US to Scrap Delta IV Launch Vehicle in Favor of Russian-Made Rocket

Sacrificing national security for cost will cost America dearly in the future. NASA is already 99.9% dependent on Russia to go into space.

 

The use of the Delta IV space launch vehicle will be discontinued in favor of the Atlas V that uses the Russian made RD-180 rocket to launch US national security payloads into space, United Launch Alliance (ULA) President and Chief Executive Officer Tory Bruno said.

“Delta IV is entirely redundant to the Atlas V in terms of its performance,” Bruno stated in a US House Armed Services Committee hearing on space programs on Tuesday.

Russia breaks into top 5 world economies, displacing Germany

Russia has overtaken Germany as the fifth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, according to the latest World Bank ranking that measures 214 economies based on their 2012 GDP performance.

Russia’s oil and export driven economy is ranked fifth amongst the top ten economies in the world with $3.4 trillion in GDP. In 2011, Germany surpassed Russia in GDP with $3.227 trillion compared to Russia’s $3.203 trillion. In 2005, Russia was in eighth place.

Rank	Country	Purchasing Power Parity
1	United States	$15.6 trillion
2	China	$12.4 trillion
3	India	$4.8 trillion
4	Japan	$4.5 trillion
5	Russia	$3.4 trillion
6	Germany	$3.3 trillion
7	Brazil	$2.4 trillion
8	France	$2.4 trillion
9	United Kingdom	$2.3 trillion
10	Mexico	$2.0 trillion

The report was published last week in an annual ranking of GDP. The World Bank also updated their ranking of countries in terms of gross national product (GNP) per capita, grouping Russia in the ‘high income’ nation block, with individual yearly income of $12,616 or more.