PARIS, March 7, 2022 (EIRNS) – On Feb. 24, U.S. President Joe Biden announced the sanctions to answer “Russia’s Unprovoked and Unjustified Attack on Ukraine": “Between our actions and those of our Allies and partners, we estimate that we’ll cut off more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports. It will strike a blow to their ability to continue to modernize their military. It’ll degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.” Attacking the Russian space program is the most suicidal policy anybody could think of. Russia is not only a major space power, but most of the West’s own space missions are dependent on Russian goodwill.
The information site Engadget.org recalls, “The International Space Station (ISS) has, from its start, been a joint US-Russian effort. Originally born from a foreign policy plan to improve relations between the Cold War foes after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the conclusion of the Space Race, the International Space Station (ISS) would not exist if not for Russia’s collaboration. Soyuz rockets helped bring ISS modules into orbit and, following the Space Shuttle’s retirement in 2011, served as the only means of getting astronauts into orbit and back, at least until SpaceX came along. Of the station’s 16 habitable modules, six were provided by Russia and eight by the US (with the rest sent up by Japan and the European Space Agency). Just last summer, Russia successfully launched its largest ISS component to date, the 813-cubic-meter Nauka science module.”
“The Russian segment can’t function without the electricity on the American side, and the American side can’t function without the propulsion systems that are on the Russian side,” former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman noted to CNN. “So you can’t do an amicable divorce. You can’t do a conscious uncoupling.”