Word: zvezda
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...Joseph Stalin coming back in style? Members of Russia's political élite certainly seem to miss him. Their views received striking expression in a 3,000-word article in the Russian Defense Ministry daily, Krasnaya Zvezda. The author, Marshal Dmitri Yazov, a former Defense Minister who was one of the leaders of the botched 1991 coup against ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, describes the former Soviet dictator not only as "the greatest military leader of all ages and peoples" but as an inspiration for today's Russia. Yazov's article glossed over Stalin's errors - "even geniuses make mistakes...
...1990s spearheading the redesigns that would turn Freedom into the ISS, the reward was command of the first crew to spend a four-month rotation aboard. But that four-month trip was preceded by a four-year wait as deadlines slipped and the cash-strapped Russians had trouble delivering Zvezda, a Mir-like module where Shepherd, Krikalev, 42, and Yuri Gidzenko, 38, will eat, sleep and do most of their work while in space...
When you spend 16 years and billions of dollars designing a new home, you'd think everyone would get a place to sleep. Last week, however, when the Russian space agency launched into orbit the 22-ton Zvezda service module--the latest, $320 million addition to the much delayed International Space Station--officials conceded they had overlooked something. Though the school bus-size pod will be home to three astronauts for four months at a time, it has been outfitted with only two tiny sleeping berths--leaving one crewman no place to bunk...
...possible no one aboard Zvezda will be sleeping much anyway, since the ship was built with so little noise muffling that the crew has to wear earplugs to shut out the din of onboard equipment. Then there's the temporary lack of shielding to protect the module from a rogue meteor hit--a potential calamity that could keep any astronaut awake at night...
Despite such obvious design glitches, the launch of Zvezda was greeted with jubilation--and for good reason. The U.S.-led, 16-nation ISS had been on hold for two years while the cash-poor Russians tried to scare up the funds to get the module built and launched. It was only with an infusion of dollars from Washington--as well as from so capitalist a benefactor as Pizza Hut, which bought advertising space on the side of the Zvezda booster--that the job was completed. Zvezda now joins the Zarya and Unity modules, which have been in orbit since...