New reusable rocket design bureau named Bartini?

[Asteroza]

So TASS is reporting something interesting

https://tass.com/science/1066823

Located under TsNIImash, the new Bartini design bureau will work on light-class reusable rockets, starting with a project based on Krylo-SV (which appears to be design descendant of Baikal, a jet engine nosed, swing wing reusable booster design concept that's been around since 2001 as an Angara booster). Apparently 80 "young" engineers have been poached from Ilyushin.

SpaceX is really lighting a fire in the launcher world regarding first stage reusability, what with ESA suddenly feeling they need to work on a F9 analog despite pushing forward with Ariane 6, and now Roscosmos. JAXA and ISRO next?

[Danderman]

TsNIIMash does not actually design for the purpose of building something, they are more like the Aerospace Corp in America.

[Arch Admiral]

Engineer Roberto L. Bartini was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party and emigrated to the USSR in 1923. He advocated the use of steel in place of aluminum in Soviet aircraft due to its lower cost, and designed a copy of the Dornier Wal flying boat entirely in stainless steel. After the crash of the Stal-7 prototype airliner in 1938 he was arrested by the OGPU and transferred to Omsk in Siberia where he formed Prison Design Bureau #4 and began designing supersonic aircraft in 1940! He was officially rehabilitated in 1946. In 1948 he became one of the elite few to survive a second purging by Stalin when his OKB-86 was closed after only two years. During the 1950s he led a sort of nomadic existence in various design bureaus and aircraft factories, producing a series of ever more fantastic designs. My favorite is the Mach 3 seaplane bomber which would refuel from a submarine in a Greenland fjord.

In 1959, the Soviet leadership went into a panic about the Polaris SLBM program and began an orgy of R&D spending on unlikely technologies to counter missile subs. Bartini got onto this gravy train with a giant STOL amphibious floatplane called VVA-14 and continued to mess around with it until his death in 1974. A damaged example is the oddest exhibit at the Monino air museum.

I don't know what message this new rocket bureau is trying to send by naming itself after a airplane designer who worked for 50 years without getting a design into production. Maybe it is a subtle joke.

[Coastal Ron]

SpaceX is really lighting a fire in the launcher world regarding first stage reusability, what with ESA suddenly feeling they need to work on a F9 analog despite pushing forward with Ariane 6, and now Roscosmos. JAXA and ISRO next?

This has been the evil plan of Elon Musk since the beginning - you didn't think the world would rely on just one entity to expand humanity out into space, did you? 

Of course now we're going to find out how hard it really is to do reusable rockets, since everyone can copy the Falcon 9 dimensionally, but the major secret to its success is the Merlin engine, and those took a good decade to perfect.

[LtWigglesworth]

SpaceX is really lighting a fire in the launcher world regarding first stage reusability, what with ESA suddenly feeling they need to work on a F9 analog despite pushing forward with Ariane 6, and now Roscosmos. JAXA and ISRO next?

This has been the evil plan of Elon Musk since the beginning - you didn't think the world would rely on just one entity to expand humanity out into space, did you? 

Of course now we're going to find out how hard it really is to do reusable rockets, since everyone can copy the Falcon 9 dimensionally, but the major secret to its success is the Merlin engine, and those took a good decade to perfect.

Well the USSR made exceptional liquid fueled engines, so we'll see if enough institutional knowledge has survived to allow them to continue to do so.  The RD-19X series have exception ISP and throttling ranges, and they are derived from an engine that was intended to be reusable, so they have a good foundation to work from. 

[JEF_300]

Can anyone confirm if this is the space vehicle that is discussed at the bottom of this page?

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikal.html

[B. Hendrickx]

Can anyone confirm if this is the space vehicle that is discussed at the bottom of this page?

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikal.html

Yes, it is. The reusable stage is known as Krylo-SV ("krylo" means "wing" and "SV" stands for "returnable stage"). The preliminary design of Krylo-SV was conducted in 2017-2018 by the Myasishchev design bureau (part of United Aircraft Corporation) and the Fund for Prospective Research (FPI). It's not clear if any of the Myasishchev people who worked on this were transferred to the newly formed Bartini design bureau (which is under TsNIIMash). The TASS report last month only mentioned that it would consist of "young Roscosmos specialists" and engineers transferred from Ilyushin.

Several TsNIIMash slides of the rocket and a small-scale demonstrator of the first stage (designated MLD) were recently posted on the NK forum by what appears to be an insider:
http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum13/topic16561/

As can be seen in the third slide, several methods are being proposed to launch the demonstrator, including the use of an Angara 1st stage and a Topol missile.

In an interview with TASS last month, FPI general director Andrei Grigoryev said subsonic flights of first-stage demonstrator carrying a "mass model" of a rocket engine are planned for 2021-2022.
https://tass.ru/interviews/6642711

 

[TrevorMonty]

An Australian small LV startup was going use same design for their booster. Haven't read anything about them for couple years, may have folded. They were using drone size versions to prove out design.

Being jet powered the Russians should be able to test fly it without risking expensive rocket engine. Plenty of cheap 2nd hand jet engines to be had for test and production versions. Engines aren't going be clocking up many hours and fuel economy isn't that important for short flights they will be doing.

[LtWigglesworth]

An Australian small LV startup was going use same design for their booster. Haven't read anything about them for couple years, may have folded. They were using drone size versions to prove out design.

Being jet powered the Russians should be able to test fly it without risking expensive rocket engine. Plenty of cheap 2nd hand jet engines to be had for test and production versions. Engines aren't going be clocking up many hours and fuel economy isn't that important for short flights they will be doing.

There were paper designs of flyback Zenit boosters for the Energia system, and they also looked similar.

[Vahe231991]

I found this news item from over a year ago mentioning the Krylo-SV designed by the Bartini TsNIIMash:
https://ria.ru/20210414/krylo-sv-1728170796.html (From April 2021)

[Rondaz]

Russian Baikal reusable launch vehicle, looks like a giant cruise missile.

https://twitter.com/Ninja998998/status/1450798070426259456

[Rondaz]

Do you remember #KryloSV, a reusable rocket with airplane-like landing? According to TASS, specialists of Siberian Scientific Research Institute Of Aviation began the flight tests of its prototype, which they plan to finish next year with a successful landing in automatic mode.

https://twitter.com/katlinegrey/status/1603055003475873794

[russianhalo117]

I found this news item from over a year ago mentioning the Krylo-SV designed by the Bartini TsNIIMash:
https://ria.ru/20210414/krylo-sv-1728170796.html (From April 2021)

It is just the updated and renamed Angara version of Baikal originally to be part of Baikterek joint venture programme between Kazakosmos and Roscosmos which failed on the funding ratio between the two CIS member states.