Soviet Cosmonauts Carried a Shotgun into Space | Hacker News Reader

Soviet Cosmonauts Carried a Shotgun into Space

medium.com

151 pointsvinnyglennon55 comments

...To ward off wild animals in case the re-entry vehicle lands in the wilderness and rescue takes awhile.

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

It's not being reported as news, the entire article is full of interesting stories about the gun and why it might be useful for survival.

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?!

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.

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...

it's medium's lame "war is boring" blog. they take a mundane fact about military/aerospace and draw it out with meandering, barely relevant stories in wannabe new yorker style. it doesn't really work for anything besides clicks.

Just 'cause you don't enjoy it doesn't mean it's cynical clickbait. This particular item was not news to me, but a lot of the War is Boring stuff is pretty interesting.

Isn't the best defense against bears, closing the return vehicle door?

You can't assume you'll be able to stay in the vehicle - You might need to evacuate it.

plus the doors were blasted out (explosive bolts), so I din't think the door were able to shut anymore. heating didn't work in capsule too. So if curious bear would come (and they are really curious beasts) and start having fun with doors and weird meatbags inside, I don't think they would be in a nice situation

I didn't know any of that and I found it really interesting. Sorry I'm not as informed as you, I'll work on that.

The headline would have been 900% better as "The Soviets took bear guns into space"

What about "Soviets bear guns in space"?

Although the pseudo-civilian space station Saylut 3 did in fact have a gun mounted to the ship. There are conflicting reports as to whether it was ever fired by humans, but it does seem likely that it was at fired as the station de-orbited.

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.

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 ;).

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...

And rations included copious chocolate for the passengers.

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

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

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 2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45-70

Seems like a nice versatile platform for small game though.

there are 3 potential targets:

1. bears

2. run-away prisoners and various other "wild" people - illegal (and legal) gold panners, poachers in "taiga" or even marihuana("konoplya") gatherers or similar in Kazahstan "steppe" - in many respects those people are more dangerous than bears

3. small game

When picturing the second scenario, I can't help but think it's a scene straight out of a Hollywood screenplay complete with cheesy one-liners.

I mean, we're talking about bandits being dispatched by shotgun-wielding Cosmonauts who just returned from space, and they may still even be wearing their space suits. Wow.

There was a short film about just that premise recently - only the cosmonaut landed on a farm in the US, and is discovered by a father and son. Wish I could remember the name!

Do you mean Baikonur (2011) ?

Nope - as I recall, it was a short film, around 15 minutes long.

4. Wolves

... which were the actual issue during the already mentioned Voshod-2 recovery.

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.

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.

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.

Or the bear's cubs are nearby.

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.

The Sirius Sled Patrol in Northern Greenland use a Glock chambered for the 10mm Auto after experience showed that the 9mm Parabellum was insufficient in polar bear encounters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A6depatruljen_Sirius#Equi...

There is a text posted on many Russian gun forums (e.g. http://forum.guns.ru/forum/44/122597.html ) that alleges Russian Ministry of Justice statistics of handgun usage against bears for self-defense. I cannot say if it is trustworthy but here are some numbers: 26 cases with Mararov pistol using 9x18 ammo. 19 at distance over 2m. Out of these: 10 people unharmed, 5 wounded, 4 dead. 10 bears killed. 7 at distance less than 2m. 3 unharmed, 2 wounded, 2 dead. 3 bears killed.

17 cases with 9x19 Parabelum ammo (that was before Russia adopted its own 9x19 so it's all imported guns), 10 at over 2m, out of these: 7 unharmed, 2 wounded, 1 dead, 7 bears killed. 7 cases at less than 2m: 3 unharmed, 2 wounded, 2 dead, 4 bears killed.

With these odds I'd rather shoot than let a bear maul me.

I know that second-guessing Russian scientists about the efficacy of their weapons is something Americans just can't resist doing. But .. really? You honestly don't think 5.45x39 would stop a Russian bear? This, based on how many years of living in a bear-infested area, like the Russian scientists who made the decision .. ?

http://www.newsminer.com/news/alaska_news/man-uses-assault-r...

It's really not the best choice for bear-hunting, but it is possible. More problematic is the barrel length and capacity than the cartridge per se.

Its not for hunting. It is for defense.

I've spent most of my life in Alaska. I don't really know anyone who would hunt brown bear with that cartridge; it would possibly suffice for self-defense. Many "smaller" rounds are fine - plenty of locals hunt with 30-06, or even 270 Winchesters, but those rounds are much more heavily loaded. Also, the comment in TFA article about the "tumbling" being key against bears sounds off; the hard part is getting through the protective mass of fur/bone/muscle/fat.

That said, bears (and especially wolves) surely represent minimal risk as compared to the elements and more generally being in got-damn space. Funny thing to worry about.

Yeah, these are not your average bear hunters. Every little bit of weight counts, so I can see where being on the lighter side of the load would make a difference to the science teams putting together these survival packages. Hunting bears? Use what you like. Trying to survive long enough after 6 months in space? I'm okay with having the lighter load out ..

> You honestly don't think 5.45x39 would stop a Russian bear?

I think it might piss off one of the larger variety, fully grown Russian bears a little bit if you managed to hit it with that short barrel. It's a light caliber that's prohibited in some places for hunting deer because of its weakness (and that's fired through a long barrel, where all the powder gets to burn) and you wouldn't really expect that lightweight, fragmenting bullet to penetrate all the hide and subcutaneous fat of a fully grown bear, not to mention the thick bone of a shoulder or the skull.

I would guess a typical Alaskan pilot's survival kit might weigh the same or a little more than this contraption and contain a collapsible .22 rifle for hunting small game and a pistol loaded with hard-cast rounds (some big revolver or a 10mm Glock).

There is some fairly good info on what kind of bullet you'd want on these pages: http://www.garrettcartridges.com/about.html

The reality is, if you're in a self-defense situation with a large bear, as opposed to a hunting situation where you've stacked everything in your favor, you're almost certainly going to die. Stuff like the Russian contraption (or even the pistol I mentioned) is just for morale. Steven Colbert is totally right about bears.

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.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2

That's... this story

That's exactly what this article is about...

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

No picture :(

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

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...

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

It's fun to say too!

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

Video?

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.

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."

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...

in case you didn't notice, it was cold WAR during that era :) also, US had this tiny little program called STAR WARS... but please continue with your personal impressions, they seem trippy enough to be fun to read

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