Russia:
No Plans of Flying to Moon or Mars
UFA,
17 (RIA Novosti by Alik Shakirov). Russia does not plan working
on programs of flights to the Moon or Mars or other planets in
the near future, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Alyoshin said Saturday.
It is too
early to speak about such programs, he said. At the same time,
he stressed that "one must think about the future" and
therefore Russia should develop basic space technologies.
"If you
look fifty years ahead into the future, development of space programs
will help us ensure national competitiveness and enhance the quality
of our national industry to an entirely different level,"
the Deputy Prime Minister said during a visit to a aircraft engines
plant in the city of Ufa.
According
to Alyoshin, Russia has quite good prospects in developing its
space industry.
"I think
there exist a good deal of good space projects in Russia,"
he said. Alyoshin described as "epoch-making" the recently
signed agreement on using Russian carrier rockets at the French
Kourou spaceport and said Moscow was considering a number of similar
orders from other countries. "It is not surprising,"
he said, "as Russia has made the largest space launchings."