Angara Successfully Launched
"Angara" is there!
— Dmitry Rogozin (@DRogozin) July 9, 2014
Russia Shakes Off Glitches to Successfully Launch Angara Rocket, Moscow Times
“The launch was originally scheduled for June 27, but the rocket’s flight computer automatically aborted the attempt seconds before liftoff. A drop in oxidizer pressure caused by a leaky valve was responsible for the shutdown. Breaking a decades-old tradition of conducting new rocket tests away from the public gaze, the Russian media televised the first attempt. A few minutes before the launch was meant to go ahead, state media outlets cut to President Vladimir Putin watching the proceedings, or lack of them, from the Kremlin. However, reverting to Soviet form, Wednesday’s launch was not televised.”
From the Moscow Times…”Although Angara is intended to replace Russia’s commercial workhorse, the Proton rocket, there are doubts that the program will become commercially viable. The rocket faces stiff competition from foreign launch firms such as the California-based SpaceX.”
This does not bode well…for the Angara. 🙂
Once again the bear finds he is not necessarily at the top of the food chain.
Who will beat Spacex and raise the bar?
My guess is china?
India.
India’s probably got a better shot at it than China. I wouldn’t be betting heavily on either one, though, unless they also go the reusability route.
How advanced are Angara’s engines??
the Angara rocket uses the RD-191 rocket engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
The Angara seems to be a well-engineered expendable. Unfortunately, it’s multi-decadal gestation period makes it a bit of a Rip Van Winkle of launch vehicles. It has the signal misfortune of coming on-line just as SpaceX is moving the goalposts clear out of the stadium, across the parking lots and down the street.
So, a sub-orbital trajectory is supposedly a successful launch. I think not. Shades of Ares-1X.
Cheers.
So it seems the RD-191 is half of an RD-180, and they plan on using up to 5-7 cores. Why not simply make an Atlas V-ski core using an RD-180 and save building as many cores? A tri-core would still be a formidable heavy, and perhaps lighter.
You’re not wrong, as my Australian friends say. But the designers of Angara seem to have wanted a family of launchers that could be configured for a fairly modest lift capacity at the lower end, a fairly impressive lift capacity and the upper end and – critically – a lot of stepwise gradations in between. They wanted to design a kind of Tinkertoy set that would allow any required lift capacity to be straightforwardly assembled out of standard modules. No single one of these configurations is as highly optimized as would be a custom-designed vehicle aimed at lofting the same mass, but as a flexible system Angara is globally optimized. Russia has even shown a mockup of a flyback version of the Angara first stage/strap-on module. This means that, unlike their existing rockets, or even the next generation launchers being built elsewhere (Ariane 6), Angara has some potential to be a SpaceX competitor assuming geopolitics allow.