The Enterprise That Developed All Of The USSR's Space Rockets Is In Critical Condition

The end of "Energy"?

General Director of the Russian Rocket and Space Corporation Energia Igor Maltsev said in a mailing to employees on the occasion of the company's 79th anniversary that the company is in a critical condition and may be closed, writes "Gazeta.ru".

According to Igor Maltsev, this corporation has multimillion debts, interest on loans "eat up" the budget, many processes are inefficient, and a significant part of the staff has lost motivation and responsibility. The General Director noted that in recent years almost all promises on key projects have been unfulfilled and deadlines have been missed.

He emphasized that "the groundwork created by Sergey Pavlovich [Korolev] and developed by our general designers - Mishin, Glushko, Semenov - has been eaten up to date," and warned that the future of Energia depends on each employee. The head urged the staff to leave illusions that everything is fine and openly recognize the crisis.

Igor Maltsev did not rule out the possibility that the enterprise will not be able to function normally, pay salaries and create new developments. He declared the need for "decisive action" and urged employees to honestly answer themselves whether they are ready to work for the sake of results. He called the task of saving the company a "miracle", emphasizing: "We must do everything that is possible, and everything that is impossible, God will do for us."

RKK Energia is Russia's leading enterprise in the field of manned cosmonautics, founded in 1946 by Sergei Korolev. It developed the first Soviet ballistic missiles, Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, Luna, Molniya and Soyuz launch vehicles, as well as the Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft and the first interplanetary automatic stations that reached the Moon, Venus and Mars.

The crisis in the Russian space industry deepened after the outbreak of a full-scale war in Ukraine, when Roscosmos fell under sanctions and lost almost all foreign customers. By the end of 2024, the corporation has made only 17 space launches - the minimum for Russia since the early 1960s, the era of Yuri Gagarin, when the USSR was the first to send a man into space.

According to the Payloadspace portal, Russia is more than 8 times behind the United States, which launched 145 vehicles into orbit, and four times behind China (68 launches).

Even a quarter of a century ago, Russia was the leader in orbital launches: in 2000, Roscosmos carried out more than 30 launches a year, compared to 28 for the US, 12 for Europe and five for China. But since then, the US has increased the number of launches by 5.2 times and China by almost 14 times. As a result, Russia has slipped to third place among spacefaring nations and is only slightly ahead of New Zealand, which conducted 13 launches last year.

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