521 CHRONICLESnshould have asked him. Like whethernhe’d been married before, and whethernhe spoke Spanish, and how he got thenidea, and how the 25-year-old tooknthe news that she hadn’t made thencut. I wasn’t meant to be a reporter,nobviously.nI thought, too, of a 60 Minutesnspecial I’d seen on the subject of offthe-racknwives. The predictable peoplenhad produced the predictable responses,nand I hadn’t learned much from itnexcept the extent of the practice. Inremembered that my reaction hadnbeen to reflect that this kind of thingnhas been going on for as long asnthere’ve been frontiers. Is the problemn(say) too few women in Australia, toonmany in England? Too few in Minnesota,ntoo many in Sweden? The answernsuggests itself.nBut this is different. The currentntraffic in wives doesn’t result, like thenold, from demographic imbalance. Itnspeaks instead of economic crisis in thenThird World and cultural—well, shallnwe say “strain”? —at home. There’snobviously a U.S. market for oldfashionedngirls, and the Third World isnwell on the way to cornering it. Do Inhear calls for protectionism?nThis is a sad business, in so manynways. It’s sad, obviously, that a youngnCosta Rican woman is so desperate tonget even to Alaska (Alaska!) that she’dninvest three days and what’s left of hernpride in cuddling with a physicallynrepulsive gringo old enough to be hernfather—hell, in Costa Rican terms,nold enough to be her grandfather.nBut spare some sympathy, if youncan, for a lonely and unattractive mannwho wants someone to help him facenold age and the long Alaskan nights—na man with so little going for him thatnhe’s surprised and delighted whennwomen treat him nice, even thoughnhe knows perfectly well why they do it.nA guy, moreover, who has no one withnwhom to share his surprise and delightnbut a perfect stranger in the Memphisnairport. That’s sad, too.n]ohn Shelton Reed writes from ChapelnHill, North Carolina, and stillnbelieves in waltzes.nLetter From Albionnby Andrei NavrozovnA Technical PointnThe event known as the accident atnChernobyl will be remembered by historynfor the scarcity of contemporaryninformation about it in the world atnlarge, a degree of ignorance far morenremarkable than the event itself Thenevent, after all, was diagnosed as annaccident, which made it interesting tonthe antinuclear left; was it not to theirnadvantage to obtain accurate reportsnon the scope of the disaster, or perhapsneven exaggerate its magnitude? As ancatastrophe on Soviet territory, thenevent was of interest to the countryclubncenter; after all, was this not anmajor industrial failing, symptomaticnof the decrepitude of the Soviet technological,nand hence military, potential?nBy procuring more data, the leftnmight have been able to influencenWestern atomic energy programs asnwell as nuclear defense strategies,nwhile the center’s argument mightnhave helped to convince the right thatnincreased defense spending, unlikengood Bourbon, is unnecessary.nBut—unbelievably(?) — none ofnthis has taken place. Neither the leftnnor the center has unearthed any factsnbeyond what the Soviet reports contained,nand even on the right speculationnwas only slightly ahead of Sovietnmisinformation. While not as complacentnas the center’s, the attitude of thenright revealed that it had fallen into annancient Soviet trap. To make the mistakenof distinguishing between the civilnand the military in Soviet Russianwould mean admitting that the failurenwas civil and thus of no real importancento the West; not distinguishingnbetween the two would mean that thenfailure was a sign of Soviet militaryindustrialndecrepitude, and hencenWestern fear of Soviet might was exaggerated.nYet is it really possible to come tonwrong conclusions concerning Sovietnmilitary-industrial might in the face ofnall available information? If the “civil”nnature of Soviet atomic power cannmislead the West into accepting Sovietnrepresentations at face value, whatnabout such “civil” projects as spacenexploration? Is it surprising that, untilnits strategic relevance was impressednnnupon the public mind by the SDIncontroversy, the West had all but forgottennabout space?nOn May 15, the Soviet rocketn”Energia” took off from Tyuratam,nbeginning a new era in space technology.nTwo hundred feet tall, it can liftnnine times as much as the Americannspace shuttle, up to 270 tons. Its 170nmillion horsepower engines, accordingnto European experts, are far morensophisticated than any Western competitor.nIt can launch a space stationn78 times higher than any satellite evernlaunched before, 22,500 miles. Accordingnto Alan Bond, head of spacenpropulsion at Britain’s Atomic EnergynAuthority in picturesque Culham,nnear Oxford, “My colleagues and I arenconvinced that the Russians are nownyears ahead along the path of spacenindustrialization and poised to gainnbenefits which would give them economicnleadership of the world.” Inn1986, the year of Chernobyl, 103 missionsnfrom all nations reached Earthnorbit. Ninety-one of them were Soviet.nOn July 25, “Cosmos 1870,” a bussizednplatform weighing 18 tons, wasnsuccessfully put into orbit. It is muchnlarger than a similar platform plannednby the U.S. for 1996. Circling thenearth every 90 minutes, the craft can,nfor example, take pictures of astonishingnaccuracy. A Soviet official, quotednin the Times of London, explained thenadvantages from an appropriately civilnpoint of view, comparing the “cartographic”nequipment with its U.S. andnFrench competitors: “On Landsat datanyou can see a steamship. Spot wouldnreveal the ship’s deck, but with Sovietndata you can see the lifeboats.” Mr.nBond, Britain’s leading expert in thenfield, has made the following statementnto the press, which says it all:n”From the launch of the first Sputniknin 1957, every rocket and engine thenSoviets have developed has been stateof-the-artnand ahead of everything elsenin the world.”nBut let us return to Chernobyl. Thenstarting point for any detached speculationnabout the whole affair is thenknown fact that the affected reactor,none of the 27 such reactors in operationnon Soviet territory, was annRMBK-1000, a uranium-graphiten”canal-type” reactor used for breedingnplutonium. This explains the Sovietnmotive and places the April 25, 1986,n