The Crisis of the Early 1990s and the Inclusion of Russia

When President Reagan authorized the space station in 1984 it was to have been completed within a decade for $8 billion. During the next nine fiscal years (FY1985-1993) more than $10 billion had been spent without much to show for it. As of January 1995 only about 25,000 pounds of flight quality hardware had been fabricated, less than 3 percent of what was then projected to be a 925,000- pound facility. This was primarily because “the space station effort for nine years languished in the design phase.”59 The “dual-keel” design of October 1985 was followed by the “revised baseline configuration” of Space Station Freedom, and then a “restructured space station” that was unveiled in March 1991, and sched­uled to cost $30 billion.

This redesign did not satisfy Congress. Its threat to terminate the program was strongly opposed by the Bush administration, however. The year before 64 senators had insisted that the Space Station Freedom be sustained as “the cornerstone of our civil space policy and a symbol of our commitment to lead­ership and cooperation in the peaceful exploration of outer space.”60 British, German, French, and Italian ambassadors to Washington added their voices to the chorus that included President Bush himself and his secretary of state, James Baker. In July 1991 Baker wrote to the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations asking the Senate to support Space Station Freedom. As he put it, “The credibility of the United States as a Partner is based on its ability to make durable commitments. We will increasingly need to cooperate with these allies on common endeavors, whether in security, economic, environment, or science and technology areas. A failure by the United States to keep the Space Station Freedom on track,” Baker emphasized, “would call into question our reliability.”61

Space Station Freedom survived Congressional criticism in 1991 partly because its “durability” was indicative of the Bush administration’s determi­nation to maintain its leadership of the free world even as the Soviet Union imploded. It also sent a strong signal to Moscow just when the United States was reaching out to engage in closer relationships with its erstwhile rival. On July 31, 1991, President Bush and Premier Gorbachev signed the historic START I treaty in which they agreed to dramatically reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. They also charged a number of joint working groups to negotiate cooperation in various space-related fields (see chapter 8), including an extended stay by an American astronaut on the Soviet Space Station Mir. In 1992 Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin extended plans for space cooperation beyond scientific support and an exchange of astronauts to include a rendezvous and docking mis­sion between the Shuttle and Mir.

Mir, which had been launched in 1986, was the “strangest, largest structure ever placed in Earth orbit,” “a dragonfly with wings outstretched,” “the best and the worst of Soviet technology and science,” a “cluttered mess” inside, “with obsolete equipment, floating bags of trash, the residue of dust, and a crust that grew more extensive with the passing years.”62 Mir was also a testing ground for long-duration human spaceflight. Cosmonauts typically spent four-six months, even more than a year on board.

Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the new president in January 1993. He and Vice President Al Gore were determined to continue the process of modern­izing and stabilizing Russia, of demilitarizing its high-technology sector, and of remodeling its institutions and industries along American lines. For Clinton and Gore space collaboration was embedded in a broader attempt to encourage Russia and the Newly Independent States (NIS) in their transition to democracy and market economics. It had the programmatic aim of capitalizing on Soviet space technology and know-how. However, it was also seen as an instrument to channel hard currency into a crumbling infrastructure, to retain elite scien­tists and engineers who might otherwise drift into the arms of rogue states, to encourage government and industry to adhere to the provisions of the Missile Technology Control Regime, and to isolate the opponents of reform by sustain­ing a high-prestige Soviet activity even as the communist system collapsed.63 In April Clinton met with Yeltsin in Vancouver and finalized an American aid package of $1.6 billion. He also invited Russia to participate in a renewed space station program. One of the most important by-products of this meeting was the so-called Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission (Victor Chernomyrdin was the Russian prime minister). It first met in September and then in December 1993 to work out details of bilateral agreements on space, energy, and technology (see chapter 8).

Clinton’s efforts did not win universal approval at home. But they played an important role in keeping the project alive in 1993. On entering the White House he told Dan Goldin (who was appointed NASA administrator in 1992 and remained in post throughout his mandate) that he was willing to support a space station. However, he asked the NASA administrator to come up with a leaner design. He was presented with three options. One was a modular concept that would use existing hardware. Another was a derivate of the Space Station Freedom. The third was a station that could be placed in orbit with a single Shuttle-derived launch vehicle. On June 17 President Clinton chose “a medium­sized modular space station” that used a “combination of Freedom hardware and flight-qualified space systems from other sources.” Goldin announced that Russian hardware alternatives had been incorporated into the plans where appro­priate.64 He said he needed $12.8 billion for the Space Station: Clinton capped its cost at $10.5 billion over the next five years.65

Congress voted on two expensive technological projects inherited from the Reagan years within days of each other in June. Both of them were intended to restore American prestige in the context of Cold War rivalry. One was the Superconducting Super Collider, on which $2 billion had been spent. Work had already begun on digging an oval, 54-mile underground tunnel near Dallas to hold the particle accelerator. The other was Space Station Freedom. Congress voted to kill the SSC; the Senate confirmed the decision a few months later.66 The Space Station survived by just one vote on a day that Dan Goldin later recalled was his worst ever at NASA.67 A year later, in summer 1994, the House of Representatives endorsed the station by 123 votes. Saving domestic jobs was one important reason for Congress’s support: NASA spread industrial contracts for the space station across 39 states, thereby spawning an estimated 75,000 jobs by 1992.68 Foreign participation and the diplomatic consequences of being seen as an unreliable partner undoubtedly also carried some weight.

With the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission getting into its stride, NASA drafted a new International Space Station Project. It had three phases and Russia was crucial to all of them. Phase 1, scheduled to last from 1994 to 1997, was a joint Shuttle/Mir program that would enable American astronauts to familiar­ize themselves with living and working in space for extended periods of time. The station core would be built in Phase 2, that would last the next three years and to which Russia would contribute several critical elements, including guid­ance, navigation, and control. In Phase 3, lasting from 2000 to 2004, the station would be completed with the addition of research modules from the four coun­tries that were building them. Russia would again provide key elements, like a habitation module (until the United States had built its own), and a crew return lifeboat for emergency evacuation. A comprehensive $400-million contract was signed between NASA and the Russian Space Agency to implement this plan.

These plans evoked criticism both at home and from the foreign partners. One of the major concerns was whether, given the state of the nation, Russia could be relied on to provide items that were critical to mission success. Others complained that the United States was using foreign aid to boost the space infra­structure of Russia and the NIS without being sure that they could deliver and at the expense of American jobs. Indeed NASA paid dearly for making an excep­tion to its policy of clean interfaces and no exchange of funds.

The evolution of the collaborative project with Russia has been described in chapter 8 , and will not be repeated here. The difficulties encountered with Zarya (the Functional Cargo Block—FGB) are illustrative. Zarya had to be put in space before anything else. With 16 fuel tanks holding more than 16 tons of propellant, and two solar arrays 35 feet long and 11 feet wide, this pressurized module was to provide orientation control, communications, and electrical pro­pulsion for the station until the Russian-provided crew quarters arrived. It was to be built in Russia under contract and owned by the United States. Schedules slipped. Costs increased. All the partners were infuriated when Moscow, who was supposed to cover all the costs related to Zarya, attempted to drop the mod­ule entirely and replace it with a Mir module. In April 1998 an internal NASA report noted

the anticipated one billion dollar cost savings to the U. S. to be accrued from Russian provision of a Functional Cargo Block. . . and an Assured Crew Return Vehicle capability was a faulty assumption as far back as 1994. The continu­ous economic situation in Russia has also negated most of the $1.5 billion in schedule savings to be achieved through their involvement.69

The Shuttle/Mir program was also a headache. The Russians demanded funds for goods and services that NASA believed had already been paid for, and charged “exorbitant” fees for cosmonaut time on American projects. When Goldin heard that the Russians were getting Mir ready to fly a space tourist, he exploded. “They always seem to have a little extra money around for Mir but not for the International Space Station.”70 In the event the original $400 mil­lion that NASA had offered for Shuttle/Mir and Phase 2 space station costs ballooned to double that figure as the Russians added ever more requests for financial support (see table 8.3).