"The Progress factory embodies the history of aviation in this country," said Yury Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency. "Its sad fate is that there is no longer any demand for its projects."
The factory has weathered many setbacks, from near bankruptcy to German bombings, but nothing has come so close to a deathblow as Russia's shift toward a market economy, its director said.
"We do not get enough help," said Anatoly Chizhov. "We have unique technology, and now it will just be thrown away. It will be hard, if not impossible, to ever recreate it."
One of the company's famous Buran space shuttles, for instance, now rusts away in Gorky Park because funding for the program dried up.
Progress, producer of the famous Soyuz and other rockets that have brought Russia's space shuttle and over half of all Russian satellites into orbit, started off as a small bicycle workshop in 1894. Since then, the factory has produced motorcycles, cars and wooden aircraft. It supplied 16,000 fighter planes to Stalin's army in World War II.
In 1993, Progress only got funding for the purchase of seven rocket engines, even though it needs eight to launch a single missile. The Russian Space Agency helped Progress buy 15 engines in 1994, and is lobbying parliament for the financing of 30 more in 1995.
But Koptev said the draft budget only allotted 1.2 trillion rubles ($360 billion) to the space industry, half of what he described as "the bare minimum" to keep factories open.
"We are at a critical edge," Koptev said. "Either the Russian space industry will be kept alive, or it will be lost forever."
Chizhov said he hoped to pen agreements with U.S. aerospace giant McDonnell Douglas and a French competitor in January, but would not reveal any details.
While the powerful Proton missile produced by the Khrunichev Space Center has attracted Western investors and customers, the missiles offered by Progress are less powerful, making it unlikely that foreign cooperation will significantly reduce the factory's dependency on state orders, Koptev said.
With a sad glance at models of the Buran shuttle and the Soyuz rocket, Chizhov said that Progress may soon become a private company again, just as it was 100 years ago.
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