The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Uh Oh for Space || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

The Russians had an oopsie with the launch pad at their main heavy-lift launch site following the launch of their Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft heading for the ISS. The unintended destruction of this launch pad cripples Russia's space capabilities.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4iHrUOa

Hello from Chile, Colorado. It's like four degrees here today. Peter Zion here. Today, well, last week, during Thanksgiving, something blew up in the former Soviet Union and it wasn't in Ukraine and it wasn't in Russia. It was in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the second largest of the former Soviet republics, kind of nestled under South Central Russia. What blew up was at the Cosmodrome, which is where the Russians centered their space program during the Cold War because you want your launch spot as close to the equator as possible. so the spin of the Earth helps you launch things. Anyway, the Cossodrome has been where everything has been happening for the ISS that really matters. Most of the heavy lift is there. The U.S. does launch things first with a shuttle and now with SpaceX's dragon capsules,

but it's the Soyuz that come out of Russia that really have the really heavy lift. Anyway, when they did a launch, the launch pad blew up, and repairs are going to take a minimum of months, maybe years, and this may be the beginning of the end of the ISS. That's the International Space Station. Now, the ISS was put up there as part of an American-Russian post-Cold War, hey, we're all Friends Now program back in the 1990s, and has been the core of manned exploration ever since. However, it's getting old, and it was going to be retired within five years,

but now without the heavy launch capacity, at least in the short term, probably longer, it's unclear whether the Russians are going to continue to participate in the program at all. It's not the 1980s anymore. With the Ukraine War three years ago, the Russians have become persona non grata in pretty much every aspect of international cooperation, even Eurovision, with the exception of the space program, because from the American point of view without the Russians involved, it's a question whether there would be a space program at all.

There's certainly the ISS itself is now in jeopardy, which means we have two problems. First of all, without heavy lift capacity, it is questionable whether the ISS can persist, and there isn't a replacement program in place. Right now, NASA has no, no plans. to put up a replacement system and there's a lot of science and a lot of work being done at the ISS that really can't be done anywhere else. The plan is for private companies go up and have their own satellite systems. It is unclear if anyone is ready for that and everyone's plans revolve around starting attached to the ISS and then when the ISS is commissioned moving off on their own. That plan may no longer be viable and if we're entering a period where there is no manned

operations in space and things like satellite repair become really difficult, especially for the bigger ones. That's problem one. Problem two is the Russians. The Russians of late have had a very, if I can't have it, no one can have it approach to really everything, because Soviet Union used to be a superpower until the Ukraine invasion, Russia was a major power. And now Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United States, and all the Europeans have basically shut the Russians out of everything they can. They just don't matter in international forms. to the degree that they used to, and they certainly don't have the cash to splash around to buy friends like they used to. So, where does that leave them? Well, if the ISS fails and they can no longer

have heavy space launch, then all of a sudden the Russians don't have much need for satellites. We did a video a couple weeks back, we'll share that on this one, where we talked about something called a Kessler syndrome. Basically, there are thousands, soon to be tens of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit. And with very few. of them are Russian. The Russians can't maintain what they have, so you've got some old Cold War relics up there, a few things that have been launched since then. But for the most part, this is Starlink and to a lesser degree in American telecommunications. It doesn't take a lot of imaginations to think of how the Russians could disrupt that. Because though they don't have

heavy spacelift anymore, they do still have space lift. They have their own cosmodrome in Russia proper. Can't get the huge volumes and the weights up, but it can certainly say go up and blow up a few satellites. And if you do that and you cause the shotgun effect of high-velocity debris, it's Mach 25, it doesn't require taking out too many satellites to caught a cascade reaction that basically makes low Earth orbit unusable for several years. And the Russians are now in a position. We're considering that doing it on purpose is probably crossing their radar now. Because if they can't use space in a meaningful way anymore and everyone else has, taking their toys and gone home, then the Russians really don't see the negative of making

space unusable.