Crypto News: Russia’s downward space trajectory

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The Fed meets today to discuss interest rates, but Wall Street is ready to move beyond rate hikes already.
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The Soviet Union was the first country to launch a satellite, and the first person to orbit Earth was a Russian, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. But the Soviets lost the moon race when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface in 1969, and no cosmonauts ever made it there. Although the Soviets landed a few uncrewed lunar missions, the last one was in 1976, the same year NASA marked the US bicentennial with a mission to Mars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is now trying to recapture the glory of the Soviet-era space program. Last year, shortly after his troops rolled into Ukraine, Putin toured the remote Vostochny Cosmodrome near the Chinese border and declared that the uncrewed Luna-25 mission, which has been in the works for more than a decade, "must be complete" in 2022. That didn't happen, and the liftoff is now scheduled for Aug. 11.

Putin visiting the assembly room for rockets at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, April 2022. Photographer: Evgeny Biyatov/Sputnik/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, needs a win. Since the invasion it's lost customers such as London-based satellite operator OneWeb Ltd. and South Korea's space agency, cutting off a valuable source of foreign funding. The European Space Agency last year pulled out of Luna-25 and a joint mission to Mars. China, which in 2021 reached a preliminary agreement with Russia to establish a joint research station on the moon, has taken to calling it a "China-led" project. And in December and again in February, a pair of Roscosmos vehicles at the International Space Station (ISS) suffered coolant leaks and couldn't complete their missions. Russia's space program "is a story of poor execution, low funding and poor quality control," says Maxime Puteaux, an analyst with Euroconsult.

Yury Borisov, a former deputy prime minister who took over as director general of Roscosmos a year ago, concedes that Russia has fallen behind other big spacefaring nations. While the US last year had more than 4,500 operating satellites in orbit and China had almost 600, Russia had fewer than 200, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. And Borisov says his country can make only about 15 a year. "Europe, India, all the leading countries are actively increasing their production capacities," he told the Moscow daily Vedomosti in December. "But we overslept."

Without a strong competitor in the field, Russia risks missing out on the space economy, which totaled $464 billion last year, according to Euroconsult. In 2020, Roscosmos reported revenue equivalent to roughly $3.7 billion. To keep up with global rivals, Borisov has said Roscosmos will borrow as much as 50 billion rubles ($550 million) to build two factories making satellites, though he hasn't provided further details. Roscosmos didn't respond to requests for comment.

For the whole kit and caboodle on Russia's downward space trajectory from Bloomberg's Bruce Einhorn, read the story here.

Americans can learn a lot from their neighbors in the north, including how to deal with a real estate market post-interest rate hikes. As Ari Altstedter writes, Canadians are in the midst of something that might be around the corner for the US:

As the global battle to tame inflation enters its next phase, Canada's housing market offers a glimpse of what could play out for many other developed nations: a game of chicken between central bankers and consumers.
It started when the Bank of Canada paused its campaign of interest-rate hikes earlier this year, dutifully warning they could go higher still and would at least stay elevated for some time. But no one seemed to believe it. House hunters promptly swarmed back into the market.

Some, like Ashley Cortiula, then chose a variable rate, rather than fixed-rate mortgage, betting that interest rates would start coming down. Did that happen?

Even the financial market pros expected the same: At the time, trading in interest-rate swaps put the odds of the Bank of Canada cutting rates by the end of the year at around 100%, according to Bloomberg calculations. But in June, after the broader economy rebounded along with home prices, the central bank ended up raising rates again to slow down everything. It followed up that hike with another one this month, singling out the housing market as a source of persistent inflation.

So, no. This leaves bankers in a position, as Altstedter writes, of assessing the psychology of clients, who don't seem to understand that housing prices, which have risen for years, can actually fall. It's not going to be easy. And it's also not like Americans don't share some of the same assumptions as the Canadian Cortiula. "I just think you can never go wrong," she said, "with real estate." Read it all here.

It's summer. You have chosen a side in the hottest culture war around, and you need a new pickleball paddle. We got you. Just be careful.

25%

That's the office-vacancy rate for the second quarter in the tech hub of Austin, where the return to the office has fallen off in recent months. Read the full story here.

"It's an exceptionally rare thing—in life or in business—that you get a second chance to make another big impression."

Linda Yaccarino

CEO, Twitter

Elon Musk is killing billions in brand value by changing Twitter's name to "X," and getting rid of the bird logo and all the associated words, including "tweet."

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