The year 1992: Rethinking the. Clean Interface and New Objectives

NASA funding is very important to the Russian space program.

—US Congress, U. S. Soviet Cooperation in Space, 1985103

The possible eradication of NASA’s clean interface mode of cooperation with Russia raised a number of difficult quandaries for program officials regarding the relationships among private enterprise, the state, and the tenets of free mar­ket capitalism. Between 1990 and 1992, even as debates raged in newspaper editorial columns and on Capitol Hill on whether or not Americans ought to collaborate (more) with the Russians in space, policymakers questioned with whom, precisely, they ought to be negotiating. Often more than one bureau claimed ownership of hardware or intellectual property. NASA officials had dif­ficulty deciphering who precisely was in charge, what Soviet priorities were, and even which assets were up for sale. One report, released in October 1991, illus­trates the tenuous situation:

In his diminished leadership role, Mikhail Gorbachev has had little to say about the future of the Soviet space program. . . A reorganization has begun involving the major Soviet space design bureaus and installations, some of which will be transferred to new private industries. Yet to be sorted out is the degree of influ­ence and authority key personnel within the reconstituted bureaus, agencies, and industries will have.104

As indicated here, it was not merely the floundering Soviet state that the American government sought to regulate—it was the engineers who might defect, scientists who may market technical knowledge, or industrialists who might withdraw from weapons compliance. Table 7.3 illustrates the range of fields supported by collaborative work. 105

Chapter 8 describes how the pursuits of national and collective security figured prominently in a number of US federal agencies and departments. Deliberations regarding the purchase or lease of Russian aerospace equipment (much but not all of it factoring in to the ISS) took place in a variety of US state bodies includ­ing NASA, the National Space Council, the CIA, and the Departments of State, Commerce, Defense, and Transportation. Each exercised responsibility over its own corner of national—and international—security.

While the International Space Station figures most prominently among these projects between FY1993 and 1997 the Bion 11 and 12 spaceflights accounted for $16 million.106 Meanwhile, the space sciences writ large accounted roughly 14.5 percent of all program costs, as detailed earlier. The 1995 Office of Technology Assessment frankly assessed the situation. In his foreword to this report, the director Roger Herdman notes that “much of the motivation for the expansion of cooperation with Russia lies beyond programmatic considerations.” In particular, their report points out that continued cooperation, including large payments for Russian space goods and services, might help stabilize Russia’s economy and provide incentive for some of Russia’s technological elite to stay in Russia.

Often representatives of Glavkosmos used the justification of sunk costs to rationalize continued investment. (Glavkosmos was the Ministry of General Machine Building’s Main Directorate for the Development and Use of Space Technology for the National Economy and Science Research, known as the commercial arm of the Soviet space program.)107 Thus they carried on the hope that the sale of various elements and subassemblies already developed by the

Soviet space programs might provide foreign currency to the withering program. NASA officials likewise highlighted the thrift of collaboration, but with some important differences. In explaining these expenditures, OTA officials likened Bion to the ISS docking mechanism “and other minor goods and services” that “involve the use of unique Russian capabilities by NASA at a low cost compared with the cost of developing them indigenously.” Some believed themselves to be buying or selling products; others believed themselves to be initiating a long­term commitment, a process. These individuals sought to build relationships as buyers and sellers, scientific collaborators, or in preserving formerly Soviet resources.

Many individuals expressed a desire to not simply denude the Soviet space infrastructure of all its useful persons and ideas, but to preserve the organiza­tions and institutional memory within. Regardless of whether or not one views this monumental shift in NASA policy—the decision to pay the Russian space program for hardware and services—as an investment in the Russian space program or bargain for the United States, the OTA leaves us with one final thought-provoking observation. “[N]o other executive branch agency is trans­ferring funds to Russia at anything approaching this rate. US government funds obligated for assistance to Russia through September 30, 1994, total something over $3B, but over a third of that total is for in-kind goods (food shipments, principally in FY 1993).”108 While foreign policy, environmental, and national security considerations had always played roles in the principles and guidelines of joint projects, the next chapter describes how they were expressed in very dif­ferent manners. In years past, national security concerns centered primarily upon fears of technology transfer. Following this, notions of “national security” came to be characterized as “international security” as the United States attempted to control the flows of former Soviet researchers and engineers to potential bel­ligerent nations.