“Study of the moon is not the goal,” said Vitaly Egorov, a popular Russian space analyst. “The goal is political competition between two superpowers — China and the USA — and a number of other countries which also want to claim the title of space superpower.”

    • Nythos@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’d rather a space race over an arms race

      But sadly we’d probably just end up with both regardless.

      • toofpic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Putin just needs more points to legitimize next year’s “elections”: The space exploration is reborn!

        • NegativeNull@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          We feared them, because they put up Sputnik, which, by the way, people forget was an emptied out casing of an intercontinental ballistic missile. And, Sputnik itself means “Fellow Traveler”, so it’s all peaceful, but it was a ballistic missile head, without explosives. So that was a signal, and we freaked in America. So NASA got founded, on the fear factor of Sputnik.

          Alright, so we then go to the moon on the fear factor that Russia will control the high ground. Then we go to the moon, space enthusiasts say, “Oh, we’re on the moon by '69, we’ll be on Mars in another 10 years.” They completely did not understand why we got to the moon in the first place. We were at war, once we saw that Russia was not ready to land on the moon, we stopped going to the moon. That should not surprise anybody looking back on it.

          Neil deGrasse Tyson

  • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I don’t question Russian science or engineering, but is this project going to run into the same sorts of issues their war has?

      • Zoboomafoo@yiffit.net
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        1 year ago

        I think this mission is their desperate attempt to have a success so Putin doesn’t draft half their workforce and tell the rest to start launching Soyuz rockets at Ukranian preschools

    • Madison420@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No Russia beat the us in almost every metric for space flight, we got to the moon first and that’s all anyone remembers.

      They’re a lot of things but their space program is pretty boss.

      You can downvote but it will still be just at true.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Considering levels of corruption in the last few years and hard brain drain I guess Russian space exploration is doomed. Thanks, Putin!