Space: Orbital Troika

With no warning, Moscow television abruptly interrupted its mid-afternoon program. Moments later it showed videotaped views of the Soviet Union’s huge space center at Baikonur in Central Asia. Two smiling cosmonauts, dressed in leather jackets and fatigues, arrived at the launch site. After exchanging ritual greetings with Soviet space officials, they waved to workmen and clambered aboard their big spaceship, Soyuz 6. They had every reason to be happy. As it disappeared into the cloud-covered Kazakhstan skies, the latest Soyuz got the Soviets off to the busiest week of rocketry since they began the space race with the flight of Sputnik 1 twelve years ago.

It was the first manned Soviet space flight in nine months, and the mission soon expanded. Within three days Soyuz 7 and 8 were also aloft; a record total of seven men were in orbit around the earth. Only slightly more communicative than usual, Soviet officials announced that the high-flying troika would maneuver in formation, test a common flight-control system and carry out several important scientific tasks, including an attempt to weld metal in the zero-gravity vacuum of space. Although they studiously avoided saying so, the Russians seemed determined to practice the techniques involved in docking large spacecraft and constructing a rudimentary space station.

Not only would a space station offer an orbiting observatory for scanning the earth and studying the heavens without atmospheric interference; it could also serve as a platform for launching rockets to the moon and more distant targets. Freed from the earth’s gravity, a rocket assembled and launched in space would require far less fuel and thrust. Last January, the Soviets achieved a primitive space station of sorts with the temporary hookup of Soyuz 4 and 5. On the eve of the Soyuz 6 flight, the Soviet magazine Nedelya commented: “Man must build himself a house wherever he goes: on the tundra, in the forests, in the mountains, on the bottom of the oceans, and now in space.”

The triple flight fell far short of that grandiose goal. After five days in orbit,

Soyuz 6 returned to earth. So did the other two spacecraft at week’s end. Even the cryptic Soviet commentators virtually conceded that the flights were more of a trial run than an actual attempt at orbital housebuilding. Still, if the Soviets master the difficult technique of space welding, which they attempted in a depressurized chamber inside Soyuz 6, they may well try to build a space station for the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth next April.

Nova’s Glitches. U.S. space officials also put a premium on space stations. Only last month President Nixon’s space advisory panel declared that they should be NASA’s next big goal. Because of the priority placed on the lunar program, though, a U.S. space station is at least two years away. Even so, it will house only three men; to avoid the welding problem, NASA designers plan to latch the parts together mechanically. In 1975, NASA hopes to build a twelve-man complex that could be expanded to accommodate as many as 100 scientists and technicians.

By then, the Soviets may be orbiting comparable bases of their own. Last week’s Soyuz shots showed that the Russians are already capable of rapidly lofting the huge amounts of equipment required for building in space. For their space troika, the Soviets needed several firing and mission-control centers, a complex three-way communications setup and three separate launch pads. NASA officials confessed that the U.S. would be hard-pressed to match the Soviet feat, since it lacks such vast ground facilities.

The rest of the Soviet space effort has not gone as smoothly as Soyuz. U.S. officials, for example, are still awaiting the first successful flight of Russia’s Nova-class booster, which is supposed to be nearly twice as powerful as Saturn 5 with its 75 million Ibs. of thrust; Nova’s glitches, in fact, may well have cost the Russians the race to the moon. And there is no doubt that they find the loss embarrassing. Musing over the meaning of the Soyuz flights last week, a young Muscovite commented somewhat wistfully: “It’s not much compared with the moon, is it?”