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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

#111

Post by selivanovp »

Etheryte wrote: post #57
tokai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they didn't. The Soviet Union did.

This is an important distinction. The majority of the aerospace know-how in the Soviet Union came from Ukraine, not from Russia.

What you’re missing is that factories were built in Ukraine as a part of reconstruction after WW2, but engineers were mostly Russian, relocated from Russia.

These days pretty much all Ukrainian space industry is dead, and it was dead even before war. Most competent people left for Russia or USA. Yes, they still provided some components just because it was cheaper to build them in the original factory, but in a last few years Russia just replaced all Ukraine components. Antares had Ukrainian fuel tanks I believe, but I doubt it’ll last long.

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

#112

Post by smcl »

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.

Yeah I had read that a good number of anti-war people had gone there both before and after mobilisation. In fact I was watching a video by the youtuber "nfkrz" (from Chelyabinsk, left after the invasion and now lives in Tbilisi) who made a really interesting point. You can still travel to the EU if you're a Russian passport holder, however you do still need to get a visa from the destination country's embassy inside Russia. So if you wanted no part in the war and made it across the border to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia or Armenia or wherever you are kinda stuck, you can't travel onwards to (say) Germany because that would mean returning to Russia and risking trouble especially if you were supposed to be mobilised. Meanwhile if you remained (whether you were quietly against it, ambivalent or super pro-Z) you don't necessarily have that barrier[0]

Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me - we should just allow Russians apply for EU/EEC country's visas outside Russia. If someone wants to not take part in a war, we should be making that easier for them as much as possible not harder or more dangerous :-/

[0] - I don't think it's easy but it's certainly a couple of levels easier than it is for those who left.

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

#114

Post by jareklupinski »

latchkey wrote: post #106
Robotbeat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

wondering if there is an inhabited planet somewhere out there much more optimized for launching spacecraft

with its equatorial denizens barely hanging on to its surface

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

#115

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

smcl wrote: post #112
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.

Yeah I had read that a good number of anti-war people had gone there both before and after mobilisation. In fact I was watching a video by the youtuber "nfkrz" (from Chelyabinsk, left after the invasion and now lives in Tbilisi) who made a really interesting point. You can still travel to the EU if you're a Russian passport holder, however you do still need to get a visa from the destination country's embassy inside…

I have (had?) a lot of friends there, some of whom have emigrated permanently, some have moved here to Kazakhstan when Putin declared his "partial mobilization", and have returned when it was declared over (although it isn't over legally…) If you haven't spoken up publicly against the war or did anything else that might endanger you personally, it has been quite safe to return to the country for the past few months. Of course, this could change in a moment — when rumors of upcoming mobilization started, my friends had less than a day to leave the country safely before the border service started selectively checking documents against mobilization lists.

> Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me - we should just allow Russians apply for EU/EEC country's visas outside Russia

I haven't seen this sentiment outside of the few remaining oppositional Russian news outlets yet. I guess politicians will do politicians' things, and chauvinism sells better than compassion.

https://t.me/svtvnews/25254

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

#116

Post by maxerickson »

rob74 wrote: post #51
pestatije wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's definitely not optimal, but GP probably wanted to highlight that it's not much worse than Baikonur (45°), at least when you compare it to Cape Canaveral (28°) or Kourou (5°). Actually, Roskosmos was cooperating with ESA to launch some of their rockets from Kourou, but of course since the Ukraine attack that is suspended ( https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-suspends-coopera... )

Yeah, most of the continental US is better than 45°.

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

#117

Post by callalex »

hammock wrote: post #81
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.

[flagged]

Can you expand on this?

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

#118

Post by s1artibartfast »

jareklupinski wrote: post #114
latchkey wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

wondering if there is an inhabited planet somewhere out there much more optimized for launching spacecraft with its equatorial denizens barely hanging on to its surface

Size and mass are the other big factors.

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

#120

Post by cjrp »

mrguyorama wrote: post #105
cjrp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

True, but presumably because of the fear of losing energy supply, Europe chose _not_ to react to earlier provocations, including the invasion of the Crimea.
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