Yes it really is very unfortunate. But I think it isn’t only the situation in Russia. The worldwide economy still faces a lot of troubles, mostly because of that stupid dept crisis here in Europe. It’s completely off-topic but I think all this “we give you more money of you achieve your goals to tighten the government budget” (speaking of Greece, but applies to any country) isn’t working a bit. How much has this cost so far? I’m not only talking about direct payments, but what has been lost worldwide due to the recession? Seriously, if the IMF, ECB, etc would have said “well screw it, we won’t see the money anyway, fix your budget and you won’t have to repay everything” I guess the situation would have been a lot better by now…

/rant

I wonder if it would be possible to re-establish contact with the stage and get it to complete it’s firing? My first understanding was that they had fallen back to Earth but if they’re still in orbit it might be possible to save them.

It’s very unfortunate, however, that this failure had to happen, especially after so many months without a failure. It’s a sign of deteriorating conditions not only in the Russian aerospace industry but in the economy as a whole, they’re stagnating, and I wonder how much further the current regime can go.