Russia seems to have lost contact with its first lunar probe in half a century

"The management team is currently analyzing the situation."

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[launcap]

the economy of Soviet Union was already shit for quite some time, and some have argued that it is the forceful investments into the military and space race, at the expense of the citizens consumption and other productive activities (e.g. producing cars, educating people better, etc.), which led to the USSR collapse. So it is rather the collapse of the Russian economy which led to the USSR entering a tailspin than the other way around, and unreasonably high level of space investments was one of the key accelerator to that tailspin.

It's well known that the US was deliberately spending more (initially anyway) on the military and space technologies in the full knowledge that the USSR would spend themselves into penury trying to keep up.

And while there was a small peace dividend once the USSR fell, it didn't last long because the military-industrial complex soon found other emergencies in order to maintain their gravy train..

As one military commentator observed - the Ukraine war is cash in the till for the arms manufacturers and they probably don't want it to end any time soon.