Space loses its appeal for Russian teens

Ivan Pozdayev and his classmates at the International Space School in a Russian military enclave ignite a model rocket made from Coca-Cola bottles and grin as it soar high over the tree tops.

But the 12-year-old frowns when asked if he wants to be a cosmonaut. A rocket scientist, then? He shrugs, "Maybe".

Even in Baikonur – a city created out of Kazakhstan’s barren steppe in the 1950s to be the secret heart of the Soviet space program – convincing young Russians to pursue a career in the underfunded and struggling space programme is not an easy task.

For Russia it is a pressing one: its space programme is largely peopled by experts hired at the beginning of the space age. Many are now in their late 50s or early 60s and thinking about retirement, and the country needs to ensure that a new generation is in place to take over.

“Unfortunately, there is very little interest among young people,” admitted Igor Barmin, chief engineer of the Baikonur launch pad, where the Soviet space program awed the world by sending the first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit in 1957 and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin four years later.

“It is a serious problem, one we haven’t found a solution for,” Barmin said.

The US space agency, Nasa, is also anticipating a large number of retirements in the next five to 10 years, but space experts said Nasa has been more successful at recruitment than the Russians.

Nasa’s top managers tend to be in their late 40s or 50s.

“The Russians are in trouble,” said James Oberg, author of the book Star-Crossed Orbits: Inside the US and Russian Space Alliance. “It is probably too late to avoid a devastating loss...to transfer corporate knowledge and know-how, you have to work side-by-side for years.”

Part of the problem facing the Russians has been convincing young people to abandon the higher salaries of a business career for the space program, where a cosmonaut’s salary is now about €300 a month.

“If you look at the Russian space programme today, it is basically a lot of older people who are not paid very well and the main thing that they seem to be doing is providing holiday opportunities for bored millionaires,” John Pike, a US-based space expert, said, referring to Russia’s selling of trips to the International Space Station.

Russian space officials strongly disagree, but concede the shortage of funds makes it difficult to launch big attention-getting projects, such as Nasa’s Mars Odyssey.

The Russians, instead, have focused on international programmes where they don’t have to pick up the entire bill, such as the International Space Station. But by their very nature, those programmes don’t generate the kind of patriotic fervour that projects like the former Mir space station did.

“It is very difficult right now. We are dealing with a small amount of resources,” said Nikolai Anfimov, head of the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building.

But in a move that some experts described as hopeful, Russian space officials proposed an ambitious international project in August to send people to Mars around 2015. Details were vague, but experts said that sort of high-profile project is what’s needed to bring glamour back to the space program and get the attention of young Russians.

During the Soviet era that was easy. The space programme churned out hero after hero, prompting many children to dream about becoming the next Gagarin or chief designer Sergei Korolev. Roads and cities bore the names of these Soviet stars after their deaths, and giant monuments were raised in their honour.

The space workers, considered by much of the country as the embodiment of Soviet success, were rewarded with generous benefits, such as access to luxury goods and exotic vacations.

Today, the space workers toiling away in Baikonur drive on potholed roads, live in crumbling apartment buildings and make do without hot water for weeks on end. They also suffer from the isolation of working in what became a foreign country with the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Dmitry Shatalov, headmaster of Baikonur’s International Space School, must contend with these realities when he talks about space program careers with his students, mostly male and many with relatives working at the cosmodrome.

But he’s so optimistic that students will find themselves drawn to the space industry that he frets about letting them too close to the ageing, but real Soviet rocket in the school’s courtyard.

“They might not know it yet, but they’d be just the ones to figure out how to set it off,” Shatalov said. “Russia will be in good hands.”