On April 12, we celebrated the 52nd anniversary of the first manned flight into space. This date itself - April 12, 1961 - became a kind of milestone, which made it possible to announce to the whole world about the unprecedented achievements of Russian science. A few years after the glorious flight of Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet Union was marked by new space achievements - the first flight of a woman cosmonaut (Valentina Tereshkova on June 16, 1963), the first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov on March 18, 1965), the creation and launch of the world's first rover ("Lunokhod-1" 1970), the beginning of the operation of the first orbital station ("Salyut" 1971). And also - launches of satellites, interplanetary unmanned spacecraft, development of systems for space exploration, and much more. This gave an unambiguous reason to call the Soviet Union the main space power on the planet.
Years have passed since the Gagarin launch, and, to the greatest regret, not only the country, the citizen of which was the first cosmonaut, but also the era of stunning domestic space achievements has gone down in history. Increasingly, information about space exploration is associated either with the activities of the American Aerospace Agency, or with European developments. Almost nothing has been heard about Russian space successes in recent years, but information often appears about another failed launch of a spacecraft or the curtailment of a space project by the Russian side.
So what happened? Perhaps the problems with technical specialists, perhaps the underfunding of the Russian space industry affects, or one is superimposed on the other and ultimately leads to a kind of destructive paradigm, which, they say, do we really need this space at all? Well, perhaps, with the development of the space industry in the country, everything is fine, but for some unknown reason, all the achievements remain outside the zone of attention of the Russian media? We will try to understand the situation and, if possible, identify the problems that are painfully affecting Russian cosmonautics today.
Not so long ago I had to hear an interesting phrase expressed by a man, shall we say, of the younger generation. This man, answering the question of what he personally knows about the achievements of modern Russian cosmonautics, said that he does not understand at all why billions of rubles are spent on this sphere in Russia, because only the state that seeks to develop space technologies should world domination, and we, they say, are building a free country whose plans do not include "world domination" … An interesting thought, isn't it … Only the same young man did not find an answer to the question: how does he think, thanks to the development of which -technologies, he can easily communicate on a mobile phone or plot the route of a car using a navigator?.. World domination, hmm …
So is there not enough funds allocated? But, excuse me … In the last five years alone, funding for the Russian cosmonautics has quadrupled. If in 2008 46 billion rubles were allocated from the state budget for the space industry, then in 2012 it was already almost 140 billion. For the current year, the expenditure side of the budget provides for financing of the Russian cosmonautics at the level of 173 billion rubles. In addition, the government plans to increase the financing of the industry to 200 billion rubles by 2015. For comparison, we present information on the level of funding for the NASA budget. So in 2012, the funding level stopped at 17.7 billion dollars (531 billion rubles). Yes, this is three times more than the level of financing of the Russian cosmonautics, but it is impossible to say that 173 billion rubles is an undignified amount for the implementation of significant projects. The EKA (European Space Agency) budget, for example, is 4.2 billion euros (approximately 168 billion rubles) - comparable to the budget of the Russian space industry. Therefore, it is hardly worth mentioning the phrase “underfunding”. After all, for another 10 years, Russia could only dream of the level of financing of domestic cosmonautics at 200 billion rubles a year. It turns out that there is money and a lot of money. What prevents you from effectively mastering them?
It is worth moving on to staffing the industry. And here problems are really identified that in the Soviet years in this regard could not exist simply by definition. The fact is that today at the enterprises that are engaged in the production of space technology and the implementation of technical projects related to space, the bulk of the work is specialists whose age is either close to retirement, or managed to pass this psychological retirement bar. Young graduates-specialists (and, judging by the monitoring of graduates from various technical universities of the Russian Federation, there are a lot of them) are obviously reluctant to come to the designated enterprises. The reason is not only relatively low wages, but also uncertainties in terms of housing. If in the Soviet years the work itself at an enterprise that was engaged in the production of space technology was considered mega-prestigious, then today, in the era of calculating all human benefits exclusively in monetary terms, not every graduate of a technical university (even with a baggage of solid knowledge and great potential) will go to a production enterprise for a salary of 10-12 thousand rubles, if in an ordinary metropolitan office he can, playing Solitaire "Klondike", earn three times the amount. Moreover, the older generation of specialists is extremely reluctant to take on a kind of patronage over those young people who come to production associations. The motivation is approximately the following: for the salary that I receive, I also have to teach the wits of the suckers?.. Obviously, the monetary background also plays a role here.
That is why lately it has been so often talked about the need to urgently raise the level of remuneration of specialists in the space industry, as well as to increase the prestige of the work itself. True, often in our country the phrase "raising the level of wages" is somehow conjugated with the phrase "optimization of the industry." And many people know firsthand what optimization is: dismiss 500 people so that the remaining 100 receive "decent" wages. The optimization option is undoubtedly economical for the state budget, but with an acute shortage of qualified specialists (from ordinary welders to design engineers), any optimization can lead to the most negative consequences.
It is obvious that the country's authorities understand the presence of serious problems in the space industry that need to be urgently addressed. However, the indicated ways of solving such problems often look rather dubious. In particular, at a meeting on the country's space industry in the Amur city of Blagoveshchensk, President Vladimir Putin suggested considering the creation of a space ministry in the Russian government.
To what extent will the new ministry be able to solve sectoral problems? Is a big question. And even if all the troubles in one area or another came to naught after the creation of special ministries, then all the ways to resolve acute issues would be known in advance. Low milk yields - create a ministry for milk yields, our biathletes shoot badly - launch a ministry for biathlon …
At the same meeting, the head of Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin made a proposal to improve the efficiency of the industry. Until the agency headed by him received ministerial status, Popovkin suggests that the country's leadership and legislators do not sit idly by, but immediately equate the salary of agency employees with the ministerial one and, in addition, add another 50% to those civil servants who are somehow connected with the space industry.
Vladimir Popovkin argues that the officials who oversee the enterprises of the space sector receive two times less than the average staff of these enterprises. Like, where does this fit: no one in the "space" officials after this will not want to go …
Well, what can you say: in fact, the head of Roscosmos opened everyone's eyes to where exactly the weaknesses of Russian cosmonautics are manifested. It turns out that the main problem is the low level of remuneration for officials of the agency itself … In order to finally convince the representatives of the authorities present at the meeting of the need to urgently increase the salaries of Roscosmos employees, Vladimir Popovkin said:
“The last reductions were made this year - 191 people. We have calculated by the standards of the Ministry of Labor that according to the criteria there should be 700 people."
If you analyze these words, it turns out that Mr. Popovkin himself and his 190 Roscosm companions work for at least four people … It's amazing how, with such intensity of work, after a grueling day at work, Vladimir Alexandrovich had the strength to get to Blagoveshchensk and express his thoughts. out loud?.. How did he not fall down from fatigue?..
Apart from space problems, the causes of which we, thanks to Vladimir Popovkin, have found out, it is worth touching on those projects that Roskosmos is working on today or is going to work in the near future.
The main project implemented with budget funds is the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome. President Putin said that the first launches from this cosmodrome should take place already in 2015, and by 2020 the Vostochny cosmodrome should begin full-fledged work. At the same time, it was announced that a modern space town for 30-40 thousand inhabitants should grow next to the cosmodrome. The head of state even made a proposal on the name of this town. In his opinion, the city should have a name associated with the name of Tsiolkovsky. It is planned that the Vostochny cosmodrome will become an international platform for space launches and become one of the innovation centers in Russia. The proposal with the name of the town in honor of Tsiolkovsky looks very reasonable, but at the same time the phrase "innovation center" is alarming. After another "innovation center", Skolkovo is alarming …
Roskosmos announces the start of a project to build a completely new spacecraft, ready for interplanetary flights. It is planned that the spacecraft will move in outer space based on the use of the energy of a compact nuclear installation with a capacity of up to 1 MW. Vladimir Popovkin, outlining the likely technical characteristics of the new spacecraft, said that its first flight will take place in 5 years. It should be noted that the detailed design of the apparatus has not yet begun …
The head of Roscosmos announced that in 2015-2016, the Russian lunar apparatus will have to reach the surface of the Moon in its polar region and carry out a sampling of the lunar soil. In this case, the soil will be taken not from the surface of a natural satellite of the Earth, but from a depth of at least 2 meters. True, so far Roskosmos does not explain for what purposes a "new" lunar soil was needed, "old" samples of which have been delivered to Earth over the past 40-odd years about half a ton (and by Soviet unmanned stations from different depths).
The plans of Roscosmos do not dry out on this. The same Vladimir Popovkin expressed confidence that in about 2028 a super-heavy rocket would be created in the bowels of the agency, thanks to which flights to the moon would become as commonplace as going to a country dacha.
Roscosmos plans to equip the asteroid Apophis with a radio beacon as part of the deployment of a new program to protect against space threats. According to Vladimir Popovkin, the lighthouse will make it possible to accurately calculate the orbit of the asteroid, which can be used to obtain information about the approach of a space body at a dangerous distance to the Earth.
In general, the plans, it must be admitted, are huge, and they look impressive; the main thing is that all of them do not remain exclusively in the thoughts of the head of Roscosmos, but be embodied, and with an eye to real necessity, and not purely for show in the plans. And I also want to hope that all these plans are not the fruit of the sick imagination of "space" officials from their "total underfunding" and their immense processing in the bowels of the agency …
