Russia must be more competitive in commercial space market, gov't official says

Russia must be more aggressive in the market of commercial space launches, otherwise it might lose its competitiveness, a top Russian government official said Tuesday.

It is necessary to find new markets, such as private clients, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told a meeting in the State Duma, or the lower house of the Russian parliament.

He warned that if the Russian space industry adheres to the status quo, it would lose "a lion's share" of global commercial space services.

Rogozin noted that the space agencies in the United States, Britain, Japan and the European Union have been busy designing multipurpose spacecrafts which will significantly slash the costs of workload delivery compared with the one-way Russian carrier rockets.

He said Russia needs to cut the costs of workload delivery to space multifold in 20 years, urging to undertake an "aggressive offensive" in that field to retain the country's existing clients and obtain new ones.

Among the projects the Russian space industry must implement in order to stay competitive, Rogozin mentioned the building of a new-generation manned spaceship, an interplanetary towing craft, a national orbital station and a super-heavy Angara carrier rocket to replace the Proton-M rocket which experienced a string of failures in recent years.

The latest one happened Saturday when a Proton-M carrying a Mexican satellite suffered a third-stage failure just before the detachment of the satellite.

On the same day, a planned correction of the International Space Station's orbit could not be carried out after the engines of the Progress M-26M cargo ship failed to start on time.

Russia currently provides 40 percent of the world's commercial space launches. Endi