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Remember when an assembly worker had hammered-in the Proton-M sensors upside down? And instead of looking at their QA process they announced something in the lines of "don't worry, we found the worker and fired him"? I remember it was discussed here how this mentality would lead to more control issues, and it does appear they have learned nothing.

Well, pointing out that landing on Mars is hard, is not really a joke.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com...

Most to of the attempts failed on earth or in earth orbit. The only european project that failed was the UK Beagle landing. The main goal of the mission is/was the orbiter.

I guess the problem (at Mars, not in Earth orbit) is meteorology. Air pressure has probably a much wider swing range than "scientists" think. So the difference between landing in a near vacuum, and using parachutes for "predetermined X seconds" and then launching rocket boosters, versus landing in a high pressure zone ist probably to high.

I guess the only reliable way is to have a kind of ground radar to get a better judgement about how to use the parachutes and if/when to use rockets.

The mass issue or unit conversion issue is a minor one.

In the Soyuz/Fregat launch vehicle, the first three booster stages of the rocket and the Fregat upper stage have their two separate guidance systems controlled by their own gyroscopic platforms. The guidance reference axis used by the gyroscopes on the Soyuz and on the Fregat had a 10-degree difference. The angle of a roll maneuver for rockets lifting off from Baikonur, Plesetsk and Kourou, which was required to guide them into a correct azimuth of ascent, normally laid within a range from positive 140 to negative 140 degrees. To bring the gyroscopic guidance system into a position matching the azimuth of the launch, its main platform has to be rotated into a zero-degree position via a shortest possible route. The ill-fated launch from Vostochny required a roll maneuver of around 174 degrees (which was apparently conducted from the 5th to 22nd second of the flight), and with an additional 10 degrees for the Fregat's reference axis, it meant that its gyro platform had to turn around 184 degrees in order to reach the required "zero" position.

In the Soyuz rocket, the gyro platform normally rotated from 174 degrees back to a zero position, providing the correct guidance. However on the Fregat, the shortest path for its platform to a zero-degree position was to increase its angle from 184 to 360 degrees. Essentially, the platform came to the same position, but this is not how the software in the main flight control computer on the Fregat interpreted the situation. Instead, the computer decided that the spacecraft had been 360 degrees off target and dutifully commanded its thrusters to fire to turn it around to the required zero-degree position. After the nearly 60-degree turn at a rate of around one degree per second, the Fregat began a preprogrammed trajectory correction maneuver with its main engine. Unfortunately, the spacecraft was in a wrong attitude and, as a result, the engine was fired in a wrong direction.

Nothing about the vehicle or the satellite being "programmed with the wrong coordinates", just an edge case for the control system (a little bit like with the Ariane 5 incident).

Did my own research.

The third stage burned up reentering the atmosphere over the north Atlantic. The fireball was observed by at least one transatlantic commercial flight.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com...

See near bottom of page.

More specifically the Nedelin catastrophe

another link

If I'm reading this correctly, something like 250 people died. There seems to be disagreement whether one, or three, guys who were on the pad and survived had gone for a smoke break shortly before the accident.

No, what I meant is that I sincerely doubt the North Koreans would ever be able to get a spacecraft of any kind to the Moon, period.

The Soviet manned lunar programs were a series of completely unsuccessful programs that tried to land a man on the Moon, and their unmanned programs were only marginally successful at best. This page shows just how spectacularly unsuccessful they were:

http://www.russianspaceweb.com...

Out of 60+ attempts, only about a dozen made it anywhere near the Moon. Some of them were able to orbit, but only a few of them actually touched down without crashing.

It's much harder than it sounds and I would genuinely be shocked if North Korea ever managed to pull it off.

The USSR did toy with the idea of using the N-1 to carry the Tsar-bomb 100 megaton device. It could have also been used as a way to deploy orbital weapons platforms to drop nukes from orbit. But the USSR and the US have signed a treaty to prevent that.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com...

I do not know if many people are old enough to remember Johnny Carson's or Karnak routine but it comes to mind seeing this post.

"Food, indoor plumbing, and sanity"
"Name three things that North Korea needs more than landing men on the moon."

Of course it isn't, comrade! That's an imperialist lie!

Angara is being developed alright. The launch pad was finally funded circa 2010 and they finished construction of it at Plesetsk recently. The first Angara 1.2 rocket is supposed to launch from Plesetsk at the end of this month. The first Angara 5 rocket is supposed to launch late this year or early next year. They also funded construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome as a replacement for Baikonur on Kazakhstan.

Also guess what the Soyuz capsule already uses rocket assisted propulsion for softening up capsule landing.

Russia has not designed a whole new spacecraft because a) Soyuz works fine. b) Roskosmos wasn't exactly swimming in money and had other problems on their mind. i.e. ensuring they could manufacture Proton and Soyuz 100% in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union left a lot of the rocket manufacturing in Ukraine, replace analog with digital avionics, and the replacement of the military rockets based on hypergolics with a LOX/Kerosene launcher. That is Angara.

There has certainly be no lack of proposals. Energia seems to propose a new capsule like every year or so.

Let us not forget that the Soviets had their Germans scientists as well. And the Soviets didn't give them a choice, they arrested and moved thousands of them long after the war.

The Rest of the Rocket Scientists - Some went west. This is the story of the ones who went east.

More

Yes its like those Mars Rovers that only lasted days instead of weeks and months and years- their primary mission wasn't even accomplished! What poor workmanship and slave labor have wrought!

Or don't even last that long. For example:

• The Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated in the upper atmosphere because of a miscommunication of pound-seconds instead of newton-seconds - okay, that was a ground-initiated software fault, but still.
• The Beagle 2 that died for some unknown reason en-route and crashed.

I'm sure some Google time could provide a long list of failed Mars attempts...

Space travel if fucking hard to do. Even with all of the failures, NASA has done some pretty impressive things. Russia has one hell of a track record with space stations. But not so much luck with Mars. Russia/USSR has been able to land one probe on Mars and recently one on Phobos (very cool by the way). Japan and the ESA have a 100% failure rate with Mars landings. Here's a list of Mars missions.

this might be interesting for you and others (it's pretty much gibberish to me :D)

http://russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_aftermath.html

Likely.

Recall that the Soyuz capsules use essentially the same approach although the 'soft landing engines' are quite a bit less sophisticated than the Super Dracos.

An interesting aside, the Falcon / SuperDraco system could be repurposed to a general non manned lander for Mars, Venus and the other smaller planets. Might make for some 'economies of scale' to have a basic platform that worked.

We are not in a space race with Russia anymore. If anything we should be sabotaging China's space program.

Remember that the Phobos-Grunt mission was carrying a Chinese satellite, YH-1.

We can't have them Chinese commies in orbit around the Red Planet!

When the tests of the flight sequence finally started, the flight control system reportedly was not able to score a single clean run of its entire flight program without experiencing some sort of problems.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_2011.html#bku


So onboard computer which controls the flight basically did not pass any pre-flight test. "Let's try, if it fails also in real, not only during testing..."

Some more usefull info can be found in this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15850516

Basicaly ESA lowered the signal strength of their antennas, so when the signal was picked up byt the probe, it had strength as if it would be near mars.

Some other rummors:
A source from the aerospace industry explains that P-G is possibly in safe mode and it always turns off each time when it goes into shadow of Earth.

The unnamed person also thinks why it was impossible to contact P-G with Russian space antennas - the spacecraft is above then only when it's in the shadow of Earth.

But the European station in Pert has contacted P-G when the spacecraft was in the sunny side of the Earth. It's the only period when there's electricity on board.

Up to date info about teh mission can be fount at http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_launch.html

Latest entry states:

November 24 developments

Around 01:00 Moscow Time (4 p.m. EST on November 23), a poster on the forum of the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine reported that the telemetry from the spacecraft had been received as well. A data set was reportedly downlinked to a European ground station and transferred to NPO Lavochkin for analysis. Shortly thereafter, the official Russian media quoted a European representative in Moscow as saying that ESA ground station in Perth had received telemetry from the spacecraft. According to Novosti Kosmonavtiki's Igor Lissov, an emergency telemetry frame from the radio-system onboard the cruise stage, PM, had been received, confirming normal power supply and the operation of the communication gear. During the next communication pass starting at 03:30 Moscow Time, ground controllers hoped to downlink telemetry via probe's main flight control computer, BKU, essentially a brain of the mission.

Since Progress uses the Soyuz rocket, I was curious about the Soyuz escape system. Looks like it's pretty well thought through.

Still, I'd like to see Space X's Falcon 9 ready to replace the Soyuz rocket.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spektr_r.html

These clowns can't produce reliable URLs. Don't reward them with links.

The image.

Reading The Friendly Article should not be summarily banned.

For those who don't know why: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/elektro.html

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/elektro.html

Oh, gizmodo is horrible. First it took me to the german site, which didn't have the article. Then, after lots of manipulation (click the little 'US' label on the left top), I got to the article, but couldn't figure out how to close the stupid window that covers half of the cool image they're talking about.

But, to the subject: Isn't it fairly obvious why the russian image looks better? Look: compare the NASA image: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2429 to the russian one: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/images/spacecraft/application/weather/elektro/earth_disk1_1.jpg One obvious difference - in the NASA image, clouds have no shadow, in the russian one they do. That makes the NASA image look flat, and the russian one jump out in 3D. Why that is, I'm not sure.

I thought that a shuttle-like stack would require it being assembled and rolled out upright, otherwise there'd be too much weight on the fuel tank from the orbiter... but sure enough, the Soviet-era Buran was assembled horizontally.

Russia had multiple space plane projects:

Buran - which the entire USSR space industry loved to hate as it was contrary to what they wanted to develop and done as a tit-a-tat with the shuttle

Multiple early Buran prototypes - much smaller, but closer to what is on the "Chinese" picture. Some flew unmanned for at least some test flights. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/images/maks_2.jpg other media can be found around the web

Mig 105/Spiral - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105

Uragan Space Interceptor - rumoured to be a 105 on steroids - http://www.astronautix.com/craft/uraeptor.htm

Does Transport Cargo Space System sound acceptable? Maybe even in this decade... (maybe - they are always notoriously underfunded; but Mir 3, probably in '20s, and supposedly with its main role of a "space drydock", should find such tug useful)

I doubt this has anything at all to do with NASA, and NASA is in no position to reclaim anything from military projects.

This system is built on designs for flight test prototypes developed when the shuttle was being designed, and refined thereafter.

TFA says: "The official description of the mission talks of demonstrating "a rapid-turnaround airborne test bed." That makes sense, but there is no sign that anyone plans to fly the vehicle ever again" which is pure utter nonsense. You don't build a lander to fly once.

The article also suggests it will attempt never before attempted things such as automated approach and landing. Stuff the Russians demonstrated with SnowStorm. along with the automated rendezvous which Russian cargo launches have been doing for years.

This is the Air Forces access to payload deployment and return. There is no point in making it landable if all you need is delivery with no return.

This is the prototype of Predator Drone of space, and/or instantly deployable Command and Control platforms, with plausible dependability.

Ex-craniate folks, the Air Force does not intend to allow sat-killers go un-challenged when so much of US military operations rely on space based coms and control.

The launch history of the Bulava is discussed here. It's worked a few times, but they've been having failures in minor components like explosive bolts. That indicates quality control problems in the supply chain, not design problems.

It's hard to restart an entire high-tech supply chain when there hasn't been any demand for years. The US lost the ability to build nuclear weapons for over a decade.

Nice paper rocket, like the Kliper which was also celebrated on these pages. Meanwhile NASA actually tests its designs.

I think the current Russian proposals show a better & more wide ranging analysis of the task. But who am I to comment on such vast potentials and tecnicalities. Have a quiet read of http://www.russianspaceweb.com/maks2009/index.htm, and recall that almost the entire low earth orbit achievements for the last 10-15 years have been enabled by the Russian engineer's pragmatism, and auto docking/manual reversion enabled supply vehicles. Yes a lot of heavy lifting has been done by the shuttle, but lots of small bricks can do the same job, and probably more cheaply. If only we could somehow just give the world's engineers a measured bucket of finance, and say âCan you do this for us?â(TM) Then step back. Hard for politicians to do. Personally I believe the engineers (EU, Russian, USSR, & US of A) have been doing some stunning work for years, on such very tight budgets, with their developed, and developing robotics, to marvellous effect. Thanks gals ân guys. Way to go, as far as Iâ(TM)m concerned. Totally productive; flaws only hurt budgets, no-oneâ(TM)s bodies; stunning returns to date. (And please - >someone tell me how to insert a line spacing Return at this xyz blog! Please?)

Your post got me googling and I found this interesting (I thought) article about the Soyuz escape system...

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz_sas.html

In 1969 the Americans first landed men on the moon. Now some people have made names for themselves by saying that this and subsequent landings never happened. Their position is that NASA faked them in order to save face and fool the public. To prove their point they rely on explanations of the reported events using dubious science and lay explanations that any first year science major would and does, laugh at.

However, they always miss or purposely avoid the the one piece of irrefutable proof that it did in fact happen. That is that the Soviet government never refuted the American claims and they were in a unique position to do so. For even after the Americans landed on the moon the Soviets still continued to send orbiters, landers and rovers to the moon.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_lunar.html

Now if they wanted to get the goods on the Americans all they had to do was to land, photograph or explore with a rover the American landing sights. Just imagine the embarrassment not to mention the the damage to American credibility, at the height of the cold war no less, that such information would generate. Records even show that they never landed or even explored that areas that that American landings happened. So they did not even go and look to make sure because they knew it really happened.

But they did not. They did not use it to pressure the Americans to stop bombing North Vietnam and Cambodia where Soviet military advisers were being killed as a result. They did not use it to pressure the United States to stop sending military advisers to and providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation. They did not use it to stop the Star Wars program of the Regan administration.

In fact they did not even use it to turn the West's attention away from the Soviet Union during the Soviet Coup of 1991 when members of the Soviet government briefly deposed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and attempted to take control of the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_coup_attempt_of_1991

Which every body knew was the last death throws of the Soviet empire. If they did not use the information then to turn the attention of the American, and world public, inward to their own governments lies and thus corruption and force it to ignore the events in the Soviet Union in order to deal with a damaging domestic and international issue. Then the proof of faked moon landings did not and never existed.

One final thought. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economy tanked. People were selling all kinds of stuff owed by the crumbling state, ships, weapons, artworks and knowledge but nobody ever approached any Western news agency or tabloid to sell them this information. And to say that one would buy it but not publish is foolish. The seller could just keep peddling it until some on did and then it would be old news and worthless until then it would still be worth something.

In 1969 the Americans first landed men on the moon. Now some people have made names for themselves by saying that this and subsequent landings never happened. Their position is that NASA faked them in order to save face and fool the public. To prove their point they rely on explanations of the reported events using dubious science and lay explanations that any first year science major would and does, laugh at.

However, they always miss or purposely avoid the the one piece of irrefutable proof that it did in fact happen. That is that the Soviet government never refuted the American claims and they were in a unique position to do so. For even after the Americans landed on the moon the Soviets still continued to send orbiters, landers and rovers to the moon.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_lunar.html

Now if they wanted to get the goods on the Americans all they had to do was to land, photograph or explore with a rover the American landing sights. Just imagine the embarrassment not to mention the the damage to American credibility, at the height of the cold war no less, that such information would generate. Records even show that they never landed or even explored that areas that that American landings happened. So they did not even go and look to make sure because they knew it really happened.

But they did not. They did not use it to pressure the Americans to stop bombing North Vietnam and Cambodia where Soviet military advisers were being killed as a result. They did not use it to pressure the United States to stop sending military advisers to and providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation. They did not use it to stop the Star Wars program of the Regan administration.

In fact they did not even use it to turn the West's attention away from the Soviet Union during the Soviet Coup of 1991 when members of the Soviet government briefly deposed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and attempted to take control of the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_coup_attempt_of_1991

Which every body knew was the last death throws of the Soviet empire. If they did not use the information then to turn the attention of the American, and world public, inward to their own governments lies and thus corruption and force it to ignore the events in the Soviet Union in order to deal with a damaging domestic and international issue. Then the proof of faked moon landings did not and never existed.

One final thought. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economy tanked. People were selling all kinds of stuff owed by the crumbling state, ships, weapons, artworks and knowledge but nobody ever approached any Western news agency or tabloid to sell them this information. And to say that one would buy it but not publish is foolish. The seller could just keep peddling it until someone did and then it would be old news and worthless until then it would still be worth something.

  order-of-magnitude reduction in U.S. credit financing.

Yours In Space,
Kilgore Trout

"There is. In reality, this is more akin to Sputnik than an ICBM."

Sputnik was launched with an ICBM -an R-7 to be exact.

I hope that the software will be as reliable as the Soyuz craft.

Two of the last three Soyuz vehicles returning from the ISS have done recently exactly the same thing. See eg. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma11.html . Pictures of the landing site; click through for the full res images. Check the large area of burnt grass - it set a pretty big fire when it landed - the significant distance between the hole in the ground and where the capsule fetched up -- that's how far it *bounced*; and especially the heavily charred front end of the capsule and the burnt-through thruster fairing. This happened in April 2008.

another link from the comments: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz_acts_origin.html

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz_acts_origin.html

According to Russian Space Web, the USSR attempted four Mars landings with only two actually reaching the planet. Of those two, only one failed upon landing.

Now consider that the Soyuz is likely flown/managed by people whose attention to safety would give NASA managers heart attacks and just how much of a fuck up the shuttle is become evident.

Did you even read what I wrote? I said nothing about whether or not the Russians were good. I said they would cut corners. Cutting corners is what you do to save money, and the Russians are famous for it. They did it early on in the space program, and the only reason you didn't see how many of their projects screwed up is that they weren't exactly forthcoming about their failures. And FYI, they didn't send any "rovers" to Venus. Landers. Not rovers. There's a difference, and not an insignificant one.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetary_venus.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Failures

I might note in passing that it sometimes pays to do a little research before running one's mouth. It's a good way to avoid seeming "assinine".

The Ariane 5G can lift 17.6 tons into LEO for a cost of about $165 million

While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.

Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.

The Ariane 5G can lift 17.6 tons into LEO for a cost of about $165 million

While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.

Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.

Who built their Cosmodrome 3 degrees further North in Baikonur.

Well, this has the feel of a location chosen by bureaucrats for political reasons rather than be engineers for practical reasons (sorry, I don't have much faith in the government of Canada).

However, the Baikonur Cosmodrome is 3 degrees further North and don't have much better weather. This hasn't stopped the Russian (and Soviet) space operations there for more than 50 years.

In 1969 the Americans first landed men on the moon. Now some people have made names for themselves by saying that this and subsequent landings never happened. Their position is that NASA faked them in order to save face and fool the public. To prove their point they rely on explanations of the reported events using dubious science and lay explanations that any first year science major would and does, laugh at.

However, they always miss or purposely avoid the the one piece of irrefutable proof that it did in fact happen. That is that the Soviet government never refuted the American claims and they were in a unique position to do so. For even after the Americans landed on the moon the Soviets still continued to send orbiters, landers and rovers to the moon.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetar y_lunar.html

Now if they wanted to get the goods on the Americans all they had to do was to land, photograph or explore with a rover the American landing sights. Just imagine the embarrassment not to mention the the damage to American credibility, at the height of the cold war no less, that such information would generate. Records even show that they never landed or even explored that areas that that American landings happened. So they did not even go and look to make sure because they knew it really happened.

But they did not. They did not use it to pressure the Americans to stop bombing North Vietnam and Cambodia where Soviet military advisers were being killed as a result. They did not use it to pressure the United States to stop sending military advisers to and providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation. They did not use it to stop the Star Wars program of the Regan administration.

In fact they did not even use it to turn the West's attention away from the Soviet Union during the Soviet Coup of 1991 when members of the Soviet government briefly deposed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and attempted to take control of the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_coup_attempt_o f_1991

Which every body knew was the last death throws of the Soviet empire. If they did not use the information then to turn the attention of the American, and world public, inward to their own governments lies and thus corruption and force it to ignore the events in the Soviet Union in order to deal with a damaging domestic and international issue. Then the proof of faked moon landings did not and never existed.

One final thought. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economy tanked. People were selling all kinds of stuff owed by the crumbling state, ships, weapons, artworks and knowledge but nobody ever approached any Western news agency or tabloid to sell them this information. And to say that one would buy it but not publish is foolish. The seller could just keep peddling it until some on did and then it would be old news and worthless until then it would still be worth something.

Secondly, it opens up an arms race in space, with money thrown into space weapons research, testing, and bigger and heavier weaponry.

Why do people keep thinking this is new? It's not. The only new thing is that it's China doing it.

The USA successfully tested an anti-satellite missile over twenty years ago. And when I mean "successfully tested," I mean we did just what the Chinese did here: destroyed an actual satellite in actual orbit around the actual earth. And it wasn't something like NMD, where we had to test it a dozen times to get a single kill. There was one test, and it just worked.

The Soviets had a working anti-satellite program even earlier than that, basically big fragmentation warheads that they'd launch into a matching orbit and then maneuver into kill range of the target satellite. Seven interceptions. Hell, the Soviets even launched (unsuccessfully) an armed orbital battle station.

All of this was decades ago. So why the fears of opening up an arms race?

Non-Technical Proof Of The Moon Landings by Arthur Paliden © 2006 In 1969 the Americans first landed men on the moon. Now some people have made names for themselves by saying that this and subsequent landings never happened. Their position is that NASA faked them in order to save face and fool the public. To prove their point they rely on explanations of the reported events using dubious science and lay explanations that any first year science major would and does, laugh at. However, they always miss or purposely avoid the the one piece of irrefutable proof that it did in fact happen. That is that the Soviet government never refuted the American claims and they were in a unique position to do so. For even after the Americans landed on the moon the Soviets still continued to send orbiters, landers and rovers to the moon. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetar y_lunar.html Now if they wanted to get the goods on the Americans all they had to do was to land, photograph or explore with a rover the American landing sights. Just imagine the embarrassment not to mention the the damage to American credibility, at the height of the cold war no less, that such information would generate. Records even show that they never landed or even explored the areas that that American landings happened. So they did not even go and look to make sure because they knew it really happened. The next question then is even if they did know they were faked why did they never use the information. They did not use it to pressure the Americans to stop bombing North Vietnam and Cambodia where Soviet military advisers were being killed as a result. They did not use it to pressure the United States to stop sending military advisers to and providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation. They did not use it to stop the Star Wars program of the Regan administration. In fact they did not even use it to turn the West's attention away from the Soviet Union during the Soviet Coup of 1991 when members of the Soviet government briefly deposed Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and attempted to take control of the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_coup_attempt_o f_1991 Which every body knew was the last death throws of the Soviet empire. If they did not use the information then to turn the attention of the American, and world public, inward to their own governments lies and thus corruption and force it to ignore the events in the Soviet Union in order to deal with a damaging domestic and international issue. Then the proof of faked moon landings does not and never did, exist. One final thought. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economy tanked. People were selling all kinds of stuff owed by the crumbling state, ships, weapons, artworks and knowledge but nobody ever approached any Western news agency or tabloid to sell them this information. And to say that one would buy it but not publish is foolish. The seller could just keep peddling it until some on did and then it would be old news and worthless until then it would still be worth something.

The Russians launch over land all the time. But it's been said that there have been occasional problems with this.

I think it's a great idea. The Russian space agency had plans for a nuclear power "Mars Train" in the 60s. It was manned as well. Mars train.