Russian cosmonauts refuse to take pistols into orbit

Not everyone knows that Soviet cosmonauts have taken weapons with them since the days of Gagarin. At first it was a PM, and then a powerful hunting TP-82 with three trunks.

At first glance, it seems strange why you need a pistol: if you fly to the station, any shot there will lead to disastrous consequences. However, the point was this. The pistol was included in the rescue kit and was stored in the landing capsule. In the case of an emergency landing in the taiga, which had already happened, he could save cosmonauts life by protecting them from wild animals.

TP-82 is a very powerful weapon. It is even difficult to call him a gun. With barrels of 30 cm, he even weighed 1.6 kg without a machete butt and cartridges.
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From two smooth barrels the pistol fired rounds of the 32nd hunting caliber with a shot, and from the rifled barrel located under them - a caliber of 5.45 mm. There was also a separate signal cartridge, which proved to be highly effective at the testing stage.

And there have been collisions with bears. Soviet scientist-designer Boris Evseevich Chertok in the book “Rockets and People” described the incident that occurred in 1965 with the Voskhod-2 landing module with Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyaev. Astronauts landed in the taiga of the Northern Urals, and rescuers could not reach them through impassable woods and snow for several days. There were situations when they directly from the helicopter saw bears coming out into the light of the fire to look at the astronauts. From PM they could not defend themselves, but only surprised bears.

Miraculously, the survivor Leonov then initiated the development of new weapons.


The crew of the International Space Station during training wintering in Siberia

What is most interesting, TP-82 was withdrawn from circulation in 2006. And it is still unknown what kind of gun came to replace him. Analysts suggest that this may be the Grach TL or the same PM.

Roscosmos is silent and does not tell whether the cosmonauts are armed at all.


Space tourist Mark Shuttleworth trains with TP-82 in 2002. Since now astronauts of all nationalities use the "Unions", everyone takes part in training courses on the Black Sea and in Siberia.

On the other hand, recently, pistols could have been abandoned. An informed source, space industry analyst James Oberg, who participated in the negotiations on this issue, knows that Russian crews periodically vote on whether to include a firearm in a rescue kit, and regularly refuse it.

And incidents happen. So, in 2008, the capsule "Union" landed 400 km from the planned point. The control center had no idea for 30 minutes where Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko was located, American Peggy Whitson and Korean So So-young, the crew had to dial a satellite phone.

However, with GPS and modern technologies, astronauts estimate the risk of getting lost in the taiga, apparently less than the risk of an accident with a gun. And, as rightly noted in the comments, every kilogram of cargo matters. Instead of a gun, which is hardly useful, you can take something more useful.