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In no way is this news or a scoop, but who can resist the tale of plucky cosmonauts calmly relaying such nuggets from a dead-in-the-water space station as:
Savinikh: "We're trying to turn on the light now. Command issued. No reaction, not even one little diode. If only something would light up..."
and
Savinikh: “I’ve gotten the Rodnik schematics. Pump connected. The valves aren’t opening. There’s an icicle sticking out of the air pipe.”
Yep — all the makings of a sci-fi straight to TV movie… icicles hanging out of air pipes indeed!
However, it is not. It is the tale of two cosmonauts sent to try to recover the dead in low earth orbit Salyut 7 back in 1985. The included cosmonaut to earth communication transcripts would be comedy genius had they been scripted, if only as a parody of calm professionalism in a seemingly absurd predicament.
Over to Ars Technica for the piece: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday September 17 2014, @07:09PM
A worthwhile read is Victor Belenko's memoir _Mig Pilot_ (he defected to Japan in a MIG-25)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 17 2014, @08:07PM
Good luck, from memory all the books his ghostwriter wrote are gone from the market semi-permanently. A poster child for the "copyright is too long" problem. Those books are 40 yrs old and outside libraries with older collections no one is going to see them again for at least 100 years maybe more. Even worse a 40 yr old library paperback was probably pulped 20 years ago, so your only hope is a hardcover edition.
Sounds like an interesting book but I probably won't be able to read it this lifetime, unless someone scans their copy and puts it up on a P2P site.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday September 18 2014, @02:46AM
I was always interested in the Soviet tech as my grandfather was stationed on an airbase right next to the GDR border after WWII and used to say "If the Russians had wanted to take us out? All they had to do was send a single plane on a kamikaze run as we had strict orders to NEVER shoot at a single plane" and of course now we know why, it was because the CIA had spread the word that we would offer a defector a million bucks if they brought the latest Soviet plane with them when they defected. I think by the time the wall fell we ended up with at least one example of every Soviet fighter from the MIG-15 on up.
I think its ironic we went to all that trouble to get 'em during the cold war and now John Travolta just flies over and picks up a couple to play Top Gun in the desert LOL.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.