FLUG REVUE December 2004: ISS is dependent on Russian supply ships

ISS AT THE CROSSROADS

By Gerhard Kowalski

For Russia, 2005 marks a joyful turning point. From 1 January of next year, the head of Moscow-based space agency FKA, Anatoly Perminov, plans to start billing the Americans for support services provided in connection with the International Space Station.

As his country will have satisfied all its obligations towards its ISS partners to supply Soyuz transporters and Progress cargo ships as of the end of the year 2004, the Americans should now pay for their passage to the Station, so the Colonel-General justifies his demand. After all, since the Columbia catastrophe of 1 February 2003, the burden of supplying the ISS has fallen entirely on Russian shoulders.

Just how high the bill will be is not yet clear. But when one considers the $20 million taxi fare which the Kremlin charged private space tourists Dennis Tito (USA) and Mark Shuttleworth (South Africa) in the past, one begins to get an idea. Given that they have a vital interest in maintaining the Station, the Russians might be prepared to offer a special price for a friend. But right now they do not have the wherewithal to bear the full cost of two Soyuz spacecraft and four cargo ships, the minimum that will be needed in 2005. Now that the Americans have been forced to put back the resumption of shuttle flights from April/May to at least July due to the damage caused by hurricane Frances to the grounds of the space centre in Cape Canaveral in September, we await Washington's response to the Kremlin's demand with interest.

The Russians for their part will be making the ISS the top priority in the new year, in which they have budgeted just under one billion dollars for spaceflight,. This directional decision, which is also a fixed commitment in the medium-term plan for the period 2006 to 2015, is essentially dictated by two circumstances. Firstly, Russia's manned spaceflight programme has relied heavily on the ISS since the end of its MIR station, as its Soyuz spacecraft are only designed for shuttle services in earth orbit and thus cannot operate autonomously for extended periods. This situation will not change until the next Soyuz development, the Clipper, in respect of which Moscow is also asking the European Space Agency (ESA) for financial support, can be launched.

And secondly, the announcement by President George W. Bush that shuttle flights to the ISS will cease in 2010, when the USA will effectively withdraw from the programme in order to concentrate on the moon, Mars and even more distant goals, has startled the Kremlin. But the other ISS partners' ISS programmes also depend critically on the resumption of shuttle flights, as the only way to transport the ESA Columbus laboratory and the Japanese Kibo (JEM) module to the Station is by the space shuttle.

This decision to get the Americans to in future pay for the transfer of their astronauts and supplies to the ISS is in fact the first consequence of the cash-strapped Russians' new strategy. Up to now the American astronauts have been carried twice a year free of charge. Moscow commentators have been raging that it is unacceptable for Russian space policy to be determined in Washington. This is also the view of the FKA. Its deputy head, Nikolai Moisseyev, said that Russia must cease to be simply a “cosmic haulier”.

Meanwhile Moscow has announced that as the second step it will send a new “multi-purpose laboratory module” to the ISS “no later than 2007”. This decision reflects the Russians' desire to create the “optimal living and working conditions” for its cosmonauts and at the same time to create the preconditions for commercial exploitation of its two other modules, Zarya and Zvezda. “We are prepared to make the resources and possibilities of our segment available to the ISS participants or to others who are not currently involved in the project – but on a payment basis,” said Moisseyev. Thus, Moscow is looking for wealthy customers for its cosmic outpost.

The Russians want to upgrade the Zarya reserve module, as the third ISS module of their own. In the words of Alexander Alexandrov, head of the experimental department of Energia (S.P.Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation) near Moscow, as a camp, it should function both as a workroom and as a recreational area for the cosmonauts. Moscow has also submitted a proposal to its partners to extend the Station to include a second Soyuz capsule as a “lifeboat”. This would mean that the number of resident crew members, which has been restricted to two since the space shuttles were grounded, could be raised to four. However, the Russians expect this capsule to be financed by the Americans, whose own plans to build a six-seat Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) were scrapped for lack of funds.

At the beginning of October, the Russian Astronautical Academy Ziolkovski (RAK) in Moscow put forward a proposal for a long-term space strategy for the years 2005 to 2035, evidently as a response to Bush's plans. According to this, over the next 30 years cosmonauts should be sent to the moon and Mars, industrial production in space should get going and reusable spaceships should be built once more.

According to Academy President Vladimir Senkyevich, the intellectual and production potential for this is available. However, the government would have to provide the necessary funding. The plans would require at least 0.48 percent of GDP, compared with a budget of only 0.16 percent in 2004. In 1989, in the Soviet era, expenditure on spaceflight had amounted to almost 0.80 percent, the President lamented. Today the country was ninth in the world, after the USA, China, Japan, several European countries and even India.

Russia's space industry, which had lost its leading position in many areas over the last 15 years and had become third-class, now stood at a crossroads, according to the Academy. Only with the appropriate level of funding could the country's status as a major power in space be restored. Senkyevich is relying here on Vladimir Putin. Since “recently every decision in the country has been made by President,” the scientists were hoping that Putin would recognise “the importance of the development of national spaceflight”.

From FLUG REVUE 12/2004

Last updated 11 November 2004

FLUG REVUE, Ubierstr. 83, 53173 Bonn, Germany