A few weeks along whilst in Moscow I had the opportunity to visit Star City. Which is the cosmonaut (astronaut in the US) training center. However, as the US are no longer sending people into space directly, we will acquiesce to the term cosmonaut. As space shuttles are no longer in use, it means everyone going into space trains at Star City. As the training center offers the training on the soviet era rockets, which are still in use. It was fantastic to visit Star City to seeing the apparatus which is currently still in use and cosmonauts are still training on. They have replicas of the rockets used and the international space center components for the cosmonauts to train on. It is not a regular tourist opportunity; indeed, it was previously a closed Russian city and it still has this feel being situated in the woods away from other development and with no road signs.
It was incredible to see where cosmonauts train in real life and to see the items used for space travel. It really drilled home that some things are really made to last! Plus, it is important to have a balance between proven technology and new technology. It was explained that the original rockets are still used, just with newer systems integrated into them, which makes the travel more comfortable as the systems are much smaller.
Robin Bell 