NASA Bans Contact With Russia – Except for ISS (Update)
Keith’s note: An internal NASA memo is circulating that bans all employee contact with Russia except for ISS operations. Stay tuned.
Keith’s 2:22 pm EDT update: NASA Internal Memo: Suspension of NASA contact with Russian entities
“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. In addition, multilateral meetings held outside of Russia that may include Russian participation are not precluded under the present guidance.”
Keith’s 7:44 pm EDT update:
Statement regarding suspension of some NASA activities with Russian Government representatives
“Given Russia’s ongoing violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, NASA is suspending the majority of its ongoing engagements with the Russian Federation. NASA and Roscosmos will, however, continue to work together to maintain safe and continuous operation of the International Space Station. NASA is laser focused on a plan to return human spaceflight launches to American soil, and end our reliance on Russia to get into space. This has been a top priority of the Obama Administration’s for the past five years, and had our plan been fully funded, we would have returned American human spaceflight launches – and the jobs they support – back to the United States next year. With the reduced level of funding approved by Congress, we’re now looking at launching from U.S. soil in 2017. The choice here is between fully funding the plan to bring space launches back to America or continuing to send millions of dollars to the Russians. It’s that simple. The Obama Administration chooses to invest in America – and we are hopeful that Congress will do the same.”
US-Russia chill won’t spread to cooperation in space, Bolden says, Physics Today
“On Thursday NASA administrator Charles Bolden reassured lawmakers that Russia won’t stop providing access for US astronauts to the International Space Station, despite the current tensions between the two countries over Russia’s recent invasion of Crimea.”
GOP lawmaker, NASA chief spar on funding and Russia, MSNBC
“Several legislators expressed concern that the diplomatic breakdown between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s incursion into Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula could derail cooperation between NASA and Roscosmos.”
The pendulum has swung back. When I started working at the Ames Research center in the late 90’s, the place was crawling with Russians. The rumor was that most had worked for the KGB during the Soviet era. Everyone thought the world had changed and believed in mutual trust and cooperation. It’s to bad NASA is being forced to pull back from this.
Yep, I’m pretty sure this happened in 2010: Odyssey Two. One good thing is that, from what I remember, nobody gets thrown out the airlock.
I remember from that movie that the two sides started talking together after Jupiter was converted into a second Sun by a Clarke type ‘sufficiently advanced technology’.
OTOH, the Russians have the only gun on ISS. (Unless Robonaut has a secret.)
[On a more serious note: Russia has responded to every diplomatic “punishment” from US/UK (withdrawing diplomats, cancelling talks) with one-up responses of their own. So it’s unlikely that NASA’s gesture will go unanswered. I hate to imagine what you guys are going to be paying for Soyuz seats and rocket engines soon.]
The movie was ‘2010: The Year We Make Contact’. Why Peter Hyams gave the film a completely different title than the book is totally beyond me. That and the totally obvious grammatical error in the message from HAL at the end pretty well established him as a pretty awful director in my mind.
The movie version of 2010 suffered from a myriad of problems. I didn’t buy Roy Schieder as Dr. Floyd and John Lithgow definitely didn’t belong. I think Hyams tried to tackle on every scene from the book, which watered down the movie. Needed a lot more Kubrick and a lot less Hyams.
Does anyone know if the ISECG workshop will be (or is likely to be) cancelled next week? link: http://www.nasa.gov/explora…
Now that you mention it, the next COSPAR meeting will be in Moscow this August. This is one of the main meetings for international coordination of space-related scientific research. I wonder if this will be considered an approved conference for NASA-funded scientists, given both the existing restrictions on international travel to conferences and the above mentioned “ban” on contact with Russia.
This is a mind-bogglingly stupid announcement that shamelessly conflates space agency operations with domestic fiscal policy mudslinging. I’m disgusted.
Fiscal policy?
While it’s a shame to see science tripping over politics, I’d much rather see us bring pressure against Putin for his territorial adventures using diplomatic and political pressure than to take the foolish military path advocated by some.
The crew of the ISS should take the opportunity to post a video on youtube of them laughing, playing, cajoling, and having an all out great time.
1. It might go viral
2. It would show how stupid we all can be here on earth
It would a more interesting video if it included some Ukrainian astronauts, possible one of them the parent of a slaughtered protester. Hahaha! What a laugh riot with them all cajoling together.
ISS should start every morning with songs like “We are the world” and ‘Man in the Mirror.” Who writes these memos. EVERY other agency is working with their Russian counterparts. The Russians should be banned from all the US sections of ISS and the Russians should retaliate in kind. BTW who has the bathroom in their section? Crazy stuff.
There’s a bathroom on both the US and Russian segments.
So in addition to not enthusiastically using Space X to bring manned space capability back to the United States, let us anger the Russians who are our only ride to the space station. We used to be a great country.
This is dumb. I can understand this if the Russians had actually attacked NATO, but this crisis is not at that point yet (and hopefully won’t get that far). Doing this achieves absolutely nothing beyond pissing the Russians off even more and giving the Russian government a justification for retaliatory measures – jacking up the price of seats to the ISS, or cutting off access entirely for US astronauts. What about all those RD-180 rocket engines they sell the US? Maybe not. They can do much more damage to us than we can to them because we need them more than they need us.
But the damage is done, and I think the US now needs to take quick measures to accelerate commercial launch options. We are reaping the very poor decision to rely on a foreign state (even one then ‘friendly’ with us) to ensure our space access. We should never have been put in this position in the first place and retiring the shuttle before an effective replacement was ready was utter stupidity on the part of the Obama Administration, and showed a complete lack of interest in ensuring the US retains leadership in Space.
What a mess….
I could give a rats ass for pissing off the Russians. Playing kiss-ass to murdering dictators has never proven to be a productive long-term strategy.
Yes, we should never have bought their engines or paid for rides. With proper funding and political will we should have commercial crew already flying. Lets hope (altho its not going to happen) that commercial crew gets funded properly now.
I don’t give a rats ass either – but cutting our own nose off to spite our face is stupid.
Its not cutting off our nose to spite OUR face. It is taking some pain to inflict vastly larger pain to a bully and thug with long-term aggressive plans which will most certainly cause us harm. Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, etc. are in bad shape due to that thug government.
We (including Europe) need to wean ourselves from any and all dependence on what is essentially a criminal syndicate.
…except Obama didn’t retire the Shuttle.. Bush did, starting the process 4 years before Obama took office (VSE). By the time Obama took office, the retirement process had gone far enough that it really could not have been reversed. On top of that, the economy was well on it’s way to tanking. Finally, no matter what Obama does, he cannot fund NASA all on his own, good or bad intentions. He suggests, Congress acts.
Mess? Yes. But let’s be factual.
Not true. I was working shuttle. When Obama took office (2009), he could have reversed the decision. It would have cost money, yes, but the shuttles were still flight certified, the pads and KSC infrastructure intact, and most important, the labor force still existed. The fact is Bush only canceled shuttle, but replaced it with another manned program, constellation. Obama canceled constellation and replaced it with NOTHING.
Anything can be reversed. It is the current President that keeps trying to stick the fork in the US Space Program. If you Space Xers think he’s your friend your just kidding yourselves. He’s funding it because its cheap, cheap, cheap. What nonsense. Did you ever think that it might be politically easier to delete a line item in the budget to a private vendor; than it is to tell the public that your walking away from America’s preeminence is space exploration.
Resting America’s future access to space on Russia is as stupid as placing it on the continued heartbeat of one man. If we want to go beyond LEO we are going to have to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time; and that will take more than 17 Billion dollars per year. Congress spends money so fast it would bring tears to an onion’s eyes. These guys always come up with money for things that they want to do.
“NASA is laser focused on a plan to return human spaceflight launches to American soil, and end our reliance on Russia to get into space. …. The Obama Administration chooses to invest in America – and we are hopeful that Congress will do the same.”
That’s sure is one out of focus laser.
Had this administration left intact the ISS support portion of the Orion program rather than trying to kill off anything related to their predecessors, there would already be a US crew launch capability operating and this would be a non issue. Under no realistic scenario would any of the CCDev options have been operational at this time. To be fair, the previous administration deserves a heap of blame for not focusing Orion on ISS support as a clear first priority, but this administration’s hands are every bit as dirty, if not more so. Trying to shift blame to Congress is nothing more than a desparate attempt to divert attention from the adminstration’s juvenile and needless antagonism of the Russians. This administration made this mess and they own it all by themselves. Trying to pass the blame for their own mistakes just makes them look even more incompetent.
I’m curious as to how we would be launching people on Orion right now, since Orion still hasn’t had a test flight to this day. Also what rocket would it be riding on, Ares 1? Suuure….
“Had this administration left intact the ISS support portion of the Orion program rather than trying to kill off anything related to their predecessors, there would already be a US crew launch capability operating”
Not accurate.
Orion has been on the development path laid out years ago. While there have been claims it would fly much sooner, at one time as early as 2011, by the time Obama took over and Augustine reviewed the program, Orion management told Augustine they’d have it in orbit in 2016-2017, and Augustine (Sally Ride) said that 2019 was more likely.
As far as “the ISS support portion of Orion” I am under the impression that mainly NASA stopped talking about this for 2 reasons: (1) there could be no justification for a single launch like Orion to ISS costing multiple bilions of dollars; much more expensive than Shuttle and (2) the Orion supporters liked to justify the ridiculous expense of Orion as being due to the fact it was a beyond Earth orbit vehicle as opposed to the relatively inexpensive Dragon or CST100 which were ONLY earth orbital.
Fact is there is no reason an Orion could not be used for ISS except that ISS requires a two launches a year if crew size is only 3 or 4, and Orions given their expense will only be built about one every one to two years. Also, there is no agreement yet with ESA for a series of Orion Service Modules; so far, despite the ridiculous expense, the US has only invested in something like half a vehicle; only the command module. And the more sophisticated systems like ECLS are on the back burner and won’t be ready til 2021 or later.
The delayed availability and expense of Orion is despite the fact that its never really experienced any cut backs to its development activity or budget.
NASA and the White House – the Administration is playing FULL COURT PRESS. As Chick Hearn would say, “It’s crunch time!” Republicans, Frank Wolf, have crawled all over NASA, particularly Worden at Ames over security issues with China. The Administration is making perfect sense to secure NASA in relation to Russia. Hopefully, the day will arrive, sooner than we can imagine, when full cooperation will return.
And this is part of the full court press to insure that Congress provides, for the first time, the full funding requested by NASA for Commercial Crew. Bolden laid it on thick at the subcommittee hearing. It made news with the big networks. Unless you can shame Congress, make them look like the scum of the Earth, they will not compromise to save themselves and much less so, to save the American people or American enterprise. Congress will just do what the $billions from lobbyists and the votes they need to sustain themselves drives them to do.
Banning contact with Russians was the right thing and it raises the importance of funding CCP in full. Otherwise, first flight will lapse another year.
That’s one small misstep for a man, one giant leap backward for mankind.
I knew that the other shoe would finally drop.and would spill over into the ISS program. This is going to be interesting.
Now THAT is just stupid.
In a rational Congress it would, but I don’t think it will in this case.
That statement from NASA is rather revolting. Rather than make a straightforward official statement of current policy and plans, it’s used as yet another bullet in the power struggle between NASA and Congress.
Sorry if I expect more professionalism from my Space Agency. They may not be wrong on substances… but boy… not the time and place to try and score political points.
I agree. This is not a decision that NASA makes. If it was really NASA, then I am a little disappointed.
My wife is a Russian citizen. Does that mean I can ignore her when I get home?
The idiots in Congress who don’t give a damn about science and all they are is street punks in Lehmann Brothers suits. And they’re only interested in cornering space so they can play Star Wars in space all by themselves they don’t what share anything the find with others especially the Chinese or Russians greed is their addiction.