Russia and the ISS

[MartG]

IIRC the US said they have a 2 year supply of RD-180 engines in store, though the ban may affect technical support of them I guess limiting their usefulness. The ban only affects the Atlas 5 launcher though as the Delta 4 uses US made RS-68 engines, so the 2 year stock gives them breathing space to transfer all operations over to the Delta if required

[MrCarPark]

The US Senate is on the case:

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/05/a-us-senate-panel...

"Mr Putin's Russia is giving us some problems," said Senator Bill Nelson, who flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986.
"So we put $100 million in the defense bill to develop a state-of-the-art rocket engine to make sure that we have assured access to space for our astronauts as well as our military space payloads."

[jmorgan]

59 million? For the uninitiated in sums, money and rockets, is that a drop in the ocean or a decent sum?

Just wondering if the side effect will be a more energetic approach from the US. The military budget is massive in comparison.

NASA PDF on 2014 expected spend

Interesting the amount the shuttle still seems to take? Interesting comment in the first pages, launch astronauts from US soil by 2017 but then we knew that?

[MartG]

MrCarPark said:

The US Senate is on the case:

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/05/a-us-senate-panel...

"Mr Putin's Russia is giving us some problems," said Senator Bill Nelson, who flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986.
"So we put $100 million in the defense bill to develop a state-of-the-art rocket engine to make sure that we have assured access to space for our astronauts as well as our military space payloads."

Why re-invent the wheel - again ? Both NASA and the private sector are already working on developing engines ( J2X, reborn F-1, etc. ). Shunting a bit more money in the direction of SpaceX to speed up man-rating of Falcon and Dragon would be more effective surely ?

Edited by MartG on Sunday 25th May 12:05

[anonymous-user]

jmorgan said:

59 million? For the uninitiated in sums, money and rockets, is that a drop in the ocean or a decent sum?

I'd say that 59 MIL would just about get the tea and biscuits sorted at the first design meeting....... ;-)

[MartG]

SpaceX unveiled the Dragon V2 this morning http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

[AreOut]

this is silly, 40 years ago we had regular space flights and supersonic airliner flying from NY to London in 3 hours and now US depends on russian engines while transatlantic flight takes 7 hours...

Sum Ting Wong

[jmorgan]

The Shuttle, that was what is wrong.

[Eric Mc]

AreOut said:

this is silly, 40 years ago we had regular space flights and supersonic airliner flying from NY to London in 3 hours and now US depends on russian engines while transatlantic flight takes 7 hours...

Sum Ting Wong

Not quite right really. 40 years ago was 1974. 1974 was the year (more or less) where Apollo was wound down. The last flight to Skylab was made that year and the only remaining Apollo era mission was the Apollo/Soyuz mission of 1975.

After that there was a six year hiatus whilst NASA for the Shuttle ready for its first flight, which happened in 1981.

So, 40 years ago NASA was entering a very similar situation to where it is today i.e. a long gap period where it was unable to send humans into space.

[MartG]

Interesting pair of articles on the subject ( first two parts of a series )

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/nasa/adrift/1/

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/nasa/adrift/2/

[Eric Mc]

I wonder what will happen now. Putin is going to come under extreme international pressure after what happened yesterday.

[jmorgan]

Who needs who for the ISS? Tricky. The US pile a load of loot and prestige and the Russians supply the bus.