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xiphiasI'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.
Tommy Bartlett is the man who made the Wisconsin Dells into what they are today. So I guess the first question is, "what are the Wisconsin Dells?"
There are a number of places in the United States where kitsch and tackiness is raised to genuine art form -- something that fills you with awe and wonder and joy at the sheer splendor of its tackiness. On I-93, right on the South Carolina side of the North Carolina/South Carolina border, there exists South of the Border, for instance.
But the granddaddy of all of these things is the Wisconsin Dells.
Okay, fine. The TRUE granddaddy of these things is the entire city of Las Vegas. But the Dells are up there.
In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, he considers tacky American roadside attractions to be places of spiritual power, like ancient shrines. And the Dells are one of the power hot-spots.
The Wisconsin Dells are a tourist area, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the genuine natural beauty of the area, along with the dramatic pinnacles rising out of the river. You know those kinds of spires where water or wind erodes away the sides of a spire, leaving a pillar with a capstone? They've got a bunch of them, and they're neat.
The Dells have been a tourist area since the 1800s, but their modern transformation into one of the great loci of kitsch is the accomplishment of Tommy Bartlett.
Tommy Bartlett's main thing was the water-skiing show he started in the 50s, but he'd had a small science museum called "Tommy Bartlet's Robot World" since the 1970s. Just a kind of fun thing for the kids, nothing spectacular, but kind of cool.
And, in 1997, he had Mir put in his little roadside science museum in the Wisconsin Dells.
He died a year later, having considered this to be a really nice capstone to his career.
"Tommy Bartlett's Robot World" is now called the "Tommy Bartlett Exploratory", and is still, basically, a little 1970s-era hands-on science museum, with a couple of neat exhibits. They've got a Tesla coil. They've got one of those "parabolic whisperers" -- a set of two parabolic, um, things, that one person whispers very quietly into and you can hear it at the other parabolic thing, twenty yards away.
And they've got Mir.
If you ever do a road trip that you can reasonably send through the Dells, stop there. It is an example of a true form of American culture. It's perhaps a form of American culture that we Americans ought to be somewhat embarrassed of, but I'm actually rather proud of it. There is something sublime about that level of non-ironic garishness. I sometimes feel that Vegas is aware of what it is, and is being a parody of itself. The Dells, though -- the Dells are genuine. Their fake-ness and artificiality is real. And they've got 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.
Tommy Bartlett is the man who made the Wisconsin Dells into what they are today. So I guess the first question is, "what are the Wisconsin Dells?"
There are a number of places in the United States where kitsch and tackiness is raised to genuine art form -- something that fills you with awe and wonder and joy at the sheer splendor of its tackiness. On I-93, right on the South Carolina side of the North Carolina/South Carolina border, there exists South of the Border, for instance.
But the granddaddy of all of these things is the Wisconsin Dells.
Okay, fine. The TRUE granddaddy of these things is the entire city of Las Vegas. But the Dells are up there.
In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, he considers tacky American roadside attractions to be places of spiritual power, like ancient shrines. And the Dells are one of the power hot-spots.
The Wisconsin Dells are a tourist area, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the genuine natural beauty of the area, along with the dramatic pinnacles rising out of the river. You know those kinds of spires where water or wind erodes away the sides of a spire, leaving a pillar with a capstone? They've got a bunch of them, and they're neat.
The Dells have been a tourist area since the 1800s, but their modern transformation into one of the great loci of kitsch is the accomplishment of Tommy Bartlett.
Tommy Bartlett's main thing was the water-skiing show he started in the 50s, but he'd had a small science museum called "Tommy Bartlet's Robot World" since the 1970s. Just a kind of fun thing for the kids, nothing spectacular, but kind of cool.
And, in 1997, he had Mir put in his little roadside science museum in the Wisconsin Dells.
He died a year later, having considered this to be a really nice capstone to his career.
"Tommy Bartlett's Robot World" is now called the "Tommy Bartlett Exploratory", and is still, basically, a little 1970s-era hands-on science museum, with a couple of neat exhibits. They've got a Tesla coil. They've got one of those "parabolic whisperers" -- a set of two parabolic, um, things, that one person whispers very quietly into and you can hear it at the other parabolic thing, twenty yards away.
And they've got Mir.
If you ever do a road trip that you can reasonably send through the Dells, stop there. It is an example of a true form of American culture. It's perhaps a form of American culture that we Americans ought to be somewhat embarrassed of, but I'm actually rather proud of it. There is something sublime about that level of non-ironic garishness. I sometimes feel that Vegas is aware of what it is, and is being a parody of itself. The Dells, though -- the Dells are genuine. Their fake-ness and artificiality is real. And they've got a space station.