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Some questions and controversy over cosmonaut Andrei Babkin’s abrupt resignation from the active cosmonaut group in 2024. Two computer-translated articles below.

Test cosmonaut Andrei Babkin wrote a letter to the country’s President Vladimir Putin

Natal’ya Vedevneeva/Наталья Веденеева, MK.ru

The Main Medical Commission rejected a highly qualified Roskosmos specialist due to the individual characteristics of the nasal mucosa

Highly-qualified Roskosmos specialist, test cosmonaut, deputy commander of the TsPK cosmonaut corps of research and testing work, Andrei Babkin wrote a letter to President Vladimir Putin (a copy obtained from our source is at the disposal of the editors). The point is that, having waited on the bench for 14(!) years, he is now being undeservedly, according to him, for purely subjective reasons, being transferred to another, non-flying position. That is, the path to space is closed forever. The reason is a medical exemption from flying due to the individual characteristics of the nasal mucosa.

According to many luminaries of medical science from The First Moscow State Medical University named after I. M. Sechenov (Sechenov University) and other respected medical organizations, Babkin’s health condition does not cause concern.

But the Main Medical Commission does not recognize the opinions of outside experts. Tell anyone that they treat an cosmonaut impartially, and they won’t believe you. The MK columnist understood the problem.

The story of Andrei Babkin is simply amazing. He joined the squad in 2010. 7 years later, in 2017, he began preparing for his first flight as part of the main crew, and it began …. As Andrei himself told me back in 2022, his launches were then postponed 8 times. No, well, in cosmic fate, everything happens, but for the same person to be removed from launching so many times, this, you see, is nonsense!

Disease? No, in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, until April 2021 there was no talk about this.

Andrei Nikolaevich Babkin was born on April 21, 1969 in Bryansk. After graduating from school, he entered the Bryansk Institute of Transport Engineering, and after serving in the army, in 1990, he was transferred to the Moscow Aviation Institute.

In 1995, he graduated with honors from the Moscow Aviation Institute with a degree in Life Support Systems and Aircraft Protection.

Since April 1997, he worked at RKK Energiya as a specialist and tester in extravehicular activities (EVA). For 25 years, Babkin has worked his way up in the space industry from an engineer and leading researcher to a test cosmonaut.

According to the cosmonaut, the choice of future profession was partly influenced by his parents, his grandfather, who was a pilot, as well as his passion for astronomy after a vivid childhood impression of the feature film The Andromeda Nebula at the Dovzhenko film studio.

Until recently, Andrei Nikolaevich had the status of “test cosmonaut” and was also the deputy commander of the detachment (Oleg Kononenko) for research and testing work (NIIR).

For the first time (in 2017) he joined the crew with Oleg Skripochka and Shannon Walker. However, after several months of training, Roskosmos decided to reduce the number of cosmonauts on the Russian segment of the ISS. This was due to a reduction in spacecraft launches to the ISS and the lack of a scientific module.

Afterwards, Andrei Babkin prepared for a flight with Nikolai Tikhonov (who had also never flown) in 2018. Perhaps they would have flown, but the accident that occurred with the launch vehicle that was launching the Soyuz MS-10 in front of them (Ovchinin and Haig then managed to eject) again pushed the Babkin-Tikhonov crew back to 2019. But again there was a misfire – in 2019 it was necessary to let the crew with an cosmonaut from the UAE pass ahead of them. The more experienced cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and newcomers Jessica Meir and Hazzaa Al-Mansouri flew. Sending a crew of only newcomers into space was risky.

The year 2020 came, preparations were made for the Babkin-Tikhonov flight on the Soyuz MS-16. By the way, this is daily grueling training, repeating knowledge about one’s own and studying the onboard systems of American spacecraft, practicing going into space in Russian and American spacesuits, working with a manipulator arm ….

“And just imagine,” Andrei Babkin told me then, “there is just over a month left before our flight to Baikonur, when my partner Nikolai injures his eye with a branch during a routine walk in the park …. Since our crew was well-coordinated, two were removed at once. American Chris Cassidy (he was supposed to fly with us) then flew with our backups Anatolii Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner."

Who remembers the documentary about Apollo 13, there is a scene where a replaced crew member (it was Thomas Mattingly, who still managed to fly to the Moon, but already on Apollo 16) arrived at the spaceport and watched from the sidelines, as his rocket launched just recently …. Babkin also looked after the Soyuz flying away from him, still hoping that, like Thomas Mattingly, luck would still smile on him.

Here we need to make a small remark about “luck.” Somehow, recently, a disdainful attitude towards the fate of cosmonauts has become the norm. Objectively healthy cosmonauts, who confirm this with all kinds of certificates and independent medical examinations, try, as was the case, for example, with Fyodor Yurchikhin, to challenge their “diseases,” but the MMC, as a rule, is inexorable. In the same way as with Fyodor Yurchikhin, at one time, according to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, they did with Aleksandr Samokutyaev and Sergei Revin …. Now, it seems, the fashion has begun to reject not only those who flew, but also those who did not flew off once. Let’s take a moment away from the mental anguish that a 50-year-old “newcomer” is likely to experience, seeing how he is ahead of those who joined the cosmonaut corps after him … I would like to draw your attention to the fact that preparing a person to join the corps, and then to fly into space – this is a very expensive pleasure, which, according to some estimates, in total costs the state more than a billion rubles. Our American partners have the same order of numbers, but there is a slight difference: they don’t waste an expensive resource – astronauts. Andrei Babkin, in a letter to Vladimir Putin, cites the following statistics: from 2003 to 2018, 45 astronauts were trained for flight in the United States, and all of them went into space, while in Russia, during the same time, out of 32, only 23 cosmonauts managed to fulfill their dream, that is only a little over 70 percent. So what am I talking about? Oh yes – about luck. Or is it about a major waste of public funds?

Let’s continue the description of Andrei Babkin’s long journey into space. When 2021 arrived, he was asked to make room for the artist and director of the feature film The Challenge.

“An information anomaly has developed,” Babkin reports in a letter to the president of the country, “when a professional has to fight to prove his right to space, an experimental film project easily offers people to get there in record time. (“You don’t have to spend years of your life to prepare an cosmonaut,” the director declares in one of the commercials, “you can do it in 4 months.”) By the way, they stated that none of the cosmonauts were “harmed” as a result of filming the film, that I was not prepared and should not have flown. So I got ready and had to fly!”

With the onset of 2022, hope for a flight began to dawn again for Babkin: he again, for the umpteenth time, passed a medical expert commission, was intensively preparing for the flight, was introduced to the crew, when suddenly, literally a few months after the positive conclusion, a completely unexpected situation arose refusal. A computed tomography scan showed, note: “slight signs of parietal thickening of the mucous membrane of the left sphenoid sinus,” or the nasal septum in the midline.

Members of the MMC in 2021 recommended that Babkin undergo surgery (bilateral polysinosutomy – endoscopic surgery to reduce the volume of the mucous membrane.)

This was done with a positive effect, and at the beginning of 2023, conclusions were received from several leading clinics, including FMBA, MONIKI, Sechenov University, Central Design Bureau of Civil Aviation and Tsentraviamed about the absence of restrictions on workloads and contraindications to professional activities. The conclusions were signed by corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professors, candidates of medical sciences, and doctors of the highest category.

But, alas, the Main Medical Commission did not recognize their arguments as useful and fair. The cosmonaut was again rejected due to the impossibility of predicting the stability of his condition several years in advance. Was the existence of modern medicines that could guarantee any flight duration even with the most unfavorable prognosis (this approach is used in other space agencies) not taken into account?

Instead, as follows from the letter, the head of TsPK signed an order to deprive Babkin of his “test cosmonaut” status.

The MK Center did not provide official information about this, confirming only in words that Andrei Babkin is no longer listed in the cosmonaut corps. And in general, as the Center advised: “First contact Roskosmos, which makes the final decision.” At Roskosmos, as expected, they answered me: “Please contact the Central Processing Commission with this question.”

Commentary by a test cosmonaut, full member of the K. E. Tsiolkovsky Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, Sergei Zhukov:

“I’ve known Andrei Babkin for a long time, and only on the good side. If he did not give up the fight for flight, it does him credit. I believe that such discrepancies between doctors who examine an cosmonaut are not so uncommon, and the balance does not always tip towards refusal. I was allowed into the squad (cosmonauts) only after the third MMC – there were comments that I corrected. True, in 2011 I myself left the detachment, devoting all my time to the cluster of space technologies and telecommunications of the Skolkovo Foundation. The task was to lay the foundations of private cosmonautics in Russia. Cosmonaut Viktor Mikhailovich Afanas’ev had a story similar to the situation with Babkin. In my opinion, before each of his flights, the doctors had doubts. But in the end he eliminated all the comments and flew. He made four successful flights into space! One of the doctors told me that even during the initial selection, Afanasiev followed the doctors who were in the military unit and did not select him, flew with them to Moscow and, by the end of the flight, convinced the doctors of the existence of an algorithm according to which he would conduct an additional examination. In general, as we see, the power of intention decides a lot.

At the end of his letter to the President, Andrei Babkin writes: “It would be necessary to include a clause in the ‘Regulations on Cosmonauts’ (approved by the Government of the Russian Federation in 2017) on the responsibility of officials for violations of the rights of cosmonauts and control by Roskosmos of the inadmissibility of such manifestations. This also borders on a waste of significant financial resources spent on many years of training of cosmonauts."

We hope that up there, the cosmonaut will be heard and, having understood the complex medical dilemma, will be helped to realize his legal right to professional activity.

Peresild instead of Babkin: the film The Challenge put an end to the cosmonaut’s career

Anna Urmantseva/Анна Урманцева

Cosmonaut candidate Babkin will not fly into space because of the film The Challenge.

A Gazeta.Ru source from the rocket and space industry said that Andrei Babkin, a member of the cosmonaut corps who had never flown into space, was asked to write a letter of resignation from his flying position in the cosmonaut corps. This means that the candidate who missed his flight because of the film The Challenge will never become an cosmonaut. Information about the planned dismissal was confirmed by astronautics expert Dmitrii Strugovets. Gazeta.Ru looked into how much it costs to train a cosmonaut in Russia compared to the budget of the film The Challenge, what is the reason for the rejection of a candidate who has been preparing for the flight all his life, and why all the cosmonauts stubbornly remain silent about what is happening at the Cosmonaut Training Center.

Life at a low start

A Gazeta.Ru source from the rocket and space industry spoke about the offer received by cosmonaut candidate Andrei Babkin, who has been constantly preparing for a flight in different crews for the last 14 years. He was asked to sign an application for transfer from a flight position in the cosmonaut corps to the position of deputy commander for science.

This means that, according to the leadership of the Cosmonaut Training Center, Babkin’s “expiration date “ as a cosmonaut candidate has expired. He will never fly into space again.

This information was confirmed to Gazeta.Ru by cosmonautics expert Dmitrii Strugovets.

Andrei Babkin joined the cosmonaut corps 14 years ago, having previously worked for more than 14 years as an engineer, tester, and leading researcher at the Energiya rocket and space corporation.

The cosmonaut candidate has been at a low start since October 2017, when he joined the backup crew of ISS-57/58 with Roskosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronaut Shannon Walker as the Soyuz MS-12 flight engineer and the ISS flight engineer. But the crew composition was changed in May 2018 due to a revision of the ISS flight program.

What happened? The state had to repay the debt for Sea Launch (floating cosmodrome), and this debt was repaid in some places in the Soyuz. To pay off the debt, the Boeing company received five free seats on Soyuz spacecraft for American astronauts, which NASA bought for $373 million. (And where is Sea Launch now?)

Since June 2018, Andrei Babkin began training as part of the main crew of ISS-61/62 with Roskosmos cosmonaut Nikolai Tikhonov and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy. But then a capsule with Soyuz MS-10 commander Alexei Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague falls from the sky – the emergency system was triggered during launch. Former head of Roskosmos

Dmitrii Rogozin promises that Ovchinin and Haig will definitely fly – just on the next ship. This is how another postponement of Babkin’s long-awaited flight happened.

Since April 2019, Babkin begins training as part of the main crew of ISS-63 with Roskosmos cosmonaut Nikolai Tikhonov and Japanese Akihiko Hoshide. But the commander is injured and the entire crew is replaced.

Since February 2020, the cosmonaut candidate has been training as part of the ISS-63 backup crew. And since May 2020, he is again part of the main crew of ISS-66 with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov as a flight engineer of Soyuz MS-17, 18, 19 and an ISS flight engineer.

And then the impossible happens …. He is replaced by Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko for the filming of the film The Challenge. As Klim Shipenko said in an interview a day before the flight: “People should imagine: you don’t have to spend a year of your life to prepare for a flight, you can make it in four months.”

How much does Andrey Babkin’s training cost?

Even if we discard the sentiments about a ruined career, a murdered dream and the loss of the meaning of life for a person who has strived to go into space all his life, but never flew, there remains money, because a professional cosmonaut is very expensive.

Andrey Babkin is one of the few candidates for the flight who, in addition to 14 years of training at TsPK, has completed an extended specialization course in partner countries.

Babkin trained in Canada to successfully operate the Canadian SSRMS manipulator to capture payloads and satellites. He was trained at NASA to work with the systems of the American segment of the ISS. He trained in the Alpha-Cupola virtual reality laboratories on tracking and capturing the Dragon, Cygnus, HTV ships, as well as controlling SAFER, a device that is worn on a spacesuit in outer space. Babkin trained to work in the American EMU spacesuit at the NBL hydrolab, which is located in Houston.

Babkin also received certification to work with payloads from the European Space Agency and the Columbus module in Germany. He successfully completed the Japanese space agency JAXA course on operating the Japanese JEM module and HTV cargo vehicle.

To estimate the monetary equivalent of training the “eternal candidate “ Babkin, Gazeta.Ru turned to an expert in the field of cosmonautics, Dmitrii Strugovets.

“No one will say the exact amount, of course, this is classified information. It depends on what expenses we will take into account. All activities of the Cosmonaut Training Center and Star City, for the most part all activities of RKK Energiya, partly the Mission Control Center, NPP Zvezda, Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and Roskosmos, a number of other enterprises and organizations, including their total payment funds labor, scientific and other equipment, maintenance of infrastructure – all this is necessary in order to maintain the number of Russian cosmonauts at the level of 30 people.

“That is, hundreds and thousands of other specialists work to train three dozen specialists and perform their work during a space flight. As a result, on average, hundreds of millions of dollars or tens of billions of rubles are spent on training during an cosmonaut’s career,” says Strugovets.

According to TexTerra’s calculations, the budget of the film The Challenge is 1 billion 246 million rubles. The film returned its money, having earned 2,000,323,945 rubles from distribution, according to the UAIS (Unified Federal Automated Information System for Information on Film Showings in Cinemas). But this is only tenth place among domestic films at the Russian box office.

And the first place is occupied by Cheburashka. At the same time, the actors of Cheburashka did not fly into space, did not film in zero gravity and did not ruin the career of a specialist whose training cost is measured in tens of billions of rubles.

As stated on the Roskosmos website, “this film (The Challenge) will help popularize Russia’s space activities and glorify the cosmonaut profession.”

“But everyone selected for the cosmonaut corps must remember that no one guarantees him the ability to fly, even if he is trained, to meet all the parameters. Nobody in the Russian rocket and space industry needs former members of the cosmonaut corps: the cosmonauts working in the industry can be counted on the fingers of one hand. He left the detachment and ended up on the street. I wouldn’t like to cite our potential enemy as an example, but in the United States they don’t do this to their heroes (and our cosmonauts are heroes),” said Dmitrii Strugovets.

I wonder what dreaming boys will think after watching the film The Challenge and then learning about the fate of Andrei Babkin?

So why was he “written off”?

Of course, “crossing off” the future of Russian cosmonautics from the list requires justification. And the simplest justification may be withdrawal for medical reasons. Why is this the easiest?

The fact is that the decisions of the Main Medical Commission (GMC)/Главной медицинской комиссии (ГМК) of the Cosmonaut Training Center are not checked by anyone. MMC does not accept the conclusions and opinions of third-party doctors, even from leading clinics, medical research institutes, and so on.

As a source told Gazeta.Ru, several cosmonauts who had been preparing for the flight all their lives were “discarded” quietly, without attracting public attention. This is due to the fact that the cosmonauts within the squad sign certain rules of the code that do not allow them to “wash dirty linen in public.”

Thus, having received a refusal for medical reasons, the candidate for the flight is forced to fight with the representatives of the MMC who have received the order on their own, which means going up against a previously superior enemy.

Gazeta.Ru had at its disposal numerous certificates – traces of the struggle for his dream of Andrei Babkin, who was disqualified due to bilateral polysinusitis, roughly speaking – an advanced runny nose. Andrey Babkin even performed the recommended operation in order to fully comply with the requirements of the MMC. And after that he was cleared to fly in the summer of 2022. What happened next? In December 2022, the disrepair was no longer temporary, but permanent. And now they’ve completely asked me to resign from my flying position.

We provide certificates from various medical institutions, as well as the decision of a council of doctors about Andrei Babkin’s fitness to fly.

Andrei Babkin refused to answer questions from Gazeta.Ru.

Roskosmos also did not answer questions from Gazeta.Ru at the time of publication.

The Cosmonaut Training Center did not respond to questions from Gazeta.Ru at the time of publication.

The commander of the cosmonaut detachment Oleg Kononenko, who has always supported Andrei Babkin, is now on the ISS. We hope to get a comment from him after the flight.

Test cosmonaut, candidate of technical sciences Andrei Babkin has been removed from the list of the Roskosmos cosmonaut corps. Instead of 25, there are 24 left …. Another loss of a highly qualified specialist who did not even have time to fly into orbit. The reason for this is highly controversial and ambiguous. Babkin walked towards his dream for 14(!) years. He was put on crew 8(!) times and all 8 times he was removed for various reasons beyond his control, for example, in 21 he was asked to give up his seat on the ship to the actress from the film The Challenge …. In the end they found a “disease,” something like signs (signs!) of sinusitis, which independent doctors from the FMBA, Sechenov Institute and others did not consider a reason for medical withdrawal from flights. And even despite this, Babkin performed the operation recommended to him by the Main Medical Commission! He believed until the very end that he would fly , he told me this in an interview in 2022. And this is the result. (Front of Russian Science with Vedeneeva/Front of Russian Science with Vedeneeva)

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