“The cost of developing a lunar rocket is equal to the entire space program for 10 years, and there is no one to implement it” – Ivan Moiseev

This project was sent to the Government of the Russian Federation and returned back at the end of last year. Following this, the head of Roskosmos announced that the super-heavy rocket would be created on new principles. Then he did not indicate which ones, but now they are talking about methane engines. The project was returned because the cost of developing this launch vehicle is approximately equal to all the money that the country allocates for space exploration for 10 years. If you make a rocket for 10 years and do nothing else, then what will it launch then?

Now we have methane engines only on experimental non-flying models. While this is a research work, there is not a single operating power plant, while on the Yenisei (the so-called that rocket under development), ready-made engines that we produce were used. In the new version, the cost of the rocket almost doubles, so it all looks like, having failed in the previous project, now they began to talk about a bright future – a new rocket that is much better.

In principle, this rocket is only suitable for flights to the moon and nowhere else. When the federal space program was cut in 2015 until 2025, the program for manned flights to the moon was cut off altogether. If now we are engaged in flights to the moon, then in parallel we must also deal with the creation of lunar complexes – a landing module, a take-off module, and so on. This Russian space budget will not be able to withstand, and even if suddenly someone allocates such enormous money, there will be no one to master it. We simply do not have enough specialists and technical means to organize all this.