Dmitri Alexeyevich Saikin

Dmitri Saikin
Country:	Soviet Union
Organization:	WWS
selected on	March 25, 1960 ( First cosmonaut group of the Soviet Union )
Calls:	0 space flights
retired on	October 25, 1969

Dmitri Alexejewitsch Saikin ( Russian Дмитрий Алексеевич Заикин ; born April 29, 1932 in Yekaterinovka , Salsk Raion , Rostov Oblast , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ; † October 21, 2013 ) was a Soviet cosmonaut who did not complete a space flight.

Life

Saikin had graduated from the military pilot school in Frunze in 1955 and then served as a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force . He was one of the 20 pilots who were put together in the Soviet Union's First Cosmonaut Group in 1959 and early 1960 .

His basic training began on March 25, 1960 and ended in December 1961 with the exam. Saikin was not among the first six selected for the early Vostok flights, but rather in the second row, which were scheduled for flights from 1964 onwards, but the program was stopped after Vostok 6 .

From February 1964, Saikin was preparing for a flight in the new Soyuz spaceship , but was later assigned to flight Vozhod 2 as one of the substitutes. On this mission, a person should leave his spaceship for the first time and float freely in space. Saikin trained both as a replacement for the commander Belyayev and for the cosmonaut Leonov , who was supposed to carry out the space exit. Saikin was then only a second substitute. If Belyayev or Leonov had dropped out shortly before the start on March 18, 1965, Yevgeny Khrunov would have stepped in .

Saikin was discussed as a crew when planning further Vozhod flights with space exits. But that didn't happen. Like other cosmonauts, Saikin was seconded to the Air Force Military Academy , which he left on December 15, 1968 with an engineering degree. Saikin was then assigned to the Almas program, which included a military space station in orbit. Saikin was preparing for a flight on the Soyuz spacecraft. On October 25, 1969, however, he had to leave the cosmonaut corps after a stomach ulcer was discovered in him . Saikin switched sides and became an instructor and chief engineer at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center . In 1987 he left the Air Force as a colonel , and in 1996 he retired.

Saikin was married and had two children.

Web links

• Short biography on spacefacts.de
• Dmitri Alexejewitsch Saikin in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)
• Дмитрий Алексеевич Заикин on astronaut.ru (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nekrolog (Russian)