A second home in Russia for American astronauts

Over at the New York Times, John Schwartz has a new installment in a series of pieces about current cooperation between Russia and America in space exploration:

Star City has become an important second home for Americans working with their Russian counterparts, and it is about to become more important still. During the five-year gap after NASA shuts down the space shuttle program in 2010 and the next generation of spacecraft makes its debut by 2015, Russia will have the only ride for humans to the station.

The gap, which was planned by the Bush administration to create the next generation of American spacecraft without significantly increasing NASA’s budget, is controversial. But it is also all but inevitable, because much of the work to shut down the shuttles is under way, and the path to the new Constellation craft would be hard to compress even with additional financing.

Those who work side by side with their Russian counterparts say that strong relationships and mutual respect have resulted from the many years of collaboration. And they say that whatever the broader geopolitical concerns about relying on Russia for space transportation during the five years when the United States cannot get to the space station on its own rockets, they believe that the multinational partnership that built the station will hold.

For U.S. Astronauts, a Russian Second Home. See these related pieces in the series: One Way Up: U.S. Space Plan Relies on Russia, and Russia Leads Way in Space Tourism With Paid Trips Into Orbit.

Image: James Hill for The New York Times. "Cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov and astronaut Mike Fincke took part in a simulation exercise at a training center in Star City."

[#1 posted by jahknow , October 15, 2008 10:22 AM]

"Open the pod bay doors, Yuri."

[#2 posted by Jack , October 15, 2008 11:02 AM]

In America, you send monkeys into space.
In Russia, we send dogs into space.
What a country!

[#3 posted by joe blough , October 15, 2008 11:41 AM]

this is so great. as a longtime fan of the soviet space program its great to be able to see this stuff from the inside. the nasa channel was regularly carrying the soyuz-tm launches, complete with in-capsule video, while the shuttle was grounded.

also the nasa archives have a lot of great still photographs of soyuz launches, thanks to the shuttle grounding.

[#4 posted by Editz , October 15, 2008 12:32 PM]

Some nice photos here:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_baikonur_cosmodrome.html

[#5 posted by djn , October 15, 2008 1:59 PM]

I've always been impressed with the russian space program. NASA gives the impression that every launch is a high-tech triumph of technology over nature [1], while the russian launches feel much more mundane - and that's a good thing, when you want to do a lot of them.

[1] Which it of course is - misunderstand me right.

[#6 posted by backlikeclap , October 15, 2008 3:36 PM]

Just chiming in to say that I love this picture! Fantastic!

[#7 posted by brandonwardlaw , October 15, 2008 9:11 PM]

Star City stole my girlfriend from me during the summer of 7th grade. She went to live with her dad there for a while :(

Alas, that was many moons ago...

[#8 posted by Anonymous , October 16, 2008 3:34 AM]

If i put on my conspiracy hat ... imagine a scenario where Putin decides to make a hostile takeover of the ISS ... there wouldn't be anything the US could do to stop it. He could make up an excuse that the US wasn't paying their share of the bills and therefore he was taking possesion of the ISS.