Russia No Longer Wishes to Be Free-of-Charge Space Carrier for USA

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 4 August: Russia will stop being a free-of-charge “space cabbie” for NASA and will restart the construction of the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS). ” Functional Cargo Block-2 (FCB-2), which currently is in the Khrunichev space centre plant could be used as a new module for the ISS ,” Aleksandr Aleksandrov, head of the test flight service of the Rocket-Space Corporation Energy, told journalists.

“There are plans to further develop FCB-2 and create on its basis a new module of the ISS, which will be used not only for the storage of cargo and equipment but also for the work and recreation of the crew,” Aleksandrov noted. FCB-2 was initially created as a backup for FCB Zarya, with which the construction of the ISS had begun in 1998. Aleksandrov would not talk about the possible timing of the FCB-2 launch, noting that “it all depends on the financing of the project.”

ITAR-TASS was told at the Federal Space Agency (FSA) that “starting from 2005, the development of the ISS Russian segment and the facilitation of the work for the Russian crew on it becomes a priority.”

In the words of the FSA head Anatoliy Perminov, “recently, the Russian side officially told NASA that Russia intends to fulfil the bulk of its obligations with respect to the delivery and accommodation of combined crews on the ISS by 1 January, 2005.” The FSA suggested that all subsequent flights conducted by the Americans on Soyuz [spaceships] should be compensated for. “This is our position: if in 2005 the Americans wish to fly on Soyuz craft, then let them pay for the costs of the flight”, Perminov stressed.

The FSA recalled that after the shuttle Columbia crash in February last year and the freezing of flights on American shuttles, “the construction of the ISS had stopped, putting the whole burden of rotating crews and delivering cargo to orbit on Russia.”