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Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by IncreasePosts on Friday May 02, 2025 @05:13PM (#43874642)
From a previous probe:

> Space law required that the space junk be returned to its national owner, but the Soviets denied knowledge or ownership of the satellite.[8] Ownership therefore fell to the farmer upon whose property the satellite fell. The pieces were thoroughly analyzed by New Zealand scientists which determined that they were Soviet in origin because of manufacturing marks and the high-tech welding of the titanium. The scientists concluded that they were probably gas pressure vessels of a kind used in the launching rocket for a satellite or space vehicle and had decayed in the atmosphere.[9]

I wonder how space law works when the national owner (CCCP) no longer exists? Does it go to Russia? Kazakhstan?

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by treyd on Friday May 02, 2025 @05:27PM (#43874761)
Usually international law regarding successor states applies, so it would almost certainly be Russia that would have a claim to it.
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by CryptoBanker on Friday May 02, 2025 @05:23PM (#43874729)
Russia is the successor state to the USSR
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by stevage on Friday May 02, 2025 @07:26PM (#43875506)
One of many successor states, no?
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by kevin_thibedeau on Friday May 02, 2025 @09:19PM (#43876123)
I'd bet many parts were manufactured in Ukraine. Let them have dibs.
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by pests on Saturday May 03, 2025 @01:01AM (#43876961)
While many countries are successor states of the USSR, only Russia was declared the continuator.

> In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 1 April 1992, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev explained the situation: “Many people think that Russia became the legal successor of the USSR automatically, but this is far from being the case. We faced a very difficult political and diplomatic task. Russia is not a legal successor, but a continuing state of the USSR.

> There was no automaticity. It was an open question. The solution was suggested to us by Western countries, especially by the British, who had a huge experience in solving inheritance issues, they had an empire. The British dug somewhere in their archives and proposed a variant of a successor state. There is a monstrous confusion even among historians who write about it and political analysts. It is simply an unwillingness to understand. So, all of them are legal successors. All Union republics. The three Baltic republics refused to be successors. All the others, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan were legal successors and now remain legal successors. In relation to foreign debt, it was a deal. With respect to the UN Security Council, an international conference of all successors under international law had to be convened to resolve the issues. Therefore, a continuator was invented. A continuator is one of the inheritors, one of the legal successors, whom everybody recognises, but it doesn't require ratification. It is simply a declaration that it is recognised as a continuing state of the legal function that is written in the UN Charter for the USSR and now for Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession,_continuity_and_leg...

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by stevage on Saturday May 03, 2025 @03:37AM (#43877468)
Thanks for sharing, very interesting.
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by consumer451 on Saturday May 03, 2025 @05:23AM (#43877859)
Only when it’s convenient for them.

UN Security Council seat: yes, of course! What an ignorant question.

Responsible for the damage done by the USSR in other countries: certainly not! How dare you!

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by int_19h on Saturday May 03, 2025 @10:08PM (#43883920)
To be responsible for that damage as a successor, one would have to acknowledge that damage was done in the first place, which isn't something that Russia is willing to do.

And it's not even a government thing. One of the very common historical myths in Russia is that it was a net positive force in basically all the territories it ever occupied as an empire. The rhetoric around it is pretty much identical by the one used by European colonial empires pre-decolonization, except that Russia never underwent the latter (for good reasons: if it were to decolonize in proper sense, it would cease to exist as a state).

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by lenerdenator on Friday May 02, 2025 @06:15PM (#43875062)
If it lands in my backyard, I'm only giving it directly to Vlad Putin in person. He has to come here.
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by copula4 on Friday May 02, 2025 @06:29PM (#43875146)
His name is not Vlad, it's a familiar form of a completely unrelated name. If you want to demonstrate contempt by using a familiar form, use Vova.

It sounds about the same as if I used something like "Joe" to refer to a William.

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by margalabargala on Friday May 02, 2025 @06:51PM (#43875290)
Everyone knows who is meant by "Vlad Putin".

The purpose of calling Vlad Putin "Vlad Putin" is to show disrespect towards Vlad Putin, which is better accomplished by making the diminutization less linguistically accurate.

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by int_19h on Friday May 02, 2025 @09:47PM (#43876249)
It doesn't actually achieve that, it just makes you look like an ignorant Westerner. Similar to all the "-ski" stuff that Americans, for some reason, seem to believe is indicative of Russian.

If you want to troll Putin, call him Vovochka.

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by margalabargala on Saturday May 03, 2025 @11:57AM (#43879909)
Putin is not in fact the intended audience, so the diminutive should be tailored to the audience, not to Putin.

Kind of like calling him "Putain", or "Poo-tin", which are also not his name.

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by elzbardico on Friday May 02, 2025 @11:50PM (#43876732)
Well, If you can't win in the battlefield, I think this is a good cope mechanism.

NATO should have stayed with their time-honored tradition of bombing the shit out of sheep-herders with AKs instead of starting a proxy war with Russia.

Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by lenerdenator on Saturday May 03, 2025 @01:05AM (#43876974)
[flagged]
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by lenerdenator on Friday May 02, 2025 @11:21PM (#43876619)
I couldn't possibly care less what that genocidal maniac wants to be called, or what the "proper" way to insult him is.
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by TiredOfLife on Saturday May 03, 2025 @02:17AM (#43877195)
Re:Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest it... by tomhow on Saturday May 03, 2025 @02:57AM (#43877332)
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43874642 and marked it off topic.