death_date death_place status birth_place mission nationality birth_date article_title name type
18 february 1966 vladivostok , russia , soviet union deceased autonomous republic of crimea , ukraine , soviet union none russian 31 march 1934 grigori nelyubov
 grigori grigoryevich nelyubov soviet
grigori nelyubov

grigori grigoryevich nelyubov -lrb- ; march 31 , 1934 -- february 18 , 1966 -rrb- was one of the original 20 soviet cosmonauts , who was dismissed from the soviet space program in 1963 for drunk and disorderly conduct .
his existence in the program was kept secret until the advent of soviet glasnost in the late 1980s .
he committed suicide on february 18 , 1966 .
born in porfiryevka , crimea in ussr , nelyubov was a captain and pilot in the soviet air force .
he was selected as one of the original 20 cosmonauts on march 7 , 1960 along with yuri gagarin .
the following year , six of the original twenty were evaluated for assignment on vostok flight crews between january 17 and 18 ; gagarin , titov , and nelyubov were considered the top three candidates .
for vostok 1 nelyubov was chosen as second backup for gagarin and presumably first backup for vostok 2 for titov in april and august 1961 respectively .
for the dual launches of vostok 3 and vostok 4 , nelyubov was again chosen as a backup for andrian nikolayev and pavel popovich .
on march 27 , 1963 , nelyubov , ivan anikeyev and valentin filatyev were arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct by the militia at chkalovskaya station .
according to reports , the officers of the security patrol that arrested them were willing to ignore the whole incident if the cosmonauts apologized , but nelyubov refused , and the matter was reported to the authorities .
because there were previous incidents , all three were dismissed from the cosmonaut corps on april 17 , 1963 , though officially not until may 4 , 1963 .
nelyubov never completed a space mission .
following dismissal he went back to flying interceptors in siberia but fell to drinking and depression .
he died on february 18 , 1966 .
while drunk , he stepped in front of a train near the ippolitovka station , northwest of vladivostok .
it was officially ruled a suicide .
to protect the image of the space program , efforts were made to cover up the reason for nelyubov 's dismissal and his following suicide .
his image was airbrushed out of the famous `` sochi six '' photo which showed the top members of the original class of soviet cosmonauts .
this airbrushing led to speculation about `` lost cosmonauts '' .
