A curious interview with Bill Nelson

I noticed on the English-language version of the Interfax web site today an interview with Sen. Bill Nelson about US-Russia space policy issues. There’s no date on the interview, but it just appeared on the Interfax web site within the last few days. The Russian news service’s reporter asked a curious set of questions, including two about the prospects of the US Congress passing a ban on US use of Soyuz spacecraft, something that was an issue last year but appeared to have been resolved after September’s approval of an extension of the Iran, North Korea, Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) waiver. In both cases Nelson said it was “extremely unlikely” that Congress would approve such a ban. (The repeated questions made me wonder if this was, in fact, an old interview, but references to the Obama Administration and “last year’s conflict in Georgia” suggest that this is indeed a recent interview.)

Some other questions ask about international cooperation on the ISS and whether the Georgia conflict might jeopardize other areas of space cooperation, like “Sea Start” (actually Sea Launch, the multinational commercial launch venture) and US purchases of RD-180 engines for the Atlas 5. The interview then ends on another bizarre note, asking if Russia could participate in a planned US “protection system” against asteroids, noting that such a system “could be used against sattelites [sic], ballistic missiles, space ships”. Nelson had to break it to the interviewer that the US, in fact, is not actively developing such a system.