The Russian Moon program is several times cheaper than the American one, however, its results would be no less significant, head of the Russian state space corporation Dmitry Rogozin said, TASS reports.
“We’ve got our own Moon program, it “weighs” ten times less than the American one, but its results will be no less important for our scientists,” he wrote on Tuesday on his Telegram channel.
According to the Roscosmos chief, in science, when there are less resources, “you need to prioritize and cut corners instead of following the leader in a cowboy hat who doesn’t know why and where he is running.”
Rogozin stressed that he had discussed the Moon program with NASA and U.S. politicians several times. “The most curious thing is that they can’t properly explain why they need to go to the Moon again. I asked NASA head Bridenstine (on January 20, Jim Bridenstine resigned – TASS), a simple question: if you land on the surface Moon again, you will just prove that you’ve got the technologies you had 70 years ago, and Jim just gave me a deep sigh in response,” he noted.
The Roscosmos chief added that Russia would not take part in any “Moon race” until it understands “the point of the prize fund.”
Earlier, Rogozin stressed that militarization of the Moon and Moon research is unacceptable, commenting on the publication by the Wall Street Journal, which said, citing informed sources in the U.S. government and space industry, that the U.S. Department of Defense may ensure the security of NASA bases on the Moon in the future, as well as the security of private missions aimed to find resources on the Moon surface. The newspaper noted that the expanded cooperation between the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA is tied to the need to counter challenges posed by Russia and China to the U.S.
Moscow has repeatedly pointed out that Washington has plans to deploy weapons to space. On February 25, 2020, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during the Conference of Disarmament that all the plans of the U.S., France and NATO to put weapons in space are becoming more real. He added that it is not too late to prevent a confrontation in space through forming common rules of conduct.
