This. WHY would Russia WANT to participate in a program mostly controlled by a country who fucking lies constantly about them?
Plus the ISS is pretty close to it's expiration date anyway.
It's only planned to stay up there another 10 years ago, if that.
So even if we WEREN'T in a spat there's a good argument for them to pull out.
Normally I'd jump on the "their loss" mentality.
Maybe that's true.
But Russia has a pretty strong national pride thing going on right now too obviously so they might just want to roll their own station a la China.
Or compete/participate with the numerous private space station programs being started, which may be a significant advantage to them over working with NASA...
.... which isn't totalllllly broken, less so than the 3-letters, maybe about on par with the FAA - but it's funded by and their goals and mandates are set by congress so whatever brokenness it has is UNFIXABLE without solving the congressional corruption and just getting worse, also like the FAA.
This. WHY would Russia WANT to participate in a program mostly controlled by a country who fucking lies constantly about them?
Plus the ISS is pretty close to it's expiration date anyway.
It's only planned to stay up there another 10 years ago, if that.
So even if we WEREN'T in a spat there's a good argument for them to pull out.
Normally I'd jump on the "their loss" mentality.
Maybe that's true.
But Russia has a pretty strong national pride thing going on right now too obviously so they might just want to roll their own station a la China.
Or compete/participate with the numerous private space station programs being started, which may be a significant advantage to them over working with NASA...
.... which isn't totalllllly broken, less so than the 3-letters, maybe about on par with the FAA - but it's funded by and their goals and mandates are set by congress so whatever brokenness it has is UNFIXABLE without solving the congressional corruption and just getting worse, also like the FAA.