How Russian cosmonauts trained for space
(Image credit: Universal History Archive / Getty Images)
While the faces of NASA’s Mercury Seven were scattered through the global media, Russian cosmonauts trained in secret, hidden from public view.
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On April 13, 1961, the special correspondent of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia, Georgi Ostroumov, met the first man in space. One day after returning to Earth, “space pilot” Yuri Gagarin has, Ostroumov reports, “cheerful, cheerful and forceful … a wonderful smile lights up his face.”
“Occasionally dimples appear on the cheeks,” Ostroumov writes. “He appreciates the curiosity with which he is pressured by the details of what he saw and lived during the hour and a half he spent off Earth.”
In a pamphlet published to commemorate the flight, Soviet Man in Space, the interview with Gagarin continues for several pages. The cosmonaut describes the experience: “The horizon presents a very unique and unusually beautiful vision.” And he praises the Soviet Union: “I dedicate my flight to … all our people who are at the forefront of humanity and build a new society.”
In a political system in which journalism tends toward propaganda, rather than a realistic depiction of events, it is easy to argue that Gagarin’s quotes are invented. But while they may have been refined by the censors, they are likely to be the cosmonaut’s real words.
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A fighter pilot who had grown up in a small Russian village, Gagarin was a much-loved family man. He was good-looking, likeable, and, fundamentally, a faithful member of the Communist Party who carried cards.
Although the drama of NASA’s first human space program was performed in public, only recently has the full story of how the Soviet Union selected and trained its cosmonauts emerged. The communist empire wanted to encourage the view that the selection was open to everyone and that these first men in space – and the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova – were volunteers. But this is not strictly true.
The Soviet Union poured large resources into the space program, but it officially did not exist (Credit: Gamma Keystone / Getty Images)
After qualifying as a fighter pilot, Gagarin is stationed at a remote airfield on the Russian border with Norway flying MiG-15 jet fighters on the western border of the Cold War. In the late summer of 1959, two doctors arrive at the base to interview a shortlist of aviators. After starting with a list of about 3,500 potential candidates, doctors have already narrowed their search to about 300 pilots from all over western Russia.
“The boys interviewed have no idea why they are being interviewed,” says Stephen Walker, the author of Beyond, who has spent years flipping through Russian archives to gather the full story of Gagarin’s mission.
The interview consists of a seemingly informal talk about career, aspirations and family. Some of the men are invited back for a second conversation. While doctors insinuate that they are looking for candidates for a new type of flying machine, they never reveal their true motivation.
“They’re looking for military pilots, people who have already signed up for the chance to kill themselves for their country, which is really what we’re dealing with here, because the chances of coming back alive are not necessarily that great.” says Walker.
While NASA is recruiting military test pilots as its first astronauts to pilot its complex Mercury spacecraft, the Soviet capsule, Vostok is designed to be remotely controlled from the ground. Except in an emergency, pilots will not be able to fly much.
“They’re not looking for people who have a lot of experience,” Walker says. “What they’re looking for is basically a human version of a dog: someone who can sit there and endure the mission, face the accelerating forces, and come back alive.”
The first intake of potential cosmonauts reduced to 20, including Yuri Gagarin, the second from the left (Credit: Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
And, just like the space dogs that Soviet rocket scientists have launched into space for more than a decade, cosmonauts will have to be fit, obedient, and small enough to fit them in the air. ‘narrow capsule.
In the end, 134 selected individuals, all young pilots, all less than 168 cm tall, have the opportunity to “volunteer” for this new top-secret task. Some say it will involve training to pilot a spacecraft, others believe it is a new model of helicopter. None of the pilots can discuss the offer with their teammates or consult their families.
Meanwhile, in April 1959, the United States announced the names of its first seven Mercury astronauts. Candidates have undergone a series of grueling physical, medical and psychological tests, detailed in Tom Wolfe’s book (and his later film and recent television series) The Right Stuff.
When asked at a press conference which of the tests he liked least, astronaut candidate John Glenn replied, “It’s hard to choose one because if you find out how many openings there are in the human body and how far you can go. get to any of them … answer which would be the hardest for you “.
But while many questions remain about how humans will cope with the rigors of space flight (accelerations, weightlessness, and isolation), there are every reason to choose the most physically and psychologically capable.
The man in charge of testing the candidates in the Soviet space is Vladimir Yazdovsky, a professor at the Moscow Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine. He has previously overseen the space program for dogs and colleagues (in private) have described him as a tough, arrogant man.
“He’s kind of a terrifying James Bond horror figure,” Walker says, “and he’s brutal with these guys.”
Exhaustion training had less emphasis than NASA on piloting skills (Credit: TASS / AFP / Getty Images)
In almost all cases, the Soviet tests are longer, tougher, and more rigorous than those endured by American astronauts. Over the course of a month, candidates are injected, polled and assaulted. They are placed in rooms, with temperatures elevated to 70 ° C (158 F), chambers where oxygen is progressively eaten and vibrating seats to simulate launching. Some of the candidates sink, others just come out.
Throughout the process, men are forbidden to tell their families or friends what they were doing. Even in that month of testing, there were still some people who didn’t know what they were testing for.
Finally, 20 of these young people arrive for training at a new cosmonaut center. It will be renamed Star City, but initially it is just a few military huts in a forest near Moscow. There is no press conference or announcement. Officially, the Soviet human spaceflight program does not exist.
“If they get out of the base, they’re told not to tell anyone what they’re doing, why they’re there; if anyone asks, they have to say they’re part of a sports team,” Walker says. “Everything is under control, everything is secret. Everything is behind closed doors.”
The training program itself is similar to that of the Americans, but with less emphasis on controlling the spacecraft. Like the space dogs that follow them, the men spin at dizzying speeds in the centrifuges, are sealed in soundproofed isolation chambers for days, and undergo an almost constant physical and psychological evaluation.
A significant difference with the American program is the amount of parachute training that Russians receive. This is because they will have to be ejected from their spaceship as they fall to the ground to avoid being seriously injured by the impact. The fact that the capsule and its pilot land separately is another secret that is not revealed until years later.
With several more men failing to reach the degree, a first group of six cosmonauts is selected for the first flights. With NASA publicly declaring that it expects to launch its first man in the spring of 1961, the head of the Soviet program, Sergei Korolev, knows he has a narrow window of opportunity.
Cosmonauts had to undergo the same tracks as NASA astronauts, such as weightlessness training (Credit: Keystone Gamma / Getty Images)
On April 5, 1961, cosmonauts arrive at what is now known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh desert where the giant Korolev R7 rocket is being prepared. Still, none of them know who will be the first in space. Finally, just a few days before the release, Gagarin nods.
It is not until an official broadcast when Gagarin is in orbit above the Earth that anyone other than those closest to the space program knows his name.
According to Izvestia’s special correspondent Ostroumov, on the morning of April 12, Gagarin gave “one last wave to friends and colleagues from below [the rocket] then he entered the interior of the spaceship, a few seconds later the order was given … the gigantic ship rose from a cloud of fire towards the stars “.
The child of the Soviet Union poster would return to Earth: the space pilot with the Russian Right Stuff.
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