pcmcgeer (06/11/82)
Canadian news tonight had more on the story: Apparently the Soviet shuttle is smaller than Columbia, but winged. The latest flight was unmanned, and took place from a secret rocket base in the Ukraine, splashing down in the Indian Ocean. It was picked up by Soviet ships in the area. The pickup was observed by Australian seamen in the area. Several things occur to me: (a) either we've been snowed, or the Soviets just can't build a Columbia-like shuttle. Dammit, Columbia can't fly without those IBM minis to control the attitude jets, and (we were told) a simpler attitude jet system won't work: remember Yeager's NF-104 near-disaster. Their most advanced computers are old 370/158's - they won't work, and you can't build today's minis out of 370-level technology. Second, they can't have anything like Columbia's tile system - no materials industry. (b) Given (a), and preliminary descriptions of the vehicle, isn't it more likely that the Soviet "shuttle" is really more an X-20 or a DynaSoar? After all, the only people who've seen the thing are Australian seamen, from a fair distance. Maybe a top-flight aerospace engineer could tell the difference between an X-20 and a shuttle from that distance, but I couldn't. (c) Why did it splash down? The Soviets pioneered hard landings. Why was this one different? Is it just because the Soviets wouldn't splash spacecraft down in the early 1960's, when the West had navies and the Russians didn't? Aside from the editorials, only one more thing: Canadian news (Global news in Toronto, for you Canadians on the net) quoted unnamed US officials as saying that the Soviet shuttle had flown several times, and that this was merely the first landing Westerners had observed.
wagner (06/11/82)
Is a DynaSoar an extinct rocket of interest only to archeologists? (sorry, the reference would have been missed if I posted to net.jokes)