Cosmonauts

Cosmonauts wear spacesuits.

Soyuz 11 cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev were killed in re-entry in 1971. They were returning to Earth after successfully manning Salyut 1, the first Soviet space station.

During the 15 years it was in orbit, Russia's Mir space station provided a home in space for more than one hundred cosmonauts and astronauts from at least twelve different countries.

A shoulder patch from the Apollo 1 mission, whose crew was killed in a fire, and medals commemorating two Soviet cosmonauts who died in their country's space efforts, were left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

The two cosmonauts collaborated on a variety of Russian space research.

The two cosmonauts looked at microgravity’s effect on pain sensitivity and bone tissue.

With the emergence of manned space flight in the 1960s, Earth-orbiting cosmonauts and astronauts acted much like tourists by taking photos from the windows of their spacecraft.

The two cosmonauts rehydrated their meals.

Cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin left the station on a three-hour spacewalk and found that the obstruction around the docking port for the Progress rocket was a rubber gasket.

Despite all the recent hullabaloo about humankind preparing to go to Mars, we should not overlook the practicality of our Moon—Luna—being possibly the first substantial step of human colonization outside our Earth—Terra. Luna is very much closer than Mars, to Terra. What astronauts, taikonauts, or cosmonauts need really is to practice their space skills on a Moon base. People need to know how to live on worlds with lower gravity. People need to know how to make and raise babies outside Earth. People need to know how to simply live on a different world, and that practice would likely find itself on the Moon. Practice makes perfect. And Luna is it. I have read a research paper supporting the idea of a human facility on the Moon, to prepare us humankind for farther objectives. It would take a long, long time... No, humankind has not yet conquered the Moon! The current romantic focus on Mars is partly because some people think that humankind indeed has conquered the Moon, which is, therefore, a "has-been" for space exploration. Such is a falsehood. Wake up, humanity! Other countries do know...