Long way to space
— How did you become an astronaut? Have you been dreaming about it since childhood or did it all happen by accident
- I am a military pilot in the first specialty. After graduating from high school with us, all the boys all day and night dreamed of heaven, and I am no exception. He entered the Borisoglebsk Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots named after Chkalov, successfully completed it and continued to serve in the parts of the Moscow Military District as a pilot, senior pilot, and flight commander, and reached the first-class military pilot. Only space could be higher.
I was lucky: we were visited by a group of specialists from the Cosmonaut Training Center, which was engaged in the selection of pilots from the cosmonaut corps. Five out of 60 pilots were selected, and I got into it. Out of this five, two years later, only one person remained - that was me. In the 90th year he was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps. For ten years he was preparing for space flight, and from a first-class military pilot, he became a first-class astronaut. Behind are two space flights that I performed as an expedition commander. My first flight was to the Mir station, I became the last crew commander who flew to this station.
Photo: Cosmonaut Training Center
A few years later flew to the internationalspace station, also as crew commander. The first flight I had was long - three months, and the second - short, but experimentally difficult. The crew was tasked with testing a new modification of the Soyuz spacecraft.
Now I am an adviser to the head of the Center and pass on my space, flight experience to young astronauts.
Station "Mir"was a Russian orbital station that operated from February 1986 to MarchAt the end of the 1990s, various devices and systems began to fail regularly at the plant, and the country's leadership considered further operation too expensive.As a result, the station was flooded in the South Pacific Ocean.
"Union"is a series of Soviet and Russian manned spacecraft for flights around the Earth and crew delivery to low-Earth orbit.The capacity is up to three people.
“Why have astronauts been trained for so long?”
- The fact is that a huge amount of knowledge, whichit is necessary to have an astronaut, must be tied to a real spaceship and station, and he must be able to use this knowledge in an operational mode. This requires constant monitoring of their skills acquired during long trainings on simulators. That is, everything is like pilots - victory in space is forged on earth. In addition to the ability to control a ship, knowledge of the entire scientific program of the future space flight is required, since one of the main goals of the flight is the scientific experiments that we conduct in space. It takes time.
The first two years after joining the squad, youYou are a candidate for cosmonauts, you go through the basic general space disciplines, on the basis of which you pass a unified state exam and receive a diploma of a test cosmonaut. Further training in a group that lasts an average of 3-4 years. At this stage, you need to pass all the exams associated with the life systems of the ship and the station, and this is about 100 exams. And if you have positive marks for all exams, you can be assigned to the crew for a future space flight at least 2-3 years before it. Therefore, a total of 7-10 years of preparation is obtained.
Photo: Cosmonaut Training Center
- Are there any minimum terms of preparation?
- It is clear that Yuri Gagarin had the shortest training.Compared to that time, now there is a completely different level of approach and amount of knowledge.We fly to the ISS.Flights last on average 5-6 months.Compare: it requires knowledge of a single ship, or knowledge of a ship, a station, and all the equipment that is inside a station.The shortest training can take at least 6-7 years.
This is the shortest preparation time, based onrequirements for a modern astronaut. Of course, we do not take the first sets. And the youngest astronaut in the history of piloting and astronautics was German Titov. And what do you think, at what age did the oldest earthling fly into space? American John Glenn at the age of 77.
Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968)- Soviet cosmonaut, first man,completed an orbital space flight lasting 108 minutes. He submitted a report on enrollment as a candidate for cosmonaut in December 1959, and already on April 12, 1961, at the age of 27, he made his flight into space. He died in March 1968 during a training flight on a MiG-15.
German Titov (1935–2000)- Soviet cosmonaut. The second person after Gagarin to fly into space, and the first to complete a flight lasting more than a day on the Vostok-2 spacecraft (August 1961).
John Glenn (1921–2016)- American astronaut.He became the third man in space after Gagarin and Titov. He performed his first orbital flight in February 1962 at the age of 40, for which he was awarded a NASA medal. He made his second flight in 1998 at age 77 as a payload specialist. Today, this is the most advanced age for space flight.
I would go to astronauts - let them teach me
- What does it take to become an astronaut?
- Firstly, desire, and secondly, a certainconformity. We need a diploma of higher education with good grades, it takes about two to three years to work at enterprises, preferably of an aviation-technical orientation, so that there are positive characteristics from the place of work.
The astronaut is the profession of an eternal student,who studies, studies and studies. On average, preparation for the first flight lasts 10 years. But it happens longer, for example, Valery Polyakov has been preparing for the first flight for more than 15 years.
Valery Polyakov(genus.in 1942) - Soviet and Russian cosmonaut, Doctor of Medical Sciences. He submitted an application to the cosmonaut corps in 1969, and in 1972 he was enrolled in the training group. Flew into space twice. The first flight took place in 1988 and lasted eight months. The second flight lasted 437 days - to date this is a record for continuous stay in space.
He is a doctor by training, so he flew tospace as an astronaut-researcher. During my preparation for space flights, we had two types of diplomas: test cosmonauts and research cosmonauts. The first are those who came to the detachment from the positions of pilots and engineers; accordingly, they are allowed to control space technology. Research cosmonauts are people of any profession, they train, fly into space, but are not allowed to control the ship. They are in space only for experiments and spacewalks. Currently there is one position - test cosmonaut. According to the requirements for applicants to participate in the competition for the selection of astronaut candidates, it is necessary to have a higher education, preferably technical.
Photo: Cosmonaut Training Center
— What areas of higher education should a person who wants to become an astronaut choose?
— Any Russian can try himself inas an astronaut candidate. But, based on practical experience, people with a technical education have an advantage. If you are gifted, you can come to the Center after a humanities university and study well there. But usually people with good technical training successfully pass all the exams, and there are about 150 of them. These are mainly Baumanka, MAI, aerospace universities, Mozhaika and Zhukovka.
"Physics" and psychology
- What feelings does the astronaut and his whole body experience after landing?
- Regardless of whether it was short or longflight, there are problems in terms of health. With a competent approach, they are solved after a time commensurate with the time of space flight. You fly a month - a month you will be restored to the level at which you were at the time of launch. You fly a year - you will recover a year. But this recovery is not just in terms of physical fitness, there are very clear medical criteria. Blood composition, level of hearing, blood calcium, functional capabilities of the cardiovascular system. In space, when we fly, the noise is somewhere around 65 dB. This is noise in the workshop where mechanical work takes place. And so that this noise does not constantly affect you, the body struggles internally. He deliberately lowers the auditory threshold. That is, you hear worse. But after you return, everything after a time commensurate with the duration of the space flight is restored.
- Cosmonauts prepare for flights psychologically? And do they check the psychological compatibility of crew members?
- In the first flight, you are to some extent like a robot. Because the enormous amount of knowledge that the astronaut is responsible for is not just information that is stored in the head. You must be able to use it, and sometimes it is very difficult. Therefore, you should hide all your emotions, feelings deep inside and only work on the basis of a real flight program.
To prevent these emotions from beating, my older comradesadvised: put on a spacesuit, go to the rocket and think that you are going to an ordinary training. When I made myself feel and do, it became much easier.
Of course, there is a feeling of fear. To a reasonable extent, this is a good feeling that makes you not to make blunders. Any of my mistakes will affect the work of the crew, and the mistake of crew members can lead to the fact that everyone will have to die. We have a huge number of political issues, difficult situations in countries. We say that if the leaders of these countries take and form a crew out of them, they will very quickly solve all the issues that had long had to be resolved on Earth.
Photo: Cosmonaut Training Center
However, the issues of psychological preparationeach cosmonaut individually, as a whole of the crew, is given great attention. We have a special department, which is engaged in the formation of crews and recommendations for leadership. Any modern astronaut understands perfectly well that to commit some kind of stupidity, having quarreled with one of the crew members, means to fly out of it or in general the entire crew will be completely removed. Such cases were, happened, prematurely stopped the flight, but now I have no specific examples.
Space money
- Are the salaries of the astronauts also space?
- A man comes to the Cosmonaut Training Centerwith a previous profession as a candidate. From this moment, he begins to receive the salary of the astronaut. Today it ranges from 150 to 300 thousand rubles. Now there is a lot of talk about raising this bar. For a salary of 300 thousand rubles, you must make at least two space flights in order to become an astronaut no lower than the second class and to be in the instructor's position.
- It is still difficult to become an astronaut, but a space tourist?
- Some negatively relate to spacetourists, but I positively evaluate these things. It turns out that there is a chance for an ordinary person who has reached heights in some other sphere, because a tourist pays money for his space flight.
Tourists are not professionals, and to them completelyother requirements: not in terms of medicine, but in terms of real preparation. If there is a possibility by the number of flights or only two crew members fly, then you can put a third one and run for money, I do not mind. If this does not violate the basic criteria by which it should be prepared during the year. The tourist must also pass all exams - for example, on the design and management of the spacesuits in which we fly. Because in a critical situation, if he does not learn how to do it correctly, the whole crew can fail. We have certain standards in case of any emergency situations on leaving the space station in order to quickly board the spacecraft and return to Earth.
Space tourism- a type of extreme tourism whenthe client is sent into low-Earth orbit or a space station. The first space tourist was the American Dennis Tito; to date there have been seven in total.
Space tourists today are offered two options. In one case, by agreement with Roscosmos, a person is sent to the ISS for several days.
Amounts have not been officially disclosed, but according toMedia, we are talking about tens of millions of dollars. The second method is offered by the American companies Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. Their prices are much lower - $ 250 thousand, but this is not about a full-fledged flight into space, but about a suborbital flight at an altitude of about 100 km lasting 15 minutes (time in zero gravity - about 5 minutes). However, these projects have not yet been implemented in practice, and all the candidates who paid the money are still on the waiting list.
“Are Americans on the moon a myth or a truth?”
- In our circles, this is not even discussed. Of course, the Americans were on the moon. But I can imagine why we are raining questions about this. The end of the 60s, the competition of the two systems. Socialism, capitalism: which is better, which system. We were the first to launch Gagarin, the first to go into outer space, the first to launch a woman.
And when we were about to fly to the moon, we didn’tthe launch vehicle went: the first failed start, the second too. And the Americans are already landing there. What to do to our management? If we fly after the Americans, then we will show the whole world that technically they are behind them. At that time, we could not allow this, so our leadership decided to send a lunar rover instead of the crew, showing that from a technical point of view we are no less savvy than they are. The lunar rover landed, took lunar soil, returned it back to Earth. That is, we have the same as the Americans, but they brought 350 kg of lunar soil, and we are 20 times less. But, nevertheless, we were technically able to do this.