СБОРКИ И БЛОКИ ДАЮТ НАМ УРОКИОсновные объемы производства «Полета» стремительно перемещаются в сторону «Ангары». У цеха окончательной сборки за номером 66 работы прибавляется. Об этом – разговор корреспондента «ЗЖ» с начальником цеха 66 П.А. Литвиненко.
Quote from: gospacex on 06/10/2016 05:13 pmWhat commercial payloads?Angara-A1.2 will pick up payloads from Dnepr, Rockot. Only already manifested payloads on Dnepr and Rockot will not fly on Angara-A1.2. Several payloads which have applied to launch those conversional launchers but have not been assigned a launcher is being directed toward Angara-A1.2
What commercial payloads?
Can you give names of those payloads?
Quote from: gospacex on 06/26/2016 03:09 pmCan you give names of those payloads?Gonets and Rodnik communications satellites.
Today Khrunichev announced a successful static firing test of the agregate module of Angara 1.2 - the lightweight version of the rocket. http://www.khrunichev.ru/main.php?id=1&nid=3540
What exactly is the point of this stage? I thought the whole point of Angara was to reduce redundant production lines, but they've just gone and added yet another stage which seems to be, from what little I can find of it, inferior in performance to even Volga, nevermind Briz-KM (which already is available for Angara 1.2 anyway), with similar longevity and restart capability. Does there really exist sufficient demand for launches in this extremely narrow performance bracket to justify development of a whole new upper stage, and all that entails, just to save a tiny bit on the per-unit costs?
I'll point out two other possible problems with the Angara program:-- shifting production of a very complex product to a new plant several time zones away usually involves sending some key personnel from the old site to the new site on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. But the Muscovites working at Khrunichev's main plant will be very reluctant to move to Siberia. They look down their noses at St. Petersburg, but Omsk might as well be on Mars to them. Everyplace in Russia outside Moscow is undergoing a rapid economic and social decline. The other day I read a story from Omsk that the city government had stopped repairing the streets, and citizens were filling potholes with potatoes,-- Khrunichev has recently been tasked with developing and building an all-Russian version of the Ukranian R-36M2 ICBM, to be called "Sarmat". The 46 R-36 missiles still in service carry about 1/3 of Russia's strategic warheads but are rapidly decaying since product support was withdrawn. Of course nobody in their right mind would order a hypergolic-fuel ICBM in the 21st century, but Putin is driven by nostalgia for everything Soviet and wants to demonstrate that he can get along just fine without Ukraine. The Soyuz-5 program (Russian version of Zenit comes from the same mindset. Sarmat undoubtedly enjoys a higher priority than Angara.