Priorities in government and space

On 8/4/06, Robert wrote:
(...)
> Its a little difficult to discuss russian successes as many of theirs
> are still hidden, and many losses could have been hidden from the
> world.
(...)

I think that you maybe referring to the experimentation in the 50's.
In the past few decades, on the other hand, we know that:

- It is not really possible to hide a rocket failure. There are
satellite and radar systems from other countries that would see any
Russian rocket failing. In fact they can track much smaller things,
like for instance North Korean missiles crashing in the sea...

- Russian flights are *announced* before taking off, and many
(possibly most) of them for the past many years have non-Russian
passengers on board. So we would forcibly know if something went wrong
in those pre-scheduled flights. Or else you are supposing that the
Russians have prescient mutants and they don't announce flights that
they know will explode. ;--)

Now, being quite frank, I think that you should stop embarrassing
yourself with those "Moon Conspiracy"-type arguments. The reliability
of the Soyuz is a very well-known fact of astronautics.