Recently, because of the changes in the situation in Ukraine, the United States led a group of younger brothers to continuously attack Russia, imposed the most severe economic sanctions in history, and Russia was really angry, and soon announced the supply of RD-180 rocket engines to the United States, and humorously told the United States: If you want to launch satellites, then the rockets will fly with brooms.
There is no doubt that the United States is the world's superpower, the economic strength exceeds any other country, the space strength is no country dares to match, 5 artificial spacecraft into interstellar space are from NASA, on the surface of Mars, in addition to china's Zhu Rong, other probes are American.
Some people may think that this is very strange, if the Us space technology is so good, why has it been using the rocket engine provided by Russia for the past few decades? Can't American rockets go to heaven without Russian rocket engines?
In fact, you can answer with a sentence said by the American Blue Origin: the RD-180 rocket engine designed by Russia, which is simply a space miracle, the RD-180 rocket engine has a beautiful appearance, stable performance, strong thrust, reasonable structure, and is the most popular rocket engine in the world.
It turns out that the RD-180 rocket engine is indeed a space miracle, NASA Atlas V carrier rocket has been launched dozens of times, Russia itself has launched nearly 50 times, the RD-180 rocket engine has never had a problem, even if the rocket failure is a problem in other aspects, and has nothing to do with the rocket engine.
In 2014, the United States purchased 122 RD-180s at a time, and as of March 2022, only the last 24 RD-180 rocket engines in the U.S. inventory remained, at the current rate of consumption, if Russia does not supply the United States with new RD-180s in 2023, then NASA will not have RD-180 engines.
As a superpower, how can the United States be subject to people, has long wanted to develop its own rocket engine, research and development costs are spent hundreds of millions of dollars, cooperation with a number of famous aerospace airlines, the United States Boeing, and Blue Origin, but it has not been developed, the molded rocket engine is not this problem or that problem.
Some people think that without the rocket engine, the American astronauts on the International Space Station will not be able to come back? In fact, the American astronauts returned to the ground not using the Atlas V launch vehicle (RD-180 engine), but using Musk SpaceX's manned Dragon spacecraft 2 to launch and return.
From 2020 onwards, SpaceX's Manned Dragon spacecraft 2 has successfully sent at least 5 batches of American astronauts to the International Space Station and successfully brought several groups of American astronauts back to the ground, while spaceX's Manned Dragon spacecraft 2 was launched using the Falcon 9 rocket, so there is no problem that astronauts cannot return.
American astronauts take SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft 2 into the International Space Station, and then dragon spacecraft 2 docks on the International Space Station, waiting for the American astronauts to finish their mission, and then bringing them back to Earth, of course, if dragon spacecraft 2 still has excess fuel, it will also help the International Space Station to increase the orbital altitude.
The Falcon 9 rocket uses SpaceX's own Raptor engine, which has nothing to do with Russia's RD-180 rocket engine, so the UNITED States satellite launch will not use a "broom".
Russia's cut off of RD-180 engines to the United States has accelerated NASA's dependence on Musk's private company SpaceX, and recently, Musk suddenly received a 3.5 billion yuan order from NASA, and was so excited that he planned to launch three more Crew Dragon spacecraft 2, Crew-7, Crew-8 and Crew-9 missions to the International Space Station.
This also reflects the "incompetence" of NASA, which was surpassed by a private company SpaceX, if NASA can not get rid of the dilemma of RD-180 engine supply, then the future launch of satellites, launch of spacecraft, launch of astronauts to the International Space Station, I am afraid that they will have to rely on SpaceX.
I remember an expert once said: The current NASA is really not as good as before, compared with nasa in the middle of the last century, far worse, in the 21st century, NASA has never carried out the same space mission as the "Apollo program", almost all of them are small troubles.
If Russia cuts off the RD-180 engine to the United States, then NASA has become more dependent on SpaceX, and recently, NASA signed a $3.5 billion contract with SpaceX, which perfectly explains nasa's embarrassment, but will not affect the space station American astronauts returning to the ground. Interesting and informative scientific content, please pay attention to the only WeChat public account: Interesting Exploration