THE NEW SPACE RACE: After Putin sacked Russia’s space chief, the rumor mill is running red-hot. “In the wake of Borisov’s seemingly sudden removal—there was no readily apparent public controversy, and he was still fairly early into his tenure—the real question is why Borisov was dismissed. Ars, working with a translator named Rob Mitchell, has been combing through Russian news reports and Telegram channels to try to determine what happened. Although we don’t have absolute answers, there is plenty of intrigue.”

The mystery might never be solved but this is the sad part:

It is also possible that Borisov was simply fired because of the generally poor state of affairs at Roscosmos, which is saddled with myriad problems, including: corruption, a lack of investment, low wages and poor employee morale, Russia’s war against Ukraine draining talent, a reliance on technology half a century old, and shrinking commercial markets.

The bottom line is that Russia simply does not have the state budget to support significant investments in its space programs, and the country’s technical efforts are bent on weapons rather than spaceflight. It also has virtually no commercial space market, as everything is controlled by Roscosmos or its state-owned subsidiaries.

The Ukraine war has exacerbated Russia’s decline in space. The country’s space program survived the breakup of the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago by partnering with the West. It formed the coalition of nations that built the International Space Station, with NASA providing significant financial support. European companies bought launches on the Soyuz rocket. American launch companies bought Russian rocket engines. But most of that is over now, and the future looks fairly bleak, with Europe closing off its markets to Russian markets and NASA and Roscosmos likely ending their space station partnership by 2030.

That’s quite a decline from the Soviet glory days or even from just a few years ago.