Posted on 05/15/2014 9:35:42 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAAY) - As conflict in the Ukraine heats-up, Russia is trying to keep the U.S. at bay, by terminating a partnership with NASA.
"This is an issue we have to address if we are going to maintain America’s preeminence in space," said U.S. Rep Mo Brooks (R-5thDistrict). Russia has threatened to stop selling RD-180 rocket engines to the U.S., and to stop allowing U.S. astronauts to use their rockets to go to the International Space Station in 2020.
"What you are seeing is the International Space Station and our military satellites have been caught up in a game of chess and the Russians are using them as pawns to sacrifice.
Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted this week saying, “Russia is ready to continue deliveries of RD-180 engines to the U.S. only under the guarantee that they won't be used in the interests of the Pentagon.” This announcement from Russia comes after the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia arising from the conflict in Ukraine.
"We sent a letter to the NASA administrator asking him to react quickly to these potential issues that are facing our country,” Brooks said.
Congressman Brooks says its time for the U.S. to build its own rockets to get military satellites into space. He also wants NASA to implement contingency plans to keep the U.S. from losing it's access to the space station.
"Who builds rockets better than Marshall Space Flight Center? I hope that our community will be given the opportunity to develop these rockets both as a replacement to the Russian RD-180 rocket engine and also to put us back into human space flight," Brooks said.
My mistake, I though it said Mel Brooks.
I wonder if this is what Obama intended. After all, he did tell Medvedev that he would have more ‘flexibility’ after he won reelection n in 2012.
The obvious answer is nobody build better rockets than Marshall Space Flight Center
Unfortunately, Marshall Space Flight Center is not building much in the way of rockets in these days where Obama Administrations NASA priorities are more Muslim outreach and transferring American Space technology to the rest of the world for free while basically killing off the domestic space industry
“This is an issue we have to address if we are going to maintain America’s preeminence in space,”
So take one in stock and reverse engineer it. Build our own.
How hard can it be?
I think Obama decided that his buddy, Elon Musk, should be the next one to send Americans into space. Unfortunately, those systems won’t be ready for ages. Meanwhile, Obama has put us into an untenable situation.......spending millions to get our astronauts to the Space Station.......but Russia benefits, so what does Obama care?
This is what happens when you have assclowns running our country into the ground.
Just how long have we been dependent on the Russians for rocket engines?
I will never forgive him for cancelling the Space Shuttle program when all of the craft had many years of service life left in them . Unconscionable.
How long will we all pay for Obama’s follies ?
AFAIK, Pratt&Whitney has a license to build RD-180 domestically and they even tried to make a few. The only defference is that Russian-delivered were about $10-11 million and P&W knock-off is around $40 million. BTW, LockMart and Boeing were both certified by Russian government to use these on it’s spacecraft.
See #10.
Ironic, isn’t it? I’m not necessarily attacking Rep. Brooks, but more generally, politicians like Obama cry about outsourcing, and then look at what they themselves have outsourced...
The problem is it would take 10 years just to go through the environmental approval process.
How is Marshall Space Flight Center going to build rockets when the engineers and scientists who used to build them are now gone and the infrastructure dismantled?
It's the same story following Apollo...NASA has forgotten how to build Saturn V moon rockets.
What you are seeing are the natural consequences of destroying your own capability for space flight. The Obama Administration stupidly took that risk because to them, NASA was not worth the money. They needed the money for Obamacare, to fight climate change, and other economy-destroying, socialistic endeavors.
We are getting the change the President promised.
What powered the Atlas before they started installing Russian engines?
[snip] The US currently pays Russia $60 million per person to ferry its astronauts to the space station [/snip] (that'll teach us!)
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