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Yuri Glaskov of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center was the co-chairman of crew training for the Phase 1 Management Working Group. He has been with the Russian space program since 1965 when he joined the cosmonaut corps. As a cosmonaut, Glaskov spent 18 days on the orbital station Salyut-5 in 1975.
Glaskov spoke of the types of training in his Oral History. He shared information on the "special program of psychological training" needed to endure long-duration missions.
"We conduct a special monitoring research when we put our crew members into complete isolation for a certain period of time, into an isolation chamber. I had to myself be in this chamber for fourteen days. It is called that you're 'alone in public.' Everybody is watching you, but you can't see anybody. There are certain psychological nuances there, because you fight yourself.
"Also I had to experience, for thirty-five days, a test of the orbital station on the ground. At that time there was two of us, but the hatches were closed and we were absolutely alone for thirty-five days. This experience created different problems. Here we had to tolerate each other, forgive each other, and supplement each other's faults or experiences. This creates its own problems. One person doesn't like certain traits of another, and so you have to learn to adapt to each other.
"When the crew is three people or more, that becomes even more difficult. Every person has his own personality. We even noticed that a certain thing happens when two people unite against the third one. But this changes. This combination changes.... In that, we have to bear in mind, were people of the same country, from the same cultural background, from, let's say, former Soviet Union. If you were a Russian or a Ukrainian, you basically had the same background. But here [with Phase 1] you have an international element coming into play, and that makes things even more difficult."
Yuri Glaskov Oral History (PDF)
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Curator:
Kim Dismukes
Responsible NASA Official: John Ira Petty