How to Join the Club of Space Superpowers

This week there were three important events in the field of human spaceflight. The carrier rocket Soyuz-FG, carrying the spacecraft Soyuz TMA-04M, successfully launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on a mission to deliver a new expedition crew consisting of two Russian citizens and one American to the International Space Station.

The Iranian Embassy in Russia circulated a statement that their country is planning to launch three satellites into orbit in the near future and then wants to send a man to space.

Finally, the second Vietnamese satellite VINASAT-2, created by the American Lockheed Martin Corp., was successfully launched into orbit. The French carrier rocket Ariane-5, launched from the French cosmodrome Kourou in French Guiana, delivered the Vietnamese satellite into space.

If anyone has forgotten, Kourou is the precise location of the exported version of the Russian Soyuz ST-B’s launches.

There are only three space superpowers — that is countries capable of performing human-manned space flight in their own spacecraft, delivered into space by their own carrier rockets and launched from their own launch complexes. These countries are Russia (Yuri Gagarin April 12, 1961), the U.S. (John Glenn Feb. 20, 1962), and China (Yang Liwei Oct. 15, 2003). However, it should be noted that the U.S. currently does not possess a piloted spacecraft or a carrier rocket for this ship.

The American space agency NASA has been forced to buy a seat on the Soyuz spacecraft from Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, in order to deliver supplies to American astronauts on the International Space Station. The U.S. is a core supporter of the International Space Station, spending more than $1 billion a year on the program. This fact has, as is to be expected, stirred outrage in American society, both among members of private sector with a commercial interest in space and among members of Congress who worry about the country.

Some Russians are also unhappy; many feel that the title of “space cabbie” is offensive.

It appears there is a solution to this “problem” — the private-sector Dragon capsule, a spacecraft created by the American company SpaceX Corp. The craft will soon be modernized and made capable of human-manned launches.

The first experimental flight of Dragon capsule took place in December 2010. The ship was activated, launched into orbit and then returned.

The second flight, during which it was planned for the ship to approach and dock at the International Space Station, was originally slated for Feb. 7, 2012. However, in January 2012 SpaceX announced that additional tests were needed and delayed the flight. It later announced that the ship would go to the International Space Station no earlier than March 20, but the launch was pushed back until the start of April and then rearranged for May 7. At the time of this article hitting the presses, the Dragon’s flight is planned for May 19.

All of this is happening under the auspices of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, which calls for private firms to create spacecraft capable of delivering shipments near Earth’s orbit, including the International Space Station. According to their contract, SpaceX will receive $396 million from NASA. It is not entirely correct to call Dragon the “first private spacecraft,” as the U.S. private sector has created several human-manned spacecraft.

For example, the last U.S. human-manned spacecraft during the pre-shuttle era Apollo, which flew to the Moon, was created by the private company North American Rockwell. The carrier rocket for it, Saturn V, was created by a consortium including Boeing Co., North American Aviation and McDonnell Douglas Corp. In point of fact, they were launched from a government launch complex.

After the closure of the Apollo program, these companies casually rid themselves of all personnel involved in the project and stored the designs and equipment for the spacecraft. As can easily be guessed, they cannot create new spacecraft and rocket carriers based on the designs of these old ones.

In the former Soviet Union and its Russian successor, things were organized differently. From the very beginning, manned spacecraft were created by one organization, which after many name changes is now called S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation “Energia.” The carrier rockets for these spacecraft are produced by a different organization, Progress State Research and Production Space Center, located in Samara. Both of these organizations are included within the governmental structure of Roskosmos. Thanks to this, the Russian space program’s development has preceded on a somewhat more linear path, including its plans for modernization. As is widely known, every new Soyuz differs from its predecessors.

China is following its own path. Although not widely publicized, China has imported technology from Russian that allowed it to create a Soyuz clone. They have successfully flown these ships, although they lag nearly 40 years behind most modern benchmarks of a space program.

As a space expert at the Gagarin Center for Preparing Astronauts in Star City informed Polit.ru, when Chinese astronauts performed a flight into open space, one of them used a Russian armor system produced by NPP Zvezda— the manufacturer for all space shields in the Russian Federation — and on the other was a “China-fied” version. Since China does not allow outsiders into their space program and does not want to participate in international projects like the International Space Station, this is not of great concern.

What is important is that now virtually all manned spaceflights occur either on a Soyuz or on one of its clones.

Returning to the topic of Vietnam, in April 2008 it launched a telecommunications satellite, VINASAT-1, into space — its first space flight in history. In doing so, it became the sixth Asian country and the 93rd in the world with a presence in space. VINASAT-1 was produced by an American company, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, and launched by the French carrier rocket Ariane-5 from Kourou, French Guiana.

Earlier, in July 1980, the Vietnamese astronaut Pham Tuan participated in the program “Interkosmos” with a first-generation Soviet astronaut from the Gagarin era, Viktor Gorbatko. Tuan and Gorbatko flew aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz-37, which was launched from the Soviet Baikonur cosmodrome on the Soyuz-Y carrier rocket Soyuz-38 and travelled to the orbital station Salyut-6. As we all understand, this does not mean Vietnam could be considered one of the space superpowers.

What does Iran want, now that it has announced its plan to put a man in space? It is clear that its man will not board the Russian Soyuz, since quite literally there is no room for him — seats are booked years into the future. China does not allow outsiders into their space program. Iran only has one option — to build their own manned spacecraft and carrier rocket. Whether they actually can achieve this is a controversial question.

But we should remember how the launch of the first Soviet satellite, even without Gagarin, shocked the Americans. The missile carrying Sputnik into space was, as immediately recognized by keen American minds, simply an intercontinental ballistic missile with a satellite attached instead of several Hiroshimas worth of nuclear warheads.

Based on this, people are rightfully fearful of the possibility of warheads falling on the heads of average Americans.

Is Iran’s announcement about its intention to launch a man into space not what it seems?