One Small Step Page 4
But Korolev knew that they would not stop at dogs. After winning the race to put the first artificial satellite into space they now had plans to launch the first spaceman. Korolev was determined that they would beat the Americans, who he felt sure would react to the Sputnik shock by trying to overtake them. In his mind he had a goal of December 1960 as the earliest they could put a human into orbit. Clearly they were ahead of the US, but would it stay that way?
The Space Race Has Begun
As a result of the Kaputnik fiasco von Braun got the go-ahead to launch a small satellite, and on February 1, 1958, Explorer 1 was successfully carried into orbit by a modified Jupiter-C rocket. “How, I wonder, would the USSR have reacted if the United States had beaten them into orbit—which they could have so easily done?” von Braun is reported to have said. He knew that the United States should have been the first nation to place a satellite into orbit. Korolev knew it, too. But now the space race had begun. Who would be the first to put a man in space?
TIMELINE
1945 Top German ballistic missile designers led by Wernher von Braun surrender to the US army in Germany. They would form the core of the missile development team at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama
1946 May 10 The first V-2 missile blasts off from White Sands, New Mexico
1956 September US army launches a Jupiter-C missile from Cape Canaveral, Florida
1957 May 1 US navy conducts a test launch of the Vanguard rocket
October 4 Russian Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, is launched
November 3 Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika, is launched
1958 February 1 US launches Explorer 1 rocket into orbit
October 1 The US Congress creates NASA
“I can see the clouds, everything. It’s beautiful”
ASTRONAUTS RACE COSMONAUTS
THE MERCURY 7 AND YURI GAGARIN
1959–1961
Stunned by the early successes of the Russian space orbits, the United States urgently set up a task group with the express purpose of being the first nation to put a human in space. But the group of astronauts chosen for this mission—known as the Mercury 7—were to find themselves thwarted when Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin also claimed this prize for the Soviets, beating the American attempt by a mere three weeks.
The United States realized that a manned spaceflight was the next big step. Coming round at last to the importance of spaceflight, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had assigned the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to develop and carry out manned spaceflights. Two months later, in July 1958, the NACA became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Within a week its director T. Keith Glennan approved plans for a manned launch, giving the responsibility to the Space Task Group based at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, headed by Robert Gilruth. There were already preliminary sketches of a small capsule that was jokingly said to have been designed to be worn, not flown. The initiative, later named Project Mercury, began on October 7, 1958. What was needed next were astronauts.
Mercury 7 Revealed to the Public
One of those selected, Alan Shepard was destined to narrowly miss becoming the first person in space.
Shepard: April 9, 1959, was one of the happiest days of my life. That was the day on which we all congregated officially as the US first astronaut group. We had been through a selection process, obviously, previous to that time. But that was the day we first showed up officially as the first astronauts in the United States.
They were called the Mercury 7, and they were: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton.
The Mercury 7 astronauts: left to right, back row, Alan Shepard, Virgil “Gus” Grissom and L. Gordon Cooper; front row, Walter Schirra, Donald “Deke” Slayton, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.
Shepard: Glenn, of course, I had known before; Schirra I had known before because of our navy connections. So I knew there was a lot of talent there, and I knew that it was going to be a tough fight to win the prize. Well it was an interesting situation because, as I say, I was friendly with several of them. And on the other hand, realizing that I was now competing with these guys, so there was always a sense of caution I suppose—particularly talking about technical things. Now in the bar everything changed, but in talking about technical things there was always a sense of maybe a little bit of reservation, not being totally frank with each other, because there was this very strong sense of competition. There were seven guys competing for the first job, whatever that turned out to be. Seven guys going for that one job. So on the one hand there was a sense of friendliness and maybe some support but on the other hand, “Hey, I hope the rest of you guys are happy because I’m going to make the first flight.” I suspect my thoughts generally reflected those of the other chaps.
John Glenn, who would become the first American to orbit the Earth:
They made every measurement you can possibly make on the human body, all the usual things you’d think about, plus all the other things that would occur in any natural physical exam, and then things like, oh, cold water in your ear. You sit, and you have a syringe, and you put cold water in your ear for a period of time. This starts the fluids in your inner ear, in the semicircular canal, starts them circulating because of the temperature differential, starts them circulating, and so you get the same effect as though you’d been spun up on a chair or something like that until you are extremely dizzy, and you had nystagmus, as it’s called, your eyes want to drift off. You can’t keep them focused on a spot. And then they would measure how long it took for us to recover from that. There was supposed to be some correlation to something, whatever it was. They had a lot of tests like that.
The Mercury 7 were paraded before the press and heralded by the American public as heroes. Viewed from today’s perspective the press conference was a strange event. John Glenn did most of the talking, while Alan Shepard was perhaps the wittiest. Several of them smoked during the interviews and all, when asked, gave their home addresses, clearly something that would not happen today. A few weeks after being chosen they moved to Langley Field, Virginia, where they were shown the prototype of their spacecraft:
Shepard: It didn’t look very much like an airplane, but if you were going to put a pilot in it, it was going to have to fly somehow like an airplane, and when you have a strange new machine, then you go to the test pilots. That’s what they were trained to do, and that what’s they had been doing.
At first the capsule did not have windows; engineers had thought them unnecessary since they would compromise its structural strength. The astronauts would have none of it. They insisted on windows and on something to do. Like their Soviet counterparts, the designers wanted almost everything to be automatic, with the astronaut acting as a passenger and doing little except in an emergency. The future space travelers were scathing, calling this method of flying “chimp mode.”
No one knew how the human body would react under conditions of zero gravity (zero G). Some thought there would be only small effects, while others took the view that in zero G an astronaut might not be able to breathe or swallow properly and could become hopelessly disorientated.
Shepard: This is a generalization, but it’s something which I’d been doing for many, many years as a navy pilot, as a carrier pilot; and believe me, it’s a lot harder to land a jet on an aircraft carrier than it is to land a Lunar Module on the Moon. That’s a piece of cake, that Moon deal! And here you had, yes, a new environment, but you know, for fighter pilots who fly upside-down a lot of the time, zero gravity wasn’t that big a deal.
The First Astronaut is Chosen
Having lost the first lap in the space race to the Soviet Union, many in the United States still believed that they could win the race to put a person in space, but first there was the difficult decision to be made—who would that person be? All of the Mercury 7 were in with a chance. Shepard remembers the day the choice was
made:
We had been in training for about 20 months or so, toward the end of 1960, early 1961, when we all intuitively felt that Bob Gilruth had to make a decision as to who was going to make the first flight. And, when we received word that Bob wanted to see us at 5:00 in the afternoon one day in our office, we sort of felt that perhaps he had decided. There were seven of us then in one office. We had seven desks around in the hangar at Langley Field. Bob walked in, closed the door, and was very matter-of-fact as he said: “Well, you know we’ve got to decide who’s going to make the first flight, and I don’t want to pinpoint publicly at this stage one individual. Within the organization I want everyone to know that we will designate the first flight and the second flight and the backup pilot, but beyond that we won’t make any public decisions. So, Shepard gets the first flight, Grissom gets the second flight, and Glenn is the backup for both of these two suborbital missions. Any questions?” Absolute silence. He said: “Thank you very much. Good luck,” turned around, and left the room. Well, there I am looking at six faces looking at me and feeling, of course, totally elated that I had won the competition. But yet almost immediately afterwards feeling sorry for my buddies, because there they were. I mean, they were trying just as hard as I was and it was a very poignant moment because they all came over, shook my hand, and pretty soon I was the only guy left in the room.
Selecting Russian Cosmonauts
The publicity and high expectations aroused by the Mercury 7 had not gone unnoticed in the USSR. Worried that they would not maintain their apparent lead, Khrushchev called a meeting of all the key people in the Soviet space effort, saying:
Your affairs are not well. You should quickly aim for space. There are strong levels of work in the USA and they’ll be able to outstrip us.
Soon, representatives of the military and the Academy of Sciences met to talk about selecting the first cosmonaut. Where should they look for candidates? The air force, the navy and even racing drivers were briefly considered, but the air force insisted they had to be pilots. So the search began.
Only men were to be considered. They had to be between 25 and 30 years of age, no taller than 1.70 to 1.75 meters (5.6 to 5.7 ft.), and with a weight of no more than 70 to 72 kilograms (154 to 159 lbs.) so that they could fit into the small capsule being designed. Two air force doctors were appointed to run the selection process, and teams were sent to air force bases in the western Soviet Union to look for candidates. Those who passed the initial selection were interviewed, but none was aware of the true nature of the mission, which was described as “special flights.” Just over 200 passed this early screening, and they were then sent in groups of 20 for further testing at the Central Scientific Research Aviation Hospital in Moscow.
Testing under the “Theme No. 6” program involved spinning the pilot in a stationary seat to test the vestibular system (a sensory mechanism involved in balance and spatial orientation) and subjecting him to low pressure and increased gravity in a centrifuge. At the end of 1959 the number of candidates had been narrowed down to 20, and these were sent back to their units to await further orders. Of the group, five were not between the ages of 25 to 30, but this condition was waived because of their strong performances. In the end, none of those selected was a test pilot. One of them, Vladimir Komarov, had some experience as a test engineer flying new aircraft, but the most experienced pilot among them, Pavel Belyayev, had accrued only 900 hours of flying time. Others, such as Yuri Gagarin, had flown only 230 hours.
Twelve of the 20 cosmonaut candidates undertook final medical tests at the Central Scientific Research Aviation Hospital. Later, Gagarin recalled having seven eye tests as well as a series of mathematical tests during which a voice whispered into his headphones giving him the wrong answers. His heart was the focus of the tests. “We were tested from top to toe,” he said. The training was divided between academic disciplines and physical fitness. They attended classes covering rockets, navigation, radio communications, geophysics and astronomy. Within a few weeks each candidate had made 40 to 50 parachute jumps. One of the USSR’s top test pilots, Mark Gallay, supervised their aircraft training. Under his direction they flew parabolic trajectories to simulate weightlessness for periods up to 30 seconds in specially equipped aircraft. Soon they all moved about 25 miles (40 km) northeast to a new suburb of Moscow, which was renamed Zelenyy, meaning “Green.” Today it is better known by a more recent designation—Zvezdny Gorodok, or “Star City.”
Crude spacecraft simulators were installed at the new training base, and because it was believed to be inefficient to train all 20 on one simulator, a choice needed to be made. A group of six would undergo accelerated training, and from them the selection of the first cosmonaut would be made. One of them—Gagarin, Kartashov, Nikolayev, Popovich, Titov or Varlamov—would be the first person in space, or so they hoped. Korolev visited the center for the first time in June 1960. The cosmonauts had only learned of his existence a few months earlier, and even then he was only called the “chief designer.” He carried with him diagrams of the space capsule. Korolev had settled on a simple yet remarkable design concept for the first spacecraft: it was to be spherical, with one side heavier than the other. The heavier side would be fitted with a heat shield. Its extra weight meant that this side would automatically turn and face forward on reentry, shielding the craft from the searing heat of friction as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Soon it was named Vostok or “East.”
Testing in Earnest
The US watched the Russian activities as closely as possible. Radio listening stations in Turkey were alerted that something was going on. In April a U-2 spy plane of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) took off from Peshawar Airport and flew over the Semipalatinsk test site, the air defense forces near Saryshagan, and then the Baikonur complex.
In the USSR there was considerable pressure to accelerate the schedule, primarily because of the stream of news about Project Mercury. By the early summer of 1960, NASA officials were expecting to fly the first suborbital piloted Mercury craft early in 1961. Korolev was determined that the first piloted Vostok craft would be in orbit before the Americans’ first launch. The deadline was specified in an official document from the Soviet government dated June 4, 1960, and entitled “On a Plan for the Mastery of Cosmic Space”; all testing for a piloted Vostok flight was to be completed by December 1960.
In early summer the Vostok capsule was transported to Baikonur for a test launch. It was not fitted with a heat shield or an ejection seat, as the aim was only to test its basic elements—in particular the complex but essential Chayka orientation system that would orientate the spacecraft correctly for reentry. Although this test capsule would burn up on reentry, telemetry data would indicate whether or not it had been properly aligned before it happened. As soon as it reached orbit, the State Commission issued a communiqué for the Soviet press. But first there was an issue over what to call the vehicle. Korolev said: “There are sea ships, river ships, air ships, and now there’ll be space ships!” Although the term “space ship” was used in the official TASS news agency report for the first time, there was no indication that the mission had any relevance to a manned spaceflight. But officials in the US knew what it implied. The unmanned Vostok test versions were launched from Baikonur into a suborbital trajectory to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. As the Soviet navy plucked the capsules out of the sea, the US navy watched from close by.
Safely Back Home
But all did not go well with the first nonmanned versions of the capsule. On reentry, the most critical part of the flight, the retrorocket fired on time but because the spacecraft was pointing in the wrong direction it went into a higher orbit, where it stayed for more than five years before coming back to Earth. The problem was tracked down to a faulty sensor, which was removed from the version of the Vostok that was to carry a cosmonaut.
Accordingly, a second test Vostok was prepared, this time with two dogs, Chayka and Lisichka, on board. They were launched in Ju
ly 1960, but the mission immediately ran into serious problems. Some 20 seconds after launch the rocket began to veer sideways. One of the strap-on engines exploded. The emergency escape rockets on top of the capsule were fired to get the “crew” up into the air and away from the launch pad as quickly as possible, but it was already too late; the dogs were dead.
Undaunted, Korolev ordered the next Vostok test mission to carry two more dogs, Belka and Strelka, along with a biological cargo including mice, rats, insects, plants, fungi, cultures, seeds of corn, wheat, peas, onions, microbes, strips of human skin and other specimens. Lifting off on August 19 it reached orbit, but the television pictures relayed back were poor. At first, the dogs appeared still, later they became more animated, but their movements were odd and they were clearly ill. Belka squirmed and vomited. Was it possible that living things could not stand more than a single orbit in space? They parachuted into the Orsk region in Kazakhstan after a one-day, two-hour spaceflight, making Belka and Strelka the first living beings to be recovered from orbit. The spacecraft itself was only the second object retrieved from orbit, the American Discoverer 13 having preempted it by nine days.
It was recommended that one or two further Vostok test flights be carried out in October–November 1960, followed by two automated missions of the Vostok flight configuration in November–December 1960. Korolev’s plan was that by December the cosmonauts would be ready for a manned flight later that month, in time to beat a Mercury launch. Then disaster struck.
Disaster on the Launch Pad
In his Moscow office, Korolev received a late-night call from the Baikonur complex on a secure telephone line informing him that there had been a major accident, the catastrophic nature of which only became clear as more information arrived throughout the night. It involved a rocket designed not by Korolev, but by his rival, Mikhail Yangel.