Presence in extraterrestrial space can cause strange manifestations, from distorted thinking to strange feelings of disorientation.
As he headed for the established area of the orbital flight, cosmonaut Gherman Titov had the impression that his body was rotating through the air. It began to feel this way as soon as the Vostok 2 spacecraft separated from the carrier rocket and became weightless. “I suddenly felt like I was running a grave and then I was flying with my feet up,” he said later. In reality, there is no rolling – the feeling was simply an illusion, something akin to an experience outside the body.
For many astronauts, these sensations tend to disappear after a few days in space, but others suffer from disturbing feelings throughout their journey. “I knew I was standing… and yet I felt upside down, despite the fact that everything was normally oriented around me” – this is how an astronaut described his experience aboard the Spacelab space station.
Trying to illustrate the phenomenon of “spatial disorientation”, the graphics of the Cosmonautica postage stamp issue. Anniversary, which will be introduced into circulation by Romfilatelia on May 14, 2021, aims to bring to the viewer as close as possible the impression of weightlessness felt by cosmonauts.
The show celebrates the 60th anniversary of man’s first flight into space (Yuri Gagarin, April 12, 1961) and 40 years since the first space trip in which a Romanian cosmonaut took part – Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu (May 14, 1981) .
Born on September 27, 1952, in Brașov, Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu graduated in 1976 from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, specializing in Aeronautical Engineering. In 1978 he was selected for the Intercosmos program, a space flight training program, and between 14 and 22 May 1981 he participated, along with Russian cosmonaut Leonid Ivanovich Popov, in a space flight aboard the Soyuz 40 spacecraft and spent a week aboard the Saliut 6 Orbital Complex, conducting a series of scientific experiments.
Romanian philately has repeatedly paid homage to this performance, with several issues of postage stamps being dedicated to the Romanian cosmonaut.
The first of these was put into circulation in May 1981. Entitled The Flight into the Romanian-Soviet Cosmos, it contained two stamps (depicting the Soyuz 40 spacecraft and the Saliut 6 Orbital Complex, respectively) and a lacy package. with portraits of the two cosmonauts participating in the mission, Dumitru Prunariu and Leonid Popov.
An anniversary show, which celebrated the 15th anniversary of Dumitru Prunariu’s space flight, was put into circulation in 1996, on the occasion of the ESPAMER ’96 World Philatelic Exhibition in Seville (Spain).
Ten years later, in 2006, Romfilatelia celebrated the 25th anniversary of a Romanian’s first flight into the cosmos, introducing a special type of stamp issue. On the package of the 1996 show, which illustrated the figure of the cosmonaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu, an overprint was applied with gold folio on half of the circulation and with silver folio on the other half.
In 2011, Romfilatelia marked the celebration of 50 years since the first human flight in Cosmos and 30 years since the space flight in which Dumitru Prunariu participated, through the COSMOS 2011 postage stamp issue. The stamps showed the portraits of the heroes of these two events, cosmonauts Iuri Gagarin and Dumitru Prunariu.
10 years after the appearance of this show, Romfilatelia joins again, in a postage stamp issue, the figures of the two participants in the space flight from 1981, in the Cosmonautics show. This year’s anniversaries, consisting of two stamps, a lacy package and a “first day” envelope.
The stamp with a face value of 2.20 lei is dedicated to the first cosmonaut of mankind, Yuri Gagarin. It is depicted aboard the Vostok spacecraft with which it flew on April 12, 1961. The silhouette of the Vostok spacecraft is in the background, and in the lower right corner of the 60 (year) Gagarin logo, the vintage insignia of the Vostok mission is visible.
The second stamp of the show, with a face value of 19.50 lei, illustrates Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu in a cosmonaut costume, details from the technical plans of the Soyuz rocket and the 40th anniversary (Prunariu) logo.
The tail of the show, with a face value of 31.50 lei, illustrates in a stylized way the first Romanian cosmonaut, Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu, in a suggested state of weightlessness, floating aboard the orbital complex Soiuz 40-Saliut 6-Soiuz T4, with his camera.
The technical drawing in the background reproduces details of the technical plans of the Soyuz rocket and of the Soyuz 40-Saliut 6-Soyuz T4 orbital complex, on board which the Romanian cosmonaut carried out his activity for 7 days, 20 hours, 41 minutes and 52 seconds. Along with the simulated perforation that suggests the orbits space, there is the official anniversary logo of the Romanian cosmonaut – 40 (years) Prunariu.
In addition to the compositional elements described above of each stamp, the cuffs of the miniskirts depict the Earth seen at night in the Cosmos. In the lower right corner, themed collectors will have the joy of finding the silhouette of the American space shuttle STS-1 (Space Transportation System-1) Columbia, which made its first flight 40 years ago, on April 12, 1981.
In the same spirit of “space disorientation”, knowing that “there is no up and down in the cosmos”, the illustration of the envelope “first day” of the show depicts an astronaut during EVA (Extravehicular Activity), along with those two anniversary logos – 40 (years) Prunariu and 60 (years) Gagarin.
The image of the “first day” stamp of the show contains stylized space elements, the profile of a cosmonaut, a celestial body, cosmic orbits and the symbol of a rocket in the form of a space vector, an element often found in the logos of many space agencies.
