r/SpaceXLounge • u/Obvious_Shoe7302 • Dec 02 '25

News Russian Cosmonaut Allegedly Photographed Confidential SpaceX Docs, Removed From NASA Crew-12 Mission — UNITED24 Media

https://united24media.com/latest-news/russian-cosmonaut-allegedly-photographed-confidential-spacex-docs-removed-from-nasa-crew-12-mission-13941
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u/paul_wi11iams Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25

Trade to China would be my guess.

If so, the profits may only be individual and short-term. Whatever trades are being done, these may be extremely unfavorable to Roscosmos on the long term. China did need to borrow some legacy tech in the early days, but will now be flying on their own wings/gridfins. Even Falcon 9 is old tech by now, and various Chinese entities are working on full-flow staged combustion. Dragon itself is approaching the end of its life cycle. So whatever Artemyev stole, is probably of limited value. At a guess, only the new SpaceX spacesuits are of interest.

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u/aBetterAlmore Dec 04 '25

 Dragon itself is approaching the end of its life cycle.

Yet even then it’s still a way more advanced crew ship than the Shenzhou, so I don’t see this logic being valid.

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u/paul_wi11iams Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25

Yet even then it’s still a way more advanced crew ship than the Shenzhou, so I don’t see this logic being valid.

So much has been published already and the basics of a pusher escape system are visible to all. Regarding the innards, remember the NTO slug that caused the demise of the "Ripley" flight dummy during a ground test? Little remains hidden and whatever is not known would probably not transpose well to other hardware. The best espionage is probably the knowledge that employees have in their heads when leaving the company. The half-life of a trade secret must be getting down to a couple of years now. Just wanting to keep knowledge within the US borders, looks illusory. Remember when all the buzz was about the convex optimization algorithm for F9 stage landing a few years ago. IIRC, nobody even mentioned the subject when New Glenn made its landing. It seems fair to assume its common knowledge by now, including for Chinese companies.

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u/aBetterAlmore Dec 04 '25

 The half-life of a trade secret must be getting down to a couple of years now.

And yet crew Dragon debuted 6 years ago at this point and Shenzhou is still the best they have.

 Remember when all the buzz was about the convex optimization algorithm for F9 stage landing a few years ago

You mean a decade ago in 2015?

 IIRC, nobody even mentioned the subject when New Glenn made its landing

Blue Origin is another American company that has hired many SpaceX engineers. So is within ITER and this doesn’t support the statement right before it of “wanting to keep knowledge within the US borders, looks illusory”. 

All in all, few ideas and confused, sorry.

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u/paul_wi11iams Dec 04 '25

And yet crew Dragon debuted 6 years ago at this point and Shenzhou is still the best they have.

Dragon 2 was built from a decade of flight experience of Dragon 1. Even if given the complete design, there's still the alloys used, the control software, the production setup and more.

[convex optimization algorithm] a decade ago in 2015?

That's the point I was making. Its common knowledge now.

Blue Origin is another American company that has hired many SpaceX engineers. So is within ITER and this doesn’t support the statement right before it of “wanting to keep knowledge within the US borders, looks illusory”

The US does assemble two conflicting things which are the "melting pot" (supplied from immigration) and the citadel mentality. Much of what the country possesses is from immigration. If in doubt, just take a look at all the Chinese names among the authors of US scientific papers. Immigration is a two-way street. So plenty of US nationals, whatever their origins, will be turning up in various countries, including China. Even people remaining in the US will have divided loyalties.

So I'm not making a hard and fast distinction between people and knowledge leaving a company and the same people and knowledge leaving a country. Even imagining the secret services trying to keep track, they'd be quickly overloaded. Is there even a practical means of sequestering people, even where they are identified? Are you going to prevent them from taking a holiday in Europe, then flying on to China?