Satellite images suggest test of Russian “super weapon” failed spectacularly

Say what you like about the Sovs, they glorified engineers and scientists. Modern Russia both treats and portrays them as trash (as opposed to just treating them as trash) without the slightest bit of respect for their trade, and then are confused when all the smart lads and lasses go to the degenerate globalhomo West.

At least in the Soviet Union the risk of GULAG was balanced out slightly by the prospect of getting legit accolades from the government for being good with the designing and the thinky-numbers. In modern Russia, all you get is poisoned tea, shit pay, and no respect.

Say what you like about the Sovs, they glorified engineers and scientists.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. When engineers and scientists couldn't do what Stalin asked he convicted them of sabotage and espionage and threw them into gulags. And it happened a lot. Also, much like the US, most of the Soviet engineering knowledge was gained from the Nazis during their version of Operation Paperclip.
- Oh, my point wasn't that they were treated WELL, especially not considering the arbitrary nature of the Soviet state apparatus. My point is that the Soviets, as a society, considered those to be prestigious and worthy careers, and pronounced that very loudly. Like how the US culturally puts a high value on military veterans in reaction to the horrific behavior towards troops returning from Vietnam, making respect for modern veterans essential in decent society, but practically speaking, the government still treats them like shit. By contrast, the modern Russian Federation doesn't give a single good goddamn about engineers and scientists, and often actively scorns them.
  
  The nice words and shit treatment are hypocritical, but as anyone who's ever been scorned for their choice of career will tell you, it's still better than shite words and shit treatment.
It was just propaganda though. USSR didn'r treat their scientists and engineers a lick better than Russia does. It was just lip service.
- "We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be." The stated values of a society are very often violated, but that they are stated usually influences behavior in that society.
  
  The Sovs definitely put a lot of effort into telling engineers and scientists that they were HEROES OF SOCIALIST LABOR and emphasizing the same to the general population. Engineers and scientists were socially valued professions. A scrap of paper in congratulations or a bit of metal and a ribbon may not be much, but as Napoleon once noted, men will do a lot for that little bit of recognition. By contrast, modern Russia has adopted a very 'thuggish' attitude towards academics, especially from state media, and it is oligarchs and ultranationalists who are glorified instead.
  
  In Soviet society, really only military officers and higher government functionaries had it better than scientists and engineers. "You get the nice apartment, access to the good stores, and a little dacha in the countryside" may not be much by Western standards, but treatment is relative to the society in which one lives - scientists and engineers were getting the good upper-middle class life. Modern Russia says "You can make as much with a doctorate as some idiot in a real country with an associate's" and siphons the rest off for megayachts. Not very inspiring.
The USSR did at least attempt to do the right thing by it's citizens most of the time. Or at least they cared enough to pretend.
- We have read very different history books.

Well, they're burning UDMH, which is some scary fucking shit. I can't imagine being in an underground ~~tomb~~bunker with several dozens of tons of it.

UDMH

At least that stuff is stable while in a tank. Imagine sitting next to tons of rocket grade hydrogen peroxide, slowly decomposing, just waiting for an excuse to go boom.

TBF the USA has idiots like Jeff Bezos and Musk making Natural Gas Fueled rockets still in development.

Pretty sure Starship has more successful launches than Sarmat at this point.
- Doesn't make the concept any less concaveman.
  
  Fuck Natural Gas, fuck Commercial Rocketry.
  
  YEA! Fuck science and NASA and all that other shit...yea man! Stick it to those damn labcoat wearing idiots!
  
  "Gets in diesel truck and rolls coal"
  
  /s
  
  Fuck off, thats the public and military sector, mate. The only thing they have to do with those space tourism asshats is they occasionally buy from them.
  
  You do realize that the only reason we're not having to rely on russia to get our astronauts onto the ISS is because of SpaceX right?
  
  Oh wow really sucking some big dick right there.
  
  Oh those massive corporations are SO altruistic, oml! They do so much fkr us and we would all be lost without them! /s
  
  Dude, if you can't get past your enormous fucking hate boner for Musk to think rationally, maybe just don't say anything. You're acting like a damn fool.
  
  I'd love to see Musk ejected into the vacuum of space and abandoned by one of his own vehicles as much as the next guy, but you can't deny the incredible effectiveness and just how incredible the advances in rocketry that SpaceX has pushed. SpaceX is writing a new chapter in space exploration as we speak, with the introduction of truly reusable rocketry
  
  Reusable rockets was cool and a good investiment. Starlink is OK, maybe could be cool with proper management. Fucking Fossil Rockets, tho?
  
  Even if you separate the art from the artist's manager its still getting pretty fucking wacky in the rocketry market.
  
  Lol what a childish thing to say
  
  Its a special type of grown adult delusional to support such terrible people as Musk and Bezos.
  
  Yea that's what I'm doing lol
  
  How dare capitalism.... Innovate in space technology? You hate just because the people doing it are rich. That's real silly.
  
  The fuq? Lots of great examples of Capitalism but Fossil Fuels isn't it, pal.
  
  The problem with fossil fuels is that they're incredibly energy dense. Gasoline has about 12000 Wh/kg of energy density compared to about 250 Wh/kg for lithium ion.
  
  Space is hard, and the paradox of launching a rocket is that you need a lot of fuel to fuel an engine for long enough to escape the Earth's atmosphere and achieve orbit. All of that fuel adds weight so you need more fuel to compensate for more weight, which adds more weight meaning more fuel. Burnable fuels have the advantage of depleting as you burn it, so as you get higher your rocket gets lighter and therefore requires less fuel to pilot.
  
  In case that's not enough challenge, in the vacuum of space there's no great way to propel a vehicle on electrical power alone. Wheels ain't gonna work and neither will propellers, and while solar sails appear to work, they offer such incredibly low specific impulse (thrust basically) that realistically no manned mission that isn't a generation ship can use solar sails
  
  So in short, space is going to require fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we as a species can find the technology to make a fully reusable and renewable space program at some point, but until then we'll have to burn chemicals get vehicles off of this planet.
  
  Additionally, right now, until another organization actually builds and launches reusable space vehicles (and can demonstrate the competence and safety record) SpaceX is the world leader in reusability. SpaceX is one of two members of the exclusive "has relaunched a space vehicle" club, shared only with NASA's space shuttle program which ended over a decade ago
  
  Jfc this guy
  
  If they managed to shave enough costs for consumer space flights you would be celebrating as the entire world burned.
  
  I don't give FUCK about natural gas energy density, we don't need rockets that run on it.
  
  Bruh, global spaceflight contributes less than 0.01% of global CO2 emissions and enables climate resiliencey through weather and climate monitoring satellites, plus technological skunkworks (many of the challenges in the microclimate of a space station happen to be the exact same challenges of the macroclimate of the Earth, plus there's a proven path of technology developed for space directly improving lives on the ground here on earth)
  
  If you can build an orbital launch vehicle that doesn't rely on fossil fuels, please do! Seriously that is a greatly needed technology and you'll have earned the wealth and fame that would bring you. But until then I'll take the next best thing which is having a space program and compensating for it's (absolutely tiny compared to basically all other industries) emissions in a larger global climate plan over not having a space industry
  
  Starlink doesn't monitor the weather, in fact it could actively impede that soon given the amount of frequency noise they're creating, and space tourism sure as fuck ain't gonna be about the betterment of science.
  
  The problem is that your entire argument stands on the leg of conflating that bizarre bullshit being developed with the rich and beneficial past history of NASA.
  
  Starlink doesn’t monitor the weather, in fact it could actively impede that soon given the amount of frequency noise they’re creating
  
  Correct, and I wasn't talking about Starlink, I was talking about the various GPS, climate and weather satellites spaceX has launched recently (and that's just the missions I can remember off the top of my head), and their capabilities to continue launching satellites for any purpose at an incredibly cost effective and potentially less destructive manner than with single use rockets
  
  Plus this isn't just a matter of SpaceX good/bad. SpaceX proved 98 times this year alone that reusable rockets work, something that before them was theoretically possible but appeared to be too technically complex and too costly to be a worthwhile endeavor. Now other space agencies have a proven model to point to when choosing whether or not to invest in their own reusable rocket designs. The US Federal Government could even simply compel SpaceX to license it's designs and software for reusable rockets if it felt so inclined
  
  Oh and you've moved the goalposts in your Elon-hate because first you were complaining about rockets using fossil fuels instead of being electrically powered and now that I've pointed out how uninformed that is you're complaining about Starlink, which is unrelated to the original point. Yes I agree, Elon is an ass to say the least, and Starlink poses a hell of a danger to the world's ability to continue studying anything in the sky. But let's be honest with ourselves about what we're talking about and the facts of the technologies we're discussing.
  
  If your argument is simply that "the CO2 emissions from accessing orbit aren't worth the global services that they enable" guess what that's an opinion, which everyone is entitled to. But let's form these opinions based on an accurate understanding of the industry you're talking about