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Oberg: Retire MIR With Honor
Washington, DC Sept. 22, 1997 - Longtime Russian space expert James Oberg is urging the U.S. space agency to cancel its current round of Shuttle-MIR astronaut visitations until the decay of Russian space programs, installations, and safety policies can be reversed, possibly with U.S. assistance. Without such changes, Oberg urged the Russian space program "retire MIR- with dignity and with honor for all that it has achieved." Oberg testified before the U.S. House of Representatives House Science Committee last week. Oberg's criticisms of the Russian space station - a station that he calls unsafe for either U.S. astronauts or Russian cosmonauts - are based not on a lack of commitment for flight safety on the part of the Russian government, but on his belief that the collapse of the Russian economic system has destroyed supplier relationships, created widespread economic hardship within Russian space facilities and design bureaus, and left a weakened space program simply unable to fulfill its commitments and promises. "The decay of government support for space activities has forced what's left of their infrastructure to stretch scarce resources, " he told the Congress last Thursday. "Even top Russian space experts attribute recent mishaps on MIR to the overall decline of the Russian space industry." Oberg cited case after case of specific examples of how the Russian program was slipping further and further behind its operational pledges and stability. But while the Congress listened to Oberg's cogent case for MIR cutbacks, NASA officials weren't in that number. The space agency believes that its reputation and that of the political structure of the future International Space Station Alpha program rests on completing the remainder of the US-Russian joint MIR program, with as little disturbance to the "partnership" as possible. While the political show on Capitol Hill dragged on last week, another spectacle was unfolding quietly, with much less fanfare: the new linkage of U.S. support for MIR with Russian pledges of participation in the Alpha program. Russian space officials confronted NASA last week with a blunt threat: drop the MIR visits, and Russia may drop its commitments to the International Station. That threat may form the basis of the next round of political potboilers over MIR: stay tuned. .. CommunityEmail This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Space
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