Posted on 04/29/2014 9:29:37 AM PDT by tcrlaf
Russia warned Tuesday that American astronauts on the International Space Station could be hurt by new US-led sanctions over the escalating crisis in Ukraine, where pro-Moscow militants seized more public buildings in the east.
Washington was resorting to "Iron Curtain" policies from its Cold War-era playbook with the new Western sanctions, which were driving the Ukraine crisis towards "a dead end", Moscow raged.
A day after the United States and its EU and Japanese allies unveiled fresh punitive measures for what was seen as Russian interference in Ukraine, violence worsened on the ground.
Thousands of pro-Moscow protesters in the city of Lugansk near the Russian border seized control of the regional administrative building, trapping around 200 riot police in the complex's courtyard. Militants in the city already held the local SBU security services building.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
"If their aim is to deliver a blow to Russia's rocket-building sector, then by default, they would be exposing their astronauts on the ISS," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said, according to the Interfax news agency.
"Sanctions are always a boomerang which come back and painfully hit those who launched them," added Rogozin
Probably exactly what Obama was hoping for.
...as in physically?
“Probably exactly what Obama was hoping for.”
It would allow NASA to concentrate on it’s Muslim outreach efforts, and Global Warming propaganda... errr... I mean “research”...
Russia is desperate for hard foreign currency.
They won’t do anything to jeapordize the money they get from NASA. This is an empty threat.
Maybe China would pay for a ride?
If an alien just arrived on this planet, the alien would understand quickly that space is not the final frontier for zer0, but instead welfare and redistribution is, along with making moslems more vicious by supplying moslems with weapons of mass destruction. The alien would probably make a call to the ship and place all systems on stand-by for leaving quickly this planet.
“Russia is desperate for hard foreign currency.”
A decade ago I’d have agreed with you, but not now.
Europe still needs that gas, and the China-Siberia pipeline system is about to open.
If there was ever a time Russia DID NOT need US Dollars, its here.
The Chinese have their own manned space crafts which take them to their own Space Station.
Russian history is a how-to guide on cutting off the nose to spite the face.
I would imagine that China wouldn’t mind spending a little to make up the difference and help keep us out of space. I don’t doubt much nowadays.
We REALLY need to get back to the business of building and launching OUR OWN rockets with OUR OWN people from OUR OWN launch pads and quit relying on the Russians. This should have been forseen. It’s no way to do business. I wonder if Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson have had private conversations about this matter. They need a ride home. Sure is a he!! of a way to run an operation.
Ah yes, the NASA card, if your Vlad, you never leave home without it.
Hard money? Is that what the phoney inflated American dollar is called?It may have been hard at one time but it isn’t worth a damn now.
Screw down some seats in the Space X Dragon (and the USAF X-37B) and declare the USA back in the manned space flight business.
Then, using those manned assets, cut the ISS in half and convert our half into something interesting like a lunar orbiting station, Mars voyager, or whatever.
Concerning manned space flight, the Chinese are basically capable of what we were doing in 1965. Unfortunately, we have regressed back to 1955.
“Well, so much for thinly veiled threats.”
Russia still holds the trump card in all of this, the gas valves.
It’s a more or less useless card. If they use it (maybe even if they only threaten to use it), they might get what they want in the short term but there’ll be a rush by the countries affected to never be put in the same position again. Some countries having to pay more for a subset of the energy they use may not be as expensive for them as it is for Putin to lose a large percentage of his revenues.
And the reliable heavy lifting booster engines.
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