Октябрь 2009 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Earth's Crust Is Shrinking
• Commentary: Can Russia develop a nanotech industry?
• Russian Professors Chafe at Scholarly Screening
• High hopes for Russia's nanotech firms
• La Sibérie sous la menace des tronçonneuses
• Nos déchets nucléaires sont cachés en Sibérie
• Déchets nucléaires : une bombe ou un pétard mouillé ?
• Israel Moiseevich Gelfand
• Climate change in Russia's Arctic tundra: "Our reindeer go hungry. There isn't enough pasture"
• Des réacteurs de type "Tchernobyl" prolongés de quinze ans en Russie
• Russia becomes the world's taxicab to space
• Is Russian science healthy?
• Fortuitous research provides first detailed documentation of tsunami erosion
• La Russie va fabriquer des navettes spatiales fonctionnant avec des moteurs nucléaires

5 октября, в возрасте 96 лет, скончался один из самых известных математиков XX века Израиль Моисеевич Гельфанд. И.М.Гельфанд известен своими работами по функциональному анализу, алгебре и топологии. Он был одним из создателей теории нормированных колец (банаховых алгебр), которая позже легла в основу теории колец с инволюцией и теории бесконечномерных унитарных представлений групп Ли. Помимо собственно математики, И.М.Гельфанд работал в таких областях как биология и медицина, его исследования были посвящены нейрофизиологии, клеточной миграции и протеомике.

Le mathématicien russe Israel Moiseevich Gelfand est mort, lundi 5 octobre, à New Brunswick, dans le New Jersey (Etats-Unis), à l'âge de 96 ans. Il compte au nombre des plus importantes figures des mathématiques du XXe siècle.
Lauréat du prix Wolf, du prix Steele, du prix Kyoto, il était associé étranger de l'Académie des sciences française, où le mathématicien Henri Cartan l'avait présenté, en 1975, comme "un pionnier qui, à l'instar de Poincaré ou d'Hilbert, ayant défriché de nombreux domaines, a laissé du travail à ses continuateurs pour une ou plusieurs générations". Loin de se cantonner à un ou deux domaines précis, il aura exploré différentes facettes de sa discipline, s'autorisant bien plus que des excursions en biologie.
Né le 20 août 1913 à Krasnye Okny, près d'Odessa (aujourd'hui en Ukraine), il débarque à Moscou à l'âge de 16 ans. Il vit de petits métiers. Il donne quelques cours particuliers de mathématiques ; il est portier à la Bibliothèque Lénine... Le soir, il suit des séminaires de mathématiques à l'université de Moscou. Avec suffisamment de talent pour être pris, dès 1932, sous l'aile du grand mathématicien Andreï Kolmogorov (1903-1987). Il obtient une thèse de doctorat en 1940.
Trois ans plus tard, il fonde son séminaire à l'université de Moscou. Celui-ci demeure légendaire, tant par sa durée - près d'un demi-siècle - que par l'influence qu'il va exercer sur des générations de mathématiciens de l'ancien bloc soviétique. "A Moscou, son séminaire, qui se tenait le soir, avait un format très particulier, raconte le mathématicien Martin Andler (université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin), qui a côtoyé Israel Gelfand pendant une année à l'université Rutgers (New Jersey), sa dernière institution de rattachement. Quelqu'un faisait un petit exposé, puis Gelfand l'interrompait et, bien souvent, disait simplement : "Je ne comprends pas." Ensuite il demandait à quelqu'un d'autre de venir au tableau pour expliquer le problème à sa manière et ce petit manège pouvait durer pendant des heures et des heures, quitte à écouter la même histoire quatre ou cinq fois de suite, chaque fois racontée par quelqu'un de différent".
Et bien qu'il y eût quelque brutalité dans cette manière de faire, "cela était accepté, y compris par des mathématiciens illustres, car il était le maître". Son séminaire, ajoute M. Andler, rassemblait "des chercheurs qui, sans être à proprement parler des refuzniks, étaient bien souvent casés dans toutes sortes de placards parce qu'ils étaient juifs ou parce qu'ils étaient mal vus par le parti". D'éminents mathématiciens l'ont suivi avant d'essaimer dans les universités occidentales au début des années 1990.
Avec l'antisémitisme qui s'installe en Union soviétique dans les années 1950, Israel Gelfand est marginalisé par le monde académique, mais continue ses activités de recherche. Il ne sera pleinement membre de l'Académie des sciences soviétique qu'en 1984, presque dix ans après son élection comme associé étranger dans la section de mathématiques de son homologue française ! Malgré ce relatif ostracisme, il semble avoir été intouchable et même avoir joui d'une certaine reconnaissance de la part des plus hautes sphères de l'Etat soviétique. Non seulement il continue librement ses recherches en mathématiques, mais il s'intéresse, après la mort de l'un de ses fils d'une leucémie, aux sciences du vivant et fonde un deuxième séminaire, centré sur la biologie cellulaire. Outre cette liberté de travail, il a été à trois reprises décoré de l'ordre de Lénine - la plus haute décoration en ex-URSS - sans jamais s'être investi politiquement. Ce qui fait dire à certains que lui-même ou ses travaux ont joué un rôle dans le programme nucléaire soviétique. D'ailleurs, précise M. Andler, "son approche des mathématiques était souvent inspirée par des problèmes issus de la physique théorique". L'une de ses grandes contributions est ainsi la théorie des représentations, appelée aussi analyse harmonique non commutative, qui intervient en théorie des nombres et en physique mathématique.
Ses pairs citent aussi au nombre de ses principaux travaux la théorie des anneaux normés, la création des ultradistributions... Ce sont en outre les outils mathématiques qu'il a contribué à développer qui permettent aujourd'hui la construction des images obtenues par scanner ou résonance magnétique nucléaire. Savant à la curiosité exubérante, il a aussi animé des travaux de neurophysiologie et de biomathématique à son arrivée à l'université Rutgers, en 1990. Il y avait transporté son légendaire séminaire moscovite et, malgré une pénible maladie de Parkinson, il a continué jusqu'à un âge extraordinairement avancé à faire des maths, publiant ses derniers articles en 2005.

Greenpeace готовит доклад о влиянии изменения климата на жизнь коренных народов Крайнего Севера. В основу работы легли данные, полученные в ходе экспедиций в июле и сентябре этого года на полуостров Ямал.

For 1,000 years the indigenous Nenets people have herded their reindeer along the Yamal peninsula. But their survival in this remote region of north-west Siberia is under serious threat from climate change as Russia's ancient permafrost melts.
It is one of the world's last great wildernesses, a 435-mile long peninsula of lakes and squelching tundra stretching deep into the Arctic Ocean. For 1,000 years the indigenous Nenets people have migrated along the Yamal peninsula. In summer they wander northwards, taking their reindeer with them, across a landscape of boggy ponds, rhododendron-like shrubs and wind-blasted birch trees. In winter they return southwards. But this remote region of north-west Siberia is now under heavy threat from global warming. Traditionally the Nenets travel across the frozen Ob River in November and set up camp in the southern forests around Nadym. These days, though, this annual winter pilgrimage is delayed. Last year the Nenets, together with many thousands of reindeer, had to wait until late December when the ice was finally thick enough to cross.
"Our reindeer were hungry. There wasn't enough pasture," Jakov Japtik, a Nenets reindeer herder, told the Guardian. "The snow is melting sooner, quicker and faster than before. In spring it's difficult for the reindeer to pull the sledges. They get tired," Japtik said, speaking in his camp 25kms from Yar-Sale, the capital of Russia's Arctic Yamal-Nenets district.
Herders say that the peninsula's weather is increasingly unpredictable - with unseasonal snowstorms when the reindeer give birth in May, and milder longer autumns. In winter temperatures used to go down to -50C. Now they are typically -30C, according to Japtik. "Obviously we prefer -30C. But the changes aren't good for the reindeer and ultimately what is good for the reindeer is good for us," he said, setting off on his sled to round up his itinerant reindeer herd.
Japtik lives on the tundra in a reindeer-skin tent or chum with his wife, mother, and three-year-old nephew Albert. There is also baby Pasha. The Japtiks live with three other families; the group has around 600 reindeer. The family slaughters a reindeer every couple of weeks, eating it raw and with pasta. They also catch fish - slicing off filets of sushi-like whitefish, taken from the thousands of virgin-lakes across the peninsula.
Here in one of the most remote parts of the planet there are clear signs the environment is under strain. Last year the Nenets arrived at a regular summer camping spot and discovered that half of their lake had disappeared. It had drained away after a landslide. While landslides can occur naturally, scientists say there is unmistakable evidence that Yamal's ancient permafrost is melting. The Nenets report other curious changes - fewer mosquitoes and a puzzling increase in gadflies.
"It's an indication of the global warming process, like the opening of the Arctic waters for shipping this summer," says Vladimir Tchouprov, Greenpeace Russia's energy unit head. The melting of Russia's permafrost could have catastrophic results for the world, Tchouprov says, by releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and the potent greenhouse gas methane, that was previously trapped in frozen soil.
Russia - the world's biggest country by geographical area - is already warming at one and a half times the rate of other parts of the world. If global temperatures do go up by the 4C many scientists fear, the impact on Russia would be disastrous. Much of Russia's northern region would be turned into impenetrable swamp. Houses in several Arctic towns are already badly subsiding.
Many Russians, however, are sceptical that climate change exists. Others rationalise that it might bring benefits to one of the world's coldest countries, freeing up a melting Arctic for oil and gas exploration, and extending the country's brief growing season. Russia's scientific community seems sceptical of global warming and the Kremlin doesn't appear to regard the issue as a major domestic problem; public awareness of climate change in Russia is lower than in any other European country.
Western politicians, however, point out that it is in Russia's interests to take action on climate change and to push for ambitious targets at December's Copenhagen summit. "There is 5,000 miles of railway track built on permafrost. It could crumble as a result of melting," Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for climate change, pointed out during a recent visit to Moscow.
However, even Russians working in the Arctic are unconvinced that their country faces a serious climate-change problem. "It's rubbish. It's invented. People who spend too long sitting at home have made up climate change," Alexander Chikmaryov, who runs a remote weather station on the Yamal peninsula, said, standing in his dilapidated station strewn with rusting engine parts and a broken-down wind turbine.
Chikmaryov lives in Marresale, an outpost on the Yamal peninsula's north-west coast overlooking the Kara Sea. A small community of Nenets hunters live nearby; otherwise there's nobody for a hundred kilometres. The weather here is, not surprisingly, bitterly cold; the sea freezes nine months of the year. The word Yamal means "end of the world" in Nenets language, and in Marresale you see why.
In fact, Chikmaryov's own data suggests that global warming is a real problem here too. In 2008 the ice was 164cm thick; this year it is 117cm. Winter temperatures have gone up too - from lows of -50C in 1914, when the station was founded, to -40C today. Every year large chunks of the coast on which the station is precariously perched fall into the sea. On the beach there is a jagged layer of thawing permafrost.
And there are other unnatural signs. On 15 August a large polar bear ambled into Marresale and started rooting through the station's rubbish bin. "It was 7pm. The bear was enormous. We set off a flare. It ran off," he recalled. Polar bear sightings are becoming increasingly common - with the bears apparently venturing south from their far-northern habitat in search of food. "They are an impudent lot. They aren't afraid of humans," Ludmilla says, gleefully recalling how one polar bear ripped the scalp from a Russian scientist living on Franz Josef Land.
Back on the tundra Japitik was rounding up his reindeer. Some were already back at the camp; their munching resembled the soft clicking of a thousand knitting needles. "I've lived all of my life in the tundra," he said. "The reindeer for us are everything - food, transport and accommodation. The only thing I hope is that we will be able to carry on with this life."

После усовершенствования реакторов РБМК на Курской АЭС (реактор такого же типа стоял на Чернобыльской АЭС) срок их службы был продлен на 15 лет. Газета Le Monde задается вопросом, достаточно ли этой модернизации для обеспечения безопасности?

Arpenter la ville de Kourtchatov, non loin de Koursk, c'est un peu voyager vers le Tchernobyl d'avant l'explosion. Avant que la ville voisine de Pripiat ne soit désertée par les hommes, envahie par les herbes folles et les arbres grêles, rongée par la radioactivité.
Comme sa sœur jumelle d'Ukraine, la centrale de Koursk dispose de quatre réacteurs de type RBMK, mais ceux-ci tournent à plein régime. Ce symbole de modernité a aussi poussé au milieu des plaines, tranchant avec les masures des paysans. L'opulence de cette cité (voitures de marque, supermarché bien approvisionné, confort des grands immeubles) fait écho à celle, défunte, de Pripiat. La statue d'Igor Kourtchatov (1903-1960), le père de l'atome soviétique, est fleurie.
Mais n'allez pas faire un parallèle entre les réacteurs de Koursk - et les sept autres encore en fonctionnement en Russie, à Sosnovy Bor et Smolensk - et ceux de Tchernobyl. "Il est incorrect de comparer les RBMK actuels à celui qui a explosé là-bas, assure Nicolaï Sorokine, le directeur de la centrale. Nous avons dépensé entre 200 et 250 millions de dollars par tranche pour les améliorer". Le système de pilotage de ce type de réacteur, capricieux par sa conception, a été totalement modifié.
Une visite dans les lieux, au détour de couloirs à la peinture trop fraîche, doit en convaincre : voici la salle de commandes, aux écrans aussi modernes qu'en France. Les barres qui stoppent la réaction en chaîne peuvent y être actionnées en 2,5 à 7 secondes, contre 12 à 18 auparavant.
Tout cela est-il suffisant pour assurer la sûreté ? Michel Chouha, de l'Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire français, a conduit une expertise internationale sur le réacteur n° 1. Rendues en 2004, "certaines recommandations ont été prises en compte", note-t-il. Mais, faute de suivi, il ignore si toutes l'ont été, et si elles ont bénéficié à tout le parc. Les deux premiers réacteurs de Koursk viennent d'être autorisés pour quinze ans de plus. Les n° 13 et 4 devraient suivre. La tranche 5, jamais achevée après l'accident de Tchernobyl, pourrait l'être en trois ans. Mais le budget manque.
Un seul RBMK fonctionne encore hors de Russie, en Lituanie. Tout juste rénové, il doit fermer le 31 décembre : c'était la condition imposée à Vilnius pour entrer dans l'Union européenne.

Поскольку американские "Шаттлы" выработали свой ресурс, российские "Союзы" и "Прогрессы" играют роль "такси" для экспедиций из разных стран. Россия также продолжает активно запускать спутники, планируются полеты беспилотных научных зондов. С 2005 года государство увеличило ассигнования Роскосмосу, но что будет в условиях экономического кризиса, пока неизвестно. Во всяком случае, ясно, что новые космические достижения значительного масштаба возможны лишь при международном сотрудничестве на принципиально новом уровне, отмечает Christian Science Monitor.

Moscow - For better or mirth, it has become one of those indelible images from space: Canadian circus billionaire Guy Laliberté floating around the International Space Station wearing a red clown nose.
The stunt earlier this month by the founder of Cirque du Soleil, who once performed as a fire breather, was intended to provide a moment of levity for his wife and children during a video linkup. But it also served a more serious purpose: to draw attention to the crusade for which he paid $35 million to journey into orbit - the need for clean water on Earth.
Mr. Laliberté is the seventh space tourist to be sent aloft on Russian rockets. His odyssey, now over, shows how much the Russian space program has evolved since the pioneering days of Sputnik a half century ago, when the country's technological prowess was both the envy - and vexation - of the West.
Though hardly the juggernaut it was at the height of the cold war, the Russian space program today is also not just a cosmic limousine for wealthy clowns. In recent years, it has become something of a taxicab for spacefaring nations around the world.
Earlier this month, no fewer than three Soyuz spacecraft were docked at the International Space Station (ISS). During the recent grounding of US space shuttles, both Soyuz and Progress missions were essential to keeping the ISS going. At the same time, the Russians remain active in the satellite launch business. "This year we will have 44 flights, which is more than we had last year, and we spend less per flight than the Americans do," says Alexander Vorobyov, press secretary of RosKosmos, showing a touch of the old Russian pride.
The Russians are keeping a hand in unmanned space exploration as well. Future plans include Luna-Glob, a much-delayed lunar probe that is now slated to go up in 2012. Phobos-Grunt, a return probe to gather rock and soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos, now scheduled for 2011 (it had been slated to take off this month). And there is the proposed Venera-D probe to map Venus, slated for 2016.
Rising budgets have undergirded this activity. Starting in 2005, the government increased outlays to RosKosmos as the economy stabilized and oil revenues increased during the Putin years. For 2009, the budget is still at that higher level of around $2.5 billion, though no one is sure this can be maintained if the economic crisis continues.
"The situation in our national space industry is extremely difficult, but we hope for better times," says Igor Lisov, a columnist with Novosti Kosmonavtiki, a leading Russian journal of space science. "We manage to sell some flights [space tourism], but this really doesn't bring in much income. We've begun making a good business lofting communications satellites, and our own work goes on."
It is true that the Russian program remains a hologram of what it once was. During Soviet times, the space program was funded on par with NASA. With the fall of the USSR, the rubles dried up. The 1990s, in fact, were marked by many humiliations. For example, one copy of the Buran space shuttle, the Soviet Union's answer to the US space shuttle, ended up as a children's attraction in Moscow's Gorky Park, where it still sits beside the Moscow River, gathering fungus and looking forlorn.
The Mir space station, one of the most successful and long-lived (15 years) Soviet-era projects, had to be supported by private contributions, and there was talk of selling it off, perhaps to be an orbiting TV studio. In 2001, it was finally brought down and dumped into the South Pacific. It was this period that saw RosKosmos turn to moneymaking schemes such as satellite launches and space tourism.
"Much has been lost to us already, after many years of catastrophic neglect, and a lot will have to be rebuilt from the ground up," says Mr. Lisov. "Our space industry still relies on the old personnel, and it does not offer the kind of salaries that would attract talented young people. That will need to change if the space program is to have a future."
Still, RosKosmos retains a lot of Soviet-era space assets, such as Baikonur (which is in Kazakhstan) and other space launch centers. Star City, near Moscow, is a very impressive complex for training cosmonauts and controlling missions. Talk remains active here about a successor to the ISS, new generations of Russian rockets - the new Angara family, supposedly coming soon - and even a manned mission to Mars. But no one thinks 20th century-style space achievements will be possible without a whole new level of international cooperation.

Насколько "жизнеспособна" российская наука?

On 2 October, 100 Russian researchers who permanently work abroad published a letter in the leading Moscow business newspaper Vedomosti complaining of "the disastrous situation in Russian basic research" reports Science and Radio Free Europe.
Official Russian statistics suggest that 25,000 scientists emigrated from Russia between 1989 and 2004, and another 30,000 went abroad under temporary contracts says the newswire service RIA Novosti. Independent reports estimate at least 80,000 emigrated in the early 1990s alone.
According to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's press office, Medvedev responded by initiating work on a plan for developing Russian science.
Both Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have called for increased science investment in the last year, triggered in part by the US stimulus bill which channeled billions of dollars to basic research.
Medvedev's visibility with science investment increased recently when he opened the Second International Nanotechnology Forum held in Moscow, which was attended by a number of government officials.
In his speech, Medvedev said that Russia had all the intellectual, organizational and financial resources necessary to become a leader in nanotechnology by investing $10.5 billion of government funding over the next few years to 2015.
Medvedev praised the university system suggesting that "they represent a genuine potential advantage" compared to international competitors.
He also stated that Russia needs to facilitate the return of researchers who fled the country and create favorable conditions for research, and expressed concern how Russia will train up the 100-150,000 workforce needed for nanotechnology.
"It is obvious that we need modern, informed, qualified professionals in this [nanotech] field, people who have been trained in the new programs... If the existing nomenclature of specializations does not provide the capabilities we need, then we simply need to change it and to prepare the sort of professionals that we do need," he said. "A shortage of personnel remains a serious barrier to Russia's serious engagement in nanotechnology."

В результате работы на Курилах двух научных экспедиций (первую организовал Институт морской геологии и геофизики ДВО РАН, вторая проводилась в рамках международного американско-российско-японского проекта "Курильский биокомплексный проект") ученым удалось отследить изменения на побережье Курильских островов после цунами и сопоставить параметры цунами 2006 и 2007 гг. с более древними событиями. Полученный материал позволил, в частности, оценить повторяемость цунами различной интенсивности в этом районе. Статья с результатами работы опубликована в ноябрьском номере журнала Geology.

(PhysOrg.com) - For the first time, a group of scientists working in the Kuril Islands off the east coast of Russia has documented the scope of tsunami-caused erosion and found that a wave can carry away far more sand and dirt than it deposits.
Tsunamis are among the most-devastating natural calamities. These earthquake-generated waves can quickly engulf low-lying land and bring widespread destruction and death. They can deposit sand and debris far inland from where they came ashore.
Now, for the first time, a group of scientists working in the Kuril Islands off the east coast of Russia has documented the scope of tsunami-caused erosion and found that a wave can carry away far more sand and dirt than it deposits.
The fortuitous observations resulted because the Kuril Biocomplexity Project had made detailed surveys of some Kuril Island coastlines during the summer of 2006, and then returned for additional work in the summers of 2007 and 2008. That provided a unique opportunity for before-and-after comparisons following a magnitude 8.3 earthquake and accompanying tsunami on Nov. 15, 2006, and an 8.1 quake and resulting tsunami on Jan. 13, 2007.
When the scientists revisited coastlines they had surveyed in 2006, they found that in some places the amount of sand and soil removed by tsunami erosion was nearly 50 times greater than the amount deposited.
"It was so extreme. I was really surprised," said Breanyn MacInnes, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences.
The team observed shorelines stripped of vegetation, small hills of soil and volcanic cinders washed away to expose boulders and, in one place, the unearthed rusty remnants of military equipment left behind at the end of World War II.
"We were there the year before and it had been completely covered with vegetation, and there were ridges closer to shore that had been completely removed when we returned," MacInnes said.
She is the lead author of a paper describing the observed differences in erosion and deposition, published in the November issue of the journal Geology. Co-authors are Joanne Bourgeois, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences and MacInnes' doctoral adviser, and Tatiana Pinegina and Ekaterina Kravchunovskaya of the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Marine Geology and Geophysics.
The Nov. 15, 2006, Kurils earthquake was large enough to raise alarms about the potential for a tsunami throughout the Pacific basin. Only very tiny waves were recorded on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, relatively near the Kurils. However, a tsunami nearly 6 feet high did more than $10 million damage to the harbor at Crescent City, Calif., some 4,500 miles away.
The Kurils themselves were hit by tsunami waves more than 70 feet high in some places, and changes in topography were dramatic.
The amount of erosion from a tsunami depends somewhat on the topography of the land, but definitely is related to the force of the wave, the scientists found. They noted that an area called South Bay on Matua Island lost about 50 cubic meters, or about 1,765 cubic feet, of sediment per meter of width, while an area called Ainu Bay lost an astounding 200 cubic meters, or about 7,060 cubic feet, of sediment per meter of width because of tsunami-induced erosion.
At a spot called Dushnaya Bay, where the tsunami was at a relatively low elevation at its greatest distance from shore, the biggest change occurred on the sandy beach, with about 5 cubic meters, or about 177 cubic feet, of sediment eroded per meter of width.
In other areas, relatively fine volcanic sand from the shore and much coarser volcanic cinders unearthed from ridges were deposited well inland, but the amount of sediment deposited was far less than the amount eroded, the researchers found. Some of the landscape scars will remain visible for decades, or even centuries, the scientists reported. For example, along Ainu Bay ridges were removed, depressions were scoured into the topography and a lake was breached and drained.
"One thing we really noticed was that anywhere there had been human disturbance, like the remnants of a military base or even just a fencepost, there was always some sort of blowout or deeper erosion," MacInnes said.
She noted that geologists have long considered erosion to be an important factor in studying tsunamis.
"There are a lot of papers that describe erosion but they can't really quantify it. Our study is the first to say, 'This much sand was removed from the coast,'" she said.
"This emphasizes that erosion is something to consider when assessing a community's risks and vulnerability."

Роскосмос подготовил проект пилотируемого корабля с ядерной энергоустановкой мегаваттного класса.

La Russie développe une fusée inhabitée fonctionnant grâce à des moteurs nucléaires, a déclaré mercredi le chef de l'Agence spatiale fédérale russe.
Le développement des systèmes d'énergie nucléaire pour des navettes inhabitées est crucial si la Russie veut maintenir sa position de leader dans l'industrie spatiale, a déclaré Anatoly Perminov lors d'une réunion de la commission présidentielle sur la modernisation de l'économie russe.
" Le projet a pour but de mettre en place des programmes d' exploration spatiale de grande échelle ", a indiqué M. Perminov, cité par l'agence de presse RIA Novosti. Il a précisé que le projet de conception de la navette sera fini d'ici 2012 et qu'au moins 17 milliards de roubles (plus de 580 millions de dollars américains) sont nécessaires pour plus de développement ces neuf prochaines années.
Les analystes pensent que le problème scientifique et technique à la base de l'envoi des missions inhabitées sur la lune et Mars est le développement de nouveaux systèmes de propulsion et de distribution d'énergie avec un degré élevé d'efficacité d'énergie de masse.

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