[FPSPACE] ISS crew greets Chertok's 95th birthday

[Jim Oberg]

>From Sunday's ISS On-Orbit Status Report:

   At ~2:00am EST, the crew downlinked special congratulatory greetings to Academician Boris Yevseyevich Chertok for his upcoming 95th birthday on March 1 (Thursday).  The downlink will be played at the birthday celebration at RSC-Energia's GONTI (State Science & Technology Institute) Auditorium after a speech by Energia President N.N. Sevastianov and a film dedicated to B.Ye. Chertok.   [A much-honored Hero of Socialist Labor and Laureate of Lenin and State prizes, Dr. Chertok, an Academician of the Russian Academy of Science, began his career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory in Fili near Moscow. Thirty years later, he was deputy to the founding figure of the Soviet space program, the mysterious "glavnyi konstruktor" (Chief Designer) Sergey Pavlovich Korolev.  Chertok's name, too, remained a state secret throughout most of his career; when he did occasionally write for the public, he used the pseudonym "Boris Yevseyev".  Chertok's sixty-year-long career and the many successes and failures of the Soviet space program constitute the core of his remarkable four-volume memoirs "Rakety i liudi", currently being published by NASA's History Office and Space Operations Mission Directorate in an outstanding English version, "Rockets and People". Chertok is considered one of the founders of Cosmonautics who in his later years became a teacher, both in science and spirit, also a historian, philosopher and "invisible cosmonaut who overcame space and time" (RSC-E).  From NASA, too: Three cheers to Boris Yevseyevich! Many more healthy and energetic years for you!  After all, 95 years on Earth equal only 50 on a Martian calendar!]