Official News page 5

REAL LIFE NEWS: RUSSIA PLANS NEW SPACE FACILITY

by Hazed

Russia is planning to build a new cosmodrome so they no longer have to rely on a facility in another country to launch spaceships.

When Russia was part of the USSR, having the launch facility sited at Baikonur spaceport wasn't a problem, but since the breakup, that puts it in Kazakhstan which is now a different country. So Prime Minister Putin has confirmed that a new facility costing $800m will be build in the far eastern Amur region, close to the Chinese border, and should be up and running by 2015.

The site, while smaller than Baikonur and less expensive, will cover 700 sq km and require 30,000 construction specialists, and will also contain a high-tech residential compound and research laboratories.

The main building work on the new spaceport, to be called Vostochny (eastern) Spaceport, is scheduled to start in 2012. The inaugural unmanned launch would then happen 2015, followed by the first manned lift-off in 2018.

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