Cost of Weakening NASA Revealed as Russia Retaliates for Sanctions

It turns out that even with the election behind him, Obama is not quite as flexible as he promised Dmitri Medvedev. Putin’s aggressive expansionism has made him look so pathetically weak in the world’s eyes that he has been forced to impose mild sanctions. These sanctions are blowing up in his face:

Russia is to deny the US future use of the International Space Station beyond 2020 and will also bar its rocket engines from launching US military satellites as it hits back at American sanctions imposed over Ukraine crisis. …

The Space Station is manned by both American and Russian crew, but the only way to reach it is by using Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.

This is not a position wise and benevolent leaders would put us in vis-à-vis our historic rival.

[Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin] suggested Russia could use the station without the United States, saying: “The Russian segment can exist independently from the American one. The U.S. one cannot.”

We have been paying Russia over $60 million per person to fly astronauts up to the space station because to our national shame we can no longer do it ourselves. NASA has been reduced from placing a man on the moon to churning out socialist propaganda (see here and here).

In further blowback over the wrist slap sanctions,

Russia said it plans to ban sales of the space-rocket engine used to launch most U.S. military and intelligence satellites.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday that he would also turn off the parts of the U.S.-run GPS satellite tracking system that are based in Russia….

Russians are famous for their skill at chess. We sent up against them a checkers player who isn’t even trying to win.

If the military implications of all this aren’t obvious, they eventually will be.

On tips from Sean C and Stormfax. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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