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Russian Moon Landing May Take As Many As Six Launches (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Russia has made no secret of its desire to land cosmonauts on the lunar surface sometime in the late 2020s. As the United States, at least for the current administration, has decided to bypass the moon in favor of Mars, Russia could move to wipe out the humiliation it suffered at the hands of NASA when it lost the 1960s race to the moon with the landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. However, a story in TASS suggests that a Russian moon landing effort would be complex, requiring up to six launches of its Angara rocket.
but the development of the Shuttle and the Soviets' failure with their equivalent
Actually, the Soviets succeeded in realizing that an airplane-shaped payload strapped onto the side of a rocket makes no sense after only one flight. It took us over 100 flights before we realized the same thing. I think they won that round.
Everything costs a lot more in the US though. One US dollar spent by the US government at some US contractor is not going to go nearly as far as the same amount (in Rubles of course) spent by the Russian government.
Just look at how ridiculously inflated defense costs have gotten in the US. An aircraft carrier cost about 2.5B 20 years ago, now they cost 15B. Inflation isn't that high in this country.
The real humiliation wasn't the space race, it was losing their empire in 1989-1991. Most of the other European empires managed to get over the loss of their former colonies, but the Russians are still whining about it 25 years later, as if they had some sacred right to brutalize and exploit the Poles and Czechs (among many others). Ditto for China, which seems to be intent on claiming every territory that might have at one point been under Chinese rule as payback for its own supposed humiliation(s).
(To be fair, it's not like every superpower and ex-superpower in history hasn't had plenty of people who felt the same way, like the Americans who still think we could have won the war in Vietnam if only we'd been willing to take the gloves off, presumably by nuking Hanoi.)
A moon base would be by far the biggest boondoggle in the history of this nation: Trillions of dollars sunk into a make-work social program for space nutters.
Come on, surely you can do better than that. The bank bailouts, the wars knowingly started on false premises, the wars started on "regime change" ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"As the United States, at least for the current administration, has decided to bypass the moon in favor of Mars"
It's a way of kicking the can so far down the road that you can't even find the can.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yes, last time it kicked off the shale oil/gas boom with some pretty stupid cowboy goldrush antics that are starting to have a bit of fallout now. Meanwhile solar/wind/etc are quietly progressing worldwide to compete with the much lower price.
Rusted on Republicans take note - the Chinese are making an absolute fortune selling those solar panels developed in the USA but forced offshore to keep some donors happy. America could be making a killing from that American technology if a few loud Texan oil executives had not put their interest ahead of the country. Those six million manufacturing jobs lost recently could be doing that and spinoffs instead of that many or more doing it in China.