[FPSPACE] RE: Last Few Hours in History of Unmanned Space?

[Chris Jones]

Jim Benson <Jim@spacedev.com> writes:

  Another reason NASA and the U.S. government were so adamant about
  downing Mir and undermining the Russian space program was to stop the
  unprecedented Russian record of 13 years of unbroken human presence in
  space in order to restart the clock in the West's favor.

Do you have any evidence for this other than paranoid imaginings?  Another view
of recent history is that the Russians were only able to get the final few of
those 14 years with NASA/US help in the form of the Shuttle/Mir program, which
allowed the Russians to continue Mir's occupation with a much lower (maybe even
zero) expenditure of funds.