___I would like to add
my voice to those who are mourning to loss of Maxim Tarasenko.
Maxim apparently died in an automobile accident Friday
evening, cutting short what promised to be a brilliant
career.
___Maxim was born in Protva,
in the Kaluga Region south of Moscow on 20 June 1962.
He received a Diploma with Excellence, Physicist-Engineer
in Spacecraft Dynamics and Flight Control from the Department
of Aerophysics and Space Research of the Moscow Institute
of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 1985. He studied shockwave
dynamics for his graduate work and was awarded a PhD (Candidate
of Science) degree in Physics and Math with a specialty
in Fluid, Gas and Plasma Dynamics by MIPT in 1988. Maxim
became a Research Associate at MIPT and Chair of Continuous
Media upon graduation.
___His plans had been to
work in aerospace engineering, but upon graduation he
became interested in space policy and the history of cosmonautics,
both domestic and foreign. In the early 1990’s he spent
a year as a visiting student at the Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University
in New Jersey. The next year he was a Visiting Fellow
at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Chicago where
he studied Science and International Security journalism.
___From 1991 to the present
he was a Research Associate at the Center for Arms Control,
Energy and Environmental Studies at MIPT where he developed
an independent expertise of national space activities,
conducted analyses of space programs and policies both
in Russia and abroad, and became an internationally recognized
expert on space program histories. His special interest
was the development of both the Soviet and American space
programs through the Cold War. The last of several times
that I saw Maxim was at an arms control conference held
at Cornell University in New York where he was to deliver
several papers. This was just one of many international
speaking engagements of his. He had delivered a paper
on the ’Reorganization of the FSU Space Program and Its
Influence on Space Activities Worldwide’ at the IAF in
Graz, Austria in 1993. His 1994 IAF paper in Jerusalem,
Israel was entitled ’From Confrontation to Competition
and Cooperation: Roadblocks and Bypasses’. The list of
papers and international places is too long to go into
at this point. I mention these two just to convey the
scope of his international status and recognition as a
scholar and researcher of the history of space exploration
and its political implications. Although I am sure there
are other pictures of him elsewhere on the web, the only
one that I know of is one that Sven Grahn has on his web
site of the two of them at the IAF in Beijing, China:
___Maxim was the author
of numerous books and articles as well, with his most
recent probabily being one in the latest issue of Novosti
Kosmonavtiki. Igor Lissov and Igor Afanasyev are both
correct that his tragic death will represent a tremendous
loss to the space history research community.
___One might expect that
someone with such an impressive resume would be very arrogant
and distant, but that was absolutely not the case with
Maxim. My first trip to Moscow was in 1995, and Maxim
kindly made arrangements for me for transportation and
access to a number of space program related facilities
in the Moscow area. I came back to Moscow the next year
for the first of the FPSPACE workshops. Charles Vick and
I made arrangements to come over several days early. Maxim
set up local accomodations for the both of us in what was one of the most enjoyable
trips of my life. Five of us packed into a little Russian
automobile going all over Moscow to see the sights. We
saw so many things that absolutely would not have been
possible without Maxim’s intervention. For example, that
is a picture of me climbing up the ladder of the earliest
LK Soviet manned lunar lander spacecraft at Kaliningrad
College, literally across the street from the TsUP in
Korolov (
). At the 1997 FSPACE workshop there was some free
time before the conference got underway, so Maxim, Igor
Afanasyev, Mike Cassett, Charles Vick and t went on a
tour of Moscow checking out model shops and book stores
for space program related items.
___I opened my remarks
by saying that Maxim’s death has cut short what promised
to be a brilliant career. On two recent, separate occasions,
researchers, one from the New York Times, needed someone
to accompany them to Baikonur for some work they were
doing on the history of the Soviet/Russian space program.
Maxim was at the top of both of their lists as the one
they needed for their work. Maxim took along a camera
and shot some incredible pictures from the N-1/Energia-Buran
launch facility and of the Proton area. He sent the film
over here and I made up sets of prints for the various
interested parties. I mention this only to say that Maxim
was gaining an international reputation as THE one individual
with the depth of knowledge and connections to cover just
about any aspect of cosmonautics. Just before his death,
be was considering accepting a position as the Moscow
bureau chief for an internationally famous aerospace publication.
___My last e-mail from
Maxim was just a week or so ago, but, as I mentioned earlier,
the last time I saw him was when he was at Cornell University,
which is about 30 miles north of my home. I brought along
some pictures I had shot while I was in Moscow of various
spacecraft instrument panels, and I was hoping that he
could translate some of them for me. Most were simple
acronyms that meant absolutely nothing to me, but Maxim
knew what just about every one was. I think back to that
beautiful clear blue sky day in August, sitting at a picnic
bench outside one of the campus buildings looking at a
stack of spacecraft photos with Maxim. A truly brilliant
individual who had extended so many kindnesses to me and
to others, as people like Jim Harford has mentioned. I
will always remember Maxim, for the all too brief period
of time that I got to know him and the many favors and
acts of kindness that he extended to me. He is irreplacable
and will truly be missed by so many of his friends.