Russian Space Industry To Receive $69 Billion Through 2020

An anonymous reader sends word that the Russian Space industry will be getting a big boost over the next eight years. Prime Minister Medvedev has approved $68.71 billion in space-related funding from 2013 to 2020. That's a huge increase from the $3.3 billion spent annually in 2010 and 2011. The increased funding is one of several efforts to restoring Russia's slowly fading spaceflight capabilities. "The failure of a workhorse Proton rocket after launch in August caused the multimillion-dollar loss of an Indonesian and a Russian satellite. A similar problem caused the loss of a $265 million communications satellite last year. Medvedev criticized the state of the industry in August, saying problems were costing Russia prestige and money." Medvedev said, "The program will enable our country to effectively participate in forward-looking projects, such as the International Space Station, the study of the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies in the solar system."

$69 billion is a sexy number

[arcite]

Too bad $60 billion of that will be siphoned off to slush funds and other nefarious activities.

Re:Receiving 2.1 trillion roubles

[priceslasher]

What's aggravating about the summary is the comparison of 1 years budget to 7 years of budget. It is still a 3x increase in budget, from 3.3 billion to roughly 9.9 billion.