Visit to Star City

Monday June 13th

The Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center was created on January 11th 1960. It is cleverly hidden in the evergreen woods near the quiet Tsiolkovskaya railroad station on the Yaroslavl Railroad about 40km northeast of Moscow in a centre that was identified in the Soviet press as Zvezdnyy Gorodok, or in English, Star City. Of course it doesn't appear on any Soviet era maps. Every cosmonaut since Gagarin has trained in Star City, and since 1992 has also been used for training NASA astronauts.

The "Star City" emblem, as scanned from the top of my Star City souvenir tea cup. The initials TsPK (the Russian letters in red near the middle) is expanded at the top - the transation is roughly "Centre for Cosmonaut Preparation". The writing at the bottom says "Star City" (Zvezdnyy Gorodok).

	A coach was provided for the trip to Star City, which collected us from outside our various residences. I was staying with the group that had opted to stay in the student dormitories at Moscow State University, and the remainder were staying at the nearby Hotel Universitetskaya. This picture, taken at 11:30am on the coach, (and several others on this page) was contributed by Ulf Ouchterlony.

At almost exactly 11:59am we had arrived and were filing through the security point at the main entrance to the facility.

	Beyond the security point we are met by our guide who leads us along the long road through the woods that screens the facility from the outside world.

The roadside is decorated by a series of monuments displaying images depicting accomplishments of the Soviet/Russian space program. I suspect these are recent additions that would not have existed during the era of secrecy.

	At the end of the road is an unmanned gate leading to the main complex, and some parking spaces. Evidently private vehicles allowed through the main gate don't get any further than this without special arrangments.

We pause before in the parking area for a briefing by our guide.

	Our guide and his translator.

At 12:16 we pause as our guide points out some of the landmarks. I think this building houses one of the two centrifuges at the facility.

	and looking in the other direction, the building in which the cosmonauts and astronauts have their lessons.

Museum of Cosmonautics

At 12:23 we reach the Star City museum of cosmonautics.

	Inside the entrance visitors are greeted by a cosmonaut statue at the foot of the stairs to the museum.

The full-scale mockup of the Mir space station that was used for cosmonaut training. Module Kvant-1 is in the foreground, the core module is immediately behind and Kvant-2 is in the background.

	The console used for controling the simulations..

There is a famous story about how NASA spent millions of dollars developing a special pen that could write in space, while the ingenious Russians just used pencils. This display apparently commemorates a similar triumph of Russian ingenuity. When NASA wanted to progress from the one man Mercury spacecraft to the two man Gemini and three man Apollo, the larger spacecraft required development of vastly more powerful boosters. Russians, on the other hand, when they wanted increase the number of cosmonauts in their spacecraft found that by packing them in the foetel position they could pack three cosmonauts in the space originally occupied by one, and hence continue to use the same size capsule and booster.

	The walls were lined with many display of photographs and examples of cosmonaut equipment. This one contains a number of examples of trypical cosmonaut food, such as your basic survival caviar and vodka.

I missed the explanation of which capsule this is because I was back taking this picture.

	I am a little puzzled by the 'USSR' printed on the capsule which is visible in this picture. I wonder why Soviet era space hardware would have its origin printed on it in English...

This is a display of one of the less glamorous parts of spaceflight - the toilet facilities for wightless conditions.

Training Facilities

	On our way to the main water lab we pass mir mockups, used for underwatertraining, sitting at the edge of the woods after the Mir was abandoned in 2000. Components of the International Space Station have replaced Mir hardware inside the main water lab.

At 13:30 we reach the neutral bouancy EVA training facility, which is the cirular building near the middle of the picture at the top of this page. After ascending two flights of stairs we reach the observation area overlooking the water tank in the center of the building.

	The observation area provided an excellent view of the ISS mockup used for training cosmonauts and astronauts in preparation of EVAs on the International Space Station.

The mockup was placed on a movable floor so that the entire assembly could be lowered into the tank to allow the submerged cosmonauts and astronauts to practice their scheduled EVA activity in the simulated microgravity of a neutral bouancy environment.

	We got an even better, close up view when we took a wrong turn on the way out and ended up on the down stairs level next to the tank without all the glass screens in the way.

At least until our excited guide came rushing in and politely threatened to have us all shipped off to a gulag somewhere in Siberia.

	There was a bit of a wait outside the EVA training tank as our guides had went back in to chase out some stragglers who had almost gotten locked inside.

A long enough delay to get someone to take my camera and take a picture with me in front of the facility.

	Next there was a visit to the TsF-18 main centrifuge, a 300 ton 18m device designed to reproduce up to 30G forces, equivalent to those experienced during liftoff.

Ulf standing in front of the famous statue of Gagarin. There is a tradition that all cosmonauts visit this statue just before going into space. This is also one of Ulf's pictures - although it may have been taken by me.

	At 15:20 the our visit was coming to an end, and the last thing on the agenda was a visit to the gift shop (which I imagine was a post Soviet innovation...)

Monday Evening

At 18:30 we were back at the university, and Risto is just about to sit down with Jenny and Patrick for dinner in the cafeteria. The presence of the cafeteria koshka was amusing to those of us used to the strict health regulations in resturants back home.

	After dinner, those of us that were staying at the university were led to a suitable evening venue by Sandjar Abdullaev. Sandjar was the person that had met me (and presumably most of the others) on arrival at the university the previous day and helped with the check in formatlities.

The place in question was "Pivnayar 01", an intrigueingly fire service themed bar, named after the emergency number you dial in Russia to report a fire.

	Interestingly, whoever owns the Sony camera sitting on the table seems to have just taken a picture of Natacha and I....

And this picture that I got from Ulf seems to be the one...

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