The Next War: In Space

But while NASA has lobbied for support from Britain and the European Space Agency, Russia says its offers have been rebuffed. “We are ready to co-operate but for some reason the United States has announced that it will carry out the program itself,” Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia’s federal space agency, Roscosmos, said on Monday. “Strange as it is, the United States is short of experts to implement the program.” NASA announced in December that it was planning to build an international base camp on one of the moon’s poles, permanently staffing it by 2024. The Russian space rocket manufacturer Energia revealed an even more ambitious program last August, saying it would build a permanent moon base by 2015. While the Americans have been either coy or dismissive on the subject, Russia openly says the main purpose of its lunar program is the industrial extraction of helium-3. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/02/914/

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