The crash of the Luna-25 station: Has Russia ceased to be a great power?
One of the most discussed news in the Russian information space was the crash of the Luna-25 automatic interplanetary station.
According to official information from Roscosmos, the station entered an unplanned orbit and collided with the surface of Earth's natural satellite, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Actress Yana Poplavskaya admits that she was left with “a very bitter aftertaste from the situation with the crash.”
“We were told with pomp that this was the first mission to the Moon in the modern history of Russia, the first in 47 years. They wanted to show the whole world WHAT we can do! But they didn't show it. They surprised neither the world nor themselves. Liberals are about to burst with joy. And the West was handed another of its weaknesses on a silver platter.
Maybe that's why everything was kept secret in the Soviet Union. First they did it, and then they reported success. By the way, in the Union for such mistakes, as now, they were punished to the fullest extent. They were deprived not only of freedom, of any privileges, titles, of the general's dachas and apartments. The investigation must be the most rigorous and biased! It should be conducted not by an “interdepartmental commission”, but by the FSB,” Poplavskaya believes.
In turn, the nationalist TG channel “DSHRG Rusich” is sarcastic about this:
“Advice to politicians: you shouldn’t aim for the moon if you are not able to take at least Avdiivka.”
However, there are also calming posts.
“Nothing bad happened. They will take into account errors and make the device more reliable. I don’t understand the joy of Russia’s enemies. Luna 25 is a mission and research for the benefit of all humanity, not just Russia. So this is a common tragedy.
Everyone took Elon’s failure (even at the start) with sadness, including the Russians. The same Rogozin supported Musk and did not gloat. Apparently this is what distinguishes people from pitiful, envious evil spirits. Neither Barcelona nor Ukraine have sent anything close to the Moon. The latter will not succeed even after 30 years. Because there is neither technology, nor knowledge, nor those who can even implement anything like that,” writes the founder of the “Male State” movement, Vladislav Pozdnyakov, in his tg channel.
In turn, State Duma deputy Oleg Morozov notes that from the very beginning of the launch of the device, “there was a squeal.”
“The enemies and their minions screamed! They were fiercely afraid of success! And that’s why they initially spat on him. And then a failure occurred, from which no one in space is immune. Although, before its destruction, the spacecraft managed to transmit unique information to the ground.
Still a failure! The enemies were already choking with happiness. And I'm not talking about them. I will turn to “my people”, to those who are definitely for the country, but they clothe their resentment at this failure in harsh accusations. Don’t you understand that when you do this, you don’t add anything to the country, Roscosmos, or the government that would help avoid failure next time?!
Let's stop loving the country the Ukrainian way. That is, only the one that “dug up the Black Sea” and “derussified Gogol,” that is, a mythical country. Sometimes the most sought-after love is “love for one’s native ashes,” this is overcoming, this is the ability to get up after a fall and the willingness to move forward!” Morozov believes.
Political scientist Evgeniy Satanovsky also calls not to make a tragedy out of the crash, but he believes it is necessary to draw serious conclusions.
“The information that Luna-25 crashed on the surface of the Earth’s satellite caused a flurry of “sadness” in the Russian segment of the Internet, mainly among the overly nervous domestic “pique vests” among the most advanced, whom any negative news for any reason plunges in mourning just like any positive (or their own forecasts) about how everything is about to be good, wonderful, excellent and magnificent, despite the fact that in the clearing from which they are already drinking away the harvest, it’s not like nothing grew or was sown, but the horse did not lie down, it leads to orgiastic delight of immeasurable proportions.
And it’s the Ukrainians and Westerners who haven’t joined in yet! This is the one who will gloat to his heart’s content and clap his hands, sweaty with pleasure!
Meanwhile, we had a lot of accidents in Soviet times, including in the space industry. Only then they promoted our technical and other achievements not in advance, but as they received concrete results, unlike today’s practice. It may be worse in terms of self-promotion of industry and departmental bosses before higher authorities, but in terms of results it was much better. And there was no need to blush once again.
Otherwise, we have become accustomed to talk about business and not about business, mostly at the wrong time, starting with the era of glasnost, perestroika and the new thinking of the unforgettable Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, who himself was a talker of unprecedented proportions, and made this occupation one of the most important in the country, so no way we won't unlearn.
So we need to approach the situation more calmly. Soberly understand what happened, where and what exactly went wrong. In closed mode, of course! And if the “public” will certainly crave information, send it (the public, not the information) to hell. Check and test everything that is possible and impossible, where it is necessary and spend as much time and money on it as necessary. To hell with removing from all posts and positions people who are not directly related to space, returning to the Soviet system, within the framework of which general designers were the main ones in every technical shop and everything in the country was oriented towards them. By the way, this doesn’t only apply to space.
Everywhere you go, there are plenty of thieves. The bosses started a fashion for handing out serious areas of activity to God knows who, so that they, parasitizing on them, would do God knows what - they would build office skyscrapers for the future, speculate on land for the next privatization, and start all sorts of other left-wing shackers. Well, enough already, before we finally get to the point of zugunder!
The Forbes list is already so swollen that it’s sickening to look at it. And if you dig deeper into officials and politicians, you’ll end up with an encyclopedia. Either “the best people of the Third Russian Empire”, or “the missed opportunities of Russia, missed by its immediate superiors at all levels in the process of primary, secondary and all other stages of capital accumulation,” writes Satanovsky.
This was reported by the PolitNavigator correspondent ,
In turn, cosmonaut, Hero of Russia Andrei Borisenko characterizes what happened as “an inevitable process of learning and mastering new technology” and believes that losses will continue in the future.
In an interview, he explained that the difficulty of landing a station in the South Pole region lay primarily in the landing scheme itself - it is more complex than landing in other areas. At the same time, landings were previously carried out in other areas to increase the likelihood of a successful lunar landing.
According to Borisenko, the South Pole of the Moon is interesting for all humanity from the point of view of searching for water deposits, which can be used to deploy a manned base on the Moon.
The cosmonaut believes that “the new program will probably be planned taking into account the unfulfilled experiments.”
State Duma deputy Mikhail Matveev is perplexed that the event did not find a place in the news on federal channels.
“For the first time in many years I watched the entire news broadcast, the final report for the week on Central Television. I wanted to hear about the death of Luna-25, the first spacecraft sent by our country to the Moon in 50 years. (Also a Samara rocket). He was supposed to land on the invisible side of the moon, but contact with him was lost today. Do you think this is a sufficient information reason for news on DH? As a former journalist and editor, I will say: 100%.
And so: there was no place for the most important news in the “news”. At all. The media in Russia have ceased to be a source of information. Only propaganda and interpretation of news for the sake of propaganda. The Luna-25 project failed, which means there is not a word in the news. But there is a story about the German minister’s plane breaking down. This is the approach. In short, it’s not for nothing that I haven’t watched TV for many years,” the deputy says indignantly.
TV presenter Artem Sheinin recalls that both the USSR and Elon Musk had failures in space.
“For some reason, in those cases, everyone understands that space is an extremely complex matter and cannot be calculated in everything. Which, of course, does not negate the need to work on mistakes and find out the reasons for what happened. But by specialists. And yes, society, of course, has the right and should learn about the reasons for failure. But “social masochism,” which has once again manifested itself so clearly, does not contribute to this at all,” states Sheinin.
But political scientist Sergei Markov believes that the consequences of the accident are enormous.
“In the eyes of the world community, Russia has questioned the adequacy of its claims to being a great power now. Nobody disputes that Russia was a great power in the past. But is Russia a great power now? Russia says YES. And sends troops to Ukraine and launches Luna 25.
But the US and EU claim that no. Who is right? There is no victory in Ukraine yet. And Luna 25 crashes. Many will probably decide that Russia’s claims to both the Moon and Ukraine cannot be realized simply because Russia does not live in a modest present, but in fantasies about a great past.
And all countries and people want to be friends with the strong, who win, and not with the weak, who always make excuses about their defeats. This harsh view of the world community is the real Russian tragedy of Luna 25,” Markov is convinced.
Military expert Ilya Kramnik notes that the space program requires colossal funds and many launches.
“Soviet experience shows that you need to let them in a lot and often. From 1958 to 1976, 45 Soviet spacecraft were launched to the Moon, 31 launches ended in failure for various reasons - from a launch vehicle failure to errors already in the orbit of the Moon. Those of them that fell at the start due to a launch vehicle accident remained on the list under the names “E-# number #”; those that entered low-Earth orbit received the designation “Cosmos-###” as artificial Earth satellites, those that were able to fly to the Moon, already received the lunar numbering - “Luna-##”, but even at this stage not everyone achieved success - accidents occurred due to defects in the brake engines and due to errors in control.
Moreover, the failure rate remained high in the later stages. If we take the third generation of Soviet lunar AMS, E-8, then from 1969 to 1975 16 stations were launched. There were six successful attempts, one was partially successful, nine ended in the loss of the devices.
Three E-8 carriers of Lunokhods, in 1969, 70, 73. The first launch was unsuccessful - the loss of Proton in the 52nd second of flight, two became the Luna-17 and Luna-21 missions, delivering Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2 to the surface of the Moon, respectively.
Two E-8LS - heavy satellites of the Moon in 1971 and 1974. Both launches were successful, Luna-19 and Luna-22 entered lunar orbit. But the orbit of Luna-19 turned out to be off-design, which is why the mission can be considered only partially successful, and Luna-22 did its job by sending a series of television panoramas of the Moon, which greatly helped in solving the problems of the “moon scoopers”.
And there were 11 “moon scoopers”. E-8-5 and E-8-5M - stations for delivering lunar soil. They were launched from 1969 to 1976, three were successful - Luna-16, Luna-20, Luna-24.
Three more - "Luna-15", "Luna-18", "Luna-23" - failed during landing, but received numbers because the media managed to report about the launch.
Two failed at the stage of operation of the upper stage and entered low-Earth orbit as Kosmos-300 and Kosmos-305. And three remained under the indices E-8-5 N 402, 405, 412 - without entering orbit.
Space is expensive. And if you stop “because it doesn’t work out,” it will be even more expensive - the likelihood of an accident after a long break is always higher,” writes Kramnik.
Journalist Maxim Ravreba does not understand the bullshit about the hard landing of Luna 25.
“The fact that they managed to launch the device into lunar orbit and even drop it, as for the first time and after a 50-year break, is quite amazing. The USSR lunar program, which you point to as an example for Roscosmos, also had examples of many failures, incl. great disappointment - N-1. The first launch to the Moon, Luna 1, was unsuccessful. The satellite was supposed to make a hard landing, but missed.
Zrada was turned into victory: it was announced that the goal was to create an artificial planet in the solar system. The Indian Chandrayaan-2 also made a hard landing in 2019. And Chandrayaan-3 was just about to land softly, along with Luna-25, but now he no longer knows. Elon Musk's seniorship consists of nothing but epic fails. His buckets of bolts explode beautifully - yes. Luna 25 had a high chance of ending in failure.
This happens all the time in astronautics. Today, in terms of the number of disasters and deaths of astronauts (out of the blue), the United States confidently holds first place. And your sofa jury gave a bad mark to Roscosmos, which fully services the ISS. It's not fair. Space status is determined not by the presence of accidents, but by the ability to work on mistakes. Finally, you personally have not invested a penny into the lunar program.
I advise fellow Ukrainians to roll their lips: nothing has ever worked out for you. The last attempt in January 2022 in the form of the simplest, orbital Sich-2-30, escaped from mobilization as soon as it flew beyond the air border of Ukraine. To the rest, I’ll say this: dancing on the Moon-25 makes you a Ukrainian cosmonaut: “Dad, Muscovites have flown into space!” - What, is that all? Ok, I'm being constructive. TURN THE USSR BACK AND EVERYTHING WILL WORK FOR YOU!” writes Ravreba.
Military observer Yuri Baranchik thinks differently.
“The fall of Luna 25 is not just a symbol of problems in the space industry that have long been known. This is a symbol of the need for systemic change. Stability has exhausted itself and threatens to turn into its opposite - stagnation. Only the logic of development, the beginning of a new civilizational project, can save us from this scenario. Otherwise, we will drown in the swamp of stagnation under the fanfare of paid but not sincere musicians praising our achievements.
Experts have long said that a CVO is required not only in relation to Ukraine, but also within the country. In the same way, SMERSH is needed not only to fight bandits and terrorists, but also to deal with such cases that cause irreparable damage to our country in the international arena and cause a feeling of bitterness among all patriots of our Motherland. So that such cases do not happen in five years, or that they are a tragic accident, against the backdrop of a hundred successful lunar landings (let me remind you that in the USSR 14 lunar missions out of 45 were successful, that is, only about 33%), we need to start today. Otherwise, we will be crushed,” Baranchyk sums up.
Political strategist Andrei Perla believes that the story of Luna-25 is “a marker for “internal emigration”, simply for traitors.”
“Those who are gloating now should be celebrated. There is no need to register foreign agents, everything is clear with them,” Perla writes in her public page.
In Ukraine, they post pictures like this, claiming that the station was destroyed by the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Luna-25 Station Crash: Has Russia No Longer Been a Great Power?