Soviet Space Plan

Russia has its share of souped-up space cadets who want to blast off for Mars day after tomorrow, but official Soviet space experts have kept their heads in spite of their Sputnik successes. In Magyar Ifjusag, organ of Hungary's Communist Youth League, Leonid I. Sedov, head of the Soviet Interplanetary Communications Commission, says that unmanned Soviet rockets could reach the moon now, but he is more interested in a deliberate development of manned space flight.

Dog-carrying Sputnik II, says Sedov, proved that an animal can stand the shock of launching and that weightlessness has almost no effect on it. This is only the beginning. Before manned space flight is realized, more Sputniks with animals on board will have to be launched. Return to earth is necessary for a manned space craft, and this problem, too, has not been solved. "My opinion," he says cautiously, "is that in the next 20 years we may ship men out to the neighbor planets."

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