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The Moscow Times Moscow Guide – Winter 2008

Since the middle of autumn one of the most important topics of discussion, could only be … no, not the financial crisis… New Year! The winter issue of The Moscow Times Moscow Guide is entirely devoted to New Years celebrations. Seven great ideas for celebrating the “Night of Nights” will help readers finalise their plans and choose how and where to party, give fresh ideas and lots of practical advice.

And don’t forget – problems will come by themselves, but happiness and luck need an invitation. That why the more cheerful and light-hearted your celebration of the coming holiday is, the happier and more successful 2009 will be for you.

The Crisis: Signs of a Kremlin Fearful Of Unrest
Sociologist Yevgeny Gontmakher has painted a disturbing picture of what might emerge from the financial crisis, forecasting continued unemployment, huge protests and spreading violence.

Market Matters: Huge Grain Harvest No Boon for Farmers
This year Russia is enjoying the biggest grain harvest it has ever seen -- and farmers couldn't be more worried.



Tuesday, January 06, 2009 Updated at 31 December 2008 22:36 Moscow Time.

The Moscow Times » Issue 4036 » News

Nasa Tv / AP

The first part of the station being launched Nov. 20, 1998 (left). U.S. and Russian parts being joined two weeks later.

Happy Birthday: Space Station Is 10

21 November 2008By Marcia Dunn / The Associated PressCAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- The planning couldn't have been better: 10 people in orbit for Thursday's 10th anniversary of the world's most elaborate and expensive housing project, the international space station.

On Nov. 20, 1998, Russia launched the first part of the space station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA followed up two weeks later with the second piece carried up by a space shuttle. Astronauts and cosmonauts moved in two years later, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The space station has grown into a behemoth outpost 355 kilometers up, home to three people at any given time -- and soon to be six.

Thanks to the newly arrived shuttle Endeavour, the space station now has five sleep stations, two baths, two kitchens and two mini-gyms. All told, there are nine rooms, three of them full-scale labs.

Three-quarters complete, the total mass of the station is 284,000 kilograms. NASA says it's about the size of a five-bedroom house.

Some other fascinating factoids: The space station has traveled 2.1 billion kilometers, orbited Earth more than 57,300 times, hosted 167 people from 15 countries and served up more than 19,000 meals.

The space station has taken longer for NASA and its international partners to build, has cost more money and has produced less science than originally envisioned. But that hasn't spoiled the celebrations going on all over the world -- and off.

The linked Endeavour and space station sailed past the 10-year mark at 9:40 a.m. Moscow time on Thursday while the astronauts slept. U.S. Mission Control in Cape Canaveral marked the occasion by showing video of the first rocket's launch in 1998.

AP

"After 10 years, we wish the international space station a happy birthday, and we hope to see many, many more," Endeavour commander Christopher Ferguson said in a taped message from the orbiting complex.

To date, the space station has taken 80 rocket launchings from Florida, Kazakhstan and French Guyana (the launching site for the European Space Agency's cargo carrier) to make and staff the space station.

The price tag from start to finish is often quoted at $100 billion. That includes money spent not only by the United States and Russia but also Canada, Japan and the 18-nation European Space Agency.

As for delays, the 2003 Columbia disaster set space station construction back by a few years. So did Russian financial problems in the 1990s that significantly delayed the launch of the first crew's living quarters.

Its objective also has shifted over the years. NASA views the space station as a place to learn more about astronaut health and other issues that could make or break future expeditions to the moon, Mars and beyond. Before, the emphasis was supposed to be on basic scientific experiments.

Managers like to point out that the technical problems that have cropped up in orbit over the years -- a torn solar wing and a jammed wing-rotating joint to name a few -- are lessons learned for deep-space travel.

The Russians, meanwhile, have used the space station as a cash cow, selling rocket rides to the occasional millionaire tourist.

NASA expects to wrap up space station construction in 2010 when the three remaining space shuttles are retired. Astronauts then will have to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft until NASA's new rocketship is available to crews, most likely in 2015. That gap is an unavoidable thorn in NASA's side; it's possible the projected five-year hiatus in human launchings from U.S. soil could be whittled a little.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who expects to be replaced in the Barack Obama administration, has said repeatedly that the space agency does not have the money to keep flying the shuttles beyond 2010 if it wants to keep its new rocketship and moon exploration plans on track.

"The moon is not the end goal, just like the space station is not the end goal," Griffin noted. "The moon is a stepping stone on the way out."