By the way, it might have never happened. In late 1970s all production and research capacities were used for implementing the project of Soviet shuttle Buran and the development of space station designed for replacing Salut-7 in space was delayed. It was perestroika and uskoreniye (acceleration), as well as the tradition to report about the achievements to the congress of the CPSU that helped. Thus, the designers made a report to the 27th CPSU Congress. Mir station was lucky to work much longer than the designers guaranteed. Over 15 years of work, the station was visited by 104 cosmonauts and astronauts from 12 countries. There were even two journalists among expedition members – Russian Yuri Baturin and Japanese Toyohiro Akiyama. The space show 9 days long costed Japanese government $28 million and was considered the most expensive one in the world. Mir station can boast of many records. These are the coupling of 39 different spaceships (Russian Soyuz, American Atlantis and Endeavour were among them), the longest uninterrupted staying in space (Valery Polyakov stayed on board the station for 438 days), the longest space flight for women (Shannon Luci spent there 188 days), and 23,000 scientific experiments. Later, 5 scientific and amenities’ modules were docked to the base one, as well as the coupling model for accepting shuttles. In late 1990s, problems occurred at the station, and it was decided to drown it. The whole world without exaggeration was watching the footage showing Mir dropping down to the Pacific Ocean.
