Month: February 2015
Proton launches successfully
The competition heats up: Russia’s Proton successfully launched an Inmarsat commercial satellite into orbit today.
Considering the problems the Proton has had in recent years, this launch success is significant. It suggests that they are back in business.
In related news, a Russian space expert was fired from his job at a hi-tech operation outside Moscow after he publicly criticized the Putin government’s consolidation of Russia’s entire space industry into a single government-run corporation.
Vadim Lukashevich worked at the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a high-tech business park outside Moscow intended as Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley that has partnerships with Western research universities such as MIT. “As I understand it, they [fired me] for a series of interviews in which I criticize the recent decision to liquidate the Federal Space Agency and create a new state corporation called Roscosmos,” Lukashevich told The Moscow Times on Friday.
…Lukashevich, a prominent voice in the Russian space scene, told the BBC the reform would remove any industry accountability and would foster corruption — all while failing to provide Russia with a long-term direction in space.
On Wednesday, a day after the interview was published, he said someone at Skolkovo’s Space Cluster called him to say he had been fired. The caller “apologized several times, saying the decision was imposed on them from above — by a phone call from URSC in the middle of the night,” Lukashevich said
I think that Lukashevich is right, that creating a single government-run corporation will encourage corruption and in the long run will be a disaster for Russia’s space industry. We will see a rebirth of the same problems that destroyed the Soviet Union. In fact, Lukashevich’s firing is illustrative of this.
I also think that in the short term it will likely energize their space program. But only for a short period of time. After they achieve some Soviet-style stunts that appear impressive, the weight of corruption and the lack of competition will cause the industry to collapse in bankruptcy again.
Iran orbits a satellite
The competition, and other things, heats up: Iran state media announced today that the country had successfully launched its fourth satellite into orbit.
The reports were very lacking in information, but if true, this launch is significant in that it once again demonstrates that Iran has the capability of placing a nuclear warhead anyone on Earth. That, combined with its nuclear program that the Obama administration is allowing Iran to complete means that no one on Earth is safe from attack from this country, which only recently was ruled by a man who thought it okay to wipe whole countries he didn’t like off the map.
The competition, and other things, heats up: Iran state media announced today that the country had successfully launched its fourth satellite into orbit.
The reports were very lacking in information, but if true, this launch is significant in that it once again demonstrates that Iran has the capability of placing a nuclear warhead anyone on Earth. That, combined with its nuclear program that the Obama administration is allowing Iran to complete means that no one on Earth is safe from attack from this country, which only recently was ruled by a man who thought it okay to wipe whole countries he didn’t like off the map.