Legal restrictions of post-Soviet period for the full-fledged operation of private companies of the aerospace sector in Ukraine are absurd, and NewSpace private companies will shape the space launch market in the near future, the owner and director of private U.S. Firely Aerospace Inc. Max Polyakov has said.

Assessing in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine the potential of Ukraine's space industry, as well as the factors and risks of developing full-fledged Ukrainian-U.S. cooperation in the aerospace sector in the context of the new technological and commercial NewSpace era on the market, Polyakov said that the Ukrainian aerospace sector still has a high potential. Despite the fact that almost 30 years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Soviet industrial practices and methods are still highly effective, he added.

At the same time, according to him, the "practices" preserved hinder Ukraine's entry into the new era of space technology.

"Ukrainian legislation hinders the emergence of full-cycle Ukrainian companies for the production of space launch systems. Only state-owned companies are authorized to do this. This is absurd in our time. If this were possible in the United States, would SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin appear?" he said.

In this regard, Polyakov said that the technical capabilities of Ukraine are excellent, and this is wonderful, because building technical capacity takes decades. As soon as the legal field changes with one stroke of the pen, development (cooperation) will not take long to come.

In his opinion, it is obvious that the space companies of the "old school" in Ukraine are now in recession. Moreover, it should be noted that new private companies, such as Firefly, will shape the market in the near future, the director of Firefly said.

Evaluating, at the request of the agency, the current situation in the global launch services market in connection with Elon Musk's SpaceX challenge regarding the introduction of technological and managerial innovations in the space industry, as well as the proposed revision of approaches to the organization of space activities, Polyakov confirmed that significant resistance to the relentless pursuit of NewSpace companies to reduce the cost of launch services by "old-timers" around the world is seen.

According to the founder of Firefly, part of this resistance is also concerns and doubts about the working systems and design solutions.

And this is a serious problem, since many decades have passed since the advent of rocket technology. Many new methods and solutions regarding the structures, required demonstration characteristics have appeared. These innovations allow us to use more efficient and equally reliable approaches to creating space launch systems, Polyakov said, explaining that for the mastodons of the industry, the implementation of these solutions actually means to start everything from scratch, crossing the experience of previous years.