MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. A Cheget seat designed for Russia’s future Oryol crewed spacecraft will withstand far greater loads than its Kazbek-UM version installed on Soyuz spaceships, CEO of the Zvezda Research and Production Enterprise Sergei Pozdnyakov told TASS on Wednesday.
"The customer has now considerably increased the requirements for loads. On the Kazbek, it was up to 70 g [the load for a body resting on Earth at the sea level equals 1 g] and on the Cheget it was raised up to 100 g," the chief executive said.
The task of any spacecraft seat is to absorb loads so that they do not exceed the permissible levels of human tolerance, which are up to 16-18 g for the spine, for example (these loads last fractions of a second). This is achieved through special absorbers, he explained.
The Cheget-type seat is now undergoing ergonomics trials, following which it will enter the stage of technical tests: a dummy with sensors will be placed into it and dropped from a height to understand how much the seat reduces loads in case of an emergency landing.
The Cheget landing seat will be reusable compared to its Kazbek version currently used in Soyuz spaceships.
The absence of an individually designed seat liner is the main specific feature of Cheget-type seats designed for the Oryol spacecraft being developed in Russia. The seats will have adjusters for the shoulders, the lower part of the human body, the height and the length of legs, which will allow for the cosmonaut’s quite rigid fixation. The angles at the knee and hip joints have also been increased to avoid swelling and discomfort. The Cheget seat incorporates two absorbers to reduce vertical and longitudinal loads.
Russia is developing the crewed Oryol spacecraft for lunar missions. Its first crewless flight is scheduled for 2023 from the Vostochny spaceport. Russia plans to start flights to the Moon aboard the Oryol spacecraft from 2028.