MOSCOW. April 11 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian space industry has earned above USD5bn within the 10 years it has been offering space services worldwide.
"The state's share (of the assets allocated for further development - Interfax-AVN) in the space industry for the past 10 years has amounted to about USD4bn, while the commercial share more than USD5bn," Yuri Semyonov, president of the Energia Corporation, said in an interview with the Kommersant daily, published on Friday.
According to him, inhabited space flights have been in high demand worldwide. In particular, the national space industry has earned more than USD1bn only for programs involving the Mir space station. The launches of foreign satellites on Russian-made Proton carriers accounted for another USD2.5bn, and the Russian participation in the Sea Launch program has yielded USD700m, he said.
Semyonov said that it would be critical for Russia in the future to balance between inhabited and automatic space programs.
"I am sure that should we bury inhabited space programs, we will have no automatic spacecraft, for there will be no cooperation that also supports this avenue of research," he said.
In his opinion, Russia should make the types of spacecraft and carriers as few as possible.
"Russia is making 30 various spacecraft on 20 different platforms. No budget can possibly sustain 20 platforms based on old-fashioned technology. The French space research program is based on two to three basic platforms, China has two," he also said.
According to the daily, since 1993 the Russian group of spacecraft has been reduced to 97 pieces from 186. Within the same period, the U.S. has increased the number of operational orbited satellites from 201 to 418, China from six to 22, France from eight to 18, India from two to six, and the European Space Agency from 10 to 15.