This is John Batchel. Speaking with Bob Zimmerman, my colleague, about ISS, there are cracks,

stress cracks in Zvezda, the module that on the Russian side of the space station is used to dock

with the upcoming Soyuz and Apollo craft, no, Soyuz, only, Russian stuff. But it's no longer reliable. And I ask Bob, what happens if

Vesta fails on the Russian side of the space station fails? And are they planning for that? Or are they

anticipating? They might have to do without it? Bob's answer is in detail.

Apparently, they are gaming that,

and there's a problem here.

It's not safe.

Here's Bob Zimmerman on.

The contingency planning just in case Zvezda is, well, fails.

More of this tonight.

We've reached the situation where I think if the Russian half of the station was gone,

the station might be able to survive for a while.

For example, the Russians have been using their progress freighters to raise the orbit

of the station since its inception.

But both dragon capsules, both cargo and manned, as well as the new Japanese H.T.V.

cargo vessel, which is about to launch for the first time,

sometime the next few months, are designed to maybe be able to provide that same orbital lift capability.

They've done some tests with both Cygnus and Dragon to see if they could do this.

And so, yes, it could survive, but I will tell you, a catastrophic failure of Zsda

will not be good for the whole station. It's designed to be balanced the way it is, and if you lose

a module, you have to reorder things very quickly.

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