[HN Gopher] OneWeb will resume satellite launches with SpaceX as... ___________________________________________________________________ OneWeb will resume satellite launches with SpaceX as the launch provider Author : MPSimmons Score : 280 points Date : 2022-03-21 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (oneweb.net) (TXT) w3m dump (oneweb.net) | oxplot wrote: | One thing to keep in mind is that satellite design takes into | account, in no trivial amount, the specific ship that takes it to | orbit. It's therefore, not a simple switch to use a new ship for | existing hardware. Everything from G-force limits to fairing | payload geometry and weight characteristics and more affect | satellite design. | | Combine that with the long iteration development of the average | satellite maker, it's not always economical to switch to an | alternative launch provider, even if the new provider offers a | ride for less cost. This is an addition to the reasons such as | long term partnerships and discounts. | Robotbeat wrote: | Oneweb explicitly designed their satellite to be able to launch | on multiple launch vehicles | samwillis wrote: | I don't think this was an unexpected result of the situation with | Russia, there wasn't really any other options, but interesting to | see SpaceX launching a direct competitor to Starlink. I suppose | they always made it clear that they were not going to let their | investment in Starlink stop them launching competitors | constellations. | | I am still somewhat surprised by the UK governments investment in | OneWeb, I hope the strategy pays off and it becomes an important | national infrastructure project. My thoughts where that it may be | about providing a future proof network for the remote areas of | the UK but we aren't exactly a big country so I'm not convinced | that's the case. The rubbish that was written about it being a | route to our own GPS system after Brexit forced us to leave the | Galileo program was clearly all fluff to make it sound more | impressive and tie it to a post Brexit strategy in some way. | ufmace wrote: | I think it makes perfectly good sense for SpaceX. They've | always made it clear that their real business goal was | colonization of Mars based on optimizing the cost of transport | to space via reusability and design for manufacturability. | Everything else they've done is basically just a way to | monetize their current space travel capabilities in service of | funding the design and construction of what they really want to | do. Making Starlink as profitable as possible was never a goal, | just a way to make some more money off of their incredibly low | launch costs and probably also develop technology for | communicating between ground and spacecraft. So why not launch | a competitor too? It's just more launches and more funding for | them. | edgyquant wrote: | I have a nice dream that Elon will build rocket and space | enterprises, get them profitable, only to break them up and | go public to allow them to be independent corporations and | allowing real competition to begin (plus remove all his other | business interests from each companies mission) | | He could still rake in cash from their owned shares it would | just be them creating a real public space sector for the good | of humanity. This will never happen ofc, but I can dream. | eganist wrote: | > interesting to see SpaceX launching a direct competitor to | Starlink. | | Interesting, but entirely expected. They'd be investigated in a | heartbeat if they didn't. | manholio wrote: | SpaceX is an american company that is subject to the Sherman | act, which deals with domestic and interstate commerce. | OneWeb is an international competitor based in UK that has no | standing to make a complaint under the Sherman act. | | No similar antitrust provision or treaty exists in | international commerce; charges against a monopoly must be | brought within a certain national jurisdiction, SpaceX does | not have partners or subsidiaries that offer launch services | outside the US. | simonh wrote: | I'm sure Oneweb will have a US subsidiary and offer service | to US customers through it. They manufacture their | satellites in the US. There's no way they wouldn't have | standing. | manholio wrote: | But that subsidiary would need to build and operate a | satellite constellation, not simply distribute internet | services or act as a purchasing agent of a foreign | competitor. | tomc1985 wrote: | Stone Brewing does distribution for a lot of smaller local | breweries | | I'd like to think that cutthroat competition is not the only | way of doing business | newaccount2021 wrote: | US DoD and NASA now have effectively SPOF reliance on | SpaceX...they aren't going to be "investigated" for anything | NotEvil wrote: | I don't think so. That's not anti-competive. Its like intel | refusing to make amd chips on intel fabs. Perfectly logical | simonh wrote: | Intel doesn't sell fab services, so it's not an issue. | However if you offer and advertise a service at a listed | price (as SpaceX does), you can't always refuse to provide | that service to specific potential clients just because it | serves your commercial interests. It very much depends on | the specifics of the service and market competitive | situation. | bpye wrote: | I think that only works when there is other capacity | available. If Intel was suddenly the only fab available to | western companies but they refused to fab AMD chips I | suspect that would result in intervention. | j_walter wrote: | Not so sure. AMD is always free to build a fab to make | their own chips. It's perfectly reasonable to refuse to | serve a direct competitor...or offer the service at a | huge expense that would make it unreasonable for the | competitor. | simonh wrote: | There is extensive legal precedent, and numerous outright | laws in many jurisdictions restraining anticompetitive | practices such as this. | ericmay wrote: | I get what you're saying, but SpaceX is a bit more | public/private than Intel, and likely the government would | be upset and better fund competitors if SpaceX was | monopolizing launch capabilities. Their strategy (at least | for now, as I would understand it) is to be neutral for | launching cargo/services/etc. - likely OneWeb is paying | more to deploy than SpaceX pays itself internally for | Starlink deployments as well. | mjevans wrote: | Presumably 'internally' Starlink is seen as a major | recurring customer who has agreed to an exclusive | purchase contract for better rates; and also to take on | higher risk mission slots (like the 12th launch of | rockets which are making new records for launches). | Teever wrote: | You're saying that SpaceX, a privately owned company that | has some contracts with different parts of the US gov't | would find themselves in trouble with the government if | they refused to launch satellites from a foreign owned | company? | | And you're saying that the government would go out of | their way to fund alternatives to SpaceX because of this? | | That seems a bit implausible. | eganist wrote: | "foreign-owned" in this case is still the UK i.e the | closest ally we have today. So I don't think you'll see | the same sort of American protectionism you might see | with e.g a Chinese competitor. | | Therefore... yeah, nothing's stopping the DoJ (guessing | the FTC would make the referral?) from pushing an | antitrust matter. But I certainly can't say for sure; I'm | not a lawyer. | simonh wrote: | Foreign owned maybe, but the satellites are manufactured | in the US. There are US commercial interests at stake in | Oneweb, and the services it intends to offer to US | clients too. | Teever wrote: | Where's the law that says that an American business must | sell their product or service to a foreign company? | eganist wrote: | > Where's the law that says that an American business | must sell their product or service to a foreign company? | | As I understand it, it's covered by the various antitrust | laws in the United States. And it's not so much a | "foreign company" thing so much as it's an unfair | advantage for any one company thing. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law | | Again, not a lawyer. But my lay reading would say that it | would feel comparable to the action the feds took against | Microsoft for trying to stifle Netscape. But I'm sure | there are far better analogues. | gbear605 wrote: | Under antitrust law, SpaceX would theoretically be made | to split off StarLink from the launch business so that | the launch business would have no incentive to prioritize | StarLink over other sattelites. | | In practice though, antitrust laws aren't enforced very | strictly and government contractors are treated | leniently, so probably nothing would happen. | Teever wrote: | How? | | SpaceX has no stranglehold over the market. | cromka wrote: | Is SpaceX a subsidiary of Starlink? Cause if not then it's | not that logical to me... | detaro wrote: | Starlink is not a separate company, it's a product of | SpaceX. | InTheArena wrote: | I thin Ukraine is proving to national governments exactly how | important LEO constellations are. I was pretty critical of the | decision of the UK gov't to bail out OneWeb, I think we may | look back and say that it was a dramatically fore-sighted | decision by the government. | | The UK still has a insane amount of geographical dispersion, | even in their post-empire state. Having the ability to ensure | that no one can turn off the lights on their communications is | important. | walrus01 wrote: | > interesting to see SpaceX launching a direct competitor to | Starlink | | It isn't, exactly, a oneweb terminal is MUCH too big and | expensive for an ordinary residential consumer or small | business. It's two active tracking parabolic antennas with | their own RF chains in radomes, takes up about a 2.5 meter long | x 1 meter wide space on a roof or similar. | | More than 1.5 years ago oneweb pivoted to a plan to sell high | capacity uplink services for regional ISPs and telecoms on a | business to business basis only. The oneweb terminal is still | much larger and more costly than the recently announced | starlink premium. | | oneweb in its current plan to sell services to ISPs currently | dependent on geostationary is more like a cheaper/slightly | smaller o3b terminal. | Stevvo wrote: | I had been talking with AST Group about getting OneWeb set up | on my boat and the size of the terminals was a blocking | issue; only place I could put them would be shading solar | panels much of the day. | walrus01 wrote: | Unless you have a gargantuan yacht the monthly recurring | cost is going to be prohibitive anyways, I'd be shocked if | it's less than $1200/mo to start. | Stevvo wrote: | Right, but that is cost I could potentially swallow; | worth it work from paradise anchorages with little other | connectivity. You don't pay rent at anchor. | | What I will probably end up doing this summer is a stern- | to mooring to some trees with a Starlink terminal sitting | on the beach with an Ethernet cable running out to the | boat. | FDSGSG wrote: | > stern-to mooring to some trees with a Starlink terminal | sitting on the beach with an Ethernet cable running out | to the boat. | | How come? What's the problem with having the Starlink | terminal on the boat? | Stevvo wrote: | It doesn't deal too well with all the movement; it works | sometimes but not reliably. I don't know if it is only | the rolling or also the lateral swinging around the | anchor that throws it off. | | In perfectly flat seas it might work fine, but you don't | often find yourself in those conditions. | strainer wrote: | Seems 'marine stabilized platforms' of many specs and | sizes are advertised. Surprising if none suitable to | mount a starlink on. | Stevvo wrote: | A catamaran would be a nice "marine stabilized platform" | nickvanw wrote: | If you're that close to the beach that you can string a | cable, do you not have 4G LTE/5G services available? With | a high-gain antenna I would imagine you could get speeds | and latency that would rival Starlink in many places. Of | course, this will vary wildly and depends on how remote | you are mooring. | Stevvo wrote: | It just depends; every anchorage is different however | it's not uncommon to be cruising in area with great | coverage, but once you lay anchor you find yourself | without service because the rocks of the bay you chose to | shelter you from sea waves also shelter you from radio | waves. | BHSPitMonkey wrote: | Surely Starlink's addressable market is a superset of | OneWeb's? A fully-launched LEO constellation will make many | of OneWeb's customers' use cases obsolete. | | That said, as others have pointed out, whether OneWeb does or | doesn't use SpaceX as a launch provider doesn't really change | that outcome (whatever it happens to be). | GuB-42 wrote: | For me, I consider the main reason for Starlink to exist is to | make use of SpaceX launch capacity. SpaceX focus on assembly | line production techniques and reusable rockets to bring down | costs per launch only make sense if you have a lot of stuff to | launch. With Starlink, they create their own demand. | | SpaceX is probably very happy to have a "competitor" paying for | launches. By itself, I have some doubts about the profitability | of Starlink anyways. | __d wrote: | This 100%. | | SpaceX is really the only provider who can credibly pick up | the former Soyuz business in the next few years. And they | need _a lot_ more business. Especially once Starship's | capacity becomes available. Right now, there's just not | enough up-mass or down-mass demand. | thereddaikon wrote: | It was definitely a problem in the past, hence why they | originally went with the Russians. But since then OneWeb has | been bought by the British government so while its a similar | tech I don't think they are strictly competitors anymore. | tobylane wrote: | Perhaps the government are using it as a cheaper way to provide | super fast internet (flexibly defined) to the last 1% or so who | can't be affordably reached by standard exchange - green | cabinet - premises measures. | paxys wrote: | AWS hosts a huge amount of direct Amazon competitors. | Explicitly banning certain competitors in an unrelated business | would be pretty damaging to the credibility of a platform. | duxup wrote: | Yeah someone else is going to take that money. Another | competitor taking it would potentially be more damaging. | fffernan wrote: | not to mention you can use that as a way to spy and choke | your competition out when they rely on you | ChuckMcM wrote: | Basically this, for SpaceX it is all win, they get to say | "see? We are agnostic and will launch competitors." And at | the same time the profit they make from launching OneWeb | satellites can be invested in growing their own business. | | I tried to explain this sort of thing to Intel once about | opening up their fabs (before Pat Gelsinger took over as | CEO). Selling access to your infrastructure for profit lets | you invest in better infrastructure without using profits | from the things you sell using that infrastructure | internally. | heavenlyblue wrote: | Yeah especially if you know that the competitor's product | is inherently worse than yours (OneWeb vs Starlink). | mmaunder wrote: | Good analogy. As long as oneweb can differentiate they'll be | fine. And as long as Starlink has vertically integrated | launch, they'll always have price as a differentiator. | | I would say that aws is a rich substrate upon which many | businesses can be built - many of which Amazon simply arent | interested in getting into. Space ISP is one business and the | price/bandwidth ratio is one of the few differentiators and | that alone may decide the winner. | | So oneweb better get creative about what they're layering on | top of their pipes. | h2odragon wrote: | jonny_eh wrote: | Avoids accusations of anti-trust. | lobocinza wrote: | It's a positive outcome for SpaceX/Starlink. The former will | increase revenue while the latter will have a cost advantage | regarding their main competitor. There's no need for then to | draw bad publicity. | iSloth wrote: | It does seem a little odd when SpaceX have Starlink, surely these | two are each other's main competition. | pkaye wrote: | Musk's long term goal is taking humans to Mars and everything | else is a stepping stone to getting there. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I wonder if OneWeb has no other choice. I'm sure executives at | SpaceX realize that Starlink would be the superior product and | they don't stand to lose that many potential customers to | OneWeb. I bet they figure they can make more money from the | launch costs than potential impact of competition from OneWeb. | | I also wonder if this will end up helping OneWeb. I can't | imagine using Soyuz 2.1 rockets is cheaper than paying for | reusable Falcon 9's. | gameswithgo wrote: | If OneWeb wins, SpaceX makes a ton of money launching for | them, and doesn't have to bother running an internet company. | bee_rider wrote: | I wonder to what degree satellite internet is winner-takes- | all. | | They are competing for customers but, at least last I | checked, they weren't putting a ton of bandwidth into orbit | (compared to existing land based stuff). Maybe they'll both | end up just selling as much as they can produce. | wongarsu wrote: | It's probably less winner-takes-all than ground based | internet. At scale, putting infrastructure into space is | a much lower barrier to entry than putting a fiber line | into every household. | | The limiting factor will be spectrum allocations. You | only have so much bandwidth per area, giving an advantage | to those that either have more directional antennas or | more spectrum available. | hedora wrote: | Fiber to the home doesn't have any technical barriers, | but localized corruption creates massive barriers to | entry. (It's much easier to do fiber to the home in rural | areas than in US metros) | | Satellite internet has the opposite problem. If it ends | up winning it will be a testament to dysfunctional | governments around the world. | wongarsu wrote: | And if OneWeb fails, SpaceX still made good money launching | them. And if OneWeb is kind of successful and a duopoly | between StarLink and OneWeb develops, SpaceX makes money | from both companies. | | Selling shovels is a great strategy, even if you own a gold | mine. | manquer wrote: | The only other affordable choice could have been ISRO with | PSLV , there was some merits to this as oneweb is owned | partly by Bharti an Indian telecom major. | | However that was always a long shot, Russia collaborates | deeply on the Indian space and missile programs. The | cryogenic 4th stage is still a Russian engine on GSLV, ISRO | won't likely risk that partnership as America has always | refused any tech because of dual concerns, and ISRO also is | not very expandable on launch capacity so it would not be | easy even if they wanted to. | panick21_ wrote: | Looking at the launch rates of Indian rockets, its pretty | easy to realize that they have no way to simply launch | more. They build rockets for specific project and have very | low launch rates. | | They can't simply build 6 extra rockets in a few years. | manquer wrote: | I agree they cannot expand that much that fast, which was | my second point. | | They wouldn't be very keen either way, as ISRO's primary | objective is their research missions while there is some | drive to have commercial operations it is not that | important to them. | | However it was also possible that Bharti (and U.K. | government ) could have pulled enough strings to get ISRO | to agree, so won't have been that surprised if they had | partnered. | thinkcontext wrote: | They might have been able to get a launch or 2 out of ISRO | but they don't have the capacity to build rockets that | fast. | cfcosta wrote: | Starlink is a money cow, but having your competitor rely on you | for the most expensive part of the job sounds like a great | proposition for SpaceX. | | For OneWeb, they just don't have other options anymore. | joering2 wrote: | Starlink is a money cow ? | cowmix wrote: | Will be (or that's the hope). | adfgadfgaery wrote: | I think you misspelled "money pit". It is currently burning | money and will continue doing so for the foreseeable future. | According to SpaceX's internal communications, the current | approach is unsustainable. It requires future launch vehicles | to make sense financially. | | https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-responds-leaked-email- | war... | | I don't think satellite internet is promising even once the | constellation is up there, but that's another matter. | | P.S. The expression is "cash cow". | Robotbeat wrote: | Satellite Internet is already a multi-billion dollar | industry before you have inexpensive and low latency | service provided by launch vehicles (and satellites) a | tenth to a hundredth the cost. | | But sure, buy into Musk pretending it's desperate to try to | motivate his workforce. The SpaceX Steamroller continues | apace. | adfgadfgaery wrote: | >Satellite Internet is already a multi-billion dollar | industry before you have inexpensive and low latency | service provided by launch vehicles (and satellites) a | tenth to a hundredth the cost. | | It is currently a money pit. It is a simple fact that | right now it requires huge expenses in launches, R&D, and | subsidized terminals and makes practically no revenue. | SpaceX has itself stated in internal communications that | their current satellites and current launch systems are | not viable. | | I don't believe it ever will make any money--cellular | networks do the same job better--but it _definitely_ won | 't make any money in the next few years. | | >But sure, buy into Musk pretending it's desperate to try | to motivate his workforce. | | So it is your opinion that he was lying to his employees | to coerce them into working overtime over the holidays | out of fear of losing their jobs? I fail to see how | that's an improvement. Either the situation is | legitimately desperate or the work environment is | abusive. | kortilla wrote: | > SpaceX has itself stated in internal communications | that their current satellites and current launch systems | are not viable. | | Yes, you're commenting on the Musk email to motivate | starship. | | > I don't believe it ever will make any money--cellular | networks do the same job better | | No they don't, because they don't exist with good | coverage in most of the geographic US. I live ~30 miles | from a major city and my internet options are terrible | cell backed plans that have gnarly data caps and poor | throughput. | | Your viewpoint is understandable but it's completely out | of touch with the reality of what exists today. I'm on | the starlink waitlist and $100/mo for uncapped 50mbps in | my location has absolutely no competition from the cell | networks, terrestrial wireless, nor geo stationary | providers. | | > So it is your opinion that he was lying to his | employees to coerce them into working overtime over the | holidays out of fear of losing their jobs? I fail to see | how that's an improvement. Either the situation is | legitimately desperate or the work environment is | abusive. | | Yes, it's likely the latter. Starship didn't exist when | starlink was started. The numbers didn't change. | mst wrote: | Being a UK resident I often have to remind myself that | the UK and continental Europe's level of cellular | coverage is something of an outlier. | | The whole of the UK is, after all, slightly smaller than | Oregon. | adfgadfgaery wrote: | Robotbeat wrote: | Musk is kind of bipolar when it comes to these things, he | does run the company extremely aggressively in a growth | mode leaving little margin for a breather (always | charging into something more ambitious), and SpaceX does | have a sort of reputation for burnout. Yeah, I DO think | Musk was exaggerating the risk to try to get his workers | to work harder. (He also pushes himself, which doesn't | totally change the fact that SpaceX workers are often at | risk of burnout.) | hedora wrote: | But, but, it will scale globally to millions of users! | That's more than I can count, and almost enough to saturate | one medium sized metro area! | | If local ISP's can eke out a living on that sort of revenue | stream, I don't see why a global satellite network and | launch infrastructure can't. | | /s | ldargin wrote: | It's not odd. They'll get paid for it. The money is still | green. | manquer wrote: | Not that odd, oneweb sells b2b only , spaceX does mostly b2c | and some b2b. | | Also spaceX launched iridium next gen satellites as well. | | OneWeb (and iridium) will just operate in their own markets . | | Iridium for example could work in different devices than | starlink as they are not LEO and do not need the complex phased | array setup starlink needs | nradov wrote: | Iridium constellation is in LEO. The ground terminals are | able to use simpler antennas mainly because the data rate is | much lower. | manquer wrote: | Yes, that was incorrect, they are at 780KM orbit, I was | thinking Inmarsat who use GEO. | | Phased Array does help in improving signal strength(and | bandwidth) by focusing on the orbital plane only, however I | thought since Iridium uses L-Band(1-2GHz) and SpaceX uses | Ku-Band(12-14Ghz), there is additional dish size required | anyway and also rain fade issues meant higher strength is | required in Ku to operate well. | headmelted wrote: | Not really. | | Starlink is their main competition, not SpaceX. | | This just seems practical and in everyone's best interest. | SpaceX get another recurring paying customer, OneWeb get their | sats up. | | This is more common than you'd think when companies are large | enough to have products in so many different categories. | | As an example: Amazon runs Prime Video, but also hosts the | infrastructure for Netflix, which to my knowledge Netflix has | always been happy with despite relying on a direct competitor | for their service. | yodelshady wrote: | Samsung will happily sell Apple parts. | | If you have a competitive advantage in launching, why limit | your exploitation of that? Worst case, you find out that your | satellite engineers were coasting off that advantage. Best | case, you make money proving they aren't. | | Plus you're now antitrust-proof, if that's ever a thing again. | taf2 wrote: | It'll be great to see these launch on broomsticks. In all | seriousness, I wonder if this ends up saving or costing oneweb | ... I guess they really don't have much bargaining power in this | case so kind of curious... | takk309 wrote: | If SpaceX were to deny OneWeb the launch space, or charge an | excessive fee as compared to other commercial launches, would | that have run afoul of anti-trust laws? Seems to me that SpaceX | should not be able to be picky about what they launch as long as | the cost is paid (within technical limitations, of course). | atty wrote: | I don't think that we should be essentially punishing spacex | for their massive success by suddenly telling them they're | required to take every customer at government-approved prices. | SpaceX isn't a utility, and no one/no government has a right to | deploy their technology in space. | IMSAI8080 wrote: | I don't think he was suggesting a government regulated price, | I think he was meaning not charging above the usual | commercially offered price. Unlike other operators SpaceX | launches have a retail price. They have a tool on their | website where they will give you a quote for launching a | satellite. | mooktakim wrote: | This could actually save them money | kobalsky wrote: | these guys probably talked with and turned down a spacex | proposal in the past. these are multi-billion dollar businesses | and that's basic due-diligence. | | spacex has better leverage now, there's no chance in hell they | went home with a better deal. | geocrasher wrote: | This is a _massive_ growth opportunity for SpaceX. Launching | competitors is not only good press but good business. Blue Origin | has yet to even deliver orbital booster engines. SLS is... uh... | well it 's SLS. There are other orbital launch options in the US, | but they are a heck of a lot more expensive than a Falcon 9 | launch. | | It would not surprise me if SpaceX started offering a stand-in | for the Russian engines as well. I wouldn't expect that they'd | sell Raptor engines to competitors, as those engines are very | much their Special Sauce- but they have the experience to make an | orbital booster engine, and right now that's a pretty unique | opportunity in the US. | sebazzz wrote: | > It would not surprise me if SpaceX started offering a stand- | in for the Russian engines as well. | | Would they? Selling an engine is different to using an engine | internally. | geocrasher wrote: | Would they? I don't know. Could they? Likely. Could they do | it while protecting the IP that makes their engines so | throttleable and reliable to restart? No idea. | Robotbeat wrote: | Not really a big growth opportunity. operating telecomm | satellites itself is a much bigger market than building them | which is a bigger market than launching them and that is a | bigger market than just providing the engines. | jakswa wrote: | I assume by "operating telecomm satellites" you mean | operating starlink? Last I read, SpaceX hoped to spin | starlink out into a separate business, and even IPO it. So in | the long run, it didn't seem like SpaceX wanted to count on | the starlink market revenue. I'd be curious to hear that this | is outdated/wrong now. It was interesting at the time because | Musk has said he intends for SpaceX to stay private forever. | Cerium wrote: | If you are staying private and want the flexibility that | gives you, it makes sense to me to spin out and IPO | successful businesses. That lets you convert private equity | into public and leave your core business unencumbered with | additional logistics. | secondcoming wrote: | Did they get the satellites back from Russia? | coder543 wrote: | Not yet, if at all.[0] | | > The company isn't sure what happened to the spacecraft or if | they'll ever be returned. "The thing about the satellites is | honestly they're the least of our problems," Chris McLaughlin, | chief of government, regulatory, and engagement at OneWeb, | tells The Verge. "We make two a day in the factory in Florida. | So we can find ways to get a resilient solution." | | [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/21/22988867/oneweb-spacex- | la... | trollied wrote: | It wouldn't surprise me if they never get them back. The | Russians would be wise to try and extract the software on | board, just in case there are any private keys, or other | useful things. | MPSimmons wrote: | Suppose they DO get their satellites back from Russian. How | long do you think it would take their engineers to go over the | satellites to determine that nothing had been tampered with, | and to approve them for flight? | | I suspect it would probably be faster to launch the next | flight's worth while reworking these and throwing away any | Trusted Platform chips. | wedn3sday wrote: | Im still curious about this as well. I wonder if their | insurance policy categorizes being seized during war time by a | hostile government as "force majeure". | hedora wrote: | Schedule delay and engineering challenges are going to dwarf | the cost of a few unlaunched satellites. | tempnow987 wrote: | I always thought of oneweb has a kind of govt boondoggle project | for the UK. | | These are the projects that aren't commercially able to attract | funding (which in this day is a bit wild) but have some weird | pitch that gets a government somewhere to jump on them. | | I believe the UK claims this will result in jumping the UK to the | forefront of space commercialization? I thought secretly that | oneweb was actually maybe making the sats in the US and the UK | mfg of the sats was basically just govt hype? Anyone know the | real scoop? | telmnstr wrote: | The origin of OneWeb was that the founder approached Elon Musk | with the OneWeb idea and an agreement was signed. Not sure what | role SpaceX was supposed to take, but at some later point Elon | bailed and started a competing service called Starlink. | | The OneWeb founder posted a photo of the signed agreement on | Twitter some years ago, dumping on Elon Musk. | | The original OneWeb founder is no longer involved and has some | other space startup now. | | Originally Blue Origin and Virgin were supposed to be the | launch capability but neither can put anything in space. | | Here is the tweet. OneWeb was originally called WorldVu | | https://twitter.com/greg_wyler/status/1116101020675977218?la... | iso1631 wrote: | Virgin Orbit can put things into space, although very low | payload - you might have enough capacity to put one oneweb | satelite into orbit at a time -- wikipedia says 500kg to | 500km, Oneweb are 150kg at 1200km. | | If 1 Satellite per launch, that would be 220 launched on | LauncherOne at a cost of $2.6b (wikipedia costs), if Virgin | Orbital could scale quickly enough (and if it can get 150kg | to 1200km) | kmlx wrote: | > These are the projects that aren't commercially able to | attract funding (which in this day is a bit wild) | | here you go: | | > On 3 July 2020, the Government of the United Kingdom and | Sunil Mittal's Bharti Global (formerly a partner of OneWeb) | announced a joint plan to invest US$500 million each for equal | stakes in OneWeb Global, approximately 42% each; the rest would | be held by other creditors including Softbank. | | > In July 2020, Hughes Network Systems invested US$50 million | in the consortium. | | > In January 2021, a further funding round raised $400 million | from SoftBank and Hughes Network Systems, with SoftBank getting | a director seat on OneWeb's board. This brought available | funding to $1.4 billion | | > In June 2021, Oneweb raised an additional US$500M from Bharti | Global, increasing Bharti's holding to 38.6% | | > In August 2021, Hanwha Systems invested $300 million to | purchase an 8.8% share in OneWeb | | from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb | ID1452319 wrote: | The satellites are made in the USA, by, ironically, Airbus | Space and Defence (who's largest shareholders are the French | and German governments). OneWeb have said they will move | manufacturing to the UK, but this was stated in a Select | Committee meeting, so could well be simply blowing smoke up the | collective 'arrises of their investors. | kmlx wrote: | it's owned by multiple parties, with the UK Gov a minority | shareholder, so i don't get what's ironic about that | statement. | tempnow987 wrote: | The UK govt was the key investor in terms of bailing them | out. | | https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/07/uk-acquires-oneweb/ | | From the UK's own website: | | https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-to- | acquire-... | | https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-secures- | sat... | | "This deal gives us the chance to build on our strong | advanced manufacturing and services base in the UK, | creating jobs and technical expertise." | | The issue I have is they keep on describing the network as | "cutting edge" without describing the breakthrough features | of the project as well as a lot of talk about building up | the UK sat mfg base, but of all the companies they pump | half a billion pounds into, they choose one where at least | SOME of the work is in the US. | vaxman wrote: | Elon is a winner, even supports competitors building EVs so it's | not surprising he supports competition in the LEO consumer | communications market. If Apple had bought them when they still | could have afforded it, I wonder if President Musk would have | changed Apple or if Apple would have changed Musk? Ah well, | eventually we will all have Starlink tPhones and tPads and will | stop pondering such questions. | perihelions wrote: | Galileo too, quite likely. | | https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1505879400641871872 (Eric | Berger / Ars Technica) | | - _" Notable: Important space officials in Germany say the best | course for Europe, in the near term, would be to move six | stranded Galileo satellites, which had been due to fly on Soyuz, | to three Falcon 9 rockets."_ | | - _" This will almost certainly be resisted by France-based | Arianespace. However it may ultimately be necessary because there | are no Ariane 5 cores left, and the new Ariane 6 rocket is | unlikely to have capacity for a couple of years."_ | pixl97 wrote: | This war is SpaceX's black friday. While everyone else was | pissing off using old technology, SX was moving ahead (not | counting small launch providers). | labrador wrote: | The Russian space program was the most impressive thing to me | about Russians, so to see it destroyed before my very eyes | saddens me. Russians are quite clever about making do with | little, but I don't see how a declining country like Russia is | today can compete with the Indian or Chinese space programs, who | are also doing amazing things that don't get a lot of press in | America. | gameswithgo wrote: | Yes, the decline russia will face is tragic, and for what? At | best they will own some land that has had all the buildings and | infrastructure ground to dust and citizens who have all been | murdered. Russia is spending tremendous resources to destroy | more resources, but physical and social. It is the stupidest | thing I've seen in my life. | icu wrote: | Before I begin to offer a different view, please allow me to | say that I in no way condone what is happening. | | So why is Putin invading Ukraine now? There are several | logical reasons if you understand Russian history, geography, | psychology and demography. | | In terms of history, in the past 500 years, Russia has been | invaded several times from the west. Specifically, Moscow has | been attacked and conquered six times in its history by | foreign armies, and usually via the same routes. This is also | where geography plays an important role in understanding the | Russian invasion. | | In terms of geography, the Carpathian Mountains are a natural | land defence between the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea. | Indeed, in the days of the USSR, under the Warsaw Pact, the | Russians could project military power in the land gaps either | side of the Carpathian Mountains on Baltic and Black Seas. | This is where NATO expansion has worried the Russians | because, post the USSR, I speculate they feel Moscow is | exposed, and is being encircled by NATO. | | I also speculate the psychology of the Russian leadership is | one of paranoia of land invasion, and they want to push out | territory (or at least project military power) to fight an | invasion from the historical routes Russia has been invaded | from. Post-communist Russia has been doing just this and is | why Crimea was effectively annexed by Russia (because they | wanted to project naval power into the Black Sea). | | From a US perspective we like to think that the US was the | biggest factor in the Allied win of WWII, but little thought | is given to how important the Russians were and how many | Russians lost their lives. This is where, most mainstream | media has completely omitted the rise of far-right violence | and politics in Ukraine. No one in the West wants to think | they are supporting Nazis even if they are fending off the | Russians. Please note that I am not saying that all | Ukrainians are far-right, however I speculate that the | Russians do care about the rise of the far right in Ukraine | (as it is along their border), and from their perspective see | it as stopping the rise of another WWII Nazi-Germany type | situation. | | Lastly, demography plays a part because Russia has had | several 'baby busts', that is not enough babies have been | born. I speculate that the Russian leadership believes that | if Russia does not plug the geographic routes for invasion | now, it never will. | | Sadly, I also don't see Russia stopping with Ukraine. If the | Russians will stop at nothing to gain geographic security | this puts Russia in a direct confrontation with NATO member | states. I also worry about the second order consequences, | like the loss of life and suffering that will happen due to a | loss of Ukrainian wheat crops, and the loss of global crops | due to sanctions on fertilizers from Russia. | panick21_ wrote: | The idea of land invasion is laughable. I mean seriously, | Germany was basically not even spending anything on their | defense. | | The idea that NATO would get its finger out of its ass to | do that is basically impossible. | | And even so, that ignore nuclear power. | | I know more about Russian history then most people and was | interested in the topic before this war, and Russia | certainty has interest there. But strategically this was | the worst single plan imaginable. | [deleted] | tomjen3 wrote: | >In terms of history, in the past 500 years, Russia has | been invaded several times from the west. Specifically, | Moscow has been attacked and conquered six times in its | history by foreign armies, and usually via the same routes. | This is also where geography plays an important role in | understanding the Russian invasion. | | If I was saying to somebody we should invade Russia they | would understand that it was a joke, because nobody gets | away with invading Russia. Nobody. It never ends well. | Russia is not the place people go make a name for | themselves as conquerors. It is the place conquerors go to | die. | asah wrote: | more details on Russian demographics... | | https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP162.html | ufmace wrote: | I see you're getting a lot of pushback on this. IMO, this | guy knows what he's talking about. Not in the sense that | it's absolutely correct. In the sense that this is what | Russian Nationalists actually believe and think. | | Keep in mind, the Russians that think like this mostly only | speak Russian. If they speak any other language also, they | choose to spend most of their time in the Russian-language | world. They consider Russia their motherland, and aren't | about to leave to nations they consider foreign and hostile | just because things might be tough for a while. They're not | listening to Western news even when they were allowed to, | and they don't know or care much what Westerners think. | | Are such types of people "ignorant", "uncultured", and | whatever else you might call them? Kind of, yeah. But what | nation can survive long without any such people, especially | in the face of the invasions they've faced in the last few | hundred years. | | These are the people who are Putin's base and make up most | of the Russian elite. They're also the ones that will | decide whether he stays in power or goes. They really do | think that those uppity Ukrainians had it coming, don't | know their place, have no business considering themselves a | country and cozying up to Nato, etc. I'm pretty sure if he | does end up getting the boot, it will be because his | backers are horrified at how much he let the once-mighty | Red Army degrade and how vulnerable he let them become to | the West, not because they realized that Ukraine deserves | to be independent after all. | | The trouble is, Putin and his crew spewed a little too much | propaganda, and believed it a little too hard. They talked | up how Ukraine was a bunch of drug-addled half-assed | wannabe Nazis to themselves so hard that they actually | believed it. They went in with a plan based around those | assumptions. The trouble is, it seems they were quite wrong | and are getting their asses handed to them. So what are | they gonna do now? I don't think that pulling out and going | home with their tail between their legs is gonna be a good | option for Putin. Beats me what they'll actually do, but | I'm afraid it won't be pretty. | | If you really want to understand things, you need to | understand that it's a different culture over there. They | really do believe this stuff. The few Westernized people | who think it's all terrible are a tiny, unrepresentative | minority. Don't make the mistake of thinking that everyone | everywhere is really just like us, with maybe just a couple | of weird assholes in charge for some reason. Our enemies | are sincere. America has made such assumptions more than | once in our past, and got our asses handed to us over it. | Now it's Russia's turn, at least as long we we don't screw | things up even more than they did. | pantalaimon wrote: | I'm not really convinced by the whole defensible geography | argument. | | Who is going to attack a nuclear power in a land war in the | 21st century? | gitfan86 wrote: | It isn't that an attack was likely, it is the fact that | an attack could overtake Moscow much easier if one did | happen. It is like people who keep assault rifles in | their home in extremely safe neighborhoods. | | From Moscow's perspective Ukraine could have a Nazi party | take over at some point in the future. Those Nazis may | think about finishing the job Hitler failed to do and | take Moscow. | dragonwriter wrote: | > From Moscow's perspective Ukraine could have a Nazi | party take over at some point in the future. | | Moscow doesn't care about Nazis; it's essentially a | fascist state itself, and has been backing neo-Nazi | groups among the separatists in sponsors (like the Sparta | battalion) before Azov was involved in the conflict, much | less incorporated into the National Guard. | | It only cares that Ukraine has a government now (not | potentially in the future) that it isn't a willing puppet | of Russia like the Yanukovych government was, or like | Lukashenko's government in Belarus is. | stef25 wrote: | The only thing more preposterous than thinking someone | would try to "take Moscow" is think that Nazis would do | it. | phatfish wrote: | Russia is more worried about a democratic Ukraine joining | the EU than a far-right government. A democratic country | on their boarder is far harder to control from Moscow, | simply look at Belarus for proof of that. Nutty dictator | in the pocket of Putin. | | That anyone can even entertain that Russia is WORRIED | about Nazis or far-right poltics in Ukraine is laughable, | they WANT that government. It's propaganda 101. | csee wrote: | > an attack could overtake Moscow | | No it can't. Ukraine doesn't and can't have nukes. Russia | has thousands of nukes. This doesn't even begin to make | sense. Nobody can invade a nuclear power, let alone one | with as many nukes as Russia. | | > From Moscow's perspective Ukraine could have a Nazi | party take over at some point in the future. | | This is their propaganda. It's that logical fallacy; | anything could happen, therefore this. Far-right gets | very little support in Ukrainian elections, and neo- | nazism is a bigger problem in Russia, Poland and Hungary | than in Ukraine. Maybe Russia should be scared of | Hungary; fair enough. But Ukraine? Azov is a large | problem that needs to be dealt with, but it has nothing | to do with neo-Nazis inside Ukrainian politics or | leadership or broader society. If they wanted Ukraine to | deal with Azov, they would stop threatening Ukraine, and | then Ukraine wouldn't have the need for Azov. If you | create an intense need for defence, then of course Azov | isn't going to be dealt with. Azov is purely the fault of | Russia. | gitfan86 wrote: | If you google "100 year history of Europe" you will see | that older people like Putin are very aware of how | drastically borders and governments have changed, even | including countries that have nuclear weapons. To say | that no one is going to invade Russia today is accurate, | but from the Russian perspective the future of Russia is | far from secure, they feel like they have to fight to | preserve Russia. | csee wrote: | > they feel like they have to fight to preserve Russia. | | I get that's part of what the propaganda is saying, and | therefore some part of the population will believe it | strongly. I am just saying it is not believable. | ncmncm wrote: | Certainly, they have to fight to preserve rule by Putin, | which is all that is under threat. Failing to invade | might have made him look weak. Pulling out would make him | look weak. The moment he starts to seem weak, he's out, | and shortly dead. | unionpivo wrote: | People focus too much on Azov. | | They (Azov battalion ) are 1000 - 1500 (depending on | source) people , and apparently only 10% - 20% of them | are self proclaimed Nazis. Even if all of them are, It | would surprise me if this was even the biggest Ukraian | Nazi group. | | Most Westerner nations have more, hell In US you would be | hard pressed to find a state that has less of them. | | Not trying to excuse them. Any white supremacist and/or | nazi has no place in modern society. Just trying to put | things in perspective. If Azov is all the nazis that | Ukraine has, they are better than most western countries. | usrusr wrote: | > In terms of history, in the past 500 years, Russia has | been invaded several times from the west. Specifically, | Moscow has been attacked and conquered six times in its | history by foreign armies, and usually via the same routes. | | If they think Moscow is too close to a border for safety, | they should cry themselves to sleep and try to find friends | to protect them. Is there _any_ capital city in the world | further from the closest border or ocean, besides Brasilia? | hshjdhskfhs wrote: | There's far right movements in more places then Ukraine, | what makes Ukraine special in its movement compared to | those elsewhere in the west? | | I'm also not sure Ukraine would have had the ability to be | a Nazi-Germani situation, their military stands no chance. | What would they have tried to conquer and not quickly been | pushed back from doing so? | | This is why I feel that argument makes no sense to me, and | sounds like a big pretext for something else, which in my | opinion is more about Putin's holding on to his power and | authoritarianism. | | Personally, I think Russia's best future is to do what | Ukraine was trying to do. Become a part of the west, | democratize properly with real term limits and all, tackle | corruption, regulate your oligarch to favor more | competition, etc. | | My thoughts though is that Putin is the one that loses most | if Russia were to do that, and he was afraid that Ukraine | would set an example, if Ukraine did it and it turned out | good for them and their people, Putin would be put in a bad | spot. | | But I'm interested in your thoughts, because it's true I | don't know as much about the geopolitics around Russia. | usrusr wrote: | It seems to be one of the few far right movements that | isn't at least in part funded from Moscow (or perhaps | even that one actually is...) | adrian_b wrote: | All those invasions of Russia from the West were failures | that did not have any long-term consequences. | | Moreover, those invasions were all personal affairs. | Dictatorial leaders like the Swedish kings, Napoleon or | Hitler wanted to beat the Tsar/General-Secretary or | whatever the master of the Russians called himself and take | his possessions. | | It was not like the majority of the citizens of those | countries cared about the Russian lands and wanted them. | | Now, when all the Western neighbors of Russia have | democratic governments, continuing to say that there exists | any danger of invasion for Russia is ridiculous. | | While during the last 500 years there were a few failed | attempts to invade Russia, on the other hand Russia has | continuously invaded very successfully both its Western and | its Eastern neighbors, becoming from a relatively small | country one of the largest empires, and it remained the | largest country after the British Empire decomposed. | | On all the territories that they invaded, the Russians have | implemented brutal policies against the natives, both | during the Tsars and during the communists. | | Especially during the 19th century, the Russians, while | expanding continuously toward the West, claimed that they | were "liberating" various populations from the non- | Christian Ottoman exploitation. | | In reality the new "Christian" rulers have always proved to | be much greedier than the former Ottoman rulers and much | more aggressive towards the non-Russian populations. The | former Ottoman empire was much more tolerant towards | minorities, regardless of their religion (as long as they | paid the imposed taxes). | | So no, any justification of Russia being some kind of | victim of invasions, when it is Russia who invaded | successfully and relentlessly all its neighbors during 500 | years, and thus needing today some imaginary vital space | for its protection, is completely baseless. | | Moreover, because the post above mentions that the Russians | would like to reach the Carpathian Mountains, supposedly | for a better protection of their Western border, it is good | to know that before WWII Russia/SSSR never reached until | the Carpathian Mountains. | | After WWII, according to the agreements with Roosevelt and | Churchill, the Soviet Union incorporated large parts from | Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Those parts included a | segment of the Carpathian Mountains and it is thus how | Russia reached them. | | However Stalin included much of what was taken from Poland, | Czechoslovakia and Romania into Ukraine. | | Therefore when Ukraine opted out of the Soviet Union, | Russia lost the access to the Carpathians, so they probably | regretted that Stalin has chosen to include those parts in | Ukraine (which made more sense geographically) instead of | in Russia proper. | oneoff786 wrote: | That seems like an incredibly improbable analysis due to | nuclear deterrence. The politics of 500 years ago simply do | not apply. | icu wrote: | Thank you for your comment, you are right that nuclear | deterrance is important and should be factored into any | military conflict. However, you've assumed that nuclear | deterrence cannot be nullified, or that robots or drones | (or say a bat virus) will not be weaponised to be a | threat to a conventional military (or nuclear deterrent). | I'm not so sure, all war brings surprises and unexpected | developments. My guess is that we're going to see hybrid | wars in the future where it isn't obvious that an attack | has been made. Indeed in "The Unnatural Origin of SARS | and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic | Bioweapons", by Xu Dezhong, it was speculated that WWIII | would be fought with bioweapons. It's quite an eye opener | considering it was published in 2015. | | If I was a military strategist, I would want geographical | strategic advantage and maximum future flexibility. | [deleted] | trhway wrote: | Why write such a long posts only rehashing Russian | propaganda? Removing the propaganda part, the bunch of | those long posts of yours today could have been stated | 10-20 times shorter as "Russia has decided to genocide a | neighbor and to use the resulting wasteland of the | neighbor's country as a geographical buffer". | | Should the world allow it to happen? All countries have | had centuries of wars. I don't see why Russia qualifies | for an exception allowing it to genocide Ukrainians. | | For the people not familiar with related terms - the UN | definition of genocide | https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml. | Putin was very clear in his editorial and speeches that | the destruction of Ukrainian ethnic and national identity | is the main goal of the war. | icu wrote: | I have literally said, "I in no way condone what is | happening". Also, please don't start jumping to | conclusions that I'm just a parrot of Russian propaganda. | | It shocked me that I never considered that I would see an | invasion, and let's be frank, a war in Europe. | | Of course, I think there should be a halt to the | hostilities... but I believe in seeing the world as it is | and dealing with that, with a view to work towards what | it should be. Sadly, the US and others like the UK, won't | risk a NATO/Russian war. That's the only way I see the | Ukrainian invasion ending. | JoshCole wrote: | Jewish democratically elected president and yet you repeat | the lie that this war is about nazis. Jewish people are | persecuted by nazis, not elected to the presidency by | nazis. | | Russian land invasion fears as speculation for why Russia | invaded, but this war started many years ago when Russia | took Crimea and Crimea doesn't have a land connection with | Russia. Russia shares a sea with Crimea, but not land. What | Crimea does have is a lot of oil. So much so that it was a | geopolitical threat to Europe's reliance on Russian oil. | | This war isn't happening because of baby busts. It is | happening because Russia raped Ukraine for oil, but then | discovered that holding Crimea against Ukraine wasn't | feasible. Crimea gets its water from Ukraine. Russia | doesn't have a port for the sea that connects it with | Crimea which is always usable. So it has to ship water in, | but doesn't have a great means to do so when Ukraine is | hostile. | | It built a bridge, but that sort of infrastructure is | vulnerable in the event of war. | | Stealing Crimea turned out to be expensive. Meanwhile, | Ukraine was modernizing its armies and pretty upset that | its land was stolen from it. | | So they call them nazis, which in this case really means | people willing to defend their land, but who cares about | actual meanings when you can just repeat Russian | propaganda? | | If Russia waits, Ukraine continues to modernize. Eventually | the war starts on Ukraine's terms and instead of | humiliating international defeat now they would have gotten | a crushing and humiliating international rout later. The | defeat is Ukraine retaking Crimea. It isn't an invasion of | Moscow. The war with NATO that Russia is afraid of isn't | NATO invading Moscow either. It is NATO supporting | Ukraine's efforts to retake Crimea. | | Which is why Russia was so desperate to do this now, even | though it was a bad decision. Every moment they waited | Ukraine was getting stronger. They wanted to win now to | stop them from facing justice later. Except they | miscalculated. Ukraine grew stronger faster than they | realized. Moreover, their espionage wasn't as effective as | they had hoped. They wanted to win quickly. They hoped to | just take Ukraine and be done. | | They didn't. They blundered. This blunder goes back many | years. As far back as the invasion of Crimea itself. | | The kicker? Oil isn't the currency of the future. They | blundered over the resource that everyone is going to be | trying to get away from. | DrBazza wrote: | If NATO were genuinely a threat to Russia, I'd expect NATO | jets to "stray" into Russian airspace as often as the | Russian planes stray into UK airspace north of Scotland, or | China flies over Taiwan. | | NATO doesn't do this. Or at least if it does, it's | remarkably poorly reported by some of the press in the UK | that I would expect to gleefully report if it were true. | | Also, if you want 'second order consequences' take a moment | to think about the brain drain of many under-30 Russians | (I'm picking an arbitrary age), that have grown up with the | Internet and western food. They're leaving as we type. | | Then, there's the demographic problem. There are fewer | young men in Russia. | | https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/03/russia-demography- | birth... | | Even fewer due to COVID, and now due to the events of the | last few weeks. And who knows how many Russian teens and | 20-somethings will be dead in a month or two? | | How do you "protect yourself" from perceived invasion from | the west with fewer and fewer people in the army? Bigger | weapons? I hope not. | | Russia are losing their youth on two fronts. | | Well done Putin, you've ruined your country for decades. | icu wrote: | I completely agree about the Russian brain drain issue, | and about the extreme cost of sending young Russian men | (many of whom are only sons) off to die. All of it, on | all sides, is a huge waste and tragedy. | | However, with regards to your statement about overt | military operations threatening Russia, have you | considered all the covert stuff? The CIA have been | running operations in Ukraine for a long time and I think | it would be fair to say that the Orange Revolution was | helped along by Western intelligence agencies. | robocat wrote: | > There are fewer young men in Russia. Even fewer due to | COVID | | Quite possibly the economy could be better after COVID? | Something that mostly kills off older retirees could | reduce economic drain (although it depends on lots of | factors). | | "Covid-19 caused total life expectancy in Russia to fall | by 2.32 years in 2020" - | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/03/covid-has- | caus... | golergka wrote: | > Yes, the decline russia will face is tragic, and for what? | | For Putin to stay in control of the country. And also, for | majority of Russians, to finally have the moment of their | fascist pride. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | gameswithgo wrote: | No you misunderstand, Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty much | a tie in my mind, and should the USA invade anyone in the | future, please sanction us until I starve to death or | leave. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Like syria, you're occupying now? | mminer237 wrote: | I don't think 900 servicemen supporting the local SDF to | defend certain locations in a de facto autonomous region | is really comparable in any way to Russia sending 200,000 | soldiers to conquer a sovereign nation and | indiscriminately shell all major cities. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | If eg. mexico bombed the shit out of USA, because it | didn't like their leaders, basically destroyed the | country, change the government, kill a bunch of people, | and then leave behind 900 mexican soldiers, would you see | those soldiers as "someone defending you", or as an | occupation? | khuey wrote: | Ignoring morality entirely for a moment it is rather | remarkable that Russia watched the US experience in | Afghanistan and Iraq and said "yes, we'd like that for us, | but on hard mode". | gameswithgo wrote: | Russia did the same thing in Afghanistan shortly before! | With the same result! | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Well yeah, and americans trained osama bin laden to fight | them. Oh how the turntables... | | So we basically agree, that both countries are bad, but | we somehow act as if somehow americans are the "good | guys" for bombing weddings in pakistan and killing | afghanis, and bunch of other people, and that russians | deserve the sanctions, while other countries currently | occupying eg. syria don't. | specialist wrote: | Do you know of Chris Hedges? | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges | | Everything he says is 100% true. | | But he never offers suggestions about how to make things | better. | | Even though I agree with Hedges, empathically, I just | can't stand listening to him. He's an Eeyore. | | People need hope, affirmation, reasons to keep | struggling, a wee bit of joy. | | Especially when everything seems so pointless. | tehbeard wrote: | Ignoring the whataboutism. | | Last I checked, noone in the states or the west at large | got disappeared or shoved out a window for protesting | those actions by their government. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Oh yeah, sure, FBI never ever infiltrated and also never | ever did anything bad to any anti-war movement in USA. | adventured wrote: | The US are the good guys, quite obviously. That's why | nearly all the good - liberal, democratic, freedom- | oriented - nations are specifically aligned with the US, | and why Russia's only pals are tyrants. It's also why | Ukraine is friends with the US (despite the distance and | cultural separation) and is fighting a war against | Russia, because Russia are the bad guys (anti democratic, | anti liberal, regressive, dictatorship, conquest- | oriented). | | Nobody thinks the US are the good guys for bombing a | wedding in Pakistan. It's for countless other reasons | that people still think the US are on the side of good, | as it always has been. You're of course attempting to use | a particularly weak argument to prove a massive claim. | The US doesn't have to be perfect to be good. What | Germany did in WW2 doesn't preclude them from being good | now; what the British Empire did doesn't preclude them | from being good now; and so on. | | The US have been such extraordinary good guys across | time, we even saved millions of Russians from starvation | by their own government (even while Russia was broadly | considered an enemy of the US at the time, we saved them | anyway): | | https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2011/pr-famine-040411.html | | Things like that are what have built the US moral | credibility, which stacks against its various mistakes | (and everyone here knows well all the prominent US | mistakes). | | The US invaded Germany, the US invaded Italy, the US | invaded France (and several other European nations), the | US invaded Japan, the US invaded Korea. Now contrast what | the US did after invading Europe, with what Russia did. | It's the difference between being the good guys and being | the bad guys, just ask Poland what the difference is - | they know exactly what the stark separation between the | US and Russia represents (the difference between freedom | and slavery, affluence and poverty). There's a reason why | Poland welcomes US soldiers on its soil, and why they'd | fight to the death to keep Russian soldiers out of their | territory. Ask Czechia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, | Lithuania, Romania what the difference is, they all know. | | Why are all of Russia's weaker neighbors afraid of it? | Meanwhile, there's affluent, free, peace-loving Canada, | not afraid in the least (witness their military spending) | that the US superpower of the last 75 years would invade | and attempt to conquer them. The difference between the | US and Russia could hardly be any greater, now or in the | past. The Canadians know it, the Polish know it, the | Ukrainians know it. | | What Russia is doing right now is evil, and they are the | villains in this war, regardless of what they did in the | past. We don't need to eg go into the history of the | Holodomor and other things Russia has done to Ukraine and | its people to demonstrate their evil, all we need is to | focus on what Russia is doing at present (intentionally | genociding the civilians of Ukraine). Russia are the bad | guys and it couldn't be any more clear than it is - which | is again why Ukraine (freedom-seeking, aspirational | democracy, liberal-leaning, West-leaning) is asking the | US to help them fight against Russia and why Ukraine | appeals to the US about shared liberal values just as | they have with other European democracies. | | The US didn't train bin Laden. It didn't invent Al Qaeda. | It didn't train or create the Taliban either. Funding | various Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the decade prior to | the founding of the Taliban, doesn't equate to training | bin Laden. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistan | ce_... | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Why is US good for attacking various middle eastern, | african and south american countries, and russia is bad | for attacking ukraine? | | The germans had 70+ years to get over the WW2, while USA | is currently occupying more than one sovereign country, | and acting good about it. You guys bomb a new country | every few years, sometimes for oil, sometimes not even | for that. Here in the balkans, people were rooting for | Trump in both elections, because everyone was afraid | Hillary will start another war here... believe me, for | most of the world (except for yourselves) you're not | "good guys" at all. Your freedom loving country has | shitty education, totally broken health system, the | prison system is basically legalized slavery, you can't | even get voting IDs to people, your warmer cities have | more homeless people than ukraine does now, and you've | changed a leader that inappropriately touched supermodels | with a leader that inappropriately touches kids. The only | thing you americans have is the military system and | lobbyists who like to attack foreign countries so they | can earn even more money. Just the money spent on weapons | for attacking countries on the other side of the world | would solve many, many other issues your country | currently has, but your priorities are not in order. | | So yeah, maybe pull out your soldiers from the countries | you're currently occupying, before you blame putin for | doing the same you guys are doing, then maybe set up your | priorities in order, so young people don't start their | lives with $200k+ in debt, instead of bombing random | countries that never did anything bad to you. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Oh yeah, and let's not forget, you guys bombed your own | city! | | https://www.vox.com/the- | highlight/2019/8/8/20747198/philadel... | adventured wrote: | > Why is US good for attacking various middle eastern, | african and south american countries, and russia is bad | for attacking ukraine? | | Intent matters. Iraq was not a sovereign nation when the | US invaded, it was a slave encampment (its people had no | human rights), its majority Shia population was held | hostage - genocided and constantly tortured - by the | minority Sunni Hussein regime. There's no such thing as a | sovereign dictatorship; there can be no claim of | sovereignty where there are no human rights. Any free | nation had a moral right to invade Iraq, if it so chose, | to attempt to remove Hussein's regime and attempt to free | the Iraqi people from the grip of his regime. The US | didn't go into Iraq to conquer it, or annex its | territory, or steal its oil (which is why today Iraq is | free-standing and has such enormous oil revenue pouring | into its government coffers). | | Did the US have a moral right to invade Nazi Germany? How | about Fascist Italy or the Empire of Japan? Did the US | have a moral right to invade France and help free it from | the Nazis and Vichy France? Yes it did, of course, and | the same moral principle in action there was just as | valid in regards to Iraq and the Hussein regime that was | holding the majority in Iraq hostage. Which | simultaneously doesn't mean it was rational for the US to | invade Iraq (as it wasn't willing to dedicate the | extraordinary resources necessary to provide the security | to prevent the civil war between the Sunni and Shia, | which would have required far more troops and financial | investment). | | So even though the US rationally should not have invaded | Iraq, the democratic world understands the US didn't go | into there in the name of conquest. The democratic world | understands the US didn't invade France, Italy or Germany | to conquer them. That's why the US is still viewed as | good, because intentions matter. It went into Iraq with a | very naive belief that - with its superpower might - it | could nation-build a new democracy relatively easily in | the Middle East. And when the civil war broke out between | sectarian groups, the US stood between them and tried to | stop it, at great loss to the US in blood and treasure. | The US didn't try to take Iraq's oil (India and China are | the biggest recipients of Iraqi oil today), it lost over | a trillion dollars from the invasion. It's entirely fair | to call the US invasion of Iraq a gigantic blunder, a | foolish mistake, an act of arrogance by a superpower that | thought it could materialize a democracy easily out of | thin air. The good nations of the world understand the US | didn't try to conquer Iraq for its own empire, that | annexation of Iraq wasn't its goal, which is why NATO is | still standing and why the US allies in Europe didn't | abandon the US. | | The US spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to | nation-build Afghanistan to progress the nation forward, | including shepherding the first democratic elections in | its history. The US effort failed, it was naive in | regards to what it would take to accomplish a positive, | sustainable outcome in a nation as backwards and poorly | developed as Afghanistan. The US is regarded as the good | guys in regards to Afghanistan, because of what its | intentions for the nation were (compare it to the Taliban | and who the friends of the Taliban are - exclusively | tyrants and theocrats). Russia went into Afghanistan in | the name of conquest, to make it a de facto part of the | Soviet Empire, it didn't aim to build a free, democrat | nation there. | | Russia has gone into Ukraine solely to annex its | territory and conquer it for the goals of the Russian | Empire, as per Putin's own oft stated world view (of how | things should be). Ukraine is a burgeoning democracy | pursuing liberal values, Russia is a brutally repressive | dictatorship with no human rights that has largely been | ruled by one tyrant after another for centuries. Russia's | intentions are plainly evil, they aim to enslave the | Ukrainian people and destroy their pursuit of liberal | values, to force them to be part of Putin's imagined new | Russian Empire. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | So, what happened to iraqi soldiers killing babies? And | iraq having weapons od mass destruction? | | > The US spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to | nation-build Afghanistan to progress the nation forward | | So, you spent your own taxpayers money to try to rebuild | a country you guys destroyed | | > The US effort failed | | And failed even at that? | | I'm very sorry, but for anyone outside of US, you were | considered bad guys then, and are still considered as bad | guys now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_ | the_Iraq_War <- just look at the number of protests (in | USA too!). You guys made up a story about weapons of mass | destruction to destroy a country (again), and couldn't | find or even plant those weapons there. Well, not just | you, UK and some other countries did play a role too, and | they're the bad guys too. | | Russia has a minority living parts of ukraine, and the | ukranian neonazis (which became a part of the official | national guard in 2014) have been attacking them for | years now. And I'm calling them neonazis, because | everyone in the west called them that until this year - | https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg | dragonwriter wrote: | > Russia has a minority living parts of ukraine, and the | ukranian neonazis (which became a part of the official | national guard in 2014) have been attacking them for | years now. | | Azov is smaller, both absolutely and as a share of the | forces on the relative side, than the neonazis among the | separatist forces it operated against even before the | full-scale direct genocidal invasion by the militarily | aggressive totalitarian corporatist ethnonationalist (or, | more succinctly, fascist) Russian regime that had both | invaded parts of Ukraine in 2014 and sponsored (and in | some cases covertly supplied) the separatist forces. | hiddencost wrote: | Ignoring morality entirely for a moment, it is rather | remarkable that the US watched the Russian experience in | Afghanistan and said, "yes, we'd like that for us."1 | vl wrote: | One of the pillars of supporting dollar as world reserve | currency (and thus having endless credit) is showing that | it's backed by strong security force. Thus it | necessitates periodic demonstrations and actual training | of said security force. Thus constant deployment to some | far countries to "fight for piece". | nkingsy wrote: | I was a freshman in college at the time and we discussed | it in a geography class. | | We all agreed that a nation state based approach to the | problem of terrorism was absurd, but there was no way any | US president would do anything less. Remembering the | phrase "a wartime president has never not been re- | elected" turns my stomach. Iraq of course was another | matter, but Afghanistan was more of a greek tragedy. | mst wrote: | Go back far enough and you'll find the british empire | thought Afghanistan would be a fun place to invade quite | a long time before that. | | It worked out just as badly for us as it did for the USSR | and the US later. | | I'm not sure why Afghanistan is catnip for overconfident | empires, but it seems to be a repeating pattern. | khuey wrote: | Americans were acting like morons after 9/11. I don't see | an analogous motivating event here for Russia. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Russians are playing the kosovo playbook. | | Minority in a larger country, minority wants to separate | into its own country, the main country won't let them, | some conflicts and shooting, shelling, killing, and an | "outside player" steps in and starts destroying the main | country. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Well, atleast the americans left them vehicles and | weapons, so the talibans didn't have such a rough re- | start there. | blibble wrote: | it's not known as the graveyard as empires for no reason | | (I wonder if the Chinese will have a go now it's | apparently their century?) | newaccount2021 wrote: | randomsearch wrote: | > for what? | | For Bin Laden. | | America has done terrible things, but what Russia is doing | to Ukraine is much worse than Afghanistan or Iraq. | | When in recent history did the UK surround a city of | another country and starve it to death whilst deliberately | shelling civilians? | | There isn't a comparison. Russia's actions in Syria are the | most similar to the Ukraine situation that I'm aware of in | recent history. | camdat wrote: | >When in recent history did the UK surround a city of | another country and starve it to death whilst | deliberately shelling civilians? | | Is this a joke? I can think of three examples in the past | 30 years. | CommieBobDole wrote: | And those examples are? | camdat wrote: | Two entire countries and a city: Yemen Yugoslavia Baghdad | | I also forgot the highway of death... So four off the top | of my head. | randomsearch wrote: | Since when did the UK surround and starve Baghdad??? | These are completely different situations. | | In Mariupol, thousands of _civilians_ have died in days | of Russian bombing (the mayor estimates up to 20 000, but | 4000 already certified) - including the deliberately | shelling of civilian buildings by Russian forces. They | 've cut off power, heating, water, and have bombed | theatres, schools, hospitals. Corpses are rotting in the | streets. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | So, destroy a country for one man? Good guys americans! | | > When in recent history did the UK surround a city of | another country and starve it to death whilst | deliberately shelling civilians? | | Yugoslavia, 1999... civil buildings were actual targets, | not just "accidents"... from tobacco factories, to public | television, bridges, etc. Also cluster bombed a city... | If you count the "mistakes", also a passenger train, bus, | group of escaping refugees, hospitals, schools, etc. Oh, | and let's not forget the chinese embassy. | | And USA is also currently occupying syria. | adventured wrote: | As the parent correctly pointed out, it's not even | remotely close to comparable. | | The Russians are intentionally destroying entire large | cities, intentionally committing genocide against | thousands of civilians in Ukraine. Intentionally seeking | to starve and deprive the civilian population of the | basic requirements of survival to further their conquest | aims. At the rate Russia is going, it'll have | intentionally murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainian | civilians before the war is likely to end. | camdat wrote: | >At the rate Russia is going, it'll have intentionally | murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians before | the war is likely to end | | And it will pale in comparison to the 300 thousand | civilians killed in the US intervention in Afghanistan | alone. At least Russia will likely succeed in it's | military objectives. | adventured wrote: | The US didn't kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in | Iraq and Afghanistan. You're conflating two entirely | different things. You're pretending the US shot, bombed | and killed all those civilians, when in fact that was an | Iraqi-on-Iraqi sectarian civil war that produced such | high civilian deaths, a civil war which the US spent | enormous resources trying to stop. | | Russia is directly, intentionlly killing the civilians in | question in Ukraine. They're doing it on purpose, aiming | for the civilians, to terrorize them into submission (and | Russia has a very long history of this form of | intentional terror-war against civilian populations in | the name of conquest). Russia's genocide of Ukrainian | civilians isn't a mistake of aiming, it's not an accident | of war, it's not a whoops, they're trying to kill them | and starve them (see what they're doing to Mariupol at | present). | | The difference between the two situations is | exceptionally obvious and morally clear. | randomsearch wrote: | Additional stats: the US and allies directly killed ~ 13 | 000 civilians during the occupation of Iraq. | | It's likely the Russians have exceeded that number in | Mariupol alone in just a few weeks. | | The difference in these numbers reflects that Russia is | deliberately targeting civilians. | | I condemn the occupation of Iraq, but agree it is | exceptionally obvious that the two situations are in no | way equivalent. | camdat wrote: | >It's likely the Russians have exceeded that number in | Mariupol alone in just a few weeks. | | Source this. | randomsearch wrote: | Can't grab a link right now but that's from the Mariupol | mayor's office and reported in The Economist this week. | 4000 dead certified at the morgue but 20000 is mayor's | estimate. Doesn't seem unreasonable an estimate given the | backlog and reports of corpses in the street yet to be | collected, along with missing persons from bomb shelters | etc | ajsnigrutin wrote: | US bombed and killed many civilians in bombing of | yugoslavia in 1999... even hit a passenger train and then | had to speed up the footage to make it seem like an | accident - | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grdelica_train_bombing | (also a bus, tv station, many more bridges, tobacco | factory, a group of escaping refugees, etc.) | | This is urban warfare... ukrainian army hides in civilian | buildings, shoot down at russian soldiers and tanks, | tanks shoot back, and the damage a tank does is what you | then see on tv. There were (now removed) videos on | youtube, of ukrainian people trying to get the ukranian | army out of their apartment building just because of | that. | | But looking at history, when US kills civilians, they | arrest the whistleblower and threathen the webpage owner | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_ai | rstri... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning | camdat wrote: | >The difference between the two situations is | exceptionally obvious and morally clear. | | https://youtu.be/JqMQk337p5s | | >You're pretending the US shot, bombed and killed all | those civilians, when in fact that was an Iraqi-on-Iraqi | sectarian civil war that produced such high civilian | deaths, | | Typing this and not realizing the obvious parallels to | the Donetsk and Luhensk regions of Ukraine is laughable, | and forces me to assume you lack the background necessary | to make a real comparison between these two situations. | mminer237 wrote: | The separatist people's republics comprise roughly 15% of | the enemy force in Ukraine. For most of the Iraq War, | Iraqi Security Forces comprised 82% of the anti- | insurgency forces. During the civil war period when most | of the civilians were killed, the US only comprised | roughly 5% of the soldiers, and they were on the third | side trying to stop the fighting. | | The US-led invasion of Iraq had ~4,000 civilian | casualties in its month and half of fighting. | | The Iraqi civil war had 70,000 civilian casualties in its | 2 years. | | The War in Donbas had 350 civilian casualties in its 8 | years of fighting. | | The Russian invasion has boosted that over 10,000 in less | than a month. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Not that long ago, I was under the impression that | americans knew that they were the "bad guys" in all of | those wars, but stood quiet, because they gained cheap | oil and other benefits from most of them. I also got that | sentiment from eg. the french, when their governments did | something bad in any of their (former) colonies. There | were even movies/documentaries (Michael Moore comes to | mind), or even historic conflicts (vietnam and the Hippie | culture around it), showing the US doing bad stuff around | the world. | | And now? It makes me sad, that so many american people | actually consider themselves the "good guys" for | destroying random countries and killing people there. | Like they did nothing bad, when they bombed peoples | houses, occupied their countries, stole their oil, etc. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Why is it not comparable? Why is cluster bombing a | serbian city better than cluster bombing Kiev? | | ...except for you people calling it "bombing for peace" - | https://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1995 | /11... | perlgeek wrote: | Not to mention that reproduction rates both in Russia and in | the Ukraine are below replacement levels, so they'll have | more land for a shrinking population. | necovek wrote: | Wasn't that the case in Western countries as well 30 years | ago? Basically, formerly communist countries are 20-30 | years behind in the sociological development, even if they | catch up economically in some aspects earlier (though those | are closely intertwined, because they are still at "I can't | reasonably provide for more than 1-2 children"). | loudmax wrote: | I don't think there was any scenario where the invasion was a | benefit to Russia. But if it had gone the way most analysts | had expected, with Kyiv falling after four days, it could | have been a benefit to Vladimir Putin. With the invasion | having gone horribly wrong it's clear to everyone that it's | in Russia's best interest to withdraw immediately. But what's | in Russia's best interest isn't necessarily in Putin's | personal interest. So better to keep on killing Ukrainian | men, women, children by the thousands to save his own skin. | | Some call Putin a "genius". I'd call him something different. | necovek wrote: | He's also sending Russian soldiers into death. Mutiny is | hard and complicated, and runs a huge risk for your life | and life of your family, so even those convinced they are | doing the wrong stuff will have a hard time stopping | themselves. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | The moment that clown Dmitry Rogozin was appointed as a | director of Roscosmos, I knew it is a death sentence for | Russian cosmonautics. | | But in a larger context, it is all a consequence of Putin's | rule. The guy is like Midas in reverse: everything he touches | turns to shit. | redisman wrote: | The brain drain will get a huge spike again unless they're | literally stopped from leaving the country. So all industries | will be affected for a long time | golergka wrote: | Half the software engineers and other STEM professionals I | know that lived in Russia have left the country in the last | month, me included. Most don't have job offers or money to | last more than a couple of months, some don't even have their | passports. | gruez wrote: | >some don't even have their passports. | | Do countries accept refugees without passports? I can't | imagine living a stateless/undocumented existence in some | random country to be better than a relatively middle class | life in russia. | JAlexoid wrote: | You can get a refugee status without an ID. | | If ID/passport were a requirement, it would make no sense | whatsoever... considering that you're likely fleeing a | government that wants to kill you. | walrus01 wrote: | > You can get a refugee status without an ID. | | tell that to all the afghans in pakistan right now who | can't get any documents from the .PK domestic offices of | UNHCR | heavenlyblue wrote: | But technically Russian government isn't killing their | citizens unless you were conscripted. | | And for all it is western governments don't have a good | history of accepting refugees, let alone refugees who | just decided the leave the country because it's just not | too good there. | mjevans wrote: | I suspect Maybe / It Depends. Plausibly they could beg | for asylum given the current geopolitical realities. | SXX wrote: | Getting asylum for is much harder than you might think | when it's come to someone from Russia. | | Getting into EU using all legal (or illegal) ways and | trying to get asylum is good option for people who | actually running from war when their home being bombed. | But if you're from IT and used to higher quality of life | and also need some comfort to work efficiently then it's | not an option - because finding a job takes time. | vl wrote: | Russians remember iron curtain all too well, wait now, | and you will not be able to leave at all. There was no | freedom of travel in Soviet Union. | golergka wrote: | Armenia accepts Russian citizen by internal Russian ID. | It's confusing, because internal id is called "passport" | in Russia, and passport is called "foreign passport" -- a | legacy of a system that was (and still is) designed to | impose prison-like discipline on it's own citizens and | limit their ability to go abroad. | konschubert wrote: | I think you and others that left deserve the support of | then western world. | | I'm a software developer in Germany. If you can think of a | way I could maybe help, mail me at | mail@konstantinschubert.com | golergka wrote: | Capitalism is the best way to do it: just hire people who | are leaving. It's a pure win-win situation. | | There is a direct and very strong correlation in Russia | between person's level of education, his worth on the | labour market and his disdain for the Russia's policy. | While majority of Russians support fascist regime and | criminal war against Ukraine, majority of those who leave | now, especially those with fluent English and | internationally valued skills absolutely do not. | jacquesm wrote: | If you need a hand, mail in profile. | antattack wrote: | They might switch to hyper-sonic missile development. | colechristensen wrote: | There has already been reporting of hypersonic missiles | launched at Ukraine, which is not at all surprising. | gliptic wrote: | Those in the know suspect these are just the upper stages | of Iskanders launched from jets. | robonerd wrote: | asah wrote: | https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18943/putins-air- | launc... | | https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/why-calling-russias-kinzhal- | a-h... | robonerd wrote: | renewiltord wrote: | Why bother, Brahmos is likely unstoppable for its purposes | for quite some time. Brahmos 2 is likely going to work too | so there's no reason to man-month it. | hackerfromthefu wrote: | Sounds expensive.. | chaostheory wrote: | It may be declining in the short term, but Russia will be one | of the winners as climate change continues to progress. | redisman wrote: | They already have 10x more land than they can do anything | productive with. | necovek wrote: | You mean as Siberia turns into beautiful sunlit coastal area? | | I've long suggested buying seaside plots there as a viable | investment strategy, with the only issue not knowing where | the coast will be :D | redisman wrote: | I'd rather buy in Canada which has its own "Siberia" and a | functional rule of law. Look at YT, NT, NU | chaostheory wrote: | I agree. I'm just pointing out that Russia will be a | superpower again one day due to inaction on climate | change. Far too little and too late. | justin66 wrote: | > The Russian space program was the most impressive thing to me | about Russians, so to see it destroyed before my very eyes | saddens me. | | It's been dead for thirty years. Russia has done an admirable | job using, reusing, and repurposing tools developed during the | Soviet Union's existence, but that is all they have had going | for them - aside from cash related to Mir and ISS and the | associated launches, which kept the whole thing on life | support. | labrador wrote: | "It's not dead, it's resting!" I had hopes for a comeback, | but that looks highly unlikey in Putin's regime or whatever | dictator follows him. | MrZongle2 wrote: | _"...or whatever dictator follows him. "_ | | This phrase saddens me, but it seems the most likely | outcome. | | When the power brokers in Moscow acknowledge that Putin has | become a liability, they'll replace him so they can return | to the kleptocratic status quo. | | I highly doubt there will be a popular uprising against | him, which at least would allow for a chance for democratic | progress. | lhoff wrote: | I was listening to a podcast recently where they were | discussion the best possible outcome for Russia in the | comming years and there conclusion was a strong but | benevolent dictator (maybe a women) that slowly paves the | way towards democracy. There sentiment was that Russia is | not ready for democracy right now because of years and | years of propaganda and suppression of an intellectual | elite. | dopamean wrote: | Which podcast? | jacquesm wrote: | They had that. Gender aside, Gorbachev did just that. And | then the thieves moved in. | ordu wrote: | _> There sentiment was that Russia is not ready for | democracy right now because of years and years of | propaganda and suppression of an intellectual elite._ | Propaganda and suppression of an intellectual elite are | symptoms. The root cause is the possibility for a small | group of greedy people to pump oil and gas, get a lot of | profits, and to finance a repression machine allowing to | cement the status quo. All this scheme is leads | inevitably to a simple economy and a concentration of | power, when democracy is considered as a threat to | profits of a small powerful group. | | If there was no possibility to sell oil and gas, then it | would be appropriate to discuss if a benevolent dictator | might help to build a democracy. While this possibility | persists nothing will help. Now it seems West is going to | ban exports from Russia (I'm very excited), but there is | China. China will benefit from supporting Russia on it's | way to a North Korea scenario. So I believe there is no | hope for a democracy in Russia. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I had assumed that Russia would want to embrace trying to land | first stage boosters after SpaceX proved it was do-able. With | the vast amount of territory they have they could avoid the | trouble of trying to land on a droneship and perhaps even | develop a large structure to catch fairings downrange. | KuiN wrote: | Roscosmos are working on a launch system with a re-usable | first stage, Soyuz-7 or Amur [1]. The renders they've | released are basically just a tweaked Falcon 9, except this | one will be re-usable 100 times over! | | Whether Amur will ever fly, or even become hardware ... I'm | not holding my breath. | | [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/russian-space- | corpor... | _joel wrote: | I do wonder if Elon meant a certain 2 nations when Tim Dodd | was with him on the Starbase tour. | | There was a Raptor 1 full upclose to which he said | something along the lines of, paraphrasing, "If you copy | these then good luck to you, you're in for pain". | | I'm sure they still know a thing or two about rocket engine | design(!) but I can't help think that brain-drain will get | the better of them sooner or later. These things require | innovation, not just brute forcing old designs. | panick21_ wrote: | You are vastly overestimating Russia ability to innovate. | Russia has basically not innovated since the Soviet Union. | Angara rocket is supposed to be the 'next generation' rocket | and its adoption has been painfully slow. | | The idea that they could just build a reusable rocket is just | not in the car. | | Mostly what the Russian space program has been doing is | announcing one absurd program after another. The amount of | power-point designs announced by Russia is comical. They have | announced a reusable rocket but like so many of the other | projects, its mostly just propganda. | gameswithgo wrote: | They have been using the same rocket for like 30 years. I'm | not sure they are organizationally equipped to innovate | anymore. Similar to the standard NASA contractors, who are | rearranging shuttle parts to make the SLS and costing and | order of magnitude more than even SpaceX's outlandish | experiments from scratch. | | Also its entirely possible the cost of a Soyuz launch is | cheaper than a Falcon9 despite re-use, due to it being used | for so long and slightly smaller. | tialaramex wrote: | Well, previously commercial outfits were choosing SpaceX in | large numbers. So if Soyuz is cheaper, why not Soyuz. Both | these vehicles have government orders which are never going | on a foreign platform, so there is no price cap for those, | but if I'm a comms satellite outfit (and there isn't | currently a war) surely I just pick whichever is cheapest? | [deleted] | totetsu wrote: | And they suspended launches because they had used rockets from | Russia https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-60602512 | _joel wrote: | ESA have also pushed pause on their side of the new mars rover | too. There's a complete bifurcation that seems to be happening. | | https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-work-solo-mars-m... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-21 23:00 UTC)