Where do we go from here?

Comment: Soviet pilot-cosmonaut Vitaly Sevastyanov on the Challenger explosion and the risk of weapons in space

Along with the rest of the world, I was stunned by the tragedy of the space shuttle Challenger. It made me remember past setbacks in the great adventure of space exploration. It also made me wonder where we are going to go from here.

It was a similarly cold and clear day in 1967 that I heard the radio report of the death of the Apollo crew, Grissom, Chaffey and White, on the ground during a training session. They were courageous, unforgettable men. I paid my respects at their graves in 1970.

I knew none of the Challenger crew personally, but I have kept up close contact with many US astronauts, and have a great liking and deep respect for them.

Each space mission is a step forward, a triumph of human intellect - and a risk. The risk is noble, and fully justifiable when taken in the interests of a better future for all humanity. But it is different when such missions are aimed at helping the development of space armaments and the deployment of weapons which, even if ostensibly there for purposes of defence, can always be used to deliver a first strike. When this happens, we must fear for the future of the world.

This road leads to conflict and disaster in space and on earth. There have, after all, been troubles with electronic equipment aboard the shuttle spacecraft during practically every flight, as well as during ground preparations.

A space-based anti-missile system would have hundreds more computers than the
shuttle ships. This means that the system itself would become hundreds of times more unpredictable.

Mankind would then become a hostage to the same machines which not only failed to
prevent the tragedy in the sky above Florida from happening, but apparently did not so much as warn about it. With weapons in space, the number of dangerous incidents would increase dramatically, and the consequent loss of life would be far greater than the seven tragic deaths in Challenger .

But there is an alternative. I hope that humanity will pool its efforts in order to avoid similar catastrophes in future. The test mission performed under the Soyuz-Apollo programme was a fine example of the benefits of cooperation between Soviet and American scientists, which should be repeated in future ventures. A plan for docking a Salyut spaceship and a Shuttle in orbit has been agreed with the United States.

Regrettably, working contacts and consultations about this project were suspended by the US without a date being set for their resumption.

During the Geneva summit with Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev said that resumed
cooperation in peaceful space exploration could bring good results and become a
positive development in Soviet-US scientific collaboration. I believe that the implementation of this project could bring us closer together scientifically - which might, in turn, help us to solve political issues.

· Vitaly Sevastyanov, a pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR, twice hero of the Soviet Union, was the flight engineer on Soyuz 9, a two-manned space craft which was in orbit for 18 days in June 1970 (beating the then US endurance record of nearly four days). A year later, three Soviet cosmonauts died on board Soyuz 11.