Fragments and the Future

Nuggets, and what's next for this publication.

Jun 20, 2024

This feels like a good time to review the information I have coming in, and where to go with it. It also gives me an excuse to publish some snippets that wouldn’t make a full article.

Please feel free to let me know what you’d like to see in the comments.

How did we get here?

When I started this substack, there was a LOT of declassified docs, and new information emerging about the Soviet space programs. Much of it concerned the crewed lunar projects, the role of the N1, and there were many new diagrams for me to clean up and translate. This has slowed to a trickle in recent months.

The biggest factor appears to be internal changes in Russia, which I’m told are like a return to Soviet times. So people are very reluctant to share information.

There’s still some, like this on the L1-7K:

L1-7K test vehicle, for crewed Lunar orbit.

Another option is to shift more towards my CGI work on the obscure Soviet projects. Obviously it’s something I take pride in, and I suspect many who follow me here know me for my CGI work. But it feels a lot less important than the historical information.

Soyuz 19k stack for tanker landing mission.

And there are plenty of cool subjects for me to cover that have already been released here on the Soviet Space Substack.

On Early Cosmonauts.

Much of the information that is coming out is about the early cosmonauts, missions from the Vostok / Voskhod era. Things like documents showing their promotions, assignments, and reviews. This seems less interesting to me - it mostly feels like background information, or material for serious historians.

But there is quite a bit of it.

Soviet cosmonauts P.R. Popovich, Yu.A. Gagarin, V.V. Tereshkova, V.F. Bykovsky and G.S. Titov at the Central TV Studio in Moscow. June 27, 1963

Act on determining the flight range of the Vostok-6 satellite with pilot-cosmonaut V.V. Tereshkova June 16–19, 1963 RGANTD. F. 24. Op. 1. D. 14. L. 9.

Yandex image translation. I have no idea why it keeps referring to sports, but it’s a good example of what I have to deal with!

Obscure Russian Space Info:

The actual achievements in space of the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union have been, well, minimal. Chugging up and down to the ISS, and a series of ambitious plans, that always seem 20 years off…

But I have quite a few Russian language books with information that’s not well known in the west. The biggest drawback is that I known minimal Russian language, so working out if something is useful or interesting is a slow, high-effort process.

Here’s an example from a 2011 book, on Lunar exploration:

Sample scan, I have no idea which mission is illustrated!

Yandex image translation of the previous illustration.

Conclusion:

So! Those are the major options. I’ve also got older fragments that could be posted. I’m not seriously considering longer items - the book is currently in limbo, but longer pieces are key to that happening.

Let me know what you’d like.

This editions cool image:

By me! CGI rendering of a successful Tanker / 19k mission.

CGI rendering by me of a successful Soyuz 19k landing.

This editions cool link:

I’ve not done this for a long time, so I’m going to link to my Gum Road store, where you can buy lots of cool stuff, including collected reference material, posters, and meeting backgrounds.

This edition’s quick download:

You have 7 days to download the collected “Novosti Kosmonavtiki” magazines from 1999. In Russian, but heavily illustrated, with machine readable text, for easy computer translation.