Manned flights from Vostochny delayed
In order to save construction costs at its new spaceport at Vostochny, Russia has decided to delay its first manned flight there until 2023.
They originally were going prepare a launchpad for Soyuz rockets so that they could do a manned launch at Vostochny as early as 2019, but had already admitted this was inefficient and had abandoned the plan. Now they have admitted that it will take until 2023 for them to get Vostochny and Angara ready for manned flights.
That it will still take almost 8 years to prepare a launchpad and get Angara ready to launch manned capsules, however, seems an ungodly long period of time. It should not take that long.
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In order to save construction costs at its new spaceport at Vostochny, Russia has decided to delay its first manned flight there until 2023.
They originally were going prepare a launchpad for Soyuz rockets so that they could do a manned launch at Vostochny as early as 2019, but had already admitted this was inefficient and had abandoned the plan. Now they have admitted that it will take until 2023 for them to get Vostochny and Angara ready for manned flights.
That it will still take almost 8 years to prepare a launchpad and get Angara ready to launch manned capsules, however, seems an ungodly long period of time. It should not take that long.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Sadly, 8 years seems quite normal when discussing future launches.
Falcon 9 was developed from scratch in considerably less time than 8 years. So was Dragon. So will their spaceport in Brownsville, for a lot less than the $3 billion the Russians are spending for Vostochny.
This might not be easy and it might require a lot of legwork, but 8 years is too long. We were flying astronauts by 1961, only four years after Sputnik. It can be done fast.
I’m sure NASA is jealous, and will try somehow to up the ante.
But getting to space is hard. As some say.
This must be the first time the Russian government has had to work with unions and their organized crime handlers.
There is so much cash being thrown at this project that its a sure bet someone. if not several someones, are getting a little ‘incentive’ under the table.
Pretty soon we are going to hear about a ‘house cleaning’ in the space industry that will reach from top to bottom. A lot of people are going to get implicated in this and a lot are going to go away permanently.
You don’t keep embarrassing the head crime boss Vladimir Putin on the world stage without some kind of real hard fall out happening.
The few arrests we have heard about are just the start. Those people will implicate a lot more. And unless Vlad gets enough cash out of this heads will roll.
> But getting to space is hard. As some say.
The Japanese and the Brazilians might say so, too. They have had quite a difficult time of it, in the past couple of decades.
However, this seems to be less of a problem of the construction being difficult to accomplish and more of a problem with project management. Building a launch pad and support hardware is not so difficult and what is needed and how to build them are reasonably well understood. At a launch pad, there are no high power, high temperature, high vibration engines attached, scant feet away, from the lightweight, fragile fuel tanks, so they don’t have to worry so much about the pad exploding, just the rocket exploding on or just above the pad.
It could also be a problem of Russia wanting a full-up site at first operation — taking on too much all at once. SpaceX is likely taking the typical capitalist industrial strategy of starting inexpensively, with the basics, then adding more over time, as need arises and funding allows. This strategy is how we got Mercury running so quickly, and it does not expend resources, now, on items that can be delayed until later, or will ultimately never be necessary.
As for Don, below, thinking that NASA might get jealous: about the same time as Mir, NASA *did* propose an even larger space station, as though they were thinking “me too!” But NASA still has the more impressive Kennedy Space Center, so I suspect that the Russians are the jealous ones, this time.