Russia will charge the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) $71 million to transport just one American astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard its Soyuz spacecraft in 2016.
That’s more than triple the $22 million per seat the Russians charged in 2006, according to a July 8 audit report by NASA’s inspector general. (See NASA IG-13-019.pd)
NASA spent $60 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars to help build the ISS and that figure would increase to $100 billion if the cost of using space shuttles to assemble the ISS was factored in, the IG report noted.
NASA still contributes $3 billion annually to cover the space station’s operating costs, and signed an agreement to provide the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space an additional $15 million annually “to manage non-NASA research on the ISS.”
But NASA has little choice but to pay Russia’s inflated ticket prices. Ever since August 2011, when the U.S. space agency mothballed its 30-year-old space shuttle program, NASA has had no way of getting American astronauts to the space station. The Russian Soyuz is now “the only vehicle capable of transporting crew to the ISS,” the IG report noted.
Monopoly has its advantages. In 2006, the price tag for the one seat NASA purchased on the Soyuz was $22 million. Four years later, the Russians increased the cost to $25 million. It went up again – to $28 million – in the first half of 2011.
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