TEPLOPAROVOZY. Politburo Diktat has further thoughts on what might replace the Space Shuttle. The illustration, apparently from the New York Times, proposes an adaptation of existing Shuttle components to create passenger and freight versions of something intended to ... what?? But as I look more closely, what do I see? A passenger version that looks like an Apollo capsule on top of an Atlas-Agena stack. A freight version that looks like a Saturn V casing riding the current Shuttle stack. Anybody remember Skylab? (And this from an agency that took a dig at Burt Rutan for making a suborbital flight of less than 15 minutes, some 40 years after the late Alan B. Shephard did so.)

So why the title? Something about these Mercury-Shuttle combinations reminded me of some efforts by the Soviet Railways to combine steam and diesel propulsion in one drive train. (The site is under construction; the most bizarre such effort is not yet illustrated.)