Happy 50th Birthday, Sergei

Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov turns 50 today! С днём рожденья, Сергей! (Not that he ever reads this…) I wonder what he will achieve in his next half-century? Maybe be 1st on Mars!

From Novosti Kosmonavtiki news №724:

28/08/2008/00:09 – The President of Russia, D.A. Medvedev, congratulated the pilot-cosmonaut S.K. Krikalyov on his 50th birthday

On 27 August the President of Russia, Dmitrii Medvedev, congratulated pilot-astronaut and deputy chief designer of Rocket and Space Corporation Energiya, Sergei Krikalyov, on his 50th birthday.

“You are deservedly considered one of the record holders among cosmonauts for the total length of time spent in orbit,” Mr. Medvedev said in his telegram. “Your truly heroic biography is an outstanding example of courage, strength of will and firmness of character. Your competence, organisational talents and professional and personal qualities have earned the deserved respect of your colleagues and friends.”

From the Energiya website:

August 28, 2008. S.P.Korolyov RSC Energiya, Korolyov, Moscow region.

An S.P. Korolyov RSC Energiya deputy general designer, instructor-cosmonaut-tester, 1st Class, Hero of the Soviet Union and of the Russian Federation, Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalyov turned 50 on August 27, 2008.

The President of the Russian Federation D.A. Medvedev sent him a congratulatory telegram, which, among other things, says: “You are rightfully considered one of the record-breakers among active cosmonauts with regard to the total duration of your orbital missions. Your truly heroic biography became an outstanding example of courage, will-power and fortitude. Your competence, managerial ability, professional and personal qualities earned you a due respect of your colleagues and friends” (news on the web site of the Russian President www.kremlin.ru).

On this significant day, S.K. Krikalyov was congratulated by Governor of St.Petersburg V.I. Matvienko, heads of the Federal Space Agency, management and staff of the S.P. Korolyov Rocket and Space Corporation Energiya, representatives of various companies and organizations in the Russian space industry and Russian Academy of Sciences, including the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Head of the town of Korolyov A.F. Morozenko, S.P. Korolyov RSC Energiya cosmonaut team, NASA representatives, friends and colleagues.

Dear Sergei Konstantinovich!

The management and staff of the S.P. Korolyov Rocket and Space Corporation Energiya heartily congratulate you on this significant day of your 50th anniversary!

Upon graduating with honors from the Leningrad Mechanical Institute in 1981, you took a job with the world-known Korolyov’s company, where you have been working for more than a quarter of a century now, having risen through the ranks from an engineer to a deputy general designer.

You worked on developing manuals for cosmonauts, proposals on displaying operator’s data on consoles of the Mir space station, updating the on-board documentation of the Salyut-7 space station. You worked at the Mission Control Center during several long-term missions. After communication was lost with Salyut-7 in 1985, you, as a member of a “ground crew”, took part in developing various options for procedures of flying and docking with the uncontrollable space station. Afterwards, this operation was successfully performed for the first time in history! The same year you joined the team of cosmonauts of NPO Energiya. You were training yourself and were taking an active part in training cosmonauts at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and at Baikonur.

You have accomplished six space missions to the muti-modular space station Mir, the unique creation of the 20th century, and the International Space Station, an ambitious international project of the 21st century, during which hundreds of sessions of scientific and applied research experiments were carried out, providing invaluable results for Russian and world science. And your pictures taken in space are the envy of any professional photographer!

Special milestones in your career are the activities on the International Space Station. Three times you worked onboard the station, and each of these missions was unique in its own way. The first mission was the first manned mission under the International Space Station assembly program, in the course of which US Node 1 module was docked to the Functional Cargo Module Zarya. Together with Space Shuttle Commander R. Cabana, you were the first to open the hatch leading to ISS. The second mission was under the program of the first expedition to ISS (ISS-1). It started the continuous operation of the ISS. You were the first to make habitable the Service Module Zvezda and Functional Cargo Module Zarya, and, later on, the Laboratory Module Destiny, and started scientific research under Russian and US programs. In the third mission you set up the absolute world record for the total space flight endurance of 803 days, which remains unbroken by any other nation in the world!

For the courage and heroism displayed during your missions into space, you were given titles of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Hero of the Russian Federation, and awarded both Russian and foreign orders and medals. You are an honorary citizen of St. Petersburg. Your energy, commitment and perseverance in achieving your goal, high professionalism and erudition, communication skills and kindness towards people earned you due respect among your Russian colleagues and foreign partners. Everybody also knows about your achievements in sports: you have learned to fly several types of airplanes, including a foreign airplane, and you won prizes several times at the USSR, Europe and world championships.

On this great day, dear Sergei Konstantinovich, please accept our heartfelt wishes of good health, happiness and prosperity to you and your relatives, of new creative successes and luck in the course of flight design tests and operation of the rocket and space hardware for the sake of strengthening the power and prosperity of Russia.

– President, General Designer V.A. Lopota

(Photo via Energiya)

Star City article

I’ve had a head cold since last week, so I haven’t felt much like doing anything. *Snuffle*

“Going to Space? First Stop: Eight Months of Grueling Training in Russia’s Star City”, Wired Magazine, September 2008. An overview of Star City, Звёздный Городок. A somewhat quirky overview of the place from the point-of-view of the space tourists training there.

Marina Driga, a military captain and press liaison, confides what some around Star City think of its high-profile trainees: “People say it is better to send monkey.”

“Mission Possible”, Anatoly Zak, Air & Space Magazine, 1/9. An overview of the Phobos-Grunt probe to be launched in 2009 (hopefully).

He started it!

Georgia’s pea-brained hothead of a president decided to provoke Russia by invading South Ossetia, this while the Olympics are on too. Naturally the Western media are siding with Saakashvilli, who has them well and truly conned (“Saakashvili as a propaganda phenomenon”, RIA Novosti). This thread at NASASpaceflight.com speculates whether the hostilites will affect the ISS partnership, seeing as the USA has sided with Georgia (whose military has been trained by U.S. forces). Though as one notes, the U.S. invasion of Iraq didn’t affect the partnership.

Some blog commentaries: Da Russophile (beginning from this entry); Saakashvilli’s War at Sean’s Russia Blog. The Western media is generally useless for anything approaching impartial reporting when regards to Russia (some exceptions: “Russo-Georgian conflict is not all Russia’s fault”, Christian Science Monitor; “Plucky little Georgia? No, the cold war reading won’t wash”, Guardian).

ISS medical training

Some information on the medical training cosmonauts receive for an ISS stay, from Novosti Kosmonavtiki news №719:

31/7/2008/12:30 – ISS commander and military pilot Sergei Volkov was trained for a new profession as the head physician

Sergei Volkov – ISS-17 commander and Lieutenant Colonel of the Russian Federation VVS (Air Force) – has for some time been trained for a new profession as the head physician of the Station. The more so because today in orbit is medical day. The official representative of TsUP (Moscow Mission Control Center), Valerii Lyndin, said, “Today the physicians are evaluating the physical fitness level of the of Russian cosmonauts on the treadmill, and Volkov is still developing critical skills for the medical operations.”

“Exercises are conducted with the cosmonaut on working with the onboard American medical equipment of which there is a lot onboard the Station,” explained Irina Alferova, the head of the TsUP Medical Group. According to her, NASA assigns a specialist in each expedition to be responsible for medicine and train them to use onboard equipment and to render aid to associates aboard. If there is a doctor in the composition of the crew – as there was, for example, in ISS-15, where Oleg Kotov had medical qualifications – that question is solved. But if the ISS crew only comprises pilots and engineers, then one of them is selected, who will, during the entire flight, fulfill the function of head physician and will periodically refresh his skills by training with the medical equipment.

Several times during the flight, training is conducted aboard to deal with a non-standard medical situation, which includes the additional training of crew for the use of equipment for the rendering of first aid. The NASA specialists assign to the cosmonauts a specific situation – for example, to remove a mote from the eye of an associate or to dress a wound – and they perform the function of physicians, using the multifunctional medical equipment existing onboard the ISS. “Through the Russian program we do not carry out such training, since we consider that our cosmonauts without this are wonderfully prepared and can render each other practical assistance,” emphasized Alferova.

“Before the flight, all Russian cosmonauts during the year pass a special course on medicine and obtain knowledge and habits, which correspond to a unfinished higher medical education.” Onboard the ISS there is all that is necessary for the rendering of first aid. Cosmonauts can give each other an electrocardiogram, take a blood analysis, or perform intravenous infusion. On the sudden stopping of heart of one of the crew members, their partner can use a defibrilator, which is located on the Station in a special medical case. There is on the ISS dentistry equipment, which includes the necessary tool for the treatment and the removal of teeth. “Truthfully, in the entire time of the operation of the Station, the dental tools have so far been not required, since before the flight the cosmonauts treat their teeth with a special composition of fluorine.”

“Can people live on Mars?”, RIA Novosti, 25/7. NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will carry some Russian equipment, the Russian Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or DAN. On a side note, when the New Horizons space probe reaches Pluto, NASA will have visited every planet in the solar system! Russia, in contrast, hasn’t done anything in unmanned spaceflight since the failed Mars-96 launch in 1996.

Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev declared 2011 the “Year of Russian Cosmonautics”. He could back that up with some funding for a manned Russian Mars mission! (Wishful thinking…)