It was an interesting choice, and they didn't mess it up -- as I recall, some LeMat peculiarities play into the plot at one point, so the propmaster knew what they were doing.
Because I'm a nerd who grew up shooting, I've taken several runs at a "guns for writers" primer, because it's hard to get right if you don't know anything about firearms. The best rule is to avoid specifics here if you can, because naming a brand (e.g.) can back you into a corner if you don't know anything about the brand. (Case in point, I read a book a year or so ago that included a character cocking a SIG Sauer, which isn't possible.)
Point being, choosing a LeMat is a risky option for the writer because it's so unusual, so I was really happy to see they did so knowing what it was. We wouldn't really have LOST anything if they'd just given the MiB a bog-standard 1851 Colt or Single Action Army, but the LeMat adds a little depth/spice/eccentricity. It's a nice choice.
It might be that Russians cooperate very well (I do definitely agree on that), but as the organisation grows bigger, it is definitely very Russian to not be able to do anything.
russians (and other citizens of soviet union) transitioned from serfdom to (at the time) bleeding edge political system. It required tremendeous amounts of bureaucracy in order to enforce ex-serfs not to get any funny ideas about their current 'freedom'.
• “right of passage” = right of way, “(approximately) a country's right for its ships to pass through the territorial seas of foreign states and straits used for international navigation”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Right_of_passage&...) Seems to be more often a typo for “rite of passage”.
Russian version of the article states that he expressed his complaint only in 1979 when he was visiting weapons manufacturing in Tula. The development started shortly after.
Because the poster thought it might be interesting to those who frequent the site? Considering its position on the front page at time of writing I would say he thought correctly.
How long have you being here? Random Wikipedia article makes its way to the home page from time to time. Every day, ~5 Wikipedia articles is submitted to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org), some have generated a lot of interesting discussions in the past.
One of the reasons I visit HN so much is precisely because of these "off topic" articles. Very often they're either interesting, thought provoking or just plain odd/unusual. That's a great thing! I have a wide range of interests so anything that tickles my curiosity is cool. Often, I find the comments far more illuminating and interesting than the original article itself.
Things that become popular on HN are pretty much legitimate & on-topic by definition. The guidelines say "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on-topic.[0] Off topic are "politics, or crime, or sports" but even those can have exceptions.
Posting a "why is this here?" comment is a sure fire way to be downvoted and [dead], after which practically no one will see your complaint anyway. Don't like a story? Flag it. It's the only effective way of lodging your opinion on these things.
The article had a link to an AK-74, and I thought is that a typo for an AK-47? Apparently Russia moved on to the next generation in 1974 and the rest of the world remained with AK-47s?
During WW2 and Korea, militaries generally favored larger, heavier bullets. The thinking was power is good. Over time, people realized that carrying weight is bad, and volume of fire is usually better than the power of a single cartridge – so the US moved to the M-16 (M4, AR-15) and the Soviets to the AK-74.
The sticking point is you have to have the money for BOTH:
1. Mass caliber conversion (rifle replacement, new ammo, new tooling...), AND
2. Purchase of additional, larger caliber weapons to replace the capability you lost when switching most of your forces from the intermediate cartridge to the newer, smaller bullet.
So, poorer countries tended to stick with the AK-47, and wealthier Soviet-bloc countries went to the AK-74...but there aren't too many wealthy communist countries, so the AK-47 remained the standard.
> In 2007,[2] the media reported that the remaining ammunition for the TP-82 had become unusable and that a regular semi-automatic pistol would be used on future missions.
Assuming the gun fires 28 gauge shotgun shells and standard AK74 ammunition, I can't see why the original ammunition failing would be a problem. Is there something I am missing here?
Guessing they need ammo which has been cleared for spaceflight, as you want the ammo go up, potentially stay there for extensive amounts of time, come back down, and still be in working order.
Since it's stored very close to the astronauts that shouldn't be a problem. Or rather you'd have a different set of problems if your astronaut compartment was hot and shaky enough to let ammunition go off.
Couldn't someone just hand-load a different bullet into the same base cartridge? In the worst case scenario, swap out the barrel for one that can handle the standard rounds?
They were already using lighter weight Makarov pistols before the TP-82, and switched to the combo gun after some cosmonauts spent the night in the Siberian wilderness and thought a small semi-auto pistol wasn't enough. But, yeah, running out of qualified ammo likely just supplied the impetus to re-evaluate the necessity of the TP-82.
More interesting is the laser pistol the USSR attempted to design for cosmonauts to carry.
Not haunted, the man in the moon simply dug further down into the cheese layer beneath the lunar regolith when we got there and started poking things with flags.
The talk section of Wikipedia speculates it might be a hoax. There seems to be a single reference to that pistol (and every other reference points back to that one).
The link doesn't work for me. Another commenter mentioned that the laser pistol is shown in a Russian military museum, which is evidence enough for me.
Three barrels: two shotgun and one rifle? Wow. That's a lot of firepower for one pistol. I don't know anything about gun construction, but I'm amazed such a small gun holds together being so hole-y.
I'm surprised I've never seen these in an FPS. Seems like a unique and versatile sidearm.
79 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadBecause I'm a nerd who grew up shooting, I've taken several runs at a "guns for writers" primer, because it's hard to get right if you don't know anything about firearms. The best rule is to avoid specifics here if you can, because naming a brand (e.g.) can back you into a corner if you don't know anything about the brand. (Case in point, I read a book a year or so ago that included a character cocking a SIG Sauer, which isn't possible.)
Point being, choosing a LeMat is a risky option for the writer because it's so unusual, so I was really happy to see they did so knowing what it was. We wouldn't really have LOST anything if they'd just given the MiB a bog-standard 1851 Colt or Single Action Army, but the LeMat adds a little depth/spice/eccentricity. It's a nice choice.
I knew a guy years ago who kind-of described it as a right of passage that you would take a trip out into the woods and build your own cabin/dacha.
A Finnish friend sent me his pictures of building his, including the obligatory sauna.
This is a VERY unfortunate way to distort the truth.
Bolshevism was just another versions of slavery / serfdom.
The liberal democracy, as practiced in the West, was actually bleeding edge: commoners having rights and exercising them.
• “rite of passage” = “a ceremony or event marking an important stage in someone's life”, “when an individual leaves one group to enter another”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rite_of_passage&o...)
• “right of passage” = right of way, “(approximately) a country's right for its ships to pass through the territorial seas of foreign states and straits used for international navigation”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Right_of_passage&...) Seems to be more often a typo for “rite of passage”.
Long may these random articles continue!
Posting a "why is this here?" comment is a sure fire way to be downvoted and [dead], after which practically no one will see your complaint anyway. Don't like a story? Flag it. It's the only effective way of lodging your opinion on these things.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
During WW2 and Korea, militaries generally favored larger, heavier bullets. The thinking was power is good. Over time, people realized that carrying weight is bad, and volume of fire is usually better than the power of a single cartridge – so the US moved to the M-16 (M4, AR-15) and the Soviets to the AK-74.
The sticking point is you have to have the money for BOTH:
1. Mass caliber conversion (rifle replacement, new ammo, new tooling...), AND
2. Purchase of additional, larger caliber weapons to replace the capability you lost when switching most of your forces from the intermediate cartridge to the newer, smaller bullet.
So, poorer countries tended to stick with the AK-47, and wealthier Soviet-bloc countries went to the AK-74...but there aren't too many wealthy communist countries, so the AK-47 remained the standard.
https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t/space-shotgun-ammo/2...
https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t/russian-tp-82-surviv...
Assuming the gun fires 28 gauge shotgun shells and standard AK74 ammunition, I can't see why the original ammunition failing would be a problem. Is there something I am missing here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c
They weren't standard AK74 rounds. They were a special soft point version (5.45x39 SN-P) that were only used in these survival guns.
More interesting is the laser pistol the USSR attempted to design for cosmonauts to carry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol
That's straight out of Scifi.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Original_Trilogy#DD...
Soviet laser pistol
My bet is that the laser pistol never existed.
Do click links in the articles. Now whether it worked or not is up to the debate (most likely not).
Still looks goofy, though.
You mean the same museum showing that USSR was never an ally of Nazi Germany?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#On-board_gun
I'm surprised I've never seen these in an FPS. Seems like a unique and versatile sidearm.
Source: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/soviet-cosmonauts-carried-a...