Slashdot Mirror
NASA Halts Non-ISS Work With Russia Over Ukraine Crisis
An anonymous reader writes "The Verge reports on an internal memo from NASA indicating that they've suspended all contracts and activities with Russia that aren't involved with operating the International Space Station. Quoting: 'Given Russia's ongoing violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, until further notice, the U.S. Government has determined that all NASA contacts with Russian Government representatives are suspended, unless the activity has been specifically excepted. This suspension includes NASA travel to Russia and visits by Russian Government representatives to NASA facilities, bilateral meetings, email, and teleconferences or videoconferences. At the present time, only operational International Space Station activities have been excepted.' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden argued recently that our dependence on Russia for putting astronauts into space needs to end."
It's really too bad these have to get in the way.
Isn't this the sort of thing that the ISS collaboration was supposed to prevent?
Gas, grass, or ass--no one rides Soyuz for free!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Would have the Russians suspend all ISS related contracts.
Good for the goose and all.
As a Dane im proud that the Secretary General of NATO and the Danish foreign minister is in front with sanctions against Russia. Putin is effectively destroying what has created lasting peace in Europe from the last 69 years. Putin will keep pushing, until we stand firm. Then he will pick as with someone else...even the gay community, anything that will take eyes of the fact that he rules the country like a dictator. But, the US Russian space cooperation was first initiated as a sign of good will. It will always stand as one of the greatest examples of respect, despite differences. I want to keep the space cooperation out of any foreign relations.
SpaceX is not too far from manned launches. Of course, if NASA had gone ahead with Orion and Jupiter-Direct, the US would have manned space flight capabilities by now.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
SpaceX is not too far from manned launches.
I believe the most optimistic schedule has a manned launch sometime mid-2015. I'd guess early 2016 as the soonest we'll see a manned SpaceX launch.
Of course, if NASA had gone ahead with Orion and Jupiter-Direct, the US would have manned space flight capabilities by now.
It would be great to have an Orion capsule ready to launch on a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket. Unfortunately the rest of the Constellation program was so horribly over budget and behind schedule that it needed to be shut down.
I understand that the Russians are the only ones that can put people in the space station, and that the US serves as the ground control. If Russia refuses to let Americans on to the space station, what are the chances that the US would not coordinate ground control for an exclusively Russian or non-American crew? I've read from a number of sources speculating on this probability. What kind of ground support and communications structure are needed to keep the station operational? With the addition of the alpha magnetic spectrometer, the ISS has become a lot more interesting. : http://ams.nasa.gov/
Perhaps this is one thing that both countries really care about, it's one thing that could serve as leverage between then; a negotiation point.
It's a shame that the cooperation deminishing. The Russians are doing some really fantastic work. They've put a radio telescope in orbit: They launched a radio telescope (Spektr-R) into space. By synchronizing this telescope with earth based telescopes, it can resolve features that are 1250x times smaller than what Hubble can see (40u-arc-seconds vs 0.05 arc-seconds).. Did you know that by pointing all of the radio dishes on one side of the earth, and that knowing the exact time radio waves hit each receiver with atomic clocks, you can out resolve any optical telescope on earth? We can literally see finer details with a radio telescope than we can with our best optical ones (using "VLBI " interferometry). The more separation between radio dishes, the better the angular resolution; and now we have one in orbit that will give us much much better resolving power. We may be able to "see" planets with radio waves. (I'd love to hear from radio astronomers about the practical limitations of this -- real world vs back-of-the envelope)
They only started recently announcing their achievements on their website. Several of my friends joked that the reason we heard nothing for so long was that it was an expensive and embarrassing dud. It works, but they don't market or advertise themselves well. http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioas...
I mean, Fox-News-claiming-Bush-kept-us-safe-from-terrorist-attacks breathtaking. As in you cannot believe that someone just said something that brazen with a straight face.
Nah, they just forced Iraq to privatize it's oil industry and sell it off to for-profit foreign interests. Because America's record post WWII has been that of a rampaging imperialistic shitbag that has all the power of a British Empire without any of the responsibilities. Rather than setting up a colonial government, which might actually do shit like build roads and schools, you just overthrow dozens of governments, including democratically elected ones, to get those sufficiently subservient to your "national interests".
No shit. America got a million people killed in Iraq, created millions more refugees, and bombed the country into the stone age. Call us when Putin does the same or starts having 16 year old kids murdered on the other side of the planet from Moscow.
The hell they did. Any reason in particular you're ignoring the illegal, western-backed coup of Ukraine's democratically elected president less than 6 months before the next elections? Aside from all that, if Russia "invaded" Crimea by moving troops to a navel base covered under an existing treaty with Ukraine, than the United States has been busy invading western europe and Japan for over 60 years.
It takes some serious neocon balls (with a hefty dose of willful dumfuckery) to treat the self-appointed junta in Ukraine as a legitimate organization, while flatly ignoring the fact that the people of Crimea just overwhelmingly voted to join Russia. This is invariably countered with some BS about how this vote was done "at the end of a gun barrel", ignoring the fact that the the first things the junta did after sizing power was to strip Crimea of it's autonomy and start oppressing minorities. And ignoring the fact that the United States has 900 military bases throughout the world and special forces operating in more than half the world's countries.
You mean after the Wikileaks cables showed Bush giving free reign to death squads, after the U.S. built military bases and a fortress of an embassy, and made it clear that it would re-invade on a moments notice from military bases in surrounding countries in the event of 'instability'?
FTFY. Compare how many governments Russia has overthrown since the fall of the Soviet Union, and get back to us. How many countries has Russia bombed or invaded. How many people Putin is keeping in gulags, and force feeding them (which is torture), after they've been cleared for release since 2007? Is Russia violating the sovereignty of nations thousands of miles away from it by bombing innocent people inside them with impunity?
The United States lecturing modern Russia about imperialism is like Jack the Ripper lecturing Alec Baldwin on how to treat women.
The response
I hope you're referring to Bush Jr. because he's the one who signed the order to kill and dismantle the Shuttle program. The current administration has failed by not producing a viable alternative and pushing the agenda forward. I personally think they're sitting on their hands, on purpose, waiting for commercial manned spaceflight to fill the role.