Russia isn't going to be in a position to afford to launch it's own satellites for a good long while in the future, and no one not in Russia would want to help them given the way they're currently acting as a government.
Plenty more money from pretty much anywhere else in the world to be had in terms of payloads, but in a practical sense I suspect it's a lot easier to launch US-based payloads then ones from overseas - shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.
> Shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.
While I certainly don't disagree, we're talking about a company who's business is shipping sensitive satellites into orbit, so they're probably better positioned to know how to undertake shipping them round the world than most people!
not true at all. I JUST spent several weeks in Russia, people will go out of their way to bring up Putin and be unhappy about him (at least to foreigners).
Compare this to the universal love and admiration for Obama in the US, and say, Stephen Harper in Canada... Because no one in the west is ever dissatisfied with anything politicians do.
There's poor in every country. Russians are certainly better off than they have been historically, and better off than neighbours like Ukraine (certainly before their 'revolution', and especially after).
Regardless, this is about sending things into space which isn't the realm of ordinary citizens, but governments. The Russian government certainly is flush with cash.
The financial markets certainly disagree with this assessment. The government's credit rating is dropping in free fall, and capital is fleeing the country.
The Russian "government" per se won't run out of money, since there is no clear border between public governance and corporate governance anyway. Essentially the state does what the oligarchs tell it to do, and everyone else does what the government tells them to do. If it weren't for the legendary corruption, this might actually be a powerful system...
In Russia there's not only "some poor". Health services are reported to be almost inaccessible without bribes, and people do behave as if a war or catastrophic inflation is coming.
I also think that Russia had a little something to do with the problems the Ukraine was having over the last few years. In a region renowned for corruption it is hard to tell if Janukowitsch and his friends robbed the country blind with or without outside help...
Plenty more money from pretty much anywhere else in the world to be had in terms of payloads, but in a practical sense I suspect it's a lot easier to launch US-based payloads then ones from overseas - shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.