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Russia Launches Angara 5

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
December 23, 2014
Filed under ,
Russia Launches Angara 5

Russia Launches Angara 5 on Maiden Test Flight [With Video], SpaceRef Business
“Russia today successfully launched the Angara 5 rocket on its first test flight. The rocket carried a dummy payload. The Angara 5 flew with five first stage cores strapped together and a Breeze M upper stage.
The Angara 5 is meant to replace Russia’s heavy-lift Proton rocket and would become the workhorse of the Russian fleet tasked with primarily launching military payloads. A future super heavy-lift Angara 7 is also planned, if needed.”

Angara best response to Western sanctions – deputy PM, ITAR TASS
“The Angara launch is a proper response to the Western sanctions and confirmation of Russia’s ability to make new achievements, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.”
Russia launches new heavy-class Angara space rocket, Xinhua
“Russia successfully carried out the first test launch of a newest heavy-class Angara A5 rocket on Tuesday. The rocket was launched at Plesetsk cosmodrome in Russia’s northern Arkhangelsk region at 08:57 a.m. Moscow Time (0557 GMT), according to the Defense Ministry press service.”

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

36 responses to “Russia Launches Angara 5”

  1. jski says:
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    If we (the U.S. of A.) had the Angara 5, would be bother with SLS?

    Probably the most advanced engines extant.

    • Matthew Black says:
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      Angara 5 only lifts about 25 tons – about the same as the U.S. Delta IV-H which recently launched Orion. Angara 5 is a 5x corestage ‘bunch’ configuration. If ULA did the same for Delta IV-H, upgraded it’s upper stage with a more powerful engine (MB-60 or RL-60) and used some of the corestages in propellant ‘crossfeed’ configuration, it would lift about 60 tons to Low Earth Orbit – better than Falcon Heavy and a fraction of the price of SLS development. A 7x core Delta with uprated regenerative nozzle RS-68 engines and a 4-engined upper stage would get nearly 100 tons into orbit. But that config is only a ‘paper rocket’ study that nevertheless would work and I bet would cost billions less than the Block 1B SLS. Use such a Delta 7 in partnership with Falcon Heavy, Propellant Depot technology and/or Solar Electric Propulsion and you could go anywhere between cislunar space and the asteroid belt…

      • Yale S says:
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        It would make better sense to simply do the same thing with a Falcon Heavy supercluster.
        In any event, the BFR, with full reusablity would have much greater lift of than delta and be ready sooner.
        It is still a paper rocket but it is be actively moved along

        • Matthew Black says:
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          Yeah, probably true – though a 45 engine supercluster might be a bit psychedelic!! 😉 I wonder if Space X could create that many extra Merlin engines on top of everything else they’ve gotta make.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        Lockheed and Boeing have had the phase II studies a long time. No potential customers ever wanted to lay down money for an order.

        • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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          Yeah, it’s a shame. The irony is, of course, that the USG has ended up paying multiples of the development cost of the upgraded EELVs on SLS, which will probably also be slower to reach service and have fewer applications for its greater cost.

          You can tell that I’m an EELV Phase-I/-II fanboy, can’t you?

          • Vladislaw says:
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            It was the way The Vision for Space Exploration should have been carried out. We could have made the moon by 2015 if we had went small, fast and commercial… congress felt otherwise and brought in Griffin, he put his thumb on the scale and EELV’s were out.

          • DTARS says:
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            Was congress responsible for Griffin being chosen or was the President?

            Clem, Marty and Me failed at stopping Kennedy’s speech. So there was the Apollo program and the great NASA build up. And we couldn’t stop them from defunding the Apollo program. The three of us tried to get a reusable space vehicle based on Saturn architecture but we failed there to. Shuttle became what it was, DOD Truck to LEO, Longest flying X vehicle in history. So now you’re saying that it was Griffins fault?

            If we stop him from being appointed and fly in expensive EELVs that we will be back on the moon by now? Back to 2005 and the Capital! Fire up the DeLoren Marty! Hang on Clem! Hit it! Aaaaaaahhhhhhbhh!

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Congress has never been shy in letting the President know who will pass the senate confirmation and who will not. Just like with Bolden. He was not President Obama’s choice he was Senator Nelson’s choice.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Griffin passed the Senate confirmation process. Do you really believe that what Griffin was supposed to do as NASA administrator was not completely spelled out to him before the process even started? That the Senators from space states didn’t make it clear what THEY would support and wouldn’t support if he was confirmed as NASA administrator? Griffin came in with a predefined mission. He immediatly iniated the the 60 day study and the VSE went out the window.

          • dogstar29 says:
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            Griffin had made some of his choices clear before he was chosen, and his support for SRBs might have pleased ATK, but it is my recollection that Griffin was the choice of President Bush. At that time Congress was much more likely to go along with the President than it is now.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            The SRB’s had already been flying for over a decade when Griffin did the FLO report:

            http://www.nss.org/settleme

            Griffin wanted absolutely nothing to do with SRB’s and recommended not utilizing them at all. Prior he had stated he believed the space shuttle should be retired sooner and that heavy lift could be derived from EELV’s. Once he was nominiated he then thought all the old shuttle stuff should be used for a heavy lift and that the heritage hardware should not be retired but used INSTEAD of anything from the EELV’s. From FLO to ESAS he did an about face.
            I thought a member of the Senate put his name forward or General Worden? I can’t recall but it wasn’t Bush who pulled the name out of nowhere.

        • John Gardi says:
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          Vladislaw:

          Boeing and Lockheed Martin have it backwards. They looked for customers first! A better way to do it, the SpaceX way, is to build, qualify, test and fly capability first… then look for customers. They wouldn’t even have to look, customers would sign up of their own accord, knowing the capability is there.

          Boeing and Lockheed Martin sell space capability the same way they sell airliners and fighter aircraft. That is their big fail!

          tinker

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Tinker, SpaceX has not built, qualified or test flown falcon heavy. Musk did a news confrence and announced a test that still has not happened. They have sold several flights for a falcon heavy only on the announcement. The difference between Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s announcement and SpaceX is that the usual suspects did not give a clue to price and for what they were charging for Delta IV and Atlas V launches no potential customer stepped forward to pay such extremely high prices for the Phase II vehicles. Plus Boeing and Lockheed wanted someone (government) else to pay for the development up front, they were not willing to finance it internally. SpaceX announced they were going to develop their launcher internally and test fly it and stated what the price was going to be. THAT is the major difference, price.

          • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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            Both you and Tinker have it correct. Price and capability before customers. That’s the Silicon Valley methodology and that’s what SpaceX is modelling so far as they can.
            Cheers

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            The #1 reason SpaceX currently successful is price. Customers don’t care much about how SpaceX gets its prices so low, they just care that they are low. #2 reason is their currently low failure rate for Falcon 9. #3 reason is that they didn’t require their customers to pay the lion’s share of their development costs.

            There have always been proposals from ULA to build bigger vehicles, but they’ve always come with a very stiff per launch price tag and on top of that, they’ve expected the customer to foot the multi-billion dollar bill for development using a traditional waterfall development approach.

            SpaceX has been successful due to a combination of clever engineering (optimize launch vehicles for low cost per flight, not maximum engine ISP or minimum vehicle dry mass) and focused program management.

      • John Gardi says:
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        Matthew:

        If you’re going to talk about 7 core launch vehicles, consider this scenario using a Falcon Heavy with 7 core booster stages:

        -At launch, the six outer cores would light and launch the vehicle.
        -Four of the outer cores would cross feed to 2 adjacent outer cores and burn for 2 1/2 minute before dropping away to propulsively land near the launch site.
        -The 2 remaining outer cores (still full) would cross feed to the center core booster stage which would be air-lit at this point.
        -The 2 outer cores would burn for 2 1/2 minutes before dropping away to land on drone barges.
        The center core (still full) would burn for 3 minutes before dropping away. It would still have the fuel reserves to lower it velocity enough to allow reentry survival and would land on another continent.
        -The upper stage would then raise to payload to orbit or beyond.

        I realize that air-lighting the center core booster stage at 2 1/2 minutes into flight would not be very efficient, but if you run the numbers on this arrangement to see how much payload the whole stack could lift, you’ll see why I don’t care.

        I did a design study on such a launch vehicle (which was much larger) 15 years ago and the folks I shared it with said it was twenty years ahead of it’s time.

        I’ll let you figure this one out for yourself, I’d like to see the result based on the Falcon Heavy cores. I think you’ll be just as surprised as I was back then. 🙂

        Here’s a clue, efficiency does not matter as much as booster stage recovery does!. I knew that lesson 15 years ago and Elon Musk knows that lesson now.

        tinker

        • DTARS says:
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          Couldn’t a very wide payload/volume be designed to go over such cluster???

        • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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          SpaceX isn’t going to develop FH beyond what they’ve already suggested including perhaps an improved upper stage engine capability. Why would they when it does all that’s required for their satellite business and Mars will be served by BFR, Dragon v2 and Raptor plus maybe some other hardware such as propellant depots, surface equipment and so on.
          J!2CW ?
          Cheers

      • dogstar29 says:
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        This would require a completely new pad and assembly flow as the horizontal integration process cannot accommodate boosters that are not coplanar.

        Moreover, while hydrogen is an ideal upper stage fuel because of its low mass, it is not the most efficient fuel for boosters as its low density requires much larger fuel tanks (heavily insulated) and larger engines than a hydrocarbon-fueled stage of the same thrust. The high Isp of hydrogen is less valuable in a booster stage which is not accelerated to orbital velocity.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          Your statement that “the horizontal integration process cannot accommodate boosters that are not coplanar” is clearly incorrect in that the Russians have done this “forever” with Soyuz, Proton, Energia, and now Angara.

          • dogstar29 says:
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            Sorry, I was talking only about the current Delta IV integration facilites. Boeing addressed this with notional concepts for more boosters early in the Delta program.

            I agree the Russians even integrated the Buran and N1 horizontally all the way to launch. But those transporter-erectors provided a new definition for the word “huge”.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      That would depend on where it was built.

  2. Jeff Havens says:
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    Drat.. would have loved to see video of the booster separation on this puppy…. I wonder if it makes a Korolev cross like the Soyuz?

    • Jeff Smith says:
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      This is a Khrunichev design, so in the spirit of Valentin Glushko, it’ll denounce the Korolev cross and have it sent to the gulag!

      In all honesty though, as a student of Russian culture and history, it’ll be sad when the last of Korolev’s work is finally removed from the Russian space program. He worked himself to death to further his space dreams under the most brutal of circumstances.

      • Yale S says:
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        Too bad it was in furthering the goals of a monstrous brutal regime that left the world a worse place and shattered millions of lives. To bad he didn’t work himself to death a bit earlier.
        Shares the dishonor with Von Braun.

  3. Anonymous says:
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    Folks:

    I’ve translated this article from RIA Novosti that mentions a reusability option for the Angara launch vehicle:

    Putin videoconference watching the launch of “Angara-A5”

    MOSCOW, December 23 – RIA Novosti.
    Russia’s first ever test launch of the carrier rocket heavy class “Angara-A5” from the cosmodrome “Plesetsk” was held on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the launching ceremony of a video conference.

    Russia made its first test launch “Angara-A5”. Creating “Angara” is a task of special importance. Enter “Angara” in the operation will allow Russia to launch space vehicles of all types from its territory and ensure the country’s independence is guaranteed access to space.

    Government customers complex “Angara” serve the Defense Ministry and the Russian Federal Space Agency, the parent company-developer of the rocket is Khrunichev.

    One of the main challenges for the future development of the project “Angara” – make this reusable rocket. At the moment the missile is constructed so that all of its stages are burned in the atmosphere, it is impossible to re-use them. Together with the TsAGI and “Lightning” Khrunichev Center already is working on the project reusable rocket. This will greatly reduce the cost of start-ups, make “Angara” the most economical in the world, no country of such a missile at the moment. However, this project requires additional funding”

    So sue me, RIA Novosti!

    I couldn’t find an English reference to reusability in any of the Russian rags. Maybe the last line of the article is the key to why!

    As I’ve said on Twitter, it’s funny that the only ones to even consider booster recovery are the Russians. A look at the company’s Wikipedia page gives us a clue to why this might be the case:

    Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center

    This companies very life is on the line and they know it! Launch vehicles is what they do and income from launches amounts to their entire revenue stream. They do not make the Soyuz LV or spacecraft. That’s another company:

    S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia

    ‘Energia’ is a much more diverse company with hands in many pies. They are also more politically connected due to their involvement in the International Space Station for cargo and crew delivery.

    A loose comparison would liken Energia to large aerospace corporations like Boeing and Lockheed Martin while Khrunichev is more like SpaceX (only with five decades of experience under their belts), focused primarily on space launch.

    Khrunichev has everything to lose if SpaceX succeeds in bringing reusability to the market place. Khrunichev also has everything to gain too, because reusability would give them the edge they need to cut into Energia’s market in their own country.

    The point is, take them seriously when they say they’ll follow in SpaceX’s footsteps. They are probably the only launch vehicle provider on the planet right now that could be nimble enough and with enough incentive (extinction) to pull it off too.

    Hope this help frame the picture for you, George:

    tinker

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      The resilient Russians are worthy opponents and are not to be underestimated. They have made many sensible decisions over the decades that have carried their space program through very difficult times indeed, albeit aided by some very insensible decisions made by ‘partners’.

      However, history shows them to have a sort of ‘pathetic fallacy’ (in the literary sense); they shoot themselves in the foot. Look only at recent history: get rid of the Tsar, get the promise of communism that became worse than Peter ever was; throw off the Reds and they get Putin.

      The Chinese must be watching this with interest, noting that economic power won the Cold War on top but the US squandered the advantage, there being sufficient hubris to go around.

      Objects in your rear view mirror could be larger than you think. And moving faster, too.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        Not every problem is solved by making everyone else into an opponent. Human expansion into space is not necessarily a zero-sum game.

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      It will be interesting to see what they come up with. Russian equipment is typically low-tech, sturdy, reliable, and launches and lands in pretty much any weather short of a blizzard. And lucky for them they won’t have to deal with barges.

      My guess is they won’t fly back, just land down range, and since accuracy will be less critical I would venture a guess that parachutes will be involved, and they will use thrust just for the atmospheric entry and for final braking at touchdown.

      • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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        after entering a sarcastic search into google — “no rubles, no reusable rocket” — i found this article: http://www.themoscowtimes.c

      • savuporo says:
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        Since when don’t they launch into a blizzard ? 😉 Both Plesetsk and Baikonur have provided ample opportunities to do just that ..

    • Yale S says:
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      They are thinking of putting jet engines and wings on the boosters. This was rejected by spaceX and others. It is something that Russia plans for the unknown future, and they have zero money for it.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wik

      Hug Dug found yet another plan of theirs as they flail into oblivion.

    • Saturn1300 says:
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      1st stages don’t burn up. They will still have to go out and pick up the pieces like they do with Soyuz and Proton I think. I repeat, Space Tourists video shows. Maybe they have enough to add parachutes. They get more damage when they hit the ground, than they do on reentry. No burning. Angara may be lighter and goes higher and may break up.

  4. DTARS says:
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    I watched the Video where Putin gives the command to a bunch of stone faced soldiers and was saddened at the absurdity of it all.

    I wish the words of the man in this link could be translated into every language and every human would read it.

    http://www.tennessean.com/s

    What if every person took his advice??

    Happy Holidays 🙂