New Russian Cosmodrome - Vostochniy

Huge collection of chronological year wise photos of Angara launch pad construction at Vostochny Cosmodrome:

https://www.roscosmos.ru/26799/

Putin to visit Vostochny spaceport in Russian Far East next week - Kremlin, 29/08/2021.

Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Russian President would take part in the Eastern Economic Forum.

MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur Region in the Russian Far East next week, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to TASS on Sunday.

"Yes, President Putin is planning to make a stop at the Vostochny spaceport on his way from Vladivostok," the Russian presidential spokesman said.

The Kremlin spokesman earlier said that Putin would take part in the Eastern Economic Forum next week, which would run on Russky Island near Vladivostok on September 2-4. The program of the Russian leader’s working trip would also include other events in Vladivostok, he said.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said on August 26 that he was planning to meet with the head of state in the coming days to discuss the prospects of developing manned cosmonautics.

The Vostochny spaceport in the Amur Region in the Russian Far East is the first national civilian space center. A decree on the spaceport’s construction was signed by the Russian president in 2007. A multi-purpose launch compound for Soyuz-2 carrier rockets was built in 2012-2016 during the first stage of the Cosmodrome’s construction.

The second stage envisages building a launch pad for Angara-A5 carrier rockets and the associated infrastructure. The construction of the spaceport’s second stage is expected to be completed in late 2022.

The Russian leader has repeatedly visited the Vostochny Cosmodrome. The last time when Putin visited the Vostochny spaceport was in September 2019. At that time, the president held a meeting at the Cosmodrome to discuss the issues of developing its infrastructure and new rocket systems.

https://tass.com/science/1331431

I would rather they built two Angara pads as originally envisioned. Drop Soyuz 5 for Angara A3. Use the two pads for multiple launch profile missions to the Moon and drop Yenisei as well. Get KVTK operational to increase Angara payload.

lancelot wrote: Drop Soyuz 5 for Angara A3.

This would mean abandoning the creation of a superheavy rocket. Universal rocket modules "Angara" are not physically suitable for these purposes.

The whole idea with using methalox is that it is supposed to increase reusability because it causes less coking than kerolox that will foul up the engine.
This is supposed to reduce the need to reinspect the engine between flights.

Methalox kind of sits in between hydrolox and kerolox in terms of density and performance. I think this makes it worst of both worlds but some think there is an advantage in this kind of architecture. Notably SpaceX. Russia also experimented with these fuels in the late Soviet and early Russian Federation periods. It was a competitor to more complex tripropellant engines which could switch between kerosene and hydrogen in different stages of flight. This was in an attempt to build a reusable SSTO, or close to it, vehicle as a successor to Buran.

For all the supposed achievements in reusability SpaceX has shown, they still have not demonstrated that the whole ordeal is cost competitive. In particular given current launch rates the extra expense of extra pads, drone ships, and the actual work in reuse, makes one wonder if you couldn't just churn out more vehicles out of the line and get to a similar or better cost reduction. They are trying to justify this by vastly increasing the amount of launches they do with putting huge satellite constellations like Starlink in space but it is highly questionable if this endeavor will ever be profitable. I mean Iridium was a bust and it had way, way, less satellites.

Starlink will be useless for the vast majority of the population. The majority of the population live in dense urban centers and each satellite does not have enough performance to serve that many people. Think of the density you require with cell phone towers and imagine translating that into space satellites. Because of the way satellite orbits work if you want low latency you need to be close to the ground, but the closer you are to the ground the higher will be your speed relative to the ground. So the more satellites you need to cover the same area 24h/7d. The satellites will also require periodic replacement and they can't be accessed for maintenance like a ground based tower. You already have the terrestrial cell phone network as a competitor which can also be used for data. So the use case for Starlink once proper 5G cell coverage increases will be very, very limited. Starlink top speed is 150Mbps, 4G is 100Mbps, 5G is like 1000Mbps. And 5G can scale that to dense urban centers.

The larger rockets only make sense if you send that much payload into space in the first place. If space launch remains expensive the best way to cut costs is not to reduce launch costs, which has a limited return, but to build things in space proper with space materials foregoing the need to lift that much mass in the first place. Or to use nuclear or solar based propulsion to reduce launch mass in deeper space exploration missions.

The Angara URM already has the necessary modular architecture to cover all current and near future Russian space launch needs. Plus a huge amount of capital has already been expended developing it. If, for whatever reason, the methalox reusables prove successful it would not be that hard to turn around the RD-191 engine technology to run on methane instead of kerosene. But for this Russia would need to justify the investment by vastly increasing their space launch requirement.

A dual Angara launch pad structure would enable a lot of lunar missions with in orbit assembly. If they modified one of the pads with an elevator so they can use it for manned space flight then they could use an Angara A3 based rocket as a manned vehicle launcher. This would be able to carry a larger capsule than the Soyuz and maximally use already existing infrastructure and investments. Angara A5 already has basically the same launch capacity as Proton which is capable of a manned lunar flyby in one launch. With the hydrolox upper stage in development the launch mass of Angara A5 to GTO will increase by like 50%. The further away the mission is the higher the mass improvement will be.

Like Big_Gazza said the launch requirements for the SHLVs are tiny. The US NASA SLS envisioned a launch rate of like a flight every two years with an increase to like two flights a year at peak rate for their manned lunar program. China already has dumped a huge amount of resources on developing the engines for their own SHLV and they already built production facilities. Their space launch site at Hainan island is close to the Equator and is accessible from ocean barge to carry extra large stages from the factory. It makes no sense to build yet another of these things. I don't need to tell you the limited economic benefit manned lunar exploration will have. This is a really long term thing. Just imagine the time it took for humanity to go from the discovery of fire to farming and from there to the industrial age. Who knows how long it will take to learn how to live in space properly?

Another thing. The mass of commercial satellites had increased for several years. But with the recent switch to more use of ion propulsion for reboosting instead of chemical rockets their mass has basically been cut in half. You can imagine what is the result of that in regards to space launch mass requirement. Electronics also keep getting more powerful. The only thing which has been kind of stagnant is the solar panels which have reached a maximum peak around the late 1980s I think. Any further improvements in solar power will be cost or mass reductions since their maximum theoretical area performance has been basically exhausted. So their only limitation to further growth is power.

I will try to explain as briefly as possible: Soyuz-LNG cannot be the basis for SHLV because of its low load capacity. Soyuz-5 involves the development of a whole line of missiles with a unified launch pad, like the Angara. If you want to create a modular SHLV for 100+ tons on LEO, then the minimum module should have a load capacity of 17-20 tons.
This is due to physics. Because of this, you cannot create a universal monoblock layout of a launch vehicle with an output weight, for example, 30 or 40 tons per LEO.

https://t.me/ruscosmodrom/379?single

On the territory of the Vostochny cosmodrome, construction work continues on objects of the second stage. At the moment, the active construction of the Airport complex is underway. The runway has already been completed, its length is more than 3 km. In the future, it is planned to complete another 1 km, which will allow to receive all types of aircraft.

The construction of a new missile system for launch vehicles of the Angara family is underway. The cable-filling tower, 66 meters high, has already been assembled, and process equipment is currently being installed. Reinforcement and concrete laying at the “0” mark is also now being carried out.

At the same time, work is underway to build a command post, a gas outlet, underground networks and communications, and improve the premises of an administrative building, a checkpoint and other facilities.

Construction and installation works of the launch complex of the Angara spacecraft and the airport complex are being carried out on schedule.

You can already see the airport runway on Google Maps.


And this is the launch pad for Angara.