The 2001 budget includes just half the money needed for the space program for this year, Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian Aerospace Agency, said late last month at a closed meeting of State Duma deputies and space officials.
India spends twice as much on its space program and it makes just two launches a year and has no piloted space program, he said.
The Russian Aerospace Agency asked for 3 billion rubles this year based on a minimum federal space program. However, the budget has just 1.4 billion rubles.
The Mir space station costs 2 billion rubles a year and specialists are not pleased with its condition. Koptev reiterated the need to close Mir in March.
Yuri Semyonov, general engineer of the station and president of Energia aerospace corporation, said that if Mir had been piloted constantly many of the current problems could have been avoided. But this costs money that Energia has not received from the state, he said.
Even the Progress M-44 cargo ship that docked with the International Space Station last Wednesday was built using the corporation¿s own money, he said. Foreign investment never came through.
In addition to piloted rockets, Russia maintains 110 satellites in orbit. There are far too few of these satellites to solve the problems of communications, telecommunications and space sounding of the Earth, Koptev said. In Kosovo alone the Americans used 119 satellites for military operations, he said.
If Russian-made communications satellites aren¿t launched, foreign ones will take their place and there is already a trend toward the purchase of foreign satellites by Russian space organizations, he said.
Koptev emphasized the state of the GLONASS satellite navigation system. Just 13 of the 24 satellites required for the normal operation of the system are actually functioning, and those are on their last leg, he said.
Russia could simply lose this navigation system soon, but it could have brought huge profit. Moreover, Russian military sites can¿t be switched to the American navigation system, which is fairly reliable, for security reasons. This is entirely absurd, Koptev said.
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