14 DAY TRIAL // Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's space agency, declared that Russia proposed a joint effort to explore the moon together with the US friends, but the US surprisingly refused the sincere offer.
"We are ready to cooperate, but for some reasons the United States has announced that it will carry out the program itself," he was quoted as saying on Russian television. "Strange as it is, the United States is short of experts to implement the program." Oh, sure, the whole NASA staff fell on their heads and lost their minds...
The big surprise is that...US denied that it ever happened. Right, where have we heard this one before?
"We haven't rejected anyone's proposal," said Michael Braukus, a NASA spokesman in Washington. "We are really into involving the international community in this. ... We're very interested in getting more involved and cooperating in our exploration efforts." He added that the agency never received any lunar exploration proposal from the Russian space agency. We can believe him, since we all know NASA makes all the discoveries public and there have never been any cover-ups.
Maybe it got lost in the mail, or maybe the dog ate it...
Furthermore, the Russians are pissed, since they have been the workhorses for the international space station program, regularly transporting cargo and people to the orbiting station with their own shuttles, mostly after the U.S. space shuttle fleet was grounded following the Columbia disaster in 2003.
So, NASA's taking a nap, while the Russians are doing all the work and then they'll wake up and establish a base on the moon. To be exact, NASA announced in December that it would establish an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024.
And, of course, officials with Russia's Federal Space Agency later said they had hoped to join NASA's program, contributing to Russian technology and space experience.
Now I do not pity the Russians either, since they were paid lots of cash for their work. Russia had signed a $1 billion contract with NASA for their cargo ships to deliver goods to the international space station over the next three years after the Columbia disaster in 2003 that grounded all American space missions.
The problem is they want a piece of the credits and a little fame doesn't hurt anyone, especially since the glory days of the Soviet space era are long gone and they don't have the cash to support their own space program just for themselves.
Now, can't we all just get along?