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Review [published February 1999]
Bryan Burrough: Dragonfly: NASA And The Crisis Aboard Mir
Chris Mitchell
Throughout 1997, the Russian space station Mir made
international headlines as it lurched from one near
disaster to another. Populated by Russian cosmonauts
and American astronauts, Mir became a symbol of the
two countries’ collaboration in the post-Soviet age. But
even with the financing and expertise of NASA injected
into the ailing Russian space program, Mir continued to
remain dangerously unstable. Bryan Burrough’s book
is a behind-the-scenes account of what was happening
both in space and on the ground.
Since 1992, NASA has sent its astronauts to train
in Russia’s Star City in preparation for going aboard
Mir. Burrough details the inevitable clash of cultures –
while the Americans were used to rehearsing for every
contingency on the Shuttle, the Russians adopted a
improvisational approach, fuelled by the lack of funds
for their space program. The cosmonauts were paid
bonuses for the efficient running of the station, which
led to American accusations of safety procedures being
ignored in order to keep Mir operational.
Burrough focuses on two NASA astronauts sent to
Mir, Jerry Linenger and the British-born Mike Foale,
BUY Bryan Burrough books online from and
highlighting their very different attitudes towards the
Russians. Linenger witnessed the outbreak of a fire
and returned to Earth vocally condemning the space
station as a deathtrap. Foale was on board when Mir’s
hull was ruptured by a collision with the Progress supply
vessel, giving the crew members less than seven
minutes to seal off the module before losing all their
oxygen. Instead of insisting on evacuation as safety
procedure demanded, Foale helped cosmonauts Tsibliyev
and Lazutkin block the breach.
In both cases, Burrough reveals that the response of
mission control was hampered by NASA’s pitiful lack
of knowledge about Mir and the unwillingness of some
Russian technicians to share their expertise. Veteran
astronaut John Blaha returned from Mir suffering from
exhaustion and depression, blaming both on NASA’s
lack of ground support.
Given the daily struggle of the undeniably brave
crew members and the chaos in mission control, it’s
difficult to read Dragonfly and remember that the
story it tells is factually true rather than a science
fiction thriller. However, Burrough doesn’t trivialise
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