"History of Space Warfare" Topic

"I remember the first time I watch the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, and there in the survival kit is a hammer-less .32 Colt (with one magazine?), and wondering if real Astronauts carried guns into space? Did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have Colt .45's in the LEM? During research of my award-winning paper on the global impact of the AK-47, I came across an quote that stated a cut-down AK (perhaps an AKS-74U) had been the first gun in space. I seems odd to a follower of NASA history that the USSR would give orbiting Cosmonauts (who were serving officers in the USSR armed forces) a gun?

The first gun in space, it seems, was not an AKS-74U, but a odd-tri-barrel survival gun, specially developed the USSR if their Cosmonauts came down in "hostile territory". The TP-82 is a break-action tri-barrel pistol (with a attachable butt-stock) that fired flares, 5.45x39mm rounds, and 12.5x70mm shotgun shells.

The TP-82 was developed after a March 1965 landing of a Soyuz capsule was off course (Russia capsules parachute over land) and rumors of wolves and bears caused the Soviet Space Program to develop a compact weapon that could be used in all manner of situations. NASA regarded the Russian space gun as a taboo subject, especially when Russians and Americans started serving onboard the International Space Station. This unusually gun is packed in a metal canister with the other survival gear under the seats of the Soyuz capsule. The fate of the TP-82 was sealed with the strangle 12.5x70mm shotgun ammunition stockpile became unstable, and so the weapon was retired in 2008, replaced by the new standard issue Russian Federation MP-443 9x19mm pistol…"
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