Russia Has Sights Set On Manned Moon Landing By 2030 207
New submitter techfun89 writes "Russia plans on sending cosmonauts to the moon as well as unmanned spacecraft to Mars, Jupiter and Venus by 2030. Considering the recent launch failures in Russia, these plans seem very ambitious. From the article: 'These ambitious spaceflight goals are laid out in a strategy document drawn up recently by Russia's Federal Space Agency (known as Roscosmos), the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Tuesday (March 13).
And there's more. Roscosmos wants a new rocket called Angara to become the nation's workhorse launch vehicle by 2020, replacing the venerable Soyuz and Proton rockets that have been carrying the load since the 1960s.'"
Good idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be good to finally get back to the moon. Can't wait to find out in what ways it's changed since the last time we visited.
Actually a lot has changed since we last visited - sort of. When the first moon landings happened, the technology that folks were able to take down to the surface was exceptionally limited. This means that any landings in the future will be able to carry out experiments that could have only been dreamed about in the 60s. SO, while things on the moon itself may not have changed, we are probably still going to learn a vast amount for the first time.
Besides, perhaps this is just the embarassment that the US space program needs to get some funding again.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Funny)
Besides, perhaps this is just the embarassment that the US space program needs to get some funding again.
By 2030 SpaceX will probably be running regular tourist flights; they'll be able to wave to the Russians as they land.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Interesting)
By 2030 SpaceX will probably be running regular tourist flights
Not at the rate they're going. Their last launch was Dec 2010. Their next is scheduled for April (probably May) this year. And their first commercial payload will be sometime next year.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Informative)
Also we've changed. Our understanding of the moon's history and geology has improved dramatically, which means we also know which experiments we need to perform.
Besides, perhaps this is just the embarassment that the US space program needs to get some funding again.
I doubt it. The embarrassment of not having a manned space program, being dependent on the Russian Soyuz (which is struggling with reliability), should have resulted in a rush order on the Commercial Crew developers; instead, the House tried to zero the CCDev budget, and the Senate's compromise severely delayed it. But if you touch a dollar of SLS, which won't launch humans until after 2021 (plus delays), Congress calls you a traitor.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Is there any advantage to sending a person? Does that accomplish anything more than just doing it? I'm all for research and exploration I just don't see the point in wasting resources on sustaining a person until we have technology which makes it more practical.
Well, given the time frame that they are setting, and the work that they are doing towards manned flight such as the Mars500 [esa.int] there does seem to be some hope for getting a small "colony" working and fairly self reliable. Would it be better if they had a precanned fusion reactor to go with it, ready to accept He3 and provide all the power they could ever use? Sure - although they can still go there without it.
But who knows what you will find out when you send folks to places that you wouldn't find out by send
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Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any advantage to sending a person?
Yes. As they put it during Project Mercury, "No Bucks, no Buck Rogers." Well, the reverse is true, as well.
Otherwise, why haven't we covered the Moon in rover tracks by now? It is much easier than controlling them on Mars, after all, and probably easier to land them (although no aerobraking might compensate for the lighter gravity). Likewise, they could have dispersed a wide net of sensors around it, instead of depending on the few left from the Apollo landings.
And, of course, the real expense is getting to High Earth Orbit. After that, as some hard SF writer put it, you are half way to anywhere. At least in delta-V terms.
Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yes. As they put it during Project Mercury, "No Bucks, no Buck Rogers." Well, the reverse is true, as well."
They didn't have the remotely-manned tech we do now or robots in quantity would have preceded men.
If there is, at the moment, anything a man can perform which a robot cannot, that argues for improved robots rather than sending expensive tourists. We need improved robot tech for all the dull/dirty/dangerous jobs on Earth, and as we are moving to "lights out manufacturing" in advanced industries so we should seek to automate everything else over time.
Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Automation is vital to the efficient production and distribution of everything you need to have an apartment on Earth.
If you have an apartment offworld, it will take even more automation to build and assemble it. If you were to use human labor the cost would be prohibitive.
Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't have the remotely-manned tech we do now or robots in quantity would have preceded men.
Robots did. There were 21 such robotic missions prior to the first manned mission. Apollo 12 [wikipedia.org] landed near (about 360 meters away) one of those robotic missions, Surveyor 3 [wikipedia.org].
If there is, at the moment, anything a man can perform which a robot cannot, that argues for improved robots rather than sending expensive tourists.
There is plenty. Perhaps you ought to watch some Apollo footage sometime to see it. The thing to remember here is that humans are currently the best robots out there for a number of important tasks (such as making decisions, land-based surveying and prospecting, land-based sample collection, etc). Humans have overhead such as supplies and need for radiation protection, but that boils down to mass and power needs just like any robotic payload.
We need improved robot tech for all the dull/dirty/dangerous jobs on Earth, and as we are moving to "lights out manufacturing" in advanced industries so we should seek to automate everything else over time.
The problem here is that this approach gets in the way of us doing cool things. Suppose I develop a new industrial process, but the prototype requires considerable human intervention (precisely because a human developed it with limited resources). I don't have the capital for this "lights out" stuff or to make sure that my workers and I are sufficiently out of harms way to fulfill whatever safety levels you're attempting to achieve here.
I have a better idea. Let's not waste time or effort making the world ridiculously safe.
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"I have a better idea. Let's not waste time or effort making the world ridiculously safe."
Don't presume "safety" is my main interest. That's not my goal. If .men were cheap I'd be fine with the "wooden ships and iron men" approach which worked well on Earth. We could afford to throw away both and we did. Men are now a burden. One has to ship them back and they can't be left in space until they die. Robots can be used, expended, and left in place. Their materials and parts may be used in the future.
Robots ar
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As for "making decisions, land-based surveying and prospecting, land-based sample collection, etc", I disagree - we can do all of those things back on Earth, with high definition video, AND have ten robots running at the same time, which can travel all over the moon, without the need to return to a safe base when they run out of oxygen, like humans do.
You still have to engineer for lunar night and solar flares. That may require returning to a base for protection, just as with humans.
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There must be a huge market for high definition ground based video footage of the moon - literally tens of millions of people would be willing to pay a few dollars a month (at least) to be able to download such videos, as several different rovers trundle to various places of interest on the Moon.
"There must be" is not the same as "there is". It's worth noting that people who actually are trying to create rovers for this sort of thing, are trying higher value-adds (such as the ability for the rover to write messages in the lunar regolith that will likely outlast any current human civilization). And yet they still have trouble funding the project. I can't help but imagine that part of the reason is simply that people with money aren't convinced that there is a market that big for that sort of thing.
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As for "making decisions, land-based surveying and prospecting, land-based sample collection, etc", I disagree - we can do all of those things back on Earth, with high definition video, AND have ten robots running at the same time, which can travel all over the moon, without the need to return to a safe base when they run out of oxygen, like humans do.
While I have my teeth sunk into this argument, I must admit that this is a very good point. The Moon is different from virtually all other bodies in the Solar System for precisely this reason. There are numerous advantages to doing this even with a focus on manned activities.
For example, the same trick can be done for a manned trip elsewhere. That is, send a large number of teleoperated tools and robots along with a core human crew which controls the robots. By doing it on the easy case of the Moon, then
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Is there some intrinsic necessity that it be not both man and machine? Or is it, for example, pettifogging so as to avoid the larger issues by dividing peoples' energies into squabbling over lesser ones?
Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't have the remotely-manned tech we do now or robots in quantity would have preceded men.
You should seriously read something about the space race and the moon landing. [wikipedia.org]
Robots in quantity did preceed men, but history classes in the U.S. tends to focus on the manned mission since Soviet was first with all other important milestones in the space race incuding unmanned missions to the moon.
Luna 9 [wikipedia.org] and Luna 13 [wikipedia.org] were the two unmanned Soviet probes that successfully landed on the moon before the American manned landing. The U.S. had some unmanned missions before the manned one but none of them managed to land.
Luna 16 [wikipedia.org] landed and brought home moon soil, Luna 17 [wikipedia.org] was a Soviet rover that traveled over 10km on the moon.
Luna 21 [wikipedia.org], Luna 23 [wikipedia.org] and Luna 24 [wikipedia.org] were other successful Soviet missions. (More automated moon traveling and soil gathering.)
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The U.S. had some unmanned missions before the manned one but none of them managed to land.
Not true. The Surveyor program [wikipedia.org] had seven missions in 1966-68, of which five landed.
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Show me a robot that can scale the mountains in Antarctica...
I agree with your post, but you have to be careful how you define the goal of a robot. If your goal is to "Show me a robot that can scale the mountains in Antarctica just like a human would", then I agree robots are not the answer. If the goal is "Reach the top of an Antarctic mountain" then autonomous robots are far superior.
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As I said, I agree completely that humans are far better at general tasks. I just wanted to point out that those who argue that "robots can't do what people can do" have to carefully consider the goal, not the means to achieve that goal.
I'm a real cheerleader for manned exploration, but I also realize that I have to temper my enthusiasm with the realization that _for specific tasks_ robots can be a better solution.
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It's also nice to have a mechanic onhand to fix minor breakdowns. Sure beats having to send 250,000 miles for parts. We got a lot of mileage out of the Mars rovers. We could have gotten even more from them if there was a mechanic onsite to fix the glitches that showed up right after deployment.
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I don't remember, either. I seem to recall it from some interview he'd done. Might be nice if'n somebody could pin it down. At any rate, whether or not it's original to Heinlein, it's certainly not an unique view, as it was accepted as something of a truism at the Jerry Pournelle RT on GEnie, or by 'most anyone who's given the matter some thought.
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Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Informative)
That was Jerry Pournelle, [jerrypournelle.com] the SF author and Byte coloumnist. He's said it quite a number of times over the years.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
When the first moon landings happened, the technology that folks were able to take down to the surface was exceptionally limited. This means that any landings in the future will be able to carry out experiments that could have only been dreamed about in the 60s.
Probably the most prominent new capability is that due to advances in computing and robotics, these experiments can now all be carried out remotely without having to send costly meatbags to tend to them.
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It will be good to finally get back to the moon. Can't wait to find out in what ways it's changed since the last time we visited.
Actually a lot has changed since we last visited - sort of. When the first moon landings happened, the technology that folks were able to take down to the surface was exceptionally limited. This means that any landings in the future will be able to carry out experiments that could have only been dreamed about in the 60s. SO, while things on the moon itself may not have changed, we are probably still going to learn a vast amount for the first time.
Besides, perhaps this is just the embarassment that the US space program needs to get some funding again.
Are there any lunar surface experiments that are better done by humans than by a robotic lander? Seems like it's an ideal place to run a remotely controlled lander since there's only a few second radio delay making control much easier than the Mars landers. And an unmanned mission would be much cheaper than any manned mission.
I know the Russians sent up a few unmanned lunar landers, but I think they were only capable of bringing home a sample.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
America's got looooots of money.
The embarrassing part should be what you choose to spend it on.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Some Americans have lots of money as do some Chinese and some Russians and at least one Mexican. The rest of us are poor schlubs living hand to mouth like everyone else. Granted there are probably more documented rich in America.
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While I get the fact that the cost of living is higher, consider the fact that the average income on the planet is $7000. Our poorest working people make over twice that if working a full time job. Those of us that are middle class professionals make more in two months than most people in the world make in a year. America is objectively wealthy, not just a few people, but everyone in the country is comparatively wealthy to many on the planet.
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America also has a massive ammount of debt - owned cheifly by China and Japan. Maybe America should start thinking about partnering NASA with JAXA and doing something that actually matters and that people will care about. Collecting soil samples? Meh. Space Station? Ooh. Moon Missions? Warmer! Moon Missions with Future Moon Colony? HELL YEAH!
And I mean lets be honest - Mars is interesting and dreams of future colonization are great - but if we can't even develop the moon then continued surveys of Mars are r
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America also has a massive ammount of debt - owned cheifly by China and Japan.
This is a misleading statement. The vast majority of American debt is owned by Americans.
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What makes you think that it's easier to build a permanent moon-base than colonize Mars?
Lifeboats.
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Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't really all the cold war, you know. Sure, the Toynbee Tile "footballs in space" thing had something to do with it. But it had as much to do with Kennedy's skill as an orator and a desire to build some unifying non-military national mission so we could lay off the killing foreigners thing for a while. Usually for these things I cite the text of the speech, but today I find the recording of Kennedy at Rice University [youtube.com] is up on Youtube now.
12:15 he anticipates the home PC.
I watched it again just now. Damn, but it's dusty in here.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Funny)
But it had as much to do with Kennedy's skill as an orator and a desire to build some unifying non-military national mission so we could lay off the killing foreigners thing for a while.
Ah, so it was a national direction chosen to redirect the competitive energy of the nation towards an end that elevated national prestige and strategic aerospace technology while avoiding direct militaristic actions that could inflame tensions.
Clearly, little to do with any cold war.
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And guess why Kennedy was orating and finding a national mission,? (Hint: It's spelled "COLD WAR".) Rather than getting all misty eyed about his speech, pick up some decent space history and study th
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That was one reason among many. It was important that we do this for national defense, to become preeminent in space - because others were really out to get us at the time and it were better if somebody master space first it were us. Competing in the Space Games was preferable to sending our boys out to fight and die in Afghanistan. It was also important for other reasons outlined there. By having a national mission focused on peaceful space we employed a great many of people, we depleted a great deal of
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"We" can't forget something that's a complete fabrication of your imagination.
I think they have this wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
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In Soviet Russia (Score:2, Funny)
Moon lands on you!
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Risk to human life (Score:4, Funny)
and others (Score:2)
Neither did it stop the U.S., or any other country for that matter.
Re:and others (Score:4, Informative)
Re:and others (Score:4, Informative)
I recall seeing a show on the space race where the US boys were scheduled to have become the first men in space, but the launch was postponed for a week or so over safety concerns. In that time the Russians launched their own ship and beat the US to a man in space.
The United States called their space travelers astronauts ("star sailors" from the Greek), and it was 3 weeks later, on 5 May 1961, when Alan Shepard became the first one in space, launched on a suborbital mission Mercury-Redstone 3, in a spacecraft named Freedom 7.
From The Space Race [wikipedia.org].
While there are always volunteers to do things, they have a pretty decent record of only letting them do it if they feel it is safe enough.
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Except that the death of a cosmonaut would go in the opposite direction: cast doubts upon the russian space program and lower the morale of future cosmonauts. So either the premise of the article is bullshit (the Russians didn't know that he would
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Nor should it now. We ALL die. We die by the millions. We die in cars, in hospital beds, and everywhere else.
You can safely fly in modern aircraft thanks to generations of test pilots including many who died "pushing the (flight) enevelope" for the sake of knowledge. It was well worth the sacrifice.
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That doesn't mean it should keep happening that way. These days, we have computers that can serve as test pilots. There's no longer a need to put human lives at risk until after the technology makes successful flights a reasonable certainty.
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If you told me there was a near 100% chance I'd die, I'd still volunteer to go into space just for the chance to do it. If I could die knowing I was contributing something useful to science, even better.
There'll always be people like me.
Ambitious? (Score:2, Informative)
I like how the summary goes on about how ambitious it is for Russia to get to the moon in almost two decades. It took just a little over 8 years for the US to go from basically nada (hadn't even gotten into orbit yet) to landing on the moon. There is better technology out there today, plus it has now of course been done before; I would think there is some advantage in being able to look at the data from the Apollo missions (assuming NASA is willing to share it?) If anything, getting there by 2030 seems a ra
Re:Ambitious? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the popular version - and it's also very, very, wrong.
F1 engine development started in 1856 for example. At the time of Kennedy's speech, both the Apollo CSM and what would eventually become the Saturn V were already being developed as well. This is why he chose the Lunar Landing as a goal in the first place - it was a reachable scientific and engineering goal that was already quietly underway.
In 1995, their goal was the Moon by 2000, and Mars by 2015. In 2000, their goal was the Moon by 2010 and Mars by 2020. In 2010 their goal was the Moon by 2020 and Mars by 2030.... The Russians have a long history of bold powerpoint plans, and basically have never accomplished any of them.
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F1 engine development started in 1856 for example.
Now that's what I call planning ahead.
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Not a chance (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a coincidence that newer Russian designs don't work. The "old guard" has retired. The new — immgirated. Just the other day international rankings came out for higher education. Not a single Russian school is on the list. That's what happens when you don't even pay starvation wages to your professors. Sooner or later they throw in the towel. It's a miracle things held together this long.
Given the scarcity of talented engineers, and the pitiful salaries Roscosmos pays to its staff, I'm kind of wondering how they expect to pull this off. They couldn't even do it when they had some of the best schools in the world (which regularly minted Nobel laureates), during the Soviet times, with essentially unlimited budget and manpower. Nowadays they can only build 20 year old rockets, and make minor improvements here and there. Put simply, after neglecting higher education for about a decade and a half, they've pissed away their technical capability to do anything they haven't already done before.
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The supply of ex-nazi rocket scientists has also dried up since we last went to the moon.
Yeah, but the Soviets did not use ex-Nazis much. Their designs, perhaps as starting points, but they tried to work on home-grown talent, after they drained their captured Germans of everything that they knew. Post WWII, the Russians didn't like the Germans enough to let them around anything as dangerous as a MIG, let alone repurposed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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The grandparent is referring to the US use of ex-Nazi rocket scientists, notably Wernher Von Braun - chief architect of the Saturn V and previously designer of the Nazi V2 buzzbombs.
But then we're skirting perilously close to Godwin here.
Today I learned: more people were killed at forced labor producing the V2 rockets than were killed by the V2 rockets.
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Only the Ubermensch can build good rockets?
(/sarcasm)
Re:Not a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowadays they can only build 20 year old rockets, and make minor improvements here and there.
20 years? Soyuz is from 1966, and has heritage from the R-7 (designed starting in 1953, a derivative launched sputnik in '57).
So by my count, that's 55 years, with modifications along the way, but the major ones done in the first decade or two.
Russia's fall in engineering and science is rather tragic.
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When you don't have a car, you can't bitch about the year of your friend's car who's giving you a ride.
Over 25,000 Americans lost their jobs when the Space Shuttle program ended. And you complain Russia isn't paying its people?
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Except - they didn't have either. They had a limited budget, limited manpower, and they started years late because they didn't actually believe the US meant it. (If Kennedy hadn't visited Dallas, and Apollo subsequently pushed as his memorial - there's a non trivial change it would have vanished like so many other bra
Venera Landers (Score:3)
I hope they do another lander--or better yet a rover.
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Launch failures (Score:4, Interesting)
>Considering the recent launch failures in Russia, these plans seem very ambitious.
Not sure I see the relevance, seeing as:
Recent failures are a blip in a long run of reliability, and
They're going to be flying different rigs by 2030, anyway, which may be invincible, or every one may fail...
Not sure I see much point to it, though. Maybe Putin is working on national morale, or make-work, or kickbacks to someone.
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What long run of reliability? The Russian boosters are no worse or no better than anyone else's. They've suffered a steady string of failures and problems across they years, and *then* comes the recent 'blip'. (Not so recent really, if you count the run of Soyuz problems running back to the turn of the century.)
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I'd call 95%+ success on rockets reliable, no? Less than 2% fatality rate? It's not quite commercial aircraft level of safety, but, well, it is space travel, right?
That said, I can't see them abandoning Soyuz by 2030. I'm sure they'll be running it until at least the apocalypse, and possibly after, at this rate. Kind of like Americans and B-52s.
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A less than 2% fatality rate puts it on par with the shuttle (2/135). Not exactly a glowing endorsement....
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They will go back before that (Score:3)
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The reason is that once private space is properly funded, then it will go to the moon around 2020.
Private enterprise operate for only a single purpose: profit. What profit is there in getting anything (Be it human or probe) to the moon?
At least some governments need to demonstrate that their dicks are the biggest in the world and use blind nationalism to motivate people to work on these profitless ventures. Paying a private company to get them there will not count, since there isn't much pride in paying someone to do it for you. My prediction is that the next person on another planet/moon will be delive
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Whatever you're smoking, I'd like some please. Just don't cross any border checkpoints with it, because something that powerfully hallucinogenic is almost certainly illegal.
If I had a nickel (Score:5, Funny)
Gingrinovich (Score:2)
Quick... someone send Newt to Russia.
The right approach ... (Score:3)
We shouln't settle for landing a man on the Moon. We should be trying to land a man on the Moon and doing it better. This is because a new approach will advance science and engineering. Those advances will have applications on Earth. Those applications may create a new economic boom that may feed back on itself by providing real career opportunities for scientists and engineers, for both space/aerospace and terrestial industries. Recreating Apollo era technology to do science on the Moon and achieve political objectives will create a short boom/bust cycle. And maybe it will give Russia the boost that it needs over the next few years, but they (and China and India and us) should be looking towards a longerterm terrestial payoff - not just Moon rocks and nationalist pretige.
Passport? (Score:2)
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they'll have to take their space-boots off.
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That being the case, will the Russian astronauts need passports when they get there?
Possession is 90% of the law. If the US isn't there to keep them out, no passports will be needed. If they can establish a permanent base, they can even claim for their own.
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There have been some rumblings of a new lunar treaty [nytimes.com] that
One of these times... (Score:2)
One of these time Russia will have a successful mission to Mars. Nineteenth time's a charm! (All joking aside, I would like to see these missions become a success.)
not going to happen. (Score:2)
This is not going to happen given the political and economic situation in the country.
The economic situation follows the political one, and there is NO NEW CATEGORIES OF WEALTH created in Russia. It's all the same thing: pump oil and gas and cut some logs and mine some metals and then sell all this stuff, but it really does not require that many people working compared to the entire population.
The political situation is such that the old categories of wealth are plenty enough to keep a gigantic bureaucratic
oh yeah? (Score:2)
Maybe they can recover one of the lunokhod rovers, or at least some trinket from it?
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
except that they will actually go; as opposed to faking some film in the desert
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as opposed to faking some film in the desert
You liar, everyone know it was a soundstage on mars.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
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1. set up lunar microbrewery
2. ???
3. profit!
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Since I don't know much about the functioning of the global economy, could you explain how the fall of the United States economy and influence will affect Russian situation? As far as I am aware, Russian exports are directed at Europe and Asia.
I also find your statement "commodities are never coming back down." to be absurd! This is similar to the "housing prices will always goes up" delusions from the very recent past. No matter what the market, prices will always fluctuate.
Lastly I would like to state for
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Why aren't you ashamed of the actions of your Government, which pays for a would-be Russian revolution?!
This is the very definition of a strawman troll. I am curious: What is it in my post makes you think that I am from the United States?
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And you are desperate to see it coming;
Despite my cynisizm towards the future of Russia I honestly don't harbour any ill will towards that nation or its people. I find it regretable to see a country of such vast potential and hard-working ethics being stuck in a perpetual state of corruption and authoritarianism with no end to it in sight.
Though Russian people are hopeless at establishing and maintaining a free and effective system of government, they will get it right eventually. Their perseverence and endurance are nothing short of amazing and
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Sciencewise (yes, that is a word if I say it is) the moon is the most boring thing in our solar system. There is nothing to learn from putting humans on it again. I do not mind spending money (our money or the Russians) on science, but let's set our sights higher (higher than the moon, get it).
That's a bizarre attitude to have. Since we supposedly have all the answers to stuff on the Moon, what is the structure of a Mare? What sort of volatiles, if any, exist underground? I've seen a paper which predicts a rather bizarre fluorine based chemistry. There might be, for example, naturally occurring CFCs and uranium hexofluoride.
The Moon also has the nearest record of asteroid impacts to Earth. And due to its proximity, it's record is mostly likely a near identical reflection of what has impacted E