Bob Zimmerman says that it seems to be returning to the Soviet era. The Russians never learned how markets and competition actually work. As he notes, it’s not clear that this will help with their endemic quality issues.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Mind boggling financial irregularities at Roscosmos.”
Is no irregularity…is plan from
Supreme SovietComrade PutinYou simply can’t think of Russia in terms of what we know in the U.S. Everything in daily life is black market and suspicion. That never changed with all the political changes.
My ex-wife would say astounding things as if they were quite normal. She now works for the state of California. Which appears a perfect fit for her… although she is now quite isolated since the Russians in Sacramento are actually mostly Ukrainian but she’s Russian-Russian from Crimea before the annex. She thinks Putin is the man!
“She thinks Putin is the man!”
Compared to Obama, she’s right.
That’s not fair, Ed. We should be comparing Obama to the lint in my naval.
It is completely fair. That is why it stings.
I was in engineering grad school in the nascent days of commercial crew and a former astronaut came to give a lecture. One of her issues with commercial crew, was if these contractors are left to their own devices to design, build, and operate a vehicle, NASA will not have satisfactory access to design and test documents, etc. and astronaut safety will be compromised.
It seemed ridiculous then and even more ridiculous now that she thought she gets more transparency from the former Soviet Union than from domestic suppliers.
I’d like to hear a frank assessment of the Russian space industry from NASA. Not Charlie Bolden’s “we’re all professional and we all get along great despite x,y,z nonsense”.
“I’d like to hear a frank assessment of the Russian space industry from NASA. ”
As an organization, I doubt NASA could give one. I am sure there are many people who work at NASA who could but…
Do you think it would be a frank assessment, coming from NASA? Would NASA give a frank assessment of the American space industry? Because the string of failures for NASA is pretty long.
These developments are rather shocking. NASA is lucky that space isn’t important to politicians and that the public is uninformed.
You better believe it.
As it is, want to take any bets on whether the Russian space “industry” that builds Soyuz would pass Commercial Crew Program criteria?
[Cue the laugh track]
Is there any way to evaluate at this point if riding a Soyuz is any “safer” than would be hopping on a Dragon V1 with diving gear? My (strange to my own ears) first thought is that after almost 50 years of flight experience with it I’d personally, possibly, take the Soyuz – a grandfathering effect. But is it “more” of a gamble than Dragon?
This is not to deride the skills of any individual Russian or team of Russians, but given the system they’ve been caught up with in one form or another since 1917…
I just sent an op-ed to Space News that the argument that Soyuz is “safe” is gone. Time to fly American.
When can we expect to see it?