emacs tramp over an unreliable connection

I want to run R on a remote box under a local Emacs (I do not want to run Emacs on the remote box).

I can run R on a remote host using TRAMP:

(let ((default-directory "/user@remote:~"))
  (R))

and everything works fine except that when the connection to remote is lost, R dies. This is no good because this means that I have to re-load all the data into R after restarting it, which takes time.

Is it possible to tell TRAMP to use a persistent terminal? (GNU Screen or tmux or Mosh or dtach)

See also emacs-devel thread tramp:sshx:(screen|tmux).

Here is how to use ESS with R running in a remote screen session:

• ssh to the remote host (outside of emacs)

• start screen session

• detach it

• open shell in emacs (M-x shell)

• ssh to the remote host again in the emacs shell

• resume the screen session (screen -r)

• start R

• finally attach ESS to the R process using M-x ess-remote in the shell buffer where you started R

There are more details, screenshots, and keybindings in this post http://blog.nguyenvq.com/2010/07/11/using-r-ess-remote-with-screen-in-emacs/