St. Petersburg, April 8 In the United States, where the Russian RD-180 rocket engines were supplied, they could not determine the composition of the alloy from which they are made, said Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of the Kurchatov Institute Research Center.
On Saturday, Kovalchuk delivered an open lecture at the Peter the Great Polytechnic University entitled «Nature-Like Technologies and Solutions to the Problems of the Modern World.»
«Until now, the Americans are buying our RD-180 rocket engines, <…> we have been selling them for many years. They disassemble, assemble, disassemble, assemble, but they cannot make metal,» he said.
According to Kovalchuk, difficulties with the creation of alloys for the production of engines are typical not only for the space industry, but also for the aircraft industry, which limits, in particular, the number of countries that have the ability to produce engines for fighter jets.
«You, sitting in an airplane at the wing, never think that a turbine is spinning nearby. A turbine consists of many metal blades, <…> it is such a small piece of metal. Firstly, it experiences the wildest mechanical loads, (because) spins at great speed, and spins in a hot gas at a temperature of more than two thousand degrees.If one blade comes off, the plane will collapse or fall apart.But (turbine blade) spins for many thousands of hours, the plane flies for many years, and why — because you can make an alloy. So, few people can do it today,» he told the audience of the lecture.
Earlier, in June 2022, the then general director of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, reported that the United States had four Russian RD- 181 for Antares rockets, which launch Cygnus cargo ships to the ISS. Rogozin recalled that the state corporation, in response to US sanctions, stopped supplying RD-180 and RD-181 rocket engines.