In 1960 an explosion at the Soviet Union’s Baikonur launching complex killed hundreds of people. Rather than halt their program to investigate the disaster and implement safety features to prevent a re-occurrence, the Soviets pretended the incident never happened and kept it a secret for decades, even from the families of the victims.

That attitude towards crew safety is just one of the cultural and operational differences between the Russian space program – a continuation of the Soviet program – and NASA, according to Scott Kelly, an American astronaut who spent a year in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015-2016. Kelly chronicled his mission in a memoir titled, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.

Kelly’s book details his career and his year-long mission. Having trained as a Navy pilot to fight the Soviet military, he was especially attentive to the operational and cultural differences between U.S. astronauts and the Russian cosmonauts that he lived with aboard the station.

Throughout his flight – and for several years prior – Kelly worked closely with Russian cosmonauts and technicians. During this period he learned to adjust to the different ways of operating and the differing philosophies of the American and Russian space agencies, including their attitudes towards crew safety.

NASA’s safety rules routinely delay or scrub launches right to the final moments of the countdown, Kelly wrote. American astronauts were never certain that they were going into space until the rocket engines ignited. Not so for the Russians, who “haven’t scrubbed a launch after the crew was strapped in since 1969.”

Kelly also described differences in the ways NASA and the Russians designed and procured equipment. Though robust and dependable, Russian equipment is often less technologically advanced than U.S equipment, as the Russians highly value efficiency and low cost. Kelly cites the Soyuz capsule – originally designed in the 1960’s and still in use today in updated versions – noting that it is cheap, simple, and reliable. The Russian Progress resupply vehicle, which brings food, spare parts and other needed components to the ISS, is another example. The vehicle is very similar to the Soyuz, he writes, “because the Russians never create two designs when one will do.”

As an astronaut, Kelly piloted two space shuttle missions (STS-103, Shuttle Discovery in1999 and STS-118, Shuttle Endeavour in 2007) and completed a five-month mission on the International Space Station (October 2010 – March 2011). In 2012 he and a Russian cosmonaut were selected to spend a year aboard the ISS as the subjects of a study on the effects of long-duration space flight. Kelly’s year in space lasted from March 2015 until March 2016. During his career he spent a total of 520 days in space. Remarkably, Kelly’s twin brother, Mark, is also an astronaut.

But Kelly‘s career almost never got off the ground. As a college freshman he was hardly the over-achieving honor student/Eagle Scout that is typical of American astronauts. He was, in fact, a poor student who was, in his words, “A directionless, undereducated eighteen-year-old with terrible grades.” But Kelly never lacked intelligence, and when he found direction he responded with energy and discipline. During his first semester at college he read Thomas Wolfe’s account of NASA’s Mercury program, The Right Stuff and he became hooked. “I felt the power of those words washing over me,” he wrote. “I felt like I had found my calling.”

Newly dedicated and driven, Kelly earned a Navy officer’s commission and was selected for flight school. Like a film character from Top Gun, he became the best of the best, flying F-14 fighters off the crowded decks of aircraft carriers. Later, like the seven Mercury astronauts whom Wolfe chronicled, he became a test pilot – the best of the best of the best. Finally, he was selected by NASA to become an astronaut – the best of the best of the best of the best.

The International Space Station was designed and built by a 15-nation coalition, including the United States, Russia, and the space agencies of Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been continuously inhabited since November 2000, and by now more than 200 persons from sixteen nations have visited it.

While Kelly calls international cooperation the highlight of the ISS program, station operations are not as international as you might think. The station consists of multiple modules and is roughly divided into two segments: the Russian segment, where the Russians live and work; and the U.S. segment, where everyone else lives and works. In addition, each astronaut or cosmonaut works directly for his or her own space agency, rather than for some international space organization. Thus, ISS crew members work on their own national experiments, follow a daily schedule prepared by their own national space agency, eat food supplied by their own nation, and speak with their flight controllers on their own national communications system.

The different nationalities cooperate with each other, and share resources when necessary, but they are more neighbors than co-workers, albeit neighbors in an alarmingly dangerous neighborhood that requires constant vigilance, near-total trust, and frequent cooperation just to stay alive. And for all the national differences that are observed, Kelly reminds us that the ISS, “is the longest peaceful international collaboration in history.”

Despite significant cultural differences, Kelly writes that American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts work well together. “We make an effort to learn about and respect one another’s cultures, and we have agreed to carry out this huge and challenging project together, so we work to understand and see the best in one another.”

But Russian attitudes about sharing information take some getting used to. Russian cosmonauts have lower base salaries than American astronauts, wrote Kelly, but the Russian Space Agency pays cosmonauts a significant bonus for each day they are in space. However, if the Space Agency determines that a cosmonaut made a mistake, they decrease the cosmonaut’s bonus. Thus, there is a tremendous incentive for cosmonauts to withhold information about problems or other issues from their own Mission Control personnel. This is especially dangerous because Mission Control has access to thousands of engineers, technicians and other specialists who understand every component of the ISS. Their knowledge is critical to keeping the ISS operating and the crews safe.

Similarly, Russian training is more detailed than comparable U.S. training, but the reason is not necessarily to ensure that cosmonauts are safer or better trained. Instead, writes Kelly, training serves to protect the trainers from blame in case of an accident or failure. “Everyone involved in training needs to certify that the crew was taught everything they could possible need to know. If anything should go wrong, it must then be the crew’s fault.”

Cosmonauts also are encouraged to avoid responsibility for mistakes. To be certified for flight, cosmonauts must pass a difficult oral exam. But once their performance is graded, cosmonauts have an opportunity to contest their grades, and they do so by attempting to minimize and avoid responsibility for any mistakes they made on the exam.

While the ISS orbits silently above our heads, it is easy to discount the difficulty and danger of spaceflight. But that’s a luxury not available to astronauts or cosmonauts. As a reminder, during a nine-month period that included the start of Kelly’s mission, three resupply vehicles were lost during missions to the ISS, including two in a row. Fortunately, none carried passengers, but the Soyuz rocket that failed on a Russian supply mission is the same type of rocket used to bring cosmonauts and astronauts to the ISS and the SpaceX rocket that failed is the same model rocket that NASA will use to transport astronauts in the future.

On his first spacewalk outside the ISS, Kelly was shocked to see the extent of damage to the exterior of the station. Fifteen years exposure to micrometeoroids, orbital debris and the sun have left the station pitted and scarred. At one point during his year on the ISS, Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts were forced to take refuge in the docked Soyuz capsule – a Soyuz capsule is always docked at the station to serve as a ‘lifeboat’ in case of a catastrophic accident – when an old satellite was detected approaching the station and there was no time to maneuver the ISS away from it. Orbiting earth in the opposite direction as the station, the impact speed would have been 35,000 miles per hour, and a collision would have instantly destroyed the ISS, and in all likelihood the Soyuz capsule.

For a full account of his ISS mission, see Scott Kelly’s book: Endurance; A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.

 

top image: Scott Kelly aboard the International Space Station. (NASA photo)

January 8, 2019