Russia Wants To Establish a Permanent Moon Base 313
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."'"
Re:Annex? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:So.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Annex? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Talk is cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
First we had an omnipotent Bush who took blame for things that happened long before he became president. Now, we have a super-omnipotent Obama.
Obama was a young punk, still wet behind the ears, when the United States decided to scrap all it's moon and deeper space capabilities in favor of a dumb ass space plane concept. A shuttle was a pretty cool idea - as a means to an end. The shuttles should have been there to service the REAL exploration efforts. But, instead, the shuttle program became an end, in and of itself, and the larger programs were simply ignored, and filed in the circular file.
Re:Russia (Score:2, Interesting)
Russia signed a specific agreement with Ukraine [wikisource.org] (and with Georgia and other FSRs) in order to get them to give their (formerly Soviet) nuclear arsenal back to Russia, that Russia would "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine", "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine", etc etc.
Putin violated that agreement. Every former Soviet republic knows that Russia won't honour any agreements, and that they all boned themselves by giving those nukes back.
Re:There isn't enough rubles in Moscow (Score:4, Interesting)
Your view, and mine, are diametrically opposed. To me, there can be nothing more important than getting mankind established in places off the face of the earth. We have plenty of evidence of big rocks striking the earth in the past, and we have plenty of evidence of major extinction events. Throughout all of our history, we have kept all of our eggs in one basket. We need to distribute our eggs into as many baskets as we possibly can.
There are reasons to dislike Russia's government - but this is one great reason to salute and respect Russia's government. I support any and every effort that can possibly result in distributing those eggs.