June 8, 1998. Copyright, 1998, Graphic News. All rights reserved

COSMIC DELAYS AND A ROCKETING BUDGET
By Oliver Burkeman

LONDON, June 8, Graphic News: IT WAS a plan fuelled by post-Cold War optimism: a permanent outpost in space, jointly funded and built by East and West Ð a triumph for global co-operation as well as for space exploration. America would pay U.S.$17.4 billion, Russia U.S.$3.2bn. Other space agencies would chip in too, and the whole enterprise would be up and running by 1994.

Unfortunately, perhaps inevitably, that vision of the International Space Station seems destined to remain a fantasy. NASA and Russian Space Agency chiefs gathered at Cape Canaveral in Florida last week [May 31] to announce the fourth major revision of the troubled stationÕs construction timetable. Now, the first of 45 components Ð a Russian-built power module Ð is due to be carried into orbit by RussiaÕs Proton rocket on November 20, five months later than the Ð already revised Ð 1997 schedule. Meanwhile, the projectÕs budget has skyrocketed. NASAÕs total forecast contribution leapt to $21bn in March Ð an increase of $3.6bn Ð but last month a panel of experts told the agency to expect something closer to $25bn. Ten of the European Space AgencyÕs member states are also contributing, as are Japan and Canada.

The latest cause for delay is the Russian-built service module. When complete, it will provide oxygen and accommodation for the first crew members but, for the time being, languishes months behind schedule at the Khrunichev Space Centre in Moscow. RussiaÕs cash-strapped government still owes its space agency $45m of the $300m it promised for 1997, and the agencyÕs contractors have stopped work on the module until they get paid.

Part of the reason for the funding crisis Ð aside from the Russian economyÕs numerous other problems Ð is the burden of the accident-prone, 12-year-old Mir project. Heat regulation and life support systems have broken down on the ailing space station, which collided with a Russian shuttle in 1997. Russian Space Agency chiefs agreed at the weekend to end the project as soon as possible and focus its funds on the International Space Station.

Speaking two weeks before the Cape Canaveral meeting, the agencyÕs director-general Yuriy Koptev played down the delay, accusing America of Ôplaying the Russian cardÕ. ÔThe timetable part is not so catastrophic,Õ he told the ITAR-TASS news agency. ÔIt does not matter when the stationÕs construction begins; the main thing is that the project is on the whole successfulÕ.

NASA is less sanguine. Originally, the agency thought the involvement of the Russians could save them $1.5bn Ð but Russian delays have already cost them more than that. The Interim Control Module, which NASA is developing as an alternative to the service module in case Russia fails to finish it, could add $400m to that cost. It all seems a long way from ClintonÕs insistence in 1993 that U.S. expenditure on the project would be capped at $17.4 billion, and light years from NASAÕs boast in 1984 that it could fulfil President Ronald ReaganÕs dream of an international space station Ð with no Russian participation, of course Ð for a mere $8bn.

The reason for the crisis lies in the extraordinary tightness of the schedule, which allows for no major delays or failures. Yet the project has not started to run smoothly yet Ð and there is almost no chance that it ever will. The British magazine New Scientist calculates, on the basis of past launches, there is a 95 percent chance of one cargo being lost, and a 73.6 percent chance that one of the 33 Space Shuttle missions, or one of the twelve key Russian launches, will end in failure.

If all the obstacles can be overcome, the station Ð now scheduled for completion in 2003 Ð will undertake research on the effects of minimal gravity on human life, the structure and evolution of the universe and on communication in space, among others, and will bring the large-scale human habitation of space several steps closer. For now, though, getting the first three sections into orbit is quite challenging enough.
/ENDS

Sources: NASA (+1 281 244 7085), European Space Agency (+33 1 5369 7155), Reuters, New Scientist