DDE

The recent certification of the Falcon Heavy for military launches might help. The fun thing is that the way the Pentagon seems to think today, they have license to counter potential, future threats. Which is satisfyingly vague. Hang on, I have a "taxation is theft" meme for that. Now, before the thread is nuked... well, what's wrong with patenting the wheel and shaking down every bike manufacturer on the planet? Global enforcement of US national (and, lately, EU supranational) law is an unfortunate but common trend.

Moonshot by 2030. Moon base. Missions to Mars. Jupiter moon lander probes. Own station in Earth orbit. Bits of the LOP-G. Bits of the Chinese station. None of those sufficiently funded. Those are beyond rumours. But remember when the Foreign Intelligence Service chief just jumped on a redeye to DC to meet with Pompeo? I 'member. "Better" news. Khrunichev will shut down the Moscow site entirely after completing its current Proton orders, and try to sell the real estate to plug the hole in its finance. That's it for the Proton, supposedly.

Sorry, I've given up on KSP for now. That weekend spent modding made me physically ill the next Monday.

It’s a bit of a stretch. The best we have is two publications by The Telegraph, a decade apart, claiming it’s “in early development”.

Provisional near-GSO. It’s not a thing that exists, so, no. Makeyev for the mear future is fully occupied with Sarmat deployment.

You can’t have unrealistic spacesuits if you don’t have spacesuits. Let me put it this way: most bulletproof vests are easily stabbed through by knives. Similarily, counter-hypervelocity Whipple shielding is worthless against low supersonic projectiles loke bullets. Basically, anti-meteoroid armour is built to handle an entirely different velocity range, where projectiles are reduced to plasma on *any* inpact and homogenous armour makes no sense - while the opposite is true for bullets.

Gee, wasn’t it beeping for a while? I thought only the ion engines were out.

Belated but related: the space-themed exposition, complete with Gagarin's pod, has reopened at VDNKh. It's half-empty, not all of the exhibits have tags, AND THE MARS-3 ROVER DEPLOYMENT ARM IS SHOVED OUT OF VIEW... but it's still better than the electronics bazaar that used to be there. The whole of VDNKh is a construction zone, though. Avoid it.

Apparently, Russia has signalled its willingness to tie its dual lunar orbit rendezvous achitecture to the LOP-G. For no apparent reason.

To spare a click and cut down on clickbait, Russian satellite electronics are 70% imported, and this is a vulnerability. Full stop.

Performance justifies all. Energomash developed the RD-503 as an upgraded first-stage motor for Sineva. It's the one Soviet engine I know of that was built for chlorine pentafluoride.

Well... The thing is, the Sarmat must squeeze into the old Voevoda launch silos as a cost-saving measure. Solid missiles are bigger pound-for-pound, so instead they used Makeyev, who specialize in extremely space-efficient SLMBs: And NOBODY has managed to get hybrids to work in a military capacity. Reportedly an RD-264 derivative. It's designed to work with the mortar ejection. Here's a non-reposted video: You can count the nozzles. Also, because someone asked, keep in mind that R-36 was two-stage as well.

Curiously, RMI was asked to develop a drop-in hydrazine-NTO replacement for the solid motor on the Sparrow III missile, and they succeeded. They did end up with the design scrapped (because Thiokol finally made a freeze-proof design), although they managed to get the Bullpup fielded instead. One thing that you lot have all missed is the matter of size. Liquid fuel means less size per dV, and it's possible to squeeze tankage into every part of the missile imaginable. This is why Makeyev, the Soviet SLBM guys, are liquid fuel fanatics. That one time they were forced to do a solid-fuel missile, they still came up with a liquid second stage; the other time, the result was the Typhoon submarine and its greatly maligned monster missiles; so for the highly cntroversial Bulava, they had to be booted in favour of the Topol developers, who specialize exclusively in solids. Instead, they were to design the Sarmat, and guess what that thing uses:

And it shouldn't. Aerospikes typically steer by differential throttling of thrust cells. The exhaust should gimbal, the engine shouldn't.

Then they are unworthy of the MCRN. https://youtu.be/aaOuUP3i_J4?t=1597