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

[DSFPortree at aol.com]

Abatoly:

It wasn't altruism toward Russia, it was a bribe. The station nearly died in 
August 1993 - it survived by one vote. That doesn't sound like a wholehearted 
enthusiasm to me. I was at JSC at that time - most everyone was sure that 
Clinton would kill the station. He would have, had not Ralpha been proposed. 
(Technically, he did - Freedom went away.)

Yes, Clinton asked for a redesign to control costs, but no one believed that 
NASA could actually do it. And it didn't control costs. This would not have 
been excused, but for Russian involvement. 

Space projects must be seen as relevant. Including the Russians made the 
station relevant. It made the space station worth spending billions on in the 
minds of many politicians of both parties. If Ralpha had not been announced in 
September 1993, I have no doubts that Freedom would have died in 1994 or 1995. 
Only space fans would have mourned its demise.

Then they'd have moved on to something else - the way they're all excited now 
about dropping ISS and moving on to the moon.

David

David S. F. Portree
author & educator
dsfportree at aol.com
(928) 226-1427
Flagstaff Arizona USA

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"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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