How Safe in Space?

The time is not far off, said Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev last week, "when the first spaceship with a man on board will soar into space." He and his audience assumed, of course, that the first spaceman will be a Soviet astronaut riding a Soviet satellite. Most U.S. authorities tend to agree, admitting that the Soviet man-in-space program is well ahead of the U.S.'s. The Russians might well be able to put a man into orbit this week and bring him back in reasonably good condition. The five-ton satellites in which they have orbited dogs weigh about four times as much as the man-carrying cabins of U.S. Project Mercury.

But before they make their big move, the Russians are apparently trying to establish a good reliability record. So far they have launched four satellites capable, in size at least, of orbiting and landing a man. The first, launched last May, carried a man-sized dummy but did not bring it back to earth. Last August another satellite orbited two dogs and landed them alive and well. (A female, Strelka, has since had six puppies.) A December satellite carrying two dogs went into orbit, but the re-entry body burned up in the atmosphere. The fourth satellite, launched this month, carried one dog and brought it back. Without allowing for launch failures that may have been kept secret, this gives the Russians a two-out-of-four reliability record. A straight run of several successes would be more reassuring.

U.S. Project Mercury has, so far, no reliability record. Its man-carrying capsules have been lobbed in short arcs, one of them carrying the live chimp, Ham, but none has gone into orbit. Project Mercury apparently intends to send one of its astronauts on a short, Hamlike rocket ride in a month or so. This will be an achievement of sorts, risky for the astronaut, but it will not compare in difficulty with a real descent from an earth orbit.

It will give little assurance that a U.S.

spaceman will get home alive.

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