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Putin slashes Russia’s space budget and says he expects better results:
Russia plans to slash funding for spaceflight activities during the coming three-year period, from 2022 to 2024. The cuts will come to about 16 percent annually, several Russian publications, including Finanz.ru, report. (These Russian-language articles were translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell.)
For 2022, the state budget for space activities will be set at 210 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), a cut of 40.3 billion rubles ($557 million) from the previous year. Similar cuts will follow in subsequent years. The most significant decreases will be in areas such as "manufacturing-technological activities" and "cosmodrome development." Funding for "scientific research and development" was zeroed out entirely.
[...] Putin has reportedly told the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, that it must increase the reliability of Russian rockets and "master" the next generation of launch vehicles. This directive has come in response to growing competition in the global space launch business, particularly from US-based SpaceX.
I guess Russia is throwing in the towel as far as space is concerned?
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:08PM (2 children)
It's "More (amount), better quality, cheaper". And there is a fourth one: "safe/secure" which people take for granted. So you can actually fix 3 of them.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:40PM
Yep. My new orbital-launch-ballista design will be able to launch frequent massive payloads to orbit for a tiny fraction of the cost. Unfortunately, the payload will be completely incinerated by atmospheric heating, but that's the price of progress.
The disappointing part is that, without an atmosphere to deal with, it really would only take a bit over 12kWh/kg (about $1/kg at average prices) to get stuff to low orbit, but thanks to atmospheric drag such efficiency is impossible without first constructing megastructures to get above it.
On the bright side, without an atmosphere (and further aided by the low gravity) such launch systems are entire viable on the moon, so that something like a 30km mag-lev "rail gun" could accelerate things to orbit for only about 0.4kWh/kg, or if a bit more powerful, to a Mars transfer orbit for only about 1kWh/kg
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 13 2021, @06:52PM
Though the original quote is the one I've always heard:
Faster (completed sooner), better (quality), cheaper, choose any two - is applicable to almost any project.