Posted
12/29/2004 03:26:00 PM
by Douglas
The Russian Space Agency is getting a little uppity, and suffeirng from some short term memory
loss.Russian Space Agency said on Tuesday it will stop giving free space trips to U.S. astronauts. The agency chief Anatoly Perminov quoted by Reiters said they “will put U.S. astronauts into orbit only on a commercial basis” from 2006.
Russia has been servicing the International Space Station alone for almost two years since the crash of the U.S. Columbia shuttle. The United States has often funded Russian cosmonauts’ trips to the station on its shuttles and since the tragedy Russia has done the same for U.S. astronauts.
How soon they forget the good old days. When NASA funded the last portion of the Mir Program, or when they contracted Boeing to totally fund the construction of the FGB portion of the ISS becuase they ran out of money.