MOSCOW -- Mir's smooth deorbit and disposal into the Pacific drew mixed reactions in Russia on Friday, with two former cosmonauts and a parliament member calling for the ouster of their country's space chief.

At the same time, Russia's prime minister publicly praised Russian space officials and engineers for the trouble-free destruction of Mir, a symbol of the country's once-dominant human spaceflight program.

Retired cosmonauts Vitaly Sevastyanov and Svetlana Savitskaya joined with another deputy of the lower chamber's largest faction -- the Communists -- to demand that President Vladimir Putin immediately sack director general of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Yuri Koptev, over the deorbiting of Mir.

The 15-year-old station, which plunged into the Pacific Ocean early Friday, could have continued its flight at least until 2002 if the federal government had not made a "political decision" to sink the station, the trio wrote in a draft resolution that they plan to submit to the state Duma for consideration.

Koptev "misled" the government on the possibility of extending Mir's life, and thus he should bear personal responsibility for its "early liquidation" and step down from his post, according to the draft of the resolution obtained by SPACE.com.

The draft said Mir should have been kept in orbit as U.S. authorities plan to "drastically cut" funding of the International Space Station (ISS), in which Russia participates with the U.S. and other nations.

The resolution ends with a call for the president and government to have Russia participate in the ISS project "on a commercial basis" while diverting the state's ISS funds to construction of another Russian station.

Putin, who was attending a European Union summit in Sweden, and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov chose to ignore the appeal of Duma's angry champions of the perished station.

Instead, the prime minister praised Mission Control Center (MCC) personnel for the smooth reentry.

"Kasyanov has expressed satisfaction that the operation went normally...and in accordance with the deadline set by the government," the prime minister's press secretary Tatyana Razbash told reporters in Moscow on March 23.

A Moscow-based Mir support foundation, of which Savitskaya is a senior member, earlier also had called upon Russians to observe a minute of silence at 10 a.m. local time.

The foundation also appealed to Moscow's leading radio stations to observe this minute of silence while calling on drivers across Russia to honk their horns to commemorate the death of Russia's sovereign space exploration program.

None of five radio stations monitored by SPACE.com observed the minute of silence and no cars honked as they roared past a turn leading to MCC's headquarters in Korolyov.

Some officials interviewed by MCC said it was sad to see Mir go, but most of them said they hope ISS will help to assuage the loss by keeping them busy in years too come. Others, however, said they fear losing their jobs at MCC and would like to have seen Mir remain in orbit.

Ordinary Muscovites also didn't express much grief and shock for the station, though a recent opinion poll showed only 25 percent supported the government's decision to sink Mir.

"I'm actually surprised that all these engineers kept this station alive for so many years with government giving only pennies," said Natalya, a 26-year old advertising manager, who refused to give her last name.

"Younger generations would have hardly worked like them -- free of charge [and] just on sheer enthusiasm," she said.

Natalya said she started following developments around Mir only after the government started publicly floating the idea of sinking the station in 1998.

"Before that, it was sort of ordinary news to hear that some cosmonauts got launched to space...it was almost like hearing farm news," she said.