Russian Space Official Calls Mir ‘Sweatshop’

Describing the aging Mir space station as a “sweatshop,” a Russian space psychologist has accused Russia’s Mission Control of provoking a June space collision by overloading the Mir’s exhausted crew.

“A Russian cosmonaut is a galley slave, a human being deprived of any rights,” said Rostislav Bogdashevsky, who has spent 35 years working with cosmonauts, in an interview published Wednesday in the respected daily Izvestia.

He accused officials at Mission Control and state-run RKK Energia - the corporation that built and runs the 11-year-old orbiting outpost - of callous disregard for the Mir’s crew.

“You can sum up their attitude in one word: ‘sweatshop,”’ the newspaper quoted Bogdashevsky as saying.

Russian space officials have argued for months about who or what was to blame for Mir’s nearly disastrous June 25 collision with a cargo ship during a manual docking practice. An early report from Energia experts put all the blame on Mir commander Vasily Tsibliyev and flight engineer Alexander Lazutkin.

Tsibliyev and Lazutkin, who returned to Earth in August, defended themselves, saying the crash was caused by worn-out equipment. Many space officials and cosmonauts took the crew’s side, blaming Energia and Mission Control for the collision.