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posted by janrinok on Tuesday October 12 2021, @06:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the squeeze dept.

Putin slashes Russia’s space budget and says he expects better results:

Russia plans to slash funding for spaceflight activities during the coming three-year period, from 2022 to 2024. The cuts will come to about 16 percent annually, several Russian publications, including Finanz.ru, report. (These Russian-language articles were translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell.)

For 2022, the state budget for space activities will be set at 210 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), a cut of 40.3 billion rubles ($557 million) from the previous year. Similar cuts will follow in subsequent years. The most significant decreases will be in areas such as "manufacturing-technological activities" and "cosmodrome development." Funding for "scientific research and development" was zeroed out entirely.

[...] Putin has reportedly told the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, that it must increase the reliability of Russian rockets and "master" the next generation of launch vehicles. This directive has come in response to growing competition in the global space launch business, particularly from US-based SpaceX.

I guess Russia is throwing in the towel as far as space is concerned?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday October 12 2021, @11:32PM (9 children)

    by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Tuesday October 12 2021, @11:32PM (#1186528)

    China is one of those rare tyrannies that combines size, stability, available local resources, money, and most of all, thinking in the long term rather than next years elections. They started plans decades ago that have been steadily progressing and are only now reaching the attention of more than the small portion of the Western world's populations that pay attention to the briefings from their intel agencies. China's space program, their steady acquisition of resources in Africa and the port properties along major shipping routes are the bigger plans I've heard of. Goddess only knows what other wheels are in motion that haven't been mentioned in the fringes of the Internet yet.

    The former U.S.S.R. also had those traits but failed to achieve it's long term potential by letting itself get pulled into a dick waving contest with the USA and destroyed it's economy trying to have the biggest missiles..

      Just like the Tortoise and the Hare, the USA decided to take a nap along the way. Pretty soon the USA's public will wake up to what China has really been up to and start screaming to their congrescritters to catch up with China. Personally I think its too late for them to do anything other than make that desperate last 50 meter sprint to be the top 3, but not the number one spot.

    Time will tell :)

    --
    "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:32AM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:32AM (#1186534) Journal

    Pretty soon the USA's public will wake up to what China has really been up to

    You have more faith in the public than I do. We don't wake up to facts until our noses are rubbed in the facts. Kinda like how events in Europe and Asia were just academic until Pearl Harbor. We won't understand where China is going, until they start dictating terms to us - and then we probably still won't understand how we got into that position. Can we recover from a service economy and student debt and the general dumbing down of America?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @02:48AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @02:48AM (#1186549)

      Since you're one of the more vocal opponents of the people trying to improve the US economy and education YOU tell us if it is possible to recover.

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:21AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:21AM (#1186562)

        Yeah. Start by un-woking the education system, from K through post-grad. Cut funds for stupid dead-end studies, and give those funds to STEM.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:03PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 13 2021, @05:03PM (#1186701)

          How cute, the anarcho capitalist thinks their opinions are worth a damn. PC concepts are not the problem, quite the opposite. Anyone else rember some conservative dumb fucks trying to legislate pi as 3? Rightwingers are beyond dumb, we need a new word.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14 2021, @04:52PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14 2021, @04:52PM (#1187017)

            Where is the anarcho when he is not advocating abolition of governing bodies? Please, smear the retards with the appropriate shit.

    • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday October 13 2021, @07:46AM

      by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @07:46AM (#1186604)

      Actually that was what I meant. I guess I didn't convey it well.

      Thank you for expressing it with more clarity than I could.

      as to your question

      Can we recover from a service economy and student debt and the general dumbing down of America?

      I want to say yes because I have a niece who will be living in that future and I hope she will have a brighter future than what I currently see coming over the horizon. But honestly I don't think so, just looking at history we can see that no nation lasts forever, no matter how big or powerful they were. They all die eventually and something different, and hopefully better, will grow from the ashes.

      --
      "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday October 13 2021, @04:41AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 13 2021, @04:41AM (#1186580) Journal

    China is one of those rare tyrannies that combines size, stability, available local resources, money, and most of all, thinking in the long term rather than next years elections.

    Then where's the evidence? This is the third post that has implied that China somehow has some special competence in this area. Well, SpaceX blew right by them just like the Russians.

    China has some of that stuff going for it. It's got a lot of people, space, resources, etc. Stability and thinking remain to be seen. The various sorts of shenanigans that China has engaged in don't strike me as typical of a long term thinker, rather just a brash thug with unusual resources at their disposal.

  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:25PM (1 child)

    by driverless (4770) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @12:25PM (#1186620)

    Pretty soon the USA's public will wake up to what China has really been up to and start screaming to their congrescritters to catch up with China.

    I doubt it. China has been really clever here, the only thing the US can ever see is military threats, for which China has been doing just enough sabre-rattling in the right places with often a bare-bones level of actual modern military gear, e.g. rebuilt Soviet-era floating hulks that the US is absolutely paranoid about, that the US' hard-on for war machines is blocking its view of anything else. For example China currently has 165 nations in debt traps out of a world total of 195, and holds over a trillion dollars in US debt. By the time the US wakes up, if it ever does, to realise that war toys are irrelevant when you what really matters is who controls the money, it'll be too late.

    Which is odd really, since it's the same thing the US did to the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:20PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @03:20PM (#1186673)

      > By the time the US wakes up, if it ever does, to realise that war toys are irrelevant when you what really matters is who controls the money, it'll be too late.

      You may be right... but history also offers many examples of "Who controls the war toys, controls the money"

      China is a nuclear power, so we won't be nearly as eager to go to war with them as with... well, pretty much every non-nuclear power on Earth that has had something we want. But China's growing financial power also stems from our debt rather than their wealth - so there isn't actually anything we need to take to dissolve it. And we also have 165 (by your count) potential allies willing to stand with us in saying "all debt to China is hereby void".

      Of course China wouldn't be happy about that, but probably not so unhappy that they'd risk nuclear war over it. And probably not even so unhappy that they'd destroy their economy by cutting off trade, though no doubt they'd demand cash up front for a long time to come.

      Of course there'd be serious fallout from doing such a thing, but it sets a hard limit on how much China can leverage the debt they hold - the moment blowing them off looks more profitable in the big picture, it starts becoming the likely response.

      Basically, geopolitics is complicated. And pretty much everything except raw materials, production capacity (agricultural, industrial, and research), and military power exist only by mutual agreement. And historically (and currently, *especially* the US), those with the most military power are not shy about simply taking what they want of the rest.

      Though when it comes to those "outdated floating hulks" - I seem to recall that China's navy actually has some serious advantages over our own, especially in regards to mobility. Something about their carriers and battleships being able to pilot circles around our destroyers? Even if that's only a minority of their fleet, that would still give them an *enormous* advantage in picking off our fleet (and even more importantly, supply lines) as they trundle across the 7,000 miles of open ocean between us . And the harsh geology of the region ensures that there's basically no land route a military could take to reach them - which combines to put them in an extremely strong defensive position, even if their direct offensive potential against the US is pretty limited.

      Of course that all goes out the window if a conflict crosses the line into a nuclear exchange - but that's an everybody-loses scenario all sides will (hopefully) seek to avoid. More of an insurance policy against total defeat, and a deterrent against other nuclear powers objecting too strenuously against any aggression directed towards non-nuclear powers. See: The UN and US's "response" to Russia invading Crimea despite the Ukraine being under a protection treaty with the Allies against just such a threat, in exchange for not developing their own nuclear arsenal. And whom we strenuously protected with a strongly worded letter - the absolute minimum required by a motivated reading of the treaty, and a clear announcement to every other non-nuclear power in the world that any non-proliferation treaty with us isn't worth the paper it's written on, and they absolutely must develop their own nuclear arsenal if they want a real deterrent.