Latvian scientists have left their mark in space

Previously, this day was honored in our republic, and the streets of Riga were named after Gagarin, Tereshkova and Cosmonautika. They were renamed a long time ago, but on the eve of Cosmonautics Day we talked with the former long-term head. Department of Space Biology and Medicine of the Museum of the History of Medicine named after. P. Stradins by Martins Vesperis. I have known him for a long time, and before he showed me a thick selection of enthusiastic materials from the Latvian press in both languages, dedicated to the flight of Yuri Gagarin.

On the fourth floor of the museum there is a department dedicated to space. Martins has said before and now that this collection is rare – there are life-size cosmonaut spacesuits, spaceship seats, and even pants from the space equipment of our fellow countryman Anatoly Solovyov, who flew into space five times and set a record for a man in outer space. – 82 hours. He donated these anti-overload trousers “Karkas-2” to the museum back in 1988. Metal plates are inserted between the layers of fabric.

“Chibis” and “Hawks” are spacesuits

“Professor Pauls Stradins donated his collection on the history of medicine to the state in 1957, and we decided to create this museum,” says Martins. — And when the museum received its first visitors in 1961, a small stand was created dedicated to space biology and medicine. In 1972 the department was expanded. Our museum at that time was friends with Star City, and we were given working duplicates of space gear and equipment.

After the ceiling collapsed in the hall in 2008, we closed it. But the Ministry of Health, thank God, gave us the funds to restore it. In 2009, we opened it again – we even made a “starry sky” on the ceiling.

Today we are the only museum in the European Union that shows the development of astronautics, space biology and medicine. Of course, private museums also appeared – in the 90s, everything related to astronautics was actively sold out.

In the middle of the hall, in a cylindrical display case, there is a preventive vacuum suit for astronauts in zero gravity with the cute name “Chibis”, and next to it is a soft-type life support suit – “Hawk”.

“Hawk” remained just a prototype – it was redesigned. The oxygen cylinders were located on the back, and when going into outer space it was not only inconvenient, but also dangerous. Therefore, they were placed at the feet – after all, in zero gravity the legs are practically not used.

There are several big problems in space – drinking water, radiation and weightlessness. The most dangerous thing is weightlessness, because our body is created with the Earth’s gravity in mind. Therefore, during a long stay in space, atrophy of all muscles, even the fingers, begins, and when the astronauts land, they, of course, are carried in chairs, as you saw. And when they try to pick up a cup of tea, it seems to them that they are lifting a bucket of water. In zero gravity, much more calcium is excreted from the body than on Earth. The entire vestibular system becomes disordered – astronauts have swollen necks after a flight because the fluid does not drain down.

Nigella in space and on Earth

— One of the rare exhibits of the museum is a stuffed dog Chernushka, who went into space on March 9, 1961, after the famous Belka and Strelka. And literally on the eve of Yuri Gagarin’s flight, the dog Zvezdochka went into space.

Chernushka was bought for Latvia from a military man for several thousand rubles, she lived here, and then this exhibit was made from her. Why exactly were dogs sent into space? Well, that’s how it was done in the Soviet Union – experiments were carried out on dogs. Let’s remember Academician Pavlov’s dogs. For space they took female dogs, mongrels, of which there were plenty everywhere.

And the Americans did similar experiments with monkeys – with the idea that they were “humanoid.” The museum has such an exhibit – a stuffed monkey in a centrifuge chair. And the caption: “The chair was used in 1962–1964 to study long-term overloads.” This is already “our” monkey from the nursery. But the USSR did not send a single such animal into space.

After all, a monkey’s brain is developed approximately like that of a one-year-old child, and if something was wrong, under stress the animals would panic, scream, fight, and they could even have a stroke or heart attack. But dogs didn’t experience such stress, if they weren’t violent. True, some individuals’ teeth fell out after landing – from the stress they experienced.

The museum has a model of the cabin in which the dog Veterok was flying – there was a button, after pressing which food appeared. But after Gagarin’s flight, the dogs—they were still sent—began to have fistulas for automatic feeding. After all, after the first human flight, many things turned out to be new to researchers – both the properties of weightlessness and the lack of appetite. The capsule with food for the dog simply flew away after she pressed the button.

There is also a table of the names of the first cosmonauts, who in America were called astronauts: Yuri Gagarin – Alan Shepard, German Titov – John Glenn, the first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first doctor in space – Boris Egorov, the first in outer space Alexei Leonov, etc. Neil Armstrong was the first to land on the moon, and Dennis Tito became the first space tourist in 2001.

They searched for Gagarin in three places

— The museum also keeps an ejection chair with a parachute for an astronaut; he ejected separately from the chair. Therefore, Yuri Gagarin actually landed in three places: in one – the descent capsule, in the other – the ejection seat, and in the third – himself.

If we talk about the problem of clean drinking water, it arose when the Mir station was built. They began to create special devices – one distills urine, processing it into water, and the other collects moisture from the air. In the museum you can see devices such as wet wipes for space. But a shower was impossible in space. There is a photo of a space toilet. Although the first “toilets” were simply suction capsules.

The museum also has instruments for studying cosmic radiation. Gamma rays pass through, destroying all living things, so it is necessary to create protection. And these rays, with prolonged exposure, make the body sterile. Of course, there have been no formal experiments testing whether a woman can get pregnant in space.

In the Kazbek shock-absorbing chair from the Soyuz spacecraft, the cosmonaut sits during descent and ascent in the fetal position – this way the impact of overloads is less destructive for the body. These are the most dangerous episodes of flight.

In the Union, the seats were designed for cosmonauts whose height did not exceed 175 cm and weight 70 kg. And the Americans made individual chairs for everyone – Neil Armstrong was taller than 1.80 m.

Photos of Valentina Tereshkova’s training were still in black and white, and then they were in color; the museum has photographs of members of the cosmonaut corps training in full gear in the pool.

There is an album of works by astronauts in space from 1988 – an ignorant person will not understand anything, since everything is encrypted in incomprehensible letters and numbers.

The medical belt of Valery Bykovsky is stored – for measuring body functions in space, a load suit for the Penguin-3 cosmonaut, which prevents muscle atrophy.

All the same porridge and borscht

— At the stand of comic food you can see what it was like in the 1980s. It remains approximately the same today. There is still a special company in Russia that has been producing food for space for decades. It is not only used for astronauts, but is also sold to rich people for their collections.

Tubes and bags with juices, cereals, soups and borscht, tea and coffee with and without sugar, special mugs…

For a long time, searching for astronauts after landing was a problem. The design point was not always respected. Therefore, the descent module contained special wetsuits for landing on water, warm clothes, hygiene bags, medicines, weapons to scare away animals in the forest, and a machete to chop firewood.



Anatoly Soloviev.

The stands tell about cosmonauts who were natives of Latvia: Anatoly Solovyov was born in Bolderaja in 1948 and grew up here, and Alexander Kaleri was born in Jurmala in 1956.

When we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight at the museum in 2011, we organized a private broadcast to the museum from the orbital space station. Then one of our interlocutors in space was a native of our country, Alexander Kaleri.



Alexander Kaleri.

Alksnis, Stirna, Keldysh and others

The unusual Olympic Bear, which can be seen in the museum, is the contribution of Latvian scientists to space. At the Institute of Biology of the Academy of Sciences of Latvia. In the 1980s, the SSR created microgravity capsules for the Salyut space station, in which liquid hardens in zero gravity. Bear – because it’s the year of the Olympics in Moscow, and he, you see, has “hardened” in shape. For this, the scientist Arnold Alksnis received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and Uldis Stirna received the Order of Friendship of Peoples. And the whole team has a diploma with Gagarin on the cover, which is also kept in the museum.

Alksnis and Stirna created cryogenic insulation for the famous Buran project. In 2004, their laboratory received a letter from ASTRIUM GmbH with an offer to enter into a contract for the development of cryogenic insulating materials for new models of the European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 rocket.

At the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. SSR created two nanopowders – black and white. The frame of the ship or the outside walls of the room were covered with white so that they did not heat up, and the interior spaces were covered with black to remove excess heat.

Another important Latvian invention is phenibut tablets, or nootropil, for relieving fatigue during flights.

The advent of the space age of mankind was brought closer not only by Tsiolkovsky and Korolev, but also by natives of our region – Friedrich Zander, Mstislav Keldysh. And when academician Vasily Parin, the author of classical studies on space medicine, was arrested in 1947 on trumped-up charges, and he was imprisoned until 1953, his friend Pauls Stradins sent his sons shoes and clothes…