[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 106 (Thursday, July 24, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8004-S8005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE MIR SPACE STATION

  Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, everybody knows that I am sort of a 
Johnny-one-note on the space station. I ask unanimous consent to have 
printed in the Record an article that appeared in this morning's 
Washington Post, the headline of which is ``Russia Wonders If Manned 
Flight Is Worth Cost.'' One of the reasons I wanted to put it in the 
Record is because it echoes precisely what I said on the floor, in 
spades, 2 days ago.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             Russia Wonders if Manned Flight is Worth Cost

                          (By Daniel Williams)

       Moscow, July 23.--With the immediate crisis on the Mir 
     space station largely resolved for now, space officials here 
     have turned their attention to tangled problems on Earth.
       They may be as hard to fix as the ones on Mir.
       Lack of money, the bane of a space enterprise that was once 
     Moscow's pride, is the major problem. The space program also 
     is suffering from a battered public image that makes rallying 
     support difficult.
       Debate over the future of Mir has ignited a finger-pointing 
     spree in newspapers over who is to blame for a recent series 
     of mishaps including a fire, a collision with a supply craft 
     and the erroneous disconnection of a computer system that 
     threw Mir out of position and drained much of its power.
       The central issue of the controversy here is one that also 
     surfaces from time to time in the United States: What price 
     manned space travel, especially when compared with unmanned 
     expeditions?
       Unmanned expeditions offer more scientific benefits per 
     dollar, except for learning about the capabilities of human 
     beings in space. And as painful as the failure of unmanned 
     satellite launches, space probes and robotic landings may be, 
     a dead satellite is not the same as a dead astronaut. That 
     element alone makes manned flights not only more dramatic, 
     but also more expensive as systems are piled on systems for 
     safety's sake.
       Mir is the space equivalent of an old used car, but Russia 
     appears unwilling to give up manned flight, even temporarily. 
     To surrender a human toehold in space is to give it up 
     permanently, officials here argue, ``If we drop space, we 
     will lag behind in this field forever,'' said Yuri Baturin, 
     secretary of the Russian defense council.
       One reason for sticking with Mir, even if it requires 
     repeated tinkering under the hood, is that it makes money. 
     The United States alone is paying Russia about $400 million 
     for

[[Page S8005]]

     continual use of the space station by NASA astronauts to 
     conduct scientific experiments in space.
       Although figures for how much Russia spends in space are 
     difficult to come by, everyone agrees that the program is 
     short of cash. On Monday, contractors and scientists held a 
     meeting in advance of Russia's next launch on Aug. 5. Each 
     speaker said that key preparations for the launch were 
     complete, but several also complained they had not been paid 
     for their work, an observer at the meeting recounted.
       Economic dealings in Russia are plagued by delayed payments 
     and unfulfilled contracts, and the space program is no 
     exception.
       Parts of the modular station are 11 years old, more than 
     double their original life expectancy. Russian space 
     officials have taken pains to assure everyone that the Mir 
     was viable and in no need of being scrapped.
       ``I would fly to Mir,'' Sergei Krikalev, a cosmonaut and 
     emerging spokesman for the space program, said recently.
       In the past, it was highly unusual for officials here to 
     publicly air the detail that has been made available about 
     Mir. In the Soviet era, only successes were widely reported; 
     operational specifics--not to mention failures--were hidden 
     as much as possible. Although the democratic atmosphere in 
     contemporary Russia explains some of the current openness, so 
     too does the perception of a need for public relations.
       Foreigners fly on Mir, and secrecy about conditions on the 
     space station would be unacceptable to the foreign patrons of 
     the flights, Russian officials say. In the United States, 
     some politicians oppose the trips as dangerous and of little 
     use; secrecy probably would fuel criticism there.
       Inexperience with public scrutiny has led to tension with 
     the Russian press. A few weeks ago, space officials invited 
     reporters to witness work at the Star City cosmonaut training 
     complex. As reporters clustered around Anatoly Solovyov, one 
     of the next cosmonauts to go up, a scientist frantically 
     tried to push them away. ``What if someone sneezes'' he cried 
     out. ``What if the cosmonaut catches a virus? All this 
     preparation will go to waste!''
       Russian space officials have accused the Russian press of 
     scandal-mongering, although many reports they initially 
     denied were later confirmed. For example, Izvestia, regarded 
     as the country's leading newspaper, reported that news about 
     a death in the family of Vasily Tsibliev, the commander of 
     Mir, had been withheld from him.
       Russian officials stopped denying the story only after the 
     Reuter news agency reported from Tsibliev's home town that 
     the family had kept the death secret.
       Space officials expressed irritation with articles about 
     conflicts among different departments of the space program: 
     Mission Control, the cosmonaut training center and Energia, 
     the enterprise that designs, builds and launches rockets and 
     space vehicles.
       Newspapers reported that Energia officials blame Tsibliev 
     for the June 25 Mir collision with a cargo vessel. The crash 
     damaged one of the modules and resulted in an emergency 
     reduction of about half of Mir's power.
       Sergei Gromov, a spokesman for Energia, said this week that 
     such a report was nonsensical given the interlocking 
     structure of the Russian space program. Almost every one 
     works for everyone else, and Energia had a big say in who was 
     to fly.
       ``The cosmonauts are affiliated with the Air Force and the 
     cosmonaut training center, but they are also personnel of our 
     organization,'' he said. ``We choose them and pay them; they 
     are half ours. It would be like blaming ourselves.''
       Space officials acknowledged that Tsibliev probably faces a 
     loss of bonus money for the flight because of the collision 
     as well as the later episode that caused the temporary loss 
     of all power on Mir: last week's accidental unplugging of a 
     computer cable.
       ``He may lose some of his bonus. But he is not on trial 
     here,'' cosmonaut Krikalev said.
       Solovyov and another cosmonaut due to relieve the exhausted 
     Mir crew prepared today for the Aug. 5 launch and for the 
     repairs they will conduct later in the month on the crippled 
     spacecraft.
       The drumbeat of bad news about Mir prompted Izvestia to 
     question whether openness in space was worth the national 
     loss of morale.
       The news from space ``makes one feel disappointed rather 
     than proud of the country, which has opened the doors to 
     another state secret,'' said the commentary published 
     Tuesday.

  Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the Senator from Utah for yielding.

                          ____________________