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Video Games

Atari Video Music: Atari gets groovy

Atari Video MusicAtari gets firmly into the swing of the ’70s with a rare foray into the non-game-related consumer electronics market. Atari Video Music is a device that, when connected to home stereo systems and television sets, displays colorfully trippy random patterns in time with music or any other audio. Some settings, such as sensitivity and randomness, can be set by the user. This bizarre device, a sort of video lava lamp, somehow fails to take off, and Atari goes back to hatching ideas for video games.

More about Atari Video Music in Phosphor Dot Fossils

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Buran Crewed Spaceflight

Soviet shuttle startup

BuranFearing that the relatively sleek, aerodynamic design of the still-unflown American Space Shuttle is a hint that the vehicle could see use as an orbital bomber, the Kremlin orders the creation of the Soviet Space Shuttle program, though work on the vehicle, codenamed Buran (“Snowflake”), is primarily a crash program within the country’s defense department rather than the civilian branch of its space program. Within months, it is concluded that Buran will closely copy the American shuttle design due to the soundness of its aerodynamic design.

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Buran Crewed Spaceflight Mir

USSR plans next-generation space station

Buran at MirWith work having started mere days earlier on Buran, a Soviet version of the American space shuttle design, the Soviet Union’s space agency is given new marching orders to create a new generation of space station hardware, based on the experience gained thus far with the four Salyut space stations and their associated Almaz military space hardware. A modular design is chosen, with multiple docking ports and multiple station components launched over a period of time, concepts which will be tested with yet-to-be-launched Salyut stations. Frequently fighting with the Buran shuttle development program for money and resources (despite the fact that the two spacecraft are expected to be compatible), this new station will not be launched until 1986, almost exactly ten years later, at which time it will be known as Mir.

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Uncrewed Spaceflight Voyager

The Uranus Option

VoyagerDespite the fact that a useful – and rare – alignment of the large outer planets will make a “Grand Tour” possible, NASA has only thus far funded a stripped-down version of the ambitious original Grand Tour plan, a pair of Mariner Jupiter/Saturn ’77 unmanned space probes (later renamed Voyager). Jet Propulsion Laboratory admits that scientists and mission planners have drawn up a “Uranus option” to extend the mission of one of the vehicles to reach Uranus four or five years after a Saturn encounter and gravity assist, and are making modifications to one of the vehicles to permit this contingency. (NASA has yet to approve continuing the MJS’77 program long enough to reach Uranus.) Mission planners also admit that a visit to Uranus could give the vehicle another gravity assist toward Neptune, while admitting that the odds of the vehicle surviving a journey to Neptune with its ability to gather images and scientific data intact would require “a miracle.”