WI/PC: Mutiny on the Mir (1987)

Silly idea I came up with during spring cleaning.

What if, at some point during the Cold War, a the crew of a Soviet space station - for the sake of this thread, let’s say it’s the Mir, ca. 1987 - 1988 - attempts to defect to the United States with said space station? Assume the entire crew has agreed to defect, and somehow this escapes the attention of the KGB/GRU until they’re actually in space.

How would they go about contacting the US? How would NASA actually secure the cosmonauts and the Mir? I assume it would be relatively simple to send a Shuttle up, though - and correct me if I’m wrong here - it seems they wouldn’t be able to actually dock the Shuttle, seeing as docking facilities weren’t installed until 1990 (and proper Shuttle docking ports weren’t installed until 1995). Assuming the Russians cut off resupply of the station, would the US have been able to resupply the station themselves?

How would the Soviets respond? The defection of multiple cosmonauts and the crown jewel of the Russian space program ought to be a major egg-on-face moment for the USSR. Would they have no realistic chance of doing anything? Would they send up cosmonauts in some sort of attempt to retake the station? Might they even attack the Mir with ASAT weaponry to prevent it from falling into American hands?
 
I think it would hard to think of a less ideal vehicle to defect with than the MIR.

They are pretty much at the mercy of ground control up there for all the stuff they need. It is not like they could fake an emergency and be rescued by a Space Shuttle or some Tom Clancy shit like that.

There is also the added wrinkle that during that time frame the Soviet cosmonauts were not really alone on the station. While not quite an International Space Station the crew included members from places like France and Afghanistan during that time.
 
As far as I could figure, the best way to make this work would be to ride up to Mir, spend some time disabling any overrides ground control has over the Soyuz, and then wait till you're in the right position to drop in on the American Midwest. Or figure out a way to fake an emergency during the scheduled reentry and come down earlier then planned, preferably again, right into the USA.
 
Silly idea I came up with during spring cleaning.

What if, at some point during the Cold War, a the crew of a Soviet space station - for the sake of this thread, let’s say it’s the Mir, ca. 1987 - 1988 - attempts to defect to the United States with said space station? Assume the entire crew has agreed to defect, and somehow this escapes the attention of the KGB/GRU until they’re actually in space.

How would they go about contacting the US? How would NASA actually secure the cosmonauts and the Mir? I assume it would be relatively simple to send a Shuttle up, though - and correct me if I’m wrong here - it seems they wouldn’t be able to actually dock the Shuttle, seeing as docking facilities weren’t installed until 1990 (and proper Shuttle docking ports weren’t installed until 1995). Assuming the Russians cut off resupply of the station, would the US have been able to resupply the station themselves?

How would the Soviets respond? The defection of multiple cosmonauts and the crown jewel of the Russian space program ought to be a major egg-on-face moment for the USSR. Would they have no realistic chance of doing anything? Would they send up cosmonauts in some sort of attempt to retake the station? Might they even attack the Mir with ASAT weaponry to prevent it from falling into American hands?
I just don't see the US deciding to claim the space station as theirs. IMHO I can see the US giving political asylum to the Astronauts (assuming they can some how make it to the U.S. or a U.S. space ship, but IMHO I don't see the U.S. wanting to take custody of Mir.
 
It's not at all hard to just land a Soyuz somewhere in the midwest, which is by FAR the most likely scenario for any kind of defection. Interesting implications in it's own right, but I don't think there's much possibility of the US backing anything more than that. If they someone WERE to try to hand over the station I suspect the sequence would be that the US orders their new crew back to Earth just about immedietely and leaves the station for the Russians to recover as best they can (realistically dooming it given how well Mir could hold up uncrewed and the difficulties in getting flights up in 1990). Silly episode, creating some very real bad feeling in Russia and getting the crew declared traitors, but imo of little long term importance.

I suppose it COULD lead to a bout of stubbornness that gets a bare-bones Mir 2 launched in the mid 90s, but more likely I think it would be the end of Russian manned spaceflight in the 20th century. What pieces get picked up later by Putin depend an awful lot on the vagaries of things like roofs falling on space shuttles in former Soviet republics. I like the picture of Buran eventually flying with a version of Spacelab in the back and a Soyuz return module as a bailout craft, but keeping Energia alive is a hell of a stretch even without the space station program. More likely I think Russia would about now be getting comfortable fling something like Kliper on it's own and talking about projects more like Salyut or Tiangong than a big modular station.
 
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One of the Soyuz backup landing sites is in fact the American Mid-West. All they have to do, is decide to land there instead.

One of the modern sites, or one of the Soviet Era sites? Because I doubt it's the later, Cuba perhaps. Admittedly, that just means the cosmonauts need to do the math for histories most bizarre deflection from the Eastern Bloc themselves instead of having it already handily done for them. As I mentioned earlier, they may also need to do some surgery on the Soyuz to gut any backup control systems that Ground Control could use to seize control over their ship.
 

Ak-84

Banned
One of the modern sites, or one of the Soviet Era sites? Because I doubt it's the later, Cuba perhaps. Admittedly, that just means the cosmonauts need to do the math for histories most bizarre deflection from the Eastern Bloc themselves instead of having it already handily done for them. As I mentioned earlier, they may also need to do some surgery on the Soyuz to gut any backup control systems that Ground Control could use to seize control over their ship.
Its the original and current sites depending on orbiit.
The Soyuz is not an airplane. Its an orbital vessel. It needs to be able to renenter the atmosphere without burning up or G forces killing the crew or both. Depending on the the orbit and where they are in it, a safe landing may only be possible in one of the backup sites. And there is very little human piloting. The crew prepare, and the Commander piunches the "go home" button and the sequence is done automatically.
 
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