Russians Want NASA to Fund Escape Craft
MOSCOW (AFP) — The Russian space agency Roskosmos wants its American counterpart NASA to shoulder some of the financial burden of equiping the international space station (ISS) with Soyuz emergency escape craft, it said.
There are plans to raise the ISS permanent crew from two to six. This would require two of the three-seater, thimble-shaped escape-vessels, capable of returning to Earth in case of an accident, to be docked at any one time. At present there is one.
"It’ll be necessary to send an extra escape craft," said Roskosmos deputy director Alexander Medvedchikov.
"But we aren’t going to do this free of charge," he said, explaining that two craft would have to be sent each six months if the crew were raised to six.
"The Americans have already tried to order an extra Soyuz from Rokosmos," he added, confirming the order had been blocked by Washington over an issue of the transfer of sensitive technology from Moscow to    Iran.
"We hope to find a solution to the problem soon," he said.
He also said that manned flights on Soyuz craft from the launch facility at Kourou in French Guiana would be possible, but would be more expensive to conduct than from the Baikonur site in Kazakhstan.
In 2003 Russia and France signed an agreement to use Soyuz rockets for unmanned flights out of the Kourou space port to launch commercial satellites from 2008.
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