back to article Russia plans manned moon shot by 2030

The Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos has submitted to its government a draft set of ambitious plans for its activities through 2030, including sending a manned craft around the moon, building ion-powered space tugs, and trying again to visit Mars. As was true with their failed Phobos-Grunt Mars probe, Roscosmos plans to …

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  1. Bill Neal
    Go

    The race to the moon started when?

    Who knows, at this rate the SPB could show them a thing or two by sending a playmonaut to the moon. Vulture 11 perhaps?

    1. mad physicist Fiona

      Re: The race to the moon started when?

      There was no race to the Moon. After they had men in orbit the Russians looked at their next goals and decided against a manned mission to the Moon. It is only American propanga that portrays a "race" to the Moon - a race with precisely one competitor. A race which ultimately led nowhere - it was 40 years since they were last there, they couldn't go there today and haven't been anywhere else since.

      In contrast ventures such as the ISS would have been completely impossible if it was not for decades of Russian experience and expertise developed on their own space station programme.

      1. Aldous
        Thumb Up

        Re: The race to the moon started when?

        such a shame the Russian's focused on records (.i.e first x numbers in space etc) hen boots on the moon. not that i want to cheer lead them and the Chinese who seem to be the only ones interested in our satellite but go Russia !

        merkins (because as a brit you are our only only hope in this sector) get NASA to stop focusing on the effects of microgravity on ants ability's to screw screws and get your boots back on the moon you gonna let a bunch of ex commie borch eaters beat you?

        hell i would by shares in spaceX right now if they would let me. orbit is big business (comm sats etc) but this hunk of rock in orbit nah we don't need that just like cars going over 20 mph will shatter the human spine

      2. ian 22
        Thumb Down

        Re: The race to the moon started when?

        Incorrect. The Lunakhod rovers were intended to survey locations for manned landings (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme).

      3. Flugal

        What were the Soyuz 7K-LOK and the N1 rocket designed to do?

        It's true, the Russians didn't get very fair with their manned lunar programme, but would be incorrect to say they didn't have one at all. How viable it was is another matter.

        That said, the US chose to go to the moon because Kennedy was (correctly as it turned out) sold the idea it was an achievement they could achieve before the Russians.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Re: The race to the moon started when?

        There most certainly was a race to the Moon. At one point the Soviets had three independent Moon programmes underway. They failed because they couldn't get the two best rocket designers to agree on a single design; and when the Politburo did decide on Korolev's N1, they skimped on the funding. Korolev couldn't build big engine chambers to rival those the Americans were designing for the Saturn V, so he used large numbers of smaller engines, making his design complex. Korolev didn't have the ground testing facilities to debug the individual stages of the N1, so it would have to be tested all-up. His tragically early death meant that when the N1 was completed under Mischin, it was a shambles. Four launches, all much later than planned, four failures.

        The fallback was to use the Proton - Zond to get a manned capsule based on Soyuz around the Moon before Apollo could do so. The Proton wasn't reliable enough at the beginning and Zond also had serious technical issues - including re entering at crushing G forces and depressurising in flight. A number of Zonds were sent around the Moon, but they only ever carried biological samples.

        After Apollo 11 the Soviets claimed to have never been planning a manner lunar mission, saying they could do it all with their Luna sample return missions and Lunokhod. In actuality the manned lunar programme limped on until something like 1975 when the repeated failures of the N1 gave the Soviets a chance to kill their plans in favour of their Salyut space stations and what would become Buran.

        Although the N1 is long scrapped, the Soviet manned LK lander still exists and is now on display in Moscow.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          the sad thing is

          that the US gave away their advantage to the rest of the world.

          I still remember sitting with my dad watching when the first man put his foot on the moon.

          If Armstrongs first words had been ' shit guys this place is swimming in oil' We'd still be there today.

          Instead he said... 'is this it? Reminds me of Milton Keyes... Let's go home.'

          1. RyokuMas
            Coat

            Re: the sad thing is

            If Armstrong's first words had been "Shit guys, this place is swimming in oil", we wouldn't have a moon any more...

            ... damn, no more surfing.

  2. The Axe

    /sarc

    You missed the /sarc at the end of the last paragraph of the article.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who will get there first, China or Russia?..

    Who do you want to get their first?

    1. OrsonX

      If you get there first, is it yours?

      1. Bill Neal
        Joke

        FLAG

        The US already claimed it, with the cunning use of flags.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Their

      Their first what?

    3. Voland's right hand Silver badge
      Devil

      You are missing the point

      Chinese do not just want to go there - they want to go and claim it and develop the resources.

      Take the Chinese space program and roadmap (available in English) and read it. It makes a very interesting read. It is even more interesting that they have hit every single roadmap item and data since they have published it.

      It will be more difficult to hit the next ones because they will need to build the next gen launcher which can go off-schedule, but none the less - their Space program is an impressive feat of program management.

      1. gujiguju
        Mushroom

        Re: You are missing the point

        The salient "missing point" is actually that the only reason why China is going it alone in space is because they were snubbed by NASA about joining ISS, many years ago.

        So, now, we've given them a reason for everyone to waste a trillion dollars in all separate, but duplicate US, EU, Russian and Chinese space programs....

        Smooth move, NASA. We showed them.

  4. teebol
    FAIL

    Why in the name of Jupiter are there still separate national space agencies in 2012? What kind of dystopian future is this?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Probably something to do with there still being separate countries and governments. As awesome as a united planet/species would be, it's not possible while we continue to kill each other for stupid reasons.

  5. Mage Silver badge
    Alien

    One isn't

    The ESA is transnational and has non-EU members. Nor is every EU country a member.

    19 European states

    Austria

    Belgium

    Czech Republic

    Denmark

    Finland

    France

    Germany

    Greece

    Ireland

    Italy

    Luxembourg

    Netherlands

    Norway

    Portugal

    Romania

    Spain

    Sweden

    Switzerland

    United Kingdom

    Extra points if you know which are NOT EU without looking it up!

    ESA even have a Launch pad for the Russians in their own Space port nearer the Equator than Chinese, US or Russian ones. They just don't get as much publicity as NASA

    1. Sweaty Hambeast

      Re: One isn't

      "Extra points if you know which are NOT EU without looking it up!"

      Norway and Switzerland.

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Looks like the russians have been suckered again.

    the quote from the actual article

    http://rbth.ru/articles/2012/03/16/roscosmos_takes_on_nasa_15096.html

    due to "Accounts Chamber Chairman Sergei Stepashin" that "“Indeed, heavy lift launch vehicles are also an indispensable element – no interplanetary spacecraft can be put into orbit without them,” he said.

    Suggested they are going to chase the US model. Rocket engineers going back to Werner von Braun have known better.

    This is a *very* poor choice and use of budget. The Augustine commission went to some trouble to find out what you a space programme could do with *existing* launchers.

    They realized propellent is the biggest *single* lump of mass that has to go to orbit but is the *simplest* to sub-divide *provided* you have a big storage tank in orbit. While big it is light, so it can still sit on on top of an existing launcher.

    Russia also has a back catalogue of very high efficiency engines running everything *except*LH2.Proton runs with storables propellant and on orbit refueling exercises have already been carried out with these, although LOX/Kero would be a much better choice given similarly developed engines. On orbit fuel transfer would also give Russia *unique* capabilities which would be "one up" on both the US and China (and India), despite *decades* of NASA saying it would be a really good idea if they developed this capability.

    The USSR developed a space shuttle because their engineers looked at the design and concluded it could not be operated for the costs NASA claimed (which was true). Russian politicians concluded it was a conspiracy to do something else and insisted on having one just like it.

    They failed to take into account NASA (and the US aerospace industries) fondness for protecting jobs at *almost* any cost (provided it's paid by the taxpayers of course).

    In a world where information is supposedly *much* more freely available astute Russian merkin watchers should have realized this a *long* time ago. Never attribute to planning for a surprise military attack what simple (very well funded) political lobbying and political self-interest can do just as well.

    Russintards, you are about to be had.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Looks like the russians have been suckered again.

      "The USSR developed a space shuttle because their engineers looked at the design and concluded it could not be operated for the costs NASA claimed (which was true). Russian politicians concluded it was a conspiracy to do something else and insisted on having one just like it."

      So they knew it was a stupid idea, so therefore it had to be something else in disguise, but they didn't know what, so they did the same in the hope that they'd figure out what it was for by the time they'd finished it. Ah, the Cold War. Happy days...

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Looks like the russians have been suckered again.

        ...and when they *did* finally finish it, they found that they were bankrupt and the Americans had won the Cold War.

        Only then did it dawn on them that *this* is what the US shuttle program was *for*.

        But the punchline is that (by that time) the US themselves had forgotten this and continued to bank-roll the program for two decades.

        1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
          Happy

          Re: Looks like the russians have been suckered again.

          "Only then did it dawn on them that *this* is what the US shuttle program was *for*."

          Actually that was what SDI was for as Jerry Pournelle used to explain it.

          STS was about keeping most of the NASA "ecosystem" in place until the US govt got over it's "temporary" reduced funding levels and returned them to Apollo levels.

          That has not happened yet but insiders remain confident that it will real soon now.

  7. Ramazan
    Joke

    Russia sill doesn't have 100 tonnes carrier

    Such powerful carriers are^Wwere considered necessary to put interplanetary ships into LEO, and there's no point to have them otherwise. But maybe they are planning to launch T-90s to space now?

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Russia sill doesn't have 100 tonnes carrier

      Energia could lift 100 tons, of course it's not flying any more, but presumably they still have the design on file somewhere.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting

    Interesting times we live in.

    With the scrapping of the shuttle fleet and the reliance on Russia to reach the ISS.

    America in a downturn and NASA still suffering from decades of budget cuts.

    Now Russia decides to go for the moon.

    If they can pull it off it'll really give the west a poke in the eye.

  9. Fred Mbogo
    Thumb Up

    To be quite honest

    I don't care if the next man/woman on the moon is an astronaut, a cosmonaut or a taikonaut. I only want Us (the worldly We) to go back there.

    Lets build a Bernal Sphere. Lets establish a colony in the moon or a science base.

    Humanity needs this. I have lost my faith in governments, economic systems and religions. We need to prove to ourselves that after surviving for so long we have something else to show for instead of the ability to accurately (most of the time) bomb brown people. To fill the pockets of alienated, uncaring pigs. To enslave each other to maintain the status quo.

    Let us be the T'au instead of the Imperium of Man.

    1. Bill Neal
      Meh

      Re: To be quite honest

      Doesn't make sense to goto the moon instead of further exploiting the excess of resources under water. For some reason, we seem content to just drill for petrochemical stuff, and eat the fish out of existence. As COOL as space is, we really have no hope of colonizing anything without more tech. This is like humans building the autobahn because we just invented the wheel.

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