Sudden Space Yekaterinburg

It is good that new, albeit temporary, popular science exhibitions are opening in Russia. At the very end of November, acquaintances from the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics contacted me and asked if I would like to go to Ekaterinburg at the “Go Into Space!” Exhibition the same week. and give a couple of lectures there. Naturally, I agreed. I bring to your attention a report from the exhibition and a report on visiting space and not very museums.

Exhibition "Go Into Space!"

Exhibition "Go Into Space!" located on the ground floor of the printing house of the publishing house "Ural Worker". The industrial past provides a trendy loft atmosphere with ceiling beams, unfinished floors, laconic white walls and protruding fire hydrants.



The history of manned space exploration is presented in great detail, a wide-wall-wide scheme can be studied for a long time.



Teflon, thermal underwear, polyurethane foam with shape memory or, for example, a battery-powered tool could have been invented without astronautics, but their path to each house would have been longer and more winding.



Space is, among other things, beautiful photographs. When they are in good quality, they can be printed on the entire wall. It turns out pretty.





The strangest exhibit is a room illustrating the operation of satellite television.



Artifacts for space holidays and space food. The guide says that not so long ago, a visitor dropped one of the cans and crushed it. There was no point in putting it back, and the staff gathered in a festive atmosphere to try real space food. There was little salt in it, and most of all, he said, it was like cat food. If you suddenly do not know, nobody has been eating tubes in orbit for about forty years, and space food, except for the efforts spent on ensuring quality and guarantees of safety, is no different from earthly. And in personal programs, relatives can receive quite ordinary earthly food, which is in a standard store.



The exhibition has a lot of multimedia - audio, video, there are even a few pairs of virtual reality glasses.



An incomprehensible unit was brought from the nearby NPO Avtomatika museum (more about it later).



Most of all, it looks like a reconnaissance satellite or geophysical rocket descent vehicle, but according to the news , this is a large-scale model of the Vostok spacecraft descent vehicle with a container in which Belka and Strelka flew. The layout was done very high quality, thermal protection rings are the same as in the real "East", the colors are very plausible, and if you look at it completely, you can see the thermal damage to the skin.



The private space section shows the Rocket Lab with the Electron rocket (first launch soon), the Copenhagen Suborbitals (crashed one rocket this summer, now they’re doing the next one) and, suddenly, the Luna Seven project from the domestic company Lin Industrial (in summer they tested the system controls for his ultralight booster project).



The spacesuit "Falcon", which is used in the "Unions". At the Sea of ​​Clarity festival, I had the opportunity to look at it closely and feel it, and in the design of this suit I was most struck by engineering impudence and ingenuity. They get into the Falcon through the connector on the chest, but some super-technologies with micron tolerances are not used to seal it. On the contrary - a sleeve, through which they get into the spacesuit, they are collected into the intestine, dragged with a regular rubber band, this intestine is rolled up and fixed on top with a fabric with a zipper. The tightness will not be absolute, but the loss of air through such a structure is minimal and will be the least problem for astronauts in case of depressurization of the spacecraft.



Amazing souvenirs at the checkout - gingerbread cookies with a picture in icing. I looked for a long time, but did not dare to take it - it’s a pity to eat them, and storing without eating is stupid. Better to stay in the photo.



Summary: The
exhibition will work only until December 20, if possible, I recommend to go. The content is high-quality and interesting.

Museum of Cosmonautics "NPO Automation"

Recently, the Cosmonautics Museum NPO Avtomatika has recently opened in Yekaterinburg. But he works on weekdays from 10 to 17 and on the second and third Saturdays of the month. And I was on the first Saturday of the month, and, even through the organizers of the exhibition “Go Into Space!”, I could not get to them. Very disappointing. In general, in my opinion, a museum that does not work in the evening and on weekends is more an imitation. Fortunately, other people managed to visit there, and at least a few photos on the network are available - news about the opening and photos from the deputy’s blog .

Planetarium

Also in the city center, in the cinema building, there is a small planetarium. They don’t have any special artifacts or exhibits, but it’s good that, in principle, there is a planetarium.

Geological Museum

The Urals are mountains, geology, minerals and gems. So I went to the geological museum. Lucky there was a temporary exhibition dedicated to meteorites.

The astronauts also visited the geological museum.



Iron meteorites.



Beautiful internal structure.



Stone meteorites.



Stand meteorite "Chelyabinsk."





Chelyabinsk meteorite in culture.



More meteorites.



But this is not a meteorite, but much worse. In fact, this is a shame for the museum and the university at which the museum is located. Give money to businessmen with a site whose name copies the name of Roscosmos, and brag about it. It is impossible to buy the name of the star. The International Astronomical Union specifically holds a rebuttal on its websiteany connection with organizations that sell the names of stars or land on other celestial bodies. If you want a star or an exoplanet to get the name that you came up with - offer them to contests that the International Astronomical Union has recently begun to organize. But the chances that the names “LLC Horns and Hooves” or “Vasya Pupkin” will win are void.

Bonus

Thanks to the organizers of the exhibition, I managed to get to the local branch of Silver Rain radio. We had a nice talk about the Progress accident, Ilon Mask, space superstitions, women in space and more.


Thank you for inviting Dmitry Stalny from the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics and to the staff of the Forward into Space exhibition for the excellent organization of lectures.

My previous adventures:
Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics , April 11-12.
Festival "Sea of ​​Clarity" and Moscow space exhibitions , July 14-17.
Excursion to RSC Energia and more museums , September.