Talk:United Rocket and Space Corporation

Vitaly Lopota – Energia
It appears that former Energia president, Vitaly Lopota, is being investigated for alleged criminal conduct as head of Energia. But it's not clear at all whether he did what he is charged with or whether political forces in Russia needed him removed to further the state renationalizing the Russian space sector. Nor is it clear why the Russian government conveniently offered him a new VP position in the new USRC company, if they are concerned about wrongful criminal actions. Here is a story in the space media: Embattled RSC Energia President Lopota Suspended from Post - See more at: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2014/08/02/embattled-rsc-energia-president-lopota-suspended-post/#more-53056, 2 Aug 2014.

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser. N2e (talk) 12:42, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

A bit more centralization
This seems relevant: Putin Tightens Grip on Russian Defense Industry, Moscow Times, 10 Sep 2014. Putin is taking personal control, and has apparently demoted Rogozin: "Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the commission's previous chief, has been dumped down to the position of deputy following the reshuffle.  The new arrangement "will increase the efficiency of state policy in the military-industrial sphere and the … security of the country," Putin said during a meeting of the commission, according to a transcript on the Kremlin's website. ...The crisis in Ukraine has sparked a protracted standoff between Russia and the West that has cut the defense industry off from high-quality foreign components and Western credit"  Interesting times. N2e (talk) 05:20, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Two year life for this entity?
It appears that the life of the United Rocket and Space Corporation may be just two years. It appears that the URSC legal entity may have been merged, along with the (former) Roscosmos Space Agency, into a new entity called the Roscosmos State Corporation, starting up effective 1 Jan 2016. My Russian is very rusty, and I can't really make out all the Russian sources, so will be looking for better sources, and even some deep-analysis English language sources, that can clarify this in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, if anyone has good sources, please leave pointers/links here. Cheers. N2e (talk) 19:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

10-yr budget, approved in 2016, is a shadow of what it was proposed to be in 2014
Russian Federal Government just approved a 10-year space budget. Russia approves its 10-year space strategy, Planetary Society, Anatoly Zak, 23 March 2016. There is a reduction of 64% in the ten-year budget from when the proposal was proposed in the spring of 2014. the Russian government finally approved the nation’s 10-year space program worth 1.406 trillion rubles ($20.5 billion) last week. Officially known as the Federal Space Program 2016-2025, or FKP-2025 for short ... The final package includes annual projected budgets for most civilian space projects and the timeline for their implementation. FKP-2025 supercedes the previous 10-year plan, which covered Russian space activities from 2006 to 2015. ...The final space budget is a shadow of its 2,315.3-billion ruble ($56.4 billion) draft proposal circulated in the spring of 2014, before falling oil prices, the annexation of Crimea, and the resulting western sanctions sent the Russian economy into recession and forced Moscow to cut spending across the board. The very fact that the program was approved two and half months after the first year it covers had already started is evidence of tough battles the Russian space industry had to fight for each line item in the document. Postponed were ambitious plans to build a giant super-heavy rocket, which would enable Russia to land its cosmonauts on the Moon by the end of 2020s and begin building a permanent base there. Even a relatively modest proposal to partially switch the new-generation Angara family of rockets from kerosene to more potent hydrogen fuel had to be delayed, potentially undermining the traditional Russian competitiveness on the international market of launch services. On the plus side, the cost-cutting apparently prompted Roskosmos to streamline its large and disparate fleet of launch vehicles from eight to just two families: Soyuz and Angara. Only six variations of these two types of rockets will remain instead of current 12.

Very interesting changes since the time the original consolidation of the Russian Space Industry was announced in August 2013, when a state corporation named "United Rocket and Space Corporation" was the entity created in which to consolidate. N2e (talk) 16:02, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

United Rocket and Space Corporation -- what is status today, in 2018?
The United Rocket and Space Corporation was founded in 2013, and clearly had a run for at least 3 or 4 years thereafter. But it is a bit unclear if it continued to exist after Roscosmos was shut down in 2016 as a state agency and the Roscosmos brand name was used for a new Roscosmos state corporation.

Did URSC continue to exist after that? Or was the Roscosmos brand just slapped onto what had been, since 2013, a forming state corp called URSC, and URSC as a name would no longer need to exist?

I haven't been able to isolate this from the English-language sources I can find. Cheers. N2e (talk) 14:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I did a bit more editing of the article prose. Although the final disposition of the URSC is a bit unclear from the sources we have, and it is unclear if/when URSC was shut down as a corporate entity; but we have no sources showing URSC existing after mid-2016. I've edited and changed a number of verb tenses to reflect what seems now to be historical about the several-year existence of this particular Russian corporation.  N2e (talk) 16:49, 28 May 2018 (UTC)