Mid-March of this year marked the 90th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Gagarin, the first person in world history to fly into space. The first flight into space aroused great interest throughout the world, and Yuri Gagarin became a world celebrity. At the invitation of foreign governments and public organizations, he visited about 30 countries. In July 1961, the astronaut met with the British leadership – Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen, contrary to etiquette, took a photo with the astronaut as a souvenir, citing the fact that he is not an ordinary, earthly person, but a heavenly one, and therefore there is no violation of etiquette. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser awarded Yuri Gagarin the highest order of the republic – the Necklace of the Nile. In September 1963, Gagarin visited Paris, where he took part in the XIV International Cosmonautics Congress. In October 1963, he and V. Tereshkova visited the UN headquarters in New York. Gagarin was president of the Soviet-Cuban Friendship Society, an honorary member of the Finland-USSR Society and visited many countries of the world with a mission of peace and friendship. In general, he became the face of the Soviet Union and a recognizable personality abroad. Today, if you ask any person on the streets of Moscow who flies in space and what the cosmonauts do there, no one will give an intelligible answer. A by-product of military space The legendary R-7 rocket Manned space exploration, as we know, became a by-product of the development of military space, the Cold War and the arms race. After all, the legendary R-7 rocket, on which both the satellite and the first man took off, was intended primarily for the delivery of nuclear weapons. The first Salyut orbital stations were created on the basis of the Almaz military observation stations. It was for their delivery into orbit that the powerful two-stage Proton rocket was created, which is still in operation. And today, military astronautics dominates to prevent the outbreak of war and the use of nuclear forces. It is no secret that today more than 30 countries around the world are working on the creation of weapons of mass destruction. There are still a lot of people working on the “poor man’s atomic bomb” – chemical weapons. More than 40 states have missile delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. Today, six more are actively approaching the club of five countries with nuclear weapons. Thus, space defense systems increase the efficiency of the armed forces by 1.5–2 times and reduce defense costs by the same amount. Without the use of space assets, it is impossible to solve such problems as warning of a missile attack, communications and control of strategic nuclear forces. At the beginning of its inception, manned cosmonautics served mainly propaganda purposes, the basis of which in the Soviet Union was the desire to “wipe the nose” of the Americans and demonstrate to the whole world the advantages of the socialist system. And at first it worked. One has only to remember the first artificial satellite of the Earth, the first cosmonaut on the planet Yuri Gagarin, the first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first spacewalk by a Soviet man, the first orbital station. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin But the unbridled space race led to the fact that the wealthier and more practical Americans won it. This became clear after their landing on the Moon and the creation of the Space Shuttle. Realizing that the Americans would not be able to achieve the exploration of the Moon and distant planets, the Soviet Union decided to invest all its efforts and resources in manned space exploration and experiments at orbital stations, the last of which was Mir. The first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova © vsegda-pomnim.com However, it soon became clear that manned astronautics did not justify itself financially, since it brought only indirect benefits from the use of scientific and technical knowledge obtained as a result of space activities, from experiments in the field of medicine , microelectronics, new materials. True, over more than 60 years of its existence, most of these experiments were carried out more than once, but there was no great return from them. In addition, the presence of a person on a spacecraft during experiments on microgravity, the creation of especially pure substances and preparations is generally unacceptable, since the mass of the astronaut introduces certain errors in the purity of the experiments. However, the Soviet Union was unable to oppose anything more serious to the United States and continued to conduct unnecessary experiments in weightlessness on plants, animals and even people, first on Mir, then on the ISS. We drank, ate, had fun! We did the math – the ISS was crying © flickr.com Until 2016, maintaining the ISS cost the countries participating in the project $6.5 billion a year. NASA covered most of the costs. Russia spent $1.5 billion annually on the ISS. And now the Federal Space Program (FSP) allocates 40 billion rubles a year, or $530 million, for manned flights for 2016–2025. The costs had to be compensated somehow. Therefore, although the Americans resisted, our country increased its income in an exotic way – by sending professional astronauts from other countries or ordinary tourists to the ISS. Each flight of European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts, “in third place” of the Russian Soyuz TMA spacecraft, brought Russia an additional 12 million dollars, each tourist – about 20 million. These funds were and are used to support the program for the construction of Russian spacecraft for flights to the ISS. However, this money is like a poultice for the deceased. Each launch of a Soyuz rocket costs Russia several tens of millions of dollars. In addition, they must be added to the rent of $115 million, which must be paid to Kazakhstan for the lease of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. And if you take into account the funds that Russia must pay to the same Kazakhstan and some Russian regions for the spoiled ecology of countries where spent rockets with residues of poisonous heptyl fall, then you inevitably begin to wonder whether we need this. . The protests of environmentalists are becoming louder and louder, who, not without reason, claim that it is space activity that leads to the formation of ozone holes over our planet. However, the environmental costs of space activities do not end there. For example, why maintain an entire Star City in Korolev, a huge Mission Control Center to manage three or four cosmonauts who don’t know what to do with themselves in orbit? But on the initiative of State Duma deputy Valentina Tereshkova, five billion rubles will be allocated to support this center in 2024-2025. The profession of an astronaut does not exist Academician Vasily Mishin Even at the dawn of cosmonautics, Academician Vasily Mishin, the successor of S.P. Korolev, argued: “The profession of an astronaut does not exist, because he spends only 20% of his time in space.” . full-time, and mainly on take-off and landing training, exercise and sleep. So manned flights are not needed at all at the moment.” His statement is supported by American professor Robert Park, who believes that most planned scientific research is not of primary importance. He notes that the goal of most scientific research in a space laboratory is to do this in conditions of weightlessness, which can be done much cheaper in conditions of artificial weightlessness on a special aircraft flying along a parabolic trajectory. And among specialists in the Russian space industry it is generally accepted that the practical advantages of orbital stations have already been exhausted – almost all important research and discoveries have been made in recent decades. Why, for example, carry out experiments made 25-30-40 years ago, especially “Quail” to study the embryonic development of Japanese quails. In 1990-In 1999 on board the station “Mir” conducted eight similar experiments with further hatching of chicks. Pathologies in the development of individual organs and systems were observed in “space” embryos, and the chicks that managed to hatch were unable to adapt to conditions of weightlessness. Russian spacecraft “Bion-M2”. From 1973 to 2013, 12 Bion satellites were launched to study the effects of weightlessness on living organisms, cosmic radiation and much more. Why repeat these experiments again? Monkey runs will no longer be carried out due to bioethical reasons and the high cost of such research. Experiment with SIRIUS-23 to simulate a long-duration expedition to the Moon. Why do unclean experiments in which there is no weightlessness, overload, radiation, change of day and night every 40-45 minutes and much more? It is necessary to study the health of astronauts who have already spent hundreds of days in space. In particular, the commander of the Roscosmos cosmonaut corps, Oleg Kononenko, exceeded the mark of 879 days spent in space in total. This is a new world record. The previous record belonged to another Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. Over five space flights from 1998 to 2015, he spent 878 days 11 hours 29 minutes 48 seconds in orbit. Instead of an epilogue General Director of the Roscosmos state corporation Yuri Borisov © kremlin.ru What to do in this case? Give up on space exploration? No. It is necessary to develop unmanned astronautics, which brings direct benefits. This includes the launch of communications satellites, Earth sensing satellites, exploration of oil and other minerals, television and radio, and meteorological spacecraft. In the absence of domestic spacecraft, Russia would have to pay a billion dollars just to rent communication channels from foreign systems and another $250 million for television channels. Roscosmos is faced with the task of reducing the gap with other countries, the head of the state corporation Yuri Borisov recently said, in the field of the number of space satellites from 190 existing today (Roscosmos data) to 360 devices by 2030. orbital constellation of more than 500 satellites. Of these, approximately 40 devices form the BeiDou positioning system (analogous to GPS). And China plans to create an orbital constellation of several thousand satellites. The American SpaceX alone, as part of the Starlink project, has launched about four thousand satellites into orbit since 2018. We’ll get there, but it’s unlikely. As for manned space exploration, it is incorrect to cite countries like India or China as examples that want to develop it. They are mainly driven by a feeling of imaginary inferiority in this matter and the desire to “surpass” their former colonizers or older brothers at all costs. They want to be like everyone else, and nothing can stop these countries. And I think that there is no need to interfere with them, although the military danger emanating from space cannot be underestimated. Space will begin to serve people only when global problems are solved in it, especially the creation of devices for transmitting solar energy to our planet. And maintaining cosmic prestige for the sake of prestige and allowing millions of people to live below the poverty line is despicable.
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