No, Russia Has Not Threatened To Leave An American Astronaut Behind In Space (arstechnica.com) 73
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, the fate of the International Space Station, which has 15 partner nations and is the crown jewel of unity in space between NASA and Russia, has been up in the air (figuratively, of course). What we do know is that there are no plans to abandon NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the space station, despite a number of stories claiming otherwise. "Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth in a Soyuz capsule at the end of this month, landing in Kazakhstan," reports Ars Technica. "NASA officials are expected to be there to greet him and bring him back to the United States." Ars Technica sets the record straight and explains where these Russian "threats" originated: The source of this "news" appears to be a video published more than a week ago by a Kremlin-aligned publication, RIA Novosti. Roscosmos TV provided footage for the video, but in sharing it acknowledged that the video was a "joke." Now, this is an exceptionally poor joke given the tensions on Earth, but it is important to understand that sharing a video a week ago does not mean Russia is threatening to leave Vande Hei behind. Nothing has changed since the video was posted. Since the beginning of this crisis, NASA officials have said operations with Russian colleagues working on the space station have proceeded nominally. "Operations have not changed at all," one NASA source confirmed Friday. On Monday, NASA's manager of the International Space Program, Joel Montalbano, is scheduled to speak at a news conference about upcoming spacewalks. He likely will say something similar.
Additionally, Vande Hei could not be abandoned. At present there are three other Americans living on board the International Space Station -- Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, and Thomas Marshburn. There is also an allied astronaut, Matthias Maurer, from Germany. NASA has its own transportation to and from the station, so Vande Hei can be assured of a safe ride home whenever NASA wants. The status of the ISS partnership is subject to change, of course. It could do so quite quickly. Russia is doing horrible things in Ukraine, and the Western world has responded with harsh sanctions. No one really knows whether Vladimir Putin will decide to end Russian participation in the International Space Station. Certainly, making it appear to a domestic audience that he was stranding a NASA astronaut in space might make him look "strong" to some Russian people. But there are simply no indications this will happen.
Additionally, Vande Hei could not be abandoned. At present there are three other Americans living on board the International Space Station -- Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, and Thomas Marshburn. There is also an allied astronaut, Matthias Maurer, from Germany. NASA has its own transportation to and from the station, so Vande Hei can be assured of a safe ride home whenever NASA wants. The status of the ISS partnership is subject to change, of course. It could do so quite quickly. Russia is doing horrible things in Ukraine, and the Western world has responded with harsh sanctions. No one really knows whether Vladimir Putin will decide to end Russian participation in the International Space Station. Certainly, making it appear to a domestic audience that he was stranding a NASA astronaut in space might make him look "strong" to some Russian people. But there are simply no indications this will happen.
The first casualty of war (Score:2, Interesting)
and the US gov & mainstream media are the biggest liars i ever seen in my life
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"We have no plans to invade Ukraine."
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And now, "We have not invaded Ukraine and have no plans to invade other countries" ... yeah, when you have a lie in your sentence, people suspect the rest of the sentence too
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(Chuckle) Good point. I notice several countries have renewed interest in joining EU/NATO/anythingthatwillprotectthemfromRussia. Can't imagine why.
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"We have no plans to invade Ukraine" - western media kind of fell victim to becoming the boy that cried wolf there. Ukraine has been saying Russia is invading for 8 years, echoed in western media. It became a joke hearing it every single day for 8 years, nobody cared or believed it.
- Minsk agreements to bring peace to Donbass? LOL, ignore, what's Russia gonna do invade?
- Russia asking to not put nukes on its doorstep? Meh, ignore, business as usual, missiles bases anywhere and everywhere we feel like it. Wh
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It's always convenient when you can rationalize your behavior by saying someone else made you do it. "The devil made me do it" is the classic fallacy. Sorry, though, it doesn't matter what the US did in the recent past, or even in the present. If it was wrong and unjust someone will have to account for it (and they will, but it's not Putin's authority to be the one to make them do it). But hypocrisy is never justification to start a war. Doesn't matter if it was used as justification in the past. Putin
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Sorry, but you (and pretty much everyone esle) in the west doesn't even remotely understand the reasons behind this conflict. You say Putin is trying to destroy some kind of culture somewhere? Little did you know that Ukrainians are Russians. There's no difference between them at all. Like 2 of them will stand in front of you, you won't be able to tell the difference. Dude I'm from Odessa (PS that's modern day Ukraine by the way), I've lived in US for 25 years, most Americans I met think I'm Russian. My pla
Re: The first casualty of war (Score:2)
Thanks for giving some real perspective.
Majority here is frighteningly brainwashed with their govt's lies. And they so sincerely believe it that it feels useless to even try to tell them the truth.
They don't realize that 1-2 western govts have got misinformation down to such an art that sometimes its actually commendable. I mean it is a great achievement and if leaders were good it would take the world forward much quicker. Unfortunately the leaders invariably are puppets run by unknown groups.
Meantime misi
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Sorry, but you (and pretty much everyone esle) in the west doesn't even remotely understand the reasons behind this conflict.
Yeah, pretty much. I do understand that Putin has invaded Ukraine.
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and the US gov & mainstream media are the biggest liars i ever seen in my life
And you were born when?
Re: The first casualty of war (Score:2)
Re: The first casualty of war (Score:2)
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You have absolutely no idea about what you are talking, and about the world. The article above talks about russian misinformation, both about the war and the space station. It tells everything that your first and single idea is not that the russian media is a liar.
I am living in a so called illiberal "democracy", Hungary, which is the member of the EU. Yet no opponent party politician entered the state funded state and private propaganda media for years. Except one case, when the only question he received w
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Yes, Americans can be amazingly parochial. Although I think that's mainly a human thing, but still...
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Look behind you, Ruski.
There cannot possibly be any casualties of war (Score:2)
This is a special military operation. /sarcasm.
sorry, off topic (Score:2, Insightful)
Has anyone else noticed that there has been a lack of moderation points for the last week or so?
All of the stories I've clicked on for the last few days have dozens and tens of dozens of comments, all bunched up around 0 and 1 point. A handful of 2's, and no comments moderated to 3, 4 or 5.
What is going on? It seems like the Slashdot algorithm for distributing moderation points has stalled.
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It could also be that /. has finally figured out how to prevent the troll armies from abusing their mod points by not allocating as many mod points to them.
Don't think so I've still seen illegitimate troll mods along with legit moderation (just to be clear - I don't think all negative mods of my own posts are illegitimate). That's just been happening less. Seems to me that there are definitely fewer mod points being handed out which might well be to limit the troll armies or it might be that someone's worked out how to get most of the mod points but aren't using them.
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Their solution appears to be to make sure that not enough mod points get out to do any significant damage, because things aren't getting modded up or down for the most part. They appear to have only handed out a few mod points, which for all we know might have all gone straight to editors.
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Yes. I've noticed this.
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Personally, I never liked the mod system, because it tends to lead to group-think, and that's exactly what it also did on Slashdot, where you could almost predict who a comment with a certain critical message was going to be modded up or down depending on the time of the day (likely relating to the time zone in which users from certain places are active).
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I'd like to offer a counterpoint to your critique of Slashdot's moderation system....
My time is limited. I hardly ever want to read all ~50 comments on a story. That's where moderation comes in handy: filter out all the low-point comments and boom! I can get the gist of the comments in just a couple minutes.
I'll even go a step further and say that often, group-think is useful! Consider a non-techy person such as myself: A story about some new piece of hardware or a new scientific discovery, usually has comm
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Perhaps that was true 15 years ago.
But these days, it seems little different from a youtube comment section. And those people also used to get plenty of mod points to spend.
Sure, the mod system does have quality posts bubble up from time to time, but especially on politicized topics, the amount of +4/5 Insightful/Informative posts that check a lot of marks on lists like this [wikipedia.org] has become worrisome, making the enti
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I was wondering the same thing. I have not seen points in a long, long time. If they are limiting the trolls, they are also limiting those who up vote legit comments.
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Same here. I used to get mod points every few days. I didn't always use them but I semi-regularly. Maybe it's just as well there are no mod points these days given the nature of the postings.
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Here's what ABC News reports:
"Russia threatens to abandon American astronaut in space as sanctions threaten peace aboard ISS"
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Space Agency and a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, responded to Biden in a series of hostile tweets. On Feb. 26, he posted a video in Russian that threatened to leave Vande Hei behind in space and detach Russia's segment of the space station altogether.
Scott Kelly said he felt compelled to speak up and engaged with Rogozin on Twitter. "I was just enraged that he, the [cosmonauts], said that they were going to leave an American crew member behind. I never thought I would ever hear anything so outrageous".
NASA has remained silent on Rogozin's threats to abandon Vande Hei in space.
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On Feb. 26, he posted a video in Russian that threatened to leave Vande Hei behind in space and detach Russia's segment of the space station altogether.
I realize these are likely empty threats, and possibly just bad jokes. But that leaky Russian segment is responsible for station-keeping, right? If it were detached for whatever reason, could the ISS be maintained with periodic visits by SpaceX (or other) capsules?
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Musk says that his SpaceX systems could replace the Russian module for guidance control and, while I really dislike Musk personally, it should be considered and put in place as a standby option. Given the truths that have come from Russia these days I wouldn't trust them when they say they will or will not abandon an astronaut or leave the ISS to its own devices. Always have a backup and always check it on a regular basis to make sure it will work.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
A fascinating video which really brings home the links between civilian space exploration and military rocket use and also the attitudes of the old, military, Russians, however when it mentions the ISS [youtu.be] (and again [youtu.be]) I see an implication but I don't see a direct threat. The English translation of the automatic captions is far from perfect. Could you please be specific about the exact timestamp where you see him threaten the ISS astronaut with abandonment.
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Rogozin is clearly a loose cannon. His ranting doesn't make engineering sense.
To be fair, Scott Kelly is a glory hound and loudmouth too.
They both seem to have bad tempers and it's unfortunate that they represent anybody.
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Dmiti Rogozin is a neonazi. They aren't generally known for their engineering sense (there were much better engineers among the original nazis, oddly enough).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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invade? Sorry misinterpretation - exterminate all the living males and make females Comfort Girls. Genocide the babies. Long live Rus, enslavers of weak neighbors.
Pretty much what I expect from Putin, f**king dick.
W T F? (Score:2)
Yes, they did threaten to leave him there.
Yes, it is an empty threat because he could get home by other means.
Why lie, slashdot?
Does It Matter? (Score:2)
Seems like Russia has a lot of current transgressions that outweigh the importance of this dilemma. Like territorial war.
Think of the movie possibilities! (Score:2)
has to eat bugs he brought along for an experiment
fights off female space vampires whose religion forbids them to wear clothes
gets sent to a prison planet for shooting first in a backwater brawl
tries to avoid getting probed by The Master of the Master Race on Reta Zeticuli
the possibilities are endless!
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I was thinking of a remake of The Martian. But when the Russians learn that Mark Watney is growing potatoes, they return and help him make vodka from the crop.
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gets sent to a prison planet for shooting first in a backwater brawl
Not very realistic. The last time I remember this sort of tuing going down, the offender was turned into a carbonite wall decoration. He was later released and briefly allowed to party on a sand yacht.
Ah, yes they are threatening (Score:2)
Just because operations haven't changed, doesn't make it a non-threat.
Ars become a trash tabloid now have they?
Forum on nasaspaceflight.com about the issue (Score:2)
On this NASA Space Flight forum it sounds like people are more worried that Mark Vande Hei will be detained on landing in Kazakhstan or the Russians will pull some kind of stunt. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.... [nasaspaceflight.com]
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Why does my perfectly normal paragraph response to this "Look like ASCII art" to the stupid Slashdot filter? It's just totally ordinary unformatted sentences.
Oh well.
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On this NASA Space Flight forum it sounds like people are more worried that Mark Vande Hei will be detained on landing in Kazakhstan or the Russians will pull some kind of stunt.
In Soviet Russia, KGB space-walks YOU.
Of course they won't! (Score:2)
He'll be much more useful as a hostage. They'll bring him back home/down to Russia, then "find" hashish oil in his luggage [espn.com] and detain him.
Is JOKE! (Score:2)
Be careful not to fall down stairs and land on many bullets, comrade.
Is JOKE!
Now, let us go out and drink vodka. After you...
--
It may not have been a likely action to be taken, but it was a threat, not a joke.
media hype (Score:1)
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Does nobody not realize this is media hype designed to distract people from what is really happening?
"There is no B-3 bomber"
How many space stations am I holding up, Winston?
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Does nobody not realize this is media hype designed to distract people from what is really happening?
"There is no B-3 bomber"
We have always been at war with West Ukrania.
Oh, wait, that's true....