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How Russia May Send Cosmonauts To the Moon After All (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: When Russia decided to abandon its drive to land cosmonauts on the moon, the reasons were not so much political than they were fiscal. The low price of oil and the costs of Vladimir Putin's imperial adventures in the Ukraine and Syria had crowded out funding for Russia space missions. It did not help matters that the Russian Space Agency was rife with corruption and mismanagement that seems to prevail across much of Russian society. However, Popular Mechanics suggests that Russia is still thinking of landing cosmonauts on the moon when that country's fiscal situation improves.
Greece is also thinking of landing on the moon "when their fiscal situation improves"
The aura that surrounds Vlad Putin will be focused by a series of unobtainium lenses and used to propel the cosmonauts to the moon where they will plant a Russian flag, set up a military base manned by space cossacks and claim the moon for mother Russia.
I stopped reading at (...and the costs of Vladimir Putin's imperial adventures in the Ukraine and Syria). Can we please stop with the propaganda pieces. I have much to do and don't want to have to look at ideological crap on /. Ok, rant off. FWIW, I think a permanent moon base should be very high on the priority list. It matters not to me who actually builds it. Chinese, Russian, EU,,, it doesn't matter.
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
astr vs cosm: Both are apt roots for the word.
An article or discussion in another forum of the Russian space program mentioned in 1990s is when they should have had lot of young people entering the workforce to start careers at Roscosmos, Energia, etc. However, they did not. So now there is an aging workforce including management (yes types are needed for organization and coordination of engineers and technicians) and nobody to replace their positions when they retire (or die). Though not surprising as Jim Oberg wrote an article in 1990s IEEE Spectrum about his visit to Baikoner, he was also free to roam around which was a huge change compared to just a few years before. Oberg described the place with lots of abandoned facilities but many 40 and 50-somethings still working there (and with meager wages) because they felt dedicated to the space program. Not many young people were willing to do that especially considering Baikoner is a bleak area to live [and not much of a nightlife].
Speaking of Putin, he has failed to match what his Soviet predecessors were able to do as we see problems of bringing the new launch complex at Vostochny.
mfwright@batnet.com
Maybe when we get rid of "different name for astronaut depending on country", we can go to work on the much more pressing "different name for group depending on animal" problem. The Chinese could appoint a zu of taikonauts to work on that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?