CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA officials on Thursday refuted Russian claims that American astronauts were ordered to be less than hospitable to California financier Dennis Tito during his recent $20 million tourist trip to the International Space Station.

Whats more, one of the U.S. astronauts station flight engineer Jim Voss said the worlds first fare-paying space tourist posed no problems and was "very friendly" during his six days on the international outpost.

"If you moved a certain valve the wrong way, you could cause some very serious damage, maybe even death onboard. So its serious business being up here, and it requires training."
-- ISS Flight Engineer Jim Voss

"It was, you know, an interesting time having Mr. Tito aboard, and he did not cause any problems," Voss said in a space-to-ground interview. "I was real pleased with that. He was a nice gentleman -- very friendly, very outgoing, and it didnt cause us any serious problems."

In an ongoing war of words spawned by NASAs opposition to Titos flight, his two cosmonaut crewmates Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin claimed Tuesday that the maverick millionaire received an icy reception from Americans aboard the station.

Musabayev felt Voss and fellow American flight engineer Susan Helms had been instructed by NASA to "keep their distance" from Tito, who was flown to the station by the Russian Aviation and Space Agency despite opposition from all other project partners.

Baturin, meanwhile, bemoaned the fact that the Americans and their Russian station commander Yuri Usachev didnt have a warm dinner waiting for the crew, which ferried a new Soyuz lifeboat up to the outpost.

The cosmonauts also considered the absence of a traditional Russian welcome gift bread and salt as a slight to the Soyuz crew and Tito.

NASA station project officials said no offense was intended.

The absence of exuberance, they added, more likely was due to the fact that Usachev and his American colleagues were "dead tired" from a flurry of work and onboard difficulties that preceded the April 30 arrival of the Soyuz crew.

During the two weeks leading up to the taxi mission, the station crew:

• Maneuvered an older Soyuz lifeboat from one station port to another to make room for its replacement a job that called for the outpost to be prepared for a long-term evacuation in case a serious problem forced the crew to abandon ship and return to Earth during the move.
• Pack up almost a ton of trash and surplus equipment destined to be loaded aboard an Italian moving van and brought back to Earth by a crew aboard shuttle Atlantis.
• Prepare for a series of critical spacewalks aimed at erecting the stations new $600 million Canadian construction crane, which was delivered by the visiting shuttle crew on April 21.
• Scramble to recover the stations three main U.S. command-and-control computers, which failed during the midst of the shuttles eight-day stay at the outpost.
• Ready the station for the arrival of the Soyuz crew 16 hours after the shuttles April 29 departure.

"We basically tried to schedule the same type of hatch-opening welcome ceremony, and hatch-closing farewell ceremony that we always have," said NASA flight director John Curry.

"I will admit that during that period of time remembering that the shuttle undocked less than 24 hours before the docking of that [Soyuz taxi] mission they probably werent as ready to have a big ceremony and those kind of activities," he said.