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I'm pretty sure I have written about it before, but I know that I've added folks to my friends list since then, and I just mentioned this in comments to someone else. It's the story of a space station.
See, the Soviet Union was always aware that they were technically behind the United States, and made up for it in, well, brute force. For instance, they knew that their T41 tanks were like only a third as good as the M1 Abrams, so they would build three times as many tanks as the US would. So it all balanced out.
This is what they did with their space program, as well.
They knew that their tech was more likely to fail than the US technology would -- so, when they built a space station, they built THREE of them. The idea was, sure, our space station is going to fail after only a third as long as a United States built one would, but then we'll just launch ANOTHER one, and then ANOTHER one.
So they built three identical Mir space stations, at once. And they launched the first one.
Then the Soviet Union collapsed. So Mir was never going to be replaced.
Which left two extra Mirs.
One of them is missing. Nobody knows where it is.
It's been misfiled or SOMETHING. For all I know, maybe they never actually even built it, and just said that they did.
Or maybe there's a space station lost somewhere in a warehouse in Russia. A lost space station.
But the THIRD one, the third one, the Russian government auctioned off, since they weren't going to use it, and they could get some money for it. Some museum or other would pay them for it.
There were really only two possible bidders for the thing, in the world. The Smithsonian museum would be one obvious choice -- they have probably the word's most wonderful collection of spacecraft and other things like that. And the British Museum was also interested (although that's a bit outside what I tend to think of their collection's strength). They had a gentleman's agreement about what the upper limit of what they'd bid for the thing was. Clearly, no other group would be around to bid against them.
Tommy Bartlett bid against them. And won.
( Read more... )
See, the Soviet Union was always aware that they were technically behind the United States, and made up for it in, well, brute force. For instance, they knew that their T41 tanks were like only a third as good as the M1 Abrams, so they would build three times as many tanks as the US would. So it all balanced out.
This is what they did with their space program, as well.
They knew that their tech was more likely to fail than the US technology would -- so, when they built a space station, they built THREE of them. The idea was, sure, our space station is going to fail after only a third as long as a United States built one would, but then we'll just launch ANOTHER one, and then ANOTHER one.
So they built three identical Mir space stations, at once. And they launched the first one.
Then the Soviet Union collapsed. So Mir was never going to be replaced.
Which left two extra Mirs.
One of them is missing. Nobody knows where it is.
It's been misfiled or SOMETHING. For all I know, maybe they never actually even built it, and just said that they did.
Or maybe there's a space station lost somewhere in a warehouse in Russia. A lost space station.
But the THIRD one, the third one, the Russian government auctioned off, since they weren't going to use it, and they could get some money for it. Some museum or other would pay them for it.
There were really only two possible bidders for the thing, in the world. The Smithsonian museum would be one obvious choice -- they have probably the word's most wonderful collection of spacecraft and other things like that. And the British Museum was also interested (although that's a bit outside what I tend to think of their collection's strength). They had a gentleman's agreement about what the upper limit of what they'd bid for the thing was. Clearly, no other group would be around to bid against them.
Tommy Bartlett bid against them. And won.
( Read more... )