Unusual items that have been in space

Man - being not always rational. Therefore, in space there were things that were not planned by the flight program, smuggled, or, even despite the legal status, are still worthy of mention.

Once upon a dime

It all started, probably before the flight of man into space. Even when dogs were launched in the USSR, there were fierce disputes among predominantly non-technical personnel - would a mechanical watch work under zero gravity conditions? And so, after the landing of the dog, Chernushki discovered a watch, sewn to the dog blanket, and smuggled around the globe on March 9, 1961. The owner of the watch, the aviation physician Abram Moiseevich Genin, of course, received a rather serious “snag” for unauthorized experiments, however, he was immediately praised by Korolev for his determination [1] .
Americans started like this, too, very early. Already in the second flight of the Mercury program, astronaut Gus Grissom took two packs of fifty-ten-cent coins, several small models of the Mercury capsule, three one-dollar bills and two sets of pilot wings [2] as souvenirs. However, almost immediately after landing, he regretted it - the capsule hatch spontaneously shot off, the capsule began to sink, the spacesuit also drew water, pulled it down, and the excess weight was clearly useless. You can watch a dramatic video . "Grissom's decapitaries" are now rumored to be selling on the Internet, but I suspect that these are fakes.
The next notable incident occurred during the flight of Gemini-3. Astronaut John Young took an ordinary sandwich from an ordinary diner not far from the cosmodrome with him. [3] And with a stone face he offered to his partner Grissom. Judging by the recording of negotiations in the cockpit, the astronauts failed to enjoy the sandwich, most likely it began to crumble. Crumbs are dangerous in zero gravity - they can get into the eye, trachea, or equipment and cause problems, even short circuits. After landing, a scandal broke out at the Congress level - a certain politician demanded cuts in the financing of the space program, calling such antics a mockery. Interestingly enough, the story is rather dark because it is not clear whether Young smuggled him, or with the permission of Dick Slayton, the head of the astronaut bureau, or this ill-fated sandwich was slipped to him by astronaut Walter Schirra, who liked to play pranks. In any case, despite the scandalousness of history, neither Yang nor Grissom suffered a noticeable punishment, and Yang then made a brilliant space career.
The achievement “First space mail” was taken by the USSR, when astronauts Khrunov and Eliseev in spacesuits “visited” cosmonaut Shatalov, passing between the docked “Soyuz-5” and “Soyuz-4” and transmitting the last letter, telegrams and newspapers published already after its launch [4] .

There is a lot of space in the lunar module.

Various unusual objects began to fly into space almost on a regular basis during the American lunar program.
Apollo 11 carried a part of the propeller and the wing of the Wright Brothers [5] and the diamond-encrusted badge of the astronaut Dick Slayton, who due to health problems did not receive access to space flight.
On the Apollo 12, the self-timer flew to the Hasselblad camera [6] . Astronaut Alan Bean wanted to make a frame with two astronauts together - a unique photo and a drawing of scientists. Alas, the small self-timer was lost in things, it was not found on time, and Bien left only to draw the picture “Awesome photo that we did not take.” By the way, he has many nice, albeit somewhat monotonous, pictures here .

Apollo 14 brought a golf club to the moon (the thread coincided with the tool for collecting samples) and a pair of balls. The suit was uncomfortable golf clothing, and, despite the statement “miles, miles, and miles,” Alan Shepard’s balls flew just a few hundred meters [7] . Edgar Mitchell did not remain in debt and threw a regular pen of some equipment as a spear. You give the Olympics on the Moon :) In fairness, it should be noted that golf was still “played” in near-earth orbit in 2006, but it was an advertisement for golf goods, and I don’t want to promote it.

"Apolon-15" was noted, perhaps, the largest collection of all sorts of things for its era. First, the astronauts took a falcon feather with them and conducted a small physics lesson on the air:

Secondly, the astronauts conducted a very touching ceremony on all the dead astronauts and astronauts they knew, leaving a sign with their names and a figure of the Fallen Astronaut on the Moon [8] .
And thirdly, in addition to the legal envelopes that they had to stamp, the astronauts took another four hundred illegal ones, which they planned to earn on [9] . It turned out to be an ugly story; not only the direct participants were punished from the astronauts, and NASA began to very seriously control the things that the astronauts going to space took with them. Personal Preference Kit (NAS) began to surrender to NASA in advance, so that the agency could see and allow or not allow things to fly.

And on the shuttles - even more

The Space Shuttle is a big car. Numerous crew, a lot of free space, and even they actually flew constantly underload. Therefore, the bill for all sorts of curious things here is already beginning to go on the hundreds. And only absolutely unusual things come to mind:
At the STS-51F mission, an experiment was conducted on the consumption of carbonated drinks in zero gravity. If it were not for the educational benefits - I would not talk about this case. Because the drinks were Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and this experiment was greatly aggravated by marketing. Both companies assembled devices to open a regular can of soda (structurally different), and the astronauts checked the convenience of consumption and the taste of the contents. The results were so-so - instead of liquid in zero gravity, foam was produced from soda, and there were no refrigerators on the Shuttle [10] .

Since we are talking about liquids in weightlessness, it is worth remembering stories with Soviet astronauts. According to an interview with Georgy Grechko [11] , he participated in the smuggling of canned beers into orbit. Without a special device for drinking turned embarrassing - foam scattered on the walls, there was nothing to drink. There is also a very famous story about a flask of brandy. In the version I liked the most, the first crew, who forgot physics, could drink only half of the flask, because in weightlessness cognac and air were mixed, and it was impossible to drink. The next crew did not leave the school course of physics and acumen on Earth and finished the cognac, creating an artificial overload.
Well, before returning to the Shuttles, it is worth remembering a couple of Soviet stories.
Soyuz-17 fits in with the Salyut-4 station. Astronauts Gubarev and Grechko open the hatch and see the poster “Wip your feet when entering the house” [1] - greetings from those who assembled and launched the station.
The second Soviet female cosmonaut, Svetlana Savitskaya, was met at this time by a sexist joke, an apron in a flower [12] . The very same Savitskaya brought a blouse with lead weights for the effect of the wings. According to rumors, it turned out beautiful.
STS-117 brought an archaeological exhibit into space - a tablet from the colony of Jamestown in 1607 [13] .
Well, already beyond the point of absurdity is a capsule with the earth from the favorite stadium of one of the astronauts STS-123 [13] .
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Unions and ISS

There has been a tradition on the Soyuz for a long time - as a “gravity indicator”, each crew takes a small talisman toy with them. Now, the black cat Dimler of the Soyuz TMA-10M crew commander Oleg Kotov and the white Olympic bear of the Soyuz TMA-11M Olympic crew are passing the watch on the ISS. By the way, an addition happened to toys in orbit - flight engineer Karen Nayberg in her spare time sewed a toy from an old T-shirt and cloth, which was carpeted with Russian food containers [14] .

And, of course, the recent history of the torch. The article has been waiting for photos for two weeks in good resolution.
In fairness, it should be noted that this is the third torch that was in orbit - for the first time the Olympic torch flew into space in 1996 on STS-78, the second - in 2000 on STS-101 [15] . But here the removal of the torch into space with the "relay" on the VCD is for the first time:

This is not exactly an “object”, but the rocket itself was unusual — a patchwork quilt was pasted over the fuel tanks and other non-cryogenic areas. I don’t remember that any more launch vehicles were artistically designed:

Well, the last photo reflects very well the fact that flying into space is a joint work of a large number of people: