The 41st pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR Valery Ryumin saw the globe from the porthole four times. Twice the hero of the Soviet Union in orbit traveled as a flight engineer three times on domestic ships of the Soyuz series and once on the American Discovery was a flight specialist.
Summing up the space epic Valery Viktorovich was for him the final flight of 58 years. Yes, and the spouses of Ryumin themselves have the title of space family rightfully: the cosmonaut’s wife, Elena Kondakova, visited the extraterrestrial orbit twice.
Path to orbit
The biography of the future hero began in 1939. The boy was born in the Far Eastern Komsomolsk-on-Amur on August 16. The parents of the child were also connected with heaven. They worked at the aircraft factory. Since childhood, Valery dreamed of flying. However, he began to realize it only with 27.
Before the war, the family moved to Zagoryanka, near Moscow, where Ryumin graduated from school in 1954. The graduate continued his further education in the mechanical technical school of Kaliningrad. He chose cold metalworking as his specialty. As a turner trainee, Valery worked in practice for three months in the summer on the basis of OKB-1.
Then in 1958 there was a military service. It lasted until 1960. After demobilization, the young man went to the capital's university. He graduated in 1966.
The young specialist was sent to work in Korolev, in the Central Space Bureau, which he already knew. However, Valery returned not as a student, but as a specialist. Three years later he became a senior engineer. His responsibilities included the development of mechanisms intended for flights to the moon spacecraft.
In the early seventies, Ryumin headed the flight management and became the deputy chief designer of the Salyut orbital stations. The candidate was enrolled in the cosmonaut corps in 1973. They prepared pilots for flights on the Soyuz series.
Space
For the first time, Valery Viktorovich went into orbit in 1977. On October 9, he spent 3 days in space. The time of stay was determined by a malfunction that did not allow the Soyuz-25 to dock with the station. Due to a change in situation, the flight was discontinued.
The new 175-day flight of the forty-year-old pilot took place in February 1979. Vladimir Lyakhov commanded the ship. Unscheduled spacewalk occurred in mid-August. The partners corrected the hooked antenna. On August 19, Soyuz-32 pilots were awarded the title Heroes of the Soviet Union. Ryumin received the Golden Star medal and the Order of Lenin.
A year passed before the pilot set off on a new flight. In orbit as part of the Soyuz-35 crew, he spent 185 days. Together with the Salyut-6 complex, 4 expeditions took place, 3 of them were international. After the return of Ryumin, a new high award awaited.
Three times in space, the pilot took the post of deputy, and then the head of the test complex. Ryumin also worked in the Central Flight Management as a deputy, and then as a test director.
In August 1980, Ryumin received a series of songs "Ruminiada" as a gift from Yuri Vizbor and Sergey Nikitin.
New responsibilities
Since 1982, for seven years, Valery Viktorovich was engaged in the management of the development of ships and stations at the Royal NPO Energia near Moscow. The team specialized in the Mir and Salute orbital stations, the Buran reusable manned spacecraft, the Progress cargo spacecraft.
The cosmonaut left the detachment in the fall of 1987. Ryumin directed all his forces to development. In 1994, he took over as the head of the Mir-Shuttle and Mir-NASA programs as a representative of Russia. For four years he held this responsible position.
In 1997, shortly before his sixtieth birthday, Ryumin joined the Discovery crew. Preparing for the flight involved in the US Space Center. Departure took place on June 2, 1998 and lasted a decade. A successful docking of the American shuttle with the domestic station was made.
In total, the astronaut spent more than a year, 371 days, in orbit. Ryumin arranged his personal life twice. His first partner was an employee of RSC Energia. In his alliance with Natalia in 1965, the first child appeared, daughter Victoria. Son Vadim was born in 1972.
The second wife of the astronaut became in 1985 Elena Kondakova. Acquaintance with her occurred during the leadership of Valery Viktorovich MCC. The area of responsibility of the young specialist Kondakova included emergency situations. It took the astronaut just a couple of days to understand his feelings. The chosen one did not expect this at all. Ryumin had to seek her consent during the year. He and his wife grew up a daughter, Eugene. She was born in the mid-eighties.
