Medvedev Wants Russia To Go To Mars
Russia currently occupies a strange position in space travel. Russia is now the only nation regularly flying manned missions, now that the American shuttle programme has been discontinued. Some fifty years after Sputnik fired the first gun on the space race, Russia is very much alone in space once more. All travel to and from the International Space Station, as well as the launching of payloads for space agencies worldwide will be achieved by launches from Russian pads with Soyuz spacecrafts. Yet, the Soyuz design has been in operation since the mid 60s: this was the rocket that was supposed to take cosmonauts to the moon.
This is of course a reductive point of view: Soyuz isn’t the same craft it was in the 60s, and technology has kept pace with progress as far as possible (though the TMA version only recently made interior changes to make the craft less cramped). The cramped Soyuz cockpit is hardly like Holidays to Barbados, but it’s comfortable enough. Soyuz remains the most efficient and cost effective way to travel to space, and is virtually unchallenged by a National Space Policy that is grounding NASA’s ambitions (though probably completely justifiably).
But Russia’s monopoly will not last long, and it won’t just be NASA in competition with them. Both China and India are becoming significant developers of new rocketry, and China has already sent three crews into space. Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has conceded that Russia can no longer regularly afford to send missions into space without international collaboration. He is nonetheless enthusiastic about focusing the Khrunichev research centres plans. Russia is particularly keen to be the first nation to Mars, and has been conducting an experiment (Mars 500) that simulates the two years of confinement that any trip to the red Tropical Sky of Mars would include.
With China’s Shenzou and India’s Orbital Vehicle Programs joining the spaceflight fracas, the future of Russian spaceflight will have to be secured with craft beyond Soyuz’s scope. In the meantime, Russia has a degree of private sector interest that no competitors can pretend to emulate. Whether you want to see the stars or hold Weddings Abroad , you can assure your place on a Soyuz craft with fifty million dollars per head.
