Space History, Dec 8: a birth and a death

[CalliArcale]

December 8, 1927, noted cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov was born in Petropavlovsk, in northern Kazakhstan. He joined the Soviet Air Force and from there, entered the cosmonaut corps on January 10, 1963. He bounced around through the corps for a while, back and forth from future Soyuz plans and the Spiral plan and even on the VVS. Spiral and VVS were ultimately cancelled, of course, and Shatalov made his first spaceflight aboard Soyuz 4 in Janaury of 1969. He launched alone in the three-man spacecraft; shortly afterwards, a crew of three launched aboard Soyuz 5. The two spacecraft rendezvoused, and then Soyuz 5 went into free drift. Shatalov then gained the honor of being the first person to perform a docking in space, capturing Soyuz 5 with the "Shtir" docking probe on Soyuz 4. Two cosmonauts then spacewalked from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4, the two vehicles undocked, and Shatalov brought his two passengers home on Janury 18, 1969. (Volynov, now alone in Soyuz 5, would have a much more eventful return, but I'll save that for another history lesson.) Technically, however, the docking was automatic; the Soviet engineers did not trust manual piloting. Shatalov's second flight was aboard Soyuz 8, launched on October 18, 1969. Soyuz 8 was to dock with Soyuz 7 (already in orbit) and be photographed by Soyuz 6 (also already in orbit) on a historic and ambitious three-spacecraft mission. Unfortunately, all three spacecraft experienced problems with their rendezvous electronics, and the docking was scrubbed. Shatalov returned to Earth on October 18. His last flight was on Soyuz 10, launched April 23, 1971. With is crewmates, Shatalov flew to the world's first space station, Salyut 1. Unfortunately, the automatic docking system failed again. Shatalov manually captured Salyut 1, but the angle of approach made a hard mate impossible. The crew may have tried to enter the station anyway; the Soviets reported being unable to enter due to a faulty hatch on Soyuz 10. After <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[darkenfast]

Excellent history! Thanks for posting this. The story of the competition between the design bureaus in the old USSR is fairly unknown in the west. Sometimes we assume the Soviet system was more monlithic than it really was.