Originally published at: Russia to withdraw cooperation from ISS over economic sanctions | Boing Boing
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I suspect lack of available funds plays a role in this as well, along with a lot of “Well, I’ll just show you!”
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It will be interesting to see if the billonare boys jump at the chance to provide transportation to the ISS.
As for Russia here:
You know what to do with it.
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What a toothless threat, well goodbye then.
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The same quote works both ways: “The purpose of Russia’s invasion is to kill the Ukranian economy, plunge our people into despair and hunger, and bring our country to its knees.”
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A much more well reasoned look at (or at least a more accurate headline for) this vs The Verge:
Before the war in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions Russia had only committed to support the ISS up to 2024, so if the response is to not extend to 2030 (as NASA and ESA have been asking for) this is a lot of shouting to change nothing.
SpaceX has already run multiple crew missions to the ISS, their Crew Dragon-3 docked on November 11th last year and is still on station docked to the ISS.
The issue is not crew access to the ISS, it’s fueling and running it’s propulsion systems. The fuel is currently provided by Russia and the correction burns are done from Russian ground control. There are concepts for how non-Russian owned craft could provide those services, but they have not been fully tested and proven.
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When compared to the thousands of dead, millions of refugees, and trillions of dollars of destruction, this is kind of small cheese. I mean it DOES represent the end of the post-Soviet era of cooperation in space, and that does make me sad. But for now, I think it is better to end this than to try and pretend that peacefully working together with Putin makes any real sense.
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Thanks for the info. I get annoyed when an article leaves something like “NASA relies on Russia to maintain the ISS’s position and orientation in space” unexplained.
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"The position of our partners is clear: the sanctions will not be lifted," Rogozin says. "The purpose of the sanctions is to kill the Russian economy, plunge our people into despair and hunger, and bring our country to its knees."
So it’s working as intended then? Good, good.
BTW, we booby-trapped the ISS hatch, so don’t plan on visiting on your own.
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Well that’s the end of the Russian manned space programme. With nowhere to go, they would be reduced to flying a near 60-year old capsule design to low orbit to do - nothing. They can’t afford to build a new space station and their launch sites aren’t even well suited to fly to the Chinese Tiangong station.
And it neatly matches the end of the Russian unmanned programme. When they blocked OneWeb launches and withdrew from French Guyana they basically told any commercial payloads that Russia couldn’t be trusted. They haven’t got anything beyond Earth orbit for more than 30 years and there’s no funding for new spaceprobes.
Their launchers are obsolete - Soyuz and Proton are antiques and uncompetitive with any Western launchers and Angara is decades behind schedule and just as uncompetitive. They’ve closed off the lucrative market for selling their amazing engines to the US and private space operators are quickly moving on with their own Western designs.
The new launch site at Vostochny has been ransacked by corruption under the watch of one Dmitry Rogozin. Every part of Roscosmos is rotten and living on past glories as the people at the top steal all the money.
A sad end for a space programme that once blazed the trail.
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World to Putin…
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ESA, NASA, and JAXA are more than capable of picking up the slack, all it takes is money.
I think this would be a good time/opportunity a joint venture for a new standardize vehicle to lift astronauts into orbit. Heck, if there were good Russian scientists, now would be the time to poach them.
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But what does “withdrawing” actually mean? Clearly, no Russian flights to the ISS, nor maintenance of components. No training at, or access to, Cosmodrome. But, are they going to remove (or restrict access to) “their” components on the ISS? They built (and “own”) about 20% of the ISS. “The Russian Orbital Segment handles Guidance, Navigation, and Control for the entire Station.” Yeah, I’m sure the ISS can afford to lose that component, no problem!
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You know what –– you can’t quit because YOU’RE FIRED.
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Pedantic question for those more in the know, are the current sanctions really ‘illegal?’
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Rogozin does not speak for Russia. He does seem to be toadying like a boss, but that does not necessarily mean what he says represents the viewsd of his organization.
The day to day course correction on thre ISS is occasionally used to avoid the odd shopping cart or whatever that is floating about there, but it is mainly used to maintain the slow decay of the orbit as the extreme atmosphere applies drag. The Russians provided the system, so you are right in saying that no other system has been tested. But this is not hard: anything that can deliver a new crew could carry some extra fuel and give the ISS a push. That is not a permanent solution, and it does not give short-term corrections, but it gives us time to come up with a better solution if the Russian threat is in fact carried out.
And so what? We were planning to scrap the ISS anywhow. It has been interesting to see the problems in running a space station for many years with a collection of bits from many nations, but many space people see it as a white elephant. We can get the crew out at leisure, and bring it down in a controlled way (which, let’s face it, is never that controlled anyhow). It is sad if this is what brings it down, but maybe its time had come.
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They can’t - the Russian modules rely on the US side of things for power.
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You mean it’s physically impossible for them to detach their components, and let them float away (or fall to earth)? There was one Ikea hex key that came with assembly/disassembly instructions and they forgot to keep it?
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