MOONBASE ALPHA!
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Posted on 09/20/2004 5:39:43 PM PDT by wagglebee
In the days of the Cold War, Soviet commanders and their best scientists were working on a project to build military headquarters on the moon, the Novaya Gazeta weekly reports.
The paper writes that the lunar base project was developed 30 years ago and was abolished only because of its enormous cost.
The newspaper cited Aleksandr Yegorov, deputy general designer of the General Machine Building Design Bureau (the name of the bureau suggests that it deals with top secret military projects) as saying that he personally took part in the development of the lunar base project.
Soviet scientists considered the moon to be a very good place for a strategic headquarters as nuclear strikes on its surface would lose most of their destructive force. As the moon has no atmosphere, no shockwave could spread there and the radioactive dust would immediately fall out back on the surface without an atmosphere to carry it.
The designer also said that the USA had also developed a lunar base project and the Soviet scientists had been aware of these plans.
Yegorov said that the Soviet Union had planned to put two spaceships into orbit and assemble them into a single station that would fly to the moon. At first the lunar settlers were to live in moving shelters and later a stationary base was to be built.
Crews of four cosmonauts were to spend up to one year on the moon. To make the base habitable it would have been furnished with water and air purification systems and even a special space greenhouse.
The project was abolished only due to its enormous cost, Yegorov said. According to him, the Soviet project was "tens of times” more expensive than the Apollo project of the United States, which cost $34 billion.
That would be true. Besides, a military base on the moon with Earth as the target makes not the least bit of sense, zero sense tactically, zero sense strategically. It says right here that any military person that would plan otherwise more than about sizteen seconds should be busted down to E-1 and today.
> ... weren't the Soviets unsuccessful in getting a
> man to the moon and then back alive?
As far as I know, they never actually tried. Their Saturn-
class booster was a disaster. Here's Oberg's summary on
dead cosmonauts. I haven't read it, although I did read
Oberg's "Red Star in Orbit" many years ago.
http://www.igs.net/~hwt/oberg/deadcosm.htm
They also planned to bury the West. That worked out real well too.
Yeah it crash landed.
See also:
http://www.jamesoberg.com/usd10.html
MOONBASE ALPHA!
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There main error in judgement was forgetting the simple fact that all their base are belong to us.
We basically planted our flag on the moon, and own it.
The Russians knew this, and were going to try and undo the damage.
Whoever really gets a base on the moon runs the planet.
Nah, we might want to colonize the moon someday. Send them all into space in a rocket with no destination, 3 months of fuel and a bomb set to go off when the fuel runs out. Oh and only put pork on for them to eat.
This is an extremely lame statement. The writer is trying to imply that the moon base came close to being realized when obviously enormous cost is the primary reason we don't have to worry about things like this.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/lk.html
That is true. That's why they came up with the idea for a moon base. That way, they didn't have to worry about bringing them back.
The US Army had planned a moon base before 1960. The plan, not the base.
Or prior to Space:1999, Gerry Anderson's other mixed puppet/people 1969 cult hit series "U.F.O". It had a great Moonbase, manned by beautiful but smart women in tight silver catsuits and purple wigs. I think the Soviets would have been envious.
You never read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", did you?
Stable launch platform, and you dont even need nukes, just throw rocks at 'em
You gotta love science fiction. Aliens can travel all the way to the moon, but don't seem to make it to earth.
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