MIR is certainly a technical triumphin orbit for 15 years and playing host to 62 peoplebut scientists in the West are less impressed with its science. "They've done a lot of biomedical research. But the results are not fully accepted. The way the science was done is not up to the Western standard," says Charles Vick of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC.
Peter Norsk of the Danish Aerospace Medical Centre in Copenhagen, who sent experiments to Mir, agrees that early work on the space station was substandard. "But when interaction between East and West began, it got a lot better," he says.
Mir was, however, responsible for at least one very important piece of research proving that space travellers would be able to grow their own food, says Robert E. Cleland of the University of Washington in Seattle, a member of the National Research Council's Space Studies ...
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