No Early Hight In Space By Russians

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29058, 21 November 1959, Page 13

No Early Hight In Space By Russians

(Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON, November 19. A distinguished Soviet scientist said today that Russia had rockets powerful enough to put a man in space, but there was no plan to do this in the near future.

The scientist, Dr. Leond Sedov (who recently visited New Zealand) said that the possibility of manned flight in space was being investigated. To carry out such a flight, he said, it was necessary to provide for the pilot’s safety and for bis return unharmed, to earth. Problems Involved in doing this could be solved, but the solutions would take time. Dr. Sedov is leader of a fourman Soviet delegation attending the American Rocket Society’s annual meeting here. Other details of the Soviet space programme disclosed by Dr. Sedov included: The Soviet automatic interplanetary station, Lunik 111, would plunge back into the earth’s atmosphere to its destruction on March 13, 1960. It would by then have performed 71 revolutions in its wide-rang-ing orbit around the earth and the moon. The Soviet Union had chosen dogs for its space flight experiments because they were more easily trained to accustom themselves to flight conditions and because the use of bigger animals permitted more thorough investigation of body changes. The fact that the Soviet Union had launched no earth satel-

lites—only moon probes end deep space probes—since May, 1958, did not mean that it had given up earth satellite experiments. Soviet moon probes had revealed no measurable radiation in the moon’s vicinity. The instruments used were capable of recording radiation one 10.000 th that of the earth. The Soviet Union had no plans at present to make launchings ' Itgux equatorial sites. Professor Sedov said in answer to questions that the Soviet Union had only one failure in its satellite and space programme—the one the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr Nikita Khrushchev, acknowledged during his United States visit last September. This was a Soviet moon rocket whose launching vehicle had blown up during a test on the launching pad. Asked flatly whether there had been any other failures, Professor Sedov replied: “No, none we know about.”