I love the logistics end of space exploration. The way humanity attempted to deal with the contingencies of the Space Race always entertain me.
Like the fact that the Soviet space program had to deal with certain realities the American program never did. America had control over the world’s oceans, so it made the most sense to have re-entering space capsules splash down, where they could be rescued by the Navy. Russia, on the other hand, controlled much larger land areas, so the Soviet astronauts came down on land. And since it’s a little more difficult to get to some parts of the (then) Soviet Union than others, cosmonauts occasionally had to prepare for a long wait before being recovered.
Which is why among the survival gear Soviet cosmonauts were issued was a fucking shotgun to fend off wolves.
(They also mounted a machine gun on their first space station. Despite what Firefly would have you believe, guns work just fine in space. Gunpowder contains its own oxidizer.)
My favorite part of the American space program is just how janky some of the solutions were. NASA came up with a trainer designed to mimic how the Lunar Module worked that was dubbed “The Flying Bedstead” that nearly killed Neil Armstrong in an enormous fireball before it was retired. And I’ve already mentioned how one of the reasons Apollo 12 didn’t end a few minutes into the launch was the fact that Pete Conrad thought firing off the escape tower would be almost as dangerous as the Saturn V exploding.
There’s also the escape slide they installed on the Space Shuttle after Challenger. The problem with bailing out of the Shuttle is that the hatch is right above and forward of the wing, so they designed a long, flexible pole that would, in theory, allow astronauts to slide and dip out of the way before free-falling away and popping their chutes. (Odds were much more likely they’d be rendered into their component atoms.)
But by far my favorite piece of space jank is a proposed system designed to recover the astronauts should the Lunar Module fail on the moon’s surface. One plan for later Apollo missions would involve the stranded astronauts ripping the ascent engine out of the LM, ripping the bench seat off the Lunar Roving Vehicle, strapping them together and rocketing into low orbit like some kind of hellacious Jackass skit whereupon the Command Module pilot would swoop down and grab them.
Makes the ending of The Martian seem meticulously planned out.