Russia Pledges To Go To the Moon

An anonymous reader writes: Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, has announced it intends to bring humans to the Moon by roughly 2030. Russia plans a full-scale exploration of the Moon's surface. Agency head Oleg Ostapenko said that by the end of the next decade, "based on the results of lunar surface exploration by unmanned space probes, we will designate [the] most promising places for lunar expeditions and lunar bases.

Comments

I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Vladimir Putin isn't man enough to leave next month and travel to the moon, then plant the Russian flag on the surface of it.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an Invasion.
It's a humanitarian effort to bring supplies to the lunies.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Nidi62]

I bet Vladimir Putin isn't man enough to leave next month and travel to the moon, then plant the Russian flag on the surface of it.

Wouldn't work. When they show the picture of him planting that flag on the moon while not wearing a shirt everyone will know it was photoshopped.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[NotDrWho]

He would go, but all the extra Soyuz seats are currently occupied by American astronauts.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[GameboyRMH]

Well now he has to do it. And you know he's gonna do it shirtless.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[macson_g]

He would need a special space suit with transparent upper section.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[thieh]

Perhaps the time between now to 2030 is to develop technology that will let him go essentially/almost shirtless on the moon. Maybe some spray-on or something. I mean they have technology to go to space, what else is stopping them to go right now?

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[SpzToid]

...[U.S. astronauts] who pay for their seats using United States dollars. Many millions of U.S. dollars actually. (Of course these seats were probably agreed to under some form of contract well before the spectacular and glorious Sochi Olympics started).

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[meta-monkey]

Incorrect. Putin would plant the flag, on the moon, shirtless, and the moon would explode from exposure to his supreme manliness.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[gstoddart]

LOL ... since when did Putin replace Chuck Norris for that meme?

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[qwijibo]

In Putin's Russia, Chuck Norris copied him.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Luckyo]

Considering the sheer amount of failures of Apollo program before its eventual success, all while program itself was consuming a gargantuan ~5% of US GDP at the time, I would wager this isn't a one month project. Especially when you consider that baseline space technology like rocket engines hasn't seen much development since 70s.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[BringsApples]

I mean they have technology to go to space, what else is stopping them to go right now?

It's a good question, one of which everyone would probably have their own answer, all of which could be refuted by many others. It's almost as if this question isn't supposed to be asked without meeting friction.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[ArcadeMan]

Chuck Norris doesn't need a stinkin' rocket to go to the moon, he just jumps.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[MiniMike]

They have workable spaceship technology now- the delay ("by 2030") is to allow for research into transparent spacesuits for Putin and the bear he will ride while planting the flag.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[pushing-robot]

sorry guys watched iron sky with vlad now hes raving about moon nazis gtg my bad

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[The Grim Reefer]

Chuck Norris doesn't need a stinkin' rocket to go to the moon, he just jumps.

Chuck Norris doesn't jump to the moon. The landing would knock it out of orbit. He simply points at the ground and the universe shifts around him by 385,000 km (give or take).

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

3 memes, 1 post....nice.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[slashtivus]

NASA peaked at 4.41% of federal budget in 1966. That is nowhere near ~5% of GDP. Also what other than Apollo 1 disaster are you referring to as "sheer amount of failures"? It was overwhelmingly successful by most any reasonable assessment.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[schlachter]

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, has announced it intends to bring humans to the Moon by roughly 2030

In the USA, Astronauts WENT to the moon, but in Putin Russia, humans are BROUGHT to the moon.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[NeverVotedBush]

Wonder if there are bears up there he can wrestle?

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[TWX]

Given that Yuri Gagarin didn't pilot his craft when he was the first man in space, and at the time the consensus was that records for achievment in flight required the occupant to be the operator/pilot, your statement is more accurate than you probably realized.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[TWX]

Yes, but Who's on first?

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[davester666]

by 2040, they plan to have a mission to bring humans to the moon and then return them back to earth, possibly alive for the entire process.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the sheer amount of failures of Apollo program before its eventual success, all while program itself was consuming a gargantuan ~5% of US GDP at the time, I would wager this isn't a one month project. Especially when you consider that baseline space technology like rocket engines hasn't seen much development since 70s.

let us instead consider the sheer amount of failures in your post. atlas rockets are still in continual development.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Luckyo]

"Continual development" without "replacement" for that long of a time tells you everything you need to know about how little development there has been in rocket engine technology.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Luckyo]

It was in the end. But like the most successful space projects, it required a massive amount of failures to succeed. In space exploration, success generally rides on tens, in some cases hundreds of failures. It's part of that particular field.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[avgjoe62]

Putin. And he's on second. And third. And he's playing in left field. And center field. And right field. And he's the catcher. And the pitcher. Medvedev was the shortstop, but when he missed a ground ball he was replaced by Putin.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[Cyberax]

It's incorrect. The first Vostok capsule had a lockout requiring Gagarin to enter a code to unlock the controls, because nobody was sure that humans in space won't go mad. As another precaution, the capsule was on a fast-decaying orbit. Fortunately, Gagarin felt just fine and unlocked the controls.

Re:I bet Putin couldn't go to the moon

[MrKaos]

Chuck Norris doesn't need a stinkin' rocket to go to the moon, he just jumps.

Chuck Norris doesn't jump to the moon. The landing would knock it out of orbit. He simply points at the ground and the universe shifts around him by 385,000 km (give or take).

Actually "The Moon" is Chuck Norris mooning the whole earth. That's why it is called "The Moon", no other mooning comes close.

Most promising places

[i kan reed]

It's odd. We just checked, but there's some kind of large metallic object and a flagpole blocking the best few candidate positions.

Re:Most promising places

[NotDrWho]

Don't worry, those are just props.

Re:Most promising places

[halivar]

There have been so few because, as it turns out, the moon is a terribly uninteresting place with really annoying dust.

Re:Most promising places

[i kan reed]

I'm glad people like you exist.

No matter how unthinking and stupid I am sometimes, I will never, ever, ever say something as dumb as this argument is right now.

Re:Most promising places

[Anonymous Coward]

Empirical proof, absolutely. "Proof" that someone of your mental caliber would accept? Nope.

Re:Most promising places

[master_kaos]

Can you present proof that no one hasn't? Your the one arguing against the norm.

Re:Most promising places

[i kan reed]

Yes. It won't matter though.

Here's a couple hundred pieces of evidence.

But that's not what you said.

What you said that was particularly dumb is the fact that no one is currently doing X is somehow evidence X never happened.

Re:Most promising places

[Thanshin]

I agree. And I'm also starting to think it's not even made of cheese.

I mean, come on! We saw no rats in any of the videos! Are they trying to convince us it's some kind of magical cheese that rats dislike? It simply makes no sense.

Re:Most promising places

[BringsApples]

Can you present proof that no one hasn't?

That sounds like you're trying to trick Pinocchio into lying.

Re:Most promising places

[damien_kane]

I mean, come on! We saw no rats in any of the videos! Are they trying to convince us it's some kind of magical cheese that rats dislike? It simply makes no sense.

The rats were all hanging out with Chewbacca

Re:Most promising places

[sudon't]

There have been 29 Moon landings. Six manned, twenty-three unmanned. The US hasn't gone since then because, it's fucking expensive, and the pissing war with the Soviets ended. But even if they flew your dumb ass to the Moon and rubbed your face into one of the many footprints on the surface, you'd think up some convoluted way that they must of faked it.

Re:Most promising places

[Jane Q. Public]

There have been so few because, as it turns out, the moon is a terribly uninteresting place with really annoying dust.

"Terribly uninteresting"? How quaint.

The moon is the single best opportunity for the expansion of space exploration.

Guess what? Rockets large enough to send out to the asteroid belt with people in them, as a practical matter, are too damned big to launch from Earth. Did I hear "build them in orbit"? Nope. Too difficult, slow, and expensive. At our current level of technology you really need gravity to do practical construction on a very large scale. 1/6 the gravity? Perfect! Rockets built there don't have to be very large at all.

The moon has vast natural resources; they merely need to be extracted from the rock. Oxygen is one of them. There is also a surprising amount of fissionable material available. So... given some initial energy and material input, you can probably have sustained output, without too much "resupply" coming from Earth. And while energy requirements of a colony might be high, there are vast amounts of solar energy available, and plenty of silicon and trace elements to make solar cells.

Etc., etc. Our current U.S. government administration might be clueless about these things, but in the long run, the moon is our greatest hope for the future.

Re:Most promising places

[itzly]

So your plan is to use the moon as a base to explore the terribly uninteresting asteroid belt ?

Re:Most promising places

[Immerman]

Even better - I'll let you collect your own: Get a nice powerful telescope and look at the moon, specifically the site of the "alleged" landing. See the flag? See the footprints? See the remnants of the landing module? If we didn't go to the moon that suggests that either:
1) Robotic technology of the time was far in excess of anything the public knew about, and we landed robots on the moon to walk around with a human-like gait
or
2) Those sneaky consipirators have managed to hack the lenses of every sufficiently powerful telescope on the planet to overlay a faked landing sight image when pointed at a specific point on the moon's surface.

Honestly I don't understand the popularity of this particular conspiracy theory - getting to the moon is basically pretty simple - shove a giant bottle rocket up your ass and hold on tight. Even factoring in the fact that you have to take a second bottle rocket with you to ride back home on it's not all that technologically impressive - by the time of the moon landing we already had pretty well worked out the engineering for making giant fucking rockets to rapidly deliver massively heavy bombs anywhere on the planet, and had used said rockets to deliver people to orbit and bring them down again, alive even. That's the hard part - energetially speaking once you've made it to orbit the moon is a lot closer than the Earth. You need to carry more rockets with you, but the only truly challenging engineering problem remaining is the whole vertical landing issue, and that's a far easier nut to crack on the moon than on Earth, thanks to the moon's much lower gravity and complete lack of crosswinds.

Re:Most promising places

[Immerman]

Yes. Surely if they had landed there would be some evidence on the moon - footprints, the remnants of a landing module, maybe even a flag some bozo planted in the ground, and anyone who wanted to rent time on a sufficiently powerful telescope could look at the moon and see them for themselves.

Re:Most promising places

[50000BTU_barbecue]

I think WWII never happened. You have proof that half the world fought each other with jet engines and nuclear bombs when ten years prior most people didn't even have running water or electricity in their homes and still used horse?

Re:Most promising places

[richlv]

"must have". like. seriously. how the fuck did you guys get to the fucking moon with that spelling? (yes, i'm assuming you are american)

Re:Most promising places

[Livius]

There was rocket technology to reach the moon in the 1960s, but cinematographic technology to fake the moon landing was not available until the 1970s.

And another hoax will be borne!

[Flavianoep]

Only now they have enough tech to stage a faux moon landing! :-P

Because that makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, the USSR is back! Going to the moon while the economy is crumbling, foreign countries are invaded and human rights are being trampled.

Re:Because that makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes perfect sense. Toss a couple projectiles out of the moon's gravity well at Earth, and who needs nukes. Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" does have accurate physics in that regard.

The moon is the ultimate high ground, which is why Russia and China want to go there so badly. One Kessler Syndrome later, and they will be the only ones there for centuries.

Re:Because that makes sense

[NotDrWho]

Going to the moon while the economy is crumbling, foreign countries are invaded and human rights are being trampled.

Are you talking about the U.S. or Russia?

Re:Because that makes sense

[TheCreeep]

Going to the moon while the economy is crumbling, foreign countries are invaded and human rights are being trampled.

Are you talking about the U.S. or Russia?

Russia, obviously.
The US is not going to the moon anytime soon with NASA's budget.

Re:Because that makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you talking about the U.S. or Russia?

Yes

Re:Because that makes sense

[tehcyder]

The vast majority of people on slashdot are in effect upper-middle class white boys. Even if they're black working class lesbians.

Re:Because that makes sense

[ColdWetDog]

If you really want some good high ground, park your weapon at a Lagrange point.

You can't do that - the TV transmitters are there!

Re:Because that makes sense

[MightyMartian]

Isn't it amazing? An economy fueled by little more than energy exports, a population still in decline, an economic war with a bloc of nations whose GDP in a bad year dwarfs its own by almost an order of a magnitude... and yup, it's going to enter the moon race.

Re:Because that makes sense

[camperdave]

Are there enough rocks at the Lagrange points? The thing about the moon is that you've got plenty of rocks to throw.

Re:Because that makes sense

[camperdave]

By the time NASA arrives on the moon, its astronauts would be able to get chow mein, vodka, AND tandoori chicken from the locals.

Re:Because that makes sense

[Immerman]

>The ultimate high ground is certainly not the moon. Anything you lob at the Earth from there must first get out of the lunar gravity well, which would require a pretty significant expenditure of fuel.

Not really - the moon's gravity well is radically shallower than the Earth's, far shallower than the difference in surface gravity would suggest (the moon's surface is far closer to it's center, and thus gravity falls off far faster with altitude.) I can't be bothered to do the math, but if xkcd is to be believed the energy to launch a given rock from the moon launch would be about 20x lower than from Earth. Meanwhile that rock would have 20x more kinetic energy when it slammed into Earth than if it were being slammed into the moon.

More to the point the Moon offers shelter, concealment, an essentially unlimited supply of rocks to throw, and plenty of nuclear fuel as a root energy source. High ground involves more than just altitude after all - there's a world of difference between "having the high ground" and "being treed". If you're in open space you're pretty much treed - everyone can se *exactly* where you are, and you have no resources except those you tak with you.

As for lauching from the far side of the moon, that would probably be wise if you wanted to take your victims by surprise, and if you want to hit something specific you'll have to precisely navigate the non-trivial gravitational field of a binary planet regardless of where the launch point is, circling half way around the moon isn't going to make things that much more difficult when you're trying to throw a dart and hit a bulls-eye hundreds of thousands of km away across a constantly shifting gravitational landscape.

But then again, why would you need to take them by surprise? What good does it do to get a few hours warning that a city is about to be reduced to a smoking crater? You can't even begin to evacuate in that amount of time. At best you could try to intercept the incoming projectile with a high yield missile, presumably nuclear - in which case if you were successful then instead of vaporizing the city you end up covering the state with radioactive buck shot - after all blowing up an projectile doesn't significantly change it's trajectory. Plus that interceptor was probably a hell of a lot more expensive to build and launch than the rock it hit. Now multiply that by the fact that it's 20x cheaper to throw a rock at the Earth from the Moon than vice versa, and you get 20x the yield on impact, and the Moon has a 400x gravitational force multiplier on it's side. For every rock we could throw at them they could throw 400 smaller rocks back, each of which would do just as much damage as ours.

And of course they would have every bit as much warning as us about incoming projectiles crossing the 385,000km void - launch a missile at the moon and they can launch a cloud of gravel to intercept and destroy it. Make it heavy gravel and the interception doubles as a counterstrike.

Re:Because that makes sense

[ToddInSF]

Then i makes sense to wait !

Mmm, tandoori chicken !

Re:Because that makes sense

[Duhavid]

"after all blowing up an projectile doesn't significantly change it's trajectory"

Or it's mass/kinetic energy.
That is what bothers me about some of the "Asteroid about to hit Earth" movies.
10^32 grams of rock or 10^32 grams of dust, probably not going to make a large difference in the damage below.

Re:Because that makes sense

[Immerman]

Yeah - when I get roped into watching one of those I try to subtly reinterpret them as blowing up the asteroid while it's still well away from Earth, rather than minutes before impact, so that even though the Earth still passes directly through the center of mass most of the material passes to one side or another.

Of course the countdown clock becomes a lot less dramatic that way - At best it's counting down to the moment when blowing up the asteroid will do more harm than good, and a few hours either way is unlikely to significantly alter the damage inflicted to Earth.

On the other hand dust is unlikely to be a major problem - so long as you can break the thing into bits small enough that they'll burn up in the atmosphere you'll likely reduce the damage considerably. You may still have firestorms and all sorts of freaky weather effects to deal with, but you won't have impact damage or the resulting massive clouds of terrestial dust thrown up into the atmosphere - and those clouds are the likely culprits for an extinction event.

Unless you're talking 10^32 grams of course - that's 100x more massive than Jupiter, or a tenth the mass of our sun. Massive enough that it's almost certainly a star in its own right and would incinerate the Earth long before impact. Heck, even if it crossed our orbit on the opposite side of the sun the gravitational disruption would likely permanently alter the orbits of every planet in the solar system, quite likely causing massive extinction event due to the resulting change in solar illuminance, even if it weren't bright enough to do much damage directly. Plus there's the fact that it would scramble the orbits of all the asteroids as well, including those far beyond neptune's orbit, potentially resulting in a drastic increase in asteroid impacts for the next several millenia, at least.

Re:Because that makes sense

[Duhavid]

I pulled a number out of thin air. It had to be a bad one, eh?

But about dust, if you had the mass equivalent of a moderate asteroid in dust, I'm not sure it all would burn up in the atmosphere.
And if it did, how much heat would that transfer to the earth ( as a system ). I don't know that the difference would be appreciable by us.

Re:Because that makes sense

[Immerman]

I figured, but the scenario was too good to pass up a comment on.

Well, Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event) says an impact from an asteroid a few kilometers in diameter could release the equivalent energy of several million nuclear weapons, though they fail to mention whether they're talking "Little Boys" or "Tsar Bombas", which offer several orders of magnitude difference. I'm guessing Fat Mans, as that's more typical of the size of weapon that's actually been used. That still sounds like a lot, but an average-sized hurricane expends about a million times that every day. So assuming the dust cloud were big enough to be spread across most of the facing hemisphere I imagine we'd get some really dramatic weather that day as several hurricane-days worth of energy was dumped into the atmosphere in a matter of moments, but without impacts or air-bursts from large meteors we'd probably avoid any really catastrophic effects.

Lil' Putin

[Anonymous Coward]

Vladimir Putin: I wanna invade the United States!
Advisor: Your majesty, that is most unwise at this point in time. I think you ...
Vladimir Putin: Then I wanna invade Georgia!
Adviser: Your majesty, as you recall we tried that already and ...
Vladimir Putin: Then I wanna invade Ukraine!
Adviser: Your majesty, that is already in progress as your ordered on your birthday ...
Vladimir Putin: *looks around the dinner table for invasion inspiration* I wanna invade Turkey!
Adviser: Your majesty! What has come over you? You know you're limited by doctrine to one invasion per year!
Vladimir Putin: *pouts and looks out the window* I wanna invade ... THE MOON.
Adviser: *murmurs quietly with other advisers* And, you promise this will be the last invasion? This will use up all your invasion credits, you know.
Vladimir Putin: Yes.
Adviser: Okay then finish your peas and we'll make a press release tomorrow.
Vladimir Putin: But I don't wanna finish my peas! I hate you, I hate you! You never let me do anything fun! I wish I was never born!

Re:Lil' Putin

[jez9999]

Why did I read the Putin lines in a George W Bush voice?

Re:Lil' Putin

[Luckyo]

A nice summary of modern Western propaganda, sadly and a good show of just far out it is. Soviet Pravda was closer to the truth in its analyses at its prime time than our media is today.

When you consider that if Putin actually wanted to do what our pundits claim he wants to do, he would have easily done it. For example, Russian Army pointedly pushed all the way to the established border of South Ossetia and Georgia with incredible rapidity, pushing attacking Georgian forces out about as fast as they could flee and then the Russian Army stopped like it hit a wall, even through Georgian army's fighting capability was completely destroyed by that point and going to Tbilisi just meant moving the armour about a hundred kilometers more.

Same thing with Ukraine. If Russia wanted to conquer it, it would have already, back in February. Considering that they didn't directly attack even after Ukrainians accidentally (?) shelled some towns on Russian side, killing a few people, or after a few hundred Ukrainian soldiers crossed onto their side only to find that locals just invited them in, fed them and sent them back, it's pretty silly to suggest that Russians "didn't invade Ukraine because they couldn't".

The entire demonisation as "undemocratic" of the leader who enjoys more genuine democratic support among his people than most Western leaders are enjoying among theirs is telling of just how entrenched the ability of established order in our media to spread blatant lies is today, almost two and a half decades after the end of Cold War.

Re:Lil' Putin

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, comrade. Western propaganda is truly the most despicable of all. But they have Coca Cola and Adidas, and we have not.

Re:Lil' Putin

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job, comrade. Here's 30 roubles for you.

Re:Lil' Putin

[wonkey_monkey]

Your Majesty? Putin's not a King. He's not the ruler of a kingdom. Nor is he a Prince, not being the ruler of a principality.

He's just in charge of a country.

Re:Lil' Putin

[NoImNotNineVolt]

My 2 kopeks:

Russia "could" have done those things in the same sense that the USA "could" nuke Iran. It seems plainly evident that Russian aggression is being stopped not by the military might of Georgia or Ukraine but by the fact that Russia would join the "axis of evil" if they actually followed through with any such plans.

Putin does want to do those things. And he easily can do those things. However, the expected political fallout from doing those things is sufficient to discourage him from actually doing so. Pointing to the fact that he hasn't done those things does not prove in any way that he doesn't want to. The subjugation of Georgia or Ukraine would be a great boon for him in domestic politics if it didn't go hand in hand with ostracization from the rest of the civilized world.

I don't think anyone's saying that Putin is undemocratic because of a lack of domestic support. I think most objections today revolve around his refusal to respect the sovereignty of neighboring states. These are two orthogonal issues.

Re:Lil' Putin

[Luckyo]

Of course it is. The moment someone dares to point out the obvious propaganda in the Western media, he's a "Putin shill". The moment that same person points out the obvious propaganda in Russian media, he's "Obama shill".

You people are just tiring in the same countless rebuked claims, like that "Putin admitted to military operatives in Crimea", "Crimean vote was rigged", "There are fascists in power in Kiev", "Polish are openly attacking Eastern Ukrainians" and other propagandist bullshit.

All of these claims have been shown to be either false or taken out of context. No, Polish PM didn't admit to sending troops to Eastern Ukraine. No, Putin didn't admit to having anything other than military already present in Crimea as per contract with Ukraine in Crimea during the annexation.

Tired. So tired. You should just go fight it out with Russian shills directly. You deserve each other, and maybe in the mean time we could get some objectivity in our mass media instead of overwhelming wave after wave of bullshit where Ukrainian sources are quoted daily saying hyperbolic bullshit, and then debunking is posted on last page in small the next day as facts become available. All while front page is full of new bullshit.

Even Pravda at its peak wasn't quite as obvious in its propagandist lies.

Re:Lil' Putin

[Luckyo]

Russia already is on the "axis of evil" as its head as far as US operations are concerned, and has been so ever since the 1990s. They have little to nothing to lose on that front.

The far more obvious reason why Russia has no interest in invading is the fact that its military resources are limited and it could only make one such invasion happen at best. And it has no interest in tying up its entire military capacity in such an invasion for decades.

Unlike US, it doesn't have the capability to invade and occupy multiple countries at once and still have significant military capability left over for maintaining other operations.

Re:Lil' Putin

[NoImNotNineVolt]

The far more obvious reason why Russia has no interest in invading is the fact that its military resources are limited and it could only make one such invasion happen at best. And it has no interest in tying up its entire military capacity in such an invasion for decades.

Unlike US, it doesn't have the capability to invade and occupy multiple countries at once and still have significant military capability left over for maintaining other operations.

Last I checked, they still have a sizeable stockpile of nuclear arms. They "could" liberally nuke Georgia and Ukraine, thereby eliminating any ground opposition (and human population) in these territories and allowing them to annex them with minimal military commitment. It's not that hard to occupy a country when it's totally devoid of all life (and quite irradiated to match). The Tsar Bomba had a fireball radius of 4km and was capable of producing third degree burns 100km from ground zero, and it was only 50% of the max yield of a bomb of this design.

Of course, conversations like this (about what "could" happen) are ridiculous, as they ignore the reality of political factors being of primary consideration. Putin "could" do a lot of things, but talking about them as though they're remotely plausible isn't likely to yield any valuable insight into anything. That's the only point I was trying to make.

Re:Lil' Putin

[richlv]

anybody following the russian invasion in ukraine will spot the crap you are claiming. it seems so lame to me, but i do suppose you will catch some poor, stupid bastard. you are a sad remain of a person.

Re:Lil' Putin

[dunkelfalke]

Well, on the other hand USSR had Pepsi.

Have they seen the Apollo 18 footage yet?

[JudgeFurious]

There's a reason we didn't go back you know.

Re:Have they seen the Apollo 18 footage yet?

[schlachter]

yah, cause we proved our point! 'Merica.

We choose to go to the moon...

[tlambert]

"We choose to go to the moon in the next two decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they will take attention away from what's happening with the Ukraine." -- V. Putin

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[Agares]

Good one, wish I had points to mod you up.

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[Anonymous Coward]

...." and the other upcoming invasions"

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[jedidiah]

It's Ukraine. Regimes change like the weather in other places. If you don't like the one now, all you have to do is wait awhile. It will change soon enough.

They're like the Iraq of the former USSR.

No grand conspiracies are really needed. Although that doesn't stop Putin from going out of his way to make it look like there is one.

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was initiated when Russia put it's puppet into power.

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Finally! Will he also get shot in two years?

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[Luckyo]

There were exactly two coups in entire post-Soviet history of Ukraine which encompasses 23 years of history. First one was early one, and after that every single regime change (until the last one) was through massive dissatisfaction of masses with incumbent powers enacted through the democratic process.

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[Luckyo]

"Russian puppet" was actively pushing for its own country's benefits by pitting EU and Russia against one another in what essentially amounted to a bidding war. I recommend actually familiarizing with Yanukovich's actions and why Russian leadership didn't attempt to seriously push to reinstate him as a result. He was anything but pro-Russian, as his tough bargaining significantly reduced Ukrainian gas bill and he was negotiating actually good terms from Ukraine's point of view with EU instead of total economic surrender of Ukraine to EU given by Poroshenko.

I'm guessing that West just figured it was cheaper to overthrow him and install a puppet that would economically surrender their country than to actually accept his terms, like they did during Cold War with Latin American leaders that tried to push for better lives for their citizenry.

Considering the ultimate result, I suspect that most in EU are hitting themselves and Fule was banned from quite a few of old boys clubs for his apparent idiocy, while Nuland got a lot of pats on the back for preventing any political alliance between EU and Russia in foreseeable future.

Re:We choose to go to the moon...

[Luckyo]

Let me get this straight: you think that Ukraine was something different or is something different under pro-Western duo that lead the country before him, or the current oligarch president?

Excuse me while I facepalm at your naivete.

In Putin's Russia

[some old guy]

Moon lands on you!

So wait

[kilodelta]

They'll get there 61 years after American boots have been all over the surface of the moon. We can tell them been there, done that, got the space suit.

And think - the Apollo space program came up in approximately seven years. The Russians are going to take sixteen years to do theirs. Best wishes! I wonder if they'll salute the American flags we've left behind?

Re:So wait

[gstoddart]

We can tell them been there, done that, got the space suit.

And, they will correctly point out that you've not been there in decades and are resting on your laurels.

Want to impress us? Beat them there again.

Otherwise you're just reliving glory days.

Re:So wait

[oodaloop]

Tell them that, and they'll point out that they only reason we went was because the Soviet Union was way ahead in the space race for several years and it took many years for us to catch up.

Re:So wait

[Anonymous Coward]

We are more concerned with going to Mars than the Moon. There are still over 200k people that would be willing to go on a one way trip there.

We are more concerned with learning how to mine asteroids than the Moon. Companies are planning this out to test how it would work.

The Moon is cute. It will at best be a depot for mining operations for the next hundred years to land asteroids on or around. After that, it might be useful as a glorified gas station when these other plans work out.

Re:So wait

[kilodelta]

We'll wave to them from Mars.

Re:So wait

[torkus]

'All over' is relative...and last I checked the US didn't even have the capability of getting astronauts to their own* space station much less the moon.

It's pretty pathetic how far backwards we have slid in some regards. The /original/ space race took 14 years to land a man on the moon and now they're aiming for roughly the same time frame to do it again?

Re:So wait

[CrimsonAvenger]

Tell them that, and they'll point out that they only reason we went was because the Soviet Union was way ahead in the space race for several years and it took many years for us to catch up.

Many years to catch up? Seems to me we managed to pass them in just eight years.

As to "way ahead for several years", if you look at the details, they were about a year ahead for several years. They stopped being ahead considerably before the aforementioned eight years were up.

And what's with the Russians taking 16+ years to do this? It's not like they're doing it from scratch, since they saw how we did it 45 years ago. And it's not like they don't already have large rockets operational....

Re:So wait

[schlachter]

we already beat them there 6 times! how many, times do we need to "do it again?"

Re:So wait

[camperdave]

Why would you land asteroids on the moon to mine them, as opposed to just mining the asteroid where it is?
Why would you put a fuel depot on the moon when there are perfectly good places to put an orbitting fuel depot that doesn't have a pesky gravity well to deal with?

Re:So wait

[MMC Monster]

Once.

Just once more, to again inspire the children of the world for a generation.

Re:So wait

[bluefoxlucid]

Waste of time and money, but a good way to drain an economy and help keep a people compliant with distraction and hardship. Heil Oceania!

Re:So wait

[bluefoxlucid]

200,000 people plus all the D-class.

Re:So wait

[NeverVotedBush]

Sadly we do have a lot of drooling, anti-science idiots. But I don't think that precludes going to Mars. It just means we'll have a lot of idiots running around misinterpreting photographs and video and claiming it was all a hoax.

Re:So wait

[painandgreed]

The Russians are going to take sixteen years to do theirs. Best wishes!

Pretty much, but I doubt they'll actually go. Sixteen years out is a pretty long time to take. I bet they don't even up their space spending this year. ...or the next. Sixteen years from now will be somebody else's probably rather than Putin's most likely. My cynical take is that it will go exactly where all of Bush's talk in each Presidential address about going to Mars went, nowhere past the news reporters.

Re:So wait

[Gavagai80]

Given the cut-rate nature of the Russian space program in recent decades, the odds of Russia getting to the moon by 2030 are quite low. It's just something to try to inspire.

All they need is some money

[macson_g]

Great plan. Now all they need is 10 consecutive years of oil prices above $200/barrel to finance the enterprise.

Re:All they need is some money

[Charliemopps]

Great plan. Now all they need is 10 consecutive years of oil prices above $200/barrel to finance the enterprise.

Or... stop invading neighboring countries. One or the other.

Re:I can already see

[mu51c10rd]

Putin revealing his masterplan of placing a giant laser on the moon and having a maniacal laugh...

Nothing James Bond can't fix...where is Roger Moore these days...

Militarization of the Moon

[kheldan]

Regardless of what anyone 'agreed' to 50-odd years ago, that's what's going to happen in the next 50-odd years, and it looks like China and Russia are going to be competing to see which one breaks the seal first. If the U.S. wants in on the party, we'd better get off our increasingly large asses and get moving.

Re:Militarization of the Moon

[BringsApples]

If the U.S. wants in on the party...

Party? A large empty fine-sand pit of nothing to do? Nothing to build with? In order to militarize the moon, they'd have to build everything out of glass, or move all of their military components to the moon. Although it's been attempted before, it took 7 failed missions. I mean, at least preparations A through G were a complete failure...

Re:Militarization of the Moon

[Mysticalfruit]

I agree, now that we've got the shuttle out of the way we should start investing money in reliable, reuseable man rated launch systems. Maybe we could get that guy whose making those fancy electric cars to do it!

Maybe we should build a space station and man it continuously and learn tons about spending months at a time in space. I know, we'll talk to the Russians! We'll call it the "International Space Station!" It'll be awesome!

You know what would be really awesome? We should send a bunch of rovers to Mars to learn about it's geology and ecology, maybe figure out why it doesn't have an atmosphere. We could learn all about the long term effects of materials on Mars so when we want to send people we'll know what to build the habitats out of.

On a serious note, we've got a HUGE jump on everybody else. The Chinese are easily 20 years behind us, the Russians are quickly falling behind. In the near future we're going to have at least one totally man rated launch system (Dragon) with another CST-100 coming along behind them. NASA has plans for the HLV as does SpaceX. My money is on SpaceX actually launching a HLV first.

As for the moon, the question is why would we go there? The argument is that setting up a long term settlement on the moon would require that we engineer materials and technologies to shield humans from cosmic rays and figure out food production, long term habitation, etc. with the safety net of being able to bail back to Earth.

My feeling is that if we were to settle the moon it would be merely as a stepping stone to Mars and then outward to Ganymede, etc.

Re:Militarization of the Moon

[Kjella]

At the bottom of a gravity well? Check. Ages of warning that an attack is incoming? Check. Horribly fragile base where any crack in your pressure dome will kill you? Check. Something tells me the moon will be as militarily relevant to a battle of earth as control of the ocean floors. If you want to get spectacular, I'd rather go out to the asteroid belt and find a suitably big rock (read: not a dino killer, not just a light show) you could aim at earth. The timing had better be just right though, if you're off by just a matter of hours that crater might end up on the wrong side of the planet. Bonus points for drilling into and blowing it up at a suitable distance, it'll do more damage as buckshot.

Re:Militarization of the Moon

[cavreader]

China and Russia,like most countries, are good at making grandiose plans but so far they have not fulfilled their lofty sounding goals. They seem to be stuck in the "Linux will dominate the desktop next year" prediction model. The last Chinese-Russian joint effort to send a satellite to Mars blew up in the atmosphere. Of course the US has had their share of failures but both China and Russia have not displayed any ground breaking technology advances that surpassed US efforts and capabilities in space. The US may need to hitch a ride to the ISS but at $70 million a seat it is a lot cheaper than maintaining the old shuttle program.

War over the moon's resources is inevitable

[0xdeadbeef]

I can't wait to kill commies with a rave gun!

The fact checkers

[blueshift_1]

At least we know that the latest nVidia graphics cards will be verifiying all of the video and images

Re:The fact checkers

[oneandoneis2]

Or generating them ;)

Re:The fact checkers

[blueshift_1]

What a twist!

Cooling Relations = More Spaceflight

[lazarus]

Seems like the cooling relations between the US and Russia are already resulting in a lot more spaceflight initiatives. It's a shame that we cannot "yearn for the stars" out of wonder instead of conflict and competition.

Re:Cooling Relations = More Spaceflight

[Luckyo]

The problem being that none of the countries alone likely has the resources for deep space exploration. Some sort of cooperation will be required, especially as it became apparent with ISS that US has a massive lead in some technological aspects and Russia in others.

.. but what about the return trip?

[ThatsDrDangerToYou]

Sure, they plan to bring humans to the moon by 2030, but when will they come back? Better read the fine print on those fancy brochures..

Rather vice versa

[estestvoispytatel]

Ukrainian coups (exactly two in 23 years) were unique and effective measure to stop typical for ex-USSR countries creeping into some sort of gulag. It's quite sad that almost every one of former Soviet republics (except Baltic states and maybe Georgia) has abandoned their checks and balances and early attempts to build functional free market rule of law democracies and went into 'strict power vertical' aka dictatorship of variable mildness. But not Ukraine. It's chaotic, yes, but free and democratic as hell.

Re:Rather vice versa

[GodGell]

But not Ukraine. It's chaotic, yes, but free and democratic as hell.

LOL. You couldn't be further from the truth. They have a "free market", sure, I'll give you that, but it's a free market in the American sense. Quality of services and products do not matter beyond some bare minimum, as friendships, kickbacks, manipulative marketing practices and sheer piles of money have orders of magnitude more influence than anything else. They have such a free market that you can't even buy proper food in many places, because nutritional content is a rather expensive thing and it's been optimized out where possible. That is perfectly in line with a functioning free market, by the way, and I'm not exaggerating here. The milk you buy in stores is almost entirely made of milk powder (you can increase milk content by paying more, but you can't just *get milk* like you can anywhere just accross the border), and that's just normal. 2-to-3-ton SUVs are the *majority* of traffic (!) in the capital and if you see a Hummer driving down THE SIDEWALK people are just getting out of the way because they are more afraid of the asshole driving it than they are of getting run over. Money just elevates you out of the population without any sort of need for control. You open your mouth against any random asshole, that happens to have a lot of it (and they are all over the place), and you get rammed off the road and beaten to a pulp or simply shot by members of the armed forces. Is that your definition of freedom and democracy?

This country needed the EU a lot more than the EU needed it; it is run by barbarians, and is still a place where might makes right. The parallels to the USA are hard to ignore but the Ukrainians simply never even experienced what freedom is. In the USA, at least in the past, some people did get that chance, and can now remember what it was like.

(Disclaimer: I just got back from there. The above applies to the - comparatively Western - capital. Everywhere else the divides are hundreds of times worse, and that's before you even consider the conflict.)

Save Russian speaking Moonites?

[gelfling]

Time for an invasion

Been there, done that. Move on.

[Streetlight]

NT

Well that escalated quickly

[Culture20]

First they're invading Georgia, then Ukraine, now the Moon!
But seriously, Putin, if you leave Earth, don't come back.

Good luck with that

[ArcadeMan]

The aliens on the dark side won't like that one bit. They made deals with the U.S.A., not Russia.

Great idea

[rlp]

They could establish a gulag there and ship prisoners to it. Then have them grow wheat to be sent back to earth. And have a warden run the whole thing with the aid of a sentient computer named 'Mycroft'.

Re:Great idea

[camperdave]

They could establish a gulag there and ship prisoners to it. Then have them grow wheat to be sent back to earth. And have a warden run the whole thing with the aid of a sentient computer named 'Mycroft'.

Riiight! And lasers can whistle!

Re:The Moon is a weapons platform

[Streetlight]

I assume these comments are an attempt at black humor.

Immediately after noticing from any place on earth a weapons launch from the moon a laser beam of sufficient energy from the earth might be able to destroy the slow moving moon launched weapon. The speed of light is very high. Of course if the moon based weapon is a laser beam, well, things would be different.

NASA's budget will now explode.

[Dega704]

Because nothing spurs congress to action faster than a chest-thumping contest with the Russians.

sounds like the past four US presidents

[peter303]

They proclaim a grand goal for NASA and starve its funding.

"Interantional Moon Base 2030"

[peter303]

Rather than a bunch of silly independent races, designate an interesting single area of Luna to accumulate missions and habitable equipment from all countries. Kind of modeled after Antarctic bases. Remember Antartica was uninhabited for 34 years between the inital polar races (1904-1911) and its first long term bases (1945). World Wars didnt help the situation.

Thank you, Mr. Putin

[Control-Z]

NASA will now get more funding and we will see more space exploration.

Russians pledge to got to your mom

[bluefoxlucid]

nt

Got the T-shirt

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Vista

why is it always 20 to 30 years away?

[k6mfw]

For past 50 or so years, US says it will send a man to Mars in 20 years. For past 50 (uh wait, 30) or so years, USSR/Russia says it will send a man to Moon in 20 years. Like we will have fusion power in 10 years like they've been saying for past 50 years. And next year we will have Hover-Cars, including conversion kits for people with vintage '80s DeLorean. But then these days we do have Picture-Phones.

After they "went" to Ukraine,

[gshegosh]

After they "went" to Ukraine, I prefer them going to the Moon than going to Poland.

Re:The Moon is a weapons platform

[captain_nifty]

It would take a lot of laser energy to destroy a good sized rock, and the moon has no shortage of rocks.

No one does anything major unless the have to

[zildgulf]

The harsh truth is that few people do anything unless they have to. We didn't send men back to the moon because we didn't have to. We will not send men to Mars because we don't have to. Faster-than-light communications will not be developed in my lifetime not because physics say that it is impossible, quantum physics says it should be possible, but because we have no need for such technology yet. We will not develop interstellar travel until we have no choice but to develop it.

Cool. Please visit the BA gift shop.

[WindBourne]

Upon arriving at the moon, They can visit the Bigelow Aerospace gift shop that will be there by 2030.

In soviet russia

[LocutusOfBorg1]

moon goes to russia!

I'm all for this, but...

[ToddInSF]

Is the moon even large enough to put Russia on ?

Re:Least Promising

[sudon't]

Good catch for someone who can't tell the difference between a spelling error and a grammar mistake. But, if you're going to criticize the writing of others, you ought to first be sure to capitalize and punctuate properly, and learn to form complete sentences yourself, (yes, I'm assuming you're a none-too-bright teenager). After all, if your own writing is atrocious, you don't come off as too smart while criticizing the writing of others, do you?