Vostochny Spaceport Pushed by Putin

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered the government to complete the paperwork for the construction of the new $2.7-billion Vostochny spaceport, located in the middle of the Siberian taiga near China, as soon as possible so that work begins this year as planned.

The Vostochny spaceport is designed to ease the country’s dependence on the Soviet-era Baikonur launch site, located in the wind-swept steppe of neighboring Kazakhstan and which Russia is leasing through 2050. Joint launches from France's Kourou site in French Guyana will begin sometime in the first half of this year, but the growing amount of business justifies a new national spaceport, Putin said.

Russia plans to send the first satellites and cargo into space from Vostochny by 2016, Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov said. Manned flights are scheduled to begin only by 2019. Perminov said manned launches will only be allowed after 15 successful launches of cargo spacecraft from the same site, which takes about three years.

By 2020 Vostochny will provide for 45 percent of the nation’s space launches, Perminov said in August. Baikonur will serve 11 percent, down from 65 percent now, while the northern Plesetsk spaceport will account for 44 percent.

There are 21 spaceports worldwide, owed by 11 countries, including Russia — which in 2009 claimed 40 percent of the highly competitive market for space launches. But such countries as China, South Korea, Indonesia and Brazil are building more of them, according to the government, as reported by The Moscow Times and The Voice of Russia.