{"id":45326,"date":"2024-04-01T20:25:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T12:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/russia-has-a-plan-to-restore-its-dominant-position-in-the-global-launch-market\/"},"modified":"2024-04-01T20:25:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T12:25:27","slug":"russia-has-a-plan-to-restore-its-dominant-position-in-the-global-launch-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/russia-has-a-plan-to-restore-its-dominant-position-in-the-global-launch-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia has a plan to \u201crestore\u201d its dominant position in the global launch market"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been a terrible decade for the Russian launch industry, which once led the world. The country\u2019s long-running workhorse, the Proton rocket, ran into reliability issues and will soon be retired. Russia\u2019s next-generation rocket, Angara, is fully expendable and still flying dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut. And the ever-reliable Soyuz vehicle lost access to lucrative Western markets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Yet there has been a more fundamental, underlying disease pushing the once-vaunted Russian launch industry toward irrelevance. The country has largely relied on decades-old technology in a time of serious innovation within the launch industry. So what worked at the turn of the century to attract the launches of commercial satellites no longer does against the rising tide of competition from SpaceX, as well as other players in India and China.<\/p>\n

Through the first quarter of this year, Russia has launched a total of five rockets, all variants of the Soyuz vehicle. SpaceX alone has launched 32 rockets. China, too, has launched nearly three times as many boosters as Russia.<\/p>\n

However, Russia has a plan to reclaim the dominance it once held in the global launch industry. In a recent interview published on the Roscosmos website (a non-geo-blocked version is available here) the chief of the Russian space corporation, Yuri Borisov, outlined the strategy by which the country will do so.<\/p>\n

The first step, Borisov said, is to develop a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket, called Amur-CNG. The country\u2019s spaceflight enterprise is also working on \u201cultralight\u201d boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that by the 2028\u20132029 timeframe we will have a completely new fleet of space vehicles and will be able to restore our position in the global launch services market,\u201d Borisov said in the interview, which was translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

A miracle, Amur<\/h2>\n

Russia has previously discussed plans to develop the Amur rocket (the CNG refers to the propellant, liquified methane). The multi-engine vehicle looks somewhat similar to SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket in that preliminary designs incorporated landing legs and grid fins to enable a powered first-stage landing.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s space industry first unveiled its Amur plans back in 2020, when officials said they were targeting a low price of just $22 million for a launch on Amur, which would be capable of delivering 10.5 tons to low-Earth orbit. Essentially, then, it would offer about half the carrying capacity of a Falcon 9 rocket for one-third of the price.<\/p>\n

At the time, Roscosmos officials were targeting a 2026 debut for Amur. Had they been able to deliver such a capability, it would undoubtedly be an attractively priced offering. Alas, the year 2026 appears to be off the table now. Through his comments, Borisov indicated that Amur will not be ready before 2028 or 2029.<\/p>\n

Since there has been almost a year-for-year slippage in that date since Amur\u2019s announcement in 2020, it seems likely that even this target late in the decade is unrealistic.<\/p>\n

Ultra-light booster<\/h2>\n

Borisov also references the development of ultra-light boosters\u2014an interesting comment given that the trend in the global launch industry has been away from small rockets toward medium- and heavy-lift boosters. Here\u2019s what Borisov had to say about the development of a small-lift rocket by Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo to three years ago, the Foundation for Advanced Research began work on something like a startup, but the work was kept quiet since the planned booster is supposed to be innovative in terms of manufacturing technology, including new castings and composite materials,\u201d Borisov said. \u201cTesting of experimental stages for the future booster took place that were in principle successful, showing that we\u2019re on the right design track. Now we\u2019re interested in engine manufacturing and firming up their specs.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

This is likely in reference to the \u201cSLK launch vehicle,\u201d which could carry approximately 400 kg to low-Earth orbit in reusable mode and 600 kg in fully expendable mode. This vehicle may include a folding-wing solution for gliding back through Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

As with the Amur vehicle, dates for this rocket\u2019s development should be treated with great skepticism. When the Kremlin-operated news service TASS reported on the SLK rocket in 2021, it had an inaugural launch date of 2024.<\/p>\n

Ultra-heavy booster<\/h2>\n

Many Russian officials were among those skeptical about the development of the massive Starship rocket by SpaceX, particularly because its first stage relies on firing 33 Raptor engines during its ascent toward orbit.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s space program, under the direction of revered rocket scientist Sergei Korolev, tried to do this with the super-heavy N1 rocket in the 1960s. Its first stage was powered by 30 NK-15 engines. Four launch attempts from 1969 to 1972 all ended in failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe N1 was far ahead of its time, with its ambitious goals exceeding the technology level of its era,\u201d Borisov said. \u201cOne issue was control of multiple engines; existing systems couldn\u2019t handle synchronous control of so many engines, the main reason why N1 was a fiasco.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

But now that Starship has been successful\u2014during its second and third test flights, the first stage of the SpaceX rocket had nominal performance, with all Raptor engines firing as intended\u2014Russia is considering an ultra-heavy booster.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike the N1, Amur-CNG will be powered by a multi-engine design,\u201d he said. \u201cIf successful, we hope to be able to transition the same design principles into an ultra-heavy booster. So we are working on the same trail blazed by Korolev.\u201d<\/p>\n

This may all play well with a domestic audience in Russia, but let\u2019s be real. Russia\u2019s launch industry is a pariah in the West, and the country is likely a decade away from deploying a vehicle that might be competitive with the Falcon 9. Its plans for an ultra-heavy booster are completely fantastical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been a terrible decade for the Russian launch industry, which once led the world. The country\u2019s long-running workhorse, the Proton rocket, ran into reliability issues and will soon be retired. Russia\u2019s next-generation rocket, Angara, is fully expendable and still flying dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut. And the ever-reliable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9712,352,21],"class_list":["post-45326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-amur","tag-russia","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}