From Jim Oberg:
Sergey Vozovikov
http://www.spacefacts.de/bios/cosmon...kov_sergei.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/astros/vozvikov.htm

Curious to see this offered without comment. Anyone who has actually
read the info in those two links can see that they provide completely
different statements.

"JotaC?" wrote in message
m...
I have read about a cosmonaut dead while training in the Black Sea,
drowned. Does anybody has more info on this?

Javier Casado
Madrid, Spain

Sifting through the conflicting reports, the best I can gather is that
he drowned while off-duty when he was at the Black Sea for emergency
landing training. The date of the incident was July 11th, 1993 (as a
point of reference, Norm Thagard's Soyuz launch happened 20 months
afterwards). I'll venture a stab in the dark as to why several
references attribute his death to "natural causes"...

Perhaps he was on an underwater dive and experienced something like a
heart attack. Did he die from the water? Did he die from something
else? I don't know.

At the time he was grouped along with his two 1990 cosmonaut
classmates, Sergei Zalyotin and Salizhan Sharipov, with the three of
them designated as "second commander's row" behind Mir primary/backup
crew for the 15th resident Mir mission. It's quite possible that his
two classmates were with him at the Black Sea, and perhaps witnesses
to the tragedy.

Sharipov went on to visit Mir as a crew member of STS-89. Zalyotin
got to Mir later, or last I should say, since he was the final
commander aboard Mir before it was crashed. Sharipov has stayed very
active. He was on the backup crew for the ISS flight that is up right
now, and he is scheduled to fly on the crew that relieves them.

Vozovikov's two classmates would know lots more about the story of his
death. Sharipov is easy to reach, but I don't have any contact
information for Zalyotin.


~ CT