[nopriorarrests]

I see it as a good thing. Russia waste less capital and valuable human resources on vanity projects. I know that HN crowd will dislike my view, since space is hot topic, but well, I would rather focus on something more tangible.

Germany has nothing to show in space industry prowess, but it is nice, wealthy country which focuses on problems at hand.

[Robotbeat]

The space industry is about $400 billion. It’s not “vanity.” Did you think I was just talking about human spaceflight or planetary exploration? Those are only about 5% of the global space industry. Russia has been locked out of modern satellite development and their lead in launch capability continues to decay. This is bad for Russia in terms of export revenue and also overal national defense.