ISS: Breaking up is hard to do
According to this detailed article by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, it will be be very difficult if not impossible for Russia to detach its half from ISS and go its own way.
The article outlines both the technical and legal reasons, and concludes as follows:
In reality, during the coming years, we are more likely to see food riots in Moscow than we are to see a new Russian Space Station or a deep space scientific exploration mission. Some of this will be due to financial concerns, and some of it will come because of a loss of access to technology from the West.
Already, Russia’s main builder of tanks, Uralvagonzavod, appears to have stopped production due to a lack of components. Roscosmos’s big four companies—RKK Energia, RSC Progress, the Khrunichev Center, and NPO Energomash—will likely not be able to keep up production for long for the same reason as the tank factory.
While everything Berger notes is true, I think he underestimates the willingness of rogue nations, as Russia presently is, to break treaties. Also, the agreements Russia has signed expire in 2024, and Russia needs the next few years to launch more modules to have any chance of making its half workable. Whether it can do it is presently doubtful, but not impossible.
This partnership is ending, whether by choice or reality. Expect Russia’s participation in ISS to continually wind down over the next few years.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to this detailed article by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, it will be be very difficult if not impossible for Russia to detach its half from ISS and go its own way.
The article outlines both the technical and legal reasons, and concludes as follows:
In reality, during the coming years, we are more likely to see food riots in Moscow than we are to see a new Russian Space Station or a deep space scientific exploration mission. Some of this will be due to financial concerns, and some of it will come because of a loss of access to technology from the West.
Already, Russia’s main builder of tanks, Uralvagonzavod, appears to have stopped production due to a lack of components. Roscosmos’s big four companies—RKK Energia, RSC Progress, the Khrunichev Center, and NPO Energomash—will likely not be able to keep up production for long for the same reason as the tank factory.
While everything Berger notes is true, I think he underestimates the willingness of rogue nations, as Russia presently is, to break treaties. Also, the agreements Russia has signed expire in 2024, and Russia needs the next few years to launch more modules to have any chance of making its half workable. Whether it can do it is presently doubtful, but not impossible.
This partnership is ending, whether by choice or reality. Expect Russia’s participation in ISS to continually wind down over the next few years.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Russia may form a partnership with China which could finance and built the needed space station parts.
Russia is already doing this on many levels and in many areas, especially since the Western powers are implementing a wide variety of boycotts.
Oil and natural resources flows to China, money flows to Russia — Russia uses the finance mechanisms of China (which are larger than the West) to bypass Western blockades entirely.
China needs food, Russia may soon control the Ukraine — the “breadbasket” of that region. Another point of common interest.
Western policies are building an greater alliance between two very old neighbors, with a common enemy — the Western powers.
” Expect Russia’s participation in ISS to continually wind down over the next few years.”
Don’t let the airlock hit you on the way out.