[FPSPACE] Feoktistov position in mid-1985?

[Bart Hendrickx]

Jim Oberg wrote :

>Just a question for something I'm writing, what was Konstantin Feoktistov's
>official position in 1985? Was he still a high official, or had he retired?


According to "Who's who in space" he was forced to retire in 1990 after
Semyonov took over from Glushko as general designer of NPO Energiya
(Feoktistov had apparently been too outspoken about the Buran programme,
which he considered a waste of money, and Semyonov happened to be the chief
designer of Buran). I think that in 1985 he still had a high position within
NPO Energiya (perhaps you should check the Energiya 1946-1996 book).
Officially, he was a cosmonaut until 28 October 1987. He doesn't seem to
provide many clues about his later career in his new book "Trayektoriya
zhizni", which contains few autobiographic details from the period after his
Voskhod mission, except that he was bumped from Soyuz T-3 in 1980 with only
weeks to go before launch (he thinks because of some kind of conspiracy
against him).

>For our Russian speaker friends:
>I've also been told his last name was a Russification of some Greek
Orthodox
>religious official, a "theoctist", but I've never been able to find
anything
>more. It doesn't appear to be that unusual a Russian name.


What I've found is that "Feoktistov" is derived from the christian name
"Feoktist", which in turn is a russification of the Greek name "Theoktistos"
(literally "created by the gods").


Bart Hendrickx