Soviet Space Battle Station Skif and Its Prototype Polus

militaryphotos.net ^ | Thu Nov 18, 2004 | Abbyy

[anymouse]

Soviet Union was developing laser space battle station Skif from beginning of 80's.

Length: 37 meters

Diameter: 4.1 meter

Weight: around 80 tons

It was supposed to be launched by Energia booster (same as for Buran shuttle)

Unarmed prototype filled with scientific equipment was created around 1985 and launched 15 May 1987. It was failed to start operations and with the fall of Soviet Union project was scrapped.

My father personally participated in this project (he also worked on Mir and International Space Station projects) and he was very dissapointed with this failure as i remember. It was big blow for Energia Corp engineers.

[anymouse]

This is why President Reagan pushed for SDI so hard.

[anymouse]

Cold war space ping.

[atomicpossum]

The whole thing looks like it's straight out of Thunderbirds.

[corkoman]

Fireball XL5 would have kept us safe.

[Walkingfeather]

I wonder if any company will start to do astroarchiology and start to recover some of these things in space and bring them back here.

[Shortwave]

A11 y0ur weap0nz bel0ng t0 us

[Army Air Corps]

"The whole thing looks like it's straight out of Thunderbirds."

Where are the strings? ;-)

[Moonman62]

Their non-service based, non-market economy couldn't keep up with ours. Thank you President Reagan.

[Army Air Corps]

I have heard of a company that planned to develop a museum on Tranquility Base. With commercial passenger spaceflight on the near horizon, such a project may be possible.

[killjoy]

Move ZIG! For great justice!

[FrankRepublican]

Amazing photos. What was the black thing on the back of the ship? Big space gun or lasr or soemthing. Pretty incredible.

[KevinDavis]

The Soviet Union was a peace loving nation... /s

[boycottliberalhollywood.com]

Move ZIG! For great justice!

Whoo, it looks like the USSR was going to "set up us the bomb"!

[Brett66]

Amazing pics, was this a chemical powered laser system? I wonder how well they expected to target with this thing? Or maybe their intention was to target unmoving objects on the ground.

[Kornev]

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyus.htm

Nasty piece of work. Basically to develop ASAT protection for space based nuclear weapon launchers.

[GeronL]

That things pretty big, but I can forsee a day when a museum or the Russian government would want it back to put on display. Maybe if someone built a giant pod that would launch empty, hence light, and open like a jaw to swallow the target and return to Earth like a regular space capsule..... hhhmmmm

Actually, thats probably already doable if someone paid for it.

[Army Air Corps]

Did you watch You Only Live Twice recently?

[Cold Heat]

Interesting to actually see this after all these years. There were rumors that they had a space based laser, but I did not know a proto had been launched.

Thanks for posting!

[erizo]

Quoting from http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyus.htm

"Polyus's failure to achieve working orbit was caused by a faulty inertial guidance sensor. ... The US Navy has made no statements about any attempts to investigate the wreckage of Polyus, which lies on the floor of the South Pacific."

"Scythian" ... such a pleasant name for a weapon.

[Cold Heat]

It is a automated laser anti mussel etc system.

There were several things it could be used for.

We had, and possibly still have one as well.

I worked on a section of a prototype (at least I think it was a prototype) in the early eighties.

I do not have a contract, so I suppose I can say that.:-)