By the way, if you want an example of someone tweeting AWESOME pics from outer space: http://twitter.com/cmdr_hadfield


His pics were what inspired my question.

great show guys, i really enjoyed it, the bonus part talking about space flights and astronaut exercise got me very exited, i wish to be able to go to space in the near future.

Hey! My country was mentioned on podcast! Cool, i guess.

On secret soviet space campaigns: there is a crazy fake documentary that talks about fictional secret moon program that was done in 1938. I've not seen it, but it looks nuts. Also, if you're interested in surrealistic books, check out Pelevin's book "Omon Ra" -- really great stuff. Not sure how it's in translation and even then lots of stuff would be lost.

On landings. From what i know, part of cosmonauts training included survival training where they had to go to forest and stay there for a few weeks, just in case they will land somewhere and authorities won't be able to find them.

Also there is a story about Gagarin than when he landed the first person he met was some random peasant and he asked if he was martian or something. Authorities didn't announce beforehand that they successfully launched Gagarin in space (in case something goes wrong), so that old man didn't know anything.

On random pieces of space equipment that locals hunt for. Not sure how it was in 90s (lots of people were scavenging on metals, times were tough), but now when we had numerous poisonous parts of rocket engines just falling from skies into gardens, i think people would rather try to get rid of it. We had numerous occasions when Protons would explode and highly toxic engine parts and fuel would fall on ground (look up for "failure" in this chart -- every single "failure" means a few tonnes of highly toxic fuel polluting soil and air resulting in weird yellow rains).