There may
be questions on Earth over which food and bathrooms the multi-national crew of
the International Space Station can use, but the rule in orbit is share and
share alike, an astronaut said Wednesday.
NASA
astronaut Michael Barratt said that each of the space station's American,
Russian and Japanese crewmembers has their own private sleeping quarters, but
everything else is open to all.
"Other than
that, the rest of this big space station is pretty much communal," Barratt, who
launched
to the station last week, told reporters Wednesday via a video link from
the orbiting laboratory.
Barratt's
comments come after recent reports from Russia that morale aboard the space
station is lowered by terrestrial bickering over which food, space toilets and
other facilities U.S., Russian and other international astronauts can and can't
use.
In an
interview with Russian language newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the space
station's newest cosmonaut commander Gennady Padalka reportedly lamented
restrictions that prevented Russian cosmonauts from eating food or using gear
made by the U.S. or the 14 other partner nations involved in the $100
billion space station project.
"What
is going on has an adverse effect on our work," Padalka told Novaya
Gazeta, according an Associated Press story published
Monday.
Padalka
reportedly attributed the problem to a 2003 decision by Russia's Federal Space
Agency to charge other agencies for the use of its resources on the station. He
arrived at the space station on Saturday with Barratt and space
tourist Charles Simonyi, and will command the outpost's crew for the next
six months.
"Cosmonauts
are above the ongoing squabble, no matter what officials decide," Padalka told
the newspaper, according to the AP wire story. "We are grown-up,
well-educated and good-mannered people and can use our own brains to create
normal relationship. It's politicians and bureaucrats who can't reach
agreement, not us, cosmonauts and astronauts."
Padalka
reportedly used back-and-forth decisions over whether he could use a new
American exercise machine to illustrate his point in the Novaya Gazeta,
but did not comment during Wednesday's video link on how resources are used
aboard the station.
Barratt
stressed that aboard the orbiting laboratory, everyone pitches in each of the
space station's different modules.
The station
is made up of a series of connected modules built by the U.S., Russia, Europe
and Japan. It is currently home to two Russian cosmonauts, two American
astronauts, a Japanese astronaut and an American space tourist.
"I would
say that with the exception of your small, personal space, it's pretty much a
group effort," Barratt said.
Padalka and
Barratt joined Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who was already aboard the
station, when they arrived last week to begin the
outpost's Expedition 19 mission. Wakata arrived at the station earlier this
month aboard NASA's shuttle Discovery to join the outpost's Expedition 18 crew —
NASA astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.
Fincke and
Lonchakov are due to return to Earth with space tourist Simonyi next week. Simonyi,
the world's first repeat space tourist, is paying about $35 million for his
second trip to the station under an agreement between Russia's space agency and
the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures. He last visited the station in April
2007.
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