ARTICLES MODERN

This place used to be no place, a secret military base northeast of Moscow does not appear on the map. Soviet cosmonaut training in the fight against the highest battlefield of the Cold War: Space.
However, these days, Star City is the place of the United States, the hard-won orbits partnership with Russia, where astronauts trained to fly on the International Space Station. Star City for two years and will be the only place where the astronauts to come from any country to the international space station.
The difference is in the future: in 2010, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shut down the shuttle program by 2015, when a new generation of spacecraft is scheduled for the United States, NASA is expected to no one and will depend on the flight to Russia 1000 Station billion U.S. dollars, to buy seats in the Union as a spacecraft in space tourists to do.

As NASA celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, the time interval in the Bush administration’s plan to retire the space shuttle of the three countries to return to the moon and the thrust of the U.S. space program entirely into the country’s political and geo-political disputes.

Senator McCain and Obama condemned the gap and to promote its commitment to the space program and go to Florida, where thousands of workers will lose their jobs when the space shuttle project. And the opposition, the United States and Russia, in Georgia’s conflicts and other problems of turbidity in the next 15 years the partnership between the space, just in the United States will become even more dependent on Russia than ever before.

NASA administrator, Michael Langgelifen, calling the situation “is not appropriate in the extreme.” In an e-mail, he tells his senior adviser in August, Dr. Griffin wrote: “The way incident Make it clear that this is unwise, the United States adopted a deliberate policy to rely on other forces. ”

Dr. Griffin is not too worried, he ordered his staff to explore the aging space shuttle flight in the past in 2010. He did that, he said in an interview last month, “about 5 minutes later, Russia invaded Georgia, because I can see this in the future.” However, he warned that any extension will cost NASA could further delay the return to the Threat to the moon and the role of the United States as a major space power.

China’s rise

Last month, China made the third successful launch of the seven gods of the spacecraft and for the first time an astronaut’s space walk. The Chinese government has expressed the hope that the establishment of a space station and ultimately to the moon landing. United States plans to return to the moon by 2020 at the earliest Some observers believe that China may be the first.

Disruption in the United States to control access to some of the pain of space in Washington, including Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, the main supporters of the space program. In an interview, Mr. Nelson said it was “inexcusable” the country’s space program to be dependent on the status of the establishment of such a turbulent political partners. “We have a Russian prime minister who believes he’s the Czar, he said:” Vladimir Putin talked about Russia’s military action in Georgia.

The United States has not reached the astronauts during space: from the end of the Apollo program in the 1975 space shuttle mission, in 1981 and more than two years after the loss of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and Colombia in 2003年. However, in the future may be the longest time, if NASA’s new rocket is greatly delayed.

Even if the gap between the outline already know, shortly after, as Dr. Griffin began running the agency in 2005, Major. Scott Kelly, scholars of the Navy, the astronaut who has made two trips to the track, in April warned that the prospects for the United States can not human beings into space rocket will be an impact on their own. “A large part of the American public would be surprised,” he added, people crying, “Who let this happen?”

Political

The Bush administration has chosen to give up his country to enter space five years, to enter the next phase of space travel. The U.S. Government decided to retire the space shuttle, and in January 2004 announced a large-scale “vision of space exploration.”

Under the plan, the U.S. space agency will stop using the aging space shuttle and risk, and moved to the launch of a new plan, the constellation around Mars rockets and Orion capsule, designed to bring the astronauts to the moon, or even near-Earth exploration Mars and the asteroid.

To a procedure that did not exaggerate the other 17,000,000,000 U.S. dollars of NASA’s annual budget, the Government has decided to gradually reduce the space shuttle program and increase the constellation. This decision has been portrayed as difficult, but in recent months, criticism of the outbreak. Democratic and Republican presidential candidate, for example, the United States has pledged to continue flying.

“As president, I will take action to ensure that our astronauts will continue to explore space, not only by falling car with other people,” Mr. McCain said in a statement this year. Mr. Obama criticized what he called the so-called “poor planning and lack of funds,” led to this situation.

Both candidates said that NASA should continue to explore the space shuttle program at least one additional flight in an attempt to speed up the development of Constellation with additional financing.

Any new funding, but it will come too late, greatly reducing the development time of new technology. “This is basically unfixable now,” Dr. Griffin said. His frustration growing, it is clear in an e-mail his assistant on August 18, including research in order to more flights.

“In a rational world, we will be allowed to choose a space shuttle retirement date must comply with the God of War / Orion availability,” Dr. Griffin wrote. In the administration, he wrote, “to retire the space shuttle is a holy war, not an engineering and project management decisions.”

After the message, published in the Orlando Sentinel, Dr. Griffin said in a statement that the information he has failed “to provide content of the framework, I shall, I support the Government’s policy.”

At that time, the legislation critical to NASA’s plan gap - by the U.S. Congress to approve the purchase of seats in the Union, in 2011 - is the stagnation of Russian anger at Georgia. This problem is resolved, last month quietly approved by Congress, but a wide range of issues raised by the gap still exists. Dr. Griffin’s concerns do not end with Russia and Washington politics. He has repeatedly warned that China’s space program was moving forward rapidly.

In Senate testimony last year, Dr. Griffin said that this was likely to be “China will be able to make people on the moon, we will be able to come back.” Concerned about the prospects of the House of Representatives Feeney, the Republican Party of Florida. Members of Congress who recently named the first new base on the moon, Neil Armstrong. Looking back, Mr. Feeney responded, “What makes you think China will give us the name of the authority after one of their bases, our astronauts?”

The partnership

The growing tension with Russia a long-term and complex international space cooperation, help to ease the Cold War, especially those who have been in the front line.

M William Shepherd, commander of the first station and the former members of the Navy Seals special forces, recalled that when he and his cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko around the world for the first time, two fighters of the Cold War that the base, where a few years ago, they Has been training and waiting on high alert.

“I am aware of at this time we do not have a Russian and an American,” Shepard said, sir. “” This is something beyond the entire canvas. ”

This partnership began in the 1990s, as the Soviet Union and its economic collapse and the Russian people’s knowledge into orbit - a bomb or to distant destinations - the risk of falling into the hands of hostile countries. To pay in order to help maintain Russia’s space program, to the logic of the United States would limit the proliferation of weapons. By the mid-1990s to start the service by Americans of the Mir space station in the United States and Russia plan what will be the International Space Station.

The characteristics of the early wary. Makebaoman, a contract employee at an early date in Russia who is now in Moscow as a representative of the U.S. Space Agency said Korolev, where the task is to control, “is a closed city”, he arrived in 1993. “Foreigners are not allowed here,” Bowman said.

These days, the U.S. team all the year round workers living in Russia and dozens of people running through the training, launch and landing. “I would like to venture to say that people who work at NASA’s Russia knows better than any other government department,” Commander Kelly, the astronauts say.

Susan Eisenhower, an expert in U.S. relations with Russia and the space program, Russia to prove that after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, they will keep their final agreement, the Americans continue to take the stand. “When we have no choice because the failure of the Russian space shuttle, we could blackmail over the tragedy and did not do so,” President Eisenhower said.

Eugene Weitalida, deputy director of Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency said in an interview in the flight control, Russia will fulfill its commitments to the pilot station.

This does not mean that will be easy. The United States and Russia in a number of trade disputes and political issues. However, said Michael Krepon, who helped found the Henry Stimson Center, Policy Research Institute said that although the Russian monopoly of the risks posed by space flight, “there is a long-term courtesy: you do not chaotic security and human in space.”

“I do not think this will become very ugly gap, if the problem persists,” said Michael Krepon. “But it will be expensive.”