[FPSPACE] Anatoly Perminov says US rebuffed Russian overtures to joint ex...

[agzak at optonline.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: DSFPortree at aol.com
Date: Monday, April 30, 2007 11:14 am
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Anatoly Perminov says US rebuffed Russian overtures to joint ex...
To: agzak at optonline.net, fpspace at friends-partners.org


> I think you're missing the point. The Bush Administration wasn't 
> out to save 
> money when they bribed Russian engineers not to sell missile 
> technology - they 
> were out to bribe Russian engineers. 

They justified it as saving 
> money, but 
> that wasn't the main reason they did it. They worried, in fact, 
> that it would 
> cost more, not less, to include the Russians. They picked ways of 
> bribing them 
> that weren't vital. Mars rovers and nuclear rockets, a US astronaut 
> on Mir, a 
> Russian on a Shuttle.

Again, Mars rovers, nuclear rockets and US astronaut on Mir could not solve the problem of 
cost overrun within the Space Station Freedom project. Progress and Soyuz did it.

> 
> The Democratic Clinton Administration and Democratic Congress were 
> not 
> interested in building a space station; they didn't want to spend 
> billions on it. 


This is simply wrong. Clinton directed NASA to redesign the space station Freedom in order 
to keep annual spending on the project within $2.1 billion, to meet Congressional budget 
projects. It has not the same as "were not interested in building a space station."

See here:

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_chronology.html


> They were interested in reducing the Reagan/Bush deficit. And, they 
> didn't have 
> to spend billions on it. The Shuttle had bumbled along for more 
> than a decade 
> without a "destination" - concern over a destination for the 
> Shuttle is a 
> space fan thing, not a policymaker thing. 

Wrong again. The Space Station Freedom project was introduced in 1984, slightly more than 
a year after Shuttle entered "operational" status. So, it "bumbled along" all these years in 
anticipation that the station assembly would start in 1991-1992.


Yet, when the notion of 
> involving the 
> Russians came along, they were willing to spend billions on a space 
> station. 
> They certainly didn't see spending those billions as saving money! 

They absolutely did. The American space station was a proclaimed NASA goal throughout 
several administrations, including Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Clinton wanted to balance the 
budget without killing the station. NASA wanted Soyuz and Progress to make station 
sustainable, since Shuttle could not do it. Therefore pragmatic calculation of cost savings and 
access to reliable technology were main real reasons, while all the politics and a nationalistic 
myth about altruism toward Russia was an added bonus. 


> 
> David
> 
> David S. F. Portree
> author & educator
> dsfportree at aol.com
> (928) 226-1427
> Flagstaff Arizona USA
> 
> DSFP homepage
> http://members.aol.com/dsfportree/dsfp.htm
> 
> DSFP Altair VI blog
> http://altairvi.blogspot.com/
> 
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> http://blogs.earthsky.org/dsfportree/
> 
> "It's like when you're a kid, the first time they tell you that the 
> world's 
> turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything 
> looks like it's 
> standing still. I can feel it - the turn of the Earth. The ground 
> beneath our 
> feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, the entire planet is 
> hurtling 
> around the Sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can 
> feel it. We're 
> falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this 
> tiny little 
> world, and if we let go..." - The Ninth Doctor
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> **************************************
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