A Space Practicum at NPP Zvezda

Every cosmonaut comes to Zvezda in Tomilino. This is where they take your anthropometric measurements—the dimensions from which your individual Sokol suit is sewn—and where they cast your seat liner, an insert shaped to your body. And it is here that you then go through the fit check: two hours sitting in the Kazbek seat, in your own liner, in your own pressurized suit—under overpressure. This simulates a depressurized spacecraft: there is no pressure outside, and inside the suit there is the pressure that keeps you alive. Why two hours? By the engineers’ calculations, that is exactly how long a crew has for an emergency descent in a depressurized spacecraft: the oxygen in the tanks is enough for breathing but only partly for removing heat, and after that comes heatstroke. You are strapped in tightly by the restraint harness, the suit is pressurized, and if anything is even slightly the wrong size, it starts pressing into your muscles—and that becomes painful. The purpose of the fit check is to see whether the suit and the cosmonaut fit each other. Cosmonauts have a saying: if the suit doesn’t fit the cosmonaut, they replace the cosmonaut.

My cosmonaut certificate is No. 203—everyone who completes general space training gets such a number—and I flew to space as Russia’s 116th cosmonaut. Far from everyone who received a certificate made it to launch, and perhaps some of them did not fly because they did not fit the suit. Otherwise, where would such a saying come from…

The Orlan, in which I made four spacewalks, is also made at Zvezda. When I first saw it without its outer layer, what stood before me was an all-metal cuirass—a shell—from the waist to the head, with a backpack holding the entire life-support system; all of it weighs 112 kilograms. I somehow had not realized that this was a metal tube they were about to seal me into. There are no small things on a spacewalk: I had turned the toggle latch—an ordinary clip—over in my hands three hundred times during training, and then in the airlock, right before the spacewalk, its little lock got stuck in a way that took some fiddling.

In a single day the participants will feel for themselves part of what a cosmonaut goes through before a flight: they will sit in the Kazbek seat wearing a Sokol suit and, as it is pressurized, find out whether the suit fits; they will step into an Orlan and learn how it “lives” under pressure; they will withstand g-loads in the centrifuge and “climb” to altitude in the altitude chamber. The suits are real, the same models that fly today; the centrifuge and the altitude chamber are Zvezda’s own test rigs. At every stage the company’s specialists will be at your side. On the same day—my lecture: it will help you go deeper into spaceflight and apply what you have seen to your own experience here on Earth.

I invite you to spend this day where Russian cosmonauts are dressed for flight, and to try on part of their path.

A one-day off-site program on the premises of Zvezda, the Academician G. I. Severin Research and Production Enterprise (Tomilino, Moscow Region). In any version the day includes a tour of the company museum, my lecture and four hands-on stages—the Sokol and Orlan suits, the centrifuge and the altitude chamber; space food on request. The group is up to 15 people. The order of the day, medical clearance and organizational matters are agreed with the client during preparation, based on their wishes and the number of participants.

The program will be of interest to:

1. a company’s top team—the head and their direct reports—as an off-site day away from the office;
2. companies that reward their best employees with an experience;
3. hosting key clients and partners;
4. event agencies that put together a turnkey off-site event.

A day at Zvezda lets you look at complex things in your own work from a different angle—through the lens of a cosmonaut’s experience. This is neither a training session nor an assessment of the participants: everyone will see the parallels with their own work for themselves, and the lecture on the same day will help bring together what they went through with the story of what it is like up there, in space.

1. Cosmonaut training has simulators where a drop in pressure is only modeled, and there was one where it actually happened. The actions are the same, but the emotions are completely different. At Zvezda the Orlan is pressurized just as it is for a spacewalk—the pressure inside is higher than outside—and everyone will feel for themselves what it is like to work in it for real.
2. The suit and the cosmonaut are checked against each other before launch—in a pressurized Sokol you can see why this check cannot be put off until the flight.
3. There are no small things on a spacewalk: there are two of you, two weeks of preparation behind you, and if it doesn’t work out, no one will do it for you. A task in the Orlan’s gloves shows this with your own hands: a simple movement under pressure stops being simple.
4. The people at Zvezda work with a sense of purpose—so that everything goes well for the cosmonaut up there, in space. You feel it when you come for a fitting. Having felt it, the participants may stop and think: what idea does their own team work by—and does it have a larger purpose?

Below is what the day consists of. The lecture comes after the hands-on stages; the order of the other stages is agreed during preparation.

WELCOME AND THE COMPANY MUSEUM:

1. the history of Zvezda: the company was founded in 1952; all Soviet and Russian spacesuits were made here—from Yuri Gagarin’s suit to the Sokol and the Orlan that fly today—along with individual life-support systems and crew rescue equipment;
2. the suits of Yuri Gagarin and Alexei Leonov, Valentina Tereshkova’s flight suit, ejection seats and the company’s developments from different years.

THE SOKOL SUIT:

1. the emergency rescue suit in which a Soyuz crew goes through launch into orbit, docking and descent;
2. fitting, getting into the Kazbek seat, working with the restraint harness, pressurization—what a cosmonaut goes through during the fit check, except that for them it lasts two hours.

THE ORLAN SUIT:

1. the spacewalk suit—in Orlans I worked outside the station four times;
2. getting into the suit, a communications check, pressurization—the suit is inflated just as in space: the pressure inside is higher than outside;
3. working with the suit’s systems: participants switch them on and off themselves and feel how the suit “lives,” how “comfortable” it is and what working capabilities it leaves a person;
4. a task testing the dexterity of hands and fingers in gloves that become as stiff as a volleyball under pressure.

THE CENTRIFUGE:

1. rotation at several g—the body becomes several times heavier;
2. the level and duration of the g-load depend on the participant’s medical clearance.

THE ALTITUDE CHAMBER:

1. a “climb” to altitude in an oxygen mask: reduced pressure, cold, simulated wind;
2. altitude and temperature are agreed during preparation.

SPACE FOOD:

1. at the client’s request: under a specialist’s guidance, participants heat canned food and rehydrate freeze-dried dishes with hot water, the way it is done on the station, and taste them.

THE LECTURE:

1. any of my programs, chosen by the client;
2. duration according to the chosen program, with Q&A.

CLOSING:

1. conversation, a group photo;
2. a video about the day for the participants—by arrangement.

1. spend a day with your team at an operating space enterprise;
2. your participants will feel for themselves what a cosmonaut goes through before a flight: a suit under pressure, g-loads, altitude;
3. hear my lecture after the hands-on stages: the story of space builds on what the participants have just been through—the impressions are more vivid, and the parallels with their own work on Earth suggest themselves;
4. get a shared story that the team will tell on its own and, by arrangement, a video about the day.

A full day on site; the schedule is drawn up during preparation.