“This,” Ann said, rising from her seat, going to the screen at the front of the Situation Room, and pointing at a small triangular-shaped object on the screen. “Freeze that,” she ordered, and the computer responded by pausing the live feed. “That, Mr. President, if I’m not mistaken, is a Soviet-era Elektron spaceplane.”
“The Russians have a spaceplane, like the one I flew in?” President Phoenix asked incredulously.
“It’s more akin to a small space shuttle, sir,” Ann explained, “in that it’s carried atop a booster, and then reenters the atmosphere and glides unpowered to a runway. Although it’s smaller than the shuttle and carries only one cosmonaut, its payload is almost twice that of our S-19 spaceplanes, about fifteen thousand pounds. They were armed with guided missiles, specifically designed to hunt down and destroy American satellites and Silver Tower. The plane hasn’t been seen since the Soviet union collapsed. The Soviets said they were going to build hundreds of them. Maybe they did.” Ann paused, distracted by painful memories of decades past. “I was aboard Armstrong Space Station when the Soviets attacked with three of those bastards. They almost took us out.”
“Did we know they were going to launch a spaceplane, General?” the president asked.
“Not exactly, sir,” Air Force General George Sandstein, commander of Air Force Space Command and deputy commander for space of U.S. Strategic Command, replied. “About three days ago we received a notification of a launch from Plesetsk Cosmodrome Launch Site 41 of a Soyuz-U rocket with an unmanned Progress payload to assist in the ROS de-mating process, sir. Nothing was mentioned about a spaceplane. We tracked the payload and determined it was indeed going into orbit and on course to rendezvous with the ISS, so we classified it as a routine mission.”
“Isn’t it unusual for the Russians to use Plesetsk instead of Baikonur, General?” Ann asked.
“Yes, ma’am—Plesetsk was almost abandoned after the Russians made a deal with Kazakhstan for the continued use of Baikonur,” Sandstein replied. “Plesetsk was mostly used for intercontinental-ballistic-missile tests and other light and medium military projects—” Sandstein stopped, his eyes widened with shock, then he said, “Including the Elektron spaceplane and BOR-5 Buran test articles.”
“Buran?” the president asked.
“The Soviets’ copy of the space shuttle, sir,” Ann said. “Buran was designed from the start as a military program, so test launches of the subscale test articles were from Plesetsk, which is well inside Russia instead of Kazakhstan. The Buran spaceplane itself made only one launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome before the collapse of the Soviet union , but the mission was highly successful—a completely autonomous unmanned launch, orbit, reentry, and landing. Five Burans were built; one was destroyed, and three were in various states of completion.”
“If the Russians are launching spaceplanes again, this could be the start of a new Russian initiative to push back into space,” Glenbrook said. “They have the ROS, and it’s not going to be attached to a Western space station anymore, so they can do what they want without a lot of close observation. If they are starting to fly Elektrons, they might be gearing up in many more areas, all related to building up their own capabilities as well as countering our own.”
“An arms race in space,” the president said. “Just what we need right now. Aren’t we required to notify the Russians if we’re going to launch a spaceplane into orbit?”
“Yes, sir, and we do, each and every time,” Sandstein replied. “Date and time of launch, initial orbital path, destination, purpose, payload, and date and time of return.”
“We give them all that?”
“Our spaceplanes are much more than orbital spacecraft, sir,” Sandstein explained. “Their flight paths are much more flexible than a launch from an Earth launch pad, as you yourself experienced. To avoid conflict, we agreed to give them information on each flight so they could monitor the flight and react to any unexplained diversions.”
“So the Russians knew I was flying in the spaceplane?”
“We don’t give them that much detail, sir,” Sandstein said with a hint of a smile.
“So we should be getting the same information on the Russian spaceplanes, correct?”
“If we want to reveal that we know about it, sir,” Ann said. “It might be better if we didn’t reveal that we know about Elektron right now. We can assume that they know, but we don’t have to reveal all we know about their activities. Silence is golden.”
President Phoenix nodded—now that the discussion was beginning to move from the military into the geopolitical arena, he needed a different mix of advisers. “What can the Russians do with that section of the space station?”