Proton-M Rocket Carrying Russia's Most Advanced Satellite Crashes

schwit1 (797399) writes "When it rains it pours: A Russian Proton rocket crashed Friday nine minutes after launch. Considering the tensions between the U.S. and Russia over space, combined with the increasing competition for the launch market created by SpaceX's lower prices, another Proton failure now is something the Russians could do without. Moreover, the Russians were planning a lot of Proton launches in the next few months to catch up from last year's launch failure. Many of these scheduled launches were commercial and were going to earn them hard cash. This failure definitely hurts, and will certainly be used as justification by their government in increase its control over that country's aging aerospace industry."

Comments

Re:at least they are trying.

[Teresita]

They "DO WORK" when it comes to space. WTF are WE doing? Sitting around, remembering the good-old-days while NASA fine-tunes its diversity statement.

Meanwhile the USA is building up quite a portfolio of images from the surface of Mars and shit. Russia's got a gig driving a space limousine.

Russian lift platform crashes

[Chas]

Russia: Maybe you should use trampoline to get into space.
*BOOM*
America: You know what Yuri? That sounds like a damn smart decision!

Re:Different problem

[pushing-robot]

They're claiming the rocket malfunctioned after entering a region of intense gay-waves emitted from western Europe.

I should probably stop watching Russian news.