The Director General of Roscosmos added that Russia will not participate in any race to the Moon until it understands "the meaning of the prize fund"
MOSCOW, February 2. /TASS/. The Russian lunar program is several times cheaper than the American one, but it will bring no less results to science, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin is convinced.
"We have our own lunar program, it "weighs" 10 times cheaper than the American one, but it will give no less important results for our scientists, " Rogozin wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday.
According to the head of Roscosmos, in science, when there are fewer resources, " you need to see priorities and cut corners, and not run after a leader in a cowboy hat, who himself does not know why he is running and where he is running." Rogozin stressed that he had repeatedly discussed the lunar program during negotiations with the leadership of NASA and American politicians. "The most interesting thing is that they themselves can not really explain why they needed to go to the moon again. To my simple question to the head of NASA, Bridenstine (on January 20, Jim Bridenstine resigned-approx. TASS) if you once again sit on the surface of the moon, you will only prove that you have finally reached the possibility of your own technologies 70 years ago, Jim just sighed heavily, " he said.
At the same time, the general director of the state corporation added that the Russian Federation will not participate in any race to the Moon until it understands "the meaning of the prize fund."
Earlier, Rogozin said that the militarization of the Moon and lunar research is unacceptable. So he commented on the publication of The Wall Street Journal, which, citing knowledgeable sources in the government and in the space industry, reported that the US Department of Defense in the future may provide protection for NASA bases on the Moon, as well as the operations of private companies for the extraction of mineral resources on the lunar surface. As the publication noted, the expansion of cooperation between the US Department of Defense and NASA is due to the need to counteract "the challenges that Russia and China are throwing at the United States."
Moscow has repeatedly pointed to Washington's plans to deploy weapons in outer space. In particular, on February 25 last year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the Conference on Disarmament, said that"the plans of the United States, France and the North Atlantic Alliance as a whole to launch weapons into space are becoming more and more realistic." He also noted that it is not too late to prevent a military confrontation in space by formulating general rules of conduct.
