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From: TAW%S1-A@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
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Message-ID: <2678@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Jun-83 13:45:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.2678
Posted: Thu Jun 30 13:45:00 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Jul-83 17:18:23 EDT
Lines: 32

From:  Tom Wadlow 

	Date: 21 Jun 83 4:05:49-PDT (Tue)
	From: harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix 
		!ucbcad!ucbesvax.turner @ Ucb-Vax

	When you think of how the Russians have been doing soft ground-
	landings almost from the start, and how "splash-down" was SOP for the
	U.S. until the shuttle, one wonders whether the Navy didn't have some-
	thing to do with the American Way of Re-entry.  Pomp and Circumstance
	for an event of indefinite location is a little easier to arrange on a
	movable surface like an aircraft carrier.  Those Siberian Plump-Downs
	must be rather dismal affairs by comparison.

I believe that the ''official'' reason for wet landings is a matter of both
weight and safety.  Why carry lots of shock absorbers into space when you've
got a couple of nice cushy oceans right nearby.  And the sudden stop at
the end of a ground landing (even if the chutes *don't* fail) is nobody's
idea of fun.

As for the Russian Plump-Downs, for quite some time the Russian
cosmonauts ejected from their Vostoks and landed separately, for exactly
the same reasons of safety.  This practice ended shortly before the
flight of Valentina Tereshkova, I believe.  (Side-note: Tereshkova
was selected mostly on the basis of her looks, since she was flown
primarily for publicity value.  Since nobody wanted to take chances
she was kept heavily sedated for the duration of the flight.  During
the landing, the sedative wore off, and when the spacecraft was found
by the locals, they found the Heroine of the State outside the
Voshkod, puking her guts out in a reaction to the drugs.  So despite
what the popular press has been saying, the first *qualified* woman
to go into space was Svetlana Savitskaya, last year.)  --Tom