Whoooooooo lives in a peanut under the sea? So-vi-et A-qua-nauts! It does look like a peanut, right? I mean what the fuck even is that? I guess given the time period it was designed similarly to their Soyuz spacecraft, which also consists of two mated sections that are roughly spherical.
The official focus of the Sadko-II mission was hyperbaric medicine. No doubt that was researched, but Sadko-II is recognizably just another step in the Soviet government's development of utilitarian small habitats which could be deployed on subsea communications cables and left there longterm, so the unlucky fellows inside could listen in on transcontinental conversations.
As you can see from the above image, the Soviet man in the sea program resulted in many different habitats of wildly different design. There's Chernomor-II at the bottom, largest of the lot. Sadko-II was closer in size and purpose to Cousteau's 2 man 'Deep Cabin'. Not a home, but an outpost, for a specific military purpose.
Sadko-II was certainly a two man structure as well, you couldn't have fit any more inside if you tried. One of them would listen to and judiciously record tapped audio while the other slept, then they would trade places like hot bunking on a submarine.
Of course these days this is a job we'd do with unmanned, AI driven machines. But the state of technology in the 70s was such that many tasks done today by computers had to be done by a couple of human beings in a tin can. All the early Soviet space stations served as manned spy satellites for example, using film(!) that was air dropped to Earth in a small capsule for development.
Photos of Sadko-II are rare, unsurprising given its age and that it was developed behind the Iron curtain. Consequently the only interior photo, and photo of the exterior while submerged that I could find are stock photos. I won't just post them here for fear of legal reprisal but I feel reasonably safe linking them:
Stock photo 1: Exterior, submerged
Sadko-II was submerged to a depth of 82 feet, about the same depth as Deep Cabin. Divers made excursions from Sakdo-II to nearly twice that depth however. The mission lasted ten days, including three spent decompressing at the end.
It was perhaps the most unusual of the Soviet habitat designs, and an interesting relic of the era in which a human presence was still needed deep underwater or in orbit to perform basic tasks like taking photographs or tapping communications cables that have since been automated. Part of the honestly regrettable trend of removing human explorers from the last unexplored frontiers in favor of robots because of the cost savings.
Anyway, stay tuned for more. There's still several Soviet habitats to get through.
Stay Cozy!
Love the spongebob spoof haha. Cool bit of history though.
Wow i never heard of this before, looks syfy like.
interesting piece of history. so soviets were building ugly and strange underwater habitat
They never cared what their machines looked like so long as they worked. Which they did, some of the time.
that's how it supposed to be after all they were made to work not to look
Lol you definitely right. The end result is what matters not the fine look @alexbeyman @lasper
Haha I wonder if it crashes 2 nuts fall out.
They could have made it simpler, they might have some some reason to make it look funnier :)
You make CCP proud comrade!
Those pictures looks like it's a draft for outer space. Those building looked a little weird but it great that they worked on it. But the future building will be awesome.
Wow that thing is interesting. Hey alex what do you think about how sbd is going up somuch? Isn't that insane?
It reminds me of the atomium here in brussels haha!
Those aquanauts look cramped! The other interior photo looks more roomy though. It's hard to get a good idea of what this looked like inside.
That photo was of them peeking up through the moon pool entrance, a narrow opening at the very bottom.
Alex - 'Whoooooooo lives in a peanut under the sea? So-vi-et A-qua-nauts! It does look like a peanut, right? I mean what the fuck even is that?' I feel the same.... Nice language you used to express your feeling lol :)
+W+ [UpVoted & ReSteemed]
So good!
Sadko-II is different from all the habitats i have seen in your posts. i know this looks little bit strange but remember the result of keep trying is Chernomor-II.so we should not stop trying things even when they not seems good.
Nice post
it's good to know that today it doesn't require humans inside to do the job. I'm feeling uncomfortable just looking at those two men inside the Sadko-II, i wonder what they had to go through.. whew ...
moreover, that submarine reminds of this ant bellow :
@alexbeyman,
Oh man I hate it! It seems like a tube :O Ops hate to be there!
At Bittrex SBD at $17 today, by the way HOLD is a good option for this moment! Hope you could make a nice income in last couple of days!
Cheers~
nice post great working
Great post , upvoted
@alexbeyman sir 1 100% up upvote me for help me to my rank 10 and than i post my own post please sir