Posted on 03/25/2014 6:00:17 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The U.S. will pay Russia $70.7 million for a single shuttle ride aboard the country’s Soyuz rocket Tuesday night, even as President Barack Obama fights for sanctions and penalties against Russia for its recent invasion of the Ukraine.
With politicians wrangling over the most diplomatic way to respond to Russia’s aggression, NASA said the space pay-off to the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) wouldn’t be affected by politics.
“We do not expect the current Russia-Ukraine situation to have an impact on our longstanding civil space cooperation with Russia, which goes back decades, including our partnership on the International Space Station (ISS) program,” Trent Perrotto, a spokesman for the space agency, told FoxNews.com.
“We are confident that our two space agencies will continue to work closely as they have throughout various ups and downs of the broader U.S.-Russia relationship.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The shuttle used to take five or six people, plus about 25 tons of payload, for $500 million per mission.
Why doesn’t America have a manned space program?
Obama killed it.
It was actually more like $800 million a launch.
Would love to see the little NASA twinkies tootling around Baikonur with their water bottles and really cool backpacks right about now.
Not exactly the groovy college kid cultural adventure they thought it was anymore.
Repurposed for moslem outreach.
Pobrecitos...
Well, it turns out that Putin and Russia aren’t all bad....
“Obama killed it.”
No believe it was done before that. But sickening that our nation hasn’t a way into space. Disgusting.
Robbing Peter to pay Putin
Can we tie Obama onto the rocket? Then ok.
We purchase extensive rocket supplies from Russia...it's good stuff, and cheap.
Of course we should be building and buying it here, but that's the current state of space lift in the world today.
Yah. I was stunned to find out a while back we were using russian motors in our heavy lift. Gotta wonder if they sell us our ICBMS and Warheads now too.......
The thing that impresses me about Russia vs US space programs is how much money we can waste to get the same thing done. Like that god awful expensive shuttle transporter. The cost to build, maintain and operate. The russians simply use a electric diesel locomotive and roll their craft out on rail, then sit it upgright. Granted the shuttle was bigger etc but it gets to the point. We did higher tech but they did more bang for buck.
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