A letter from Yuri Gagarin…

While visiting the Cricova winery near Chisinau, the guide described Yuri Gagarin’s visit, and I thought this was worth blogging.

Cricova Entrance
Cricova Entrance

The Cricova complex is built into 120 kilometres of caves, where the temperature and humidity is stable at the best level for storing wine.

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Some photos from when Alexei Leonov visited Moldova

When I visited Chisinau ion Moldova in September, I visited a small cosmonautics museum. They have an impressive collection of photos of cosmanauts visiting Moldova from the early days of the manned space program.

Here are a couple of photos of the first man to walk in space on his trip!

leonov-moldova-2

Cosmos Museum, Chisinau, Moldova

On my last visit to Moldova, I was lucky enough to go to the Cosmos Museum. Not a conventional museum, this is set in a scheel, where children are encouraged to make accurate models of rockets, (at ;least the older ones!)

The lady who runs it, Mrs Lubov, is extremely knowledgeable and helpful, and was kind enough to show me the collection of photographs of cosmonauts visiting the city.

They have a pressure suit, lots of samples of space food, and full size detailed plans of Korolov’s “GIRD09” liquid fueled rocket!

I sent them a large print of a set of N-1 rockets, in the hope it will help inspire the next generation.

cosmos-museumI think the children are very lucky to have such an enthusiastic and well informed expert they rto encourage and help them!