Russia's Space Program Is In Big Trouble - Slashdot
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Russia's Space Program Is In Big Trouble
Russia's Space Program Is In Big Trouble (wired.com) 67
Posted by msmash
on Tuesday March 21, 2023 @05:20PM from the closer-look dept.Crippled by war and sanctions, Russia now faces evidence that its already-struggling space program is falling apart. In the past three months alone, Roscosmos has scrambled to resolve two alarming incidents. First, one of its formerly dependable Soyuz spacecraft sprang a coolant leak. Then the same thing happened on one of its Progress cargo ships. The civil space program's Soviet predecessor launched the first person into orbit, but with the International Space Station (ISS) nearing the end of its life, Russia's space agency is staring into the abyss. "What we're seeing is the continuing demise of the Russian civil space program," says Bruce McClintock, a former defense attache at the US embassy in Moscow and current head of the Space Enterprise Initiative of the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. Around 10 years ago, Russian leaders chose to prioritize the country's military space program -- which focuses on satellite and anti-satellite technologies -- over its civilian one, McClintock says, and it shows. Russia's space fleet is largely designed to be expendable. The history of its series of Soyuz rockets and crew capsules (they both have the same name) dates back to the Soviet era, though they've gone through upgrades since. Its Progress cargo vessels also launch atop Soyuz rockets. The cargo ships, crewed ships, and rockets are all single-use spacecraft. Anatoly Zak, creator and publisher of the independent publication RussianSpaceWeb, estimates that Roscosmos launches about two Soyuz vehicles per year, takes about 1.5 to 2 years to build each one, and doesn't keep a substantial standing fleet. While Roscosmos officials did not respond to interview requests, the agency has been public about its recent technical issues.
Plus this, which failed to make headlines here: "For crewed launches, Russia has long depended on its Baikonur spaceport in neighboring Kazakhstan. But the nation has charged costly annual fees, and in March Kazakhstan seized Russian spaceport assets, reportedly due to Roscosmos' debt."
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by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21, 2023 @05:24PM (#63388747)
blyat
If they bail, there's always the Peoples Republic of China to take up the slack.
by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2023 @05:36PM (#63388759)
they could always approach SpaceX and ask for them to send a few extra engines there way, it's not like they laughed in Musk's face when he asked the same of them
Oh, right
Or maybe they could reach out to Ukraine for expertise since they used to house one of the Soviet Union's better space engineering groups
Oh, yeah that's not going to work
Or, maybe they could dig deep and get more rocket scientists entering their educational system, because it's not like people are fleeing russia in fear of becoming canon fodder
Hmmm, that's not gonna work either
I suppose the only chance is for sanity to take over and an entire country stop playing the stupid game that Putin has set them on
LOL, okay too bad, USSR used to have top notch rocket scientists, shame to see it go this way
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> USSR used to have top notch rocket scientists, shame to see it go this way
Russian leaders chose to prioritize the country's military space program -- which focuses on satellite and anti-satellite technologies -- over its civilian one
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Putting the LOL's aside for a moment it IS a shame, considering they were the first country in 1961 to send it, when it comes to space exploration.
An entire planet, often forgets that fact.
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The planet hasn't forgotten it, but 60-plus years down the line, it is, without continued follow-on, irrelevant.
As the saying goes, "yeah, but what have you done for me lately?"
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> "yeah, but what have you done for me lately?"
What have the Romans ever done for us? *
* apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health
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Romanes eunt domus!
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But it has contused, conflated, Russia with the USSR. Russia may have been politically dominant but that is something quite different from being the source of the engineering and scientific talent. One of the reasons Russia is failing is that vital aerospace industry and talent is in Ukraine and former satellite states.
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The reason the USSR got the first satellite in orbit before the US was the Eisenhower made a deliberate choice to let them, for political reasons. The US could have beaten them to it, but only using a military rocket, which would have been a political coup for them. Plus, he wanted them to establish that things in orbit over a foreign country didn't violate that country's airspace - so they couldn't complain when our satellites overflew them.
(Sadly, once they did manage an orbital launch using Big Dumb Rock
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The technological issues surrounding reusable rockets is a tough problem to reliably solve even now, and if the US was going to keep to Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, it was going to be done was with big ass rockets. Say what you will about the Saturn vehicles, they were wonders of technology for the 1960s and did indeed get the job done.
Sometimes perfection is the enemy of the good.
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They certainly were. But they weren't as useful as a shuttle would have been on any level other the political grandstanding. (Which we should not ignore the value of, in the late 60s.)
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FYI, the shuttle was supposed to be flying missions weekly to produce equivalent mass to orbit as sticking with SaturnV launchers
Now, 50 years later, we are back to launching big rockets, the news ones are smart enough to land
Nobody is even considering creating anything like the shuttle for moving material to orbit, that certainly does not speak well for the concept
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Oh, I don't know. I think it's more that an entire planet often has better things to think about than that bit of irrelevant trivia.
Who's got the world record for most mushrooms stuffed up their nose? Doesn't matter. What's the name of the person who invented the wheel? Doesn't matter.
Sure, we revere ground-breakers for a while but eventually the who stops mattering. That people who are now dead happened to have lived in the same general geographic region did a thing first is... trivia. -
Yeah and the people most responsible for all that innovation were in what country again?
(USSR is not a country...)-
It was when there was a pioneering space program.
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What country? Not Russia. The USSR was a conglomerate of many countries, many satellite states. Russia may have dominated politically but scientific and engineering talent came from many countries other than Russia. Similar story for that war winning Red Army, troops coming from many countries other than Russia.
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So which country is it that put a man on the moon? The United States is a conglomeration of many states.
The USSR was a country. You're being silly, presumably for some weird political reason known only to yourself.
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Actually my point is that trying to portray Russia as the first to launch an artificial satellite, the first to put a man into space, is like trying to portray Florida as the first to put a man on the moon.
You do realize that those "other countries" that I am referring to in the USSR context are Ukraine, Georgia, etc. For example lets look at some of the heads of the various design bureaus of the Soviet space program:
Chief Designer of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, Ukranian.
Head of Central D
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Tell that to the multiple mult-billion dollar a year industries that rely on it, like the entire telecommunications industry, and the entire television industry.
There are many people who feel money would be better spent on robotic missions, it is true. Interestingly, not all of the people who have actually worked on purely robotic missions agree.
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If Russia basically cedes its space program to competing nations, I think it's likely it will never really reinstated under Russia's own auspices. Whatever the end result of the war in Ukraine, Russia's economy is going to be in shambles, and the flight of human capital is going to leave key industries crippled for years. What we are seeing in Russia isn't the new dawn of the Bear, we're seeing the death throes of an empire whose capacity for force projection has diminished so much in the last 40 years that it can't even successfully invade a country a fraction of its size and population that sits on its own border. If anything, the war is accelerating the decline. This more resembles the Russian Empire in the last few decades of its existence; overextended with perpetual economic and political woes, and then a crazed and delusional ruler decided to jump into an alliance that pulled a broken country into a war of attrition that saw an entire generation wiped out, while the engine of state ground itself to death.
In 1917 at least a coherent political entity existed that could seize power and eventually impose order. But Putin has been much more successful than the Romanovs at eliminating potential competitors, so the irony is that there is no government-to-be in exile that can swoop in when the Russian people finally rise up. Russia has become a trap for its people, and now Putin will mortgage the country to Beijing just to create the illusion that Russia is still in the game. If Russians think they're in trouble now, just wait until they wake up and realize China owns them.
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Russia's space program is not "organic", neither "complete". It inherited a fraction of the former USSR's space program, which was a multi-state effort, not a purely Russian effort. Georgia, Ukraine, etc all contributed vital scientific, engineering and manufacturing talent. The only hope Russia had at a space program was to maintain good friendly relations with its neighbors so the old multi-state effort could continue. Obviously it chose otherwise.
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You need to distinguish wants and needs. A space program is a want, not a need. In all honestly, every dollar sent launching astronauts into space is a dollar wasted. It could be better spent arming and feeding your populace.
Except Putin doesn't care about the populace. If he did, he wouldn't be engaged in a proxy war with the West via Ukraine.
Thus spending vanity money on space would fit in with wasting money at the expense of its citizens. However, the problem is, space isn't sexy anymore
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they could always approach SpaceX and ask for them to send a few extra engines there way, it's not like they laughed in Musk's face when he asked the same of them
Considering Musk is peddling Russian lies about Ukraine [rollingstone.com], even praising what the Russian state propaganda outlets are saying [businessinsider.com], this may work.
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fwiw, Musk was probably just trying to stay off of Putin's "polonium tea party" list
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Or they could stop sinking all their money into an endless war. *sigh* Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.
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The USSR was not just Russians, many of those scientists and engineers were Ukrainian, Georgian, etc. People of satellite states.
Similar story for the Red Army, neither was it just Russians, many soldiers were from satellite states.
Today we are seeing Russia when not propped up by their "neighbors".
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