mo4ch:>‘Shame on Boeing’: Elon Musk hails Russian-made rocket engine’s design as ‘brilliant’ | Mo4ch News
SpaceX founder Elon Musk praised the Russian-built RD-180 rocket engine for looking awesome but said his bitter rivals Lockheed and Boeing ought to be ashamed of using it during their launches.The eccentric tech billionaire said a few nice words about the RD-180 on Twitter, while mocking his competitors at the same time. “It’s embarrassing that Boeing and Lockheed need to use a Russian engine on Atlas,” the rocket-maker wrote on Saturday “but that engine design is brilliant.”The RD-180 was developed by NPO Energomash in the 1990s, based on an older Soviet model, RD-170. Since the early-2000s, the Colorado-based United Launch Alliance (ULA), jointly run by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has been using the engine to power the first stages of its Atlas carrier rockets, including Atlas V.Also on rt.comNew Roscosmos chief says Russia mulls reusable rockets, slams Elon Musk for ‘killing competitors’The design Musk likes so much is not its only great feature. The ULA website calls RD-180 “a pow…