IAC/Roscosmos
The chief of Russia’s space company, Yuri Borisov, mentioned his nation’s future ambitions in space on Tuesday on the International Astronautical Congress. He spoke expansively about Russia’s plans to construct a new space station in low-Earth orbit, the Russian Orbital Station, in addition to different initiatives.
“We predict to design, manufacture, and launch a number of modules by 2027,” Borisov mentioned through a translator on the convention, which is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, this 12 months. The convention’s plenary classes are being livestreamed on YouTube.
This space station will reside in a polar orbit, Borisov added, permitting it to look at all the planet’s floor. Its goal shall be to check new supplies, new applied sciences, and new medicines. “It will be like a permanently functioning laboratory,” he mentioned.
Megaconstellations and nuclear tugs, too
During the dialogue, Borisov added that Russia is additionally arduous at work on the “Sfera” megaconstellation to fulfill the nation’s massive demand for communications. This constellation would come with the capability to supply direct-to-cell communications, which essentially signifies that a few of these satellites shall be very massive. Such initiatives price billions of {dollars} at a minimal to get off the bottom.
In a PowerPoint slide accompanying Borisov’s presentation, Roscosmos additionally marketed different, even grander visions. The slide confirmed a nuclear-powered deep space transport automobile referred to as “Nuklon” and two “potential” launch automobiles named Amur-LNG and Korona.
It all might have appeared and sounded good on the worldwide stage, however the presentation had one thing of the texture of a Potemkin Village, which refers to faux villages designed to impress the Russian empress Catherine the Great two centuries in the past. Put one other method, most (if not all) of the presentation was based mostly on vaporware slightly than {hardware}.
Shortly earlier than Borisov took the stage, Russian media sources revealed that the nation’s budget for space actions is resulting from drop over the subsequent two years—slightly than rise to satisfy the problem of those formidable new space packages.
According to an article in Lenta.Ru, translated by Rob Mitchell, the proposed Russian space exercise budget for 2024 will comprise 285.95 billion rubles ($2.88 billion), adopted by 271.91 billion rubles ($2.74 billion) in 2025 and 258.1 billion rubles ($2.6 billion US) in 2026. The article says that “the budget allocations shall be aimed in specific to advance financing of funding initiatives for the Russian space and rocket business and for the capabilities of the Roscosmos State Corporation.”
Less cash to construct extra issues? Probably not.
From Russia, with doubt
No one doubts the power of Russia to construct space stations, because the nation has a lengthy historical past of assembling profitable orbital outposts. However, for the reason that dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has struggled to construct new {hardware} for spaceflight actions. Both its Nauka space station module and Luna 25 spacecraft that lately crashed into the Moon had been basically mothballed initiatives largely constructed many years in the past.
The concept that Russia will now construct a new space station and launch it throughout the subsequent 4 years at a diminished budget is particularly tough to grasp in the present scenario. The nation’s most important focus is on financing and preventing its unprovoked battle towards Ukraine, and because the space budget story reveals, sources for the space program are more likely to be diminished slightly than elevated.
Every mission proposed past the space station appears much more fanciful. Consider, for instance, the Amur and Korona rockets. Russia has been speaking publicly in regards to the reusable “Amur” rocket for 3 years now. It seems much like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and goals to have a reusable first stage. But there has apparently been zero progress towards really creating the {hardware}.
As for the Korona rocket proven on Borisov’s slide, who is aware of? It’s most likely a reference to a single-stage-to-orbit rocket first conceived of 30 years in the past when NASA and McDonnell Douglas had been engaged on the DC-X launch automobile in the United States. The concept that Russia is going to resurrect this idea and develop precise spaceflight {hardware} is not “potential,” because the Roscosmos slide claims. Rather, it is preposterous.