Slashdot Mirror
Russia To Establish Bases On the Moon
ananyo writes "Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has said that Russia will pursue extensive, long-lived operations at the Moon's surface. 'We're not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago,' Popovkin said, through a translator at the Global Space Exploration Conference in Washington DC. 'We're talking about establishing permanent bases.' The heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada and Russia, along with senior representatives from the space agencies of India and Japan were in Washington DC talking about the benefits of international collaboration. JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, also issued a clear pronouncement about targeting the Moon."
Just FYI, Russia is by definition part of of the First World.
By the original, Cold War definition, Russia/USSR was 2nd world.
1st World was US/NATO/allies. 2nd World was USSR/Warsaw Pact nations. 3rd World nations were everyone else.
This has now devolved into 1st world/3rd world, mainly based on economy.
The decommissioning work done to prepare the shuttles for museum display rendered them beyond any practical ability to return to service. Large parts of the internal structure were chopped out to remove contaminated fuel tanks, etc. It would likely be faster and cheaper to build a new shuttle than to try to fly one of the museum display orbiters again.
Add in the fact that the supply chain for things like external tanks and other shuttle parts was dismantled several years ago, and many of the specialized jigs and fixtures sold off for scrap.
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The rest of the story: Before the landers, the US had the first successful flyby of Venus with Mariner 3 in 1962 and the first successful flyby of Mars with Mariner 4 in 1964, ahead of the Russians in both cases. As for landers: Luna 9, first soft lander on the moon (Russian) -- landed Feb 3, 1966, operated for 8 hours on the moon, returned 3 series of TV pictures. Surveyor 1, first American soft lander on the moon -- landed June 2, 1966, returning 11,237 photos over 42 days of operations, continued to return engineering data until Jan 7, 1967, over 7months later. Mars 3, first soft lander on Mars (Russian), landed Dec 2, 1971, 14.5 seconds after landing communications from the lander permanently ceased, one partial image was transmitted containing nothing identifiable. Viking 1, first US soft lander on Mars -- landed Jul 20, 1976. Operated for over 6 years until Nov 11, 1982, returning several hundred photos along with life search and other science experiments. The Russians landed first and I commend them for it, but the US missions were vastly more productive; this information should always be included when the statements about who got there first are made.