As a boy growing up on the fringes of the world’s largest spaceport, Stan Rudenko would walk past a full-scale Soyuz launcher on his way to school.
His town, built exclusively for the Soviet Union’s space programme, revolved around rockets, engineers and astronauts, with monuments to space pioneers on nearly every street corner.
Mr Rudenko, now 42 and chief executive of Aspire Space in Abu Dhabi, still recalls the roar of rockets being launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where his father once helped lead operations for the Zenit space programmes.
“Our whole life was centred around launches and there were plenty of them,” he told The National. “I clearly remember the Buran orbital spaceplane landing flanked by fighter jets. It was a moment of absolute triumph for the whole nation.”
Baikonur was the beating heart of the Soviet space empire, a huge, closed-off complex where the world’s first satellite and the first human were blasted off into space.
After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1992 and Kazakhstan gained independence, the programme was severely scaled back. Mr Rudenko’s family, like many others, eventually left the once-thriving rocket town.
Despite a lifelong fascination with spaceflight, he initially pursued a different career, graduating from a top law school in St Petersburg and working for multinational firms.
“Life returned me to rockets and now we have some of the best engineers working with us,” he said, proud that he now leads one of the UAE’s most ambitious private-sector projects to build a new generation of fully reusable rockets.
Made in the Emirates
Aspire Space, originally founded in Luxembourg, has relocated its headquarters to the UAE and plans to manufacture rockets entirely in the country.
The company is developing Oryx, a two-stage, fully reusable orbital transportation system designed for satellite deployment, space station resupply, in-orbit laboratory missions and cargo return missions.
Unlike conventional reusable rockets where only the booster is recovered, Mr Rudenko said Oryx is designed so both stages return to Earth.
“It’s a fully reusable rocket ship. The second stage is a fully fledged spaceship capable of performing diverse orbital missions before returning to Earth. Launch is just the beginning,” he said.
Mr Rudenko believes true reusability will create a “virtuous cycle” where costs fall as flight frequency increases, similar to aircraft operations.
“It’s neither economical nor sustainable to drown expensive hardware in the ocean … let’s make it work for us instead,” he said.
The rocket will be powered by methalox engines being developed in partnership with Dubai’s Leap 71, which designs and builds artificial-intelligence-powered propulsion systems.
Aspire’s engineering team includes veterans from Zenit, Energia–Buran and Sea Launch, programmes that built the Soviet Union’s most advanced heavy-lift capabilities.
Sergey Alekseevich Sopov, the company’s chief technology officer, said the design of Oryx draws heavily on this legacy. “Reusability is not [only] about landing a rocket, it’s about returning its value to the economy,” he said.
He said it would require an engineering culture built around rapid turnaround, not just recovery.
“Every structural node, propulsion element and avionics block is designed with a clear understanding of its service life and digital traceability. In a reusable system, there are no small parts,” he said.
Launch plans in UAE and Kazakhstan
Aspire hopes to operate two launch sites, one in the UAE for sovereign access to space and a second in Kazakhstan for high-cadence commercial missions.
Mr Rudenko said the UAE site is still under discussion, so Kazakhstan’s established flight corridors make it more suitable for frequent launches.
He said Oman’s emerging Etlaq spaceport remains an option the company is “watching very closely”. The firm aims to establish a complete manufacturing and testing cycle in the UAE, beginning with engine and full-stage test stands.
“We have an ambitious timeline for fire-testing of actual hardware. Having these facilities operational is essential," said Mr Rudenko.
His company will be presenting their rocket project at the UAE Space Pavilion at Dubai Airshow next week.
