Russia may carry on ISS project after 2020 - newspaper

[bananas]

Source: Interfax

Russia may carry on the International Space Station (ISS) project after 2020 although the wish to drop out was declared this spring, Izvestia wrote on Monday.

The Russian membership in the ISS project after 2020 is still open for consideration but there is 90% probability the national administration will decide to carry it on, the newspaper quoted a source in the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) as saying.

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"If we take a look at the relevant section of the federal space program, we will see that the Russian Academy of Sciences is the ISS project customer. Our American partners have said many times they wished to continue the ISS operations after 2020. When they heard our leaders saying that Russia wanted to close down the project in 2020, they fostered the interaction with scientists and made interesting propositions of works in the period after 2020. A yearlong mission of a U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS is scheduled for 2015," the Roscosmos source told Izvestia.

<snip>

"Meanwhile, Roscosmos is not very interested in halting the ISS works right now: the federal space program of 2006-2015 allots 186.6 billion rubles for the station. If we stop building new modules of the station, considerable funds will be written off and some enterprises will have to start massive dismissals," he added.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=530860

[LloydS of New London]

1. And the $54 million per seat they're getting from us doesn't hurt, either

Come on, Elon!