The Russian space industry does not depend on procurement of the United States, Rogozin said
MOSCOW, 18 Jul — RIA Novosti. The Russian space industry is not financially dependent on US purchases of Russian rocket engines, said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.
Thus Rogozin refuted the conclusions of the journalist, Space News Matthew Bodner and other American media that after the refusal of the USA to purchase the “Roscosmos” on the Russian manned Soyuz spacecraft and engines for the Atlas 5, the Russian state Corporation will be supposedly in dire financial Straits.
“By itself, the publication is a boorish character, bursting with glee over the problems that are created against our space industry American sanctions, as well as problems resulting from the underfunding of enterprises in previous years,” said Russian Deputy Prime Minister.
“However, by themselves, the arguments and figures which are in this publication do not correspond to reality. Never, our space industry is not dependent on Americans. It was just the opposite,” he said. Rogozin emphasized on the fact that “concerning the evil attacks against the fact that Russia will cease to receive currency for the supply of these engines, the judgments of the American journalist have a professional disappointment, because these points do not correspond to reality”.
Deputy Prime Minister also said that the issue of termination of the supply of engines in the United States that were purchased since the early 90-ies, has set itself the Russian party “owing to the fact that the Americans have repeatedly concealed the true purpose of those payloads that American missiles on our engines were taken out in space.”
According to him, in accordance with the agreements that were signed in the early 90-ies, it was directly forbidden to display weapons on those missiles.
“However, we note that part of the spacecraft, which had previously displayed these missiles, had at best a dual purpose, and often it was a spacecraft created by order of the Pentagon. This directly contradicts the letter and the contents of contracts signed by our sides,” — said Rogozin.
Vice Prime Minister reminded that Russia is selling US the engines NK-33, RD-180 and RD-181. Speaking about the NK-33 engine, Rogozin noted that it was created in the early 70-ies under the “Lunar program” of the USSR. In Soviet times, Samara factory of JSC “Kuznetsov” has been collected about hundreds of such engines and that they and Americans bought. As for the engines RD-180 and RD-181, they are purchased until now.
“The solid orders from NPO “Energomash” enclosed by 2020, and if we talk about cooperation in the framework of the ISS, then it is likely that these engines will be procured after 2020″, — said Rogozin.