At the end of the shuttle's lifespan, Baikonur will become NASA's only gateway to space.
The latest launch of the Soyuz spacecraft underscores the risks that the United States' space program will now face: dependence for years to come from another country to get all NASA astronauts into outer space. None of the space systems can be 100 percent reliable. Therefore, the question arises - how risky is the chosen strategy?
The main lesson of the global partnership that led to the construction of the International Space Station is clear. We realized that comprehensive, independent technologies for major space objects are proving amazingly robust in the face of inevitable contingencies. Oxygen supply, spacewalk or crew delivery - in all these cases, having redundant backup options can be critical.
However, these lessons are now being ignored. Crew members of the space station, including Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin, and NASA astronauts Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker, who went to the orbital station on Tuesday, will no longer fly into space and return to Earth on the departing soon to well-deserved rest of space shuttles. The univariate method and critical path algorithm is now unexpectedly proposed to be considered "good enough".
There is no longer any question of perfection. What are the main threats - known and perceived - that may be associated with the use of Soyuz, which has become the only option for delivering crews to the space station?
1. Price games. The Russians will find it difficult to resist the temptation to use their monopoly position to charge too high a price, and the latest increase in space charges is highly suspicious.
However, both sides will be in tough negotiations, and the Americans have important trump cards in their hands. Most of the electrical equipment and space-to-Earth communication links on the ISS are owned by the United States. Russian cosmonaut and space station veteran Mikhail Tyurin complained last year that when using only Russian ground stations, only one large image file could be transmitted to Earth per communication session, and this level is lower than that which was at the disposal of American (and Soviet) space stations in the 1970s and 1980s. Russian satellites for radio relay communications of a new generation are only now preparing to launch. Therefore, the United States can respond to any increase in the cost of delivering crew members with a symmetric increase in the price per kilowatt / hour or megabit.
2. Technological disadvantages. Soyuz spacecraft and booster rockets have been in operation for decades, and all this time they have been consistently improved. But since these are disposable devices, the reliability of each launch is determined by the production conditions at the moment, and not by the statistical data recorded in the log books.
In recent years, there have been many unpleasant surprises related to both hardware and software. There is also an alarmingly widespread practice of withholding information about such issues from the public in Moscow and Washington. During two regular Soyuz landings in 2008, the detachment of the disposable descent module was not carried out in the normal mode. As a result, the Soyuz, when landing, entered the red-hot plasma with its nose pulled up, which created a mortal danger for the unprotected sections of the capsule. In early 2009, a software glitch caused the rocket motors to start up unscheduled, causing the space station to nearly collapse from vibration. At the end of last year, at launch, there were problems with the escape system of the spacecraft, however, fortunately, it was not needed. In each of these cases, information about equipment malfunctions leaked out amid official silence. It is possible that there were more such cases, but we simply do not know about them.
3. Crew training. If there is a single and key way for American and Russian space crews to cope with emergencies or the failure of critical space systems, it is years of deep and practice-oriented pre-flight training. Lack of knowledge or the right skill at a critical moment can have serious consequences in an unforgiving outer space.
The Russian Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City recently went through a tumultuous period of bureaucratic and budgetary turmoil as its management (and funding) shifted from the military to civilian agencies. The new director of the center and former cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev issued public warnings that large investments are needed to replace equipment that has failed or was dismantled by military personnel who left the center.
Astronauts and astronauts, when asked about this, express complete confidence in the adequacy of their training. However, last month the current crew became the first in many years to fail the "final exam." The crew members passed the second exam, but the retake and correction system is not provided in outer space.
4. Diplomatic stability. Access to the Baikonur cosmodrome, located on the territory of independent Kazakhstan, depends on the benevolence of the current Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who holds an ethnically divided state with an iron fist (Kazakhs in the south, Russians in the north, Baikonur in the middle). However, the 70-year-old president is not immortal, and those who replace him may be less accommodating on issues such as environmental damage, utility bills, and fair treatment of Kazakh workers at the base.
5. Terrorism. At the launch site in Baikonur, they take terrorist threats (from Chechen or other separatists) rather seriously and conduct annual anti-terrorist exercises with the participation of military units. Previously, these special forces were even more dangerous than the thought of a real terrorist attack, as their favorite tactic, as far as one can tell, was to rush in and kill anyone in sight. Now the security issues at the demilitarized military base are being dealt with by the civilian police and contractors brought from Moscow.
Given the fact that extremist groups and Chechen settlements are scattered throughout Kazakhstan, space objects in Moscow, which are often located on busy streets, can become a convenient and located close to home potential target. Attacks there could seriously damage space travel.
6. Demography. The saddest secret of the Russian space program is its aging workforce who retires or dies. These key specialists are only partially replaced by new hires who are willing to work for a ridiculous salary just because they are devoted to the ideals of space travel. Recently, active efforts had to be made to find candidates for this job, and this was done because there were not enough applications from candidates.
If we add to this one more characteristic cultural feature associated with the refusal to document procedures and events (the fewer people who know something, the more significant those who can remember it become), then the recruitment process is alarming in terms of reducing skill level and corporate memory due to the constant loss of irreplaceable skilled workers.
In the long term, NASA will be able to switch to commercial launch providers, and it will also be able to use Russian ships for space travel. And even in the short term, the risks associated with Russian space flights are by no means a guarantee that some kind of failure will inevitably occur. Rather, they identify areas where constant vigilance and troubleshooting work is needed. The absence of this kind of work or their inferiority can lead to unexpected equipment failures.
