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Russia's Role in the ISS in Trouble
Uhh_Duh writes "cnn.com is reporting that the Russian space program has fallen on hard times and is no longer capable of launching independent missions due to budget problems. The article touches on the fact that their annual funding is about 309 million versus the U.S. budget of 15 billion. They've also announced that they will not be meeting most of their future deliverables for the international space station." (corrected, the title originally said "IIS" instead of "ISS)
Carry all of the boy bands into space for $100 million...then take bids on an open auction to leave them there...
So is NASA planning on writing off Russia totally? Do they get to use the Internation Space Station later on if they get funding (economy improves, etc)?
Rule #1: Never never never give any critical roles to bankrupt nations.
About the dumbest thing NASA (or the US) could do, get together a bunch of nations to build/launch/maintain a space station, then give the critical parts (life support, delivery of components) responsibility to the nation than can least afford to do it.
Brilliant, the IIS was doomed from the word go.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Their money is probably better spent feeding their people and counting their nukes at this point anyway.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hate it when slashdot changes the title of the story and makes ME look like a bafoon!! I submitted it as "Russia's Space Program in Trouble".
I've been framed as a spelling idiot!
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
I guess that this will louden the cry for billionaire space tourism. IMHO the russians should make that stuff their top priority !
:-)
Let the russians handle the tourist part, let the yanks handle the military sillyness and we europeans will do the real stuff
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
The space program has become ridiculous, between failed attempts to launch boy bands into space and new projects like virtual planets http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=96&ncid =96&e=1&u=/space/20021210/sc_space/cyber_planets__ building_virtual_worlds_to_explore_signs_of_real_l ife it seems to have drifted far from actual space exploration. If they ever want public support for government dollars, they need to start looking at sending someone to Mars, or at least back to the moon,
Worst. Sig. Ever.
We better tell the Soviet Russians that if they don't pay up, all their space base are belong to us.
Please try to keep posts on topic.
So aside from all the typos and joking, does anyone else have an opinion on the fact that the US is now THE power in space? Although the article mentions India spending $500 mil on space, it doesn't come close to our spending or our expertise. Personally I think it's a good thing. Space is the next military battleground, or so it is said. So what are your thoughts?
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
To a degree all of this was just to help keep Soviet scientists around in Russia and not heading to the mid-east to develop nasty weapons. Further the military clearly had motives in keeping the Space Shuttle running. However now the Russians can't do much and haven't been able to move into commercial projects. Even in NASA the shuttles are wearing out with no replacements on the horizon.
The big question is whether all of these problems are a good thing or a bad thing. When you consider the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars spent on all this, one can ask what the return has been. (Say it in a Carl Sagan voice) There are plenty of good scientific projects. Further R&D on making space flight cheaper is a big deal. But space research itself needs to be seriously rethought.
The global dependence on money is appalling and ridiculous. Money as motivation will only bring the human race so far, and probably in the wrong direction. What happens now, when such a major player in the space race is forced to resign because they cannot secure enough meaningless currency to further scientific research in space? It is a terrible waste of human potential.
Future generations will look at us as petty and shortsighted, squandering finite resources we have no claim to with regards only to our own instant gratification. That is, if there are any resources left for the human race to survive on after a few hundred years.
Cynical? Not me. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to drive my SUV through a red light while talking on a cell phone.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
Only on slashdot would that not look like a typo.....my bad. Sorry.
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
IIS crashes you.
Oops, that is ISS.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
It was a mistake to have Russia as a "partner".
NASA/USAF should have bought thier technology outright like LockMart did with the advanced trans-sonic S/VTOL Yak-41.
Russia seems to be having all sorts of problems these days. I saw a blurb on CNN the other day about a Russian rocket failing to make orbit and falling back into the atmosphere, destroying the satellite it was carrying. I feel like we hear about something like this in Russia every few months lately. But it makes me wonder-- does the US have this kind of problem (maybe not NASA, but commercial satellites going up, or military stuff), and the media just doesn't make a big deal of it?
The International Space Station is now neither International nor a Space Station. Discuss amongst yourselves.
An American astronaut in space in 1970 was asked by a reporter, "How do you feel?"
"How would you feel," the astronaut replied, "if you were stuck here, on top of 20,000 parts, each one supplied by the lowest engineering bidder?"
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
what a Beowulf cluster of "In Soviet Russia" posts would look like.
Originally (according to a 1998 issue of Popular Science), the ISS was to be completed by 2003.
Ah, and here I was wondering since I'm sure IIS *does* have a 15 billion dollar budget...
When has Russia's role NOT been in trouble as a partner in ISS ? Honestly I'm waiting for the news that'll say :
Russia's Role in ISS no longer in trouble!
Now THAT will be news.
lone, dfx.
Based on this article confusing the ISS with IIS is due to reading slashdot too much. It's safe to assume the person who posted IIS isn't reading slashdot enough to be warned of BIG mistakes (considering the amount of invaluable posts moderated high) which could be made.
...can't they compensate with pitch and yaw?
Look on the bright side: at least it wasn't some lame "first post" shit. Instead, it was lame "In Soviet Russia" shit. I'm not sure if this is an improvement but at least its different.
BTW, USSR = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which was the official name for the country when it had a communist government. So "Soviet USSR" is definitely redundant and "communist USSR" is only slightly less so. "Soviet Russia" and "Communist Russia" are somewhat cold war relics since Russia was the name for the czarist country that was replaced by the USSR and the west continuing to call the country "Russia" rankled the rulers of the USSR. Its kind of like when the Brits refer to the U.S.A. as "the colonies".
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The article doesn't touch the fact that space engineers in Russia (not in Moscow - in real Russia, where most of space programs are located) have $309 of monthly salary, compared to $15,000 in US. That makes them even in terms of working hours contributed to the project.
Less is more !
Russia has problems that plague the USA, and NASA. Just a few months ago, a person on the ground was killed when a Proton rocket exploded when launched. Less than 20 years ago, NASA lost 7 people to the Challenger disaster. I don't think Russia has any greater problems than NASA.
In fact I think it is wonderful that they are given the oportunity to contribute to a world class effort like the ISS. Go and look at it.. There isn't anything more spectacular in the space program than that, for the moment. Missions to the Moon are a long way off for NASA.
The discussion of space exploration always brings out the whiners about how much money it is costing, when it could be feeding the hungry. Oh, yeah? So could all the money put into the tobacco industry, and canceling cigarettes would actually benefit mankind, not removing our link to space.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Hmmm, are we looking forward to another "we need more money or the crew has to leave" every week, like before the service module was launched?
If you think about it, we need more scientists working to develop new technology. If the Russian space program, or that of any nation, tanks, then those scientists and skilled workers will be forced to seek employment elsewhere, and progress will surely suffer.
The article touches on the fact that their annual funding is about 309 million versus the U.S. budget of 15 billion.
Also considered a contributing factor, the Russians' budget was in Roubles, the Americans' in US Dollars.
Fuck it
Too bad Russia can't allocate more money. But they have bigger problems - crime, poverty, health, gassing of rebels.
I think that every $1 that the US aids Russia saves $2 in the military budget, even after acounting for the corruption. Of course, IANAA (accountant). Then again, Worldcom looked pretty solid to accountants, too...
I just hope Russia is able to maintain their current level of funding for space - every bit counts.
If humanity does not have a significant presence in space (1000000+ people) within the next 200 years, I fear that we will always be on this rock, overcrowding it and eventually destroying it.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Income and prices for most strategic resources including people in Russia 5 times lower than in US. So I suppose in terms of money 300 mill $ sound like not enought, but in terms of resources available Russia has enought to keep most space and military programs running. More important is a problem of brain drain - it is not easy to keep engineers in if I can make $110K /yr in US working on stupid satellite radio project, comparable to $7K while working on military app. in Russia. If they could provide higher life standard back in Russia - many will be back, but when it happen many of us will be to old and kids won't go back.
Although China has announced that it's planning a permanently manned space station this seems like a waste of time, effort and money. I think it would make more sense to let China either take Russia's place or just let them join the ISS program. But I guess relations between the US and China need to improve before this could happen.
In this case, I'd have to say that Mir has fallen the hardest of all...
To be anal to the core, there was a thing called Soviet Russia, and its official name was RSFSR -- Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (ugh). It was one of the 15 "republics" that made the USSR, and its territory is precisely the Russia of today.
There was a daily newspaper named Sovetskaya Rossiya; it outlasted the Soviet era and in the recent years served as a tribune for those favoring restoration of Communism, who still hold considerable ground.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
1) The International Space Station becomes the American Space Station due to the lack of participation from other nations.
2) 10 years from now, the full project is launched. Yeah, this is hypothetical, just deal.
3) Teachers get excited and want to show their students the breaking news at cnn.com.
4) Censorware detects "ASS" all over the site and denies the teachers and students access to the biggest NASA news in years.
Then there was the time I accidentally misspelled "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury" as "I'll kill you! I'll kill all of you! And burn your goddanmed houses down!"
Boy, that was a doozie.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I'm a former NASA nut, used to research the Soviet space program, etc., and so was very forgiving...
This ISS program is a turkey, though, and we should cut our losses.
The problem is simply that the ONLY reason for the existence of the ISS is to KEEP PEOPLE EMPLOYED. First of all, NASA itself as a beaurocracy has pushed and pushed for the only mega-project that it could keep getting funding for because a beaurocracy wants to EAT. They couldn't get funding for more sensible programs like a shuttle replacement, or other more mundane but necessary things, so they push for funding for the incredibly wasteful ISS because $15 billion a year wasted is $15 billion a year they WANT, no matter what it's for.
If they can't have $15 billion a year for sensible things, they'll take $15 billion for non-sensible things, just so long as no one loses their job.
As far as the Russian's involvement, it was actually the PLAN to get them involved simply to keep them employed! The Clinton administration changed the ISS from a US program, space station Freedom, to the ISS, almost exclusively to keep former soviet rocket scientists at their jobs instead of following money to other, more threatening sources. That was almost the sole reason for it.
That, actually, made a least a LITTLE bit of sense. Sort of.
Anyway, you could argue that with the Russian's participation the ISS has been more successful that it would have been otherwise, even WITH them dragging the program down - because with billions thrown down a rathole in either case, at least this way it was a bit more interesting, and did at least give the US and Russia something to strengthen our ties.
This space available.
Jeez, didn't you see Armageddon? They wouldn't be strapped now if they hadn't spent so many rubles hauling cigarettes up to their orbital refueling stations.
1. Several years ago Russia was making good money from their space agency doing lots of foreign launches. As part of a US deal to supply aid to Russia one of the conditions was to scale back the amount of foreign launces they were doing as it was hurting NASA's profitability. More US economic terrorism.
2. Everyone jokes about MIR. Remember SKYLAB? It fell out of the sky ages ago.
MIR lasted 2-3 times as long as it was supposed to. SKYLAB Didnt it was launched May 14, 1973, fell to earth July 11, 1979
MIR lasted 15 years!
Now, just perhaps, perhaps if they weren't building 500 or more new sixth generation topol-m strategicmissiles they wouldn't be so "broke".
Perhaps if the russians weren't building over 200 underground nuclear war fighting bunkers including one as large as the entire DC area inside the beltway , then perhaps they wouldn't be so "broke".
Nope, IMO the russian leaders, like most insane megalomanaic world leaders, are big fat liars.
The wrong idea that sending people into space is science and research goes all back to the Apollo program, when after the first landing on the moon NASA tried to sell subsequent missions as "scientific missions".
IMHO, sending a man to the moon was the highest cultural achievement of mankind in history so far, but as a piece of art, there is no much value in repeating it, and as nobody had the balls to admit that hundred billion dollars were spent for art, it had to be science.
There is plenty of important science that happens in space, but you don't need people hanging around for that.
Manned Space Exploration is about beeing there, and to feel how it feels to be there. It is about living there. It is about building houses, planting trees and fathering children out there. And cruising around with a cool car, if you are american.
After Apollo 17 all space programs world started to decline, and there is no end in sight. The Space Shuttle program started by crippling Wernherr von Braun's original design that had a piloted, horizontal landing reuasable first stage by using a cheap throw-away fuel tank and reusable solid fuel boosters, ending up with a Space Shuttle with more expensive payload than using throw-away rockets. The buerocrats way of wasting money by budget cutting. And every news I heard about the ISS the last twenty years was about budget cuts and delays. I heard you need 2.5 people just to operate it, and there are three guys up there. SNAFU.
It is sad, and I hope I will be wrong, but within a decade we will see:
- The ISS will be abandoned a finally reenter the atmosphere
- The last Space Shuttle will go out of service
- There will be no more capabilities to send humans into orbit any more
I just hope mankind will regain manned space travel before we will have depleted our natural resources here down on earth.Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
This is just wonderful. A *bunch* of my posts got modded all the way down to -1 Off Topic in relation to the Soviets and IIS. I lost 11 karma points over it!
When the article was originally posted, it said IIS and not ISS. That means that my jokes were on-topic, not off-topic.
If I had lost one ore two points, I wouldn't even care. (heck, even 4'd be fine since that's how many comments I made.) But 11?!
That is rather overly zealous moderation
The problem really is NASA as being more than simply a military shipping company.
You have a fundamentally flawed view of money. Money is not meaningless, it is a universal mechanism by which capitalist economies quantify resources. A dollar represents some amount of resources - the actual amount depends on what resource you're trying to aquire, how much of it is available, and how much other people want it. Very basic capitalism.
If Russia doesn't have enough money to fund its space program, does not mean some stupid people decided not to print a few extra pieces of paper. It means that Russia cannot reasonably provide the resources to keep up its part of the ISS bargain. A country can only produce so much, and the Russians have decided that it's more important to build critical infrastructure and to feed people to continue building components for the ISS and blasting them into space.
The only thing more shocking than your ignorance of basic economics and their relevance to society is the fact you got moderated up to 5.
And it would have been if it hadn't been for cutbacks. And don't go blaming just the Russians, NASA's funding has also been cut a lot in recent years.
Actually AC, the Proton is the rocket, the Soyuz is the capsule.
9 99 b/112299z.htm
http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/stories/1
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Did I hear things or is everybody ignoring some recent news about ISS? A few days ago I heard that USA and Russia had agreed to grow ISS's crew some people more by 2004 or 2006. Sincerly, I didn't take serious attention as I was running out to work and saw just a glimpse of some meeting showing on TV. Did anyone here saw this thing?
And how can this fit with this news?
On what concerns the objective of ISS... Well it was and it is a turkey... One of you guys pointed correctly. While politicians (both sides!) played Space Station to keep people happy, Science and all the rest went through the pipe.
--blind patriotism is just that, "blind". If you read more of my stuff you'd see I'm just as "down" on our US goon insane "leaders" as yours, or red china's, or any other agressive nation's. Your country has a dismal track record of invading and occupying and you know it. It has a past dismal record of enslaving it's own pople, from the czars on up, a master/serf nation. If you can break that cycle, good for you! Unfortunately my country has set itself down the same path, we are heading to a two class society of masters and serfs, and I think *all* of it sucks. All I do when I post is point out inconsisterncies with what government or corporate leaders "say" as opposed to what reality is, and I usually try to back it up with relevant linkages, just like I did in my post. Step back a second and think about it that way, the original post was russia is " too broke" and "can't afford" peaceful space station payments. I pointed out it's not as "broke" as they say publically, that they divert money from peaceful projects into weapons of mass destruction, and it doesn't get acknowledged or covered much in the mainstream press. they get caught lying blatantly, same as our leaders get caught lying, it just happens. The same applies to the US, we let these international arms and construction contractors drive our foreign policy via their tame bribed politicians WAY too much, in my opinion, because "war" is "good for business" at least according to these spilled blood merchants. I find I am fair and consistent with my "dissing" and "put downs" of these people, in any country, and your country don't get a skate on it as far as I am concerned, I'm an equal opportunity complainer!
Be proud of the good things your nation does, as I am of mine, but don't be blind to the things that slide into the "bad" area. Best advice I have.
No, the military gave up on the space shuttle after the Challenger accident. They finished with stuff already in the pipeline, and that was it. There have only been 2 military shuttle missions since 1995.
The amount of industrial nepotism that goes on, to say nothing of hundreds of millions in political back-rooms deals, is amazing. America was actually funding Russia to some extent during the Cold War. American industrialists had a hand in building the missiles at the heart of the Cuban crisis. The problem is that you can't formalise such arrangements.
Both Russia and China have impressive heavy-lift credentials. They got those by not farting around with fancy stuff (just getting the basic engineering right), and by reducing the politics to the level of `if this succeeds, you will be a national hero, if it fails you will be dead'. They should try that in the US; the burgeoning litigation industry there would implode.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing