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Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is Redrawing the Geopolitics of Space - ISS
- zupa-hu 5y ago[flagged]
- lxe 5y ago> ESA is looking for a new ride for its ExoMars rover mission, after its launch aboard a Russian rocket this year was cancelled. Did you read the article?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dmosley 5y agoGermany turned off instruments being used on a joint project that si currently at Lagrange 2. This in turn resulted in Russia shutting down the project completely. This is hardly "nothing happened". Perhaps you should have "wasted time" and read it... more info on the above that was in fact mentioned in the OP article. https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Russia_stops_deliveries_of_rocket_engines_to_US_Roscosmos_Head_Says_999.html https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Russia_stops_deliveries_o...
- hdivider 5y agoExtreme scifi-level scenario: could the Russians commandeer the ISS and use it as an impactor weapon on US or Allied soil? My guess not; super hard to do, and impact doesn't release that much energy anyway. Any space expert opinion?
- spywaregorilla 5y agoNot really. If that were to happen we'd be at the point of nukes anyway.
- gamegoblin 5y agoISS has many components with different drag ratios and would break up unpredictably upon entering the atmosphere, making it impossible to aim reliably. This is a big part of the difficulty in decommission planning for the ISS in general.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoThat would probably have the worst cost/impact ratio of any weapon ever. They might as well build catapults that launch bricks of gold at the enemy.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoNo, it would break up and just rain debris over a large area. Also, why would they ever want to? They have far more precise and effective weapons. It sounds like a good plot for a call of duty game though!
- OrlandoHakim 5y agoA more plausible scenario is Russia refusing to bring back American astronaught, Mark Vande Hei and leave him stranded on the ISS to find another way home - at least according to this article. [0] [0] https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2022/03/russia-threatens-to-leave-american-astronaut-on-international-space-station.html https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2022/03/russia-threate...
- pvaldes 5y agoThen, not one Russian astronaut would be allowed in a NASA project in a spatial scale of time, probably.
- OrlandoHakim 5y agoI suspect we are already way past that point no matter what.
- aaron695 5y ago
- hirako2000 5y agoEven Science can't resist to publish about politics.
- rsfern 5y agoThis is Nature… But seriously, what science to fund is political, and I hardly think this topic is out of scope for an editorial in a venue where science policy matters so much to the audience
- hirako2000 5y agoThat's become a fact that much of science is funded from geo political factions. the further atomic combustion development is certainly a great example. it doesn't mean all science is, nor should be. you make it sound like the purpose of science research is to pursue particular political pursuits. and by doing that you are implicitly endorcing this view. A reminder of significant science discoverers through history: Pythagoras, Archimedes, Aristotle, Da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Plank, Bohr, Einstein. one could hardly see a trend of politically funded or motived pursuits. what (most of) the greatest scientists have in common is that they researched and pushed science further on the name of science, most weren't funded politically, quite the opposite, some were in strict opposition with political status quo and were impeded by it. I would agree that modern "science" has been for a large part corrupted by monetary gains, hijacked by private enterprises, governments, and (mis) guided by such. It may have always been so, all the future generations get to see is what's left of it, the skimmed gems that anyhow gets out of the few brilliant minds of the entire humanity. It doesn't imply we should make it seem normal nor a desirable. Science in it's millenia long history, what it accomplished and the figures who accomplished it, their background, affiliation and funding (or lack of) isn't reflective of our current model. that is what my parent comment tries to highlight. Even Science magasine, one of the most respected journal, is increasingly discrediting itself by publishing politically heavy articles and headlines. they could have kept this article apolitical, the title instead is so politically heavy it is borderline click bait or a tone of a state press conference statement. down votes is only a reflection, what science has turned into is even being swallowed as legitimate even by one of the most technically educated fringe of our society. The HN readers.
- modzu 5y agothe politics of this is very sad. there isn't a single country on earth whose politics are "correct". but cooperation is always, always better than division. turning off instruments because they were made in another country? its insane. what does that accomplish? science, and in particular all the sciences related to space, must transcend that. i mean, these countries blowing each other up, they sell each other the weapons.. but we cant share a telescope? :(
- gameswithgo 5y agoIt isn't a question of political nuance, Russia is murdering an entire nation. With no cooperative option currently existing to end it. I am heartened that the world is resisting on as many non violent fronts as possible.
- whatshisface 5y ago>It isn't a question of political nuance, Here is what the crew of the international space station was doing one day after US ground forces entered Iraq: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/news/station/2003/iss03-12.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/news/station/2003/iss03...
- bitcharmer 5y agoOpinions like yours always baffled me. You probably think that taking away McDonald's from an average Russian is somehow unfair and accomplishes nothing, right? The whole point of this huge exercise in global isolation of an aggressor country is to change that whole country's behaviour and deter others from doing the same. And before you say it's Putin - no, it's not. It's him and the millions who wholeheartedly support him. Since we can't invade Russia to stop the aggression this is the next best thing we got. I can't put it in words any simpler than this.
- modzu 5y agoyoure an american, right? so i get that working for foreign "regime change" is normalized to you.
- dmosley 5y agoPost-Installation Disabling. It's like John Deere for space parts... "And a German astronomy team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, switched off a German-built instrument on the Russian astronomical observatory Spektr-RG halfway through its planned observations." Does anyone else find this rather concerning, and in some ways quite petty? I realize people are taking hard lines on these events. So don't sell them any more, but switching off post-install? Perhaps they do some sort of processing for the data? I have no idea. The article is quite vague.
- gameswithgo 5y agoI am absolutely delighted that the world at least seems to slowly be approaching a point where invasions will not be tolerated. I am an American and I hope that if we ever aim to invade a country again that the world will shut us down even harder than we have Russia. Stop exploding children, if your government aims to explode children, eliminate your government. Quit pretending to be concerned about the telescope.
- deepsun 5y agoI am from autocratic country Belarus, and over years I actually came up with, maybe unpopular, opinion that it is good to forcefully impose democracy on other countries. Please do it on my native country. Because after some point, autocratic government goes against people's will, and can even resemble occupation of its own nation. Like literally 3% of the population repress the other 97%. All means of overturning the government and are violently suppressed at their roots.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoHas forcefully imposing democracy ever worked anywhere? I can't think of single example that turned out okay.
- dkyc 5y agoGermany? I’m very grateful for that operation.
- 99_00 5y agoThe next super power will be whoever dominates space. It's too bad the west a d Russia can't combine tech and expo to ensure that China doesn't dominant space. At least the harder road is still an option if we choose to take it.
- dannywarner 5y agoGood reasons the future of space should be private companies. We need more SpaceXes and not more state-sponsored.
- tgv 5y agoYou mean: the state pouring more money in private companies?
- jdrc 5y agoMaybe it should be retired early
- hunglee2 5y agoHard to imagine the Russian space programme recovering from this war. Collaboration with NASA and the other non-China space agencies was the only way to keep the domestic Russian programme going. Going it alone in a future of North Korea-like economic / technological / political / financial isolation? I guess it is possible but hard to see it right now. Sad end for a country that has done so much for human space exploration
- mateo1 5y agoThey don't lack expertise but they will be lacking money and access to some specialised components and assemblies in the future. That said I doubt they're going to abandon their space program. I guess their launch platforms will remain stagnant and focus R&D money on things that are vital for them, like anything related to the new nuclear weapons race.
- justin66 5y ago> Hard to imagine the Russian space programme recovering from this war. The Russian space program never recovered from the fall of the Soviet Union. The sanctions and international outrage surrounding the Ukraine invasion, combined with the development of less expensive launch options that relieved everyone’s reliance on the Soyuz launch platform, mean everyone can stop propping the whole thing up.
- antifa 5y agoOne advantage of propping it up is so that they don't all leave to NK/Iran to build ICBMs.
- nine_k 5y agoI suppose that once the regime changes, the international support may very well return. Looking at the low-efficiency, high-cost warfare Russia is now waging I suspect that the regime is brittle, and lacks talented people willing to work for it. Some more capable forces may replace it relatively soon, naturally or violently.
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago> the ISS has generally managed to stay out of Earth-bound politics — but the Ukraine conflict could change that I guess it depends on what “generally” means, but the Ukrainian conflict already changed that in 2014 AFAIK: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/crimea-catch-22-russia-space-training-may-put-nasa-bind-n199486 https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/crimea-catc...
- OrlandoHakim 5y agoI worry about potential retribution from the Russian side if provoked by the US. America is, after all, wholly dependent on Russia to return astronaut Mark Vande Hei safely to Earth later this month. I don’t want this to happen, obviously but according to this article they have already threatened as much. [0] [0] https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2022/03/russia-threatens-to-leave-american-astronaut-on-international-space-station.html https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2022/03/russia-threate...