Next Generation Rocket Angara: News

The simple fact of the matter is that for a rocket going into earth orbit vertical speed is not as important as eventual horizontal speed... they certainly have to climb to get to altitude but most of the climb is a horizontally accelerating rocket.

Once in orbit to climb to a higher orbit they don't just point upwards and fire their rockets to climb to a higher orbit because they are actually moving sideways around the planet which is the direction they actually have to accelerate to climb to a higher orbit... firing rockets directly down towards the earth will push them up to a higher orbit but because they haven't increased their orbital speed they would drop back down below the orbit they were in and bob back and forth till they return to the orbit they were in before they fired their rockets.

To climb or decend they have to fire the rockets backwards to increase their speed which will raise their orbit, or forwards to slow down to lower their orbital height.

In the US space shuttle thrusters are used to turn the shuttle around so it is pointing backwards and then the main rocket engines are fired to slow the shuttle down to allow it to descend into the atmosphere... when they finish their burn the thrusters then turn the shuttle around so the heat shield and wings are presented to the atmosphere as it reenters to help slow the craft down further.

Slow down too much and you come in almost vertically which means you are coming in too fast and will burn up, not enough and you will skip off the atmosphere and back into space and miss your landing window.

The advantage of using recycled ICBMs is in 5 years time when the extended new start treaty needs to be replaced and the US gets all pissy and demands Chinese missiles and Russian missiles get counted together but UK and French and Israeli missiles are missiles of soverign countries and therefore can't be counted with US missiles and of course thunderbird and Poseidon have to all be added to numbers too, then of course Russia will have to say no... so the natural result will be a missile race to make the other side want to get some limit...

During the arms race madness when both sides are making as many ICBMs as they can the Russians can be happy that if any agreement is eventually signed they can use all these ICBMs and perhaps SLBMs as satellite launchers rather than just scrapping them.

The SS-19 missiles had a good record for reliability so they were popular as ROKOT launchers.... they likely have a few left to make this Russification worth while.

That is just some kind of overall suit so they can enter some sort of clean area in the chip fabrication facility.

only problem with having lots of recyclable ICBMs it makes your "domestic" small rocket developers payback on any project impossible
so to me these lightweight launchers are mostly a waste of capital in Russia

They will be ICBMs first and foremost so when they are made they wont be ready or used for satellite launches... the main user might be the Russian military to launch satellites.

A custom designed lightweight launcher should be cheaper than these missiles which will likely be liquid propellent rockets using storable liquid propellent.

They only become efficient because when they are surplus to requirements as ICBMs or even IRBMs that they are essentially free.

In fact that could be the thing too... design them to be full power ICBMs with three stages, or with super heavy payloads as IRBMs for all those hostile new targets in Europe, or just make them with two stages and just normal IRBMs for medium range targets to trash... the thing is that with two stages you have one high energy stage to get airborne and the whole weapon moving and out of the atmosphere and then the second stage takes it 4-5 thousand kms to its target in Europe or Japan or Alaska... but it would be easy to fit two of those first stages to end up with three stages... two energetic fast burning "first" stages and then a third stage to get it around the world to the US of A.... such flexibility in design would be as useful for an IRBM/ICBM as it would for a satellite launcher.. the IRBM would get most payloads to orbit but heavier payloads can add an extra stage or for higher orbits the extra stage could be used.

You can then vary your number of ICBMs and IRBMs based on the number of first stages you make... and when IRBMs retire making some extra first stages would allow IRBMs to launch high orbit payloads or heavy payloads too.

They will have rockets for lighter payloads too, which will use more efficient cryogenic fuels.

I do think though that flyback Krylo-SV rocket/UAV mutation is worth pursuing - if only to create interesting work for your people
who is funding it ? .... you can bet it is the military

Well if the first stage is reusable for space launches (would be redundant for ICBMs and IRBMs) then you could make a dozen or so and use them with hundreds or thousands of IRBMs to make them equivalent to ICBMs in terms of orbit heights and payload weights... if you could carry them around on the back of a truck it would offer the ability to rapidly replace lost satellites if needed, which would be a useful military capability.

Some conflicts will start without warning so being able to drive a truck to a specific location and launch a temporary satellite that might only last a few months to a year would be a valuable capability... not to mention the ability to replace lost satellites in a conflict too.

Conversely the ability to launch things into orbit like that would also be useful for shooting down or attacking enemy satellites too.

Zhukovsky international airport is 4.6km and Ulyanovsk is 5km of reinforced concrete for heavy planes...