/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15164783
The Soyuz-5 actually completed most of it's engine test campaign last year, so the only big hold up now is deciding where the dumb thing is supposed to launch from.

It's compatible with any of the old Zenit pads, but Pad 35/1 at Plesetsk got converted to launch the Angara, 45/1 at Baikonur has been derelict since the last Zenit-3M launch a decade ago, and 45/2 got sent straight to God in a ABL style launch failure back in 1990. Russia and Kazakhstan have been playing chicken over paying for the refurbishment of one or both of those, and neither looks willing to budge.

The last possibility would be launching from Sea Launch's old Ocean Odyssey platform. That reverted to full Russian ownership in 2016, but when that happened Boeing stripped it of all of its western-owned computer systems. Russia just can't buy computers these days, so it's hard to say if fixing it would be any cheaper than refurbishing one of the Baikonur pads.

I'd still like to see the Soyuz-5 launch the Orel from latitude zero somewhere. It'd be the most inspiring thing the Russia space program has managed since the Buran test flight.