Russia’s GPS may holdup its space exploration plan
Jan 26th, 2008 by RedPepper
With big oil money flowing into Russia’s economy, it has seemed that the country’s space program would benefit from the largess. But at the moment a top Kremlin official has ordered that space exploration be put on the hold until the country’s Global Positioning System (GPS) competitor – Glonass truly begins operational.
According to Reuters, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov laid down the law to Roskosmos officials this week:
“Working on such large-scale and correspondingly wasteful projects (as Moon or Mars missions) purely to satisfy our own ambitions or to achieve some kind of fantastic goal is something we have no right to do,” said Ivanov.