Friday, October 29, 2010

USSR Pavilion, Expo '67

(Oops, forgot to set the correct "publish" time! Sorry about the late post).

You know, I'm no commie, but I have to admit that the USSR had a pretty cool pavilion at Montreal's "Expo '67". See for yourself, comrade! I'm thinking a stiff wind might cause this entire building to take off like a kite.


It was pretty cool inside as well, especially when they displayed their aerospace technology. Here's a scale model of a Tupelov TU-144 - the Soviet supersonic transport aircraft (SST) that bore a striking (too striking?) resemblance to the French/British Concorde. The actual aircraft would not fly until several years after the fair.


Here is a selection of bitchin' Russian spacecraft and satellites. Is that vertical thing with the solar panels a space station of some kind? The smaller vehicle that is headed towards us is a Vostok spacecraft - nearly identical to the one that Yuri Gagarin flew in when he became the first human in space. The round part is the "capsule" in which the cosmonaut sat; it still amazes me that the Russian capsules land on the hard earth rather than in the ocean like the U.S. craft, and yet it seems to have worked pretty well over the years.


I've got lots more Expo '67 stuff, so I hope you enjoyed this post!

6 comments:

  1. Ha!, that building looks like it was built last year. There's never anything really new in architecture, designers just steal from different people from season to season.

    Also, looks something like the Yacht Bar.

    I like it, and all those planes.

    I hear that the ground is softer over there in Somewhereistan where those things land, so that's why that works.

    My helmet is too big for that Vostok capsule, I prefer McDonnell/Douglas products, more headroom.

    JG

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  2. Actually, they didn't all land soft. We just didn't hear about it until the USSR broke up....

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  3. That expo certainly had its share of great architecture. Thanks for the swell view.

    Poor Vladimir Komarov learned first hand how 'soft' those landings were, by the way. RIP.

    Moving right along...

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  4. Yeah and the architects all borrow from rather short rotating lists of influences. That is a modern looking building.

    Cool satellites and capsules! Russia had - has - such an awesome space program.

    Also the part of the vehicle on the left looks interesting. In the 2nd and 3rd pics there is one person (man in 2nd, woman in 3rd) with one arm across their chest and one hand by their mouth going, "Hmm" at the objects. :)

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  5. Vladimir4:31 AM

    You post all these great pictures and go to all this work, and then you distribute the fruits of your labor to the whole wide world for free! If that's not communism, then I don't know what is! A capitalist would be charging us cash every time we looked at these babies! Keep up the good work, comrade!

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  6. We went there when I was a kid. It was really f'in cool. The lines were exponentially worse than Disneyland, up to four hours. We never made it into the US Pavilion on foot, just with the people-mover ride they had...

    The Russkies had all this great hardware, working lasers and stuff like that. The Americans had giant blow-up photos of Marylin Monroe and Clark Gable, the geodesic dome everything was housed in mostly empty space. So, we won the Cold War with imagery and dreams, and all the pictures of Lenin couldn't save the Russkies from entropy...

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