US Obtained Technology From Russia to Create Methane Engines for Rockets - Roscosmos Chief
Russia helped the United States obtain technologies to build rockets with engines running on methane, but did not make progress in further developing them for its own space industry, Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Thursday
"The paradox is that we were leaders in this direction. In the early 1990s, in the absence of any funding and order, a prototype for one of the methane engines was sold to the United States for $1 million," Rogozin said, while addressing a meeting of the Russian academy of Cosmonautics.
Rogozin stressed that the United States had developed methane technologies for building rocket engines over the past few decades, while Russia had not succeeded in that direction.
"Today, as a result, we see the active development of methane technologies in the American rocket engine industry, and we have remained at the same level where we were," the Roscosmos chief said.
In September, Rogozin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had supported the corporation's proposal to create a new family of Russian rockets and develop methane technologies for the space industry. Later that month, Roscosmos said that the cost of a new reusable Russian carrier rocket with an engine running on methane would be about 900 million rubles (about $14 million).