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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)."

2 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bread and circuses, minus the bread by mahmud · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not one of those killjoys who think you have to completely solve all human ills before launching anything into space, but it's a big mystery how Russia can come up with money for space, and yet can't seem to raise the standard of living enough to stop its demographic implosion and high rates of unemployment and deadly alcoholism.

    Because if you actually studied Economics instead of minority languages, you would understand that Russia is already overspending on its social programmes. Giving money to the poor is the best way to fuel the inflation. Plus 65M$ is a drop in a bucket compared to the current Russian currency reserves.

    I am not one of those killjoys who think that poor people shouldn't be helped at all and that the markets should completely take over the welfare functions but it's a big mystery how some people fail to see the big picture even though they routinely travel through the country and are exposed to the economic processes taking care there.

  2. Phobos is intriguing by denver38 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Phobos never failed to intrigue me. From Wikipedia: Phobos's unusually close orbit around its parent planet produces some unusual effects. As seen from Phobos, Mars would appear 6,400 times larger and 2,500 times brighter than the full Moon appears from Earth, taking up a quarter of the width of a celestial hemisphere. Some nice pictures of Mars, including Phobos, can be found here: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martian_skies.html