Yep you read that correctly. I first started hearing about this from my science guy. He stated that he had heard that the Russians were threatening to ban American astronauts from the International Space Station due to our reaction to their annexation of the Ukraine’s Crimea.
This sounded so very bizarre that I had to Google it to see what the skinny was and there it was on Extreme Tech's web site:
- Russia is threatening to ban the US from using the International Space Station. Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly in the short term, Russia will ban the US from buying the Russian RD-180 rocket engines that are currently used by the ULA’s Atlas V launcher to put the US military’s satellites into space.
Now here is where it gets a bit confusing for me. Sure
they can stop the U.S. from getting RD-180s and certainly refuse
passengers after 2020, but how can they physically or legally prevent
U.S. astronauts from entering the ISS?
Right now, since
the retirement of the Shuttle fleet, we do no have the ability to ferry
personnel to the station. However, after 2020, I can not imagine that
the man rated version of Space X's Dragon capsule will not be be in
service, by that time.
To that end, Elton Musk of Space X presented Dragon V2 that will be able
to carry seven astronauts for several days, visit the ISS and land
where-ever needs to under its own power. Check it out HERE
2 comments:
I being a child of the cold war myself, have this to say. Nothing. Not a damn word. You all know exactly what I would like to say. And if caused an international incident, tough. But I will keep my mouth shut. Be nice if we just did this shit with our allies though and not have these ignorant chess playing game problems. Okay, yeah, shutting up now.
As you can see in my initial comments is that to me this amounts to stuff and nonsense. There isn't anything to the Russian threats that would destabilize ISS or NASA. Space X and Dragon V2 are going to be doing it so much better with bigger payloads that the Russians are going to come across as spoiled brats.
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