Posted: Oct 03, 2007 01:49 pm EDT
(MountEverest.net/Pythom.com) Gagarin's former space engineer and 7-time Snow Leopard Boris Korshunov (72) summited Cho Oyu (8188 m) yesterday. The climber reportedly went on his own, left Camp 2 and planned to reach Camp 3, but didn't find his tent there and therefore decided to keep climbing - to the top at 4 pm.

Climbing the Russian way

The Russians are something else. Last night, news arrived that Kazakhs Denis and Serguey topped out K2 - bagging the latest summit of the peak ever, and through the first north ridge ascent in 11 years. This only weeks after another Kazakh team made an astonishing attempt for a complete ascent of the peak's NW ridge, and a month after a Russian team bagged the first ascent of the Mountaineer's mountain's West Face.

The ex-Soviets smoke, drink and attack the peaks with a zest that's scary to most western clean-shaved athletes.

Beer yes - shortcuts, no

This spring, Boris Korshunov attempted Dhaulagiri but was caught alone and without a tent at 7,300m in the night. Denis was on the peak as well, aborted his speed ascent and helped Boris Korshunov down - then turned back up and summited the next morning, in 4,5 hours.

Denis repaid and old favor to the veteran climber, who summited Annapurna Central in 2004; helped Denis Urubko, Simone Moro and Bruno Tassi to set a new route on Baruntse North Face at the age of 68; and finished the Elbrus (5642 m) classic race at just under 5 hours (4:58:10) last year!

Boris’s Dhaula attempt came one year after an Everest attempt in his signature style - he never uses Sherpas or supplementary oxygen.

The trick

Perhaps longevity and success is about more than healthy diets, regular exercise and stress avoidance: Boris still climbs hard, parties hard, and works hard.

Baikonur Cosmodrome was the launch site when Gagarin became the first man in Space, and from where today's ISS space 'tourists' and cargo shuttles launch. Boris Korshunov worked in the special research team preparing Gagarin's flight.

He works in the Space industry to this day and was awarded for his contribution in Soviet and Russian achievements in Space on Yuri's Night, April 12th 2006.

"We need the risk-taking spirit of the Russians," Burt Rutan (SpaceShipOne) said in California a while back.

Gagarin took big risks. The ex-Soviets are all-weather climbers. But how do they do it? As Spaceref.com put it, "Russia picks a date, stack their rocket, ship it - and then shoot."

On April 12, 1961, at age 27, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. The rocket was from ready and his friends urged him to wait. But the race was on and time was out. When he stepped into the space craft, Yuri knew that chances were pretty big that this would be his last step on Earth.

What he didn't know was that less than 2 hours later, he would be the first human to see the Earth from above, and instead of dead, he would be famous all over the world.

Even beyond the loose parts of the rocket itself, nobody could tell what would happen to him - how the brain would function in weightlessness, or how the body would adapt. During reentry, the Vostok capsule was supposed to separate cleanly from its equipment module, but the two remained tethered by an umbilical line.

The Vostok spacecraft tumbled at a rate of 30 degrees per second. As a result, Gagarin experienced an acceleration of 10 G. The tumbling continued until the umbilical cord finally burned through. Gagarin exited the spacecraft at an altitude of about 20,000 feet and parachuted to the ground. His words: "Now let the other countries try to catch us."

Tale has it that the Ruskies themselves jolted awake a sleepy Washington with the news, in an early morning phone call stating, "we have been to Space."

The launch site was the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan. Gagarin made a single orbit of the Earth. His flight lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes. "I could clearly discern the outlines of continents, islands and rivers. The horizon presents a sight of unusual beauty. A delicate blue halo surrounds the Earth, merging with the blackness of space in which the stars are bright and clear cut," he reported.

Had it not been for Yuri's risky step, America would have got there first. Only weeks later, on May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard made a short, suborbital flight and became the first American in space. Less than a year later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.

Only seven years after his epic flight, on March 27 1968, Gagarin died in a crash on a training flight in a MiG-15 aircraft. He was 34 years old.

Altitude and age

In a previous story, responding to an incorrect Everest study on climbing and age, ExWeb wrote: "Even the Space folks have noticed [that age can be an asset]: The first Soviet Cosmonaut team was in their mid-twenties. The first Americans averaged just over 30 years. The present Shuttle Mission (STS-118) crew is averaging 47 years. Mike Melville (Spaceship One pilot) was born in 1941. Brian Binnie in 1953."

The faulty Everest age study was in fact based on another space man: US NASA astronaut Karl Gordon Henize, 63, who died of AMS at 6000 meters on Everest in 1993. Henize was a mission specialist on STS-51-F in 1985 (at 59). He did 126 orbits of the earth. There is no reason to believe that age was a factor in his death: the Astronaut died in ABC on the North side after developing acute HAPE - a common complication of climbing affecting all ages.

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