Cosmonauts forced to end ritual wetting the wheel

A decades-old tradition of Russian cosmonauts urinating on the wheel of the bus that takes them to their rocket is under threat after designers of a new spacesuit omitted a zip.

Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, reportedly asked the bus driver to stop so that he could relieve himself before his flight from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 1961. He urinated on the rear right-hand tyre.

Since then it has become traditional to do the same for luck. Female astronauts usually urinate into a vial in advance and pour it on to the wheel.

The flight diary of Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a Malaysian who took off from Baikonur in 2007, noted that it took him five minutes to unzip and five minutes to seal up his spacesuit again after observing the tradition, which he said he enjoyed.

This week journalists examined new spacesuits for the crew of Russia’s Federation spacecraft and realised that the tradition was in danger. ‘‘We don’t have a fly,’’ said Sergei Pozdnyakov, head of Zvezda, which makes the spacesuits. ‘‘It doesn’t say anywhere that they have to pee on the wheel.’’

Most modern spacesuits are equipped with large nappies so that astronauts can urinate in space, but Russian versions have until now included a zip.

Wetting the wheel of the bus is not the only ritual that is observed at Baikonur. On the eve of every launch since the 1970s, astronauts have watched The White Sun of the Desert, a cult film from the Soviet era set during the Russian civil war.

A month after Gagarin’s flight, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. He blasted off in a soggy spacesuit after a launch pad delay meant that he was kept waiting in his rocket for eight hours. Shepard’s urine shortcircuited some of the electrodes that were monitoring his heart and respiration. – The Times