Senate Clears NASA to Buy Russian Spaceships

Space.com ^ | 21 September 2005 | Brian Berger

[Dan Evans]

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate approved Sept. 21 a bill that would clear the way for NASA to buy the Russian Soyuz vehicles it needs to continue to occupy the International Space Station beyond this year.

The bill was introduced Sept. 15 by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to provide temporary relief from provisions in the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 that bar U.S. purchases of Russian human spaceflight hardware as long as Russia continues to help Iran in its pursuit of nuclear know-how and advanced weapons technology.

Lugar’s bill, S. 1713, changes the law to permit NASA to buy any Russian space hardware or services it needs for the International Space Station program until 2012.

The bill was approved the morning of Sept. 21 by unanimous consent, a Senate procedure that allows non-controversial legislation to bypass a floor vote.

The U.S. House of Representatives also is considering amending the Iran Nonproliferation Act to permit NASA to buy Soyuz vehicles, but it has yet to take any legislative action.

The House could either pick up and pass the Senate’s bill or introduce a bill of its own that would have to be reconciled with the Senate version before becoming law.

Without relief from the Iran act, NASA could soon find itself unable to send its astronauts to the space station for extended stays. A Soyuz capsule set to carry a new two-person crew – and one space tourist – to the station Sept. 30 is the last one Russia is obligated to provide at no charge to the United States under a bilateral agreement.

NASA and the U.S. State Department formally asked Congress in June to amend the Iran act to permit the United States to make use of Russian space technology in its space exploration plans.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Those were the days.

[repentant_pundit]

NASA needs to get out of the administration mode and let the engineers loose!

I'd take that one small step further and say that NASA needs to be taken out of the Administration altogether, and let the engineers go!

Private industry and privately funded research is the way to go.

If space travel is sufficiently worthwhile, inspiring, or entertaining, it will happen because donors and investors will voluntarily pay for it.

.

[Centurion2000]

IIRC, now the Russian space program has a beter safety record that us.

[RightWhale]

The silver lining is that the Shuttle program can finally be let go and NASA can put their resources into the new program. The construction of the ISS is about done anyway, not finished, just done.

[Pessimist]

"I'm no big fan of NASA but if they can find something better and cheaper, let them do it. "

"If the ride is mo fly, then they must buy"

[ARCADIA]

Gov't doesn't exist to "create jobs," contrary to what many Republicans think.

I am sure that that is just a rumor started by the 75% of the population that depends on the public dole for their jobs. People like farmers, the military, police, homeland defense, civil contractors, any industry collecting Medicare/Medicaid/perscription drug benefits, Anyone working on a highway project, NASA, The military industrial complex, those dependent on Fannie Mae and FDIC, those dependent on publicly subsidized illegal labor... oh yeah, there are still a few craftsmen making products for ordinary people - but, we are about one hiccup short of a command economy.

[Dan Evans]

IIRC, now the Russian space program has a beter safety record that us.

Is that figured in deaths per flight or failures per launch?

[Gekko The Great]

Private industry and privately funded research is the way to go.

They won't go. Not enough short-term profit in it for me. Better to trade energy futures and speculate in real estate. To hell with creating or learning anything.

If space travel is sufficiently worthwhile, inspiring, or entertaining, it will happen because donors and investors will voluntarily pay for it.

Right on. "Entertainment Nation" strikes again. Better to stay home and pop the pills. Cheaper that way. I can keep more of my money in my decrepit, stoned-out hands.

[cynicom]

Outsourcing the government???? Excellent idea. At least we could fire our employees.

[Gekko The Great]

I'm no big fan of NASA but if they can find something better and cheaper, let them do it.

Right. I'm with you. Cheaper is always better. If we can save a few pennies here and there to pinch in our decadent fingers, who gives a crap about being a technologically strong nation? Who cares about being even a strong nation? Hell, who even cares about being a nation, as long as I can keep more of my money for myself? Hey, we're alike, you and I. Money, money, money, the soul and center of everything...

[LiveFree99]

Dick is obviously making something "perfectly clear" to the commies.

[Dan Evans]

During the industrial revolution, scientific research was funded by wealthy patrons. That is changing because our tax structure makes it increasingly difficult to make money as our income increases. If government weren't taking 40% of our wealth, most of space research would be funded by private investors.

[Moonman62]

I'm no big fan of NASA but if they can find something better and cheaper, let them do it.

NASA recently gave Burt Rutan $6 million to generate some paper on a new design for vehicles to service the ISS. Burt actually built a prototype and tested it for the same price.

Here's the website.

http://www.transformspace.com/

[Captain Rhino]

We can't fly the space shuttle until the external fuel tank foam shedding problem is fixed (again!). We don't have an off-the-shelf equivalent of the Soyuz design in production (or even ready for production). NASA will not finish designing and flight certifying the successor to the space shuttle, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), until about 2012.

I image you could try to put Apollo back into production but updating the design, converting all the drawings for use in CAD/CAM, perhaps developing an ISS docking adapter, and actually getting ready for series production of the space craft (and launch vehicles) ain't going to be cheap. It's not quite the equivalent of designing and building the CEV but darn close.

The Soyuz is a PROVEN space craft that the US has flown on in the past. We can purchase it with the confidence we'll be able to fulfill our ISS obligations. So we are stuck buying from the Russians until NASA can solve its shuttle problems. Yeah, it's somewhat embarrassing to have to purchase foreign but the Russians have been our (admittedly underfunded) partners in ISS for a while now and will be only too glad to crank out all the Soyuz's we need until we can get back on our feet - with a broad smile and for a price, that is.

The only other alternative NASA has is to shutdown our portions of the ISS for an unknown period and hope the cash-strapped Russians don't either abandon the ISS entirely or turn the thing into a branch of the Hilton hotel chain before we can get back up there.

[EricT.]

It's not like the Russians are novices in space.

First, would you buy a Russian made car?
Second, have you seen the Russian space program's safety record?

[Free Baptist]

We are just never going to consider (Are we??) that "little" things like this are part of a much larger picture of globalism, weakening all sense of national identity. There will be no United States or Russia before long, but a global system under which the United States will have no sovereign will, not sovereign initiative, no sovereign economy (Hello, NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, etc.), no sovereign exploration spirit, no sovereign defense posture, NO SOVEREIGN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, just NO sovereignty.

[Clock King]

Russia has a LOT more man-hours in space than we do and they have a wealth of practical knowledge about things that go wrong. NASA is smart not to ignore that knowledge.

[Sometimes A River]

"Better and cheaper" doesn't mean "Cheaper is always better."

Value and price don't mean the same thing.

[andyk]

The silver lining is that the Shuttle program can finally be let go and NASA can put their resources into the new program.

Good point.

[andyk]

IIRC, now the Russian space program has a beter safety record that us.

Overall, I'd say probably not. More recently, that's probably true. For the first twenty to thirty years, their program was highly secret, and failures were not made public. Only recently have we become aware of some of the tragic losses of the Soviet space program.