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Hello,
I've been a life-long enthusiast of aviation and space flight. Most of my knowledge of the space programs of the superpowers is related to the U.S. manned missions of the 1960s. Now, I remember hearing that the Soviets had started their space station program in the late 1960s or the early 1970s. What I don't know is what was the intention of the Soviet space stations.
Where they primarily of a military function or were they mostly scientific research? Did the Soviet space program focus on these stations, once the Soviet manned lunar program had failed due to booster problems?
Cordially,
EarthWolf
" Man will not always stay on the Earth. "
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
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'sfunny, i happen to be reading about their stations this afternoon!
Military/scientific... Hard to say, of course, with the then quite secretive operations. At leas some of the missions were 100% military.
But science... A lot of time was dedicated to observing the Earth (wich of course nicely fits in in spying-operations, I guess...) Russia is a vast countr, with a lot of sparsely or non-inhabited regions, punishing climate, and observing from high above made it possible to search for natural recources, forest-fires etc...
They did a fair bit of engineering, too, like welding in zero-g and vacuum, while doing EVA's, installing solar panels by hand, manufacturing of alloys etc. They even did experiments with extra-sensory perception.
They also used them for a lot of biology, checking how humans react to micro-gravity etc. IIRC the current on-orbit is still by far held by russian astronauts, some stayed up more than a year, and later went back 'up,' recently they tried to change the lenght of missions on ISS from 6 months to 12, saying their data suggests it's ok to do so, and it would save them launching Soyuzes, now that the STS is grounded. NASA didn't want any of it.
Russia didn't make it a secret their stations were in fact a bridgehead for a manned mission to Mars, in the middle 80's, just before things started to fall apart, there were extensive rumours about a MIR-II that would do just so... I guess they felt they had enough know-how in building the hardware, and the medical records showed them it was doable.
Russia was into station from before the moonrace, they denied being in it, concentrating rather on their orbital labs. The moonrace was a diversion of their 'natural' evolution, and didn't pan out into a success, so they went back to their tried-and trusted (modular) stations, wich they could build w/o a super-big launcher.
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Of course, the clearest reason for the space stations were the same as is yet the case with ISS: Research on Earth, the stars, microgravity, long duration. With Mars also in mind.
The first Salyut was launched at the time the SU realized they had lost the run to the Moon. They liked to start somiehing new. Some salyuts were military, at least one of them appeared to have real guns outside to shot American destroyer-satellites. It could have become real star-wars.
Salyut 6 and 7 were also hostels for much communistic brothers, including cosmonauts from countries as Cuba and Mongolia. The salyut-program is really interesting. In comparision with Salyut, the advantages of America of space stations is nearly insignificant.
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I still like the oncept. A bit like an oversized mobile home, camper, if you like.
Once visited a full-size replica (training-model) It was roomy!
It didn't cost an arm and a leg, so you could deorbit them, and launch a newer, uprated version, etc.
I think it payed off very quickly.
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