Mike E Sat Sep 06, 2014 7:50 am
Putin visits Vostochny; new problems come to light
The Russian President Vladimir Putin re-visited Vostochny on September 2, during his trip across the country including the Russian Far East. Putin toured the launch pad for Soyuz rockets and the processing area. He then chaired a meeting in Blagoveshensk on the development of the launch site. During the meeting, Putin watched a ceremony of powering up an upgraded electricity-distribution center at the local Ledyanaya train station. The facility was designed to supply electricity to the space port's main power hub, GPP. In his public introduction to the meeting, Putin again stressed the importance of completing the site by the 2015 deadline and said that the current lag in the work schedule had been between 30 and 55 days. According to Putin, more than 6,000 people were working at the site, instead of needed 12-15 thousand.
Putin again warned against the Soviet practice of building technical infrastructure at the expense of residential housing. He said that during his helicopter tour he had seen only around eight new apartment blocks capable of accommodating just 3.5 thousand residents under construction, while 40 had been promised for 12,000 people. (According to the contractor, three blocks with 228 apartments would be completed in 2014 and another nine buildings, a kindergarten and support infrastructure would be finished by June 2015.)
Putin also disclosed that 100 billion rubles had been spent on the Vostochny project since 2011 and another 50 billion had been allocated in 2015.
At the time of Putin's visit, Spetsstroi reported that a quarter of all the equipment had already been delivered to the launch site from 50 contractors around Russia. A total of 26 facilities were in process of being outfitted with internal hardware. In his report to Putin, the Roskosmos head Oleg Ostapenko said that a third of equipment had been delivered. However Ostapenko admitted that mobile tracking stations of the Ministry of Defense would be required to support the first launch from Vostochny, despite an ongoing construction of the stationary tracking facility.
However official reports from the Kremlin, Roskosmos and Spetsstroi did not mention much more serious problems that had apparently been on the agenda of the meeting with Putin. Lack of workforce and unrealistic deadlines imposed by Moscow in the Vostochny project inevitably prompted developers to cut corners and sacrifice the quality of construction. According to the Izvestiya daily, quoting an unnamed source at Roskosmos, reports prepared for the meeting warned that the installation of equipment in unfinished facilities put at risk the sensitive hardware. Much worse, inspections revealed poor quality of construction at the Soyuz launch pad. For example, cracks had already appeared on the ceiling of the fourth floor inside the launch structure. At the processing facility, some pillars of the crucial "transborder" gallery had been installed without necessary amortization supports. Numerous violations and poor quality of construction was also found at the new residential complex. While the official Russian media kept repeating that only Russian citizens were employed in the project, the Izvestiya revealed wide-spread exploitation of illegal immigrants from Moldova, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to minimize cost of construction and maximize contractors' profits.
Manned missions from Vostochny postponed until 2020s
In the Kremlin's transcript of the September 2 meeting, Ostapenko said that during the first mission from Vostochny, a Soyuz-2-1v/Volga rocket would deliver the Mikhailo Lomonosov and the Aist-2 satellites. All tests of the launch vehicle were scheduled to be completed in May 2015 and it was to be shipped to the launch site in the following June. Lomonosov was to be ready by December 2014 and its delivery to the launch site was also set for June 2015. No public announcements were made about the promised launch of the manned spacecraft in 2018, however an official TV reportage likely inadvertently revealed that an unmanned Oka-T satellite would be launched as the "first mission within the manned space program" in 2018. It essentially confirmed that manned missions would not be possible from Vostochny until 2020s.