By
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Russian cosmonauts gave up a space training boycott yesterday, returning to NASA without a millionaire who set off a U.S.-Russian feud over letting rich tourists buy rides to the space station.
The four cosmonauts showed up at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for a series of briefings in preparation for a flight to the international space station next month aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, said NASA spokeswoman Eileen Hawley.
They were not accompanied by Dennis Tito, a California businessman who bought a ticket for the Soyuz flight, Hawley said. There was no immediate word on the status of Tito; NASA planned a late-afternoon news conference.
The cosmonauts - two prime crew members and their backups - walked out of a meeting Monday because Tito was not going to be included in their crew training, NASA spokeswoman Debra Rahn said.
The Russian Space Agency contends it's their rocket and they can fly whom they want.
NASA argues it would be foolhardy to send a nonprofessional to the space station, especially at such a busy time in its construction.
A person who is untrained in all the critical space station systems and requires constant supervision "would add a significant burden to the expedition and detract from the overall safety of the international space station," NASA said in a statement Monday evening.
Early yesterday, from space shuttle Discovery, returning commander Bill Shepherd said "the day will come" when tourists fly in space and he applauded the idea. "But it's not something that you can enter into lightly," he added.
Russia's Soyuz rocket is scheduled to lift off April 30 with commander Talgat Musabayev and flight engineer Yuri Baturin.
Russian space officials have maintained that Tito will be in the third Soyuz seat.
Tito, the 60-year-old founder of an investment firm who once worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has deposited millions of his own money into an escrow account to be paid to Russian space officials once he has launched.
He was supposed to fly to Mir and spent months training at cosmonaut headquarters in Star City, Russia. But he had to scrap that idea when Russia decided late last year to ditch the 15-year-old space station. Mir's fiery re-entry is targeted for Friday.
Russian space officials decided to instead put Tito in the next Soyuz bound for the international space station. The three-person Soyuz is needed as a lifeboat to replace one that has been docked at the orbiting complex since Nov. 2. Under the plan, Tito and the two cosmonauts would return in the old Soyuz six days after delivering the new one.
Musabayev, Baturin and their backups were supposed to train all week at Johnson, NASA's astronaut base, to familiarize themselves with critical systems in the U.S. sections of the space station.
But they never got beyond the security-badging center on Monday.
As the cosmonauts were going over their training schedules in a conference room, they saw that Tito had a different itinerary, Rahn said. His itinerary was heavy in administrative and legal issues and referred to plans for future training.
Musabayev, Baturin and their backups refused to go into the space center without Tito, and left with him. A European Space Agency astronaut, German Thomas Reiter, did go in.
NASA recommended against Tito's April flight after meetings last week in Moscow with space officials from Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan. U.S. officials said they were supported by all the countries except Russia.
NASA said it is working with its international partners to establish criteria for selecting, training and certifying nonprofessional crew members on a commercial basis. As for Tito, it's too late for him to prepare for a safe flight this spring, NASA said.
"Hopefully, we'll resolve it and we can get back on track," Rahn said. But she added: "We'll see."
