Yeah, how about you read the damn article? This is mentioned:
The crew vehicle served the Soviet space program through 1991 and since then has been a mainstay for the country’s large space corporation, Roscosmos. The Soyuz is a hardy, generally reliable vehicle that NASA counted on for crew transport from 2011 to 2020, after the space shuttle’s retirement and before SpaceX’s Crew Dragon came into service.
The Soyuz spacecraft, as well as a lot of the country’s other satellites, launches into orbit on the Soyuz rocket. This vehicle dates back even a bit further, to 1966. Russian engineers have modified and modernized both the spacecraft and rocket over time, but they remain essentially the same space vehicles.
There’s nothing wrong with aging technology that works. However, there have been some issues of late with leaks and other problems that have raised serious questions about quality control and the ability of the Russians to manufacture these vehicles.
IOW, Russia lost a decades-long ability under the watch of Putin/his appointed cronies
Yeah, Roscosmos was a pretty normal space agency, ESA even had collaborations with them (ExoMars comes to mind). It’s Putin’s political decisions that have all but ended Roscosmos. I can’t see them recovering from this, at least not in the near future.
Meanwhile every destroyed endangered species habitat and every deregulated launch pad disaster at SpaceX is just a stepping stone toward saving humanity!so-true
While modern liberal capitalist Russia with its oligarchs and chud politicians can eat my shit and hair, a) Putin isn’t personally responsible for the craft crashing, this is just “Bad thing happened, how do we blame it on Very Bad Man” which is just pathetic journalism, and b) lots of things go wrong with these kinds of missions all the time. Even the successful ones are like “Oh, awesome, our craft landed upside down, there’s dust over the solar panels, and one of the legs is broken, but we otherwise have a connection? That’s a big W in my book!”
I put a solid 80% of the blame on Gorbachev and Yeltsin (and the absolute blood-sucking monstrous ghouls who conducted the shock doctrine) for everything in the Russian state decaying after the disastrous fall of the USSR. Putin’s far from innocent in terms of liberalization of the economy and ideally he will be put up against the wall in a people’s tribunal, but he inherited it from those two dipshits and it would be silly to pin the blame for the decay of Roscosmos solely on him.
Unrelated, but also worth noting that Russian missile and rocket engines are still second-to-none, so they still have a big role to play in a spacefaring near-to-mid future.
I do however find it bad taste to blame a failure in scientific endeavor on a country’s political leadership (which to be fair, deserves to be criticized in many other ways) while ignoring the fact that after the Space Shuttle program fraught with disasters ended in 2011, Russian spacecrafts were the only means to send American astronauts to space for nearly a decade (with near accident-free record) until SpaceX came along. If the Russians weren’t reliable on their space technology, do you think the NASA would even think about booking the Soyuz flights? (Keep in mind that the Columbia disaster killed all 7 astronauts, NASA would not even have considered Russian space flights if the risks would involve repeating such disasters)
Finally, I think many people who live in the first world Western countries seriously underestimated the consequences of what the Washington-led neoliberal shock therapy did to post-Soviet Russia. Entire industries were being carved out and mass unemployment and poverty happened in just a few years leading to crimes and even child prostitution (which had practically been eliminated during the Soviet times) were simply unthinkable for most people.
The modern day Russia is the consequence of Western imperialism, period. You can blame all the reactionary elements in the country and laugh at their poverty, but this is what being defeated by imperialism looks like. It will take decades if not longer to recover economically, especially under unprecedented sanctions, and all that has to factor into a lunar lander program that they last tried 47 years ago, no?
I’d like to know exactly what Putin is thinking will come of all of this. Is he so deluded and surrounded by yes men that he genuinely thinks he’s doing a good thing? Or is it just standard rampant greed and bullying?
Yes. This is the downfall of every powerful man who surrounds himself with yes men. His advisers probably told him that if they invade Ukraine, the leadership would flee and he could install a puppet. They didn’t expect him to actually do it.
There's been a lot of chatter that he is seriously ill (I've heard cancer or Parkinson, but who knows what it really is) - people who've analyzed the recent photos say they see swelling in his hands/wrists which could indicate the use of strong steroids which are known to alter thought processes that could explain his recent believe that he could win a conflict with Ukraine and beat India to the south pole of the moon (concurrently no less).
I'm honestly impressed that russia admitted the landing failed at all, I figured they would have simply kept quiet. I guess they know we have strong enough telescopes to see the crash site? Who knows lol
On other news, the Sandoval family from equator just opened the first Mexican restaurant in space. It’s not cultural appropriation because reasons. But yeah, it took a good decade of collecting duds from 4rth of July celebrations, candles from McDonald’s quick parties, and aluminum cans from football games. They did loose tio Alberto de la Torre on the glorious flight of Condor1. Rest in piece tio! But after a few more test flights, they got cousin Freddy to try his luck. Freddy made it out of the planet with only two huevos Fritos lost. His huevos were sorely missed, but once he cut them off and got loose, he was able to steer the …what do you call a used UPS truck with a bunch of rockets attached to the back of it? Anyway, Freddy saw the Russian rocket. Okay he says he’s sorry for the minor bump… Well, we’re not sure what he’s saying right now, it’s too far. But we assume that he’s making good burritos right now. According to his current trajectory, he will come back one day. We assume he’s using the Russian parts to fix his radio. Last time he called, we only heard “ahhh!”. He was probably referring to the ruzzian rocket…“ahhh ruzzian rocket”. Anyway my people who aren’t Mexican, why would you even open a Mexican restaurant? Just open a restaurant and call it something unique and interesting. How about “the equator pizzeria” or “El suchi Equaroriano!” But regardless, the ESA…Equayorian Space Agency, has been doing great work no? Soon, Novelas3 will be launching. It will be an SMS satellite 🛰️ that will spam…allow communications to all possible phones about Novelas! Via SMS!
Oh I meant as a title for a real county that can do space things. Like if India lands their craft and all goes well, they can be the “space leader” then if say China or France does something cooler they get to be the “space leader”.
russian federation is not even in the running anymore.
No title can beat the best job title in the world: Planetary Defense Officer, the person who leads the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) at NASA
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