Inside Russia's Energomash (rocket factory)

[Dr Mordrid]

Oh Brother - both for the lax security and the decrepitude of much of the facility. Follow the link to Lana's blog for the pics - it's in Russian though.

Energomash is one of the largest rocket engine designers in Russia, and they produce the RD-171/180/191 series. A partial list -

RD-0107: first stage engine for Soyuz

RD-0108: second stage core engine for Soyuz

RD-0253: first stage engine for Proton

RD-170 family: first stage engine for the Zenit and the booster engines for Energia

RD-180: first stage engine for the US Atlas V

RD-191: first stage engine for the Angara family

RedOrbit....

Lana Sator's blog & pics....

Russian Rocket Security Caught Sleeping On The Job

On Thursday, Russia’s deputy prime minister vowed to punish “sleepy” security officials who were caught dozing off in photos taken by bloggers.

Blogger Lana Sator said she and her friends were not caught as they roamed around state rocket-maker Energomash’s plant on five separate occasions.

She posted almost 100 pictures of decrepit-looking hardware from inside an engine-fuel testing tower, the plant’s control room and even its roof.

Russian media quoted a senior space agency official as saying that the breach was a shock. “It showed a complete inability to protect anything whatsoever,” the official told Izvestia.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the security failure was “unacceptable” and warned that “sleepy cats” who failed to maintain security at strategic defense sites will face punishment.

Russia has faced plenty of embarrassments in the past year with its space program, most recently with a Russian communications satellite that crashed last week.

An unmanned cargo spacecraft crashed in August, and a Russian Mars-bound craft got stuck in orbit in November. The space program also lost a $265-million communication satellite.

http://en.rian.ru/ru.../170546115.html

Minister orders Russian space agency security blitz after blogger invasion

Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has been given until January to rectify security at its plants or face the consequences, after a reported penetration of its rocket plant in northern Moscow.

A group of Russian bloggers claimed in a report posted on the Internet that they managed to get inside the Energomash plant in Moscow’s Khimki district, which manufactures liquid-propellant engines for civilian and military rockets.

They were able to wander about and take pictures for five days, and did not see any security officers.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said harsh measures would be taken to enforce security and punish the “sleepy cats” responsible for the plant’s security.

“There will be no freewheeling,” he told Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin, and also gave a warning to the bloggers, who he called “cheeky mice.”

“I don’t advise anybody to penetrate strategic installations anymore,” he said.

The Energomash plant can be accessed through holes in the fence, which it has no money to repair, Energia rocket and space corporation’s Senior Vice President Vladimir Osmolovsky told Izvestia newspaper.

[Evildead666]

LOL, "Hello, where's the Duty Free ?"

[KRSESQ]

Lax security is almost a moot point. Judging from the condition of the facilities, they have nothing to sabotage/steal/vandalize.

I have to admit it's a little hard to believe that this is the main production facility rather than some abandoned site. If it is the main facility then HOLY CRAP!

[Dr Mordrid]

Yessiree - that's where Energomash designs all their engines, and it's is also where the RD-171, RD-191, and the RD-180 engine used in every single US Atlas V launcher are built. Makes you feel all warm & fuzzy inside, don't it?

The RD-171 is used in the Zenit launcher. The RD-191 is to be used in the upcoming Angara family of launchers.

Reuters....

Russian officials rattled by breach at rocket plant

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's deputy prime minister vowed Thursday to punish "sleepy" security officials after bloggers posted dozens of photos of an apparently unguarded strategic military rocket motor factory near Moscow.

Blogger Lana Sator said she and friends met not a soul, much less any security guards, as they roamed around state rocket-maker Energomash's plant, snapping pictures, on five separate night-time excursions in recent months.

She posted almost 100 pictures of decrepit-looking hardware from inside a rusted engine-fuel testing tower, the plant's control room and even its roof at lana-sator.livejournal.com

Russian media cited a senior space agency official, speaking anonymously, who described the breach as a shock of the same scale as German pilot Mathias Rust's brazen Cessna flight under Soviet radar to land on Red Square in 1987.

"It showed a complete inability to protect anything whatsoever," the official told Izvestia. Space agency Roskosmos declined comment on the incident when reached by Reuters.
>

In contrast - this is SpaceX's eat off the floor factory

[cjolley]

They test rocket engines in, or at least next to, a city!?
Wow, that place has "I don't give a shit" written all over it.

[Dr Mordrid]

That's right.

The Energomash site is in the city of Khimki, which is just NW of Moscow and it has >200,000 people. At least SpaceX's test site is 5 miles outside of rural McGregor Tx, and NASA's Stennis test site is in rural Mississippi miles from anywhere.

Those towers are part of the rocket exhaust system. They fire them into horizontal tunnels, then spray thousands of tons of water into the exhaust as it turns vertical into the stacks. This is 90° rotated relative to the usual system that fires engines downward into a flame trench that then turns horizontal.

Of course Russian engines usually have multiple thrust chambers off a single pair of turbo-pumps, so they're noisier to start with which makes noise mitigation a lot tougher.