Russia seems to see the writing on the wall. No longer can disposable rockets win business for the Russian Space Industry. NASA put an end to the ongoing launches of astronauts into space with the development of domestic. The Russian space industry plans on maintaining or growing market share.

“In 2020, 33 launches are planned, of which 12 launches of satellites under the Federal Space Program, nine launches of commercial vehicles, three from the Guiana Space Center,”

Dmitry Rogozin the head of Roscosmos.

According to https://tass.ru/, Russia is planning on completing 30 commercial launches in 2020. To compete in the international market, Roscosmos announced the cost of launch services will be reduced by more than 30%. The allegation is that American companies are price dumping. With the emergence of SpaceX into the launch sector and other new space companies, the launch vehicle options increased greatly. SpaceX specifically has captured a lot of commercial launch contracts with the partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX has proven the booster reuse capability up to five times and disclosed that the reusability is much greater.

Dmitry Rogozin’s claim of American companies engaging in price dumping may not be a valid comparison. American companies diversified the supply. New innovative rockets have been designed, built and launched by American companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab. 

Since there are more rockets available on the market, there is more supply. Using supply and demand principles, if the supply is greater than the demand, pricing goes down. All companies need to adjust to this market condition of technology and supply. Companies can either provide a commodity cutting into profits using older technology or innovate to remain competitive with higher margins. The resulting impact, companies lower access costs to space.   

If Roscosmos needs to increase its presence in international markets, lowering the price to market demands is a price for entry. To stay in the market will become increasingly difficult as a large number of new players are planning on entering the market. The trend on the market is the opposite of what Roscosmos had been doing for years with NASA. The cost to launch people into space for NASA has been rising. The blue line in the chart represents cost and the orange bars represent seats purchased.

“The pricing procedure we proposed is essentially our response to dumping from US companies funded by the US budget, and if the market launch price, for example, of SpaceX, is about $ 60 million, then NASA pays for the same service from one and a half to four times more”

Dmitry Rogozin the head of Roscosmos.

Elon Musk Tweeted a reply.

“SpaceX rockets are 80% reusable, theirs are 0%. This is the actual problem.”

Elon Musk Tweet

Mounting concerns about the future of the Russian space industry are becoming apparent. During a preflight press conference with Astronaut Chris Cassidy, reporters asked about the impact of SpaceX to cooperate with the Russian space market. The US government has taken a stronger stance in recent years against Russia. The purchase of Russian rocket Engines and services have been curtailed.

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SpaceX Rockets

The SpaceX Falcon 1 successfully reached orbit September 28, 2008, becoming the first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket to do so. Since then SpaceX developed the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. SpaceX most recent project includes developing a more powerful rocket called “Starship”.

SpaceX strived for more than just developing a rocket. SpaceX worked to greatly reduce the access cost to space. SpaceX did this by leveraging innovative new rocket designs and manufacturing techniques. Now seemingly commonplace, the first successful landing of an orbital rocket in 2015 gripped the world.  

All over the world, people were inspired. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and a handful of other new space companies started trailblazing new ways to launch and land rockets. The successes demonstrated by Blue Origin VTOL of the suborbital New Shepard Rocket and then the first SpaceX Falcon 9 orbital booster represents the trend of the future. A lot of western companies are now looking at how to recover or reuse as much of the rocket as possible.

Halfway around the world, People in China and India have been inspired as well.  A number of Chinese and Indian private start-up companies emerged.  These companies likely have several years to go before having a reusable orbital rocket booster, but these companies will be putting additional price pressure on the Russian space industry. SpaceX raised the bar by lowering prices through reliable reusability. Now the industry old space companies like Roscosmos scramble to respond.

What is CCP? and why?

Commercial Crew Program (CCP) has put in motion to facilitate the development of a United States (U.S.) commercial crew space transportation capability.  The ultimate goal of the program is to achieve safe, reliable, and cost-effective access to and from low Earth orbit (LEO) including the International Space Station (ISS) which is due to be operational through 2024.  NASA has purchased commercial services to meet its ISS crew rotation and emergency return rather than continue to rely on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft which launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site.  NASA will now utilize spacecraft developed and launched from US soil.

A primary concern is the safety of the crew.  NASA with the new commercial procured spaceflight services from Boeing and SpaceX is seeking to reduce risk to crew and especially reduce the probability of loss of crew (LOC).  NASA has established minimum tolerable levels of safety for crew transportation missions to the International Space Station (ISS).  The Space Shuttle, as summarized by NASA System Safety Handbook originally had an expected LOC between 1:1,000 and 1:10,000.  After re-evaluation from the Challenger and Columbia disasters, the LOC estimates were redone several times and estimates ranged from 1:35 to 1:200.  Having such a high risk for humans on the space shuttle helped drive the need for a new vehicle.

Based on studies of known failures for past missions, NASA established reducing the LOC could be partially achieved by reducing risk to crews during launch.  NASA raised the bar on safety, and all future crewed missions by including a “launch abort system” LAS, a capability that the Space Shuttle did not have.  With the inclusion of a LAS, NASA was able to achieve more than 80% lower risk based on a NASA Ames study. The achievable risk would be much, much lower than that of the space shuttle. 

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