Aug 26 1981
From The Space Library
The Washington Post said that a USSR satellite that fell into the sea off the coast of China August 23 might have "lost its way to the Moon." The Soviet foreign ministry said that Cosmos 434 was not nuclear-powered and posed no danger of nuclear contamination: the Washington Post said that the Soviet Union seemed eager to allay any fears of radioactive debris like that Cosmos 954 strewed over Canada's "sparsely inhabited" Northwest Territories in January 1978. The Soviets said that the reentered craft was an "experimental lunar cabin." This description tallied with a long-held belief that Cosmos 434 was relic of an unsuccessful manned lunar mission planned in the 1960s by the Soviet Union to rival the U.S. Apollo program, which had put 12 men on the Moon by the time it ended in 1972.
Between November 1970 and August 1971, the Soviet Union had launched four unmanned satellites that performed complex. maneuvers in Earth orbit simulating those of a lunar-landing mission. A two-volume book on the Soviet space program published in 1979 by the American Astronautical Society said that the satellites (Cosmos 379, Cosmos 382, Cosmos 398, and Cosmos 434) seemed to be practicing acceleration toward the Moon, braking into lunar orbit, landing on the Moon, and returning to Earth. The Soviet Union never disclosed the purpose of the satellites, but U.S. analysts believed them to be flight tests of a propulsion unit for manned lunar spacecraft. As the 50th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution neared, observers thought it likely that the Soviet Union would mark 1967 by putting a man on the Moon; in 1968; the year before the first U.S. moon landing, Soviet cosmonauts were saying that, when the Americans reached the Moon, Russians would be there to greet them.
The Soviet program apparently had a series of setbacks that "cooled the leadership's enthusiasm," the Washington Post said. In June 1969 the first attempt to launch the G rocket (a giant new booster like the U.S. Saturn 5) was said to have ended in a mammoth explosion demolishing the launch complex. It also apparently exploded in the early stages of flight during two other tests, in the summer of 1971 and on November 24, 1972. (W Post, Aug 30/81, A-25)
September September 1: Press reports described the rollout of Space Shuttle Columbia on its eight-tread mobile launching platform from KSC's VAB to launch pad 39A, a 3.5-mile trip that took about seven hours.
New launch date was October 9, only 39 days from rollout; however, Columbia had sat on its pad for 104 days before its first flight, and launch director George F. Page said that all the usual tests should be completed in time. The new schedule allowed for weather delays or new technical problems. The launch pad was modified after last April's ignition caused shockwaves that buckled struts on the spaceship and endangered other parts; Columbia had "several hundred" of its 31,000 heat-resistant tiles replaced. It would carry a new fuel tank-the only expendable part of the Shuttle assembly-and two new solid-fuel booster rockets to be retrieved from the ocean shortly after liftoff.
KSC officials had closed two viewing sites for the next launch because of exhaust fallout. Dr. Albert Koller, chief of environmental management for KSC, said that the fallout problem was a surprise: acid drops in an exhaust cloud produced by STS-1's boosters had spotted vegetation up to four miles north of the site, but apparently did not harm animals in the area. Hydrochloric acid drops from the cloud might cause reddening and burning of unprotected skin.
NASA hoped eventually to send a shuttle back into space within two or three weeks of its previous mission, but Page said "we're a long way from that ultimate goal." (NY Times, Sept 1181, C-3; W Post, Sept 1181, A-4)
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