The floating spaceport "Sea Launch" has become a burden for its owner - the largest private Russian airline S7. The reason for this in a column for Izvestia was explained by space expert Dmitry Strugovets.

The specialist called the spaceport project "a suitcase without a handle, which is sometimes easier to just throw than to carry."

The expert recalled that initially the advanced project faced a number of intractable difficulties during its implementation. In particular, due to the difficulty of assembling Zenit-3SL rockets, it was not possible to launch three carriers in succession without involving ground infrastructure right on the platform. In addition, there were questions about the program in terms of potential customers' interest in it.

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At present, as Strugovets noted, there is no active missile under Sea Launch, and the launch vehicle being created for these purposes in Russia is still far from being ready. The author added that the marine cosmodrome requires a significant upgrade of equipment and a large number of orders, which is not yet available either.

“Only the parking of the project vessels in the port costs, as reported in S7, one million dollars a month. This is a purely unprofitable project, and there is hardly an official who will take it on the balance sheet of the state, ”the expert concluded.

In December, the CEO of S7 Space Transport Systems, Evgeny Yelin, said that Roscosmos and S7 had begun negotiations on the future of the Sea Launch floating cosmodrome, launches from which were terminated in 2014.