This is a week and a half old, but I didn’t link it at the time. Eric Berger documents its decline.
4 thoughts on “The Russian Space Program”
Comments are closed.
This is a week and a half old, but I didn’t link it at the time. Eric Berger documents its decline.
Comments are closed.
I don’t see them recovering from some of the self-inflicted hits. They were already struggling when Russian invaded Ukraine, which cost them the bulk of the commercial launch customers, compounding their lost revenue due to competition from Falcon 9. And they’ve lost their exclusive lock on ISS manned delivery flights.
That leaves Russian military launches, but Russia’s military budget is going to have to focus on rebuilding the land army, and manned PR jaunts are going to be near the bottom of the priority list.
But Russia will steamroll Europe and conquer the world.
It’s not money, it’s people. Especially in the last two years (wonder why?), anybody that can leave Russia has left. Bet driving an Uber in New Jersey beats hell out of being a rocket scientist in Russia.
Other than jaunts to the ISS I wouldn’t say the USA/NASA is doing a whole lot better. With the sole exception of China (their space program being bankrolled thanks to heavy investment in their economy from the West) Old Space in general is not looking so great. The next century belongs to the privateers…