Museum of Cosmonautics, Moscow

When I was a little boy, when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would always say "Astronaut".

I was attracted by stories about celestial bodies, rockets flying to the moon, I admired brave cosmonauts and their suits, big helmets with shiny visors...
And I wasn't even aware of how unfulfillable that wish was 😕
I grew up and remained a lover of space stories, but beyond 10,000m, I didn't fly.

You can imagine how happy I was when I had the opportunity to visit the Cosmonautics Museum in Moscow.

We all know about the NASA space program, there were many documentaries and films based on true events ("Apollo 13" and Tom Hanks, as the main character, in my opinion the best film on the subject of the space race).

But we may have forgotten that the USSR during the Cold War, at the beginning of the 60s of the 20th century, was an equal rival of the USA with a competition to see who would be the first to conquer space.

Not far from the center of Moscow there is a museum complex, and one of the main ones is the Museum of Cosmonautics.
The statue of a rocket landing in the sky gives a clear idea of what kind of museum it is.

When you enter the main entrance, the statue of a cosmonaut with outstretched arms seems to be greeting you, inviting you to embrace, and welcoming you to this phenomenal museum, which tells the story of the history of USSR cosmonautics in detail.

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The museum contains countless exhibits of original equipment, parts of aircraft, meteors, but also many replicas of satellites, rockets, as well as a full-scale replica of the "MIR" Space Station.

Along with a large number of exhibits, there are plates with descriptions (on some bilingual ENG-RUS, on some only in Russian, so a translator had to work 😀).
In any case, and without reading in detail for each exhibit, it is easy to conclude what each exhibit represents.

There are astronaut suits, their tools, food containers, decorations, documents...

And the most valuable exhibits are the used pilot's chair and the grounded probes that landed the brave astronauts from orbit.
If you get close enough to one of them, you can see on their surface the extent of damage from the high temperature to which they were exposed when passing through the atmosphere.

Of everything in this museum, I was most fascinated by the dimensions of probes, rockets, satellites, as well as equipment for astronauts.
Judging by the specimens on display, it is clear that the astronauts could not have been large people.
That is why there are many women among the astronauts.

In addition to a bunch of buttons for controls, the probe also has two seats, and I'm not sure I could fit in one of them, even without a spacesuit on.

I am fascinated by visiting this museum, perhaps the most in my life. That's why I decided to add it to my Pinmapple map of visited locations. I recommend you to visit the same, if you are ever in Moscow.