Russia's Space Dream: A Glorious Past, an Uncertain Future

Author: Abaiter
Reviewer: Shiguang

  Russia has a uniquely dramatic history of spaceflight. Following its development over time, this article offers a brief account, analysis, and review of the Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russian space programs along two main threads: theory and engineering. For each spaceflight theory, we will introduce its mechanical principles and engineering applications from a quantitative perspective. For each mission, we will collect as much information as possible about its scientific objectives, payload parameters, and instruments. For each space transportation system, we will give figures such as its payload capacity to different orbits and its specific impulse. This will let us see directly how Russian and Soviet spaceflight rose and declined, before considering one question at the end: where does the future of Russian spaceflight lie? Without further ado, let us go back more than a century and see where modern spaceflight began its journey from dream to reality.

The Space Dream Begins

  If we traveled back to a village in Russia's Ryazan Governorate in the 1860s, we might see a group of lively children. If one of them was always holding a book or earnestly telling others about his extraordinary ideas, we had better not disturb him: he might well be the future father of rocketry, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The fifth child in his family, Tsiolkovsky was bright from birth and possessed an almost obsessive love of and longing for the unknown. He loved reading and daydreaming. He often imagined how beautiful the view would be if he could climb as high as a cat. Yet Tsiolkovsky's upbringing was full of hardship. At the age of ten, he contracted scarlet fever after going skiing. Although he survived, he lost almost all of his hearing. His companions grew distant from him, so he spent his days immersed in the worlds created by books and fantasy, finding solace there.

  As he grew older, Tsiolkovsky's family's limited means and his impaired hearing kept him from completing a conventional education. His father believed that he deserved a higher education, however, and sent him to Moscow. There, Tsiolkovsky found that he could not enroll in a school, so he studied in libraries instead. During this period, he read widely and encountered cutting-edge theories and ideas. In 1977, he passed the examination for rural teachers and became a secondary-school teacher. In his rented home, Tsiolkovsky built a laboratory of his own. Unaware of earlier work, he spent some time independently deriving theories about gases that had already been discovered. His interests later shifted to aviation and spaceflight, and he eventually derived the rocket equation. With a pen, he began transforming human spaceflight from an impractical fantasy into an endeavor that could be put into practice.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

  Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation is as follows:

$v = \omega ln (\frac{m}{k})$

  Here, v is the rocket’s terminal velocity, ω is the velocity of the exhaust gas relative to the rocket itself, and $\frac{m}{k}$ is the ratio of the rocket’s initial mass to its final mass. The equation primarily tells us that the more mass a rocket loses by expelling gas backward, the faster it travels. This is not difficult to understand and may even sound self-evident, but its implications are profound. The equation shows that when $ln(\frac{m}{k})$ is greater than 1—in other words, when $\frac{m}{k}$ is greater than the natural constant e, or approximately 2.72—the rocket itself travels faster than the gas it expels. This is somewhat surprising, because common sense tells us that an object cannot be accelerated to v by the effect of something moving at a constant speed below v. How, then, does a rocket do it? The key is that a rocket is an object of variable mass: as it expels gas, its own mass decreases accordingly. The rocket and the expelled gas therefore form a momentum-conserving system. At every moment, from an inertial frame moving at the rocket’s velocity, the rocket is expelling gas backward and the body of the rocket is accelerating. According to this theory, even if a rocket expelled gas at the speed of a human breath, given enough time it could accelerate to the speed of light. Another crucial implication is that it sets the minimum ratio between the mass of the fuel and that of the rest of the rocket. In other words, at a fixed exhaust velocity, the greater the payload mass needed for a rocket to reach a given speed, the more fuel it must carry. The higher the exhaust velocity, the higher the ratio of payload mass to fuel mass can be. This is why electric propulsion is being developed today. Electric propulsion can accelerate charged particles to very high velocities, reducing the mass of fuel required and allowing a larger payload to be carried or a higher travel speed to be reached. Even today, then, Tsiolkovsky’s equation continues both to constrain and to guide the development of human spaceflight.

  Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation made his name immortal, but one of his remarks has been no less influential: the familiar words, “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” Generations of spaceflight pioneers have treated this sentence as a sacred flame. What many people do not know is the second half: “At first, they will cautiously venture beyond the atmosphere, and then they will conquer the Solar System.” The history of Soviet spaceflight would bear out that latter prophecy.

  Getting beyond the atmosphere was no easy task. After the October Revolution, Soviet Russia faced a bleak economy and considerable domestic turmoil. During the New Economic Policy and the Five-Year Plans, the Soviet Union prioritized heavy industry vital to the country's survival. Spaceflight was then being explored and attempted only on a small scale worldwide, so the Soviet Union did not devote much effort to it either. The world soon descended into the smoke of the Second World War. Yet it was during that war that the German development and deployment of the V-2 rocket under Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the Soviet leadership. They quickly realized that this was an important future direction for national defense and the arms industry—and the shadow of humanity's future cast into the present. Thus a man was released from a Siberian prison labor camp. He would prove to be the most important figure in the history of Soviet spaceflight: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev

  Korolev was born in 1907 in Zhytomyr, in the Ukrainian Republic of the Soviet Union. From childhood, he was fascinated by anything that could fly. He even tried to fly like a bird by using bedsheets as wings. Once he understood that he could not become a bird, he realized that humans needed aerodynamics to take to the sky. He studied the subject and independently designed a successful glider. In 1929, Korolev, by then a university graduate and aircraft designer, visited the father of spaceflight mentioned earlier, Tsiolkovsky. Their meeting changed the history of Soviet spaceflight. It was then that Korolev resolved to shift his work from aviation to spaceflight, from within the atmosphere to beyond it.

  In 1931, Korolev and other Soviet rocket enthusiasts formed the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion and began developing rocket engines. When people of great intelligence and great ambition work together, they can produce first-rate results with extraordinary speed. In 1933, the group created the world's first liquid-oxygen-and-gasoline rocket engine. Soon afterward, it test-launched the Soviet Union's first liquid-fueled rocket. That same year, the Soviet Union established the world's first rocket research institute, with Korolev as its deputy director.

  As the Soviet purges expanded, however, Korolev was caught up in them and sent to Siberia. Accounts differ as to why he was imprisoned. Some believe that he was simply a victim of the widening purges, while others think the state deliberately jailed him to protect him amid the campaign. In any event, before long he was transferred to a special prison, where he continued his rocket research. In the bitter cold of Siberia, Korolev had only his profound thoughts, paper, and pen for company. Yet the drawings that emerged from that prison sent the Soviet Union's first generation of missiles and its medium-range missiles soaring into the sky. No one knows how he spent each day and night in prison or what he thought about. I imagine, however, that his thoughts must have transcended his own honor and disgrace, even the boundaries of nations and the barriers of ideology, and flown into the endless reaches of space. Perhaps on every sleepless night he was already riding the rockets he would later design, looking back at Earth from beyond the atmosphere and pondering human survival and existence.

  During the Second World War, Korolev was released because the state needed him; he was later rehabilitated. After the war, he became chief designer of Soviet ballistic missiles. In 1947, the Soviet Union launched its first prototype ballistic rocket. In 1949, its first missile, the R-1A, was launched successfully. In 1957, the R-7, humanity's first intercontinental ballistic missile, completed a successful test flight. The Soviet Union had now cautiously ventured beyond the atmosphere. Its next step was to launch larger rockets, place satellites in Earth orbit, and then advance farther into the Solar System. Following the course Tsiolkovsky had described, Soviet spaceflight entered its years of glory.

Years of Glory

  In 1957, as the R-7 missile made its first flight, a rocket adapted from the R-7 was also completed: the Sputnik launch vehicle. As its name suggested, it would carry humanity's first artificial satellite into space. The satellite was called Sputnik 1. It was a metal sphere 0.58 m in diameter and weighed 83.6 kg. Its construction was not complex. It contained two radio transmitters and 4 antennas for studying the properties of radio transmission through the ionosphere and for communicating with the ground. It also carried a barometer and a thermometer to record physical parameters in the upper atmosphere. The satellite's scientific objectives were simple, but its significance was immense: for the first time, humanity would place an artificial object in Earth orbit. A dream dating back to the age of Newton was at last about to become reality.

Sputnik 1

  On October 4, 1957, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Sputnik 1 rose into the sky aboard a Sputnik launch vehicle with a thunderous roar. Good news soon arrived: the satellite had entered orbit successfully. People on the ground detected the signal it transmitted and obtained scientific data from space for the first time. They cheered both the mission's success and the Soviet Union's early lead over the United States in the Space Race.

  No account of Soviet spaceflight can avoid the United States. The first artificial satellite's scientific objectives were, as we can see, quite limited. The main force driving both it and its launch vehicle to be developed and launched so quickly was their political significance. Launching the first artificial Earth satellite before the United States would demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet system and the sophistication of Soviet technology. It would help raise national pride, stabilize the socialist system, advance the international communist movement, and establish a powerful international image that could bring diplomatic victories. Driven by the same objective, the Soviet Union promptly launched the second Earth satellite on November 3 that same year. This mission sent a small dog, Laika, into space.

Laika

  This satellite, including the dog, had a mass of 508.3 kg, a substantial increase over the first. On May 15 of the following year, Sputnik 3, with a mass of 1,327 kg, was likewise launched successfully and placed in orbit. The Sputnik launch vehicle carried out all of these launches, so its performance parameters deserve a brief introduction:

• Rocket configuration: one core stage + four conical boosters.
• Overall parameters: total length 29.167 m; maximum base diameter 10.3 m; liftoff mass 267.3 t; liftoff thrust 3,904.4 kN; thrust-to-weight ratio 1.49; low Earth orbit payload capacity 1,327 kg.
• Booster parameters: total length 19.8 m; diameter 2.68 m; liftoff mass 42.5 t; structural mass 3.5 t; propellant mass 39 t; RD-107 engine, each with four main combustion chambers and two vernier chambers; liquid oxygen/kerosene propellant; sea-level thrust 821 kN; main engine sea-level specific impulse 2,452.5 N·s/kg and vernier specific impulse 2,442 N·s/kg; operating time 120 s.
• Core-stage parameters: length 28.75 m; diameter 2.95 m; liftoff mass 95.7 t; structural mass 7.2 t; propellant mass 88.5 t; RD-108 engine; the same propellant as the boosters; rated total sea-level thrust 722.3 kN, with a corresponding derated value of 620.3 kN; total vacuum thrust 912.3 kN; vacuum specific impulse 3,021.5 N·s/kg; operating time 300 s.

  Having conquered low Earth orbit, the Soviet Union set its sights on the nearest large natural body: the Moon. The Luna launch vehicle was soon developed from the Sputnik rocket. It departed from the single-stage configuration and used a multistage rocket for the first time. Its longer operating time allowed it to send an artificial object into lunar orbit.

  On January 2, 1959, Luna 1 lifted off from Baikonur aboard a Luna launch vehicle. Two days later, it flew past the Moon at a distance equal to 1/80 of the Earth–Moon distance. Because the Moon's gravitational field did not capture it, Luna 1 ultimately became an artificial planet of the Solar System, orbiting the Sun like Earth. It was the first artificial object launched by humanity to escape Earth's gravity. The Soviet government announced that humanity's first lunar probe had passed close to the Moon. The news instantly made headlines around the world, and the Soviet–American race to the Moon began.

  Luna 1 had been intended to strike the Moon, but a trajectory error caused it to miss. The Soviet Union clearly had no intention of stopping there. On September 12 of the same year, Luna 2 rose into the sky and followed a corrected path toward the Moon. This time, an object thrown by human hands struck the surface of a body beyond Earth for the first time. Luna 2's radio communications equipment was destroyed on impact, ending its contact with Earth, but the data transmitted before the collision still provided important information: the Moon had no magnetic field and no radiation belts comparable to Earth's Van Allen belts. The American Explorer 1 satellite had discovered the Van Allen belts in 1958. Discovering them on the first passage through them demonstrated the comparatively meticulous character of American spaceflight work—the same meticulousness that made the Apollo program possible.

  The Soviet lunar program continued at full speed. Just one month after Luna 2 was launched, Luna 3 lifted off successfully and took humanity's first photograph of the far side of the Moon. Long-term tidal locking has made the Moon's rotation and orbital periods tend toward the same value, so the same side always faces Earth. We call this the near side of the Moon. Luna 3 allowed us to overcome billions of years of tidal locking and glimpse the appearance of the far side for the first time.

The far side of the Moon

  Running in parallel with the lunar program was the Soviet crewed spaceflight program. On August 19, 1960, Sputnik 5 was launched. It was an experimental spacecraft in the Soviet Vostok program and carried 2 Soviet space dogs, Belka and Strelka, 1 gray rabbit, 40 mice, 2 rats, and a number of flies, plants, and fungi. The spacecraft returned successfully the next day, bringing every living passenger back unharmed. Strelka even gave birth to 6 puppies afterward. One wonders whether she ever told her children about the time she looked down at Earth from space.

  Perhaps not, because a dog's language may not be able to convey so much information. That task would require a human. The success of Sputnik 5 proved that crewed spaceflight was feasible. The following year, on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin entered the world's first crewed spacecraft, Vostok 1, and rode a Vostok launch vehicle into space.

Yuri Gagarin

  “The spacecraft is operating normally. I can see Earth through the porthole. Everything is proceeding according to plan.” Eight minutes later, radio waves from space carried this message. The first human being to enter space was reporting his safety to Mother Earth. Two hours later, after the fastest trip around the world in history, Gagarin and his spacecraft reentered the atmosphere. At an altitude of 7 km, Gagarin separated from the spacecraft, opened his parachute, and made a successful soft landing. The spacecraft's parachute apparently did not slow it successfully: witnesses said that it was still traveling at considerable speed when it struck the ground. Gagarin, however, stood on solid earth once again. According to one account, women from a nearby farming family recoiled in terror when they saw him descend from the sky in his strange clothing. They relaxed only after Gagarin told them in Russian that he was a Soviet citizen just like them and that what he needed now was a telephone so he could call Moscow.

  The Soviet Union had no shortage of tough men like Gagarin, nor of tough women. In 1963, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, the first woman in space, also flew aboard a Vostok spacecraft. She spent more than 70 hours in space and orbited Earth 48 times. The photographs of Earth's atmosphere she took during the flight later became important evidence for identifying the top of the atmosphere. She is still alive and remains active in public life, and she hopes to take part in an expedition to Mars. It is worth noting that the proposal adopted last year to amend the Russian constitution with respect to presidential terms was originally submitted by her. After the first woman entered space, the Soviet Union went on to achieve humanity's first multi-person spaceflight and first spacewalk.

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova

  Crewed spaceflight is a systems-engineering undertaking, but the rocket that carries the astronauts into space is especially important. The Vostok launch vehicle had two operating modes, one for lunar exploration and the other for crewed spaceflight. Because of its demanding payload requirements, its liftoff mass was far greater than that of earlier rockets. Its detailed parameters are shown below:

  The success of the Soviet crewed space program caused a sensation. It also gave Soviet spaceflight engineers enormous courage and confidence, convincing them that the human body could conquer more distant reaches of space. Their next objective was, of course, the Moon. By then, in 1962, the Soviet Union had successfully launched humanity's first probe to fly past Mars. This led them to believe that, given a rocket with greater thrust, humans could be sent to the Moon. The Molniya rocket was created to meet that need. In 1966, Luna 9, carried by a Molniya, achieved the first soft landing of a human-made probe on the lunar surface.

  Molniya was the first rocket whose core had three stages. Its principal performance parameters were as follows:

• Dimensions and mass:
  • Total length: 43.44 m
  • Maximum core diameter: 2.99 m
  • Liftoff mass: 305000 kg
• Boosters:
  • Quantity: 4
  • Engine: RD-107-8D74K
  • Propellant: kerosene/liquid oxygen
  • Booster thrust: 994.7 kN
  • Operating time: 119 s
• First stage:
  • Engine: 1 RD-108-8D75K
  • Propellant: kerosene/liquid oxygen
  • Thrust per engine: 940.8 kN
  • Operating time: 301 s
• Second stage:
  • Engine: 1 RD-0108
  • Propellant: kerosene/liquid oxygen
  • Thrust per engine: 294 kN
  • Operating time: 200 s
• Third stage:
  • Engine: 1 S1-5400
  • Propellant: kerosene/liquid oxygen
  • Thrust per engine: 66.7 kN
  • Operating time: 192 s
• Payload capacity:
  • Low Earth orbit: 6783 kg
  • Geosynchronous orbit: 1600 kg

  That same year, Venera 3, launched aboard a Molniya, also achieved humanity's first probe encounter with and hard landing on Venus. Later, in 1975, Molniya sent Venera 9 into orbit, and the probe returned what remains humanity's only photograph of Venus. But that comes later in the story.

  Another high-capacity rocket, Proton, was also developed around this time. It later became one of the workhorses of Russian space transportation and carried out many space-station launches.

  Yet it was clear that a crewed lunar landing would require an even more powerful rocket. The United States was then developing the Saturn V, one of the highest-thrust rockets in human history. Unwilling to fall behind, the Soviet Union developed the N-1, which became the largest firework in human history, bar none.

  Development of the N-1 was completed in 1965, and it underwent 4 launches between 1969 and 1972. Every launch failed, and the first 3 ended in explosions close to the ground that caused enormous damage. The N-1's first stage had 30 engines, commanded by the KORD thrust-control system. Problems with KORD caused the first two failures. The first failure occurred because the frequency of the KORD system was similar to the first stage's resonant frequency. This made KORD overly sensitive to a voltage fluctuation in engine No. 12, which it mistakenly interpreted as a failure, and it shut the engine down. Because thrust had to remain balanced, shutting down one engine triggered a chain reaction that ultimately shut down every engine. The rocket lost thrust, coasted freely, and struck the ground and exploded 52 km away. The second failure began when an engine ingested foreign debris and exploded. KORD immediately issued shutdown commands to the other engines, causing the rocket to fall back onto the launch pad and produce the largest non-nuclear explosion in human history. The third and fourth launches came closer to success, but they failed because of problems that could have been found during ground testing. In short, all 4 failures were virtually inevitable. With funding in short supply, different chief engineers and engineering departments struggled to cooperate effectively because of conflicts of interest, while Korolev's death left the development team even more leaderless. Objectively speaking, controlling 30 high-thrust engines simultaneously may simply have been extremely difficult when computer technology was still immature. All these factors brought about the N-1's defeat. After the United States succeeded in landing on the Moon, the Soviet Union gradually abandoned both the N-1 and its crewed lunar-landing program. Yet the N-1 laid the groundwork for the still more powerful Energia rocket, which would become the final crescendo in the history of Soviet spaceflight.

The Final Crescendo

  After losing the Moon race, the Soviet Union turned to other fields. In space stations, it launched Salyut 1, humanity's first space station, in 1971. It was launched by the Proton-M rocket mentioned earlier. Because that rocket used the highly toxic propellant unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, it was jokingly called the “ultimate toxic launch.” That same year, the Mars 2 probe achieved humanity's first hard landing on Mars. Just 5 days later, Mars 3 reached Mars, completed humanity's first soft landing there, and successfully transmitted information from the planet back to Earth, though it operated for only 7 s. In 1975, the Soviet Venera 9 returned humanity's first image of the Venusian surface, which is also the only photograph humanity has of the surface of Venus. In 1984, Svetlana Savitskaya walked in space, becoming the first woman to move freely outside a spacecraft. In 1986, Halley's Comet returned and the Soviet Vega probe flew past it. That same year, construction began in earnest on the Soviet Mir station, humanity's first third-generation space station. After its lunar ambitions were thwarted, the Soviet Union immediately embarked on new explorations and created one new marvel after another.

Photograph of the surface of Venus taken by Venera 9

  Amid this succession of triumphs, the Soviet Union finally unveiled the major project it had kept under wraps for 20 years: Energia, the most capable launch vehicle in the world to date. Energia's development can be traced to the 1960s. In 1973, the United States made a technological transition, abandoning the Saturn V in favor of the Space Shuttle, while the Soviet Union continued researching high-energy cryogenic propulsion. Drawing on the technological legacy of the N-1 and following a long period of research, evaluation, design, and manufacturing, Energia finally made its first flight in 1987. Energia was a prototype platform. It could carry a space shuttle, and could even be adapted for rocket recovery, much as Space-X does today. A technical malfunction kept Energia's first flight from reaching orbit, but it was already a qualitative improvement over the N-1. On its second test flight, Energia successfully carried the Buran space shuttle into space. Buran then returned automatically, glided, and landed. Once again, the hegemonic West felt the pressure of an apparently imminent Soviet sweep of the spaceflight field. If Energia entered routine service and began to be recovered and reused, the West would have no advantage left in spaceflight.

  To understand the mindset of the hegemonic West, consider Energia's specifications:

• Dimensions and mass:
  • Total length: 60 m
  • Booster diameter: 3.9 m
  • Booster height: 38.3 m
  • Second-stage core diameter: 7.7 m
  • Mass: 2400000kg, 2400T.
• Core stage:
  • Engines: 4 RD-0120 engines
  • Propellant: liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen
  • Thrust: 5,800-7,500kN
  • Specific impulse: 359 s at sea level, 455 s in vacuum
  • Operating time: 480-500 s.
• Booster stage:
  • Engines: 4 RD-170 engines
  • Propellant: kerosene/liquid oxygen
  • Thrust: 29000-32000kN
  • Time: 309 s at sea level, 338 s in vacuum.

  Clearly, this was a behemoth. Its boosters alone were taller and heavier than the entire Vostok-series rockets described earlier. Nor was its bulk empty: the core stage plus 2 booster stages could produce more than 70000 kN of thrust, nearly 100 times that of the Sputnik launch vehicle. By comparison, the American Saturn V could provide only 34000 kN of thrust and was dwarfed by Energia. Moreover, the Saturn V was no longer in service, so the United States no longer possessed such payload capability in practice. The age of Soviet supremacy in space seemed about to begin.

  Fate, however, had other plans. The 2 Energia test flights just described were the only 2 launches it ever made. Gorbachev came to power 2 years before Energia's first launch and soon began economic reforms. While Energia was undergoing flight tests, Gorbachev's reforms shifted into the political sphere and gradually spun out of control. A powerful nation was approaching its end.

The Great Roc’s Broken Wings

  After the Soviet Union collapsed, misguided shock therapy impoverished the people of the new Russia while giving rise to oligarchs. The organizational and economic foundations on which the space program depended were severely damaged, and Russia could no longer sustain construction and launch projects on Energia's immense scale. Yet the legacy of the past remained: a rich reserve of talent and technical support on the ground, existing rocket designs and models in production, and the Mir space station in orbit. With the docking of its final 2 modules in 1995 and 1993, Mir was completed. The finished station was 87 m long, had a mass of 123 t, and offered 470 cubic meters of usable volume. As the world's first long-duration crewed space station, it spent 15 years in orbit from the day it was born, far exceeding its design life of 5 years. It circled Earth more than 80000 times, traveled 3.5 billion km, conducted 22000 scientific experiments, and completed 23 international scientific research programs. A total of 31 Soyuz crewed spacecraft and 62 Progress cargo spacecraft docked with it. It also docked 9 times with American Space Shuttles, and astronauts flying joint missions made 78 spacewalks from this “human-made celestial palace,” spending a total of 359 h 12 min outside the station. Over the years, 28 long-term expeditions and 16 short-term expeditions worked aboard it; astronauts from 12 countries, 135 people in all, served on the station. They conducted a large number of life-science, space-materials, and medical experiments, obtaining exceptionally valuable results and data. They photographed many stars and planets, detected elementary particles and cosmic rays, and greatly expanded humanity's knowledge of the universe. They also explored the possibility of using space to forecast earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and other natural disasters. In 2001, the station was deliberately deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere. People said, “The last territory of the Soviet Union disappeared into the sky at that moment.”

The space station burning up in the atmosphere

  The International Space Station (ISS) took the baton from Mir. Russia also made major contributions to the ISS's construction. Its first module, Zarya, was launched into space by Russia aboard a Proton-M rocket. The ISS ushered in a new era in humanity's peaceful use of space. Unfortunately, because China's spaceflight capabilities were not yet strong and its ideology differed from that of the West, the Western countries led by the United States did not allow China to join this large international collaborative project.

  After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia never again achieved a spectacular “world first” in spaceflight. In the new century, it instead often drew worldwide attention for an extraordinarily high rocket-launch failure rate. China's first Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, failed to enter orbit in 2011 because of a problem with the Russian rocket carrying it, strengthening China's resolve to explore Mars independently. Meanwhile, the United States continued expanding the frontiers of human exploration, though much more slowly after the fall of its old rival. In 1995, it was the first to send a probe into Jupiter orbit and then into Jupiter's atmosphere. In 1997, humanity's first Mars rover, Mars Pathfinder/Sojourner, landed on Mars. In 2004, humanity's first probe entered Saturn orbit and landed on Titan. In 2011, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to enter Mercury orbit. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made probe to leave the Solar System. In 2015, New Horizons made the first flyby of Pluto, and that same year Space-X successfully recovered the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. In 2018, the Parker Solar Probe was launched to study the Sun from an unprecedentedly close distance… Even China, a relative newcomer, achieved humanity's first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, the first launch of a spacecraft to the Earth–Moon L2 point, and the unprecedented feat of completing Mars orbit, landing, and roving in a single mission. Yet Russian spaceflight, whose foundations once rivaled those of the United States, had not produced even one more first for humanity.

  It is not that Russia has no wish to revive its space dream. In 2016, the Roscosmos State Corporation was established by merging the Russian Federal Space Agency and the United Rocket and Space Corporation, with the aim of moving back into space with more unified steps. During the recently passed 2020 Mars launch window, Russia had planned to restart its Mars exploration program, but was unable to do so for various reasons. In my view, the fundamental problem facing Russian spaceflight is inadequate funding. Spaceflight is inherently expensive, and it often offers no immediate return. As part of the capitalist world, Russia conducts its space activities according to the workings of capital markets: money always flows toward the highest returns. American space technology is now clearly ahead of Russia's, while Europe as a whole is no less capable. Russia once competed with the United States and Europe by offering certain launches at low cost, carving out a share of the market through differentiation, but these missions were usually confined to low Earth orbit and lacked deep-space exploration programs. Russia's low launch-success rate is another problem. It substantially undermines the price advantage of Russian spaceflight products, because when the alternative is risking the loss of an entire satellite, customers still tend to choose safer products even at a higher price. Moreover, as Musk's rocket-recovery technology has matured, Russia's former price advantage has disappeared. In short, Russian spaceflight has not yet moved beyond the Soviet model of overcoming problems through sheer scale. That model allowed enormous projects, but it also tolerated enormous failures and fireworks: we could simply launch another one. The social system has changed, however, and Russia's approach to spaceflight no longer suits the present environment.

  And yet…

Space Is There

  Yes, space is there. Every great nation wishes to look up at the stars, but only the greatest can turn the exploration of those stars into reality, giving something back to all humanity. Russia, the nation that gave birth to the father of human spaceflight, will surely restore its spacefaring strength. The opportunity ahead is clear, and it comes from the East. April 23, 2021, was not only the author's birthday (cross that out), but also a milestone in Sino-Russian space cooperation: the International Lunar Research Station presentation, jointly hosted by the China National Space Administration and the Roscosmos State Corporation, was held in Nanjing. At the meeting, Chinese and Russian representatives announced to the world that the two countries would jointly build a lunar research station. We can clearly see that, as China rises in every field, the next wave of human spaceflight is drawing near. China plans to establish an Earth–Moon economic zone by the middle of this century. Its creation will mark the point when spaceflight begins to generate direct economic returns. Cooperation on the lunar research station shows that China and Russia will work together more extensively on exploring the universe. Russia can use this opportunity to revive ambitious projects from its past, such as improving and producing Energia, thereby complementing China's existing spaceflight capabilities (China has not yet mastered super-heavy-lift launch-vehicle technology). At the same time, it can work with Chinese personnel on issues such as rocket operational stability, raising the success rate of Russian launches and improving the funding situation of the Russian space program. By the time the Earth–Moon economic zone is largely established, a Russian space system capable of launching powerful, safe, and reliable rockets will become a new engine of Russian economic growth. Russia cannot give up the universe. After all, Tsiolkovsky's words still ring in our ears:

  “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”