Documents / FOIA release
(EST Pub Date) Annotation
Central Intelligence Agency · 1990-01-01 · 53 pages · text by OCR
This Central Intelligence Agency file is a 1991 JPRS translation, report JPRS-USP-91-005. It carries the annotation and text of a Soviet brochure on the space program, written by one of the first cosmonauts. The brochure reviews what manned and unmanned spaceflight have achieved and calls the American lunar program a costly dead end pursued for prestige. It then proposes future tasks, including environmental monitoring satellites, orbiting factories, an international monitoring system, Mars sample return, radio telescopes and space robots.
“Earth orbit”32 pages
- p. 1 …We have found out that man can live and work in orbit for a year (and…
- p. 2 …In terms of applied, in-orbit activity that is beneficial to the people on Earth, the…
- p. 4 …And last of all, the unmanned space vehicles for applied operations in Earth satellite orbit. Among…
- p. 6 …At this moment, the quantity of upper stages that remain in near-Earth orbit-along with…
- p. 9 …The idea of the Shuttles consisted in lowering transportation expenditures between Earth and orbit. The goal…
- p. 10 …Group B consists of operations that set up economically beneficial in-orbit production and that put…
- p. 11 …Earth with cheap, ecologically clean electrical energy.
83. It could also include operations on orbital stations…
- p. 12 …Such operations include studies performed with space telescopes placed in circumsolar and near-Earth orbits and…
- p. 13 …Satellites in geostationary orbit do not move in relation to the Earth's surface. We shouldn…
- p. 14 …Systems of radio telescopes placed in near-Earth and circumsolar orbits and operating as part of…
- p. 15 …Truly inexpensive, reusable transport craft for transport operations between Earth and orbit.
124. Neither the American…
- p. 17 …The second stage, after placing the payload into orbit, returns to Earth and is readied, along…
- p. 18 …Orbiting solar electric power plants would be useful for supplying Earth with electrical energy. The electrical…
- p. 21 …Radio telescopes in near-Earth orbits or, what is more effective, in Sun-satellite orbits may…
- p. 24 …glance, to offer important advantages over Earth-based and orbital telescopes.
169. The last task could…
- p. 25 …We could, of course, use measures that are typically used for orbital space vehicles-screens and…
- p. 29 …trans-Mars injection from Earth satellite orbit, flight to Mars, Mars orbit insertion, descent to the…
- p. 30 …injection of orbiter from Mars satellite orbit to trans-Earth trajectory: 0.5-1.5 km…
- p. 32 …On the stages of flight between Earth satellite orbit and insertion into a Mars satellite orbit…
- p. 33 …acceleration from a low, near-Earth orbit to a high, injection orbit (beyond the Earth's…
- p. 34 …compartments of the orbiter; the reentry vehicle used in the return to Earth; and the mission…
- p. 35 …injection of the orbiter from Mars satellite orbit into a trans-Earth trajectory with the sustainer…
- p. 36 …communications with Earth, the mission module, and the Mars rover (via the orbiter).
247. Because of…
- p. 37 …spacecraft rendezvous with the orbital unit; gear for communications with Earth (direct and through relay satellites…
- p. 38 …one hand, the orbital unit's communication antennas are always pointed toward Earth (i.e., in…
- p. 39 …The booster-rocket stage must lift the spacecraft from a low, near-Earth orbit to an…
- p. 40 …from Earth in a transport spacecraft that travels between Earth and the low-orbit servicing station…
- p. 41 …the crew transfers to the transport spacecraft that travels between Earth and that orbit, and the…
- p. 42 …of putting the cargo into low, near-Earth orbit were assumed to be $5,000/kg…
- p. 43 …the Earth-Moon system, each of which is located on the Moon's orbit equidistant from…
- p. 52 …Systems of radio telescopes placed in near-Earth and circumsolar orbits and operating in a single…
- p. 53 …Space robots for operations in open space in Earth satellite orbits.
354. Table of Contents
355…
Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991
Document 5 of 10
Page 1
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Status: [STAT]
Report Type: JPRS Report
Report Date:
Report Number: JPRS-USP-91-005
UDC Number:
Headline: Annotation
Source Line: 00000000
FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE:
1. What's been done so far and what may lie ahead- something of a summary of the development of the space program, and an attempt at predicting how it will develop-are what is contained in this brochure, written by one of the planet's first cosmonauts.
2. The brochure is intended for a broad circle of readers.
3. Thirty years have gone by since the first man flew into space, and 33 years since the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite. One naturally wants to ask oneself, Just what have we succeeded in doing? What new things have we learned? What have we gained that is of practical value?
4. What's Been Done So Far?
5. In terms of manned flight, we can list the following achievements:
6. We have found out that man can live and work in orbit for a year (and probably longer).
7. We have performed six lunar missions.
8. Man can work in open space (in a space suit), but his mobility and his capabilities there are extremely limited.
9. Man can do research in space, altering its programs and aims in the course of a mission. His capabilities, however, are largely determined by the equipment on board, and he cannot compete with automatic devices in terms of accuracy of execution of precision operations.
10. Manned spaceflight has not given us any fundamentally new information (other than data on man himself in weightlessness and data on the operation of the flight systems themselves in space), and we are powered by the hope for now that we will be able to do something of substance in the future.
11. We still haven't found an ''ecological niche'' in science,
Not linked to a story yet.
About this file
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 53 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.