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.
“Mission Control”7 pages
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 ## Document 5 of 10 120 tons, the mass of the complex can be around 300 tons. 245. If the mission crew that lands on Mars consists of four individuals, then the total number of crew members for the Mars mission must be at least six. 246. The orbiter's onboard systems and computers must support in-flight operations such as control and navigation and communications with Earth, the mission module, and the Mars rover (via the orbiter). 247. Because of the need to minimize the mass of the spacecraft and because of the long duration of the flight, a closed-loop oxygen-and-water system will have to be used for life support. 248. The long flight of the mission far from Earth, with no possibility of giving any direct assistance to the cosmonauts, raises the question of whether the mission should consist of several spacecraft, who could provide such assistance to one another and, at the same time, avoid duplicating programs of operations. ## 249. A Base in Geostationary Orbit 250. A base in geostationary orbit could be used for servicing unmanned geostationary platforms, communications and television-relay satellites, and weather satellites that are in geostationary orbit; for observing the Earth's surface in the interests of the environmental monitoring and natural resources studies; for weather observations and astrophysical research; and for the construction of solar electric power plants. 251. The creation of a base in geostationary orbit does not appear today to be an essential task, but the development of communications and television-relay systems and the appearance of multipurpose platforms in geostationary orbit could lead to the conclusion in the future that a base in geostationary orbit is needed. The rest (communications, television, radio telescopes, etc.) represents incidental goals: if a base were to be created, then it would be logical to use it for other purposes, too. 252. The base could include an orbital unit; an external platform; a fueling station; and an orbital transport vehicle for carrying cosmonauts and cargo to vehicles and platforms being serviced. 253. In addition, the base could also include a manned transport spacecraft (for bringing crews to and from the base) and multipurpose cargo transport spacecraft (for delivering cargoes from low orbit to the base).
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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.