Space Program for Sale

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Sergei Krikalev got more than he bargained for when he rocketed into space last May from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in what was then still known as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Krikalev was scheduled for a five-month stint as flight engineer aboard the Mir space station; his replacement was slated to arrive in October. Who could have foreseen that Krikalev's country would disintegrate before his mission was over? By the time October rolled around, the Baikonur facility was on the verge of belonging to Kazakhstan , rather than the Soviet Union. As a public relations measure, space-program authorities decreed that instead of a sending a replacement for the cosmonaut, a native Kazakh should go up for a short and politically expedient visit. Poor Krikalev got some fresh supplies but no relief. Ten months after his sojourn began, he's still circling the earth every 90 minutes, day and night, stranded 350 km above the planet. He may finally come down next week.

Krikalev's troubles are symbolic of what has happened to the Soviet space program. As recently as last year, 34 years after Sputnik, the U.S.S.R. was basking in its reputation as the premier spacefaring nation in the world. Now political fragmentation and economic upheaval are raising questions about whether the successor states will be able to support a viable space program at all. In the U.S., even as officials debate the larger question of whether the West should provide economic aid to these states, a more specific debate is under way over the wisdom of striking commercial deals involving their rockets and other scientific assets.

Looking for ways to keep working, Russian space-industry officials, as well as scientists of all sorts, have begun to market their most useful skills and services to the U.S and other nations. Last week Boris Babayan, who created powerful supercomputers for the former Soviet Union's space and nuclear- weapons programs, hired his entire Moscow lab out to Sun Microsystems of Mountain View, Calif., to develop computers and software. Also last week, the U.S. Department of Energy signed a one-year contract with scientists at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy to do research on thermonuclear fusion, a potentially limitless energy source that American physicists have been struggling with for decades. Both deals are tremendous bargains for the U.S. Sun is paying Babayan's 50 or so crack computer scientists just a few hundred dollars a year apiece. And the entire 116-member Kurchatov team is being hired for $90,000 a year -- roughly the salary of one high-level U.S. physicist.

But space scientists are having a tougher time marketing themselves to the U.S. Though officials at NASA have expressed interest in Russian space technology, a lingering cold war mentality, especially in the Defense Department, has kept any major deals from going through. Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood and other hard-line officials have argued that it would be a mistake to keep Russia's missile factories and space reactor plants in business. "We don't want to encourage them," Atwood told a congressional panel recently. After all, missiles can be used to launch nuclear warheads as well as satellites, and reactors could power space weapons.

Other American officials, however, look upon the Russian space program as an emporium holding an irresistible bankruptcy sale. It is perhaps the most desirable technological treasure trove the former Soviet Union has to offer. Says a senior Bush Administration official: "We wanted to steal some of this stuff a few years ago." The erstwhile Soviets are world leaders in rocket propulsion and space power plants. "They are way ahead of us in materials and nuclear power, and there is eagerness to do business over there," says Joe Wetch, the president of International Scientific Products, a San Jose firm attempting to market Soviet space technology in the U.S. To miss the opportunity, he adds, "is insane."

Several big-ticket items on NASA's wish list are currently available from the Russians at rock-bottom prices. Among them: the Energia rocket, which can lift more than three times the space shuttle's 30-ton payload; the most advanced liquid-fueled rocket motors in existence; and a space-ready nuclear reactor that could extend the life and lower the cost of communication and weather satellites. In addition, the Russians are offering the services of a Soyuz spacecraft for use as a rescue vehicle for U.S. shuttle crews, plus a superior system for enabling space ships to rendezvous and dock. Also tempting to U.S. space scientists is an impressive data base -- gathered by Soviet physiologists -- on human responses to low gravity.

Making deals on these and other space technologies not only could save the U.S. research money and provide hard currency for the struggling republics but might also stave off disaster for a space program that has fragmented along with its country. Russia owns the rockets and spacecraft, but the main launch center is in Kazakhstan. Crucial aerospace plants and satellite tracking facilities are now the property of Ukraine, Georgia and Uzbekistan. Says Nikolai Semyenov, a spokesman for Glavkosmos, once the central Soviet space agency: "With Kazakhstan we don't have problems. But we don't have any cooperation agreements with the others, and those facilities are lost to us."

Financing the agency's operations has become an enormous problem. Russia still retains about 80% of the program's assets but, says Semyenov, "there is / no financing for the 1992 space program. We have barely enough just to pay wages to the personnel." Ground controllers in Moscow went on a brief, symbolic strike in January to protest low salaries, and construction workers at Baikonur recently rioted in protest of their salaries and inhuman working conditions. The Russian space shuttle, Buran, which was in the final stages of development, has been shelved indefinitely and Mir is nearing the end of its useful lifetime, with no replacement available. Even the long-suffering Krikalev has had to do without one of his few luxuries: fresh honey.

For the moment, the program is lumbering along. There were 59 launches last year, compared with 29 for the rest of the world, and plans are still afoot for a series of unmanned Mars visits in 1994 and 1996 -- at least on paper. "The key test will come at the end of this year, when they've used up all their supplies," says a U.S. government analyst. One promising sign: a new Russian Space Agency was created two weeks ago. Insiders hope it will be able to halt the decline.

But that will require money, which will be hard to squeeze from the anemic Russian budget. Clearly, foreign capital is needed. For several years Moscow has been raising funds by selling visits to Mir, at $10 million to $15 million a pop, to countries such as Japan and England. Several nations, including India, have paid to launch satellites on Russian rockets. Now virtually every branch of the space infrastructure, once financed by the Soviet military, has trade representatives in the U.S.

But their frustration is growing at America's failure to conclude any deals. Last year, for example, Pentagon officials said they were ready to spend $10 million on a Topaz-2 space reactor, but Deputy Defense Secretary Atwood is said to have blocked the sale. He has also reportedly forbidden Pentagon officials to travel to Russia without approval from him or Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. NASA's attempts to approach the Russians, meanwhile, have been stalled by the State Department.

Officially the U.S. government neither favors nor frowns on purchasing space technology from the Russians, but the lack of a clear-cut policy has enabled hard-liners to hold sway. Shutting out the Russians, though, may prove more dangerous than propping them up. Secretary of State James Baker announced in January that the U.S. would contribute $25 million toward an institute in Moscow that will employ Russian nuclear scientists and presumably keep them from hiring out to outlaw states such as Libya and Iraq. The same logic should apply to space scientists and hardware, which -- as the hard-liners themselves maintain -- could pose a threat as well.

A tough policy could also push the Russians into the arms of the European Space Agency, already competing with the U.S. for commercial launch services. The Europeans now control 60% of that business. Says a congressional space analyst: "If they were to add the Russians' heavy-lift capabilities, it would make the U.S. a second-rate power in space."

An explicit policy on purchases of Russian space expertise, services and hardware is clearly overdue, and Congress is putting pressure on the Administration to devise one. At week's end Atwood went to Capitol Hill to discuss the matter, and gave signs of relenting on some deals. The Defense Department's purchase of the Topaz, in fact, may be approved as early as this week. Says a senior congressional source: "Several of the top people are now aware they have to act."

With reporting by Dick Thompson/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow