Russia's New Cosmodome Approved

eldavojohn writes "You may recall discussing Baikonur, the Kazakhstan city rented by Russia that has been used as a launch site for quite some time. Today, Putin has just approved construction of Vostochny between 2010 and 2018 which will be positioned in the far east of Russia to complement the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northern part of the country. This is not bad news for Kazakhstan as the director of the Russian Federal Space Agency has announced they plan to operate this facility alongside Baikonur."

Comments

Long term, this is a good thing.

[mlts]

Russia having two space ports (similar to how the US has the Kennedy and Johnson space centers) is going to be one of the best things they can do. The more efficient the process of launching stuff into Earth orbit, not to mention out of orbit for interplanetary missions, the closer everyone comes to space based living.

A multinational space race (or even better, cooperative missions) benefits everyone, even if its the side effects of materials developed for aerospace programs being used for everyday life.

This is a gamble on Putin's behalf, but it can pay off big for Russia, because people will be contracting with them for launches of private satellites (new ones, and replacements for existing satellites.)

Re:Long term, this is a good thing.

[FooAtWFU]

"but I suspect this wild success is the exception, rather than the rule."

why, whats your logic behind that, because you give very good examples of WHY such technology races benifit us then proceed to try trash it based on nothing. everytime man has been invovled in competition of this nature, he has produced better tech, and there's no reason to think we won't this time.

Couple of things. First, we've already done a Space Race. The problems of Space have been attacked, and been solved (to within the appropriate mission parameters as applicable). There are diminishing returns on research in the area. Sending a crew to the Moon, sending a crew to Mars.... it's a quantitative difference, sure, but it's not the same deal as sending people up there to begin with. Secondly, on that note, I don't think the Next Big Thing is going to be spectacularly space-related. Biotech/genetics, possibly, or maybe some nanomateriwhatever stuff, but not so much Spacey. I mean, even practical fusion power (which would be an awesome next-big-thing and which could be construed as Spacey) isn't something that you could reasonably expect to walk away from a new major space program with.

Past performance does not necessarily indicate future results... it'd be naive to assume that throwing money at space will keep coming back with awesomely wonderful things, and there are so many things that we could be spending money on, research and otherwise.

Re:Long term, this is a good thing.

[Chief Wongoller]

"This is a gamble on Putin's behalf, but it can pay off big for Russia, because people will be contracting with them for launches of private satellites (new ones, and replacements for existing satellites.)"

That's not what the Russians seem to have in mind. First deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov has stated that "urgent measures needed to be taken to develop the country as a leading space power, rather than as a provider of launch services for other countries." and "Russia should not turn into a country providing only launching services". In addition manned launches will not be made from the new base until 2018, and the Khazak base is only guaranteed to remain in use until 2020. This is about Russia re-establishing itself as a world power and as such is driven by nationalism, so who needs, or rather wants, the cooperation of a renegade break-away state?

Source of my info is domainb,com <domainb.com/industry/aerospace/20071121_vostochny.htm>

ISR

[The Clockwork Troll]

In Soviet Russia, the Ritz is Putin on YOU.

Re:Trust me, they will deliver...

[DerekLyons]

Despite what we in the west think about the Russians, I strongly believe they will deliver on this given their track record.

Huh? Their track record over the last fifteen odd years is of one project after another that fails to materialize - or is delivered years late.
 
 

I guess it's not in them to seek publicity unlike we in the west.

That would explain the endless stream of glossy presentations, especially from their space industry, promising ever more wonderful accomplishments. (None of which, as noted above, have ever amounted to anything.)
 
 

Now for those who might think this post is "flamebait", I'd like to remind them that the Soviet Union, much of which became today's Russia had and still has the biggest, heaviest and highest-capacity flying aircraft in service today. And this was put in service more than ten years ago...again, with little fanfare.

It's not that your post is flamebait, it's just disconnected from the facts. The AN-225 was put into service nearly twenty years ago in the Soviet Union - with a great deal of fanfare. It was then mothballed with the fall of the Soviet Union. When it was placed back into service, it wasn't Russia that placed it in service - but a private company. While it did recieve a great deal of fanfare in the appropriate circles, like all cargo aircraft it was soundly ignored by the media. Comparing it with the A-380 is comparing apples and oranges.
 
 

Ohh, what about the Space Shuttle which continues to make news whenever it's to lift off or land. On this front, the Russians just fire their Soyuz craft as if it's just another chore!

Again the disconnection with facts... It may not make the Western media, but it does the Russian each time it launches or lands.

Re:Trust me, they will deliver...

[arivanov]

Actualy when the Mria (An225) launched the customer was there. The Russian space program, Buran, the military complex, you name it. All of these were mothballed or frozen 15 years ago and not entirely unexpectedly so did the Mria. For the last 15 years its little brother - the An124 did the heavy hawling. Now the market for ultraheavy loads is opening again so it was once again taken to the skies: http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1296054/L/. Compared to it the A380 is a dwarf.

IMO while awesome it is not that much of a technological achievement. It may be big, but it ain't revolutionary in any sense.

Now this http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1295104/M/ is something out of a different league. It may not take a large load, but its take-off and landing requirements (a field only slightly bigger than a football pitch) are in the realm of the insane.

Same for some of the specs for this one: http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1262070/M/.

Both of these are so far ahead of anything in their class it is not even funny.

Location?

[Alkonaut]

Why northern russia? What about being close to the equator? That is the reason the US have their sites in California and Florida, and the reason that the European agency cannot even have its launch site in Europe!

Is this site not intended for launching stuff into orbit, but merely intended as a landing site, or a sub-orbit launch site?

Re:Location?

[Tom Womack]

In case you haven't noticed, Russia doesn't get very near the equator; they built the original facility in Baikonur because that was as far south as you could get in the Soviet Union and have a reasonable region of Soviet Union over which to drop discarded rocket stages.

The southernmost points of Russia are in the Caucasus, but that's a decidedly unstable area of the world, and rocket stages dropped off by things heading east would drop on Kazakhstan, which the Kazakhs obviously don't want. If you rule out the Caucasus, the next-southernmost points are at the North Korean border in the far east; there is a constant Russian worry that the Chinese might want to expand into Siberia if it's left empty, and so they'd like to build facilities there, especially the sort of facilities which set up clusters of skilled people who'd bring non-resource-dependent income to Amur.

The proposed site is Svobodny, which is just over the Amur from China, and not too far from the Komsomolsk-na-Amur rocket factory.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&sll=54.162434,-3.647461&sspn=8.188315,20.566406&ie=UTF8&ll=51.410771,128.19191&spn=0.272388,0.6427&t=k&z=11&iwloc=addr&om=1

Obviously, an equatorial site would be better, and indeed there's a Soyuz pad being built at Sinnamary, in French Guyana, five degrees from the equator and about twenty miles from the Arianespace facility at Kourou. First launch from there will be late 2008, but it's only Soyuz so not particularly heavy lift, and I suspect the Russians might be less keen than EU nations at having their military satellites launched from French soil.

Russian politics...may not happen for a while

[mev]

I strongly believe they will deliver on this given their track record.

Note that the announcement comes one week before the Russian Parliamentary elections set for December 2nd. Putin is term limited as President but has vowed to run for Parliament and speculated that he could continue to rule as a strong prime minister.

What has actually been announced is a feasibility study to decide a location by 2010, and intentions to build start in 2018. The Amur Region that is named is the same one where Putin announced on February 26th, 2003 that he was opening a new road across Siberia and that 2008 it would be paved. That was coincidentally three weeks before the last Russian Presidential election. I have been across the Amur Highway this year (2007) and while a lot of good work has been done, there is no way the Amur Highway will be entirely paved in 2008, nor for that matter by 2010 (Putin's last announcement on the topic in 2006) or in my opinion by 2018.

So when I think of "track record" and I think of some of the engineering difficulties of the Amur Region (think permafrost, little infrastructure,...) and I put it in the context of Russian politics, then while this may eventually be built, I doubt it will be done by 2018 mentioned in the article. All that is promised so far is a study in 2010.