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Comment by sigmoid10 | Hacker News Reader

NASA still cooperates heavily with Roscosmos and American astronauts regularly fly in paid Soyuz seats. The latest one is Johnny Kim who launched in late April on Soyuz MS-27 from Baikonur and will stay on the ISS until december. And Christopher Williams is already scheduled for the next Soyuz mission.

China on the other hand will probably never happen because of the general political climate in the US and this administration in particular.

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Congress has forbidden NASA to cooperate with China for many years. It's been law since 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment

Also I believe that Russia isn't being paid for astronauts to fly on Soyuz. Instead, cosmonauts fly on Dragon. It's a like-for-like exchange which is mutually beneficial (both countries need the other's cooperation to keep the ISS operational, so these exchanges ensure that can continue if either Soyuz or Dragon are grounded for some reason.)

Correct. The US paid for the Soyuz flights that they owed Russian astronauts, because they had no means of bringing them to the ISS.

My understanding is Russia wants out of ISS cooperation. Whatever contract there is, it will expire soon, and may not be extended.

The ISS was built in the late 90s and China was already barred from joining back then.

> American astronauts regularly fly in paid Soyuz seats

It's a seat swap arrangement, no money is exchanged.

https://spacenews.com/nasa-extends-seat-barter-agreement-wit...

Swap means they still get something in return, even if it's not cash. It's not like it was ever free.

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