Russia Begins To Reduce ISS Participation
Roscosmos plans to reduce Russian ISS crew to two, TASS
“Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos plans to reduce Russia’s crew at the International Space Station (ISS) from three to two cosmonauts, the Izvestia newspaper writes on Thursday, citing Roscosmos manned programs director Sergei Krikalev. “Plans to reduce the crew stem from the fact that less cargo ships are sent to the ISS and from the necessity to boost the efficiency of the program,” the newspaper quotes Krikalev. Apart from that, it will make it possible to lower expenses on the space station’s maintenance.”
Space station crew may drop to five because of Russia, Ars Technica
“In a statement on Monday, NASA confirmed that Russia is considering dropping back to two crew members. However, the agency did not provide any additional information. According to NASA: “Any questions about the near-term Russian Space budget or Russian ISS expedition size should be directed to the Roscosmos press office. Roscosmos has joined NASA and other International Space Station partners in extending support for the orbiting laboratory to at least 2024, and the current level of research of both NASA and the international partners on ISS is at an all-time high.”
Russia has generally blown quite cold on commercial crew (mostly because of the ‘age of Soyuz’ conceit) but I wonder if, now they seem to be planning to bow out of the ISS to a certain degree, they’d object to more frequent commercial crew visits and with larger crews. I could see a Dragon or Starliner arriving with six crew for a Soyuz-free three- or even six-month stint.
They’d charge us rent.
I doubt it. They’re saying this is about reducing the amount of supplies they’d have to send up to ISS, but I suspect it’s really about freeing up that third Soyuz seat for a paying customer (space “tourist” who pays for the seat in cold hard cash).
So I wonder…how much money will cutting back one Progress each year save them…as opposed to how much money will adding tourists make them?
Google how much previous tourists paid. It’s in the tens of millions of US dollars for a single “tourist” seat to ISS on a Soyuz. That’s cold hard cash for an agency who will be losing the cash currently being paid to it for NASA astronauts to fly on Soyuz.
Yeah but…if they can snag two tourists a year for, say, twenty million each…but they’re saving two hundred million on one less cargo mission a year…they’ll go that way.
They go hand in hand. Saving money is one thing. But getting an influx of cash to help pay for those Soyuz and (the remaining) Progress flights is necessary too.
Sarah brightman’s ticket was going to be $50M. Gone are the days of only making $20M per tourist seat. But if commercial crew misses their dates then us seat costs go from I believe $74M to $85M for the Soyuz. So if they can convince ESA, NASA or jaxa to take the slot that might be better deal than tourists
US Commercial Crew should be able to sell tourist seats to the ISS too. We should also consider inviting China to join the program.
We should invite the entire House Technology Committee.
One way!
Inviting China to the ISS program would be like inviting the guy that robs you to rent a room. Exactly how many aggressive anti-US-alliance moves, how many technology thefts, how many hack attacks does China have to make before this notion is dropped for good?
It’s 2016. History has happened. The notion all the countries peacefully cooperating in space translating to cooperation on Earth died died when Russia invaded another European country, not caring remotely about the ISS partnership. 20 years or promoting cooperation through space amounted to nothing because Putin’s political objectives in Ukraine mattered far more than our orbiting science project.
Having been through that, you would invite China to the ISS? The same China illegally building islands and loading them up with weapons specifically to destroy carriers carrying 5000 Americans on them? That China? There is nothing we can do in space, now or ever, that is worth looking past people who would do that. I would rather have less progress, smaller programs and not work with them, than compromise and have my taxpayer dollars go towards programs that cooperate with a country that is literally gunning for us. We can invite China to the program when they dismantle those islands, and write a formal letter of apology for their technology them and designing weapons like the DF-21D.
Frankly, I view this entire post as fantastic news. The second we can drop the ISS project and partner with just the ESA, JAXA and Canada for the next destinations, and never have to work with Russia again, the better off we’ll be.
China’s activities in the China Sea are easily explainable and logical. They are simply creating a forward defense line against a persistent, overwhelming force that is visibly and demonstrably aggressive.
China’s sense of history pales out own paltry tendency to regard decades as history. These guys plan for the future in ways that we just don’t. They are smart and consistent and powerful.
And there is much to learn here.
Witness the huge infrastructure programs that are on-going inside continental China, financed in large part by our insatiable appetite for VCRs and iPhone. Just like we financed Dubai and environs because we can’t see beyond our noses, shipping trillions to pan-Arabia instead of actually developing internal alternatives, China is using this largess in a logical and consistent manner.
In large part we enabled this monster.
Your naiveté with the respect to the chinese is breathtaking. I may understand the motivations of a feeding shark w/o making it easier for him to have lunch.
They can once that port for commercial use is filled with a BA330
I wonder if the Russians have offered the US or other partners their third crewman position on ISS for six month missions. If you figure the cost for the Soyuz seat + cost of time on ISS, the Russians could make a lot of money and the US/international side could get an additional crewmember’s worth of work-worth a lot on a station where so far they get fewer than 40 hours of worktime a week between all the crewmembers. They could put the burden of supplies on the US and its partners who are taking over more of the resupply anyway.
I think they said they are going to the China station. A permanent one in a few years. Also UN is going to send members space people to the China station.
Well, if true, I’d say let’s help them, by uncoupling the Russian segments and push them off with a bon-farewell wave
That’ll make room for a couple of Bigelow B330’s and extra docking modules for (anything but Russian) spacecraft.
The ISS needs Russia. If they go, it gets splashed.
Chances are it’s getting splashed after 2024 anyway. The SLS will need it’s $3 billion a year for payloads.
I mean, merits aside, look at it from a Congressman’s perspective. The SLS will be doing stuff in lunar orbit with the potential for a new mini-station there. Suddenly, the ISS budget looks like $3 billion on yesterday’s destination.
Not a chance it gets extended to 2028. I’m sincerely looking forward to that fight.