Posted on 03/03/2022 9:34:07 AM PST by BenLurkin
The Atlas 5 rocket uses the Russian RD - 180 engine. They had a whole bunch of them sitting around after the cold war and and somebody, I don’t know if they were Russian or American, got the bright idea to start using them again. It turns out that they were fantastic for the Atlas 5. I believe there is a Discovery Channel show that told the story of how the RD - 180 came to be used by NASA.
The ironic thing is that the Atlas family started off as an ICBM…. Against the Russians.
What are jobs program the Atlas V is.
The technology of the Atlas V is already obsolete. It is not reusable and far too expensive to advance our colonize the solar system. The Atlas V program under Never Access Space Again is throwing good money after bad because It cannot compete with the SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
He should have said China, Iran, and North Korea could use the supply for long-range missiles. That would have gotten Biden’s panties in a bunch.
Russian technology was good enough to shoot Juan “The Bricklayer” McCain down in Vietnam.
The only way it would matter to not buy Russian oil is if they couldn’t sell it anywhere else. But they can and do sell all over the place, like all oil gets sold.
We couldn’t just allow the evil empire to fall, as gentlemen should, we had to rush in and rub their noses in the filth and humiliate them. We were ungracious winners, an ugly trait :-/
The Atlas V was designed in the late 1990's (maiden flight in 2002). Back then, Russia was humbled and poor. The fear was that, if Russian rocket engineers were unemployed or left to drive taxis or collect garbage in Moscow, they would end up working for North Korea or Iran. It just so happened that Russia had mastered the tech to build very advanced rocket engines ("oxidizer-rich staged combustion") and was happy to sell them to us for badly-needed cash.
Fast-forward twenty+ years. Russia is making trouble again. We have now mastered oxidizer-rich staged combustion. The most advanced rocket engine in the world is Elon Musk's Raptor, made in the USA. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin BE-4 is not far behind. The BE-4 will power the successor to the Atlas V, the Vulcan, which should fly this fall for the first time.
That’s news to me. Why would they want to steal it if they weren’t impressed?
Okay, maybe you've got me mixed up with someone else's post as I think all of the above are legit discussion points and I would think would be non-controversial on a site like FR. Maybe we're now instead to cheer Russia and China, give them our money?
I liked this part the best:
Thanks to Raptor 2’s quick turnaround, a small fleet of Raptor 2 equipped Starships could launch several times a week. This means SpaceX could launch more payload into space in one year than the US has done in its entire history.
NASA is a woke joke that does more to keep us on earth than into space.
Why "already"? It's >20 years old. That's a long time in the world of technology. Have you booted up Windows NT lately? ;-)
Yep, this is a problem for ULA (Lockheed/Boeing) Atlas vehicles.
Good! American technology and know-how to get us into space, keep us there, and expand our presence. Short of China stealing this, no way they or the Russians can match us.
I've known for twenty years.
Only recently. We have been using Russian engines for many years.
You're leaving out the most important element - the consumers who won't pay more for US made products.
It's easy to blame corporations and politicians but people need to look in the mirror.
Yes, that’s an inconvenient fact for sure.
U.S. consumers love the abundance of junk that’s made in China and other countries where labor is cheap. We are, after all, a very materialistic society. And that’s not going to ever change.
December 1991 - Grabby Poppy [Daddy Bush] and Rapin Bill.
Wasn't happening with those two pieces of Deep State Mitt.
Plenty of looting going on, though.
I am also talking about the newly developed Atlas V rocket engines being already obsolete. The Atlas program is essentially already dead.
SpaceX is a decade ahead of the private competition and 50 years ahead of the bureaucrats at NASA.
I have to differ with you on this, GOPJ. The Soviet Union was not the least bit interested in friendship after WWII. And Stalin SURELY wasn’t interested.
They were interested in advancing Communism world wide, including to the USA, and were actively working on all fronts to do it both before WWII and after.
The only thing that put a dent in that was McCarthy, and that respite lasted only a decade or two at the most.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.