An article on the Telegraph news website from February of this year noted a chill in the relationship between Russia and the United States, and hinted at the possibility of a new Cold War in space. Adrian Blomfield’s piece “Russia sees moon plot in NASA plans” reports that Russian officials claim their nation’s offers the the United States to participate in a cooperative Moon effort have been rebuffed.

Why?

Because. The ice on the Moon is better.

And why is that?

Though it would be easy to imagine a customer of a Star Wars cantina making this odd comment (in subtitles), the real reason is that, assuming there is any ice there, it should be, unlike earthly ice, chock-full of an isotope of helium called helium 3.

A plentiful supply of helium 3 — rare on Earth, but abundant in space — combined with an as-yet unperfected nuclear fusion technology, could potentially provide an efficient source of power and a meaningful, clean alternative to fossil fuels for an energy-hungry Earth.

The Russian claim is that the United States wants to control it.

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Larry Ketchersid, new novelist, author of Dusk before the Dawn, and fellow listee on Paul Levinson’s list of Best First SciFi Novels, opens his review of Red Moon with the following praise:

The US-USSR space race re-imagined, with historical fiction combined with a near-future earth on the brink; a great read, not just for NASA fans or sci-fi fans, but all readers.

This book combines an in-depth knowledge of the Soviet Cosmonaut program and moon exploration in general with a plausible near future environmental/ political forced need for a new fuel supply and an intertwined, well thought out face-paced read. One of the most enjoyable reads off my stack in quite some time.

Read the rest here.

And thank you Larry, and best wishes to you and toward all your endeavors.

Reposted from Daniel Brenton’s Weblog, The Odd Little Universe of Daniel Brenton

There is a bizarre story involving the Soviet space program that originally circulated in the late 1980s, and still pops up here and there on the internet. Attributed to The Washington Post, the story spoke of six Soviet cosmonauts being witness to seven giant figures hanging in space, in the form of humans, with mist-like halos and wings the size of those on jumbo jets.

In other words, the classic depiction of angels.

This reputedly was witnessed by cosmonauts Vladimir Solevev, Oleg Atkov and Leonid Kizim in July of 1985, during their 155th day aboard the Salyut 7 space station, and was later sighted again by three other Soviet cosmonaut-scientists, including woman cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya. “They were smiling,” it is claimed she said, “as though they shared in a glorious secret.”

Afterwards, Vladimir Solevev, during a 1997 tour to schools in the United Kingdom, dismissed the story, and expressed puzzlement as to why the Post would print something so obviously absurd.

(No comment.)

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