Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!bob
From: bob@etive.ed.ac.uk (Bob Gray)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: US, USSR shuttles a costly error...
Message-ID: <1082@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Nov 88 16:19:15 GMT
References: <1360@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Reply-To: bob@etive.ed.ac.uk (Bob Gray)
Organization: Edinburgh Concurrent Supercomputer Project
Lines: 45

In article <1360@mcgill-vision.UUCP> cox@spock.ee.mcgill.ca (Henry Cox) writes:
>
>[ From the Montreal Gazette, 22 November, 1988 ]
>
>U.S., U.S.S.R. SHUTTLES A COSTLY ERROR: SOVIET
>
>New York (AP) - The former head of the Soviet space research agency
>says both the Soviet and U.S. space shuttle programs are costly
>mistakes that will yield few scientific benefits until the next
>century.

Interesting. The BBC TV news showed an interview with
Sagdeev on this subject just after the BURAN test flight.

He was speaking in english, and commented on both the Soviet
shuttle systems and gave a completely different impression.

>"It went up.  It came down.  But it had absolutely no scientific
>value," was Roald Sagdeev's accessment of the 3 1/2 hour unmanned
>flight last Tuesday of the Soviet shuttle.

It was just a test flight, no scientific studies were
planned.

>He said, however, that the shuttle "is technology of the 21st
>century.  Why should we pay 20th century money for it?"

Followed by "we will only use the shuttle when we need it's
capabilities".

>"It is much simpler and cheaper to fly a payload with any kind of
>expendable vehicle."

This was one of the main points he was making, that
expendable launchers made on an assembly line were much
cheaper than complex re-useable systems.

In one interview recently one Soviet scientist (I forget
who) said that a payload launched on BURAN would cost ten
times what it would launched on a disposable.

Sagdeev also said that in his opinion the USA had "made a
SERIOUS mistake" in relying exclusively on the shuttle and
scrapping other launch systems. (his emphasis)
	Bob.