Documents / FOIA release
This CIA-held JPRS report (JPRS-USP-89-007) is an English translation of an interview with academician Roald Sagdeyev. The interview ran in the Soviet magazine PRIRODA in January 1989. Sagdeyev talks about space research achievements, the Interbol project, and the Phobos mission to Mars, including the loss of contact with Phobos 1 in September 1988. He also covers competing designs for Mars 94, manned flight to Mars and democratizing Soviet science. He mentions UFOs only once, recalling a Gosplan lecture where every audience question was about flying saucers.
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69. Even now, there is a whole series of international legal norms (for example, the ban against placing nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction into space). From my point of view, they need to be supplemented by a rejection of the militarization of space in the broad sense, i.e., also banning the testing of any weapon in space. A proposal has been made that a series of legal agreements be concluded regarding the use of outer space in the national economy or for economic purposes. 70. Thus, this field already has its own science--international space law. This science is developing and, from time to time, there are international conferences and seminars, and everyone associated with space is interested in the development of this sphere of activity. 71. [Correspondent] Roald Zinnurovich, in our conversation, you have talked about those space projects which are either already in full swing or will be conducted in the next few years. But what about a look into the future? What kind of space projects do you foresee for the 22nd century (in fact, there are only 11 years left until the beginning of the 21st century)? 72. [Sagdeyev] It is a shame to admit it, but the realities of our practical economic affairs reduce the role of the leader of any scientific collective involved in space, be it the director of an institute or the head of a laboratory, to one of spending nearly 90 of the time on the solution of immediate problems--'forcing through'' orders, and not just such grandiose ones as an order for a satellite or a subsequent launch, but also for an instrument which is supposed to go up; getting the individual component assemblies which may or may not be produced by our industry--and all of this represents an enormous amount of work. And, in the end, it turns out that, in that set of everyday current affairs, which, with proper organization of the country's economic system, should not eat up so much time, we are not in a position to even think about projects in the 21st century, let alone the 22nd century. 73. Nevertheless, I am hopeful that, in the 21st century, we will witness the free travels of man within the limits of the solar system, even though, true, it may not be us, but rather, our descendants. I think that, during the next approach of Halley's Comet in 2061, mankind will certainly succeed in unraveling its mystery. Certainly, it would be dangerous to land a manned spacecraft on the surface of the comet's core, but, who knows, it is possible that, by that time, protection against the dust streams will have been developed. In any case, taking a sample of material directly from the comet's core and delivering it to earth will turn out to be a readily
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 21 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.