Although the deadly explosion that destroyed a Brazilian rocket Aug. 22 dealt a severe and painful setback to Brazil’s cash-strapped space program, the country remains dedicated to developing its own launch system and must accept the risks that accompany such an endeavor, Brazilian officials said.

While the country’s space budget is tight, there is currently no reason to conclude that the accident on the Alcantara launch pad could have been avoided if the government had provided more funding, Jose Viegas, Brazil’s defense minister, said. The Ministry of Defense has overall responsibility for the Veiculo Lancador de Satellites (VLS) rocket program.

“No country in the world has developed a space program without accidents,” Viegas said, according to a transcript of remarks he made Aug. 26. “The best homage that we can make to the deceased of Alcantara … is to continue with the program.”

The 21 people killed in the accident -- some of whose bodies were so badly burned they had to be identified using dental records -- died while working for the “progress of the country,” Viegas added.

Speaking Aug. 25, Viegas said the team working on the rocket would not have gotten within three days of the planned Aug. 25 launch if there had been reason to believe the VLS project was underfunded. Brazil’s space program “does not have abundant resources. We all know this,” he said Aug. 25. “[But] the resources cannot be considered insufficient, because if they were, we would not have [gone ahead] with the launch” preparations. The defense ministry provided Space News with Portuguese transcripts of Viegas’ Aug. 25 and Aug. 26 remarks.

Brazil has tried without success to launch a rocket since the first VLS mission, in November 1997, ended when the rocket veered off course shortly after liftoff and had to be destroyed by remote control. A second launch attempt two years later also failed. The planned Aug. 25 launch was to have been Brazil’s third try at becoming the first South American country to send its own launch vehicle into space.

Viegas said it would take about 30 days for investigators to determine what caused one of the engines on the VLS rocket to accidentally ignite when the vehicle was still several days away from launch. Two science satellites were destroyed when the rocket blew up and its launch pad collapsed.

The four-stage VLS design, based on Brazil’s Sonda sounding rocket program of the 1960s and 1970s, is intended to carry payloads weighing up to several hundred kilograms to low Earth orbit, according to the Brazilian Aeronautics and Space Institute’s Internet site.

Brazil is continuing to discuss using the Alcantara base to launch Ukrainian rockets, a proposal that has been under consideration for some time, Viegas said. The remote coastal facility in northeast Brazil is located close to the equator, making it an ideal launch site for satellites destined for geostationary orbit. The closer a launch pad is to the equator, the greater the payload capacity of rockets launched from it.

The VLS disaster represents yet another disappointment for Brazil’s space community, which recently lost out on a chance to contribute a module to the international space station when money for the project ran out. Brazil had intended to provide NASA with a pod for experiments to be attached to the exterior of the station.

Funding for any sort of space-related projects is likely to be scarce for the foreseeable future because Brazil must carefully control spending to comply with the terms of a multibillion-dollar aid package granted in 1998 by the International Monetary Fund, said Lincoln Gordon, a Brazil analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“Brazil is firmly committed to having a sizeable budget surplus, so they have to be very tight on budgetary matters,” said Gordon, who served as U.S. ambassador to Brazil in the 1960s and later became U.S. assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs.

While new Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has “quite an ambitious agenda,” he is unlikely to risk Brazil’s economic stability to accomplish his goals, Gordon said in an Aug. 28 telephone interview. “I think Brazil’s reforms are here to stay.”

Analysts said there probably will be little, if any, impact on the global satellite and launch businesses from the VLS accident. The VLS rocket is designed to loft only small payloads, so it would not pose competition for the majority of rockets, such as Europe’s Ariane 5 and the United States’ Atlas 5.

“The significance of the VLS is to Brazil. They want to be able to launch future government satellites without procuring launch services from another party,” said Rachael Villain, a launch market analyst at Euroconsult in Paris.

Brazil already operates its own satellite manufacturing facilities, under the auspices of the country’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), “and there is logic in launching domestic satellites on domestic launches,” Villain said in an Aug. 28 telephone interview. INPE spacecraft have been launched on Chinese and U.S. rockets.

Villain compared Brazil’s efforts to launcher projects in India and Japan, which have sought to deploy domestically constructed spacecraft on their own rockets.

While those countries have made progress in developing rockets, neither one plays a significant role in the global launch business, she said. “When you link a domestic satellite program to a domestic launch capability, there is always a mismatch.”

Even if Brazil is able to successfully launch a future VLS rocket, the country would have a hard time convincing potential customers to place their satellites on the launcher, said Marco Caceres, senior analyst at Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, Va.

“If they’re able to launch successfully, it will be considered a fluke,” Caceres said Aug. 27. “I imagine that they’ll continue the program from the standpoint of national pride, but if they tried to compete [with other launchers], you’d have to wonder.”