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Soviet spacecraft design engineer and
cosmonaut. Together with Sergei Korolev,
Feoktistov began conceptualizing a manned space vehicle that could travel into
orbit and return safely to Earth as early as June 1956. He helped design the Vostok
spacecraft and its subsequent conversion to the multiseater Voskhod. For
this he was rewarded with dubious pleasure of flying alongside two crew mates in
the extremely risky Voskhod 1 mission in 1964, thus becoming the first
scientist-engineer in space. As head of his own bureau he played a major role in
the design of the civilian Salyut and Mir space stations and served as flight director on the Soyuz
18/Salyut mission in 1975. Although assigned to fly on Soyuz T3, he was grounded
a few days before launch because of medical problems. Later he joined NPO Energia
before retiring in 1990. Feoktistov graduated from E. N. Bauman Moscow Higher
Technical School (MVTU) with a doctorate in physics.
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