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Boat of the Week: Inside ‘Galactica,’ the World’s Largest All-Aluminum Superyacht

Heesen's behemoth has a high-tech "backbone" running its length to provide enough rigidity for the boat to reach a blistering 30 knots., julia zaltzman, julia zaltzman's most recent stories.

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What has an aluminum-plate backbone, more than one head, and runs faster than Usain Bolt? Heesen ’s superyacht Galactica— or “Project Cosmos,” as it was formerly called by the yard. The largest boat built by the Dutch shipyard to date is getting ready for its spring debutante ball. Fast, sporty and 262 feet long, the owner refers to Galactica as his “ultimate superyacht.”

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Hundreds of yachts around the world are larger than Galactica . None of them are built entirely out of aluminum. For the owner who likes to make a statement with his custom new builds, Galactica had to be his largest and fastest one yet. The owner decided he wanted a 30-knot top speed—greased lightning for a yacht this size and a conundrum for the shipyard.

A 262-ft. steel-hulled boat with conventional propulsion wouldn’t be able to reach that 30-knot mark. But an all-aluminum boat might, though that metal doesn’t provide the type of structural support that heavier steel does. Such a yacht had never been built, even by an aluminum specialist like Heesen. It would take serious creative engineering.

Galactica on her maiden journey through small Dutch villages.  Courtesy Galactica

The owner has history when it comes to these types of requests. His previous two yachts, Galactica Star and Galactica Super Nova are both all-aluminum with top speeds nearing 30 knots. At 230 feet in length, the latter was Heesen’s largest-ever build when delivered in 2016. Galactica is 30 feet longer, and while that doesn’t sound like much in the scheme of things, the technical ingenuity required to make it work had Heesen’s top engineers scratching their heads. The answer lay outside the boating industry, in the construction industry’s I-beam.

“Everyone knows the I-beam where you have the material on the outer veins of your structure,” Peter van der Zanden, Heesen’s general manager of design, development and engineering, told Robb Report . “That’s where our inspiration for the backbone came from, where we have the majority of materials in the bottom of the boat and on the main deck—our ‘outer veins’.”

The name “backbone” suggests a spine or something with flex, but the patented box-shaped structure is anything but. Composed of 15-mm aluminum plate, it’s lightweight and strong, running almost the full length of the yacht.

Glass was a main priority for the owner’s third boat in the Galactica series.  Courtesy Heesen

“We knew the design would work, our only concern was if it would work well enough,” says Van der Zanden.

Heesen created a scale model of the boat in water, divided into four segments, and simulated the pressures and forces at sea. When the results exceeded the requirements set out by Lloyd’s, the yard patented the design.

Of course, there’s more to Galactica than its hidden backbone. Key defining features of the Winch Design exterior include large sweeping panes of glass that trace the arching line of the superstructure. A bow helipad doubles as a cinema with seating and a screen that folds away into the deck. The glass-bottomed pool on the main deck reflects sun rays on the beach club below. Increasing the amount of light—both natural and artificial—throughout the boat was a chief request in this latest version of Galactica.

On its journey from the Oss shipyard to North Sea sea trials, the clearance between the top deck and some bridges was less than six inches.  Courtesy Heesen

“The owner’s previous experience has certainly influenced the way Galactica looks,” James Russell, exterior designer at Winch, told Robb Report . “It takes time to learn what you love, and particular focus has been paid to areas where more time will be spent, such as the beach club.”

Inside, an interior by Sinot Yacht Design & Architecture includes a central glass elevator, brushed oak and marble finishes, and in the main deck lounge, hand-cut glass ceilings. Galactica ’s windows incline at 45 degrees, rather than the standard 90 degrees, to give the illusion that the panes of glass are larger than they are.

Glass is a recurring theme, from the glass detailing in the straw marquetry and stainless-steel wall located in the main deck lounge, to the drinks display cabinet on the bridge deck with bespoke-sized backlit glass cubes sized to fit individual bottles. But glass is heavy. For the yacht to be fast, it needs to be light.

The helipad converts into an open-air cinema, with a screen that rises from the deck.  Courtesy Heesen

On a yacht of Galactica ’s size, everything is large, from the four MTU V20 engines (12 tons each) and the two gearboxes (13 tons each), to the air-intakes and the fuel tanks. But everything was made as lightweight as possible. The boat totals only 1,700 gross tons. The owner’s 30 knots will come from the MTUs’ 19,320 horsepower as well as the variable-pitch propellers.

Nothing has come easy with this yacht build. Its January journey from Heesen’s shipyard in Oss to the port of Harlingen where the boat is undergoing final testing in the North Sea was a game of inches. It passed through villages and squeezed beneath canal bridges with less than half a foot to spare, a hair-raising exercise for an undelivered superyacht. It will be turned over to its owner in April.

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Galactica Super Nova - 2016

At 70 metres overall, Galactica Super Nova is the largest Heesen built to date. With an impressive top speed of 30 knots, this aluminium yacht with a Fast Displacement Hull Form is one of the fastest superyachts in her class in the world.

First impressions

Galactica Super Nova’s head-turning exterior design is by Espen Øino, who worked on a pre-established technical platform provided by Heesen. Her profile embodies Heesen’s DNA, but also introduces new design elements that make her one of the brightest stars in the Heesen galaxy.

Step aboard

Galactica Super Nova’s classic-contemporary interior is a paragon of elegance and comfort. The designer Sander Sinot worked closely with the owners to create a design that perfectly suits their lifestyle and taste.

Specifications

Hull type: FDHF

Exterior design: Espen Øino International

Interior design: Sinot Yacht Design

Hull: Aluminium

Length over all: 70.07 metres / 229 feet 8 inches

Beam over all: 11.90 metres / 39 feet

Draft (half load): 3.25 metres / 10 feet 6 inches

Tonnage: approx. 1,200 GT

Accommodations

Cabins: Full-beam owner’s stateroom, one VIP suite and four double suites

Technical Details

Maximum speed (half load): 30 knots

Range: 4,000Nm at 12 knots

Fuel capacity: 89,000 litres / 23,511 US Gallons

Fresh water: 25,000 litres / 6,604 US Gallons

Propulsion Details

Main engines: 2 x MTU 20V 4000 M93L Fixed Propeller + 1 x MTU 16V 4000 M93L Booster Jet

Maximum power: 2 x 4,300kW + 1 x 3,440kW

Main generators: 2 x Kilo-Pak, each 240kW

Bowthruster: ZF-Marine 165kW, electrically driven

Stabilisers: Quantum extendable, 2 fins, zero speed

General arrangement

Wheelhouse deck

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65m motor yacht GALACTICA STAR (Project Omnia) launched by Heesen Yachts

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Written by Eva Belanyiova

The 65m luxury motor yacht GALACTICA STAR (Project Omnia) by the respected Dutch builder Heesen Yachts has been launched. Superyacht Galactica Star (YN16465) was build with an aluminium hull and superstructure, boasting naval architecture by Van Oossanen and Heesen Yachts. Omega Architects designed her elegant exterior lines and her interior is by Bannenberg and Rowel .

65 m Heesen mega yacht Galactica Star (Project Omnia - YN 16465) equipped with five Seakeeper M21000 gyros

The 65m FDHF motor yacht Galactica Star was first presented in 2010 at the Yacht Club de Monaco and was sold to a Heesen repeat client right after. Researched by the world’s leading maritime engineers, the Galactica Star yacht features a revolutionary fast displacement and extremely efficient hull. This yacht has the highest power to weight ratio of any comparable yacht.

The Heesen 65m Galactica Star Yacht offers a number of unique features, such as a duplex beach club found aft on the main and lower decks with a 10 square metre side balcony on the port side and 22 square metre swimming pool platform.

On the lower deck guests will find a sauna, hammam, shower room, day head and a fully equipped bar. Another interesting feature is the glass bottom swimming-pool on the main deck, allowing the natural light to glimmer through the water to the bar area beneath.  On the fore deck there is a large sunbathing area, which can be transformed into a touch-and-go heli-deck. The tender garages with gull-wing doors are also located beneath the foredeck.

Galactica Star yacht is run by twin MTU 20V4000M93L engines and is expected to reach a maximum speed of 27knots and a 4,200-nautical-mile range at 14 knots of speed. She is due to be delivered in June 2013.

Please contact CharterWorld - the luxury yacht charter specialist - for more on superyacht news item "65m motor yacht GALACTICA STAR (Project Omnia) launched by Heesen Yachts".

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'Galactica Star' renamed ILLUSION and available for Caribbean yacht charters

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By Katia Damborsky   8 October 2019

The 65m/213ft motor yacht ILLUSION , formerly known as 'Galactica Star' is now open for Caribbean yacht charters . 

Refitted earlier this year after being sold at auction,  ILLUSION is now a luxury yacht for charter .

She will be spending her debut yacht charter season exploring the hotspots of St Barts and the Virgin Islands . 

The yacht's sleek and sporty exterior design comes from Omega Architects, while her interiors are the work of esteemed design studio Bannenberg & Rowell.

The motor yacht offers accommodation for up to six guests in 12 cabins, which comprises one master, one VIP and four double staterooms.

A contemporary, yet inviting theme best describes her interior design.  Her colour palette is sleek and dark, with stone detailing offset by plush textures and soft furnishings. 

Crowning the yacht, the sundeck stretches out invitingly. It enjoys a jacuzzi pool, alfresco dining and a variety of sunning areas where guests' can stretch out and unwind.

The yacht's sleek and sporty exterior design comes from Omega Architects, while her interiors are the work of esteemed design studio Bannenberg & Rowell.

There is a second, considerably larger pool on the main deck aft, which has a glazed portion in the bottom.  It allows views into the beach club below, where guests can enjoy unfolding sea terraces and premium spa facilities which includes a sauna and hamman.

The foredeck plays host to a convivial seating area which can also double as a touch n go helipad. Beneath it, there is the tender garage with gull-wing doors.

While she may be new for charter, she is no stranger to hosting guests on board. In 2016, she welcomed Beyonce and Jay-Z  on a superyacht vacation in Italy  which celebrated the singer's 32nd birthday.

In the beach club below, guests can enjoy unfolding sea terraces and premium spa facilities which includes a sauna and hamman.

If you would like to learn more about chartering M/Y ILLUSION please reach out to your preferred yacht charter broker .

You can view and compare all Caribbean charter yachts .

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65m Heesen 2013 / 2019

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Yacht GALACTICA STAR Delivered by Heesen

Heesen yacht GALACTICA STAR is a 65m super yacht capable of speeds up to 29 knots.

Fast Displacement

Heesen’s 65m Fast displacement all-aluminium motor yacht GALACTICA STAR successfully completed sea trails in the North Sea with an air temperature of 11 degrees Celsius, wind force oscillating from 4 to 5 Beaufort and waves over a meter high.

The GALACTICA STAR reached speeds of 28.8 knots, 2+ knots over the contractual speed. The vessel performed well, moved smoothly through the water and was reported to be very manoeuvrable.

The guests’ comfort onboard is further insured by 5 Sea Keeper gyro stabilizers.

Yacht GALACTICA STAR Accommodations

Yacht GALACTICA STAR has accommodations for up to 12 guests and includes some notable luxury features.

The duplex beach club is located aft on the main and lower decks. It boasts a 22 square meter swimming platform and 10 square meter side-balcony.

Yacht GALACTICA STAR Beach Club

On the lower deck of the duplex beach club there is a sauna, hammam, shower room, day head and a fully equipped bar. Another notable feature is the glass bottom of the swimming pool in the main deck which allows natural light to glimmer through the water to the bar area beneath.

The large sunbathing area on the fore deck transforms into a touch-and-go helipad. Heesen yacht GALACTICA STAR also features tender garages with gull-wing doors beneath the fore deck.

Heesen Yachts is the first of it’s kind to use aluminum for both hull and superstructure in its innovative hull configuration. The company’s Fast Displacement hull configuration is the perfect platform for creating a new luxury yacht generation where increased performance and reduced environmental impact begin with the hull design.

For more information regarding yacht GALACTICA STAR contact: Team@WorthAvenueYachts.com

Galactica Star | The ultimate yacht

Heesen Yachts’ Galactica Star is the world’s first all-aluminium fast displacement motor yacht. A thing of streamlined beauty, it might be the ultimate yacht

Galactica Star

The yacht is the private jet’s more romantic sibling. Jets are loud and limited by landing spots. Yachts represent pleasure more than convenience. Wealth buys freedom not regulations; the yacht smirks at the idea that you’re bound by anything but a horizon that inches forward as you do.

Furthermore, there’s something irresistibly nerdy about yachts. Learning to sail is another skill to add to the UHNW CV of dreams.

The most famous modern yachts are as much a work of art as they are a machine: The precise curation of art and design in Blue Bird’s saloon makes an expansive cabin look like the lounge of a Belgravia townhouse. Tara Getty’s yacht – rescued from the scrap heap by the oil heiress and and restored to its original splendour – is utterly elegant. Quite different is Dakis Joannou’s Guilty : its exterior is a graphic, architectural print executed by the artist Jeff Koons in an clashing palette of yellow, black, white and blue. It’s different, but like Blue Bird it celebrates the object: the contoured lines of a super-vessel.

Obviously, if you can afford the best, you’ll want it: in March this year, Dutch company Heesen Yachts launched the Galactica Star, the world’s first all-aluminium fast displacement motor yacht. The yacht scales water particularly efficiently, and has a specialised hull that reduces tension with the waves (less seasickness) and makes it easier to handle in the water. The yacht incorporates technology that reduces its emissions and confounds the norm of gas-guzzling monstrosity. The hydrodynamic design was developed by Van Oossanen Naval Architects and the result is 30% more efficient than a round-bilge motor yacht.

Of course the yacht is more than just a shiny toy you can sail. For all its presence, it is also symbolic of absence: of escaping, of the freedom of picking your destination, of being totally disconnected from reality. This applies whether you’ve sorted out a wifi connection or not. A yachting holiday connotes an adventurous spirit, a love of intrigue, a desire to find the sunset and keep sailing. The Galactica Star is the vessel to do it in. C

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Galactica Super Nova: Heesen’s super-fast superyacht with more power than 16 F1 cars

A 70 metre that can exceed 30 knots? As Heesen's super-fast former flagship joins the brokerage market , we look back at the build of the mighty Galactica Super Nova ...

Galactica Super Nova may be five metres longer than her Heesen Yachts predecessor Galactica Star , but this evolution was about much more than extra length. For one thing the new 70 metre had an extra engine packed inside and, while Galactica Star was the first incarnation of Van Oossanen ’s Fast Displacement Hull Form, the younger yacht really tests the “fast” in that description.

A centreline booster engine coupled to a Rolls-Royce water jet can be engaged when the wing engines and propellers push Galactica Super Nova above 20 knots. Then it’s time to hold on to your hat. “We did a speed run for the boss,” says the yacht’s engineer, Jan Kamstra. “On the main 20V MTUs alone we reached 26 knots.”

Once you have firmly grasped the concept of a 70 metre yacht with four decks of living space zooming by at 26 knots, consider what comes next. “If we know we are going to want to run fast, we will put the booster engine in warm-up mode,” says Captain Chris Guy. “In the wheelhouse, speed is controlled by a single throttle lever. I just keep pushing it and once the yacht is going faster than 20 knots the centreline jet is engaged automatically as I push the lever. We go from zero to top speed [30.3 knots] in 75 seconds.”

Naval architect Perry van Oossanen says: “Thirty knots is a great thing for a boat this size, especially with the simple fixed props and a single jet.” He also compliments Heesen for Galactica Super Nova ’s engine room design, which is “the same size as Galactica Star and there’s one more engine in it”.

To slow down, the captain can disengage the jet manually or simply pull back on the throttle. The computer clutches out the water jet at 17 knots and shuts down the booster engine once sensors show it has cooled sufficiently. At 1,650 revolutions per minute and 17 to 18 knots, the total fuel burn is a little less than 1,000 litres per hour. Dial back to 1,250 revolutions per minute, which delivers Galactica Super Nova ’s slow cruising speed of 12 knots, and fuel consumption drops to 660 litres per hour for a range of 4,000 nautical miles.

“She just wants to run,” says Guy. “I have to rein her in all the time. It often seems I hardly have any rpm on and we are doing 12 knots.” Indeed, just 500 revolutions per minute sends Galactica Super Nova moving at 7.4 knots.

From a performance perspective, however, speed isn’t the only consideration. Lots of semi-displacement yachts can achieve high speeds but it comes with a cost. The characteristic of the Van Oossanen hull is that it behaves mostly like a displacement hull — bulbous bow and all. The trick is in the way Galactica Super Nova ’s hull shifts from a sharp entry to a moderate round bilge displacement form and then to a flatter, planing, low-deadrise form aft for speed.

Unlike a typical fast hull design, its stern doesn’t sink at slow speeds while the bow tries to climb over its own wave. “We have [vertical] interceptors [at the stern] to make sure the boat stays as flat as possible while running,” says Guy. These are automatic, engaging as Galactica Super Nova passes five knots. As revolutions per minute increases they extend further. Guy and Kamstra tested that, too: at full rpm, the interceptors are responsible for an extra knot of speed.

While most owners will never get into the nuts and bolts of how their yacht is “tuned” to operate, they know quickly if they are comfortable or not. “Last night we had a 1.5 metre sea against us and we were running at 15 knots. There was no slamming. None!” Guy says that emphatically, as if he isn’t sure he is going to be believed. “That doesn’t happen in a fast boat.”

While he and Kamstra point to other incremental improvements aboard Galactica Super Nova , the larger changes are in the exterior and interior design. Heesen brought in Espen Øino to restyle the profile Frank Laupman of Omega Architects created for its 2013 Galactica Star and hired Sander Sinot for the interior.

Rather than substantially enlarging the superstructure, Øino spent much of the additional five metres on lengthening Galactica Super Nova ’s open decks. Not only does this make the profile look sleek and aggressive, it gives more room forward to the tender garage under the foredeck and a laid-back seating area/ outdoor cinema (which turns into a helipad) on top of it.

For the fixed hardtop over the massive sundeck , he broke the angles established below with a curved support arch — but painted it and the communications mast grey so they would disappear from view rather than add height to the profile. A simple bit of trompe-l’œil that works.

Galactica Super Nova ’s sweeping sundeck links visually and physically to the open bow, which is another 65 square metres of guest space — and both are designed to be usable day or night. The sundeck has sliding glass as well as the hardtop, for sun and wind protection. The foredeck has brackets for carbon-fibre poles and awnings that shade a seating area during the day.

At night, the poles support a screen for films or video of the day’s activities. This can be set in two positions: the first is for watching from that deck via a small projector; the second, for a bigger audience, involves a larger projector and image, viewed from seating on the sundeck above. A sound system is wired into both locations.

With a nod to practicality, Heesen included a deck hatch for getting the poles and lounges to a dedicated storage area below. When Galactica Super Nova is party central, a portable DJ station is linked to the onboard sound system and, for extra flourish, the carbon-fibre poles can be fitted with lights.

Galactica Super Nova has a unified aesthetic from top to bottom, inside and out: it’s beach-like, modern, open, light and pleasant. “Every space is consistent,” says Paul Costerus, of Sinot Exclusive Yacht Design. “The detailing is the same, bridge to main to beach club , but there is a shift in materials and ceiling style to define each space.”

The overhead height — 2.2 metres on the main and bridge decks and 2.1 metres in guest cabins — looks even greater because of lighting tricks and walls lit top and bottom so they appear to float. Galactica Super Nova ’s wooden floors have been edged with carpet to soften the look and eliminate bulb and strip reflections. The overhead lighting is LED in stainless steel strips. “It looks like halogen and has the same light quality,” says Costerus. “The quality of the lights will make or break an interior.”

Sinot used just three species of wood — sycamore, two types of wenge, and teak — to achieve the warmth of the interior, with the joinery and furniture on Galactica Super Nova made by Metrica and Heesen. The panelling and cabinets have a smooth, contemporary style that lets the richness and grain patterns of the wood do the talking.

Brushed and polished stainless steel provides the accents. Nowhere is this more effective than in Galactica Super Nova ’s central superyacht staircase , where the curved steps are banded in steel strips that appear to spin out of the central support post, hug the treads and then continue out to wrap the walls of the curved stair surround. The effect is striking, original, organic and reminiscent of a seashell.

On the subject of organic forms, all of the art aboard Galactica Super Nova has been framed in the same timber and style as the room’s joinery by owner request, to keep the same “form language”, according to Costerus.

Of course, the name Galactica Super Nova wouldn’t seem appropriate without a gigantic, multifunctional beach club with multiple hull openings. Guests arriving at the stern of the main deck are greeted by an elevated six metre infinity-effect  superyacht swimming pool wrapped in a teak splash border. Raising the pool preserves room in the beach club below and two glass windows in the pool’s bottom brighten the space even when the portside shell door is closed.

The space is delightfully residential in tone with a sofa and chairs, Emperador marble accents and all the amenities for a day on the water. The full bar is fitted with a kegerator so the owner’s favourite brew is on tap. Galactica Super Nova ’s large bathroom, which is lined in tile and onyx, includes a steam room.

Above, the main saloon opens to the aft deck via sliding glass doors and a drop-down window, although strategically placed orchids and other greenery provide privacy. Floor-to-ceiling windows around Galactica Super Nova ’s saloon allow natural light inside during the day, while at night carefully positioned LEDs wash the leather-wrapped mullions, bathing the room in soft light. Dividing the saloon from the dining area is an unusual architectural feature — a sort of half arch — that anchors a stone, shell and gold model ship sourced by the owner.

The main deck galley and its service pantry are a masterwork of stainless steel and black granite. The layout cleverly keeps Galactica Super Nova 's 16-strong crew from stomping through the chef’s domain, no mean feat on a boat with a modest 11.9 metre beam. There are three refrigerated wine caves and more refrigeration in the service pantry, to keep stores close at hand.

The master cabin forward is down a starboard hallway with a white Thassos marble floor. Bleached wenge doors with leather panels open on to the suite. Here, sycamore is crosscut to mimic lacewood, while a straight-veined Eramosa marble provides contrast. Sinot’s materials palette on Galactica Super Nova is neutral and constrained, but he’s exploited the materials to their full potential and the effect is far from dull.

It’s hard to imagine that the weight budget was calculated to the weight of each chair or that the marble is actually only five or six millimetres on a honeycomb backing. That’s part of the puzzle with a high-speed boat. Finding the path to deliver on all the elements in the owner’s brief takes creativity and co-operation, a lot of give and take, and willingness to explore new materials and methods. With Galactica Super Nova , the results are, shall we say, stellar.

First published in the October 2016 edition of BOAT International. Galactica Super Nova is jointly listed for sale with Burgess and Arcon Yachts .

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AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE

Star city at 50.

Change comes to the place where spaceflight was born.

Michael Cassutt

Deep in a birch forest 25 miles northeast of Moscow’s Red Square is a collection of apartment blocks and gray buildings, some rather oddly shaped, that gives the impression more of a campus than of a town. On many days the roar of jets from a nearby airfield shatters the silence, but otherwise the place is quiet, remote, apparently serene—a Russian gated community.

Known as the Federal Budget State Research Center and Cosmonaut Training Center, the complex bears the name of a national hero, Yuri Gagarin. NASA calls it the GCTC, short for Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. More popularly, and slightly inaccurately, it goes by the name of Star City (a better translation is “Starry Town”), and at the age of 50, it is the world’s oldest facility dedicated to the business of training humans to fly, work, and live in space.

Over its lifetime, the center has trained more than 120 crews for launches on Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz spacecraft, or for trips to Mir and the International Space Station on the U.S. space shuttle. Most of the trainees have been citizens of the Soviet Union and Russia, but graduates of the center include more than 140 Americans, Europeans and Japanese, half a dozen Chinese astronauts, and all the world’s space tourists, from U.S. millionaires Dennis Tito and two-time flier Charles Simonyi to Canada’s Guy Laliberté and Iranian-born Anousheh Ansari. Center officials estimate that 400-plus people have studied in its classrooms and trained in its simulators.

Today the center is facing challenges unlike any it has ever known. Its major buildings, constructed in the 1960s, are crumbling under the dual assaults of weather and age, and for the first time in its history, the facility is under new management. In July 2009, control passed from the Russian air force to Roskosmos, the country’s civilian space agency. The center’s director, veteran military cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev, was retired.

His replacement? Civilian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, at 52 a veteran of six spaceflights and two tours on the International Space Station, the first cosmonaut to fly on the shuttle, and holder of the world record for time spent in space (803 days). Krikalev is generally considered one of the most capable and popular space travelers in the world. (He even flew—and remains friends with—Charles Bolden, the current NASA administrator.) But will skills learned in space prepare him for the job of re-energizing Star City as it enters its second half-century?

THE SOVIET MINISTRY OF DEFENSE order creating a “Cosmonaut Training Center”—Military Unit 26266—came down on January 11, 1960. The center, officially created as part of the Soviet aerospace medical establishment, was first directed by flight surgeon Yevgeny Karpov. A site was chosen not far from the Chkalov Air Base, home of the USSR’s military flight test center, and within reach of both the Red Banner Air Force Academy in Monino and the Korolev Design Bureau in Kaliningrad, where the Vostok spacecraft that carried the first cosmonauts to orbit was built. When Karpov, his staff, and the original cosmonauts—a group that included Gagarin, Gherman Titov, and Alexei Leonov—moved to the location in 1960, they took up just one building.

Over the next decade, Star City grew in size and budget, expanding to a staff of 600, with more than 60 cosmonauts. The team worked on plans for lunar landing missions as well as manned military projects, and got its own aircraft support unit, the 70th Special Destination Wing, based at Chkalov. The center’s directors were air force generals, many of them former cosmonauts. With the abandonment of the lunar program and the scaling back of military efforts in the 1970s, the facility concentrated on training cosmonauts for long-duration space station missions on Salyut and, in the 1980s, Mir.

Star City first opened its doors—grudgingly—to Americans in 1973, when NASA astronauts began training for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. A special residence was built for the Americans on the grounds of the center (the building was later converted into the Profilactorium, a medical center for crews recuperating from long-duration missions. It now houses the NASA director of Russian operations and his team).

NASA has had a permanent presence at Star City since 1994, when astronauts Norm Thagard and Bonnie Dunbar began to train for the first shuttle-Mir mission. Integrating the civilian U.S. team into a closed Russian military center wasn’t easy. Driving onto the grounds for the first time one cold February day in 1994, astronaut Ken Cameron looked at the grim buildings, barbed-wire fences, and armed guards and told his small team, “Well, guys, there’s only a few of us cowboys, and a hell of a lot of Indians.”

Culture shock was a serious problem for the Americans. Recalls astronaut Mike Lopez-Alegria, NASA’s director of operations in Russia from 1996 to 1997: “You couldn’t find a restaurant. The telephone situation was bad. There were no gas stations. Gasoline was sold from trucks that were just pulled up along the road.”

Bert Vis, a Dutch space researcher, co-authored the only published history of the GCTC, Russia’s Cosmonauts: Inside the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center , which came out in 2005. Originally invited to Star City by a cosmonaut pen pal, Vis has made 17 visits, for a week or two each time, since 1991, when the Soviet Union disbanded. In the early days, Vis bunked in his host’s apartments, could not use a computer, and barely had access to a phone. Lately he has been able to book rooms at a hotel, though landline phones are still iffy.

The greatest change since the Soviet breakup has been the way Star City residents react to foreign visitors. At first “people would stare at me,” Vis says. “They were not used to seeing a foreigner there. When they heard me speak English, they would turn their heads and look at who that stranger was.

“There were older military officers who refused to meet with me, thinking that talking to a Westerner would harm their careers,” he adds. “Don’t forget that the old generation owed everything they had to Communism.”

Today, NASA astronauts live at Star City for months at a time, in Western-style cottages. And, Vis says, “The latest groups of cosmonauts are much more open to non-Russians, and don’t see the NASA guys and Europeans as spies who come to steal their technology.”

That may ease cooperation with Americans, but Krikalev also has to contend with other culture gaps and rivalries—among Russians. At the space station’s mission control center in Moscow, the staffers, including the all-powerful flight directors, are employees of the Energiya Corporation, which builds the spacecraft. But the capcoms (capsule communicators, or “ glavnis ” in Russian), who communicate with the cosmonauts in flight, come from Star City. GCTC doctors handle all the preflight medical care for cosmonauts, and work with them on a daily basis. But during missions, physicians from another organization, the Institute for Medical-Biological Problems, are in charge. According to John McBrine, a NASA veteran of four tours in Russia, “There’s no way the IMBP doctors have the same relationship to the crew the GCTC guys do.”

Another fundamental rift is between the two kinds of cosmonaut: the military pilots in Star City and the civilian engineers like Krikalev, who come from Energiya. The smaller Energiya team lives and works in Moscow, commuting to Star City only when assigned to a specific program. Beginning in 1966, Soviet law required each cosmonaut crew to have a commander from the GCTC, as well as a flight engineer from “the organization that built the vehicle,” meaning Energiya. It would be as if NASA had ordered every Gemini crew to include an engineer from McDonnell aircraft.

For years, both organizations fought for the right to command space missions. “GCTC rightly felt that every spacecraft commander should be one of their pilots,” says McBrine. In some cases, a veteran Energiya engineer had to work under a rookie GCTC commander—not the most harmonious of situations.

Today the training center is part of Roskosmos, which was created only in 1994 to serve as a Russian counterpart of NASA. Headed by Anatoly Perminov, the agency is trying to foster a thriving Russian space industry. It intends to end the country’s reliance on the Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in the independent nation of Kazakhstan. Roskosmos plans to transform a missile base at Svobodny, in the Russian far east, into the Vostochny (“Eastern”) Cosmodrome, and hopes to launch cosmonauts from there by 2018.

Though Roskosmos owns Star City, the agency doesn’t necessarily like the arrangement. According to former cosmonaut Yuri Baturin, “Roskosmos did not plan to absorb GCTC. But the Ministry of Defense specified reductions in armed forces, and simply included GCTC in that.” Apollo-Soyuz astronaut Tom Stafford put it more directly: “The Russian air force couldn’t afford to keep paying the bills. They don’t have an interest in manned spaceflight—they never really did.”

The shift from military to civilian ownership poses a staffing problem for Krikalev. The center was allowed to keep 210 military employees, and another 110 workers were allowed to leave military service and stay in their jobs. But that still leaves dozens of positions unfilled, and many military people stationed in Star City scrambling to find assignments elsewhere.

To hire replacements, Krikalev has to offer salaries competitive with those of private industry, placing extreme pressure on his budget, which needs to be doubled to “keep the center functioning properly.” He plans to recruit directly from Moscow’s best technical schools, Bauman Moscow State Technical University and Moscow Aviation Institute, but says, “I’m not giving up on graduates from military schools.” Also on his wish list are space and missile students from Mozhaisky Academy, in his hometown of Leningrad. He’d like the cosmonaut corps to be larger and more diverse, noting that only one of 34 Russian cosmonauts is a woman.

Then there is Star City’s aging infrastructure. Most of the center’s buildings were constructed during the glory days of the 1960s. Some “look like they’ve been shelled,” Krikalev complains. Richard Garriott, the video game entrepreneur who financed his own trip to the space station on the Soyuz flight TMA-13 in October 2008, says, “They have very limited money for exterior work, but always have money for the essentials: simulators, the centrifuge, the hydro-lab.”

Under military control, the training center’s flight support unit, the Seregin Wing, had 16 aircraft, from Aero L-39 training jets to Tupolev Tu-154 transports. These were used by the cosmonauts to maintain pilot proficiency, and for weightlessness training. But in late 2009, the Russian air force disbanded the wing and dispersed the airplanes. “Except for one,” Krikalev notes, “a Tu-154 with glass hatches in its fuselage,” which was formerly used by the Ministry of Defense in NATO’s “Open Skies” program.

Juggling these management problems while continuing to train space station crews has been difficult, says Baturin—“like rebuilding the conveyor belt while you still manufacture the item. Imagine what a car would look like under those circumstances.”

Star City’s main business, of course, is spaceflight training. And the methods developed there over 50 years are often quite different from NASA’s. The GCTC trainers emphasize theoretical classroom work, complete with regular graded exams, while NASA concentrates on practical skills, teaching astronauts to perform specific tasks like operating the station’s robot arm or conducting a spacewalk. “GCTC will test you on the nature of an electronic relay,” says Lopez-Alegria, “but knowing that doesn’t help me operationally. We don’t do systems, we do skill sets.”

In the old days, the GCTC published few manuals; cosmonauts took handwritten notes at lecture sessions. Staffers were reluctant to print and distribute written materials, because they saw the information as proprietary. (In early 2008, South Korean astronaut candidate Ko San was removed from a Soyuz crew assignment for taking workbooks out of Star City without permission. According to one former NASA astronaut, manuals are still officially restricted to the center.)

As a first-time flier, Garriott saw value in the Russian methods, including the emphasis on theory: “At first I wanted to rush through that phase. But eventually I became a big fan of the Russian top-down system.” For example, he says, “I started training, right from zero, with my crew and with the same small team of instructors. Over the weeks and months, these two or three instructors followed every step of my progress: what I got, what I didn’t get, how I responded to every situation. We passed our exams, then flew down to Baikonur, where we were in quarantine for two weeks. We suited up, got out to the pad, got into the Soyuz. And on the radio was one of my instructors! I hadn’t realized that would be the case. But it was so reassuring! I realized, That guy knows me . Back on the ground, after the flight, the crew starts its debrief—and the same instructor is there too.”

This emphasis on personal relationships is one of the reasons the glavnis in Russian mission control are from Star City, not Energiya. NASA has started to move toward a similar model: Many space station capcoms are now members of the training teams, not fellow astronauts. “Both sides have learned from each other,” says McBrine.

STAR CITY IS MORE THAN just a school for space travelers. It also is a company town with a population of 6,000, including retired cosmonauts, training specialists, engineers, and administrative staffers and their families, as well as businessmen, cooks, and schoolteachers. There are baptisms and weddings. Children of cosmonauts have married and raised families here, and a Russian Orthodox church was dedicated last winter—a first for Star City. There are, of late, many funerals.

For 49 years, the military director of the GCTC doubled as the “mayor” of this unique village. But the shift to civilian control brought an election in June 2009. The winner was Nikolai Rybkin, a 63-year-old retired air force colonel who was Star City’s State Security (KGB) representative from 1976 to 2001. Rybkin was a popular figure in Star City because he paid attention to things that mattered to its residents. “He was great about getting a gazebo built and returning the swans to the lake,” says one NASA official who asked to remain anonymous. “I just wish he’d also put more street lights along the roads.”

At the time of his election, Rybkin was in jail, charged with smuggling, and so was unable to take office. In late October 2009, Russian government officials appointed former cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, a Rybkin supporter, to take his place—which speaks to the insular nature of Star City. During the glory days of the 1960s, residents had special access to food and consumer goods, and lived in apartments that were double the standard Soviet size. The price for these privileges was submission to strict military and KGB control. Three cosmonauts from Gagarin’s group were expelled for “violation of training discipline” when one of them started a drunken argument with the local militia. Over the years, others were sent packing for marital discord, embarrassing personal connections (engineer Boris Belousov was discovered to have Ukrainian relatives who had fought on the side of the Germans during World War II), or failing to appreciate the Communist Party (Eduard Kugno openly criticized the organization as “a pack of lickspittles”).

In the old days, it was also risky to criticize Star City management. In 1967 engineer Gennady Kolesnikov, while a candidate for the cosmonaut corps, complained about training methods and was ordered to see the doctors. “I was checked for ailments, and they found 12!” he told Bert Vis. With this “medical disqualification,” he was transferred to a teaching job outside the center.

Star City’s managers often used the medical department as a disciplinary arm, a ruse that veteran cosmonauts knew well. Following his 1965 Voskhod 2 flight, Pavel Belyayev was so suspicious of the center’s doctors that he skipped medical exams for months. Tragically, he developed a bleeding ulcer that turned into peritonitis, which killed him.

Cosmonauts aren’t always exemplars of the healthy lifestyle. Garriott’s backup, Australian entrepreneur Nik Halik, recalls “working out in the gym with cosmonauts, then walking outside to see them puffing cigarettes and drinking vodka.” The darkest side of life at Star City has long been alcoholism. One unnamed veteran cosmonaut says that “90 percent” of the staff of one engineering department drank too heavily. The affliction is most common among the dozens of retired pilots and engineers who were selected for cosmonaut training in the 1960s, moved permanently to Star City, then never made it to the launch pad. But the problem isn’t limited to the unflowns. To this day, visitors can find famous names from Salyut and Mir crews stumbling drunk down icy sidewalks. Halik says he drank so much during his year-plus at Star City that now he “can’t stand the sight or even the thought of vodka.”

Maybe it’s because of the small-town insularity that the 1997 class of nine cosmonaut candidates included three second generation spacemen: Sergei Volkov (son of the new mayor), Roman Romanenko (son of three-time flier Yuri Romanenko), and Alexandr Skvortsov, whose father Alexandr was a cosmonaut candidate in the 1960s. This isn’t necessarily nepotism. Since the 1990s, young Russians have not seen becoming a cosmonaut as the plum opportunity it once was. Interest in the most recent Energiya recruitment in 2005 was so dismal that the company had to go looking for new hires among grad students at Bauman Moscow State Technical University and at Moscow Aviation Institute.

The problem may be a lack of exciting new missions. “Unflown cosmonauts concentrate on future work on [the space station],” Yuri Baturin says. “Those who have completed flights look into the future, and they are often disappointed by the absence of clear plans.” Leroy Chiao, a NASA astronaut who trained in Star City off and on for five years, remembers that cosmonauts and astronauts “didn’t talk about lunar flights, knowing that it was beyond the timeframe of our careers.”

The inbred nature of Star City’s society does have an upside. Richard Garriott—himself the son of an astronaut, Skylab and shuttle veteran Owen Garriott—says, “When I was growing up in the Johnson Space Center community, the astronauts were mostly test pilots—part of an old boy’s network. They played hard, and they played away from home. They rarely appeared at family gatherings, picnics, kids’ baseball games. They had hangouts no one knew about. Star City is completely the opposite.”

Garriott recalls a night in February 2008, shortly after arriving at Star City, when he and Halik entered the Soyuz Café, “a shiny jewel of new construction” that he describes as “half digital, half dacha.” They were immediately invited to a family gathering. “It was for the next ISS crew, and there were babies and grandparents in attendance, in addition to the adults. We sat down. The host welcomed everyone, and every five minutes or so he would ask somebody to stand up and introduce a guest and offer a toast—to the crew, to the future, and so on. I found similar scenes repeated there almost every night for the next year.

“Part of what I experienced was unique—possibly only to Star City. But the vibe you got was ‘Someone you know is in space.’ It’s part of everyday life. It’s continuous. It’s a very meaningful way to deal with this hazardous way of life.”

Rather than resenting the foreign spaceflight participants, says Garriott, the residents of Star City have welcomed them. Part of it is practical: “The Russians love the idea of foreigners buying seats on their vehicles. Not only does it offset the cost of flying, but it shows that people are willing to take a chance on their system.”

The openness to new ideas is typical of the cosmonauts now flying missions to the space station. “The earlier guys were a bit reserved or uncomfortable with us,” NASA’s Lopez-Alegria says. “We had been their cold war enemies.” Today’s cosmonauts are not only completely at home with international crewmates, they are also, thanks to Facebook and other social media, far more connected with the outside world. GCTC cosmonaut Max Suraev blogged his Expedition 21 stay on the station in 2009 and 2010, posing for pictures with a “ray gun” and joking about subjects from space food to his inability to choose clothing. In many of his posts, he was more candid than the typical NASA astronaut.

One of the middle-generation cosmonauts, Yuri Malenchenko, arrived in Star City in the late 1980s as a 26-year-old fighter pilot. He went on to serve a four-month tour on Mir in 1994, flew a short shuttle mission to the International Space Station in 2000, then participated in two long-duration missions in 2003 and 2007. Now 49 and training for a third ISS stay, he is philosophical about the ways the life of a Russian cosmonaut has changed over the course of his career: “Twenty-two years ago the country was different. Since then there have been many events that happened in politics and the economy. So now Star City is different, and we are different.”

Michael Cassutt is a novelist and television writer in Studio City, California.

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Galactica Star // Heesen Yachts

Galactica star is a 65m fast displacement motor yacht by heesen yachts..

Van Oossanen delivered a hydrodynamic design that is 30 % more efficient than a round-bilge motor yacht. The naval architecture was done together with Heesen’s in-house naval architects. Omega Architects designed the sporty and elegant exterior lines. Bannenberg and Rowell Design have created the interior design.

Two MTU engines with a power of 4,300 kW each at 2.100 rpm, power GALACTICA STAR up to 27 knots. If a long range is needed, the yacht has a range of 4,200 nautical miles at 14 knots.

The yacht was delivered in June 2013.

Photos and Renderings of GALACTICA STAR

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