Russian space revolution???

This is off topic a little but I did find this article interesting so I thought I’d post it here in case any of you find it interesting also (Courtesy of the Times newspaper and their excellent web-site):

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 24 2001

Russians to launch satellites from plane

FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW

IN A giant hangar on the banks of the Volga, a Russian aerospace company is converting the world’s largest aeroplane into a flying launchpad from which, it claims, rockets will deliver satellites into orbit cheaper than ever before.
Four Antonov 124 “Ruslan” aircraft have been delivered to an assembly complex in Ulyanovsk, east of Moscow, where they are to become the basis of one of the more ambitious, and potentially most lucrative, undertakings in the Russian space programme.

Each capable of lifting a 120-tonne payload, the aircraft are being modified to release a shortened version of one of Russia’s workhorse space rockets, the Polyot, for mid-air launches high enough in the Earth’s atmosphere to remove the need for the massive first-stage booster engines that make conventional launches so costly. According to the latest blueprints, the aircraft will be loaded with 100-tonne, two-stage Polyot rockets and flown to refuelling bases in either the Middle East, the Russian Far East, South-East Asia or South Africa depending on the orbit required.

For the launch conducted over open ocean, the “carrier aircraft” will have to perform a gorka or “zoom manoeuvre” at its maximum cruising altitude of roughly 35,000ft, diving to gain speed, then climbing at 26 degrees and releasing its payload during a brief window of weightlessness at the apex of the climb. After six or seven seconds of horizontal free-fall controlled by a drogue parachute, according to the current plans, the rocket’s engines will ignite, blasting it into orbit anywhere from 140 to 6,500 miles above the Earth.

“We will be able to use any airport with a two-mile runway as a cosmodrome,” said Leonid Shirobokov, deputy director of Air Launch, which is privately run but backed by the Russian Government. The company claims that it will be able to deliver 3.5-tonne payloads to orbit from northern launch sites and four-tonne satellites from equatorial ones such as the Seychelles, where the Earth’s spin gives extra boost. The project combines a heavy reliance on the brute force of Soviet technology — no American plane can match the cavernous Ruslan’s lifting ability — with a faith in international markets.

In a prospectus published this month Anatoli Karpov, the company’s chairman, promised to put communications and navigation satellites in orbit for $2,500 (£1,700) per kg by 2003, or roughly a tenth of the cost of Cape Canaveral launches and four times cheaper than from the floating “sea launch” platform built by a Boeing-led consortium for use in the Pacific. Mr Shirobokov said that modifications on the first two aircraft are expected to be finished by summer. It will then seek $130million to complete a project that could end in Russian dominance of a global satellite launching business worth up to $15 billion over the next 15 years.

Mid-air space launches are by no means tried and tested. American efforts using decommissioned cruise missiles dropped from carrier aircraft have yet to prove commercially viable, and a Californian firm hoping to tow reusable space vehicles to high-altitude launching sites behind a 747 jumbo jet is still raising funds to build a prototype. The Russian team is not planning its first full test for two years, but it has four carrier aircraft on permanent loan from the country’s military. It also has “off-the-shelf” Soviet-era rocket technology that remains unmatched in terms of reliability and value-for-money. One key moment in the Air Launch “flight profile” is still giving headaches. Engineers intended to pull the Polyot rocket clear of the aircraft with parachutes, only to find that suitable parachutes do not exist. The latest plans involve a pneumatic catapult that pushes the rocket out of the aircraft.

Now, I think that this will be fascinating if it works but it looks like it could be fraught with problems. Nontheless, I would love to see a mid-air launch taking place somewhere over the Pacific, it would certainly look spectacular.