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From: glenn%ll-vlsi@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: none
Message-ID: <12534@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 16:38:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12534
Posted: Mon Oct  1 16:38:58 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Oct-84 05:39:04 EDT
Lines: 24

Subject: Empty Salyut Station

The Russians have announced that their cosmonauts are preparing the Salyut
Space Station to operate in an unmanned automatic mode after they leave it
in a few days.  They are also beginning to load their Soyuz T-11 spacecraft
for the return flight.

There had been much speculation that the Soviets would try a crew switch on
this mission to keep the Salyut continuously occupied.  However in a recent
interview with Roald Sagdeev, the director of the Space Research Institute
in Moscow, for Sky and Telescope magazine he was asked if the about indications
he gave that the Salyut would be run in an automatic mode with experiments
on board it.  He said point blank that this Salyut would not be permently
manned because the design was too old.  That would wait until their new
station was put up in the near future.  The behaviour of this mission agrees
with his statements.

One other point.  Leonard David of the Nation Space Institute has pointed
out that on Sept 25 the Russians had achieved 10 man-years of human activity
in space (from Space Calendar, Sept 24 '84 issue).  The US has less than half
that and is falling further behind, even with the current large number of
people orbited in a shuttle.

                             Glenn Chapman