this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
296 points (94.6% liked)

World News

32379 readers
979 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, how about you read the damn article? This is mentioned:

The crew vehicle served the Soviet space program through 1991 and since then has been a mainstay for the country's large space corporation, Roscosmos. The Soyuz is a hardy, generally reliable vehicle that NASA counted on for crew transport from 2011 to 2020, after the space shuttle's retirement and before SpaceX's Crew Dragon came into service.

The Soyuz spacecraft, as well as a lot of the country's other satellites, launches into orbit on the Soyuz rocket. This vehicle dates back even a bit further, to 1966. Russian engineers have modified and modernized both the spacecraft and rocket over time, but they remain essentially the same space vehicles.

There's nothing wrong with aging technology that works. However, there have been some issues of late with leaks and other problems that have raised serious questions about quality control and the ability of the Russians to manufacture these vehicles.

IOW, Russia lost a decades-long ability under the watch of Putin/his appointed cronies

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, Roscosmos was a pretty normal space agency, ESA even had collaborations with them (ExoMars comes to mind). It's Putin's political decisions that have all but ended Roscosmos. I can't see them recovering from this, at least not in the near future.