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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.'
Ok kids, everyone under your desk.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
This might be one of the best things to happen for SpaceX.
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.
How does one suspend GPS? Russia doesn't control outer space above their country.
ps - Elon Musk must be chuckling.
I was hoping that despite our political issues, Russia would still partner with us in exploration/science endeavors. I guess I was a little too optimistic.
And I should have bought SpaceX stock last week.
is to stand up to the bully.
All HTTP connections to US websites will be redirected to a youtube video of Putin striking manly poses while riding on top of a grizzly bear.
Am I the only one who, upon hearing such things, immediately considers the possibility that these two governments are cooperating to manufacture a "threat" which will justify the next expansion of government (in terms of both power and revenue)? Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I'd certainly leave open the possibility.
Do a quick bunch of mealy mouthed video bites proclaiming solidarity and further cooperation to, well, study the situation.
I have no faith in our leaders here in the US or in the EU to stop Putin.
We need to bring back the NASA programs and other things that are vital to national security in house rather then outsourcing to the lowest bidders...
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
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!).
The sanctions and bans clearly will not work to defuse the Ukraine crisis. The Russian public has bought into Putin's nationalist rhetoric. Putin completely controls the political discourse in the mass media within Russia. This year, Kremlin increased pressure even on web based news, social networks, and blogs. Every Western sanction is met with a counter-sanction from the Russian side. The Russian economy and standards of living may suffer (some have serious doubts about the effectiveness of these sanctions), but I don't think they will make Russia back away.
Moreover, it's not clear what is the goal of the western sanctions as their goal is often amorphously described as "deescalate the situation in Ukraine". What does this mean? Russians think that annexation of Crimea is a done deal. Not just Putin, average Russians too. They certainly won't back away from that. As for the instability in east Ukraine, it's not clear how you prove who is escalating what right now? The locals in East Ukraine are certainly as pissed off at Kiev as it gets, specially after deadly Odesa clashes and the coup in Kiev. I don't think they need a lot of encouragement from Putin at this point.
The best way to defuse the crisis in Ukraine, is to help this country rebuild its democratic institutions and economy. While Ukraine is viewed as the victim in this dispute, its government must do more to accommodate the concerns of its Russian-speaking citizens in the East regions. For one, they should be allowed to elect their local government officials.
This might really hurt Russia. The Soviet Union struggled to stay apace with technology, and Russia has too since the collapse of the USSR. Space technology was one area where Russia could make money and truly claim to be among the best. If they're not careful this might kill off one of their few chances for profitable exports in the world economy.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Kill shuttles, kill the DC-X, kill spaceplanes, kill research, find the cheapest possible source of launchers. Make a business out of manned spaceflight. So now we're hostage to Russia, because they were cheaper than building a reusable launch system. SpaceX ain't ready yet. So, we're screwed. May Elon Musk get what he wishes for, and may he be able to deliver. Next month.
Gee, maybe we should have kept our space program going. Then instead of placing it in the hands of moronic dictatorships like Russia (true if you live in reality) or private industries trying to make a profit, they would be the one collecting money for licensing, part sales, and commercial launches. It was one of the few things at NASA that made money!
Outsource everything, cut investments in high tech, cut investments in infrastructure and science.Spend more on giant military. That's what it gets us.
Space X lost in court but won anyways?
Ever since the Cold War ended, the US has really gone to shit. It's like an old boxer who goes out of shape because there's no one left to fight.
Now can we build up our space launch infrastructure?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The Russian already delivered several and we have tested them on our rack. We should be able to reverse engineer them, without help from the Russians. Pound sand, Ruskies.
man, Americans are learning a lot of geography lately...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
the news should be read with few facts in mind. first of all, it was Musk who sought the ban of russian engines ( earlier slashdot story http://science.slashdot.org/st... ), so it hurts some companies, but not US, SpaceX will benefit from this 'ban', Musk is happy. then look at gps facilities http://www.gps.gov/multimedia/... - there is no one GPS facility in Russia. So this are not about GPS, but about those businesses, which provided more correct positioning information for Russian customers. If Rogozin wants to harm russian customers, let it be, but it hardly will have any effect anywhere else. And take Japan with a project http://www.qzs.jp/en/ - currently much of what provide ground stations could be transferred to satellites. So, it is quite possible, that even won't harm russian customers, they will be offered to use more satellites. as for threats to block International Space station beyond 2020, this might bite, but still not much. Though there are reports, that currently there are a lot of customers for international space station services, still unmanned satellites could perform almost all of these services, and more cheap and that was true for almost all time when astronautics existed - piloted stations added quite few actual results except for public attention to space research. So combined: if russian go the way of sanctions the biggest harm will be for russian space program and russian customers of space services. For US any announced threats are of very minor importance. So let this Rogozin hit russian interests with his own hands.
In terms of economic impact on US it is pretty toothless. ULA has already stated that they have two year supply of RD-180 engines and that they are perfectly capable of manufacturing the engines themselves. The reasons for buying these engines from Russia are mostly political - US supports Russian engineers so they don't go and build rockets in Iran. On the other hand Elon Musk must be laughing out loud. The Russians just created the perfect political environment for the congress to act and allow SpaceX to compete with ULA for military satellite launches, something that only few days back was made impossible by a court decision. Good job Ruskies, you just open the door for your most aggressive competitor.
As far as the shutting down GPS ground stations in Russia goes, this will only impact the accuracy of the system on Russian territory. So the only way somebody in US may feel pain is if they fall off their chairs laughing.
Russia will probably be willing to lift the ban if the US lifts its own ITAR restrictions. They disallow the export defense-related technology, including rocketry, to Russia.
SpaceX tries to prevent the US from buying rockets from Russia and unfortunately looses. After that the US goes to Russia to buy rockets and gets refused. It looks to me like SpaceX has all the cards now, I wonder how much the price just went up to buy one of their rockets?
Well played!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Same old story between two super powers...
http://www.newspapirus.com
So, turns out that funneling cash to huge defense contractors only works for national security as long as those involved care more about defense than cash.
Lockheed and Boeing got a bunch of money (and get a bunch of money every year, assured access) to deal with this and develop capability for building this engine domestically, but turns out they just pocketed the money, never built the rocket engine factory, and nobody blinked an eye. Thankfully they have the Delta IV, but who knows if they can scale up production like they need to, and you can guarantee it's going to be a hell of a lot more expensive.
The Romans were not unstoppable murdering machines?
The Germans and Persians seemed to hold them off fairly effectively over the generations....
Of course the Gauls were whipped, but that's about what you'd expect from the forerunners of the French. ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It is not like they have issues hauling things into space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_%28rocket_family%29). Or am I missing something?
nosig today
Should help Space X out quite nicely
bet you wish you didn't gut NASA now huh?
Case studies show otherwise, majority of easter Ukrainian population does not want to be part of Russia (take pretty much any non-Russian case study), don't buy this anonymous shit please.
Eastern Ukrain is predominantly Russian speaking, but so is the capital.
Parent post is clearly underrated.
Defenders of Masada killed themselves. If they didn't resist at all, they would've been residents of a Roman Province — hardly a horrible fate (see "Life of Brian" for humorous take on it). They — a sect, which in today's America would've been laughed at as "Right-wing religious nuts" — chose to fight, which is admirable, but even then losing didn't mean dying — they were in for enslavement, but not death.
The Mayans, on the other hand, whom somebody else mentioned here with regret, were killing all their prisoners-of-war. Visit Chichen Itza or any other Mayan site in Yukatan — you'll be shown walls made of human sculls — centuries before the "horrible" Spanish showed up.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I have a gun. I bake my own cake. Brownies too. Today I baked cinnamon rolls. You're welcome to come have one.
Or you can sit there and complain that you're hungry.
Funny enough, that also applies to the Greek resistance against Persian control. The Persian emperor really only wanted to levy taxes on the Greeks, not to send them off to the mines. A bunch of other countries were also paying taxes to the persians. Sparta was actually considering complying with them at first - until a bunch of historical accidents occurred which caused Athens to declare war against Persia, and the proud Spartans couldn't be seen as being weak, so they had to go along. It was of course admirable the way they defended themselves against tyranny, but it was very unpragmatic of them.
And about the Mayans, you're absolutely right, but I'm not going to take sides. In the Spanish-Mayan conflict, both sides committed atrocities at about the same level of barbarity, in my opinion.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
In the Spanish-Mayan conflict, both sides committed atrocities at about the same level of barbarity, in my opinion.
There was one significant difference: The Mayans never invaded and conquered Spain.
Putin apologists remind me of battered wives. If only you could stop making him mad, everything would be okay.
There's a reason why Eastern Europe was rushing to try to join NATO. And they were right. They're going to be rushing even harder now.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Your GNSS primer has quite a few errors--except for calling them GNSS instead of using GPS like Kleenex, like most reporters do. :)
1a. GPS long in the tooth: not at all. From the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gps#Timeline_and_modernizationGPS article, the next phase (III-A) is already approved and just needs to be built; 7 more from the previous phase still need to be completed and launched as the older birds die. And the math doesn't change over 30 years, only the corrections.
1b. Didn't notice this until after I wrote the above: Wikipedia has an entire article on the next GPS generation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
2. GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, and the newer Chinese Beidou expansion that's apparently been renamed Compass are all worldwide systems. The former three use medium earth orbit (MEO), but not polar so there's reduced or eliminated polar coverage (mainly above the (ant)arctic circles; Compass/Beidou uses both GEO and MEO. Also, I know first-hand that GLONASS works just fine here in Arizona as my Samsung Galaxy Note II with its SIRF dual-system chip receives it with no flags for inaccuracy compared to GPS.
3. "Planned Errors": This is Selective Availability and hasn't been used since the 90's.
4. Beidou/Compass' build-out vs GALILEO's: China's is happening, according to Wikipedia, unlike GALILEO, where the latest announcement is a pair of birds delivered to the Guyana spaceport and STILL no ETA to full deployment...
Nice idea - a license agreement which bans military applications. More products should do this.
... russian speaking ukranians were imported to Ukraine, and the originally ethnic groups were cleared out.
... I propose they just move back to Russia, and leave Ukraine to the ethnic groups that were cleared out.
Then what about people in US move back wherever they came from and leave the continent to the ethnic groups that were cleared out ?
I guess there's a duration threshold somewhere, after that people living somewhere can claim the land.
Maybe 50 years is a bit short, a few hundreds start to be interesting, and thousands year long occupation seems fair.
Anyway, there might have been some other original ethnic group there before any of both today, they should focus on something else than their ancestors' culture and learn to live together.
Kuwait is only an ally because of its oil reserves...
Wrap it up however you like, it was a war over the availability of resources, and in this case, oil.
Only for lack of the sea-faring technology. And if they had the technology, their code of ethics and religion would've caused them to kill all the Spanish. Not convert, not even enslave, but kill. And that's why I consider them much more barbaric, than the Spanish were at the time.
Because the oft-denounced "Western culture" has developed by those times not just the ocean-crossing ships and muskets, but also a monotheistic religion, which did away with idols, who could only be appeased by blood.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
News Flash, we can get survey grade GPS from modern day equipment, subinch vertical and horizontal using proprietary technology. New GPS networks are coming online and as of last month if you use dual frequency GPS can get submeter horizontal (decrypted signal; used to be encrypted). So what's the fuss? In my opinion, we need to stop being the global police and worry about our own issues. Doesn't anyone read and understand lessens from history anymore? Maybe, it's the corrupt politicians with hidden agendas. I say let the change in cultures happen organically rather than synthetically. We certainly don't have our stuff together so why do we impose our moral rights on others outside of our boundaries. Unless it infringes on our rights, who cares what they do! Evil will always exist and going to search for it depletes resources and security.
an elderly relative they took in did not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... ... After the national railways complied with the exiled Dutch government's appeal for a railway strike starting September 1944 to further the Allied liberation efforts, the German administration retaliated by placing an embargo on all food transports to the western Netherlands. By the time the embargo was partially lifted in early November 1944, allowing restricted food transports over water, the unusually early and harsh winter had already set in. The canals froze over and became impassable for barges. ..."
"The Dutch famine of 1944, known as the Hongerwinter ("Hunger winter") in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived because of soup kitchens. About 22,000 died because of the famine. Most vulnerable according to the death reports were elderly men.
So yes, it is the height of foolishness that the USA has reduced its food stocks to bare minimums for "just in time" delivery. I read somewhere a few years ago that the USA was divesting itself of its government reserve grain supplies too. It is even more insanity to convert grain to fuel. A trillion dollars a year or more for security spending in the USA, and the government can't even get the basics right...
See also: ... In the inflationary 1970s, the USDA revamped FDR's program into the Farmer-Owned Grain Reserve, which encouraged farmers to store grain in government facilities by offering low-cost and even no-interest loans and reimbursement to cover the storage costs. But over the next quarter of a century the dogma of deregulated global markets came to dominate American politics, and the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act abolished our national system of holding grain in reserve. As for all that wheat held in storage, it became part of the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust, a food bank and global charity under the authority of the secretary of Agriculture. The stores were gradually depleted until 2008, when the USDA decided to convert all of what was left into its dollar equivalent. And so the grain that once stabilized prices for farmers, bakers and American consumers ended up as a number on a spreadsheet in the Department of Agriculture. Now, as the United States must confront climate change, commodity markets riddled by speculation, increased import costs, hosts of regional conflicts and the return of international grain tariffs and export bans, we have put our faith entirely in transnational agribusiness and the global grain market. ..."
http://articles.latimes.com/20...
"But when it comes to food prices, our country cannot even threaten to bolster the national supply because the United States does not possess a national grain reserve. Such was not always the case. The modern concept of a strategic grain reserve was first proposed in the 1930s by Wall Street legend Benjamin Graham.
More neoliberal neocon madness... But most people in the USA did not have a parent who saw a relative starve to death during wartime... You always think the basic services will be there -- until you test them in a crisis and they are not...
"Neoliberalism as a Water Balloon"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Or also:
http://www.taobackup.com/testi...
"No matter how sophisticated or comprehensive your backup system is, you will never know if it works unless you actually test it. Without testing, you can have no confidence at all. Here are
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
If you're far enough away from the nuclear blast to survive it, drop to the ground, face down, with your hands over your eyes. When the bright flash from the detonation occurs, you will be blinded. However by doing as I just instructed, your vision will return...rather than being 'burnt out'
The sanctions and bans clearly will not work to defuse the Ukraine crisis.
Without something concrete, consequences such as those sanctions and bans and threat of them becoming more and more severe, Russian tanks would most likely have already rolled to Eastern Ukraine. Whether that's helping to eventually defuse the crisis, or just helping to prolong it by preventing Russia from ending it in SU style, that's matter of opinion.