The Pentagon fears without Russian rocket engines

[monty]

The Pentagon wants its two largest contractors to keep using Russian rocket engines

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5553588f69beddd8064446fa-700-459/rd180_ula.jpgUnited Launch AllianceRD180
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the nation's spy chief this week urged a key Senate committee to amend federal law to allow a joint venture of the two largest US arms makers to use more Russian RD-180 rocket engines.
Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper urged Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, in a letter dated May 11, to change the law so the Pentagon can retain "assured access to space".
This is a legal requirement that mandates availability of two satellite launch vehicles so the U.S. military can always get satellites into space, even if one of the rockets is grounded due to a catastrophic failure.
The letter, obtained by Reuters, is the latest twist a drama surrounding United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, and its sole potential competitor Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. The latter is nearing certification by the Air Force to compete for some military and spy satellite launches.
http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5553583b69beddbf044446f7-1200-1200/rd-180_test_firing.jpgWikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180#/media/File:RD-180_test_firing.jpg)Russian RD-180 rocket engines
The current dispute centers on a clause in the 2015 defense authorization law banning use of Russian engines that were not paid for before Russia's annexation of Crimea last year.
The Air Force — and now Pentagon leaders — have asked Congress to change the law to include engines that ULA ordered, but had not paid for, at that time for use in its Atlas 5 launch vehicle.
ULA is seeking the relief because it is discontinuing use of most of its US-powered Delta 4 rockets because they are too costly, and its new Vulcan rocket won't be ready until 2022 or 2023.
The House Armed Services Committee has already proposed a similar change.
Air Force Secretary Deborah James last month said changing the law would allow ULA to compete for 18 of 34 competitive launches between 2015 and 2022 against SpaceX, versus just five launches.
No immediate reaction was available from McCain, but he has been critical of continued use of the Russian rocket engines, citing concerns about the cost and reports Russia is inflating its prices.
Carter and Clapper did not address that issue. They said even if the Air Force certifies SpaceX, losing access to the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets could leave the Air Force with "a multi-year gap where we have neither assured access to space nor an environment where price-based competition is possible."
ULA says the proposed change would preserve meaningful competition and avert a potential gap in capability.
SpaceX executives argue ULA should have focused long ago on lowering the cost of its Delta 4 rockets.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Read the original article on Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/). Copyright 2015. Follow Reuters on Twitter (http://twitter.com/Reuters).

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-pentagon-us-spy-chief-urge-use-of-more-russian-rocket-engines-2015-5

[Glass]

Can someone remind me please, why it is America cannot build rocket engines?

[monty]

Can someone remind me please, why it is America cannot build rocket engines?


We we exported all our manufacturing to China. We also dumbed down all our education system. :o

[Horn]

ULA is seeking the relief because it is discontinuing use of most of its US-powered Delta 4 rockets because they are too costly

Needs an effective counter bid to screw down the price of the Delta 4. Politics never interferes wit bidness.

And u can't simply re-spec Chinese or Brazilian rockets with the payload insurance.

[Neuro]

Can someone remind me please, why it is America cannot build rocket engines?
It is rocket science! Those that could have done it got occupied with numerology...

[monty]

It is rocket science! Those that could have done it got occupied with numerology...

Right! It appears we have more important things to research:cool:

Futuristic EM DriveApril 29, 2015 by José Rodal, Ph.D, Jeremiah Mullikin and Noel Munson - subedited by Chris Gebhardt
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/A2-350x140.jpgA group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.

EM Drive:
Last summer, NASA Eagleworks – an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) – made waves throughout the scientific and technical communities when the group presented their test results on July 28-30, 2014, at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.
Those results related to experimental testing of an EM Drive – a concept that originated around 2001 when a small UK company, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR), under Roger J. Shawyer, started a Research and Development (R&D) program.
The concept of an EM Drive as put forth by SPR was that electromagnetic microwave cavities might provide for the direct conversion of electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-04-19-005958-350x236.jpgThis lack of expulsion of propellant from the drive was met with initial skepticism within the scientific community because this lack of propellant expulsion would leave nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum if it were able to accelerate.
However, in 2010, Prof. Juan Yang in China began publishing about her research into EM Drive technology, culminating in her 2012 paper reporting higher input power (2.5kW) and tested thrust (720mN) levels of an EM Drive.
In 2014, Prof. Yang’s papers reported extensive tests involving internal temperature measurements with embedded thermocouples.
It was reported (in SPR Ltd.’s website) that if the Chinese EM Drive were to be installed in the International Space Station (ISS) and work as reported, it could provide the necessary delta-V (change in velocity needed to perform an on-orbit maneuver) to compensate for the Station’s orbital decay and thus eliminate the requirement of re-boosts from visiting vehicles. Despite these reports, Prof. Yang offered no scientifically-accepted explanation as to how the EM Drive can produce propulsion in space.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015-04-19-010043-350x274.jpgDr. White proposed that the EM Drive’s thrust was due to the Quantum Vacuum (the quantum state with the lowest possible energy) behaving like propellant ions behave in a MagnetoHydroDynamics drive (a method electrifying propellant and then directing it with magnetic fields to push a spacecraft in the opposite direction) for spacecraft propulsion.
In Dr. White’s model, the propellant ions of the MagnetoHydroDynamics drive are replaced as the fuel source by the virtual particles of the Quantum Vacuum, eliminating the need to carry propellant.
This model was also met with criticism in the scientific community because the Quantum Vacuum cannot be ionized and is understood to be “frame-less” – meaning you cannot “push” against it, as required for momentum.
The tests reported by Dr. White’s team in July 2014 were not conducted in a vacuum, and none of the tests reported by Prof. Yang in China or Mr. Shawyer in the UK were conducted in a vacuum either.
The scientific community met these NASA tests with skepticism and a number of physicists proposed that the measured thrust force in the US, UK, and China tests was more likely due to (external to the EM Drive cavity) natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating (internal to the EM Drive cavity).
However, Paul March, an engineer at NASA Eagleworks, recently reported in NASASpaceFlight.com’s forum (on a thread now over 500,000 views) (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36313.0) that NASA has successfully tested their EM Drive in a hard vacuum – the first time any organization has reported such a successful test.
To this end, NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection.



read the complete article here:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

[Dogman]

Right! It appears we have more important things to research:cool:

Futuristic EM DriveApril 29, 2015 by José Rodal, Ph.D, Jeremiah Mullikin and Noel Munson - subedited by Chris Gebhardt
A group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.

EM Drive:
Last summer, NASA Eagleworks – an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) – made waves throughout the scientific and technical communities when the group presented their test results on July 28-30, 2014, at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.
Those results related to experimental testing of an EM Drive – a concept that originated around 2001 when a small UK company, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR), under Roger J. Shawyer, started a Research and Development (R&D) program.
The concept of an EM Drive as put forth by SPR was that electromagnetic microwave cavities might provide for the direct conversion of electrical energy to thrust without the need to expel any propellant.
This lack of expulsion of propellant from the drive was met with initial skepticism within the scientific community because this lack of propellant expulsion would leave nothing to balance the change in the spacecraft’s momentum if it were able to accelerate.
However, in 2010, Prof. Juan Yang in China began publishing about her research into EM Drive technology, culminating in her 2012 paper reporting higher input power (2.5kW) and tested thrust (720mN) levels of an EM Drive.
In 2014, Prof. Yang’s papers reported extensive tests involving internal temperature measurements with embedded thermocouples.
It was reported (in SPR Ltd.’s website) that if the Chinese EM Drive were to be installed in the International Space Station (ISS) and work as reported, it could provide the necessary delta-V (change in velocity needed to perform an on-orbit maneuver) to compensate for the Station’s orbital decay and thus eliminate the requirement of re-boosts from visiting vehicles. Despite these reports, Prof. Yang offered no scientifically-accepted explanation as to how the EM Drive can produce propulsion in space.
Dr. White proposed that the EM Drive’s thrust was due to the Quantum Vacuum (the quantum state with the lowest possible energy) behaving like propellant ions behave in a MagnetoHydroDynamics drive (a method electrifying propellant and then directing it with magnetic fields to push a spacecraft in the opposite direction) for spacecraft propulsion.
In Dr. White’s model, the propellant ions of the MagnetoHydroDynamics drive are replaced as the fuel source by the virtual particles of the Quantum Vacuum, eliminating the need to carry propellant.
This model was also met with criticism in the scientific community because the Quantum Vacuum cannot be ionized and is understood to be “frame-less” – meaning you cannot “push” against it, as required for momentum.
The tests reported by Dr. White’s team in July 2014 were not conducted in a vacuum, and none of the tests reported by Prof. Yang in China or Mr. Shawyer in the UK were conducted in a vacuum either.
The scientific community met these NASA tests with skepticism and a number of physicists proposed that the measured thrust force in the US, UK, and China tests was more likely due to (external to the EM Drive cavity) natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating (internal to the EM Drive cavity).
However, Paul March, an engineer at NASA Eagleworks, recently reported in NASASpaceFlight.com’s forum (on a thread now over 500,000 views) (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36313.0) that NASA has successfully tested their EM Drive in a hard vacuum – the first time any organization has reported such a successful test.
To this end, NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection.

read the complete article here:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/



Right !

Liquid fuel rocket engine's have become so old school!

I think it has been said that if we tried to make new Saturn 5 rocket F-1 engine's they would have trouble doing it today!

Sad !

:(

[monty]

Right !

Liquid fuel rocket engine's have become so old school!

I think it has been said that if we tried to make new Saturn 5 rocket F-1 engine's they would have trouble doing it today!

Sad !

:(

but we still have the Russian engines to get us off the ground. We go around the world poking everyone with a big stick, then rely on their products to defend ourselves. :confused:

[Dogman]

but we still have the Russian engines to get us off the ground. We go around the world poking everyone with a big stick, then rely on their products to defend ourselves. :confused:

Discombobulated aren't it !

;)

[Horn]

and as Russian satellite attempts fall out of the sky, they are still eager to sell in advance of U.S. aims.

talk about being numbered by the NWO.

[Horn]

You're All!, Numbered by the NWO