"I was born in a poor negro family, and although I dreamed of flying from childhood, that was utterly unthinkable," Tamayo Méndez said in the book. "I had to start work early, as a street shoe-shine boy — a poor man's profession — or selling vegetables."
Tamayo Méndez joined the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, and he later attended the Association of Young Rebels around 1960,That led him to study as an aviation technician in Cuba and become a pilot after moving to the Soviet Union to continue his studies, where he learned to fly a MiG-15 fighter jet. While training, he was inspired by the first-ever human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin in 1961.
Tamayo Méndez was selected for the program in 1978 and spent roughly 1,500 hours training over more than two years with Romanenko, his crewmate, before their September 1980 launch. The two men docked with the modest Salyut-6 space station a couple days later, stayed aboard for about five days, and then returned home.
Tamayo Méndez also helped with experiments involving a brain-stimulating helmet, as well as those designed to measure stress levels, blood circulation, immune system cell health, and cellular of division yeast.From left: Cosmonauts Valery Ryumin, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, Yuri Romanenko, and Leonid Popov float inside the Salyut 6 space station in September 1980.
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