At press conference Victor Yushchenko said he had come to Dnipropetrovsk to consider ways to develop the space industry in Ukraine, presidential press office reported.
The President claimed that this industry was a synonym to the word “progress” all over the world. It incorporates basic technologies and is directly linked to security policy and industrial sovereignty of any state, he said. The Head of State remarked that the space industry was a “colossal component of technologies which hauls dozens of industries of the national economy.”
“This is a core of what we mean by the globalidea of progress,” he said.
The President stressed Ukraine had a complete cycle of space technologies: it produces carrier rockets, services and launches satellites. Any country of the third millennium, he said, will want to have information received from space exploration activities, use relevant services and own space vehicles and equipment. Yushchenko added that space exploration was a sphere whereUkraine’s national interests were matured.
“We think this market is strategically important to Ukraine and so it must be absolutely promising,” he said and reminded those present that our space industry consisted of about forty enterprises and institutes employing more than forty thousand specialists.
Over the past fourteen years, we have launched 89 carrier rockets that put about two hundred space vehicles into orbit.
“This is a basis of the national industry,” Yushchenko said and added that its technological profoundness required “planetary cooperation.”
The President asserted that Ukraine should not withdraw from such international projects as Sea Start and Dnieper. He also said we had advanced in the Cyclone 4 Ukrainian-Brazilian project, which can be launched in 2008.
Yushchenko said at a recent meeting of the National Security and Defense Council and during his meeting with workers of the space industry a few months ago he proposed to formulate a development concept for the industry and then use it to elaborate Ukraine’s space program. He thinks it should be developed by our country’s leading space enterprises, Yuzhmash and Pivdenne Design Bureau. The President is also convinced the program will help Ukraine define new objectives and find new ways to use its great space potential.
