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Russia tells US either recognize Crimea or you ain't riding to ISS

DarthTom

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
I'm surprised no one has posted this. If they follow through with this threat - we aren't going to the ISS for a while - US astronauts that is.

NBC News
As the International Space Station gets ready for a routine change of crew using Russia’s Soyuz spaceships, the Russian government seems to be initiating a subtle gambit to force the United States into a diplomatic trap over the status of Russian-occupied Crimea.
Here’s how it works: Either the United States acknowledges the legitimacy of the recent Russian annexation of that Ukrainian province, or it will be forced by existing agreements to disqualify NASA astronauts from flying aboard Russia’s spaceships, which currently provide the only means to get astronauts to and from the space station.



The challenge appeared this week in an innocent-looking Russian press report, saying that crew survival training for Soyuz spacecraft could be transferred back to the Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea.
 
Not just NASA astronauts, but anyone that isn't a Russian cosmonaut. So the European and Japanese astronauts currently in training are pawns in Russia's political game too.

But it's not an issue quite yet. Russia's press report was full of possiblys, maybes, and ifs. It sounds like (from reading the article) they don't exactly have the budget to really do it, plus it doesn't offer any advantage over where they're currently training.
 
Not just NASA astronauts, but anyone that isn't a Russian cosmonaut. So the European and Japanese astronauts currently in training are pawns in Russia's political game too.

But it's not an issue quite yet. Russia's press report was full of possiblys, maybes, and ifs. It sounds like (from reading the article) they don't exactly have the budget to really do it, plus it doesn't offer any advantage over where they're currently training.

I also think that Russia needs the U.S.'s participation in the ISS program in so many ways just as much as the U.S. needs to hop rides to the ISS. We can't participate without them, but they can't participate without us. We have each other over the same barrel.
 
The Russian space program would collapse without foreign investment. The news agency speculation would only have any bearing on reality if the Russian government had decises to sacrifice the huge national advantage of having the only reliable transportation into orbit on the planet for a minor turf war. I don't think so.
 
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