Education and Military Training
Bondarenko was born in Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR, USSR. His father was sent to the Eastern Front in the first days of World War II. The youngster and his mother went through several years of privation during the time from 1941–1944.
From an early age, Bondarenko was fascinated by aviation heroes and dreamed of becoming a military aviator himself. While still at Kharkiv's Higher Air Force School, he was a member of the local aviation club. After Bondarenko's graduation in 1954 he was admitted to the Voroshilov Aviation Military Academy and a year later he was transferred to an air force college in Grozny, Armavir Military Pilot Aviation School, from which he graduated in 1957. In 1956 he married Galina Semenovna Rykova, a medical worker. Their first child was born later that year. During 1956, Bondarenko was sent to Armavir Higher Air Force Pilots School, graduating in 1957—the same year Sputnik 1 was launched.
Commissioned a Second Lieutenant Bondarenko served in the Soviet Air Force's PribVO (the former Baltic Military District) and on 28 April 1960 he was chosen to be among the first group of 29 cosmonauts. He began training on 31 May for a planned launch on the spacecraft Vostok 1 (aboard which Yuri Gagarin carried out the first human spaceflight a year later). According to his fellow cosmonauts, Bondarenko was a mild-mannered person with a pleasant disposition. He had a good singing voice and played tennis well.
Read more about this topic: Valentin Bondarenko
Famous quotes containing the words education and, education, military and/or training:
“A President must call on many persons—some to man the ramparts and to watch the far away, distant posts; others to lead us in science, medicine, education and social progress here at home.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“It’s fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust to him armed with his primer against the soldier in full military array.”
—Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
“The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)