Soviet Manned Programs 1977Through 1983

By Marcia S. Smith,Formerly with the, Science Policy Research Division of the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service

1976-1980/1981-1983

STATUS OF U.S. AND SOVIET MANNED PROGRAMS AT THE

END OF 1983

Thus, as 1983 drew to a close, the Soviet Union and United States were both heavily involved in manned space activities. The Soviets with their space station program and the Americans with their reusable ferry craft, seem to have adopted opposite philosophies in the development of manned vehicles.

In the early 1970's, the United States had had to choose, for budgetary reasons, between developing a space station or a reusable vehicle. It chose the reusable space shuttle, and now is considering whether or not to build a space station. The Soviets took the opposite path, building first the space station, and now the reusable vehicle.

By selecting the path it did, the Soviets have outdistanced the United States in gaining experience with human beings in outer space. They have more than doubled the duration of manned space missions from the 84-day Skylab flight in 1974 to 211 days for the Soyuz T-5/7 crew in 1982. With that much time to perform experiments, the Soviets have greatly expanded knowledge in fields such as plant growth in space; the processing of pharmaceuticals, metal alloys, and crystals; Earth resources photography; astrophysical observations; studies of the upper atmosphere; and most importantly how the human body withstands extended exposure to the conditions of space. But for all of this, they still have problems in returning the results of their scientific work to Earth. The Progress vehicle which takes supplies up to the space station is not designed for reentry, so it cannot bring results back. They have partially compensated for this by developing the Kosmos 1443-class spacecraft with a descent module, but it has flown only once. They could obviously benefit from having a reusable ferry craft.

The United States, on the other hand, has made a great technological leap by developing the reusable space shuttle. It is designed to allow routine and comparatively inexpensive access to space but it has no space station from which to ferry crews and experiments. The debate over whether or not to build a space station is a current issue in both Congress and the executive branch that had not been resolved by the end of 1983. By contrast, Soviet space technology has advanced little in the past decade and a half. Their primary manned spacecraft is simply an up-rated Soyuz, which was first used in 1967, and it is launched by the same launch vehicle that placed Sputnik 1 in orbit in 1957.

The roles of the military and civil communities in manned activities is also becoming more controversial. Since the entire Soviet space program is the responsibility of the military—there is no Soviet equivalent of NASA which conducts civilian space activities in the United States—it is sometimes represented in the West as being an entirely military program. If the same criteria are applied to Soviet manned activities as are applied to those of the United States, however, one would have to conclude that to date both have been heavily oriented toward civilian goals.

The United States would certainly count Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and ASTP as entirely civilian, and the shuttle as primarily civilian since it was developed by NASA, even though 37 percent of anticipated shuttle flights through 1994 will be for the Department of Defense. Similarly, then, Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, and Salyut 1 and 4 can be counted as civilian, while Salyut 3 and 5 could be counted as military. As noted earlier, the military/civil interface on Salyut 6 and 7 is unclear, but a study of what the Soviets have openly discussed about Salyut experiments leads to the conclusion that the cosmonauts could not be spending a majority of their time on unannounced military experiments in order to have time to spend on those that have been announced as civilian. Assuming that the Soviets are honestly reporting the nonmilitary experiments, the conclusion can be reached that Salyut is no more militarily oriented than the space shuttle (that is, no more than 37 percent of Salyut experiments are for military purposes.)

Manned spaceflight is also becoming increasingly international in the 1980's. The Soviets took the lead in sending non-Soviet cosmonauts into space. By the end of 1982, representatives of the nine Interkosmos countries plus France had flown on Soviet missions, and two Indian cosmonauts are now in training. The United States followed suit in the fall of 1983 with the launch of a European on the first Spacelab flight. Spacelab, which fits inside the cargo bay of the space shuttle, was developed by the European Space Agency. In December 1982, President Reagan invited Brazil to send an astronaut on a future space shuttle flight, and Australia, Canada, and Japan have indicated interest in doing the same (Canada has already chosen six candidates).

The future for manned spaceflight then would seem to include a wide variety of uses of space—both military and civilian—by people from many countries, not just the United States and Soviet Union. Although the United States has no plans to go back to the Moon or to other planets in the foreseeable future, the Soviets have openly talked about the possibility of manned flights to Mars (although they have not specified whether they would circumnavigate the planet or land). The United States is debating whether to build a space station, and some have suggested that it be an international effort, while the Soviets apparently are already developing their version of the space shuttle. Whether the two space powers will return to the manned space cooperation of the ASTP-era, perhaps with U.S. shuttle flights to Soviet space stations as envisioned in the 1977 agreement for cooperation between the two countries (which was allowed to lapse in May 1982 because of Soviet activities in Afghanistan and Poland) is very much uncertain, but with the growing number of countries involved in space activities, and the efforts by the United States and Soviet Union to send people from other countries into space, it would appear that space will be international regardless of U.S. and Soviet attitudes toward cooperation with each other.

References:

A. SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS: 1976-80, (WITH SUPPLEMENTARY DATA THROUGH 1983) MANNED SPACE PROGRAMS AND SPACE LIFE SCIENCES PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF HON. BOB PACKWOOD, Chairman, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION UNITED STATES SENATE, Part 2, OCTOBER 1984, Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D. C., 1984