by Dmitry Zaks
MOSCOW, Jan 22 (AFP)
Russia in effect privatized the revolutionary Soviet-era Mir space station Friday to give the aging orbiter a three-year stay of execution — should it find some commercial funding.
The 100-tonne 13-year-old vessel had been due to burn up in orbit and splash into the watery depths of the Pacific Ocean this summer.
That fiery touchdown would have spelled an emphatic end to the era of Russian space dominance and made way for the much larger and technologically impressive International Space Station (ISS).
But Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov ruled that Mir has a right to live until 2002. In the process he also washed the government’s hands clean of all future financing for the creaking orbiter.
“The financing of all stages of Mir’s flight, including its final exit from orbit, effective the second-half of 1999 will come from non-governmental sources,” Primakov said in the order, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
Mir’s annual operating costs are estimated at 200 million dollars, well beyond the reach of a government incapable of paying its pensioners, teachers and doctors on time.
The station had been only scheduled to stay up in space for five years and recently suffered a horrific run of mishaps that included fires, power outages and a nearly-fatal crash with a cargo vessel.
Its main computer has shut down at least four times to leave Mir and occupants spinning uncontrollably through space in total darkness.
But the private Russian firm Energiya that built and operates Mir still argues its creation can, with proper financing, lead a healthy life for years to come.
And Mir’s Russian fans insist that enough private businesses can be enticed into using the floating space lab for unique research and experiments.
The first crew is not due to inaugurate the ISS until January 2000 and Energiya argues that Mir will make a more useful laboratory than its larger cousin for several more years.
Mir’s designers in December announced they had already secured some new private funding, but they refused to disclose who its customers might be.
Energiya has already made the space station available to advertisers that included an Israeli dairy producer, the Pepsi Cola soft drink maker, and a large banana distributor.
It also hopes to cash in on future foreign space visitors to Mir. A three-month mission that includes a Frenchman and a Slovak is due to blast of for Mir on February 20.
That mission was due to be the last, but some Russians argue that many more may follow as European nations prepare to put their own less-experienced astronauts on the ISS.
The news that Mir and Russia’s space program may still matter is certain to boost the country’s ever-dwindling self-esteem.
Russia was to become only a junior partner in the ISS and even that contribution appeared in doubt when the nation’s space agency had to borrow 60-million-dollars from Washington to complete a promised module of the ISS project.
But although the United States won the race to land a man on the moon, the Soviets became unrivalled champions of space endurance, starting with the launch of their first space station Salyut in 1971.
It was on Mir that the majority of space flight records were set, including the longest space stay of 437 days set by Valery Polyakov from 1994-95.
Russia’s nationalist- and Communist-dominated parliament recently passed a resolution pressing the Primakov to keep Mir afloat.