Last September, Grand Circle traveler Laurie Holden left his home in Phoenix, Arizona, for a long awaited trip to Russia with his friends Louis and Gerry. If they weren’t captivated by the treasures that awaited them on their main trip (including four days in Moscow, a boat cruise through northwestern Russia, and ending with four more days in St. Petersburg), their pre- and post- trip extensions officially had them sold: Three days in Kiev, Ukraine and five days split between Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland.
After returning from his tour, Laurie realized, “If I learned one thing from this trip, it is that the world is becoming more and more of a unified superculture.” He wrote an account of his adventures—which integrates all of the sights, sounds, and people he met along the way—for his family and friends, and also shared it with me.
Although Laurie’s original submission, which totaled an impressive 81 pages, was too long to publish in its entirety, I wanted to share his impressions of an optional tour of Star City, where Laurie learned about the Russian space program and reflected back on his first memories of “the great beyond” …
Laurie Holden: Visiting Russia's Own "NASA"
Model of the Mir space station, which orbited the Earth for 15 years.
Grand Circle gave us our choice of optional tours to the Tretyakov Gallery or Star City (the latter, a sort of Russian version of NASA for training cosmonauts). Though it was $45 more, my companions, Louis and Gerry, and myself chose Star City, giving the nod to space exploration over the city’s reportedly second best museum of art. Our Program Director, Guzel, told us that this was a new option, and that other tour companies didn’t offer it. In fact, the whole facility had been (until recently) off-limits to any visitors—including Russians.
It had been many years since Russia first made its trek into space. I was 13 years old in 1957, isolated deep in the Maine woods. Our only communication with the outside world was an old radio operated via a huge dry cell battery, and the nearest radio station was about 150 miles away. Our settlement was a one-horse community without the horse.
Cosmonaut Yuri Onufrienko, assisted by translator Natalia, talked to the group about Russian space exploration.
I will never forget getting dressed early one morning and hearing my mother announce, “The Russians have put a satellite in orbit!” to my father and I. That was almost an epiphany to me … a citizen of such a small world, to see the possibility of visiting other planets—to boldly go where no man has gone before—a prequel to Star Trek flashing before my eyes!
Our day began driving about an hour out of the city to the northwest, seeing some small towns with little cottages that families lived in year round. Star City was secluded in a forested area “in a location kept so secret, even most Russians didn't know where it was,” and we noted a number of buildings on campus, all varying examples of 1960s frill-free Soviet architecture.
Our tour of Star City was generous and rewarding. We saw life-sized models of the Mir space station, which orbited the Earth for 15 years, and other satellites, space suits, dried food packets, and a hundred different items used in orbital life.
Laurie Holden with Rossia crew member Alyona, in traditional Russian garb.
We climbed five floors of steps to get to the top of the tank that is used (when filled with water) to simulate weightlessness. In a different building, we saw the world’s largest centrifugal ride—a colossal arm with a cockpit at its end that can rotate so fast that one could literally lose his mind, a phenomenon of gravity rather than psychology!
Cosmonaut Yuri Onufrienko, who has spent more than a year in space from his four different missions and is a very personable individual, talked to us about living in space and answered our questions. Although Grand Circle’s Natalia did the translating, Yuri would often understand our English questions and give us an English answer—switching over to Russian when the answer required a more lengthy explanation.
There was a memorial area with a statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. We completed our morning with lunch at the old cosmonaut campus cafeteria. I was glad to finally sit down, as my hips needed a landing!
Want to learn about Russian space exploration for yourself or speak with other Russian cosmonauts? Plan your Russia Revealed: Moscow to St. Petersburg River Cruise today.