Dmitry Rogozin / Twitter
On Friday, a Soyuz 2.1B rocket was launched from Vostoch’s Cosmodrome, carrying a payload of 36 of its OneWeb satellites into space. Although Russia’s newest space station is located in the eastern part of the country, it is still several hundred kilometers away from the Pacific Ocean.
This means that as the Soyuz rocket ascends into space from this location, they land on the scattered populated Yakutia region below their footsteps. With the Soyuz rocket, there are four boosters that serve as the “first stage” of the rocket, and this goes away about two minutes after the liftoff. After that, the second phase of “Block A” goes away later in the flight.
Although the Yakutia region is geographically rugged and sparsely populated, the Russian government is doing a reasonably good job of establishing drop zones for these phases and keeping them away from residential areas. With the start of Friday, this happened as usual.
However, he did share photos and videos of these operations Twitter And Facebook, the head of Russia’s space program, Dmitry Rogozin couldn’t help but take what he thought was a swipe at SpaceX. In his comments, Rogozin referred to Boca Chika, where SpaceX is building a prototype of its Starship Mars rocket, and wondered if SpaceX would be able to work in the same harsh conditions as its tough Russian experts.
“This is not Boca Chika. This is Yakutia, and in winter. The team in the field of the fall of the second phase of the One Web mission was deployed yesterday, two days before the launch. Temperature – minus 52,” Rogozin wrote on Facebook. “I wonder if Gentle SpaceX will be able to function in such a situation?”
Irony, Noted by some users In response to Rogozin, it is said that “humble” SpaceX engineers do not need to dare weather to recover the rocket’s phases. They have created a smart rocket. SpaceX did the first phase of the Falcon 9 rocket to return to the ground or land itself on an autonomous drone ship for future reuse. And its second phase can be ordered to enter the atmosphere and burn.
Original, and machine translation of Dmitry Rogozin’s post on Facebook.
Dmitry Rogozin / Facebook
Moreover, in Boka Chika, the company is trying to build a fully reusable rocket with both super heavy first stage as well as starship upper stage landing and reusable. And while temperatures in South Texas rarely drop below freezing, the mercury regularly peaks at 100 degrees during the Boca Chika summer – when the company’s engineers work all day in their work.
Rogozin has been a difficult year. As the Falcon 9 continues to drive the business of commercial launches away from Russia’s proton rockets, SpaceX’s crew dragon has also eliminated the need to buy seats on NASA’s Soyuz vehicle for its astronauts to reach the International Space Station. For the most part, Rogozin has reacted to these changing financial circumstances with a refusal.
But it seems quite clear that, although “benign” may be SpaceX, the company’s success has angered the Russian space chief.
