
Soviet Cosmonauts Carried a Shotgun into Space - vinnyglennon
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/soviet-cosmonauts-carried-a-shotgun-into-space-a9e7852c6da5
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ghshephard
...To ward off wild animals in case the re-entry vehicle lands in the
wilderness and rescue takes awhile.

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java-man
exactly. soviet space craft always land on the ground. why is this news?

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NeutronBoy
Because the expected reaction is supposed to be 'Oh, those silly Soviets. Look
at all the weird things they did during the space race'.

I bet they also had lifejackets. Who needs lifejackets in space?!

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HCIdivision17
Wow; I hope you don't mind if I steal that life jacket line.

The sheer volume of perfectly rational nonsense that is done flies in the face
of what many consider common sense. It's nice to have a simple nonsequitor to
jump to for when the need arises.

~~~
3JPLW
I like it. It's a shame the Apollo program got rid of the shark repellent from
Mercury (at least, as far as I can tell) [1]. It would have been even better
to say that NASA took shark repellent to the moon.

I guess taking a life raft to the moon is about as good.

1\. [http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the-
moon/onl...](http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the-
moon/online/astronaut-life/medical-survival.cfm)

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Cogito
I was particularly interested in the fact that the astronauts going on a
mission vote whether or not to take a gun with them (apparently now a standard
Russian sidearm), and increasingly vote not to.

A very interesting article.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yup. It seems reasonable now as the tracking and rescue infrastructure is much
better than it used to. The gun's utility starts to drop in this case. I never
knew about the voting before, it's another interesting thing I learned today
on HN ;).

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dingaling
KLM ( Netherlands airline ) used to pack an Arctic survival kit that included
an AR-10 rifle and .308 ammunition.

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-58AA26J4UnM/UEehaS7_-EI/AAAAAAAACG...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-58AA26J4UnM/UEehaS7_-EI/AAAAAAAACG4/wasT0Hy6v0g/s1600/5.+Polar+survival+kit.jpg)

And rations included copious chocolate for the passengers.

Modern kits sadly omit the rifle and carry high-calorie cookies instead of
chocolate.

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dbarlett
Not to be confused with the 23mm cannon fired from Salyut 3
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#On-
board_gun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#On-board_gun)

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jboggan
I disagree with the notion that 5.45x39 out of a roughly 12-inch barrel would
be that great against bears. I thought they would at least issue slugs for the
shotgun barrel (which is somewhere in between the small 28-gauge and a .410
shotguns in American parlance) but apparently not . . . you need hardened cast
projectiles to penetrate on bears, not soft points.

Compare the 5.45x39 stats [1] to a round more suited and used for defense
against bears [2]

1 -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.45%C3%9739mm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.45%C3%9739mm)
2 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45-70](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45-70)

Seems like a nice versatile platform for small game though.

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teuobk
Perhaps more surprising is that they now use a 9mm sidearm for that role, at
least according to the article's speculation. Good luck doing anything other
than making the bear mad with that.

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grecy
I live in the Yukon, and I can confirm that when confronted with even a medium
sized brown bear the last thing the world you'd want to do is shoot it with a
9mm sidearm.

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Avshalom
While I wouldn't shoot one with a 9mm, just a warning shot is generally enough
to get a bear to move on unless you've already deeply pissed it off some how.

~~~
grecy
Haha, such a common misnomer.

When you're dealing with a bear that has never seen people before, it has no
idea that loud noises like rifles are dangerous. I've seen a friend fire a
.375 right past a brown's head from 50 yards and it didn't even blink. The
bear just kept eating berries sitting on his butt.

You can lay on your horn in the car, fire bear bangers and smash pots and pans
together - they don't care.

I've also seen someone unload into one with 5 shots from a .303 - all shots
hit home in the heart/lung area (later we found both lungs torn apart, though
not the heart) and it kept running full speed for over 100 yards. If we had
been closer than 100 yards, it would have had us.

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e0m
There was a story a while back about astronauts returning from the ISS in a
Soyuz capsule. The guidance computer failed (can you imagine if all shuttle
guidance computers failed!) and they entered a 9G "Ballistic Entry Mode"
instead of the 3G "Guided Entry Mode". The capsule and astronauts survived,
but they ended up in some far off field in Siberia. I'd want a shotgun with me
then.

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eps
That was the Voskhod-2 mission, 1965, the first spacewalk.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2)

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m_d
I'm sure I already posted this last time this subject came up, but the Soviets
also prototyped a Moonraker-esque laser pistol for their cosmonauts:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol)

~~~
folli
No picture :(

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Gaussian
I am impressed by the amount of latent bear fighting knowledge around here.
People chiming in from the Yukon and Alaska. Pretty awesome.

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jkot
US pilots carry a gun in survival kit as well. I have not found any mentions
about astronauts, but Gemini crew had machete.

[http://www.answers.com/topic/nasa-project-gemini-
familiariza...](http://www.answers.com/topic/nasa-project-gemini-
familiarization-manual)

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vinceyuan
I learned a new word 'cosmonaut' from this article. :-) (I am not a native
english speaker.)

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urda
It's fun to say too!

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CmonDev
Yes, and unlike astronauts, they are actually reaching their destination:
[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/astronaut](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/astronaut)

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biomimic
Video?

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PaulHoule
I think their program has always been more militarized than ours. For
instance, prior to 1980 they launched space stations with attached machine
guns; later they developed a space launch system that visually looks much like
the space shuttle and planned to launch a prototype Deathstar with a
1-megawatt laser.

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andrewliebchen
The Space Shuttle's cargo bay was the size it was so it could carry military
satellites to orbit. Vandenberg Air Force Base was going to be a west coast
launch site for the shuttle, and it seems as though every astronaut use to be
a Navy pilot. Our program was plenty "militarized."

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colechristensen
At least 11 space shuttle missions had classified payloads, it's reasonable to
believe most of these were spy satellites.

[http://www.airspacemag.com/space/secret-space-
shuttles-35318...](http://www.airspacemag.com/space/secret-space-
shuttles-35318554/?no-ist)

