More budget cuts to Russia’s space program
The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, revealed today that there will be significant additional cuts to the country’s space program in the coming months.
These cuts come on top of the almost one-third cuts imposed from the time the budget for the ten-year plan was first proposed in 2015 and its adoption early this year.
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The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, revealed today that there will be significant additional cuts to the country’s space program in the coming months.
These cuts come on top of the almost one-third cuts imposed from the time the budget for the ten-year plan was first proposed in 2015 and its adoption early this year.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I understand it is slashed from $31 bn to “about” $8 bn. Minus 75% from last year’s proposal. But it will change when Russia together with Iran and Syria and maybe Oman, and now with the help of Turkey, occupies the Gulf states before the next US president is in office, and dictates the world oil price. Russia’s air force, aerospace and modern weapons systems is a perfect complement to the huge but a bit outdated armies in its allied Middle Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia spends more on the military, and on advanced weapons systems, than Russia, but their fiasko in Yemen reveals that they don’t know how to use them. There will be no effective resistance. The oil rich areas at the Persian Gulf are inhabited by a shia majority, maltreated by the rulers and supported by Iran (although they are arabs, not persians).
Off topic:
Bob, or any reader here, do you know of anyone reporting independently on Europe’s space program? I only find ESA’s own blogs and announcements, which is designed as propaganda for school children without any analysis or debate. I don’t know of anyone reporting on it like for example Anatoly Zak does on the Russian space program, and of course this and a few other blogs on NASA. I take it as an expression of the American exceptionalism, the US is very different from most other countries (maybe Canada and Australia is halfway like the US, europeans don’t have much independent journalism and certainly no kind of space culture, that’s just between the government, big industry and the science community).
Localfluff asked, “Do you know of anyone reporting independently on Europe’s space program?”
The answer is no. Space News (a part of Space.com) has one reporter, Peter de Selding, whose beat is focused on the European launch market, but he is not independent and he does not cover the science part.