Ed Kyle wrote:
John Schilling wrote:

The Russians have long had and will long have an arsenal of rockets capaple
of lofting a ton or so onto the continental United States. They will from
time to time test-fire one of these rockets just to keep in practice. ..

When they practice rocketry, they obviously have to aim the rocket somewhere
other than at the continental United States. One place a rocket capable of
lofting a ton or so to CONUS can go, is Low Earth Orbit. ..

So if there is someone out there with a bit of payload that they want to
put into LEO, and a bit of cash to pay for it, it is pure profit for the
Russians to load it onto one of the rockets they are going to practice
launching from a submarine under the Arctic Ocean anyway.


I wonder how many of The Planetary Society members
who helped fund this project realized that they were
helping Russia test the readiness of a missile
system designed to kill United States citizens by
the tens of millions.
Half of which having voted for bush.

Greetings!
Volker