Posted on 07/17/2014 2:18:25 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Edited on 07/17/2014 2:32:04 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Should the Russian government yank its supply of rocket engines for United States launches, critical national-security satellite missions could be delayed up to four years, experts told a joint Senate hearing Wednesday.
United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket is the workhorse of heavy satellite launches in the United States, but the booster requires a Russian RD-180 engine to get off the ground.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Good thing Zero tasked NASA to Musloid outreach instead of space exploration or Hamas might have attacked Israel.
Well....duh. Not all that long ago, anyone who suggested that we get rocket engines from the Russians (vs. using American suppliers) would have been suspected of treason.
Don’t we have engineers who could take one apart and reverse engineer it?
Add a bell or whistle — and patent the “improved” design.
Russian rockets are so stupid of an idea that it causes one to realize that the government is composed of extremely idiotic and stupid people!
He killed the Space Shuttle and now we are dependent on the Russians in order to get to our space station.
Or extremely intelligent traitors
It is disgusting that we are gutting our own defense industry when there perfectly reasonable domestic options - either United Launch Alliance, or better, commit to using some of the smaller private operations like Space X. Outsourcing to Russia is just ridiculous.
We’re too dependent on the whole world for a lot of things.
It's very, very hard. The problem is not in the drawings - they can be trivially recreated with modern 3D scanners. Would take just one day, probably.
The real devil is in the details that are called "material science." It is not enough to mill a part from a nearest piece of steel that you happen to find under your workbench. You must use the exactly right brand of steel - which may, not very unsurprisingly, be made only in one place on this planet - in a little town near Moscow. Can you recreate this steel, since you have every scientific method available to analyze a sample? Well, maybe. Or maybe not. Metal alloys are not just chemical compounds - they are a collection of crystals, and these form in unique conditions of a specific furnace. Sure, you can always go with "close enough" - but these parts work in pretty demanding conditions, and if they fail your entire vehicle will be spectacularly lost.
Should the USA start the work? I'd think this would be a far better application of tax money than helping ISIS in Syria and simultaneously blowing them up in Iraq. At very least it's possible to make something that is better than the RD-180 design. But this work will cost a lot of money and will need a few years of trying, testing and failing - and going back to the drawing board until it's perfect. You cannot make a replica in a few months; doing it in one year would be, IMO, very doubtful. Two years - perhaps. But the political demands are "right now" - and there is nothing right now.
isn’t there law requiring DOD buy US products. We know they buy a lot of military needs from foreign sourcse, but isn’t that in violation of law?
The reason UAL( Boeing-Lockheed) went Russian is because of cost not because they lack the technological know how.
They already have a design in place in case the Russians cut off supply. But it will just be far more expensive.
SpaceX already has heavy lift capability at far cheaper prices than UAL using Russian engines. UAL and their supporters deride SpaceX designs for being dated but what does it matter if it is overall much cheaper and gets the job done?
Yes, there was a time doing business with the enemy was considered TREASON
But many Free Trade Liberals have no problem with America shipping jobs and production to Communist China...so having Russians build our rockets are no big thing to them
Certainly. People who built the engine for STS can build a much smaller engine. Or could, since many of them have retired, and some are dead. Do we have enough engineers with experience in design of rocket engines with cryogenic fuels? I specialize in RF designs, for example; a control loop for a LOX pump would be beyond my practical skills. (I can build it, but I can't guarantee that it will work right on a real rocket.)
They already have a design in place in case the Russians cut off supply. But it will just be far more expensive.
Expensive is just one aspect of the problem. Compatibility is another. Mounting, fuel, pipes, valves, weight and center of mass, new vibration, new resonances, new control systems - all that needs to be simulated, measured, and flight-tested. That's where you burn time. As an example, the firmware for the platform may require mathematical proof of correctness.
UAL and their supporters deride SpaceX designs for being dated but what does it matter if it is overall much cheaper and gets the job done?
I can certainly understand why UAL says that. However I'm afraid that their position has little to do with the needs of the country.
Just amazing to me that we are in this position. What happened to America?
Ask Woodraw Wilson. He figured it out.
The project was beginning phase out under W and a replacement vessel was supposed to have been under development. It never got done. It was still years away under Bush and is never never under Obama.
That sentence sums up the State of The Union. Congress kept raising taxes for several decades, putting more & more regulation on the private sector even before that, and actual encouragement by politicians and their families vested interest in doing business with China.
We've also got a two term POTUS who is about as competent in foreign affairs as Jethro Bodine at brain surgery. Do we have an alliance meaning our reliable long standing ones Obama has not alienated us from yet left?
Reagan said Trade Partners not Trade Patsies. He had it right. No POTUS since has had this policy and for that we have paid dearly by losing our self sufficiency. The world especially China has us by the throat. The Middle East, Mexico, and South American producers have us hooked on THEIR oil. Our nations claim to fame national product is quickly becoming the golden arches saying billions served.
I find it ironic the billionaire who wants oil shipped on rails instead of piped and keeps cost up and workers wages down also owns the nations largest mobile home manufacturing company.
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