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.
(s)AHA! now we know why Bush wants to steal Iraq's oil. He wants Haliburton to build the moon base!(/s)
Scottie, beam me down to the planet of scantily clad, bikini-wearing, buxom women immediately!
The Soviets "planned" a lot of things.
The short skirt on Star Trek were not sexist. They were the fashion of the 60's.
We need to do the rest.
The Russian people fell into this trap for 80 years.
Jeeze, Barabra Bain, et. al. certainly took themselves seriesly! I can count on zero hands the number of times they even smiled.
In real life, humans fall back on humor, even gallows humor, to survive.
I would have spaced the lot of 'em.
Yes, I remember, but not as military uniforms for women at that time or any other time.
*sigh*
I understand that former Presidential candidate Dennis Kasinich was going to be the commander of the moon base.
heh heh.
There you go! I still like that series although I do wince at the catsuits and purple wigs. The women were all smart and technical types, and the commander of moonbase was a woman. It was ahead of its time in many ways by that.
Glad to be your second opinion!
Awwwwwww yeeeeaaaaah. Tha's what I'm talkin' 'bout.
Which movie was first-- and more convincing? Heinlein's "Destination: Moon" or the Soviet "Road to the Stars?"
Why would he wanna come all the way back from Mars just to be the commander of a stinkin' Moon base?
(SID)"Drool alert... drool alert... this is no drill."(/SID)
http://ufoseries.com/movieClips/opening.mov
According to the book, Earth's gravity "well" is guarded by the gravity "curb" of the moon. If you can get that rock past the pull of the moon's gravity, then the Earth does all the remaining work in accelerating the rock to 11km/sec until it smacks her own surface.
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