Russian-American Cooperation in. Space: Privatization, Remuneration, and. Collective Security

As the Soviet Union awkwardly dismantled itself in the early 1990s, NASA policymakers labored to adjust their existing research and exploration initiatives to what was shaping up to be a new world. Having ostensibly won the Cold War, state officials now and again paused to consider the chances of a more enlight­ened coupling of capitalism and democracy. For some, waning tensions begged an unrestricted reassessment of government, cutting back on half a century’s build-up of armaments, infrastructure, and spending. Vice President Al Gore oversaw the streamlining of American bureaucracy before taking the reins of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission (for economic and technical cooperation between the United States and Russia). For both former Cold War superpowers this cohort sought balanced budgets, smaller smarter government, and improved regulatory practices.

At the close of the twentieth century, new economic and security regimes took shape, carrying the promise of reduced tax expenditures, increased capital flows in the global economy, and the likely inclusion of the Newly Independent States in formerly “Western” multilateral security structures. Tightening bud­gets reflected a new skepticism of public spending on large R&D and scientific projects such as the Superconducting Supercollider (cancelled by Congress in 1993), the Strategic Defense Initiative (cancelled in 1994), and the Space Station Freedom (which later became the ISS in 1994). At the same time scholars began to seek links between Japanese commercial success and the shrinking percentage of profits being reinvested in American industrial research and development.

This political environment characterized by demobilization, fiscal belt-tight­ening, and bureaucratic reform combined to produce the curious situation in which the world’s leading space powers collaborated for more than two decades, meeting some needs through innovation and others by coasting on the surpluses of Cold War science, engineering, and productive capacity.

In 1991 NASA sent an ozone mapping spectrometer into orbit aboard a Ukrainian Tsyklon rocket, originally designed as a Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

In 1992 Rockwell, prime contractor for the Shuttle Transport System and Energia, Russian Scientific Production Association (NPO), began retrofitting a docking device intended for the Soviet Buran. It would be used for the American Shuttle’s visit to Russian space station Mir.

In 1993 NASA’s Space Station Freedom Office considered the possibility of purchasing a Soyuz capsule for use as a space station “life boat.” It was later inte­grated into the International Space Station (ISS) as a Crew Transfer Vehicle.

The year 1994 brought the consolidation of the Western alliance’s Space Station Freedom (SSF) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ Mir II plans into the International Space Station.

What follows is an overview of the history and historic significance of Russian – American collaboration in space in the 1990s. The first half contextualizes the two nations’ collaboration, considering its intended role in the post-Cold War reordering of international trade, demobilization, and environmental activities. It considers less the micropolitics of how and why NASA retooled preexisting projects and initiatives for collaboration and more how NASA’s history dovetails with American foreign policy as it was intended to bring order and stability to the former Soviet Union.

The latter half of the chapter focuses less on international activities and more on US interest groups. It is again an overview, illustrating the complex of inter­ests shaping space policy: would importing finished products from Russia come at the expense of American industrial prowess? Should national space program cooperation and liberalized trade be considered an effective preventative against weapons proliferation? To what degree would NASA (and Congress) be will­ing to reshape their preexisting national policies in the interest of international cooperation? The Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission bundled these oftentimes – conflicting interests when seeking to embed formerly Eastern structures of trade, science, and international relations in the West. Under these agreements, NASA officials labored to craft and often renegotiated agreements with the fast­degrading, but still very proud heirs of the Soviet space program.