Russia Suggests US "delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline"

[popeyespappy]

Actually, it also has a lot to do with the fact that US believe its presence in space needs to be more spectacular than would be allowed by the budget it was willing to give NASA.

There is a lot more intertwining between US and Russian space programs than the ISS. For example US relies heavily on Soviet and Russia designed liquid fueled rock engines for our key launch vehicles. American menufacturer of key components of liquid fueled rockets in turn depends heavily on selling their wares to Russian engine manufacturers.

The turth of the matter is since the 1970s, American liquid fuel rocket engine development have stagnated with the development of Space shuttle main engine because stagnation of NASA and limited military application of heavy liquid motors. First Soviet Union and now Russia had been and remains superior to us in practical liquid fuel rocket motor design know how. Russia rocket motors now depend in a number of areas on superior American fabrication technology. But the US in trun depends on superior Russian experience and design knowhow with regard to overall rocket motor.

I don't doubt that there has been some technology transfer between the US and Russia on liquid fueled rocket motors, but I'm standing by my statement that US involvement with the Russians on ISS had more to do with keeping their rocket scientists out of Iran and North Korean than anything else. I was in Star City twice and Baikonur once during the mid 90's. I deployed a Timeplex Link II mux with some voice instruments and routers attached to provide some semi reliable comms for the American astronauts working there during the phase I (shuttle/MIR) operations. It provided a direct link between those sites and the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville where we tied it into the NASA mission voice, data and ISDN networks. The HOSC, which is where I worked from mid 87 through 2001, was the control center for the shuttle main engines during launch and where the science support teams sat for all the science conducted on the shuttle when it was flying Spacehab or Spacelab mission and the ISS. I worked with personnel from ESA, the independent German, Dutch, Italian, French and Japanese space programs as well as the Russians. The only member of that group that weren't paying their own tab were the Russians. While I don't claim to be fully cognizant of all the politics of the period I sat in on enough meetings with our NASA management to hear why we were expending our limited funds with the Russians instead of putting people to work in states.