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By Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov

July 25, 2005

Original Article (English)

MOSCOW: The summer launch window for the Discovery space shuttle, set to become the first shuttle in orbit since the Columbia disaster, in the words of a spokesman from Russia's flight control center, has shrunk to a porthole.

In fact, for to all intents and purposes, the absence of a coherent shuttle program signals the end of the project.

Most people accept that the shuttle program will be terminated by 2010. By that time, plans are to complete the construction of the International Space Station, again using U.S. spacecraft, upon which the entire program has been based from the beginning. For that purpose, when Sean O'Keefe was NASA Administrator, it was calculated that 28 shuttle flights would be made, which at the time seemed like enough.

This means that at least six launchings will have to be made annually in the time remaining. Such a rate is improbable, considering the present state of the Space Shuttle program. The best year for the Shuttle program was 1985, when nine launches took place. At that time there were four orbiters, but now there are only three. But this is not the biggest problem.

No sooner had new NASA Administrator Michel Griffin gotten used to his new office had he cut the number of flights. Now a special commission promises to determine in September the final number of launches required for Space Station. The Russian Federal Space Agency, which regarded the original number of flights to be insufficient, isn’t even commenting on this commission’s anticipated decision. Thus, American plans to complete construction of the International Space Station seem like nothing more than a "declaration of intentions."

Regarding those intentions, as distinct from 1985, shuttles today are to be used exclusively for the Space Station. It has been proven far less expensive to reach space using single-mission carrier rockets, including Russian ones. Meanwhile, Griffin himself publicly expressed the attitude of the U.S. space establishment to the station on May 18.

"The station is limited in its research potential," he said, which was politically correct, but left no doubt as to the future.

The Americans can hardly be accused of a lack of pragmatism, and it would be short-sighted on our part to believe they will strive to promote international partnership and make effective an idea in which they do not believe.

If they were committed, why waste time and money on an old transportation system, risk the country's image and, most importantly, the lives of America's best astronauts? After all, the modernization of Discovery has not yet been completed, so wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on designing a new spaceship?

NASA's Planned CEV Spacecraft

It would, and Griffin has informed Senators of NASA's intention to withdraw some funds from the International Space Station’s science program and to spend more on developing the promising CEV research spaceship. A request from one Senator for Griffin to describe the main areas of research at the Station met with the reply that it would be good to experiment with "hardware" and conduct scientific research.

Summing up, and at the same time drawing a line under the whole of America’s part in the International Space Station program, Griffin added that all the experimentation and research could well be done on Earth. "If we didn’t have a space station, we might do otherwise, but having one we look for opportunities to use it," he said.

In other words, Russia is being told to believe that shuttles will fly regularly to maintain man's presence in space, because the U.S. has found no other purpose for the Space Station. However, politics and many other things are involved.

The most optimistic calculations show that even work on developing the new CEV spacecraft, to be done at the expense of the International Space Station program, will make manned flight possible no earlier than 2014.

And until then there will be pilotless vacuum.