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Stranded The Extraterrestrial Peril of Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev By Will Dabbs, MD

I once harbored personal aspirations concerning the astronaut program myself. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed. NASA photo.

Human beings are social creatures. We are designed by our Creator to crave the company of fellow humans. To be deprived of this mystical stuff is invariably deleterious to the normal psyche.

Our drive for companionship falls along a spectrum. Some folks cannot maintain their sanity if they aren’t among a crowd. Others are happiest with a good book and solitude…for a time. However, true social isolation will, legit, drive a guy crazy.

You can see this in prisons. Even if your mates are all hardened maniacal criminals, everybody despises solitary confinement. A little solitude can be cathartic. A lot is invariably hellish.

Next Level Stuff

Unless you are ridiculously wealthy, you probably will not get to ride into space. Astronaut selection is unimaginably arduous. Curiously, I once aspired to that myself. I applied for the astronaut program right out of flight school and got closer than I had expected.

Had I not cashed in my flight suit in favor of being a husband and father, I might have actually pulled that off eventually. Or not. That’s one of life’s many imponderables.

In retrospect, everything worked out fine. There is arguably no more high-effort/high-payoff profession than serving as an astronaut. However, that’s a pretty tough life.

It’s one thing if you find yourself stuck at Walmart for an hour or even snowbound for a few days. It’s something else entirely to be trapped in space. That experience just touches a primal chord. So much so that more than a few top-flight movies have been made on the very subject. However, sometimes it actually happens for real.

Mankind has maintained a constant presence in space for decades now. Life in the limitless void brings its own unique challenges. NASA photo.

Recent Examples

Astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunny Williams launched up to the International Space Station aboard the new Boeing Starliner back in June of 2024 on what was supposed to be an eight-day mission. Then everything about the Starliner went pear-shaped, and they had to bring the ship back empty. Finally, some 286 days later, a SpaceX Dragon capsule fetched them home. Wilmore and Williams seemed fairly introspective about the experience.

Throughout their time in orbit, Wilmore and Williams were stranded but not forgotten. They could rest easy knowing that the economic and engineering juggernaut that is the United States of Freaking America was going to eventually bring them home. But what if that was not the case?

The Castaway

Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev was born in Leningrad in 1958. His hobbies included skiing, cycling, swimming, aerobatic flying, and amateur radio. He studied Mechanical Engineering and joined NPO Energa in 1981. This was the agency responsible for manned spaceflight in the old Soviet Union.

Over the next several years, he paid his dues. Krikalev played a significant support role in docking with and repairing the out-of-control Salyut 7 space station in 1985. Then, on 26 November 1988, he headed up to the Mir space station for a protracted stay alongside another Russian cosmonaut and a French counterpart. He safely returned to Earth in April of the following year.

Cosmonauts don’t just fall off the turnip truck, and the Soviets wanted to get their money’s worth. On 19 May 1991, Krikalev launched for Mir yet again, this time with a fellow Russian and Brit named Helen Sharman. Sharman came home after a week. Krikalev and his counterpart, Anatoly Artsebarsky, stuck around per the original mission parameters.

When Artsebarsky rotated home, Krikalev volunteered to remain in orbit as Mir’s flight engineer. Then, on 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union imploded under its own weight. The nation that had fired Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev into space no longer existed. He was stuck.

Like most things, a little bit of space is probably pretty cool. Too much, however, is another thing entirely. NASA photo.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Flirt with a Girl…

 

Krikalev made the best of things. He did scads of EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity- aka space walks) and spoke to folks all around the globe via ham radio. One of his radio buddies was Margaret Iaquinto.

Sergei and Margaret spoke daily for more than a year total. They discussed personal issues, politics, and technical stuff. Iaquinto established a digital bulletin board that the Mir crew could use to get unfiltered news about the death of the Soviet Union.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome and the mission landing area were both located in newly independent Kazakhstan. Folks on the ground seemed a bit preoccupied with their own problems to fret about one dude who had already been in space for a long, long time. After a great deal of chaos, Krikalev finally came home on 25 March. Because of his unique circumstances, he has been rightfully described as the last citizen of the Soviet Union.

The Rest of the Story

That guy just couldn’t get enough. Once the dust settled on the USSR, Sergei Krikalev volunteered to fly on the US space shuttle. On 3 February 1994, Krikalev blasted off yet again, this time as a crewmember on shuttle flight STS-60. He returned to Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery eight days later.

In December of 1998, he returned to space as part of STS-88 aboard Endeavor to assist in the assembly of the International Space Station. He returned to the station two more times after that.

Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev went to space a total of six times. He spent an aggregate of 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 minutes in orbit. He conducted eight EVAs for a total of 41 hours and 8 minutes floating about in the void. He is number four on the list of space travelers based on total time spent off-planet. The other three are also all cosmonauts.

Thanks to the curious phenomenon of time dilation, Krikalev is 0.02 seconds younger than someone else born at exactly the same time who remained on Earth.

He was awarded both the Hero of Russia and the Hero of the Soviet Union for his extensive work in the heavens. Krikalev closed out his extraordinary career in command of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Not half bad for a guy who was shipwrecked in space when his country fell to pieces.

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Nathan Bedford Forrest charges a Union Brigade alone the day after Shiloh, 1862

In my humble opinion Forrest was probably one of thee best Cavalry Commanders this nation ever produced. Yeah I know, he made his vast fortune off of slavery. But he was & still is the wizard of the saddle in my book. Grumpy

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All About Guns

New for 2026: Pedersoli 1805 Baker Rifle Pedersoli now offers an authentically styled 1805 Baker Rifle for collectors, re-enactors and enthusiasts. by Jeremiah Knupp

Pedersoli 1805 Baker Rifle
Images courtesy of Pedersoli Firearms

Mention the words “Baker Rifle” and one image comes to mind: Richard Sharpe, the main character in Bernard Cornwell’s series of historical novels and the BBC television series it inspired, and his band of green-coated riflemen.

Until recently, to get your hands on a Baker Rifle like Sharpe’s you had to choose between a rare original, a custom-built replica or an affordable, but less authentic reproduction that often lacked the Baker’s key feature—its rifling. That has changed with Pedersoli’s introduction of its 1805 Baker Rifle.

: Pedersoli sought to bring authentically styled Baker rifles into the hands of collectors, re-enactors, and shooters with its 1805 Baker.
: Pedersoli sought to bring authentically styled Baker rifles into the hands of collectors, re-enactors, and shooters with its 1805 Baker.

The flintlock Baker Rifle was made in seven different versions and served the British Empire from about 1800 to 1837. Pedersoli’s Baker follows the 1805 pattern. Its overall design shows the influence of the German Jaeger rifles that inspired it, with its full walnut stock and brass patch box.

The rest of the features are authentic, from its sling mounts to the bar for mounting a sword bayonet at the muzzle. The rifle has an overall length of 45.44 inches and weighs 8.4 pounds. Most importantly, the rifle’s 30-inch Pedersoli Match Grade, tapered round barrel has the proper .625-inch bore and seven-groove rifling with a 1:120-inch twist rate. The company is also selling a bullet mold to cast the proper .614-inch round ball.

Amongst its most important details, the Pedersoli Baker’s .625” bore is rifled with seven grooves in a 1:120” twist.
Amongst its most important details, the Pedersoli Baker’s .625-inch bore is rifled with seven grooves in a 1:120-inch twist.

While the Baker is most associated with the Napoleonic Wars, the rifle also has a connection to American history. British troops carried the Baker during the War of 1812 and quantities of the rifle were also sold to Mexico and were used in the Texas War of Independence, including at the Battle of the Alamo.

The Pedersoli Baker’s walnut stock has a matte finish and authentic profile.
The Pedersoli Baker’s walnut stock has a matte finish and authentic profile.

The Pedersoli 1805 Baker Rifle has an MSRP of $1,995. For more information, see the company’s website.

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He Made The World Protect Yosemite, The Sequoias and The Grand Canyon. He Was From Dunbar, Scotland.

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All About Guns COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Click: A Zippo, a 1911, and a Way of Life by Scott Witner

Gold Zippo engraved with the Second Amendment beside a 1911 pistol on a gunsmith workbench, symbolizing legacy, craftsmanship, and tools that last

The first thing Earl Briggs did every morning was reach for two things: his coffee and his Zippo.

Not his phone. Not the remote. His Zippo.

It was a 1968 classic brushed chrome, worn down to raw brass on the corners where his thumb had worked it ten thousand times. His father brought it back from Vietnam with three words scratched into the bottom panel in uneven letters:

still standing here

Nobody knew if the old man carved it himself or bought it off some kid in a Saigon market. Didn’t matter. It said what it needed to say.

Earl set it on the kitchen table next to his mug every morning the same way some men set out a Bible.

He ran a small gunsmith shop outside of Zanesville, Ohio — the kind of place that didn’t advertise, didn’t need to. Word got around.

A hand-painted sign above the door read:

BRIGGS FIREARMS — REPAIR & CUSTOM WORK
We don’t call 911.

The regulars loved that. Earl had put it up as a joke fifteen years ago and never took it down.

We don't dial 911 sign

Most days it was trigger jobs, action smoothing, the occasional stock refinish. Sometimes a farmer would come in with a Model 94 that hadn’t been cleaned since Reagan, and Earl would spend a quiet afternoon bringing it back.

He didn’t mind.

His apprentice, a twenty-three-year-old named Danny, noticed the lighter on the bench one afternoon while Earl was fitting a new barrel.

“That thing got a story?”

“Everything worth keeping has a story.”

Danny picked it up. Turned it over. Read the scratched letters on the bottom.

“Your dad’s?”

“Mm.”

“What’d he carry over there?”

“A 1911 and that lighter.” Earl didn’t look up from the vise. “Said the lighter never let him down. Said the same thing about the 1911.”

Danny sparked it. There was that sound first — that sharp, solid snap when the lid swung open, a sound so specific and so clean it belonged to nothing else on earth. Then the wheel, and the flame came to life. The butane fumes drifted across the bench — that smell, faintly sweet, faintly chemical, the kind that lands somewhere between a memory and a warning. Earl caught it without looking up and something in his jaw relaxed, the way it did every time.

“How old is this thing?”

“Fifty-six years older than you.”

Danny set it back down with a little more respect than he’d picked it up with.

On Saturdays, the gun shop turned into more of a clubhouse.

Men came in who weren’t there for gun work, or not only for gun work. They drank Earl’s terrible coffee, argued about loads and legislatures, and solved the world’s problems before noon without anyone taking notes.

That particular Saturday, the talk turned to a bill moving through Columbus.

“They want to make us register everything,” said Hoke, a retired deputy who owned more guns than some departments. “Registration’s just a list they make before they come take ’em.”

Earl listened.

He had opinions — strong ones — but in a room where everyone already agreed, the useful thing was to listen for what wasn’t being said.

What wasn’t being said was this: most of these men weren’t angry.

Not really.

Underneath the politics and the noise, they were protective. Of their families. Of what they’d been handed, and what they intended to pass on.

The guns were real.

But they stood for something else — a simple idea:

I am responsible for my own.

Earl picked up the Zippo. That snap cut through the chatter like a period at the end of a sentence.

He lit the propane torch he used for solder work, and for just a moment, the smell of butane hung in the air over the coffee and the gun oil, familiar, grounding, like the shop itself was exhaling.

When Danny closed up that evening, he found an envelope on the bench with his name on it.

Inside was a Zippo — brand new, still in the box.

On the front, laser-engraved, the Second Amendment.

Below it, scratched in uneven letters:

Now you carry it.

Danny stood in the empty shop for a long moment, reading the engraving in the last light through the front window. Then he opened it — that snap, loud in the quiet — and sparked the wheel.

The flame rose clean and steady. The smell curled up soft and sharp at the same time, the way it always did, the way it always would.

He stood there a moment longer than he needed to.

Then he closed it, slipped it in his pocket, and walked out into the evening.