Vladimir Putin proposed declaring 2021 the Year of science and technology. This initiative is not accidental-despite Western sanctions and the pandemic, the innovative economy is increasingly coming to the forefront in Russia. What are the main scientific and technological successes achieved by domestic scientists and industry in the past year?
After the events of 2014, many experts predicted "technological isolation" of the Russian economy. This belief was based on the well-known opposition of two economic models: protectionism and free trade.
The usual claim of free trade advocates is that protectionism and the closure of the national market leads to the decay of the economy, but free trade on the contrary – to the prosperity of the country. It was in this logic that the developed countries of the West wanted to" colonize " Russia in the early 1990s. Then our country was offered to "quietly pump oil and gas", and everything more or less technological and innovative – to buy abroad. Everything is in the logic of the English economist of the XIX century, David Ricardo, who clearly calculated the example of "exchanging English wool for Portuguese wine" and proved that it is better for Portugal to grow grapes, and for England to raise sheep, in order to then profitably exchange these goods in free trade.
Exactly the same scheme was proposed after the collapse of the deeply "protectionist" USSR and Russia. Like, let everyone do what they do best: the United States makes computers and airplanes, and Russia just pumps oil. We were told: Russians, stop thinking about the high-tech that you got from the USSR, you will earn three times more if you throw all the forces of the country into oil production!
However, in the real world, they try to turn the" exchange of wool for wine "into"glass beads in exchange for land". One of the countries (colony) becomes increasingly dependent on the world leader (metropolis). After that, the colony falls behind in the civilizational race-and often forever. All this was proved by another economic genius-the Austrian Daniel List.
Therefore, this scenario was expected from the" Russia of the 2014 model": agony in the grip of Western technological sanctions, and then-the surrender of any political and economic independence.
Diamonds under our feet
Now, in 2020, it became clear that the scenario of technological isolation of our country did not work. Sound Russian protectionism and" self-reliance "proved stronger than the primacy of" free trade", which the United States is trying to abuse. 2020 was a time to demonstrate the final technological achievements that have become the results of the efforts of previous years and even decades. Let's try to make a rating of these successes – the ten main scientific and technological breakthroughs of our country in the outgoing year.
1. The first place should be given, of course, to the Russian vaccine against the new coronavirus "Sputnik V". The vaccine was urgently developed in just a few months, but this was the result of the Titanic work of previous years at the Gamalei Center. For several years, the Center worked on the creation of a vaccine against MERS (middle East respiratory syndrome virus) – and it turned out that this work could become the main one for the development of a vaccine against coronavirus. Several more covid-19 vaccines from other Russian research centers are on the way.
2. At the very end of the year, the new domestic airliner MS-21, which is undergoing tests, rose into the air – and this happened for the first time with the new domestic PD-14 engine. Without a doubt, there is a huge technological breakthrough. There are fewer countries producing such aircraft engines in the world than there are countries capable of putting a person into space.
3. The unique floating nuclear power plant "Mikhail Lomonosov" was put into operation in the middle of this year and supplied the first light and heat to the power grid of the Chukchi city of Pevek. Such floating nuclear power plants are a real salvation for remote coastal regions of our country, a major technological achievement – and a very likely expensive export product for other countries of the world.
4. In space, the achievement of Russian technologies was the first x-ray survey of the cosmic sky, which was made by the Russian space Observatory "Spektr-RG". Now we know almost ten times more x-ray sources in four times greater resolution than on the former best sky map in the world so far, the German orbital Observatory ROSAT, obtained back in 1990.
5. The first flight of the new Russian Il-114-300 aircraft took place, which should become one of the main tools for ensuring transport connectivity of the country's regions. Russian airlines need hundreds of such machines. And for her, again, an aircraft engine of a new modification was created.
6. The first Aframax-class supertanker built in Russia has been commissioned (we will discuss the significance of this event in more detail below).
7. Heavy rocket "Angara-A5" made the second test launch, which means that Russia gets the prospect to make its own lunar, and maybe even a Martian program – only rockets of this class provide delivery to orbit of the corresponding payload.
8. New generation Russian nuclear reactorVVER-1200 was put into operation for the first time abroad, at the Belarusian nuclear power plant. This means further expansion of the Russian atomic industry, confirmation of the safety and reliability of its technologies.
9. Scientists of the Kurchatov Institute, together with specialists from Moscow universities, Moscow state University and MEPhI, for the first time registered solar neutrinos – particles formed inside our star in the process of a complex thermonuclear CNO cycle, in which carbon, nitrogen and oxygen interconvert into each other, simultaneously using hydrogen and "producing" helium.
10. Scientists of the Russian University of chemical technology (RCTU) together with colleagues from the Nizhny Novgorod state technical University have proposed a new technology that allows using membrane cleaning and modern absorbers to obtain pure ammonia. Thus, the Maxim that fundamental and applied science interact with each other, giving rise to new technological structures, was once again confirmed. It is possible that the old process of producing ammonia, the so-called Haber process, which "fed" all of humanity for more than a century, providing about 2/3 of the necessary nitrogen for the growth of agricultural plants, will soon become the property of history. This process has remained virtually unchanged since the beginning of the XX century, and its main "Achilles' heel " was the huge consumption of heat and electricity. The famous "green revolution"in agriculture is primarily energy consumption for all its stages, from fertilizers and pesticides to harvesting. Now, a method has been invented to produce ammonia with energy consumption an order of magnitude lower than before.
Dig deeper, look wider
Each of these technological achievements is just a "media point" that clearly demonstrates the result of previous, long-term and purposeful efforts. For example, take the news about the creation of the first Aframax class supertanker in Russia. Aframax is perhaps the pinnacle of the world's tanker industry. In the entire history of the tanker fleet, only a dozen of the most technologically advanced countries produced such vessels, for which the largest and most advanced shipbuilding enterprises were used.
At the same time, the lead supertanker "Vladimir Monomakh" passed the entire construction cycle, from metal cutting to delivery of the ship to the customer in a little more than two years, at the level of the best world standards. Well, if we take into account the fact that the entire series of supertankers will be 12 vessels, of which three more, after the Monomakh, are already under construction at the far Eastern shipyard Zvezda, then the whole scale of the new shipbuilding program will play with completely different colors.
Let's try to understand the complexity of the task of creating a ready-made supertanker in the country. After all, shipbuilding, like many other industries, is, in fact, only the final consumer, which depends on the mass of supporting enterprises from other industries. For example, a supertanker is also a huge sheet of ship steel with a thickness of two centimeters, for which it was necessary to start producing special railway platforms in the country for transporting such an oversized cargo. Not to mention the fact that the very production of ship steel for the Arctic class supertanker is a separate challenge, already for metallurgists.
Or we can take fuel, which "Vladimir Monomakh" needs more than one hundred tons – in its work it will use highly environmentally friendly motor fuel of the DMF type III standard. The sulfur content of such fuel does not exceed 0.5 percent, which fully complies with the requirements of the International Convention for the prevention of pollution from ships (MARPOL). For the production of such fuel in Russia, Rosneft carried out a large-scale modernization at the Komsomolsk oil refinery, where production according to the requirements of the DMF standard was fully mastered this year.
In addition to 12 supertankers, the same Zvezda is currently building five Arc7 gas tankers for the Russian Arctic-LNG-2 project, also laid down this year. A gas carrier is a much more technological vessel than a liquid tanker. Moreover, under the terms of the order, Zvezda will not only have to lay, assemble and paint the hull of the vessel, but also mount components for maneuvering – this item includes propeller-driven columns, which until now were mainly imported and not manufactured in Russia. In addition, the shipyard also has to install a cargo system, that is, membrane tanks that store liquefied gas, which is also the most advanced edge of modern shipbuilding. Moreover, all five gas carriers need to be transferred to the customer, NOVATEK, also in the shortest possible time – by the end of 2022.
But, again, even gas carriers will not be the most technological order of the "Star"! Now its slipways are loaded with Arctic supply vessels and elements of huge Arctic sea platforms.
They are also building unique vessels on Zvezda, which no one in the world can do so far – we are talking about heavy-duty icebreakers of the Leader type according to the LK-120YA project. Such ships simply have no analogues in the world, other Arctic powers did not even come close to the Russian level of the icebreaker fleet. And Russia is going to launch the first icebreaker of this series by 2027 and by the beginning of the 2030s have at its disposal a fleet of three such "lords of the Arctic".
Where should Russia go next?
I want to believe that our country, albeit with difficulty, was able to find its way into the future. Moreover, the road is different from the recipes of the free trader Ricardo," according to the precepts " of which many African countries are forced to live today, each of which has been contracted to produce their own monoculture-whether it is cocoa, coffee, diamonds, copper or bauxite. Such countries do not have their own national economic policies, there is no independent economy, and even more so there is no technological progress.
All these victims of free trade have become only "cogs" in the world division of labor, and in the most recent and dirty roles. At the old feasts in the castles of the English feudal lords, such poor relatives were called "sitting at the salt": the salt shaker usually closed the set of prestigious dishes served for the owners at the beginning of the table, and at the end of the table only leftovers fell to the "sitting at the salt".
In 2020, Russia not only showed, but also proved that it will not "sit for salt". Our country has regained its technological leadership and is no longer going to "exchange oil for glass beads" of Western high-tech.
Alexey Anpilogov