- Joined
- Feb 13, 2008
- Messages
- 5,398
- Reaction score
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- Location
- Khimki
- Website
- tigerofsiberia.livejournal.com
Back in 2005, I have done several personal discoveries. The first was Orbiter and its rich forum (the "old" one, at m6.com), another was Hyugens landing on Titan, and the final one was this presentation movie of future Phobos-Grunt mission:
These things have rocked my mind, and made me a real fan of spaceflight. I have suddenly received an opportunity to virtually orbit Earth or travel to other planets. I have been able to see laws of orbital mechanics at work, after studying the basic laws of it in my student age. I could watch a great community of people who helped each other create this great spaceflight sim, shared cool information on real life spaceflight and exchanged views and ideas that expanded my own vision of the world.
On another hand, after gaining this much of inspiration, I could see that there still was a language and cultural barrier that separated Orbiter fans community from many information sources in Russian segment of Internet that related to Russia's national space program. Those years, there was much to watch for in it, to look forward and to be impressed by. Things were clearly going uphill. Expectation of a fantastically ambitious Phobos-Grunt mission was just one of the things. There was Clipper project, there were promises to invest into an interplanetary spaceflight, into expanding RSOS if the ISS. It was about this time when internet coverages of Russian launches first appeared or improved from a previous, more simplistic, style.
I thought it would be cool if people who take interest in spaceflight could have access to all this information. I also could see that somehow image of my country and its culture is not understood very well in the West, much less accepted or praised. These things formed a feeling of a mission I should have performed. It may be too silly sounding, but I fancied myself a missionary who should deliver insight into these things to Orbiter community. Mostly because of that I spent very much time translating texts and littering "Space Flight News" and "Off Topic" sections of the forum with information relating to development in Russia in general and proceedings in our spaceflight, joining "cheer teams" of space launches just to be there 1st to type "LIFT_OFF!>." when a rocket lifts off. I have even gone as far as translating some nice songs into English and posting them here.
I also was a fan of every interplanetary probe that took off anywhere on Earth and sailed to the vastness of space. I waved good-bye to the New Horizons, that carried names of me and my family on a CD to the infinite star bound trip. Meanwhile, I never stopped hopping that one day I get a chance to see off a Russian interplanetary mission, and world gets astonished by such a sound event.
The reality has made me few blows since then, however. The more deeply I stroke my roots into spaceflight community and communicated to people who really worked for space industry and science, the less illusions I had about what future may hold. Developments in the world and in the country since 2005 were also not very happy. The worst thing ever was the "8/8/8" war which was a heavy trial for my health of mind. I was deeply scared of a possibility that things would quickly spiral down to a real WW3 then. I didn't know what way of loving my country was the best to pick these days.
Now, when we can safely say that Phobos-Grunt mission is over (if you permit me to say so), I have no good expectations left. It has cost me too much nerve. I can clearly see that wins or fails in space are rooted on Earth, and until things are fixed down here, there's no sense in having high hopes about shining future of space faring Earth. It's best to devote my personal time to the work I have and spend less of it to stupid browsing of spaceflight websites and retyping information I find in one place, to another. Orbiter forum has many great and knowledgeable posters who can provide insight and reminder of proceedings to people who want to know more about spaceflight and watch how new amazing discoveries are done. Existence of free online translator tools helps to overcome language barriers. Bridges between various spots of fan activity taking places in several well known forums are easy to cross.
I feel like I've done enough and I can finally deafen the buzzer inside me that used to tell "I MUST post this to O-F!" I will lurk here from time to time to see how things will proceed. If anyone wants to wake me up, send a PM, leave a comment in my still existing blog: http://tigerofsiberia.livejournal.com or use my personal email if you know it.
It was a pleasure to be with you. Bye.
These things have rocked my mind, and made me a real fan of spaceflight. I have suddenly received an opportunity to virtually orbit Earth or travel to other planets. I have been able to see laws of orbital mechanics at work, after studying the basic laws of it in my student age. I could watch a great community of people who helped each other create this great spaceflight sim, shared cool information on real life spaceflight and exchanged views and ideas that expanded my own vision of the world.
On another hand, after gaining this much of inspiration, I could see that there still was a language and cultural barrier that separated Orbiter fans community from many information sources in Russian segment of Internet that related to Russia's national space program. Those years, there was much to watch for in it, to look forward and to be impressed by. Things were clearly going uphill. Expectation of a fantastically ambitious Phobos-Grunt mission was just one of the things. There was Clipper project, there were promises to invest into an interplanetary spaceflight, into expanding RSOS if the ISS. It was about this time when internet coverages of Russian launches first appeared or improved from a previous, more simplistic, style.
I thought it would be cool if people who take interest in spaceflight could have access to all this information. I also could see that somehow image of my country and its culture is not understood very well in the West, much less accepted or praised. These things formed a feeling of a mission I should have performed. It may be too silly sounding, but I fancied myself a missionary who should deliver insight into these things to Orbiter community. Mostly because of that I spent very much time translating texts and littering "Space Flight News" and "Off Topic" sections of the forum with information relating to development in Russia in general and proceedings in our spaceflight, joining "cheer teams" of space launches just to be there 1st to type "LIFT_OFF!>." when a rocket lifts off. I have even gone as far as translating some nice songs into English and posting them here.
I also was a fan of every interplanetary probe that took off anywhere on Earth and sailed to the vastness of space. I waved good-bye to the New Horizons, that carried names of me and my family on a CD to the infinite star bound trip. Meanwhile, I never stopped hopping that one day I get a chance to see off a Russian interplanetary mission, and world gets astonished by such a sound event.
The reality has made me few blows since then, however. The more deeply I stroke my roots into spaceflight community and communicated to people who really worked for space industry and science, the less illusions I had about what future may hold. Developments in the world and in the country since 2005 were also not very happy. The worst thing ever was the "8/8/8" war which was a heavy trial for my health of mind. I was deeply scared of a possibility that things would quickly spiral down to a real WW3 then. I didn't know what way of loving my country was the best to pick these days.
Now, when we can safely say that Phobos-Grunt mission is over (if you permit me to say so), I have no good expectations left. It has cost me too much nerve. I can clearly see that wins or fails in space are rooted on Earth, and until things are fixed down here, there's no sense in having high hopes about shining future of space faring Earth. It's best to devote my personal time to the work I have and spend less of it to stupid browsing of spaceflight websites and retyping information I find in one place, to another. Orbiter forum has many great and knowledgeable posters who can provide insight and reminder of proceedings to people who want to know more about spaceflight and watch how new amazing discoveries are done. Existence of free online translator tools helps to overcome language barriers. Bridges between various spots of fan activity taking places in several well known forums are easy to cross.
I feel like I've done enough and I can finally deafen the buzzer inside me that used to tell "I MUST post this to O-F!" I will lurk here from time to time to see how things will proceed. If anyone wants to wake me up, send a PM, leave a comment in my still existing blog: http://tigerofsiberia.livejournal.com or use my personal email if you know it.
It was a pleasure to be with you. Bye.