Russian launch technology is very advanced and inexpensive, being based, as it is, on existing military R&D. It has been licensed to other space-aspiring countries. India's troubled Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is based on Russian technology, reports Stratfor. Many private satellite launching firms - Australian and others - find Russian offerings commercially irresistible. Russia - unlike the US - places no restrictions on the types of load launched to space with its rockets.
Still, launch technologies are simple matters. Until 1995, Russia launched more loads annually than the rest of the world combined - despite its depleted budget (less than Brazil's). But Russia's space shuttle program, the Energia-Buran, was its last big investment in R&D. It was put to rest in 1988. Perhaps as a result, Russia failed dismally to deliver on its end of the $660 million ISS bargain with NASA. This has cost NASA well over $3 billion in re-planning.
The living quarters of the International Space Station (ISS), codenamed "Zvezda", launched two years late, failed to meet the onerous quality criteria of the Americans. It is noisy and inadequately protected against meteorites, reported "The Economist". Russia continues to supply the astronauts and has just launched from Baikonur a Progress M1-8 cargo ship with 2.4 tons of food, fuel, water, and oxygen.
The dark side of Russia's space industry is its sales of missile technology to failed and rogue states throughout the world. Timothy McCarthy and Victor Mizin of the U.S. Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote in the "International Herald Tribune in November 2001: "[U.S. policy to date] leaves unsolved the key structural problem that contributes to illegal sales: over-capacity in the Russian missile and space industry and the inability or unwillingness of Moscow to do anything about it … There is simply too much industry [in Russia] chasing too few legitimate dollars, rubles or euros. [Downsizing] and restructuring must be a major part of any initiative that seeks to stop Russian missile firms from selling 'excess production' to those who should not have them."
The official space industry has little choice but to resort to missile proliferation for its survival. The Russian domestic market is inefficient, technologically backward, and lacks venture capital. It is thus unable to foster innovation and reward innovators in the space industry. Its biggest clients - government and budget-funded agencies - rarely pay or pay late. Prices for space-related services do not reflect market realities.
According to fas.org's comprehensive survey of the Russian space industry, investment in replacement of capital assets deteriorated from 9 percent in 1998 to 0.5 percent in 1994. In the same period, costs of materials shot up 382 times, cost of hardware services went up by 172 times, while labour costs increased 82-fold. The average salary in the space industry, once a multiple of the Russian average wage, has now fallen beneath it. The resulting brain drain was crippling. More than 35 percent of all workers left - and more than half of all the experts.
Private firms are doing somewhat better, though. A Russian company unveiled, two weeks ago, a reusable vehicle for space tourism. The ticket price - $100,000 for a 3-minutes trip. One hundred tickets were already sold. The mock-up was exposed to the public in a Russian air base.
As opposed to grandiosity-stricken Russia, Kazakhstan has few pretensions to being anything but a convenient launching pad. It reluctantly rents out Baikonur, its main site, to Russia for an $115 million a year. Russia pays late, reports accidents even later, and pollutes the area frequently. Baikonur is only one of a few civilian launch sites (Kapustin Yar, Plesetsk).
It is supposed to be abandoned by Russia in favor of Svobodny, a new (1997) site.
Kazakhstan expressed interest in a Russian-Kazakh-Ukrainian carrier rocket, the Sodruzhestvo. It is even budgeted for in the Russian-Kazakh space program budget 2000-2005. But both the Russians and the Ukrainians were unable to cough up the necessary funds and the project was put on indefinite hold.