MOSCOW. Sept 3 (Interfax) - Russian scientists have started working on new types of rocket engine fuel, Pyotr Levochkin, Deputy General Director at Energomash, said.
"Together with the leading chemical institutes, under the supervision by Alexander Alexeyevich Medvedev, the chief designer of space launch vehicles at TsNIIMASH [Central Research Institute of Machine Building], research has begun on a new fuel," Levochkin said at a conference in Moscow on Monday.
To reduce the cost of space launches, work has begun on creating cost-efficient liquid-fuel engines, he said.
"Research has begun on the creation of a combined liquid-fuel engine and also of a liquid-fuel engine for the 'air start' program being revived. It has now been proved that a one-stage carrier rocket is capable of achieving the first cosmic velocity," Levochkin said.
The methane engine for spacecraft has good prospects, Energomash's general director Igor Arbuzov said in an interview with Interfax in June this year.
"Speaking of the distant future, various studies show there is methane on the moon and on Mars, which means these resources could be used at some point," Arbuzov said.
Russia, the United States, and Europe, including France, have been working on an engine running on liquefied natural gas for a long time, he said.
"This is not accidental. First of all, we realize that the market seeks the simplest and most reliable solutions. Secondly, everyone wants to make engines cheaper," Arbuzov said.
Methane meets these requirements best, given the developed resource base and a power yield exceeding that of kerosene, he said.