[FPSPACE] Energia going bankrupt?

[Jim Oberg]

I am not satisfied by the official explanations of the need
to replace Sevastianov. Improvements that occurred under
his leadership all seem to have been under way prior to his
arrival. Problems under Semyonov (such as the loss of
cash flow when booster programs abandoned 'Block-D'
vehicles in favor of 'Briz' and 'Fregat' upper stages) were
out of his control and were not remedied by his successor.
The Soyuz/Progress doubled launch rate and US cash
bonanza were caused by the needs of the ISS program,
not by Sevastianov's salesmanship. Kliper was a debacle
under both regimes.

It seems to me that Perminov's main problem with Sevastianov
was that the Energia chief acted as if he were his own boss and
not a Perminov underling.

Along the lines of underlings -- the RSA website shows that
the press secretary is now Aleksandr Vorobyov -- and so
Panarin is really gone (http://www.federalspace.ru/pressServ.asp),
which I have to say is a great relief. His home page makes no mention
of the space job (http://www.panarin.com/catalogue/5) -- the 'Panarin'
on www.panarin.ru is a DIFFERENT Panarin, be careful.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at hotmail.com>
To: <FPSPACE at friends-partners.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 12:35 PM
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Energia going bankrupt?


> Considering the state that Semenov and Koptev left Energia in, I have my
> doubts about what is really going on here.
>
> If we look at Energia and Roskosmos, Sevastyanov and Perminov put the 
> Soyuz
> launcher on a firm path to improvement, instituted the Baykal fly-back
> booster program to lower the launch cost for Angara, and came up with
> workable architectures for manned flight to the Moon and Mars.
>
> Undoubtedly the ESA rejection of the Klipr played a role, but ESA
> participation in the Soyuz capsule upgrade is ignored. As is the private
> money for circum-lunar flights.
>
> My suspicion would be to look for personal corruption along with money 
> from
> the GDFMN among Sevastyanov's opponents.  Sevastyanov was accused of
> "lunacy", but what of the "martians"?  As far as the charge of "lunacy"
> goes, it would appear that S & P left Russia in a good position to work 
> with
> China in the 2020's.
>
> Oh well. At least Walt Anderson is still in jail.
>
> E.P.
>
>
>>From: "Sven Grahn" <svengrahn at telia.com>
>>To: "FPSPACE FPSPACE" <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
>>Subject: [FPSPACE] Energia going bankrupt?
>>Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 08:40:55 +0200
>>
>>http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/07/31/russia.space.bankruptcy.reut/index.html
>>
>>Sven
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