http://polyscience.org/2005/10/shuttle-program/ Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:11:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 http://polyscience.org/2005/10/shuttle-program/#comment-268 polyscience.org » Soyuz hangups and space tourists Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:36:11 +0000 http://polyscience.org/?p=142#comment-268 [...] Russia has turned to space tourism in recent years to finance their largely-broke space program. The first civilian in space was Californian Dennis Tito, and Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa was second. Currently the United States is dependent on the Soyuz program because of the problems with the Shuttle program. But now there are legal issues to contend with because of a law passed in 2000 prohibiting space-station-related payments to Russia because they helped the Iranians build a nuclear power plant. In theory, this could mean no more continuous American presence on the ISS, though this seems unlikely. [...] [...] Russia has turned to space tourism in recent years to finance their largely-broke space program. The first civilian in space was Californian Dennis Tito, and Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa was second. Currently the United States is dependent on the Soyuz program because of the problems with the Shuttle program. But now there are legal issues to contend with because of a law passed in 2000 prohibiting space-station-related payments to Russia because they helped the Iranians build a nuclear power plant. In theory, this could mean no more continuous American presence on the ISS, though this seems unlikely. [...]

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