SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has no shame in sharing his views on outer space life or space travel, and now he has one person ready to hear more over tea: Russian Space Director Dmitry Rogozin (Dmitriy Rogozin).
On Tuesday, Rogozin, head of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, accepted the first interview with Western news media.say CNN, Rogozin was surprised by the recent flight of billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to outer space. He said that he hopes that Russian millionaires will one day follow and invest in more outer space travel. He described their interest in “yachts” than “spacecraft”.
Branson was the first of the two to fly in space as a passenger on Virgin Galactic Unity 22 on July 11. Nine days later, Bezos’ blue origin NS-16 took off from the West Texas launch site and remained at suborbital level for about 10 minutes.
Despite all the compliments to Bezos and Branson, Rogozin retained the highest respect for Musk because he realized a dream that his country was postponed to declare.
“Mr. Elon Musk realized many of the ideas and ideas we wanted to achieve, but did not realize it, because after the collapse of the Soviet Union, our space program was suspended for a while,” Rogozin said on CNN. “We respect him as an organizer and inventor of the aerospace industry. He is not afraid of taking risks.”
SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavor approaches the International Space Station after launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 24, 2021
Photo: NASA/Handout
Rogozin spent a little time inviting Musk to visit him in Russia and “as a guest” with my family. In this way, he hopes to further discuss “exploring the universe, extraterrestrial life, and how we use space to protect life on Earth.”
This is not the first time an international official has sent an invitation to Musk. In August last year, Musk wrote on Twitter that “the aliens built the pyramid obv”, which won him hundreds of thousands of likes and also attracted the attention of Egypt where the huge pyramid is located. Rania A. Al Mashat, Minister of International Cooperation of Egypt, Tweet After Musk stated that she paid “very admiration” to his work and her country opened its doors to him.
“Mr. Musk, we are waiting for you,” she said.
However, Rogozin’s invitation did bring some complications. Since 2014, Rogozin has been subject to U.S. sanctions during his tenure as Russia’s deputy defense minister because of the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. This complex cooperation in outer space, especially considering that the United States relies on Russian facilities and rockets to send its astronauts into orbit. Musk himself praised the Russian rocket engineering and technology.
“Russia has excellent rocket engineering and the best engines currently flying. The reusable version of their new Angara rocket would be great,” Musk wrote Twitter March 2019.
Musk and Rogozin also have some personal competition, which is fully demonstrated on Twitter. After being sanctioned by the United States, Rogozin stated that it needed a “Trampoline“Thus sending his astronauts into space. Five years later, Musk’s SpaceX company cooperated with NASA to develop a new rocket. He said at a conference “Trampoline work.“
In December last year, Rogozin posted a photo of the launch site in Yakutia Province, Siberia, making fun of SpaceX.He captioned the photo in Russian question Can SpaceX engineers work at sub-zero temperatures like Roscosmos?
When asked about these online disputes, CNN’s Kristin Fisher said that Rogozin sees them as “interesting, normal, and healthy competition between engineers.”
The Soyuz-2 carrier rocket was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on May 22, 2020.
Photo: Roscosmos
