Technical isolation: the US closes the export of space technology to Russia

24.12.2021 10:38

Technical isolation: the US closes the export of space technology to Russia
Photo: SpaceX

Sad rhetoric

The Americans seem to have banned everything they could reach to Russia. But it turns out that there is still room for maneuver. And the point is not in the SWIFT system, but in a much more prosaic thing - in the export of space technologies.

Senator Marco Rubio was concerned about the safety of the United States' space leadership and introduced a bill to the Senate. The document is titled "On the Protection of American Leadership and Enterprises in the Space Sphere" and is intended to limit not only Russia, but China.

According to the Washington senator, critical technologies should not be bought or directly borrowed by competitors, as this entails strategic risks. Rubio is proposed to create an interdepartmental mechanism to control the military-civil cooperation of American companies with their Chinese and Russian counterparts.

Simply put, the United States fears that the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies, disguising themselves as commercial firms, are scouting the innermost secrets of American space.

A natural question will be - why did NASA not take care of its safety before?

Why for a trivial, in general, problem, it was necessary to involve the Senate lawmakers?

According to the experts of the Russia Today agency, the whole point is in the growing technological lag of the United States. They say that the Americans are not doing well in the space industry, and in order to maintain the existing status quo, they are ready for unpopular methods of competition.

However, if the country has nothing special to share due to its lag, then the export of which technologies can be limited at all?

From the point of view of RT analysts, one can agree with very big reservations.

Mark Rubio is really concerned about industrial espionage from Russia and China (China, by the way, is much more afraid), but all fears are concentrated around the commercial component of the space program.

Over the past few years, several private companies, albeit with partial government participation, have achieved impressive results. And these offices, unfortunately, are not Chinese or Russian.

Despite the fact that Russia ushered in the era of space tourism - in 2001, Dennis Tito paid $ 20 million for the flight - now the entire industry has gone to the United States. In the last 4 months alone, 18 people have been tourists in space. The cost of putting a kilogram of useful mass into orbit is rapidly decreasing.

If 20-25 years ago it cost about 28 thousand dollars, now Falcon 9 promises less than 2 thousand per kilogram. And Elon Musk predicts 10 bucks per kilogram in the upcoming Starships. However, the statements of the richest man on Earth should be treated with a certain degree of skepticism. He has already promised many times, then postponed the implementation, and later even forgot about what was said.

Apparently, we are witnessing the emergence of a new multi-billion dollar industry, not only for entertainment, but super-fast travel around the planet.

The aforementioned Starships are planned to be equipped for a flight of passengers from the United States to Europe in just three quarters of an hour. A seat in such a "Hyperconcord" of the XXI century will cost a passenger more than $ 1, however, the authors of the idea are confident in the success of the project. This is the initial amount - in the future, technologies will inevitably become cheaper.

Repeating history

What's all this American space leadership fair for?

In addition, all technologies that rotate in commercial space are originally dual-purpose. It is much easier to buy or "borrow" an innovation in Elon Musk's conventionally private office than to infiltrate the space programs of the Pentagon or NASA.

Recall that in the final stage of readiness, a rocket capable of lifting more than 100 tons of cargo into orbit is the above-mentioned Starships. How critically important technologies are now in the hands of SpaceX is unnecessary to tell.

That is why Senator Marco Rubio decided to submit a bill to the Senate "To protect American leadership and businesses in the space sector." It is planned to restrict the sale of telecommunications and aerospace products to representatives of Russia and China, as well as oblige manufacturers to notify about investments from these countries.

The senator is particularly jealous of China:

“Protecting technology investments from corporate espionage by the CCP is critical to our economic and national security. Congress and the Biden administration must take this aggression seriously, or we risk losing our position as world leader in the cosmic future. ”

The initiative also has specific destructive goals that are not aimed at protecting their own technologies. Rubio calls to "torpedo" the Russian-Chinese project of the International Scientific Lunar Station.

Of course, it will be difficult for the United States to directly slow down the lunar ambitions of the two countries, but it is quite possible to restrict the transfer of its own technologies to the project.

By the way, these are quite normal relations between countries deeply involved in the new Cold War.

Now Washington has quite tangible problems with the lunar program, and if it is delayed, then the second in stories the Chinese will be on the natural satellite of the Earth. With Russian technological assistance, of course. Great hopes in the United States are nourished in time for the results of the development of a super-heavy Starship capable of throwing astronauts to the Moon.

The parallels with the Cold War in this situation are not accidental.

Russia is consistently led into technological isolation, which is in many ways even more dangerous than financial isolation. For various reasons, our country lost its leadership in space, moving for several years by the inertia of the Soviet technological legacy. When the fuse ended, it turned out that the domestic space requires at least a serious reform.

In this regard, I recall the story of Soviet microelectronics, which until the end of the 70s could well compete with American products. The needs for semiconductors from the military in the Soviet Union and the United States were, in general, similar. But then the market for household computers appeared overseas, which simply flooded the industry with billions. The Americans even had to export surplus technologies to South Korea and Japan.

As a result, the consumer, and not the state customer, dictated the requirements for manufacturers, which became the driver of the growth of microelectronics. Up to a certain point, the military-industrial complex was a very effective locomotive of this process, but even its resources are far from endless.

A very similar situation is now emerging with American space - such as Musk, Bezos and other lesser-known billionaires are getting involved. In 2019 alone, the volume of the industry was estimated at $ 366 billion. Businessmen are rapidly reducing the cost of space travel and taking space from a constantly subsidized history into a lucrative project. In twenty years, according to Morgan Stenley, more than one trillion dollars will be spinning here annually.

In addition to commercial space flights, private satellites are actively developing. For example, the Satellogic orbital constellations can organize online observation of any point on the Earth in the coming years.

Forty years ago, Soviet Russia lost its leadership in microelectronics. Recovery will take hundreds of billions and does not guarantee quick success.

The transfer of space in the United States into the hands of private owners threatens a new catastrophe for Russia - the avalanche-like growth of the industry will finally throw the country into the technological margins. That is why the package of restrictions by Mark Rubio should be taken not as a sign of American weakness, but as a guide to urgent measures at Roscosmos.