MOSCOW, June 17. /TASS/. The popularity of Elon Musk and the flight of his company SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS should be attributed entirely to private companies’ expectations of eventual privatization of space objects, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Aseyev, told TASS on Wednesday.

Aseyev, a former deputy president of the RAS, is certain that the current fuss about Musk’s projects stems from the expectations free market economy enthusiasts pin on the privatization of space and space projects at some future date.

Also, Aseyev attributes the popularity of Musk’s projects in Russia to the lingering illusions of the 1990s private enterprise is capable of coping with complex tasks, including those involving the economy of whole countries and the solution of ambitious technical problems.

The scientist is certain that such ideas are utterly unrealistic, because all of humanity’s main achievements in space are based entirely on the potential of government programs. In particular, Aseyev quotes an article the CEO of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin published in Forbes magazine. Rogozin points to the heavy government support for Musk’s company SpaceX, including budget spending on the creation of the spacecraft itself, the opportunity to use the space site free of charge and NASA’s scientific and engineering ideas and potential and its personnel.

"This prompts the conclusion that to achieve future successes in space government support for the space programs Rogozin mentioned in his article should be stepped up," Aseyev concluded.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew Dragon spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral on May 30 at 15:22 East Coast time. It was a second launch attempt. The first one was canceled 17 minutes before the expected time due to bad weather. It was the first crewed flight carried out from the US territory on a US-built spacecraft in nine years. Crew Dragon’s successful docking with the ISS took place on May 31.