Russia announces revised schedule for its lunar unmanned projects
NPO Lavochkin, the Roscosmos division that builds Russia’s lunar landers, has now announced a revised schedule for all of that country’s proposed lunar unmanned projects, following the failure of its Luna-25 lander in August.
The program calls for at least six missions, including orbiters, landers, and a rover, launching from 2027 through the 2030s. However, this quote from the article is the reality:
As often before, the latest strategy relied on the development time frames that had never been demonstrated by NPO Lavochkin in comparable projects in the past three decades.
What is worse is the 100% failure record of Lavochkin’s planetary probes once launched. It takes forever to build anything, and then what it builds and launches doesn’t work.
Not that this absimal record will cost Lavochkin anything. The Russian government and the bureaucracy that controls it does not allow any competition. Instead, like prohibition-era mobsters, divisions like Lavochkin carve up territories that they control, and allow no one else in. For example, Lavochkin owns planetary research while Energia, another division in Roscosmos, controls manned space flight as well as its launch industry. No one else is allowed it enter these markets, which means Lavochkin can fail repeatedly for the next century and nothing will change.
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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.
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NPO Lavochkin, the Roscosmos division that builds Russia’s lunar landers, has now announced a revised schedule for all of that country’s proposed lunar unmanned projects, following the failure of its Luna-25 lander in August.
The program calls for at least six missions, including orbiters, landers, and a rover, launching from 2027 through the 2030s. However, this quote from the article is the reality:
As often before, the latest strategy relied on the development time frames that had never been demonstrated by NPO Lavochkin in comparable projects in the past three decades.
What is worse is the 100% failure record of Lavochkin’s planetary probes once launched. It takes forever to build anything, and then what it builds and launches doesn’t work.
Not that this absimal record will cost Lavochkin anything. The Russian government and the bureaucracy that controls it does not allow any competition. Instead, like prohibition-era mobsters, divisions like Lavochkin carve up territories that they control, and allow no one else in. For example, Lavochkin owns planetary research while Energia, another division in Roscosmos, controls manned space flight as well as its launch industry. No one else is allowed it enter these markets, which means Lavochkin can fail repeatedly for the next century and nothing will change.
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.
“Lavochkin can fail repeatedly for the next century and nothing will change.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing!
Patrick Underwood: Yes, it is bad. When bad people anywhere stymie human achievement, we all will suffer bad consequences in the end. Wouldn’t be better if Russia was a healthy prosperous nation competing for business on the open market, rather than a nation run by mobsters who think it okay to start wars for political gain? Those same mobsters squelch all competition inside Russia, and thus squelch the ability of ordinary Russians to follow ambitious but laudable dreams.
Once the Chief Designers died, it was a downhill slide. Like Musk, they were Cosmists for whom space exploration was there all.
Pants usually have two pockets at least:
One we will call “public” and the other we will call “private.”
If you want a ride to space, it really doesn’t matter which pocket it comes from.
Blue Origin is just as private as SpaceX
Russia is just as public as China.
Like Blue, Russia just has ‘holes in its pockets.
And India just made a capsule out of pocket lint.
You can always train “know-how.”
It is “want-to” that is lacking.