This news story
Kazakhstan Impounds Property Of Russian Cosmodrome Operator In Baikonur is somewhat related to the topic of this thread.
So Russia owes money to Kazakhstan for a project related to shifting to rockets that use a less toxic fuel. My understanding is that the Proton uses UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) and N2O4 oxidizer (nitrogen tetroxide). But to use a different fuel would require a new engine design and a lot of changes to the rocket. Russia has shown no signs of doing that.
So this dispute impacts the long talked about new launch facility at Baikonur.
The Russian civilian space program is in an ongoing state of collapse.
Let's unpack this a bit.
--Russia owes money to the Kazakhs for an
environmental study for the new Soyuz rocket. Russia hasn't paid because they're bullies and likely because the Kazakhs are super corrupt and shady (they learned from the best, after all) and the $30M won't be the end of it anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if there was never actually a formal agreement to pay $30M, but I digress...
--The new Soyuz uses an RD170 variant motor; RD170 and its variants have always run on LOX and Kerosene/RP1. These motors are used in Soyuz (the current one), Zenit (so, also the defunct sea/land launch venture), Angara, Atlas 5, and probably others. So...we're not actually talking about less toxic fuel here with a new rocket, since it was always already going to use less toxic fuel. (And, to be clear, the Kazakhs could actually give a *sugar* about environmental damage)
--Proton does use The Bad Stuff for propellant; Proton is all but dead and Russia has long been wanting to supersede it with Angara (which, again, already uses LOX and RP1). It's a messy world of course and it's worth noting that the new Soyuz is more or less the replacement for the mostly-failed Angara program. Younger and prettier, as it were...
--The Russian "
civilian space program", (quotes and italics are meant to highlight the absurdity of the statement because there's really never been a civilian space program) has already collapsed. It was on a respirator before Vlad started a War; the War nailed the coffin tight. The two major factors were 1) Falcon 9 and 2) the string of Proton failures in the 2010's. Proton was long the cheap 4/5m class rocket, and was massively profitable for Russia. Once the more cheaper and more reliable F9 really started to take hold there was little reason for anyone to buy protons. Soyuz--beyond the Oneweb contract, which was brokered through Arianespace--only did a handful of commercial launches over the years because its been pretty unfavorably priced (a Soyuz launch is more or less the same price as a Falcon 9). The overwhelming majority of Soyuz launches are and have been Federal or ISS related. And again, "ISS != civilian" in Russian, though I appreciate that's diving into semantics.
--Russia is generally keen to shift mid inclination launches to Vostochny, despite the logistical nightmare of shipping rockets 6-8000km or whatever it is across Siberia. A major hangup is the Russian obsession with history/legacy/tradition, but even that's not enough for Vlad to invade Kazakhstan and properly take Baikonur back over again. (Unlike the Ukraine there's very little redeeming value in Kazakhstan to Russia beyond the facilities in Baikonur...which themselves are only redeeming simply because they exist...). The other major hangup is that the awkward existing relationship over the city/base is just too easy to manage for Russia's big thumb on Kazakhstan's Yorkie bark.
--That Vostochny has been plagued with corruption is kind of just standard MO for Russia. Doing any kind of business in Russia is mostly about how to out-corrupt the other person. That one gets arrested in the process of doing business simply means there are other more corrupt players in the game...with more money.
spacenews.com
