Energia

Energia is the home of the former Soviet space program. It was by far one of the best excursions that our program has arranged. Our tour guide spoke excellent English and was extremely knowledgeable. During our tour, we saw things like a duplicate of Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin's original re-entry capsule, a life-size model of the Mir Space Station, and a couple cosmonaut toilets, too. Today, the remaining engineers at Energia work on commercial satellite-launching ventures.

Sergei Korolev, father of the Russian space program (and the space race)


Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space

The Energia/Buran shuttle model designed by Energia during the 1980's

A contemporary copy of the original Sputnik, which means "traveling companion" or "satellite" in Russian

Me standing next to a huge camera that was launched into space in order to take a picture of the dark side of the moon


These are all models of the first stuff that was launched into space: batteries, solar panels, cameras, and those sorts of things


Another model of space-junk; I can't believe this stuff worked


In the foreground you can see an early model cosmonaut toilet


And here is a later model space toilet, found on the Mir Space Station


The first re-entry capsule was designed for laboratory animals


The next re-entry capsule was designed for Yuri Gagarin; this is the real deal


This gadget is the coolest piece of technology that our guide showed us. It is a gyroscopic stabilizer that was used on the Mir Space Station as a joint between the gigantic modules that comprised the station. The stability that the central axis of the gyroscope supplies when a torque is applied to the gyroscopic frame allows the modules to be rotated with a small amount of energy, which is at a premium in space. Our guide said that each kilogram put into space costs twenty-thousand dollars, so that it's best to conserve on heavy batteries and large motors with gizmos like this.


And lastly, a cosmonaut suit, which comes in one piece; cosmonauts step into the suit from a hatch in the back

My Friends the Bums

Hey, guys, what's up?

Phew! That fire stinks like burning plastic!

You see, there are these bums that have a campsite outside of my apartment building and, I suppose, drink there. It is really a gross sight when the snow melts, because scattered around this little grove is a ton of trash, a self-made bench, and a firepit. Anyways, I've been keeping track of them whenever I see movement down there and I decided to start taking pictures. The other day was eventful, so I took a video. I asked my host mother if she thought that they would enjoy speaking Russian with me, since they looked pretty relaxed sitting around their fire, but she said that it was verboten for me to visit them, since they were probably insane and violent.

I Have TWO Russian Library Cards Now!

This past Wednesday, with the help of an official-looking letter from the director of my language school, I was able to gain admission to the Central State Sechenov Medical Library. During my first trip to the library, I was able to find two full card catalog drawers of bacteriophage-related scientific papers from the 1980's and 1990's. Although I didn't have time to order any articles (I had to leave to see the Bolshoi present Prokofiev's opera War and Peace), I marked a handful of them down in my notebook, including an article about Soviet biowarfare. Apparently, some Soviet scientists during the 1980's were assessing the United State's capacity to wage biological warfare and proposed to use bacteriophage to combat bacterial weapons. Very interesting . . .