An International Operation

We've been putting U.S. astronauts on the Russian Mir Space Station. I think an interesting thing that is coming up is that on STS-84 next May, the U.S. has agreed to take a Russian cosmonaut up as part of its shuttle crew. It's a docking mission, so she won't go over to Mir. But as part of this shuttle mission, the U.S. will be doing some joint experiments with the Europeans on a facility called BIORAC, which is a system for doing cell culture experiments. The Russian cosmonaut is going to be one of the operators of the BIORAC facility. So it's kind of a neat link of a Russian on a U.S. vehicle doing experiments on a European facility.

As far as any further progress with the international operation, it seems like what's going on with the Mir program is that we are continuing to learn about working with each other -- learning more about the way the each culture thinks, does business, and conducts negotiations. Each mission seems to be getting better.