Sergey Krikalev is the most famous Russian cosmonaut after Gagarin, who was "forgotten" in space
In February 1994, the first flight of a Russian cosmonaut on an American spacecraft took place. This was the flight of Sergei Krikalev on the Discovery shuttle as part of the STS-60 space flight. In orbit, the shuttle's ventilation system failed. The Americans had clear instructions: to report the breakdown to Earth and wait for instructions. While in Houston they were deciding what to do, the condensate accumulated in the ducts began to freeze, something had to be done.
Krikalev did not want to interfere. When the astronauts asked, "What would you do?" - Sergey answered: "I would fix it." And then he took it and fixed it.
Before his second flight in May 1991, Sergei Krikalev could not have imagined that events on Earth would make him a "space centenarian". On May 19, 1991, he, as part of the sOyuz TM-12 crew, launched to the MIR orbital station. The crew of the space expedition successfully completed all flight tasks and was going to return home. But the August events made their own adjustments to the flight plan.
In October 1992, NASA management announced that a Russian cosmonaut with space flight experience would fly on an American reusable spacecraft. Krikalev became one of two candidates sent by the Russian Space Agency to train with the STS-60 crew. Krikalev participated in the STS-60 flight— the first joint US-Russian flight on a reusable spacecraft (Shuttle Discovery). The STS-60 flight, which began on February 3, 1994, was the second with the Spacehab module (Space Habitation Module) and the first flight with the WSF device (Wake Shield Facility).
During the flight with the American spacecraft, an emergency occurred — the life support electronics and the air duct failed. Despite the objections of the American side and the proposal to wait for a backup vessel from Earth, our cosmonaut managed to restore and restart the shuttle's instruments. This caused delight and extreme surprise on both the American and Russian sides.
After the STS-60 flight, Krikalev returned to his work in Of Russia. He periodically went on business trips to the Lyndon Johnson Space Center in Houston to work in the Mission Control Center with Search and rescue service during joint US-Russian flights. In particular, he participated in the ground support of flights STS-63, STS-71, STS-74, STS-76.
Krikalev is known and admired all over the world (in some countries there are entire museum stands dedicated to our cosmonaut). American director Michael Bay in 1998 made the film "Armageddon", where the Russian cosmonaut-Colonel Lev Andropov, living alone on the space station (mad, unshaven, drunk, wearing a hat with earflaps and a padded jacket, hits the instruments, opens the fuel tap with a crowbar, blows up the MIR space station), was shown in a caricature form - however, in the end, it is he who saves all American astronauts by hitting the computer of the "non—removable" shuttle with a drawbar the key. It is absolutely not necessary that Krikalev was taken as the basis of the character, of course, but there are too many coincidences.
Today Sergey Krikalev works as the first deputy General Director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering" for manned programs and is the most famous cosmonaut in the world, after Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin.
Keywords: Cosmonautics | Cosmonauts | USSR