I remember being a kid in Russia in 90s. Economy in ruins. parents working all-day long just to bring food on the table, dirty streets, a lot crime, orphan kids on the streets sniffing glue. Even as a kid I felt how bad it all was. And I remember how me and my family went camping and fishing with friends. At night, when we sat near the fire camp, one of the grown ups told me to look at the sky and showned me a little white dot moving across the sky. "It is Space Station Mir. There are our Cosmonauts there". It probably was just a satellite, but at that moment I thought it was a space station, and it shocked my kids mind. Our, real russian space station in up there with real cosmonauts. It really contrasted with the poverty and gloominess of 90s. One of the brightest memories of my childhood. Needless to say, watching Mir going down in 2001 was heartbreaking.
That might probably NOT be a satellite,. A satellite is generally not big and bright enough to be seen on the ground, only objects like the Mir or the ISS is. If a satellite is that big, it would also make a headline (since it would had the space for humans onboard but chose to fill that space with equipment -it would be a super satellite!). I haven't heard about such powerful and versatile satellite being launched back then, therefore the chance that it was Mir was quite high! Edit: the information here is my own experience and opinion, which is not correct, see more comments below from people living in areas with clearer sky.
Oh, by the way, there must be records online about the exact location about the position of Mir throughout its life (which is not hard to calculate considering it's been in a stable orbit). You can verify whether the Mir was visible at that point on that day. (With the assumption that you remember which day it was...)
I was an American kid at the same time (15 in 1991) and we got some news of how bad it was for you all. I'm not gonna say my feelings around Mir's end in any way compare to yours, but I was incredibly sad to see the storied station go down. I remember checking the newspaper in late 91/early 92 all the time to see if the stranded cosmonaut had been brought home yet. I couldn't grasp the enormity of what was happening, not really, but I could focus on that one thing.
胡嘉君 on a clear night, without lots of city/background lights satellites are easily visible. On a clear night here in NW Washington I can go outside and watch the sky for 10 minutes and see about 3 satellites on average. There are currently only 2 space stations - the ISS and China's new station, unfortunately the name escapes me - orbiting the earth and they both do so approx every 90 minutes because of their orbits (250 miles up, 17,500 mph). Even small satellites are visible on a clear night with minimal background light pollution. And there are thousands and thousands of them to be seen on any given night.
@@andyhu9542 you can easily see the satellites, I remember watching them at night during summer vacation as a kid in the late 80's. I still look them up when I'm somewhere with no light pollution.
3:29 Correction: the Buran did make it into space in 1988. However it was an unmanned mission. The Buran demonstrated fully computer-controlled landing capabilities during that mission.
You beat me to it! From my understanding, it was "world", from meeting a few cosmonauts many moons ago by chance. Peace would also have been a clever/sly bit of Soviet punning, too, and "world peace community" would have been even better.
@@JPMadden Pre- C20th peasants the world over didn't get to travel unless they were either sailors or criminals... Now, as I was told by a cosmonaut who actually appeared in that video, I think we'll take his word for it, eh?
There is something worth mentioning: the US did not fund the Russian space program out of kindness or a newfound generosity. The Soviet Union had hundreds of highly trained and highly experienced rocket scientists and engineers who would be out of a job if the US wouldn't give Russia the money to keep those people employed. And countries like Iran and North Korea (and others the US wouldn't want having access to advanced rocket technology) would be happy to offer them jobs instead. So the US decided it was a prudent investment, leaving them to deal with the devil they knew, and not gamble on what would come next.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. This channel is not very old. So the first video on this channel, he looks exactly like he does now. You can see on TopTenz that he started shaving his head years ago
Buran actually went to space once albeit unmanned but it was nearly a perfect mission. Buran was also much more capable than Space Shuttle. Such a shame that the program got cancelled.
I just want to thank the writer for when talking about the time MIR was built not saying "the height of the Cold War". It's so rare to hear about space programs of the US and USSR and it not be described as such.
Niel deGrasse Tyson said it best. Sputnik meant fellow traveler. Our Atlas V was just an amped up V2 rocket. The space race was extremely military oriented. Yes, we did amazing things, but we were both strapping guys and girls to ICBMs in a ridiculous contest.
@@tokyosmash it does, once. And yes, such vehicles are normally remote controlled. Newer ones like SpaceX do it all by the computer it self. You don't have to transmission what it should do, it do it automatically.
@@xXDrocenXx actually it wasnt remotely controlled but it use rudimentary digital computers with hardware synchronization to fly in complete automatic mode... it was even able to automatically start correct abort scenario without ground or pilot (future plan) input...
Funny thing about the somewhat relaxed daily schedule aboard the space station is, that back in the days of the Skylab missions, the exact opposite led to morale breakdown and something quite resembling a mutiny, when the crew outright refused to follow orders from the control center due to being overworked and still falling severely behind the plan. It is ever since then I believe that this more relaxed work regime got adopted.
that's not what happened. Yes the crew was over worked and the crew decided to have morning briefs with mission control attended by one person and then that crew member would inform the other 2. One morning the overworked mission commander simply forgot to turn on the radio and the other 2 crew members kept working, he realized his mistake later and by the next orbit communications were back on. This incident though did lead to some talks where the crew told mission control how overworked they were and mission control then relaxed the schedule allowing them to spend more time on tasks rather than rushing things. It wasn't a mutiny
I was a 10 year old kid fascinated with space when MIR came down. I still have a newspaper from the day. I was pretty upset by the loss of a legend, but was really excited about the ISS. My classmates were also excited, but not because of the ISS. You see, Taco Bell had placed a giant target out in the ocean and promised everyone a free taco if a piece of MIR hit the target. It didn't happen...
bonus fact: in Brazil there´s an expression called "things are Russian" (a coisa tá Russa) meaning something is mega hard and nearly impossible to destroy
The ISS's parts were delivered by an awesome plane called the "Guppy". I remember because I saw a part of it at the local airport on it's way to Cape Canaveral. It was really neat.
Great video!! Mir was really quite the epic achievement in many ways. As to feeling old - look, I remember when Skylab was a big deal, okay? Hoping that humanity at LEAST gets some kind of station on the Moon before I die, dangit.
Yes, all of us ' oldies ' remember the good old days... 50 odd years since the moon landings, almost no progress since ( apart from a few space stations ) and I think they should be trying to make some kind of gravity module or wheel, similar to the beautiful 2001 film wheel... They simply MUST have earth gravity, for the people to live properly up in space...
13:22 Mir is over the Cook Strait in NZ. I can almost see my house (I was living in the Nelson region at the time, but I was probably away working at sea). It reminds me of all the skydiving I did back then in Nelson and Motueka.
Chelomei's TKS (which eventually was recycled as part of Mir) always fascinated me - especially with its heatshield hatch and pressurised compartment in the rear 'FGB' module, it felt more 'spaceship-like', compared to Soyuz. Mind you, I grew up watching Space 1999, with its 'Eagles', so in my mind a spaceship HAD TO have a door/tunnel behind the pilots ;-)
The book Dragonfly (I haven't finished reading yet) talks about US and Russia working together on Mir. What stood out to me was most NASA astronauts wanted nothing to do with Mir and astronaut office had to scramble to find those willing to do a Mir mission. Russia wanted astronauts to have spaceflight experience before serving on Mir and one astronaut willing to serve on Linenger was fast tracked to a Shuttle mission shortly after becoming an astronaut. There were other issues which one has to ask "did they really do that or this happened?"
At 11:35 you can really see how jacked up that lower right panel is getting from space debris hitting it. Such a sad loss, I always regret watching such things, both symbol and an actual home in space for so many years, fall.
1) I believe the footage of "Mir's reentry" @ 1:35 is actually film of the destruction of Colombia on her fatal reentry. 2) if the above is correct, I think it is at best, insensitive and demeaning to all the Colombia heroes that perished, to use images of. their. deaths. As representation of the end of the Mir mission that, while dramatic, suffered no loss of life. There probably isn't any real footage of Mirs Detroit so alternative images can be fine. There are literally hundreds of films of things reentering the atmosphere that could substitute for Mir. It just shouldn't be of heroes ihn their deaths I do love almost all of your stuff Simon, including this one! Keep up the good work!
Another scary thing about the MIR fire was that smoke was everywhere. Smoke didn't rise to the top. In free fall smoke just mixes with all the air, you couldn't crawl under the smoke
I wonder is the wreckage in the pacific ocean has been traced and if there are still pieces a "treasure hunter" deep sea exploration team could pick up for historical significance.
Think it would have been largely machined from billet aluminum like the ISS meaning whatever twisted melted wreckage survived re entry has probably rotted away at the bottom of the ocean since unfortunately.
Suggestion: It's a dark topic but "The Search for What Went Wrong in the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster". Seems there's a lot less content on that than there is for the Challenger disaster so it would be quite interesting to see a dive into it.
OH MY GOD I had just commented on your Salyut 7 video on another channel that i'd love for you to do one on the Mir! Then the magic happened and here we are. Good on you Simon. Top work old chap!
I can't wait until there's a space station orbiting the moon, it's called Gateway and it's a vital part of the Artemis progam. The Artemis program will no doubt inspire many children to be astronauts or in other space professions, as the Apollo and space shuttle programs did for current scientists. There's no end to the awesomeness of space. 😂
yup yup it’s an epic goodie. Manual docking to Mir, 2 month shake-down & unpacking of the new furniture. Then over to Salyut-7, pack up the house over 2 months, do a couple of EVAs to bring in the clothes-line, then back to Mir
Simon, what gives? You totally should do a video on Bagger 293 and or Bingham Canyon copper mine! They are both mega in their own way! At the very least they should get side projects videos on them!
Great video. I've been hoping you'd do Mir for ages. I think a video on the Salyut stations would also be very interesting, and I don't think anyone can deny they were a megaproject in their own right.
i saw it go by on its last orbit ...skywatching, looking for some thing ...saw the streak... didn't really know at the time...later ...wow! end of an era of my youth.
Simon, do a talk about the water cycle. Rain isn't just water, you know and every drop has been through many (mostly non human) kidneys in the last few hundred million years. It's not just water, there's other nutrient cycles that reuse the same resources over and over. Pick any person in history or prehistoric animal and chances are you have a few atoms in your body that were once in them.
If I recall correctly, there was a single Cosmonaut on the station when the USSR fell. He was stuck up there for so long that he set a record for number of days in space continuously at the time and had to do serious physical rehabilitation when he got back to Earth.
The Buran space shuttle "unfortunately never made it into space". Someone hasn't done his homework... yes it did, it completed a single orbit unmanned. Need to be careful, also, with the current Orion Space Capsule, which is neither docking-rated nor man-rated.
The Day I watched the MIR Space station burn up in the Atmosphere I was very sad. It represented advancement, change, cooperation. Never forget the Cosmonauts!
Surely the day the crew got locked out side had to be one of the highlights. The ISS did not follow from MIR, it overlapped. That means that the last day every single human was on the Earth, was the day before MIR was first occupied. This should be a holiday.
For a future Mega Project consider "Rockets that are Reusable". The idea itself goes back to the earliest days where space travel by rockets was envisioned as well documented in Buck Rogers but proved surprisingly hard to accomplish.
Suggestion: Space programs of countries other than the USA and Russia, such as, China. Also, the rise of the steel industry in Pennsylvania, particularly, Pittsburgh.
It literally blows my mind how long it takes at least some American public schools to begin upgrading their textbooks. The Soviet Union was dissolved not long after I turned 2 yet when I was in elementary school the books we used still didn't call it Russia, it was still the Soviet Union. I also remember wall maps having it all labeled as the Soviet Union. Same with 9/11. It happened while I was in 7th grade and I went through the rest of middle school and all of highschool without it ever being mentioned in textbooks
8:02 do you have never ask yourself, what tap water is? i dont know how its done in you location, but its basically cleaned and processed dirty water. Beside... maybe a good topic for a new megaprojects episode?! Waterdistributionsystem are hugh!
Megaprojects - FALSE , the FIRST American Space Station was the MOL - Manned Operating Lab. it had a Crew of 2 , and used a Gemini B capsule as Transport and Lifeboat. the Russian ALMAZ was similar but Smaller in scope . later on we had the Skylab Project , with a crew of 3 , and used Apollo Command and Service modules. and the Space Shuttle had Space HAB , and Space LAB.
That was a very interesting video, at the time I have vague memories of the US/USSR space programmes, but thought little about it, that summed it all up well. I know I have seen other videos on bringing Germany from a smoking pile of rubble into the jewel of Europe, but could you do 1 ?, it would be awesome, if that wasn't a mega project I don't know what is, cheers.
MIR is my favorite space station, it was up when i was a little kid and i was always amazed that something like was orbiting the Earth. Btw, nice amount of subscribers, haha, 666K Also, 7:49 that's the Ren & Stimpy intro, but it sounds more high def, is this someone else's version, or is it the album/soundtrack version? 13:24 Hah, very nice to see Ren & Stimpy on this episode, as i love MIR & Ren & Stimpy! 14:24 Hey, that's Chris Hadfield, i had no idea that he was on MIR as well.
Simon, Before saying this was your favourite episode in a while, i had decided the same thing. Your enjoyment of the subject is clear from the beginning. It's a good thing!:-) 🖖
Sergei Krikalev was a russian cosmonaut who launched just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and was actually stranded on Mir until they figured out how to get him down. Can you imagine being in space and seeing the country that launched you dissolve?
If you love space stuff do one on spacex’s starship. It’s just a prototype right now, but if it’s even 1/10’th as successful as they hope it would be the biggest leap forward since Apollo. Also, what they have actually achieved down in Texas at this point is a mega project in itself. Look at what they have built in just over 2 years
I like your videos! I think you missed an opportunity here, to mention that Taco Bell, the restaurant chain, placed a target in the pacific ocean. Taco Bell promised everyone on earth a free taco if any part of Mir impacted the target. :-)
You should do a video on Mircorp, the private company that tried to buy Mir and actually paid to launch a mission to inspect the station. It would have to hold the record for most expensive home inspection from a prospective real estate buyer in history. Along with Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Russian ICBMs to send to Mars it has to be the most batshit crazy story from private space entrepreneurs. FYI about the Musk story, he wanted to send mice to Mars originally before he changed it to seeds which he would grow into plants in a small greenhouse using Martian soil. He attempted to buy 3 ICBMs (without the nuclear warhead) but got sick of the Russians dicking him around and continually raising the price, which was why he decided to build rockets himself and founded SoaceX. When he first talked about sending mice one of his friends bought him an enormous wheel of cheese as a joke, saying he had all the food supplies he needed for the mission now. Years later Musk sent the same wheel of cheese in the first Dragon cargo capsule to dock with the ISS.
16:09 Actually Russia and the Soviet union used a nitrogen oxygen mix for their spacecraft atmospheres. Only the us used to use oxygen rich environments.
Doing cardio exercise in space , like on a treadmill would probably make you lose body strength, while in space ? You would probably need to do more strength related exercise like weights or days off exercise? Some cardio might help with metabolism energy though because I'm not sure how blood pumps around a body with decreased gravity
I still wish someone would have bought Mir and turned it into a space hotel. Yes this suggestion was very much floating around the Internet and news back in the late 90s.
The Buran did go into space, on a test launch, achieving its most important mission: allowing Glushko to one-up his late rival Korolev. Ironically it ended up using kerosene, hydrogen, and oxygen, instead of UDMH, N2O4, and petty rivalry.
The booze was a bit of surprise and contention with the first Astronauts on Mir, but even more so when coming home on the Soyuz because the Cosmos brought a "survival" pistol along in case the capsule came down in Siberia. Guns on a space station were a no-go in NASA.
It's a bit funny how history is unfolding. Both the US and USSR wanted a station, and a shuttle. The US made a working shuttle, but due to cost overruns, had to cancel the station. The USSR also had cost overruns, but they cancelled the shuttle. So one side had a shuttle, but no station to fly to and the other side had a station but no shuttle to fly to it. Imagine if they had started to cooperate earlier, together having both a shuttle and a station.
The ISS has been in orbit since November 20, 1998 so it'll have been in orbit for 23 years in 19 days. You're right, that makes me feel old. Just like the fact that 9/11 happened 20 years ago. I was in 7th grade when that happened. I'm the oldest out of my siblings. 1 was born in 92 and the other 2 were both born after 9/11 and they seem to love making me feel old just because I'm the only one born in the 80s
This may make you feel even older, the ISS is essentially a Mir class station with loads of extra modules attached by other countries, it's core module was built alongside Mir's and originally designated Mir 2 (this is why the Russian sections look so bad, because some of them are 30+ years old).
16:45 The scary thing about sealing off the compartment was all the hoses, air ducts, and wires that were run through the hatchways between modules. Very un NASA.
please, please, please New horizons. My Son was born just before it was launched and I remember telling him for his primary school space lesson about all the planets and the only thing I could say about Pluto - which was a planet at that time - was it was 'slightly pink' thanks due to the Hubble images. I remember waiting a decade for that probe unveil what it did., which was, spectacular!
I remember being a kid in Russia in 90s. Economy in ruins. parents working all-day long just to bring food on the table, dirty streets, a lot crime, orphan kids on the streets sniffing glue. Even as a kid I felt how bad it all was. And I remember how me and my family went camping and fishing with friends. At night, when we sat near the fire camp, one of the grown ups told me to look at the sky and showned me a little white dot moving across the sky. "It is Space Station Mir. There are our Cosmonauts there". It probably was just a satellite, but at that moment I thought it was a space station, and it shocked my kids mind. Our, real russian space station in up there with real cosmonauts. It really contrasted with the poverty and gloominess of 90s. One of the brightest memories of my childhood. Needless to say, watching Mir going down in 2001 was heartbreaking.
That might probably NOT be a satellite,. A satellite is generally not big and bright enough to be seen on the ground, only objects like the Mir or the ISS is. If a satellite is that big, it would also make a headline (since it would had the space for humans onboard but chose to fill that space with equipment -it would be a super satellite!). I haven't heard about such powerful and versatile satellite being launched back then, therefore the chance that it was Mir was quite high!
Edit: the information here is my own experience and opinion, which is not correct, see more comments below from people living in areas with clearer sky.
Oh, by the way, there must be records online about the exact location about the position of Mir throughout its life (which is not hard to calculate considering it's been in a stable orbit). You can verify whether the Mir was visible at that point on that day. (With the assumption that you remember which day it was...)
I was an American kid at the same time (15 in 1991) and we got some news of how bad it was for you all. I'm not gonna say my feelings around Mir's end in any way compare to yours, but I was incredibly sad to see the storied station go down. I remember checking the newspaper in late 91/early 92 all the time to see if the stranded cosmonaut had been brought home yet. I couldn't grasp the enormity of what was happening, not really, but I could focus on that one thing.
胡嘉君 on a clear night, without lots of city/background lights satellites are easily visible.
On a clear night here in NW Washington I can go outside and watch the sky for 10 minutes and see about 3 satellites on average.
There are currently only 2 space stations - the ISS and China's new station, unfortunately the name escapes me - orbiting the earth and they both do so approx every 90 minutes because of their orbits (250 miles up, 17,500 mph).
Even small satellites are visible on a clear night with minimal background light pollution. And there are thousands and thousands of them to be seen on any given night.
@@andyhu9542 you can easily see the satellites, I remember watching them at night during summer vacation as a kid in the late 80's. I still look them up when I'm somewhere with no light pollution.
3:29 Correction: the Buran did make it into space in 1988. However it was an unmanned mission. The Buran demonstrated fully computer-controlled landing capabilities during that mission.
this is correct
Word "Mir" means different things:
1) Peace
2) World
3) Community
You beat me to it! From my understanding, it was "world", from meeting a few cosmonauts many moons ago by chance. Peace would also have been a clever/sly bit of Soviet punning, too, and "world peace community" would have been even better.
I also heard it translated to mean the "world of the village." Think of pre-20th century peasants--their world was the village.
@@JPMadden Pre- C20th peasants the world over didn't get to travel unless they were either sailors or criminals... Now, as I was told by a cosmonaut who actually appeared in that video, I think we'll take his word for it, eh?
@@peterjones596 That's my point--they didn't travel, so their village was the world. Also, the unnecessary snark is not appreciated.
Right now it suggests "Russkij mir", or "Russian peace / village / community", which in practice means Russian war, cruelty, destruction and tyranny.
There is something worth mentioning: the US did not fund the Russian space program out of kindness or a newfound generosity. The Soviet Union had hundreds of highly trained and highly experienced rocket scientists and engineers who would be out of a job if the US wouldn't give Russia the money to keep those people employed. And countries like Iran and North Korea (and others the US wouldn't want having access to advanced rocket technology) would be happy to offer them jobs instead. So the US decided it was a prudent investment, leaving them to deal with the devil they knew, and not gamble on what would come next.
Very good comment, indeed.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket You nailed it. ALL the political class are indeed douche bags.
Oh I am sure those Russian rocket scientist were just clamoring to go to Iran or North Korea if they threw them a couple pennies.
better that cultures work together in space than start another nasty conflict on mother earth
no matter what or why we did it. it was for are good
The ISS video is so old, you can still the see ghost of Simon's hair ;)
It's the 1st one that is posted on Megaprojects actually
Absolute violation 💀
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. This channel is not very old. So the first video on this channel, he looks exactly like he does now. You can see on TopTenz that he started shaving his head years ago
@@nickdaveNDM True I may have no idea but you clearly have no sense of humour
😂😂😂 I'm not sure what's funnier, the people missing the joke completely or the joke itself
3:30 The Buran shuttle did make it to space. It flew a test mission unmanned.
1:55 - Chapter 1 - Beginnings
4:00 - Chapter 2 - Scrambling to launch
5:25 - Chapter 3 - Early MIR
8:55 - Chapter 4 - End of an era
11:30 - Chapter 5 - MIR grows
13:10 - Chapter 6 - Life on MIR
15:25 - Chapter 7 - Accidents
16:55 - Chapter 8 - The end
- Chapter 9 -
- Chapter 10 -
Legend thanks
Buran actually went to space once albeit unmanned but it was nearly a perfect mission. Buran was also much more capable than Space Shuttle. Such a shame that the program got cancelled.
it is time to rebuild the soviet space program
@@kurtwollermann2210 20-30 years to late and more times expensive.
Hardly more capable when it was smaller and never saw real service. Whatever helps bring peace to your inferiority complex I guess.
@@adub1300 bruh did the space shuttle do a full autonomous maiden flight
Didn't think so
@@ethannorton564 the first several flights of the Enterprise were fully automated.
Mir means "The World", "Peace" and "cooperation"/"community" which most stories miss.
"I thought drinking in space was not allowed! Epic!"
ACCIDENTS
I just want to thank the writer for when talking about the time MIR was built not saying "the height of the Cold War". It's so rare to hear about space programs of the US and USSR and it not be described as such.
Niel deGrasse Tyson said it best. Sputnik meant fellow traveler. Our Atlas V was just an amped up V2 rocket. The space race was extremely military oriented. Yes, we did amazing things, but we were both strapping guys and girls to ICBMs in a ridiculous contest.
@@WaywardVet it's the way humanity works. Necessity is the mother of invention but war is its much more motivating father.
3:39 Buran did go into space. albeit, only once & unmanned.
ONLY remote vehicle to do so and land by itself.
@@tokyosmash it does, once. And yes, such vehicles are normally remote controlled. Newer ones like SpaceX do it all by the computer it self. You don't have to transmission what it should do, it do it automatically.
@@xXDrocenXx actually it wasnt remotely controlled but it use rudimentary digital computers with hardware synchronization to fly in complete automatic mode... it was even able to automatically start correct abort scenario without ground or pilot (future plan) input...
@@xXDrocenXx this was in 1988, my guy. 33 years is an eternity when it comes to technology.
Funny thing about the somewhat relaxed daily schedule aboard the space station is, that back in the days of the Skylab missions, the exact opposite led to morale breakdown and something quite resembling a mutiny, when the crew outright refused to follow orders from the control center due to being overworked and still falling severely behind the plan. It is ever since then I believe that this more relaxed work regime got adopted.
that's not what happened. Yes the crew was over worked and the crew decided to have morning briefs with mission control attended by one person and then that crew member would inform the other 2. One morning the overworked mission commander simply forgot to turn on the radio and the other 2 crew members kept working, he realized his mistake later and by the next orbit communications were back on. This incident though did lead to some talks where the crew told mission control how overworked they were and mission control then relaxed the schedule allowing them to spend more time on tasks rather than rushing things. It wasn't a mutiny
I was a 10 year old kid fascinated with space when MIR came down. I still have a newspaper from the day. I was pretty upset by the loss of a legend, but was really excited about the ISS. My classmates were also excited, but not because of the ISS. You see, Taco Bell had placed a giant target out in the ocean and promised everyone a free taco if a piece of MIR hit the target. It didn't happen...
Ha, Oh man, that's something.
bonus fact: in Brazil there´s an expression called "things are Russian" (a coisa tá Russa) meaning something is mega hard and nearly impossible to destroy
The ISS's parts were delivered by an awesome plane called the "Guppy". I remember because I saw a part of it at the local airport on it's way to Cape Canaveral. It was really neat.
Great video!! Mir was really quite the epic achievement in many ways.
As to feeling old - look, I remember when Skylab was a big deal, okay?
Hoping that humanity at LEAST gets some kind of station on the Moon before I die, dangit.
Yes, all of us ' oldies ' remember the good old days... 50 odd years since the moon landings, almost no progress since ( apart from a few space stations ) and I think they should be trying to make some kind of gravity module or wheel, similar to the beautiful 2001 film wheel... They simply MUST have earth gravity, for the people to live properly up in space...
13:22 Mir is over the Cook Strait in NZ. I can almost see my house (I was living in the Nelson region at the time, but I was probably away working at sea). It reminds me of all the skydiving I did back then in Nelson and Motueka.
Chelomei's TKS (which eventually was recycled as part of Mir) always fascinated me - especially with its heatshield hatch and pressurised compartment in the rear 'FGB' module, it felt more 'spaceship-like', compared to Soyuz. Mind you, I grew up watching Space 1999, with its 'Eagles', so in my mind a spaceship HAD TO have a door/tunnel behind the pilots ;-)
The book Dragonfly (I haven't finished reading yet) talks about US and Russia working together on Mir. What stood out to me was most NASA astronauts wanted nothing to do with Mir and astronaut office had to scramble to find those willing to do a Mir mission. Russia wanted astronauts to have spaceflight experience before serving on Mir and one astronaut willing to serve on Linenger was fast tracked to a Shuttle mission shortly after becoming an astronaut. There were other issues which one has to ask "did they really do that or this happened?"
I would highly suggest picking up that book if you find space history interesting, it is an excellent read!
At 11:35 you can really see how jacked up that lower right panel is getting from space debris hitting it. Such a sad loss, I always regret watching such things, both symbol and an actual home in space for so many years, fall.
“This is your piss, Demetri” 🤣😂
“Now I’m off to take a golden shower” 😂
1) I believe the footage of "Mir's reentry" @ 1:35 is actually film of the destruction of Colombia on her fatal reentry.
2) if the above is correct, I think it is at best, insensitive and demeaning to all the Colombia heroes that perished, to use images of. their. deaths. As representation of the end of the Mir mission that, while dramatic, suffered no loss of life. There probably isn't any real footage of Mirs Detroit so alternative images can be fine. There are literally hundreds of films of things reentering the atmosphere that could substitute for Mir. It just shouldn't be of heroes ihn their deaths
I do love almost all of your stuff Simon, including this one! Keep up the good work!
Nope, it's Mir: ruclips.net/video/fVQd9Ejkbiw/видео.html
Why do you think there wouldn't be footage? This was a BIG media event at the time.
Another scary thing about the MIR fire was that smoke was everywhere. Smoke didn't rise to the top. In free fall smoke just mixes with all the air, you couldn't crawl under the smoke
Thanks. Could tell you enjoyed that. More space related content please. There is so much happening with space flight and exploration today.
I wonder is the wreckage in the pacific ocean has been traced and if there are still pieces a "treasure hunter" deep sea exploration team could pick up for historical significance.
Think it would have been largely machined from billet aluminum like the ISS meaning whatever twisted melted wreckage survived re entry has probably rotted away at the bottom of the ocean since unfortunately.
Good stuff! Can you do a video on how the GPS system came about?
He did a bit about it on Today I Found Out a year ago. Not sure if it covered the beginning tho.
Suggestion: It's a dark topic but "The Search for What Went Wrong in the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster". Seems there's a lot less content on that than there is for the Challenger disaster so it would be quite interesting to see a dive into it.
Agreed, seems it is insignificant compared to Challenger and given it happened months prior to 9/11 it never got the attention it so rightly deserved.
OH MY GOD I had just commented on your Salyut 7 video on another channel that i'd love for you to do one on the Mir! Then the magic happened and here we are. Good on you Simon. Top work old chap!
I can't wait until there's a space station orbiting the moon, it's called Gateway and it's a vital part of the Artemis progam.
The Artemis program will no doubt inspire many children to be astronauts or in other space professions, as the Apollo and space shuttle programs did for current scientists.
There's no end to the awesomeness of space. 😂
Artemis video coming soon :)
@@megaprojects9649 FINALLY 😂
Since it's NASA, you'll simply have to wait.
Another epic story is that in 1986 there was first in history Station to Station flight: Soyuz spacecraft went from Mir to Salut-7 space station
yup yup it’s an epic goodie.
Manual docking to Mir, 2 month shake-down & unpacking of the new furniture.
Then over to Salyut-7, pack up the house over 2 months, do a couple of EVAs to bring in the clothes-line, then back to Mir
Simon, what gives? You totally should do a video on Bagger 293 and or Bingham Canyon copper mine! They are both mega in their own way! At the very least they should get side projects videos on them!
No video about any of the various baggers can ever top bagger 288 it pretty much tells you everything about it 😉
@@hawlitakerful it is a big one for sure, but 293 holds the world record as the largest vehicle in history. It was built after 288.
@@StarScapesOG i know i know
In case you didn't get the reference...
ruclips.net/video/azEvfD4C6ow/видео.html
It was more of a comedic remark
@@hawlitakerful haha! I did not get that reference, I had never seen that clip before! But it is hilarious!
Great video. I've been hoping you'd do Mir for ages.
I think a video on the Salyut stations would also be very interesting, and I don't think anyone can deny they were a megaproject in their own right.
The weightlessness part of space and the effects it has on us just goes to show how specifically geared humans are to survive on THIS planet.
"Geriatric danger" sounds... cooler than it has any right to, probably xD
"Geriatric danger" describes most politicians. So many old fools!
It's a nice band name 🤣
"The original space habitat" … that would be Salyut, in 1971, with its groundbreaking successor Salyut stations up to Salyut 7.
I remember when there were bets on where MIR would come down. Taco Bell had a target and promised free tacos if a piece of MIR hit it.
This was my suggestion! Thanks so much Simon! Your channels are absolutely awesome to watch. 🤘🏻
i saw it go by on its last orbit ...skywatching, looking for some thing ...saw the streak... didn't really know at the time...later ...wow! end of an era of my youth.
Excellent writing and entertaining delivery. Well done again. I quite enjoy these videos of yours sir.
Skylab? Dad launched Humans to Skylab way before Mir had diapers!
Simon, do a talk about the water cycle. Rain isn't just water, you know and every drop has been through many (mostly non human) kidneys in the last few hundred million years. It's not just water, there's other nutrient cycles that reuse the same resources over and over. Pick any person in history or prehistoric animal and chances are you have a few atoms in your body that were once in them.
You can see that Simon has a lot of fun on this video.
"Mir" also means "world", not only "peace"
It thought Mir means Moon?
Can you imagine both? World peace. That would be great. Having world peace.
@@ClamBake7525 Luna is Moon.
@@FrankyPi duh, I thought Mir in Russian meant moon.
In Russian, "Mir" literally means "peace" as it does in most other slavic languages, my native language included.
In what language does it mean world?
Already did a Dyson sphere, so now do an O'Neil cylinder since stuff that hasn't been built yet is fair game.
If I recall correctly, there was a single Cosmonaut on the station when the USSR fell. He was stuck up there for so long that he set a record for number of days in space continuously at the time and had to do serious physical rehabilitation when he got back to Earth.
Great video Simon and your set look great. :)
The Buran space shuttle "unfortunately never made it into space". Someone hasn't done his homework... yes it did, it completed a single orbit unmanned. Need to be careful, also, with the current Orion Space Capsule, which is neither docking-rated nor man-rated.
Two orbits?
The Day I watched the MIR Space station burn up in the Atmosphere I was very sad. It represented advancement, change, cooperation. Never forget the Cosmonauts!
Megaprojects with 666k subscribers. November 1st, 2021.
Congrats Simon "beelzabub" Whistler
03:30 hang on - it most certainly made it into space - just without a crew.
@7:56 "The Dog Pound Hop" from "Ren & Stimpy" starts playing.... I lost it. Didn't hear that one coming.
Surely the day the crew got locked out side had to be one of the highlights. The ISS did not follow from MIR, it overlapped. That means that the last day every single human was on the Earth, was the day before MIR was first occupied. This should be a holiday.
That's 35 years since every human has been on the planet at once, crazy.
For a future Mega Project consider "Rockets that are Reusable". The idea itself goes back to the earliest days where space travel by rockets was envisioned as well documented in Buck Rogers but proved surprisingly hard to accomplish.
Thank you egg of wisdom, for shedding this information on my brain
That's a hairy egg
Yet another great video Nomis 👍👌
I love this space stuff, too! Do more!
I really suggest you doing the ITER fusion reactor in france the tech and engineering put into that is insane.
Looking forward to these videos to learn new things, and the memes that are sprinkled in. Interesting and hilarious
I love your space videos. Could we more information on lunar landings and maybe something about the dark side of the moon?
Suggestion: Space programs of countries other than the USA and Russia, such as, China.
Also, the rise of the steel industry in Pennsylvania, particularly, Pittsburgh.
+1
It literally blows my mind how long it takes at least some American public schools to begin upgrading their textbooks. The Soviet Union was dissolved not long after I turned 2 yet when I was in elementary school the books we used still didn't call it Russia, it was still the Soviet Union. I also remember wall maps having it all labeled as the Soviet Union. Same with 9/11. It happened while I was in 7th grade and I went through the rest of middle school and all of highschool without it ever being mentioned in textbooks
What state were you in? That makes a huge difference in the quality of public education. Even from town to town there can be big disparities.
The Buran never got into space, but it got onto Megaprojects and that's just as good.
Buran did go to space November 1988 unmanned, & made 2 orbits before it re-entered the atmosphere & landed safely but it never flew again.
@@frankchan4272 (Just go with it, man.)
8:02 do you have never ask yourself, what tap water is? i dont know how its done in you location, but its basically cleaned and processed dirty water. Beside... maybe a good topic for a new megaprojects episode?! Waterdistributionsystem are hugh!
Nice video as always! Make a video about Brasilia - the city was built in 1000 days!
Simon, my man, you need a space channel on youtube
Megaprojects - FALSE , the FIRST American Space Station was the MOL - Manned Operating Lab.
it had a Crew of 2 , and used a Gemini B capsule as Transport and Lifeboat.
the Russian ALMAZ was similar but Smaller in scope .
later on we had the Skylab Project , with a crew of 3 , and used Apollo Command and Service modules.
and the Space Shuttle had Space HAB , and Space LAB.
That was a very interesting video, at the time I have vague memories of the US/USSR space programmes, but thought little about it, that summed it all up well. I know I have seen other videos on bringing Germany from a smoking pile of rubble into the jewel of Europe, but could you do 1 ?, it would be awesome, if that wasn't a mega project I don't know what is, cheers.
Finally
Thank you Simon
You rock Simon! thx for video!
"Dimitri, we told you not to eat any asparragus before liftoff!"
MIR is my favorite space station, it was up when i was a little kid and i was always amazed that something like was orbiting the Earth.
Btw, nice amount of subscribers, haha, 666K
Also, 7:49 that's the Ren & Stimpy intro, but it sounds more high def, is this someone else's version, or is it the album/soundtrack version?
13:24 Hah, very nice to see Ren & Stimpy on this episode, as i love MIR & Ren & Stimpy!
14:24 Hey, that's Chris Hadfield, i had no idea that he was on MIR as well.
Simon,
Before saying this was your favourite episode in a while, i had decided the same thing. Your enjoyment of the subject is clear from the beginning. It's a good thing!:-) 🖖
Sergei Krikalev was a russian cosmonaut who launched just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and was actually stranded on Mir until they figured out how to get him down. Can you imagine being in space and seeing the country that launched you dissolve?
Super megaproject
Excellent video 📹 👏
Amazing engineering
If you love space stuff do one on spacex’s starship. It’s just a prototype right now, but if it’s even 1/10’th as successful as they hope it would be the biggest leap forward since Apollo. Also, what they have actually achieved down in Texas at this point is a mega project in itself. Look at what they have built in just over 2 years
I like your videos! I think you missed an opportunity here, to mention that Taco Bell, the restaurant chain, placed a target in the pacific ocean. Taco Bell promised everyone on earth a free taco if any part of Mir impacted the target. :-)
My favorite part of this video was 1:10 where Simon very *nearly* had a Blaze moment and you could SEE him remember which channel he's on.
Thank you
You should do a video on Mircorp, the private company that tried to buy Mir and actually paid to launch a mission to inspect the station. It would have to hold the record for most expensive home inspection from a prospective real estate buyer in history.
Along with Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Russian ICBMs to send to Mars it has to be the most batshit crazy story from private space entrepreneurs.
FYI about the Musk story, he wanted to send mice to Mars originally before he changed it to seeds which he would grow into plants in a small greenhouse using Martian soil. He attempted to buy 3 ICBMs (without the nuclear warhead) but got sick of the Russians dicking him around and continually raising the price, which was why he decided to build rockets himself and founded SoaceX. When he first talked about sending mice one of his friends bought him an enormous wheel of cheese as a joke, saying he had all the food supplies he needed for the mission now. Years later Musk sent the same wheel of cheese in the first Dragon cargo capsule to dock with the ISS.
Thank you verry verrry much for this video!
16:09 Actually Russia and the Soviet union used a nitrogen oxygen mix for their spacecraft atmospheres. Only the us used to use oxygen rich environments.
Doing cardio exercise in space , like on a treadmill would probably make you lose body strength, while in space ? You would probably need to do more strength related exercise like weights or days off exercise? Some cardio might help with metabolism energy though because I'm not sure how blood pumps around a body with decreased gravity
I could’ve sworn that the title said Mr space station
I still wish someone would have bought Mir and turned it into a space hotel. Yes this suggestion was very much floating around the Internet and news back in the late 90s.
So early Simon didn’t finish his tea and crumpets yet
Wot wot
The Buran did go into space, on a test launch, achieving its most important mission: allowing Glushko to one-up his late rival Korolev. Ironically it ended up using kerosene, hydrogen, and oxygen, instead of UDMH, N2O4, and petty rivalry.
You should do a Megaproject on all the Channels that you have!!!🙌💯😂 Now thats a projects!! Didnt realize you had bout 20ish!!👍🙄😩
The booze was a bit of surprise and contention with the first Astronauts on Mir, but even more so when coming home on the Soyuz because the Cosmos brought a "survival" pistol along in case the capsule came down in Siberia. Guns on a space station were a no-go in NASA.
It's a bit funny how history is unfolding. Both the US and USSR wanted a station, and a shuttle.
The US made a working shuttle, but due to cost overruns, had to cancel the station.
The USSR also had cost overruns, but they cancelled the shuttle.
So one side had a shuttle, but no station to fly to and the other side had a station but no shuttle to fly to it.
Imagine if they had started to cooperate earlier, together having both a shuttle and a station.
Effortless thumbnail design, simple yet elegant.
Simon, the Buran DID make it to space...once, unmanned.
I love the use of the Ren and Stimpy theme!
"You want my delicious ice cream sandwich!"
The ISS has been in orbit since November 20, 1998 so it'll have been in orbit for 23 years in 19 days. You're right, that makes me feel old. Just like the fact that 9/11 happened 20 years ago. I was in 7th grade when that happened. I'm the oldest out of my siblings. 1 was born in 92 and the other 2 were both born after 9/11 and they seem to love making me feel old just because I'm the only one born in the 80s
This may make you feel even older, the ISS is essentially a Mir class station with loads of extra modules attached by other countries, it's core module was built alongside Mir's and originally designated Mir 2 (this is why the Russian sections look so bad, because some of them are 30+ years old).
Great video as always
Thanks for sharing :-)
16:45 The scary thing about sealing off the compartment was all the hoses, air ducts, and wires that were run through the hatchways between modules. Very un NASA.
please, please, please New horizons. My Son was born just before it was launched and I remember telling him for his primary school space lesson about all the planets and the only thing I could say about Pluto - which was a planet at that time - was it was 'slightly pink' thanks due to the Hubble images. I remember waiting a decade for that probe unveil what it did., which was, spectacular!
Does anybody else remember the Taco Bell target set up in the middle of the ocean for when Mir and Skylab came down?
Yeah, I remember that.
Water has all once been piss anyway, might as well drink it from the source
Leave a Russian in space for 14 months and don't send a drink or two and I guarantee building a still in space will become experiment priority #1.