After I graduated from school, I enrolled in the military college, a cadet school. This is the first stage of military training; it instills discipline and various qualities required for military life.
Roman Romanenko
It was actually pretty difficult to grow up in the Star City. There were regular kids around me, and everybody knew that my father was a cosmonaut. Even at school, every teacher could comment on my behavior just because I was considered special.
Throughout the history of spaceflight and the study of effects of exploring to human, space environment to human body, we have accumulated enough knowledge to be able to move over to the next step: getting ready for interplanetary missions, for interplanetary exploration.
Whenever we went on a trip, picnic, or business trip, I was always with my dad, and I would just always be in contact with cosmonauts, and I thought it would be always normal to be with them.
I did want to be a pilot. I wanted to be a military pilot because I liked airplanes. I was interested in modeling airplanes.
My family didn't have time for me, so I decided to join the Suvorov military academy, which is in St. Petersburg. I spent two years there and studied general military science. At that point, once I graduated, I joined the Chernigov higher education pilot academy.
I think the people that want to fly in space, who want to work in space, who want to go to station, these people realize that there is a risk inherent to what they do. They understand that there are possible off-nominal situations, dangerous situations in space, and there's no insurance against that.
All children of cosmonauts went to one school. We all lived in the same neighborhood, Star City, and all of us, children of cosmonauts, were in the center of attention from the teachers and general inhabitants of the Star City, and so it was difficult in that respect.
