Roscosmos has questions about economic aspects of Musk’s rockets
SpaceX is secretive about the economic aspects of its launches
MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has questions to SpaceX founder Elon Musk he is opting not to answer, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin said on Sunday.
"The topic is still debatable, giving rise to many questions Elon Musk is not going to answer. Including our question about government support," he said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station.
According to the Roscosmos chief, Russian and American experts believe that only ten-fold use of reentry modules can yield profits. "SpaceX does not demonstrate such results," he said, adding that SpaceX is secretive about the economic aspects of its launches.
"When launching recoverable spacecraft half of fuel will go to reenter this unit to Earth. It means that a rocket is to be capable of taking more than 20 tonnes of payload puts to the orbit half as much," Rogozin noted, adding that "the rocket itself for the way back" accounts for the rest of the payload.
Moreover, in his words, avionics, software, energy sources, sensors, electronics, hydraulic, electric and other systems require funding as well.
"It is a beautiful engineering idea. We like it but so far it is a cover hiding the United States’ dumping on the market for launching services and a flagrant attempt to squeeze rivals out of it," he said, stressing that Roscosmos will not yield to it.