Russia Planning Permanent Base on the Moon

[finehoe]

Russia's space agency is planning to build a manned moon base - launching modules into space on six separate rockets.

Russia plans to launch a lunar probe in 2024 which will scout possible locations - before landing a man on the moon in 2030.

Construction of the Luna 25 lander has already begun, the official state news agency Tass has reported.

Once the components are in place, assembly of the moon base will continue over ten years.

Moscow has previously said that it envisages the base being permanent.

Last year, deputy premier Dmitry Rogozin said: 'We are coming to the moon forever.'

In an article in the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta he wrote, ''The moon is not an intermediate point in the race. Ot is a separate, even a self-contained goal.

'It would hardly be rational to make some ten or 20 flights to the moon, and then wind it all up and fly to the Mars or some asteroids.

'This process has the beginning, but has no end. We are coming to the moon forever.'

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/russia-is-planning-to-build-a-permanent-manned-base-on-the-moon-095818907.html#HGAnQAy

[spuwho]

Since the retirement of Energia, the Russian space program doesn't have a heavy lift capability, just alot of small to medium lift.  So I am not surprised that it will take many flights to support any lunar base effort.

At the moment their unmanned medium lift is relatively inexpensive and so they can get resupply out fairly cheaply.

The bigger issue is where they are going to launch it from?

The new space base in Siberia is way behind schedule so that leaves Balkinour or through their French partners in Guyana, which now has Soyuz launch capacity.

With their plans to leave the ISS in 2020, that will end their financial commitments and they can redirect their rubles towards the moon.

[BridgeTroll]

We should have been there by now instead of wasting time and money in low earth orbit...

[Jason]

I hope they take out the Nazis before they setup their base! 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/








Iron Sky is a fun movie, although extremely politically incorrect.

[acme54321]

I hope they take out the Nazis before they setup their base! 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/








Iron Sky is a fun movie, although extremely politically incorrect.

I forgot about that one!  It was "entertaining"

[spuwho]

We should have been there by now instead of wasting time and money in low earth orbit...

Actually we have learned alot from the ISS about long duration space flight. Lessons that would be pretty risky if learned in deeper space.

Macular degeneration caused by the deforming of the eyeball when exposed to long term zero G is the one that surprised everyone.  Essentially your eyeball stops being "round" and you begin to lose your eyesight.

The Apollo missions were too short to measure this anomaly, but long duration stays on the ISS started to detect it. If we had send anyone to Mars unknowing, they would have come back clinically blind.

The eyeball appears to recover once back on terra firma and vision restores after the ISS testing. Not sure about recovery from a Mars exploration.

The ISS also exposed some design weaknesses in the EVA suits. When ISS astronaut Parmitano nearly drown to death in his own suit (and still made it to the air lock blind with water over his eyes), it revealed an issue with a evaporator system when in constant reuse.

NASA did a good job suppressing just how close he came to dying, but these are things that can be resolved in NEO, not when a crew is 3M km from Earth.