The live catastrophe was a serious blow to the entire Russian space industry. We are talking about the accident of the Proton-M rocket with three GLONASS satellites on board, which occurred on July 2, 2013. This ill-fated launch was shown live on the Russia-24 channel. It could be watched live or recorded by TV viewers all over the world. In fact, this disaster has become a kind of symbol of what is happening today in Russia with the space industry.
Then in July, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed reforming the entire industry. To prepare the reform, a special commission was to be created, headed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. Earlier Rogozin has already promised to draw extremely harsh conclusions from the latest failures of Russia in space. According to Rogozin, after the reforms, the space industry will no longer look the way it looks now. At the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the country's defense industry has promised to draw rather tough conclusions from the disaster of the Proton-M launch vehicle, both in organizational and personnel terms.
As a result, the decision of a specially created commission was transformed into the idea of creating a United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) in Russia, which could go to an IPO within 2-3 years. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin noted that at the time of the creation of the new corporation and in the next 2-3 years, the block of shares owned by the state should be 100%, at the end of this period, in order to attract private investment, it is planned to bring the corporation to an IPO (the first public sale of shares of a joint stock company).
It is assumed that the URCS will include 33 Russian organizations, united in 8 integrated structures, including 16 enterprises, of which 9 are open joint-stock companies and 7 are federal state unitary enterprises. By the end of the 3rd quarter of 2013, the Russian government must submit to Vladimir Putin an action plan for structuring the space industry. “Roskosmos, which had previously submitted to the government a project for the formation of a new corporation, concluded that the most optimal option would be to create a 100% joint-stock company while retaining Roskosmos as the controlling federal executive body. It is planned that the new corporation will include all domestic enterprises of this industry, with the exception of a number of defense enterprises,”said Dmitry Rogozin.
According to Rogozin, the members of the created commission still have a strong opinion that it is not worth introducing structures that are working on the creation of military missile technology into the structure of the newly created corporation. Currently, 4 large Russian enterprises that specialize in the implementation of the Russian state defense order - MIT Corporation OJSC, Kometa Corporation OJSC, Makeeva GRTs OJSC and SPU-TsKB TM Corporation OJSC - remain under the jurisdiction of Roscosmos. …
As the Deputy Prime Minister clarified, at present, these organizations have "very important tasks" to fulfill the state defense order, and a decision on them will be made a little later. this topic, "- said the deputy chairman of the government. Rogozin also added that no dates have yet been determined. According to the official, a specially created working group will have to prepare all the necessary documents within 10 days, after which a final decision will be made, which will be submitted to the administration of the President of Russia. The drafted and detailed draft of the forthcoming reform should be submitted to the Kremlin by the end of September 2013.
According to Dmitry Rogozin, the creation of a rocket and space corporation can save the Russian space industry from duplication. Reforming the Russian rocket and space industry should consolidate the efforts of enterprises and design bureaus, which will make it possible to maximize the existing production capacity. And this in itself should accelerate the manufacture of spacecraft of a new type, like the manned module that was presented at the International Aviation and Space Salon in Zhukovsky in 2013.
The creation of the United Rocket and Space Corporation in Russia became the topic of a separate meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government Dmitry Rogozin, which took place in early September. In fact, it is assumed that the Federal Space Agency will be divided into 2 parts. So Roskosmos should get the function of a state customer, and this department will also form state policy in the space sector. At the same time, all domestic design bureaus and enterprises of the rocket and space industry will have to enter the new United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), with the exception of enterprises operating in the Russian defense complex. This structure will have to take over the functions of the general contractor and focus on the execution of the state order.
“The formation of a new corporation is supposed to be carried out on the basis of an existing enterprise to facilitate procedures at the start of the entire process of reforming the industry. In particular, it is planned to put into the role of the base enterprise the Scientific Research Institute of Space Instrumentation, which, in turn, is a subsidiary of the Russian Space Systems JSC. At the same time, organizations that provide space activities will remain subordinate to the agency. These are cosmodromes, the Cosmonaut Training Center, ground-based automated control facilities, industry institutes, as well as enterprises of military rocket technology, the Deputy Prime Minister said.
At the same time, a separate question is the fate of RSC Energia. The fact that this well-known enterprise should become 100% state-owned has been discussed for a long time, but only now there was some understanding with the main shareholders of the corporation. During the meeting, Dmitry Rogozin said that we would propose to complete the formation of the Board of Directors of RSC Energia in the near future; it is planned to nominate Deputy Minister of Economic Development Andrei Nikolaevich Klepach as chairman of the Board of Directors. In the future, the Board of Directors will have to determine all the remaining personnel issues within this corporation.
Rogozin also made a proposal to increase the staff of Roscosmos to 450 people, currently 191 specialists work there. It is planned to accomplish all the tasks set for the creation of a new corporation within one year. Discussing the goals of creating the URSC, the vice-premier of the government highlighted: “Firstly, it is a unified technical policy, consolidation of the domestic space industry, universalization of solutions. At the same time - stimulation of the design thought to develop something new, and not only to apply the old accumulated technical groundwork. Creation of those very "centers of competence" closer to the new Vostochny cosmodrome, possibly even a separate academic center, a full-fledged academic campus in the Far East of the country, which would work on new projects for the Russian rocket and space industry. These are the tasks that we face. The only thing that remains is the most important thing - to choose the right people for their implementation."
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin believes that the formation of a new united corporation should allow the country to get rid of the series of failures that have plagued the Russian rocket and space industry over the past several years. It is noteworthy that a new era of the Russian space industry may begin after the disaster of the Proton-M launch vehicle with three GLONASS satellites on board. So a whole circle of failures from 12 cosmic failures over the last 2 years can be closed. This series of failures began on December 5, 2010, when malfunctions in the upper stage DM-3 caused three Russian satellites of the GLONASS-M navigation system to plow the Pacific Ocean instead of a near-earth orbit.
