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Ane of the staples of the sci-fi genre for more than a century is the ray gun. H.Thou. Wells pioneered the concept in War of the Worlds, in which Martian invaders employ a powerful, invisible Oestrus-Ray to decimate the Earth. Ray guns, disintegrators, radio guns, lasers, phasers, and plasma weaponry followed thereafter, all described with varying degrees of accuracy and real-world limitations. In reality, our infinite-based weapon technologies accept lagged far backside these futuristic concepts — but that doesn't mean the topic hasn't come up. Both the Soviet and US governments explored the thought of space warfare.

Popular Mechanics has a new report on the Soviet Kartech R-23M, the only gun to ever be fired from infinite. The R-23M was derived from the R-23, a 23mm gas-operated autocannon that could fire up to two,600 rounds per minute and is the fastest single-barrel cannon always introduced in service. According to PM, the space-based variant used smaller, fourteen.5mm shells, but could fire up to v,000 rounds per infinitesimal (the cited range is betwixt 950 – 5000 rpm).

Information technology's mostly understood that the Space Race between the US and the USSR was effectively a proxy battlefield of the Common cold State of war, just the particulars of how these scenarios played out have faded from the public's consciousness in the last l years. Equally the launch capability and technology of both nations raced ahead, it became obvious that satellites could do far more than circumvolve the Earth transmitting a simple radio signal. The start successful spy satellite mission was Discoverer 14, launched August 18, 1960. Back then, the motion-picture show the satellite carried was ejected from the satellite and retrieved by planes as it descended via parachute.

Military men on both sides of the Atlantic were well enlightened of how vital aerial reconnaissance had been during WW2 — but space-based imaging was a new and unsafe borderland. Even advanced spyplanes like the Lockheed U-ii could theoretically be shot downward, equally the Soviets demonstrated in May, 1960. Satellites, on the other hand, couldn't exist targeted with conventional ground-based weaponry. ICBMs of the day weren't designed to lock on to a point target the size of a satellite and were ludicrously overpowered for killing satellites in whatever case. If you wanted to defend a satellite against an incoming assault from a pre-existing enemy satellite, your arts and crafts would need its own defenses — and that'southward where the R-23M comes in.

The Soviet Almaz / Salyut model.

The Soviet Almaz / Salyut model.

The Russians developed a programme to create a manned series of spy satellites cloaked backside the same engineering and ostensible program goals equally the civilian Salyut program. Of the 7 Salyut missions, Salyut 2 (the starting time of the and so-chosen Almaz missions that carried the R-23M cannon into orbit) depressurized in-orbit and was destroyed without e'er hosting a coiffure. Salyut three was the first station to carry and fire the weapon, only the Soviets were sufficiently concerned near harm that they only performed the test later on the crew had long since returned to Globe.

Firing a gun in space, it turns out, isn't much like firing it on Earth. For one thing, the entire 20-ton station had to rotate in order to hit a target. For another, the Salyut stations had to fire their ain engines to annul the recoil from the weapon itself. If you want to shoot in microgravity, you accept to take something to button against, or you'll finish up destabilizing your own orbit.

The results of the this test remain classified, but grainy Idiot box footage recently shown on Russian Television set immune 3D modelers to create a replica of the cannon'southward design, equally shown above. To the best of our knowledge, no Russian or U.s. space platform has ever fired on the other, but projects similar this show that the 2 governments took the threat of satellite attacks seriously.