Russians on the moon

Matt Deckard · Sep 1, 2007

Should we race to beat them or should we let them do their thing or should we join in to help?

I say It's high time the US got its rear in gear and got up there to start mining that gold!

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070831/75959612.html

scotrace · Sep 1, 2007

Hey! That's OUR moon!

deanglen · Sep 1, 2007

If they get up there, they'll probably go over and pulldown our flag, or something. Maybe they'd build a wall between our landing site and theirs.

dean

Samsa · Sep 1, 2007

I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first
Wowee! pretty scary!

- Bob Dylan

dhermann1 · Sep 1, 2007

Competence

The craft they originally intended to send to the moon looked like a real steampunk tub, according to people who saw it. Like a steam locomotive cab. I would expect them to blow up several of their spacecraft before they ever got into orbit. I just don't think they have the inherent competence to do it. The Chinese, on the other hand, just might.
But yes, we need to get up there ourselves. Altho I'm of the camp that believes a far greater emphasis needs to be put on non manned exploration for the next generation.

Ecuador Jim · Sep 1, 2007

Our wings are about to be clipped!

The current space shuttle program is due to shut down shortly. NASA is racing to complete the International Space Staion before the end of the shuttle project.

I don't know how the next generation shuttle project is progressing; does anyone out there know the status?

We've exported a bunch of our technology to the Russians to get them up to speed on servicing the ISS; They might just pull this off.

I think manned space exploration has created so many useful technologies that we should continue to go that way, as well as unmanned missions. I think we need to share the cost burden with other economies though. I thought that was what the ISS project was supposed to do.

I'm envisioning the closing moments of "Space Cowboys"; Tommy Lee Jones propped up against a moon rock with Frank singing "Fly Me To The Moon" to the closing credits.

MrNewportCustom · Sep 1, 2007

I've been watching The States on the History Channel. When Arizona was covered, they mentioned NASA using the area around the crater as training grounds for astronauts going to the moon. The show also mentioned a possible future moon landing in, I think they said, 2020.

I did some looking online, but couldn't find anything else on it.

Lee
________________________

Looks like the race is on again.

Fast · Sep 2, 2007

They want us to race them to the moon. While we send a football squad's worth of guys to a cold, dead rock, they send submarines to claim the bottom of the ocean, then on to Santa's at the north pole!

Carpe diem
Fast

Miss Neecerie · Sep 2, 2007

Ecuador Jim said:
I don't know how the next generation shuttle project is progressing; does anyone out there know the status?

I think manned space exploration has created so many useful technologies that we should continue to go that way, as well as unmanned missions. I think we need to share the cost burden with other economies though. I thought that was what the ISS project was supposed to do.

.

Since the "Vision for Space Exploration's' next craft is Apollo Capsule-esque....calling it the 'next shuttle project' is a huge misnomer.

For updates on its status from NASA... http://www.nasa.gov/

for the less offical word http://www.space.com/ is a good site..

For what its worth the cost burden of ISS -is- shared, with other governments that have projects and modules scheduled to go up there. Both Canada and Japan have stakes in the ISS.

And thats all I am allowed to say.

Denise...not an impartial observer.

Diamondback · Sep 2, 2007

I could add some information, but I'm afraid I'd get carried away and my opinion of NASA after they made the decision to purge their top minds (the von Braun team) would get me banned from the Lounge. (There is no polite way for me to express my contempt for a great many of the boneheads in Admin and their decisions, two that cost fourteen lives in particular...)

Unmanned exploration has its place, but if you're gonna colonize and start developing, you need boots-on-the-ground...

buelligan · Sep 2, 2007

Why would we want to go to the moon anyways, I mean what could one country do with all that Cheese.

Diamondback · Sep 2, 2007

Good staging-ground for flights to Mars, or to start mining the asteroid belt...

Maj.Nick Danger · Sep 2, 2007

Been there,....

...and you know.

(Well, the general consensus is that we've been there already anyway.)
We gotta get to Mars next. Mars is the place we gotta be.

carter · Sep 2, 2007

Originally posted by Diamondback
Good staging-ground for flights to Mars, or to start mining the asteroid belt...

As any student of the war in the Pacific can tell us, leaving any outpost open to the competition can be disastrous. That's why the way to Japan was a series of battles to take and hold islands between the allies and the Land of the Rising Sun. Ships and planes could not wage war without boots on the ground.
To leave the moon uncontested is not something done without peril.

They want us to race them to the moon. While we send a football squad's worth of guys to a cold, dead rock, they send submarines to claim the bottom of the ocean, then on to Santa's at the north pole!

Carpe diem
Fast

This point is at least equally, if not more, critical. The melting of the polar ice caps has already lead to the initial stages of an undersea land grab that has at stake some of the richest untapped oilfields on the planet. When one considers the Russian resumption of Cold War overflights as well as their joint wargames with China, there is real cause for concern.

I'll keep it at this. Not a political discussion but some thoughts on geo-political reality in the 21st century.

Diamondback · Sep 2, 2007

Hmmm... another Cold Warrior, huh? (You're in good company--even though I'm obviously too young to have been part of it, my attitude and knowledge were enough to have had a group of old SAC veterans at the B-52 50th party tell me "you're one of us", which I consider some of the highest praise I've ever received.)

carter · Sep 2, 2007

Originally posted by Diamondback
Hmmm... another Cold Warrior, huh?

IMHO, the Cold War never ended. It just went on hiatus.
The same issues still exist and as long as there are nations that perceive that they are treated as second-class regardless of shifting alliances, boundaries, etc., the same reactions should not be surprising.
Any student of the period between WWI and WWII has a pretty good grasp of the reasons Japan fought with the Allies in WWI and with the Axis in WWII.
Look at the former USSR nations since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Which have been allowed to join the EEC? Which are aligned with NATO? Which have prospered? Which have not?
This is a story as old as time, played out countless times over the centuries. Only the names have changed.

To understand is not to accept.
To fail to understand is unacceptable.

Diamondback · Sep 2, 2007

carter said:
This is a story as old as time, played out countless times over the centuries. Only the names have changed.

To understand is not to accept.
To fail to understand is unacceptable.

Indeed. I seem to recall Churchill advising those who would divine the future to study the past... Like the title of a Star Trek episode said, "Tomorrow is Yesterday."

carter · Sep 2, 2007

"When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Georges Santayana The Life of Reason

"Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future." John Ruskin

Baron Kurtz · Sep 2, 2007

Back to the moon?

Can anyone say . . . waste of money better spent elsewhere? I will never understand the obsession with space exploration.

bk

Diamondback · Sep 2, 2007

Because this rock isn't gonna support us forever, for part of it. Come on, haven't you ever wanted to go over that next hill and see what was over there, just for the sake of seeing it? Space is that next hill...

Besides, once it's commercialized, it'll be a whole new economy.

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