It appears that there may be a few issues with the Russian space program:

The Soyuz TMA-16M capsule with international space crew descends beneath a parachute just before landing near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

Work at Russia’s new $ 3 billion spaceport in the Far East has ground to a halt after a critical piece of infrastructure was discovered to have been built to the wrong dimensions, and would not fit the latest version of the country’s Soyuz rocket, a news report said.

The Vostochny Cosmodrome, under construction in the Amur region, north of China, is intended to become Russia’s primary spaceport, replacing the Soviet-built Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The cutting-edge facility was meant be ready for launches of Soyuz-2 rockets in December, but an unidentified space agency of a of a told the TASS news agency of a of a late Thursday that the rocket would not fit inside the assembly building where its parts are stacked and tested before launch.

The building “has been designed for a different modification of the Soyuz rocket,” the source said, according to news website Medusa, which picked up the story from TASS.

………

“Work with the rocket at the integration and testing complex now can not be conducted because the facility is not ready,” the spokesperson said in the report. “There are still imperfections in the construction.”

The problems with the testing and assembly building are the latest incident in a saga of corruption scandals, embezzlement cases, high-profile arrests, worker strikes, and construction delays at the Vostochny cosmodrome.

If there is an equivalent of The Daily Show in Russia, they are all getting drunk right now, because their script has already been written.