So as I was discussing in an earlier post about Christa McAuliffe's inadvertant role in the Challenger Disaster, it's becoming clear how 'space tourist' Dennis Tito's trip to the International Space Station could result in a disaster having nothing to do with his experience, training, or lack thereof.

I hadn't expected the departure from standard operating procedure to be so similar to Challenger, but there it is. Tito's Soyuz craft took off this morning for the space station, over NASA's objections, as the Endeavour is still docked to the station, pending repair of its computers.

Endeavour is expected to leave on Sunday, but this is by no means a certainty. The Soyuz ship plans to dock with the Station on Monday. Because of the high profile of this mission, and the Russians' need to demonstrate that they have some measure of control, instead of simply taking directives from NASA, they refused to delay the launch by a day or two, to ensure Endeavour's departure.

If Endeavour is still there on Monday, the Russian Space Agency has implied that they'll dock anyhow (the station has more than one docking port). This hasn't been adequately prepared or trained for, and there's a possibility of shearing problems, as you have three very heavy bodies all connected by two relatively small sealed joints (the docking connectors and airlocks).

If I could tell you what could go wrong, it probably wouldn't be a problem, but there are just too many unknowns. In addition, astronauts spent the last few days 'tourist-proofing' the station, an unplanned act that all by itself could initiate a critical unexpected problem.

And of course, the irony is again that if so much pressure hadn't been centered around Tito's 'mission' then there would be a far less likely chance of disaster than there is with all the minor and major changes taking place at the same time in order to accomodate the mission.