(December 18, 2022 at 11:43 am)Anomalocaris Wrote:(December 18, 2022 at 10:38 am)Jehanne Wrote: Does it make sense that the United States is supplying high-tech weapons to Ukraine so that they can resist the Russian invasion of their homeland while continuing to participate with the Russians on the International Space Station:
EarthSky -- Leaky Soyuz at ISS in ‘good working order,’ NASA says
Why not have some moral backbone and ditch the ISS? Bring all Americans and our equipment back ASAP and be done with it?!
Bring American equipment back? With what?
Also, it is a nominally international space station, so nominally the other partners besides Russia gets a nominal say.
The entire attitude of the US on Ukraine is not about moral back bone, but about realities of power. Ditching the international space station would not not a power move. That would leave the US, which it thinks is the rightful rule setter and entitled top dog on the world, without a space station, and China, the hateful opponent who doesn’t think the US is the natural rule setter forever, with one.
American equipment will come back with the American astronauts, whatever they can carry. The pukes can have the rest. If the US does not have a space station, so what?? We have the sole 5 spacecraft on hyperbolic trajectories that will leave our Solar System, forever. The United States' legacy as a spacefaring power is secured, forever. We have nothing to prove, to anyone.
We should abandon the ISS, the sooner, the better.
