The Defense Ministry provided moral support to the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, which mostly had to pay its own way.

The initial Angara design featured one oxygen-kerosene engine and one oxygen-hydrogen engine. Both engines were originally developed for the first stage of the Zenit launch vehicle and the main section of the giant Energia rocket. In the long run, it was decided to develop a new oxygen-kerosene engine and its supercharged high-thrust version. But the project encountered serious difficulties from the very outset despite previous achievements.

In the mid-1990s, a revamped Angara version eventually featured the URM-1 multipurpose rocket module for manufacturing lightweight, medium-weight and heavy-duty rockets to meet the projected launch market demand.

Lightweight launch vehicles were both expensive and unpopular, and the modular Angara concept proved extremely expensive and time-consuming.

In the final count, three-stage, rather than two-stage, heavy-duty and medium-weight rockets were required because standardization negatively affected product quality and reliability.

To make things worse, the heavy-duty Angara has more boosters than the Proton, and its stages are scattered over larger areas.

Although the initial Angara version was to have lifted off from the Zenit-2 launch pad in Plesetsk, an entirely new general-purpose launch facility was required to launch space rockets in every category. Part of the Zenit-2 facility's infrastructure was used during launches until 2006 when the state engineering enterprise Zvyozdochka in Severodvinsk, in northern Russia, built a standard launch pad for launching all members of the Angara rocket family.

Initial flight tests are to commence in 2011 with the launch of the lightweight Angara-1.2, and the rocket's heavy-duty version is to lift off in 2012. This risk-reduction concept implies that the entire program, which has been regularly financed out of the federal budget since 2004, will be completed 20 years after its inception.

Russia and Kazakhstan recently argued over the losses incurred by a failed Proton launch from Baikonur. If not for this and other similar scandals, Moscow would have no motives for building a new space center in the Russian Far East.

Once the Vostochny center is complete, the Russian space program, which has been suffering from the dire consequences of the Soviet Union's disintegration since 1992, will become completely self-sufficient.

Although Sergei Ivanov claims that Russia now launches all military spacecraft from Plesetsk, it is impossible to launch geostationary satellites from there and the location is only suitable for low-orbit launches.

According to Ivanov, a space center resembles an entire city with schools, apartment buildings, hospitals, daycare centers, power plants and a ramified transport network, rather than just a residential area. Consequently, senior government officials should not make unrealistic statements with regard to its construction; on the contrary, any delays are quite explainable.

It appears that the government should first build the required infrastructure and create normal working conditions for the new space center's personnel. Such conditions would be a far cry from the late 1950s and the early 1960s when the first ICBMs were placed on combat duty in Plesetsk, and when the launch pad and maintenance workers had to live in railcars and the local vehicle assembly building's equipment rooms. Still, this was nothing compared with Baikonur, whose first builders lived in dugouts.

(Yury Zaitsev is an academic adviser with the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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