Soviet Space Battle Station Images Published 350
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."
...but a faulty sensor caused it to de-orbit... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stratoshperic Archeology (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say that was fairly unlikely. See, there are these satellites called 'launch detectors' the US military has that picks up rocket heat signature blooms within seconds anywhere in the world. So they know at least something is taking off and where it is going. And then there are these other things called 'telescopes' that let people on the ground look at things in space. Combine the two and while there might be some military satellite whose exact use is secret, there really isn't anything in orbit that isn't well known.
Re:Stratoshperic Archeology (Score:3, Interesting)
anyway, funky shots of a funky vehicle from a funky time... glad those days are over. I like Russians and
Re:Stratoshperic Archeology (Score:5, Informative)
And the majority is being tracked by NORAD down to the size of around a basketball; which is the major reason why they actually justify the Cheyenne mountain budget. No. No points for Stargate jokes. Note that this addresses your point about tracking being limited; the military stares outwards.
Civilian tracking is generally a matter of watchin g for new stuff. "we still don't know where the radioactive material on the spacecraft landed."
It's the largely technical problem of finding an object the size of a basketball in an oval area 150 miles wide in the minor axis by 7000 miles in the long axis, the majority of that being water. 270 grams isn't much, and it's probably fairly safe for the moment.
"Maybe not so much with something this big, but you could always claim that it's an expended booster or maybe a failed research satellite if you didn't want anyone paying attention to it."
This was what they said about some Bigbird satellites, except someone did point out that failed satellites don't change orbit. I think that the veil of secrecy surrounding KH lasted for all of five years.
Re:...but a faulty sensor caused it to de-orbit... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:violated USSR - USA treaty? (Score:5, Informative)
Virg
Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
any ideas why this on the Latvian army site? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:any ideas why this on the Latvian army site? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:any ideas why this on the Latvian army site? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:any ideas why this on the Latvian army site? (Score:4, Informative)
You can check it out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Latv
Re:any ideas why this on the Latvian army site? (Score:3, Informative)
99% of his materials are shamelessly copied from other sites.
Re:Yep, number increment (Score:2)
Re:Yep, number increment (Score:2)
Diameter: 4.1 meter
Weight: around 80 tons
Uhhh....it looks a hell of a lot bigger than 4.1 meters wide in the pictures. Lying on its side it looks like it is from floor to ceiling on one of the many floors of the structure. Standing up seems much bigger than 37 meters too....hmmm.
Re:Yep, number increment (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yep, number increment (Score:2, Informative)
Nuclear space mines, self-defense cannon! [www.army.lv]
So the nuclear space mines are in the Pacific now? (Score:2)
Wonder if they ever recovered anything?
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Dunno about that, but this [www.army.lv] reminds me of Bill Cosby's skit, "200MPH", where he jokes about Carol Shelby.
Shelby catches Cosby driving "one of them ferrin cars", and swears he's going to build Cosby a custom Cobra, the best that ever was. "Its gonna have du-al exhaust, du-al sup'chargers, du-al steerin' wheels, du-al fire extinguishers...du-al everything. I dunno how it's gonna work but goddangit everything gonna be DUAL".
Don't anybody show Shelby that picture :-)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
The picture of the launch vehicle being erected is classic. Looks like either the world's largest surface-to-air missile or a 1950's idea of a rocket ship.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
See a picture... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:See a picture... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:See a picture... (Score:2)
Hahaha (Score:3, Funny)
And they said that movie with Clint Eastwood in space was farfethced. Hah!
*ahem*
We do have a cowboy in office, don't we?
Oh man that thing is uber Cool!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh man that thing is uber Cool!!! (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
What it had to be said.. at least it's out the way now
Software error (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Software error (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Software error (Score:5, Insightful)
Luck had nothing to do with it. Good test procedures caught it.
Re:Software error (Score:2, Interesting)
Man, I am glad it "de-orbited." (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Man, I am glad it "de-orbited." (Score:2, Interesting)
300 million wouldn't even cover the costs
for the symposium to kick off the feasability
study.
bush & co (warsRus) has already kicked in over
6 billion dollars for new (non-Reagan) work on
a (theatre) missile defense system. so far,
the only tests that have worked have been the
ones that have been "billed" as "demonstrations".
"leaked" reagan-era intel touted soviet land-
based laser cannon capable of destroying USA
satellites in HEO. $6B for a non-functional
missile defense system, but not a re
Thats not a battle station... (Score:4, Funny)
If it was ever used... (Score:3, Funny)
...we'd just have to get George Lucas to go back and edit it so that their space station fired first.
~BSBREAKING NEWS: Soviet Battle Station Slashdotted! (Score:4, Funny)
Too Bad It Already Fell Out of Space (Score:3, Funny)
Leads one to ponder the relative computing powess (Score:2, Interesting)
Leads one to ponder about the relative computing powess against the counterpart in those times.
Just how far the computing differences were, considering that a probable computation error caused the machine to orbit incorrectly.
Re:Leads one to ponder the relative computing powe (Score:5, Insightful)
from
With all the advanced technology, nothing similar or remotedly comparable happens in the new millenium.
CC.
"One thing i can tell you - Energia Corp now (Score:5, Interesting)
A most interesting comment from the guy who provided the photos.
Perhaps he woudl be willing submit to a
Re:"One thing i can tell you - Energia Corp now (Score:5, Informative)
Unarmed, but still... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unarmed, but still... (Score:2)
De-Orbit? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:De-Orbit? (Score:3, Informative)
There, was that a useful line to write? No? Do you understand why it was not useful? Yes, that's right, because sometimes more precise terms are neeeded. "Crashed" is imprecise. "De-orbit" describes a little bit more about the reason it crashed. De-orbit means it decellerates itself so it is no longer going fast enough to orbit and thus falls. (As opposed to, say, accellerating itself off at some angle such that it was still going fast enough to o
a faulty sensor? (Score:2)
Looks well cool (Score:2)
cool (Score:2)
If the USSR had that back then.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If the USSR had that back then.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In any conflict with the US, our communications, global positioning and recon sattellites would be prime juicy targets.
Re:If the USSR had that back then.... (Score:2)
Re:If the USSR had that back then.... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't hit what you can't see. Sounds obvious but in warfare it can be the only difference between winning and getting spanked.
Re:If the USSR had that back then.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If the USSR had that back then.... (Score:2)
de-orbit... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:de-orbit... (Score:2)
Launch Failure Conspiracy Theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Gorbachev had just come to power and wanted to make peace overtures to the West. A giant space battle station was not going to help this endeavour so a deliberate "launch failure" would be the simplest and easiest way of getting rid of the darn thing and shutting down the program.
As I said, it's nothing more than a theory I've heard articulated. I've no idea how much credability or plausibility it has.
Re:Launch Failure Conspiracy Theory (Score:2)
Re:Launch Failure Conspiracy Theory (Score:3, Funny)
Unlikely. I prefer the conspiracy theory that says that a US battle station destroyed it on its way up. The Soviet Union collapsed when its leadership realized what had happened, and what the implications are. US battle stations
Re:Launch Failure Conspiracy Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Newsflash for you: there are more ways of bringing something down then just shooting it out of the sky.
History Channel Last Night (Score:5, Informative)
Re:History Channel Last Night (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like a small moon to me (Score:2, Funny)
In... (Score:3, Funny)
remember.... (Score:2, Funny)
FAB! (Score:2, Funny)
There's a PC statement . . . (Score:2)
A lot of us call that "Crashing."
Been there, done that (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Been there, done that (Score:2)
Something tells me that when it hit the ocean it got scattered into many, many pieces. Probably be too hard to recover all of them. Most probably aren't very big either. This thing also came through the atmosphere on an unplanned trajectory so anything really usefull was burnt as well. It isn't really worth it to recover
Re:Been there, done that (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Rabid Ronnie (Score:3, Interesting)
Mainly though, this Polyus battle station shows what a waste the SDI initiative was in the first place, and more importantly, for today's world of Texas cowboys, what a waste the missile defense shield is. The huge amount of money wasted on lunatic plans to conquer space is easily countered with comparitively cheap countermeasure, be they a space based laser battlestation (why does the US think that China could not build one itself, with the same lack of hoo haa that the Russians had?) or a manouvering warhead.
But those big defense companies need to justify their existences, employees salaries, and profits, don't they?
Soviet Russia is GO! (Score:3, Interesting)
And yeah, it does look like the Thunderbirds. If I stare long enough, I could swear I see the strings.
I'm calling BS Flag, 30 yard line. It may be legit, but somebody is gonna have to do better than those photographs.
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2, Insightful)
On a completely unrelated note Bush just signed a bill putting the US 800 BILLION in debt.
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, this is the administration that was honestly pushing for the ballistic missile defense shield. And I
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2)
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2)
Because its not like there are countries with nuclear weapons on ballistic launchers out there, or anything.
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2)
How much use would that ballistic missle defense shield have been against a dirty bomb? Oops, none again! Hmm.
How much... hopefully you see the point. Many of the tactics of terrorist warfare do not make use of major weapons or missles and rockets. Not only does that tie them into one area, but that requires an infrastructure on the order of an entire nation to support and build. That is usu
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2)
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.
The thinking seemed to be that what you really wanted was a good old fascist dictatorship. The US was more than happy to help destabilse democratic socialist governments, or ally with fascist regime
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:3, Insightful)
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 Ch
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2)
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:4, Informative)
Sad (Score:2)
Maybe technological progress comes in times of war - yet people who forge that progress have to be born someday and have a chance to educate themselves.
With war around you - that's pretty tough [warchild.org]...
Re:Sad (Score:2)
Radar, turbine engines, space flight, Mach-x flight, fussion and fission research are examples, and this is just from the top of my head.
Luxurious war... (Score:2)
Re:Luxurious war... (Score:2)
Like i said, technlogical advancement IS NOT an excuse for war.
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:2)
If it was up to me, the MOD (UK Ministry Of Defence) would buy only German or Russian weaponry. Espeicially German subs as ours seem to catch fire a lot.
The CIA made sure they upped the ante by over-estimating the size and capability of the Soviet threat, although this was
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm, George W Bush, a
Ofcourse... (Score:2)
Re:Old Soviet Overlords (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unlike the US... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad (Score:2, Informative)
Skif means "Scythian" in the native tongue.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Funny)
The rumor is that it crashed into the ocean because of a sensor failure. The truth is it suicided because they gave it a really sucky name.
Re:Great term (Score:2)
Watching a dodgy application spawn an infinite number of background processes is particularly impressive.