SELECTIONS BY GKNII

GKNII in Akhtubinsk began the selection process in 1978. The job was offered to all pilots working for GKNII and eight pilots displayed interest in the project [18]. They were:

• Ivan Ivanovich Bachurin;

• Aleksey Sergeyevich Boroday;

• Viktor Martynovich Chirkin;

• Vladimir Mikhaylovich Gorbunov;

• Vadim Oleynikov;

• Vladimir Yemelyanovich Mosolov;

• Nail Sharipovich Sattarov;

• Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Sokovykh.

On 1 December 1978 six of them (Bachurin, Boroday, Chirkin, Mosolov, Sattarov, and Sokovykh) were cleared by the GMVK to begin their OKP training in January

Vladimir Gorbunov (B. Vis).

The TsPK, LII, and GKNII cosmonaut teams pose in front of a Soyuz launch vehicle during a visit to Baykonur in 1981. From left are Boroday, Vasyutin, Shchukin, Volk, Grekov, Levchenko, Bachurin, Volkov, Stankyavichus, Moskalenko, Viktorenko, Kadenyuk, Sokovykh, and Mosolov (B. Vis files).

1979. Oleynikov had apparently been medically disqualified [19]. Gorbunov later claimed that he also began OKP, but left the program at his own initiative, having come to the conclusion that there was no future for him in Buran. In fact, he had told his commander in Akhtubinsk that he was signing up for Buran as long as he could combine that with his job in flight testing the MiG-29, a program he felt offered him much more perspective [20].

The six remaining pilots commuted between Akhtubinsk and TsPK in training cycles of between one and two months. While in Akhtubinsk, they continued their test flying for the Air Force. Not all of them would finish OKP. In April

1980, Nail Sattarov was flying a Tupolev Tu-134, a medium-size passenger plane, when he decided to have a little fun and perform a roll maneuver with the aircraft. Although colleagues of his have stressed that this was something everyone had done at least once, Sattarov had the bad luck of being caught. Besides a reprimand and temporary grounding, he was also removed from the Buran training group. Apparently, his commanders felt that such undisciplined behavior disqualified him from being a cosmonaut. Interestingly, although this is the reason that is usually given as the one that ended his cosmonaut career, Sattarov himself insists that the incident had nothing to do with him discontinuing OKP and leaving the group. Instead, he claims that in late March or early April 1980 he had indicated to his commanders at GKNII that he felt his flying career was going nowhere if he would continue to train as a cosmonaut, and that his request to return to test flying full time was granted [21].

Aleksey Boroday, Vladimir Mosolov, Ivan Bachurin, and Anatoliy Sokovykh (from left) in Baykonur, early 1981. After Sattarov and Chirkin had left the GKNII team, these four were the only cosmonauts left in that team until new members were selected in 1985 (B. Vis files).

The remaining five candidates completed OKP in November 1980 and were awarded their certificates of cosmonaut-testers on 12 February 1982. All five resumed their test pilot duties at GKNII, with their Buran-related work as a secondary task.

Shortly afterwards, Viktor Chirkin came to the conclusion that the Buran program was not going the way it should and he seriously doubted the vehicle would ever mature to the point that manned flights by Air Force test pilots would materialize. At his own request, he was relieved of his duties in the cosmonaut group in 1981. Chirkin went on to become a Major General, and in 1995 a Hero of the Russian Federation.

Anatoliy Sokovykh was less lucky. He too returned to test flying but in 1985 became involved in an incident that cost several people their lives. In one version, one of his crew members accidentally shot down another plane, but another version has it that his crew accidentally destroyed the wrong ground target, killing several soldiers. Sokovykh had not made the mistake himself, and it has even been said that the crew itself had only followed instructions from the ground. However, as commander of the aircraft he was held responsible and reportedly was demoted. In addition, with such a blot on his reputation, he could not maintain his position as cosmonaut [22].

By then, it had already been decided that the group needed fresh blood, and in August 1985 the GMVK added three new test pilots (from eight candidates that had originally been considered) to the group. They were:

• Viktor Mikhaylovich Afanasyev;

• Anatoliy Pavlovich Artsebarskiy;

• Gennadiy Mikhaylovich Manakov.

The three joined another group of cosmonaut candidates to undergo OKP in Star City. Most of the others had also been selected for the Buran program. They were, from LII, Magomed Tolboyev, Yuriy Sheffer, Ural Sultanov, Sergey Tresvyatskiy, and Viktor Zabolotskiy and, from NPO Energiya, Aleksandr Kaleri, Sergey Krikalyov, and Sergey Yemelyanov. The final candidate was Yuriy Stepanov, a physician who came from the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems (IMBP).

However, soon after Afanasyev, Artsebarskiy, and Manakov finished OKP in May 1987, they were approached by TsPK cosmonaut training chief Vladimir Shatalov with the request to transfer to the TsPK cosmonaut team. That same offer was extended to Ivan Bachurin, Aleksey Boroday, and Vladimir Mosolov [23]. Shatalov, who was in dire need of new crew commanders, considered the six pilots

The 1985 OKP class. From left (standing) Artsebarskiy, Kaleri, Tolboyev, Sheffer, Sultanov, Tresvyatskiy, Zabolotskiy, Krikalyov, and Manakov. Sitting are Afanasyev, Stepanov, and Yemelyanov (B. Vis files).

readily available candidates who had all finished OKP and could easily move over to the TsPK ranks. In addition, the Buran program was suffering delays, which might make the choice easier for them.

Afanasyev, Artsebarskiy, and Manakov accepted the offer and were officially included in the TsPK team in January 1988. However, Bachurin, Boroday, and Mosolov declined. They were preparing for the approach and landing test program on BTS-002 and felt that was more of a challenge for test pilots. As Mosolov put it: “We didn’t want to be like dogs instead of crews. We wanted to fly with techniques that we could control and manage’’ [24]. In addition, Aleksey Boroday has said that the GKNII commander, wary of losing all his Buran cosmonauts to TsPK, had refused to consider a transfer of the three senior pilots [25].

Meanwhile, Mosolov was dismissed from the GKNII group in 1987 because of his divorce [26]. This left the GKNII team with only two members and it was decided that the group needed to be expanded yet again.

Ivan Bachurin was given the task to pre-select young test pilots and invite them to become members of the group. Seven pilots decided they wanted to join and took the initial medicals, which were held in TsPK’s medical department. Four of them didn’t pass, and this was a reason for two more to decline. They decided they didn’t want to go to TsNIAG, the central military hospital, and risk being grounded from test flying if they would be declared medically unfit for the Buran program. The only one left was Anatoliy Polonskiy [27].

In the end, Polonskiy passed the medical board in February 1988 along with two other candidates and on 25 January 1989 all three were confirmed by the GMVK:

• Anatoliy Borisovich Polonskiy;

• Valeriy Ivanovich Tokarev;

• Aleksandr Nikolayevich Yablontsev.

Two months later, three more pilots passed the medical commissions. They were:

• Valeriy Yevgenyevich Maksimenko;

• Aleksandr Sergeyevich Puchkov;

• Nikolay Alekseyevich Pushenko.

In May 1989, the six began the basic cosmonaut training course in Star City, even though the GMVK would only officially confirm the selection of Maksimenko, Puchkov, and Pushenko on 11 May 1990. The six graduated on 5 April 1991, all of them getting the qualification of cosmonaut-tester with the accompanying certificate.

It should be noted that after all the selections mentioned above the GKNII pilots initially had a status similar to that of the LII pilots until 1981—that is, something comparable with payload specialists in the United States. It was not until 7 August 1987 that the USSR Ministry of Defense officially set up a team of what could be considered GKNII “career cosmonauts”. They were based at a branch of GKNII in the Moscow suburb of Chkalovskiy, right next to Star City. The first to be included in the team by that same order were Bachurin and Boroday, with Bachurin named as commander.

Added to the team on 25 October 1988 was Leonid Kadenyuk, who had been a member of TsPK’s 1976 Buran selection, but had been dismissed after divorcing his wife. Since he had already undergone OKP, he could begin working with Bachurin and Boroday right away. In fact, all three were assigned two years later to a mission in which a Soyuz vehicle would link up with an unmanned Buran to test some of its systems in orbit.

On 8 April 1992 the Chkalovskiy team was expanded with Puchkov and Yablontsev and now consisted of five members, which was the originally planned number. As members of the team began leaving, the vacant slots were filled by pilots of the 1989-1990 pools, just to maintain the total number at five. With the Buran program in its death throes, this was apparently done more for bureaucratic reasons than anything else.

After Bachurin left in November 1992, his place was taken by Tokarev on 30 January 1993. Following Boroday’s departure in December 1993 Pushenko was added to the team on 6 February 1995. All this resulted in the rather bizarre situation that in the late 1980s/early 1990s the GKNII pilots were essentially split into two groups, the “career cosmonauts” based in Chkalovskiy and the “temporary cosmonauts’’ based in Akhtubinsk. Two of the earlier selected pilots, Polonskiy and Maksimenko, were never included in the Chkalovskiy team.

Just like the LII team, the GKNII team was faced with the choice in 1995 of either ceasing its existence or reassigning its pilots to other space projects. Unlike the LII team, the GKNII team was officially disbanded by an Air Force order on 30 September 1996. Two of the GKNII pilots, Kadenyuk and Tokarev, would eventually go on to fly in space, albeit in other capacities. Kadenyuk flew as a Ukrainian payload specialist on Space Shuttle mission STS-87 in 1997. Tokarev became a TsPK cosmonaut, performing a short-duration Space Shuttle mission (STS-96) to the International Space Station in 1997, and a long-duration mission aboard the ISS in 2005-2006 (for more details on the further careers of the GKNII pilots see Appendix B).