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Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

ralphmirebs.livejournal.com

111–120 of 124 posts

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#111
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the book "Energiya-Buran, the Soviet Space Shuttle" by Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis, they correctly noted that the stated reasons for the US space shuttle did not make any sense, so they assumed there must be some secret rational reason for building it: > As TsNIIMash [Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building] director Yuriy Mozzhorin later said: "[The Space Shuttle] was introduced as a n…

Great summary :) - without the internet the F-35 design would probably be evaluated in similar vein - makes no sense so there must be some hidden purpose.

This is how lots of really creative uses for things come about. If you haven't any idea what something's supposed to do, you're now totally free to come up with your own use.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#113
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The STS was purposely designed not to do that due to political reasons, pilots didnt want to feel like they were passangers, emergency restrictions, etc. Eventually those restrictions were lifted and was fully autonomous at a certain point, I don't remember which models have the full autonomy suite, but the capabilities varied as these things were built out. Considering the Buran has never put a person into space, it…

> The STS was doing all these things and more. Ok but if Buran failed didn't STS fail too, just took more money and killed more people? No current space vehicles are based on it. It was too big. Too expensive. Too failure prone (it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older). Once the concept was proven, after a few space walks, maybe fixing Hubble, it was time to realize it was a bad idea scr…

> didn't STS fail too

Ha. If you can look at the images from the Hubble space telescope and call the STS a failure, thats some pretty extreme cognitive dissonance.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were persecuted and killed because of Lysenkoism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov Your false equivalences trivializes that persecution.

I'd put this persecution more in the hands of Stalin and his cronies. He hardly needed an excuse to persecute and kill anyone, after all.

That's not how Soviet scientists felt about Lysenko. Just check his Wikipedia page.

In 1962 three of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Pyotr Kapitsa, presented a case against Lysenko, proclaiming his work as false science. They also denounced Lysenko's application of political power to silence opposition and eliminate his opponents within the scientific community. These denunciations occurred during a period of structural upheaval in Soviet government, during which the major institutions were purged of the strictly ideological and political machinations which had controlled the work of the Soviet Union's scientific community for several decades under Stalin.

In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences:

He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#115
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The STS was doing all these things and more. Ok but if Buran failed didn't STS fail too, just took more money and killed more people? No current space vehicles are based on it. It was too big. Too expensive. Too failure prone (it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older). Once the concept was proven, after a few space walks, maybe fixing Hubble, it was time to realize it was a bad idea scr…

> it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older That's only because Soyuz has a smaller crew capacity. Both Soyuz and STS have had the same number of catastrophic failures (Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 on the Soyuz side; Challenger and Columbia on the STS side). Neat fun fact: Soyuz 11 also has the distinction of being the cause of the only in-space human fatalities (all other spaceflight-related fata…

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Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#116
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The STS was doing all these things and more. Ok but if Buran failed didn't STS fail too, just took more money and killed more people? No current space vehicles are based on it. It was too big. Too expensive. Too failure prone (it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older). Once the concept was proven, after a few space walks, maybe fixing Hubble, it was time to realize it was a bad idea scr…

> didn't STS fail too Ha. If you can look at the images from the Hubble space telescope and call the STS a failure, thats some pretty extreme cognitive dissonance.

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Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#117
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He not only managed to sneak inside the base, he apparently made it into the shuttle itself. If the last photo is a picture of him, he's dressed in military clothing, so maybe he just blended in and no one bothered to check him.

Very interesting because he's wearing what look like US Marine Corps MARPAT camouflage...which is distinctly non-Russian. There are a lot of them floating around in that part of the world that were smuggled out of Iraq and Afghanistan though. http://battlerattle.marinecorpstimes.com/wp-content/uploads/...

I think this web site is a non-original content. I remember reading the exact same sequence of photos in English a few months ago. I think some Western journalist/enthusiast managed to get the access to this hangar and he posted the original story. These guys just picked up the content and re-posted it. Notice copyright on the pictures to Ralph Mirebs. Maybe he was there with his Marine friend?

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#118
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> didn't STS fail too Ha. If you can look at the images from the Hubble space telescope and call the STS a failure, thats some pretty extreme cognitive dissonance.

[deleted]

This is trolling. The Hubble was far more than "pretty pictures." Please, if you have nothing of value to write but egging people on and being dismissive maybe this isn't the forum for you.

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#119
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older That's only because Soyuz has a smaller crew capacity. Both Soyuz and STS have had the same number of catastrophic failures (Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 on the Soyuz side; Challenger and Columbia on the STS side). Neat fun fact: Soyuz 11 also has the distinction of being the cause of the only in-space human fatalities (all other spaceflight-related fata…

[deleted]

>Given the general feel of incompetence and mismanagement on the Soviet side

200+ ground crew and spectators were blown apart by Soviet incompetence during the R-16 launch. Yes, there are far, far more deaths in the Soviet program. Its is literally history's worst rocket catastrophe. The Soviets even denied it and covered it up until 1989. Please stop parroting Russia propaganda. You're not fooling anyone here.

http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-disasters/nedelin-c...

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/therophe.htm

http://gizmodo.com/5239848/how-not-to-launch-a-rocket-the-ne...

Re: Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

#120

For the geeks... Buran had prolog code in its brain and could land on its own...in the 80s!!!

Actually, the Russians developed a completely different programming language Prolog and Prol2 that had nothing to do with the French Prolog. It just happened to have the same name.

Source: http://forum.oberoncore.ru/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=4111

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