The Fall Worth $1.6 Million to Begin With
The government commissions of Russia and Kazakhstan set up to study aftereffects of the RS-20B crash held the first joint meeting in Astana Friday, August 4, 2006. Kazakhstan claims $1.6 million to begin with, but is likely to extend the demand to at least $8 million, once Astana calculates the overall damage to nature.
On July 26, the RS-20B transcontinental ballistic missile blasted off from Baikonur with the mission to put into orbit 18 satellites. Due to the emergency cutoff on the 74th second, RS-20B fell to the semidesert soil in Kazakhstan, roughly 150km from the launch, exploded there together with 26.9 tons of heptyl and 69.1 tons of amyl and buried the remains of all 18 satellites.
Kazakhstan evaluated the costs suffered to eliminate aftereffects of the crash first time on Friday. The amount stands at $1.6 million so far and covers only the health checkup of the population in affected area and the search of RS-20B fragments.
The overall damages will take into account emergency discharge of toxic agents into the atmosphere in view of the harm done to the air, land, water resources, flora and fauna of Kazakhstan. The ecological evaluation will take a month, said Deputy Minister of Education and Science Azamat Abdymomunov, who chairs Kazakh commission. On aggregate, the amount will reach at least $8 million, the sources speculate.
One more conclusion is expected to be shaped also in a month. The commission headed by Academician Nikolay Anfimov, director of Engineering Central Research Institute, is expected to determine the cause of the RS-20B crash. This commission set to work in Dnepropetrovsk past Friday, where the crashed missile was made in 1981. The reasons under consideration include breakdown of one of the four RD-264 engines of the first rocket stage, failure of control system or software failure.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 07, 2006
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