Russian Launch Vehicles and their Spacecraft: Thoughts & News

Rogozin also recently said the Vostochny Angara-A5 pad generally replicates the Angara pad at Plesetsk ....

this bit was interesting .... it is built to withstand the equiv of a tactical nuke strike
he was actually saying ... a loaded Angara-A5 on the pad exploding .... fully fueled .... is the equivalent of a tactical nuke

needless to say a super-heavy ...... would go up like an fn big nuke

apparently has a military radar satellite onboard (to see through clouds in Ukraine ?) MKA_R

MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. An Angara-1.2 light carrier rocket carrying a space module for the Russian Defense Ministry has been launched for the first time from the Plesetsk space center in the Archangelsk Region, the ministry told reporters on Friday.

anyway
it seems this was the rocket set aside for the Korean KOMPSAT but that has been delayed and now cancelled it seems - see list

http://www.sworld.com.au/steven/space/russia-man.txt

interesting bit is - look at Katelin Grey's shots on Twitter

https://twitter.com/katlinegrey/status/1520156928294498305/photo/1
https://twitter.com/katlinegrey

this is what the exact first launch from Vostochny will look like in late 2023
the tower is an exact replica of this one (currently they are up to the 7th floor which is that 2nd braced crossbeam)

https://kosmosnews.fr/2022/04/18/tour-de-service-angara-a-vostochny-7eme-etage-et-premiers-equipements/

first launch will be a 1.2 Angara

( hmmmm - off at a slight tangent re that Sworld list
that's interesting Rokot-2.....
that is the de-Ukrainised recycled ICBM .... next batch
Rus call it Rokot-M ..... must be that )

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau_det/rokot-m.htm

they ran out of the original Rokot launchers in late 2019 ?

smaller than the Angara 1.2 yes

this is interesting last "KOMPSAT" to fly was around 800kgs ....

http://www.astronautix.com/t/t200.html

so if that Angara 1.2 was originally meant for the KOMPSAT
maybe MKA-R weights around 800 kgs ?

2015 March 25 - . 22:08 GMT - . Launch Site: Dombarovskiy. Launch Complex: Yasniy Sh370/13. LV Family: R-36M. Launch Vehicle: Dnepr.
Arirang-3A - . Payload: KOMPSAT 3A. Mass: 800 kg (1,760 lb). Nation: Korea South. Class: Surveillance. Type: Surveillance satellite. Spacecraft Bus: T200. Spacecraft: Kompsat. USAF Sat Cat: 40536 . COSPAR: 2015-014A. Apogee: 538 km (334 mi). Perigee: 522 km (324 mi). Inclination: 97.53 deg. Period: 95.23 min. South Korean imaging satellite with submeter resolution. Sun synchronous orbit; 0130 GMT local time of the descending node..

http://www.astronautix.com/t/t200.html

I'm no satellite expert - but it seems the nearest Russian radar satellite is called Kondor and it weighs 1000kgs
according to Gunter .... 1100 kgs

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/kondor-fka-1.htm

MKA-R probably similar to this Kondor ?
will probably never know ..... but around 1000 kgs seems a pretty good guess to me

hmmmm
that's interesting according to Sworld a Kondor-FKA is penciled in for 2022
FKA ... MKA ? ....

http://www.sworld.com.au/steven/space/russia-man.txt

The Rokot missiles were very good weapons and very popular... western designation was SS-19 and it was a reliable and capable rocket... but lots of bits from the Ukraine in it.

The upgraded models with all Russian parts is a good step forward for using existing missiles... I wonder if they will make new missiles from scratch after the service weapons are used up.

I don't know a lot out ICBMs

I think Rogozin said a while ago that they were going to move to fewer and bigger ICBMs ?

seem to recall him saying bigger ICBMs were much more useful when they were "recycled" when retired
much more useful payload to orbit options ...

and fewer missiles were cheaper to maintain ?
it was a while ago ...

can't remember the source

Sarmat is twice as big as the SS-19s aren't they ...
moving to a more "Chinese" model of fewer but bigger ICBMs ?

he is a bit eccentric .... but it does make sense to me

Big_Gazza wrote:

The question is whether Russia has any decommissioned RS-36 silos that can be restored.

A lot of them. At least a hundred, if not more.

I haven't read the comments Gazputin mentions from Rogozin, but comments about bigger missiles being more useful for satellite launches does make sense as they will all have limited operational life spans and it is important these days when making products to think about disposal after they become obsolete.

Certainly the SS-18 an SS-19 weapons were very popular and very reliable satellite launch platforms, and I suspect Samartan will be very good too with it extra range potential.

I can see that the new START agreement was extended just in time, but it is unlikely that anything will replace it for the foreseeable future with HATO encroaching on Russian borders the US will likely demand Chinese nuclear weapons be included together with Russian totals and for tactical nukes to be included and I don't think Russia will agree to either unless the UK and French and even Israeli nukes get included too, not to mention all the complication of Russias new weapons like Thunderbird and Poseidon which they will demand are counted as strategic nukes too no doubt.

The biggest expense with ICBMs is their bases... either building silos or storage areas where they will be located... but most are already built.

The START 2 treaty banned heavy ICBMs so single warhead weapons only were allowed but the new START and its current extension lifted the ban on heavy ICBMs so some money could be saved building big heavy ICBMs to reduce the number of missiles needed to deliver the warheads, but improvements in technology should mean train based missiles could be a future possibility with scramjet powered cruise missiles becoming a potential new area.

Before ICBMs were possible both sides experimented with winged super long range cruise missiles... most had ranges of a few thousand kilometres and speeds of about mach 3 with ramjet propulsion... but the introduction of the R-7 and later ICBMs all work in that direction stopped because even a mach 3 aircraft could be shot down while a mach 10 plus IRBM or ICBM was relatively safe short of nuclear ABM systems.

Well scramjets mean the upper speed limit of platforms is no longer limited to mach 5-6, and much higher speeds are possible and weight is massively reduced if you just carry the fuel and scoop the air needed to burn the fuel from the atmosphere as you fly through the air.

3/4ths of rocket fuel by weight is oxidiser to burn the fuel... it will work in space and low oxygen environments but it basically quadruples the weight which means much more powerful rocket motors are needed which burns fuel at a higher rate meaning more fuel is needed in a vicious circle.

In comparison a scramjet motor is lighter than a rocket motor and burns fuel more efficiently and not only that it can be throttled precisely to optimise the fuel burn... a liquid fuelled rocket can do that too of course but not a solid rocket.

Only needing to carry the fuel makes the weapon much smaller and much lighter and also cheaper too.... meaning a missile that barely fits on an enormous custom designed truck could now fit on a rail wagon rather easily... and the mobility of a train is much better than a truck.

An interesting implication of moving from ICBMs to hypersonic cruise missiles is that hypersonic cruise missiles would not normally leave the atmosphere... but a missile like the proposed GZUR missile which is about 5 metres long and supposed to have a range of about 1,500km and to fly at a speed of mach 6 which should be ready for service rather shortly if not already. The further development is the GZUR II which has a Kh-32 like booster attached to the rear creating a 12m long weapon with a flight range of over 12,000km and a speed of greater than mach 12.

Such a weapon could reach most parts of the planet when carried by a PAKDA or Tu-160M, and do so rather quickly, but what do you do with them when they are obsolete?

Perhaps a final stage solid rocket to leave the atmosphere and head up into orbit?

It is not going to be as good a satellite launcher as an ex ICBM, but it has the potential for a shuttle launcher that could perhaps take off from an airport runway with turbojet engines, then switch to ramjets to accelerate and climb to very high speeds and altitudes to then release a much smaller rocket to make it to space... the shuttle could then turn around and slow down and land again at the airfield it took off from or another suitable runway to be reused as often as required... burning hydrogen fuel would be optimal for greenhouse gas emissions of course... it would be interesting to see what effect burning hydrogen fuel at very high altitudes might do... at 40-50km altitude and moving faster than mach 15 or so the water vapour created in the combustion of hydrogen in air would create a stream of ice crystals behind the aircraft in flight which is going to create cloud cover where there has never been cloud cover before and how long will it take to descend and what effect will it have on the weather below it?

Super hail stones?

Reduced sunlight reaching the earth surface is known to lower temperatures... vapour trails from normal jet airliners are known to effect climate when there are thosuands of them every day...

But odds are there wont be thousands of space launches every day but how long before someone realises instead of carrying a solid rocket and satellite to the edge of the atmosphere you could carry passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney in hours instead of days...

But then if it is hydrogen fuelled how hard would it be to carry a tank of oxygen too so when you leave the atmosphere you close off the air intakes and start pumping oxygen into the now rocket scramjets... the precise control of the mixture should make it very efficient and totally air independent... but obviously then you will need the craft to be capable of operations in a vacuum and also able to survive multiple reentries too.