Sergey Krikalev


Former head of the Cosmonaut Training Center. Yu. A. Gagarina, Hero Soviet Union and Hero of Russia (one of four people who have been awarded both titles) Sergey Krikalev to this day holds the planet's record for the total time spent in space (803 days in six launches).

Krikalev made his first flight on the Soyuz TM-7 spacecraft on November 26, 1988. After the previous crew of cosmonauts returned to Earth, Krikalev and his team continued to work at the station. But the arrival of the next batch of cosmonauts was delayed, so the crew remaining on board, including Krikalev, prepared the station for an unmanned flight and returned to Earth on April 27, 1989. After that, Sergei Konstantinovich was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

When Khrushchev thumped his boot, he laughed with joy, not yelled in anger. Some suggest that he was furious with some bad news from Baikonur. Photos of his bell episode remove this interpretation. A few weeks ago, a "secret satellite" was discovered traveling in such an odd orbit that experts were initially completely unable to explain who could have launched it. The tale of the "secret companion" has been added to the unknown. Yes, there have been speculations that some scientific or space achievements will be announced; but no, there was no "official prediction" of such an announcement.

May 19, 1991 Krikalev makes his second start. According to the plan, he was supposed to return home in July of that year, but agreed to stay until October, since the next two flights were merged into one. However, in October, a cosmonaut from Kazakhstan, Toktar Aubakirov, arrived at the station as a flight engineer, who was not prepared for long flights. Krikalev again remained on the Mir. Together with cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, they continued scientific experiments, once again made an exit to outer space, and only on March 25, 1992 (more than 10 months after the launch!) Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth. But he probably remembered this risky and long flight not only for this, but also for the fact that he flew away from one country - from the USSR, and returned to another - to Russia. For this expedition Sergey Krikalev was awarded the title of Hero Russian Federation(his star of the Hero of the Russian Federation is listed under No. 1).

Speculation by Western observers and forecasts by Russian scientists contributed to an atmosphere of anticipation and excitement centered around Khrushchev's trip. The Russian propaganda machine couldn't hope for better publicity. Some specialists have indeed suggested that Mars probes are in the process.

A manned shot was expected and was not announced. It may have been delayed, or it may have been started and the pilot was killed. Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, the top official of the Russian missile program, reportedly "died in a plane crash."

In the first two flights alone, Sergei Konstantinovich spent more than a year at the Mir station and made 7 spacewalks. In total, he made six flights into space, which is also a record, only among Soviet and Russian cosmonauts - in terms of the number of space flights.

Sergey Krikalev / ©NASA

Valery Polyakov

Within weeks, Nedelin was either killed by an exploding nuclear missile, driven to suicide by a furious Khrushchev after failing to stop a man, or perhaps killed in a plane crash. What can be said about these stories? Such stories appear only in the Soviet Union. Does this mean the meaning of the Russian defense complaints is that the authors “hate the socialist reality”? Or can we just say that people are just used to thinking that in Russia one thing usually means something else?

A few years later, these stories found new support in the text of the so-called "Penkovsky documents", supposedly the diary of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. All the intelligence he had collected was transferred to the West through his contact, Greville Wynn. The diary, according to its publishers, was smuggled through penetrating routes into the hands of Russian émigré groups in Germany.


Another person out of four, awarded both titles at once - Hero of the Soviet Union and Hero of Russia. Valery Vladimirovich holds another world record - the longest single flight into space, which amounted to 437 days and 18 hours (1994-1995, the Mir orbital station). For him, the cosmonaut received the title of Hero of Russia. During his life, he made only two flights, but spent as many as 678 days 16 hours and 34 minutes in space, yielding in total time spent in airless space only to three in the history of mankind: Sergey Krikalev (803 days), Alexander Kaleri (769 days) and Sergey Avdeev (747 days).


Valery Polyakov / ©Roskosmos

Alexander Kaleri


Hero of the Russian Federation Alexander Kaleri, as mentioned above, spent 769 days in space (second place in history after Sergey Krikalev) and made five flights. It was he who, for health reasons, was replaced by Krikalev back in 1988, when Sergei Krikalev received the Hero of the USSR for his first flight.


The book is full of stories, events and opinions that make for a fascinating read. In it we find claims that, prior to Gagarin's flight, several people were launched into the stratosphere and never heard from again. No Western specialist felt that the original story was plausible; retelling even less.

"Penkovsky" writes that Russian manned shots are launched from the Urals "near Orenburg". It looks like Cape Kennedy is in the Appalachians, not far from Chattanooga. The real Penkovsky must have known that Baikonur was 600 miles from Orenburg. Even in Central Asia this stretches the meaning of the word "next to".

Alexander Kaleri / ©Roskosmos

Gennady Padalka


Many people know this name thanks to the “instructions for meeting aliens”, the existence of which Gennady Padalka once jokingly admitted to journalists. Gennady Ivanovich is generally a person with humor; during the 2012 expedition, he slept on the ceiling of the station.

However, I didn’t dream of becoming an astronaut in childhood: “Then we didn’t even hear about such a profession, therefore, when we boys were asked who you want to become, we, as one, answered “Gagarin”.

The Russian test program continued. This was probably the last shot before a manned orbital flight. However, the retro-fire orientation was disabled and the pod descended on an incorrect trajectory. The heat shield overloaded, and the pod and its dog crews disintegrated.

Speculation and anticipation have reached fever pitch. There have already been several false alarms. The flight of this heaviest satellite was surrounded by mystery. At first, the Russians said little about it, leading Western specialists to conclude that the actual results of the launch were unexpected. Someone tuned in to 22 MHz and heard "groans and heartbeats." Someone else heard Russian Morse.

He connected his life with aviation, but in 1987 fate brought him together with Alexei Leonov and that's it - "the claw got stuck."

During his first flight, Gennady Padalka spent 198 days in space and almost 6 hours in open space. In total, he went into orbit three times, each time spending about six months there, he went into outer space 8 times. He has the title of Hero of the Russian Federation.

What if the pilot had been incapacitated at launch and now flew through space, slowly dying in the interplanetary vastness? The Russians were clearly hiding something. A number of lesser scientists popped up to talk about advances and experiments in the new satellite. It will "study the earth as a planet". He had "a series of new scientific instruments". This "brought the first manned flight closer".

An Italian physiologist, listening to a tape of "heart beats", said that they were clearly dying. Knowledgeable observers called this latest report "complete nonsense." Some have used stronger words. Biomedical data from space is encoded into telemetry carrier signals, which are then decoded on the ground. Heartbeat, breathing rate, temperature, etc. Everything is encoded together; the signal sounds like a chirpur or organ pipe. It doesn't look like a heartbeat.


Gennady Padalka / ©NASA

Elena Kondakova


Remembering the feat of Valentina Tereshkova, we cannot fail to mention Elena Kondakova, the first Russian woman cosmonaut (the third, taking into account the USSR). In addition, Elena Vladimirovna is the first woman to make a long-term space flight. Its first flight, which began on March 22, 1995, ended only five months later. In total, she made two flights into space, receiving the title of Hero of Russia, and then left astronautics, becoming a politician. But the heroism of this woman is probably in her blood - in 2011 she announced her withdrawal from the United Russia party due to the fact that she did not agree with the result of the internal party elections in August of that year: “People were given sheets with numbers of people for whom it was necessary to vote, when counting the ballots, it turned out that there were more of them than people on the site. United Russia's primaries are an economically inexpedient game of democracy. I am aware that my statement means the end of my political career ... "

Russia-USSR became the first space power! And continues to be in the present!
For as long as I can remember, everyone knew the names of the cosmonauts, they were the main characters - as they would say now "supermen" - of peaceful Soviet times.
For the duration of the flights, all radio and television programs were interrupted, the brilliant Levitan solemnly announced a new flight, then photos of the new astronauts were printed on the front pages of newspapers.

Western experts were surprised to note that these frequencies at 20 and 40 megahertz were in the center of the amateur radio bands. Spatial multiplication at these frequencies is not optimal, but at the same time there is already a large inventory of radio communications equipment that can operate at these frequencies. Or it can simulate operations at these frequencies.

Not easy way determine if a particular radio signal is actually coming from the satellite. Doppler shifts are observed in the signal. A better criterion would be to understand that signals from a satellite can usually only be received if the satellite is in line of sight with a ground station, a condition that lasts only a few minutes for satellites near the Earth.

Belka and Strelka also flew long before my birth, but for some reason I also knew them.
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Routine flights into space began somewhere in the second half of the 70s.
Before interest faded, the last "surge" was Soyuz-Apollo. In Omsk, the live broadcast of the docking of American and Soviet ships was at night, I remember it through a dream, my cousin (10 years older than me) woke me up, he did not sleep, he really wanted to see this historical event.

The radio frequency spectrum is very busy, especially at the frequencies chosen for Soviet space telemetry. As it turned out, the signal was transmitted by an experimental teleprinter. idle move in Leningrad. The new second stage launched the injection stage and the parking payload around the Earth. After an appropriate coastdown period, the third stage ignited and increased the payload on the escape trajectory.

The booster, telemetry and launch time all come together to provide overwhelming evidence for this conclusion. Because the evidence against this is so devastating, the careful structure of misinterpretations, half-truths, and errors associated with this event in Mr. Mills' article must be completely abolished.

Then the detachment of cosmonauts was replenished with new faces, there were a lot of cosmonauts, not everyone knew them anymore. Flights with cosmonauts from the socialist countries were more "promoted".
But the first - everyone knew!

The first cosmonauts of the USSR

Cosmonaut No. 1 - Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin (1934 - 1968)


The "cosmonaut" would be a young man, alone, planning to make one circuit of the earth. The pilot was indirectly identified as Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Sergeevich Ilyushin, the son of an aircraft designer and a famous test pilot in his own right. Yuri Gagarin, 27, was named its pilot.

His bronze bust was presented in Moscow. A new Soviet postage stamp was issued. All these factors point to a long period of preparation for this exact event. What can we make of Ogden's report? Even after several years, many believe that an earlier flight was made.

Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968), pilot fighter aviation, first space flight:
April 12, 1961 "Vostok".
He died on March 27, 1968 in a plane crash.



Gagarin's funeral

The historic flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin took place on the morning of April 12, 1961.
The Vostok spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome and, having circled the Earth once, landed in the Saratov region.
Moreover, Gagarin ejected and landed with a parachute.

Ogden was aware of the rumors and stories about the upcoming manned space flight. There were indications that it was nearly launched several times. Or perhaps it really was started and the official silence implied that it had failed.

In addition, he learned from other personal contacts that Lieutenant Colonel Ilyushin, who was Ogden's neighbor in Moscow, had somehow been injured and was in the hospital. Ogden concluded that the flight had already taken place and that Ilyushin was the pilot. The correspondent was wrong about so many details that he probably didn't even make it into the real news. Before Moscow, there was enough evidence to link his story. If the flight had been preceded by unannounced failures, it is obvious that it would not have been declared until the successful completion.

Cosmonaut No. 2 German Stepanovich Titov (1935 - 2000)

German Stepanovich Titov (1935-2000), air defense pilot, one space flight: August 6, 1961 Vostok-2. He left the cosmonaut corps on 06/17/1970.
Later he worked at the Institute of Space Research.

All this confusion and doubt about a possible previous flight, together with some stinging holes and suspicious silence in some aspects of Gagarin's mission, has led many observers to express serious doubts about whether Gagarin ever actually flew as the Russians report.

On this point we can speak with some certainty. Despite the distortions, half-truths, errors, and lies about the Vostok-1 mission, we can indeed believe that this happened in substance, but not quite in the way Russian official reports claimed.

Cosmonaut No. 3 Andrian Grigorievich Nikolaev (1929 -2004)

Andriyan Grigoryevich Nikolaev (1929-2004), air defense pilot, two space flights: August 11, 1962 "Vostok-3"; June 1, 1970 "Soyuz-9". He left the cosmonaut corps on 01/26/1982.

Cosmonaut No. 4 Pavel Romanovich Popovich (1930 - 2009)

Pavel Romanovich Popovich (1930-2009), Air Force pilot, two space flights: August 12, 1962 Vostok-4; July 3, 1974 Soyuz-14. He left the cosmonaut corps on 01/26/1982.

All stories about the mysterious Ilyushin event have been withdrawn. Many sources have been cited that Gagarin's flight was a hoax, a fictional repetition of a real event that happened a few days ago that took out his original pilot.

Now we can be sure that no launches happened a few days ago. At the post-field press conference, one of the few real facts what Gagarin was allowed to talk about was that, while in orbit, he could make out villages, rail lines, arable fields, and other small objects on the ground more than a hundred miles below him. This statement was received with the complete distrust of Western experts. Two years later, Gordon Cooper looked out the window at Mercury 9 and saw what he said were smoke trails, roads, villages and similar features.

Cosmonaut No. 5 - Valery Fedorovich Bykovsky (1934)

Valery Fedorovich Bykovsky (1934), Air Force pilot, three space flights: June 14, 1963 Vostok-5; September 15, 1976 "Soyuz-22"; August 26, 1978 "Soyuz-31". He left the cosmonaut corps on 01/26/1982.

Cosmonaut No. 6 - The first woman - cosmonaut - Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (born 1937)

Space flight June 16, 1963, "Vostok-6", at the same time in orbit was Vostok-5, piloted by cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky.

Nobody believed him; no one believed that the human eye could detect such small features on such long distance. After further testing on subsequent Gemini flights, it was determined that such a solution was indeed possible, that Cooper saw what he said he saw, and that Gagarin was not lying when he claimed the same thing either. Before this event, however, every specialist claimed that such a feat was impossible. If Gagarin were lying about his mission, he could not claim to have done something that he knew everyone would find impossible.

Cosmonaut number 7. Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov



Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov (1927-1967), Air Force pilot-engineer, two space flights: October 12, 1964 Voskhod;
April 23, 1967 "Soyuz-1". On April 24, 1967, Vladimir Komarov died during landing after performing a flight on the Soyuz-1 spacecraft. (Yu.A. Gagarin was appointed his understudy in this flight).
We have a book about Komarov at home.

Descriptions of the portholes and cameras on the Vostok spacecraft have been linked to problems of translation and censorship. The pressurized section that Gagarin was inside was cylindrical, with a porthole at his feet and another over his head. Today there is no doubt that Gagarin carried a camera and photographed the ground. They denied that Gagarin took the cameras off him, even after he mentioned it publicly.

Photographs of Gagarin, released in Moscow, showed him in different periods of his education. One shot from it during early training attracted the attention of a Western journalist. He showed a young pilot wearing a Lindbergh type leather helmet, a big smile on his face. In the West, some specialists have jumped to the conclusion that it was Gagarin's suit worn in space.

On October 12, 1964, the world's first multi-seat spacecraft flew into space. For the first time, the crew included not only a pilot, but also an engineer and a doctor.
For the first time in history, the crew flew without spacesuits.
For the first time, a soft landing system was used. The call sign "Rubin" sounded from orbit for a day. The total duration of the flight was one day and 17 minutes, during which time the ship circled the globe 16 times.

Cosmonaut number 8. Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov

Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (1926 - 2009), USSR pilot-cosmonaut, researcher-cosmonaut spaceship Voskhod, 8th cosmonaut of the USSR and 12th cosmonaut of the world, doctor of technical sciences.
K. P. Feoktistov was the first civilian cosmonaut and the only non-Party cosmonaut in the history of Soviet cosmonautics who made a space flight.
Member of the Great Patriotic War since 1941 he fought in the infantry, was a scout. In 1942 he was captured by the Germans and shot, but survived.
During the Great Patriotic War, Feoktistov dropped out of school and went to the front. He fought as a scout of a military unit. While performing reconnaissance in the city of Voronezh, Feoktistov was captured by a German patrol and miraculously survived after being shot:
After graduating from Moscow Higher Technical School in 1949, he worked at NII-1 in the group of M. K. Tikhonravov, then at OKB-1 (now NPO Energia).
Participated in the development of the first artificial satellite Earth, spacecraft "Vostok", "Soyuz", "Soyuz T", "Soyuz TM", "Progress", "Progress-M", orbital stations "Salyut" and "Mir".
In the detachment of cosmonauts since 1964, on October 12-13, 1964, he flew into space on the Voskhod-1 spacecraft.

Cosmonaut No. 9 Boris Borisovich Egorov

Boris Borisovich Egorov (1937 - 1994). The doctor is an astronaut.He made one flight on the multi-seat Voskhod 1 spacecraft, lasting 1 day 0 hours 17 minutes 3 seconds.
Later he worked at the Institute of Biomedical Problems on the problems of weightlessness.
Doctor of Medical Sciences.

Cosmonaut No. 10 Pavel Ivanovich Belyaev

Belyaev Pavel Ivanovich (1925-1970), naval aviation pilot, one space
flight: piloted March 18, 1965 Voskhod-2.
He graduated from the Yeysk Military Aviation School of Pilots in 1945, participant Soviet-Japanese War August-September 1945.
During the landing of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft, due to deviations in the operation of the spacecraft's orientation system to the Sun, P. I. Belyaev manually oriented the spacecraft and turned on the braking engine. These operations were performed for the first time in the world.
As a result, Voskhod landed in an undesignated area 180 km north of the city of Perm. In the TASS report, this was called a landing in a “reserve area”, which in fact was a deaf Permian taiga ..
The cosmonauts had to spend two nights alone in the wild forest in severe frost. Only on the third day, rescuers on skis made their way through the deep snow, who were forced to cut down the forest in the Voskhod landing area in order to clear the area for the helicopter to land.
Flight duration - 1 day 2 hours 2 minutes 17 seconds.

Cosmonaut No. 11. Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov.

The world's first spacewalk.
Alexei Leonov (1934), Air Force pilot, two space flights: March 18, 1965 "Voskhod-2"; July 15, 1975 Soyuz-19. He left the cosmonaut corps on 01/26/1982.

Leonov made the first ever astronautics spacewalk duration 12 minutes 9 seconds. During the exit, he showed exceptional courage, especially in an emergency situation, when a swollen space suit prevented the astronaut from returning to the spacecraft. Leonov managed to enter the lock only by relieving excessive pressure from the spacesuit, while he climbed into the hatch of the ship not with his feet, but with his head forward, which was forbidden by the instructions.
In 1975, on July 15-21, Leonov, together with V.N. Kubasov, made the second flight into space as the commander of the Soyuz-19 spacecraft under the ASTP program (another, often mentioned name of the program is Soyuz-Apollo) .
A.A. Leonov is the author of about 200 paintings and 5 art albums, including magnificent space landscapes, fantasy, earthly landscapes, portraits of friends (watercolor, oil, Dutch gouache).

April 15 - the birthday of the pilot - cosmonaut of the USSR No. 12 Georgy Timofeevich Beregovoy.

Georgy Timofeevich Beregovoy was born on April 15, 1921 in the Ukrainian village of Fedorovka, Poltava province. He spent his childhood and youth in the city of Enakievo. It was here that he graduated from high school, took the first steps in his career as an electrician at the Yenakiyevo Metallurgical Plant, and here he took to the air for the first time, being a cadet of the Yenakiyevo flying club.
By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Georgy Beregovoy was a well-trained attack pilot. Fate kept him, although during the war years the brave pilot had to repeatedly look death in the face. He ended the war as a Hero of the Soviet Union.



After the war, he successfully completed the higher officer courses for test pilots. He worked as a test pilot of the USSR, having received the title of Honored Test Pilot of the USSR in 1961, and in 1963 he was admitted to the cosmonaut corps, despite his age.
Having completed a full course of training for flights on ships of the Soyuz type, October 26-30, 1968 - at the age of 47! - made a space flight on the Soyuz-3 spacecraft. In flight, there was the first ever attempt to dock with an unmanned Soyuz-2 spacecraft in the shadow of the Earth. The flight lasted 3 days 22 hours 50 minutes 45 seconds. On November 1, 1968, he was awarded the second Gold Star medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union for his space flight.
Having gone through the war without serious injuries, he almost died in peacetime: on January 22, 1969, in the Kremlin, during a solemn meeting of astronauts, officer Viktor Ilyin fired at the car in which Beregovoy was driving, mistaking it for Brezhnev's car. The slight external resemblance of Beregovoy to Brezhnev also contributed to the error. The driver sitting behind the wheel was mortally wounded, and Beregovoy received minor injuries from fragments of the windshield.
After the space flight, Lieutenant-General of Aviation Beregovoy worked for a long time as the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center and brought up a whole generation of space argonauts. He retired in 1987 with the rank of lieutenant general. But he continued active public work as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Georgy Beregovoy died on June 30, 1995 during a heart operation. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.