SPACE.com -- Cosmonauts Told to Resume Training, Station"s First Skipper Comments

The Soyuz rocket used to launch the Expedition One crew to the ISS on Oct. 31, 2000.

Click to enlarge.

Astronaut Norm Thagard becomes the first American to ride a Russian rocket during this March 1995 launch to Mir.

Click to enlarge.

Russians Refuse NASA Training Without Tito

Koptev: Tito Will Fly "Regardless" of NASA

Goldin, Koptev at Odds on Tito Flight

Tito"s Spring Flight to Space Station Hits Major Snag


	Cosmonauts Told to Resume Training, Station"s First Skipper Comments By Jim Banke Senior Producer, posted: 05:00 am ET 20 March 2001

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- New marching orders to cooperate and resume work are on their way this morning from Moscow to the Russian cosmonauts in Houston who staged a Texas standoff with NASA officials on Monday.

The drama began when cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin, along with a backup crew, arrived at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for training on Space Station Alpha systems, but then refused to participate when it became clear their crewmate -- American businessman Dennis Tito -- would not be allowed to participate.

According to the Russian Interfax news agency, the cosmonauts will be told when they wake up this morning to report for training at JSC as planned and agreed to by the Russian and U.S. space agencies.

But that still leaves open the question of whether or not Tito will be allowed to join his cosmonaut colleagues in their training for a Soyuz taxi flight to the space station in late April.[uplink]

Tito is paying the Russian space agency as much as $20 million for the opportunity to sit in the open third seat of the Soyuz capsule and ride with on the one-week-long space mission. NASA and other partners involved in the station project have objected to the idea, saying they need more time to put in place proper procedures and training requirements.

NASA plans a press conference on this topic for Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the station's first skipper weighed in with his thoughts from aboard shuttle Discovery during a space-to-ground interview with news media early Tuesday.

"I think flying people such as Mr. Tito is a good idea, but I think NASA is also right in saying that they need time to work with him and make sure that he's ready," said Expedition One commander Bill Shepherd, who has been in space with cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko since Oct. 31.

"Our crew trained for over four years to get ready for our flight," Shepherd said. "It's not something that you can enter into lightly."

The former Navy SEAL diplomatically avoided the notion, suggested in a question, that this flap over Tito is a sign NASA's partnership with Russia is weak or lacks trust.

"I think the station is a lot more complex than just the Russian pieces of it, and I think that's part of why the NASA managers are having this discussion. I don't think the whole question is over yet, and I'm going to leave it to the folks at Johnson [Space Center] in the space station program office to really say how they are going to get Mr. Tito ready."