Over RUR 500 bln ($7.6 bln) will be allocated for the development of Russia’s space exploration industry in the next three years, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting on the Roscosmos state corporation’s financial and economic state. He also emphasized that this money should be used to develop satellites and build a super-heavy lift launch vehicle.
According to Medvedev, the space exploration industry can be commercially viable but Russia is still far from it. Given the current pace of construction at the Vostochny spaceport, there is no chance for launching a heavy-lift rocket in 2021. The prime minister said that in 2019, the second stage of construction will begin to make the cosmodrome infrastructure ready to launch heavy lift rockets by 2021.
Russia is aiming to land its cosmonauts on the Moon in the early 2030s, and in the late 2020s, Roscosmos will begin the construction of the Russian lunar base.