Russia floats joint lunar base with NASA & ESA


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Not a hop out, take a walk and go home mission, but a permanently manned MOONBASE.

http://en.rian.ru/science/20120119/170840782.html

Roscosmos Revives Permanent Moon Base Plans

Russian Space Agency Roscosmos is in talks with its European and U.S. partners on the creation of manned research bases on the Moon, the agencies chief, Vladimir Popovkin, said on Thursday.

"We don't want the man to just step on the Moon," Popovkin said in an interview with Vesti FM radio station.

"Today, we know enough about it, we know that there is water in its polar areas," he said, adding "we are now discussing how to begin [the Moon's] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency ."

There are two options, he said: "either to set up a base on the Moon or to launch a station to orbit around it."

The project of a "prospective manned transportation system" to be sent to the Moon is currently being developed, the Roscosmos chief said.

The Moon base project seems to revive Cold War-era plans to create a permanent outpost on the Moon, which was talked about by some Soviet and U.S. scientists since the late 1950s.

Russia is also planning to send two unmanned missions to the Moon by 2020, the Luna Glob and the Luna Resource, Popovkin added.

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This would be great indeed.

But has no one, i.e. NASA, ever thought about this? I mean, what they are saying completely makes sense, but what took it so long to realize that we need to make a station up there?

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it's definatly one of those things that one country alone should not do... we need to bring the world together to work on this, and yes including the chinese... we need Russia, the ESA, NASA, the Chinese, Japan, etc we can all work together to do this

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so one minute Popovkin is accusing us of destroying his Mars ship, the next he's planning to settle the moon with the US and EU...yeah this guy is off his rocker. having said that, the sooner we have a permanent moon base the better. for me supporting a moon settlement is common sense, we need it. this can be easily done tomorrow. just "retire" and refit the ISS as a moon base/orbiter, save money like that.

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