Re:I am not enthused. (Score 1)

I am trying to work out what makes you think there would be "American proprietary secrets" on what appears to be a product of the Russian space program. I know there has been co-operation between America and Russia post-communism, but this module does pretty much the same things that the very first Russian spacecraft did, way back in the days when they were actually superior to the USA. It's fairly basic stuff.

Besides, the most likely outcome for this thing is that it will be bought by an American or someone from a western country. The science museum in my home town (Sydney Australia) has a lot of neat space memorabilia, including an F1 engine (the type used in the Apollo program) that you can walk right under. They don't check your passport to see if you're an Iraqi spy on the way in, despite the American proprietary secrets inside!

I have a lot of respect for the Russian space program. Let's face it, the collapse of communism, the Soviet Union, and the economies of the former eastern bloc countries show that the cold war has been lost, well and truly. But the ingenuity and achievement of the Russian scientists and engineers to do so much under those circumstances is really inspiring. It's really about the work of those individuals. The cold war questions about the superior ideology are only for the history books now. If I were a multi-millionaire or the director of a museum with a good acquisition budget I would be bidding on a piece of history like this for sure.