One Small Step Read online

  On January 13, 1969, Vladimir Shatalov boarded the next Soyuz to be launched, Soyuz 4. Nine minutes prior to liftoff, the countdown was abruptly halted due to a failure in a hydraulic system and the launch was postponed 24 hours. It was another freezing day when launch operations began again. This time, there were no problems. Lt Colonel Vladimir Shatalov, 41 years old at the time, lifted off at 10:32 a.m. Moscow Time. In space, he manually fired the main engine of Soyuz 4 on the fifth orbit to change his orbital parameters to 129 by 147 miles (207 by 237 km), to await the vehicle with which he would rendezvous.

  Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 Dock in Space

  The next day, Soyuz 5 lifted off with its three-cosmonaut crew of 34-year-old Lt Colonel Boris Volynov (commander), 34-year-old civilian Aleksei Yeliseyev (flight engineer) and 35-year-old Lt Colonel Yevgeni Khrunov (research engineer). As soon as Soyuz 5 reached orbit both spacecraft began their approach toward each other. In contrast to the original plans for the mission, which envisioned a docking on the very first orbit of the passive ship, the maneuvers were carried out at a more leisurely pace over the period of a day. As Shatalov closed in on Soyuz 5, there were the seemingly inevitable problems, including erroneous signals from the docking control and spurious contact lights, but soon the two spacecraft hard-docked to Volynov’s exclamation of “Welcome!” Straight away Khrunov and Yeliseyev began their preparations for their transfer spacewalk by entering the living compartment of the Soyuz 5 spacecraft. Each of their spacesuits had a self-contained life-support system attached to one of their legs instead of their backs. Soyuz 5 carried letters addressed to Shatalov from his family and from ministers, as well as newspaper articles about his launch.

  Spacewalk from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4

  Volynov bid the two cosmonauts goodbye and retreated back into the Soyuz 5 Descent Module, closing the hatch between the two modules to allow depressurization. Khrunov then opened up the outer hatch of the living compartment on Soyuz 4’s 35th orbit and cautiously poked his head out. He recalled later:

  I was amazed by the marvelous, magnificent spectacle of two spacecraft linked together high above the Earth. I could make out every tiny detail on their surfaces. They glittered brilliantly as they reflected the sunlight. Right in front of my eyes was Soyuz 4.

  Yeliseyev followed Khrunov, crawling toward the docking unit of Soyuz 5. They moved over to the living compartment of Soyuz 4, opened its hatch and crawled in. A welcome note from Shatalov, who was in the ship’s pressurized descent apparatus, was waiting for them. After pressurization of the living compartment had taken place, the hatches between the two modules were opened, and Shatalov embraced his comrades, treating them to a toast of blackcurrant juice instead of the customary vodka. The entire episode had lasted one hour.

  Wasting no time, the two commanders, Shatalov and Volynov, prepared for undocking. Just four hours and 34 minutes after docking, the two spacecraft separated and went on their own way, Soyuz 4 now with three cosmonauts and Soyuz 5 with one. They had been joined for three orbits. Soyuz 4 was the first to return from orbit but Volynov, now alone, faced what was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous reentry in the history of the Soviet space program.

  Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov explains how Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 docked in Earth orbit on January 16, 1969.

  Cheating Death—Twice

  During the early morning of January 18, in preparation for his reentry around midday, Volynov reported that all systems on board Soyuz 4 were fine. At 10:20 a.m., he passed over Africa before firing the engine for the predetermined period to initiate reentry. Six seconds after the termination of retrofire, Volynov heard the pyrocartridges ignite, triggering the separation of the three major modules of the spacecraft: the living compartment, the Descent Module and the Service Module. However, when he looked out of the window for confirmation he immediately saw that something was wrong. He could see the antennas attached to the solar arrays on the cylindrical Service Module, meaning that it had not separated from the Descent Module. While similar failures had occurred on early Vostok and Voskhod flights, it posed a much greater threat on Soyuz because of the relatively large size of the module. Volynov immediately reported his predicament in code to ground controllers. Most believed he was doomed.

  As the Soyuz descent apparatus—still attached to the 3-ton Service Module—entered the Earth’s atmosphere, it began to perform a series of somersaults, exposing unprotected parts of the craft to the severe heat of friction. Smoke began to appear within the capsule. Normally during a reentry, hydrogen peroxide thrusters would fire to provide lift and alter the craft’s trajectory in order to reduce thermal and gravitational stresses. But although the instrument panel indicated that the valves for the thrusters were open, Volynov noticed there had been no firings—all the propellant had been used up during the retrofire phase, when the computer had tried in vain to correct the space ship’s incorrect orientation.

  Volynov was sure he was only a few minutes from death. He considered saying goodbye to his family but decided to hurriedly save all the recorded materials on the docking procedure by ripping the important pages from the logbook, rolling them up tightly and placing them into the middle of the book. Then he calmly began to speak into a tape recorder, describing all the details of his experience to assist in identifying the reasons for the failure. There were more terrifying moments. Once, there was a sharp clap—the propellant tanks of the Service Module had blown apart; it happened with such force that the crew hatch was forced inwards and upward like the bottom of a tin can. Volynov then realized that the troublesome Service Module had disintegrated, but his problems were not over yet. The straps on the main parachute began to twist, preventing the parachute from unfurling properly. For the second time he was sure he was going to die, but then the braids of the parachute began to untwist and the capsule landed, its soft-landing engines firing to slow the final descent. Even then, the landing was still so hard that the teeth in Volynov’s upper jaw were broken off at the roots. Fortunately, the specially molded couch saved him from broken bones and more serious injuries.

  The Race is Over

  In spite of the near catastrophe at the end of the flight, the Soyuz 4–5 mission was a landmark flight in the Soviet space program. It was not only the first docking of two piloted spacecraft in space but also the first transfer of a crew in orbit from one spacecraft to another. While the mission was nearly two years late it liberated them from the shadow of Komorov and gave them a success—but compared with the US space program it was still relatively unimpressive. NASA astronauts had accomplished the first docking in space in March 1966 in Gemini 8. But after the humiliation caused by Apollo 8, the Soviet leadership was willing to take anything remotely successful as a triumph. They made much of the fact that the two spacecraft had been, in their words, the world’s first “experimental orbital station.” In the press conference Khrunov let it slip out that:

  In the design of our spacesuits certain aspects of Leonov’s suit were taken into consideration. Our experiences on this flight may well contribute to the designs of a Moon suit.

  While 1969 was to be the most dramatic year in the history of spaceflight, it was also perhaps the year when the Soviets realized that the space race was over and the political leadership intellectually abandoned their space program. Space achievements were used as a means to sell the virtues of socialism in the early 1960s, but now Soviet officials were almost embarrassed by them, for they seemed to pale into insignificance compared with the achievements of the Americans. Against this backdrop, senior Soviet space officials convened in January 1969 to discuss not only an adequate response to the US space program, but also to talk in general about the larger direction of their entire manned space effort. Deputy Chief Designer Chertok observed that the Soviet space program had fewer resources than the US program and yet was spending its money with even less rationality. It was an accurate observation on the state of the poor management of the Soviet space program in the 1960s.

 
N1 Rocket Crashes to the Ground

  The launch date for the first N1 was set for February, but there were still signs that all was far from well in the form of an alarming report from Baikonur Cosmodrome commander Major General Aleksandr Kurushin. He refused clearance for the launch, due to many problems in the ground equipment and in the rocket itself. He only gave way after considerable pressure from most of the members of the State Commission. So it was that the doomed rocket was wheeled to the launch pad and levered upright.

  In an attempt to take some of the gloss off the Apollo program, the Soviets had built an unmanned Moon Rover. It was launched successfully on February 19, but just 51 seconds after launch the payload abruptly fell apart, and the booster exploded. Two days later, almost four years late, the most powerful rocket ever built fired its 30 first-stage engines, producing 4590 tons of thrust. In just over ten seconds the N1 left the pad. According to Boris Chertok:

  All the surrounding area shakes, there is a storm of fire, and a person would have to be insensitive and immoral to be able to remain calm at such moments. You really want to help the rocket: “Go on, go up, take off.”

  All seemed well until 70 seconds into the launch, when the control system abruptly shut down all the engines of the first stage, well before planned cut-off. Its momentum continued to carry the N1 upward to an altitude of 17 miles (27 km), before the rocket gradually came down to crash about 31 miles (50 km) from the launch site. The emergency rescue system saved the capsule, however, which landed some 20 miles (32 km) from the pad area. Another failure.

  Apollo 9—Dull but Dangerous

  In some accounts, Apollo 9 is considered as being a rather mundane flight in comparison with other Apollo missions, yet there are those who believe it may have been one of the more dangerous missions ever flown. It was certainly one of the most important to the program. It was the first flight of the Lunar Module—the spacecraft that would actually land on the Moon—and the first complete test of the entire Apollo system.

  Its three-person crew were Mission Commander Jim McDivitt, 39, Command Module Pilot Dave Scott, 36, and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart 33. The flight was launched on March 3, 1969.

  McDivitt: The Lunar Module was the key to the whole program. And trying to get it light enough to fly was a real challenge. We got to the point where we were filing little blousons off of castings and things like that to get the weight down. The main thing was that we got a chance to fly the Lunar Module to see if it really worked. We had a few minor glitches on the descent engine, as I recall, when we first started it up, but it worked fine. The rendezvous worked okay. The computers worked. The radar worked. I mean, we did a damn good job of engineering it, because we really didn’t have very many big problems with the spacecraft. It all went together well.

  The Apollo 9 crew of James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart.

  Would Apollo 9 Make It?

  It was an encouraging mission. There remained nine months before President Kennedy’s deadline expired, but there were times when the crew of Apollo 9 thought that the equipment wouldn’t make it.

  McDivitt: The first time Rusty and I went up to Grumman to do a storage review—a storage review is something you do before you really solidify where you’re going to put everything, and it’s so you can still make some changes. And we went over to this vehicle sitting there in the corner, and we had two different kinds of vehicles. We had nonflight vehicles that were heavy construction; we had the flight-weight vehicles. And we go over there, and we get in the spacecraft, and we crawl in. And I can remember the first thing we did is we knocked off the shield around the environmental control system, which was a thing about as thick as a piece of paper and made out of plastic. And so, we get in there and we start checking the stowage. We weren’t checking the spacecraft. We were just checking to see if everything fitted. Every time we turned around, something else broke! And I’m pretty mild-mannered and I don’t get excited when things aren’t going right. But after we were doing this for about five or six hours, and everything we touched fell off the wall or broke or it did something! Finally I got on the radio and I said: “Damn it, you guys! We’ve been here all day long. We’re—and we’ve got this crappy training vehicle out here that, you know, we ought to get something that more resembles what the heck we’re going to fly with in space instead of this junk that we’ve got here!” And then I shut up, and there’s this long pause. And finally somebody comes on the intercom and says: “Jim, that is the flight vehicle.” I looked at Rusty and he looked at me, and we said, “Oh my God! We’re actually going to fly something like this?”

  During the mission we did a docked burn with the Lunar Module. We did a bunch of oscillating tests with the Command Module. We did an EVA. We checked all the alternative methods of doing star alignments. We had multiple burns on the descent stage. Throttled the engine up and down through regimes it probably was never throttled at when it landed in the Moon. And it worked out really great.

  Sickness in Space

  Russell “Rusty” Schweickart joined NASA as one of 14 astronauts named in October 1963, the third group of astronauts selected. During the Apollo 9 mission it was planned he should make an EVA to test the portable life-support backpack, which was subsequently to be used on the lunar surface explorations.

  Schweickart: Although the Russians had had a fairly strong record that people would get sick in space, up until Apollo 8 we had actually not experienced it. Our spacecraft were smaller, we’re much more restricted, and on Apollo 7 no one reported any problem. But on Apollo 8, Frank Borman had gotten sick, but for all kinds of reasons, which are Frank’s, he wouldn’t really come forward with it. He didn’t do any tests afterward. So we didn’t know a lot about it, but I was fairly cautious because I would get sick on the zero G airplane, our affectionately dubbed Vomit Comet, which I’m sure you’ve heard about before. After successive parabolas, it’s a very sickening experience and a challenging one for motion disturbance. So I knew from that and from a few episodes of seasickness that I was susceptible to motion sickness.

  Well, of course, we didn’t know that, so then on the third day of the mission, when it’s time for me to go into action, that’s really the first time when I’m moving around, and the first thing I’ve got to do is get into the space suit early in the morning. Getting into the space suit is a real contortionist challenge. So I got into the space suit, in which you have to double over. I mean, it’s very interesting. I used to love to do it, and I could get into the suit as well as anybody or better than almost all people because I was also doing some of the early suit work.

  When I popped my head through the suit and stood up and started zipping up the suit, I was not feeling too well. This was early in the morning before getting ready to go into the Lunar Module. I sort of slowed down to try and take it easy, but once that process of malaise starts going, you know, it kind of has a natural dynamic. So suddenly I had to barf, and I’m grabbing for a bag, barfed in the bag, and, I mean, that’s not a good feeling. But, of course, you feel better after you barf, like anytime you get motion sickness, you feel better after it, but you don’t like to do it. Of course, that was sort of a warning shot. I mean, you know, oooh, we got a problem here?

  So then I go over into the Lunar Module, and that’s also a challenge, because now you’re going from an environment that you’re used to in the Command Module where that’s up, now you go over into the Lunar Module. Well, in the Lunar Module, you’re used to that being up. But now they’re 180 degrees. So you’re used to being up, and when you go over there, it’s down. So you’re having to change axes and do all kinds of stuff. So when I went over there to activate the Lunar Module, I was moving very slowly and deliberately and using my eyes a lot, and trying to keep my head from moving, because I sure as heck didn’t want to get sick again. That worked out. After I got things turned on, then McDivitt came over and we started working together. We’re slowly moving toward the afternoon activities, and at one
point we’re both busy.

  All of a sudden I had to barf again, so then twice, for the second time that day, I’m grabbing for a bag and I barf. Again, after it’s over you feel better, but now I’ve barfed twice and, of course, we’re all very aware of that. Even though I’m feeling better immediately after I barfed, I’m still not feeling great. So we get everything done. It didn’t delay us at all, but we got everything done, but we got back in the spacecraft and now the question is, you know, the next day I’ve got to go EVA, or scheduled to go EVA. Well, barfing in space is no fun. Jim decides: “Well, we’ll cancel the actual EVA tomorrow. We’ll go right up to the point of depressurizing the hatch.” I can still have the helmet on, do all the checkout on the portable life-support system, the whole thing. But when it comes time to actually depressurize the Lunar Module, we’ll simulate depressurizing, assume that you’ve been outside, you’ve come back in, and we’ve just repressurized. Then we’ll pick up all of the checklists and everything from there. So we’ll get all the tests and checkout and all the procedures and make sure every—we’ll get as much done as we possibly can, but we’re not actually going to do the EVA.’

  Well, then it’s time to go to sleep and get ready for the next day, store everything. And again I’m still not feeling very well. Of course, now I’ve just been the cause of not doing the EVA, which means that the portable life-support system really isn’t checked out the way it was supposed to be checked out, so it’s not really ready for the lunar surface missions, and are we going to run into some problems? This is already March of 1969. That end of the decade, I mean, is coming right up. Am I going to get so sick that we have to—am I going to remain sick, or are we going to have to actually abort the mission and the whole rest of the mission, in fact? Are we not going to be able to do the rendezvous? Is this basically a wasted mission because Schweickart’s barfing? I mean, that’s all going through my mind as I’m trying to go to sleep that night.