Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin Complains About American Jokes

Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, lamented that Americans still do not take the Russian space programme as seriously as their own.

By Reuters | Updated: 10 June 2020 11:13 IST

Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin Complains About American Jokes

Photo Credit: Reuters

Russia's Roscosmos space agency Director General Dmitry Rogozin

Highlights

US launched the first astronauts from US soil since 2011 last month
Dmitry Rogozin criticised US behaviour in a column in Forbes Russia
Roscosmos has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks

Americans should show more respect for Russia's space programme after relying on it for nine years as the only way to send US astronauts into orbit, the head of Russia's space agency said.

The United States launched the first astronauts from US soil since 2011 last month in a rocket built by SpaceX, the company of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. In the intervening years, Americans flying to the International Space Station relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

In a column in this week's Russian version of Forbes, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, lamented that Americans still do not take the Russian space programme as seriously as their own.

"When our partners finally managed to conduct a successful test on their spacecraft, there were nothing but jokes and mockery directed at us," Rogozin complained. Instead, the American space industry should have thanked Russia.

"Our country was the first to send a man into space," Rogozin wrote. "We remain first to this day."

Roscosmos has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks and corruption scandals, including during the construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the country's far east.

It criticised US President Donald Trump's "hysteria" after he said the SpaceX launch showed the United States had regained its place as the world's leader in space.

Trump also said US astronauts would soon land on Mars, and that Washington would soon have "the greatest weapons ever imagined in history."

© Thomson Reuters 2020

OnePlus 8 vs Mi 10 5G: Which Is the Best 'Value Flagship' Phone in India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.