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Wiki Wanderings: The Last Soviet
On this date in 1994, Sergei Krikalev, a former USSR cosmonaut, took off on NASA's space shuttle as part of shuttle mission STS-60.
Krikalev had been on the space station Mir when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is where the missions were launched from, wound up in independent Kazakhstan rather than Russia. As part of the political wrangling, independent Russia offered a Kazakhstani cosmonaut a place on an upcoming mission, but he wasn't experienced enough, and the guy who would have relieved Krikalev got bumped. Krikalev didn't want to abandon Mir, so he stayed for twice as long as originally planned, a total of 311 days.
On a 2005 mission to the ISS, he would set the record for longest total duration in space (he's since been surpassed and is now third).
Why am I just learning about this, also where is the thinly-veiled speculative fictionalization.
Krikalev had been on the space station Mir when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is where the missions were launched from, wound up in independent Kazakhstan rather than Russia. As part of the political wrangling, independent Russia offered a Kazakhstani cosmonaut a place on an upcoming mission, but he wasn't experienced enough, and the guy who would have relieved Krikalev got bumped. Krikalev didn't want to abandon Mir, so he stayed for twice as long as originally planned, a total of 311 days.
On a 2005 mission to the ISS, he would set the record for longest total duration in space (he's since been surpassed and is now third).
Why am I just learning about this, also where is the thinly-veiled speculative fictionalization.