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From: glenn@LL-VLSI.ARPA (Glenn Chapman)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Progress 41 ejected as crew prepares to leave USSR's Mir station
Message-ID: <8904240005.AA29889@ll-vlsi.arpa>
Date: 24 Apr 89 00:05:25 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 94


     On board the Mir/Kvant space station on Apr. 23 Dr. Valrey Polyakov 
became the physician with the most orbital time by exceeding 236 days, 
the record set by Dr. Oleg Atkov on Soyuz 10B/Salyut 7 in Oct. 1984.  
Dr. Polyakov is now the tenth most experienced cosmonaut.  Alexander 
Volkov and Sergei Krikalev who arrived on Soyuz TM-7 in November, have 
now been up for 147 days.  The crew is making the final preparations for 
coming down on Apr. 27th and preparing to leave the station in the 
unmanned mode for several months.  As part of this the Progress 41 cargo 
craft's engines substantially boosted Mir's altitude by about 40 Km (25 
mi) to form a 400 x 372 km (250 x 232 mi) orbit.  Thus the station can 
go for several months now without requiring Mir's own engines or 
reboost.  On Apr. 20th Radio Moscow announced Progress 41 had been 
ejected and entered the atmosphere, hence leaving the rear docking port 
free for the next crew or other craft to service the station.  (Also 
AW&ST Apr. 17)
     There is some controversy concerning the reason for the leaving Mir 
unmanned.  The conflict in the media, both western and eastern, is 
between the closing down of the station for because of high program 
costs, as compared to a short term suspension due to technical problems. 
Confirmation of the report on Soviet TV about the power loss (see my 
Apr. 13th posting) was given in an Aviation Week article on Apr. 17th.  
All reports agree that there has been a progressive decline in the 
station power, which will require a mission to repair the station in 
about August.  On the short wave they have stated that the next mission 
will go up and then two expansion modules (about 20 Tonnes each - the 
mass of Mir's core section) will be launched nearly simultaneously.  
This will allow them to dock one section, transfer it to the side port, 
then rapidly dock the second section.  The will allow them to minimize 
the problems with asymmetry that will occur when Mir has only one module 
docked to the side.  The problems with the gyroscopic momentum wheel 
system have probably forced easy of maintaining stability to become a 
very important issue for them.
    On the other hand many press reports have tended to focus on 
statements like that of Boris Yeltsins during the Moscow election 
campaign of "Bread not Sputniks."  The New York Times (Apr. 19) ran an 
article that quoted Viktor Blagov as stating that the close down was to 
save money rather than for technical reasons.  On Soviet television 
there was a news interview with another official which stated that yes 
the station was unmanned to save money until the new modules were ready 
in the fall.  However, when asked about the power problems the answer 
was that Mir was three years old and previous stations had run into 
problems that required repairs at about that age [especially Salyut 7 in 
June 1985].  Hence some repair needs should be expected.  Also the new 
modules would add solar panels which will add more power to the station.  
Meanwhile on the short wave on Apr. 18th the Soviets listed the number 
of paying customers that will be sending people to Mir in the future.  
These are the Japanese in May 1991, British in 1991/92 for a 14 day 
mission, the French in 1991/92 for a two month flight, and an Austrian 
in 1992 for an 8-10 day visit.  The Japanese visit is especially 
interesting as the Tokyo Broadcasting System is paying for a journalist 
to fly, the first to do so (the NASA Journalist in Space program was 
cancelled).  Indeed there is an interesting rivalry in this launch as 
NASDA, the main Japanese space agency, is scheduled to fly an astronaut 
on the shuttle the summer of the same year. (New Scientist Apr. 1).
    All of this suggests that there are technical problems with Mir.  
but does not answer the question as to whether the Russian manned space 
program is being significantly scaled back for economic reasons.  
Historically the soviets have said that they are reducing some activity 
because of economic reason, when really the difficulties were technical 
(eg. the Tu-144 supersonic transport).  They have been very reluctant to 
admit problems with their equipment.  My personal feeling is this is a 
case of the station having some power problems which reduces the 
experiments the cosmonauts can do while possibly putting them at risk if 
things get much worse (the life support system takes a considerable 
fraction of the power).  Meanwhile delays in the modules mean the new 
experiments the crew were to perform are not yet ready.  Hence, the risk 
of maintaining the crew up there under these circumstances is not 
balanced by a gain of more scientific information.  Thus, in some ways 
both views are correct, both economics and technical problems are saying 
bring the crew down.  To put this in perspective consider that this 
hiatus is rather a short period between long duration space station 
crews by historical standards.  Outside of Mir's 26 month continuous 
occupation there are only two times since 1978 when the period between 
extensive visits was 3 months or less.  Indeed such delays are common in 
all the world's space programs; the NASA Discovery launch, scheduled for 
Aug. 10th has just been set back until Nov. while the next ESA's Ariane 
4 flight is now delayed due for technical reasons.
     Thus it is with some amusement that I have watched a number of 
people post notices, based on the western media economic statements, of 
how this indicates the Russian program is going to fall apart, just as 
one would expect from a Communist run system.  Until I see more 
evidence, such as a failure of the mission to go up in Aug./Sept., there 
little proof to back up this belief.  Only time will tell whether the 
USSR has dropped out of the race toward being the first human space 
faring nation, or just has stumbled and will rise again.
     Unfortunately, I will be away giving some lectures for the next two 
weeks so it will not be possible for me to post the events of the Soyuz 
TM-7 landing.  If someone else out there in netland follows the program 
would they please do so to keep the others informed.  Thank you in 
advance.

                                           Glenn Chapman
                                           MIT Lincoln Lab