MOSCOW. May 18 (Interfax-AVN) - Experts believe the disaster that occurred on the Baikonur cosmodrome on May 12, when the roof of a hangar collapsed, is likely to have been caused by overloading, a spokesman for the Russian Aviation and Space Agency told Interfax.
Some ten tonnes of roofing paper was brought to the roof during maintenance work and placed on one of the roof segments, he said. In addition, the hangar had been practically "neglected" for some time after 1990. It then became Kazakhstan's property and was repaired every year.
Another reason the roof collapsed was that Baikonur was in the center of an earthquake in May 2001, and after that the building was subjected to high wind pressure and was affected by thunderstorms. The aging of the metal ceilings and their welded assemblies should also be taken into consideration, the experts said.
Russian Aviation and Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Mikhailicheko, a member of the governmental commission that worked at Baikonur, said the construction of the Buran space shuttle, fragments of the Energia rocket carrier, and fuel reservoirs of the Zenit rocket stored in the facility had become completely unusable.
The bodies of seven of the eight men who were working on the roof on May 12 have been recovered from the rubble. Rescue works have been called off and will be resumed as soon as builders remove the debris of the three segments of the building.
The hangar was built in 1964-1967 as part of the Soviet H-1 program - the manned lunar landing program. The experts do not rule out that the explosion of a lunar rocket carrier during testing could have affected the seismic situation in the hangar area and caused certain changes that made its walls and roof less reliable.