PARIS — A senior Russian government space official on April 16 said Russia is bound by an environmental agreement with Kazakhstan to phase out the heavy-lift Proton rocket in 2020, a deadline that argues in favor of the long-delayed, expensive Angara replacement.
Yuri N. Koptev, a former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency who is now head of the Roscosmos Corporation’s science and technical council, said Angara as currently designed will cost twice as much as today’s Proton to build. He said cost reductions would occur as Angara entered . . .
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