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threwrfaway | on: Astronauts told to return to ISS after sheltering over air leak repairs
The hubris of forgetfulness; to think that until Elon showed up the West couldn't even put a person in space anymore.

The Soyuz, the MIR, the human space records, the Venera program, closed cycle rockets, all have no equivalent in the West. Even their version of the shuttle was superior (it flew 100% autonomously).

I don't like Musk, but he single handedly saved the Western space programs.

bobim | parent | next
I didn't realize Buran flew, and flew autonomously. Impressive for the times.
sigmoid10 | parent
This sense of national pride based on long past achievements will always be bewildering to me. Do you really think a country that is actively engaged in a full scale open land war and whose economy is in shambles is able to maintain (much less build) a venerable space program? Elon might have saved the American tax payer from the senate launch system jobs program, but the majority of the global space industry is and always has been in the west. Russia has been an afterthought since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And it shows in everything they have done in space since.
threwrfaway | root | parent | next
"This sense of national pride"

Im Italo-American. The closest I ever got to Russia was my cousin going to Moscow to, and I quote: "learn new things, like how to snort vodka"

It seems to me that you are projecting your dislike of the government of Russia into your evaluation of their engineering merits.

They landed drones on Venus, and on the Moon before Apollo 11

cpursley | root | parent | next
Well, they managed to rebuild their launchpad ahead of schedule and launched this big boy not long ago:

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...

They've also got some new passenger jets certified and about to enter production (MC-21 and SU-100).

inglor_cz | root | parent
"Do you really think a country that is actively engaged in a full scale open land war and whose economy is in shambles is able to maintain (much less build) a venerable space program?"

Don't blame Russian space failures on the war.

Roskosmos was robbed blind by the likes of Dmitry Rogozin long before 2022. The Angara heavy launcher project has been started in the 1990s and still reminds me of Duke Nukem Forever. The Vostochnyi cosmodrome has been a black hole in red numbers for some 15 years etc. Things were "meh" even during the times when oil was 140 USD per barrel and Russia had no sanctions going against it.