As part of the United States's staggeringly effective response to the Russian Federation's invasion & dismemberment of Ukraine, co-operation between the American 7 Russian national space agencies, N.A.S.A. & Roscosmos, respectively, has been severely curtailed: space-link. Recall that since the premature retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet & the cancellation of the Constellation program (to design & manufacture the next generation of American spacecraft) by President Obama, the United States has had no independent manned spaceflight capability & has been paying Roscosmos to launch astronauts to the International Space Station & return them safely to Earth, alongside Roscosmos's own cosmonauts. The administration's public financing of "private" commercial spaceflight has resulted in new rockets & new cargo-rated spacecraft, but not yet any spacecraft rated for manned flight. Thus, Roscosmos remains the only way to get N.A.S.A. & allied astronauts into orbit & back to the good Earth.
An interesting feature of this article is N.A.S.A. Administrator Charles Bolden's evinced divorce from reality. Under Bolden's watch, the Space Shuttle fleet was retired & the Constellation program was cancelled, resulting in massive workforce reductions at both N.A.S.A. & its contractors, including the loss of invaluable practical experience in the design, production, preparation, & maintenance of manned spacecraft. For Bolden to now try & pass the blame for N.A.S.A.'s lack of a manned spaceflight capacity on the Congress is nothing short of a very bold lie. The United States could have a manned spaceflight capability by 2015 instead of 2017 if only N.A.S.A. had been funded at the requested levels, Mr. Administrator? What about the two years between the cancellation of the Orion spacecraft & the Shuttle-derived Ares family or rockets (Constellation) & the announcement of the development of the Orion spacecraft & the Shuttle-derived Space Launch System family of rockets? Why, sir, is that not also to blame, the two years spend losing irreplaceable expertise & personnel to a review process that, ultimately, approved virtually the same program it has cancelled? Charles Bolden may have served this country well as a Marine & an astronauts, but he has done & continues to do it incredible disservice as the administrator of N.A.S.A.
Liberty & Union: Obamboozled
The parade of horrors continues, & the horror has in any ways exceeded my worst fears. I never imagined that the United States would stand by impotently, playing the part of France & Britain to Russia's Germany in a macabre reenactment of the 1930s*. I never imagined that for so many years N.A.S.A. would be without the capability for manned spaceflight (a capacity it had held since 1961, until Mr. Obama moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), & thus beholden to Roscosmos. I never imagined that the N.A.S.A. chief would be more loyal to Elon Musk than to the United States Congress. Damn my eyes for failing to see the true depth & breadth of the horror before it was too late.
All the Russias | The Savage Wars of Peace
*Hyperbolic, you say? Consider: A weak, post-Soviet Russia signed a treaty to honor Ukraine's sovereignty & territorial integrity; a weak, post-Imperial Germany signed a treaty to honor Czechoslovakia's sovereignty & territorial integrity. Years later, a resurgent Russia then used force & the threat of force to reclaim the Crimea, a region of Ukraine with an ethnically Russian population; years later, a resurgent Germany used force & the threat of force to reclaim the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia with an ethnically German population. Russia claimed that the Crimea was the extent or its territorial demands, but almost immediately began agitating ethnic tensions in eastern Ukraine & massing troops along the Ukrainian frontier; Germany claimed that the Sudetenland was the extent of its territorial demands, but almost immediately began agitating nationalist tensions in Austria & massing troops along the Austrian frontier. It is yet unknown what if any additional territorial concessions Russia will acquire through the use of force & the threat of force; Germany used force & the threat of force to annex Austria & later the non-ethically German remainder of Czechoslovakia, finally culminating in the invasion of Poland & the start of the Second World War. If these parallels are not as clear as I have pointed them out to be, please apprise me of where I have erred.
The United States & the Russian Federation will not go to war over the Ukraine, not even if Russia's Putin ordered his troops to seize all of Ukraine, including Kiev & the Ukrainian-majority regions, just as France & Britain refused to go to war with Nazi Germany over the invasion of German-speaking Austria & non-German Czechoslovakia. But what about the Baltic trio of Latvia, Lithuania, & Estonia, N.A.T.O. members that the United States is treaty-bound to defend? Weakness, even if only perceived & not real, emboldens the rapacious. Fairly or not, the rapacious perceive the United States under President Obama as weak, & are thus emboldened.
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