No More Space Tourists After 2009, Russia Says 105
mknewman writes with disappointing news for anyone with the money that it would have cost to fly as a space tourist, excerpting a story that says "Russia's space chief says there won't be any more tourists headed to the international space station after this year. Anatoly Perminov told the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that there will be no room for paying tourists because the space station's crew is expanding from three members to six."
Oldest sales trick in the book (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Space tourist rockets (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not good enough. When this much money is on the line, you make space. Besides, it's a way to relieve the world's rich people of their money for the good of the Motherland. These people make some terrible commies, I must say.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Surprisingly enough, they don't get all of their money from oil and gas.
"Despite higher energy prices, oil and gas only contribute to 5.7% of Russia's GDP and the government predicts this will drop to 3.7% by 2011."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia#Economy [wikipedia.org]
Re:Damn! (Score:5, Insightful)
first (post from space) != (first post) from space.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, from that technical definition you're right. If you assume as definition the promised paradise of the communist future, of course nobody will say that some society archived it. The problem with this line of thinking are the following conclusions:
1) Humanity never "enjoyed" a real communist society, so we must try again (as if all the "experiments" done were not enough.)
2) The failure (after failure...) of a lot of vocal people arguing about the communist benefits, has another excuse for avoiding the ridiculous
BTW, China was named itself communist (Mao tried a lot of pretty weird schemes with its people), but Russians always sustained that they were the true revolutionaries (i.e. more communists.) Of course that byzantine discussions were totally silly (as in the Trotsky case) but illustrate the fat books that can be devoted to the insubstantial issue of the degree/realness/quality of the socialist/communist governments.
regards,