cathedrameregulaemea

And THERE. People in Antarctica eat ice-cream. I'm going to cite this every time someone looks at me funny for buying ice-cream in the winter.

Ask, and ye shall receive

привет саша! Wow, it's not often that the English speaking world gets to talk to cosmonauts directly, so let me make the most of this..

1. Have you read Dragonfly? What's your take on it?

2. Did you meet with Bryan Burroughs when he was researching the book?

3. Do you still have a lot of friends at Энергия/роскосмос/Федералспаце/лавочкин? Has the culture with respect to manned spaceflight mission planning changed? With the ISS? In terms of the over-working the cosmonauts etc.?

4. I know at NASA, they like to trump the spirit of international co-operation, but frankly, it seems flimsy- what with the Russian Segment more or less functionally isolated from the US segment, and with the clarion call for "launchers from US soil". What's been your experience post your retirement as a cosmonaut? (EDIT: compared to your experience as a cosmonaut)

5. Where do you think the Russian space industry is headed? One decade from now - post ISS? Do you think it'd be in a partnership with the other global space agencies for a concerted effort? Continued experiments on the long term effects of sustained exposure to microgravity, still in LEO? What's the inside scoop on the new, much delayed multipurpose module?

Hmm.. heard this numerous times, but always thought of it only in an American context. Googled to check how many occasions cosmonauts would've had - assuming of course, that all were heterosexual (which doesn't hold - cf. Sally Ride), and no that one would get into bed "with the enemy" (i.e. they'd stick with partners from their own country).

Turns out, only 2 Soviet women and 1 Russian woman have ever been in space. In addition to 4 cosmonaut candidates. Wonder why that is...

• Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space) flew alone on Vostok 6 (1963).

• Svetlana Savitskaya flew with two male cosmonauts on each of her two Salyut-7 missions (1982, 1984 - when she became the first woman to conduct an EVA). Wikipedia states that she was given the orbital module of the Soyuz for privacy. She had a 9 year old son as of 1995 (so he was born in 1986) - with a non-cosmonaut.. Now, Sergei Korolev had a rule that barred mothers from flying to space. Ostensibly because of intense training schedule of cosmonaut candidates, requiring them to spend time away from family, which would be problematic for mothers. (It should be so for fathers too, but who're we kidding. The mother-child relationship is considered WAY more important). Anyway, he'd passed long before Savitskaya's flight, but I'm guessing his rule stayed. What does this mean in Savitskaya's case? I guess she postponed family, and was possibly married for quite a while, even while she made her spaceflights. Also, she doesn't sound like someone who'd break the communist party ideals.

• Yelena Kondakova - as a Russian - flew two missions. One to Mir (1994) - where she flew with 3 cosmonauts in total, and STS-84 in 1997. She was already married to one of the heads of the Mir program - Valery Ryumin - prior to her spaceflights (definitely before the second).

So, TL;DR - I don't think the Russians have ever had sex in space. Well, not if you define sex as with another person atleast.

I've always heard the description of the blackness of space, as well as the beauty of the Earth - aren't you able to see stars/ the Milky way? Even when in the Earth's umbra? Is it a human-eye brightness adaption issue?