Houston, Texas- The current battle between the Baltic province of Georgia and Russia has caused many shockwaves around the world, and it is not yet resolved either.

The fighting in Georgia between Georgian Government Forces, and Georgian Rebels with Russian Troops backing has sent serious shocks to many different issues around the world, and one of the ones that may be gravely affected is the International Space Station.

NASA may be in a whale of a pickle, the Space Shuttle is facing retirement in 2010, and there is no space transportation vehicle on the US Horizon until about 2015.

Currently, the back up has been the Russian Soyuz aircraft, but with Russia joining the fight in Georgia, and with the United States strongly condemning the actions of Russia, relations between Russia and the United States regarding the International Space Station are also likely to grow cold.

If Russia refuses to let the ISS use their Soyuz craft for transportation, then the nations that participate in the International Space Station may literally be looking for another way of traveling to and from the space station.

www.overthelimit.info...

WASHINGTON — Russia's military campaign in Georgia could have repercussions far beyond its borders, jeopardizing the U.S.-Russian partnership for manning the international space station over the next decade.

Lawmakers, including several from Texas, warned Friday that Moscow's air and tank attacks on its neighbor will likely prompt Congress to re-evaluate legislation allowing NASA to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for Russia to taxi astronauts to the space station.

The Soyuz spaceflights would span the five years between the shuttle's 2010 retirement and the launch of the new Orion spacecraft.

While some members predicted that Congress would eventually give NASA the go-ahead this year or next to work with Moscow's space program, others said they would rather see the retirement of the aging shuttle fleet put off a few years rather than rely on the Russians.

www.chron.com...

I particularly like point 'five' . The shuttle has always been a bad in terms of cost but since NASA is primarily a Military operation this may or may not be all that surprising. How the US have arrived in this sorry situation is obviously a very very long story but the following might at least offer some insight as to what the shuttle has contributed to the creation of a bankrupt nation.

å Second, to paraphrase Dr. George Mueller at a NASA history conference held in Washington in recent years, we “got the shuttle we have today from the ‘Bureau of the Budget Design Bureau’” that NASA did not want and that was not cheaper than Saturn 5.

www.space.com...