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Russians Conduct Inspired Discussions of Space Exploration


Coincident with Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian Presidency and the naming of a new government, there is currently a high density of public discussion in Russia about the future of the real economy, the possibility of reviving science, and the space program, in particular. These discussions, including TV shows, have involved government officials, as well as some members of the self-identified "patriotic opposition."


The latter have expressed some optimism about the continuation of Dmitri Rogozin, who called for the Strategic Defense of Earth effort, as deputy prime minister in charge of the Russian defense sector, as well as appointments such as defense industry specialist Denis Manturov as minister of industry and Putin's naming of a tank factory shop steward as his Presidential Envoy to the Urals Federal District. 


Their enthusiasm is tempered by dismay at the naming of hardcore neoliberal monetarist Arkadi Dvorkovich as deputy prime minister in charge of the economy as a whole, including the energy sector.


Thus it is fitting that the most dramatic televised Russian discussions of space policy have also featured strong attacks against monetarism--on First Channel national television, no less.

On May 22, the Den web TV channel, which is associated with the weekly {Zavtra}, carried a discussion titled "Space Exploration Against the New Barbarism." The participants were anti-free trade economist Mikhail Delyagin, journalist Maxim Kalashnikov, and historian Andrei Fursov--all of them regular {Zavtra} contributors and "patriotic opposition" figures. 


Kalashnikov recently conducted a web TV discussion with Yuri Krupnov, head of the Development Movement, on prospects for Russia's proposed new Far East Development Corporation: would it become "a new Tennessee Valley Authority" on a vast scale, or get hijacked as "a new British East India Company" to loot Siberia for the benefit of oligarchical interests?


The Den TV roundtable on space exploration vs. a New Dark Age was held on the premises of the giant rocket manufacturer, Energomash, whose executives took part in the discussion. Opening the dialogue, Fursov noted that only on two occasions in the 20th Century did Muscovites spontaneously pour into Red Square: on May 9, 1945, Victory Day over the Nazis, and on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin made mankind's first space flight. 


Fursov (born in 1951) recalled that as a 10-year-old he had learned an outline of future space plans: reaching the Moon, developing a base there, moving to colonize Mars, and by around 2020 we were supposed to be setting out for the more remote planets. What happened, he said, was that a paradigm shift occurred in the 1970s: the victory of neoliberalism, first in the West, and then, after 1991, in Russia. 


This is what bogged down the space program. Kalashnikov, according to a summary published in {Zavtra}, went on to call for "Russian space exploration to become the assembly point for a new future for Earth, a powerful magnet for geniuses and breakthrough technologies on a planetary scale."


Den TV is an online venue, but on May 15, equally inspired ideas were voiced on the popular "Citizen Gordon" talk show on Russia's biggest nationwide TV station, First Channel. This round table took up the topic "Does Russia Need a Space Program?"



Against the backdrop of host Alexander Gordon's "devil's advocate" protests that "it costs too much," serious advocacy for expanded efforts in space came from current and past leaders of Russia's space program, as well as other experts and activists in the field. Among the participants were:


* Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos);

* Yuri Koptev, former director of Roscosmos, known as the man who prevented the total loss of the Soviet Union's space achievements during the 1990s;

* Victor Savinykh, cosmonaut, Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, President of MIIGAiK [the Moscow Engineering Institute for Geodesy, Aerophotography, and Cartography];

* Yuri Krupnov, chairman of the supervisory board of the Institute of Demography, Migration, and Regional Development (and founder of the Development Movement), whose paper on the potential for a space industry development corridor around Russia's Far East cosmodrome was presented at the September 2007 Kiedrich Conference.  
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Interview of Roskosmos Head Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, May 22, 2012 in Washington, D.C.


Question: In late April, RIA Novosti reported that the deputy head of Roscosmos had spoken of a proposal to create a new Russian federal program to deal with the threats of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. Could you speak to that proposal? It was also that the Russian Academy of Sciences would help coordinate that effort. What's the status of the current discussion?


General Popovkin: There are such plans. That is true. But at this time we are not so much preparing to combat the threats; rather, at this stage, we want to evaluate these threats and establish a system of monitoring objects in space. We are drawing not only on the resources which Roscosmos itself is developing today, but also those of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Academy of Sciences. And the purpose is precisely to begin to monitor outer space, and space objects.


Such a monitoring system will then enable us, to the extent possible, to combat, or counteract, some threats from space. But first we need to collect the statistics and make an assessment of the objective situation. Does something present a threat to us? If it does threaten us, then how great is the threat? If there is some degree of a threat, then when and with what probability? And after that, a decision can be made. This is what my deputy, Mr. Davydov, was talking about, and this is what has been supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences.


Question: [Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri] Rogozin has also spoken about the idea of cooperation with the United States on this issue. If we had the optimal level of international cooperation, the optimal level of interaction between the United States and Russia, what would you like to see in terms of cooperation to address this?


Popovkin: When Dmitri Olegovich Rogozin spoke about this, he said that cooperation in this area would be a lot more useful and effective than building the European Ballistic Missile Defense system, the intended purpose of which Russia still doesn't accept, particularly when it comes to the deployment of surveillance and strike systems. 


And precisely from this standpoint, if this can be organized, it would be much more effective and better to do it. To speak more specifically, what was proposed was to involve all the available optics -- regardless of where they are located or what agency they belong to -- that are being used to study and investigate space, and have them operate under some kind of single plan or concept, in order to achieve the best possible monitoring of all objects in space.


Question: Mankind has not set foot on another planetary body since the early 1970s. Earlier you spoke to Russia's visit to change that, to get mankind to the Moon. I'm hoping you can speak to that further and lay out what Russia's perspective is for returning mankind to the Moon.


Popovkin: Well, human feet have already taken steps on the Moon, and there is no point in just repeating what was done 40 years ago. Therefore I was talking about something a bit different. I said that human knowledge about the Moon today is considerably greater than 40 years ago. The possibilities for lunar research are now completely different, using the technologies produced through scientific and technological progress during those 40 years. And the first area, as I already mentioned, is research on the Moon itself, and on what there is on the Moon: including the areas where water has been detected, in the south and north polar regions of the Moon.


Secondly, if we take into account the particular features of the Moon, first and foremost the fact that it does not have an atmosphere, the Moon could become an ideal platform on which to position various telescopes, both optical and radio telescopes, for astronomical research, research on distant stars. What the participation of people looks like will be determined by whether we can now design such technologies to be completely automated, or if they will need to be serviced by human beings. Whether or not man needs to walk on the Moon or not will depend on that. That's what I was trying to say in my speech.


Question: There a lot of various specialists, people who at various times have stated the idea that sooner or later mankind will have to abandon the Earth, and relocate to some other planets because of scarcities of natural resources, food, water, energy sources. Some have gone even further, and described phantasmagorical pictures of showdowns, military conflicts, the mutual annihilation of people, and so forth. And that the only way out of that situation, in the opinion of a number of people and the question included specific names would be to leave this planet and relocate the entirety of mankind to some other platforms in space. What do you think about that?


Popovkin: I think that for my lifetime and maybe fifty generations into the future, the Earth will suffice. As for various possible directions things might take, let the science fiction writers talk about that, and the unscientific fiction writers, too. Our goal today is to obtain as objective a picture as possible of our galaxy, or, say, neighboring galaxies, so that our descendants, in some hundreds of generations, will be able to make objective and correct decisions, if necessity arises in the event of some cataclysms occurring on our planet.


But it is premature to talk about Noah's Ark yet.


Question: In the United States we had a program called NERVA, which was a nuclear thermal rocket program back in the 1970s. Are there any programs being carried out now in Russia for specifically using nuclear reactors to propel thrust, for fission, nuclear fusion rocket propulsion?


Popovkin: Yes, we are moving into work on a gigawatt-class nuclear-powered engine. And the development of such an engine is dictated by the requirements of exploring the remote planets. It's too early to report on any results. But it is my deep conviction that if we want to explore deep space, then, first of all, theoretical physics needs to advance quite a bit, because based on the laws of motion we know today, and of course the power units we have now, we won't get very far.


And if you can understand such things as the physics of black holes, or the compression of stars, or movement through worm holes--there are a great many of these theoretical things that theoretical physics today is investigating--I think that there ought to be some discoveries there which will allow us to travel based on completely different principles. These are all still profoundly theoretical matters, but at some point there should be demand for them.