back to article Man's future in space ... Barack Obama: Mars. Narendra Modi: Mars. Vladimir Putin: Er, Moon

As India's boffins manage to put a probe in orbit of Mars on a shoestring budget, Russia has reiterated that it will boldly go ... as far as the Moon. The head of President Putin's space agency has confirmed it will build a new rocket to reach Earth's natural satellite – first occupied by the US in 1969 – and set up permanent …

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  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Moon is a harsh mistress

    Quote:Quite why Russia has its sights set on the Moon,

    1. It is a perfect place for a slingshot. Throwing bloody big rocks too. So what was that about the sanctions once again.

    2. If they are not there, the Chinese will be - read their Moon and near space exploration plan.

    3. Going to mars still looks like a one-way ticket whose benefits are solely scientific. Compared to that a moon base may have some ROI.

    1. Russell Hancock

      Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

      4. Build a hotel and charge people to visit - i would personally love to visit space and look back at the earth. Mars is just too far away to do that and while i will probably never be able to afford to visit the moon i can always dream.

      5. Docking / repair base for the comet / asteroid / space miners / pirates / whatever to come and get easy (ish) repairs - easier than earth, also good place to store the minerals / water / what have you ready for use in space.

      6. Why NOT...

      1. Dr Scrum Master
        Mushroom

        Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

        7. Store nuclear waste on the far side...

        1. dotdavid

          Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

          If you can get nuclear waste out of the Earth's gravity well wouldn't you just fire it at the sun?

          1. marioaieie
            Mushroom

            Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

            I guess you have never played KSP...

            To put something into the sun you have first to get rid of all earth orbital velocity. There are some tricks that will help you, so you can get down to half of that, but it's still a lot of energy to burn.

            Also: space 1999

            [Mandatory explosion icon for KSP related comment]

          2. Mike Flugennock
            Thumb Up

            Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

            Yeah, launching it into the Sun makes the most sense. Just friggin' obliterate the shit.

            Do it on the Fourth Of July, too, and stream it live with Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" mixed over it. Whee-hah.

            1. cray74

              Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

              "Yeah, launching it into the Sun makes the most sense. Just friggin' obliterate the shit."

              Or you can skip the risk of launching nuclear waste and use it as fuel. One nuclear reactor's shit is another reactor's tasty treat. CANDU reactors can run on light water reactor waste. Fast reactors are happy to burn transuranic isotopes that moderated reactors don't handle well. More conceptual reactors like accelerator-aided sub-critical designs can also burn waste isotopes.

              You also need to consider the environmentalist angle on this: smash all the nuclear projects! Consider the anti-nuclear track record:

              1) US designs a nuclear power plant with an ability to efficiently create fuel; destroy heavier isotopes; process waste to create weapon proliferation-resistant fuel; and produce negligible waste. The IFR gets torpedoed by green opposition under the guise of proliferation risks, leaving hundreds of reactors churning out waste. Fortunately, there was a plan for that.

              2) US spends decades scoping out a stable, safe underground waste repository and engineering solutions to contain the waste for thousands of years. Green opposition torpedoes that Yucca mountain repository for fear of nuclear leaks, leaving waste stored in big swimming pools and rusting barrels near cities. That worked well at Fukushima, right?

              3) Brilliant group of rocket scientists and nuclear engineers plan to safely remove nuclear waste from Earth and store it on the moon (or fire it into the sun). Green opposition torpedoes this plan under the guise of preventing ozone depletion and global warming by rocket fuel, leaving nuclear fuel once again on Earth.

              I recall reading a science fiction book (I think it was "The Vampire Master Race Theory," by Frezza) that had a pearl of wisdom: you can predict the actions of a large organization by assuming it is run by a cabal bent on destroying it. Certainly seems to be the case of the anti-nuclear movement, which has consistently undermined attempts to utilize and safely store nuclear waste and instead left it close to major cities.

          3. Martin Budden Silver badge
            Boffin

            Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

            If you can get nuclear waste out of the Earth's gravity well wouldn't you just fire it at the sun?

            Because it takes three times more Δv to get from LEO to the sun than it does to get from launch to LEO. Getting to the sun requires a lot of fuel. You might find this diagram interesting.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

          7.5 If you have the nuclear waste up there just send it on its way to the sun - no need for storage.

        3. Matt Wellard

          Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

          Re Item 7. Aren't we 15 years too late to start doing that...

        4. Zog_but_not_the_first
          Happy

          Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

          Didn't that all go horribly wrong in 1999?

          1. AndrueC Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

            Didn't that all go horribly wrong in 1999?

            Yup. Brian Blessed was involved in the project a couple of times as I recall :)

        5. Mike Flugennock

          Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

          "7. Store nuclear waste on the far side..."

          7a. Premise for Gerry Anderson space opera.

      2. Crisp

        8. He3 mining.

        There's loads of it up there on the moon.

    2. GitMeMyShootinIrons

      Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

      Putin wants a secret lair where he can sit in a ridiculously oversized 60's style chair and stroke a cat, plotting world domination. Think Bond villain or Dr Evil...

    3. AbelSoul
      Trollface

      Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

      Moon Gnomes?

      1. Get to Moon

      2. ?

      3. Profit

    4. Trollslayer

      Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

      You drop rocks from orbit, the gravity well on the moon is too high.

      1. td97402

        Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

        You've got to get rocks to drop from somewhere and there's no other nearby source. Many people have described magnetically accelerated mass drivers on the moon. See Heinlein.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

        linear mass accelerators (rail guns) work quite well for getting out of gravity wells where there's no atmosphere to slow them down. All you need to do is get the launch angle and velocity "just so"

    5. td97402

      Re: Moon is a harsh mistress

      The sending people to Mars thing is a bit of nationalistic grandstanding with no real scientific value. First to the pole, first to the top of Everest and all that. There are always going to be the adventurer types. Like Buzz Aldrin one of the Mars expedition's most visible proponents. It will likely end up costing 100 to 200 billion dollars to go, putter around in the grimy red dust, grab a few rocks and come back. Our robotic missions seem to be doing a lot of science already for significantly less cash.

      Now, spending 100 to 200 billion dollars to get a real moon base going, you at least have something to show for your cash at the end of the day. Might even be, over the extreme long haul, profitable with moon based industries, mining, who knows what. There's certainly some interesting science projects that would need humans to build. Far side of the moon radio astronomy comes to mind.

  2. Mark 85

    No Brainer, Really....

    Quite why Russia has its sights set on the Moon, 45 years after Neil Armstrong made his giant leap for mankind, isn't clear.

    If you want to control Earth and whatever's going into space, the moon is pretty good place to do it. Reasonable gravity well. Good orbit for intercepting whatever you like. And an excellent jump-off point for points beyond.

    The biggest problems are no-atmosphere, minimal water, and natural resources are unknown at this time.

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Re: No Brainer, Really....

      That and it is a lot easier and cheaper to gain experience there than on Mars. There is a much shorter turn-around time for transport, plus, you can bring your experienced astro/taiko/cosmo/nauts home.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No Brainer, Really....

        It is much easier to SAY you're going to set up a lunar base than to actually do it. He gets the prestige at home for making bold plans, but the schedule is so long that if he's still alive when it becomes clear it will never happen he can blame it on someone else.

        1. td97402

          Re: No Brainer, Really....

          Speaking of "no brainers", billionaire health care is a lot different than what you or I get these days and is looking to get very interesting in the near future. I can see the "Head of Putin" still giving orders in 50 years!

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Billionaire health care

            So long as billionaires continue to die at the same ages us non-billionaires do, I'm not going to be convinced it makes any difference. They can catch diseases earlier if they do all the scans to look for signs of cancer or heart disease or whatever, but they can't cure them any better.

            If the Koch brothers both make it to 100 then I might start worrying about, otherwise the only thing I think it buys them is a bit more worry as they'll be more aware of diseases than we are in the early stages, but it won't do much to increase their lifespan (i.e. see recent studies on the lack of difference in survival rates for catching cancer earlier than it typically is now)

        2. Vector

          Re: No Brainer, Really....

          "It is much easier to SAY you're going to set up a lunar base than to actually do it."

          That may be true, but is it more difficult to do that than to create a large scale space station? It would certainly be easier to scale once established.

          The fact is, we need a staging point somewhere around this planet in order to do anything really effective beyond its orbit. The Moon may not be the perfect place, but it's a lot better than lifting everything out of the Earth's well. We may start with having to import everything from Earth anyway, but with time, we could probably figure out how to use the local resources for some purposes.

          The plans for going to Mars as they stand at the moment are going to end up just like our little jaunt to the Moon. We go, we bring back some rocks, we say we went, then forget about it for 50 years because it was too expensive.

    2. Gartal

      Re: No Brainer, Really....

      Geo Politics.

      The US currently controls all of the sea lanes that matter. Everyone, everyone has to be nice to the US for them to allow trade.

      Set up a base on the moon with a lasers or masers or bloody great big things that go bang and the balance of power shifts.

      1. crayon

        Re: No Brainer, Really....

        "The US currently controls all of the sea lanes that matter. Everyone, everyone has to be nice to the US for them to allow trade."

        More insidiously, the rise of petrodollars and the subsequent ubiquitous use of the USD in world trade means the US has a much more effective means of controlling trade. Transactions denominated in USD requires that it goes through a US bank or a US-based subsidiary of a bank. This gives the US huge leverage in blackmailing companies and countries into complying with their geopolitical machinations of the day. Which is a reason why an increasing number of countries are working to bypass the use of USD and trade with each other using their own currencies. The ditching of the USD in favour of the euro by Saddam Hussein is what prompted his downfall.

  3. Anomalous Cowshed

    speaking as a member of the cow-herd fraternity

    It's all about the moo.

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: speaking as a member of the cow-herd fraternity

      And the lunar jumping over...

  4. Alister

    I wonder if there's a political element to Russia's decision?

    Has Putin realised that for a lot of Americans (those who are not moon-landing deniers) the Moon is somehow considered to belong to them in some way, (even though that isn't actually the case) , and for Russia to say they are going to set up a permanent base there will really annoy the Americans?

    1. disgruntled yank

      Oh?

      "Has Putin realised that for a lot of Americans (those who are not moon-landing deniers) the Moon is somehow considered to belong to them in some way,"

      a. I will leave you to define "somehow considered" and "in some way". Heck, go ahead and define "a lot".

      b. Undoubtedly there are "moon-landing deniers", but they are a vanishingly small part of the population.

      "(even though that isn't actually the case)"

      c. Do tell.

      ", and for Russia to say they are going to set up a permanent base there will really annoy the Americans?"

      d. I don't see that setting it up will really annoy the US. I really don't see that saying they will set it up will provoke more than a "Huh. Wow."

      1. td97402

        Re: Oh?

        The way things are going, it is hard to say, do you recall the hysteria following the Russian's launching Sputnik? Quite literally kickstarted the U.S. Space Program and put the Nuclear ICBM programs into high gear. Think about having Chinese and Russian presences right overhead. It very well might make quite a few people nervous.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Oh?

          "The way things are going, it is hard to say, do you recall the hysteria following the Russian's launching Sputnik?"

          Something to do with having a ICBM flying overhead with a radio on its nose instead of a nuke - a good demonstration of what could happen if they changed their minds.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      He has

      The man has a degree in international relationships (that is how the actual major is called) and if memory serves me right the curriculum used to include a paper on reactions to a hypothetical "competitive event" and methods to influence public opinions in an opponent country of your choice. Though I think he specialized in Germany (with a second choice of France), not USA. Not sure, I have to look it up.

      So in terms of "will it wind up X, Y, Z" - if the decision was taken by him, this has definitely been evaluated as part of the decision.

  5. James 51

    Any chance this is for domestic consumption? Just might be something to boost his image at home or perhaps it is the new way to keep thousands of troops going for a walk in places where they've got nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes and No

      Same as the sanctions. His responce on the previous tit-for-tat was perfectly calculated. Eu was overproducing ~ 20% and exporting it all to Russia - all of it indirectly sponsored by farm subsidies. That is blowing up massively in the face of Netherlands, Greece, Germany, Poland and Baltics right now. The overproduction is so bad that some crops (apples and potatoes) now cost a negative value. It is cheaper to leave them to rot in the fields than to try to sell them.

      In the meantime, he is giving his allies agriculture (and his own) a massive kick. The exact choice of sanctions, method of application, etc was more to balance domestic economy than nail the Eu (not that this did not happen either).

      I do not want to think what he will come up with next, but it will be a "plan within a plan within a plan". The man will make a good Harkonnen (weren't they Russian by origin by the way).

  6. codejunky Silver badge

    Annex the moon!

    It isnt hard to see why the hunk of rock orbiting earth would have some value. If people are looking to fly off into space the moon as a pre-built floating platform that needs the habitable bit for humans. The alternative is building a space station and then trying to protect it from all sides from floaty things.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Annex the moon!

      aka the little green men...

  7. solo

    Misinterpretation

    They plan a landing on Ukraine and making a base in 20 ears. You heard they promised the people the moon?

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Misinterpretation

      They plan a landing on Ukraine and making a base in 20 ears.

      Pardon?

  8. VinceH

    "Quite why Russia has its sights set on the Moon, 45 years after Neil Armstrong made his giant leap for mankind, isn't clear [...] A Moon base is within easy reach, though not as exciting as a Mars HQ."

    Neil Armstrong, and those who followed him, stayed on the Moon for a comparatively short amount of time. What nobody has done is something you stated earlier in the article:

    "The head of President Putin's space agency has confirmed it will build a new rocket to reach Earth's natural satellite – first occupied by the US in 1969 – and set up permanent encampments in the next 20 years."

    Nobody has done that yet. We've had people spending a fairly long time in space, but not on another body. I'd posit that if you're thinking about setting up a permanent or semi-permanent base on another body, something that hasn't been done before, the sensible thing would be to do it on the closest one before going further afield.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "Nobody has done that yet. We've had people spending a fairly long time in space, but not on another body. "

      There were a number of years between Abel Tasman's trip to New Zealand and another bunch of Europeans heading out that way, etc.

      Not that I think Putin can do it. This is mainly about grandstanding.

  9. eJ2095

    USSR..

    Setting up a deathstar.....

    1. Yag

      Re: USSR..

      Nope, it's our moon, not Mimas

    2. Graham Marsden
      Coat

      Re: USSR..

      That's no...

      ... oh, wait, yes it is, never mind.

  10. Matthew 17

    The Moon has more to offer.

    Whilst a trip to Mars would be spectacular it has less to offer that can be monetised.

    If Russia, China or whomever start mining the Moon they will be unstoppable.

    The ISS is a bit of a lemon, another temporary structure that will be ditched in the ocean soon enough. A permanent facility on the Moon with a focus on extracting raw materials from space could transform energy and manufacturing. Launches from the Moon with its lower gravity to harvest asteroids should be more efficient once the infrastructure has been established. With their 'fuckit, it be reet' attitude to engineering they might be able to pull it off without haemorrhaging anything like the $billions Europe or the US would require to do the same.

    Interesting times ahead.

    1. Tom_

      Re: The Moon has more to offer.

      Trillions, but your point is good.

    2. Rikkeh

      Re: The Moon has more to offer.

      I dunno, the ISS has taught the participating space programmes a lot about the logistics of running a piece of kit that complicated in the long term. Every spacewalk to fix something, every incorporation of a new bit of equipment or new way of doing things is a step forward. In retrospect, saying the ISS is a bit of a lemon might be like saying Gemini was a bit of a lemon- it didn't do much at all compared to Apollo or Mercury in terms of milestones, but it was a vital stepping stone between the two.

      In recognition of that, personally, I'd be in favour of one last resupply mission (or more) carrying nothing but fuel to try and put the thing into a much higher orbit, one that will be stable for a few centuries at least. That way it can be preserved as the historical artefact that it will surely become.

  11. RainForestGuppy

    Expanded Sub-headline

    Man's future in space ... Barack Obama: Mars. Narendra Modi: Mars. Vladimir Putin: Er, Moon. David Cameron: Croydon.

    Really annoys me that subsequent UK governments have not invested more in space technologies. Ok we're too small to have our own full space program, but we don't even invest much into ESA, meaning that the French and Germans, develop all the technologies and get the downstream engineering benefits.

    Even something a potentially ground breaking as the SABRE engine from REL gets minimal governmental funding, in other countries they'd have $billions thrown at it.

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