5 thoughts on “Russia’s Space Program”

  1. A commenter quibbles that it’s actually (an evil) private contractor which misbehaved:

    @Gazza “the corrupt SOB in question was the owner of a PRIVATE construction subcontractor, not Spetstroi the primary (state-owned) contractor”

    So what? After the Soviet era, the Russian space industry consisted of a fair number of independent companies. Over time, that independence has been curtailed, both by excessive meddling and micromanagement from the top, and by outright nationalization. When the control is so centralized, the responsibility, the blame, lies at the top, regardless of whether some pieces are public or private.

    I personally believe, as pointed out by Anatoly Zak and James Oberg, that aging workforce, declining overall population, lower gas prices all combine to force a lower budget. They would still be better off if they had less of a space program and more of a space industry. Just my two cents.

  2. Russia still has more people than Japan. It is true a large amount of the USSRs space industry was located in Ukraine and the major launch site was in Kazakhstan. Still their economy and population remains large enough to have a decent space program.

    Even with the delays, Vostochny Cosmodrome is open to Soyuz flights, and Angara is now operational. IMO what they need to do is focus on less launchers (e.g. Soyuz, and Angara), they need to drop the other legacy launchers like Proton and Rokot, possibly also reduce the amount of Soyuz and Angara models, and develop the KVTK LOX/LH2 Angara upper stage.

    In the long run (10-20 years) they need to develop a reusable first stage. They certainly have the engine technology to do it even with their existing engines. Their main issue is the avionics but it isn’t like there is a lack of software developers in Russia.

    In short their main issue, as usual, is too having many operational launch vehicle designs which means their industry is stretched way too thin but this is nothing their government doesn’t already know. They basically reduced things to Khrunichev.and Energia years back.

    Still I expect China to surpass the Russians in all space spheres over the next decade. They already best them in amount of launches last year and the trend will continue now that Long March 5 is online. I expect them to have a private launcher over the next decade besides the Long March series and the solid rockets derived from their ICBM. Probably a small launcher. This isn’t as ridiculous as it seems since the Chinese private sector is already quite active at UAVs and there are decent amounts of cash in their private sector.

    1. Russia has only about 20 million more people than Japan, and even that requires belief in official Russian population numbers. Personally, I’m of the opinion those need to be taken with a large portion of salt.

      But Japan, as long as you brought that country up, has the world’s third largest economy. Even with – as I’m willing to concede – a still modestly larger population than Japan, Russia’s economy isn’t anywhere near the Top 10. Russia’s GDP is roughly on a par with those of Spain, which has a population less than a third of what Russia claims its own to be, and of Australia, whose population is less than a sixth that of Russia.

      Russia has much bigger problems than a decaying space sector and no real prospects of improving its situation in any significant way for the foreseeable future. That is simply going to make future Russian space efforts likely to be even less consequential as time goes by.

      Truth to tell, Russia is dying. It’s going to take awhile to completely expire, but the trend line seems both clear and without any real prospect of long-term reversal.

      This year marks the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. By the time of the Bolshevik Bicentennial, Russia’s population seems quite likely to have fallen below even the present population of Spain, perhaps by quite a bit. GDP, absent any significant improvement in average economic efficiency, is likely to have fallen in train to something, in inflation-adjusted terms, approximating those of present-day Sweden or, at best, maybe present-day Argentina.

      The Twilight of the Rus will be a process, not an event. But that process is already well underway and I see nothing whatsoever likely to halt, or even slow, it.

      1. I don’t know about that. It’s not a good idea to underestimate them. It’s also kinda specious to use GDP measured in USD to figure out the size of the Russian economy due to the devalued ruble. If you look at their GDP adjusted by PPP the figures look quite different as it is over twice that of Spain and ahead of France and the UK.
        If they somehow managed to annex Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, they would also get overnight like 70 million more people. I don’t think it will happen under their current leadership. But it would be hardly surprising if it did happen this century. In the eyes of the Russians this is probably analogous to the transitory period in the Russian Revolution where the SSRs were still independent.

        Not that it matters too much, like I said China is a much bigger issue at the moment.

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