
Dmitry Rogozin on SpaceX Crew Dragon Launch - tosh
http://en.roscosmos.ru/21511/
======
myth_drannon
Sadly Russia culturally and technologically is not a successor to USSR. Its
space program is in shambles. Soyuz was designed in the '60s and Russia's
space program can't offer anything new. That happens when you pay your
engineers 150$ per month(floor cleaner at McDonald's makes $250) while Rogozin
gets 400k$ per year (that's only the official number...), double of what NASA
director makes.

Humanity needs a way to access space and we can't rely on the relics of old
Soviet technology for that (no matter how great it was, we are rapidly losing
the knowledge of it).

~~~
hobofan
While it's not as extreme, SpaceX isn't exactly known for great engineering
salaries either.

~~~
optimiz3
Most people I know would be very happy to own SpaceX stock.

~~~
Avicebron
That's not quite the same as an engineering salary, especially if you are not
getting stock options. Would be happy to find out that all new engineers are
getting stock options though.

------
gbuk2013
I'm not sure why Mr. Rogozin is writing in English and in Forbes, but yes this
is mainly aimed at the internal audience.

There's a lot of bitching and moaning in certain Russian circles about how the
space program is falling behind and OMG Space-X launched a crewed vehicle,
we're all doomed kind of thing.

The reality is that of course Space-X is standing on the shoulders of giants
(NASA and US Treasury) and that the Russian space industry, like the rest of
the country has had a tough 25 years. I was living in Russia in the early 90s
and those were dark times. Space was not a priority then and it is not really
a priority now although some progress is being made. As an example: a lot of
critical industry and launch facilities literally ended up in different
countries overnight.

Also Roscosmos is a government controlled structure and well... there's a
reason why NASA had to turn to a private company to get things done. ;)

Now he's probably getting a kick from upstairs and feels he has to write up
something like this and genuinely feels like some of the criticism from the
peanut gallery is unfair. In the end though, as an outsider now, it looks to
me like they are doing a reasonable job all things considering.

~~~
sq_
> genuinely feels like some of the criticism from the peanut gallery is unfair

I agree with this for sure. Yeah, what SpaceX and, to a lesser extent, Boeing,
are doing is cool, but there's something to be said for being the "old
faithful" of the launch industry. No one else can really hold a candle to the
flight heritage of Roscosmos' rockets and crew vehicles. Sure, they haven't
fundamentally changed in a _long_ time and aren't new and shiny like Falcon,
but they've been flying for forever and are reliable.

------
cs702
Wow, there's so much... _negativity_ in this post by Rogozin. It reads like
"sour grapes":

 _" Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the
vine but was unable to, although it leaped with all its strength. As it went
away, the fox remarked 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour
grapes.'"_[a]

People who speak disparagingly of the accomplishments of others would do well
to apply this story to themselves.

\--

[a]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes)

~~~
starpilot
That's how we know SpaceX is doing a good job competing. Seriously, more than
the ESA, and more than Boeing, Russia is SpaceX's strongest competitor. If
Rogozin was unruffled and apathetic I'd be wondering if they knew something
that SpaceX didn't. The fact that he's upset means that he considers them to
be a fully-developed player in the space launch market.

~~~
jandrese
With SpaceX delivering astronauts to the ISS this year, Rogozin lost the last
mission type where it was a monopoly. If anybody had hopes that the taxi
service would keep them alive even as SpaceX undercut them on delivering mass
to orbit those hopes were dashed.

------
adwn
Is this satire? It appears to be the real Roscosmos website, and yet this
press release reads like the response of a child that – in an attempt to
suppress tears after being second in a competition – lashes out defensively
and throws around insults and excuses.

I'm trying to think of a less demeaning adjective, but the most fitting that
comes to mind is "butt-hurt".

~~~
Dolores12
There are few good points tho. For example:

>Our Soyuz MS has proven to be the world’s most reliable spacecraft. We have a
unique record of 173 successful flights. Even the three emergencies caused by
the carrier rocket failures in 1975, 1983 and 2018 occurring during various
injection stages showed its unique survivability due to the launch escape
system reliability. By the way, the Soyuz rocket of various configurations has
performed over 1,900 launches. And this statistics is the golden trademark.
The US engineers have yet to earn this reputation. I sincerely wish them luck.

If SpaceX to launch 5 launches per year it would take 35 years to prove same
kind of reliability.

~~~
sq_
Barring slippage, they're supposed to have three more launches before the end
of June, which would put them on track for 24 this year. They seem to be well
on their way to matching 173, based on their current record and high flight
rate.

~~~
avmich
Hard to say, but maybe Rogozin means crewed spaceflights, not just any rocket
launches. Soyuz had more than 140 flights... don't know where 173 came from,
but no, SpaceX isn't going to launch 24 flights of manned Crew Dragon this
year, not next year.

I don't agree with ideas of the article :) but Soyuz spacecraft did fly quite
a lot of flights. More than Shuttle already, and counting.

------
chooseaname
No doubt there are some sour grapes in that article. However, as an American,
I feel it's our obligation to honor and respect the fact that without the
Russians, we would not have had American astronauts in space for the past 9
years.

~~~
elteto
But when were they dishonored or disrespected?

~~~
tareqak
> In this connection, I note another strange moment seen in not only the
> ‘expert’ statements, but also coming from the side of NASA officials — such
> as Stephanie Schierholz, who have already started making wreaths to bury the
> Russian Soyuz spacecraft alive.

I’m still trying to find evidence of this event ever happening.

~~~
atomashpolskiy
[https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-russia-forced-
cosmonauts-...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-russia-forced-cosmonauts-
spacex)

------
trhway
i wonder if by overtaking the USSR/Russia space program Musk did more for
progress of Russian society than almost anybody else - the space program has
been one of the few [left-over from USSR] pillars of Russian nationalistic
"greatness", and the "great" don't need progress, changes, etc. Kicking that
pillar out provides for the additional stress which at the end may lead to
some movement forward, to the "problem acknowledgement" first step, a "king is
naked" kind of moment. The timing is especially bad for that "greatness" \-
the "high" of Crimea takeover has almost gone, Russia is banned from Olympics
(with sport being another "pillar") because of doping, and Putin popularity is
starting to go down due to total failure to handle coronavirus and high spike
in the number of "dual sided pneumonia" and cardiovascular deaths (that number
of extra deaths in the last couple months is more than 10% of coronavirus
cases while official coronavirus deaths are only 1% - that miracle of Russian
healthcare is naturally helped by special criminal penalty for spreading of
false, ie. contradicting official, coronavirus information).

I think history has its sense of irony - Musk started building his rockets as
result of Russian refusal to sell rockets (i think it was about decommissioned
ICBMs) to him 20 years ago. In alternative Universe by selling to him Russia
would have probably slowed down SpaceX may be by 10 years or may be SpaceX
wouldn't have even survived in such a case.

------
VSerge
The focus is wavering and it is hard to make sense of much that is being said
beyond: Soyuz kept bringing cosmonauts into space for 9 years - true - and
SpaceX / the US would do well not to bury them just yet or disparage the
accomplishments of the Soyuz program. Fair points and all that, but the tone
in this is strangely personal and even a bit whiny somehow. Just not what one
would expect from an official communication at that level of responsibility.
Then again, if you look at Musk's tweets some days, it can be quite a strange
experience. Fun times in the space industry.

------
princekolt
> By the way, under the conditions of pandemics, limited staff managed to
> retain continuous work, and it became clear at once, who can continue to
> work remotely and who is unnecessary.

hahahahahahhaha say what you want, but I love the unfiltered nature of Russian
culture.

------
jahabrewer
I guess I understand the... aggressive tone of the piece given the amount of
flag waving in the recent Crew Dragon launch. But, just speaking as an
American with a little interest in space, I have a lot of respect for the
Soyuz program.

~~~
option
Rogozin has nothing to do with Soyuz program’s success. He has a lot to do
with it not evolving

------
sigrlami
Looks like it was ghostwritten. Completely differs from Rogozin's speech and
flow of thoughts. Not so aggressive and rather peaceful. Also, this is an
original article, in English. Strange for the official website where Russian
is the main language and everything translated to English.

Anyway, Rogozin bad manager with huge salary overexploiting Soviet tech,
including lots of which created by Ukrainians at Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye Design
Office. Paying 500-700$/month to a professional engineer(based on region, mec.
eng, electrical engineering, programmers) is outrageous.

------
radium3d
To be fair though you should count reusables as a different class of rocket
which SpaceX has the lead if we're counting successful launches. Does Soyuz
recycle any parts of launched rockets?

~~~
lnsru
I think, this one was already posted here some time ago:
[https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/in-russias-
spac...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/in-russias-space-
graveyard-locals-scavenge-fallen-spacecraft-for-profit) Basically poor people
recycle rocket parts as building material for their needs.

------
Slippery_John
> the cost of our launches is substantially lower

Cost for a seat on Soyuz is $90MM, cost for a seat on Dragon is $55MM. These
are the market rates, not the true cost. In that whole paragraph he's
basically saying that the true cost of the seat on the Soyuz is still cheaper
than the true cost of the seat on the Dragon. Is there any data to
substantiate that? I suppose we'll see in the coming months and years if they
actually reduce their asking price.

------
cryptonector
> Equally strange is the statement that 'for the first time a private company
> created a crewed spacecraft'. And what about Boeing and Lockheed Martin?
> Aren't they still private or have they been nationalized? SpaceX is no less
> a private company than Boeing is with the ties to the Pentagon being no
> weaker,

ULA is a private rocket company, yes, and successful, but they don't yet have
a successful crewed spacecraft.

~~~
avmich
The principal difference is the NASA involvement and its forms. For
Mercury/Gemini/Apollo/Shuttle NASA designed, managed and ordered spacecrafts.
For Crew Dragon, NASA buys launches - with a lot of say in how the spacecraft
should be built and behaved, but still not on the level of project initiator,
as it happened before.

SpaceX is a bigger author of its manned spacecraft than any private company
ever was.

------
barbegal
> The new American spacecraft are more than double the weight of a Soyuz while
> offering only one additional seat.

Is this true? The launch mass of a Soyuz capsule is about 7000kg and the
SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-1 launch mass was about 12000kg so not "more than
double" however Demo-1 didn't include astronauts. The Crew Dragon can
theoretically carry several tonnes of cargo to the ISS in addition to 4
astronauts.

~~~
derekp7
Also, it was originally designed to carry 7 astronauts -- but NASA wanted a
different seat position for stress reduction.

(I'm kind of glad that it doesn't carry 7, the more people that are on a
flight, the more casualties you get if there is a failure).

~~~
rst
SpaceX is still advertising a seven-seat capacity on their web site. The "crew
dragon interior" video seems to be the NASA-endorsed four-seat configuration,
but makes it pretty clear there's a whole lot of room under those four.
[https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/dragon/](https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/dragon/)

------
thePunisher
Russia spends a sizeable amount on space exploration, but 80% of it is stolen
or defrauded by corrupt officials like Rogozin. Putin is angry about the
endless string of failures that result from this, but dares not to come down
too hard on the culprits for fear of losing support.

This means that Russia will fade away as a space-power, replaced by China,
which is quickly catching up with the West.

All Russia can do now is bragging and brawling about its successes and drawing
up an endless number of plans which will never be realized

------
youeseh
You have to give credit to someone who is willing to put their neck on the
line in such a public way. Best of luck, and I hope the competition pushes us
all forward!

------
shasheene
Mirror:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200610151434/http://en.roscosm...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200610151434/http://en.roscosmos.ru/21511/)

------
frwfaw_
As a Russian citizen, all I can say is that Rogozin is tiresome. Instead of
trolling SpaceX, I'd rather see him address criticisms like this one [0],
where Russian engineers talk about the sorry state of our space industry.

Although ultimately there is no mystery here.

The Soviets had a real commitment to science and technology. It was one of the
few silver linings of the communist regime. Present day Russia is devoid of
that commitment. You can say that lack of funding is the problem (and there is
that), but even more troublesome is the apparent lack of leadership. There are
no driven, fanatical figures out there trying to set up a vision for the
industry. Absent drive from the top, the industry is at best in maintenance
mode, trying to keep Soviet heritage pieces flying.

Case in point, Roscosmos hasn't had a space engineer for a director since the
early 2000s. Rogozin is a career politician, educated as a journalist. Before
Rogozin, Roscosmos was ran by an automaker named Igor Komarov who came from
Avtovaz. Before Komarov, there was a string of Army Generals during the 2000s
(Gen. Nikolai Ostapenko, Vladimir Popovkin, Anatoly Perminov). Car
manufacturers and ICBM generals are not the people who will lobby the
political leadership for a basic space program.

Oh well. Whether things will change, I dunno. I think before they do, there
has to be a realization at the top that education and science are important.
Right now they are playing third fiddle to guns and butter, and all we get are
Rogozins whose solution to everything is to put lipstick on a pig.

[0] [https://varlamov.ru/3912524.html](https://varlamov.ru/3912524.html)

~~~
tastyminerals
I thought so too, now I believe that it was sheer naivety. If anything, the
realization that education matters is the last thing they come to because this
is not their task. Pumping resources out while maintaining the belief of being
competitive is what all this government was doing all the time. Take a look at
the yearly budget, you don't need to go too far. And it was like this since I
remember. Nothing changed in the colony except the managers.

------
pj_mukh
"America is a very large country, and a large country should be benevolent and
noble"

What? Is something lost in translation here? Interesting, Russian idiom
perhaps?

~~~
mc32
I think as others have suggested the post is meant for a Russian audience (ex-
pats, etc).

Otherwise it’s ridiculous knowing that Russia is double the size of the US in
area and China India are four times larger in population...

------
atomashpolskiy
I don't like this person (and our officials in general), but I feel compelled
to say, that I find the mockery of his points and all things Russian (in this
thread and overall) absolutely disgusting and borderline insulting.

Sadly, it's quite typical. The most atrocious example of this mentality is
(still, after so many years) US propagandist efforts to make everyone believe,
that their participation in the WWII was decisive, with D-Day being the
turning point, that ultimately brought the victory over Nazis. When someone
dares to notice, that there were Kursk and Stalingrad in 1943 and a full-on
race to Berlin quite some time _before_ the first American troops even landed
on Omaha beach, the official propaganda dismisses all evidence or smears the
Russian side: like, yeah, sure, they helped a lot, no shit, but it was only
possible, because Red Army was overrunning German tanks with millions of
vodka-infused unarmed savages, who were machinegunned in the back by
commissars, oh, and don't forget lend-lease and food, that US was providing to
Russia, otherwise Hitler would have taken Leningrad in 1941...yadda-yadda

Adequate people tend to understand, that any such collective fight (conquering
space is also a real fight) is collaborative, and every party plays an
important role. Denigrating former allies _after_ the fight is finished is
behaving not like a human, but like an ape. It's equally disgusting to see
this happen both on Russian and on American side.

~~~
Nginx487
This thread is a discussion of a particular article of a particular hysterical
Russian official. You're trying to turn it into a clown show in a Roskosmos
Twitter style: "We are Russians, god with us", "We did not start WWII in
1939", proving most of commentators here right. Glad you joined us on HN,
Mr.Rogozin.

~~~
atomashpolskiy
Comments here are going very far beyond discussing a "particular article",
including you specifically, who is a (maybe former) Russian citizen. Replying
to you feels like stepping in a pile of crap, but God asked us to be kind and
wise, so I'll tolerate my disgust for a moment and tell you: Please, be
ashamed of youself. And STFU.

~~~
Nginx487
Looks like your god asked you lots of other things. He asked your fascist
state to hate your neighbors for belonging to other nationality and
(unfortunatel) being weaker than you, asked you to kill them, steal their
homes, destroy their culture. He asked you to hate with a hysterical, medieval
hatered successful countries like the US (which is probably responsible for
all your problems according to state propaganda), threatening to turn them
"into the nuclear dust" (say hello to Mr.Kiselev). He asked you to hate your
ethnic minorities, forbid them to learn their mother tongue and their culture
- you teach them New Russian History instead, with "Stalin the Effective
Manager". He asked you to throw into prison everyone who had courage to tell
the truth about your neo-nazi state, and hate everyone for being wrong color,
faith, sexual orientation, political views or hating just someone. You are
right, I'm a former Russian citizen. I did not renounce my citizenship, I just
do not recognize our totalitarian regime as a legitimate state.

~~~
dang
Using HN for flamewar like this will get you banned here, so please don't.

More generally, please stop posting nationalistic flamebait to HN. You've
unfortunately done that quite a bit, and it's not ok. I understand that being
an immigrant from a country is a special case, more complex than simple
prejudice, but the internet doesn't handle such nuances.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
tareqak
I am genuinely confused by the sentiment of my fellow commenters saying that
this press release sounds like “satire”, “butt-hurt”, “whiny”, “sour grapes”,
and “aggressive” [0][0][1][2][3].

I have the following questions for you all if you have the time to answer
them.

1\. What should an official press release from an leading official of a
country’s national space program read like? If you have one or more examples,
then please do share.

2\. Should this official press release make mention of the opinions of foreign
space scientists / foreign space officials and address those opinions, or
should this official press release make no mention of them?

3\. If one of the long-term goals of space travel is to colonize another
planet in order to avoid human extinction in the case of a catastrophic world
war, then is not nationalism in human space flight antithetical to that goal?
Quote from Elon Musk: “If there’s a third world war we want to make sure
there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring it back
and shorten the length of the dark ages” [4].

4\. One of the shortcomings of Soyuz seems to basically come down to some form
of “it is old”. Given that this forum is Hacker News and we routinely have
posts about how some specific instances of old technology have no modern
viable successors with similar track records, or old ideas being rediscovered
in newer technology (e.g. language features that existed in Common Lisp for
decades), why does the sentiment for Soyuz so differently with with that of
old technology like older programming languages or older but still used chip
designs?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478044)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478215)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478087)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23478013)

[4] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/11/elon-
musk...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/11/elon-musk-
colonise-mars-third-world-war)

~~~
fastball
Did you read it? Pretty ironic you are decrying nationalism when these
comments from Rogozin came across as very nationalistic, effectively "you guys
don't appreciate how much Russia has done for you – oh and by the way our
rockets are still better than yours even though they are clearly not". There
were also a lot of things that I found pretty petulant in tone. This one stood
out to me:

> America is a very large country, and a large country should be benevolent
> and noble. However, some of my colleagues (not me, of course — I have no
> illusions about the partners after working as Russia’s representative to
> NATO) did not receive any words of gratitude or professional noble response,
> although they could fully count on that.

If that's not the kind of comment that discourages collaboration, I don't know
what is. I mean it doesn't even make sense – what does a country's size have
to do with "being noble"?

~~~
tareqak
I read it. Here is one quote

> In this connection, I note another strange moment seen in not only the
> ‘expert’ statements, but also coming from the side of NASA officials — such
> as Stephanie Schierholz, who have already started making wreaths to bury the
> Russian Soyuz spacecraft alive.

Stephanie Schierholz is Lead Spokesperson, Public Affairs Specialist for Human
Spaceflight for NASA. I am trying to find evidence for this Soyuz wreath, or
if it was a different event that was misunderstood.

------
Stierlitz
Didn't anyone else notice that Elon Musk never met with President Donald J.
Trump at the launch site.

~~~
walls
Oh no? Took about 20 seconds to find this:

[https://nypost.com/2020/05/30/elon-musks-historic-spacex-
mis...](https://nypost.com/2020/05/30/elon-musks-historic-spacex-mission-
makes-successful-launch/)

------
BFatts
This sounds really whiney... almost like Trump drafted it for him.

------
YarickR2
I hope they fire fat bastard. Crap, he lost so many leads , during Stalin rule
he would be executed for being traitor and spy.

