Space In General
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Russia's Deputy PM says country must shoot for Moon base
Russia should set itself the "super goal" of building a large base on the Moon it could use to achieve "leaps" in science and to give a new sense of purpose to its troubled space program, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday.
Calling the task "big, prestigious and political", Rogozin said the country's space industry - which has suffered a string of costly and embarrassing failures - urgently needed a tangible stimulus to force it to focus.
"There is a lot of competition among countries in the space sector and so we must have a big super goal that could pull forward science and industry; that would enable the country to escape from the morass of problems, which have kept us captive for the past 20 years," Rogozin told the Vesti FM radio station.
"Why not try to build a big station on the Moon that would be a base for future 'leaps' of science?".
Russia's renewed focus on the Moon may reflect a scaling back of ambition following a string of space failures and comes as other countries - notably China - are eyeing the Moon with greater ambition. Beijing plans to land its first probe there next year even though it still has a long way to go to catch up with space superpowers Russia and the United States.
Scientists have said the Moon may hold reserves of water and suggested various minerals could possibly be mined there.
The Soviet Union put the first satellite and the first man in space, but those glory days are a distant memory. Crimped budgets and a brain drain mean Moscow has long been absent from deep space and its space program appears to be in trouble.
Last year, a Russian mission failed to return samples from the Martian moon Phobos, and last month the failure of a Proton rocket caused the multi million-dollar loss of Indonesia's Telkom-3 and Russia's Express-MD2 satellites.
"We are losing our authority and billions of roubles," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told officials at a government meeting last month.
Roskosmos, Russia's space agency, has previously floated the idea of a Moon base - possibly built in collaboration with the United States and Europe - and has also spoken of the option of constructing a space station that would orbit the Moon.
It is planning to send two unmanned missions to the Moon by 2020 and there have been reports that it is weighing a manned mission there too.
Russian scientists and cosmonauts have suggested lunar colonizers could take shelter in what they believe is a network of underground caves left by the Moon's volcanic past.
"It's too far and too expensive to Mars," space industry expert Igor Lissov told the state RIA news agency. "We must start with the moon. We must give ourselves realistic goals."
Rogozin said the Moon project could be a jumping-off point for future deep space projects.
Space agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said on Monday that Russia would recall the rocket type which caused the multi-million dollar loss of Indonesian and Russian telecom satellites last month.
Such failures for Russia, which conducts some 40 percent of global space launches, risk undermining its standing in the market, strengthening competitors such as Europe's Ariane rocket
Reuters
Russia should set itself the "super goal" of building a large base on the Moon it could use to achieve "leaps" in science and to give a new sense of purpose to its troubled space program, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday.
Calling the task "big, prestigious and political", Rogozin said the country's space industry - which has suffered a string of costly and embarrassing failures - urgently needed a tangible stimulus to force it to focus.
"There is a lot of competition among countries in the space sector and so we must have a big super goal that could pull forward science and industry; that would enable the country to escape from the morass of problems, which have kept us captive for the past 20 years," Rogozin told the Vesti FM radio station.
"Why not try to build a big station on the Moon that would be a base for future 'leaps' of science?".
Russia's renewed focus on the Moon may reflect a scaling back of ambition following a string of space failures and comes as other countries - notably China - are eyeing the Moon with greater ambition. Beijing plans to land its first probe there next year even though it still has a long way to go to catch up with space superpowers Russia and the United States.
Scientists have said the Moon may hold reserves of water and suggested various minerals could possibly be mined there.
The Soviet Union put the first satellite and the first man in space, but those glory days are a distant memory. Crimped budgets and a brain drain mean Moscow has long been absent from deep space and its space program appears to be in trouble.
Last year, a Russian mission failed to return samples from the Martian moon Phobos, and last month the failure of a Proton rocket caused the multi million-dollar loss of Indonesia's Telkom-3 and Russia's Express-MD2 satellites.
"We are losing our authority and billions of roubles," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told officials at a government meeting last month.
Roskosmos, Russia's space agency, has previously floated the idea of a Moon base - possibly built in collaboration with the United States and Europe - and has also spoken of the option of constructing a space station that would orbit the Moon.
It is planning to send two unmanned missions to the Moon by 2020 and there have been reports that it is weighing a manned mission there too.
Russian scientists and cosmonauts have suggested lunar colonizers could take shelter in what they believe is a network of underground caves left by the Moon's volcanic past.
"It's too far and too expensive to Mars," space industry expert Igor Lissov told the state RIA news agency. "We must start with the moon. We must give ourselves realistic goals."
Rogozin said the Moon project could be a jumping-off point for future deep space projects.
Space agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said on Monday that Russia would recall the rocket type which caused the multi-million dollar loss of Indonesian and Russian telecom satellites last month.
Such failures for Russia, which conducts some 40 percent of global space launches, risk undermining its standing in the market, strengthening competitors such as Europe's Ariane rocket
Reuters
CodeRedR51
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Thought this was pretty cool.
http://www.nasa.gov/mp3/687631main_687014main_emfisis_chorus_1.mp3
NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/mp3/687631main_687014main_emfisis_chorus_1.mp3
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- Dennisch
The powerful primary mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to detect the light from distant galaxies. The manufacturer of those mirrors, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., recently celebrated their successful efforts as mirror segments were packed up in special shipping canisters (cans) for shipping to NASA.
The Webb telescope has 21 mirrors, with 18 primary mirror segments working together as one large 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) primary mirror. The mirror segments are made of beryllium, which was selected for its stiffness, light weight and stability at cryogenic temperatures. Bare beryllium is not very reflective of near-infrared light, so each mirror is coated with about 0.12 ounce of gold.
The James Webb telescope is going to be a big one.
And:
With the combined power of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, as well as a cosmic magnification effect, astronomers have spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever seen. Light from the primordial galaxy traveled approximately 13.2 billion light-years before reaching NASA's telescopes, shining forth from the so-called cosmic dark ages when the universe was just 3.6 percent of its present age.
Astronomers relied on gravitational lensing to catch sight of the early, distant galaxy. In this phenomenon, predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago, the gravity of foreground objects warps and magnifies the light from background objects.
In the big image at left, the many galaxies of a massive cluster called MACS J1149+2223 dominate the scene. Gravitational lensing by the giant cluster brightened the light from the newfound galaxy, known as MACS 1149-JD, some 15 times, bringing the remote object into view.
At upper right, a partial zoom-in shows MACS 1149-JD in more detail, and a deeper zoom appears to the lower right. In these visible and infrared light images from Hubble, MACS 1149-JD looks like a dim, red speck. The small galaxy's starlight has been stretched into longer wavelengths, or "redshifted," by the expansion of the universe. MACS 1149-JD's stars originally emitted the infrared light seen here at much shorter, higher-energy wavelengths, such as ultraviolet.
The far-off galaxy existed within an important era when the universe transformed from a starless expanse during the dark ages to a recognizable cosmos full of galaxies. The discovery of the faint, small galaxy opens a window onto the deepest, remotest epochs of cosmic history.
CodeRedR51
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Man, sucks that we don't have the technology (yet) to at least visit our neighboring galaxies. Maybe in a couple thousand years if we don't kill ourselves by then. 
And I won't be around to see it.
And I won't be around to see it.
CodeRedR51
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Quick, someone invent a "stop aging" serum or something. 
- 9,055
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- BasedAckbar
I hate the moon. Who does he think he is? With his shiny light and 🤬.
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- BasedAckbar
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You heretic.
The moon has no light. It haz reflections.
Except on the dark side.
In other news - Endeavour was retired. Now we can get up close.
Dotini
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The moon has no light. It haz reflections.
Actually, astronomers over the centuries have recorded thousands of transient lights, color changes and glows coming from the lunar surface or its tenuous atmosphere. These are real events, but not well understood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_lunar_phenomenon
Respectfully submitted,
Steve
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Dotini just did an anti joke chicken.
But nice facts as always bro.👍
But nice facts as always bro.👍
Dotini
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Dotini doesn't believe in E.T. or the supernatural. But he does dig natural mysteries and phenomena.
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Except there is no dark side(it sort of has, a unlit portion of an hemishphere), just a far side which receives as much sunlight as the earth facing side.
Oh, nice to see more progress on JWST too. It is true that the project sucks money like nothing else, but it will provide mankind with barely believable knowledge.
CodeRedR51
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CodeRedR51
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I don't expect to see much more than humans on Mars in my lifetime. Currently that's scheduled for 2033+.
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Sending humans to Mars. I find it a bit pointless. We already have a couple of rovers up there. Now all we need is a rover that can bring back a few hundred kilos of Martian rock and soil to Earth. Humans on Mars is nothing more than a prestige mission. And unless there will be a new space race I see no need for it. Better spend the money on other missions, like the J. Webb telescope.
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Humans can better analyze the environment if they are immediately within it instead of having to send a third party such as a rover or robot.
Though the endeavor of maintaining the livelihoods of such people in such a barren land will be a massive undertaking in both monetary and scientific avenues.
Though the endeavor of maintaining the livelihoods of such people in such a barren land will be a massive undertaking in both monetary and scientific avenues.
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We can send a probe through a dust tail of an asteroid. And they are still analyzing the data. Sending humans is one thing, sending a complete lab to Mars is not going to happen in our lifetime. Therefor, rocks back to Earth is a lot better.
Unless NASA has plans to sent other rockets full of useful stuff to Mars, prior to the Sending-teh-Humans mission.
Unless NASA has plans to sent other rockets full of useful stuff to Mars, prior to the Sending-teh-Humans mission.
CodeRedR51
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All the likely Mars missions were outlined in a conference this morning. I flipped through the PDF which might have that info.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/691580main_MPPG-Integrated-v13i-Summary Report-9-25-12.pdf
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They don't go into detail about the "human" missions, except for 1 thingie:
Deep"Space"Habitat"(900"days)"
900 days in space, So that will be at least a year on Mars. So it will be certain that there will be a lot of science done on Mars.
Deep"Space"Habitat"(900"days)"
900 days in space, So that will be at least a year on Mars. So it will be certain that there will be a lot of science done on Mars.
CodeRedR51
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The outline on page 26 shows the time frame for a human based Mars orbiting missions, cargo based missions, and then finally human based exploration missions. That to me looks like the "Cargo to Mars" missions are sending things there to prepare beforehand.
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I expect to see humans on Mars but I won't live to see the answer to my question.
I don't expect to see much more than humans on Mars in my lifetime. Currently that's scheduled for 2033+.
In 2033 I will be 38 years old.
CodeRedR51
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