Valentina Leonidovna Ponomareva Biography

As a child, she did not know who she wanted to become, but tried on herself such “heroic” professions as a pilot, a polar researcher, a sailor, and a geologist. She wanted to achieve something very significant. At school, Valentina was loved by literature and her teacher, seeing the girl's outstanding philological abilities, urgently advised her to choose literature with her profession. But in those years, public opinion prevailed that exclusively people who create equipment are engaged in a standing business.

Humanitarian professions were less valued. And Valentina also wanted to be “at the very forefront of science and technology”, but she could not determine the area of ​​technology, which would be interesting to her. Nevertheless, Valentina Kovalevskaya studied perfectly, received five not only in literature, but also in physics and mathematics. In the tenth grade, the Moscow Aviation Institute of the MAI, whipping over the school in which Valentina studied, organized a parachute circle in it.

Valentina Kovalevskaya also signed up in him. In winter, they studied the theory associated with the landing parachute PD, and in the summer Valentina and his girlfriend - the only one of the entire group - made their first jump. This jump turned the life of Valentina. She realized that she wanted to study only in the MAI. By that time, Valentina had already entered the Engineering Institute, and the acceptance of statements in the MAI was over, but since she graduated from a school with a gold medal, she still managed to transfer to the MAI.

Valentina Leonidovna immediately signed up for the airborne club for the aircraft department. The girls were not taken there, but persistently moving around the "authorities", she managed to achieve her to be accepted. The instructor in the group was a former military pilot Nikolai Novator. Then flights with an instructor and independent flights began. Chkalov in Tushino, and there began to fly on a new plane, Yak Valentina Leonidovna Kovalevskaya, too, had a chance to participate in these parades.

In her books, she recalls that she flew with rapture all her student years, and studied almost in absentia at the institute: she rarely went to a lecture, and passed every spring session from behind parades in the fall. Nevertheless, starting from the first year, Valentine participated in a scientific circle called “High -rise Circle”, led by Oleg Viktorovich Gurko, an enthusiast of the idea of ​​a person’s flight into space, the comrade -in -arms of Mikhail Klavdievich Tikhonravov.

In this circle, students of the aircraft and motorist faculties were engaged in the study of astronomy, the works of Tsiolkovsky, the theory of reactive movement and many other issues related to space flights. The theme of the circle was unspoken because in those years the missiles were considered exclusively as a combat weapon, and the idea of ​​space flights was considered harmful fantasy.

Many students of this circle became specialists of the rocket and space industry eventually. And Valentina found there good friends with whom she maintained relations all her life. At the end of the Institute, Valentina Kovalevskaya received a diploma of a mechanical engineer of liquid-reactive engines-a LRC with honors. The topic of the diploma project was called the "nuclear missile engine." The queen, but it was not very convenient for her to travel from Moscow to the sublips, because she was already married and expected the child.

And then Kruzhkovtsy's friends invited her to issue a transfer to the Department of Applied Mathematics of the Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences now the Institute of Applied Mathematics named after Keldysh, the director of which was Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh. As a young specialist, she came to the department for theoretical physicists, considered the tasks in nuclear physics, and later worked as a programmer for a computer “Strela”.

Once, at the New Year's institute evening, one of the colleagues of Valentina Leonidovna, V. Egorov, knowing about her love for aviation, asked if she wanted to fly into space. Valentina Leonidovna Ponomareva replied that she would like, but at the same time did not take this conversation seriously. Nevertheless, the colleagues of V. Ponomareva knew that women would receive women in the detachment of astronauts, and therefore V.

Egorov urgently advised her to write to M. Keldysh about her desire, which she did. Keldysh talked with V. Ponomareva, and she was informed that it was necessary to go through the medical board for the selection in the first women's group of astronauts. The medical board was held in the Central Research Aviation Hospital of the Central Executive Committee and included an extensive survey program with different specialists; vestibular research; tests in the centrifuge, baroacer, etc.

Then there was a mandate commission for the impeccability of the biography. In the end, five people were gained in the first female group: V. Tereshkov, V. Ponomarev, I. Solovyov, T. Kuznetsov and Zh. All of them were drafted into the army for military service. The last of the group on April 12, the training program for the flight, lasted eight months, arrived at the Center for the Training of Cosmonauts V.

Ponomarev. She was the same as in men, no concessions were provided for women.The main task was medical and biological training, that is, the preparation of future astronauts for the impact of space flight factors such as overload, noise, vibration, closed limited space and weightlessness. In those years, space medicine was a very young branch of science, there were many questions in front of it: in the first flights it was necessary to find out how the astronaut’s body could endure these factors, whether a person could work in space.

Every day the girls took a medical examination, then theoretical classes, training on simulators and stands, physical training, testing on a centrifuge, in a thermal chamber, etc. began. Business was modeled during the flight of the aircraft along the parabolic trajectory. The duration of zero gravity was about 40 seconds on each hill. In one flight, the plane managed to make three or four slides.

The flight training of V. Ponomarev took a moment in her book, she recalled that she especially remembered and gave many happy minutes the flights on this reactive fighter behind the clouds that she could fly so for hours, because the clouds were bizarrely beautiful and their shape was never repeated. The last chord was parachute preparation, which was held in October at a military airfield near Feodosia.

The girls performed on jumping with a delay in the opening of the parachute, including at night, on water and in special. The State Examination of the Women's Group of the Cosmonauts detachment passed on November of the year. Everyone received excellent grades and were transferred from cosmonauts to the permanent composition of the CPC to the position of “Cosmonaut” with the assignment of the military rank “Junior Lieutenant”.

A “mixed” flight was planned: a man was supposed to fly on the Vostok-5 ship, and a woman on the Vostok-6 ship. The decision on the appointment of commanders was made by the State Commission and declared the astronauts on the eve of the departure at the cosmodrome.

The commission included M. Keldysh, S. Korolev, N. Kamanin and other leaders of the space program. At a meeting of the commission, it was announced that the commanders of the spaceships were appointed by V. Bykovsky reserve B. Volynov and V. Tereshkov, the reserve I. Solovyov and V. Korolev turned to all members of the female group of the cosmonauts detachment, and said that they would still be in space.

Then he thought so. The girls were later explained that the next flights would be more difficult and interesting, but V. Ponomareva writes that even then she had a feeling that she would no longer have such a chance to visit in space. Of course, she was bitter, but ahead was ahead of the departure on the cosmodrome as an understudy. Evgeny Anatolyevich Karpov, the head of the Cosmonauts training center, talked with I.

Solovieva and V. Ponomareva individually and said that V. Tereshkov was chosen as a “contact” person, because after the flight, the first woman-cosmonaut would have to travel around the country and around the world, communicate with a large number of people. In addition, it was believed that the “man from the people” should have flew, and not from among the “employees”.

On the cosmodrome, they flew on the first of June. Ponomareva writes in his books that the day of checking the spacesuits of the ship commander and understudy was very difficult for her. S. Korolev approached her and did not ask anything, stood nearby, patted on the shoulder and left. Then it seemed to her that her fate did not take place. The next flight into space took place only after 19 years, when Svetlana Evgenievna Savitskaya flew into space as an astronaut-researcher.

Ponomareva, along with the rest of the girls from the first women's group of astronauts, remained in the cosmonauts detachment until the fall of the city of G. Korolev, and a few years later, the Voskhod program was closed, and in October of the year the female group was disbanded "due to the inability to use." During the service in the Cosmonauts detachment, V.

Ponomarev entered the adjuncture of the N. Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, and after a while, passed the candidate at least. As a specialty, she chose the dynamics of space flight.