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Deputy PM says Russia aims to end ISS participation in 2020

SpaceX is planning it's first manned test quite soon..within 3 years..


http://www.spacex.com/dragon
There may be delays, but it appears that they are still
on track to launch the first fully US manned spacecraft sooner rather than later..
so we just might be able to tell the Sov--I mean the Russians, to take their toys and go home..
 
Getting to the station by 2020 is not the problem. Keeping it functioning after the Russians take their very essential "toys" is.
 
But in a few months when the last American leaves, we'll still need to maintain the station, which can't be done without a fairly high workload from personnel on board, who will be Russian (and any other country we've pissed off recently, which is most of them). So to maintain our very expensive piece of infrastructure, we'll have to keep sending up resupply flights - to the Russians who booted us.

As was said about Syria, which some foreign journalists described as the worst diplomatic performance in modern history (we scored an unforced own goal, and then the NYT published Putin's op-ed which was likened to Putin doing donuts on Obama's lawn), Putin is playing chess and we're playing hopscotch.
 
No.

The Soviets were going to bury us half a century ago, and in the 1980s they were ten feet tall and taking no shit from anyone.

So those on the Right told us, over and over. What has always been inconvenient for the Right and unfathomable to the paranoid and fearful is that despite repeated attempts to assert their influence and power the modern history of Russia, both on the world political stage and economically, has been failure upon failure upon failure.

That is not changing now. The Russians frighten old fools and children who don't know better yet.

But - but - They're Comin' Right At Us!

...again. :guffaw:
 
They failed again and again because they were leftists, and socialism is an abject disaster. Now they're learning to make a profit, much like the Chinese. That will eventually give them the financial means to do all the things they couldn't do before.
 
gturner said:
They failed again and again because they were leftists, and socialism is an abject disaster. Now they're learning to make a profit, much like the Chinese. That will eventually give them the financial means to do all the things they couldn't do before.
Click to expand...

So a Totalitarian Capitalistic states are your vision of good governance?
 
MANT! said:
So a Totalitarian Capitalistic states are your vision of good governance?
Click to expand...

Totalitarian and capitalistic would be fascism, a next door neighbor of socialism, not the other end of the spectrum.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VogzExP3qhI[/yt]
 
gturner said:
They failed again and again because they were leftists, and socialism is an abject disaster. Now they're learning to make a profit, much like the Chinese. That will eventually give them the financial means to do all the things they couldn't do before.
Click to expand...


No.
 
There's no merit in discussing with Dennis. As long as you're in agreement with him it's fine, but discussions with diverting opinions are absolutely pointless with him.

gturner might be wrong, and you might disagree with his posts, or even find them laughable, but he is still trying to make his point.

Dennis, as soon as he runs out of arguments, or gets bored, just declares himself the king of the discussion by posting his absolute "No.", as in "You're wrong and/or stupid, and I don't even care to explain why." That makes him feel better about himself, I guess, as he thinks this behaviour somehow elevates him above the average internet nerd he always speaks so fond of. Discussing with people he strongly disagrees with is just below him. But at the end of the day, he simply loses the argument every time he does it.

He could say nothing at all, but instead he uses the "No." in an attempt to get the last word, no matter how pointless it is. You could replace it with "Balls." or a fart noise, and it would have the same childish effect.

He also occasionally uses the condescending "kid", just to establish a hierarchy in the discussion where he's the know-it-all and you're the child that can learn from his wisdom.

No kidding.

Last thing I'm ever going to say about this specific matter.
 
Last edited:
^ Dr. Cargraves will beat them to it, flying past ISS with the rocket ship Galileo on his way to the Moon to clean out that Nazi base.
 
God, "Galileo" was an awful juvenile. No doubt Heinlein knew what he was doing, though.
 
Dennis said:
No.

Sorry that you're disappointed by the inability of the GOP to gin up a real scandal or any substantial misconduct to build their campaigns on. I'm sure it seemed like an easy idea from the other side, given how consumed the Nixon, Reagan and Dubya administrations were by such things.
Click to expand...

No one is to blame in this. Politicians on both sides have always supported the ISS for the jobs aspect. The fact of the matter is the downturn of the economy AND the so-called "War on Terrorism" (including the Iraq and Afghanistan ventures), took the focus away from the ISS and other related projects. And even though I would like to criticize Pres. Obama for adding additional expenditures (i.e. "Obamacare"), he is simply doing what every other politician is doing: he's prioritizing what the constituents want. And if 51 percent of the electorate wants government assistance at this time, then guess which budgets are going to be cut in favor of a larger welfare budget? Yeah, that.

As for the Russian matter: everyone seems to forget that Putin has his own agenda, irregardless of what American politicians want. He hated the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed, and that the Russian sphere of influence has lessened. And based upon what I've been reading about "Fearless Leader", Putin is dead set on screwing with the United States in order to hide the fact that the Russian economy is in the toilet. So, what do you do in order play to your base? Go nationalistic. Besides, at the very least, what's going on in Eastern Europe should serve as a wake-up call to all politicians on the importance of not being so interlocked with other nations to such a degree that the US can't maintain its own objectives free of foreign influence.

Ergo, both the Bush and Obama Administrations are to blame for this, IMO.
 
gturner said:
That was insignificant compared to what else he said, which is that ULA is banned from using the RD-180, which powers the Atlas-5, from launching US military satellites. It is presumed this also means that we'll no longer get any RD-180s. Perhaps the Administration shouldn't have targeted his personal finances without considering the consequences.
Click to expand...

I'd wager that the DoD has some classified backup plan to launch their satellites we are un-aware of.

Regarding the ISS - if Putin is still in power in 2020 and still not wanting to play ball with the ISS - at least for US astronauts we're fucked. However, I'd imagine he would not want to alienate the rest of our European partners involved in the project as well?

Aside from the space ramifications regarding these types of decisions - there are a lot new Russian billionaires I'd imagine who aren't happy with Putin's recent political decisions that may affect their personal wealth since how they play with the West has been affected as well.

In short, despite the fact that Putin wants to believe that it's 1974 and he can make unilateral decisions for Russia - old Soviet era sytle - I'm betting he has less power than we are led to believe and cannot make decisions in a vacuum nor without the support of his weatlhy friends.
 
Good Grief, We have a two year supply of RD-180's, two alternative heavy launchers and several foreign launchers available. There is nothing to freak out about. As for the ISS, de-orbit the piece of junk and blame the Russians. The money saved can be used to develop another heavy launch vehicle.
 
Better yet, get SpaceX to send up a few boosters to transpose the station's orbit closer to the equator where it will be more useful as a "garage" for assembling deep space ships. The current highly inclined orbit was set up to make things easier for the Russians. Imagine them not finding the camper where they left it. (How do you say "What the?" in Russian?)
 
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