Mueller on the Soviet Space Program (During the 1960s/1970s) “…we were heavy observers but the…Russians were completely different than the American space program. Theirs was top secret and you didn’t know anything about it until they told you that it had happened…except for our spy apparatus. So when they did something we would learn about it– but in terms of describing program, they never did [that]….[When the Soviets spoke at international conferences, it was] not in enough detail to be of any real use, although the CIA was most interested in whatever we could learn. But they [the Russians] were well trained and because they were compartmented so much there wasn’t a lot of general knowledge. Now Kotelnikov [Academician Vladimir A. Kotelnikov, Soviet Academy of Sciences] was clued in across the board but he was probably one of the more intelligent people I’ve run across and so he didn’t give away anything he didn’t want to give away. It was interesting that one conversation we were talking about – I was talking about the space shuttle and reusable vehicles and he said well I think that’s important too but I think you will see that we’re doing something, and that was about the extent of it….[and] the implication was that they were building a reusable vehicle which turned out to be Buran, which looks like a shuttle.” (9/09)
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 15:00:00 +0000
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