enthalpy

Saturday, July 16, 2005


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.



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