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25 comments to "Bigger is Better: 7 Insane Soviet Projects."
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Anthony
June 5th, 2007 at
2:17 am
It’s amazing that the most powerful bomb ever created is that small.
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James Schend
June 5th, 2007 at
7:46 am
The ground-effect vehicle and the ice breaker don’t really seem all that insane. The Soviets had far more insane projects…
For instance, their version of our space shuttle which was a close duplicate in every way except it lacked any sort of life-support systems whatsoever. They took it off and landed it on remote control anyway to show it off, before giving up on the whole concept. (Turns out they might have been right in the long run, considering how much trouble our shuttles have and how reliable Russian Soyuz capsules are!)
BTW, the US space shuttle can be piloted on remote control also. I don’t think NASA’s ever used this capability.
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James Schend
June 5th, 2007 at
7:50 am
Oh and don’t forget this little beauty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_A-40
A flying tank!! And they actually got it to work, by removing most of the tank’s armor and ammo.
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Link Saturation Hacks
June 5th, 2007 at
10:09 am
They sooo should have went for the funky Parliament, and with all the good looking soviet women, i could have learned to love the bomb too
fun read, dugg and reddit++
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Kriss
June 5th, 2007 at
10:58 am
Other more successful examples of BIG soviet realisations:
The An-225 Mryia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225
“currently the world’s largest flying airplane”Antonov An-124 Ruslan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-124
” is the largest aircraft ever mass produced (until production of the Airbus A380 starts)” -
r-dubs
June 5th, 2007 at
1:02 pm
the parliament building is parodied in animal farm.
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andrewTee
June 5th, 2007 at
2:15 pm
Book listed as source doesn’t match book shown. Interesting article though.
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Alex
June 5th, 2007 at
2:22 pm
Thanks andrewTee - it’s corrected now.
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Ovidiu
June 5th, 2007 at
2:23 pm
I never knew the Soviets invented the Dental Floss… I thought they don’t brush their teeth
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Chris
June 5th, 2007 at
2:37 pm
Well, give me any 100,000 slave laborers and what “I” can achieve…
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Chris
June 5th, 2007 at
2:40 pm
…and SEE what…
sorry, my keyboard is manned by a team of only 1 slave laborer…
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r-dubs
June 5th, 2007 at
4:56 pm
No, sorry. it was an illustration in the 50th anniversery edition of the book. it is “the windmill”.
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Krii
June 5th, 2007 at
6:29 pm
How about the plan they had to reverse the direction the Volga river flow that surly qualifies as a completely insane idea
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jenix
June 6th, 2007 at
2:37 am
The author of the article must cross out the last sentence about Magnitogorsk, because it is absolutely false! It’s true that the iron ore in the mountain Magnitnaya finished, but up to these days they use Kazakhstan’s ore and coal. Kazakhstan is about 100 km away from Magnitogorsk, and this country is extremely rich in minerals. That’s why the sentence about the “collapse” of Magnitogorsk’s economy is absolutely irrelevant!
PS One of the most insane projects of the Soviets was to turn the river Angara backwards, so that it could supply whole Kazakhstan with water. Of course this crazy plan failed, because it is impossible to turn the stream of one of the biggest rivers in the world backwards. -
Alex
June 6th, 2007 at
3:23 am
Jenix, the article was republished verbatim from the mental_floss book.
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jenix
June 6th, 2007 at
4:20 am
Alex
Then the book itself should be republished!)) I live 400 km away from Magnitogorsk and I know this city pretty well! -
kevin
June 6th, 2007 at
12:32 pm
uh doesn’t the Chicago river run backwards ?
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E.T.Cook
June 8th, 2007 at
4:57 pm
My favorite is one of the largest economic crashes of all time. Boy they sure showed us.
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K
June 10th, 2007 at
3:13 pm
kevin -
You’re right. I didn’t know we made the Chicago river run backwards. Weird.
http://www.apwa.net/About/Awards/TopTenCentury/chica.htm
And, of course, there’s always wikipedia.
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Collin
June 11th, 2007 at
9:48 am
Re: the Yamal icebreaker
“and an armored steel hull 4.8 centimeters thick.”
That sounds mighty thin. According to the Wikipedia article linked:
“The Yamal is equipped with a double hull. The outer hull is 48 mm thick where ice is met and 25 mm elsewhere and has a polymer coating to reduce friction.”
Big difference. If that’s verbatim from the book, that’s quite an error.
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Collin
June 11th, 2007 at
9:49 am
Scratch that. Damn. It’s Monday and I must be more tired than I though. Millimeters, not meters. Now I feel quite a fool. It still sounds very thin for some reason.
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akb427
September 11th, 2007 at
2:43 am
The nuclear-powered icebreaker Yamal has never been the world’s only nuke icebreaker; it’s one of six Arktika class ships, though several of them are inactive. It’s pretty dumb to say “none compare” when the previous four have pretty much the same design. The last Arktika class ship built (completed in 2006 after a 13-year stall for funding) is even bigger.
Besides that, even the Arktikas aren’t the only nuke icebreakers; there are also two Russian river icebreakers, and a monster nuke-powered cargo ship with an icebreaking bow.
And I’m not sure the Arctic is the world’s largest piece of ice; I’d guess the Antarctic sheet is bigger.
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Condurache
December 11th, 2007 at
10:38 pm
so the russians detonate a smaller Tsar bomb…
that means they still have the 100 megatons Tsar bomb? -
Ivan
December 30th, 2007 at
10:53 am
Russia/CCCP posses superior simplicity and the greatest environment of people. Their projects are simple yet effective and at low cost which makes their weapons the best. But Stalin’s reign was terrible…I would have worked on economical conditions instead and not execute 20 million Russians which included the best scientists, doctors, architects, etc in the USSR and those who would surely shorten the Second World War by maybe a year to my opinion.
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Sergei
December 30th, 2007 at
10:57 am
Soviet technology would also be more advanced. It’s true. If Stalin would not kill so many of his own people, the USSR would still stand today. It was the greatest Empire that ever stood and its collapse was what shook the century.
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