Kryten

Engine gimballing. One plane per engine, I think tangential to the main rocket body.

Indeed it is, now feel like an idiot. Replaced with another video from about the same distance, gives good shots of the cloud.

This is the closest vid I can find that's not just another copy of the one in the OP.

Delivery of three spare GLONASS (effectively Russian gps) navigation sats to orbit.

We now have reports that glonass-m satellites contain RTGs for backup power. False alarm, sorry everyone, only first-gen glonass sats have it, not the -m models on this launch.

Just before it burst into flames, there was a shot of the engines; all six were definitely still thrusting.

Probably engine or guidance system failure. No way to draw firm conclusions this early.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAnM-1Ch8Y This is breaking, I actually just watched it happen on Roscosmos' livefeed. We're not even sure there aren't casualties yet; it came down close to the pad and has extremely nasty propellants. Just terrible...

The next one goes up on long march 7. It's definitely very far in development, multiple complete first stages have been built and tested and and all engines are considered flight-qualified. First flight is planned for late 2014, major delaying factor is apparently construction of the new launch site. CZ-5 isn't doing as well, they hit setbacks with the hydrogen tankage, but they still think they can get a first flight in 2015. It's not three families, they're actually all connected; CZ-7 cores are used as boosters for CZ-5, CZ-6 cores are used as boosters for the other two, and they use a common set of rocket engines.

Proof of what concept though?

Heck, Lunokhod 2 traveled further in less than five months than opportunity has in eight years. Therefore it returned more useful science, right?

It's unlikely to be worth much unless it's in mint condition, and well, you can see it isn't.

From that article you can't tell; because the photo angle neatly hides the Toyota symbol. I wonder how much JAXA are being paid for this...

Because having a few strategic bombers would totally have stopped the soviets entering Berlin.

It's probably a range safety thing. Given the population density in denmark, there can't be many inland areas large and uninhabited enough to drop rocket stages in.

It's to do with how elements are ultimately produced; lighter elements (up to iron) are formed by fusion inside stars, but anything above that is formed by less common exothermic processes, and the heavier the element the less of it ends up produced by those processes (very roughly).

What they've done in the past, or rather what the USSR did in the past, has nothing to do with the present. Not only is it not the same country, all the engineers and scientists who made these things happen are dead. That's we we have things like the P-G failure; it wasn't the Zenit, it was the main flight computer. It didn't have some kind of minor glitch, it simply didn't even work at all. The Russians at that point finally realised how badly they'd messed up, and right then they moved Luna-Glob back several years, because it had a bunch of common components. What kind of space program launches a hundred million dollar spacecraft without making sure it can even turn on? One that's made your mistake; badly mistaken their own capabilities.

Look, take the example of Lunar missions. You say Russia should be ahead in this area because of there past efforts, right? Even if they aren't doing it right now. Problem is, just look at their actual attempts; Luna-glob was initiated in the early 2000s, and supposed to be launched in 2009; and there's a good chance that it won't even hit it's current target of 2015. The Chang'e program was started around the same time, and now has flown two complete missions and has another fully assembled and undergoing final checks. Which of those sounds like they have more capability to you?

So why does this not matter when deciding who's ahead? Should we say Britain are the most powerful country in the world because they had the empire?

Why does it matter what they've done in the past if they can't do it now? Chang'es 1 and 2 beat the pants off of everything that the russians have done in exploration of the moon in the last 35 years, because that's nothing. Even going further back than that, you don't find anything with remotely comparable capability to those. Same in a lot of other areas.

Those aren't newly built engines, they are literally from the 60s. They were the engines for two more planned N1s, left in a warehouse after the program cancelled. Since N1 used no less than 38 of those engines each, they've a reasonable stockpile; but they haven't been able to get any more built without years of trying (at least without someone telling it'll cost incredible amounts of money) and are now looking at other engine options.

It does, people have tried. It even gets Harvester.

RD-180 is just half of an RD-170, and RD-190 is just an RD-180 that's been halved again. That's 'innovative' to you?

Russia had effectively no capability. Paper rocket designs are a dime a dozen, and mean nothing without the means to actually manufacture, previously flown design or not. There's a reason all of the projects you can mention are either in the far future or cancelled; they simply don't have the skills anymore. The engineers who built veneras and zonds are now retired or dead, they now effectively have to stay over; failure to recognise that killed Mars-96 and Phobos-grunt. Even angara is based on a scaled-down version of a thirty year old engine, and is years behind schedule.

So what they were capable of doing thirty years ago means they're ahead now? Plans mean nothing if they don't have the tooling anymore, which they don't. Why do you think NASA isn't just restarting saturn production?