Hello and welcome back. If you follow the channel, you know that we previously restored
a Soyuz space clock, that was flown in the Soyuz-TM spacecraft.
It had some incredible electronics in it, chockfull with Soviet ICs.
But, today, we have another version of this clock, courtesy of space collector Steve Jurvetson.
It is an older model which was flown on the very first generation of the Soyuz spacecraft, starting
in 1967. To me, it looks even more beautiful, and appears to be entirely electro-mechanical.
Here you can see the clock on an early Soyuz panel. And here on a later, much more complex
panel. Eventually it gets swapped out with the digital version, which fits in the same
panel. By the way, the digital version is still flying in the ISS space station today!
Here it is in the Zvezda module. And look, here is the older analog version,
in the Buran shuttle! So these clocks had a long and distinguished space life.
So today is the day, we have been given the go ahead to open it up and try to make it
work. And in a channel exclusive first, the clock opening was livestreamed for Patreons, in glorious
patatovision. That turned out to be quite an adventure, with the stream lasting almost 7 hours!
But out of mercy, I made a 15 minute cut that has the juiciest moments, as well as high resolution
footage. The timestamps refer to the original stream if you want to see it has it happened.
I plan to do a more in-depth video later,
but for now, let’s relive the clock opening adventure, as it actually happened.
So today we are going to attempt to get to get this beautiful Soyuz clock working.
I already have my other clock and an HP clock both on the Cesium time source, with a
big pile of HP equipment to make that work. And as a first we're going to livestream this.
So here is Ken. Say hi Ken for the camera. Hello, Ken Shirriff here!
And there's a live stream going on for the patreons
from my lowly iPhone. So we'll see if I can manage all of this at the same time.
Okay okay so i have some some looseness here, but not here.
Alright.
My goodness. That's cool. Wow.
It's so much simpler than the digital one, which has 10 boards filled with chips.
And all the screws are locked in.
We're expecting all those screws removed by the end of the live stream
[laughter]. That is just absolutely gorgeous.
That is astounding.
Now somebody needs to make a 3d model of it. That would be so cool. There's a lot of work
to be done here. It's a little Antikythera of its own. I am getting worried that this
wiring is actually different from the one on our main clock. It's not going to be as
simple as we thought. Oh, this is just too good. So the chronometer
can be pulled. The chronometer button can be pulled by the solenoid and then to know
which of the three position it's at, you have an encoder right here: these contacts over here.
The cam switch? Yeah, there are three of them so they can tell you
which position you are, since it's kind of a sequential thing.
So I'm going to push on the relay here, on the actuator.
Yeah, and it's advanced the seconds. So that is
indeed the seconds advance, or the half second advance.
This one over here is going to advance the mission time.
And it does not, because? Or it's... Oh, it should be the chronometer!
I bet you that's the chronometer. Let's do
clear - operate
Yeah, bingo! You see the chronometer advancing?
Yep. On the bottom. Very nice!
Okay, that's the first thing we need to repair, it's extremely sluggish.
Okay, got it. I have to confirm it under the binocular, but
this just the shaft just terminates into a little mushroom thing, and the mushroom thing pushes
all the rest of the mechanism. And it's really sticky, something really needs to be done for it.
Okay, so bear with me, I'm going to go under the binocular and see if i
can get some insights with that. Okay, so back to Marc. Well, so,
you know, what a difference a binocular makes where you can see in 3d.
So, I can see it's not a mushroom, it's actually,
at the other end of the shaft it's a nut that appears to be adjustable on the top.
There's either a screw that goes in,
something like that. I'd have to take a picture. With a counter screw.
And it's all locked with the green stuff that you see everywhere. Does this make any sense?
So that if i had to pull the shaft, I would have to unlock this, which seems very difficult.
Okay, the good side of things is that I see where I could put oil right there, and I would
probably do it under the binocular too. Unless I can get myself in a good light. Okay, so...
I think the cleanest way would be like with light coming from there I can get it
from there. Okay that's gonna work in this very position.
This is my very special Nye oil
Okay
Oh already worked. Fixed!
All right, that wasn't too hard. You just have to put the oil at the right place.
All right, done. Nice!
Clock pink. Yep, reset.
Okay.
Why is it 20 ohms? What the heck? I'm suspicious that this contact is not working great.
So that's the contact that would put the chronometer
in motion, and it's 20 ohms instead of being zero. 18, getting somewhere.
Two!
That's better.
I have made my [minimalist] adapter here.
And if I did it correctly...
So we'll disconnect this guy
and it went back to its own clock, and then we are going to make
an atomic mechanical clock, a meca-tomic clock.
OK no such luck. Why?
So I reconverted myself so i have DC pulses. I'm basically bypassing the 800Hz
supply and I'm just amplifying the pulses directly with the power amplifier here.
And I'm having 12 volt pulses at the moment.
And it's not doing a thing.
DC amps. Almost no DC amps. I cannot do DC circuits anymore? Longer pulse?
Yeah, it tells me 20 volts. Ah, here we go! Need[ed] more juice. All right.
All right, you'll be happy, I'm giving it short pulses.
Okay, I think it works! That was a little bit anti-climatic.
Can you see it on the live stream? I have no idea how my camera is doing. Yeah, it shows up
display on the livestream ticking away. So now, if we've done reverse engineering properly, if I do
operate, we are having the chronometer!
Nice! Okay, it's going there.
So you know, I should do a live stream of that, all the time [laughter]
Your atomic clock via the Russian Soyuz space clock dial
Oh sure, that works!
Yeah, so I think I dialed it about right, it needs half an amp.
Okay let's turn it off.
Plug it in. I still have pulses, that should still work.
So now it's cleared, it's not advancing.
I put it to operate. Next one is stop.
And the one after that is clear.
Woohoo, were you able to see that?
So, interesting, the start is not until you release, the stop is immediate,
and the reset is immediate too.