On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 tlj18@juno.com wrote: > Interesting article! > Blazing Satellites - Guns in Space > Virtually no information was available about the military Salyuts until > recently, when access was opened up to a full-scale training model at the > Moscow Aviation Institute. Well, guess what--Salyut 3 had a machine gun. Actually, this is quite an old story. It was first revealed, I believe, in the December 1991 issue of the Russian publication Znanye - an issue which first showed the military Salyut, the L-3M manned lunar lander proposal (the one that required two N-1 launches), discussed the heavy Zarya Soyuz-replacement, etc. > The Cold War may be done for, but there are still guns in space, and all > of them are Russian. The survival kit in the Soyuz spacecraft which ferries > cosmonauts to and from the Mir space station is said to contain, among > other things, a pistol and ammunition. Don't shuttle emergency kits carry things like knives which can also be used as weapons ? Very good for puncturing and ripping a spacesuit. As pointed out, the Russians carry a gun purely for safety against local wildlife (even rednecks if they do an emergency landing in the southern US !), and it is not intended as a weapon against people. Phillip Clark --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phillip S Clark 22 Winterbourne Close Molniya Space Consultancy Hastings Compiler/Publisher, Worldwide Satellite Launches E Sussex TN34 1XG U.K. Specialist in "space archeology" - the older and more obscure the more interesting it is ! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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