S.O.S.: Save Our Space Station — and More Tax-Dollars — From Being Squandered in Al Gore’s ‘Russian Cooperation’ Scam

(Washington, D.C.): Is there no limit? Today’s, Washington Post reports that
the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration is about to seek authority to pour at least $660
million more down the black hole known as the Russian space program.

Over the past five-and-a-half years, the Clinton-Gore team and its G-7 allies have transformed
the
International Monetary Fund into a ready source of undisciplined, unconditioned cash for the
government in Moscow nominally led by Boris Yeltsin.⁽¹⁾
On a lesser scale, Vice President Gore
has been personally responsible for a similar corruption: the perversion of NASA’s budget into a
slush-fund for the former Soviet military-industrial complex’s Russian Space Agency — the folks
who bring us the Kremlin’s ongoing ballistic missile modernization and expanding missile
proliferation operations.

The latest proposal to advance the Veep’s “space cooperation” agenda would more than
double
the dollars that NASA has invested to date in a three-part agenda: 1) involving Russia in
the
International Space Station (in the process exposing U.S. astronauts to life aboard the
much
smaller and increasingly dangerous Mir space station⁽²⁾); 2)
offering financial support to
Russia’s scientists and engineers in the hope of dissuading them from pursuing lucrative
business opportunities in rogue states — where their expertise would likely translate into
proliferating weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems; and 3) ensuring that such
states cannot achieve a technological shortcut by simply buying Russian
rockets to meet their
ballistic missile needs.

Unfortunately, none of these initiatives has performed as advertised. Indeed, in each
case,
American national interests have been compromised at considerable expense to the
taxpayer.

Russia’s Sabotage of the International Space Station

The August 1998 edition of the American Spectator Magazine offers a powerful
indictment of the
Gore initiative to make Russia a partner in the ISS. Written by a man who knows whereof he
speaks — former NASA rocket scientist, James Oberg — the article entitled
“NASA’s Russian
Payload” demonstrates that the Veep’s directive added huge costs to Space Station program from
the “get-go”:

• “Original plans called for the Freedom Station [the name given to the U.S.-led program
  initiated by President Reagan] to be carried up in pieces by shuttles launching due east from
  Cape Canaveral, taking full advantage of the eastward rotation of the Earth.
  The
  Station’s orbit would consequently range between 28 degrees North and 28 degrees South
  latitude (i.e., an ‘orbital inclination’ to the equator of 28 degrees).

• “The Russians, with their far northerly rocket bases, simply could not reach this
  orbital
  path due to esoteric, but immutable, laws of celestial mechanics; their missions circled
  the
  Earth with a much steeper north-south range of 52 degrees. So in order to allow the Russians
  access to the new space station, NASA shifted its planned orbit northward.

• “This caused a number of operational difficulties, since NASA engineers had based their
  designs for the Station on the low-inclination orbit. Many parts of the Station could easily
  overheat or freeze in the new orbit. Even worse, shuttles heading for the Station no longer
  could fly due east from Florida, but instead had to head off toward the northeast, losing much
  of the boost from Earth’s eastward spin. Because of this, the shuttle’s payload carrying
  capability fell by one-third. NASA implemented a number of design changes to increase the
  shuttle’s payload, but since these would have been possible no matter which orbit was aimed
  for, there remained a one-third penalty for the Russian-compatible flight
  plan.

• “It’s easy to tally up the cost of doing it the Russians’ way. Over the planned 20-year life of
  the ISS, NASA expects to fly about 120 shuttle missions to it. About 40 of these will be
  needed merely to match the amount of cargo that the first 80 would have been able to carry
  into the old west-to-east orbit. At an estimated half a billion dollars per flight, taking the
  Russians into the partnership will cost $20 billion. Yet not a
  penny of this appears in
  NASA’s official space station budget.

• “The change in orbital inclination had been a feature of the original Russian merger proposal
  of
  March 1993, but NASA officials had not drawn attention to it and Congress was caught
  by surprise months later.” (Emphasis added.)

As early as 1994, the General Accounting Office was warning: “Most of the savings
from
Russian participation comes from an optimistic schedule that may not hold up. If the schedule
slips, any savings will quickly evaporate.” Shortly after the release of this scathing GAO report,
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin countered by claiming: “The fact is every nickel is accounted
for in the NASA budget, and Russian cooperation will not cost the U.S. taxpayer one
penny
more — in fact I believe it will save us billions.” It is hard to top this statement as an
example
either of irresponsible naivete on the part of an experienced former
aerospace-executive-turned-senior-government-official or of cynical “buying-in” to a program
certain to prove an excuse
relentlessly to increase NASA’s top-line (even though most of the agency’s other priority
programs would suffer grievously to defray ISS cost-growth).

So Much for Preventing a Hemorrhage of Talent

Mr. Oberg dissects with similar, devastating effect the Clinton-Gore Administration’s claim
that it
was curbing proliferation via the migration of the best minds of the old Soviet military-industrial
complex:

• “By saving the Russian space industry from collapse, Western money — both from NASA
  and
  from the private sector — was supposed to keep otherwise-unemployed Russian rocket experts
  from assisting weapons development programs in rogue states around the world.

• “An example of what’s really happening is the Energiya Rocket and Space Corporation,
  which
  builds and operates Russia’s manned space vehicles and thus will play a crucial role in the
  International Space Station….Its 1997 commercial earnings were placed at $350 million. That
  broke down to: $160 million for foreign guests aboard Mir, mainly NASA,
  with some
  French payments. $100 million for sales of Space Station hardware, some paid
  by NASA
  and some still owed by the Russian Space Agency. $50 million from investment in ‘Sea
  Launch,’ a plan with Boeing to launch a Ukrainian-Russian rocket from a ship in the
  Pacific
  Ocean. $20 million in sales of a commercial third stage used on ‘Proton’
  rockets for Western
  satellites. $20 million in sales of the Yamal communications satellite to a
  Russian bank.

• “Yet during the last ten years, Energiya has laid off more than 40,000 space workers, and it
  pays the remaining 22,000 engineers and technicians less than generously.” In other words,
  the money is going someplace else — perhaps, as part of the massive capital
  flight from
  Russia to Swiss or Cypriot bank accounts, or perhaps into what amounts to the subsidizing of
  the other side of Russia’s space program: the Kremlin’s substantial effort to maintain and
  modernize its strategic forces that pose an abiding threat to the United States.

What ‘Restraint’ on Russian Missile Transfers?

The third objective advanced by Vice President Gore and other Administration officials was
to use
the influx of U.S. cash to the Russian space industry as leverage to thwart the export of rocket
engines, guidance systems, materials and designs.

Here again, though, the record has been dismal. Notably, Washington Times
National Security
Correspondent Bill Gertz revealed in September 1997 that Israeli intelligence had tied the Russian
Space Agency to sales of missile technologies to Iran. Indeed, Yuri Koptyev, the head of the
Russian Space Agency, and the aerospace director of the Russian state arms exporting agency
(Rosvoorouzhenie) were among those implicated in a major effort to assist Iran acquire the ability
to manufacture long-range ballistic missiles.

According to the Times, these missiles — two derivatives of the North Korean No
Dong, dubbed
the Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 — will have ranges between 800 and 1,200 miles and could be capable
of delivering chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to targets as far away as the European
continent within two-to-three years.⁽³⁾

The help that the Russians have given Iran (and presumably others) underscores the findings
of
the congressionally chartered Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United
States, chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This panel rejected the
politically dictated assumptions that underpinned a 1995 National Intelligence Estimate that
arrived at the predetermined and pollyannish conclusion that the U.S. would not face a missile
threat for “at least 15 years.” Specifically, the Rumsfeld Commission took exception to the
notion that countries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea would not benefit from access to other
nations’ ballistic missile technology greatly to foreshorten the timeline to intercontinental
capabilities.⁽⁴⁾

The Bottom Line

There is no excuse for throwing good money after bad in the further, vain pursuit of such
policy
will-o’-the-wisps. As things stand now, even without the Russian fiasco, NASA will be hard
pressed to find the money required to complete the International Space Station. href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾ Matters will
only be made worse if the space agency is allowed further to jeopardize this important initiative.
That would be the predictable effect of a reaffirmation at this juncture of the Administration’s
commitment to keep a defaulted Russia in the “critical path” of the ISS. After all, doing so will
simply ensure that still more millions (if not billions) will disappear like water into the sand as the
flight date for the Service Module and other components to be supplied by the Moscow recede
into an unraveling Russian economy and as concerns intensify about the reliability of any products
that might miraculously belch forth many months, if not years, from now.

As Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Science
Committee,
demonstrated in a pivotal series of hearings last year, the enormous investment being made in this
project must no longer be permitted to be held hostage to Russian programmatic shortcomings
arising from the Kremlin’s technological, financial and/or political problems. It now falls to him
and his colleagues to bring to an end, at long last, the fraud that has been perpetrated by Vice
President Gore, NASA’s top management and other Administration officials who have papered
over the Kremlin’s chronic shortfalls and concealed from the American taxpayer the true costs
associated with Russian partnership in the ISS.⁽⁶⁾

Specifically, Congress should launch a comprehensive investigation into the extent to which
Administration misfeasance — if not outright malfeasance — in conjunction with
Russian perfidy
has led to the present pass in which a preeminent national priority, the ISS, has been needlessly
put at risk of failure or yet more, unjustifiable cost-overruns. No further funds should be
provided to Russia pending completion of such an investigation and plans reluctantly initiated in
response to earlier congressional pressure for a non-Russian back-up plan must be implemented
forthwith.

– 30 –

1. See The Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Restoration Watch # 10: Consolidation of Power
by Primakov Marks the End of the Line for Reform in Russia ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_161″>No. 98-D 161, 10 September
1998) and the Casey Institute’s Press Release
entitled President Clinton Should Heed Security-Minded Advice,
Not Strobe Talbott’s (No. 98-R 154, 28 August
1998).

2. For more information on the recent problems with Mir, see the
Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled: Pull The Plug On Mir (No. 97-D
100, 18 July 1997) and Clinton Legacy Watch # 6:
Crises Involving U.S.-Russian Space ‘Cooperation’ Show Clinton-Gore Errors, Need for
Changes (No. 97-D 139 ,18 September 1997).

3. Mr. Gertz wrote: “The Israelis have identified Mr. Koptyev and
[a] Rosvoorouzhenie official
as the only two senior Russians linked directly to the Iranian program. Some U.S. officials
believe they are ‘free-lancing’ for cash rather than carrying out deals approved by Moscow. The
report identified Mr. Koptyev, as well as the aerospace director of the Russian government arms
export agency, as being involved in Iran’s Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missile development program.”

4. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Critical Mass #2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile
Defenses (No.
98-D 133, 15 July 1998), ‘My God, the Threat Is Right Now’ (No.
98-D 155, 1 September 1998)
and Only the Clinton Team Could Respond to North Korean, Other Emerging
Missile Threats
by Canceling Near-Term T.H.A.A.D. (No. 98-D
159, 3 September 1998).

5. For example, a GAO report issued on 22 May 1998 observed that
there is a potentially huge —
and unbudgeted — cost associated with providing the space surveillance
necessary to protect the
ISS from space debris. According to an Air Force study tasked by Congress in FY1998, the price
tag for a system capable of monitoring 1-centimeter debris could be on the order of $400
million
to $2.5 billion. Given the Clinton-Gore Administration’s hostility to technology that
could lend
itself to space control and ballistic missile defense (which would surely be the case of such a
tracking system), however, there may be more than the standard official dishonesty about the
costs of the ISS at work here.

6. Particularly egregious has been the role played in this regard by the
erstwhile Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission. See The Buck Stops With Al Gore:
Veep-Approved Rip-Off By
Russia of U.S. Taxpayer, Technology Now Threatens An Americans Life ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_89″>No. 97-D 89, 27
June 1997).