The most useless things that astronauts took with them into orbit. Russian cosmonauts refuse to take pistols into orbit. What do astronauts take with them?

19.09.2019 Documentation

To the question The first three (things, objects) that the astronauts took with them. The teacher said that there were manual abacus and... given by the author User deleted the best answer is KARANDA$ I REZINKA-KOGDA SO S4ETA ZVEZD SBIVALISJ !

Answer from 22 answers[guru]

Hello! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: The first three (things, objects) that the astronauts took with them. The teacher said there were hand abacus and...

Answer from SUnset man[guru]
Playing cards. Wine Solntsedar.


Answer from Marina[guru]
Unlike a usual earthly business trip, when flying into space (in fact, this is also a business trip), a person does not need to pack a suitcase with the most necessary belongings. Other people will do this for him - everything necessary is carefully placed by them in strictly defined places in the ship under the control of representatives of the quality control department and the customer. But among all this baggage there is something specific to everyone going into space. When, at the dawn of astronautics, the item “Personal belongings” was introduced into the Soyuz spacecraft, pilot-cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov defined their volume as follows: “Personal belongings are a toothbrush, a comb and photographs of loved ones.” And it was decided that each crew member would be given 250 grams for this.


Answer from Vitalik P.[active]
...a spaceship... and... several galaxies.


Answer from Ђ [guru]
An anecdote on topic :)
For one space flight lasting 3 years after
After lengthy tests, three cosmonauts were finally selected. Because
the carrying capacity of the spacecraft is limited, and the equipment
there is a lot on board, each astronaut was allowed to take with them
no more than 70 kg of necessary items. The first one, very addicting
foreign languages, took with me 70 kg of textbooks, dictionaries,
language courses and literature on various languages. The second one took
his wife, who weighed just 70 kg. And the third says:
- You really annoyed me during the tests, not letting me smoke.
Therefore, I take with me 70 kg of cigarettes, cigarettes, cigars,
pipe tobacco, etc.
In three years spaceship lands safely. To him,
Naturally, journalists immediately come running, some of them foreign.
The first cosmonaut comes out and gives interviews in as many as 20 languages.
The second one comes out - with him is his wife and two children. Finally the third one comes out
all pale, trembling, with a crumpled cigarette in his mouth, and says:
- WELL, SOMEONE FINALLY GIVE ME A MATCH!! !
And some more useful information:
MCC and the astronauts themselves.
First of all, the name is given to the 14 tons of various scientific instruments located on Mir. Stayed on board and
things necessary for the life of astronauts - exercise equipment, sleeping bags, some clothes, food. The Mir had a library and video library consisting of several hundred books and tapes. They were brought with them by crew members and sent from Earth with “trucks” by a psychological support group.
Some cosmonauts forgot their personal belongings at the station. Thus, American astronaut Michael Foel, who worked on Mir in 1997, was simply physically unable to pick up photographs of his loved ones that were hung on the walls of the Spektr module. This section of the station was punctured during a collision with a cargo truck.
the Progress ship and it was impossible to enter it without a spacesuit. Also kept at the station were three artificial New Year trees with toys, passed from crew to crew, a Santa Claus costume and several guitars, which were taken with especially musical astronauts.
But alas, here is the answer...


Not everyone knows the fact that cosmonauts, ever since the first flight into space, began to take with them military weapon. At first, the cosmonauts were given an ordinary Makarov pistol, and then they replaced it with a powerful three-shot hunting pistol TP-82. This post is dedicated to weapons in space.

The gun was part of the rescue kit and was in the landing capsule. It was needed so that in case of landing somewhere in the taiga, and there were such cases, the astronaut could be saved from an attack by wild animals.

The TP-82 is an incredibly powerful weapon. The 30-centimeter barrels themselves, without cartridges and a machete stock, weigh 1.6 kg.

The upper smooth barrels were intended for firing shot from 32 caliber cartridges. The lower rifled barrel was used to fire 5.45 mm cartridges and a special signal cartridge.

There have been cases of encounters with bears. In the book “Rockets and People,” design scientist Boris Evseevich Chertok told how in 1965, Alexey Leonov and Pavel Belyaev landed their Voskhod-2 landing module in the taiga of the Northern Urals, and the rescue team, due to bad conditions, weather conditions It took several days to get to them. The bears came out into the light of the fire, but the PM only surprised the predators and they fled from the shots. It was Leonov who said that a different weapon was needed.

The photo shows the crew of the International Space Station during winter training in Siberia.

TP-82 was no longer used in 2006, but what replaced it is not known. Roscosmos remains silent on this matter.


From the very day the first man flew into space, a variety of, sometimes quite strange, objects began to be sent into orbit. Even automatic unmanned spacecraft send the most unusual things into space from Earth.

1. Toys

Since 1985, when 11 toys were launched into space on the Discovery shuttle, they began to be regularly taken on board spacecraft. Typically, astronauts took toys to record videos of how objects behaved in a state of weightlessness.

STS-54 (1993) sent 40 toys into space, and STS-77 (1996) sent 10 more. Sixteen toys and sports equipment were sent to the International Space Station for testing. And as part of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program, Pixar's 30.5-centimeter Buzz Lightyear astronaut figurine spent 458 days in Earth's orbit (on the ISS).

2. Firearms

Beginning in 1986, all Soviet and Russian cosmonauts were issued a three-barreled TP-82 pistol, which could fire both bullets and flares. The butt of this weapon was removable and could be used as a machete. Such weapons were not intended to fight aliens at all, but to help astronauts survive after an emergency landing in the wilderness.

For the first time, the idea of ​​equipping cosmonauts with special weapons came from cosmonaut Alexei Leonov after Leonov and Belyaev made an emergency landing on board the Vostok-2 spacecraft in 1965. The astronauts spent 2 days in the winter taiga, waiting for rescuers. At the same time, the PM pistol they had was very poorly suited for protection against predators and hunting. In 1968, a survival kit was developed for all Soviet space missions, in which the Makarov pistol was replaced with the TP-82.

3. Erotica


When NASA sent Apollo 12 to the Moon in November 1969, the backup crew played a prank on the primary crew. After the lander landed in the Ocean of Storms region, Charles Conrad and Alan Bean prepared to go out onto the lunar surface. When they opened the manuals attached to the suits' wrists, they found snapshots of Playboy models with witty comments ("see interesting hills and valleys," "ideal bondage partner," "remember to describe the bulges," "study her activity").

4. Luke Skywalker's lightsaber


Some things were taken with them into orbit for no reason, just so that later they could say that this item had been in space. When the Discovery shuttle was launched in October 2007 (with Expedition STS-120, which spent 2 weeks on the ISS), each astronaut was allowed to take 1 kilogram of personal belongings with them on the flight.

Flight commander Pam Melroy took her nephew's school flags with her. Other crew members took with them various souvenirs to later give them to their friends and various organizations. Also included on the flight manifest was the lightsaber used by Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. George Lucas asked for this sword to be taken into space to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.

5. Change (coins)


It would seem that the coins are too ordinary to be included in this list of unusual things. But why do astronauts need coins in orbit? In July 1961, Gus Grissom, who became the second American in space, splashed down after 15 minutes of suborbital flight in Atlantic Ocean. While he was waiting for a helicopter from the USS Randolph base, water began to flood the Liberty Bell 7 through an open hatch.

When Grissom swam out, he realized that he was being pulled down to the bottom by the change lying in his pocket (the astronaut took it with him to give it away later as souvenirs). He threw her into the hatch of the sinking vehicle, and soon a rescue helicopter arrived. When Liberty Bell 7 was recovered from a depth of 4,900 meters in 1999, 52 coins were recovered from it.

6. Product Advertising


For advertising purposes, the Coca-Cola Company spent $250,000 to develop a can that you can drink from in zero gravity. The company even reformulated the drink to make it easier to drink (carbonated drinks are hard to keep in your stomach in zero gravity). When Pepsi caught wind that NASA had decided to send cola dispensers on the next shuttle, it spent as much as $14 million developing its can “for space.”

Finally, the Challenger shuttle was sent into orbit in 1985 with four cans of Coke and Pepsi on board. The crew tried both drinks in zero gravity and found them disgusting. But that didn't stop Pepsi from launching advertising campaign, and which called its product "one giant drink for humanity" (similar to Armstrong's words "one giant step for humanity").

7. "Letter in a Bottle" Sent into Space

When New Horizons completes its five-month exploration of the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015, it will become the fifth man-made object to leave the planet. solar system. Attached to its body in various places are containers containing souvenirs, such as a CD-ROM containing photographs of New Horizons project personnel, photographs of the states of Maryland and Florida (where the probe was built and launched), and a US postage stamp depicting Pluto.

Also sent with the probe into the depths of the Universe was a piece of metal from Spaceship One, the first private manned spacecraft, and a small bowl-like container containing the ashes of Tombaugh, the man who first discovered Pluto back in 1930.

8. Top secret joke


In December 2010, SpaceX launched the unmanned Dragon spacecraft in California. After the capsule orbited the Earth twice, it successfully splashed down 804 kilometers west of Mexico in Pacific Ocean, becoming the first commercial spacecraft.

The ship that made the test flight had its only cargo hidden in a container screwed to the floor with "Top Secret" written on it. When the container was opened, it was found to contain a large circle of Gruyère cheese. This was an allusion to the Python skit in which John Cleese tries to order cheese from a cheese shop that doesn't have any cheese.

9. Armchairs, hamburgers, beer and bacon

For $60 you can buy a 60-gram balloon that can lift 800 grams of payload to an altitude of 32,000 meters or 2.3 kilograms of cargo to an altitude of 26,000 meters. The so-called near space begins at an altitude of 23,000 meters. In July 2012, students sent petunias in a vase into the stratosphere, where the flowers froze at -63 degrees Celsius.

After this, two friends contacted Anheuser-Busch to ask if they would like to film the first beer in space. The company agreed and eventually a video appeared showing 2 Toshiba cameras attached to a chair on hot-air balloon, filmed beer and hamburger flying into space.

10. Ashes

Celestis Memorial Spaceflights offers to send the ashes of loved ones into space. The ashes are sealed in a container, which is then launched into orbit by the Celestis spacecraft. The first such flight took place in April 1997, and the ashes of such celebrities as Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and lawyer Timothy Leary, known for his commitment to psychedelics, ended up in space. Beginning in 2015, Celestis plans to begin sending pet ashes into space. The cost of the service is from $12,000.

Many articles have been written about what strange things astronauts sometimes take with them into orbit. All of them, in one way or another, come down to the “usefulness” or at least justification of the presence of products or household and hygiene items in space.

Take, for example, cognac discovered by Georgy Grechko at the Salyut-6 station: “strong” saved cosmonauts from colds and frostbite. Or seeds of wheat, radishes, lettuce, cabbage - by growing crops in orbit, astronauts conduct successful experiments and help science. Soft toys that act as indicators of weightlessness in space have also been talked about more than once.
But there have been cases when astronauts took frankly “non-space” things into space. Let's look at the 4 strangest ones, and if you read to the end, you will receive a bonus.

Pistols

With Yuri Gagarin, not only human space exploration began, but also the history of “space guns”. On his first flight, Gagarin took with him a PM - aka a Makarov pistol. The “barrel” was supposed to be useful in case the Soviet cosmonaut “falls in the wrong direction” upon landing. Later, this happened - Alexey Leonov recalled that during the landing in 1965, he and his partners spent two days in the forests Perm region. “You could only shoot yourself with a PM,” Leonov joked. It became obvious that we are not talking about any useful functions of the PM.
Then Soviet developers decided to abandon the idea of ​​including Makarov in the cosmonaut’s equipment. However, an alternative was invented much later - only in 1979, the same Leonov in Tula, at a weapons factory, proposed creating a special weapon that would help an astronaut during an emergency landing “in the wrong steppe.” The creation took years, and by 1982 the famous three-barreled TP-82 appeared. For a second, they stopped using it quite recently - in 2006. Whether Russian cosmonauts now take weapons into orbit with them is a big secret. Roscosmos, at least, does not comment on this in any way.

Luke Skywalker's sword

Continuing the topic of weapons, we cannot help but mention the personal request of George Lucas, with which he addressed the American astronauts in 2007. The director asked members of the STS-120 expedition to take with them into orbit the lightsaber wielded by Luke Skywalker's character in the Return of the Jedi episode. The request was humorous, but the astronauts responded with joy and took the famous sword on board. The space odyssey of the props became symbolic also because it was in 2007 that “ star Wars"celebrated their 30th birthday.

Holy relics

In October 2016, members of the Soyuz MS-02 expedition, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, took on board a particle of the relics of Seraphim of Sarov. This is one of the last known cases of astronauts taking something like this with them. Previously (in 2008 and 2009), the relics of St. Sergius Radonezh. Back in 2009, a particle of the Life-giving Cross of the Lord went into orbit.
The public is still debating whether there is any practical benefit from such a “cargo.” Because of this controversy, the holy relics are included in our selection. But let’s not forget that Russian cosmonauts are mostly believers and often decorate their personal corners on the ISS with icons.

Fishing set

Interestingly, the so-called “Russian cosmonaut survival kit” still includes a fishing kit. The heroes themselves joke that they wouldn’t mind landing somewhere closer to a body of water to go fishing with friends for a day or two. But seriously, fishing gear is needed in a set for the same thing that a Makarov pistol was needed in its time - so that an astronaut who lands in the wrong place can survive in the wild. There are no known cases in which fishing rods or nets were useful to Russian cosmonauts when landing on Earth. And that’s why the fishing set takes its place of honor in our selection.
BonusAnd now a few words about what has been in space, but with the help of drones. First up, Swiss cheese. In 2010, the first commercial Dragon spacecraft orbited the Earth twice. On board there was a capsule with the inscription “Top Secret”. When the capsule was opened after landing, it turned out that there was a whole wheel of cheese inside.
Bonus number two will be a story about ashes in space. Jokes aside, the Celestis Memorial Spaceflights company has been sending human ashes into the vastness of the Universe for more than 20 years. The relatives of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, were among the first to use the company's services.

The Faculty of Journalism of NSU decided and proposed such a topic for the first entrance exam - an essay.

So, what will yesterday’s graduates and future journalists take into space?

Books come first. They are taken for different purposes: some simply do not have time to re-read everything they want on Earth, while others bring their favorite authors to “understand it again.” Everyone agrees that food for the mind is important and necessary: ​​it is impossible to spend two years just eating and sleeping. One applicant takes a book of books with him into space - the Bible. The other is history books. The third is Russian literature. Pushkin, of course, is present.

Sometimes people forget about bodily food, although some practical people write about it first. First eat, and then read. The list of products is sometimes specified: bread, salt, yogurt, fruits, vegetables.

The next most popular is a laptop, preferably one with Internet access. Where to look for a network in space? Although some take it to listen to music and watch movies, as well as read books in electronic form, in case they are not allowed to take paper literature.

By the way, about music. It is also readily “packed into a backpack” along with all kinds of media and players: tape recorders, a player and other pounds of modern electronics.

The next item is photographs of family and loved ones. Some people plan to take entire albums with them, while others only need one or two cards. One applicant decided not to limit herself to photos, but to take “her whole boyfriend” with her. Another applicant - “photos of me” along with relatives and friends. Often, all this abundance was accompanied by the corresponding equipment: a camera and a camera. Like real journalists, everyone is trying to make exclusive information available to everyone: they are filming documentaries, write and illustrate what is written with their own footage.

Writing materials also turned out to be very popular: 20 notebooks of 96 sheets each, 20 pens, just notebooks, a diary, one large, clean and thick book, just a ballpoint pen, a set of pencils... In general, stationery supplies are presented in all their variety. Some are not going to limit themselves to works of small volume, but are counting on a surge of inspiration and the arrival of a muse to write an entire book.

There were also original individuals who sometimes did not think about practical benefits or thought, but in their own special way. So, the things that are contenders for flying into space are:

Pink slippers in the shape of rabbits and Toptygin the bear;

Sanity;

A wind-up dinosaur, a buildable model of an airplane or tank, a battery-powered electronic aquarium, a miniature globe;

Variegated leaves, shells, smooth and rough river pebbles, a magpie feather, a dried apple tree branch and birch bark;

Soul and the great mighty Russian language;

Mirror;

Russian flag and a bag of earth;

Telescope.

The main thing is not to make a mistake. After all, there are two whole cosmic years ahead.