Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author"

The initial reaction from reading Barthes text “The Death of the Author” is just that: the elimination of the author’s personality and intention from his/her writing makes room for a more education undertaking by the reader to gain insight from the text.
One of the more noticeable aspects of the texts is his use of virtually run-on sentences. At three pages, the text is relatively short, but the sentences make is seem excruciatingly long, some up to 10 lines long. Is he just rambling or is he trying to make a point from this?
Barthes deconstructionist view of authorless deciphering of poetry and prose is an interesting stance, but not necessarily a new one. It mirrors somewhat New Criticism theorist views of looking only at the words of the text and not contemplating external or internal variations that may have been planted by the author.
Barthes makes a biting point of killing off the author so the writing can live, which makes me think in analogy of a space shuttle, fueled by external fuel tanks. Once the shuttle is in orbit, there is no need for the fuel tanks anymore, so they are ejected. The obvious metaphor here is the shuttle is the work and the fuel tank is the author. But we still have a driving force within the shuttle, the astronaut, which dictates direction. Where is this astronaut in Barthes theory? It seems his control is the reader, but where is this reader at take-off? Just watching?
This analogy may have gone too far, but it is something to think about, keeping in mind that at one time Barthes was a structuralist at one time, so it is not necessarily surprising that some of these undertones can possibly pop up in his theory.