Shotgun Kept In Space Station

[bigray327]

...so what happens if they miss Vermont?

We'll certainly be aiming for a landing site in the western United States, probably at the dry lake beds at Edwards AFB, so I'm not too worried about Vermont. As for targeting, even back in the later Apollo days, we had the ability to put a capsule within a square mile or so, based solely on knowing the winds of the day and choosing a good time to deploy the chutes. Now, with GPS and more sophisticated targeting methods, life is good.

/guess where I work

 

[warwagon]

As for me,I hold the opoinion that when John Glen took that fall in the tub, and hit his coconut, that wires got shorted in the brain pan.
That was about the time he transfomed from a Marine hero into a liberal pansy.:banghead:

 

[Optical Serenity]

So, which is better? An AR-15 vs. AK-SOYUZTHREEBARRELEDSHOTGUNRIFLE?

 

[Nightcrawler]

Many people assume that some kind of laser weapon would be the weapon of choice for the crew of your nuclear powered rocket, but there's no reason conventional guns won't work just as well. Lasers would offer less of a penetration risk, though.

As for firing in zero gravity, I think all you'd have to do is brace yourself with one hand and you'd be okay. You'd want to be behind cover anyways. Even a grazing hit can be quite lethal if you don't have a self-sealing space suit.

Makes firing longarms a bit tricky, perhaps, but how would you shoulder a weapon and use your aiming device in a bulky vac suit anyway?

The thing is, I don't think normal firearms would work very well for space walks, use on the moon, etc. The thing is the temperature differences. You're talking about things heating up to hundreds of degrees, then cooling back down to about 3 Kelvin, depending on whether or not the sun is shining. I think normal guns might seize up under those circumstances, if used "outside" for long periods of time. (Don't metals tend to stick to each other under exteme cold?)

Perhaps a specially designed "vac gun" that's built with just such tolerances in mind?

 

[loose cannon]

well no ones mentioned it yet so i may as well....its for when the wraith hive ships arrive from the pegasus galaxy.

theyre tough to kill so if the rifle barrel doesnt do it the rifled slugs from the shotgun barrels will.

 

[AStone]

best of thread

"Hello Dave. What are you doing with that shotgun? Will I dream, Dave?"

<snort>

Oh, so subtle.

<updated by a decade; slight British accent of Patrick Swayze>
"Number 1, what are you going to do with that shotgun?"

And just imagine the ballistics of a 7mm08 in space. Talk about flat trajectories...

Nem

 

[LAK]

More like to handle a runaway astro-nut; or a general mutiny. Conditions being what they are, this is not unlikely to happen sooner or later, and it is not like a sub that in a bad situation can make a rapid surface.
---------------------------------------

http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org

 

[Herself]

Both the Soviet/Russian and U.S. space station programs have experienced "mutinies." The first ones on each side were by crews given too much to accomplish in too short a time, on one of the pre-Mir (Saylut?) stations and on Skylab. Essentially, the crews realized Mission Control wasn't going to be able to come up and make them toe the mark, so when schedules became too hectic, they took a day or so off!

The most recent one was when the first crew of the ISS named the place "Alpha," over objections from their bosses on both sides. Not high drama but there were some hard feelings.


...A smoking area on Mir? Good for them! I was never fond of the USSR but when the space program over there kept Mir running and running, long past its expected service life with little more than perserverance, duct tape, bungee cords and string, I really came to admire the talent and spirit of their cosmonauts and engineers. --Plus you have to admire anybody launching manned and cargo rockets from approximately the latitude of Detroit! Didja know they sent canned food up for crew rations? Steel cans! Just like you'd buy at the supermarket, if you were shopping in Russia. Mir was the way I thought a space program would be; it had its warts but it was a very survivable machine. The place managed to get through a fire after all, no small thing when the nearest firehouse is a world away and any air that goes up with the flames is air you won't have for breathing!


On the last page of gun drawings in the beautiful "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Handguns" by A. B. Zhuk, the Russian .410 "Mars" will be found. It may be ancestral to the current Russian space program's "wolf gun," as the description notes it was "...[d]eveloped...for cosmonauts, pilots, geologists, prospectors and others who must survive under extreme conditions." 260mm barrel, detachable shoulder stock. It looks like a space gun!

--Herself

 

[Working Man]

Space station smoking area. Crazy 3-barrel space shotgun/carbine/machete, for wolf defense (!). I'm sorry, but sometimes Russians are just plain cool.

Sounds like they have more rights up in space then we have in some Dallas
restaurants.

 

[MrTwigg]

I can't resist.

Open the pod bay doors Hal, d*mmit !

 

[Manedwolf]

On packing a shotgun in space: hey, it worked for Zoe; it works for me.

Except that's not a shotgun. Her sidearm is a cut-down Winchester rifle.

 

[Justin]

The Mare's Leg is nice, but I think I'd have to go with Vera.

 

[AJ Dual]

In the 1970's the Soviet Union launched a series of Salyut stations that had classified military missions.

To prevent "capture" or close inspection by the U.S. some of the stations were armed with a 23mm machine gun/cannon! ("Go big or go home…" theory I presume!) It's station keeping and attitude control could be slaved to the fire control, firing thrusters to counter-thrust automatically against the recoil of the cannon. The system was tested at least once by ground control before the station was manned.

To prevent the recoil from imparting rotation to the Salyut station, the cannon was in a fixed mount along the stations major axis of mass, and it was aimed by maneuvering the entire station.

The Soviet designers later decided that, space, even just low orbit, is a VERY big place. And if the Americans wanted to spy on their station, they could just keep their distance with a "dark" satellite with a bigger camera, affording them no target. And in the aftermath of post-Apollo cutbacks, the U.S. had virtually no manned space transportation with which to board or capture the station. So subsequent Salyuts went unarmed.

Although there is anecdotal evidence that the US had a secret military spaceplane in development during that time, (But not actually deployed until the 90's.) Aviation Week and Space Technology has an article on a spaceplane launched from a mach 3 parent aircraft at high altitude that was based on the Mach 3 XB-70 bomber prototype. (The XB-70 itself scared the bejesus out of the USSR, causing the development of the massive Mach 3 MiG 25 Foxbat) If it really did exist, it could have been launched with little warning, and attacked Soviet space assets. So perhaps they weren't utterly paranoid after all…

(Remember the big space-suit/laser battle from "Moonraker"? LOL…)

Frankly, I would be shocked if it were proven that there were never any undeclared weapons systems or satellites with nukes up there between the beginning of the space race and today...

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Calling Baikal:

Given the popularity of Russian Nagants, SKSs, and Kalashnikovs, and
the popularity of AR7, M6 and other "survival" backpacker guns,
the "TOZ TP-82 survival weapon, 20 gauge shotgun over a 5.45x39mm rifle"
could be modified for the US market:

 

[default]

AJ Dual, at first I thought "yeah, right" when I read the part of your post about a 23mm cannon on a Salyut. Glad I kept my mouth shut, and thanks for bringing to my attention something I should have known about as a Soviet space program buff.

Among other places:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/spaceguns/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut

http://www.geocities.com/i_s_s_alpha/past_spacestations.htm

 

[glockamolee]

The Machete was one of two that was sold by Sovietski years ago. The other machete is the version that I was able to pick up

 

[tellner]

You know there was a SMOKING area on Mir?

Can't they just go outside to smoke like everyone else?

 

[ABTOMAT]

I have to imagine it wouldn't have taken many hits to stop an enemy spacecraft. Especially 23mm!

 

[VirgilCaine]

The thing is, I don't think normal firearms would work very well for space walks, use on the moon, etc. The thing is the temperature differences. You're talking about things heating up to hundreds of degrees, then cooling back down to about 3 Kelvin, depending on whether or not the sun is shining. I think normal guns might seize up under those circumstances, if used "outside" for long periods of time. (Don't metals tend to stick to each other under exteme cold?)

The problem with firing guns in space is heat--without an atmosphere of molecules to get heat away from the gun, heat can only radiate away from the gun, which is very slow. So after a few shots, the barrel might be too hot to fire.

 

[Brian Dale]

Manedwolf,

Except that's not a shotgun. Her sidearm is a cut-down Winchester rifle.

Man, you can tell that she's pretty if I'm distracted enough to mistake her rifle for a Model 1897 shotgun. I stand corrected.

...and , too.

 

[thatguy]

Seems to me that I read a few years ago that there is an international agreement barring all weapons from space, even small arms. I find the survialist angle hard to swallow given the tracking on any returning vehicle. They would be all over a crashed spaceship within minutes, hardly enough time for surviving astronaughts to be playing wild kingdon with the wolves, which, BTW, don't hunt humans.

Also, some American astronaught was once asked in an interview if any small arms were ever taken into space and he said no.

If they do have a gun on the station it might be to kill any personnel who go nuts and threaten the vehicle.

 

[Dr.Rob]

Seems to me that I read a few years ago that there is an international agreement barring all weapons from space, even small arms. I find the survialist angle hard to swallow given the tracking on any returning vehicle.

Yes because no nation ever violated a treaty, ever. And because big dollar technology projects never ever fail, ever. (Hubble) And that wolf chewing on your foot never attacked anyone. (Except that little Siberian girl that never made the papers here)

The Russians, from experience, prepare for the worst. I'm not saying a Russian engineer could have kept the Titanic from sinking, but you can damn well bet there would have been enough lifeboats. And your chafing dish could be used as an oar.

Russians have been doing more with less for over a century, and while we might look sideways at our former adversary's inventions, they often work astonishingly well. (Do a web search on limb re-attachment, for example)

There is also a level of machismo in the Russian Armed Forces that we westerners likely just don't get. For example, G-Suits were often NOT worn by Soviet pilots, because they were for 'pansys.' Russian special forces were trained in extensive hand to hand combat, not for use against US, but to keep them from using their trusty kalashnikovs on their own citizens. You have a riot in Georgia? Send out some Spetnatz boys armed only with shovels. The result though is that the average Russian snakeeater can break bricks with his pinkie because they LIKE the hardship of constant training.

You want to assault a bridge? Get blind drunk on potato spirits the night before.

You want to build a space station? Keep a fur suit in the storage locker in case the heat goes out. (TRUE STORY, as reported in National Geographic... Russian Kosmonauts wearing fur suits to stay warm while repairing an abandoned space station, they smoked a lot during the repairs.)

You want to take a new American rifle to the range for testing, put it in a padded case and drive it to the range. You want to take a Russian rifle to the range for testing? Wrap a chain around it and drag it behind the truck to the range. (Cue Russian gun designer holding up AK-74 and smiling saying, "Yes but our rifle is also a club!")

And just to stay gun related, I really want one of those three barrelled Kosmonaut machete guns!

 

[Sistema1927]

You want to take a new American rifle to the range for testing, put it in a padded case and drive it to the range. You want to take a Russian rifle to the range for testing? Wrap a chain around it and drag it behind the truck to the range. (Cue Russian gun designer holding up AK-74 and smiling saying, "Yes but our rifle is also a club!")

And, the Russian rifle will probably look better after being dragged to the range.

 

[default]

Well put, Dr. Rob. The Russian mixture of technical brilliance and brute force has resulted in some incredible devices, some more successful than others:

A single-seat attack helicopter with coaxial rotors and an ejector seat. (Ka-50)

A titanium-hulled submarine with a reactor cooled by liquid metal capable of submerged speeds up to 44 knots. It was built in giant assembly buildings from which the air was removed and substituted with argon. Workers wore spacesuits. (Alfa-class)

A rocket-powered 200-knot supercavitating torpedo. (Shkval)

A select-fire assault rifle optimized for use underwater. (APS)

A supersonic interdiction bomber/fighter capable of 9g turns that has a kitchen...and a bathroom. (Su-32FN/Su-34)

A ring of shaped charges on a tank turret roof slaved to a millimeter-wave fire control radar to defend against antitank missiles. (ARENA)

A probe that landed on Venus in 1975 and survived for 65 minutes...at 90 atmospheres, 485 degrees centigrade, in an extremely corrosive atmosphere.

These are just some of the wackier Russian inventions. There is also:

A pistol in which the slide stop lever doubles as the ejector, and the mainspring doubles as the magazine release. It has 27 parts, 7 fewer than your average GLOCK. (Makarov PM)

An assault rifle with a way-oversized gas system and significant bolt overtravel that virtually guarantees reliable function, irrespective of how dirty the weapon is or how substandard the ammunition is. (AK-47, AKM, etc.)

A combination screw-driver/firing-pin protrusion gauge. (Mosin-Nagant bolt tool)

A 30-caliber rifle cartridge that was rimmed to ease headspace issues. (7.62x54R)

Ok, the last couple ones are kind of a joke (had to work the MN in there somehow). And admittedly some of these projects were not successful (too-high pilot workload in the Ka-50, tremendous expense with little subsequent advantage (Alfa-class). I'm very proud of American technical achievements, and have great respect for the engineers of Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Great Britain, and Japan, but there's something about the Russian combination of pessimistic realism and resultant overengineering and a design approach not always overly-burdened by "what worked before" that I like.

 

[Mal H]

About the "Shotgun Kept In Space Station" - I haven't read every post here, but there seems to be a misconception about it. The shotgun isn't kept in the ISS, it is stowed, unloaded, in the Soyuz up/down vehicle. It probably hasn't been taken from its storage compartment for years and is never taken into the ISS (or MIR when it was manned).

default's excellent post above reminded me that the Russian K36D ejection seat is now used, with modifications, in US fighter planes. Their technology was extensively tested and found to be superior to anything we (NATO countries) had.