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Searching for details: The author of this page will appreciate comments, corrections and imagery related to the subject. Please contact Anatoly Zak. In the meantime: (A historical context for the events described in this section): 1999 Dec. 31: President Yeltsin, resigns his post, the first Russian leader to do so voluntarily. He appoints Vladimir Putin as a successor. 2001 Sept. 11: Terrorists attack the United States, causing massive civilian casualties and global instability for years to come. 2003: US invades Iraq leading to a prolonged instability in the Middle East and to record-high oil prices, in turn, boosting the Russian economy. 2007 Feb. 10: In Munich, Germany, President Putin accuses the US of provoking a nuclear arms race. The speech is seen by many as a new low in US-Russian relations.
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By 2007, the Moon has emerged as the main goal of the Russian manned space program. This artist rendering depicts a concept of a lander, which was drafted in the early planning of Russian lunar expeditions at the turn of the 21st century. Copyright © 2008 Anatoly Zak
Russian space program: a decade review (2000-2010) First published: 2008 Jan. 3 Geopolitics and space In May 2001, a respectable American magazine published an apocalyptic prophesy entitled "Russia is Finished." Intellectualizing the conventional wisdom of the 1990s, the article confidently promised "the unstoppable descent of a once great power into social catastrophe and strategic irrelevance." Little did the editors of the publication know that just a few months later, the only remaining superpower would be hit with the worst terrorist attack in its history, dragging its government into a protracted and costly conflict across the world. One of the unintended consequences of the post-September 11 global instability became soaring oil prices, which quickly turned Russia's natural resources-driven economy from bust to boom. With the Kremlin coffers full with oil revenues, the Russian government managed not simply to postpone a "social catastrophe," but to take steps to reverse its "strategic irrelevance." On the international stage, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his official doctrine the creation of a "multi-polar world," which would challenge America's military and economic dominance. By the end of his two terms, President Putin consolidated so much power in his hands that he could make his old secret service bosses red with envy. Putin used his new financial and political muscle to repair Russia's battered economy and military might. In 2006, Russian military spending approached 600 billion rubles, or double of its annual budget in 2000. (240) By the end of 2007, a Russian aircraft carrier group was heading back on patrol of the high seas for the first time since the end of the Cold War. Strategic missile bombers, land- and submarine-based ballistic missiles flew regular doomsday rehearsal missions. Oil money also started trickling down into the previously underfunded space industry. To the delight of Russian space officials, increased funding was accompanied by President Putin's declaration that "...without astronautics, Russia can not compete for one of the leading positions in the world's civilization, and will not be able to provide its defense at a necessary level." (270) Cooperation undone Emboldened by the renewed federal support, Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, set about drafting new long-term plans in space. Unlike in the 1990s, cooperation with NASA was no longer a centerpiece of Russia's space goals, reflecting the new political climate in the first years of the 21st century. Although the two space agencies were continuing working closely on the construction of the International Space Station, the program was increasingly becoming a lone outpost of cooperation in the sea of unraveling hopes. America's bullish moves to stretch NATO toward Russian borders and hastily deploy a missile defense system in Europe pushed relations between the two countries, in the words of one American diplomat, "from bad to worse." On Feb. 10, 2007, at a major security conference in Munich, Germany, President Putin accused the United States of provoking a new nuclear arms race among other sins. Western pundits talked of the new cold war, while state-controlled Russian TV was full of paranoia about Western conspiracies to weaken Russia. In such climate, on both sides, rational ideas of building a common future for the world community were being replaced by chauvinistic urges for global economic domination and international prestige. At the beginning of 2004, NASA essentially declared its intention to divorce from Russia and Europe with its decision to withdraw from the International Space Station program and aim for the Moon instead. Unlike the ISS, all the crucial elements of the future American lunar infrastructure would be built domestically, with no reliance on foreign contributions or major overseas contractors. Moon race: round two Although officially NASA left the door open to international participation in the lunar program, America's partners were left to decide for themselves about new directions in space. As rising giants of Asia -- China and India -- made their intentions for exploring the Moon loud and clear, Russia and Europe could hardly afford to stay on the sidelines of what increasingly resembled a new moon race. Not coincidently, during 2005 and 2006, the Russian space agency and its European partners rejected a proposal from the industry to build a new-generation reusable spacecraft, which would be best suited for operations in the low-Earth orbit. Similarly, the idea of a new all-Russian space station fielded around the same time also did not seem to get much traction. Instead, both Russian and European space officials favored the concept of a lunar-oriented project, known as ACTS. To be developed cooperatively in Europe and Russia, the new program would include a new spacecraft capable of entering lunar orbit and, eventually, a lunar lander designed to deliver humans on the surface of the Moon. Unlike the United States, Europe represented a natural partner for Russia, since the two sides have been closely involved in every aspect of economic cooperation from energy to aviation for more than a decade. During the first years of the 21st century, Russia's chief spacecraft developer, RKK Energia, served as a major contractor in the development of the European ATV cargo ship, designed to resupply the ISS. Still mutually suspicious of each other, Europe and Russia would have to resolve difficult and politically loaded issues of rights and responsibilities in the new project. Given limited budgets for space, both sides needed each other to accomplish such an expensive and risky enterprise as a lunar expedition; yet, both had to keep their internal constituencies and industrial lobbies satisfied. On one side, Europe wanted independent access to space for its astronauts, instead of being a mere sub-contractor for traditional Russian spacecraft developers. On the other hand, Russia was adamant about preserving its own technical independence with a full complement of spacecraft, rockets and workforce to support it. Unlike post-Soviet 1990s, Russian space industry was no longer a beggar willing to take any paying job. All these conflicting political requirements could be as important as the reentry capsule's shape and the crew size for the future lunar ship. New space infrastructure Beyond its alliance with Europe, the Russian government promised to replace its key space assets, inherited from the former USSR, with a brand-new triad of space infrastructure for the 21st century. In addition to a next-generation manned spaceship, Russia committed to build a new launch site and a fleet of rockets with a wide range of capabilities. By the end of 2007, Russia made the potentially momentous decision to develop a new launch facility for manned missions in the nation's Far East. On November 6, President Putin signed a decree on the creation of the Vostochny ("Eastern") launch site in the Amur Region, Russian media reported two weeks later. If ever built, the new launch site would mark a historic shift of the Russian manned space program from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to its own territory. From the moment the Soviet Union disintegrated in December 1991, Russian officials have promised to abandon Baikonur and shift operations to the existing launch site in Plesetsk and to a newly built facility in Svobodny. However, the severe financial crisis of the 1990s stalled all these plans. More than a decade later, record-high oil prices reinvigorated Moscow's ambitions in space and made new large-scale federal projects more realistic. The creation of the new launch site aimed to end Russian dependency on Kazakhstan, whose government charged multi-million-dollar annual fees for the rent of Baikonur. In addition, with new investments in the Russian Far East, the Kremlin hoped to tighten its grip on this remote region of the country, which in the last decade has seen considerable economic influence from China and Japan. Along with the construction of the new launch site, the Russian government promised to relocate into the region high-tech enterprises supporting the manned space program. The price tag of the whole undertaking (apparently including the development of the launch site, a new family of launch vehicles and a next-generation spacecraft) was estimated at 180 billion rubles. In the meantime, Russian budget officials reportedly capped projected spending for the program at 36 billion.
Russia tries to chart its space future Published: April 15, 2008 Four years after NASA had announced its intention to return to the Moon, Russian future goals in space remained murky. On April 11, the eve of Cosmonautics Day, the outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of his Security Council (known in Russian as Sovet Bezopasnosti), with the official goal of considering various aspects of the Russian space program until 2020. Although few specific details, such as expected cost or exact aims of the manned space program, had been released to the taxpayers in the wake of the meeting, Russian space officials did come out with broad and sometimes contradicting statements about the direction of the national space effort. According to Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Russian space agency, although Russia had committed to stay in Baikonur until its current agreement with Kazakhstan would expire in 2050, the Security Council established the year 2015 as a “solid date” of the first launch from new launch site in Vostochny. At the same time, there was apparently still no agreement on the type of launcher, which would carry the manned spacecraft from the new site, Perminov admitted. He did disclose that the next-generation manned spacecraft would have a mass between 18 and 22 tons, which would be too heavy even for the most radical upgrade of the Soyuz rocket, such as Soyuz-2-3 or Soyuz-3. As expected, Perminov cited the yet-to-be-flown Angara rocket as the best candidate for carrier of the future manned ship. He added that the final choice of the launcher would be made based on the size of the next-generation spacecraft. Perminov also hinted that even larger rocket would be needed for human deep-space missions, such as lunar expeditions. Perminov also reiterated the previously voiced Russian goal to replace the ISS with an all-Russian station in Earth orbit. This time, he described its purpose as an assembly platform for deep-space transport ships heading to the Moon and Mars. He claimed that the Security Council had approved the plan in general, however without setting a timeframe. Defining new spacecraft Even less certainty was surrounding the next-generation transport ship meant to replace the Soyuz. Just at the beginning of April, the head of Roskosmos manned directorate Aleksei Krasnov assured the media that Russia and Europe were finishing negotiations on the combined development of the new-generation vehicle although a political inter-government agreement was needed to seal the deal. Both sides declared the expedition to the Moon to parallel a similar US effort as the goal of the project. Yet, just few days later, Vitaly Lopota, the head of RKK Energia, chief developer of manned spacecraft, told reporters that his organization could not formulate any concept of the new spacecraft without knowing "where would we fly." Speaking at a press-conference after the docking of the Soyuz TMA-12 with the ISS, Lopota, said that once the expected political decision on the destination of the program was made, RKK Energia would quickly unveil one of several concepts of the future vehicle. He promised a radically new spacecraft, capable of landing under a wide range of conditions. Unofficial postings on a highly respectable Russian web forum, apparently originating from RKK Energia, claimed that the reentry capsule of the proposed new spacecraft would have a mass of nine tons and it would be capable of zeroing in onto a landing area with a radius of just two kilometers. A fully assembled vehicle configured to reach the ISS would have a mass of 13 tons. Another version of the ship, with a service module designed for autonomous missions, would reach 18 tons. One speculative estimate arrived at the dry mass (without propellant) of the Moon-bound vehicle equal to 12 tons. After separation from the upper stage, which would send the vehicle from the Earth orbit toward the Moon, the full mass of the spacecraft was estimated at 22.4 tons, essentially matching the numbers quoted by Perminov in the wake of the April 11 Security Council meeting.
Page author: Anatoly Zak; Last update: April 17, 2008 Page editor: Alain Chabot; Last edit: April 16, 2008 All rights reserved |
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A mockup of the European ATV cargo ship (right) next to the model of the Ariane 5 rocket (not to scale). Russian firm RKK Energia was a contractor in the development of major components for the ATV, building a foundation for possible future Russian-European cooperation in space. Click to enlarge: 400 by 300 pixels / 40K Copyright © 2005 Anatoly Zak
By the end of 2007, Russian government made a potentially momentous decision to build new launch center in the Far East. Copyright © 2007 Anatoly Zak
A speculative drawing showing the ACTS spacecraft in lunar orbit. Click to enlarge. Copyright © 2008 Anatoly Zak
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