R.I.P: Georgy Grechko
Russian cosmonaut Georgy Grechko died today at the age of 85.
Grechko was one of the Soviet Union’s most important early cosmonauts, flying some of the first long term missions on several of Russia’s early Salyut stations. He was also important in that in the first real elections run by the Soviet Union he ran for office against party officials, won, and helped throw the Communists out of power.
I met and interviewed Grechko when I was writing Leaving Earth. He struck me as a kind and intelligent person, exactly the kind of person you’d want in charge, and who rarely gets that chance. Russia is diminished by his passing.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
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Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Russian cosmonaut Georgy Grechko died today at the age of 85.
Grechko was one of the Soviet Union’s most important early cosmonauts, flying some of the first long term missions on several of Russia’s early Salyut stations. He was also important in that in the first real elections run by the Soviet Union he ran for office against party officials, won, and helped throw the Communists out of power.
I met and interviewed Grechko when I was writing Leaving Earth. He struck me as a kind and intelligent person, exactly the kind of person you’d want in charge, and who rarely gets that chance. Russia is diminished by his passing.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
When good people die, we are all diminished. Rest in peace.
Only astronauts go to heaven more than once.
From Earth to Earth, by gravity.
He wasn’t killed by microgravity, space radiation or Martian bugs. Stuff that some people are overly obsessed with today. He even survived riding on a 300 ton kerosene Soyuz bomb through the sky. It seems he was laid to sleep by the same mysterious decay of aging that takes care of us all equally.
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Godspeed, Mr. Grechko.
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Maybe it was a near disaster now that Soyuz landed with Expedition 50?
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/21041/did-the-soft-landing-rockets-malfunction-in-the-soyuz-expedition-50-crew-landi
The crew seems unharmed, but that was a late landing burn. The Russian space program seems to be disintegrating from quality problems. They do have a reputation for robust safety margins and they are doing great with human space flight, even if it nowadays just looks lucky. It is going the wrong way, in a time when one has to run in order to stay in competition. Soyuz less reliable today than 50 years ago.
Wow what a very nice landing! Being rolled and dragged around by the parachute. Hardened astronauts deal with this, but it isn’t great marketing for space tourists who seek serenity on weightlessness.
https://youtu.be/hFgV2KW3crw?t=205
tangential, but very interesting—
“What killed Yuri Gagarin?”
-available at the John Batchelor website…
http://johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts/download
LocalFluff–
cool video.
-are those lawn chairs made out of titanium?
@wayne
I don’t know abut the lawn chairs, they don’t look like any of the most popular IKEA models.
Astronauts aren’t carried around because they can’t walk after returning from microgravity, but because lab guys want to make kinky medical experiments with them before they exercise their muscles in Earth’s gravity. To try to evaluate the effects both of long term weightlessness and the G-forces of the pretty rough landing. When Soyuz has landed way off almost in China (which would be embarrassing, missing the largest country in the world), the crew has had no problem with climbing out by themselves and perfectly doing everything required to call for and settle themselves during many hours waiting for the rescue team to pick them up from the forest in nowhere.
I heard that the commander aboard might’ve fumbled with his pushbutton or whatever to cut off the parachute. They aren’t supposed to be rolled over and dragged around like that. But it requires a manual action of the crew to prevent it just in time.
We are now losing the generation of the early space explorers, a sadness for us all. I hope that the historians have gleaned all that they need to help future generations understand that time period.
LocalFluff,
The person who said that the landing rockets fire 3 seconds prior to landing is off by an order of magnitude. My understanding is that the rockets fire when the Soyuz is only 70 centimeters (about 27 inches) above the ground. This is consistent with the answers in the StackExchange link.
Soyuz may not be experiencing the same quality problems that Russia’s rockets seem to have. There was a Soyuz capsule that did not pass a pressure test, a few years back, and a more recent problem with the need to replace wiring, but the quality control checks that were supposed to find problems like these did their jobs. I have worked on several projects in which similar problems were found and corrected well before launch, so I am less concerned about problems found and corrected before launch than problems that are not. It is the undetected problems or uncorrected problems that worry me most.
Localfluff –
“lab guys want to make kinky medical experiments with them” A twist where the beings from space are probed by the humans from earth…
But seriously,
Fair winds and following seas Dr. Grechko