Posted on 03/30/2012 11:25:19 PM PDT by garjog
By 2030, Russia will send robots to the Moon to collect samples. The program will be punctuated with a manned Moon landing — 60 years after Neil Armstrong’s Apollo mission. Payback, perhaps, for losing out on the major leg of the U.S. and Soviet space race.
The optimistic program also lays out plans for active exploration of other planets in the solar system, and ideas for a follow-up to the International Space Station: The ISS is only funded until 2020.
(Excerpt) Read more at kurzweilai.net ...
Will Russia still be able to do this?
It’s expected their population is basically going be halved in about 50 years.
Its amazing. The country is planning a moon colony and they cannot pay their own scientists.
Well, planning is one thing. Being able to carry it out is another. I don’t see technology as the big impediment so much as other pressing needs are likely to restrict it to the realm of a pipe dream.
Could be wrong, of course.
No worries. China is demographically taking over their eastern frontiers.
Funny; I always thought MSNBC was the network from Mars....or was it Uranus?
At least until China’s demographics, thanks to their one child policy, starts to catch up to Russia, which should happen by about 2015 or so, give or take a year. :)
Here’s my different take.
In 1980 or so, Reagan precipitated the fall of the Soviet Union by pushing them with a huge defense initiative—Star Wars—which they felt they had to match, but were economically unable to do. Economic over-reach put a lot of stress on the old USSR.
The US has long felt it has to match every showy, prestigious initiative. If a Russian-Chinese space program were advertised, and we tried to match it in our current economic straits, it cause us a good deal of economic strain. Cloward-Pliven by a different name?
Yup, and Newt was called an idiot or crazy for the US doing it.
Yeah, sure they will, Ray.
Me, as a Heinlein-bot, am deeply embarrassed by our "Space Program" with that dog-eared shuttle thing and the 8th grade Science Fair Projects in Space. Where's MY Moon-Base? MY Mars Colony? MY asteroid mining operation? (Keep answer clean!)
Seriously folks, our space thing is just so 60's!
Me, as a Heinlein-bot, am deeply embarrassed by our "Space Program" with that dog-eared shuttle thing and the 8th grade Science Fair Projects in Space. Where's MY Moon-Base? MY Mars Colony? MY asteroid mining operation? (Keep answer clean!)
Seriously folks, our space thing is just so 60's!
And I plan to be a multi-trillionnaire by then. Thanks garjog.
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