Soyuz Or Shuttle?

Finding out that he'll be commanding the next mission aboard the International Space Station is a mixed blessing for cosmonaut Aleksandr Kaleri. Even though this is the realization of his lifelong dream -- spaceflight -- he has no idea yet how he'll get back to Earth.

And, as with the crew of ISS-7, Kaleri's team will be short-handed. Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque has been bumped from the mission, but will accompany Kaleri and Foale into orbit as second pilot aboard the Soyuz. He'll spend a week on the ISS, then return with the crew now aboard.

Duque, Kaleri and Science Officer Michael Foale are set to blast off from Kazakhstan October 26 to relieve the two man crew of ISS-7. Russian Col. Yuri Malenchenko and Science Officer Ed Lu have been conducting basic housekeeping tasks, a skeleton crew put aboard shortly after the February Columbia tragedy.

Kaleri was supposed to have been part of the ISS-7 crew, but concerns about extending the fuel, water and other expendables aboard the ISS cut the crew to just two men. That concern has led to limiting the next ISS mission to two crewmembers as well.

There are some who question Kaleri's ability to pilot the Soyuz spacecraft to its rendezvous with Space Station Alpha. Unlike most military veterans who wind up in the Russian space program, Kaleri has just under 40 hours' time built in an L-39 prop trainer. Is he fully qualified to fly the spacecraft?

“I have had the same [Soyuz] training as the military pilots,” he pointed out, in slow but clear English. And he has received full certification from the training center outside Moscow. "In my opinion the skills for controlling spacecraft like the Soyuz, more ballistic than an airplane, are not so close to the skills for piloting planes. I think I can do these tasks at the same level of performance as military pilots. I will do my job no worse than them."

As for his lifelong ambition to man a Soyuz crew, Kaleri said there was “no joy this time, because of the circumstances.” The circumstances, obviously include the death of Columbia and the uncertainty that now surrounds the ISS program.

As for how they'll get home approximately six months after their Soyuz launch, Foale says, “We joke that we may have a one-way ticket [on the Soyuz]." As to which spacecraft he will land on next spring, he added: “I honestly wouldn’t want to guess.”

As for the relative inexperience of his mission commander, Foale says, “I have no doubt that Sasha [Kaleri] can outperform all the other cosmonauts.”

FMI: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov