Russians shake up
their space industry

Target of the space takeover
Semyonov, who turned 70 last month, has headed Energia since 1991 when the company was created to manage Soviet spacecraft manufacturing facilities. Although recently said to be in poor health, Semyonov is apparently not volunteering to retire.

The facility he heads dates back to 1946, when it began work on rockets and, later, space vehicles. It was headed by legendary Soviet space genius Sergei Korolyov during the space race, and the town it is located in, Kaliningrad, was renamed Korolyov in the mid-1990s.

In the 1960s, Semyonov played a leading role in developing the Soviet manned moon capsule, the Zond, although America's Apollo successes led to the cancellation of that program before any cosmonauts could fly in it. He later headed development of the Soviet space shuttle, Buran, which flew just once in unmanned mode before being mothballed.

NASA A 1993 photo shows then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and Yuri Koptev, who headed the Russian Space Agency at the time, shaking hands during a pact-signing ceremony. Energia chief Yuri Semyonov is at far right, looking none too thrilled.

In 1993, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Semyonov tried to consolidate the remnants of the soviet space industry under his leadership. But he was outmaneuvered by Yuri Koptev, formerly in a Soviet government ministry overseeing space and rockets, who shaped a “Russian NASA” and reached agreements with NASA Administrator Dan Goldin to be recognized as the sole authority over Russian space activities.

Starved for funds
The main thrust of Energia's work remained the construction and operation of human space vehicles such as the Soyuz crew transport, the Mir space station, and the international space station's main living module. Although NASA paid for some of these developments, the Russian government itself, as Semyonov’s main customer, only provided funds at low levels, and usually late.

Hence, observers who talked on background with MSNBC.com found current government complaints about Energia's poor financial condition to be hypocritical, because it has been the government’s own practice of starving it for funds that has been the primary factor in the crisis.

Semyonov’s attempts to commercialize Energia's operations — including the development of a Block-D upper stage — have been largely stymied.

One of Energia's most ambitious commercial projects has been the sale of open seats aboard the Soyuz to space passengers bound for the space station. Since 2001, two seats were sold to millionaires, and several others went to European professional astronauts. But the last several private-sector candidates — including pop star Lance Bass — had to drop out due to a variety of funding and medical problems. The Russian government put its own representatives into those seats, but unlike the commercial candidates, they paid Energia nothing.

Energia also has proposed the development of a new piloted spacecraft called Kliper to replace Soyuz vehicles in the next decade. The European Space Agency has expressed interest in contributing to the project’s funding, but apparently the Russian government has not.

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