Three's Company, Two's A Crowd

For the first time in the brief history of the International Space Station, it will be manned by just two crewmembers in the upcoming mission. They'll be on board together for six months, practically living in each other's lap the entire time. A lot of marriages can't survive that, much less two type-A astronauts - one from the US and one from Russia.

Ed Lu and Yuri Malenchenko lift off from Kazakhstan Friday. They'll spend several days with the two Americans and one Russian they're replacing, then they'll be on their own.

Space officials in Russia, along with their NASA counterparts, are said to be mildly concerned about the reduced ISS contingent. "I think the dynamics of three people is a little bit easier in that kind of situation rather than two," said Jim Voss, who lived on the station for more than three months in 2001 and is now a space station manager at Johnson Space Center. He was quoted by Florida Today as saying, "Even with three people, you have to really get along with your crewmates. You're there for a long time in a small space."

Good Thing These Guys Get Along

Voss told the newspaper that, luckily, Lu and Malenchenko are indeed good friends. They've flown together in the past and have even walked in space together.

By putting two people on the ISS instead of three, Russian and US officials say they'll be able to reduce the amount of supplies needed during their six-month tenure. That's important in these days when the US shuttle fleet is grounded in the wake of the Columbia tragedy. Russia, strapped for cash, has promised to go to the till for money to build more spacecraft, hoping to fill the void left by the absence of the American shuttles.

But What Can A Two-Man Crew Accomplish?

Not a lot, actually. Shannon Lucid, NASA's chief scientist and a six-month resident on the Russian Space Station Mir in 1996, told Florida Today "They're basically there to take care of the station," and they won't have much science to do. For that reason, Russian space officials say, don't count on much science getting done on this mission. The crew will spend most of its time keeping the lights on and the air breathable. These guys are going to have a lot of time on their hands.

The third astronaut scheduled for Mission 7 blamed the Columbia disaster for being grounded. "It was a tragedy, what happened, and we felt for that," said cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, who was bumped from the flight. "And for the station, it's a regret that (the accident) caused us to change our development schedule. For the majority amount of time (only two crew members are aboard), science is in the background, and since that is what the station was designed for, that is the most important source of regret."

"Being underworked - which is what I very often was - leads to boredom," former NASA astronaut Norman Thagard, a Mir veteran and the first American to fly on a Soyuz, told Florida Today. "And being overworked chronically tends to lead to friction between the crew and the Mission Control Center, and I think my two Russian crewmates were overworked, and I sure could see the friction develop. So they need to be in the comfortable middle range there. They need to be reasonably busy with meaningful work."

Testing The Bonds That Tie US-Russia

While ISS Mission 7 will be a severe test of the friendship and working relationship between Lu and Malenchenko, it's also a test of the working relationship between the US and Russia. The two countries are still at odds over the Iraq war. But that tension is reportedly nowhere to be seen in the joint ISS project. "We're really pulling together as a team," space station program manager Bill Gerstenmaier told Florida Today reporter Chris Kridler at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Star City, Kazakhstan. "We're recognizing where we need critical consumables, where we need critical activities."

"The engineers and all the smart people have done their analysis, and the decision has been made that it's much better for the space station if we keep it continually crewed," Lucid said. ". . . I think the crew is going to have a really good time. It's going to be a real adventure."

FMI: www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/station