Username Protected wrote:
That's what shocks me. The calculation to determine how much fuel they need is simple, at least in rocketry terms. They should have known before launching if they had enough gas to get the ∆V they needed to make it to orbit.
Russian flagship post-Soviet rocket Angara underperforms projections too, at least in the A5 variant. They only knocked out 2 launches of it and they're already working on a radical enhancement with Hydrogen fueled upper stage, because the main customer has payloads designed to the advertized mass. The developers are far from beginners either. Their company, Khrunichev Center, now part of Roskosmos nee ORK, was building rockets since 1950s.
