CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Astronauts aboard the International Space Station apparently have access to a gun.
Russian Cosmonauts carry a gun on their Soyuz space capsule, which is attached to the space station. Every spacecraft carries survival gear for crash landings, and the Russian Soyuz has a kit that includes the gun. A photo of a space tourist using one version of the weapon is posted on his [who's?] Web site.
But although the gun has been there for as long as the space station has been in orbit, its existence is kept quiet. NASA and Russian officials won't talk publicly about it. Former NASA engineer Jim Oberg, who is an author and journalist, wrote about the gun on his Web site. He said the gun has no place in an environment where people are under such high stress. "There have been cases of severe psychological strain on people in space, strain that they have taken out -- that their shipmates worried about the ultimate actions," Oberg said.
Experts said the idea of an astronaut losing control was unthinkable until one year ago, when Lisa Nowak shattered the myth. Her own attorney said she was insane when arrested for hunting down another woman, and prosecutors said she was heavily armed. Nowak had flown in space just seven months earlier. Oberg knows an astronaut bent on orbital manslaughter could simply throw any number of switches to do the job, but he said the crews would be safer if the gun was locked up or left on Earth.
The gun is located in a survival kit between some seats aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. All the crewmembers know about it, and U.S. astronauts who fly aboard the Soyuz are trained to use it.
You know you're a firearms enthusiast when... you read an article like that and come away frustrated because the author failed to mention the make, model, and caliber of the weapon in question. I found a description of the weapon carried on the Soyuz at Jim Oberg's website (I had to dig around to find the photos).
Russian participation means that there are guns on board the ISS, and the guns belong to the Russians. This is not quite as alarming as it sounds, and officially it’s no secret. However, I could never find any mention of this design feature on NASA web sites or mission press kits. Actually, it’s a safety feature, and not an unreasonable one.
American astronauts who trained for the 1995–1997 Mir visits, and later as part of the Soyuz spacecraft crews for the International Space Station, encountered a unique feature that cosmonauts need to master: target practice. They have to know how to load, aim, and fire the special survival gun that has been on board all Soyuz spacecraft throughout their 30-year history.
The triple-barreled gun can fire flares, shotgun shells, or rifle bullets, depending on how it's loaded. The gun and about 10 rounds for each barrel are carried in a triangle-shaped survival canister stowed next to the commander's couch. The gun's shoulder stock opens up into a machete for chopping firewood.
Familiarization with the gun usually takes place during survival training in the Black Sea, when the crews train to safely exit a spacecraft floating on the water (although a firing range at the cosmonaut center at Star City near Moscow is sometimes used for training). After floating around in the water for a day or two, the astronauts and cosmonauts take a few hours to fire several rounds from each chamber off the deck of the training ship.
"It was amazing how many wine, beer, and vodka bottles the crew of the ship could come up with for us to shoot at," astronaut Jim Voss told me. "It was very accurate," he continued. "We threw the bottles as far as possible, probably 20 or 30 meters, then shot them. It was trivial to hit the bottles with the shotgun shells, and relatively easy to hit them with the rifle bullets on the first shot."
"It is a wonderful gun," agreed Mir veteran Dave Wolf. "I found it to be well balanced, highly accurate, and convenient to use."
Mike Foale trained with the gun and found it to be pretty standard. “Other than firing flares, bird shot, and a hard slug from its three barrels, during sea and winter survival training, I can’t say it is very unique,” he told me. He added, as if in reassurance, “The Soyuz commander controls its use.”
Every Soyuz spacecraft carries such a gun, although none of these guns have ever been unpacked in flight. And they have never been needed, with the exception of an incident in 1965, when bears (or wolves—the story varies) chased two far-off-course cosmonauts. The guns are often presented to crew members as postflight souvenirs. Although several survival kit bags have shown up at space auctions, I’ve never seen any of the guns for sale.
That still doesn't tell us much.
