During the Cold War, the term "missile gap" came to represent the worry that the United States wasn't as armed as the Soviet Union. But there was also the rocket gap. Although the U.S. got to the moon first, the Soviets—later just Russia—consistently sent more rockets into space, year after year. In 2016 the U.S. is expected to send up more for the first time.
The numbers come from the Moscow Times, which looked at all the scheduled rocket launches for this year and the next. Using the open source data, the paper determined that "Russia will finish 2016 with just 18 launches... compared to China's 19 and America's 20 launches."
The Russian space program's priorities have changed, as have the space programs of all nations over the years. Its budget for the next decade is roughly that of NASA's for a single year, coming in at $21.3 billion (NASA got $19 billion in 2016).
It's been quite a trailing off for the once-mighty program, which sent the first satellite, the first animal, the first man, the first woman, and the first multi-person crew into space. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the space industry saw a temporary bump with foreign investment. But the program, one of the last jewels of the USSR, was no longer a priority. Budgets were slashed, and lacking the patriotic fervor and competitive wages from just a few years prior, many scientists chose to work elsewhere. Inflation sent the cost of launches up a hundredfold.
Another devastating blow was the 2013 crash of a Proton-M rocket. The Russian industry relied heavily on the Proton-M, initially launched in 2001. The 2013 crash seemed to throw into doubt the big selling point of the older rocket, it's reliability. Further crashes in the following year old raised concerns, leading to a reorganization of the entire industry.
As it stands, the future of the Russian space program will not be one dominating rockets. The United States' lead is only expected to grow with its increased partnerships with private spaceflight companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. The coming years might see a growth in space exploration, but it's hard to say if that will directly result in more launches. As it stands, the Russian space program is a powerful reminder of what can happen to a scientific program ignored for decades.
Source: The Moscow Times