Antares

I can almost hear this being said in a meeting somewhere: “Let’s use old Soviet-era rocket engines which have been in storage in Siberia for four decades. We’ll buff off the corrosion and weld the cracks and they’ll be good as new. What can go wrong?”

Ask Orbital Sciences what can go wrong. I’ll bet they have a real good idea this morning.

Last night, Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket blew up 10 to 12 seconds into its flight. Or as NASA would say, “experienced an anomaly.” The Antares first stage is powered by two Aerojet AJ-26 engines, which are modified Soviet-built NK-33 engines. The NK-33 engines were built in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Soviet Union had hope of going to the Moon. When the Moon program ended, the government ordered the engines to be destroyed. But a bureaucrat decided to store 150 engines in a warehouse. Thirty years later, word of the stored engines leaked out to America. One of the engines was taken to America and demonstrated on a test stand. In the mid-1990s, Aerojet bought 36 of the engines, fixed them up, and renamed them AJ-26.

Why does Orbital want to use the NK-33? What’s so great about it? The NK-33 has one of the highest thrust-to weight-ratios of any Earth-launchable rocket engine. In fact, it’s second only to the SpaceX Merlin 1D engine. SpaceX is Orbital’s competitor.

This morning, the Russian Space Agency launched its own Progress cargo vessel from Kazakhstan. The spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station six hours later with 3 tons of food, fuel, and other supplies. The launch and flight went smoothly. Turns out, the Russians don’t use antique rocket engines. They sold their antique engines to us.