[FPSPACE] Russia desperate to recruit new group of cosmonauts

[Jim Oberg]

This story appears based entirely on NK material,
but apparently makes no acknowledgement of the source.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <spaceflightnews at gmail.com>
To: "'FPSpace'" <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 1:18 AM
Subject: [FPSPACE] Russia desperate to recruit new group of cosmonauts


> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/279289_cosmo30.html
>
>
>
> Sunday, July 30, 2006
>
> Russia desperate to recruit new group of cosmonauts
>
> THE INDEPENDENT
>
> Russian attempts to recruit a new generation of cosmonauts have faltered 
> for
> the first time in 40 years with a rare recruitment competition attracting
> only a handful of applicants.
>
> As part of the then Soviet Union Russia put the first man in space 45 
> years
> ago but it seems few young Russians are keen to follow in Yuri Gagarin's
> famous footsteps today.
>
> The recruitment drive, only the 16th of its kind since 1966, was launched
> last year by Energia, Russia's giant state-controlled space corporation 
> that
> designs and makes spacecrafts.
>
> In the Soviet era the same competition regularly attracted 3,500 
> applicants
> eager to become flight engineers, train in Moscow's "Star City" and visit
> the then Mir space station.
>
> In those days only 20 of the thousands who applied became trainee 
> cosmonauts
> and of those fewer than 10 actually passed the medical and other tests to
> become qualified cosmonauts. Back then it was highly fashionable to become 
> a
> cosmonaut.
>
> Gagarin had lent the profession a magnetic glamour, trainees enjoyed 
> access
> to better housing and luxury goods, and the Soviet authorities poured
> billions of rubles into the space program as a matter of national pride.
>
> Now, however, the situation is dramatically different and it would seem 
> that
> the days of cosmonaut glamour are long gone. Energia has received around
> only 10 applications in the past year and a half since it opened the
> recruitment competition.
>
> Of those only one, that of 28-year old Elena Serova, a technical 
> specialist,
> has proved viable; the others didn't even pass the medical test.
>
> Desperate times call for desperate measures and Energia has begun scouring
> technical colleges in the hope of getting engineering students to apply.
>
> But those students who have applied so far have not met the corporation's
> stringent entry conditions.
>
> Nor is the recruitment crisis confined to Energia's cosmonaut program; it 
> is
> biting hard in its manufacturing and design departments too.
>
> In the Soviet era thousands of young graduates rushed to fill its ranks 
> but
> now the average age of an Energia employee is 46.2 years, five more than 
> the
> average in Russian industry. Energia currently boasts 15 trained 
> cosmonauts
> who make up just under half of Russia's 37-strong team. NASA, its 
> archrival,
> has 101 trained astronauts on standby.
>
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