United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) is elaborating proposals for establishing a unique holding company comprising enterprises specializing in development and production of rocket engines. In this case URSC is establishing a truly unique company – so far there are no large holding companies specializing in development of engines for rockets and spacecraft in any country of the world, Izvestiya reports.
“Yes, we are working on scenario for establishing a new holding company specializing in production and development of rocket engines as a part of URSC, — URSC Deputy CEO on production development, Igor Arbuzov, said. — Results will be submitted to the head of Roscosmos (Federal Space Agency) Igor Komarov and URSC CEO Yuri Vlasov by June 1st 2015”.
Integration of enterprises of the rocket and space industry into large holding companies was started in 2010: Roscosmos offered to integrate all the enterprises and scientific institutions of the Russian space industry into six companies. One corporation should have specialized in production of all types o satellites; other one – in development of launch vehicles, third one — manned spacecraft and orbital stations. Since that time this idea has been changed several times, but in general the direction remained the same: for instance, a company responsible for all the aspects of instrument making is being established on the basis of Russian Space Systems.
The company may comprise the following enterprises of Roscosmos: NPO Energomash, Keldysh Research Center, Proton – Perm Motors, Ust-Katavsky Vagonostroitelniy Zavod, Experimental Design Bureau Fakel, Konstruktorskoe Buro Khimavtomatiky, Nauchno-ispitatelny tsentr raketno-kosmicheskoi promishlennosti (stands for Research Test Center of Rocket and Space Industry).
All these enterprises differ from each other: for example, Khimki-based NPO Energomash manufactures the world’s best oxygen-kerosene engines, which are exported to USA. While Ust-Katavsky Vagonostroitelniy Zavod is a depressed city-forming enterprise suffering from decline in demand for tramcars. The enterprise manufactures orbital maneuvering engines.
Earlier, the far different profile of the enterprises manufacturing rocket engines prevented the establishment of engine building holding company despite the idea being discussed in Roscosmos many times.
This time the preparation for the integration process is carried out this way: in accordance with URSC’s order, a working group was created on each enterprise. The groups are responsible for developing proposals in the area of production optimization (both in terms of a given enterprise and the whole industry), marketing policy, future product line, etc. In May the groups’ proposals will be submitted to URSC and the corporation will choose the structure of the future holding company.