WEBVTT - THE LAST SOVIET - EP 3: No Experience Necessary 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.920 Twenty seven year old Helen Charman makes her way to 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:19.200 her car. She's a chemist at the Mars Chocolate factory 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:22.080 and she's on the way home. Her days are filled 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:24.520 with questions about the right kind of toffee to use 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:27.360 on chocolate ice cream, or how long a Mars bar 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:33.120 will survive in the heat. She likes her job. Get up, 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:37.000 go to work, come home a regular nine to five 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.080 that day. Helen turns out of the factory car park 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.040 and quickly hits the rush hour traffic. She sighs and 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.680 turns the radio up loud. On it, a newscaster is 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.600 going through the day's headlines. It's early summer nineteen eighty 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.160 nine and in Hungary, the communist regime has just been overthrown, 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.320 which could end forty years of one party rule. An 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:02.000 Ira bar has gone off at a British military base. 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.920 Please believe the tech, May Harold as summer of terror. 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.960 Two hundred and sixty people arrested at Stonehenge for celebrating 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:12.960 the Summer Solstice. Protesters moving towards Stonehenge. Helen starts flicking 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.280 through the channels. I means number one, the new single 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:20.520 yeahde and she just wants to listen to some music, 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.959 and that's when she hears it. I was driving my 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.280 car home from work and flicking through the stations, trying 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:34.600 to find some music, and I heard an announcement, A 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:38.480 suppose an advert really, and it said started off with 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:44.080 astronaut wanted, no experience necessary. Suddenly Helen's staring at the 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:52.360 radio an astronaut. Now, lots of kids me included dream 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:56.920 of being an astronaut, but not Helen. She might work 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:59.880 for a company called Mars, but she's never thought about 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:05.600 going into space. Being British, who was no job for 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.920 an astronaut. Growing up in the nineteen sixties nineteen seventies, 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:12.079 Britain didn't even have a space program, so it wasn't possible. 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.680 It wasn't part of my agenda. But now Helen's listening 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.960 hard as the voice on the radio continues and then 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:22.520 went on to describe they wanted people to go over 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.280 to Star fifteen year Moscow, train with the cosmonauts and 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:30.560 do experiments on the Mere Space station Cosmonauts Star City, 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:37.519 Mere Space Station. These were words Helen hardly knew. They're 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:40.480 looking for someone between twenty one and forty with scientific 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.920 training and the ability to learn a foreign language, and 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.640 Helen thinks, I'm twenty seven, and I have a degree 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:54.880 in chemistry, and I know French and German. And then 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.080 this idea begins to form in the back of her mind. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:05.480 What if the traffic light turns red before she can 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:07.840 talk herself out of it. Helen reaches for a scrap 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.120 of paper and scribbles down the number from the radio. 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.720 She has no idea that this moment, stuck in traffic 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:20.200 is about to change her life. That not only will 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.160 she be soon going to space, but she's about to 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.200 get a front row seat to one of the most 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:29.960 important events of the twentieth century, the collapse of the 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:34.520 Soviet Union, and by her side will be a Russian 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:49.880 cosmonaut called Serge Kracole from Kaleidoscope. iHeart podcasts and exile content. 0:03:50.680 --> 0:04:04.200 This is the last Soviet I'm Lance Bass. So actually, 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.839 Helen Sharman and I have pretty similar stories. We grew 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:11.360 up in very different worlds and had very different jobs, 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.680 but we both somehow ended up in the same strange place, 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:19.800 a secret town outside of Moscow, doing the same insane thing, 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:24.320 training to go to space. We were both young, myself 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:28.040 twenty three, Helen twenty seven, and we left everything we'd 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:30.880 ever known behind us to see that electric blue light 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.960 of our planet from orbit. We were actually at the 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.480 frontier of something that today is a familiar idea, paying 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.719 to go to space, except in our case it was 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:44.120 TV companies who were paying for us. It was CBS 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:46.720 and MTV fronting the money for my trip and for 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.480 Helen a bunch of companies with backing from a British 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.760 TV channel. We were fish out of water, and both 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:57.719 of our journeys started completely by chance. For me with 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.719 a call from my agent Lance. What would you say 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:02.599 if I told you I've got you a ticket on 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:06.480 a Russian space rocket for Helen? Sitting in her car 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.159 one day in nineteen eighty nine, It all began with 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:16.000 that radio ad astronaut wanted new experience necessary. Helen keeps 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.239 the application for him in her bag for weeks before 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:21.800 she sends it in a few weeks later, she gets 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.080 a call. A woman's voice says, I'm telephoning on behalf 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:29.800 of Air Vice Marshal Peter Howard and would like to 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:32.440 ask if you would come for a medical for the 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:40.080 Anglo Soviet Juno's space mission. Hotline has been buzzing continuously 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.520 with hopeful astronauts. The mission was a joint project between 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.880 the Brits and the Soviets. They called it Project Juno, 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:50.080 and the idea was to hold a contest to try 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:52.440 to find the best person in Britain to go to space, 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.560 retracting applications from, among others, a city brokers, a tax inspective, 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:01.080 a baker. There were commercials on posters, in newspapers, on 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:04.880 TV and of course on the radio. With nearly twelve 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.640 thousand enthusiastics making contact, the chance of success is six 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:12.520 thousand to one. There was a selection process and medical 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.760 psychological tests and then gradually whittled us down. This morning, 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:19.159 it was only a small step onto the platform for 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.760 the four who've beaten thirteen thousand candidates in the space race. 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:27.440 A documentary film crew even followed their every move. It 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.640 was kind of like an early version of a reality 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.400 show which one would make it to space. Not quite 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.320 The Bachelor, but you know what I mean. Helen Sharman's 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.520 a research technologist for a confectionery firm and is already 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.440 used to comments about her being the woman from Mars. 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:44.120 I know we have to be fit, we have to 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:46.279 be able to run the Russian language. So I have 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:50.560 to be able to be perhapsing scientists fell in sextus annually. Yeah, 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:54.000 I think I've got it now. Helen is pretty understaid. 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.440 In fact, I would say she's quite tipathy British. She's 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.520 not like US Americans, always saying we are the best 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.720 at everything. But she had done pretty damn well to 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.599 get to this stage. Thirteen thousand people had applied, and 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.920 now she's just one of four. He only obstacle. Three 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.400 other equally determined to spurring astronauts or four have the 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:21.880 same ambition to join the Juno mission. They were tested 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:26.280 and tested, intelligence, reasoning power, how they work under pressure. 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.600 They asked Helen about her motivations. Why she was doing 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.720 this money, fame, the good of science, the thawing of 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:38.000 East West relations. This was, after all, a rare opportunity 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:40.320 for people from the West to go behind the Iron 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.280 Curtain to experience a slice of the Soviet way of life. 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:47.920 Helen thought about these questions for a while, and in 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:51.640 the end she answered, honestly, after doing all this work, 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.080 all these tests, and getting excited, she just wanted to 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.480 go to space, blast off in a rocket, see the 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:04.360 Earth from above. Just like me. She had been bitten 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.120 by the space bug from starting out, not really believing 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:10.920 that space was for someone like her. Now it was 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:14.800 all she could think about and it was almost within reach. 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.280 The final announcement was made in the Science Museum in London. 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:24.200 There was a big sort of glitzy TV show and 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:27.000 we were being encouraged to tryand and be terribly excited. 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.800 Helen isn't really one for the cameras or glitz and glamour, 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:34.040 so she isn't really feeling it. She's sitting there just 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:36.080 trying to remember what to do if they call her name, 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:38.560 and trying not to think about how many people are 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:44.080 watching at home. Helen Charmotte. When day and asked my name, 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.440 I just knew I had to stand up, go to 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:50.240 the stage, shake hands, turned to face the cameras, smile 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:52.280 a lot. And it was only really when the whole 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:55.200 thing finished when I could relaxing people. I'm going to 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.840 train with the cosmonauts and it could really start to 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:06.920 sink in them. Helen was off to train for eighteen 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.160 months with a team of cosmonauts for omission to the 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:14.240 Mere Space Station, the Soviet's most advanced piece of space technology. 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:16.719 It's a huge floating network of tubes and wires in 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:20.439 orbit around the Earth where multiple cosmonauts can live, work 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:24.520 and perform experiments. Helen had forty eight hours to pack 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.480 up her life and move to the Soviet Union. I 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:29.760 had to resign from my job. I closed for the 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.040 Moscow winter. Eighteen months in Moscow. She was going to 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:35.680 need a thick coat and sell my car. You know 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.000 all that. She even got her affairs in order in 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.320 case she died in training or on her emission, the 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:43.680 arrange power of attorney. It was before internet banking, before 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.520 the internet as we know it now, no emails, no 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.600 mobile phones. It was all very very weird, a feeling 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.240 of being cut off, I think, very much from everything 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.640 that's had known in the UK. For Helen, the Soviet 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.440 Union was very much an alien land. It fell very 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:04.560 exotic and very very exciting. It was going to some 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.600 other world. Really. Helen had grown up in the nineteen 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.480 seventies where we were told that the Soviets were all 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.200 nasty and they were going to come in Boma country 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:17.760 with new clibombs. So she was already nervous. Then in 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.000 November nineteen eighty nine, just as she's preparing to leave 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:25.440 everything she knows. She hears this news from ABC This 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.520 is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings reporting tonight from 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:33.960 Berlin from the Berlin Wall specifically, take a look at them. 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:36.240 They've been there since last night. They are here in 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.000 the thousands, They are here in the tens of thousands. 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.440 The Berlin Wall was coming down. Thousands and thousands of 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.160 West Germans come to make the point that the wall 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:49.319 has suddenly become irrelevant. Earlier that summer, a peaceful revolution 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:53.680 began in East Berlin calling for more freedom, and finally, 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.920 on the night of November ninth, the checkpoints were overrun 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.360 and the gates of the wall were swung wide. For 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.240 the hapless East German border guards at Checkpoint Charlie, they 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.800 were swamped. They simply gave up, opened the gate and 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:11.400 allowed thousands through the one crossing point that had remained 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:16.080 firmly closed. The news was beamed across the globe in 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:28.200 deep indimenticab Checkpoint Charlie day, the government of East Germany 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:37.280 announced that its borders are open for Helen's family and friends. 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.000 It was worrying, would it be dangerous going to Moscow 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:45.600 at this totally uncertain time, and I expected a sort 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:50.080 of harsh exterior, perhaps people who were a bit secretive, 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:55.880 people who didn't want to share much. But Helen was determined. 0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:59.600 She realized not only did she have the chance to 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.760 become a cosmonaut, but she could find out what was 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:09.120 really happening behind the iron curtain that's coming up after 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:35.520 the break. Star City, the secret cosmonaut training facility. I 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:37.720 remember arriving there in two thousand and two for my 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:42.120 very first days of training. They shipped me out there 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:45.080 in the dead of night, to a place about twenty 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.240 miles north of Moscow, in the middle of a forest. 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:51.880 It was a place that until the nineties was completely 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.760 off the map. It felt like I was arriving at 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:59.120 the Russian version of Area fifty one. When you get there, 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:03.320 there are these huge iron gates and guards standing there. 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:08.240 Helen remembers the same thing soldiers with their guns at 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:11.400 the gates and bobbed while around the edge of Star City. 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.960 But once you got inside the walls of Star City, 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:20.120 I remember it had the feel of kind of a 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.240 movie set, cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union. 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:28.080 There was a bank, shops, a movie theater, a railway, 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.720 station sports fields. But if that sounds quaint, it wasn't. 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:37.280 All the buildings were gray Brutalis blocks, and let me 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.760 tell you, on a cloudy day, the whole place felt 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:46.959 pretty bleak. But there also was this big sense of community. 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.920 Everybody knew everybody because the only people allowed to live 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.880 there were cosmonauts and their families. The fact that there 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.520 were customauts wool king around who I'd read about and 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:59.120 who I could see in space magazines, and something that 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:01.920 I was cute in the post office behind them. Helen 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:04.960 was star struck. But before she could meet her heroes 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.520 and her future crew, she had to train. Training to 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:10.800 be a cosmonaut is one of the hardest things I 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.400 have ever done, no doubt about it, more physically and 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.959 mentally grueling than any INSYNCT world tour. And those were rough. 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.360 Days of Star City started at about five am. First 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.920 on the schedule was a Russian language class taught by 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.040 a teacher that only spoke French and Russian. Yeah, and 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:35.720 I gotta say Russian. It's not easy. In fact, Russian 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:37.960 is one of the most difficult languages in the world 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:40.360 to learn. I didn't even know that I had to 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:44.080 learn a whole new alphabet. I mean it took me 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:48.880 six months to learn Jagabaru, Pruskin and noshka, which means 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:53.600 I speak Russian a little. And that's before we even 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:57.440 started the physical training. There's not so much about running marathons, 0:14:57.480 --> 0:14:59.880 but it's building up good muscle strength in general fitness. 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:03.520 All right, Helen's doing that thing we call British understatement 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:07.680 again because the training it's brutal. We had this machine 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:09.680 which is meant to recreate what it feels like when 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.880 your rocket is returning to earth. They strapped me into 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.600 a chair, spun me around. I got up to five 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.000 g's which is basically like a grand piano being pressed 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:23.720 into your chest. Then there was the weightlifting, working so 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:27.160 hard I was puking like every five minutes. And I 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:30.960 haven't even told you what happened in the woods. Sometimes 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:33.640 they would just leave you there after a long run 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.520 and say, okay, enjoy your night. And I had to 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:38.880 build a shelter and start a fire and find food 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:41.480 all on my own in the deep dark depths of 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:45.640 a Russian forest. Then there was the technical stuff, which 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:49.800 you had to totally learn from scratch as to navigation ballistics. 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:52.920 Basically the theory of flying really freaking fast through space, 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:58.320 and all of us in Russian. One thing I found 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:00.360 out pretty quickly was that they weren't going to make 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:04.200 any distinctions between the train cosmonauts and us newbies. Every 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:07.360 member of the crew would have responsibilities. I was in 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:09.560 charge of oxygen on the soils, and so I had 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:11.720 to know exactly how much air was needed to keep 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.560 my crew made safe. I had to calculate all of 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.360 this in my head. And did I mention all of 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:23.720 this was in Russian. Yeah, if you were even a 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:27.520 point off, everyone was dead. Because so much can go 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.320 wrong with space travel, we were always having to learn 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:32.360 what you should do in the event of a disaster. 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.360 So some simple things, for instance, say the radio might 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:37.840 not work, what if you can't speak to ground control? 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.040 But there could be something else more complex, like what 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:42.640 if your spaceship fails to land on the station? What 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.440 the hell do you do? Then? What if the electricity 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:47.800 cuts out or one of your fellow crew goes on 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:51.200 a spacewalk and never comes back. So together we would 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:53.080 work through that. Now, that's the kind of thing that 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.440 we did in the simulators, and you would practice and 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:57.680 practice and practice, and it really was a case of 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.160 practice makes perfect. Years and years of Soviet missions to 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.440 space meant that if anything went wrong, there was always 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.440 a go to answer. These scenarios are often written down 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:10.760 as well. It's part of our manuals, so we don't 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:12.960 have to remember everything. We just have to remember which 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.520 page we've got to quickly moved to for Plan B 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.920 or Plan and C instead of Plan A. After months 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:22.960 in Star City, Helen started to believe in herself. She 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.120 was strong, she knew a bit more Russian than I did, 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.960 and she knew how to save the spaceship from disaster. 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.280 And eventually, in the summer of nineteen ninety she was 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:37.520 ready to meet her crew, the famous cosmonauts, the guys 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.320 she had been standing behind in the post office. The 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.919 commander of her mission would be Anatoly Artabaski, and she 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:47.119 would also ride with an engineer, the hero of the 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:53.760 Salud seven rescue, sarage Crecovat. Sagey starts off when you 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.760 meet him. He is a very modest kind of character, 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.399 and he's very strong internally, but he's not the kind 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:04.200 of person who would be the loudest in the room 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.320 by any stretch of the imagination. You could probably go 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.399 into a room. Unless he's standing up, he's quite tall, 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:11.760 but if he was sitting down, you probably could go 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.800 pass without even noticing him because he's not shouting, he's 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:18.880 not waving his arms around, so you know, his presence 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:22.840 just sort of creptopotomy. Helen says, there's this thing you 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:26.280 need to understand about cosmonauts. All the cosmonauts have chosen 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:30.960 in many respects. We're all quite similar fairly, I would say, 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:35.240 even tempered, so not too excitable, not too depressive. But 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.600 Sarah Gay stood out. I think Sagey has got a 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:43.480 particularly high propensity to deal with stress. He's just outwardly 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:45.840 very calm. He probably deals with it all inside, but 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:48.640 he does deal with it soon. She was being invited 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:50.880 to his house to meet his family, and of course, 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:52.760 the first time that any British person goes to a 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.080 Soviet house for dinner, you think this enormous amount of food, Wow, 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.320 it's this amazing, and then you're offered more and more 0:18:58.320 --> 0:18:59.760 and more. You think, thank you very much, that was 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.719 it's just really feeling super full. That's great, and then 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:08.040 they say, oh, now it's the main course. I can 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.720 tell you what Helen says about the Russians. Is true, 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.360 they love to feed you and they like to get 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:16.960 a drunk on vaca. But the generosity Helen experienced in 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:21.440 Saragey's house also made her think, I know they were 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.760 very well off compared to the average Soviet citizen at 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.920 that time. I certainly was aware of the difficulty of 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.880 many of them. The queues I hate, standing in lines 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:35.720 I hated, and some of the hunger that was going around, 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:38.040 some of the homelessness as well. In Moscow. It caused 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:40.879 the average Russian a full day's pay for a pound 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.840 of meat at the private markets. And then compared to 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:46.840 the relatively good standard of living in Star City, and 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:48.800 the fact that I could go to a canteen rude. 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:52.080 Star City has looked curious by Soviet standards. The diet 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:55.560 calculated by scientists to give them and eat my breakfast, 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:58.080 lunch and dinner there, and so could the other cosmonauts 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:00.560 without having to worry about where is that food coming from? 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:03.639 That was a real luxury because in the rest of 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:07.320 the country people were starving, women and children were sleeping 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.000 in Moscow's railway stations. So what do you do now, 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:12.639 go into I don't even know what I can do, 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:14.280 I'm going to have to go back to the train 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.480 station and spend the night there. Thirty two million Russians 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.600 now found themselves below the poverty line. So only one 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:23.919 in six families has a telephone, only one in twenty 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.639 four owns a car. The quality of most things people 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:37.800 can buy here is third rate. Helen heard about all 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:40.000 of this from the Western media and her friends from 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.560 back home. She knew about the collapse of the Soviet economy, 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.280 and she also knew about President Gorbachev and about how 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:50.560 he was trying to change the Soviet Union. So in England, 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:53.800 in the UK, we'd got these two Russian words, and 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:59.479 Glasnost and pedestroca. We talked a little bit about this 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:03.280 in episode to Glasnost generally just means openness and pedestroika 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:07.399 means rebuilding, and they became synonymous with what Gorbutof was 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:09.840 trying to do. He was being more open with the West. 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.359 We liked Glasnost and we liked paristroika in the West, 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:16.800 and here was a chance to ask actual Soviets what 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:20.320 they thought. And so she started going up to the 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:23.320 cosmonauts in Star City, What do you think about these 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:28.240 reforms of glasnost of pedestroika, And the response I got 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:30.520 was a bit of a blank. What's odd? I don't 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:32.960 people don't normally kind of sort of stum upon me 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:34.840 when I'm asking them questions and they say, what do 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.199 you mean? She replied, well, you know, I mean like 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.560 society opening up what President Gorbachev was trying to do. 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:46.120 Aren't we open? We thought we were being quite open 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:50.840 with you. And what about pedestroika rebuilding? Well, but rebuilding 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:52.800 the school down the road. Isn't that's a good thing, 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:57.400 isn't it? The political connotations to these two words just 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:02.160 weren't used in the Soviet Union. This made Helen realize 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:06.280 everything she thought about the Soviet Union was wrong. That 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:11.120 people in Star City, people like Serage Kreklov cosmonauts, they 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:16.760 actually liked their lives because their lives were relatively quite 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:20.399 good and relatively quite stable. They liked the way that 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:23.399 they worked and the way that they lived. They weren't 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.400 aware of any other way to do that, and they 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:28.159 were very happy with that. And I kind of, I 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:30.399 suppose I'd always assumed that they would always be trying 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:32.840 to live more like the life in the West was. 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:35.199 And of course they weren't. They were very happy with 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.280 their lives, happy with their lives and proud to be 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:41.840 part of the Soviet space program, the most revered men 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:46.480 and the Soviet Union revered and rewarded with comfortable houses, 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:52.840 food and a good life. The only problem is that 0:22:52.920 --> 0:22:56.560 comfortable life, the one enjoyed by Soviet cosmonauts since the 0:22:56.600 --> 0:23:12.680 age of Uriga Gerin it was in serious jeopardy. So 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:17.199 it's now April nineteen ninety one and the three cosmonauts Sarage, Helen, 0:23:17.280 --> 0:23:21.040 and Anatoli are finally ready ready to go to space. 0:23:21.720 --> 0:23:24.840 They leave Star City by military plane and three hours 0:23:24.880 --> 0:23:28.000 later they start their descent to Bikanir, the secret city 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:31.040 in the desert where the Soviets launched their rockets. From 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:34.800 Helen clings to her seat. Bikenore is everything she pictured, 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:37.479 the closest thing on Earth to a Star Wars planet, 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:40.720 with great hangars and domes jutting out of the reddish 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:43.280 brown Earth, and the cosmonauts are going to have to 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:46.639 spend two weeks there in quarantine. They need to make 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:49.479 sure that they're not carrying any viruses into the space station. 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:53.399 Then they have to go through a series of strange rituals, 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:56.080 rituals that go back to the very early days of 0:23:56.160 --> 0:24:01.440 Soviet space travel. There's a huge number of very traditional 0:24:01.640 --> 0:24:04.520 things that we do before the space flights itself. On 0:24:04.600 --> 0:24:07.840 the day, you wake up whichever bedroom you'd be sleeping, 0:24:07.880 --> 0:24:11.080 and you sign the door. Your signature goes on the 0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:13.199 door of that room. Goodnessays what they've done with all 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:16.879 these doors. They must be jampactful of signatures. But the 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:20.160 signatures are only the first part of the ritual. Next, 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:24.280 the cosmonauts watch a movie. Picture the scene Helen, Sergei 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:27.840 and Anatolie all gathered around on this little sofa from 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:31.600 movie night, maybe eating some popcorn or probably more like 0:24:31.680 --> 0:24:35.159 sunflower seeds. And what was the movie White Sun in 0:24:35.200 --> 0:24:37.840 the Desert. I think it's called to some sort of comedy, 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:42.240 White Sun in the Desert, very Russian Harley sounds like 0:24:42.240 --> 0:24:44.960 me the parents, But you know anyway, Then the next 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:48.080 day they get up early, get into their spacesuits, they 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:50.440 get on a bus to the launch site, and then 0:24:50.520 --> 0:24:54.159 comes another ritual. Your Gagarin forgot to go to the 0:24:54.200 --> 0:24:56.640 loo before he went to the rocket, so he needed 0:24:56.680 --> 0:24:58.640 to get out of the bus and have a pee 0:24:58.640 --> 0:25:01.720 on the back wheels, so you will do that. That's right, 0:25:01.960 --> 0:25:04.159 because Juriga Garan forgot to take a leak before his 0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:07.720