Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sri-unix!glenn@ll-vlsi 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