U.S.-Russia Plan Outlined for Space Lab

The leaders of the American and Russian space agencies Thursday unveiled the broad outlines of a plan to build a joint orbiting space laboratory, dubbed space station Alpha, that would put six astronauts and cosmonauts from the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe into permanent orbit by the year 2001.

The new plan would cost “several billion” dollars less than the earlier $19.4-billion space station plan, which was developed over the summer by the Clinton Administration before the Russians were brought aboard, said Daniel S. Goldin, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. That figure did not include $8 billion already spent directly on the project.

The Administration announced Sept. 2 that it had signed an agreement with the government of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to bring the Russians into the project.

The announcement, which included few operational details, sent waves of anxiety through NASA and American firms with contracts to build the station, raising new concerns about whether the agreement would damage the shaky coalition of support for the station in Congress.

After reviewing the Goldin plan, Capitol Hill sources said Thursday that the foreign policy initiative underlying the deal probably represents the best hope of keeping the space station program on track.

As a result, the plan cuts two ways for American aerospace firms. On one hand, thousands of jobs would be lost if Congress decided to fold the program.

“If this (joint plan) doesn’t work, we might as well forget it,” said Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and one of the space station’s most ardent supporters in Congress.

On the other hand, the planned addition of a Russian propulsion system will strip a major component built by Lockheed Corp.’s space division in Sunnyvale from the project and the impact on jobs there remains unclear.

Goldin said, however, that most of the Russian participation represents an addition to the program rather than a substitution for American work.

Under the new plan, Goldin said, Russian participation would allow completion of the station two years ahead of the most recent NASA schedule.

*

The plan, announced at NASA headquarters by Goldin and Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency, outlines a three-phase construction plan that would begin in 1995 with a series of space shuttle missions to the existing Russian space platform, Mir.

In a second phase, beginning in 1998, Russians and Americans would assemble the rudiments of a separate, much larger and more powerful space laboratory in a series of 10 launches, half from Russia and half from the United States.

The final phase, to be finished by 2001, would complete an international space station with living and laboratory modules and other hardware built by the American, Russian, Japanese, Canadian and European space agencies.

The entire project, designed to serve as a platform for research on human biology and industrial processes and materials, would require 31 assembly flights using the American space shuttle and Russian Proton rockets.

However, Thursday’s announcement leaves unresolved many questions about the joint program’s overall budget, the degree of American control over it and its effect on the already beleaguered American aerospace industry.

“The devil will be in the details,” Brown said. “We need to look closely to make sure that this program is credible and can be accomplished within the diminishing resources that NASA will have available.”

Under the terms of the deal, by far the most ambitious effort at cooperation between the two former Cold War rivals, the United States would pay Russia a total of $400 million over four years for their contribution to the program and would pay an annual fee of “considerably less” than that to lease the Russian propulsion system.

First proposed in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, the orbiting laboratory has been redesigned at least five times, most recently this year at the behest of President Clinton. The program narrowly survived close votes in the House earlier this year, although it won more widespread support in the Senate.

The proposal must be ratified by both the United States and Russia. That is expected to happen in mid-December.

“This is it,” Goldin said. “We have to start flying.”

A central issue that has troubled some on Capitol Hill is control.

Under the plan outlined Thursday, the Johnson Space Center in Houston would be the seat of command and control for the space station mission. Russians would provide backup facilities.

*

Asked whether the Russian people would agree to being a junior partner in the space station effort, Koptev said: “It seems to me that we spent about 70 years trying to decide who was the junior and who was the senior partner. And that was not very helpful.”

Goldin characterized as false rumors on Capitol Hill that the Clinton Administration plans to use the space station deal to channel billions of dollars to the Russian government in lieu of direct foreign aid.