PASSENGERS OF BOEING-747 TO WITNESS "SCUTTLING OF MIR STATION"








MOSCOW, March 6, 2001. /RIA Novosti correspondent Eduard Puzyrev/. U.S. businessman Bob Citron will charter a Boeing-747 plane only to see the Mir orbital station scuttling. This was said Tuesday to journalists by Musa Manarov, ex-cosmonaut of the USSR. Mr Manarov is among the six Russian specialists in space exploration invited to this flight.


	According to Mr Manarov, the plane is to take off from a Fiji island and head for the proposed Mir crash area located in the northern part of the Pacific ocean between Australia and South America. After de-orbiting, the fragments of the Mir station will be scattered along the water body strip - 200 km wide and 6,000 km long. The plane will fly 300 km away to the south from the crash area. The ex-cosmonaut expressed hope that the Boeing "will not be brought down by a stray fragment of the station" and the flight would end in success.


	Mr Manarov said he would take a video camera with him. Two or three TV-cameras will also be mounted aboard the aircraft in order to transmit a live report to U.S. mission control centres via satellite communication. All rights for chronicle video shooting have been reserved by Bob Citron's company, Mr Manarov added.


	In his words, the plane will take about 120 passengers as tourists. The ticket will cost $5,000-$10,000 dollars. The place by the porthole, for instance, is sold at $10,000 dollars.


	Organizers of this "show-expedition" have also invited Russian representatives - one of the designers of the Mir station, Leonid Gorshkov, the ex-cosmonauts of Russia and the USSR, Yelena Kondakova, Sergei Avdeyev, Vladimir Titov, Musa Manarov, and a journalist, aide of the Moscow regional governor Yuri Karash. On Friday, all of them will leave for Japan and then to one of the Fiji islands.