MIRNEWS.108 20 SEPTEMBER 1991 Rumors about the possible purchase of the MIR-station by the United States still influences the mood of the cosmonauts on board MIR. In a radioconversation of Krikalyov with one of the trackingships in the evening of 20 Sept. 1991, orbit31993, 2103UTC, he again mentioned the subject. Some information derived from this conversation: 1. 5 minutes earlier Krikalyov spoke with a radio-amateur in the United States, who told him about a TV-broadcast in which a reporter told that the United States does not want to purchase the station. Artsebarskiy added that the Americans do no like the interieur of the station. 2. Krikalyov told that he had a chat with TsUP (flightcontroller Solovyov) and they ensured him that there is no chance that the Union will sell out the MIR- station. 3. Solovyov acknowledged that Russian spaceflight is in big trouble but he expects the worst not before 1992. From other official Russian sources: 1. General Shatalov resigned (or has been dismissed) as Head of the Cosmonaut Trainingcentre in Starcity. His successor is cosmonaut General Pyotr Klimuk. 2. The Russian federation (so the country of Yeltsin) stated that all space- organisations and firms on its territory are under its jurisdiction. A lot will be changed in the near future, having a great impact on the management. The federation already founded a new organisation, named Korad, which will take over the exploitation and planning of firms which thusfar had the supervision over spacestations and huge rockets, like Energiya. The Ukraine and Kazakhstan will do the same with space-organisations and firms on their territory. They also will have their own firms in that field. 3. Before the news about Shatalov and the new space organisation reached me, I got word from officials who stated that they are going on with the flights with guestcosmonauts (in 1992 with a German and Frenchman) and that they also will execute the operations with an Austrian and Kazakh cosmonaut with Soyus-TM13 on October 2d 1991. they also still stick to the plans to replace the present baseblock (MIR-1) by MIR-2. That operation is due to start in 1994 and will take a long time, for they want to continue the use of the present Modules (Kvant-1, Kvant-2 and Kristall), but also exploit the new Modules, still to be launched, Spektr and Priroda. Chris van den Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.