The Curious Geopolitical Immunity of the International Space Station
White House says U.S. will retaliate against Russia for hacking, Politico
“White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest promised on Tuesday that the U.S. would deliver a “proportional” response to Russia’s alleged hacking of American computer systems. In addition to pledging that the U.S. “will ensure that our response is proportional,” Earnest told reporters flying on Air Force One that “it is unlikely that our response would be announced in advance.”
China, Russia consider joint defense response to U.S. missile shield
“Amid escalating U.S.-Russia tensions, the Russian military said Tuesday it will cooperate with China on efforts to fend off a threat posed by the U.S. missile defense program. Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir of the Russian military’s General Staff accused the Pentagon of developing the shield as part of planning for a possible first nuclear strike. “The missile defense system considerably shifts the balance of offensive weapons, allowing the planning of a more efficient pre-emptive strike,” he said at a security conference in China.”
Keith’s note: Interestingly, every time the bad relationship between the U.S. and Russia gets worse there is no mention of altering U.S./Russian cooperation in space. Indeed, when U.S./China tensions are mentioned, you hear increased talk of cooperation between the U.S. and China in space. Oh wait: the Chinese are going to visit their new space station in a few weeks. Why is space seen as a venture that seemingly transcends terrestrial politics – indeed, one where peaceful collaboration regularly prevails over less desirable behavior? There is a precedent: Antarctica.
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There are many Russians who do not have direct contact with European, Japanese, and North American people being trained there in Russia. Those Russians provide food, critical crew equipment, training supplies, transportation, etc etc etc. Those people are being bombarded by news about how the people that they provided services for are conspiring against them. Those people are told that the people they provide services for are from countries that are hostile to Russia. How long until we see some result? Hopefully not sabotage but possibly resentment.
Similarly ping-pong in days gone by.
Hey, this sounds like a good thing. Unless, of course, you want war.
What if there were no space station? It wasn’t until the Russians were brought on board in the program this station became reality, Freedom would never fly as congress was getting more and more skeptical. And HSF would have ended in Russia if they didn’t get money from the US. I kind of wonder that the crews talk about. But then war and peace are dictated by top politicians, people themselves get along just fine but they’re the ones that have to do the dirty work when war occurs.
Had the Russians not been brought on board we would have had a “Skylab 2”, which would have been a reasonable step to take.
We would have continued with the stick-built SSF, until ti became obvious we could not do it.
I worked on Freedom for many years. Until Clinton brought in the Russians it was nothing but paper.
Everything was just paper until it was built! Apollo was paper before it was built. Had we NOT brought in the Russians it would have progressed (not under some of the early designs) as well.
You don’t think the “Alpha” design would have been built? (Ie, the design chosen from Clinton’s “three options”, before bringing the Russians in to merge Mir 2 as the core of ISS.)
How? Skylab was build around a modified third stage of the Saturn V. Limited to smaller launch vehicles or the Shuttle, we were looking at a set of small, connected cans, not a single, big can like Skylab.
Not literally the same hardware! We would have had a more incremental space station. As it was, the Space Station was pretty small for quite a while, once the first two segments (FGB and a Node, as I recall) were up there.
If there were no ISS, the Shuttle Program would have ended in 2002. The Russian program would have stumbled along with an occasional launch, probably at the same rate as China is launching.
NASA would also be launching capsules on the Atlas V as the OSP would have probably been continued since there would have been no need for a big space program to replace an non-existent ISS.
Why would there be an OSP if there was no space-station? Given that transporting astronauts to the space-station was its entire reason for being.
Maybe more engineers and scientists in leadership roles would help? Of course, they may not be able to stomach the political games…
The one geopolitical snag the ISS has always been mired in is the anti-Chinese policy of Frank Wolf and his successors. China is one of only two nations with the present ability to launch humans into space, and even when Commercial gets going it will still be one of only three. The ISS needs new partners with deep pockets and man-rated rockets. The US and China need to take every opportunity we have to develop a stable relationship in which we can solve disagreements without rattling sabers. It’s time to get over our xenophobia and invite China to join the iSS program.