Astronauts face riskier-than-usual spacewalk

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA is taking bigger chances and more of them – even bending its own safety rules – to keep the international space station running with a two-man crew and no shuttle visits.

Tonight both astronauts will take a riskier than usual spacewalk, wearing an odd mishmash of Russian and U.S. gear, cut off at times from communications, and struggling with tools in extra-stiff gloves never intended for the repairs they will make.

They’ll be forced to alternately speak Russian and English and communicate with two different control centers. They’ll travel an unprecedented distance over dangerous terrain, about 45 minutes each way.

Why? Because there’s been no space shuttle to bring them the equipment they need. Russian spacecraft are too small to carry large replacement parts.

Despite the added risks, astronaut Mike Fincke and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka said Wednesday they’re excited and ready.

“We’re all in this together,” Fincke told Mission Control. “This is going to be fun.”

Their task : Replacing a fizzled circuit breaker.

The Russians have been bailing out NASA with crew and supply drop-offs ever since the shuttle accident, and are demanding compensation for Thursday’s six-hour spacewalk since it involves repairs to the U.S. section. They threatened to postpone the outing, but agreed Tuesday to worry about payment later.

Station operations manager Mike Suffredini said safety officials were in on the debate and stressed that this spacewalk “is one that we can go do and should go do.” To put it off could jeopardize two spacewalks planned by the Russians later this summer for assembly chores, he said.

“We don’t feel we’re cutting corners,” Suffredini said. He said there has been a heightened sensitivity to safety in the station program ever since the Columbia tragedy, and that he and others find themselves constantly asking, “What are we doing? Is it right to go do it? Are we taking unnecessary risks?”

But a retired agent in NASA’s inspector general office, Joseph Gutheinz, wonders whether NASA and the Russian Space Agency are “sweeping any known risks under the table in an effort to keep the space station program alive.” He said the agencies downplayed risks at Russia’s Mir station during visits by U.S. astronauts in the 1990s.

Gutheinz also questions whether it’s safe to send an entire crew out, with no one to monitor systems inside. The station has been empty during a spacewalk only once before, in February.