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TOP 4 scientific technologies lost in the USA
TOP 4 scientific technologies lost in the USA

Video: TOP 4 scientific technologies lost in the USA

Video: TOP 4 scientific technologies lost in the USA
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Many creators associate the United States with the advanced country of high-tech, information technology, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and many others. Of course, this is partly the case. But as they say, there are spots on the sun. and for the United States … Today I will tell you about four technologies that the United States has lost. And perhaps forever.

Effectively enrich uranium

For a long time, the United States decided not to enrich uranium on its own. They started to do this, but used an expensive gas-diffusion technology, which consumes several times more electricity than centrifuge enrichment technology. Realizing that it was too expensive, they decided to buy enriched uranium from the USSR, which was much cheaper.

Due to the lack of desire of the authorities to do everything on their own, the United States has lost the ability to enrich its own uranium. Money for the construction of the necessary technological processes, factories, centrifuges, etc. there is, but there are no personnel who could work there.

After the end of the Cold War, more than 600 tons of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium remained in the USSR. The USSR diluted it and entered into a contract with the United States for the supply of this uranium for use in American nuclear power plants. In 1994, the USSR and the United States signed a contract for the supply of this uranium to the United States, but in 2013 Russia sent the last 60 tons of uranium for American nuclear power plants and now the Americans have nowhere to take it.

The United States did not destroy its own gaseous diffusion facilities, but mothballed, but time is playing against them, even though they are mothballed. Alternative centrifugal facilities URENCO are located on the territory of the United States (they cover approximately 50-60% of the needs of the US nuclear energy sector, the rest is covered by European contracts and Techsnabexport).

It is too expensive to create on its own, and now the Russian "Rosatom" is engaged in the purchase of depleted uranium from the United States, its processing and sale back to the United States. The Americans themselves still do not have modern uranium enrichment technologies and remain dependent on Russian companies.

At the same time, they have repeatedly tried to restore these technologies, there were whole programs and projects. But all is useless. For example, the "American centrifuge" project has not gone anywhere, it has been transferred to the national laboratory (ORNL) and is funded quite well for pilot production (the HiLo Uranium project). But so far it is far from industrial exploitation. Whether the United States will be able to create competitive technologies on its own is a question of course.

Icebreaker construction

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In early 2018, the Coast Guard and the US Navy announced plans to invest up to $ 9.8 billion to build three heavy polar icebreakers capable of operating in the Arctic and Antarctic. The commissioning of the first of them is scheduled for 2023.

This announcement was an important and long-awaited event for the US military. The newest American icebreaker, Polar Sea, was launched in 1978 and decommissioned in 2010. Another similar ship, Polar Star, which entered service in 1976, is currently the only one in operation. heavy icebreaker of the United States. The US Coast Guard has two other smaller ice-class polar vessels. A stark contrast to Russia (41 icebreakers).

In a new report released this month, the US Audit Office states that the US Coast Guard does not have a clear business case for either the cost or the timetable for its ambitious heavy icebreaker acquisition program.

The GAO is the US oversight body mandated by Congress to audit how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. In the case of the icebreaker program, the agency conducted a comprehensive analysis, ranging from the costs of climate change in Alaska to assessing the economic viability of drilling in the Arctic National Reserve.

The investigation established that the Coast Guard approved the icebreaker program without a preliminary analysis of the project, without a technological assessment, without an assessment of technical risks.

The estimated cost and schedule of the project have been heavily criticized. The pledged price of the icebreaker - $ 9.8 billion - was deemed understated and did not take into account all the funding needs of the program. The planned date of the ship's commissioning is not based on realistic estimates of the construction timeframe, but on the timeline for the decommissioning of the last available icebreaker, Polar Star.

As a result of the investigation, the GAO sent six recommendations to the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security and the Navy, according to which it is necessary to "conduct a technological assessment of the project, revise the budget and develop a schedule for implementation in accordance with existing methods and practices, and then revise the technical specifications of the program." The Department of Homeland Security agreed with all six recommendations.

Well, speaking in Russian, the United States has not built icebreakers for over 40 years. Imagine, they haven't built it for more than 40 years. Everyone who participated in the creation of the last icebreaker is already retired or not. The factories have long been redesigned and have lost the required competencies (including because of people). And such an industry is not being built in a year or two.

Creation of fantastic engines for the SR-71 aircraft

The Lockheed SR-71 is a strategic supersonic reconnaissance aircraft of the United States Air Force. It was unofficially named "Blackbird" from English. "Blackbird".

The peculiarities of this aircraft are high speed and flight altitude, due to which the main evasion maneuver from missiles was acceleration and climb.

In 1976, the SR-71 "Blackbird" set an absolute speed record among manned aircraft with turbojet engines - 3529.56 km / h. In total, the FAI has registered 4 valid records, all of which relate to airspeed. And one altitude record in horizontal flight - 25 929 meters. If anyone is interested, the modern F-35 has a maximum speed of 1930 km / h. That is, 1976 - 3500 km / h and 1930 km / h in 2019.

This aircraft was just a headache for our air defense. MiG 25 and 31 were slower than him. Fortunately, he had no weapons.

The engines were the heart of this aircraft. J58 Variable cycle turbojet. Pratt & Whitney is a hybrid of a turbojet engine and a ramjet engine.

I will not describe the details of this engine, but it had flaws and was too moody. But let me remind you that it began operating in 1966.

It was decommissioned in 1998. Here, as with uranium enrichment, most likely. They considered that there were no opponents left, and why such complex, expensive engines.

Production of engines for heavy missiles, an analogue of the Russian RD-180

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Closed-cycle liquid-propellant rocket engine with afterburning of oxidizing generator gas after the turbine, equipped with two combustion chambers and two nozzles. Developed in the mid-1990s, on the basis of the world's most powerful Soviet engine RD-170, produced by NPO Energomash im. Academician V. P. Glushko.

In 1996, the RD-180 project won the competition for the development and sale of engines for the US launch vehicles Atlas-3 and Atlas-5.

In 1996, General Dynamics acquired the right to use the engine. It was first used by it on May 24, 2000 as the first stage of the Atlas IIA-R LV - a modification of the Atlas IIA rocket; later the rocket was renamed "Atlas III". After the first launch, additional work was carried out to certify the engine in order to use it on the Common Booster Core of the main stage of the Atlas-5 rocket. The price of one engine as of 2010 was $ 9 million. Thus, since the beginning of 1999, the RD-180 engine has been used in the Atlas-3 and Atlas-5 launch vehicles. By 01.02.2008, 6 launches of the Atlas-3 LV and 12 launches of the Atlas-5 LV were performed, in all of them the RD-180 engine worked flawlessly.

Since the goal of the engine program is to launch commercial satellites and satellites of the US government, Pratt & Whitney is considered to be the joint manufacturer of the RD-180 in order to comply with US legislation. At the same time, despite the numerous rumors spread in the Internet media and blogs, the patent rights for the engine design belong to NPO Energomash; at the end of 2018, all engine production is concentrated in Russia. The sale was carried out by a joint venture between Pratt & Whitney and NPO Energomash, called JV RD-Amros. The acquisition and installation was carried out by the United Launch Alliance (ULA).

Surprisingly, in 2008-2009, Energomash's net loss from deliveries of RD-180 engines to the United States amounted to 880 million rubles, or almost 68% of all the company's losses. The Russian Audit Chamber found that the engines were sold for only half the cost of their production costs. According to the executive director of NPO Energomash, Vladimir Solntsev, until 2010, rocket engines were sold at a loss, since the cost of production grew at a higher rate than the price at which it was possible to establish sales. In 2010-2011, a number of measures were taken, and the situation was corrected.

In connection with the deterioration of Russian-American relations (since 2014), politicians of both countries put forward proposals to stop the supply of the engine used by the Americans. In particular, the ban on the purchase of the engine was introduced by an amendment by John McCain. The initiative to ban the use of the engine for US military launches was made by the deputy. Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitry Rogozin.

As a replacement for the RD-180 in the United States, new engines were considered, for the development of which the Pentagon regularly allocates money.

However, when the US engine is ready for use, no one can answer.

Also in 2014, a contract was signed with a private company Blue Origin to create an analogue of the Russian RD-180; their new BE-4 engine (using methane as fuel) was introduced in early 2017; successful progress is reported.

Its competitor, Aerojet Rocketdyne, carried out the first firing tests of the prechamber of its AR1 engine in May 2017.

In August 2018, NASA Director Jim Bridenstein said in an interview with C-Span that American developers are working to create an alternative to the Russian RD-180 engines.

In January 2018, the Financial Times, citing representatives of NPO Energomash, announced that the Chinese company Great Wall Industry was negotiating the purchase of rocket engine technology; the publication noted that the RD-180 develops three times more thrust than the most powerful Chinese engine YF-100, which is based on the earlier RD-120 engine.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk is embarrassed that Boeing / Lockheed are forced to use a Russian engine on the Atlas rocket, but the engine itself is great.

In 2018, 11 RD-180 engines were delivered to American customers.

On February 11, 2019, Elon Musk announced on his Twitter about a successful test of the Raptor engine, designed by his company SpaceX. On tests, the engine showed a pressure of 268.9 bar, which exceeds the previous record of the Russian RD-180.

On February 12, 2019, the chief designer of NPO Energomash, Pyotr Lyovochkin, noted that the RD-180 engine is certified with a 10% margin, which means that the pressure in its combustion chamber can be higher than 280 atmospheres. The Raptor operates on a gas-to-gas basis. For such engines, this level of pressure in the combustion chamber is not something out of the ordinary.

To understand the issue, all four listed technologies are high-tech. That is, real high-tech. Real technologies.

They cannot be taken and created. We need research institutes, enterprises, laboratories, cooperation between hundreds of enterprises, and most importantly, we need people, thousands of people with the necessary, rare specializations.

That is, the fact.that the United States has been unable to create products with these technologies for many years, says that they have lost entire high-tech industries.

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