Word: soyuz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plenty of amenities for its occupants: 20 viewports, exercise machines for physical fitness and, for the first time in orbit, an on-board television receiver to help relieve the long hours of isolation. The monotony was also broken by the visits of other cosmonauts, who arrived in Soyuz ferry craft, the workhorses of the Soviet manned space effort. In addition to regular supplies, they carried mail, such special snacks as fresh borsch, strawberries and quail pate, not to mention a guitar. Though Salyut was designed to last 18 months, it continues to function thanks to on-board repairs...
...understandable then that Cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalyonok, 39, got a little sentimental last month when he and his rookie sidekick, Viktor Savinykh, 41, headed back to earth in an advanced Soyuz T spacecraft after 75 days in space. Theirs was the final visit of cosmonauts to Salyut, although it could be used for unmanned missions. The Soviets have indicated that they may dock an unmanned Cosmos satellite on Salyut soon, perhaps this week. After looking back at the ship for the last time, Kovalyonok rhapsodized: "It was so beautiful it gave my heart a pang...
...informed 1,700 attentive delegates to the 16th congress of the Czechoslovak Party that he was confident that the unruly Poles would come to their senses after all. TASS then announced that the three-week-old Warsaw Pact military exercises, with their World's Fair name of Soyuz '81, were coming to a close. Brezhnev's speech was all the more welcome following the growls of Czechoslovak President Gustáv Husák the day before. The game was good-cop-bad-cop, but it worked. So much, then, for the impressive show of force...
Given all this, there ought to be less puzzlement than there is about the Soviet decision to call a halt to Soyuz '81 after leading the world to believe that an invasion was at hand. One theory has it that the Soviets originally made a decision to intervene, and then changed their minds. A second is that the exercises were a contingency measure. Yet there is a third way of looking at it; that the threat was the invasion. The Soviets withdrew because they felt they had temporarily accomplished their purpose. Even if they decide to invade after...
Slayton, selected as one of the original seven astronauts for the Mercury program in 1959 but forced by a heart murmur to wait until he commanded the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, was asked if he still hoped of returning. "Hell, yes, I wouldn't be here if I didn't," he replied...