From: utzoo!decvax!cca!Ciccarelli@PARC-MAXC@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.space Title: Oberg on Russian Shuttle Article-I.D.: sri-unix.1956 Posted: Tue Jun 29 09:50:42 1982 Received: Wed Jun 30 01:39:11 1982 James Oberg, a follower of Soviet space efforts, spoke on National Public Radio's Morning Edition program today. His assessment of the recent "mysterious" launch and Indian Ocean splashdown of a Soviet vehicle was that it was probably *not* a shuttle. He cited several reasons for his opinion; the main one was that the Soviets, by launching more hardware ("a million pounds a year") into space, had achieved a cheaper cost-per-pound than the USA. Economics simply doesn't presently require a shuttle to achieve their objectives, which he said centered around a space station presence. He further said the space station is important to them because the reliability of their satellites is far lower than that of the U.S.; they need the repair capability. /John