According to relevant media reports, russia announced that it would stop providing rocket engines to the United States, and many people in the outside world speculated that the US aerospace would completely fall off the altar. It is reported that as early as the last century, the United States purchased a large number of rocket engines from Russia, and its domestic "Cosmos 5" carrier rocket used Russian RD-180 engines. Data show that in the past two decades, Russia has provided a total of 122 RD-180 engines to the United States, and there are still 24 that are not in use, and the Russian side has also made it clear that it will not provide technical maintenance for these engines.
In fact, Russia stopped supplying rocket engines, will not have a great impact on the United States, has always been aware that relying on Russia is not a long-term solution, so as early as a few years ago, the United States has begun to develop a domestic engine that can replace the RD-180, but it has not yet been developed. But even so, Russia's suspension of engine supply will not have much impact on the development of U.S. space. On the one hand, the remaining 24 RD-180 engines in the United States are enough to launch several large rockets, on the other hand, the United States manned lunar rockets have also made great progress, and even Musk has said that he plans to land on Mars in 2029.
It is worth mentioning that in recent years, the United States has put the "return to the moon" plan on the agenda, for this reason, the United States has also specially developed a new generation of rocket "space launch system" and "Orion" lunar landing spacecraft. Due to the delay in the development of the "space launch system", the US return to the moon plan was forced to be postponed, so the outside world is also very concerned about whether the United States will return to the moon as scheduled. But recently, NASA said that the new lunar rocket is ready to be completed and is about to make its first flight.
According to information released by NASA, the "Orion" spacecraft has been successfully installed on the top of the space launch system rocket, and was recently pushed to the Kennedy Space Center launch site. According to the plan, the giant lunar rocket will be tested for the first time on next month, and if the test is successfully completed, it will lay the foundation for the United States' "return to the moon" plan, but if the test fails, the plan will be postponed again. But from the current situation, the rocket and spacecraft are ready, and in the absence of accidents, they will soon be launched and fly around the moon. In this regard, many people bluntly said that the Russian RD-180 engine blockade failed.
In addition, the US spaceX company is also developing a large rocket starship, after Musk has said that its altitude will reach 120 meters, the maximum load of up to 300 tons. In other words, as long as two such rockets can complete the task of launching a huge spacecraft. It is reported that Musk plans to build 1,000 Starship rockets, launching 3 a day, with the goal of sending 1 million people to Mars and building a Martian city on the surface of Mars by 2050. This idea may seem out of reach, but Musk has always been confident that the starship can meet the requirements of Martian colonization. Asked when humans will be able to go to Mars, Musk said he would land on Mars in 2029.