The Soviet Union spent much money on outer space exploration building research laboratories which today turn out to be needless. This is a laboratory of metallography (metallography is the study of the physical structure and components of metals). Let’s go see what’s inside!
It was a secret laboratory with doors equipped with access codes, that even some of its workers could not go wherever they wanted. It has been like this before, now it’s different.
So, we’re in the control room.
Some part of the equipment has been removed. Probably, for other purposes.
A remote control device.
A control panel. Although the laboratory has been abandoned for some time, if you got caught here, you’d wish it had never happened.
In Soviet times, they conducted a lot of researches and tests here for cosmos exploration but in the 90s the country could not allow it anymore, so the work was suspended… for ever, as it turned out later.
Probably, this device was used for testing space equipment in a vacuum at different temperatures.
Some shots from the inside.
The testing device from another angle.
‘STL-300′. Does anybody know what it is and what it’s for?
A poster picturing the device.
Gel leak testers. They have a weight of 170 kg and were produced in the 70s.
Little by little, local people disassemble the equipment…
On the one hand, the lab is outdated; on the other hand, is there a lab in Russia where they carry out similar tests and investigations right now?
An older version of the leak tester.
On the second floor there are workplaces of employees and a substation.
A set of stylish component parts.
Devices which haven’t been unwrapped.
Ionizing vacuumeters.
The view of the main floor.
This is a department of chemical inquiries.
Many of the flasks have been broken so there is a very strong smell here.
A heat exchanger.
A dryer machine to evaporate unnecessary water from the flasks.
No laboratory could do without scales.
The extractor fan is in panic! Which is understandable because it was supposed to draw in the toxic air which used to be in abundance here.
New flasks.
One of the storage rooms.
Naturally, all the measurement devices were made in the USSR, except for the Dendy joystick.
AT (Ancient Technology) that you won’t be seeing in modernized Russian smelting & fabrication plants. The industry supplying Sukhoi would be laughing uproariously if you suggested them getting materials from here. Too bad it couldn’t have been upgraded and repurposed for something with financial return.
Collapse of the Soviet Union is the worst thing that happened to the world’s scientific community.
I would agree to a point. The end of the post-Stalinist thaw under Brezhnev retarded a lot of scientific research as Brezhnev was overly concerned with military and nuclear issues and neglected a lot of the theoretical physics and biological areas. Most of the major advances in science occurred in the 1950s to the mid 60s.
Such waste of state money! At least all this equipment could be donated to universities and schools.
Universities need to be using today’s equipment to be training their students to create the equipment and techniques of tomorrow. Donating this stuff would be using the equipment of three decades ago to train students to create the technology of yesterday. It just needs to be sold off to China so they can convert it into paper clips.
I can imagine men in white dust coats totally wrapped up in their work all around the place. It must have been very sad for them when it all finished
all are continuing
Alloy design and manufacture is still part science and part black art. A lot of the equipment shown here could still be used (if working properly) in a modern lab. For instance, modern microscopes may have fancier controls (I know mine do) but it still comes down to the quality of the glass in many cases. I have certainly seen more done with less.
The roundbottom flasks and glassware are very expensive and would be useful for universities. The dryers and thermometers (if functional) would also be useful.
Weapons is all they can do, who knows if there was toxic chemicals made in the devices.
What a depressing country, the people live a HaRd life.