Almaz / OPS

Konstantin Feoktistov survives being shot and left for dead by German troops as a teenage scout in the war, a brush with death that marks the future spacecraft designer.

Chelomei develops the Proton heavy rocket and proposes the Almaz, a crewed military reconnaissance space station with its own return capsule and defensive gun.

The first military Almaz station, flown under the Salyut cover name, breaks up in orbit before a crew can board, the secret armed reconnaissance station programme of Chelomei's bureau.

Salyut 3 (Almaz OPS-2) carries a modified 23 mm Rikhter aircraft cannon, the only weapon ever fired in orbit, test-fired unmanned in January 1975 as the station was deorbited. A crewed military reconnaissance outpost of the Cold War.

The military Almaz reconnaissance stations fly under the civilian 'Salyut' name to disguise their true purpose: high-resolution photo-reconnaissance and, on OPS-2, a cannon. Their real history stays classified for decades.

Under Gazenko the institute develops the exercise regimes, loading suits and monitoring that let cosmonauts survive missions of months and then a year, the science beneath every endurance record.