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Which part of this is not-the-onion-y? Building stuff on the moon might give us a good jumping off point for solar system exploration, and having a power source there would help construction. Is it that it’s Russia and China doing it?
Is it that it’s Russia and China doing it?
I mean…
If I were writing a fictional story about world domination by ruthless politicking, overthrowing foreign governments, and assassinating key opposition figures around the globe without an effective concern for local populations, it would be about the US.
But if I were writing one where the first step to world domination was an advanced moon base… pretty much gonna be Russia or China.
For what? Who’s going to use that power?
A theme park with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the blackjack. And the theme park
Why would china need help from russia
Because Russia has still a pretty good way of sending rockets to space. The bigger question would be, why you want to do this? And 2nd how would you cool this with no water on the moon
Some types of nuclear power don’t work like what you are probably imagining.
Its more of a hockey puck of hot plutonium and a thermocouple, rather than a nuclear power plant on earth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Doubt it. RTGs are great for a deep space probe, but too limited to support a base.
Probably more like:
The article specifically mentions that they don’t know how to solve the cooling problem yet. That’s what’s cool about these types of projects though, they force innovation that can potentially be used elsewhere.
As I see it, three possibilities rise above the others:
- Russia is dusting off and refining plans that the Soviet Union made decades ago, and will claim it as a “huge innovation” or something like that, despite being a concept from the 70s or 80s that just never got off the ground for one reason or another. This could conceivably be done well under the right circumstances, but based on the incredible amount of manufacturing and production issues Russia is having as a direct result of Ukraine War sanctions, it might be that they can’t actually do anything without China’s help, because the highly specialized western equipment they’d normally use is no longer being sold to them, so they need a replacement supplier.
- Russia’s last moon mission went tits up fairly publicly, so Roscosmos is probably thinking they can avoid getting egg on their face if they can persuade China to unify their lunar base ambitions with their own. Note that this ignores the fact that China almost certainly wants to build a moon base entirely on their own, both as a matter of national pride, as well as the fact that they want to fully own any knowledge and expertise gained from such a mission.
- Putin is trying to entice CCP leadership to more closely align themselves with Russia in a geopolitical sense, as a more unified adversary to the west, which these days they both see as an implacable foe that they want to defeat. To me, this is the angle that would make the most sense in terms of convincing CCP leadership… but at the same time, remember that China is absolutely measuring Putin’s back for a knife at this point, because Russia’s got a shitload of natural resources up in Siberia that the Chinese would LOVE to exploit.
