First came the shattering impact, as the seven-ton cargo vessel collided with the Mir space station. Then came the terrifying sound of the station's atmosphere escaping into the remorseless vacuum of space. "I heard the big thump and thud," American astronaut Mike Foale later recalled of the June 25th collision. "Almost immediately, we heard a hiss and felt pressure falling." As the station's irreplaceable oxygen supply steadily bled away, the crew -- Foale and Russian cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin -- struggled to cut power and data cables and seal off the station's ruptured Spektr science module.

After several desperate minutes -- perhaps as many as 20 -- the crew was able to isolate the damage and take inventory. The ruined Spektr module contained the station's primary solar panels, which were rendered useless. The gyroscopes that had been used to steer and orient the station had been shut down, as had the human waste disposal and air conditioning systems. Even more importantly, the station's main oxygen generation and carbon dioxide removal systems were both knocked out. With their solar batteries running at around 50 percent of normal, the crew was reduced to groping around the cabin with flashlights. The failure of the gyroscopic steering system also required them to perform several fuel-intensive burns with the station's attached Soyuz escape vehicle in order to redirect the remaining solar panels toward the sun.

Back to Normal?

By June 29th, Mir's surviving solar batteries had been recharged, partial lighting had been restored, the air conditioning was up and running again, and the waste disposal system was restored. Station commander Tsibliyev offered thanks to God for the crew's preservation, and Foale assured ground-based flight controllers that he would be willing to fly in space again after his terrifying ordeal.

NASA's Shuttle-Mir program director Frank Culbertson, who had been content to retail information from the Russian Space Agency (RSA) to the press during the most dangerous phase of the crisis, announced on June 29th, "Basically, what you have is a slowly increasing level of comfort on board and on the ground after returning to more normal operations." However, the repair plan proposed by the RSA was anything but a "normal" operation. The crew was instructed to don space suits, depressurize the station's cabin, send Foale to man the lifeboat, and send Tsibliyev and Lazutkin through a two-foot-wide portal to repair the stricken Spektr module.

Carefully avoiding possibly fatal encounters with debris -- such as sheared metal, glass fragments, or chemicals from science experiments that exploded as the module decompressed -- the Russians would attach a new hatch door which could maintain an airtight seal while allowing the power cables to be reconnected.

This plan presented several critical difficulties: It was by no means certain that the crewmen would be able to fit through the narrow aperture wearing bulky suits that were designed for use outside the station; there was not enough power to conduct a practice depressurization of the Mir; and there was no assurance that the new hatch would retain its crucial airtight seal.

The Mir crew has displayed remarkable ingenuity and adaptability, not to mention preternatural composure in the face of life-threatening crises. "These guys are real heroes," Culbertson told a June 29th press conference. "They've shown that with perseverance and support, you can get through some very serious situations. This is giving us a better understanding of the risks and what it takes to manage and deal with them."

The courage, tenacity, and resourcefulness of the Mir astronauts are inspiring, but the risks they have faced have been largely irrelevant to the pursuit of scientific knowledge. With the Spektr science module disabled, Mike Foale was deprived of both his living quarters and access to his science experiments. What purpose was served by leaving an American aboard the badly damaged Mir? The July 6th Newsweek provided an answer: "If Americans pulled out of Mir, it could spell the end of the U.S.-Russian partnership in space." The unnecessary risks run by Foale and the other four Americans who have served aboard Mir have been consecrated to the greater glory of globalism.

From Crisis to Catastrophe

For Mir, "normal operations" take place in a narrow spectrum that runs from crisis to catastrophe. According to the Associated Press, "Since the Mir entered service in 1986, there have been 1,439 breakdowns, 60 of which remain unfixed." Launched in 1986, Mir's life expectancy was a mere six years; the Russians now insist that the station can remain in service until at least 1999. In fact, the RSA has actually suggested that the aging Mir could provide the hub of the planned "Alpha" international space station. NASA summarily rejected that proposal when it was presented in December 1995. However, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin told the December 26, 1995 Washington Post that his agency "has tried to come up with a solution that will enable the Russians to operate Mir as a national treasure." Specifically, Mir would remain in operation through the end of the century -- perhaps as late as 2002 -- while the new station is under construction.

Although Russia had promised to provide more than $300 million worth of components for the international space station, the revised arrangement of December 1995 would require them only to provide the most "critical" pieces of hardware. In keeping with an agreement reached in 1993, NASA would also pay the RSA a total of $473 million over five years to rent space on Mir -- which makes the disintegrating station one of Russia's most profitable sources of hard currency. Other nations have followed suit, spending a total of $471 million a year to rent space for astronauts and experiments on Mir.

The increasing interdependence between NASA and the RSA has its downside, Goldin observed: "There'll be lots of opportunities to get nervous." Truer words have never been spoken by a NASA bureaucrat. Last February 23rd, while Mir was playing host to a six-man international crew, including American Jerry Linenger, one of the lithium perchlorate canisters used to provide oxygen erupted into flames. Linenger was working at a computer console when the station's master alarm went off. Linenger had become inured to the sound of alarms aboard Mir, as system failures are a regular occurrence. His complacency was shattered, however, when one of the Russian crew members shouted "Seryozny!" ("It's serious!"). The American rushed into the Kvant astronomy module, where he joined two cosmonauts in battling the fire.

"The flame was maybe two feet flying out of this thing [the oxygen canister]," Linenger recalled in June. "It looked like sparklers going off and molten metal flying." Three crew members were dispatched to prepare the Soyuz lifeboat in the event they would have to abandon ship. However, the Soyuz has a maximum occupancy of three passengers, meaning that three would have to remain aboard.

The fire extinguishers proved useless against the oxygen-fueled blaze. The crew confronted the possibility of immolation, suffocation, or worse: The station's aluminum hull is flammable, and had it ignited the resulting hull breach could have killed the crew instantly. A quick appraisal of these uninviting options prompted Linenger and his crewmates to turn their extinguishers on the walls of the module in a desperate effort to maintain hull integrity. Eventually the fire burned itself out, leaving the station's air clotted with ash, smoke, and chemical vapor.

That crisis -- the most serious confronted by the Mir until the cargo vessel collision -- took place while the station was out of contact with Russian mission control. A February 24th NASA press release laconically described the incident as a "problem with an oxygen-generating device" which resulted in a "small fire" that "burned for about 90 seconds." By early March, both of Mir's main oxygen generating systems were off-line, leaving the crew to rely entirely on the lithium perchlorate canisters to provide breathable air. Only 100 of the 185 canisters were still functional at that point; furthermore, they were intended only to provide supplemental oxygen when more than three crew members are on board. "You hate to see your margins [of safety] reduced in any area," NASA's Culbertson told the press. "It's not a comfortable situation to be in, but that's where they are right now."

Culbertson declined to point out that the American crew member was there because of the politics of the U.S.-Russia space partnership. One manifestation of that partnership is NASA's new-found penchant for Soviet-style dissimulation. Although Linenger debriefed NASA about the Mir fire on March 24th, it was not until June 28th -- after the most recent crisis -- that NASA grudgingly acknowledged to the public that the February 23rd fire had lasted for 15 minutes, rather than 90 seconds, and that it had been a life-threatening crisis, rather than a minor malfunction. Thus, it is reasonable to suspect that the full story of the June 25th collision has yet to be told -- and that it might not be until it is eclipsed by an even graver incident.

"Shaving at the Margins"

Since the fire in February, Mir has suffered recurring breakdowns of its life support, attitude control, and air conditioning systems. A coolant leak released antifreeze into the cabin, causing allergic reactions and breathing difficulties for the crew. Glitches were also detected in the station's automated docking system, which used Russian-made, bargain-basement guidance equipment in place of a more expensive version previously supplied by Ukraine. "They're shaving at the margins," James Oberg, author of Covering up Soviet Space Disasters, told the Washington Post. It was apparently a guidance system failure that led to the June 25th crash.

There is no more critical emergency aboard a space vessel than a hull breach, and sealing off the compromised area does not solve the problem. Space analyst Alcestis Oberg notes that the rupture of the Spektr module "stressed and weakened all the seams and joints of that module and possibly the rest of Mir, not just at the point where the actual leak occurred. It's impossible to ever trust the airtightness of that section again." Furthermore, "If another hull rupture occurs, astronauts could die immediately if it is large."

"More hull ruptures -- apart from the collision -- are possible, and these NASA has known about for a long time," Oberg continues. "Corrosion has been found in several places on the Mir's hull, which is the thickness of cardboard.... Also, the hull's metal was guaranteed only for a lifetime of five years, and Mir has been aloft for over 11. So there is now the likelihood of metal fatigue.... Either corrosion or metal fatigue could cause Mir's hull to tear again."

The thermal and dynamic stresses encountered in orbital space take a toll on well-maintained spacecraft; those stresses can be exacerbated by pressure variations within the craft. As Oberg reports, "The Russians do not keep a steady and tightly controlled pressure in their spacecraft. Apparently the pressure goes down and up, according to when the cosmonauts replenish it. The airline industry can tell you about this type of metal fatigue because it caused a catastrophic airliner episode some years ago."

Mir presents other potentially lethal hazards as well. On several occasions, unmanned Russian satellites have exploded when their propellants have corroded through their containers; this is particularly likely to occur on satellites that are more than ten years old. Oberg observes, "The 11-year-old Mir propulsion system is now being heavily used to aim Mir's remaining solar panels at the sun, and any one of those jets could spontaneously stick on or blow open at any moment."

Risk is part of any enterprise, particularly space exploration. But why are Americans being required to run the risk of missions to Mir? Oberg writes: "Putting an American on a manifestly unsafe space vehicle is not gloriously 'pushing the envelope,' as NASA mythologists insist. It is reckless disregard for life and safety, repeating the Challenger disaster experience. The bottom line is that there is no medical or scientific knowledge or wonderful spaceflight 'experience' that justifies putting someone in such a dangerous spaceflight situation, no matter what upbeat spin NASA has put on it. However, there is intense White House pressure to put a happy public face on U.S./Russian relations and to keep the ailing project going no matter what."

"If any Americans are killed to keep an 'air of positiveness' around U.S./Russian space relations, let the next Challenger-like commission put the blame where it belongs: On President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and NASA Administrator [Daniel] Goldin," Oberg concludes. "They've had plenty of warning to keep Americans out of a deadly situation, and they haven't done it."

Profit Motive

For the Russians, continued American involvement in Mir missions boils down to a matter of simple profit. "The Russians don't want to admit to a failure and have to close down the Mir and lose a huge source of hard currency," observed Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Science Committee, immediately after the June 25th crash. "The reason Mir has been kept going five years beyond its design capability is because it is a huge foreign currency earner for Russia. And a lot of that foreign currency is dollars right out of the U.S. taxpayers' pockets."

The Clinton Administration had originally promoted joint space ventures with the Russians as a way to economize, noted Sensenbrenner in a June 5th address to the National Space Forum (NSF). "When the Clinton Administration invited Russia to join the program in 1994, it told the Congress that bringing Russia into the program would save the U.S. taxpayer $2 billion and accelerate the program by one year," Sensenbrenner recalled. However, "the Russian government has not paid its contractors enough funds in a timely manner to meet its obligations to the International Space Station. As a result, the first element launch will be at least eight months late. We're still waiting to find out how long Station completion will be delayed." The "first element" was to be a Russian-built service module, which would serve as the station's main living quarters; the current plan is to replace the Russian module with an American-built "temporary" component -- and to keep paying the Russians to build their own as well.

And the promised savings to the taxpayer? "We're just three years into a program that will last another 15 years, and the cost of working with the Russians has already reached $1 billion," noted Sensenbrenner. In addition to the $473 million contract with the RSA to use Mir for training missions, NASA claims to have spent $500 million in program reserves to compensate for Russia's failure to deliver promised hardware for the space station.

"Congress warned the Clinton Administration in 1993 and 1994 that bringing in the Russians was risky," Sensenbrenner told the NSF. "But the White House plowed ahead anyway, perhaps because it viewed the foreign policy implications as more important than the scientific mission." The foreign policy thrust with regard to space exploration is consistent with the Administration's overall approach to U.S.-Russia relations: Abandon unilateral development of defense-related technologies; enhance Russia's capabilities; and proceed on the basis of "interdependence" with Russia rather than the pursuit of America's national interest.

Pleading Poverty

"By their own admission, the Russians now rely on the American Space Shuttle to furnish them with 40 percent of their supplies," reports the Houston Chronicle. "They can no longer afford the expendable Soyuz rockets with the Progress cargo capsules that kept their cosmonauts fully provisioned before the cooperative shuttle expeditions began nearly two years ago." Out of solicitude for our impoverished "partner," the Clinton Administration has volunteered to use the Space Shuttle to loft station components and cargo that had originally been Russia's responsibility.

But although the Russians plead poverty when it comes to resupplying Mir and manufacturing components for the Alpha station, it somehow manages to maintain its ambitious commercial launch schedule. A deal struck in early 1996 between the Clinton and Yeltsin Administrations increased the number of Russian launches carrying U.S. payloads from eight to 20 a year, allowing the state-controlled Russian aerospace sector to compete with the Western commercial space-launch market. "Even more worrisome than the as-yet-undefined hard currency windfall this deal represents for a Russian industry imbedded in the old Soviet military-industrial complex is the fact that the Clinton Administration is ... blithely sacrificing capabilities that may be essential to America's strategically vital access to space," noted a report from the Center for Security Policy (CSP).

But for the Clintonites, such concerns are redolent of an outmoded "Cold War mentality." Speaking before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science Committee in October 1993, John M. Gibbons, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy for the Clinton Administration, exulted: "We have an absolutely historic opportunity here ... that can help Russia ... become a member of the global industrial complex at what is a pretty low cost to us...." Although Gibbons did not explain why it would be considered a bargain at any price to modernize the aerospace capacity of a nuclear-armed "former" mortal enemy, he waxed grandiloquent about the potential for U.S.-Russian space cooperation: "I think all of us here today would agree that ... we are witnessing and continuing to witness a dramatic and fundamental change taking place in the former Soviet Union. The change has opened up new vistas for our cooperative relations with Russia, allowing us to leave behind the vestiges of the Cold War."

Nor was Gibbons the only one smitten by the notion of space-based convergence with Russia. Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) insisted that although NASA's primary mission did not include forging "post-Cold War relations" with Russia, "it is certainly this government's mission to establish tighter U.S./Russian relations in this changing world."

A similar pose was struck by former Space Shuttle astronaut John Fabian, president and CEO of the Virginia-based ANSER Analytic Services, who told the subcommittee that "Russian-American cooperation on the space station clearly fits within the broader perspective of the U.S. agenda. It is ... an element of foreign policy, economic strength, advanced technology, human exploration, and national security." More importantly, according to Fabian, "We are in a unique position to globalize human endeavor in space.... Cooperating with Russia gives the United States the opportunity to develop interdependent relationships.... We are indeed fortunate at this time, when the world's two space superpowers, built on competition, are able to build a cooperative space program capable of consolidating the many recent political gains on earth as we work together for our common destiny in space." (Emphasis added.)

In Heaven and Earth

Joint space ventures were therefore intended to be another avenue for the accelerating merger between the U.S. and Russia -- a way of binding in the heavens what Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin are binding on earth. Representative Martin Hoke (R-OH), who was less than enchanted with the proposed partnership, complained that it was built "on notions of global cooperation, hands across the water, the new world order ... and what I would have to ultimately call a kind of bleary-eyed romanticism about the notion of ... going into space with a former enemy...."

The main mechanism through which the new U.S.-Russian "partnership" conducts its business is the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission (GCC), a bilateral body presided over by Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin that joins Cabinet-level officials from the U.S. with their Russian counterparts. An outgrowth of the April 1993 Vancouver Summit between Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, the GCC is a secretive body which meets twice a year to coordinate U.S. and Russian policies in space exploration, environmental protection, energy, technology, finance, foreign policy, and other matters.

In its September 1993 inaugural meeting in Washington, DC, the GCC signed three joint statements on aerospace policy, one of which called for "the development of a unified space station." The same meeting produced the first commercial launch agreement, which gave Russia access to the international launch services market in exchange for a Russian promise -- which in practice proved to be non-binding -- to observe the guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime, which governs the sale of high-technology goods and services. In the December 1993 meeting in Moscow, the GCC signed a protocol calling for American astronauts to visit Mir for extended periods of time. The next semiannual meeting of the GCC in June 1994 resulted in a $400 million contract between NASA and the RSA covering the Mir missions, joint technology development, and hardware purchases for the Alpha station.

The groundwork for these initiatives was laid in secret bilateral negotiations in the summer of 1993. During the October 1993 Space Subcommittee hearing, Dr. Gibbons admitted, under close questioning by Representative Martin Hoke, that during the spring of 1993 the Administration first approached Russia about a possible "space partnership" and that in August "NASA began work with its Russian counterparts." This didn't sit well with Hoke, who had been among the most energetic supporters of the original Space Station Freedom concept.

After expending a great deal of energy "to persuade [Congress] to vote for the authorization and appropriation of the funds based on the $2.1 billion to create Space Station Freedom with our foreign partners as it had been presented," noted Hoke, "... we find, through front page articles in the New York Times and the Cleveland Plain Dealer ... that in fact the Administration has, unbeknownst to us, apparently negotiated a deal with the Russians to use Space Station Mir." In effect, the Administration had pulled a bait-and-switch, using the promise of an American-led space station to win the appropriation, then cutting the Russians into the deal -- and eventually making Mir the functional centerpiece of the entire policy.

The deal allowed the Russians to use their aging, decrepit station as an expensive boarding house, renting space to Americans at a price of more than $90 million a year. It also opened another aid spigot as Russia was brought on board as a major contractor in the Alpha station project -- although none of the promised and paid-for hardware has yet materialized. Space Shuttle resupply missions to Mir also cut down on launch costs, which increased the profit margins for Russia's new commercial launch industry.

"[W]ho would have believed five years ago that the Cold War would end and that when it ended the United States would end up paying Russia to help it build America's space station?" asked Representative Sensenbrenner in October 1993. "And yet that is exactly what we are hearing about today. As the Cold War ends, a chilling irony remains. Even though some say America won the Cold War, it is clear from looking at space policy that the spoils of victory are going to Russia...."

The Big Picture

It is also clear that the Clinton Administration's compulsive multilateralism is entirely in harmony with the long-term designs of our nation's foreign policy elite, which has actively pursued convergence with the communist and "ex"-communist world as a prelude to the creation of world government. One of the most candid expressions of that design -- A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations, a State Department-commissioned 1962 report by the late Lincoln Bloomfield -- envisioned a UN equipped with "powers sufficient to monitor and enforce disarmament, settle disputes ... enforceable taxing powers to finance its political organs, its disarmament policing agency, and its international military force, which includes a nuclear component. The nations [would be] disarmed to police levels."

Bloomfield envisioned the creation of "an international force, balanced appropriately among ground, sea, air, and space elements." Bloomfield predicted, "In general, space technology [would remain] in national and in some cases (communications, broadcasting, transportation, messenger service, etc.) private hands," but they would operate "under international inspection." The global authority would own and operate "those space vehicles required both as a military deterrence system and to monitor enforcement of the disarmament agreement." The creation of a permanent international space station would be, at the very least, a potent symbolic step toward the world envisioned in Bloomfield's report.

But Bloomfield also recognized that there would have to be dramatic changes in the communist world before the vision he described could be consummated. According to Bloomfield, "if the communists would agree, the West [meaning the foreign policy elite] would favor 'a world effectively controlled by the United Nations.' The remaining question is then how to transform and tame the forces of communism ... to the point where the present international system might be radically reshaped."

It is because the Clinton Administration, and particularly its "Space Czar," Vice President Gore, aspire to the world described by Bloomfield that they are dogmatically committed to a U.S.-Russian space partnership -- notwithstanding its present cost to the taxpayers and its potential cost in American lives.

The Great Soviet-American Space-Race Charade

By William Norman Grigg 

According to conventional accounts of the "space race," the Soviets jumped out to an early lead in October 1957 with the launch of the first Sputnik satellite, extended their lead with the 1959 Lunik probe (which reportedly flew past the moon and settled into a solar orbit), conducted the first manned orbital flight in  1961, and conducted the first extra-vehicular "space walk" in 1965. It was only through a prodigious effort, inspired by the visionary leadership of JFK and carried out through the earthy political savvy of LBJ, that the U.S. rallied from behind to beat the Russians to the moon. There are two serious problems with the standard historical account. First, the United States, in effect, spotted the Soviets an early lead in the space race; secondly, in a very real sense, the U.S. was "racing" against technology it had supplied to the Soviets.

By the mid-1950s, with the help of technology and missile scientists taken from Germany at the end of WWII, the Soviets were ready to loft a satellite into orbit. In 1956, General James M. Gavin, leader of the U.S. Army's Research and Development arm, had become aware that the Soviets were planning on launching an orbital satellite within a year. He requested permission to pre-empt the Soviet victory by using the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama to build and launch a satellite -- only to have his proposal summarily rejected.

Ten years later, Gavin described the incident to an audience in Boston. According to a December 2, 1966 wire service story, Gavin recalled that he "made several entreaties to the Department of Defense seeking authority to launch a satellite, and shortly thereafter I was given a written order forbidding me to do so." This despite the fact that in 1956 the U.S. had, according to Gavin, "launched a Jupiter nose cone more than 700 miles into space.... We believed then that we had the capability of orbiting a satellite." Nevertheless, as a result of the mysterious order Gavin received, the Soviets were allowed the honor of inaugurating the "space age."

Antony Sutton, a former Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the most prolific and authoritative scholar on the subject of Western technological and financial aid to the former Soviet Union. In five detailed, copiously documented volumes, Sutton demonstrates that the Soviet military-industrial complex -- including the Red space program -- was entirely dependent upon technology transfers from the West. In his 1986 book The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, Sutton points out that, absent the wholesale transfer of technology from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R., the U.S. would have been "racing with itself."

The contemporary eagerness of America's policy elite to forge "joint ventures" in space between the U.S. and Russia is nothing new; as Sutton documents in his 1973 study National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union, "The United States appears, in historical perspective, to have been almost desperate in its attempts to help the Soviets in space." Even as U.S. policy makers were holding back the efforts of General Gavin and his subordinates, records Sutton, they were resurrecting the idea of building "'bridges for peace' to provide a rational explanation for the massive transfers of Western technology that were required to fulfill Soviet programs."

"In the ten years between December 1959 and December 1969," Sutton continues, "the United States made eighteen approaches to the USSR for space 'cooperation'" -- a fact that would be inexplicable if the "space race" had indeed been a critical front in a winner-take-all ideological struggle, as the Cold War was supposed to be. NASA besieged the Soviets with offers of technical assistance, joint visits to space tracking and data-acquisition facilities, and invitations to attend American space launches.

Sutton earned the derision of "expert" opinion in the mid-1960s when he announced that "the Soviets did not have the technology to be first on the moon, and by themselves could not make it in this century." However, at roughly the same time the same conclusion had been reached by Leonid Vladimirov, a Soviet aerospace scientist who would later defect to the West.

In his 1973 book The Russian Space Bluff, Vladimirov recalls that "When I left the Soviet Union with the intention of asking for political asylum in Britain, I knew for certain that the USSR had quietly abandoned all dreams of engaging in a 'moon race' with the United States and that it would be American and not Soviet spacemen who would be the first to set foot on the moon."

For several years prior to the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, Vladimirov tried to convince his contacts in the West that the Soviets were hopelessly behind the Americans in the space race. However, "expert" opinion dogmatically maintained that since the Soviets had launched the first satellite, the first moon probe, and the first manned space vehicle, and had conducted the first space walk, they were the heavy favorites to prevail in the race to the moon. After Apollo 11, many of those same "experts" asked Vladimirov to explain why the Soviets had "fallen behind" in the space race; in his book Vladimirov points out that "the Russians were never ahead in space. There had been only the appearance of leadership: shows brilliantly staged by a great producer, [Soviet space flight director Sergei Pavlovich] Korolyov, to scripts provided by the Americans."

Why the charade of Soviet space supremacy? For the Soviets, the reason is obvious: Soviet space "triumphs" offered valuable vindication of the scientific claims of Marxism-Leninism and a potent source of domestic propaganda. However, as Antony Sutton explains, U.S. policy makers had a great investment in the myth of Soviet space conquest: "NASA and U.S. planners have a conflict of interest. If they publish what they know about the backwardness and dependency of the Soviet space program, it reduces the urgency in our program." Now that the "Cold War" is over, technology transfers continue in order to bring the Russians into what James Gibbons calls the "global industrial complex" and to facilitate "convergence" with our former enemy.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | newsvine | technorati