up there, is an out of control Soviet Spacecraft hurtling its way towards earth. Kosmos-482 is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere by the end of this weekend, but nobody knows where it will come down. Kosmos-482 was launched into space in March 1972. This thing was supposed to travel to Venus but somehow got stuck in earth’s atmosphere where it has remained spinning purposelessly around the planet for almost 50 years.
Because it was going to a very hot place it was heat protected, so the chances are it won’t burn up as it returns to earth traveling at 17,000 miles an hour. This could be some spectacle. Kosmos-482 should survive re-entry as long as its heat shield is intact. It will be going around 150 miles an hour, when it hits the ground or water. If pieces of the spacecraft survive and are recovered, they legally belong to Russia.
1972 gave us the Lincoln Continental. I saw one of these these morning as I was driving my car to the Auto shop.
1972 was the year that the first scientific hand-held calculator was introduced at a price of $345. A Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi was discovered in Guam, after spending 28 years in the jungle, having failed to surrender after World War II. This was also the year President Richard Nixon made an unprecedented 8-day visit to the People’s Republic of China meeting with Mao Zedong. Later on in the year the effort to demonize and remove Nixon started with the so-called Watergate scandal.
In October 1972 a prototype of the Airbus A300 flew for the first time from Toulouse–Blagnac International Airport. The first production model, the A300B2, entered service in 1974. On December 11 Apollo 17 landed on the Moon. It was the eleventh and final mission of NASA’s Apollo program. Believe it or not, this was the sixth and most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon, while Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans orbited above. Clearly our priorities have changed since then. We spend money on welfare and wars now, instead of walking on the moon.
Martin Bormann actually ran a gas station in the desert. We found out this information in the movie Supervixens
Finally, on December 28 , the bones of Nazi Party official Martin Bormann were discovered in Berlin during construction work, and the last executions in Paris by guillotine took place. Roger Bontems and Claude Buffet, (they sound like a couple of effete restauranteurs) the Clairvaux Mutineers had their heads sliced off at La Santé Prison by chief executioner André Obrecht. Various people have since been beheaded in France, but domestic terrorists have been responsible in those cases. We’re not walking on the moon anymore, we’ve got enrichment and diversity instead.
Obviously a lot of other stuff happened in 1972, but these are some of the highlights. Watch out for space junk! Good day.