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In 100 km from Moscow by the Kiev highway there is a wonderful museum of strategic rocket forces in the training center of SRF. In a huge hangar customers can admire almost the entire history of the Soviet rocket production from the P-2 to the Topol. However, there is one drawback: the museum is located at the military unit and therefore ordinary people are not allowed to come here, and inordinary are allowed, but still many things are forbidden to be photographed. A variety of cars SRF lined up in an open area. Of course, not without their “master” – the Topol. It is easy to distinguish a RT-2PM Topol from a Topol-M RT-2PM2 by wheels: a first modification has 7 pairs of wheels. The engines are assembled on the MAZ-7917-15U168 chassis. During the Soviet era the production of the Topol was made by many Soviet republics, now the Topol-M has only one foreign detail, it is a chassis brought from Belarus. A gyrocompass is the most secret thing. Previously, it was so secret that it was impossible even to look at the right side of a car. Now you can examine its side, but the compass is strictly covered. |
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view The Museum of Rocket Forces in Balabanovo as presented by: English Russia |
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After several years of rotting in the open air on docks in Tushino, the spacecraft Buran will be restored, then demonstrated at the air show MAKS-2013. Recently the “Buran” was brought from Tushino to Zhukovsky, where it will be restored and displayed. So let’s look at the pride of the Soviet space industry. The spacecraft fuselage, its wings, fin, landing gear and other details were loaded onto a barge. Preparations for the move took about three months. This time includes the waiting for locks to start operating.According to the plan of designers the Buran would fly into space, but due to the suspension of funding of the program “Energy – Buran”, the spaceship was not completed. It was assembled at the Tushino engineering plant, and only 30-50% of the work were done. In October, 2004 the unfinished ship was transported from the factory to the mooring, which also belonged to the plant. There was no canopy over the vessel. urans were made at the Tushino engineering plant, then they were carried out to a nearby water reservoir and from there rafted along the Moscow river to Zhukovsky. An airplane “Atlas” transported the Buran from Zhukovsky to Baikonur. The first and the only flight of the Buran was made ?in November, 1988. In 1990 works on the program were suspended, in 1993 – were finally cut down.By the time of closing of the program, five flying spacecraft Buran had already been built or were under construction. According to one version in the museum there is the product 1.02 Buria, that was going to make a second flight in the automatic mode with a docking together with the manned space station “Mir”. According to another version there is only a mockup in the museum. |
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view The Second Chance For Buran as presented by: English Russia |
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Can you take a stainless cane with 3 mm in diameter and drill a hole of 2 mm alongside the cane at the depth of 3 cm? It’s fine if you can. Now let’s take a cane with 2 mm in diameter and drill an ideal 1 mm hole at the depth of 2 cm. Mind that you don’t have any power drill at your disposal but only a primitive hand brace used in 1970. Will you be successful this time? Hardly. Alexander’s favorite model is a twisted steel sword that forms a loop. It was not easy to bend the sword to get a beautiful loop. He adores weapons but hates wars. The sword is tied up and placed into the earth saying it’s time to stop wars all around the world. Today his collection consists of 50 models he has created for 30 years. He can tell you a lot about the history of the guns as well. Thus, the Thompson gun was used by American gangsters. Finding its schematic drawing was far from being easy. “The Thompson submachine gun”. Alexander is not going to shoe a flea yet as he is always busy as it is. Still, it is not a problem for him as he can turn his hand to almost anything. |
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view Master Of Miniature Guns as presented by: English Russia |
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Large Project 775 landing craft (otherwise known as “Ropucha I”) is a series of Soviet ships designed for landing of troops and loads on the shore. They are the base of the Russian Landing Fleet. Let’s explore their history and go aboard one of them. The Russian Navy had some requirements concerning this type of ships: a large landing craft had to be capable of carrying a battalion, a medium landing craft – a company, and a small landing craft – a platoon. Ironically, all of the already existed medium landing craft didn’t meet these requirements and in 1968 it was decided to design new medium landing craft called Project 775. The new project was designed in Poland thus its main constructor was a Pole. In a process of designing ships were reclassified from medium to large landing craft. The forerunner of the future ships was built in 1974. The first series consisted of 12 ships was finished in 1978 and called “Rapoucha I” in the West. The second series consisted of 16 ships was finished in 1992. They were called “Rapoucha II”. These ships must have been substituted by new Project 778 ships but after the breakup of the USSR, in 1992, both unfinished ships were destroyed. Large Project 775 landing ships were designed exclusively for the Navy of the USSR. None of them was a part of the Navy of any member states of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation. The only exception is the large landing craft given to Yemen in 1979. Besides the transportation of troops and loads Project 775 landing ships can also be used for installation of mine barriers, delivering humanitarian supplies and people’s evacuation from dangerous areas. It is capable of carrying 650 tons and covering the 4700-mile distance in any non-freezing seas and oceans. |
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view Russian Large Landing Craft as presented by: English Russia |
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The Silicium factory in Kazakhstan produces metallurgical silicon in a special way using special ore heat-treating furnaces. This is one of the biggest factories in the whole country and the only one specializing in this field. Silicon is the second most plentiful element of the Earth’s crust after oxygen. It is commonly found in the combinations with silica and silicate. Pure silicon is used in various semiconductor devices and metallurgy. Two types of products are made here: metal silicon (used in aluminium and chemical fields) and silicon dust (used in production of extra-strong dry building mixtures). Silicon of technical purity (up to 99.9%) is made at a temperature of 1800 C inside the ore heat-treating furnaces (the main admixtures are carbon and metals). The fireproof furnace is a kind of a round steel outer cover with a bottom lined up with fire bricks. Power supply is maintained by an electrode which is made of graphite and connected with a furnace transformer, energized by the low-voltage circuit. Silicon is being constantly delivered through a special hole into the steel moulds. The process of the silicon reduction is taking place inside the furnace with the shunted arc. The temperature here is about 1670 C. The main types of reducers include coal and charcoal (birch and pine). After having been molten inside the furnace, silica goes to the scoop and then is slopped into the moulds. Today it’s the only furnace which is in use at this factory but one more is going to start its work very soon. All the end products are exported to the European Union. By the way, the metallurgic silicon market value is € 2500 per ton. |
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view Metallurgical Silicon Production as presented by: English Russia |
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This spring a little village in Kazakhstan became famous all over the country. It has to pay a high price for it, though. One night water burst the water reservoir dam and practically wiped the tiny village off the face of the earth. The tragedy took many lives, caused a lot of damage to the citizens and radically changed their usual way of life. Early in the morning this woman went to the neighboring village and came back only in the afternoon. There was a lot of water everywhere. Probably, because of the rain, she thought. It was quiet and calm all around, people were working. Her daughter returned from school earlier than usual, she was told to go home and prepare all the documents and stay at home. At eight o’clock power supply was cut off and the family went to bed. The woman woke up because of the wind, she opened the door and water poured into the house. When the water reached the neck level they broke a window and saw that their belongings weres afloat around. “I escaped of the flood, because I have heard shouts- recalls a village schoolnurse – I don’t know for how long I ran then. Now I was given accomodation and furniture. Personally I feel fine. However people tell that they don’t have money to buy building materials to build barns for cattle, and also there is no work for them.” |
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view The Village Of Sad Destiny as presented by: English Russia |
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We hope you don’t mind to visit the Regional Center of Dog Service belonging to the Main Department of Internal Affairs. The first center of police tracker dogs appeared in St. Petersburg in 1909 and later it became the first cynological department of the Ministry of the Interior. But this time we are invited to the center of the Moscow Region. The center has 240 enclosures where they keep 120 dogs. 40% of cynologists are women. The enclosures are clean and neat. Some dog hotels look worse. In winter they are covered with greatcoat cloth and laid with straw. The main breed here - German shepherd. These dogs are better adapted to the Russian climate. However they also have Labradors and Rottweilers. Each day a dog is given one kilogram of by-products and 600 grams of cereals. But basically they use American dry feed PRO PAC. The company has won the tender this year and offered the best price. And now the performance part. Though it is not very impressive. The dogs do not bite with all their jaws, don’t jump from a distance, tear before they get an order. They understand that such detention may result in serious injuries, some kind of inheritance of the Soviet times. By the way, there are no universal dogs - drugs, explosives, tracking, patrolling. When a dog finds an explosive it makes a signal. It tries to show the place with its paws. The dogs trained to find weapons define the smell of powder and gun oil. In theory a dog can work with any cynologist but in practice - only with an owner. This one is a personal dog. They say that in Germany dogs are medalled but in Russia they are only special tools and don’t get rewards. German dogs are retired to have warm existence in their old age, Russian dogs may only hope to be taken to someone’s house. |
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view Military Working Dogs as presented by: English Russia |
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Back in August, 1995, Russian IL-76TD RA-76842 plane was captured by the militants from Taliban movement. Along with the plane an aircrew was also captured (8 people.) And today the story is going to go about this plane. IL-76 was owned by a private airlines from Kazan called Aerostan. The plane was subleased out by the Afghan government and was shipping ammunition supplies en-route Tirana-Sharjah-Kabul. The cargo was conforming with all norms of ICAO and was permitted for shipping. It was not their first flight to Kabul; special radio waves didn’t air any prohibitions or limitations for the flight. Everything was going alright. But over Afghanistan territory, while the plane was 8,000 meters high, it was captured by MIG-21 fighter jet which was owned by Taliban movement. A short time after the plane was forced to land at the airport of Kandahar city. No sooner than a year passed, 378 days if to be exact, before Russian pilots managed to make an outraging runaway; they played upon a silly blunt of security who allowed them to start repairing the plane. They were acting as sharp and consistently as ever: engineers were shutting the loading ramp, a pilot was starting engines and a radio operator was checking radio lines. Behavior or the air crew didn’t attract a bit of security’s attention. Maybe just the loading ramp made them somewhat uneasy. Slowly but firmly they were heading their way to a take-off which was too short. It’s not a fast thing to speed up a huge aircraft with some militants chasing you on a military car. But another capturing didn’t work this time and the plane got off from the last meter of the runway. |
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view Then Captured Plane as presented by: English Russia |
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