Well, not if you believe the Chinese. China launches military satellite that will take aim at space junk | Space
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Makes you wonder if anyone in the Russian command knew, or cared, that two of their countrymen were put at risk by this test.
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“Commander, Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy are aboard the ISS at the moment.”
“Pah, I never liked Pyotr Dubrov and I owe Oleg Novitskiy money. Launch the missile!”
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The Soyuz is ancient and limited, Proton is on its way out, Angara is an uneconomic monster and there isn’t enough money to develop anything new in a country with an economy smaller than Australia that is actively being looted by its government.
Given the rate at which the Russian space programme is decaying - paralleling the rest of the Russian economy - they won’t be able to access space in the near future.
Presumably they want to deny anyone else the opportunity out of pure spite.
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Somebody must have pissed off Putin big time if they have a twelve-digit-pricetag on their head.
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Well, you know, we were planning to blow that stuff up anyway, so we figured, why not go for a twofer?
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Well, if the ISS went foom, at Russia’s hand, but slightly looked like it was an accident, the Russian press can cast this as “Russia has won the new Space Race”. The cosmonauts aren’t the target, the West is. He likes his enemies to be poisoned exotically or to be thrown from windows, so it doesn’t seem like he prizes subtlety. And it’s It’s not like the cost of any of this has an effect on Putin’s 300 billion personal fortune.
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Future civilizations from other planets will someday wonder about the origin of the Rings of Earth.
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Love a little Billy Bragg !
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Bet it was deliberate.
rootin’ tootin’ vladi putin is one of the main reasons we can’t have nice things.
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Oh, but I’m sure it was a complete accident. You know how launching these missiles is just like shooting from the hip. (And hitting a satellite moving 25000 km/hr at an altitude of 400km)
They had no idea where that debris would go!
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“So, the leaky Soyuz capsule and the flaky Nauka thrusters both failed. Switch to plan C”.
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Where is the fun in ascribing it to incompetence when you can insinuate that everything is a sinister plot?
Because incompetence at that level is indistinguishable from active malevolence. You have to be really good at what you do to be that “incompetent”.
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that seems incredibly naive…
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Or it’s working as intended.
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For completeness
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ASAT missiles have been used by the US and other countries before. so are we mad now because it was RUS, or because of the altitude of the SAT they targeting being in a similar orbit as the ISS?
If you believe everything our government says our “test” was done to protect people from the sat that was deorbiting anyway, but…not sure how much i believe that. USA-193 - Wikipedia
not taking sides here, i think what the Russians did was shitty and dangerous, but i am sure the US has done shitty and dangerous stuff as well
