“It looks bad to me,” Tito was saying. “Russia will appear to have backed down, trust me.”
Yesterday morning, Tito and four celebrated Russian cosmonauts were far from capitulating. They piled out of a white Suburban in the NASA parking lot here just before 9 a.m., as scheduled. By agreement, crew members in any flight to the ISS must cross-train for a week at the NASA facility, to familiarize themselves with the two American portions of the space station. Tito, who is 60 but looks much younger, does not expect to enter the American modules, or “segments” in NASA parlance; his contract to fly is only with the Russians, who have been training him for seven months on the Russian segments. The Russians brought him to Houston in fulfillment of this standing agreement.
As anybody who has every had a college roommate knows, sometimes sleepovers cause friction.
Before entering the building, the cosmonauts huddled in Russian, which Tito doesn’t understand. Finally, Commander Talgat Musabayev–his business card calls him “Hero of the Russian Federation”–addressed Tito in English. “Denny,” he said, using a nickname, “we are together. We have to be staying together. Understand?” He understood. “Don’t separate,” he repeated ominously, as the five clapped each other’s backs.
Inside, NASA had different plans. They folded the visitors into a conference room just inside the gate of the Johnson Space Center with Newsweek following behind, the only media in the room. The meeting belonged to Bob Cabana, a stern Marine colonel and veteran space-traveler who leads the international operations office. He spoke to the delegation through a translator, Michael C. Foale, an assistant director at Johnson who happens to have been aboard the Mir during the horrible string of disasters that preordained its calamitous return to Earth, expected later this week.
Cabana addressed Tito first: “The NASA position is still we do not think there is adequate time to train you for an April flight, but regardless of when you fly there are technical issues to settle regarding reimbursement for training, insurance issues, medical issues. So we’d like to sit and talk with you about that this morning.” This is the first time NASA has suggested that it also wants reimbursements from Tito.
Musabayev replied in Russian, without rancor. “We have a slightly different position. We have an official order, instruction from our leadership, and we’re obligated to carry it out,” he said. “Dennis Tito has already undergone training. And he has shown good results. And the leadership has decided that our crews must do training together.”
The Americans did not budge. “In that case, we will not be able to begin training,” Cabana pronounced, “because we are not willing to train with Dennis Tito.”
Musabayev reiterated his view of Tito’s strong preparedness, adding that as far as understanding of the American segment is concerned, Tito is no further behind than anybody else. None have been there before. “We have exactly the same knowledge of the American segment, all five of us. We start from zero. It is the same for Mr. Tito,” he said.
But Cabana seemed irked by this effort at dialogue. He worked his molars back and forth resolutely. Finally, he responded in the language of an international standoff. “There is nothing to discuss-we have given you our position.”
Musabayev and his crew were prepared for this eventuality, but nonetheless seemed surprised at the quick escalation. “Our position will not change,” Musabayev responded. “We do not have the power to change our position.”
The meeting ended within minutes, and despite NASA’s blandishments to meet separately with Tito–as Cabana had just last week in Moscow–the would-be traveler demurred. “I’m with my crew, and I stand with my crew, and my commander will speak for me,” he said.
NASA met reporters in Washington today to show they were not gloating over Tito’s momentary separation from the crew. Mike Hawes, America’s deputy associate administrator for the ISS, would not speculate as to what might happen if Moscow won’t back down. But things may never be easy. “I will tell you that every day of this program is a hard partnership,” he said. “The is what it takes to meld all of these cultures, all of this hardware, all of these people across the board, into something that is meaningful and bigger than all of us.”
This didn’t mitigate Tito’s disapointment as he watched his crew leave for training without him, notwithstanding assurances from Musabayev and Yuri Baturin, the mission engineer and former National Security Adviser to Boris Yeltsin, both of whom seem genuinely to like their American adventurer. “Please,” Baturin said warmly. “You will fly with us. You are member of crew, I am sure of this.” Equally firm signals came from the Russian Aerospace Agency spokesman Konstantin Kreidenko, who told the Associated Press, “We will fulfill the obligations to Mr. Tito under the contract, and he will blast off as planned on April 30.”
“That makes me feel a little better,” says Tito between calls of support from his aerospace lawyer and Buzz Aldrin, a friend. “But I still would like to be with my crew.” Only time will tell if he’ll get that chance. Meanwhile, he is keeping in mind an an old cosmonaut expression: You never know for sure if you are part of the mission until the enema. Which is another story altogether.
