Russian senior officials commented on the launch of the Dragon spacecraft: This war is theirs, not ours

On June 8, 2020, nine days after the manned Dragon spacecraft manufactured by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company successfully launched to the International Space Station, the director of the Russian Space Corporation (Roscosmos) De Mitry Rogozin commented on this incident for the first time in a Forbes column and conducted an in-depth analysis of Russia’s response plan.

Dmitry Rogozin mentioned in the article that in 2011, the United States stopped launching manned spacecraft to the International Space Station. This suspension was due to its huge cost and unbearable high failure rate. rate, because the United States has lost two batches of crews.

However, NASA did not stop launching manned spacecraft. Instead, it found a new solution-allocating huge amounts of funds and allocating them to several companies: Lockheed Martin ("Orion") "Moon spacecraft"), SpaceX (crewed "Dragon" spacecraft) and Boeing ("Starliner" spacecraft).

As a result, Elon Musk’s company received a spacecraft launch site built by the state for free, and received basic scientific and technological work and the best engineering talents paid for by NASA, as well as budget funds. Come and build your own spaceship.

In other words, contrary to popular belief, SpaceX not only received authorization from the Pentagon, but also did not spend a dime of its own money. It built this spacecraft with American taxpayer money.

The answer given by Dmitry Rogozin is - impossible. He said:

Judging from the overall joy of the American public, Americans are quite anxious about the fact that they have been completely dependent on the Russian Soyuz MS spacecraft when sending astronauts to the International Space Station for the past nine years.

In the past nine years, NASA and Boeing have indeed paid fees to Russia, and Russia has fulfilled its partner responsibilities comprehensively and with high quality, and has delayed some of Russia's flight and experiment plans. based on performance responsibilities.

NASA’s official attitude is not friendly. They have even started making wreaths to “bury” the Russian Soyuz spacecraft alive. For example, some people have suggested that the price of a crew seat on the manned Dragon spacecraft is US$55 million, while the price of a Soyuz seat is more than US$90 million. In the future, Russians can only take American manned spacecraft to the International Space Station.

But the new US spacecraft weighs more than twice as much as the Soyuz and offers only one extra seat. In order to launch such a large launch vehicle, the Falcon 9 and Atlas V heavy-stage rockets are used in the manned Dragon spacecraft and Starliner spacecraft respectively - not to mention the Atlas V" is equipped with the Russian "RD-180" engine as the first-stage main engine. In contrast, Russia's Soyuz spacecraft was launched into orbit by a Soyuz-2.1a rocket, which is a medium-sized launch vehicle, not a heavy-lift launch vehicle.

For this reason, our launch costs are much lower than those in the United States. Therefore, I maintain that no matter what our competitors say, the Soyuz MS spacecraft equipped with the "Soyuz-2.1a" launch vehicle has not been challenged either in the past or now.

As early as the fall of 2018, when the Soyuz FG rocket encountered an emergency, our spacecraft rescued the crew in this incredible situation and sent American astronaut Nick Hague safely and safely. Back to the United States. A few months later, we successfully sent him to his destination - the International Space Station.

And when our partners finally successfully conducted a test of their craft, we received nothing but jokes and jeers - even though at this point, our Soyuz, its It is only appropriate to express gratitude to the Soviet developers and Russian engineers, who, after all, were responsible for their continuous efforts to increasingly modernize the most reliable spacecraft in the world. Despite personal and departmental sanctions, we did not collapse and maintained space cooperation, thank you for nothing. Americans don't need to use trampolines, as I once metaphorically put it - we'll continue to send their astronauts into space.

The United States is a very big country, and a big country should be kind and noble. However, some of my colleagues (not including me, who had long since become disillusioned with our partners after serving as Russia’s representative in NATO) received no words of gratitude or a response to their professionalism, even though they had every reason to do so. Looking forward to this thank you.

Dmitry Rogozin said SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft will have limited impact on Russian aerospace, saying: “This war is theirs, not ours.”

Russia's Soyuz MS spacecraft has proven to be the world's most reliable spacecraft, with a unique record of 173 successful flights. Even emergencies caused by launch vehicle failures in 1975, 1983 and 2018 have shown their unique survivability with reliable launch escape systems. Soyuz rockets of various configurations have carried out more than 1,900 launches, and this number itself is a "golden sign."

Dmitry Rogozin also mentioned the problem of insufficient motivation for the development of the Russian aerospace industry. He said:

Russia does have some problems with insufficient innovation power in creating new aerospace equipment. Why? Because many people think that if we have the Proton, then the market is almost ours. What other motivation is needed? As a result, we not only lost valuable time, but also made a bunch of decisions to gain the authority to dispose of expensive land in the center of Moscow. But the matter is now settled; we will not use the land of the Khrunichev Center for commercial buildings, we will let the teams of the experimental rocket manufacturing and "Salyut" design bureaus stay there, and the abandoned open space will be used to house the state space agency The central building complex will be completed in 2022.

He also responded to some private criticism: Some people claim that Roscosmos is building an office instead of a rocket. I will let those people down. This is pure nonsense. First, the construction costs are borne by the Moscow budget and do not involve Roscosmos funds. Secondly, what we built for Russian rocket engineers was not an office, but a modern, state-of-the-art engineering center. They already deserved this. If we need new designs, we should create the necessary good working conditions, I think this should be clear to everyone.

Over the past two years, I have led a new team at Roscosmos that has been trying to revolutionize the industry; it is a matter of our honor!

In 2019, we managed to break the 16-year emergency chain and successfully launched 25 space rockets. We successfully launched the unique Spektr-RG observatory to the L2 Lagrange point 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth. We also set several world records in terms of flight time to the International Space Station - our Progress cargo spacecraft arrived at the space station in just over three hours.

And this is just the beginning.

First, comprehensively promote new development. Dmitry Rogozin claimed that the new eco-friendly "Angara" heavy rocket will resume its flight tests in the autumn, and in 2021-2023, regular tests will be carried out. In 2023, "Angara" will Lift off from the new launch pad at Vostoni Spaceport. In addition, they are also developing a two-stage Soyuz light-heavyweight rocket that will be ready for flight testing in 2023.

New developments in the Russian aerospace industry also include the new reusable "Eagle" manned spacecraft, which is expected to conduct flight tests at the end of 2023 and transport astronauts to the International Space Station in 2025; a new lunar exploration plan is planned in 2021 At the end of the year, the Luna-25 satellite will be put into orbit. After this, there will be a lunar orbiter and a lunar module to detect the lunar soil.

The second is to establish a universal space launch site. Since the new rockets and spacecraft are too large to be transported by rail, they will continue to resume the construction of new ground space infrastructure at the Vostokny launch site, with major construction projects expected to be completed in 2022.

The third is to innovate a modern and well-proportioned production system. Fundamentally reduce costs and eliminate excessive non-production workers.

The fourth is to plan and create a flexible scientific research/launch and other supporting systems. It will involve four categories: rocket construction, satellite construction, ground space infrastructure and scientific research.

I am fully convinced that we will succeed because it depends on the professionalism and motivation of people who are responsible for clear results - and not on simply buying new machines, said Dmitry Rogozin. I believe in these people, I do believe in these people that I have the privilege of working with. I am confident that our team has the ability to continue to achieve significant achievements for Russia in the space domain.

(Translation: Zhang Tian)