There seems to be movement in doing things on the Moon.
Not to be a Debbie-downer, but don't get too excited. If we stacked up all the paperwork for all the world's civil space studies that went nowhere, the pile would probably reach lunar orbit. Baited-breath reporting about minor space studies becomes clickbait in the general press. But that reportage doesn't necessarily mean (and usually doesn't mean) that much is actually happening behind-the-scenes.
European space agency has said its now going to begin movement towards a Luna Village on the moon.
The ESA Director-General is a fan of his "Moon Village" concept, but that doesn't mean that ESA's member states or the EU are. Woerner has directed some very low-level discretionary money towards a couple conferences and studies. But there's no buy-in or significant funding above his level yet.
Earlier this week, Russia and US space agencies signed agreement of occupation to build the Deep Space Gateway station.
No, this is just a joint statement that NASA and RSA think that the DSG is a nice concept to look at. But there's no funding for its development in either agency.
http://spacenews.com/nasa-and-roscosmos-to-study-deep-space-gateway/In the US, the new Administration has yet to get a NASA Administrator appointed, nevertheless weigh in on the direction of NASA's human space flight program, which may or may not include the DSG.
In Russia, RSA has been trying to get the Nauka lab module launched to ISS since 2007. (Maybe next year.) Given the state of the Russian economy, it's hard to see where resources for Russian contributions to a DSG would come from.
And without getting political and violating Rule #4, it's worth noting that the geopolitics of recent years do not bode well for new US/Russian cooperative ventures in space.
Programmatically speaking, the DSG is a good idea if you have a moderate to high cadence of missions to the Moon or beyond. But SLS/Orion will only launch 1/yr at most, rendering the DSG grossly underutilized. It's bass ackwards. The transportation tail (SLS/Orion) is wagging the destination dog (DSG).
I thought the US was wanting to go it alone this time.
That was two NASA Administrators ago. Mike Griffin wanted the predecessor to SLS/Orion -- his Ares I/Ares V/CEV designs -- to not rely on foreign systems or contributions. But even he wanted foreign participation at the destination.
Things have changed since then. Orion is now dependent on ESA for its Service Module.
FWIW...
