The subtleties of the profession, "cosmonaut"

I advise you to learn the subtleties of the profession, "astronaut", and about his work told us cosmonaut Cosmonaut Training Center. Yuri Gagarin Air Force Colonel Valery Tokarev. Read more below.

About fear





I would not say that there is terrible. You are a professional and adaptirueshsya to work, so you have time to think about fear. I was not afraid at the start or on the way down - we constantly recorded and heart rate, and blood pressure. At the station at all after a while you feel like home. But there is a delicate moment when it is necessary to go into space. Downright do not want to go.
This is the first parachute jump. Here before you an open door, and height of 800 meters. While you are sitting in the airplane and under you like some firmament - not terrible. And then have to step into the void. Win a human nature, the instinct of self-preservation. The same feeling, only much more powerful when you go out into open space.
Before leaving you wear a spacesuit in the airlock was depressurized, but was still inside the station, which flies at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour in its orbit, but it's your house. So you open the door - you open manually - and there is darkness, an abyss.
When you're on the shady side, you do not see anything under them. And you know that hundreds of kilometers below the abyss of darkness, and the darkness to you from the station habitable lit need to go where there is nothing.
At the same time you are in a suit, but it is not a business suit in it uncomfortable. It is hard, and the hardness necessary to overcome physically. Move only on hands, feet hanging ballast. Besides deteriorating visibility. And you need to move along the station. And you realize that if unhooked, death is inevitable. Enough two centimeters to miss, you can not have enough of a millimeter - and will forever drifting away from the station, and a start is not what, and you have no one to help.
But even get used to it. When floated on the sunny side, it becomes clear the planet, home Blue Earth, becoming calmer, let her from you in thousands of kilometers.

About public take into astronauts

Spaceman can become any citizen of Russia, under the appropriate specific requirements. This is only the first Gagarin, the set was of military pilots, and then began to take more and engineers, and representatives of other professions. Now the application can be submitted to the astronauts, with any higher education, though philology. And then people are selected according to standard: health check, carried out psychological tests ... In the last set, for example, only one pilot.
But in the space eventually fly not all, according to statistics 40-50% of those who received training. The candidate is always ready, but not the fact that in the end will take flight.
Minimal preparation - five years: half the total space training, then a half year training in a group - that's not the crew, still half a year training in a carriage with which to fly. But on average, before the first flight takes much more time - someone ten years, someone even longer. Therefore, young and unmarried astronauts are practically no. The training center people come usually at the age of about 30, usually married.
The astronaut has to learn the International Space Station, ship, flight dynamics, theory of flight, ballistics ... Our task is also included in the orbit to conduct shooting, edit and send to Earth scenes from the station. Therefore astronauts learn and camera work. And, of course, the requirements for maintaining the physical form of permanent, like athletes.

About Health

We joke that the astronauts selected for health, and then ask both smart. The problem of health is not even to survive an overload, it is not as difficult as one might think, now even the untrained people fly into space as tourists.
But tourists still fly for a week and holds a professional astronaut in orbit for many months. And we worked there. This is tourist on takeoff strapped to a chair - all, his task - to survive. But the astronaut to work in spite of Overload and communications support to the Earth, and to be ready to take control in the event of failure - in general, should control everything.
Medical selection astronauts now, as before, very difficult. We have passed it to the Seventh Air Force hospital scientific test in Sokolniki and called this place "the Gestapo." Because there you thoroughly scan, something made to drink something ukolyut something torn out.
Then it was fashionable to remove the tonsils, say. They have not hurt me at all, but I was told that it is necessary to cut. And when you are selected, contrary to doctors own peril.
Then I look further: "And let you remove the tooth?" - And he was a native, only the nerve away from there! But the doctors felt that the space might ache and vomited. This is the only tooth that I pulled in my life.
Although some have been much worse. Many pilots were afraid to go to the astronauts, because many of them after a medical examination is deducted from the Flight of work. So you and do not fly into space, and on the plane you fly ban.

On the first flight

You have him for a long time to cook, you are a professional, everything you can, but you never really had not experienced the feeling of weightlessness.
Everything happens very quickly: preflight excitement, then a strong vibration, acceleration, handling, and then - again! You're in space. The engines are switched off - and the complete silence. At the same time the crew comes up, then you have fastened seat belts, but the body has obezvesheno. Here then comes the feeling of euphoria. Outside the window - the brightest paints. In space, no halftones, everything is saturated, high contrast.
Just want to feel everything, to be twisted in the air, to succumb to the feeling of joy, but when you're a member of the crew in the first place to work. It is a lot going on at the same time: it is necessary to ensure that as disclosed antenna, check for leaks and so on. Only after you are sure that everything is in order, you can remove the suit and really enjoy weightlessness - pokuvyrkatsya.
Again, tumbling dangerously. I remember, experienced cosmonauts began to move very smoothly, and we are newcomers, steep-spun. And then the vestibular apparatus is crazy. And you realize that it is necessary to be careful, because they can begin nausea.

About smells

Is that you in the world ran to the toilet, and even if not ran - do not worry. And there, if you missed it all will be flying within the atmosphere. And it will be necessary to collect a special vacuum cleaner. But the smell will not collect a vacuum cleaner. And the atmosphere alone, and she spoils.
Odor at the station constantly accumulate, so that when the first time to arrive, do not feel very comfortable. We are there and engage in sports, and the window will not open, do not ventilate.
But the person gets used to the smell quickly. So you can not say that all the time in orbit you feel uncomfortable. Only the first time you open the hatch of the ship and swam to the station. Although a few months ago from the start time to the dock was 34 hours, so that the atmosphere on the ship had time to fill with different smells and did not feel much of a difference. It is now flying six hours, so that the ship remains more or less fresh air.

About weightlessness

The first days of difficult to sleep: the head feels no support, it is very unusual. Some head to tie a sleeping bag. No items can not be left unfastened: fly away. But a week later you are completely used to the weightlessness and live normally, produced daily routine: how much sleep when there.
Legs in weightlessness you do not use at all, some muscle atrophy, despite the fact that every day you train on special simulators. Therefore, the return to Earth is much more difficult to fly than the overload is transferred complicated.
And then the first time in the world you still can not get used, it is necessary to carry the weight of his body. There's also a finger pushed - flew. Transfer items do not need to mate, threw subject - he flew. What some have sinned after six months spent in space? Feast, someone asked me to tell anything, glass, for example. Well astronaut and throws a glass across the table.

About the International Space Station

Station as spacecraft consists of modules. These compartments four meters in diameter and no more than 15 meters in length. Each astronaut has a corner: you come at night, sleeping binds himself to swim. Near usually floats laptop, radio to be able to you, if anything, to quickly raise.



It's like a hostel. Nothing is isolated, even cabins without screens, only the toilet can be a bit of privacy. Although American ships fully insulated cabins.
Finding the station not like any prison or the hospital. It's just your job with specific tasks. It is necessary to conduct experiments to divert the station from collision with debris, maintain her work to change some equipment, if necessary.
It is believed that the astronauts in the crew is carefully selected on psychological characteristics, but it is not so. If a multinational crew, each country simply gives his man. During the preparation of doctors, of course, watch how you approach each other.
But I've always been lucky with the crews. Some astronauts after a joint flight to Earth with each other do not talk, and here I am with all my colleagues support the relationship.
While in space, emotions, as well as color, very intense. They occur more strongly enough the slightest push - and once the scandal. That is the main art - the art of managing them. How on earth in general.

On the Meaning of

My path to the astronauts was pretty consistent. I learned not to lёtnom school lёtnaya job I liked, but I constantly testing new equipment. Then I learned not to test pilot, had the newest aircraft carrier-based - this is when you need to put your car on the deck of the ship. In these exercises, the pulse of the pilots rolls are stronger than when I fly into a war zone. Then, when I became a test pilot of the first class, I realized that all the above in the atmosphere can not jump. And it was logical to go and fly in space bird. That is, for me, it was a consistent way. This is typical of a man and a cosmonaut. Although astronauts are different, too.



But God in the cosmos can not see it, we know more of Gagarin. But I can tell you that space - a living. When you're there, you pass through some sort of information, you just have to listen to it. Aliens we have not seen, but when I visited there, hold a strong belief that we are not alone in the universe, there are those who are smarter and stronger than us.

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