“I am Argon”: 100th anniversary of the birth of the legend of astronautics Georgy Beregovoy
“I am Argon”. This callsign sounded from orbit in the fall of 1968. On the new Soyuz-3 spacecraft, for the first time, docking with another spacecraft was performed manually by Georgy Beregovoy. He was the only cosmonaut to go through the Great Patriotic War. Today, twice the Hero of the Soviet Union would have turned 100 years old. The correspondent of “MIR 24” Igor Naymushin learned about the legend of aviation and cosmonautics.
This was the first and only flight of Georgy Beregovoy into orbit. In the fall of 1968, he spent almost three days in space on the new Soyuz-3. For the first time, he had to perform a difficult docking with another ship in manual mode. But it was even more difficult to get together mentally. After all, the new Soyuz program was failing. The first unmanned ship exploded, the other two did not start, the fourth with Vladimir Komarov crashed. But Beregovoi was not used to retreating. He flew, despite the great risk, and carried out the experiment entrusted to him in space. Beregovoy did everything he could. But then it was not possible to dock with Soyuz-2. But his experience turned out to be invaluable – the engineers realized that it was impossible to dock manually in the shadow of the Earth and on the first orbit. The cosmonaut was dissatisfied with his work, but the management thought otherwise. His mission was called heroic and Beregovoy was awarded the second Gold Star.
Aviation and Cosmonautics Legend: 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Georgy Beregovoy
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“Intelligent, charming, handsome, test pilot, Hero of the Great Patriotic War, who fought for independence. I never thought that I would work directly under his subordination, ”said the 28th Soviet cosmonaut, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, head of the Yu. Yu. A. Gagarin from 1991 to 2003, Petr Klimuk.
At that time, Georgy Beregovoy was the oldest cosmonaut. He was 47 years old. In addition, he is the only front-line soldier who ascended into space. 186 sorties during the war, including on the Il-2 flying tank. Three times he was knocked down, but he always returned to his own. In 1944, the first star of the Hero of the Soviet Union appeared on his chest.
“The plane is on fire, the shooter says that the boots are already smoking, but there is no need to jump over the occupied territory, so we flew over and jumped out when the car was already over the neutral strip,” said the son of Georgy Beregovoy, associate professor of the Moscow Aviation Institute Viktor Beregovoy about one of the sorties.
An outstanding and fearless test pilot, he put many aviation developments on the wing. For almost 15 years he was the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center and brought up a whole galaxy of space explorers. An interesting exhibit is carefully kept in the museum of the center – a jackhammer, donated by Donetsk miners to Beregovoy. And he grew up in Donbass.
“Georgy Timofeevich Beregovoy was the first of the cosmonauts to report from space, he worked as a correspondent. Here is such a symbolic gift – a golden pen – he received from his fellow countrymen, ”noted the guide of the museum of the Yu.A. Gagarina Vera Kovalenko.
Georgy Beregovoy has always remained a Soviet man. Even when he had heart problems, he refused to be operated on in Germany. And he would hardly have acted differently – he was faithful to his country until the last days.
