Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak | Hacker News Reader

Another Russian spacecraft at ISS has a coolant leak

spacepolicyonline.com

124 points_Microft176 comments

Are we at the point we should start suspecting sabotage? Or is this just usual Russian incompetence?

This maybe news cycle bias, but since the Ukraine war, and threat of Russian pulling out of ISS program, these malfunctions have been more visible.

Is anyone tracking these and similar incidents publicly?

It seems more likely that we're seeing the effects of sanctions or internal choices about how to allocate resources in the face of a huge demand for war production.

Wasn't the previous leak down to a micrometeorite strike?

Usually the cause of most leaks on ISS.

Wondering whether Kessler Syndrome is kicking in earlier than we anticipated.

> Are we at the point we should start suspecting sabotage?

What possible reason would the Russians have to sabotage their own side of their won space craft?

The only real outcomes would be either having to launch an additional spacecraft to get their people back or suffering the indignity of the US bringing their people back on a US vehicle.

If they don't want to be there, it'd be pretty easy to cite something about US/NATO involvement in Ukraine and just abandon ship. They don't need some sort of elaborate gimmick which also happens to paint them in a pretty incompetent light, in order to do that.

Well, sabotage could also have been done by the other side, to point out the russian incompetence and drive them out even earlier, but the risk/reward does not make this likely.

> Well, sabotage could also have been done by the other side, to point out the russian incompetence and drive them out even earlier, but the risk/reward does not make this likely.

1. NASA wants Russia to maintain a presence on the ISS. Many of the necessary functions for operating the ISS are spread across both the US (international) and Russian sides. If the Russians left, that would dramatically complicate operations.

2. How would the US even get to the spacecraft in question? It's not like someone could casually take a stroll around the station and pop in a hole with a drift and hammer.

3. Even if the US could access the spacecraft in question, it's not obvious to me that US Astronauts would actually do the deed instead of blowing a whistle. It's not like they're CIA operatives. There's a great deal of camaraderie between the personnel of each side.

4. The Soyuz that had the first coolant leak had an American astronaut on board. Why would the US risk its own people?

That seems like the weakest argument against it. If we're talking about the kind of shadowy secret agents who will sabotage a $150 billion project (most of which was paid by their own side) as a manoeuvre in a complicated geopolitical game, surely they're not above sacrificing a few innocent lives for it.

>NASA wants Russia to maintain a presence

NASA is not the DOD

>drift and hammer

Adding incompatible ionic compounds causes material failure

>It's not like they're CIA operatives

Hmm that's a pretty strange assumption to make.

NASA isn't in the business of sabotaging, that would be the CIA. That means that

1. NASA cares about keeping the ISS alive, the CIA might have other priorities and care more about how this humiliates Russia much more than NASA

2. I would be more surprised if there were no CIA agents in the manufacturing pipeline of Soyuz spacecraft, never mind the launch site. Just strategically weaken some parts so they fail in orbit.

3. So let's use CIA operatives

I'm not saying it was the CIA. The CIA has motive and capability to do it. But it could as well be Russian corruption somewhere in the supply chain, or just bad luck

Seems unlikely, There's little to gain from this. There are far larger propaganda victories already that actually matter to the populace.

Seems like a pretty wacky thing to do IMO.

Maybe the CIA does have some operatives in the Russian aerospace industry. But why would any such operatives risk exposing themselves by sabotaging hardware going to the ISS? Just for a rather contrived plan to make the Russians look incompetent while putting American astronauts at risk too? Surely the CIA can come up with better ways to make the Russians look incompetent without putting carefully established agents at risk. Or they can just do nothing, since the Russians seem to have little trouble displaying ineptitude without any assistance.

Sabotage might also be performed by a disgruntled / disturbed worker, not working for either 'side'.

> What possible reason would the Russians have to sabotage their own side of their won space craft?

Some people believe the Nord pipeline blowup was self-sabotage.

Update: I did not say I believe this myself. I'm just using this as a counter argument to say that the reasons might not be obvious at first glance and people tend to believe all sorts of things.

... because it gets them out of contractual obligations to deliver gas.

But… they want to sell gas.

Right up until they prefer to deliver retribution by withholding gas.

Right, but the weapon is not the cutting of the supply, it's the threat. The fear that comes with uncertainty.

There is no uncertainty when the pipeline is damaged irreparably.

Russia had already been increasingly cutting gas supplies to Europe before the Nordstream pipeline was sabatoged. They weren’t just threatening.

If that's true, why blow up your own infrastructure when you can just cut the supply?

First, there’s no “if”, it’s a fact that can be easily verified. Second, I don’t pretend to know for a fact it was Russia. One of several reasons that I think it’s most likely is that Russia is the country involved here where one man’s irrational decisions would turn into action with virtually no checks.

Russia can close the valves on their end, and germany cannot do anything, since the EU their contractual obligations and literally promising to steal russian assets.

Destroying the pipelines doesn't benefit neither germany nor russia.

The volume has certainly been going down for a while, I'm not sure who's responsible for that. Like I would actually need to research that part. Russia can stop the pump while Europe can suspend payments. Both actions have the same effect on volume sold.

September 29, 2022 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60131520

Russia has been reducing gas supplies through Nord Stream 1 for a number of months.

In June, it cut deliveries through the pipeline by 75% - from 170m cubic metres of gas a day to roughly 40m cubic metres.

In July, Russia shut it down for 10 days, citing the need for maintenance. When it reopened, the flow was halved to 20m cubic metres a day.

In late August, it shut down Nord Stream 1 entirely, blaming problems with equipment. The pipeline has not been open since then.

Looks like you are right.

and isnt it somewhat reasonable that if we do not believe the maintenance explanation, that it MIGHT just be that they are doing it to force the germans to put the stamp on the final opening approval for nord stream 2? there is a reason nord stream 2 was created, even though nord stream 1 exists.

Prevents potential assassins near Putin thinking they have an easy out.

From https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2022/09/29/russian-s... :

If Nord Stream is shut down suddenly through “force majeure,” a sudden uncontrollable stop that is the fault of neither party, then Russia can void its obligations toward European stakeholders without legally breaking contracts, thus dodging the many penalties in doing so.

I don’t know if you guys are being deliberately obtuse with stuff or what, but the Nordstream pipeline can deliver gas to Germany—that’s it. If circumstances change such that Russia no longer wants to deliver gas to Germany, the pipeline has no value to them. It doesn’t matter that it’s theirs. It’s not like they can use it for something else.

I did not say I believe that.

Russia could just stop the flow of gas without blowing the pipeline up.

They had Zero reasons to blow it up and very good reasons to keep it alive if and when the Germans wanted that gas again.

The only beneficiary of the pipeline going bust are the USA.

Russia had zero logical reasons to blow it up. I don’t have any trouble believing that Putin’s devotion to rational decision making is less than complete at this point—particularly when it comes to doling out retribution to the west.

The idea that the US would risk making itself a pariah amongst its NATO allies, particularly right now does not seem believable to me.

It's easier to call your enemies insane than to admit you don't understand their motivation.

Humans routinely prioritize retribution over rationality.

That goes for our guys too.

Except between the US and Russia, Russia is the country where one man is in complete control with no checks on his whims.

The US had no qualms making itself a pariah amongst its UN allies by spying on them back in 2010, germany included, when biden was still vice president no less, so I don't think that's much of an argument against them doing it. Especially when you are talking about NATO, an organization where the US power imbalance is even higher.

That isn't enough to blame them for it of course, but to assume that Putin is not behaving logically because the alternatives are so "unthinkable" is misguided.

Spying on a close ally is not even remotely comparable to destroying said ally’s means of getting energy.

> Spying on them back in 2010, germany included

News for you: Everyone is spying on everyone else. Always have, always will be. Germany was also spying on the US. Spying, a.k.a having inside knowledge, is always a preference by all regimes. Whether one has the means to do it is another matter.

>"The idea that the US would risk making itself a pariah amongst its NATO allies"

NATOS biggest financial backer, strongest military that is actually capable of something and projects force all over the world, financial power that can tell to Swiss banks how high to jump or else and tell other countries what they can sell and to whom.

Without the US NATO is irrelevant. I think your "US would risk making itself a pariah" statement is pure fantasy. There is zero risk for the US.

I suppose debating the finer points of international diplomacy would be a rather pointless endeavor at this point if we can’t even agree that, depriving a close ally of energy that it uses to fuel its industry and keep its citizens warm through the winter, would entail some non zero level of risk.

No longer supplying means that they get geopolitical flack for 'using hydrocarbons as a weapon'. And will get dragged before the courts for not honoring their long term contracts.

So blowing the pipeline up is the better alternative.

A famous journalist, American no less, does not agree with you.

Also, as soon as that pipeline got blown up, EU got forced to take much more expensive American liquid gas.

It's not hard to believe in and it makes 100x more sense than Putin blowing it up for funzies.

It’s not even just a little difficult for you to believe that the US would risk totally destroying its standing within NATO in order to do something that Russia was already doing on their own accord?

"US standing within NATO?"

I have news for you, US is NATO.

It does not care what it's "allies" say. And it will do all it can to make them toe the line.

And that line is: Russia is the enemy that needs to be dismantled and destroyed. You shall not deal with Russia, period.

Why is it difficult for you to understand this simple logic?

Why is it difficult for you to understand that Europeans have agency and pride like anyone else and they would not “toe the line” if the US did something so brazen and aggressive. It’s absurd.

> A famous journalist, American no less, does not agree with you

A famous journalist who believed obl was imprisoned by pakistan in 2006 and the assassination was staged, siria didnt use chemical weapons, and skripals weren’t poisoned by novichok. You see the pattern here?

> siria didnt use chemical weapons

This was reported at a simmilar timeframe (compared to the war) and from the same groups of people who said iraq had weapons of mass destruction, so not trusting them would not be that stupid... especially if you have better inside sources that "normal people" do.

Ever wondered why they published that piece on substack and not somewhere else?

Oh come on... just look at the list of anti-russia sanctions and trying to legalize literal stealing of russian assets in europe... closing the valve on the pipeline is miniscule compared to eg. cutting russia out of SWIFT.

On the other hand, this has cause many other countries to think the famous "what if we're next?", and switching from dollars to their local currencies, forming new alliances (either within BRICS or SCO) which seriously endangers the power of dollars and in turn euros.

Note to those trying to explain to me I am wrong: note that I did not say who blew the pipeline up.

Just that Russia did have credible motives, and that for Russia, blowing up the line anonymously is better than just saying "no more gas for Europe".

But given the stakes, they are not the only ones that have motives. And I never said otherwise.

> No longer supplying means that they get geopolitical flack for 'using hydrocarbons as a weapon'.

They've already invaded a nation. What you're suggesting here is like a violent machine-gun toting bank robber in ski mask making sure to pay his parking bill before driving off, because he's worried about what other people might think of him.

Using international trade to coerce nations is a far lesser crime than invading them and leveling their cities with artillery.

> get geopolitical flack

so as opposed to now, someone will talk poorly about them? I dont quite know how putin would sleep at night if someone said he was a bad dude

> The only beneficiary of the pipeline going bust are the USA.

Ukraine and Norway are also beneficiaries. Ukraine because it reduces the risk of Germany getting squishy about supporting them and Norway because they’ve cornered the European natural gas market.

But ukraine is unable to do it by themselves, and norway probably to. On the other hand, USA (biden) literally said that they will stop the nord streams on tv.

> But ukraine is unable to do it by themselves,

They're pretty good at improvisation. Odds are good that they could pull off such a thing if they were so inclined. You don't need a traditional submarine fleet to do something like this.

They're not at the top of my suspects list though.

This only holds if you think of Russia as a single abstract actor with its own interests. Instead Russia, like every country, has individual decision-makers with their own personal interests.

The “Russia did it” argument for Nord Stream is about internal politics. Putin’s war ruined the lifestyles of his elites, who spent most of their time in mansions and yachts in the West. All of that is gone now. It’s tempting for those elites to want to find a way to turn back the clock to February 23, 2022, get the gas money flowing again, and get back to the family villa in the Amalfi Coast. Like Cortes burning the ships to remove the temptation to mutiny, blowing up Nord Stream lets Putin close off this avenue.

Truth is you can tell a plausible story for a lot of actors to do it. But I lean toward the Russia hypothesis because they had less to lose if they got caught.

The US has spent immense political and literal capital on building a coalition to sanction Russia, which could all be undone if it got caught committing an act of war against Germany (no, phone spying is not the same, everyone does that to everyone). Besides, the benefits for the US are hazy, since Germany did not appear open to ever reactivating the pipelines. Why take such a huge risk to prevent something that didn’t appear likely to ever happen, let alone any time soon?

But if it was Russia, what is Germany gonna do to Russia that it’s not already doing? Maybe it would’ve sped up tank deliveries by a few months if they’d caught Russia red-handed, but tanks still happened eventually.

Russia controls the valves and germany controls the sanctions... anti-gas sanctions come from germany, russia closes the valve, no gas for germany.

Then a cold winter comes, gas prices get very high (especially since the americans are inflating the price), german industry is fucked, people are paying a lot for heat (or being cold), and there's putin with "just lessen the sanctions, stop sending stuff to ukraine, and you get the cheap gas back". And the only one standing between the (relatively strong) industry and cold people are Scholz (...and Ursula) and a lot of "alternatives" who could take their place.

Germany and russia being friendly? American biggest nightmare... as they've said before, literally, on camera, they'll stop the nordstreams, and they did. Now, even if people of germany get fed up and replace the current politicians, they won't get the cheap gas again.

So, russia has less money, germany has less industry, usa gets stronger and can sell overpriced gas... so only one winner in this outcome, and it's not russia.

By September Putin would have been able to see the writing on the wall. Germany was not caving on sanctions and they were clearly expediting a post Russia energy future.

Also, are you deliberately changing what Biden said about ending (specifically) Nordstream 2 to “the Nordstreams” to make it seem more believable that he was referring to physical destruction rather than stopping the non-operational Nordstream from progressing to operational status?

> expediting a post Russia energy future.

Meaning what exactly? Very expensive gas, and in turn heat, and local factories closing down?

Politicians can shit around all day, factories need cheap gas to work, people need jobs in those factories to be able to eat and heat their homes and heat is more expensive than ever.

People first need safety, and only after that working factories, and there's tremendous suspicion in Europe that here we have a replay of sad events some 80 years ago. Politicians can shit all day, and people can be gullible as worms, yet sometime they add two with two and figure out that spending more today and changing the energy sources for tomorrow may save them from having to spend all and above to maintain the defense after the previous guy separating them from problems will fail.

Talking about jobs and factories one shouldn't forget about safety.

For "the rest of the world", the "sad events" have been happening literally right now, or during the last 80 years... syria, libya, afghanistan, iraq, iraq again, yemen, yugoslavia, etc., but since it was "us" doing it, no sanctions were needed, and dead civilians didn't count. Syria is occupied right now by americans and you're shitting here about safety... Price Harry even went playing "war tourism" and went shooting afghani farmers and bragged about it... France has been fucking up africa for centuries too. I live in a shitty small slovenia, and even we sent soldiers to help the agressors in afghanistan and syria.

But yes, overinflated politicians are bragging about europe being civilization and everywhere else being a jungle... so yeah, maybe it's time for yankee/European to go home and keep for them/ourselves. If we don't, we have no moral superiority to blame putin for anything while our own soldiers are occupying foreign sovereign countries this very moment.

> I live in a shitty small slovenia, and even we sent soldiers to help the agressors in afghanistan and syria.

Fun facts:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...

I don't agree that some of your statements are facts.

However, pretty much all countries have unjust conflicts in their history, where they were on the wrong side. That doesn't mean it should continue.

I'll refrain from commenting on Syria topic - I feel it justifies better facts on the table and longer discussion than this place allows. You may think what you want.

Maybe it's time for many countries to keep to themselves - that would roughly correspond to Westfall sovereignty, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty . Or maybe we should be of the opinion that certain things, like human rights, aren't the matter of countries, and have some ways of supporting them too.

> If we don't, we have no moral superiority to blame putin for anything while our own soldiers are occupying foreign sovereign countries this very moment.

Why?

> However, pretty much all countries have unjust conflicts in their history, where they were on the wrong side. That doesn't mean it should continue.

We're not talking about far away history... we're talking about our soldiers occupying foreign sovereign countries right now, today. This is not a germany WW2 situation, where they got fucked, repaid some of the damage, said that they won't repeat history and two generations went by... this is literally today. If we wanted to be better than putin, there's 1 year (minus 11 days) gone by, with us pointing a finger, while we're doing the same... 1 year (almost) that we had the time to "be better", and leave the occupied countriey... but we didn't.

> Or maybe we should be of the opinion that certain things, like human rights, aren't the matter of countries, and have some ways of supporting them too.

Lets be real... noone cares about human rights. At least not enough to start a war. Do people have a right for police not to steal their stuff? Not in america (civil asset forfeiture). The british have arrested more people for "wronghink" (on social media) than the "bad bad putin" did. Guantanamo bay is still there. And zelensky is banning political parties, tv stations and a whole church now. Noone cares about all that. This is just a nice excuse to start a war where you need one... usually in places with either natural resources or strategic location. Find someone to testify about soldiers killing babies, bam war. Need a better story for the second time? Just use weapons of mass destruction excuse.. and then a few years later a "whoopsie, we fucked up". Where are the human rights of the people prince harry killed when he went on his killing tourism?

> Why?

Because we're the same. Counting the number of wars and dead people, even worse.

> If we wanted to be better than putin, there's 1 year (minus 11 days) gone by, with us pointing a finger, while we're doing the same...

> Because we're the same.

I really doubt USA fights at the moment anything close to what's going on in Eastern Ukraine. I think you're biased.

> I really doubt USA fights at the moment anything close to what's going on in Eastern Ukraine. I think you're biased.

Imagine if 'the rest of the world' was arming afghanis, giving them intelligence and satellite data, starlink, training their soldiers and sending mercenaries... plus of course hundreds of billions of dollars/euros... the afghanistan war would look even worse than vietnam did for americans.

Since we didn't help them, but helped the agressors, afghanistan fell relatively fast. ...and after 20 years and trillion of dollars, they managed to replace the taliban with the taliban.

Norway is also a big winner, regardless of who destroyed the pipelines.

This analysis is not complete.

By the time the pipeline was bombed, it was clear that the EU wasn’t going to cave into Russian demands to stop supporting Ukraine.

So the pipeline sitting there usable but with no gas flowing would both create legal problems for Russia and also be a symbol of European unity.

Regarding the US being able to sell LNG, the capabilities to transport and offload it in the quantities needed don’t exist yet.

I don’t know who blew it up, the most logical would be the Ukrainians but they probably couldn’t have. The next logical are Russia and the certainly have the capability. The USA may be the third logical option and they do have the capability but I’m not so sure they could have done it in this part of the world undetected by Russia.

> So the pipeline sitting there usable but with no gas flowing would both create legal problems for Russia and also be a symbol of European unity.

What legal problems? Is russia going to get sued? ...while EU is literally stealing russian assets and sending weapons to kill russians?

The situation on tv is one thing, but the people are fed up with ever more expensive lives while sending billions to ukraine, and enough angry people means huge changes in politics. The last time germany was so fucked by outside forces as it is now, they elected that austrian painter guy, who actually made the country strong again... sadly it ended up in a war and another fuckup of germany.

You are obviously quite sympathetic to Putin’s viewpoint here and I’m not going to try and persuade you otherwise.

I’m merely pointing out that there are some reasons for Russia to have bombed the pipeline.

The Hitler reference is just weird.

> By the time the pipeline was bombed, it was clear that the EU wasn’t going to cave into Russian demands to stop supporting Ukraine.

it is clear that the ruling class didnt want to, but there was increasing pressure from the people of germany and also other parts of EU to approve nord stream 2.

And the US simply couldnt accept that the possibility that they would cave to pressure from the people(the horror). Its probably entirely possible that the germany/EU regime asked the US to do it, just to remove the possibility of them having to be accountable to their own citizens.

This is straight up ruSSian propaganda. I'm disgusted.

edit: assuming this wasnt /s

you got me, putin secretly sends me bitcoin, and photos of him riding horses shirtless, as I so desperately crave that.

What a marvellous argumentative tool you have, anything you disagree with that can in some way be classified as "russia might think this way", and you have a magical out where you percieve yourself to have won the argument. And with moral superiority too!

I have heard that putin recommends you breathe oxygen regularly, I would strongly recommend you cease listening to russian propaganda, and do the right thing here

I’d argue Putin is a winner. The Nordstream pipelines were essentially switched off money printing machines that could be switched on at any point if powerful Russians decided it was time to remove Putin. No longer the case now.

Both countries also heavily invested in Nordstream-2, and there were good economical reasons for that. Current sanctions are temporary, as well as this war, and if it haven’t been blown up, it would start working again in no time.

Once the dust settles, it will take less time to fix the pipeline than to repair Russia's international standing. That's true even if the pipeline is unsalvageable, because Russia certainly is.

The sanctions aren't going away until Putin is replaced by someone sane. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, do you?

I can easily imagine both a) countries restoring relationship with Russia with Putin and b) Putin by various reasons being replaced by another server of national capital, with some shifts in money, giving excuse to EU to reestablish relationship.

EU was buying gas and oil from Russia for the last 40+ years, they were okay with pumping Russia with billions of euros even after Crimea annexation (and they still pump some moneys during 2022), also funding Russian military industrial complex, that is now blowing up Ukraine. So I’m pretty sure that when dusts settles, Russia will come back as part of international community, maybe with a slightly different leadership.

I can easily imagine both a) countries restoring relationship with Russia with Putin

You have a vivid imagination, one that puts my own to shame.

It’s not unheard for “the West” to maintain good relationships and trade with countries engaged in armed conflicts or human rights violations, if there’re good economical and political reasons. So I won’t be surprised if after conflict has settled, “the West” will slowly restore relationship with Russia, maybe with a slightly different leadership (eg without Putin - but it doesn’t make much difference overall)

when can we replace the regimes in the west with someone sane?

After we make up a bunch of fairy tales about Nazis and invade Canada?

True. Fairy tales about WMDs and a million deaths in iraq is more civilised.

Whatabout

If that's all you've got -- and that is, indeed, all you've got -- then just pipe down and save the bandwidth. We didn't try to take over and annex Iraq. We got rid of a dictator. Should we have done that? No, of course not. But it's hardly comparable to what Putin is doing, and your value system is horribly broken if you think otherwise.

I never said whatabout anything lol. You were the one trying to downplay what happened in iraq just because the US graciously didn't annex it (which is not saying a lot when you destroy the country so completely that you guarantee it won't ever be a threat anymore). That's a completely arbitrary goalpost, that conveniently stops right at what your own side didn't do. It's exactly the equivalent of russian apologists arguing that "yeah we invaded a country, but at least it was to defend our direct borders and it wasn't invading and destroying a country on the other side of the world". How convenient.

I get that crying about whataboutism is the trendy way to deflect and be openly hypocritical. But at least do it when it makes sense, not when you get called out for downplaying warcrimes.

I think your value system is even more broken when you dismiss and downplay an entire region being destabilized for generations, a million lives lost and countless more ruined because your side did it "with good intentions", or because gasp someone said a hecking whataboutism.

> What possible reason would the Russians have to sabotage their own side of their won space craft?

Same reason why they blew up their own pipeline (they didn't but our propaganda must paint them as complete morons).

“The Russians”? No. “Some guy in Russia?” Lots of reasons why some guy in Russia might be mad and try and sabotage a Russian spacecraft.

OTOH, Russia also has a sordid history of unsubstantiated accusations of sabotage to cover up for their own incompetence.

Roscosmos sabotaging its own cosmonauts? I'd also be more deliberate with throwing around sound bites like "usual Russian incompetence". While I agree with there is a lot of cultural and political incompetence in Russia (and elsewhere) some incredibly advanced science and engineering has come fro Russia.

Didn't most of the advanced science and engineering come from the USSR?

USSR =! Russia. Majority of main advances came from the satellites, such as Ukrainians (Glushko, Korolev, chelomei, etc.).

Not to mention some of the early tech having German origin (same in the West).

I wasn't referring to the USSR. Had I wanted to refer to the USSR, I would have typed "USSR". My point is that the West doesn't have a monopoly on great ideas and innovation. The existing Russian (and others) state is not a conglomerate of incompetence, and has plenty of advanced engineering feats under her belt.

I am suggesting it is not just disingenuous, but unwise to be so dismissive of Russian capabilities, especially when the geopolitical atmospher is the way it is right now.

Majority of main advances came from cooperation and how education, science and engineering was organised and funded. So all achievements are Soviet achievements, not Russian/Ukrainian/Georgian/etc, saying otherwise has been a common political tool of nationalist in all post-ussr countries.

Yes this is the point I was making. Although, I wouldn't try to say "this was a Ukrainian achievement" – I still think you should lump most of them together as "Soviet" achievements. But calling them Russian seems just as misguided as calling them Ukrainian.

A lot of that depended on contributions from the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and minorities within Russia like the Russian Jews and Germans. Many of the latter have been leaving Russia in droves since the 1980s.

I understand the need to paint Russia like a country run by corrupt and incompetent people, in light of the current geopolitical events.

But, in doing so, at least try to be believable.

It's remarkable how post-soviet states are quickly forgetting that many of them (Baltics, Georgia, and Ukraine in particular) built the majority of their currently existing heavy industries and civilian infrastructure due to their placement in the highest supply category (out of three other less fortunate categories [1]) under USSR's planned economy. For years the the entire union had been allocating its resources and the best work labour to these regions, in strong accordance to the priorities defined by Politburo.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/s8jy8l/each_settle...

> is this just usual Russian incompetence?

I don't think there is an impression of that or really ever has been. Russia has successfully launched humans into space more regularly and at a lower cost than the US for the last 60 years. (Well until the last few years)

I think it's more likely that this is just an occurrence of something akin to the birthday paradox and sometimes things just happen. It's the narrative due to the current (horrendous) political direction of Russian foreign policy that then colours the interpretation of these events.

Edit: Your comment has been downvoted significantly and was briefly "dead" I think unfairly, and while I disagree with part of it and don't believe the sabotage hypothesis, you are asking the questions that most people will be asking. The reply's are a worthwhile discussion in my view, and so I vouched for it.

It wasn’t that long ago they drilled a hole in a Soyuz, then patched it with epoxy and sent it up anyway, only for the epoxy to come out and cause a leak.

As far as I can tell, the evidence for the hole being drilled then epoxied on Earth amounts to nobody wanting to believe the alternative (that it was drilled while in orbit.)

Here is the hole. Personally, I don't see any trace of epoxy in or around this hole: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Hole_in_...

(To be clear, it's the small hole, not the big one next to it. The small hole next to the paint marred by a slipping drill bit.)

The epoxy was applied on the outside and was later covered by insulation. Here is a picture from the EVA where they cut away the insulation and located it: https://i.insider.com/5c112efc4a8213310205a17b

I’ve worked with epoxy quite a bit, and delaminating is one of its failure modes. That is, sometimes it flakes off cleanly without leaving much behind.

Having said that, it’s hard to believe that there wouldn’t be traces of epoxy inside that very rough hole, or in the bare metal exposed by the drill bit. So it seems odd to me also.

Also not that long ago, they tried launching a Proton M which had the angular velocity sensors installed upside down: https://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html#culpri...

Looks like decades of rampant corruption and political violence are not exactly good for high-tech industry. Who would have thought?

Once in KSP Iinstalled MechJeb (a modded autopilot component) upsidedown and my rocket failed in precisely this way, trying to make a u-turn right off the launch pad. Pretty funny to see it happen IRL, since nobody got hurt.

I don't think you can attribute this failure to a political system. Space is hard. NASA's Genesis sample return capsule also failed due to an upside-down sensor[1].

Fun fact about the Proton M failure: the sensor was designed so that it could only be mounted correctly, but apparently it had been forced in the wrong way somehow. Possibly with a hammer. From [2]:

By July 13, investigators simulated the improper installation of the DUS angular velocity sensors on the actual hardware. As it turned out, it would be very difficult to do but not impossible. To achieve that personnel would need to use procedures and instruments not certified either by the design documentation or the installation instructions. As a result, the plate holding the sensors sustained damage. Yet, when the hardware recovered from the accident was delivered to GKNPTs Khrunichev, it was discovered that the nature of the damage to the plate had almost exactly matched the simulated version.

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9331-crashed-spacecra...

[2] https://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html#culpri...

'last 60 years' doesn't really mean much when it's been obvious in the past 2 decades or so that their capabilities have been deteriorating rapidly compared to what they once were.

They haven't sent an interplanetary science mission in decades, their next-generation vehicles are constantly delayed or unreliable, Nauka was an entire 12 years behind schedule and so on.

Now on top of that, they're under heavy sanctions and are experiencing further brain drain from people fleeing conscription. It's clear that they're having to cut more and more corners to keep up. Plus, for Russia it has only been 30 years, the time under the USSR should not be considered comparable considering that much of their aerospace talent was in/from Ukraine (which is also why Ukraine punched above its weight in the space sector).

Russia also simply hasn't invested into maintaining the necessary pool of talent. We're starting to get to the point where the people who had significant experience from the soviet space program will be starting to become less and less available.

> which is also why Ukraine punched above its weight in the space sector

In 1991 it was expected that independent Ukraine, a 52 million strong country, will basically be the next Spain.

What did it punch in the space sector in the last 30 years? They did indeed inherit a huge chunk of USSR industry and science and nothing went out of it.

Ukraine supplied engines for Vega's upper stage, co-developed the Antares and half of Firefly Aerospace's operations were in Ukraine office before the US forced them to divest from there. Considering that only a few months later Firefly would reach orbit, I think it reflects well on the capabilities Ukraine also must've had relative to their status as the poorest country in Europe.

They kept launching Tsyklon-2, Tsyklon-3, and Zenit-2 rockets. They developed Zenit-3 and Dnepr rockets from Soviet designs. The launches dropped off after 2014 since launch locations were Russian. Ukranian company builds the first stage for Antares rocket. They were working on Cyclone-4M rocket but war delayed if not canceled it.

> In 1991 it was expected that independent Ukraine, a 52 million strong country, will basically be the next Spain.

This was expected by who? At independence, Ukraine was one of the poorest countries in Europe, and it remains that way today.

This was expected by Ukrainians. They were talking about being the new France.

Ukraine fell behind even as far as their immediate neighbours are concerned.

The information about their participation in space programs were enlightening, though.

They’ve had a bunch of incidents on the ISS over the past couple of years.

This is outdated, unfortunately. The Russian space program has suffered from immense brain-drain, budget cuts, and corruption, all of which have worn it down over 30 years and resulted in vastly reduced quality control.

In the past handful of years, on ISS alone, there have been: * Progress coolant leak * Soyuz coolant leak * Nauka module rogue thruster sending entire station spinning out of control * Soyuz hull leak * Launch failure with two crew aboard * Various low-grade problems on older modules especially Zvezda

I might be forgetting something, that’s just off the top of my head. No, this amount of serious issues is not normal “space is hard” stuff, and nowhere near as many problems have happened with any of the other ISS partner countries.

This is not to mention a steady rise in unscrewed launch failures, especially for Proton but also for Soyuz. Russia was pissing away its dominant position in commercial launch long before sanctions.

The once-great Soviet space program is dying with the world’s longest whimper.

Why "unfortunately"? When space program of basically bigger size North Korea suffers of brain drain and incompetence, it's a good thing by all means (I'm Russian myself)

I mean that what the Russian state as a whole has become—including a space program that once made humanity proud—is unfortunate. The current Russian state (space program included) becoming an international pariah cannot happen soon enough, and I would love to see the other ISS partners think seriously about how to continue without Russia (not easy but doable—main capability that must be duplicated is the ability to reboost the station, which is hardly a big unknown problem).

That's like saying the Russian blown up the Nordstream pipeline to sabotage their own revenue stream.

A revenue stream that could only flow again if Putin were kicked out. Hard to imagine who might want a giant price on Putin’s head taken out.

Many do this mistake to consider "Russia" instead of just Putin, those two entities interests do not align, so shit that might not make sense for Russia to do might make perfect sense for Putin to do.

We had the cases where instead of admitting that their warship was hit Putin regime pushed the narrative that it was just Russian incompetence.

So for sure it makes no sense for Russia to want their popes sabotage, but I am not sure about Putin, I can't understand his thinking, wither I am missing some information or his mind got corrupted by his own propaganda.

It’s also a mistake to think that Putin is some kind of Czar with absolute ultimate power.

Please tell me who can stop Putin?

- the chances that the parliament can do it are zero

- the chances that the army can do it are small sicne he put in charge his incompetent but loyal people and has created his own military branch for his personal protection

- the chance that public protestsc could do it are also small

China has more influence on what Putin ca n\t do then Russians.

Putin doesn’t exist on his own and doesn’t act on his own. He has support from FSB, from capital, from right people there and there, he has influence. He can be removed and influenced by many many people. But you’re right with your assessments that nor parliament nor public protests can do shit with Putin and his goons.

It will not be easy for FSB to just remove him, they would need some convoluted plan and make sure someone would not tell Putin about it, on the other hand Putin can get any inconvenient individual poisoned or thrown of a window.

I could be wrong but FSB is kept in check by Putin private army branch, the main army is kept in check by the mercenaries, the mercenaries are controlled with money, the oligharchs are controlled with fear of FSB dudes killing them. So you would need all those to coordinate to eliminate Putin.

IMO largest changes would be a military intervention after Putin gives them some idiotic order like killing ethnic Russian civilians or some extreme suicide mission.

I have trouble imagining Russians wanting their own spacecraft to look bad.

It just doesn’t make sense.

It's a government space agency in a kleptocratic state, what other result would you expect?

Roscosmos has been under scrutiny for corruption and fraud for some time. I don't even think you could even attribute it to incompetence (on behalf of the professionals) because if you keep reducing funds and resources problems are going to manifest regardless.

I think resources in general are getting a little hard to find in Russia, especially for things like space ships. Most likely those resources are being diverted into making missiles, either officially, or through black market channels. Russia will fight until Moscow falls, it not a matter of if a Soyuz or two doesn't come home.

why would russia sabotage their own space station?

it would be a job for the US , just like with nordstream2, they were never able to make one and china recently made their own (smaller), so they are maybe jealous, or it does give the impression that Russia is a scientifically advanced country, that would go against the current dogma?

let's take a step back and appreciate how the west was never able to put something habitable into orbit for this long

impressive

As the resolver for a Manifold prediction market, I've been following this story closely for the last couple months. [0]

Back in December, HN user JanSolo wondered if the three astronauts assigned to the leaking Soyuz MS-22 might be evacuated via the Dragon Capsule. [1] Since the default evacuation plan was to send the next Soyuz MS-23 up early and unmanned, Dragon seemed unlikely...unless, of course, the coolant leak was due to a design or manufacturing defect affecting other Roscocosmos craft.

This latest Progress MS-21 news makes the defect hypothesis much more likely, in my view. A joint NASA-Roscocosmos investigation found that the original MS-22 coolant leak was caused by a micrometeroid about 1mm in diameter. I don't expect them to walk that back, so perhaps the defect makes these coolant lines more susceptible to puncture than before?

[0] https://manifold.markets/alangrow/will-the-three-iss-astrona...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33995082

This comment section looks ridiculous.

If the purpose of propoganda stories is to paint the Russians as untrustworthy to the Western world (hint: that is the purpose!) then it is surely effective.

Not sure why you are being downmodded, there's no need for "Russian" to be in the title here.

This is a very common trope from alt-right media. If the culprit is ever black, Muslim, or an immigrant, they will absolutely let you know in the headline.

There have been 5 major incidents at the ISS since 2018 that could have led to loss of the station if it were caught later. One of which was only ameliorated by a module running out of fuel.

The problem here appears to be that the quality standards of roscosmos is in steep decline.

This is why Russia is in the title.

Now if you want to draw the linkage between the Ukraine war and regressions to their space program, the evidence is certainly there, but I think this story stands quite well on its own.

Doesn't alt right love Russia and especially Putin? How did it get on your "black, Muslim, or an immigrant" shortlist?

Classic case of enemy of my enemy

Yes, the far-right in North America and Western Europe loves Russia.

There is no way someone quoting "the usual Russian incompetence" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764133) is asking in good faith…

Russia's performance in space in the last few years has been less than impressive. I don't think 'incompetence' is too strong a word, frankly.

If Russia does not wish to look untrustworthy to its ISS partners, it should probably look into increasing its quality control: two coolant leaks, a launch failure with crew aboard, a hull leak, a brand-new module that sent the station spinning out of control… it has not been a trust-building past few years for the Russian space program. All of these are concrete incidents, not propaganda, and not things that can be expected to “just happen” in such numbers.

From what I've heard these leaks were caused by a micrometeor impact, but I am not up there checking myself...

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/micrometeoroid-str...

When you start seeing repeated failures in the same place the micrometeorites theory looks less likely.

It was plausible for the first case. But when the second time it happened on the Russian section again one starts to wonder if there was more to the story. I.e. why have not micrometeorites hit equipment of other countries?

What has been happening to the Russian space agency is a travesty. From 2018 to 2022 the Director General of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, was an actual Sieg Heiling neo-Nazi. He was also a co-founder of the ultra-nationalist party Rodina that wants to ban Jewish organizations and buildings in Russia:

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/16057071016402984...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Rogozin

Imagine letting a Sieg Heiling neo-Nazi run the legacy of the Soviet space program.

It's easy to imagine because the US did just that with NASA, except with an OG-Nazi instead of a neo-Nazi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

von Braun didn't run US space program. He was in charge of rocket development. And why mention von Braun without mentioning the similar effort by the Soviets?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim

Tangentially: What purpose does ISS serve today? It cost $150 billion to get to this point, but is it doing anything which justifies the operating and maintenance costs?

vs. other uses of the money. On Earth, direct replacement with new in-orbit infrastructure/new station, or other space operations.

NASA plans to retire the International Space Station by 2031 by crashing it into the Pacific Ocean:

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/02/world/nasa-international-...

And it's already planning its replacement:

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-companies-to...

It's there to give the Space Shuttle program a reason to exist.

But the space shuttle program ended a decade ago?

That's the (sad) joke. The shuttle was one element of a larger plan, where the shuttle was an enabler of the broader plan but not really a useful end in itself (vs other rockets, etc.). The rest of the plan was cancelled before being built, but the shuttle existed. There was a mostly-post-hoc justification of military/IC missions (on orbit servicing of national security assets, and "nonconsensual servicing" of foreign/hostile objects on orbit...), but this was mostly turf protection. ISS was than mostly to compete with Mir, and then became some combination of "justify the shuttle we have at home" and then "jointness missions with Russia".

I say this as a huge space flight enthusiast: I believe the ISS has only symbolic value and serves a secondary function as a subsidy program for component producers. The same was largely true of the Space Shuttle program.

I also don't necessarily have any problems with that, unless it's siphoning away funds that could have been used to build up an actual orbital infrastructure or serves to further the impression that this is the reasonable maximum the public can expect from a human presence in space.

Since the Apollo program we have a history of hinting at, but then purposefully not following through on, the idea of expanding human civilization into space.

ISS is the reason SpaceX exists, for example. Without it, the government funded “commercial space” efforts and development help wouldn’t have happened and the other things spacex is doing and going to do wouldn’t have happened.

I have no idea whether the Crew Dragon contract rescued SpaceX financially or not, I'll take your word for it. However, I'm unsure why you're framing this as a counterpoint to my argument?

> I also don't necessarily have any problems with that, unless it's siphoning away funds that could have been used to build up an actual orbital infrastructure

ISS is/was being used as a first step in building “actual” orbital infrastructure. SpaceX was awarded $400M for the developmental of falcon 9 + dragon, phase two was paying for the actual subsequent launches which is ongoing.

“Rescued spacex” would be an odd way of putting it, developing then launching crew and cargo to iss is a huge part of their revenue which enables them to pursue other things like starlink and starship, etc. $2B in 2022 from NASA isn’t a rescue, it’s their business.

ISS isn’t an impressive end, it’s a necessary stepping stone which is enabling next steps like commercial space developing technology and companies, testing things in a relatively safe space relatively cheaply.

Science? Must every human endeavour generate profit?

It doesn't have to generate profit, but it does need to generate more science/better science than the next best alternative way to spend the money. (It's presumably not optimized solely for science, but also engineering and politics, both domestic and international, but it doesn't seem to be the most efficient way to accomplish what it accomplishes.)

The issue that comes up with 'efficiencies' in this context is that much of the money that has been spent at all on ISS-based science would probably not have been spent at all if it had to be done otherwise, because instead of a large up-front cost of the ISS + smaller cost of an experiment to be done inside or just tossed out an airlock, there would be no upfront cost and a large cost for a dedicated science satellite.

This is why Artemis is structured the way it is, the best way to guarantee that the US sticks to a commitment instead of every other president trashing the last one's work is to tie in so many international partners and so much large-scale up-front spending that it becomes too prestigious to cancel.

On top of that, there are lots of engineering benefits, where it's useful that we've learned the lessons from the ISS instead of needing to learn them later at the Moon or Mars or needing to have a sufficiently slow and expensive waterfall design process where they get figured out on the drawing board. Eg. simply being a destination for crewed spacecraft to go to is in itself useful as it creates a standard target to aim for. It allows SpaceX to discover that their toilet can leak urine into a compartment sometimes much faster because they're flying and refurbishing regularly.

It'd similarly be hard to quantify the benefit of things like regular resupply flights needed etc, considering that a big part of what helped SpaceX establish itself as a leader in the industry (and thus also giving rise to all of the other new launch companies and their potential technological improvements, private funding and cost reductions) was the ISS cargo resupply contract they won. Creating that regular demand has a similar effect on funding and costs as the emergence of megaconstellations as a viable project have had.

So, I'd say that ultimately the ISS is proving to have been worth the cost for the US. Without it acting as an easy destination, our space industry would be kinda like the SLS, absurdly expensive, very corrupt, barely usable and essentially non-existent (compared to the rest of the industry).

The purpose was to keep the Russian rocket program alive and out of the hands of the Iranians, Koreans and other bad actors. It was also a PR effort where the west could strongly subsidize other countries for international harmony and goodwill.

Given the current state of Russia and Iran, it failed.

But ironically it is now doing good science.

I’m all in favor of letting the Russians go their own way at this point.

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