Posted on 02/05/2004 7:32:02 PM PST by blam
Space spat forces crew change
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Friday February 6, 2004
The Guardian (UK)
In space no one can hear you scream - at your fellow astronaut. Russian officials have dropped two of the astronauts intended to become the international space station's next crew because they were deemed "psychologically incompatible".
Russian Valery Tokarev and American Leroy Chiao - known as the Expedition 9 crew - were due to take off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 19. But yesterday a space agency spokesman said the crew would be changed because the two men appear to have wound each other up.
"It's not that the crew was unprofessional or ill, but on certain considerations it was not ready," a space agency spokesman told Reuters. "The crew members should understand each other's words and opinions, they should get on like good friends."
During the six months each crew spends in the space station, occasional satellite phone calls to their families provide the only solace from a mismatch between cosmonaut and astronaut.
Officials are replacing Mr Tokarev and Mr Chiao with Gennady Padalka and Nasa astronaut Michael Fincke. They will travel to the ISS with Dutchman Andre Kuipers from the European Space Agency who, after eight days of experiments, will return to Earth with the current crew.
At least he's not on an old diesel sub like I was.
you'd prefer "karl la fong?"...
the two failed to get along, evenly dividing the blame.
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