Russia Wants To Establish a Permanent Moon Base

An anonymous reader writes "Having established its presence in the Crimean Peninsula, Russia is now shooting for a bit loftier goal, a permanent Moon base. 'As reported by the Voice of Russia, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that establishing a permanent Moon base has become one of the country's top space priorities. "The moon is not an intermediate point in the [space] race, it is a separate, even a self-contained goal," Rogozin reportedly said. "It would hardly be rational to make some ten or twenty flights to the moon, and then wind it all up and fly to the Mars or some asteroids."'"

Comments

Fine..

[MickyTheIdiot]

...just don't let them put nuclear waste up there. You don't want it to rip itself out of orbit.

Re:Fine..

[stox]

That's what we said about 1984.

Re:Fine..

[khelms]

Yeah, darnit. Except for Obama being elected in 2008, we would have had a base on the moon in 1999!

Re:Fine..

[MightyMartian]

I'm waiting to blame Obama's successor for the lack of a 1999 moonbase.

There isn't enough rubles in Moscow

[rmdingler]

Good luck if the contractors are the ones who built roads and infrastructure for the Sochi Olympics.

Re:There isn't enough rubles in Moscow

[Runaway1956]

If Russians have the will to go to the moon, then they are miles ahead of us. The American people, and especially the American politicians, lack the will.

Perhaps you would like to debate the ultimate weapon now?

First infiltrate with masked astronauts

[Steve1952]

Is plan: 1: First infiltrate with masked astronauts without insignia. 2: Build government offices, and seize them. 3: Have popular vote 4: Profit!

Russia

[Kyusaku Natsume]

We can say anything about their government, but we can't say that they are not really ambitious.

Talk is cheap

[Brett Buck]

Every few years, one of the Russian aerospace companies presents a new "plan" to go to Mars, colonize the moon, teleport to the Sun (at night, of course), etc. All they need is a few billion or so to get it going. It's slightly more credible that that letter you got from the Nigerian prince.

        I expect that given many tens of billions of dollars, and a few decades, the Russians could manage to do most of these proposals, but there is no intent to actually do any of them aside from a neat-looking study.

Re:Talk is cheap

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Craft but not people.

Re:Talk is cheap

[thoth]

All these problems you attribute to NASA are actually congressional problems. NASA budgets are are the chopping block every year. The only way they get stuff passed is by distributing the work to every Congress member's districts. That's fucked up as you would expect, but we're a country that doesn't give a shit about funding science, paying scientists very well, or even listening to scientists. In fact there's a whole industry around discrediting climate scientists, since that threatens corporate profits, and a huge number of adults Americans don't believe in evolution. Entertainment and sports are the heroes and finance is where the big bucks are.

Annex?

[mbone]

Russia has no plans to annex the Moon. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty makes this legally impossible, and common sense shows that it could never (or, at least, not for a good long while) be enforced.

Re:Annex?

[Deadstick]

I'd put a lot more reliance in the difficulty and expense of the enterprise than I'd put in the Russians honoring treaties...

Re:Annex?

[Kierthos]

Yeah... you know, back when Ukraine broke off from Russia, they made a deal with Russia over Ukraine's nukes. Basically, when Ukraine declared independence, they had what amounted to the third largest nuclear stockpile in the world.

In exchange for turning over all their nukes to Russia, Russia agreed not to interfere with Ukraine's territorial integrity. (Translation: If you voluntarily turn over your nukes, we won't mess with your new country.)

Fast forward from then (1994) to now, and oh look, Russia ignored that treaty in seizing the Crimea region. So color me particular unwilling to believe that if Russia gets a moon base that they won't try and ignore that treaty if it suits them.

Re:Annex?

[CrimsonAvenger]

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty makes this legally impossible, and common sense shows that it could never (or, at least, not for a good long while) be enforced.

If they put a base there, and noone else can even go there, then they pretty much de facto own the moon.

It's not, after all, like anyone can do anything to stop them from doing whatever they like up there - noone else can even get to LEO reliably***.

***: the Chinese can get up there (once every couple years or so). And SpaceX Dragon is going to be undergoing man-rating tests later this year (proving that the escape mechanism works, among other things) and next year so that it can be man-rated. Once that happens, NASA won't be dependent on the Russians, they'll be dependent on SpaceX....

Re:So..

[homey of my owney]

No. Putin views things in black and white. Just like his pre-perestroika predecessors. He views this exactly as they viewed the race to the moon in the 60's. It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, but as any Russian will tell you - once KGB, always KGB

Sensationalism

[quantaman]

Russia doesn't want to establish a moon base, but they're obligated to step up and protect all the Russian speakers on the moon. Moreover the moon is historically Russian, not only did a recent referendum establish that 98.3% of the moon wants to join Russia, but the moon is so close that on a clear night you can actually see it from Moscow!!

better than wasting trillions on pointless wars

[Anonymous Coward]

What did US achieve with all that money and lives. It alienated us in the world stage and achieved nothing of value in the end. Ike was right:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Russia wants a lot of things.

[goodmanj]

Russia's manned space program basically consists of announcing plans to do amazing things, which come to nothing as they keeping on doing the same stuff they were doing in the 1980s. As opposed to the U.S. manned space program, which consists of making plans to get back to the stuff they were doing in the 1980s, which come to nothing.

(Unmanned is another story.)

Re:The guy is demented...

[rmdingler]

Bold, public, optimistic predictions are an historically cheaper way to fund nationalistic fervor than actual deeds and accomplishments.

Re:So..

[jamstar7]

It would appear that Tea Party Politics are a form of infectious disease, and it's spreading to Russia. Does anyone have the time to tell Capt.PutPut that the USSR, and the Space Race are over?

I dunno, from here, it looks like he's attempting a Soviet Reunion.

Hope he can get the original drummer when he 'gets the badn back together'...

Re:Propaganda much?

[FatLittleMonkey]

Ethnically, it wasn't Russian until the 1940's when Stalin deported (and murdered) a shitload of locals and trucked in Russian-speaking replacements.

Before that, it was no more Russian than India was "English".

Putin apologists are weird. Russia signed an explicitly unambigious agreement to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and existing borders. Putin violated that agreement. It's not complicated.