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Having been awarded Hero of the Russian Federation (Russia's highest honor ), member of both French and Russian orders, pilot-cosmonaut Sergey Avdeyev celebrated in orbit New Year and his birthdays (he was born on 1 January) three times. His wife passed gifts to him by cargo ship beforehand, with the inscription: "Open on 31 December". And she never knew which of their friends would give her gift from her husband.
Sergey Avdeyev holds the record for most time accumulated in space. In his three missions he was off Earth 747 days and had nine walkouts in space with a total length 41 hours.
During the years 1995-1996 on the First National TV channel of Russia there was a series of clips, called "The Russian Project", addressed to common public values. In one of them, which was meant to emphasize the scientific and technological power of the state, two actors played the roles of cosmonauts onboard the Mir orbital station. One of them (Oscar winner Nikita Mikhalkov) pointed from above on a bend of The Volga River and on the city of Samara City near it, and told to his colleague that his mother lived there. At that time almost no one noticed that in outer space, at that very time, real cosmonauts, one of which was Sergey Avdeyev, the native of Samara, were working in space.
G21: Have you seen that clip on TV?
AVDEYEV: No I haven't, but I've heard about it.
G21: So, this means this concurrence was not special, and your role had been played without consultation with you?
AVDEYEV: I didn't know about it, I think it [appeared only] occasionally.
G21: It seems to us a vivid example that in our days we don't pay enough attention to space exploration and to astronauts/cosmonauts.
AVDEYEV: Yes it is. But we don't have to be distressed, because there are a lot of important and significant things for each of us that remain unnoticed yet.
Our life is multi-leveled itself and it is impossible to say that nowadays the astronautics remains in the first layer of public interests. It is not on the first and not on the last place. We should consider it as the come to pass fact. The public opinion is always right, including in what level it has placed the astronautics and cosmonautics.
Besides, some things unnoticed now will be appreciated later. In my childhood I lived in Kuibyshev (now Samara), on the street that some later was named after Yuri Gagarin, (on the forth floor of an one-room apartment, with the grandmother, mother, father and younger brother).
They say Yuri Gagarin had been driven along this street, noticed by nobody, just after his triumphal flight. He ...landed nearly got some rest and from [the] local airport he departed to Moscow. People didn't see him then and only after several hours in the evening I saw through a window a triumph on our street - woman and man danced, had fun, shouted something...
G21: It seems, that cosmonautics here in Russia don't get good publicity.
AVDEYEV: Space science is not bubble-gum and not a powdered drink that can be adverticed. As well as mathematicians, physicians and chemists do not advertise themselves, they do not proclaim - "Long live to [this or that] theorem!"
In my view, cosmonautics is a triangle, with a politics as an apex - it is more notable as a demonstration of a leadership and a high development. Other angles are an engineering and science. This third side answers a question: "For what?", and explains what gain, what knowledge, practical benefits and spiritual riches people receive from this activity.
Now, in comparison with other countries, in Russia we have the lowest interest [in] space [exploration], especially among [the] young generation.
Only a few children, whose parents work at the space enterprises, have an opportunity to visit their places of work and to learn more about this activity.
Fortunately now these space installations [have become] accessible and not so closed and secret as it used to be. For example, my mother and father worked at a defense factory and for me in my childhood it was a real nightmare and a strongest stress, when in school I had to write in composition about my parents. I did not know in what they were engaged at all.
Nowadays, the specialists of aerospace plants or, say, of Mission Control Center, have an opportunity to invite their daughters and sons to their workplaces, to show them what is what and to kindle their interest.
It is a very good slogan [we have now]: Space is our future. Such [an] attitude involves people in creativity, attracts them to universal values, to high achievements, which are not only related to space.
Now we pay so much interest to "bucks", that we see almost nothing around us.
One familiar of mine, has [a] daughter who studied at the ballet school of The Bolshoi theatre. Their requirements are very specific - certain physiological data, good health, ability to bear large physical overworks, and at last to be simply "not dense". As the next commission concluded, that her future in ballet is very problematic because of her too high stature, she has passed to a usual school, actually not absolutely usual, but in specialized economic school. Quite soon it has became clear that she is the best in her class on mathematics and physics. It is an example that at schools our youth is being brought up on a rather primitive level. It is a very complicated and large problem now.
G21: What is your educational background?
AVDEYEV: I graduated from Moscow Engineering-Physical Institute, experimental nuclear physics department. It used to be a secret institute, in which they did not accept any foreigners or women. Earlier students from China studied there, but [probably because of] this, they succeded in building their own A-bomb and the doors of institute were closed to them, too.
I specialized in astrophysics, our space physics department took part in the design of orbital telescopes. Then I was allocated on work in Energia Rocket Space Corporation, Koroliov, near Moscow. I have been working there until now not only as an engineer, but also as cosmonaut and investigator.
G21: Was it your dream to become a cosmonaut?
AVDEYEV: No, I just wanted to be a physician. Studying six years in the institute and after that working nine years in Energia, I never thought that I shall become a cosmonaut, just did not dream about it.
I just learned casually from familiars, that in Energia there is the group of cosmonauts and decided to participate in cosmonaut selection.
G21: Philosophers say that something too strongly desired is unachievable and the best way to find something is to refuse it. In your case, this statement seems really proven.
AVDEYEV: Generally, yes. Many of my familiars since childhood or youth wanted very much to become cosmonauts, they specially went to the appropriate institutes, and after this went to firms,which have close relations with the group of cosmonauts. But I know no one of them who finally passed. It is just the way [things happen in] life...
G21: Is it necessary to do physical exercises every day in outer space?
AVDEYEV: Yes, twice per day.
G21: What is your attitude to sports?
AVDEYEV: I was engaged in sport up to the third year of institute. I was a high jumper and once I had to make a choice, either to go in professional sports, or to stop at the achieved level. The time of a sportsman is very short, [at the age of] 35 years you are already aveteran there. I think, that the real sport is when you out-top on what a man is capable, i.e. when you reach what nobody have achieved before. Simply to act on competitions year after year, not surpassing the most maximum rod, it was not meaningful in my view, therefore I had decided to continue sport exercises only for myself.
G21: You ran into many emergency situations in orbit and successfully coped with them. There was a lot of information and reports about accidents on Mir station. What can you tell us about those?
AVDEYEV: It's like my story about Gargarin. There were onlyk reports about achievements, celebratory posters and so on, and they kept an absolute silence about problems. Now we almost do not speak about achievements, but notice failures only. But accidents always were, they are and always will be. It is simply [part of] our work.
G21: What stipulations were you given for handling an extreme case?
AVDEYEV: In a case of dangerous situations, such as a fire or air leakage, if nothing can be done already and it is necessary to land on the Earth urgently, for each lap, on every 1,5 hours, we had so-called Form 14. It is the table of exact times and some other data (longitude, latitude and other), using them we had an ability in exact seconds to press the appropriate button and consequently to land on the Earth, in a prearranged area, where they waited for us.
There are some --- certain regions in Russia, Africa, Asia and others, stipulated between the states, where we could be picked up at any time. Within 3 days appropriate search-and-rescue services have all opportunities to come to these points on land or on water, where we have fallen. It is necessary to overcome difficulties before the search teams arrive. For this purpose they specially trained us, threw us in the sea, in a desert, in mountains. Under supervision of doctors we studied how to survive [in those different environments.]
For each day ... we always had these lists of exact times, which were periodically updated, they were transferred as first, even as zero-in-line, of our communications. This information was attached separately, on a special place [in our communications].
In the most extreme case, if something happened with cosmonauts in orbit, causing them to completely lose their consciousness and fly without feelings, there was a special group of the cosmonaut-resquers. One of these specially trained cosmonauts could alone, without any help, fly up to the orbital station, load people into the rescue ship, seat them and fasten [them in], and land a ship on the Earth. For this purpose there were special people and facilities, which would allow [us the capability] to carry out these types of emergency rescues from Mir. There was special rocket kept always in readiness.
But recently there were not sufficient money, some workers, engineers and even cosmonauts did not receive their salary. Therefore it was useless to expect the rescue ship, we only could hope that we would not lose our consciousness and that the radio communication would not be cut off and it would be possible to receive again this Gorm 14, for a descent in an urgent situation.
G21: Were you scared there, in space?
AVDEYEV: It depends. Here, on the Earth, we are sometimes afraid, too.
Ten years ago I was shocked when my brother gave me the newspaper with an article about events in Chapaevsk, where I was born. There workers {on the night shift] were often afraid to go back home, because some local teenagers did not have anything better for their entertainment than to take some rifles and shoot at passers-by who went on night roads.
For a usual man it is abnormal to expect that from around a corner you can be shot. It is too terrible and much more than in orbit.
It is a special fear in space, fear that you understand and can predict. You do not expect dangers each second, but imagine them in general and, accordingly, prepare for them.
G21: The weight of responsibility before lift-off must be incredible. When the work of thousands of people and large sums of money are involved, it is impossible to turn back and to betray others. Did you feel in those moments any sense of inevitability or fatalism?
AVDEYEV: Certainly, yes. But you just live in all this. Not only on flight itself, but also on its preparation, you expend a large amount of resources, work, thoughts, diligence of very many people. You face [these things] with them every day, worked with them. A flight is only the crown[ing achievement] of everything that was done before. It is not a fate, but natural consequence of everything done. Understanding all this, you just go on, as it was earlier. It is just a summarizing.
Generally speaking, this is a normal condition for any man or woman, not only for astronauts, but for all of us, when at the end of an academic year or a calendar year, we estimate what we have got, what has happened, what has been lost, what has been acquired, what we would like and so on.
G21: Are the cosmonauts practical people?
AVDEYEV: I would say very impractical.
G21: We'd imagine that the large responsibility and work with extremely expensive engineering probably should form a tough attitude, such as of military men or of managers.
AVDEYEV: There are a few tough people among the cosmonauts and not that of "militaries" or "authorities". Those [types of people] just would not survive in space, in such an environment where we cosmonauts were forced to work. Cosmonautics selects sincere people, which are rather humanistic themselves. They are very mild and vulnerable, everyone in one's own fashion, but certainly, like most people, they are very different.
Cosmonauts are very attentive to human mutual relations. On the Earth it is not so dangerous if someone betrays others, but in space it could turn out fatally.
As for managers, which "have to deal with money", usually a manager knows that he works in a company, which has a limited sales -- say, 100 millions dollarsm -- and according to this he operates with this money. If some employee baffles him - it is possible to dismiss him; if this man is lazy - it is necessary to press on him; if those people work well - he should encourage them. In outer space people are closed in a small area, they have limited connections with the outside, besides they operate with facilities that are much more expensive than a representative of any company can imagine.
In an orbit revolve billions of dollars, rubles and franks, connected together. A cosmonaut, who flies over there, does not know this figure, and nobody knows it, since it can be counted only approximately. Thus people there lean not on the cost, but on something greater, on an interest in the work, on spirituality that connects persons. It can't be estimated in any figures, or expressed in any money.
G21: In everyday life we all forget some things. How did you manage, in such huge station, to do so much complicated technical work without missing something?
AVDEYEV: They reminded us. Besides we had several different kinds of plans and checklists. One general plan for the whole flight: what experiments, how many per day, how many walkouts in space, how many lorries we should accept and discharge, when we should land, and who would come to follow us.
Also there were plans for two weeks forward: what experiments and works should be executed. In addition to the above-mentioned there were detailed plans for days forward, by hours and minutes: from awakening in the morning, one, another, then third and so on up to the [time you] retire.
Frankly speaking, during last flight of 26-27th, dubbed Expedition, we had only approximate general plan. For example, I did not know, when I would be headed back to the Earth and what it would be necessary to do during the flight. We prepared for one, but the other has turned out, we were going to land at one date and have landed much later, etc. etc.
G21: Altogether you accumulated more than 747 days in space. We have to wonder whether it was always interesting to look at the Earth?
AVDEYEV: Yes, it was. The Earth is always different, always varies. One in the summer, another in winter. And winters in different hemispheres are distinguished.
G21: Was there any especially interesting case in an orbit?
AVDEYEV: There were so many moments of this kind that I can not focus on any one. Each day is not similar to others there. Everyday is significant in its own way and it is difficult to choose the most important.
© 2001, GENERATOR 21.
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