WEBVTT - The Story of Mir 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:04.200 Hey, y'all, it's Jonathan, and before we get to today's episode, 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:06.720 I've got something I want to say, and that's there 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:10.000 are a lot of Russian names in this episode that 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:14.240 I absolutely butcher, but none do I butcher as much 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:18.400 as I do one that's spelled k v, A and T, 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:23.520 because I forgot while recording the episode that in Russian 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:29.000 v is essentially like a double you type sound like 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:33.800 vodka is vodka. So through the entire episode I pronounced 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.600 it as kvant when it should be quant, which makes 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:42.400 way more sense because it does reference quantum. So just 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:47.120 be prepared to hear me mispronounced quant as kvant a 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:50.879 billion times, as well as pretty much every other Russian 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:56.000 term and name that's in this My apologies, it's my fault, 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:00.200 but rather than go back and re record everything, I 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.120 thought I would warn you up front. And now let's 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:13.200 get to this interesting, if not correctly pronounced episode. Welcome 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:21.160 to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:24.479 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.760 I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.000 love of all things tech, and in this episode, we 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:34.199 are continuing our history about space stations. We are going 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.640 to focus on mirror. So in the last episode, I 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:42.000 talked about the first space station, the Salut one UH 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.600 that was from the Soviet Union, plus other stations in 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:49.560 the Saliot line, some of which were secretly military reconnaissance 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:54.880 space stations that were masquerading as civilian science stations. Pretty sneaky, 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:58.880 those Soviets. I also talked about the sky Lab space station, 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:02.520 which was inhabited for just one seventy one days but 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.320 had been in orbit for two thousand, two hundred forty 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.919 nine days, and I touched on this in the last episode. 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.880 But the reason sky Lab was unoccupied for most of 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:14.960 the time it was orbiting Earth is that NASA no 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:18.720 longer really had access to launch vehicles and space capsules 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:21.440 that could, you know, visit the station. They didn't. They 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:25.320 physically didn't have the equipment or the budget needed to 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.200 send more missions to sky Lab, and was essentially waiting 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.600 on the Space Shuttle program to come online to go 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:35.320 back to sky Lab. But the Space Shuttle program was 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:37.760 delayed to the point where sky Lab could no longer 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.960 maintain orbit, and it re entered Earth's atmosphere in the 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:43.880 summer of seventy nine. But we've got a lot more 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:46.280 to talk about when it comes to space stations, and 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:48.560 now we're going to pop back over to the then 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:52.160 Soviet Union. So sky Lab came down in seventy nine, 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:56.000 and the last of the Saliot stations, Saliot seven, entered 0:02:56.120 --> 0:03:01.880 orbit in nine two and would remain in orbit until now. 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:05.480 While sal Yot seven was an orbit, a new Soviet 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.440 space station would take form in space, and that station 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.200 was Mirror M I R. Now, just as a reminder, 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:17.360 before Mirror, all space stations were what we call monolithic 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:20.840 in form. Now that means that they went up fully 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:24.760 assembled in in one big piece, you know, kind of 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.200 like they were a one piece space station, even though 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:28.840 if you break it down, they're actually made up of 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.079 many many pieces, but it's all, you know, pre assembled. 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.880 Mirror would take the next step forward. It would be 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:39.080 the first modular space station, meaning the station would ultimately 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:43.600 be made up of multiple modules which would then connect 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:47.240 to a core module out in space. Uh. There's a 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.480 lot of benefits to this particular approach, but the big 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:53.360 one is that you're not as limited on internal space 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:58.200 inside your station, and you're not limited by mass the 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.080 way you would be with a monolithic design line. So 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:03.480 let's get into physics for a second to really understand 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.480 why this is a big deal. So Isaac Newton that 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:10.640 smarty Pants mathematically demonstrated the concept of an exchange of 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.320 momentum in the sixteen hundreds, and a few centuries later 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:19.760 a Russian scientist named Konstantine Soolkovski applied the idea of 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:23.800 conservational momentum to rockets. This was in nineteen o three, 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.640 and that became the basis of all of our rocketry 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.479 moving forward. And there are three big things you have 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.159 to keep in mind when you're trying to launch something 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:37.520 into space using a rocket. Those three things are the 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:39.920 energy that you need to generate in order to work 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.800 against gravity, which in most rocket equations we represent with 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:48.919 the delta V to indicate rocket velocity. The value of 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:52.000 this depends on where you're planning on going. If you're 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.160 going to Mars, then you'll need to exert more energy 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.040 than if you were just going into low Earth orbit. 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:02.960 Once you've selected where you're going and where you're starting from, 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.680 the value of this variable solidifies. There's nothing we can 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.680 do to change that number. This is literally physics. It's 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.960 the amount of energy needed to get into that part 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.640 from wherever you are. Also, it takes about twice the 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.839 amount of energy to go from Earth to Mars as 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.520 it would take to go from Earth to Earth orbit. However, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.920 what's really interesting to me is just getting into orbit 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.920 is about half of that total energy to get to Mars, 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.640 because just overcoming Earth's gravity and not falling back to 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:38.000 the planet requires a lot of energy. So while it 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:39.839 takes more energy to get to Mars that it does 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:42.880 to get to low Earth orbit, just getting to lower 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:46.159 Earth orbit is hard. Then you've got how much energy 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:51.040 is available in your propellant, right, how much potential energy 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.279 is stored in the fuel you are using. Not all 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.279 propellants are equal in this, Some are more dense in 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:02.560 energy than others. But again we're limited here. The rockets 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:05.679 we use rely on chemical reactions. There is a limit 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.720 to how much energy we can release out of these 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:12.160 chemical reactions. Physics dictates it we can't go beyond that, 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.960 so again reality has limited us. And finally, you've got 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.120 the propellant mass fraction, which is how much propellant you 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:24.239 need in comparison with the total mass of the stuff 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.440 you're sending off into space. Your rocket. So we've decided 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:29.839 where we want to go, you know, like low Earth orbit, 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.640 and we've decided which propellant we're going to use to 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:35.600 get there. And those two factors tell us the limitations 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:39.159 we face in getting a spacecraft to that point, because 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:41.920 it sets the ratio we have to hit between the 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.599 amount of fuel and the total mass of the rocket. 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.160 And obviously, as you add more fuel, you add more mass, 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.960 so you start hitting some fundamental limitations there too. We 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:56.480 can't just keep, you know, building more massive rockets. You 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.600 start to run into an issue with that ratio, or 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:01.640 at least, you know, we start to bump up against 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:05.000 tough restrictions if we try to do that. And so 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.880 if we want to build sizeable structures in space rather 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:13.160 than just like creating a truly monstrous rocket, the solution 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.640 is to make those structures modular and then to launch 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.760 large sections of the structures and individual launches and then 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.560 assemble them in space. That's what Mirror would do. Now, 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.600 as I'm sure anyone listening to these episodes understands, the 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:32.800 road to developing, constructing, and deploying any sort of spacecraft 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.920 tends to be a pretty long one. While the first 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:40.320 Mirror module would launch in February nine six. The planning 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.480 for the station began a decade earlier, in the middle 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:47.600 of the Saliot program, so Mirror got an official approval 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:51.480 from the Soviet government in nineteen seventy six, But that 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.000 didn't mean it was a straight path from planning to execution. 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:59.200 A lot was going on in the Soviet Union, including 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:03.320 a lot of citical battles within the Soviet space program. 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:07.960 Different leaders within different departments were scrabbling for funding and 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.600 for authority, and it meant that budgets were shifted around 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:15.760 multiple times, which honestly is not that different from how 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:19.200 things happen in NASA if we're, you know, really being critical. 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.680 During the span of years between nineteen seventy six and 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:26.560 nineteen eighty six, changes in the Soviet space program meant 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:30.120 that funds were pulled from Mirror and redirected towards a 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:35.880 different space project, that of the Barran spacecraft. Now I'm 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:38.640 not sure that I could do a full tech stuff 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:43.040 episode about the Barran, but it does merit mentioned. Also, again, 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:47.080 apologies for my pronunciation. It's going to be terrible and 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:51.640 that's all on me. But the Barran bu R A 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.439 n was essentially the Soviet equivalent of the Space Shuttle, 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.360 a reusable space plane style spacecraft designed to go into 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:02.800 low Earth orbit and then to act as kind of 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.240 a plane upon return to Earth, and most importantly, it 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.840 would be reusable. Now, that project began in the seventies, 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:15.280 with construction starting in nineteen eighty, and here in America 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.440 we had the space Shuttle program in development at this 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:22.640 same time. The Soviets couldn't afford to go full steam 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.040 ahead both with Mir and Barran, so in nineteen eighty four, 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:31.760 the administrators redirected Mer's budget towards Brand's test flights. Now, 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:36.079 that could have spelled doom for Mere, but then Valentine Glushko, 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:39.800 a Soviet engineer in charge of the entire space program 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:42.319 who had been part of some of those political fights 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:45.720 within the Soviet space program I mentioned earlier. Anyway, he 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:49.120 had committed to getting Mire in orbit by the mid eighties, 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:53.560 so he managed to redirect some funds back into the 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.400 Mir space station program. Brand, by the way, would go 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.959 on to conduct an unscrewed test flight, so no one 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:05.360 was aboard, but it was successful. It happened without really 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:09.319 a hitch in, but it didn't really do anything else. 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:12.600 And uh, the big reason for that had nothing to 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:14.880 do with the technology. It had everything to do with 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:19.360 the collapse of the Soviet Union. But a few years 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:22.520 after getting the thumbs up, the Soviets planned to merge 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:26.400 Mirror with the Almah's program. Now, if you listen to 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:29.800 our previous episode in this series, you know that Almah's 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:34.520 was the designation for a Soviet military space station project. 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:39.559 Alma's had previously merged, you know, with Saliot stations to 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:42.880 three and five. In the Saliot program, we're all meant 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.960 to act as military reconnaissance stations. Now, Saliott too had 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:50.280 had multiple technical problems that led to it re entering 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.280 their atmosphere just a couple of weeks after it first 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:58.319 attained orbit. Fortunately, there were no people aboard. No crew 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:03.240 had visited the space station at that point, so no 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:07.280 one was lost as a result of that. Sellot three 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:10.000 and saw It five had a little more success, though 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.920 very little is known about those stations because the Soviets 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.360 were not super eager to share military secrets with the 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:18.400 rest of the world. That's not to say that there 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:22.200 aren't resources out there. There are. I just find a 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:27.360 lot of them to be questionably reliable. Anyway, as part 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.720 of the Alma's program, engineers designed a spacecraft with the 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:35.160 designation d O s so d OS one was actually 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.560 used to serve as the Saliot one space station. D 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.880 OS two, three, and four were Saliot two, three and 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:46.560 five respectively, Salut six and seven were DUS five and 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:50.319 US six, and then the core of the Mirror module 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.160 would be DOS seven. So this was a case of 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.079 the engineers taking the designs for an earlier space station 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.920 and then involving them to allow for that modular approach. 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:05.080 DOES or d OS seven would be the core module, 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.880 the heart and soul of Mirror. This core module would 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.840 also serve as crew quarters. In fact, for a while, 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.600 this would be the entirety of the space station. It 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:19.559 actually had six docking ports, which allowed not just Soya's 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:23.520 capsules to dock, but also cargo ships. Or they would 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.640 serve as the connection point for other Mirror modules, and 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.640 each module could focus on the specific type of science. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:34.040 For example, the Kavant one module had equipment to study 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.720 astrophysics from the station, and we'll talk more about that 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.360 in a in a little bit. So as for the 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.880 name Mirror, you might wonder what that means. Well, because 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:46.400 you know salute means salute for example, So what does 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.840 mirror mean. It's actually a little tricky to translate into English. 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:53.200 Now you could say it translates to the English word 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.640 for world, or that it translates into the word for peace, 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:00.160 but it's actually more specific than that. So prior or 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:05.240 to eighteen sixty one, Russia operated under a serfdom structure 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:11.640 with lots of Russians as surfs, and approximately one third 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:15.280 of all Russians were serfs. But Czar Alexander the Second 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.760 decreed that all surfs were freed. That that also meant 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:22.439 they were free to pay rent to their landlords. Uh, 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:26.440 the word mirror means a peasant community that owned its 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:30.479 own land, when previously it did not have that ownership. 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:34.400 So there are a few contextual, subtle things going on 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:38.120 with that name that are difficult to capture with a 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:42.520 single word in English. So, despite all the obstacles, the 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.160 U S s R launched Mir's core module on February twenty, 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:50.720 nineteen eighties six. This was an unscrewed mission to get 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.920 the core into orbit and it was successful, so no 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.760 cosmonauts were aboard at this point, but it did deploy 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.040 from its launch vehicle and enter a bit. The core 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.720 module resembled the monolithic space stations of the Saliot era. 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:07.320 I mean, after all, they were both based off the 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:12.760 same seed, the Alma's military platform. And it measured about 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.920 forty three ft or thirteen meters in length, and the 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:19.080 widest part of the stepped cylinder, you know, some parts 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:21.800 of the cylinder were wider than the others, but the 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.200 widest part was thirteen point eight feet in diameter or 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.080 four point two meters. On either end of the station 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.040 were docking points, and at the forward end. There were 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.440 four more docking points around the circumference of the station, 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:37.880 so six in total. As I said, just a couple 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:42.400 of weeks after the core module innered orbit, a space craft, 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:48.160 a Soyu spacecraft carrying Vladimir Solovyov and Leonard Kidzen docked 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:52.280 with the station. Actually first it docked with Mirror for 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:54.880 fifty five days. So they docked with me Or for 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.800 fifty five days. Then they left Mirror and they went 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:03.040 to dock with Saliot seven, which allowed the cosmonauts to 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:07.240 load equipment from Saliot seven into their soyus T spacecraft, 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.400 and then they carried that back to Mirror after spending 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:14.880 about two months aboard Saliot seven. And each of these 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.880 trips between space stations took about twenty nine hours to travel, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:21.760 so more than a full day to get from one 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:24.720 to the other, and they did it a couple of times. Uh. 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:26.880 It was the first time the spacecraft had docked with 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.680 two space stations during a single mission. The two cosmonauts 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.400 became the first residence of the Mirror space station. And 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.360 again this version of Mirror was just the core module, 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.800 so it was a lot like the Saliott stations. In fact, 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.560 the first module to join Mere and expand the station 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:47.200 wouldn't come online until that first module was the Cavant one, 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:52.440 which I mentioned earlier, and it was an astrophysics module. Now, 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.600 if you look at illustrations is a Mirror when it was, 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.240 you know, complete, when all the modules had attached to it, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.520 you would see how complicated this modular approach could become. 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:06.800 Some folks kind of likened it to tinker toys. The 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.760 Kvan one module connected to the aft end of the 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:14.720 core module, so opposite where the Soyuz capsule would dock. 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.920 The Soyuz capsule docked in the forward side of the station, 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:22.640 the Cavant one was attached to the aft side. The 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.800 kan one module had its own extra docking port in 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.640 the aft of its module, and it also had a 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.920 pair of very long solar panels, as did the mir Core. 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:36.360 I should also add that while that's the configuration I 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:41.600 saw on one illustration, the Russians frequently rearranged the modules 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:45.080 of the Mirror space station, so I don't know if 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:47.640 that was how it was configured throughout the entire history 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:51.000 of Mirror, because it did move some modules around at 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.760 different times in order to prep space for new modules 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:58.800 joining the station. The kvant one module was built on 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:02.840 top of an earlier acecraft design, the t K S spacecraft. 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.280 The original purpose for that type of spacecraft was to 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:10.919 serve as a resupply cargo ship for those Alma's military stations, 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:14.119 but the Cavant one was all decked out with scientific gear. 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:18.720 It had two pressurized compartments in which cosmonauts could work safely, 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:22.480 and it also had an unpressurized compartment where specific experiments 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.959 could take place and in an airlock. According to a 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:28.920 few different sources I found, the Cavant one was supposed 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.400 to dock not with Mirror originally but with the Saliot 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:35.639 seven space station, and if it had that would have 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:39.000 made Saliot seven the first modular space station in orbit. 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:42.040 But the development of Kalant one was a rocky journey 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.600 and of itself, and in the process the decision was 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.760 made to switch it over to Mirror instead of Saliot seven. 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:52.639 The scientific instruments uh aboard the Cavant one included X 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:57.840 ray telescopes, spectrometers and ultra violet telescope and more. The 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.200 Cavant one would study stuff like quasars and neutron stars 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.879 and any of those solar panels. Because the equipment aboard 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.880 the vont one required a lot of electricity to use, 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:11.199 more than what the Mirror core would be able to 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:14.280 generate on its own and still provide, you know, important 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.320 stuff like life support. It also didn't have its own 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.480 propulsion system, and that made me wonder how the heck 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:24.200 didn't manage to dock with Mirror if Cavanton one didn't 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.520 have propulsion, how did that work? Well, the answer to 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.120 that question will be coming up right after we take 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:40.400 this break, all right, So, how did Cavant one doc 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.240 with Mirror if it didn't have a propulsion system of 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:47.080 its own well. It relied on a special spacecraft called 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:51.240 an f g B tug like a tug boat. Essentially, 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:54.080 the tug docked with the cavant One and then act 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.679 as the propulsion unit and moved it to dock with 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:01.720 Mirror before it would disengage fly off. The cavat one 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:05.239 itself was a variation of the f g B, so 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:07.760 both of these were spacecraft that were based on the 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:12.919 earlier t K S spacecraft. That meant that with f 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.520 g B and the cavanton One together, it was too 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.000 spacecraft joined and one of them was just acting as 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.600 the propulsion system for the joint spacecraft. The docking a 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:28.040 Cavat one Demir did not go as planned. First there 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:32.080 was a failure of the control system that delayed everything. Then, 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:34.560 after fixing that, there was an issue with the two 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:39.719 spacecraft actually forming a solid seal as they docked together. 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:44.399 Something was preventing him from locking in. So the cosmonauts 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:47.920 a board mir donned space suits and had an emergency 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.639 e v A or spacewalk, and on that space walk 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:54.439 they found out what the problem was. There was a 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.399 trash bag in the docking ring on Mirror that was 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.280 preventing a seal with the Cavat one. That kind of 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:05.960 raises more questions, but I don't have any answers to them, 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.679 so I'm not gonna bother to ask them anyway. The 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:12.480 cosmonauts removed the trash bag, and then the two spacecraft 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.720 were finally able to dock together securely. The tug then 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:19.840 disengage from Cavat one, but the whole process meant that 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.040 it no longer really had sufficient propellant to enter into 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.119 a controlled de orbiting path, which was what the plan 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:29.880 had been, so instead, the Soviets decided that they would 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:34.200 use a shorter boost to push the f GB tug 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:36.840 up into a higher orbit so that it would become 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.280 a later Earth problem and it would eventually undergo orbital 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.359 decay and it would re enter Earth's atmosphere on August 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.720 in an uncontrolled re entry. That those are words that 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.919 you don't ever like to read. Uncontrolled re entry is 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:55.240 not good. Cavanton one would get a lot of upgrades 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:59.040 over the years, with cosmonauts adding solar arrays or taking 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.560 a raise from other parts of Mirror and then installing 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.800 them in Cavant one, but by the mid nineties most 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:08.280 of the instrumentation aboard CAVAT one had long since failed, 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:11.960 gone beyond its useful life, and the module was used 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:17.760 for and I quote, rubbish storage, which that kind of stings, 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:22.120 doesn't it. But before it became a trash pit in space, 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:25.639 Cavant one was an active lab and expanded the living 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.240 space of the space station. It also had some impressive 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:34.080 mechanical stabilizers. They used flywheel mechanisms that would allow the 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:38.160 space station to reorient in space without having to use 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:42.359 propellant and thrusters. Now, the space station did have thrusters 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:44.960 and it did have propellant, but obviously you want to 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.360 be really judicious with how you use that stuff because 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.080 you have a limited amount on board and it's not 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:54.320 easy to bring more up to you. So using these 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:58.439 mechanical systems and sparing the fuel meant that you know, 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.840 you're being much more efficient. It's pretty darn cool. So 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:05.879 just using physics instead of propellant really interesting. But the 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.040 Cavanton one was just one of the modules that attached 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:13.720 to MERE. The second one was Prepare Yourself Cavant to 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:18.439 this happened. Now this one would provide more power to 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.480 the station. It also included additional flywheel mechanisms for orientation, 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:26.399 and it also had a large airlock, and unlike Cavant one, 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.560 it had a propulsion system. So to get into the 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.320 whole development of this about why the Soviets decided okay, 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:36.560 after Cavat one, this whole f g B tug thing 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:39.000 is a bad idea. It would take way too long 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:41.639 to get into all the stuff about that, but essentially 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:46.119 it boils down to them saying, well, if we have 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:50.439 a propulsion system attached to the modules, we can actually 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:53.760 make more use of more space, which makes way more 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:56.800 sense than to use a tug to push it into 0:22:56.800 --> 0:22:59.840 place and then jettison it. So the Cavant Too would 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:03.399 be on the first of those types of modules. The 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:08.760 cavant To docked with Mer on December at the axial 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:12.959 forward port, and then subsequently a manipulator arm on the 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:17.560 space station unplugged Cavat Too and then plugged it into 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:19.879 its new home, which was on a radio port on 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:22.960 the Mere Core module. And this is pretty much standard 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:27.640 operating procedure. When modules would join, they would first dock 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:30.719 with one part of the station. Then the manipulator arm 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:35.080 would end up moving them to its you know, new home. 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:38.159 In some cases it was a permanent home. In some cases, 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:42.000 you know, they would rearrange later on. The Covant too 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:45.160 had shower facilities not too different from what I described 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:49.400 aboard sky Lab. Also had a water regeneration system. Water 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:52.480 on space stations is a truly precious commodity, and I'll 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:56.680 talk about how space stations managed that a little bit later. 0:23:56.920 --> 0:23:59.200 We'll really talk about it more in the I S. 0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:02.119 S episode coming up later on down the line. It 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:05.720 also had life science and material science experiments aboard the 0:24:05.720 --> 0:24:10.919 Cavant to and it expanded the space cosmonauts could occupy 0:24:11.080 --> 0:24:15.640 once again. It gave folks more room in the space station. Now, 0:24:15.680 --> 0:24:19.680 the next module to join the party was Crystal or Crystal, 0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:22.920 I guess it's k R I S T A L 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:25.560 L THO. I've also seen spelled with just the one L. 0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:30.159 This happened in now. Originally it carried the designation of 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:33.600 Kant three, but they decided to change it up. And 0:24:33.600 --> 0:24:35.880 this is the module that had one of its solar 0:24:35.960 --> 0:24:39.320 arrays removed and then later installed in Cavant one. This 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:41.840 would be a few years after it had, you know, 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:46.000