Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency file is a 1991 JPRS translation, report JPRS-USP-91-005. It carries the annotation and text of a Soviet brochure on the space program, written by one of the first cosmonauts. The brochure reviews what manned and unmanned spaceflight have achieved and calls the American lunar program a costly dead end pursued for prestige. It then proposes future tasks, including environmental monitoring satellites, orbiting factories, an international monitoring system, Mars sample return, radio telescopes and space robots.
“Low Earth orbit”15 pages
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Document 5 of 10 201. Those expenditures tentatively appear to be the following for a Mars mission spacecraft: 202. 1. Injection of the complex from an Earth satellite orbit to a trans-Mars trajectory: 3.6-4 km/s (depending on how close it is to the optimal date for injection). 203. 2. Expenditures for the orbiter: 204. insertion into Mars satellite orbit: 0.1-1.5 km/s (depending on the method of orbital insertion and the orbital parameters chosen) 205. injection of orbiter from Mars satellite orbit to trans-Earth trajectory: 0.5-1.5 km/s (depending on Mars satellite orbit parameters) 206. insertion into Earth satellite orbit: 0-3.2 km/s (depending on return profile chosen-either with immediate reentry, or with a preliminary ''stop'' in Earth satellite orbit). 207. 3. Expenditures for the mission module: 208. descent from orbit into a descent trajectory, plus landing: 0.2-/3 km/s 209. insertion from Martian surface into Mars satellite orbit: 5.3-4.2 km/s (depending on parameters of orbit in which orbiter is waiting) 210. rendezvous and docking with orbiter: 0.1-0.2 km/s. 211. Those data show that a great deal is considerably more accessible and determinable for a Mars mission spacecraft. The power needs and the appearance of the craft can be described here and now. 212. The Mars mission module will have two propulsion systems: one on the lander (for the descent and landing), the other on the ascent stage (for orbital insertion and rendezvous and docking with the orbiter). 213. The operating conditions and the large number of cut-ins (the steering engines will have thousands) determine the fuel components: high-boiling-point, hypergolic-and, thus, toxic-components such as nitrogen tetroxide gas and nonsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. The toxicity of the components represents a substantial drawback, especially since the cosmonauts will have to go out onto the planet's surface, which is ''flooded'' with the components. And besides,
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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. 53 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.