Russian company proposes new Russian space station post-ISS
Energia, the division in Roscosmos that manages the Russian manned program, including its share of ISS, has proposed that Russia build its own space station after 2025, and the reasons it gives strongly suggest they are worried about the condition of their 20-year-old and leaking Zvezda module.
The International Space Station’s systems are likely to keep breaking down after 2025, Energia company, which manages the Russian module, said and suggested building a national station instead. “Russia has commitments regarding the ISS through 2025. Several elements are already seriously damaged and about to stop functioning. Many of them are impossible to replace. After 2025, we expect many ISS elements to start breaking down en masse,” the deputy director-general of Energia, Vladimir Soloviev, said at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. [emphasis mine]
They don’t mention Zvezda by name, but the highlighted words point to it. Assuming the persistent leaks in the module are related to stress damage and age, this statement is recognizing publicly that replacing Zvezda is very difficult, or impossible, and that it is on the verge of complete failure.
Whether Russia has the money or resources to get another station built soon after 2025 is questionable, however. If they do decide to go it alone, I doubt they could launch a replacement before 2030, at the earliest, and likely much later than that.
If they do end the partnership with the U.S., it is unclear what happens to ISS. If the Russians choose to undock their portion of the station it will leave ISS somewhat crippled. It has been my impression that without all of the environmental systems in the Russian half, ISS cannot function. This might no longer be true, and will likely not be true with the planned arrival of Axiom’s private modules by the mid-20s. Timing however of all this remains critical.
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Energia, the division in Roscosmos that manages the Russian manned program, including its share of ISS, has proposed that Russia build its own space station after 2025, and the reasons it gives strongly suggest they are worried about the condition of their 20-year-old and leaking Zvezda module.
The International Space Station’s systems are likely to keep breaking down after 2025, Energia company, which manages the Russian module, said and suggested building a national station instead. “Russia has commitments regarding the ISS through 2025. Several elements are already seriously damaged and about to stop functioning. Many of them are impossible to replace. After 2025, we expect many ISS elements to start breaking down en masse,” the deputy director-general of Energia, Vladimir Soloviev, said at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. [emphasis mine]
They don’t mention Zvezda by name, but the highlighted words point to it. Assuming the persistent leaks in the module are related to stress damage and age, this statement is recognizing publicly that replacing Zvezda is very difficult, or impossible, and that it is on the verge of complete failure.
Whether Russia has the money or resources to get another station built soon after 2025 is questionable, however. If they do decide to go it alone, I doubt they could launch a replacement before 2030, at the earliest, and likely much later than that.
If they do end the partnership with the U.S., it is unclear what happens to ISS. If the Russians choose to undock their portion of the station it will leave ISS somewhat crippled. It has been my impression that without all of the environmental systems in the Russian half, ISS cannot function. This might no longer be true, and will likely not be true with the planned arrival of Axiom’s private modules by the mid-20s. Timing however of all this remains critical.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Any new space station now needs to rotate to generate artificial gravity, or there is no point. We now have decades of research to now prove that living in zero gravity is bad. Earth gravity is good. Partial gravity needs to be tested.
I agree with David K. Time for a more aggressive space presence than what the ISS can provide. Before seeing SpaceX progress with the Starship, I would have thought it would have been ludicrous to abandon ISS. However, it is likely that by 2025 the expense of launching a new more capable, and larger space station than the ISS will be just a fraction of what it was during the Shuttle era.
Demphasize learning about how sensitive humans are to zero-g and shift to learning how to create orbital environments and infrastructure that are suitable for long term habitation by humans. Take the first real steps towards becoming a spacefaring civilization.
I don’t doubt the Russians are sincerely worried about the state of their segment of ISS. They should be.
But the rest of the story looks like a trial balloon by Energia aimed at trying to get something large from their organizational wish list. That isn’t going to happen. Russia has barely enough money to maintain its current reduced presence on ISS. Building a new station is a complete pipe dream. Russia is too poor to afford such an effort now and will be still poorer by 2025.
From the article:
Add that to the quote that Robert included, and it is no wonder that some media had misinterpreted things:
If they have to “review the timeline of future participation” and expect many irreplaceable “ISS elements to start breaking down en masse” just after their “commitments regarding the ISS” expire, then who can blame anyone for thinking that they are seriously considering leaving the ISS project in 2025?
For years the Russians have been making noises about disconnecting their modules from the ISS in order to use them to create their own national space station. The new information here suggests that we can expect them to change their thinking so that they abandon their failing hardware in place and start their new space station from scratch.
I think Dick Eagleson is right. They are trying to get scarce funding for an expensive project.
Reviewing the past three decades in my head, it seems to me that Vladimir Putin attempted to rescue Russia’s once-great space program but discovered that he needed American money to do it. In the 1990s, NASA sent boatloads of money Russia’s way, but when Dan Goldin discovered they were spending too little of it on the ISS modules it was intended to be used for, he told them if they didn’t start spending the money on the proper modules, then Russia would be demoted from partner to contractor. (Hmm. I wonder what we would now be thinking of Russian workmanship had they been demoted.) I remember my aerospace colleagues and I cheered at Goldin’s bold international relations.
Russia seemed to get through the 2000s by selling launch services to geostationary orbit to commercial communication companies. The 2010s seem to have been funded by ferrying NASA’s astronauts to ISS. This decade they don’t have much in the way of prospects for revenue from space services, since the commercial companies are using SpaceX rather than Russia. Chronic quality problems are not helping Russia, either for revenue or for its own purposes.
I see a different future option for Russia. America is turning toward commercial space for solutions to (previously) expensive problems, and commercial space stations are proposed for eventually replacing the ISS. Not only could NASA rent, lease, or hire space on private commercial space stations, but Russia could do so too. The downside is a possible loss of national prestige. U.S. companies leasing space to Russia is very different than Russian companies leasing space to NASA. The nation whose company is doing the leasing holds the more prestigious position (such as the U.S. buying seats on the Russian Soyuz).
Another advantage to commercialization of space is that it is far more likely that space projects will have more benefits for mankind, because those projects that do not will have a harder time paying for themselves or surviving. This fits better with the Outer Space Treaty, too. As Bridenstine once noted, there is more venture capital money available for commercial space than Congressional money available for NASA space. In addition, we can be sure that venture capital money will be more wisely spent, where usefulness to mankind is concerned.
Its time to build the wheel.
In response to pzatchok, if by “build the wheel”, you mean a hub and spoke rotating habitat, I completely agree. Probably in eleo due to extra radiation shielding but could be next to the iss if you want.
I think this is something that a Biden administration might actually accomplish (or at least get started) that would differ from the previous administration’s Artemis program (though I would suggest doing both).