During a meeting this weekend at RSC Energia, the prime contractor for Russia's crewed spaceflight program, the discussion turned toward development of the Federation spacecraft. This is the oft-delayed program to develop a new generation of crewed spacecraft for the Russian space industry.

Dmitry Rogozin, the leader of Russia's space program, Roscosmos, was apparently not pleased with ongoing delays to the program. First initiated more than a decade ago, the Federation spacecraft now is unlikely to fly humans before 2023.

Rogozin made the following comments after one of the Federation engineers suggested that, perhaps, time could be saved in the spacecraft's development by reducing the number of tests of its emergency escape system.

In response to this suggestion, Rogozin reminded the two rows of men sitting at a long conference table how Joseph Stalin would ensure the reliability of a new armored vehicle—with a PPSh-41 submachine gun in his hand. "He would put a constructor inside and shoot at the vehicle with the automatic weapon," Rogozin said. "If the constructor survived, it was a good machine. I suggest writing an order to put constructors on the ship during tests."

This comment was met with laughter, some of it nervous, in the conference room. One of the engineers then asked, "Of the SAS (Emergency Escape System)?"

Rogozin nods a response: "SAS." (Translations of this video were provided to Ars by Robinson Mitchell). It is not clear whether Rogozin was serious or just making a testy remark out of frustration.

The leader of Roscosmos appears to be under increasing financial demands and pressure to deliver. Recently, he suggested that managers of Roscosmos facilities and their contractors clean up "trashy" work places and chided employees for their sloppy work practices. These improvements were to be made without additional money, he added.

Rogozin has also set very high targets for flights in 2019. Although Roscosmos will likely carry out 17 space launches this year, it plans to bounce back with more than 35 launches in 2019, Rogozin said, based upon a report in Space Daily. Of these flights, ten of them will be "heavy" rockets, including nine Protons and one Angara. This seems especially ambitious, as the Proton, which has had reliability problems in recent years, has averaged fewer than three flights a year since the beginning of 2016.