Space chief warns of Russia's decline

Russia has recently pioneered "space tourism"

By Richard Black BBC science correspondent

The head of Russia's space agency has warned that Russian cosmonauts will soon become mere cab-drivers in space because of funding cuts.

Yuri Gagarin became the world's first spaceman in 1961

Yuri Koptev, director of the aerospace agency, said that Russia was no longer capable of mounting its own space missions.

And money is not the only problem - many of the agency's younger staff have left for higher-paying commercial jobs; the average age of workers is now over 60.

Mr Koptev's remarks came as the biggest communications satellite ever launched was ditched in the sea because of failures on a Russian rocket.

'Glory days ended'

Speaking at a conference on space research, Mr Koptev was strikingly candid about the dire finances of the once mighty Russian space programme.

It now had only about $300m a year, he said.

That is roughly half what India spends, while the US space agency's (Nasa) annual budget comes to about $15bn.

Russia is committed to sending support craft and supplies of food and fuel to the International Space Station (ISS), and Mr Koptev said that was going to swallow most of its annual budget.

He said Russia's glory days in space ended in the 1970s.

Now the country can no longer think of mounting independent missions, and Russia's future in space will be as cab-drivers on more glamorous missions run by other countries.

As Mr Koptev was bemoaning his agency's fate, European communications companies were counting the cost of the Astra 1K satellite, the largest communications satellite ever built.

It had to be ditched in the sea on Tuesday following the failure of its Russian-built launch rocket to put it into the correct orbit.