I find it hard to take seriously pronouncements of government plans to do something almost two decades from now. That’s a long time, and a lot of things can happen, both technologically and politically, to either accelerate it or put it off even further. I continue to think that the first mission back to the moon will be private, because unlike the government, there are people in that sector who actually want to do it, and they have the resources.
8 thoughts on “The Russian Moon Mission”
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What is the old saying, a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step? The first step is deciding where you want to go, unless you are Forest Gump and who really desires to be Gump?
We wont really know for a few years, at least, if their actions match their words.
Sounds more like teaching the King’s horse to sing.
“–there are people in that sector who actually want to do it, and they have the resources.”
Out of idle curiosity, who are those people? And, given those two suppositions, why have they not done it yet?
As you must know but refuse to admit, one of those people is Elon Musk and he is doing it at a pace that will keep him from going broke in the process. Of course his stated goal is Mars but he is likely to stop by The Moon on the way (though probably not literally).
I remember the 80’s, and the envy U.S. commentators expressed tha Japan had 250 year plans for their economy. That really worked out for them…
Right up there with our asteroid mission.
I don’t know what you gain from a circumlunar mission, but if the Russians really wanted to do one, don’t they have the hardware at hand?
There is the Soyuz, which I had the impression was designed with the circumlunar mission in mind? Then there as this thing in the West called a Heavy Zond. The regular Zonds were unmanned space probes, and what from descriptions sounded like a modified Soyuz was flown under the Zond rubric for the Russians to be coy about what they were up to, but the craft wasn’t a proper Zond so our guys called it a Heavy Zond.
I was under the impression that a lot of their hardware was based on a single design — kind of like how a Ford and a Mercury used to be the same car, only now, a Ford and a Mazda are modifications of the same “platform.” As such, the Russians already have a craft capable of cis-lunar travel and reentry. As to getting it there, don’t they still fly the Proton, which was their way of sending the Heavy Zond around the Moon from back in the day?
Landing on the Moon is a much more challenging proposition, but the cis-lunar mission is something they tested with the Proton and Heavy Zond a whole bunch of times unmanned, and they almost got it right but then Apollo 8 happened and they gave up on it.
From what I’ve read, the Soviets designed a version of the Soyuz for a lunar mission. However, when that mission was abandoned, so was that version of the Soyuz. It had features like a more capable heat shield and other modifications (e.g. better communications capability) that aren’t needed for Earth orbit. Since they abandoned the lunar mission about 40 years ago, the Soyuz has been optimized for LEO missions. I’m pretty sure the current production models aren’t suited for a lunar mission of any kind.