12-25-2014, 05:57 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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The Angara A5 launch makes Russia's recently announced national space station and manned lunar exploration plans sound more realistic. To reach the Moon, Angara could be used in EOR (Earth Orbit Rendezvous) mode, as NASA had wanted to do with Apollo, because a larger Moonship could have been used. (Cost and time constraints, plus their lack of rendezvous/docking/EVA experience in the early 1960s, caused them to opt for the simpler LOR--Lunar Orbit Rendezvous--plan, which involved landing the minimum amount of equipment on the Moon.) Also:
If Russia arranged to launch Angara from Kourou, as they now do with the Soyuz launch vehicle, it could boost even heavier payloads into LEO, GTO, GSO, and to the Moon. Manned Venus and/or Mars flyby missions (which could encounter *both* planets if launch dates were chosen carefully), manned planetary orbiter missions (including unmanned, real-time driven Mars rovers and manned Phobos & Deimos landings) could also be conducted in EOR mode using Angara. Manned Mars landing missions are also a possibility, although a larger number of Angara launches (to ferry the interplanetary spaceship and the MEM into Earth orbit, possibly with their propellants being launched separately and loaded aboard in orbit) would probably be necessary. But having the problem of "*HOW* do we do this?" is vastly preferable to the problem of *CAN* we do this?"
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