Titsup Russian rocket EXPLODES, destroys $275m telly satellite It's red faces all round at the Russian space agency after its latest Proton rocket launch failed midflight, destroying a very expensive satellite that was due to beam digital TV all over the former Soviet Union. The Proton-M rocket, carrying a European-built Express AM4R telecommunications satellite, launched from the …
I was informed today, on good authority, that the pressure point for the Russia/Crimea/SpaceX/ULA has shifted. Certain parties are applying enormous pressure on satellite insurers to adjust their weighting to reflect various risks of storing, moving, launching and first year operations of satellites using Russian motor cores and/or launching from Russia.
It's all quite interesting. The entire global insurance market for everything satellite related is less than $2B in premium payments. Although the industry has historically been profitable, the average premium payment has dropped about 50% over the last few years. That means the insurance companies are quite keen to make adjustments that can increase the average amounts of those premiums.
Overall, I like it. Nobody in government is going to seriously diddle with international relations at this point, but if the finances change drastically it's quite possible you'll see big change in government feeling on the issue. This is smart business, only made better when proof is blowing up overhead.
All this will do is to make Russian government re-insure them or "pressure" their banks into underwriting at extremely competitive rates.
This may have worked once upon a time when Russia had the mother of all deficits and no financial reserves. At this particular moment in time - do not think so.
You completely miss the point. Russia has fuck all to do with the insurance of the satellite build, launch site logistics, pre launch prep, launch or the 1st year of service. That's because they don't build much of what they launch. That's done by companies in other countries who do have to pay the insurance costs.
If insurance prices got back to what they were a few years ago Russia could offer to launch the satellites for free, and it still would move the economics in Russia's favor.
" Nobody in government is going to seriously diddle with international relations at this point, but if the finances change drastically it's quite possible you'll see big change in government feeling on the issue. "
Russian stockmarkets have been extremely jittery since that mess began. It might be politically popular but the people who hold the pursestrings within the country have their doubts.
"They have a reliable rocketry system and very cheap too! The Mars orbiter is already halfway at about 70 million dollars only and conceived and launched within 16 months"
Not sure why that received a downvote, although (and especially if you're from India) why post as AC? The mission cost is genuinely something to be proud of, and might just generate the sort of headlines that will help the element of competition required to kickstart space as a paying commercial sector.
They haven't been launching long enough to get a reputation for reliability. Same reason why SpaceX isn't get any critical loads, and won't be for a while. It takes years to build up a good reputation, and months (as the Russians will soon find out) to ruin it.
But good on India for joining the game, there is a serious backlog of launch slots, which will only get worse as people cancel contracts with Russia and pay to cut in line for Ariane launches. The quicker that India and SpaceX are seen as viable alternatives beyond the "discount launch" market the better for everyone.
The brazilians would be at the same stage as India too, if they hadn't managed to blow up a rocket on the pad whilst most of their employees were working on it.
Rule #1, don't have people anywhere near the thing if it's got fuel in it. The Russians learned that particular lesson a long tim ago (N1 days)
So, first the Russians take Crimea, then the US starts sanctions. When the Russians talk about limiting ISS activity, stopping and heavy launch functions for the US/EU, then the US nixes GLONOSS base stations in CONUS, and now a Russian telecommunications satellite 'mysteriously' blows up on launch. I wonder if there could possibly be a connection?
Nah. Never.
An extraordinary amount of Cold War era spy vs spy type stuff was nothing more than the normal screwups you always see if you step back far enough. The difference, is that nobody gives a shit that stuff goes on constantly unless it's happening to someone you're in a 30 year propaganda war with.
May be related to telemetry, apparently with the Proton M the control is done from the ground.
If something interrupted the signal at the crucial moment then it might cause the systems on the rocket to buffer overflow and crash during conditions of high data throughput.
The M has its own controller and backup but the mains both run identical code separate from the backups
This is for a number of reasons but mostly for security so if something like a power glitch affects one of the backups or one of the mains at the same time the rocket isn't affected.
Some satellites, booked for Proton launch, are going to be delayed.
It's not so easy to put a satellite on a different launcher, because of the physical structure that supports the satellite, and the control systems.
And who has launchers spare?
If somebody wants an extra Falcon launch after this, it will take time to build everything, and there is the problem of time on the pad.
There isn't going to be a sudden change.
"A large proportion of the cost of a satellite is the custom design and build. Is it not standard practice to build at least one identical spare alongside the original?
Certainly comm sat operators do like to have spares (either on the ground or on orbit).
The learning curve on most satellites is very steep. The cost to double production (IE 1 --> 2) is a lotsmaller. Iridium hired the guy who developed iPad production to streamline the process. Their 77 sats were much cheaper to knock out at the end.
"The learning curve on most satellites is very steep. The cost to double production (IE 1 --> 2) is a lotsmaller"
That's hardly surprising when you're making dozens(*) of engineering test articles before the actual flight unit.
(*) I'm not exaggerating. Test units will be constructed to verify the materials, dimension the wiring looms, stress test, test for fit, etc etc etc.
A large proportion of the satellite build is test and verification - that still costs 2x as much for 2 units.
Most of the commercial satellite bus is pretty much pick and mix, compared to the R&D effort in a science payload.
So if you built a spare it would probably cost 75% of the first item and unless it is one of a constellation like GPS/Iridium you wouldn't have a market for it unless there was an oops, it's cheaper to buy insurance.
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