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Roscosmos intends to reduce Angara rocket costs

According to the manufacturer, this is possible, including by means of introducing the product lifecycle management technology and lean manufacturing system

MOSCOW, March 9. /TASS/. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos intends to reduce the costs of the country’s new Angara carrier rocket by means of cutting the RD-191 engines’ production cost, CEO of the engines’ manufacturer NPO Energomash research and production association Igor Arbuzov said on Wednesday.

"The leadership of the Roscosmos State Corporation has set us the task to optimize the RD-191 engine’s production costs to make the Angara launch vehicle competitive on the world market of space launches," Arbuzov said as quoted in a report posted on the website of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center (Angara manufacturer).

"This is possible, including by means of introducing the product lifecycle management technology and lean manufacturing system," he added.

According to open data, an RD-191 one-chamber liquid-fuel engine that is used in the first stage of the Angara rocket costs 250 million rubles. NPO Energomash is the designer and manufacturer of these engines.

Angara, named after a river in Eastern Siberia, is a family of space-launch vehicles being developed by the Moscow-based Khrunichev Space Center.

Angara is a new generation of Russia’s space rockets. The Angara family includes the light rocket Angara-1.2 (liftoff mass 171 tons, payload 3.8 tons), medium Angara-A3 (481 tons, 1-14.6 tons) and heavy Angara-A5 (773 tons 3-24.5 tons), Angara-A7 (1,113 tons, 7.6-35 tons). These rockets will be used to launch a wide variety of payloads - satellites, manned spacecraft and inter-planetary space probes.

Only two launches of the Angara rocket have been carried out thus far: the light Angara-1.2PP rocket was launched in June 2014, and the heavy-lift Angara-A5 - in December 2014. Another launch of the Angara rocket is scheduled for late 2016.