-
Cosmos Pavilion Re-Opened at VDNKh, Moscow by Danderman on 18 Aug, 2018 17:26
-
The Cosmos Pavilion was emptied of it's exhibits some 20 years ago, but has been revamped. Plenty of exhibits now, including the Almaz-T.
-
#1 by Danderman on 18 Aug, 2018 17:27
-
Some sort of BOR artifact.
-
#2 by Danderman on 19 Aug, 2018 16:07
-
The Almaz-T
-
#3 by Phillip Clark on 19 Aug, 2018 16:46
-
From photos which have been posted on Facebook I have noted that there is a UR-700 model in there, next to the N-1. I don't know if there is any other UR-700 material there.
-
#4 by Danderman on 20 Aug, 2018 07:57
-
I didn't see any information posted about UR-700.
-
#5 by Danderman on 20 Aug, 2018 07:59
-
More UR-700.
-
#6 by Danderman on 20 Aug, 2018 10:52
-
This is a little OT, but I believe that this photo taken from the Cosmos Hotel shows the Bear Lake ground station antenna on the horizon.
-
#7 by Danderman on 20 Aug, 2018 10:57
-
I believe this is the Mir mock-up previously at the Gagarin Training center.
-
#8 by Nicolas PILLET on 20 Aug, 2018 11:18
-
I believe this is the Mir mock-up previously at the Gagarin Training center.
No. It is the Mir mock-up previously at GKNPTs Khrunichev. -
#9 by B. Hendrickx on 21 Aug, 2018 23:32
-
I had the chance to visit the Cosmos Pavillion last weekend and it is quite impressive. The first thing you see when entering the Pavillion is Gagarin's Vostok, which is on temporary loan from the RKK Energiya museum. Other fine exhibits apart from the ones already mentioned here are a full-size RD-170 engine, a TKS return capsule (probably the same one that was on display for a while in the nearby Cosmonautics Museum) and a full-size aft section of the MAKS air-launched spaceplane (see picture).
Probably boring for the casual visitor, but very interesting for the space history geeks are some authentic drawings and documents that are in drawers that visitors can slide open. I hadn't seen some of these earlier, such as timetables for the Soviet lunar program and various schemes for spaceplanes which I presume were proposed by Chelomei or Myasishchev (still have to figure that out). For some reason these schemes were in the UR-700 drawer.
I've attached two of the drawings here. One is of a nuclear-powered space station simply called "Big Space Station" (Bolshaya orbitalnaya stantsiya) with a crew capacity of 50 and rotatable sections to provide artificial gravity. It's probably a "Korolyov bureau" proposal, but there's no date on it. Perhaps a further development of the N-1 launched MKBS space station planned in the early 1970s?
The other is a drawing of what clearly is a version of the Mir-2 space station. It shows a Buran orbiter docked at the bottom, a Zarya transport ship docked on top and also several specialized modules that seem to be based on the Zenit-launched Progress-MT vehicles. Zarya, a Zenit-launched reusable replacement for Soyuz, was studied in 1985-1989, so the drawing presumably dates back to the second half of the 1980s. At that time Mir-2 was supposed to become a big Freedom-type space station with 75-ton Energiya-launched components, so this proposal doesn't quite fit into what we know about the history of Mir-2. See this article I wrote many years ago for a BIS publication:
http://www.bis-space.com/belgium/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/frommir-2.pdf
Perhaps it shows an early stage of construction of the Freedom-class Mir-2 (the 20-ton DOS-8 module, now ISS's Zvezda, was supposed to go up first and act as the living quarters of the station). However, the core module looks different from what is seen in other drawings, with two smaller diameter cylindrical sections that contain support equipment and and engine unit (to be used not only for attitude control and orbital maneuvers, but also for final orbital insertion according to the drawing).
My apologies for the poor quality of the pictures. The drawings and documents are behind glass and there's a transparent ceiling overhead, so reflections are inevitable, especially on a sunny day like the one last weekend.
-
#10 by Nicolas PILLET on 22 Aug, 2018 06:33
-
a TKS return capsule (probably the same one that was on display for a while in the nearby Cosmonautics Museum)
AFAIK, the TKS displayed in MMK is still there. It is vehicle n°103/1.
I'm 99% sure that the one in Cosmos Pavillion is the one which was located in GKNPTs Khrunichev, whose number is unknown.
See my list here : https://www.kosmonavtika.com/vaisseaux/tks/visite/visite.html -
#11 by B. Hendrickx on 22 Aug, 2018 13:11
-
a TKS return capsule (probably the same one that was on display for a while in the nearby Cosmonautics Museum)
AFAIK, the TKS displayed in MMK is still there. It is vehicle n°103/1.
I'm 99% sure that the one in Cosmos Pavillion is the one which was located in GKNPTs Khrunichev, whose number is unknown.
See my list here : https://www.kosmonavtika.com/vaisseaux/tks/visite/visite.html
Thanks for that note, Nicolas. Here are two images of the vehicle on display at the Cosmos Pavillion. There is no serial number on it, at least not on the side that I photographed. I remember that several years ago the TKS at the MMK museum was in the entrance hall (I think there was an exhibition devoted to Chelomei's birth anniversary at the time). I didn't go inside the MMK museum this time, but I was in the entrance hall to have a look at the museum shop. The TKS was no longer there, but I suppose it must be on display inside the museum then.
-
#12 by Nicolas PILLET on 22 Aug, 2018 13:56
-
I remember that several years ago the TKS at the MMK museum was in the entrance hall (I think there was an exhibition devoted to Chelomei's birth anniversary at the time). I didn't go inside the MMK museum this time, but I was in the entrance hall to have a look at the museum shop. The TKS was no longer there, but I suppose it must be on display inside the museum then.
Yes, it was first in the entrance in 2014, and then moved inside the museum (in 2016, IIRC). See my pictures here : https://www.kosmonavtika.com/vaisseaux/tks/visite/mmk/mmk.html -
#13 by lucspace on 22 Aug, 2018 15:13
-
@Bart:
The images exhibited in the drawers can be found here as well:
http://buran.ru/images/jpg/18a-2_bolsh-stan_corr.jpg
http://buran.ru/images/jpg/16a_MIR2-isxod.jpg -
#14 by Danderman on 22 Aug, 2018 16:06
-
The TKS in the museum is still there, and does not have the white dome on top, as does the vehicle in the Cosmos Pavilion.
-
#15 by B. Hendrickx on 22 Aug, 2018 19:04
-
@Bart:
The images exhibited in the drawers can be found here as well:
http://buran.ru/images/jpg/18a-2_bolsh-stan_corr.jpg
http://buran.ru/images/jpg/16a_MIR2-isxod.jpg
Thanks a lot, Luc. The Mir-2 drawing on Vadim Lukashevich's Buran website includes text that is not in the version seen in the Cosmos Pavillion. This tells us that the proposal dates back to July 1985 and that this version of the station was supposed to be placed into a 400-km Sun-synchronous orbit with an inclination of 97°. The 84-ton core module, consisting of three sections, was to be launched in one piece by the Energiya rocket, with the module's own engine section providing the final orbit insertion burn. The wider central section of the core module had the same diameter as the Blok-Ts core stage of the Energiya rocket (7.7 m). The station could house a maximum of ten crew members and it had a total of ten docking ports, eight of which were to be occupied by specialized modules to be launched by the 11K77 Zenit rocket.
So this is a hitherto unknown early version of Mir-2 that predates the versions seen in my BIS article to which I posted a link yesterday.
I can't immediately find these images when I look for them via the homepage of the Buran website (they are not in the photo sectio, which is http://www.buran.ru/htm/foto.htm ). Could you tell me how to get to them starting from the homepage? Just wondering what other images there are. Thanks. -
#16 by eeergo on 05 Sep, 2019 15:18
-
I've had the privilege to follow you guys' footsteps and visit the impressive VDNKh Space Pavilion myself about a week ago. I have some questions about the provenance of the artifacts in display that weren't quite clear from my reading of this thread:
1- Is the Almaz "mockup" really so? Judging by appearances it doesn't seem to be of recent construction, and hosts too many details in many parts to be just an approximate model, even though solar panels, thrusters and other bits do look like basic mockups. Is it an non-flightworthy STA of Almaz-2 (unmanned radar Almaz), or the actual model that is shown in RussianSpaceWeb (S/N of this one?) ? Or one of the Almaz(-2?) that was bought by Excalibur Almaz and reportedly sent back from Isle of Man, numbers 205 & 206 (I guess not the barebones 206, but how many more unflown flight-worthy hulls are there, by the way)?
2- I understand the Buran behind the Moskvarium (next to an awesome space-themed kids playground I'd love to play in) was the one previously in Gorky Park, and is a mashup of engineering test pieces, the 5K and 4K wings, the 0.11 vertical stabilizer and lots of willingness from Energia workers. Right?
3- I've seen with my own eyes three (apparently flightworthy) TKS VA capsules: one in Moscow's Cosmonautics museum, another one in the VDNKh and finally at the Smithsonian in Washington. Eight were supposedly purchased by Excalibur Almaz, but Wikipedia lists only 3. According to these lists, there should be 7 flown TKS VA's total, with two more lost (009L, 103), plus one modified to be a non-recoverable integral part of the TKS-M/Kosmos 1686 mission. There may be 3-4 more flightworthy but unflown ones according to Wikipedia. Which one is the one in VDNKh?
4- Is the Vostok rocket over the fountain at the entrance a total mockup (looks too detailed to be so), an STA or engineering model, or a real rocket - and if so, where was it pulled from?
5- What's the MAKS article? Just a flashy mockup, or something more "engineering-worthy"?
6- Was the Mir mockup displayed, previously at Khrunichev, used for training, and if so for which kind (underwater, familiarization...)?
By the way, I visited the Cosmonautics Museum and the Space Pavilion on consecutive days, so I can confirm the TKS VA are distinct, permanently-exhibited articles.
-
#17 by eeergo on 05 Sep, 2019 15:34
-
Some more highlights I have no further questions about:
- Glonass-K engineering model.
- Fyodor's (working!) twin while its lucky sibling was trying to dock to ISS in MS-14.
- Luch engineering model over a "5D" hemispheric cinema.
- Express-AM's engineering model antenna package.
- A nice flightworthy, production unit of the RD-170 that you can touch and stick your nose into
- Real, structurally-correct test article for the N1! Behind it, real NK-33 and NK-43, and also an inert, flightlike current-generation Soyuz SAS tower motors (see previous post image, together with Almaz and TKS VA).
- Soyuz TMA control panel.
- Luna-20 lunar core sample.
- BONUS: Ulyanovsk's open-air aircraft museum's Tu-144, just because
-
#18 by asmi on 05 Sep, 2019 17:13
-
- A nice flightworthy, production unit of the RD-180 that you can touch and stick your nose into
That's RD-170 - it's got four nozzles (and "RD-170" written on the bell 
). Production units always have serial numbers written on it, also it's unusual to see English spelling of "RD" - even production RD-180 sent to US used Russian font "РД". But it still might be a production unit that was simply repainted for display.
-
#19 by eeergo on 05 Sep, 2019 20:20
-
- A nice flightworthy, production unit of the RD-180 that you can touch and stick your nose into
That's RD-170 - it's got four nozzles (and "RD-170" written on the bell ). Production units always have serial numbers written on it, also it's unusual to see English spelling of "RD" - even production RD-180 sent to US used Russian font "РД". But it still might be a production unit that was simply repainted for display.
Who says a 7 isn't an 8? Post-truthism Sorry for the brain fart, corrected! The stenciled letters are both in cyrillic and latin alphabets though.
-
#20 by asmi on 06 Sep, 2019 02:37
-
Who says a 7 isn't an 8?
7 maybe looks similar to 8, but two extra nozzles are hard to cover up even with all of the might of today's mass media
). Production units always have serial numbers written on it, also it's unusual to see English spelling of "RD" - even production RD-180 sent to US used Russian font "РД". But it still might be a production unit that was simply repainted for display.