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Like voyeurs at a car crash, delegates at last month’s annual meeting
of theInternational Astronautical Federation constantly sought out Yuri
Semenov, Gen-eral Designer at the Soviet Union’s Energia Design Bureau.
In this position, his brief covers the Mir space station, the Buran spaceplane
and the powerful Energia rocket. The question everyone wanted answered was:
how badly has the economic crash hurt the Soviet Union’s space programme?

In the end they did not learn much that was new, but they certainly
heard – again – that the Soviet Union is seeking international collaboration.

Repeatedly during the conference in Montreal, eager observers of the
Soviet scene turned up to the sessions in which Semenov was expected to
speak, only to be dis-appointed each time he withdrew. Semenov eventually
broke his silence towards the end of the meeting. His presentation, in a
packed auditorium, both bemused and irritated his listeners.

Semenov proposed a satellite system to repair the damaged ozone layer,
other satellites that would collect solar energy and relay it to Earth,
a giant telecommunications satellite, and launchers to take radioactive
waste into outer space. For each, he invited international collaboration.

As for the Soviet Union’s space programme, Semenov told delegates that
the spaceplane, Buran, would fly under remote control to the Mir space station
next year. There, a crew will board the plane and take it for a test flight,
before returning to Mir and sending Buran back to Earth. So far Buran has
made only a single automatic flight. Semenov added that the cosmonauts on
board Buran would help with the tech-nically tricky job of replacing the
core of Mir – the major, pressurised section – towards the middle of the
1990s, and also that the Soviet Union would develop a new space station
for the year 2000.

Throughout the presentation, Semenov attempted to interest his audience
in renting space on Mir or in making use of Soviet rockets to launch their
satellites. Unfortunately, the sheer scale of Semenov’s ideas and his apparent
refusal to acknowledge the parlous economic state of the Soviet Union left
many delegates unconvinced.

Yet Semenov’s achievements in space engineering, on Mir, Buran and Energia,
should earn him a hearing. They certainly won him the federation’s top medal
this year for achievements in space engineering.

He is in an unenviable position. Roald Sagdeev, formerly head of the
IKI Institute of Space Research in Moscow and now professor of physics at
the University of Maryland, says of Semenov: ‘You must remember he is the
head of a huge enterprise and suddenly he has no money. He is acting in
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It is hardly surprising that an air of unreality should surround Semenov’s
presentation. After all, the Soviet Union put the first satellite and the
first man in space. It has kept people in space for far longer than has
the US and has a space station permanently in orbit. The heirs to these
achievements and architects of today’s space programme must feel bewildered
as they wait to see whether anything can be salvaged.

Even before the failed coup in August, politicians, scientists and engineers
in the Soviet Union recognised that their best hope for a future space programme
was to sell their expertise and services and to participate in international
space ventures.

Mikhail Gorbachev set the ball rolling in the mid-1980s when he suggested
a world space agency. Sagdeev says that Gorbachev thought that the suggestion
might distract the superpowers from turning space into a battlefield, as
the American Star Wars programme seems bent on doing. When Gorbachev realised
that other spacefaring nations were not interested in a UN-type space organisation,
he tried to interest the US in a joint mission to Mars.

Now the emphasis has shifted, and the Soviet Union wants to sell its
know-how and services. Sagdeev says: ‘If there was any indication from the
Western powers or Japan that they would use Soviet space services, even
if it were a glimmer on the horizon, we would get support for space from
the Russian government.’

If the Soviet Union’s space programme is to continue, support from Russia
is crucial. In the past, all the republics paid for the space programme
via taxes collected and distributed by central government. The contributions
roughly reflected the gross domestic products of the republics; Russia’s
share was more than half the total.

In a somewhat unbalanced exchange, the Soviet Union placed between 80
and 90 per cent of space development contracts in Russia, and sited the
majority of its space institutions and design bureaus on its territory.
In all, the livelihoods of several hundred thousand skilled engineers and
scientists working for the space programme will depend on Russia’s willingness
to continue funding the space programme.

Unfortunately, Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president, has voiced hostility
towards the space programme. ‘With the economy collapsing, there has to
be a sacrifice at the altar,’ says Sagdeev.

The cost of the civil space programme is gigantic – 8 billion roubles
a couple of years ago. Now, with inflation rising fast, the total is probably
about 20 billion roubles (there is no way to make a direct comparison with
Western currencies). Also, republics can opt out of the space programme
if they want to. Presumably, that is what the Baltics and Ukraine will do.

Besides the political goodwill of Yeltsin and the leaders of the other
republics, the Soviet Union’s space community needs a new organisation.
The now-dismantled Ministry of General Machine Building managed 97 per cent
of the space budget; the remaining 3 per cent is controlled by the IKI Institute
of Space Research, which Sagdeev ran for 15 years.

Despite all these difficulties, Sagdeev still says that the principal
obstacle to international collaboration is the political stance of Western
nations. Cold War agreements intended to prevent American technology falling
into the hands of the Soviet Union still exist. Those agreements even prevent
Western countries using Soviet rockets to launch satellites containing American-made
parts. Nearly all Western satellites fall into this category.

Sagdeev believes that Western industry, in an attempt to pro-tect its
own technology markets, will lobby Western govern-ments in order to restrict
involvement with the Soviet Union’s space programme. ‘Yet,’ says Sagdeev,
‘if a country like Japan were politically courageous and came to the Soviet
Union, we could do miracles together.’

The US could also benefit from collaboration, says Semenov. By launching
elements of the international space station Freedom on the Soviet Union’s
heavy-lift launcher Energia, the US could cut Freedom’s $40-billion bill
by $3 billion. But the proposed savings did not make much of an impression
on the Americans. ‘Three billion is a drop in the ocean for that programme,’
observed one of them.

According to a White House spokesman, whatever the US decides about
cooperation in space with the Soviet Union will be in the context of larger
political considerations, such as trade relationships between the two countries
and political stability of the union. However, President Bush and President
Gorbachev last year agreed that a cosmonaut would fly on the US shuttle
and an American astronaut on Mir. They also agreed to exchange environmental
data from remote-sensing satellites. So far, the two countries have made
little progress with preparations for the cosmonaut-astronaut exchange.

In addition to its existing products, the Soviet Union wants to interest
Western investors in developing new ideas. For example, the company Commercial
Space Technologies of London is trying to interest Western countries in
leasing or buying communication satellites developed in factories in Siberian
Russia.

Some countries in high northern latitudes could benefit from the highly
elliptical orbits of these Soviet communications satellites. The paths they
follow, known as Molniya orbits, pass close to the Earth at the South Pole
and are more distant at the North Pole, so satellites take several hours
to pass over the Arctic. This keeps them in contact with the ground for
several hours a day. Most communications satellites are in orbits over the
equator, from where they cannot reach the poles. A Canadian Air Force officer
in Montreal said that Molniya orbits could be of great use to Canada.

At least one of the breakaway republics is also striving to raise money
in the West. For example, a company in the Ukraine has begun a joint venture
with Commercial Space Technologies to raise $80 million to develop a new
launcher. The Space Clipper would comprise a Antonov 124 transport aircraft
carrying a modified SS 24 intercontinental ballistic missile. The ICBM would
drop from the belly of the aircraft, fire in mid air and carry small satellites
into low Earth orbit. Later versions could be improved by adding wings to
the ICBMs.

Although the Soviet Union’s manned space programmes and its impressive
array of launchers usually take centre stage, the country also has an active
space science programme. And for some years, the Soviet Union has worked
on two Mars missions, scheduled for 1994 and 1996. Both involve collaboration
with nearly 20 other countries.

Mikhail Marov, head of the department of planetary physics and astronomy
at the M V Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics in Moscow, says that
the economic crisis in the Soviet Union has forced a decision to halve the
two projects.

Originally, the Mars 1994 project was to have included two spacecraft.
Both would have contained a vehicle to orbit Mars, two vehicles to penetrate
the planet’s surface, two automatic scientific ground stations and a Mars
rover, to take soil and atmospheric readings over a wide area.

Now, says Marov, Mars 1994 will comprise one spacecraft containing an
orbiter, two penetrators and two small ground stations, but no rover. Mars
1996 has also been halved and will comprise one spacecraft containing two
penetrators, one balloon for atmospheric readings, one rover, but no automatic
ground station.

Unfortunately, says Marov, scientist are not yet sure how much funding
will be available for the missions. Until recently, the Soviet Union, like
the Euro-pean Space Agency, allocated money for a whole mission once it
had been approved. Now money is allocated annually. Marov says this ‘jeopardises
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The Mars 1994 project needs between 50 and 60 million roubles in 1992.
If the money is forthcoming the project will follow the existing timetable
and all the components will be integrated within the spacecraft at the end
of next year, says Marov. He believes the international nature of Mars 1994
should ensure its funding. He is less sanguine about Mars 1996: ‘The situation
is so unstable that it is difficult to make any predictions so far ahead.’
He says inflation is rising so steeply he cannot predict whether there will
be enough money even to pay academics.

This shortage of money makes international collaboration difficult,
according to Burkhard Pfeiffer of ESA, a veteran of international cooperation.
He was the programme manager on Symphonie, the Franco-German communications
satellite developed in the 1970s and of the Spacelab project run by Europe
and the US.

One of the most important things, when collaborating, is that people
actually meet. But the Soviet’s cannot always afford to travel to meetings,
says Pfeiffer.

He believes that the most successful collaborations involve partners
who have conviction in their work and trust one another not to withdraw
for political reasons. It is best, too, he says to have no exchange of funds.
So, for example, in a future joint venture, he says, the Soviet Union could
launch a satellite the Europeans had built.

Many years from now, Russia or the Soviet Union could join ESA, says
Pfeiffer. ‘There is the potential for us to cut down on our own ambitions
and to take advantage of Russia’s launch capability,’ he says. Such a decision
could only be taken by the member states of ESA. And it is hard to see how
Russia, with or without the other republics, would fit in, given the tensions
that already exist between member countries keen to satisfy their own industries
and to bolster national prestige through technological achievements.

The International Space Year is due to begin in January; it was called
to coincide with the 35th anniversary of Sputnik-1, the world’s first artificial
satellite. In the light of the Soviet Union’s struggle to keep its space
programme going, Sagdeev sees irony in the timing: ‘I hope that next year
does not become one of mourning for the Soviet Union’s space programme rather
than one of celebration.’

Helen Gavaghan is a freelance jouranlist based in Washington DC who
specialises in the politics and technology of space flight