As the space shuttle Atlantis spends its last days in orbit, the space flight community is preparing for a shift in the balance of power. The end of the US space shuttle programme later this month after 30 years will hand Russia's Soyuz spacecraft an unprecedented monopoly in carrying people to the International Space Station (ISS).
The small, sturdy Soyuz capsules have barely changed since they were first deployed in 1966, making them the Volkswagen Beetle of spacecraft. New Russian manned spacecraft are not expected to be in operation for many years. Meanwhile, US efforts to develop a commercial space industry to fly astronauts into orbit could take at least a few years, and government plans for a long-distance vessel are even farther off.
For now, Russia hopes to make the most of this unprecedented exclusivity to raise the millions of dollars it needs to build a new spaceport to launch its rockets from its own far east. Moscow is currently spending more than 140 million dollars per year for use of the old Soviet cosmodrome on the central Asian steppe in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
The Soyuz will be key, not only for the shuttle-less US space programme, but for the Europeans, as the international partners shift their ISS focus from construction to scientific experiments. "We Europeans will also need Russian Soyuz spacecraft in the future," said Johann-Dietrich Woerner, head of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Cologne.
Moscow will be able to demand high, but hardly astronomical, prices for trips to the ISS. The cost for the US space agency NASA works out to more than 55 million dollars per seat through 2014 and 62.7 million dollars after that. "Contracts establish that Europe can claim in exchange for services like the construction of a laboratory on the ISS, other services, for example flights to the space station," Woerner said.
Still, he has some concerns."If the Soyuz suffers a serious breakdown in the coming years, we would have a problem with the ISS," he said. The Soyuz spacecraft is regarded as cost-efficient and rugged, though technologically backward. For this reason, Russia is modernising its space vehicles: last year, the Russian space authority Roscosmos changed its analogue control system to a digital equivalent. The switch eliminated some 70 kilogrammes of technical equipment from the craft, freeing that weight for the addition of an extra passenger - a paying customer.
"In order to earn money, Russia will again carry into space wealthy tourists," says former German astronaut Sigmund Jaehn. "Capitalism rules in space, too." But Russia is not just a "taxi driver" for US astronauts and adventurous tycoons. It is also a carrier for telecommunications companies, which will bring in further revenues. Unmanned, expendable Progress spacecraft take up to 3 tonnes of material to the ISS before being destroyed on re-entry to the atmosphere. Russia's new spaceport in Vostochny, near the Chinese border, is expected to cost more than 850 million dollars, to be paid for from unmanned space launches.
Despite tight budgets, President Dmitry Medvedev recently announced that Russia would not withdraw from space research. Fifty years after the dawn of manned space flight, mankind remains "only at the very start of the path," Medvedev said at an event to celebrate the late Russian legend Yuri Gagarin, the first person to fly into space on April 12, 1961. Nowadays, Russia has changed the romantic hopes of Gagarin's time for "more pragmatic" goals, Medvedev admitted. But there is still more to space than that.
"There remains a dream, of course, a dream about conquering other planets, other solar systems," he said. Among those dreams are a mission to Mars, which Roscosmos estimates will not be possible before 2030. Six men are currently working in Moscow on the most comprehensive Mars experiment in history, inside a sealed container.
The volunteers involved are only to be let out of their 180-cubic-metre "spacecraft" in November, after 520 days inside - the estimated duration of a flight to Mars and back. But Woerner said he believes such a trip would only be feasible as a joint project. The United States and Russia, former rivals, would need to team up. But, he said, they would also need to bring in the new star in the sky of manned space travel: China.
Comments
Comments are closed.