DUMITRU PRUNARIU

“A DREAM WITHOUT LIMITS, A LOVE WITHOUT FEAR”

PROJECT MADE BY: DASCĂLU ANA-MĂDĂLINA

BERGHEȘ ANDREEA

DIACONU IOANA
BĂLĂUNȚESCU ANA-MARIA
 A sense of the unknown has always
lured mankind and the greatest of the
unknowns of today is outer
space. The difficulties,
the joys and the sense
of accomplishment are
epitomized in the space
programme.
 Prunariu was thus becoming the very first Romanian
cosmonaut to ever cross the Karman line and also the
103rd man in space, spending no less than 7 days, 20
hours and 40 minutes out there.
His story begins in Brasov, on the 27th of September
1952. And if for all the dreamers, scattered all over the
world, the Cosmos will forever remain both a mystery and
a searing dream, who would have thought that a
Transylvanian Romanian could ever live to fulfill his?
 On the 14th of May, 1981, the Soviet mission Soyuz 40 was
entering Cosmic Space. Aboard of it there were two cosmonauts:
Leonid Popov, from the Soviet Union, and Dumitru Prunariu, from
the then Socialist Republic of Romania.
 His passion began to catch contour when he was still a child, at
the Pioneers’ House in Brasov. And then in elementary school, Mr.
Prunariu's passion grew bigger by seriously building models and
winning national awards. In high school, however, he began building
missile models and later he become a cosmonaut. That proved to be
the first step towards The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering from
Bucharest, where he specialized in Aeronautics. After graduation, he
came back to native land, at IAR Ghimbav.
Near the plane, which Mr. Prunariu was flying with.
 Since when do you have this passion for flying? Is it from childhood or it was just love by
chance?
“ I can't know for sure if I was born with this passion, but I can definitely tell that since
when I have looked at the sky I also loved the planes. I guess I can tell that it was a bit also of
luck as I was born and I lived in Brasov, there, as you know it is an intersection of
airlines. Consequently, since I was 5 years old, I wanted to build my own airplane in my
grandfather's carpentry workshop.”
“ Not even in my dreams have I ever expected to fly so high. Since I remember, I wanted
to build my own plane with which I could fly through the atmosphere, but fate reserved me
something else. I can say that I was mesmerized by the space flight. "

Along with colleagues from the Aeromodeling Circle in

1965
 A year later, in the May of 1977,
the selection for the cosmic flight
programme Interkosmos was just
beginning and for Dumitru Prunariu
that meant the start of a rocky yet
certain path toward the fulfillment of a
life-long ambition. He went through
both physical and theoretical training,
which proved to be extremely
thorough and difficult, as the officer in
charge of them had been given only
two months to transform them into
professional sportsmen, capable of
great performance.
 In the end there were two Romanians, Dumitru Prunariu and Dumitru
Dediu who made it in the 1778 trainees for the following three years at the
Training Center for Cosmonauts Iuri Gargarin, in the so-called stellar
town, close to the Russian capital. Thus, on the 12th of May 1981, Dumitru
Prunariu received the official confirmation that he had been nominated to
take part in the Romanian-Soviet spatial flight, alongside of the Soviet
cosmonaut Leonid Popov, who had just set the “duration” record of 185
days. Prunariu was the only one who got maximum scores in the final exams
and tests.
`
 In order to be able to
imagine the acceleration that
the cosmonauts where
subjected to, let us think that
after only 8 minutes and 50
seconds the spaceship was
dispatching itself from the
last part of the bearing
rocket. At this point, they had
already reached an altitude of
220 kilometers,
approximately 3000
kilometers away from their
launching site and going
around the Earth with a
staggering speed of 28 000
km per hour.
 The spaceship that Dumitru
traveled in united with the space
station Saliut-6, as a result of the
skillful maneuvers carried out by
Prunariu and his partner while on
board. On the station there were
two more soviets, Vladimir
Kovalionok and Victor Savinîh.
Prunariu tells a quite amusing
story about illicitly bringing an
onion and Romanian cognac for
Kovalionok on board, as well as a
small automatic Canon camera.
Still, nobody condemned them for
this, as the photographs taken
with that camera were the best
ones in the entire Intercosmos
programme.
 This is how the Solium-6 lab
shows, alongside the spaceship of the
permanent crew. The picture was made
by Dumiru Prunariu on May 22, after
they left the space laboratory to land.
 The duo performed 22 scientific
experiments while in Cosmos. Most
of them had a Romanian
conception, and the equipment
manufactured in Romania for this
purpose boasted a high degree of
miniaturization, reliability and also
a low energy consumption rate,
thus working flawlessly.

These experiments aimed at

obtaining vital information for
broadening the scope of
knowledge in the Astrophysics
domain, the study of cosmic
radiations and of cosmic
technologies and also in Biology,
Cosmic Medicine and
Psychology
 Dumitru Prunariu’s memory of those special moments is still vivid in his
head. He would pass over Romania every single day and from there, from up
high, Romania seemed to be as big as a “ruddy home-made bread”, as he calls
it. The return of the two cosmonauts from Cosmos took place on the 21st of
May 1981. Prunariu recalls that the moment of switching back to the normal
gravity was utterly awful. He felt like he was made of lead and the ground was
wobbling under him.
 Moreover, after 36 years from his famous mission, Dumitru Prunariu had an
interview, in which he was asked about what could possibly differentiate him from the
others candidates, in number of 150. So, mister Prunariu said that people are very
different in their nature, such as: “For a certain type of activity, there is only a certain type
of person who is suitable for doing a particular job”

Q: What characteristics/ features should a cosmonaut have?

“Firstly, you must be focused all the time and have a strong will, you must have the ability to
work and make decisions under stress and of course not to be claustrophobic. And all of above
mentioned existed as a basis of selection and were gathered as the time passed.”
• Last but not least, during this interview, Dumitru
Prunariu spoke about his meeting with Nichita Stanescu
in 1982, in which they took advantage of the occasion to
discuss the entire night about “Cosmos, world and
poetry”. It is worthy to be mentioned that the result of
the impression that Prunariu had made on the romanian
poet can be seen in the following paragraph: “Dumitru
Prunariu is close to a beautiful child, as the youth itself,
clean as the flesh of an apple. He came to see me, while I
was lying sick in my bed, and I was surprised to see how a
national hero can be so gentle, so humble, so cordial, so
scientist and so childish at the same time. I don’t know
how the heroes of any country are, but ours, whether
from wartime, or peace, have something of Prince
Charming in them.” (Nichita Stanescu, December 1982).
10 years later
VĂ MULȚUMIM!