#Shuttle-Mir

[moonwatchuniverse]

First NASA astronaut onboard Soyuz... March 1995, physician Norman Thagard became the very first American astronaut to ride a Soyuz capsule to space. Nicknamed the "American cosmonaut", Norman Thagard's long-duration mission was the first of 7 long-duration flights onboard the Russian space station "Mir" in the Shuttle-Mir era (1995-1998). Although some of these NASA-astronauts, Thagard, Lucid, Blaha, Linenger, Foale, Wolf and Thomas, took a personal wrist watch, they were still issued an Omega Speedmaster chronograph. Thagard being the last long-duration NASA astronaut to wear a "Radial Dial" Speedmaster chronograph in the Shuttle-Mir program. (Photo: NASA)

[krakenmare]

Shuttle-Mir Approach (December 28, 1995)

[sepdet]

Holy fuck y'all

Flickr account: NASA on the Commons

I haven't seen some of these photos in decades, and some I've never seen, and anyways

Crew of shuttle Atlantis playing peekaboo with crew of old Russian space station Mir (RIP) Nov 24, 1995

Q: why do most space photos showing spacecraft have no stars?

Discovery's maneuvering thrusters angled for pitch up, main engines at low burn, July 6, 2006

Discovery pulling in to dock with ISS, July 6, 2006

Endeavour departs ISS, March 24, 2008— note how bright the shadows are from the sun-glare off clouds.

Discovery over Southwest coast of Morocco as ISS and Discovery bid farewell and take photos of one another for final time on March 7, 2011.

Hint: Is it day or night in these photos?

Astronaut Charles M. Duke drilling, photographed by John W. Young (Hey, he flew on the first space shuttle!) April 21, 1972.

Pilot Harrison Schmidt bagging what they hope is a lava sample, Apollo 17, Dec 13, 1972.

International Space Station taken by Discovery undocking March 25, 2009.

Stars don't show in most photos of spacecraft because sunlight illuminates surfaces far more brightly than distant stars shine. In fact, sunlight in Earth's orbit is brighter in space, since air scatters enough light rays to turn their wavelength blue.

Columbia 😭 liftoff STS-50, June 25, 1992. Gods I miss ya, little sister.

But the sun covers less sky (or, to put it another way, the photons it emits kerp spreading out over an increasingly large sphere of space) for Mars and the outer planets, so its light is dimmer, until it's just another star.

Enhanced contrast version of first image of another planet, Mars by Mariner 3, July 15, 1965. 6 years before you were born doesn't feel that long ago... does it? Does it? How dare it start feeling that way to me! ;)

There's so many more amazing images on that channel, including planets/moons. Go look. Cool stuff.

[chernobog13]

The crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis as seen from the Mir space station, November, 1995.

[spockvarietyhour]

Yeet to Mir, Quantum Leap S01E02 “Atlantis”

[lonestarflight]

"Artist's concept of a Soviet space shuttle approaching a manned space complex. (From Soviet Military Power 1985)."

Date: May 1, 1985

NARA: 6386730

[neutron669]

Mir and Space Shuttle

[paraparaparadigm]

[bosquedemel]

whenever i see photos like these i’m just like “wow we did this. we actually did this and we’re still doing it, this is crazy” i love space

[livingforstars]

Mir is 10 - March 10th, 1996.

"The first module of the Russian Space Agency's Mir Space Station was launched into orbit 10 years ago from 1996, (on February 20th, 1986). Mir has since been substantially expanded in orbit by adding additional modules, including the Kvant Astrophysics Module (1987) and a docking module. NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis was modified to allow it to dock with Mir in 1995 (STS-71, STS 74) beginning a series of Shuttle-Mir flights scheduled to continue through 1997. In this wide angle view - poised above planet Earth with sunlight glinting from solar panels - Mir and Atlantis are seen connected via the docking module from the perspective of the shuttle payload bay. The image is from an IMAX movie frame taken during the STS 74 mission. In late 1997, having built on this jointly developed understanding and experience, the US and Russia would launch the first modules of the International Space Station."

[moonwatchuniverse]

FORTIS Friday ... During a visit to the FORTIS watches facilities in Grenchen - Switzerland, MoonwatchUniverse was shown 42 steel + 4 solid Gold 38 mm chronographs. These early 1990s steel chronographs were tested by Roscosmos with feedback the watches should be extremely legible with appropriate lume. Since July 1994 the FORTIS Official Cosmonauts Chronograph has been flown during at least 25 Soyuz spaceflight missions, used by spacefarers of 4 nationalities. Between March 1995 and June 1998, 7 NASA astronauts stayed onboard the Russian Mir space station: Norman Thagard (115 days), Shannon Lucid (188 days), John Blaha (128 days), Jerry Linenger (132 days), Michel Foale (144 days), David Wolf (127 days) and Andrew Thomas (140 days). This post shuttle-Mir era group photo shows David Wolf in front right, wearing a solid Gold 38 mm FORTIS Official Cosmonauts chronograph. (Photo: NASA)

[theonevoice]

On a related note, I'm now headcanoning Crowley catching the Mir Space Station mid-air as it was falling into the ocean and performing a hiding miracle on all the monitoring devices so that nobody would notice.

A sort of "thank you for your service out there in space" move, if you will, so actually one could say that the Mir didn't really fall, you know...

Don't mind me, I'm a child of the 90s, Hubble, the Shuttles and the Mir were like science-fiction in real life for many of us... Yes, I did hated that scene in Armageddon. This is the clock, btw, the same model was also used onboard the Sojuz spacecrafts:

[exhibitaengineering]

STS- 74

STS-74 was the fourth mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, and the second docking of the Space Shuttle with Mir. Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Kennedy Space Center launch pad 39A on 12 November 1995. The mission ended 8 days later with the landing of Atlantis back at Kennedy

Mission: Second Shuttle-Mir Docking

Space Shuttle: Atlantis

Launch Pad: 39A

Launched: November 12, 1995 at 7:30:43.071 a.m. EST

Landing Site: Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Landing: November 20, 1995 at 12:01:27 p.m. EST

Runway: 33

Rollout Distance: 8,607 feet

Rollout Time: 57 seconds

Revolution: 129

Mission Duration: 8 days, 4 hours, 30 minutes, 44 seconds

Orbit Altitude: 213 nautical miles

Orbit Inclination: 51.6 degrees

Miles Traveled: 3.4 million

Crew

Kenneth Cameron, Commander

James D. Halsell Jr., Pilot

William McArthur Jr., Mission Specialist

Jerry L. Ross, Mission Specialist

Chris A. Hadfield, Mission Specialist

Source: NASA Official Website

[dynamischreisen]

Max, Costa Rica, Tag 7

Supderduper Eco Techno

Wie geplant früh ging es heute los. Direkt vor dem Hostel wurden wir abgeholt - rein ins Shuttle, auf die Fähre, in das Taxi. Immerhin also war alles eine mehr oder weniger private Tour, was meinen Rant von gestern emotional etwas abschwächt, wenn auch nicht politisch.

Unser Hostel, das irgendwie sowas wie Terre superduper Eco experience nature pura vida lodge heißt, liegt zwar 20 Mimuten Fahrt von La Fortuna entfernt, bietet dafür aber einen absolut atemberaubenden Blick auf den Volcan Arenal. Wieder trafen wir im Garten bunte Kolibris (die werdet ihr hier noch öfter sehen) und Schmetterlinge - alles blüht. Es ist richtig schön.

Zu Fuß begannen wir dann unsere übliche Erkundungstour mit einem Zwischenstopp in einem Restaurant mit unfassbar gutem Essen. Das bestand nämlich zu 90% aus Käse - mehr muss ich wohl nicht erklären. Beim gewöhnlichen Spazier-Wandern dann haben wir wieder mega coole Tiere gesehen. Und das ganz ohne Guide. Unsere Highlights sind der Cherrie‘s tanager (oder wie Nico ihn liebevoll getauft hat: Der krank rote Ficker), den es nur ziemlich genau hier gibt, und der Swainson-Tukan. Mensch, was war es für eine Erleichterung, letzteren zu sehen. Damals in Peru nämlich ist mir nur einer über den Kopf hinweg geflogen, ohne dass ich ihn beobachten oder gar fotografieren konnte. Mein Gefühl sagt mir, dass da aber sicher noch mehr kommt.

La Fortuna selbst war auch schön. Leider etwas zu spät kamen wir an, um das Städtchen bei Tageslicht zu erkunden, das sicher super aussieht, wenn der Arenal über allem thront. So ging es dann eben recht früh in Richtung Ende des Abends, den wir bei zwei Bierchen in einer Hostel-Bar haben ausklingen lassen. Die Party stand dann auf dem Rückweg an, als unser Uber-Fahrer Musik von DJ Koze hörte, wir auf simple, aber tatsächlich konstante Weise auf Spanisch über Techno und Subkultur sprachen. Ich zeigte ihm DJ Heartstring, Funk Tribu etc. und wir verstanden uns prächtig. Auch wenn das nicht so ganz meine Musik ist, ist es doch cool, zumindest ein bisschen zu wissen, was abgeht. Also danke dafür, Leute!

Leider dauerte das alles etwas länger, die Küche zum selber Kochen war schon zu, weshalb unser Abendbrot aus Ritz-Crackern bestand. Die gibt es morgen auch zum Frühstück, denn die Tiere warten nicht, bis wir einkaufen waren.

[silverslipstream]

Hi Jeb!

I'm curious about Kat from White Sky; what kind of science does she do and does it tie into the crime she's framed for? Did she flee into outer space or was it exile? Also did she make the rocket to space? What does it look like?

-HD

Hello, Hyper Discourse, and thanks for the ask! I was really pleasantly surprised to see such a tailored question of specific interest about Kat, so you should know that it was greatly appreciated :))))) Kat's actual job back on Earth was a junior propulsion systems designer for German rocketry corporation Langersprung Developments (English: Long jump: refers to the 'long jump' between Earth's surface and outer space). She was headhunted by Langersprung after winning a national youth design competition and joined them straight out of high-school. She joined a 'residency' at their science park in Munich, which basically amounts to a four-year long think tank before young prospects join the company in an official capacity. It's kind of like a university degree, except you get paid for your studies. The actual crime is somewhat of a mystery in the story itself: Kat didn't exactly have a lot of warning before the German police and ELTO burst onto campus and started hunting for her. All she knows is that someone framed her for viewing and stealing top-secret information related to the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the huge spacecraft being built in lunar orbit for the first manned mission to Saturn. It was definitely 'fleeing' in that regard; she managed to get out of the park and the city, but upon seeing her face all over national news, she resigned herself to going on the run in outer space, which is considerably less regulated than Earth. Kat didn't build the Dowager Caroline, she's an 'old tub', built in the late 2030s (more than fifty years before the story begins) by Mitsubishi in Japan. The Caroline runs on chemical propellants instead of more modern nuclear/fusion fuel, and it's a debris hauler: it collects and recovers space junk and abandoned craft for recovery contracts or to sell them as scrap for refineries and smelters. I haven't really sketched out the actual design of the Caroline in my head (zero artistic talent lmao), but in my mind it's very much a 'realistic space RV': think ISS/Mir modules, mostly white and grey colours, bulky and somewhat rounded. It's not meant for atmospheric operation (to get back to Earth, the Caroline would need to dock at an orbital station and the crew would take a separate shuttle down to Earth's surface. I've attached a few photos of design inspirations below so you can see where I'm coming from.

Again, thanks for the questions!

[lonestarflight]

“The dawn of a golden new era in international space cooperation is echoed in the gold-dusted morning sky that greets the orbiter discovery as it glides in for a landing on Runway 15 of the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility. During the approximately eight-day, six-hour flight of STS-63, the crew completed a close-in rendezvous and flyaround with the Russian space station Mir, performed research in the SPACEHAB-3 lab module, and deployed and retrieved the SPARTAN-204 free-flyer. Heading up the six-member crew is Commander James D. Wetherbee; serving as his second in command is Eileen M. Collins, the first female Shuttle pilot; Bernard A. Harris Jr., a medical doctor is the payload commander; and Janice Voss, C. Michael Foale and Vladimir G. Titov, a veteran Russian cosmonaut, are the three mission specialists. Discovery’s successful rendezvous with Mir has served as an excellent dress rehearsal for a planned series of dockings between the U. S. Shuttle and Mir, slated to begin later this year. After the astronauts had landed, the cosmonauts aboard Mir radioed their congratulations on the mission’s completion and a job well done.”

Date: February 11, 1995

NASA ID: KSC-95PC-294