Mir-2: A New World, 1976-1999
A Successor to Mir
Plans for a replacement of the Mir space station had been floating around since the mid 1970s, authorised as part of the same programme of “3rd generation space systems” that included the shuttle and Energia heavy launch vehicle. Initially intended as little more than a copy of Mir, even making use of Mir’s back-up DOS-8 core module, by the mid-1980s the imminent debut of the Energia rocket, as well as the challenge of President Reagan’s Space Station Freedom and Star Wars projects, meant that more ambitious options could be considered. These reached a zenith with the so-called OSETS “Orbitalni Sborochno Ekspluatatsionni Tsentr” (“Operational Centre for Orbital Assembly”), a giant space dock composed of four 75 tonne pressurised modules attached to a large truss carrying photovoltaic arrays, radiators and up to eight solar thermal reflectors to generate over 100 kW of electrical power for use in industrial production and military experiments in missile defence. The crew of 6-12 cosmonauts would be ferried to and from the station by the shuttle and a new large space capsule, Zarya, to be launched via the Zenit rocket.
On its maiden flight in 1987, Energia carried a Polyus-Skif module similar to those proposed for the new station - indeed, the module was launched with “Mir-2” painted on its side. However, by the time a guidance error in its TKS-derived upper stage had caused Polyus to impact in the Pacific, plans for Mir’s successor had already been down-scaled from four to three large modules, and the station would continue to shrink as the Soviet Union suffered through the Gorbachev Depression.
In April 1990, shortly after the ouster of Gorbachev, the decision was taken to postpone all work on Mir-2 in order to focus on the completion of the Buran and Burya shuttle orbiters. Despite this directive, NPO Energia’s Chief Designer, Yuri Semenov, continued low-level studies on a cheaper replacement for Mir, perhaps by initially evolving the existing station through adding new modules and gradually disposing of the old ones. These studies were internally given the derisive name “Mir 1.5”, but they meant that when the political winds changed again Semenov would have a proposal to hand, ready to go at short notice.
International Collaboration
Such a change came in 1992 with the election of US President Bill Clinton. Building on the groundwork laid by his Republican predecessor, Clinton sought to strengthen ties with the struggling USSR in order to bolster the Kremlin reformers against either a catastrophic disintegration at the hands of separatist forces, or a renewed power-grab from the old guard. To this end, Clinton proposed a number of direct measures to support the Soviet economy, such as pushing for increased IMF loans, as well as more indirect but targeted means, including increased cooperation in space exploration. Aside from military hardware, the space industry was the one sector of the economy where the Soviets could claim to be globally competitive, with their liquid rocket engines in particular recognised as being the most advanced in the world.
As well as agreements on access to Soviet launch vehicles for US commercial payloads and exploratory talks into US firms building Soviet engines under license, there were further discussions on joint manned space flights. The US Space Station Freedom project had undergone the same process of down-sizing as Mir-2, and by 1993 had been reduced to an abbreviated version unaffectionately nicknamed “Space Station Fred”. With both the US and Soviet stations struggling for funding, talks were held between NASA and VKA on merging their two projects to form a single “International Space Station”. However, despite the end of the Cold War, hawks in both the US Congress and the USSR Supreme Soviet spoke out loudly against such close collaboration with “the enemy”.
Although this opposition killed the chances of a joint station, it did raise the profile of manned spaceflight as an area of continuing ‘friendly’ competition between the current and former superpowers, and active cooperation in fact continued, albeit at a lower level. When the US Congress narrowly approved appropriations for the so-called “Option A-3” redesign of Freedom (now called “Space Station Alpha”) in 1994, it included an option to use Soviet Soyuz capsules as an interim lifeboat [1]. This would allow Alpha to be permanently manned from as early as the fourth assembly flight, rather than waiting for the 16th assembly flight and development of NASA's own Assured Crew Return Vehicle. The FY-1995 funding act therefore released $50 million for Boeing and RKK Energia to begin studying the modifications that would be needed to allow Soyuz to be delivered to Alpha’s 28 degree orbit by the US Space Shuttle, as well as extending its dormant in-orbit lifetime to up to 2 years. It also authorised a series of joint US-Soviet missions in which NASA astronauts would travel to Mir via Soyuz, whilst Soviet cosmonauts would be given berths on the American shuttle. Also planned were a series of dockings between US shuttles and Mir (with the Soviets paid to supply a suitable docking adapter module), but the retirement of Mir in 1997 meant that the visit of Atlantis in 1996 was the only such mission flown.
In addition to the Soviets supplying Alpha with a lifeboat, Moscow-based Fili KKP [2] proposed to sell to NASA one of the two unflown 77K modules, originally built for Mir, to act as a service module and space tug for the station. However, despite the fact that this would have allowed a man-tended capability for Alpha from the first launch, US officials were uncomfortable with putting a Soviet component on the station’s critical path, and so this proposal was rejected. However, the Soviets found a more receptive audience in Europe, with ESA proposing to share the costs of completing a 77K in exchange for hosting European experiments and the Soviets providing an annual crew slot for ESA astronauts to visit Mir-2. Similar in concept to ESA’s cancelled Man Tended Free Flyer, this Euro-Soviet Technological Complex (ESTC) would spend much of its time separated from the Mir-2 station, docking occasionally to return samples and have experiments swapped out. ESA had already agreed to provide the European Robotic Arm for the Soviet station, and were planning several astronaut visits to Mir in the coming years under the Euromir programme, making their commitment to Mir-2 a natural extension of the evolving Euro-Soviet relationship [3].
So it was that by late 1994 the shape of Mir-2 had begun to crystallise. The core of the station was once more to be the DOS-8 module originally built as Mir’s back-up, now launched into a 65 degree orbit. This would be supported by a number of small specialised modules that could be swapped out as needed. Unlike on Mir, these additional modules would not be self-contained spacecraft, but would draw their power and other utilities from a large central beam housing solar generators, radiators and engines. The initial DOS-8 core and the European lab would go up on either separate Proton or Energia-M launches, or together on a single Energia-M, with the rest of the components to be launched and assembled by Buran and Burya.
Authorisation to proceed with Mir-2 was formally given by presidential decree in January 1995. Work immediately got underway at the Fili KKP factory outside Moscow to refurbish the long-dormant DOS-8 and 77KSO [4] modules and fit them with the systems needed to turn them into the Mir-2 Base Block and ESTC respectively. However, just a few months later the entire project was put in doubt as the Soviet Financial Crisis hit.
With the advent of the Crisis, by June 1995 work on DOS-8 had come to an almost complete halt. Refurbishment of the ESTC (funded by ESA under a contract denominated in US dollars) continued at a reduced level, as did development of the Soyuz-ACRV for NASA, but the rest of the Mir-2 project was paused. In September 1995, in response to the crisis, the station underwent a final redesign to reduce as far as possible the number of expensive Energia and Energia-M launches. The shuttle-launched 37K-based lab modules would now be replaced by smaller, cheaper modules sharing a design with the pressurised compartments of the Progress M2 cargo vehicle. The node, lab and airlock modules would now all be launched by Zenit and ferried to the station by modified Progress M2 service modules, a considerably cheaper option than relying on the shuttles for a ride. The large central truss was still planned to be carried via shuttle in two separate flights, but the design left open the option for the sections to be launched on Energia-M, or split into smaller chunks and carried by Zenit. The initial DOS-8 core and the European lab would now go up on Proton. The orbital plane of the station was also changed, over European objections, to the same 51.6 degree inclination as Mir. This would increase the mass that could be launched to the station in a single go, hopefully reducing the number of flights that would be needed to keep the station supplied. It would also allow a postponement of plans to human-rate Zenit, which would have been necessary if the Soyuz spacecraft were to reach a 65 degree orbit with a full crew of three plus the heavy APAS-89 docking system. The cheap and reliable R-7-derived Soyuz rocket would therefore continue its long role as the Soviet Union’s primary crew launcher, alongside occasional shuttle visits that would temporarily boost the station’s crew to ten or more.
Assembly Begins
Work on DOS-8 re-started in February 1996 and proceeded relatively smoothly throughout the rest of the year. In December the module was handed over from Fili KKP to RKK Energia and shipped to Baikonur’s Site 2 to undergo final outfitting and tests prior to launch, which was now targeted for mid-1997. However, electrical testing conducted at the MIK 2B facility in April uncovered a number of serious defects that would postpone the launch date into 1998. Investigators eventually discovered that technicians working on the Energia-owned DOS-8’s power system had skipped important component-level testing as Fili prioritised work on their own ESTC for the dollar-paying Europeans over that of their Soviet colleagues. The investigation would eventually lead to criminal charges against several Fili mid-level managers, whilst many of the Moscow-based technicians found themselves sharing the punishment by being exiled to Baikonur for six months to fix the module on-site.
By March 1998 fitting out of DOS-8 had been completed and the module was moved from MIK 2B to Building 92-1 to undergo final preparations and integration. Fueling of its hypergolic propulsion system was carried out in the first week of April, after which the station module was installed under its fairing and mated with the Proton-K carrier rocket. The integrated stack was then rolled horizontally by rail car to Pad 24 at Site 81, where it was raised to vertical on 22nd April 1998. Two days later the Proton-K lit its engines and lifted the first module of the Soviet Union’s new space station to orbit.
With the initial operations and check-out showing no problems, the path was cleared for the first crewed mission to Mir-2. This would be Soyuz TMA-1 carrying cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Gennady Padalka, launched from Baikonur’s LC-1 on 5th June 1998. Although officially marking the first launch of the Soyuz TMA variant (where the “A” referred to the APAS-89 docking system), this spacecraft was virtually identical to the “Rescue Soyuz” spacecraft used for the Soyuz TM-16/Burya docking mission and held on the pad in case of emergency during Buran’s manned launches. Soyuz TMA-1 included some modernised avionics and other minor upgrades, but was otherwise the same reliable spaceship that had supported Mir-1 over the previous dozen years. This heritage meant that, in a departure from established Soviet practice, the new ship was to be manned on its first launch (although many observers attributed this decision more to the general shortage of funds than to confidence in the equipment).
Aside from proving the new Soyuz variant, the main objective of the Soyuz TMA-1 mission (forming the first part of Mir-2 EO-1) was to complete the on-orbit check-out of the Mir-2 Base Block and prepare for the upcoming assembly missions. To this end the space in Soyuz normally used for a third cosmonaut was filled with 85 kg of equipment and experiments that had not been ready for installation before DOS-8’s final preparations. Musabayev and Padalka soon got to work in their role as space handymen, powering-up and testing equipment, as well as making occasional field repairs - a role that had become wearyingly familiar to veterans of the last years of the Mir-1 space station.
The next visitor to the station was a Progress M2 cargo ship. Launched by Zenit from Baikonur, Progress M2 took advantage of that rocket’s greater throw-weight to carry an expanded pressurised cargo module, whilst the redesigned service module used common propellant tanks both for its own needs and to refuel Mir-2. This was the second mission for the new spacecraft, Progress M2-1 having docked with Mir-1 on a test flight in late 1997 before committing that station to its final journey. This new launch, designated Progress M2-SO1, saw the pressurised cargo module replaced with the first of Mir-2’s docking and airlock modules, SO-1 or “Pirs” (Pier) [5].
The launch proceeded without a hitch, as Zenit once more demonstrated the reliability that was helping to make it such a popular choice in the international commercial launch market. Two days after lift-off, on 5th July 1998, Progress M2-SO1 successfully docked at the Mir-2 Base Block’s aft port, beginning the long process of expanding the new station. Over the following week Musabayev and Padalka unloaded a tonne of equipment and provisions that had been shipped up with Pirs, taking special care to check out the two Orlan-DMA spacesuits that had been included in the manifest. Other tests involved a refueling of the Base Block’s propellant tanks by the Progress M2 service module via pipelines installed in Pirs, a capability that would be vital in keeping the station’s tanks topped up over its lifetime. With these tests completed, the Progress M2 service module was used to boost the station’s orbit before detaching from Pirs on 30th August and de-orbiting for a destructive re-entry over the Pacific.
Settling In
On 18th September 1998 Musabayev and Padalka were joined on the station by the crew of Soyuz TMA-2: Viktor Afanasyev, Valery Korzun, and Spanish guest cosmonaut Pedro Duque [6]. The relief crew became the first to dock at Pir’s aft APAS-89 docking port, and the new module would continue to feature prominently in the mission as it doubled as temporary sleeping quarters for Afanasyev and Korzun as the five crew members shared accommodations on the cramped station.
ESA astronaut Duque would spend his time on the station setting up long-term experiments that were planned to transfer to the ESTC module (since christened “Magellan” [7]) upon its anticipated launch the following year. Duque also conducted a number of television broadcasts for both European and Soviet TV networks as part of a broader outreach campaign. After a week aboard Mir-2, Duque joined Musabayev and Padalka as Soyuz TMA-1 undocked from the forward axial port and headed for a landing in the Kazakh SSR, formally marking the end of Mir-2 EO-1 and the start of EO-2.
Following a relocation of Soyuz TMA-2 to the axial Base Block port, EO-2 saw the first spacewalks of the Mir-2 era, with Afanasyev and Korzun making use of Pirs’ large airlock to install external experiments and test techniques for assembling truss structures. These latter involved opening both airlock doors so that a long frame could be assembly by the cosmonauts without them needing to leave the Pirs module, with the ends of the assembled beam protruding from each side of the module.
The most important addition to the station during EO-2 came in early January 1999, with the launch of Progress M2-USM1. This Zenit-launched mission heralded the arrival of the first of two planned Universal Docking Modules, nodes equipped with up to eight APAS-89 docking ports that would form the connecting hubs linking Mir-2s various modules together. USM-1, named “Yedinstvo” (Unity), was particularly important as its two lateral mid-point ports would be the attach points for the station’s central truss, the Science Power Platform (NEP), which would provide power and cooling services to the rest of the growing station.
With Yedinstvo successfully docked and unloaded, the crew of EO-2 began preparations for handing over to EO-3 at the end of January. This new crew consisted of Vasily Tsibliyev and Aleksandr Kaleri, joined in their Soyuz TMA-3 capsule by American “space tourist” Dennis Tito. Tito had paid for his flight as the world’s first “space tourist” through MirCorp, a private company that had been set up several years earlier with the aim of purchasing the Mir-1 station from the Soviet government upon its retirement. Although that deal never went through, MirCorp was able to arrange for private individuals to purchase a ride in the third seat on Soyuz flights to Mir-2, and so spend around a week in orbit [8].
Tito returned to Earth (twenty million dollars lighter, but otherwise unharmed) with Afanasyev and Korzun aboard Soyuz TMA-2, vacating Pir’s aft docking port. A few weeks later Tsibliyev and Kaleri would relocate their own Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft to Pirs, freeing up Yedinstvo’s axial port to support the next assembly mission: the long-awaited arrival of Buran at the station.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[1] IOTL The President was given four options: A1 (downsized, simplified Freedom using a Lockheed Bus1 propulsion module), A2 (the same as A1 but with specialised thrusters on the truss instead of Bus1), B (basically Freedom with the assembly sequence slightly re-jigged) or C (a monolithic can launched on a one-off Shuttle-C, similar in some respects to the station from
Eyes Turned Skyward, but without the truss). IOTL all those options were made redundant by the agreement to bring the Russians on-board, though A2 was the front runner. ITTL the President (or rather his advisors) gets the same set of options… and opt to invent a fifth “A3”, which can be considered the equivalent of OTL’s ISS “US Core Complete” (i.e. the bare minimum number of US components we can get away with and still meet our obligations to partners).
[2] The Fili Space Production Company (Fili KKP) is the result of a merger between the former KB Salyut (part of NPO Energia between 1981-1988) and the Khrunichev Machine-Building plant, both of which are located in the Moscow suburb of Fili. KB Salyut had previously been known as OKB-23, or the Fili branch of Chelomei’s OKB-52 bureau, with the Khrunichev Plant long having assigned to build OKB-23’s designs.
The merger also went ahead IOTL, as both KB Salyut and Khrunichev found themselves competing to sell the same product (the Proton rocket) to foreign customers. The merger IOTL created GKNPTs Khrunichev in 1993 as an independent company outside the authority of any government ministry or the Russian Space Agency. This special status allegedly came about due to the fact that President Yeltsin’s daughter worked for the company, in an uncanny echo of Nikita Khrushchev's patronage of OKB-52 due to Chelomei hiring his son.
ITTL as IOTL, the merged company is privatised in the early 1990s (aka “flogged off to its management for a criminally low price” as part of the policy of getting as many enterprises as possible off the state’s books to qualify for desperately needed IMF loans), but ITTL Fili KKP remains under the legal supervision of the All-Union Space Agency.
[3] ESA interest in joining Mir-2 is common with OTL, where the 1992 ESA ministerial meeting in Grenada approved work on the European Robotic Arm for Mir-2, a joint ESA-Russian spacesuit design, and explored options for the former
Columbus Man Tended Free Flyer to operate in conjunction with Mir-2. At the time it was seen as a hedge against uncertain US political commitment to Freedom, which the US Senate came within a single vote of cancelling in 1993.
IOTL the spacesuit and MTFF were cancelled outright, but the ERA is still planned to form part of the Russian Segment of the ISS, to be flown to the station with the much-delayed Nauka Multipurpose Lab Module. Like TTL’s ESTC, OTL’s Nauka is based upon a 77K module.
[4] IOTL, 77KSO became the Spekr module of Mir, launched in 1995 with US support and experiments. The module was famously rendered uninhabitable in the summer of 1997 when it was hit by Progress M-34 as a result of a money-saving experiment in manual remote piloting. ITTL the diversion of funding from Mir to Buran/Energia in the early ‘90s means the module is still sitting at the factory in Fili, alongside the hull of 77KSI (OTL’s Priroda).
[5] Note that, although the design is the same, this is not the same module as OTL’s Pirs.
That module was ITTL used for its intended purpose, as the SM docking module for orbiter 1.02 (Burya).
[6] IOTL Duque did not get his first spaceflight until 2003 aboard STS-95. Here he gets an early shot as part of the extended ESA-VKA “EuroMir” programme. In both timelines he was selected as an ESA astronaut in 1992. He is counted as the first Spanish astronaut, although in both timelines he is preceded by NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, who although born in Madrid is a naturalised citizen of the US.
[7] This means of course that the module shares a name with the famous Venus probe, but as Europe felt no shame in naming its navigation system “Galileo” I figure the allure of naming a space station module after a second famous European navigator was too compelling. ITTL the equivalent module on Alpha remains “Columbus”, as per OTL’s ISS module.
[8] MirCorp existed IOTL for much the same reasons, although it would be another firm, Space Adventures, that would ultimately give Tito his shot IOTL, flying to the ISS in 2001. ITTL the earlier demise of Mir-1, plus less involvement (and so opposition) from NASA (an OTL ISS partner, but nothing to do with TTL’s Mir-2), has moved up the timetable by several years.
IOTL it was MirCorp that paid for the mission that saw Aleksandr Kaleri fly to Mir with Sergei Zalyotin in 2000 to briefly re-activate the station. ITTL Kaleri’s participation is fully funded by the Soviet government.