According to cosmonaut Sergei Ryazansky, "there are no problems with brains and hands in Russia," but conditions should be created for startups
YEKATERINBURG, July 22. /TASS/. Suborbital flights, if there is an investor, are a lifting and, in the future, a scalable business for Russia. There are capacities and engineering forces for this, Russian cosmonaut, scientist, Hero of Russia Sergey Ryazansky said at a press conference at the Ural Information Center TASS on Thursday.
On the eleventh of July, billionaire Richard Branson made a suborbital flight, rising to an altitude of 86 km. Also a week later, Blue Origin successfully carried out a suborbital flight of the New Shepard spacecraft with passengers on board, among them was the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos.
"Of course, suborbital flights are possible, the only thing is that you need to spend money and create a similar aircraft - it's difficult to call this object a spacecraft. Suborbital flights are, indeed, a lifting business, plus scalable, if there are appropriate investors. Once a project of suborbital flights was developed in Russia, but, unfortunately, at some point investors left it, and the project stalled. But if there is a desire, then we have the capacity and engineering forces," he said, answering a question about the possibility of suborbital flights in Russia against the background of the flights of Branson and Bezos.
According to Ryazansky, "there are no problems with brains and hands in Russia," but conditions should be created for startups, and there should also be an understanding that Roscosmos is ready to cooperate with investors.
Sergey Ryazansky was born on November 13, 1974 in Moscow. He graduated from the Biological Faculty of the Lomonosov Moscow State University with a degree in virology. In 2011, he was enrolled in the cosmonaut squad. He has been in space twice as part of the 37th and 53rd crews of the ISS. In total, during the implementation of four spacewalks, he spent 27 and a half hours there.