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Soviet Space Battle Station Images Published
An anonymous reader writes "Images of the Soviet Union's laser space battle station Skif and its prototype Polyus have been published on the web. Polyus-Skif was the Soviet response to the American 'Star Wars' program of the 1980s. The Polyus was launched in May 1987 but a faulty sensor caused it to de-orbit into the South Pacific. More information can be found at Encyclopedia Astronautica."
Isn't it great that that dictatorship spent itself into bankruptcy?
.4 trillion dollar deficit and growing. Which country are you talking about?
Hmm, George W Bush, a
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Even while it was an awfully managed country, economically, the Russians pulled out some impressive engenieering feats, specially in the field of aeronautics. In the cold war days, it was all about conquering space, for some reason, and the USSR was right there - neck to neck with the USA. And they had the military power indeed, so they were, arguably, powerful.
If anything, the fall of the USSR saddened me for that very reason. It seems the true technological progress comes in times of war, even when it's a "cold" one.
If you look at the home page http://www.army.lv/, you'll see that this is a Russian Army fan site dedicated to Russian soldiers. Latvia is a former USSR republic, and the percentage of Russians there is (or was until recently, not sure about now) larger than the native Latvians. So no big surprise here, and this is not a Latvian Army site, as the URL would suggest.
That bug was found and fixed during simulation testing. It never made its way into actual flight software.
Luck had nothing to do with it. Good test procedures caught it.
considering the time & a probable computation error
./ ... "Seems as though the Genesis spacecraft was able to launch from earth, travel through space, avoid aliens, and cruise back into the atmosphere to be caught by stunt pilots waiting patiently with their helicopters. Alas, the brakes didn't work because a sensor was designed upside down.
from
With all the advanced technology, nothing similar or remotedly comparable happens in the new millenium.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I read a book written by Air Force General Chuck Horner (Ret.) who commanded the air war over Desert Storm. Before retiring his last job was heading up SPACECOM, the military's space command. In describing that he remarked (paraphrasing) "There are many people who think that we shouldn't start putting weapons in space. Well, I've got news for them. There already there.
In any conflict with the US, our communications, global positioning and recon sattellites would be prime juicy targets.
No member of the Reagan or Bush administrations ever admitted or revealed publicly any knowledge of Polyus. The US Navy has made no statements about any attempts to investigate the wreckage of Polyus, which lies on the floor of the South Pacific.
For some reason the phrase "been there, done that" comes to mind.
Considering the amount of money spent on SDI, I can't imagine the US not going to great lengths to try to salvage the wreck in order to see what countermeasures the USSR was working on.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
The problem with throwing an ICBM into the air, is that everyone will know where it came from, and you'll have them coming right back at you.
Build a weapon inside the country you want to attack, set it off, never claim responsibility. Then no one knows who did or how to get them back for it.
These types of threats are a lot more scary than China or North Korea throwing nukes around. They know we'll just throw some back at them. When we don't know who attacked us; or it wasn't a country, but a small group of people scattered around the earth, it's a lot harder to take any kind of retaliatory action.
What?
The Soviet's had a lot of failures though, more than the US would accept. E.g. the four N1 moon launcher failures, and the failure of this mission. The other thing to keep in mind is that the majority of the Soviet space program was military in nature (only 20% of mission were non-military), and the Soviet military are far more willing to take risks on conditions to meet deadlines than NASA.