The Ordinary Spaceman by Clayton C. Anderson

Author:Clayton C. Anderson [Anderson, Clayton C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO023000 Biography & Autobiography / Adventurers & Explorers
ISBN: 9780803277311
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2015-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Believe it or not, Russia’s version of winter survival training is easier. First of all, it’s only scheduled for two and a half days. Second, and perhaps most important, they don’t mind if you—in fact they encourage you to—build a raging fire to keep warm!

When cosmonauts are assigned to a spaceflight, they must undergo winter survival training—no matter how many times they’ve done it before. Their version also begins with two preparatory days of training, one in the classroom and one in the Russian outdoors.

On an assigned crew this time, I would be in the field with retired U.S. Army colonel and helicopter pilot Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonaut Alexander “Sasha” Lazutkin. Sasha was our Soyuz capsule commander, and for this survival exercise the crew commander.

On day 1, we spent eight tedious hours in the classroom covering the Soyuz basic emergency kit (Hаз, pronounced nahz), our survival clothing, how to build shelters (wigwams and lean-tos), and basic winter survival techniques.

Then it was time for a trip to a garage-like building on the Star City training territory of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Here we executed a practice exercise, donning our Sokol space suits as if we were preparing to leave the space station in a Soyuz spaceship bound for Earth.

Fully clad in poorly fitted training versions of our Sokol suits, we climbed into a real, once-flown Soyuz capsule. As evidence, its hull was covered in seared burn marks and a black charred heat shield that had protected its crew from a fiery death during reentry.

Agreeing we had executed a successful simulated landing, we remained inside the cramped chamber. Three grown men sitting side by side as if occupying the front seat of a Volkswagen Beetle, we prepared to change into our winter survival gear.

The Texas phrase “three pigs wrestling in a burlap sack” came to mind as my body temperature climbed inside the heavy suit and as a result of the incredibly high heat being put out by the building’s thermal control system. It was extremely important to monitor our body temperatures during the sim.

After discarding our Sokols and donning our Russian survival gear, we finally emerged one at a time through the overhead hatch (imagine the Volkswagen Beetle with a moon roof) the same way we would have to do in the field.

The simulation was over. It was time to do it for real.

The definition of what constituted “the field” has changed dramatically since U.S. astronauts first started training with the Russians. A substantial drop in space budgets in post-Soviet Russia caused them to rethink many of their space program’s requirements. What used to be winter survival trips to more desolate (and perhaps more dangerous) locales were now short trips to a forest just outside Star City. Unfortunately, our survival training exercise with our cosmonaut colleagues happened at a time when a drop in temperature rivaled the drop in their budget.

We would not leave the woods for two and a half days.

The training site was a heavily wooded area near a popular Moscow resort about eight miles outside Star City.

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