ILB International Lunar Base Planned

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mr_mark

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In remarks on China's Lunar program, an article at space.com mentions an international moon base and efforts to move towards that quote: "In addition they have started participating in discussions for the International Lunar Network (ILN) mission." Anyone know of this? This is the first time I've heard of it. So there is real plans for an international Moon base similar to the ISS sometime in the future.
 
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mr_mark

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Well heck, just found out this is for robotic missions kind of a bummer. Do you think this could be a precursor to a manned ILB at sometime in the future?
 
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kelvinzero

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... ar_Network
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/missions/iln

That is actually quite interesting. Im quite enthusiastic about this. Robotic missions that actually leave money to do something on the moon are a lot more interesting than manned ones that don't.

Long term I think it would definitely encourage people, especially if it moves beyond pure space science to ISRU research. If power and oxygen generation are already in place, and you have a fleet of robots in need of repair, then sending people would have a clear motivation. You could also send them in a much lighter craft, perhaps only landing not much more mass than the people themselves, because the infrastructure and return vehicle or fuel could already be in place.
 
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