Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin offered to his colleague, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, to create a docking module at the lunar station to receive Russian and Chinese spacecraft as the only ones that are able to evacuate US crew to the Earth in case of an emergency
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th December, 2020) Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin offered to his colleague, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, to create a docking module at the lunar station to receive Russian and Chinese spacecraft as the only ones that are able to evacuate US crew to the Earth in case of an emergency.
"I have now offered NASA, Jim Bridenstine, the head of NASA: 'Listen, you can direct your ideas in different directions there, but you must simply make a gateway for your money, it is in your own interests, the interests of your crew's vital importance, a gateway that will adapted to the Russian spacecraft, so that, if necessary, we can approach our spacecraft and pick up your crew and return to the Earth.' The same goes for China," he said during a roundtable at the Federation Council.
As an example of such an emergency, Rogozin recalled the incident with the Kursk submarine, when a single adapter was needed to save the crew of one country with the help of equipment from another country.
"No one except Russia, and no one except China in the future, they do not have such technologies yet, but, nevertheless, no one can save the US crew, no one," Rogozin said.
In October, Bridenstein told reporters that the United States was already working to create airlock design standards that will allow the Russian manned spacecraft Orel to dock with the US Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway.
The US plans to build the Gateway station in circumlunar orbit and is inviting ISS partners to participate in the project. In 2017, Roscosmos and NASA even entered into an agreement on the joint creation of a lunar orbital station, but later Rogozin said that Russia could not afford to participate in this project, since it was assigned an insufficiently large role.
