US-Russia Summits and Early Negotiations for Trade, 1991-1992 “

The year 1991 ushered in a flurry of activity, calibrated to the rapid disarmament of both Soviet and American Cold War era weapons arsenals. At the July 1991 Bush-Gorbachev summit, the two signed the START I treaty, agreeing to cut their weapons base by roughly two-thirds. While meeting, they also signed an Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes. As with previous agreements (including 1987, 1977, 1972, 1971, and to a lesser extent, 1962), the agreement charged joint working groups (JWGs) to negotiate cooperation in a number of fields including space biology and medicine, solar system exploration, space astronomy and astrophys­ics, solar-terrestrial physics, and earth sciences.

As detailed in chapter 7, cooperation between the United States and Soviet Union tapered off considerably in the 1980s, but by no means stopped. Several instruments were being built and flown on host satellites: between 1987 and 1997 a total of 70 NASA life science experiments flew on three Soviet/Russian bio­satellites.10 In August 1991, NASA sent its Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer into orbit aboard a Russian Cyclone (Tsyklon) rocket.11 That same year, using a research ship, a plane, and a ground station, Soviet scientists made observations of chemical releases in the Caribbean for the American Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite program.

Four themes in the Agreement for Cooperation captured the limelight. For one, this agreement called for preliminary cooperation on the Shuttle-Mir mis­sions. Second, in a revolutionary change in trade limitations, Russia would be permitted to submit a bid for launching one US-built Inmarsat 3 communications satellite (a tremendously important shift in international trade relations, permit­ting the launch of a US instrument on a Soviet lifter). Third, the United States would contribute a hard lander to Russia’s Mars 94 spacecraft. And finally, the two nations would explore the possibility of using the Soyuz-TM as a “lifeboat” for the space station in medical or technical emergencies (also known as an Assured Crew Return Vehicle or ACRV).12 NASA and the White House viewed these projects as just the beginning of a long-term relationship in space exploration.

In July 1992, one month after the Bush-Yeltsin summit and just three months after taking office as NASA administrator, Daniel Goldin joined a delegation of military, industrial, and scientific leaders heading to the former Soviet Union. Led by NASA and the National Space Council, this interagency delegation included Brian Dailey (new staff director of the National Space Council), Martin Faga (assistant secretary of the Air Force for space), and representatives of the National Security Council, State Department, and Central Intelligence Agency. Following the failure of the Space Exploration Initiative in 1989, the Bush administration was interested in implementing significant changes in NASA functionality. To this end they recruited Daniel Goldin from TRW Space Technology Group, where he had considerable success running space programs using minimal mana­gerial structures and streamlined engineering practices. Goldin’s mandate was to implement a top-down change in NASA practices and procedures (in parallel to the space sciences success with “Faster, Better, Cheaper”).13

Following a visit to European Space Agency facilities in Germany, the delega­tion went on to a number of institutions in Russia and Ukraine. These included sites geared for both human and robotic space activities including the Russian Flight Control Center (TsUp), NPO Energia, NPO Energomash, Khrunichev, KB Salyut, Babakin Research and Test Center, Lavotchkin, NPO Zvezda, and the Yuriy Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (Star City). NASA and NSC rep­resentatives met with the directors of the institutes visited. They also met with the heads of the Russian Committee for Hydrometeorology & Monitoring the Environment, the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP—responsible for the Bion satellites detailed in chapter 7), the Ministry of Industry, the Department of Aviation Industry, the Central Aerohydro dynamics Institute (TsAGI), and the Institute of Aviation Motors.

The Goldin-Dailey delegation departed on July 17. On July 18 a second American delegation arrived. It was headed by the director of the Office of Space Commerce (in the Department of Commerce). In the days to come, senior management and engineers from 17 leading aerospace firms visited more than 40 locations in Russia. They met with representatives of design bureaus, scien­tific production associations, research institutes, and production enterprises to discuss possible joint ventures. Administrator Goldin explained the significance of the second delegation—the US government aimed to cultivate “genuine” partnerships among Russian and US firms. Hoping to thwart accusations that aerospace firms were unnecessary middlemen in state collaboration, he went on to explain that this Department of Commerce trip was necessary for US aerospace companies to assess Russian technologies and that the Russians were planning a similar trip in reciprocation in the hope of finding routes for Russian – American business partnerships.14

Transnational projects occupied a minefield of political and economic con­siderations, making it a shrewd decision for the government and industry execu­tives to travel separately. Might Russian launch vehicles infringe on the budding US commercial launch market? If NASA purchased surplus hardware from the Russians, would savings in taxpayer dollars outweigh the “cost” of engineer­ing and production work lost? Might profits from civil space and aviation joint ventures help US firms weather cuts in defense spending? That being said, was the government merely offering Lockheed, Boeing, Rockwell, and the like new “subsidies” intended to help weather recent defense cuts?

Instead, proponents suggested that the adaptive reuse of Soviet surplus equipment such as the Topaz reactor, electric rocket thrusters, and the dock­ing module originally intended for Buran-Mir missions provided value-added work to US industries. At the same time this hardware cut research and devel­opment overhead for NASA and the Department of Defense. Dan Goldin’s observations, though understandably crafted to appeal to the appropriate audience, reflect the tricky nature of Russian-American business dealings. Aviation Week and Space Technology explained that “[a]dministration offi­cials are eager to involve US companies in the cooperative process, but they do not discount the possibility that government funds will flow directly to Russia to purchase space hardware.” Addressing the specter of post-Cold War unemployment, Goldin intimated that he desired to be particularly careful that the US civil space program did not add to the woes of the aerospace industry as defense spending dropped precipitously.15 Rather than (in his own words) simply “ship money to Russia and get back a product,” the new NASA administrator suggested that these new international deals could wind up a win-win situation: with taxpayers saving money and US firms acting as prime contractors on retrofit projects concerning Russian machines. “Do we want to make work for Americans, or do we want Americans to do value-added work?” he asked.16

In the weeks that the Goldin-Dailey delegation and the Office of Space Commerce industrial commission toured Russia and Ukraine, they observed a network of communities in painful transition. What remained of the Soviet scientific research base writ large were roughly 400,000 public and semipri­vate institutions. Nested within complex hierarchies, some were at technical universities, others specialist institutions, and many situated within entire “closed” cities of technical specialization.17 These included organizations such as the Institute of Microelectronics and High Purity Materials, the Research Institute of Robotics and Engineering Cybernetics, the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, and the St. Petersburg Aerospace Instrumentation University, all in need of funding and all in need of administrative direction. Some institutes, such as the Committee for Hydrometeorology, dated to the Cold War era. The Russian Academy of Sciences was reestablished, its origins dating to Peter the Great.