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Russia's Moon And Mars Exploration Ambitions Hobbled By A Lack Of Money (phys.org)
MarkWhittington writes: Phys.Org reports that the ambitions of the Russian Space Agency continue to exceed its financial wherewithal to carry them out. A Russian rocket is due to launch the first element of the European ExoMars program, which consists of the Trace Gas Orbiter and the Italian-built Schiaparelli lander, in March. Both are due to arrive at Mars in October. After that, Russia's space exploration plans are a bit hazy, hobbled by a lack of money.
Basically like everything else in the world?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Surprised they haven't resorted to the way ever other person does...GoFundMe. ;)
Now only if they'd make sure the framework for a market economy were in place instead of relying on revenue from gas sold to Europe, they might actually stand a chance. But no... oligarchs want their power and fuck those serfs. The advice of "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers" has the same effect on them as it did on the empire.
Doesn't need any money. He will build a free university on Mars for all black and brown people. And it'll be free.
Killing people in other lands...especially oil lands...is a massive money loss. Didn't you ever read Dune?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
All they need is another cold war .
Sell us your shit for a reasonable (for even very unreasonable cartel-set values of "reasonable") price, and stop attacking the people who *do* sell us their shit for a reasonable price.
I mean really: if there was ever a time to invade a country, it was when crude was $140/bbl. But we didn't.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Lack of money has also delayed my trip to the Sun.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Dune is fiction. Are you a fucking moron? You probably think Hershey's has Oompa Loompas.
This issue has been known since The Art of War. The first chapter can be summed up as two rules which Sun Tzu stresses are of far greater importance than any battlefield tactics:
1. Don't get into a war unless you are confident you can win in.
2. Even if you're confident you can in it, don't get into a war unless you are confident you can win it quickly - because war is horrendously expensive, and a prolonged campaign may leave your treasuries empty and people in poverty even if you are victorious in the field.
He was not an advocate of the fair fight.
Seriously? Right now, when Amnesty International is complaining that Russia is committing some of the most egregious war crimes that the world has seen in decades, you're going to complain about the US killing people? The US, the country that sat out the whole conflict until Daesh started committing genocide, and has thusfar resisted pressure from all of its allies in the region to send in ground troops or even establish a no-fly zone?
Really?
Sometimes the double standards amaze me. The US takes out one MSF hospital in Afghanistan and the world is aghast and enraged. Russia takes out four hospitals in a single day, including coming back to double-tap an MSF one later in the day, adding to the near obliteration of the hospital system they've nearly conducted in Syria thusfar. And most people's reaction? Crickets.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the US. I was out there protesting both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But seriously people, the hypocrisy here can be cut with a knife.
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
They dont have money to go to the moon but they have money to fund war
Hard to make money when you don't make anything regular consumers want. I don't need an ICBM or a tanker full of oil. How about some furniture or other household goods, or clothing? I would buy Russian goods if they were viable and available.
Zapp Brannigan's big book of war says all you need is someone to blame it on.
I'd be glad to participate growdfunding project buying one way ticket for Mr Putin up there :)
There's your money
russia may be broke to do space right, but at least they are still able actually send people to space, unlike some other countries.
If they need more money they need to focus on killing people in faraway lands and none of this silly exploration.
Russia is already doing just that in Syria. Every day Russian war planes deliberately target civilians opposed to Assad's dictatorial regime. This past week Russia deliberately targeted several hospitals in Syria.
Russia has tried to claim it's upgrading its weapons systems, but every time they do they come out the next month with downward revisions on the money available to purchase such weapons or put the programs on hold due to the corruption inherent in their society.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
That's because they're busy trying to reconquer the Warsaw Pact.
Surely has the answer
If you don't want your hospitals blown up, don't take your fucking Jihadists there.
The problem with War today is that people think it can be waged in a limited fashion.
" civilians opposed to Assad's dictatorial regime"
So...rebels?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Deliberately targeting civilians? Deliberately targeted hospitals? Corruption inherent in their society? Propaganda much? Care to provide any credible source of any of your claims?
Parent is modded informative?
Of course Russia doesn't bomb Assad's regime. They public stated they support them, and for good reason.
Assad's regime is SECULAR. That means no force fed religion from government. Assad protects minorities like Christians and other Muslim sects. If you remove him, there will be chaos from ISIS and an Islamic regime will prevail, and make things worse in the region.
It will be another mistake like removing other secular dictators like Saddam. At least they kept a general stability in the region of crazies.
Wow you are lapping up the Kool Aid. Russia are the only ones with the balls to combat CIA financed Al-Nusra freaks.
So. The Democratic Party's goal is achieved.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
All my plans for world domination is hobbled by the same thing. Lack of money.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The U.S. 2015 figure is 16.3%, or 20.4% if veteran's benefits are included. How much are you being paid to be a liar?
The three leading candidates - Sanders, Clinton, and Trump - are all mentally defective. We're screwed.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Russia wouldn't have to step in and help Assad if US led forces didn't try to topple him.
May I have 2 billion rubles for gas?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The US, the country that sat out the whole conflict until Daesh started committing genocide
From the Global Intelligence Files in 2011, about the US financing anyone available to fight against Assad (read terrorists/"rebels"), and being interested in a big humanitarian disaster. Quotes from the e-mail:
they said without saying that SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce missions and training opposition forces. One Air Force intel guy (US) said very carefully that there isn't much of a Free Syrian Army to train right now anyway
So there were no rebels to train, but they were there and training them anyway.
the idea 'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within
They dont believe air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Ghadafi move against Benghazi. They think the US would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn't reach that very public stage.
Also, there is a very interesting interview with the former head of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency):
Who is to blame for the rise of ISIL (for some reason, I only get the "an error occurred" message, so here is a link to the most important part: Former DIA Head Concedes US Deliberately Backed Extremists in Syria).
They are discussing a 2012 report by the DIA informing that by supporting terrorists, the US would end up supporting Daesh during the interview. Here is the DIA report, heavily redacted (it's just three pages out of seven pages).
You should at least watch the 5 minutes video before saying that the US sat on the conflict again.
Uh... no rebels to train? Seems like half of Syria was lost to Assad before the USA ever got involved. Who was fighting then, unicorns?
The point of the post is that the US is involved from the beginning. Try reading the email from 2011, it's a quote of what the airforce guy says. I even made it bold for retards.
so the guys who fought against Assad were... USA? Huh? Try thinking once in a while.
Can't they just beg for money on craigslist, like everyone else does?
Invade Crimea and Ukraine, or go to Mars?
Apparently, they did not pick Mars...
That's the Republican Party at work, actually, or haven't you noticed their last 5 administrations?
"They don't like me" is not an excuse to kill people. Your people don't like you? Hmm. Jee. I dunno. Maybe you aren't a good leader then.
A country's leader only has a small influence on the course of a country. Blaming all your woes on the leadership, and then sending the country into chaos isn't always a good solution if things aren't going well.
Even if the allegations are true, these are not "the most egregious war crimes ... in decades". You need to chill out on the hyperbole. They would definitely be war crimes, but by the standard of war crimes, they are in the category of disregard for collateral damage. It's horrible, but in scale and sheer degree of negligence, not something that deserves to be singled out in the Syria-Iraq fuckorama of death. Again, I'm not suggesting it's OK, but no party in this war has clean hands.
Bush II managed to screw up both of them, by looking at the war as a simple military contest without considering the subsequent expense of occupying territory with a hostile population afterwards. Sun Tzu had a great deal to say on how to fight a guerilla war against a force with superior numbers, but I don't recall him saying much on defending against the same tactics beyond 'try not to get into that situation.'
You've got to be the world's biggest dumb ass if you think that our recent problems with wars are primarily the work of Democrats. Remember that Republican president that threatened you were a traitor to the USA if you even had a difference of opinion on whether we should go to war?
Sure, Democrats have started wars too, but you have to look back many, many years into history to dig up an example as horrid as our recent war entanglements.
but I don't recall him saying much on
As only one of his books is that famous, my suggestion is to re-read it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It will be another mistake like removing other secular dictators like Saddam. At least they kept a general stability in the region of crazies.
Why is being secular dictator that better? He dealt extremely violently with demonstrators in Arab spring. That's how the civil war started. He is to be blamed for all that happened - he could allow free elections and there would be no war.
Now seeing the details of these claims: MSF stops sharing Syria hospital locations after 'deliberate' attacks - The Guardian
Hospitals in opposition-held parts of Syria are refusing to share GPS coordinates with Russian and Syrian authorities because of repeated attacks on medical facilities and workers, Médecins Sans Frontières and humanitarian workers on the ground have said.
“Given the number of hospitals that have been bombed since the war started, they do not think [giving GPS coordinates] is going to protect them, rather the opposite,” another official said.
Don't let the title fool you. The WHOLE article does NOT have a word, or phrase suggest that they STOP provide GPS coordinates to Russia AFTER the incident. In fact, as the quote, they have never provided the data.
Further details:
http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-g...
The charity, also known by its French acronym MSF, says repeated attacks against health facilities during Syria's five-year civil war have led medical staffers to ask the group not to provide the GPS coordinates of some sites. This was the case of the makeshift clinic run by the charity in the Syrian town of Maaret al-Numan, which was hit four times in attacks on Monday, killing at least 25 people.
OTOH, the Kunduz hospital was the brightest lit building, with flag were easy recognize AND they provided GPS data, and they repeats the claim that "the strikes continued for half an hour after U.S. and Afghan authorities were told the hospital was being bombed" .
After that, tanks entered and destroyed the evidences.
While no-one know which was Russian or Syrian bombing or "other" airforces (remember the airstrike that killed numbers of SAA soldiers, no one know who did this).
Score:4 Informative, without any information, and full of dis-informations.
Tiger Forces complete the east Aleppo encirclement: 800+ ISIS fighters trapped
https://twitter.com/PetoLucem/...
https://www.almasdarnews.com/a...
Al-Nusra Front Confirms Deaths of 300 Terrorists in Syria's Aleppo
http://sputniknews.com/middlee...
WOW, the title Syrian war: Russian-backed offensive in Aleppo has killed 500 people this month, Observatory says
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
But actually, by at least 500 people, including 89 civilians, have been killed since the Russian-backed offensive on Aleppo province began earlier this month
Now, do your homework!
Look how well the Arab Spring ended in Libya.
You mean a general low-level chaos killing thousands instead of a civil war killing hundreds of thousands?
Yeah, it's a nightmare alright.
Last post!
They can clearly afford to spare the plans for later. Once Saudi Arabia will have driven North America's tar sand business to bankrupt, they will rise oil prices again, and Russia will have money for space exploration.
That makes no sense to invade a country where most of the people hates you. Even if war is easily won, you face fierce resistance from the population or you trigger a civil war. In either case it gets difficult to reap anything. Putin is not stupid, I can bet money Russia is not going to invade Estonia.
The U.S. 2015 figure is 16.3%, or 20.4% if veteran's benefits are included. How much are you being paid to be a liar?
The three leading candidates - Sanders, Clinton, and Trump - are all mentally defective. We're screwed.
How so? Be specific, using actual facts please.
I read it a few years ago, I probably forgot that part of it.
Amnesty International and the other orgs are explicitly anti-American. I don't really know why you're surprised. AI was founded on the idea of exposing America's crimes and covering up those of the Soviets. Seriously, look it up.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Russian space programme is _profitable_. US, europe are still the biggest customer of the Russian space programme, with rest of the world lining up too.
Plans are not hazy - they are confidential. If I was in charge, I'd make for continued market dominance with low cost, reliable and safe launch vehicles - which might well be the strategy here.
And funny you should makke that point about Russian space programme and not everybody else's. Watching too much propaganda?
No money? America supposedly went to the moon in the 60's using 60's technology. Of course, they have never gone back.
Ok, I decided to go against the /. tradition and read the linked article. "Most egregious war crimes" my ass! The Sky News link is a total propaganda piece. With images of crying children and "war crimes" claims liberally thrown every couple of paragraphs. So then I went to the source: https://www.amnesty.org/en/lat...
Here are the quotes in the Amnesty source regarding bombing hospitals:
"The briefing includes evidence suggesting that Russian authorities may have lied to cover up civilian damage to a mosque from one air strike and a field hospital in another."
So, it wasn't "hospitals", it was one single *field* hospital. Basically, a bunch of tents in a field. Just like a military or training camp would look like from the air. Did it have any identifiable signs of being a hospital? And would ISIS try to use the same to hope to protect its own camps perhaps?
"A witness to an attack just a few metres from Sermin field hospital in Idleb said the attack appeared to have been carried out by a more sophisticated plane as they did not see or hear the plane before the missiles were dropped."
So they don't even have evidence it was Russia, since they didn't see or hear the plane. Does Russia even have stealth bombers?
So from bombing a bunch of tents in the desert by possibly Russian planes we end up with definitive "most egregious war crimes". Wow.
"Tovarisch, gib moneys so glorious Motherland could into space"
That should do it.
If we gave NASA half the DOD's budget, do you really think Mars would be a "maybe in the 2030s" thing? Fuck no, early 2020s easy (not that there wouldn't be engineering hurtles to overcome, please no nit-picky asshole-ish-ness).
You mean a general low-level chaos killing thousands instead of a civil war killing hundreds of thousands?
No, a general low-level chaos killing thousands instead of a dictator picking off dozens and keeping the chaos in check.
"So then I went to the source: https://www.amnesty.org/en/lat..."
Did you? The link you posted is dated December 2015, the hospital bombings happened only a week or two ago. Whether you're purposefully trying to conflate two reports I've no idea. Here's the actual MSF report:
http://www.msf.org.uk/country-...
The other hospitals hit weren't MSF hospitals but were independent (see just about every news source on the planet).
"So they don't even have evidence it was Russia, since they didn't see or hear the plane. Does Russia even have stealth bombers?"
Stealth isn't invisibility, it doesn't hide aircraft from visual view, so what has stealth got to do with anything? Sophisticated in this context simply means they were bombing from high altitude such as not to be visually identifiable. This is why we know it was Russian aircraft because Syria doesn't have anything anymore to hit from that height, and because air flight records show now US/coalition aircraft in the area at that time (in fact, the US/coalition folk don't even operate over that city anyway because they're not bombing friendly rebels, nor are they bombing Assad's forces - the US et. al. operate to the East against ISIS - they have no business there and if they were there the Russians would have radar record of it, which they don't).
Still, I doubt for a second you're the type of person judging by your comments that would absolve the US in the same way - "Well they didn't actually see that it was predator drones that blew up the wedding party because they fired from too high altitude so the US must be innocent!".
So I'd say nice try at deflection, but it really wasn't, you basically failed on all counts from using the wrong article to conflating things like stealth with invisibility. F for fail, must try harder next time, I hope Putin doesn't take your family's food away for this.
A country's leader only has a small influence on the course of a country.
If Assad orders planes to drop barrel bombs on Syrian cities, is he responsible for the deaths caused?
Blaming all your woes on the leadership, and then sending the country into chaos isn't always a good solution if things aren't going well.
He can always, you know, not be the leader. If he chooses to persist in pretending to lead, whilst killing folk who have the temerity to suggest that he can't be their leader unless they agree to it, the fact that he didn't choose to step down when a sane and decent person would have makes him completely responsible for the deaths he ordered.