Crew Dragon spacecraft with Falcon 9 launch vehicle, created by SpaceX Ilona Musk on the second attempt, was launched from Cape Canaveral. The first launch was planned on May 27, but was delayed due to bad weather. On board the ship, astronauts Bob Benken and Doug Harley, who had previously flown into space, went to the ISS station. By the way, this is the first manned flight in 9 years, carried out from the United States. The delivery of a new astronaut ship aboard the ISS using Crew Dragon marks a new era in the commercial exploration of space, - writes The Wall Street Journal, becoming the first and only one made on a private spacecraft, as previously.
SpaceX delivered only loads to space orbit. Moreover, this launch will break America’s dependence on the Russian Unions, which were used for astronaut flights on the ISS. In the fall, for example, for this service NASA will pay Russia more than $ 90 million for one seat on board a Russian ship, while a place in Crew Dragon costs one and a half times cheaper - about $ 60 million.
The event is commented by network analyst Dmitry Milin:
“New launch! Do you need three bags of pride in a cup of morning coffee?”
If you want to understand very briefly why Russia has lost the status of a leading space superpower, simply type in the search “Jobs and work in the company“ Joint-Stock Company State Missile Center named after Academician V. P. Makeyev. Here is a link to the average salary estimate:
The average salary in the company Joint-Stock Company State Rocket Center named after Academician VP Makeyev varies from about 9,739 rubles. per month at the position of a painter up to 24,265 rubles. per month for electronic posts". With such a level of salaries (lower than at the box office at McDonalds), it is impossible to count on the fact that strong specialists will not come to the rocket industry.
In principle, this could be finished. Further in more detail with a historical tour.
Yes, State Rocket Center named after Academician VP Makeyev is not directly involved in outer space, but our “outer space” has always been an appendage to the combat missile program. The USSR space program was a "show room" of the program for creating intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The launch of Sputnik was a way to demonstrate to Americans the possibility of throwing an atomic bomb anywhere in their territory, launching Gagarin - a heavier hydrogen bomb. The famous Korolyov's R-7, who gave rise to the creation of a whole family of launch vehicles: Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, Lightning, Soyuz, Soyuz-U, Soyuz-U2, Soyuz -FG, Soyuz-2 is a talented refinement of the FAU-2 von Braun, whose missiles flew at a maximum to medium range and were not particularly reliable.
Half of the country's industry worked for the USSR missile (and nuclear) program. Few people remember now, but when the Sputnik and Gagarina were launched, the second half of the country went hungry and lived in barracks. Khrushchev's center appeared later.
And now in a situation where the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin receives several times more than the head of NASA, and his employees who are actually engaged in design and production receive salaries many times less than in NASA, someone wonders “why Russia has lost the status of a leading space superpower?"
Yes, because Russia has not been "straining" for a long time to achieve the goal of maintaining this status, it saves on the salaries of those who really work, providing huge salaries to extremely unskilled management, like an educated journalist Rogozin.
Actually, society expects success from the rocket industry as a visitor to McDonald's: “A new launch! Do you need three bags of pride in a cup of morning coffee?” and not going to pay big salaries to those who provide these “three bags of pride for a cup of morning coffee”.
The country's technological development depends on a marginal minority of scientists, engineers, and skilled workers with respect to whom a fundamental consensus has been reached in Russia - all of them should be poor and work hard for the rest, providing them with pride in preserving the achievements of the USSR.
Almost 30 years of bullying of space industry employees who received from 15 to 30 thousand rubles led to a logical result - not only Protons, but also Unions began to fall.
At the same time, Dmitry Rogozin, who does not have an engineering education, runs Roskosmos, liquidating the Moscow production site of the Khrunichev NPO, but at the same time has built his son to lead Ilyushin. The real misfortune is not when the “cooks” run the state, but when they run the “defense industry” and Roscosmos, and the “cooks” the children occupy leading positions in leading technology companies not because of their professional successes, but because of a kinship with leadership "cook".
One of the main troubles of Russia is that people who get a lot of money here, who in other countries (and in the USSR too) would not be allowed to go to the areas they lead in a cannon shot. “The general director of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, earned more than 29.5 million rubles in the first year of work in the state corporation, including almost 23.5 million rubles. - at the main place of work. Information about the income of employees of Roscosmos is published on the website of the state corporation”.
The authorities tried with words (!!!) to raise the status of an engineer, selected quotes:
March 21, 2010 - Vladislav Surkov: “an engineer will become the main person in the country”.
April 10, 2018 - Putin: “The key factor in a technological breakthrough is talent, the competencies of scientists and engineers, and, of course, their social status. All this must develop, and social status must grow”.
But the reality is completely different when it comes to concrete problems, the attitude towards engineers and designers changes to "consumer", showing that their life is not worth a penny for the country.
“When they showed Comrade Stalin an armored car in which he must drive, and that the PPSh would not break it, he put him inside the designer of this car and she was riddled with a machine gun. The designer survived because the car was good. I propose to add to the decision that we designers have to put in the ship when tested SAS (emergency rescue system)", - RIA Novosti cited Rogozin's words at a meeting of Rocket and Space Corporation Energia.
Against the background of this attitude towards people, “like dirt”, Rogozin is going to create, on Putin’s instructions, a National Space Center at the State Space Scientific and Production Center named after M.V. Hrunichev by the fall of 2022. According to Rogozin, enterprises and design bureaus will be located there on 100 hectares of land - these are manufacturers of microelectronics, composite materials and so on. The area of the center in the form of a skyscraper, reminiscent of a rocket, will be 250 thousand square meters. meters. The headquarters of Roscosmos, as well as 17 subordinate structures will move into it. “20 thousand engineers and designers will be gathered in one place".
It is unclear where Rogozin was going to take so many designers for such low salaries with such his bestial attitude towards people.
The results were not long in coming: the head of the Federal Service for Labor and Employment (Rostrud) Vsevolod Vukolov: “Today, the main (problem) is still for enterprises - they cannot find a specialist in the engineering industry, they cannot find a specialist in the field of production unit, ”he explained, noting that, in his opinion, now “it is necessary to pay attention to training specialists in the production sphere”.
And how to find a specialist for such salaries and with such an attitude as to “consumables”?
As a result, we have lost the most important thing - we have lost professional staff. If you look at engineering, science, schools - two generations are knocked out there. Only the old people remained - they will soon leave the old. No frames - the worst. Machine tools can be purchased. A normal person can be trained to work on a CNC machine, maybe in six months. He will become a professional. There is no one to teach. Nobody wants to work in national poverty to live in poverty when you can go to serve in the FSB or the Ministry of Internal Affairs and become a billionaire like Colonel Cherkalin or Colonel Zakharchenko.
By and large, we have four main problems:
1. We have too small a proportion of people engaged in creative work and too many people engaged in control, protection, defense, leadership (often mediocre, harmful). And the first half is shrinking, moreover, due to the departure of the most talented and successful ones, and the second half is growing all the time due to an increase in the number of officials, "siloviks" and controlling the implementation of new and new bans.
Moreover, the labor of people engaged in creative work is socially despised and poorly paid in comparison with the work of the "siloviki" and officials.
The most egregious and characteristic example is Roscosomos whose creative employees are paid less than NASA employees, the head of Roscosmos without an engineering education and other talents Rogozin is many times more than the head of NASA.
2. Our share of entrepreneurs is too small. De facto repressive legislation, lack of protection of private property, lack of a fair trial, racketeering and banditry by law enforcement agencies, asphyxiating controls by mediocre and corrupt bureaucracy make doing business less attractive and dangerous. Therefore, one cannot count on the appearance of the “Russian Musk” with private space.
3. We have an extremely low level of organization and management, both by the state (this level simply harms the economy) and in production (mainly nationalized in recent years). A negative selection of managers has been implemented in our country, when no more successful ones are appointed to managerial posts, and they have relatives-officials or “siloviks” (enforcement officers), as well as FSB retirees who are given managerial posts to “retire” nursing.
4. Lack of freedom and unsuitable living environment, which instead of caring for citizens creates a minefield of fines and bribes from which the controlling estate is fed, which leads to the departure of the most talented engineers, designers and programmers to countries that are much more comfortable for living at times higher salaries.