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John McCain

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In which he is an idiot (sorry, behind a paywall):

The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on Tuesday downplayed the potential national security significance of NASA
continuing payments to Russia to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

“I have a much bigger problem with the Russian rocket engine,” Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters at the Capitol. “I don’t see what the impact is, financially, of the Russian riding as compared with $300 million worth of rocket engines. There’s no comparison.”

But this is what I found interesting:

McCain’s counterpart in the House, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), told reporters Tuesday that U.S. dependence on Russia for space-related items is a national security issue. But Thornberry also said the challenge with paying for Russian rides to ISS is much like the RD-180 scenario: one faced with limited options.

“It ought to be a lesson for all of us about letting key capability atrophy and becoming dependent upon somebody else whose reliability can be called into question,” Thornberry said. “That doesn’t mean you snap your fingers and solve it any more than you snap your fingers and solve the Russian engine issue.”

Actually, we could. All we have to do is be more accepting of astronaut risk.

8 thoughts on “John McCain”

  1. Maybe I’m mathematically challenged, but IMHO, the $480 million a year we’re paying the Russians for Soyuz rides is a larger amount than the $300 million for RD-180 engines.

    McCain, on the other hand, seems to be of the opinion that 300 is larger than 480.

    I guess math has been added to the list of things where reality is subjective, not objective?

      1. It’s also cheaper to buy RD-180s from Russia than to develop a system to avoid the need for RD-180s.

        My personal preference is for independence from Russia for both manned and unmanned launches. Dependance equals leverage, and we really don’t need to be handing Mr. Putin leverage (as well as hundreds of millions of dollars).

    2. It is not as much about the money as the national security implications. I have to agree with McCain here. The RD-180 problem has much larger national security implications than a Soyuz problem would have.

      We are talking about not being able to sustain the US defense satellite network vs losing some NASA manned space experiments.

      2. The problem with buying RD-180 engines isn’t that they’re incapable of sustaining US defense satellites.

        The problem is who the money goes to, and what he might do with it.

        Helping to finance Putin’s dream of rebuilding the Soviet Empire does have national security implications, which go far beyond “NASA manned space experiments.”

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