Russia Bans US Use of Its Rocket Engines For Military Launches

schwit1 sends word that Russia will now ban U.S. military satellite launches using Russian-made rockets. According to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, this is retaliation for U.S. sanctions on high-tech items, put in place because of the dispute in the Ukraine. Rogozin also threatened to block U.S. plans to keep using the International Space Station beyond its 2020 mission end date. That's not all: 'Rogozin also said Russia will suspend the operation of GPS satellite navigation system sites in Russia from June and seek talks with Washington on opening similar sites in the United States for Russia's own system, Glonass. He threatened the permanent closure of the GPS sites in Russia if that is not agreed by September.'

Comments

SpaceX

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be one of the best things to happen for SpaceX.

Space programs as a crowbar?

[AaronLS]

Wasn't it nice when at least space programs still worked together and were kind of outside the scope of international quarrels. Astronauts working together, at least to me, were a symbol of how we were still all civilized people who had a lot of common interests and could work together peacefully.

Re:Space programs as a crowbar?

[erikkemperman]

Market economics are the alternative to fighting for resources. Instead of grabbing what you want by force, you just buy it. The market based world order of the Pax Americana is far more peaceful than the age of imperialism and mercantilism that preceded it.

What is this peace you speak of? Imperialism is far from over, the current situation is hardly different from the Spanish, British, or even the Ronan empires in any interesting way. It always amounts to wielding an overwhelming asymmetry in military might to maintain a steady flow of wealth from the rest if the world to the homeland.

The amazing thing is that so few there seem to have any idea what kind of dick they are being as a nation, or to what extent their comfort (often even a luxury that ought to be embarrassing, frankly) is underwritten by misery and poverty in lesser places.

Re:Space programs as a crowbar?

[erikkemperman]

Actually I was in disagreement with your assertion that Pax Americana was somehow not a kind of empire in how it operates in the world the last couple decades, I didn't mention all out war.

But you're not wrong in that, since the end if the Cold War, there have been fewer "nation-vs-nation" wars, as you put it (which were not really that, even during the Cold War, but mostly proxy wars between both superpowers). "Standing armies" does not mean what it used to, before there was a single superpower.

But notice that military spending has not diminished as one might have expected, rather it has risen since the early 90s. It is as much as the rest of the planet combined, to the extent that their budgets are accountable at all, that is. Find a world map of US military installations. The reason that actual, explicit coercion is rare is simply that lesser nations can't afford to let it come that far. That makes the coercion more efficient, yes, but not less "empire" like.

That doesn't make the present situation peaceful in any meaningful way though, for great numbers of people. That there were no formal war declarations and massive infantry battles doesn't actually make the history of, say, Haiti, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, all that much less bloody. That is what imperial enforcement looks like, not Waterloo.

Comparative advantage is BS

[areusche]

This is exactly why comparative advantage is complete BS. When you let another foreign entity control your means of whatever it may be (rocketd, iPhones, car parts, tools, etc etc) you lose that ability to utilize it when the political poo hits the fan.

Watch the space shuttle program make a dramatic re-appearance. This is a massive national security issue that I bet no one brought up when they decided, "Gee, lets go and outsource our rockets and launches to a foreign power we've had cold relations with since the early 20th century."

This is what happens when people look solely at the bottom line. It gets a little hard to project your power into a region when that same region makes most of your equipment (I'm looking at you China!).