From Stuart Williams, AFP:  President Vladimir Putin on Friday unveiled a new $50 billion drive for Russia to preserve its status as a top space power , including the construction of a brand new cosmodrome from where humans will fly to space by the end of the decade.

Fifty-two years to the day since Yuri Gagarin became the Soviet Union’s greatest hero by making the first human flight into space, Putin inspected the new Vostochny (Eastern) cosmodrome Russia is building in the Amur region of its Far East district.

Putin said in a live link-up with the multinational crew of the International Space Sation (ISS) that Russia hoped to have the first launches from Vostochny in 2015 and the first manned launches in 2018.

"It’s going to be a great launch pad. It took a long time to choose but now work is fully underway," said Putin in comments broadcast on state television, adding that Vostochny would be fully operational by 2020.

Russia still carries out all manned launches from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan — the same place where Gagarin made his historic flight. But this has been clouded in recent years by disputes with the Kazakh authorities over lease terms. . . .

The Russian space programme has been hurt in recent years by a string of launch failures of unmanned probes and satellites, but Putin vowed Moscow would ramp up spending.

He said that from 2013-2020, Russia would be spending 1.6 trillion rubles ($51.8 billion, 38 million euros) on its space sector, a growth far greater than any other space power. . . .

The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, meanwhile said Moscow was targeting 2030 as the year in which it could begin creating a base on the moon for flights to Mars.

"The moon is a great launch pad, it’s basically a big space object on which a whole load of things could be accommodated. Not using it would be sinful," he told state television.  (photo: Aleksey Nikolskyi/AFP)

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