Heavy rocket “Angara-A5” today, on Monday, December 14, was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the Ministry of Defense. Prior to that, this carrier was launched only once – in December 2014.
During the second test launch of Angara-A5 in six years, it is planned to put 2.4 tons of cargo into geostationary orbit, presumably of no practical use.
In November, TASS, referring to a source in the rocket and space industry, reported that on the rocket already taken to the launch pad “an underestimated insulation resistance between the second and third blocks was revealed,” as a result of which the carrier was removed from the site, and the launch was postponed to December …
In the same month, the chief designer of the Angara complex, Dmitry Petrov, said that the heavy carriers of the first and second flight tests do not structurally differ from each other.
In October, Dmitry Rogozin, the general director of Roscosmos, said that the first flight test of the Angara-A5, conducted in December 2014, “did not confirm the customer's requirements,” since “the mass to be removed was lower than needed.”
In August, the manager, in the course of his report to Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov at the Army-2020 forum, promised that this rocket would launch in November.
In July, the former general director, ex-designer of the Khrunichev Center, Vladimir Nesterov, explained the reasons for the high cost of Angara-A5. “Wages, electricity, gas, heat, overhead costs, transport services need to be entered somewhere. And when a three-fold production cycle is hung on one product, naturally, its price triples, ”said the former head.
In the financial report of the Khrunichev Center for 2019, it was reported that the cost of production of Angara-A5 is seven billion rubles, which is three times more expensive than the Proton-M rocket, which it has to replace.
In May 2019, according to the SPARK-Marketing system, it became known that the Angara-1.2 light rocket was 1.5 times more expensive than the Soyuz-2.1a and Soyuz-2.1b medium carriers.
The Khrunichev Center is the most problematic and unprofitable enterprise of Roscosmos. One of the company's failed projects is the development of a family of carriers “Angara”, which in the heavy version should replace the “Proton-M”. The creation of missiles has been going on for more than a quarter of a century and required more than three billion dollars (according to other estimates, more than five). Currently, the debts of the Khrunichev Center exceed 80 billion rubles, which is equivalent to half the annual budget of the state corporation.
