Russia plans missions to Mars and the Moon

[Klaus Lange]

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,
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.

Wrong. West won Cold War. Economically. That's why Gorbachov started pyerestroika, what ended in dissolution of USSR. Even today, after two decades, Russia is weaker than USSR in 1990. There was even attempt to stop democratization process by supporters of "hard" communism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_c...3%A9tat_attempt

In some ways money can be miraculous... Did you read Viktor Suvorov's "Aquarium" ? It's about soviet spy on West, partially autobiographical novel. Do you know how USSR obtained many of it's technologies without spending large sums on researches? They ordered spies to steal such technology, already developed by western corporations. They just bribed low- and middle-level scientists, workers from proper factory, sometimes by extortion, blackmail ( e.g. substituted lover, who was in really soviet spy )... It worked for decades. What I'm saying, it always worked. Even Sun Tzu wrote about it in his "Art of War".

Well, this is where China's over population helps. They will send millions of them to work in Africa and what happens after that, well...you figure it out. Oh, don't forget India.

China expand also in Siberian direction, what is great problem for Russians. China is a great economical and demographic power, but they have little - to no many resources. Russia have almost whole periodic table on Siberia, but lacks in people to settle and ability to fully develop that region.