SPACE RACE! Russia Moon Base 2015 & Mine for Helium-3; U.S. Planning Moon Base by 2020 then to Mars

[The Cleaner]

HOUSTON -- For the first time since 1972, the United States is planning to fly to the moon, but instead of a quick, Apollo-like visit, astronauts intend to build a permanent base and live there while they prepare what may be the most ambitious undertaking in history -- putting human beings on Mars.

President Bush in 2004 announced to great fanfare plans to build a new spaceship, get back to the moon by 2020 and travel on to Mars after that. But, with NASA focused on designing a new spaceship and spending about 40 percent of its budget on the troubled space shuttle and international space station programs, that timetable may suffer...

Scientists and engineers are hard at work studying technologies that don't yet exist and puzzling over questions such as how to handle the psychological stress of moon settlement, how to build lunar bulldozers and how to reacquire what planetary scientist Christopher P. McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center calls "our culture of exploration."...

These early forays will resemble the six Apollo lunar missions, which ended in 1972. "You have four crew for seven to 10 days," Toups said in a telephone interview. "Then, if you found a site of particular interest, you would want to set up a permanent outpost there."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500999_pf.html

Russia is planning to mine a rare fuel on the moon by 2020 with a permanent base and a heavy-cargo transport link, a Russian space official said Wednesday.

"We are planning to build a permanent base on the moon by 2015 and by 2020 we can begin the industrial-scale delivery... of the rare isotope Helium-3," Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Energia space corporation, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying at an academic conference...

Helium-3 is a non-radioactive isotope of helium that can be used in nuclear fusion. Rare on earth but plentiful on the moon, it is seen by some experts as an ideal fuel because it is powerful, non-polluting and generates almost no radioactive by-product.

Source: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Russia_Plans_Mine_On_The_Moon_By_2020.html

[gasperc]

1. can we exile Bush there?

[GreenZoneLT]

2. Believe it when you see it.

Didn't W's Daddy promise we would go to Mars?

[wuushew]

3. There is zero need to go to moon before Mars

The technical knowhow and ability to go to Mars exists right now. The moon and Mars are very dissimilar environments so I don't know why anyone would want to waste money on combined equipment used for both missions.

[soothsayer]

7. because we want to weaponize space by building warfare stuff

on the moon, and we want to do it before the chinese do it!

[mainegreen]

4. Shouldn't we try and get fusion to work before actually setting up mines on the moon? nt

[softwarevotingtrail]

6. these announcments are designed to keep NASA funded

No basis in reality. Where is Poppy Bush's Mars project?

I frankly don't believe they went to the moon the first time, but just call me crazy.

[Raster]

9. Crazy. That dog won't hunt.

Move on!

[Botany]

11. Crazy

My Sister in Law works @ NASA .... she has spent time with some of the
people who went to the moon.

[Botany]

5. it has been done already

lunar bulldozers building a space "fort" and then we build a spaceship
and fly to Mars & back ..... No problem.

[Orsino]

8. Dear god!

The Russkies are gonna fuel their nonexistent fusion reactors from their nonexistent moonbase!

I, for one, do not want to go to bed by the light of an imaginarily Communist moon.

[originalpckelly]

10. Good, send all the violent idiots to the Moon...

and while the rest of normal people stay on Earth.

[Ian David]

12. I call this program, "No Astronaut Left Behind"

It's an un-funded mandate meant to accomplish several things:

1) Starve NASA to the point where it can no longer afford all those troublesome "Earth Science" programs that keep studying problematic things like Global Warming and the hole in the Ozone Layer.

2) Did we mention Halliburton has a no-bid contract for Lunar Helium?

3) Magnetic rail gun mass-drivers can turn lunar rocks into kinetic weapons for mere pennies per megaton of explosive power. Think in terms of being able to create a "Tunguska Explosion" anyplace on Earth, on a whim, with the added benefit of "Plausible Deniability." Maybe an ordinary asteroid just "happened" to land on New York during the Democratic National Convention, or maybe a routine inter-orbital ore transfer was miscalculated and just "happened" to hit Venezuela.

[Duppers]

13. ain't gonna happen!

NASA is cannibalizing their programs now. This admin gives them program objectives, but not a dime with which to fund them!

>>
Show Me The Money
NASA Looks to the Future With Eye on the Past, Washington Post

But Wes Huntress, a former NASA associate administrator and ex-member of the NASA science advisory board, said that ever since Bush announced the space exploration vision, the administration has refused to give the agency additional funding to accomplish its mission. The result is that "Griffin has had to cannibalize the agency to get the money for the new program," Huntress said. "Even at that, I don't think there are sufficient funds to support even the return to the moon once the program gets really moving.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/03/AR2006120300691.html