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Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

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Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#101

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

saiya-jin wrote: post #89
medo-bear wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol this is so stupid. being russian is as much an ethnicity as it is a nationality. if you make derisive prejudicial comments about an ethnic group that is racism

With that logic, you can't say ever any critical remark about a group of people (since they can self-identify as ethnicity XYZ and who are you to say otherwise), because it all gets siphoned into 'that's racism' outrage. If anything, it should be labeled 'ethnicism', in fact thats a proper word so lets be factual. What about, instead of this totalitarian auto-censorship outrages in anonymous online forums, we discuss…

I don't "self-identify" as anyone, I have a birth certificate issued by the Kazakh government that plainly identifies me as ethnically Russian. Since the beginning of 2022, that has been enough to receive limitless amounts of vitriol and death threats from people such as yourself.

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#102

Post by dotnet00 »

sorenjan wrote: post #91
pestatije wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

51° N is like London...not the best latitude for launching to space

I don't know anything about space launches, how come the first orbital launch site in mainland Europe is in Esrange in northern Sweden, latitude 67° N? Are different latitudes good for different trajectories?

Yes, Esrange is best suited to launches into Sun Synchronous Orbit, which is high-inclination (nearly a polar orbit). It's very popular for things like Earth observation satellites.

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#103

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

labster wrote: post #21
vinaypai wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> turning away from it seems like an economic suicide On the other hand, not turning away from it might be literal suicide.

Nah, we in NATO don’t blame landlocked countries with small economies for having, well, ambiguous relations with nearby Russia. It’s the places that have a choice, like Serbia, India, and Hungary, that are at risk of moving themselves onto our list of geopolitical rivals.

Oh, come on. The only reason you have not destroyed our economy with sanctions yet is because your oil companies have deep investments in our oil industry in western parts of the country. Additionally we cover about 50% of the world's uranium supply. Even before the war started, our khan put more than 300 people in the ground to preserve his rule (many of them random women and children; and that's according to official sources whom everyone considers to be seriously biased), and your politicians looked the other way because it didn't tip the scales far enough.

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#104

Post by dotnet00 »

cjrp wrote: post #75
0xDEF wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has spend billions to gain soft power by hosting the 2018 world cup, the winter Olympics etc. However the only "soft power" that has actually worked for Russia are their hundreds of thousands of social media disinfo sockpuppet accounts. They have convinced half of India, Nigeria, Hungary and Kentucky that Ukraine created COVID-19.

Do their energy exports count as soft power? Arguably that was working quite well, until they further expanded in to Ukraine.

I think they count as soft power, but on the energy front, everyone (even Europe itself) completely overestimated how strong it was. Russia very much expected that energy dependency would keep Europe out of the conflict, even if it would put them on a path towards breaking that dependency in the long term. No one seemed to truly expect that the reaction would be so strong that it'd take less than a year to mostly eliminate that dependency.

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#105

Post by mrguyorama »

cjrp wrote: post #75
0xDEF wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has spend billions to gain soft power by hosting the 2018 world cup, the winter Olympics etc. However the only "soft power" that has actually worked for Russia are their hundreds of thousands of social media disinfo sockpuppet accounts. They have convinced half of India, Nigeria, Hungary and Kentucky that Ukraine created COVID-19.

Do their energy exports count as soft power? Arguably that was working quite well, until they further expanded in to Ukraine.

In fact that went very poorly. They cut off gas to Europe in an attempt to freeze them and make them come to the bargaining table, but Europe responded very strongly and largely still supports Ukraine. The winter was even very mild. In cutting off the crutch, Russia forced Europe to go cold turkey instead of delaying it for a decade like they wanted to. Now Russia has to settle for selling the gas to other places at a steep discount, and Europe may never buy Russian gas again.

There's even a fun parallel to draw with the floating LNG terminals off the coast and WWII floating harbors for Normandy

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#106

Post by latchkey »

Robotbeat wrote: post #79
selimthegrim wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the trajectories from there are nowhere as good as Baikonur

You’re right. 45.6deg vs 51.8deg N. The eastward boost you get from the earths rotation is just: 2 * pi * cos(latitude)/day so the difference is: 2 * pi * r_Earth*(cos(45.2deg)-cos(51.8deg))/day = 40m/s. Which doesn’t sound like a lot but can add up. I compared Plesetsk (Russia) vs Baikonur (Kazakhstan) in the Silverbird Astronautics calculator for Soyuz v2-1B using 3.3m fairing and without Fregat, and I got 1552kg e…

I never considered this and your response made me ask google the question: "Where is the best place to launch a vehicle?"

"The land at the equator is moving 1670 km per hour, and land halfway to the pole is only moving 1180 km per hour, so launching from the equator makes the spacecraft move almost 500 km/hour faster once it is launched."

Neat, thanks for such an interesting answer.

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#107

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

batter wrote: post #93
saiya-jin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand russian mentality. If it will be the only option, they will run their space program, however gutted and affected, from grey market. The war will only strengthen this mentality and approach. Just don't expect thats the same grey market that we individuals are exposed to, currently places like Turkey, Georgia, Belarus and plenty of *stan countries are happily providing all the banned wares.…

To run space programs they'll need money. Even with resources they have running both war and space programs will lead to catastrophic consequences. But I suspect that's exactly the way they'll choose.

For the time being, the West has been supplying Putin's troops with plenty of money (taxes from selling natural resources go into the federal budget, which is used to fund the military, and therefore the war). They made record profits last year.

https://svtv.org/gas-for-putin-war/

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#108

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #46
smcl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah to me (admittedly a complete outsider) they seem to just barely have the capability to remain in the fight in Ukraine, it's almost unthinkable that they'd try to open another front. I've also been wondering recently if Georgia might see this war as an opportune moment to retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia, or if Moldova might attempt to reestablish control of Transnistria. With Russia underresourced and distracte…

Unlikely; the current Georgian gov't is rabidly pro-Russian. They've got the previous (anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian) president thrown in jail, slowly dying (Saakashvili). And the country is rammed full of Russian ex-pats. Much of the populace seems extremely unhappy about this, but it's an unstable situation in the wrong way that would lead to military action in that way.

Most of those Russian expats are anti-Putin and anti-war. But I guess you don't care about that, as usual these days. We're the (old) new boogeyman, and this is Red Scare 2.0.

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#109

Post by cmrdporcupine »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #108
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely; the current Georgian gov't is rabidly pro-Russian. They've got the previous (anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian) president thrown in jail, slowly dying (Saakashvili). And the country is rammed full of Russian ex-pats. Much of the populace seems extremely unhappy about this, but it's an unstable situation in the wrong way that would lead to military action in that way.

Most of those Russian expats are anti-Putin and anti-war. But I guess you don't care about that, as usual these days. We're the (old) new boogeyman, and this is Red Scare 2.0.

I never said I don't care about that. But the situation is complicated. While many of those Russians align like you say, it doesn't change the fact that it remains a mix, that Russians have a heavy influence there, that there's tensions around that, and that alienating Russia or taking explicit anti-Putin positions is what the current Georgian gov't is currently trying to avoid.

In any case I genuinely feel for the Russian anti-war or opposition diaspora and don't hold bigoted anti-Russian positions like others on this thread might be showing. It's a complicated situation and indicative of the broader problems we'll see more and more of as empires and hegemonies built around domination of hydrocarbon exports become more volatile.

Re: Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

#110

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #109
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those Russian expats are anti-Putin and anti-war. But I guess you don't care about that, as usual these days. We're the (old) new boogeyman, and this is Red Scare 2.0.

I never said I don't care about that. But the situation is complicated. While many of those Russians align like you say, it doesn't change the fact that it remains a mix, that Russians have a heavy influence there, that there's tensions around that, and that alienating Russia or taking explicit anti-Putin positions is what the current Georgian gov't is currently trying to avoid. In any case I genuinely feel for the R…

OK, that's fair, and I apologize for putting words in your mouth. It's been the default assumption lately, sadly.

I am from Kazakhstan, and our government has been in a position similar to what they're experiencing in Georgia. Lots of paranoia about Putin trying to stir up something here. To slow down immigration, they implemented some new anti-immigration laws that aren't targeted specifically at Russian citizens (although it quite obvious to everyone bothering to observe), so they pretty much can't stay here for more than a few months. But I guess Georgia depends on migrant's money much more than we do, so they can't simply do the same.

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