An astronaut is one of the most dangerous professions available to modern man. An astronaut is a person who sits in a small capsule on a bomb the size of a 15-story building and is fully aware of the drama of this situation. Any wrong action in flight will kill you, and to understand which action will be wrong, the astronauts and ground support team spend days training and testing systems.
But in absolute numbers, astronautics does not look like that.
Over more than 60 years of manned spaceflight history (at the time of the launch of Galactic 03 on September 8, 2023), 375 manned space flights have been completed. There are only 5 known incidents that resulted in casualties. All occurred in the Earth’s atmosphere during takeoff or landing. Not a single person died in space. Let me remind you that space begins above the Karman line. It’s 100 km or 60 miles.
The youngest cosmonaut is German Titov (USSR). He took off on his first flight at the age of 25 years 10 months 26 days. The flight took place on August 6-7, 1961 on the Vostok-2 ship.
The oldest astronaut is John Glenn Jr. (USA). At the time of the Discovery shuttle launch on October 29, 1998, he was 77 years, 3 months, and 11 days old.
The youngest female cosmonaut is Valentina Tereshkova. At the time of launch, she was 26 years 3 months 11 days old.
The oldest woman is US astronaut Barbara Morgan. She took off on August 8, 2007, at the age of 55 years, 8 months, and 12 days.
The cosmonaut who spent the most time in orbit is Russian doctor Valery Polyakov. His record of 437 days has still not been broken. He spent all this time on board the Russian orbital station Mir.
The record for cumulative time spent in space was long held by Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev (803 days over six flights) but was surpassed in 2015 by Gennady Padalka with 879 days over five space flights.
The record for the longest solo space flight by a woman, 328 days, belongs to Christina Koch.
The longest solo flight was made by Russian cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky, who spent 4 days and 23 hours alone in space from June 14 to 19, 1963.
Image credit:
https://www.theatlantic.com
https://www.oldest.org
