Russia plans missions to Mars and the Moon

[Vladimir]

That all things happened in communism, economically inefficience system. That's why USSR lost Cold War - they just couldn't resist pace of arms race. Every state action should be profitable, if not in money, then in technology, influence, acces to resources...

Wrong on so many levels. First, cold war wasn't lost or won by anybody, it ended years before USSR collapse. But sure, economy was damaged by arms race. But guess what? It's not just system, it was pretty much the whole civilized world against USSR. No surprise it was too hard.

Now,

Well, thanks to huuuge economy, Chinese military forces are quickly upgrading, I suppouse also space program. Predictions are in the next decade People's Republic will construct their own aircraft carriers, what will dramatically change balance of the power in Pacific region.

money cannot make miracles. You can't use bags of money to go to space, and chinese won't. Carriers are totally different theme, and their usefulness is highly overrated, especially since anti-ship missiles (also satellties, ever heard of "legend"?) got born. And i mean not the slow-ass things nato calls missiles, i'm talking about all those supersonic low attitude maneuvering torpedo-rockets. Everything else in chinese army is a joke too. Still, upgrading this joke means their space program gets even less money, but hey, who cares. Those carriers will not fly to mars anyway.

And that's even if we assume their export-based ****-making economy with problems with workforce, low level of education for masses, etc. actually works and not just a huge bubble.

---