re proton centaur dennisn ecs comm mot com dennis newkirk writes the centaur is controlled technology state dept will not allow it to be used outside of us sorry in article apr zeus calpoly edu jgreen trumpet calpoly edu james thomas green writes has anyone looked into the possiblity of a proton centaur combo what would be the benefits and problems with such a combo other than the obvious instability in the xssr now i haven t seen any speculation about it but the salyut kb design bureau was planning a new lh lox second stage for the proton which would boost payload to leo from about to kg geostationary goes from kg gals launcher version to kg this scheme was competing with the energia m last year and i haven t heard which won except now i recently read that the central specialized kb was working on the successor to the soyuz booster which must be the energia m so the early results are energia m won but this is a guess nothing is very clear in russia i m sure if salyut kb gets funds from someone they will continue their development the centaur for the altas is about meters dia and the proton is so that s a good fit for their existing upper stage the block d which sets inside a shround just under meters dia i don t know about launch loads etc but since the centaur survives titan launches which are probably worse than the proton those titan srb s probably shake things up pretty good it seems feasible except the centaur is a very fragile thing and may require integration on the pad which is not available now protons are assembled and transported horizontially does anyone know how much stress in the way of a payload a centaur could support while bolted to a proton horizontally and then taken down the rail road track and erected on the pad they would also need lox and lh facilities added to the proton pads unless the new proton second stage is actually built and of course any centaur support systems and facilities no doubt imported from the us at great cost these systems may viloate us law so there are political problems to solve in addition to the instabilities in the cis you mention dennis newkirk dennisn ecs comm mot com motorola land mobile products sector schaumburg il
