Russia set to launch manned spacecraft in 2017

[Kshasty]

Source: RIA Novosti

Russia intends to keep up with the U.S. in the space race and launch a new manned spacecraft by 2017, a senior Russian space official said on Tuesday.

"We plan to enter the market in 2015 with an unmanned spacecraft and are likely to launch it from the new Vostochny space center. In 2017, a piloted spacecraft should also be developed," Vitaly Lopota, the head of Russia's Energia space corporation, said.

He also described the modern space market as "tough and pragmatic," and said the United States was planning to orbit a new manned spacecraft no earlier than 2017.

Russia will start building its new space center, Vostochny, in the country's Far East in 2011 and should complete it in 2018. It currently uses the Baikonur space center in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan, which it has leased since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Read more: http://en.rian.ru/science/20100126/157684606.html

[Kolesar]

1. Cash that could have been spent keeping people warm in the winter

The manned space program is a relic of the Cold War. And it became irrelevant after the US reached the moon in 1969

[howard112211]

2. I disagree. Space exploration is crucial for the future of mankind.

[HeresyLives]

5. Surely you jest. n/t

[Posteritatis]

6. Increased employment in the tech sector keeps people warm in the winter. (nt)

[heliarc]

10. It became irrelevant after...

we developed the ICBM as a delivery solution for nuclear warheads.

[TheLastMohican]

12. This is a very narrow-minded approach.

People are warm in the winters here.
I am right now in the middle of Siberia, Novosibirsk, minus 34 C outside, plus 27 C inside. Too warm for my liking.
There is a lot of things to gain from space exploration - and Cold war or "dick measuring" is not even on the agenda.

[liberal N proud]

3. I would rather see money spent in space than on bombs

Many new technologies have been developed for the space industry that have had positive and some negative impacts on our lives.

[madokie]

4. Part of human nature is to explore

The means for our explorations have given us many things including the computer we're using today.

[heliarc]

9. Many new technologies have been developed for the space industry

that have made the military more deadly...

The Space program was a cover for Nuclear proliferation IMHO

[Baclava]

7. Let them have the moon - it's boring.

More cold rocks and dirt are not what we need.

We're wasting time. We should be sending up dozens of robots to get on with terraforming the rest of our solar system with habital worlds.

Suck some of that atmo from Venus and spray it around Mars - kill two birds with one stone.

Manned spaceflight with current technology is too slow and expensive - get that fusion rocket on line and genetically alter some pioneers to live under less earthlike conditions. Jupiter's and Saturn's moons are a good place to start after we get the drill rigs up there. Then maybe we can talk about spreading our seed throughout the galaxy.

[Mudoria]

8. Send Kudzu to Mars...

within 5 years it will have turned the red planet green.

[RZM]

11. Dear Russia,

Don't take this the wrong way, but it seems to me that over the past couple hundred years, going out of your way to show the world that you are indeed a great power has often backfired, sometimes disastrously. Perhaps now is the time to 'think outside the box' . . . Just saying.

Spasibo,

RZM

[TheLastMohican]

13. Na zdorovie,

Kushay, ne oblyapaysya.