CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Russian Space officials may be ready to wage a high-level transoceanic telephone battle with NASA Friday over plans to launch U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito to the International Space Station, but apparently there will be no answer at the other end.
That was the indication here at Kennedy Space Center Thursday as NASAs top brass said they have no intention of taking part in a "heads-of-agencies" teleconference the Russians expect to have with their Western counterparts.
"I dont believe there will be a phone call tomorrow," NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin tersely told reporters when asked about the teleconference.
Senior Russian space officials convened in Moscow Thursday to discuss plans to counter NASA objections to the launch of Tito on an April 28 Soyuz taxi flight to the international outpost.
Yuri Koptev, director general of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, went so far as to draft a list of station-related complaints that he planned to bring up during the teleconference, which presumably was supposed to include the heads of various agencies involved in the project.
Koptev also planned to re-assert his agencys determination to launch Tito, who is paying the Russians an estimated $20 million for a 10-day round trip to the outpost.
NASA and its international partners in both Europe and Canada, meanwhile, continue to object to Russian plans to launch the wealthy U.S. investment manager, arguing that he lacks the proper training and may pose a safety risk during a busy assembly period at the outpost.
The Western station partners also have bristled at what they consider a unilateral Russian decision to launch Tito, despite objections from the other agencies involved in the project.
"Let me just simply say safety is our number-one objective. Respect among the partners is part of safety," Goldin said.
The NASA chief, however, indicated that lower-level project managers would continue discussions.
"We are very systematically working at a professional level, and I expect before the launch of Mr. Tito, all these issues will resolved," Goldin said. "Itll be a non-issue, a non-problem, and were going to get on with the program, and beyond that, I have nothing else to say."
Tito, meanwhile, returned to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow Thursday after a three-day trip to Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where he and crewmates Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin checked out their Soyuz spacecraft.
"Everything went fine," Baturin told SPACE.com. "The spacecraft is perfect. Tito was extremely excited to see the real 'flyable spacecraft that will deliver him to the station."
Added Musabayev: "After we had seen Tito in the Soyuz spacecraft, we got even more confident that our flight will be a total success."
SPACE.com Moscow Contributing Correspondent Yuri Karash contributed to this story.
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