Warm greetings and wishes for unity and brotherhood to all brave space
farers, from distant Sol!

As myriad environmental and political pressures bear down on our fair
planet, more representatives of humanity than ever before have taken
to the cosmos.  These men and women represent, it is said, the
planet's best and brightest.

But for various reasons, the opportunity to participate in this great
exodus into the unkown has not been afforded to all those would gladly
do so; not even to all of those whom have felt the impassioned
yearning for space deep in their hearts for many years.  This
unfortunate Earth-bound fate has affected a great many of my comrades
in the Greater Kansai Region Soviet Space History Preservation and
Re-enactment Society, despite our great affinity for the cosmos and
our unwavering commitment to understand as fully as possible the
monumental task of living in it.  Until recently, it also affected
myself.

Eager to participate in this great expansion into the skies in any way
possible, the GKRSSHPRS has embarked, with the generous assistance of
an anonymous benefactor who understands our heartfelt plight, on a
grand undertaking.  Working over many years we have constructed and
had placed into Low Earth Orbit the orbial station Shin-Salyut 6, a
painstakingly accurate recreation of the historical station Salyut 6,
operated by the former Soviet Union from 1977 to 1982.  Further, we
have managed to make perfectly legitimate arrangements with various
online parties such that station log entries from Shin-Salyut 6 will
intermittently be broadcast via the QEC system to various deep space
relays.

Our QEC hookup is one-directional, space farers.  We cannot hear you,
and we know not what great adventures you undertake in our name nor
what troubles you face.  But we wish to inspire you all, and to lead
by example, by detailing to you our efforts to live, in this humble 15
metre cylinder, with the right-thinking and ideologically correct
minds of the earliest pioneers of long-term space habitation in our
distant past.  Our trials and tribulations may seem insignificant
compared to your cryo-sleep journeys at relativistic speeds to other
stars.  But we are, in our way, which we feel is equally valid to
other ways, doing our best to demonstrate to everyone that humanity's
future in space is, as it ever was, a source of great inspiration,
hopes and dreams to people of all walks of life, and that those
working to make this future a reality must always work so in the
spirit of togetherness and in the interests of the common good, as our
comrades before us did.

I, Nobu "Leonid Popov" Sakamoto, have been granted the great honour of
commanding this mission and I pledge to undertake my duties to the
highest standards.  I am joined on Shin-Salyut 6 by comrades Kensuke
"Valery Ryumin" Urashima and Yukiko "Svetlana Savitskaya" Ayanami.  In
addition to living model space faring lives under conditions of
hardship resulting from the simple nature of our historically accurate
vessel, my fellow cosmonatus and I hope to provide reports, as
accurate and detailed as the abilities of our instruments permit, on
the state of the planet Earth, which has undergone significant
climatological and oceanographic changes since of many our intended
readers left.

Poyekhali!

Leonid Popov,
Major General, Soviet Air Force (r-enact.)
Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR (r-enact.)

(Nobu Sakamoto,
 Vice-President,
 Hyōgo Chapter,
 Greater Kansai Region Soviet Space History Preservation and
 Re-enactment Society)
