| Rosaviakosmos and NASA cannot agree on the resumption of American shuttle flights Bargaining between the Russian and US space agencies regarding the resumption of American shuttle flights to the International Space Station appears to be continuing. Recently, American experts announced another postponement of the launch of the Discovery shuttle, scheduled for May 22. In response, Roscosmos transparently hinted that if NASA does not begin to punctually fulfill its partnership obligations, Russia will stop providing its ships to send American astronauts to the station.
After the Columbia disaster in early 2003, American space shuttle flights were suspended, and the entire financial burden of maintaining the ISS fell on Russia, which had to make its flight schedule more intensive. Each launch costs Roscosmos a lot of money, so Russia continued to put pressure on its partners, demanding that they resume flights. But NASA representatives were in no hurry to draw conclusions about the reasons for the death of Columbia, while continuing to send their astronauts to the ISS on Russian ships.
It was possible to make progress in negotiations on the resumption of shuttle flights only after Roscosmos demanded that NASA compensate for the financial losses suffered by Russia due to the disruption of the shuttle flight schedule. As a result, the Americans promised to send the Discovery shuttle to the ISS in May of this year.
However, these plans were not destined to come true. According to NASA representatives, Discovery needs to replace its main fuel tank with a new, safer model, for which the ship will have to be removed from the launch pad. The planned volume of work does not allow even optimists to expect that the start will take place before mid-July. Until this date, according to the American side, the Russian Progress truck should provide the ISS with drinking water and fuel, the launch of which could take place as early as June. NASA representatives themselves expressed regret over yet another flight delay. NASA Director Michael Griffin, in particular, said that his agency would like to resume flights as soon as possible, as this is necessary to continue construction of the International Space Station, but “the safety of the crew is paramount.”
Representatives of Roscosmos doubted the sincerity of their partners. According to the head of the Roscosmos manned programs department, Alexei Krasnov, from 2006 only Russian crew members will fly on Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS. “Russia proceeds from the assumption that the American side will deliver its astronauts to the ISS on shuttles. At the same time, we proceed from the standard plan that the shuttle will fly and will fly as NASA plans. There is simply no other plan for the program,” said Mr. Krasnov, according to whom Roscosmos also intends to review the agreed distribution of crew time. “We believe that since 2006 this distribution should change. Our colleagues have a large amount of assembly work and maintenance planned for this time, but we would not want to get into a situation where we spend all our useful time on the interests of our partners, and we have no time left for ourselves,” Mr. n Krasnov.
However, such threats are unlikely to be taken seriously in the West. While Russia was spending money on unscheduled launches, the ISS partners were busy building their space station modules on the ground. When the time comes to send them into orbit, shuttle flights will be resumed. American, European and Japanese astronauts will begin full-fledged scientific work in their modules, and Russia will finally start looking for funds to complete the construction of its module, having only a service compartment and a docking port in space. Alexander GUDKOV |
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