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Russia

Dark Days Ahead For Russia's Space Program?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 9, 2018
Filed under
Dark Days Ahead For Russia's Space Program?

Russian editor: Our space program is entering the “Dark Ages”, Ars Technica
“As soon as next year, the United States plans to stop paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Russia for Soyuz seats, because it is developing its own transport to the space station. And the European Space Agency has signaled that it will stop launching Russian Soyuz rockets from its French Guiana-based spaceport in the early 2020s. A Russian space editor, Andrei Borisov, has captured the fading zeitgeist of the Russian space program in a lengthy article on the new leader of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, and the changes he has proposed. “The ‘Russian Space’ Rogozin is trying to create reminds one of the Dark Ages in Europe,” Borisov writes on Lenta.Ru, where he serves as editor of science and technology. “In it, there is no place for modernization, there is only the mission of survival.”
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61 responses to “Dark Days Ahead For Russia's Space Program?”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Sadly this is really the outlook for the future of Russia, survival. They failed to make the necessary economic and political reforms needed to restructure their economy beyond the export of commodities like oil and so they are starting the long drift downward. Although this article is from last year nothing has really changed in terms of the basics.

    https://www.theguardian.com

    This is also a decision point for the West as a Russia where poverty is increasing will be more militaristic, as was the case of Germany and Japan prior to WW II. We need to learn from history and take a more pragmatic view towards helping Russia develop its economy.

    • SouthwestExGOP says:
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      The Russians had the choice to be prosperous, accepted members of Europe – trading gas for economic development. They decided that they wanted to be feared, so they sell gas and try to bully their neighbors. We need to stay connected until they can once again decide to try democracy instead of Putin and autocracy.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        Don’t underestimate the power of autocracy; the recent bipartisan Senate report concedes that Putin influenced our election and may have chosen our president. Putin’s control of the press is total and his approval ratings are unsurpassed. It should be a lesson to us in how easily democratic principles can be lost if we become to enamored of a strong leader.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          This is suppose to be about Russia’s future in space, so we should focus on that. But in both areas the United States is reaping the consequences of past decisions.

          In this case it was the funding support it gave Russia for its HSF program starting with the missions to Mir, then ISS and then expanding it after the retirement of the Shuttle. They became dependent on that funding and have no way to replace it when it ends.

          • Paul451 says:
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            {Laughs}

            “Hey, let’s not get political, let’s stick to the topic. It was Clinton’s fault!”

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            ? True, it was the Clinton Administration that brought the Russians into the station with the Mir/ISS Program, but I suspect the Bush Administration would have made a similar arrangement with Russian as it was the logical thing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union, so I don’t know what is political about it. And it was one of the good things coming out of the Clinton Administration.

            The point I am trying to make is that the US, having made the Russian HSF Program dependent on NASA funding, should be seeking someway to continue the partnership, both in terms of the symbolism and the original purpose of keeping the Russian experts working on space exploration versus weapons.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            They are welcome to stay on the ISS. Before the Columbia loss Russia was making good money flying tourists to the ISS, they will have some empty seats to fill, so why not sell more tickets? The Russian government can restore some funding to thier space activities, and realistically if it does not then a US subsidy will not help.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Actually they already are doing so. The UAE is paying them to fly it’s astronauts to the ISS. I suspect you will see them targeting other nations with money as well.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        It is in line with the history of Russia where strong leaders (Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Stalin, etc) are honored and politicians dispised. Government and political systems may change but Russia, like China, remains the same.

        • Jonna31 says:
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          One of the most interesting assessments of Russia I ever read was that over the past 150 years we’ve been living in real time what historically happens to great powers, and that relative government stability has only masked it. The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation are all expressions of the same idea: the Russian people as a people of destiny, a Russian imperium of some sort, stretched from one side of Eurasia to the other. The economic and political systems vary, and leadership changes, but many governmental and cultural institutions have endured to perpetuate a 300 year “Russian Imperium” that, consistent with troubled great powers of the past few thousand years, has reorganized and rebranded itself. But it’s still fundamentally the same thing.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            If I recall it was Ivan the Great that stated “Russian is the Third Rome and there will be no fourth” It is also why he took the title of Czar, the Russian version of Caesar. That vision of Russia is as deeply rooted in their political culture as liberty is rooted in the United States political identity.

          • richard_schumacher says:
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            It was a monk in 1510 writing about Moscow and not Russia as a whole, but the same essential idea:
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
            The Russian sense of exceptionalism and glorious destiny is about as strong and bad as is that of the US.

        • SouthwestExGOP says:
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          Our Russians neighbors fear chaos and instability – they fear invasions even when they have to create enemies that might invade them. They have tremendous potential, hopefully one day they will decide to join us instead of trying to bully us.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Indeed.

            Russians have not forgotten WW2: the loss of life has been burned into the national identify.

            Our little town down here on the Florida SW coast has an interesting little enclave of Russians, all about my age, which is early boomer; I was born in 1949. Sitting around and just talking with many of them who lived in Soviet Russia is quite an education. At the same time that I was carrying anti-war, or anti-segregation signs, they were struggling with an oppressive regime that could, and would, take their freedom at the slightest whim.

            Why am I mentioning this? Because when it comes to nations the saying about walking in someone else’s shoes might be impossible.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Can’t do that without seeming to agree with Putinism…as the current Administration is finding out. Of course, arrogant “trampoline” remarks from them and efforts by oligarch-hired mercenaries to force military confrontations with us that get people killed won’t put us back on their happy neighbor list either.

        I’m going to be a minority voice here and declare that I prefer to work with Russia on things like space exploration. It seems to soften the dialog a bit when we disagree with them on other things.

    • space1999 says:
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      Not sure Japan prior to WWII fits with the point you are trying to make… I think most (all?) would agree that poverty and humiliation were key factors in the rise of Nazism, but based on a quick wikipedia read, it doesn’t seem like the same factors led to Japan expanding their empire prior to WWII.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Japan needed oil. The US feared Japanese expansion, denying them oil. Japan attacked.

        Over simplified, but largely true.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Yes, the various sanctions and diplomatic isolation of Japan started with the Manchurian Invasion. Bans on weapons were followed by bans on steel and other raw materials until the tipping point was reached with oil.It is why at the start of the war Japan drove south towards the oil of the Dutch East Indies instead of East.

          We need to learn from history and give Russia a pathway out. One part will be finding a way to continue subsidizing their HSF Program after ISS.

          • David_Morrison says:
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            It may be worth noting that Japan’s rise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was aided by Teddy Roosevelt and others, who believed that the Japanese were really of Ayran descent and not true Asians. Thus some of the western powers encouraged Japan’s nationalistic and militaristic tendencies, including the expansion into China that ultimately led to WW2 in Asia. The Japanese battleships that destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet in the 1905 battle of Tsushima were built in England!

          • Robert Rice says:
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            Say wha???

          • fcrary says:
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            Yea. I’d like to see some references for almost all of that. I do have a vague memory of German (Nazi) statements that the Japanese were “honary” Aryans, or the Asian equivalent of Aryans, made around the time of the treaty between Japan, Germany and Italy. But that’s about all I can think of along those lines.

            But the statement about the Japanese navy in 1905 is mostly correct. They wanted a good navy before they had the ability to build one locally, so they bought from the best suppliers. The ships were purchased from the United Kingdom (although I’m fairly sure they were built on the Clyde, which is Scotland, not England.) I think the guns we’re largely purchased from Germany. And young officer candidates were sent to military academies in the United Kingdom or Europe.

            But there is a difference between selling army to a country and encouraging that country’s military ambitions. France, for example, did not encourage Argentina to invade the Fauklands, but they did sell many of the arms used by Argentina during that conflict.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            I believe David Morrison is referring to the work of historian James Bradley who argued in his book “The Imperial Cruise” that most of the problems in the Pacific in the 20th Century resulted from President Roosevelt encouraging Japanese Imperialism.

            https://www.amazon.com/prod

            The book centers on a high ranking 1905 diplomatic mission President Roosevelt sent to Asia and provides evidence based on his research that it set the tone for many of the events that followed, including Japan entering WWI on the side of the Allies which planted the geopolitical framework that led to WWII. It is a very interesting book. James Bradley is more famous for an earlier book, “Flags of our Fathers” that was made into a movie.

            Returning it around to the topic of Russian, it is a good cautionary that we might be viewing Russia with a similar prejudice based on its long history of conflict with Europe and that it may be setting the stage for a similar chain of tragedy in Eurasia.

          • Robert Rice says:
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            Well weren’t the bans on steel and oil due to the fear of impending war with the US….seems like a pretty good reason

          • fcrary says:
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            No, the bans were about the war in China, where the US had significant, economic interests. As well as pressure from people with humanitarian concerns about reported war atrocities by the Japanese army in China.

      • fcrary says:
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        Arguably, the issue goes back well before World War Two. Possibly a hundred years earlier. A good deal of the imperialist and militarist policies in early twentieth century Japan could be attributed to Perry’s Black Fleet. They had a foreign fleet anchored off shore from their capitol and (in effect) dictating terms of a treaty under an implied threat of bombardment. That wasn’t exactly popular. Japanese foreign policy for the next century was complex, but making sure nothing of the sort could happen again was part of it.

  2. Michael Spencer says:
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    Pragmatism and politics aside this is not a good thing for humanity. The Russians have much to offer.

    On the issue of humanity: we are an odd species, aren’t we? Seats of power being populated avarice and greed, frequently, while capability is afforded not even a glance. To the extent that leaders reflect a population surely we are a dull bunch.

    Examples abound: poor, sad Africa, of course; Venezuela; and of course the aforementioned Russia; add, too, any of the Muslim nations, and for a variety of reasons.

    Individuals are so lovely, of any nation, yet collectively we suck. It is a mystery.

    • Jonna31 says:
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      Really? What precisely do they have to offer? Over the decades you could claim they had two things:

      (1) Reliable, affordable access to space via the Soyuz
      (2) Unparalleled long-duration human spaceflight experience via their Space Stations (especially MIR).

      #1 there, the Soyuz, has been fatally undermined by even cheaper rockets in the form of the Falcon 9 and the prospect of a vastly superior capsule in the form of the Dragon 2. Let’s wind back the clock to about 13 or so years ago… the CxP era. Remember all that talk of an “American Soyuz”, and how Ares I was (laughably) supposed to be that? The entire concept was rendered obsolete by commercial rockets that can land.

      In this area, Russia offers something only so long as SpaceX is not flying people into space. That’s not going to be a thing for much longer.

      With respect to #2, the ISS has made NASA the leader in long duration spaceflight..

      So besides the absurd sentimentality of “we’re all in this together” (we’re not) utopianism of all mankind putting aside their differences (most of which are rather important, and not something to be swept under the rug by the way) to colonize space, precisely what does Russia offer? Their industrial and technological capacity has sharply declined over the past 15 years. They’ve suffered epic brain drain as authoritarianism rebounded. They certainly don’t have money.

      Let’s deal with the Russia we have, which is an aggressive, revanchist power experiencing a broad and ongoing political, economic and industrial decline.

      Oh and one more thing. As a matter of principle, we should not work with countries that attack our democracy. Exploration of space is important. The integrity of our system of government and way of life is vastly more so. Russia attacked the US in 2016. It was our cyber Pearl Harbor, in an unexpected form. And now you lament that we can’t unite with our common human brothers and sisters to do great things en masse?

      I’ll tell you when we can entertain that: When the individuals responsible for attacking us are trotted down the road to a Federal Court House in irons.

      • fcrary says:
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        Perhaps Mr. Spencer should have written “had” not “have” so much to offer. Even in the disasterous, late 1990s, Russia had the potential to do great things in space. For essentially all of Russian history, that has been the tragedy: Enormous potentials which never became realities.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Yes, and SpaceX is just the tip of the iceberg on that score. The full global ramifications of THAT market disruption have yet to be fully felt. It was made worse by the arrogance of a lot of folks who still haven’t learned…including those in Russia.

    • space1999 says:
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      Large portions of Africa may be poor in western terms, and obviously many countries have a way to go w.r.t. democratic governance, but “sad”… that seems a little pompous. Also, Indonesia is the largest predominantly muslim country, and the Economist ranks them just below Mexico on their “democracy index”… in any case, given the current state of US politics I don’t think we should be feeling too superior.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Pompous? On re-reading, yes, it sure does. Still, Africa is still carrying the scars of colonialism, which is what I had in mind; the continent has been subject to (seemingly) countless string of repressive kleptocrats. An Africa without colonialism and its handmaid, the repugnance of slavery, would be an interesting alternative history story to be sure.

        Muslims- to the extent that current practice is stuck in the 15th century, I stand by my remarks. And indeed Indonesia suffers from the Sunni/Shia silliness, as well as hostility towards Christians of any sort.

    • Eric says:
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      Not all individuals are “so lovely” and we don’t all suck collectively. Some times individually and collectively we are great. Some times we are not. Human behavior collectively and individually while often not all that predictable, isn’t that big a mystery conceptually. The book I read that I think explains us the best both socially and biologically is Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species. When I started reading it, I quickly started thinking about how it applied to just about everything in life from the micro to macro level. I also think it explains what works and doesn’t work in economics far better than Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

      While I don’t always like how some of the rules of evolution apply to us, after reading Darwin’s masterpiece the evidence I see tells me he was right even in areas he didn’t apply his work to. As individuals and as however we choose to group ourselves together are experiments in social evolution. There are successes and failures, but in the long term big picture I see remarkable progress. Compared to the history of the world, modern society is such a recent phenomena. We’re going to make mistakes going forward.

      There are many things I don’t like in how nations behave. But the progress I’ve seen in my nearly six decades is phenomenal. There are far fewer wars. We do help each other more in times of crisis. Progress is rarely equally applied to all humans. Evolutionary processes do however eventually spread widely and often rapidly when they are successful.

      Russia is making some mistakes in reading the tea leaves as is everyone else. But I think they are smart enough to eventually learn from them. I think there is a good chance Russia, while not guaranteed, will bounce back and thrive. I think it is a question of when and not if.

  3. Daniel Woodard says:
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    The use of the Soyuz by ESA was always a bit of a puzzle, it might have saved money short term but was always likely to lead to logistical and political difficulties.

  4. JadedObs says:
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    No tears here – Russia has gone from being a promising newly liberated country in the early 1990’s to a malevolent kleptocracy ruled by an autocrat who seeks to reclaim bygone Soviet global influence by bullying weaker neighboring states and interfering with global peace and prosperity by undermining democracy – including our own. If Russia had reformed, it would probably be a major global economy by now. Instead, its GDP is about the same as Canada and less than New York state’s despite covering a dozen time zones and having eight times the population.
    The really good news is that, as Russia’s space capabilities dwindle, its ability to threaten US assets and capabilities also declines, It would have been nice if all of their space capabilities had all been channeled to good use but given the rate of North Koreas’ improvement, one has to wonder if they aren’t selling weapons technology too.

  5. mfwright says:
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    It seems it was a accidental arrangement of people and events that led them to accomplish what they did in their space program. Kind of like the Apollo program, it worked because all the dominos from infrastructure to management were all lined up at the right place at the right time. Yes, getting philosophical here.

    I have a feeling if Russian space program comes to an end which no more Soyuz, that may be the end of HSF. Yes, there is BFR, Dragon2, BO, Orion… but their first flights keep getting pushed further into future.

    • Michael Genest says:
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      Wow…”that may be the end of HSF”. You don’t think that may be a bit extreme in the pessimism department do you? Even if there was some time gap between the end of Soyuz and the start of any of the several new US HSF capabilities, so what? And you believe that would precipitate the end of HSF?!? Forever? Cmon….have a little faith in the human race.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Yes, after all there is another in which the force is strong…

        https://www.space.com/40727

        • james w barnard says:
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          In the 15th Century, Portugal was the leader in exploration, only to be replaced by Spain, then the Netherlands, then England, and ultimately, when it came to HSF, Russia and then the U.S. While China is well behind us…right now. Whether we, the United States, regain/retain leadership in space will depend on the ability of our commercial entrepreneurs, as well as NASA, to regain support of our citizens for HSF beyond LEO. Otherwise, like Portugal, we will relinquish the lead to others, whether China or India or ???
          Ad Luna! Ad Ares! Ad Astra!

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          China’s actual space budget is thought to be about $3B a year. NASA spends around $20B a year.

          Is this David and Goliath? No.

          From the $20B remove everything not directly spent on space and related infrastructure development, including aerospace; remove the ISS, the Webb, and similar programs, and soon you find that HSF in China compares much more favorably with NASA.

          Many here, including me, have pointed out that $3B annually wiser spent could take any nation’s HSF to the front of the pack. Whether you agree with China’s governance, or not, it does have the advantage of multi-year focus, something that the US can never accomplish when successive elections go left/right/left/right.

          • fcrary says:
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            As another comparison, the Cal Tech contract to manage JPL was recently renewed for five years and $15 billion. The press release wasn’t clear about it, but I believe that does not include the NASA grants to scientists at JPL or contracts for flight projects. (I.e. the management grant covers operating the lab and perhaps salaries of some of the people there; not everything JPL does.) So that’s $3 billion per year for the fraction of NASA work which JPL does. I’d have to say China is getting more for roughly the same money. (And, yes, some of that may reflect the relative costs of living; the Los Angeles area is not cheap.)

          • Not Invented Here says:
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            How do you know China is not going left/right/left/right all the time? You have no insight into their internal politics and policy making process to make this determination. Everything you see is from the outside, and from the outside, their HSF is going at a snail’s pace, with a launch rate considered dangerously low in the US.

            The US’ problem has nothing to do with changing directions due to elections, in fact it’s the opposite: Too little change is happening, yes Obama cancelled Constellation but SLS/Orion is still here wasting money. If US election can really change direction of HSF we wouldn’t have SLS/Orion but instead we would fully fund Commercial Crew and invest billions in space technology development, the US would be in a much better position in terms of HSF than today.

      • mfwright says:
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        Maybe why I am pessimistic is because I haven’t seen any actual spacecraft and actual people that will fly them. Back in the days i.e. 1979 Life Magazine article “AOK for 1980” showing armies of technicians working on Columbia and photo of Young and Crippen. Yes, that first flight was delayed another year but it was actual hardware and actual people. Logically I understand there are flight hardware being built but the touchy/feely part of me wonders if it really exists.

  6. George Purcell says:
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    At the end of the day the Russian economy is about the 80 percent of the size of the Texas economy. They simply don’t have the wealth to compete with us anymore, certainly not when they are also trying to compete with the US on a military basis at the same time.

    • fcrary says:
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      As far as competition in space is concerned, I’m not sure the size of a country’s economy is what matters. There have been lengthy discussions of how NASA could use their budget more efficiently, and NASA only gets about half a percent of the US federal budget. A country with an economy half the size of Texas could, potentially, do better. If they were willing to spend a larger fraction of their budget and/or use those funds more efficiently. But that doesn’t seem to describe Russia.

    • Donald Barker says:
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      Oh and our trillion dollar debt will not be going away any time soon. Nations have collapsed for less. http://www.usdebtclock.org/

      • sunman42 says:
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        Sorry to inject a sliver of economics into this discussion, but much of our debt is “owned” by foreign banks and governments who buy our treasury bonds because they’re issued in the most stable currency around. When the EU finally went to a single currency, there were expectations that the markets would work to share that business, but it never happened, and look at Europe now. Since Keith doesn’t want political discussions here, I won’t go into why no one, even in Europe, trusts the Euro as much as the dollar, but suffice to say that neither the Euro nor the renminbi is in any danger of replacing the US$ as a reserve currency. We could probably double our debt without risking any ill effects.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          True, and by far the biggest government holder of the US government debt is the US government ?

          • sunman42 says:
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            The breakdown of that is kind of interesting. Excluding the government bonds in which Social Security is required by law to invest its Trust Fund, nearly half the government securities are held by the Federal Financing Bank, which bails out government entities running a deficit (currently only the USPS) and fund a whole bunch of federal loan services, by far the largest balance (more than half) belonging to rural utility service loans.

  7. wwheaton says:
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    We should have offered a Marshall Plan to Russian when the opportunities arose. Unfortunately the time seems to be not now, yet we should still try to nudge them in that direction whenever possible. We missed our chance in the 1990s, 40 years after a the previous little opportunity in 1953. But Curtis LeMay wanted to start a ‘preventive war’ then (seriously — read the later chapters of Richard Rhodes’s book, “The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb”) and we barely escaped from that after 1962. It’s not obvious we can get through all that again….

    • cb450sc says:
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      There actually were some programs like that, specifically grant aid for “FSU” physicists and physics-related fields (including astronomy!). The idea was to try and prop them up enough that they wouldn’t start selling their skills to the highest bidder, e.g. countries willing to pay for expertise to aide their weapons of mass destruction programs. I reviewed a few proposals for those programs. The amount of money they were asking for was laughable compared to what it would cost to fund American scientists, so really it was a case of “give it to them, it hardly costs anything”.

      • wwheaton says:
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        Yes, I have heard of that. But I feel that we tragically neglected the need to help Russia after the disaster of WW II, in which the burden in terms of human life and destruction of civilian infrastructure fell predominantly on them. Russian soldiers essentially destroyed the German Army, at awful cost to the country. The kind of aid we gave Western Europe to help them reconstruct after the destruction they experienced might have made all the difference after the war. I suspect many ordinary Russian civilians feel a whole generation of their young men were almost wiped out, and they never got the kind of economic support we gave Western Europe. We will never know what the world might be like today if we had done better with that.

        • fcrary says:
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          To some extent, Stalin did not want a Marshall Plan for the Soviet Union or eastern Europe.

          • wwheaton says:
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            Yes, Stalin’s attitude was problematic, as we would have had to bargain material support for Eastern Europe and the rebuilding the USSR versus free and independent governments east of USSR, and friendlier behavior from Russia. Not clear if that was ever possible.

  8. Matthew Black says:
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    Russia – especially as it pertains to Space – has so much talent and experience, so much history. It is an aspect of their history that has been almost magical. But the sad rise of corruption and mismanagement in that great collection of States and countries has been heartbreaking to watch. They have so much potential and so much to (theoretically) offer. I guess the rhetorical questions must be; what went wrong?! 🙁

  9. Robert Jones says:
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    There are the new Soyuz 1, angara 1, and angara 5. http://Www.robert-w-jones.com

  10. richard_schumacher says:
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    Betcha a quarter that, after his meeting with Putin next week, Trump will order somebody to buy a billion dollars’ worth of parts and services from Roscosmos or Energomash.

  11. Donald Barker says:
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    Unfortunately such events, added to continued problems with Crimea, north pole ocean and historical political posturing, could cause a domino effect that would cause the ISS to come to an end. Right now, the US alone has no means of controlling ISS altitude or attitude for very long (no propulsion section). So if Russia had to pull out, ISS would not fare well. This would further put a stop to all US human space flight for a decade or more. At the extreme, unrecoverable, as we approach 10 billion humans on Earth.

    • Not Invented Here says:
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      Cygnus just performed a reboost test on ISS, Russians are not the only one who can reboost the station now.

  12. Steve Pemberton says:
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    One thing they have going for them is that in Soyuz they have a relatively simple and reliable launcher and vehicles, which has enabled the program to weather previous economic and political storms in the past. Most famously when two cosmonauts were stuck on Mir for several months in 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union. As an indication of how robust the Soyuz system still is, last night they launched a Progress supply ship which docked to ISS in just under four hours, after only two orbits. This had never been done before, the previous “fast-track” launches took six hours. They are hoping to start using the two-orbit technique for manned launches also, which will reduce by two hours the otherwise very long day that cosmonauts and astronauts experience when using the fast-track method, between wake-up time in Baikonur and sleep period on ISS.

    However if they eventually have no customers and no destination for Soyuz, and no money and/or political will to build a new station, then the program could end. Unless there is enough money to be made in tourist flights to sustain the program.

    This would be too bad, as I have always felt that after the early years of the cold war and the space race that their space program has been sort of on its own and not tied so much to whatever is happening politically. As evidenced by no major disruptions to cooperation with ISS partners during the very tense past few years. I get the impression that many if not most of the people who have dedicated their lives to their space program do so out of passion. I remember reading once that cosmonauts lived not that far above the poverty level, although maybe that has since changed.

  13. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    This is all symptomatic of the chronic condition that Russia is about 6 time zones too wide for its own economic viability.