I constantly hear that the Americans, after the shutdown of the Shuttle program, do not have their own ship, launch vehicle, etc., and use the services of Russia, that they are suckers, and this is where we "made" them. I decided to understand the topic a bit, and see what developments are currently being developed in the USA.
I've heard about this company for a long time. space x, which developed the Falcon launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft.
On December 21, 2015, they successfully launched a cargo ship and successfully landed a booster at Cape Canaveral.
After a short study of Wikipedia, it turned out that the United States has a program Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS)
They also write that the goals of the program are as follows:
NASA plans to spend $500 million (less than the cost of a single Shuttle launch) by 2010 to fund the development and demonstration by commercial companies of vehicles to carry cargo, and subsequently crew, to the International Space Station. Unlike past NASA projects, the created ships will be owned by the development companies themselves and will be used under Commercial Resupply Services contracts with NASA to supply the ISS.
Private spacecraft and their providers compete for four areas of service:
- Level A: delivery of cargo in unpressurized compartments of the ship and disposal;
- Level B: delivery of cargo in sealed compartments of ships and disposal;
- Level C: delivery of cargo in sealed compartments of ships and its return to Earth;
- Level D: crew transportation.
According to the information, there are now 2 contracts with private companies Space-X and Orbital Sciences Corporation
Orbital Sciences Corporation, has a huge history behind it, manufactured more than 560 launch vehicles that are still in use today, developed the Cygnus spacecraft and the Antares launch vehicle for it.
Cyrnus- a ship for delivering goods to the ISS, but Antares- a disposable launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation and the Ukrainian company Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, at the moment the launch vehicle uses the RD-181 engine developed by the RussianNPO Energomash.
With Space-X and Orbital Sciences Corporation - everything is clear, but I also came across Blue Origin and I wondered who they are and what is their purpose?
Blue Origin- is a private company, probably making money by putting satellites into orbit, but in addition they are developing a new manned spacecraft New Shepard which will be able to deliver both cargo and people into space.
Most recently, they successfully launched the ship, having reached a 100-kilometer altitude and returned from there both the ship itself and the launch vehicle.
Wikipedia writes about this ship the following:
Company-developed three-seater ship New Shepard Designed for vertical takeoffs and landings. The cone-shaped spacecraft is about 15 meters high and 6 meters in diameter at the base. The device consists of two modules - the engine compartment and the crew capsule, which can accommodate three or more people.
The total mass of fuel is about 54 tons. The thrust of engines running on concentrated hydrogen peroxide and kerosene should be approximately 100 tons. In 110 seconds, they must raise the device to a height of 40 kilometers, then the engines will turn off, and the rise will continue by inertia. The ship must rise to a height of about 100 kilometers, after which; switch to the landing path. The re-start of the engines is carried out for landing at the Corn Ranch spaceport. The duration of the flight will be about 10 minutes. The interval between flights should be no more than a week.
It is assumed that the created ship will be based on the concept developed by McDonnell Douglas reusable ship vertical takeoff and landing Delta Clipper DC-XA.
There are other companies in the US that are building reusable transport ships: Orion, CST-100 and Dream Chaser.
It turns out that the Americans are trying to create a reusable launch vehicle in order to reduce the cost of delivering goods, they also decided not to engage in development and construction at the state level, but to transfer this stage into the hands of private organizations, creating competition between them for a tender for the delivery of goods and people into space. In my opinion, this is an excellent strategy that will bear fruit in the next 10-15 years.
I am also sure that private companies, due to their mobility and commercial interest, are able to attract the best specialists / fanatics from all over the world to their ranks. Why is it important? New people, new ideas, forces, approaches, with proper funding - success is guaranteed.
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If we compare the development strategy of the US space industry with Russia, it becomes clear that there is indeed a crisis in the Russian space industry.
At the moment, there are three largest state-owned companies that are engaged in the production of launch vehicles and ships.
Since the time of the USSR, it has been producing Soyuz manned spacecraft and Progress unmanned spacecraft. They have a contract with NASA for the delivery of crews and cargo to the ISS. They participate in many places, they do a lot of developments. More recently, they announced the development of a partially reusable ship "Federation", which will replace the Unions and Progress. So far, the ship is planned to be delivered on the Angara-5 heavy launch vehicle. In general, the story with the new ship is still muddy, the economic crisis, incomprehensible goals and objectives, and very distant plans.
Like NPO Energia, the enterprise was established back in the days of Soviet Union, and during the collapse it survived as best it could. Now the enterprise steadily produces launch vehicles: "Proton-K", "Proton-M", and is the manufacturer of a new family of launch vehicles "Angara". From the information on the site, it becomes clear that the main customer is the Ministry of Defense, and the carriers "do not have to" be returned to the ground after launch.
They were the creators of the ship on which Yuri Gagarin flew into space. An enterprise with a great history and heritage.
At the moment, they are the manufacturer of the family Soyuz launch vehicles, and later its revised version " Soyuz-2-1B".
After a superficial analysis, I felt sorry that only state-owned companies are engaged in space, accustomed to receiving huge funds from the country's budget. I like the American space development strategy through private companies and talented people more.
Image copyright AP Image caption American success private company SpaceX is an example for private space companies around the world
“I won’t pronounce this name, it’s already too much, in my opinion ... My day begins, continues and ends with him,” joked the official representative of Roscosmos Igor Burenkov, but there was a fair amount of truth in this joke. At the first private space conference, every speaker mentioned SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
At some point, the critical mass of mentions of this name exceeded the threshold, and it became a household name: one of the participants, talking about the problems of the industry, used it as a unit of efficiency of a private entrepreneur in space.
The famous head of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Elon Musk, is considered an example of private astronautics all over the world.
The day after the start of the conference, the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a payload was scheduled.
And although there were too many doubts about the success of this test, and this project had several accidents in the past, everyone in the audience recognized that in the United States, private space exploration is developing much faster.
There are private space companies in Russia, but when I asked a representative of one of them whether it was easy for them to develop, he eloquently shook his head: "Almost impossible."
It is also unlikely that anyone began to argue with this at the InSpace Forum 2016 conference, otherwise there was no need to collect it.
The Russian state cosmonautics is now undergoing a large-scale and very difficult reform.
First, an economic and financial crisis has begun in Russia, which has already affected the financing of Roscosmos.
Secondly, the cumbersome organization of the industry was inherited by the Russian state from the Soviet Union. She is ill-suited to modern world, first of all - to market conditions.
These circumstances determine the problems that private cosmonautics faces in Russia.
Advantages and disadvantages
Russia's lagging behind the West in this area was illustrated by the very first panel discussion, which resulted in a discussion of the basics: what private cosmonautics essentially is, what tasks it sets for itself and what place it can occupy in the state space industry.
For representatives of the space business themselves, the definition of this phenomenon does not cause any difficulties. According to Sergey Ivanov, the head of the Dauria Aerospace company, the main difference between private and state cosmonautics is the desire for commercial success.
"Speaking of space, we always remember romance, politics, pride in the state, things much higher than just money. And for me, private space is about money. About earning, creating added value, return on invested capital, creating products that find their customers, about market relations," he said.
This property of private space companies determines their strength, weakness and their relationship with the state.
The main advantage of commercial astronautics is the ability to quickly respond to market changes, new goals and technologies. A commercial company in the space industry is freer in setting goals, in finding ways to fulfill them - the company depends on the investor.
The weaknesses of this type of company appear for exactly the same reasons - investments in a space project can pay off in many years, and no one can guarantee success. The success of Elon Musk largely depended on his personal determination and faith in success.
In Russia, as Igor Burenkov said at the conference, such investors do not exist.
"We can talk about various great foreign entrepreneurs as much as we want, but they risk the greatest money. And I don't see anyone willing to risk that kind of money. They come to us with small devices. Nobody brings us billions," he said.
"Space Bible"
According to a representative of Roskosmos, the agency is now more than open for cooperation, but "space businessmen" have a lot of claims against the state.
First of all, it concerns normative documents, such as the "Regulations on the procedure for the creation, production and operation (use) of rocket and space systems - Regulations RK-11 and the "Regulations on licensing space activities".
Any spacecraft or rocket must meet the stringent requirements set out in them.
Ivan Moiseev, head of the Space Policy Institute, told the BBC that the requirements laid down in RK-11 are designed for large spacecraft. Manufacturers of small vehicles and rockets find it difficult to comply with regulations that are not designed for them.
“Firstly, it’s even difficult for them to get this RK. Although there is nothing secret there, we habitually put the stamp “secret” so that nothing happens. We need to turn this situation inside out, because excessive secrecy harms economic development", - he said.
Representatives of private cosmonautics propose to rewrite the provisions of RK-11, which has already been dubbed the "space bible", but in Roscosmos they are answered that the agency that is engaged in fundamental reform is not able to simultaneously change the fundamental documents.
“The patient is in intensive care, he came out of a coma, breathes with the help of an artificial respiration apparatus, and then a young man appears who says: “Come on, here's a rope for you and jump!” said Igor Burenkov.
Market
As Pavel Pushkin, head of the Kosmokurs company, told the BBC, the market in this area is very small.
"This share is 8-10% both in our country and in the United States. This share is very small, and all these small companies are starting to fight for this share," he said.
Several commercial satellite companies operate in Russia, including Gazprom Space Systems, Sputniks and Dauria Aerospace.
According to Pushkin, companies are fighting for the commercial market, but they would also be happy to receive government contracts.
This is a normal practice for all countries, including the United States, where the largest corporations try to rely on government orders and receive state support.
However, the shape of such cooperation continues to take shape. Much was said at the conference about how it should be.
In particular, it was said that low orbit could be given to private space, leaving long-range flights to large government agencies.
"Cosmocourse" Pavel Pushkin, he said, is trying to occupy a rather narrow niche in the space market. The company is developing a reusable spacecraft for tourist suborbital flights (exits to low orbit without revolving around the Earth).
Will Russia have its own SpaceX?
The Kosmokurs company has already managed to coordinate with Roskosmos technical task to create a ship, but they don’t think about developing further there.
"Lack of experience interferes," its head admitted in an interview with the BBC.
This problem is perhaps the most serious in the Russian private cosmonautics. In order for a company like Elon Musk's SpaceX to appear in Russia, many years must pass. SpaceX itself was founded in 2002.
Image copyright RIA NovostiIn addition to all the organizational and financial problems, there is also a rather low activity of enthusiastic businessmen themselves.
Sergey Zhukov, president of the Moscow Space Club and full member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, said that the ratio of Russian and US startups in the space industry is about one to five hundred.
"And investment ... Our oligarchs are buying Chelsea, but can they be blamed? An almost impossible environment for innovation," he said.
The representative of the state corporation "Roscosmos" Igor Burenkov did not argue with this. According to him, the state of the private space industry reflects the overall business situation in the country.
"In our country, business is just beginning to develop, it is going through the stage of capital accumulation, but no one has canceled the economic stages of development. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just time. If someone has been doing such things for 20 years, and someone has been doing this for three hundred .. But those who have been doing it longer will have priority in developing private initiative," he said, adding: "Oranges will not be born from aspen."
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Taiga.info correspondent visited InSpaceForum 2018, where representatives of both sides discussed the possibilities of interaction between private astronautics and the state.
What is lacking in private astronautics
Four years ago, Pavel Pushkin founded the Kosmokurs company of tourist flights into space. “We went to a new market - space tourism, where many technologies are not available, and we have to do everything ourselves,” Pushkin explains. - And our company has problems in interaction with the state. We need work regulations, normal certification, access to regulatory documentation. Now everything is simple: if there is a state order, then there is a regulation. And we have no state order, no regulations. Neither Roskosmos, nor Rostekhnadzor, with which we solve industrial safety issues, nor the FSB, from which we need a license to export rocket technology. Here we are at an impasse.”
Founder of the private space company Galaktika. Space Alia Prokofieva also lacks a lot. For example, financial support, although all space "private traders" would probably like to receive it. “We live in a country where money counts a lot,” says Prokofieva. “Here, people want to start earning or return investments immediately, and not in a couple of years.” But if we talk about long-term projects, for example, about mining in orbit, then you need to consider the possibilities of using it and calculate the options for earning money on your own.
Why do we fly into space
What should be a public-private partnership
The interaction of private space and the state is a natural approach in most economies of the world, says Dmitry Payson, director of the research and analytical center of Roscosmos.
“Many countries have the same scheme: the state orders technical solutions for its tasks from commercial companies, but in Russia, Roscosmos combines the functions of both a manufacturer and a state body that regulates space activities,” Payson explains. - With the advent of commercial companies, this gradually began to change. Previously, the state played a major role in setting goals - it formulated the framework, drew up the terms of reference, and then invited the performers. And now private traders are acting as the initiating party, coming up with projects that can have sales to both the state and the commercial sector. Private enterprises are taking on more activity and responsibilities; the range of projects becomes a bit different.”
The head of the Moscow representative office of SingularityUniversity, Evgeny Kuznetsov, is sure that three points must be fulfilled for a normal public-private partnership. First, learn to negotiate goals. Secondly, both public and private companies need to develop in their employees the competence of negotiators who can understand the other side and can adapt their internal processes in the company for the right interaction. Thirdly, to form a structure of external investors so that they can come from both the state and the commercial side, understanding how it all works.
“So far, there are few investors, and we do not understand how much money they are ready to provide,” says Kuznetsov. “But a big plus for investors is that over the past three years it has become at least clear who to talk to and who to go to if you want to invest in the space industry.”
S7 in space
The S7 company bought a floating spaceport in 2016. We can say that now this is the largest and most successful transaction in Russia between a commercial company and a state-owned enterprise. Now the private company "S7 Space Transportation Systems" has a ship and an offshore platform with equipment installed on them for launching . S7 signed a contract for the production of twelve with the Ukrainian company Yuzhmash. The company plans to start launches in 2019. The ordered missiles will last until 2023 - 3-4 launches per year are enough for the project to become self-sufficient.
On the forum CEO S7 Space Sergey Sopov said that the company is ready to take over the Russian segment under a concession agreement. “This idea came from the fact that, on the one hand, there were talks about the flooding of the ISS after the end of its service life, and on the other hand, they were thinking about how to use it commercially,” Sopov notes. - The specialists of our company decided that it is possible to make an orbital spaceport. We have transport space systems, we have, so this is a rather prosaic task. From the orbital cosmodrome it will be possible to send cargo ships to and from with the help of a special tug.”
At each event, where representatives of private and state cosmonautics are present, they talk about public-private partnership. This is really important in space exploration, because the state cannot solve all the problems - you need to give businesses the opportunity to enter the industry.
Private companies have made significant progress in mastering outer space. Private rockets launch private satellites that generate tens of billions of dollars a year. A lot of success has been achieved by private cosmonautics in the development of technologies - many are looking with hope at reusable rockets that promise cheaper access to space. Private companies have already emerged targeting near-Earth asteroids, and tourists are buying tickets to the vicinity of the moon. Do we have a future of science fiction where corporations run space exploration, and what is behind today's success of private traders outside the Earth?
Today, the attention of the whole world is riveted on the successes and failures of just one private space company - SpaceX. Someone is waiting for the revolution that is coming when the price of a space launch will drop ten or more times, someone is rubbing their hands in anticipation of the moment when the “bubble will burst” and the “swindler Musk” admits how he faked a video with a rocket landing on a sea platform. In both cases, no one remains indifferent. To return the first rocket stage after a space launch is, of course, a serious engineering achievement. But practically the same thing has been done since the 80s as part of the program space shuttle, then the hulls of solid-fuel boosters returned by parachute, and he himself Shuttle was nothing more than a reusable third stage. And such technology did not reduce the cost of conquering outer space, the complexity of the system and the cost of inter-flight maintenance killed the entire economic meaning of reusability. That, however, did not stop NASA from operating the system for 30 years. And here we see an important significant difference between private and state cosmonautics - a private trader follows the beaten track after the state and tries to benefit where state enterprises have not tried. Therefore, about the success of the company SpaceX we can confidently speak when reusable missiles become more profitable than disposable ones.
The private astronautics made a real revolution in the 2000s, although then few people paid attention to it. Namely, then the income of the world space market exceeded the total government spending on space. Since then, this difference has grown every year and now space allows private companies to earn three times more than the world government budgets spend on it. Although in Russia it is traditionally believed that it is possible to make money in space only through a state contract, abroad the main source of money from space is relaying: satellite television, transmission of large amounts of data, and provision of live television broadcasts. A good income is provided by the provision of navigation services, the production of ground receiving, processing and transmitting equipment, to a lesser extent - satellite imagery and the use of this data. Currently, space communications occupies about 10% of the world telecommunications market, the rest of the information is transmitted via terrestrial networks, but the demand for transmission is growing exponentially, so the role of space is not reduced, despite the fiber entangling the Earth. A third of the entire space market is occupied by the production of satellites and rockets, and the launches themselves do not exceed approximately 2% of the total "pie". Therefore, leadership in space launches does not at all mean leadership in space exploration, neither fans should forget about this. SpaceX, nor fans of Roskosmos.
Despite the thousands of near-Earth satellites that are launched and paid for by private customers and that bring profit to their owners, not a single private satellite has reached interplanetary space. There, near the Moon and on Mars, near Saturn and beyond the orbit of Pluto, state apparatuses continue to reign supreme. Most of them are produced by private companies, lockheed martin, Thales Alenia Space, Orbital ATK, but the customer and operator in all cases is the state. And here it is time to understand the terminology and separate the two types of activities in space, which are often confused by the media and the space agencies themselves.
Saturn V, NASA's heavy rocket, with Apollo 17 as payload. Photo before the start of today's last manned expedition to the moon. December 1972
The study of space is the main activity carried out by states from the very beginning of astronautics. Studying the conditions of near-Earth and interplanetary space, visiting and examining bodies solar system, delivery of extraterrestrial matter, astrophysical research. All this is a fundamental science that expands the limits of knowledge of the surrounding world, but does not bring practical benefits. Financing of fundamental science traditionally rests on the shoulders of the state, although now private capital is one way or another included in this activity, but the share of its participation in the study of space is low, and, as a rule, is associated with the financing of ground-based laboratories and research centers.
Space exploration is the practical use of the conditions of outer space or the opportunities that it opens up. Historically, the state has been the leader in this type of activity. For civilian use, weather satellites were launched, the first television repeaters. For the military, communication satellites, spy satellites: optical and radar, missile attack warning satellites have been actively used and continue to be used. Native and navigational GPS systems and GLONASS were considered as military vehicles for guiding ballistic missiles. However, in the 2000s, private cosmonautics became leaders in the development of near-Earth space. The provision of communication services and the use of satellite data has enabled the deployment of large-scale private relay networks and the launch of hundreds of earth imagery satellites. In the United States, the possibilities of private traders are actively used even in the public interest. Gradually, civil services are moving from operating their own spacecraft to ordering commercial services, this applies to satellite imagery, and relaying, and rocket launches, and supplying the International Space Station.
Today, the most valuable and actively exploited space resource by private traders is the geostationary orbit (GSO) in the plane of the equator, at an altitude of 36,000 km from the Earth's surface. GSO allows satellites to remain above a single point on the surface as they revolve around the planet. It is in this orbit that telecommunications satellites are located, providing television broadcasting, retransmission, Satellite Internet, there are also meteorological satellites capable of surveying each of its hemispheres in a constant mode.
Geostationary satellites represent the crowning achievement of space unmanned technology: have a mass of 1 to 8 tons, an impressive scope solar panels a couple of tens of meters or more are equipped with radiation-resistant electronics that allow them to work in space for more than 10 years, ion and plasma engines, high-performance radio complexes and a laser communication system. Now it is not uncommon for a satellite to stop operating not because of technical problems, but because of the moral obsolescence of the payload or the exhaustion of the fuel supply, operable satellites are forever sent to the “burial orbit” to be replaced by more modern ones.
Why are private traders, having the most modern satellites and cheaper reusable missiles, do not protrude further than the GSO? The answer is simple: there is no profit. Working in near-Earth orbit allows us to provide services to solvent inhabitants of the Earth. Until such inhabitants appear on the Moon and Mars, the launches of private vehicles there do not make any sense.
Now let's remember about lunar tourists and asteroid resources, which we mentioned earlier. When will they allow the exploration of the Moon and deep space to begin?
Unfortunately, not soon. The problem here is the complexity of the technologies that will need to be developed to create a lunar tourism infrastructure or asteroid mining. For example, consider hunting for asteroids. To date, two companies have declared their goal of mining space resources: Deep Space Industries And planetary resources. About $20 million was invested in the first, about $25 million in the second, and $21 million was received for the development of a near-Earth satellite constellation for Earth imaging. The Luxembourg government has announced that it is ready to invest up to $200 million in private companies. Even if Luxembourg's grants are written into private funds, there is still a total of less than $300 million invested in the commercial development of near-Earth asteroids.
Japanese microsatellite PROCYON developed at the University of Tokyo. To assess the complexity of the task, it is worth considering real examples missions for the extraction of interplanetary matter or the study of small bodies of the solar system. Japan State Spacecraft Hayabusa (jap. はやぶさ, "Peregrine Falcon"), which managed to reach the asteroid, extract less than 1 gram of its substance and deliver it to Earth, cost $ 138 million. A more complex NASA project OSIRIS-REx has a budget of $ 800 million. Student Japanese apparatus PROCYON, which was only supposed to get close to the asteroid, cost $ 5 million, but did not succeed due to a propulsion system failure, although it was able to spend a year in interplanetary space. The unsuccessful "Phobos-Grunt", for the study and extraction of samples of the satellite of Mars Phobos, cost the Russian budget about $ 200 million. Do not forget about the timing of the missions: Hayabusa flew 7 years OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016, should reach the asteroid in 2020 and return in 2023. But it still takes several years to develop the device. The most expensive and difficult mission of this type is the project Rosetta, which included the study of the nucleus of comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko and the landing of the module on its surface. Ten year flight Rosetta cost €1.4 billion.
It is very difficult to imagine an investor who dares to invest in such a super-expensive and super-risk long-term project, seriously expecting financial benefits at the end of the flight. They may be driven by philanthropic motives or the desire to leave their name in the history of astronautics, but not the desire to enrich themselves at the expense of extraterrestrial platinum or water. The only practical financial interest here may be in the development of technology, but this will take more than a dozen years.
In the situation with space tourism, the scale financial costs higher by orders of magnitude, meanwhile, space near-Earth tourism is already a reality, and lunar tourism can become a reality in a matter of years. How is this possible?
Here we again return to the role of the state. In 1957, only a playboy and philanthropist could invest in telecommunications satellites. The hope of making a profit by 2005 and recovering costs in 2015 could only belong to a madman. There were none in the 50s. Only when the state created heavy rockets capable of launching several tons into the GEO, when the state tested the telecommunications prospects of the orbit in practice, developed electronics capable of withstanding the conditions of space, created or paid for industrial capacities capable of producing satellites powerful enough, long-lived and cheap enough to make it become profitable, only then did commercial astronautics become real and profitable. In the language of economics, the state took over all the capital expenditures of the space industry, leaving only operating costs and revenue to private traders.
In manned astronautics, everything is more complicated and more expensive. By 1969, the idea of tourist flights to the moon might have seemed more realistic, but in reality everyone knew about the cost of NASA to get people to the moon (about $5 billion in modern dollars for a ticket to lunar orbit), so not a single billionaire brought a truckload of cash to Houston to be taken on another flight. Today, two companies are ready to offer a tourist flight to the Moon and back: the Russian RSC Energia and the American SpaceX. In the first case, the tour will take place on board the modified Soyuz spacecraft, in the second - in the modified Dragon. In both cases, the capital expenditures for the creation of cosmodromes, rockets and ships capable of such a flight are state-owned. States are a regular customer of the Soyuz spacecraft as part of the International Space Station program, and NASA orders and pays for the creation of the spacecraft Dragon. In both cases, near-Earth spacecraft are being created at public expense, and improvements to get to the moon and back will need to be done solely in the hope of tourism income. And although the Soyuz has been flying for more than a decade, it is still not capable of flying to the moon, although the price tag for a lunar tour is much lower than in the 60s - about $ 120 million. The cost of lunar modernization still exceeds the expected commercial benefit, and existing demand is too low.
The result is disappointing. With all the desire and all the romance of private space, modern investors do not have the physical ability to take on the real development of interplanetary space. At the same time, the role of the state in space exploration can be rethought, taking into account the accumulated experience. In the early days of astronautics, no one thought that vacuum would ever be beneficial. State investments were made for other purposes: military and propaganda, but, in the end, they gave an economic effect. Unfortunately, the proportions of input and output are not always preserved. The United States paid for about half of the world's cosmonautics, and now receives up to 60% of the world's space revenues, the USSR / Russia took over about a quarter of the world's cosmonautics and today is content with 1% of space profits. But that's another story.
Today we can say with confidence that space exploration is impossible without the joint efforts of the state and private business. Only the state can seriously invest "in the long run": finance the industry, develop infrastructure, and train personnel. Only private traders are able to make this infrastructure profitable, enrich themselves and, through taxes, return to the state its investments. This is, of course, an idealized scheme that may not work. But technology is advancing, and space is still an hour away if a car can go up, so each state is able to decide for itself whether it is worth the risk of investing in space in anticipation of an economic return in decades. But NASA is already building a whole series of spacecraft to reach and explore asteroids, developing near-lunar infrastructure: a super-heavy rocket, an interplanetary spacecraft, and plans to build a habitable station. The head of ESA is seriously calling for the construction of Moon Village - with the active involvement of private space, not only as contractors, but also as tour operators. Roskosmos, on the other hand, hopes to regain the lost demand for space launches and start making money on Earth imaging and relaying, that is, start competing with private companies. There is no talk of developing the infrastructure for deep space exploration, and such a task is not set. The project of the device to the asteroid Apophis has been cancelled, the Luna-25-26-27 lunar drones are constantly being postponed, the future of Phobos-Grunt 2 has not been determined.
Businessman Ruben Vardanyan published an open letter in response to an investigation into a network of offshore companies created by the Troika Dialog investment bank and operating from 2006 to 2013. Open letter Vardanyan is posted on the website of the IDeA Foundation, of which he is a co-founder. Formerly the Organized Crime and Corruption Investigation Project – Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) - reported that through a network created under the leadership of Vardanyanmoney was withdrawn from Russia, including using "criminal schemes".
“Everything is mixed up in the published materials: information taken out of context, interpretations and fiction – round and green,” he said. Vardanyan added that despite the absence of accusations against him, he, as a former senior partner of Troika, feels responsible for what is happening. According to Vardanyan, now lawyers are studying possible legal actions to protect the reputation.
The businessman emphasized that Troika was created in the early 1990s, when "the investment banking industry did not exist, and the whole country was in a startup situation." “Back then, we refused to live by the ‘laws of the jungle’ and did our best to create a civilized environment in Russia with clear rules of the game,” he noted and urged not to evaluate Troika’s activities outside the historical, economic and business context of that time.Vardanyan also spoke about the support and gratitude from partners, colleagues, friends, associates and strangers from all over the world for the projects he and his family are involved in.
According to OCCRP, the network of about 70 offshore companies created by Troika operated from 2006 to early 2013, and during this time $4.6 billion was transferred to it, $4.8 billion was withdrawn. The journalists' conclusions are based on data on bank transfers of companies that had accounts in the Lithuanian bank Ukio (lost their license in 2013). Accounts of about 30 companies associated with Troika Dialog were serviced in this bank, the investigation said.After reviewing banking documents, OCCRP concluded that money with unclear origins was mixed with legal cash flows in many transactions and received in a bleached form to the final recipients. The recipients might not know about the origin of the money, the authors of the investigation emphasized. TO key element of the circuitwas the Lithuanian bank Ukio, closed in 2013.
The businessman, commenting on this investigation earlier, emphasized that among the company's clients there were no people to whom law enforcement there were questions. INIn a conversation with OCCRP, he did not deny that Troika used foreign companies that had accounts, in particular with Ukio, to conduct business. At the same time, according to him, the investment bank acted"according to the rules that existed in the world financial market at that time."
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