TRAMPOLINE TO SPACE AMERICA???…..As an uncommonly brisk night fell over Houston last week a tiny Russian spacecraft, bathed in blinding sunlight, re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and plunged toward a dusty steppe in Kazakhstan. Of the three astronauts inside one was American, Rick Mastracchio, returning from a 188-day stay aboard the International Space Station. His arrival was closely watched in Houston, where Johnson Space Center has responsibility for U.S. human operations in space. Here, in mission control, photographs of astronauts old and new line long halls. They offer a palpable reminder that these people have managed every Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle flight. Houston flight directors guided the moon landings, saved Apollo 13 and repaired the Hubble Space Telescope.Yet until recently one thing had remained constant. Those within the photograph lined walls called the shots. They made the life and death decisions for astronauts soaring in the heavens above. No longer. During last week’s Soyuz landing, Contella could only spectate as the drama played out, in a different language, half a world away, aboard a spacecraft emblazoned with a Russian flag. Such is today’s space Realpolitik that, while the United States paid for most of the $140 billion space station, launched nearly all of it into orbit, and controls most of its day-to-day operations from Houston, Russia still holds the trump card: access. “They have us right where they want us,” said three-time NASA astronaut Mike Coats. The mounting Ukraine crisis has highlighted the space agency’s vulnerability, but this state of affairs is not new. Russia began embracing NASA in a bear hug right after the space shuttle retired in 2011. Former Johnson Space Center Director Mike Coats discusses NASA’s relationship with Russia. Since that time Russia has substantially hiked the price of a trip to the International Space Station, to $71 million per seat. Russia’s deputy prime minister over the country’s space program, Dmitry Rogozin, was among the first seven Russians sanctioned by President Obama. But Rogozin holds the trump card in space, and he’s playing it. Perhaps, he said last week, Russia will no longer be interested in running the space station after 2020 as the United States wants. And if America doesn’t like it? Too bad, he told his Twitter followers earlier this month. “After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline,” Rogozin tweeted in Russian. A taunting trampoline tweet.
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 19:33:09 +0000
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