RUSSIA: Russia fears that the Columbia disaster may herald the collapse of its own space programme because it cannot fund the international space station on its own.
"Columbia has cut off Russia from space," the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper bemoaned in a front-page headline yesterday. "If the Americans freeze their space programme, then our own programme will be left without work," it predicted.
The fate of the space station is in the balance following Columbia's break-up. Russia now presents the only alternative for sending up crew and cargo to the space station while the US sifts through evidence of what caused the tragedy and keeps its space shuttles grounded until the final verdict is in.
Russia however lacks not only the cash but also the hardware - unlike the shuttle, its space craft are not reusable - to fill in the gap. Worse still, its rockets can only carry a tiny fraction of the cargo which the US space shuttle did.
"Without US participation, the future construction and use of the international space station will not be something that either Europe, Japan or Russia can handle on its own," the Kommersant business newspaper said.
It quoted officials saying Russia would have to shoot up eight Progress cargo rockets this year at a cost of some $320 million (€300 million) to compensate for equipment which would have been brought up by US shuttles.
Russian Space Agency spokesman Mr Sergei Garbunov said Russia only had five space craft available - two manned Soyuz rockets and three unmanned Progress ships - and would need some time to build more.
Kommersant concluded that "most likely, the space station will have to be mothballed this year and its crew evacuated". Worse still for the Russian space programme, officials said they would have to cancel the lucrative launches of private citizens who were willing to pay tens of millions of dollars for a visit to the station. These flights would now be used to supply the space station instead.
"Whether Russia on its own is able to guarantee that the ISS continues to function depends on financing," said Russia's space control spokesman, Mr Vsevolod Latyshev. "Mankind has to find the money to keep up this project."
In a sign of solidarity between the two former bitter space rivals, the Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, went to the US embassy to sign a book of condolences while the US ambassador attended a commemorative service held in Star City, the Russian space centre on the edge of Moscow.
Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Moscow Alexander Vershbow said the global space community was "one family" as dozens of Muscovites laid flowers in the snow outside the US embassy throughout the weekend.
Mr Vyacheslav Mikhailichenko, a spokesman for Russian Space Agency, said: "Russia will not be able to fully guarantee the development of the ISS with its own craft because the Progress rockets have a small payload." But on a more optimistic note, he said: "At the moment, we are not studying the option of mothballing the station."
A Russian Progress vessel successfully docked with the ISS on Sunday with supplies for the three- man crew, two Americans and a Russian.