Buran & Mir
One of the greatest achievements of the Soviet manned spaceflight era was the Mir space station. As the Mir space station deorbited, I will not go into detail about them on my site but instead provide links to other sites.
Originally intended for a five-year orbit until being replaced by Mir-2, the Russian space station Mir (“Mir” means either “Peace” or “World”) instead remained in orbit for 15. 104 cosmonauts and astronauts from various countries visited and lived on the station; it was continuously occupied from 1989 to 1999 (3640 days, 22 hours, 52 minutes), and had made more than 85 605 orbits by the time it was deorbited on 23 March, 2001. Despite a lot of silly hysteria in the media, Mir’s deorbiting went flawlessly, and what remained of the station came to rest on the seabed of the South Pacific.
Mir endured a few mishaps during its time in orbit; most notably an on-board fire and a wayward Progress supply ship poking a hole in the Spektr module. These accidents were, however, blown out of all proportion by the media (who salivate at any prospect of a disaster) and various so-called space “experts”. Considering that Mir spent 15 years in one of the harshest environments known, it did remarkably well!
Mir, itself, also endured a negative publicity campaign allegedly forced upon the U.S. media in exchange for NASA press passes, special access for interviews of NASA officials, and related government contractor sponsorship of their publications. Consequently, even as the European press portrayed Mir as an impressive monument to human progress, in the U.S.A. Mir was depicted as a “bucket of bolts” and an “orbiting trashcan”.
– Mir, MirCorp and a jealous NASA at SpaceProjects.com
From Chris van der Berg’s Mir Final:
But nevertheless I experienced a strong feeling of sadness. I thought about the hundreds of space flight experts in Russia, who had been involved in the Mir exploitation. For instance TsUP, the flight control near Moscow. The room for the control of Mir-operations was always a house full of specialists and scientists, who liked their job. With scanty wages, sometimes not fully paid they fulfilled for 100% of their responsibilities and in their specialities they showed enormous achievements.
In September 2000 I visited TsUP while a pass of the unmanned Mir complex was going on. It was sad to see the almost empty room with only a few operators and specialists, who, depressed by the knowledge of an unsure future, took their seats behind the monitors and keyboards. For them and their colleagues there is nothing to monitor anymore. What will be their alternative? Now thinking about them I felt like crying.
I myself can continue to enjoy my hobby with the monitoring of the International Space Station and other space objects, for instance radio amateur satellites. This will be not so intensive and less aimed at the distribution of information, but last but not least there will be something. For the duty crews and experts at TsUP, but also at a lot of tracking and calculation facilities, there will be nothing at all.
I also visited the so called Buran-hall during the ISS EVA with Malenchenko (STS-106). The operations fully stood under control of MCC Houston. No Russian controllers were involved. That what I saw and heard was for me no reason to be optimistic about the future role of the skilled and experienced flight control staff of the Russian side.
Gradually the control of the ISS has been shifted from Moscow to Houston and the attitude control of the complex has been transferred from the Russian Zvezda to the American Destiny.
So more and more the role of the Russian flight controllers will be decreased to a reserve one. Only the incidental operations with Soyuz ships and Progress freighters will remain a Russian task. All they can do now is to wait for Russian science operations on board ISS some time in the future.
Facts & figures
Composition
Mir was comprised of 6 modules, plus the Progress cargo and Soyuz transport ships that regularly docked and undocked:
| Module name | Designation & purpose | Reached orbit | Parameters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core module Базовый Блок |
17KS 17КС Base block |
20 Feb 1986 |
|
| Kvant-1 «Квант-1» |
37KE 37КЭ Astrophysics module |
Docked 30 Mar 1987 |
|
| Kvant-2 «Квант-2» |
77KSD 77КСД Extension module |
Docked 26 Nov 1989 |
|
| Kristall «Кристалл» |
77KST 77КСТ Technology module |
Docked 31 May 1990 |
|
| Spektr «Спектр» |
77KSO 77КСО Geophysical module |
Docked 23 May 1995 |
|
| Priroda «Природа» |
77KSI 77КСИ International ecology research module |
Docked 23 Apr 1996 |
|
Energiya diagram of the final configuration of Mir. A larger version of this photo, and articles on Mir’s final day, can be found at the Energiya news section for March 2001.
Mir’s impressive record
Between 1986 and 2000, Mir was inhabited 90% of the time. From 1986 to 1999:
- 30 Soyuz spacecraft brought 80 astronauts to Mir, including 21 non-Russians.
- 9 US shuttles brought 57 astronauts to Mir, including 8 non-Americans.
- 84 different astronauts stayed on Mir on 137 different occasions.
- 22 Progress vehicles served the station.
- 23 000 science and research experiments were performed.
- 78 EVAs were carried out, totalling 352 hours in the vacuum of space.
- The record for the longest unbroken period of time spent on board is held by cosmonaut Valerii Polyakov, with 437 days.
From Mir, Le Voyage Extraordinaire, 1986–2001 by Jacques Villain, published by Le Cherche Midi (via the CNES site; see link below).
Links
- Avia.ru: Orbital Station Mir, Орбитальная станция «МИР», a Russian-language site
- Cato Institute: “Mir’s Heroic Death”, 23 March 2001. I detest the ethos of this institute (essentially the promotion of the free market economy – a capitalist society is a bloody unpleasant place to live if you are one of the “Have-Nots”), but this article about Mir’s demise shows how determined NASA was to get rid of its rival. Some of the commercialization proposals, though, bordered on the tacky – one being a proposal by producer Mark Burnett to film the Survivor series at Star City. How more undignified can you get? If this series is like the previous “Survivor” episodes, you would be watching a bunch of bickering, whinging, self-obsessed fame-seekers competing to go into space. Has the Russian space program really come to this? Yurii Gagarin (if he were still alive) would have an apoplectic fit.
- CNES (French Space Agency): 2001, a Mir Odyssey
- Cosmic Dancer: “Cosmic Dancer” was a 3-dimensional sculpture created by artist Arthur Woods, launched to Mir on 22 May, 1993. Cosmic Dancer unfortunately went down with Mir in 2001.
- Energiya: Mir section
- Gunter’s Space Page: Mir/DOS-7
- Houston Chronicle: 15 years of Mir online archive
- Information Center of Orbital Complex Mir
- Johnson’s Russia List: “The Legacy of Mir”, 2001.
[…] For Russian cosmonauts, however, Mir doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves. Many of them are still smarting over NASA’s relentless lobbying to have the station brought down. Last year the quasi-private space firm Energiya, which operates Mir, was trying to persuade NASA to launch the first components of the ISS in an orbit that would have brought it close to Mir. If NASA had done so, perhaps some of the valuable equipment aboard Mir could have been ferried to the ISS. It was not to be. NASA, apparently determined to keep Russia captive to the ISS, delayed its launch long enough to place the two in separate orbits.
[…] To cope with uncertainty, the Russians have developed a freewheeling, seat-of-the-pants space culture. To Western sensibilities, this way of working can appear reckless. “The Russians like to figure it out as they go,” says Bennett. “To my American-trained mind, it sounds like a really dangerous thing to do. But they haven’t killed anybody. It works, or they’re the luckiest people in the world.”
- Mir-25: a small but interesting site featuring the crew of the 25th expedition to Mir (Soyuz TM-28) in 1998, including some questions and answers
- The Moscow Times (via Archive.org): “May Mir’s Legacy Be as Enduring”,22 March 2001.
Over the last few years, much of the Western press coverage of Mir has had a distinctly uncharitable, almost juvenile flavor. The world has, almost gleefully at times, reported the station’s dotage, allowing its glory days to fade virtually to oblivion. Only in recent days have Western editorials begun to redress the balance.
[…] Russia has every right to be proud of Mir – proud of how it was conceived, what it achieved, what it symbolizes. Its legacy will continue as long as humankind continues to peacefully study, explore and develop space. Ultimately, Mir symbolizes the crucial advance from the militaristic competition of the early space race to a spirit of cooperation that we can only hope will never be reversed.
- NASA: Shuttle-Mir Web: an extensive site featuring lots of photos from the Shuttle missions, interviews and other data. One useful document is “Mir Hardware Heritage” by David Portree; it has details of all Russian missions and spacecraft up to 1994.
- NASA History Division: Shuttle-Mir: The United States and Russia Share History’s Highest Stage (SP-2001-4225). Online CD/book.
-
New York Times:
- “What the Mir Can Still Teach Us”, 19 July 1997
- “American Megamillionaire Gets Russki Space Heap!”, 23 July 2000. A curious and somewhat discomforting article on the eccentric millionarie who founded the short-lived MirCorp.
According to the Russian philosopher Grigori Pomerants, his country has slipped into “a state of mass disorientation” since the collapse of the Soviet empire. MirCorp’s presence here, surely, does not help. Anderson’s company comes with its fat wallets, its precocious grandmasters of capitalism, buying at deep discount the detritus of the space race, the Soviet Union, the cold war.
- Russian Space Web: The Mir space station
- Soviet Web Space: Mir Flight Log mission data page by Asif Siddiqi (Archive.org link). A listing of all flights to Mir.
- Sydney Morning Herald: “The Murder of Mir”,10 February 2001. Describes the politics behind the de-orbiting of Mir and “the real reason the U.S. wants Mir dead.” A few extracts:
[…] From the American point of view, the message was pretty clear: there was room for only one space station, and that station was going to be the ISS.
[…] Clint Eastwood’s NASA-advised Space Cowboys portrayed Russia’s space program as bumbling, duplicitous and dependent on the Americans (and specifically NASA).
[…] The endgame began in late October, when the pending launch of the first ISS crew gave NASA the opportunity for a display of braggadocio not seen since the heady days of the Apollo missions. Buried in the noise of this chest-thumping was a terse statement from the ISS project manager Robert Cabana: “When we get rid of Mir, then it [the ISS] will be the space station. Okay?” Cabana wouldn’t have to wait long. Mir’s fate was sealed. [One would have to wonder what Cabana’s STS-88 Russian crewmate, Sergei Krikalyov, would have thought of that remark!]
[…] Jeffrey Manber responded with an open letter to [President] Putin, reminding him of his pro-Mir statements. Manber said the de-orbiting of Mir would “play into the hands of those who do not want Russia to be equal in space. I believe you understand that Russia won’t be able to create such a masterpiece [as Mir].
This article got me very annoyed at the time, but upon reflection maybe it was better for Mir to “die with dignity” rather than be turned into some orbiting entertainment center.
- Terror in Space: companion site to an American TV series about the Mir space station, originally broadcast in October of 1998. Worth a look at as an example of the exaggerated hyperbole the Western media delighted in reporting about Mir:
Welcome to the companion Web site to the NOVA program, “Terror in Space,” the story of the aging and trouble-prone Russian Space Station Mir, which crashed to Earth by deliberate plan in March 2001. Experience the harrowing and life-threatening problems aboard the aging Mir space station through the eyes of the Russian and American astronauts who lived through them. Feel the heat from the fire that erupted on board. See the collision between Mir and another space craft. Endure the power outages and the computer failures that have jeopardized lives. Hear the debate over whether NASA should continue to risk its astronauts by sending them to Mir in preparation for the launch later this year of the most ambitious space project yet – the International Space Station.
This nonsense aside, the site is quite good, with details about Mir. Worth reading is an interview with egotistical astronaut Jerry Linengar, who volunteered to go on a Mir stay, then spent the whole time complaining about everything (read the book Dragonfly by Bryan Burrough for details).