TECHNOLOGY-RUSSIA: High Aims with Low Funds

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW, May 14 2002 (IPS) - When the hangar at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan collapsed Sunday, many hopes for Russia’s space programme came down with it.

The collapse of the 65-metre high hangar, killing eight construction workers, is seen as symptomatic of the state of the Russian space programme – ambitious but under-funded.

Russian space officials sought to play down the loss. The accident will not damage Russia¹s space programmes, Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for Rosaviakosmos, the Russian space agency told RTR state television Monday.

Gorbunov said the accident could have been caused by a fuel tank blast inside the hangar. Or, he said, it could have been caused by strong wind. But there are indications of neglect.

The roof of the hangar built in the late sixties for the Soviet moon programme had never been repaired. The hangar was used to build a Buran space shuttle in 1988. Plans for another Buran shuttle in 1993 were dropped. A Buran shuttle and a rocket launching system were in the hangar at the time of the accident.

The hangar known as the 112th MIK was now being prepared to accommodate the Rus commercial rocket launching system to replace the ageing Soyuz system.

Baikonur is Russia’s main commercial rocket launching site. In recent years there have been numerous disputes between Russia and Kazakhstan over the Baikonur lease, which costs Russia more than 100 million dollars a year.

The collapse of the hangar could renew disputes over safety. Of the eight workers who died, seven were Kazakhs and one was a Belarus national.

The hangar is unlikely to be repaired. It has been cordoned off due to fears that the walls could also collapse. The damage runs into millions of dollars.

Russia’s space programme has become a liability following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Buran and the Mir projects are among many that were abandoned.

Mir, which means both ‘peace’ and ‘world’ in Russian was the country¹s showcase. The former Soviet Union spent an estimated four billion dollars on it. In the end Russia could not find about 200 million dollars needed to keep Mir in orbit. The 130-tonne space station came down in the Pacific in March last year.

Lack of money has hit most of the remaining projects. Workers at once elite space plants earn about 1,000 roubles (30 dollars) a month, though some space executives earn a thousand times that much. As a result, thousands of qualified workers have left the space sector. Spacecraft manufacturers find it increasingly difficult to make quality products.

But not all projects have fallen out of orbit. Three years ago Russia launched the biggest space exploration project ever when it sent the first component of the 40 billion dollar International Space Station into orbit. The Zarya (Dawn) module has been orbiting Earth smoothly.

Russian space officials have tried recently to fund projects through space tourism. A week’s trip to the International Space Station is being sold at 20 million dollars.

Space tourist Mark Shuttleworth returned to Earth May 5 after ten days at the International Space Station. Shuttleworth, a 28-year-old South African Internet millionaire, is waiting to blast off again. Russia will need many more Shuttleworths.