>And as an aside, isn't the Russian space program always "beleaguered"? a decade old story about one of the unsuccessful launches goes this way - "the salary w

>And as an aside, isn't the Russian space program always "beleaguered"? a decade old story about one of the unsuccessful launches goes this way - "the salary wasn't paid for several month, so not much work was done, once the launch date came within a month the government finally paid the salary and the satellite was built really fast, though some testing and some other things didn't really make it ..."