mir_russia_usa_010314 MOSCOW -- Russian space officials fear that the
impending cuts to NASA's International Space Station (ISS) budget could leave the outpost with a limited crew capacity and possibly curtail the amount of cosmonaut participation in the program. In response, opponents to the planned Mir deorbit are taking advantage of the ISS situation to demand Russia expand its manned space exploration program.[inset]
A senior official at RSC Energia, the company that designed and built Mir, told SPACE.com that the possible cancellation of the station's planned habitation module could limit the crew size to only three, possibly leaving many of the project's international partners stranded on Earth.
"This will hinder work at the station," said the official who did not wish to be identified. "A three-strong crew was at certain times not even enough for Mir, which is much smaller and required less operational efforts."
The official said it is possible that the U.S. and Russian ISS contractors could team up to launch a commercial module to compensate for the possible cancellation of the habitation module program, but noted that "one cannot fully count on that possibility."
Speaking in a phone interview, the official said those Russians championing Mir -- a diverse group, ranging from space industry veterans to the nation's largest political group, the Communist Party -- have seized this opportunity to call for the resurrection of the 15-year old space station. The station is tentatively set to be deorbited on March 22 by the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos).
In February, the state Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, passed a non-binding appeal urging President Vladimir Putin to halt Mir's deorbit. The vote was initiated by the Communist Party, whose leader, Gennady Zyuganov, sent an open letter to Putin on February 7 arguing that Washington's plans to deploy a
National Missile Defense (NMD) system would make "equal cooperation" between Russia and United States in the ISS project "problematic." The possibility of such problems should prompt the Kremlin put Mir's deorbiting on hold, Zyuganov wrote.
But according to Yuri Koptev, director general of Rosaviacosmos, Russia is unable to spare any resources to even mothball Mir in a higher orbit, much less maintain it as a manned operation. Koptev said Russia would have to launch four Progress cargo ships in two months to preserve the station. However each of the Progress ships is needed by Russia in order keep up its ISS commitments.
Less than two weeks after NASA announced the suspension of the ISS' habitation module, crew return vehicle and propulsion module, the Russian Communist Party launched an offensive against Rosaviacosmos and the Russian government's Mir deorbit decision with small peaceful protests in Moscow, and condemnation in parliament.
"[The cuts] may lead to a situation where we will have to skip entire flights and only have one cosmonaut onboard only during every second permanent mission," Communist Duma member Alexander Volkov, told SPACE.com.
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Volkov said the possible scaling down of ISS "should prompt our government to think twice" before deorbiting the station. 'It will be an end to our manned exploration program; and if our relations with America decline they could edge us out of the project," Volkov warned in a March 14 phone interview.
Volkov also speculated that the space station's North American contractors may become "too busy" manufacturing components for the U.S. National Missile Defense program to "pay enough attention" to the ISS.
The RSC Energia official agreed with Volkov, saying he fears NASA and its U.S.-based space station contractors may further scale back their contributions if the George W. Bush administration decided to deploy the NMD. Construction of NMD "will seriously increase the burden" on these contractors and they may argue that they are too busy with NMD contracts to honor Washington's ISS commitments, he said.
Moreover, the RSC Energia official said he fears NASA could withdraw from ISS despite having already spent billions on the station. "They killed the Apollo program and SkyLab without a wink, and they can do it again," he said.
Such a withdrawal could deal a serious, if not lethal blow to the entire program, Volkov said. "[The Russian] people would say they sacrificed our own sovereign station and manned space exploration for the sake of a project that was falling apart even before completed," Volkov said.
The RSC Energia official called on NASA to honor its ISS commitments, primarily the construction and launch of the three programs cut by Bush. "Unfortunately, NASA is encountering the same kind of problems that we have had: The lack of financing. But we have managed to cope with this problem and honor our obligations and NASA should do the same," the official said.
Russian companies could actually benefit from the cuts. The possible cancellation of the U.S.-built crew return vehicle and propulsion module programs may increase NASA's dependency on Rosaviacosmos and RSC Energia to produce Soyuz TM manned capsules and Progress cargo ships.
As for the propulsion module program, it could be replaced by the European Space Agency's automated transfer vehicle project (ATV), the RSC Energia official said. RSC Energia is a subcontractor supplying docking and fuel supply systems for the project.
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