Trouble in orbit sparks tempest in Washington

First contact: A Russian cosmonaut shakes hands with a U.S. astronaut

With Mir's mechanical troubles, politics came to the forefront, as a congressional inquiry questioned whether political concerns had overshadowed science and even safety.

F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and the chairman of the House science committee, thought they had. Sensenbrenner called House hearings in September, just before astronaut David Wolf was scheduled to relieve Michael Foale aboard the station, and argued that no more Americans should go to Mir to "spend months being an assistant Mr. Fixit."

NASA's inspector general, Roberta Gross, admitted in a letter to Congress that NASA "considers the impact on American-Russian relations far broader than NASA's science and technology goals." But Frank Culbertson, former astronaut and NASA's manager for shuttle-Mir missions, insisted that he would never carelessly risk astronauts' lives.

'Despite my objections, the administrator chose to go ahead and continue with the program. There haven't been any more major mishaps, and I am grateful, thankful to the good Lord for that.' -- Rep. David Weldon, R-Florida

Weldon, initially a supporter of the project, opposed sending Wolf up as scheduled. "I became concerned after the fire and decompression that the amount of knowledge we had gained was sufficient and the risks no longer justified a continued U.S. presence," Weldon said.

The House committee opposed sending Wolf into orbit, but left the final decision -- and the ultimate responsibility, if anything went wrong -- to NASA administrator Dan Goldin. "Despite my objections, the administrator chose to go ahead and continue with the program," Weldon said. "There haven't been any more major mishaps, and I am grateful, thankful to the good Lord for that."

After his safe return, Wolf said his stay aboard Mir went well and he finished all of his experiments, though "some of them didn't go as well as we'd like."

"I don't know if we have gotten that much additional information out of these last two flights, but certainly we have gained some additional knowledge, and I believe that overall, on balance, the program may be judged a success," Weldon said.

Part 4: Did science suffer?

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