Today, the International Space Station (ISS) is two years behind schedule and still unmanned, a gobbler of cash that has become a source of political friction between its main partners.

NASA managers fly to Moscow for two days of talks with the Russian Space Agency on Thursday, desperately hoping the Russians will haul the troubled venture back on course.

"We are at the moment of truth," NASA administrator Dan Goldin warned last weekend.

"To say we are frustrated and disappointed is an understatement... The Russians have got to understand what the focus is here, and that is their commitment to the station. It is up to the Russians to demonstrate that."

Of unprecedented scale, the ISS will require nearly four dozen flights to take more than 100 units aloft, for slotting together by remote control or perilous walks in space.

The complex is designed to comprise huge solar arrays, six laboratories and living quarters for a crew of up to seven, who will live and work in space for between three and six months at a time.

The latest rescheduled goal is to complete the scheme by November 2004.

But only two modules have been put together: the Russian control unit Zarya and the US module Unity, both launched and connected in late 1998.

The next piece -- a Russian-built service module called Zvezda -- should have been launched in April 1998. A first US-Russian crew is, theoretically, scheduled to deploy next month.

But their mission has been put on hold after Zvezda's launcher, the Soviet workhouse of space, the Proton, blew up on two other missions last year.

About the size of a city bus, Zvezda comprises an all-important propulsion system to keep the ISS safely in orbit, 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the Earth, as well as accommodation for the station's initial three-person crew.

The Moscow talks will assess whether the Russians can guarantee to meet a deadline sketched by RKK Energya, the company tasked with assembling Zvezda, to launch the unit "in the middle or end of summer."

Washington has stoked pressure on the Russians, threatening to send up a rival propulsion unit, initially built for the US Navy, if Zvezda's delays imperil the assembly schedule.

But US hackles have also been raised by the announcement that the moribund Russian space station Mir will be revived by a new crew at the end of March.

Congress, exercising tight control over the ISS, is bound to fear that Russia has put the scheme on the back burner or will divert personnel and launchers to sustain its own station, said David Baker, editor of the specialist journal Jane's Space Directory.

"The reinterest in Mir is really causing the wrong signals to go out to Washington," Baker said.

Worse may be in store. Rumours abound within the space community that some of the 800 million dollars handed by the US to help the cash-strapped Russians build and launch their share of the ISS has been siphoned off.

"There's a lot of talk about million-dollar dachas outside Moscow," said one expert, adding however that the beneficiaries were unlikely to be Russian scientists and engineers, "who have achieved miracles in diabolical conditions."

A US Congress report in 1998 put the cost of building and operating the station for 10 years at 95 billion dollars -- 20 percent more than estimates in 1995 -- of which the United States will shoulder by far the biggest burden.

Other than Russia and the United States, the ISS members are Canada, Japan, 11 members of the European Space Agency (ESA), which are contributing several modules, plus Brazil, which is a payload participant.

Paul Murdin, an administrator at the British National Space Centre, said unmanned missions could do the same research tasks as the ISS at just a fraction of the cost.

The station may become a "white elephant" circling the globe, he feared.

"A white elephant was a present of the King of Siam, which was given to someone he didn't like. It was sacred, so the recipient couldn't get rid of it.

"It didn't do a stroke of work, ate a lot of food -- and usually bankrupted the person it was given to."

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Satellite Launch To Boost DTH In India
Calcutta, India (SPX) Dec 28, 2005
The successful launch Thursday of India's heaviest satellite from spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana may have boosted the country's space research efforts to yet another level, but it has also lifted the spirits of at least three Direct-To-Home televisions broadcasters, one of which has been waiting for years to launch its services in India.