Piotr Dolgov

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Piotr Dolgov was a colonel in the Soviet Air Force. On November 1, 1962, he was killed while carrying out a high-altitude parachute jump from a Volga balloon gondola. Dolgov jumped at 28,640 meters (93,970 feet). The helmet visor of Dolgov's Sokol space suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, and the suit depressurized, killing him.

If Dolgov's jump had been successful he still would not have exceeded the record set by Joseph Kittinger for the highest-altitude parachute jump in history (31,300 meters, August 16, 1960).

Over the years there have been false reports that Dolgov was actually killed on October 11, 1960, in a failed flight of a Vostok spacecraft. Such a flight would have occurred six months prior to the historic Vostok 1 flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, on April 12, 1961. These reports make Dolgov a phantom cosmonaut, one of the few such cosmonauts who actually existed, although he was not a member of the cosmonaut team.

A fictionalized version of Dolgov's death (misdated in February 1961) appears in the short story "The Chief Designer" by Andy Duncan, which was published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and was a Hugo finalist.

[edit] References

• http://astronautix.com/astros/dolgov.htm Brief description of Dolgov as phantom cosmonaut and of his actual fate
• http://www.vectorsite.net/tamrc_14.html Public domain text which briefly describes Dolgov's death
• http://www.asimovs.com/Nebulas03/thechief.shtml Text of "The Chief Designer"
• http://www.asfs.org/id21.htm Interview with Andy Duncan about "The Chief Designer"