"Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, it must be done." - Yes, Minister.
USSR economy was in decline. So they built Buran (copycat of Space Shuttle), and Tu-144 (copycat of Concorde). Both are extremely costly, and that helped USSR to fall sooner.
They tried launching satellites two months ago in their first ever rocket mission and it failed.
Something pretty routine for Russia, US and China and even heavily sanctioned Iran.
No they didn't. It simply a US company that flew a plane out of the US.
The failure had nothing to do with the UK.
As we all know doing something new requires immediate success or it isn’t worth pursuing.
When you fall off a horse, do you get back on? Personally I head straight home and refuse to even look at a horse ever again.