The Original Soviet Space Clock

This design pre-dates the digital clocks of the later Soyuz designs. It flew on one of the early Soyuz T spacecraft, which started as a military design in 1967 and went through a complete redesign in the late 70’s with a launch escape system and solar cells. This was the first spacecraft to ferry three astronauts in space suits (unlike the slapdash Voskhod space race entrant). Flight 10 of Soyuz T was the first manned pad abort as the rocket blew up on the pad; the launch escape tower pulled the astronauts away to safety at 20 G’s.

The clock module provides current Moscow time, preset announcement time, and a stopwatch. The stopwatch is used for the propulsion system engine burn timing, to make sure it burns for the calculated time to reach the mission trajectory. It also flew in the Buran space shuttle and Almaz military space station (below).

I could use some help with the translation notes above. Спасибо большое!

Flickr file: www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/8328690534


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