Cooperative Kerfuffle

摘要

Despite its status as a shining example of international cooperation, the International Space Station has a harsh lesson to teach the five-member global partnership that built it: Unilateral decision-making can lead to chaos. Since NASA decided to end its aging cargo- and crew-carrying space shuttle program—a 2005 decision slated to take effect this summer—international partners contributing to the orbiting space complex, including NASA, have devised their own means of accessing the ISS. The result, according to European Space Agency (ESA) chief Jean-Jacques Dordain, is a crazy-quilt of smaller, less-capable cargo-hauling vehicles supplied by Europe, Japan, Russia and eventually the United States. Even worse, in the wake of the shuttle's retirement, space station astronauts will have to rely solely on Russian Soyuz capsules to reach the orbiting outpost for the foreseeable future.