NASA's Astronauts Could Be Stranded in Space if Russia Cancels Their Ride Home
16 replies, posted
[url]http://news.vice.com/articles/nasas-astronauts-could-be-stranded-in-space-if-russia-cancels-their-ride-home?trk_source=homepage-in-the-news[/url]
[quote]
NASA just cut off all of its non-International Space Station communication and collaboration with Russia because of the country’s aggression in Ukraine. That raises the question: What happens if Russia decides to cut all ties with NASA?
The relationship between NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, when it comes to the International Space Station, is a symbiotic one — much of the technology in the space station is controlled by NASA, so if Russia decides it doesn’t want to shuttle American astronauts back and forth, the agency has some options for recourse. But the Russians are certainly in a pretty powerful position when you consider that NASA has no other way to get humans to space. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Vladimir Putin could decide that Americans are no longer welcome aboard Soyuz spacecraft.
[/quote]
A title and story worthy of this section's name. I'm no expert, but I seriously doubt Putin would give the order to leave people stranded in fucking space.
edit: Stranded like when your buddy gives you a ride to a party and then leaves you there. They wouldn't actually be stranded but no matter what they do next it's either going to be costly or dangerous.
[quote] I seriously doubt Putin would give the order to leave people stranded in fucking space.[/quote]
Why did you post this article then? It's not going to happen.
They can just steal the escape capsule and drop it on Putin's house. Then storm out with their weird futuristic weapons they had in space and save the world with their trusty dog companion.
Putin already has Crimea, further escalation will only hurt Russia without gaining much.
I'm sure the US has an emergency plan to drop the escape capsule on american soil if necessary. It's not like the station constantly hovers over Russia.
Russia won't leave them stranded in space. The whole Crimea incident was bordering political suicide, but if Russia were to leave astronauts stranded that would cross the line.
Nobody is getting stranded in space. There are always enough Soyuz seats for everyone in case of an emergency, and I have a difficult time believing the Russian crew would actually shut the hatch on their colleagues and bail for home. The worst that could happen is the American crew members rotate out and Russia refuses to fly anyone else to the station. Far more likely is they simply jack up the price of a ride to the point that people in Congress start making noise about giving the Russians hundreds of millions of dollars.
[QUOTE=Rubs10;44455147]Why did you post this article then? It's not going to happen.[/QUOTE]
Because fear-mongering is fun.
[QUOTE=Melnek;44455291]Because fear-mongering is fun.[/QUOTE]
Yeah totally this, not to point out the ridiculous story that the source posted.
Didn't you guys know? When fear mongering, it's best to say that the thing you are trying to raise fear about could literally never happen. That's the best way to get people to believe it could happen DUH
So basically it will just be the first grand theft spacecraft
They will equip a Dragon capsule with emergency evacuation equipment if this happens, I can almost for sure predict that. It has proved to be safe during reentry. The thing even has temperature control and proper air. What a crewed Dragon really is waiting for is proof of working launch abort systems and that the booster rocket won't go explode on them.
Also don't worry, both the astronauts and cosmonauts on ISS know how to maneuver the Soyuz capsules. I doubt they would just abandon (the cosmonauts that is) their astronaut colleges just because of conflicts down on Earth. You also have to take under consideration that many of the life support systems and power is provided by the American/European/Non-Russian parts of ISS so a conflict over ISS isn't really in the best interest of Roscosmos or Russia because that would leave a majorly crippled metal shell...
[editline]5th April 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=pentium;44455170]I'm sure the US has an emergency plan to drop the escape capsule on american soil if necessary. It's not like the station constantly hovers over Russia.[/QUOTE]The escape capsules are Russian. :v:
The airlocks could also easily be closed between the Russian and other parts of ISS to prevent that as well.
[QUOTE=frozensoda;44455133]A title and story worthy of this section's name. I'm no expert, but I seriously doubt Putin would give the order to leave people stranded in fucking space.[/QUOTE]
escape pods
[quote]
The relationship between NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, when it comes to the International Space Station, is a symbiotic one — much of the technology in the space station is controlled by NASA, so [B]if Russia decides it doesn’t want to shuttle American astronauts back and forth, the agency has some options for recourse[/B]. But the Russians are certainly in a pretty powerful position when you consider that NASA has no other way to get humans to space. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Vladimir Putin could decide that Americans are no longer welcome aboard Soyuz spacecraft.[/quote]
I guess if it happened it would mean NASA would maybe turn to private companies like SpaceX.
Space is fucking dangerous
(understatement.)
Between NASA and whatever other space agencies are using the ISS there must be well over 100 different ways for them to get back home.
I'm 100% positive that when they where making the ISS they did not just simply gloss over the fact that if something goes wrong they would just be stuck there.
Fire? debris? system error? any one of a million things that could go wrong up there?
there wouldn't be time to send up a ship, they would HAVE to make their own way back and i'm willing to bet it would be easy as fuck to do so.
It's going to end in a COD style micro gravity shootout.
[QUOTE=_Maverick_;44455510]Space is fucking dangerous
(understatement.)
Between NASA and whatever other space agencies are using the ISS there must be well over 100 different ways for them to get back home.
I'm 100% positive that when they where making the ISS they did not just simply gloss over the fact that if something goes wrong they would just be stuck there.
Fire? debris? system error? any one of a million things that could go wrong up there?
there wouldn't be time to send up a ship, they would HAVE to make their own way back and i'm willing to bet it would be easy as fuck to do so.[/QUOTE]The only spacecraft that we currently have that has reentry capabilities are the Russian Soyuz and American SpaceX Dragon. (The latter is not crewed but takes well over a ton of cargo back to Earth) so there isn't really much of a choice if Russia takes their spacecraft down without the American astronauts.
Even assuming they somehow managed to magically strand our people in space and we couldn't produce an effective means of getting them home, we remain better equipped to destroy shit in space.
We'd just float around their GPS constellation and destroy all their shit with the arm on the X-37.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-37[/url]
The one we launched in 2012 is still on mission doing...whatever the fuck it is those things normally do.
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