I am serious, because theft of physical objects and intellectual property doesn't require a declared war. For example, the Chinese government appears to engage in IP theft on a regular basis in order to give Chinese companies an edge, but China isn't at war with anyone. I don't know what the legal property status is of a rocket that has crashed in international waters, but that assumes Russia cares about legal status. Judging by their actions in Ukraine, Russia disregards the rules when it suits them, just like the United States has often done. A Falcon 9 with landing/reuse capability is a serious business threat not just to Lockheed/Boeing and Orbital Sciences. The Russians make money from launches too, and they stand to lose income if SpaceX radically reduces launch costs. Stealing the technology is in their interest. I would expect them to make the attempt if it was possible, although I concede it would be difficult to actually pilfer a crashed rocket from who knows where in the ocean. Reverse engineering the rocket might also be difficult depending on the damage and corrosion and the difficulty of retrieving flight control algorithms from the computer systems.
What can I say, I'm paranoid by nature. I freely admit it. I even posted about the Heartbleed bug and asked if Tesla was affected (answer is no, thank goodness)!
I wouldn't be surprised if Russia tried to steal a rocket that had sunken to the bottom of the ocean a year or so after the fact and in secret, but stealing it in broad daylight so to speak seems a bit brazen. When they break the rules they have to give themselves some sort of justification, even if everyone knows its BS. It would be really hard to justify stealing a private company's rocket that's based in the US just off US waters that was being used for non-military purposes.
Perhaps the spacecraft in international waters is subject to the same jurisdiction as the ships in international waters or high seas. The ships and people on board are subject to the laws of the country whose flag they carry, and often they may be subject to a jurisdiction of more than one country. If international waters were 'lawless territories' then piracy would not be a crime. To my knowledge Russia does not have a track record of piracy on high seas. China is not the worst offender when it comes to IP piracy. According to some studies: When figures are adjusted for population, China’s rates of intellectual property violation are lower than those of many other countries, including the United States.
http://on.msnbc.com/1liA6kc The segment is long (22 minutes), but they definitely believe the Russians tugboat is there in the interest of something SpaceX related. I personally wouldn't be surprised if the Russians try to steal the rocket.
Espionage and spying between the US and Russia without formal declaration of war is the norm. Now, whether the Russians would try and snag the stage in "broad daylight" is another question... but if they thought they could get away with at least taking a peek, don't doubt they would... war or no.
More likely it's a signal intelligence craft, and they were trying to intercept telemetry to the spacecraft and related communications.
I tried to state the case succinctly. I'll expand to say that such theft of information would only be done covertly. To actually steal the hardware would be brazen beyond belief. The Ukraine situation bears no similarity. Without going into a lot of detail that would take us way off topic, I'll just say that was none of America's business.
The Russians could be there for a few reasons: 1. Collect SIGINT on the SpaceX launch. 2. Observe and mark the booster splash down location. In the event SpaceX is unable to recover the rocket and it sinks the Russians would have some idea of the salvage location for later covert retrieval. 3. Support submarines for other reasons, co-incident with the SpaceX launch. Plenty of other activity going on around the cape. That particular vessel does not appear to be outfitted for SIGINT, so more likely 2 or 3. Snatching SpaceX property while they are actively attempting to recover it would be blatant theft and highly unlikely. Gathering data on where it splashed down for salvage use later should SpaceX abandon it is another matter altogether.
Some updates on the first stage recovery: SpaceFlight Insider SpaceX President Shotwell talks recovery efforts during recent ribbon-cutting ceremony - SpaceFlight Insider
For those who were wondering, I got confirmation that due to the four day delay they ended up swapping out the Stanford samples with ones from a blood center in Florida. So no doug space clones.... for now.
So where is more information on the landing? Lets see some of that tracking plane tracking data, if nothing else. Come on, SpaceX! Don't leave us hanging! Was Elon being overly optimistic and/or not entirely correctly informed when he tweeted about the landing? Or did it really happen? How slow did it get before reaching the water? Did the legs deploy? How is the search going? Feed my brain!
Nothing new here, but a great summary of SpaceX reusability: Rockets that return home SpaceX pushing the boundaries | NASASpaceFlight.com
From SpaceX President and Chief Executive Officer Gwynne Shotwell: And that's the break I'm figuring the Russians were angling for. It's salvage now. Funny, they just happen to have a salvage frigate out there...
It is articles like this that really make me debate if I should just fork over the yearly fee and get access to their L2 site. haha! - - - Updated - - - I'm sorry that after donating, what was it, 4 times? that they were unable to use your's. But I am glad that they were able to at least push forward with their mission since you had mentioned that any further delays would result in them scrapping it altogether.
If it were salvage that'd just mean they have the right to receive a proportion of fair value for recovering it, not the right to do anything with it. Maybe SpaceX were aware the Russian would want to steal it, so the US government deliberately created the fire in the radar to force a delay that would allow SpaceX time to come up with something that would give the Russian invalid information when they recovered the stage.