China interested in Russian competencies in building rocket engines - Roscosmos CEO

MOSCOW. April 26 (Interfax) - China is interested in Russian competencies in building rocket engines and wants to know how they are made so they can duplicate them, Roscosmos CEO Yury Borisov said.

"They [China] are interested in our competencies on engines, they are eager to get them and find out how they are made so as to duplicate them," Borisov said at the Knowledge.First Enlightenment Marathon.

Roscosmos First Deputy CEO Andrei Yelchaninov said in an interview with Interfax on April 10 that Russia was discussing deliveries of RD-191 rocket engines with India and expected to sign a relevant contract soon.

Former Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin said on March 3, 2022 that, in response to American sanctions, Russia was suspending deliveries of rocket engines to the U.S. and would halt the maintenance of RD-180 engines that had previously been shipped there. Rogozin estimated the damage the U.S. would incur over Russia's decision to halt supplies of rocket engines at about $4 billion.

Maxim Ovchinnikov, Roscosmos deputy CEO for economy and corporate management, said previously in an interview with Interfax that deliveries of said rocket engines to the U.S. yielded about 10 billion to 12 billion rubles a year to their manufacturer Energomash, or about one-third of all of its revenues.

The U.S. Congress has repeatedly urged the U.S. Air Force to stop using Russian rocket engines in the past few years. However, Congress members admitted that the U.S. was unlikely to be able to replace them at least until 2024, particularly because of high costs of a nascent U.S. analogue.