FileTitle: Prose2001.html
Category: Humor
Type: Prose
Description: Space Station Mir News Report
KOROLYOV, RUSSIA--U.S. and Russian scientists are increasingly
excited about the Mir space station project, which promises to reveal
more than has ever been known about the scientific relationship
between weightlessness and mortal terror.

"By stranding our scientists on a dilapidated space station with
faulty wiring, loose hardware, and malfunctioning air systems," NASA
head Daniel Goldin said, "we have created extremely favorable
conditions for learning about spaceborne panic."

The two Russians and one American on board the station are
reportedly terrified beyond lucidity.

Among the groundbreaking experiments conducted on board Mir: a
June 25 collision with a cargo craft that depressurized the Spektr
module; last week's emergency power shortage, caused by a disconnected
cable; and the periodic release of "dry ice" steam that simulates a
shipboard fire. All have been deemed a huge success by agency heads.

"They are in a constant state of what aerospace scientists term
'mind-shattering terror,' frightened for their very lives," Russian
mission director Vladimir Solovyov said. "And we have not even used
the hull-mounted Alien puppet that taps on the window yet."