Deflecting Criticism, Russia Tries Insinuating 2018 Hole on Space Station Was US Sabotage (space.com) 83
Remember that small leak on the International Space Station discovered in 2018 that was traced to a Russian module and apparently made by a drill bit? (Implicating the technicans that built the module on earth, Ars Technica wrote "There is evidence that a technician saw the drilling mistake and covered the hole with glue, which prevented the problem from being detected...")
It's being revisited in the aftermath of a more recent incident involving Russia's Nauka science module to the International Space Station. (A software glitch after launch had required two course corrections for its rocket, and then while docking in space the module mistakenly fired its thrusters, causing the space station to briefly loss control, as well as communication with earth for 11 minutes.) Russia "is furious at what it says is unfair criticism of its space program," notes Futurism.com.
In response, Russia's state-owned news agency TASS has presented an anonymous interview with someone said to be a "high ranking" official at their space agency suggesting that the 2018 drill hole could've been caused by an emotionally unstable NASA flight engineer onboard the space station. The state-owned agency's story claims this flight engineer had discovered a blood clot in their jugular vein, and could've decided their return to earth for medical treatment might be expedited by sabotaging Russia's module. The problem with this story? Space.com reports: NASA officials knew the precise locations of the U.S. astronauts before the leak occurred and at the moment it began, thanks to space station surveillance. The video footage indicated that none of the U.S. astronauts on the station were near the Russian segment where the Soyuz vehicle was docked.
So Russia's state-owned news agency TASS now suggests that NASA could've tampered with that video to cover-up sabotage by NASA's astronauts — and points out that they weren't allowed to administer lie-detecting polygraph tests to those astronauts.
Asked to comment on the "unstable astronaut" theory, NASA's human spaceflight chief said they "did not find this accusation credible."
Ars Technica calls Russia's claims "extraordinarily defamatory."
It's being revisited in the aftermath of a more recent incident involving Russia's Nauka science module to the International Space Station. (A software glitch after launch had required two course corrections for its rocket, and then while docking in space the module mistakenly fired its thrusters, causing the space station to briefly loss control, as well as communication with earth for 11 minutes.) Russia "is furious at what it says is unfair criticism of its space program," notes Futurism.com.
In response, Russia's state-owned news agency TASS has presented an anonymous interview with someone said to be a "high ranking" official at their space agency suggesting that the 2018 drill hole could've been caused by an emotionally unstable NASA flight engineer onboard the space station. The state-owned agency's story claims this flight engineer had discovered a blood clot in their jugular vein, and could've decided their return to earth for medical treatment might be expedited by sabotaging Russia's module. The problem with this story? Space.com reports: NASA officials knew the precise locations of the U.S. astronauts before the leak occurred and at the moment it began, thanks to space station surveillance. The video footage indicated that none of the U.S. astronauts on the station were near the Russian segment where the Soyuz vehicle was docked.
So Russia's state-owned news agency TASS now suggests that NASA could've tampered with that video to cover-up sabotage by NASA's astronauts — and points out that they weren't allowed to administer lie-detecting polygraph tests to those astronauts.
Asked to comment on the "unstable astronaut" theory, NASA's human spaceflight chief said they "did not find this accusation credible."
Ars Technica calls Russia's claims "extraordinarily defamatory."
Russia: Space is Hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Live with it and the fact that you'll make mistakes to learn from...or stay on Earth.
I can't believe that Elon Musk has more grace in dealing with mistakes than a Superpower.
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Their tirade is at the "we didn't land on the moon" level.
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I don't know why this is considered an insult. Borscht is just fucking awesome. People who have never had it have no idea what they are missing.
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I don't know why this is considered an insult. Borscht is just fucking awesome. People who have never had it have no idea what they are missing.
Oh hell yeah Loves me some borscht. Cold as a drink, or hot with the beets and beet leaves in it.
Re: Russia: Space is Hard (Score:2, Informative)
Its only 2.65 here so ol prez is doing great
See how that works now shut the fuck up
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maxeji9815 ( 8040160 ) -- Except Trump didn't do wrong, the media pretended he did. Under Biden we have re-invaded Afghanistan, restarted the Israeli conflict, bombed both Iraq AND Syria, and Biden is just getting started. Also, gasoline is over $4.50 a gallon, COVID cases are higher than ever before, and inflation is through the roof. I think I want Trump back and everything that he did "wrong".
You really created this sock puppet account just to spread misinformation like this?
Re: Russia: Space is Hard (Score:2)
Yes... there's like twenty or so of them at least with the same pattern, all random sounding with four digits at the end I think.
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Musk appears to be a total prick to his employees.
But admitting he was wrong about things is not one of his faults.
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> I can't believe that Elon Musk has more grace in dealing with mistakes than a Superpower.
And therein lies the problem, Russia can no longer pretend to be a superpower. It's economy is weaker than nations that are mostly 3rd world (China, India, Brazil).
Really, Russia is a failed backwards state that still has some hangover of the fruits of the post World War II era hanging around (like nukes and a space programme) and nothing much else.
It's about as much of a super power as Somalia at this point. It sp
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You do know there are three worlds. First world, second world, third world. China isn't third world. Look it up.
That's actually a bit tricky. The actual definitions of those terms is based on US/western and Soviet rivalry and their spheres of influence. The '1st World' was the US/western world. The '2nd World' was the Soviet Union and its satellites and dependent states. The '3rd World' was all the rest, which were pretty much all poorer, less developed countries that didn't interest the US/West or the Soviet Union much. Third world basically became synonymous with extremely poor countries with weak or broken governa
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I can't believe that Elon Musk has more grace in dealing with mistakes than a Superpower.
Nations divorce responsibility from authority as a routine matter. Why would they accept responsibility when they do not have to?
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You are a guy who literally said that we should do genetic tracing for the purpose of punishment for catching a virus
Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought
Not US Sabotage (Score:5, Funny)
It was a 2 mm hole. Had it been the US, it would have been 5/64 inch.
Objoke (Score:2, Funny)
As I slipped my finger slowly inside her hole, I could immediately feel it getting colder and colder
I slid my finger back out, and within seconds, she was sucking again.
I thought to myself, "I really need a new fucking spaceship."
Sure this is not a Comedy episode? (Score:1)
Children (Score:3)
I mean is there anything sadder than grown "adults" in international science programs with tears in their eye point and cry "mum it was his fault".
Re:Children (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean is there anything sadder than grown "adults" in international science programs with tears in their eye point and cry "mum it was his fault".
The accidentally drilled and patched hole while on earth does make a lot more sense than someone wanting to return to earth for medical treatment, so they took a chance on destroying the entire space station.
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Its nuttier than that. The allegation is that it was the souez capsule itself that was sabotaged. That is to say, russia is claiming an astronaut wanted to go home faster so they, uh, tried to damage the ride home?
Nothing of this claim makes sense. I've seen the claim that there where signs of a drill skipping therefore spaaaace. But drills skip. They have a extremely fast moving parts, even in expert hands sometimes shit just goes wrong. Further the hole was filled in, poorly apparently , indicating that
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I've seen the claim that there where signs of a drill skipping therefore spaaaace. But drills skip. They have a extremely fast moving parts, even in expert hands sometimes shit just goes wrong.
Holy smoke, yeah. I've had drills skip all the time right at good old 1G.
Further the hole was filled in, poorly apparently , indicating that somebody made a mistake, then tried to fill it in with some form of epoxy. Does ANY of this make sense as a get-home-quick scheme by somebody with an astronaut brain?
No for sure. Must be some real booboo feelings there. I know there were people on social media who were busting Russia's chops hard, but shit happens, especially in space. NASA knows this Roscosmos knows this.
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Use a drill bit center tap tool - I've got some. Solid metal rod with a short steep point on one end (opposite of a needle point) and a flat end on the other.
Put the point exactly where you want to drill, then tap the other end once with a hammer. Nice pointed dimple you can set the drill bit into.
No skipping!
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Use a drill bit center tap tool - I've got some. Solid metal rod with a short steep point on one end (opposite of a needle point) and a flat end on the other.
Put the point exactly where you want to drill, then tap the other end once with a hammer. Nice pointed dimple you can set the drill bit into.
No skipping!
I've taken to putting a small dead center in my Mill and centering on the hole I want to drill. It's a bit of a pain, but it's accurate - most holes don't have to be quite that accurate.
Sounds like we have something similar - only my method takes longer.
Re:Children (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the science/engineering people pushing this. It's purely coming from the political establishment, and in Russia if you're told to tell a lie, you tell a lie, if you value your job and/or life.
Statements of the fact. (Score:2, Informative)
For the Russian version "our USA colleagues did it"
1. There were 5 or so attempts to drill a hole. Only one went through.
2. There was slippage on all attempts. While this does not guarantee that the attempt was done in zero G, it is more likely - not enough leverage to drill.
3. At least one attempt was to drill through a structural truss (unsuccessful of course). A person familiar with the design of the craft and the location of the trusses would not try to drill there.
4. The American crew member who ha
Re:Statements of the fact. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is evidence that a technician saw the drilling mistake and covered the hole with glue, which prevented the problem from being detected during a vacuum test. . . “I have conducted investigations of all kinds of spacecraft, and after landing, we discovered a hole drilled completely through the hull of a re-entry module," the former Energia employee, Viktor Minenko, said in Gazeta.RU. "But the technician didn't report the defect to anyone but sealed up the hole with epoxy. We found the person, and after a commotion he was terminated,” said Minenko.
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Now Russia is trying to do a lazy clean-up of their reputation by blaming someone completely outside their control. Maybe this story will encourage Russians' pride in their space industry. Maybe for a few, it will improve the view of Russia's commercial launch capacity relative to Space-X . But there is no reason to take it seriously, especially since we know the location of the American astronauts.
Re:Statements of the fact. (Score:4, Funny)
Add to the against side 3) sabotaging the craft you hope to ride down to Earth is a pretty bad strategy for getting to Earth faster.
On the other hand..... (Score:1)
Diaper astronaut Lady - https://okmagazine.com/news/di... [okmagazine.com]
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The orbital module that the hole was in is not the reentry capsule. The Soyuz can operate fine when the orbital module is depressurized (which it is anyway when separated from the capsule). A bad leak just means the crew can't use the facilities and have to stay in the capsule for the whole trip, which is uncomfortable but not dangerous.
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Sure, but to get to the reentry module from the station, you must go through the orbital module. The damage would either be serious enough to make that a problem or too minor to alter the mission schedule significantly.
As it turns out, the Soyuz remained docked for months after the leak was found.
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You don't even mention the known locations of the US astronauts mentioned in the summary. So much for listing facts. My impression is that there is also a bunch of other circumstantial evidence based on how the construction process works. Like this is something that gets "checked" in such a way that a single worker could cover it up. That is unusual in a project like this, where most things would be independently checked. So some crazy unstable astronaut happened to pick a mechanism of sabotage that lo
A Canadian did it. (Score:2)
Five attempts to drill a hole, slippage on all attempts, one attempt through a structural member. This is the workmanship of Possum Lodge owner Red Green. What more evidence do you need? Use of the "handyman's secret weapon" duck tape?
Ya, but ... (Score:2)
Russia's state-owned news agency TASS has presented ...
I'll wait until it comes out in Pravda -- they only print the truth. :-)
Propaganda Savant (Score:2)
When was the last time (Score:1)
"administer lie-detecting polygraph" (Score:2)
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Geometric logic (Score:2)
There is such a thing a geometric logic for ascertaining where the missing frozen strawberries went.
“Unstable astronaut”? (Score:1)
Trump didn’t go into space, Vlad.
More forensics? (Score:1)
Debris (Score:2)
Re: Debris (Score:1)
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That story makes me wonder how they manage debris will drilling in space. Do they have a vaccum-cleaner-integrated drill?
So you’re saying to look for the astronaut with a chip on their shoulder?
kot-begemot-uk summarizes everything pretty well (Score:1)
Soviet Style Propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
The Cold War never ended. (Score:2)
The US objective should not be cooperation with Putin, but to withdraw all support for Russian space efforts. That's far more important than some aging space station only built as a symbol of naive idealistic therefore idiotic symbol of a cooperation doomed since 1917.
Russia remains an enemy society, not a society with a temporary enemy government.
Re:The Cold War never ended. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a lot of great things about Russian society, and a lot of great Russians. In day to day life they aren't much different from Americans. The difference is that decades of Soviet rule gave them a "grit your teeth and endure it" fatalist attitude.
The problem is that the west fucked up their golden opportunity to help Russia transition away from authoritarianism. Under Yeltsin civil liberties were not that different than in the west, even more free in some ways. The problem was that the attitude of the west was "Look, Capitalism won! Now the market will make Russia a better place!", when in fact unchecked capitalism absolutely ravaged the country. Citizens were given shares in formerly state-owned businesses, which they promptly sold for a pittance to the oligarchs. They were not prepared at all to manage a capitalist economy and the west did nothing to help, and instead profited off of it where they could.
Their fall back to authoritarianism was not surprising at all, given those circumstances. Russians most definitely miss their civil liberties, but they don't miss those lean years where the stores were full of products that they couldn't afford.
Re: Soviet Style Propaganda (Score:2)
I wasn't old enough back then, but to me, this is just about as entertaining as the US bashing against Russia lately (as of: the past 5 years or so).
Everything "the Russians did it in USA-land". Stupid president? Russians did it. Botched elections? Russian did it. Misinformation at large scale? Why of course it was a Russian campaign, never mind that the American press has been consistently lying to its citizens since the 70s, and probably before that also. Covid? Oh, that one's a Chinese conspiracy, sorry.
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If you can't even say "America," you're already chortling to yourself pretty hard. I doubt we have anything to do with it.
Re: Soviet Style Propaganda (Score:2)
Well... sorry, was choking on popcorn while LMAO. I'm sure you understand.
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Oh, all the world knows how you people chortle, I can assure you. Don't forget to pat yourself on the back while with both hands.
Re: Soviet Style Propaganda (Score:2)
Who's "you people"?
I'm neither Russian nor American, so... yes, essentially I'm "all the world" who "knows".
And I'll be out of popcorn soon if you keep up the comedy :-D
So, there's a (Score:1)
hole in their whole hole theory.
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Holy cow!
Scrap ISS and stop enabling the Russian enemy (Score:2)
The Cold War never ended. Cooperation was the naive dream of mental children doomed to failure since 1917.
ISS is only money and can easily be replaced. Space will still be there. Scrap fraternization with the enemy Kremlin and deorbit ISS then hire Elon Musk to do it better. It's old tech and no machine is beyond replacement.
Nerds get overly attached to objects, but machines are mere tools and tools can be remade better.
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But there was a short period around the turn of the century were Russia was less dicky. They acted like they wanted to be like a big European country with a European way of doing things. But Putie shifted it back to Soviet Mode.
Grew up with the cold war and not going back (Score:2)
Russia's obligations... (Score:2)
Didn't they weasel out of a bunch of infrastructure of the ISS in the early days? It seems like I was reading articles for years about how NASA had to subsidize and help them out financially with a bunch of the components they couldn't afford or make up to spec.
metric or SAE? (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with the ISS (Score:2)
Putin has entire government agencies (like the Internet Research Agency) spending all their time spewing misinformation that disrupts the west. He helped elect Trump - and look at the cost in terms of international relations, shared defence (NATO) and so on.
Given this context, it stands to reason that Putin will take every available opportunity to seed the west with misinformation and outright lies. Thanks to the open nature
Spewing misinformation (Score:2)
Does misinformation get spewed? Or do they try to let it out without others noticing?
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For example, think back to early 2017... A story broke in the press about the fact that (former General) Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor to President-Elect Trump, had been secretly meeting with the Russian Ambassador, to negotiate a relaxation of sanctions. What does the President-Elect do? He immediately goes on TV and throws out a completely unfounded claim that President Obama had ordered bugs and wire taps at Trump Tower in New York
What is Maskirovka? (Score:2)
The little masquerade is central to Russian diplomatic and military deception.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Time to call their bluff (Score:2)
As is almost "usual" Russia have overstayed their welcome on the ISS.
They are there, riding the coat tails of other nations who have invested more resources and effort, and they are trying to "save face" by flinging baseless allegations.
Not terrible original.
Ask them how their athletics doping control measures are going..
Unstable engineer with blood clot did it (Score:1)