Word: russia
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With a 360-ft.-high (110 m) steel flame swooping up from its roof, topped by a Jetsons-esque rocket, Moscow's Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics has opened again, after more than three years of expansion and renovation - one small step in Russia's effort to claim a more prominent place on the world stage by highlighting its past glory in space exploration...
...Indeed, as a new space race heats up - with China and India joining the U.S., Europe and Russia in the quest to be the first to build a moon base or put a man on Mars - Russia's government has done more than just revamp its space museum. In 2007, it founded Rosnanotekh, the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation; last year, the government announced tentative plans to abandon its current space base in Kazakhstan and build a new one in the Russian far east; and in March, it launched an effort to design a new moon rocket. (See pictures of animals...
...great hurdles stand in the way of Russia's realizing its space dreams: a collapsing public-education system and a brain drain that for decades has been siphoning off the country's highly trained engineers as they move to better-paying jobs in the West. It is this second issue that the museum aims to address. "We need our youth to become interested in space again," says Laveikin. "We need to develop a youthful corps of engineers and cosmonauts...
...Read: "Russia Moves to Ban Criticism of WWII...
...Others who are familiar with both papers disagree. "The social issues are decorative additions, but the document was not significantly revised," says the Carnegie Moscow Center's Petrov. "Even so, the idea of returning Russia to greatness [is now] less important in comparison to the economic crisis. In the end, in the middle of the crisis there is no real reason to formulate this strategy because no one knows what will happen between now and 2020." And although Russia remains on the offensive on many fronts - from nukes to energy and the Arctic - continuing negotiations with the U.S. may mean...