Cape Canaveral, Fla. — When Mir plunges into the Pacific next week, more than metal will rain down in flames. Lots more.
Like Shannon Lucid's books, all 100 of them. Michael Foale's running shoes. Andrew Thomas' nail file. Norman Thagard's spare uniform.
The American astronauts who lived aboard the Russian space station wish they could salvage some of the things they left behind, as well as some Russian items and even pieces of the 15-year-old spacecraft itself.
Thomas said Friday from the international space station that if he could, he would bring back the picture of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, that hangs above Mir's galley.
Another picture has hung up there for years, but Mir's first American resident, Thagard, is not sure it's worth saving.
"It was almost a pornographic sort of thing that was hanging from the toilet ... one of those that would probably be offensive to some women," he recalled from Tallahassee, where he is an electronics professor at Florida State University.
The X-rated drawing and Gagarin's portrait and a Russian icon will join Lucid's library for what she calls "the ultimate book burning." Russian space officials are targeting next Thursday for Mir's fiery finale.
Lucid's books were gifts from her daughters. They were mostly used, half-price paperbacks. The covers of the hardbacks were torn off before launch to save weight.
Altogether, seven Americans took turns living aboard Mir from 1995 through 1998. They were practicing for the international space station, now circling Earth with space shuttle Discovery.
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