[Thrownatbirth]

Why? Its heavy lift boosters are some of the best tools in the business!

It's the people tank at the end of the booster that they need. The Russians have always scrimped on habitability.

I used to talk with Shannon Lucid on ham radio when she was aboard Mir. There was always a loud metallic grinding noise in the background that sounded very ominous. She said the specs were a little loose when Mir was built and the industrial noise was simply the spacecraft expanding and contracting as it heated up and cooled down in each orbit. She had to put up with that for months.

[bmwcyle]

A brave woman to ride in a Russian spacecraft. I was in the US Submarine Navy but I would never go to sea in one of their subs.

[Calvin Locke]

By OSHA standards, that particular Russian module is considered a health hazard for hearing damage.

The article I read was referring to the machinery, but I don't recall anything about expansion/contraction.