Cruising Cronies: Moscow Cosmo Space Museum

Quite a buzz for me and way too many pictures to include here but a couple of interesting things. The actual spacesuit Yuri Gagarin displayed next to me shows what a midget he was. The two first (and now stuffed) dogs into space - fun fact is that one of their puppies was given to Jackie Kennedy as a gift. Inside the 3 cosmonaut capsule there is almost no foot/ leg room. With extended flight times and heels almost touching your bottom; no wonder they couldn't walk after landings!! They had full size mock-up of the space station. The rocket cluster shown is full size - surprisingly small. One of the capsules came down in Siberia instead of the steppes of Kazakhstan. Took 3 days to locate the cosmonauts who got themselves out the capsule and lit fires (in the snow surrounded by thick forest) to survive. The closest the rescue team could get was 5 hours away by snow ski, so after cross country skiing to the cosmonauts, they all had to ski back to the pickup helicopter!!! Tough guys.

This space needle with rocket on top was totally impressive

Space hero wall.

Moscow is near the foot

Sputnik

Yuri Gagarin's space suit

This was the first Soviet space walk above and below. First try to get back into the bag in space showed many problems. Cosmonaut couldn't bend his fingers to operate latches, was supposed to enter feet first but couldn't see down from helmet and kept getting jammed on entry with back pack. Ended up going head first and then doing somersault turn to close the entrance behind him. That had never been done in practice, and on his return they asked how he had managed to do it. He replied "I just didn't want to die in space".

Tough guys.