 As the Ukrainian space industry is on the verge of collapse, the repercussions will affect more than one nation or company. This is your space pod for March 3rd, 2015. Back on October 10th, Ukraine's primary rocket manufacturer, Ushmash, issued a letter to their employees stating that Ushmash is in a deep financial crisis, the main factor which is a precipitous decline in production. The current crisis is not irreversible, but the situation is close to the point of no return. The actual bankruptcy of the enterprise will result in the loss of Ukraine's status as a space power. The cause of this crisis has been the unofficial war with Ukraine that Russia has, although it is Ukrainian separatists siding with Russia, the repercussions of this war have been very widespread. Economic sanctions levied by Ukraine against Russia have put in jeopardy several existing rockets, including Ukraine's Zenit rocket and the variants for sea launch and land launch, the Rockat small launcher and the Dnieper rocket. The reason being is because all of these rockets are a collaboration between Ukraine and Russia and rely on components from each side in order to make these rockets work. The Rockat and Dnieper rockets are based on old ballistic missiles that are no longer in production and would need to be phased out anyway, which Russia has already planned to do with their modular Angara rockets. Beyond Ukraine's previous cooperation with Russia, they also have three international deals that are also in jeopardy. Ushmash is a primary contractor on Orbital ATK's Antares rocket. They build the first stage fuel tank as well as the payload fairing for that rocket, and the engines are also supplied by Russia for that rocket, but that is a whole another political situation. Ukraine also had a deal with Brazil to develop the Cyclone IV rocket based off of their successful Cyclone III rocket and would have launched from the Alcantara Space Center in Brazil, although with the demise of the Ukrainian space industry that probably won't happen either. Ukraine is also the supplier of the engines of the fourth stage of the European Space Agency's Vega rocket. It's called the AVM, or the Attitude Veneer Upper Module, and without it, the Vega rocket would be unable to deliver its payloads into their intended orbits. The German Space Agency is working on a replacement for that fourth stage upper module, however it would not be available for several years, so because of all this fighting and the Ukrainian space industry's financial troubles, the Vega rocket could be grounded too. The reason that I'm telling you all of this is that because of this political, financial, and violent situation over in Ukraine, by my count there's eight rockets that will either never fly again or never get a chance to fly in the first place. And to us space geeks, that's a crime in and of itself. Even if Ukraine were to be completely annexed by Russia, it's highly unlikely that the Russian space industry would continue to use all of those systems that Ukraine produces. And it's going to be very interesting to see how Ukraine weathers this storm if their space industry survives at all. It's also going to be very interesting to see how the different space agencies and space companies around the world who are involved with Ukraine will be able to manage without them. Of course it is my hope that the Ukrainian space industry will survive and that they will be able to continue to fly all of those rockets and be able to achieve some of their future goals in space as well. As the fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine, we're going to be paying very close attention to how things progress from here on out. Thank you very much for watching this new space pod. I'm very excited and very honored to be doing these. And hopefully this will be able to fill the space news gap that we are just unable to completely fill with our live shows. Please subscribe to our new channel tomorrow. And also please leave a comment either on YouTube or any of your favorite social media about this whole Ukrainian crisis and what you think should be done about it. We are of course a crowdfunded show and every penny helps to be able to bring you content like this. So if you're interested in helping us out, please visit patreon.com slash T-M-R-O to find out more information about how you can help us to bring you the epic space content of tomorrow today. Oh, this is so cool. Space pods are back.