Through hardship to the stars

A capricious astronaut arrived on Mir
The Americans' shift change began with troubles
The commander of the American reusable spacecraft Endeavor, Terrence Wilcutt, who successfully docked his shuttle to the Mir orbital complex on Saturday, nevertheless caused specialists to worry: the docking compartment turned out to be depressurized.

It took half an hour for specialists on Earth to understand this situation. It turned out that the depressurization occurred due to an error by the shuttle crew - the air valves in the docking compartment were not closed. As a result, the handshake between the two crews in orbit had to be postponed by half an hour. And the Mir complex lost almost a hundredth of the atmosphere (3 cubic meters out of 400).
The Russian flight directors did not fail to reproach the American crew for their oversight. The Americans responded immediately: astronaut Andrew Thomas, who arrived on the shuttle and would work on Mir for 139 days, suddenly announced that the Russian Falcon spacesuit specially made for him (intended for emergency escape from the station) was too small for him. Although during the many months of preparation for the flight at the Russian Cosmonaut Training Center, the American did not express such complaints.
The Russian mission control center regarded Andrew Thomas's statement as a "whim", and deputy flight director Viktor Blagov even advised the astronaut to deal with the inconveniences steadfastly, "in the Russian way." Nevertheless, it was decided to leave Thomas “just in case” with the larger space suit of David Wolfe, who, having completed his shift on Mir, returns to Earth. “Now Andrew Thomas will have two spacesuits, both of them in good condition and absolutely usable,” a Kommersant correspondent was told at the MCC. And they expressed the hope that there would be no more “whims” on the part of the American astronaut.
Meanwhile, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Russian-French crew is now spending the “extreme” (cosmonauts never use the word “last”) days before the launch, scheduled for January 29. Talgat Musabaev, Nikolai Budarin (who will work with Thomas in orbit for four months) and Leopold Ayars completed pre-launch training yesterday: according to the training schedule, in the time remaining before launch, they are entitled to rest, which will be disturbed only by medical supervision and a visit to the sauna (necessary to maintain optimal weight). This morning, at 5.00 (according to a tradition established since the time of Sergei Korolev and impeccably observed to this day), the Soyuz-U launch vehicle with the Soyuz TM-27 spacecraft was removed from the installation and testing building to the launch complex , called "Gagarinsky" at the cosmodrome. Now the final stage of preparation for the launch will begin at Baikonur.

EVGENY Kommersant-Fyodorov

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 11 dated January 27, 1998, p. 2