#mir

[xponentialdesign]

🔺 Feeling Stripes 🔺 source files

[llocket]

✧ 　bok-su & da-jeong graphics

f2u, only with credit! no need to reblog but very appreciated! ↳ self indulgent!! ++ good in dark & light mode

AW HELL YEAH SIG YALL THE GOAT!!!! anyway PLAY MARRIED IN RED OUT NOW!!!!

[answithvanzz]

woah it’s pride month again

Celebratory Bok-su for the occasion

[cosmonautroger]

Mir, 1991

[why-wont-you-eat-tuna]

How many of you guys would read a beddie fic based on the wedding crashers artwork/them being in mir

[fullyunsourced]

Product placement... in SPACE!

Who are the bravest people to go to space in history? Of course you might say Armstrong or other pioneers. But I want to put forward a couple of names you might not think of: Sergei Zalyotin and Aleksandr Kaleri. Who are they? They're the first people to trust a private company to pay to bring them back!

The Russian space program was in rough shape in the 90s. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and funding for space exploration went with it. After that, everything was run on an absolute shoestring, including the money for supplying and maintaining their space station Mir.

Mir was the first-ever modular space station, and something of a trial project for the International Space Station (though of course the ISS wouldn't come about until Mir was already being retired). Despite the budgetary issues, it still set new records. In its time, it was the heaviest space station ever, the longest occupied (12.5 years straight). And it's still where the longest single human spaceflight was, at 437 days.

So where can the money come from? You could get other countries to pay for it. And they did: Many of Mir's occupants were from other nations, paying for their stay. And the Shuttle-Mir program saw seven astronauts stop on the station, bringing with them much-needed resupplies.

And, last but not least, advertising, of course. Many times, private companies paid for their products to be sent up to Mir for the astronauts to do product placement in their TV broadcasts. In one particularly galling event, the cosmonaut was ordered by the commercial's director to redo the shoot, because he wasn't smiling enough. Look closely enough, and you'll even see ad banners hung up in the Russian mission control center.

The end of Mir was inevitable, and it came right at the turn of the millennium. Its orbit was too far for integration with the new ISS. Usually you'd deorbit the station safely, but why not squeeze the tiniest bit of extra cash out of it?

Thus MirCorp was born. The company's plan was to maintain the station itself, and refurbish it into the world's first orbital movie studio! Plans got further than I'd expect: A movie star, Vladimir Steklov, was even trained and assigned for a flight to start filming.

Before that, the station had to be prepared, so MirCorp hired on Zalyotin and Kaleri, the latter of whom already had done two missions to Mir. Their job would be to reactivate the station months after it was abandoned by the previous crew in 1999.

They spent over two months working on the station, inspecting the interior and exterior for damage.

Soyuz TM-30 was the first privately-funded space flight, but it was the end of the story for Mir. MirCorp went out of business shortly thereafter, and no more flights could be made. The station was intentionally deorbited and burned in the atmosphere in 2001.

[edwhiteandblue]

Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, the record holder for longest single stay in space, watches Space Shuttle Discovery rendezvous with space station Mir through Mir's window (02/06/1995) | 📸 NASA