Today the entire world is celebrating the World Cosmonautics Day, also called International Day of Human Flight into Space. Besides, Ukraine is celebrating the Day of Aerospace Industry Employees.

On this April day back in already distant 1961 the human for the first time has overcome the terrestrial gravity and completed an orbit of the Earth in his spacecraft. It was Yuri Gagarin, test pilot, who has become the world’s first cosmonaut.

For us, employees of the Yuzhnoye State Design Office, this is the professional holiday we celebrate with new achievements. We have accomplished a lot and still more is to come.

On this memorable day we would like to celebrate all the employees and enterprises of the aerospace industry with professional holiday and may we wish them sound health, creative and innovative ideas, developing the advanced aerospace technologies!

And new achievements are sure to come and all the prerequisites are being created to support this. Coordination meeting hosted by our enterprise on April 5 laid the foundation of the Space Association of the hi-tech enterprises which will promote the expansion of the potential cooperation in the aerospace industry, create opportunities for changes in the development of the new advanced technologies and substantially increase marketability of the Ukraine’s enterprises in the global market.

The purpose of the association is to unite the capabilities of the domestic hi-tech enterprises on the terms of equitable partnership, to form the interbranch cooperation in order to increase the competitiveness of the national industrial production.

Aerospace industry is a driving force in the development of the scientific engineering potential of Ukraine, embracing lots of allied industries and defining country development as the industrial and hi-tech nation.

Advancement of the competitive national space production into the global market enables profitable activity and sufficient level of arrivals for modernization and upgrade of the test facilities of the aerospace enterprises, as well as allied industry branches: metallurgy, power, chemical industries etc.

– I believe this is historical event of great significance, – Vadim Vasiliev, the chairman of the JSC ELMIZ supervisory board and at the same time the secretary of the coordination meeting told in an interview to Constructor paper. – Because the time has passed, the country has changed; the system of national administration has changed. More and more problems related to the organization of production, with new technologies are heaped on the shoulders of businesses and enterprises. And, certainly establishment of such organizational coordinating authorities is very important, because it makes possible the combination of capabilities of the hi-tech enterprises, coordination of their actions. It is conventional in Europe for professional associations to partially incur functions which used to be with ministries. And we are not talking about the abstract friendship; establishment of association is absolutely rested on business bases. As is well known, there is time to cast away stones, and the time has come to gather them together.

This point of view was backed up by Alexander Osadchy, the chairman of the coordination meeting and General Director of Kievpribor:

– It is a pity we did not do it before. After all we always look up to Yuzhnoye SDO with hope, it is the main source of scientific thought, the main source of economic activities of the aerospace enterprises. And I believe that the element of openness which turned up in YSDO, involvement of not only the aerospace enterprises, but all enterprises no matter how small they are, which can do, manufacture something, is of paramount importance.

What is the significance of cooperation? Today we have walked over the territories of the new YSDO divisions. And as a director, I have estimated the amount of necessary investments to manage those new machine tools and equipment. And after all there is always someone nearby who already possesses such machine tools. And I frequently address the cooperation to help me manufacture what I need, instead of buying the equipment for hundreds thousands and even millions of foreign currency. And I am glad that Alexander Degtyarev, Yuzhnoye General Director, deals with it not in the narrow-minded manner: I will do everything myself but relies on all the capabilities of other enterprises. Today we have to come together, unite all the capabilities, thoughts, science and move forward the aerospace industry. And Association is the result of our openness, our joint activities. I am convinced it will yield results.

Valery Shmarov, the chief executive of the association Aviaprom also believes that cooperation will be the way out of recent complicated economic situation:

– When in the 90th the aircraft industry went out of control, we organized the Aviaprom Association. Perhaps we do not always cope with destructive events, but we live on and keep on working. Nowadays many people take an interest in creation of “space” association to revive the vital traditions of our past. Yuzhnoye SDO plays significant role here. It is good to see that the YSDO team today resembles a tiger prepared for a jump. It has concentrated, grouped and is on the brink of making a new technological jump. And it is the guarantee of the future of the YSDO.

Indeed, it is not an accident that coordination meeting on association creation was held on the basis of our design office. The authority of our design office rests on the unique experience in the development of aerospace engineering and large-scale scientific and technology advance, accumulated for more than 60 years of successful activity and is supported by the ability to develop in the present-day reality with flexible response to the requirements of the global space market.

Yuzhnoye SDO heritage includes great number of successful designs, many of which have become internationally recognized. And still Yuzhnoye keeps on developing, trying to meet the requirements of the global space market to the uttermost.

In between the plenary meetings the coordination meeting participants visited Yuzhnoye SDO subdivisions and premises: strength test facility, new technologies facility, DO-3 new premises, soon to hold the assembly of the spacecraft. After all, the purpose of the coordination meeting was also to acquaint participants with the near -term plans of Yuzhnoye SDO, to discuss new tendencies in the field of aerospace technologies, latest developments and achievements in the allied industries, to develop effective forms of activities organization and management of research-and-production cooperation, to cover new views on pressing production issues and integrating approaches of their solution.

– We are design office, but the products are required on the market, not the drawings, – says Alexander Degtyarov, Yuzhnoye SDO General Director. – We need to expand the cooperation, to join the efforts of all hi-tech enterprises interested in introduction of high technologies, relying on achievements of both fundamental and applied sciences. We are taking up interesting, serious job and as participants of meeting put it, creation of the association is an event which will go down in history.

Association formation was not only supported by the industrial workers, but also by the representatives of science and education. It is enough to say that six NASU academicians were present at the meeting.

– Our alumni are successfully working in Yuzhnoye SDO, and we are proud of it, – says Alexander Pivovarov, principal of the Ukrainian State University of Chemical Engineering. – And if the high assembly calls upon us, I am ready to subscribe and become useful for association.

– Space projects starting now can be realized both in ten years and down the generations, – says Yaroslav Jatskiv, NASU academician, director of the Main astronomical observatory of Ukraine. – But even if we won’t be able to see some fruits of our activity, it is our contribution to the development of the country. Astronomical community is small, but Ukraine has laid enormous groundwork and has great ideas which we should put into practice together.

At the end of the plenary meeting Vadim Vasiliev, secretary of the coordination meeting and chairman of the JSC ELMIZ supervisory board gave a summary of the discussion:

‒ Association is a voluntary non-profitable union of the equal in rights participants. Its major maxims are tolerance and responsibility. It is also a platform for tackling the work relations, for meaningful dialogue. Our goal is import substitution, cooperation and bringing on the «space level» of the smallest companies. Program activity is also important, which is examination of the official documents, lobbying of the projects and advanced trends. These are the issues we are going to tackle.

Participants of the meeting were handed over the Statement of the main areas of activity of the “Space” association of the hi-tech enterprises of Ukraine so that they could discuss it with their collective bodies and revise it, if necessary. Specially gathered working group will process the revisions and proposals made. Its goal is to combine various points of view in order to reach the real synergy. Association directorate is to be allocated in Kiev. Subsequently, the working group will send out draft Charter to the association participants.

All of it is a matter for the near future. And the first step has already been made!