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Russians to Launch Satellites by Plane Moscow/March 5, 2001/Satnews/ -- After preparing for years, the Russians have revealed they are ready for commercial use of launching satellites from airplanes by 2003. General Director of the Air Launch Aerospace Corporation Anatoly Karpov has been quoted by news agency Tass as saying two test launches are scheduled for the end of 2002. According to a recent report from The Times of London, 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 program. The project is called Air Launch and will use the An-124-100 plane, also known as Ruslan. 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, the The Times reported. According to the latest blueprints, the aircraft will be loaded with 100-tonne, two-stage Polyot rockets and flown to refueling bases in either the Middle East, the Russian Far East, South-East Asia or South Africa depending on the orbit required. The launch is to be conducted over open ocean with the “carrier aircraft” performing 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. Karpov, in a recent prospectus published last month, promised to put communications and navigation satellites in orbit for $2,500 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. Shirobokov said that modifications on the first two aircraft are expected to be finished by summer. It will then seek $130 million 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. According to Karpov, launch costs are up to US$30,000 per kilogram from the ground; up to US$10,000 from the sea, but only up to US$7,000 from the air. There are no problems with first rocket stages that plunge back to Earth after launch; the flight trajectory of the rocket and inclination of the satellite orbit are arbitrary. In another news conference, Karpov was confident of making its first launch in 2003. He added, "A few years after that we could be making five to eight launches a week" using six planes, four of which are to be acquired from the Russian Air Force. "Sixty percent of the cost of a traditional land launch is the first stage," said Karpov. As a consequence, Air Launch would be able to charge just US$5-6,000 per kilogram. Karpov said Air Launch's only current competition in the niche was Boeing, which announced in March that it was developing a program using modified 747-400F jumbo jets. According to Karpov, Air Launch could potentially control up to 40 percent of the commercial air launch market. There are similar efforts being done by the Americans but American efforts using decommissioned cruise missiles dropped from carrier aircraft have yet to prove commercially viable. 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, according to industry reports. Back
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