ROSAVIAKOSMOS CHIEF AGAINST MAKING PAGEANTRY OF MIR'S DEMISE








MOSCOW, March 2. /RIA Novosti's correspondent Eduard Puzyrev/. Rosaviakosmos chief Yuri Koptev does not like the idea of American businessmen making "pageantry" of the death of the Russian space station Mir, he told the RIA Novosti correspondent. 


	According to the American daily The Newsday, Bob Citron, the founding father of the Spacehab company handling space tourism, is going to arrange a charter air flight for those who would like to see an unforgettable pageantry when the Russian orbiter falls down from the skies. He promises that from an altitude of 10,000 kilometers future 120 passengers will witness the space station's entry into the dense layers of the atmosphere, burning there and falling into pieces, which will then plunge into the Pacific waters. Media reports say that to this flight will be invited representatives of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with cameras, several ex-Russian cosmonauts. For ordinary spectators the tickets for this show will cost 6,500 dollars apiece. 


	"Regrettably, we have no legal papers that would prohibit making fuss around the technically complicated procedure of discontinuing service of a large space facility", said Koptev. "I'd like to warn the future passengers that they will face the risk of being hit by a large yet-unburned fragment, to say nothing of thousands of small fragments falling there". Koptev "strongly recommends" that the Spacehab plane does not appear in the region.