TO SEE RUSSIAN ROCKET LAUNCH

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31195, 20 October 1966, Page 17

TO SEE RUSSIAN ROCKET LAUNCH

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, October 19. The Communist leaders of nine nations, gathered in Moscow for summit talks on Vietnam and China, leave today to watch a spectacular rocket launching on the dusty steppeland of Soviet Kazakhstan.

The launching could be of anything from a giant military rocket to a spacecraft with several men aboard. It will probably take place

tomorrow at Russia’s secret cosmodrome at Baikonur, 1550 miles from Moscow.

The leaders of the Soviet Union, its six East European allies, Mongolia and Cuba will probably be the biggest top-level audience ever to watch a launching. President de Gaulle had the rare privilege of a trip to Baikonur last June, when he watched a weather satellite and a missile being launched, but he is the only foreign leader ever to have visited the site. Space Research Like France, the eight nations whose leaders are in Moscow have agreed with Russia to co-operate on space research. The six East European countries are Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. There have been reports that a Bulgarian and a Czechoslovak cosmonaut might take part in a manned launching, but these have been treated with considerable scepticism.