Russia to reduce manned missions to ISS in 2020
According to a Roscosmos, Russia will halve the number of manned Soyuz missions it will fly to ISS in 2020, from the normal four per year that they have been doing since 2009 to only two.
The article provides little additional detail, other than those two flights will be in the second and fourth quarters of the year, and that there will be three Progress freighter launches as well.
In May the Russians had announced that NASA had agreed to buy two more astronaut tickets on Soyuz. Since then there have been two manned launches, one of which I think was covered by this purchase. If not, then both launches next year are to launch Americans to ISS, and that Russia will not launch otherwise.
Either way this information tells us two things. First, NASA is probably getting very close to finally approving the manned flights of Dragon and Starliner, after many delays by their safety panel.
Second, Russia’s reduction in launches suggests that they are short of funds, and can’t launch often without someone buying a ticket. It is unclear what they will do when the U.S. is no longer a customer. I suspect they will fly the minimum number of crew in the fewest flights while still allowing them to maintain their portion of the station. Periodically they will likely add a flight, when they sell a ticket to either a tourist or to another foreign country, as they are doing right now with an Soyuz-flown astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.
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According to a Roscosmos, Russia will halve the number of manned Soyuz missions it will fly to ISS in 2020, from the normal four per year that they have been doing since 2009 to only two.
The article provides little additional detail, other than those two flights will be in the second and fourth quarters of the year, and that there will be three Progress freighter launches as well.
In May the Russians had announced that NASA had agreed to buy two more astronaut tickets on Soyuz. Since then there have been two manned launches, one of which I think was covered by this purchase. If not, then both launches next year are to launch Americans to ISS, and that Russia will not launch otherwise.
Either way this information tells us two things. First, NASA is probably getting very close to finally approving the manned flights of Dragon and Starliner, after many delays by their safety panel.
Second, Russia’s reduction in launches suggests that they are short of funds, and can’t launch often without someone buying a ticket. It is unclear what they will do when the U.S. is no longer a customer. I suspect they will fly the minimum number of crew in the fewest flights while still allowing them to maintain their portion of the station. Periodically they will likely add a flight, when they sell a ticket to either a tourist or to another foreign country, as they are doing right now with an Soyuz-flown astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Flying so infrequently can’t be good for keeping crews practiced in how do to what they do safely.
Russia’s slow recessional as a consequential space power continues apace. 2020 will be the first full year with no new NASA revenue for crew seats to ISS. 2021, with the scheduled debut of ULA’s Vulcan, will see the beginning of the end of RD-180 sales for Atlas V. By 2024 that will be entirely gone. That will leave a couple pair of RD-181’s for NGIS’s Antares each year until 2030 when ISS is decommissioned. With new satellite launches for pay already all but gone and declining prospects also for sales of oil and gas or weapons on world markets, Russia is looking at having to get along, starting now, with less than half its accustomed annual space products and services revenue with much of the remainder also to be gone by mid-next-decade and all of it to be gone by the end of the 2020’s.
For the Russian space industry, Winter is coming. Vostochny may see completion, but will be little-used. The new Federatsiya space capsule may well never fly. Angara looks increasingly problematic to say nothing of fever dreams of a new super heavy lifter. Even the long-delayed “new” Russian ISS modules may never be launched. In the world of press releases we see continued Russian boastfulness and fabulism. In the real world we see ongoing retrenchment.
The only thing that might stave off eventual failure even of the ability to maintain its current fleets of domestically-oriented Earth-orbiting satellites would be another complete collapse of the ruling Russian regime and promises of renewed sales to the West and other long-term aid in return for, say, the return of Georgian and Ukrainian territory previously seized, abandonment of the Kaliningrad Salient to Lithuania and/or Poland, a complete scrapping of even the current threadbare Russian strategic nuclear forces and perhaps even a complete nuclear disarmament. Achieving Russia’s end as a strategic threat in the world would be worth a reasonable on-going U.S./NATO-funded welfare program for the Russian space industry and even other industries.
Short of any willingness to stand down as a military threat to the rest of the world, the Russians should be left to their fate as a declining power – space included – going forward.