NASA via Reuters

The International Space Station is photographed from Atlantis during the last shuttle mission.

Now that the space shuttle fleet is out of service, the Russians are in charge when it comes to getting people to the International Space Station and back — so when a Russian space official talks about sinking the station as early as 2020, that may sound ominous to some ears.

In reality, it's not that big a deal: Vitaly Davydov, deputy director of Russia's Federal Space Agency, was simply stating current policy when he told TV interviewers that the station would be in use until 2020 or so, and that it would have to be taken out of orbit when it's obsolete.

The interview from "Good Morning Russia" ("Utro Rossii") caused a stir when a Russian-language transcript turned up on the space agency's website, but don't panic: If anything, the International Space Station will be in operation well after 2020. Russia, NASA and the other partners in the 16-nation venture are looking into extending the station's lifetime to 2028 — that is, if they can verify that its components will still be in working order that far into the future.

By 2028, still more space stations will be in orbit — almost certainly including the space bases currently being planned for launch as early as 2015 by private companies such as Bigelow Aerospace.

A close reading of the transcript shows that Davydov's comments, made during an interview focusing on last week's retirement of the shuttle fleet, are in line with the space station effort's current plans:

Q: Concerning the International Space Station, what's its fate? How long will it exist?

A: For now we've agreed with our partners that the station will be used until around 2020.

Q: And how long was it due to last?

A: Originally, 15 years.

Q: It's already been 13 years.

A: It's been 13 years since 1998, but the station's potential is much greater. I recall that when we flew Mir, we also thought it wouldn't be around all that long, but it was in operation for 15 years. [The first part of Russia's Mir space station was launched in 1986, and the complex was deorbited in 2001.]

Q: And then what happens to the International Space Station?

A: After the station completes its existence, we will be forced to sink it. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, it's too heavy an object. It can leave behind lots of junk.

Q: Then will we build a new one?

A: There are a few alternatives. Of course, it's possible that [another] station wouldn't be created, but that we'd immediately try to turn our attention to the moon, to Mars. ...

Until a couple of years ago, the space station partners were working on the assumption that the 500-ton space station would have to be shut down and taken out of orbit in 2016. At the time, the partners were working out a plan that would put the station down in the Pacific just five or six years after its completion. But then the Obama White House revised NASA's space vision to extend the station's lifetime to at least 2020, providing an orbital testbed for future exploration.

NASA will have to rely on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the space station for the next few years, while commercial ventures develop space taxis for NASA's future use. NASA also plans to move ahead with the development of an Orion exploration spaceship and a heavy-lift launch system for going beyond Earth orbit.

In the "Good Morning Russia" interview, Davydov speculated that a future space station could be built as a platform for trips to the moon or Mars. And he noted that Russia, like the United States, was working on a new type of spaceflight system that will have "reusable elements on a level considerably higher than today's."

"We calculate that after 2015 we will also begin to test a qualitatively new ship," Davydov said.

He was asked which country would be the first to come out with a new spaceship for exploration. "Let us compete," Davydov answered.

Update for 2 p.m. ET: Space.com's Leonard David laid out the plan for the International Space Station's eventual disposal in this article last year. Russia's Progress cargo ships would have to be modified in order to push the space station on a course to come down in the Pacific (or give the station an orbital boost in case more time is needed to execute the de-crewing and deorbiting plan). A contingency plan for deorbiting the space station has to be ready well before 2020, just in case a catastrophic event requires the abandonment and safe disposal of the football-field-sized complex.  

More about the future of spaceflight:

• Russians say 'it's our space age now'
• Is America's space effort dying or evolving?
• Space station takes center stage
• Ten players in the commercial space race

Txchnologist is running a thoughtful series of reports about the future of spaceflight this week, including an analysis from our own James Oberg, NBC News' space analyst. Check out the selection so far:

• Why is NASA caving in to the Russians on the ISS?
• Q&A with 'Spacesuit' author on final-frontier fashions
• The top 10 astronauts of all time

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA file

A Russian Soyuz craft leaves the International Space Station with three crew members in November 2010.

Russian space officials are hailing the end of the space shuttle era as the beginning of the "Soyuz epoch." For at least the next few years, Russian Soyuz craft will serve as the only way to get back and forth from the International Space Station, and NASA will be paying up to $63 million a seat for the ride.

Russian cosmonauts will also make up half of the space station's crews from here on out, even though NASA has paid most of the estimated $100 billion cost of construction.

The Soyuz epoch was heralded on Thursday by the Russian Federal Space Agency in a news release that also paid tribute to the shuttle era. The Russian-language report says that the shuttle fleet's retirement marks a "new stage in the International Space Station program, in which the Russian Soyuz spaceships have no backups."

The Russian space agency said it would be 2016 at the earliest before any other crew-capable spaceships are available for trips to the International Space Station. That's roughly what NASA is saying as well: Its current timetable calls for commercial space taxis such as the SpaceX Dragon, the Boeing CST-100, the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser or Blue Origin's orbital space vehicle to be ready for use sometime in the middle of the decade. 

Here's the way the Russians see the road ahead:

"For a 30-year period, the shuttles ensured not only access into space for humans, but also delivery into orbit of the large-scale payloads without which the building of the International Space Station would hardly have been possible. Humanity is indebted to the American ships for their role in the mastery of space.

"But really, why are the comfortable and beautiful 'birds' departing, while the 'old' Russian Soyuz spacecraft, as they are called by foreign media, are remaining?

"The answer is simple: reliability, to say nothing of profitability.

"The term 'old' has nothing in common with the reality. Soyuzes are constantly being modernized. Over the next year, newly modified ships equipped with digital systems will fly. The second Soyuz in the TMA-M series is currently undergoing flight design tests.

"Furthermore, even if there's an alternative to Russia's manned Soyuz spaceships in the next few years, it will take a lot of time to prove that the new ship will provide sufficient safety for human spaceflight.

"In the world of human spaceflight, today marks the beginning of the Soyuz epoch — the epoch of reliability."

NBC News space analyst James Oberg pointed out the announcement in an email. "Didn't take them long to start crowing, did it?" he wrote. "What happens next, I wonder?"

The space station crew composition already reflects an arrangement that ensures the Russians will never be outnumbered in orbit. The agreement for the 16-nation project calls for three crew members on each six-person expedition to come from the Russian space effort, with the other three representing the U.S. On-Orbit Segment, or USOS. That's shorthand for NASA plus the other partners, such as Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency. The current crew for Expedition 28, for example, includes three Russians, two Americans and a Japanese astronaut.

Until the commercial space taxis are ready, astronauts will have to fly to the station and back aboard the Soyuz craft, which are exempt from NASA's human-rating requirements. The current fare comes out to $48 million per seat, but NASA's agreements with the Russians call for that figure to rise to $51 million next year, $55.8 million for 2013-2014, and $62.7 million for 2014-2015.

'Full service' from Russia
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has pointed out repeatedly that the fare includes not only the ride itself, but also the required training at Russia's Star City cosmonaut complex. "It's not like a bus ticket or an airplane ticket," The Huntsville Times recently quoted Bolden as saying. "You used to be able to go into a gas station and get full service. ... We get full service from the Russians, old-time full service."

The way it works is that a Soyuz is sent up from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a crew of three. That craft serves as the emergency lifeboat for the crew members until their six-month tour of duty is over and it's time to return to Earth. Then the Soyuz provides the ride home ... well, at least home to the Kazakh steppes and on to Moscow. The crew rotations are staggered by roughly three months, so one three-person Soyuz crew overlaps with another during the course of a 6-month-long expedition. Because the shuttles will no longer fly to the station, the crew count will vary between three and six, far less than the 13 who were on board during peak times in the shuttle era.

It's true that launching a Soyuz is considerably cheaper than launching a shuttle (which came out to $1 billion to $1.5 billion per mission). But the shuttle had much higher payload-carrying capability — up to 25 tons in the cargo bay. In comparison, the cargo capacity is 2.5 tons for Russia's unmanned Progress ship, 6 tons for Japan's HTV cargo carrier, 8 tons for Europe's expendable ATV, and 6 tons for SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule.

When it comes to flying astronauts, NASA is counting on the commercial taxis to outdo the Russians. "We believe we can come in at less than the cost to the Russians," one of the would-be taxi operators, Sierra Nevada's Mark Sirangelo, told me earlier this month. "We think substantially less."

And because the taxis are simpler than the shuttle, NASA expects them to improve on the shuttle fleet's safety record. Will they be better than the Soyuz? Oberg thinks the Soyuzes may be riskier than the Russians let on, but what do you think? Feel free to chime in with your comments below.

More about the future space race:

• Powerwall: Goodbye, shuttle ... Hello, Soyuz
• The shape of space shots to come
• Russia relishes chances created by shuttle's end
• Is America's space effort dying or evolving?
• Gallery: Ten players in the commercial space race

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.