Speaker 1: Hey, y'all, it's Jonathan, and before we get to today's episode,
Speaker 1: I've got something I want to say, and that's there
Speaker 1: are a lot of Russian names in this episode that
Speaker 1: I absolutely butcher, but none do I butcher as much
Speaker 1: as I do one that's spelled k v, A and T,
Speaker 1: because I forgot while recording the episode that in Russian
Speaker 1: v is essentially like a double you type sound like
Speaker 1: vodka is vodka. So through the entire episode I pronounced
Speaker 1: it as kvant when it should be quant, which makes
Speaker 1: way more sense because it does reference quantum. So just
Speaker 1: be prepared to hear me mispronounced quant as kvant a
Speaker 1: billion times, as well as pretty much every other Russian
Speaker 1: term and name that's in this My apologies, it's my fault,
Speaker 1: but rather than go back and re record everything, I
Speaker 1: thought I would warn you up front. And now let's
Speaker 1: get to this interesting, if not correctly pronounced episode. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a
Speaker 1: love of all things tech, and in this episode, we
Speaker 1: are continuing our history about space stations. We are going
Speaker 1: to focus on mirror. So in the last episode, I
Speaker 1: talked about the first space station, the Salut one UH
Speaker 1: that was from the Soviet Union, plus other stations in
Speaker 1: the Saliot line, some of which were secretly military reconnaissance
Speaker 1: space stations that were masquerading as civilian science stations. Pretty sneaky,
Speaker 1: those Soviets. I also talked about the sky Lab space station,
Speaker 1: which was inhabited for just one seventy one days but
Speaker 1: had been in orbit for two thousand, two hundred forty
Speaker 1: nine days, and I touched on this in the last episode.
Speaker 1: But the reason sky Lab was unoccupied for most of
Speaker 1: the time it was orbiting Earth is that NASA no
Speaker 1: longer really had access to launch vehicles and space capsules
Speaker 1: that could, you know, visit the station. They didn't. They
Speaker 1: physically didn't have the equipment or the budget needed to
Speaker 1: send more missions to sky Lab, and was essentially waiting
Speaker 1: on the Space Shuttle program to come online to go
Speaker 1: back to sky Lab. But the Space Shuttle program was
Speaker 1: delayed to the point where sky Lab could no longer
Speaker 1: maintain orbit, and it re entered Earth's atmosphere in the
Speaker 1: summer of seventy nine. But we've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to talk about when it comes to space stations, and
Speaker 1: now we're going to pop back over to the then
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. So sky Lab came down in seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and the last of the Saliot stations, Saliot seven, entered
Speaker 1: orbit in nine two and would remain in orbit until now.
Speaker 1: While sal Yot seven was an orbit, a new Soviet
Speaker 1: space station would take form in space, and that station
Speaker 1: was Mirror M I R. Now, just as a reminder,
Speaker 1: before Mirror, all space stations were what we call monolithic
Speaker 1: in form. Now that means that they went up fully
Speaker 1: assembled in in one big piece, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like they were a one piece space station, even though
Speaker 1: if you break it down, they're actually made up of
Speaker 1: many many pieces, but it's all, you know, pre assembled.
Speaker 1: Mirror would take the next step forward. It would be
Speaker 1: the first modular space station, meaning the station would ultimately
Speaker 1: be made up of multiple modules which would then connect
Speaker 1: to a core module out in space. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of benefits to this particular approach, but the big
Speaker 1: one is that you're not as limited on internal space
Speaker 1: inside your station, and you're not limited by mass the
Speaker 1: way you would be with a monolithic design line. So
Speaker 1: let's get into physics for a second to really understand
Speaker 1: why this is a big deal. So Isaac Newton that
Speaker 1: smarty Pants mathematically demonstrated the concept of an exchange of
Speaker 1: momentum in the sixteen hundreds, and a few centuries later
Speaker 1: a Russian scientist named Konstantine Soolkovski applied the idea of
Speaker 1: conservational momentum to rockets. This was in nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: and that became the basis of all of our rocketry
Speaker 1: moving forward. And there are three big things you have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when you're trying to launch something
Speaker 1: into space using a rocket. Those three things are the
Speaker 1: energy that you need to generate in order to work
Speaker 1: against gravity, which in most rocket equations we represent with
Speaker 1: the delta V to indicate rocket velocity. The value of
Speaker 1: this depends on where you're planning on going. If you're
Speaker 1: going to Mars, then you'll need to exert more energy
Speaker 1: than if you were just going into low Earth orbit.
Speaker 1: Once you've selected where you're going and where you're starting from,
Speaker 1: the value of this variable solidifies. There's nothing we can
Speaker 1: do to change that number. This is literally physics. It's
Speaker 1: the amount of energy needed to get into that part
Speaker 1: from wherever you are. Also, it takes about twice the
Speaker 1: amount of energy to go from Earth to Mars as
Speaker 1: it would take to go from Earth to Earth orbit. However,
Speaker 1: what's really interesting to me is just getting into orbit
Speaker 1: is about half of that total energy to get to Mars,
Speaker 1: because just overcoming Earth's gravity and not falling back to
Speaker 1: the planet requires a lot of energy. So while it
Speaker 1: takes more energy to get to Mars that it does
Speaker 1: to get to low Earth orbit, just getting to lower
Speaker 1: Earth orbit is hard. Then you've got how much energy
Speaker 1: is available in your propellant, right, how much potential energy
Speaker 1: is stored in the fuel you are using. Not all
Speaker 1: propellants are equal in this, Some are more dense in
Speaker 1: energy than others. But again we're limited here. The rockets
Speaker 1: we use rely on chemical reactions. There is a limit
Speaker 1: to how much energy we can release out of these
Speaker 1: chemical reactions. Physics dictates it we can't go beyond that,
Speaker 1: so again reality has limited us. And finally, you've got
Speaker 1: the propellant mass fraction, which is how much propellant you
Speaker 1: need in comparison with the total mass of the stuff
Speaker 1: you're sending off into space. Your rocket. So we've decided
Speaker 1: where we want to go, you know, like low Earth orbit,
Speaker 1: and we've decided which propellant we're going to use to
Speaker 1: get there. And those two factors tell us the limitations
Speaker 1: we face in getting a spacecraft to that point, because
Speaker 1: it sets the ratio we have to hit between the
Speaker 1: amount of fuel and the total mass of the rocket.
Speaker 1: And obviously, as you add more fuel, you add more mass,
Speaker 1: so you start hitting some fundamental limitations there too. We
Speaker 1: can't just keep, you know, building more massive rockets. You
Speaker 1: start to run into an issue with that ratio, or
Speaker 1: at least, you know, we start to bump up against
Speaker 1: tough restrictions if we try to do that. And so
Speaker 1: if we want to build sizeable structures in space rather
Speaker 1: than just like creating a truly monstrous rocket, the solution
Speaker 1: is to make those structures modular and then to launch
Speaker 1: large sections of the structures and individual launches and then
Speaker 1: assemble them in space. That's what Mirror would do. Now,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure anyone listening to these episodes understands, the
Speaker 1: road to developing, constructing, and deploying any sort of spacecraft
Speaker 1: tends to be a pretty long one. While the first
Speaker 1: Mirror module would launch in February nine six. The planning
Speaker 1: for the station began a decade earlier, in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Saliot program, so Mirror got an official approval
Speaker 1: from the Soviet government in nineteen seventy six, But that
Speaker 1: didn't mean it was a straight path from planning to execution.
Speaker 1: A lot was going on in the Soviet Union, including
Speaker 1: a lot of citical battles within the Soviet space program.
Speaker 1: Different leaders within different departments were scrabbling for funding and
Speaker 1: for authority, and it meant that budgets were shifted around
Speaker 1: multiple times, which honestly is not that different from how
Speaker 1: things happen in NASA if we're, you know, really being critical.
Speaker 1: During the span of years between nineteen seventy six and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, changes in the Soviet space program meant
Speaker 1: that funds were pulled from Mirror and redirected towards a
Speaker 1: different space project, that of the Barran spacecraft. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that I could do a full tech stuff
Speaker 1: episode about the Barran, but it does merit mentioned. Also, again,
Speaker 1: apologies for my pronunciation. It's going to be terrible and
Speaker 1: that's all on me. But the Barran bu R A
Speaker 1: n was essentially the Soviet equivalent of the Space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: a reusable space plane style spacecraft designed to go into
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit and then to act as kind of
Speaker 1: a plane upon return to Earth, and most importantly, it
Speaker 1: would be reusable. Now, that project began in the seventies,
Speaker 1: with construction starting in nineteen eighty, and here in America
Speaker 1: we had the space Shuttle program in development at this
Speaker 1: same time. The Soviets couldn't afford to go full steam
Speaker 1: ahead both with Mir and Barran, so in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: the administrators redirected Mer's budget towards Brand's test flights. Now,
Speaker 1: that could have spelled doom for Mere, but then Valentine Glushko,
Speaker 1: a Soviet engineer in charge of the entire space program
Speaker 1: who had been part of some of those political fights
Speaker 1: within the Soviet space program I mentioned earlier. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: had committed to getting Mire in orbit by the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: so he managed to redirect some funds back into the
Speaker 1: Mir space station program. Brand, by the way, would go
Speaker 1: on to conduct an unscrewed test flight, so no one
Speaker 1: was aboard, but it was successful. It happened without really
Speaker 1: a hitch in, but it didn't really do anything else.
Speaker 1: And uh, the big reason for that had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the technology. It had everything to do with
Speaker 1: the collapse of the Soviet Union. But a few years
Speaker 1: after getting the thumbs up, the Soviets planned to merge
Speaker 1: Mirror with the Almah's program. Now, if you listen to
Speaker 1: our previous episode in this series, you know that Almah's
Speaker 1: was the designation for a Soviet military space station project.
Speaker 1: Alma's had previously merged, you know, with Saliot stations to
Speaker 1: three and five. In the Saliot program, we're all meant
Speaker 1: to act as military reconnaissance stations. Now, Saliott too had
Speaker 1: had multiple technical problems that led to it re entering
Speaker 1: their atmosphere just a couple of weeks after it first
Speaker 1: attained orbit. Fortunately, there were no people aboard. No crew
Speaker 1: had visited the space station at that point, so no
Speaker 1: one was lost as a result of that. Sellot three
Speaker 1: and saw It five had a little more success, though
Speaker 1: very little is known about those stations because the Soviets
Speaker 1: were not super eager to share military secrets with the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. That's not to say that there
Speaker 1: aren't resources out there. There are. I just find a
Speaker 1: lot of them to be questionably reliable. Anyway, as part
Speaker 1: of the Alma's program, engineers designed a spacecraft with the
Speaker 1: designation d O s so d OS one was actually
Speaker 1: used to serve as the Saliot one space station. D
Speaker 1: OS two, three, and four were Saliot two, three and
Speaker 1: five respectively, Salut six and seven were DUS five and
Speaker 1: US six, and then the core of the Mirror module
Speaker 1: would be DOS seven. So this was a case of
Speaker 1: the engineers taking the designs for an earlier space station
Speaker 1: and then involving them to allow for that modular approach.
Speaker 1: DOES or d OS seven would be the core module,
Speaker 1: the heart and soul of Mirror. This core module would
Speaker 1: also serve as crew quarters. In fact, for a while,
Speaker 1: this would be the entirety of the space station. It
Speaker 1: actually had six docking ports, which allowed not just Soya's
Speaker 1: capsules to dock, but also cargo ships. Or they would
Speaker 1: serve as the connection point for other Mirror modules, and
Speaker 1: each module could focus on the specific type of science.
Speaker 1: For example, the Kavant one module had equipment to study
Speaker 1: astrophysics from the station, and we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: in a in a little bit. So as for the
Speaker 1: name Mirror, you might wonder what that means. Well, because
Speaker 1: you know salute means salute for example, So what does
Speaker 1: mirror mean. It's actually a little tricky to translate into English.
Speaker 1: Now you could say it translates to the English word
Speaker 1: for world, or that it translates into the word for peace,
Speaker 1: but it's actually more specific than that. So prior or
Speaker 1: to eighteen sixty one, Russia operated under a serfdom structure
Speaker 1: with lots of Russians as surfs, and approximately one third
Speaker 1: of all Russians were serfs. But Czar Alexander the Second
Speaker 1: decreed that all surfs were freed. That that also meant
Speaker 1: they were free to pay rent to their landlords. Uh,
Speaker 1: the word mirror means a peasant community that owned its
Speaker 1: own land, when previously it did not have that ownership.
Speaker 1: So there are a few contextual, subtle things going on
Speaker 1: with that name that are difficult to capture with a
Speaker 1: single word in English. So, despite all the obstacles, the
Speaker 1: U S s R launched Mir's core module on February twenty,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties six. This was an unscrewed mission to get
Speaker 1: the core into orbit and it was successful, so no
Speaker 1: cosmonauts were aboard at this point, but it did deploy
Speaker 1: from its launch vehicle and enter a bit. The core
Speaker 1: module resembled the monolithic space stations of the Saliot era.
Speaker 1: I mean, after all, they were both based off the
Speaker 1: same seed, the Alma's military platform. And it measured about
Speaker 1: forty three ft or thirteen meters in length, and the
Speaker 1: widest part of the stepped cylinder, you know, some parts
Speaker 1: of the cylinder were wider than the others, but the
Speaker 1: widest part was thirteen point eight feet in diameter or
Speaker 1: four point two meters. On either end of the station
Speaker 1: were docking points, and at the forward end. There were
Speaker 1: four more docking points around the circumference of the station,
Speaker 1: so six in total. As I said, just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks after the core module innered orbit, a space craft,
Speaker 1: a Soyu spacecraft carrying Vladimir Solovyov and Leonard Kidzen docked
Speaker 1: with the station. Actually first it docked with Mirror for
Speaker 1: fifty five days. So they docked with me Or for
Speaker 1: fifty five days. Then they left Mirror and they went
Speaker 1: to dock with Saliot seven, which allowed the cosmonauts to
Speaker 1: load equipment from Saliot seven into their soyus T spacecraft,
Speaker 1: and then they carried that back to Mirror after spending
Speaker 1: about two months aboard Saliot seven. And each of these
Speaker 1: trips between space stations took about twenty nine hours to travel,
Speaker 1: so more than a full day to get from one
Speaker 1: to the other, and they did it a couple of times. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was the first time the spacecraft had docked with
Speaker 1: two space stations during a single mission. The two cosmonauts
Speaker 1: became the first residence of the Mirror space station. And
Speaker 1: again this version of Mirror was just the core module,
Speaker 1: so it was a lot like the Saliott stations. In fact,
Speaker 1: the first module to join Mere and expand the station
Speaker 1: wouldn't come online until that first module was the Cavant one,
Speaker 1: which I mentioned earlier, and it was an astrophysics module. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look at illustrations is a Mirror when it was,
Speaker 1: you know, complete, when all the modules had attached to it,
Speaker 1: you would see how complicated this modular approach could become.
Speaker 1: Some folks kind of likened it to tinker toys. The
Speaker 1: Kvan one module connected to the aft end of the
Speaker 1: core module, so opposite where the Soyuz capsule would dock.
Speaker 1: The Soyuz capsule docked in the forward side of the station,
Speaker 1: the Cavant one was attached to the aft side. The
Speaker 1: kan one module had its own extra docking port in
Speaker 1: the aft of its module, and it also had a
Speaker 1: pair of very long solar panels, as did the mir Core.
Speaker 1: I should also add that while that's the configuration I
Speaker 1: saw on one illustration, the Russians frequently rearranged the modules
Speaker 1: of the Mirror space station, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was how it was configured throughout the entire history
Speaker 1: of Mirror, because it did move some modules around at
Speaker 1: different times in order to prep space for new modules
Speaker 1: joining the station. The kvant one module was built on
Speaker 1: top of an earlier acecraft design, the t K S spacecraft.
Speaker 1: The original purpose for that type of spacecraft was to
Speaker 1: serve as a resupply cargo ship for those Alma's military stations,
Speaker 1: but the Cavant one was all decked out with scientific gear.
Speaker 1: It had two pressurized compartments in which cosmonauts could work safely,
Speaker 1: and it also had an unpressurized compartment where specific experiments
Speaker 1: could take place and in an airlock. According to a
Speaker 1: few different sources I found, the Cavant one was supposed
Speaker 1: to dock not with Mirror originally but with the Saliot
Speaker 1: seven space station, and if it had that would have
Speaker 1: made Saliot seven the first modular space station in orbit.
Speaker 1: But the development of Kalant one was a rocky journey
Speaker 1: and of itself, and in the process the decision was
Speaker 1: made to switch it over to Mirror instead of Saliot seven.
Speaker 1: The scientific instruments uh aboard the Cavant one included X
Speaker 1: ray telescopes, spectrometers and ultra violet telescope and more. The
Speaker 1: Cavant one would study stuff like quasars and neutron stars
Speaker 1: and any of those solar panels. Because the equipment aboard
Speaker 1: the vont one required a lot of electricity to use,
Speaker 1: more than what the Mirror core would be able to
Speaker 1: generate on its own and still provide, you know, important
Speaker 1: stuff like life support. It also didn't have its own
Speaker 1: propulsion system, and that made me wonder how the heck
Speaker 1: didn't manage to dock with Mirror if Cavanton one didn't
Speaker 1: have propulsion, how did that work? Well, the answer to
Speaker 1: that question will be coming up right after we take
Speaker 1: this break, all right, So, how did Cavant one doc
Speaker 1: with Mirror if it didn't have a propulsion system of
Speaker 1: its own well. It relied on a special spacecraft called
Speaker 1: an f g B tug like a tug boat. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the tug docked with the cavant One and then act
Speaker 1: as the propulsion unit and moved it to dock with
Speaker 1: Mirror before it would disengage fly off. The cavat one
Speaker 1: itself was a variation of the f g B, so
Speaker 1: both of these were spacecraft that were based on the
Speaker 1: earlier t K S spacecraft. That meant that with f
Speaker 1: g B and the cavanton One together, it was too
Speaker 1: spacecraft joined and one of them was just acting as
Speaker 1: the propulsion system for the joint spacecraft. The docking a
Speaker 1: Cavat one Demir did not go as planned. First there
Speaker 1: was a failure of the control system that delayed everything. Then,
Speaker 1: after fixing that, there was an issue with the two
Speaker 1: spacecraft actually forming a solid seal as they docked together.
Speaker 1: Something was preventing him from locking in. So the cosmonauts
Speaker 1: a board mir donned space suits and had an emergency
Speaker 1: e v A or spacewalk, and on that space walk
Speaker 1: they found out what the problem was. There was a
Speaker 1: trash bag in the docking ring on Mirror that was
Speaker 1: preventing a seal with the Cavat one. That kind of
Speaker 1: raises more questions, but I don't have any answers to them,
Speaker 1: so I'm not gonna bother to ask them anyway. The
Speaker 1: cosmonauts removed the trash bag, and then the two spacecraft
Speaker 1: were finally able to dock together securely. The tug then
Speaker 1: disengage from Cavat one, but the whole process meant that
Speaker 1: it no longer really had sufficient propellant to enter into
Speaker 1: a controlled de orbiting path, which was what the plan
Speaker 1: had been, so instead, the Soviets decided that they would
Speaker 1: use a shorter boost to push the f GB tug
Speaker 1: up into a higher orbit so that it would become
Speaker 1: a later Earth problem and it would eventually undergo orbital
Speaker 1: decay and it would re enter Earth's atmosphere on August
Speaker 1: in an uncontrolled re entry. That those are words that
Speaker 1: you don't ever like to read. Uncontrolled re entry is
Speaker 1: not good. Cavanton one would get a lot of upgrades
Speaker 1: over the years, with cosmonauts adding solar arrays or taking
Speaker 1: a raise from other parts of Mirror and then installing
Speaker 1: them in Cavant one, but by the mid nineties most
Speaker 1: of the instrumentation aboard CAVAT one had long since failed,
Speaker 1: gone beyond its useful life, and the module was used
Speaker 1: for and I quote, rubbish storage, which that kind of stings,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. But before it became a trash pit in space,
Speaker 1: Cavant one was an active lab and expanded the living
Speaker 1: space of the space station. It also had some impressive
Speaker 1: mechanical stabilizers. They used flywheel mechanisms that would allow the
Speaker 1: space station to reorient in space without having to use
Speaker 1: propellant and thrusters. Now, the space station did have thrusters
Speaker 1: and it did have propellant, but obviously you want to
Speaker 1: be really judicious with how you use that stuff because
Speaker 1: you have a limited amount on board and it's not
Speaker 1: easy to bring more up to you. So using these
Speaker 1: mechanical systems and sparing the fuel meant that you know,
Speaker 1: you're being much more efficient. It's pretty darn cool. So
Speaker 1: just using physics instead of propellant really interesting. But the
Speaker 1: Cavanton one was just one of the modules that attached
Speaker 1: to MERE. The second one was Prepare Yourself Cavant to
Speaker 1: this happened. Now this one would provide more power to
Speaker 1: the station. It also included additional flywheel mechanisms for orientation,
Speaker 1: and it also had a large airlock, and unlike Cavant one,
Speaker 1: it had a propulsion system. So to get into the
Speaker 1: whole development of this about why the Soviets decided okay,
Speaker 1: after Cavat one, this whole f g B tug thing
Speaker 1: is a bad idea. It would take way too long
Speaker 1: to get into all the stuff about that, but essentially
Speaker 1: it boils down to them saying, well, if we have
Speaker 1: a propulsion system attached to the modules, we can actually
Speaker 1: make more use of more space, which makes way more
Speaker 1: sense than to use a tug to push it into
Speaker 1: place and then jettison it. So the Cavant Too would
Speaker 1: be on the first of those types of modules. The
Speaker 1: cavant To docked with Mer on December at the axial
Speaker 1: forward port, and then subsequently a manipulator arm on the
Speaker 1: space station unplugged Cavat Too and then plugged it into
Speaker 1: its new home, which was on a radio port on
Speaker 1: the Mere Core module. And this is pretty much standard
Speaker 1: operating procedure. When modules would join, they would first dock
Speaker 1: with one part of the station. Then the manipulator arm
Speaker 1: would end up moving them to its you know, new home.
Speaker 1: In some cases it was a permanent home. In some cases,
Speaker 1: you know, they would rearrange later on. The Covant too
Speaker 1: had shower facilities not too different from what I described
Speaker 1: aboard sky Lab. Also had a water regeneration system. Water
Speaker 1: on space stations is a truly precious commodity, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk about how space stations managed that a little bit later.
Speaker 1: We'll really talk about it more in the I S.
Speaker 1: S episode coming up later on down the line. It
Speaker 1: also had life science and material science experiments aboard the
Speaker 1: Cavant to and it expanded the space cosmonauts could occupy
Speaker 1: once again. It gave folks more room in the space station. Now,
Speaker 1: the next module to join the party was Crystal or Crystal,
Speaker 1: I guess it's k R I S T A L
Speaker 1: L THO. I've also seen spelled with just the one L.
Speaker 1: This happened in now. Originally it carried the designation of
Speaker 1: Kant three, but they decided to change it up. And
Speaker 1: this is the module that had one of its solar
Speaker 1: arrays removed and then later installed in Cavant one. This
Speaker 1: would be a few years after it had, you know,
Speaker 1: merged with Mirror. It also incorporated some docking mechanisms that
Speaker 1: were meant to work with the Barrand spacecraft. So, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the brand program would get the acts before
Speaker 1: any such space plane could visit Mirror. However, it would
Speaker 1: come in handy when the Space Shuttle, the United States
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle, would visit Mirror. We'll get there like vant
Speaker 1: to Crystal or crystal doctor. I can't say crystal without laughing.
Speaker 1: But it docked at a forward axial port on Mirror
Speaker 1: and then got shifted around by the manipulator arm. And
Speaker 1: it was a module that moved a couple of times
Speaker 1: during the lifetime of year, usually to allow for some
Speaker 1: other module to join the party. And it included a
Speaker 1: resupply of food, so it had you know, food storage
Speaker 1: aboard this module. It also had industrial processing equipment, so
Speaker 1: think of something like a space furnace, something that falls
Speaker 1: into the materials science category. And these experiments would be
Speaker 1: important for the pursuit of long term space exploration. The
Speaker 1: idea being that humans in the future might gather raw
Speaker 1: materials from various sources and outer space, such as asteroids,
Speaker 1: and then they might process those materials to make useful
Speaker 1: stuff that they could you know, take advantage of onboard
Speaker 1: as spacecraft. The module also had had an Earth observation camera,
Speaker 1: gamma ray telescope and several spectrometers. And then the fourth
Speaker 1: extension of Mirror was Specter, which isn't just a villainous
Speaker 1: organization in James Bond movies, and it's actually spelled differently.
Speaker 1: Specter is spelled spe k t R. It launched in
Speaker 1: nine But that is skipping over some really important stuff
Speaker 1: that happened in between the launch of Crystal and Specter.
Speaker 1: So in n when Crystal launched and the know when
Speaker 1: Specter launched, in in between that you had a really
Speaker 1: important event take place. This was the dissolution of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. That process really began in the late eighties
Speaker 1: with various territories within the then USSR declaring independence from
Speaker 1: the federation, and by late ninety one the situation had
Speaker 1: escalated to the point that the Soviet Union was no
Speaker 1: longer a union and it ceased to be Gorbachev, the
Speaker 1: president of the USSR, resigned and things were thrown into
Speaker 1: uncertainty across all aspects of the various nations, including the
Speaker 1: Soviet era space program. Now, the original purpose of Specter
Speaker 1: was to be military in nature. It was to be
Speaker 1: a counterpart to the proposed US project of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: and boy, haudy, I'm gonna have to do a full
Speaker 1: episode about Star Wars, I think, because that was a
Speaker 1: heck of a thing. I remember it as being a
Speaker 1: really big deal when I was growing up and in
Speaker 1: the eighties, and it was a really controversial subject. It
Speaker 1: was also a massive failure in many respects, including as
Speaker 1: a means to deter the Soviet Union from developing long
Speaker 1: range nuclear weapons, the idea being, oh, if we have
Speaker 1: a system that can shoot down your nuclear weapons, there's
Speaker 1: no need for you to keep building more. That logic
Speaker 1: ended up not being effective anyway. Specter was supposed to
Speaker 1: be part of a program that would serve as a
Speaker 1: platform for space based weaponry, presumably to shoot down I
Speaker 1: C b M s from the United States headed towards
Speaker 1: Soviet targets, but the collapse of the Soviet Union left
Speaker 1: the program in limbo. So the partially completed module was
Speaker 1: left sitting in a shop, and the same was true
Speaker 1: for the following module called Paroda. Former Soviet leaders had
Speaker 1: lots of stuff to worry about well outside the space program,
Speaker 1: and so both of these modules were effectively mothballed for
Speaker 1: a few years. Then the Americans chimed in. Once the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union fell apart, America was like, hey, we can
Speaker 1: help you out. So in ninete, NASA reached out to
Speaker 1: Russian leadership and offered to foot the bill to complete
Speaker 1: both Specter and Paroda on the American dime, provided that
Speaker 1: NASA would also be allowed to incorporate several hundred pounds
Speaker 1: worth of scientific experiments on the two modules. The military
Speaker 1: platforms gave way to scientific experiments, including one that would
Speaker 1: allow scientists to expose experiments to the vacuum of space
Speaker 1: using manipulator arms attached to the station, and much of
Speaker 1: the rest of the station got retooled to study atmospheric
Speaker 1: science on Earth. The Russians agreed to this plan, and
Speaker 1: they decided they were going to launch Specter in but
Speaker 1: there were some delays, and this time the delay was because,
Speaker 1: and I am not kidding about this, the American equipment
Speaker 1: destined to be installed Inspector got held up in customs.
Speaker 1: As such, the module was not ready for launch until
Speaker 1: the spring of nine, and it took off on May
Speaker 1: twenty of that year. The final module to join Mere
Speaker 1: was called pi Roda, and it was also meant to
Speaker 1: at least be partly a military platform for mere serving
Speaker 1: in a surveillance function, and some of the states in
Speaker 1: the USSR had provided instruments meant to further scientific studies,
Speaker 1: but upon the dis aolution of the Soviet Union, Russia
Speaker 1: was left solely in charge of Mirror, and the other
Speaker 1: former Soviet states saw their experiments withdrawn from the module.
Speaker 1: A German multi spectral scanner was added to it, but
Speaker 1: then all the funding for the program got the Axe
Speaker 1: and Paroda joined Specter in storage until the Yanks came
Speaker 1: along and offered to pay for the rest of the
Speaker 1: construction and development costs. The additional weight of the American
Speaker 1: experiments on board Paroda necessitated a change in the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: Originally it was going to carry an additional solar array
Speaker 1: in the forward section of the craft, but they Russians
Speaker 1: removed that in order to conserve mass, and it would
Speaker 1: the solar array would launch on a later cargo vessel
Speaker 1: and cosmonauts would install it during a spacewalk. The experiments
Speaker 1: that did make it aboard Paroda concentrated on stuff like
Speaker 1: studying the relationship between Earth's atmosphere and its oceans, measuring
Speaker 1: land characteristics from space, measuring the roughness of the sea surface,
Speaker 1: measuring optical effects through the atmosphere as well as measuring
Speaker 1: trace elements in the atmosphere, and finally studying how the
Speaker 1: surface of the sea reflects microwave radiation. And with Paroda
Speaker 1: mirror was complete. You had the core module and you
Speaker 1: had the other six modules attached to it. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, occasionally the Russians would use the manipulator arm
Speaker 1: on the outside of the station to kind of rearrange
Speaker 1: where the modules were. Those aboard the space station would
Speaker 1: inhabit the core module. They would seal off whichever modules
Speaker 1: were being moved. And like I said, if you look
Speaker 1: in illustration to mirror, you'll see how the pieces all
Speaker 1: connected in various ways to one another to create the
Speaker 1: full station. It's pretty nifty. I also like that you
Speaker 1: could be working in an orientation that's ninety degrees from
Speaker 1: someone else in another part of the station. But because
Speaker 1: there's not really an up or down when you're in
Speaker 1: microgravity from your own perspective, it would like the other
Speaker 1: person was, you know, at a ninety degree angle from you,
Speaker 1: so their sideways, but they would feel the same way
Speaker 1: about you, because again up and down a relative. Paroda
Speaker 1: would dock with Mirror on April twenty six nine and
Speaker 1: it got to its final location quote unquote final location
Speaker 1: on the te So something else happened before Mirror was
Speaker 1: made complete with the addition of Specter and Paroda. And
Speaker 1: that's the Shuttle Mirror missions. At least some of them
Speaker 1: happened before that. Now. I mentioned earlier that under Soviet control,
Speaker 1: mir had a special airlock system, sometimes called the androgynous
Speaker 1: peripheral assembly system or a PASS a p a S.
Speaker 1: After the dissolution of the U S s R, there
Speaker 1: was an interest in building a stronger link between Russian
Speaker 1: and American space programs, with the US proposing links with
Speaker 1: Mirror using the newly launched space Shuttle program. So Russia
Speaker 1: sent an a PASS to NASA, and NASA resaw its
Speaker 1: incorporation into the payload bay of Space Shuttle Atlantis. The
Speaker 1: Shuttle Mirror mission had three parts to it. One was
Speaker 1: that a cosmonaut would join an American crew aboard a
Speaker 1: space shuttle. That happened when Saragei Krikalev joined Space Shuttle
Speaker 1: Mission STS sixty that was on board Space Shuttle Discovery.
Speaker 1: That mission lasted eight days. The second component was that
Speaker 1: an American astronaut would visit mir That honor fell to
Speaker 1: Norman E. Thaggard, who boarded a Saya's spacecraft in Russia
Speaker 1: to rendezvous with Mirror in March of nineteen. His mission
Speaker 1: lasted one fifteen days total and included the arrival of
Speaker 1: both the Specter module as well as a visit from
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle Atlantis. And that was the third part of
Speaker 1: the Shuttle Mirror program, the docking of an American space
Speaker 1: shuttle with the Russian space station. I'll explain more after
Speaker 1: we take this quick break. You know, one thing I
Speaker 1: haven't covered yet about Mirror is that the crew aboard
Speaker 1: the space station could fluctuate over time. You could have
Speaker 1: cruise from one Soyuz capsule mixed with cruise from the
Speaker 1: previous capsule. Uh, and so there were times where the
Speaker 1: space station was hosting more people than other times. When
Speaker 1: Thaggard and his crewmates joined the station in n it
Speaker 1: brought the total population up to thirteen thirteen folks and
Speaker 1: only two toilets. Don't worry, We'll be sure to cover
Speaker 1: the toilet situation in this episode. Before long, however, members
Speaker 1: of the Mere seventeen crew because they were all numbered
Speaker 1: by how many missions were visiting the station, so Mere
Speaker 1: seventeen that crew left the station to return home, and
Speaker 1: the cosmonauts assigned to the Mirror eighteen mission stayed aboard Mirror.
Speaker 1: One of those to return home was Valerie Vladimirovich Poliakov.
Speaker 1: He had been a board Near for an astounding fourteen months,
Speaker 1: one year, two months, setting a world record that has
Speaker 1: yet to be beaten. When he joined Mire, he was
Speaker 1: part of the fifteen crew of that space station, and
Speaker 1: he left as part of the seventeenth crew, so he
Speaker 1: was parts of Cruise fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, so he
Speaker 1: had been there for a while. Also. That was his
Speaker 1: second trip of Tamir. His first one was back in
Speaker 1: Night when he was part of Cruise Mirror three and
Speaker 1: Mirror four. He had stayed up there for two forty
Speaker 1: days on that first go round. Atlantis launched on June
Speaker 1: twenty nine and carried two cosmonauts, Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Buderin,
Speaker 1: who would transfer to Mirror and stay on as members
Speaker 1: of Mirror nineteen. The Shuttle docked with Mirror two days
Speaker 1: after the launch, and it went smoothly. It connected through
Speaker 1: the Crystal Module and the rest of the station, and
Speaker 1: all ten cosmonauts and astronauts aboard other th in the
Speaker 1: Core module to celebrate the occasion. The Shuttle remained docked
Speaker 1: with Mirror for several days, leaving with the Mirror eighteen
Speaker 1: crew as part of the Shuttle crew on July four,
Speaker 1: and the Mirror nineteen crew boarded their Saya's capsule and
Speaker 1: disengaged from Mirror temporarily in order to record the process
Speaker 1: of the Shuttle departing the station. So we actually have
Speaker 1: pictures and video of the Space Shuttle departing Mirror because
Speaker 1: some cosmonauts got into the Saya's capsule and blasted off
Speaker 1: for a little ways to get those pictures. Once that
Speaker 1: was all done, the Saya's capsule returned to dock with Miror,
Speaker 1: and the Shuttle then moved off to conduct a few
Speaker 1: more experiments before it ultimately returned to Earth. Atlantis would
Speaker 1: take return trips to Mirror six more times, so Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle Atlantis visited me Or seven times total. That included
Speaker 1: a mission that brought astronaut Shannon Lucid to the station
Speaker 1: as part of STS seventy six. Lucid would set a
Speaker 1: record for the longest stay in space by an American
Speaker 1: up to that point, and also the longest stay for
Speaker 1: a woman. During her stay at Mirror, Paroda would end
Speaker 1: up joining the station and complete it. Lucid would also
Speaker 1: plant a crop of wheat, and they would ultimately go
Speaker 1: from being a seedling to producing seeds of its own.
Speaker 1: It was the first example of someone taking a crop
Speaker 1: through the full life cycle in space. The wheat would
Speaker 1: return to Earth aboard another Atlantis mission STS one. Space
Speaker 1: shuttles Discovery and Endeavor would also dock with Mirror once
Speaker 1: each before the space station would be retired. All missions
Speaker 1: took place between n and During that time, Mirror experienced
Speaker 1: a major and potentially catastrophic emergency, a couple of them,
Speaker 1: actually so. In February, a backup oxygen generating device caught
Speaker 1: fire on the station. Now, as you might imagine, a
Speaker 1: fire on the space station is incredibly dangerous. According to
Speaker 1: Russian authorities, the fire only lasted less than two minutes,
Speaker 1: but those aboard Mirror said it was more like fourteen minutes.
Speaker 1: He generated a lot of smoke, and those aboard had
Speaker 1: to put on respirators in order to breathe. Also, they
Speaker 1: found out that some of the respirators proved to be nonfunctional.
Speaker 1: Not great. The smoke blocked an exit path to the
Speaker 1: Soya's capsule, so there was no escape from the station.
Speaker 1: It made an escape impossible because your pathway was blocked
Speaker 1: to your one way home. Ultimately, the crew was able
Speaker 1: to extinguish the fire using like a wet towel and
Speaker 1: a fire extinguisher, but they had to continue to wear
Speaker 1: respirators for like forty five minutes or so in order
Speaker 1: for the smoke to clear out. Another serious accident happened
Speaker 1: on June twenty seven. A cargo spaceship collided with the
Speaker 1: Specter module during docking procedures, and the collision created a
Speaker 1: small hole in the exterior of Specter, which caused Spector
Speaker 1: to de pressurize. Michael Fole, and American artist inside Specter
Speaker 1: at the time of this crash, felt the pressure in
Speaker 1: his ears change. That was his warning to get the
Speaker 1: heck out of a dodge or Specter, and he exited
Speaker 1: the module and the Mirror crew sealed Specter off from
Speaker 1: the rest of the station. The collision also caused damage
Speaker 1: to some of the station's solar panels, so the crew
Speaker 1: ended up turning off some of the experiments in order
Speaker 1: to conserve power. Fortunately, in neither of those accidents was
Speaker 1: there any loss of life, and the experiences really drove
Speaker 1: home the need to develop efficient and effective emergency procedures
Speaker 1: for cosmonauts and astronauts to follow should the worse happen.
Speaker 1: The last crew to visit Mirror did so in April
Speaker 1: two thousand, journeying to an empty Space Shuttle, So the
Speaker 1: previous crew, which had left in August of actually ended
Speaker 1: a nearly ten years streak of continuous occupation of the
Speaker 1: space station. Not continuous with the same people. Obviously you
Speaker 1: had different cruise coming in and relieving others, but I
Speaker 1: think it was like a week and one day short
Speaker 1: of a full ten years of continuous occupation when the
Speaker 1: last crew had left. Then this space station remained empty
Speaker 1: and dormant for a good long while until April two
Speaker 1: thousand and This was from a private space company. Mere
Speaker 1: Corps was the name of the company. Because funding had
Speaker 1: run out in Russia to have a state backed space
Speaker 1: agency focusing on Mirror. At this point, attention was turning
Speaker 1: towards a different space station, the I S S, the
Speaker 1: International Space Station, which we'll talk about in the next episode.
Speaker 1: So the mission that flew up to Mirror in April
Speaker 1: two thousand was, as I said, a privately funded mission
Speaker 1: from mir Corps. The two cosmonaut crew was to conduct
Speaker 1: repairs and reactivate the station, with the hope that private
Speaker 1: company could keep Mirror in operation. However, mir had already
Speaker 1: lived well beyond its expected lifespan. The station was going
Speaker 1: to need a lot of repairs and the investment would
Speaker 1: be considerable, and with the I S S taking form,
Speaker 1: it was just too hard to sell, and mire Core
Speaker 1: could not get the funds to pay for anything more
Speaker 1: than the first mission in two thousand. So Mirror had
Speaker 1: run out of time and money, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: one it would d orbit like sky Lab. There was
Speaker 1: some worry here on Earth that Mirror might end up
Speaker 1: crashing down on some populated area, and Mirror was much
Speaker 1: much bigger than sky Lab, but Russian engineers took steps
Speaker 1: to have a controlled d orbit, and the station ultimately
Speaker 1: broke apart above the South Pacific. All Right, I also
Speaker 1: promised that I would talk about pooping on Mirror. I
Speaker 1: mentioned that mir had two toilets. One was in the
Speaker 1: core module, which is good news because you know, it
Speaker 1: was a while before cavant One joined Mirror and made
Speaker 1: it a modular space station, and the second toilet was
Speaker 1: lowcated in covant to Now, if you look at pictures
Speaker 1: of a mere toilet, you had best prepare yourself for
Speaker 1: some psychological trauma. It does not look much like a
Speaker 1: toilet at all. It looks like a canister that has
Speaker 1: some sort of tube thing in the front of the
Speaker 1: canisters opening. So to use the facilities, you would position
Speaker 1: yourself on. The toilet had a fastening system or straining
Speaker 1: system with restraining bars to keep you sealed to the seat.
Speaker 1: Very important. You don't want stuff, you know, floating around.
Speaker 1: We had already had experiences with that in previous space missions.
Speaker 1: The toilet had a fan to create airflow to help
Speaker 1: with feces collection, and so the feces would go into
Speaker 1: collection bags, which in turn would go into an aluminum
Speaker 1: container for storage. But urine was different. This is where
Speaker 1: that tube comes in. It was a hose and you
Speaker 1: had urine funnel adapters that you would attach to the
Speaker 1: end of the hose, and unlike other space toilets in
Speaker 1: the past, this one had adapters designed so that both
Speaker 1: men and women could make use of the toilet. No
Speaker 1: more of that sexist male only stuff here. It was
Speaker 1: not a no girls allowed kind of thing, which you know,
Speaker 1: it was refreshing really Now. The hose would collect the
Speaker 1: urine and would send it on to a watery recovery system.
Speaker 1: And you might think, what the what, but yeah, water
Speaker 1: recovery was a big part of Mirror, and it remains
Speaker 1: an important part of space travel in general. We need
Speaker 1: water to survive and there's no easy way to get
Speaker 1: additional water when you're in space, so you have to
Speaker 1: make the most with what you have. You want to
Speaker 1: use what you have as much as you can, and
Speaker 1: that means you need systems in place to collect wastewater,
Speaker 1: treat it, and then recycle it for further use, including
Speaker 1: as drinking water. Now, another use of water on board
Speaker 1: Mirror was to run an electric current through water. This
Speaker 1: is a process called electrolysis. The result is that electricity
Speaker 1: breaks the molecular bonds between hydrogen and oxygen. Now, this
Speaker 1: is one way to generate oxygen in space, though it
Speaker 1: does mean relying on water in order to do that.
Speaker 1: Water recycling involves moving wastewater through a series of filters
Speaker 1: to remove all the contaminants, leaving pure water behind, and
Speaker 1: the I S S would use a similar approach, creating
Speaker 1: a closed loop system to capture water not just from urine,
Speaker 1: but also from sweat and even water vapor from breathing.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in the I S S episode. Well,
Speaker 1: the Mirror space station would come hurtling down in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, part of it lives on in our next episode,
Speaker 1: when we do talk about the International Space Station, we'll
Speaker 1: learn about a module very similar to Mirror's core module
Speaker 1: that serves as the heart of the I S S.
Speaker 1: As for what we learned from here, well, apart from
Speaker 1: all the secret stuff that got buried in Soviet files,
Speaker 1: we learned a lot about the long term effects that
Speaker 1: being in space can have on the human body. We
Speaker 1: observed how the body can change over time in microgravity,
Speaker 1: including stuff like bone and muscle loss. The things we
Speaker 1: learned will be crucial should we ever take the step
Speaker 1: toward establishing long term space habitats on the Moon or
Speaker 1: on Mars. Not to mention just you know, handling the
Speaker 1: effects of space travel between Earth and Mars, because that
Speaker 1: journey alone takes around, you know, more than half a year.
Speaker 1: So we learned a lot from mirror even beyond, like
Speaker 1: all the the super shady stuff that the Soviets were doing,
Speaker 1: or at least the semi shady stuff. Um and and
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of that learning continues on with the
Speaker 1: International Space stations. So in our next episode we will
Speaker 1: turn our our thoughts and eyes and ears towards the
Speaker 1: I S S and we'll also talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of other space stations and uh and talk about what
Speaker 1: the future holds. Oh and I'll also cover the space
Speaker 1: station that never was a k A Freedom, but that's
Speaker 1: in the next one. If you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: I should cover in tech Stuff, reach out to me.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is over on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle we use for the show is called tech
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.