Putin dissolves Roscosmos, will restructure it as a state-run corporation
engadget.com
engadget.com
To add a bit more value to my shorter post, here is a partial list of the extreme corruption in industries that Putin's government has gifted to friends of the President;
Russian Railways: http://www.reuters.com/article/russia-capitalism-railways-sp...
Gunvor Energy Trading: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8175406/...
Bank Rossiya: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/world/europe/it-pays-to-be...
Gazprom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazprom#Establishment_of_gover...
Etc. etc. As a final comparison.. The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver cost ~$1.7B Canadian.. The Sochi Olympics cost upwards of $51B.
The scale of graft is staggering.
And I am afraid that moving parts of Khrunichev Institute out of Moscow (for example — it happens independently of top-level restructuring) will deal more damage than formal rearrangement of top-level control.
http://spacenews.com/russia-moves-forward-with-industry-cons...
I'm with you on the rest though, more than just changing the board members, dismantling the education pipeline or installing lackeys in the production facilities will do much more long term harm.
This is a simplification that putin's propaganda machine loves so much. Today's Russia isn't much different from the 90s, except the portrayal in tv and the fact that instead of looting soviet relics, raiders destroy succesfull companies that have been built in the last 20 years.
Could put a damper, yes. But the reasons are mostly Russia own internal problems, not stiff external competition. SpaceX does superb technical work for each dollar spent, but they still have a road to travel to reach technical achievements of even Soviet Union 1980-s level. And it's hard to compete with government-subsidized, R&D-already-recouped and massively manufactured tech.
Not that SpaceX doesn't go there. In fact, they demonstrate very good technical and economical results. It's just too different - USSR Academy of Sciences focused work of decades on, say, material science and Energomash-level of first stage engine perfection. SpaceX has a huge boost in reuseability area and much more modern technologies - they just have a lot to catch up to. Yet at the same time Russia - could - enjoy both the wealth of institutionalized rocketry knowledge and quite inexpensive workforce - in exactly those technical areas which are required for space which could be hard to beat - even to Elon Musk.
It's really sad state of affairs in Russia - and unfortunately space isn't the only one area suffering.
If you ask me, if you are a rocket company and don't make your own engines you are not a rocket company. External forces can instantly turn you into an expensive fuel and liquid oxygen tank manufacturing company that can't launch a paperclip into orbit.
The smartest thing SpaceX has done, perhaps by accident or genius, was to design and manufacture their own engines. Well, their own everything in their case.
ULA charges USD $400 million for a launch and SpaceX under $200 million (I think it's $160). One is a perfect example of what happens when private enterprise and capitalism go to work and the other is representative of anything government touches, funds or insists on keeping alive despite reality. The same mechanism that gives you billion dollar websites and a myriad of programs that do nothing but burn money a N times what a more effective private effort could accomplish.
You can launch three SpaceX rockets for the price of one ULA. And now that they are landing them and will start to re-use them the equation might approach a ridiculous case of perhaps 10 launches for every 1 from ULA.
If you want to really understand where things are, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HADsoywAEuU
You really have to grok this before understanding the entire picture.
What Russia does doesn't matter any more. Nobody is going to be able to compete with what Musk and his team have created. I am not sure most realize how much of a game-changer this will be.