Roscosmos Releases Plan for Re-Investing in Russian Space Infrastructure

Source: RIA Novosti

The Russian space agency Roscosmos released a document Saturday prioritizing space goals through 2020. The plan, which was apparently approved in December, calls for a $69 billion investment and continues the focus on consolidating the sprawling space infrastructure  into a much smaller number of holding companies with the ultiamte goal of attracting commercial investment.  New starts in human spaceflight and science missions would take a backseat to completing the massive far eastern Vostochny spaceport, which is intendent to significantly reduce the dependence on launch operations currently carried out at the Baikonur facility in Kazahkstan.  As part of the Vostochny project, Russia hopes to undertake significant advances in launch vehicle assembly and processing, much of which has remained unchanged  for decades.  A related priority would be the introduction of the long-delayed Angara family of boosters, a modular system meant to replace several current rockets, most notably the freqeuntly flown, but trouble plagued  Proton.