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Russia Has Sights Set On Manned Moon Landing By 2030
New submitter techfun89 writes "Russia plans on sending cosmonauts to the moon as well as unmanned spacecraft to Mars, Jupiter and Venus by 2030. Considering the recent launch failures in Russia, these plans seem very ambitious. From the article: 'These ambitious spaceflight goals are laid out in a strategy document drawn up recently by Russia's Federal Space Agency (known as Roscosmos), the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Tuesday (March 13).
And there's more. Roscosmos wants a new rocket called Angara to become the nation's workhorse launch vehicle by 2020, replacing the venerable Soyuz and Proton rockets that have been carrying the load since the 1960s.'"
It will be good to finally get back to the moon. Can't wait to find out in what ways it's changed since the last time we visited.
The manned moon has its sights on landing in Russia by 2030.
never stopped Russia before
It's not a coincidence that newer Russian designs don't work. The "old guard" has retired. The new — immgirated. Just the other day international rankings came out for higher education. Not a single Russian school is on the list. That's what happens when you don't even pay starvation wages to your professors. Sooner or later they throw in the towel. It's a miracle things held together this long.
Given the scarcity of talented engineers, and the pitiful salaries Roscosmos pays to its staff, I'm kind of wondering how they expect to pull this off. They couldn't even do it when they had some of the best schools in the world (which regularly minted Nobel laureates), during the Soviet times, with essentially unlimited budget and manpower. Nowadays they can only build 20 year old rockets, and make minor improvements here and there. Put simply, after neglecting higher education for about a decade and a half, they've pissed away their technical capability to do anything they haven't already done before.
>Considering the recent launch failures in Russia, these plans seem very ambitious.
Not sure I see the relevance, seeing as:
Recent failures are a blip in a long run of reliability, and
They're going to be flying different rigs by 2030, anyway, which may be invincible, or every one may fail...
Not sure I see much point to it, though. Maybe Putin is working on national morale, or make-work, or kickbacks to someone.
except that they will actually go; as opposed to faking some film in the desert
If they hurry, they can get there before China.
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Well, I take some exception to that. The U.S. space program proved that no matter how dangerous the mission, there would always be volunteers. However, NASA (as far as we know) never forced men into capsules that they knew were doomed.
If I had a nickel for every time the Russians announced some ambitious program I could run my own space program. Let's see if any money actually gets allocated.
I recall seeing a show on the space race where the US boys were scheduled to have become the first men in space, but the launch was postponed for a week or so over safety concerns. In that time the Russians launched their own ship and beat the US to a man in space.
The United States called their space travelers astronauts ("star sailors" from the Greek), and it was 3 weeks later, on 5 May 1961, when Alan Shepard became the first one in space, launched on a suborbital mission Mercury-Redstone 3, in a spacecraft named Freedom 7.
From The Space Race.
While there are always volunteers to do things, they have a pretty decent record of only letting them do it if they feel it is safe enough.
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That's the popular version - and it's also very, very, wrong.
F1 engine development started in 1856 for example. At the time of Kennedy's speech, both the Apollo CSM and what would eventually become the Saturn V were already being developed as well. This is why he chose the Lunar Landing as a goal in the first place - it was a reachable scientific and engineering goal that was already quietly underway.
In 1995, their goal was the Moon by 2000, and Mars by 2015. In 2000, their goal was the Moon by 2010 and Mars by 2020. In 2010 their goal was the Moon by 2020 and Mars by 2030.... The Russians have a long history of bold powerpoint plans, and basically have never accomplished any of them.