Angara's First Flight

[Gill]

Russia’s Angara rocket has launched on her maiden flight from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northwest Russia on Wednesday – with a T-0 of 12pm UTC – tasked with a suborbital test mission which will serve as a precursor to planned orbital launches. Angara’s first launch attempt in late June was delayed via a technical hold during the countdown, resulting in the vehicle being rolled back off the pad.

Angara, which is named after a river in Siberia, is the first new orbit-capable rocket to be developed by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Designed with a modular approach, it is capable of flying in multiple configurations depending upon mission or payload requirements.

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As an aside note, a future version of the Angara rocket is also going to be the vehicle on which the unimaginatively named Prospective Piloted Transport System spacecraft will launch upon. Russian Space Web has an exhausting history of that project here.

Regardless, the Angara launch represents a major success following the recent Proton-M issues, and could represent a hopeful future for Roscosmos.

[Zeropoint]

Good on them! As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to space travel, national borders are meaningless and a success for any of us is a success for all of us.

Ad Astra, and give Laika some skritches for me.

[Irbis]

Nice. At least some good news, after that weird scandal with rocket sabotage. Hopefully next launches will be successful, too.

[Gill]

The Proton's always been sort of a, "meh" kind of launch vehicle despite the family's high mean throw weight, and that it and its carcinogenic fuel often decide they really don't want to go to space has always been somewhat of a problem for the people living down range of the launch sites.

Replacing the Proton is just one step in the right direction, as it's not just the Proton-M failures that have plagued Roscosmos. Aside from being run so poorly that the Russian government has decided to re-nationalize the program in a bid to trim off epic levels of inefficiency and phenomenally low productivity, we get the notable failures of Phobos-Grunt and Mars 96 and the total destruction of the Buran orbiter and an Energia launch vehicle in 2002. With the restructuring efforts in mind, It's generally expected that Putin will retain the previously announced budget increases for the Russian space program (especially if Angara in particular lives up to its expectations as a common replacement for everything) and both the funding and the recent shakeup are likely to produce a more active and robust space program than has been seen in Russia for a very long time. Can I hope they might actually get Venera D into the air?

Additionally: While I'd say the last given launch date of 2018 is a little early to see the first flight of the Angara A5 mounted PPTS, it will nonetheless make the astronautics field all the more interesting as we see the CST-100 and Dragon V2 launched prior eventually operate alongside it.

[Channel72]

I strongly hope that Russia and China continue to make progress with their space programs, so maybe we can recapture the Space Race spirit of the 60s, and start to take space exploration seriously again. The success of Curiosity should also be considered.

[Gill]

The thing is: Neither of them have any real plans for manned spaceflight beyond Low Earth Orbit.

The CNSA's plans extend to eventually constructing a modular space station by the 20's (Tiangong-3), but the predecessor to that project (Tiangong-2) has yet to be launched. While high end versions of and Angara and its PPTS will be able to get to Lunar orbit and back (albeit with a reduction in crew capacity), there isn't anything indicating their use in actual deep space missions anywhere in the near future. There really is no chance of a, "Space Race" ala the Cold War at this point.

There's also evidence of the CNSA being generally uninterested in attempting a repeat of Khrushchev one-upmanship. There was a good 2003 article from The Space Review by Jeff Foust which describes what we're still seeing right now:

China is proceeding in space in a very methodical, deliberative manner, and seems uninterested in competing with the US in manned space flight in any major way. Even if China ramped up its space efforts, the current geopolitical climate seems far less likely to trigger a race than the Cold War-fueled competition between the US and USSR. Those predicting such a race, and even hoping for one to break out, might be better served by helping craft policies and programs that would benefit the long-term development and use of space for defense, exploration, and commerce. That’s a race well worth winning.

For better or worse, NASA remains the only organization committed to manned deep spaceflight. Just as Mr. Foust said, hoping for a modern space race is foolish and there are more sustainable alternatives that, while not being as sexy, are a lot more sustainable.