Russia launched Luna-25, its first moon mission in 50 years, to land on Earth's satellite ahead of India's Chandrayaan-3.

“Study of the moon is not the goal,” said Vitaly Egorov, a popular Russian space analyst. “The goal is political competition between two superpowers — China and the USA — and a number of other countries which also want to claim the title of space superpower.”

    • NegativeNull@lemmy.worldEnglish
      131·
      1 year ago

      We feared them, because they put up Sputnik, which, by the way, people forget was an emptied out casing of an intercontinental ballistic missile. And, Sputnik itself means “Fellow Traveler”, so it’s all peaceful, but it was a ballistic missile head, without explosives. So that was a signal, and we freaked in America. So NASA got founded, on the fear factor of Sputnik.

      Alright, so we then go to the moon on the fear factor that Russia will control the high ground. Then we go to the moon, space enthusiasts say, “Oh, we’re on the moon by '69, we’ll be on Mars in another 10 years.” They completely did not understand why we got to the moon in the first place. We were at war, once we saw that Russia was not ready to land on the moon, we stopped going to the moon. That should not surprise anybody looking back on it.

      Neil deGrasse Tyson