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Russia Plans Its Own Moon Base
Socguy writes "After being rebuffed by NASA, Russia now plans to build its own moon base by as early as 2027. The nation now plans to send a manned mission to the moon by 2025 and establish a permanent base shortly thereafter. 'According to our estimates, we will be ready for a manned flight to the moon in 2025,' Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov told state news agency RIA Novosti. A station that could be inhabited could be built there between 2027 and 2032, he said. While Russia will be refurbishing existing spacecraft, the U.S. is taking a different approach after the space station is finished and plans to scrap the space shuttle program in favour of a new kind of spaceship to be called Orion."
So what? US also can't find its own ass with two hands (see "Katrina, hurricane"). Maybe you should shutdown ALL scientific projects, dismiss all military and start thinking of the children?
The same can be said for U.S. treatment of its own poor. What a government spends money on is not necessarily related to where it's needed.
You mean to tell me it spends more on this than on defense? Not even close! Defense used to be 20% of the whole budget in non war years. You know what it is now when we have an unnecessary war entered under false pretenses, which we are coincidentally losing? Does anyone even know what IRAQ cost? What it's going to cost over the next 10 years?
Don't forget a lot of money is wasted on pork projects and things like NASA.
"it's that we've lost our vision of the future"
While I agree with you that true insight of the future is of major importance and among the very top of priorities, I would argue that we never had a vision of the future before. So many gaffes, mistakes and so much idiocy in the American past... Vietnam war, Cuban missile crisis, moonrace, manhattan project, star wars, communist witch hunt, state sponsored foreign dictatorships, wars, our part in genocides...
Sorry but ever since we've been a superpower, we've always been fucked up as a people. We have not as a nation achieved a passing grade for improving ourselves and our world. We should work to obtain and understand clearer visions of the future, then maybe for the first time in our history we won't be a fucked up nation.
"The problem with the "forget all those rocket thingies and research and spend the money on social programs" mindset is that it strips a society of the ability to improve.""
This is not true at all, please explain how dumping trillions into space races and then pointless space stations and shuttle missions has 'enhanced our society's ability to improve itself'. What we have teflon now? It has not. It was waste. It was not efficient. We need accountability for our spending. If that unfathomable wealth had been better spent we could have enhanced our society so much that these programs could now be run with much greater scope and success.
I am a scientist (iaas?) and imho science is not some esoteric thing that we need to pump X amount of dollars into pure research or else. We have to use our brains plenty of science is a waste. Plenty of it is unscientific. Plenty of it is ahead of it's time. We need to prioritize science programs just like anything else. America as a nation is behaving very much like it's inefficient debt-ridden citizens: it keeps buying things it doesn't need and putting it all on high-apr credit cards while going around littering and driving like assholes in big gas-guzzling SUV with the rudeness of someone who thinks they own the roads.
We need to start holding everything and everyone accountable to the high standards that should have been expected from the beginning. It's all too often we see corporate corruption, inefficiency in government, conflict of interest in science, under-performing all around and just go "oh well what can you expect"
If all this money being wasted in the name of science went to science education we would be miles ahead of other nations. Ditto for defense spending.
Liberty.