Dec 19 1984
From The Space Library
The Soviet Union launched a scale model of what U.S. experts called a small, reusable, winged spaceplane. It orbited the Earth once, glided back into the atmosphere, and splashed down in the Black Sea. The apparently successful unmanned flight, the fourth in a new shuttle program, was seen as further evidence of the growing competition among superpower countries to develop advanced instruments for using space for military as well as peaceful operations. U.S. intelligence analysts speculated that the Soviet spaceplanes, when fully developed and flown by pilots, could be used to deliver small payloads or to inspect or attack other satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Soviet Union was also reported to be close to conducting the first tests of a larger, manned space vehicle comparable to the U.S. Space Shuttle.
In what had become a characteristic of the space race between the Soviet Union and United States, one nation, the Soviet Union in this case, was trying to catch up with the other in developing the large shuttle but was also trying to move ahead with another technology, the small spaceplane. And equally characteristic, this had apparently prompted the other, in this case the United States, to step up its efforts to design a spaceplane of its own. (NY limes, Dec 19/84, A-1)
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