©copyright 1996 Keith Cowing and Reston Communications

The following is based upon a presentation made by Roald Sagdeev on 22 November 1996 at the GWU symposium "Life in the Universe: What is The Message From the Martian Fossils ".

Note that Dr. Sagdeev and his wife, Susan Eisenhower, wrote an op-ed piece, Signs of Life in the Russian Space Program, for the 24 November 1996 edition of the Washington Post which covers some of these topics in a less detailed fashion.

Regarding the failure of the Mars96 launch, Sagdeev came up with two scenarios:

1. The "control block" (computer/communications asembly) within the Mars96 probe malfunctioned and the appropriate signal did not get sent to "Block D" (upper stage);

2. Block D did not understand the signal sent to it by Mars96 probe and malfunctioned.

Sagdeev concurred with the widely circulated story that the Mars 96 probe had indeed separated from the Block D upper stage, possibly because of commands sent from the Mars96 control block. He certainly seemed to be leaning toward a failure on the part of the Mars96 probe by stating that " fuel would not have been spent by Block D and it would not have separated on its own."

Sagdeev was also basing his assessment of the situation on historical data.

According to Sagdeev, The problem with Mars96 resulted from "lessons having not been learned from the failed Phobos 1 and 2 missions". The "control block" within Phobos 1 and 2 was the same hardware as was used in the Mars96 probe - and was provided by the very same contractor. After the Phobos failures, the Russian government said that there would be a thorough investigation as to what happened. There never was.

The reason, according to Sagdeev, is that a representative of the prime contractor for the control block [Mr. Lapedin (sp)] was the only member of the Congress of People's Deputies representing the Russian military/industrial complex. When the Minister of Space Industry [Buchlanov (sp)] was promoted by Gorbachev because of his "success" with the Buran program, someone was needed to replace him. Lapedin (sp) got the job. Due to the political nature of these appointments, Sagdeev's successor was not able to raise the issue and an investigation into Mr. Lapedin's company - and its performance on the Phobos missions - did not happen. Thus were sown the seeds for yet another hardware failure.

All is not rosy within the Russian space establishment right now. This failure really stung at a time when a sting was not what was needed. Sagdeev feels that Russia will need to identify how it would improve its space infrastructure if it expects to get internal and international support for another Mars mission. There are conflicts ("rebellions" according to Sagdeev) ongoing within the Russian space community and the DUMA. Some feel that Russia is "selling its technology for almost nothing" and that crew selections are not being done right since "Russian cosmonauts have much more experience".

Sagdeev noted that market reforms are occuring within some segments of the russian aerospace industry - most notably those associated with ISS, but that they had not reached all sectors of Russian space activities yet. He also noted, that after checking his reords, that 16 Protons had been used between 1973-1988 for various space science projects and that each one worked just fine.

Sagdeev claimed to have only paid $2 million for each Proton/Block D vehicle as opposed to the $80 Million now charged for commercial launches. The implication to the audience being, with a slight snicker and a smile, that someone had learned how to take advantage of a free market.