MOSCOW, November 19. /TASS/. Directorate for selecting scientifically important experiments has been set up at the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the agency's head Dmitry Rogozin told a press conference dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the International Space Station (ISS).
"We are establishing a directorate at Roscosmos which will be independent and will select experiments from the point of view of their scientific significance, subjecting them all to the same logic. We do not need experiments for the sake of experiments," Rogozin said. He added that experiments should be "lively and pragmatic."
The Roscosmos head explained that this is done in order to not let bureaucracy hamper the development of cosmonautics. "Selecting experiments is part of large, heavy, hidebound bureaucracy. It should all be reformed, definitely," he said.
Rogozin said he understands why this happens. "People responsible for experiments are very conservative because god forbid this experiment will result in malfunction of the onboard machine or something like that... That's why everything is carefully measured, studied with the help of various state standards, requirements, rules," he noted adding that this may lead to the situation where certain experiments have been discussed for 10 years, not moving any closer to implementation.