They are on Mars, but we are in Venice, or how much has been stolen

On August 6, at 9:30 Moscow time, Alexander Plyushchev interrupted the news block on Echo and solemnly announced that NASA's Curiosity spacecraft had successfully landed on Mars.

Agree, successfully covering 252 million km and delivering the rover to the surface of the “red planet” without failure, to a predetermined point, is a brilliant achievement of the human mind.

This all-wheel drive, six-wheeled device will travel around the fourth planet of the solar system for two years and, of course, will transmit a lot of valuable information to Earth.

All that remains is to be happy for the Americans, or “Pindos”, as our patriotic statesmen call them.

One thing causes bitterness, and even rage. It was today that RBC reported that: “The launch customer (Armavia), the newest Russian aircraft -100 (SSJ-100), seems to have been completely disappointed in its choice and decided not to use the previously ordered aircraft. Previously, the airline announced that it would abandon the purchase of a second Superjet, and is now looking for an opportunity to abandon the first airliner, purchased at the beginning of 2011.”

Yes, yes, dear readers, this is the same Superjet, the main achievement of the Russian aviation industry, about which powerful propagandists have been telling us for a long time and excitedly. By the way, according to Zhvanetsky: “What will they say now? I don’t think they talked for long.”

The same one that, during a demonstration tour, crashed into a mountain in Indonesia on May 9 and killed 45 people. And just on Friday, August 3, he made an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo, coming from Kazan. And what about the revelations of the fired flight attendant about this “masterpiece of technology” and “scientific breakthroughs” from the times of developed, sovereign democracy?

I am not an expert in the field of aviation, however, a couple of years ago I realized that nothing would come of this venture, which cost taxpayers approximately $1.4 billion.

My old friend, an expert on Venice, during a tour of the world’s most famous tourist brand, showed the new modern office of the Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Company (SCAC) and the rather shabby houses of top managers.

I immediately remembered my business trip to Komsomolsk-on-Amur in 1999, to the main GSS plant, where they were actually creating a new Russian aviation brand. I compared: where is Venice, where is the Amur region and Curiosity, how much money was stolen from our project.

For comparison, the successful conquest of Mars cost American taxpayers $2.5 billion. These two projects are incomparable: the creation of a banal short-haul passenger aircraft and a Mars rover, which, by the way, is already on Mars. And their prices differ by less than 2 times.

As a result, I came to disappointing conclusions.

With such a deplorable state of state institutions, “African” corruption, total hypocrisy, lies and irresponsibility, there is definitely no hope for at least some success in the field of high technology.

In short: they are on Mars, and ours are in Venice, and in their palazzos.