Space Station in CRISIS: Furious Russia threatens to BAN US from ISS The political standoff between the US and Russia over the latter's antics in Ukraine has put the future of the International Space Station (ISS) in doubt. On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said his government will suspend cooperation with the US on international spaceflight efforts, including the sale of …
Regrettably, the far right complains about *any* scientific research under the complaint "we can't afford it", while trumpeting for defense expenditures and demands to invade pretty much every "offending" nation on Earth (while also being utterly incapable of locating the "offending" nation of the week on a map).
The more fun thing is, the US GPS constellation is aging, with no replacement plans in sight.
"The more fun thing is, the US GPS constellation is aging, with no replacement plans in sight."
That makes the creation of the European Galileo system, long seen as wasteful me-too project, seem quite rational. Who cares about GPS if future devices manage to use also the European, Russian and Chinese navigation satellites.
I think a lot of people would care, since a lot of consumer products like PNA's and in-car navigation systems can't use the signals of those other navigation satellites. Only more recent systems like the TomTom Go, are able to use Glonass as well as GPS.
Professional receivers from Leica, Trimble and Topconn etc already accept all of those signals, or can be made to do so with a firmware upgrade in most cases.
"Only more recent systems like the TomTom Go, are able to use Glonass as well as GPS."
To be honest these days you'll struggle to find devices that don't use both equally. Certainly almost all smartphones built this side of mid-2012 will happily eat up both signals. I was pleasantly surprised when getting my note 2 to fire up the GPS Test app and see satellites reporting identification numbers in their 65-99 range. It's a trivial change for the silicon so all the manufacturers now just whack it all into one functional block.
"The more fun thing is, the US GPS constellation is aging, with no replacement plans in sight."
Rather interestingly part of what caused the Spacex lawsuit was that the 14 "openly competed" launches left after the 36 core block buy was handed to ULA was mostly for GPS.
Then the USAF said some were not needed after all.
Then it turned out that ULA gets a fixed minimum number of launches every year of the contract (which is probably the real minimum level their factory needs to break even).
Some of those GPS birds are >23 years old and yes F9 is capable of delivering one of them to orbit, but now ULA have offered to deliver 2 to order on the same launch (and at only "slightly" extra cost)..
No replacement plans in sight for GPS? What are you talking about. There has been a continuous replacement and improvement process in place since the beginning of the system. There are plans to launch 12 new block IIIa satellites starting this year (EDIT: ok, checking it looks like it will now be 2016) with improved accuracy.
Regrettably, the far right complains about *any* scientific research under the complaint "we can't afford it"
Right now, the US government is in so much debt that it can't afford to buy paper clips. What's your point?
This is all the more funner when you consider that Russia not only has the last word on any and all manned missions into space, it also owns a significant piece of the U.S. debt. They literally have the Obama administration by the balls.
Although really this particular mess is John Kerry's failure. You gotta bet if Hillary was still Secretary of State this mess with Russia absolutely never would have happened.
It's rather more subtle than that. The US government would have no trouble affording much more debt than they currently are running, but the right wing refuses to increase the borrowing ceiling and insists that the budget must be at least balanced. Meanwhile neither side will compromise on their pet projects or pork, making it near impossible to do so. Both sides are at fault, neither will compromise and the limit is entirely artificial.
Polls show that 86% of Americans are in favor of a balanced budget amendment. What's your point?
The point is that EITHER both sides need to cut their expensive projects (did the word "compromise" pass you by?) or they need to increase the debt cap. They have to do one thing or another, the "crisis" is down to both sides refusing to do either, and there is no need for it.
>but the right wing refuses to increase the borrowing ceiling and insists that the budget must be at least balanced.
Well, personally, I don't see what's wrong with a balanced budget, at least corrected for economic cycles.
The problem of the US (and not only them) is that it spends too much for what it taxes. The real problem the US right wing yahoos contribute is that they do not want ANY tax increases on anyone and have vetoed budget changes to reflect that. And tax brackets in the US, as well as elsewhere, are disproportionally lenient to capital gains versus employment income.
However, neither the Reps or the Dems have shown any great interest in reforming entitlements such as Medicare or pensions, where the real $ is sitting. Not sure where mortgage tax deductions fit in, but no one's much wanted to yank the pigs' snouts away from that little trough, despite it costing a lot and being useful mostly to richer folk.
For the record, I heartily support public health funding, but it needs to be inclusive, not just cover old people like the US's >65 Medicare. I also support increased spending on public education, as long at the benefits accrue mostly to the students, not just unions.
Nothing wrong with low taxes either, as long as they cover expenses and allows for spending to support people who need it. Outside of health care and education however I'd prefer to see spending aimed at poorer people, with more means testing when appropriate.
Steady-state deficit spending is just a really crappy way to saddle younger people with debt and is not at all progressive in any way. However, it is a winner with older, and more conservative, voters in the US, as a good chunk of entitlements tend to go their way. Same problem applies elsewhere, not just the US.
Good try on blaming the debt on John Kerry,you just don't like Obama and have to make up stuff to say
Where did I blame the debt on John Kerry?
I didn't blame the debt on John Kerry, I blamed the present friction with Russia on John Kerry.
For your information, John Kerry is Secretary of State and is responsible for U.S. foreign relations. You should get a good textbook on the U.S. government and teach yourself how it works.
The U.S. debt might have something to do with the fact that during the first two years of the Obama administration, while the Dems dominated both houses, the Dems spent $4.1 TRILLION dollars on "fixing" the economy. That's enough money to give every household in the United States $14,800. Most of that money went to the wealthiest 1% (look it up).
Meanwhile, today in one out of every five households in the USA no one has a job, while real unemployment is 17%. Welcome to the Obama Economy.
That's not politics, that's reality.
Who knows, maybe this will make the US Government properly fund NASA again instead of neglecting it as they have in recent times.
We could use another space race.
No Healthcare for the uninsured and, inflating everyone's Dollar in Minimum Wage income is sooo much more important then Space Exploration... According to the current administration anyway.
The problem with this bluff is that people only have to half-believe it, for it to backfire.
After Russia cut off gas to Ukraine last time, partly over re-negotiating the lease on the Crimean bases they just annexed, Europe spent quite a lot of cash on upgrading its gas interconnectors. It's still reliant on Russian gas, but can at least push the stuff the other way down the pipes now, so if Russia chooses to supply only Germany, theoretically the Germans could share. It also pursuaded others to invest large chunks of change in LNG - so lost Russia customers.
Threatening to do this again in a few days is likely to mean Europe has to move to other gas suppliers, and therefore has less reason/excuse to avoid sanctions over Ukraine.
Equally just the threat of removing access to those rocket engines means that the US government will have no choice but to find another US source. Which there wasn't at the time. Once they've done that, why pay defence dollars outside the US, when there's pork to be dished out funding a factory in someone's constituency?
Result, loss of income to the Russian economy. Loss of trust in the Russian government. These ex KGB guys seem to be excellent at the diplomatic/tactical/military stuff, but not so good at the economics and strategy. Still, I guess you don't need to know economics if you can just nick your cash off someone else.
Loss of trust in the Russian government.
Whose trust? Their citizens apparently love the bare-chesting (always have), the more the better, and even if they somehow lost their faith, well, past experience tells me it won't worry any government of Russia. Anyway, great news for the defence industry (no offence) worldwide, bad news for us plebs.
Loss of trust in the Russian government.Whose trust? Their citizens apparently love the bare-chesting
The citizens of Russia don't trust their government. That might not mean they can get rid of it, but it does mean they like to keep their money in other countries. Which cripples the Russian economy. It's one of the reasons they keep needing foreign investment to exploit their mineral reserves. And the more of these international joint ventures that get stolen, or the more scary it looks to operate there, the less investment will happen. And the weaker the economy. In the end, be it military, diplomatic, strategic or political affairs - it's the economy stoopid.
According to the Russian Central bank, $60 billion of foreign capital fled the Russian economy in the first 3 months of this year. According to the ECB that's now up to $220 billion (as of last week! No economy can survive that.
Putin became popular because he sorted the economy out. He may be staying popular because he's making Russia look strong. But if the economy collapses, he''ll lose popular support, and have no money for military adventurism.
"Threatening to do this again in a few days is likely to mean Europe has to move to other gas suppliers, "
What other suppliers? The US shale boom is not exportable in large volumes, not withstanding the conversion of some east coast import terminals to run as export. The global LNG market wants a huge price premium to supply Europe in preference to the shorter runs to Asia & Japan, and if you want certainty you need to contract months if not years ahead. Add in the fact that Europe doesn't have the LNG facilities to import much more than a fraction of its demand, and you start seeing problems with these alternative suppliers. There's only one country with the gas reserves to change things, and that's Iran. The west having demonised and threatened Iran (and vice versa) for thirty plus years, I can't see either side working to get Iran access to world markets anytime soon, nor being willing to cosy up with Europe.
The EU has only three energy security options:
1) Keep doing what you're doing, which means dreaming of renewables, whilst actually being beholden to a range of energy-rich despots round the world.
2) Tear up their climate change religion, reinstate coal as a major component of the energy mix, and start fracking in continental Europe.
3) Adopt a French-style solution of building nuclear power plant to cover 90% of demand, and accept that it will have crap load factors. This sound superficially attractive, but the wheels come off when you consider that the builders of nuclear power plants simply have no idea how to do it cheaply.
"so if Russia chooses to supply only Germany, theoretically the Germans could share."
Check who is the shareholder of 51% in the Nord Stream pipeline and who is the chairman. The same chairman that told to anyone who wanted to hear that Crimea belongs to Russia.
The Germans don't give a f*ck about anything and anyone in Ukraine and 20+ billions invested in Russia it's not a small amount of money. So what the Germans did? They cut out Ukraine and all the countries between them and the Russian gas. If the rest of Europe wants to be free from the Russian control, Kazakhstan its the only way to go (besides Algeria and Egypt for now). Its the only neighbour that Russia fears and unable to control.
Sure, but who has a better track record in actually getting things done for their nation?
Putin plays chess and Obama plays basketball. Chess requires a single person to use/know stratagy, the other allows other players to carry the weight of a weak player.
I think we know who the weak player is on the national level.
~Best wishes
That was my first thought on this one - Space X must be loving the issues if only for the fact that it highlights that having one supplier of anything is a dangerous thing - be it Space buses or toilet paper!
Hopefully this will make NASA look at the manned version of the Dragon in a new, more urgent way...
Actually right now the government money is their meat and potatoes. In fact for all the talk about commercial space flight, the truth of the matter is nobody does without the government. We may get there someday (it's certainly where I'd prefer us to be), but we're not there yet.
The station will still be there after 2020, all that the Russians can do is not carry American crew to it when the current contract/agreement ends in 2020, i.e. their threat is to not extend it. They will also lose about $60M per non-carried American so also hurts them. 2020 gives Elon plenty of time to get his module crew rated and thus more pork in the offing. The engines are a non-event, plenty of alternatives ways to launch satellites.
Why?
The only thing NASA ever liked about the Man to the Moon program was the good publicity they got. They didn't want to do manned missions, that was shoved down their throats. They would much have preferred a series of unmanned probes that would have cost far less money. ISS is a cobbled together program that runs only because of inertia. NASA complains about it constantly because it eats so much of their budget. This is just one more issue with manned space flight, and from NASA's point of view, another reason to end the waste.
Please don't read me incorrectly. My gut tells me you have the correct position and I'd like to see better support for manned exploration. But if you were sitting in the room with the NASA bean counters and/or Congress critters, what do you say from this incident that changes their position?
Because everyone knew that LH2/LO2 is the highest conventional Isp combination.
What "everybody" (well everybody in NASA) did not see was the permanent 90% cut (as a proportion of government spending) post Apollo, when Johnson basically called "mission accomplished" on the space race and Tricky Dicky tried to kill off the whole thing.
Tricky Dick had no money left, he farted it all out blowing up women and children and random AK wielding peasants in 'Nam (because the french failed to do so a bit earlier even though quite a few recycled german personnel was in their colonial army at that time).
There was so no money left that he went off the Gold standard. The frankly Death-Star sized chickens from THAT are presently coming home to roost btw. Enjoy the guano.
"You need to re-check your history. "
He does (and so would I have had to in his place). But the wider point is valid - the US went through the usual build an empire, fight wars, debase the currency......and you (judging by your moniker) are now in the terminal glide phase, hanging on to your "send a gunboat" approach to diplomacy, your tenuous status as the global reserve currency, and so forth.
I don't say that critically - Russia, Britain, Spain, Netherlands, assorted Middle Eastern countries, we've all done this. I'll credit the US of A with one thing, and that's that (in addition to being the kings of make-work and bullshit) they get things done more quickly than everybody else. In this case, completing the "empire life cycle" more quickly may not be seen as quite such a good thing.
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