Private Russian Company Proposes Lunar Base
MarkWhittington writes According to an article in Sputnik, a private Russian company called Lin Industrial has announced that it is capable of building a lunar base. However, according to information contained to a recent post in Parabolic Arc, this announcement may be more the result of idle boasting than an objective assessment of actual ability. Nevertheless, Lin seems to be one of the few entrepreneurial startups in Russia in the style of much more robust enterprises in the West such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Random boasting from people unable to carry them out... Well, they better not build it where all those time-share lots have been sold...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I propose a private base on Venus!
Look how easy that was!?
Ridiculous.
Ezekiel 23:20
A base on the moon? Why?
I think an unmanned base with drones/bots will be much cheaper and yield greater returns.
Call us back when you've at least orbited a space station or two...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I can build a base on Mars.
Just give me a trillion dollars....
"Russian"
Right there you lost all credibility...
I, too, am capable of building a lunar base.
I just need some funding. And a rocket. And a team of trained engineers/astronauts (both, not either or).
Rocket fuel, I guess. And plans. Plans would be good.
But I am totally capable.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I'm sure they can build a base actually, and that they've researched thoroughly before making the claim. But the real difficulty is getting all the material and equipment into orbit, and onto the moon.
I only need someone to fund it.
then they are capable of bankruptcy and the modern gulag. Russian business is ebb and flow like that.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
According to a comment in the Internets, an Internet entity called Anonymous Coward has announced that it is capable of building a solar base. However, according to information contained in a recent post in Slashdot, this announcement may be more the result of idle boasting than an objective assessment of actual ability. Nevertheless, Anon seems to be one of the few entrepreneurial startups in the Internets in the style of much more robust enterprises in the West such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Anonymous Coward is looking for politicians to take part in the first mission to colonize the Sun.
Whoever sets up the lunar base, do you mind also putting a Pirate Bay server up there, too? I never finished downloading the second season of Hannibal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They couldn't even build a heavy booster back when the USSR was at the peak of its military and economic might. They sure as hell aren't capable of it now, with thieves and crooks running the country.
Random boasting from people unable to carry them out... Well, they better not build it where all those time-share lots have been sold...
Why? If someone who has a time-share takes it to court the only thing the court will conclude is that it isn't valid.
You have two option to enforce that time-share. Go to Russia and try to fight in court there or go to the Moon and try to hold your ground there.
Lunar Base is, too.
I have a 19 inch penis... and it's shaped like a shark... and it shoots lasers. Also it can build a base on Mars.
Slashdot article covering it, please.
"Whooooooosh"
In the style of SpaceX? So I suppose they're undercutting other traditional space launch companies and are on track to developing a a heavy lifter and other technologies they hope could get them to Mars?
Wait, you're telling me they don't even have one rocket yet, never mind having actually achieved orbit, any sort of revenue, or even the beginnings of the capability of building, launching, landing, and assembling a moon base? Slashdot, why?
Russians had the most expensive olympic games in the history $50 Billion, while the living standard of the average russian, if measured by GDP per capita is probably 50% lower than average western country.
Clearly, those who were part of it, liked the taste of the money and want more "projects". In US they would start a new war, or would bring another entitlement program aka "Obamacare". In EU they are playing with the LHC. Russians want to colonize the moon now that Ukrainians kicked their teeth in East Ukraine.
At the same token, in Russia, significant part of population still uses outhouses, average life expectancy of males is 50 years, currently interest rate is more than 10% and inflation is more than 10%. Russia has 1/6th of the world's territory, but they have 1/50th of the population and have negative birth rate.
Yes, let them colonize the moon for their "lebensraum" is an issue #1.
What are they going to pay for it with?
There are two kinds of people who announce they can do something like that - the ones who don't have a clue how hard it is, and the ones who don't care because their objective is to scam investors. (Seasteading's a lot easier, but most of the proposals I've seen for that have been the scammer types.)
Yes, getting enough equipment up to the moon to build a moon base is something you can do if you've got enough cash. Doing it as a private industry (rather than a government doing it) means you also need a revenue model once you've built it, and if you've done due diligence you won't find much revenue up there, even if you manage to get rid of inconvenient UN treaties that ban owning the moon.
But building an ecosystem that can sustain your moon colony is really hard; we don't know how to keep small pilot projects like Biosphere II running for very long without cheating and restocking the atmosphere, or how to build dirt without a ready supply of nitrogen and phosphate to grow plants with. It's a lot easier to deal with that on a moon base than on Mars, because you can send an occasional care package, but it's not like the convenience of restocking the International Space Station (which doesn't recycle most of its resources either.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Talk about lots of hope and with little change, considering it's rather impossible for people to survive on the moon, let alone safely travel beyond a 1000 miles from Earth's orbit. Real scientists know this, as do the Russians, regardless of the NASA actors. The truth apparently still hurts.
Elon Musk had to be the one who downvoted you, that wolf in sheep's clothing.
I'll bet there a bunch of companies capable of building a lunar base [as in, a facility capable of supporting life for a non-trivial amount of time on the surface of the moon]. Of course, none of them have any chance of actually getting the base to the moon.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Clearly it's boasting because it seems more like a Nigerian Prince scam. So what if they can make a lunar base? NASA can make a lunar base. SpaceX could easily make a lunar base considering their talent. What we need is a reason to do so, one that involves the formula:
value extracted > value invested.
Until someone comes up with a reason to go based on that formula, no one's building a lunar base.
there is no such thing as "private Russian company"/ they all KGB decorations
In Russia all your base belong to us
There's been a variety of related and rigorous work - but unlike Biosphere II, they haven't been large and gaudy and thus haven't captured the media and the public's attention. That the more rigorous research has only lead to the conclusion that we don't currently actually know all that much rather than making sexy headlines hasn't helped much.
Robert Heinlein provided much of the philosophical legwork for how to make it work: Don't worry about building large reinforced airtight structures above ground, but instead bore into the ground and/or use caves that can be sealed up and fortified.
i.e., live IN the moon not ON the moon
So first you send up rockets with tunnel-boring moon machines, then you build hatches over the holes, then you seal up the leaks in the tunnels, then you build whatever you want inside there, with a pressurized atmosphere.