Trampoline to Space? Russian Official Tells NASA to Take a Flying Leap
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, a target of U.S. sanctions sparked by the Ukraine crisis, said Tuesday that those sanctions would boomerang against America's space effort and essentially told NASA to take a flying leap ... on a trampoline.
"After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline," Rogozin said via his Russian-language Twitter account.
The tart tweet came after news reports in which Rogozin, who is in charge of the Russian space program, was quoted as saying sanctions against Russia would have a negative effect on NASA as well as Europe's space effort. "Essentially, the Americans want to clear us out of the space services market," he said.
Russian rockets are being used to launch European satellites as well as NASA astronauts, he noted. "I am sick and tired of these sanctions, to be honest," he told journalists in the Crimean city of Simferopol, which was part of Ukraine until Crimea was annexed by Russia last month. "They don't understand that the sanctions will hit them like a boomerang."
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/trampoline-space-russian-official-tells-nasa-take-flying-leap-n92616