Russia is about to do the most Russia thing ever with its next space station

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/russia-is-about-to-do-the-most-russia-thing-ever-with-its-next-space-station

29 Comments

  1. CMDR_omnicognate on

    You mean the lead pockets all the money and they “smekalka” something together with cheese and chewing gum leading to the deaths of several thousand?

  2. CrookedWarden19 on

    How do you make an entire space station accidentally fall out of an eighth story window?

  3. Borrow it from China/NK and watch it run off into the woods?

    Look at what someone else is doing, make it 5times bigger, and watch it fail in all possible ways?

    Declare a 3 day special military operation for getting to the moon, and never get anywhere near achieving their goals while killing 100s of thousands of their young males in their attempts?

  4. Sohn_Jalston_Raul on

    So they’re planning to repurpose the ISS core modules for their new station, even though the ISS core modules are themselves repurposed Salyut modules, lol

  5. iamamuttonhead on

    I had to read the entire thing to find out that it wasn’t:

    build a vodka still in their space station

    Very disappointed

  6. TheOnsiteEngineer on

    So they plan on reusing the aging, already over-their-time-limit, heavily fatigue cycled Russian segment of the ISS and attach their shiny new modules to it? That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. I also seem to recall the Russian segment is the main cause of concern for the increasing leakage measured in the ISS.

  7. Instead of building new modules, they want to reuse the Russian Orbital Segment of the ISS for their “new” space station. Nevermind that the core of the Russian segment is decades old, and the Zvezda module is increasingly leaky. Also, the Zarya module is US property.

    To be fair, the Nauka laboratory module and Prichal docking module *are* relatively new–to the ISS anyway. Much of Nauka was built in the 1990s, but it wasn’t completed, launched, and docked to the ISS until 2020 (and the latter not without unplanned excitement).

  8. Sure. Lets look at some numbers, shall we? Right now about 8% of Russias GDP is being used for the war in Ukraine. That is insane. It gets worse, thats near 40% of the entire Russian Federal budget.

    Okay, so build it when the war is over.. Except you cant. The war in Ukraine has hollowed out the Russian economy, it will need to continue spending on defense for quite some time to come in for a soft landing.

    Okay, so wait a bit longer.. Sure, you can, but Russia is also going to be dealing with rebuilding its infrastructure that Ukraine is systematically destroying, with no end in sight.

    Okay, so wait a bit longer.. Sure, but now the Russian demographics are totally shit. They were shit before the war, but now you are likely looking at worsening demographics even before the war, and now after the war, by times its over, you will likely be dealing with 2 Million dead, wounded, or missing Russian soldiers. The dead are dead, as are likely the missing.. but the wounded? Thats a drag on the economy for years to come.

    Okay, but surely they will come out of it then. No, doubt it. The U.S. may try to trade with them up until Trump is out of office, but that will then come to an end. Europe is done with them, and now China and India can basically extort whatever they want from Russia as they are in a desperate spot.

    Long story short, Russia doesnt have the economy to do this, and wont for a very long time.

  9. Last time I checked, Russia is practically broke. Who’s going to pay for this? Do they even still the technology and capabilities? There aren’t even any Ukrainian territories up there for them to invade.

  10. No shit.

    Russia is no longer a global power. It hasn’t been since the breakup of the USSR. It has a fraction of its population. A fraction of its GDP. An economy smaller than Italy. They’ve been able to coast off of stuff designed and built in the USSR, but that stuff is aging out, and they can’t afford new things. That country needs to come to terms with that fact.

  11. Economy_Link4609 on

    Well, on the plus side – it’s a glorious day for Kazakhstan I guess. More years of Russia paying to use Baikonur.

  12. ItspronouncedGruh-an on

    The most Russia thing ever? So announce something that sounds groundbreaking and then at best built a Potemkin village version of the thing they announced?