Yugos In Spaaaaace!

NASA this week widened the search for a shuttle replacement -- making a point of talking with designers from the outer regions of what Ronald Reagan used to call the "Evil Empire."

Perhaps the most innovative suggestion comes from Belgrade, Serbia: Modify and fly the Yugo. NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham says it's no joke.

"Look, it's affordable, lightweight and has a certain pinache. I think astronauts these days need a little pinache," he said.

The idea would be to modify a Yugo with internal life support controls and maneuvering thrusters, allowing it to dock with the likes of the International Space Station. The concept is not without precedent. There had been talk of using the Yugo as a replacement for the costly Soyuz missions to the Mir space station. But, while Mir is long-gone, the Yugo is still here.

In fact, the plucky (if not maintenance-prone) Yugo has already seen a number of different service incarnations. The Croat army, for instance, uses it as a field artillery platform.

"We're most intrigued by the idea that it's the kind of low-cost, off-the-shelf solution we've been looking for all along," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe.

O'Keefe said NASA first began serious study of the Yugo as a spacecraft immediately after President Bush announced his plan to colonize the moon and start a program for manned missions to Mars. The president's goal was a lofty one, but he only planned to increase NASA spending by about $1 billion a year -- a figure critics said was far short of the funding required to undertake such a mission.

But with a characteristic can-do attitude, NASA engineers went to work looking for ways to make the space program fit the budget.

"And you know what," O'Keefe asked rhetorically, "by employing the Yugo, we just might be able to service the Hubble Telescope."

Critics were quick to make light of the NASA Yugo study. "How do you double the value of a Yugo?" asked Charles Pena at the Cato Institute. "Fill the tank. But you can bet that, by the time NASA is done with it, we'll have a Yugo space module worth billions and billions of dollars. And you'll still have to push it home."

FMI: www.nasa.gov