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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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 Document 5 of 10 51. Full-fledged emergency rescue systems need to be installed on rocket systems used for putting cosmonauts into orbit. 52. After injection, the upper stage of the launch vehicle should not be kept in orbit long. 53. We need to verify (if only with theoretical calculation) the absence of the danger of any harmful effect produced by the rocket fuel combustion products on the ozone layer of the atmosphere. 54. We must not forget what we learned in the lunar program. 55. On 20 July 1969, we gazed at the Moon with feelings that were unusual, new for us all. On that day, humans- Armstrong and Aldrin-were walking on its surface, at a fantastic distance of 400,000 km away! That event was perceived as (in the words of Armstrong) a ''giant leap for mankind.'' An impressive range of operations and an impressive result. Complete success. 56. The euphoria felt at the time by the project's developers and probably by most of the American people was understandable and quite natural: 'We're on the Moon! That's us on the Moon, and not those Russians who are eternally behind in everything... Our natural position in space research has been restored (and our prestige, too)... What we had perceived at one time as a sort of abstraction, a sort of pretty, unalterable detail of the sky, has turned out to be a real world after all, one on which you can walk, and ride-one you can touch. This is a historical achievement, and it's ours!' 57. Emotionally, that historical show that was put on for the whole world meant, of course, a great deal: you could feel that you were a participant on that unusual journey and adventure, you could feel the Moon under your own feet. 58. We could congratulate the Americans and the all the rest of us again on that magnificent achievement. And why not. But something raises some doubt, something is not quite right. 59. The landing of N. Armstrong and E. Aldrin on the Moon was the beginning of the lunar project. Between 1969 and 1972, the Americans delivered six missions to the Moon. What can be considered a plus about the lunar program? 60. Twelve people spent time on the surface of our satellite. In all, they covered nearly 100 km of it on foot or by vehicle, and they brought back nearly 400 kg of lunar rock. But in and of themselves (apart from the advertizing/souvenir aspect of the matter), those
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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.