Time running out for space station deal

How NASA is playing its hand
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a NASA official told MSNBC.com it was very clear that a game was being played. “This is posturing by Russia, based on INA. We still don't have any relief from INA, although there are a lot of discussions going on at various levels of the administration and Congress,” the official said.

After the last contractual Russian launch next September, the official said, “our original agreements with the Russians expire. ... After that, the Russians are saying we'll become paying customers just like everyone else.”

“In the end, an agreement will likely be reached,” the official predicted, “but the Russians are pushing hard at every opportunity.”

During a Friday teleconference for reporters, Michael Kostelnik, NASA's deputy associate administrator for the space station and shuttle programs, hinted that NASA was looking for permission to pay the Russians.

"The only practical way [to transport space station crews] is with the Soyuz," he said. "Right now there is not a policy way ahead, with INA, but we are working very hard within the government to get a resolution."

Soyuz capsules will stay in the mix
Resolution of the issue is important, because with the resumption of shuttle flights, a new strategy for transporting the space station's long-term crews must be developed. Prior to the Columbia disaster, all but the very first crew were carried into space aboard shuttles, while Soyuzes were flown by short-term crews. Since 2003, of course, all station crews have launched on Soyuzes.

Now a new "mixed" strategy is emerging: Even after shuttle flights resume, Soyuzes would still carry two long-term crew members, with the third Soyuz seat reserved for a short-term paying customer. The third long-term crew member would be transported on the shuttle.

This arrangement would, for the first time, create overlapping tours of duty for the long-term crew. There would always be at least one experienced astronaut staying aboard to break in arriving crew members. While this would have some impact on crews not training together on Earth, it also will enhance the efficiency of handovers from one crew to the next.

NASA fights back?
Yet another NASA source privately advised that the current flap was a part of the “hardball negotiations” but he revealed that NASA negotiators were pulling some hitherto-unrecognized aces out of their sleeves. This person, who requested his name not be divulged, said that the precipitating event was not next April's Soyuz mission, but a seat aboard the STS-121 shuttle flight now slated to follow the first shuttle mission in May.

“In response to Russia announcing they will charge the U.S. for Soyuz seats after 2005,” the source explained in an e-mail, “NASA is charging Russia for their nationals to ride on the shuttle.”

The rates, he explained, were pegged to be the same. About 20 Russians have flown, without charge, aboard shuttle missions over the past 10 years.

The STS-121 connection is that the Russians have sold one of their “Russian” spots on the station to the European Space Agency, which will use it to send veteran astronaut Thomas Reiter into orbit. It was originally expected that NASA would give Reiter the seat on STS-121 that otherwise would have gone to a Russian cosmonaut, Sergey Volkov, who would have stayed aboard the station, raising the crew size back to three.

But now NASA has told Moscow that since this is a “Russian” seat, the Russians must pay for it. “The Russians predictably have a problem with this,” the source wrote, “and stopped training in retaliation.”

Alternately, goes the U.S. bargaining strategy, the Russians can swap seats on Soyuz flights for seats on shuttle flights on a one-for-one basis, with no cash changing hands.

But even that deal would not solve the looming issue of the funding for the second Soyuz bail-out capsule and other issues associated with the expansion of the space station. And on the more distant horizon is the period after 2010 when shuttle flights cease, years before astronauts can ride NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle into orbit.

Americans may fly aboard Russian spacecraft, or perhaps Chinese spacecraft, or even perhaps commercial U.S. human space vehicles — but NASA’s own independent human spaceflight capability will suffer a gap of several years duration.

James Oberg, space analyst for NBC News, spent 22 years at the Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer.

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