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  David Rigsby Rigsby is a second-year political science student who hopes to return to his home planet some day. You can reach him at drigsby@ucla.edu. Click Here for more articles by David Rigsby

Every year it seems that the holiday season begins a day or two earlier than it did the year before. Icicle lights and gold garlands decorate store windows, while ads remind shoppers how many days, hours and minutes they have left to catch sales. This is the time of year when the price tag wields its power over Americans.

And yet, Americans scrutinize the price tag of government spending no matter what time of year it is. A project of recent controversy that will cost an estimated $90 billion upon completion is the International Space Station. Try to fit that one into your stocking. The ISS has been the focus of NASA’s energy since the early 1990s.

The station will serve as a floating laboratory, with researchers working on projects ranging from medical research to nano-circuitry.

American taxpayers are wondering if the ISS will pay for itself in the form of technological breakthroughs and medical research. Russian taxpayers are not worried about the monetary cost, but rather the cost of their technological and cultural identity as a space-capable nation. In order to meet the deadlines set by NASA, Russia has had to make series after series of cutbacks. The most recent of these cutbacks include the crown jewel of their space legacy: the Mir space station. The Russians plan on de-orbiting the station this February and dumping it in the Pacific Ocean near New Zealand.

  Illustration by ZACH LOPEZ/Daily Bruin The ISS serves as another example in the list of “global” projects that the United States has spearheaded in recent years. The United States usually sets the pace for the project, and coordinates the efforts of partner nations. Instead of forming partnerships with Russia, the United States has usually played dictator by giving Russia guidelines to follow. This project, that Russia initially signed on for to strengthen their space program, might actually mark the end of its space agency. If these US policies regarding the Russian space program continue, Russia’s sole purpose will become that of the doting employee of NASA.

The ISS is a carryover from the Reagan era of Star Wars projects intended to challenge the Soviet Union. In 1993, when the project was first beginning to lift off, the concept morphed into a project that the whole world could participate in. NASA brought Russia to the drawing board, along with the European Space Agency, Japan, Canada and Brazil.

After countless delays and missed deadlines, the first official crew took residence in the partially completed space station a few weeks ago. This historic crew consists of three men: an American and two Russians. Newsweek reports that over the course of the mission, the crew will be busy, “setting up house, installing and testing life support systems and unpacking several thousand pounds of gear and supplies left by previous missions.” If this mission goes well, NASA will not have to readjust the 2005 projected completion date of the station.

Skeptics of the project are asking NASA, “Why bother?” To which NASA replies, “For science.” Research in the ISS’s laboratory modules will focus on, “the effects of gravity on plants and animals, developing next-generation materials and machines that can function in the high-radiation vacuum of space and commercial development of new drugs and microchips.” Larry Young, an MIT professor of astronautics, who studies the biological effects of weightlessness, compares the ISS to the Hubble Space Telescope, which also suffered from delays and complications. “Now it’s surpassing everyone’s fondest hopes, and no one talks about the problems anymore,” the professor said, in regard to the telescope.

As far as some critics are concerned, Nasa has a lot to prove. Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Newsweek that, “There will certainly be some interesting science, but probably not $90 billion worth. The only way that you can really justify this project is if you want Star Trek to come true.” McDowell is referring to the idea of using the ISS as a jumping-off point for future missions to Mars. NASA has made comments of someday using the station for jump off missions to other regions of the solar system, but no concrete mission plans have been publicly released.

Americans have a substantial amount of money, time and resources at stake with the success or failure of the ISS, but the Russians have much more to lose. When the Russians signed on to the space station, they unknowingly signed the death warrant for the bulk of their other space programs, such as Mir. Reuters reports that, “U.S. officials have pushed Russia to dump Mir, saying it drained sparse resources that would be better spent on Russia’s role in the ISS.”

Mir is a 15 year old space station that has bridged the doomed Soviet Union with the struggling new republic in Russia. Mir has hosted thousands of experiments, both Russian and American. Even with the station’s aging components, the Washington Post reports studies which have shown that the station could remain in space until 2003 or 2005. Several private organizations have inquired about leasing Mir from the Russians and using it for commercial use. The Netherlands- based company MirCorp was willing to foot the $60 million needed to keep it in orbit for one year.

The most interesting offer that the Russian government entertained regarding extending the life of Mir came from NBC. Even after the government announced its plans for de-commissioning the station, NBC claimed that it was still negotiating to make use of Mir in a reality based television show that they were planning on developing with “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett. According to an Associated Press report, “Destination: Mir” might still be coming to an NBC affiliate near you.

There is something much more important than entertainment value to be lost with the destruction of Mir: Russia’s social balance. The government is already squabbling about the Cabinet’s decision. Russia’s State Duma lower house of parliament has criticized the decision. Deputies overwhelmingly supported a motion condemning the “premature end to operations aboard the Mir orbital station, and ditching it is a poorly thought out and unjustified step.”

Russia’s job market is also threatened by the decision. About 100,000 scientific and technical jobs depend on the space station’s stability. Russia’s already unstable job market would be subjected to even higher stress. Mir has been the pride of Russia’s space program, allowing Russian cosmonauts to break many records, much to the dismay of their American counterparts.

There are also fundamental differences in the way that Russians and Americans deal with problems in the construction of the ISS and training of its crew. Newsweek reports that, “the Russians favor skills based training, expecting cosmonauts to deal with problems as they arise, rather than repeated simulations designed to estimate the unexpected.” The same issue reports that American astronauts “never travel without exhaustive procedure manuals.”

Both sides claim that their way of doing things is superior to the other’s. Yet Russia has been the partner required to change its procedures when working on the ISS. The United States has once again forced its ideology on another culture.

If this “partnership” has taught the world anything about international projects, it is to be very cautious when signing a contract with the U.S. The contract that Nation X signs just might be the death warrant for its scientific individuality.

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