Space expert about Putin’s meeting with young employees: “I expected more”

“The existence of individual countries and the preservation of their status without space will soon become impossible. This is becoming more and more interesting…” This is how President Vladimir Putin began his meeting with young employees of the space industry in Korolev. Before this, VVP walked through the workshops of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, talked with the industry leadership, and, in general, began the conversation quite prepared.

The young people did not waste their time – they immediately announced the most pressing problems of the industry: low salaries for employees, bureaucracy. Energia engineer Anton Kulikov, for example, informed the head of state that while the Russian space industry is bogged down in paperwork, the world astronautics is rapidly developing, constellations of hundreds and even thousands of satellites are being created. Today, according to him, enterprises lack flexibility, due to an overabundance of control, deadlines are missed, and the cost of projects is rising.

“The time has come to get together with leading developers and discuss the current regulatory framework; it should be the core of the work, and not the proverbial spoke in the wheel,” Anton concluded.

Putin generally agreed with the young scientist and promised to “adapt the regulatory framework to the realities of today,” but without fanaticism. Otherwise, if control is weakened too much, “there may be failures, like with Luna-25.” And the president, in his words, was very offended when she landed on the moon differently than expected.

Meanwhile, Denis Demin, head of the design department of the NPO Lavochkin, assured the head of state that the team, having carefully analyzed the mistakes, did not give up.

The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, who was present in the hall, confirmed that the next launch under this program is planned for 2027, but you can try to move the deadline to the left, to 2026.

The chief designer of small spacecraft, Ivan Zimin from the Reshetnev company, drew Vladimir Putin’s attention to the fact that while talking about the Sphere project, an analogue of Elon Musk’s satellite communication system, we have completely forgotten about geostationary space systems, which, according to him, are not supported by government funding.

Vladimir Putin expressed sincere surprise, saying that satellite constellations must necessarily be financed from the state treasury.

“Everything should work in one circuit,” he said and for some reason immediately turned his attention to the “Sphere.” – This was the “Ether” project. At one of my public appearances I made a mistake and called it “Sphere”. I then say to the former general director of Roscosmos: “Dim, I’m sorry, I misspoke,” I said on “Ether” “Sphere.” He: “Nothing, the project is now called “Sphere”, we have already rewritten everything.”

None of those present gave Putin any clues as to why geostationary satellites and the Sphere system are not united into one circuit.

According to the editor of the GLONASS Bulletin magazine, Konstantin Kreidenko, who commented on this issue for MK, geostationary space systems, by and large, are a completely different system, not low-orbit, like Sphere.

“It’s very difficult to talk about it working in conjunction with Sphere,” says Kreidenko. – This is not provided for by the Sphere project. I think the young scientist raised the issue of allocating government funding for new geostationary satellites, since the old ones are coming to an end. And it takes from 2 to 4 years to create new ones.

But personally, I would raise another question at this meeting: why are constellations of satellites being created in the first place? To provide some service on Earth – right? First, you need to receive an order from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other ministries and departments, and then create groups. Unfortunately, I have not yet heard any serious discussion in this vein.

There is another topic that is somehow not customary to talk about. We all know that there is a component that controls satellite constellations, and there is consumer equipment – what you and I use. How are we developing it now? For example, the Chinese have made a smartphone that can receive SMS messages from a communications satellite directly. What is it like?!

To be honest, I expected from the last meeting of the president with industry employees a more serious approach, a conversation about the country’s needs in space development, about the technical capabilities of our space technology, a look beyond the horizon of 15 years.

In general, the only positive aspect of the meeting is that the president now has a desire for dialogue and that he paid attention to the space industry. Now we will wait for the result.