Posted
7/16/2005 02:23:00 PM
by Douglas
Russian space exploration has defiantly taken a back seat since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but at least they're still
trying. The Russian government has approved a space programme for the next ten years.
The programme provides money for the development of a reusable spacecraft to replace the ageing Soyuz manned launch vehicle.
Russia also wants to start experiments to test whether it is possible for humans to make the flight to Mars.
A new reusable spacecraft
and Mars feasibility studies? That's a pretty tall order, considering how much money they're throwing at this.
But the new 10-year budget, reported to be about 300 billion roubles ($10.50 billion), is less than the US spends on space in a year.
NASA's annual budget is about $15 billion, but this came from the BBC, so I'm not
sure if that's $10.5 Billion (a million million, or what we call a trillion) or just a thousand million.
I'm pretty sure it has to be the American Billion, as I don't think the entire Russian economy is going to see $10.5 trillion in the next 10 years.