Nowadays NASA has other priorities..
Posted on 01/27/2016 2:44:23 PM PST by Olog-hai
Senior Pentagon officials on Wednesday sought to defend the use of Russian-made rocket engines to send U.S. military satellites into space, telling exasperated lawmakers they are moving quickly to end the practice and rely on American-made rockets for the launches.
But Air Force Secretary Deborah James and Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall failed to stem sharp criticism from several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who view Russia as the chief geopolitical threat to the United States.
Led by the committee chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., they said using the Russian engines enriches President Vladimir Putin's inner circle and puts U.S. national security in jeopardy. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Wow....first time in decades I agree with McCain!
Sad that he’s so opportunistic with points like this.
Yep.
You can always tell with him when he is up for re-election. Always.
Nowadays NASA has other priorities..
Well isn’t that sweet.
The engines work.
Hey, dey all made in China anyway, right?
How large a steel and machining operation do they have today in Mother Russia?
Aren’t these are the same congresscritter fools that allowed the evisceration of NASA and by association, the USA space program?
That they are. But not to worry, NASA has the funds now to make an engine almost as powerful as the current Russian one in use - it should be ready in a few years ... meanwhile, Russian is working on a new tech super heavy lift engine which will be ready in a few years at 150 tons to orbit, or many times more than the NASA engine ... the Congress Critters so hugely crippled the US effort that we will likely never recover, just save face, is all.
Private efforts at super heavy lift are no where near the Russian engine to come.
Interesting.
We don’t have rocket engines to do the job and the way things are acquired today, it will be years and years before we can make or own engines.
Time to start making them now.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/249148-a-new-missile-gap
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