Thread by @opinion

Sixty years ago today, the first man orbited space.

Yuri Gagarin became an icon, taking the front pages by storm in an unparalleled PR win for the Soviet Union. Today, space lore remains powerful in Russia trib.al/5ySQzhO

Moscow naturally named its first approved coronavirus vaccine after Sputnik, the satellite whose launch in 1957 terrified the Western world.

But Russia is not the force it was trib.al/5ySQzhO

Russia’s space industry has been hurt by a combination of:

❌Western sanctions
📑Bureaucracy
🔐Military secrecy
🇷🇺A state-dominated economy

Private space enterprises like those driving innovation in the U.S. haven't been able to flourish trib.al/5ySQzhO

Nostalgia is understandable. Firsts achieved during the Cold War were major successes, no matter how slim the margin.

It may have turned out differently in 1961 had the U.S. not delayed a mission after a test flight ran out of fuel half a second too early trib.al/5ySQzhO

Russia still remains one of few nations to reliably launch humans into space, but a new generation of rockets and craft has seen endless delays, with:

🚀Too little creativity
🚀Too much wasteful spending
🚀Some embarrassing malfunctions trib.al/5ySQzhO

The boss of state space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, has responded to private success abroad by denigrating efforts like those of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

In 2014, he tweeted that the U.S. might need a trampoline to get its astronauts to the ISS trib.al/5ySQzhO

Money is part of the issue. Federal spending has increased in rubles, but fallen in dollar terms.

2020 spending for the space program, launch sites and the GLONASS satnav system is an estimated $2.4 billion, less than half the dollar level in 2013 trib.al/5ySQzhO

U.S. purchases of RD-180 rocket engines have dried up.

Vital support had also come from U.S. payments for Soyuz trips to the ISS, so SpaceX was a wake-up call when it sent astronauts into orbit last year.

“The trampoline worked,” Musk quipped trib.al/5ySQzhO

Roscosmos has sought to make changes — but some initiatives haven’t gone to plan:

The Vostochny launch site is intended to secure Russia’s autonomy. But specialists say the Siberian terrain and ocean conditions could make emergency landings dangerous trib.al/5ySQzhO

The Angara rocket family, which has been in the works for a quarter century, is looking cripplingly expensive.

A new manned craft has sputtered. Without it, Russia will have trouble reaching the moon trib.al/5ySQzhO

Moscow insists on centralized control and secrecy, failing to grasp the importance of a thriving commercial sector that could incubate its own SpaceX.

Private companies are trapped in what insiders describe as a regulatory and bureaucratic no-man’s-land trib.al/5ySQzhO

With the future of U.S.-Russian cooperation in space unclear, there has been a push toward links with China, with plans for a joint lunar research station.

But China has its own ambitions and a drive for self-reliance trib.al/5ySQzhO

In his book about SpaceX, space journalist @SciGuySpace cites a scientist studying the company’s feverish efforts: “In the long run, talent wins over experience and an entrepreneurial culture over heritage.”

Without big changes, that’s bad news for Russia trib.al/5ySQzh