The Mir conundrum

The US National
Aeronautics and
Space Administration
(NASA) says
it wants Russia to
abandon its
Mir space station so
it will not be in
competition with its
international
successor.
Paradoxically, NASA
officials are
considering another
space shuttle
mission to Mir. The
proposed mission
would retrieve a
docking module
which, according
to a leaked Internet
e-mail, NASA
had "no intention
whatsoever of ever seeing... on
this Earth again".
NASA-watchers suspect that the
space agency has
accepted that Russia will cling on
to the ageing Mir, and has decided
that collaboration is a much
better move than confrontation.