When I was younger , I remember an old gun guy looking at S&W 39's & talking about how they were used by NASA. He said, that NASA astronauts had 39's on space missions. Anybody know if this is true?

A 39 floating around in zero G with system critical hardware in every corner of the spacecraft and the vacuum of space beyond that, I highly doubt it.

However, it sure would be handy in a rowdy alien cantina.

Dude seriously what are you smoking ?
Astronauts bringing handguns into outerspace ?
Had to check my calender to make sure it wasnt April 1st.

Unlikely because if someone had to fire it, it would have created a thrust vector against the operator and possibly the spacecraft itself. Besides, what would they have used a 9mm to shoot, each other? Come to think about it, IF a M39 were sent up with the early astronauts it might well have been for the purpose of one dispatching the other(s), followed by himself in the event they found themselves in an untenable situation with no escape but drifting off into space to die, or burning up on reentry.

Some of the Russian survival kits had Makarovs. You do remember what
Jeff Cooper said about the 9 x 18? But I guess he didn't actually say if was bad in a survival kit.

__________________
NRA LIFE MEMBER

His"information" was.. ,if one astronaut went crazy the others would use the piston to dispatch him before he could jeopardize the mission.

Maybe he was thinking about this movie:
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Aliens

But really, with the times they were back then they could have been worried about landing in a communist country or being fished out of the sea by a russian " trawler ", could have happened. Space flight wasn't that exact back then, mistakes are still made today.

Excatly

The model 39's were used to accuate the bramflux dibulators. At the time NASA could not figure any other way to do this considering the extreme nitrogen negative impact that is reflected by the solar flares in space.

I read this on the internet.

__________________
James Redfield
LM #497

Virtually no information was available about the military Salyuts until recently, when access was opened up to a full-scale training model at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Well, guess what--Salyut 3 was armed. The station had a 23 mm rapid-fire cannon mounted on the outside, along the long axis of the station "for defense against US space-based inspectors/interceptors".

Russian Soyuz capsules carry firearms as a standard part of their survival kits. The exact model of firearm carried seems to have varied throughout the lifetime of the Soyuz program, but at least two different guns have been included in these kits. According to the Kosmonavtka, these two firearms are as follows:

1) The Makarov pistol, which is used by both military and police forces in Russia. It fires 9 mm cartridges and has an 8 round magazine.

2) A three-barrel (two-over/one-under) drilling developed specifically for the Soyuz program. One barrel is a rifled for shooting rifle cartridges, one is a smooth-bore for firing shotgun shells, and the third is used to fire flares.

Astronauts know...

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side." - Han Solo

I heard they were for ballistics testing on the surface of the moon. In the end, they had to settle for just whacking golf balls.

You are correct, sir.
Later missions utilized a unit constructed actuator, and the '39s were no longer needed.
The actuators were reliable and had no malfunctions throughout the remainder of the program.
Eventually, the bramflux dibulators were replaced with solid state digital models that operated on the same principle as the trionic alternating phase element transducer.
The 39s were still a popular item among purists, and are in high demand to this day.
I am lookin' at a 439 this year, maybe.

Never mind the hole it would make in the spacecrafts skin , Discharging a firearm inside a sealed cabin full of pressurized O2...hmmm sounds fun bang--KABOOM !

As for rapidly ending the pain if something went wrong all they would have to do is open a hatch or swallow a pill.

As for hauling a 23mmm rapid fire cannon into a space station full of pressurized O2 where weight and storage is a premium ,
My guess is the effect of that kind of recoil would act kinda like maneuvering jets and the resulting blast send the station spinning out of control or even out of orbit ....

Doh !!!! Im actually commenting on cannons in outer space !

You do recall what happened to Apollo 13, yes? How they couldn't land, circled around the moon, nearly died from lack of O2?

To get back to Earth, the commander, James Lovell, realizing that the O2was depleted in one tank, ordered the pilot, Jack Swigert, to fire one round of 9mm from an M1-AI S&W Model 39 into the tank at the exact angle needed to create an escaping gas port facing the sun. Since Fred Haise, the Lunar Module Pilot, wasn't going to be piloting the Module, he placed his thumb over the bullet hole in the capsule so that when the gases escaped from the O2 tank to direct the capsule back to Earth they were not interfered with by the gases escaping from the capsule itself, which would have directed the capsule directly to Mars, according to the slide rule calculations that NASA made at the time.

Mick Jagger claimed that the song "Under My Thumb" was his prediction of this event.....

And so it goes.........


***GRJ***