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A comment on The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight.

Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by harywilke on Saturday October 05, 2024 @02:03PM (#41751702)
Read a very interesting book on the space race from the soviet side. One of the things that stood out was the lack of solid state transistor technology meant that they were using tube transistors in their space craft. This was one of the reasons they had problems doing spacewalks. They couldn't expose the interior of their capsules to space or the electronics would go pop. The Wrong Stuff How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned by John strausbaugh https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-strausbaugh/th...
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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by izacus on Saturday October 05, 2024 @02:34PM (#41751916)
The title itself should tell you that the book is there to sensationalize and grind an axe, not to actually provide any historical accuracy.

And yep, the author didn't even bother to use primary sources: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4851/1

It's like recommending a book about Apollo program written by Russians without reading any US documentation.

If there has to be a western author, James Harford's Korolev biography is a better put together look into Soviet space program and actually has some proper academic reviews.

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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by kens on Saturday October 05, 2024 @02:54PM (#41752044)
I read "Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space" and found it very interesting. It is a detailed history of the early Soviet space program and Yuri Gagarin's flight.
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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by MrBuddyCasino on Saturday October 05, 2024 @03:28PM (#41752288)
Why would a vacuum tube „pop“ when exposed to vacuum?
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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by dmix on Saturday October 05, 2024 @03:55PM (#41752452)
probably because the vacuum of space is way more extreme than inside the tube which would cause pressure on the seals
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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by teraflop on Sunday October 06, 2024 @08:43AM (#41756750)
Vacuum tubes typically have an internal pressure of less than 0.001 atm, sometimes much less.

Any seal that can withstand a pressure difference of 0.001 atm to 1 atm from the outside can almost certainly withstand a difference of 0.001 atm to 0 atm from the inside.

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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by analog31 on Saturday October 05, 2024 @07:14PM (#41753586)
Possibly nowhere for the heat to go. Some tubes need a certain amount of ventilation depending on the application. It wouldn't pop, but might fail.
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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by numpad0 on Saturday October 05, 2024 @08:27PM (#41753824)
Some of Soviet spacecrafts were known to have been built around ~1atm pressure vessels as a brute force means to reduce unknown unknowns. I suspect it could be reverse reasoning from there.
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Re:The Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Sovi... by bgnn on Saturday October 05, 2024 @06:30PM (#41753391)
that's bullshit. vacuum tubes are used in spacecraft by NASA too. it's likely they are still used. they don't pop in vacuum. plus they're more radiation resistant thwn transistors.
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