Will Elon put a Dagger into Roscosmos?

[Phil1111 1,192]

With Spacex bringing private space launches into a Russian dominated area. With NASA outspending Russia $22.5 billion to $1.7 billion and US rides on Russian rockets ending in two years. Is Russian space expertise headed for retirement? Of course there is also  Boeing will refly its passenger spacecraft for NASA without crew

A reckoning for Russia's space program

Will the SpaceX launch fire up US-Russian space travel competition?

Russia's status as a space power will end with the start of NASA's commercial crew

[Guest]

With this long-awaited success, Elon Musk has singlehandedly put a stake in the heart of the Russian space program. Russian expertise in many fields started going away when the USSR imploded and much of the talent headed West to where the money was. This was accompanied by a huge brain-drain in Russia as well as a declining birth rate and GDP. Further embarrassment has come from Chinese technology theft resulting in versions of Russian products which are superior to the originals.

And now the expensive misadventures in Ukraine and Syria and all the sanctions which have come along with them, coupled with the bottom dropping out of the oil market, are crushing Russian technology. There's a current news story that GLONASS is all but kaput because most of the satellites have crapped out (attrition of NAVSATs is expected and a fact of life) and the Russians can't afford to replace them or even import the parts needed to build replacements, and they can't seem to make them domestically. They appear to be on the verge of cutting their losses with GLONASS. In short, the Russian space program is f***ed. They can't even maintain what they've got now, let alone compete with a radical new technology that has upended the commercial space market. They spent billions on their new launch facility (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Cosmodrome) and it'll rust, unless they can come up with a better way to fly rockets than SpaceX does, which is doubtful, even though they're making a Dragon clone as we speak (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orel_(spacecraft))

The Russians do build 'em tough though, I'll  give them that.

Edited June 1, 2020 by Guest

[wmw999 2,600]

I'll bet they'll still have a space program; ours didn't die, and we seem to have recovered from the "shame" of using Russian rockets to launch American missions into space. We could all do with a little more cooperation on large-scale technical programs. Not complete integration, but some awareness of and readiness for serendipity.

Wendy P.

[kallend 2,174]

You forget that Putin owns the White House.

[billvon 3,131]

1 hour ago, wmw999 said:

I'll bet they'll still have a space program . .  .

Agreed.  I think the one program that will have a "stake put in its heart" is Boeing's commercial crew program.  Even though they got almost twice the funding for their crew launch contract they still haven't launched a crew, and their one test flight had some serious flaws.  (And the more they look into it the more problems they are finding; shades of the 737 MAX program.)  And SpaceX has already launched a crew - and recovered the booster for use next time.

Even the ULA, the organization that Boeing is part of, is going to fall on hard times.  They simply aren't going to be able to compete on cost.  Even their yet-unflown Vulcan is not recoverable, and can get only half the payload to GTO than the Falcon Heavy can.  And the Falcon Heavy returns 27 of the 28 engines on the vehicle to be used again and again.

Russia, on the other hand, will absolutely want to launch payloads that they don't want us to be able to see - and they are going to want to send their own astronauts to the ISS on their own vehicles.  So overall, SpaceX is going to be far bigger threat to US companies than Russian ones.

[Guest]

Bill, total agreement. I didn't mention ULA because the topic was the Russians, but I have before (not here). You're right - I used needlessly dramatic phrasing (stake in heart, etc). ULA has to see that their days of gouging the taxpayer are over. The Russian program will limp along (such things are a huge prestige item if nothing else), but it would be great if there were more cooperation in space ventures to distribute the costs. India's now got the 3rd largest economy after the US and China so given the success of their domestic space projects so far it would not surprise me to see them getting more involved in cooperation in space. However, that means shouldering some of the ISS costs, which I doubt they'll want to do. India wasn't in a financial position to pony up back when the ISS was being planned, but maybe things have changed. They're welcome - anything to offset some of the expense.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Guest

[Guest]

12 hours ago, wmw999 said:

I'll bet they'll still have a space program; ours didn't die, and we seem to have recovered from the "shame" of using Russian rockets to launch American missions into space. We could all do with a little more cooperation on large-scale technical programs. Not complete integration, but some awareness of and readiness for serendipity.

Wendy P.

Agreed.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, kallend said:

You forget that Putin owns the White House.

John, we were discussing the space above the Kaman line, not the space between 45's ears...  :-)

Edited June 2, 2020 by Guest

[turtlespeed 226]

1 hour ago, markharju said:

John, we were discussing the space above the Kaman line, not the space between 45's ears...  :-)

Everything from those guys is tainted with trump - He has real estate in their heads.

Which means he is winning.  He wants everyone to think of him all the time - 

He wins without ANY question here.