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on Russian space

Stuck in decline by James Oberg [email protected]

Modern spaceflight, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin was fond Analyst James Oberg, of saying, is so complex that it can be pulled off only when people are formerly of NASA, performing at their absolute best. But judging by their string of space- sees a Russian space flight failures in recent years, the people inside ’s space industry no longer seem to be at their peak. program The latest mishaps — booster failures, payload failures, control cen- whose failures ter-command errors and a nagging issue with solar panel deployment and mishaps on two of the last four missions — have reignited concern among can’t be chalked up Russians over unsolved, perhaps unsolvable, quality control deficien- cies within the country’s space program. Attempts to reverse the long to bad luck. post-USSR spaceflight retreat have borne little visible success. If any- The problems can thing, a host of new challenges, foremost among them lack of money, more accurately be have exacerbated the problems. traced to the long, Because many aspects of Russia’s domestic space program are tightly integrated into international projects such as the space station, slow decline of the those concerns affect other national space programs as well. country’s space Recently, Russian Deputy Prime Minister , Mos- industry after the cow’s point man for the space industry, lamented what he called breakup of the corrupt management and other systemic ills within Russia. “With such degradation in the leadership, one should not be sur- Soviet Union. prised at the high accident rate,” Rogozin told Russian lawmakers in a speech in May, according to news reports. Days later, a Russian watch- dog agency alleged that the nation’s space programs had misspent $1.8 billion in 2014 alone. Reforms initiated by Rogozin likely won’t bear fruit for several years — assuming he gets enough money to implement them. Igor Ko- marov, a former auto industry executive and the fourth person in six years appointed to fix the Russian space agency , said a turnaround “will need profound reforms.” The Russian space industry retains a core competency that contin- ues to operate mature space systems, perform regular upgrades, and occasionally pull off respectful leaps in capability such as the new booster family, or not long ago, a 500-day ground isolation test run for a manned mission. But the problem that Komarov and others have been addressing is much deeper than the highly-visible rocket explosions, spaceflight operator errors and corruption trials. Continued on page 23

AEROSPACE AMERICA/SEPTEMBER 2015 21 Decline Continued from page 21

The scope of the problem goes far be- yond the evident troubles; it also shows in the things we don’t see. Russia has not ventured beyond Earth orbit in a quarter century. And the list of promised deep-space missions invariably seems to retreat further and further into the future. Russia also has been unable to replace the Soviet-era full-orbit coverage communi- cations relay network — code named , the equivalent of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay . This is curtailing operations and forcing Russia to rely on NASA’s com- munications network. More embarrassing is Russia’s inability to produce and deliver the long-promised and years-delayed Nauka Science Module, which was supposed to host a major up- grade of Russian station-research capabili- ties. It’s uncertain whether Nauka will ever be built, making Moscow’s boasts about building its own orbital outpost ring hollow. The litany goes on. GLONASS, Russia’s answer to the American GPS network, is mired in production shortages for handsets. Fabrication of next-generation spacecraft has been seriously hampered by lack of ac- cess to Western electronic components put under embargo after President Vladimir Pu- NASA tin’s annexation of Crimea. Thanks to Soyuz TMA-14M lifts off toward breakdowns of old satellites and delays of the space station in 2013 carrying a crew of three. Two of the last promised replacements, Russians still must Russia’s once-vaunted space program is four Soyuz missions have been buy much of their weather and Earth imag- worrisome. The recent failure of a crewed bedeviled by trouble with solar ery from abroad. The new weather-fore- Soyuz to deploy a solar array, the second in panel deployment. casting satellite is officially still undergoing the last four flights — after 30 years of fault- acceptance testing two years after launch. less performance — is a disturbing reminder Even a key rocket fuel, heptyl, is now im- of the “canary in the coal mine” metaphor, ported from Germany. a sign of more widespread danger. Perhaps most dangerously in an era of Many of the root causes, including an growing world tensions, Russia’s military offi- aging workforce, low salaries, obsolescent cials are publicly complaining that the mis- infrastructure and the deterioration of a sile early-warning satellite network has to- culture of disciplined quality control, re- tally collapsed. The delay of replacement main largely unresolved. Meanwhile, a satellites means Moscow must rely on ground spate of new problems adds to the strain radars to detect any missile attack, slowing on Russia’s space program. detection and giving dangerously brief win- The economic embargo and boycotts dow to make life-or-death decisions. following Russia’s claim over the Crimean All this may seem like piling on, and penisula has exacerbated Russia’s vulnera- no major program is immune to sporadic bility stemming from its reliance on foreign failures. But the sheer number of technical, avionics components. This has added to the operational and financial woes bedeviling Continued on page 25

AEROSPACE AMERICA/SEPTEMBER 2015 23 Decline pability and standardizing quality control Continued from page 23 processes. While touting the need to hire previously recognized need to develop do- 10,000 college graduates per year, Rogozin mestic suppliers for several hundred critical has declared that 100,000 of the 250,000 aerospace products previously purchased current workers will lose their jobs as un- from Ukrainian factories. derused and duplicate production capacity The plunge in world oil prices has is eliminated. The trick then is to retain slashed Russia’s space budget by as much enough skilled veterans who can work as one third less than promised. What’s alongside new hires and pass on the hard- more, Russian policymakers have been si- earned wisdom of their experience.

phoning rubles from the space program to A perennial problem in Russia, graft and Information Office Press Russian Presidential military investments. Still more money is and corruption, has resulted in more than a being diverted to dubious infrastructure hundred prosecutions of middle- and up- projects, such as the Vostochny Cos- per-level officials, including Vitaly Lopota, modrome in Siberia and refitting confis- former head of the Energiya Rocket and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister cated Ukrainian-owned space facilities in Space Corp., and Vladimir Nesterov, former Dmitry Rogozin, Moscow’s point man for the space industry, the Crimea. Even if properly managed — chief of the Khrunichev State Research and reportedly warned that corruption and it clearly has not been — this enor- Production Space Center, the two biggest and mismanagement is reflected mous construction boondoggle is sucking enterprises in the Russian space industry. in the high rates of accidents. up a large share of the financial resources. Leaders in the west should feel a chill from The entire space industry is undergo- Putin’s recent call for a return to “1930’s dis- ing a massive reorganization with the stated cipline” and media nostalgia for finding “a goal of eliminating redundant industrial ca- Continued on page 27 Roscosmos

The mammoth under construction in Siberia could recharge Russia’s space aspirations — or prove to be a costly boondoggle.

AEROSPACE AMERICA/SEPTEMBER 2015 25 new Beriya,” brutal leader of Stalin’s post- That NASA officials have been down- Decline Continued from page 25 World War II Soviet nuclear program. playing Russia’s problems reflects respect Top-level plans seem to focus on a re- for Russia’s space heritage. It also indicates lentless crash effort to make a satellite a blind faith in the constancy of the odds launch out of Vostochny Cosmodrome by governing catastrophic failures, which for the end of this year. However, it’s worth Russia have historically been low. That faith noting that the same construction group results from a logical fallacy, and not merely that rushed the Sochi Olympics to last-min- because dice have no memory. In the space ute completion is in charge. But getting the business, engineers like to rely on as many launch off will not signify the achievement of the same fabrication tools, human skills of operational capacity. That’s because the and techniques as possible from mission to fixes largely come at the expense of exist- mission, but some change is inevitable no ing resources. These schedule-driven direc- matter how hard they try. This means that tives have called for use of emergency util- every mission is carried with a new set of ities, the shortcutting of other infrastructure dice — and a growing number of external by leaving out all facilities not directly sup- factors are loading each new set of dice porting the initial launch, and the tempo- more and more against Russian success. rary duty of key personnel from experi- enced launch teams from other launch sites. QQQ None of these ad hoc measures will amelio- James Oberg is a former NASA rate the growing weaknesses that have al- mission control specialist who led the orbit de- ready been inducing an intolerably high sign team for the first International Space Sta- error rate in the mainstream Russian space tion assembly mission in 1998. He is author of industry, nor will a successful but purely a dozen books on space exploration and is a symbolic “on time” first launch. former space consultant for NBC News.

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