As most tyrants, Putin is attracted to flashy expensive projects allowing him to show off his greatness and power. Economic viability is not a big factor there, neither is the actual benefit vs. costs to the citizens - the only citizen whose opinion matters is Putin himself. This makes it attractive for some big projects - you only need to convince one person, and nothing else matters.
However Russia would not be a good place to do this, the level of corruption is astonishing and the number of local interests one will have to satiate would be enormous. And the manufacturing culture is not that great, which means most of things will need to be imported and assembly will have to be very tightly controlled, and even then screwups will happen a lot. So I would estimate the probability of success as very low.
BTW: I wasn't aware there was a "race". Who exactly is racing?
Comments
As most tyrants, Putin is attracted to flashy expensive projects allowing him to show off his greatness and power. Economic viability is not a big factor there, neither is the actual benefit vs. costs to the citizens - the only citizen whose opinion matters is Putin himself. This makes it attractive for some big projects - you only need to convince one person, and nothing else matters.
However Russia would not be a good place to do this, the level of corruption is astonishing and the number of local interests one will have to satiate would be enormous. And the manufacturing culture is not that great, which means most of things will need to be imported and assembly will have to be very tightly controlled, and even then screwups will happen a lot. So I would estimate the probability of success as very low.
BTW: I wasn't aware there was a "race". Who exactly is racing?