Launch puts big rocket up Moscow
CAPE CANAVERAL: Russian officials mocked American “hysteria” over its successful SpaceX launch as pioneering businessman Elon Musk taunted Moscow and US President Donald Trump vowed to beat it to Mars.
As SpaceX astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken successfully docked and boarded the International Space Station for NASA, a war of words broke out back on earth.
SpaceX’s history-making voyage to become the world’s first commercial company to send humans into orbit meant Russia has lost its long-held monopoly on space travel.
Owner Musk lobbed a jab at Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian space chief who once said Washington may one day be forced to “deliver its astronauts to the ISS by using a trampoline”.
“The trampoline is working,” quipped Musk alongside NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. Both men laughed. “It’s an inside joke,” Musk added.
In 2014, Rogozin, then deputy prime minister, mocked the lack of a US manned flight program after Washington announced new sanctions against Moscow which included some space industries. Later he tweeted his congratulations.
But Russia’s space corporation said it was puzzled by the frenzy unleashed by what many hailed as the dawn of a new era.
“We don’t really understand the hysteria sparked by the successful launch of a Crew Dragon spacecraft,” Roscosmos spokesman Vladimir Ustimenko said. “What should have happened a long time ago happened.”
Speaking at the iconic Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the flawless SpaceX launch, Trump vowed that US astronauts would return to the Moon in 2024 “to establish a permanent presence and a launching pad to Mars”.
“And the first woman on the Moon will be an American woman and the first nation to land on Mars will be the United States of America,” he said.
“We are not going to be number two anywhere.”
The Russian space agency shot back, saying it was not planning to sit idle, either.
“Already this year we will conduct tests of two new rockets and resume our lunar program next year,” Ustimenko tweeted.
He did not elaborate but Moscow has said it is planning to conduct a new test launch of the Angara heavy carrier rocket later this year. It is also pressing ahead with the development of its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat, also known as Satan 2 by NATO’s classification.
In 2018, President Vladimir Putin boasted that the Sarmat was one of the new Russian weapons that could render NATO defences obsolete.
Russia had for many years enjoyed a monopoly as the only country able to ferry astronauts, and Saturday’s launch meant the loss of a sizeable income. A seat in the Soyuz costs NASA around $US80 million.
Roscosmos insisted that the US still needed Moscow. “It’s very important to have at least two possibilities to make it to the station. Because you never know …,” Ustimenko said.
Some MPs in Moscow tried to downplay the US feat. “This is a flight to the International Space Station, not to Mars,” said one, Alexey Pushkov.