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Comment by mm321 | Hacker News Reader

https://www.gazeta.ru/science/2021/08/27_a_13919672.shtml Here is an article in Russian about the effects of sanctions on RD-180 engines (these were powering the Atlas rockets run by ULA). it mentions a few interesting details: Energomash is loosing a third of its income, they will likely have to close down production of that engine, and that they won't be able to resume production of the engine in the future. This means that we, as a space faring species, are likely to loose the know-how for the RD-180, just like we lost the know-how for the F-1 engine of the Saturn-V.

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What's notable is that the Russians were not able to exploit the huge lead that they had built in rocket engine technology. The RD-170 series of engines (RD-180, RD-190, etc) were so ahead of their time. Imagine if they had focused on reusability instead of aping NASA's foolish shuttle ideas.

A reusable Zenit or Energia would have been a real game-changer back in the 80s. Russian launches would have cost a fraction of what they were in the west. With cheap launch costs, MIR would likely have been maintained and expanded; maybe even to this day. The ISS would likely not exist since one of its primary goals was to engage the Russian space industry and prevent it decaying away to nothing. With Russian primacy in space, perhaps we'd see more of the 'exotic' Russian space ideas realized... like Kliper, TKS & Polyus.

> A reusable Zenit or Energia

There is a great episode on Energia/Buran vehicle that goes in depth and interviews the key players. It's in Russian, but the "auto-translated" subtitles are quite good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1WV5KzAUS8

Zenit was reusable. The reusability elements were later removed because nobody demanded them.

The most critical piece of technology in an oxygen-rich staged combustion engine like the RD-180 is reportedly the metallurgy for an oxidizer-rich preburner.

But the required metallurgy is no longer exclusive to Russian engineers -- SpaceX's Raptor (which is a full-flow staged combustion engine) has an oxidizer-rich preburner on the oxidizer side of the engine.

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