Abstract
Mikhail Nikolayevich Burdayev was born on August 27, 1932, in Feodosiya, Crimea. In 1956 he graduated with honors from the Mozhayskiy Air Force Engineering Academy. In the years from 1956 to 1959 Burdayev served as a senior technician, then as a squadron engineer at an aircraft carrier; from 1959 to 1969 he worked as a researcher, then a senior researcher at the Central Scientific-Research Institute No. 2 of the Air Defense (2 TsNII) in Kalinin, working on military space topics. In 1963 he defended a dissertation and was awarded the degree of candidate of technical sciences. On April 12, 1967, Burdayev joined the cosmonaut group. From 1967 to 1969 he had general cosmonaut training. In 1969–1970 he trained under the Soyuz-VI military station program, from 1970 to 1972 under the Almaz military station program, and in 1972–1973 under the Salyut (DOS) civilian station program. From 1974 to 1976 Burdayev trained for a Soyuz 7K-S mission as a flight engineer. From 1976 to 1983 he trained under the Soyuz 7K-T program. From 1974 to 1983, Burdayev participated in flight control operations, and from 1983 to 1989 he served as a shift leader of the mission control group at the Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1987 Burdayev defended a doctoral dissertation and was awarded the degree of doctor of technical sciences.
Mikhail Burdayev on board a sea ship with a Soyuz landing module in the background, October 1973 (courtesy Mikhail Burdayev).
June 11, 2006
Star City, Moscow region, Russia
Interviewer: Slava Gerovitch.
The interview was conducted in Russian and translated by Slava Gerovitch.
Despite his thorough cosmonaut training and superb qualifications, Mikhail Burdayev did not get a chance to fly in space. His background as a military researcher set him apart from the military pilots, who comprised the majority in the cosmonaut corps, and gave him a distinct perspective on the organization of cosmonaut selection and training. In this interview, he discusses the grueling process of cosmonaut training, the politics of crew selection, and the relations among different professional groups composing the cosmonaut corps. Burdayev also recalls episodes from his later career as a shift leader of the mission control group, discusses the problem of human spaceflight versus automatic probes, and reflects on his career shift from training as a cosmonaut to being a space scientist.
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Notes
Mikhail Burdayev, Teoriya i raschet spiraley dlya planerov (Moscow: DOSAAF, 1970);
Burdayev, Teoriya godografov v mekhanike kosmicheskogo poleta (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1975);
Burdayev a. et al., Dinamika i printsipy postroeniya orbitalnykh sistem kosmicheskikh apparatov (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1975);
Burdayev, Ergonomika i kosmicheskaya informatika (Zvezdnyy: TsPK, 1991);
and Burdayev a. et al., Osnovy aerokosmicheskogo ekologicheskogo monitoringa (Zvezdnyy: TsPK, 2002).
For a bibliography of 113 items, see Vasiliy V. Tsibliyev, ed., Nauchnyye trudy sovetskikh i rossiyskikh kosmonavtov: Materialy k bibliografii (Zvezdnyy gorodok: RGNIITsPK, 2009), pp. 256–269.
In 1980 all research on early warning systems and space defense systems was transferred to the Special Scientific-Research Institute No. 45 (45 SNII) of the Ministry of Defense in Babushkin near Moscow. See Mikhail Pervov, Sistemy raketno-kosmicheskoy oborony Rossii sozdavalis tak, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Aviarus-XXI, 2004), pp. 518–519.
For the first cosmonaut group, selected in 1959–60, the maximum height was 175 cm, and the maximum weight 75 kg; see Larisa V. Uspenskaya, comp., Chelovek. Korabl. Kosmos (Moscow: Novyi khronograf, 2011), p. 132. For the second group, selected in 1962–63, the height limit was raised to 180 cm, and the weight limit to 80 kg; see Vladimir Shatalov’s interview in this collection. The limits were later raised again, but until June 1999, the maximum height of the cosmonaut was 182 cm, and the maximum weight 85 kg—still below Burdayev’s height and weight.
On the “five ministers’ order,” see Nikolay Kamanin, Skrytyi kosmos, vol. 3 (Moscow: Novosti kosmonavtiki, 1999), p. 96 (diary entry for July 31, 1967). In May 1966, a cosmonaut group was created at the Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building (later the Energiya Corporation) under the Ministry of General Machine Building. In May 1967, a cosmonaut group was organized at the USSR Academy of Sciences. In March 1972, a cosmonaut group was set up at the Institute for Biomedical Problems of the Ministry of Health. Also in March 1972, a cosmonaut group was created at the Central Design Bureau of Machine Building under the Ministry of General Machine Building (until 1965, under the Ministry of Aviation Industry). The Cosmonaut Training Center was subordinated to the Ministry of Defense.
On cosmonaut selection groups in 1960–1974, see Asif Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974, NASA SP-2000–4408 (Washington, DC: NASA, 2000), pp. 881–888.
Valeriy Victorovich Ryumin (1939–) and Vladimir Afanasyevich Lyakhov flew on Soyuz 32 to the Salyut 6 space station in February 1979. They returned in June 1979 on Soyuz 34, which was sent to the station in the unmanned mode to pick up the crew. The engine on Soyuz 34 was redesigned to fix malfunctions that caused the failure of the Soyuz 33 mission in April 1979. See Dennis Newkirk, Almanac of Soviet Manned Space Flight (Houston, TX: Gulf, 1990), pp. 200–203.
The fire occurred on September 4, 1978, during the Expedition 2 on Salyut 6. See Yuriy Baturin, ed., Mirovaya pilotiruyemaya kosmonavtika. Istoriya. Tekhnika. Lyudi (Moscow: RTSoft, 2005), p. 281.
According to Boris Chertok, during the approach, the Argon-16 computer on Soyuz T-2 noted a discrepancy between the predicted and actual velocities, concluded that the automatic rendezvous system was malfunctioning, and shut it off. Malyshev then successfully performed manual approach and docking. See Chertok, Rockets and People: The Moon Race, vol. 4, pp. 507–508. According to another version of events, traceable to Aleksey Yeliseyev, the computer was functioning correctly, but the crew turned it off because they did not trust its recommendations; see Rex Hall and David J. Shayler, Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft (Chichester: Springer/Praxis, 2003), p. 293; Newkirk, Almanac of Soviet Manned Space Flight, p. 213. Valentina Ponomareva and Viktor Przhiyalkovskiy also discuss this episode in their interviews in this collection.
See Mikhail Burdayev, “Application of Hodograph Method to Calculation of Time of Transfer in a Central Gravitational Field,” Cosmic Research 47:2 (2009): 185–190.
Space Science Board, Science in Space (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, 1961).
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© 2014 Slava Gerovitch
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Gerovitch, S. (2014). Test Cosmonaut Mikhail Burdayev. In: Voices of the Soviet Space Program. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481795_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481795_11
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