Russia to spend around $50 billion on space program in 2016-2025
Most ambitious space program projects for 2016-2025 will cost about $7.5 billion
MOSCOW, October 24. /TASS/. Russia’s Roscosmos space agency estimates the costs of most ambitious space projects in the federal space program for 2016-2025 at about $7.5 billion, a source in the space rocket industry told TASS.
Roscosmos has requested about $50 billion from the federal budget for the program, while another $6 billion is to be spent from manufacturers’ own funds and incomes from commercial projects. In contrast to the previous program (for 2006-2015) Roscosmos hopes to draw thrice as much funds from the treasury and extra-budgetary sources.
Most of the money is to be invested in research and development - about $36 billion, the agency’s source said. The money will be enough to implement the innovative option. The conservative one, according to Roscosmos, will cost about $7 billion less for the budget, the source said.
“However, the conservative option reserves no funding to devise technologies for a manned mission to the Moon, and the overall share of ambitious projects is close to zero,” he warned. The source did not mention any of the projects he was referring to, though.
As for the economic effects of the program, Roscosmos estimates it at about $31 billion - a similar parameter in the draft of the previous program stood at less.