Star City is a magic place.
It's the birthplace of cosmonautics,
and it's this little city on the outskirts of Moscow still tucked away in the woods if you if you want.
Of course we fly to the Space Station on a Russian vehicle the Soyuz,
and so the training for those very critical moments of
launch, ascent, docking, and then reentry,
takes place in Star City.
We have simulators in Star City that are perfect replicas of the actual flight vehicles.
And the brain of the simulator is exactly the same brain of an actual flight vehicle,
so that it responds and it acts exactly in the same way.
A very, very accurate mock-up and simulator of the Soyuz MS-13 that we will fly.
So he has a very sophisticated system inside
that is identical to the system that will fly on the actual machine.
It replicates all the situation recognitions that we will encounter during a nominal simulation
or emergency situations.
We have to demonstrate our proficiency at docking the spacecraft
of approaching a spacecraft and landing in the manual mode
in case all the automatic modes go down with the computers.
If you knew for sure that everything goes right,
then the training would be very short,
because in a nominal situation,
lots of things happen automatically or by ground control.
What we train for however,
is a number of emergencies that we know could happen.
It's unlikely, but we know that could happen.
There are some upgrades in a simulator,
for example a smoke machine.
In case of fire, they will fill the spacecraft with smoke
so that we actually have to react to clear the smoke
and all the steps to save our lives if in case of fire inside the spacecraft.
Now of course in the simulators we face the worst possible scenarios.
You might have...
simultaneously,
an issue with a computer,
or with the engine
at the same time,
a fire onboard,
or a depressurisation when you are leaking atmosphere into vacuum.
And a very tricky scenario that we practice in Star City,
is the case of the evacuation where the atmosphere of the Space Station is compromised,
so we have to wear the gas masks,
evacuate the Station
and then while we are in the Soyuz,
we need to practice donning our Orlan pressure suits.
Putting on the hood of our Orlan suit, and then putting on the mask again.
When you renter to Earth from space.
The module breaks and is slowed down,
you will feel yourself pressed into your seat,
with many times your own weight.
4gs is the nominal reentry.
If there is a problem,
and we have to go with a ballistic reentry,
you actually can get up to 8, 10...
even peaks of higher gs.
That's why the centrifuge is very important.
Because we get exposed to that kind of physical pressure on our chest
and the faster the centrifuge spins,
the higher is the load that you feel as a subject inside.
The doctor who is monitoring our heart rate and breathing rate,
at 8gs,
will give us some exercises some visual acuity exercises
to make sure that we can still see properly,
because it's very important when you re-enter that you can see and read the displays and still function normally.
Since the acceleration is through the body,
it pushes the blood away from the frontal part,
so you really need a different kind of respiration
and exercise in order to maintain consciousness doing the profile.
My crew and I've been training on a manual reentry profile,
that means that the spacecraft is still controllable,
but instead of maybe an automatic profile with the computer driving the re-entry,
we have to fly it ourselves.
Because the whole point of this manual reentry,
is to actually hit the spot where they are waiting for us.
One of the most challenging times in a way,
and also one of the most fun times,
it's the final exams.
We have a certain number of emergency situations
that will be given to us in the four hours in the morning
and the four hours in the afternoon.
And the crew which starts with responding to those emergency situations
with with their knowledge, with their skills.
They are authorized to deviate from the written procedures,
and then there will be a debriefing where we have to explain our actions,
why we took those actions,
and we have to do it in a timely way,
in a safe way,
and that's really the end of the of the training.
From that moment on,
if everything goes well,
we will be qualified for flight
and we get ready to go to the Cosmodrome and flight.