Drawing in outer space. A. Leonov

The collection of the Tretyakov Gallery has been replenished with two space paintings: a test pilot, twice a Hero Soviet Union, the first person to walk into outer space, Alexey Leonov donated two of his works to the museum. It turned out that he had been interested in painting since childhood, and after school he even chose between flying and art school. The craving for the sky won, but he did not give up art, and painted even during that legendary flight

Leonov is not only a professional cosmonaut, but also a professional artist. In the same 1965, when Alexey Arkhipovich became the first person to cross the threshold of a ship into outer space, he was admitted to the Union of Artists. “I was accepted into the Union by Katenka Belashova (sculptor - website note), Plastov, Romadin - what great masters they were!.. I brought them my sketches,” says Leonov. “Before the flight, I thought a lot about what technique should be: paint in will not work in space, pastel will not work, watercolor will not work either. All that was left was a pencil. A "Tactics" pencil of medium hardness and good paper. I already knew from the stories of my comrades what I would see: a black sky, a blue Earth. And when I did the first works, they they began to say that my horizon does not bend like that. We argued for a long time - I measured it! I knew exactly how many degrees the arc should be! And only then Professor Lazarev judged us. He said: “Guys, what altitude did you fly at? ? - 300 kilometers, and he is at an altitude of 500 kilometers. Which means the sizes are all different!”

And around the Earth in the picture there is a blue belt of atmosphere. “The belt is exactly four degrees! Do you know how I measured it? I made a palette with the size of the Moon and calculated that the height of the belt was four times its size. I accurately determined the color using an anomaloscope, a device that determines a person’s color vision. According to science, I measured the time, which he made sketches. So the color of the Earth is not fictitious, but as it really is."

In the second painting, the astronaut artist depicted the aurora over the north pole. Flashes of green flame are visible above the horizon, but where the Moon is, red light suddenly appears. “We still don’t know where he’s from,” explained Alexey Arkhipovich.

“Then it was forbidden to make sketches of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft, but I did,” Leonov continued. “It was not much different from the Vostok - they only added a soft-design airlock chamber and a second engine. But in fact it was not "The new ship is just like the Vostok was, and remains the Vostok. Everything is absolutely in the details."

The astronaut also spoke about the difficulties he had to face during the flight. He was on the verge of death and still doesn’t remember how he coped with the situation. “I was attached to the ship with a halyard and had to pull it out of the airlock to go into space, and then collect it to go back. right hand I had a movie camera, and the second one I had to wind it up and attach it to hooks, and I don’t know how I did it. This is impossible! I went back not with my feet, but with my head first, and I had to turn around in this airlock, but the suit was inflated. I released the pressure valve without asking permission from the land, that is, I broke the law, but it made me feel better. I lost six liters of water in one day! So if anyone wants to lose weight, please go there!” Leonov concluded his story, gesturing to the sky.

Leonov's works are in the collection Dresden gallery, in Houston. In Russia, Leonov’s paintings are kept in museums in two cities: 17 works in Gagarin and another 70 in Kemerovo, where the artist has been running a regional children’s art school for 15 years, the only school in Russia for children with musculoskeletal disorders.

After the ceremonial part, Leonov toured the exhibition and spoke on the occasion about his acquaintance with Pablo Picasso. Through the Russian-French artist Nadezhda-Khodasevich Leger, the cosmonaut agreed on dinner with the cubist. “He wasn’t a great artist. The Rose Period, the Blue Period, Guernica, and then he started doing all this nonsense,” Leonov said. “When we had dinner, he spent a long time gnawing on trout bones, and I thought, why is he so greedy? ? Then he brought clay, pressed this skeleton into it, and an hour later the fired form was ready. Picasso filled it with bronze and that’s it! The work is ready! And everyone around them admires: “Oh, how great! How brilliant!" - It's a shame!"

The ceremony took place at the “Thaw” exhibition, which operates in the museum building on Krymsky Val. The choice of location is symbolic: one of the sections, called “Space - Atom,” talks about the exploration of the sky, including Leonov’s contribution to it. Here you can see documentary footage of young Leonov drawing landscapes while preparing for the flight. IN Tretyakov Gallery noted that all legal formalities for the transfer of works to the collection were observed, and now the paintings will become valuable exhibits, since they reflect important point history of space exploration and the 20th century in general.

In addition to the “Thaw” exhibition, the ceremony of handing over the paintings was timed to coincide with the premiere of the film, which tells about the legendary flight of Leonov and Belyaev and the cosmonaut’s spacewalk. The main roles in the film were played by Evgeny Mironov and Konstantin Khabensky.

Alexey Leonov, having buried nine brothers and sisters, becoming the last in his family, is very homesick for his homeland and his departed relatives. Today, the cosmonaut who arrived in Kemerovo opened an exhibition of his paintings “Space and Earth Landscapes” at the regional Museum of Fine Arts.

Among the 70 paintings there is one, inconspicuous, but piercing and... explaining why an ordinary boy, more than half a century ago, decided to become and BECAME an astronaut. In this picture, 77-year-old Alexey Arkhipovich depicted his father’s house - in the village of Listvyanka in the north of Kuzbass.

In the picture, a simple Siberian parents' hut was literally covered with a canopy of the sky. This low, hugging sky is so close,” museum employees told KP. – As everyone who freezes in front of the picture says, it called Alexei Arkhipovich in his childhood to become a pilot and cosmonaut.

Indeed, little Lenya, a boy with the heart of an artist and dreams of travel, felt the call of heaven for the first time there, in Listvyanka. And he became an astronaut. In the large Leonov family, as Raisa Arkhipovna Ganicheva, the sister of the famous cosmonaut who was the first in the world to go into outer space, said several years ago, Alexey was called “son of heaven.”

On my last visit to Listvyanka two years ago

the astronaut ran to his father's house at a run

Two years ago, having arrived in Kemerovo on the anniversary of the death of his last and most beloved sister, Raya, Alexey Arkhipovich, having visited her grave, hurried to Listvyanka.

I lit candles in the church for my entire departed family - for my long-dead mother - Evdokia Minaevna, father - Arkhip Alekseevich, for my nine sisters and brothers.

The famous cosmonaut is still strong in appearance, still humorous, lively, but his eyes are sad, recalls Vladimir Toroschin from the Tisulsky Department of Culture. “But as soon as the fields of his native village of Listvyanka appeared, the village, his father’s house itself, to which we drove up, Alexey Arkhipovich seemed to native land received! TO parents' house he didn't walk, he ran!

After all, the old hut in which Leonov was born and grew up until the family moved to the city is still the same. The same two tiny rooms where the Leonovs lived so harmoniously when they were all happy and alive. Everybody is alive! The same mountain ash at the gate.

In this corner there was my cradle, and there, let’s go, I’ll show you my favorite stream,” he led his wife and companions from the regional center of Leonov. With difficulty, he was able to find his stream, which, like the astronaut, was then 75 years old.

Sister Raya was the first to notice the gift of an artist in the future cosmonaut.

The last time the cosmonaut saw his beloved sister Raya alive was six months before her death. He was only able to stop by for the evening. And he amazed her by remembering the bread with which she saved him when he was 3 years old.

Oh, we had a very difficult life then, in 1937,” Raisa Arkhipovna recalled that meeting with Alexei. “We haven’t seen bread for six months.” We ate only quinoa and potatoes.

I'm Lesha, 14 years older. He was 3, I was 17. All my life I was his most beloved sister and nanny. I remember the chairman of the collective farm brought a bag of flour, at that time of famine! And where did you get it?! They baked bread in secret. I worked in an office, recording workdays. In general, they gave me a loaf and told me to hide it, carry it home with my backside, through the gardens.

I’m running, the bread under my shirt is burning. Lenka met me in the garden. He runs up: “Lyadya (that’s how he said “Paradise”), but you’re not there? (“You don’t have any bread?”) Where did you remember the word “bread” from? I handed him the loaf. How happy he was!

My father then cut the loaf into tiny pieces and gave it to all the children, but not a piece for himself. And he gave the biggest piece to Lesha.

This saving loaf inspired the Leonovs and little Lesha with hope that the hunger would soon end and life would get better. Not right away, but that’s what happened. And little Lenya grew up and glorified the Leonov family throughout the world.

... On their last meeting with Raya, Alexey Arkhipovich gave her an album with photographs of his paintings.

If his love for the sky and space had not overcome his love for drawing, Lenya would have become a great artist. I remember he was little and he drew all the time, and it was very similar. It happened that one of our people would swear at him, which again - in dreams, and I defended: “Let him draw, Leni has a gift from God,” recalled Raisa Arkhipovna.

Most of all to her, from latest collection pictures of my brother - an astronaut, I liked the picture - a man in outer space, and although she couldn’t see her face, she knew: Alexei had portrayed himself.

Fellow countrymen asked the astronaut to paint an icon

In Tisula and Listvyanka every official visit Leonov in Kuzbass is welcome to visit him.

And he not only tells his homeland all the new details about “his” space, but also teaches the children from the “art” to draw.

In this painting, cosmonaut and artist Alexei Leonov, as his sister said, depicted himself, the first person in the world to go into outer space. Photo: Larisa MAKSIMENKO

In his paintings there are earthly and space landscapes. And recently, fellow countrymen at a meeting, remembering that in the temple Holy Mother of God The Three-Handed Church in Tisul laid a brick of the cosmonaut’s name in the wall, they asked Alexey Arkhipovich to paint an icon for the temple.

Alexey Arkhipovich, a believer, bought a personalized brick, giving a whole thousand rubles for it, recalls the rector of the church, Father Maxim. – My heart trembled when Alexey Arkhipovich signed “Leonov A.A.”, kissed the brick, which was in the dust, in the work, and handed it to the mason. The brick lay firmly in the masonry. And Alexey Arkhipovich stepped heavily to the side and put on dark glasses. He didn't want people to see the emotions that overwhelmed him.

And at the request of fellow countrymen - to paint an icon for their homeland. Alexey Arkhipovich replied that he dreams about it, but “I’m not worthy!”, for now. He does not yet dare to take up icon painting, because he explained to his fellow countrymen: “There was a period when everyone everywhere asked me after the flight: “Have you seen God in space?”, and I answered: “No.”

The Leonov family has heavenly protection

It is no coincidence that our fellow countryman Alexei Arkhipovich has so many talents. As Raisa Arkhipovna, the cosmonaut’s sister, told KP in her last interview:

Our parents met in church and fell in love at first sight, but they had to defend their feelings. Both relatives were against their choice. Relatives on her father’s side accused: “Evdokia, although smart, graduated from parochial school with straight A’s, is not a beauty. Besides, she’s poor.” Relatives on the maternal side convinced: “Arkhip is too handsome guy, and the way he sings, the way he dances, everyone looks at him, unreliable. And he's rich." But Evdokia firmly stated:

Either I’ll marry Arkhipochka, or go to a monastery!

And so Arkhip and Evdokia got married. Moreover, Evdokia’s parents were the first to surrender, including the young people who accepted them to live with them.

Our mother and father’s love for each other was so strong, and the marriage was so successful that my mother’s father, grandfather Minai, later told us, his grandchildren, more than once: “I adopted Arkhip, I have an excellent son, Arkhipushka.” And then mom and dad, one after another, gave birth to us, 12 children,” recalled Raisa Arkhipovna. – Two died in infancy. Ten grew up talented and reliable - Shura, Lyuba, Raya, Nina, Nadya, Tonya, Petya, Lesha, Vera and Borya. But the most talented was Lesha.

He was named Alexey Arkhipovich in honor of his father - Arkhip, grandfather - Alexey and St. Alexey. After all, when Lesha was born in 1934, it was the holiday of Alexei - God's man. Then church holidays They haven’t celebrated it for a long time, everyone was already atheists. IN rural church There was a club and dance. But the mother of the future cosmonaut said:

Alexei, man of God, this name is most suitable for my son. I feel it in my heart.

And I was not mistaken.

Alexei Leonov was destined for both a fantastic space journey and fantastic luck when, for the first time in the world, he went into outer space, Leonov could not return - the airlock doors were not allowed in or when the automatic control failed during landing.

And Alexey Leonov and his brothers and sisters inherited amazing karma from Minai’s grandfather. Grandfather Minai in his youth, working at a factory in Central Russia, saved a huge demonstration of workers from execution. He learned that along the street, where strikers would flock from all sides, machine guns would be installed on the roofs. And the strikers will be shot point blank. Grandfather Minai, unable to warn the workers himself, sent his daughter to ensure that the demonstrators changed their route.

And so he saved almost the entire city from execution. This human gratitude and God's favor helped him for a long time and was inherited by his descendants in Siberia.

The astronaut's father got into " public Enemies», but he was quickly rehabilitated

Already in Siberia, in Kuzbass in life big family The Leonovs also had a bad streak (Arkhip Leonov, the father of the then future cosmonaut, was declared an “enemy of the people” and imprisoned). But the streak ended with an unexpected miracle.

The Leonovs hid this family page all their lives from the jubilant country, which rocked cosmonaut Leonov in its arms. And they were amazed how this black mark did not prevent their Lesha from becoming an astronaut.

Our father was very competent, a jack of all trades. I remember they trained him to be a livestock specialist. And they gave him a bunch of positions: he is the manager of a sheep farm, he is responsible for the cows on the collective farm, and he is responsible for the pigs. And then the harvesting began. In addition, he was appointed to be in charge of the drying room - drying grain. It rains and rains. “Dad disappears on the dryer for days,” recalled the cosmonaut’s sister, Raisa Arkhipovna. - And then they resort to him: the best cow on the collective farm - Krasotka - cannot calve, she is dying. Father, let’s rush about: you can’t throw away the grain, and you need to save the cow. They persuaded him: “We will watch for you, run to Pretty Woman.”

The father of the future cosmonaut saved the beauty and the calf. But his shift workers dried out some of the grain at the dryer.

The grain was accepted at the elevator, everything was accepted.

But the denunciation went “to the top.”

And the father of the future cosmonaut, an honest man, told the visiting collective farm chairman about his worries about grain. The commission went to the elevator and found several roasted grains. Maybe not even Leonov’s. But the father of the future cosmonaut was convicted of sabotage.

There is a God – as soon as Alexei Leonov’s father was brought to the camp, he was immediately noticed. After all, an epidemic among pigs began in the camp farm. The camp authorities called prisoner Leonov, who was a livestock specialist in freedom, and not only asked, but begged him to save the pigs. Leonov defeated the epidemic. And three months later he was released to his family.

The Leonovs cried when Alexey flew into space

On March 18, 1965, when the whole country rejoiced - for the first time in the world, a man, a guy from Russia and Kuzbass - Alexei Leonov, went into outer space, the entire huge Leonov family cried.

“I, my parents, my sisters and brothers, we were all very afraid for Lesha,” recalled my sister, Raisa Arkhipovna. “They probably injected me as much as half a liter of glucose into a vein when they boarded the plane to fly to a meeting in the Kremlin. This is to bring me to my senses, to support my body... I thought of only one thing, if only Lesha would survive, if only he would be found sooner after landing. Although they reported that the cosmonauts were already relaxing at the government dacha, I couldn’t believe it.

My sister’s heart worried in vain. Raisa's companion on the plane from Kemerovo to Moscow was a pilot who took part in the search for cosmonauts Leonov and Belyaev.

He, and later Alexey himself, told Raisa Arkhipovna about the extreme landing.

After landing, when Lesha took off his spacesuit, he found himself waist-deep in water, so much flowed out of him. They sat down in the taiga, the frost was minus 21, he and Pavel Belyaev were both wet. They froze, poor things, right away. Lesha rammed the snow with his chest up to a dry birch tree nearby. There was a snowdrift the size of a man. “I chopped branches and lit a fire,” Raisa Arkhipovna was worried. “He also told Belyaev: “What kind of coffee do you like: hot or cold?” I put a tube of coffee near the fire, and it exploded. Left without coffee. They, wet, lasted almost three days. Until the lumberjacks came to them.

...The consequences of that extreme landing still affect the well-being of the legendary cosmonaut Alexei Leonov - his heart. But the great cosmonaut continues to travel a lot around the country, meeting people. And - to paint landscapes of Russia and his native Kuzbass, it is his homeland that gives him strength.

On a note

Where can you see paintings of the famous astronaut?

The exhibition “Space and Earth Painting by Alexei Leonov” is running at the Kemerovo Regional Museum fine arts on Sovetsky Avenue, 48. You can visit it any day except Monday

Presentation "Cosmonaut-artist. Alexey Leonov." "Art" 9th grade. On the topic "Art Anticipates the Future." The work of A. Leonov, who created a large number of paintings on the theme of space exploration.

Download:

Preview:

To use presentation previews, create a Google account and log in to it: https://accounts.google.com

Slide captions:

Cosmonaut-artist Alexey Leonov

Space and science-fiction painting A. Leonov, A Sokolov ALEXEY ARKHIPOVICH LEONOV Pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR, Major General of Aviation. Member of the CPSU since 1957. Born on May 30, 1934 in the village of Listvyanka Kemerovo region. The first flight into space was made on March 18-19, 1965, together with P.I. Belyaev. as co-pilot on the Voskhod-2 spacecraft. For the first time in the world Leonov A.A. went out of the spacecraft cabin into outer space and performed a number of experiments outside the ship. To perform a human spacewalk, the Voskhod-2 spacecraft was equipped with an airlock chamber. Medical and biological research was carried out, and some problems of space navigation were solved. For the first time, a spacecraft was launched using a manual control system. The second space flight took place on July 15-21, 1975 together with Kubasov V.N. on the Soyuz-19 spacecraft. This was the world's first joint flight of the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft and the American Apollo. The ships were docked for 44 hours. The crews moved from one ship to another, jointly performing scientific and technical experiments. A manned international laboratory, Soyuz-Apollo, was created in the orbit of an artificial Earth satellite - a prototype of future international orbital stations. A. Leonov created a large number of paintings on the theme of space exploration. Since the mid-60s, he has been a constant co-author of the science fiction artist A. Sokolov ANDREY KONSTANTINOVICH SOKOLOV Born in 1931. After graduating from the architectural institute in the mid-50s, he worked in his main specialty - as an architect. Since childhood, the future artist loved the science fiction of Jules Verne, Belyaev, Tsiolkovsky, and Bradbury. And he dedicated his first works in the genre of science fiction painting to Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451.” After the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite in 1957, all of A. Sokolov’s creative aspirations were devoted to the theme of space exploration. Some of his paintings are “mini-series”: we see the successive stages of the construction of a large manned space station in Earth’s orbit, we observe the first landing of people on the Moon, Venus, Mars, the satellites of the giant planets, together with the crews of photon rockets we rush to the stars. A huge number of works are devoted to the topic of real achievements of Soviet cosmonautics (it was only in 1981 that several works on the topic of American space exploration appeared in the album “Life Among the Stars”). Since the mid-60s, A. Sokolov’s constant co-author has been the USSR pilot-cosmonaut A. Leonov.

No perfect equipment can accurately convey what is seen in Space. Only human eye and the artist’s brush are able to convey to people the beauty of our Earth, revealed from a cosmic height... There are not many such people. There were them in the twentieth century. only three - who took the first cosmic step. And two of them are our compatriots: Gagarin, who first ascended into space orbit, and Leonov, the first to push off from the hatch into free flight, separated from hostile space only by the shell of a spacesuit... Among the cosmonauts there are no ordinary people at all. But not everyone is able to convey to others not a dispassionate photo report, but the feelings, emotions, mood that accompany entering a new environment for a person. It is unlikely that the picky commission that selected pilots from garrisons on a “principally new technology", first of all she assessed the artistic talents of the young pilot - it was much more important to her that the day before Alexey Leonov brilliantly landed the emergency MIG-15bis with the engine turned off.

ALEXEY ARKHIPOVICH LEONOV

SP turned out to be right. Already two generations of people have perceived space, first through the paintings of the artist A. A. Leonov, and only then through the television “picture”, which improves every year, but is not able to compete with the eye and hand of the artist... Although the impressions and sensations of Alexei Arkhipovich in the very moment of exit, and especially the return to the ship, was conveyed by profanity... The designers of the first extravehicular spacesuit made a mistake, and the flexibility of the inflated suit in a vacuum turned out to be less than designed. As a result, the hands came out of the gloves, the legs came out of the boots, and it became completely impossible to move, but it was necessary. "19-year-old Sergei Korolev in Gagarin's spacesuit." 1965. Drawing by A. Leonov on the dust jacket of the book “Psychological problems of interplanetary flight.”

The paintings of the artist A. A. Leonov are unique. It just so happens that our artists willingly paint native nature, no less willingly experiment with all sorts of unconventional styles, but extremely rarely (and often ineptly) depict the “second” nature - man-made. Maybe this happens because this very man-made nature– you need to know technology, but most artists (as well as “humanists” in general) treat such knowledge with disdain?

SPACE AND MAN

in the paintings of Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov,

pilot-cosmonaut, twice Hero of the USSR.

The Vostok spaceship is a symbol of the space age. The world's first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew into space on it on April 12, 1961.

The first Soviet artificial communications satellite, Molniya-1, launched in 1965, resembles a fantastic flower or a space station from films about the distant future. Its giant “petals” are solar panels, which are always oriented towards the Sun, and parabolic antennas are always oriented towards the Earth. The satellite is designed to relay television programs and long-distance telephone and telegraph communications.
By the way, in 1967, one of the satellites of this series was the first in the world to obtain a color image of the Earth.

Meteorological satellites have radically increased the reliability of weather forecasts, made it possible to detect cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes at the stages of their formation, measure the direction and speed of their spread, select optimal routes for fishing and merchant ships, and also determine the boundaries of ice cover in the Arctic regions along the North Sea route routes, get information about precipitation areas and much more. Satellites are able to provide timely warning of the occurrence and dangerous movement of a tsunami. It is difficult to estimate the number of lives saved thanks to weather satellites.In the picture: METEOROLOGICAL SYSTEM "METEOR".

The first person to see seventeen days and nights in one day was pilot-cosmonaut German Titov, Yuri Gagarin's backup, who in August 1962 made a daily flight on the Vostok-2 spacecraft. During this flight I saw Titov "TERMINATOR"- the boundary of day and night, constantly changing in space at every turn of the flight. All the astronauts describe this spectacle as unforgettable!

For an astronaut, a day - an hour and a half - is the time it takes a satellite spacecraft to orbit the Earth. During an earthly day, astronauts encounter 17 cosmic dawns.
In Leonov's painting " NIGHT GLOW OF THE ATMOSPHERE HALO" the ship flies over the night Earth. Through the Veil dark clouds reddish city lights are visible. And on the horizon, behind which the Sun is hidden, a rainbow stripe of the earth’s atmosphere appeared. And above all this is the Moon embedded in the black velvet of outer space and the brilliant stars.

Alexey Leonov was the first cosmonaut to notice in space and then depict the moment when the fiery red disk of the Sun just rose from the horizon. An unusually beautiful halo appeared above the sun for a short time, its shape reminiscent of an old Russian kokoshnik. The cosmonaut made the first sketch of this drawing with colored pencils on the page of the logbook on the Voskhod-2 spacecraft.

For the first time in the world, as a result of manual docking of manned spacecraft in 1969, a Soviet experimental space station was assembled and operated in the orbit of the Earth's satellite - a prototype of future large orbital stations.

And in 1975, Soviet and American ships docked in space. This first ever international international conference was called space program "SOYUZ" - "APOLLO". The commander of the Soyuz-19 spacecraft was Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov himself! During the six-day orbital flight of the Soyuz-19 spacecraft, joint rendezvous and docking means were experimentally carried out for the first time; docking of Soviet and American spacecraft, mutual transfers of cosmonauts from ship to ship, and joint research experiments were carried out. In preparation for this flight, Leonov learned in one year English language“from scratch” (he studied German at school)!
During the flight, the Soviet and American cosmonauts showed excellent interaction and mutual understanding, the tasks were carried out consistently and clearly, in a truly friendly atmosphere.

Today's astronautics cannot be imagined without working spacewalks by astronauts. And Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov was also the first to go into outer space! He proved the possibility of a person staying and working in conditions of weightlessness and vacuum.

After this, even transitions of astronauts from one spacecraft to another through outer space became possible!

Every space flight, every program is unique. They have one thing in common: final stage flight - descent to Earth.

The spaceship leaves its orbit. The atmosphere is becoming increasingly dense. Jets of plasma engulf the ship from all sides. The temperature on the surface of the capsule rises to 10 thousand degrees - higher than on the surface of the Sun. The outer coating melts and evaporates. A giant “cosmic drop” is approaching the Earth... Small “meteors” - shot off ship structures - can be seen burning up in the atmosphere.

There is no such thing as a “meaningless waste of time” in astronautics. Every second spent by an astronaut or satellite in orbit makes a huge contribution to world science. We all use millions of things in everyday life that were created thanks to astronautics and impossible without it! Even the fact that you are now reading this article in the INTERNET magazine ZATEEVO and chatting on your mobile phone is 100% the merit of astronautics.

And perhaps very soon, even the most fantastic paintings of Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov will be repeated in amateur photographs of space tourists by schoolchildren.

“My class and I flew on vacation to the star Beta in the constellation Lyra!”

"Ewwww! This is an excursion for kids! Here we are we're flying observe the shifts in spectra in nebula No. 443! "

What am I talking about and what am I talking about? I love reading memoirs, last years, most often, on space theme. After reading a certain number of books, enough information accumulates to see the same events through the eyes of different people. And then suddenly not only interesting additional details, but also facts from some memoirs contradict facts in other memoirs, and often official publications in the Soviet media. Or facts that are greatly distorted modern media. For example, in famous book Boris Chertok’s “Rockets and People”, there is also a text that raises questions when compared with other memoirs. Reading a book recently American writer“Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969–1989” I discovered a number of “inaccuracies” that did not in any way affect the quality of the book, and were curiosities from the point of view of a Russian person, because turned out to be translation errors from Russian into English, and I managed to trace one bright one to a book by another American author who made an erroneous translation from Russian.

/** This is cat only. The long intro that wasn't planned doesn't end here. Be careful - a lot of letters. */
Who made a mistake, who quoted - it doesn’t matter. The authors trust the books of other authors, media reports of that time, the memory of participants in the events and often cannot verify the accuracy of the facts presented. Boris Chertok included in his book the memories of his colleagues and quotes from their books and, for example, about “Venuses” he copied a verbatim fragment of text from the book by O.G. Ivanovsky “Start tomorrow at 9” because Chertok himself did not participate in these events.

Nevertheless, the memories of real participants in the events, supported by documents, photographs and film materials, are valuable and, often the only, memories of some “insignificant” events on a historical scale, but no less interesting for history buffs. Here I will allow one more remark - you should not blindly trust Soviet newsreels and photographs of the Soviet era. What I will demonstrate in the photo from the memoirs:

This photo has nothing to do with the lunar control center in Simferopol - it is easy to check by finding photos and videos from other angles, that the unit at the back is the receiving pressure chamber of the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry named after. IN AND. Vernadsky Academy of Sciences, where the lunar soil delivered by the Luna-16 AS from the Sea of ​​Plenty was placed. After which a memorable photo was taken.

Test on knowledge of the history of astronautics

Who's really in the photo? The signature contains an error. (Photo clickable)

we should congratulate our Russian colleagues on the discovery of a new planet. It certainly wasn't Venus!
(We must congratulate our Russian colleagues on the opening new planet. It definitely wasn’t Venus!)

Facebook. Photo by Emily Carney

Photos can be freely distributed. So to speak, so that historical artifacts do not disappear national history. For approximately the same purposes, “digital archeology” was from my articles.
Subsequent research into “what did I re-photograph from him” led to funny finds that I will introduce you to. The starting point is this quote:

A similar photo did not gain such popularity even in Russia. Although it was made by the Soviet automatic station Zond-7 on August 11, 1969. In fact, it was a device based on the Soyuz spacecraft and its flight to the Moon was part of the “lunar race” program. But the race was lost, so, apparently, the results of this work were not particularly publicized.

Photo sources

Did it seem like something? And so?

And for the full collection:

We, without being witnesses to the events, undertake to judge our ancestors based on secondary materials that have survived to this day. Not alive in that era, we undertake to judge without having full picture the world by modern standards, without absolutely understanding the emotions, reasons and actions of our ancestors. Paying attention to details that they did not consider important and significant, and completely ignoring things that were important to them. Therefore, it is interesting to ask the opinion of the participants in the events themselves, while this is possible.

Announcement

And so we return to the topic. My narrator’s name is Sergei Pavlovich (hereinafter in the text I will shorten it to S.P.) and once he provided the transmission of reports from Central Television from two Centers for Deep Space Communications (CDKS) (NIP-10 and NIP-16 in the media were called either CDKS or MCC, then simply Center - depending on the context, and in no case was information about their real location allowed). Here is an example of a fragment of an article about the Lunokhod in Ogonyok, where the journalist reported unclassified information about the real location:

... at the Center for Deep Space Communications. Although the dull bare steppe stretching to the very horizon is only barely dusted with snow, New Year trees are appearing here more and more often. Yes, in general, these are not fir trees, but small pines.

The huge eight-headed receiving antennas trembled and smoothly raised their bowls. It became quiet in the spacious halls of the Center, so that it seemed as if the blue-green snakes of pulsating signals on numerous screens, to which the attention of the operators were now given, began to speak. The station's creators bent over the graphs and columns of numbers, checking their calculations with the data displayed on special displays. Only the frivolous morning chirping of birds was mixed with rare short messages over the public address line and, with a purely earthly note, burst into the strict concentration of the premises of the Center, where the peace of distant Venus reigned today.

Last summer, this building looked like this (I specifically planned to come here to see what had changed there after the events, the anniversary of which was celebrated yesterday. Externally, new antennas appeared on the territory):

The remote control glows with multi-colored lights—blue and green pulses run across the oscilloscope screens.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” some device clicks like a metronome. Slowly time goes by. Expectation. Concerned faces.
Tick ​​tock, tick tock. The signal takes a long, long time. After all, he has to run 78 million kilometers. It will take 4 minutes 20 seconds... Yes! Eat!

In the room where the journalists sit, there is a long screen covering the entire wall. It shows a diagram of the station's entry into the planet's atmosphere. Below, on the left, on the outermost screen of the oscilloscope, the blue diamond of the signal from the on-board radio transmitter pulsates. At the top, numbers are quickly changing, counting down the seconds and minutes of Moscow time. “According to updated data, the time of entry into the atmosphere is 7 hours 58 minutes 44 seconds,” announced over the public address line. “The estimated time of signal loss is 8 hours 02 minutes.”

Hooray! There is a signal. It was as if a sea of ​​smiles spilled across the room. Everyone is happy. Congratulate each other. The signal is strong and good. It is only five times weaker than what a directional antenna provided. Now the blue beam of an oscilloscope is recording information that astronomers have dreamed of for centuries. Radio signals will inform the Earth about the pressure, density, temperature of the atmosphere itself mysterious planet Solar system.

And this is what this “neighboring control center” actually looked like, from where Soviet spacecraft were controlled - (description from the words of S.P.) a fragment of a hall with a number of operator workstations along the wall, a computer terminal (seemingly for “Minsk-22”) and on the wall there is a large digital display (the same Nixie indicators, as they say now) with the parameters of the spacecraft. The photo was taken after the work was completed. That’s why in the photo everything is turned off and in the frame there is only a television employee at his remote control (a microphone and a video monitor are visible). This is the only photo of the “Center hall” that I know of.

In 1975, the Mission Control Center near Moscow came into operation. In the fall of 1977, the new Salyut-6 station (DOS No. 5) was already controlled from the new MCC. From this station the stage of regular long-term manned flights began in astronautics. The flight control service was reorganized. Instead of a semi-partisan gathering, similar to the Cossack army, consisting of several hundred multi-tribal specialists traveling to the Black Sea, a professional service was created with a clear structure of responsibility, division of functions among stations, ships and shifts.

Formation professional service flight control, begun by Tregub, was completed with great enthusiasm by Alexey Eliseev. He is credited with creating a clear structure and strict liability scheme at the stage of preparation and conduct of the flight. GOGU as a temporary interdepartmental organization gradually died out. Since 1974, its functions were actually performed by the flight director - a cosmonaut, a representative of TsKBEM, NPO Energia. The first was Alexey Eliseev. In 1986, Eliseev was replaced in this post by Valery Ryumin, and from 1988 to the present, Vladimir Solovyov has been heading the service.

The first generation of managers recalled the Evpatoria control center as lost heaven. Black Sea, kilometers of wild sandy beaches, steppe covered in spring scarlet poppies, cheap dry wine, grapes, fruits, caressing sea breeze - all this Crimean romance was becoming a thing of the past.

S.P. also remembers this time at the MCC with a lot of local alcohol and... female attention(corrected by censorship), if we reduce his stories about what business travelers did in their free time from work to two words. A business trip to a resort, essentially. Sometimes for a couple of months.

/** This is where the introduction ends, which was not planned. Let's move on to the actual material itself. Thank you for being with us. Don't switch! */
Artifacts S.P. - these are several photographs that have survived to this day. The rest was lost because... was not particularly appreciated.

For weeks, working in the control center (in in this case meaning Evpatoria), often crossed paths with the astronauts and, naturally, took autographs. It is interesting that the “Central Television studio at the MCC” was where the broadcasts were sent to Central Television in Moscow and further throughout the USSR: interviews with cosmonauts, specialists, the latest space news, etc., according to S.P. was a small room in one of the buildings. S.P. proud working together with the famous Soviet television journalist Yuri Fokin (who remembers him now? I first heard about him from him), considers him a brilliant and talented journalist. One of the interesting things I remember about him was the tradition that the first thing after arriving was buying a bottle of local Calvados, which he adored very much and during his business trip he gradually drank a bottle himself. He speaks neutrally about other television journalists, believing that in the 1980s the class fell and even slipped into yellowness (he is talking about Zheleznyakov, whom he considers accidental in this topic, who came to the space topic only for the sake of a quick career, and not “love of art”) .

Cosmonaut Alexey Stanislavovich Eliseev, who at that time led the flights of orbital stations.

The completion of the work was celebrated with the following “souvenirs” - “express reports” produced in the darkroom (the first thought is how much easier life has become with the invention of Photoshop and photo printers):

Express report on the work of Venera-9.

Another one was found on the Internet - about “Venera-9” and “Venera-10”

Express report on the Salyut-5 and Soyuz-21 orbital station.

And Soyuz-24.

In Soviet documentary film about the Moscow Mission Control Center, at 15:36 you can see a wall with such photo applications.

Later, I accidentally found early versions in my memoirs, made using a slightly simpler technique.

Once I found a site dedicated to the works of A. Sokolov and A. Leonov, scifiart.narod.ru, I spent several days on it. And one of the impressions of the paintings was the views of the Earth’s surface, which the artists did well. And I noticed for myself that now it’s much easier to draw - from Google Earth to online cameras on the ISS and all without leaving home.

Several photos with description

A. Leonov soaring over the Crimea at the moment when he left the airlock.

A. Sokolov ORBITAL COMPLEX OVER THE BLACK SEA
The painting shows a picture of the sunset of our star over the Black Sea, taking into account the comments made to the artist by pilot-cosmonauts V. Lyakhov and V. Ryumin. The artist depicted the Soyuz - Salyut 6 - Soyuz orbital complex at the moment when it covered the setting sun.

IN SPACE from the album “Cosmic Distances”. A. Leonov, A. Sokolov. The painting depicts Alexei Leonov, who walked into outer space on March 18, 1965.

A. Leonov, A. Sokolov. "Above Donbass". 1984

Painting by Alexey Leonov “ABOVE THE BLACK SEA”.
March 18, 1965. Moscow time 11 hours 34 minutes... The radio brings from space the voice of the commander of the Voskhod-2 ship, Pavel Belyaev:
“Dawn! I am Diamond! Man has entered outer space! Is in free floating!..”

It's finished! For the first time in the world, a person - Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov - is in outer space, face to face with the Universe. Implemented the most important step on the path to conquering outer space. Here is an unusual, but very real “self-portrait” of cosmonaut A. Leonov. He depicted himself floating above the Earth at the moment when he emerged from the spaceship's airlock into outer space. It was over the Black Sea.

A. A. Leonov, A. K. Sokolov. People of the coming planet. Left part of the triptych. 1984

From a set of postcards SPACE FOR THE NATIONAL ECONOMY, 1985.
“Above the Earth is an orbital space complex, which includes the second generation Salyut station with two Soyuz-T spacecraft docked to it. One of them delivered a visiting expedition to the station, and now, together with members of the main crew, the cosmonauts will have to complete an extensive program scientific research and experiments.

This catalog clarified the question of how the artists worked on the paintings, because any artist needs “nature”:

Sokolov first turned to his theme in art in 1957.

In 1961, a drawing by A. Leonov with a commentary by Yu. Gagarin appeared in the Pravda newspaper. In 1965, Sokolov and Leonov met, and their creative collaboration has been going on for almost twenty years.

Each of Sokolov’s canvases, even seemingly on the same subject, is unique in its own way. Particularly interesting are the paintings, sketches for which have been in space and were corrected on board the modern orbital stations Salyut-6 and Salyut-7: “Over the Aral Sea”, “Over the Black Sea”, “Over Gulf of Mexico", "Above the Caspian Sea". Here, for example, is what cosmonauts V. Lyakhov and V. Ryumin wrote on the sketch for the painting “Above the Caspian Sea”: “It (the sketch - M.V.) corresponds quite closely to life. This pattern looks more like twilight at sunset. There must be shadows from the clouds.”

In the sketch for the painting “Over Florida”, the comments of the American astronauts: “It looks very realistic, except for the clouds in the lower right corner in the form of too straight lines, which are not conveyed quite correctly, but purple at the upper edge of the airy halo it is too purple and too bright. Michael Collins." “Very realistic! We can almost see our launch pad. Owen Garriott." "Made good drawings! The surface of the Earth is not covered by clouds, it is more colorful, similar to what is seen from an airplane. Alan Bean."

There are many such sketches with adjustments, and they serve as an illustration of how difficult it is, with what precisely calibrated objectivity Sokolov creates his paintings.

Commentary in high resolution.

Attention! Error! The drawing was made from an altitude of less than 200 km.
There is a lot of red and light yellow and we see much more than what is drawn. Rivers and terrain folds are more pronounced. There is no clarity on the horizon, only haze. Everything is clearer as it gets closer.
Vladimir Lyakhov. Alexander Alexandrov. Salyut-7 board.

Leonov’s pictorial works are somewhat different, less abstract. They have a clearly formulated specific plot and no less clear embodiment of it: “Automatic docking”, “In outer space”, “Soyuz-Apollo orbital station”, “Space radio bridge”. These works are distinguished by precise knowledge of the subject, reliability, and persuasiveness. Leonov made sketches for his paintings during his space flights. They can be found on the pages logbooks Voskhod-2 and Soyuz-19. Leonov's graphic sheets are interesting. Apparently, the drawing is closer to the astronaut-artist.

For publication, I “tightened up” the colors, otherwise it’s hard to see in this photo. S.P. commented: “Shot by Probe. And printed in the CDKS photo laboratory on Kodak photo paper.”

And here is the catalog spread. The photograph is kept here for a reason.

On the right is A. Leonov’s graphic “In Flight of Molniya-1,” which we couldn’t find on the Internet in good resolution, so here it is:

S.P. drew my attention to this part of the graphic:

It can be seen that the photograph of the “Probe” became the “real life” for the artist, the key parts of which are depicted on the graph: Asia Minor, the Balkans, the Black Sea with Crimea, the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, half of the Caspian Sea and the still deep Aral Sea. The only thing not visible is a giant spot, which is located in Egypt and could be Lake Toshka, but in fact there is some kind of defect in the printing or storage of the photo.

Scan of this photo:

And a photo from the Internet:

As a result:

Returning to the image and quote at the beginning of this text, what is actually true is that the photo gained popularity, but often as part of another image, hiding its origin from uninitiated. At the same time, it was interesting to learn how the artists worked on space-themed paintings.

/** The publication should have ended here, but.... */
I planned to end here, but the story continued. Seeing my admiration, S.P. A few days later he found and showed another artifact.

Photo of the crater at back side Moons. On the back of the photograph there is a dedicatory inscription, the name of the photo and the name of the apparatus that photographed the crater. I pasted the latter onto the image. Unfortunately, the photo was exposed to water, the ink blurred and it was impossible to say for sure which device removed the crater. My first thought, for some reason, is that this is an unknown photograph of Luna 11. It was not possible to find a photo on the Internet - apparently the photo was never published. But the inscription on the reverse side, after editing the image levels, clearly contains the letters “Zon”. Most of all, this is similar to Zond-8, which photographed the Moon in 1970. And S.P. claimed that it was Zond-8. Although in this state it is difficult to distinguish “3” from “8”. I take your word for it. Moreover, now the origin of the photo was recently confirmed to me by another Zond-8 photograph from private collection.

The reverse side of the photo is complete

Perhaps Lavrova Nadezhda Pavlovna
From March 18, 1968 to June 19, 1989, N.P. Lavrova headed the Department of Aerospace Surveys at MIIGAiK. Participated in the organization and execution of work on space photography Earth, Moon.
By scientific programs MIIGAiK, in which Lavrova I.P. took part, obtained the first images of the Earth from lunar orbit during the flight of automatic Zond stations.

As it turns out, this Aitken crater is indirectly well known in connection with the South Pole-Aitken Basin. And in English Wikipedia there is an article dedicated to the Aitken crater. The crater is located on the far side of the Moon (16.8°S 173.4°E), on the northern side of a giant crater. Named after the American astronomer Robert Aitken (1864-1951). The crater has a diameter of 135 km. The crater was photographed in 1972 year by the crew of Apollo 17. The name was approved by the International Astronomical Union in 1970. Zond-8, let me remind you, flew in October 1970. I couldn’t find who suggested calling it that. Maybe this photograph is the first photograph of a crater in the history of mankind and was taken when it was still unnamed.

The fact that allegedly “the race was lost, therefore, apparently, the results of this work were not particularly publicized”(), does not mean that the work was simpler and easier.

(“When you’re number 9, you try harder” is a reference to the famous slogan of an American company that held second place in the market in its niche: “We Try Harder because we"re number two.”
//We try to work harder because we are number two.
Paraphrased as “If you are number two, you just have to try harder”
//If you are number two, then you are just trying (to work) harder.)

Results were achieved no less important than those of rivals in the space race, and which can be admired 50 years later. But this photo raises an important question - where Now these results? Geektimes has a great article "". One can envy this approach to one's history. In many ways, this is a dream for Russian history.

Will they be published? domestic photos? I doubt it, at least in the coming years. S.P. regarding this crater, he shared his memories of a conversation at that time about these photos with specialists - that if there was something in the photo that could not be explained, then the photographs were classified. The possibility that the United States could secretly carry out work on the surface of the Moon was seriously contemplated. Publishing the photo would allow the United States to know that their facility might no longer be so secret for the USSR and take some measures.

Declassifying something that no one has been interested in for a long time still poses a problem now. Easier to destroy. This is well written about in this quote from the memoirs.

Today, at the cosmonauts' house, a security officer stopped me. I was warned that if I was going to write for a newspaper on any topic, then the text must first be approved by a special commission of the Center.

It turns out this is a whole procedure. Here is a sample document that must be drawn up and agreed upon in order to have the right to send a note to the newspaper. Even if it's just a few lines.
First, you need to draw up an author’s certificate, in which you need to indicate that my text does not contain secret information or similar information. My signature must be certified by the Center command. This is like my guarantee.

Secondly, the “Act of Examination of Materials Prepared for Open Publication” must be filled out and signed by the commission members. The act must be approved by the unit commander (head of the Center).
The correctness of each point of the act must be proven to each member of the commission and the commander.
So now I understand those military men who do not want to get involved with the press.
Vasily Sergeevich Lesnikov “Next to the cosmonauts. American time. 1970–1979"

(Photo Luna-16 from a private collection. On foreground a stereoscopic panoramic image formation system, which included two panoramic scanning cameras of 300x6000 pixels of the same type that were installed on the early landing stations of the E-6 series and lunar rovers. Located on the lander directly below the return rocket on the same side as the sampling system, they were spaced 50 cm apart, covering a 30° field of view.)

Since the second half of the 2000s, thanks to the widespread use of the Internet, a large amount of information, memories, historical photographs and video materials have appeared. Then information began to be found on the topic of Lunokhods, which was interesting to me, and if by the end of the 2000s there were only a few notable publications in newspapers and TV stories, now a large number of documentary materials, interviews with participants and publications for different years. But some details in publications are not paid attention to. For example, there is practically no detailed technical description of both the remote control and the lunar rover itself. In general, the transmitter diagram of the first Satellite appeared on the network quite recently. Apparently it's a big secret.

Are you interested in something?

Thank you! Yes, that is right. In connection with the article, I am talking with a representative of the RKS management: maybe it will be possible to publish materials on the first satellites.

This sadness is brightened up by private initiatives - history buffs who, with their money and free work, “extract”, store and publish historical materials. For example, they are collecting money for the digitization of Soviet space films from film archives (there are these comrades, for example, on rutracker with distributions). Important work at your own expense for preservation space history made by the owners of the resources epizodsspace.no-ip.org (http://epizodyspace.ru) and www.kik-sssr.ru. There is an example on Geektimes. Most of Soviet space photographs, panoramas of Venus in general ended up in digital form thanks to personal funds and great desire get these photos of one person. A former Microsoft programmer from Redmond in the early 2000s found contacts and paid for the work of digitizing Soviet photographs stored, if I’m not mistaken, at the Space Research Institute. The photographs were used when writing articles on his website. In reality, he has more photographs than have been published, and photographs with his “credit” and his processing can be seen in popular science books and various thematic websites.

Unfortunately, these are not all originals, and most often a reprint is not the first copy and also a paper one. Although there are definitely digital originals somewhere. Unfortunately, in addition to bureaucratic obstacles, there may be technical ones.

Find out why

Most likely, digital copies are stored not even on 8" floppy disks, but on tapes in data format for some EU. NASA also has the question of “how to read it.”
I accidentally came across this publication in an old Soviet magazine:

More modern digital data is also stored somewhere. Halley's Comet. Vega-1:

It would be cool to “resurrect” the remote control: change the monitor, load some kind of Mars rover/lunar rover simulator into it, and give visitors the opportunity to control the legendary device, albeit a virtual one. For now, you have to rely only on your imagination.

It is possible to control using this remote control only with the directional antenna of the lunar rover. This is not obvious to museum visitors because... The caption to the exhibit states “Fragment of the Lunokhod-1 control panel.” And this is in a museum, where it seems like they should know the history of the exhibits in more depth.

Some things are not described anywhere; perhaps the authors of memoirs or studies did not particularly think about some of the details. And the only ones who can tell about this are living witnesses to the events. If you ask them about it, of course. Which is what I asked S.P. because he participated in providing a live broadcast of Central Television from the Lunokhod control center. This is how it looked to television viewers and readers of the Soviet press.

And this is how it really happened:

By the way, the direction of the shooting was determined by the fact that nothing secret was included in the frame in the background.

Modern view of the lunodrome from approximately the same place and in the same direction:

According to S.P. This is one of the first Soviet television cameras for outdoor filming. The television camera itself weighed about 60 kg and the tripod weighed about the same. The camera was connected by more than a kilometer of cable to their mobile television studio (PTS), from which the signal was transmitted by a directional antenna to the antenna of the television center and a relay communication line to Moscow. The memories of how they dragged it around the Lunodrome are fresh for him.

In a recent interview, V. Dovgan said that the joystick was called “knüppel”, as it turned out, a word familiar to the military of some specialties and engineers of the military-industrial complex, and which passed from them to “ civil language"in the era of the advent of personal computers as a local competitor to the word "joystick". He also told a little about how he controlled it - the joystick was installed in the required position and a button at the end of the handle was pressed, confirming the sending of the command. But there is no information about the remaining details of the remote controls.

For a long time I was interested in several questions: the handles on the video monitor, the round recess below and to the left of the screen, the device to which the commander is pointing his finger in the picture, the flat device standing on the left side of the driver’s console, and many other little things in the photo and film frames.

TV crews also worked with the crew at the control center of the lunar rover. Thanks to which S.P. He explained to me the purpose of the parts in the photographs of the Lunokhod remote control. And by the way, TV people worked not only there. S.P. said that the room in the hotel "Ukraine" (Simferopol) for the drivers of the lunar rover "Slava and Gena" was very conveniently located near the buffet. Communication was not interrupted for a long time)

On the left panel of the commander's console there is only one device, which turned out to be a clock. And a flat device with a thick cable standing on the left side of the driver’s console turned out to be an indicator of the television frame number.

The rest of the i’s were dotted by the book of the lunar rover driver V. Dovgan, The Lunar Odyssey of Russian Cosmonautics. From “Dream” to lunar rovers. . In particular, it turned out that the number of the television frame and the time were imprinted on the film. This is EXIF ​​and archiving of TV frames. Will they all ever be digitized? I would like to see it geo-referenced, for example, in Google Moon.

Vyacheslav Dovgan, in fact the only source of memories of lunar rovers. His interviews and publications are actually the only thing that can be found. His book summarizes and clarifies a lot of disparate information into a single picture. Refutes the speculations of the yellow press, describing how the events actually happened. Although Vyacheslav Dovgan did not fully describe the consoles and workplaces. Blind spots in these issues S.P. erased with simple answers.

A microphone and a box with loudspeaker slots under the phone are a speakerphone. Dovgan writes that at first they tried to work with headphones, but it turned out to be inconvenient.

Two handles on the monitor - it turns out that the monitor is a separate device that simply lies on the “carriage”. In case of breakage, it was quickly lifted by two handles and replaced with a spare one. And two handles because... two people lifted it - the monitor weighed about 30 kg, about half of the weight was accounted for by the supply transformer.

And finally, “knobs on the video monitor, a round recess below and to the left of the screen” - knobs are the usual television image settings. And the “round depression” turned out to be another screen - an oscilloscope showing the presence of a signal. Because the picture on the video monitor screen was updated rarely, the oscilloscope made it possible to immediately understand that something had happened and there would be no next picture.