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Survive 48 Hours: Training
Astronauts should be prepared for any situation in space... and on earth.
The lander can make an emergency landing somewhere in the taiga, desert or in the middle of the ocean.
And before the search and rescue group appears, people just need to survive.
"Popular Mechanics" visited the cosmonauts ' survival training in the winter forest of the Star City
Dmitry Mamontov
21.02.2011 19:22:00
5
44602
Space for changing clothes In the space inside the lander can compete with another small sized cabinet.
But the first point of survival training is changing the crew members from flight suits into warm clothes (and in the case of training at sea — into warm clothes and wetsuits) even before leaving the SA
Cosmonauts and astronauts
The last stage of the training: medical assistance and transfer to the meeting place of the PSS
Lying on its side in the deep snow, the lander resembled the egg of some giant exotic bird half orange, half green.
The silence of the snow covered forest near Moscow was broken only by some rustling inside.
For fifteen minutes nothing happened, and I almost missed the moment when the hatch opened in the orange "shell" and the pilot cosmonaut Gennady Padalka slipped out in a blue jumpsuit and a cap of the same color.
Like an empty peel, he pulled out the flight suit and put it aside.
NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba appeared from the hatch.
"Second serve?" — they asked from inside.
"Not yet.
I had no time to flash a perplexed thought about lunch, as cylindrical bundles tightly pulled by a cord flew onto the white nylon of the parachute lying next to the descent vehicle.
The last crew member, cosmonaut candidate Alexey Khomenchuk, got out after them.
Having unlaced the "sausages", the astronauts took out warm clothes from them and changed their clothes without haste.
In the forest of the Star City, another autonomous complex survival training has begun in case of landing in a wooded swampy area in winter.
The story of survival
The need for a survival course for cosmonauts became obvious in 1965, after the flight of the Voskhod 2 crew Pavel Belyaev and Alexey Leonov.
This flight is best known for the fact that it was on March 18, 1965 that Alexey Leonov entered outer space for the first time in the world.
And also the fact that it was accompanied by a lot of emergency situations, which, fortunately, did not lead to a tragedy.
One of these situations occurred during the return: the automatic orientation system to the Sun did not work, and therefore the brake propulsion system did not turn on in time.
The crew was given the command to land in manual mode (again for the first time in the world), Belyaev and Leonov chose the landing area in the Ural taiga (for safety) and with an error of 80 km landed a couple of hundred kilometers from Perm.
The cosmonauts did not have warm clothes, but, according to Alexey Leonov's memoirs, they used vacuum insulation of spacesuits for screen insulation.
The helicopters found the crew only the next day, but the astronauts had to spend another night (while the loggers were cutting down the landing pad for the helicopter) at the landing site, however, in more comfortable conditions (in a built hut).
"It is since 1965, in general, that the survival courses for astronauts in various climatic and geographical zones have their history," Colonel Alexander German, a survival instructor and head of the department for preparing astronauts for actions in extreme conditions of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (CPC), tells Popular Mechanics.
After this incident, the training of astronauts included training in actions after an emergency landing — that is, any when the crew will have to act autonomously.
Moreover, this does not necessarily have to be a landing somewhere in the remote taiga — it can be a landing at a given time at a given polygon, but in conditions when search and rescue services (PSS) cannot reach the crew, for example, due to weather conditions.
In this case, the crew members must, firstly, overcome the stress associated with the fact of an emergency landing, secondly, if necessary, provide assistance to the injured crew members and, thirdly, organize interaction with the PSS — identify themselves, establish radio communication, unmask the area.
And, of course, to preserve your life and health, taking into account the condition of the astronauts after the flight (the impact of weightlessness, etc.) and in stressful conditions for at least 48 hours."
Stress resistance is generally an absolutely necessary quality for an astronaut.
After all, he must perform complex operator work in conditions of constant stress.
Therefore, the psychological training of astronauts is extremely important and special attention is paid to it in the CPC — both individual and team.
The first category includes, in particular, special parachute training.
"Imagine a parachute jump —" says Alexander German.
In such a situation, all normal people experience fear, because the body perceives it as a threat to life.
Fear, of course, can be curbed, but for this you need to make several hundred jumps.
So, the cosmonaut does not just have to make a jump, but during this time to solve some problem or test and dictate the solution to the dictaphone.
Moreover, not only the correctness of the decision is evaluated, but also the emotional background."
Another component of psychological training provides for actions as part of a separate group.
During survival training, astronauts operate only with crews (two or three people).
Snow, sand and water
In order for astronauts to survive until the arrival of the PSS, survival training is necessary in a wide range of climatic conditions: in a wooded swampy area in winter, in the desert in summer and at sea (simulated flooding).
Moreover, in order not to lose their survival skills, each cosmonaut must undergo "winter" and "sea" training once every five years, but once is enough to get survival skills in the desert.
Flooding is practiced on the Black Sea or on lakes, and desert conditions are on Baikonur, in summer the temperature there reaches +40°C, and in the sun it reaches +50.
"From the point of view of physiology, training in the desert is difficult, because the water supply is limited," explains Alexander German.
— But from the point of view of operator activity, they are relatively simple.
Even with a very strong frost, for minus 40, you can actively fight move, build shelters, collect fuel, light fires.
But it is impossible to fight the heat in the desert, the only way to minimize moisture loss is complete inaction.
Complete means complete, even no talking, you just need to build a shelter out of parachute nylon... and then lie in it until the PSS appears.
But the skills of actions in the winter in the forest and on the water, especially inside the CA, should be periodically refreshed."
Forest in winter
Training in the conditions of the winter forest lasts two days.
As pilot cosmonaut Gennady Padalka told "PM", for whom this winter survival training is already the fourth in a row, previously such events were held in much more severe conditions — for example, in Vorkuta or Tiksi, where the thermometer dropped below -40°C, and taking into account the wind speed of 10-15 m/s, the reduced temperature was about -50°C.
"In fact, there is no need for such harsh conditions.
Based on the inclination of the orbit, we do not rise above 51 degrees north or south latitude, although, of course, in Transbaikalia or the Far East, conditions can be very severe.
But there is no fundamental difference, say, between -10 and -30°C, since the training lasts only two days.
And the purpose of such training is not so much survival in harsh conditions, as working out psychological interaction in a team."
Despite the fact that winter training is now being held in the Moscow region near the Star City, they nevertheless, according to Alexander German, well simulate the conditions of a real emergency landing: "For two days, astronauts must perform a certain cyclogram: change into TKK (heat — protective suits) inside the lander, find a place for a camp, unmask the area, build several types of shelters a single pitched and double pitched hut or wigwam, spend the night in them, collect a lot of firewood to warm themselves during all this time.
In addition, introductory courses on interaction with PSS, providing medical assistance to a victim of hypothermia or injuries are being worked out.
And everything will end with a pedestrian crossing through the forest, while it is assumed that one of the crew members cannot move independently — the other two will have to carry him."
Survival Course
The training, of course, is the final part of the course on actions in extreme conditions, during which astronauts study various medical aspects, survival tactics, psychology, and also get acquainted with the composition of the NAZ.
The course also includes training on dressing astronauts inside the lander (and this, given the extremely limited internal space, is extremely difficult) and practical exercises in the forest (orientation, making a fire, etc.) or in the desert (building shelters and making protective clothing from parachute fabric).
The whole course, according to the instructors, lasts four days — two of them include theoretical and practical classes, one day in the forest and a two hour training on changing clothes in the descent vehicle.
An important task of training, according to the instructors and the astronauts themselves, is not only to obtain real survival skills with a minimum set of tools, but also psychological preparation - the acquisition of self confidence.
"Many people at first simply do not believe," says Alexander German, " that they will be able to survive in such conditions and with such a meager set of things as NAZ.
But we also teach how you can do without even these things — for example, how to build a shelter if a parachute is stuck in the canopy of trees, or how to live without a knife and a machete.
The basic skills that are given in this course — to light a fire in the pouring rain, not to get lost in the forest, to keep warm in the cold are quite useful.
But all the same, when we finish the training course, we wish the astronauts that these skills will never be useful to them."
I carry everything with me
A wearable emergency reserve is a set of things that help the crew to fight for survival in an emergency landing.
According to the instructors, with the proper use of NAZ, the crew is guaranteed survival (without pathological changes in the body) for three days at a temperature from -50 to +500C.
The only exception is the desert: the water supply in the NAZ is limited to 6 liters, and in this case the period of guaranteed survival is 48 hours.
The set of NAZ consists of several blocks.
The first unit consists of 6 liters of water, the second includes freeze dried food with a long shelf life (about 5000 kcal for each crew member), dry fuel, wire saws, needles and thread, fishing gear, wind resistant matches, as well as a first aid kit, water disinfection products, a medical cape.
The third unit is a knife, a machete, a whetstone, a compass, light signaling means (a lantern, an aviation mirror, two PSND (a night/day signal cartridge) of orange smoke or fire, a PRB 2 rocket launched to a height of up to 300 m and burning for at least a minute, a mortar with 20 signal cartridges with stars fired to a height of up to 50 m), as well as an emergency radio station with a range of about 15 km with three sets of batteries.
The third block is equipped with a raft that keeps it afloat when it is driven.
In addition to the three mentioned blocks, the NAZ includes styling with warm clothing, which includes heat protective suits (TKK) with synthetic insulation, consisting of a jumpsuit, as well as a warm jacket with sewn mittens and soft boots (shoe covers), as well as gloves, hats, headsets, fur (unties) and wool socks.
Warm clothes are packed in compact bundles — "sausages", since there is very little space in the descent vehicle (SA).
Regular flight wool suits are also used as warm clothing.
The article was published in the journal "Popular Mechanics "(No. 101, March 2011).
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