The International Space Station Is The Undiscovered Country
Keith’s note: Roscosmos Chief @Rogozin has been tweeting up a storm. A nasty storm. In a nutshell he is unilaterally ending Russian cooperation on ISS unless all sanctions are lifted. He does not specify what he means by “ending cooperation”. He has also has posted all the letters from the iSS partners that in essense say “thanks for your note, we have nothing to add. Have a nice day”. No one seems to be jumping in front of Rogozin’s latest threats.
This time Rogozin is more intense and detailed in his tweeting. He is also desperate which is in synch with Putin. Rogozin is lock step in support of Putin’s genocidal slaughter of Ukraine and has gone off the deep end to demonstrate that support by repeating every imaginable piece of propoganda lies.
Rogozin is a lost cause. No one is going to start disconnecting ISS modules. The U.S. has a new re-boost system on Cygnus that will be tested and SpaceX has signaled that this is something they could offer in a rather straight forward fashion. We have independent crew and cargo capabilities. Alas, in Russia, with foreign sources of hard cash all but dried up for Roscosmos – thus their cash influx to prop up their various human and science space programs, and the crippling impact of global sanctions, it is hard to imagine that Russia could continue to do things with ISS the way that they have been doing. And it is not very clear how they could help China if Russia is essentially broke.
The ISS has managed to survive two decades of political turmoil on Earth with comparatively minor impact on its operations and missions. We are now entering a new phase where that global cooperation is going to be tested. As I have often said I hope that the common sense of purpose and true cooperation that have been the hallmark of international cooperation for more than 20 years should be teaching us something about how to get along back on Earth. Who knows – despite all the complaints that ISS is just an expensive thing in search of a purpose, the ability for the iSS to maintain a higher order of human interaction – literally – above the petty human fray of politics – is its biggest possible contribution.
First Contact Day is on Tuesday, April 5 – as in April 5th 2061. The Star Trek movie “First Contact” is about humanity’s climbing back to space after a global nuclear war. The other Star Trek film I mention is “The Undiscovered Country” – a Shakespearean phrase affixed to a film about the aftermath of a cold war in space – one where one side clearly beat the other but old hatreds and distrusts still color a larger search for peace. Both films have a new relevance to what we see in the news during the day and see in our dreams/nightmares at night.
Have you ever noticed the similarity between the ISS symbol, the UN symbol, and the Star Trek United Federation of Planets symbol? Since there aren’t any Vulcan’s waiting to come save our asses its up to us to do that. Maybe ISS is a good place to start. Just sayin’.
????? ???? ??????? ???????, ???????????? ???????????? ???????????? ????????? ????? ??????? ? ????? ?????????? ???????????? ????????? ???? ???????? ???????? ?? ??? ? ??? ????????? ? ??????????? ?????? ??????? ?????? ???? ??????????? ?????????? ???????-??????????? ???????. pic.twitter.com/rnMYiK9wal
— ??????? (@Rogozin) April 2, 2022
“… The head of NASA, Senator Nelson, the head of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, and the head of the Canadian Space Agency, Lisa Campbell, responded to my appeal to them demanding the lifting of sanctions against a number of enterprises in the Russian rocket and space industry….”
??????, ??? ?????????????? ?????????? ????????? ????? ?????????? ?? ????????????? ??????????? ??????? ? ?????? ?????????? ???????? ???????? ???? ??? ?????? ? ?????????????? ?????? ?????????? ???????.
?????????? ??????????? "??????????" ?? ?????? ?????????? ?????????????? ? ??????— ??????? (@Rogozin) April 2, 2022
“… financial, economic and production activities of our high-tech enterprises. The purpose of the sanctions is to kill the Russian economy, plunge our people into despair and hunger, and bring our country to its knees. It is clear that they will not be able to do this, but the intentions are clear. That’s why believe that the restoration of normal relations between partners in the International Space Station and other joint projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions. Specific proposals of Roskosmos on the timing of the completion of cooperation within the …””
taH pagh taHbe, that is the question for the continued cooperation with the Russians and the ISS partners. “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon,” said by Chancellor Gorkon – a Klingon seeking peace – perhaps someone like Gorkon will surprise us and we can go to the undiscovered country.
It seems we are now into a new theme of space politics. Rather the ST analogy, I wonder of other analogies of early European global exploration of the Americas and Africa, what cooperation/conflict these
European had at the time? What is certain any cooperation with nations on space programs will not be the same, countries will consider what happens if becoming hostile with partners 10 or 20 years later.
Is there really any better analogy here than the events of 1930-1940, certainly for the broad strokes? The difference is we have that history and its very extensive and complicated fallout…including ultimately the curious thread of space rivalry which begot the ISS…to learn from, assuming we have the wisdom to do so.
ARS Technica has an article where the claim is that these Tweets from Rogozin are just a bluff. I don’t think so. Unfortunately, they think that we need them in order to move forward. We do need them…but momentum is space no longer needs them.
You and I are old enough to remember the Capital to Capital broadcasts. I seem to recall this idea of the U.S. and Russia cooperating in space has some of its roots there. Buy their ICBM engines and use them on our rockets, turning swords into plowshares. Get married and have a space station together. Entangle both sides in a web of common interests for the security and technological benefit of both.
It was great while it lasted.
Eric Berger, the space editor at Ars, has a solid handle on this subject. Bluff is all that Rogozin has left, so that’s how he’s playing his hand. All the puffed-up tweets aside, Mark Vande Hei landed normally and returned to Houston without issue.
AFAIK, one of the original reasons to engage Russia with ISS was to keep their cold-war era science and engineering talent doing something beneficial rather than building weapons. That generation has mostly past.
Putin has learned that the same mutual interests that can keep folks from shooting each other might also keep them out of each other’s way while they shoot at someone else.
Which might have meant something if Russia were still relevant.
Scotty: “I’m doing all I can to hold it together, Captain!”
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
G.K. Chesterton
This is how the Russian space program ends. Not with a bang but a wimper.
Is it really a wimper? Or is it actually a whine?
Hardcore Star Trek fan here, and I’m going to have to object to you using First Contact Day and the Federation as an aspiring example. To put it plainly, that is casual Star Trek fan talk. I apologize in advance for taking Star Trek a bit literally.
United Earth and First Contact happened about 10 years after World War III, which occured in the 2050s between the US-Western Alliance (basically NATO+US Pacific allies) and the Eastern Coalition (basically the Shanghai Cooperation Organization). 600 million people and most of the world’s major cities were destroyed. Large parts of the world reverted to barbarism. In Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, Colonel Green, an ex-US Military officer and his battalion, engaged in mass executions against Americans and refugees from Asia who had radiation sickness and cancers so they didn’t introduce mutations into the human population. They would become an example for the xenophobic terrorist group Terra Prime in the mid 22nd century (Star Trek: Enterprise season 4).
There is a sinister subtext to Star Trek’s World War III story: the US-Western Alliance more or less won the war. Those 600 million dead were mostly in Asia and the Middle East. Western Cities like San Francisco, London, Paris and New York were mostly restored in the 30 years after World War III. China and its allies took far longer to recover and stayed in a level of barbarism (as seen in Q’s court in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation) until the early 22nd century. In the books, large portions of the Middle East and American Midwest (where our ICBMs are) remained a nuclear wasteland well into the 23rd century.
That is Star Trek’s ugly truth: far from representing humanity putting aside it’s differences to explore the stars, that came only after the Western World annihilated the competition in the most destructive war in human history. The “Western Way” won out, formed the nucleus of United Earth and then the United Federation of Planets, because the alternative died in a nuclear holocaust while the West took comparatively light casualties. Of course it’s easy to put aside your differences when everyone alive and influential is like you, and everyone different than you is dead and living an iron age lifestyle.
Star Trek is only an example to aspire to if you don’t look hard at it. Because it’s really the story of Western Civilization’s final victory, which in turn is promoted into the core values of the most significant space fairing power for the next 1200 years (as seen in Star Trek Discovery).
Not exactly the best message about partnership and inclusion.
One point that you missed out is this: Yes, it was bloody but humanity’s 2050s to 2250s era was about the systemic and progressive removal of political ideas and cultural characteristics that had inevitably led to conflict.
Yes, something obviously derived from Western neoliberal culture (minus the dominance of the interests of private wealth) was ascendant and had basically obliterated all of its competitors on Earth. However, this was due to the “worst of all systems except all the others” principle that makes democratic/republic-based institutions essentially morally superior. People are more likely to be happy and freer in those societies and thus they are more likely to survive. Other political and cultural systems are only likely to survive by using violence, corruption and repression.
Russian leadership lies when they say this is about “denazification” of Ukraine and “protecting Russians”. Russia needs the warm-water ports in Crimea and they think they need a puppet government in Ukraine (like they have in Belarus) in order to have access to that port. Barring that, they conquer it and also conquer a land corridor to it. Hostile ships within artillery range of the coast are very vulnerable, this is true (as Ukraine demonstrated recently), but friendly ships are not vulnerable at all.
U.S. Navy ships dock at foreign ports all over the world. They buy fuel and provisions. Their soldiers spend money. This is the way countries fill one and others gaps…by mutually beneficial cooperation. Russia needed Crimea, and after the people of Ukraine voted the Russian puppet President out of office, Russia could have shrugged and made other arrangements to gain access to Crimea as a neighbor, a friend, and a protector…as the United Federation of Planets does in Star Trek. Ukraine, through Crimea, with it’s largely Russian population, could have been a cultural and economic bridge between Russia and the West. Instead, Russia behaved like Soviets and Klingons.
The world doesn’t accept that way of doing things anymore. Russia is getting their heinies kicked, and their leadership…through their own choices…are destroying Russia.
Thanks for the long reply but to be honest you simply miss the point. 99% of the people who actually saw the movie or read my post know nothing about Star Trek canon. You treat Star Trek history as it actually happened it did not.
In the first week of January 1993, I presented an analysis to Dan Goldin and NASA leadership (AAs and Center Directors) showing what NASA had accomplished in its first 35 years and extrapolating for the next 35 years (NASA had received $485B in FY93$ in those prior years, so I extrapolated what would happen if we got the same amount of funding in the future). I was scheduled to brief for 30 minutes, and the discussion lasted 2 hours
I provided data contrary to conventional wisdom at the time. For example, while space science had launched 57 spacecraft in the 1970’s (for $22B) and only 27 spacecraft from 1980-1992 (for $24B), more than a third of the 1970’s missions were re-flights of identical instruments because mission lifetimes were so short, and the spacecraft of the later period had a mass that averaged six times larger than the earlier period, reflecting more sophisticated capabilities.
But perhaps the most relevant chart to some of the discussion I see here was on the last chart, where I was looking at similarities and differences between the first 35 years and the next. My last two comparisons for the future period were “Cooperation with the Soviets” (as opposed to competition in the earlier period), and “Potential for collaboration with the former Communist states brings together the greatest intellectual potential since the Manhattan Project” (compared with the influx of skilled foreign workers from Canada’s cancelled CF-105 program that contributed a talent influx to NASA during the Apollo era). I remember verbally going a little further (I was already pretty far out on a limb) and suggesting that a US/USSR collaboration on space nuclear propulsion could be a game-changer.
Not sure whether this ever had any impact on the early efforts to collaborate with the Soviet/Russian space agency (certainly, nothing was ever done with nuclear propulsion), but it was an idea floated at the time.
Science fiction, in fact a lot of fiction, sometimes can be used to inspire, or give a warning about, events that might or might not happen. (The handle attached to this post is for amusement). In the end real events are usually far different than fictional events – as in “you can’t make this stuff up”.
I’ll note that while Roskosmos isn’t getting the stream of foreign currency that they used to receive, they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it if they did (banking sanctions). Also, while this small tap has been turned off, Russia as a whole continues to receive a massive influx of cash in payment for all fo the fossil fuels that outside countries continue to buy from them. Their most significant customers are still plugged in and sending their payments, albeit not yet in the rubles that Putin wants. That has not changed. The question then becomes where does Putin want to spend that money. Seeing has how he has the ruble to prop up while he attempts to crush and subjugate Ukraine (then the Baltics, Moldova, Central Asia, the Caucasian republics, Finland, Eastern Europe, …), there isn’t exactly a lot of cash left over to spend on space. Putin has set his priorities and if rockets aren’t being used to deliver munitions, he’s really not interested in them right now. Rogozin, desperate for some small contribution from the federal budget, is in full obsequious mode. To borrow a Southern American expression, bless his heart.
With all the Star Trek references, herein, no truer line of fictional dialog illustrates where we are today as a species and civilization:
https://youtube.com/clip/Ug…
I have many friends in Ukraine, displaced, at best their homes and lives destroyed. I leave in one week to meet three of them, assess the situation on the ground where they are safely located now, and decide what to do to ensure their survival and safety. How many of you armchair warriors are putting your personal blood and treasure on the line to ensure our civilization and peaceful way of life survives Putin?
Our Greatest Generation understood what it means to stand for, live by, and die for.
We are doomed if we forget the lessons of history and our grandparents. I refuse to dishonor their sacrifices to placate Putin, or Rogozin.
Rogozin, and Roscosmos: Get the hell off the ISS, now. I’d happily show you the hatch, and lock it behind you.
Or, overthrow Putin, then deliver him to The Hague for crimes against humanity prosecution.
Those are the only choices I can respect from your people. Once you remove this 21st century Hitler from power, we can discuss space exploration cooperation, but not one second, or one US dollar, sooner.
Slava Ukraine.
Thank you for stepping up and putting your backside on the line, Keith. I’m using my Russian language skills and my money to contribute as my body is no longer able to engage the battle. Слава Україні!
Thank you, Todd, any thing you can contribute to help defeat Putin is greatly appreciated.
I am doing all I can at 64 years old to help defeat Putin. I’d be happy to fly a Ukrainian fighter against the Russians, but, I lost my civilian medical certificate many years ago. I guess I could fudge the paperwork, as I am a fast learner.
Instead, I’m going after three former employees of my company, and getting them to safety, whatever it takes. They are all single women, in their 30’s and 40’s, ripe pickings for human trafficking. Not happening on my watch. I pity the fool who lays a hand on them.
Thanks, again. Slava Ukraine.
My in laws just came back from doing emergency medical work in Ukraine. Wholesale murder, rape, stealing, forced relocation of people to Russia and things I won’t post. I hope we pull away from the x-cccp, even on ISS and (all other colborations in space) until the true nature of the Russian people reemerges and we can all work together again. Right now the animals are in charge.