Comment by tcheard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tcheard | Hacker News Reader

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The Atlas V rocket built by the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was scheduled to be the rocket to launch the majority of missions for this USAF contract is build using Rocket Engines bought from NPO Energomash part of the Russian Space Agency, specifically led by Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister of Russia.

Obama issued an executive order sanctioning Dmitry Rogozin and any organization he is involved with. Given that ULA were buying rocket engines from an organization that Dmitry Rogozin is involved with, they would be breaching the executive order by doing so.

Now this doesn't the contact has been stopped yet, as ULA have stated that they already have a 2 year stock of the engines and the injunction doesn't stop any sale pre-injunction. But if no other rulings come up as to why the contract should be stopped, they will still need to figure out a way to fulfill the launches that they do not have engine stock for.

Rogozin tweeted a couple of days ago that US astronauts should go to space on a trampoline. It's interesting that a deputy PM can be so unprofessional as to say things like that in public, but that's modern Russian politics for you: top level bureaucrats saying embarassing things purely for internal consumption.

Rogozin's twitter timeline is pretty much designed to provoke US administration (he has Russian and English feeds, both equally ridiculous). It isn't just for "internal consumption" anymore. It's Cold War 2.0, kids, at least as Kremlin sees it. And Rogozin isn't some small potatoes in Russian admin.

I think a human rated Dragon/Falcon stack can't come soon enough. The last I read, the first crewed flight to the ISS was scheduled for the end of next year as part of NASA's "Commercial Crew integrated Capability" (CCiCap) program. I wonder if NASA will be pressured by congress to speed up the program given the situation with Russia.

Thank you very much for the very thoughtful reply and gives a bunch of color (also alluded to by 'pmorici').

So, would you say that the injunction would have been granted had the sanctions not in place? Or was this purely a result of the sanctions?

The full text of the order can be found here: http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/z-pdf-arch....

Note the courts dealing with SpaceX's filing is not complete, this is just an initial injunction based on one particular part of the filing.

This injunction was particularly because it was in breach of the sanctions placed on Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin, and would not have been ordered otherwise.

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