cosmonaut dying after being extensively burned in a training exercise. This cosmonaut
would ®nally be identi®ed some years later as Valentin Bondarenko, the ``Junior''
mentioned in Shonin's book.
Two years on, in 1986, a series of ocially sanctioned articles appeared in the
Soviet newspaper Izvestia in which the full names and some biographical information
was ®nally revealed on all eight of the ``missing'' cosmonauts. By then, a full quarter
century had passed since Yuri Gagarin had ¯own in space.
By way of contrast, NASA's seven Mercury astronauts had been openly intro-
duced to the American public amid much fanfare at a Washington, D.C. press
conference on 9 April 1959. It was all part of the open information policy the civilian
space agency had adopted and maintained in consultation with the White House, in
which the nation could participate by knowing what space feats were being planned,
when they were scheduled to launch, and who would ¯y them. It was an agreeable and
workable policy, but one that would continually frustrate NASA ocials as it gave
considerable propaganda advantage and leverage to their Cold War adversary, the
Soviet Union. In the early days of the adversarial Space Race to the Moon, as soon as
NASA announced an ambitious manned space mission, Soviet leaders from Premier
Nikita Khrushchev down would emphatically demand that this feat not only be
carried out ahead of the Americans, but surpassed. And while America and the entire
world were familiar with the names of the American astronauts well in advance of
their ¯ights, no one apart from a privileged few would know the identities of
cosmonauts assigned to these increasingly hazardous ¯ights.
In quali®cations, expertise and experience, the Mercury astronauts (and later
astronaut groups) far outshone their Russian counterparts. America's astronauts
were highly quali®ed military test pilots with solid engineering backgrounds and
hundreds of hours' experience in supersonic aircraft. As they were expected to
participate in the design and actual operation of their craft in space, only the best
possible candidates would be chosen, and the selection process was a long and
arduous process. Conversely, the ®rst Soviet manned spacecraft, Vostok, would be
automatically controlled from the ground, and the ®rst cosmonauts were expected, in
the main, to be little more than sightseeing passengers taking part in some relatively
innocuous onboard experiments and monitoring systems. Therefore, the search for
suitable candidates was a relatively easy one, carried out and ®nalized within the ranks
of jet pilots in the Soviet Air Force and Navy. No real engineering skill was required,
and while test pilot experience was useful, it was by no means mandatory.
Overall, the Soviet candidates were much younger than their Mercury counter-
parts and also shorter in stature, in order to comfortably ®t into the con®nes of the
Vostok craftÐalso re¯ecting Soviet aircraft design. They would need to have some
experience in parachute jumping as (unknown to Western observers at the time) they
would not be landing in their spacecraft. The Soviet spacecraft designers were still
working on a satisfactory rocket landing system, and harboured concerns that the
impact with the ground on landing would be far too hard on the cosmonauts. As a
consequence they would be automatically ejected from their craft as they neared the
ground. In Gagarin's case this would later provoke controversy in regard to Soviet
claims that he had orbited the Earth. Under FeÂdeÂration AeÂronautique Internationale
xxii Authors' preface
(FAI) regulations, a recordÐand orbitÐcould only be claimed if a participant
actually landed in the same craft in which they had been launched. Pragmatists
therefore continue to argue that while Gagarin may have been the ®rst person to
¯y into space, he cannot be considered the ®rst person to have actually completed an
orbit of the Earth. That honour, they still say, should be bestowed under FAI rules on
U.S. Astronaut John Glenn.
Less than a year after NASA ocially named the space agency's seven Mercury
astronauts the ®rst Soviet cosmonauts were reporting for space¯ight training, initially
in temporary facilities located in Moscow. Later, when completed to occupancy stage,
they would continue their training in a special complex outside Moscow that came
to be known as Zvezdny Gorodok, or Star City. And less than a month before
Alan Shepard became the ®rst American to travel into space, a member of the
cosmonaut teamÐone of Korolev's ``Little Eagles''Ðwould enter the history books
as the ®rst person to be launched into space.
Apart from a burning desire to achieve space¯ight and weightlessness, Russia's
cosmonauts shared one thing in abundance with the Mercury astronauts: an extreme
competitiveness to not only be the best, but to ¯y ®rst. Many, however, would
miss out. While America's astronauts were for the most part highly disciplined
individuals, a reckless arrogance often fuelled by alcohol and high spirits soon crept
into the much larger company of the ®rst cosmonaut team, resulting in four of their
number being summarily dismissed without ever ¯ying into space. A physical problem
during centrifuge training cost another man his place in the team, yet another suered
a serious, disqualifying neck injury in a simple accident, and a third candidate would
be diagnosed with a stomach ulcer at the wrong time in his career. Finally, the
youngest of all 20 candidates, 24-year-old Valentin Bondarenko, would suer a
horrible death just a few weeks before Gagarin's ¯ight when his body was engulfed
in ¯ames during a training exercise in the oxygen-enriched environment of a pressure
chamber.
Told in narrative form for the ®rst time, the story of the original Soviet cosmonaut
team is a truly compelling study of human endeavour. It is not only one of extra-
ordinary courage and high ambition, but of over-con®dence and sometimes foolish
behaviour, extreme disappointment and the abject bitterness of failure. The lives,
inspirations and aspirations of these 20 men before and after their selection can now
be fully related for the ®rst time in factual detail. But while some of their number
would come to know greatness and global adoration, others would sadly and anon-
ymously fall by the wayside through accidents, illness, arrogance, disciplinary action
and even death.
Many of the inherent mysteries of the Soviet space programme still abound.
Frustratingly, investigations into these are often hindered by the determination of
many early participants to adhere to time-worn fallacies surrounding their training
and ¯ights. However, one of the greatest fallacies still causing conjecture is that of the
so-called ``phantom cosmonauts''. This 20th century legend thrives on persistent but
unfounded rumours that several men and women died in Soviet space disasters before
and after Gagarin's orbital ¯ight. These rumours, and the names of those allegedly
involved, will be examined in this book and due homage paid to many of the very real
Authors' preface xxiii