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Russia To Study Martian Moons Once Again

Posted by timothy on from the phobos-grunties dept.

Robbie writes "The Russian space program once faced bleak prospects, receiving meager government funding. Meanwhile, the United States and the ESA continued to send automatic probes to the Red Planet. NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are now crawling on the planet's surface, while their Russian prototypes never lifted off and are now on display at the Space Research Institute's museum. However, the situation seems to be improving today. Under a stage-by-stage national program for studying Mars, the Phobos-Grunt automatic probe will be launched in October 2009. This cutting-edge modular spacecraft costs just 1.5 billion rubles ($64.4 million)."

5 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bread and circuses, minus the bread by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Informative

    Giving money to the poor is the best way to fuel the inflation.

    You don't have to directly hand out cash to people to eradicate poverty. Governments routinely boost the economies of regions hard hit by giving tax breaks to local businesses, maintain the infrastructure they built, and spend more on education there. (Adjacent republics in Russia can have wildly different economies based on how well the schools are preparing people for a global economy, look at the difference between poor Yoshkar-Ola and increasingly affluent Cheboksary.)

  2. Re:Phobos Grunt = Doom guy by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Grunt" is the Russian word for "soil", not a word for "An infantry soldier. slang (orig. US)". But still, yours is an interesting thought. :-)

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  3. Re:Bread and circuses, minus the bread by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oops, to continue my last post: it seems like Russia is abandoning huge amounts of its territory in a way I've never seen in the U.S. or the EU. Things are left to rot, people pack up and move to Moscow (virtually every young minority person I know is there already or is planning to go soon) or abroad, and no local businesses ever come in. And yet, as it self-defeatingly retreats from all this space, the Asian portion of which which is ripe for China to eventually grab through force or demographics, Russia gets more nationalistic and ethnocentric of late.

  4. Pictures from the previous Phobos Mission by mbone · · Score: 2, Informative

    Pictures from the Soviet Phobos mission can be found here.

  5. Re:Phobos Grunt = Doom guy by Cyberax · · Score: 2, Informative

    They are mostly synonyms.

    "Pochva" means a part of Earth's crust on which plants can grow.

    "Grunt" means any soil.

    PS: Russian is my native language.