kvs wrote:Rogozin has been the target of smear on this forum and elsewhere. This is because he cleaned house at Roscosmos.
He only took charge in 2018 but from all the haters you would think that he was there from 1998. Over the last three
and some years there has been a clear improvement of the situation.
Rogozin was assigned as the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of defense and space industry in late 2011.
So to claim he was not somewhat responsible back then is disingenuous. He was the boss of the bosses of Roscosmos, Khrunishev, and Energia back then.
kvs wrote:Before Rogozin, Roscosmos was in a state of
almost Ukrian style "raspil". All sorts of money siphoning rackets which were degrading Russia's launch capability and
introducing delays. Delays are a sure sign of corruption since they are a way to extract more money. These are not
technical difficulty delays, but engineered ones.
Well I remember reading about the situation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Soviet Union had collapsed and they had to change existing space launcher plans. The plan in Soviet times had been to use Energia and Zenit as future launchers to replace Proton and Soyuz. After the breakup a lot of the infrastructure for these projects was in Ukraine or elsewhere. All pads were in Kazakhstan and there only one for each of these rockets. The cost for Energia was something the state could no longer afford and the orbiter still had teething issues. The state massively cut funding for space as a percentage of the budget in the early Russian Federation period. Even when funding was available it was erratic to say the least. Loads of money at one time and none at the other time. So Energia worked on the Soyuz 2 upgrade and Khrunichev on the Proton M. These would be modernized versions of existing rockets with 100% native parts. There were loads of pads for Soyuz in the Russian Federation proper including at Plesetsk.
Russia commercialized space launches to the West to gain the funding required to modernize their launchers and manufacturing infrastructure. Starsem and ILS were created as ways to fund these activities. The US paid for the design of the RD-180, back then for Atlas III, and bought several dozens of these engines. Russia could have developed a rocket with this engine. But Khrunichev, when they designed the Angara, wanted a single bell nozzle version of the engine so the rocket family would scale all the way from the Rokot to the Proton. It was this state requirement to be able to replace Rokot which thus caused much of the delay as it meant the basic URM had to be smaller and thus require a single bell engine. Despite this even given erratic government funding the RD-191 single nozzle engine was eventually developed just really, really slowly. You can tell it was not due to lack of engineering skill because the RD-180 project had similar complexity yet it was developed a lot faster. Thus even in extremely difficult financial conditions the Russian Federation developed the Soyuz 2, Proton M, Briz M, and the RD-180, the Angara, and others. Plesetsk was modernized to launch the Soyuz 2 and Angara rockets.
The first flight of the Angara URM was made with the launch of Naro-1 at South Korea in 2009. They made at least three launches of the URM in South Korea and in all cases the URM performed as expected.
kvs wrote:1) Vostochniy is now entering a good tempo of commercial launches. Recall that Rogozin was assigned to clean up
the corruption during its construction that caused a 1.5 year delay in its completion. Vostochniy is seeing the building
of the Angara pad ahead of schedule.
The original plan was for the Angara pad to have the facilities for manned space flight to replace Baikonur. They deleted these facilities and now the Angara pad will only be capable of launching unmanned payloads.
The construction companies constantly siphoned off money from the Vostochniy Cosmodrome project. The construction workers themselves were not paid for months on end and had to resort to complain on TV directly to Putin so this mess could be solved. And you see this as an achievement by Rogozin.
Putin had to twist his ear and get someone to supervise him.
kvs wrote:2) Rogozin moved the production of the Angara to Omsk. The first Angara launch was four years before the arrival
of Rogozin. The program was indeed falling behind. Nobody with any integrity can claim that this poor state of affairs
has been the case after 2018.
The first launch of the Angara URM-1 was in South Korea in 2009. Rogozin claims they could not produce the Angara modules but they produced one in 2009 and another in 2010 for South Korea. Because South Korea paid on time. I am sure the expanded facilities at Omsk increased production rate so they can launch the Angara A5 at a decent clip. Angara A5 uses more modules. But the production was clearly enough to do tests with it.
kvs wrote:5) In spite of all the hater spew about the "failure" of the latest Angara test launch it was a success for the Angara
program. The Persei module somehow became the main story. It was being tested, a concept that the haters ignore
when launching their attacks.
Only because you people obsessively focus on Rogozin's supposedly no failures launch record. Well that is a bust too. This also shows some problems still exist since Persei itself is still yet another iteration of the Block DM upper stage originally developed for Proton. It should have been no problem yet it still failed. Unlike Angara URM-1 and URM-2 which were all new and had basically no major failures thus far. Some people also have complained because they think the launch schedule for Angara has been too timid. They could have merged some of those launches together.
kvs wrote:Rogozin is being subjected to the same demonization as Putin precisely because he has been succeeding at restoring Roscomos
and Russian civilian rocket industry to world class. I do not recall the previous leadership at Roscosmos ever getting this sort
of targeted hate campaign.
Then you don't remember people discussing the Russian space launch industry at all. Because people ridiculed Roscosmos all the time back then. For the (many) Briz M upper stage failures with Proton, for the improperly installed sensors on a Proton which caused it to try to fly upside down, for the many, many delays with Angara and Plesetsk to the point people thought Angara would never fly at all, etc. The space industry was intensively investigated and at one time had a revolving door of constantly changing bosses. The investigations showed, for the most part, internal corruption was in isolated cases in the contractors themselves and not institutionalized at the upper Roscosmos level. The major issue was actually the lack of consistent funding to available programs as the funds only came in a haphazard fashion. Constant bickering between Khrunichev and Energia corporation also did not help. Roscosmos's behaviour itself had little to find fault with.