Slashdot Mirror
India Ends Russian Space Partnership and Will Land On the Moon Alone
An anonymous reader writes: The Russian space program has experienced numerous accidents and delays recently, leading Indian officials to call into question its long term viability. Now India has decided to pull out of a partnership with Russia for a mission to the moon. According to the Examiner: "Previously, India was scheduled to launch a Russian lander on one of its rockets and send it to the lunar South Pole. Now, according to a story in Russia and India Report, India will go it alone, building its own lander to touch down on the lunar surface within the next few years.
... brought this shithole called russia to complete degradation of engineering and scientific potential. Typical salary of research assistant used to be 200 USD (back in 2008 when I worked there). Almost impossible to buy any modern (i.e. Western) equipment - local hardware has exorbitant pricetags with chinese-type quality. Median age of "researchers" was 65 years old. Outdated equipment from museums (I remember doing optical experiments with calibrated light sources from 1950 (sic)). Stupid nationalism - you cannot write Ph.D. in English, and almost no subscriptions to modern journals. They still live in 1960x, thinking they are great. I'm surprised that India waited this long to ditch those pompous morons.
Full disclosure: I used to work in MePHI as a research associate. I left this shithole, like everyone who wanted to do something worth of their life, and never looked back.