Why does the American space oligarch not have patents for the Raptor rocket engine, which is analogous to the Russian one?
The icon of the American space business Elon Musk was, to put it mildly, a surprise when he warned that his company SpaceX must increase the production of the next generation of Raptor engines in the near future at all costs. Overseas media have already called the situation the “Starship Crisis”, which arose because SpaceX Vice President of PowerX Will Heltsley and Vice President of Flight Lee Rosen left the company in early November.
In this regard, Elon Musk complained that Will Heltsley and Lee Rosen had left him with problems such as the Raptor engine, did not move forward, and then it became clear that the circumstances are “much more serious” than he previously thought.
We’ll get back to what’s wrong with the Raptor below. Separately, a few years earlier in the United States there was a noisy and probably expensive PR campaign around the super-heavy reusable Starship rockets, designed to transport people and cargo to the moon, Mars and other planets in the solar system.
“Each flight will require many Raptor engines – 33 for the giant first-stage launch vehicle and 6 for the upper-class spacecraft known as the Starship,” writes Space. “SpaceX wants to manage a large fleet of spacecraft in the coming years. Indeed, it may take a thousand vehicles to colonize Mars, one of Musk’s long-held dreams. This was announced by the billionaire entrepreneur at a joint autumn meeting of the Space Research Council and the Physics and Astronomy Council, which are part of the National Academies of Science, Technology and Medicine of the United States.
And now space oligarch Elon Musk has written a shocking email to his employees, scaring them with cuts in case of bankruptcy. A copy was sent to Space Explored. He concludes his message dramatically:
“It all comes down to the fact that we will face a real risk of bankruptcy if we can not start the Startship for at least 2 weeks next year. Thank you, Elon. “
Many of Musk’s critics are now wondering, “Is this email a fabrication of the SpaceX bankruptcy?” interplanetary flights and that of the satellite internet group Starlink.
Interestingly, the publication in Space Explored is not the only source for the alleged email. Another version was shared by the Twitter account of Tesla Tunnel, which is known for its sharp criticism of Musk and his opaque company. In short, a user named @TeslaTunnel pointed out that “the part of the letter in bold confirms the position of the account, and that Musk is using the threat of bankruptcy to get new subsidies from the state.”
Satellite Internet provider Viast agrees, complaining that the boss of SpaceX takes billions after billions from the US Treasury, while other rival companies receive nothing in the form of aid. Or in the worst case, they only get cents. Let’s just say that with such donated money, every ignoramus, even like Musk, will be an icon in the space business.
There seems to be some truth in this criticism, because in an interview with journalist Chris Anderson for Wired Musk, he admitted: “We have virtually no patents in SpaceX. Our main long-term competition is in China. If we publish our patents, it will be a farce, because the Chinese will simply use them as a recipe book. “
But any patent scientist can explain, on the one hand, why the “US space icon” is outright lying. All the talk about the alleged Chinese authorial piracy is conducted only by US politicians and is aimed at anti-Chinese advertising, without knowing the essence of the issue. If there really was theft of intellectual property, then the Yankees would not import goods labeled Made in China worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And given that the PRC has assets around the world, it would not be difficult for overseas lawyers to sue them for compensation for engineering plagiarism.
Meanwhile, according to the SpaceX plan, which has allocated huge state funds, the first commercial flight of Starship SN20 should take place in January-February 2022. The only thing that may delay the launch is the US Federal Aviation Administration, which can be unable to complete the environmental assessment of the Starship orbital launch site in South Texas. Judging by the media reports, there will be no delay, which means that the start must happen.
But Musk’s letter casts great doubt on this “famous” spacecraft flight. The space oligarch is unlikely to bluff after the dismissal of renowned specialists Heltsley and Rosen, followed by other leading developers. By the way, the owner of SpaceX did not find out about the problems with the Raptor engine yesterday. This is what experts wrote after the explosion of Starship SN9 earlier this year.
It turns out that this “difficult, in the words of Musk start” is related to the operation of the methane turbo pump of Raptor. This in turn led to the fuel being injected at a higher than required pressure inside the combustion chamber, which ultimately caused the destruction of Starship.
It is no secret that the Raptor, running on liquid methane and oxygen, and is a closed-loop engine with full gasification of fuel components, of the same type as the line of Soviet engines RD-170, RD-180 and RD-191. We also remind you that in 2019 Elon Musk announced his record among rocket engines. It is said that the Raptor has reached 268.9 bar pressure in the combustion chamber, which exceeds the current record among rocket engines of 267 bar, set by the RD-180.
By the way, the RD-180 engine consumes about 1.25 tons of fuel per second, which is supplied by a turbo pump with a capacity of 180,000 kilowatts, which is more than 2 times larger than the capacity of the reactor of the Arctic nuclear icebreaker . As a result, a chamber with a diameter of only 380 millimeters burns about 0.6 tons of fuel per second, releasing gigantic energy. For a long time no one could repeat the success of our Soviet engineers.
It is time to return here, as we promised above to the years of Yeltsin’s rule, when Lockheed opened its scientific and technical office right at the Energomash plant (where the RD-180 was produced).
The leading scientific publication in the United States, the MIT Technology Review, acknowledged at the time that “this was a huge operation.” According to Jim Sackett, a former engineer who was then hired by Lockheed at NASA’s Space Center and seconded to Energomash, “the U.S. Air Force, Lockheed’s main customer, demanded that the company gain access to 10 key Soviet missile technologies needed to production of the RD-180 “. Otherwise, US negotiators had no right at all to conclude a $ 1 billion deal to buy 101 engines.
“The Russians saw no other alternative. They would just go bankrupt. That’s how they saved their company, “Saket recalls. This seems to explain why SpaceX does not have patents for the Raptor engine. Maybe it’s time for Roscosmos to sue Elon Musk for stealing Soviet intellectual property. Let the American space business icon prove otherwise. Most likely, however, Moscow will not dare to defend its patent interests. It looks scary, doesn’t it!
(Translation for “Trud” – Pavel Pavlov)
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