Rocket Factory Augsburg’s Static Fire Test Opens Old Questions

The  19th August static fire test by Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) opened up more than just questions about the technical details of the fiery event. The extent to which Ukrainian technology was used and how it got there come to mind.

The August explosion

RFA had a lot of video of the test. This is good, as a lot of the metal involved had melted or vapourised. The data from the videos enabled a rather quick initial assessment by RFA. A problem in the area of the turbopump created an RUD of the turbopump and a kerosene and later an oxygen fire. In a video released on 26th August, RFA COO Dr. Stefan Brieschenk explains that their “Helix motors had been ignited more than 100 times, and an oxygen fire in a turbopump had never occurred before.” The turbopump itself is a development of a proven design, so the fire, which physically consumed parts of the rocket, is all the more surprising. 

 As for the Helix engine, including the turbopump, Dr. Brieschenk stated that the company is sure that the incident “is not related to the design. We’re quite confident that the design is very sound, and we don’t have to make any changes there.” As the first rocket had been essentially an engineering test piece, there are over 100 changes to be made to the second rocket, which has already been built,  including changes to the manifolds. 

Dr. Brieschenk related that the fire protection systems at the launch site had not been designed with this intensity of a fire in mind. This will be remedied. A rebuild of the site components closest to the rocket is in order, but the major infrastructure at the site is still usable.

RFA has announced that their plans for a launch have been pushed back to 2025. The upper stages and fairing for satellites are already at Saxa Vord, waiting for integration.

Old questions resurface

RFA utilises a liquid rocket engine made with afterburning oxidizing generator gas (cycle ORSC), and using RP1+LOX fuel. Such fuel type was new for Europe, as rockets in the area almost all operate on LH2+LOX fuel or on monomethylhydrazine with nitrogen tetroxide, as well as without oxidizing generator gas afterburning technology. RFA is actually the only European startup to choose this approach. 

The choice of fuel, though, comes hand-in-hand with the engine design. RFA has been open about purchasing a turbopump from the Ukrainian rocket engine builder Pivdenmash, and on developing their turbopump from this basis. The turbopump fits into the RD-8xx series engines created by the Pivdenne Design Bureau in the 1990s that were based on Soviet-era RD-36 engines for ICBMs. These engines use  RP1+LOX as a fuel. The route makes sense, overall. RFA chose to adapt their engine from proven technology, thus speeding up development time and lowering costs. 

Just what happened here?

The problem that arises isn’t technical, and there are no videos. The questions relate to how RFA was able to purchase the technology in the first place. An article on a Ukrainian website focused on corruption looked at the purchase, not of the turbopump itself, but of the design documentation for the whole RD-8xx series engine. According to the author, Yuri Romanenko,  the docs went for $300,000. Similar documentation would have also gone to Saudi Arabia as part of a 2014 contract to create a single-chamber rocket engine for the Kingdom, but that contract was valued at $68 million. The author points out that the sum RFA is said to have spent wasn’t enough to keep the employees at the design bureau paid for a month. 

Gaining the design documentation would have been a coup for Rocket Factory Augsburg, and for a company without experience in building rocket motors, a development multiplier. This is also not documentation that you can find easily on the Internet.

Orbital Today asked an unrelated expert in Dnipro, Ukraine, about other possible sources for the papers. We were told that outside of Pivdenne Office, the Russians might have had them, but with their own rocket in the class as the RD-8, it wouldn’t have been an interesting sale. The Saudis, who had paid tens of millions in their deal, would have had docs regarding a similar engine, but would have paid much more than $300,000 for it. 

Not just the designers

The question of export licences for the documentation gets raised as well, as the oversight that should have prevented the sale as-is failed. By selling the documents for a pittance, the design bureau effectively cut Ukraine out of a key part of the burgeoning New Space industry. By designing and building a commercial rocket or even an engine, given their experience in military launch vehicles, we could have been seeing Ukrainian-engined vehicles launching from Saxa Vord. And an engine alone might have made sense – consider the Rolls-Royce Trent series aircraft engines flown in both Boeing and Airbus airframes. Pivdenne Engines for you. Now we’ll never know. 

That Rocket Factory Augsburg did well in its purchase is undoubted. Just how that occurred, it’s something we’re also unlikely to ever know.