The Russian Space Agency (RKA) is reported to have plans for resuming production of the Kosmos-3M space launcher at the Polyot plant in Omsk.
Kosmos-3M has been used to launch a variety of satellites - military, civilian as well as commercial payloads. Just recently it was used in a launch of a Parus navigation satellite. The problem is that the production of these launchers was discontinued in the early 1990s, so the recent launches used rockets from the reserve of the Ministry of Defense. The plan was to gradually replace Kosmos-3M with the Rockot launcher, but it apparently proved more difficult than expected - Rockot seems to be more expensive, not to mention the need for launch facilities in Plesetsk.
Comments
Thanks for that news, don't know if its good news or bad news. The Rockot LV finally seems to be having a good year, 3 launches for 2005, and the novel vertical payload processing.
Restarting production of a vehicle that is out of production for more then 10 years, there should be plenty of spare SS-19. The Rockot with its new upper stage should be a bit more capable.
The article in Kommersant, which reported the news, is rather skeptical about the prospect of restarting the production. But they say that Kosmos-3M is much cheaper than Rockot ($6-8 million as compared to $10 million).
I agree with your statement but Rockots are more expensive than Kosmos.