Editing Shuttle–Mir program (section)

===Safety and scientific return===
Criticism of the program was primarily concerned with the safety of the aging ''Mir'', particularly following the fire aboard the station and collision with the Progress supply vessel in 1997.<ref name="OffPlanet"/>

The fire, caused by the malfunction of a backup [[Chemical oxygen generator#Solid oxygen generator from Mir|solid-fuel oxygen generator]] (SFOG), burned for, according to various sources, between 90 seconds and 14 minutes, and produced large amounts of toxic smoke that filled the station for around 45 minutes. This forced the crew to don respirators, but some of the respirator masks initially worn were broken. [[Fire extinguisher]]s mounted on the walls of the modules were immovable. The fire occurred during a crew rotation, and as such there were six men aboard the station rather than the usual three. Access to one of the docked Soyuz lifeboats was blocked, which would have prevented escape by half of the crew. A similar incident had occurred on an earlier ''Mir'' expedition, although in that case the SFOG burned for only a few seconds.<ref name="Dragonfly"/><ref name="OffPlanet"/>

The near-miss and collision incidents presented further safety issues. Both were caused by failure of the same piece of equipment, the TORU manual docking system, which was undergoing tests at the time. The tests were called in order to gauge the performance of long-distance docking in order to enable the cash-strapped Russians to remove the expensive [[Kurs (docking system)|''Kurs'']] automatic docking system from the Progress ships.

In the wake of the collision NASA and the Russian Space Agency instigated numerous safety councils who were to determine the cause of the accident. As their investigations progressed, the two space agencies results began moving in different directions. NASA's results blamed the TORU docking system, as it required the astronaut or cosmonaut in charge to dock the Progress without the aide of any sort of telemetry or guidance. However, the Russian Space Agency's results blamed the accident on crew error, accusing their own cosmonaut of miscalculating the distance between the Progress and the space station.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Burrough|first1=Bryan|title=Dragonfly|date=1999|publisher=Fourth Estate}}</ref> The Russian Space Agency's results were heavily criticized, even by their own cosmonaut Tsibliyev, on whom they were placing the blame. During his first press conference following his return to Earth, the cosmonaut expressed his anger and disapproval by declaring, "It has been a long tradition here in Russia to look for scapegoats."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Specter|first1=Michael|title=Refusing To Play Role Of Mir's Scapegoat, Crew Fights Back|work=New York Times|date=17 August 1997}}</ref>

The accidents also added to the increasingly vocal criticism of the aging station's reliability. Astronaut [[Blaine Hammond]] claimed that his safety concerns about ''Mir'' were ignored by NASA officials, and that records of safety meetings "disappeared from a locked vault".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-02-06-space-investigate-usat_x.htm|title=Some question NASA experts' objectivity|author=Alan Levin|publisher=USA Today|date=February 6, 2003|access-date=2017-08-22|archive-date=2011-06-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604032359/http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-02-06-space-investigate-usat_x.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> ''Mir'' was originally designed to fly for five years but eventually flew for three times that length of time. During Phase One and afterward, the station was showing her age—constant computer crashes, loss of power, uncontrolled tumbles through space and leaking pipes were an ever-present concern for crews. Various breakdowns of ''Mir''{{'s}} Elektron oxygen-generating system were also a concern. These breakdowns led crews to become increasingly reliant on the SFOG systems that caused the fire in 1997. SFOG systems continue to be a problem aboard the ISS.<ref name="Dragonfly"/>

Another issue of controversy was the scale of its actual scientific return, particularly following the loss of the ''Spektr'' science module. Astronauts, managers and various members of the press all complained that the benefits of the program were outweighed by the risks associated with it, especially considering the fact that most of the US science experiments had been contained within the holed module. As such, a large amount of American research was inaccessible, reducing the science that could be performed.<ref>{{cite news|author=James Oberg|title=NASA's 'Can-Do' style is clouding its vision of Mir|newspaper=Washington Post|page=C1|date=September 28, 1997|publisher=Retrieved March 9, 2007 from NewsBank}}</ref> The safety issues caused NASA to reconsider the future of the program at various times. The agency eventually decided to continue and came under fire from various areas of the press regarding that decision.<ref>{{cite news|author=Mark Prigg|title=Row between Nasa and the Russian Space Agency – Innovation|newspaper=The Sunday Times|page=Sport 20|date=April 20, 1997|publisher=Retrieved March 9, 2007 from NewsBank|no-pp=true}}</ref>