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Brazil vows new launch after disaster
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) -- Brazil pledged to launch a new rocket by 2006 after 21 people died in an explosion a week ago that ended the country's third attempt to become a space power. The nation promised to press on with its program to honor workers who died on August 22 and said it would cost about $33 million to rebuild the platform and equipment destroyed after a rocket engine ignited by mistake. "We expect to launch a SLV (satellite launch vehicle) before the end of the Lula government," Defense Minister Jose Viegas told reporters Friday at a briefing on the disaster investigation. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who began a four year term on January 1, wept at the Wednesday commemoration for victims of the disaster and promised their families full compensation. About 20 people were also seriously injured in the explosion. Viegas said the government would send Brazil's Congress a proposal to pay the family of each victim $33,000 and pay for the education of their children up to university.
He said Brazil had set up technical and police commissions to investigate the disaster which occurred days before a planned lift-off of the $6.5 million, 65-foot (20 meter) rocket. Viegas said there were still no indications of sabotage. Had the launch worked it would have been the first successful venture into space by a Latin American nation. Brazil hopes to turn its Alcantra space base into an international commercial satellite launch center. Rockets launched by Brazil in 1997 and 1999 were destroyed shortly after lift-off because of technical problems. In recent years the program has suffered from underfunding and the head of Brazil's space agency has said it needed nearly three times the $12 million budgeted it in 2003. "The hope is that we have something more than this in 2004," Viegas said of future program funding. He said the disaster had not disrupted talks with Ukraine to launch its Cyclone rockets from Alcantara in the future. Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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