DDE

There's state media and there's state media. MK is owned by its chief editor Pavel Gusev, and is much further removed from the Kremlin monetary trough than, say, VGTRK even though he's well-embedded politically. Because of that, it is often (at least selectively) more critical and seems to target a more displeased - if a more tabloidal - audience. Articles with the same tone appearing in, say, Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru (Potanin and Mamut... might change now that Sberbank has bought Rambler&Co) or the more business-oriented Kommersant (of Ilia Safronov fame) were hardly notable. However, you may have noticed the mention of Shoigu in the article already. Pavel Gusev is the Chairman of the Public Council of the Ministry of Defense. And the article starts by sniping about military procurement... It would seem that Eric's knowledge about RD-107/RD-108 and probably by extension the V-2 is somewhat short of Wikipedia standards. The original HTP supplier went bankrupt March last year: https://ria.ru/20200307/1568276729.html I'll have to dig through my archives, but Angara's designer has long since claimed the low pay a canard - at least $1500 for the actual doers, at market exchange rate. You can about double that in PPP. Or, to put it more bluntly, it's about the average Moscow wage or 6 times minimum wage; heck, I don't quite earn 2k gross after 5 years. Considering these people are more likely to have studied on a scholarship than your average blue-collar (not that student lending is much of a thing in Russia), and a lot of them are likely to get company housing, that sounds comfy by the standards of Russia's maligned blue-collar class. That's said, we're still talking about severe corporate bloat: Roscosmos central management earns five times that, and Rogozin earns twice as much (at market rates, again) as the head of NASA. https://www.mk.ru/politics/2019/08/14/zarplaty-sotrudnikov-roskosmosa-porazhayut-voobrazhenie-kosmonavtam-takie-dengi-ne-snilis.html Oh, what a familiar and annoying mindset. Just tighten the screws! Bang on the table! Shoot a few scapegoats! Roscosmos was built to introduce strict order instead of the feudal system of individual KBs. Rogozin was brought in to introduce strict order after the public failures of Popovkin. Stepping on the same rake won't bring change. Heck, two, three years ago there already more FSB spooks than rocket scientists. Five years ago Rogozin began to dismiss key KB officials at the first sign of failure. Has anything at all improved?

Sarmat is marketed as a drop-in replacement for Voevoda, so it makes absolute sense they're externally quite indistinguishable. There's speculation Makeyev have relied on their usual engine-inside-tank shenanigans to squeeze out more performance.

*after half an hour auditing an old save* "Why, why, why did I put a subway line one district south instead of the main axis between the factory district and residential!?"

Well, the contrary reports that satellites in general are prime targets and are already getting hit clandestinely all over the place, by groups that are far below nation-state cybertrooper level, come from more sources than just the irate US Space Force. And no, I don't mean piggybacking your Internet.

A card gap test involves putting a propellant flask next to a bit of explosive, with X cards in between, this acting as impromptu units of shock sensitivity. The propellant in question apparently was IsoButylene Adduct of N2F4 (IBA), which was then mixed with N2O4 to produce a rather prickly mixture (tested to 96 cards before everyone gave up).

A question more poignant to this thread: does money smell?

Now George Sutton is the world's foremost engine-eer.

Interesting conspiracy theory: Bart Hendrickx invented Aerostat in order to lure the Russian rumor mill into sharing info about Nudol (a few months ahead of the destructive test) https://topwar.ru/188069-ajerostat-ili-kak-poluchit-razvedyvatelnye-svedenija-sovershenno-besplatno.html

And some chonky 'special mission' bois at Reshetnev with zero details:

2018 http://vestnik-glonass.ru/stati/v-rossii-prodolzhayutsya-uspeshnye-ispytaniya-lazernogo-glonass/

"You know what this parking lot could really use?"

All you need is struts

Race you to 2000, then )

More relevant than for the "upcoming" megathread: Fellowship of the Ring premiered 20 years ago.

Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is really rough. Still good for someone with the niche interest... the title is rrally descriptive. I'll be trying out Cyberpunk tomorrow. Let's see if I have to return. Also hoping to get back into either Cities Skylines or Frostpunk (no pun intended).

Supply officers had an affinity for lead-based red paint... or it's just the anti-rust primer without any paint.

Unstable and explosive things generally are.

The engine in question is RD-0110 of Voskhod and Soyuz third stage.

Dear lord, this guy is still going strong and fairly on-topic. Almost everyone from the Atheists vs Creationists era of Youtube has gone into politics (and usually at each other).

Primarily because this was before the rather artificial rocket-missile distinction (in fact, before the adoption of the term "rocket" in certain languages).

Proton launch scrubbed after rollout.

"Take it outside"