Tag: Russia

Dragon arrives at ISS

9:06 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has been berthed with ISS, bringing with it Bigelow’s privately built inflatable test module.

This berthing also makes it the first time the two American cargo freighters, Dragon and Cygnus, are docked at ISS at the same time.

In a related non-news story, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, which now controls that country’s entire aerospace industry, claimed in a television interview today that Russia is the world’s “undisputed leader … in launch vehicles and launch services,” noting that they launch about 40% of all launches worldwide.

That’s nice for him to say, but just because you say it doesn’t make it so. I expect that 40% number (which includes all Russian government launches and is thus inflated from their actual market share) to shrink considerably in the coming years, as the Russian space industry has shown a complete inability to innovate in the last twenty years. With the consolidation of that industry into a single corporation all run by the government, I do not expect that inability to go away anytime soon.

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Boeing moves to block Russians from selling Sea Launch

9:21 pm

In a reaction to news that the Russians have a potential buyer for Sea Launch, Boeing has sued to block the sale.

In a motion for a preliminary injunction filed with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California April 2, Boeing argued that a sale of Sea Launch could hinder its ability to collect on a summary judgment issued last year against Energia of at least $300 million. “If Energia succeeds in selling these assets and moving all of the proceeds thereof to Russia, without paying the hundreds of millions of dollars that it owes, it would unquestionably complicate Boeing’s collection efforts,” the company’s lawyers stated in the court filing.

Energia has refused to pay that $300 million. However, since Sea Launch’s floating launch platform remains docked in California, Boeing retains a great deal of leverage in this legal dispute. I expect the court will eventually put a lock on those assets until the Russians pay up.

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Russia schedules first Vostochny launch

7:08 pm

The competition heats up: Roscosmos has scheduled April 27 as the date for the first launch from its new spaceport in Vostochny.

I do wish them luck. I don’t think the Russians will be very successful at competing in the new private launch industry that is beginning to emerge, centered as they are on Soviet-style, top-down, giant government-run organizations, but I still hope they succeed at whatever they attempt in space. As far as I am concerned, the more the merrier.

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Russia insures first Vostochny launch

8:40 am

In the heat of competition: Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has obtained insurance for the first launch from Vostochny, covering the rocket and the launch facilities it will use.

This story tells us more about Russia’s present circumstances than the situation at Vostochny. Normally, government space agencies self-insure. Russia, however, is having serious economic problems, and I suspect that the managers there have recognized that if this launch fails and the launchpad is damaged badly, they don’t have the cash to quickly rebuild it. Granted, the insurance itself will probably cost them a lot of money they also don’t have, but considering the significant quality control problems the Russian aerospace industry has had in recent years, combined with the corruption that has surrounded the construction at Vostochny, they are probably wise to cover themselves in the not unlikely chance that something goes wrong.

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Further chaos at Vostochny

9:16 am

One week after the Moscow Commercial Court ordered the contractor building the new Russian spaceport Vostochny to repay $52 million in bank loans, that contractor has now filed three lawsuits totaling $17.9 million against the organization that runs the spaceport.

The new lawsuits suggest that even as the contractor’s managers were embezzling millions from the spaceport, the spaceport organization was also pocketing some money that was supposed to go to the contractor.

Russia: a true worker’s paradise!

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Russia selling Sea Launch?

12:12 am

The competition heats up? Though he couldn’t reveal any details, the director of Russian space agency Roscosmos today said that they have found a buyer for Sea Launch.

“I cannot tell you who the investor is, or the value of the contract, due to certain obligations. I hope that we will have something to say about it by the end of April,” Komarov said. He did, however, say that investors from the U.S., Australia, China and Europe have expressed interest in the project.

Because Sea Launch is a floating launch platform, there really is no reason the company can’t be taken over by anyone in the world. And should the buyer use the Ukrainian Zenit rocket that the platform was designed to use, the technical problems might be reduced as well.

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Vostochny contractor ordered to pay loans

10:16 am

A Moscow court has ordered the main contractor building the Vostochny spaceport to pay back 3.5 billion rubles in debt to its bank.

VTB [the bank] has filed several lawsuits to recover debt from Dalspetsstroy [the contractor]. On February 24, the Moscow Commercial Court granted the bank’s lawsuit seeking 722 million rubles ($11 million) from the company. Another claim for 777 million rubles ($11.5 million) should be considered today.

It was the ex-CEO of this contractor, plus his two sons, who are charged with embezzling over a hundred million rubles from the project.

In related news, this Moscow Times article provides some nice details about Russia’s just approved ten-year plan for its space program. As reported earlier, Russia’s bad economic times has forced them to cut the program to the bone.

Somehow, why do I think that these two stories have so much to do with each other? Could it be that there is some inherent corruption within Russia’s giant government-run aerospace monopoly called Roscosmos that prevents that monopoly from innovating, competing, and doing things efficiently?

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Near disaster for ExoMars

6:22 pm

The Russian jinx for going to Mars might not be over yet: New data suggests that the Briz-M upper stage to the Proton rocket exploded shortly after it has propelled ExoMars on its way to Mars and then separated from it.

There appears to be a cloud of debris near the probe, thought to have been caused when the Briz-M stage was to fire its rockets one last time to take it away from ExoMars as well as prevent it from following it to Mars. Instead, it is thought (though not confirmed) that the stage blew up at that moment.

Though so far ExoMars appears to be functioning properly, but they have not yet activated all of its most sensitive instruments. Only when they turn them on in April will we find out if they were damaged in any way by the Briz-M failure.

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Fuel for Russia’s nuclear space engine

9:14 am

The competition heats up: According to Russian press sources, the first fuel for that country’s nuclear space engine project has now been delivered to Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy corporation.

The article is very unclear whether this space engine is a nuclear power plant similar to those used by NASA’s deep space Voyager, Pioneer, and Cassini probes, or whether it is a real nuclear-powered engine designed to provide thrust. Russia has never launched a probe with the former, so that would be an advancement for them, but it would not be a game-changer in the exploration of the solar system. If the latter, however, it will give them the capability no one else has to travel quickly and more efficiently to other worlds.

Based on a careful rereading of the article, I suspect the former.

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Vostochny begins practicing launch procedures

8:59 am

The competition heats up: Dress rehearsals have begun for the first Soyuz rocket launch at Russia’s new spaceport Vostochny, scheduled sometime this spring.

They have not announced an official launch date yet.

If all tests go as scheduled, the launch vehicle will be removed from the launch pad on March 25 and returned to its processing facility for the final assembly with its payloads, including Lomonosov, Aist-2D and Kontakt-Nanosputnik satellites, which will be delivered into orbit during the first mission from Vostochny. The State Commission overseeing the launch will be making decision on the date of the first liftoff based on the results of the tests, the readiness of the launch facilities and the completion of safety measures for the launch personnel, Roskosmos said.

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Russia finally approves 10-year space plan

9:31 am

The announcement yesterday that Russia is trimming its space budget by 30% was actually part of the final approval of their ten-year space plan, under discussion and planning for the past two years.

Interestingly, the 30% cut was only the last reduction of many in the budget plan since it was first announced. Initially, they hoped to budget 3.4 trillion rubles for their aerospace industry over the next decade. The final budget approved yesterday is for 1.4 trillion. That’s a 59% reduction.

Considering that the reductions have forced them to abandon any plans for building a re-usable rocket, they will be increasingly hard-pressed in the next decade to successfully compete for business in the commercial market. While Russia stands still with its older designs, others will be developing new less costly ways to launch rockets. The business will go elsewhere, and they will actually have even less money to work with.

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Russians use wooden matches to ignite rocket engines

9:15 am

The March 12th launch abort of a Soyuz rocket occurred because the Russians use the equivalent of a giant wooden match to ignite their Soyuz rocket engines.

Essentially, prior to launch engineers insert large wooden matches into each engine, and these are ignited using an electric spark prior to allowing fuel into the combustion chamber. When mission control sensors all matches are burning, they open the valves and fuel enters the chamber, igniting and incinerating the matches.

This setup is not as simple as a regular match, but it is surprisingly reliable and has worked for six decades on hundreds of rockets. Yet on March 12, during the first attempt to launch the new Russian satellite for Earth observation, one of the “matches” failed to fire after the ignition command was issued. It was enough of a problem for the launch control system, which detected the lack of signal from the failed igniter, to call off the propellant injection into combustion chambers. The launch was aborted just a moment before liftoff, and the fully fueled rocket remained safely on the pad.

To launch the next day, they simply replaced the matches and tried again, quite successfully.

The article makes me wonder how other rockets ignite their engines.

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Roscosmos budget slashed 30%

10:46 pm

How’s that consolidation working out for ya? The Russian government announced today that it will have to cut the budget for its space program by 30 percent over the next ten years due to the country’s deepening economic problems.

In line with its reduced funding, the space agency has agreed to delay a manned flight to the moon by five years – to 2035 from 2030 – and scrap plans to develop a reusable rocket, a potentially valuable cost-saving technology. A Roscosmos spokesman previously said the agency would reassess its plans after 2025.

Essentially, the consolidation of Russia’s entire aerospace industry into a single corporation run by the Russian government has produced a very expensive government program unable to accomplish much of anything for a budget of 1.4 trillion rubles ($20.4 billion) from 2016 to 2025. Sounds kind of like NASA, doesn’t it?

Give me competition over a centralized program any day, and see great things happen. Go with a centralized government program, and watch as the life ebbs from the creativity of everyone.

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ExoMars blasts off

8:46 am

The European-Russian Mars orbiter/lander ExoMars was successfully launched on a Proton rocket this morning from Baikonur.

It will still take most of today for the rocket’s Briz-M upper stage to complete several additional engine burns to send the spacecraft on its path to Mars, but the most difficult part of the launch has now passed.

The article does a nice job of summing up Russia’s most recent track record in trying to send spacecraft to Mars, thus illustrating the significance of today’s success:

For Russian scientists, the launch marks the resumption of a cooperative effort with Europe to explore the Solar System, after the failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission in 2011.The launch of the ExoMars-2016 spacecraft will be Proton’s first “interplanetary” assignment in almost two decades. During its previous attempt in November 1996, Proton’s upper stage failed, sending the precious Mars-96 spacecraft to a fiery desmise in the Earth’s atmosphere and effectively stalling Russia’s planetary exploration program for a generation.

Further in the past, during the Soviet era, the Russians tried numerous times to either orbit or land on Mars. Every mission failed. If this mission successfully reaches Mars and lands it will mark the first time the Russians played a major role in a mission to Mars that actually reached its goal and worked.

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Another Falcon Heavy customer switches to different rocket

2:15 am

The competition heats up: Afraid of more delays in SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, Inmarsat has booked a Russian Proton rocket for a 2017 commercial satellite launch.

London-based Inmarsat is the second Falcon Heavy commercial customer to have sought a Plan B given the continued uncertainties in the launch schedule of Falcon Heavy, whose inaugural flight has been repeatedly delayed. Carlsbad, California-based ViaSat Inc. in February moved its ViaSat-2 consumer broadband satellite from the Falcon Heavy to Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket for an April 2017 launch, securing what may be launch-service provider Arianespace’s last 2017 slot for a heavy satellite.

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ExoMars ready for launch

2:07 am

The European ExoMars Mars orbiter and lander mission, set for launch on March 14, is assembled on its Proton rocket and is ready for launch.

This European project was originally going to be in partnership with NASA, but the Obama administration pulled out of the deal. The Russians then offered to come in and provide a rocket for the mission.

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Roscosmos approves space tourism project

8:01 pm

The competition heats up? Russia’s giant aerospace monopoly Roscosmos has given formal permission for the development of a suborbital space tourism project, proposed by the formally independent company, KosmoKurs.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos has admitted the private space company KosmoKurs to working out a project for the development of a reusable system for space tourism flights, KosmoKurs Director General Pavel Pushkin said on Friday. “Our technical design specification was approved by Roscosmos two days ago. The system’s preliminary design will be created with this document,” Pushkin said at the InSpace forum.

According to him, the technical design specification has also been approved by the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash) and the Keldysh Research Center. In addition, Pushkin said, Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov has already approved the project. “Igor Anatolyevich has taken the project with enthusiasm and gave orders to promote this project”, Pushkin said.

So, if I understand this right, this private company had to get approvals from Roscosmos’s bureaucracy, two other competitive groups within Roscosmos, plus the head of Roscosmos itself, before it would be allowed to proceed with building its independent suborbital operation. I wonder how many bribes KosmosKurs had to pay along the way. I also wonder what kind of quid pro quo deals that had to make in order get those other institutes to give their okay.

With Russia’s aerospace industry function under this kind of set-up, I doubt they are going to get much done in the coming decades.

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Iridium dumps Russia for SpaceX

10:14 pm

In the heat of competition: Because of Russian red tape Iridium has switched from a Russian rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for placing its first 10 next generation communications satellites in orbit this year.

I thought the Putin government’s consolidation of its entire aerospace industry into a single corporation was going to speed things up? Not. Then again, SpaceX might not be any better, considering the problems it continues to have meeting its launch schedule.

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The moment Yeltsin became a capitalist

10:50 pm

In 1989 Boris Yeltsin, member of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and leader of one of what could be considered the equivalent of one of its mid-western states, visited Texas and toured the Johnson Space Center as well as a typical American supermarket. It was the grocery store that impressed him, not America’s space program.

He was dazzled by the fact that grocery stores were everywhere, and that they even offered free samples. A year or so later, a biographer wrote that on the plane ride from Texas to Florida, Yelstin couldn’t get the vision of the endless food supply out of his mind, and lamented how different things were for his own countrymen. According to wikipedia, Leon Aron, quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his biography, “Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000): “For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. ‘What have they done to our poor people?’ he said after a long silence.” He added, “On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the ‘pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments.’”

He wrote that Mr. Yeltsin added, “I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.”

And then, in his own autobiography, Yeltsin wrote about the experience at the grocery store himself, which reshaped his entire view on communism, ultimately leading to his leaving the Communist party. “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”

In writing Leaving Earth, I read all these same sources and was struck as well by how much this moment influenced Yeltsin. Very clearly, what Yeltsin saw that day led him to abandon communism.

If only more Americans could experience the same contrast he did, that of the shortages and poverty of top-down, command economies like socialism and communism vs the wealth and vibrancy and freedom of capitalism. I suspect unfortunately they will have to turn the U.S. into a new Soviet Union before they will realize how bankrupt such systems are.

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Ukraine’s aerospace industry in collapse

9:39 am

The Russian government’s takeover of its entire aerospace industry, plus its war in the Ukraine, has caused an 80% crash in Ukraine’s aerospace industry.

The two largest enterprises are the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and the PA Yuzhmash manufacturing company, which work closely together on Ukrainian launch vehicles. Yuzhmash produces the first stages of the Zenit and Antares boosters and a fourth stage for Europe’s Vega launch vehicle. The company is also involved in the conversion of retired ballistic missiles into Dnepr satellite launchers as part of a joint program with Russia.

However, Russia is phasing out use of the Zenit and Dnepr launchers. Russia is shifting over to using Angara and Soyuz-2.1v, newer rockets the nation produces domestically. Russia is also switching to domestic manufacturers for space components to reduce their dependence on foreign suppliers.

This destruction by Russia of its neighbor’s aerospace industry doesn’t necessarily bode well for Russia’s own aerospace industry. Consolidated as it is into one giant entity, with no competition, it is very likely it will not produce much that is very innovative or creative at a reasonable cost. Russia was better off with the competition.

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Russian Proton rocket successfully launches commercial satellite

10:21 pm

The competition heats up: The Russians successfully put a European commercial communications satellite into orbit today their Proton rocket.

It was the sixth successful Proton launch since their May failure. The key quote from the article however was this:

ILS owner Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center of Moscow has said it would give ILS leeway to reduce prices to work its way back into the regular commercial-launch rotation alongside SpaceX and Europe’s Arianespace. The decline of the Russian ruble against the U.S. dollar has made that task easier as most commercial launch contracts are priced in dollars.

In other words they are going to cut prices to compete, and the falling ruble has given them more leeway to do it.

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Angara at Vostochny trimmed

10:16 am

Due to cuts in the Russian government’s ten-year plan for aerospace, the number of Angara launchpads at the new Vostochny spaceport has been slashed in half, with construction delayed as well.

On January 20, 2016, Roskosmos officials admitted that budget cuts at the end of 2015 required to drop plans to build one of the two launch pads for Angara rockets in Vostochny. Previously, the Russian space officials claimed that a dual launch complex for the Angara was absolutely necessary to support the four-launch scenario of the lunar expeditions relying on the Angara-5V rocket. The beginning of the construction of the remaining single pad was now delayed from 2016 to 2017.

Based on all the different reports I’ve read, they have also eliminated in the 10-year plan all lunar missions and the construction of a new space station. Essentially, their budget can only barely sustain what they are already doing. Like NASA, they have too large a labor force — jobs maintained for pork barrel reasons rather than actually accomplishing anything — that makes it impossible for them to afford anything new.

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Russia names next manned spaceship “Federation”

7:44 pm

They might not be close to building it, but the Russian government has decided that the name they will use for their next generation manned spaceship to replace Soyuz will be “Federation.”

“Federation is a perfect name for the series of new Russian spacecraft. Russia is a federation of 85 constituent entities and each of them will be able to give its name for one of the spaceships,” the corporation [Energia] said [in a press release].

Don’t bet on this spaceship appearing in the near future. In fact, don’t bet on it having this name either. Remember how in the 2000s they were going to build “Clipper”? That never happened either. With a shrinking economy and the consolidation of their entire aerospace industry into a single government entity I expect Russia’s space industry to have a great deal of problems building anything new in the coming years.

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Russia trims its 10-year space plan

10:28 pm

The competition cools: Due to budget pressures, Russia has once more cut what it plans to do in its as yet not finalized 10-year space plan.

Not only do they expect to fly fewer satellites during the plan, they appear to either have dropped or are significantly curtailing their plans for their own space station after they pull out of ISS in 2024.

The corporation has also lost some of the original ambitious projects, including creation of two autonomous modules (transformable and power generating ones, ordered by the Russian Academy of Sciences), meant for the creation of a Russian orbital station. The project is absent from the latest version of the program. A transformable module was to be created in 2020-2025 and its launch was scheduled for 2025. Its service life was estimated at five years and design and manufacturing costs, 12.3 billion rubles.

In addition, it appears they are cutting back their plans for planetary research.

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Russians to develop Falcon 9-like rocket

9:21 am

The competition heats up: The Russian government has apparently given the go-ahead to the development of a Falcon 9-like modular rocket, original dubbed Soyuz 5 but now called Fenix (Phoenix).

The images at the link show it to be similar in concept to Falcon 9, with its first stage used as a component to produce multiple configurations. With one first stage it would resemble Falcon 9. In its Falcon Heavy configuration it would use three first stages strapped together. Moreover, the article notes that development would begin as expendable, but shift towards re-usability during operation, like Falcon 9. And it does appear that reducing cost is its main driver, since it will involve the development of only one engine and the reuse of it in every stage, like Falcon 9,

If all goes as outlined in the plan (don’t bet on it), the rocket would be operational by 2025, which is the one difference with Falcon 9. SpaceX got its rocket designed and launched in about five years. The Russian governmental system is going to take ten years to do the same..

The article is a detailed explanation of the rocket mentioned by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin during his confusing television briefing on December 30. The irony here is that, while this rocket might be able to compete with the Falcon 9 of 2016, when it becomes operational in 2025 who knows what will be considered competitive.

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Leningrad Cowboys & the Red Army Choir – Sweet Home Alabama

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I can think of nothing more appropriate to begin the new year with than this performance. Nothing.

Hat tip hondo.

By the way, with the New Year I am in desperate need of more Evening Pause suggestions. If you’ve sent me suggestions in the past, you know the email address. If not, post a comment here saying that you have a suggestion (without mentioning what it is) and I will email you for it.

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