Moscow Steps Up To Fill Shuttle Void

Doubling back on its previously stated position regarding funding for the International Space Station, the Russian Cabinet Thursday pledged extra money to build more spacecraft that would service the international space station, while NASA teams and federal investigators in the US try to figure out what happened to the ill-fated shuttle Columbia.

Money Troubles

Up to now, Russian officials had contended that it could not build extra ships for the international space station without a U.S. financial contribution. But something has changed at the Kremlin.

"We will undoubtedly have to carry the main workload, having to perform additional launches and flights to the station," Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said at the beginning of the Cabinet session. "We can't postpone this decision."

Yuri Koptev, director of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, told reporters later that the Cabinet had approved the early release of the $38 million originally set for the second half of the year to speed up construction of extra ships.

Koptev said the government had also tentatively promised to bolster the space station's budget from $130 million this year to $240 million next year.

NASA has said that any potential American funding is constrained by U.S. legislation barring additional payments to Russia's space agency unless Washington confirms Russia has not transferred missile technology or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons to Iran in the previous year.

With US-Russian ties a bit strained over the war in Iraq, don't look for Congress to waive that bill. US officials also point out Russia wasn't living up to its obligations to service the station.

Thursday, Koptev said Moscow will continue holding out for financial help to build new spaceships, but acknowledged that American space shuttles had done some of the work on the station that the cash-strapped Russian program was supposed to do, but couldn't.

What Goes Around Comes Around

"Now it's coming back to us and it's hard to complain about that," he said.

The alternative is to leave the station temporarily unoccupied. But that could become a safety issue, Koptev said. Since allowing its own Mir space station to fall out of orbit in March 2001, Russia's manned space program has hinged entirely on the international outpost.

Russian Soyuz crew capsules and Progress cargo ships are the only link to the 16-nation station as the American shuttle fleet remains grounded pending an investigation into the Columbia disaster. Soyuz ships serve as lifeboats for the crew and must be rotated from the station every six months, while unmanned Progress ships ferry fuel, water and other supplies.

The Taxi's In The Barn

In the past, U.S. space shuttles performed rotation of the station's long-term crew, while Russia used Soyuz capsules to earn extra cash by bringing space tourists on weeklong missions to the station.

Because of the break in shuttle flights, U.S. astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko are to ride a Soyuz to the station in late April or early May for a six-month mission.

As part of the crew rotation, the station's current residents, Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin, will return to Earth in another Soyuz capsule presently docked at the station.

FMI: www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/station