> After all, the rise of ambitious US competitors like SpaceX could put a damper on Russia's surprisingly lucrative spaceflight business. Could put a damper, y

> After all, the rise of ambitious US competitors like SpaceX could put a damper on Russia's surprisingly lucrative spaceflight business. Could put a damper, yes. But the reasons are mostly Russia own internal problems, not stiff external competition. SpaceX does superb technical work for each dollar spent, but they still have a road to travel to reach technical achievements of even Soviet Union 1980-s level. And it's hard to compete with government-subsidized, R&D-already-recouped and massively manufactured tech. Not that SpaceX doesn't go there. In fact, they demonstrate very good technical and economical results. It's just too different - USSR Academy of Sciences focused work of decades on, say, material science and Energomash-level of first stage engine perfection. SpaceX has a huge boost in reuseability area and much more modern technologies - they just have a lot to catch up to. Yet at the same time Russia - could - enjoy both the wealth of institutionalized rocketry knowledge and quite inexpensive workforce - in exactly those technical areas which are required for space which could be hard to beat - even to Elon Musk. It's really sad state of affairs in Russia - and unfortunately space isn't the only one area suffering.