Dumitru Prunariu, The First Romanian in Outer Space

Air force general and engineer Dumitru Prunariu was the only Romanian to ever go to outer space

Steliu Lambru, 31.05.2021, 13:33

Space flight has brought closer to each other people of different cultures, ethnicities, or sides of the planet and different geopolitical interests. An ideal of humanity in getting to know the outer limits, space flight had isolationism and barriers melt in the face of human strength and ingenuity. Air force general and engineer Dumitru Prunariu was the only Romanian to ever go to outer space, and this happened on May 14, 1981, 40 years ago. Together with Col. Leonid Popov, Prunariu was half the crew of Soyuz 40, which went up to the Soyuz 6 — Soyuz T-4 orbital complex, as the climax of a long period of preparation, the most important moment in the life of the 29 year-old Romanian airman.

Prunariu and Popovs mission was a success, and they both returned safe and sound. The moment 40 years ago was a media and television event, and Prunariu was on TV for a full hour. The secret of the success of such a mission is the compatibility of all the members of the team, as Prunariu said back then:

“Leonid Popov took me in like a kid brother, we started working together, and saw that we got along great. The age difference was not so big, about 7 years. I knew very well the theory, he knew the practical side, so we combined and completed each other, and we passed the final exams, which confirmed us as the main crew. We got top grades in all the exams.”

Questions write themselves when talking to a man who flew into outer space. One of them had to do with weightlessness:

“First you have a state of euphoria when you start floating, when your arms are just hovering freely. The on-board documentation just floats in front of you. Little by little, however, bodily changes occur, and you get a state of discomfort, which gets worse in the first couple of days. You get headaches, vertigo, your inner ear doesnt know up or down, left or right. Blood circulation changes, the tension on joints and muscles produces a state of discomfort.”

Beyond the spectacular nature of such a moment, flying into space, there are details that are quite commonplace. One of them was the team of Soyuz 40 bringing into orbit a bunch of spring onion, for their colleagues on the complex. Here is Dumitru Prunariu:

“I have to tell you that these people that fly into outer space are regular people with families, they have their needs, they want a small drink, or eat something special. Vladimir Kovalionok, the commander of the space station, after two months in space, just wanted to taste spring onion. He called his wife on the phone, she knew that we were going up there, and she gave the onion to Ivan, the crew physician, who accompanies us to the rocket. Ivan took out of his medical kit a handful of spring onion wrapped in a newspaper, and told us that the onion had to get to Volodya. We stared at each other, and Popov told me that I had a spare pocket on one of my gauntlets. I shoved the onion in that pocket, and after a day and a half it reached Vladimir Kovalionok.”

In addition to spring onion, Prunariu brought his Soviet colleagues a small gift, a small bottle of Romanian brandy.

“We were visiting the main crew. You knock on the door, and you make small gifts. The Romanian tradition is to gift something like a bottle of wine or a small bottle of brandy. Well, I got a flat bottle of purely Romanian brandy, and it was a great pleasure making this small gift to the cosmonauts. You drink the brandy with a straw, because you cannot pour it into anything, theres weightlessness. My colleagues were yelling Wheres my shot glass?, and with my mind freshly initiated into space matters, I was thinking, what glass? But they took out a hose from a panel and used it to drink out of the bottle.”

Dumitru Prunariu came back to Earth after 8 days, and science journalist Alexandru Mironov recalled his reception:

“I saw him when he came back to Earth at a meeting with journalists in the Marble Room at the Spark Palace. I was afraid for him post factum. This kid was shoved into an empty vat and sent barreling through space. He was shy, he seemed scared senseless, but he was only like that in front of journalists. He is a man of steel. There was a clear order by which we were forbidden to talk too much about him, because we only had two heroes back then, the Ceausescus, and we were supposed to talk only about them. Effectively, he disappeared from the spotlight. But he understood his role, and went to thousands of meetings with the public, and was very empathetic.”

Leonid Popov and Dumitru Prunariu were rewarded for their efforts and professionalism with many decorations, Romanian and Soviet. For 40 years, Dumitru Prunariu has the singular distinction of the greatest achievement in Romanian aeronautics, and the capsule that brought him back to Earth is on display at the National Military Museum in Bucharest.