Posted 10/01/2007 05:26:00 PM by Douglas

That's a pretty sweet space station we had there for a while. Who ever is the last one out, don't forget to turn out the lights.

Partners in the international space station are arguing about when to shut it even though the orbital platform, billed as the most successful joint space endeavour, is not fully assembled.

The United States insists it will pull out of the station at the end of 2015 while Russia wants its life prolonged, said European Space Agency (ESA) chief Jean-Jacques Dordain at an astronautics congress in Hyderabad, southern India.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin has told space station partners that the US agency has no plans for "utilisation and exploitation" of the science research lab for more than five years after it is completed, Dordain said.

"ESA is not prepared to pay NASA's share when NASA has left the space station," Dordain told reporters Tuesday night on the sidelines of the space summit.

"If NASA is staying, we are ready to follow," he added. "If NASA is quitting, I shall not propose to ESA to pay part of the cost that NASA is covering today."

So if NASA is going to dump in after assembly complete with no science budget, why bother completing it? The next vehicle is on the books. What are they waiting for?