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After spending 40 years and billions of dollars competing in the space
race, the US and Russia are now trying to save money by cooperating on the
design and construction of the space station Freedom.

Under a seminal agreement signed last week, Russia also agreed to put
export controls on the sale of its missile technology. In return, the US
will cooperate with Russia in space, and allow it to launch commercial satellites
that contain American technology. Daniel Goldin, who heads NASA, welcomed
the agreement: ‘Our presence on the space frontier began as a product of
the Cold War, but that ideological struggle is now over. Cooperation will
replace competition.’ The new agreement means that the embattled space station
will be redesigned, yet again, over the next two months, this time in order
to integrate Russian technology and ideas. Four cost-cutting exercises have
already forced Freedom to be redesigned a number of times. Some members
of Congress argue that it is now only a shadow of the original design and
the money would be better spent elsewhere.

Goldin was quick to head off any Congressional objections to the agreement
on cost grounds. ‘The cross-pollination of ideas between our two spacefaring
nations will be healthy and potentially profitable. Russian participation
will not have a significant impact on US jobs,’ he says.

NASA officials hope that their space station partners – Europe, Japan,
and Canada – will approve the formal plan for a new East-West design by
1 November. But the European Space Agency seems ambivalent. ‘As far as we
are concerned, the official position is that (the contract) signed with
the US was for Freedom and that’s still valid,’ said an ESA spokesman.

America’s partners knew about the negotiations with Russia, which were
driven by President Clinton’s instruction to NASA to cut costs, but decided
that a result would be achieved more quickly if they did not interfere.
Now they are studying the outcome of the talks to judge its effects on the
balance of spending on the project.

‘It won’t mean us spending more,’ insists the spokesman. ‘But it will
be a few weeks before we know all the details of how the redesign might
require changes in our work.’