Screw music, let’s talk about space. Fifty years ago today — June 26, 1974 — the Soviets started star wars. They successfully launched Salyut 3, which was the first military space station. There’s still not much known about it. The Salyut program featured four civilian space stations and two military ones.
Salyut 1 was successfully launched in 1971, becoming the first space station. Two Soyuz missions (10 and 11) visited the station. Soyuz 10 had a docking failure and couldn’t access the station, but the crew of Soyuz 11 managed to dock and do experiments at Salyut 1 for 23 days. However, when returning to Earth, the crew were asphyxiated due to a valve failure just prior to re-entry.
The Soviets abandoned Salyut 1, allowing it to drift and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere on Oct. 11, 1971. Salyut 2 was intended to be the first military space station, but it had a launch failure on July 29, 1972. The station ended up in the Pacific Ocean.
Then they launched Salyut 3. Well, they called it Salyut 3, but it was really Almaz 2 — a secret Soviet military reconnaissance space station disguised as a civilian research station. It’s believed to have been outfitted with several Earth-aimed cameras and a gun. One crew (from Soyuz 14) were able to dock and man the station, but a second crew aboard Soyuz 15 were unable to successfully dock. So, the Soviets de-orbited the station, which re-entered Earth’s atmosphere Jan. 24, 1975.
The next mission was actually a civilian one, and the Americans would soon follow suit with SpaceLab. All this stuff is pretty cool, so I thought I’d fashion a Spotify playlist for you featuring songs with actual clips of (mostly NASA) astronauts and mission control in the mix for effect. This is a really common practice with EDM and trance. But I managed to find a whack of proper songs with cool space/astronaut clips in them for you. Enjoy!
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
