Miracles on a Shoestring

baikonur, kazakhstan – The Central Asian steppe lights up and air billows as a nearly 300-ton

Soyuz rocket roars into the night sky. The projectile arches over southern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean, shedding its spent stages before the last, upper stage propels a European Space Agency (ESA) scientific probe on its long journey to Mars. It is the sort of textbook launch which customers have come to expect from the Russians.

It would scarcely be an exaggeration to call Russia’s continued mastery of space exploration a miracle.  With a 2003 state budget of $362 million (compared with NASA’s $15.19 billion budget), the Russian space effort owes its survival to growing commercial launch operations, a technical base largely inherited from the Soviet-era, low labor and production costs, and, of course, Russian ingenuity.

“Our space budget is now roughly the same size as India’s,” said Sergei Gorbunov, spokesperson for the Rosaviakosmos aerospace agency. “We have started to live according to our means. Our country cannot afford to plow huge finances into space, because there are other pressing obligations, like the social sector; there are teachers’ and doctors’ salaries and pensions to pay.”

This acceptance of constraints is a far cry from the heyday of the Soviet program, when space chiefs in Moscow could tap virtually limitless funds in the ideologically-charged Space Race against the United States. After the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, it consistently beat the U.S. with a series of important “firsts,” sometimes by a matter of weeks (see box, page 27). Inspired by the masterful leadership of rocket scientist Sergei Korolyov – still revered as the father of the Soviet program – the Russians put the first animal, then the first man and the first woman into orbit, made the first flights past the Moon, Venus and Mars, the first unmanned lunar and Venetian landings and performed the first male and female spacewalks.

It all began at Baikonur, the world’s largest rocket launching facility (“cosmodrome” in Russian), built in 1955 on a 6,700 km2 swath of now independent Kazakhstan. This seemingly derelict landscape of crumbling barracks, rusting storage tanks and overgrown railway lines was where the dashing young cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched in April 12, 1961 on the maiden 108-minute human space flight. The center was also a key element of Moscow’s nuclear attack capability, launching more than 100 unarmed intercontinental ballistic missiles, as tests in preparation for a conflict that thankfully never materialized.

“Who comes to us bearing the sword shall die by the sword,” once read a large inscription near one launch pad. These days, however, war cries have faded and many of the launch pads have fallen into disrepair. Baikonur is no longer supposed to hold missiles, although tight security makes it hard to tell what is still operational.

The Reluctant Hero

“We say, ‘If it’s painted, it’s usable, if it’s rusty, then not,’” said Francois Maroquene, vice president of Starsem, a European-Russian joint venture to launch commercial satellites and spacecraft.

Starsem has helped breathe new life into Baikonur. Using Russian rockets to launch European, U.S. and Asian satellites is a major breadwinner for the country’s struggling space enterprises. But manned missions funded by the state and launched from Baikonur are still the locomotive, pulling along much of the remaining science and technology.

The manned program also has great political significance in the 21st century. Dogged by countless post-Soviet problems, Russians see their presence in space as a matter of national pride and an important aspect of their new relationship with the United States. In an opinion poll conducted for the last Cosmonaut’s Day (April 12, 2003) by the independent Agency of Regional Political Studies, 52 percent of respondents said they feel Russia is maintaining its position as a major space power, while 34 percent believe it is gradually losing its status.

Today, manned missions are essentially a cooperative endeavor, centering on the International Space Station (ISS), a 19-nation, $100 billion venture led by the U.S., Russia and the ESA.

It has not been an easy marriage. Tensions arose even before the first section of the station was launched in 1998. Russian delays in the construction of segments of the orbiter evoked NASA threats to downgrade Russia, a lead partner, to subcontractor status. Once the station was up and running, however, friction diminished. But NASA increasingly was calling the shots, because its space shuttles were hauling the main payloads that kept the station ticking.

After the February 2003 loss of the Columbia space shuttle and crew, and the subsequent grounding of the U.S. shuttle fleet, the situation changed dramatically. Russia suddenly found itself in the driver’s seat, as it was the only country with spacecraft able to service the ISS. Until shuttle flights are resumed – NASA hopes it will be in early 2004 – two-man ISS crews will travel in Soyuz space capsules while unmanned Progress freighters will ferry tons of supplies to the station.

“We greatly appreciate Russia’s support of the International Space Station following the loss of our space shuttle Columbia. We are committed to work together for the good of the world,” U.S. President George W. Bush said at his June summit in St. Petersburg with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Truth be told, it is a role that Russia might prefer not to have had thrust upon it.

While the situation makes Russia the savior of the ISS, it is a tremendous financial burden. Russia had originally allocated R4 billion ($130 million) to the ISS this year, compared with $1.7 billion reportedly planned by NASA. Now it has to find tens of million of dollars more to build new spacecraft. Somehow it appears to have done so.

“Our partners suffered a catastrophe and we are ready and able to help,” Viktor Blagov, Russia’s deputy flight controller for the ISS, told Russian Life. “People died and now is not the time to speak of pride in our current role, but I’m pleased that we are able to cope with the task – many people didn’t think we could.”

Despite upheavals and anxieties since February, daily operation of the ISS is going smoothly, said Blagov, a veteran hand in the running of space stations. But, he added, future success depends largely on the rate at which Russia can build and launch Progress re-supply craft. Each one costs around $22 million to build and launch; Russia says it has enough to cope with the station’s needs this year but will have to build a total of six more spacecraft for next year, mainly Progress freighters.

The Russian government is supposed to decide in August whether to meet Rosaviakosmos’ request for an additional R2.8 billion ($92 million) to help tide it over in 2004. The agency seems confident it will get the funds and has already offered to single-handedly keep servicing the ISS through the year, if shuttle missions are not resumed as expected.

“The ISS project can only be saved if the station will be permanently crewed,” said deputy Rosaviakosmos head Nikolai Moiseyev in July.

The Buck Stops

With such a burden on Russia’s already strained capacity, one might expect the United States to pay for some of the urgently needed ISS construction. But there is one little problem: Iran.

U.S. law prohibits the purchase of technology (e.g. launch vehicles) from countries that cooperate with Iran in ways that may enable Iran’s production of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is currently helping Iran build a nuclear power plant. “Our U.S. partners say they are concerned [about the ISS situation], but we don’t see any particular effort to help,” said Rosaviakosmos spokesperson Sergei Gorbunov, adding that discussions of possible financial aid stalled after the U.S. side rejected various Russian proposals to skirt the difficulties. These could potentially include releasing funds to another area of the Russian economy, thereby freeing up Russian funds for the space work.

NASA says its hands are tied, and that it was under the impression that its partner is taking the extra costs in stride. “At this point, there are no plans to provide additional funds to the Russians,” said NASA spokesperson Debra Rahn.

Meanwhile, whatever steps are required to save the station must be identified and implemented quickly. There is no time for diplomatic haggling. Quoting a grim yet illustrative Russian saying, Gorbunov noted that, “It’s too late to drink mineral water when your kidneys have already failed. … We have to continue the work and use the station as intended.”

So far, some $20-40 billion has been spent on the $100 billion ISS. Russia’s planned contribution is $6.6 billion. In return, it will be able to lay claim to 35 percent of the station’s resources.

Meanwhile, Rosaviakosmos director Yuri Koptev has warned of more problems down the road. New delays in scheduled construction work again threaten the peace. If Russia does not find an additional $200-300 million to meet existing obligations, it risks being relegated to the role of “cosmic taxi” for the station, Koptev said earlier this year.

Orbit Master

From the start, a key bargaining chip in Russia’s dealings with its ISS partners was its unparalleled experience running space stations, eight of them to be exact. This included seven Salyut stations plus Mir, which all flew between 1971 and 2001, when Mir was scrapped and efforts focused on the ISS project already underway.

Subject to myriad accidents and glitches during the 1990s, Mir came to symbolize the woes of the Russian space sector: broad use of outdated equipment, ruthless cost-cutting, and a minimalist approach to renewal. In the summer of 1997, concern about the amount of daily maintenance and repairs required to keep the aging outpost going came to a head when a Progress supply ship rammed a hole in a Mir module during tests of a new manual docking system. Only by unhooking and severing a mass of cables was the three-man Russian-American crew able to shut the damaged module’s hatch and save the rest of the station from decompression. Mir then limped on with less than 60 percent of its power supply. The station was patched up during a rescue mission, but on Earth it was a time for some frank admissions.

“Due to financing problems, we have to use [parts] until they die … we are saving a lot of money with this scheme, but we have to decide soon whether we need safety or to save money,” flight controller Blagov said at the time.

Running on a shoestring budget, like many other parts of the Russian space sector, Mir was a technological endurance test that never ceased to amaze. Originally built for five years of service, the orbiter’s life was extended annually for ten more years. There was no question of a new Russian station to replace it – all available resources were being diverted to the concurrent construction of the ISS.

By the end of the 1990s – a stormy decade for Russia on all fronts – years of neglect of the space sector had left their mark and prompted fears that excellence that was hard-won over the years may have been lost or overtaken by the times. Thousands of specialists left the sector for more lucrative employment elsewhere, while those who stayed worked in miserable conditions. Even today, average salaries are still just one-twentieth that of their U.S. counterparts.

Mir was finally scrapped in March 2001, burned up in the atmosphere as its remains scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Russia’s go-it-alone days of manned space missions were over.

Selling Space

To Russia’s credit, it manifested great resourcefulness during the difficult 1990s. Space enterprises started sidelines in consumer goods and Mir was the site of several television ads. For a commission, cosmonauts fought off bouts of space nausea to consume bananas and milk for foreign companies, while their crewmates filmed them. In perhaps the most ambitious advertisement in history, Russian cosmonauts in 1996 inflated a giant soda can outside the station and unfurled a promotional banner for Pepsi. During the 1997 Mir crisis, the flight control center in Korolyov struck some shrewd deals, placing advertisements for a computer software company, a bank and chocolate factory beside the giant flight display screens that were featured on daily news bulletins around the world.

In April 2001, commercial endeavors culminated in the flight of the first “space tourist,” Californian multimillionaire Dennis Tito. Originally, Tito was to join a short Russian mission delivering a new Soyuz capsule to Mir. But Tito was rerouted to the ISS after the decision was taken to retire Mir. NASA was incensed at the Tito flight, but Russia dug in its heels and said it was entitled to use its part of the station as it wished. Russia won the stand-off and a year later sent a second space tourist, South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth, to the ISS on another short supply mission. Organized through the U.S. company Space Adventures Ltd., both trips cost the intrepid tourist an estimated $20 million. If ISS operations are back on an even keel next year, Rosaviakosmos predicts that the next space tourist could float through the station hatch as early as late 2004. Space Adventures recently announced, however, it had agreed to purchase an entire Soyuz from the Russians and send two tourists with a chaperone cosmonaut to the ISS as soon as possible. (For would-be space travelers who find the $20 million ticket price a bit steep, many less expensive aspects of the cosmonaut training program are available to the public – see inset box, below).

Meanwhile, during the 1990s, builders of launch vehicles (i.e. rockets), found their expertise in great demand as global telecommunications companies rushed to get new satellites into orbit. Russian revenues from this activity rose steadily from $20 million in 1992 to some $900 million in 1997, helping compensate for the sudden end of state funding.

In this area, Russia has not only comparative advantage (its rockets are cheaper than U.S. or European equivalents), but it enjoys high success rates. Both U.S. and European launch companies came to separate partnership arrangements with the makers of the stalwart Soyuz launch vehicles and the heavier Proton rocket.

“It’s good we are cooperating with the Russians, because they are unbeatable,” said Alain Fournier-Sicre, the European Space Agency’s representative in Russia.

Russian rocket industry veterans who spent their formative years serving only the Soviet program say there is no bitterness about having to launch for foreign clients. “On the contrary, we are proud we are needed today after having been abandoned in the 1990s,” said Albert Ushakov, deputy chief designer at the Lavochkin Association, a major manufacturer of space equipment.

Recently, however, the global launch market has slumped, due to an excess supply of launch agents and not enough orders. Revenues are falling, with Russia expected to earn as little as half its annual peak revenues of $900 million. A Proton launch that used to earn $80 million, now brings just $40 million.

Yet the slack market has not halted ambitious plans to take Russia’s launch activities overseas. Talks are underway to build a space center on Christmas Island, northwest of Australia. The closer a rocket launches to the equator, the less fuel and power is needed to propel its payload into orbit, thereby increasing the possible weight the rocket can carry. Another partnership in the works – with the European Space Agency – foresees the construction of Soyuz rocket launch facilities at the ESA launch center at Kourou, French Guyana, South America. Its location just 550 kilometers from the equator means Soyuz rockets launching there will have a maximum payload of four tons, compared with just 1.4 tons at Baikonur.

Since Russia uses several other types of rockets, apart from the Soyuz workhorse  (some 1680 Soyuz in different modifications have been launched since 1957 with a 98 percent success rate ), Baikonur will still have its share of work, Rosaviakosmos director Yuri Koptev said. The same goes for Russia’s two smaller launch centers at Plesetsk in the North and Svobodny at the Far East. “We don’t intend to leave Baikonur,” Koptev stressed.

On June 6, 2003, Russia launched its 300th Proton rocket at Baikonur. The rocket was carrying a US communications satellite.

Back to Basics

The Central Asian cosmodrome at Baikonur has launched more than 1,100 spacecraft in its 48 years of operation, and about 65 percent of the country’s space program work goes on here. Just 16 launches are planned at Baikonur this year, compared with the 40-50 per year during the peak Soviet times. Yet the cosmodrome’s future seems bright: Russia has opened talks with Kazakhstan about extending their lease from 2014 to 2064.

Albert Ushakov, of the Lavochkin Association, has been a regular visitor to the center since 1965. He said that Baikonur’s new work with Starsem and others pulled it out of its post-1991 nosedive. Now the old-timers barely recognize the place: “Fifteen years ago,” Ushakov said, “no one dreamed there could ever be such an influx of foreigners.”

The space center’s somewhat shabby appearance is deceptive – evidence of its glorious past is everywhere. On the horizon, gantries for the 60-meter Energiya rocket stand idle after just three launches. With a payload of 100 tons, the monster rocket carried the Soviet space shuttle Buran into orbit on its one and only flight in 1988, before both Buran and Energiya were shelved because of funding shortages.

One Buran is parked nearby, peeling in the sun. Another that was kept in pristine condition inside the vast Building 112 was destroyed last year when a hangar roof collapsed.

Down the road, past the occasional lazing camel, one of two working Soyuz rocket launch pads is used to send crews and cargoes to the ISS. Other types of rockets – the Proton, Zenith and Cyclone – are used for commercial purposes and to hoist Russian spy satellites. Launches take place year- round, no matter if it is minus 40 degrees Celsius or plus 40.

In few other places in the former Soviet Union does one encounter such hostile conditions alongside such profound pride and conviction in one’s work. Hundreds of Russian staff live in the adjacent town of Baikonur (which means “red-brown earth” in Kazakh) a worn and battered sprawl of apartment blocks, dusty boulevards and large heating pipes snaking above-ground. Its tattered state is partly due to lack of maintenance, partly to the sandstorms and snowstorms that lash it through the seasons. A memorial site in the center commemorates the victims of two rocket accidents on October 24, in different years. In 1961, an explosion claimed more than 100 lives; in 1963, seven died in another catastrophe. Russia’s achievements in space did not come cheap.

But, as contributors wrote in a 1995 compilation, Legendary Baikonur, the spirit of Korolyov, Gagarin and other pioneers endures to this day, even when the odds seem insurmountable. This entry by rocket engineer Anatoly Koreshkov speaks of the launch center, but could just as easily apply to the entire Russian space program:

Our town is not for the feeble,

Not for the timid,

Not for the petty bourgeois, spoiled by comforts,

It’s not corks from champagne we launch here,

But rockets tearing off into an ocean of stars.