Space station Vjuga

Last crawled date: 6 years, 1 month ago

One upon a time, after Russian military space station "Almaz" (diamond) but before deployment of the Dead Hand nuclear missile defence system "Perimeter" there was first secret nuclear deterrence programme "Vjuga" (blizzard).

Silent eye in the sky, manned by long stay crew of two, this space station purpose was to listen and watch for nuclear explosions on the USSR territory and strike with six nuclear warheads of 500MT each.

Station completely relied on the visiting resupply craft to boost its orbit, as manoeuvring module was replaced by nuclear warheads tubes strapped to their third stage boosters. Eliminating long ascending trajectory, nukes could strike almost immediately rendering any missile defence system useless as long as station was unreachable on the high geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO).

The only two test firings are know, both successfully hitting targets at Kamchatka. There are no historical evidence that actual nuclear warheads were delivered to the station and armed, but concern it caused was enough to cancel out USA space bomber "Space shuttle" flights over Kremlin.

Modules

GN "Гнездо" (the nest) - docking module for the resupply ship. Contains four large viewpoints used by cameras and telescope.
KBO "Командно-бытовой отсек" - command and living module. The main living and work place. Contains Фреон (freon) command and guidance computer, equipment racks, sleeping stations and storage lockers.
AO "Агрегатый отсек" (equipment module) - cold / vacuum storage and equipment space.
RO " Ракетный отсек" (missile module) - contains tubes with six 500 MT nukes strapped tot he third stage boosters.