A Mir Setback

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, July 20, 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post 

What exactly does Mir mean in Russian -- "Oops"?

Can you believe what's gone wrong with this thing?

First, the space station got pulverized while trying to dock with
a supply ship. Then it started spinning wildly. This thing is
decrepit. It is so old it has rotary-dial telephones.

Mir looks like a '73 Chevy Nova orbiting the Earth. Next thing
you know they'll put carpeting on the rear window ledge, and
add see-through mud flaps with a silhouette of a naked woman.

What do you make the odds of getting in a two-car collision
20,000 miles in space? I mean, how crowded is it up there?
You could probably go for decades without having to turn on
your blinker before making a left.

Hmmmm, that damage has to be over the deductible, right?
Man, that driver's rates are gonna go . . . to the moon! Get it?

Good thing Shannon Lucid left the Mir before the crash.
They'd have blamed it on her.

Woman driver!

So now they're trying to get a mechanic up there to fix it. But
they've had a problem finding a Russian mechanic with enough
experience -- almost all the Russians who know anything about
machinery are driving cabs in Manhattan -- so it may have to
be subcontracted out to an American.

NASA, NAPA, what's the difference?

Then, just the other day, somebody on board the Mir pulled
the wrong plug out of a socket, and, according to a news story,
"cut power to electricity, orientation, communication and the
oxygen generation system . . . Mir twisted chaotically for
hours."

I'm no Wernher Von Braun. But it seems to me, Moscow,
we've got a problem.

Especially that oxygen thing.

You'd think they'd have been more careful with that plug.
Disconnecting it is essentially like disconnecting the extension
cord to Earth. The Russians have not disclosed why one of the
crew yanked out this plug, so one can only speculate. Possibly
someone on Mir had something else he was absolutely
desperate to plug in. Maybe one of those room air fresheners. 

Actually, I'll bet it was this: You know those wild, fun-loving
Russians. They slug down a few belts of vodka, and the next
thing you know they're doing the kazachok, and then
somebody's saying, "Hey, look at Nikolai, he's wearing a
portable anti-gravity toilet seat on his head! Hahaha. And,
look, look, Vasily's going to play "tie up the yak"! . . . Vasily,
what are you doing? Vasily, don't pull out that plug!"

Hey, who turned out the lights?

Vey is Mir! (a joke only my father will get). 

This must be going over great in Russia. It's got to be a bigger
embarrassment than Yelstin doing the Macarena.

(Not that the Russians have all the doofuses. Didja read about
the bank robber in Virginia Beach who demanded money from
a teller, and was handed a bag, which he then stuffed down his
pants? Hmmm, what's in the bag, Sparky? If you said "An
exploding dye pack that burns at 400 degrees when activated,"
come on down! The suspect left the bank on foot. He got
about a block, whereupon witnesses reported seeing "an
explosion taking place inside his pants." Don't you hate when
that happens? My mother always warned me to wear clean
underwear in case a bag of money exploded in my pants.
Virginia Beach police recovered a pair of charred pants, then
put out a bulletin for a man wearing smoking underwear, and
whose groin might be covered with bright red dye.)

This Mir thing gets the Russkies where it hurts. For years they
didn't have much to brag about. I mean, think of the typical
Russian couple -- the Khrushchevs! He was a fat, bald, rude
guy with boils on his face, who looked like a potato. And she .
. . well, she looked like a bus with a kerchief.

There didn't seem to be anything to eat except root vegetables.
Russian automobiles were hideous pieces of junk that rattled
and shuddered like they were made of bowling balls, turnips
and aluminum siding. The one thing the Russians were always
good at was rockets. We chased them for years. We chased
Laika the space dog. We chased Yuri Gagarin. Their rockets
went straight into space, and ours kept blowing up on the pad.

Now, even their rockets suck. 

All they have left are those nesting dolls, which are, ouch, mir
trinkets. 

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company