Site information
I created my “RuSpace” website to provide information about the Russian space program that I felt was interesting and (hopefully) useful, as well as being a source of links to many other sites I liked and had found helpful. From 2001 I was writing some ISS-related stories for myself and gathered a lot of material and links during my research, and thought that I could put this together in the form of a website.
The site was first created at Yahoo! Geocities under the URL http://au.geocities.com/kosmonavtka2/, and first uploaded on 21 September 2003. (That URL is now inactive – see an old version of the site at Archive.org.) I initally named it “Kosmonavtka”, «Космонавтка» (Russian for lady cosmonaut) as I was stumped for a site name, but later came to dislike it (it is awkward to pronounce, sounds odd and makes no sense to most), so I renamed it in 2010.
The website was not really planned from the beginning; instead it has grown and evolved rather haphazardly. It seems to have consolidated into information about the contemporary Russian space program, rather than try to attempt the enormous task of a complete history, which is covered quite adequately by other sites. “RuSpace” is by no means a comprehensive overview of the Russian space program; I have concentrated on topics of interest to me.
The other sites of my collective were originally part of this one! They just grew also, and branched off into their own sites.
I am never happy with the way the site looks or is organized, so it can change now and again.
The cosmonaut photo that I have seemed to have “adopted” as the mascot for this site is of Leonid Kizim during a spacewalk on Salyut-7. I found it on a page at the Fortis Swiss Watches site (the page has since been removed so the link is to one at Archive.org – hope they don’t mind if I “borrow” him!). I don’t know where to find the original photo (there is a small version at CollectSPACE).
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian space program has been either made fun of or ignored in the Western media because its leaders have become obsessed with raising funds above all else (as the program was chronically underfunded by the government through the 1990s – and still is, though somewhat improved since that awful period). Russian spaceflight has become very limited in scope, mainly concerned with ferrying crew and bored rich space tourists up to the ISS and back, and too obsessed with commercialization. There are very few flight opportunities for cosmonauts (and no women cosmonauts!). In fact, the Russian space program only gets a mention in the media when another space tourist goes up – a sad contrast to the Soviet era.
Hopefully some leaders with vision – another Sergei Korolyov (or his reincarnation!) – will emerge to get the program back on course and fulfil the grand dream of colonizing the Universe. (I would love to add a real Martian mission section to this site, one day...)
Some small screenshots of my site at different times:
