The Soviet-built station, destroyed Friday in a choreographed exit after a 15-year career, was born from the superpower rivalry that catapulted Man into space four decades ago.

But the end of the Cold War and the daunting cost of having a manned outpost in orbit means no country today, not even the wealthy US, seriously intends to build another Mir by itself.

Yet if international partnership is the future, it can be elusive to achieve, judging by the experience of the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS has become a theatre for "continuing bristling between the Americans and Russians," David Baker, editor of the specialist British publication Jane's Space Directory, told AFP Friday.

"The engineers are getting on wonderfully well, assembling the bits and pieces of this giant Meccano (Erector) set in orbit (...) but the project itself is laced with political sniping."

The ISS is a colossal scheme involving 16 countries led by the US and Russia, with a tab likely to nudge a 100 billion dollars, of which the lion's share will be shouldered by NASA, by the time its 450 tonnes of units are fully assembled in 2006.

But politics and emotions have often entangled the scheme. The most powerful strands are Russia's poverty and its humiliation after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of Mir.

At one point, Russia even demanded fundamental design changes because of the Kuril Islands, an archipelago seized from Japan by Stalin in 1945 and whose ownership remains disputed to this day.

"The engineers, in their naivete, and with no thought to the political sensitivities of the Russians, had placed the Russian module next to the Japanese module," said Baker.

"The Russians had refused to be alongside Japan while there was still contested territory. If you look at the final configuration of the space station, you see those two modules are now at opposite ends of it."

Capitol Hill, for its part, is alarmed at the repeated US bailouts to fund Moscow's contributions to the ISS.

Some Congressmen accuse Russia of having a less-than-total commitment to the ISS, a sentiment fuelled by the 12th-hour bid to save Mir and continuing dreams of building a Mir-2.

"We do not rule out that one day it could become indispensable to build a new (Russian) station," the head of the Russian Space Agency, Yury Koptev, admitted Friday.

"But for such a project, we need our own sources of financing and today, our resources are limited."

President George W. Bush, however, is also raising questions about his enthusiasm for the ISS, a cash-demanding project with lofty ideals initiated by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, back in 1994.

Bush's budget plans, while not threatening the ISS itself, will probably mean the axing of X-38, a little US-made spaceplane that would evacuate the ISS crew in an emergency.

If so, that would mean a Russian ship, the Progress, would be the ISS' sole lifeboat, thus giving Moscow a big say in deciding the shape and timing of future missions.

So there is plenty of potential for hampering the ISS, ranging from tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions to a semi-comic row, which erupted openly last Monday, over a millionaire "space tourist", Dennis Tito.

Tito forked out 20 million dollars for a trip aboard Mir, but the Russians switched him to a flight to the ISS, scheduled for April 30, after the veteran space station was condemned.

That move is contested by NASA, which points out Tito is untrained for an ISS mission and argues he is a potential safety hazard.

The only other country interested in a national space station is China, which like the United States and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s seems willing to pay a huge price for becoming a manned space power.

But analysts say Beijing is unlikely to go beyond placing a laboratory in orbit, rather than attempting a Mir-sized facility, which would be several times larger.

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