Russia: June 2009 Archives

Video games multi-millionaire Richard Garriott, Space Adventures' sixth space tourist and one of the company's co-founders, spoke to Hyperbola at the Royal Aeronautrical Society's 30 June 2009 space tourism event. He followed in his NASA astronaut father's footsteps, Owen Garriott was a scientist astronaut that was a Skylab crew member and participated in a Space Shuttle mission

The study did not address the other US Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) - a heavy-lift version of the Atlas V - because of "no clear advantages and several disadvantages," including the difficulty in obtaining human-rating data on its Russian RD-180 engines.

wrote Frank Morring with his 15 June scoop. Of that sentence there are 12 words that represent the biggest obstacle to using the Atlas V and I can't remember it ever being discussed by the blogosphere, the difficulty in obtaining human rating data on its Russian RD-180 engines

The Russians will have their own technology export rules and it is not beyond plausiblity that the information that is needed to human rate the Energomash RD-180 is restricted by them

Oh but the Russians might use the RD-180 for the new launcher for the Advanced Crew Vehicle, I hear the blogosphere cry. Fine, and they have access to the data to human rate that engine but Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne won't be getting it anytime soon

Or to flip this argument on its head, if you think members of Congress don't like paying Russia for crew transport to the International Space Station now how do you think they will like having the the US ISS ferry and subsequent return to the Moon programme's crew transportation system dependent entirely on Russian engines?

he sad reality is that this whole RD-180 situation has been dragging on for years...   

Thanks to NASA and UStream if you missed the 17 June public meeting of the Review of US Human Spaceflght Plans committee in Washington DC then you can while away the hours watching the above

credit Flight / caption: But will it ever be built?

I snapped this photo last week at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center stand at the Paris air show. It shows the company's proposed heavy lift Angara A7 rocket model. During the Russian delegation press conference at the air show Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) head Anatoly Perminov, with a rare smile, referred to the "complete family" of Angara rockets now on the agency's exhibit - which houses all the major space companies

The data sheet that accompanied the model can be seen in the extended portion of this blog post. It describes a vehicle launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome, with a 1,133,000kg (2.4 million lb) gross lift off weight, using liquid oxygen and kerosene propellant and able to put 7,600kg into geostationary orbit and 12,500kg into a "geo transfer orbit" with what it calls a KVTK-A7 upper stage. How different is that to the Breeze M/KVTK upper stage I wonder? There is also a reference to a "support orbit" with the figure 35. Is that 35,000kg to LEO?

Talked about publicly on and off for a number of years the earliest article Hyperbola can find is a 1 March 2005 TASS article referring to the A7 as able to put 41,000kg into low Earth orbit (along with talk of a 100,000kg to LEO capable super booster) but there was no reference to this on the Paris air show data sheet - I did get to meet the head of public relations for Khrunichev and forgot to ask, doh! Too busy with the ILS folks, more on that in a future article

Strangely there is not even a mention of the A7 on the Khrunichev website and during my email contact them prior to writing this article no mention was made of the A7. Perhaps recent difficulties with Angara made talk of the A7 a little academic? However a potted history and some technical detail with some artist's impressions can be found at Anatoly Zaks' Russian Space Web site

credit Flight / caption: Three different versions for the failed Russian tender?

There was no one today (well it is Sunday and the air show officially starts tomorrow) on the stand to talk about these models of the Khrunichev Space Center piloted space complex (see second picture in the extended portion of this blog post for vehicle data) but Hyperbola does intend to talk to the Russian space company this week so expect more details. Looking at the data and seeing how closely they align with the manned spacecraft tender that the Russian Federal Space Agency published this complex concept design (with Angara 3 identified as its launch system) is probably Khrunichev's failed bid for what is now known as the Advanced Crew Transportation System

click on all the images in this blog post to see larger versions in the same window browser

From 15-17 June Hyperbola will be coming from Le Bourget where the 100th Paris air show will be launching into full swing - and there may even be reportage on breaking news over the weekend (yes I've got to work Saturday and Sunday...). Expect multimedia coverage (when I have the time to upload it) of the space industry that camps out in the Parisian suburb for the first half of next week along with tweets from the European Space Agency and Russian Federal Space Agency press conferences, at least. C'est magnifique!

Utilisez Google traduire, en haut à gauche, à lire le blog au-dessus de l'affichage en français

Go here to find out more about how you can follow all the tweet action from the Flightglobal team working this week at the Le Bourget Paris Salon de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (that's aeronautics and space to the anglais only readers out there) as the air show is also known

It is a bright and sunny Saturday (13 June) morning here in le Bourget, France where preparations continue for the 100th Paris air show that will see a whole of lot of aeronautics stuff and plenty of European spaceflight industry and agency activity to fill the Hyperbola posts that are to come, hopefully along with some podcasts and video reports


Agrandir le plan

credit RSC-Energia / caption: Mini Research Module 2 in final assembly at Energia

S P Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia has posted on its website a photo report of the Min Research Module 2 (MRM2) in final assembly with cosmonauts and NASA astronauts in attendance during training

MRM2 will be launched by a TSKB-Progress aka Samara Space Center Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station this November. Although called a mini research module MRM2 is actually to operate as (scroll down to bottom of page) a port for the docking of Soyuz, Progress and other cargo vehicles and as the primary Russian airlock for the performance of spacewalks by two ISS crewmembers using Russian Orlan spacesuits

The picture above shows MRM2 in final assembly and in the lower half of the image the group of people, Energia says, "includes the cosmonauts A. Kaleri, O. Skripochka, M. Suraev, A. Skvortsov and S. Revin and the American astronauts R. Garan, Sh. Walker and J. Williams"

They took part in training by the RSC-Energia specialists at the Checkout & Test Facility, where the module is in the final stage of its manufacturing operations

Meanwhile go here for images of MRM1, which will be launched in 2010 by Space Shuttle