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Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has lashed out again, this time at newly announced US ban on high-tech exports to Russia suggesting that "after analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I propose the US delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline." Rogozin does actually have a point, although his threats carry much less weight than he may hope. Russia is due to get a $457.9 million payment for its services soon and few believe that Russia would actually give it up.
Furthermore, as Jeffrey Kluger noted at Time Magazine, Russia may not want to push the United States into the hands of SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, two private American companies that hope to be able to send passengers to the station soon. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences have already made successful unmanned resupply runs to the ISS and both are also working on upgrading their cargo vehicles to carry people. SpaceX is currently in the lead and expects to launch US astronauts, employed by SpaceX itself, into orbit by 2016. NASA is building its own heavy-lift rocket for carrying astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, but it won't be ready for anything but test flights until after 2020. "That schedule, of course, could be accelerated considerably if Washington gave NASA the green light and the cash," says Kluger. "America's manned space program went from a standing start in 1961 to the surface of the moon in 1969-eight years from Al Shepard to Tranquility Base. The Soviet Union got us moving then. Perhaps Russia will do the same now."
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 01 2014, @03:29AM
I don't think it matters really.
No single country at the moment is living anywhere near sustainability. We only survive at the moment since their are resources we can obtain cheaper than normal through the abuse of other populations.
If America shut down the borders tomorrow, we would be so deeply screwed.
The coming wars are entirely inevitable and will be fought for control over ever scarcer resources for the purposes of energy production, farm products, and specific materials needed by industry to provide the technology we are currently using.
It's inevitable due to the entrenched interests that really run government preventing any kind of technological solutions to our problem of sustainability. We could have switched over to something other than oil quite some time ago. No, it's not solar, but nuclear.
All of the ecologically and economically viable solutions we can bring to bear, including nuclear, are prevented from becoming a reality for us and attaining the efficiency we need to support an American population that may top 500 million by 2050.
I'd like to see just how civilized we will remain when we can no longer feed ourselves, tend to our own infrastructure, and the Bread and Circuses started to break down and we aren't so entertained in the sweltering heat and bitter cold (need energy for AC/Heat).
There will be a time soon, and hopefully you and I will both be dead, when the children of the future we created will bitterly fight amongst themselves for the scraps that we take for granted now.
At least until we fuck it up on a really spectacular level and kill 5 billion people within a few years and take some of the stress off the supplies. Some country will figure that out, and as terrible as it will be, will pull the trigger since the scientists will tell them the truth that India being emptied of a few billion, and China losing 80% of its population could give us a few more centuries of breathing room for technology to magically save the day. Even though the tech is here to day, and just enormously inconvenient for entrenched interests and economic systems.
Add the predictions from the climate change people and I think war is pretty much a guarantee in the future.
50/50 it will be nuclear and really prevent us from rising again to this level for a few thousand more years. Assuming life on the planet will still be supported at all.
The real question is where and when will the leaders of the world pull the trigger to give benefit to those specific beneficiaries of war, and obtain more decisive control over markets that traditional corruption cannot provide to them.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday May 01 2014, @04:18AM
That's a thick load of horseshit. No wars are necessary. Pro-war people on any side are traitors and should be fed to the fire.
Now that it's official that the United States are an oligarchy, we should focus on removing those who don't act in the best interests of the people common.
Unfortunately, those people have a lot of pull -- which is why, as per The Art of War, you give them a way out, because an enemy that has the most to lose will inflict the most damage. And that they've lost touch with reality is obvious.
(Score: 1) by mrbluze on Thursday May 01 2014, @06:18AM
Good words, but you won't read them in the mainstream press at the moment which suggests that wars, while brutal, keep us safe and rich. Just how debt makes us rich and slavery makes us free, and other absurdities. I hope we shake off these warmongers soon.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 2) by quadrox on Thursday May 01 2014, @08:24AM
He didn't say necessary, he said inevitable. There are some people/governments/financial stakeholder who can't leave well enough alone and must have more (control and money) at any cost. Eventually they will conflict so much that they will drag us all into a war, and unfortunately I don't see any sane way to stop this development.