MOSCOW, August 4 (RIA Novosti) – Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin heavily criticized Russia’s space industry on Monday, lambasting technical incompetence and calling for structural reform across the whole sector during a meeting of a commission appointed to investigate a high-profile launch failure last month.
“Firstly, I see ineffective management. Secondly, excess capacity. And thirdly, a blurred understanding of the goals of Russia’s activities in space,” Rogozin told the commission, Russian media reported.
To begin to address some of the problems, Rogozin proposed potentially far-reaching changes to Russia’s space industry. Contractors, manufacturers and operators of space systems, all currently under the control of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), need to be made independent of one another, according to Rogozin, who also said there should be a “discussion” about the merger of the aviation and space industries.
The commission that Rogozin was addressing was formed last month to investigate an accident on July 2, when a Proton-M rocket carrying three satellites for the Glonass positioning system, Russia’s answer to GPS, fell to the ground in flames shortly after blasting off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur space center. The incident was the latest in a series of setbacks for Russia’s space program, which has been blighted by the loss of rockets and satellites, and a large corruption scandal around the Glonass program.
The fault for the accident lay with the designers of three sensors incorrectly installed on the Proton-M rocket, the commission, which is conducting an investigation into the incident, said Monday.
But Rogozin, the Cabinet official responsible for overseeing the aerospace and defense industries, appeared to lay the blame elsewhere, comparing the engineers who incorrectly installed the sensors to the fictitious Lev Andropov, an unhinged Russian cosmonaut portrayed in 1998 Hollywood blockbuster “Armageddon,” starring Bruce Willis.
The commission must name the people, including officials from Roscosmos, who were responsible for the accident, Rogozin said. Last month, he said on Twitter that those involved in the launch were taking lie-detector tests.
Neither Rogozin's criticism, nor his call for reform, is new. Immediately after the Proton-M rocket's crash, he said that “harsh decisions” must be taken and that the industry could “not continue to exist in its current form.”
Over the last month, Roscosmos has come under a barrage of sustained official criticism. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Friday reprimanded the head of Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, for incompetence. Last week, the federal Audit Chamber published a report heavily criticizing the space agency.
"Roscosmos is among the biggest and least disciplined [of government agencies],” the Audit Chamber said in the report, published Thursday. “[It] blatantly ignores regulatory requirements and best practices in state procurement orders.”
Headline modified after publication.
