The Danish edition asks whether Russia is losing its position as a leading space power. The Soyuz accident is still fresh in my memory. On the other hand, no one expected the Soviet Union to be the first to go into space, but that is exactly what happened. The past in Russia really was brilliant. And now Russia and the United States are striving for space in two different ways. Which is better? Time will tell.
Once everyone considered the Soviet Union the leading space power, but times have changed.
No one expected the Soviet Union to be the first to go into space, but that is exactly what happened. First, on October 1, 1957, he launched the first satellite, Sputnik-1, and then, just a month later, Sputnik-2 with the dog Laika on board.
In the early years of space flights, the USSR was considered virtually invincible in space, and this reputation only strengthened when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in April 1961.
But that was many years ago, and today the question arises whether the time of Russia's greatness in space has not remained forever in the past. There are two signs that point in this direction:
- plans for the future in the space industry are vague and rather inconsistent;
- launches are getting smaller.
In addition, scientific research in space has become very weak. The number of research satellites is very small, and the last time Russia tried to launch a space probe was seven years ago.
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The numbers speak for themselves
Today there are six space powers in the world: three large - the USA, China and Russia, and three small - Japan, India and Europe as an economic and political association.
It will be very revealing to compare how the number of space launches by each of these powers has changed over the past five years.
The trend can be seen in the table. Please note that launches made before October 1 are included for 2018.
First of all, the table shows that since 2014, the number of launches conducted by Russia has been steadily decreasing. From the first place, which it occupied in 2014, the country dropped to third, after the United States and China.
At the same time, both Chinese and American astronautics have become more active.
Russia earned a lot
But the number of launches is only part of the story. It is equally important what exactly is launched.
In one respect, Russia behaves like other space powers: most of the launches are carried out to support the satellite systems that society needs. These can be military satellites for espionage and defense, or communication satellites, as well as those with the help of which they observe the Earth and the weather on it.
The second important part of Russian cosmonautics is flights to the ISS space station on the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
Here Russia plays a very important role today, since so far it is the only space power that can deliver astronauts to the ISS.
Today, Soyuz is an important source of income for the Russian cosmonautics, as Roscosmos is getting pretty good pay for bringing astronauts from the USA, Europe, Canada and Japan to the ISS. Each launch costs over $ 80 million, so that's a significant profit.
But already now competition has a noticeable effect on prices
Russia also makes money by launching satellites for other countries. Today, both rockets and satellites are international goods, and there is competition in this area both in terms of price and quality.
But the Russian space industry is finding it difficult to compete with other countries.
In 2013, half of all commercial satellites in the world were launched using Russian rockets. In 2018, this figure fell to about 10%. This was partly due to competition, and partly due to technical problems with the Proton rockets, which will soon no longer be produced.
Price competition has intensified especially since SpaceX refined and reused its Falcon 9 rockets.
Russia is now pondering whether it should withdraw from this market in order to concentrate instead on building satellites. The question is whether things will go better there.
What about science?
What the Russian cosmonautics lacks in particular are scientific satellites and space probes. There are several satellites like Spectra, which explore space, or Lomonosov, which studies the upper atmosphere, but there are quite a few of them.
And compared to how the Soviet Union's space program began, this is practically nothing.
The situation in Russia is even worse with space probes, which have gradually become an important part of almost all space programs:
- NASA sent one probe all the way to Pluto, and the probe "Juno" explores Jupiter;
- ESA (European Space Agency) is going to launch a probe to Mercury;
- Japan is exploring the asteroid Ryugu, and it has a satellite orbiting Venus;
“Even India has a probe in Mars orbit.
Russian space program is in crisis
Another sign that the Russian space program is in crisis is how incredibly slowly the new Vostochny cosmodrome is being built in Eastern Siberia.
The construction, which began in 2011, has been repeatedly overshadowed by large-scale corruption scandals. Big economic problems also complicate it.
Another problem is that construction is taking place in a remote corner of this large country, and few people want to go “to the outskirts”.
Foggy plans from the times of the USSR
At the dawn of space navigation, the Soviet Union was very active in launching space probes. It was he who made the very first attempt to send a probe to Mars back in 1960, albeit unfortunately unsuccessful.
But it was the start of a long series of space probe launches to Venus and Mars.
Under the Venus exploration program, the first spacecraft landed very successfully on the surface of a planet heated to almost 500 degrees and sent pictures from there.
But to Mars, despite us many launches, the Soviet Union, and later Russia, it was never possible to successfully send a space probe.
The last space probe that Russia launched in 2011 was Phobos-Grunt, which was supposed to explore the small moon of Mars, Phobos. However, the probe did not go beyond the earth's orbit, having burned over the Pacific Ocean. A possible cause is insufficient quality control.
Since then, Russia has not tried to launch space probes. There are some rather vague plans for launching new probes to Venus, possibly after 2025, but the study of the outer solar system, it seems, was never even in the plans.
From a brilliant past to a less brilliant present
The natural question is what happened to the once such a large-scale and ambitious space program. Of course, partly everything is explained by the economy, but it is also important to take into account Russian culture.
The space age began as part of the Cold War and was therefore dominated by the military. In addition, space exploration fit well with an ideology that implied that communism was the future, and space was part of that future.
And they had the "father of spacefaring" Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), who laid the theoretical foundations for travel in space, and also gave rise to the idea that the future of mankind is in space.
The Soviet Union really wanted to show that this huge power is more than just a backward agricultural country, and the space race was very important here.
Compared to the United States, the Soviet Union did not have many economic and industrial resources, but it focused on developing the space industry - and as a result was a leader in space for several years.
The victories in space were a great propaganda success for the USSR. However, the everyday life of citizens did not get better, and in the long term the USSR could not compete with the better economy and more developed industry of the West.
The people don't really need a new space age
But now, under Putin, society has changed. Now in Russia they are looking more and more at the former greatness. The era of space successes has become almost something of a historical monument with such idols as cosmonaut Gagarin and chief designer Sergei Korolev.
Of course, many would like to return that time, but in everyday life people have many problems, and the meager economy puts a lot of pressure on them, so now society is unlikely to insist on building a new space age.
Neither the people nor the government are simply not considering the prospects for future development in space, for the realization of which so many resources need to be donated. Americans actually have the same problem. Perhaps, in search of space plans, it makes sense to go to China.
Two paths to space
There are two main, seemingly cultural differences, in the way Russia and the United States have approached space exploration. The Americans cannot introduce new technologies quickly enough, while the Russians go forward in small steps and constantly use existing technology.
This difference was very clearly manifested immediately after the "race" to the moon. The Americans spent huge sums of money on both the Apollo and the Saturn rocket, and this technique could be used to build a space station, a base on the moon, or even travel to Mars.
And in a typical American way, they were not considered good enough. They finished Saturn and Apollo and immediately set to work on the space shuttles. For eight years, from 1973 to 1981, the Americans could not send astronauts into space.
Finally, the space shuttles began to fly, but already in 1986 the Challenger had a disaster, and it was a sudden awakening to reality.
It was now clear that it was dangerous to fly in these space shuttles, and preparing them for a new flight did not take a couple of weeks, but many months. And they were not cheap, so in 2011 the last shuttle was launched.
Today the Americans are back to rockets and spacecraft based on Apollo technology.
The Russians used only the rockets they already had to launch small space stations. After all, the Soyuz spacecraft with the large Proton rocket could cope with this task, so why change something that already works well? Thus, they managed to avoid the creation of new large rockets during the gradual expansion with several modules of their last large space station, Mir.
There was only one exception when the Russian Buran spacecraft and Energia rocket were developed. However, only one unmanned test launch was made with them, after which this expensive project was abandoned, because in addition to all other problems, the USSR was then already on the verge of collapse.
Pros and cons
Each approach has its own pros and cons. For the Americans, the shuttles proved to be a costly affair, although their 135 launches made it possible to solve a long series of important tasks.
Without the shuttles, it would be very difficult to build the ISS. However, it is worth noting that if a couple of old Saturn rockets were stored somewhere, the ISS could be built much faster.
The rejection of shuttles led to the need to create new cheap missiles.
Private traders undertake the task
This task was taken up by Space-X, which developed the world's first partially reusable Falcon rocket.
Another company, Blue Origin, has created a new rocket engine powered by liquid methane and oxygen, which will be used in two next-generation rockets, Vulcan and New Glenn, also partially reusable.
So American missile technology has made some pretty big steps forward, but they also have the means to experiment with new technology.
Russian technology may be too outdated
Russian rocket technologies are not particularly competitive now - for example, the Soyuz rocket was designed more than 60 years ago.
For many years, work has been carried out on new missiles of the Angara type, but they are not reusable, which means it is difficult for them to compete in price with the Falcon.
Since all missile construction in Russia is controlled by the state, it is also not helped by innovations from private firms.
Add to this the impact of falling oil prices and the sanctions that Russia has been subjected to since the annexation of Crimea. There is certainly little hope that a significant amount will be allocated to develop the next generation of missiles that are so badly needed.
International Space Station.
In 2014, Russians said that the 10-year budget for the development of astronautics would amount to $ 70 billion. Today that amount has fallen below $ 20 billion. With such a modest budget, you can only keep astronautics alive.
Russian cosmonautics will certainly survive, but much indicates that Russia's time as a space superpower is behind us.
ISS will be decommissioned - and then what?
There are decisions ahead of us that cannot be postponed. For example, what will we do if the International Space Station is decommissioned within the next ten years?
The biggest question is whether Russia will continue to work alone, or will it seek to participate in a new joint international project. If Russia chooses the latter, then China may become a better partner for it than Western countries.
Putin and space
It's hard to say exactly what Putin thinks about space - by and large he appears to be positive. But now the focus is on urgent problems, not big plans for the future. In this spirit, on August 8, Putin held a meeting attended by the head of the Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin.
According to the official minutes, the meeting had two main themes:
- use of the GLONASS navigation system;
- improved monitoring of the Earth.
GLONASS is the Russian response to America's GPS, and Rogozin is now working to make the use of GLONASS a legal requirement for all aircraft flying within Russian borders. Rogozin also promised to increase the number of Earth monitoring satellites from the current 10 to 23 within a few years.
To demonstrate what good pictures Russian satellites can take, he used, among others, pictures of the new Crimean Bridge. After all, Russia needs to keep an eye on a vast territory: Rogozin, for example, mentioned such tasks as detecting illegal logging, as well as problems with the environment.
All this was approved by Putin, allocating money for the work: here the procedure is somewhat simpler than the one that NASA (or ESA) has to go through.
Helle and Henrik Stub are PhDs in Astronomy, Physics and Mathematics from the University of Copenhagen.