MOSCOW. June 6 (Interfax-AVN) - The U.S. company SpaceX will take several more years before its Dragon spacecraft can perform a manned flight to the International Space Station, says Energia space rocket corporation President Vitaly Lopota.
"The Dragon spaceship's flight is surely a success for the company SpaceX. It has worked on it for 10 years and spent $1.6 billion. But there are three to four more years of work before the spaceship will become suitable for a manned flight," Lopota said.
SpaceX used the same technology in developing the Falcon-9 launch vehicle that is used in the Russian-Ukrainian rocket Zenit, he said.
"They have made something similar to the Zenit both in terms of its configuration and technical parameters," he said.
The launch of this new U.S. spacecraft should not be viewed as an indicator that Russia is lagging behind the U.S. in building space rocketry, Lopota said.
"We should just make concrete decisions enabling us to develop our rocketry timely," he said.