Tomorrow is the debut of Chris Hadfield’s new book, 𝘈𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰 […]

Tomorrow is the debut of Chris Hadfield’s new book, 𝘈𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰 𝘔𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴
I read a pre-release copy and loved it! It paints an alternate history of Apollo 18, written by an incredible polymathic astronaut — so it has the engineering detail of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯, set in the Apollo era, minus the mistakes. I found it to be much more compelling than the alternative Apollo history seen in Apple TV’s 𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥.

As an Apollo space artifact collector, I was also delighted to see 16 of my historic treasures reborn in an action thriller, written by my favorite astronaut no less!

For example, one of the characters in the book, Vladimir Chelomei at the OKB-52 design bureau, promoted Almaz as a response to the US Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) project. MOL had been widely publicized in the US press in the early 1960s, which provided Chelomei plenty of material to use to lobby for a Soviet military space station. I have the telescopic sighting visor built for spying on the U.S. from space.

Yes, the Soviets had secret weaponized space stations, and they really did fire the machine gun in space, taking out a target satellite! The Almaz space stations are the only known armed, crewed military spacecraft ever flown. (details in the captions)