Re – the Russian ISS leaks there’s an old bit of wisdom to the effect that one should not attribute to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence. Cui bono? I can’t see any way in which the leaks have advantaged the Russians. That applies to leaks in Progress and Soyuz vehicles as well.

I, too, have encountered more than my share of predatory/incompetent mechanics. Over the past half-century, vehicular bothers have done more than any other single thing to keep me poor. As my bad eye has prevented me from passing the CA DMV eye exam for more than a decade – one good eye used to be enough, but no more – I no longer own an automobile and miss neither the expense nor the bother. I eagerly await the advent of Tesla’s upcoming Robotaxi fleet operations to handle the diminishing need I have to drive anywhere.

My biggest credit card purchases have been to mechanics….due to a water leak I paid them to fix my engine seized up–all I heard is how tough it is to find leaks. Another kid said my car was making noise because it was old–blasted serpentine belt was the problem.

I have only met one or two that didn’t deserve to burn in torment.

Haven’t looked at the Isaacman podcast yet. On my to-do list. Sounds as though he had a lot of good ideas anent reforming NASA. Perhaps whomever does wind up being Administrator will see fit to crib his ideas.

Jeff Wright,

I believe Axiom 4’s first delay was due to weather, the second was due to the F9 oxygen leak and the third due to dodgy Russkie hardware on ISS.

Re: commies vs. capitalists, it’s worth noting that the F9 leak was fixed in a day. The Russkie leaks on ISS have been festering for years despite numerous “repairs.”

Axiom’s first delay was due to a leak on the SpaceX end side of things.

It would be nice if oxygen said to itself “I’m only going to leak from some Russian/Commie craft—never Capitalist SpaceX. Dragons.

But that isn’t what happens.

Oxygen treats all with equal disdain.

It’s difficult to estimate how much of the ostentatious bonhomie displayed aboard ISS whenever a new crew arrives is real and how much is not,

Oh…I expect it’s mostly sincere, but mostly because of the relief from the extended isolation that ISS service imposes. You’re stuck in a cramped metallic apartment with six other human beings for months on end, and even the upgraded Wifi only goes so far in extending your human contact. Finally a new batch of human beings shows up, and it’s got to be difficult not to get a little excited. I have heard from people who have worked in the Antarctic bases (who have more space and more people) who speak of this kind of experience.

And in connection with that….I don’t know if you watched all of Jared Isaacman’s podcast interview, but I was struck by the ideas he had hoped to try out for ISS: missions reduced to four months rather than stretched to eight months, reconfiguring Crew Dragon (and Starliner?) to accommodate the full 7 passengers, more commercial flight opportunities. Basically, trying to maximize the utility of what time ISS has left to amp up the commercial LEO market by getting more people up there and reducing the cost per seat for those people as a segue to commercial stations. Obviously, I do not know how well briefed he has been on the state of ISS and its leaks, but… I will close by saying that I am unsure if his ideas are the best way to go, but I think he was at least aiming at the right goal.

It’s difficult to estimate how much of the ostentatious bonhomie displayed aboard ISS whenever a new crew arrives is real and how much is not, but we now have at least an approximate target date for when that ceases to be an issue. Unless, of course, the ISS, itself, takes a hand before that.

It was as if NASA had no idea the repair work was occurring, either because it wasn’t paying attention to what the Russians were doing or because the Russians had kept this work secret until it was completed. In either case, this is not how such a partnership should operate.

It’s difficult to avoid the impression of two space agencies trapped in this flying machine. Trapped by their own political imperatives — imperatives that require some dissembling not only with their own votaries and stakeholders, but with each other, too.

Of course, human spaceflight programs have been political creations right from the very start. As Charles Murray once put it, Kennedy’s decision to adopt Apollo “was a completely political—almost cynical—decision.” The only difference between the American and Soviet programs of the 60’s and those which have been adopted since is that they were mission driven programs, rather than vendor driven programs.

And the International Space Station has been notoriously so. In the 80’s, it was a way to keep certain rice bowls filled while keeping pace with the Soviets at a cost and risk level that American political leadership could accept. In the 1990’s, the rice bowl imperative remained but the others shifted to saving both Boris Yeltsin’s regime and its talented aerospace engineers from much more dangerous fates. In the 2000’s, the Bush administration’s taming of ISS’s spiraling costs and the subsequent urgency of retiring the Shuttle changed the imperative again to increased reliance on the Russians for not only lifeboat capability but even crew transport for an extended time.

Today, however, all these imperatives but the rice bowls have dissipated. Instead, both agencies now desperately hug the station tightly as their only viable human spaceflight program, with the NASA replacement(s) repeatedly delayed and any Russian replacement more or less impossible due to collapsing funding and capability. To admit that this project is now becoming rapidly untenable would come at a political cost neither wants to pay. The situation is worse for the Russians, of course, thanks not just to the absence of a vibrant commercial space industry but also thanks to the constraints that dictatorships must operate under along with the eternal Russian sense of inferiority.

So they dissemble to us, and they dissemble to each other. But neither knows what else to do. And the theater goes on, until the station itself forces the performance to conclude.