“Let them fly on brooms” – Russia stops supplying rocket engines to the United States
Roscosmos today decided to stop supplies of rocket engines from NPO Energomash to the United States.
Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin stated this on the Rossiya-24 TV channel, PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Let me remind you that these deliveries have been active since the mid-90s. These are the RD-180 engines, on which the Atlas-5 rocket flies as a sustainer, and the RD-181, which is used in the first stage of the Antares rocket.
In 2022-24, it was planned to additionally supply 12 RD-181 engines. Negotiations were also held on the supply of RD-181M with improved tactical and technical characteristics, but we believe that in the current situation we cannot continue to supply the United States with our world's best rocket engines. Let them fly something else. At least on their own brooms,” said Rogozin.
According to him, in past years the United States purchased 120 RD-180 and 24 RD-181 engines from Russia, and now almost all of them have been used. He doubts Elon Musk's stated ability to take control of the ISS.
“This will require a special effort for Orbital Sciences, which operates its Cygnus spacecraft. It has the ability to adjust the ISS orbit, but how will the United States launch this ship now? We will not supply engines. We have unique engines. They started 98 times without a problem. There are basically no similar statistics in the world. We are refusing not only the supply, but also the servicing of the remaining 24 engines,” Rogozin said.
In addition, all Roscosmos specialists left the French cosmodrome Kourou in Guiana today. Cooperation with the German Aviation and Cosmonautics Center, which arbitrarily turned off one of the two telescopes of the Russian space observatory Spektr-RD, located one and a half million km from Earth, was also severed.
“We will carry out all the experiments ourselves, and our German colleagues will be left with nothing,” Rogozin noted.
According to him, Roscosmos will now focus on launching Russian dual-use (military and civil) vehicles into space, since the corporation is releasing launch vehicles due to the rupture of contracts with Western countries. Russian satellites will use nationally produced electronic components, as well as stocks of pre-purchased imports. To stimulate the corporation's engineers, the administrative staff's salaries were reduced by 30%.
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