[The Sabbaticus]

Had to look up if the ESA was tied to the European Union, otherwise I would have given this project the thumbs down. That the neoliberal conceit of the impotent Eurocrats would slither its way into the form of a base on the bloody moon would be one step too far.

Of course I do not welcome cooperation with the Russians either. They'll end up pilfering European technology and shortchanging their European counterparts.

[Saeko]

Igor, tell your Russian and Eurotrash buddies to stay away from any excavated rectangular rocks.

[Potemkin]

They should also be careful to stay away from any swastika-shaped moonbases....

[youtube]DeAfoiN5SDw[/youtube]

[Decky]

Decky, Strongbow is foul. Drink Bulmer's instead, or something from the green fields of West Mercia.

Last time I checked I had a y chromosome so I will not be drinking Bulmers.

As for drinking a cider from the midlands, where exactly is it you think strongbow's cider apples are grown? Herefordshire in the west mids where the best cider apples in England come from (some people claim that Somerset makes the best cider apples but those people are wrong).

[Rugoz]

ESA's human spaceflight budget is too small for anything like a lunar base. Roscosmos doesn't have the money either. Its just empty talk.

ExoMars is the next big joint project.

I really hope the cooperation with Russia on ExoMars isn't going to impact the mission negatively.

Russia at this point has no experience with deep space missions and the foreseen launch vehicle (Proton) is terribly unreliable. ESA just needed the money.

P.S. I'm all for ESA-Roscosmos cooperation otherwise. Space agencies have to cooperate, no matter the politics.

[Nets]

There is no "dark side of the moon", Igor.

Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.

Anyways, I look forward to this

[W01f]

If survival of the human species is our priority, then the most logical course of action would be to start colonizing space as soon as we possibly can. The Earth will undergo an extinction event at some point in the future, be it man-made or nature, so the sooner we have a backup plan for our species the better. Also, colonizing a new planet (or moon) with a population that's selected for genetic fitness/compatibility will almost certainly result in a society that's largely buffered from many of the socioeconomic problems we face in the world today. It might just be the case that the Earth is a dead-end for humanity; we may never solve these problems here at home.

[Harmattan]

It is not a good idea. I don't think we should explore space. You just never know what we might encounter.

I can tell you.

[Smertios]

I think we should stay on Earth forever until we solve everything bad like poverty, war, disease, unhappiness, rudeness, the Netherlands, and so on. It's not like fixing everything and creating heaven on Earth will take an extremely long time or anything. And then we can explore and colonize space.

We spent millions of years perfecting the art of simultaneity precisely so we could solve more than one problem at the same time.

There are plenty of funds in the planet to both end poverty and explore space. That's why we are trying to do both at the same time.

Also, what happens if the Earth is destroyed before we even manage to solve those problems? It's better to be safe than sorry.

[Igor Antunov]

Due to the nature of gravity's effects on biology in general, Moonlings and Martians would look substantially different to Earthlings. Future generations living on those worlds would be much taller, slimmer and more fragile. They could not even return to earth and function without exoskeletons/artificial muscles/supports. Considering we commit genocide on the basis of imagined ethnic differences and something as superfluous as skin colour here on earth; in regards to those who leave earth - we (earthlings) would not even consider them as human in time.

So homo sapiens as we know them, us here on earth, our fate is tied to this planet. Without earth, or with a significantly altered earth, we humans of today cease to exist. So we should embrace change, and accept the fluidity of the genetic code and of society by extension. We should not be afraid to alter our species as circumstance and environment demands, we should not be afraid to abandon past political systems and adopt new ones. The status-quo is always temporary.

The way many today go about promoting diversity, race, culture, etc, is utterly flawed. We should not celebrate existing differences, safeguard existing cultures or even accept all of them. We should yearn to build better people and societies, to accept superior specimens, artificially altered or otherwise and exterminate those that are inferior.

Heil progress! Heil!

[Smertios]

Actually, we don't quite know that yet. We know the effects of microgravity on the human body mainly because we have conducted tons of space flights to near-zero-g conditions around the low Earth's orbit. Nobody knows for sure whether the Martian or Lunar gravity would be enough to prevent that.

The gravity of Mars, for example, is equal to 0.376 g. Micro-g means an order of magnitude of 0.000001 g. That means that the gravity of Mars is over 300,000 times greater than what we know to be hazardous to the human body. For all we know, that might just be enough to support our muscular and skeletal systems. We'll have to get there and return to be sure.

[The Sabbaticus]

Russia to Rewrite Space Program as Economic Crisis Bites

Russia is to revise its space program, the national space agency said on Tuesday after a newspaper published a report that billions of dollars of cuts may be afoot including to ambitious Moon exploration plans.

[Rugoz]

Mars colonization is total nonsense.

No extinction event could make Earth less habitable than Mars (unless some large planetary body hits Earth but that hasn't happened in billions of years because the inner solar system has been cleared of those).

The most reasonable thing we can do is map potentially hazardous asteroids. That is already being done. The most dangerous are the smaller ones (a few hundred meters), because there are many of them out there we don't know yet.

[Smertios]

Well, I have to agree. There is little reason to colonize Mars. Just like there is little reason to colonize Antarctica. The environment is simply too inhospitable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't get there and establish scientific bases, though. Mars can even be a hopping station for ships transporting minerals from the asteroid belt.

[Igor Antunov]

Russia is to revise its space program, the national space agency said on Tuesday after a newspaper published a report that billions of dollars of cuts may be afoot including to ambitious Moon exploration plans.

Iran receives as much Russian aid per year as Russia spends on its space program. Priorities can be shifted around as both represent a small share of the budget. This article shows nothing concrete about the long term moon program being altered beyond postulating.

[Godstud]

What a colossal waste of money! If NASA was doing this, Igor, you'd be complaining about it, instead of praising it.

[Rugoz]

That doesn't mean we shouldn't get there and establish scientific bases, though.

Scientific bases would be far too costly. We can send robots. Mars is a dead end for human exploration anyway. Planetary scientists seem to be more interested in Jupiter's and Saturn's moons nowadays.

Mars can even be a hopping station for ships transporting minerals from the asteroid belt.

Asteroid mining is not a viable business and won't be for decades. And "stopping" at Mars makes no sense.

This article shows nothing concrete about the long term moon program being altered beyond postulating.

The Russian manned moon program was already a pipe dream before Roscosmos' budget was slashed in half.

[Lexington]

We should yearn to build better people and societies, to accept superior specimens, artificially altered or otherwise and exterminate those that are inferior.

This sounds great until you discover that you're the inferior one.

[Igor Antunov]

I can deal with that. Sacrifice for progress.

Also, Russian space agency is about to get much bigger:

Vladmir Putin officially dissolves Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency and will restructure it as a state-run corporation starting January 1, 2016.

Roscosmos State Corporation will be merged with the United Space and Rocket Corporation and Rocosmos

http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/28/roscosmos-abolished/

[Lexington]

We should yearn to build better people and societies, to accept superior specimens, artificially altered or otherwise and exterminate those that are inferior.

This sounds great until you discover that you're the inferior one.

I can deal with that. Sacrifice for progress.

I'm fairly certain you'd run like a rat under a floorboard. But it's okay - good people did have to hide from eugenicists under floorboards like rats.

Oh, wait, I thought you said in another thread you were a leftist and not a Nazi?