
Suspension of NASA contact with Russian entities - mindstab
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=45536
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rst
Not mentioned: contacts between American aerospace companies and their Russian
subcontractors. Which is interesting because rocket engines for the American
Atlas V booster are Russian-built. ULA, the American launch consortium that
builds Atlas V supposedly has two years' inventory, but they're under contract
to provide launch services for longer than that.

(Orbital, the "other" American company doing cargo launches to the space
station, is also using Russian engines --- in fact, engines that were
literally built for the Soviet lunar program, and were plucked out of a
warehouse in Kazakhstan years later --- but they have enough inventory to
fulfill their contracts already in the US.)

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api
This sort of thing underscores how economic interdependence promotes peace.
It's bad business to declare war on your suppliers or customers.

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makomk
Didn't work during the last two World Wars, can't imagine it'll help prevent
the next one whenever that happens either.

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Deestan
"Promotes", not "guarantees" or "forces".

~~~
dwd
Trade dominance is soft force, so when that fails or is denied war is
inevitable.

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grecy
Of course, every country in the world should be suspending contracts with the
US over NSA spying, torture, unjustified wars, going against the UN, etc. etc.

~~~
xur17
We didn't annex a sovereign nation.

~~~
grecy
Na, you just threw out democratically elected leaders, multiple times.

~~~
maaku
They're both bad, but they're not comparable.

~~~
obstacle1
They're absolutely comparable. If anything at least Russia is being upfront
about its imperial ambitions by using its own military. US just outsources its
imperial projects (mostly, though Iraq, Afghanistan are counterexamples) by
fomenting political disruption or destroying economies until demands are met.

Same ends, different means. One's just more covert.

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wtracy
"At the present time, only operational International Space Station activities
have been excepted."

I'm guessing this means that we're still flying astronauts up on the Soyuz.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that this ultimately will give NASA the
drive to rebuild its manned spaceflight capability. I don't have high
expectations, though.

~~~
vishaldpatel
SpaceX

~~~
xur17
How close are they to manned space flights?

~~~
rst
There are a whole bunch of items that you'd want to add to a cargo Dragon to
make it fit for human travel. IMHO, the two standout items are launch abort
handling and docking, but there are a whole bunch of other stuff you'd want as
well (in terms of life support, advanced communications, etc.).

On these two items:

NASA doesn't want crew in the Dragon capsule until it has a launch abort
system (LAS) that would let it get away from a failing booster rocket. The
current design involves much stronger versions of the orbital thrusters; this
is scheduled for tests this summer.

Also, the cargo Dragon doesn't currently dock autonomously with the ISS;
instead, it effectively parks itself close enough for the station's robot arm
to grab it and move it to a berthing port. When Dragon leaves, the process is
reversed --- meaning that the arm and its support systems need to be operating
in order for the spacecraft to leave. In normal operations, that's manageable
--- but one of the things you want in a crew transport is that it be able to
leave a failing station quickly in an emergency. The berthing arrangement
doesn't really suit.

NASA is planning to deal with that by adding new docking hardware to the
station, and mounting compatible hardware on the Commercial Crew vehicles
(whoever winds up winning that competition). But the hardware isn't there yet;
it's actually scheduled to go up on Dragon cargo flights next year.

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TeMPOraL
What in hell? AFAIR even in the middle of the Cold War, NASA was freely
collaborating with Russian scientists. So why such decision, why _this_ is one
of the first moves by US government in the topic of Ukraine and, in short,
_what the fuck, America_?

~~~
cema
I suspect the current political management of the USA is caught with their
pants down and feel they need to quickly do something that would not be too
hard to do. Statesmanship and political responsibility is not their forte,
unfortunately.

NASA being a governmental organization (not part of the government, but
financed and controlled by it) has to follow. I do not think the scientists
and engineers would make this choice, but I do not think they had a choice.

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logfromblammo
Ivan, I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm not allowed to speak to
Russians any more.

Johnny, is the same here. Is no more talk to the Americans. How lucky we are
to both be speaking to empty air near open microphones at the same time. And
winking.

It would be nice to believe that scientists and engineers would be above
political squabbling.

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derekp7
Does any of this remind you of 2010 (Space Odyssey part two), where the US and
Russian astronauts (that flew together) were told not to communicate anymore?
I read that a few years ago, and thought that it was somewhat comical in that
it was based on what I thought were very dated world relations. Now it is
coming true.

~~~
maaku
Well, ISS operations is explicitly exempted (the story there is particularly
interesting as the current commander is Russian from Crimea).

~~~
jurjenh
Genuine question - was he Ukranian when he went up there? I guess customs for
space flight isn't such a concern, but that would be a weird thing to have go
down while you're off the planet...

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maaku
Actually it seems there was a changeover to a new expedition a month ago and
the current commander is Japanese. I was thinking of Oleg Kotov whose
nationality is Russian and was prior to this but is from Simferopol, Crimea.
His Expedition 38 ended on 10 March 2014.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Kotov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Kotov)

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dang
This is not anything interesting about space programs; this is politics where
the space program is just a host organism.

Since the actual (political) content is predictable, and predictable content
is not interesting, HN can do without this.

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tptacek
_this is politics where the space program is just a host organism_

This is such a perfect description.

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seliopou
Now that the cold war is back, does that mean we'll be returning to the moon?

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ChuckMcM
Sigh. This was not unexpected (sort of like putting your bishop out there for
the queen to capture) but it is challenging. It would be nice if this was
dumping a ton of funds to accelerate the Dragon program at SpaceX though, not
having access to the ISS anymore would pose something of a challenge.

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wglb
This is simply politics. I am flagging this.

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huhtenberg
Freedom Fries, Part 2

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tanzam75
It's funny you mention Freedom Fries.

The top four spacefaring countries in the world are Russia, the US, China, and
France.

It is already illegal for NASA to have any bilateral contact with the Chinese.
And now NASA is cutting ties with the Russians as well.

At this point, we should probably try to keep the French on our side ...

~~~
camus2
You lost us (in spirit) already with all your french bashing when you went on
with your illegal war in Irak.

