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INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION Once scorned, Russian capsule may bring 3 astronauts home
By David Arnold, Globe Staff, 2/2/2003
The crew has enough supplies to last until June, but, after that, they might have to return aboard a vessel that some American engineers openly scorned when it was first proposed: the Soyuz Russian space capsule docked outside the station. ''There was some debate [in the early 1990s] about Russian dependability, that their economy and engineering could not be counted on,'' said Charles M. Vest, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who headed a panel that reviewed the space station. ''It's turned out that they have been very reliable, really quite strong compared to us.'' Now, the Russians will be the lifeline for the space station. A regularly scheduled unmanned Russian transport is slated to arrive at the space station Tuesday, bringing solar power generating equipment to the astronauts. And, if the space shuttle program is grounded for long, the Soyuz capsule may be their ride home. ''If there was ever a time or a way to buy stock in the tried-but-true Russian Space Agency, this is it,'' said James Oberg of Dickinson, Texas, who served for 22 years as a mission controller at NASA.
The space station is a $60 billion venture among 16 countries, with NASA spending about $2 billion annually and employing 16,000 people to operate a facility mainly devoted to researching the effects of life in space. But the needs of the space station make the job of NASA officials harder as they investigate the Columbia crash. In 1986, after Challenger exploded, the shuttle program was grounded for nearly three years. Now, such a long shutdown could force NASA to leave the space station unmanned. With no permanent crew aboard, the space station can operate in a ''dormant'' mode as long as occasional maintenance is performed by visiting astronauts. In fact, NASA had already been considering a ''demanning'' contingency for 2003 before yesterday's events. But the longer the station goes unoccupied, the greater the chances that it would deteriorate to an uninhabitable state. A dormant period would also cause a significant interruption in the station's continuing assembly and scientific research program. However, as Vest points out, the current situation would be much worse if critics of Russian technology had prevented the Soyuz from being part of the station, essentially stranding the astronauts. Early proposals had put the space station in an orbit configuration that would have put it beyond the reach of launches from the Russian Cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan - in part because some NASA officials believed the Russians should not be members of the international consortium. The Clinton administration asked Vest to lead a committee that would determine what the orbit of the future station should be. ''The concern at the time had nothing to do with politics,'' Vest said. The issue was whether Russian economy and engineering could support membership in the consortium. In a report delivered to Clinton in 1993, Vest's committee wrote: ''The objective assessment of risk to human life and to the long-term operation of the space station must be a major element in the decision making .... An assured crew return capability must be provided.'' The only backup was the Russians. So the space station went into an orbit that could be fetched from Baikonur. The Russians are under contract to fly to the station twice annually, leaving one emergency space capsule behind and taking the previous capsule home, according to John Tylko, a lecturer at MIT. One member of the space station is always a Russian trained to fly the Soyuz. The Russians also send an unmanned ''Progress'' transport to the station every five months or so to deliver hardware to the slowly expanding station. Responsibility for a crew rescue ship was slated to shift to the United States when the Russian contract expires in 2006. An American plan to build a substitute space station lifeboat - the X-38 - became so expensive that it was abandoned in spring 2001, and the Russians are likely to continue providing emergency backup, according to Oberg. Construction of another American escape vehicle is being considered, he added, but its cost and completion date are far from finalized. M aterial from the Associated Press was used in this report.
This story ran on page A18 of the Boston Globe on 2/2/2003.
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he crash of the space shuttle Columbia yesterday left the three astronauts aboard the International Space Station to wonder how - and when - they will get home. The two Americans and one Russian orbiting 200 miles above the earth were counting on a space shuttle to bring them back in March, but an extended safety review of the shuttle program would throw those plans into serious doubt.
