Russia's Mir space station is at another crossroads, as its Western backers race against time to come up with enough funding to keep the outpost in orbit next year.

The board of directors at MirCorp, a Netherlands-based company leasing the station from Russia's RKK Energia, made a decision on Tuesday to significantly streamline its original plans for piloted missions to Mir next year.

A shortage of funds has made MirCorp opt for the minimum 14-day expedition to the Russian space station in February 2001. Dennis Tito, an American businessman who earlier this year booked a flight to Mir, will largely finance the mission.

The original plan called for a long-term Russian crew of two professional cosmonauts to go to Mir at the beginning of next year. Tito would then travel to the orbital outpost with their replacement crew and return home with the first -- who by that time would have logged several months in orbit. The two-member replacement crew would remain on Mir for another long-duration mission.

MirCorp representatives acknowledged today that although the company raised $40 million over the last several months it was not enough to finance the two-crew scenario.

"You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out that it costs more then $40 million to keep a space station in orbit," Andrew Eddy, senior vice president at MirCorp said.

MirCorp had also reduced the duration of a single mission from three or four months to only two weeks. "We don't have enough time to train Tito to fly for several months and he is not interested in doing that," Eddy told SPACE.com.

RKK Energia would need to allocate two Progress cargo ships to deorbit Mir safely. The first spacecraft would have to refuel the station's core module, so it can maintain its position in space, while the second ship would carry the propellant for the final deorbiting burn.

According to Grigoriev, if enough funds to keep Mir in orbit are not found within the next few months, the station will be directed into the Earth's atmosphere around February 2001. "We'd like to make 15 years in orbit," Grigoriev said. The Mir's core module was launched on February 20, 1986.

Since the Russian government stopped financing Mir operations last year, RKK Energia managers said they did not have the resources to deorbit the complex safely. During space hearings held by the Russian Duma (Parliament) on Monday, RKK Energia's Designer General Yuri Semenov warned that unless the government allocates 600 million rubles to the company, Mir could uncontrollably reenter Earth's atmosphere.

Despite this dark prognosis, MirCorp representatives are still optimistic about the prospects of finding new partners and investors who would allow yet another crew to be sent to Mir later in 2001.

"It is a race against the clock, because it is necessary to continue investing money into Mir," Eddy said " We need to bring in a new investor sometime later this year, and we are on track doing that."

Several Western businessmen started MirCorp earlier this year, saving the Russian space station from seemingly inevitable reentry. The first privately financed crew returned from Mir in June after an almost three-month mission aboard the station.