"Roscosmos" will also use the return stage

The American company SpaceX has just successfully landed the first stage of the cargo ship Falcon 9 on a floating platform and delivered it to the port for transportation to the base. Ilon Mask says that this level can be used 10-20 times, and “with a little repair” - up to 100 times . Even if it slightly exaggerates, the cost of launching a rocket and outputting 1 kilogram of cargo into orbit is still noticeably reduced. Thus, SpaceX will be able to effectively compete with the cheapest space transport - Russian missiles.

But Roscosmos is not quite sure of that. “Much work remains to be done to prove the low cost and payback of this project. And besides, reliability. You can plant it once, but declare that it will be used 20 times in a row without significant modifications, just wipe the dust, this ... still needs to be seriously worked on this, ”said Igor Komarov, general director of the Roscosmos state corporation, on April 11 the program "Opinion: Cosmonautics in Russia" on the channel "Russia 24". He agreed that the company Ilona Mask is one of the main competitors in the market of launch vehicles: “This company is well-known and uses new approaches, and does not allow anyone to live in peace.”

The main way of competition is cost reduction: “We see that competition in the launch services market is growing, and this requires serious attention to cost reduction. We have the first results. We managed to reduce the cost of "Protons". Actively working with the "Union". We are also working in terms of spacecraft, so-called automata. ”
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However, in order to compete with SpaceX in the launch services market, Russia will in the future use return stages . Work is under way in this direction, it is only in the timing of bringing such steps into commercial operation. Igor Komarov believes that by the end of 2016, “principled and new directions on which we will focus” will be formulated.

Russia's task is to be a leader in the field of space research and in space activities. “In a number of areas we retain the leading role. This also applies to manned space flight, launch vehicles, and our launch vehicles: in terms of the share of the launch services market, we certainly take first place. And in the field of engine-building contracts that have been concluded recently and the interest that various countries show in our engines shows that we are indeed leaders in these areas, ”the Roskosmos general director said.