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Sure, any to answer the more general question in the OP: Russia invented and built and then sold to the USA the RD-180 rocket engines that are used for the fir

Sure, any to answer the more general question in the OP: Russia invented and built and then sold to the USA the RD-180 rocket engines that are used for the first stage of the American Atlas V launch vehicle. Which the USA will no doubt "reverse engineer" soon :) The OP needs to get out more often.

samatman 6y ago
I feel weird playing the jingoism game, because it doesn't even vaguely reflect my feelings on the subject, but here we go: SpaceX, a privately-held American company, is the only source of innovation in rocketry at the present time. Their reusable launch platform plays in its own league; everything else is steam power, Falcon is internal combustion. That's just a fact. Unlike insisting that China, Russia, India are incapable of innovation more generally, which is risible. My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought of as 'higher tech'. I'm fairly certain we'll discover, in the next ten years, that China is quite capable of making cutting-edge computer chips, and just hadn't gotten around to it yet. I've never shared my countrymen's obsession with insisting on being 'the greatest'. This country is great in its own right, along many dimensions; it is, in fact, right at the cutting edge for medicine and CPUs; denigrating the work of other nations only detracts from this.
- pinkfoot 6y ago
  +1
- tatersolid 6y ago
  > My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought of as 'higher tech'. My impression is that “real” rocket engines include a jet engine just to pump fuel. They have many other pieces as well. Not that a modern high-bypass turbofan is simple, but don’t discount the complexity of rocket science.

samatman 6y ago

I feel weird playing the jingoism game, because it doesn't even vaguely reflect my feelings on the subject, but here we go: SpaceX, a privately-held American company, is the only source of innovation in rocketry at the present time. Their reusable launch platform plays in its own league; everything else is steam power, Falcon is internal combustion. That's just a fact. Unlike insisting that China, Russia, India are incapable of innovation more generally, which is risible. My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought of as 'higher tech'. I'm fairly certain we'll discover, in the next ten years, that China is quite capable of making cutting-edge computer chips, and just hadn't gotten around to it yet. I've never shared my countrymen's obsession with insisting on being 'the greatest'. This country is great in its own right, along many dimensions; it is, in fact, right at the cutting edge for medicine and CPUs; denigrating the work of other nations only detracts from this.

pinkfoot 6y ago
+1
tatersolid 6y ago
> My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought of as 'higher tech'. My impression is that “real” rocket engines include a jet engine just to pump fuel. They have many other pieces as well. Not that a modern high-bypass turbofan is simple, but don’t discount the complexity of rocket science.