Re:A roadmap to an industrially self-sufficient Mars base in...
by calgoo on Saturday May 13, 2017 @01:03PM
(#14331875)
I think the difference is that Russia has the resources to create the factories if they need too, its just a lot easier and cheaper to outsource it.
Re:A roadmap to an industrially self-sufficient Mars base in...
by jessriedel on Saturday May 13, 2017 @01:18PM
(#14331959)
Sure, but the point of this part of the blog post is that there is a minimum viable sizes for modern industrialized civilization, and it is bigger than Australia (pop. 24M), and probably even Russia (pop. 144M). Russian can't itself manufacture all products it needs simultaneously even if it could do it for any individual product.
Folks in this thread seem to have mistakenly interpreted this as a value judgement about Russia from the author. "Russia is sophisticated enough to produce any of these products!" is a retort to that claim, buts it's completely besides the point.
I know nothing about this industry, but looking only at that list it seems very possible to me that Russia is, for all intents and purposes, completely dependent on the global economy for semiconductor fab.