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
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 Document 5 of 10 replacement, new scientific gear, and fuel. 259. On the outside of the orbital unit would be the platform, the propulsion system, the solar panels, the temperature-regulation system radiator, the optical sensors for the attitude control system of the orbital unit and the solar panels, antennas, and the powered gyroscopes of the attitude control system. Powered gyroscopes are used because, on the one hand, the orbital unit's communication antennas are always pointed toward Earth (i.e., in practical terms, attitude needs to be merely maintained) and because, on the other, an attitude control system that uses no fuel is needed (for the same efficiency considerations associated with expendable materials delivered from Earth). The location of the powered gyroscopes outside the pressurized spaces stems not only from the fact that the flywheels must rotate in a vacuum (in order to avoid windage losses), but also-and this is the main reason-from the consideration that a noise source be removed from the pressurized spaces. 260. The platform is a trusswork structure that supports the directional communication and relay antennas and the optical instruments that are operating in different spectral ranges and are used for observing the Earth's surface and the atmosphere. 261. The propulsion system is needed for placing the based in the desired region in geostationary orbit and for moving it to another region if the need arises. In addition, it can be used for keeping a cloud-base from "'racing apart'" in the event that the system for maintaining a given position relative to the main module goes out of order. Accordingly, the propulsion system includes a vernier engine, thrusters for control and coordinate shifts of the base with fuel, fuel-tank pressurization tanks, and pneumohydraulic valves. As fuel components, a gas such as dimethylhydrazine-nitrogen tetroxide would, of course, be used. 262. In a cloud-base, the fueling station would be an independent, unmanned space vehicle. For that reason, it would have to have a complete set of servo systems to support its existence: attitude control and stabilization systems (including a radar for rangefinding and measuring the radial velocity relative to the main module of the base, plus powered gyroscopes as controlling organs); a communications system; a temperature-regulation system; a power-supply system; life-support systems that are switched on when cosmonauts visit the fueling station; and a propulsion system. 263. The vehicle for making trips between the service facilities of the base would be an orbital craft capable of both manned and unmanned operation. In the unmanned mode, the craft could be used for simple service operations-such as fueling operations. For operations
Not linked to a story yet.
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.