MAN-IN-SPACE FAILURE?

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29383, 9 December 1960, Page 17

MAN-IN-SPACE FAILURE?

"Soviet Vehicle Disintegrated”

(Rec. 9 pm.) CHICAGO, December 8

The Chicago “Daily News” reported yesterday that a Soviet attempt to put a man into space last October ended in tragedy and further experiments were postponed for several months. The newspaper said in a dispatch from Berne that the Soviet spacecraft was apparently launched successfully, but that the capsule in which the man rode did not separate from the rocket and that the entire space vehicle disintegrated.

According to the dispatch, which quoted foreign diplomats in Switzerland who had contacts in Moscow, the attempt was timed to coincide with one of Mr Khrushchev’s appearances at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, The newspaper report said that when Mr Khrushchev returned to Moscow, he severely rebuked Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, identified as having been in charge of the man-in-space experiment, and that the marshal committed suicide, though the Soviet press reported it as an accident The dispatch said General Kiril Moskalenko succeeded Marshal Nedelin as supreme commander of Soviet rocket forces.