The Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Cosmonaut Biographies

Description

When first published in 1986, the stated purpose of this book was to bring together all the available information on the Soviet Cosmonaut Team - its composition, its history, comprehensive biographies of each man and woman, their spaceflight assignments, callsigns, time spent in space - in fact, to present the fullest possible picture of each person. It was hoped that it would, in time, become the standard reference work on the subject, and it has been very pleasing to learn that many of the cosmonauts, and indeed the American astronauts, consider it to be so. Since the book's first appearance, which marked the 25th anniversary of the World's first manned spaceflight by the Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, on 12 April 1961, great changes have taken place in the Soviet Union. In particular, the advent of Glasnost has allowed a great deal of new information to be released, much of which has given honest and frank accounts of events which were previously not allowed to be discussed. This has enabled us to obtain a much clearer picture of the Soviet manned space programme. As with the first edition, a biography of every cosmonaut who has flown since April 1961 is included in this book, although only brief details of their missions are given, as the intention is to concentrate on the Jives and careers of the cosmonauts themselves. In a departure from the first edition, it has been possible to include biographies of many unflown cosmonauts, whose identities were previously kept hidden. It should be noted that throughout the book, the Afghan, French, Indian and Syrian cosmonauts are treated in the same manner as those cosmonauts from the lntercosmos countries, although Afghanistan, France, India and Syria are not members of the Intercosmos organisation. Furthermore, there is limited speculation in the actual biographies - as they are intended to be factual. Where speculation does exist, other than in the background sections, it is denoted by the use of italics in the text. Finally, as a British citizen, it gives me special pleasure to be able to include in this edition biographies of Tim Mace and Helen Sharman - the two British candidates for the joint Anglo-Soviet Project Juno mission planned for April 1991. One of them should hopefully become the first Briton in space, and my only regret is that it will have taken so long to achieve this. (Purists may object to me also including the other two British finalists, but for this, I make no apologies!). Gordon R. Hooper 12 July 1990 Preface Changes to the Second Edition List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction Cosmonaut Biographies in alphabetical order Post Script Sources of Current Information Index