TROUBLES WITH MONEY, ROCKETS, AND TOILETS PLAGUE RUSSIAN SPACE PROGRAM.

It was disclosed yesterday that the scheduled December 15 launch of a replacement crew for the Mir space station has been delayed until February. The previous crew change also had to be delayed for the same reasons: not enough money to pay for the construction of the Soyuz booster rockets used to launch the space vehicles that resupply the station. The workhorse of the manned program, the Soyuz rockets themselves have had problems this year, with several spectacular failures. However, more than 770 launches of the 5 variants of the Soyuz — first introduced in 1966 — have been conducted over the years, with a success rate of over 97%.

The two cosmonauts and one American astronaut currently on Mir have a more immediate problem: the device that recycles their waste into the station’s cooling system has broken, and the waste containers are nearly full. New containers were to have been delivered in October, but that launch has been delayed until later this month. (Reuters, November 7) The crew members aboard Mir have probably offered to pay for this launch themselves.

Central Asian Battalion Taking Shape.