A Fat Sausage In the Sky

Moscow links up two crews in space station

For more than a month two Soviet cosmonauts have been circling the earth in the 65-ft.-long Salyut 6 space station, observing the earth, performing experiments in weightless conditions, growing algae as a possible food for future space travelers, donning new, improved space suits, and even erecting a small New Year's tree inside their 19-ton home away from earth.

Last week the Soviet team had callers. From the fog-shrouded space station at Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, two more cosmonauts were launched into orbit aboard Soyuz 27. They were Air Force Lieut. Colonel Vladimir Dzhanibekov, 35, a pilot who is making his first space flight, and Oleg Makarov, 44, his civilian flight engineer whose two previous Soyuz missions included a flight that was aborted and forced to land in the snows of Siberia near the Chinese border in 1975. After chasing the blinking red and blue lights of Salyut round the earth for a day, the cosmonauts caught up with the space station, clambered through a hatch and embraced their comrades, who quipped: "Now don't be chicken. We're friends in here." The newcomers even brought newspapers and letters from home. Then all four exchanged toasts in cherry juice squeezed from tubes. The docking 320 kilometers (200 miles) above the earth gave Russia another space-age first: the linkup of more than two spacecraft.

The four cosmonauts were to work together for five days on various experiments, Tass said. Then the two newcomers would return to earth early this week. They would leave behind Soyuz 26's Yuri Romanenko, 33, and Georgi Grechko, 46, to continue endurance tests and perhaps to break the U.S. astronaut record of 84 days in orbit. If all goes according to plan, the Soviets will have shown that they can keep a permanent observatory in the sky, staffed by relays of spaceships bringing up fresh supplies and personnel. By contrast, during the U.S.'s comparable Skylab missions in 1973 and 1974, no more than a single Apollo ferry ship at one time ever docked with the station, and the space station was left unmanned for weeks on end.

The multiple linkup is also proof that the Russians are acquiring the capability of constructing large orbital stations made of numerous components shipped up separately from earth and assembled in space. Said an American space official after seeing the three-part assembly on radar: "It looks like a long, fat Russian sausage in space."

The U.S., which has had no astronauts in space since 1975, will be able to put together its own sausages when the space shuttle that is now being tested begins regular flights in the 1980s. But for the Soviets the feat is something of a breakthrough. While the U.S. showed it could dock spacecraft as long ago as the pre-moon shot Gemini 8 flight in 1966, the delicate skills required to bring together two space ships, both of which are traveling at speeds of 29.000 k.p.h. (18,000 m.p.h.), have often eluded the Soviets. (One explanation: they insist on controlling the maneuvers, up to the last few hundred feet, from the ground rather than following the American technique of leaving the job largely to the astronauts.)

In fact, their very first attempt to man Salyut 6 was an embarrassing flop. A week after it was sent aloft in September with no one on board, Soyuz 25 tried to link up with it, apparently as part of the Kremlin's celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution and the 20th anniversary of the flight of the first earth satellite, Sputnik. But Soyuz 25 slammed into one of Salyut's two docking ports, holding only briefly and then drifting away. Soviet controllers had to summon the cosmonauts back to earth.

In December, Soyuz 26 was launched and it successfully reached the space station. A week later controllers could breathe a collective sigh of relief. During a space walk outside the ship, Grechko inspected the other port and reported it to be in perfect order.

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