Russia to have Moonbase by 2030

Russia is starting a program to establish a Moon base by 2030, by using a large cave to house cosmonauts.

www.news.com.au

The colonists could live in underground volcanic caves sheltered from radiation and meteor showers inside sealed inflatable modules, Reuters reports

The head of Russia's Star City cosmonaut training centre Sergei Krikalyov revealed the plan at a forum on the future of manned space flight this week, the report said.

Krikalyov said the 2008 discovery of a 65m wide, 80m deep hole in the moon by Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft could pave the way for lunar bases.

"It would be enough to use an inflatable module with a hard outer shell to - roughly speaking - seal the caves," he said.

Deputy science head at the Russian training centre Boris Kryuchkov estimated the colonies could be built by 2030.

The European Space agency also showed interest in making the moon our new home.

"In ESA, there is still a very strong focus on the moon,” Research Operations Department head Martin Zell said. “It could be a natural first to go there."

Sounds like a very expensive project, with ongoing sovereign debt problems in Europe, this seems quite ambitious.

I hope they can do it however.

This is very interesting. As much as I am interested in thee advancement and growth of the human race, I'm a little scared if the Russians were the first to do something like that though

reply to post by Krusty the Klown


Mining the moon for it's rich titanium deposits with low cost export to Earth being at the bottom of the gravity well could prove generous means for covering costs, and financing future endeavors.
Lower gravity with working active mining on moon could supply raw material to all future space projects cheaper and in greater capacity than heavy lift solutions earth side.

My question is this..... Where exactly is Russia getting the money to fund such exotic operations and missions? Is it just me or were they flat BROKE not even 10 years ago and needed help getting there ISS module and cosmonaut into orbit?

now we are broke and the hichhikers

reply to post by Helious


Russia is the world's largest producer of oil.
When prices rose some years ago Russia got rich.

Thank you Russia! You know this means the U.S now plans to have a moon base by 2029.

RP 2012

exactly, the states in three days will announce their new "2028 Moon Base." It will be "incredibly better than the russian's."

About time someone starts mining and making bases up there been wondering what took them so long. Figured America would of been up there by now with a ship factory or something. 1-10% of the surface is titanium (varying area's) they also have a way to remove water from the soil add a large solar array they could expand from a small base to a huge underground city fast. I was hoping by 2000 every year that passes it seems like we keep postponing thing longer and longer.

Looking into something else, I believe it was water traces near the surface, I found out the Kaguya spacecraft couldn't analyze anything under a few millimeters below the lunar regolith, and it wasn't really it's mission at all. The Indian Chandrayaan-1 was more suited to analyze the water content of polar craters. Thus the trace of 'water' readings are highly susceptible it made, and anything (regarded as indicated) lower than that would be also. That means an underground lava tube or whatever couldn't have been found by that spacecraft.

Kind of one of the reasons NASA launched the GRAIL mission, to probe lower than that.

The JAXA Kaguya–Selene mission was to map the surface and provide a 3D fly-around at a much less resolution than the mapping instruments, I don't believe it had geological instruments to determine such things below the surface of the moon.

reply to post by AaronWilson


Of course it will be better than Russia's. Russia is like the exact opposite of what German engineering is. I would say the U.S is in the middle of the road. Good but not great.

reply to post by Mcupobob


I agree, they do like to keep it nice and metalic-ee. German space program would be incredible, i bet those space ships would be like space cruise ships made of leather happiness with a unicorn powered thruster. Yup, those Germans do build some good stuff.

Let's just be honest here, who would want to trust a nation who cannot get their rockets off the ground safely? Walk before you run buddy.

The future is in space but to mine the moon is ignorant as it could have adverse consequences on the tide & waves. If Russia really wants to lead the way, they should start by advancing horticulture. That's where the money is. If they run some fertilization experiments on desert or tundra soil and are conclusive and applicable, it will prepare us for the eventuality of seeding martian landscape.

In regards to money, I was reading just today that apparently Russia has been less hard-hit than most nations economically. They're probably in a better position to attempt this than most countries.

I don't want to see Russia monopolize the moon, but I would like to see more space exploration. I think we need more joint projects, though, not one country unilaterally taking actions.

I want to see hippie communes on the moon, but yes, I would like to see joint projects between nations too.

Originally posted by eyes0wide0open
This is very interesting. As much as I am interested in thee advancement and growth of the human race, I'm a little scared if the Russians were the first to do something like that though

Russia is allright these days. It's all about China and North-Korea these days! If NK was to announce a plan to build a moonbase, I would seriously hope for a military intervention by the West. Mid-east gets a lot of attention, but those ragheads are just a bunch of fools who happened to read the wrong book and interpret it literally. North-Korea however, they're actually crazy.

reply to post by famalhut


korea (north) couldnt build a theme park or even a building so im not to worried about them setting up a base on the moon especialy when they cant even feed their whole army let alone there pop.....

Originally posted by nineix
Mining the moon for it's rich titanium deposits with low cost export to Earth being at the bottom of the gravity well could prove generous means for covering costs, and financing future endeavors.
Lower gravity with working active mining on moon could supply raw material to all future space projects cheaper and in greater capacity than heavy lift solutions earth side.

That's a good point. If they can extract resources then they are getting a return on the money they spend, as opposed to just about all previous moon missions which only had a scientific return.

This project could turn out to be profitable in $$$$$$$.

Strange? It seems like it was just yesterday that USAID decided to give Russia fifty million dollars to go with Ciscos One billion dollar plan to teach Russia how to use the internet. Oh wait that was just the other day.

en.rian.ru...

en.rian.ru...