Ten days since, as the company “SpaceX” brought the crew into orbit, — NASA returned the ability to deliver astronauts to the ISS, Russian officials reacted ambiguously. But there is a clear tendency to diminish the accomplishments of “SpaceX” and magnify the light of the space future of Russia.
At a press conference after launching may 30, the founder of “SpaceX” Elon Musk boldly stated: “a trampoline-it works”. It was a stiletto heel to the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, a former military officer (as in the original — approx. The new York times), which in 2014 landed in the sanctions list of the USA in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. When US still flew into space on the Russian Soyuz, Rogozin in his Twitter suggested NASA use a trampoline, if the Agency so abhorrent to cooperate with Russia.
At the last review Mask, Rogozin responded: “Please pass on my sincere congratulations to the team @elonmusk (I appreciated the joke) and the team @SpaceX. We hope for further cooperation!”
A change of tone
Went smoothly and diplomatically. But in fact, Rogozin, most likely, deeply hurt. A few days later, Rogozin shut down your personal profile on Twitter to remake it in the official profile of Roscosmos and removing the most critical tweets. Alas, the old, burning Rogozin Twitter disappeared. At least for a while.
But he will not go away. Earlier this week, Rogozin wrote in “Forbes” magazine article about the Crew Dragon and the Russian plans in space. Since then, the Russian space Agency has published the English version, and there have Rogozin’s not lavish with his compliments, “SpaceX” and NASA.
Rogozin writes that “SpaceX” is no better than any other space company, because the Crew Dragon has left “huge funds” that the spacecraft is very heavy, and that Americans should be damn grateful that Russia helped them in space for nine years. All this is not true, but it seems that Rogozin offended and defensive.
“Elon Musk has spoiled the mood, not us, and their compatriots from the company “Boeing”, beating them with the beginning of flight tests. It is their war, not ours”, — Rogozin wrote.
Curious, but he acknowledged that the Russian inflated for NASA prices for a trip into space. While Rogozin said that Roscosmos, the money “earned honestly”, he did not agree that flights for Crew Dragon cheaper than the “Unions”. (According to NASA flight Crew Dragon worth 55 million dollars per person. During the last round of negotiations, NASA has paid Russia more than $ 90 million for a place in the “Union”).
“The cost of our launches much lower than the us. Gentlemen seem to confuse the cost of start-up and the price of launch services, formed to market properly. On this basis, I argue that the “Soyuz MS” in conjunction with the rocket “Soyuz-2.1 a” was and remains unsurpassed, — whatever may be said of our competitors,” says Rogozin.
Space Kalashnikov
The rest of the article is largely devoted to the enumeration of the great achievements of Russian cosmonautics — so that the spacecraft “Soyuz” he compares with the works of such masters of the Renaissance as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Titian, but also calls him “our cosmic Kalashnikov”.
His bragging about the bright future of the Russian cosmonautics picked up the social network. So, last Friday updated Rogozin enthusiastically tweeted about the spacecraft of new generation “eagle”. To the tweet was accompanied by photos of the “rescue” in case of emergency landing on water. In fact, in the pictures people go down to the wire with the model “eagle”, which is constantly reviewed and, maybe, never will take off. In addition, as noted by the Russian space journalist Anatoly Zak, this “news” is repeating the tests seven years ago.
Even the head of the press service of Roscosmos, Vladimir Ustimenko said recently that Russia plans to start testing two new missiles and soon will resume lunar exploration program. However, this article, apparently, is illustrated with pictures of the old prototype accelerator “Baikal” twenty years ago.
The pattern is clear. With the success of “SpaceX” and NASA, the Russian space Agency desperately needs to announce their own upcoming breakthroughs. But they are embodied or not, we won’t deceive ourselves.
