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."
The current space exploration roadmap features the Moon as well, but in two different scenarios, one in which it's the first stop after LEO, and one in which we go to the asteroid fields first, then to the Moon. Since the roadmap is spearheaded by NASA, there may actually be a chance of this, provided the next president doesn't axe the budget further, since the roadmap deadlines are approaching (I seem to remember 2020 for a Moon/asteroid base, depending on the path chosen, but I may be wrong).
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
The rich are getting really creative hiding their money from the government now...
Nuclear waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side explodes in a catastrophic accident, knocking the Moon out of orbit and sending it and the Moonbase Alpha hurtling uncontrollably into space.
Yeah, the recent history (failed launches) by the Ruskies suggests they are suffering the same political/bureaucratic decay as NASA. In the early days the techies run the place because the suits haven't yet learned the buzzword to make people believe they understand enuf to run things. Same thing happens in private corporations. Organizations age just like people.
I'm sorry, you're comparing to who? NASA? Oh yeah, beacause NASA has a super flawless record...
That was one affair. Europe also lost spacecraft (Beagle Mars probe), and so did the US (Deep Space 2). Space exploration and rocketry is, by its very nature, a risky and failure-prone endeavour, hence the low and reluctant investment in the field.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
they still fund their space program? Uh I got nothing.
ACK
I would hope we could all work together to create a moonbase, sort of like the international space station. If all the countries who can, race to the moon as individuals, I'd expect there be a turfwar over the few areas that might have more value to a colony (like fighting over polar ice). It'd be a sad thing to expand the worst of our nature to the moon and make the sands of that distant void red with blood.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
That's no moon...
Popovkin went on to announce that Drax Industries has been awarded the tender for construction of the new shuttle fleet and moon base. He went on to note that Drax's recent announcement of a toxic orchid-farming operation in the Amazon jungle was pure coincidence, and by the way did anyone know of an orthodontist in Washington who knew how to work with steel?
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
It's perfectly natural for the head of a space agency to want to expand what his agency does.
Follow-up questions:
(1) Has the Russian government actually committed budget to the proposal?
(2) What does Russia expect to accomplish with its moon base?
Note that Russia has been talking about this for a while.
Well, they're pretty good at launching NASA astronauts. In fact, they're the only ones who even CAN.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
seriously, who's going to volunteer to live in a metal box on a barren rock with no women and no sex and a high risk of cancer due to all the cosmic rays?
In Soviet Russia, base moons you!
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
error prone
Their space program hasn't lost a single man since the early 70's. Can NASA say that?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
3 areas of concern as seen on the ISS
1) If you go full international everything will take 10 times as long and cost 10 times as much. That does NOT mean you should go isolationist. If the Americans want to drop a lab literally next door, thats OK, even if they want to share power and air thats OK. But you have to be firm about each item being owned and responsible by precisely one nation (or at most a very small group) and you cannot make the whole project or even subprojects depend on that one nation's work. If the Germans want to land a really cool telescope and click it into position next to the base like a lego block, fine. But if you need a full UN treaty to launch some oxygen tanks then you're completely F'd as those guys are utterly ineffective.
2) Permanent as in ongoing perpetual expansion like a stereotypical overseas military base, or permanent as in we've not decided when to abandon ship yet? The danger of not being in perpetual expansion mode is you'll probably end up like the ISS, in construction for 99% of its lifetime and the week after the last bolt is tightened, its time to deorbit and give up. Permanent as in we intend to expand or improve this base to the tune of $1B/yr in perpetuity is a pretty good idea. Project management with a defined yet nebulous end date after which its managerially abandonded is a great idea for making "a" disposable rocket engine. Its a terrible idea for an entire base, or a station, or even a vehicle program.
3) Please don't do the space shuttle and ISS thing of promising everything to everyone for free and instantly, and then scaling back until its a miserable failure compared to its original goals. So the ISS could hold 24 crew. OK, lets build everything to the assumption that the hotel labor load will be 2 people working full time, thats less than 10% of the crew changing air filters and gaskets or unclogging toilets or whatever the hotel load is on a station. Whoops we're imploding the crew size to 6, now a minimum of 1/3 of the on-orbit time is spent maintaining the station. Whoops. Suddenly a station where most of the people do scientific research turns into an aerospace version of "this old house". Whoops.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It was the devastated by war Soviet Union that launched the first satellite, the first man, the first space station, has the record for longest space presence AND is right now the only country of launching humans into space...
They were the first when they were poor and are the only now they are poor again. Something tells me that having a rich street full of day traders does not have much impact on a nations capacity to venture into space. It really isn't all that expensive either if you don't fluff you budget with pork.
Can Russia do it (again)? No idea, but being a backward 3rd world nation sure didn't stop them before. And the west is currently begging to use that 3rd world nations tech. And it is not Russia that right now is bankrupting itself with insane military spending.
The tech for setting up a moonbase exist, all it takes right now is will power. And in many ways, going into space is a lot easier then fixing the economy, or getting the banks under control etc etc. It is hard but managable task that more or less requires a leader who tells the rocket scientist to do it, and give them food, shelter and materials. Russian scientists are not spoiled, they farm their own food and launch rockets.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yeah, their space program is such a joke. All they did was put the first satellite in space, first orbit, first man and woman in space, first space station, first probes on Venus and Mars--in fact, pretty much every space "first" except man on the moon. And they're currently the only country in the world capable of even putting a man in orbit. Ha, ha, what a joke! Let's all laugh at them!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Obama? What's he got to do with it?
NASA's funding situation has been problematic for decades. W and the Republican led Congress flushed nearly $1T down the toilet from 2002 through 2008 in Iraq; NASA's funding is a fraction of that. Imagine what we might have done if that money had been given to NASA instead.
Oh, you're trolling. Never mind. Go crawl back under your bridge.
It'd be a sad thing to expand the worst of our nature to the moon and make the sands of that distant void red with blood.
Yeah, reserve that for Mars, which is named after a war god and conveniently already is red. :-)
Russia has something like 3x more manned spaceflight missions, and at least 3x more space stations than any other country. Hell, the ISS's primary module during it's infancy was quite literally MIR 2. They just had a spare space station lying around and decided to repurpose it.
It's also worth noting, that when China ramped up their manned spaceflight program, they modeled their space capsule after the diving-bell style Soyuz capsule, not the conical Mercury/Gemini/Apollo style that the US uses. There's something to be said for that.
Russia might have one of the worst income gaps in the world, but their space program is world class.
moox. for a new generation.
that why the USA needs to race back to the moon and build a fort around it maned by space marines.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
At one time, US used to be the lead in grand endeavors, but laziness, political infighting, and lack of true leadership has paralyzed the American will.
I hope to live long enough to see America return
As an American I wish the Russians luck and hope they actually do this and succeed. I hope that if they successfully do this it may motivate the powers-that-be over here to emphasize science a little more than they have been. And even if America doesn't take the hint and start emphasizing science again it would be a freaking moon base! :) That is neat no matter who is doing it.
Someone's been reading Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon.
Time's fun when you're having flies. - Kermit the Frog
That's right!
If they were serious they would certainly start by having some whalers on the moon!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
That the Germans have outsourced the job to Russia to complete Operation Iron Sky?
Yeah, their space program is such a joke. All they did was put the first satellite in space, first orbit, first man and woman in space, first space station, first probes on Venus and Mars--in fact, pretty much every space "first" except man on the moon. And they're currently the only country in the world capable of even putting a man in orbit. Ha, ha, what a joke! Let's all laugh at them!
And the Italians used to rule most of Europe and the Middle East. Your point?
Russia's space program hasn't done anything but produce small incremental improvements on *Soviet* technology. Technology built by a country under the auspices of its military that *no longer exists*. Technology built using quantities of labor and resources that are no longer available to it.
If you believe for an instant that the current space program in Russia could do something like this, you're completely ignorant of the reality of the existing space program in Russia or its history. (You'd be equally ignorant if you thought NASA could do it either -- it couldn't... not even close. Technical ability has no bearing on the political or economic realities of a program like that.)
There are 113 launches in below list and 45 of them are since 1992.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_manned_space_missions
BTW. Do you remember that at a specific long period, Mir space station was the only human residence in space?
To be fair, China also currently can put a human in orbit.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
How many people have the russians put in space since the 1970s compared to NASA? Not many! The shuttle had something like 140 launches and each one could carry up to 7 people. There have been 26 soyuz launches and each capsule takes up to 3.
No idea where you got that 26 figure from but since 1981 there have been 135 shuttle launches and 74 soyuz launches, 2 shuttles lost and 0 soyuz lost...
"I don't think people here are that gullible to believe that's Obama's fault given that the plan to kill the shuttle program pre-dated Obama"
So you're saying he didn't have the executive authority to halt that plan? No, sorry, doesn't wash. As far as I'm concerned he's just continued the backwards looking short sighted policies of Bush in this regard.
"If you wan't to blame Obama for something legitimate blame him for pushing NASA to become more dependent on the private space industry"
That too.
Halt it and do what? The aging shuttle fleet was ridiculously expensive to maintain and the economy was losing millions of jobs per quarter at the time when he came into office. Where is the money supposed to come from? Maybe you could cough up the funds no? The Airforce has their mini shuttle that is doing them well and for everything else the spaceX and others will be a whole lot cheaper and therefore the size of the federal government has been reduced. People have been screaming to reduce the size of the federal gubmint so now the massive scale of the launch program has been reduced and now people bitch that its reduced. just wow.
If all the countries who can, race to the moon as individuals, I'd expect there be a turfwar over the few areas that might have more value to a colony (like fighting over polar ice). It'd be a sad thing to expand the worst of our nature to the moon and make the sands of that distant void red with blood.
Doubtful. The moon is a pretty big place. If we did actually establish separate bases up there, it's more likely the groups would cooperate a bit on their own. They're off in the middle of nowhere trying to survive in a place that could kill you in a second. Deliberately damaging anyone's equipment could easily kill off everyone. Turf wars are something you'd expect when there's a lot more infrastructure in place and specialized "security" people present who will obey inane kill orders from their host country.
NASA is still doing outstanding science with amazing teams. Just because the shuttles and ISS are a bit of a debacle hardly means NASA is in 'decay'. Please stop spreading this nonsense.
Current missions:
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html
Future missions:
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html
Look at all that political decay.
Is this satire? I can't be sure.
Only 4 missions currently planned for the future ...
(Interestingly, where is JWST?)
The current missions looks impressive, until you discount "Hurricanes" and "Ice Bridge", etc. which aren't space missions in themselves, and Juno, which I believe is gone ...
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
"Halt it and do what? The aging shuttle fleet was ridiculously expensive to maintain"
Any space system is highly expensive to maintain. With that price came flexibility. Name me any other system that could have brought a satellite DOWN from orbit not to mention allowing on the spot repairs.
"Where is the money supposed to come from?"
Oh I dunno, how about some of the billions still being spent in afghanistan. When is the US going to pull out again?
Why would Russia need a permanent moon base? I could understand if Singapore want some more elbow room, but Russia already has more cold, isolated, and desolate real estate than any other country.
If Obama (for some reason we blame NASA, but put the blame on your hero) didn't cut NASA we could be talking this as well. What I find a shame are those welfare scum who take money away from projects such as these because they refuse to work. The so called poor today are just lazy thugs.
Try paring down the Defense budget first and see how much money is there for NASA. The poor make a convenient target, especially for those with no compassion or concept of what creates poverty. But if you look at actual entitlements and Keynesian make-work projects, our defense industry tops the list.
. . . with the World Economies in Decline . . . the Moon stands out as the next Emerging Market!
. . . invest now! The Moon Economy will soon leave all the World Economies in the dust . . . !
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
If all the countries who can, race to the moon as individuals, I'd expect there be a turfwar over the few areas that might have more value to a colony (like fighting over polar ice). It'd be a sad thing to expand the worst of our nature to the moon and make the sands of that distant void red with blood.
Doubtful. The moon is a pretty big place. If we did actually establish separate bases up there, it's more likely the groups would cooperate a bit on their own. They're off in the middle of nowhere trying to survive in a place that could kill you in a second. Deliberately damaging anyone's equipment could easily kill off everyone. Turf wars are something you'd expect when there's a lot more infrastructure in place and specialized "security" people present who will obey inane kill orders from their host country.
Sounds like Antarctica.
Oh yes, because it's real easy to cover up a Soyuz launch (which sets off every launch detector in the U.S.) and pretend it never happened. Both the Soviet and Russian space programs are well documented at this point, and only a conspiracy theory nutball thinks they somehow killed tons of cosmonauts and then disappeared them not only from all the reams of documentation that became public after the fall of the USSR, but also from the memories of dozens of engineers and cosmonauts who have provided extensive oral histories of the program in subsequent decades.
Of course, there are still nutcases who think that NASA never landed on the moon and are hiding little green men at Groom Lake, so you're in plenty of crazy company.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
exactly right, and in fact, the only thing that has kept the soviet, er, russian space program alive thus far was a decision by the Clinton administration in the post cold war era to allow US companies to launch their spacecraft on non US launch vehicles and to make space station Freedom (remember that?) into the ISS with the US paying Russia provide flights to it
And they're currently the only country in the world capable of even putting a man in orbit.
China says "Hello"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
A close analogue. Moon bases would likely be staffed by civilian scientists and engineers. They're not exactly the warrior types. If you phoned down to McMurdo and told them sneak onto the French base and plant some seismic charges on their power generator, I think the response would be something like: Go fuck yourself.
One of those "future" missions is just sending another crew to the ISS to spin around in LEO for a while doing not much at a steep price.
One is just Landsat redux also not leaving LEO.
The third one is studying the Van Allen belts which isn't exactly going where no one has gone before.
MAVEN is the only mission that actually involves leaving Earth orbit.
@de_machina