Russia Will Launch Its First Moon Mission Since The 1970s

I like the moon. I hope we humans and robots settle there. Besides it will give the humans a place to stay, after the robots take over the Earth.

When I read the title I thought they were doing a manned mission. It would be good to see people leave the confines of low orbit for the first time in 50 years.

Plus they could use it as practice/tests for going to mars.

It's about time the space faring governments of the world start building an infrastructure on the lunar surface that will support long term duration stays, ship yards, fuel generation and processing, navigation stations for terrestrial navigation and launch facilities on the moon.

This is what robots should be doing there about now. Otherwise we'll never get there in a reasonable amount of time.

Can't believe the Russian government will spend billions launching more lunar probes, or even spend billions more on a manned lunar mission in the next 5 years. It has no value to them, especially since the feat has already been accomplished.

The only possible reason I can imagine for Putin to make this announcement of a manned lunar program is to create interest within the Chinese government. The Chinese have aspirations for putting a man on the moon, and maybe Putin feels the Russians could make a profit selling a lunar space system to the Chinese.

Well think if we improve our ability to send larger and larger payloads to the moon then we could use it for useful things. Like building giant greenhouses to grow food on to help take some strain off earth's resources. It might not be a huge amount at first but theres thousands of square kilometers up there and we could build it up over time.

Just imagine thousands of kilometers of farm without having to clear cut thousands of kilometers of forest or other habitat on earth.

".....Like building giant greenhouses to grow food on to help take some strain off earth's resources....."

Since the lunar environment has none of the resources needed for agriculture (except for sunlight), just how would this "take some of the strain off earth's resources"? We would have to launch water, CO2, soil, chemical fertilizers, the materials to construct the greenhouses, and whatever resources are needed to maintain/operate them. Then we would need the massive spacecraft able to transport these agricultural products back to earth. Hopefully before they spoiled.

The current cost of a round-trip to the lunar surface and back is over $300,000/lb. Are you willing to pay $250,000 for a lunar tomato?

But, don't forget, as far as sunlight is concerned. On the moon, you have 14 of our days of sunlight and then 14 of our days of dark.

But, don't forget, as far as sunlight is concerned. On the moon, the sunlight is not moderated by an atmosphere.

Agreed!