Russia & U.S. – cooperation and rivalry in space

Business Week writes about the symbiotic relationship between Russia and the U.S. in space exploration. It re-iterates the biggest upcoming situation—that for five years or more, the U.S. will depend on Russia to get its astronauts into space. After the shuttle retires, only the Russian Soyuz will be available to ferry people to the International Space Station.

Competing again?

But will the two national have another race to the moon? Business Week suggest this may happen, and that Russia—this time—is starting out behind. But this assumes that America’s new Constellation space vehicles (launcher Ares, and crew vehicle Orion) will be ready in 2015. That seems unlikely now. The project is behind schedule and under-funded.

If the Russians actually have their new spacecraft (a successor to Soyuz) is ready by the scheduled date of 2018, it may be flying the same time as Orion—or even before.

American program costly; Russian program seems almost cheap

It’s also interesting to note that the new Russian space system is estimated to cost $25 million. The American Costellation project (admittedly, a whole project and not just a space transportation system) comes with an estimated $92 billion price tag.

In any case, if Russia and the U.S. race again to the moon, they can probably expect at least one more competitor, China, to be in the race. My guess? The U.S. will scale down it’s program but still go to the moon. Russia may be less of a competitor than China. I think China is more serious than either Russia or the U.S. about making space travel a priority.

Everyone is also talking about going to Mars, but I think nobody will make a serious attempt for decades.

But, that’s just a guess.