[FPSPACE] Re: A single team of cosmonauts?

[Dante Wynter]

> >
> >RUSSIAN COSMONAUTS' TEAM 45 YEARS OLD
> >
> >
> >MOSCOW, March 7, (RIA Novosti) - Forty-five years ago today, the 
>legendary
> >team of space trail-blazers was formed at the Yury Gagarin
> >cosmonaut-training center. "It full complement - now it makes up 21
> >cosmonauts - led by its commander Yuri Lonchakov will leave for the town 
>of
> >Gagarin to celebrate the momentous date," Sergei Tafrov, deputy head of 
>the
> >center, told RIA Novosti. The name of the first man on Earth to make a 
>space
> >flight was given in 1968 to the town of Gzhatsk, an ancient Russian town 
>in
> >the Smolensk region, near which Yuri Gagarin was born and lived.
> >
>Does anybody know the names of those 21 cosmonauts "still alive"?
>
>--
>
>Zeger Nuyens
>dokter.nuyens at pandora.be

There were twenty cosmonauts in the first group selected - nine are still 
alive, to the best of my information.

Valeri Fyoforovich Bykovsky, Viktor Vasiliyevich Gorbatko, Anatoli 
Yakovlevich Kartashov, Aleksei Arkhipovich Leonov, Pavel Romanovich 
Popavich, Mars Zakirovich Rafikov, Georgi Stepanovich Shonin, Boris 
Valentinovich Volynov, and Dmitri Alekseyevich Zaikin.

On a personal note, it's a shame Mars Rafikov never got to fly - he seemed 
destined to!  Perhaps NASA can give him a flight?

Dante Wynter