NASA
Had No Choice But To Buy Soyuz Flights
from www.mindfully.org
on 6 January 2006
NASA's announcement
last week that it will pay Roskosmos $43.6 million for a round-trip
ride to the International Space Station this spring, and an equivalent
figure for an as-yet-undetermined number of future flights to the
station until 2012, represents the agency's acknowledgment that
it had no alternative.
The deal was reached recently between the two space agencies after
Congress last October amended the Iran Nonproliferation Act to permit
NASA to conduct commerce with its Russian counterpart. The act had
prohibited such transactions, because the both the Clinton and Bush
administrations determined that the Russian government was aiding
the development of Iran's nuclear program. The fact that both the
Bush administration and Congress agreed on the need to exempt ISS
activities from the prohibition underscores the desperate situation
in which NASA finds itself regarding manned spaceflight.
"If the U.S. is to maintain a presence on the ISS and take
advantage of the billions invested in the facility, we must rely
on the Russians," Joe Pouliot, a spokesman for the House Science
Committee, which oversees NASA, told SpaceDaily.com.
"It's clear we have to rely on Soyuz and Progress, and we definitely
have to pay for it," Pouliot said.
Such comments sum up NASA's predicament succinctly. Since February
1, 2003, when shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over
the Southwestern United States, and with only the exception of shuttle
Discovery's 14-day mission beginning last July 25, the U.S. space
program has lacked any capability of putting humans into orbit.
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