Selection and biomedical training of cosmonauts.

Abstract The twenty-eight year experience to support safety of manned space missions, points to the validity of a chosen and adopted USSR concept of cosmonaut selection and training. Medical selection was based on the observations made in clinical medicine, medical expertise of the flying personnel, and experimental investigations concerning space flight effects on living systems. Between 1948 and 1961, the data on animal exposure to space flight factors have been provisionally obtained in vertical missile flights which made it possible to validate manned space mission feasibility.