New Russian Cosmodrome - Vostochniy

magnumcromagnon wrote:

PapaDragon wrote:

mutantsushi wrote:I didn't see this posted here, plans for manned Soyuz from Vostochny are being dropped completely,
with manned program from Vostochny now planned to only happen via Angara-5V (+PPTS), now scheduled for 2025.
Which begs the question, why bother finishing the Soyuz pad there?, if it will not achieve "independence from Kazakhstan"?
I guess it leaves the possibility to re-start the manned Soyuz program from Vostochny WHEN/IF NEEDED,
but honestly that is a very expensive contingency plan and Kazakhstan is hardly seeming to present a threat of non-cooperation...? /shrug
I'm sure everybody in Roscosmos/etc are just waiting for the day Vostochny is finally fully functional and they can forget this long drawn-out episode.

http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0372-blow-for-new-cosmodrome-as-officials-say-first-manned-launch-is-still-a-decade-away/

Soyuz will be go-to light cargo rocket for decades to come, hence the launch pad on Vostochniy (and in French Guiana and in China and most likely Brazil.....)

Angara and PTK-NP are superior to Soyuz system on all parameters. You can't use 50 years old ship infinitely. It took a total redesign for it to carry 3 crewmen instead of 2.

It is time for old girl to go to well earned retirement.

Vostochniy must be completed in order to achieve independence from Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan cannot be trusted, neither can any country that is not called Russia. It is mathematical axiom. Recent events proven it yet again.

Well I agree that Russia should take every step to end strategic dependency on any other nation, but to say that Kazahkstan cannot be trusted is a patently absurd claim, that is unwarranted and unsubstantiated:

President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, not President Putin of the Russian Federation, is the mastermind behind the Eurasian Union and you could argue that Kazakhstan's Nomenklatura is on average more pro-Russian that Russia's Nomenklatura. Back in the early 90's Nazarbayev was trying his best to collect the pieces of the USSR puzzle and putting them back together again, take for example the Eurasian Union was in fact proposed by Nazarbayev in a speech back in 1994, meanwhile at the same time Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs were raping their respective countries' state-owned assets. Kazakhstan has reliably chosen to stick with Russia in the worst of times and the best of times, and resisted all the Pan-Turkic pressure of falling in to the orbit of Turkey in NATO's sphere of influence.

magnumcromagnon wrote:
If your still in doubt, here's a good write up about Nazarbayev and Kazakhstan, and their relationship with Russia:

Interesting Overview of Central Asia's Most Successful 'Stan'

kvs wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:
If your still in doubt, here's a good write up about Nazarbayev and Kazakhstan, and their relationship with Russia:

Interesting Overview of Central Asia's Most Successful 'Stan'

I know someone from Kazakhstan, a Russian academic, and what he describes is primitive ethnic politics where Russians are
treated like second class citizens even though they are around 40% of the population.   It's the same shit as in Ukraine, the
Baltics and the Balkans.   Politicians, including Nazarbayev, play off the "dominant" former culture (Serbia in the case of Yugoslavia and
Russia in the case of the USSR).   Of course all these ethnic republics were never abused like they pretend they were.  
This is a new political mythology manufactured by newly arrived elites to secure their position and get as much of the pie
as they can.

The situation with Kazakhstan is that its leadership are not total drooling idiots who would go for outright ethnic cleansing.
But they cannot be trusted.   Russia must have friendly relations but it should not tolerate abuse and have any illusions
that it has real friends at the state level.   This is actually true for all countries throughout history.   At the state level
we have a predatory fish ecology even if we have rational behaviour at the individual level.  

Project Canada wrote:
I cant wait to see Vostochny up and running. is it 2018 when it will become fully operational?