Russian Space Science and Technology

As the Western commercial sector began to tentatively explore former Soviet technologies for sale, assess Russian firms, and evaluate the institutional change necessary to make trade happen, representatives of the space sciences, too, engaged in their share of match-making. Whereas most Scientific Production Associations (NPOs, to the Americans) had been privatized through the course of market reform, many scientific institutes and agencies weathered the transi­tion from state-directed socialism to neoliberal capitalism as government enti­ties. Here are just a few of the key players.

Russian Space Agency (RSA), Rosaviakosmos/Roskosmos (RKA)18: Created in April 1992, the RSA functioned as a replacement for many Russian organizations including Glavkosmos, Interkosmos, Intersputnik, and the Ministry of General Machine Building’s civil space policy functions.19 This agency functioned as a rough counterpart to NASA, both a coordinator of space programs and procurer of technical systems. Russian Federation president Boris Yeltsin selected Yuri N. Koptev, a former senior official of the Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM), as agency head.

Managing a newly formed agency, Koptev’s administration faced high expec­tations for performance as well as reform. Academician Roald Sagdeev observed: “[I]t took precisely 35 years to realize that the nation needs a unified organization to run its space program, not in the interests of the military or of the arms race, but in the interests of human kind, international cooperation, science and com­merce.” In 2001, experts observed that, “[t]he Russian space sector has come a long way.” “If you look back ten years the space sector was totally within the mili­tary establishment, the so-called military industrial complex, this was, actually, a tremendously successful conversion; it is not complete, but still impressive.”20

Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS): This institution was reborn at the end of 1991, becoming the default successor of the fast-dissolving USSR Academy of Sciences. As such, the RAS inherited many of Russia’s key research institutions and space science organizations including the Space Research Institute (IKI), the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, and the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics. Until the early 1990s, the academy was NASA’s primary partner in bilateral space agreements.

RAS: Space Research Institute (IKI): Directed by academician Albert A. Galeyev (and before that Roald Sagdeev mentioned earlier) and boasting a staff of more than a 1,000, this organization performed research in the fields of plane­tary physics, space plasma physics, astrophysics, space materials technology, opti­cal studies, and physical studies. Since its founding in 1965, IKI staff prepared space research programs, designed, tested, and operated scientific instruments (including spacecraft), and engaged in extensive international cooperation.

RAS: Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry & Analytical Chemistry: This insti­tute focused principally on space research concerning geological analysis and mapping. The Vernadsky Institute’s best-known work in planetary studies was the Venera Missions to Venus in the 1970s and early 1980s and the Mars 94 pro­gram. As a result, NASA staff were considering subcontracting with Vernadsky Institute through Arizona State University, seeking analyses of landing sites on Mars and weathering processes on Venus.

RAS: Intercosmos Council: For decades this council had coordinated inter­national space science projects. However Administrator Goldin’s July 1992 Briefing Book indicates that this institution’s influence seemed to be waning with the dissolution of the Eastern bloc and rise of the RSA.

As of 1991, the most recent proposal developed by the Academy of Sciences for the development of space industries (“Program 2005”) had been around for two-and-a-half years, unacknowledged by the Coordinating Committee for Space Research. This general lack of direction only fueled the demands of scien­tists and engineers for a more centralized and active command.21 Though it may be impossible to generalize who welcomed privatization or realignment from statist to democratic operation, throughout this period each government entity and newly minted firm operated under at least one constraint: a precipitous lack of funding. The Russian Federation’s revenue deficit, along with a mad­dening pace of inflation, a desperately weakened tax base, and an inefficient (if not corrupted) supply of financial support, left each organization in dire straits. Officials needed more (and more stable) currency; institutions required steady work in order to remain intact.

Policymakers, industrialists, and the American public alike shared in this awareness. The years 1991 and 1992 brought a flood of coverage in US newspa­pers, trade publications, and scientific journals, detailing the plight of Russian science and engineering. Workers went without pay while engineers took on supplementary work as taxicab drivers and auto mechanics. The Baikonur launch facilities weathered slowly while many production facilities sat idle.

Anatoliy Petrushin, deputy director for finance at Progress Plant TsSKB (Research and Production Rocket Space Center), explained that in an effort to avoid layoffs, his launch vehicle production facility had begun ersatz diversifica­tion. “For example,” he pointed out, “we have set up a shop producing dispos­able syringes. And although only around 300 people work there, one half of the profit earned by the plant last year came from syringe production. Could this situation be more absurd?!” A disheartened Petrushin predicted the end of launch vehicle production for his plant: “Privatization will lead to just one thing: the replacement of space production by something that is short-term and ultra­profitable. The sophisticated equipment will then go out of commission and the plant will go under the hammer.”22

More disturbing, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics reported that rocket and space industries in the Commonwealth of Independent States were “simultaneously seeking to exchange space competence for hard cur­rency” and “attempting to convert their manufacturing capabilities to produc­tion of kitchen equipment.”23 A year earlier the Washington Post took readers to Ukraine’s Yuzhny Machine Building Factory where trolley buses and air­plane parts had supplanted ICBM production.24 Yuzhny might best be identi­fied as the facility at which Nikita Khrushchev boasted that the Soviets would “make missiles like sausages.”25 Indeed, what was an unemployed missile engi­neer to do? Several speculated that weapons scientists in more desperate straits were likely to sell their expertise to developing programs in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, or the like.

Even as debates carried on in newspaper editorials and on Capitol Hill as to whether Americans ought to collaborate with the Russians in space, policymakers questioned with whom precisely they ought even 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. A report prepared for the New Initiatives Office at Johnson Space Center illustrated the degree of uncer­tainty, if not confusion:

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.26

Stakeholders read the situation in different ways. Some called for US govern­ment and scientific organizations to send aid to the once thriving scientific and space infrastructures. Financial support might not only help individuals and their families, but perhaps dissuade weapons engineers from defecting, keep sci­entists from marketing their technical knowledge to “rogue nations,” or keep industrialists in line with weapons compliance regulations. Noting that US aid was “but a drop in the bucket compared to the scope of the problems confront­ing former Soviet science,” others begged that there be even the smallest, sim­plest demonstrations of support. One National Science Board official pointed out the benefits of offering “in kind” assistance in the form of journals, sur­plus personal computers, technically obsolete lab equipment, or the archiving of research data.27

Meantime, assorted critics voiced dismay. Some interpreted the former Soviet Union as an impotent and unstable giant that was best left to its own demise—be it the civil space program, military-industrial complex, or scientific research base. Others remarked on the confusion and limited liquidity that accompanied this rapid and haphazard privatization. Loren Graham, historian of Russian science, acknowledged the Russian state’s problems with authoritarianism and corrup­tion, cautioning that “[i]f money goes directly into the hands of directors, it might be slowing the process of reform,” ultimately, “enforcing the authoritarian character of the Soviet science establishment that we’ve criticized in the past.”28 At the same time, some speaking in the interest of national defense questioned the ability of the administration to assure its voters that their tax dollars would benefit civil space and not be plowed back into military complexes.

Be that as it may, a coalition was in the making that viewed the weakened economic system as an opportunity to reshape Russian institutions—Americans might provide leadership in postcommunist market reform, ease the conversion to a free market, introduce Russian firms to global business, or produce profit­able joint ventures among otherwise downsizing defense firms.

Party lines were not necessarily dependable predictors of behavior. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) declared that such trade offered “a way to complement each other’s civilian space programs in a way that allows mankind to advance, yet provides jobs for both the Russian and the American people.”29 Later he pointed out that cooperation with Russia would provide a way to “nudge” Russia down a “democratic path and [ensure that it] does not lapse into totalitarianism.”30 Senator Al Gore (D-Tenn), chair of the Senate sub­committee that authorized NASA funding, opined that “[t]he taxpayers would like to save some money if we can buy off the shelf some important components that [the Russians] have developed in their space program.”31 In 1993, Dana Rohrabacher—a Republican from California—went so far as to contemplate the hypothetical replacement of the Space Transport System with the Energia Rocket system. Such cooperation with the Russians, he postulated, “will not cost American jobs and will not cost taxpayers for us to work with these new friends and to help cement democracy in what was the Soviet Union.”32

In the 1992 presidential race, Republicans chuckled over the similarities between the Clinton-Gore platform and George H. W. Bush-Dan Quayle’s. “It’s a hoot,” commented one Bush administration official, who went on to describe Clinton’s space statement as being little more than a carbon copy of Bush’s. Like Bush policy, Clinton’s position paper supported Mission to Planet Earth, directed NASA to give higher priority to innovation in the civil aircraft industry, prodded the administration to establish a permanent presence on the moon, send humans to Mars, maintain strong cooperative ties on the Space Station while, at the same time, using robotic exploration whenever feasible. Tellingly, Clinton criticized Bush’s policy for only two shortcomings: failing to set clear enough priorities for NASA (which led to NASA being “saddled” with more missions than it could possibly achieve) and favoring military space spending over civil.33

The Bush and Clinton years are bridged by a broad collection of (borrowing from arms control language) “confidence-building measures” between NASA’s Goldin administration and Koptev’s Russian Space Agency. This cooperation led directly to some government-supported joint ventures, while easing the way for private sector activity in the months and years to come.