Dmitri Zaikin

Dmitri Alexeyevich Saikin (Russian: Дмитрий Алексеевич Заикин born April 29, 1932 in Jekaterinowka, Rajon Salsk, Rostov Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, † October 21, 2013 ) was a Soviet cosmonaut who has completed no space flight.

Life

Saikin had 1955 graduated from the military pilot school in Frunze, and then served as a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force. He was among the 20 drivers that were compiled in the course of 1959 and early 1960 for the first cosmonaut group of the Soviet Union.

His basic training began on 25 March 1960 and ended in December 1961 with the exam. Saikin was not one of the top six that were selected for the early Vostok flights, but to the second row, which were used for flights in 1964, but the program was stopped after Vostok 6.

As of February 1964, Saikin was preparing for a flight in the new Soyuz spacecraft, but was later assigned to the flight Voskhod 2 as one of the replacements. In this mission, a man should leave his spacecraft and float freely in space for the first time. Saikin trained both as a substitute for the commander Belyayev and for the cosmonaut Leonov, who was to perform the spacewalk. Saikin but was then only the second substitute. Had Belyayev and Leonov failed shortly before take off on March 18, 1965, Yevgeny Khrunov would have skipped.

When planning for further Voskhod flights with spacewalks Saikin worked as crew in conversation. But that did not. Like other cosmonauts Saikin was seconded to the Military Academy of the Air Force, which he left on 15 December 1968, an engineering degree. Then Saikin was assigned to the Alma's program, which provided for a military space station in orbit. Saikin prepared himself on a flight on the Soyuz spacecraft. But on 25 October 1969, he had to leave the cosmonaut corps, after a gastric ulcer had been discovered with him. Saikin switched sides and became instructor and senior engineer at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1987, he retired as a colonel from the Air Force, 1996, he went into retirement.

Saikin was married and fathered two children.