The Proton is a government-built rocket that first flew over 50 years ago.
The Russian government offered it commercially (after they acknowledged its
existence), probably at or below cost, especially since they could get top
dollar from NASA for crew flights to the Space Station on Soyuz after the
Space Shuttle was retired. Even with its relatively lower cost, it wasn't
exactly disruptive to the commercial launch business. It had a respectable
number of commercial launches in 2010 (9 by my count--thank you Wikipedia),
when Falcon 9 had its first flight. It's been a pretty steady decrease
since then, with only 3 in 2017 (and 0 commercial launches planned for 2018
according to Spaceflight Now). It may also be a "dead rocket walking,"
thanks to Falcon 9 (rather than FH). Russian national security payloads may
be its only chance at survival.
On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 1:01 PM, John Stoffel <john@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Henry" == Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Henry> On Sat, 10 Feb 2018, Paul Mueller wrote:
But now it's the whole gamut, from suborbital to interplanetary...
Henry> Again, has been for quite a while. It's been possible to buy a
Proton
Henry> launch commercially for a couple of decades now, and Proton has
launched
Henry> Mars landers -- in fact, it launched the *first* Mars landers (Mars
2 and
Henry> 3), as well as the latest (the ExoMars orbiter carrying the
Schiaparelli
Henry> lander). It was also a candidate to launch Pluto Fast Flyby, which
later
Henry> morphed into New Horizons.
Henry> (And speaking of Falcon Heavy missions, Proton also launched the
first
Henry> designed-to-be-manned spacecraft to fly around the Moon... although
in the
Henry> end, Zond never flew manned because Apollo 8 got there first.)
Henry> An increment up in payload mass and down in cost, yes, but *not* a
Henry> radically new development.
But wouldn't this be considered a radical change because from a US
perspective, you now have much much much less ITAR headaches than if
you tried to launch on a Proton. Along with a possible lessening of
integration issues, though as we saw the recent SpaceX launch of Zuma,
you can still screw that up even if you're a dino-space builder.
Gah! I'm not making my point well here. I suspect that integrating a
US built sat, designed in English and EST to PST timezones, is easier
when working with a launcher provider who is also based +- a few
timezones from you. It's hard enough working with people in the same
building, but now put them 12+ hours out and in a totally different
language...
Maybe I'm over-estimating the difficulties.
Also, you aren't dealing with ULA and their NASA-centric procedures
when dealing with SpaceX. At least I hope not. And don't they quote
NASA and US Security launchers as costing more because of all the
paperwork they need to do?
And to change subjects again, when is Elon going to show off his
tanking a stage in orbit from a second stage... Really Big Friggin
Rocket. Heh.