Space.com By Elizabeth Howell 7/2/2018
I spent several days in June traveling with a group of journalists to watch the Expedition 56 crew launch to the International Space Station (ISS). To do so, we had to make our way to Moscow, get picked up by a charter airline, and fly to the remote desert town of Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
We wrapped up our trip on June 8 in Moscow when the crew successfully docked with the ISS. At that time, a small group of officials representing NASA, Europe and the Russian space agency Roscosmos congregated in TsUP (Russian Mission Control) to talk about the mission.
But when asked about the future, the conversation suddenly turned vague. The consensus: Discussions are ongoing and the public will have to wait. [Roscosmos: Russia's Historic Space Centers in Pictures]
No NASA commitment past 2019
All people going to the International Space Station must do so through Kazakhstan today. Since the space shuttle retired in 2011, there's no other ship capable of carrying people up there besides Soyuz, the Russian workhorse of many decades. NASA purchases seats for its astronauts; each mission is worth tens of millions of dollars. But the situation is going to change soon.
Two companies — Boeing and SpaceX — are developing commercial crew vehicles to carry astronauts to the ISS. They should start flying crews in the next year or two, at least if the current development schedule holds. And NASA hasn't committed to buying any seats past 2019, several officials told me while I was in Moscow. That made me wonder — what is the future of Roscosmos with less money flowing from international partners?
"This will certainly pose a problem for the agency in terms of its funding, for which it has been struggling of late," Michael Dodge, a space law and policy researcher at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, told Space.com in an email. "The United States pays a great deal of money for each seat it takes on the Soyuz, which helps to offset the expenses of preparing, maintaining and launching that vehicle. Of course, Russia has its own interests to support onboard the ISS, and will still need to launch its cosmonauts to the station until it decides it no longer wants to engage in operations there.
More:
https://www.space.com/41038-roscosmos-russian-space-strategy-commercial-crew.html
