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."

Re:Old Soviet Overlords

[gad_zuki!]

>Isn't it great that that dictatorship spent itself into bankruptcy?

On a completely unrelated note Bush just signed a bill putting the US 800 BILLION in debt.

Re:Old Soviet Overlords

[smartin]

Isn't it great that that dictatorship spent itself into bankruptcy?

Hmm, George W Bush, a .4 trillion dollar deficit and growing. Which country are you talking about?

Re:Old Soviet Overlords

[Bastian]

Ya know, the Bush administration really fascinates me. It really shows that although the Cold War is over, the USA hasn't lost its Cold War modes of thought. We're spending so much money and pulling so many dumb stunts in part because we seem to think that we're still standing off against some monolithic enemy that spans 10 time zones. (And yes, I mean to say "we." Don't forget who vote him in.)

I mean, this is the administration that was honestly pushing for the ballistic missile defense shield. And I think that this idea that the only way to make sure a country isn't going to stab us in the back is to make sure it is a republic comes straight out of a 15 years obsolete line of thinking that says that anything that isn't a democracy is going to be much more vulnerable to falling into the USSR's camp.

You step back for a moment, and it almost looks like the USA is some poor traumatized vet who still sometimes sees visions of a battlefield from long in the past and dives under tables to take cover from imaginary grenades and the like. Only you can't take time to feel sorry for him, because for all his raving lunacy, he's still the guy holding the biggest gun in the room.

Re:Sad

[Prowl]

I always thought it was called Peter the Great...

Re:Old Soviet Overlords

[Lisandro]

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.

Re:any ideas why this on the Latvian army site?

[glebd]

If you look at the home page http://www.army.lv/ [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.

Re:Software error

[YrWrstNtmr]

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.

Re:Leads one to ponder the relative computing powe

[foobsr]

considering the time & a probable computation error

from ./ ... "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 [newscientist.com].

With all the advanced technology, nothing similar or remotedly comparable happens in the new millenium.

CC.

Re:If the USSR had that back then....

[FireAtWill]

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.

Been there, done that

[Dan East]

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

Re:Old Soviet Overlords

[duffbeer703]

Ballistic missile defense makes alot more sense today than it did during the Soviet era.

The Soviets had something like 12,000 warheads pointed at the US. A ballistic missile system that intercepted 98% of them (which is nothing like the actual ABM system being tested) would still leave two hundred or more nuclear detonations in the US.

If you consider the current threats from relatively poor states in the Middle East, North Korea or China, ballistic missile defence makes a hell of alot more sense. Even China only has a couple hundred ICBMs, and a credibile defence renders those launchers obsolete.

The popular notion that the demise of the Soviet Union has resulted in nuclear weapons going away is a dangerous illusion.

Re:Man, I am glad it "de-orbited."

[BLAG-blast]

I find it interesting you say this since Bush has cut taxes. If he was prying out more money, then wouldn't taxes have actually had to go up?

Because he is going to raise the amount of money that the US can get into debt. This is the same as raising taxes, but old people will die before we have to pay it off

Re:Been there, done that

[WombatControl]

I'd imagine that whatever wreckage remains is in very small chunks in very deep water. Even if we could find and recover it, there'd be almost nothing left. Reentry tends to do a very good job of scattering debris for miles - imagine if Columbia had broken up over the Pacific rather than over Texas.

Even with Challenger recovery took a long time, and that was a craft that hadn't come down from orbit and many of the pieces landed in relatively shallow water. Trying to pull the pieces of a Russian submarine from the deep ocean after it had gone through reentry probably wouldn't have provided enough information to justify the costs.

Re:If the USSR had that back then....

[dave420]

Not meaning to burst your bubble, but a LOT of retired US military people, some with great ranks, have said some complete and utter buckets of bullplop. Serving in the US military doesn't mean you'll always tell the truth, especially if they're selling something :)

Re:Old Soviet Overlords

[Peyna]

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.

Re:Unlike the US...

[Peyna]

you mean with "president and congress"?

Re:Old Soviet Overlords

[mwood]

No accident, that. The strategy is known as "arm the enemy to death." If your economy can support a faster arms race than the other guy's for longer, you win.

Re:Wow

[RedWizzard]

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.