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Russia Bans U.S. From International Space Station: America Strikes Back
Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No, it's an International Space Station. But if Russia gets its way, it's going to be off-limits to the United States soon.
For weeks now, there have been rumblings about Russia wanting to ban the United States from using the ISS while the two countries wrangled over Ukraine. While that would probably violate international law, it may be feasible from a practical perspective. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin argued that "the Russian segment [of the ISS] can exist independently from the American one. The U.S. one cannot."
An even more immediate problem facing America is Russia's threat to cut off access to the RD-180 rocket engines that the United Launch Alliance (the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin uses in its Atlas V rockets. These are the big beasts that carry U.S. military satellites into space. They're critical to national security. But we've only got enough RD-180s stockpiled to keep ULA supplied for about another 22 months."
Right, and if we left it to the Russians, would it end up crashing back to Earth like the MIR space station???
(Yeah, I know that Skylab did too, but that's a different story.)
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