@S1-A.ARPA,@MIT-MC.ARPA:glenn@ll-vlsi (09/26/85)
From: glenn@ll-vlsi.arpa (Glenn Chapman)
The Soyuz T-13 spacecraft separated from the Salyut 7 space station today
(Sept 26) as expected and has returned to earth. On board was Vladimir
Dzhanibkov, who spent about 110 days in space on the Salyut, and one
of the original Soyuz T-14 crew (Grechko ?). They are leaving the newer
Soyuz T-14 craft for the current Salyut crew. There are several new
interesting points on this mission since my last mailing (Sept 17).
First is the crew change with one of the original T-13 crew ( Victor Savinykh)
staying with the space station along with two new crew members from the current
flight. The Russians are calling this (correctly) the first crew rotation in
space. Secondly Dzhanibkov, who is comming down, is the USSR's most experienced
mission commander. He has five flights to his name (about one a year since
1980) as compared to a maximum of 3 for most other cosmonauts. (One other
cosmonaut has 4 flights but the Russians do not count one of them because it
was on the Soyuz 18A aborted mission). He was probably chosen to pilot
the Soyuz T-13 flight because of the difficulty they expected it to have in
docking with the Salyut which was experiencing communications/electrical
problems. Maybe they want him down to train for a more demanding mission
next year or possibly because he was not reacting properly to the long
duration in space. Finally of there is the interesting mixture of having
long an short duration people on the same crew. This means that the Savinykh
can help the newer crew members integrate into the Salyut operation more
quickly. Does this mean that Salyut 7 will be permently occupied until the
replacement station is brought on line? Previously the Russians had said
that crew rotations would not take place until the next space station was
occupied.
Mean while I have been getting letters from the L-5 society about the
difficulty in getting NASA's current budget through without cuts. Oh well.
Glenn Chapman