Word: cosmonauts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Never before had the world received so stunning a glimpse of a Soviet space crisis. Cramped inside a tiny capsule 155 miles above the earth, Commander Vladimir Lyakhov radioed mission control that something was desperately wrong. Seated beside him was a hastily trained Afghan cosmonaut, Abdul Ahad Mohmand. Replied a ground controller: "How are things with food?" Lyakhov: "There is no food." Controller: "What about the emergency rations?" Lyakhov: "They are there, but why touch them? We will be patient," he added, noting that there was no way to rid themselves of wastes...
When the re-entry manuever was attempted again, three hours later, the rocket abruptly stopped after just seven seconds. Reason: it had apparently not occurred to either the cosmonauts or the ground controllers to reprogram the computer for the spacecraft's new position. Lyakhov responded by pressing a manual button to restart the engine, but the computer again cut off the rocket. Admitted the cosmonaut afterward: "I am not excusing myself. There was fault there...
Another possible hazard on a long space journey has its source on planet earth: human nature. Soviet flights have demonstrated that performance levels begin to decrease as the days stretch into months. Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko, whose 326 days aboard the space station Mir set a space endurance record last year, was down to only two hours of productive work a day toward the end of his eleven-month flight and had become decidedly peevish. "Leave me alone," he once snapped to mission control. "I have a lot of work...
Soviet space doctors seem more sanguine. While no American has stayed in space for more than three months, the Soviets have repeatedly staged manned flights of longer duration, capped by the 326-day stay of Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko last year aboard the orbiting space station Mir. "The experience of that flight," says Dr. Arkadi Ushakov of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, "testifies that we should be optimistic about long-duration space flight. Our knowledge in the field of weightlessness is growing, and we are learning what countermeasures need to be taken to ensure health and safety...
...Soviet cosmonaut recovers from a record 326- day mission in record time. -- Reagan okays high- resolution U. S. satellite photos...