India to Russia: 'Sod you, Vlad, we're going to the moon ALONE' Russia couldn't promise the moon, it seems, so India has lost interest in a joint probe project scheduled for 2022. The delays that have plagued Russia's Luna-27 lander project – originally planned for this decade but currently scheduled for a 2022 launch – have frustrated India, according to the New Indian Express. That …
Speaking of manned landings, yes, it's been 42 years (7 Dec 1972). But after Apollo 17, the following lunar landings occurred, skipping orbiters and impactors:
Luna 21 / Lunokhod 2 (1973)
Luna 23 (sample return, 1974)
Luna 24 (sample return, 1976)
Chang'e 3 (lander/rover, 2014)
Skipping orbiters after 1972 leaves out a surprising (to me) number of missions. Workhorses like Clementine and Chang'e 2 tend to be overshadowed by Mars.
I notice that a bunch of senior Russian space officials are now being charged with corruption. Including a committee of the Duma saying that Roscosmos can't account for about $1.3 billion of cash from 2013 alone.
However, I'm not sure if this isn't just the modern Russian equivalent of being sent to Siberia. Someone has to get punished for an embarrassing cock-up, so why not try a few high profile people, who don't have the right connections? Or have annoyed the wrong person lately?
On the other hand, looting state enterprises for all their cash is something the Putin regime excels at. I wondered if the recent spate of accidents was because the large increases in defence spending over the last few years (not to mention the Olympics), had already been straining the Russian government budget. And that's before sanctions and the oil price crash last year. So I wondered if they'd been cutting margins too much. But equally it could be corruption. Or both. Or just bad luck - and the usual learning curve as designs are slowly updated.
India was moaned at when they started launching satellites, complaints being that they ought to be spending on roads and education. But it turned out that for such a huge land-area, satellites enabled remote comms e.g. for education much more cheaply (and quickly).
As regards their moon-goal, it's an effective way of demonstrating that their hi-tech is world-class. At international conferences on alternative space shuttle designs (in 90's I think), an industry leader confided: ~"none of these countries ever intends to build a shuttle, it's just a way of advertising their aerospace capability in general, hoping instead for lots of lucrative aircraft work". Shame - everyone loved the "Dan Dare" -esque German design, "Sanger".
More generally, a successful space involvement - as India has previously demonstrated (e.g. the first nation to place a probe in Mars orbit at their first attempt) - does no harm a country's brand/image regarding technology in general. Leading to more trade - that could be used to alleviate those negative points of brand/image/peoples-lives. Along with all that Brexit bounty they're no doubt looking forward to.
As a space enthusiast, I just hope they do achieve their lunar ambitions - we've barely explored our largest natural satellite. Oh look, I inadvertently said "we" - that'll be the humanity-unifying thing. A commodity in decline on Earth...
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