The Challenges Facing the Russian Space Industry
The organizations that put the first man in space are largely structurally unchanged despite a long-term funding reduction. Slow-moving reforms are not enough to withstand new live player competition.
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Roscosmos is the state-owned enterprise encompassing effectively the entirety of the Russian space program and space industry. Technically created in 2016, Roscosmos succeeded the Russian Space Agency that existed from 1992 until then, and which itself succeeded the Soviet space program housed under the Soviet Ministry of General Machine-Building. This makes Roscosmos the institution that achieved the launches of the first man-made satellite, the first human spaceflight, and the first space station in Earth’s orbit, among other space firsts. It also makes Roscosmos the institution that built and launched the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the long-range missiles which make global nuclear strikes possible and which must travel through space to deliver their payloads. Much space technology, from rockets to global positioning satellites, is tantamount to highly advanced military technology and is viewed this way by the governments that sponsor its costly research and development. For decades, Roscosmos was clearly the world’s first or second-most important space program and thus a key institution underwriting the global balance of power. But since 2015 or so, Roscosmos has fallen behind on a number of dimensions.