President Medvedev Suggests Punishing Those Responsible for Phobos-Grunt Debacle

Well they should definitely perform a full investigation. Maybe it is sabotage..who knows..they were the first in space so I figure they should have better results.

Ummm...yeah... nice knee-jerk totalitarian-esque response from a political puppet. Joy!!!

The last thing this cat needs to do is spit that hardliner B.S. to the international community. That's like listening to Tea Party and GOP Republicans talk about U.S. foreign policy: They're going to get a whole lot of people in trouble, poppin' off at the mouth.

What?! A reformed democratic country acting communistic? Say it ain't so!

It was a mistake. Nobody is perfect. Not even scientists and engineers. So they have some mishaps with rocket launches. In a field as complex and daring as spaceflight, I'm surprised more mishaps don't happen more often. It would strengthen our resolve on such a scientific pursuit if we were use to failure and human casualties in spaceflight. That way no one is prone to such knee-jerk reactions such as President Medvedev's comments. Something went wrong in a highly technical and complex field experiment. So what! That's not a reason to issue out threats of punishment in an attempt to motivate someone to achieve success. Sure this failure should mean that a certain Roscosmos program should see financial cutbacks, if not program termination, but to fine someone or charge them with criminal activity for failure is a serious mistake. If espionage is at the center of this, then yes someone must suffer the consequences, but such threats and actions don't motivate people like that anymore. This is the 21st Century. Authoritarian disciplinary action inspires public dissent.

That is some great news. It will mean more Russian Scientists moving away to the European Union, the US, Canada and other places. Russia`s backwards policies deserve nothing but Contempt. Just look at their defense against Iranian or Syrian sanctions or against actions in Libya by NATO. Russia again wants to oppose anything the West does for the sake of opposing. A big shame since Russia was looking to become more developed and open only a few years back.

The only one here who should be jailed are the Russian officials demanding a Sample return mission from Phobos for a ridiculous 160 million Dollars. You can`t spend pennies and expect success. Europe`s Mars Express orbiter costs some 370 million dollars. More then twice as much. And it didn`t have to land. Let alone return. To build something that is reliable requires strong investments to test and retest all components. ESA and NASA thus have a very high track record. Just look at ESA`s Moon orbiter smart 1, the Mars Express and Venus Express, The Giant Herschel Space Telescope, the Rosetta Comet Chaser. Just look at Nasa`s new Mars rover and the older rovers. The Shuttle project also proved a too complex device for NASA with 14 astronauts now being killed. They had to cancel it as a result. But strong improvements were made for the last few years and flights.

While the political system change, the players mindset did not.

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I am just so Qurious!

Shuttle was canceled because it was about a billion dollars a launch. Even with all that money we still had failures. This Medvedev person even jokingly talking about Stalin and punishment is pretty sad. Someone that had 10s of millions of Russians killed.

Well, it is about time to punish these officials, after the 20th fail... Sabotage is always a possibility. Although what would be the reason?

Stripping their funding will surely benefit the Russian space program.... SURELY... (facepalm).

This is very similar to the Russian space program policies in the age of Stalin--and also the main reason for their failures.

The threat of punishment/death/torture/prison meant that those involved in working on the soviet space program were more concerned with shifting blame and hiding any mistakes than with safety or success of the missions.

In an normal space program, if you discover an error, you could report it to your superiors and delay the launch to provide for time to fix the error... In this type of totalitarian space program, you would just hide the error and look for someone to blame for the inevitable failure of the project.

Pretty stupid way to run a space program; pretty stupid way to run a country too.

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"Do not offer sympathy to the mentally ill.
Tell them firmly:
I am not paid to listen to this drivel.
You are a terminal boob." - William S. Burroughs

Anyone and I do mean anyone who thinks Russia is any different from is historical self is a moron. A leopard cannot and will not change its spots..same goes for Russia..
If a truly reformed democracy then why over the span since is supposed transformation has this nation and of course China(at least this nation makes no bones about its stand on democracy)stood in front of EVERY single effort to bring and support freedom in the world? Further more its time the "Big Boys" club aka Security Counsel was utterly disbanded..what an affront to ture democracy in the UN and an affort to the rest of the nations of the world who should have as much a say as any other. The Veto power is a joke..basically allowing these nations the power to stop any thing the rest of the world decides on....shameful and stupid..and frankly if real change is not soon brought to the UN I believe nations of Character should simply withdraw.