By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

South Korea's very first space launch has had more false starts than a drunken track meet. Officials at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which set Aug. 19 as the new launch date for the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1), can only hope they won't be crossing the date off their calendars again.

The KSLV-1 will be the first spacecraft to be launched from the Naro Space Center, the country's brand new spaceport at the southwestern tip of the Korean Peninsula.

The launch was originally scheduled for October in 2006, but technical issues forced the launch to be postponed six times before it was set for Aug. 19, Tuesday. The ministry set the "launch window," or the last possible date for the launch, to Aug. 26 and said it will notify the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization immediately.

"The Russians had said a launch could be possible between Aug. 14 and Aug. 16, but considering that we needed more time to gain approval from international bodies, Aug. 19 was the more logical date," said Lee Sang-mok, deputy minister of science and technology policy.

"We have no technical problems at this point, and should weather conditions permit, the launch will be held on Aug. 19."

The repeated delays had critics wondering whether local authorities have been properly communicating with Russia's Khrunichev State Space Science and Production Center, which is providing the technology for the project.

The ministry and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the country's space agency, have been struggling to defend themselves against accusations that they were pushing things too quickly without monitoring the readiness of the equipment.

However, some observers have raised suspicions that the Russians are more interested in using Korean money to experiment with technologies for their own future rocket projects.

The Khrunichev Center developed KSLV-1's 25.8-meter long lower assembly that contains the propulsion system, while KARI designed the solid-fuel upper portion of the rocket, which will house the satellite.

The Khrunichev Center has built two rockets, one currently used for testing at its laboratory and the other to be used for the actual launch in Korea.

The Russians, who completed combustion tests on the rocket engine on July 30, delayed the previous Aug. 11 launch date after discovering an abnormal spike in revolution numbers in its back-up booster pump. However, the data was later confirmed as a simple calculation error.

The KSLV-1 is powered by an RD-151 rocket engine developed by Russia's NPO Energomash. However, there had been suspicions that the Khrunichev Center fired up an RD-191 engine, not an RD-151 one, in its combustion tests for the KSLV-1 project.

The RD-191 engine will be used by the Angara rocket family, which is intended to become the mainstay of the Russian rocket fleet in the future. So basically, the 502.5 billion won KSLV-1 becomes an expensive guinea pig, a stage test before the Russians start flying the Angara rockets themselves, critics say.

Lee Ju-jin, who heads KARI, denied the speculation, saying that the Khrunichev Center confirmed that it used an RD-151 engine for KSLV-1's combustion test, not an RD-191.

However, Lee also said that RD-151 and RD-191 are completely identical engines, with RD-151 being a version of RD-191 tailored to fit the flight profile of the KSLV-1.

``The two engines share basically the same hardware. The difference in thrust can achieved by just altering the fuel or turbo pressure,'' Lee said.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr