5OO

Withoutouerestimating the possible successes of the U.S._. in this sphere, we are

extremely alarmed by the unfolding situation and believe that special and urgent measures are necessary for maintaining the leading role of the USSR in space. _

gt the end of his letter, Korolev recommended four specific courses of action:

I. Concentrate forces and resources on the primary and main goals: the urgent

creation and work on the N I complex, terminate all work on [Chelomey's] LIR-500

theme, and use the released forces and resources on N I.

2. Accomplish in 1967 a circular orbit of the Moon with a crew on the upper stages

of N i [that is, the N I I[ using the well-tested _ . , R-7 carrier for delivering the crews

to orbit.

3. Ztccomplish in 1968 the first landing of Soviet researchers on the surface of the

Moon with the aid of the N I complex.

4. Develop in the nearest future a complex plan o/work on the N l with measures of

state importance, ensuring that it has primacy of fulfillment in this work in the

agreed upon timeframe. _

Notwithstanding the fact that Korolev's proposal was partly motivated to retain his

monopoly over the Soviet piloted space program, the letter also made a modicum of sense. It

is clear evidence of Soviet, and in particular Korolev's, belief that what was needed was not two

different projects, but a singular program to achieve several objectives. Thus, in mid-August

1965, the Soviet Union was poised to set forth on one of two approaches for piloted lunar

exploration, one integrated and one fragmented.

Military-Industrial Commission Chairman Smirnov presided over his promised meeting on

August 26. The meeting had a formal theme: "On the State of Work on Research into Outer

Space, the Moon, and the Planets. '''{' Smirnov did not spare anyone. He criticized almost every

facet of the Soviet space program, including the lunar program, interplanetary projects, and

Soviet long-range communications systems. Chelomey's OKB-52 was singled out for allowing

enormous delays in work on the LK-I system. OKB-I and other organizations under the

Ministry of General Machine Building were not excluded from this censure, being accused of

"weakness of work." To Korolev's dismay, Smirnov believed that Chelomey's UR-5OOK booster should play a central role in the future of the human space effort. In conclusion. Smirnov

issued three orders to the Ministry and its subordinate organizations:

• To prepare in a week's time a schedule for the manufacture and work on the LIR-5OOK

launcher

• To Korolev and Chelomey, to examine and solve the problem of unifying the development

of a circumlunar vehicle and a lunar landing spacecraft

• To submit in a month's time a program for flight testing the UR-5OOK and piloted

spaceships _'

As a result of Smirnov's orders, Minister of General Machine Building tqfanasyev established yet another "working commission" to examine the state of work on lunar programs at

68 Ibid

69. Ibid Author's emphasis.

70 Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 233.

71 Ibid

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

both the Chelomey and Korolev design bureaus. '_ On September 6 and 7, the commission visited both enterprises. Commission members had already been given all seventy-eight volumes

of the LK-I draft plan to familiarize themselves with the project's technical details. What they

found was not surprising in the light of Korolev's earlier criticisms of Chelomey's work--that

is, that the LK-I circumlunar program was beset by delays in the creation of the launch vehicle, its Blok A TLI stage, and the LK-I spaceship itself. Chelomey's deputies displayed wooden

models of the LK-I and Blok A, but the criticism from the Korolev faction was relentless.

Chelomey's poor showing was in complete contrast to the favorable impression of the following day, when the commission visited Kaliningrad to see Korolev's handiwork. Korelev's engineers proudly displayed at least ten metal models of the 7K Soyuz at the OKB-I plant as

dozens of technicians worked around them in a professional manner. The commission was particularly impressed by the success of work on the critical Blok D stage of the L3 lunar landing

complex. Ultimately, there were "long and heated discussions," which ended in "both sides

[Chelomey and Korolev] blaming each other," but the end result was clear: Chelomey's LK-I

program was effectively dead after more than a year's expenditure of time, resources, and funding/' Chelomey desperately tried to defend his product, appealing directly to Academy of

Sciences President Keldysh, but it was too little too late/4 As Mishin recalled later, even the

government sided against Chelomey:

In the second half of 1965, it became clear that the collective of the OKB headed by k/

M. Chelomey would not be able to ensure that our country would be first place in

achieving manned circumlunar flight, because the work was lagging in the development of the circumlunar flight system. _'

It was time for yet another abrupt turn in the Soviet piloted space program.

The concerted opposition to the LK-I effort cleared the way to address Military-Industrial

Commission Chairman Smirnov's orders from late August. It was clear to the major participants

that while the LK-I was not an option worth pursuing, Chelomey's LIR-5OOK should be a major

component of any future lunar plan. This meant that Korolev's N I I proposal was going to be

rejected. At the same time, with the LK-I out of the running, the only remaining option was to

use the more capable LI based on the Soyuz spacecraft. The combination of the

UR-5OOK and the LI would provide a solution to the near deadlock. Korolev, pragmatic to the

end, had already anticipated this exact course of events even before the death knell of the

LK- I. As early as the first days of August, Korolev's engineers were exploring contingency plans.

One of the first options was to use the N l's Blok G and Blok D stages as upper stages of the

7'2. This commission included, among others, S. A. Alanasyev (Minister of MOM), M. V. Keldysh

(President of AN SSSR),G. A. Tyulin (First Deputy Minister of MOM), G. N Pashkov(Deputy Chairman of VPK).

K. A. Kerimov (Chie[ of the Third Chief Directorate of MOM), and Yu. A. Mozzhorin (Director of Nil 88), as well

several chief and general designers, including V. P Barmin (GSKB SpetsMash), V. N Chelomey (OKB-52), S P.

Korolev (OKB-I), N. D. Kuznetsov (OKB-276), V I. Kuznetsov (NII-944). N. A. Pilyugin (Nil AP), and M S

Ryazanskiy (Nil Priborostroyeniya). See Ivan Evteyev. "From the History of the Development of Space" (English

title), Tribun, July 2. 1993,p. 3

73. The quotes are lrom Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"

74. k,Vhatseems to be descriptions of the visits in early September 1965are included in Mikhail Rudenko,

"Space Bulletin: Lunar Attraction: Historical Chronicles: First Publication" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 26

(1993): 8-9_ although the dates given for the visits are September I and 9. See also Semenov, ed., RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsifa. pp. 233-34, in which this process issaid to havetaken place in Septemberor October.

Another source suggeststhat the commission's visits to the two design bureaus took place in late August 1965.See

Evteyev, "From the History o[ the Development of Space."

75. Mishin. "Why Didn't We Flyto the Moon?"

501
5O2

UR-5OOK to boost the L I spacecraft into lunar orbit. 7_By mid-September, there were two competitive circumlunar variants for the UR-5OOK, each with a different TLI stage: either Korolev's

Blok D or Chetomey's Blok A. Both options would mean dramatically reducing the mass of the

L I spacecraft, down to four and a half to five and a half tons. Thus, the original conception of

the L I spacecraft, as the lunar-orbiting 7K-LPK, was shelved. To reduce the mass of the Soyuz

spacecraft to an absolute minimum, Korolev's engineers emerged with a surprising design solution: they eliminated the spheroid living compartment from the forward end of the spaceship.

As such, the two-person crew would have to spend their entire mission cramped in the small

descent apparatus. This modified spacecraft inherited the general L I designation: denoting its

lineage back to the 7K Soyuz was its design designation, the 7K-LI. The mission would be only

circumlunar/7

A second issue of concern was whether to allow crews to be launched on the UR-5OOK

booster because it used toxic propellants extremely dangerous when exposed to humans.

OKB-I thus explored alternative variants in which the crew would be launched into orbit on a

standard Soyuz booster, link up with the LI spacecraft, transfer to the LI by an EVA, and then

leave for circumlunar space in the LI. By October 5, at a meeting of high ministry officials, it

seems that the direct launch version was favored despite the concerns for safety. During the following week, chief designers representing each major aspect of the new L I plan drew up a formal proposal for submission to the Military-Industrial Commission/_ Based on this proposal, the

Central Committee of the Communist Party and the USSR Council of Ministers issued a joint

decree on October 25, 1965, titled "On Concentrating the Forces of Design Organizations of the

Industry for the Creation of the Means of a Rocket-Space Complex for Circling the Moon."79 This

document cut through the confusion inherent in the lunar program and effectively ratified a

piloted circumlunar project separate from the landing effort with the following three provisions:

• Korolev's OKB-I would be "brought in" to the piloted circumlunar program, which would

use Chelomey's UR-5OOK booster.

• Chelomey's OKB-52 would terminate all work on its LK-I spacecraft and instead concentrate all resources in accelerating the UR-5OOK booster program, as well as its TLI stage

(Blok A).

• OKB-I would concentrate its resources on the design and creation of new piloted spaceship for circumlunar flight, as well as a second TLI stage for use with the LIR-5OOK booster.

Among the many repercussions of this decision, the most important was clearly the continued separation of the circumlunar and landing programs. Korolev's pleas in the first half of

1965 had provided the climate to integrate the two disparate projects, but despite intensive discussions, arguments, and even compromises, the ultimate direction adopted left the programs

fairly independent. It was as if NASA had decided on two parallel projects--one using the

Saturn IB for circumlunar missions with a modified Apollo and one using the Saturn V for land76. As early as 1964.Korolev had evidently proposed using the I IA57 Voskhod booster's Blok I third stage

on Chelomey's UR-5OOKProton as a TLI stage.Chelomey refusedthe offer SeeB. Ye.Chertok, Rakety i lyudi. £oryachiye dni khotodnoy uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeoiye, 1997), pp. 387-88: Golovanov, Koroteu, p. 754.

77 Korolev may havefirst introduced his 7K-LI variant publicly on September8, 1965 SeeV. Petrakovand

I ftfanasyev, "'Proton' Passion" (English title), .ztuiatsiyai kosrnonautika no. 4 (April 1993): I0-12.

78. The seven signatories to the proposal were S. E Korolev (Chief Designer of OKB-I ), V. N. Chelomey

(General Designer of OKB-52), N. A. Pilyugin (Director and Chief Designer of Nil AP), M. S. Ryazanskiy (Chief

Designer of Nil Priborostroyeniya), V R. Khrustalev (Chief Designerof TsKB589), A. M. Isayev(Chief Designer of

OKB-2), and V. P Barmin (Chief Designer of GSKB SpetsMash). See Semenov. ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya

Korporatsiya. p. 234

79 Ibid

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

mg missions with a completely different spacecraft. A closer look at this decision reveals some

semblance of a rationale. First, for the Soviets, "before the end of the decade" was an unimportant abstraction. Far more important to them was the impending celebration of the fiftieth

anniversary of the Great October Revolution, set for the first week of November 1967.

Anniversaries played a far more important role in Soviet culture than, for example, in the

American cultural milieu. All Soviet industrial and economic enterprises were obliged to "present" the Communist Party with a "gift" as part of major celebrations. Korolev's OKB-I was

not exempt from this unwritten rule. l_nticipating that a lunar landing as early as 1967 was a

foregone impossibility, the major space chief designers instead opted to choose a lesser ambitious goal, a circumlunar flight. Second, the circumlunar project would allow the Soviets to test

a few components of the landing system. Engineers would gain experience in deep space piloted missions, high-speed reentry, long-range communications, and the flying of a strippeddown Soyuz spacecraft to lunar distances.

In accordance with the decree, the Ministry of General Machine Building formalized the

new direction of the lunar program with an order on November 13, 196_5, specifying manufacturing quantities and schedules for the project. The several design organizations together were

to build and deliver six and nine complete spacecraft complexes in 1966 and 1967, respectively. Each complex would consist of the spacecraft proper, designated the 7K-LI (or "product

II F91 "), a TLI stage, and the LIR-500K launch vehicle. In addition, these organizations would

also produce several 7K-OK Earth-orbital Soyuz spacecraft and its I IASII launch vehicle for

the delivery of lunar crews to Earth orbit in case the direct flight on Chelomey's booster was

not deemed safe at some future point, s° Minister Afanasyev's order called on Korolev and

Chelomey to finish, by November 25, specifications of the complete system with two different

possible variants--one using Korolev's Blok D and the other using Chelomey's Blok A--as the

TLI stage. The same order from Afanasyev also confirmed contractors for the major subsystems

of the 7K-LI spaceship, in particular its guidance and control systems?'

The 7K-LI's guidance system became the source of a conflict that was characterized by the

pitfalls of personal allegiances, in particular Korolev's relationship with Chief Designer Nikolay

g. Pilyugin, the man who had led the design of almost all Soviet guidance systems for missiles.

Pilyugin had been one of the original members of the Council of Chief Designers in the 1940s.

Pictures of him from Kapustin Yar show a man looking slightly older than his age, with a dour

face, dark eyes, and a world-weary disposition. Following his return from Germany in February

1947, Pilyugin had joined NII-885 in Moscow as a deputy to Chief Designer Ryazanskiy: a year

later, he was appointed a chief designer at the institute's Department No. 3, responsible for

inertial guidance systems. Of all the other chief designers, it was perhaps Pilyugin who was the

closest to Korolev. While Korolev had suffered from the Purges in the 1930s, Pilyugin himself

was the target of Beriya's terrifying whims during the early 1950s. Once, after a particularly

galling series of failures in the guidance system of a missile, Beriya hounded Pilyugin into

admitting sabotage. When Pilyugin argued back, he was convinced that it was the end for him.

There were other factors playing against the chief designer: the "not from workers" background

of his wife, the arrest of his brother, and his father-in-law's profession. _ It was only after

Beriya's death that Pilyugin breathed easier.

80. The second test launch of the two-stage (JR 500 booster was completely successful on November 2,

1965, no doubt bolstering the case in favor of using a direct flight.

81 Semenov, ed,, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorparGtsiya, p. 234.

82, Col. M Rebrov, "t_ Day Before the Launch , .: PagesFrom the Life of the Chief Designer of RocketSpace Guidance Systems" {English title). Krc_snayGzuezda, February 25, 1989, p. 4: Lt.-Gen, G. Tyulin, "Look

Forward" (English title), Krasnayc_zuezda, May 18 1988, p. 4: B. Ye. Chertok, Rc]kety i lyudi (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye, 1994), p. 333.

503
5O4

Despite chronic diabetes and a chain-smoking habit, Pilyugin flourished during the 1950s.

He retained a near monopoly on the development of inertial guidance systems for Soviet

strategic missiles, slowly rising in power until,

by the early 1960s, his design department at

NII-885 had outgrown the thematic direction of

the organization, which was still headed by

Chief Designer Ryazanskiy. To circumvent any

potential conflict between the two, in gpril

1963. Pilyuginls Complex No. I at the institute

separated and became the new ScientificResearch Institute for Automation and

Instrument Building (Nil gp) 8_gs the conflict

over the N I broke into the open. when Glushko.

Barmin, and Kuznetsov of the original six

"defected" to Chelomey's side. it was Pilyugin

who remained by Korolev. perhaps playing a

critical role in the entire proJect's genesis.

In general, throughout the 1960s, Pilyugin

found himself less and less interested in guidance systems for spacecraft, instead preferring

to focus on ballistic missiles or launch vehicles,

such as the N I. When design of the Soyuz had

begun in 1962, Pilyugin did not participate.

Similarly, when early conceptions of the L I were

discussed in early 1965, Pilyugin's lack of interChic[ DesignerPilyugin developed inertial guidance

systemsfor most Soviet ballistic missiles and launch

vehicles. Of all the original members of the famous

Council of Chief Designers, Pityugin u;as perhaps

the closest to Sergey Koroleu. The tzuo had met in

C_ermany in 1945 during the Zt4 recovery

operations (files of Peter _orm)

est prompted Korolev to entrust the design of the ship's guidance system to his own talented

guidance systems specialist, Raushenbakh. As the L I project picked up steam, however,

Pilyugin abruptly changed his mind and insisted that his institute be picked as the contractor.

Pilyugin's proposal for the system was heavier and more cumbersome and drained more power

than Raushenbakh's. Korolev's people warned that choosing Pilyugin's system would delay the

project by two, perhaps three, years. _

Korolev was caught in a bind. OKB-I engineer Feoktistov sat down with Pilyugin's representatives and explained in detail why their proposal would hinder the L I program. Pilyugin called

up Korolev in rage at Feoktistov's "improper'' behavior. Korolev was well aware that things had

changed since the 1950s, when the concept of what was "best" for a particular project overruled

personal allegiances. Put on the spot, Korolev explained to his deputies that if he did not choose

Pilyugin, it would be a breach of their personal contract, an unspoken agreement forged over

twenty years. In September 1965, Korolev selected Pilyugin's heavier and more cumbersome

design for the 7K-LI: OKB-I would retain the responsibility of the general layout of the system.

Thus, yet another technical decision in the lunar program was pushed through on the basis of

nontechnical considerations. The decision to forge ahead with Pilyugin was specified in the

November order from the Ministry of General Machine Building on the design of ZK-LI spacecraft. Three primary organizations would participate in the development of the vehicle:

83. s.M. Vyazov. " 18 May--80 YearsFromthe Birth of Academician N. ,q Pilyugin (1908)" (English titte).

tZ istorii aviatsii t kosmonavtiki $9 (I 988): 38-46

84. Golovanov, Korolev, pp. 754-56.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

• Korolev's OKB-I (general layout of the guidance system, systems for orientation,

approach, power sources, on-board cable networks, manual approach guidance, thermoregulation, and on-board switchboards)

• Pilyugin's Nil AP (stabilization system for issuing course corrections, control systems for

engines, guidance system for reentry, stabilization and guidance systems for engines of the

TLI stage, general layout and logic for guidance for the TLI stage, and on-board switchboard for the TLI stage)

• Ryazanskiy's Scientific-Research Institute for Instrument Building (radio complexes with

systems for trajectory measurement, telemetry, communications, transmission of TV

images during all stages of the flight, and electronic programmed timers) _'

Throughout November 1965, there was intensive collaboration among all the major organizations to eliminate each and every potential source of uncertainty in the program. The most

important decision at this point was whether to use Chelomey's Blok _ or Korolev's Blok D as

a TLI stage. @ combined group of engineers from OKB-I and OKB-52 worked on this particular problem at the time and recommended the use of BIok D because it would have better performance characteristics in combination with the UR-5OOK booster. There was an additional

rationale for favoring Blok D. This same stage was to fly as part of the N I-L3 and perform some

of the most critical maneuvers during a lunar landing. By flying it earlier as part of the circumlunar program, the engineers would be able to eliminate all problems prior to a landing. _

On November 30, OKB-I and OKB-52 issued the predraft plan for the L I program. Within

a quick two weeks, on December 13, two documents were signed, finalizing the detailed layout

and technical components of the piloted circumlunar program. The first of these, "Preliminary

Data on the 7K-L I Ship," was signed by Korolev and addressed the piloted spacecraft itself. The

second, a protocol of understanding between the two major parties titled "The Basic

Composition of the UR-5OO-TK-LI Rocket-Space Complex," was signed by both Korolev and

Chelomey and formally approved Blok D as an integral part of the entire project. _ Two days later,

Korolev presented this final conception to the Military-Industrial Commission as well as the

Council of Chief Designers. _ It had been less than four months since the commission's original

directive to bring some order to the effort, but a concerted effort had managed to bring some

sorely needed guidance to the program. For Korolev, it was a victory of sorts; after five tries since

1961, he had finally managed to gain control over the circumlunar program/_

The irony of the matter was that the compromise solution in the form of the UR-5OOK-Li

project was probably not the most effective path available. There was a brief window of opportunity in mid-1965 when Korolev had taken advantage of Chelomey's shortcomings to suggest

unifying both the landing and circumlunar programs as one. But by the end of 1965, political

expediency in the need to demonstrate Soviet supremacy in space by the fiftieth anniversary of

the Great October Revolution in 1967 had closed that opportunity. The two programs remained

85. Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 234.

86. One of the advantagesof using Blok D was a siightly better mass performance. In this new profile, the

third stageof the UR-5OOKbooster would not enter orbit. Blok D (the fourth stage) itself would fire to achieveorbital

velocity around Earth. Its second firing would be the TLI boost. This profile, the engineers calculated, would albow

a IO0-kilogram increasein the mass ol the 7K-LL a significant amount given the limited capability of the entire sys

tern. Seeibid., p. 235.

81. _ third document, dated December31, 1965, and titled "Preliminary Data on the LI Payload Block

(Product I IS824)," was a more detailed appraisalof the project. Seeibid, pp. 234-35.

88. _,fanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft"; I. P,. Marinin and S. Kh. Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Lunar

Flights" (English title), Zemlya i uselennaya no. 4 (July-/qugust 1993): 62-69.

89. The four previous proposals were an NI -related proposal in 1961.the Vostok-7/I L project in 1962,the

7K-9K-I IK proposal in 1963. and the NI I-LI idea in 1964-65.

505
5O6

separate, with independent goals, different launch vehicles, ground systems, and spacecraft.

but using the same design bureaus that were already overburdened and stretched to the limit.

More Voskhods?

The three long-range piloted projects that gained a modicum of focus in 1965--the Earthorbital Soyuz program, the circumlunar LI project, and the lunar landing N I-L3 effort--comprised only a portion of OKB-I's efforts during the year. Through the unending meetings and

decisions on these projects, Korolev's engineers were concurrently engaged in numerous other

programs, such as the Molniya-I communications satellite, the Luna automated lunar probe,

the Mars and Venera spacecraft to the inner planets, the Zenit-2 and Zenit-4 robotic military

reconnaissance satellites, the R-5V suborbital rocket, and at least three military ballistic missiles. In the piloted program, the most immediate concern was how to follow up the spectacular Voskhod 2 flight of Belyayev and Leonov in March 1965. The earliest expected date for

missions in any of the three long-range piloted programs would be 1966. Thus OKB- 1 anticipated at least a yearlong period before the resumption of Soviet crewed spaceflights. To fill this

gap, there were a plethora of plans to use the near-obsolete 3KV-type Voskhod spacecraft to

mount a few additional missions.

Planning for subsequent missions to Voskhod 2 had begun well before that flight and in

fact trace back to the earlier "extended Vostok" missions, which were abandoned in early 1964

once the Voskhod program got its start. As early as September 1964, the Air Force was planning for the construction of five more Voskhods by early 1965, two for flights with one cosmonaut of twelve to fifteen days, two for "special scientific experiments," and one for a repeat

EVA mission. By February 1965, OKB-I issued a document. "Initial Data on the *Voskhod'

(3KV and 3KD) Ship Series in 1965," which was a slightly revised manifest for five manufactured spaceships:

Vehicle Launch Date Mission

3KV no. 5 July-August 1965 Two dogs on a fifteen- to thirty-day mission

3KV no. 6

Voskhod 3

September-October 1965 Pilot and scientist on a fifteen-day mission with an

experiment in artificial gravity

3KV no. 7 March-April 1966

Voskhod 4

Pilot and doctor on a fifteen- to eighteen-day mission

with an experiment in artificial gravity for three to

four days

3KD no. 8 1966

Voskhod 5

Two-person crew on three- to five-day mission with

an EVA to a distance of fifty to I00 meters

3KD no. 9 1966

Voskhod 6

Two-person crew on three- to five-day mission with

an EVA to a distance of fifty to IO0 meters_°

The Military-Industrial Commission gave this manifest and schedule official status by formal decree (no. 156), dated July 28, 1965, and titled "On the Manufacture of 'Voskhod' Space

Satellite-Ships." The resolution obligated various branches of the space industry conclusively

90. Kamanin,5krytiykosmos:1964-1966,pp. I10, 138-39.156-51

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

to confirm within a month's time the full range of scientific and military experiments to be

conducted on the five missions, as well as schedules for the manufacture of necessary supplementary equipment)'

Five Air Force cosmonauts began training for the first piloted mission (Voskhod 3) in early

March 1965. At Korolev's insistence, a sixth man, Dr. Georgiy R Katys, a civilian laboratory

chief at the Institute of Telemechanics and Automation of the Academy of Sciences, was added

to the training group. Katys had been a leading contender for the "scientist" position on the

first Voskhod mission in 1964, but he had instead served as a backup, primarily because of

Korolev's stubborn insistence on having Feoktistov on the flight. Having been excluded from

that crew, Katys persevered, and throughout the following months, prepared an extensive scientific program for implementation on a future Voskhod mission. In April, he joined the five

military officers to train for Voskhod 3. It would be the first time that a career scientist would

fly into space. _

The flight program for Voskhod 3, prepared with the participation of Katys, was designed

to extend the absolute duration for a piloted spaceflight. Some of mission's scientific instrumentation would be mounted in a special semi-spherical pressurized chamber curved inward

into the crew capsule, while others would be installed on the exterior of the 3KV ship for work

in conditions of vacuum? _ Apart from scientific and military experiments, the crew would carry

out the entire flight in a highly elliptical orbit, thereby raising the absolute altitude record for a

piloted spaceship. As with the previous two Voskhod missions, Voskhod 3 would be preceded by a precursor flight, this one with dogs aboard, which would be a complete test of the life

support systems of the spacecraft, clearly one of the weakest elements in the Voskhod spacecraft. During the one-day Voskhod and Voskhod 2 missions, failures and malfunctions in the

system raised grave concern among many on the capacity of the vehicle to carry out longer

duration missions.

There was another ambitious element originally planned for both Voskhod 3 and Voskhod 4:

the simulation of artificial gravity in Earth orbit. In late 1964, Korolev had asked Raushenbakh,

chief of OKB-I's Department No. 27, to begin work on a modest system to test an artificial

gravity system in low-Earth orbit. The project was named IT, the Russian abbreviation for "artificial gravity." Raushenbakh's plan called for the launch of a 3KV Voskhod craft aboard the

tlA57 launcher into a low-Earth orbit. Following insertion into orbit, the 6,370-kilogram

Voskhod craft carrying two cosmonauts would separate from the 30,O00-kilogram upper stage

to a distance of about five to ten meters to deploy a tether. At this point, a solid-fuel engine

would fire to separate the two vehicles to completely unwind the tether to its maximum length

of more than 1,000 meters. When it was completely unwound, the two craft would slowly

begin to rotate around a common axis, initially at about one and a half degrees per second.

One peripheral objective of the IT project was to generate an electrical current from interactions

of the current-conducting tether with Earth's geomagnetic field. In an interesting connection

with the human lunar landing program, Korolev and Raushenbakh also planned to simulate

one-sixth the level of Earth's gravity in space. After the initial phase of rotation, the crew would

reduce the distance between the ship and the upper stage to 300 meters, increasing the

91. Ibid., p. 207.

92. Ibid. pp. 159, 177-78, 183-84; Kamanin. "in the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be..."; I. Marinin,

"Russian Cosmonaut-Scholars" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 3 (January28-February I I, 1996): 49-54. The

six men formed three tentative crews for Voskhod 3: B. kLVolynovlG E Katys (primary), G. T. Beregovoy/t S.Dernin

(backup), and V. g. ShatalovtYu. R Artyukhin (backup)

93. S. Shamsutdinov and I, Marinin, "Flights Which Never Happened" (English title), .,9viatsiyai kosmonautika no. I (January 1993): 44-45.

507
508

angular velocity to about seven degrees per second. The tether would then be disconnected,

and the crew would continue their planned mission in orbit. According to Raushenbakh's

design, the actual tether would be strapped to the side of the Voskhod spacecraft from the base

of the reserve retrorocket unit all the way to the apex of the primary deorbit engine. Total time

in a tethered mode could be extended up to one or two days/" Although the design of the system originated at OKB-I, it seems that responsibility for developing an actual working prototype was turned over to OKB-I Branch No. 3 at Kuybyshev, whose primary responsibility at

the time was the manufacture of launch vehicles and the design of reconnaissance satellites."'

The Voskhod 4 mission would primarily focus on biological and medical experiments in

Earth orbit. By early March 1965, three senior physicians at the Air Force's Institute of Aviation

and Space Medicine had prepared an extensive program of medical research for the mission.

This included carrying out surgery in space using a rabbit as a test subject (from Yaroshenko).

a psychological experiments program (from Ivanov), and a cardiovascular research program

(from Voskresenskiy) that would include studying the effects of calisthenics in space. On

February I0, 1965, two doctors who had served as backups during the first Voskhod mission,

Colonel Lazarev and Captain Sorokin, began preparations for the doctor position on the flight.

Despite resistance from the Sir Force, the Ministry of Health also managed to put forward several candidates from its in-house Institute of Biomedical Problems for the mission. In May, four

doctors passed initial medical tests at the Central Military Scientific-Research Hospital in

Moscow, and two of them joined Lazarev and Sorokin in September 1965 to train for the medical flight. Although none of the doctors were formally inducted into the cosmonaut team, they

represented the biomedical profession in a first serious attempt to include complex physiological research as part of the Soviet piloted space effort, v°

One of the later Voskhods would be another exercise in propaganda. As early as January

1965, cosmonaut overseer Kamanin was thinking of having two women fly on a future

Voskhod spacecraft, with one of them carrying out a spacewalk. On April 2, 1965, during a

meeting with Korolev, Kamanin casually mentioned his idea to the chief designer. The proposal must have seemed like deja vu to Korolev, for it was the same Kamanin who had suggested

a female space mission in 196t, which eventually led to Tereshkova's flight. Kamanin wrote in

his journal that he:

was motivated to make this suggestion because a spacewalk by a woman, with a wide

range of studies, and possibly with the use of autonomous means of movement in space,

would have no less a response from the world than the flight of "Voskhod-2?'

Korolev wanted nothing to do with it, while the male cosmonauts were quite vocally

against it. But within two weeks, Kamanin had evidently managed to gain the support of key

officials, including Academy of Sciences President Keldysh and Air Force Commander-in-Chief

94. Mikhail Rebrov."'IT' Project" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda. June 8, 1993. p. 2: G A. Kustova, ecL,

Ot peruogo Sputnika do "Energii"-"Burana" i "Mira" (Kaliningrad: RKK Energiya. ;994), p 57. Note that the length

of the tether is described as being fifty meters in one source. It is possible that this was the earlyversion of the system to be flown on Voskhocl 3. SeeShamsutdinov and Marinin. "Flights Which Never Happened."

95. Shamsutdinov and Marinin. "Flights Which Never Happened."

96. Ibid : V. Semenov.I Marinin, and S. Shamsutdinov. Iz istorii kosmonautiki uypusk I: nabory u otryady

kosmonautou t astronautou (Moscow: AO Videokosmos. 1995), pp. 2 I, 24: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: t9(;4-1966.

pp. 139, 226, 227. The original four candidates from the Ministry of Health were Ye.A. Ilin, A. A. Kisilev, S. O.

Nikolayev,and Yu. A Senkevich.Nikolayev and Senkevichwere dropped from training at an earlystage,leaving only

Ilin and Kisilev.

97 Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos. 1964-1966. p. 178

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

Vershinin. After Tereshkova's flight, the other four female cosmonauts had for all intents and

purposes been consigned to support roles, but Kamanin's new idea brought them back into the

forefront again. In April 1965, two of the most qualified of the remaining four, Ponomareva and

Solovyeva, began training for the EVA mission of Voskhod 5. Solovyeva would have the honor

of becoming the first woman to walk in space. Four men would serve as backups) _

Another component of the continuing Voskhod program was the use of the first Soviet

autonomous EVA maneuvering backpack, designated the Cosmonaut Maneuvering and

Motion Unit (LIPMK). Briefly considered for use by the women cosmonauts, engineers

delayed its use on a later mission by more experienced pilots. The white horseshoe-shaped

unit had an empty mass of ninety kilograms and was designed like a motor scooter. The

UPMK, which had an autonomous lifetime of four hours, was equipped with eighteen solid

rocket motors for forward and reverse movement, as well as fourteen compressed air thrusters

for angular movement (with six degrees of freedom). Maximum capable velocity relative to

Voskhod was projected at thirty two kilometers per hour. The cosmonaut would wear the unit

around the waist and control movement via two pistol-shaped handgrips and a control panel.

Total mass with a cosmonaut wearing the Berkut EVA suit was approximately 250 kilograms.

Severin's Plant No. 918 began developing the LIPMK in 1964. At least four cosmonauts--

Gorbatko, Khrunov, Shonin, and Zaykin--were in the running for the mission by September

1965. Khrunov, who had served as backup to Leonov on Voskhod 2, was the favorite for the

actual EVA? '_

One similar project that may have been related to the Voskhod program was the development of an "individual means of cosmonaut descent from orbit to Earth." Engineers apparently began research at the time on "a spacesuit-capsule with the capability to perform descent

and soft-landing by a single person.""_° In August 1965, Plant No. 918 summarized its research

on this unique capsule in two variants: for one cosmonaut (500 kilograms mass) and for two

cosmonauts (ZOO kilograms mass). As with the ClPMK. the capsule would be capable of

inspecting spacecraft, rescuing cosmonauts, and recovering parts of orbiting vehicles.'"'

These were all fairly ambitious plans for the limited Voskhod spacecraft, and their successful implementation would certainly have produced a significant impact on the already awed

public perception of the Soviet space program. The period following the Voskhod 2 mission

was, however, a time of great indecision. There were continuing clashes between Korolev and

the Ministry of Defense. which through the Air Force and the Strategic Missile Forces had operational control of the space program. The chief designer had always been resentful of the Air

Force's complete jurisdiction over the training and selection of cosmonaut crews. This issue

was aggravated by an order from Military-Industrial Commission Chairman Smirnov in early

August 1965 to "immediately begin military research on Voskhod spacecraft.' ..... Apparently

prompted by concerns over the "militarization" of space by the United States, the order led the

98. Ibid, pp 124, 178, 182-83. TheVoskhod 5 crews were named by Kamanin on April 14, 1965 The

backups forV. L Ponomarevaand I B. Solovyevawere D. A. Zaykin/Ye V Khrunov and G. S. Shonin/V V Gorbatko.

99 Ibid., pp. 226-27: Neville Kidger, "The SovietSpace 'Back-Pack.'"5,paceflight 34 (March 1992): 82-83.

I00. Ishlinskiy, ed., ,,qkademik5, R Koroleu, pp. 210-1 t.

I01 Kamanin, _krytiy kosmos: 1964-1966, pp. 208 244-45.

102 K. [antratov, "Dmitriy Koz[ov's 'Zvezda" (English title), Nouost_kosmonaut[ki 3 (January 2?-February

9. 1997): 50 55: Kamanin, "In the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be.... " During this period, there had also been

some discussion concerning the possible installation of orbit-correction engines aboard the 3KV Voskhod. which

would have been a qualitative leap in abilities. Proposalswere circulated among Korolev, Kamanin, and Soviet Air

Force Commander in-Chief Marshal K. ,q. Vershinin to this eftect, although Korolev was apparently hesitant to

approve such a plan. becausethe installation of such engines could delay the program. It was, however,obvious that

any advanced military reconnaissancemission would be limited by the lackof engines for changing altitude and inclination. The changesto the Voskhod were never enacted.

509
510

Air Force to constantly change the manifest for succeeding Voskhod missions. For example, by

late August, the tqir Force wanted to fly a one-man twenty-five-day mission on Voskhod 4 with

only military experiments instead of the original fifteen-day biological research flight. The gir

Force planned to use high-quality Czech-built cameras named Ztdmira for the mission. Korolev

was outraged at the revision, threatening once again to remove control over cosmonaut training and crewing from the tqir Force.

The single-man P,ir Force plan was eventually rejected, but by late November, Kamanin

removed scientist Katys from the primary crew of Voskhod 3 because another military cosmonaut was "much better prepared for a 20-day flight.' .... When he heard the news, Korolev told

Kamanin: "The Air Force is continuing its policy of removing civilian cosmonauts from flights.

That's the way it was in the preparation for the Voskhod-I flight, and that's how it's continuing now. I'm tired of the behavior of the military .... ,o4 Kamanin wrote in his journal:

Korolev frequently stoops to trivialities, harasses and irritates people, interferes with

details and neglects the key thing: time and the quality of preparation of the spacecraft.

He spreads himself too thin and tries to keep everything under his control: this explains

his continual conflicts with _lushko, Pilyugin, Voronm, Kosberg. and other Chief

Designers. Korolev even tries to influence the activity of the Air Force. _

The debates within the upper echelons of the Soviet space program over Voskhod reflected, on a larger level, the conflicts between the defense and civilian sectors in the arena of spaceflight. Clearly, the inherent confusion had a debilitating effect on the entire program. Trying to

pander to the military while staying faithful to his own schematic for space exploration, Korolev

found himself in a difficult position, often making decisions that were too reductive and counterproductive than one would expect from a visionary manager of his stature. As the months

in 1965 wore on, the government added to the confusion by not laying down deadlines for specific missions--actions that would have helped clear the way for launching the remaining

Voskhods.

The inevitable delays appeared again. Originally, Korolev had set the ten- to fifteen-day

Voskhod 3 flight for November 1965, but it was clear by early September that this was unrealistic. P, flightworthy spacecraft would not be ready until at least January of the following year,

although the crew was prepared to fly. One of the primary bottlenecks was the development of

a reliable life support system. The original Vostok system had been designed to support one pilot

for a maximum of ten days. Voskhod would have to maintain two pilots in orbit for more than

two weeks. The artificial gravity experiment, meanwhile, was rescheduled. During a technical

conference in October 1965 to discuss the status of the project, Korolev decided to delay the

system's testing from Voskhod 3 to Voskhod 4. The schedule for the project was incredibly compressed, and as one participant recalled, "when the production of the artificial gravity system

began, of course, there were extensive delays. Also, many of the technical questions in the project's planning section could not be solved." '_'_There was also external pressure. In August 1965,

the United States had finally taken the absolute endurance record in space with the Gemini V

mission, which lasted nearly a week. There were plans to fly Gemini VII in December for two

whole weeks. In a desperate measure, Korolev extended Voskhod 3's planned duration from ten

103. Kamanin. "In the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be.. ': Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos t964 1966. p

265 Katys was replaced by V. V. Gorbatko, one of the original twenty cosmonauts from the 1960 selection. B. V

Volynov remained the primary commander of the Voskhod 3 mission.

104 Kamanin, "In the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be .... " p. 30

105. Ibid

106 Ishlinskiy, ed., ,'qkademikS P Koroleu, p 336: Rebrov."IT Project."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

to fifteen days to twenty days. There were also delays in the female Voskhod 5 mission. Not

only were the female cosmonauts receiving inadequate training, but Plant No. 918 refused to

take on the job of designing completely new spacesuits for the women. '°'

As the pressure from the United States continued to grow, many of the original Voskhod

plans had to be revamped. By November 1965, Koro[ev proposed canceling the manufacture of

the last two Voskhod spacecraft (Voskhocl 5 and Voskhod 6), because that would free up

resources to focus on the Soyuz program, which was slowly becoming a more important priority. In the end, a compromise was reached: only Voskhod 6 would be canceled. The remaining missions would be launched as resources or plans allowed. At a meeting of the

Military-lndustrial Commission on December 16, 1965, the Soviet government added one more

condition to the Voskhod program: that OKB-I launch two Voskhods in time for the 23rd

Congress of the Communist Party in March 1966 as a salute to the Party. It was a completely

unrealistic deadline that threatened to derail an already haphazard project. ® By the end of the

year, the Soviets had accomplished only a single piloted spaceflight, Voskhod 2, the second

year in a row with this dubious distinction. In the meantime, the United States finished five

resoundingly successful Gemini missions in Earth orbit, capped off by the spectacular rendezvous of Gemini Vl and Gemini VII in December. Frank Borman and James A. Lovell, Jr., in

the latter spacecraft sealed NASA's year with a record fourteen-day mission. It was the most

visible indication that the mismanagement of the Soviet space program during the 1964-65

period was finally slowing down the Soviet space juggernaut.

The Last Stand

It was in this climate of falling morale that Korolev spent the last months of 1965. It had

been an extremely difficult year for the ailing chief designer. Many of OKB-I's space projects

had been beset by troubles. Perhaps most embarrassing was the Ye-6 automated lunar probe

project designed to achieve the first soft-landing on the surface of the Moon, Between January

1963 and December 1965, there had been eleven consecutive failures for the program, a record

that had dampened the spirits of even the most optimistic of engineers. '°_ After one particularly painful failure in March 1965, Kamanin wrote in his diary: "Korolev was more distressed by

the setback than anyone. He looked dejected and appeared to have aged ten years.' ...... There

were also several repeated failures for the Molniya-I communications satellite program during

1964-65, which tested the resolve of OKB-I engineers.

Through all this, there was also the loss of several of Korolev's closest colleagues. In

January, OKB-154 Chief Designer Semyon g. Kosberg, responsible for the upper stage engines

for several of Korolev's space launch vehicles, left Voronezh urgently for a meeting in Moscow.

His automobile slid on the icy roads, and he was severely injured. Doctors were flown in from

Moscow, but the sixty-two-year-old aeronautical engineer succumbed to his injuries. Even in

death, his contributions to the space program remained hidden. He was merely identified as "a

leading designer of airplane engines.' .... The same month, Korolev attended the funeral of

Andrey V, Lebedinskiy, the director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems--an institute whose

107. Kamanin. "in the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be.. ": Kamanin, 5krytiy kosmos t964-I966, pp.

220, 228.

108. Kamanin, 5krytiy kosmos 1964-1966, pp. 275-76.

I09. Semenov.ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 148

110 N Kamanin, "g Goal Worth Working for," no, 44 The probe in question was Ye-6 no 9, which failed

to leaveEarth orbit when the S1.5400engine of the Btok L [ourth stage failed to fire. It was named Kosmos 60 by

the Soviet pressto disguise its true intentions.

II t. "Semyon Kosberg, Soviet Air Expert," Neku"YorkTimes, January 5. 1965, p. 33: Golovanov. KoroJeu.p.

560: SergeyKhrushchev. NJkita Khrushlheu. krizisy i fakery uzgtyad iznutri. torn I {Moscow: Novosti. 1994). p. 493.

511
512

creationcanbedirectlytracedbackto Korolev'sproposalsinthelate1950s.IvanV,Popkov,

oneof Korolev'sfavoriteyoungengineersatOKB-Ialsodiedin anautomobileaccidentin

January.Popkovhadspecializedinthedesignofnavalballisticmissiles.Otherdeathsduring

theyearincludedthoseof GeorgiyM.Shubnikov,thelegendary"builder"of theBaykonur

Cosmodrome.Andfinally,therewasformerOKB-IDeputyChiefDesignerVoskresenskiy's

tragicdeathinDecember.":

Korolev'sownhealthwasclearlydeterioratingthroughouttheyear.Intqugust,hecomplainedaboutnotfeelingwellbecauseofabnormallylowbloodpressure,andinSeptember,he

wasafflictedwithsevereheadaches.Healsosufferedfromprogressivehearinglossandaseriousheartcondition.In late1965,hewroteto hiswife:"I aminaconstantstateof utter

exhaustionadstress,butI canundernoconditionsshowthatthesethingsaregettingtome.

I amholdingmyselftogetherusingallthestrengthatmycommand.'...Theinstitutionalcrises

ofthepastfewyears,thefightingwiththemilitary,thediscordwithGlushko,Chelomey,and

Yangel, the bureaucratic gridlock--all these were also taking a toll. By the end of 1965, he was

seriously contemplating resigning from his job. His wife recalled later:

Sergey Pavlovich would sometimes come home at wit's end. He seemed much more torn

up by [work-related problems] than he ever was from any domestic squabbles that we

ever had. He used to come home rather quickly from work. In his last years when he

would come home from some kind of meetings, he would be so emotionally torn. so

exhausted, and he would say heatedly, "1 can't continue to work like this, you understand. I'm not going to continue working like this. I'm leaving! .....

There was even talk of appointing one of his deputy chief designers as the technical director of launch operations at Tyura-Tam As his health suffered, his temperament spiraled. He was

increasingly abrupt with his associates. It did not help that Glushko continued to viciously

attack Korolev throughout the year. In November, Kamanin wrote in his diary:

Sergey Paulovich also complained about Clushko, who at a meeting of the MilitaryIndustrial Commission had given sharp criticism of the activity of his . . . Design

Bureau. The criticism, in Korolev's words, was not friendly, but sought to force him into

a corner "_lushko thinks." said Korolev, "that he is the chief successor and descendant

of Tsiolkovskiy. and that we are only making tin cans .... '....

The question of keeping Korolev's identity secret had evidently been raised several times

in 1965 at the level of the Central Committee. Each time, however, Party apparatchiks had

delayed a final word on the issue, thus preventing his name from being associated with that of

the mythical "chief designer" of the Soviet space program.

Being spread too thin over countless projects took its toll. Nine months after Belyayev and

Leonov landed in the taiga of Siberia. a single Soviet cosmonaut had yet to enter space. In the

meantime, NASA had flown five two-astronaut Gemini missions, each with spectacular success that visibly regained some of the public respect that had been lost during the age of

Sputnik and Vostok The crowning achievement of this spurt of activity was the joint Gemini

rendezvous mission in December. when two spacecraft had carried out the first rendezvous in

tt2. Gotovanov, Koroleu.p. 771

113. Ibid

114. Ibid.. p 770.

115 Kamanin, "In the Future His Name Will Probably Be .... " p. 30.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

orbit. It must have been a sobering realization to the cosmonauts and Korolev that even if the

Soviets had flown their Voskhods, they still would have been unable to accomplish what the

Gemini astronauts had performed in December--that is, extensive maneuvering into different

orbits. No doubt alarmed by the impending stagnation of their program, a group of experienced

cosmonauts, along with their overseer Kamanin, authored a special letter to Soviet leader and

General Secretary of the Communist Party Brezhnev on October 22, 1965. In it, they highlighted the gridlock in the space program because of the immensely complicated management

system, the undue focus on automated systems over piloted ones, and the poor funding of the

space program. Cosmonaut Gagarin personally handed the letter to Brezhnev's aides, but three

months later, they were still waiting for even an acknowledgment of his having received it. ''_

In this climate, Korolev was not much help. On December 26, 1965, he and his wife Nina

visited the Cosmonaut Training Center at Zelenyy near Moscow, perhaps to boost the morale

of the many cosmonauts who were apprehensive of the delays in the Voskhod and Soyuz programs.'' They were received by Center Director Maj. General Nikolay F. Kuznetsov and his

Deputy Gagarin, who escorted them to the training area where cosmonaut Komarov was

preparing for the primary mission of the Soyuz program, the docking of two Soyuz in orbit.

Gagarin asked the chief designer about OKB-I's plans for the immediate future, perhaps trying

elicit some hint of what the cosmonauts could expect. Korolev was vague:

Right now, we're preparing the launch of the Soyuz .... It has already tested wet( in

unmanned flights. We are also working on a space station. "four comrades have already

seen the wooden model .... We are also working on effecting an unmanned soft lunar

landing and conducting research in outer space .... You'll learn more about the work

once you become involved in it. ''"

Kamanin wrote in his journal on January 5:

7111the cosmonauts are pessimistic as never before. Their limitless faith in Korolev has

been dealt a serious blow by Korolev himself: Sergey Paulovich came to the Center. met

with the cosmonauts, but could not tell them anything definite about the next flight. ''_

Korolev's health in the meantime became more and more frail. Between December 14 and

t 7, he had undergone a series of medical tests in Moscow, which had indicated to doctors that

he required to be hospitalized for at least a week for a minor operation to remove a bleeding

polyp in the straight intestine. He spent his last day before the operation, January 4, 1966, at

his office, staying late as usual, before being admitted to a division at the Kremlin hospital the

following day. '_° It seems that Korolev did not expect to stay in the hospital long, for he had

already invited people to celebrate his fifty-ninth birthday at a party on January 14, '_'

116. This letter has been reproduced in full in Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos' 1964-1966, pp. 245-48.

I t 7. A. E Romanovand V. S.GubarevtKonstruktory (Moscow: Izdatelstvopoliticheskoyliteratury, 1989), p. 183

118. Nikolai Kuznetsov, "A LeaderAmong Leaders,"in V. Mitroshenkov. ed, Pioneersof Space (Moscow:

Progress Publishers, 1989), p. 93. The "unmanned" flights to which Korolev referred may have been the suborbital

mission(s) of a stripped-down Soyuz descent apparatus launched on the R5V scientific missile

119. Kamanin. "In the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be .... " p. 30.

120. Ishlinskiy, ed., ,ZtkademikS. P Koroleu, p 68: Golovanov, Koroleu, pp. 773-74: Nicholas Daniloff, The

Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1972), p. 119. Kamanin says that the operation was to

"remove a tumor in the duodenum." SeeKamanin. "In the future His Name Will Probably Be.... "

12I, His birthday was on January 12,but Korolev preferredto celebrateit on January 14.Confusingly, his actu

al birth date in the julian calendar system usedby Russiansprior to the GreatOctober Revolution was December30

513
514

The original date for the operation was January 5, but was delayed to run some more tests.

In the meantime, Mishin temporarily took over for Korotev while the latter was indisposed. Even

from the hospital bed, Korolev tried to keep his hand in the design bureau's activities. During

a crisis on January 7 at a meeting of the Collegium of the Ministry of General Machine Building,

Minister gfanasyev had forced Deputy Chief Designer Chertok "to hear scathing criticisms...

of the shortcomings of the Bureau and its senior officials." Mishin was indignant after the

meeting and returned to his office and wrote out a letter of resignation from OKB-I.

Fortuitously or not, one of his aides saw Mishin prepare the document, and immediately called

Korolev. Korolev asked his deputy what he was doing. Mishin replied, "Writing my [resignation]. It is hard enough to work with you, but with [gfanasyev] there is no way." Korolev

replied. "Tear up the report, ministers come and ministers go, but we stay in our business.

Resignations are the only thing they want of us." ,2,,

On January I I, Dr. Boris V. Petrovskiy, the USSR Minister of Health, personally performed

a histological analysis on Korolev and excised a small piece of polyp from the gastrointestinal

tract, causing excessive bleeding. Given Korolev's paramount importance as a state figure in

the Soviet Union, it would have been unusual for anyone else but the Minister of Health to

operate on Korolev. Despite his high rank, Petrovskiy was indeed an accomplished surgeon

and regularly operated on patients during this period. However, Petrovskiy may not have been

completely prepared for the operation on the morning of January 14. Several key surgeons,

including Petrovskiy's deputies, were inexplicably absent on that day, even though it was not

a holiday There were numerous complications with Korolev himself. He had not revealed to

the doctor that his jaw had been broken in prison from torture in 1938, which made it difficult for him to open his mouth wide. His unusually short neck compounded the problem, and

it prevented doctors from using an intubation tube into his lungs. Instead, they performed a

tracheotomy and inserted a tube via an incision in his neck. His jaw problem necessitated the

use of a general anesthetic despite the uncertainty over his heart condition. Even the anesthetic was in short supply. Korolev bled profusely during the operation. Petrovskiy later wrote

in his memoirs:

,zl laporotomy (the process o[ opening the abdominal cavity) indicated the presence of

an immovable malignant tumor which had grown into the rectum and the pelvic wall.

Using an electronic scalpel, we were able to extract this tumor only with great di[ficulty and conduct a biopsy, which confirmed the presence o[ this malignant tumor--which

was an angiosarcoma. _'_

The size of the tumor, larger than a person's fist, was a shock to those in the operating

room. lqs Korolev lay profusely bleeding, Petrovskiy realized that Korolev was in serious danger. With tensions rising, Dr. tqleksandr A. Vishnevskiy, a noted cancer specialist, was called

in. The two evidently completed the operation, four hours after it had started, but half an hour

later, Korolev's pulse abruptly stopped. Despite repeated attempts to revive him, he was gone.

He had just turned fifty-nine. '_

The news was devastating to the space community. On the evening of the operation, all of

Korolev's deputies and division chiefs assembled at OKB-I in complete disbelief. None had any

idea that Korolev's condition was that serious. Most doctors later believed that with or without

122. Tarasov, "Missions in Dreams and Reality": Golovanov, Koroleu, p 770: Mozzhorin, et aL. eds, Doro£i

v kosrnos: I, p, 120.

123 Golovanov. Koroleu. p. 775,

124 /bid, pp 774-78.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

the operation, Korolev did not have very much longer to live--perhaps a few months. Still in

shock, Korolev's principal deputy, Mishin, ordered Deputy Chief Designer Chertok to quickly prepare an official obituary and to take it personally to Ivan D. Serbin, the feared chief of the Defense

Industries Department at the Central Committee. Serbin amended Chertok's original draft. By this

time, Soviet leader Brezhnev personally decided to allow a link between Korolev's name and the

Soviet space program. The chief designer's identity would finally be revealed to the public. '_

Mishin later recalled that even at this juncture, there was resistance from higher placed Party officials to reveal Korolev's name. The signatures of Mishin, Chertok, and Korolev's other deputies

were removed from the obituary because of security reasons.'2"

The official Soviet news agency TASS announced his death on the morning of January 16

as the leading news item of the country. 13 medical report accompanying the obituary stated that

he had been suffering from a malignancy in the intestine, sclerosis of the arteries, emphysema.

and an upset metabolism. The cause of death was said to be "cardiac insufficiency" during the

operation. '_ Korolev's arch enemy Glushko was apparently unperturbed by the sudden death.

Glushko was conducting a meeting on January 14 when his Kremlin phone line rang. He heard

the news, hung up, and turned to his audience and said, "Sergey Pavlovich is no longer with

us." He paused for a second and continued, "Now where did we leave off? ..... In the West, his

importance to the Soviet missile and space program was not clearly understood at the time. The

New York Times carried his obituary on page 82 of its Sunday edition, mentioning that Korolev

was a "designer of sputniks and manned space capsules.' ....

Korolev was given a state funeral on January 18, the likes of which had not been seen in

many years in Moscow, The urn with his ashes was carried from the House of Unions by

Smirnov, gfanasyev, Keldysh, Tyulin, Gagarin, and others, following which the senior cosmonauts carried it from the Historical Museum to Red Square, There, Brezhnev, Podgorny, and

other Soviet leaders lifted the urn and placed it in the Kremlin Wall. '3° Smirnov then placed the

urn in the niche, which was then covered with a marble plaque with the following inscription:

KOROLE M Sergey Paulouieh 30.12.1906-14.01.1966'"

Speakers at the funeral eulogized Korolev's accomplishments with dry and banal cliches.

Keldysh added that "one of the greatest achievements of science and technology, the era of

man's exploration of space, will always be associated with Korolev's name.' .... Kamanin's journal entries for the day add some telling commentaries about the funeral:

Koroleu occupied a place in the Kremlin Wall next to S. V Kurashou (USSR Minister of

Health). I was irritated by the [act that they were neighbors." it unnecessarily reminded

me o[ the great guilt o/our medicine in the premature death of Sergey Paulouich. ,,qll o/

125. Chertok. Rakety i lyudL goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny, p. 361: Semenov, ed., RGketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 158. Mishin recallsthat the obituary was written by him. not Chertok. SeeTarasov.

"Missions in Dreamsand Reality"

126.

127.

128.

129

p. 82.

130

1966, p. I0.

131.

132.

Tarasov,"Missions in Dreams and Reality": Mozzhorin, et al. eds., Dorogi u kosmos:/, p 121.

Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos,p. 119.

Golovanov. Koroleu. p. 779.

"Sergei E Korolev is Dead at 59: Leading Soviet SpaceScientist." New "YorkTimes, January 16. 1966.

Theodore Shabad, "Chief Soviet Space Designer Is Buried in Kremlin," NeLu "YorkTimes, January 19,

He was cremated at 9 p.m. on January 17.

Kamanin, "In the Future His Name Witl Probably Be.... "

Shabad, "Chief Soviet SpaceDesigner Is Buried in Kremlin."

515
516

the orators at the funeral gathering especially solicitously stressed the thought that

Korolev was a great scientist, but not the chief director o/space studies, that there we

had many like Korolev. This is not true. I know that thousands o/staff and dozens of

Chief Designers worked along with Korolev, but it was he who was the Chief Designer

of spacecraft, and not only in post, but in essence as well I will always place unlimited value on Korolev's talent. I knew features o/his character which were not the best,

but they cannot hide the magnitude o/the figure of our Chief Designer. His name should

be before the names of all our cosmonauts. I am deeply convinced that it will be so.'"

Thus ended not only the life of the architect of the early Soviet successes in space, but also

a momentous era in the history of space exploration. As a manager, designer, politician, lobbyist, engineer, and flight director, he had carved out a position for himself that defied any singular title. Each one of the responsibilities that he had carried on his shoulders was vacant, His

successors would try to fill the vacuum, but in truth, things would never be the same again.

133 Kamanin, "In the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be .... " p 3l.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
1

__ CHAPTER TWELVE

A NEW BEGINNING

SergeyPavlovich Korolev's death ended one man's unprecedented twenty-year reign over Soviet

missile and space programs. He bequeathed to his associates and aides the daunting task of managing an empire whose intricacies had only been clear to him. While many of his deputies were certainly adept in various areas of directing the works of OKB-I, no single person had expertise in

managing the design bureau, dealing with Soviet politicians, brokering deals with other chief design

ers, and instilling a vision of space exploration among the thousands who worked at the firm.

Unlike no other chief designer before or since, Korolev dominated the Soviet space program.

His informal title in the official Soviet press before his death was not "chief designer of OKB-I," but

rather "chief designer of rocket-space systems"--a far-more melodramatic moniker than simply the

head of a design bureau. His vast array of roles in the space program did not, for the most part,

come from his official appointments (which were many), but rather from his larger-than-life personality. Thus, when he died, there was an unprecedented vacuum. While his successor would

inherit the title of chief designer of OKB-I, he would not have Korolev's informal powers accrued

through twenty years of making history. In some ways, the post-Korolev period was characterized

by an equal playing ground, with the leading chief designers no longer following a single voice. This

also meant that there was no single ardent supporter to push projects. The lobbying from the bottom up as a consequence became more diffuse and less imposing in contrast to the Korolev years.

Mishin

The first order of business for a demoralized Soviet space program was to choose a successorto

Korolev. The normal procedure for selecting a new chief designer would have been for Minister of

General Machine Building Afanasyev to discuss the names of candidates with Secretary of the

Central Committee Ustinov. The proposal would be presented to the Central Committee, whose

members would passit on to the Politburo. In the caseof OKB-I, Korolev's senior staff did not want

to risk having an unwanted individual appointed chief designer by higher-ups, and they tried to take

the matter into their own hands. The night after Korolev's death, one of his most beloved former proteges, Chief DesignerViktor P.Makeyevof SKB-385, flew into Moscow from his home base at Miass

to try and bring some order into the succession. Makeyev assembled all the senior staff at OKB-I

and asked them for opinions. Somesuggestedthat Makeyev himself take over the design bureau, but

he was firmly against doing so: he had as many as sixteen submarine-launched ballistic missile projects ongoing at Miass, far too much work to be suddenly moving to another organization.'

I. B, Ye Chertok, Rakely i tyudi goryachiye dni khotodnoy uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, t997),

pp. 368 69.

517
518

It took a long time to come to a decision. One who was there, Deputy Chief Designer

Yevgeniy V. Shabarov, recalled many years later that:

. . . through the night we wrote a letter addressed to the Secretary of the [Central

Committee], the Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission, and to [our] minister.

In the letter we proposed that in our opinion, Vasiliy Pavlovich Mishin be appointed the

successor to Sergey Pavlovich Korolev since he had been [Korolev's] First Deputy. We

also offered various other reasons for the choice. Fit five in the morning the letter was

ready and we all signed it/

Bushuyev and Chertok had originally proffered Mishin's name. Only one deputy, Sergey S.

Kryukov, had opposed Mishin's candidacy, gll other senior staff agreed that Mishin would be

the best person for the job. The prompt action by OKB-I senior staff seems to have surprised

government officials, who were not too happy with this internal recommendation. Mishin

remembered that:

my appointment.., encountered some opposition from Llstinov who at the time was a

Secretary of the Central Committee... overseeing defense matters. He wanted to use the

occasion to limit the authority and jurisdiction of the Chief Designer and put him under

an administrative head of OKB- I. Ustinov had made such attempts during Korolev's lifetime but they had run up against Korolev's well-argued objections.'

By the time that the senior staff at OKB-I officially proposed Mishin's name, Communist

Party officials had already decided on an alternative person to head the design bureau: Georgiy

A. Tyulin, then the First Deputy Minister of General Machine Building. Ustinov believed that by

appointing Tyulin as "administrative head" of OKB-I, he would be able to curb some of the

undeniable powers of the chief designer of such an important design bureau. The papers for

Tyulin's appointment were drawn up, but there were long drawn-out negotiations on the issue,

and it took an astonishing five months before the Central Committee agreed to ratify the original proposal from the OKB-I senior staff. On May 5, 1966, Soviet leader Brezhnev summoned

Mishin to the Kremlin and informed him of his promotion, and six days later, Minister of

General Machine Building gfanasyev signed an order officially appointing Mishin as the new

chief designer of the organization.

Mishin was clearly the most likely choice as a successor, having been groomed by the late

Korolev for almost a decade for this position. But he did not have his predecessor's stature or

clout. In fact, Mishin had somewhat of a reputation for being blunt and tactless and was not

known for his diplomatic skills. He was, however, respected for his engineering skills. One military officer who closely worked with Mishin recalled that he was:

Fin excellent mathematician, a fast thinking engineer He knew the business and, most

important, could screen options as fast as a computer, , . Mishin possessed very specific information. He was always ready to come up with a strong rebuke at the Council

o[ Chief Designers where he was invited. He deferred to no authority as long as the

authority in question came up with solutions that defied logic and common sense to

serve a hidden agenda. That is why he was not popular 4

2. Yu. ,q Mozzhorin, et al., eds.. Dorogi v kosmos:I (Moscow: M/_h 1992), p. 182.

3 Ibid. p. 12I.

4. Mikhail Rebrov, "The Secretsof Rocket Codes" (English title), Krasnaya zvezda. June 3, 1995. p. 6.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
NEW BEGINNING

Vasiliy Mishin succeededKorolev as OKB I Chief Designer alter Korolev's death in January 1966

This photo probably datesfrom early t968 In the background are Maj _enera[ Zt[eksandrKurushin (left).

commander of the Tyura-Tam range at the time. and Maj, _enerat _natoliy Kiriltou (right), Kurushin's deputy.

(copyright Christian Lardier)

This is an important distinction from Korolev, who, perhaps because he better understood

the workings of the political machinery of the Communist Party, was more willing to work out

problematic issues than let them languish in deadlock. Mishin, stubborn to the end. refused to

budge if his instincts told him so, sticking to his beliefs until the bitter end. Lacking the political instincts of say a Wernher von Braun or a Sergey Korolev, he suffered dearly. Some would

argue that so did the Soviet space program in the coming years.

Mishin's appointment as chief designer was only one of several different honors bestowed

upon him. He replaced Korolev's vacant position as the head of the somewhat amorphous

Council of Chief Designers for programs in which his design bureau had the leading role. Thus,

at least during the meetings of the council, he outranked much more senior designers such as

Glushko, Pilyugin, and Isayev. In March 1966, Mishin was inducted into the Presidium of the

Interdepartmental ScientifioTechnical Council on Space Research, headed by Academy of

Sciences President Keldysh. That council continued its critical advisory role of implementing

the Soviet space program by serving as "expert commissions" for a plethora of proJects2 Finally

on July I, 1966, Mishin was promoted to the rank of full Academician of the LISSR Academy

of Sciences. Along with Mishin. three other major space designers--Barmin, Pilyugin, and

5. Interview, Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov with the author, November 15, 1996.

519
52O

Yangel--also became P,cademicians the same day, joining the select group of Glushko and

Chelomey. 6

These six designers--Barmin, Chelomey, Gtushko, M/shin, Pilyugin, and Yanget--atl

Academicians, commanded great respect among the upper echelons of the space industry, but

their ascendance was also evidence of a great diffusion of power. For example, of the six, only

one (/angel) was allowed to become a Candidate Member of the Central Committee of the

Communist Party--an unprecedented honor that even Korolev did not enjoy. It was in fact

Yangel's new appointment as a Candidate Member that prompted many Western analysts to

come to the conclusion that Yangel had "succeeded" Korolev as the "chief" of the Soviet space

program, as if the entire effort was run by a single monolithic organization. This was an error

in analysis that would not be dispelled until well into the 1970s, when the concept of "design

bureaus" filtered out through the curtain of censorship. What was equally unknown at the time

was that Yangel's honorary promotion as a Candidate Member of the Central Committee probably stemmed not from his achievements in space, but rather from his clearly notable contributions to the development of strategic ballistic missiles. More evidence of the diffusion of

power was the choice of Korolev's replacement as a member of the Presidium of the Academy

of Sciences, the highest arbiters of scientific research in the Soviet Union. Neither Glushko, nor

Yangel, nor M/shin, nor Chelomey filled the position in May 1967--rather, it was Chief

Designer Pilyugin, responsible for guidance systems.'

Soon after the changeover in leadership at the design bureau, the Ministry of General

Machine Building enacted a ministry-wide change in naming of institutions, which effectively

replaced the "OKB-plus-number" system with an even more bewildering designation system.

Almost every design bureau involved in the missile and space industry would have the dreary

phrase "machine building" attached to its name. perhaps as a somewhat comical way to disguise the true roles of these organizations. Thus on March 6, t966, OKB-I became the new

Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building. or "TsKBEM" in its Russian abbreviation. Chelomey's OKB-52 meanwhile became the almost identical Central Design Bureau of

Machine Building, or "TsKBM," distinguished only by the omission of an "E" in its abbreviation. _ At the same time, M/shin enacted a large-scale restructuring of his design bureau in

6 Chertok. Rakety lyudi goryaehiye dni kholodnoy uoyny, pp. 516 17; Christian Lardier, "Soviet Space

Designers When They Were Secrets," presented at the 47th International Astronautical Federation, IAA-96-

IAA.2 209, Beijing. China. October 7- t I, 1996.V. P.Glushko had become an Academician on June20. 1958. while

V N, Chelomey had become one on June 29, 1962. Note that there were also a number of scientists who were

Academicians who were involved in the ballistic missile and/or space programs. These included A, A. Blagonravov

(became an Academician in September 1943), A Yu. Ishlinskiy (in June 1960). M V. Keldysh (in November 1946).

S A. Khristianovich (in September 1943}. V. A. Kotelnikov (in October 1953), B. N. Petrov (in June 1960), G. I.

Petrov (in June 1958). and L. I Sedov (in October 1953). In addition, there were several other designers and/or

scientists in the space program who were Corresponding Members of the Academy of Sciences--that is, junior to

full Academicians. These included A F.Bogomolov (in July 1966). K D Bushuyev (in June 1960). V I Kuznetsov

(in June 1958), N. S Lidorenko (in July 1966),A. M Lyulka (in June 1960), D. Ye Okhotsimskiy (in June 1960).

B V. Raushenbakh(in July 1966), M S Ryazanskiy(in June 1958), S. S. Lavrov(in July t966), and S. K. Tumanskiy

(in june 1964)

7 Lt Gen G. Tyulin, "Look Forward" (English title). Krasnaya zuezda, May 18. 1988, p. 4.

8 Yu P. Semenov. ed, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S P Koroleua (Korolev:

RKK Energiya,named after S P. Korolev, 1996). p 158: Mikhail Rudenko. "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes"

(English title), Vozdushniy transport 52 (1995): 8-9; Chertok, Rakely i [yudi goryochiye dni khotodnoy voyny,

p 403. Someof the other organizations whose names werechanged included: Glushkos OKB-456. which in January

1966 was renamedthe Design Bureauof Power Machine Building (KB EnergoMash): Mozzhorin's NII-88, which in

january 1967 was renamed the Central Scientific-Research Institute of Machine Building {TsNIIMash): Barmins

GSKBSpetsMash, which in January 1967was renamed the Design Bureau o| General Machine Building (KB OM)I

and Yangels OKB-586, which in October 1966was renamed the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau (KB Yuzhnoye)

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
A New BEGINNING

November 1966, creating ten subdivisions, each

designated a "complex," dedicated to a specific

mission profile, His two First Deputy Chief

Designers were SergeyO. Okhapkin and Dmitriy

I. Kozlov, both of whom had worked under

Korolev since 1946."

Okhapkin, a prematurely gray-haired man

full of verve and energy, had served his apprenticeship under such famous Soviet aviation

Myasishchev designers as Tupolev, and Ilyushin

before joining Korolev's team in 1948 as an

expert on dynamics and precision. In December

1952, he became a deputy chief designer, eventually directing planning work on the N I booster. Upon Mishin's appointment, Okhapkin

headed OKB-I's Complex I, dedicated to rocket

systems, which included the N I. '° Kozlov, on

the other hand, had headed the old Branch No.

3 at Kuybyshev since its establishment in 1960.

After KoroleVs death, the branch remained subordinate to the main center at Kaliningrad,

although Kozlov's primary work was related not

to piloted systems but rather the development

of high-security military reconnaissance satellites. Apart from Okhapkin and Kozlov, there

were five remaining deputy chief designers for

spacecraft, guidance systems, rocket engines,

ground equipment, and testing."

As with all notable figures in the space proOKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Sergey Okhapkin was

one o/ the principal forces behind the creation o[ the

NI rocket _[ter Mishin's appointment as OKB-I

Chief Designer, Okhapkin serued as First Deputy of

the organization, primarily responsible for the quickly

accelerating Luork on the NI (files o/Peter Gorin)

gram, the identities of Mishin, Okhapkin, and Kozlov were kept state secrets, and the Soviet

press completely refrained from commenting on the nature of the succession to Korolev.

Eventually, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were allowed to use pseudonyms when writing articles in the popular media':' Unlike Korotev, Soviet journalists did not refer to Mishin as

the "chief designer of rocket-space systems," but rather the less encompassing "chief designer of piloted spaceships." It was a small, but telling indication that Korolev's old design bureau

had reached its zenith of power and that glory days were no longer ahead but consigned to the

history pages.

9. For Okhapkin. see Semenov, ed.. Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 158. For Kozlov, see V.

Drebkova. "Anniversaries: General Designer D. I. Kozlov--75 Years" (English title), Novosti kosmonavtiki 20

(September 24-October 7, 1994): 56. Note that Kozlov assumed his post in 1967. not 1966.

I0. Yaroslav Golovanov, Korolev: [akty i mify (Moscow: Nauka. 1994), pp. 478-80.

I I They were K. D. Bushuyev (spacecraft, Complex 2), B. Ye. Chertok (guidance systems, Complex 3), M

V. Melnikov (rocket engines. Complex 5), A. P Abramov {ground equipment, Complex 6), and Ya. I Tregub (testing, Complex 7). Complex 4 was for the Experimental Machine Building Plant (ZEM) attached to the design bureau.

It was headed by TsKBEM First Deputy Chief (but not Deputy Chief Designer) V. M. Klyucharev. See Semenov, ed.,

Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya, pp. 158-59. Note that Klyucharev was appointed to his position on

September 8, 1967

12. Their pseudonyms were M R Vasilyev (Mishin). S. O. Osipov (Okhapkin), and D. Ilichev (Kozlov). See

Lardier, "Soviet Space Designers When They Were Secrets."

521
522

The End of Voskhod

Mishin's first job as Chief Designer of TsKBEM was to assess the state of the Voskhod program. At the time of Korolev's death, there were immediate plans for three to four Voskhod and

five Soyuz missions in 1966. The first one, Voskhod 3, was the long-duration mission with cosmonauts Volynov and Shonin, planned for almost a year. The spectacular success of the fourteen-day Gemini VII flight in December 1965 had given the Soviet mission even more of an

impetus to get off the ground. There seems to have been some effort from ministerial leaders

to substitute the all-woman EVA flight in place of Voskhod 3, but this attempt did not bear

fruit. '_ The subsequent Voskhod 4 would be a scientific flight, including artificial gravity experiments with test pilot Beregovoy and scientist Katys, while Voskhod 5 would be a military mission with cosmonauts Shatalov and Detain. An extra mission, with only dogs, would precede

Voskhod 3 to test the extended life support systems on the near-obsolete 3KV spacecraft.

The Voskhod 3 mission was timed to coincide with the opening of the 23rd Congress of

the Communist Party in early March 1966, as a "gift" to the doctrinal keepers of the Soviet

Union. This flight, and the additional two or three Voskhod missions, would also serve to

bridge the gap to the inaugural jaunt of the Soyuz spaceship, then slated for sometime in late

1966. From a public relations perspective, the remaining Voskhod expeditions would no doubt

deflect worldwide attention from NASA's successful Gemini program. Certainly, the Voskhod 3

mission, dedicated to regaining the mission duration record claimed by Gemini VII, would be

an outstanding publicity victory for the Soviet space program.

On January 27, about two weeks after Korolev's death, Mishin hosted the first technical

meeting at OKB-I under his management to discuss the future Voskhod missions. The attendees decided to prepare Voskhod spacecraft 3KV no. 5 for launch with two dogs in the first

half of February. Some from the military, particularly Air Force Lt. General Kamanin, opposed

such a thirty-day biomedical precursor mission, apparently because he believed that it would

unnecessarily delay the Voskhod 3 mission, which was very important to future military operations in space. Cosmonauts had extensively trained to use an infrared optical instrument

named Suinets ("Lead"), which would allow them to observe plumes from the launches of four

Soviet ballistic missiles. At the same time, officials decided to launch spacecraft 3KV no. 6

(Voskhod 3) on an eighteen-day mission during March 10-20, 1966--that is, after the landing

of the precursor mission. The primary limiting factor for the extended mission seems to have

been the poor performance of the Voskhod spacecraft's life support system, in particular its air

regeneration capabilities, which most believed would not guarantee safety for two cosmonauts

for a period of eighteen days in space. '4g second similar meeting on February I0 confirmed the

general state of readiness to carry out the two flights. '5

13. See, for example, N P Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos:kniga utoraya. 1964-1966gg (Moscow: Infortekst IF,

199?), pp. 284,286. 288.

14. Ibid. pp 293-94. Among those present for this meeting were V. P. Mishin (OKB I), G. _. Tyulin

(MOM), P. V..Tsybin (OKB-I). K. D Bushuyev (OKB I), A I. Burnazyan (Ministry of Health), ,q G. Karas

(TsUKOS). K. A. Kerimov (MOM). G. I. Voronin (OKB-124), S G Darevskiy (SOKB LII), N. P. Kamanin (VVS),

N. F.Kuznetsov (TsPK), Yu A. Gagarin (TsPK). V. M. Komarov (TsPK), Ye.A. Karpov {GKNII/qiKM). ,q. M. Genin

(GKNII AiKM)_ A N 8abiychuk (WS), S G Frolov(WS), and V. A. Smirnov (WS).

15 fbid. pp 300-01. The meeting was also the forum to formally approve the membership of the first postKorolev State Commission. This State Commission for Voskhod would now include G. g. Tyulin (Chairman from

MOM), M V. Keldysh (AN SSSR),S. I. Rudenko (WS), V. P. Mishin (OKB-I), N. N. Smimitskiy (GURVO), V. A.

Kasatanov (affiliation unknown). V. A. Kazakov (MAP), A. G. Karas (TsUKOS), G, P Melnikov (Ntl-4), N. P.

Kamanin (WS). A. A Kurushin (NIIP-5), P. V. Tsybin (OKB-I). I. D. Spitsa (TsKIK), Ye. V. Shabarov (OKB-I).

V. N Pravetskiy(Ministry of Health), and h T. Bulychev (MO).

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
R NEW BEGINNING

There were no major delays in the preparation of the precursor mission, and Tyulin gave

the final approval for the launch at a State Commission meeting on February 17. Two dogs,

selected for the flight after a rigorous selection process at the Institute for Biomedical Problems

in Moscow, would fly a twenty-five-day mission. The 3KV-type Voskhod vehicle, spacecraft no.

5, was launched at 2310 hours Moscow Time on February 22, 1966, and named Kosmos-I I0

upon entering orbit. The craft carried dogs named Veterok and Ugolek into a highly elliptical

initial orbit of 187 by 904 kilometers at a 5 t.9-degree inclination. The high apogee of the orbit

was evidently an attempt by Soviet scientists to examine the effects of the Van Allen radiation

belts on the dogs. It was an element of the flight that had originally emerged as early as 1963

during planning for the Vostok program. The State Commission hoped to launch the subsequent Voskhod 3 craft into a similar orbit not only to study radiation effects, but also to claim

the absolute altitude record for a piloted space vehicle. With the launch of Kosmos-I I0, for the

first time in the Soviet space program, a piloted spacecraft used the fifty-one-degree inclination

for the orbit--a practice that would be adopted for almost all the remaining crewed space missions in the Soviet era. This inclination not only allowed the II P,57 launch vehicle to lift the

heaviest payload into orbit without having to land in China in case of an abort, but it also

would provide optimal flight conditions for future missions to the Moon. The total mass of the

vehicle was 5,600 kilograms, with 3,000 kilograms of that mass for the spherical descent apparatus that contained the two dogs. '6

While the primary goal of the flight was to test the life support system in preparation for

Voskhod 3, Kosmos-I10 also had a number of supplementary scientific goals. Apart from the

dogs themselves, there were various types of yeast preparations, samples of blood serums, protein growths, chlorella, and lysogenic bacteria aboard the spacecraft. '7Throughout the mission,

the two dogs were fed anti-radiation drugs and food delivered by means of tubes into their

stomachs. Veterok served as the experimental specimen, while Ugolek was the control animal.

By March 4, things seemed to be proceeding normally. The only minor problem was a deployment malfunction in one of the communications antennas. On March 14, about twenty clays

into the flight, the State Commission met to discuss the progress of Kosmos-I IO. tqlthough the

condition of the dogs and cabin atmosphere parameters, such as pressure, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide content, were within normal range, there had been "a steady tendency

of gradual deterioration of the composition of air in the cabin. ''_ Some recommended immediately terminating the flight and recovering the dogs, while others, notably life support system

Chief Designer Voronin, expressed confidence in a full twenty-five-day flight. A special landing

commission consisting of twenty-five officials discussed the issue in detail throughout the

night. By the next morning, all agreed that the flight should be curtailed and the dogs brought

down. At 1400 hours Moscow Time on March 16, ground controllers began operations necessary for reentry. Three hours and fifteen minutes later the dogs landed safely 2 IO kilometers

southeast of Saratov, approximately sixty kilometers from the intended landing spot. About thirty to forty minutes later, rescue teams were able to report that the dogs were in safe hands. The

flight had lasted nearly twenty-two days.

The physicians who examined the dogs upon their return did not anticipate the poor conditions of the animals. In an official report published two months after the landing, the doctors

reported that the animals suffered from muscular reduction, dehydration, calcium loss, and

confusion in readjusting to walking. Their motor systems did not return to normal until eight

to ten days after the end of the mission, while full restoration of blood circulation system did

p. 57.

t6. G A. Kustova, Ot pervogoSputnika do "Energii"-"Burcma" i "Mira" (Kaliningrad: RKK Energiya,1994),

17. V. P Glushko, ed., KosrnonGutikaentsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskayaentsiklopediya, I985). p 203_

18. Kamanin. Skrytiy kosrnos. I964-196& p. 314.

523
524

notoccuruntilfivedaysafterlanding.Thedoctorsaddeddramatically, "Prolonged space flight

and the development of methods to combat unfavorable effects of such flights have raised new

problems for space medicine." '_

The Kosmos-110 mission was to have cleared the way for the piloted Voskhod 3 mission,

but during the flight itself, events on the ground had necessitated a second look at safety issues

in connection with the 3KV Voskhod spacecraft. As early as February 2, Chief Designer Fedor

D. Tkachev of the Scientific-Research and Experimental Institute of the Parachute Landing

Service reported that during the past three simulated landing tests of the heavy Voskhod spacecraft, the parachutes had ruptured, g fourth consecutive failure soon after did not prevent the

launch of Kosmos-I10 but raised serious questions about the system as a whole. Continuing

problems with the life support system prompted both OKB-t24 and the Ministry of Heatth's

Institute for Biomedical Problems to initiate long-duration ground simulations to assess the feasibility of carrying out a twenty-day mission in the Voskhod spacecraft. A third technical problem was the bothersome failure of the Blok I third stage of the I IA57 launch vehicle during a

ground test in December 1965, apparently because of high-frequency oscillations in the stage.

Although the stage had not failed in flight, engineers at OKB-154 in Voronezh had still not

identified the reasons for the explosion/°

Throughout the Kosmos-II0 mission, there were rumors from Moscow that a piloted mission was imminent. On March 9, the United Press International reported that the Soviet Union

would launch a multicrewed spacecraft before the end of March 1966, in time for the 23rd

Congress of the Communist Party. '_ The rumors were relatively precise and reported that the

craft would fly through the Van Allen radiation belts. There was less confidence behind the

scenes. The long-duration ground test runs of the life support system did not produce encouraging results. After fourteen days, the Institute for Biomedical Problems had to terminate its

exercise because of a worsening of the atmosphere in the cabin. OKB- 124's similar experiment

was shut down after sixteen days. Parachute failures meanwhile continued to accumulate

throughout March. About the only positive news was on February 28, when the Air Force

declared the four cosmonauts training for the flight--Beregovoy, Shatalov, Shonin. and

Volynov--ready for launch/_' Coincidentatly, Dr. Norair M. Sisakyan, the Academic Secretary of

the Department of Biological Sciences of the Academy of Sciences, died in mid-March amid the

intense discussions prior to Voskhod 3. _ He had played a key role in biomedical aspects of all

Soviet piloted space missions beginning with the early suborbital flights of dogs in the early

1950s, and his death must have been a severe blow to Soviet space medicine. By the time of

his death, well before the landing of Kosmos-110, the Voskhod 3 mission was quietly moved

back to late April at the earliest.

On March 22, Mishin's engineers held a meeting to discuss the problems and assess the

results of the Kosmos-I I0 mission. The only anomalies during the flight had been the failure

of the Zarya antenna, a malfunction in the ion sensor, and a problem with the Signal highfrequency transmitter. Biomedicine specialists were already in the midst of two renewed longduration ground tests of the life support system. If the results from the tests were satisfactory,

19. Raymond H. Anderson, "Soviet Dogs Lost Muscular Control in Space," New York Times. May 17, 1966:

Raymond H. Anderson, "Gagarin Hints the Soviet Is NearOrbiting Manned SpaceStation," Nel,uYork Times. April

9. 1967,p 31

20 Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964-1966, pp. 296, 300, 302,305

2 I. "Soviet is Said to Be PreparingMannedTest of Van Allen Belts," Hew YorkTimes. March I0, 1966, p. 15

22 Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964-1966. pp. 309-II.

23 "Dr Norair Sisakyan.A Soviet Biochemist," New York Times, March t3. 1966, p. 86.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
R NEW BEGINNING

Voskhod 3 would be launched around April 20-22. 1966. The engineers' perhaps overtly optimistic hopes on carrying out the mission on time were thrown into disarray within days. On

March 27, 1966, a Molniya-I communications satellite lifted off from Tyura-Tam on its 8K78

booster. Unfortunately, the Blok I third stage exploded during the active portion of the trajectory, destroying the payload and the launch vehicle. _4Because an almost identical variant of

Blok I was set for use on the I IA57 booster for Voskhod 3, the failure raised alarms across the

board. Several leading State Commission members rightly opposed an early Voskhod launch

until investigators had conclusively ascertained the cause of the failure.

All through April, engineers focused on the problem with the Blok I stage, delaying the

launch of Voskhod 3 week by week. The tests with the life support system had also proved to

be unsatisfactory. Tentatively, officials were hoping for a piloted launch around May 20-27,

1966, but already there was a growing lobby against the flight of Voskhod 3 and in fact the

Voskhod program as a whole. The conflict bubbled up to the surface on May I0, 1966, during

a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission. Mishin, Tyulin, Kamanin, and Deputy Minister

of Health Burnazyan reported that all resources were ready to support the launch of Voskhod

3 on May 25-28. Military-Industrial Chairman Smirnov, however, stunned everyone by proposing to completely cancel the Voskhod 3 mission, invoking the following reasons:

• An eighteen-day flight would not provide anything new.

• The accomplishment of the Voskhod 3 mission would delay the Soyuz program, which

should be the primary focal point for all activities in 1966.

• "[g] flight without maneuvers in orbit and without docking would display [the Soviets'] lag

behind the U.S.A. and would be perceived by the public as proof of the superiority of the

Americans. '':_

Smirnov clearly had some cogent arguments. NASA was flying Gemini missions at the time

that were much more demonstrative of American superiority in piloted spaceflight than anything Voskhod 3 could do. The chairman had the support of a number of other key industrialists, but a whole row of powerful chief designers, academicians, ministers, and military officials

strongly resisted Smimov's suggestion. Smirnov agreed to back down and asked the Voskhod

State Commission to look into the matter of terminating the program as a whole.

On May 12,the day after Mishin's formal appointment as chief designer of the old Korolev

design bureau, the State Commission heard status reports on the various problematic bottlenecks in the Voskhod 3 plans. A designer from OKB-154 assured commission members that

the high-frequency oscillations that had caused the Molniya-I accident would not occur again,

but most members remained unconvinced. Despite Chief Designer Voronin's report that the life

support system was finally ready, Smirnov's abrupt speech about canceling the project had evidently made a big impression. The numerous technical glitches, combined with Smirnov's wellargued position on the pointlessness of the mission, ground the preparations for the mission

into permanent inertia, As engineers argued back and forth throughout May on the reliability

of the Blok I stage, State Commission Chairman Tyulin delayed the launch first to June and then

to mid-July 1966/" The frustrated cosmonauts were sent off on a short holiday: it became

increasingly clear that there might never be a Voskhod 3 mission, Despite the occasional

24. Postingto FPSPACElist-serveron the Internetby IgorLissov,DecemberI I, 1996:S.Valyayev,"Russia

CancelledLaunchof 'Molniya-M'" (Englishtitle), NauostikosmonautikiI (January1-12, 199/): 29-34. The

Molniya-I satellitein questionwas IIF67 no 5.

25. Kamanin,Skrytiy kosmos:1964-1966,p. 337

26. Ibid.,pp 338-39,343

525
526

murmurs of resuming preparations for the launch as late as November 1966, the Voskhod program was irrevocably over by June/'

Smirnov was clearly the instigator in the decision, but it seems that Mishin had played a

major role in its termination, Having just assumed the role of chief designer of the most prestigious organization in the Soviet space program, he was no doubt reluctant to start off his

tenure with an obsolete spacecraft that would guarantee only marginal safety to its crew. As

one Russian journalist later wrote, Mishin "managed to convince the leaders that the 'old junk'

couldn't take the country far and would only increase the lag between the United States and

Russia. ''_ In much the same vein, another source suggests that Mishin was concerned about

the obsolete design of the Voskhod spacecraft and persuaded the leaders of the Soviet space

program to permit him to terminate the fruitless effort in favor of moving ahead with the much

more versatile and advanced Soyuz spacecraft/9

In retrospect, Smirnov and Mishin's decision to terminate the Voskhod project was a pragmatic one. Originally planned as a modest extension of the capabilities of the Vostok spacecraft in 1962 and 1963, engineers at OKB-I continued to formulate plans for the vehicle well

into 1966. The spacecraft had extremely poor characteristics and capabilities, and it was only

by "cutting corners" that the engineers had managed to establish a manifest that included EVg,

long-duration, and high-altitude missions. Voskhod had no capability to change orbits and,

therefore, to conduct rendezvous and docking operations, placing it clearly in the first generation of space vehicles rather than the second. To spend the remaining months of t966 preparing an obsolete spacecraft for flight would have undoubtedly delayed even further any attempts

to bring the much more capable Soyuz to quick operational status. It is, however, tempting to

consider the effects on public opinion and the U.S. space program if any or all of the projected Voskhod missions had been conducted on time. Many of the same objectives fulfilled in

NgSA's Gemini program were also planned for Voskhod. Voskhod's EVA mission was flown as

Gemini IV (in June 1965), and the two-week-long mission was flown as Gemini VII (in

December 1965). Then, the astronaut maneuvering unit was flown on Gemini IX (in June 1966,

although the test of the unit never took place because of astronaut Eugene Cernan's troubled

spacewalk), and the artificial gravity experiment and high-apogee flight was conducted on

Gemini XI (in September 1966).

Some of the remnants of the Voskhod program were incorporated into Soyuz, while some

were postponed indefinitely. The eighteen-day long-duration mission fell into the former group,

becoming part of planning at an early stage. _'_The female EVP, mission lost much of its support

when Voskhod was canceled. The four unflown women once again found themselves without

a program for which to train, and they were ordered back into their theoretical studies in pursuit of graduate degrees. The extensive medical experiments program, which included surgery

on a mammal in orbit, was dropped from any further consideration: science in the Soviet piloted space program continued to be play second fiddle to military or political exigencies. The

physicians selected for the Voskhod program never formally entered the cosmonaut team and

returned to their jobs with little hope of ever flying into space. The autonomous EVA maneu27 On July 23, 1966, Kamanin orderedthe Voskhod 3 crews to immediately resume training for the mission so as to be ready by September 15 Then on October 12, Kamanin wrote that Mishin orderedthe resumption

of preparations for the mission. Finally,on November 25, Kamanin proposed carrying out Voskhod 3 in January 1967.

None of these plans wereevidently very serious. Seeibid, pp. 354. 360, 382,409.

28 Leonard Nikishin. "Soviet Space Disaster on the Revolution's Anniversary: How and Why Soviet

Cosmonaut Komarov Died." Moscow NeuJs9 (March I-8. 1992): 16.

29. S. Shamsutdinov and I Marinin, "Flights Which Never Happened" (English title). ,.quiutsiyai kosmon

uutiku no. I (January I993): 44-45

30 This is hinted at in V. R Mishin, "Why Didn't We Flyto the Moon?" (English title), Znaniye: tekhnike:

seriya kosmonc_utikcLc_stronomiyano 12 (December 1990): 3-43

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

vering unit named the UPMK, set for use on a later Voskhod mission, was the subject of many

delays. Engineers at KB Zvezda did not complete the design of the unit until 1968, two years

after Voskhod was canceled. By that time, anticipating little use in the near future, the built

units were put in storage for a future time. Soviet cosmonauts would not use a similar contraption until 1990, during a mission to the Mir space station. That unit, also developed by

Zvezda, was designed on the basis of experience creating the UPMK. There had also been

much talk of military missions in the Voskhod program. These lost all justification once the

Soyuz came along, particularly the military 7K-VI variant. Finally, the artificial gravity system

was found to be too complex. Even before Voskhod's cancellation, in February 1966, Mishin

had proposed to Minister Afanasyev to postpone the use of the IT system to a Soyuz mission.

Although crews did indeed train with the system, other priorities in the Soyuz program meant

that the system was never flown in space.

The Lunar Flotilla

Korolev had adopted the lunar-orbit rendezvous profile for the mission of landing Soviet

cosmonauts on the Moon. Through the mid-1960s, engineers continued to fine-tune the plan,

motivated by considerations of safety. By 1967, in fact, the single-launch N I-L3 mission plan

had grown into a dauntingly complicated flight plan, involving several launch vehicles and

spacecraft. Mishin's engineers were most concerned over the conditions at landing. What if the

LK lander was damaged upon landing on the surface of the Moon? Could the lone cosmonaut

have any way of knowing this before exiting the craft to set foot on the surface? To preclude a

premature disembarkation, the engineers decided to launch a separate small lunar rover to

inspect the exterior of the lander. Then another question arose: what if the LK was indeed damaged and could not take off? In such a case, TsKBEM engineers proposed having a backup lander launched separately, which would land near the primary one. There were more questions:

what if the primary and backup landers were too far from each other for the cosmonaut to walk

from one to the other? The pilot would have to travel from site to site via the lunar rover. These

complex operations on the surface of the Moon also significantly raised the requirements for

precision landing. The engineers introduced two additional lunar orbiters to map the potential

landing sites prior to the piloted mission. Finally, there would be supplemental lunar orbital

communications satellites to act as relays during landing and surface operations. All of this was

motivated because of the tight mass constraints that precluded redundancy of many of the crucial systems on the LK.

The adoption of the more complex plan meant that the piloted lunar program was inextricably linked with the vigorous robotic lunar probe program. The latter had begun in early 1958,

when Korolev had proposed a series of probes--the Ye-I, Ye-2, Ye-3, and Ye-4--for initial exploration of the Moon. Of the nine launches of the first generation of probes, only three achieved

any modicum of success, but these were some of the most significant firsts in the early years of

the "space race." The first was the first probe to achieve escape velocity and enter solar orbit (the

Cosmic Rocket in January 1959). The second was the first probe to impact on another celestial

body (the Second Cosmic Rocket in September 1959). The third was the first probe to take photographs of the far side of the Moon (the Automatic Interplanetary Station in October 1959)."

Retroactively called Luna I, Luna 2, and Luna 3, respectively, these modest spacecraft inaugurated a glorious era of robotic space exploration, By 1959, Korolev was already planning for a more

3I. ForaWesternsummaryof theearlyObjectYelunarmJssJonst see Asif A. Siddiqi,"Firstto theMoon."

]ournczlo[ theBritishInterplanetarySociety51( 1998):231 38

527
528

ambitious series of spacecraft: the Ye-6 lunar soft-lander and the Ye-? lunar orbiter. In January

1960, the Soviet government approved preliminary work on these two classes of probes.'"

The Ye-6 lunar lander fared extremely poorly in the ensuing years, hampered partly by the

lack of redundant systems on any of the probes because of mass constraints. There were eleven

launches of Ye-6 probes between January 1963 and December 1965. Of these, four were orbital

launch failures, two failed to leave Earth orbit because of failures in the Blok L acceleration stage,

two missed the Moon, and three crashed onto the surface of the Moon) _ It was a dismal record

of missions that no doubt demoralized thousands of engineers. By this time, Korolev had transferred all automated lunar and interplanetary programs to the design bureau of the S. A.

Lavochkin State Union Machine Building Plant, led by Chief Designer Georgiy N, Babakin. The

first lunar soft-lander type flown under Babakin's command was the Ye-6M, identical to the

Ye-6 except for the use of modified shock absorbers and an independent guidance system. _

It was seventeen days after Korolev's death, on January 31, 1966, that the first Ye-6M

probe, vehicle no. 202, lifted off from Tyura-Tam and headed for the Moon. Once it was dispatched toward the Moon, it was named Luna 9 by the Soviet press. By all standards, Luna 9

and its predecessors designed by Korolev's engineers were ingeniously constructed probes. On

its way to the Moon, the probe was about 2.7 meters high and consisted of three sections. At

the rear was the $5.5P, engine powered by an amine-based fuel and nitric acid with a thrust of

4.64 tons. The main purpose of this engine was to reduce velocity upon the approach to the

Moon to facilitate a soft-landing tn addition, there were four arm-mounted thrusters that would

be used for the vehicle's stabilization during landing. The central cylindrical section controlled

the whole craft and carried telecommunications and command units. Strapped to the central

section were two jettisonable units that had a total mass of 312 kilograms. The first of these

carried a radar altimeter, which would trigger the final retroburn based on the altitude from the

surface of the Moon. This unit also carried attitude control thrusters for mid-course corrections

on the way to the Moon. The second unit carried Sun and Moon sensors for attitude reference.

The top section of the vehicle was the landing capsule of the probe. '_

At an altitude of 8,300 kilometers from the surface of the Moon on February 2, the attitude

control jets "froze" any rolling motion in the craft and aligned it to a vertical trajectory. The radar

then triggered the terminal descent sequence, and the two compartments on the side were ejected. The $5.5A engine then ignited, and five meters from the surface, a deployed sensor made contact with the ground and ordered engine shutdown. At this point, the landing capsule was thrown

away from the main bus and bounced separately on the lunar surface not far from the main craft.

The exact time of impact was 2145 hours, 4.25 seconds Moscow Time on February 3. Exactly

258 seconds after landing, an automatic timer activated radio transmissions from the fifty-eightcentimeter-diameter spheroid capsule. The Soviets had finally accomplished the first soft-landing

of a probe on another heavenly body, nineteen days after the death of Chief Designer Korolev.

32 The earliest published mention of these two variants is in a letter dated March 26, 1960, to Military

Industrial Commission Chairman D F Ustinov, published as S. P. Korolev, "On Expediting Operations Concerning

Automated Lunar Stations (1960)" (English title) in M V Keldysh, ed.. Tuorcheskoyenaslediye,Ztkademika Sergeye

Paulouicha Koroteua izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980). pp 414--15 Seealso Semenov,ed,

Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya, p, 146.

33 Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 148

34. K Lantratov. "Anniversaries: 25 Years for Lunokhod-I" (English title). Nouosti kosmonautiki 23

(November 5-t8. 1995): 79-83 Lunar and interplanetary programs weretransferred to Babakin in April-May 1965.

TheYe-6M program was approved by a decree(no. 055-263) of the Central Committee of the Communist Partyand

the USSRCouncil of Ministers on August 3, 1964. What seemsto be a technical prospectus for the Ye-6Mhas been

published with disguised designations as S.P Korolev.et al. "Automatic Stations for the First Landing on the Moon

(1964)" (in Russian), in M V Keldysh, ed.. Tuorcheskoyenastediye/qkademika, pp. 515-19

35. Andrew Wilson. Solar System Log (London: jane's Publishing Co., 1987). p. 33

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

The 105-kilogram probe's internal equipment was protected by shock absorbers and was installed

in a pressurized compartment loaded toward the bottom. Four spring-loaded petals opened on top of

the lander, and the TV system was activated, returning the first panoramic pictures of the lunar surface.

Ironically, the first pictures published from Luna 9 were in the British press, from transmissions intercepted by the famous Jodrell Bank radio telescope. The Soviet bureaucracy's customary inefficiencies

prevented Prauda from getting the scoop. About nine full or partial scans of the surface were received

by the Soviets over the following four days, by which time the batteries were exhausted. The only other

experiment on board was a radiation detector measuring the interaction of cosmic rays with the lunar

soil) _ Luna 9 was the first of two such spacecraft to land on the Moon. An almost identical vehicle, Luna

13, successfully landed on the Moon in December t966.

By the time that Luna 9 landed on the Moon, Korolev's design bureau had already spent more than

five years developing another robotic lunar probe that figured significantly in the Soviet piloted space

program. In early 1960, Mikhail K. Tikhonravov's department at OKB-I began exploring the possibility

of designing and creating a mobile research station to travel the surface of the Moon. Unlike the earlier

Ye-6 lunar probes, which were launched by the four-stage 8K78 booster, the new heavier probes would

be launched by a variant of the N I booster. _ These studies may have had a link to even earlier research

from the mid-1950s, which was publicized widely in the Soviet press. In November 1955, Yu. S.

Khlebtsevich authored a detailed article in a popular journal on the technical aspects of a mobile "tankette laboratory" for traveling on the surface of the Moon. Bearing a remarkable likeness to early conceptions of such vehicles at OKB-I, Khlebtsevich's design was yet another 1950s-vintage forerunner of

Soviet space achievements of the 1960s, 3_

After a slow start exploring various options, such as wheels, tank tracks, and so on, in 1963,

Korolev transferred the development of the mobile probe's chassis to the Leningrad-based All-Union

Scientific-Research Institute No. I00 (VNII-I00) led by Chief Designer gleksandr L. Kemurdzhian. VNIIIO0's primary expertise was building tanks for the Soviet Army, but Kemurdzhian had developed a personal interest in remote-controlled space probes. '_ Based on research in 1963 and 1964, Korolev and

Kemurdzhian emerged in July 1964 with a conception for a 900-kilogram rover as part of the L2 theme

that could support piloted lunar operations. The rover's link with the piloted space program was fortified by the famous August 1964 Soviet Union decree commitment to a human lunar landing program.

The rover's primary goal would be detailed photography and research for proposed landing sites for

crews on the Moon. By early 1965, engineers at OKB-I had finished a draft plan for the L2 rover, but at

this point, Korolev decided to transfer all robotic exploration probes to the Lavochkin design bureau. _

36. Ibzd, pp. 33-35.

37. The specific variant was evidently the N I I, with a launch mass of 700 tons and a lifting capacity of

twenty tons. SeeLantratov, "Anniversaries: 25 Yearsfor Lunokhod I."

38. Yu S. Khlebtsevich, "The Road into Space" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no. II (November 1955):

33-3?. An English translation of this article isincluded in f.J. Krieger_Behincl the Sputniks: ,,qSurueyof SouietSpace

Science (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, t958), pp. 178-88 Note that Khlebtsevich had first spoken of his

"tankette laboratory" in an article in Tekhnika motodezhi in July 1954.The earliest known description of a mobile

probe on the Moon in an official Soviet document within the space program is in a letter from USSRAcademy of

Sciences President M. V. Keldysh to the Soviet government, dated December 22, 1962. This document has been

published in an edited version as M V. Keldysh. "On a Plan for Scientific Researchinto Outer Spacein 1963 1963"

(English title), in V. S. Avduyevskiy and T. M. Eneyev,eds_ M _ZKeidysh izbrannyye trudy: raketnaya [ekhnika i

kosmonautika (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), pp. 460-62.

39. N. G, Babakin, g. N. Banketov, and V. N. Smorkalov. C N. Bc_bczkinzhizn i deyatelnost (Moscow:

Adamant, 1996), p 56: Lantratov, "Anniversaries: 25 Yearsfor Lunokhod-I."

40 Lantratov. "Anniversaries: 25 Yearsfor Lunokhod I." There is an account of a visit in 1965 by Korolev

and other engineersfrom OKB-I to the premisesof VNII-f00 in Leningrad to view the test of an early version of the

lunar rover on a simulated lunar surface. SeeYu. A. Mozzhorin, et aL. eds, Naehalo kosmicheskoy ery: uospominaniya ueteranou raketno-kosmicheskoy tekhnlki i kosmonautiki: uypusk utoroy (Moscow: RNITsKD, 1994). pp.

48-49. Seealso Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964-1966, p 222, in which the author refers to KoroleVs visit to the

LJkhachevPlant to see a model of the lunar rover

529
530

Thus, in May 1965, all documentation and research on the rover

ended up in Chief Designer

Babakin's lap.

Babakin had had an interesting career. _q completely selftaught engineer who received his

college degree at the age of fortythree, he was an unusually gifted

researcher who held a particular

disdain for formal educational

learning. He briefly worked at the

famous NII-88 from 1949 to 1951,

where he first met Korolev. He

spent the next fifteen years

designing high-priority missiles,

including the infamous Burya

intercontinental cruise missile at

OKB-301 in Khimki under Chief

The Ye-8 rover appears here in its final cteslgn incarnation in 1971, by

which time it was publicly known as Lunokhod. The two square

objects in front are cameras, while the container at the top front with

the lid open is a laser reflector built by the French

(copyright Quest magazine)

Designer Semyon ;q. Lavochkin. By 1960, he had risen to the post of deputy chief designer for guidance systems.' For a few years in the early 1960s, Babakin worked for Chelomey, when the

Lavochkin firm came under the Chelomey's control. When Chelomey fast control of his empire,

Babakin rose to the top of the Lavochkin design bureau, at the exact same time that Korolev transferred all automated deep space probes to the organization. He was fifty years old at the time.

Babakin and Kemurdzhian opted to start from scratch on the rover design. By this time, the

rover had been renamed Ye-8. To a certain extent, the redesign was dictated by the switch in

launch vehicles to Chelomey's UR-5OOK booster in late 1965. Just like the L I circumlunar project,

the latter would use the Blok D translunar-injection stage to boost the rover to the Moon. More

modifications came from data on the lunar soil received from the Luna 9 soft-lander probe. The

firmness of the soil as well as the thinness of the dust layer led designers to drop the caterpillar

track in favor of eight small wheels for movement. Babakin finished and signed the draft plan for

the Ye-8 in the fall of 1966. 42One of the lead designers of this first mobile probe on the Moon

was Oleg G. Ivanovskiy, a veteran from the Korolev days. He had served as the "lead designer"

of the Vostok spacecraft and early lunar probes until June 1961, when he left engineering to

become the space department head at the Military-Industrial Commission. There for five years, he

was responsible for a variety of important tasks, including preparing long-range space goals. In

November 1965, he returned to designing as a deputy chief designer responsible for lunar probes

at the Lavochkin design bureau?'

41 Babakin. Banketov,and Smorkalov, q N. Babakin, pp. 25-29; B. Ye.Chertok. Rakety i lyudi (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye, 1994), pp. 272-13: O. G. Ivanovskiy and M. B, Faynshteyn,"On the Lifeand Scientific t_ctivities

of G N. Babakin" (English title), in B. V. Raushenbakh,ed., Issledovaniye tvorchestva osnouopolozhnikou kosmonavtiki i yeye sovremennyeproblemy (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), pp. 29-37.

42 Konstantin Lantratov, "Anniversaries: 25 YearsFrom Lunokhod-I: Part I1" (English title), Novosti kosmonavtiki 24 (November 19-December2. 1995): 10-79. Curiously. one otherwise reliablesource statesthat the first

meeting at Babakin's organization to discuss the Ye-8 rover was on June 14, 1967'.See Babakin, Banketov, and

Smorkalov, _. N Babakin. p. 53.

43. Yu. A. Mozzhorin, et aL. eds., Dorogi u kosmos,II (Moscow: M/ql, 1992). pp. 13-14; O. G, Ivanovskiy,

Naperekor zemnomyprityazhenyu (Moscow: Politicheskoyliteratury, 1988).p. 265, Therewere two other deputy chief

designersunder Babakin:V. G Perminov(deep spaceprobes) and A. G. Chesnokov (applied themes and satellites).

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

Although the engineers finished the draft plan for the Ye-8 in 1966, it would be late 1967

before all the design documentation was finished, allowing for the construction of flight models. The complete Ye-8 vehicle had a mass of about 5,700 kilograms and consisted of a lander

stage (the KT) and the actual rover (the 8YeL). The latter was designed to operate for three

months on the lunar surface. The central components of the KT stage were four eighty-eightcentimeter-diameter spherical propellant tanks arranged in a square-shape linked by cylindrical

connections. Two additional pairs of large cylindrical propellant tanks were attached vertically at

the opposing sides of the central frame. These detachable tanks had mountings for antennas.

One tank also had a nitrogen attitude control system, and another had attitude control sensors

for the entire mission to landing. All the tanks contained the same unsymmetrical dimethyl

hydrazine and nitric acid propellants, although the cylindrical ones were used only for lunar-orbit

insertion and maneuvers in lunar orbit. Four short compressible landing legs were attached to

the main spherical tanks, providing a maximum base of approximately four meters in diameter.

Attitude control thrusters were positioned at various places, including two on a boom. A radar

altimeter similar to the one on the piloted LK lander was installed between the tanks. All eight

tanks fed a single engine designed by OKB-2 at Kaliningrad, designated the I I D417, with a variable thrust of 0.15 to 1.92 tons. The engine had a main exhaust supported by two verniers on

each side, for use close to the surface so as not to disturb the sampling site. Four additional

verniers around the periphery of the base provided stability during flight.

The KT stage was completed by the main pressurized toroidal compartment, which served

not only as the primary location for all communications, data processing, and command electronics systems, but also as a platform on which the rover would be placed. The compartment

also included gyroscopes for attitude reference and a set of chemical batteries for power. In

addition, the stage included two sets of ramps, which would be lowered on each side of the

KT following landing. Once the entire vehicle had landed, the ramps would be lowered, and

the rover would track down the ramps to start its journey on the lunar surface."

The 8YeL rover, with a total mass of 756 kilograms, was placed on top the KT lander stage.

It was a pressurized magnesium alloy lightweight container on wheels, with a height of

1.35meters and a diameter of 2.1.5meters across the top of the compartment./_s with most Soviet

deep space probes, the majority of the instrumentation was installed within a pressurized compartment (at one atmosphere pressure), which contained communications and control systems.

The main chassis had a large hinged convex lid, which opened up to reveal a radiator for daylight

exposure. The inside of the lid also contained solar cells for furnishing one kilowatt for the internal batteries of the rover. P,n additional 350 to 660 watts of power would be furnished by eleven

kilograms of radioactive Polonium-2 I0 kept at the rearof the 8YeLto ensure heat for the long lunar

nights. To provide information on the rover's movement, the probe used internal gyroscopes; other

sensors would cut off power in casethe rover attempted to overcome dangerous slopes.

Each of the eight wheels was fifty-one centimeters in diameter and equipped with independent suspension and direct-current electric motors in the hubs, the latter developed by the

Krzhizhanovich Power Institute in Moscow under A I. Moskvitin. The width from left to right

at the wheel level was 1.6 meters. The wheels were made out of fine wire mesh and had titanium blades to grip the lunar surface. The 8YeLwould be capable of two forward and one fixed

reverse speeds, while changes in direction would be achieved by driving the wheels on either

side at different speeds or in reverse.In addition, the rover was designed so as to be able to move

even if only two wheels on each side were operational. If a particular wheel got stuck, a command

from Earth would release a powder charge to burst the shaft, thus making the wheel a passive

component. The 8YeL rover was designed from the beginning so as to be controlled from the

44. Wilson,SolarSystem Log p. 61.

531
532

ground. P, five-person team (commander, driver, engineer, navigator, and radio operator) would

guide the vehicle together while sitting in front of TV consoles showing views from the lunar surface. Nominal velocity on the surface of the Moon was limited to 100 to 200 meters per hour.

The rover carried four TV slow-image transmission facsimile cameras of the type developed

earlier for the Ye-6-class of probes. These would be equipped to return 6,000-line images, which

could be assembled into panoramas of the lunar surface. The cameras would be able to scan

360 degrees in the vertical and 180 degrees in the horizontal, thus providing side, down, and

rear views. In addition, there were two TV cameras positioned at the forward end of the rover

for providing stereo photographs with a 50-degree field of view. Communications for all surface

operations would be via two antennas: one steerable high-gain and the other conical low-gain.

All cameras were dual purpose--that is, for controlling the vehicle as well as for research on

topography. Controllers would determine initial direction by using the panoramic cameras and

would negotiate more precisely by the two frontally placed remaining cameras.

Among the scientific instruments eventually included on the 8YeL models built in the late

1960s was a penetrometer to test the soil's mechanical characteristics. The Ri/ma x-ray fluorescence spectrometer was for irradiating the soil and recording the induced radiation to iden

tify elemental quantities of iron, calcium, silicon, magnesium, titanium, aluminum, and other

substances. The x-ray device could also be used for measuring extragalactic x-rays/_

The Ye-8 lunar rover probe began to figure into the N I-L3 piloted lunar mission profile as early

as March 1966: it would select a suitable landing site for the Lunar Ship lander and serve as a radar

beacon to allow the LK to make a precision landing at a safe landing site. In December, the

Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for Space Research met under Keldysh's supervision to discuss requirements for the rover mission as it related to the L3 piloted landing expedition. The council discussed two different scenarios: a "realistic" one, with the rover having a

lifetime of two to three months and a limited radius of operation, and an "unrealistic" one, with

the rover having a lifetime of a year and a radius of operation extending to 500 kilometers.

Discussions also centered around formulating a specific sequence of launches for the rover in conjunction with the N I-L3. Curiously, the Soviet press was uncharacteristically forthcoming about

the rover project. On August 20, 1966, a commentator on Radio Moscow told his listeners,

"Soviet experts are designing an automatic mobile station to place on the Moon..40

By early 1967, the N I-L3 profile had expanded into a highly complex plan with a flotilla of

support missions, most designed to compensate for the poor capabilities of the L3 complex.

The first lunar landing mission would be preceded by the launches of two Ye-8LS robot lunar

orbiters, which would take detailed high-resolution photographs of the proposed landing sites.

The photographs would allow scientists to select two landing sites: a primary one and a reserve

one, Once the landing sites were determined, the Soviets would launch two separate Ye-8

rovers within a week of each other on top of UR-SOOK-Blok D boosters from Tyura-Tam. The

rovers would land at the primary and reserve landing sites, respectively, making sure that the

specific areas of landing would not pose hazards to the piloted lander. Teams on Earth would

control both rovers by remote control.

45 Ibid. pp. 63-64: Christian Lardier, L',qstronautique Souietique (Paris: Armand Colin. 1992). p. 269:

Lantratov, "l:Inniversaries: 25 Years From Lunokhod-l: Part II": Kenneth Gatland, Robot Explorers (London:

MacMillan, 1972). pp 153 57. Note that the data refer to the final version of the8YeLin 1967 68. In 1966, the

mass of the rover was limited to only 650 kilograms.

46. Soviet Space Programs, 1966-70. Goals and Purposes, Organization. Resources. Facilities and

Hardware. Manned and Unmanned Flight Programs. Bioastronautics, Civil and Military Applications, Projections of

Future Plans Attitudes Toward International Cooperation and Space Law. prepared for the Committee on

,'_eronautical and Space Sciences.US Senate,92d Cong.. I st sess. (Washington. DC: [AS. Government Printing

Office. December 1971). p 363

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

A month or two later, the N I would be launched with a working L3 complex, the latter

including a LOK orbiter and the Reserve Lunar Ship (LKR). The LK Rwould land automatically at

the site of the reserve Ye-8 rover using radio beacons to guide it to a precision landing, thus saving the lander's precious propellant supply. The automated LOK would photograph the landing

site from lunar orbit and return to Earth. The Ye-8 rover would then reconnoiter around the LKR,

taking photographs of all sides of its exterior and relaying back TV pictures, thus making sure that

there had been no damage during landing. Only after an analysis that the LKRwas indeed in working condition would preparations begin for launching the actual L3 complex for the piloted landing. This launch would take place during the following lunar launch window after the landing of

the LKR--that is, after about a month. The second N I-L3 would carry out its flight as per the

nominal mission profile, with the flight engineer remaining in orbit in the LOK and the commander landing on the Moon in the LK. The actual landing would be effected by using radio beacons

from the Ye-8 rovers on the surface of the Moon. The landing was to take place as close as possible to the LK R. The rovers would once again examine the primary LK to ascertain whether the

lander was in good external condition for takeoff. If there was no damage, the lone cosmonaut

would be allowed to disembark and step onto the surface of the Moon. A nominal EVA would

last about two hours, while the total stay on the Moon would be limited to six hours.

In case the primary LK was damaged, the cosmonaut would have to get to the LK R and lift

off in that spacecraft. Because the Soviets were less than confident that the two landers could be

landed within walking distance of each other, the Ye-8 rovers would serve as transport vehicles if

the connecting distance was too far. The rovers would be equipped with reserve oxygen, allowing the cosmonaut to connect the Kreehet-94 suit to the rover's internal supply. In addition, there

would be a small platform for securing the cosmonaut in a standing position for travel from one

lander to the other. The cosmonaut could control the movement of the rover via a control panel,

allowing a top speed on the surface of 1.2 kilometers per hour. After arrival at the LK R, the cosmonaut would board it and take off to enter lunar orbit. The remainder of the mission would be

identical to the standard N I-L3 lunar profile? 7

There were two more support programs to the N I-L3 landing mission. The first involved

mapping mass concentrations on the Moon that profoundly affected lunar-orbital trajectories, and

the second was to support reliable communications at lunar distances. Both objectives could be

achieved with the use of robotic lunar satellites. Even before these requirements had surfaced,

Babakin's team had already begun developing a series of small probing lunar satellites. The first

model, the Ye-6S, was built almost accidentally. When the Voskhod 3 mission was postponed,

the Communist Party was left without a spectacular space mission to celebrate the 23rd Congress

of the Communist Party in Moscow in March 1966. Babakin proposed that he could launch a

modest satellite to the Moon if given a month. His engineers used the basic

Ye-6 bus to create the Ye-6S probe, which was designed, developed, and built in less than thirty

days and launched on March I. A failure in the guidance system of the Blok L stage prevented the

mission's completion, but an identical probe was launched a month later on March 31 and named

Luna I0. On April 3, Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon. Immediately after,

the Internationale, the anthem of the Communist Party, was played aboard the probe and beamed

back directly to the Kremlin Palace of Congresses where the 23rd Congress of the Party was in

session. Assembled delegates stood at attention as the anthem was played? _

47. K Lantratov, "Anniversaries: The 'Deceased'Lunar Plan" (English title). Novosti kosmonavtiki 14 (July

2-15, 1994): 60-6I.

48. _. Tarasov,"Missions in Dreams and Reality" (English title), Prauda, October 20. 1989. p 4: Soviet

Space Programs, 1960-70, p. t7: Babakin, Banketov,and Smorkalov, q. N Babakin. pp. 42-43. Although only two

Ye-6Sspacecraft were launched, there were apparently a total of five ordered for manufacture by MOM Minister

S. A. Afanasyev on February I L t966

533
534

The Luna I0 craft was shaped similar to Luna 9, except the lander was replaced by a

245-kilogram orbiter. Although the orbiter had no imaging capability, it relayed micrometeoroid,

gamma-ray, infrared, and radiation data from near-Moon space for fifty-six days. Scientists also

gathered important information on the pattern of the Moon's gravitational field based on orbital

tracking. Radiation detectors revealed that the Moon had no trapped radiation belts comparable to those around Earth/_ The success of Luna I0 allowed Babakin's engineers to design a

dedicated probe primarily to take photographs of the surface of the Moon, the Ye-gLF, two of

which were launched in August and October 1966 as Luna II and Luna 12. respectively. Both

carried cameras for surface photography, although the first failed to return any usable images

because of malfunctions in the spacecraft's stabilization engines, which sent the spacecraft into

a spin. s°They also carried the R-I unit for checking the action in vacuum of motors similar to

the ones designed to turn the wheels of the Ye-8 rover.

Tracking during the Luna I0 mission had proved that the Moon had a very heterogeneous

gravitational field. For Luna 12, ballistics experts on the ground had predictions for its orbit

around the Moon for a six-month period based on prior information. But during the course of

the mission, its perilune reduced by three to four kilometers per day, contrary to predictions."' A

failure in one of the attitude control engines of the probe prevented changing the perilune of the

spacecraft. The data gathered during the mission, however, served as a starting point to design

and develop a new model of a lunar sate}lite, one of whose mission goals was to study the

Moon's gravitational field to make precise determinations of trajectories for the various elements

of the N l-L3 lunar landing plan. Babakin's team began development of the Ye-gLS in late 1966,

which also had the dual purpose of testing the Soviet deep space communications network.

Tracking for the Moon

The Soviet tracking and telemetry network, known officially as the CommandMeasurement Complex, had grown in steps and bounds since its early days in the late 1950s.

Approximately fifteen stations, referred to as Scientific-Measurement Points (NIP), were located throughout the contiguous USSR, serving as stations for use during Earth-orbit and deep

space missions, both piloted and automated. The ground stations were augmented in the mid1960s by the third generation of Soviet tracking ships. In 1965 and 1966. the new Ristna and

Bezhitsa replaced the older llicheusk and Krasnodar. Later in 1967, four new ships were introduced-the Kegostrou, the Nevel, the Morzhovets, and the Boroviehi--each with a displacement of 6,100 tons and a crew of thirty-six? _ The same year, all the ships were officially turned

49. Wilson, Solar SystemLog, pp. 35-36.

50, The Ye-g[l- probeswere designedto takephotographs in two regimes: ( I ) photographing in a stabilized

mode from the perilune immediately after the satellite braked into lunar orbit and (2) in slow rotation conditions

when oriented relative to the Sun. The failureon Luna I0 was due to "uncompensated parasitic moments" in the

stabilization engine system. SeeBabakin, Banketov,and Smorkalov. G- N. Babakin. pp. 45-46. A document dated

circa 1905, from Keldysh and Babakin to the government, proposing the Ye-6LFprogram has been published as

M. V, Keldysh and G. N. Babakin, "On Photographing the Lunar Surfacewith Artificial Satellites of the Moon"

(English title), in Avduyevskiy and Eneyev.eds., M _/Keldysh. pp. 480-81.

51. Babakin,Banketov,and Smorkalov,G. N. Babakin, pp. 46-48. Both the Luna II and Luna 12spacecraft

also had extensive supplementary scientific instruments aboard The latter carried a gamma-ray detector, a magnetometer, radiation detectors, an infrared radiometer, and meteoroid detectors. Luna 12 detected x-ray emissions from

the Moon's surface asa secondary effectof fluorescenceunder solarx-ray emission, The Sovietslater claimed that this

was the "birth of x-ray astronomy." SeeG. V, Petrovich.ed., TheSouiet Encyclopaediaof SpaceFhght(Moscow: Mir

Publishers, 1969), p. 45. Contact was lost with Luna I I on October I. 1966,and with Luna 12on January 19, 1961

52. JacquesVillain, ed.. Baikonour la porte des #toiles(Paris:Armand Colin. 1994), p. 92: B./q. Pokrovskiy,

"Zarya"--pozyunoye zemni (Moscow: Moskovskiy rabochiy, 1987). p. 254

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
NEW BEGINNING

over to the Department of Naval Expeditionary Work of the Academy of Sciences, although it

seems that the "civilian" tag was somewhat of a misnomer because much of the on-board personnel were military servicepersons, s_The Soviets depended to a great extent on these ships,

partly because overflying satellites were in direct visibility of ground stations only nine out of

twenty-four hours on the average. In addition, unlike NASA, the Soviets had less luck placing

stations in foreign countries, although stations were established in Chad, Cuba, Guinea, Mali,

and the United Arab Emirates in 1967-10M The locations in Africa were evidently built specifically for piloted lunar programs because they would be on the ground track for return trajectories from lunar distances.

All the ground stations of the Command-Measurement Complex were under the direct

control of the Strategic Missile Forces via military unit no. 32103. This unit, commanded by

Maj. General Ivan I. Spitsa since March 1965, had emerged from the auspices of the military

NII-4, located in Bolshevo outside Moscow. Since the early days of the ICBM program, NII-4,

which was subordinated to the Strategic Missile Forces, was responsible for coordinating tracking and communications with space satellites via its numerous tracking stations across the

Soviet Union. In December 1957, NIl-4 moved its control center from Bolshevo to Moscow, and

in January 1963, this control center was removed from NIt-4's jurisdiction and subordinated

directly to the General Staff of the Strategic Missile Forces as military unit No. 321037 _ The

Moscow location was the central control node for the early Soviet space program, supporting

all communications with robotic and piloted satellites in space.

Unlike NASA, however, the Soviets did not have a dedicated mission control facility for

piloted missions until well into the early 1970s. Instead, each mission had its own customized

chief operations and control group (GOGU), somewhat analogous to the Western concept of

a flight control team, which maintained control over all flight operations, such as docking, EVA,

reentry, and so forth. The GOGU was staffed by approximately ten representatives from the

design bureaus, the military, the production plants, and the Academy of Sciences/" By the time

of the early Soyuz missions, the GOGU oversaw up to about 500 individuals, who worked

around the clock in three shifts. If there were specific technical issues or problems, specialists

from the relevant design bureaus were invited to participate in the operations of the GOGU Up

until 1966, Colonel Amos A. Bolshoy, an officer in the Missile Strategic Forces, led the GOGLI

for all piloted missions, For a particular flight, the GOGU was given access to the military

Command-Measurement Complex, and depending on the circumstances surrounding the

mission, the GOGU could be based at one of several locations, including NII-4's Moscow

branch (for Vostok missions) or the Ministry of Defense's General Staff control center, also in

Moscow (for Voskhod missions), Because the Vostok and Voskhod missions were relatively

short, State Commission members usually never departed the launch site at Tyura-Tam after

53. The commander of the Department of Naval Expeditionary Work (OMEP) was Rear Admiral I D.

Papanin, who served in that capacity from 195t until his death in 1986.

54. Souiet Space Programs 1976-80. Supporting Vehicles and Launch Vehicles, Political Coals and

Purposes, International Cooperation in Space, Administration, ResourceBurden, Future Outlook, prepared for the

Committee on Commerce. Science, and Transportation, LhS. Senate. 97th Congress, 2d sess. (Washington, DC:

U.S Government Printing Olfice. December 1982), p. 124

55. K, V, Gerchik. ed., Nezabyuayemyy Baykonur (Moscow: Interregional Council of Veterans of the

Baykonur Cosmodrome, 1998), p 379. See also B. /q. Pokrovskiy, Kosmos nachinayetsya na zemlye (Moscow:

Patriot, 1996). p 212. Formilitary unit No. 32103, seeSemenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 351.

56. For the earlySoyuz missions, the GOGU included nine men: R A./5gadzhanov (TsKIK), S. N. gnokhin

(TsKBEM), B, Ye.Chertok (TsKBEM), K P feoktistov (TsKBEM), G. I. Levin (NIl-4), Pavlov (affiliation unknown),

B, V. Raushenbakh(TsKBEM), M, S. RyazanskJy(Nil Priborostroyeniya), and Ya. I. Tregub (TsKBEM), SeeChertok.

Rakety i lyudi: goryaehiye dni kholodnoy uoyny, p. 422.

535
536

liftoff. Thus, for these early flights, senior officials such as Korolev, Keldysh, or Tyulin would

remain at Tyura-Tam and maintain a constant communications link with the Moscow center,

which itself maintained contact with the Command-Measurement Complex. The nerve center

at Tyura-Tam was usually at site 2 on the second floor of the giant Assembly-Testing Building

in the offices of Maj. General Anatoliy S. Kirillov, the famous chief of the First Directorate at

the launch range during the early 1960s. 57

With the commencement of the Soyuz program, officers of the Strategic Missile Forces

proposed moving the main control center for piloted missions to a dedicated facility, the

Scientific-Measurement Point No. 16 (NIP-16) at Yevpatoriya in Crimea. NIP-16 thus became

the second-generation Soviet flight control center, at which the GOGU controlled almost every

single Soviet piloted mission from 1966 to 1975. By 1966, the first-generation flight control

centers, at NII-4 and the General Staff, were, for the most part, turned over to control automated military satellites.

NIP-16 had originally been built in the late 1950s as a modest station for receiving telemetry from overflying satellites, but its central role in the Soviet space program grew dramatically

during the early 1960s. In 1959, when OKB-I first began developing interplanetary spacecraft to

fly to Mars and Venus, Korolev and Keldysh proposed a dedicated site to build a deep space

tracking station. The designers had a deadline of just eight months, g special commission quickly selected Yevpatoriya on the shore of the Black Sea. The future facility was named "Object MV"

to denote its role in tracking spaceships to Mars and Venus, although it was rumored that the

"MV" also stood for Mstislav Vsevolodovich, the first two names of Academician Keldysh.

Korolev had initially invited Chief Designer Ryazanskiy of NII-885 to design the radio tracking

systems for the facility, but he had declined, believing that it would be impossible to develop

antennas capable of tracking signals from a distance of I00 million kilometers. Chief Designer

Yevgeniy S. Gubenko of SKB-567 took on the job and proposed that instead of one lO0-meter

parabolic dish, eight sixteen-meter" bowls," designated ADU-IO00, be erected at the site,

providing a capability to communicate to distances of 300 million kilometers. '_

Korolev came up with an ingenious idea to mount the dishes using leftover parts from the

Soviet Navy. Construction workers dug a huge crater out of the rocky ground, poured in a

foundation, took the revolving gun turret of a former seafaring battleship consigned to the

junkyard, and placed it on the foundation. Then the open framework of a railroad bridge was

placed over the turret. The bridge itself was covered by the solid hull of a scrapped submarine.

The eight antennas were fixed to this hull? _ Eventually, the Object MV station at NIP-16 consisted of three complexes separated by several kilometers: one designed to send commands

and the two others to receive incoming information. Each complex had eight antennas with a

diameter of sixteen meters and a surface area of I,O00 square meters. The transmission power

was rated at 120 kilowatts, and the maximum range was 300 million kilometers. The sensitivity was sufficient to detect a match struck on the surface of the Moon. The facility came on

57. Ibid, pp. 413-14; Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. pp 351-53.

58 Pokrovskiy. Kosmosnaehinayetsya na zemlye, pp. 309-12: B. Ye. Chertok, Rakely i _yudi Fi_iPodlipki

Tyuratam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996). pp. 301-02. Chief Designer Ye. S. Gubenko died unexpectedly in

1959.and this work was continued by his successor,A. V. Belousev.Other enterprises involved in building the dish

es included TsNII-173 (mechanical drives) and MNII-I (systems for aiminl_the antennas). Note that Chertok says

that the diameter of the dishes was twelve meters. Most other sources suggest sixteen meters. See,for example,

Pokrovskiy, "Zarya"--pozyunoye zemni, p. 228.

59 B Sopelnyak "The Secretof Facility MV" (English title). Krclsnayazuezdcz.March 22, 1990 p. 4.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
A NEW' BEGINNIN6

line on September 26, 1960, on a provisional standing, and it

was fully operational by December 30. °°

The Yevpatoriya station was supported by several "ballistics

centers," These were located at NIl-4, at the Institute of Applied

Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, at the

Central Scientific-Research Institute for Machine Building in

Kaliningrad, and at Yevpatoriya itself, for computing all trajectories, orbits, flight parameters, and so forth. The facilities at

Yevpatoriya were relatively primitive. Mission controllers had no

real-time visual depictions of mission parameters, such as at

NASA's much more modern Manned Spacecraft Center in

Houston, Texas. The primary mode of communications

between the centers and spacecraft were, in fact, old-style telephone and telegraph systems, scrambled to maintain secrecy.

In 1966, Maj. General Pavel g. ggadzhanov, a deputy commander of military unit No. 32103, began his tenure as the head Pauel Ztgadzhanou was the "[_ight director"/or Souiet piloted

of the GOGU--that is, the "flight director" of Soviet piloted space missions during the late

space missions. An amateur radio enthusiast in his youth, he t%os His early career had been

joined NIl-4 in 1948 and contributed to the development of at the military NIl-4. Later, he

tracking networks at Kapustin Yar, Tyura-Tam, and eventually seruedas a deputy chie[ o[ the

the space Command-Measurement Complex. Based on this Command-Measurement

Complex, the Soviet tracking

work, Agadzhanov earned his Ph.D. in the late 1950s, and he network (,fileso/Peter Qorin)

moved into ballistics computation work for the Soviet ground

communications segment. _' For the top-secret piloted lunar

flights--the UR-5OOK-LI circumlunar and N I-L3 landing missions--Colonel Nikolay G.

Fadeyev, yet another accomplished military officer, headed flight operations in the late 1960s. _:

The GOGLI controlled the missions via the military officers of the Command-Measurement

Complex, but the GOGU itself was subordinated to the temporary State Commission, which

would receive recommendations from the GOGU, make decisions based on these communications, and then recommend courses of actions. The GOGU would also maintain constant contact with "backup" centers: Group T at Tyura-Tam and Group M at NIl-4. TsKBEM played a

major role in the operation of the GOGU, because its "technical leader" (the "deputy flight

director") was usually a civilian deputy chief designer from the design bureau. This post was

occupied by Boris Ye. Chertok from 1966 to 1968 and Yakov I. Tregub from t 968 to 1973?' This

management hierarchy, in which a military officer headed flight control while his principal

60 Pokrovskiy, "Zarya"--pozyunoye zemni, p. 227: I. Meshcheryakov. "The Center for Long-RangeSpace

Communications" (English title), Ztuiatsiya i kosmonavtika no. 6 (June 1988): 42-43. Object MV was augmented

in 1979 by the seventy-meter-diameter RT-70radio telescope, which allowed spacecrafttracking to extend to 15 billion kilometers The RT70 was designed by NPO Radiopribor (formerly NII-885). Three other large dishes for the

deep space communications network were designed and built by the OKB of the Moscow Power Institute

(OKB-MEI). These included two dishes (twenty-five and thirty two meters) at Crimea and one dish (sixty-Four

meters) at Medvezhiy Lakenear Moscow. The twenty five meter dish was evidently located at NIP-IO in Simferepol.

SeeChertok, Rakety i tyudr Fiti Podtipki Tyuratam. p 301: A V. Ponomarev, "2 June--75 YearsFrom the Birth of

Academician _ F.Bogomolov (I 913)" (English title),/z istorii aulatsii i kosmonautiki 59 (I 989): 47-50.

61. Pokrovskiy, Kosmos nochinayetsya no zemlye, pp. 114-16: Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmieheskaya

Korporatsiya. p. 355.

62, Pokrovskiy, Kosmos nachinayetsya na zemtye, pp. 279-80: Semenov, ed.. Raketno-Kosmicheskaya

Korporatslya. p 355. Therewas a third GOGU.chief during the period 1966-73, Colonel M. S. Posternak

63. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p 355. Whereas, at first, the GOGU was established unique to eachmission, starting in 1968, Chief Designer Mishin established a specialized control subdivision

in Tregubtstesting department at TsKBEMto locus exclusively on mission control.

537
538

assistantwasacivilianfromthedesignbureau,wassymptomaticofallflightcontrolteams.It

underscorednotonlythedeeplyenmeshedmilitarynatureofallSovietspaceprograms,but

alsothedecades-longaftereffectsoftheactionsofartilleryofficerswhohadpragmaticallytaken

operationalcontrolovermissileprojectsduringthelate194Os.Ironically,Tregubhadstartedhis

careerasanartilleryofficeroverseeingtheearlyA-4andR-IlaunchesfromKapustinYar.He

latermovedontodirectlaunchesofairdefenseandanti-ballisticmissilesfortheSovietmilitary

duringthe1950sand1960s.In 1964,KorolevhadinvitedhimtojoinOKB-Iasthedeputy

chiefdesignerresponsibleforflightesting.

The Rise and Fall of the UR-?O0

Through the mid-1960s, in the post-Korolev era, General Designer Vladimir N. Chelomey

continued to push his own conception of a piloted lunar landing project. This proposal, involving the giant UR-700 booster, had gained ground in 1964 when Khrushchev had suggested that

scientists carry out a detailed appraisal of the costs and advantages of the UR-700 over the N I

plan. Despite Khrushchev's ouster, Chelomey lined up a formidable array of supporters, including Chief Designers Glushko, Kuznetsov, and Barmin. By October 1965, the Ministry of General

Machine Building had approved the development of a predraft plan at TsKBM. Perhaps realizing the absurdity of the situation, Korolev had evidently authored a letter to Minister Afanasyev,

requesting that the government not waste money on duplicating the N l-L3 project. The letter

never reached/qfanasyev: days after preparing it, Korolev was dead.

Chelomey's engineers at his Branch No. I at Fill approached the UR-700 effort with some

amount of humor. There was evidently a joke making the circles at the design bureau that because

Korolev had died, his subordinates could not be expected to make anything out of the "hopeless"

characteristics of the N I. Therefore, Chelomey's engineers were acting only out of kindness by

offering "humanitarian" aid in the form of the UR-700." Because they were working in a lessthan-favorable post-Khrushchev climate, Chelomey's deputies developed a technical plan that significantly reduced cooperation with outside subcontractors and relied heavily on internal

expertise. In addition, the actual design of both the LIR-700 booster and its lunar payload, designated the Lunar Ship No. 700 (LK-700), was derived from already existing designs to minimize

long lead times for developmentP TsKBM completed the predraft plan (the mechanics of the proposal) for the UR-700 and its LK-700 lander in August-September 19667_The achievement of this

milestone served as a catalyst for action from the government. Minister Afanasyev finally fulfilled

the deposed Khrushchev's original command by issuing an order on September 17, 1966, for the

formation of a commission to conduct a comparative study between the UR-7OO and the N I-L3

on "the reasonability of proceeding with further works on those projects. ''_'

The "expert commission" to compare the UR-70OILK-700 and the N I-L3 proposals was

headed by the ubiquitous Academician Keldysh. According to one observer, most of the

thirty-four members of the commission were sympathetic to the late Korolev. Chelomey's relation64. Rudenko. "Designer Chelomey's RocketPlanes."

65 Sergey Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu. krizisy i rakety: uz.glyod iznutri torn 2 (Moscow: Novosti,

1994),p 518.

66. Rudenko, "Space Bulletin: Lunar Attraction: Historical Chronicles" (English title), Vozdushniy transport

24 (1993): I I. One source states that in August 1966, "the predraft plan for the piloted ship for circling the Moon

of the type 'LK-3' and the piloted ship for landing on the Moon 'LK-700' was finished." The source also implies that

in September 1966, "the work on the mechanics of the proposal for the (JR-Z00rocket-carrierplanned for landing

the LK-ZO0piloted apparatus on the Moon" was finished, SeeMikhail Rudenko. "Space Bulletin: Lunar Attraction:

Historical Chronicles: First Publication" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 27 (1993): 8-9.

6Z. Vetrov interview, November 15, 1996: Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov, "Development o[ Heavy Launch

Vehicles in the USSR," presented at the 10th International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and

Aeronautics. Moscow State University, Moscow, RussiatJune 20-27, 1995.

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

ship with Keldysh had also evidently soured despite the latter's occasional support. _ In late October

1966, Minister Afanasyev, accompanied by the commission, visited both TsKBM and TsKBEM to

assess the pros and cons of both projects as explained by their respective creators. 69Chelomey had

set up a stunning display of posters in his huge sixth floor office room at Reutov, and the commission spent the day asking detailed questions. The visit to Mishin's design bureau differed only in

the use of models instead of posters. Afanasyev was evidently uncertain of which project to favor.

By this point, Chelomey felt that he was fighting a losing battle because Mishin had the backing of

Keldysh and Llstinov. He told one of his assistants, "I don't want to fight with [the commission]."7°

He wanted instead to concentrate his time and resources on the UR-IOO ICBM project, one of his

few bright prospects for the future. Finally, on November 16, 1966, Chelomey presented the basic

technical details of his competitive lunar landing proposal at a plenary session of "the advisory

council reviewing the course of work being done in the N I-L3 program. "7'

The origins of the URqO0 booster can be traced back to 1961, when Chelomey tasked his

Branch No. I to explore possible designs for a booster capable of lifting approximately seventy tons to low-Earth orbit. Serious work on the concept did not, however, begin until the cotlapse of the LK-I circumlunar plan in 1965. Chelomey was also inspired to pursue the idea from

Yangel's defunct heavy-lift R-56 rocket project offered briefly as a competitor to the N I-L3 program. Perhaps he did not want to be left out of this mother lode of space projects. Chelorney

made sure that his UR-700 proposal would have radical differences with Korolev's N I-L3: if the

two projects were only marginally dissimilar, any evaluation commission would have little reason to pick the UR-700 over the N I. Like a good politician, he made sure that the LIR-/O0 proposal was not just incrementally, but significantly more superior to the N I project in every

relevant parameter.

When Chelomey formally presented his UR-700 lunar landing project in November 1966,

he emphasized five major requirements for the overall plan, which he believed would give it the

advantage over his principal competitor:

• His design bureau and only his design bureau, TsKBM, would be the primary contractor for the

project. Mishin's TsKBEM would be completely excluded from any participation in the work.

• All subcontractors working on the N I-L3 should redirect alt their work to the URqO0 project. (In addition, all ground equipment developed for the N I-L3 would be used for the

UR-7OO with minimum updating.)

• The UR-700 project could be accomplished in the shortest time possible with the most

minimum of expenditures. Curiously, Chelomey made no mention whatsoever of a competition with Apollo: apparently, Chelomey believed that even in the most favorable of circumstances, the first landing mission would mostly likely be after an Apollo landing,

• All stages of the UR-700 and its LK-700 would use storable propellants (nitrogen tetroxide

and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine).

• All of the manufacturing of the LIR-700 and the LK-/OO would be carried out at TsKBM and

its affiliate M. V. Khrunichev Machine Building Plant in Moscow.

68 Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu: tom 2, p. 519.

69. Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes."

70 Khrushchev, Niki_a Khrusheheu: tom 2, p. 521.

7 I. I. B, Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft (From the History of the Soviet Space Program}" (English title),

Nouoye u zhizni. Nauke, tekhnike Seriya kosrnonautika, astronorniya no. 12 (December 199I): 1-64

539
54O

For the UR-700 launch vehicle in particular, there were four design specifications:

• The booster would launch a payload about one and a half times the mass of the L3 payload of the N I rocket.

• The booster would be built on the "block" principle--that is, its separate blocks could be

transported by rail and assembled at the launch site. These blocks would be based in

design on the individual rocket units of the smaller Proton booster.

• The booster would have a minimum number of stages and engines to increase reliability. The

engines of the lower two stages would have very high thrusts per combustion chamber.

• Booster staging would be designed with a composite layout in mind--that is, the first

stage would be connected in parallel like strap-ons, and the second and third stages would

be linked in tandem.

The LK-700 lunar landing payload had two major requirements:

Because of the selection of a direct ascent, the LK-700 would have a launch mass of one

and a half times as much as the L3 payload.

The design of the LK-700 would be such that maximal use would be made of already created space vehicles. This would significantly reduce development time. Engineers would

make good use of already-built robotic spacecraft such as the "IS" and the "US," the abandoned piloted Raketoplan and LK-I proJects, and the UR-IO0 ICBM _2

In exploring various concepts of the LK-700 lunar landing spacecraft, Chelomey proposed

using a "direct ascent" mission profile: it dispensed with both lunar-orbit rendezvous and

Earth-orbit rendezvous. In the United States, NtqS_q had foregone direct ascent in favor of lunarorbit rendezvous in 1962. while Korolev's camp in the Soviet Union had done the same in

1964, Chelomey. however, did not want to deal with complex docking operations, which might

introduce weak links in the system as a whole. His engineers also believed that a direct ascent

profile would allow a wide range of landing sites on the Moon, up to as much as 88 percent of

the lunar surface, as opposed to lunar-orbit rendezvous, in which landing sites would be limited only to the equatorial regions, g direct ascent profile necessitated the use of a very heavy

launch vehicle--one with a lifting power about one and a half times more than that of the N I.

Payload capability to Earth orbit of the UR-700 was in the range of 145 tons, sufficient for a

translunar-injection stage, a lunar braking stage, and a large lunar lander. The mass o[ the latter two components--that is, the mass injected on an escape trajectory--was approximately

fifty tons," The increased mass of the lander would allow a crew of two persons to land on the

Moon, unlike the L3's one cosmonaut. Two cosmonauts on the ground afforded significantly

increased levels of safety and more scientific research. With high-energy stages, this number

could be increased to three during later missions.

Unlike the N I-L3 plan, Chelomey outlined an extensive program of scientific research for

his new project, to be carried out both en route to the Moon and on its surface. This program

would include:

72 E-mail correspondence, Igor Afanasyev with the author, December 16, 1997.

73. The mass of 145 tons is from N. Kamanin. "A Goal Worth Working for" (English title). Vozdushniy

transport 45 (1993): 8 9. Other figures havealso been quoted, including 130 tons and 150-151 tons. Forthe for

mer, see Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft." For the latter, seeV Karrask,O. Sokolov, and V. Shishov, "Known and

Unknown Pages of the Russian Khrunichev Center's Space Activity." presented at the 47th Congress of the

International Astronautical Federation,Beijing. China, October 7-It, 1996.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

• Research on radiation conditions in space

• Studies on micrometeoroids in space

• Research on solar plasma

• The study of the lunar surface for identifying optimal landing sites and refining selenographic coordinates for purposes of navigation

• The collection of samples from the Moon at various depths

• Passive seismographic studies on the Moon

• Measurements of lunar surface temperatures

• Studies of lunar soil properties by spectroscopy

• Research on cosmic rays

• Research on electrical potentials in lunar soil caused by natural magnetic fields

• A precise determination of the Moon's movement relative to Earth with the use of lasers

delivered to the Moon

• The study of variations in the lunar gravitational field

• Research on variations of the lunar magnetic field

• Extensive surface photography _

In making his report, Chelomey also offered up the somewhat ambitious prospect of gearing all

LIR-700 landing missions such that they would eventually lead to the establishment of permanent bases

on the Moon. Initial landing sites would be chosen for their possible use as future "colonies." Work on

these future prospects would be aided by Ye-8 robotic rovers on loan from the Lavochkin organization.

From a hardware perspective, the UR-700 booster was a behemoth. On the pad, the complete

booster-payload stack would be approximately seventy-six meters in length (including the standard

launch escape tower) and have a base diameter of about seventeen and a half meters (excluding four

large aerodynamic stabilizers for use during the active portion of the ascent trajectory). For engines on

the rocket, Chelomey had initially contracted his favorite subcontractor, Chief Designer Kosberg. In

1962, Kosberg's design bureau, OKB-154, had begun work on a 250-ton engine, the RD-0215. A number of other research organizations, including the Central Institute of Aviation Engine Building, the

Scientific-Research Institute of Thermal Processes, and the All-Union Institute of Aviation Materials,

were involved in the early work on the engine, which was the most powerful engine Kosberg had ever

designed. Using technologies derived from engines of the UR-200 ICBM, in two years, Kosberg's engineers prepared a large volume of ground equipment for testing the unit at its own manufacturing plant.

Two initial engines were built, one for cold testing and one for ground firings. '5 In 1965, Glushko

stepped in. For several years, he had been working on a giant 680-ton (vacuum) thrust engine for possible use on a future Soviet booster. When Korolev rejected all his overtures to use this engine on the

N I, Glushko turned to Chelomey and convinced the latter that his RD-270 would be a better choice for

the URqO0 than Kosberg's RD-0215. All work on the Kosberg engine was terminated immediately.

The cooperation with Glushko led to two variants of the UR-700: one with a multitude of RD2_13engines, identical to the ones used on the first stage of the more famous UR-500K (or Proton)

booster, and the second one with the massive RD-270s/" This second version of the rocket was a

three-stage monster that dwarfed the N I in size. Compared to the N I-L3's total mass of 2,7.50 tons,

the UR-700/LK-700 would weigh a whopping 4,820 tons at launch. Its mass was more comparable

to the giant Nova studies pursued by NASA in the early 1960s before the decision in favor of the

Saturn 05. The new system's specifications were:

?.4, Afanasyev correspondence, December 16. 1997.

75, KB Kflim,,qutom_ztikiStrcznitsyistorii: _omI (Voronezh: KB KhimAvtomatiki, 1995). pp. 57-58.

?.6. Vetrov, "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles": Telephone interview, SergeyNikitich Khrushchev

with the author, October I0, 1996. Lt General N. P.Kamanin wrote in his journal entry for December28. 1966,that

"the first and second stagesof the UR-700arebasically the sameasthose of the UR 500." It is possible that he was

referringto the firstvariant of the UR-/O0 using the RD-253 engines SeeKamanin, "/_ Goal Worth Working for."

541
542

J

n

UR-700 UR-700

1966 (project) circa 1969

(modified project)

77

8O

7O

6O

5O

3O

I0

o

meters

Shown are two uc_riontsof Chetorneys UR-700booster,from 1966 and circa 1969 (copyright PeterGorln)

Stage Engines Thrusts Total Thrusts

Stage I

Stage II

Stage III

Nine RD-270s 640 tons each (sl) 5,760 tons (sl)

Three RD-270s 680 tons each (v) 2,040 tons (v)

Three RD-254s 170 tons each (v) 5 I0 tons (v)"

The third stage's RD-254 engines were merely altitude versions of the Proton's RD-253 units.

In terms of design, the UR-700 held a superficial resemblance to the Proton and Vostok

boosters, in that it looked like a core booster surrounded by strap-ons. The arrangement and

use of the core and strap-ons were, however, vastly different. In the LIR-7OO's case, Chelomey's

engineers used both a tandem and a parallel strap-on scheme on the same booster. The core

77 E-mail correspondence, IgorPffanasyevwith the author. December t 7, 1997

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

of the launch vehicle--the second stage--consisted of a two-stage booster. The lower portion

was a cluster composed of three long cylindrical modules, each with a diameter of just over four

meters, which was a limit from a rail transport perspective. These modules were derived from

the same tanks used on the Proton booster. Each module was equipped at the base with a single RD-270 engine. The upper portion of the core consisted of three smaller diameter cylindrical tanks clustered together, each with a single RD-254 engine.

The core was surrounded through its entire length by three clusters, each with two identical cylindrical modules. This set of six cylinders was known collectively as the first stage of the

booster. Like the core, the first stage also used single RD-210 engines on each module. All nine

modules of the first and second stages were to fire at liftoff, giving a total sea-level thrust of

5,760 tons, far above both the N I (4,620 tons) and the Saturn V (3,404 tons). The effectiveness of the excessively high thrust was tempered to a great degree by the use of lowperformance propellants--unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide--which

significantly lowered the efficiency of the engines as compared to both its competitors. At a

certain point in the trajectory, the strap-ons would be discarded, leaving the lower portion of

the core to fire at a vacuum thrust of 2,040 tons. This section would eventually fall away, and

the three RD-254 engines would fire at a total of 5 I0 tons thrust to insert the 151-ton payload

into Earth's orbit. Initial parameters would be 260 by 186 kilometers at a fifty-one-and-a-halfdegree inclination. 7_

The entire LK-700 complex was a four-stage vehicle. The first stage was for translunar inJection (TLI), the second for braking prior to landing on the Moon, the third for soft-landing on the

Moon, and the fourth for liftoff and direct return to Earth. Their performance characteristics were:

Stage Purpose En_nes Number X Thrust Design Bureau

StageIV TLI 11D23 Three X 23.5 tons Kosberg

StageV Lunar braking I ID23 One X 23.5 tons Kosberg

StageVI Lunar landing I ID416 Three X 0.75-1.9 tons Isayev

StageVII Lunar takeoff 15DI3 One X 13.4 tons Izotov

After being put on a trajectory toward the Moon, the crew would discard the heavy TLI

stage weighing about I00 tons and settle into their lunar lander, which would have a mass of

fifty and a half tons, en route to the Moon. During this part of the mission, mid-course

corrections would be effected by small 1.67-ton-thrust verniers on the side of the spacecraft.

gfter a three-and-one-third-day coast to the Moon, the single lunar braking engine, similar to

the ones used for TLI, would fire to reduce velocity to levels safe for the initiation of lunar landing maneuvers. After the use of this engine, this stage would be jettisoned, releasing the

18.3-ton lander proper. At this point, the two-man crew would use a set of three throttleable

1.9-ton-thrust engines for hovering over the lunar surface and selecting a site. At landing, the

LK-700 lander would have a mass of just over seventeen tons. For initial landing sites,

Chelomey's engineers picked two possible areasstemming from two different trajectories to the

Moon: the Seaof Fertility after a six-and-a-half-day flight to the Moon or the Ocean of Storms

after a three-and-a-half-day flight.

The cosmonauts would spend the majority of their trip in a cone-shaped return apparatus

shaped similarly to the abandoned LK-I circumlunar ship, but scaled up in size to hold two

78 Karrask,Sokolov,andShishov,"Known andUnknownPages"Themassof the LK-700complexon the

groundwas 154tons. Thethreemissingtons wasthe launchescapesystem,which would bediscardedpriorto

insertioninto Earthorbit.

543
544

On the right of this Russian drawing is one of the few publicly available representations of Chetomey's

LK 700 lunar landing complex The resemblance of the LK-700 to N/qS,q's Gemini is clearly evident. Below the

lander is the final stage of the UR-/O0 rocket. Forcomparison, Korolev's L3 lunar complex is shown on the left.

(copyright IgorAfmrosyeu)

cosmonauts. The link in design between the LK-I and the LK-700 would establish a genealogy

of spaceship design across several generations of space vehicles designed at Chelomey's design

bureau. '_ The return apparatus would set down on the Moon with its apex pointing upwards--

looking much like an upright Apollo Command and Service Module. The crew would spend about

twelve to fourteen hours on the lunar surface during early missions, sufficient for one excursion

outside. At liffoff from the Moon, the cosmonauts would sever attachments to the descent stage

of the LK-700 and launch from the surface using a single 13.4-ton thrust engine firing at full

thrust. Two different options were available to the crew in their 14.8-ton ascent stage: either

flying directly toward Earth or entering lunar orbit and leaving for Earth at the most appropriate

moment. After further mid-course corrections on the way back to Earth using three small

200-kilogram-thrust engines, the return apparatus would separate from the rest of the LK-ZO0

spacecraft and reenter Earth's atmosphere. Looking remarkably similar to the Apollo Command

Module, the 3.I-ton capsule would land by parachute on Soviet territory after a guided descent

through the atmosphere. The total mission would last eight and a half days from start to finish. _rj

79. g drawing of one variant of the LK-700 has been published in Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft"

80. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": gfanasyev correspondence, December 17. 1997

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
- 1

A N_w BEGINNING

The Kosberg and Isayev design bureaus were contracted to build most, but not all, the

engines for the payload. One exception was the designer for the critical ascent stage engine of

the LK-700 lander, which was contracted out to OKB-II 7 (later the Leningrad experimental

design bureau named after V. Ya. Klimov). Like many other aviation design organizations,

OKB-II 7, headed in the mid-1960s by Chief Designer Sergey P. Izotov, was trying to diversify

into the missile and space business to preclude economic collapse. Izotov had primarily been

famous for designing engines for Soviet military helicopters from the Mil and Kamov design

bureausY Izotov's first foray into the missile business had been the creation of the 8D423, the

second-stage engine for Chelomey's UR-I00 ICBM. This single-chamber engine with a thrust of

13.7 tons aJsohad four one-and-a-half-ton-thrust verniers) _Chelomey took this engine, modified it, and used it as the liftoff engine for his LKqO0 lander. This sort of appropriation and crosspollination was symptomatic of many of the elements of the LIRqOO/LK-700 project, a point that

Chelomey repeatedly emphasized as one of its principal advantages.

When Chelomey presented his conception of the LIR-700 project in November 1966, he

did not mince words or hold back. He took every opportunity to firmly criticize various aspects

of the N I-L3 project, bringing the arguments down to levels that were clear to industry leaders

who had little or no engineering backgrounds. He also had some key supporters in tow, including Chief Designers Glushko, Barmin, and Kuznetsov, as well as Air Force Lt. General Kamanin.

According to one respected Russian space historian:

Chelomey tried to convince the leadership of the sector that with financial support and

the research base that had been created in previous operations, his OKB would be able

to execute the program quickly and make the USSR the first to land on the Moon ....

The advisory council, however, considered such a declaration too bold and allowed

only the performance of preliminary design work on the UR-7OO/LK-700 complex? _

Kamanin, with his own biases against the N I, wrote in his journal in late December 1966:

Based on the UR-500 and [the UR-I00] Chelomey has designed the UR-700 rocket, which

has been approved by a panel of experts from the Ministry of _eneral Machine Building,

but so far the go-ahead has not been given for its implementation, Our leaders hesitate

about simultaneously building Chelomey's UR-700 rocket and Korolev's N J (hundreds of

millions of rubles have already been spent to build the latter). But they are oblivious to

the [act that the cast of building a UR-700 will be ten times less than the amount spent

to build the M I. Because the first and the second "stages" of the UR-700 are basically the

same as those of the UR-500 and, besides, it can use the same assembly and test building and launch equipment as the N I.... One would have thought that one should go

ahead with UR-700 immediately, but L. V Smirnov and D. F Ustinov will hardly dare to

take such a step because it was they who gave the green light to the i"41.... _4

Despite the compelling nature of Chelomey's arguments, several members of the evaluation commission were not thrilled by some of the weak links of the project, in particular the

81. A N Ponomarev, Sovetskiye aviatsionnyye kosntruktory (Moscow: Voyennoye izdatelstvo, 1990),

pp. 312-13

82. Ye. B, Volkov, ed,, Mezhkon[inentalnyye bcdlisticheskiye rakety SSSR (RF) i SSh_ (Moscow: RVSN,

1996), p. 148.

83. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft," pp 39-40

84. Kamanin, ",q Goal Worth Working for," p. 9.

S45
546

development of the high-thrust RD-270 engines. Glushko had begun work on these in t962,

but by 1966, there had still been no ground firings of the engine. Commission members were

also less than happy with the environmental dangers posed by such huge amounts of toxic propellants in the UR-700 rocket. The acoustic problems at liftoff were also unresolved. Finally, the

actual return apparatus of the LK-700 had a very small volume. For cosmonauts who would

have to wear EVA spacesuits the entire duration of the mission, comfort would have to be sacrificed. Despite Chelomey's protestations to the contrary, the commission members believed

that the limited size and performance characteristics of the LK-700 would preclude long-duration landings on the Moon: such missions would have to use high-energy stages. The N I-L3

also had many of the same weaknesses as the UR-700, but at least work on the former had

already been ongoing for several years. In the end, the Keldysh Commission declined to recommend serious work on the UR-IO0 project in November 1966, although it seems that a formal termination decision did not take place until August 1967, invoking the "unreasonability

of continuation of further works on the UR-700.""_ Unfortunately for the Soviet lunar program,

this was only a temporary respite. Like a phoenix, the specter of the UR-700 would rise again.

Deadline for the Moon

If, for the time being, the threat from Chelomey and his UR-IO0 had receded to the background, Mishin's N I-L3 effort had much more imposing problems: these involved funding,

delays, and technical obstacles. His engineers had completed the final draft plan for the L3

complex in mid-1966, and it was only after that "with a six year delay the government issued

the decision on subcontractors for the program."_ Earlier, in April 1966, Mishin met with Soviet

leader Brezhnev to inform him of the sequence of missions in the overall Soviet piloted lunar

program. It would be a three-stage process involving the use of:

• The 7K-OK Soyuz to master rendezvous and docking in Earth orbit

• The UR-SOOK-LI complex to perform a circumlunar mission with two cosmonauts

• The N I-L3 complex to land on the Moon

The N I-L3 complex would consist of three stages:

• Test the N I booster and accomplish an automated lunar-orbital flight

• Test the L3 complex and accomplish piloted lunar-orbital flight with a robotic landing on

the surface of the Moon

• Perform a piloted landing on the surface of the Moon

Within the framework of N I missions for robotic lunar-orbital flights, in March 1966,

Mishin's engineers emerged with a plan to launch the stripped-down Soyuz spacecraft known

as the 7K-L I, which was intended for use in the circumlunar project on the N I booster. In this

variant, the spacecraft was known as the 7K-LIS, with the "S" standing for the Russian word

for satellite ("sputnik"), indicating that its primary mission was to circle the Moon. Engineers

believed that three N I-L I launches early in the N I launch test series would provide valuable

experience in not only proving out problems in the N I, but also mastering operations in lunar

orbit--an essential requisite for the ultimate piloted lunar landing.

85. For November 1966, see Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu:tom 2, p. 522. ForAugust 1967.seeVetrov

interview, November 15, 1996 Seeatso Vetrov, "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles."

86 V P Mishin, "The Development of Booster-Launchersin the USSR," presentedat the 43rd Congress of

the International Astronautical Federation,IAA-92-01971Washington. DC, August 2g September5, 1992.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

By October 1966, the plan was to start with two to three launches of the automated

N I-L I complex. These would lead to three to four launches of the piloted LOK orbiter in lunar

orbit, during which an automated LK lander would set down on the Moon, return to the lunar

orbit, and link up with the LOK. Finally, it would be on the eighth, ninth, or tenth launch that

cosmonauts would accomplish the actual piloted lunar landing. _' With strong lobbying from

senior engineers within the design bureau, such as Feoktistov, TsKBEM formulated its N I flight

plan in such a manner that there was a contingency plan to use a dual-launch Earth-orbit rendezvous mission profile to deliver the landing crew to the L3 complex in Earth orbit. The engineers would resort to this profile only in case there was little confidence in the ability of the

N I to safely launch cosmonauts into Earth orbit. All these slight modifications to the basic mission profile put forward by Korolev in late 1964 added layer after layer of complexity to the original vision of a Soviet lunar landing. Instead of simplifying matters, each modification

threatened to topple the tenuous balance that barely kept the effort together.

The additions and modifications to the design of the L3 complex through 1967 meant that

models designed for flight differed in many ways to the original technical plan on paper which

was prepared by engineers in 1965. _ For example, the use of three different vehicles on the

lunar surface--the LK, the LK R and the Ye-8 rover--necessitated having constant communications and telemetry from more than one spaceship. Additional communications systems for

voice and telemetry, named Foton and Mezon, respectively, were added to the design of the

ground stations by late 1967. Mishin also proposed a special ground communications station

in Cuba specifically for lunar operations. Remarkably, the Soviets announced the existence of

such a station by October 1968. "_ Power and mass limitations also affected the conceptions of

the LK lander: in late 1967, Mishin was proposing the replacement of the lander's chemical batteries with solar panels on the fifth and sixth production models. There were other changes in

the Ye-8 rover designed for lunar surface operations. In January 1967, Mishin and Babakin

agreed to a tactical-technical requirement for the rover, stipulating that life support would be

ensured on the lunar car for a full forty-eight hours. By early April, however, mass constraints

deadlocked Babakin's engineers, and a variety of problems arose in the operation of the life support package on the rover. The problem evidently delayed the preparation of a final draft plan

for the Ye-8 well beyond the expected time period.

The sequence of launches planned in October 1966 meant that, at conservative levels, the

hundreds of contractors and subcontractors would have to sustain a launch rate of about one

N I every three months through 1961 and 1968. Any realistic assessment of the situation within the lunar program in late 1966, however, would have given pause even to the most superficial of observers that this pace would be impossible to maintain. Perhaps the most serious

source of delays was the main engines for the N I booster. Space program leaders such as

Smirnov, Afanasyev, Dementyev, and Pashkov met in March 1966 to discuss problems with the

development of the engines. One major source of anxiety was the NK-15V engine for the second stage. While the NK-15s for the first stage had been tested 153 times in static stands, there

was still no test stand existing that allowed the NK-15Vs to be tested in altitude conditions.

Chief Designer Kuznetsov's OKB-276, the lead developer of the engines, and several plants

located at Kuybyshev were lagging in their work on the engines--a problem compounded by

87. According to production figures from October 1968,three to four NIs wereto be manufactured in 196?,

six in 1968,and six in 1969--a total of fifteen or sixteen These numbers evidently included three for ground test

ing only: the articles I M I. IM2, and I M3, The flight versionsbegan with the designations 2L, 3L. 4L, and so on. By

December 1966, the preparation of I M I was delayed from December 1966 to February 1967.

88. The "final" draft plan [or the L3 complex was finished in mid 1966according to Mishin. SeeMishin,

"The Development of Booster-Launchers."

89. 5ouiet .SpacePrograms. 1966-Z0, p. 150.

547
548

a shortage of labor2" Pashkov reminded the participants that the engines were to have been

delivered for use on flightworthy N Is in January 1965. It was clear that the primary bottleneck

in the program was engine development, and it was this fact that determined the huge delays

in the Nt program at the time.

The estranged Glushko also may have contributed to raised tensions among Kuznetsov's

engineers. Astonishingly, as late as 1967, Glushko was still talking openly of revising the N I rocket so as to use his old RD-253 engines, which by then were in use in Chelomey's LIR-5OOK Proton

booster. One engineer later recalled that "lit) was a difficult period of time for Kuznetsov: there

was one accident after another on the test stands. Glushko followed all this jealously."_' The final

testing of the NK-I 5 engine occasionally displayed partial burnout of the firewall of the combustion chamber or the nozzle. Engineers at OKB-276 later introduced deliberate burn-throughs in

the engines to test engine tolerance, and they were fortunate to discover that the units performed

in a stable manner despite the burn-throughs. Before the NK-15 engines were released for series

production, on one occasion, one of the experimental units "smoked out" during a test, bolstering Glushko's arguments against Kuznetsov's engines, fit a meeting of a joint commission to

investigate the accident, Glushko said, "You can see for yourselves that the engine is bad. It's not

fit for work, and certainly not for installation on such a crucial piece of hardware like the N I." _'

Fortunately for Kuznetsov, the commission later ascertained that the fault had been caused by a

production defect and not a design flaw: the engines were recommended for series manufacture.

The program to develop high-performance liquid hydrogen engines, so doggedly pursued

by Korolev in the last years of his life, was also vigorously supported by his successor Mishin.

It took a long time, but seven years after Korolev's first letters to the government requesting

funds for liquid hydrogen engines, the Soviets tested such an engine. On April 8. 1967, engineers directed the first ground test of the first Soviet liquid oxygen-liquid hydrogen engine, the

I ID56, designed and built by the Chemical Machine Building Design Bureau (formerly OKB-2)

headed by Chief Designer Isayev2 _By this time, the Soviets were a full six to seven years behind

the United States in this critical area of rocket engine technology. While it was clear that liquid

hydrogen would not be an integral part of the first N I version, by September 1967, Mishin had

sent proposals to the Ministry of General Machine Building on the use of Isayev's engine on an

upper stage designated BIok R for a subsequent version of the N I.

There were delays in the development of the L3 complex. The late start of the Soviets in

t964 was finally beginning to have a significant long-range effect on competing with Apollo.

By the end of 1966, neither the Blok I engine (for the LOK orbiter) nor the Blok Ye engine (for

the LK lander) had been tested on the ground. The most optimistic forecast was that they

would be tested in July and August 1967, respectively. The workload on TsKBEM was so severe

in 1966 that Mishin and his deputies even considered handing over all development of the LK

to Chief Designer Babakin's organization24 Naturally, such uncertainties did little to instill con90. Within OKB-276, V. N. Orlov and V. S. Anisimov, two of Kuznetsov's deputies, were appointed to lead

the N I engine team. Several subgroups focused on specific areas, including high thrust engines (headed by Deputy

Chief Designer N. D. Pechenkin) and NI third- and fourth-stage engines (Deputy Chief Designer N. A. Dondukov).

EngineersAstakhov and Yelizarovwereassigned to leadthe development of gasgeneratorsand turbopumps, respectively SeeRudenko, "Space Bulletin: Lunar Attraction."

91 M. Rebrov, '_ButThings Were Like Jhat--Top Secret:The Painful Fortune of the N I Project" (English

title). Krasnaya Zuezda january 13, 1990. p. 4

92 Igor Afanasyev, "N-I: Absolutely Secret" (English title). Krylya rodiny no. II (November 1993): 4-5

The chair of this commission was Chief Designer A. D Konopatov of the Chemical Automation Design Bureau (KB

KhimAvtomatiki). formerly known as OKB-154.

93. "Calendar of Memorable Dates" (English title), Nouost_ kosmonautiki 8 (April 7-20, 1997): 59-60:

Semenov,ed, Raketno.KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 262.

94 V.M. Filin, Vospominaniya o lunnom korablge (Moscow: Kultura, 1992), pp. 9 10.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

fidence in the engineers who had worked on the vehicle for several years. TsKBEM's finances

were also stretched to the limit in 1965 and 1966, which led officials to cut corners on various

ground and in-flight systems. The design bureau was beset by a 51 million ruble shortage in

1965 that increased in 1966.

Construction of the launch complexes for the N I was well under way by the time that

Mishin took up his duties as chief designer. The original plan was to build two launch complexes, each with two pads. Financial constraints, however, forced engineers to plan for only a

single launch complex, designed by GSKB SpetsMash led by Chief Designer Vladimir P. Barmin.

It would be the culmination of Barmin's career in the space and missile business. A contemporary of Korolev's, Barmin graduated in t930 as a mechanical engineer and had the ghoulish

honor of creating a special refrigerating device for Lenin's mausoleum. In 1937. Barmin was

dragged off to the Lubyanka prison to be questioned about a trip he and some other engineers

had made to the United States in 1935 as part of a business delegation. When the group had

come under suspicion, the head of the group committed suicide: most of the other members

were arrested. Barmin was let go, but he lost his job. He made the leap from refrigerators to

missiles in June 1941, when he was put in charge of production at the famous Kompressor

Plant, where thousands of Katyusha missile launchers were manufactured during the war. For

a brief period, Barmin had the dubious distinction of working for P,ndrey G. Kostikov, the engineer who had been instrumental in sending Korolev and Glushko to the GULag.

After the war, Barmin and Korolev struck up their acquaintance once again, and the former

led the development of launch complexes for almost every single Soviet long-range ballistic missile, including the famous R-7 ICBM. Barmin also had his run-ins with the Soviet leadership. In

1959, when Khrushchev abruptly decided to terminate further work on the Mirnyy missile

launch site near Plesetsk, Barmin asked permission to speak at a meeting and told Khrushchev

to his face that such a decision would be in error. His persuasive arguments won the day. The

Mirnyy site was completed, eventually becoming the most prolific space launch site in the

world2 ' Although Barmin's GSKB SpetsMash organization did not retain its monopoly in the

design and creation of launch complexes, it inherited a leading role in the field by the strength

of its participation in the UR-500K and N I programs. In January 1961, GSKB SpetsMash was

renamed the Design Bureau of General Machine Building (KB OM).

Barmin's team began construction of the first launch pad (site I10 right) in September

1964 and completed it in August 1967. The second pad (site II0 left) was built between

February 1966 and late 1968. The scale of construction associated with the launch complex,

about thirteen kilometers to the northwest of the famous site I, was huge. A large technical

zone and living area was built seven kilometers from the launch pads at site 113 for personnel

from the Progress Machine Building Plant who were on assignment from Kuybyshev to oversee

the assembly and testing of flight-rated boosters. Technical and materiel supplies were brought

to Tyura-Tam on a daily basis via two huge trains, each with several dozen wagons. The railcars were evidently so large that delegations from other socialist countries often came to the

launch site to view the trains2 _

When it was finished in 1968, site I10 consisted of two launch pads located 500 meters

from each other, each with 145-meter-tall service towers for propellant loading, power supplies,

95 Col. M. Rebrov. "To Do Tomorrow: Pages From the Life ot the Chief Designer of Space Launch

Complexes" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, October 22, 1988,p. 3: Boris Khlebnikov, "Vladimir Barmin: One o[

the Top Six Designers." 2qerospaceJournal no. 2 (March-April t997): 8t-83.

96. J. Villain, "A Brief History of Baikonuc" presented at the 45th Congress of the International

Astronautical Federation, IAA-94 IAA.2.1 614. Jerusalem, Israel, October 9-14, 1994: Leonard Nikishin, "Rough

Going on Interplanetary Trajectories. How We ExertedOurselves to the Utmost in the Lunar Race" {English title),

ObshchayagazetG,july 15, 1994,p 9,

549
55O

crewboarding,andthermalcontrol.Afterthecompletionof prelaunchprocedures,thetowerwould

bemovedaway,leavingtheNI atthepad,"held

down"byforty-eightpneumo-mechanicallocks.In

addition,four180-meter-talllightningrodswere

builtaroundeachlaunchpad.I_totalof ninety

uniquestructureswereeventuallyconstructedat

siteII0 forNI operations,dwarfinganyother

launchcomplexatTyura-Tam? _ In the early 1960s,

engineers had originally proposed assembling the

lOS-meter-tall launchers vertically in a special

assembly building. Because this would have necessitated the construction of a gigantic building

160 meters tall, the engineers decided to lessen the

funding strain by opting to assemble the boosters

horizontally in a "smaller" building. The latter was

the gigantic assembly-testing building for

N I assembly at site I12. with the dimensions of

forty-seven (height) by 240 by 250 meters. It was

reputed to be the largest building on the Eurasian

landmass. P, second assembly-testing building at

nearby site 2B was dedicated for assembling the

L3 complex, while the fueling station was located

at site I12_. During launch operations, the

L3 would undergo preflight checking in its building, covered by cowling, and be transported by rail

to the fueling station for propellant loading. From

Chief Designer Vladimir Barmin was one o/the

original membersof the Council of Chie/ Designers

His organization was responsible for designing and

creating launch complexes/or a wide spectrum of

Soviet missiles and space launch vehicles tn later

years. Barmin expanded into other areas, such as

designing lunar bases,lunar sample return scoopers, and space-basedfurnaces (flies of Peter _orin)

there, the L3 stack would be transported to the larger assembly building, where it would be connected to the assembled N I in a horizontal position. After further tests, the N I-L3 booster stack

would be transported by two diesel locomotives moving on parallel tracks to the launch pad?"

With such an impressive level of construction at Tyura-Tam in the 1960s, it is not surprising that LI.S. photo-reconnaissance satellites were able to pick up convincing signs that the

Soviet Union was indeed running the race to the Moon. The first public indication that the

USSR was engaged in building a massive rocket came in the fall of 1966 when a reporter from

The New York Times, Evert Clark, quoted "official sources" that the "Soviet Union is believed

to have finally begun developing a rocket of 7.5-to-10-million pounds of thrust enough to send

men to the Moon .... "_ _ top-secret CIA report from early 1967, declassified twenty-five years

later, indicates that LI.S. intelligence services were well apprised of concurrent Soviet efforts.

Designating site I I0 at Tyura-Tam as "Complex J," the authors of the report wrote:

The construction of Complex J at Tyuratam [sic] makes it clear that the Soviets have

under development another and much larger booster [than the Proton]. Complex ] is a

very large launch facility which appears to be of the same magnitude as the U.S. Apollo

launch facility at Merritt Island. It has been under construction for the past [three-and97. I. A Marinin and S. Kh. Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Piloted Flight to the Moon" (English title).

Zemlya i vselennaya no, 5 (September-October 1993): 77 85,

98. Ibid: Villain, Baikonour, pp. 65-66

99. EvertClark. "Soviet Is Reported Developing a Big. New Rocket," New York Times.September 13. 1966.

p. 28.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
/1_ NEW BEGINNING

a-hall] years and we estimate it will be ready [or initial launch operations in the first

hallo[ 1968 at the earliest. '®

As for the actual piloted lunar landing, the CIA was evidently under the impression that the

Soviets were not in it to beat Apollo:

Two years ago, we estimated that the Soviet manned lunar landing program was probably not intended to be competitive with the 71pollo program as then projected, [that is.]

aimed at the 1968-1969 time period. We believe this is still the ease.., we estimate

that the earliest the Soviets could attempt a manned lunar landing would be mid-to-late

1969. We believe that the most likely date is sometime in the 1970-1971 time period. '°`

NASA Administrator James E. Webb joined the chorus of believers who were convinced

that the Soviets were building a huge rocket--a belief no doubt bolstered by his access to classified reports from the CIA During testimony to a House Appropriations subcommittee in

August 196L he stated that "the U.S.S.R. is building a larger booster and will shortly, I believe,

in calendar year 1968, be flying a booster larger than the Saturn 5. ''°_ Webb's claims were dismissed by many, because he was unable to provide any supporting evidence. The complete lack

of physical evidence would come in handy in later years when the Soviets engaged in one of

the most successful deceptions in the history of space exploration.

The Soviets themselves were not being particularly coy at the time. Although they were shy

about specifics, the general tone of Soviet public figures did not leaveany doubt as to the ultimate

goal of the Soviet space program. As one would expect, the cosmonauts were the most vocal in

their pronouncements: although the Communist Party maintained strict control over each and

every word uttered by these young men, they were more amenable to fits of spontaneity than their

elder bosses. On P,pril 12, 1965, during celebrations in honor of Gagarin's flight, cosmonaut

Belyayev, fresh from his recent trip on Voskhod-2, spoke in hyperbolic terms about the lunar program: "Preparations are in full swing. The Americans speak broadly about their preparations to

land a man on the Moon, but naturally, we in our country, are not idle either. We shall seewho

will be there first." '°_Lessthan a year later, Bykovskiy, praising NASA's lunar-orbit rendezvous mission profile, added that work was in full swing to develop maneuvering ships and suits needed for

work on the lunar surface.'_ _ few months later, in _pril 1966, Leonov spoke candidly in Hungary:

I think that I do not disclose any secret by saying [that] Soviet cosmonauts are preparing/or such a journey [to the Moon]. I should very much like it i[a Soviet man went to

the Moon first because we were the first who made the most important steps in space.

I believe we shall soon witness man's landing on the Moon. 1 cannot say when. but it

will be during this five-year plan period.'°'

In the complete vagueness that surrounded Soviet pronouncements on the space program at

the time, cosmonaut Komarov made one of the most specific statements during a visit to Japan

in July1966:

I00. U.S.CentralIntelligenceAgency,"NationalIntelligenceEstimateII-1%7: The SovietSpaceProgram,"

Washington,DC. March2, 1967,p. II, asdeclassifiedDecemberII. 1992,bytheCIP_HistoricalReviewProgram.

I01. Ibid.,p. 2.

102. EvertClark,"New SovietShotis ExpectedSoon," NewYorkTimes,August19,1967.

103. SovietSpace Programs, 1966-70, p. 359

104. Ibid.,p. 361.

105. Ibid, p. 362

551
552

There is no need to make haste about a Moon trip by human beings--and the important thing is how to carry out everything in safety. But I can positively state that the

Soviet Union will not be beaten by the United States in a race for a human being to go

to the Moon.'°_

Upon his return to Moscow, cosmonaut overseer Kamanin confronted Komarov about his

unauthorized statement. Having deviated too much from the doctrinal line. there were calls

from the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers regarding the "incident.' ....

Remarkably, it was roughly at the same time that one of the most authoritative aerospace trade

journals in the United States, Aviation Week & Space Technology, reported that the Soviets

were not heading for the Moon. In a long article in November 1966, the author reported

that the:

Soviet Union is showing increasing signs of having conceded the manned lunar landing

race to the U.S. as part of a vastly revamped space program. The new space philosophy. which the Soviets consider better balanced though less dramatic than their previous one, could produce a much less complex manned circumlunar mission without

landing within the next year ....

It was one of the best examples of how much Western analysts misread the intentions of the

Soviet space program at the time, which as it happens was going through a transition, but one

that was not clear to observers of that era.

In contrast to the early 1960s. the Soviet space program as a whole was not afforded relatively uncontrolled access to funding. Brezhnev was considerably less sympathetic toward the

space program than his predecessor, and salaries in the space industry were said to have gravitated to more average levels during the early years of the post-Khrushchev era. As one senior

official at the Central Scientific-Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNllMash) recalled,

Brezhnev "supported space only if brought political dividends.' ..... While detailed figures on

appropriations for space still remain classified, it is known that the Soviet Union spent 7.9 billion rubles on its space program during the period t966-1970. ''° At the prevailing unofficial

conversion rate, this amounted to approximately $24 billion, or 1.25 percent, of the Soviet

Union's yearly gross national product during the same period." The N I-L3 project was about

20 percent of the total space budget each year. amounting to roughly $4.8 billion of expenditure from 1966 to 1970 (in 1966 U.S, dollars). _'' Thus, although the Soviet Union's expenditures on space were close to twice the portion of its gross national product as in the United

106 Evert Clark, "Soviet Spaceship Hunting Quarks," New York Times,July 17, 1966,p 55; Ibid. p. 363.

107 Kamanin, "/_ Goal Worth Working for."

108 Donald C. Winston. "Soviets Revamp Lunar Space Plan," .;quiation Week & Space Technology.

November 28, 1966, pp. 22-23.

109 Stephane Chenard, "Twilight of the Machine Builders," Space Markets 7(5) ( 1991): I I-19

I10. Yu. Koptev, "Space Fantasies:Ctasnost vs Rumors" (English title), Ekonomika i zhizn 38 (September

1990): 19

tl I. The conversion rate used was $3 = I ruble, extrapolated from figures in Soviet Space Programs.

1966-70. pp 108-09. Table I givesthe Soviet grossnational product for 1967 as $365 billion (in 1966US dollars)

Table 2 gives the Soviet state budget for 1967 as I15.24 billion rubles. The figure of t.25 percent has been extrapolated from totaling the Soviet state budget for t966-70 and then determining the ratio of the space budget (7.9 bit

lion rubles) as a percentage of the cumulative state budget (631.13 billion rubles). Note that the actual figures were

remarkably close to those predicted in 1971 without the benefit of any "real" figures ,qnalysts hypothesized at the

time that the Soviet space budget was 1.5to 2.0 percent of the Soviet gross national product.

I 12 fhe ratio of the N I-L3 to the total spacebudget hasbeen extrapolated from St_phane Chenard. "Budget

Time in Moscow," Space Markets 7(5) (1991): 10,

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
R NEW BEGINNIN0

States, actual dollar expenditure on space and the lunar program in particular was far less than

that of its primary competitor. '_

The end of 1966 was a particularly critical decision-making point for the leaders of the

Soviet space program. NASA had just completed ten highly successful Gemini missions, displaying a remarkable level of expertise in mastering complex operations in Earth orbit, while the

Soviets had not launched a single cosmonaut into space. American successes were bolstered in

1966 by two launches of the Block I Apollo Command and Service Module, as well as a test

launch of the S-IVB high-energy cryogenic upper stage. ''4 By the end of the year, three astronauts were preparing for the first piloted launch in a Block I Command and Service Module

aboard the Saturn IB to conduct a thorough testing of the entire spacecraft in Earth orbit. The

giant Saturn V, meanwhile, was scheduled to take an automated Apollo spacecraft into Earth

orbit by the summer of 1967. In early January 1967, Boris g. Stroganov, one of Serbin's deputies

in the Central Committee's Defense Industries Department, told Mishin that the upper echelons of the Communist Party were extremely concerned about the Soviet lag behind the United

States. All this warranted a response, especially given that many of the deadlines from the original August t964 decree on the Soviet lunar landing had remained unfulfilled as a result of poor

management and insufficient funding. There had already been a number of decrees through

1966 on the lunar program at the level of the Ministry of General Machine Building. ''_ Speaking

of a decree in late 1966, Lt. General Kamanin wrote in his personal journal on November I 0:

I read the [Military-industrial Commission] decree which says that the 1964 decisions of

the [Communist Party] and the Council of Ministers on orbiting the Moon and landing

humans on the Moon are not being [ul[illed properly. The resolution reiterates orders to

the industry to glue top priority to all work connected uaith spacecraft and rockets and

to treat them as special state assignments. There are sure to be many more such resolutions, rebukes, and reprimands as the temperature over the Moon rises. But papers and

reprimands don't get anywhere: too much time has been wasted. The bosses, however,

won't hear about our problems and will demand new "spectacular" flights to mark the

50th anniuersary of the October Reuolution._ _

In October 1966, the so-called "Council for the Problems of Mastering the Moon," which

included the leading ministers, deputy ministers, academicians, chief designers, and military

officers from the Soviet space establishment, was set up specifically to examine both the

macro- and micro-level details of the Soviet program to land a human on the Moon. Headed by

Minister of General Machine Building tqfanasyev, the council heretofore was the primary advisory body to the Soviet Party and government on all affairs involving the N I-L3 project. Rumor

had it that Ustinov and Smirnov had set up the council so as to insulate themselves from the

possibility of blame if the Soviet lunar program failed. Another possible motive may have been

113. Central ScientJtic-Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash) Director Yu g Mozzhorin

recalled. "The Americans had spent $15 billion on the creation of an experimental base: we had spent only about

$1 billion." See Rebrov. "But Things Were Like That--Top Secret."

i 14 The two Command and Service Mod_)es were _aunched on Februar), 26 and P,ugus_ 25, )96b The

S-IVB test was on July 5. 1966. See Linda Neuman Ezell, N,qS_ Historical Data Book. Volume I1: Programs and

Projects 1958 t968 (Washington. DC: NASA SP-4012. 1988), p. 187.

115_ There was a Ministry ol General Machine Building order (no. 207ss) on May 16, 1966, on the Nf A

Military Industrial Commission decree (no. 428) was issued on September 14. 1966, on the N I-L3.

116. N. Kamanin. "A Goal Worth Working for." p 8 Kamanin refers to two VPK decrees from this period:

one on the "conclusions of the expert commission on [scientific research work] to settle the organization o[ search

and evacuation of lunar ships" and the other on the UR 500K-LI and N I-L3 complexes See also Kamanin. Skrytiy

kosmos 1964-1966 p. 388.

553
554

to circumvent the power of the Council of Chief Designers with regard to the lunar landing program. ''_ The council in its deliberations returned to the original 1964 decree to discuss the issuing of a second decree to stipulate specific schedules for the achievement of a circumlunar and

lunar landing mission. TsNIIMash Director Yuriy A. Mozzhorin, an individual who probably had

much to do with determining the pace of the space program, recalled:

It was clear to me that the objective was becoming unrealistic and that the uolume of the

work ahead exceeded the capacities of the sector by a factor of 2-2.5..glt a conference

of Chief Designers and curators, I expressed doubts. They Lucre met tuith criticism. ''_

Mozzhorin evidently refused to approve the conditions of the new decree, but it seems that

he eventually capitulated under pressure from Afanasyev. _9 At the same time, Mishin's principal deputy for the N I. Deputy Chief Designer Okhapkin, pleaded to Ustinov, "We want to solve

this problem, we can solve it. and we will solve it on schedule if we receive assistance.' .....

These intensive discussions in late 1966 eventually led to the adoption of another important decree associated with the piloted lunar landing program--one that established goals

competitive with the late President Kennedy's set for Apollo. On February 4, 1967. the Central

Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a document (no. I15-46) titled "On the

Progress of the Work on the Development of the UR-500K-LI.' .... The document, signed just

eight days following the Apollo I fire, in which three U.S. astronauts were killed during a

ground test, called for the consolidation of all national resources in support of the accomplishment of a piloted lunar landing on the Moon prior to the United States. The document was prepared by the four most powerful individuals in the Soviet space program: Llstinov, Serbin,

Smirnov. and l_fanasyev. '_

The authors of the resolution, which still remains classified, described as "unsatisfactory"

the work of the government in fulfilling the terms of the original 1964 decree on piloted lunar

programs and stated that "a flight around the Moon by a manned spacecraft and the landing

of a manned mission on the Moon shall be considered to be objectives of national importance." '" Implicitly at least, the resolution freed the purse strings of the Ministry of Defense for

the program, but in reality, it seems that the attitude of the primary financiers of the project

I 17 Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for." The composition of the council is still unknown but presumably

includedall the majorchief designers,such asG. N Babakin(GSMZ Lavochkin),V. P.Barmin (KB OM). V, N, Chelomey

(TsKBM), V. R Glushko (KB EnergoMash).A. I, losifyan (VNII ElektroMekhaniki),A. M Isayev(KB KhimMash), A. D.

Konopatov (KB KhimAvtomatiki), N, D. Kuznetsov(KB Trud), V. I Kuznetsov (Nil Prikladnoymekhaniki). A. M. Lyulka

(KB Saturn), V, P.Mishin (TsKBEM),A. S. Mnatsakanyan(Nil Tochnykh priborov), N. A. Pilyugin (Nil Avtomatiki i priborostroyeniya),M S. Ryazanskiy(Nil Priborostroyeniya),G. I. Severin(KB Zvezda), S. K. Tumanskiy (MMZ Soyuz),

G. I Voronin (KB Nauka).and M. K. Yangel(KB Yuzhnoye). Initially.there wereonly two military representativeson the

council: A. G. Karas(TsUKOS Commandenin-Chief)and A. I. Sokolov (NII-4 Director). Another sourcestates that by

December1967,the council included "Marshal N. I. Krylov. Marshal Rudenko.Ministers of Aviation, Defenseand Radio

Industries,all the primary Chief Designers.the Presidentof the Academyof SciencesKeldysh, and the DeputyChairman

of the VPK Pashkov."SeeChertok. Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny, pp. 476-77. Therewas evidently

another "Moon Council," this one for automated exploration, whose chair and deputy chairwere M M Keldysh (AN

SSSR)and G. A. Tyulin (MOM), respectively.SeeMozzhorin. Dorogi u kosmos:I. p 162.

118. Rebrov."But Things Were LikeThat--Top Secret,"p. 4. ForMozzhorin's own accounton his doubts on the

decree,seeRudenko. "SpaceBulletin: LunarAttraction."

119. Rudenko, "SpaceBulletin: LunarAttraction."

120 Rebrov,"But ThingsWere LikeThat--Top Secret," p. 4.

12I. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Flyto the Moon?"

122 LeonardNikishin, "Inside The Moon Race," Moscow News 7 (April II. 1990): 15.

123. N Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for" (Englishtitle), Vozdushniy transport 46 (1993): 8-9. Author's

emphasis

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

remained unchanged. Less than two weeks after the document was issued by the leadership,

new USSR Minister of Defense Marshal Andrey A Grechko refused to provide money for a

search-and-rescue service for returning cosmonauts from the Moon. When he was told by Air

Force leaders that about 25 to 30 million rubles and 9,000 personnel would be required, he

lashed back, "1won't give you personnel, I won't give you money. Do what you like but I won't

raise this with the government .... And in general I am against Moon missions."'24 This lack

of commitment was devastating to the project.

The February 1961 document detailed astonishingly ambitious timetables for both the LI

and the L3 programs:

Mission Date

First piloted circumlunar flight of the UR-50OK-LI

First flight tests of the N I-L3

First piloted lunar landing of the N I-L3

June-July 1967

September 1961

September 1968

In an extreme case, the landing could have been achieved between October and December

1968.'2_It remains unclear what prompted Ustinov and the others to aim for such an unrealistic

schedule. By February 1961,the N I had yet to fly while the L3 complex existed only on paper,

and yet the Soviets were proposing that this highly complex mission be accomplished in less

than two years. The only visible manifestation of any progress was the completion

of the first full-scale N I test vehicle, the I MI, which was finally assembled at Tyura-Tam that

same February, although it remained in the giant assembly-testing building. Actual flight models, although being manufactured, were well behind in the queue. Clearly, the senior staff of

TsKBEM, including Mishin. were as much responsible for stipulating these outlandish deadlines

as was the political leadership. These TsKBEM employees, after all, were the ones who made

assessments of the state of the program in late 1966, on whose basis Ustinov and the others

made their decisions. To have agreed to the late 1968 deadline seems in retrospect to have been

professional suicide, but for reasons that are still not clear, the designer faction accepted them.

Kamanin wrote in his journal entry for March 15, 1967: "There is no doubt in my mind that

these deadlines are anything but realistic." ,2_It was probably clear to most engineers that if past

experience was any indicator, the government would be unwilling to back this near ridiculous

deadline with any sort of financial commitment.

First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Leonid I, Brezhnev and

Chairman of the USSRCouncil of Ministers _teksey N. Kosygin signed the February 1967 document and officially made it binding to all the hundreds of primary and secondary contractors

working on the lunar program. Nearly six years after Kennedy's speech, the Soviet piloted lunar

landing program was an objective of national importance. It was the Soviet leadership's belief

that if the Soviet military-industrial complex performed as stipulated, a Soviet citizen would be

standing on the surface of the Moon by the end of 1968. The fact that the United States' with

all its industrial might, had been trying for the same objective for six years could not have

escaped the notice of all involved. Speaking of the document that had appeared far too late and

of the government that had ignored the pleas of designers for so many years, a Soviet journalist wrote years later:

124. Ibid.

125. SeeTarasov,"Missionsin Dreamsand Reality,"in which Mishinsaysthat the timetablefor the flight

testswasto bein thesecondquarterof 1967and thelandingin the third quarterof 1968.

126. Kamanin,",q GoalWorth Workingfor." no.46.

555
556

This shows the level of competence of the top Soviet leaders Brezhnev and Kosy£in who

signed the document [and] the honesty o/the Party and government officials who prepared this document: Ustinov, Smirnou, Serbin, ,Ztfanasyev.'_7

Defining the Circumlunar Program

Through 1966, the LI program to send Soviet cosmonauts around the Moon assumed primacy in importance over the L3 landing effort--a strategic shift motivated very much by the

impending fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution in late 1967 The basic elements

of the project had been frozen by a document issued on December 3 I, 1965, titled "Initial Data

on the LI Payload Block (Product I I$824)," signed just two weeks before Korolev's death. The

main points of this document described the changes necessary to the spacecraft and launch

vehicle to accomplish the piloted circumlunar mission. '78For the 7K-LI vehicle in particular,

there were three goals:

• Create a modification of the 7K-OK Soyuz spacecraft, designated the 7K-LI, capable of circumlunar flight with a crew launched in the vehicle

• Establish a phased realization of the goals:

- Create the technological-model complex IM I with 7K-LI no. IP

- Create automated variants for circumlunar flight on 7K-LI nos 4-9

• Prepare 7K-LI nos. II-14 for piloted circumlunar flight '_

The 7K-LI spacecraft (also called simply the "LI ") was essentially a stripped down 7K-OK

Soyuz, reduced to "fit" the 5.1- to 5 2-ton mass constraints for a circumlunar mission using

Chelomey's UR-5OOK rocket and Mishin's Blok D upper stage combination. Depending on the

particular variant, total mass varied from .5.2to 5,7 tons (in Earth orbit) and .5.0to 5.5 tons (after

TLI). The primary difference between the Soyuz and the LI was the omission of the spheroid

living compartment in the latter, making the LI a compact two-module spacecraft built for a singular objective with little room for upgrades. The two modules were the descent apparatus and

the instrument-aggregate compartment.

The descent apparatus was a segmented-conical body with an improved heat shield sufficiently strengthened to withstand lunar return velocity reentries. This shielding would be cast

off prior to the actual landing on Earth. The two-person crew would spend their entire eightto ten-day mission within the confines of this capsule with an internal volume of only two and

a half cubic meters, compared to the Soyuz, which afforded six and a half cubic meters./qpart

from the crew couches, the descent apparatus also contained the ship's control panel, an onboard computer, scientific instrumentation, a camera, life support systems, portions of the ther127. Nikishin, "Inside the Moon Race," p. 15.

128. Semenov. ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 235. The nine points related to the overall complex were: (I) use Blok D from the N! booster as a TLI stage: (2) use the/K-OK Soyuz as the spacecraft, but without the spheroid living compartment at the forward end, the descent apparatus would be modified for lunar speed

atmospheric reentry, and a special supporting cone at the apex of the now-shortened vehicle would allow connections with the launch escape tower: (3) eliminate mooring and orientation engines from the 7K-OK Soyuz and trans

fer these functions to the SOZ system on Blok D: (4) develop a new payload shroud: (5) ensure that Blok D can

retire in vacuum conditions: (6) ensure that Blok D can fire to allow T[I: (7) agree on a cycle of events for the

UR-5OOK Proton booster during launch, allowing launch escape and rocket safety: (8) develop the details of a circumlunar trajectory with return at lunar velocities: and (9) create simplified 7K L I spacecraft numbers 2P and 3P for

tests in Earth orbit, which would include two firings of Blok D.

129 Ibid, p 236

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
NEW BEGINNING

real regulation and communications systems, biological samples, an optical orientation

device, and a storage battery.

One of the improvements on the

capsule compared to the Soyuz

was doubling the number of

thrusters for yaw during guided

reentry. This augmentation in

reentry capability was offset to a

great degree by the omission of

the reserve parachute from the

descent apparatus because of

both space and mass constraints.

The single remaining parachute

had a dome area of 1,0OOsquare

meters. The deletion of the living

compartment prompted engineers to attach a special support

cone to the apex of the spacecraft to allow a firm connection

The 7K-L I spacecra[t was the final iteration o[ Koroleu's repeated

attempts to design a [light-capable piloted circumlunar ship The

vehicle, later publicly named Zond. was similar in terms of most

systems to the Earth-orbital Soyuz. The major design dff[erence between

the two was the omission o[ the [orward living compartment on the

Zond spacecraft Two cosmonauts would have to spend a cramped

week within the confines of the tiny descent apparatus. (copyright

VideoCosmos Co., via Dennis Newkirk)

with the nose fairing and the launch escape tower of the booster stack. The cone, weighing

150 kilograms, would be cast off from the vehicle prior to TLI. As with the Soyuz and the

N t-L3, the launch escape system was equipped with a set of powerful solid-propellant engines

to remove the descent apparatus far from an exploding rocket.

As in the 7K-OK Soyuz, the 7K-LI instrument-aggregate compartment was divided into

three sections: the transfer compartment, the instrument compartment, and the aggregate

compartment. The pressurized instrument compartment contained the primary and backup

buffer storage batteries and additional ship instrumentation for on-board systems. The unpressurized aggregate compartment at the extreme aft of the ship contained the single high-thrust

engine on the spacecraft, the $5.53, developed by the Design Bureau of Chemical Machine

Building, led by Chief Designer Isayev. The engine used unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and

a mixture of nitric acid and nitrogen tetroxide (AK-27) and had a thrust of 425 kilograms--that

is, it was identical to its counterpart on the Soyuz spacecraft. The 400 kilograms of propellant

for the engine was contained in four spherical tanks at the aft of the aggregate compartment,

which also included eight attitude control thrusters operating on hydrogen peroxide (of one

and one and a half kilograms thrust). Thermal radiators covered the whole compartment on its

outer surface, gs with the Soyuz, primary power on the vehicle was provided by two large solar

arrays, spread like bird wings from the aggregate compartment. Unlike the Soyuz's four segments on each panel, the 7K-LI had three per panel, with a wingspan of nine meters and a total

surface area of eleven square meters.

Apart from the deletions, TsKBEM engineers supplemented or changed a number of systems

from the basic 7K-OK Soyuz craft. These included the attitude orientation system, which had

improved solar (the 99K) and stellar sensors (the lOOK), gyroscopes and command instruments,

memory devices, and so on. For transmitting telemetric information, the engineers introduced a

pencil-beam parabolic antenna operating in the decimeter range, which was attached at the front

of the descent apparatus, The antenna had its own self-contained optical sensor for aiming at

Earth (the t01K). The antenna as a whole would be discarded once its work was finished. Other

antennas included short-range ones at the end of the solar panels (for radio communications)

and additional ones for ultra-shortwave telemetry and radiotelemetry.

557
558

Theguidancesystemforthe7K-LIspacecraftwasdevelopedcooperativelybytheorganizationsofMishinandPilyuginbasedonearliermodelsusedfordeepspaceprobesaswellas

controlenginesforearliershipsandrocketstages.ForthefirstimeinaSovietpilotedspacecraft,

theguidancesystemsoperatedonthebasisofathree-axisstabilizedplatformandaspecialcomputernamedthe/Trgon-II, developed by Scientific-Research Institute of Digital Electronic

Computing Technology. It would serve as the prototype for all further models in the Soyuz

spacecraft.

The 7K-LI spacecraft had a total length of five meters with the support cone and four and

a half meters without. Maximum diameter was 2,72 meters at the base and 2.2 meters around

the main body. The total length on the pad of the UR-5OOK, Blok D, ?%LI, and launch escape

tower combination was just over sixty-one meters, far exceeding the length of Soyuz spacecraft

stack/_°

/_ nominal mission profile of the circumlunar mission would begin with the launch of the

UR-5OOKProton booster with its 7K-L I and Btok D payloads. During the launch, the ship would

be beneath a fairing, which would be cast off after passing through the dense layers of the

atmosphere. The partially filled Blok D would fire for the first time to achieve sufficient velocity to lift itself and the 7K-LI into an Earth orbit with the parameters of 220 by 190 kilometers

inclined at fifty-one and a half degrees. The cosmonauts aboard would check the state of all

systems for a period of one orbit or one day, depending on the circumstances, orient the stack

for boost toward the Moon, and then separate the support cone from the apex of the spacecraft. Blok D would fire for a sufficient period of time to accelerate the stack to Earth escape

velocity toward the Moon. The stage would then separate while the ship's solar orientation system would put the spacecraft in a one-degree-per-second turning mode while ensuring maximal solar panel exposure to the Sun. The 7K-LI ship would circle around the Moon at a range

of 1,000 to 12,000 kilometers while the cosmonauts would carry out photography and TV sessions. The scientific investigations planned for the automated precursor missions would

include studying radiation through the flight path, studying cosmic rays, and performing experiments on small biological payloads. During the course of the seven days in flight, the $5.53

main engine of the ship would carry out three or four mid-course corrections: the first on the

outbound trajectory at 250,000 kilometers from Earth and the second and third ones on the

return trajectory at 320,000 and t50,000 kilometers, respectively, from Earth.

Before reentry back into Earth's atmosphere, the parabolic antenna and instrumentaggregate compartment would separate from the descent apparatus with its two-person crew,

The precision-guided reentry had two endo-atmospheric phases and an intermediate exoatmospheric portion to radically decrease the gravitational loads subjected to the crew. The first

"dip" into the atmosphere would decelerate the vehicle to about just over seven and a half kilometers per second, after which the capsule would "bounce" out of the atmosphere along a ballistic trajectory and reenter the atmosphere again at a reduced velocity of 200 meters per second.

P, special guidance system would control the motion of the descent apparatus throughout this

entire portion by changing the lift force via roll control of the capsule. The length of return trajectory would vary between 6,000 and 10,500 kilometers, depending on the angle between the

horizontal plane and the ship at the moment of entry: this was also an important determinant

of radio visibility with ground communications stations, gfter the double-dip reentry, the capsule

would come down by parachute, discard its thermal shielding, and finally land in Kazakhstan by

using soft-landing engines much like the Soyuz spacecraft. If for some reason the guided reentry

130. Ibid. pp 235-36:Afanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft":I ,q.MarininandS,Kh. Shamsutdinov,"Soviet

Programs[or Lunar Flights" {Englishtitle), Zemlya i uselennayano 4 (July-August 1993): 62-69: Lardier,

LZtstronautique5ovietique,p. 159:Glushko.Kosmonautikaentsiklopediya,pp. 12930. The two batteriesforthe

7K-LIwerea silver-zincbatteryandcalcium-nickelbattery(blok 800).

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

procedure failed, the descent apparatus would be able to accomplish a simple ballistic reentry into

the atmosphere with a subsequent landing in the Indian Ocean, '_

There was one additional cautionary element of the LI circumlunar project, introduced to compensate for any potential troubles with the UR-5OOK Proton launch vehicle. From early discussions

in the fall of 1965, Korolev's engineers had expressed reservations of launching cosmonauts on the

still-untested Proton booster--concerns motivated primarily by the use of toxic storable propellants

in the rocket. As insurance against the possibility of designers not being able to declare the Proton

safe enough to launch humans, Mishin came up with a plan to launch the ?K-LI on the Proton in

an automated mode. The crew would be launched separately on a special variant of the Soyuz,

which would dock with the 7K-LI ship. The two cosmonauts wearing their Yastreb (" Hawk") EVA

suits would exit the Soyuz and transfer into the 7K-Lt via "a curved tunnel in the.., support

cone." '_ The Soyuz would then automatically undock, while the cosmonauts in the L I woutd carry

out their circumlunar mission after a corresponding boost from the Blok D stage. For this plan to

work, TsKBEM had to accommodate the manufacture of two special modifications of the 7K-OK

and 7K-LI vehicles. The 7K-OK's modification, designated 7K-OK-T, was equipped with a forward

unit equipped for docking with a 7K-LI. The 7K-LI's modification not only had the "curved tunnel"

but also a custom-built passive docking unit installed at the forward end of the spacecraft at the

support cone. This heavy unit would be discarded once the transfer took place and before TLI. _

The Military-Industrial Commission, on April 27, 1966, adopted a decree (no. t01 ), titled "On

Approving the Work Plan to Build the 7K-LI Piloted Spacecraft." which addressed the entire spectrum of issues associated with the L I circumlunar program. The commission approved the manufacture of fourteen such spacecraft: five in 1966 and nine in 1967. Ground testing was to finish and

flight testing begin by the last quarter of 1966 or the first quarter of 1967. Among other things, the

decree specified schedules for the development, manufacture, and delivery of L I simulators and the

establishment of a search-and-rescue service for a spaceship returning from the Moon. '_ According

to the commission's decree, a specific schedule of operations was established for the program:

• September 1966--ground testing of one ship (7K-LI no. I P) at Tyura-Tam

• October 1966--two automated Earth-orbital tests (using 7K-LI nos. 2P and 3P)

• November-December 1966--two automated circumlunar flights (using 7K-LI nos. 4 and 5)

• December 1966-May 1967--five piloted circumlunar flight with crew transferred to the

7K-LI in Earth orbit after being launched on the 7K-OK-T Soyuz (using 7K-LI nos. 6 through IO)

• June-September 1967--four piloted circumlunar flight with crews launched in the 7K-Lt

(using 7K-LI nos. II through 14)

Such a schedule would ensure the fulfillment of the primary objective of a piloted circumlunar

mission prior to the fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution in November 1967.

13I. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporcztsiya,pp. 238-39: Marinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet

Programsfor Lunar Flights": Petrovich, ed, The Soviet Encyclopaedia o[ Space Flight, pp 513-14

132. Marinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Lunar [lights."

133. The details of the "curved tunnel" and the special docking unit on the 7K-LI in this variant remain

unknown.

134. N.P. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for," Vozdushniy transport no. 44 (1993): 8-9: Semenov,ed,

Raketno-Kosm_cheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 237. Note that one of the stipulations of the decreewas the official termination of Chelomey's UR-5OOK-LKI program in the "full-scale modeling stage.The remaining stages, which envisioned the complete ground-based optimization of all the systems of the carrier and the vehicle, as well as the

performance of 12 unmanned and I0 manned launches of the UR-SOOK-LKcomplex, were canceled by the same

decree." SeeIgor Afanasyev, "Without the Stamp 'Secret': Circling the Moon: Chelomey's Project" (English title).

Krasnaya zuezda. October 28, 1995.

559
560

AswithmostothertimetablesoftheSovietspaceeffortoftheperiod,thereweredelays.

ManywithinTsKBEMbelievedtheentireprogramtobeauselessdiversionfromthemainL3

landingproject.AlthoughtheLIprojecthadmovedintofirstpriorityovertheL3, there were

continuous postponements in issuing the technical documentation on the spacecraft, as well

as testing delays in the construction of and upgrades to the two Proton launch complexes at

Tyura-Tam. Being a matter of state importance, the status of the project was constantly examined at the ministry level throughout 1966. The concurrent work on the mainstream Soyuz

effort was clearly a major drain on facilities and resources. If TsKBEM believed before that carrying out three full-scale piloted projects (Soyuz, L I, and N I-L3) was a manageable prospect,

the employees were finding out that they were stretched to the limit. By December 1966, a single 7K-LI spaceship had yet to get off the ground.

On December 9, 1966, at a meeting of the Council of Chief Designers, Mishin presented a

new schedule of flights for the L I program. Automated test flights of the first phase would

include only four missions. Of these, the first two (2P and 3P) would be in Earth orbit to test

out Blok D firings, while the remaining two (4L and 5L) would fly full-scale circumlunar missions

and return to Earth. After these flights finished in March-May 1967, the first crew would fly to

the Moon on June 25, 1967 aboard 6L Kamanin noted about the meeting: "All the designers

expressed doubts that the work could be accomplished within such a short timeframe. Mishin

explained to them that he did not invent the schedule, but that it had been dictated to him by

Ustinov and Smirnov."'_5 An ad hoe twenW-member State Commission to guide the entire test

program was established in mid-December with First Deputy Minister of General Machine

Building Tyulin as its chair. Among its members were Mishin, Chelomey, and Keldysh. '_"

The State Commission for LI met for the first time on December 24, when Mishin,

Chelomey, and Barmin presented reports on the readiness of the spacecraft, the launch vehicle, and the launch pads, respectively. It was evidently the first time that all the heads of the

various branches involved in the project discussed the project together. In accordance with the

recommendation of the Council of Chief Designers, the new target date for the first piloted circumlunar mission was set for July 26, 1967. This would be preceded by the four automated

flights. During the meeting, Mishin also presented his conception of the "fall-back" dockingin-Earth-orbit scenario to launch the crew not on the Proton booster, but rather in a /'K-OK-T

Soyuz spacecraft. After the first few outbound piloted missions, once engineers had gained a

modicum of faith in the Proton booster, the cosmonauts would fly directly into orbit on the

Proton. ,_,'

During a second meeting of the commission on December 30, Mishin, Chelomey, and

Barmin reported that all systems were on track for the first LI launch at the end of January. All

the members of the commission were due to arrive at Tyura-Tam on January I0-12, 1967. There

was some discussion on the establishment of search-and-rescue services for vehicles returning

from the Moon. Because, for the first time, the landing of a Soviet piloted spacecraft could be

in the oceans, Marshal Matvey V. Zakharov, the Ministry of Defense General Staff Chief, had

issued an order on December 21 that assigned the Air Force the responsibility for all land recov135. Kamanin. "A Goal Worth Working for," no. 45.

136 The membersof the StateCommission for LI included: G. A. Tyulin (MOM). V. P. Mishin (TsKBI:M).

V N Chelomey (TsKBM), M. V. Keldysh (AN SSSR).V. A. Anfilatov (affiliation unknown), N N. Gurovskiy(IMBP),

N P Kamanin (WS), ,q G. Karas (TsUKOS), V. A. Kasatanov (affiliation unknown), V. A Khazanov (affiliation

unknown), A. A Kurushin (NIIP-5), G. P. Melnikov (NIl-4), N K. Mordasov (affiliation unknown), Yu. A.

Mozzhorin (TsNIIMash), A G Mrykin (MOM), D. P, Polukhin (TsKBM Branch No. I), Ye.V. Shabarov (TsKBEM),

!. I. Spitsa(TsKIK), Ya. I. Tregub(TsKBEM),and Yu. N. Trulanov (TsKBM Branch No. I). SeeSemenov,ed., RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p 238.

131 Kamanin. "A Goal Worth Working for," no. 45.

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
A NEW BEGINNING

ery operations and the Navy the responsibility for all sea recovery operations. In addition, tracking stations at Feodosiya and Llssuriysk were being modified to communicate with returning

spacecraft from the Moon.

The final point of discussion at the meeting was the selection of crews for the project.

Cosmonauts had been unofficially grouped together to train for the LI mission by early

September 1966. By early December, the main players had agreed on a list of fourteen men from

the larger team at the Cosmonaut Training Center to train specifically for this project. '_8Because

of the increasing requirements for cosmonauts in the mainstream 7K-OK Soyuz program, whose

launches had already begun by this time, Kamanin and Mishin agreed to train cosmonauts by

late December for the L I independently of Soyuz. Cosmonauts who would fly Soyuz missions

would be added sequentially to the circumlunar program. The LI group was to undergo a fivemonth-long training program beginning on January I, 1967. Each crew would include a commander who had experience from a previous space mission. ByJanuary 1967, eleven lucky men

had been selected to train for the project, including Leonov, the spacewalker from Voskhod 2,

and Popovich, the ebullient pilot from Vostok 4, both favorites for the first outbound flight. ';9

The training for these men was impeded to a great degree by the absence of LI simulators,

which, despite much discussion, the M. M. Flight Gromov Flight-Research Institute had not

delivered by the end of 1966 to the Cosmonaut Training Center. The cosmonauts instead trained

in 7K-OK Soyuz simulators equipped with new control instruments.

The L I Takes Flight

The first 7K-LI spacecraft was a model built specifically for ground testing at Tyura-Tam.

These tests were completed successfully in conjunction with a UR-5OOK-Blok D combination

in January. '4°The success did little to instill confidence that the planners would be able to maintain the compressed schedule handed down by Ustinov and Smirnov. The State Commission

met twice on January 17, 1967, and heard reports from a number of chief designers involved in

the program. There were "new difficulties" in the preparation of the first Earth-orbital mission,

bringing Mishin and TsKBEM under fire from members of the commission. Some designers

received reprimands; the commission decided to report the most glaring lags in work to the

Central Committee. Chief Designers Grigoriy I. Voronin (of KB Nauka) and Gay I. Severin (of

KB Zvezda), responsible for life support, emerged with an unlikely proposal to limit the number of cosmonauts in the 7K-LI crew to one, because of difficulties with the life support system./q final decision on the issue was delayed. '4_

At a meeting of the State Commission on February 14, the first test flight of the ZK-LI,

originally scheduled for January 1967, was put back to late February or early March. The first

two flights would primarily test the Blok D TLI stage with two firings: one to achieve Earth orbit

and the second to boost the payload to escape velocity. No recovery was planned on either

flight. Incredibly, the commission still hoped to carry out four automated missions prior to a

piloted one set for June 26, t967, despite the fact that within the same period, Mishin and the

138. Ibid. The cosmonauts for the 7K-LI program were G. T. Beregovoy,V. F.Bykovskiy, Yu. A. Gagarin.

Ye, V. Khrunov, /q. A. Leonov, V. M Komarov. A G, Nikolayev, V. A Shatalov,and B. V. Volynov as crew commanders and G. M. Grechko,V. N Kubasov, O. G Makarov,V. N. Volkov. and A. S. Yeliseyevasflight engineers.

139. Kamanin. "A Goal Worth Working for," no. 46. The new 7K-LI training group had been agreedon as

early as December24, 1966,They were P.I. Klimuk./_ A. Leonov, E R. Popovich. M A. Voloshin, and B. V Volynov

(all commanders) and Yu. R ,qrtyukhin. G. M. Grechko,O G, Makarov, N. N, Rukavishnikov,V. I Sevastyanov,and

/¥ F.Voronov (all flight engineers).

_40. ,qfanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft."

141. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for," no 46.

561
562

other chief designers were to carry out the first highly complex Soyuz mission of docking two

such ships in Earth orbit with the subsequent transfer of cosmonauts. Through it all, Mishin,

Chertok, and others tried to compensate for the poor management conditions by personally

appealing to subcontractors to deliver parts on time. Unbelievably at this late stage, some contractors, such as Chief Designer Ryazanskiy, were not only behind schedule, but did not even

know that they had been assigned to make a parts delivery in the first place. _'_Without a singular overseeing entity such as NASA, there was no coordinated plan for maintaining deadlines

for dozens of subcontractors.

Some of the pressure on the Soviets to accelerate their lunar program was alleviated by a

tragic accident half a world away. By early 1961, NASA was preparing for the first flight of the

Apollo Command and Service Module, the spacecraft intended to take the first astronauts to

the Moon. The first mission, Apollo I, was planned to thoroughly test all the essential systems

aboard the Block I class of modules. The fourteen-day mission, set tentatively for launch on

February 2 I, 1967, was to be crewed by astronauts Lt. Colonel Virgil I. Grissom, Lt. Colonel

Edward H. White II, and Lt. Commander Roger B. Chaffee. Both Grissom and White had flown

previous space missions. In preparation for the launch, the crewmembers were simulating a

countdown on January 27, when arcs from electrical wiring in an equipment bay in the

Command Module began a fire. In the l O0-percent oxygen atmosphere of the capsule, the crew

succumbed to burns and asphyxia within minutes of the beginning of the fire/4_

NASA immediately canceled all further missions in the Apollo program and established

several teams to determine the causes of the accident. Outside analysts predicted that this

would set back the Apollo program by at least a year, if not more. The accident inadvertently

gave the Soviet Union an added probability to catch up with the United States following inactivity lasting almost two years. Despite the tragic nature of circumstances, the disaster no doubt

instilled a glimmer of hope among the Soviets that perhaps the "race to the Moon" was still a

race that had no clear winner. It would not have been surprising if Mishin, Chelomey, Keldysh,

and others believed for this brief window that it was a foregone conclusion that the first human

to fly around the Moon would be a Soviet citizen.

The first 7K-LI spacecraft, vehicle no. 2P, was launched from Tyura-Tam at 1430 hours,

33 seconds Moscow Time on March I0, 1967, into a 190- by 310-kilometer Earth orbit inclined

at fifty-one and a half degrees to the equator. It was the very first launch of the graceful silver

four-stage Proton booster. The spacecraft was named Kosmos-146 upon entering orbit, no doubt

to hide the true mission of the vehicle. The Blok D stage, also in its first mission, performed flawlessly, firing both times--the second time boosting the 5,017-kilogram ZK-LI vehicle to escape

velocity. All except two on-board systems on the spacecraft operated without fault. The RDM3 radio beacon did not turn off at the computed time because of a circuit error, and the unit

worked continuously for forty-two hours instead of the nominal forty minutes. The second

minor problem was a fault in the thermo-regulation system that led to an unexpected fall in pressure in one of the main lines.'44 Kosmos- 146 remained in orbit for about nine days. while ground

controllers maintained contact for at least five days. _4'The spacecraft probably reached lunar distance apogee before returning back to the vicinity of Earth and burning up on reentry.

The success of Kosmos-146 was no doubt a tremendous boost for engineers who had

labored over the program for more than a year. The second spaceworthy 7K-LI vehicle, space142. Ibid

143. Ezell.NASA Historical Data Book, Volume IL p. 176.

144. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 240-41. The actual type of the 7K L I spacecraft was 7K-LIP, with the "p" indicating a simplified version not equipped for recovery.

145 Westerners trackedtransmissions from the payload during March II- 15at 20.008 megahertz. SeeSven

Grahn and Dieter Oslender, "Cosmos 146and 154," Spaceflight 22 (March 1980): 121-23

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
R New BEGINNING

craft no. 3P, was quickly prepared for launch within less than thirty days. The vehicle would

repeat the exact same profile as its predecessor, except Blok D's second firing would follow one

day after entering Earth orbit instead of after one orbit. On April 6, Chelomey, Glushko, Barmin,

and other chief designers arrived at Tyura-Tam to view the launch, along with ten cosmonauts

who were training for the circumlunar flights. The latter group, including Leonov and Popovich,

would study the equipment at the launch pad and get acquainted with all prelaunch operations

involving the Proton booster. It was the first time that they physically saw the launch vehicle.

On April 8, the designers and guests watched the launch from site 92, the location of the

assembly-testing building for the Proton, a distance of just over one and a half kilometers from

the pad at site 81, Lt. General Kamanin described the scene:

Unlike the [R-7,] the UR-5OOKrocket has a simple and well-designed service frame: the

base of the frame is to one side of the rocket, but it "hugs it" with five service landings

and has two elevators. ,z]fter the frame is opened the rocket stands there like a beautiful white church .... '_

gt exactly 1200 hours, 33 seconds Moscow Time, the booster gracefully lifted off from its

pad. Despite gusts as high as eighteen meters per second, the performance of all four stages,

including the first firing of Blok D, was nominal. The 5,O20-kilogram 7K-LI ship entered a

186- by 232-kilometer orbit with a fifty-one-and-a-half-degree inclination to the equator. T/qSS

announced the mission under the designation of Kosmos-154. About forty minutes following

launch, all the members of the State Commission gathered at the office of Colonel Kirillov, the

newly appointed Deputy Commander of Cosmodrome, to congratulate Chelomey on the success. Throughout the day, ground controllers monitored all systems aboard the Blok D-LI stack

in Earth orbit, conscious of the fact that this would be the first time in the Soviet space program when an upper stage would fire after a stay of twenty-four hours in weightlessness and

vacuum.

The news turned sour on April 9, when telemetry proved that Blok D had failed to fire for

the second time. After an analysis of incoming data, TsKBEM engineers believed that an instrument switch had been left in the wrong position because of negligence on their part. The

instrument was used for triggering a system of engines that stabilize the propellant after the

first firing of the Blok D main engine. The engines of this system were apparently prematurely

jettisoned, disabling the main engine completely because it was unable to effectively use the

propellants. _7The blame for the error fell on Mishin's shoulders, and State Commission

Chairman Tyulin gave him a dressing down. Kamanin recalled:

Tyulin was furious and swore at him. In the evening, still fuming after the unpleasant

experience of reporting to Ustinov and Smirnov, he gave a devastating but perfectly

accurate assessment of Misflin: "He has five times more arrogance than Korolev and ten

times less competence. "'_

The Kosmos- 154 stack remained in its low-Earth orbit for about two days following launch

before decaying naturally. The failure undoubtedly slowed the pace of the circumlunar program,

146, Kamanin. "A Goal Worth Working for," no, 46.

147, Ibid., t_fanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, p, 241.

148. Kamanin, "P, Goal Worth Working for." no. 46. p. 9

563
564

and the prospect of carrying out the first piloted mission in June or July must have seemed

shaky by any stretch of the imagination, especially given the intensive work concurrent in the

Earth-orbital Soyuz program. At the same time, even it the June-July deadline seemed out of

reach, there was still much hope that two Soviet men would circle the Moon by the November

1967 deadline. But this still vibrant hope was dealt a fatal blow just sixteen days after the

launch of Kosmos-154. It would be one of the most devastating incidents in the history of the

Soviet piloted space program--an event that crippled its run in the race for the Moon.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
I

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TRAGEDY

The Soyuz spacecraft was the centerpiece of the post-Korolev space program. Since Korolev's

death in January 1966, the design, development, and testing of the 7K-OK Earth-orbital Soyuz

were expected to lead to the most spectacular mission in the Soviet canon to date: the docking

of two Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit, followed by the transfer of two crewmembers from one

vehicle to the other via a spacewalk. Soviet space program leaders strongly believed that this one

mission would overshadow the cumulative achievements of all ten of NASA's Gemini flights

during 1965-66. Thousands of engineers worked toward this singular goal to reestablish Soviet

preeminence in piloted space exploration. From a political, technical, and human perspective, the

failure to do so was not an option. But as haste crept into the preparations, an atmosphere of

unease began to pervade the program.

Civilians in Space

For many years before his death, Sergey R Korolev had spoken of sending not only military

officers into space, but also the young civilian engineers who actually designed and developed

Soviet spacecraft, such as Vostok. Voskhod, and Soyuz. Intermittently throughout the early

1960s, several engineers at OKB-I had passed through preliminary medical screening, but

their candidacy as cosmonauts was never taken seriously by the Soviet Air Force. the service

responsible for all cosmonaut training) The impetus to include engineers on spacecraft increased

significantly with the development of the 7K-OK Soyuz spacecraft, which afforded two to three

extra seats for missions. In September 1965, eight military cosmonauts began training for the

docking and EVA Soyuz mission, prompting Korolev to entrust one of his engineers to look into

the matter of forming a parallel civilian training group. _At least eleven civilians from the design

bureau passed the initial medical screening at the Ministry of Health's Institute of Biomedical

Problems. but Korolev's death put the matter temporarily on the backburner?

I In September 1961, the Air Force allowed Korolev to send civilian engineers through medical screening.

See Rex Hall. "Soviet Civilian Cosmonauts," in Michael Cassutt. ed.. Who's Who in Space: The International Space

Year Edition (New York: Macmillan. 1992), p. 278

2, The eight military cosmonauts who began training in early September 1965 for the first Soyuz mqssion

were V. F Bykovskiy, Yu. A. Gagarin, M V. Gorbatko, Ye. V. Khrunov, P I Kolodin, V M Komarov, A. G Nikolayev,

and A. F.Voronov. See N R Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: kniga vtoraya, t964-1966gg (Moscow: Infortekst IF, 1997).

pp. 347, 349: N. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 44 (t993): 8 9. These

eight men were still in training for the first Soyuz mission by late August 1966.

3 These eleven men were S. N. Anokhin. V. Ye Bugrov, G. A Dolgopolov, G. M. Grechko. V. N. Kubasov,

O. G. Makarov, N. N. Rukavishnikov, V. A. Timchenko, V A. Yazdovskiy, and A S. Yeliseyev. See I. Marinin, "The

First Civilian Cosmonauts" (in Russian), Nouosti kosmonautiki 12-13 (June 3-30. 1996): 81 87.

565
566

With unexpected vengeance new Chief Designer Mishin took up the gauntlet of training

civilians, in part motivated by his hostility toward the Air Force, which coveted its total monopoly over cosmonaut training. A governmental decree six years previously had codified that all

Soviet cosmonauts, regardless of their affiliations, should be trained exclusively at the Air

Force's Cosmonaut Training Center? But without the agreement of either the Ministry of

General Machine Building or the Ministry of Defense, Mishin signed an official order (no. 43)

on May 23. 1966. establishing the 73 Ist Flight-Methods Department, which consisted of the

first civilian "cosmonauts group" in the Soviet Union. The group members were:

• Sergey N. Anokhin (fifty-six years old)

• Vladimir N. Bugrov (thirty-three)

• Gennadiy A. Dolgopolov (thirty)

• Georgiy M. Grechko (thirty-four)

• Vateriy N. Kubasov (thirty-one)

• Oteg G. Makarov (thirty-three)

• Vladistav N. Volkov (thirty)

• Aleksey S. Yeliseyev (thirty-one) _

Anokhin was an odd selection for the group because he was more than twenty years

older than the rest. A famous World War II pilot, he had gone on to be one of the most accomplished test pilots in the Soviet Union, flying out of the famous M. M. Gromov Flight-Research

Institute outside of Moscow. Acquainted with Korolev since the wartime days, Anokhin had been

invited to head up a flight testing department at OKB-I in April 1964, ostensibly to oversee the

training of future cosmonauts from the design bureau? Given his age (he was six years older than

Mishin), his inclusion in the group seems to have been more of a personal favor to Korolev's

memory than to any serious plan to launch him into space.

Without official recognition from the Air Force, the eight candidates had little hope of

actually flying in space and were known only as "cosmonaut-testers." Mishin, however, tried

everything in his power to bypass official Air Force rules. On June 15, t966, he forced through

a formal Military-Industrial Commission decree (no. 144) that stipulated that his eight civilian

cosmonaut-testers be considered as candidates for the forthcoming Soyuz flight.' By this time,

the friction between the Air Force, represented by the ubiquitous Lt. General Nikolay P. Kamanin,

and TsKBEM began to affect the course of the Soyuz program. Without any agreement on the

crew, the engineers faced great difficulties in establishing timetables for the highly complex joint

mission. In late June, Mishin even went so far as to propose completely civilian crews for the

mission, although the eight military officers were finishing up several months of training."

Throughout the month of July, the arguments went back and forth, with both Mishin

and Kamanin refusing to budge on their positions, Although First Deputy Minister of

General Machine Building Tyulin served as a mediator, Mishin convinced him and other officials,

4. This decreewas issuedon August 3. 1960.Seeibid.

5. Ibid : Yu. P, Semenov, ed., Rakerno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya "Energiya" irneni 5 P Koroleua

(Korolev: RKK Energiya,named after S. P.Korolev. 1996), p. 426.

6. Semenov, ed, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 425: Hatl. "Soviet Civilian Cosmonauts,"

p. 287.

7, Kamanin, "t:1Goal Worth Working for," no. 44; Marinin, "The First Civilian Cosmonauts": Semenov,

ed.. RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 426.

8. The civilian crews proposed by Mishin were Dolgopolov/Yeliseyev/Volkov (primary) and

_nokhin/MakarovlGrechko (backup). SeeMarinin. "The First Civilian Cosmonauts." tn early July, there was a new

civilian crew proposal: DolgopolovlMakarov (Soyuz I ) and YeliseyevlKubasov(Soyuz 2). SeeKamanin, Skrytiy kosmos 1964-1966. p. 348.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

including Academy of Sciences President Keldysh and Deputy Minister of Health gvetik I.

Burnazyan, to approve a program on July 30 to train a group of civilian cosmonauts for the L I

circumlunar program. The implication was clear: Mishin would no longer use the Air Force's

Cosmonaut Training Center. Kamanin, predictably, called the document "a piece of nonsense. "_

The acrimony came to a head in early August, when First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Air

Force Marshal Sergey I. Rudenko, Kamanin's immediate boss. agreed on a compromise: to allow

civilians to fly, but only if they passed through military medical screening and then trained at the

Cosmonaut Training Center. Although Kamanin still objected, Mishin apparently found the plan

agreeable, and on August t 6, he wrote a letter to Kamanin explaining that civilian engineers should

fly on the Soyuz spacecraft because "design solutions can only be checked by highly qualified

specialists directly involved in designing and ground testing of the spacecraft .... ,,,o

On August 31, the eight TsKBEM engineers led by Anokhin arrived at the Air Force's

Central Scientific-Research Aviation Hospital for medical screening. Having passed through the

tests, Grechko, Kubasov, and Volkov arrived at the Cosmonaut Training Center on September

5, the first group of civilians engineers in the Soviet space program to do so. The three, joined

later by Yeliseyev, began training on October I. '_ Makarov arrived in November, All five were

accomplished engineers in their own right, participating in many of the historic events during

the early space program. Grechko had helped fuel the early R-Ts before launches in 1957.

Makarov had been on the teams that designed the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz spacecraft. For

the Soyuz, L I, and L3 programs, each of these engineers were to occupy the flight engineer's seat--

"the member of the crew.., with responsibility for the correct operation of on-board systems and

carrying out the flight program." ': The remaining three from the group--Anokhin, Bugrov, and

Dolgopolov--failed to pass the Air Force's medical screening and were never considered for

these Soyuz missions."

The addition of civilian engineers to train for the Soyuz flights, while it did not end the

battle between TsKBEM and the Air Force on the issue of cosmonaut selection, did allow Soyuz

training to proceed without further disruptions. The training regime was, however, incredibly

compressed. Although all the civilians had the advantage of being intimately familiar with the

7K-OK vehicle, they still had a scant three months before the docking mission, then set for early

January 1967. By mid-November, Kamanin was looking at a mixed crew composed of military officers, in training for more than a year, and the new civilians. '4 Ultimately, Mishin's insistence on

training civilian engineers had a long-lasting legacy on the composition of crews for the next thirty years of the Soviet and later Russian space programs. During the late 198Os and throughout the

1990s, each and every crew to the Mir space station included a flight engineer who was a

spacecraft designer from the design bureau, now known as the Energiya Rocket-Space

Corporation (RKK Energiya).

Despite the arrival of the new civilian engineers at the Cosmonaut Training Center,

Kamanin stubbornly remained resistant to allowing the engineers to [ly on the immediate Soyuz

missions. On his orders, the eight military officers continued to train for the flight, two

of whom--Gorbatko and Khrunov--prepared for the EVA from one ship to another. Mishin,

9. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for." no. 44.

Io. Ibid.

I I. Marinin, "The First Civilian Cosmonauts."

12. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiyG, p. 425, Firstfootnote.

13. Grechko. Kubasov, Makarov, Yeliseyev,and Volkov werejoined on January 8, 1967,by two more civilian engineers from TsKBEM:V. I, Sevastyanovand N. N. Rukavishnikov.Grechko dropped out of training temporarily when he broke a leg during parachute training on or about October 10, 1966. See Marinin, "The First Civilian

Cosmonauts."

14. N. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for" (English title). Vozdushniy transport 45 (I 993): 8-9.

567
568

however, insisted that Kubasov and Yeliseyev, two of his own men, be put on the flight for the

spacewalk. On November 16, 1966, the Communist Party's Defense Industries Department

Chief Serbin finally arbitrated a compromise: of the two EVA cosmonauts, one would be from

the Air Force (Khrunov) and one from TsKBEM (Yeliseyev). There was some controversy over

Yeliseyev's past. The Soviet security apparatus had discovered that Yeliseyev's original last name

was Kumytis, a Lithuanian name. His father, Stanislav A. Kumytis, had been arrested in 1935 and

spent five years in jail for "anti-Soviet agitation." Later, Yeliseyev had taken his wife's last name

to put the past behind him. Evidently. the KGB let the issue go, although in past years such

"tarnished" biographies had given pause to select cosmonauts for flight crews. ''_

The remaining cosmonauts on the docking flight would all be military officers. Since

September 1965, four Air Force cosmonauts had been training for the commander's spot on the

two Soyuz spacecraft: veterans Bykovskiy, Gagarin, Komarov, and Nikolayev. Of them, it seems

that Vladimir Komarov had been the leading contender for the commander aboard the active

Soyuz, and he distinguished himself with excellent grades during mission training, Of all

the flown and unflown cosmonauts, there was little doubt that he was the most technically

accomplished as well as the most intellectually sophisticated member. He had originally served as

a fighter pilot in the Caucasus military district during the early 1950s before joining the prestigious

N. Ye. Zhukovskiy Air-Engineering Academy in August 1954. He graduated five years later, in time

to join the State Red Banner Scientific-Research Institute of the Air Force with the rank of

"captain engineer" of the Air Force. When he joined the cosmonaut team--that is, military unit

no. 26266--in 1960, he was only one of two individuals who had graduated from Air Force acad

emies: the rest had only finished the equivalent of American junior colleges. Komarov nearly

dropped out of training early on, because of the diagnosis of an irregular heartbeat, but he had

persevered and flew into space as the commander of the historic throe-person Voskhod crew in

October 1964. Within less than two years, he had become the sole contender for the primary

crew commander's spot for the first Soyuz flight. '6 At a State Commission meeting at Tyura-Tam

on November 2 I. 1966. it was Komarov who announced the candidates for the two spacecraft:

Soyuz I would fly with Komarov, and Soyuz 2 would fly with Bykovskiy. Yeliseyev, and Khrunov."

Yeliseyev was the sole civilian engineer from Mishin's design bureau, Bykovskiy was the

veteran from Vostok 5, and Khrunov was one of the remaining unflown cosmonauts from the

famous "Gagarin group" of 1960. Gagarin was, for the first time in five years, back on a backup crew. Since his first mission in 1961, he had served as more of a public relations linchpin for

the Soviet space program than anything else. Some of his international duties were mitigated

by his appointment in late 1963 as a deputy director of the Cosmonaut Training Center--a desk

job that posited him as a leading member of the State Commissions for the Voskhod flights.

In the intervening period, Gagarin had gained weight, and his flying skills seemed to have

deteriorated. This was not simply Gagarin's fault: cosmonaut overseer Kamanin had continually

opposed Gagarin's reassignment back to cosmonaut training. As early as April 1963, Kamanin

emoted that "Gagarin hopes that someday he will fly new space missions. It is unlikely,

however, that this will happen. Gagarin is too dear to mankind to risk his life for the sake of

an ordinary space flight. ''_ Gagarin, however, pursued a second flight with unfettered vigor

15. Kamanin, 5krytiy kosmos t964-1966, pp. 385-86. 389,390,391,394,395,399.

16. I Marinin, "P,nniversaries--Vladimir Komarov--70 Years" (English title], Nouosti kosmonGutik{ 6

(March 10-23, 1997): 51-53. Eordetails on the training programfor the first Soyuz mission through 1966. seeViktor

Mitroshenkov, Zemlya pod nebom (Moscow: Sovetskayarossiya. 1987), pp. 385-98.

17 Marinin, "The First Civilian Cosmonauts." The two backup crews were: Gagarin (Soyuz I) and

Nikolayev, Kubasov,and Gorbatko (Soyuz 2). Note that prior to the admission of civilian engineers (Yeliseyevand

Kubasov) on the crews, two military engineers had trained for the EVA transfer: P. h Kolodin and A F.Voronov.

18 N Kamanin, "For Him, Living Meant Flying" (English title), Vozdushniy tronsport 9 (1994): 8.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

and was even considered the primary contender for the Soyuz flight until April 1966, when a

combination of political and personal factors forced officials to replace him with Komarov.

Instead, Gagarin served as Komarov's backup. '_

Stumbling Toward Piloted Flight

According to the Military-Industrial Commission decree from August 1965, the Soyuz

program was to set off with the first automated missions in the first quarter of 1966. Upon

Mishin's official appointment as Chief Designer in May, one of his first tasks was to evaluate

the state of the project, and he was remarkably optimistic, scheduling the first piloted attempt

in August 1966. The plan at the time was to launch two automated Soyuz spacecraft to

check the operation of all systems in robotic mode. :° Needless to say, this schedule was not

maintained. Throughout 1966, engineers carried out ground testing of the spacecraft at a feverish pace. Apart from static testing on stands, the Soyuz was involved in intensive dynamic

design testing, work on the nominal separation of the three component modules, testing of

the payload shrouds, thermal testing, checking of the operation of the life support system in

pressure chambers, docking of ground models by using suspended cables in a high-altitude

chamber, testing of the engine units, flight testing of the landing system, and dynamic testing

of the launch escape system.

The engineers began the ground testing of the first flight model of the Soyuz spacecraft on

May 12, 1966. There were many problems. Instead of the anticipated thirty days, it took four

months to debug the ship. There were as many as 2,123 defects in the vehicle, significantly

affecting the pace of the project. The official history of the design bureau states that the

testing of the Soyuz spacecraft:

required the solution of a number o[ serious scientific-technical and management problems. which arose due to the considerable complexity, as compared to the "Vostok" and

"Voskhod" in the composition and logic of the functioning of the on-board systems .... :'

Among the factors that the engineers had to face were problems with the parachute

system. Serious defects were identified when two out of seven drop tests from the An-12

aircraft at Feodosiya failed. After one test on August 9, when the reserve parachute failed to

open, Kamanin prophetically wrote in his diaries:

One has to admit that the 7K-OK parachute system is worse than the parachute system

of the Vostoks. Ztnd the spacecraft isn't much to look at in general: the hatch is small.

the communications equipment is outdated, the emergency rescue system is primitiue

and so on. If the automatic docking device turns out to be unreliable (which cannot be

ruled out) our space program will be headed for an ignominious failure/:

19 On April 16, 1966, at a meeting at the Cosmonaut Training Center, officials proposed Komarov instead

of Gagarin asthe primary candidate for the first Soyuz flight. Gagarin was proposed ashis backup SeeMitroshenkov.

Zemtya pod nebom, p. 382. In January 1966,the primary crew for the first miss,on was Gagarin and Voronov

20. There was also a Military-Industrial Commission decreein early 1966 that stipulated that the first two

automated flights would be in August 1966,the joint piloted flight would be in September October 1966, and the

second joint piloted flight would be in November 1966. SeeMarinin, "The First Civilian Cosmonauts"

2 I. Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 177: B. Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi goryaefliye

dni kholodnoy uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1997), p. 402.

22. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for," no. 44. The parachutesystem was designed and built by NIEI

PDSheaded by Chief Designer P D. Tkachev

569
570

The political pressure to return to flight was

immense, as official TsKBEM historians noted later:

... it was impossible to allow a gap in

the realization of piloted [lights after

the successful series o[ launches of the

"Vostok" and "Voskhod" ships and it

was necessary to maintain the priority

in space research relative to the

./qmericans . . . there was also pressure

on the part o[ the government. Thus,

Deputy Minister [o[ _eneral Machine

Building Valentin Ya.] Litvinov personally daily in the morning carried out

operative meetings in the 44th assembly shop.., and signed a list o[ bonuses for accelerating workF _

To oversee the test launch phase of the

Soyuz spacecraft, the Soviet government established a new State Commission in October

1966, whose official title was the "State

Commission for Flight-Testing of the Soyuz

Spacecraft." Maj. General Kerim A. Kerimov, a

forty-nine-year-old artilleryman, formerly of the

Strategic Missile Forces, was appointed to head

Maj General Kerim Kerimov was the chair of the ad

hoc State Commission [or Soyuz from 1966 to 199I

.z]veteran Strategic Missile forces officer, he

officially served in several high positions in the

Ministry at General Machine Building during the

Soviet era (files of Peter Gorin)

the commission apparently to honor the late Korolev, who had originally suggested Kerimov for

the post. 2'_He was an odd choice for the position. Unlike the State Commissions for the Vostok,

Voskhod, LI, and N I-L3, it was the first occasion when a commission chair did not have a ministerial or even a deputy ministerial rank. In fact, the actual duties of the chairs of the N I-L3,

L I, and Soyuz State Commissions show a progressive decline in state importance with Minister

Afanasyev (for the N I-L3), First Deputy Minister Tyutin (for the L I), and Chief of the Ministry's

Third Chief Directorate Kerimov (for Soyuz), respectively. The latter was yet another former

artillery expert who had gone to Germany after the war to recover German A-4s. Throughout

the 1950s the native/qzerbayjani had worked at Kapustin Yar before heading the first space

directorate at the Strategic Missile Forces. In 1965, he quit the Strategic Missile Forces under

dubious circumstances before going on to the Ministry of General Machine Building.

Throughout the summer of 1966, senior space officials met on several occasions to agree

on a manifest leading up to the ambitious docking mission. Because almost all the systems on

board the/K-OK Soyuz spacecraft were automated, some members recommended that instead

of two automated solo flights, engineers carry out a full-scale rendezvous and docking mission

23. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 178.

24. K. Isaakov,"Earth--Our PaternalHome" (English title). Bakinskiy rabochiy, August 19, 987. p. 3: V.

Ovcharov and L. Chernenko. "Recommended by Korolev" {English title). Sovetskayarossiya.August 22, 1987,p. 2:

S. Leskov,"Sputnik." Komsomolskaya prauda, October 4. 1987,p. 4: "Living History, Noteworthy Events:Rockets

Go Into Space" (English title), Souety narodnykh no. 4 (April 1988}: 50-53: K Isaakov, "Breakthrough into the

Unknown: Today is Cosmonautics Day" (English title}, Bakinskiy rabochiy, April 12, 1988. p. 3: Kamanin. Skrytiy

kosmos. 1964-t966, pp 380,383

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

between the two ships. Among those in favor of such a plan was Chief Designer Armen S.

Mnatsakanyan of the Scientific-Research Institute for Precision Instruments, responsible for the

design and development of the Igla rendezvous and docking radar system. After assessing the

pros and cons, Kerimov and Mishin agreed to Mnatsakanyan's suggestion. The first two automated flight models of the 7K-OK Soyuz arrived at Tyura-Tam in August 1966 for their launches

in September. Further problems, however, necessitated moving the launches to November 1966.

This was to be followed in January or February of the following year with the piloted mission.

On the morning of November 18, the commission met at Tyura-Tam in preparation for the

upcoming dual launches set for November 26-27. Spaceship no. 2, the active Soyuz, would be

launched first, followed twenty-four hours later by Spaceship no. I, the passive Soyuz. Upon

orbital insertion, if the passive ship was within twenty kilometers of the active vehicle, then

docking would take place between the two ships on the passive one's first or second orbit. If

the distance was greater, then the docking would occur a day later. If all systems were operating ideally, then the two spacecraft would remain docked for three days: both would land on

the fourth day of their respective missions. -'_Engineers believed that a piloted flight with the

third and fourth Soyuz vehicles could be mounted as early as December 26-27. g lot of factors

had to work perfectly to maintain the deadline--for example, both of the two pads (at sites I

and 3t) capable of launching the I 1@51I booster would have to be available for launches. This

meant that the commission would have to obtain permission from the military to delay the

launch of a Zenit-4 photo-reconnaissance satellite scheduled for launch from one of those pads.

The Soyuz launches would mark the first launches of the I IASII booster, a marginal modification of the earlier IIA57 launch vehicle used for Voskhod.

A final State Commission meeting took place on November 25, by which time the two

launches were set for November 28 and 29. On launch day, Kamanin wrote:

We've been waiting for this to happen for more than four years (the industry delayed the

manufacture of the spacecraft because they were overautomated: they have to be able to

link up euen if unmanned). Today and tomorrow will see launches on which the immediate future of our space program will hinge: all the Moon spacecraft are based on Soyuz] _

The first Soyuz spacecraft lifted off successfully at 1600 hours Moscow Time on November

28, 1966, from Tyura-Tam It entered an initial orbit of 181 by 232 kilometers at a 51,9-degree inclination; the perigee was lower than expected because of the less-than-stellar performance from the

new launch vehicle. The Soviet news agency TASSdesignated the spacecraft Kosmos-133 and, as

was customary, did not indicate that the flight had any connection with the piloted space program. Problems beset the mission almost immediately. As soon as the payload separated from the

booster, the pressure in the tanks of the mooring and orientation engine system dropped from

340 atmospheres to thirty-eight atmospheres in 120 seconds. Within less than fifteen minutes,

all or most of the propellant in the system had been used up, sending the spacecraft into a slow

rotation of two revolutions per minute. Given that these engines were indispensable for attitude

control during approach and docking, there was little hope of carrying out a docking with a second Soyuz. Kerimov and Mishin immediately decided to cancel the preparations for the second

launch and instead focus efforts on bringing Kosmos-133 back to Earth.

The spaceship had more problems. The mooring and orientation system thrusters were

required not only for rendezvous and docking but also to position the spacecraft into correct

attitude to fire the main deorbit engine. On Deputy Chief Designer Chertok's suggestion,

25. Kamanin,"g GoalWorth Workin8 for." no 45; Chertok,Raketyi Jyudi.£oryaehiyedni kholodnoy

uoyny,p. 412; Kamanin,5krytiykosmos:t964 1966,p. 396.

26. Kamanir_,"lqGoalWorth Workingfor," no. 45,138.

571
572

ground controllers at Yevpatoriya decided to use a backup set of attitude control engines linked

to the backup main engine. A test of these small thrusters, however, showed that they turned

the ship in an opposite direction to the one commanded--that is, they could not be used

for reentry attitude orientation either. Kosmos-133 seemed to be stranded in orbit. Preliminary

ballistics projections showed that the spacecraft would decay naturally after about thirty-nine

orbits, in which case the automatic self-destruct system would blow up the vehicle during

descent because of an incorrect orientation.

Given these almost insurmountable problems, the Chief Operations and Control Group

found an ingenious way to work around them. The flight control team decided they could use

a third set of tiny thrusters, the orientation engines, which were used only for minor attitude

control, to position the vehicle correctly for short time periods. Thus, instead of firing the main

$5.35 engine for a full I00 seconds for reentry, the controllers would fire it in short bursts of

about ten to fifteen seconds while the orientation engine system maintained proper attitude.

The cumulative effect of several of these short firings would be the same as one long burn--

that is, sufficient to deorbit the spacecraft safely. There was, however, little hope of bringing

the ship back to a preselected target area."'

In the early morning of November 29, after extensive consultations with Chertok at

Yevpatoriya and with Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev in Moscow, the State Commission opted to

try for a reentry on the seventeenth orbit using a combination of the automatic solar orientation

system, the orientation engine system thrusters, and the main engine. Controllers apparently

doubted whether all the correct commands had been sent to the spacecraft at the time, and Mishin

decided to call off the attempt and not take the risk. Attempts to bring the ship down on the eighteenth and nineteenth orbits using ionic attitude control sensors did not succeed either. Kamanin

in his journal recorded that the controllers fired the engine two times, but each time the unit cut

off after ten and thirteen seconds, respectively. P, third burn to change Kosmos-133's orbit to shift

its landing track over Soviet territory also prematurely cut off after twenty seconds, apparently

because the ship was not properly stabilized during the firing. It remains unclear whether these

aborted burns were deliberate firings to guide the ship in for deorbit or failed attempts at reentry.

Ultimately, the State Commission decided to delay the landing for another day to wait for the

following opportune landing opportunity on Soviet soil# *

On the morning of November 30, on the spacecraft's thirty-second orbit, the controllers

carefully sent commands for new engine firings to be carried out on the succeeding orbit. But

on the thirty-third orbit, the main engine apparently shut down prematurely again. /_ fifth

engine firing on the thirty-fourth orbit using the ionic sensor system did the job: the spacecraft

was sufficiently slowed down to begin orbital decay. Kosmos-133 separated into its three

component modules and began reentry, but the descent apparatus abruptly disappeared from

radar screens about seventy to I00 kilometers over Earth, 200 kilometers southeast of the city

of Orsk. An extensive visual search by the Air Force's search service ended without result. Later,

the State Commission ascertained that the descent trajectory had been too flat and the capsule

had begun to overshoot Soviet territory and head toward China. The self-destruct system,

consisting of twenty-three kilograms of TNT, exploded automatically and destroyed the

capsule. Debris apparently rained down on the Pacific Ocean east of the Mariana Islands# _The

mission had lasted about one day, twenty-one hours.

2?, Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni khotodnoy uoyny pp. 416-19.

28 Kamanin, Skrytiykosrnos: 1964 1966, pp 414-16.

29 Ibid. pp. 416 I 7: Leonard Nikishin, "Soviet SpaceDisaster on the Revolution's Anniversary: How and

Why Cosmonaut Komarov Died." Moscow News 9 (March I-8, 1992): 16;Kamanin, "_ Goal Worth Working for."

no 45; I. Marinin, "'Soyuz': 30 YearsSince the First Flight" (English title), Nouosti kosmonauliki 24 (November

18-December I, 1996): 64-65.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

Although the flight could hardly have been considered successful, the mission did give

engineers and controllers on the ground a chance to evaluate the operation of all the Soyuz

systems in realistic conditions. The ionic orientation system was stable, the main engine could

be fired repeatedly in vacuum, and the spacecraft could be reentered despite faulty stabilization.

Based on an analysis of the problems, many State Commission members, including Chairman

Kerimov, Mishin, and Ryazanskiy, believed that Kosmos-133 could have been safely recovered

if there had been a cosmonaut on board instead of a mannequin. Four investigation commissions,

which included Chief Designer Ryazanskiy, Deputy Chief Designer Tsybin, and Department Chief

Raushenbakh, reported their findings on December 8. There had been three major failures on the

ship: the complete spurious exhaust of the propellant in the mooring and orientation engine

system; insufficient stabilization of the spacecraft when the deorbit engine was fired; and a

failure of the Tral telemetry instrument on the fifteenth orbit. They found that the failures had

nothing to do with design flaws but rather problems in assembling and testing that particular

model on the ground. The service lines for the jet vane controls of the orientation engines were

evidently tangled up, and a faulty system was installed on the vehicle. During reentry, the

retro-engine had fired for less than a nominal period because of the lack of vehicle stabilization.

which itself was a result of the faulty orientation system. The State Commission recommended

that the second Soyuz, the passive ?K-OK, be launched no later than December 18 on a

solo flight. Igla system Chief Designer Mnatsakanyan opposed a solitary launch and continued

to insist on an automated docking flight, but he was overruled by Mishin, who apparently

regretted following Mnatsakanyan's advice to mount a joint flight on Kosmos-133. If all went

well cosmonauts would fly into space aboard two different Soyuz vehicles in late January or

early February.'°

The pace at Tyura-Tam was intense, g little more than two weeks later, the remaining

Soyuz spacecraft, vehicle no. I, was ready for launch, this time from the pad at site 31. The

launch was set for 1430 hours local time on December 14, 1966. At the count of zero, shards

of flame shot out from the base of the I Ig511 booster, but they were suspiciously smaller and

less powerful than normal. The rocket remained fixed on the pad, and those present assumed

that computers had aborted the launch at the last minute because of a then-unknown glitch.

The flames at the base died down soon, and steam filled the area as thousands of gallons of

water poured onto the launch mount. Approximately twenty-seven minutes after the abort,

observers saw the launch escape system suddenly start firing. At this point, there were many

pad workers who were engaged in 'safing" the booster, as was customary following a launch

abort. Although the rocket seemed to remain inert, within a few seconds, the flames from the

escape system directly engulfed the lower portion of the Soyuz spacecraft and the booster's

third stage below. As the fire spread, scores of workers near the pad took cover in their bunkers.

Kamanin described the scene:

I ran to the cosmonauts' house and ordered everyone who was there to quickly go from

the rooms into the corridors. It proved to be a timely measure: within seconds a series

of deafening explosions rocked the walls of the building which was located 700 meters

from the pad. Stucco fell down and all the windows were smashed. The rooms were

littered with broken glass and pieces of stucco. Fragments of glass hit the wails like

bullets. Clearly, if we had remained in the rooms a few seconds longer we would all

have been mowed down by broken glass. Looking out through the window openings

I saw huge pillars of black smoke and the frame of the rocket devoured by fire .... 3,

30. Kamanin,"g GoalWorth Workingfor," no 45: Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya,

p. 1791Marinin."'Soyuz':30YearsSincetheFirstFlight,r

31. Kamanin."g Goal'vVorth'vVorkingfor," no.45,p. 9.

573
574

State Commission members met about twenty minutes later at the Soyuz assembly-testing

building, but among those missing were Mishin, Kerimov, and Maj. General Kirillov, the Chief

of the First Directorate at the Baykonur Cosmodrome. As concern mounted for the missing

individuals, Baykonur Commander Maj. General Aleksandr A. Kurushin quickly sent an

emergency medical team to the launch pad area to search for survivors. Within a short time,

Mishin, Kerimov, and Kirillov turned up safe at another command bunker. The Soyuz descent

apparatus miraculously landed safely at a distance from the pad without incident.

On December 16, an investigation commission reported on the probable causes of the

terrible accident. It seems that when the command to ignite had been sent to the booster, only

the second stage of the 1IASl I launcher (that is, the strap-ons) had fired, and computers had

instantly aborted the launch. After the announcement for pouring water around the launch

mount, Mishin and Kirillov had concluded that it was safe to egress from their bunkers because

all engines on the booster were shut down. Ground control then sent a command to relocate

the escape frames of the pad structure onto the vehicle to prevent the launcher from swaying

in the gusty winds present at the time. By this point, many service personnel had already

arrived at the pad to climb up the service tower to inspect the rocket. As the frames were lifted near the booster, one of these touched the booster prematurely and tilted it, This occurred

because the launch vehicle had moved very slightly from its original position at the launch

abort. P,s soon as the booster tilted, the emergency rescue system was automatically triggered

by gyroscopes, which detected a vertical angle exceeding seven degrees. The ninety-ton

solid-fuel engine of the system fired on command, and its long exhaust penetrated the Soyuz

propellant tanks on top of the booster: at that point, all service personnel fled the area in panic.

It took almost two minutes between the firing of the system and the final explosion of the first

and second stages of the booster--a length of time that no doubt saved the lives of most of

those who were close to the booster, including Mishin, Kerimov. and Kirillov. Most managed

to run as much as 150 to 200 meters to safety, while Mishin and the others fled to a nearby

bunker. A Major Korostylev unfortunately took refuge behind the concrete walls of the launch

assembly and, as a result, became the sole fataliW in the accident. Several others were severely

injured. The entire pad complex and associated structure was completely destroyed. _'

At the meeting on December 16. Mishin admitted that the design of the emergency rescue

system had been fundamentally faulty because the gyroscopes could trigger the operation of

the system even when all power was cut off to the booster. Remarkably, just three days prior

to the explosion, engineers carried out a test of the rescue system at the Air Force's test site at

Vladimirovka near Kapustin Yar. Because the goal of the test was not to check fire safety, the

tanks of the spacecraft were left empty for the firing of the rescue system engines. A fueled

spaceship could have easily precluded such a disaster. Engineers introduced a number of design

changes on the rescue system based on the recommendations of the accident commission,

including ensuring that the solid-propellant engine of the system could be turned off manually or

remotely immediately after aborts. _

The explosion and destruction of an I I/_51 I booster, a Soyuz spacecraft, and the pad at

site 31 significantly delayed any hope of mounting an early piloted Soyuz mission. Another

automated Soyuz flight was inserted into the schedule, to be carried out on January 15, F967,

from the other remaining pad at site I. Mishin had ordered re-equipping one of the piloted versions for the solitary robotic mission. The piloted mission was postponed to March--a delay

accounted for by the time needed to transform the pad at site I to support dual Soyuz launches.

In the meantime, on December 2 l, Kamanin sent the eight primary and backup cosmonauts for

32 Ibid: Nikishin,"SovietSpaceDisaster."

33 Semenov,ed..RaketnoKosmicheskayaKorporatsiya.pp. 179-80.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

the first mission, who had been intensively training through November and December, on

a short vacation. _ The year would end without a single Soviet piloted flight, the first such year

since crewed spaceflight was inaugurated by Gagarin in 1961.

The next Soyuz spacecraft, a passive 7K-OK, vehicle no, 3, was prepared for its two-day

mission in late January 1967. The State Commission met on January 19 in Moscow before

flying to Tyura-Tam starting January 23. _ Mishin was evidently ill for the two weeks preceding

the launch, set for February 6, and was not present at many of the technical meetings. Due to

minor technical reasons, the launch was delayed exactly twenty-four hours, and the vehicle lifted off successfully from the pad at site I at 0620 hours Moscow Time on February 7, 1967.

Initial orbital parameters were 170 by 241 kilometers at a 51.7-degree inclination. TASS

announced the flight as Kosmos-140, another in a long series of nondescript generic satellites

with no particular mission. One of the unusual payloads aboard the ship was a cryogenic

superconducting magnet on board for the analysis of charged particles. The Soviets later

claimed that this was the first such instrument launched into space to study cosmic rays. _

Communications were interrupted briefly during the powered ascent, but they were restored

once in orbit, which was once again lower than intended because of the less-than-nominal

booster performance.

Trouble began to appear on the fourth orbit. The vehicle failed to respond to a command

to orient itself to turn the solar panels to face the Sun to recharge the on-board batteries. The

astro-orientation sensor system used for this maneuver had evidently malfunctioned. Worse, propellant levels in the attitude control system had dropped to 50-percent levels during this test. After

anxious consultations, the State Commission decided to raise the orbit and try one more time to

test the sensor system, which used the 45K solar-stellar sensor. On the twenty-second orbit, the

Soyuz main engine fired for fifty-eight seconds, but the spacecraft failed to respond to the "spin

up to the Sun" command, and all the propellant in the main attitude control system was spent.

By the end of the day, commission members were looking to terminate the flight early. Once

again, most members believed that the failures on Kosmos-140 were only in systems that had

duplicates for manual control, such as "spinning up" and the astro-orientation system. All of

these malfunctions could have been compensated by cosmonauts." The remaining systems such

as life support, the main engine, thermal control, and so on, worked without problems.

The State Commission decided to use the ionic sensor system of orientation to posit the

vehicle in the correct attitude prior to retrofire. The designer of the system, TsKBEM Department

Chief Raushenbakh, had little confidence in the device, because he believed that the main

engine might misfire as a result of exhaust, which could disorient the ionic sensors. Luckily for

everyone, the system worked without a flaw, and the descent apparatus of Kosmos-140 began

its reentry.

Following deorbit, the search-and-rescue service received faint signals from the descent

apparatus, which were evidently originating from the Aral Sea, far west of the intended landing

site. It was apparent by then that the capsule had automatically changed its landing profile from

a guided reentry to a ballistic return. About four hours after landing, searchers discovered the

descent apparatus eleven kilometers from Cape Shevchenko, lying on an iceberg in the Aral Sea.

34. Mitroshenkov. Zemlya pod netoom,p 397 Among the cosmonauts training for 7K-OK missions by late

December were the eight men for the first mission (Bykovskiy, Gagarin, Gorbatko. Khrunov, Komarov. Kubasov,

Nikolayev. and Yeliseyev), as well as four other cosmonauts training for future missions (Beregovoy, Makarov,

Shatalov,and Volkov).

35 Ibid., pp. 399-400.

36. V. R Glushko, ed., _osrnonautiko entsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1985). pp.

201-02; Yu R. Mozzhorin. ed., Kosmonautika (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1981), p. 446.

37. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 46 (1993): 8-9

575
It was the first sea landing for a Soviet piloted vehicle. Unfortunately, soon after the rescue

teams discovered the capsule, it sank through the ice to a depth of about ten meters. It seems

that the capsule had crashed through the iceberg and floated in the resulting hole until

it became water-logged and simply sank. Engineers back in Moscow were naturally alarmed by

the news, because the descent apparatus had been repeatedly tested for floatation in caseof a

water landing.

The recovery of the capsule proved to be extremely difficult, and the Air Forcehad to call in a

team of divers. Helicopters were not able to lift the capsule because it was too heavy. With much

difficulty, an Mi-6 helicopter managed to accrue sufficient horizontal velocity to drag the thing the

three kilometers backto the shore. In their postflight analysis, engineers discovered a thirty- by tenmillimeter hole at the center portion of the bottom of the vehicle, which was sufficient for loss of

pressure and the subsequent sinking. The investigation showed that the hole was the result of an

infringement of the unity of the heat shield, which had been cast off. The heat shield itself had

a maintenance hole with a plug attached with special glue for a thermal gauge pipe. The plug

was incorrectly mated to the heat shield, resulting in a chain of events that led to the hole in the

spacecraft. If a crew had been on board, they would have died, since Soyuz crewmembers would

not be wearing spacesuits during reentry. To address the problem, engineers eliminated the

plug completely from the heat shield, and they also made the heat shield a monolithic structure

instead of being assembled piece by piece. In addition, all "suspect" areasof the heat shield were

reinforced with extra material as a cautionary measure. At a meeting on February 16, Mishin and

Bushuyev reassured the State Commission that the necessary measures would be carried out to

preclude such an accident from happening again._

Soyuz I

From an outsider's perspective, the natural course of action for the State Commission

would have been to add another precursor Soyuz mission to the schedule. The two spacecraft

flown in 1966 and 1967 had significant problems, primarily in their reentry phase, and certainly

there would have been the need to verify the operation of all the components of reentry, such

as the heat shield, parachute system, reentry orientation systems, and so forth. Despite

the three attempts to launch the 7K-OK Soyuz, Mishin and his engineers recovered only

a single descent apparatus after a space mission--one whose thermal protection system had

a catastrophic failure. This is not to say that Mishin did not undertake a thorough analysis of

the situation. The results of the three Soyuz attempts were the subject of intense discussion;

the main decision for the engineers was whether to carry out another automated mission or

whether to go directly to a piloted mission. Deputy Chief Designers Konstantin D. Bushuyev

and Yakov I. Tregub of TsKBEM led this analysis in February and March 1967. Mishin invited

a host of representatives from all organizations involved in the Soyuz program to hear their

individual assessments of the status of their particular system and its potential readiness for a

piloted flight. Remarkably, most of the other designers and engineers recommended crewed

flight. Among the dissenters was TsKBEM Department Chief Ivan S. Prudnikov, who based

his objections on the insufficient testing of the new, improved heat shield. The majority of

engineers, however, expressed confidence in the work of the heat shield. _'

38. /bid: Semenov, ed,, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 180: Nikishin, "Soviet Space Disaster":

G Salakhutdinov. "Once More About Space" (English title), Ogonek 34 (l_ugust 18-25, 1990): 4-5.

39 Semenov, ecL, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. pp. 180-81

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

On March 25, 1967, Chairman Smirnov's Military-lndustrial Commission met to discuss

the preparations for the mission. Representing the State Commission. five men spoke on the

flight, including Chairman Kerimov, Mishin. and Kamanin/° Smirnov asked several questions.

including: "Do you think the equipment will work smoothly?" Kamanin replied:

Three launches of Soyuz spaceships and the completion of all ground tests have made us

confident that the flight will be successful although at one point some of the cosmonauts

had certain doubts about the ship's bottom. We know that following the burn-out of the

bottom of ship no. 3, the Central Design Bureau o[ Experimental Machine Building has

worked hard to reinforce it. Chief Designer Mishin has said on more than one occasion

that now there should be no doubts about the bottom. We believe Mishin/'

Kamanin introduced all the cosmonauts preparing for the flight: the eight primary and

backup crew members--Bykovskiy, Gagarin, Gorbatko, Khrunov, Komarov, Kubasov, Nikolayev,

and Yeliseyev--as well as four additional understudies who were expected to fly a subsequent

Soyuz mission after finishing their training on June t.4: Although there was no formal decision

on the primary crew, Komarov (for Soyuz I) and Bykovskiy, Yeliseyev, and Khrunov (for Soyuz

2) were the leading candidates. Mishin personally met with Ustinov two days later to discuss

the flight, setting in motion a series of events that would cripple the Soviet space program? _

The decision to move ahead with the docking mission has been obfuscated and mired in

controversy and speculation for thirty years. One TsKBEM engineer, who later emigrated to the

United States in the 1970s, added to the rumor mill by recalling that:

The management o[ the Design Bureau knew that the vehicle had not been completely

debugged. more time was needed to make it operational, But the Communist Party

ordered the launch despite the fact that four preliminary launches had revealed faults in

coordination, thermal control, and parachute systems. It was rumored that Vasiliy

Mishin. the deputy chief designer who headed the enterprise after Korolev's death in

1966, had objected to the launch/_

There was clearly much political pressure from Brezhnev and Ustinov to get the flight off

the ground. It had been almost two years since a piloted Soviet spaceflight, while the

Americans had flown ten Gemini missions. In addition, May Day, one of the most important

holidays in Soviet culture, was imminent, and there is reason to believe that the Soyuz flight

was timed to roughly coincide with the anniversary. A simple automated flight of the vehicle

40 Kamanin, "For Him, Living Meant Flying." The other two speakerswere Maj. General g. G. Karas

(Commander ot the Central Directorate of Space Assets) and Ma]. General A. I. Kutasin (the Air Force head for

rescue and recovery operations).

41. IbM, p, 8.

42 The four understudies were probably Beregovoy,Makarov, Shatatov, and Volkov.

43. There was apparently also a State Commission meeting the same day. SeeMitroshenkov, Zemlya pod

nebom, p. 404.

44 Victor Yevsikov, Re-Entry Technology and tile Soviet Space Program (Some Persona[ Observations) (Falls

Church, VA: Delphic Associates, 1982), p. 4. See also Dmitriy Payson, "Eternai 'Soyuz'--Today Marks the 25th

Annwersary of the FirstDocking in Orbit" (English title), Nezavisimaya gazeta, January 15. 1994, p. 6, in which the

author states, "The Soyuz was hastily prepared for launching and it was launched (an unprecedented act!) despite

the categorical refusal of Vasiliy Mishin .... "

577
578

would have hardly mattered for such an auspicious occasion. When asked in an interview in 1990

whether the he had been pressured to carry out the mission, Mishin replied:

Truly, there never was a time when we worked in peace, without being hurried or pressured from above. The unskilled, totally bewildered, high-ranking bureaucrats believe that

they are [ulfilling their duties if they are shouting "Let's go, let's gof" at people who don't

even have time to wipe the sweat o[f their brows. 4_

Asked about the possibility that his deputies may have committed errors during the preparations,

Mishin emphasized:

No. the deadlines and the pressure from above haue nothing to do with that. Not a single

supervisor [or any or the Soyuz systems would have given the "go-ahead" to the [light if

he were not certain or that system's satis[aetory operation. 4°

Ultimately, it was a decision motivated by the apparently huge lag in piloted space exploration accrued through 1965 and 1966 as compared to the United States. Throughout 1966, both

the political and technical managers of the Soviet space program banked on the inauguration of

the Soyuz program to take some steam out of U.S. space achievements, which finally seemed to

have gained momentum after years of humiliation. When Mishin, Bushuyev, Tregub, and others

recommended a go-ahead with the flight, clearly they did not have full confidence in their ship.

Korolev, of course, had also taken his own risks, particularly with the two Voskhod missions,

which were highly risky endeavors. The EVA mission of Voskhod 2, for example, was not preceded by a successful precursor mission. But Soyuz was a far more complex spacecraft: it was a

completely untested quantity in terms of crewed operations. The Soyuz mission was a gamble of

extraordinary levels.

The intensive discussions on Soyuz in February and March 1967 were mirrored by the slowly

increasing number of rumors emanating from "unofficial" sources from the Eastern bloc that a

Soviet space spectacular was imminent. On March 7, a commentator on Prague Radio reported

that "much more complicated manned operations in Earth orbit are about to begin which have

taken over two years to prepare."47 Just two days later, Lt. General Kamanin, in a long interview

with Warsaw Radio, said that piloted flights would begin again that spring. He added that the

Soviets were not locked onto any particular date and that the flight would come only when they

were assured of success. He implied that the deaths recently of the three American astronauts

were the result of unnecessary haste in the U.S. space program, a factor absent in the Soviet space

program.4_

After an unusually grueling training program involving countless hours in simulators on the

ground, the eight primary and backup cosmonauts for the mission took their final exams for the

flight on March 30, and all passed with excellent marks. On April 6, the men visited the depths

of the Kremlin to meet with high Central Committee officials and receive wishes of good luck.

The same day, Kamanin, accompanied by veteran and rookie cosmonauts, flew into Tyura-Tam.

45. Salkahutdinov. "Once More About Space," p. 4.

46. Ibid

47 Soviet Space Programs, t966-70 Goals and Purposes, Organization, Resources, Facilities and

Hardware. Manned and Unmanned Flight Programs. Bioastronautics, Civil and Military ,,_pplieations. Projections o_

Future Plans. Attitudes Toward International Cooperation and Space Law. prepared for the Committee on

Aeronautical and SpaceSciences, U.S. Senate,92d Cong.. Ist sess.(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing

Of[ice, December 1971), p. 364.

48. Ibid; PeterSmolders, Soviets in Space(New York:Taplinger Publishing Co., 19Z3), p. 150.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

The crews o[ 5oyuz I and Soyuz 2 present themselves before the State Commission in front of the launch pad in

,'3pril 1967 In the foreground from left to right are the primary crew of Vladimir Komarov. Valeriy Bykovskiy.

Yeugeniy Khrunou. and ._leksey Yeliseyeu (in civilian clothes) and the backup crew of ¥uriy _agarin. _ndrian

Nikotayev. Viktor Gorbatko. and Valeriy Kubasov (also in civilian clothes) Chief Desgner Valentin Glushko is

visible in the background between Yeliseyev and _agarin (copyright Christian Lardier)

Komarov followed on April 8 and Gagarin on April 14._ For many, it was the first time that they

had spent the celebrated "Cosmonautics Day," the anniversary of Gagarin's pioneering flight, at

the Baykonur Cosmodrome.

There was a meeting of the State Commission on April 14 at which the members decided to

begin fueling the two launch vehicles and spacecraft. Assuming an eight-day period for

complete preparation, the first launch was tentatively set for April 24-25. Mishin telephoned both

Ustinov and Brezhnev later: Ustinov evidently expressed some anxiety over the impending flight.

The mission would be inaugurated by the launch of the active 7K-OK Soyuz I, on the first day,

with Komarov. The following day, as the ship was flying over Tyura-Tam, the passive 7K-OK

Soyuz 2 would be launched with Bykovskiy, Yeliseyev, and Khrunov. The two spacecraft would

dock on the very first orbit of Soyuz 2: it would be the first docking of two piloted spaceships,

After docking, Yeliseyev and Khrunov would exit from their depressurized living compartment and

crawl over to the depressurized living section of Soyuz I. Following the transfer, Soyuz I, with a

crew of three, would return the following day. Soyuz 2, with a crew of one, would also return that

same day. Apart from the dramatic nature of the flight, the mission had significant value for future

operations in the NI-L3 project as well as possible Earth-orbit rendezvous profiles for the

circumlunar L I program.

49. Mitroshenkov. Zemlya pod nebom, pp. 405-06. Among the cosmonauts accompanying Kamanin were

rookie G T. Beregovoyand veterans A. A Leonov, and P. R. Popovich. Note that another source states that the primary and backup crews arrived at the launch site on April I0, 1967 See Grigoriy Reznichenko. Kosmonuut-5

(Moscow: Politicheskoy literatury. 1989), p. 97.

579
580

The EVA itself had been the subject of much discussion for months. In November 1966.

two of Mishin's Deputy Chief Designers, Sergey O. Okhapkin and Pavel V, Tsybin, proposed

having one cosmonaut move away from the docked vehicles to a distance of about ten meters

to photograph the complete complex and the second cosmonaut. After opposition by some of

the cosmonauts, TsKBEM opted for the use of a ten-meter boom to ensure that the vehicles

would be photographed--a problem entrusted to Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev? ° By the

time of the actual mission, Bushuyev had abandoned the idea, possibly projecting its use on

a later Soyuz docking mission. The cosmonauts on this first flight would simply crawl from ship

to ship. There were other changes to the spacewalk schedule. TsKBEM engineers had apparently

designed the hatch on the Soyuz ship with too small a diameter (0.66 meters). This would

be barely enough for a spacesuited cosmonaut to egress from the ship and make it all but

impossible for the men to get back into the second ship. Mishin and his boss, Deputy Minister

Litvinov, were categorically opposed to redesigning the hatch to a larger size for the first few

Soyuz vehicles, believing that a redesign would delay the initial launches by months. Instead, at

a meeting on August 4, 1966, attended by Chief Designers Mishin (spacecraft) and Severin

(spacesuits), officials decided to move the Yastreb EVP, suit backpacks from the cosmonaut's

back to the waist. Mishin promised that future Soyuz ships, beginning from vehicle no. 8,

would have larger hatches?' Such changes added an extra level of tension to an already hurried

situation. Just a week prior to the launch, on gpril 15, Kamanin wrote in his journal:

I am personally not fully confident that the whole program of flight will be completed

successfully, although there are no sufficiently weighty grounds to object to the launch.

In all the previous flights we believed in success. Today there is not such confidence in

victory. The cosmonauts are prepared well. and the ships and the instruments have gone

through hundreds of tests and verifications, and all seems to have been done for successful flights, but [still] there is no confidence. This can perhaps be explained by the fact

that we are flying without Korolev's strength and assurances, we were spoilt by Korolev's

optimism. _'

The fueling of the Soyuz I launch stack began at 2300 hours Moscow Time on gpril 15.

The morning of April 17, the cosmonauts attended a final five-hour class under Raushenbakh's

supervision to study once again the modes of docking, orientation, and so on. In the afternoon,

Mishin arrived to talk personally with the crews about various portions of the mission. Even at

this late point, there seems to have been some disagreement over which mode of operation to

use for the crucial docking maneuver. Mishin favored a completely automatic docking, believing

in the infallibility of the ship, but he was opposed by Kamanin and some of the cosmonauts,

including Komarov and Gagarin. For more than two years. Bykovskiy, Gagarin, Komarov, and

Nikolayev, the four commanders, had been training for an automatic approach followed by a

manual docking and were reluctant to let automation do the whole thing. At the meeting,

Komarov argued that the Igla system could automatically bring the active vehicle within 200 to

50. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos 1964 I966, pp 396 97, 400

51 Ibid. pp. 355, 361 Presentat the August 4 meeting were S, M Alekseyev (Chef Designer ot KB

Zvezda), K. D, Bushuyev (Deputy Chief Designer of TsKBEM), N. R Kamanin (SpaceAide to the Commander-in

Chief of VVS), V A, Kazakov (Deputy Minister of MAP). V. M Kornarov (Cosmonaut of TsPK), V. Ya. Litvinov

(Deputy Minister of MOM). V. P Mishin (Chief Designer of TsKBEM), G. I. Severin(Chief Designer of KB Zvezda),

N. S Stroyev (Director of the M. M. Gromov Fight-ResearchInstitute), and P.V. Tsybin (Deputy Chief Designer ol

TsKBEM).

52. tev Kamanin and Aleksandr Nemov, "Komarov's Star: The Tragic Details of the Testing of the

Soyuz-I' SpaceShip" (English title), Poisk 5 (June 1989): 4-5.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
TRAGEDY

300 meters of the passive vehicle, following which he could manually dock the two spacecraft.

Mishin listened to their arguments and delayed a final decision on the matter until the following

day. By the end of the day, the fueling of the Soyuz I launcher had concluded while the fueling

of the Soyuz 2 booster had begun. Thus, the launching was informally set for April 24-26. _

The Council of Chief Designers met on the morning of April 18 to discuss the docking issue.

State Commission Chairman Kerimov supported an automatic approach via the Igla to fifty

to seventy meters, followed by manual docking, although many engineers still defended

the fully automatic variant. TsKBEM Department Deputy Chief and cosmonaut Eeoktistov mediated the issue and argued in favor of the semi-automatic profile, and the council accepted his recommendations. Later in the day, Feoktistov discussed various contingency measures for

emergency situations with the cosmonauts. The final State Commission meeting prior to launch

took place on April 20 at site 2, The launch of Soyuz I was set for 0335 hours Moscow Time on

April 23, while the launch of Soyuz 2 was set for 0310 hours Moscow Time the

following day. tqll the Chief and Deputy Chief Designers confirmed that the launch vehicles, space

ships, and support services would be completely ready to accomplish the launch on time. The

commission also formally approved the crews for the two missions and gave the official go-ahead

for the flight) _

On April 22, the I IA51 I rocket was already at the launch pad at site I. In the late morning,

the primary and backup crews had their customary meeting with the launch command

and industrial representatives. A number of chief designers met with the crews and informed them

that after the Soyuz I launch, there would only be two reasons for a postponement or cancellation of the Soyuz 2 launch: if there was a failure in the Igla system or if there was a low charge in

the solar batteries on Soyuz I. Kamanin counseled Komarov that the most important factor on

the mission would be safety: in the case of any malfunctions, there would be no need to proceed

with the complicated docking procedure. Later in the day, Komarov attended a press conference

for journalists with special access. Komarov dedicated his flight to the fiftieth anniversary of the

Bolshevik Revolution) '

_q final meeting of the State Commission, lasting forty-five minutes, began one-half hour

before midnight and concluded with recommending a full go-ahead for the flight. Komarov woke

up about two hours after midnight, and doctors attached sets of medical sensors to his body. He

was dressed in a plain light woolen gray suit and a blue jacket. At 0300 hours, he arrived at the

pad to give a short speech to State Commission Chairman Kerimov and then embraced senior

officials goodbye, Mishin, Kamanin, and Gagarin accompanied him to the rocket: Gagarin went

up with him all the way to the top of the rocket and remained there until the hatch closed.

There were no anomalies prior to launch. The spacecraft, 7K-OK no. 4, lifted off exactly on

time at 0335 hours Moscow Time on April 23, 1967, with its sole passenger, forty-year-old

Colonel Engineer Vladimir M. Komarov. He was the first Soviet cosmonaut to make a second

spaceflight. It took 540 seconds for the ship to successfully enter orbit. The official Soviet news

agency TASS released a brief statement, calling the flight Soyuz/, and announced the orbital parameters and some vague objectives of the program. Characteristically, there was no mention of the

impending Soyuz 2 mission. Rumors in the West, however, had reached crescendo proportions,

some clearly indicating that a docking with a second ship was planned) _ Cosmonaut Popovich

53. Ibid There was a minor delay on April 18, when a valve on one of the systems for loading nitric acid

into the spacecraft failed. The problem was fixed without much delay.

54. Ibid.

55 Ibid : 5ouiet Space Programs. 1966 70, p 181Mitroshenkov, Zemtya pod nebom, p. 407_

56 For a summary of these rumors, see James Oberg. "Soyuz-i Ten YearsAfter: New Conclusions,"

Spc_ce[hght19 (May 1977): 183-89.

581
582

informed Komarov's wife, Valya, that her husband was in orbit about twenty-five minutes after

launch. She told reporters that "my husband never tells me when he goes on a business trip. ''_';

For the first time on a Soviet piloted mission, the Chief Operations and Control Group--

that is, the flight control team--was located at the Scientific-Measurement Point No. 16 at

Yevpatoriya in Crimea. A team of twenW controllers, including TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designers

Chertok and Tregub and Department Chief Raushenbakh, assisted Chief Operations and

Control Group Chief Colonel PavelA. Agadzhanov, the "flight director." The flight control team

would actively communicate with the spacecraft in orbit while maintaining continuous contact

with the State Commission, all of whose members remained behind at site 2 at Tyura-Tam

Additional ballistics support was provided by NII-4's military control center in Moscow.

The initial incoming report from telemetry streams from two ground stations indicated that

the Soyuz spacecraft's left solar panel had not opened upon entering orbit. As Agadzhanov's

team examined the data, they found other anomalies. A backup antenna in the telemetry

system was inoperable and the 45K solar-stellar attitude control sensor's optical surface had

probably been contaminated by engine exhaust. While the antenna was a minor annoyance,

the sensor malfunction was serious because without it, Soyuz I would be unable to orient the

ship properly to change orbital parameters in preparation for the rendezvous and docking.

Telemetry indicated that current orbital parameters were 196.2 by 225 kilometers at a 51° 43'

inclination. It was on the second orbit that controllers first established stable communications

with Komarov on ultra-shortwave frequencies: for reasons unknown, the shortwave system was

inoperable. Komarov calmly reported:

I [eel well. The parameters o[ the cabin are normal. The left solar battery has not

opened. There's been no spin toward the Sun. The "solar current" is 14 amperes.

Shortwave communications are not working. Ztttempted to manually per[orm spinning.

Spinning did not occur, but pressure in the [orientation engines] dropped to 180) _

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Komarov even tried to knock the side of the ship to jar

open the recalcitrant panel. Already. the situation had deteriorated dramatically. Because one

solar panel was not operative and the ship had failed to automatically orient the other toward

the Sun, power on board the ship was far below normal. Power experts at Yevpatoriya had

calculated that the buffer batteries could operate with the current levels of power up to the

seventeenth orbit, after which Komarov could use reserve batteries for up to two more orbits.

This meant that Soyuz I could safely operate for about a day, significantly less than the three

days needed for a docking mission. In the meantime, Agadzhanov told Komarov to shut down

nonessential systems and to try at all costs to orient the right panel toward the Sun. On the

third orbit, Komarov told ground control that the left panel was still folded against the ship and

that the vehicle had not oriented toward the Sun. Current had stabilized at a low fourteen

amperes, far below that required for a nominal flight. The 45K attitude control sensor was still

inoperative. Despite the troubles, the State Commission believed that the orientation problem

would be solved, and it recommended that preparations for the launch of Soyuz 2 be continued. Kamanin meanwhile sent Gagarin directly to Yevpatoriya to assist the Chief Operations

and Control Group in its operations) _

57 Smolders.Soviets in Space.p. 156.

58 Kamaninand Nemov,"Komarov'sStar": Chertok,Raketyi lyudi, goryachiyedni kholodnoyuoyny,

pp.444-45.

59. Kamaninand Nemov,"Komarov'sStar": M. L Rebrov,Kosmieheskiyekatastro[y(Moscow:IzdAT,

1993),p 27:Chertok,Raketyi lyudi:goryachiyedni kholodnoyuoyny,pp.445-46.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

On the fifth orbit, Komarov attempted to manually orient the ship by using Earth's horizon

to position the vehicle at correct attitude, but he found it difficult to do so, partly because it

was difficult to keep a target hold on the moving Earth. In addition, his attempt seems to have

been overruled by the on-board control system. Apart from the astro-orientation system, which

used the 45K solar-stellar sensor, and the manual orientation system, the vehicle was also

equipped with ionic sensors. The use of these, however, also met with little success on the fifth

orbit. From the seventh to the thirteenth orbits, Komarov was outside radio visibility using ultrashortwave communications because the spacecraft would pass over the Atlantic and the

P,merican continent. As planned earlier. Komarov was ordered to sleep during this period, while

consultations among Moscow, Tyura-Tam, and Yevpatoriya continued throughout the day at a

feverish pitch.

Most of the senior members of the State Commission, including Chairman Kerimov,

Keldysh, and Kamanin, recommended the immediate postponement of the Soyuz 2 launch and

the return of Komarov at the earliest possible opportunity--that is, the seventeenth orbit.

Incredibly, Mishin still had hope and believed that the commission should make a final decision

on the thirteenth orbit, once Yevpatoriya reestablished contact with Komarov, There was even a

plan to have the two EVA cosmonauts, Yeliseyev and Khrunov, manually unfurl the jammed solar

panel during their spacewalk from one ship to the other. But on the thirteenth orbit, Komarov

reported that his second attempt to use the ionic orientation system had failed. _ He added that

the left solar panel was still jammed; current on the ship had remained static at twelve to fourteen amperes. Mishin later recalled that "because of the emergency, the shortage of power on

board caused a chain of problems [including] a change in the temperature conditions, "_'

Immediately, the State Commission unanimously canceled the Soyuz 2 launch. Evidently, the

Soyuz 2 cosmonauts were bitterly disappointed, blaming the commission for "excessive caution

and indecisiveness. "_2

The problem at that point was how to return the spacecraft from orbit, nominally on the

seventeenth orbit, but with the eighteenth and nineteenth orbits as reserve. P,gadzhanov's team

at Yevpatoriya considered the matter carefully. There were three main failures on board Soyuz I:

the unopening of the left solar panel, the failure of the ionic orientation system, and the malfunction of the 45K solar-stellar attitude control sensor. The recalcitrant solar panel not only

deprived the spacecraft of much-needed power, but also caused an asymmetry in the ship, which

prevented the open solar panel from facing the Sun. Because of this mechanical imbalance, engineers were all but sure that all of Komarov's efforts to spin the ship in the direction of the Sun

would fail and, in fact, would simply waste the precious propellant in the orientation engine system, If there was too little fuel in this system, then during retrofire, Komarov might not be able

to compensate for moments arising from the mass displacement because of the single opened

panel.

The Soyuz had three orientation systems. If all three orientation systems were inoperative,

it would be practically impossible for Komarov to return his ship. With an incorrect attitude,

Soyuz I would either burn up in the atmosphere or fly into a higher orbit, The ionic orientation

system had already failed to perform twice. Engineers also believed that the system would be

60. Kamanin and Nemov, "Komarov's Star": RussianSpaceHistory. Sale 65 t6 (New York: Sotheby's, 1993),

description [or Lot 46; Reznichenko,Kosmonaul-5. p 97. One source suggests that Komarov may haveactually tried

to fire his main engine to change his orbit. In Nikishin, "Soviet SpaceDisaster." the author notes: "The first orbital

correction was widely off mark becausethe maneuver thrusters' exhaust aifected the operation of the attitude control system's ion sensors."

61. Salakhutdinov, "Once More t_bout Space."

62. Rebrov,Kosmicheskiye katastrofy, pp. 27-28.

583
584

unreliable during the morning hours when the return was planned because of ion pockets, which

could disrupt the work of the sensors. As for the 45K solar-stellar sensor, it was not

functioning at all. This left manual orientation, which was working, but as Komarov reported,

it was extremely difficult to manipulate in Earth's shadow because it would be difficult to locate

Earth's horizon. Normally, using manual orientation, the cosmonaut would cross Earth's

terminator into lighted areas. In Komarov's case, with a reentry at the earliest opportunity, he

would still be in the dark. °'

Time was already running short for Komarov. If he was to perform a successful reentry on

the seventeenth orbit, then Agadzhanov's team needed to transmit a precise set of commands to

Komarov on the sixteenth orbit. It was already the fifteenth orbit, and officials at both

Yevpatoriya and Tyura-Tam were still arguing over a proper choice of orientation for reentry. It

had been almost twenty-four hours since the launch, and not one member of either the State

Commission or the Chief Operations and Control Group had slept. In their state of alarm,

members continuously violated established rules to communicate only via secret channels

between the two centers. On the fifteenth orbit, Komarov reported that he believed that the

ionic system and its associated attitude control engines were in working order. Based on his

recommendations and assessment from data on the ground, the State Commission recommended that the ship be landed on the seventeenth orbit using the automatic ionic orientation

with the backup set of orientation engines. Agadzhanov, Raushenbakh, and Chertok carefully

checked over the set of instructions that Gagarin personally transmitted to Komarov. In the final

seconds before loss of contact, Mishin and Kamanin both wished Komarov good luck. _4

At the appointed time, Soyuz I initiated the reentry sequence. The main engine was supposed

to fire for deorbit at 0256 hours, 12 seconds Moscow Time on April 24, but nothing happened.

Ballistics reports pouring into Yevpatoriya indicated that Soyuz I's orbital parameters had remained

the same. Once communication with Komarov was reestablished, the cosmonaut reported that the

ion system seemed to have worked fine, but evidently, as the ship had crossed the equator, it had

flown into an "ion pocket" in Earth's shadow where the concentration of the ions was less than

what the sensors could detect. The ship's control system correctly issued a command to prohibit

the firing of the retro-engine. ''5State Commission members decided to immediately begin preparations for another landing attempt on the eighteenth orbit. As the seventeenth orbit was ending,

however, the flight control team did not have any new instructions ready to transmit to Komarov.

Finally. the State Commission decided to land Komarov on the nineteenth orbit.

With the use of both the ionic and solar-stellar orientation systems out of the equation,

the only remaining option was for Komarov to manually orient the ship prior to retrofire, but

using a very complex series of operations in orbit. Komarov would have to orient the ship manually to Earth's horizon in the light portion of the orbit. Just before entering Earth's shadow, he

would transfer attitude control to the spaceship's KI-38 gyroscope system. Once he was out of

the shadow, he would check to see whether Soyuz I was still correctly oriented for retrofire. If

not, he would once again take over manual control and issue all the commands to complete

the retrofire sequence for a landing on the nineteenth orbit. It was an incredibly difficult task--

one for which none of the cosmonauts had ever trained on the ground. One of the power

specialists warned at the time that Komarov had one to two orbits at the most--that is, he

might not have very many more chances to attempt reentry. Gagarin once again transmitted the

new set of instructions to the Soyuz I cosmonaut. Komarov seemed calm and agreed to carry

63. Chertok. Rakety i tyudi: goryachiye dni kholodr_oy voyny, pp 446 47: Kamanin and Nemov,

"Komarovs Star"

64. Chertok. Rakety i lyudi goryaehiye dni kholodnoy uoyr_y,p 447.

65 Ibid: Nikishin, "Soviet Space Disaster": Kamanin and Nemov, "Komarov's Star."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO H
TRAGEDY

out all the operations on time, which would lead to a 150-second retrofire with engine ignition

at 0557 hours, 15seconds on April 24.

Komarov performed skillfully and carried out his assigned program almost to the letter.

He replied through the increasing static, "The engine worked for 146 seconds. Switch-off

occurred at 0559 hours 38.5 seconds. /_t 0614 hours 9 seconds, there was the command

'Accident-2'. .... The "Accident-2" signal threatened to give controllers a collective heart attack,

but Raushenbakh gathered his resolve and explained to the team not to worry. The attitude

control system had been unable to handle the strong moments because of the asymmetry of

the vehicle, and the gyroscopes had issued the "Accident-2" command after the spacecraft

deviated from its set angle by eight degrees. That only meant that instead of a guided reentry,

Komarov would perform a direct ballistics return. All other parameters, such as the length of

the burn, were well within range for a successful reentry.

At Tyura-Tam, the members of the State Commission were huddled together on the

second floor of the administrative portion of the huge assembly-testing building at site 2.

Journalists at the launch site were excluded from the meeting but were able to overhear voices.

Cosmonaut Leonov served as an intermediary to brief reporters on the ongoing situation.

Mishin, Kerimov, Keldysh, Minister Afanasyev, and Air Force First Deputy Commander-in-Chief

Marshal Rudenko all exchanged brief comments as they heard Komarov's report. About fifteen

minutes after retrofire, there was the expected break in communications as Komarov's capsule

entered an ionization layer. A few minutes later, Komarov's voice cut through the radio silence:

he evidently sounded "calm, unhurried, without any nervousness. "_7 By this time, Kamanin

and a group of Air Force officers had already taken off from Tyura-Tam in an 11-18aircraft to

head for the projected landing range--the reserve landing area for the mission, about sixty-five

kilometers east of Orsk, far west of the planned site for a guided reentry. According to ballistics

data, Soyuz I had landed at 0624 hours Moscow Time.

Once search services determined the landing site, the reserve search-and-rescue service

at the town of Orenburg was called into operation to locate the descent apparatus. It was a

beautiful and sunny morning at the landing site, and visibility was evidently very good.

Members of the rescue service recalled that:

The commander of one of the 71n-12 search aircraft reported to the helicopter commander

that he could see Soyuz-I in the air. All the group members were immediately at the windows. But we couldn't see the reentry vehicle descending in the air. The helicopter commander began a rapid descent. Then the helicopter turned sharply to the right, and many

of the group members saw the reentry vehicle down in a green field. It was lying on its

side, and the parachute could be seen right next to it. And then the soft-landing engines

kicked in. That alarmed the specialists on the helicopter, because the engines were supposed to switch on just before the landing of the reentry vehicle, right above the ground. "_

The first helicopter landed seventy to I00 meters from the capsule, which was surrounded

by a cloud of black smoke, The fire inside the vehicle was still very intense, while the bottom

of the ship, where the sofblanding engines were, had completely burned through. Witnesses

claimed that streams of molten metal were failing on the ground. Along with foam fire

extinguishers, they used dirt around the ship to temper the fire: "The vehicle was completely

66. Chertok.Raketyi tyudi:goryachiyedni kholodnoyvoyny,p. 448

67. Rebrov,Kosmicheskiyekatastro[y,p. 28.

68. Iosif Davydov."How CouldThat HaveBeen?:SlanderedSpace"(Englishtitle), Rossiyskayagazeta,

June1I, 1992.p 5.Authors emphasis.

585
586

Thisshows the wreckage o/the Soyuz I descentapparatus _mrnediatelya/ler the crash Cosmonaut Vtadlm_r

Komarovs body was still burred within the wreckage at the tm_e o[ this photograph (Rudy. Inc., uia Quest magazine)

destroyed while the fire was being extinguished, and the spot looked like a small earthen mound,

beneath the peak of which was the cover for the hatch-crawlway."_

The rescue service originally communicated on an open channel with ground controllers at

Moscow, Tyura-Tam, and Yevpatoriya, although they spoke in code. Once the rescuers had seen

the ship on the ground and on fire, one of the pilots had cryptically reported, "1 see the object,

the cosmonaut needs urgent medical attention out in the field. ''`° At that point, perhaps to

preclude rumors, the search service terminated all communications with the three control centers.

For the next few hours, there was no news from the site as Mishin, Kerimov, and others anxiously

waited for any scrap of news.

Kamanin, meanwhile, landed at Orsk airport about two hours after the Soyuz I impact, fully

expecting to meet Komarov there. Once out of his plane, he was told that the ship had landed

sixty-five kilometers away, that it was burning, and that the cosmonaut had not been found.

Another unconfirmed report came in that Komarov was wounded but alive in a hospital at a town

three kilometers from the landing site. The Air Force general decided to go directly to the landing

site first, although he had been explicitly ordered to wait for a call from Moscow to report on

Komarov's status. Back at the three control centers, there was complete confusion. Ustinov in

Moscow was frantic for information. He began calling up Party secretaries in Orenburg and Orsk

on special lines, but could not reach anyone. Although the vehicle had landed at 0624 hours,

Llstinov received no information on the state of the cosmonaut for the next three and a half hours.

When Kamanin arrived at the landing site, the Soyuz I descent apparatus was still on fire.

He was not the first high-ranking space official on the scene. Academician Georgiy I. Petrov. the

Director of the Space Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences, had arrived there first and

was directing efforts to assess the situation. There was still no sign of the cosmonaut. Local

69 Ibid

70 Nikishin. "Soviet Space Disaster." Note that in Semenov.ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,

p. t81, the first detection is said to be have been from an II-14 aircraft, while Nikishin. "Soviet Space Disaster," sug

gests that it was from a helicopter.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO J

H
TRAGEDY

residents reported that the ship had fallen toward Earth at a great speed and that the parachute was

turning and not filled up with air. They confirmed the observations of the search-and-rescue service

that at the moment of landing, there were some explosions followed by the fire. Kamanin recalls:

,,3 cursory examination of the ship convinced me that Komarov was dead and was still

in the remains of what used to be his ship, I ordered to clear out the debris on the ground

and search for Komarov's body. Simultaneously I sent one of the workers by helicopter.

and others by automobile to the local hospital in order to verify the story of the injured

cosmonaut. ,lifter an hour of excavations [that is, at around 0930 hours] we discovered the

body of cosmonaut Komarov among the remains of the ship .... 7_

Finding the body had been a difficult job. One of the rescuers recalled:

The group's physicians set to work--they shoveled away the top layer of dirt from the

top of the mound from the hatch cover../qfter the dirt and certain parts of instruments

and equipment were removed, the cosmonaut's body was found lying in the center chair

The physicians cleaned the dirt and the remnants of the burned helmet phone from the

head. They pronounced the death to be from multiple injuries to the cranium, spinal

cord, and bones. 72

Meanwhile, Kamanin flew back to Orsk and personally telephoned Central Committee

Secretary Llstinov with the following short message:

I was at the location, cosmonaut Komarov has died, the ship burnt up, The primary

parachute of the ship did not open, and the reserve parachute did not fill with air The

ship hit the ground at a speed of 35-40 meters per second: after impact there was an

explosion of the braking engines and a fire started. I was not able to report on the fate

of the cosmonaut earlier since nobody could see anything, and during that time we

extinguished the fire in the ship by covering it with dirt. Only after carrying out excavations were we able to find Komarou's body. _

/_t noon on April 24, Ustinov called Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev, who was at

an international conference of communist parties in Czechoslovakia, with information on the

accident. Ustinov also edited a TASS report, which was issued after a full twelve hours of

silence from the Soviet press. The official line was that although the flight had been eventless

until reentry, "when the main parachute was deployed at a height of 7 kilometers, the spaceship, according to preliminary reports, crashed at great speed as a result of the parachute cords

getting entangled, [and] killed Komarov. ''74

In the early afternoon, State Commission members Kerimov, Keldysh, and Chief Designers

Mishin, Tkachev, and Severin arrived at the impact point escorted by KGB agents. Soon, senior

engineers from TsKBEM, including Deputy Chief Designer Tsybin and specialists involved in

Soyuz development, arrived to catalog and inspect the entire landing area. Komarov's remains

were taken in a coffin back to Moscow, arriving an hour after midnight on P,pril 25. Aboard the

aircraft were Keldysh, Kamanin, and the other cosmonauts who had trained for the mission:

7 I. Kamanin and Nemov, "Komarov's Star," p 5

?2. Davydov, "How Could That Have Been?," p, 5.

?'3. Kamanin and Nemov, "Komarov's Star," p. 5.

74. Smolders, Soviets in Space, p 159.

587
588

Bykovskiy, Gagarin, Gorbatko, Khrunov, Kubasov, Nikolayev, and Yeliseyev. They were met in

Moscow at the airport by Komarov's widow Valentina Yakovlevna Komarova. His remains were

then cremated and the urn placed in the Red Banner Hall of the Central House of the Soviet

grmy for mourners to pay homage. The next day, the Soviet Party and government gave him a

state funeral with full honors, and his ashes, like Korolev's, were interred in the Kremlin Wall.

In a grisly aside to his death, not all of Komarov's remains were found during the initial search,

and a group of Young Pioneers, the equivalent of Boy Scouts in the Soviet Union, discovered

additional remains that were later buried at the crash site itself. Reportedly, Party officials took

great pains to hide this fact from the general public/_

The death of Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov was a catastrophic blow to the Soviet space

program. Apart from the pure psychological cost of losing a cosmonaut on a space mission, the

disaster immediately stopped all three major Soviet piloted space projects--the Soyuz, the L I,

and the L3. Any hope of accomplishing a circumlunar flight by late t967 was in great doubt,

while landing a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon by late 1968 was sheer fantasy at this point.

The blow to morale was incalculable, not only to the design bureaus, institutes, and military

units involved in the project, but also to the nation as a whole. It was bitter news to swallow

that the first Soviet piloted spaceflight after two years had ended in tragedy, in the process

losing perhaps the Soviet Union's most accomplished spacefarer. At the spot where Komarov

landed, Party officials later collected the remaining tiny fragments of his last ship and erected

a small hill. Sergey N. gnokhin, the famous Soviet test pilot, who at the time was the head of

the testing department at TsKBEM, placed Komarov's officer's cap in the hill, after which a gun

salute sounded out, paying tribute to what many considered a fallen hero of the Soviet Union.

gll further piloted flights were indefinitely canceled at the time. On gpril 27, Ustinov

met with the leading space industry representatives and established a special governmental

commission headed by himself to determine the causes of the accident. This commission

included seven subcommissions. One of them, to investigate the landing itself, was headed by

the recently appointed Director of the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute, Viktor V. Utkin,

a respected aeronautical engineer. The commission included two representatives from TsKBEM,

Chief Designer Mishin and Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev. Soyuz I and 2 backup cosmonauts Gagarin and Bykovskiy also served as members. '6

Utkin's subcommission finished its work, which included some experimental analyses,

by June 20 and emerged with the cause of the accident: a release failure of the container block

of the primary parachute. The parachute was packed in a container whose hatch was jettisoned,

releasing a "braking" or drag parachute, slowing down the vehicle to a manageable forty meters

per second, sufficiently slow to allow the primary parachute to fill up with air instead of

shredding. The drag parachute itself was supposed to pull out the main parachute, but it did not

do so because the latter had gotten jammed in the container. Under nominal circumstances,

automated instruments on board the capsule would have detected an increase in velocity,

discarded the primary drag and main parachutes, and activated the backup system. On Soyuz-I,

once instruments detected the velocity increase, the capsule was unable to discard the primary

chute because it was still stuck in the container. This meant that the primary drag chute was

still deployed above the spacecraft. Once the single backup parachute was released, it was to

have come out in the shape of a long, thin cylinder and then unfurl to its dome shape. In

Komarov's case, the backup chute began to extend under the still attached drag parachute from

75. Semenov,ed, Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya,p 181:Kamaninand Nemov,"Komarov'sStar":

Nikishin."SovietSpaceDisaster."

76. Semenov,ed.,Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya,pI 182:Chertok,Raketyi lyudi goryaehiyedni

kholodnoyueyny, p 453. ForGagarin.see Mitroshenkov,Zernlya pod nebom, p. 41I. For Bykovskiy,see

Reznichenko.Kosrnonaut-5.p 97.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

the primary system, and it never filled with air. Without any means of braking, the ship

plummeted and hit the ground at a velocity of 144 kilometers per hour (forty meters per second).

An autopsy of Komarov confirmed that he died on impact with the ground and that the effects

of the fire were secondary. Despite rumors to the contrary, Komarov did not cry or scream before

the impact, although during the last seconds, he was surely aware that he had little chance to

live/7 Because of the rapid velocity of descent, the frontal heat shield was never discarded at an

altitude of three kilometers, and the soft-landing engines never fired prior to touchdown. Those

engines, in fact, detonated after landing, burning with the thirty kilograms of concentrated hydrogen peroxide from the capsule's attitude control engines. From launch to impact, Komarov's

ill-fated flight had lasted one day, two hours, forb/-seven minutes, and fifty-two seconds.

The commission discovered that the reason that the primary parachute never issued was

because of friction within the container between the parachute and the inside walls of the

container. The increased pressure within the parachute container relative to the low pressure

outside the vehicle caused the parachute to simply block up against the insides of the container.

This effect was never detected on four drop tests of the parachute system prior to the flight. As

late as 1990, however, Chief Designer Mishin continued to believe that the parachute had been

incorrectly packed during preparations. The solar panel failure was later traced to the panel getting

snagged on the external vacuum-shield cover of the spacecraft, The 45K attitude contro[ sensor

had failed because of a "steam-up" of its optical surface. The commission recommended

redesigning the parachute container by making it conical instead of cylindrical, increasing its internal volume, and polishing the inside walls. Additional measures would include installing an

autonomous node for separating the primary drag chute and photographing the assembly of the

parachute packages/_

There was also an unofficial and more likely version of the cause of the accident--one that

attributed the accident to gross negligence on the part of technicians at TsKBEM's manufacturing plant. During preflight preparations, the two Soyuz ships had been coated with thermal

protection materials and then delivered into a high-temperature test chamber to polymerize the

synthetic resin. In the case of the two Soyuz ships for the April 1967 mission, technicians tested the vehicles in the chamber with their parachute containers, but apparently without the covers for the containers. In Deputy Chief Designer Chertok's investigation of the matter in the

early 1990s, he could not find anyone still alive who could remember why the covers had been

left off. Because of the omission of the covers, the interiors of the parachute containers were

coated with a polymerized coating, which formed a very rough surface, thus eventually

preventing the parachute from deploying on Soyuz I. '_ Clearly, the most chilling implication of

this manufacturing oversight was that both Soyuz spacecraft were doomed to failure--that is,

if Komarov had not faced any troubles in orbit and the Soyuz 2 launch had gone on as scheduled, all four cosmonauts would have certainly died on return.

The unofficial cause of the accident was never included in the official report on Soyuz I.

partly because those at the manufacturing plant who knew of the violation of testing procedure

chose to remain silent on the issue so as not to incriminate themselves. The one major casualty of the post-Soyuz I investigation was Chief Designer Tkachev of the Scientific-Research and

77. Rebrov,Kosmieheskiyekatastrofy, p. 29: Semenov,ed, Rakelno KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p, 182:

Nikishin, "Soviet Space Disaster" Note that Davydov, "How Could That Have Been?." gives the impact velocity as

twenty six to thirty meters per second (ninety-four to 108 kilometers per hour). Most Western sources quote the

incorrect 450 kilometers per hour.

78. Semenov, ed,, Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporcztsiya,p, 182: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi. goryaehiye dni

khotodnoy voyny, p. 457: Salakhutdinov, "Once More About Space."

79, Semenov, ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p 182: Chertok, Rakety i tyudi: goryachiye dm

kholodnoy uoyny, p. 451.

589
590

Experimental Institute of the Parachute-Landing Service who had designed the Soyuz parachute

system. Although the unofficial version clearly exonerated his organization of any blame, Tkachev

was fired from his job in 1968, ending his role in designing the parachute systems for Vostok,

Voskhod, Zenit, Soyuz, and many other Soviet spacecraft of the era. Two parachute testing

failures following Soyuz I apparently sealed his fate. g° He was replaced by Chief Designer Nikolay

A. Lobanov.

In retrospect, the Soyuz I flight should not have been carried out at that time. The spacecraft

was insufficiently tested in space conditions, and it was certainly not ready for the ambitious

first mission it was scheduled to accomplish. Although participants continue to deny that there

was explicit pressure from Brezhnev, Ustinov, and Serbin to accomplish the flight as soon as

possible, the implicit pressure had a much more imposing effect. It was not just a matter of Soviet

prestige in space exploration, it was also the fact that perhaps many of the leading designers' jobs

were on the line. When Brezhnev or Ustinov complained about the lack of Soviet successes

in space, it translated into political pressure on Mishin, Kerimov, Keldysh, and others. Thus,

both sides made decisions that were counterproductive and eventually had fatal consequences

for the Soviet space program. All told, the responsibility and guilt for the accident lay not on the

conscience of any one person, but rather on a technological culture that considered high risks

acceptable in the cause of satisfying political imperatives.

A Diamond...

The Soyuz I disaster crippled the three major Soviet piloted space programs in the mid-1960s:

the Soyuz, the LI, and the L3. While these were the central components of Soviet efforts to

compete with the United States in space, these were not the only ones. There was, in fact, a huge

parallel effort aimed at piloted military operations in space--one that was completely hidden from

view, and whose existence, as with most other Soviet space projects, was unknown until the late

1980s, The Soviet military, left out of the Soyuz, LI, and L3 programs, had promoted its own

participation in space research by financing projects dedicated to establishing a Soviet military

human presence in space. These efforts were motivated to a great extent by perceptions about

the U.S. Department of Defense's well-publicized conceptions of a military space program. After

several years of intensive research, President Lyndon B. Johnson canceled the X-20A Dyna-Soar

spaceplane program in December 1963. Opinions at the time were moving in favor of a military

space station in Earth orbit capable of supporting multicrewed long-duration missions. Preliminary

work on such a vehicle, later named the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), began in late 1963,

concurrent with the termination of the X-20A program, although official approval did not come until

President johnson's announcement on August 25, 19657'

The underlying concept behind the U.S. Air Force's MOL was the use of a modified

Gemini spacecraft named the Gemini-X (later referred to as the Gemini-B), which would be launched

together with the Mission Test Module (later the Laboratory Module) as a single unit by a Titan IIIC

launch vehicle. Once in orbit, astronauts would open a hatch in the heat shield of the Gemini-B

vehicle and crawl into the Laboratory Module for a month-long mission. By the time that Johnson

made his announcement, MOL's primary goal was overhead reconnaissance, primarily over the

Soviet Union. Other tasks emerged later, including satellite inspection, accuracy testing of orbital

bombardment systems, command and control over military operations during wartime, assessing

the effects of month-long missions on humans, and electronic intelligence reconnaissance? _

80 Chertok, Rakety i lyudi goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny, p 458.

8 I. Paul B. Stares,TheMilitarization of Space US Policy. 1945-1984 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

1985). p. 98

82 William E Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionageand National Security (New York: Berkley Books,

1988), p 227: Donald Pealer._'MOLPart I: Manned Orbiting Laboratory," Quest 4(3) (Fall 1995): 4-16

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
TRAGEDY

Plans for MOL caused of much anxiety in the USSR Ministry of Defense. On August 24, 1965,

the day before Johnson's announcement, the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers

issued a joint decree calling for the expansion of military research in space? _ By this time, the Soviet

Union had already begun the development of a specialized, piloted vehicle exclusively for military

purposes, the Soyuz-R, which was a small "space station" consisting of a modified Soyuz docked

to another modified Soyuz. Work on the Soyuz-R had proceeded from about 1963 to 1965 at

Korolev's Branch No. 3 at Kuybyshev under the direct command of branch chief Dmitriy I. Kozlov,

one of Korolev's prot_g4s. The appearance of the MOL seems to have quashed Kozlov's hopes as

the Ministry of Defense's General Staff began looking for a more substantial military presence in

space. They found a willing provider in General Designer Chelomey, whose proposals seem to have

originated from a combination of the Soviet's own desire for crewed reconnaissance and their fear

of MOL. It was rumored that Khrushchev had a "fixation" on LI.S. aircraft carriers and desired a

Soviet response, perhaps some way to keep track of them. Apprised of the MOL effort, Chelomey

emerged with a mirror concept: a space station containing sophisticated reconnaissance equipment, including powerful radars to track LI.S, naval forces, _

On October 12, 1964, just two days before Khrushchev's overthrow, Chelomey gathered all

his deputies and proposed the creation of a new Earth-orbital complex named ZIImaz

("Diamond"). The twenty-ton station would be crewed by two to three military officers on

a rotating basis and launched by a three-stage UR-5OOK booster, better known as the Proton. The

station was intended for operation for about one to two years, during which time cosmonauts

would conduct experiments and scientific activities formulated by the Ministry

of Defense, primarily consisting of photographic and visual reconnaissance? _ With the MOL project clearly accelerating, Kozlov's modest Soyuz-R proposal was no match for Chelomey's Almaz.

In early 1966, the Scientific-Technical Council of the Ministry of Defense's General Staff reviewed

both projects on a competitive basis and decided to recommend _qlmaz for formal approval. All the

technical documentation on Soyuz-R was turned over to Chelomey for planning and designing the

_qlmaz complex. _

As projected in 1966%7. the Almaz complex consisted of two elements: a space station proper called the Orbital Piloted Station (OPS), or I I F71, and a transport ship to bring crews back and

forth between Earth and the station. Originally, Chelomey had proposed a large cargo ship based

on the design of the Almaz and about as large, but this proposal was not adopted by the ScientificTechnical Council. As an alternative, Chelomey used Kozlov's transport ship for the Soyuz-R complex. a modified 7K-OK Soyuz spaceship named the 7K-TK. On March 30, 1966, Minister of

General Machine Building gfanasyev formally assigned TsKBEM's Branch No. 3 under Kozlov to

design and build this modified Soyuz to serve as a ferry vehicle for the Almaz complex. It was the

second occasion on which the Mishin and Chetomey design bureaus would undertake significant

cooperation with each other despite a competitive rivalry extending back to t960. Kozlov, using

the 7K-OK vehicle as a basis, quickly completed the draft plan for the 7K-TK the same year and

began working on preparing the technical documentation for the manufacture of the ship? 7

83. K Lantratov, "Dmitriy Koziov's 'Zvezda': Part I1" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautdkt4 (February

10-23, 1997): 82-84.

84, RoaldZ. Sagdeev,The Making o[ a Souiet Scientist: My 7tdventures in Nuclear Fusion and Space From

Stalin to 5tar Wars (New York:john Wiley & Sons, 1993), pp. 206 07.

85. I.B. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft(From the History of the Soviet SpaceProgram)" (English title),

Nouoye u zhizni Nauke. tekhnike. Seriya kosmonaulika, astronomiya no. 12 (December 199_ ): 1-64.

86. K. Lantratov. "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda': Part I" (English title). Nouosti kosmonautiki 3 (January

27-February 9, 1997): 50 55 The chair of the Scientific-Technical Council of the Ministry of Defense'sGeneral Staff

at the time was Lt. General N. N. Alekseyev.

87. Ibid

591
592

One of the major bottlenecks in the Almaz program was incorporating a wide variety of

systems as specified by various factions within the Ministry of Defense. Technical requirements

were revised over and over again, causing significant delays. For example, on December 28,

1966, the Military-Industrial Commission adopted a decree (no. 304) to change the timelines

for the 7K-TK transport ship's development. By 1967, Chelomey completely dropped Kozlov's

transport ship from the glmaz plan--a decision perhaps partly motivated by a reluctance to

cooperate with the old Korolev design bureau. The Almaz space station, the OPS, would

include its own large return capsule for the crew. At the same time, Chelomey continued to

promote his old idea of a separate transport craft to deliver crews to the station at a later date.

During this period, the Soviet government established an "interdepartmental" commission of

seventy renowned scientists, heads of design bureaus, and research institutes from the aviation

industry and the Ministry of Defense to evaluate the design of the tqlmaz complex. Their recommendation and high appraisal of the technical characteristics of the plan were critical to the

further progress of the project. The final details of the P,lmaz design were frozen by June 21.

1967, when Chelomey signed the draft plan for the spacecraft, which consisted of more than

I00 volumes of technical documentation from twenty-five major design bureaus. Two months

later, on August 14, 1967, the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a joint

resolution fully committing to the project/_

The central component of the/qlmaz complex was the OPS ( I IF71), a space station just

under twenty tons that was composed of three sections:

• The return apparatus (11F74)

• The station proper (I IF75)

• A small recoverable capsule (I IF76)

The station proper was shaped like a long cylinder with sections of two different diameters:

a large-diameter (4.15 meters) portion and a small-diameter portion. It had a mass of fifteen tons

and a length of 11.61 meters. The small-diameter section was in the forward portion of the

station and would be enclosed during launch by a conical nose fairing. The large-diameter area

was at the aft of the station and ended in a spherical airlock with a passive docking port, called

Konus, along the main axis of the station for visiting spacecraft. There was a hatch between

the airlock and the large-diameter area, allowing for depressurization for spacewatks. EVAs

would be carried out via a large hatch at the upper portion of the spherical airtock. There was

a second smaller hatch at the lower end of the airlock that connected to a chamber containing

a small drum-shaped recoverable capsule, the i IF76, which was capable of being ejected from

the station and returning to Earth with the exposed film and other scientific materials. Once

the capsule was packed with its payload, the crew would spin-stabilize the pod and then eject

it from the OPS. The one-meter-long capsule had its own solid-propellant propulsion system

for reentry, a parachute system, a jettisonable heat shield, and the actual descent compartment

equipped with a radio beacon for recovery forces on the ground.

There were antennas as well as two main engines positioned around the airlock on the end

of the large-diameter portion for orbital corrections. Each RD-0225 engine with a thrust of

400 kilograms was developed by the Chemical Automation Design Bureau (formerly OKB-154)

under Chief Designer Aleksandr D. Konopatov. Power for the station was provided by two large

88. Ibid: VladimirPolyachenko,"The 'Pep'of Almaz"{Englishtitle), Krylyctrodiny no. I (january1992):

18-19: gfanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Olaf Przybilski, Ztlmaz: Da5 supergeheimermilit6rische

OrbitalstationsprogrammderUdSSR(Dresden.Get.:Institutfor Luftlahrt,1994),pp. 16-17.TheMinistryof General

MachineBuildinghadissuedanearlierdecreeon Almazon February9, I967.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

This is a model of the military _Imaz space station on display This model is of the original variant of the

space station, with the large qemini-shaped reentry capsule attached on the forward end (to the right).

This capsule was later deleted :from the station. The folded up solar panels are on the left. surrounding the

single docking port o[ the station (copyright Dietrich Haeseler)

solar panels spread like wings to a span of 22.8 meters, whose bases were attached to the

spherical compartment. The panels would provide 3,12 kilowatts of power. The entire aft end

of the station was surrounded by a cone-shaped shield made of vacuumed thermal insulation.

Cosmonauts would dock at the aft docking port, open the hatch into the spherical airlock,

and crawl through a short tunnel into the large-diameter area. The tunnel itself was enclosed all

around by a stubby instrument compartment containing spherical propellant tanks for the OPS

main engines, the engines themselves, pressurized gases, and small attitude control thrusters.

Going back toward the station, there was the large-diameter area that had a control

console, a work station, an optical sight allowing the cosmonauts to "freeze" the movement

of Earth below and observe specific details, and periscopes allowing for the inspection of the

space around the station. Instruments were designed and installed as detachable modules to

facilitate easy repair. The compartment also included athletic instrumentation and the toilet.

The centerpiece of the large-diameter area was the .Z]gat- I, optical telescope, a large device that

occupied a considerable portion of the compartment. The telescoping camera had a focus

length of 6.315 meters and was certainly one of the largest mirrors ever put into orbit. In the

open media, Russians have claimed that the resolution was less than three meters, but given

the size of the mirror, it is more likely that the telescope was capable of distinguishing targets

smaller than one meter. The cosmonauts would use Agat-t, in conjunction with the ASA-34R

wide-film camera, to photograph targets on Earth, develop the film on the station, conduct an

analysis, and send back the more militarily important ones directly to Earth via a TV link, all

within about thirty minutes. The remaining photographs would arrive on Earth in the If F76

recoverable capsule. Other optical instruments on the station included the OD-5 optical

viewfinder, the POU-II panoramic instrument for wide coverage of Earth's surface, topographic

and stellar apparatus, and the Volga infrared instrument with a resolution of I00 meters.

Heading further to the aft of the station, the cosmonauts would enter the smaller

diameter section, which was the crew living compartment containing sleeping areas with

deployable bunks, a dining table and chair, a food storage area, and viewports for photography,

For the first time on a Soviet piloted spacecraft, the life support system included a device,

designated Priboy ("Surf"), with the capability to recycle water from air humidity.

One of the most interesting components on the station was motivated by concerns among

Soviet military leaders that the United States might attack such an explicitly military space

station in orbit. Given the paranoia about LI.S. military space plans, Chelomey agreed to the

military's proposal to install a means to defend the station in case of such an attack. Under a

593
594

contract, the Design Bureau of Precision Machine Building (formerly OKB-16) under Chief

Designer _,leksandr E. Nudelman designed a twenty-three-millimeter-caliber rapid-fire cannon

for the station. Cosmonauts would be able to use a gunsight to turn the station and aim the

cannon at a selected target. Nudelman's previous claim to fame had been as the designer

of several major anti-tank guns and missiles for the Soviet armed forces. The Soviets evidently

considered the weapon more of a defensive system rather than an offensive one, given the

limited maneuvering capabilities of the P,lmaz OPS.

Because its primary mission was overhead reconnaissance, the OPS would have a low operational orbit (220 by 270 kilometers) and be oriented toward Earth's surface for long periods. The

search and observation of targets on the ground thus posed complex demands on the guidance

system. As per the original requirements, Chelomey's engineers designed a guidance system that

would control the station continuously from the moment it separated from the launch vehicle

to orbital decay many months later. What they emerged with was a "decentralized" system.

with subsystems for orientation, stabilization, movement control of the center of mass of

the vehicle, navigation, and programmed control of the on-board apparatus. The primary flight

control system was based on an analog system because a digital device that was continuously

operable for a year was not in existence in the Soviet Union at the time. Instead, the l_ll-Union

Scientific-Research Institute for Electromechanics (formerly NII-627) headed by Chief Designer

P,ndronik G. losifyan developed a new low-power electromechanical stabilization system using

a spherical ring flywheel with a large kinetic movement. Unlike conventional orientation

systems, there was almost no propellant consumption for this device. Cosmonauts would be

able to carry out rapid roll control at one degree per second to expand their field of view

Precision would be achieved by a system that corrected the gyroscopic orientation system with

a Doppler signal from a radar instrument, which itself was part of the radar observation gear for

the station. This gyroscopic orientation system was developed by the Scientific-Research

Institute for Applied Mechanics (formerly NII-944) under Chief Designer Viktor I. Kuznetsov,

one of the original members of Korolev's old Council of Chief Designers from the 1940s

The control system had various modes of operation, including precise orientation and

stabilization, restoration of orientation from a disoriented position, and the spinning of the

station into "storage" position. Cosmonauts themselves could also manually orient the station

when observing targets by putting the target in the cross-hairs of their optical sight with a turn

of the control stick. As a result, the guidance system would allow all the optical instruments

on board to inspect the selected target. Although analog computers were used on the overall

station's guidance system, Chelomey's engineers designed a digital system based on the

,Zirgon-12Zi computer for the observation instrumentation, a first for a Soviet piloted space vehicle. The computer was developed by the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute for Digital

Computer Technology? 9

The first version of the/_Imaz OPS was equipped with a large return apparatus (I IF74),

which was similar to the LK-I and LK-?00 lunar spacecraft. Apart from its shape, the OPS return

89. gfanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": V Polyachenko and P,. Tumanov, "From the History of Space

Science:The Controllable 'glmaz'" (English title)..,Ziuiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 8 (August 1993): 41-43: I. Marinin,

"_O Krasnogorsk Plant Named P,fter S./_. Zverev" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 19(September 9-22, 1996):

44-49: O[ficiaIly Neuer Disclosed, Moscow Ostankino Television, First Channel Network, Moscow, November 26.

1994. 1105GMT: Igor Tsarev."I_ 'Diamond-Studded' Sky: Should the Military, Who Maintain They HaveStopped

Preparing for 'Star Wars,' Be Trusted" (English title), Trud. September 28, 1993. p 4; S. l_. Zhiltsov, ed.,

_osudarstuennyy kosmicheskiy nauchno-proizuodstuennyy tsentr imeni M. V Khrunicheua (Moscow: RUSSLIT.

1997), pp. 78-79: Christian Lardier, L_stronoutique Soui_tique(Paris: ,qrmand Colin, 1992), pp. 204-05: Dietrich

Haeseler,"Original glmaz SpaceStation." Spaceflight 36 (October 1994): 342-44: B. _q Pokrovskiy,Kosmosnachinayetsya na zemtye (Moscow: Patriot, 1996). p. 405.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
TRAGEDY

apparatus had two striking similarities to MOL's Gemini-B: the Soviet vehicle was designed to

have a hatch in the center of the heat shield for transfer to and from the station proper: and the

spacecraft was designed for reuse on subsequent stations. Originally, it seems that Chelomey

intended to launch the return apparatus and the OPS separately and assemble the two in orbit,

but this plan was abandoned later in favor of launching the crew in Almaz on a Proton rocket.

The return apparatus consisted of three sections: a conical crew capsule with a flat top shaped

remarkably like the /gpollo Command Module: a second longer cone with a sharper angle

attached at the apex of the crew capsule; and a short, thin cylinder at the very forward end containing a powerful deorbit engine, The length of the return apparatus was 3.64 meters, and the

base diameter was 2.79 meters.

On the OPS, the truncated spherical base of the return apparatus was fixed at the forward

end of the station on the opposite end from the docking unit. The 4.9-ton module had three

seats in its internal volume as well as control panels for operations during mission end. The

longer cone section of the return apparatus was equipped with a set of attitude control thrusters

for use prior to reentry, as well as the primary and backup parachutes. At launch, the entire OPSreturn apparatus complex was topped off by a long thin escape tower equipped with two sets of

solid-propellant rocket engines for emergency situations during passage through the lower

atmosphere. Once in orbit, the crew would vacate their seats and remove the center seat to open

a hatch at the base of the return apparatus and crawl into the small-diameter area in the t_lmaz

OPS. There were evidently many engineers who believed that having a hatch in the middle of a

heat shield--that is, the most stressed part of a spacecraft--was akin to suicide, but Chelomey

was confident that this was a workable design. For return to Earth, the cosmonauts would secure

themselves in the return apparatus, close the heat shield hatch, and undock from the station.

tqfter they fired the deorbit engine, the conical capsule would separate from the cylinder and brake

into Earth's atmosphere. Independent flight was limited to about thirty hours. The return apparatus was capable of returning at least 360 kilograms of equipment, film. and other materials to

Earth after a long-duration flight. It was designed to have a lifetime of five flights? ° Some of these

missions would be as part of a future projected delivery vehicle to the Almaz station, named the

Transport-Supply Ship, which was at a very early stage of planning in 1967. By this time. the first

Almaz space station launch was set for sometime in 1968-69. The first cosmonaut training

group for the eqlmaz station was established as early as September 1966, although crew training

proved to be of a very preliminary nature through 196/. 9'

The early fqlmaz station's design and capabilities were quite similar to the tqmerican MOL.

This was partly attributable to the ancestry of both complexes. The Almaz OPS descent apparatus emerged from the LK-700 and LK-I capsules, which were based to a great degree on

Gemini. Similarly, MOL Gemini-B was simply an uprated Gemini. Chelomey clearly had access

to information on MOL. During the 1960s, the Soviet government used to publish a classified

weekly journal entitled Raketno-kosmicheskaya tekhnika (Rocket and Space Technology) containing abstracts of articles published in the open media in the West. In 1964 and 1965. the

journal evidently published numerous articles on the MOL? _ While there is no clear evidence

90. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft"; Polyachenko and Tumanov, "From the History of Space Science:

The Controllable Almaz'": Lardier,L'TlstronautiqueSoui._tique,p. 203: Nina Chugunova, "Chelomey's Cosmonauts:

Why ThereAre No Crews FromNPO Mashinostroyeniya in Outer Space" (Englishtitle). Ogonek4-5 (January 1993):

24 29; Haeseler, "Original Almaz SpaceStation."

91. There were a total of seven cosmonauts selected for the l_lmaz group on September 2. 1966: R I.

Belyayev.L S. Demin, V. G, Lazarev.A. N. Matinchenko. G. S. Shonin. L. V. Vorobyev, and D A Zaykin. Belyayev.

the only spacefligh_ veteran, was the commander of the group. SeeVadim Y. Molchanov, "Soviet Manned Lunar

Programs." 9,uest2(4) (Winter 1993): 43; Kamanin, 5krytiy kosmos: 1964-66, p. 3F4.

92. K. Lantratov, "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda': Part II1" (English title), Nouosti kosmonu_tiki 5 (February

24-March 9. t997): 8t-86.

595
596 i

to suggest that Chelomey took MO[ plan wholesale, macro-level design characteristics of Almaz

were probably influenced significantly by the American project.

•.. a Star...

As befits the story of any Soviet space project from the 1960s, the Soviet Union did not

respond to a singular U.S. space project, such as MOL, with a singular response. Almaz, in fact,

had a complementary military piloted project that, while a little more modest, was also a response

to the MOL. When the Military-Industrial Commission approved the initial plans for the Almaz

station in 1965, the first flight was expected in 1968. Motivated by concerns of having

a Soviet crewed military presence in the intervening three years, the commission looked into other

options. In early August 1965, Commission Chairman Smirnov signed an order to develop a

military version of the 7K-OK Soyuz for missions involving visual and photographic reconnaissance, satellite inspection, the testing of early warning technologies, and the verification of the

operation of weapons in orbit. The Central Committee and the Council of Ministers, in its decree

of August 24, 1965, approved a timetable for the development of such a vehicle, officially named

the Zuezda ("Star"). Coincidentally or not, by this time, OKB-I's Branch No. 3 in Kuybyshev

under Deputy Chief Designer Kozlov had, on his own authority, completed the draft plan that

fulfilled the government's requirements. After further discussions, on July 7, 1966, the Ministry

of General Machine Building signed an order (no. 296ss) selecting Kozlov's branch as the lead

developer of the Zvezda ship. Kozlov proposed a modification of the original ?K-OK Soyuz named

the 7K-VI._

In its original conception, the design of the 7K-VI was very similar to Korolev's 7K-OK. It had

three major components arranged from the front to the aft: the living compartment, the descent

apparatus, and the instrument-aggregate compartment. The first section would have carried a

full complement of military instrumentation. By late 1966, Kozlov began to rethink this design,

motivated by the two failures in the Soyuz precursor program, including the catastrophic launch

failure in December 1966 when a military officer had been killed. To preclude such problems from

occurring on his ship, Kozlov prepared a new design for the 7K-VI, which departed significantly

from the 7K-OK. In the new design, the descent apparatus and the living compartment switched

places. This meant that just as in Almaz and MOL, there would be a hatch in the middle

of the crew compartment's heat shield to allow cosmonauts to move into the main experiment

module of the ship. The new ship had a heavier mass of just over six and a half tons and could

fly thirty-day-long missions in Earth orbit with two crewmembers. The heavier ship required an

uprated version of the basic I IASII Soyuz launcher, called the I IASIIM. The Ministry of

Defense found the new design worth pursuing, and in a governmental resolution on July 2 I, 1967,

set a formal timetable for the first launch, targeted for 1968. The system would reach operational

status a year later._4

As with the early Almaz station, the ZK-VI was equipped with a weapon designed by Chief

Designer Nudelman's Design Bureau of Precision Machine Building. The complement consisted

of a single rapid-firing gun modified for use in vacuum, mounted on the descent apparatus.

Cosmonauts would be able to aim the gun by maneuvering the entire spacecraft using a special

visor. Skeptics believed that pilots would not be able to aim the gun; they also believed that the

recoil from gunfire would send the entire ship into a spin. To eliminate such problems, Kozlov's

engineers built a dynamic test stand at Branch No. 3 in mid-1967, consisting of the descent

93. Lantratov. "Dmitriy Kozlov's "Zvezda': Part II." Its production index was llF73

94 Ibid Initially, Kozlov wanted to have one crewmember aboard the 7KVI to compensate for the heavier

mass, but the Ministry o[ Defense believed that one cosmonaut would not be able to accomplish all the planned

work in orbit

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

apparatus, an optical visor, control systems, and

seats set on a platform resting on an air cushion.

Subsequent tests dispelled any doubts about

the capability of both the pilot and the ship during a shooting match. As in the Almaz OPS,

Zvezda's gun was insurance against the possibility that American satellites on anti-satellite or

inspection flights would engage the Soviet

spaceship.

The descent apparatus, although shaped like

the basic Soyuz version, had two seats in it, but

facing in slightly different directions, like a "v"-

shaped pattern. The hatch was positioned underneath the seats. Tests at the time verified the

hatch-in-the-heat-shield design, which was the

subject of much concern, both in the Zvezda and

Almaz programs. The living compartment of the

ZK-VI contained the primary reconnaissance

instrument, the aSK-4 optical visor and camera,

installed on a side porthole. The cosmonaut

would sit in a saddle, looking somewhat like a

cyclist, and use a visor to observe and photograph Earth's surface. Cosmonauts could also

mount other instruments on the porthole, including the Svinets device, a throw-over from the

abandoned Voskhod 3 flight, for observing ballistic missile launches. They would also use a long

mast extending from the outside of the living

compartment for electronic intelligence and the

detection of any approaching enemy spacecraft.

One unusual attribute that set the 7K-VI

Drnitriy Koztou was the First Deputy Chief Designer

aI TsKBEM under Vasiliy Mishin He headed the

Koroleu design bureau's Branch No 3 in Kuybyshev

startir_g in t959. As chie[ of the branch, uJhich &ter

became independent in 1974, Kozlov oversaw the

development of robotic and piloted reconnaissance

spacecraft for the USSRMinistry of De[ense Kozlov

remains the head of his organization to this day.

rernainrng one of the fast chief designers [rom the

Korotev era who are still active in the Russian space

program His design bureau continues to build

almost all of Russia'sphoto-reconnaissance

spacecra[t (files of Peter Gorin)

apart from any previous piloted vehicle was its power source. Kozlov dispensed with solar arrays,

believing them to be a potential source of problems (confirmed on Soyuz I). He proposed the

use of two radio-isotope generators, which would convert heat produced by the radioactive

decay of plutonium into the large amount of electricity required for the extensive instrument

complement aboard the vehicle. To preclude accidents upon reentry, the generators were

encased in landing capsules capable of surviving reentry. Once they were recovered, engineers

would reuse them for subsequent missions.

A final design objective of the 7K-Vl spaceship was to serve as a transport ship for future

crews to the Almaz space station, much like the terminated 7K-TK from Kozlov's early plans for

a military space vehicle. Branch No. 3 engineers looked into the possibility of installing a docking

unit at the forward end of Zvezda to allow it to dock with the Almaz station, thus establishing

quite a formidable military space complex in Earth orbit, designated imaginatively the I 1F71 I. _

Given the several years of work on the abandoned Soyuz-R variant, progress on the 7K-Vl

Zvezda program was swift. By mid-1967, Kozlov had defended a revised draft plan for the

ship and its launch vehicles, based on a tactical-technical requirement for the spaceship issued

by the Ministry of Defense in March 1967, His engineers had also transferred all technical

95. Lantratov, "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda': Part II1"

597
598

documentation to the Progress Plant for

the manufacture of the first models. The

Air Force Commander-in-Chief's Aide for

Space Matters Lt. General Kamanin established the first 7K-VI cosmonaut training

group in September 1966, comprising six

cosmonauts headed by the veteran Pavel

R. Popovich2 _ Through 1967, Popovich

spent much time in Kuybyshev training on

the ship and testing out its rapid-fire gun

in simulators. In addition to career cosmonauts, the Ministry of Defense was also

intent on including scientists from its various research institutes. Three researchers

from NII-2 of the Air Defense Forces joined

the team at the Cosmonaut Training

Center on April 12, 1967. NII-2 was the

leading institute developing strategy for

anti-satellite operations on automated

Soviet satellites, such as the IS system? 7

Schedules for the program were also set

at that time. On August 3 I, 1967, MilitaryZvezda (7K-VI, 11 F73)

1967 (project)

This is a drawing of Dmitriy Kozlov's 7K-VI piloted

reconnaissance spacecraft developed in the 1960s.

,_lthough the spacecraft design was based on the original

Soyuz spacecraft, there were major differences in the

layout of the main modules of the vehicles

(copyright Peter Gorin)

Industrial Commission Deputy Chairman Georgiy N. Pashkov chaired a meeting to discuss the

course of the Zvezda project, calling it a program of "extraordinary importance. ''98 Kozlov optimistically predicted that the first automated flight would take place in the second half of 1968,

although Progress Plant Director A. Ya. Linkov believed 1969 was more realistic.

That military piloted operations were of great concern not only to the Ministry of Defense

but also to the Soviet leadership was underlined by a meeting of the Council of Defense on July

15, 1967. The council, a shadowy body attached to the Politburo, was the supreme arbiter

for all defense issues in the Soviet Union. At the meeting, Brezhnev and Kosygin expressed

dissatisfaction with delays in the Soviet piloted space program and ordered an expansion of

military operations in space. The breadth of Soviet plans for the late 1960s and early 1970s was

astonishing. In a diary entry for September 16, t967. Lt. General Kamanin summarized his

notes on the next eight-year plan for Soviet space operations, covering 1968 to 1975. According

to his calculations, the military would need twenty Almaz space stations and fifty Zvezda

ships, in addition to 400 "transport ships," presumably the Soyuz, The total annual launch rate

of crewed ships would reach forty-eight. 9_

Soviet plans for the military piloted dominance of space were not limited to conventional

systems such as Almaz and Zvezda. As more evidence of an almost unprecedented military

buildup in space, the USSR had a third, much more ambitious, piloted space project approved

in the mid- 1960s. Since the beginning of the space era, a host of Soviet aviation designers, such

96. N. Kamanin, "P, Goal Worth Working for," no. 44. The six cosmonauts were Yu. R _rtyukhin, B. N

Belousev. /_. i_ Gubarev. V. I. Gulyayev,G M Kolesnikov, and P. R Popovich. They were later joined by g. F.

Voronov and D A. Zaykin.

97. These three cosmonauts were V. B. l_lekseyev, M. N Burdayev.and N. S. Porvatkin SeeV. Semenov.

I. Marinin. and S Shamsutdinov, /z istorii kosmonautikL vypusk I: nabory v otryady kosmonavtov i astronavtov

(Moscow: gO Videokosmos, 1995), pp I0. 12.

98. Lantratov. "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda': Part III."

99. /bid

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

as Tsybin, Myasishchev, and Chelomey, had doggedly pursued a dream of building a reusable

spaceplane, one that could eventually fly from airport into space and land back on a runway.

Thwarted mostly by the winds of political change, none of their three projects ever got

off the ground. By 1965, the Soviet Air Force gave it yet another try, in a project that would

eventually span thirteen long years.

•.. and a Spiral

General Designer Vladimir N. Chelomey's Raketoplan project, consisting of the R-I and

R-2 spaceplanes, had died an ignominious death around 1965--a result of the technological

limitations and the political exigencies of the period. At the same time, the primary raison d'etre

for the project, the U.S. Air Force's X-20A Dyna-Soar, had long been consigned to history.

For the immediate future, there were no serious plans by the U.S. armed forces to pursue the

creation of such vehicles. Only some test vehicles were flown. Under a joint NASA-Air Force

program, lifting bodies such as the M2-F2 and HL-10 were tested at NASA's Flight Research

Center (later the Dryden Flight Research Center) at the Rogers Dry Lake in California. '®

The lack of U.S. support for spaceplanes did not deter the Soviets. Unlike almost any other

Soviet piloted space project of the Cold War era, something prompted the Soviets to push the

development of a piloted spaceplane well after the Americans had abandoned such hopes.

Historical precedent suggests two reasons: either the Soviets believed that secretly the United

States was developing such a vehicle, or it was insurance against the possibility of the United

States developing such a vehicle in the future. Both rationales, of course, hinge critically on the

assumption that in their Cold War-era space projects, the Soviet Union and the United States

were doing things in a parallel and responsive manner instead out of a unilateral need to do

such things. Whether this is a hypothesis that will hold up to historical scrutiny remains to be

seen. The record from the former USSR still remains vastly incomplete.

In the early 1960s, the Air Force contracted two aviation industry design bureaus, OKB-156

headed by tqndrey A. Tupolev and OKB-155 headed by/qrtem I. Mikoyan, to propose elements

of an integrated reusable aerospace transportation system/°' Little is known about the Tupolev

proposal. Scientific research on lifting bodies had apparently begun during the late 1950s at

the famous N. Ye. Zhukovskiy Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI). Based on this

research, OKB-156 had initiated work in the late 1950s and the early 1960s on a suborbital

lifting body using "hot" construction--that is, frames using heat-resistant alloys without

special thermal shielding. In the 1960s, General Designer Tupolev apparently designed and built

a full-scale hypersonic vehicle capable of Mach 2 to 5 to verify ground research on developing

a winged space glider. Research conducted in cooperation with the famous M. M. Gromov

Flight-Research Institute helped engineers experimentally verify data already obtained from

wind tunnels on such parameters as aerodynamic quality, characteristics of longitudinal and

lateral static stability, and balance at different angles of attack during reentry. The engineers

discovered that for a winged hypersonic vehicle with a relatively large stern area, air resistance

could reduce aerodynamic quality by 30 to 40 percent. The overall research helped identify

changes in further research on the basic layout of a reusable spaceplane. '°2

I00. RichardE Hallion,On TheFrontier:FlightResearchat Dryden,1946-1981(Washington,DC: NASa1

SpecialPublication(SP)-4303,1984),pp. 141 72.

I01. MikhailRebrov,"The MoorDidItsBusiness. TheFateof 'Buran,'asDramaticasOur Lives"(Engiish

title), Krasnayazuezda,November29, 1997,p. 5: Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos:1964-1966,p 262

102. K, K Vasilchenko.et al.. eds.,Letnyyeissledouaniyai ispytaniya-[ragmentyistorii i souremennoye

sostoyaniye,naucflno-tekhnicheskiysbornik (Moscow:Mashinostroyeniye,1993),p. 55: TsZ1_l-Osnounyyeetapy

nauchnoydeyGtelnosti,1968-1993(Moscow:Nauka,_996).p. 155.

599
600

This early work was to lead to the development of a complete two-stage reusable space

transportation system. The first stage would be a hypersonic carrier aircraft, and the second

stage a small plane for short jaunts into space. Between 1961 and 1966, Tupolev's engineers

apparently built a small automated prototype of the winged space launcher designated "product 130." Although details still remain classified, the aircraft was developed on the basis of the

Tu-95 bomber as part of a large-scale study of hypersonic flying vehicles in the 1950s and

1960s. Work on the 130 was to have led to the creation of a rocket-propelled spaceplane named

Zvezda. which would have been launched into orbit by some modification of the UR-200

ICBM. The launch system for the 130 would have been similar to the one used on the American

B-52g aircraft for "drop-launching" the X-15 rocket-plane. _°_Unlike his competitor Mikoyan,

Tupolev apparently had a "cool" attitude toward the spaceplane program in general. By 1966,

whatever work had been accomplished at OKB-I56 was terminated. Instead of a unilateral

spaceplane program, it seems that Tupolev joined up with Mikoyan for a cooperative project,

which proved to be the most famous Soviet spaceplane of the early Soviet space era.

General Designer Mikoyan, the head of the MiG design bureau, had had a long interest in

such topics. He had publicly expressed an interest in space as early as 1962, when in an article

in the Soviet military newspaper Krasnaya zvezda (Red Star). he described a spaceplane design:

The spaceplane is an intermediate link between aviation and rocket technologies, a

combination of a ballistic rocket and airplane. viewed as a whole, the spaceplane will

have the general outlines of a modern airplane with elements o[ a spaceship. The spaceplane will be launched as is a ballistic missile and will fly at altitudes o[ I00 to 200 km.

Ztfter acceleration to a speed of Z9 km/sec, the spaceplane will follow a ballistic trajectory with deceleration.'"

It seems that Mikoyan had begun exploratory studies on such topics in the early 1960s.

possibly derived from Chief Designer Tsybin's research on the abandoned PKP. spaceplane from

the late 1950s. It would be 1965, however, before Mikoyan initiated any productive work on the

spaceplane project. ''_ At the time, Mikoyan inherited a secondary source of information to

accelerate his efforts. When the new Brezhnev administration terminated Chelomey's R-I/R-2

spaceplane project in 1965. much of the database was transferred to Mikoyan's Moscow-based

OKB-155. along with a number of engineers who had worked on Chelomey's project. This

information proved invaluable for Mikoyan's designers to quickly advance from a research to an

experimental stage in the development of a new aerospace system. '°_ Chelomey, of course, had

inherited his spaceplane research from Myasishchev's work on the promising but ultimately

abandoned M-48 design. Mikoyan also was favorably placed to take advantage of the massive

research work at the prestigious TsAGI during the early 1960s on various Chelomey and Tupolev

research projects. In the topsy-turvy world of space politics, Mikoyan had thus inherited the

103 Bill Gunston. The Osprey Encyclopedia o[ Russian .,Z]ircra[t:18Z3-1995 (London: Osprey Aerospace,

1996) p 435: F-mail correspondence. Mark Hillyer to the author. April 30, 1998.

104. A Mikoyan. "Future AerospaceTechnology" (English title). Krasnafa zvezda, January9. 1962, pp 2-3,

quoted in Soviet Space Programs: Organization. Plans, Goals. and International Implications. prepared for the

Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences. U.S. Senate. 8Zth Cong.. 2d sess. (Washington, DC: US

Government Printing Office, May 1962), p. 333.

105 Gleb E [ozino-Lozinskiy and Vladimir P Plokhikh "Reusable Space Systems and International

Cooperation," ,_erospaeeAmerica (june 1990]: 31-40: Afanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft"

106 Interview Gerbert Aleksandrovich Ye(removwith the author, March 3, 1997: Anatoliy Ki_pi[ and Olga

Okara, "Designer o[ SpacePlanes Vladimir Chelomey Dreamed of Creating a SpaceFleetof Rocket Planes" (English

title). Nezavisimaya gazeta, july 5, 1994,p. 6

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
TRAGEDY

complete database for most prior spaceplane research in the Soviet Union. It put him in

an extremely favorable position to move quickly on the project.

Less than two years after the cancellation of the X-20 Dyna-Soar, on July 30, 1965, the

Ministry of Aviation Industry approved work on a new spaceplane project named Spiral. '°'

The head of the Spiral project at OKB-155 was one of Mikoyan's principal deputies, Chief

Designer Gleb Ye. Lozino-Lozinskiy, a fifty-five-year-old engineer who had played a tremendously significant role in the development of numerous MiG fighters. During Khrushchev's

downsizing of aviation in favor of rockets, Lozino-Lozinskiy had stood up to the Soviet leader's

tirades against airplanes, suggesting that "in spite of all the enthusiasm with regard to rockets,

one should not forget the little wings. They are still of use to us." '°" As chief designer of the

Spiral project, Lozino-Lozinskiy signed off on the preliminary design of the system on June 29,

1966, just a year after work had begun. _" To expand the work profiles at his design bureau,

Mikoyan subsequently established a branch of OKB-155 (by this time renamed MMZ Zenit)

dedicated specifically to space themes at the premises of the Dubna Machine Building Plant

near Moscow. Coincidentally, it was at this same plant that former Chief Designer Tsybin had

directed his work on spaceplanes in the late 1950s. Mikoyan's new Dubna branch, created in

1966, had its own design bureau, headed by Yuriy D. BIokhin, who supervised all of LozinoLozinskiy's work on Spiral. A third man, Petr A Shuster, served as the chief of the branch, '_

The primary goal of Spiral was piloted spaceborne reconnaissance, satellite inspection, and

anti-satellite operations. To do this, engineers needed to create a system capable of operating

within very short lead times, one that was reusable, and one that could be launched from

a variety of locations. Thus, Mikoyan dispensed with the idea of launching the spaceplane

on conventional rocket boosters and, in fact, adopted a design that was in some ways very

similar to the Chetomey and Tupolev concepts--that is, launching the spaceplane into orbit

from a mother aircraft. Rummaging through the extensive database on spaceplane research

available to them, Mikoyan's engineers firmly believed that this would be the most efficient

option. Early analyses showed that with an air-launched system, effective payload increased by

about 9 percent over standard ballistic models, while the associated costs were projected to be

three to three and a half times lower for launching one kilogram of payload into orbit over conventional single-use launch designs. There were also operational advantages. Soviet engineers

believed that an air-launched system would afford them all-weather and twenty-four-hour

launch capability. Space visionaries, of course, continue to debate to this day the advantages and

disadvantages of such systems for delivering payloads to orbit, but in the heyday of the

107. A Central Committee and Council of Ministries decreeon Spiral was issued in late 1965.

t08. Col. M. Rebrov, "The Revolutions of 'Spiral': A Biography and Portrait of the Chie[ Designerof the Buran

SpacePlane" (English title). Krasnaya zuezda.July 31, 1991,p. 4

109. Vyecheslav Kazmin, "The 'Quiet' Tragedy of EPOS" (English title), Krytya rodiny no. i I (November

1990): 25-26.

I10 Ibid. The Dubna Machine Building Plant (MZ Dubna) was formerly known as Plant No. 256. E V.

Tsybin's OKB 256 moved here on April 25, 1956. After OKB-256 was dissolved on October I. 1959,the plant was

subordinated to OKB-2-155 headed by Chief Designer&. Ya. Bereznyak OKB 2-t55 was a branch of the Mikoyan

design bureau at the time and had produced a number of short range cruise missiles after its establishment on

October 12, 195I. When QKB-2-155 was separated from its parent entity in 1966. part or all of the facilities of the

Dubna Machine Building Plant remained subordinate to the Mikoyan design bureau It was here that OKB-155s

Space Branch was established. From 1966 on, OKB-2-155 was known as the Raduga Machine Building Design

Bureau(MKB Raduga). There is evidence to suggest that MKB Radugacooperatedwith OKB-155's Space Branchon

the Spiral project, SeeVladimir Nikolayevich Trusov, "45[ MKB 'Raduga'" (English title), Vestnik uozdushnogo riot

I (1997): 16-18: Stepan Mikoyan, r"Molniya':From 'Spiral' to M,qKS" (English title). Vestnik uozdushnogo ftot t

(1997): 60: Lardier,LT]stronautique Sovietique, p. 100: Piotr Butowski. "Steps Towards 'Blackjack'," ,ZiirEnthusiast

73 (January February 1998]: 36-49; E mail correspondence. Mark Hillyer to the author, March 29, 1998.

601
602

mid-1960s, to a generation of old-school aeronautical engineers such as Mikoyan and LozinoLozinskiy, there was no question that air-launched spacecraft were the wave of the future.

Lozino-Lozinskiy's l l4,8-ton Spiral system was a two-stage system consisting of the

reusable Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft ("product 50-50") and a two-stage payload. The payload

consisted of an expendable two-stage booster rocket and the Orbital Aircraft ("product 50").

The engineers proposed two near-identical Spiral systems--a primary and a secondary model,

each differentiated only by the choice of propellants:

Primary Model Secondary Model

Component Propellants Propellants

Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft

Booster rocket

Orbital Aircraft

Liquid hydrogen

LOX-liquid hydrogen

Nitrogen tetroxide-unsymmetrical

dimethyl hydrazine

Kerosene

LOX-kerosene

Nitrogen tetroxide-unsymmetrical

dimethyl hydrazine

The Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft (the 205) was a large tailless aircraft built somewhat

like a "flying wing," with sweptback wings and vertical stabilizer surfaces on the wing tips. It

was equipped with four multimode air-breathing turbojet engines operating on kerosene (on

the secondary variant) or on liquid hydrogen (on the primary variant). The aircraft's turbojets

were under the main long fuselage and had a common, regulated supersonic air intake.

The actual orbital payload was fixed on top of the aircraft to a pylon, with its forward and rear

ends covered by fairings. The Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft had a total length of thirty-nine

meters, a wingspan of sixteen and a half meters, and a mass of fifty-two tons (primary version)

or seventy-two tons (second variant)."' One of the more imposing technical challenges was

the development of a hydrogen-fueled carrier aircraft. Much of this research was carried out

at TsAGI near Moscow in cooperation with the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics

of the Academy of Sciences, based in Novosibirsk. Siberia. Beginning in 1967, Institute Director

Academician Vladimir V. Struminskiy was instrumental in laying the foundation for this work,

which was not only in support of the Spiral carrier aircraft but also for future transport

and bomber aircraft.''

The payloads--the two-stage rocket and the Orbital Aircraft--were attached on top

of the Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft's fuselage from the rear, to two-thirds of the way toward

the front of the carrier aircraft. The booster rocket was a classical cylindrical rocket with a mass

of 52.3-52.5 tons consisting of two stages, both fueled on either liquid oxygen

(LOX)-kerosene or LOX-liquid hydrogen. Unconfirmed reports suggest that this rocket,

designed to accelerate the Orbital Aircraft into orbit, may have been a contribution from

Korolev's OKB-I. Other contradictory evidence suggests that Lozino-Lozinskiy may have

considered using one of Chelomey's ICBMs, the UR- 100, for the role. If indeed the UR- I00 was

actually under consideration for the Spiral system, Mikoyan and Lozino-Lozinskiy must have

factored in a significant amount of redesign to accommodate the new propellant combinations

because the UR-IO0 used storable hypergolic combinations. In the Spiral conception, the

II I. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Lardier,L_stronautique Soui#tique. p. 248: E-mail correspondence.

Igor/_fanasyev to the author, December6. 1997.

112. Another participant in this program was OKB-165 headed by General Designer A. M. Lyulka Seealso

Lardier, L_stronautique Souietique, p. 175: G. R Svishchev, ed., Auintsiya entsiklopediya (Moscow: Bolshaya

Rossiyskayaentsiklopediya, 1994), p. 546.

CHRLLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
TRAGEDY

This i5 a model of the complete Spiral system on display. The high-speed _,0-50 carrier aircraft would have

returned to an airport after accelerating its combined payload to a velocity of about Maeh 5-6. The actual Spiral

spacep[ane is mounted on top of the carrier_ fuselage backed by a two-stage cylindrical rocket at {ts base

(files of _sif 5iddiqi)

booster rocket would have a first-stage thrust of I00 tons, a little more than the eighty tons

on the UR-I00 ICBM. Second-stage thrust would be twenty-five tons. "_

The main component of the Spiral system was the Orbital Aircraft (the 105). The relatively

small vehicle was built on a triangular base and had wings swept back at fifty-five degrees. The

vehicle had a length of eight meters and a wingspan of just under seven and three-quarters

meters. Four meters of the wingspan covered the width of the fuselage. The mass of the ship

was only 10.3-10.5 tons. The useful payload of the ship would be two tons, The shapes of the

lifting body, the wing, and the rear fin were designed for optimum performance in any given

_light regime and potential shell temperatures as a result of frictional heating. The rear fin

was swept back at sixty degrees and was attached at the rear of the spacecraft on top of the

vehicle's turbojet engine. Additional airbrakes were hinged on the upper surface of the fuselage.

The wings themselves could be rotated to a vertical position during orbital injection and the

initial portion of reentry to reduce thermal stresses. In the subsequent gliding phase through

the atmosphere, these panels would be folded out to provide maximum surface area and

better lift-drag ratios.

The single pilot's cockpit consisted of a pressurized metallic capsule lined with insulating

material. In case of an emergency in orbit that might prevent the entire vehicle from deorbiting,

the pilot could detach the headlight-shaped capsule from the main fuselage and use its own

engine to reenter and land by parachute. The rear part of the cockpit thus had its own self-contained heat shJeJd. To loci)irate e)ection, the capsule was mounted on two rails anchored to the

fuselage structure with a pyrotechnic ejection device. Internal pressure and temperature would

be maintained at 760 mm Hg and ten to fifty degrees Centigrade, respectively. While the pilot

113. Kazmin, "The 'Quiet' i-ragedy of EPOS": Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": tardier. L.,qstronautique

5oui_tique. p 175: Afanasyev correspondence. December6. 1997.

603
604

could control most operations manually, including the elevons and rudders as well as the main

turbojet engine, there was an on-board computer for navigation and automatic flight control.

For landing, instead of wheels, Lozino-Lozinskiy chose to use four skids retracting via

compressed air stored at the front of the struts. With a high angle of attack, the ship would

land on the rear skids first, before tipping forward onto the forward ones. Each skid strut was

equipped with special shock absorbers.

For propulsion, the Orbital Aircraft had three different sets of engines. The primary engine

for maneuvering in orbit and deorbiting was a one-and-a-half-ton-thrust rocket engine

positioned at the rear of the fuselage. In addition to the main thrust chamber, the engine also

had two auxiliary combustion chambers at forty kilograms each for use in case of primary

engine failure. The propellants for the engine, unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen

tetroxide, were carried in tanks positioned at the fuselage's center, near the ship's center of

gravity. A second set of engines with an independent feed system would be used for attitude

control in both space and the atmosphere. It consisted of six engines at sixteen kilograms

thrust and ten engines at one kilogram thrust. The higher powered ones were the primary

means of controlling pitch, yaw, and roll, while the lower powered units were for precise orbital

stabilization, The final propulsion unit on the Orbital Aircraft was the powerful RD-36-35K

turbojet engine created by the Rybinsk Design Bureau of Engine Building (formerly OKB-36)

under Chief Designer Petr A. Kolesov, the famous aviation engine designer who had up to that

point developed jet engines for Tupolev, Sukhoy, and Yakovlev. Rated at two-ton thrust, the

kerosene engine could be used both at takeoff for test flights to reach Mach 0.8 and at landing.

As in the previous Soviet spaceplane programs, much of the research and development

effort surrounding Spiral was focused on the development of reusable thermal protection

for the spacecraft. For high-speed aircraft of the period, the Soviets were moving slowly from

aluminum and aluminum alloys to titanium alloys and eventually to beryllium and niobium

alloys, In creating the Orbital Aircraft, the engineers designed the vehicle in such a manner as

to compensate for thermal stresses not by a resilient heat shield, but rather by its aerodynamic

design. Tests showed that with a special heat shielding screen, the maximum temperature at

stressful points, such as the front of the fuselage, the edges of the wings, and the tail, did not

exceed 1,500 degrees Centigrade. Consequently, Lozino-Lozinskiy's engineers used titanium

alloys and in some places aluminum alloys without any expensive coatings, such as tiles. The

heat "screen" itself was not solid, but composed of a set of sheets, much like a fish's scales,

suspended on ceramic bearings. Given deviations in temperature, these scales automatically

changed shape while preserving the stability of the shield's relative position to the main body

of the craft."'

Each flight of the Spiral system would begin with the use of a "launch truck" to boost the

stack into the sky. In the case of the carrier aircraft using kerosene, the Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft

was to take the complex to Mach 5.5-6 hypersonic velocities until the Orbital Aircraft with its

two-stage booster separated at an altitude of twenty-eight to thirty kilometers. In using the hydrogen carrier variant, the separation was to occur at twenty-two to twenty-four kilometers altitude

and at Mach 4. The two-stage booster would then come into operation and acceleratethe vehicle to near-orbital velocity. Burn times would vary between 387.2 (liquid hydrogen) to 281.5 seconds (kerosene), depending on the propellant combination used. Then the Orbital Aircraft's own

engine would kick in to inject the spaceplane into a low-Earth orbit at approximately 130 by 150

kilometers altitude. Orbital inclination would vary between forty-hve and 135 degrees. The carrier aircraft would then flew back to its originating airport, ready for another flight.

114 Kazmin,"The 'Quiet Tragedyof EPOS":Iqfanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft":R _q Belyakovand J.

Marmain,MiC_Fi[ty"fearsofSecret/tircra[tDesign(,qnnapolis,MD: NavalInstitutePress,1992),pp.417-21

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
TRAGEDY

The flight of the Orbital Aircraft was short in duration, geared to its specific missions

of interception, inspection, or reconnaissance. During the course of its two or three orbits in

flight, the pilot could effectively change altitude and inclination of the orbit. After accomplishing

its primary goal, the aircraft could dive into the atmosphere at a very high angle of attack (up

to fifty-three degrees) with its wings folded at the standard forty-five degrees to the vertical

and drop to hypersonic speed. When folded during reentry, the wings would remain in

an aerodynamic "shadow," significantly reducing thermal stresses on critical areas while also

improving stability. The spaceship was designed to have a 1,500- to 1,800-kilometer cross-range

maneuver capability, allowing it much flexibility in choosing landing sites. After further reductions

in speed, the pilot would unfold the spaceplane's wings to a near-horizontal position (ninetyfive degrees to the vertical), glide down, and land at the chosen airport on its skids. In case the

pilot was unable to land on the first pass over the runway, he would fire up the turbojet engine

to steer the vehicle back for another try, at a landing speed of about 250 kilometers per hour. ''_

The Spiral project, as proposed in 1965-66, was to be performed in four distinct phases.

During the first stage, MMZ Zenit was to build a suborbital analog of the Orbital Aircraft with a

rocket engine for launch from a variant of the Tu-95 bomber named the Tu-95KM, apparently

derived from the earlier Tupolev studies for the "product 130." The purpose of such tests was to

evaluate the basic aerodynamic and power performance characteristics of the actual Orbital

Aircraft in conditions close to spaceflight (altitudes of up to 120 kilometers and speeds up to

Mach 6-8), as well as reentry into the atmosphere. Lozino-Lozinskiy planned to build three

analogs, with subsonic flights beginning in 1967 and supersonic and hypersonic flights starting

a year later.

In the second stage, engineers were to design and build the Experimental Piloted Orbital

Aircraft (EPOS) for further improvement of design and flight characteristics of the Orbital Aircraft.

The two vehicles were to be externally identical, differing only in some internal systems. The

launch of the EPOS was planned on a standard Soyuz-type I IASl I booster. When Korolev and

kozino-Lozinskiy first discussed the use of an R-7-derived booster for use in the

Spiral program, Korolev apparently pushed the idea hard. One of Lozino-Lozinskiy's deputies

remembered later that Korolev's motivations for offering the Soyuz rocket for the Spiral program

was "so he could get a big order for R-Ts to make them cheaper.' ..... After launch by the Soyuz

booster, the spaceplane was to enter a 150- by 160-kilometer orbit with a fifty-one-degree inclination, make two to three orbits, and then perform a reentry and landing nearly identical to that

planned for the Orbital Aircraft. According to the initial plan, MMZ Zenit was to build four models of the EPOS for automated orbital missions beginning in 1969 and piloted missions the year

after.

The third stage was to focus on the creation of the Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft, probably

contracted out to Tupolev's OKB-156. The work on the Hypersonic Booster-Airplane was to

begin with the creation of four models of the kerosene variant by 1970. After further experimental testing at hypersonic speeds, Tupolev's engineers were to proceed to the construction

of the more complex hydrogen variant, with flight tests beginning in 1972. Four models were

slated for production in the initial plan.

The final stage of the Spiral program included integrated testing of the entire system, with the

Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft, the two-stage booster rocket, and the Orbital Aircraft. Automated

115. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Kazmin, "The 'Quiet' Tragedy of EPOS': Lozino-Lozinskiy and

Plokhikh. "ReusableSpaceSystems and International Cooperation": Andrey Batashev,"Steep Turns of the Spiral A

Quarter-Century Did Not Suffice for Implementing the ProjectCreated by the 'Father' of the Soviet Shuttle" (English

title). Trud. June 30. 1994. p. 4: _fanasyev correspondence, December6, 1997.

I16. James Harford, Korolev. How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Driue to Beat .Z]merica to the Moon

(New York:John Wiley & Sons. 1997), p. 275,

605
[

6O6

flights in the kerosene variant were to begin in 1972, leading to full-scale testing of a piloted variant using liquid hydrogen in 1973. It was, in all senses, a tong-range program and one not tied

to meeting unrealistic deadlines arising from a necessity to respond to a similar U.S. project.

The Spiral project was huge, much larger than any of the previous spaceplane programs in

the Soviet Union, certainly rivaling and perhaps exceeding the amount of effort the U.S. Air Force

had invested in the Dyna-Soar program. The rich historical legacy of spaceplane research in

the USSR, leading all the way back to the S_inger-Bredt studies in the late 1940s. served as a

springboard for the new project. Apart from MMZ Zenit, another important player in the program

was the famous TsAGI, whose director ironically at the time of Spiral's birth was former General

Designer Myasishchev. Earlier, during 1961-64, Myasishchev had initiated a program under

the codename Tayga to study complex phenomena associated with hypersonic flight, inspired

apparently by concurrent American projects such as PRIME. Throughout 1965-69, TsAGI

scientists conducted extensive tests in wind tunnets to refine the design of the Spiral Orbital

Aircraft. Here, scientists used the MK-105 stand for determining the architecture of the complex

guidance system for the spaceplane. The institute also conducted tests in support of Spiral in

specially re-equipped L-18 flying laboratories. In 196L a team of TsAGI scientists also began

research on determining the layout for a single-stage-to-orbit aerospace system using hydrogen

engines. Engineers studied the possibility of extrapolating the results of the Spiral program from

a one-person spaceplane to a multicrewed orbital transport vehicle. Remarkably, the Orbital

Aircraft's excellent lift-drag ratio and thermal characteristics were retained in the large model.

Based on the research at TsAGI, especially on the Tayga program, three institutions--the

M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute at Zhukovskiy, Plant No. 166 at Omsk, and MMZ

Zenit--cooperated in the design of a series of test beds to prove the basic technologies of the

new Spiral spaceplane program. Under the name Unpiloted Orbital Rocket-Glider (BOR),

the engineers set out to study the various critical points in a spaceplane's trajectory during both

suborbital and orbital flights. The early BOR vehicles came in three different variants, scale models of the EPOS at one-half and one-third size for launch on suborbital ballistic trajectories.

BOR-I, BOR-2. and BOR-3 were to be used primarily to study stability and controllability

characteristics at supersonic and subsonic speeds and also to evaluate the performance of

thermal shielding to be used on the EPOS/'_

Some cosmonauts also got into the act. As early as December 1965, three pilots,

including veteran cosmonaut Titov, began preliminary studies in connection with the Spiral project. They performed more intensive flight training than was usual for other cosmonauts at the

time. first flying MiG-17s and then moving on to MiG-21s in 1966. By the following year, they

were flying fighter-interceptor aircraft of all types currently in operation with the Soviet Air Force. '_

Perhaps not coincidentally, fifteen Air Force officers were at the time completing their graduate

degree work at the prestigious N Ye. Zhukovskiy Military-Air Engineering Academy in Moscow.

At Korolev's behest, the entire group, which included most of the 1960 and 1962 cosmonaut

enrollments, were studying the development of a single-seat reusable spaceplane.' ''_Among their

study duties was to analyze the performance characteristics of the defunct Dyna-Soar spacecraft.

The cosmonauts later named their own project "Buran-68," which as it turned out differed

I it'. E mail correspondence, Igor°qlanasyevto the author, December I I. 1997: Kazmin, "The Quiet Tragedy

of EPOS": Ts,,qql-Osnovnyyeetapy r_aucflnoydeyatetnosti, t968 1993 pp. [56. 244

118. G.Titov, "... Thisis Neededfor ,qll of Us" (English title),/qv_cttsiyui kosmonavtiku no 4 (,qpri11993):

2-3. The other two cosmonauts training with Titov were ,q. V. Filipchenko and ,q. R Kuklin, both rookies Seealso

Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: I964 1966, pp 295,306, 347.

tl 9 S. M Belotserkovskiy._ibel Qagarincl: [akty i domysly (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniya, 1992), p. 19 The

fifteen cosmonauts were V. F. Bykovskiy, Yu. ,q. Gagarin. V V. Gorbatko, Ye V Khrunov, ,q. ,q. Leonov, ,q G

Nikolayev, 1- D Pitskhelauri, P R. Popovich, Zh. D. Sergeychik,G. S Shonin, I. B. Sotovyeva. V. V. Tereshkova.

G. S. Titov, B V Volynov, and D. ,q. Zaykin.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TRAGEDY

significantlyfromDyna-Soar,but wasvery

similartotheSpiralEPOSspaceplane.Through

complexmathematical modeling and theoretical

research, each cosmonaut developed a particular

part of the spaceplane. Gagarin was responsible

for the general layout, the aerodynamic design of

elements ensuring landing, and control systems.

Titov developed the emergency rescue system.

Nikolayev created the aerodynamic form for

hypersonic and supersonic speeds as well as the

thermal protection. "_'_The Air Force's decision to

have all of these cosmonauts focus on the spaceplane theme underscored the fact that they were

indeed very serious about the program. '2'

The glmaz, Zvezda, and Spiral projects

were critical to Soviet plans to militarize space

operations. Adding to the concurrent Soyuz, L I,

and L3 programs, there were six major Soviet

crewed projects by 1967, an impressive contrast

to the two U.S. piloted space programs of the

time, tqpollo and MOL. From a political and public relations perspective, the military projects

were, perhaps, less important than the three

_t top is a winged rocket.glider developed by the

Tupoleu design bureau ir_the early I960s to carry

out research at Mach 2-5 or_ the aerodyr_amic

characteristics of a hypersonic winged vehicle _t

bottom is the BOR-2lifting body developed by the

M M. Gromov Flight.Research Institute in the late

t960s within the framework of the Spiral program.

(copyright _sif 5iddicli)

major efforts in support of crewed lunar operations. The military and civilian programs

ran parallel with each other with some modicum of interdependence, but all were affected

by cosmonaut Komarov's tragic death in April 1967. For those involved in Soyuz, LI, and L3, in

particular, the disaster paralyzed their efforts with uncertainty and doubt. Numerous deadlines fell

through the cracks as engineers from TsKBEM began their long. hard road back to recovery.

120. ibid., pp. 16-17, 20. The topics of focus for someof the other cosmonauts were: Zaykin (work on com

ponents and computation of mass characteristics), Popovich (power sources), Khrunov (orientation systems).

Bykovskiy(propellant system [or the liquid-propellant rocketengine}, and Sergeychik(safety systems on the flight}.

121 There may have been a third competitor in the Soviet spacepiane programs apart from Mikoyan's

QKB-155 and Tupolev's OKB 156: General Designer P O. Sukhoy's OKB 51. whose proposal was evidently based

on an existing high-speed bomber design named the T 4 In the early 1960s,Sukhoy had proposed the creation of

a new-generation strategic supersonic bomber, which was part of a competition with the Tupolev and A S. Yakovlev

(OKB 115) design bureaus On May 2 I, 1963, Sukhoypresentedhis conception of the T-4. also known as the "prod

uct [00" because it weighed 100-120 tons. The forty-four-and-a-half-meter long aircraft had a maximum design

speedof 3,200 kilometers per hour (Mach 301) and a supersonic range of about 6,O00kilometers, The T-4 bomber

made only ten test flights between August 1972 and January 1914, one of which achieved supersonic speed. The

Soviet Air Force, however, soured on this technological marvel by the early 1970s. believing that its goals could be

performed by more com,entiona) and reliableaircraft, such as the famousTu-145, also known as the Tu 22M Backfire

bomber. Three prototypes of the T 4 were scrapped,while a fourth one was consigned to an air museum after work

was stopped in 1975 According to an interview with test pilot Maj, General V. S Ilyushin on December23, 1990

the T-4 was planned asa booster for a spaceplane E-mailcorrespondence, SergeyVoevodin to the author, September

2. 1997: letter, Peter Pesaventoto the author, August 15, 1997.Seealso Piotr Butowski, "Steps Towards 'Blackjack',"

Air Enthusiast -/3(January-February 1998): 36-49: L. L Selyakov.Maloizuestnyye stranitsy tvoreheskoy deyatelnos

ti auiatsionnogo konstruktora Vtadimira Mikhczylouich Myasishcheuq (Moscow: AO RNTK ira. Tupoleva, 1997), p.

112; Gunston, The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian ,Ztircraft, pp. 352-53; Mikhail Rebrov, "The Unknown 'One

Hundred'" (English title), Krasnaya zvezda, September 13, 1995, p 4: Svishchev. 7_viabiya entsiktopediya, pp

550-5 I.

607

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Gvr'riNG B ¢K

ON TRACK

The road out of the quagmire of the Soyuz I disaster was a difficult one. Because all three

major piloted space projects--the Soyuz, the LI, and the L3--depended greatly on the vagaries

of the basic Soyuz spacecraft, the accident had a widespread effect on the Soviet space program.

Throughout 1966-67, the most important goal for the Soviets had been the celebration of the

fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution in November 1967 with a circumlunar

flight of two cosmonauts in the LI spacecraft. Because the LI shared the same design as the

Soyuz spacecraft that had killed Komarov, the disaster had grave implications for an early

circumlunar flight. Technical issues were the primary determinant to any plans for lunar flyby

in November 1967, but remarkably, the leading Soviet space officials still held out hope for

meeting that increasingly elusive deadline.

The Tough Road Ahead

In late May 1967, two veteran NASA astronauts, Lt. Colonel Michael Collins and

Lt. Colonel David R. Scott. arrived at the Paris Air Show to make a joint appearance with two

Soviet cosmonauts, Colonel PavelI. Belyayev and Konstantin P.Feoktistov. It was only a month

after Komarov's death, but the unexpected meeting provided a brief but illuminating view of

the Soviet space program. Over numerous toasts of vodka, what the astronauts found out was

not so surprising: the cosmonauts indicated "that there would be several Earth orbital flights

and then . . . a circumlunar flight."' As Collins later recalled, "Belyayev himself expected to

make a circumlunar flight in the not-too-distant future. ''2 The revelation was noteworthy precisely because of the almost complete information blackout on future plans in the Soviet space

program. What was particularly astonishing was that despite the Soyuz t disaster, the Soviets

were being remarkably optimistic in public of their circumlunar plans.

In October 1967, Academician Obraztsov stated with unusual explicitness that "the very

next milestone in the conquest of space will be the manned circumnavigation of the Moon,

and then a lunar landing, ''_ But as if to cover their bets, in their typically confusing way, Soviet

I. "Soviet Plans Manned Trip Round Moon," Washington Post, June 4. 1967. p. A9.

2 Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: ,'qn ,'qstronaut's journeys (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. t974),

p. 280.

3. Soviet 5pace Programs, 1966-70 Cioats and Purposes, Organization. Resources. Facilities and

Hardware Manned and Unmanned Flight Programs, Bioastronautics. Civil and Military _pplications, Projections of

Future Plans, ,qttitudes Toward International Cooperation and 5pace Law, prepared for the Committee on

/_eronautical and Space Sciences. LI,S. Senate, 92d Cong., Ist sess, (Washington, DC: US. Government Printing

Office, December 197t), p. 366

609
610

spokespersons of the period ensured against the possibility of failure. Academician Leonid I.

Sedov, the chairman of the "Commission for the Promotion of Interplanetary Flights" under the

Academy of Sciences, was particularly notorious for brilliant obfuscations of the Soviet reach

for the Moon. Because Western observers found it difficult to identify any single individual with

real power within the Soviet space program, by default, many of Sedov's statements were

magnified out of proportions, despite the fact that he had almost no connection whatsoever

with the space program's operation. In September 1967', Sedov confidently told journalists that

"manned flight to the Moon is not in the forefront of Soviet astronautics, as the problems of

return from the Moon have still to be solved. ''_ It was a typically disingenuous statement that

was symptomatic of the Soviet public relations effort of the time.

One of the more prominent pronouncements of the period was a cryptic news item in

August 1967 that ten Soviet cosmonauts were practicing sea landing tests for future space missions.' Unlike standard Earth-orbital flights, cosmonauts flying back from the Moon would

potentially land in water areas because of the nature of their return trajectories. Among the

group were four Air Force officers preparing for the commander's seat on the first lunar missions: veterans Leonov and Popovich and rookies Klimuk and Voloshin. _ Remarkably, because

of poor planning and bureaucratic gridlock, the trainees did not have the luxury of a 7K-LI

spacecraft simulator throughout 1967. One interesting component of their training regime

in 1966-67 was to rehearse for the possibility that it would not be sufficiently safe to launch

cosmonauts on the Proton booster, and, therefore, they would have to transfer to the 7K LI in

Earth orbit from a Soyuz ship launched on a more reliable I IA511 rockeL The cosmonauts flew

on parabolic trajectories in a Tu-104 aircraft and used a special curved tunnel to carry out

the transfer. The results of the training were not too encouraging, and it proved to be a very

difficult exercise.'

Immediately after the Soyuz I accident, despite pervasive uncertainty, TsKBEM engineers had

assumed that the problem with Soyuz I would be quickly identified and eliminated.

Just six days after Komarov's death, Chief Designer Mishin set a new tentative plan for the

circumlunar project, with four automated 7K-LI spacecraft flying around the Moon between

June and August 1967. They would be followed by three piloted flights on spacecraft 8L,

9L, and IOL in sufficient time to make the November 1967 deadline. By June, however,

a one-month delay had already accumulated, possibly because of the extensive and timeconsuming work of the Soyuz I accident investigation commission. The Komarov disaster had

other repercussions on the L I program. It was clear to most senior space program leaders that

the Soyuz docking and EVA mission would be delayed possibly to early 1968. This meant that

the cosmonauts would not have an opportunity to rehearse an extravehicular transfer prior to

a dual-launch circumlunar flight. During a meeting of the L I State Commission in early June

1967, Chairman Tyulin officially decided to abandon the docking-in-Earth-orbit option for the

circumlunar project and opt for launching cosmonauts on the new UR-5OOK Proton booster. As

4. Ibid, pr 365.

5. "Soviet DescribesSplashdownTests," New York Times,,_ugust 25. 1967: "Cosmonauts Train for Water

Recoveries," ,quiation Week & Space Technology, September II. 1967. p. 31: Viktor Mitroshenkov, Zemlya pod

nebom (Moscow: Sovetskaya rossiya. 1987). p. 424.

6. There were twelve cosmonauts training for the LI program in May 1967'.They were pilots V F.

Bykovskiy,P I. Klimuk, P,. P_.Leonov, P_.G. Nikolayev, P.R. Popovich, and V. I:L Voloshin, aswell as engineers Yu.

P ,_rtyukhin, G M Grechko, O. G. Makarov, N N. Rukavishnikov,V. I. Sevastyanov,and _. F.Voronov. SeeVadim

Y. Molchanov, "Soviet Manned Lunar Programs," _uest 2(4) (Winter 1993): 43. Other sources give a slightly different composition. See, for example, I. ,a Marinin and S. Kh. Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programs for Lunar Flights"

(English title), Zemlya i uselennaya no. 4 (July-P,ugust 1993): 62-69. Scientist V. G. Yershovis said to havejoined

the LI training group in May 1967.

7. Marinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Lunar Flights"

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
J GETTING BACK ON TRI_CK

a compensatory measure, he introduced two additional automated circumlunar missions into the

flight sequence, making a total of six robotic flights before a piloted one. Of the six

precursor missions, two had already flown in March and April 1967 with mixed success. The

results of the remaining four would make or break the ability of the space program to make the

sacred November 1967 deadline. The immense pressure to celebrate the anniversary with a piloted circumlunar mission was such that the first of the four remaining LI ships would fly in July

with the old parachute system because there was simply no time to install a modified version,

corrected following Komarov's death._

If there was any hope left for a circumlunar flight before the end of 1967, by mid-July, it was

clear to most in the State Commission that the engineers would simply be unable to make the

deadline. The first fully equipped 7K-LI vehicle, spacecraft no. 4, had only just finished its experimental testing in July after a long four months. 9 TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designer Yevgeniy V.

Shabarov, overseeing the preparation of the vehicle, spent many long clays ensconced at the

Kaliningrad plant eliminating problems from the vehicle. Preflight testing, usually lasting several

weeks, had yet to even begin, Top Communist Party and government leaders, such as Ustinov,

Serbin, and Smirnov, were simply in a state of panic, knowing that the first launch of the Saturn

V was slated for late 1967, while the N I was still many months away from flight./_t a meeting

of top officials in August 1967, Secretary of the Central Committee for Defense and Space

Ustinov was infuriated. He told Mishin: "We have a celebration in two months, and the

Americans are going to launch again, but what about us? What have we done? Imagine October

1967. Please understand this! We must suppress all personal interests and partiality! ....

On September 7, the L I State Commission met to set a date for the launch of the first automated circumlunar flight of a 7K-LI spacecraft. Several chief designers, including Mishin,

Ryazanskiy (radio-control systems), and Barmin (launch complexes), reported on the readiness

of the booster and the spacecraft." t31though many of the participants believed that their

systems were 99 to 99.9 percent reliable, Mishin himself believed that the complete booster-payload system had a reliability rate of 60 percent, illustrating a remarkable lack of faith in the

equipment. According to the plan, after flying around the Moon and heading toward Earth, the

spacecraft would have the option of two different reentry profiles: a direct ballistic reentry into

a I00- by 2,000-kilometer area in the Indian Ocean or the more preferable guided reentry in

Kazakhstan. As a precautionary measure, the Soviet government signed an agreement with the

Indian government in early September that would allow Soviet spacecraft to be brought to Indian

soil following recovery. '_

There were several malfunctions during the days leading up to the planned launch, but

nothing critical enough to delay an automated flight. The 7K-LI vehicle, spacecraft no. 4L,

lifted off precisely on time in the dark night at Tyura-Tam at 0111 hours, 54 seconds Moscow

Time on September 28, 1967. Air Force representative Lt. General Kamanin recalled the scene:

8. N Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for" (English title), Vozdushniy trcznsport46 (1993): 8-9.

9. Yu. P. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya "Energiya" imeni 5. P Koroleua (Korolev:

RKK Energiya, named after S, P. Korolev, 1996), p. 24 I.

IO A, Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality" (English title), Prauda, October 20, 1989_p. 4.

I I. Others reporting included Yu N. Trufanov (TsKBM Branch No. I responsible for the UR-S00K Proton)

and R A. Agadzhanov (Chief of the Chief Operations and Control Group and Deputy Chief of TsK[K).

12. NASA Scienceand Technology Division, Astronautics and .qeronautics, 1967:Chronology of Science,

Technology,and Policy (Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication (SP)-4008, 1968), p. 321. Another source says

that the agreement between the two countries was signed on November 18, 1967. See Christian Lardier,

tZtstrondutique Souietique(Paris: Armand Colin, 1992), p 16I,

611
612

This still from a movie shows the transport o/ a 7K-LI circumlunar spacecraft on its Proton booster on the way

[ram the assembly building to the launch pad at Tyura Tam Note the cluster o/solid-propellant rocket engines

at the top o[ the launch escape tower The hatch on the external fairing [or cosmonaut entry into the actual

spacecraft can be seen in the [oreground as a dark oblong shape (/iles o/,_si/ Siddicti)

It immediately seemed to me. as well as other observers, that the rocket was going up

slower than usual. But none of us counted seconds, and we all hoped that it was the

rocket's unusual night launch that inhibited our ability to assess the takeoff adequately.

When the first stage's side units decoupled, we were prepared to cast off doubts, but

suddenly the automatic rescue system came into action, and the burning mass abruptly changed its path and began moving down to Earth .... '_

It later transpired that one of the six main engines of the Proton first stage had failed to fire

at launch. Remarkably, the ascent was steady for sixty-one seconds before diverting from a

nominal path, which provoked the emergency rescue system into action. The booster itself

crashed about sixty-five kilometers from the pad amid the thunder of loud explosions. The LI

descent apparatus separated from the wandering launch vehicle on time. Although the capsule

was destabilized at the moment of separation because of an unexpected pressure shock, the

vehicle landed safely in one piece not far from the exploded booster. When rescuers arrived.

they were greeted by a strange scene: from one end of the horizon to the other, there was an

eerie yellowish-brown cloud of nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine all

over the steppes. The descent apparatus lay majestically on top of a hill amid the toxic vapors. _4

The difficulty in rescuing the capsule was a nagging reminder of the dangers of using storable

13 N Kamanin "A Goal Wo[th Working for" (English title). Vozdushniy transport 47 (I 993): 8-9

14 Semenov ed RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya p 241

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

propellants on a booster intended for launching humans into space. If there had been a crew aboard

the descent apparatus, they might possibly have been exposed to the dangerous propellants.

With the foregone conclusion that there would not be any piloted circumlunar missions in

1967, the engineers trudged on with their work on the next 7K-LI spacecraft. Late on the day

of the launch failure, some members of the State Commission met to discuss the preliminary

results of the accident investigation. Chief Designer Mishin, perhaps to lift the rapidly falling

spirits of his engineers, told those present that they should not be discouraged and should work

even more energetically for the next flight of the L I spacecraft, tentatively set for the next lunar

launch window in two months. It would be a busy time for TsKBEM engineers because Mishin

had also scheduled the first post-Komarov flights of the Soyuz spacecraft in October. These

would be followed by the Li launch on November 21-22. '_

On October 7, there was a major meeting at the Kremlin presided by Ustinov to discuss

various aspects of the troubled L I program. Chief Designer Glushko reported on the reasons for

the unfortunate Proton failure on September 28. The single engine failure on the first stage had

occurred because of the blocking of the propellant supply system by a rubber plug. The plug

had evidently fallen into the engine during its assembly at Plant No. 19 at Perm, where the units

were manufactured on order from Glushko's Design Bureau of Power Machine Building (formerly OKB-456). Ustinov castigated Minister of Aviation Industries Petr V. Dementyev for his

negligence in the matter, telling his audience that the Proton failure had cost the Soviet government 100 million rubles and a two- to three-month delay in the circumlunar program. All

the reports, from Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev, Mishin, Tyulin, Chelomey,

and others, were filled with recriminations against subcontractors who were inefficient in their

deliveries. '_,

The fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution passed with much fanfare in the

first week of November 1967 all over the Soviet Union. But for those involved in the space program, it was a time marked by the acknowledgment that their handiwork had failed the task

given them by the Soviet government. Since 1964-65, numerous decrees and decisions from

the Central Committee, the Council of Ministers, the Military-Industrial Commission. and the

Ministry of General Machine Building had all aimed for this date as the holy grail of Soviet cosmonautics--the month when two Soviet citizens would fly around the Moon and bring their

hammer-and-sickle flags back to parades and celebrations in honor of the Bolsheviks. It, of

course, never happened that way. Engineers. cosmonauts, chief designers, ministers, and military officers all dug back into preparations for the next circumlunar launch attempt. A success

would bring some consolation to a beleaguered effort.

In mid-November, LI State Commission Chairman Tyulin arrived at Tyura-Tam to oversee

the prelaunch testing of the flight vehicle, the 7K-LI, spacecraft no. 5L. Several of the lunar cosmonauts, including Leonov, Popovich, and Dobrovolskiy, were escorted to the launch site by

Kamanin on the morning of November 18." After the launch, they were evidently to fly to

Yevpatoriya to participate in the control of the vehicle during its weeklong circumlunar mission.

The only prominent chief designer present at the launch range to oversee preparations was

Glushko: Mishin and Chelomey did not arrive until 36 and I I hours, respectively, before launch,

probably because of numerous prior commitments in several other concurrent projects. It was a particularly chilly launch night at Tyura-Tam, with the Moon beautifully suspended over the Proton

I$. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for," no. 47

16. Ibid. Cosmonaut/q. g. keonov has also describedthe reason for the Proton failure: "It turned out that

a rubber plug had fallen into the manifold ahead of the turbopump assembly. Having gotten stuck in the line, it cut

off the fuel feed" SeeMajor I. Kuznetsov, "The Flight That Did Not Occur" (English),/quiats_ya l kosmonaut_kano.

8 (August 1990): 44-45.

17. Mitroshenkov. Zemtya pod nebom, p. 426.

613
614

launch pad. The 7K-LI spacecraft lifted off just after midnight local time, 2208 hours Moscow Time,

on November 22, 1967. Everything seemed to be working perfectly until second-stage operation,

when one of the four engines of the second stage failed to ignite. The remaining three engines

continued to fire for four additional seconds until an automatic signal from the ground detecting

trajectory deviation shut them off. Once again, the emergency rescue system fired on time and shot

the L I descent apparatus away from the launch vehicle. The descent apparatus crashed about

300 kilometers from the pad, while the automated crew capsule flew eighty kilometers southwest

of the town of Dzhezkazgan. Because of a spurious command from the vehicle's altimeter, the softlanding engines fired at an altitude of four and a half kilometers instead of just prior to touchdown,

causing the capsule to perform a "hard" landing. Engineers later added a filter to the gamma-ray

altimeter to preclude such malfunctions, in both the L I and Soyuz spacecraft. '"

At the end of 1967, the pressure was off Mishin a little bit. No longer chasing after an

impossible target, his immediate goal was to beat the Americans in a circumlunar flight. Given

that piloted Apollo operations were not expected to resume prior to the fall of 1968, the Soviets

could be forgiven for being optimistic about doing just that. The accumulated delays allowed

engineers to continue fine-tuning the 7K-LI spacecraft design. One of their ultimate goals was

to replace the original _rgon-I I computer by the more improved Salyut-I model sometime in

1967-68. The engineers also continued to shave off weight from the vehicle in an attempt to

optimize its capabilities. The major changes introduced into the Soyuz spacecraft parachute

system were also incorporated into the L I. The results of the testing were. however, not very

encouraging, On January 26, during a test of the LI landing system at the Air Force range at

Vladimirovka near Kapustin Yar, the parachute shot out and filled with air but abruptly

collapsed, and the capsule crashed on to the ground and exploded. '_

In January. the LI cosmonauts finally began training in a specially built simulator delivered

by the Special Experimental Design Bureau of the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute at

Zhukovskiy near Moscow. The simulator, known as Volchok ("Top"), was installed at the Air

Force's Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine to allow cosmonauts to train for the return to

Earth at lunar velocities. The simulator was part of a complex that included an M-220 computer,

a centrifuge, the L I cockpit, and an instructor's control panel. The L I group conducted at least

seventy runs on the simulator using precise methodologies for the circumlunar training program

consisting of the two different reentry profiles: one ballistic and the other guided. The favorite

to command the first circumlunar mission, cosmonaut Leonov, later recalled:

We had to learn to choose the angle of entry after the last [mid-course] correction using

the star-tracker and sextant. [The angle] depended on the magnitude and direction of

the deceleration burn. It was possible to "bury" oneself in the atmosphere with a large

angle and to "slip through" it with a small angle. The optimum version was an entry

with a "pop-up": enter, exit the atmosphere after extinguishing great speed, and reenter. already knowing the angle of incidence at which the craft had to be held to get to

the calculated landing point. The "manual firing input" instrument highlighted the

number of burns after passage of the first sector. From that we figured the distance to

the calculated landing point, then converted distance into angle of incidence .... yTs a

result we learned to make a "landing" with an accuracy to one kilometer. ....

18

no47

19

20

Semenov. ed, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p 241: Kamanin. "P, Goal Worth Working for."

N. Karnanin, "P_Goal Worth Working for" (English title). Vozdushniy transport 48 (1993): 8-9.

Kuznetsov. "The Flight That Did Not Occur." p. 44.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

General L I training consisted of studying the 7K-LI ship's on-board systems, the dynamics of its motion, mathematical support, programming, ballistics, and astro-navigation.

Included in the cosmonauts' training program was a ten-day trip to Mogadishu, Somalia, in the

summer of 1968 to familiarize themselves with the constellations in the southern sky: returning LI vehicles would fly over Antarctica, then Africa, before heading toward Soviet territory.

On an actual flight, the vehicle would use its star-tracker and sextant for autonomous navigation, and the cosmonaut would take over in case of sensor malfunction/'

By early February 1968, Mishin and Kamanin had agreed on the selection of four crew

commanders to train for the first few missions: cosmonauts Bykovskiy, Leonov, Popovich, and

Voloshin. _ They, along with eight others, were engaged in an intensive program throughout

1967-68, but it seems that they did not have much confidence in the spacecraft. Kamanin

recalled in early March that:

[The cosmonauts] are working diligently and know the craft well. Perhaps, it is precisely because the cosmonauts excellently know all the strong and weak points of the craft

and the carrier rocket that they no longer have their initial faith in the space hardware/_

In their training in the L I simulators, the cosmonauts remarked that although it was quite

easy to work with the new instrumentation, it would be a very trying job to spend about seven

days cramped in the tiny descent apparatus of the 7K-LI vehicle/4 The two recent launch

failures of the Proton booster did not do much to raise their spirits.

The next LI launch was set for March I-2, 1968. The unusually long gap between the

fourth and fifth L I flight attempts was partly a result of the poor results of the emergency

rescue system's ground testing of the CIR-5OOK-LI booster stack, carried out under Deputy

Chief Designer Tsybin's direction, There were evidently repeated parachute failures in the escape

system in January and February, but the necessity to maintain deadlines prompted him to

recommend launches despite complete confidence in the systems. On February 20, the L I State

Commission met, presided over by an ill Tyulin. General Designer Chelomey and Chief Designer

Aleksandr D. Konopatov of the Design Bureau of Chemical Automation, responsible for

the Proton's second-stage engines, briefed the attendees on the possible reasons for the two

consecutive failures in late 1967. While the specific cause of the November 1967 malfunction

was still unknown, the two designers believed that the premature ignition of propellant because

of local heating to more than 200 degrees Centigrade led the suspect engine to fail. Chelomey,

Konopatov, and Mishin proposed a number of changes to the engine design--suggestions that

were approved by the remaining members of the State Commission. At this point, the State

Commission still planned to carry out four more fully automated L I flights before proceeding

with a crewed flight.

A number of the cosmonauts training for the LI program, including Bykovskiy, Leonov,

Popovich, and Sevastyanov, flew to Tyura-Tam in a Tu-124 aircraft on February 28, 1968,

21 Ibid.: Marinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Lunar Flights."

22. Kamanin, "/_ Goal Worth Working for," no, 48, By this point, five tentative crews had been formed for

the LI program: A. A Leonov/O G. Makarov, V F.Bykovskiy/N N. Rukavishnikov.R R. Popovich/V. I. Sevastyanov.

V. A. Votoshin/Yu. R Artyukhin. and P h Klimukl_ F.Voronov. In addition, one civilian scientist. V, G Yershov,and

another civilian engineer, G. M. Grechko, also trained with the core group of ten. For crew complements, see S.

Shamsutdinov and I. Marinin, "Flights Which Never Happened: The Lunar Program" (English title), .,qviatsiyoi kosmonczutikano. 2 (February 1993]: 30-3 I.

23. Kamanin, "_ Goal Worth Working for," no. 481 p. 9.

24. I B. _qfanasyev,"Unknown Spacecraft(From the History of the Soviet Space Program)" (English title),

Nouoye v zhizni Nouke. tekhnike: Seriya kosmonautika, astronomiya no. 12 (December 1991): 1-64

615
616

accompanied by cosmonaut overseer Col. General Kamanin and first cosmonaut Gagarin, who,

although he was not preparing for a mission, was closely involved in the L I cosmonauts'

training program."' It was very windy and cold at the launch site, and the snow cover gave the

area a beautiful sheen. Later that day, the State Commission held a meeting to discuss the

specific plans for the next launch, set for March 2. Besides Mishin and Chelomey, their deputies

for the 7K-LI and the Proton booster--Yevgeniy V. Shabarov and Yuriy N. Trufanov,

respectively--spoke on the readiness of all the preparations. Because there was no lunar launch

window at the time, Mishin and Chelomey had agreed to launch the spacecraft out to a

distance of about 330,000 kilometers into deep space--that is, out to lunar distance--and then

bring the vehicle back to Earth, thus simulating an actual circumlunar flight. The nonlunar objective also gave launch controllers the luxury of having launch windows lasting more than just a

few seconds. The next 7K-LI launch, slated at the time for April 23. would fly to the Moon. 2_

There was a remarkable lack of confidence during the preflight preparations. Even State

Commission Chairman Tyulin had misgivings about the launch. Kamanin wrote in his journal on

March I: "Aft of us need a successful launch like a breath of fresh air. Another failure would bring

innumerable troubles and may kill the people's confidence in themselves and the reliability of our

space equipment."" The 7K-LI ship, spacecraft no, 6L, lifted off at 2t29 hours,

23 seconds Moscow Time on March 2, 1968, into a circular Earth orbit at around 200 kilometers altitude at a fifty-one-and-a-half-degree inclination. Exactly one hour, eleven minutes, and

fifty-six seconds after launch, the Blok D stage fired for 459 seconds to boost the spaceship

into a highly elliptical orbit with an apogee of 354,000 kilometers. The Soviet news agency

TASS did not announce anything of note about the launch, except to name the spaceship

Zond 4 ("zond" being the Russian word for "probe"). The Zond designation had previously

been used for three completely unrelated deep space probes in the early 1960s, and it was

a curious excavation of an obsolete moniker. Retroactively, the Soviets would call the entire

circumlunar effort the Zond program.

The day after launch, a group of cosmonauts led by Gagarin flew to the flight control center at Yevpatoriya to support the activities of the Chief Operations and Control Group. The

L I crew of Popovich and Sevastyanov, one of the leading contenders for an early mission, spent

long periods in a special "bunker" at Yevpatoriya, playing the role of an actual flight crew.

Communications between the two were routed through Zond 4 back to Yevpatoriya to

simulate as closely as possible realistic conditions during an actual mission. _

The first minor sign of trouble on the flight appeared on the morning of March 4. At 0753

hours Moscow Time. the controllers attempted to carry out the first mid-course correction, but

they failed to do so because of a failure in the attitude control system: the lOOK stellar sensor

(using minimum shading) correctly tracked the Sun, but failed to find Sirius. The first mid-course

correction was. however, not a necessary factor for a successful mission, and engineers were con

fident that everything would work fine. All systems on Zond 4, including the communications

systems, were working without serious disruptions, although the main omnidirectional antenna

had evidently not unfurled properly. A second attempt to use the stellar orientation system on

March 5 was also a failure: the sensor tracked Sirius for only a few seconds (with maximum shading) before losing it, suggesting some sort of malfunction in the astro-orientation sensor built by

25 Mitroshenkov, Zemlya pod nebom, p 436

26 Kamanin. "/q Goal Worth Working for," no 48. The March mission was timed to be launched a half

lunar month outside the nominal lunar launch window and was, in fact, aimed in the exact opposite direction of the

Moon

27. Ibid. p 9.

28 Marinin and Shamsutd_nov "Soviet Programs for Lunar Flights": Shamsutdinov and Marinin, "Flights

Which Never Happened:The Lunar Program."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

I

__ _m

L

UR-500K (8K82K)

Zond (7K-L1) launcher

1967

UR-500 (8K82) UR-500K (8K82K) UR-S00K (8K82K)

Test vehicle for LX.I spacecraft SaJyut launcher

Launcher of 1964 (project) 1971

Proton*l -3 satellites

1965

-61

-59

-55

-41

0

meters

This shows the evolution o[ the L/R-500space launch vehicle. For many years,Westerners believed tha( the

clustered modules of the [irst stagewere strap-on boosters. Thesemere in fact only propellant tanks and

not sel_contained stages (copyright Peter _orm)

617
618

the Geofizika Central Design Bureau, The engineers finally declared success the next day when a

medium-density filter on the sensor proved to be the right solution to the stellar tracking

problem. The vehicle was oriented properly and fired its main engine to sharpen its trajectory. _

Ballistics calculations showed that Zond 4's trajectory was perfect and that there would be no need

for further mid-course corrections. The vehicle was expected to enter Earth's atmosphere down to

an altitude of only 45.8 kilometers, then bounce out to 145 kilometers and then reenter again.

In the complex schema of Soviet ground control over spacecraft, the Zond flights were

controlled from Yevpatoriya, but supported by ballistics centers at NII-4 in Bolshevo and a new

Coordination-Computation Center at the premises of the Central Scientific-Research Institute

for Machine Building (TsNllMash) located right next to TsKBEM in Kaliningrad. The

Coordination-Computation Center had provided only ballistics support for space missions since

January 1963, but it had steadily expanded its activities in the mid-1960s to support the piloted lunar program. It would eventually form the basis for the famous Flight Control Center

(TsUP) that controlled all missions to the Mir space station. 3° Some of the Air Force officers

involved with the Zond 4 flight were in attendance at the Coordination-Computation Center

during the return portion of the spacecraft's trajectory as they saw the projected "pop-up"

trajectory mapped out on giant screens in front of them. But the projections were unfortunately

markedly different from the true path of Zond 4 on March t I. After the vehicle separated into

its two component parts, the descent apparatus was evidently in the wrong attitude because

of the "unpreparedness of the orientation system." Thus the spacecraft entered the atmosphere

into the correct corridor, but then never left it. Instead, it entered into an uncontrollable

ballistic trajectory. It evidently passed through the atmosphere safely and was about to deploy

its parachutes, when at an altitude of ten to fifteen kilometers over the Gulf of Guinea near the

west African coast, the emergency destruct system of the descent apparatus was commanded

to explode the capsule. The destructive charge had been included on the spacecraft for precisely

such a contingency: "for fear that the Americans may get hold of it.'-, The Soviet press

refrained from commenting on Zond 4's fate, although in later years, official Soviet publications

would say that the spacecraft was in heliocentric orbit, e' The order to destruct had strong

support: Tyulin and Mishin evidently cleared the decision through Central Committee Secretary

Ustinov and Military-Industrial Commission Chairman Smirnov,

A crew in the spacecraft would have endured up to twenty g's during the descent, but

would probably have survived the splashdown. The main problem on the Zond 4 spacecraft

was traced to the lOOK stellar sensor, whose surface had evidently been contaminated. For

future vehicles, engineers introduced a special cover for the sensor, which would be cast off

before use. The State Commission for the LI program met on the afternoon of March 26, 1968,

to discuss the status of the project. TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designer Chertok summarized all the

failures of the stellar attitude control sensor on Zond 4 as well as the results from the flight,

29. Kamanin. ",q Goal Worth Working for." no. 48.

30, Thegenealogy of this center can be traced back to May 13, 1959, when the Council of Ministers issued

a decreefor the formation of a Computation Center (VTs) at the premisesof NII-88 in Kaliningrad In January 1963.

it assumed the role of one of the many ballistics centers Forspace missions. In October 1964, this ballistics center

served as the chief ballistics center for the Voskhod mission. A second decreeof the Central Committee and the

Council of Ministers on October 25, 1965, led to the creation of the Coordination-Computation Center (KVTs) on

the basis of the ballistics center. See V. I. Lobachev, V, N. Pokuchayev,and N P Shcherbakova. "3 October--

30 YearsFrom the Beginning of Functioning of the Computation Center of the NII-88 (TsNllMash), Assumed as the

Start of Creation o( the Soviet Flight Control Center (1960)" {English title), Iz iztorii auiatsii i kosmonoutiki 64

(1993): 98-106

3 I. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for," no. 48: Semenov,ed, Raketno.KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya,

p. 241. The mission duration was about ten days, nineteen hours

32, See,for example, Yu. A. Mozzhorin. ed,, Kosmonavtika (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1981), p. 446,

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Mishin reported that the next 7K-LI vehicle and its Proton booster would be ready for the next

launch by April 20-22, in time for the next lunar launch window just after midnight local time

on April 23._

The LI spacecraft arrived at the Baykonur Cosmodrome on April 12, the anniversary of

Gagarin's Vostok flight in 1961. State Commission members Tyulin and others flew into the

launch range four days later in preparation for the launch. Hopes were high that this would be

the first fully successful automated circumlunar mission in the Soviet space program. The

preparations for the launch proceeded without significant problems. The unusually cold April

temperatures, down to minus five degrees Centigrade at night, did not deter work, which

was concurrent with an unrelated Soyuz precursor flight in Earth orbit. The cosmonauts and

officials were housed for the first time in the new Kosmonavt Hotel, a fully furnished abode for

crews to spend their days before launch. On the morning of April 20, the State Commission

met to go over all the changes in the 7K-LI vehicle since the flight of Zond 4, including the

modifications to the critical stellar sensor, responsible for the demoralizing failure at the end of

the mission. _4

At a last meeting on April 22, one of the topics of discussion was whether to blow up

future 7K-LI spacecraft if they returned to Earth in uncontrolled trajectories. Chief Designer

Misbin, along with Deputy Chief Designer Shabarov, vigorously supported such a contingency

but were opposed by Chief Designer Barmin, Kamanin, and all the cosmonauts. Many,

including Chelomey, remained neutral, perhaps unwilling to take a stand on an issue that had

implications for national security. In the end, a final decision seems to have been postponed:

Mishin evidently believed that a ballistic landing would be unlikely on this particular flight.

It was another cold night launch for the program. The UR-5OOK rocket lifted off precisely

on schedule at 2301 hours, _' seconds Moscow Time on April 22 with the 7K-LI, spacecraft no.

ZL. The rocket flew gracefully into the dark skies as observers watched the exhaust become

smaller and smaller. About seven minutes after launch, at T+260 seconds, the flame abruptly

disappeared, although the third stage had yet to fire. It was clear that there had been some

malfunction and that the emergency rescue system had been activated. The controllers at

Tyura-Tam received a report from the rescue service about four hours after launch that the LI

descent apparatus had landed 520 kilometers from the launch site, about II0 kilometers east

of the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. The initial reports were distressing: a helicopter

commander relayed that he had located the capsule but that it was on fire, an impression

confirmed by search service commander Air Force Maj. General Aleksandr I. Kutasin. In the

morning, it turned out that both had been mistaken: the 7K-LI capsule landed without

problems, and all elements of its rescue system had worked flawlessly. By the afternoon, the

capsule was back at Tyura-Tam, a stop on its trip back to Moscow the following day._

A cursory investigation into the accident indicated that the failure was not because of a

booster problem. A sensor on the spacecraft had erroneously detected a breakdown and

ordered the booster's second-stage engines to shut down and abort the flight. By the late

morning of April 23, engineers were leaning toward some sort of failure in the 7K-LI's power

supply system. The failure laid to rest any hope that there would be a crewed circumlunar flight

before the fall of 1968 at the earliest. Of the four Lt attempts in 1967-68 to fly to lunar

distances, only one, Zond 4, had been a partial success. The remaining three had failed to reach

even Earth orbit, underlying serious problems in the launch vehicle. The entire program was

already more than a year behind schedule, with many tests still to be carried out. With little

33. N. Kamanin,"For Him,LivingMeantFlying"(Englishtitle), Vozdushniytransport9 (1994):8.

34. N. Kamanin,"ForHim, LivingMeantFlying"(Englishtitle), Vozdushniytransport12(1994):12.

35. N Kamanin,"I_ GoalWorth Workingfor" (Englishtitle), Vozdushniytransport49 (1993):8.

619
620

hope of an impending piloted mission, the L I cosmonauts were sent on leave on June I, 1968.

On May 20, Mishin held a meeting at his design bureau and targeted July 17 as the next launch

opportunity for a circumlunar flight, putting a three-month gap between missions. The accident

investigation of the last launch failure was evidently a big factor in the long interval.

Not surprisingly, the political leadership at this time was extremely disconcerted by the continuing series of failures in the program. Mishin met with Military-lndustrial Chairman Smimov in

May 1968 to discuss the status of the project. The latter asked Mishin to accelerate the pace of

work on the L I as much as possible to launch a crew around the Moon by October 1968.

Smirnov's boss, Ustinov, had also set the same deadline, which took into account

three more automated launches in July, August, and September, leading to a flight by two

cosmonauts in October) _ Despite the spate of setbacks, publicly the Soviets continued to

maintain their interest in a piloted circumlunar flight. On a tour of Hungary in February 1968, cosmonauts Belyayev and Bykovskiy were remarkably explicit in their pronouncements. The

latter, one of the leading candidates for commanding the first circumlunar flight, told journalists:

The Soviet Union will send men to the Moon only when there is no longer any risk, and

there is every guarantee that a safe return can be made. One of our next steps is not a

Moon landing, but the orbiting of the Moon by a manned space vehicle. Naturally [the

death of Komarov] had a certain retarding effect. It took many weeks to investigate and

learn the causes of the accident. However. it caused no essential revisions in the space

research and spaceship development program which had been worked out. _'

In a hint of the troubles facing the circumlunar project, Academician Vasiliy V. Parin, one of the

leading space biomedicine specialists in the Soviet space program, did admit that precursor

"pathfinder" flights could delay the first Soviet piloted lunar mission? _

U.S. observers were also getting in on the act. Through the spring of 1968, US. government

officials and the American press were unusually vocal about imminent Soviet space plans. Noted

journalist John Noble Wilford wrote in February that among the immediate goals of the Soviet space

program was "[a]n unmanned flight of the Soyuz around the moon and back to earth,

without attempting a landing on the lunar surface.., this summer." _ That U.S. intelligence was

clearly cognizant of the troubles plaguing the Soviet space program at the time was confirmed by

articles in the U.S. media, clearly noting the two recent LI launch failures in November 1967 and

April 1968, which were covered up by the Soviets. _ The knowledge of these failures does not seem,

however, to have given pause to exclamatory pronouncements in the American media. In

a prominent page-one article in The New "fork Times on May 5. a reporter claimed: "A mass of public and private evidence about the Soviet Union's recent space exploits has led analysts to believe

that the American public is in for a series of space surprises. "4' No one could guess at the paramount

level of managerial, technological, and funding chaos plaguing the Soviet piloted space effort,

36 N Kamanin. "For Him, Living Meant Flying"(Englishtitle), Vozdusflniy transport 16 [1994): I I.

37 SouietSpacePrograms,f966-70, p, 368: "Moon fly-Around by SovietLikely," BaltimoreSun, February26,

1968 p A3

38. NASA Scienceand Technology Division, Astronautics and l_eronautics. 1968: Chronology o[ Science,

Technology.and Policy (Washington, DC:NASA SP-4010,1969),p. 105.

39. John NobleWilford, "RenewedSovietSpaceDriveLikely,"New YorkTimes.February18, 1968,p 18

40 See,forexample,EvertClark."Soviet ResumesTestsof Orbitat Bombing System,"New York Times,April 26,

1968 p 35.

41. EvertClark,"Soviet Advancesin SpaceAwaited," New YorkTimes, May5. 1968.pp. I, 50. Forother articles

claiming a big Sovietpush in space,seeEvertClark,"Manned FlightExpected,"NeuyYork Times.April 16. 1968,p 37:

RaymondH. Anderson, "Sovietsin Space:A New Glamour Phase,"New YorkTimes,April 28, 1968,SectionIV. p f l.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

P, little more than a month after that article, on June 26, 1967, the LI State Commission

met to discuss preparations for the next launch. Engineers from TsKBEM admitted that they,

and not Chelomey's engineers responsible for the Proton booster, had been to blame for

the most recent LI launch failure in April. A short circuit in the power supply system of the

spacecraft's computer resulted in the "Accident in the Autonomous Guidance System"

command being sent from the vehicle to the booster, Consequently, the engines in the second

stage of the Proton automatically switched off. The problem was traced to a design error on the

part of Department No. 212 at the TsKBEM, which had incorrectly mounted the three-axis

stabilized platform in the descent apparatus of the LIJ: Mishin and Tyulin agreed to attempt

the next circumlunar launch on July 19. This flight would be followed by similar launches in

August, September, and October. After three to four automated flights of the UR-5OOK-LI

system, cosmonauts would fly to the Moon in November-December 1968, well over a year later

than originally intended.

This schedule was again put into jeopardy as a result of a near-catastrophic accident at

Tyura-Tam during the summer of 1968. On July 15, four days prior to the intended launch, the

?K-LI spacecraft, the Proton booster, and the Blok D upper stage were undergoing combined

testing at the launch pad at the Baykonur Cosmodrome. The stack had already been fully loaded

with propellant when the oxidizer tank of the Blok D stage exploded. The first reports suggested

that the rocket, the spacecraft, and the pad were destroyed, killing three pad technicians. Later,

it transpired that although the Blok D stage was destroyed, both the UR-5OOK launcher and its

LI payload were relatively intact. One person, a Captain I. D. Khridin, had been killed and

another seriously injured. The accident had occurred because of an erroneous electrical

command from a malfunctioning ground cable network, which resulted in excess pressure in

Blok D. The situation after the accident was extremely dangerous. The LI spacecraft and part

of Blok D tipped over to one side, supported only by the emergency rescue system tower, which

was stuck on a service girder on the pad structure. Blok D's fuel tank, with five tons of kerosene

and two attitude control engines with their own oxidizer and fuel, had broken away from the

girder and had pushed deep into the third stage of the Proton. Observers watched in terror as

the seriousness of the situation became deathly clear. At the time of the accident, the payload

contained five tons of fuel in Blok D, one and a half tons of solid propellant in the emergency

rescue system tower, more than one and a half tons of toxic propellants for Btok D's attitude

control system, thirty kilograms of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide in the L l's guided

reentry system, four and a half liters of triethylamine for the ignition of the Blok D propellants,

benzine-based fuel for the thermo-regulation system connected to more than 150 pyrocartridges, and twenty-five kilograms of explosive for the payload's self-destruct system. It was a

highly toxic explosion waiting to happen as more than 150 pad technicians stood in shock on

trusses and girders all around the booster. Fortunately, not one of the pipes in any of the

systems punctured. 4_

Because the situation was so serious, Minister of General Machine Building Sergey

,q. Afanasyev headed up an emergency commission to save the pad, the booster, and the spacecraft. Afanasyev's First Deputy Tyulin supervised the general work of cutting the payload block

to begin slowly pouring out propellants. Mishin personally directed all operations at the launch

pad to separate, painfully and slowly, each component of the payload from the launch stack in

the unbearably hot temperatures at the launch site. It took two weeks of concerted effort to

finally dismantle the complex, based on thorough calculations on each component's center of

42.

43.

for,no. 49.

Semenov, ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,p, 242:Kamanin,"A GoalWorthWorkingfor,no.49.

Semenov.ed,, Raketno-Kosmicheskaycz Korporatsiya,pp. 242-43:Kamanin,"A GoalWorth Working

621
622

gravity after the accident. Both the July and August lunar launch windows were

abandoned as a result, reducing further the odds of a piloted circumlunar mission before the

end of 1968. The best-case scenario was a December launch, although unofficially many

engineers believed that January 1969 was a more realistic target. Maintaining this new deadline

was complicated further by plans to concurrently run Soyuz missions in Earth orbit, which were

indispensable to advancing the Soviet lunar landing program. Unlike the L I, however, the Soyuz

had a less painful road back to recovery after the Komarov tragedy in 1967.

Docking in Orbit

In April 1967, when cosmonaut Komarov set off on his last mission, there were fairly

distinct plans for at least two further Soyuz missions to follow. Both would have been solo

Earth-orbital missions, the first (Soyuz 3) commanded by Gagarin and the second (Soyuz 4)

commanded by rookie Beregovoy? 4 For Gagarin's career, the Soyuz I disaster was a severe

setback. Having lost one of Soviet Union's best and brightest, cosmonaut overseer Lt. General

Kamanin was not about to jeopardize Gagarin's life in grueling training programs. On April 29,

1967, five days after the accident, Kamanin met with a number of cosmonauts, including

Gagarin. Beregovoy recalled that:

. . . Kamanin, who looked aged by the tragedy, called us all together and laid out the

future flight programme. He told _agarin straight out that there was practically no

chance he would be allowed to fly again. Kamanin himsel.f would recommend that

qagarin not be permitted to participate in any other flights. Yuri listened to this terrible

pronouncement in silence. 4_

The most immediate matter at hand for Kamanin was to reestablish a training plan for

Soyuz, contingent upon a new schedule of flights set by Chief Designer Mishin. In revising the

Soyuz manifest, all agreed that the first subsequent crewed mission should be a repeat attempt

to carry out the aborted docking and EVA flight from Soyuz I. By May 5, Kamanin had tapped

test pilot Beregovoy to pilot the active vehicle. As plans stood at the time, the old Bykovskiy

crew from Komarov's mission would remain as a team to fly the passive Soyuz spacecraft. They

began training with the Volga rendezvous simulator by the fall of 1967.

Ironically, by the time that the Soyuz I disaster paralyzed the Soviet piloted space program,

the cosmonaut corps was welling to its greatest number. Traditionally, most cosmonaut

trainees were military pilots or engineers. Mishin's insistence on including engineers from

TsKBEM had forced the Air Force to accept civilians who had participated in the design of the

Soyuz spacecraft. Although such a group of eight engineers had begun training in late 1966.

they did not receive official status as "cosmonaut-testers" until an order of the Ministry of

44. E-madcorrespondence,SergeyVoevodin to the author, January 30, 1997 At the time, the Soyuz 3 crew

corrsistedof Yu. g. Gagarin/V. N. Volkov (primary) and A. G NikolayevlV, N. Kubasov(backup) The Soyuz 4 crew

was G 1. Beregovoy/L S. Demin/G. S. Shonin (primary) and D. _. Zaykin/g. N. MatinchenkolG. T. Dobrovolskiy

(backup). Seealso V. Molchanov. "First Selection" (English title). Ztpogey8 (March 1994): 2. In his diary entry dated

December7, 1966. N. P Kamanin provides a slightly different crew composition The Soyuz 3/4 crews would have

been G. T Beregovoy(Soyuz 3) and V. g. ShatalovfV. N Volkov/O G. Makarov (Soyuz-4) These would probably

have been the backup crews for Soyuz 314. Kamanin also writes that Soyuz 5 would be commanded by one of

Beregovoy.8ykovskiy, Gagarin. Komarov. Nikotayev, and Shatalov.The rema,ning two crewmembers would be one

of four candidates: V. G Fartushniy. P.I. Kolodin, Yu N. Lapkin, and an unnamed engineer from TsKBEM SeeN P

Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos kniga vtoraya, 1964-1966gg (Moscow: Infortekst IF. 1997). p. 420.

45. Georgi Beregovoi, "Not to Be Forgotten," in Viktor Mitroshenkov. ed.. Pioneers of Space (Moscow:

ProgressPublishers. I989), pp. 298-99: Mitroshenkov, Zemlya pod nebom, pp. 413-14

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING B/_CK ON TRACK

Machine Building on May 27, 1968. Of the eleven men inducted at this time, ten were from

TsKBEM and one, Vladimir G. Fartushniy, was a senior scientist at the Ye. O. Paton Institute for

Electro-Welding based at Kiev. 4_His selection was primarily motivated by plans to carry out welding experiments in space, an idea that had originated as early as November 1964 when Korolev

had instructed his deputies to draw up plans for the work. Paton Institute Director Academician

Boris Ye. Paton was also very supportive of the project and had initiated the development of an

instrument named Vulkan to allow Soyuz cosmonauts to carry out such experiments in space? 7

In addition to engineers, the Soviets, like NASA, also looked into the matter of training

career scientists for future space missions. In January 1965, Academy of Sciences President

Keldysh set in motion the process of selecting scientist-cosmonauts, despite the almost

customary resistance from the Air Force on the issue. What little science had emerged in

the early 1960s was only after much lobbying by numerous highly placed academicians. While

science was a junior partner in the U.S. space program, in the Soviet Union, it was considered

an irritation at best. After the formation of the academy's Institute of Space Research, many

scientists expected an expansion of scientific activities in space, but judging by the number of

scientific satellites launched as part of the Kosmos cover name, it seems that the situation had

not changed much. The only major components of scientific research were the continuing

projects to send automated probes to Mars and Venus, but these efforts were to a great degree

motivated by competition with the United States. Roald Z. Sagdeyev, later the Director of

the Institute of Space Research, summarized the situation as one in which "the guiding

philosophy behind Soviet space launches reflected the interests of the space industry to the

complete neglect of science per se."_

In this climate, Keldysh sent the files of twenty-four scientists to the Air Force. Of them,

the military allowed nineteen to undergo medical screening in September 1966, By November,

only four passed the rigorous testing at the Air Force's Central Scientific-Research Aviation

Hospital. Finally, on May 22, 1967, a month after Komarov's death, they arrived at the

Cosmonaut Training Center to begin training. They were:

• Mars N. Fatkullin (twenty-eight years old)

• Rudolf A. Gulyayev (thirty-two)

• Ordinard R Kolomiytsev (thirty-two)

• Valentin G. Yershov (thirty-nine) _

These four men were joined by Georgiy R Katys, the accomplished scientist who had been

passed over for several Voskhod missions because of his "questionable" background. Of the

four new scientists, Fatkullin, Gulyayev, and Kolimiytsev were all researchers from the academy's

46 I. Marinin, "The First Civilian Cosmonauts" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 12-13 (June 3-30,

1996): 81-87. The other ten TsKBEM selecteeswere K P.Feoktistov, G. M Grechko,V. N. Kubasov,O G. Makarov.

V I Patsayev,N. N. Rukavishnikov, V I, Sevastyanov,V. N Volkov, V ,q. Yazdovskiy,and _q S. Yelfseyev

47. Korolev's letter to his deputies, dated November 29, 1964, has been published as S P Korolev, "On a

Program of Work on Welding in SpaceConditions" (English title), in M. V, Keldysh, ed., Tuorcheskayenastediye

71kademika SergeyaPavJovicha Koroteva izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980). p. 520. For an

account of a conversation between Korolev and Paton in the autumn o[ 1965 on the welding issue, see Aleksandr

Romanov,Koroleu (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1996), pp. 503-09 Korolev and Paton signed a formal agreement

on the project on December I, 1965.

48 Roald Z. Sagdeev, The Making of a Soviet Scientist: My Ztdventures in Nuclear Fusion and Space From

Stalin to Star Wars (New York:john Wiley & Sons. 1993), p_ 154.

49. I. Marinin, "Russian Cosmonaut-Scholars" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 3 {january 28-February

II. 1996): 49-54: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: knigo utoraya. 1964-1966gg, pp. 132. 204,378,382.

623
624

Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere, and Radio Wave Propagation, while Yershov was

from the famous Institute of Applied Mathematics, which Keldysh headed at the time. Yershov

was chosen specifically to provide navigational support on L I circumlunar missions. He, in fact,

participated in the development of the LI autonomous navigation system. By coincidence,

NASA selected its second group of scientist astronauts a little more than two months after the

Soviet selection. These eleven new astronauts would be unofficially known as the "Excess I I"

to indicate their less than hopeful chances of ever making it into space, j° Under the command

of Katys, the Soviet scientists finished their initial training program in July 1968 to await formal

assignment to a flight.

Scientists were not the only civilians considered for spots on a Soviet spaceship. Decades

before NASA considered sending a journalist into space, the late Korolev had given the

idea some thought. One of those in the running was Yaroslav K Golovanov, a writer for the

newspaper Komsomolskayct prauda, who would thirty years later publish a biography of

Korolev. Golovanov, one of the few Soviet journalists allowed into the inner sanctum of the

Soviet space program, had spoken to Korolev in January 1965 on the possibility of beginning

cosmonaut training. On February 12, 1965, the chief designer signed papers permitting him to

begin initial medical screening tests. He was joined by a second reporter, Yuriy V. Letunov of

the TV program Vremya (Time). In July-August 1965, both passed their initial medical tests,

but the journalist-in-space idea receded into the background after Korolev's death. Golovanov

tried to pursue the matter with a letter to the Central Committee in the spring of 1968, but the

space leadership politely rejected the idea, no doubt because the Soyuz at the time was still a

raw, untested machine, better to be flown by experienced pilots)'

Declaring the Soyuz safe took a considerable amount of time. Based on the recommendations

of the Utkin subcommission, engineers at TsKBEM, the Scientific-Research Institute

for Automated Devices (responsible for designing parachutes), and the M. M, Gromov FlightResearch Institute carried out an intensive series of corrective tests on the Soyuz capsule

throughout 1967. The tests resulted in some supplementary modifications to the Soyuz

parachute system, including changes in the operations schedule of the reserve parachute

during launch aborts up to six kilometers altitude. Engineers built several boilerplate models of

the descent apparatus to test these modifications; the Utkin subcommission evidently had the

authority to recommend changes in design.

The process to declaring the ?K-OK Soyuz vehicle safe for automated flight was fraught

with difficulties and accidents. Two new Soyuz spacecraft were the subject of vigorous testing

for an automated docking flight in the fall of 1961. During a ground test of the solar panels on

one of them, electric equipment burnt out, forcing engineers to dismantle the ship and replace

the damaged instruments. Of the twenty tests at the Air Force site at Feodosiya by late

September 1967, nearly half had malfunctions: three were complete failures? ';' Despite the

setbacks, by the autumn of 1967, the Utkin subcommission declared the 7K-OK Soyuz vehicle

safe for automated missions." Parachute testing would continue until commission members

were satisfied that the complete system was safe for humans.

50. For a discussion of the events and controversy behind the selection of scientist astronauts in the LIS.

space program, see William David Compton, Where No Man Has Cone Be[ore. /7 History o[ Lunar Exploration

Missions (Washington. DC: N_S,q SP4214, 1989), pp. 57 58, 65-72 Seealso Donald K. "Deke" Slayton with

Michael Cassutt, Deke! US Manned Space: From Mercury to the Shuttle (New York: Forge. 1994), pp 143-44,

152-53, for a more personal account.

51, A, P_.Tarasov,Neizuestniy kosmodrom (Moscow: Orbita, 1990), pp. 8-I0.

52 Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for." no. 47.

53 Semenov,ed, Raketno.Kosmicheskaya Korporats[ycLp. 183.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

The two Soyuz spacecraft finished their testing at the Baykonur Cosmodrome by

mid-October 1967 and were prepared for launch soon after. On October 16, at a meeting of the

State Commission, Mishin announced that the flight profile for the new launches would be

slightly different than the one planned for the aborted Soyuz 1/2 mission. The primary goal of

this test would be to check the reliability of all major spaceship systems of both spacecraft. The

active Soyuz would spend almost three days flying solo in orbit, while controllers at Yevpatoriya

would pore over incoming data. If the "health" of the ship was still acceptable, then the

Strategic Missile Forces would launch the passive Soyuz at the end of the third day. The two

spacecraft would merely approach each other in space using their Igta radar systems. Docking

was not completely excluded from the plan, but it was not considered a primary goal. The first

ground training simulation for the plan was held on October 19, with cosmonaut Gagarin

participating as a member of the Chief Operations and Control Group, Later, he flew into

Leninsk near the test site the day before the scheduled launch. Coincidentally. his Air Force boss

Kamanin was promoted from lieutenant general to colonel general the same day) _ For Kamanin,

his rank was not the only good news of the week.

The active spacecraft, vehicle no 6, simulating the role of the lunar orbiter in the lunar

landing mission, was launched successfully from site 31 at Tyura-Tam at 1230 hours Moscow

Time on October 27, 1967. The initial orbital parameters of the spaceship, named Kosmos-186

in the Soviet press, were announced as 209 by 235 kilometers at a 51.7-degree inclination.

Naturally, TASS neglected to mention that the flight had any relation to the piloted space effort.

For the first time in the Soyuz program, all systems were working without fault in orbit. The

solar panels deployed, and the Igla system was operational. 's There was some sign of trouble

on the second day of the mission when controllers discovered that the spacecraft was unable

to change its orbit on the seventeenth orbit, apparently because of a malfunction in the 45K

stellar-solar attitude control sensor. There were also disruptions in the work of the ion sensor

system the following day. Engineers dug into their work and managed to overcome the most

serious problems by the third day of the flight, prompting the State Commission to give a

go-ahead for the second Soyuz launch.

Before the launch of the passive Soyuz, Mishin, perhaps motivated by the relatively good

state of Kosmos-186 in orbit, decided to attempt not just rendezvous, but full docking between

the two vehicles, s° Thus, with a new mission, the passive Soyuz, spacecraft no. 5, was

launched at 1212 hours Moscow Time on October 30 and entered a 200- by 276-kilometer

orbit, also at a 51.7-degree inclination. The vehicle was named Kosmos-188 in the Soviet press.

The performance of both vehicles fulfilled all expectations. The launch of the second spacecraft

was performed in such a way as to insert the vehicle within twenty-four kilometers of the active

ship. The latter then fired its engine twenty-eight times (over three minutes of burn time) on

completely automatic commands from the Igla system. Within just sixty-two minutes of the

launch of Kosmos-188, both vehicles were successfully docked to each other on the target's

first orbit. At the time of docking, the two ships were out of communications range with Soviet

surface tracking stations, but once they were over Soviet territory, ground controllers began

receiving clear video pictures from the ships showing their docked configuration. These images

54. Mitroshenkov, Zemtya pod nebom, p. 425: B Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni khdodnoy

uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1997), pp. 467-69.

55 Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for." no 47.

56. Ibld Interestingly, Chief Designer A. S. Mnatsakanyan of the Scientific ResearchInstitute of Precision

Instruments {Nil TP), responsible for developing the Igla system, recalls that an unnamed deputy chairman of the

Soyuz State Commission expressed reservations about going [or a full docking only an hour before launch,

Mnatsakanyan, however, gave his full support to Igla. See Yu _. Mozzhorin, et ak eds., Dorogi v kosmos: II

(Moscow: MAI, 1992), p. 32.

62.5
626

were later shown on Soviet TV, giving the public their first brief look at the Soyuz spacecraft.

It was an impressive display of automation, bolstering somewhat the argument that

cosmonauts were mere passengers in the Soyuz spacecraft. It was also the first docking of two

robot spaceships in history.

After the two ships were linked, the controllers discovered that there had not been

full "hard" docking because, for reasons unknown, there was still an eighty-five-millimeter gap

between the two ships. This was considered a minor problem, and after three and a half hours

of connected operations over two and a half orbits, Kosmos-186 and Kosmos-188 separated.

Both ships were to finish off their missions with guided reentries, but both ran into problems.

In Kosmos-186's case, on October 3 I, the failure of the 45K sensor changed the reentry profile

into a direct ballistic return. The descent apparatus, however, was recovered safely. The

following day, Kosmos-188 was unable to perform a guided return because of incorrect attitude:

the ship had flown into an ion pocket, confusing the ion attitude control sensor. The ship

entered on a steep trajectory, and its self-contained explosive automatically destroyed

the descent apparatus to prevent a landing on foreign territory. It was proved later that if the

explosive had not been carried on board, the capsule would have landed 400 kilometers east of

Ulan-Ude north of Mongolia, but in Soviet territory)'

The Kosmos- 186/188 flight was timed to occur a week before the fiftieth anniversary of the

Great October Revolution. It was a poor substitute for a piloted circumlunar mission, but it was

a minor advance for a space program beleaguered by failures and catastrophes. The confidence

imparted by the docking mission was, however, tempered by the two unrelated L I launch

failures before and after Kosmos-186/188. Immediately after the docking success, the Soyuz

State Commission met on November 15 to discuss the future manifest for the project) _With

no authorization from the Lltkin subcommission to carry out piloted flights, it seems that

Mishin had planned a repeat performance of the automated docking mission in early 1968,

which would allow further testing of the problematic attitude control sensors on the Soyuz

spacecraft. In the meantime, crews training for upcoming Soyuz flights continued their

training program at a less intensive pace.

For "Cosmonaut No. t," Yuriy A. Gagarin, the post-Soyuz I period was a particularly

transitional time. Having been denied flight status, in November 1967, he was subjected to the

additional humiliation of being grounded from flying aircraft solo. Apart from his important role

in various State Commissions, he continued to serve as an international ambassador for the Soviet

space program. His various obligations took their toll. Kamanin wrote in his journals in 1968:

There were many situations when _agarin miraculously escaped big troubles. These situations often occurred when he attended parties, drove in cars or boats, or when hunting with the big bosses. I was particularly concerned about his driving cars at high

speeds. I did a lot of talking with Yura on this issue. The actiue life style, endless meetings and drinking sessions were noticeably changing Yura's image and slowly, but

steadily erasing his charming smile from his face2 _

Training for the Soyuz I flight and an assignment to the subsequent Soyuz 3 mission

apparently curbed his extracurricular activities. The cosmonaut lost weight, trained regularly,

and eventually mastered the Soyuz spacecraft. In addition, by late t967, he was finally

wrapping up work on his graduate degree at the N. Ye. Zhukovskiy Military-P, ir Engineering

5?. Chertok,Raketyi lyudi:goryachiyedni kholodnoyvoyny,pp.413-74.

58. Mitroshenkov,Zernlyapod neborn,p. 425.

59. N. Kamanin,"ForHim, LivingMeantFlying"(Englishtitle), VozdushniytransportII (1994): 13.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Academy in Moscow dealing with a reusable single-seat military spaceplane. At Gagarin's own

request, Kamanin temporarily relieved the young cosmonaut of his duties as training center

deputy director to allow him to focus exclusively on his dissertation. At the same time,

Kamanin and Center Director Maj. General Nikolay F. Kuznetsov promised Gagarin that he

would be allowed to resume flight training once his academic work was finished. _°

On January 8, 1968, several of the fifteen cosmonauts pursuing higher degrees graduated

with their "Candidate of Technical Sciences." Gagarin and Titov defended their dissertations

on February 17 at the academy, and both passed with excellent grades?' Immediately

afterwards, Gagarin threw himself back into flying in training aircraft to gain enough experience

to resume flying solo. After passing his medical tests on March 12, he was cleared to fly, and

he did so jointly with another pilot the following day for a one-hour, fifty-two-minute jaunt. He

flew several times the following days, always with other more experienced pilots who kept their

hands on the controls. On March 23, Kamanin expressed some reservations about Gagarin's

frenzied training pace, but could not dampen the cosmonaut's enthusiasm? _

On his flight on March 27, Gagarin was escorted by Colonel Vladimir S. Seregin, a

forty-five-year-old test pilot with impeccable credentials, who had been assisting flight training

for cosmonauts since 1963. The two took off from the Chkalovskaya airfield near Moscow a

little after I0 a.m. in the morning for a flight over the town of Kirzhach. A few minutes after

takeoff, Gagarin requested permission to alter course: "This is 625. Mission accomplished.

Altitude 5,200. Request permission to approach. TM It was the last communication from the

LITI-MiG-15 trainer aircraft. Communications abruptly ended at 1030 hours, I0 seconds

Moscow Time. As alarm began to rise back at the Cosmonaut Training Center, Air Force

officials put together a search team to determine the fate of the two men, About four hours and

twenty minutes after loss of contact, a helicopter commander finally reported back that he had

found the wreckage of the airplane about sixty-four kilometers from the airfield. Debris was

scattered in a very woody area, with snow as much as one meter deep. The engine and the

cockpit were evidently buried six to seven meters in the ground, indicating that the plane had

hit the ground at a velocity of 700 to 800 kilometers per hour. It was not long before searchers

found a fragment of an upper jaw, which doctors identified as belonging to Seregin, Air Force

officials immediately informed Soviet leaders Brezhnev and Kosygin of Seregin's fate, although

they had no incontrovertible proof of Gagarin's death ?4

Throughout the night, an emergency commission held meetings to establish what had

happened, It was a long torturous night for many, as it was becoming increasingly clear that

there was almost no chance that Gagarin had survived. One cosmonaut recalled, "We saw

Kamanin with his lips pressed tightly together, Kuznetsov struggling to control his trembling

chin, Leonov with his face to the wall and Popovich repeatedly leafing through flight

documents."_ gs soon as dawn broke on March 28, a search party led by Kamanin was back

60. The letter requesting that Gagarin be relieved of his duties as deputy commander of military unit no.

26266 (the Cosmonaut Training Center) and the letter permitting him solo flying privileges in the spring and summer of 1968 havebeen published in Kamanin, "For Him. LivingMeant Flying," no, 9.

61, Among the cosmonauts defending in January were V F, Bykovskiy,M V. Gorbatko, A, G. Nikolayev,

P R. Popovich, G. S. Shonin, and B. V. Volynov. SeeMitroshenkov, Zemlya pod nebom, p. 429. Others who graduated in 1968were A. g Leonov,Ye.V Khrunov, I. B. Soloweva. and D A. Zaykin. The three remaining cosmonauts

of the group of fifteen--all women--graduated in 1969.

62. Mitroshenkov. Zemlyo pod nebom, pp. 437-41 Gagarin's wife recallsof this period: "He talked about

another spaceflight and began to train for it." See Yevgeniya Matakohovskaya, "Tell Me About Him," in

Mitroshenkov, ed., Ploneersof Space,pp. 147.

63. Beregovoi. "Not to Be Forgotten," p. 320,

64. Kamanin, "For Him, Living Meant Flying," no. 9.

65. Beregovoi, "Not to Be Forgotten." p. 318.

627
628

at the crash site. At around 8 a.m, Kamanin saw a piece of cloth hanging from a birch tree

about ten to twelve meters in the air; the cloth was identified conclusively as a piece

of Gagarin's flight jacket. By then there was no doubt: Gagarin was dead. Both pilots' bodies

were found soon after. Gagarin's wallet contained his ID, a driver's license, 74 rubles, and small

photo of Sergey E Korolev. Both bodies were cremated by 211.5 hours the same night. In

contrast to the deaths of Korolev and Komarov, the outpouring of grief from the average Soviet

citizen was unprecedented. The urns with the two pilots' ashes were laid at the Central House

of the Soviet Army the following day for 40,000 people to pay their respects. On March 30, the

urns of Gagarin and Seregin were escorted by Soviet leaders Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorniy, and

others to the Kremlin Wall to be interred in their final place. Hundreds of thousands of

Muscovites were on hand to view the dour funeral march for a man they considered a fallen

national hero. °_

The investigation commission into the disaster discerned a cause of the accident by late

July 1968, although it was a process fraught with diverging opinions because of the absence of

"a smoking gun" despite the thousands of hours spent poring over the evidence. The official

report, issued in December 1968 by the Central Committee, hinted at pilot error:

The most probable cause of the death of _agarin and Seregin was a sudden turn of the

aircra]t to avoid a collision with a sounding balloon: a less probable cause was turning of the aircraft from the upper edge of the clouds. As a result of the sudden turn. the

airplane entered critical flying angles: the adverse meteorological situation complicated

aircraft control: and the crew died. t''

Both the senior cosmonauts and Kamanin seem to have objected vigorously to attributing

the accident to pilot error; they even sent a letter to Central Committee Secretary Ustinov on

the issue. On the other side, many of the Air Force members investigating the accident were

evidently reluctant to admit that there were defects in the UTI-MiG-1_5 aircraft.

Almost twenty years later, the files for the crash were reopened, and a number of researchers

carried out a detailed investigation using computer modeling to determine the causes of

the crash. The new study found that the accident did not occur because of pilot error or from a

mid-air collision. There were a number of cumulative causes. Ground equipment was evidently

faulty at the time of the accident and thus was unable to track the UTI-MiG-15 in flight.

In addition, Gagarin and Seregin did not have accurate information regarding the altitude of the

ceiling in that area. Other violations of safety regulations included the flight of two MiG-2 Is and

a MiG-15 in the same area at the same time. As for Gagarin and Seregin, after receiving their last

instruction to fly home, they began a turn and descent to 700-1200 meters. At that time, they

were flying between two layers of clouds and could not see the horizon. The other MiG-15 then

passed Gagarin's plane at a distance of only 500 meters, although the pilot of the other craft did

not notice Gagarin's aircraft. Soon after, Gagarin's plane entered a trailing vortex created by the

second MiG and flew into a spin. Gagarin and Seregin managed to pull out of the spin after five

full revolutions but only in thick cloud cover, which disoriented the pilots, They overestimated

their altitude by 200-300 meters and exited the cloud cover assuming their altitude was much

higher than the actual 400-600 meters above the ground. Their angle of attack at the time was

seventy degrees. The pilots were unable to activate the emergency ejection system in the less

66. Kamanin, "for Him, Living Meant flying," no. 9

67. N. Kamanin, "For Him, LivingMeant Flying" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 18-19 (1994): 12

H

H

U

CHALLENGE TO _IIPOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

than five seconds remaining and crashed into the ground. An extra two seconds or 250-300

meters altitude would have easily saved them. _

Clearing the Soyuz

Gagarin's death was an unprecedented psychological blow to the Soviets, especially

because it came at a time when the Soviet piloted space program was reaching a nadir

of sorts--a situation that no one could have anticipated a few years before. From the days of

consecutive victories in the early 1960s, the Soviets witnessed an almost unending series of

setbacks, tragedies, and failures. Perhaps the only bright spot in the quagmire was the recent

successful docking-in-Earth-orbit Soyuz flight in October 1967.Since then, tests had continued

slowly on the parachute and landing systems of the 7K-OK vehicle in preparation for a repeat

attempt of the original Soyuz I mission. There were, however, a number of landing failures that

progressively delayed plans--malfunctions that in retrospect were critical in moving piloted

Soyuz flights downrange at a time when NASA was beginning to finally recover from the

Apollo I disaster. The State Commission for Soyuz, under Lt. General Kerim A. Kerimov, met

on March 26, 1968, the day before Gagarin's death, to discuss immediate plans. Mishin and

Chief Designer Fedor D. Tkachev of the Scientific-Research Institute of Automated Devices,

which was responsible for parachute design, reported that the 7K-OK ship's primary parachute

system was already cleared for flight while the reserve system would be ready by launch time,

then set for April 9-14. _'_

On April I0, exactly two weeks after Gagarin's death, several cosmonauts, including rookie

Beregovoy, slated to command the Soyuz I repeat docking flight, flew to the Baykonur

Cosmodrome accompanied by Air Force First Deputy Commander-in-Chief Marshal Sergey I.

Rudenko. Many officials remained in Moscow, because of the investigation into the causes of

Gagarin's death and also to celebrate April 12 or "Cosmonautics Day," the seventh anniversary

of Gagarin's pioneering first flight. After arrival at Tyura-Tam, the State Commission set the two

Soyuz launches for 14 and 15 April. Unlike the Kosmos-1861188 mission, this particular joint

flight was to simulate an actual piloted flight as closely as possible. Consequently, the primary

and backup crews training for the docking and EVA mission were sent to the Flight Control

Center at Yevpatoriya to follow the flight on the ground and train in such a manner as

to simulate their actions on a real mission, Both ships were also equipped with new infrared

attitude control sensors to augment the chronically faulty ionic sensor system on the early Soyuz

spacecraft.7L"

The active 7K-OK vehicle, spacecraft no. 8, was launched from Tyura-Tam at 1300 hours

Moscow Time on April 14, 1968. Initial orbital parameters were 210 by 239 kilometers at a

51.7-degree inclination. The Soviet press announced the mission as Kosmos-212. A day later,

on April 15, engineers successfully launched the passive Soyuz spacecraft, vehicle no. 7, at

1234 hours Moscow Time, with only a two-second delay. The target vehicle, named

Kosmos-213, entered an initial orbit of 205 by 291 kilometers at a 51.4-degree inclination. At

the point of orbital insertion, the active spacecraft was only four kilometers away from the

passive one, a remarkable achievement in precision. With great economy of propellant,

Kosmos-212 approached Kosmos-213 and automatically docked at 1331 hours, just fifty-seven

68. S. BelotserkovskiyandA Leonov."TwoSecondsWasAll TheyNeeded--Yu.GagarinandV Seregins

FinalFlight"(Englishtitle). Prauda.March23, 1988,p. 4. As remarkableasit mayseem,anentirebookhasbeen

dedicatedto Gagarin'sdeathandthenew investigationin 198788 SeeS M Belotserkovskiy, qibel Gagarina.[akty

i dornysly{Moscow:Mashinostroyeniya,t992),

69 Kamanin,"ForHim,Living MeantFlying."no 9.

?0. Kamanin."ForHim.LivingMeantF)ying."no. 12

629
630

minutes after the target spacecraft's launch. Ground controllers at Yevpatoriya were able to view

the docking on their consoles via a live TV feed from both spacecraft, The two spacecraft

remained connected for three hours and fifty minutes before continuing autonomous flight:

each vehicle clocked up about five days in space. The major remaining objective of the flight

was to verify the complete reentry procedure. Kosmos-212 successfully carried out the first

guided reentry in the Soyuz program (with an aerodynamic efficiency ratio of 0.3) and landed

near Karaganda in Kazakhstan on April 19. Winds were very high at the landing site, up to

twenty-two to twenty-three meters per second, and although the descent apparatus landed

safely, winds dragged the capsule about five kilometers from its landing spot, damaging the

outside coating. 7_

Kosmos-213 remained in orbit for another day and conducted some unusual scientific

experiments, On board the spacecraft was an extensive scientific payload, including a new type

of luminescent rnicrometeoroid detector, an ultraviolet photometer, and a radiation-sensing

package. The photometer measured ultraviolet and visual spectrographic night sky brightness,

while the [ueh.l instrument measured cosmic ray positrons and electrons. In addition, a

cryogenic superconducting magnet, first tested on the Kosmos-140 Soyuz precursor, was used

to detect cosmic rays in conjunction with scintillation, gas discharge, and Cherenkov detectors.

The spacecraft's descent apparatus landed on April 20 near Tselinograd after another guided

reentry. All systems worked without fault, but once again the descent apparatus was dragged

after touchdown by twenty-five-meter-per-second wind speeds. Rescuers had to wait for the

dust storm to subside before they could recover the capsule."

The successful conclusion of two consecutive automated docking missions raised

the question of moving on with piloted flights. One of the biggest factors were the results of

ongoing ground testing of the redesigned parachute system. Throughout 1967-68, engineers

carried out a series of approximately forty drop tests of mock-ups of the descent apparatus from

Tu-16 aircraft to verify the parachutes and elements of its design. In addition, they also

conducted six test drops from An- 12 aircraft and carried out special "controlled" experiments

using Mi-6 helicopters by introducing a maximum of eighteen-meter-per-second horlzontol

velocity during the drops. There were a number of major failures, especially in the operation of

the reserve parachute. '_ The cosmonauts training for the docking and EVA mission completed

their full training program by the end of May 1968, after many delays related to updating the

Soyuz simulators concurrently with the actual Soyuz spacecraft. By February, Kamanin had

tentatively tapped Beregovoy to command the active vehicle, and Volynov, Khrunov, and

Yeliseyev to fly the passive vehicle, although as with many other earlier crews, the process of

crew selection was caught up in an almost pointless conflict between Kamanin and Mishin/_

7 I. Ibid

12. Ibid.: joel Powell, "Research FromSoviet Satellites," .Spacelligh!2_5(January 1983): 33-34.

13. Semenov, ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 183. The testing was a joint effort among

TsKBEM, the M. M. Gromov Flight-ResearchInstitute. the Scientific-ResearchInstitute for Automated Devices (Nil

AU), the Zvezda Design Bureau(KB Zvezda). and the Iskra Design Bureau(KB Iskra), and was carried out at the Air

Force'stesting station at Feodosiya.

74. The center of this disagreementwas over Mishin's insistence that TsKBEM Department Deputy Chief

K. P. Feoktistov, a civilian, be included as the crew commander of the first post Soyuz I flight. Feoktistov himself

eagerly supported this position and took groat pains in 1967-68 to promote his candidacy, despite his relatively poor

health and reluctance to commit to parachute training. The issue culminated in March 1968 during severalState

Commission meetings, when the Air Force,led by Marshal S. h Rudenkoand Col. General N. P. Kamanin resisted

Mishin, Feoktistov, and their highly placed supporters in the government, which included M. V. Keldysh (AN SSSR),

G. N. Pashkov (VPK). G. _. Tyutin (MOM), K. A. Kerimov (MOM), and B A, Stroganov (TsK Defense Industries

Department). It was not until mid-June 1968 when Mishin finally withdrew Feoktistov's candidacy See also

Beregovoi, "Not to Be Forgotten," p. 299.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

It was not until May 6, 1968, that the Council of Ministers formally approved the above crews.

An additional four cosmonauts--Nikolayev, Shonin, Kubasov, and Gorbatko--would fly an

exact repeat of the docking and FVA mission at a later date.

The debate over the next step after the Kosmos-212/213 missions was colored to a great

degree by Central Committee Secretary Ustinov's pronouncement before the docking flight in

early April 1968 that "irrespective of the results of the upcoming flights of two Soyuz spaceships,

two more spacecraft should be prepared for an experimental flight."7_ After the success of the

Kosmos-212/213 mission, Ustinov's decision was called into question by other space program

officials, including Mishin and Kamanin, who were more confident of the Soyuz spaceship's

safety. On April 2 I, the day after Kosmos-213's landing, the State Commission met in Moscow:

Commission Chairman Kerimov and Chief Designer Mishin graciously allowed the cosmonauts'

views to be aired on the issue. All four primary crew cosmonauts favored a piloted flight as the

next step. Kerimov, Mishin, Chertok, and others thanked the cosmonauts for their work and

seem to have been very pleased that they supported a piloted mission. At least tentatively,

Kerimov and Mishin scheduled the flight for late June or early July 1968.

Those advocating another automated mission were a powerful lobby--that is, the leaders

of the Soviet military-industrial complex--Ustinov, Afanasyev, Smimov, and Dementyev--all of

whom were clearly playing it safe after the Komarov tragedy. Their viewpoint had some basis

because by early May, although all the major problems with the 7K-OK spacecraft had been

eliminated, it still had two weak spots: the backup parachute and the emergency rescue

system• Throughout the twenty-three drop tests after Soyuz I, the backup parachute had

evidently performed below par, while the rescue system malfunctioned more frequently.

Kamanin wrote in his diary about the dilemma facing the managers of the Soviet space program:

•.. under the circumstances Koroleu would have assumed responsibility and given a goahead [or the [light. Cosmonauts and Air Force specialists would have gone along with

such a decision. But un[ortunately, Mishin is not Korolev and he is hedging." 9 am not

going to propose a manned [light myself but i[ the Central Committee tells me to, I will

agree. "_

The climate had clearly changed after the Soyuz I disaster. Kerimov and Mishin were definitely more conservative with their decisions. No one, from Ustinov down to Mishin, was gutsy

enough to recommend a decision for flight and risk losing their jobs over a hasty decision. The

decision would have important implications and, in retrospect, was a critical juncture in the

Soviet space program. By mid-1968, NASA had meticulously modified its Apollo Command and

Service Module and was close to declaring the spacecraft ready for piloted flight. Every month

was desperately important as the two countries were closing in on their final goals. For the

Soviets, including another automated mission would add yet another two months before they

saw a return to piloted flight. For many, apart from the issue of safety, there were also exogenous

considerations.

On May 7, 1968, Mishin held a meeting at TsKBEM in Kaliningrad. The engineers concluded at the end of the meeting that with the exception of the backup parachute system, the

7K-OK spacecraft was completely ready for piloted flight, Mishin believed that the parachute system would be cleared for flight by the first half of August. Troubles with the backup parachute

system, however, forced Mishin and his deputies to rethink their strategies for an early August

75. Kamanin, r'FOr Him, Living Meant Flying," no, 12,

76 Ibid., p 12.

631
632

flight. The major problem with the backup parachute was that with three crewmembers in the

descent apparatus (an excess of 1,300 kilograms), it had a tendency to rip off upon deployment.

Parachute Chief Designer Tkachev and Mishin proposed instead to reduce to the crew of the passive vehicle to two men, by 150-200 kilograms, to declare the system safe for operation, In addition, perhaps to avoid any unnecessary risk, Mishin proposed that during the August flight, the

cosmonauts would dock the two Soyuz ships and only depressurize the living compartment of

the passive Soyuz. In the interest of time, most of the cosmonauts as well as Kamanin agreed,

at least tentatively, to the deletion of the spacewalk, leaving the more complex EVfq transfer to

a subsequent Soyuz mission/_

The uncertainty with the backup parachute system, combined with a general sense of

conservatism, introduced a modicum of uncertainty throughout the month of May 1968 as

different engineers proposed different variants of the flight. Some supported having one member transfer via EVA from one ship to the other, while others suggested merely having one

cosmonaut from the passive ship carry out an EVA without transfer. Another controversial issue

was the number of crewmembers on each ship: several different combinations were considered

at the time, including one on the active ship and two on the passive one, one on the active ship

and three on the passive one, and two on both ships.

The group supporting an early return to piloted flight expanded by mid-May 1968, with

the addition of Chief Designers Voronin and Severin. Academy of Sciences President Keldysh

dissented, however, clearly still influenced by Soyuz I. He cautioned, "It seems to me that we

are too hasty, and the question of technological launchings should still be discussed. I reserve

my opinion on the selection of piloted flights without preliminary additional technological [that

is, robotic[ launchings. "'_

The issue seemed to reach some kind of resolution on May 29 at a meeting of the Council

of Chief Designers. Pressured by Ustinov, Keldysh, and Smirnov, Mishin proposed a compromise

variant for the initial Soyuz piloted flight: a docking of two 7K-OK vehicles in Earth orbit with a

single cosmonaut in the active vehicle. At least a dozen other chief designers supported Mishin,

and the Air Force agreed to the new proposal/_ A second flight in September would have the full

docking plus EVA mission with cosmonauts Khrunov and Yeliseyev performing the critical trans

fer spacewalk. With the support of Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev, this plan

seemed to be the most promising, but, within a few days. the imposing hand of the Communist

Party's Central Committee intervened. In early June, Ustinov blocked the proposal, giving orders

that regardless of what the chief designers believed, another automated docking flight of the

Soyuz was required before a piloted flight. With that final blow. the Soviet space program lost

two critical months.

On June I0, 1968, the Soyuz State Commission met to discuss a response to Ustinov's

demands. Commission Chairman Kerimov approved a plan to launch a single automated Soyuz

77. N Kamanin, "For Him, Living Meant Flying" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 15 (1994): II

According to Mishin, the crews for the two Soyuz spacecraft would be Beregovoy)Kubasov (Soyuz 2) and

Yeliseyev/Khrunov (Soyuz 3). Kamanin did not agree to Mishin's crew proposals and continued to resist efforts to

posit a civilian (Yeliseyev)as a crew commander.

78 Ibid

79. Among the chief designersand other officials presentat this meeting wereV. P.Barmin (Chief Designer,

KB OM), V R Glushko (Chief Designer, KB EnergoMash), Maj. GeneralA. G Karas(Commander, TsUKOS), M, V

Keldysh (President, AN SSSR). K. A. Kerimov (Chief, Third Chief Directorate, MOM), V t. Kuznetsov (Chief

Designer,Nil PM ), V. F MishJn(Chief Designer,TsKBEM),N A Pilyugin (Chief Designer. Nil AP), M S.Ryazanskiy

(Chief DesFgner,Nil Priborostroyeniya). G I. Severin(Chief Designer,KB Zvezda), F.D Tkachev (Chief Designer.Nil

AU), G A. Tyulin (First Deputy Minister, MOM), h I. Utkin (Chief Designer, Nil IT), and G. h Voronin (Chief

Designer KB Nauka).

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TR;_CK

vehicle in July, carry out a joint docking flight between two Soyuz spacecraft with a single

cosmonaut in the active vehicle in September, and finally a full-scale docking and EVA mission

in November-December 1968. The Military-Industrial Commission formally approved this plan

in late July 1968. Ustinov had one more demand: that the third flight include a transfer of two

cosmonauts from one vehicle to the other. This meant that Mishin and his engineers would have

to come up with a solution to the reserve parachute problem before the end of the year. Because

they could not reduce the mass of the reentry capsule below 2,750 kilograms (a low limit for

three cosmonauts), the engineers had to search for other options to reinforce the reserve parachute system. _¢_

The robot 7K-OK, spacecraft no. 9, was launched into orbit at 1300 hours Moscow Time on

Rugust 28, 1968_ more than a month behind schedule because of a variety of problems

related to the vehicle's parachute system. The spacecraft, named Kosmos-238 by the Soviet press,

entered an initial orbit of 199 by 219 kilometers at a 51.7-degree inclination. The vehicle was a

passive variant of the Soyuz spacecraft. Little is known about the mission, although Western

observers tracked at least one major orbital maneuver during its flight. _' The descent apparatus

returned to Earth without any significant anomalies on September I, after a flight lasting one hour

short of four days. Ustinov was satisfied, and the path was finally clear for piloted Soyuz missions

after a break of close to one and a half years. This last flight, Kosmos-238, was critical not only

because it finally instilled sufficient confidence for resuming crewed operations, but also because

of the widespread importance of the 7K-OK spacecraft. The viability of almost all Soviet piloted

space projects of the period, including the LI, the L3, the Soyuz, and the military 7K-VI,

depended very much on the success and health of the 7K-OK vehicle./qs evidenced by later declassified materials, the 7K-Vl military reconnaissance offshoot of the Soyuz was suffering some major

birth pains at the very same time that Mishin and his associates were trying to bring the Soyuz

spacecraft back into crewed operations.

The Soyuz-Vl

Looking back at the history of Soviet piloted space programs in the 196Os, what is most surprising is the unprecedented amount of work that was invested into projects that never saw the

light of day. What the public saw at the time was only the tip of a supremely diverse space program; many projects were canceled prior to reaching flight status. In some cases, programs

emerged and disappeared within the same year, inexplicably changing the direction of the Soviet

space effort for a few months. One such program was the Zvezda military spaceship

project, which had emerged in 1966-67 at TsKBEM's Branch No. 3 at Kuybyshev under the leadership of First Deputy Chief Designer Kozlov. Consisting of a completely redesigned Soyuz

spacecraft named the 7K-VI, the vehicle was to provide military cosmonauts experience

in activities such as reconnaissance and combat prior to the advent of the large ,qlmaz space station in the late 1960s. By late 1967, Kozlov's immediate boss, Chief Designer Mishin, was evidently having second thoughts. For reasons that are not completely clear, Mishin countered with

a new military station proposal at the time--one that would supersede Kozlov's Zvezda and in

fact serve as a direct competitor to Chelomey's ambitious Rlmaz space station project, which

had already received full support.

The situation was complicated by the relationship between the central headquarters

of TsKBEM and its Branch No. 3. Although the latter reported nominally to Mishin, the branch

80. Kamanin, "For Him, Living Meant Flying," no. 16: N. Kamanin. "For Him, Living Meant Flying"(English

title), Vozdushniy transport 17 ( 1994): I I.

81. Philiip Clark, The Souiet Manned Space Program: ,z]nIllustrated H(story of the Men, the Missions, and

the Spacecraft (New York: Orion, 1988), pp. 48-49

633
634

seems to have had some degree of autonomy with regard to its own programs. For example, in

developing newer military photo-reconnaissance satellites such as Zenit-2M, Zenit-4M, and

Yantar-2K, Kozlov's engineers for the most part worked without much interaction with Mishin's

engineers. At the same time, Kozlov, as the organization's First Deputy Chief Designer,

ultimately reported to Mishin on the progress of all his projects.

In October 1967, Mishin wrote a letter to Military-lndustrial Commission Chairman

Smirnov and Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev to terminate Kozlov's 7K-VI

program and use the freed-up resources to build an additional eight to ten Soyuz ships during

the following year. Air Force Lt. General Kamanin, who clearly disliked Mishin both personally

and professionally, wrote in his journal at the time:

Work on developing the [1K-VI] ship is in full swing and it promises to be much better

than the Soyuz. This is apparently exactly the thing that is tormenting Mishin. He didn't have anything against 7K-VI as long as he counted on the fact that it would be an

exact replica of the Soyuz, but when he saw that Kozlou had refrained from blindly

copying 5oyuz and was deueloping a principally new and significantly better ship, he

abruptly changed his opinion of Kozlou and his ship? _

Although recent accounts of the history of the 7K-VI portray Mishin as the "evil" figure in

the attack against the vehicle, it is clear that he had the strong support of most of his leading

deputies on the matter. Their criticism of Kozlov's spaceship centered on two factors--the use

of radio-isotope generators and the use of a hatch in the heat shield--both of which they considered very weak design choices.

As an alternative to the 7K-VI, Mishin and his deputies instead proposed a new concept,

the Orbital Research Station, better known simply as the Soyuz-VI, with the "VI" being the

abbreviation in Russian for "military research." Within a few weeks of the new proposal,

Kozlov capitulated to Mishin's new proposal, evidently because of intense pressure from

Minister Afanasyev, and abandoned his coveted Zvezda project. In November 1967, Mishin and

Kozlov signed a document titled "Basic Provisions for the Development of the Soyuz-VI

Military-Research Space Complex," which officially testified to Kozlov's capitulation to Mishin

on the matter/' Kozlov's abrupt change of direction put the military in the difficult position

of having to support a program whose chief designer was no longer interested in it, In this

climate, many military officers, including Commander of the Central Directorate of Space

Assets Lt. General Andrey G. Karas, who had invested much time and resources in Zvezda,

consolidated their forces to put up a resistance against Mishin's new Soyuz-VI. The standoff

came to a head on December 8, 1967, at a meeting on the premises of TsKBEM. Mishin was on

vacation at the time, and Kerim A. Kerimov. the Chief of the Third Chief Directorate of the

Ministry of General Machine Building, presided over the deliberations. All of the leading deputy

chief designers at TsKBEM, including Bushuyev, Chertok, and Okhapkin, came out in favor of

terminating Zvezda. Predictably, most of the military officers were against it. raising a particularly relevant question: "Why do we need a small Almaz if we're already building a big one? TM

It seems that the Mishin faction had lined up its ducks in a row. By instructions from

Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev, on January 9, 1968, Kozlov signed an order

82. K Lantratov. "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda'" (English title), Nouosti kosmonoutiki 6 (March 10-23, 1997):

74-80. Translation by Bart Hendrickx.

83 Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosrnicheskayoKorporatsiya. p. 210. Mishin met with Kozlov on October 12,

1967,to discuss the cancellation of the Zvezda project.

84. Lantratov, "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda'"; Kamanin, "/q Goal Worth Working for," no. 48.

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
GETTING _ACK ON TR.qCK

terminating all work on the Zvezda spacecraft to commence developmental work in support of

Mishin's Soyuz-Vl. The military did not give up. On January 27, Kamanin enlisted the support

of six veteran cosmonauts and met with USSR First Deputy Minister of Defense Marshal Ivan I.

Yakubovskiy, who promised to assist on the matter. The disagreement finally came to some kind

of resolution on February 17, 1968, during a meeting of the Scientific-Technical Committee of the

General Staff of the Ministry of Defense, the authoritative consultative body for all new military

programs in the country. Chaired by Committee Chairman Col. General Nikolay N. Alekseyev,

the meeting was called to discuss the joint proposal of Mishin and Kozlov to terminate Zvezda

in favor of Soyuz-VI. Although all the attending high-ranking officers came out in favor of

continuing with Zvezda, it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to offer support to the

project when Kozlov himself had changed sides. In addition, the military's word on the issue may

have been overruled by someone in the Communist Party's Central Committee. With little hope

for victory, Alekseyev essentially dropped the matter, effectively closing the Zvezda program.

Although Kozlov was shut out as a "prime contractor" in the piloted space program, he was able

to use many of the basic systems from the Zvezda space complex to develop subsequent

automated reconnaissance satellites in the Yantar ("Amber") series."'

The new Soyuz-Vl program was clearly a competitor of sorts to Chelomey's Almaz, and

therein may lie the answer to how Mishin was able to gain support for his project in the face

of such imposing resistance from the military. Central Committee Secretary Llstinov, the de

[aGo head of the Soviet space program, was known as being extremely hostile to Chelomey's

ambitions. By supporting Soyuz-Vl, he may have been trying to sabotage Chelomey's Almaz.

The Soyuz-Vl complex consisted of a small space station, named the orbital block (OB-VI)

and a crew delivery spacecraft (7K-S), which was to be developed on the basis of the original

7K-OK Soyuz spacecraft. Augmenting the entire Soyuz-Vl complex would be three other spacecraft: two Soyuz-type ships for short- and long-duration independent missions (7K-S-I and

7K-S-II, respectively) and a robot cargo ship (TK-G), which was also a modification of the basic

Soyuz spacecraft,e°

Very little is known about the station proper of the Soyuz-Vl complex: it was apparently very

similar to the orbital block of the long-abandoned Soyuz-R project from the mid-196Os (that is,

shaped like a cylinder about the size of a 7K-OK spacecraft). The OB-VI was to carry about

700 to 1,000 kilograms of scientific and military apparatus. Instead of radio-isotope generators to

provide power as on the Zvezda, the QB-VI had solar panels. One of the requirements of the

Soyuz-Vl's design was that it allow cosmonauts to transfer from a ferry to the station via internal

means. Thus, unlike the regular 7K-OK Soyuz vehicle, which had a system that prevented internal transfer, Mishin's engineers for the first time began work on a more flexible pin-cone system

to allow through passage. Like much of the station, this system was also evidently based on

the earlier Soyuz-R concept. The Soyuz-VI complex was to fly in an operational orbit of 250 by

270 kilometers at an inclination of .51.6 degrees. Piloted flights would last approximately thirty

days."' For a brief period, Mishin evidently considered the idea of testing advanced particle

accelerators on the Soyuz-Vt complex. In June 1968, representatives of TsKBEM met with

famous Soviet physicist Andrey I. Budker, one of the founders of the Institute of Nuclear

Physics, to discuss the issue. The idea was probably dropped soon after because of the limited

capabilities of the Soyuz-Vl.

8.5. Lantratov,"Dmitriy Kozlov's'Zvezda'"

86. /bid.Thep[oductiondesignationsforthesespacecraftwere:thecompleteSoyuz-VIcomplex( I 11:730).

theOB-VI(I 11:731),the 7K-S(I 11:732),the 7K-S-I(I 11:733),the 7K-S-II(I 11:134),andthe/K-G (I 11:73S).

87. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,p 210.

635
636

The 7K-S crew supply ship was an improved version of the basic ZK-OK Soyuz vehicle,

Under Mishin's direction, engineers addressed all the weak points of the original Soyuz ship

and tried to replace systems and eliminate shortcomings. The official design bureau history

adds that:

• , . with the goal o[ improving the tactical-technical, technological, and operational

characteristics in the ship's design and on-board systems, important changes were introduced, which aHected the course o[ development and ultimatel / resulted in the creation

of a new ship. 88

When work began on the Soyuz-VI in the second half of 1961, it was overseen by Deputy

Chief Designers Bushuyev and Tsybin: both men were principally responsible for piloted spaceships at the organization. The USSR Ministry of Defense issued a new tactical-technical requirement for the Soyuz-VI complex in May 1968, which supplemented a similar document issued

in support of the canceled Zvezda. g month later, on June 21, amid the intense preparations

for piloted lunar flights, TsKBEM and its Branch No. 3, jointly issued the first version of the

draft plan for the Soyuz-Vl. Mishin subsequently approved the "theoretical drawings" of the

ZK-S Soyuz spaceship on October 14, 1968._9As part of the general change in direction from

Zvezda to Soyuz-Vl, many of the cosmonauts training for the former were reassigned to the

latter. The group was originally commanded by veteran Popovich, but upon his transfer to the

lunar program, he was replaced by Major Aleksey A. Gubarev?°

The project may have accelerated quickly, but it is clear that by 1968, Kozlov had lost

much interest in the Soyuz-VI. His branch was intensively busy with the development of more

important photo-reconnaissance satellites. Mishin, perhaps pragmatically, seems to have been

more focused toward creating an improved version of the Soyuz. the 7K-S. than the actual

OB-VI station itself• And without doubt, the target of all his energies was focused not on the

Soyuz-Vl station, but on the programs he had inherited from his late mentor Korolev--the Soyuz,

the UR-5OOK-LI.and the N I-L3 projects. As the Moon seemed to loom close enough to reach, the

year 1968 would have Mishin and his engineers set out on the penultimate lap

of the race to the Moon by finishing up an extensive testing program for the NI-L3 rocket

complex, certainly the most intensive such effort to date in the history of the Soviet space program.

Preparing for the Landing

Through 1968, U.S. television and the press were full of rumor and hearsay on the impending introduction of a super-heavyweight Soviet launch vehicle comparable to the Saturn V.

While some of this reporting was pure speculation, much of it was trickled down and leaked

information from U.S. intelligence services, which were continuing to monitor activities at

Tyura-Tam for clues to Soviet plans. During testimony in support of NASA's fiscal year 1969

authorizations to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics in February 1968, NASA

88. Ibid, p. 211,

89. INd

90. The othercosmonautsin the Soyuz-Vlgroup,establishedin early 1968,wereV. B. Alekseyev,M N.

Burdayev,Yu.N. Glazkov,L D,Kizim./_. Ya.Kramarenko,M I. Lisun,A, Ya.Petrushenko,N. S, Porvatkin,G. V.

Sarafanov.E.N. Stepanov,andV. D.Zudov.Seel_antratov,"Dmitriy Kozlov's'Zvezda'."Othersourcessuggesthat

threeothercosmonauts--V.A, Grishchenko.V. I Gulyayev.andD,A. Zaykin--werealsotrainingforSoyuzVl, Note

that Grishchenkoand Gulyayevresignedfrom cosmonauttrainingon February5, 1968.and March6, 1968,

respectively

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Administrator James E. Webb told his distinguished audience: "... there are no signs that the

Soviets are cutting back as we are. New test and launch facilities are steadily added.., and a

number of spaceflight systems more advanced than any heretofore used are nearing completion."" Webb also forecast the introduction of a Soviet booster more powerful than the Saturn

V. Five months later, George E. Mueller, the NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space

Flight, added fuel to the fire in a private memorandum distributed to Apollo contractor personnel in which he stated that the Soviets were developing a "large booster, larger by a factor

of two, than our Saturn 5."_ In May 1968, one American journalist encapsulated the tone of

these sporadic reports on the giant Soviet super-booster:

This booster, like the Loch Ness Monster or Soviet submarines seen off the East Coast

when the/qmerican Navy's budget is under review, tends to be mentioned by witnesses

who are considered unreliable or prejudiced. But students o[ Soviet space trends say

there is direct evidence that the booster will appear when the Russians are ready to

show it. This conviction is apparently based on evidence--reconnaissance photographs

of rocket engine test stands or perhaps new launching pads. _

As was customary, Soviet officials never once mentioned the N I rocket, although through

the first part of 1968, they continued to make repeated allusions to the possibility of Soviet

cosmonauts flying and even landing on the Moon in the near future24

Behind the veil of secrecy, the N I was indeed emerging in metal, but it was months behind

the latest schedule. As stipulated by the February 1967 decree from the Central Committee and

the Council of Ministers, the first test flight of the launch vehicle was set for the third quarter

of the same year. Cosmonauts were to lift off in the N I -L3 complex in April 1968. Slowly, deadlines shifted month by month, until engineers lost another year engaged in a very broad ground

testing program carried out at more than a dozen different locations.

Engineers built more than thirty-five full-scale experimental assemblies of the most

intricate, heavily loaded elements oF the rocket's frame, many of which were tested at the

Central Scientific-Research Institute of Machine Building next door to TsKBEM in Kaliningrad.

In addition, individual sections of the booster structure were verified for strength and stability

at specially built test stands built in 1967 at the Experimental Machine Building Plant belonging to TsKBEM. The comprehensive ground testing included: work on precision and pressurization: testing in deep vacuum and in weightless conditions: work on the mechanical and

pyrotechnical systems of separation and docking and on the pneumo-hydraulic systems of the

rocket stages; work on the command instruments and measurement systems, power sources,

armature, and life support systems of the L3 complex: testing in high temperatures and

vacuum: static testing of the rocket stages (including work on the thermodynamic processes

associated with fueling the stages, storage, and preparation for launch): and work on the booster at the launch position (including checking the thermodynamic processes of the propellant

9 I. NASA Scienceand Technology Division, 7_stronauticsand ,qeronuutics, 1968, p. 34.

92. John Noble Wflford, "NASA Aides FearSoviet SpaceGain," New York Ttmes.August 14, 1968, p. I I

93. Clark, "Soviet Advances in SpaceAwaited," p. 50.

94. Perhapsthe only hint by a Soviet official during t968 on the existence of the N I rocket was a statement by Academician L I, Sedov on West Germantelevision on March 20, 1968: "Specialrockets are now available.

very large rockets which have been built exclusively for space researchpurposes These rockets make it possible to

consider practically many things of which formerly one could dream. Flights to the Moon and space flight to the

planets are now quite feasible" SeeSouietSpace Programs, 1966 70. p 369.

637
638

systems of the ground complex, the system of docking the rocket to the launch complex,

and the technological processes of preparing the launch complex and the rocket for launch)2 5

Among the many problems engineers encountered at the time was how to protect

the bottom part of the rocket from the thermal and mechanical effects of the exhaust coming

from the array of liquid-propellant engines. Specially developed materials were subsequently

tested in various simulated conditions, although they would not be ready until the fifth

launcher manufactured for launch, vehicle no. 7L. _ Testing the booster's propellant tanks

proved to be more difficult than anticipated. During some tests in 1967, the tanks were

completely destroyed when internal pressure reached three atmospheres despite the fact that

they were rated to handle over that limit during emergencies2' Another problematic issue

involved dynamic precision with regard to pulsation pressure in the rocket's tanks, which

seemed to have thwarted work in the late spring of 1967. As late as July 1968. TsKBEM Deputy

Chief Designer Sergey O. Okhapkin, the man responsible for much of the work on the

N I. reported that there was still much about the dynamic precision of the rocket's first three

stages that was unresolved.

If earlier the development of the N l's engines threatened to be the major bottleneck in

the program, by 1967-68, the Trud Design Bureau (formerly OKB-276) was finally able to

report good progress. By September 1967, Trud. under the direction of its Chief Designer

Kuznetsov, had completed the construction of two major engine static stands at Kuybyshev,

the EU-28 and the EU-29, for ground tests of individual engines of the first and second stages

of the N I in both nominal and adverse conditions. The testing at Trud was followed by a

second series at the mammoth testing facilities of the famous Scientific-Research Institute for

Chemical Machine Building (formerly NII-229), the premier rocket engine test facility in the

Soviet Union, located at Zagorsk. Stands originally built for R-7-based boosters were

redesigned to fire all of the N l's stages except, of course, the important first stage, which

remained an unknown quantity and would have to be flown "green." The testing at Zagorsk

began with "cold" firings of the N I stages, followed by:

• Firings on the EU-87 test stand of individual tests of the NK-15 first-stage engines

• Three firings on the EU-16 test stand of the Blok B (second) stage

• Four live firings on the EU-16 of the Blok V (third) stage

• Firings on the EU-15 test stand of the Blok G (fourth) stage

• Firings of the Blok D (fifth) stage _

"Interdepartmental testing" of all the engines as separate units was carried out between

September and December 1967, opening the way to the firing of complete prototypes of the

second and third stages, which were completed by June and August 1968. respectively? _

95. Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p 255,

96 R Dolgopyatov. B Doro|eyev,and S. Kryukov, "At the ReadersRequest:The NI Project" (Englishtitle),

_viatsiya i kosmonovlika no. 9 (September 1992): 34 37.

97 Kamanin. "A Goal Worth Working [or." no, 46.

98 Semenov,ed , Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 256 57: Boris Arkadyevich Dorofeyev, "History

of the Development of the NI L3 Moon Program," presentedat the IOth International Symposium on the History

of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Moscow State University, Moscow. Russia,June 20-27, 1995. The EU 16 firings

were carried out on February 2, 1967,April 13, 1967,August 23, 1967,and November 25, 1970, The EU 15 firings

were carried out on June 23, 1968. August 29, 1970,and December 15, 1973.ELI-t5 was the site of a major acodenton June 15, 1968.

99. Igor Afanasyev. "NI: Absolutely Secret" (English title), Krylya rodiny no II (November 1993): 4-5:

Dolgopyatov, Doro|eyev, and Kryukov, "At the Readers' Request: The N I ProJect": Vad. Pikul, "The History of

Technology: How We Conceded the Moon: A Look by One of the Participants of the NI Drama at the Reasons

Behind It" (English title). Izobretatel i ratsionelizator no. 8 (Augus[ 1990): 20-2 I.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Progress on the L3 lunar complex was much slower than that of the N I, partly because

of continuing modifications to the design through 1968 as a result of ground testing and

monetary restrictions. Engineers carried out three major ground firings of Blok D in 1967 in support of L3 operations; these were in addition to the two Earth-orbital launches of the acceleration stage as part of the circumlunar LI project. One of the major concerns regarding Blok D

was its operation for powered descent initiation from lunar orbit. During discussions in

January-February 1968, the engineers and Chief Designers expressed reservations that after

finishing its part of the deorbit firing, the subsequent ejection of Blok D from the Lunar Ship

(LK) lander could be dangerous because of a Blok D explosion upon impact on the lunar

surface. Among the options explored were the possibility of increasing the propellant of the

lander engine to raise the altitude of separation, or even re-igniting Blok D to move the stage

further away from the lander. To be perfectly sure of Blok D operation during the entire landing

phase, Mishin and his deputies tabled plans at the time to carry out a series of "rehearsal" tests in

Earth orbit using the Proton booster. For this. the engineers proposed creating the LIE vehicle,

which would consist of a simplified automated ZK-LI circumlunar vehicle, an experimental Blok D

upper stage, and a special payload fairing for the complex. During its mission, the LIE would

specifically test two major operations: lunar-orbit insertion and powered descent from lunar

orbit, both crucial maneuvers on the landing flight. ''_

During 1968, the engineers were still debating over the docking radar for the LK, choosing

from two competitive variants. Igla and Kontakt. Despite the better performance characteristics

of the former, for inexplicable reasons, the engineers chose the latter, designed by the ScientificResearch Institute of Precision Instruments under Chief Designer Mnatsakanyan, for the LK.

It seems that the lander's Planeta radar was, however, based on Igla. Perhaps the most critical

element of the LK, the Blok Ye main engine, was suffering severe delays in its development

program at the time. Full-scale ground tests of the lander engine had been scheduled for 1966,

then 1967, but the timelines were continually moved back. At a meeting in March 1968, Ivan I.

Ivanov, the leading designer for the engine at the KB Yuzhnoye (formerly OKB-586), reported that

the engine was displaying a specific impulse three seconds lower than needed during test runs--

a serious problem that would affect the mass of the LK, which had already been reduced down

to an absolute minimum. "'

In the United States, NASA had plans to test the Apollo Command and Service Module

and the Lunar Module in Earth orbit before declaring them safe for lunar operations. Not

surprisingly, the Soviet Union had similar plans for their two analogous spacecraft, the Lunar

Orbital Ship (LOK) and the LK. In 1967, Mishin had approved plans to design and build Earthorbital versions of both vehicles, called the TIK and T2K, respectively. The two spacecraft

would be equipped with fully functional life support systems to carry a single crewmember

each. As was customary for the Soviets, the piloted flights would be preceded by joint

automated flights of the TI K-T2K, also in Earth orbit. The TI K would be launched into orbit

by the powerful UR-500K Proton booster, while the T2K would use a modified version of the

Soyuz launch vehicle designated the I IASI IL Once in orbit, the T2K would simulate a descent

to and an ascent from the lunar surface, followed by docking with the TI K. The two vehicles

would then separate, with the descent apparatus o[ the TI K returning to Earth for recovery. '°_

Despite the uncertainty regarding the Blok Ye engine, TsKBEM engineers were optimistic in their

I oo Semenov,ed, Raketno-Kosmicheskc_yaKorporalsiya, p 228.

101 In December 1966,the first test of Blok I (LOK) was set forJuly 1967,and the first test of Blok Ye(LK)

was set for August 196?.

102. K. [antratov, '*The FallFrom Orbit of the LastSoviet Lunar Ship" (English title), Nouosti kosmona_tiki

25 (December 3-t6, 1995): 32-36.

639
640

schedules for the TIK and T2K missions in Earth orbit. In March 1968, Mishin was planning

for the first T2K launch in October 1968, with the second and third models a month later, In

August, Mishin discussed with Chief Designer Gay I. Severin of the Zvezda Design Bureau, the

man responsible for all spacesuits in the Soviet space program, the possibility of using Yastreb

EVA suits on the TI K and T2K for a possible spacewalk. The idea seems to have been dropped

soon after because of the added complexity of such a mission.

Much of the testing on the LK and LOK was carried out at the TsKBEM plant or at the

imaginatively titled Scientific-Research Institute for Chemical and Construction Machines

at Sergeyev Posad. These tests included those for the separation of the LOK and the LK in

nominal and emergency situations, the docking systems, and the separation of Blok D. The

same institute was also the location of landing tests of the lunar lander mock-ups to refine the

design of the LK. At least 200 drop tests of the descent framework were conducted, half of

them with full-sized prototypes. Engineers devised different simulated lunar landscapes for

a variety of situations and introduced various landing profiles, For example, three different

parameters, including the horizontal velocity (zero to one and a half meters per second), the

height of the fall (several meters), and the angle of contact with the surface (thirty degrees to

negative values), were considered. Designers also experimented with craters of various dimensions,

repeating tests over and over to eliminate random results, Engineers carried out pyrotechnical

separation tests to verify the operation of liftof[ from the Moon, a problem made more difficult

by temperature deformations in the ascent stage and none in the descent portion. _'_

Of the many potential hazards facing the LK during operations near the Moon, one of the

most imposing was the influence of lunar gravitational anomalies. During the early robotic lunar

probe missions in the mid-1960s, lunar satellites such as Luna I0, Luna II, and Luna 12 deviated

significantly from their expected trajectories around the Moon, raising the specter of such errors

during piloted operations. To map out magnetic and mass anomalies on the lunar surface that

could affect orbital vectors, engineers at the Lavochkin State Union Machine Building Plant

under Chief Designer Babakin designed small lunar satellites designated the Ye-6LS to assist in

mapping gravitational anomalies on the Moon, The first such spacecraft was launched on May

17, 1967. by a four-stage 8K78M booster (better known as the Molniya-M). Unfortunately, its

Blok L translunar injection malfunctioned and was not able to impart sufficient velocity to the

probe. As a failed deep space probe, the Soviet press referred to it by the nondescript name of

Kosmos-159. TM A second Ye-6LS probe failed to reach orbit on February 7, 1968, when the thirdstage engine cut off prematurely at T+524.6 seconds because it ran out of propellant. Babakin

was third time lucky, when vehicle no. II 3 was launched successfully on April 7, 1968, and

arrived at the Moon a few days later, officially named Luna 14 in the Soviet press.

Communications with the probe was carried out by the large TNA-400 dish at Simferopol in

Crimea. Apart from successfully mapping gravitational anomalies, Luna 14 also carried motor

103 V. Filin. "At the Requestof the Reader:The NI-k3 Project" (English title), _uiatsiya i kosmonautika no.

2 (February 1992): 40-41: Semenov,ed.. Raketno.KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 256. Note that the descent stage

was not temperature controlled.

104 "Calendar of Memorable Dates" {English title), Novosti kosmonautiki tO {May 5-18, 1997): 5i 53:

Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space: Part 6: The Improved Four-StageLaunch Vehicle,

1964-19t2," Spaceflight 40 (May 1998): 181-84, Althoup_hKosmos 159 did not reach lunar orbit, it did attain a

highly elliptical orbit with an apogeeof 60,637 kilometers, the highest for any satellite in the Kosmos series Western

analysis of the Kosmos-159 launch suggests that basedon its launch time. it was launched directly away from the

Moon, much like Zond 4, SeePhiliip S. Clark, "Obscure Unmanned Soviet Satellite Missions," The ]ournal o/the

British Interplanetary Society 46 (October 1993): 371-80 More recent evidence suggests that Kosmos-159 did

indeed enter _tsoriginally planned orbit. SeeTimothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketrythat Conquered Space:Part $:

The First Planetary Probe Attempts. 1960-1964," Spaceflight 40 (March 1998): 85-88

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

drives for testing different materials, lubrications, and coating for the wheels of the future Ye-8

lunar rover. '°_

The rover, for transporting cosmonauts from one lander to another on the Moon's surface,

was Babakin's most important contribution to the Soviet lunar flotilla of the 1960s. In early 1967,

Soviet space officials tabled a new proposal to build upon the Ye-8 rover: why not build a compact spacecraft capable of landing on the Moon, recovering a tiny portion of lunar soil, and then

returning to Earth? '°_ The idea was clearly motivated to a great extent as insurance against losing

the race to the Moon. If all else failed--and Apollo was about to land on the Moon--then

Babakin could dispatch one of these robots to recover soil before any American astronaut. It was

a pragmatic public relations exercise, but one that obviously had important scientific payback. The

proposal apparently originated from Babakin's design bureau, and it was the subject of "a brief

but heated debate" before being approved for implementation. '°'

As with the L3 program, the primary limitation for the soil return spacecraft was mass.

Instead of developing a completely new vehicle, Babakin chose to model his sample returner on

the Ye-8 rover by using its descent platform, the so-called KT stage. But instead of the lunar rover

as a payload, the KT would carry a vehicle capable of scooping some soil. lifting off from the

Moon, heading for Earth, and reentering into Earth's atmosphere for subsequent recovery. Babakin

designated the spacecraft Ye-8-5 to distinguish it from its antecedent, the Ye-8 rover.

When beginning to design the Ye-8-5 vehicle, the engineers assumed that it would be necessary to correct the return trajectory of the capsule on its trip back to Earth--that is, it would

require complicated optical and gyroscopic devices, command radio links, and a rocket engine, all

exceeding the mass requirements for the spacecraft. A solution to the problem came from Dmitriy

Ye. Okhotsimskiy, one of the star scientists at the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the

Academy of Sciences: he had helped optimize the design of the first Soviet ICBM in the early

1950s and later worked on many early Soviet space projects. Okhotsimskiy's mathematical analysis showed that among the possible trajectories on the return flight from the Moon, there were a

small class of passive flight trajectories that do not require correction and exist only on the

"Moon-to-Earth" trip because of the strong influence of Earth's gravity. He found that with these

passive trajectories, the landing point on Earth depends on the starting point on the Moon. This

meant that the landing point had to be very exact, to within plus or minus ten kilometers of a

specified point on the lunar surface. The study of lunar gravitation anomalies on Luna 10, Luna

II, Luna 12, and Luna 14 proved to be extremely useful for mathematical analyses of landing

profiles from lunar orbit.'°_

Babakin's engineers fought long and hard with the mass constraints. The launch vehicle for

the Ye-8-5 was the same as that for the Ye-8, a four-stage Proton booster that could put a mass

105. N G, Babakin,_. N. Banketov,and V. N Smorkalov. G N. Babakin: zhizn i deyatelnost (Moscow:

Adamant, 1996), pp. 54-55: Lardier,L_stronautique Soui#tique,pp. 182.267.The TNg-400 was designedby OKB MEI

under Chief DesignerA E.Bogomolov. Lona 14 also carriedscientific instruments, including one for measuringcharged

particlesfrom the Sun, SeeKenneth Gatland,Robot Explorers(London: MacMillan, 1972), p. 140.

106. Note that K Lantratov, "The 'Late' Lunar Soil" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 15 (July 16-29,

t994): 41-43, states that the sample return effort began in 1968, not 1967,

107 Yu A. Mozzhorin. et aL, eds., Dorogi u kosmos:I (Moscow: MAI, 1992). p. 163.

108. B.V. Rauschenbach,"Soviet Programof the Moon SurfaceResearch,"presentedat the 45th Congress of

the International Astronautical Federation, IAt_-94-1A#,2.2 626, Jerusalem, Israet,October 9-14, 1994. There were

additional limitations on the Ye-8-5 lunar probe. With a passive trajectory, the predicted landing point on Earth was

too wide for effective search.This required transmission of the actual post-takeoff trajectory from the Moon. which

meant that the return ship neededto carry complex radio-technical equipment. Okhotsimskiy bypassedthis problem

by proposing the use of radio equipment working in the meter range instead of the standard decimeter range, thus

reducing the mass of the communications instrumentation. Thesetransmissions would also be augmented by ground

observations to measureangularvelocity of the returning ship from a distance of 150,000 kilometers from Earth.

641
642

of only 5,550 kilograms on a translunar trajectory from Earth orbit. This would include both the

KT descent stage and the actual scooper with its returning spacecraft. Despite a widespread and

intensive effort to reduce the mass of the Ye-8-5 sample returner, Babakin was able to produce a

vehicle with a mass of only 5,880 kilograms. With the project in jeopardy, Babakin convinced

both Che/omey and Mishin to optimize the capabilities of the Proton and the Blok D stage,

respectively, to allow the rocket to carry the increased mass. Chelomey and Mishin evidently

were able to fulfill Babakin's requirements by reworking several systems and reducing reserve

propellant/_

The Earth-to-Moon trip for the Ye-8-5 sample returner was identical to that of the Ye-8 rover.

_t nominal flight for the Ye-8-5 would begin with its launch into a low-Earth orbit by the Proton.

About seventy minutes after launch, Blok D would fire a second time to insert the payload on a

trajectory toward the Moon. After two mid-course corrections, the Ye-8-5 would fly into a

120-kilometer-high lunar orbit four days and seven hours after launch. In lunar orbit, the ship

would conduct two further corrections: the first to reduce perilune down to twenty kilometers

over the landing point and the second to straighten out the plane of approach. P,fter seven days

and sixteen hours in space, the Ye-8-_iwould fire its lID411 engine to initiate powered descent

from lunar orbit, landing on the lunar surface on its KT descent stage within six minutes.

The KT stage for the sample collector was identical to the one on the lunar rover except for

the addition of a 0.9-meter-long remote arm with a drill appendage, stored in an upright position.

lqfter landing on the Moon, the arm would be rotated down to the target area. Electric motors,

tested on tuna 14,would allow the arm to sweep over a lO0-degree arc, while the drill itself could

be swiveled in elevation. The latter consisted of a hollow rotary/percussion bit to drive into

the surface. The Ye-8-5ascent stage consisted of three spherical tanks for nitric acid and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine for the ascent stage engines, which was composed of the $5.61 with

a thrust of 1.92 tons placed in the center and four outbound verniers attached to the tanks.

i_ pressurized cylinder above the central tank contained control, communications, and power

equipment including gyroscopes and accelerometers. Four antennae were placed orthogonally on

the horizontal plane on the outside of the cylinder. The central component of the ascent stage

was a small thirty-nine-kilogram spherical capsule with a diameter of fifty centimeters placed at

the top of the cylinder. Internally, in the upper portion, the capsule carried parachutes and descent

antennas. The middle part had a receptacle for the sample, and the lower part had batteries and

transmitting equipment that produced a displaced center of gravity toward the bottom where the

ablative heat shield was the thickest. Once the remote arm had collected the soil, the arm would

raise the drill and insert the soil into the small capsule at the top of the craft, pressurize it, and

then seal it. The capsule as a whole was attached to the rest of the ascent stage via straps. '_°

P,fter one day and two hours on the lunar surface, the ascent stage would lift off from the

Moon and enter a direct trajectory toward Earth. There would be no mid-course corrections on

the return trip, and its ultimate destination would depend on the precision of the trans-Earth injection burn. After a flight lasting eleven days and six hours, the small capsule would land on Soviet

territory.

Preparations for both the Ye-8 and the Ye-8-5 accelerated through 1968. During the middle of

the year, the lunar rover was subjected to ground simulations at a specially constructed lunar landscape near Simferepol in Crimea. l_t least five firing tests of the KT lander stage took place in late

1968 at Zagorsk, one of which was less than successful because of a premature engine cutoff."'

109. Babakin.Banketov,andSmorkalov,Ci.N.Babakin.p. 54.

I I0. AndrewWilson.SolarSystemLog(London:Jane'sPublishingCo.. 1981).pp.61-62.

II I. O.A. Sokolov."The Raceto the Moon:A Lookfrom Baikonur,"presentedat the45th International

AstronauticalCongress.IAA-942ri.6I0.

CHALLENGE TO JII_POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRP, CK

Babakin's Ye-8-5 sample scooper may not have been an integral part of the N I-L3 lunar

landing program, but it added to the burden of the Soviet lunar effort of the period. The repeated

additions and modifications to the N I-L3 plan in 1965-67 also complicated mission design.

Even after the ink was dry on a final draft plan for a particular element of the L3 complex,

months later, engineers would propose modifications based on new anticipated needs. This not

only made it impossible to manufacture flight models of the spacecraft, but also added layer

after layer of complexity to the N I-L3 mission. By 1968, the following components were part

of the entire program:

• Ye-6LS (two robot probes to map lunar gravitational anomalies)

• Ye-8LS (two robot lunar satellites to photograph the lunar surface)

• TI K-T2K (automated and piloted flights of the LOK and LK in Earth orbit)

• LI E (automated test of the Blok D stage in Earth orbit):

• N I-LI (two lunar orbital LI flights as test payloads for early N I launches)

• Ye-8 (two lunar rovers to serve as transport for cosmonauts);

• N I-L3 (one N I launch with the backup LK)

• N I-L3 (one N I launch with two cosmonauts to land on the Moon)

This was in addition to the huge effort expended on the separate LI circumlunar project.

For a launch profile that was to originally include a single launch to the Moon, the Soviet

program to land cosmonauts on the Moon now included a multitude of weak links that could

seriously disrupt the schedule. Perhaps one of the few confidence boosters for Soviet space

engineers at the time was the majestic sight at Tyura-Tam of the first N I rocket as it was

wheeled out to its launch pad.

The l_iI Arrives... and Leaves

During late 1967, the Soviets could not have ignored the hoopla surrounding a significant

milestone in the U.S. space program. On November 9, 1967.the first Saturn V booster lifted

off from Launch Complex 39 at the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Kennedy, Florida.

Apollo 4, as it was called, was a magnificently successful mission, vindicating the so-called

"all-up" philosophy, coming on the heels what one observer called "the most exhaustive

ground-test program in aerospace history. "''_ Coincidentally or not, the Soviet government

issued a new decree five days after the Apollo 4 launch--one that amended the unrealistic

targets laid down in the important February 1967 resolution on landing Soviet cosmonauts on

the Moon. The new decision, adopted on November 14, called for the initiation of flight

testing of the N I booster in the third quarter of 1968, almost a year behind the Saturn V. A

date for a landing was apparently not specified: the authors of the decree merely stated that it

would take place "in a period ensuring the preeminence of the Soviet Union in the exploration

of space"--that is, before the Americans. ''_ Mishin recalled decades later that "by then, it was

already clear that the dates set by these directives were unrealistic. They were not backed up by

funds, or production capacities, or resources..,4 According to the chief designer, spending on

112. RogerE. Bilstein,Stagesto Saturn:A TechnologicalHistory o[ theApolloSaturnLaunchVehicles

(Washington,DC:NASASP-4206,1996),pp.347-48.

113. MikhaitRudenko,"SpaceBulletin:LunarAttraction:HistoricalChronicles:FirstPublication"(English

title), Vozdushniytransport28( 1993):I0:V. E Mishin,"Why Didn'tWe Flyto theMoon?"(Englishtitle), Znoniye:

tekhnike:seriyakosrnonautika,astronomiyano, 12(December.1990):3-43.

114. Mishin,"Why Didn'tWeFlyto the Moon?"

643
644

the N I-L3 at its peak in 1967-68 amounted to about $1.5 billion, compared to Apollo's nearly

$3 billion at its peak in 1966-67. ''_

When the Saturn V blasted off from Cape Kennedy, half a world away in the Kazakhstan

desert at Tyura-Tam, Soviet engineers were putting the finishing touches on the first N I mock-up.

The supervisory body over the entire N I-L3 program, the so-called Council for the Problems

of Mastering the Moon, met on October 9, 1967, to discuss these preparations as well as the

overall status of the Soviet lunar landing program, Mishin reported that the first N I flight model

would only be able to lift seventy-six tons, while a slight modification of the second stage

would allow the attainment of the nominal ninety-five tons required for a lunar landing for

a single cosmonaut. More improvements in the first and second stages, including raising the

thrust of the NK-15 engines from 154 to 170 tons, would provide a payload capability

of 105 tons, sufficient to carry two instead of one cosmonaut down to the surface. Such a plan

had been discussed among the senior staff in mid-1967, apparently prompted by continuing

grave concerns over the safety of having a single cosmonaut on the surface of the Moon.

Academy of Sciences President Keldysh was one of the strongest supporters of the

two-cosmonaut plan, making the somewhat implausible proposal at the October 1967 meeting

that the council should seriously consider landing two cosmonauts on the Moon on the very

first launch of the NI. If that was impossible, then the mission should try and land a lone

cosmonaut.' ,7 Keldysh's voice was not the only one touting this absurd idea. Communist Party

General Secretary Brezhnev was rumored to have said: "We should prepare for a manned

mission to the Moon straight after the first successful launch of the N I, without waiting for

it to be finally developed.' .... Mishin understandably reasoned that it would be absolutely

impossible to land two cosmonauts on the Moon on the first or second N I.

Brezhnev's ludicrous demands underline to a great degree the incredible gap between

the people building the spacecraft and those who controlled the purse strings. If there were

expectations that the creation of the Ministry of General Machine Building in t 965 would put

an end to the institutional chaos in the space program, they were never fulfilled. The managerial chaos was underlined at an important meeting after the Apollo 4 mission. On January 23,

1968, Minister Afanasyev hosted a large conference with the senior staff at TsKBEM, including

Mishin, Bushuyev, Chertok, Qkhapkin, and Tregub, at which the primary subject of discussion

was the N I-L3. Afanasyev pulled no punches and bluntly blamed Mishin for all the troubles in

the Soviet space program. Going down the litany of delays and failures in the program,

Afanasyev spared no words in criticizing the performance of TsKBEM and Mishin in particular.

While the poor results of the N I program could not be attributable to the incompetence of one

man, Afanasyev had good reason to single out Mishin. In the two years since he had assumed

the post of chief designer of the design bureau, there had been nothing but failure. Mishin was

also stubborn and ill-tempered, and he constantly alienated those around him, from his

deputies to the other chief designers. Of the original five chief designers who were alive, only

Pilyugin and Ryazanskiy had "normal" relationships with Mishin, The three others had some form

of complaints against what they considered his rude behavior and poor leadership qualities.

115. The figure of $1.5 billion is extrapolated from "The Moon Programme That Faltered," Spaceflight 33

(January 1991): 2-3, in which Mishin gives a figure of "half a billion" rubles. The conversion rate used was $3 =

I ruble, which was the unofficial rateat the time. The figure for Apollo is taken from Janevan Nimmen and Leonard

C. Bruno with Robert L. Rosholt, N_S.B Historical Data Book, Volume I N/TS,,q Resources 1958-t968 (Washington,

DC: NASA SP4012, 1988). p. 148.The precisefigures for 1966 and 1967were $2.9713 billion and $2.8779 billion,

respectively.

116. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working [or," no. 47.

I 17. What Stars.,qreWe Flying to? (English title), Moscow Teleradiokompaniya Ostankino Television, First

Program Network, Moscow, April 9, 1992, 0825 GMT.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Despite the rising complaints against Mishin, he was not dismissed. Some believed that Ustinov

kept him on as the "fall guy" to take the blame for a program that was all but doomed to fail. The

chief designer may have also had powerful supporters in key positions, one of them being

Politburo member Andre,/P. Kirilenko.

At the meeting in January 1968, Mishin clearly articulated some of the inherent managerial

problems at TsKBEM. In some ways, his two basic points were more substantive than _fanasyev's

introductory tirade. The chief designer strongly believed that his design bureau was overburdened

with extraneous tasks, which prevented it from concentrating on such space projects as the

N I-L3. Primary among these was the solid-propellant RT-2 ICBM project, which swallowed

a lion's share of the design bureau's resources in the late 1960s. Mishin also complained about

having to work on subsystems, such as launch escape towers and spacecraft landing systems,

simply because subcontractors were unable to do so. His second point was aimed at the organization of the Soviet space program, and in particular Afanasyev's Ministry of General Machine

Building. He bluntly accused the ministry of not controlling the completion of items that were

subcontracted out by TsKBEM--that is, not helping in having subcontractors meet deadlines, a

job that was increasingly falling on already taxed engineers at the design bureau,

Mishin's deputies also spoke. Chertok and Bushuyev both admitted that it was TsKBEM's

own fault that they were so overloaded with projects They mentioned the 7K-LI circumlunar

program in particular, inherited from the Korolev days, as one that was a needless burden.

The hasW and often personality-driven decisions of 1964-65 were finally having the negative

consequences many had feared. In the end, as with many other meetings, nothing changed.

/_fanasyev refused to disrupt military programs, such as the RT-2 ICBM effort, in favor of

"civilian" projects, such as the N I-L3. The missile project stayed at TsKBEM. Relations between

the design bureau and its subcontractors remained just as chaotic. The engineers at TsKBEM

shrugged their shoulders and went back to work. ''_

Through the tumultuous events of the lunar program in the late 1960s, there was one curious politically motivated episode that threatened to derail the N I-L3 program as late as 1967.On

November 17, 1967, the Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers issued decree

no. 1070-363, which assigned General Designer Vladimir N. Chelomey to design and develop the

UR-700 heaw-lift booster and the LK-700 lunar spacecraft to land two Soviet cosmonauts on

the surface of the Moon by 1972 or 1973.''_ To any observer with even cursory familiarity with

the history of the Soviet piloted lunar program, this decision remains one of the most inexplicable-one that even the most intricate machinations of political intrigue fail to explain, How could

the Soviet government commit to a second lunar landing program at a time when millions

had been expended on the NI-L3? How did the UR-700 program reemerge after an official

interdepartmental commission had already passed it over in favor of the N I-L3? According to

Sergey N. Khrushchev, the former Soviet leader's son, the action was partly motivated by the

astonishing delays in the N I-L3 program. He hints that the idea belonged to Minister of General

Machine Building Afanasyev, who was increasingly at odds with his boss Ustinov over support

to Chelomey's organization. '_°Cool in his promotion of the late Korolev's dreams, Afanasyev

began to shift his allegiance to Chelomey's programs with the formidable backing of new

USSR Minister of Defense/3ndrey A. Grechko. The UR-700 may have had other supporters,

II 8 There is a detailed account of this meeting in Chertok, Rokety i lyudi: goryaefliye dni kholodnoy voyny,

pp 479 87,

1t9. P, second decree (no. 472) was issued by the Ministry of General Machine Building on November28,

1967.

120. Sergey Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu krizisy i fakery: uzgtyad iznutri: tom 2 (Moscow: Novosti,

1994). p. 524

645
646

specifically Chief Designer Glushko and Air Force Col. General Kamanin. both of whom were

vocal and vociferous opponents of Mishin. '_'

The new order tasked Chelomey to produce a draft plan for the UR-700 and the LK-700

within a one-year period. According to Khrushchev, Chelomey was very reluctant to take on

the order, and he did not believe that any program at this late stage could be competitive

with Apollo. Perhaps expecting another accident to delay Apollo, Chelomey sank his teeth into

reviving the UR-700 proposal, tasking the development of the booster to his Branch No. I at

Fill under his First Deputy Viktor N. Bugayskiy. Having already worked on the project for

several years, Chelomey and Bugayskiy were able to produce the draft plan for the LK-700 lunar

landing ship as early as September 30, 1968. Engineers finished the draft plan for the gigantic

UR-700 rocket on November 15, just two days before the stipulated deadline. '_ They may have

worked on time to produce the results desired by gfanasyev, but the second coming of the

UR-700 slowly sank into oblivion. The Americans were racing ahead with Apollo, there was

already a huge commitment to the N I-L3, and Chelomey himself had little interest in forcing

through this last-minute gasp. Perhaps understandably, Mishin's faction was less than pleased

with the entire debacle. According to one of Bugayskiy's deputies:

[_A/]e received the order for the 200 ton rocket and began working. And suddenly the

specialists from Korolev's Design Bureau were writing a memo to the Minister of _eneral

Machine Building S. A ,Ztfanasyev. Soon they "killed" our 200 ton rocket, and Korolev's

people were left without any competitors.'23

Chelomey's engineers never built their gargantuan booster: "All the work on the LIR-700

was limited to the design and the mock-ups of certain sections of the rocket." '_ Like so many

of Chelomey's dreams, the UR-700 never left Earth. By early 1969, Chelomey had abandoned

work on his alternative lunar landing proJect.

As for the N I, components for the first batch of rockets were produced initially in February

1967 at the Progress Plant at Kuybyshev. After production, the parts were then transported to

Tyura-Tam, where they were assembled at the giant assembly-testing building. The first group

included two mock-ups for ground testing and fourteen models for flight testing. Later operational batches would be manufactured based on the results of the first set of launches. The first

N I mock-up, vehicle no. I M I, was designed and built to allow engineers to refine the dynamic

characteristics of all the ground assemblies and the rocket itself and was not meant for flight.

They used the mock-up, a complete engineering model with a nose section, to carry out

integrated final ground testing of the N I-L3 complex as well as to perform procedures for

prelaunch preparations. The results of these tests would clear the way for releasing the first flight

article, N I vehicle no. 3L, for launch. Just two weeks after the Saturn V launch, on November

25, 1961, the I MI was moved on rail tracks from the assembly-testing building to the first

completed launch pad at site I IOP.'_ At the pad, giant cranes raised the booster to a vertical

121 In a diary entry on August 3 I, 1974,Kamanin recallsthat he and Glushko, in 1967,proposed the can

cellation of the N I-L3 program, presumably in favor of the UR-700 project. SeeN. Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Our

Guys" (Enghshtitle), Vozdushniy transport 15 (1993): 12

122 Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushehev:tom 2, p. 524.

123 Dmitriy Khrapovitskiy. "Absolutely Unclassified: The Ground Waves of Space Politics" (English title).

Soyuz IS (April 1990): 15.

124. Ibid

125 V A. Lebedev, "The N I-L3 Programme," Spaceflight 34 (September 1992): 288-90: Afanasyev. "N I:

Absolutely Secret" Note that there were originally three mock-ups of the N i: I M l, I M2, and I M3 The I M3 eventually became the first flight article. 3L.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

position. It seems that the magnificent view of the graceful rocket lifted spirits considerably. U.S.

spy satellites were also watching. In a classified report at the time, the CIA reported:

loin several occasions since December 196;7, [the NIl has been erected on the pad

while on other occasions the pad has been empty, suggesting the Soviets are testing the

erection and checkout facilities of the system. The vehicle has not been flown but there

is no evidence that the program is experiencing major difficulties. _'_

On December I, the Moon council met once again under Afanasyev's tutelage. Almost all

the _uminaries of the Soviet space program, including Minister of Aviation Industries Petr V.

Dementyev, Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Missile Forces Marshal Nikolay I. Krylov, Tyulin,

Kerimov, Mishin, Barmin, Kamanin, and many other chief designers, were present. The reports

were fairly positive. Save for a few items on the service tower and some systems adjustments,

the first launch pad was prepared for an actual launch. The IM I mock-up had been placed on

the pad, while all its operational parameters were measured during three complete cycles, after

which the booster was transported back to the assembly-testing building. The plan was to take

the rocket out again to the pad to fuel it completely three times. Ground workers would then

train for thirty days to master all operations in preparation for the first flight model of the N I.

The flight article, rocket no. 3L, would then be moved to the pad and prepared for launch in

the first half of March 1968, although all finishing work on the launch pad would not be

completed until March 30. There apparently had been problems with the mock-up, for it was

returned to the assembly-testing building on December 12, 1967, and moved back out once

again in January. The official history of TsKBEM notes that the work highlighted the

requirement for better technical documentation. '_'

As workers labored to prepare the first N I flight model, focus shifted to the L3 complex.

On January 15, 1968, the Moon council met to specifically discuss piloted lunar operations,

both in lunar orbit and on the lunar surface. Apart from MishJn, Chief Designer Severin responsible for spacesuits and DepuW Minister of Health Avetik I. Burnazyan reported on the health

safety measures for lunar surface operations. The news was not good. Severin, for example, told

his audience that he would need two more years to clear his Krechet-94 suit for operations on

lunar landing missions. One of Mishin's demands for the suit was that it be sufficiently robust

for up to five kilometers of movement on the Junarsurface and alJow EVA operations for up to

seventy-two hours, perhaps to enable the cosmonaut to survive decompression in the lander.

Like most other chief designers, Severin's primary problem seems to have been the severe mass

limits on the suit. At the time, the suit had a mass of approximately ninety kilograms. A large

conference on the Krechet-94 and Orlan suits for the lunar mission was held on March 19.

1968, at Severin's Zvezda plant at Tomilino. Severin apparently had confidence in meeting

Mishin's requests, reporting that the Krechet-94 would ensure EVA life support for six hours of

work on the lunar surface, while the Orlan would provide two and a half hours, sufficient for

the spacewalks in Earth or lunar orbit from one ship to another. Because the replenishment of

oxygen and water would be possible from the LK or from the Ye-8 lunar rover on the surface of

the Moon, the total operational time for the Krechet-94 would be as high as fifty-two hours. ':_

126. U.s. CentralIntelligenceAgency,"NationalIntelligenceEstimateII-1-69: TheSovietSpaceProgram,"

Washington, DC,June 19, 1969, p. 14. as declassifiedin 1997 by the CIAHistoricalReviewProgram.

127. Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya.p. 573;Kamanin,"A GoalWorth Workingfor,"

no.47:Kamanin,"A GoalWorth Workingfor," no.49:Afanasyev,"N I: AbsolutelySecret":Afanasyev,"Unknown

Spacecraft"

128. Kamanin,"A GoalWorth Working[or," no.48;Kamanin,"A GoalWorth Workingfor," no.49,

642'
648

Presumably because of the results of the I M I tests, Mishin was unable to meet the March

1968 deadline for launch, informally delaying the attempt to May. Military units evidently did

not completely master all operations related to the work of the huge emergency rescue system

on top of the N I. To add to the problems, work was disrupted on the booster in April by the

death of two men during ground tests. '_ Oxygen systems on the support tower were also

incomplete for a launch. At a meeting on April 22, Mishin targeted May 5 for another full-scale

testing of the flightworthy N I-LI on the pad. The first launch article finally arrived at its pad

on May 7, 1968. The launch was set for late May, despite concerns over the state of the

booster engines, which were in less than perfect condition and only barely within the specified

limits for testing.

The original payload for booster no, 3L had apparently been a 7K-LIE spacecraft equipped

to test firings of the Blok D stage. At some point in 1968, the spacecraft was replaced

by a dedicated circumlunar spacecraft re-equipped for flight in lunar orbit. In an example of the

cross pollination among the various lunar programs, this variant, known as the 7KLIS, seems

to have been left over from the short-lived plan to have the 7K-LI dock in Earth orbit with

a Soyuz spacecraft prior to its circumlunar mission. The spacecraft was equipped with the

Engine Orientation Complex (known as the "DOK") from the L3's Lunar Orbital Ship. The

complex, having a mass of around 800 kilograms, was installed at the forward end of the

7K-L IS on its prominent support cone to carry out attitude control. Because there was no need

for docking on the N l's launch, the engine complex did not have the active node of the

Kontakt docking system. The DOK was manufactured by a new entrant to the Soviet space program, the Arsenal Machine Building Plant based in Leningrad. whose design bureau was headed

by Chief Designer Petr A Tyurin. _°The first complete 7K-LtS vehicle was assembled in March

1968, in time for the planned N I launch in two months.

The launch was not to be. At some point during the prelaunch testing, technicians

discovered cracks in the first stage. Blok A, which had evidently formed when the rocket was

mated to its payload.'" In such a condition, there was only one option: bring the booster back

to the assembly-testing building and repair the cracks. The restoration took much longer than

expected, introducing what would prove to be a fatal delay in the N I-L3 problem. Days turned

to weeks, which eventually turned to months. It was not just the cracks on the N I, but also

cumulative delays in the delivery of reliable equipment for ground operations, which was

a significant factor in pushing back the deadline. In August, Mishin met with Ustinov and

reported that subcontractors were continuing to break deadlines, that many electrical systems

at the launch site did not meet specifications, and that there were many failures during ground

testing. There was also a severe shortage of military personnel at Tyura-Tam for N I operations.

Afanasyev and Mishin were looking at a best chance for launch in late 1968, yet another year

behind schedule. The hopes of the Soviet Union in reaching the Moon before the Americans

hopelessly sank into an intractable quagmire. By this time, NASA had already flown a second

Saturn V booster and launched the first automated Lunar Module into Earth orbit.

129 Military workers for the NI were part of the Sixth Scientific-Testing and Experimental Directorate at

Tyura Tam. SeeJacquesVillain. ed., Baikonour [a porte des Etoiles (Paris:grmand Colin, 1994), p. 73.

130 That the original payload for booster no. 3[ was a 7KLIE is noted in Semenov. ed, RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p 573. The manufacture of the DOK-DKP for the 7K L IS was probably the first venture for the Arsenal Machine Building Plant in the Sovietspace program. Later,in 1969-70. the organization took on

"design escorting" for the US naval reconnaissancesatellite system originally developed by TsKBM under General

Designer V. N Chelomey. See M. Tarasenko, "The Scientific Program of the KB 'Arsenal'" (English title), Nouostl

kosmonautiki 6 (March _1-24, 1996): 47-48: Dmitriy Litovkin, "SpaceProJectsof 'Arsenal'" (English title), Krasnaya

zuezda. January t3, 1996

131 Afanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret."

CHALLENGE TO _:_POLLO
GETTING BACK ON TRACK

Unlike the N I, the Saturn V used a high-performance cryogenic upper stage fueled by

liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Throughout 1968, as the race slowly slipped through

their hands, many Soviet designers clearly realized that although the N I had arrived as a real

quantity on the launch pad at Tyura-Tam, it had much room for improvement, specifically in its

use of propellants. An increased payload would allow engineers to amend one of the weakest

elements of the N I-L3 plan and increase the crew size from two to three. The late Korolev had

persistently tried to create a liquid hydrogen engine development program in the early 1960s,

and the effort was finally producing results by 1967-68 with the establishment of a modest

production base as well as the first static tests of actual engines.

The model with the best prospects, which began static tests in 1967, was the IID56

engine with a thrust of seven and a half tons, a creation of the Design Bureau of Chemical

Machine Building under Chief Designer Isayev based in Kaliningrad Two other engines, the

IID54 and IID57, built by the Saturn Design Bureau under Chief Designer Lyulka, were

also approaching the ground testing stage by 1968. P, fourth engine, a derivative of the N I's

NK-15V motor, was the most powerful of the lot: it was a 200-ton-thrust engine proposed by

N I engine architect Chief Designer Kuznetsov. This engine was, however, far behind in its

development curve than the others. Possible applications of the Kuznetsov engine on future

variants of the N I were discussed only in January 1968, Each of the four engines had a specific

application in a modernized N I:

• The NK-15V would replace the current engines in Blok B (stage II).

• The I ID54 would replace the current engines in BIok V (stage III).

• The I ID57 in the new Blok S would replace the current Blok G (stage IV).

• The I ID56 in the new Blok R would replace the current Blok D (stage V). '_2

Perhaps it was the success of the Saturn V or perhaps it was Isayev and Lyulka's progress

in developing the engines, but the Soviet liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen rocket engine program

seems to have interested a most unlikely party at this time. After years of vociferously opposing

such engine applications in space rocket boosters, in early 1967, Chief Designer Glushko

suddenly emerged with an idea for a 200- to 250-ton liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine,

The idea was evidently discussed at a ministerial level in January 1968, but by this time, Mishin

was not interested in Glushko's reconciliatory gesture.

Proposals for the four engines from Isayev, Lyulka, and Kuznetsov allowed Mishin to table

realistic modifications of the NI in 1967-68. In May 1968, The chief designer had one of his

aides prepare a letter to Minister Afanasyev proposing three modifications of the N I--designated the N I F-V2, the N I F-V3, and the N I F-V4--each distinguished by the particular liquid

hydrogen stage it used. The N I F-V2 would use a new second stage, the N I F-V3 would use

a new third stage, and so on. '_ In August 1968, an "expert commission" consisting of

132. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmiefleskayaKorporatsiya. p. 262.

133. The aide was V. K. Bezverbiy. TsKBEM engineers had begun work on modernized variants of the NI

prior to Korolev's death. Korolev had signed a "technical account" on November 9, 1965.that described four primary versions o[ the NI: the NILI (a variant with better mass characteristics and more reliable engines), the NIF

(a model with improved engines on the first and second stages), and the N IM (two radically improved versions

with new engines on alt three stages). Eachof these would also havesubvariants, depending on their use of highperformance liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engines on the second or third, or both, stages. Their designations

included the letter "V" to denote the Russianword for hydrogen ("vodorod") and a number to denote the stage

application. Thesesubvariants were the N I U-V3, the N IF-V3,the N I M-V3 (two different versions), the NI F-V21V3,

and the NI M-V21V3. Lifting capability stretched from ninety-five tons on the N IU to 230 tons on the NI M V-21V3.

See B V. Raushenbakh,ed,, S P Koro/eu i ego de/o: sueti ternu istorii kosmonautikL izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), pp. 632-33,

649
65O

representativesfromvariousotherorganizationsexaminedtheNIF-V3andNIE-V4concepts,

evidentlygivinga positiverecommendationto both.Thelatterversion,theNIF-V4,was

discussedattheCentralCommitteelevelthesamemonth,althoughaformaldecisionon

developmentwasnotforthcomingatthetime.Intheirpursuitof high-performanceengines,

TsKBEMengineersconsideredmanyotherproposals,includingredesigningtheBlokDfifth

stageforliquidhydrogen,upratingthecurrentfirst-andsecond-stageenginesforhigherthrust

andreusability,upperstagenuclearrocketengines,andevencombinedliquidlair-compressed

enginesworkingonliquidhydrogenforthefirststageoftheNI.'_4

AsthepreparationsforthefirstNI launchatlastbeganto pickup,spaceofficialsfinally

addressedamostcritical,butoften-postponedissue:atrainingprogramforcosmonautsforthe

L3lunarlandingprogram.Incontrastto NASAastronautswhohadbeeninvolvedin lunar

operationstrainingforseveralyearsalready,theSovietsweretypicallybehindonthecurve.Air

ForceAideKamaninhadagreedonaninitiallistofsixmenonSeptember2, 1966,toprepare

forthelunarlanding.'_5Unfortunatelyforthecosmonauts,theydidnotdomuchtraining;by

theendof 1967,therewerestillnoL3simulatorsavailableattheCosmonautTrainingCenter.

Kamaninclaimsinhisjournalsthatmuchofthisdelayinthedeliveryofsimulatorshadtodo

withTsKBEM'scontinuousredesignoftheL3complex,whichmadeitimpossiblefortheprime

contractorofthesimulators,theSpecializedExperimentalDesignBureauattheM,M.Gromov

Flight-ResearchInstitute,to producethem.AnotherobstaclewaswhatKamanincallsthe

"ideology"of theL3complex.Inthefallof 1966,officialdocumentsspecifiedthatunlike

previousSovietpilotedspacecraft,theL3wouldaffordcosmonautsaignificantdegreeof

controloverthecourseofamission.'_"Inayear,Mishin'sengineershadbackedawayfromthis

requirement,fallingbackonKorolev'soldadageabouthavingthemserveonlyaspassengers.

Thus,fromthepointofviewof TsKBEM,L3cosmonautscouldmanagewithacompressed

trainingprogram.Intheirview.civilianengineersfomthedesignbureauwouldbethebest

candidatesforlunarlandingflights.

Theissueof L3simulatorsandthecosmonauttrainingprogramfinallycameto ahead

inDecember1967duringseveralmeetingsbetweenAirForceandTsKBEMrepresentatives.The

formerwereparticularlysurprisedtofindthatMishinhadcanceledcontractsfortwosimulators:

aturbo-flierandaV-10helicopterwithLKcontrols.Mishin'sunilateralactionsseemto have

seriouslyraisedthewrathofmanyofficials,whowereincreasinglytiringofthechiefdesigner's

somewhatabrasiveways.EventuallybyDecember15,twodeputychiefdesignersatTsKBEM,

TregubandTsybin,agreedin principleto a newlistof twentycosmonauts,consistingof

tencivilianengineersandtenmilitaryofficersunderAirForcecommand.TsKBEMandAirForce

officialsalsocametoapreliminaryagreementoalistofsimulatorsneededforthelanding.'_"

134The last concept is mentioned in Semenov,ed., Roketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatso_a.p. 2?9

135. The men were Yu. I_. Gagarin, V. V. Gorbatko, Ye. V. Khrunov,/5. P,. Leonov, I_. G. Nikolayev, and V.

P,.Shatalov. SeeN Kamanin. "/_ Goal Worth Working for" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 45 (1993): 8-9

136. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for," no. 47

137. The civilians were K. P. Feoktistov, G M. Grechko, V. N. Kubasov,O. G. Makarov, V. P Nikitskiy. V. I.

Sevastyanov. N N Rukavishnikov,V N Volkov. V. I. Yazdovskiy, and A. S Yeliseyev The military officers were

V F.Bykovskiy,A V. Filipchenko, V. V. Gorbatko, Ye.V. Khrunov,/_. P. Kuklin. A. A. Leonov, I_. G. Nikolayev, G, S.

Shonin. V. P,. Voloshin, and B. V. Volynov. By December26, Nikitskiy and Voloshin had been replaced by V. Ye.

Bugrovand P.I. Klimuk, respectively, although the latter two did not effectively join the group until February 1968

See Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for," no, 48. Note that TsKBEMhad evidently established its own group of

cosmonauts for the L3 program earlieron August 18, 1967.These six cosmonauts were S. N. ,qnokhin, V. Ye.Bugrov,

G. A. Dolgopolov, V. P.Nikitskiy, V. I. Patsayev,and V A. Yazdovskiy.See I. A. Marinin and S, Kh. Shamsutdinov,

"Soviet Programsfor Lunar Flights."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
I GETTING Bi_CK ON TRACK

The eighteen-member L3 group, commanded by the ubiquitous Aleksey A. Leonov, finally

began preliminary training in January 1968, later]oined by two others the following month. On

March 13, Air Force Commander-in-Chief Marshal Konstantin I_. Vershinin signed off on a

two-and-a-half-year-long training program for these men. At the time, the first L3 missions in

Earth orbit were set for late 1968, The first lunar landing, under normal circumstances, was

expected in the 1970-71 period, although most designers desperately still clung to the hope

of carrying out the mission by late 1969. The shift to 197'0-11 was evidence of a marked but

subtle feeling among most Soviet space officials that it would be all but impossible for NASA

to fulfill Kennedy's goal of landing an American on the Moon before the end of the decade.

This belief was not without validity. By March 1968, NASA had still to recover from the Apollo

I tragedy and was months away from flying a piloted Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit, let alone

in lunar orbit. Many Soviet officials believed that it would take a miracle to successfully

carry out a sequential series of completely successful piloted Apollo missions in the perhaps

fourteen months leading to a first landing. In many ways, the Soviets were viewing American

capabilities through the prism of their own record. Failures were simply an accepted part of

testing systems in space for the Soviets. In a diary entry in March 1968, Kamanin wrote:

It took us three extra years to build the NI and the L3, which let the United States take

the lead. The/Ymerieans haue already carried out the first test flight o/a lunar spacecraft, and in 1969 they plan to perform five manned flights under the )tpollo program.

It is worth noting that there are bottlenecks in the ..Z:tmericanprogram--I mean the use

of liquid hydrogen as fuel for the second and third stages of the Saturn V and of pure

oxygen inside the Apollo. So far hydrogen has been successfully "working" for the

United States, but it may throw them back as was the case with oxygen which let them

down, causing the death o/three astronauts in January o/last year. ,3_

But the Soviets did not count on the fact that Apollo was one of the most thoroughly

ground-tested programs in the history of the U.S. space program, They could not and did not

anticipate that Apollo would fail to fail.

138. Kamanin,"A GoalWorth Workingfor," no.49,p. 8.

651

i,, CHAPTER FIFTEEN

.. FINAL LAP

TO THE MOON

Through the ten years after Sputnik, two powerful nations engaged in a competition whose

underpinnings had as much to do with ideology as it did with strategic power. Space was, of

course, only one component of this race, and some would argue less important in its immediate ramifications than the ideological and often bloody confrontations played out all across the

world. But when John F.Kennedy's singular pronouncement in 1961 changed the tenor of the

space race from one of the grander conquest of space to the less encompassing and more specific reach for the Moon, the meaning of space also changed. For a brief period in the 1960s, for

most people, space exploration did not immediately bring to mind images of communications

satellites, weather pictures, interplanetary probes, or even military fortifications. It was the Moon

that caught the eye--the Moon, always mystical in nature, but now imbued with earthly concerns and earthly rivalries. For many, he who would reach the Moon first would not lay claim to

the Moon, but rather Earth itself. As such, the last gasp to the finish line from September 1968

to July 1969 was as remarkable as anything ever seen before in the history of space exploration.

Return to Flight

As the summer gave way to the fall in 1968, the record of the Soviet piloted circumlunar

program was dismal. Original plans were to carry out four automated lunar flights before flying

cosmonauts around the Moon. In the four attempts since late 1967,there had been three complete failures and one partial success, the deep space mission of Zond 4 in March 1968. To add

insult to injury, another L I spacecraft had been destroyed during ground preparations for a

launch in July 1968, delaying flight plans by several months. The first of the three remaining

7K-LI spacecraft arrived at the Baykonur Cosmodrome to inaugurate a new series of attempts

beginning with the lunar launch window in September 1968. The pace and results of ground

preparations would determine the possibility of launching L I missions in the October,

November, and December windows•

Ll State Commission Chairman Tyulin. accompanied by Kamanin and a number of L I cosmonauts, including Bykovskiy and Popovich, arrived at Tyura-Tam on September I0, 1968, for

the launch, set for just after midnight on September 15. Kamanin appointed Bykovskiy, one of

the leading contenders to command the first lunar mission, to be in charge of controlling preparations for the new launch. As the most experienced Soviet cosmonaut, he had recently, on

July II. been appointed commander of the cosmonaut detachment.' On the morning of

I The "real" designation of the cosmonaut detachment was military unit no 26266. See Sergey g.

Voevodin, VS,q053, October 23, 1994, an electronic newsletter, available at NASA History Office. NASA

Headquarters, Washington, DC, file on cosmonauts.

653
654

September 13, there were reports from representatives of the search-and-rescue services for the

LI spacecraft. Resources were evidently very limited at the backup site in the Indian Ocean,

primarily as a result of financial constraints; the State Planning Organ, responsible for budget

appropriations, had recently cut monies for the service by half. If the spacecraft splashed down

in the Indian Ocean, it would be during night time on September 21, making the recovery even

more difficult with the limited resources at hand, especially because the LI descent apparatus

had no light beacon. Later in the day, the LI State Commission met at a new three-story building at site 81 near the Proton launching pad. Deputy Chief Designers Trufanov and Shabarov,

responsible for the booster and spacecraft, respectively, confirmed that all was ready for a

successful circumlunar flight/

The 7K-LI spacecraft no. 9 carried a most interesting assortment of biological payloads

to allow doctors to prepare for a piloted circumlunar mission. The central component of the

payload was a set of two Steppe tortoises (Testudo horsfieldi Gray), each with a mass of

0.34-0.4 kilograms. As part of the experiment, there were two other tortoises in the control

group and four more that were left untouched. Soviet doctors picked tortoises over other

animals because they did not need complex systems for "security" and also "the method of

fixing them on board spacecraft [could] be stringent. ''_ The two flight tortoises were placed

in the spacecraft on September 2, at which time their food supply was terminated. Physicians

would study the deprivation of food until the recovery of the spaceship, to study the pathomorphological and histochemical changes in the animals over the course of several weeks,

/_part from tortoises, spacecraft no. 9 also carried hundreds of drosophila eggs of

the Domodedovo-32 line, air-dried cells of wheat, barley, pea, pine, carrot, and tomatoes, a

flowering plant of Tradescantia paludosa, three different strains of chlorella, and a culture of

lysogenic bacteria. _

The launch was perfect. The Proton booster lifted off just 0.07 seconds late, at 0042 hours,

10.77 seconds Moscow Time on September 15, 1968. With the Moon suspended squarely

above the pad, the rocket gained speed as it sped into the night sky. At an altitude of

160 kilometers, the third stage switched off as planned, letting the booster coast up. After an

agonizing 25 l-second interval, Blok D switched on as planned and fired for a nominal

108 seconds to insert the stack into a perfect Earth orbit of 191 by 219 kilometers. After a circuit around Earth, about sixty-seven minutes after launch, Blok D fired successfully a second

time to impart sufficient velocity to its payload to send it toward the Moon. After the translunar-injection maneuver, the Soviet press finally announced the launch, designating the mission

Zond 5. It was the first time in the circumlunar program that a spacecraft had been successfully sent toward the Moon.

While the initial results from the flight were encouraging, as it progressed, there were some

malfunctions that threatened to destroy any hope of a complete success. During the outbound

flight to the Moon, ground controllers at the main flight control center at Yevpatoriya discovered that the lOOK stellar attitude control sensor had failed. Later diagnosis showed that the

failure was a result of a contamination of the sensor's optical surface from residue released by

2. N Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for" (English title). Vozdushniy transport 50 (1993): I0-II

3 N A. Gaidamakin, G R Parfenov, V. G. Petrukhin, V. V. gntinov. E E Saksonov,and/q V. Smirnova,

"Pathomorphological and Histochemical Changes in the Organs of Tortoises Carried on Board the SpacecraftZond

5" (English title), Kosmichesiyeisstedouaniya 7 (November December 1969): 931-39.

4. O. G Gazenko, V. V Antipov, and G. E Parfenov, "Results of Biological Investigations Undertaken on

the Zond-5, Zond-6. and Zond-7 Stations" (English title), Kosmicheskiye issledouaniya 9 (July-_qugust 197]):

601-09 The payload was evidently carried in a 150-kilogram cone and also included instruments for the study of

radiation, primary cosmic rays. the composition of the solar atmosphere, and photometry of several stars See

Christian Lardier,LT_stronautiqueSouietique(Paris: Armand Colin, 1992), p 16I.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

the heat given off from the interior coating. With one sensor malfunctioning, positioning the

vehicle for mid-course corrections became a difficult proposition. Upon hearing news of the

failure, Chief Designer Mishin and State Commission Chairman Tyulin flew to Yevpatoriya from

the Baykonur Cosmodrome to direct compensatory measures, joining a group of cosmonauts,

including Bykovskiy and Popovich, who were already at the center. On the morning of

September 17,controllers were able to use the less accurate solar and Earth orientation sensors

to maneuver the spacecraft successfully to carry out the first mid-course correction, sufficient

to make the vehicle circle the Moon and head directly toward the Earth. At the time of the firing,

at 061 I hours Moscow Time, Zond 5 was at a distance of 325,000 kilometers from Earth)

The spacecraft circled around the far side of the Moon at a distance of 1,960 kilometers

from the surface and was flung onto a return trajectory toward Earth. Special cameras took

high-quality photographs of Earth from a distance of 90,000 kilometers, which were, in fact,

the first complete pictures of Earth from the Moon, three months before Apollo astronauts

returned with similar photographs. On the night of September 19-20, the British astronomical

observatory at Jodrell Bank monitored transmissions from Zond 5 and picked up a Russian

voice calling out instrument values from the spacecraft) At the time, observers believed that

the voice was prerecorded, but more than likely, cosmonauts, including Popovich at

Yevpatoriya, were playing the role of a real crew by transmitting their reports via the spacecraft.

Zond 5's journey back was a difficult and challenging ordeal for ground controllers. To the

alarm of the flight control team, the I01K Earth sensor also failed at the time. The problem was

later traced back to incorrect procedures during the spacecraft's preparation at the technical

complex. There was evidently an error in the operational documentation that caused the

sensor to fall out of coordination with the mechanical operation of the spacecraft's main omnidirectional antenna. To make matters worse, the three-axis stabilization platform spuriously

switched off the guided reentry system. With all these failures, there was little hope that the

spacecraft could carry out a guided reentry onto Soviet territory because that would require a

highly precise attitude during the firing of the main engine. Engineers instead focused on bringing the vehicle back on a ballistic trajectory into the Indian Ocean using the remaining 99K

solar sensor in conjunction with the smaller attitude control thrusters. Over the course of twenty hours, controllers at Yevpatoriya fed a series of singular commands to "swing" the ship

from one side to the other, so that the resulting thrusts of the two engines would fire in the

direction of Earth, After alternately turning on the small thrusters on each side of the vehicle,

the ship gathered enough velocity and hit a tiny thin corridor in Earth's atmosphere for a

ballistic reentry into the Indian Ocean/

Tensions were high at both control centers, the primary one at Yevpatoriya and the supporting one located at the Ministry of General Machine Building's Coordination-Computation

Center at TsNIIMash, next door to Mishin's design bureau. A number of high-level officials,

including Georgiy N. Pashkov, a Deputy Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission, and

Maj. General Andrey G. Karas, the Commander of the Central Directorate of Space Assets, were

present for the reentry at the center, Air Force representative Kamanin, who was also present,

summarized the possible fate of Zond 5 as controllers watched their terminals:

5. Kamanin."#, GoalWorth Workingfor"; Yu, R Semenov,ed.,Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya

"Energiya"imeniS.P Koroteua(Korolev:RKKEnergiya,namedafterS_PKorolev,1996),pp.243-44;V R Glushko,

ed.,Kosmonautikaentsiklopediya(Moscow:Sovetskayaentsiklopediya,1985),p. 130.

6 KennethGatland,RobotExplorers(London:MacMillan,1972),p. 141.Somereportsalso suggestthat

a secondmid-coursecorrectionwaseffectedon the returntrip. SeeGlushko.ed., Kosmonautlkaentsik(opediya,

p. 130.

7. Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporo_siya,pp.244,354.Notethatthereweretwo 99Ksolar

sensorson theship,Oneof themhadfailedto turn on. leavingasinglesolarsensoravailablefor use.

655
656

The spacecraft, according to estimates, should enter the atmosphere at an angle of

3-6 degrees to the local horizon. Euen minus one degree in the reentry angle would

mean that Earth's atmosphere would fail to "catch" the spacecraft. Even one degree

would increase the g-load by 10-16 units above the estimated 30-40 units, and a

greater angle would be dangerous not only [or the crew. but may also destroy the spacecraft. In other words, the spacecraft should f{y over 800.000 kilometers along the EarthMoon-Earth route at a speed of I I kilometers per second and hit the zone ("funnel") of

safe entry 13 kilometers in diameter. Such high precision can be compared only to that

of hitting a one-kopek coin from a 600 meter distance/

To the credit of the resourceful ground controllers at Yevpatoriya, the ship slipped perfectly through its intended corridor into Earth's atmosphere. Within three minutes of the splashdown at 1908 hours Moscow Time on September 2 I, the commander of the search-and-rescue

service. Air Force Maj. General Kutasin, reported that Zond 5 had landed 105 kilometers from

the nearest Soviet ship in the Indian Ocean? The first flight of a spacecraft to the Moon and

back had lasted six days, eighteen hours, and twenty-sour minutes.

The rescue of the Zond 5 descent apparatus was complicated not only by the nighttime conditions but by the presence of some uninvited guests. LI.S. Navy vessels were in the area at the

time. evidently to observe the recovery process and to collect information on the Zond spacecraft.

The lingering U.S. ships caused undue anxiety back at Yevpatoriya, especially for "flight director"

Pavel A. Agadzhanov, the chief of the Chief Operations and Control Group, who did not want to

compromise the secrecy of the landing. It took the BorouiehL an t_cademy of Sciences ship

equipped with radio direction finders and powerful searchlights, several hours to find the capsule

in the rough seas. Rescuers then lifted the 2,046-kilogram capsule onto the ship's deck and covered it with a large tarpaulin. The American ships left within minutes of having observed the

recovery."' After recovery, an oceanography ship, the Vasiliy _olounin. carried the spacecraft to

Bombay on October 3, where it was packed into a container to hide its appearance. Officials drove

the capsule to the airport, from where it was flown directly to Moscow on an An-12 aircraft.

Through it all, the tortoises survived their ordeal, despite enduring a rough sea landing." The

descent apparatus, including the animals, arrived in Moscow on October 7: four days later, doctors were able to finally begin their medical analysisY

8. Kamanin, "g Goal Worth Working for," p, I0. Others present at the Coordination-Computation Center

included K P Feoktistov (Department Deputy Chief, TsKBEM] and A. G. Mrykin (First Deputy Director,TsNIIMash).

9. The exact location of the landing was 32o38' S by 65033' E.

10. B.A. Pokrovskiy,Kosmosnachinayetsya na zemlye (Moscow: Patriot, 1996). pp 283-84 Curiously, the

CIA in its report on the recovery of Zond 5 stated: "The spacecraft splashed down late on 21 Septemberafter completing a seven-day flight around the Moon. Soviet recovery ships were unable to locate the vehicle for some ten

hours, and it was another three hours--mid morning--before they recoveredit _qU.S. destroyerobserved this first

Soviet water recovery at close range." See Peter Pesavento, "Two Weeks That Killed the Soviet Dream," Netu

Seienlist (December18. 1993): 29-32.

11 Soviet Space Programs, I956 70 Goals and Purposes, Organization, Resources, Facilities and

Hordtuare. Manned and Unmanned Flight Programs, Bioastronautics. Ciuit and Mditary Applications. Projections of

Future Plans, ,,qttitudes Totuard International Cooperation and Space LauJ, prepared for the Committee on

Aeronautical and Space Sciences, US. Senate, 92d Cong.. Ist sess, (Washington, DC: US. Government Printing

Office, December 1971),p 242.

12. Gaidamakin, et aL. "Pathomorphological and Histochemical Changes." According to their analysis:

"The effects of space flight, in conjunction with starvation, produced changesmainly of atrophy type in the organs

of the animals.... ' In addition, "Starvation at the space center (of tortoises of a control group) led to less pronounced atrophy of the tissue Comparison of the changes which occurred in the test and control animals indicates

that the main structural changes in the tortoises were caused by starvation and to a lesser degree by the action of

the flight factors"

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FINRL LP.P TO THE MOON

The Zond 5 mission, despite its attendant flaws, was the first unequivocal success in the

LI program. It allowed Tyulin and Mishin to seriously plan on flying a crew on a circumlunar

mission in January 1969, contingent upon two more successful LI flights. By the time Zond 5

splashed down in the Indian Ocean, there were three lunar launch windows left before 1969--

in October, November, and December. Based on the pace of preparations, Mishin hoped to fly

LI spacecraft no. 12 in November and spacecraft no. 13 in December. The ship and cosmonauts for a piloted flight would be ready in January. Such a schedule would still fulfill the original mandate of flying four robotic spacecraft before a crewed attempt.

Crews for the piloted mission had nearly completed their training program by this time,

with a final spurt during the Zond 5 flight, when some of the LI cosmonauts trained at

Feodosiya. On September 27, Kamanin and Mishin agreed to three final crews for the first circumlunar mission. With any luck, one of these crews would make history as the first humans

to fly from Earth to the Moon. The crews were:

• Crew I: Aleksey A. Leonov and Oleg G. Makarov

• Crew 2: Valeriy F. Bykovskiy and Nikolay N. Rukavishnikov

• Crew 3: Pavel R. Popovich and Vitally I. Sevastyanov

All three crews were judged to be equally prepared for the flight, although it seems that

Kamanin had favored the Bykovskiy crew as the primary candidates for the first outbound mission. As with all other Soviet piloted missions, a final decision on the issue was expected at

the State Commission meetings prior to launch. Eachof the three crews also had a single understudy--Anatoliy P. Kuklin, Petr I. Klimuk, and Valeriy g. Voloshin, respectively. The three backup cosmonauts were trained and ready to step into either the commander's or flight engineer's

position in case a primary crewmember was indisposed.';

The nine men training for a circumlunar mission were not the only cosmonauts preparing

for spaceflight in the fall of 1968. By August 1968, trainees Beregovoy, Volynov, and Shatalov

had completed training for the first piloted Soyuz mission since the Soyuz I tragedy more than

a year before. In the autumn of 1968, Ivan I. Utkin, the chair of the subcommission investigating the accident, finally declared the Soyuz landing system completely ready for piloted flight. _4

Less by plan than by coincidence, Chief Designer Mishin set the "return to flight" Soyuz mission in time for the fifty-first anniversary of the Great October Revolution. The flight plan was

for one cosmonaut in an active Soyuz to link up with a passive automated Soyuz. The two ships

would remain docked for a few hours before separating and carrying out independent missions.

The conservative rendezvous and docking flight would then open the way for the long-delayed

EVA transfer attempt. There was one major difference on this mission from the previous

"rehearsal" docking missions of Kosmos-186/188 and Kosmos-212/213: in this case, engineers

decided to launch the passive instead of the active vehicle first. The older profile was clearly more

suited for simulating operations in lunar orbit when the active LOK would await the passive LK

after it had lifted off from the Moon. The Soviets themselves have never revealed the reasons for

this unusual switch. Perhaps it was dictated by engineering concerns over checking the operation of the Igla rendezvous radar system before committing to a piloted mission. Lesslikely, but

certainly possible, it may have been TsKBEM's attempt at rehearsing an Earth-orbit rendezvous

for a lunar landing mission in case the N I was not deemed safe for carrying cosmonauts into

orbit. Such a prospect was, in fact, given serious consideration throughout 1968-69.

13. Kamanin."A GoalWorth Working for." On September24, three daysbeforethe final decision.

Kamaninwasleaningtowardthefollowingcrews:A./q. LeonovlAF Voronov.V_F.BykovskiylN.N Rukavishnikov,

andP.R.Popovich/OG. Makarov.Obviously,this crewcompositionwasmodifiedbySeptember27.

14. Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporc_tsiycL p. 183

651
658

This meeting of the State Commission occurred prior to the Soyuz 3 mission in October 1968. Sitting at left are

Commission Chairman Kerim Kerimov and Chief Designer Vasiliy Mishin. Standing next to Mishin is,ZtirForce

Aide Nikolay Kamanin. Standing next to Kamanin from left to right are cosmonauts Cieorgiy Berogauoy (primary),

Vtadimir Shatalov, and Boris Volynou. Sitting on the extreme right is Marshal Sergey Rudenko, a Deputy

Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet _ir Force. (copyright Christian Lardier)

The Soviet political leadership was particularly anxious to resume space missions after the

long gap, particularly because of NASA's well-publicized launch of Apollo 7 on October II,

1968. It was the first crewed U.S. spaceflight since the Apollo I fire in January 1967. A few days

after the Apollo 7 launch, Mishin met with Communist Party General Secretary Brezhnev to

brief him on the state of various projects at TsKBEM, including the N I-L3, Soyuz, and RT-2

ICBM programs. Mishin also spoke to Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev by telephone after arriving at the launch site. The two Soyuz missions were set for mid-October 1968,

but there were numerous malfunctions during prelaunch testing, which prompted Afanasyev

to order Mishin to delay the launches. On October 23, the day after the Apollo 7 crew's splashdown, the State Commission for Soyuz met at the Baykonur Cosmodrome to discuss preparations for the Soviet launches. Kamanin presented cosmonaut Beregovoy as the primary

candidate, with Shatalov and Volynov as his backups. There seems to have been some serious

doubt as to Beregovoy's qualifications for the flight. He had failed his prelaunch examination,

receiving a "2" ("bad") out of a possible "5" ("excellent"). Instead of flying his backup

Shatalov, Air Force officials organized a second examination, in which Beregovoy managed

to get "4" ("good"). _ All three men--Beregovoy, Shatalov, and Volynov--had trained for the

Voskhod 3 flight in 1966, whose cancellation had been one of Mishin's first actions after

his official appointment as chief designer. Another issue at the meeting was what to call the

first automated 7K-OK vehicle in the press--that is, whether to give it a nondescript "Kosmos"

designation to hide its true mission or to bestow it with the Soyuz moniker. Commission

15. I. Izvekov and I./_fanasyev. "How Froma FailureWas 'Forged' the Next Victory" (English title). Nouosti

kosmonautiki 23124(I 998): 64-66.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

members agreed to call the spacecraft Soyuz 2, but to announce it only after the launch of

Beregovoy with Soyuz 3.

The 7K-OK spacecraft no. II lifted off successfully from site I at the Baykonur

Cosmodrome at noon on October 25, 1968. The initial orbital parameters were 183 by 224 kilometers at a 5 I.l-degree inclination. All systems aboard the automated Soyuz spaceship seemed

to be working without fault, but conservatism crept into the proceedings. Chief Designer

Mnatsakanyan of the Moscow-based Scientific-Research Institute for Precision Instruments

recalls that on the night of the first launch, thirteen members from the Chief Operations and

Control Group at Yevpatoriya sent a telegram to him at the Tyura-Tam control center to drop

the idea of docking on the mission and simply try a two-part rendezvous--first to thirty kilometers and then down to 100-200 meters. The abrupt change in plans was evidently motivated by a lack of confidence in the Ig[a radar system, whose chief architect was Mnatsakanyan.

By his own account, the chief designer had no one to consult, and he unilaterally decided to

reject their recommendation, taking full responsibility for the decision/6

The following day at 1134 hours Moscow Time, as the target vehicle passed over the

launch site, the 7K-OK spacecraft no. 10 lifted off with Colonel Georgiy T. Beregovoy aboard.

It was the first-ever piloted launch from site 31, the second launch complex at the Baykonur

Cosmodrome built for launch vehicles derived from the old R-7 ICBM. At forty-seven years old,

Beregovoy was the oldest person to venture into space at the time. His initial orbital parameters were 205 by 225 kilometers also at a 5 t.7-degree inclination. Soon after the launch, the

Soviet press announced Beregovoy's mission as Soyuz 3 and the target as Soyuz 2.

On Soyuz Ys first orbit, ground controllers switched the Igla rendezvous system into operation, bringing the vehicle to a distance of only 200 meters from the Soyuz 2 target after at least

two orbital corrections. At that point, as external TV cameras beamed down images to Earth,

test pilot Beregovoy took over manual control to bring his spacecraft in for a docking. As he

closed into a range of forty to fifty meters, his spaceship automatically banked 180 degrees from

the target despite his best attempts to compensate for the guidance system. '_After the sudden

failure, the two ships moved apart while several senior officials, including Minister Afanasyev,

Academician Keldysh, Col. General Kamanin, Space Assets Commander Maj. General Karas,

and Chief Designer Mishin, flew to Yevpatoriya from the launch site. There was evidently some

controversy on whether the docking failure was the result of an Igla system failure.

Mnatsakanyan insisted that his system worked flawlessly and that:

the cosmonaut had been confused by the light beacons [on the target spacecraft], and

thereby [had maneuvered his spacecraft in such a way] that a certain angle had been

formed betLueen the antennas of the [two] ships, causing the [active] ship to "turn

auJay" to one side. _s

Later analysis confirmed Mnatsakanyan's hunch and clearly pointed to pilot error as the

primary reason for the failure. Once the Igla system had brought Soyuz 3 to within 200 meters

of Soyuz 2, Beregovoy took over manual control. At that point, the two ships were still not

aligned perfectly. However, instead of gingerly stabilizing his ship along a direct axis to the

target, Beregovoy used a stronger firing to put his spacecraft into a completely incorrect orientation relative to the target. The passive Soyuz 2's radar system, sensing the improper deviation, automatically turned its nose away from Soyuz 3 to prevent an incorrect docking.

16. Yu.&. Mozzhorin, et aL. eds.. Dorogi u kosmos:II (Moscow: M/_I, 1992),p. 35.

I1. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya,p. 190.

18. Mozzhorin, Dorogiu kosmos:IL p. 35,

659
660

Beregovoy, not sensing the real problem, completed a fly-around, and then tried to approach

the target a second time. The same thing happened again. In the process, he practically

exhausted all the propellant remaining for orientation. Because there was barely enough propellant remaining for reentry only, any further docking attempts had to be called off. _

After the initial rendezvous. Beregovoy retreated from Soyuz 2, and throughout the remainder of the day, the ships drifted 565 kilometers apart. At the end of his work day, on Soyuz 3's

fifth orbit, the cosmonaut moved into the spheroid living compartment at the forward end of

the ship and began his sleep period. 2°

On October 21, after waking up. Beregovoy exercised for about twenty-five minutes before

beginning his day's activities. Perhaps taking a cue from the recent live transmissions from the

Apollo 7 spaceship, the State Commission allowed Beregovoy to "host" a TV performance later

that day that was beamed down to Soviet television, providing the public their first view of the

interior of the Soyuz spaceship. Viewers saw the cosmonaut wearing a woolen training suit and

a white helmet with earphones as he spoke of the comfort afforded by the new spaceship. The

following morning, the automated Soyuz 2 spacecraft separated into its component parts, and

despite a malfunctioning astro-orientation sensor, the descent apparatus carried out a successful

guided reentry, landing at 1056 hours Moscow Time near the target region in Kazakhstan. The

parachute system worked without fault. On October 28, Beregovoy devoted his time to a modest

suite of scientific and Earth observation experiments. He carried out:

observations of the stellar sky, the earth, and other heavenly bodies: detected the storm

centers of typhoons and cyclones on the earth's surface: made reports to earth on fires

in forests and jungles: studied the brightness of the earth's surface; photographed its

cloud cover and snow cover: and photographed its horizon in daylight and twilight.-"

This last experiment involved taking photographs using photometrically marked black-andwhite film with orange-colored light filters.::

After midday, Beregovoy performed a second TV transmission for public benefit, pointing

out instrumentation within the vehicle. One orbital maneuver the same day on the thirty-sixth

orbit changed his orbit to 199 by 244 kilometers. His fourth working day began on October 29

at 0345 hours Moscow Time, and it culminated with his third public TV broadcast, during

which he gave viewers a look through the portholes in the Soyuz. There were evidently

no anomalies during the flight, and the cosmonaut worked without interruption on his experimental observations. He maintained a good appetite throughout the mission and did not

display any sign of disorientation, although he later admitted that it took him about twelve

hours to get fully used to the weightless state.

Soyuz-3's reentry program was the source o[ great anxiety at the control centers, not the

least because it was the first piloted return to Earth since Komarov's tragic death. After an

initial aborted attempt. Beregovoy fired his main engine for 145 seconds over the Atlantic

19. Izvekov and/sfanasyev, "How Froma FailureWas 'Forged' the Next Victory." /qsa comparison, during

the twenty minutes of the automatic portion of the rendezvous, Soyuz 3 usedonty thirty kilograms ol propellant

In the ensuing two minutes. Beregovoyused up forty kilograms, alter which there were only eight to ten kilograms

remaining, sufficient for only one reentry attempt.

20. EvgenyRiabchikov.Russians in Space {Moscow: Novosti PressPublishing House. 1971), p. 244: Peter

Smolders, Souietsin Space (New York: TaplingerPublishing Co., 1973), p. 163

2 I. Riabchikov,Russians in Space, p. 245.

22. G. V, Rozenberg and /5. B. Sandomirsky, "/51titude Variation of the Scattering Coefficient from

SpaceshipSoyuz 3 Measurementsand/serosol Stratification," in K. Ya. Kondratyev. M. J. Rycroft, and C. Sagan,eds,

Cospar Space ResearchXI Votume I {Berlin: ,,qkademie-Verlag1971), pp 633-38.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE _V_OON

Ocean to brake from orbit on the morning of October 30. Flying over Africa and then the

Caspian Sea, the descent apparatus successfully carried out a guided reentry landing at

1025 hours Moscow Time near Karaganda in Kazakhstan. Luckily for Beregovoy, a blizzard at

the landing area had passed by morning time, and the cosmonaut landed safely on a snowcovered steppe, welcomed by a bewildered local boy on a donkey. '_ During a three-day, twenty-two-hour, fifty-minute, forty-five-second mission, Beregovoy had circled the Earth sixty-four

times. While his flight may not have been completely successful, the Soyuz 2/3 mission was a

significant boost to the confidence of engineers working on the program. Almost every single

automated system aboard the Soyuz 3 spacecraft, including the Igla rendezvous system, the life

support systems, the main engine, the attitude control sensors, and the parachute landing system, worked flawlessly. Beregovoy's postflight report on October 31 to the State Commission

was illuminating. He recalled that payload fairing jettisoning was "unpleasant." Once in orbit,

there were problems with the viewports: the right viewport was fogged up from the exterior,

and there was dust between the glasses of the viewports, tn general, Beregovoy reported that

there was a lot of dust in the descent apparatus. Most critically, he reported that the manual

control during the approach to Soyuz 2 was "too sensitive," implying that the "human automation" dynamics had room for improvement. When asked later by the press whether his age had

made it difficult for him to be chosen for the mission, Beregovoy replied that his height

(180 centimeters) had been more of a problem than anything else. _

Crew-rating the Soyuz spacecraft was critically important for the future of the Soviet space

program, but for immediate purposes, the focus was on the Moon--in particular, the L I

circumlunar program. Delays in the preparation of the next flight-ready L I vehicle had forced

Mishin to skip the October 13-15 lunar launch window, thus shifting the launch into November.

With rumors on the possibility of an Apollo lunar-orbital mission circulating in the Western

press, Soviet public spokespersons suddenly found themselves in a difficult position. As a result,

throughout October and November, Soviet officials expressed often contradictory positions on

their policy on the "race to the Moon." On October 14. Academician Sedov, representing the

Soviet Union at the 19th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation in New York, in

a clear obfuscation of the truth, stated that "the question of sending astronauts to the Moon

at this time is not an item on our agenda. The exploration of the Moon is possible, but is not a

priority. '''_ Then, as if to contradict himself, he added that "the program for the exploration of

the Moon depends upon the success [of the Zond] experiments. Since the experiments may have

various results, it is not possible at this time to be positive about lunar landings. ''_

The press conference for the Soyuz 3 mission, held on November 5, was also an interesting

exercise in public relations. Despite hesitance on talking about lunar plans, Academician

Keldysh was forced by the numerous questions from journalists to finally concede that the

Soyuz spacecraft was not designed for a flight around the Moon. He strongly implied that the

Soviets were not planning a piloted flight around the Moon in the near future. It was the first

step on the slow and painful road for the Soviets in their cover-up of the piloted lunar programs.

After years of vociferously voicing opinions in favor of crewed lunar operations, Soviet

spokespersons were all of a sudden caught in a web of confusion, having to emphasize that

they were not interested in the Moon while confirming as such, often in the very same sentence. Keldysh, for example, added at the Soyuz 3 press conference that before cosmonauts

23.

24.

p. 132

25.

26.

Riabchikov.Russians in Space,pp. 243-44: Smolders.Soviets in Space. pp. 165-66.

ReginaldTurnill. The Observer'sBook o/Manned Spaceflight (London: FrederickWame & Co, 1975),

"Russian Denies Moon RaceIs On." New York Times, October 15, I968. p. 48.

Ibid.

661
662

actually carried out a lunar landing, a complete mission from liftoff to lunar landing and return

to Earth would be carried out automatically. The Soyuz 3 mission itself was the subject of a lie:

when a journalist asked Beregovoy why he had not docked with the Soyuz 2 spaceship, the

cosmonaut replied calmly, "That was not on the program.'_7 No doubt, he was only saying

what his "handlers" had asked him to say. As if to confirm that the Soviets were finally backing away from any public association with the Moon, Academician Sedov emphatically

announced during a visit to the University of Tennessee Space Institute on November 7 that

the "U.S.S.R. would not conduct manned lunar operations within the following six months. '''_

Apollo Versus Zond

In this penultimate lap toward the Moon, the tenor of the competition between the Soviet

Union and the United States dramatically changed in the late fall of 1968 with the fast pace of

events in the Apollo program. U.S. space officials had been carefully watching Soviet accomplishments throughout the year for hints of their ambitions toward the Moon. Circumlunar missions had been raised in classified CIA briefs as early as April 1967, and it was no surprise to

U.S. observers when Zond 5 successfully carried out its flight exactly as predicted. The CIA, in

a top-secret "National Intelligence Estimate" on the Soviet space program dating from April

1968, claimed that the Soviets might attempt a piloted circumlunar mission by "the last half of

1968. ''_ One senior NASA astronaut, Frank Barman, recalls that in early August, news of the

Soviet deadline of late 1968 had trickled down from the CIA to NASA, prompting NASA officials

to establish a more ambitious timetable for Apollo. _°In the alphabetical sequence of Apollo missions, the "C" mission (Apollo 7) in Earth orbit was to be followed by the 'D" mission (gpollo

8). the first flight of the combined Command and Service Module with the Lunar Module, also

in Earth orbit. The "E" mission (Apollo 9) would then be a Lunar Module test in high-Earth orbit.

In early August 1968, George M. Low, the Deputy Director of NgSA's Manned Spacecraft

Center in Houston, ordered his staff to work on a plan to eliminate the "E" mission in favor of

the much more ambitious "C-prime" flight--one in which an Apollo Command and Service

Module launched on a Saturn V would go directly to lunar orbit. It was a decision laden with

risks. It would only be the third launch of the Saturn V booster, and the risks of a lunar-orbital

mission would be exponentially more than one in Earth orbit. But based on their analysis, Low

and Air Force General Samuel C. Phillips, Apollo program manager at NASA Headquarters, were

willing to commit. As NASg historian Roger D. Launius accurately observed in retrospect:

The advantages of this could be important, both in technical and scientific knowledge

gained as well as in a public demonstration of what the United States could achieve. So

far Zlpollo had been all promise: now the delivery was about to begin. _'

21. "Soyuz 3 Moon Trip Called Unlikely," New York Times, November 6, 1968, p. 44: Soviet Space

Programs. t966-F0, p 370

28 NASA Soence and Technology Division, Ztstronautics and Aeronautics, 1968: Chronology of Science.

Technology.and Policy (Washington. DC: NASA Special Publication (SP)-4010, 1969), p. 267.

29. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate I I-I-67: The Soviet Space Program,"

Washington, DC. April 4, 1968, p. 2. asdeclassified in 1991 by the CIA Historical Review Program.

30 Frank Barman and R. J. Sterling, Countdown:/qn ,qutobiography (New York: William Morrow_ 1988)_

p. 189.

3 I. RogerLaunius. NASA 7t History o[ the U.S. Civil SpaceProgram (Malabar, FL:Krieger Publishing Co,

1994)_pp. 89 90.

CHALLENGE TO 41_POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

By mid-August, the Manned Spacecraft Center received clearance from NASA Headquarters

on the new plan; a final decision was still contingent upon the success of the initial piloted Apollo

mission in Earth orbit, then slated for October 1968. If Apollo 7 was an unequivocal success,

NASA would move ahead to the lunar-orbital Apollo 8 in DecemberY

On October II, 1968, NASA launched Apollo 7 into Earth orbit with three astronauts. After

a highly successful eleven-day flight, the crew splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean. NASA

management's case for lunar orbit in December was further bolstered by the outstanding achievement of Zond 5, which had successfully circled the Moon and splashed down in the Indian Ocean.

There was little doubt among independent observers that the Soviets were targeting the Moon for

a piloted circumlunar flight, possibly for their lunar launch window, also in December 1968. On

November II, Phillips composed a final memorandum on launching Apollo 8 to lunar orbit, and

Acting NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine announced it publicly a day later/'

By early November, the Soviets were still planning two more automated LI missions, one

in mid-November and one in early December, to be followed by a piloted launch in January. The

question begs itself: Once the Apollo 8 announcement was made public by NASA, did Soviet

officials consider skipping one of the precursor flights and moving the piloted launch to December?

The Soviets had a significant advantage. To have the best lighting conditions for potential lunar

landing sites for future missions, NASA officials had set the Apollo 8 launch window for December

21, 1968. Because of differences in trajectories, the circumlunar launch window for a Soviet

launch from central Asia would be earlier in the month, around December 8-10. Thus, launching

cosmonauts to the Moon in December would guarantee a first-place finish at a time when the

rivalry between the two space programs was approaching a climactic finish. But contrary to a

plethora of speculation in the West, there was, in fact, no real plan for a December 1968 piloted

launch to preempt Apollo 8Y

Cosmonauts, chief designers, and military officials arrived at Tyura-Tam in early November to

direct the preparations for the launch of the 7K-LI spacecraft no. 12. The launch went off without

incident at 2211 hours, 31 seconds Moscow Time on November I0, 1968. Within sixty-seven

minutes of the launch, the Blok D upper stage successfully fired to boost the spacecraft, named

Zond 6 by the Soviet press, toward the Moon. As soon as the spacecraft was on its way to the

Moon, controllers discovered that an antenna boom had not deployed, effectively preventing operation of the stellar attitude control sensor mounted on the boom. Despite the problem, ground

controllers managed to command the vehicle to perform its first mid-course correction at a distance

of 246,000 kilometers from Earth on the morning of November 12 using a backup stellar attitude

control sensor that used the Sun and Sirius as fixed points. Flying what seemed to be a perfect

flight, Zond 6 flew around the far side of the Moon two days later at a closest distance of

2,420 kilometers.

A camera on the spacecraft took high-resolution black-and-white photographs of the Moon

from distances of I 1,000 and 3,300 kilometers. The first session was intended for filming the lighted surface of the Moon for measuring its photometric characteristics and determining its amount

32. For a discussion of the switch to "C-prime," see also William David Compton. Where No Man Has

GoneBe/ore.Z_History of Lunar Exploration Missions (Washington, DC:NASA SP-4214,1989)_pp 132-33: Donald

K. 'rDeke" Slayton with Michael Cassutt, Deket US. Manned Space:From Mercury to the Shuttle (New York: Forge,

1994), pp. 213-16.

33. This memorandum of General Samuelis reproduced in full as "Reading No. 15: NASA Decidesto Make

a Circumlunar Apollo Flight," in Launius, N_S.,q:;q History of the US Ciuil Space Pro£ram, pp. 207-I0

34. Col. General N R Kamanin's diaries confirm assuch On November 9, 1968, he wrote: "We havetwo

more test launches to complete the programof preparinga piloted flight around the Moon." These two test launches

were planned for mid-November and eady December 1968. later on November 10, 1968, KamanJnwrote that "our

flight around the Moon with a crew on board is scheduled for the first half of t969 " SeeN Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry

for Our Guys" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 12 (1993): i l

663
664

and form. The closer shots enabled large-scale photography for photometric measurements and

the mapping of hidden portions of the Moon. The camera used panchromatic film and had a

focal length of 400 millimeters: it produced frame sizes of thirteen by eighteen centimeters.

Stereo imaging was made possible by the angles of some of the images. The photographs covered areas of the Moon both visible from Earth and on the far side. P,part from the camera, Zond

6 also carried a photo-emulsion detector to record the paths of cosmic rays, as well as another

device to measure micrometeoroid impacts. _ The spacecraft also carried biological specimens.

although the Soviets have never provided any details. These possibly included tortoises,

drosophila. Tradescantia plants, bulbs of the gllium series, dried wheat germs, various strains

of chlorella, B, eoli, and other samples. Explicit mention was only made of air-dried cells of

wheat, barley, peas, pine, carrots, and tomatoes.'"

After the spacecraft circled the Moon, controllers had to refine the trajectory of Zond 6 sufficiently to allow it to perform a guided reentry into Earth's atmosphere and land on Soviet territory instead of the Indian Ocean. The first correction was successfully accomplished on the

morning of November 16 at a distance of 236.000 kilometers from Earth. It looked as if everything was on track for a perfect mission until sometime the same day when ground controllers

detected a disastrous problem: the air pressure within the descent apparatus had dropped from

a normal level of 160 mm Hg down to 380 mm, indicating a compromise of the spacecraft's

integrity,' There was also an associated drop in temperature within the hydrogen peroxide

tanks for reentry attitude control. Despite the partial depressurization, later found to be the

result of a faulty rubber gasket, the critical systems on the ship remained operational, and the

controllers were able to carry out the third and final mid-course correction, just eight and a half

hours prior to reentry at a distance of 120,000 kilometers from Earth on the morning of

November 17, Zond 6 separated into its two component modules prior to reentry, and at

t658 hours Moscow Time the same day. the descent apparatus entered its tiny entry corridor

into Earth's atmosphere at a velocity of 11.2 kilometers per second. Passing through its

9,000-kilometer-long reentry corridor, it skipped out of the atmosphere, having reduced velocity down to 7.6 kilometers per second, and began a second reentry that further lowered velocity to only 200 meters per second. Throughout the reentry, engines on the descent apparatus

automatically fired to vary roll control so as to change lift force and reduce g-loads. Unlike its

predecessor, the Zond 6 descent apparatus was subjected to a maximum of four to seven g's. '"

The complex reentry was a remarkable demonstration of the precision of the L I reentry profile,

The guided reentry may have been successful, but the depressurization problem was a failure difficult to ignore. During part of the descent, pressure in the descent apparatus reduced

further down to only twenty-five millimeters, certainly killing any biological payloads on board.

No doubt, a crew within the ship would have experienced the same fate. The near-total depressurization caused the gamma-ray altimeter of the descent apparatus to issue a false command

to release the single parachute system, whose container was also depressurized, at an altitude

35 Glushko, ed. Kosmonavtika entsiktopediya, p_ 130: SovietSpacePrograms, 1966-70, p 243 Note that

more recentRussianaccounts state that the lunar photography was carried out at distances o[ 8,000 and 2,600 kilometers. SeeSemenov.ecL,Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 245. The pictures had a resolution of fifty lines

per miIlimeter

36 One Sovietsource implies at severalpoints that the biological payloads for Zond 6 were almost, but not

completely identical to Zond 5. SeeGazenko, Antipov, and Parfenov, "Results of Biological Investigations."

31 Semenov.ed, Raketno-KosmicheskoyaKorporatsiya, p. 245

38 Glushko, ed., Kosmonautika entsiktopediya, p 130: G. V. Petrovich, ed., The Soviet Ertcyclopaedia o[

SpaceFlight (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1969)_pp 513 14: I B. Afanasyev, %lnknown Spacecraft(From the History

o[ the Soviet Space Program)'*(English title), Novoye v zhizni Nauke. tekhnike Seriya kosmonavtika, astror_om_ya

no. 12 (December t991): 1-64.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

of 5,300 meters above the ground instead of much later. Without a parachute, the ship simply

plummeted down to the ground and smashed into pieces. Remarkably, the impact occurred only

sixteen kilometers from the Proton launch pad at the Baykonur Cosmodrome, where Zond 6 had

lifted off just six days and nineteen hours previously/_

What lay ahead for rescuers was yet another situation fraught with danger. The crushed

descent apparatus clearly had a lot of valuable materials, including the in-flight data recorder as well

as exposed film from the Zond 6 camera, which possibly could have survived the crash. On the

other hand, the capsule contained ten kilograms of TNT, whose condition was unknown and

which would pose a threat to any recovery operation. Groups from TsKBEM and the ScientificResearch Institute for Automated Devices arrived at the site on the day of the crash, followed

by Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev the following day, November 18. The plan was to extract all

available recoverables from the broken chassis of the spacecraft with manual tools, but without

striking any blows to the ship. It was a long, step-by-step, and arduous process, but rescuers

eventually dismantled the explosive system and handed it over to an Air Force team, which later

blew it up in a nearby steppe. For their demanding work, Chief Designer Mishin personally ordered

commendations for all rescuers. A cursory inspection of the remains of the descent apparatus

showed that the parachute system had indeed been jettisoned: moreover, the main undeployed

antenna boom had remained attached to the capsule through reentry instead of being

automatically discarded prior to entry into the atmosphere, although this did not affect the success

of its guided reentry. Among the items recovered intact from the wreckage was the exposed film

from the Zond 6 camera. Beautiful pictures of both Earth and the Moon were later published in the

journals, serving to confirm Soviet assertions that everything about the flight had been successful.

While all the biological specimens had been killed, Soviet scientists were able to glean

information from some of the seedlings on board, a°

Following the Zond 6 crash, Mishin postponed any plans for a piloted LI mission in the near

future: the dreams of Soviet engineers and scientists of circling the Moon prior to the United States

also went up in smoke. It was the final and ignominious end of three years of intensive work--

work plagued by unprecedented delays and failures. It was not a pretty picture for the Soviets in

November 1968. Given the results of Zond 6, an automated launch would have to be skipped for

the December launch window. The next available window was in January 1969. If and only if that

mission was completely successful, officials could hope for a piloted circumlunar mission for the

next window, perhaps in March or April 1969. Kamanin wrote in his diary on November 26, 1968:

I have to admit that rue are haunted by U.5. intentions to send three astronauts on board

Apollo 8 around the Moon in Decemben Three o/our unpiloted L I spacecra/t have returned

to Earth at the second cosmic velocity, two of them having/lawn around the Moon. We

knotu everything about the Earth-Moon-Earth route, but uJe still don't think it is possible to

send people on that route."

39. Semenov.ed. Raketno-KosmieheskuyaKorporatsiya. p, 245: Afanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft." The

parachute system was evidently discarded at the time that the "frontal shield" for the descent apparatus was jettisoned. SeeMajor I. Kuznetsov, "The Flight That Did Not Occur" (English title). ,ztviatsiya i kosmonavtika no. 8

(August 1990): 44 45. In the final conclusion on the Zond 6 failures. TsKBEM engineers believed that two

problems--the drop in temperature in the hydrogen peroxide tank to minus five degreesCentigrade and the capsule

depressurization--were related events, Rfter the temperature drop on the night of November 14, engineers had

attempted to heat the tank by facing it toward the Sun. The excessheat evidently affected the weak seal of the main

hatch and led to slow decompression

40. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p, 246: Gazenko, Antipov. and Parfenov. "Results

of Biological Investigations."

4 I. Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Our Guys." no 12.

665
666

Ironically, it was the same day that the Soviet press for the first time explicitly connected

the Zond circumlunar flights to a piloted space project. A journalist wrote in Soviet News,

"[The] space station Zond 6, like Zond 4 and Zond 5, was launched in order to improve the

automatic functioning of manned spaceship which will be sent to the Moon. ''_ It was a particularly curious time for such an admission, especially because the LI program was at its nadir

then, with little prospect of a piloted mission in the near future.

The impending launch of Apollo 8 on December 21 raised the ante of the space race to a

dramatic level, especially in the public forum. Many mainstream Western publications reported

that the Soviets were planning to go ahead with a piloted circumlunar launch on December 8Y

Early in December. th_ popular magazine Newsweek quoted "U.S. sources" claiming that the

Soviets would "default because of unspecified technical problems with their Zond spaceship."44

f_ week later, the same magazine asserted that:

Intelligence sources confirm that the Soviet Union was ready but unable to send a

manned mission to the moon earlier this month when the launch window was open.

Unspecified technical difficulties developed in the Zond spacecraft. In the past week. the

Soviet space tracking and recovery ships in the Indian Ocean have dispersed or returned

to port? _

These rumors contributed to a veritable cottage industry of stories that the Soviets had prepared a booster and that cosmonauts had been ready on the launch pad going through a countdown, which had been canceled at the last moment. The evidence, however, suggests that

there was no such attempt, nor were there plans for such a launch, at least on the part of senior

officials and designers. The cosmonauts training for the LI, however, apparently had other

ideas.

Civilian cosmonaut Sevastyanov, an engineer on one of the three crews training for the circumlunar mission, recalls that the LI group of six cosmonauts wrote a letter directly to the

Politburo asking for permission to fly to the Moon in December. They argued that despite all the

failures on Zond .5 and Zond 6, the presence of a crew aboard the ship would make a flight more

safe. Their proposed mission would begin with a launch on December 9, with sufficient time to

beat Apollo 8. According to Sevastyanov, despite the absence of permission from higher officials,

the cosmonauts flew to Tyura-Tam during the first days of December and were there for more than

a week. The Proton booster and the 7K-LI spacecraft no. 13 were ready in the assembly-testing

building, apparently the same articles that had been planned for a robotic flight in December

before the Zonal 6 failure. With zero support from most space officials, the cosmonauts never

received permission to fly? _ Given the inordinate levels of confusing information concerning

Soviet space history, Sevastyanov's account is probably purely apocryphal. As evidenced by

42 Phitlip S. Clark, "Topics Connected With the Soviet Manned Lunar Programme," journal o[ the British

Interplanetary Society 40 (May 1987): 235-39. Seealso Donald C. Winston, "Soviets Admit Zond 6 Manned

Capability." 7]viation Week & Space Technology.December2, 1968, pp 18-19. A prominent article in the official

Soviet government newspaperIzvestiya also highlighted the possibility of a Soviet piloted circumlunar mission as a

result of the "success" of Zond 6 See "Russians Cite Readinessfor Manned Lunar Flights," New York Times.

November 26. 1968, p. 4.

43. See,forexample, "Radiating Confidence." ,qviation &leek & SpaceTechnology,December2, 1968,p. i 5.

44. "Soviet Moon Shot Postponed?," Newsweek (December 16, 1968): 24.

45. "Soviet Moon Shot That Fizzled," Newsweek (December 30, 1968): II. See also "Cosmos 260

Launched," New York Times, December 18, 1968, p. 35.

46. I.A. Marinin and S. Kh. Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Lunar Flights" (English title), Zemlya i vselennaya no 4 (July-August 1993): 62-69: S. Shamsutdinov and I. Marinin. "Flights Which Never Happened:The

Lunar Program" (English title), .,qviatsiya i kosmonavtika no. 2 (February 1993): 30-31

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

Kamanin's personal journals, the cosmonaut overseer was not even at Tyura-Tam on December

8, instead spending the day at the Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow overseeing minor

bureaucratic issues unrelated to the lunar program/7 True or not, Sevastyanov's story adds to the

mythology of the Soviet space program, growing ever more richer and imaginative year by year.

As the Apollo 8 launch grew closer, Soviet spokespersons for the space program began

their efforts to neutralize what was threatening to become a public relations disaster. In a

propaganda offensive that would last a year, Soviet officials engaged in a complete about-turn,

backing away from their insistent statements of years before. Veteran cosmonaut Titov, on a

trip to Bulgaria, told journalists the day before the Apollo 8 launch, "It is not important to

mankind who will reach the Moon first and when he will reach it--in 1969 or 1970. '"8 But

matter it did. When Apollo 8 lifted from Cape Kennedy on December 2 I, 1968, the eyes of

world were upon the three astronauts, Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James A. Lovell, Jr., and

Lt. Colonel William A. Anders, who were embarking on a journey as important as any in

history--to leave the bonds of Earth and head out into deep space. For many Soviets, it was a

bittersweet day. Kamanin wrote in his diary:

The flight of Apollo 8 to the Moon is an event of worldwide and historic proportions.

This is a time for festivities for everyone in the world. But for us, the holiday is darkened

with the realization of lost opportunities and with sadness that today the men flying to

the Moon are not named Valeriy Bykovskiy, Pavel Popovich, nor _leksey Leonov, but

rather Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William .Zlnders. _

The Apollo 8 Command Module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on December 27,

1968, after a mission successful beyond the best of hopes, during which the crew had circled

the Moon ten times. After years of uncertainty and a lack of self-confidence, the United States

had convincingly taken a dramatic lead over its only competitor. The time for payback had

arrived for both countries. For the United States, it was payback for excellent management, high

levels of funding, and a state-level commitment: for the Soviet Union, it was precisely the

opposite. In their meager responses to Apollo 8, Soviet spokespersons weakly defended

their positions. Academician Sedov, still referred to as the "father of the Sputnik," told Italian

journalists a day after the Apollo 8 splashdown that the Soviets had not been competing in a

race to orbit or land on the Moon. Referring to Apollo 8, he added:

There does not exist at present a similar project in our program. In the near future we

will not send a man around the moon, We start from the principle that certain problems

can be resolved with the use of automatic soundings. I believe that in the next I0 years

vehicles without men on board will be the first source of knowledge for the examination

of celestial bodies less near to us. To this end we are perfecting our techniques. _°

Automation was a big theme in Soviet public statements throughout 1969. The topic was

prominent at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission on December 30, 1968, to discuss

47. N. Kamanin, "For Him, Living Meant Flying" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 18-19 (1994): 12

Even more damaging for the Sevastyanovstory, Kamanin on December5-6 had spentthe days off at his dacha resting and "clearing paths of snow."

48. Soviet SpacePrograms. 1966-70, p. 371.

49- LevKamanin, "From the Earth to the Moon and Back" (English title). Poisk 12 (July 1989): 7-8. See

also Abe Dane, "The Moon Mission That Wasn't," Popular Mechanics (March 1990): 38-39.

50. r'SovietSpace71ideDenies Moon Race,r, Washington Post, December29, 1968, p. 7t4.

667
668

a response to Apollo 8. Grasping at straws, commission members decided to move ahead with

one possible glimmer of light at the time: the Ye-8-5 robot spacecraft capable of recovering soil

samples from the surface of the Moon. Kamanin had a cynical view of the exercise, writing:

They cannot possibly get into their heads the uery simple thought that it is impossible

to answer the piloted flight of ]_pollo 8 with a flight of an automatic machine.., any

automatic machine cannot possibly be a satisfactory answer. Only landing people on

the Moon and successfully recouering them on Earth would serue as an answer to the

triumph of Ztpollo 8. But we are not ready for an expedition to the Moon. in the best

case we will be ready [or such a flight in about 2-3 years?'

P,s with many other lunar projects at the time. there was much still unknown about the

Ye-8-5: engineers at Chief Designer Babakin's design bureau had not even built a complete

model of the spaceship by the end of the year. Regardless, the Central Committee and the USSR

Council of Ministers issued a new decree, no. 19-10, on January 8, 1969, titled "On the Work

Plans for Research of the Moon, Venus, and Mars by Automatic Stations. ''_2 The decree

evidently called for the acceleration of various automated programs, including the Ye-8-5 robot.

It was the first clear response to Apollo 8, and it established a new direction in Soviet space

policy that would remain entrenched for many years to come, Handed their biggest defeat yet,

officials now went about neutralizing the effects of the Apollo victory by claiming that the

Soviet Union had never intended to reach the Moon. It was clearly much easier to change

history when the details of that history were originally obscured or hidden beyond recognition.

Transfer in Orbit

When the Soviets were finally ready to carry out their long-delayed docking and EVA Soyuz

mission, it was already an anachronism. Originally, Korolev had conceived such flights

as means to master rendezvous, docking, EVA, long-duration missions, and other complex

operations in Earth orbit to provide expertise for future piloted lunar excursions. It would serve

in much the same capacity as Gemini did for l_pollo in the US. space program. To extend the

analogy, by the time the Soviets were ready to fly their Gemini, the United States was already

flying Apollo. In fact, much of the technology used on the Soyuz was different from that on

the L3. For example, cosmonauts would use the Yastreb EVA suits on Soyuz unlike the Or[an

and Krechet-94 on the L3. The Soyuz used the Igla rendezvous radar system, while the L3 used

Kontakt. The actual docking contraptions were completely different, and the launch vehicles

had no common elements. Still, it was an important step in moving slowly to piloted lunar

operations by providing crucial experience to ground controllers, cosmonauts, and designers in

performing complex operations in Earth orbit.

Rumors about the mission were bolstered in November 1968 when Mishin, under cover as

the anonymous "Chief Designer," spoke to Soviet journalists about the assembly of two Soyuz

spacecraft in orbit? _ Preparations for the missions culminated in a meeting at Tyura-Tam of the

Soyuz State Commission on January II, 1969. Kamanin presented the two primary and two

backup crews to the commission for final approval? 4 Like no other crew before, the four

51. N. Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Our Guys" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 13 (1993): 8-£

52. Ibid.

53. Donald C. Winston, "Soyuz SeriesAims for Orbital Platform," ,Z]uiation Week & Space Technology.

November 18, 1968, pp. 121-23

54. Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry [or Our Guys," no. 13.

CHALLENGE TO FLPOLLO
FINRL L&P TO THE MOON

members of the primary crew, all

rookies, each had distinctive backgrounds, breaking tradition with

earlier Soviet cosmonauts. The commander of the active spacecraft was

Vladimir /31eksandrovich Shatalov.

the first of a new generation of

Soviet cosmonauts to fly into space.

Born in Petropavlovsk in

Kazakhstan on December 8, 1927,

he had graduated with distinction

from the Red Banner Air Force

Academy with honors in 1956.

When training to become a test

pilot in the early 1960s, Shatalov

applied for admission into the ranks

of cosmonauts at a time when the

Air Force was expanding its pool

base from young, inexperienced

pilots to accomplished engineeringtest pilots with graduate degrees. It

seems that Shatalov had been the

top ranked in the group of fifteen

military officers selected in January

1963. The light-haired and powerfully built man had plenty of experience preparing for space missions.

He would have flown on one of the

later Voskhod missions in 1966 had

the program not been canceled. He

ACTIVe_E_DEZV_lS -"

• $oYuz _

eA_qw R_NDEZVOUS

Sourer cosmonauts performed the first docking of two piloted

spacecraft in orbi[ during the Soyuz 4/5 mission in january t909

(copyright R f Gibbons)

had also served as ground communicator for the Voskhod, Voskhod 2, and Soyuz I flights?"

The passive vehicle crew consisted of Volynov, Yeliseyev, and Khrunov. Commander

Volynov had served as a backup crewmember for a number of Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz

missions, and might have have commanded Voskhod 3, had it not been canceled only two

weeks prior to liftoff. He would also have the honor of being the first Russian Jew to fly into

space, a distinction that would posit him in many difficult situations in the future. Both

Volynov and Khrunov had joined the cosmonaut detachment in 1960 as part of the famous

"Gagarin group," although both had to wait almost nine years for their first chance to fly in

space. The self-effacing Khrunov, like Volynov, had also served in important backup positions,

including for cosmonaut Leonov during his historic first spacewalk on Voskhod 2 in 1965. The

final member of the crew, Yeliseyev, was the first of the new civilian group from TsKBEM, whose

candidacy had been pushed so hard by Korolev and then Mishin. On this mission, Khrunov

and Yeliseyev would carry out the actual EVA transfer from one Soyuz to another--the mission

they had been trained to perform in 1967 on Komarov's ill-fated flight.

On January 13, 1969. Shatalov boarded his ship for the first Soyuz launch, which was set

for 1300 hours Moscow Time. Given the fact that Shatalov's home telephone number also

ended in " 13" and that he was slated to be the thirteenth Soviet cosmonaut, many were a

55. Rex Hall, "Soviet Air Force Cosmonauts," in Michael Cassutt, ed., Who's Who in Space: The

InternationG/Space Year Edition (New York:Macmillan, 1992), p. 26 I.

669
670

little apprehensive about the launch. Fortunately for the superstitious, nine minutes prior to

liftoff, the countdown abruptly stopped) _ There was evidently a failure in a hydraulic system

on Blok I_ of the booster: the State Commission postponed the launch to the following day) _

It was another freezing day on January 14 when launch operations began for a second launch

attempt at pad 31. Witnesses recall the entire launch area being covered with a thick layer of

snow. This time, there were no problems. Lt. Colonel Vladimir P,. Shatalov, forty-one years

old at the time, lifted off at 1032 hours Moscow Time on January 14 in his Soyuz spaceship,

vehicle no. 12. The initial orbital parameters of the ship, named Soyuz 4, were 173 by

22_5.3 kilometers with a 51.72-degree inclination. During his initial hours in orbit, Shatalov manually fired the main Soyuz engine on the fifth orbit, about six hours after launch, to change

parameters to 207 by 237 kilometers, sharpening his approach trajectory in wait for the target

vehicle. He also hosted a television session, which was broadcast to Moscow TV, clearly

showing two extra but empty seats in his spaceship, thus arousing speculation that there would

be a linkup of some kind in the following days? '_

The next day, January 15, the 7K-OK spaceship no. 13 lifted off precisely on time at

1005 hours Moscow Time with its three-cosmonaut crew of thirty-four-year-old Lt. Colonel

Boris V. Volynov (Commander), thirty-four-year-old civilian Aleksey S. Yeliseyev (Flight

Engineer), and thirty-five-year-old Lt. Colonel Yevgeniy V. Khrunov (Research Engineer). The

initial orbital parameters of the now-named Soyuz 5 were 198.7 by 230.2 kilometers at a

51.69-degree inclination. As soon as Soyuz .S was in orbit, both spacecraft immediately began

their program of 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 in a much leisurely pace over the period of a day. Volynov on Soyuz 5 fired his main

engine on his fifth orbit to change the orbit to 211 by 2.53 kilometers, thus moving closer to

Shatalov's chosen orbit, lqfter a second maneuver by Shatalov on the morning of January 16 on

his thirty-second orbit, ground controllers switched on the Igla system at 1037 hours Moscow

Time. Through the next half hour, the radar system brought the two vehicles to a distance of

only I00 meters. Shatalov later vividly described the program from then on:

7qt this point. I went over to manual control, and Boris Volynov did the same. The problem was to make sure that the docking units of both spacecraft were properly oriented

toward each other. Throughout this time I was manually controlling the appropriate

thrusters. With the control stick on the left-hand side I regulated the craft's linear velocity-slowing it down or speeding it up--and damped out the lateral velocity, When we

were over the shores o/Ztfrica--some seven or eight thousand kilometers from the borders of the Soviet Union--we approached to within [forty meters] of each other and

started to hover. Ztt this range, Boris Volynov and I performed several maneuvers/'_

As he closed in on Soyuz 5, there were some problems, including erroneous signals from

the docking control and contact lights, that were apparently related to the spurious activation

of the control and diagnostics system on Soyuz 4. At a ginger twenty-five centimeters per second, the two spacecraft hard-docked at 1120 hours to Volynov's exclamation of "Welcome! ....

56 M f Rebrov,Kosmicheskiyekatastro[y Russkiyesensatsii (Moscow: IzdAT, 1993), pp. 41 42

57. The launch problem may haveoccurred becauseof ground operator error K P. Feoktistov recalls that

there were "Incorrect actions of ground control" in inputting settings. SeeRussian Space History. Sale 65/6 (New

York:Sotheby's, 1993), description for Lot 57,

58 Smolders,Soviets in 5pace, p 170.

59 Riabchikov.Russians in Space,p. 256. With his right hand, Shatalovexercised roll control.

60 lbid. p 257: Smolders. Soviets in Space. pp. 171 172: RussianSpace History. Lot 57

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE _V_OON

One cosmonaut on the passive ship was rumored

to have been much more excited. Unconfirmed

reports suggest that at the moment of docking,

when the pin was inserted in the cone of Soyuz 5,

one of the crewmembers on the latter ship shouted out "We're being raped! We're being raped!"

While initial TV broadcasts of the segment carried

the exclamations intact, all later replays omitted

the offending words?'

After docking, it seems that the two vehicles

had suffered excessive rotations because of the

problems with the diagnostics system but settled

down sufficiently for the cosmonauts to begin

preparing for the crew transfer. Somewhat overextending its claims, the Soviet press dramatically

announced that the link up of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz

5, a combined mass of 12,924 kilograms, as "the

world's first experimental space station. ''_2 The

complex did, however, have a common power system during the docked duration by means of a

plug-and-sockets system on the docking nodes.

On the thirty-fifth orbit of Soyuz 4, Khrunov and

Yeliseyev began their preparations for their transfer

EVA by entering the living compartment of Soyuz

Soyuz4 Commander Vtadimir Shatolou displays

how Soyuz 4 and Soyuz5 docked in Earth orbit in

january t969 It was the first time that two piloted

spacecra]t docked to each other in space

(files of Peter _orin)

5 and unstowing two Yastreb suits from a side cupboard. Commander Volynov assisted them

during the procedure, which proved to be relatively difficult with three men in the cramped confines of the module. Each suit had a self-contained backpack attached to one of their legs instead

of their waists, as was the case on the earlier Yastreb versions for the abandoned Soyuz 112 mission. Both cosmonauts were, however, tethered safely to the spacecraft via umbilicals, which carried lines for communications and health telemetry. In a ceremonial move, Soyuz 5, launched a

day after Soyuz 4, had carried into orbit a bunch of mail addressed to Shatalov, as well as a number of newspaper articles on the Soyuz 4 launch. The letters were not only from his family, but

also from Minister gfanasyev, Chief Designer Mishin, State Commission Chairman Kerimov, Col.

General Kamanin, and others. During the transfer, Khrunov and Yeliseyev were to carry the mail

and media materials, presumably in their pockets, in addition to a camera. 6'

gfter the suits were tested and pressurized, Volynov bid the two cosmonauts goodbye and

retreated back into the descent apparatus and shut the intermediary hatch between the two

modules before commanding the living compartment to depressurize. Khrunov then opened up

the outer hatch of the living compartment on Soyuz 4's thirty-fifth orbit and poked his head out

cautiously. After Voiynov's final permission to egress, Khrunov moved his body out of the spacecraft, briefly getting entangled in his safety cord. The combined complex was over South

America at the time. Khrunov recalled later:

I emerged from the spacecraft without difficulty, and looked around. 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

6 I. James E Oberg, RedStar in Orbit (New York: Random House, 1981). pp. 98-99.

62. Petrovich, The Soviet Encyclopaedia of Space Flight. p. 388,

63. Riabchikov, Russians in Space. p. 258; Smolders. Soviets in Space, p. 112.

671
672

they reflected the sunlight. Right in front of my eyes was Soyuz-4, looking very much like

an aircraft. The big, long spacecraft was like a fuselage, and the solar panels were like

wings. _4

Yeliseyev followed after Khrunov, letting the latter lead in EVA activities. Khrunov crawled

toward the docking unit of Soyuz 5 and removed a TV camera from a support and turned off

its power supply. Before exiting the spacecraft, Yeliseyev had forgotten to fasten a still-photo

camera to his suit. The instrument floated out into space, depriving the Soviets of high-quality

photographs of the historic event. Among their modest activities during the excursion, the two

men also "made observations of the Earth's horizon, [and] checked the operation of the attitudecontrol jets."_ Khrunov, followed by Yeliseyev, then moved over to the living compartment of

Soyuz 4, opened its hatch, and crawled in. They were received by a welcome note from Shatalov,

who was at the time in the spaceship's descent apparatus. After the pressurization of the living

compartment, the hatches between the two modules were opened, and Shatalov embraced his

comrades, treating them to a toast of black currant juice instead of the customary vodka, which

was prohibited aboard the spacecraft. The entire episode had lasted one hour, although the two

cosmonauts had been out of the spacecraft for thirty seven minutes.

Wasting little time, the two commanders, Shatalov and Volynov, began immediately

to prepare for undocking. At 1554 hours, just four hours and thirty-four minutes after docking,

the two spacecraft separated and went on their own ways, Soyuz 4 now with three cosmonauts

and Soyuz 5 with one. They had been joined together for three orbits. In continuing

their independent missions, the crews carried out a number of scientific experiments, which

included the use of a new stellar-navigation sextant, the operation of the RSS-I spectrograph for

geophysical studies, and the testing of instrumentation for medical and biological experiments.

Earth observational experiments included observing and photographing terrestrial cloud cover,

storm formations, snow and ice cover, and various geological structures. One set of activities

included astronomical investigations, such as observing the astral sky during both day and

night, photographing the night sky in a direction opposite the Sun, and studying the initial

stages of the development of comet tails. The RSS-I, on Soyuz 5, was used for a spectrophotometry experiment on Earth's twilight aureole over a spectral range of 400-650 nanometers on

the second and fifteenth orbits from a mean altitude of 240 kilometers. Khrunov also carried

out experiments related to the passage of radio waves through the ionosphere. Finally, both

Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 carried special targets on the exterior for measurements of tritium and

helium-3. Each target consisted of a package of fourteen plates made from one sheet of aluminum? _

Soyuz 4 was the first to return from orbit. On January 17, Shatalov, Yeliseyev, and Khrunov

carried out a guided reentry, landing at 0953 hours Moscow Time, forty kilometers northwest

of the town of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. The mission had lasted two days, twenty-three hours,

twenty minutes, and 47 seconds. Volynov, now alone, had a much more difficult time, facing

perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous reentry in the history of the Soviet space program.

During the early morning of January 18, in preparation for his reentry around midday, Volynov

reported that all systems were fine aboard the ship. At 1020 hours, he passed over the Gulf of

64. Riabchikov,Russians in Space, p. 259.

65 Ibid_ pp. 259-60.

66. I. A Alimova. V O Naidenov, B. S. Boltenkov. and V N Gartmanov, "Measurement of Tritium and

Helium 3 in Aluminum Targets" (English title), Kosmicheskiye issledouaniya 9 (January-February 1971): 149-51:

K 7a. Kondratyev, A A. Buznikov, B. V. Vinogradov, V. N. Volkov, V. V. Gorbatko, and O I. Smotky,

"Spectrophotometry of the Earth From Manned Spacecraft." in Kondratyev, Rycroft. and Sagan, eds., Cospar

Volume I, pp. 619-32: Smolders, Soviets in Space. p 175: Lardier. L_Istronautique Soui_tique. pp. 187-88: G. S.

Narimanov. ed.. Ot kosmicheskikh korabley- k orbitalnym starztsiyam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, I971),

pp. 65-66.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
_INAL LAP TO THE MOON

Guinea near Africa before firing the $5.35 engine for the predetermined period. Six seconds after

the termination of retrofire, Volynov heard the pyrocartridges triggering to separate the three

major modules of the spacecraft: the living compartment, the descent apparatus, and the

instrument-aggregate compartment. As he looked through the viewport, he noticed something

deadly wrong: he could clearly see the antennas attached to the solar arrays on the cylindrical

instrument-aggregate compartment, meaning that the section, also known as the service module,

had not separated from the descent apparatus. While similar failures had occurred on early

Vostok and Voskhod flights, it posed a much greater threat on Soyuz because of the relatively

huge size of the module. Volynov immediately reported in code to ground controllers about his

predicament. Most simply believed that Volynov had little chance to live?7

The descent apparatus tumbled in somersaults as it remained attached to the three-ton

service module and began its long journey through the atmosphere. Turning over and over, with

the thermal shield unexposed to the heat because it was still covered by the service module,

the heat began to affect unprotected portions of the descent apparatus. Smoke began to appear

within the capsule as the light heat insulation began to burn. Normally, during a reentry, hydrogen peroxide jets would fire during this period to guide the capsule to provide lift and reduce

thermal and gravitational stresses. In this case, Volynov noticed that his instrument panel indicated that the valves for the thrusters were open, but there had been no firings. All the propellant had been used up at the initiation of retrofire, when the computer had tried in vain to

correct the spaceship's incorrect attitude.

Volynov recalls that he was sure that only a few minutes separated him from death. The normally unflappable cosmonaut considered saying goodbye to his relatives, but instead decided to

hurriedly saveall the recorded materials on the docking procedure by ripping the important pages

from the log book, rolling them up tightly, and sticking them into the middle of the book. Then,

amid the cauldron arou0d him, 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. Through it all, there

were terrifying moments. Once, there was a sharp clap, indicating that the propellant tanks of

the service module had blown apart with such force that the crew hatch was forced inwards and

then upwards like the bottom of a tin can. Plummeting through a ballistic trajectory, he realized

that the service module had finally disintegrated and he had survived. His relief soon turned to

anxiety when the parachute system triggered at an altitude of ten kilometers. The straps on the

main parachute began to twist, preventing them from unfurling properly. Forthe second time in

minutes, he was convinced of his end, Remarkably, the braids of the parachute began to untwist

slowly: by the time that the descent apparatus landed with its soft-landing engines, it was sufficient to ensure Volynov's safety, although the landing was so hard that the roots of his teeth

in his upper jaw were broken off. It was only the specially built shock-absorbing seat that saved

him from broken bones and more serious injuries? _

The Soyuz 5 descent apparatus landed 600 kilometers from its originally intended landing

site, 200 kilometers southwest of Kustanay. TtqSSonly announced that "the flight took place

successfully, a unique experiment was conducted, and the vehicle touched down in the designated area." Volynov landed at I108 hours Moscow Time on January 18, after a three-day, fiftyfour-minute, fifteen-second mission. In their investigation of the Soyuz 5 reentry, TsKBEM

engineers found that the connection locks between the descent apparatus and the instrumentaggregate compartment had failed to release. The two modules finally separated from each

other when the intermediary transfer compartment, carrying hydrogen peroxide tanks for the

attitude control thrusters, exploded. Despite the dangerous situations, the designers were

67. MikhailRebrov,"A DifficultReEntryFromOrbit" (Englishtitle), Krasnayazuezda,April27.1996,p 5.

68. Ibid.

673
674

extremely pleased with the performance of the descent apparatus, which had withstood temperatures and stresses far above nominal during the reentry and specifically ensured the safety

of the crew in a sudden switch from a guided to a ballistic reentry, The mission also confirmed

the correctness in using an advanced titanium frame for the descent apparatus, as well as the

propitiousness of countless design and statistical tests to ensure the stability of the capsule

with any angle of attack. 6_

In spite of the near catastrophe at the end of the flight, the Soyuz 415 mission was a landmark flight in the Soviet space program. It was not only the first docking of two piloted spacecraft in space and the first transfer of a crew in orbit from one spacecraft to another, but also

the first completely successful piloted space mission in the post-Korolev era. While the mission had been accomplished nearly two years late, the complexity of the flight indicated a certain maturity in Soviet space operations from the almost primitive Voskhod missions during

Korolev's last years. Still, compared to the U.S. space program, it was a poor match. NASA

astronauts had accomplished the first docking in space as early as March 1966 on Gemini VIII.

Eventhe Soviets themselves had already accomplished automated docking twice in orbit. But after

the humiliating defeat of Apollo 8, the Soviet leadership was willing to take anything remotely

successful as a godsend. What was at best an interesting and moderately complex operation in

Earth orbit was made out to be the most dramatic step in the exploration of space. At the subsequent press conference for the Soyuz 415cosmonauts, the Soviets made much of the fact that the

docked complex had been the world's first "experimental orbital station." In one of the few interesting moments of the presentation, cosmonaut Khrunov let 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. '''°

There was a bizarre postscript to the Soyuz 415 mission. On January 22, a number of famous

cosmonauts, including Nikolayev, Tereshkova, Leonov, and Beregovoy, were being driven to the

Kremlin for an awards reception in the back of a Zil limousine. As they entered the gates of the

Kremlin, a man in a hat and dark glassesstepped from the shadows with a gun in each hand and

began firing at the limousine with the cosmonauts. He managed to fatally wound the driver.

Leonov remembers:

I looked down and saw two bullet holes on each side of my coat where the bullets passed

through. ]1 fifth bullet passed so close to my face I could feel it go by. This man was shooting at me, thinking that I was Brezhnev. He was angry because he had been conscripted

into the army. When it was over, Brezhnev took me aside and told me; "Those bullets were

not meant for you,/qleksei. They were meant for me, and for that, I apologize. "'

The man, a young army lieutenant named Ilyin, was apprehended, and later spent twenty years in

a special prison,

Dazed and Confused

More than any other U.S. space achievement of the 1960s, the flight of Apollo 8 froze the

Soviet space industry into a kind of collective shock. Nothing the Soviet Union was capable of

doing in December 1968 could have been neutralized the worldwide accolades for the impressive

achievement of Borman, Lovell, and Anders. If the Communist Party was only too eager to

69. Semenov,ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya,p. 184.

70 Smolders,Sovietsin Space.p. 176.

71 ThomasO'Toole,"The ManWho Didn'tWalk on the Moon," NewYorkTimesMagazine,July 17,

1994.pp, 26-29

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FINRL LRP TO THE MOON

use space achievements as a means to sell the virtues of socialism in the early 1960s, now Soviet

officials were almost embarrassed by it. In this backdrop, senior Soviet space officials convened in

January 1969 to discuss not only an adequate response to the U.S. space program, but also to talk

in general about the larger direction of their entire piloted space effort.

The first meeting, presided over by Minister of General Machine Building Sergey A. Afanasyev,

was held on January I0 amid the cold snowy weather at Tyura-Tam, just a few days prior to the

Soyuz 41_5launches. Among those present were all the members of the Council of Chief Designers

involved in lunar programs, as well as deputy chief designers and department heads from many

design bureaus and institutes/? Afanasyev was aghast. He asked the distinguished assemblage,

perhaps, rhetorically, "How can we get out of this mess?!" The primary questions at hand were:

• How should the success of Apollo 8 be neutralized in the short term?

• What should be done with the L I circumlunar program now that its importance had been

all but neutralized by Apollo 87

• How should the L3 landing project proceed, and was there any way the USSR could beat

an American landing?

• How should the N I be modified to improve its capabilities for the future of the Soviet space

program77_

On the first point, the Party and government had just passed a resolution accelerating the

Ye-8-5 sample returner project. In a compensatory measure to allay public opinion, many senior

Soviet government officials were shifting their thinking to automation. Kamanin emphasized as

such in his diary entry for January 20 1969 lamenting that:

in the ,qcademy o[ Sciences and in the industry there is u very strong mood for the use

o[ robots and against the active development of piloted flights. This aspiration is supported by the Central Gommittee, the [Military-Industrial Commission], and the

[Strategic] Missile Forces._4

Boris A. Stroganov, one of Serbin's deputies in the innards of the Central Committee's

Defense Department, proposed that all parties should assist the Lavochkin design bureau to

quickly accomplish its task of completing a sample return mission before an Apollo landing. If

Soviet officials publicly touted the value of automated lunar exploration, then privately most

knew that it was a poor substitute at best. The majority of participants at the meeting vocally

supported piloted exploration. In fact, Afanasyev asked the attending chief designers whether

a thirty-day-long Soyuz mission could be mounted in the near future to boost Soviet claims as

a leading space power.

On the issue of the circumlunar L I project, opinions were divided, Some, such as Babakin,

Ryazanskiy, and Chertok, supported moving on to piloted missions regardless of the success of

Apollo 8, while others, such as Mishin's deputies Kozlov and Kryukov, argued for only further

automated launches. Yuriy A. Mozzhorin, the powerful Director of TsNllMash (formerly

NII-88), openly voiced a means to "save" the LI program. Because the Soviet Union had

declared that it had a space program as accomplished as the American one, simply continuing

72. Among those present were S. A. Afanasyev (MOM}, G. N. Babakin (GSMZ Lavochkin),

V. K. Bezverbiy(TsKBEM),B.Ye.Chertok(TsKBEM),G. I, Degtyarenko(TsKBEM),B.A Dorofeyev(TsKBEM),V IRFinogeyev

(Nil /_P), P,. G. Iosifyan (VNII EM), D. I. Kozlov (TsKBEMKuybyshevBranch), S. S, Kryukov (TsKBEM),V. P Mishin

(TsKBEM),g. S. Mnatsakanyan(Nil TP), Yu. A Mozzhorin (TsNllMash), S. O Okhapkin (TsKBEM),N. _. Pilyugin(Nil

AP), M, S. Ryazanskiy(Nil Priborostroyeniya),and B, A. Stroganov(TsKKPSSDefenseIndustriesDepartment)

73 Interview Peter Gorin by the author November 18 1997

14. Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Our Guys," no. 13.

675
676

the LI program would not do. Instead. he suggested giving the project a "scientific flavor," as if

to suggest that the Soviet Union had higher goals than simply competition. It was in fact exactly such a tack that official Soviet spokespersons took in the coming months as the LISSRhalfheartedly continued the circumlunar project in its automated variant. Plans for piloted missions

were indefinitely postponed in March 1969, while the remaining 7K-LI spacecraft were prepared

for use only in robotic mode.

eqsfor the N I-L3 program, some, such as Chertok and Mishin's principal aide for new projects,

Vitally K. Bezverbiy, admitted openly for the first time what was privately beyond debate for over

a year: that the Soviet Union could no longer overtake the United States in a landing of humans

on the Moon. There was, however, overwhelming support for reconfiguring the N I-L3 program so

as to use two launch vehicles to assemble a lunar complex in Earth orbit, instead of the one

planned for severalyears. Participants considered two separateoptions: one using the current variants of the N I and one using advanced and uprated versions. The first option, supported by

Kryukov, Mozzhorin, Pilyugin, and Ryazanskiy, among others, was motivated primarily by the poor

rated performance characteristics of the first four flight models of the N I, vehicle nos. 3L, 4L, 5L.

and 6L: none of them were capable of lifting the ninety-five tons required for a bare-bones L3 lunar

mission. Thus, two launches would ensure that all the components of the L3complex would reach

orbit. It must have been particularly demoralizing to hear Chief Designer Pilyugin state that engineerswere not sure they could make the ninety-five-ton mass limit for the L3 complex, euen i/the

N I could lift such a payload into Earth orbit. His Deputy Vladlen P.Finogeyev reminded everyone

that becausethe L3design had been redrafted three times in the last few years, there was not even

an LOK or an LK spaceship in any shape or form existing anywhere.

The second option--using uprated N Is--was attractive because it would enable engineers to

expand the landing crew size from one cosmonaut to two--a crucial issue that factored into

the discourse on the safety of cosmonauts on the Moon. Among the variants considered at the

time were the N IF-V3 and N IF-V4, with liquid hydrogen stages in the third and fourth stages.

respectively. The most favored option seems to have been the use of the two N IF-V4s to launch a

huge lunar complex into Earth orbit, called the LS,which would allow four to five cosmonauts to

spend up to two months on the surface of the Moon. In the end. nothing was decided. It seems

to have been a meeting to air the "dirty laundry," a catharsis of sorts. Perhaps the most pointed

comments were from TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designer Chertok who, during his speech, very accurately observed that the Soviet space program had less resourcesthan the U.S. program and yet

was spending its money with even less rationality. It was a dead-on observation on the poverty,

not only of money, but also of management, in the Soviet space program in the 1960s.'"

Major consultative meetings of the Council of Chief Designers were set for late January 1969,

and in preparation, Mishin met with many leading officials through the month to discuss various

aspects of the piloted lunar program. On January 24, he examined both the current

NI-L3 effort as well as possible modernized variants. One of the issues at hand was the

possibility of eliminating the testing of the TI K, T2K, and LIE Earth orbital test beds to reduce the

amount of work. In addition, once again, there was some discussion on the complicated

LK plus LK, (backup lander) plus Ye-8 (rover) profile planned for the L3. He also drew up

preliminary documents on inviting other organizations--namely the S. P,. Lavochkin State Union

Machine Building Plant--to manufacture the payload block for the proposed N IF-V3 rocket.'"

Problems with the LOK and the LK had also cropped up. Both spacecraft were still overweight, the

former by five kilograms. As an example of the lengths to which the Soviets worked on "shaving

75. Gorininterview.November18,1997.

76. Thepayloadblockof theN IF-V3consistedof BlokG,BlokD,thetransferfairing,andBlokt

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

off" mass from the lander, engineers proposed eliminating an eighteen-kilogram visor and a sighting instrument from the LK

The following day, January 25. Mishin met with Chief Designer Pilyugin of the ScientificResearch Institute of/_utomation and Instrument Building, one of Korolev's old associates from the

1940s who now presided over the development of most control and guidance systems

for Soviet spacecraft. The meeting was important because, for the first time, there was serious

discussion of using Mars to neutralize the success of Apollo. The two chief designers discussed a

three-step Mars exploration program:

• Mars '73--a robotic vehicle to Mars for sample return (on the N I)

• Mars 'ZS--a piloted satellite of Mars (on the N I F-V3)

• Mars '77--a piloted landing on Mars using an N I with nuclear rocket engines

In the meantime, Pilyugin suggested continuing the current N I-L3 program, but in a twolaunch scheme, both with and without the Ye-8 rovers. He suggested that to reduce extraneous

work, Soviet designers should focus on creating a single modernized version of the NI, the

N I F-V3. Perhaps prompted by the discussion with Pilyugin, Mishin brought up the issue of Mars at

an internal meeting on January 26, at which he considered the possibili W of inviting the Ministry of

Medium Machine Building to develop nuclear power sources for Martian spacecraft,

These discussions culminated in widely attended and important meetings of the Council of

Chief Designers on January 26 and 27, 1969. Apart from the usual chief designers and their deputies,

a number of important scientists from the Academy of Sciences and representatives from the

military were also present/; Academician Keldysh set the meeting off with the admonition that there

was no hope of carrying out the N I-L3 program as it then stood. Instead, he believed that designers should focus on improving the capabilities of the N I with liquid hydrogen upper stages and

carrying out the three-step Mars exploration program, with missions in 1973, 1975, and 1977-80.

Although most at the meeting agreed that Mars should be the next goal for the Soviet space

program, there was little support to completely abandon the Moon, For the Mars expedition, most

of the attendees supported the creation of the uprated N I booster, the N I F-V3, which would have

a new third stage equipped with Chief Designer Lyulka's IID54 liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen

engine. One attendee, Viktor I. Shcheulov, an officer in the Strategic Missile Forces, cautioned that

liquid hydrogen stages would not be ready for use until 1971 at the earliest.

Shcheulov made one of the more prophetic statements at the meeting. He believed that the

creation of Earth-orbital space stations would smooth the effect of recent U.S. successes in space.

TsKBEM had, for many years, explored various conceptions of space stations, one of them being a

huge complex in orbit called the Multirole Space Base-Station (better known simply as the "MKBS"),

which would allow for the rep]acement of crews on board, thus establishing a permanent piloted

presence in space. The space station option, while not as attractive as Mars, was slowly beginning

to emerge at the time as a possible alternative long-range goal for the Soviet space program. In

January 1969, with the recent success of Apollo 8 in mind, there was, however, more of an interest

in the Moon and Mars, and this clearly influenced the formation of a post-1968 space policy for the

Soviets. At a meeting on January 29 for his senior staff at the design bureau, Mishin brought up the

issue of the Moon, Mars, and Earth-orbital stations. '_ Most of the designers agreed on a two-prong

long-range program:

77. Among those present were K. D. Bushuyev (TsKBEM), A. G. Iosifyan (VNII FM). M V. Keldysh (AN

SSSR),M, S Khitrik(NllAP),G P Melnikov(NII-4),V E Mishin (TsKBEM),A.S, Mnatsakanyan (NIITP).Yu.A

Mozzhonn (TsNIIMash), G. N. Pashkov(VPK), M. S Ryazanskiy (Nil Priborostroyeniya), G. I. Severin(KB Zvezda),

V. I. Shcheulov (TsUKOS), and G I Voronin (KB Nauka),

78 Among those present were V. K Bezverbiy, BYe Chertok. K. E I-eoktistov. V. P. Legostayev, S O.

Okhapkin, V. N. Pravetskiy,I. I Raykov,and Ye. F,Ryazanov All werefrom TsKB[M.

677
618

• The development of the MKBS in Earth orbit, whose design would be based on otd designs

for the Heavy Interplanetary Ship dating from the Korolev days

• The use of the MKBS to mount a Mars expedition

Much of the discussion was focused on the development of closed-cycle life support systems to

ensure survival over a period of two to three years in space, as well as nuclear-electric power

sources for such advanced missions. '_ The MKBS would also be used for defense goals.

The general consensus from the meetings was that the Soviet Union should continue work

intensively on the N t-L3 program, now as part of a dual-launch Earth-orbit rendezvous/

lunar-orbit rendezvous profile, but at the same time begin planning for the coup de grace--a

progressively sophisticated Mars landing program over the next decade, which promised to

bring the prestige of the Soviet space program out of its current doldrums. The Mars program

would use components of the large Earth-orbital station, the MKBS, which would also be dedicated to defense purposes. The somewhat diffuse and perhaps hasty response to the success

of Apollo 8 was not confined to the restricted corridors of the Soviet space establishment.

Academician Keldysh, in a statement to Moscow Radio on January 24, hinted at the uncertain

prospects for the future of the Soviet space program. Putting a bright face on the recent

Soyuz 4/5 success, he spoke clearly about new directions: the establishment of permanent

orbital stations and the accomplishment of interplanetary flights. Speaking of the Zond spacecraft and its capability to carry cosmonauts around the Moon, he added that such a flight

should not be expected in the next two or three weeks. In closing, he said simply that piloted

lunar operations "depends somewhat on our further considerations as to what we shall do with

automatic apparatus and with manned ones."_

The N I in Flight

It is ironic that at precisely the time when the Soviets were having second thoughts about the

Moon, a number of their lunar projects approached the flight testing stage, making 1969 one of the

busiest years for lunar-related space launches in the history of the Soviet space program. The armada was inaugurated by a launch during January that punctuated the intensive high-level discussions

on the Moon program. Prompted by TsNIIMash Director Mozzhorin's suggestion to continue robotic LI launches with a "scientific" tenor, it seems that Minister Afanasyev had sanctioned further

launches in the beleaguered program, beginning with one in January 1969. Ironically, a number of

the L I cosmonauts, including Bykovskiy, were on hand at Tyura-Tam to view the launch, no doubt

fully aware that their chances of ever flying around the Moon had abruptly dropped dramatically.

The 7K-LI vehicle, spacecraft no. 13, was the same article that was to have been launched in

early December on a robotic circumnavigation of the Moon, but was stood down because of the

catastrophic crash of Zond 6."' The Proton booster lifted off successfully at 0414 hours, 36 seconds Moscow Time on January 20, 1969. After first-stage cutoff, the second stage began firing,

but at T+501 seconds, the booster began to fall. tqfter several minutes, controllers reported to State

Commission Chairman Tyulin at the command center at site 2 that search-and-rescue services had

detected the L I spacecraft, saved by the emergency rescue system, southeast of Irkutsk near the

border with Mongolia. It took about four hours for analysts to produce a preliminary accident

79 The Soyuz Moscow Machine Building Plant (formerly OKB 300}, headed by Chief Designer S Ks

Tumanskiy, had developed nuclear power sources capable of producing ten kilowatts by 1969 He expected to

create more powerful units--at fifty kilowatts by 1970and up to 2,500 kilowatts by 1975.

go. Soviet Space Programs, I966-70. p. 372

81. Interestingly, in earlyjanuary 1969, a cable network on spacecraft no 13 had been severed. Engineers

opted to replace part of the network with parts from the already flown spacecraft no. 7, which had been launched

m April 1968and recoveredafter a launch failure

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
T

I FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

report. One of the four engines of the second stage had shut down abruptly, twenty-five seconds

prior to the planned cutoff point. At this point, the third stage could have easily fired to compensate and inserted the payload into orbit, but a diagnostics computer on the booster, as soon as it

had detected the engine failure, aborted the mission and fired the emergency rescue system for the

LI spacecraft/2 Thus was lost 100 million rubles and another chance to fly to the Moon. _ It was

the fourth launch failure in the circumlunar program out of only nine launch attempts, illustrating

that one of the weakest links in the project was the UR-500K Proton booster, designed and built

by a branch of Chelomey's design bureau.

With that inauspicious beginning, engineers moved on to more ambitious prospects. In

February 1969, both Babakin's first Ye-8 lunar rover and Mishin's first N I rocket were ready for

liftoff. In fact, in what was certainly not a coincidence, their launches were timed a day apart.

The specially made 7K-LIS lunar spacecraft would arrive in lunar orbit and attempt to photograph the Ye-8 rover on the surface. Since the original May 1968 launch date, engineers had

spent months mired in a frustrating delay. Although the first flight-rated N I vehicle, booster

no. 3L, was completely ready for launch and the basic construction of the first launch pad had

been finished by the end of 1967, problems with many pad-booster interface systems forced

launch date postponements for weeks and then months. _ On September 18, 1968, Afanasyev

had presided over a meeting of the State Commission for the N I at Tyura-Tam at site 112 near

the N I pads. Approximately 100 chief designers, deputies, Strategic Missile Forces and Air Force

officers, and government officials were present during the five-hour meeting. The participants

noted that three different deadlines stipulated by Central Committee decrees had not been met.

At the time, the IMI mock-up was on the completed pad at site I IOP with a functional

payload undergoing fueling tests to allow service teams to train and gain experience for actual

launches. Kamanin, who attended the meeting, recalled, "There have been lots of drawbacks,

improper quality of work and plain bungling--in particular there was an accident with a bulldozer cutting the main power supply of the launch pad."_' At the meeting, Afanasyev scheduled the first launch for late November 1968 and the second one for February 1969.

82. Kamanin, 'rl FeelSorry for Our Guys," no. 13

83. Although Russian sourcessuggest that this launch was an attempt at a circumlunar flight, the launch

date for the mission would seemto indicate that it may have been a deep space mission, much like Zond 4. Richard

Ftagg'sanalysisof L I launch windows during 1968-70 suggeststhat Zond circumlunar launches were only attempted when trajectories could be flown that were closeto coplanar with the Moon's orbit to minimize the effects of the

Moon's gravity. If a 7K-LI craft approached the Moon from a transfer orbit with a large angle relative to the Moon's

orbital plane, then the force of lunar gravity would have changed the plane of the orbit, deflecting the craft from the

required return trajectory. In such a situation, the 7K-LI spacecraft's main engine would not have been powerful

enough to effect mid-course corrections to return the vehicle on an Earth-bound trajectory. An additional scientific

requirement was for the far side of the Moon to be illuminated during the mission to carry out surface photography

In examining the launch windows of the 7K-LI, Flaggobserved that there were no circumlunar launch windows that

satisfied these criteria from January 1969to July 1969.However, lunar age,declination phase,and opening anglewere

close to permitting a 7K-LI launch during January 7-9, 1969, although those parameters "were definitely outside

those . . . as defined by the successful Zond flights." See Souiet Space Programs. 1981-8;': Space Science

Applications. Military Space Programs,,,qdministration. ResoumeBurden. and Master Log of Space[lights.prepared

for the Committee on Commerce, Science,and Transportation, US Senate.101stCongress, I st sess (Washington,

DC: US Government Printing Office, April 1989). pp 384,386. Curiously, on January 3-4, 1969,news of a Soviet

launch failure that was apparently detected by NORAD was "leaked" to the Western press.The failure was said to

haveoccurred becauseof a second-stage malfunction. SeeGatland, Robot Explorers, p, 144.

84. Boris Arkadyevich Dorofeyev, "History of the Deveiopmentof the NI-L3 Moon Program," presented at

the 10th International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Moscow State University,

Moscow. Russia,June20 27. 1995.

85. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working for." There was a complete fueling exerciseinvolving the NI stack

in October 1968 that lasted ten days, See Maj.-Gen. Valery Aleksandrovich Menshikov, "The Toilers of the

Cosmodrome: The Test Personnel of Baykonur" (English title). Auiatsiya i kosmonautika no I (January 1993):

39-41 The flight version of the N I. booster 3L, was moved to the pad in November 1968, but it was replacedbriefly

by the I MI again

619
680

Engineers were unable to remedy the

interface problems until December 1968,

forcing another two- to three-month delay, g

few days before the Soyuz 4/5 missions, on

January 9, 1969, amid discussions about a

post-Apollo 8 strategy, gfanasyev convened

another meeting of the N I State

Commission. It was unusual for a minister to

head a State Commission, and Afanasyev's

appointment to the position underlines the

importance with which space program head

Ustinov viewed the N I rocket program. After

hearing a number of reports, gfanasyev set the

launch date for the first N I as February

18, 1969, within the launch window for a

lunar-orbital flight. The proceedings were

interrupted by an alarming report from

Baykonur Cosmodrome Commander Maj.

General Aleksandr A. Kurushin, who refused

to agree to a launch of the rocket because of

many "deficiencies" in both the ground

equipment and the rocket itself. After pressure

from most of the members of the State

Commission, including gfanasyev and Mishin,

as well as Party Central Committee representaThe first Nt rocket being brought _o the pad [or launch

in February t969 ([des o[,Z]si[ Siddiqi)

tive Stroganov, Kurushin backed down and promised to have these "deficiencies" removed by the

slated launch date? ° Needless to say, Kurushin's initial outburst did little to instill confidence in a

success.

The final prelaunch cycle for the first N I launch began in mid-January 1969. The twenty-eightday program involved 2,300 people from dozens of different organizations and fifty tank wagons for

liquid oxygen fueling of the rocket. _ The majority of the site workers were Army conscripts, who, as

one participant recalls, had come from backgrounds unrelated to the space program:

The test officers at the time were principally 35-40 years old, without higher education

and came [rom all ouer. Tankers and artillerymen, pilots and sailors, combat engineers

and chemists--in short, it would be easier to list who was not there--were encountered

among them. 8_

The men completed their job on time. On February 3, booster no. 3L was slowly moved

from the assembly-testing building to the launch pad on a special crawler-transporter. At the

pad itself, the giant booster was lifted to a vertical position and held up by a sixteen-meter support ring with forty-eight explosive bolts at the base of the first stage, The mass of the booster

and its L3S payload was exactly 2,772,103 kilograms. By the time of its first launch, models

off the first-stage engines for the rocket had accumulated over I00,000 seconds of test operating

time on the ground. _

86 Kamanin. "1FeelSorry for Our Guys." no. 13.

87. J. Villain. "A Brief History of Baykonur." presentedat the 45th Congressof the International ,qstronautical

Federation.IA/q-94-hq,q2. I. 614.Jerusalern.Israel.October 9-14, 1994

88 Menshikov. "The Toilers of the Cosmodrome.' p. 40.

89 The L3Sdesignation was confusingly applied to the payload for the first two N Is, which consisted of

Blok G, Blok D, and the 7K LIS lunar orbiter

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

The assault on the Moon in February

1969 began with the launch of the first Ye-8

lunar rover. P, Proton booster lifted off successfully at 0948 hours Moscow Time on

February 19 with its payload, Ye-8 vehicle no.

201 and its translunar-injection Blok D stage.

f3s Babakin's engineers watched the rising

rocket, just over fiEy-one seconds after

launch, the payload abruptly fell apart, and

the booster eventually exploded. The debris

from the accident, including portions of the

lunar rover, fell fifteen kilometers from the

launch site. f3 later investigation found that

the source of the problem had been a new

payload fairing designed and built specifically for the rover payload. Aerodynamic vibrations during passage through maximum

dynamic pressure tore the shroud off at its

weakest tension points. The debris tore into

the lower stages of the rocket, resulting in a

massive explosion at T+54 seconds. Despite

an intensive search of the debris area, engineers were unable to find the Polonium-210

radioactive isotope in the rover payload

designed for heating the spacecraft on the

Moon. Unconfirmed rumor has it that soldiers at Tyura-Tam discovered the isotope

This photograph was taken moments before the launch o[

the first HI, booster no 3L, in february 1969.

(copyright Quest)

package and used it to heat their barracks during the bitter winter of 1968-692 ° With two failures

out of two Proton launch attempts in the year, space officials turned their attention to the longawaited first launch of the N I rocket.

The launch was originally set for February 20, but it was delayed to the afternoon of February

21 because of poor weather conditions at the launch site2' Boris g. Dorofeyev, Mishin's deputy

for testing the N I, directed all the launch preparations: he would perform the same on-site technical direction carried out by the late Leonid A. Voskresenskiy back in the 1940s and 1950s. Before

the launch, a senior engineer ceremoniously broke a bottle of champagne on the main body of

the N l's launch transporter; 2 It was a clear and cold day at the Baykonur Cosmodrome, and

prelaunch operations proceeded without delays. Almost four years late, the most powerful rocket

ever built by humans fired its engines precisely on time at 1218 hours, 7 seconds Moscow Time

on February 2 I, 1969. The thirty first-stage engines generated a total of approximately 4,590 tons

of thrust, and within thirteen seconds, the N I soared off the pad and headed out into the skies

with its L3S payload. Deputy Chief Designer Chertok vividly described the launch of this monster:

90. Konstantin Lantratov, "Anniversaries: 25 YearsFromLunokhod-I" (EngIish title), Novosti kosmonavtiki 24 (November 19-December 2, 1995): 70-79; O. A. Sokolov, "The Raceto the Moon: A Look from Baykonur,"

presented at the 45th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, 1_/_-94-2.1.610;N. G. Babakin, _. N.

Banketov, and V. N. Smorkalov, _ N_ Babakin: zhizn i deyatelnost (Moscow: Adamant, 1996), p. 57: Kamanin. "1

FeelSofty for Our Guys," no. 131I. Lisov, "Launch and Flight of the 'Mars 96' Station" English title), Novosti

kosmonautiki 22-23 (October 21-November 17, 1996): 48.

9 I. Igor Afanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret" (English title), Kryla rodiny no. 9 (September 1993): 13-16.

9Z 'cad. Pikul, "The History of Technology:How Vv'eConceded the Moon: A Lookby One of the Participants

of the Nt Drama at the ReasonsBehind It" (English title). Izobretatel i ratsionalizator no. 8 (August 1990): 20-2 I_

681
682

Even i[ you have attended our Soyuz

launches dozens of times, you can't

help being excited. But the image of

an N I launch is quite incomparable.

Ztll 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: "_o on, go up, take off. ....

And go it did, despite the fact that between

three and ten seconds of ignition, the Engine

Operation Control (KORD) system erroneously

shut down two first-stage engines. All seemed

well until T+70 seconds, when the KORD system abruptly shut down all the engines of the

first stage, well before planned engine cutoff.

This let the behemoth fly upward to an altitude

of twenty-seven kilometers and then gradually

descend on a trajectory that led to impact about

fifty kilometers from the launch site. The emergency rescue system was activated after engine

cutoff, and the descent apparatus of the 7K-L IS

spacecraft landed without incident thirty-two to

thirty-five kilometers from the pad area? 4

Because it was the first launch attempt of a

booster whose first stage had not been tested on

the ground, engineers were not unduly discouraged by the failure, although the timing of the

loss, as NgS_ was gearing to land on the Moon,

perhaps lent a disheartening tenor to the recovery operation. Military-Industrial Commission

Chairman Smirnov was apparently satisfied with

the performance of the rocket, and Mishin himself reassured his engineers that "this is normal

for a first launch. "_ Official historians of

Mishin's design bureau were more specific:

Despite the accident, this launch confirmed the correctness of the selected

dynamic scheme, the dynamics of the

launch, the control processes of the

These movie stills pieced together show the launch of

the first N! Moon rocket in February 1969

(copyright VideoCosmos Co, via Don PealerQuest)

93. SergeyLeskov,"How We Didn't Get to the Moon" (English title), Izuestiya, gugust 18. 1989,p, 3

94. Marinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Lunar Flights": Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Our Guys,"

no. 13.

95. M. Rebrov,"But Things Were LikeThat--Top Secret:ThePainful Fortuneof the N I ProJect"(Englishtitle),

KrasnayaZvezda. January 13, 1990,p. 4: Pikul,"The History of Technology_"

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

[booster] with the aid of coordinated engine thrusts, and allowed the receipt of experimental data on the loads on the [booster] and its precision, the influence of acoustical

loads on the rocket and the launch system and [on its] operational characteristics in

realistic conditions2 6

It was clear after the launch that during the forty-first second of flight, one of the thirty

engines of the first stage had failed and ignited others around it. As designers gathered after the

launch, Mishin seemed to believe that the failure was probably caused by a malfunction in the

turbogenerators, which provided electric current for the booster. First Deputy Chief Designer of

the All-Union Scientific-Research institute for Electro-Mechanics Nikolay N. Sheremetyevskiy

recalls that Mishin squarely laid the blame on him before leaving the launch site. Later analysis

of telemetry proved that Mishin was wrong. In fact, when the turbogenerators were recovered

from the debris, both units were still in operating condition27

Senior N I engineers were able to report on the results of a preliminary investigation on the

causes of the failure by March II, 1969. The critical KORD system had clearly failed to meet the

required standards for flight operation. As designers reported, the KORD system had not passed

acoustical testing: an analysis of the reliability of the system had shown that KORD could not

react to all possible conditions. As reconstructed from telemetry and an analysis of debris, 0.37

seconds prior to engine ignition, the KORD system shut down engine no. 12, and then by its

logic, the opposite engine no. 24, although both were functioning without problem. Thus, by

the time the rocket lifted off from the pad, twenty-eight of the thirty engines were

firing: the remaining engines compensated fully for the absence of the two shutdown units and

kept the booster aimed perfectly on a nominal trajectory. At T+5.5 seconds, excessive vibrations

in the gas generator of engine no. 12 caused a line connected to a gas-pressure sending unit

behind the turbine to rupture. The engine was beset by a second problem at T+23.3

seconds when, after the throttling down of thrust to reduce loads during maximum dynamic

pressure, a two-millimeter-diameter pipe for measuring the fuel pressure in front of the engine's

gas generator punctured. Consequently, "acid" gas with a temperature of 340 degrees

Centigrade began mixing with the propellant, forming an extremely flammable solution.

Eventually, at T+54.5 seconds, a fire broke out in the tail section of the first stage. Ground

telemetry clearly showed a sharp rise in temperature at that point in engine nos. 3, 2 I, 22, 23,

and 24. gt T+68.67 seconds, the fire burned through the cable insulation, thus causing a short

circuit in the I,O00-hertz direct-current and alternate-current circuits of the KORD system, which

issued a command to shut down all the remaining twenty-eight engines of the first stage2_

96. Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya,p, 257,

97. Yu.g. Mozzhorin,el aL,eds..Dofogiu kosrnos:] (Moscow:MAI, 1992),p, 195.

98 Afanasyev,"N I: AbsolutelySecret":JeffreyM. Lenorovitz,"TrudOfferingLiquid-FueledEnginesFromNI

MoonRocketProgram.",quiationWeek& SpaceTechnology,March30, 1992,pp. 21-22. An excerpt fromthe official

accident investigationof the 3L launchis includedin R Dolgopyatov,B,Dorofeyev.and S, Kryukov,"Atthe Readers'

Request:The N I Project"(Englishtitle),ltuiatsiya i kosmonautikano. 9 (September 1992):34-37, There are conflictingversionsof theaccident.Onecommonlyquotedscenariois thatat T+66seconds,"theelevatedvibrationscaused

byacousticalloadsrupturedalinethatfeedsoxidizerto thegasgeneratorof oneof the[engines]:theleakingliquidoxy

gen started a firein the aft section." See_fanasyev. "UnknownSpacecraft."The "elevatedvibrations"arose becauseat

T+65-66seconds,thefirst-stagengines"throttledbackto fullpower,butmuchstrongerthanexpectedcausingstrong

vibration[s].Theoxidiserpipelineof oneenginebrokespillingliquidoxygen.The KORDcontrolsystemwasunableto

shuttheenginedownquickenoughanda firebrokeout." SeeV. A. Lebedev,"TheNI-L3 Programme,"Spaceflight34

(September1992):288-90:I, A. MarininandS.Kh.Shamsutdinov,"SovietProgramsForPilotedFlightto the Moon"

(Englishtitle),Zemtyai uselennayano. 5(September-October1993):77-85.Theofficialhistoryof theKorolevdesign

bureaustatesthat therewasa failurein engineno. 2 becauseof high-frequencyoscillationsin its gasgenerator.As a

result,a pressurecarbinepunctured,allowing thepropellantsto causeafirein thetail endof the rocket,Thefiredisruptedtheoperationof theon-boardcablenetworkof the KORDsystem,whichissuedacommandat T+68.7seconds

to shut off all the engines See Semenov.ed., RaketnoKosmieheskayaKorporotsiya,p. 257.

683
684

Overall. it was clear that the main problem for the booster was the lack of integrated

ground testing for the first stage. In addition, there had been inadequate testing of the

first-stage engines because of the absence of vibration stands. The space industry's leading

research and development institution, TsNllMash, recommended the introduction of a burnmonitoring system on the engines and stages prior to assembly as part of a flight model, but

these recommendations were apparently rejected because of the lack of time and resources--a

familiar reasoning offered throughout the 1960s. 99 Mishin and Kuznetsov introduced some

cosmetic changes to the following flight models of the NI, including the deletion of the

pressure sending unit and its pipe behind the turbine. The KORD system's main network was

moved from the aft compartment into the intertank section. Additional improvements included

adding new ventilation openings below the fuel pipeline covers to allow external air into the

inside compartment. '°° Booster no. 4L was moved out of the queue of flights to allow for the

cosmetic modifications as well as more substantive ones to improve lifting capacity. The next

N I launch would instead use booster no. 5L.

To the Finish Une

In March and May 1969, NASA performed two highly successful Apollo missions, Apollo 9

and Apollo I0, respectively, bringing the United States ever so closer to landing astronauts on

the surface of the Moon. On Apollo 9, astronauts had thoroughly tested the Lunar Module in

complex rendezvous and docking operations in Earth orbit. Such activities were repeated in lunar

orbit on Apollo I0. In the Soviet canon, such missions would have been out of the question in

1969 because none of its lunar spacecraft were flightworthy: Chief Designer Yangel's engineers

static-fired the important Blok Ye engine of the Soviet lunar lander for the first time only in

February 1969. _°' Through the dampening enthusiasm, an increasingly small group of cosmonauts continued to train for lunar landings at both the Yu, A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training

Center or at the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute, both located near Moscow. On March

28, 1969, veteran cosmonaut Bykovskiy was appointed the chief of the lunar department of the

cosmonaut detachment. '°9 By June 18, this department included only eight men out of the original group of approximately twenW-five from early 1968 who had trained for lunar landing missions. The eight included three Air Force officers training to land on the Moon--Valeriy F.

Bykovskiy, Yevgeniy V. Khrunov, and gleksey g. Leonov--and five others training to remain in

lunar orbit during surface operations--Oleg G. Makarov, Viktor I. Patsayev, Nikolay N.

Rukavishnikov, gnatoliy F. Voronov, and gleksey S. Yeliseyev. '°_

The training was most challenging for the three preparing to land on the Moon. A dynamic simulator, built on the basis of an Mi-9 helicopter (itself modified from the Mi-8), allowed

the cosmonauts to train for the actual landing phases. Having finished helicopter school, the

trainees flew the helicopters to simulate worst-case scenarios for landing. Leonov recalls: "I

99 Rebrov, "But Things Were Like That," The article does not explicitly mention TsNIIMash, but rather

"the head institute," which was usually a euphemism for TsNIIMash.

100, Afanasyev. "N I : Absolutely Secret"; Alexander Yasinsky,"The N- I Rocket Programme," Spaceflight 35

(July 1993): 228-29: Marinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Piloted Flight to the Moon,"

I01. V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov. and V Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy t3entr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZIKBYu, 1994), p. 77. The tests were conducted at the giant testing facilities at Zagorsk

belonging to Nil KhimMash.

102. Voevodin. V.SFI053The cosmonaut detachment as a whole was split up into different departments,

including orbital space stations (headed by G. S. Shonin), spaceships (R R. Popovich), air-space systems (G. S

Titov). and candidate cosmonauts (P. I. Belyayev).

103 Kamanin. "I FeelSorry for Our Guys," no. 13.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

made nine very difficult landings in that helicopter with the engines cut. Normally pilots

don't do such landings because they usually

end in a catastrophe, but we did it. We cosmonauts and pilots perfected the art."'°_ They also

took training courses at the M M. Gromov

Flight-Research Institute to master the ability to

choose a landing site in the shortest time with

minimal propellant reserves, while evaluating

vertical velocity, to enable a survivable landing

on the ground. After TsKBEM engineers had

completed their preliminary landing simulations

of the LK at the testing station at Zagorsk, the

cosmonauts were invited to participate in landing trials on fake lunar landscape in specially

built landing simulators at the Kiev Institute of

Civil Aviation Engineers.

The training eventually had cosmonauts

wearing the Krechet-94 lunar suit in simulated

lunar gravity. One of the fears among engineers

was the possibility of the cosmonaut falling

over on the surface and being unable to get up

in the low gravity in the cumbersome lunar suit.

To circumvent this problem, engineers came up

with an ingenious solution consisting of a large

Cosmonaut ,ZttekseyLeonou appears here in training

for tunar landing approaches using a specially

equipped helicopter. This photo dates from around

1969 (N71S.,Ztphoto)

hula-hoop-type ring that would be attached to the waist of the spacesuit before disembarking

on the lunar surface. The larger part of the hoop was at the back side so as not to interfere with

arm movements. The cosmonauts participated in sessions in special aircraft that simulated onesixth gravity during which they "fell down" on their backs and simply rolled over and lifted

themselves up. Another concern was depressurization after launch from the Moon. In a grueling exercise carried out in 1968, an Air Force captain dressed in a cumbersome pressure suit

spent twelve torturous hours in an LOK cabin placed in a pressure chamberJ °5

The cosmonauts may have been engaged in intensive training to land on the Moon, but if

the barometer of public statements from Soviet officials was any indication, the USSR was very

confused about its next destination. Academician Blagonravov, the veneered doyen of Soviet

space spokespersons, intimated in a statement reported by TASS on March 14, 1969, that there

was still much work to be done before a Soviet lunar landing. Yet less than a month later on

April 9, recently flown cosmonaut Shatalov told the Hungarian press that the Soviet Union

would need "six, seven, and perhaps more months" of preparations before a landing on the

Moon. He added with confidence that "who makes the better preparations will get to the Moon

first, and it is our wish to do so.' .... L3 trainee teonov was also unequivocal in his belief in the

power of Soviet science:

104. "The Russian Right Stuff: The Dark Side of the Moon," NOV,q television show. #1808, WGBH-TV.

Boston, February 27, 1991.The M. M. Gromov Flight-ResearchInstitute had put in a request for an MJ4 helicopter

to train for lunar landings asearly asMarch 8, t965. SeeN E Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos:kniga uloraya. 1964-1966gg

(Moscow: Infortekst IF, 1997), p. 2[0.

105. Lardier, L'l]stronautique Soui(tique. p. 176; Afanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft": Kuznetsov. "The Flight

That Did Not Occur": S. Leskov, Kak my ne sletali na lunu (Moscow: Panorama, 1991), p. 12; V. M Filin,

Vospominaniya o lunnom korablye (Moscow: Kultura. 1992), pp. 60-6 I. The Air Forcecaptain was Zhon Gridunov

106. Souiet SpacePrograms, 1966-70, p. 372.

685
686

The Soviet Union is also making preparations for a manned flight to the Moon. like the

._lpollo program of the United States. The Soviet Union will be able to send men to

the Moon this year or in 1970. We are confident that pieces of rocks picked from the

surface of the Moon by Soviet cosmonauts will be put on display in the Soviet pavilion

during the Japan World Exposition in Osaka in 19 70.'°7

Leonov's somewhat misplaced confidence was astonishing because it came quite possibly

at the utmost nadir of the Soviet space program in the 1960s. Removed from actual decision

making within the Soviet space program, the cosmonauts were in general prone to more

dramatic and often outlandish statements than older officials at conferences. However. even the

cosmonauts must have surely known that there would be no Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon

in 1969 or indeed in 1970.

The mainstream of Soviet public pronouncements was, however, turning to Earth-orbital

space stations as the "mother lode" of future operations. Followin 8 the intensive high-level

discussions in January 1969, the Soviets persistently began to emphasize two major directions:

automated lunar exploration and permanent space stations in Earth orbit a la Tsiolkovskiy.

Statements from academicians, anonymous chief designers, cosmonauts, and official radio

commentators proliferated into the new Soviet propaganda offensive even before an American

had set foot on the Moon. '°_ A third option, piloted Martian missions, would be emphasized in

the future as the technology became available. These statements were the first in a long series

in 1969 to bombard the Western media with the idea that the Soviet space program was

neither politically motivated {which is why the "race to the Moon" was unimportant) nor

narrow {which was why Earth-orbital stations were being planned). These pronouncements

were hard to counter because real Soviet intentions had always been cloaked in mystery. But

the Soviets themselves were fully aware of this obfuscation of truth. Air Force Aide Kamanin

wrote in his diary during the Apollo I0 mission of the "unrestrained lying" by Soviet officials

on the issue of Soviet intentions with respect to the Moon. He added bitterly, "We have come

to the end to drink the bitter chalice of our failure and be witnesses to the distinguished triumph of the U.S.A. in the conquest of the Moon." ,09

For Soviet government and Communist Party leaders, the impending humiliation was a

hard pill to swallow. In early April 1969, Communist Party General Secretary Brezhnev invited

Vasiliy P. Mishin to report on the work of the Soviet piloted space program during his

three-and-a-half-year tenure as chief designer of the leading Soviet space enterprise. Mishin

painstakingly explained the root reasons for the poor showing of the Soviet program in

comparison to Apollo--all symptoms evident to any high-level space official in the Soviet

Union. There was the institutional disarray in the organization of the space industry. Although

there were many multi-profile design bureaus, there were severe shortages of subcontractor

institutions. The production plants were badly organized with poor quality control, and each

plant handled too many different production lines and was not specialized enough.

Most tellingly perhaps, Mishin also touched on ideological reasons: he emoted on the lack of

material incentives among workers in fulfilling plant orders of experimental models of articles."°

Among the four major points discussed at the meeting was an agreement to limit the L I

circumlunar project to only further automated flights, thus unequivocally terminating any

hopes of cosmonauts flying around the Moon in the near future. As far as the N I-L3 program,

107. Ibid., p. 374.

108 For several statements from the period, see ibid., pp. 373-75.

109. Kamanin, "1 Feel Sorry [or Our Guys," no. 13.

II0 Gorin interview, November 18, 1997.

CHALLENGE TO LI_POLLO
T

I FINAL LRP TO THE MOON

Mishin could only report that a piloted landing would be preceded by a complete robotic mission, including landing and takeoff from the Moon. Future N I missions would include the docking of spaceships in Earth orbit using liquid hydrogen stages, such as Blok S, before embarking

on the voyage to the Moon. Repeating a mantra that had been uttered dozens of times by both

Korolev and Mishin, the latter asked for more funding to pursue liquid hydrogen research, which,

despite the best efforts of many, had enjoyed only lukewarm support from the government.

Mishin's two final proposals to Brezhnev involved the creation of new generations of space

weapons for ballistic missile defense using the N I as a launch vehicle, and advanced flights to

the Moon, Mars, Venus, and the outer planets. All of these were in the future. As far as the race

to the Moon was concerned, there would be little to show from the Soviet side in 1969.

One of the more common stories proliferating in the Western media during the summer of

1969 was that the Soviets would do something spectacular before the first Apollo landing mission, Apollo I I. After the unqualified success of Apollo I0 in May 1969, NASA was looking at

a lunar landing flight in July, with the ideal launch date being July 16. The question was: Could

the Soviets do something to preempt the climax of the greatest American adventure of the

1960s? Nothing that the Soviets had accomplished in 1968 or 1969 had indicated that they had

even a modicum of capability to attempt a full-scale lunar landing. Evidence now suggests that

in June 1969, Chief Designer Mishin's most optimistic timetable for a first Soviet lunar landing

was "by the end of 1970.' .... Wernher yon Braun claimed in early June that it was still possible

for the USSR to reach the Moon before the United States if the Apollo I I mission was delayed,

and he strongly believed that the Soviets would undertake piloted lunar flight in the "latter part

of 1969" using a giant booster. '_' The CIA clearly had less confidence in Soviet capabilities than

yon Braun. In a top-secret "National Intelligence Estimate" issued a month before the launch of

Apollo I I, the CIA predicted that "we estimate that a [Soviet] manned lunar landing is not likely to occur before 1972 although late 1971 cannot be ruled out.' .... But yon Braun also referred

to the most widely discussed scenario: that in the few remaining weeks leading up to the launch

of Apollo I I, a robotic spacecraft would scoop up some soil and bring it back to Earth.

Prompted by Apollo 8, the Soviet Communist Party and government had decreed in January

1969 to accelerate their robotic lunar exploration program. Chief Designer Babakin's engineers

had done an outstanding job of producing at least five flight models of the Ye-8-5 sample return

spacecraft by the summer of 1969 in sufficient time to beat Apollo I I. Apart from the fact that

the Ye-8 class series of heaw lunar probes had not been tested in space even once, the engineers

had to address another possible problematic issue: the poor performance of the UP,-5OOK Proton

booster. By the end of April 1969, four consecutive launches of the rocket had failed to deposit

their payloads into Earth orbit, let alone into deep space. ''4 Of the total thirteen launches of the

three-stage UR-500K variant (most with a fourth stage), seven had been unequivocal failures. In

this context, the State Commission for the L I circumlunar program met on May 29, 1969, to

address "the Proton factor." While none of the failures pointed to errors in design, they did not

exonerate quality control procedures during manufacturing. Designers Chelomey, Glushko, and

Konopatov promised State Commission Chairman Tyulin that the next booster would not fail,

but confidence was at a high premium at that point.'" Perfect operation of the Proton booster

III. Kamanin. "1 FeelSorry for Our Guys." no 13 Kamanin mentions this in his diary entry for June 19,

1969

112. NASA Scienceand Technology Division, 7]stronaut_cs end _eronautics. 1959: Ohror_ologyQ/_Sc_ence,

T_'chnology.and Policy (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4014. 1970), p. 170

ll3. Cl. S. Central Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate I t 1-69: The Soviet SpaceProgram,r'

Washington, DC.June 19, 1969,p. 20, asdeclassified in 1997 by the CIA Historical Review Program.

114. Of the four launches, one carrieda 7K LI (in January), one carried a Ye8 lunar rover (in February),and

two carried M-69 Mars probes (in March and April).

115. Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Qur Guys," no. 13.

681
688

wasparticularlycriticalatthetime,notbecauseofitsuseinthenow-dyingpilotedcircumlunar

program,butbecausetheProtonwastolaunchtheYe-8-5lunarscoopertotheMoon.

TheconfluenceofactivityinboththeSovietandU.S.spaceprogramsduringthesummerof

1969wasunprecedented.Babakin'slunarscooperhadtwochancestoflytotheMoon,inthe

JuneandJulylunarlaunchwindows,gt thesametime,MishinwasalmostreadytobringthesecondflightmodeloftheNt rockettothelaunchpad.Iftheattemptwassuccessful,therocket

wouldsendthe7K-LISspacecraftonanambitiousfullyautomatedlunar-orbitalflight,followed

bythevessel'sreturntoEarth.NASAwould,ofcourse,launchperhapsthemostimportantmissioninthehistoryofAmericaneffortstoexplorespace.Theracewasnowinitsfinalap.

Ye-8-5spacecraftno.402waslaunchedfromTyura-TamonJunet4,1969,toreclaimsome

gloryfortheSovietspaceprogram.Ifallwentwell.asampleoflunarsoilwouldbebackon

Sovietterritoryinalittlemorethanelevendays.Unfortunately,thespateofProtonfailuresdid

notabate.Afterthethirdstagehadcompletedfiring,thefourthBlokDstagewasto fireto

insertthepayloadintoEarthorbit.Becauseofadisruptionofanon-boardcircuit,hecontrol

systemfailed,preventingtheBlokDenginefromfiring.Thepayloadinsteadtracedanarcthat

depositeditintothePacificOcean.''_Theoddsweredecreasingdaybydaynow.Babakinstill

hadfourmorescoopersleft,andonecouldbelaunchedinthesecondweekofJuly1969fora

repeatattempt.AfterfivestraightlaunchfailuresoftheProton,engineersandofficialscouldbe

forgivenforharboringapessimisticattitudeonthechancesofsuccess.

ThefocusoftheracetotheMoonnowshiftedtotheNI rocket.ByearlyApril,basedon

thepaceof preparations,MishinhadsetMay30asthedatefortransportingthenextflightreadyN3,boosterno.5Lfromtheassembly-testingbuildingtothelaunchpad.Thelaunch

wouldbeduringthelunarlaunchwindowinJune,onJune13-15.1969.Thepreparationsfor

thelaunchwerefarmorespeedythanusual.Oneparticipantrecalls:

The first launch of the N I (article 3L) aroused dual feelings among those contributing to

the events: on the one side [Central Committee] Secretary D. F. Ustinou demanded acceleration of the launch of the "fifth--article 5L." The commotion at the plant rose extraordinarily. The issuing of the complete equipment and nodes for the assembly of the N I

managed to be on the current schedule, the fulfillment o] which was overseen personally by the Deputy Minister of Defense of the country. On the other side, people from a multitude of commissions proposed some highly practical [modifications] .... However, the

events unfolded so fast that many of the conceived measures for the 3L rocket simply

physically did not have the time to be "spread out.' ....

The inevitable delays in the schedule meant that Mishin rescheduled the launch of the rocket

from the June launch window to the one in July, just three weeks before Apollo I I. It would be

a truly extraordinary few weeks in July, with plans for the launch of the second N I, the second

Ye-8-5 lunar scooper, and, of course, Apollo I I.

The launch of NI booster no. 5L was set for the night of July 3, 1969. The day before,

there were rumors from unofficial sources in Moscow that something spectacular was imminent, but all these reports predicted a sample return mission on or about July 10. '_ Given the

level of activity at the Baykonur Cosmodrome, it is testament to the power of the Soviet shroud

116. Ibid K Lantratov. "The 'Late' Lunar Soil" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 15 {July 16 29, 1994):

41 43: Sokoiov, "The Raceto the Moon"

117 Mikhail Rudenko, "Four Steps Fromthe Moon" (English title), Moskouskaya prauda, July t9. t994, p

I0. The quote is from Vadim Pikui.

118. Souiet Space Programs. I966-70. p 374: NASA Science and Technology Division,/qstronautics and

,Zteronautics t969, p 195.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

Two NI Moon rockets appear on the pads at Tyura-Tam in early July 1969. In the foreground is booster number

5L with a Junctional payload [or a lunar-orbiting mission. In the background is the I M I ground test mock-up

of the NI for rehearsing, parallel launch operations. (files of,rlsif Siddiq!)

689
69O

This is the spectacular night launch o[ the second 191booster in July 1969 Within seconds, the rocket

collapsed back onto the pad. destroying the entire pad area in a massive explosion.

(copyright VideoCosmosCo., via Don PealerQuest)

the Baykonur Cosmodrome, it is testament to the power of the Soviet shroud of secrecy that, without exception, there was not a single leak to the Western media on any impending launch of a giant

booster from Soviet central Asia. The hubbub at Tyura-Tam was unlike anything seen in recent memory. Ministers, deputy ministers, chief designers, senior military officers, and cosmonauts had

all flown in for the launch--a final gasp for the sinking hopes of the Soviet reach for the Moon.

Valeriy P,, Menshikov, then a young lieutenant in the Strategic Missile Forces, who was duty officer

at site 112 near the N 1 pads, later provided one of the best personal accounts of that fateful night:

There were hundreds of vehicles on the roads with soldiers, officers and civilians. They

bore combat banners, documents and various materiel. The dust and heat, the roar of

the automobile engines, the human chaos, the congestion and traffic jams, the hoarse

shouts of the traffic-control personnelIall of this was reminiscent of frames from

movies of the first months of the [Second World] war. The only thing missing were

_erman dive bombers. ''_

As night fell, Menshikov ordered the launch site group to assemble and then led them away

from the rocket to a bunker close to the NI pad at site I IOP to await the launch. Like most

observers, lunar cosmonauts Leonov, Makarov, and Rukavishnikov witnessed the launch from a

distance of six to seven kilometers. Prelaunch operations began at 0600 hours Moscow Time on

119. Menshikov, "The Toilers of the Cosmodrome," p. 40

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

the morning of July 3 and continued through the day. By 1540 hours, personnel had begun

fueling the first three stages, a procedure that was completed within one hour and fifty minutes.

Fueling of the L3S payload block began in the early evening at 1900 hours. There were evidently

no serious anomalies during the ensuing countdown as the clocked ticked closer to midnight.

The N I ignited to life at exactly 2318 hours, 32 seconds Moscow Time on July 3 (it was

after midnight on July 4 at Tyura-Tam). Menshikov remembers the experience vividly:

We were all looking in the direction of the launch, where the hundred-meter pyramid of

the rocket was being readied to be hurled into space. Ignition. the flash of flame from

the engines, and the rocket slowly rose on a column of[lame. And suddenly, at the place

where it had just been, a bright fireball. Not one of us understood anything at first. ,,3

terrible purple-black mushroom cloud, so familiar from the pictures from the textbook

on weapons of mass destruction. The steppe began to rock and the air began to shake.

and all of the soldiers and officers froze. '_°

Rukavishnikov's remembrance is almost surreal: he could see the booster double over in

an explosion on the pad, but there was no sound. Those few seconds of "deathly silence"

lasted an eternity until the full roar of the launch and the ensuing explosion reached the

viewing stands. _2'The young Lieutenant Menshikov adds:

Only in the trench did I understand the sense of the expression "your heart in your

mouth." Something quite improbable was being created all around--the steppe was

trembling like a vibration test flg. thundering, rumbling, whistling, gnashing--aU mixed

together in some terrible, seemingly unending cacophony. The trench proved to be so

shallow and unreliable that one wanted to burrow into the sand so as not to hear this

nightmare.., the thick wave from the explosion passed over us, sweeping away and

leveling everything. Behind it came hot metal raining down from above. Pieces of the

rocket were thrown ten kilometers away, and large windows were shattered in structures

40 kilometers away. ,_ 400 kilogram spherical tank landed on the roof o[ the installation and testing wing. seven kilometers from the launch pad._2_

By some estimates, the strength of the explosion was close to 250 tons of TNT--not

a nuclear explosion, but certainly the most powerful explosion ever in the history of rocketry.

The booster had lifted off to a height of 200 meters before falling over and exploding on

the launch pad itself, about twenty-three seconds after launch. The emergency rescue system

fired in the nick of time, at T+ 14.5 seconds, to shoot the descent apparatus of the payload two

kilometers from the pad, thus saving it from destruction. Remarkably, no doubt because of the

stringent safety precautions, there were no fatalities or injuries, although the physical devastation was phenomenal. When the first teams arrived near the pad in the early-morning hours of

July 4, there was only carnage left behind:

We arrived at the fueling station and were horrified--the windows and doors were

smashed out, the iron entrance gate was askew, the equipment was scattered about

120. Ibid.

12i. Rudenko,"FourStepsFromtheMoon," p. I0.

122. Menshikov,"TheToilersof theCosmodrome,"p. 40.

691
692

with the light o[ dawn and was turned to stone--the steppe was literally strewn with

dead animals and birds. Where so many o[ them came [rom and how they appeared in

such quantities at the station I still do not understand.'2_

By 0800 hours the morning of July 4, Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev

had convened a meeting of the State Commission and began the long process of determining

the reasons behind the disaster by looking at films of the launch and analyzing telemetry,

Afanasyev also telephoned Brezhnev and Kosygin, the latter of whom was particularly dissatisfied with the results. Perhaps most sobering of all was Chief Designer Barmin's assessment

on the destruction of the launch area. The right launch pad at site I IOP was completely

destroyed; the explosive force also displaced the 145-meter-tall service tower from its rails and

destroyed all the special ground equipment of the launch installation, including a lightning

arrester. The top two and a half floors of the five-story underground pad support structure had

collapsed. '_ The left launch pad at site I IOL had remained unscathed, g second NI had in

fact been mounted at the pad during the failed launch presumably to rehearse dual launches

planned for later in the lunar program. Barmin believed that restoration of the destroyed

complex would be faster and cheaper than building a completely new one.

To pursue an investigation of the accident, Afanasyev created a commission headed by

Chief Designer Mishin: this commission consisted of seven subcommissions for particular areas

of the N I rocket.':" The stress of the previous few months of relentless work seem to have taken

their toll on the fifty-two-year-old Mishin; at a meeting three days after the disaster, he suffered

serious heart trouble, although he was apparently back at work very soon after. Beginning on

July 4 and continuing through the waning weeks of july, the commission focused on malfunctions in the KORD engine control system. It was immediately clear after the accident that at least

five engines had been turned off within one second of ignition. According to early data. KORD

turned off all engines save one, engine no. 18, about ten seconds into the mission. Engineers

also detected early on a short circuit in an oxygen line in the area of two other engines, nos.

8 and 9. But the question remained: Why had KORD shut the engines down in the first place?

By July I I. a researcher from the P. I. Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Motor Building was

able to report that perhaps a foreign object had entered an NK-I5 engine's oxygen pump.

causing a cascade of failures. By the time of Mishin's visit to Kuybyshev on July 16 for

123 Ibid. p. 40. g US. CORONA photo-reconnaissance satellite photographed the aftereffects of the pad

explosion by earlyAugust 1969.One such picture, taken on CORONA mission 1107during pass 169on August 3,

1969, has been published. Seethe back cover of £uest 4(2) (Summer 1995) CORONA information was probably

the primary basisfor a description of the NI launch lailure in a top secretCIA document from March 1970 SeeU.S

Central Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate I I 1-69:The SovietSpaceProgram," Washington. DC.,

March 26, 1970,p I, as declassified in 1997by the CIA Historical Review Program News o[ the disaster eventually leaked out into the open media. The first revelations emerged on November 17, 1969. simultaneously in Great

Britain and the United States See Stuart Auerbach, "Soviet Moon Rocket Exploded in Test," kVashington Post.

November [ 8. 1969, p. A t ; "Soviets Suffer Setbacksin Space," Auiation Week & Space Technology,November 17,

I969, pp 26 27: "Disaster at Tyuratam," Time November 28, 1969, p. 27. Curiously, the February 1969 launch

attempt was never detected byWestern intelligence, although they apparently did expect a launch in early 1969.See

"Countdown for BiggestRocket Yet." Newsweek, February24. 1969,p. 28: Donald C. Winston, "Soviet SpaceMay

Include Large BoosterTest," ,Ztuiation Week& Space Technology.March 10, 1969. pp. 132-33.

124 Rudenko. "Four Steps Fromthe Moon" Note that another source saysthat "all six underground levels

of the launch structure were destroyed by the explosion." SeeMarinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programs for

Piloted Flight to the Moon."

125 The subcommissions were headed by N. D. Kuznetsov (engines), G I. Degtyarenko (temperatures and

loads), A. G Iosifyan (electrical supply), V P Finogeyev(guidance and control systems), Ye V. Shabarov (launch

escapesystem), B A Dorofeyev (specialty unknown), and Kupavin and Dorofeyev (KORD).

CHALLENGE TO MI_POLLO
F_NAL LAP TO THE _OON

discussions with engine Chief DesignerKuznetsov aswell as his own First Deputy Kozlov, there were

four likely reasons for the accident out of a possible seven at the beginning of the investigation.

The search for the causes of the disaster would continue on for many months, but the

damage inflicted not only on hardware but also on the spirits of Soviet engineers on the night

of July 3, 1969, was irreparable. Kamanin wrote in his diary the day after the accident:

Yesterday the second attempt to launch the M I rocket into space was undertaken. I was

convinced that the rocket would not fly, but somewhere in the depth of my soul there

glimmered some hope for success, We are desperate for a success, especially now. when

the 7tmericans intend in a few days to land people on the Moon, and when the American

astronaut Frank Barman is our guest. But all such hopes were dispelled by the powerful

explosion o/the rocket five seconds after the "launch" command.., on its first time, the

rocket flew 23 kilometers, and did not cause harm to the launch platform and launch

site. This time it fell two kilometers [sic] from the pad and caused huge damage to the

launch site, This [ailure has put us back another one to one and a hal/years. '_

Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoliy Dobrynin had indeed invited Apollo 8 astronaut Colonel Frank Barman for a nine-day visit to the USSR.Although Barman and his family were

not considered official guests of the Soviet government, it was the first visit of an American astronaut to the country. On the night of July 4, 1969, Barman was present at the U.S. embassy's

reception to celebrate Independence Day. The timing could not have been worse for the Soviets.

Instead of being feted by reporters on a new success in space, Soviet cosmonauts were on hand,

less than twenty-four hours after the catastrophe at Tyura-Tam, glum and reticent. When asked

about the possibility of a Soviet lunar scooper timed to fly before Apollo I I, Beregovoy, Feoktistov,

and Titov declined to confirm or deny the rumors. '_ The following day, Barman visited the Gagarin

Cosmonaut Training Center, where he was received by the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief

of the Soviet Air Force Marshal Pavel S. Kutakhov and Col. General Nikolay P Kamanin, '" The

many cosmonauts attending the function could only watch in damaged pride as the NASA astronaut gave an impressive slide show of his recent flight to the Moon.

Through their despair, the Soviets had one final gasp left: a flight of the Ye-8-5 sample

return spacecraft during the july launch window. If it succeeded, the mission would vindicate

their recent abrupt emphasis on automation versus piloted flight. Even more dramatic would be

a success for the scooper if Apollo 11 failed. Such a scenario, no doubt given consideration

during those desperate weeks in early July, would have, in one fell swoop, eliminated all the

failures, explosions, and delays of the year so far.

Chief Designer Babakin's engineers prepared his spacecraft, Ye-8-5 vehicle no. 401, for

launch at the same time that workers were scouring the remains of the N I at Tyura-Tam. There

were problems with the mass of the spacecraft right up until the final days before launch.

Engineers calculated that the ascent stage of the robot, called the RYe-85, had a mass of 513.3

kilograms instead o[ the allotted 512 kilograms. After much soul searching, Babakin ordered the

deletion of one of two 1.28-kilogram radio transmitters on the ship, leaving the primary one with

no backup. It was a gutsy move, underlining the risks inherent in the mission in general. The

launch itself was a blessing. After five straight failures of the Proton launch vehicle, the rocket

lifted off on time at 0554 hours, 41 seconds Moscow Time on July 13, 1969: precious payload

was deposited on a perfect trajectory heading for the Moon. The Soviet press, announcing the

126. Kamanin, "l FeeI Sorry for Our Guys," no 13

127 James F. Clarity, "Top Soviet/5ides Observe the 4th," New York Times july 5, 1969.

128 Riabchikov, Russians in Space, pp. 265-66.

693
694

mission as Luna 15, merely stated that the spacecraft would study circumlunar space, the

Moon's gravitational field, and the chemical composition of lunar rocks, and would carry out

surface photography. '29

The world's eyes and ears, however, were not on the Soviet spacecraft, but on the three

American men who set off for the Moon on July 16, just three days after the launch of Luna

15. For a brief moment, Apollo II astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin

E. Aldrin. Jr., represented not only NASA and not just simply the United States, but, in the

justifiably hyperbolic language of the day, all humanity itself. But there was also a more earthly aspect of the mission, too: they carried the baton on the last lap of the "space race,"

inaugurated by the Soviet Sputnik twelve years previously. This more political dimension had

gradually receded from the foreground as it seemed that the Soviets had, for reasons unclear,

relinquished their claim to answer President Kennedy's challenge, For Soviet space engineers,

however_ the "space race" as a living artifact was far more imposing in 1969 than to their

counterparts across the ocean. Their last hopes were pinned on Luna 15 much more than

anyone would care to admit at the time.

The responsibility of directing the Luna 15 mission fell on the shoulders of First Deputy

Minister of General Machine Building Georgiy A. Tyulin, the fifty-four-year-old retired artillery

general whose career in the missile and space industry had now spanned more than twentyfive years. Tyulin, as chair of Luna 15's State Commission. ran into trouble with the spacecraft

after only one day of flight. Controllers detected unusually high temperatures in the propellant

tanks of the $5.61 engine, which would be used for takeoff from the lunar surface after the

collection of the lunar sample. With the specter of a possible explosion of the entire engine

complex en route to the Moon, Tyulin assembled all the senior program engineers, including

Chief Designer Babakin. After a quick analysis, some participants proposed a seat-of-the-pants

method of turning the spacecraft in such a way as to keep the suspect tank in the Sun's

shadow at all times. Despite some acrimonious exchanges and stiff resistance from engineers,

1-yulin sided with trying the unorthodox procedure: telemetry later showed that the tank

temperature stabilized at acceptable levels. '_''

Luna 15 fired its main engine to enter lunar orbit at 1300 hours Moscow Time on July I 7.

Engineers planned two major orbital corrections prior to landing on the Moon. The first (Kill)

on July 18 was to bring the spacecraft's perigee to sixteen plus or minus four kilometers

altitude. If the altitude was too high, then there would be insufficient propellant to brake

the ship down to the surface, and if it was too low, then there would not be enough time to

slow the vehicle down for a survivable landing. The second correction (KIV) on July 19 would

determine the longitude of the ascending node to posit the ship over the precise landing

corridor. The State Commission did not, however, anticipate the ruggedness of the lunar

surface, and the altimeter showed wildly varying readings for the projected landing area.

Controllers instead spent three to four days carefully analyzing incoming data. Over twenty to

twenty-two communications sessions per day, engineers laid the groundwork for carrying out

corrections, built a support system of coordinates, established thrust orientation vectors, and

carried out trajectory measurements over consecutive orbits. Two carefully prepared maneuvers

were carried out at 1608 hours on July 19 and at 1716 hours on July 20, the latter putting

the spacecraft into the planned II0- by sixteen-kilometer orbit at a retrograde inclination

of 127 degrees.'"

129 5ouiet Space Programs, 1966-70, pp. 196:Babakin, Banketov,and Smorka[ov, G' N Babakirl, p. 64.

130 Babakin. Banketov,and Smorkalov, C_ N Babakin_pp. 60-62.

131 Ibid.. pp. 62-63: Lantratov, "The 'Late' Lunar Soil." The o_bit after the [irst correction was 221 by

ninety-five kilometers.

CHRLLENGE TO i_POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

Some members of the State Commission for the Luna sample return spacecraft are shown in a photo from 1970 at

Simferepol. Sitting in the foreground/ram left to right are Commission Chairman Georgiy Tyulin. Chief Designer

Georgiy Babakin. and Minister of General Machine Building Sergey _fanasyev The tall figure standing at the back

on the right is Yuriy Koptev. the current director of the Russian Space _gency who was an engineer at the

Lavochkin design bureau at the time Sitting in the second row at left is _cademician Boris Petrov. one o/the

principal international spokespersons for the Soviet space program (copyright Asif Siddiqi)

The Western press closely followed the mission of Luna 15. Kenneth Gatland, a respected

British journalist who hosted the Apollo I1 broadcasts for British television, recalled:

Even as the Apollo II programme was on the air, and we sat before the cameras

discussing how Mail Armstrong and Edwin Aidrin would land, the Russian robot was

maneuvering in orbit. There was even the suggestion ,from one scientist that Russia might

be preparing to set down on the Moon a mooncraft capable of rescuing the Americans

if. by some accident, they were stranded on the Moon! To the delight of the TV

producers, the drama was kept up until the last. '_

Even NASA, busy as it was with Apollo t I, managed to join in the drama of the race. The

Apollo II crewmembers were kept apprised of the progress of Luna 15. There was also some

concern that Luna 15's orbit might, in an unlikely situation, interfere with that of Apollo I I.

t32. Garland, Robot &pforers, p. 145.

695
696

Astronaut Borman played a critical role in passing on detailed orbital information on Luna 15

from the Academy of Sciences to the White House, which evidently laid to rest any fears the

Apollo flight control might have had back in Houston. '_

To Western observers, the closeness of the race in lunar orbit was without precedent.

A little less than six hours after Luna 15's second and final orbital correction, the Apollo II

Lunar Module began its voyage toward the lunar surface, After a thrill-laden descent, the two

astronauts. Armstrong and Aldrin, safely put down the ungainly looking lander onto the lunar

surface at 2017 hours GMT on July 20. In Moscow, it was 2317 hours, close to midnight.

Luna 15, meanwhile, was still in orbit, as controllers pored over their data. Originally, their plan

was to put down the robot less than two hours after Apollo I I. The delays in mapping out a

correct trajectory for Luna 15, however, took their toll. Unsure of the terrain below, Tyulin

delayed the landing a full eighteen hours, awaiting a final and unanimous affirmative from his

engineers. During this no doubt demoralizing period, Nell A. Armstrong exited the Lunar

Module and set foot on the surface of the Moon.

As a mesmerized world watched the ghostly images of human beings walking on another

celestial body, Luna 15 became a footnote to history, Tyutin's State Commission finally

commanded the robot to fire its descent engine at 1847 hours Moscow Time on July 21, a

little more than two hours prior to the planned liftoff of Armstrong and Aldrin from the Moon.

it was the spacecraft's fifty-second orbit around the Moon. Controllers impatiently followed the

signals from Luna 15 as it descended swiftly to the lunar surface. Landing would be six

minutes after the beginning of powered descent. To the collective shock of all those present,

transmissions abruptly ceased four minutes after deorbit, at an altimeter reading of three kilometers. ''4 Later analysis showed that the spacecraft had unexpectedly hit the side of a mountain at a velocity of 480 kilometers per hour. The impact point was at 12° N, 60 ° E in Mare

Crisium. The Soviet news agency TASS characteristically announced that Luna 15's research

program had been completed and the spacecraft had "reached" the Moon in the "preset"

area. ,2 There was one small irony to the whole mission. Even if there had not been a critical

eighteen-hour delay in attempting a landing, and even if Luna 15 had landed, collected a soil

sample, and safely returned to Earth, its small return capsule would have touched down on

Soviet territory two hours and four minutes alter the splashdown of Apollo I I. ''_'The race had,

in fact, been over before it had begun.

Armstrong and A/drin, meanwhile, lifted off successfully, and with crewmember Collins,

headed back to Earth, splashing down safely in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969, concluding

one of the most dramatic voyages of exploration in the history of humankind. Outside the

USSR, Soviet officials were unusually magnanimous in their praise of this incredible feat, but

within the country, to their own citizens, they were less than generous. By the end of the 1960s,

official Soviet doctrine had showed a marked positive evaluation and reportage of American

space achievements, but Apollo II, given its paramount importance as a defining moment of

the space race, was an anomaly. Many within the space industry, including TsNIIMash Director

Mozzhorin, were themselves responsible for deemphasizing the importance of Apollo II,

perhaps partly to hide their own shortcomings. In the glasnost days of reevaluating the black

holes of Soviet history, one Soviet journalist wrote with undisguised vitriol:

133. Slayton and Cassutt, Deke!, p. 240: SouietSpacePrograms. 1966-?0, p, 196.

I34 Babakin, Banketov,and Smorkatov,_ N. Babakin. pp. 63-64: Lantratov, "The Late' Lunar Soil"

135 5ouiet SpacePrograms 1966-?0, p. 197 Rebrov, "But Things Were Like That."

136 Lantratov, "The 'Late' Lunar Soil"

CHALL[NGE TO _POLLO
FINAL LAP TO THE MOON

The task of Mozzhorin's group consisted of misinforming the public and concealing

from the people the blunders and the real state of our affairs in space. But the deception

became obvious when, on July 21. 1969... Nell Armstrong became the first earthling

to set foot on the surface of the Moon and planted the American flag. Our deceitful

propaganda, supervised then by M. ..'7. Suslov (now one of Moscotu's boulevards has

been named after him), was forced to show this historical event on our television

screens during a volleyball match bettueen two local teams, '_

The news itself was not accompanied by any TV footage, merely a dry news report. Actual video

of the landing was evidently restricted to a select group within the Soviet Union, including the

chief designers.

With the final and ignominious end to the "race to the Moon," the uncertainty of the

numerous pronouncements of the last eight months disappeared, replaced by two clear and

consistent themes: the Soviet objective to the explore the Moon by automated means and the

longstanding goal of establishing piloted orbital space stations in Earth orbit. Implicit, of

course, in both these themes was the claim that the Soviet Union had never planned to send

humans to the Moon because its program had always been geared more toward scientifically

productive rather than politically motivated objectives. Academician Blagonravov claimed on

Moscow Radio on July 21 that the only advantage of sending cosmonauts to the Moon was to

provide freer choice in picking up Moon rocks. He emphasized that the space programs of the

two superpowers had moved at about the same pace but along parallel paths. ''_ Even if he knew

of the existence of the N I-L3 program, he would have been committing treason against the

state had he stated that the Soviet Union had indeed tried to race the Americans to the Moon.

Later in the month, in another statement, he added that Soyuz spacecraft would be converted

into "modules of orbital space laboratories designed for research in lengthy flight.' ....

Salvaging the wreckage of the Soviet piloted space program was not an easy task.

Discussions in early 1969 had given focus to three possible future tracks:

• A piloted Mars mission

• Improved lunar landing missions

• Earth-orbital space stations

Publicly. Soviet spokespersons focused only on the third item. Academician Sedov, for example,

on a visit to Japan in fate August 1969, claimed that a new type of "spacecraft" would be used

to put a large space station into Earth orbit. There was, he said, no necessity in sending humans

to the Moon because automated lunar probes could return soil back to Earth. '_° The decision

to move ahead with space stations was, however, fraught with much more internal acrimony

than Sedov's statement would suggest. The three major possibilities available to the Soviets in

the post-Apollo II climate raised not only the hope of restoring prestige to a rudderless

Soviet space program, but also gave rise to yet more acrimony among the major players in the

industry. The lessons of losing the Moon race had, it seems, not been learned very well.

137 German Nazarov, "You Cannot Paper Space With Rubies: How to Save Billions" (English title).

Moloduya guardiya no. 4 (/_pril 1990): 192-20L

138. Soviet Space Programs, 1966-70, p. 375.

139. NP,SP,Science and Technology Division, _stror_auticsand ..qeronuutics. 1969. p. 256,

140, 5oviet SpacePrograms, t966-i'0, p. 376, Disingenuously, Sedov added that a soft landing had not been

a goal for I_una 15: the spacecraft had been "sent to study the Moon from lunar orbit."

697

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

OPTIONS

Conventional wisdom would suggest that after such a fatal blow as the triumphant landing of _qmerican astronauts on the Moon, the Soviet Union would simply fall back into a period of conservatism, characterized more by self-appraisal rather than any further grand gestures

at competition. But Soviet officials, from the highest arbiter of the Soviet space program,

Dmitriy F.Ustinov, down to the lowest engineers, differed in one key respect to their American

counterparts. For the Soviets, the race to the Moon might have been over, but the less specific "space race" was not. Ironically, it was, in fact, the American space program that entered an

uncertain period of soul searching as it sought to define a direction in the post-Apollo frontier--a direction that for the first time was not determined exclusively by Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. The Soviets, on the other hand, continued to propose, define, and

implement newer programs, which harked back to political imperatives of the KennedyKhrushchev era. If the Americans had beaten the Soviets to the Moon, then the Soviets would

beat them to Mars. If the Americans were going to build a space station in Earth orbit, then the

Soviets would build one sooner. While Soviet motivations in late 1969 were a little more complex than such simplistic rhetoric, by and large, the Soviet space program did not abandon the

space race in 1969. In fact, its piloted lunar programs continued to serve as a major force in

policy, years after Nell I_. Armstrong stepped on the Moon in July 1969.

Rummaging Through the Wreckage

Much of the activity in the Soviet program during the latter part of 1969 resulted more from

inertia rather than any new goals. As policy planners gradually sought to establish clear directions for the overall effort, space vehicles intended for flight earlier in the decade were finally

ready for launch. With little to lose after eqpollo II, Ustinov, Smirnov, and tqfanasyev allowed

some token launches in the piloted lunar program, which on superficial examination seem to

make little sense. The first such mission was a circumlunar flight of the 7K-LI spacecraft in the

late summer of 1969. Although the piloted component of the circumlunar program had been

officially suspended in March 1969, Chief Designer Mishin continued flights of the troubleprone spacecraft in the hope of flying crews on board at some uncertain time in the future.

Carrying out a simple automated circumlunar mission less than a month after Apollo I I might

indicate a disregard for public perceptions of the Soviet space program, but the timing of the

launch was apparently more of a coincidence than anything else, The Soviets did, however, go

to great lengths to play down news of the mission.

As with previous LI launches, cosmonauts were present at the Baykonur Cosmodrome,

although this time they were involved to a greater degree in flight operations. Leonov and

699
700

Makarov trained to acquire skills of "controlling the [descent apparatus] as operators" in preparation for a piloted flight. The 7K-LI spacecraft, vehicle no. I I, had been the last model manufactured for automated flight and contained mannequins. The ship was, however, redesigned

for piloted flight with powered control panels and blocks removed from the switches. The

spacecraft lifted off from the Baykonur Cosmodrome at 0248 hours, 6 seconds Moscow Time

on August 8, 1969, and successfully headed toward the Moon an hour later. Called Zond 7 by

the Soviet press, the ship, like its predecessors, carried a menagerie of living specimens, including four Steppe male tortoises, which were part of a group of thirty tortoises selected for a biological study.: The spacecraft was said to have been equipped with improved instrumentation,

although few details were provided. After a mid-course correction at a distance of 250.000 kilometers from Earth on August 9, the ship circled the far side of the Moon at a range of

1.200 kilometers two days later. The only anomaly on the flight was a communications problem-the main parabolic antenna failed to unfurl because of a jam in the securing cables--

although this did not prevent the accomplishment of any of the main flight objectives/

For the first time on a Zond mission, the on-board camera took color photographs, The

first session took place on August 8 when the camera took pictures of Earth at a distance of

70,000 kilometers, clearly showing a large part of the globe, including Asia, Africa, and the

Middle East. Three days later on August II, there were two further sessions. The first tenminute run was at a distance of 10,000 kilometers when the ship was closing in on the Moon:

it covered the western side of the Ocean of Storms and nearby heavily cratered areas. An hour

later, the spacecraft took a further series of photographs showing far side features from a range

of 2,000 kilometers. Several of these spectacular shots were reminiscent of those taken by

Apollo astronauts, with Earth majestically setting over the Moon's horizon. Although the Moon

generally tends to look gray, scientists hoped that color photos from different angles might

reveal differences in its microstructure. Apart from photography, the spacecraft also performed

"measurements of the physical characteristics of circumlunar space as well as technical experiments for developing motion controlling systems with the onboard [computer]. astroorientation systems, deep space communications apparatus, and other onboard systems.'"

The Zond 7 spacecraft flew back to Earth without incident, once again flying over the

South Pole and then moving north over the Indian Ocean. It entered the correct corridor on

August 14, lost velocity, skipped out, and then reentered again for a perfect, aerodynamically

controlled reentry onto Soviet territory. Parachutes deployed at an altitude of seven and a half

kilometers and soft-landing engines fired a meter above the ground for a faultless touchdown

south of Kustanay in Kazakhstan, just fifty kilometers from the intended target point. The mission had lasted six days. eighteen hours, and twenty-five minutes. Two years late, TsKBEM

finally accomplished a fully successful 7K-LI circumlunar mission. It was, of course, too late for

I, Yu. R Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S P Koroleua (Korotev:

RKK Energlya,named after S. R Korolev, 1996). p. 246.

2. O G, Gazenko, V V Antipov, and G. E Parfenov. "Results of Biological Investigations Undertaken on

the Zond 5, Zond-6, and Zond-7 Stations" (English title). Kosmieheskiyeissledouaniya 9 (July-August 1971):

601-09 Other specimens included air-dried cells of wheat, barley, peas, pines, carrots, tomatoes, mustard bulbs of

common onion, one strain o[ single-celled chloretla algae,and a culture o[ lysogenic bacteria.

3, V. R Glushko, ed., Kosmonautika entsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskayaentsiklopediya, 1985), p 130:

Semenov.ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 246.

4. Glushko, ed., Kosmonautika entsiklopediya, p. 130: Souiet Space Programs, 1966-70 C_oats and

Purposes, Organization, Resources, Facilities and Hardware, Manned and Unmanned Flight Programs,

Bioastronautics. Ciuit and Military .,'qpplications, Projections o[ Future Plans. ;qttitudes Toward International

Cooperation and Space Law. prepared for the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, U.S Senate.92d

Cong. Ist sess,(Washington, DC: US. Government Printing Office, December 1971), p 244: Kenneth Gattand,

Robot Explorers (London: MacMillan, 1972). p 150.

CHALLENGE TO _I:_POLLO
OPTIONS

politicians to extract any mileage from the resounding success of Zond Z, coming as it did less

than a month after the American lunar landing. But the conclusion of the mission did raise the

possibility of moving ahead to piloted missions on the L I spacecraft. At a meeting of the L I

State Commission on September 19, 1969, the members discussed such an option. The Air

Force Commander-in-Chief's Aide for Space Col, General Kamanin recalled that "the success of

Zond-7 . . , gave some encouragement to Mishin, Tyulin, and Afanasyev who were gradually

recovering from the shock caused by the failure of the N I and the brilliant Apollo missions."_

The State Commission tentatively decided to make use of the three remaining 7K-LI spacecraft

still left on the ground. The first would be launched in early December 1969 on an automated

flight followed by the second in April 1970, perhaps carrying the first Soviet cosmonauts

around the Moon. While Mishin and State Commission Chairman Tyulin may have wished for

such, the forces against piloted L I missions were too overwhelming. There was little to be

gained politically from a piloted LI mission at this point. Both Brezhnev and Ustinov had more

or less decided on the program's termination in the spring of 1969, and the plans to launch a

crew in April 1910 eventually died a quiet death. By the end of 1969, the piloted portion of the

UR-5OOK-LI project was irrevocably over, and while Mishin had plans to fly the remaining

unflown vehicles, these were redirected toward primarily technological goals.

The dilemma facing Soviet space planners in the direct aftermath of the Apollo landing was

how to respond in the immediate months. What kind of a piloted mission could be mounted

in the waning months of 1969 that would not underline the weak position of the USSR in comparison to the United States in the exploration of space? In the landmark January 1969 meetings after/qpollo 8, Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev had suggested a thirty-day

Soyuz mission in Earth orbit. A month later, Soyuz State Commission Chairman Maj. General

Kerimov emerged with a more modest seven-day Earth-orbital flight of two cosmonauts in a

Soyuz ship. Space program chief Ustinov wanted more, telling the commission that a sevenday mission was too "thinnish" and that "it should be thick."" Kamanin, on February II,

underlined the confusion in how to proceed with the Soyuz program, writing in his diary:

We have reached a fully absurd [situation]: there is not one man in this country who

would be able to say what the next flight into space will be. Ustinov does not know this,

Keldysh. Smirnov. and Mishin do not know this--generally no one knows! ,Ztll my

attempts to obtain from the state the composition o[ plans for piloted space [lights lead

nowhere: there are no such plans, and it is most unlikely that there will be.

Originally, prior to the Soyuz 4/5 docking-and-EVA mission in January 1969, Mishin had

had plans to fly repeat Earth-orbital flights of the 7K-OK Soyuz spacecraft, but equipped with

the Kontakt rendezvous radar system earmarked for the lunar version of the Soyuz instead of

the less advanced Igla. While Kontakt was not ready for flight at the time, the Soyuz 4/5 repeat

mission plans offered an answer on how to formulate a response to Apollo. By late February,

Mishin's idea was to launch three 7K-OK Soyuz spaceships into Earth orbit, two of which

would dock automatically with each other, while the third would hover at 300 to 400 meters

range by means of manual control and take photographs of the experiment, _ Although a poor

5. N Kamanin. "1 FeelSorry [or Our Guys" (English title). Vozdushniy transport 14 (1993): II.

6 N Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Our Guys" (English title). Vozdushniy transport 13 (1993): 8-9

7. Ibid.

8. gmitriy Payson. "Eternal Soyuz'--Today Marks the 25th Anniversary of the First Docking in Orbit"

(English title), Nezauisimaya gazeta, January 15, 1994, p. 6: Christian Lardier, LTqstronaufiqueSouietique (Paris:

Armand Colin, 1992), p. 188

701
102

match for a lunar mission, such a flight would not only demonstrate the capacity of the Soviet

space program to perform complex operations in space, but also provide a long overdue public

relations extravaganza from the potentially spectacular photographs. On a purely technical

level, the flight would also allow engineers to perfect rendezvous and docking operations and

control multiple vehicles in orbit in preparation for future space station missions.

By ¢qpril I, 1969, Mishin had a short-range plan for the TK-OK Soyuz program:

Missions Dates

Soyuz 6, 7, and 8

Soyuz 9 and I0

Soyuz 11 and 12

Triple flight in gugust 1969

Docking flight in October 1969

Docking flight in February 1970

Apart from rendezvous and docking, the triple joint mission would have other important

elements. A special unit named the Vulkon ("Volcano") was installed on Soyuz 6 (spacecraft

no. 14) to allow its crew to carry out a complex series of welding operations in conditions of

microgravity and vacuum. The Ye. O. Paton Institute for Electro-Welding based at Kiev had

developed the unit on a contract handed out during the Korolev era. Cosmonaut Fartushniy, a

scientist from the institute, had been slated to fly the Vulkan unit into space, but by April, he

had been moved from Soyuz 6 to Soyuz II, evidently because of mass constraints when the

crew size was reduced from three to two2 Additional instrumentation on Soyuz 6 included the

Suinets apparatus, a military experiment for detecting and identifying the plumes from ICBM

launches. The triple ship experiment would have a record seven cosmonauts flying in space

simultaneously, most of whom had been training in various capacities on the piloted circumlunar and landing projects during the previous two years/° The two final docking missions--

Soyuz 9/Soyuz I0 and Soyuz I ItSoyuz 12IWOUld include at least one very long-duration

mission to reclaim the absolute endurance record for a space mission, held for almost four years

by N/qSg's Gemini VII mission. These four missions would also use the long-delayed Kontakt

rendezvous system. _'

Mishin discussed these plans with Llstinov during a meeting on June 7, 1969, but the possibility of carrying out the triple Soyuz mission quickly gained a new urgency after the second

catastrophic blow to the Soviet space program in eight months, the Apollo II landing. Once

the inevitable delays crept into the ambitious Soyuz plan, Soviet space program leaders began

to get cold feet. In late September, less than two weeks before the projected launches, Chief

Designer Mishin met again with Llstinov to discuss preparations for the triple mission. Mishin

noted in his personal office notes that "there is a fear in taking decisions. '''_ Ustinov forbade

Mishin to begin propellant loading of the boosters and spaceships, despite the latter's protest

to adhere to the original program. Llstinov told Mishin that the final decision to proceed with

9 Fartushniy was to haveflown in the third seaton Soyuz 6. SeeRexHall, "Soviet Civilian Cosmonauts,"

in Michael Cassutt, ed., Who's Who in Space: TheInternational Space )'ear Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1992),

pp 29O-9l

I0 On April 7, 1969, the planned crews for the three ships were G. S. Shonin/V. N Kubasov (Soyuz 6),

A. V. FilipchenkolV_N. VolkovlV V. Gorbatko (Soyuz 1), and A. G. NikolayevlV. I. Sevastyanov(Soyuz 8). The backup crewmembers wereA. P.Kuklin, G. M. Grechko, and P,I. Kolodin. The crews began training for the missions on

April I0. 1969.

II The crews for the last four missions were (on April 7. 1969) Ye. V. KhrunovlA S. Yeliseyev(Soyuz 9),

A. P. KuklinlG M. Grechko (Soyuz I0), V. A. Shatalov/V G Fartushniy (Soyuz II), and G. S. ShoninlV A.

YazdovskiylV. I. Patsayev(Soyuz 12).

12 Interview, PeterGorin by the author, November 18, 1997.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
OPTIONS

the launches would be discussed at the Politburo level, an unusual state of events for a space

launch. It is quite likely that Soviet leaders such as Brezhnev and Kosygin were extremely sensitive to the possibility of a catastrophic failure in the Soviet space program so soon after Apollo

I I; such a mission would also once again raise the question of the direction of the Soviet space

program. How were officials to answer to the obvious comparisons with Apollo?

On September 29, Mishin spoke with Llstinov, Smirnov, and Afanasyev. The chief designer had already received permission to begin fueling the first Soyuz, spacecraft no. 14, but was

still awaiting approval to move ahead with prelaunch preparations for vehicle nos. 15 and 16.

The Politburo met a day later and finally granted permission to carry out the triple flight. The

mission would be touted as a major step in the creation of Earth-orbital stations, the "true calling" of the Soviet space program. The activity leading up to the launches was further intensified by major changes in the crew complement of the three Soyuz vehicles. Originally, the third

Soyuz--the active vehicle during the docking exercise--would have been crewed by cosmonauts Nikolayev and Sevastyanov. Colonel Nikolayev, the veteran from the Vostok days, would

also serve as the overall commander of all seven cosmonauts in space. Unfortunately for him,

he had performed poorly during a preparatory exam in late July 1969.'_ Perhaps expecting an

improvement in his abilities, planners continued to maintain the original crew complements

until September 17, when Mishin and Kamanin agreed to replace the Nikolayev-Sevastyanov

crew with a new two-cosmonaut crew fresh off their own recent spaceflights: Shatalov and

Yeliseyev. Shatalov, of course, had the distinction of being the only Soviet cosmonaut who had

actually carried out a docking in space, and his inclusion in the crew for the third Soyuz was

probably a boon to confidence. A final decision on the crew replacement was taken in early

October, after all the primary and backup cosmonauts for the three ships had arrived at the

Baykonur Cosmodrome.'4

Apart from the uniqueness of having three Soyuz ships in orbit at the same time, the joint

flight would also mark a significant expansion of Soviet communications capabilities.

Transmissions were normally limited to flight over the Soviet landmass or with a small flotilla

of modest seafaring vessels under the control of the Department of Naval Expeditionary Work

under the Academy of Sciences since 1967.That same year, the Soviets began the construction

of the first of a new generation of vastly improved tracking ships. The first of these, with a displacement of 17,850 tons, was the Kosmonaut Vladimir Komarou, a Poltava-class dry cargo

vessel that was converted to its new role at Leningrad in 1967. The 121-strong crew and

118-member science team were three and seven times larger, respectively, than predecessors

such as the Dolinsk. The prominent features of the Kosmonaut Vladimir Komarou were the

unusual hull sponsons and the massive plastic radomes, which enclosed huge antenna arrays

for tracking and communications. Forthe Soyuz program, the ship would serve as one node of

a communications bridge, from the Soyuz spacecraft, to the Kosmonaut Vladimir Komarou, to

Molniya-I satellites in Earth orbit, to the NIP-16 Flight Control Center at Yevpatoriya. The ship's

first active role during a piloted mission had been on the Soyuz 4/5 docking flight, although it had

provided support during the circumlunar Zond 5 mission when it had been stationed at Havana.

13. GordonHooperand Bert Vis, "Meetin8 the SpaceExplorers:Vitali Sevastyanov,"SpaceflightNews

(January1991):34-36.

14. I. Marinin,"Russia.The ExtraordinaryIncidentsof the'Vulkans'"(Englishtitle). Novostikosmonautiki

17(August12-15, 1996):22-25. NJkolayevandSevastyanov,meanwhile,wereconsignedto servingasbackupsfor

the mission.The backupswereA. G. NikolayevlG.M. Grechko(Soyuz6). A. G. NikolayevlG M. GrechkotRI.

Kolodin(Soyuz7),and_ G. NikolayevlV.I. Sevastyanov(Soyuz8) Notethatthe originalbackupcrewsweredifferentand includedat variouspointsas crewcommanderboth A. R Kuklin (who wasdroppedbecauseof health

problemsinjuly 1969)andYe.V. Khmnov(whowaspenalizedinJuly 1969forbeinginvolvedin a hit-and-runautomobileaccidentduringwhich hehadnotcometo the aidof thevictims).

703
704

As the Kosmonaut Vladimir Komarov entered duty

in August 1967, even larger vessels were on the

drawing board--ones capable of controlling both

Earth-orbital and deep space missions. '5 tqll of

these served to significantly expand communications-link times for piloted missions.

The architect behind much of the radiotracking and communications equipment on these

ships was Chief Designer Mikhail S. Ryazanskiy of

the Scientific-Research Institute for Radio

Instrument Building (formerly NII-885). One of the

original members of Korolev's old Council of Chief

Designers from the 1940s, he also had a very interesting career. Obsessed with building radios since

he was a child, in the late 1920s, Ryazanskiy

became a radio technician and a leading member

of the Young Communist League at Nizhniy

Novgorod (or Gorkiy). It was there that he came

under the suspicion of the Soviet secret police,

having been accused of destroying important

equipment. Incriminating evidence that his grandfather had been a priest, an "unacceptable" heritage for any Communist Party member at the time,

bolstered the absurd charges, With the support of

many of his coworkers, a possible death sentence

Chic] Designer Ryazanskiy uaasone o[ the s_x

original members o/the Council of Chief Designers

His organization, originally culled NII-885, was

responsiblefor all radio-control guidunce systems

[or Soviet ballistic missiles and spacecraft

(files of Peter_orin)

was commuted to one month's hard labor. Rising through the ranks, Ryazanskiy eventually

made important contributions to the Soviet wartime effort in radio and radar technology before

joining the Moscow-based NII-885 as a chief designer in 1946 after the A-4 recovery operations

in Germany. i" Along with Korolev, Glushko, Pilyugin, Barmin. and Kuznetsov, Ryazanskiy completed the original Council of Chief Designers.

Ryazanskiy's career as a chief designer was briefly interrupted in January 1951 when he was

appointed the chief engineer of NII-88--a position superior to Korolev at the time. The turned

tables do not seem to have disrupted their own personal relationships. Ryazanskiy was promoted out of the missile design business to an administrative position in 1952 as chief of the

Seventh Chief Directorate of the Ministry of eqrmaments under Ustinov, but in less than two

years, he returned to his chief designer spot at NII-885, saying that "administrative work is not

for me." " Back at the institute, life was not easy for Ryazanskiy. Secret police mastermind

Lavrentiy R Beriya had a particularly strong dislike for the chief designer because of his father's

15. B _ Pokrovskiy,Kosmos nachinayetsya na zemlye (Moscow: Patriot. 1996), pp. 347-48: Soviet Space

Programs: t976-80 Supporling_ Vehicles and Launch Vehicles. Political Goals and Purposes, Inlernational

Cooperation in Space. 71dministration, Resource Burden Future Outlook, prepared for the Committee on Commerce,

Science. and Transportation, US. Senate, 97th Congress, 2d sess. (Washington. DC: US Government Printing

Office. December 1982), p. 127.During the Soyuz 4/5 mission, the Kosmonaut Vladimir Komurov had served ,n

conjunct,on with two other older vessels,the Morzhovets and the Neuel SeeG. S. Narimanov, ed_ Ot kosmichesk_kh

korabley - k orbitalnym stantsiyam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1971). p 57.

16. Col. M. Rebrov,"The Whiteness of Martian Seas . : PagesFromthe Lile of the Chief Designer of Radio

Control Devices" (Enghshtitle), Krasnayu zuezda. March ii. 1989. p 4.

17 Ibld

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
OPTIONS

political leanings in the 1930s. Several people from NII-885 were, in fact, arrested in 1952-53

by Beriya's henchmen, while Ryazanskiy himself was charged with withholding evidence. His

fate and possibly his life were saved by the deaths of Stalin and Beriya in 1953. Later,

Ryazanskiy was instrumental in choosing the site of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, an action that

would prompt Korolev to often grumble: "Mikhail is to blame for everything, He chose this

God-forsaken hole .... "'_ The final ignominy Ryazanskiy had to face was in 1961, when all the

original members of the Council of Chief Designers received their second Hero of Socialist Labor

award--all except Ryazanskiy. As rumor had it, Ryazanskiy had been witness to one of

Brezhnev's drinking binges around 1960. V/hen the latter had offered the chief designer a

cognac, Ryazanskiy disgustedly refused his offer. Brezhnev remembered this event when the

awards were handed out for Gagarin's flight. Ryazanskiy's name was crossed off of the list and

substituted with that of Brezhnev. At the time of the triple Soyuz mission, Ryazanskiy was sixty

years old.

Troika

The first I IASI I booster with its Soyuz payload was moved to the pad at site 31 at TyuraTam on the morning of October 8 to begin its prelaunch processes. It would be an intensely

active period for ground personnel: over a period of three consecutive days, Strategic Missile

Forces troops would launch three different Soyuz stacks into orbit. Each spacecraft would

remain in orbit for five days, all three overlapping for the middle three days. News about an

impending Soviet space spectacular evidently leaked out of Moscow, with some press reports.

on October 9, predicting the launch of three Soyuz spaceships that might be used for "building an orbital station." '_

7K-OK spacecraft no. 14 lifted off on time at 1410 hours Moscow Time on October II,

1969, with two rookie cosmonauts Lt. Colonel Georgiy S. Shonin (the commander) and civilian Valeriy N. Kubasov (the flight engineer), both thirty-four years old at the time. The spacecraft, named _1oyuz 6, which was not equipped with a docking probe but did carry the small

Vuikan apparatus in its living compartment, entered an initial orbit of 186.2 by 222.8 kilometers inclined at 51.68 degrees. It had been almost ten months since the last Soviet piloted mission. Among the objectives announced by the Soviet media were perfecting spacecraft control

systems, testing navigational devices, carrying out Earth resources photography, investigating

atmospheric phenomena, performing biomedical research, and experimenting with welding in

vacuum and weightlessness. 2° It seems that the cosmonauts did not do much during their first

day in orbit apart from a main engine firing on the fourth orbit at 2008 hours to change orbital

parameters. Some minor activity on the fourteenth orbit involved Shonin carrying out navigational exercises using the astro-orientation system and automatic stellar sensor. Kubasov,

meanwhile, tried out a new sextant, the SMK-4, whose measurements were compared with

computations on the ground to verify the accuracy of the instrument. Kubasov later took photographs of the low-lying Caspian Sea coast and the Volga delta, forests in Central Russia, and

cloud formations."'

Mounting rumors of more Soyuz launches were confirmed the following day, when 7K-OK

spacecraft no. 15 lifted off from site I at Tyura-Tam at 1345 hours with not two, but three rookie

18. Ibid

19. Soz)ie_SpacePrograms, 1966-Z0, p. 317.

20. G.I. Petrov,ed., Conquest of Outer Space in the USJR. 1967-70 (New Delhi: tqmerind Publishing Co.,

1973), pp. 117-18.

2 I. PeterSmolders,Souietsin Space (New York:Taplinger Publishing Co., 1973), p 179.

705
706

cosmonauts. The ship, named Soyuz 7, entered an initial orbit of 207.4 by 225.9 kilometers at

a 51.68-degree inclination to the equator. Aboard were Lt. Colonel lqnatoliy V. Filipchenko (the

commander), civilian Vladislav N. Volkov (the flight engineer), and Lt. Colonel Viktor

V. Gorbatko (the research engineer). Filipchenko was forty-one at the time, while Volkov

was thirty-three and Gorbatko was thirty-four. TASS announced the goals of the mission as

including maneuvering in orbit, navigational investigations jointly with Soyuz 6 in group

flight," and scientific research consisting of the observation of celestial bodies and Earth's horizon, the determination of the actual brightness of stars, and measurements of illumination by

the Sun.2_Naturally, there was no mention that the ship was equipped with a passive docking

mechanism, nor that the spacecraft was to dock with a third Soyuz.

Preparations for the launch of 7K-OK spacecraft no. 16 had begun immediately after

the launch of Soyuz 6 from the pad at site 31. Within two hours of launch, the new boosterpayload stack was moved to the pad to begin its prelaunch operations. Once the two cosmonauts were settled into the descent apparatus of the spacecraft, Commander Shatalov ran into a

minor problem while tightening the wheel on the hatch lock between the two Soyuz modules

when one of its three spokes cracked under excess pressure. The crew reluctantly reported the

problem to ground control, who advised that as long as pressure integrity was maintained, the

problem would not hinder a timely launch/_ Thus, within twenty-four hours of the launch of

Soyuz 7, Strategic Missile Forces personnel launched the third Soyuz spacecraft in three days.

The launch was at 1319 hours Moscow Time on October 13, 1969.Veteran cosmonauts Colonel

Vladimir A. Shatalov (the commander), who was forty-one, and civilian t_leksey 5. Yeliseyev(the

flight engineer), who was thirty-five, entered an initial orbit of 204.5 by 223.7 kilometers at a

51.68-degree inclination. TASS announced that the new ship, named Soyuz 8, would carry out

complex scientific observations with Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 7, including group flight and the even

more general "joint orbital maneuvering to solve a number of problems connected with manned

space flights. TM TASS also reported that Shatalov would be in overall command of the three

ships. Both he and Yeliseyevhad the distinction of holding the record for the shortest turnaround

for space missions, having flown in space less than ten months earlier.

Initially, after Soyuz 8 entered orbit, the three spacecraft carried out independent flight

focused on their own experiments program, although several orbital corrections by all

three ships on October 13and 14seemed to have been preliminary maneuvers to allow for the

eventual intersection of their orbits. In general, the experiments program in orbit was divided

up. The Soyuz 6 crew carried out biomedical research (such as inner ear tests) and Earth

photography. The Soyuz 7 crew performed photography of Earth and stellar objects in differing

spectral bands. The Soyuz 8 crew focused on research on the polarization of sunlight reflected

by the atmosphere. Biomedical experiments included using "functional probes" and individual

and group psychological tests to assess working capacity in orbit. Earth photography focused

on the development of cyclones and the movement of storm fronts. The Soyuz 7 cosmonauts,

in particular, conducted detailed remote-sensing exercises, including the study of geological

areas to detect reserves of mineral raw materials. Soyuz 8 Flight Engineer Yeliseyev. like his

compatriot Kubasov on Soyuz 6, also used a new SMK-4 sextant to determine orbital elements

independently of help from ground stations. One major experiment involved the determination

of reflective properties of forests, deserts, and other areasof Earth's surface. The crews remained

in regular contact with each other and for the first time jointly used the Molniya-I satellite

22. Petrov.Conquestof OuterSpace.p. 123.

23 M F,Rebrov,Kosrnichesk_yekatastro[y:Russkiyesensatsii(Moscow:Izdt_T.1993),pp.43-44.

24 Petrov,Conquesto/OuterSpace,p. 129.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

Hereare the seuencosmonauts of the Soyuz 6/7/8 mission. Sitting Jrom left to right are Valeriy Kubasou.

_eorgiy Shonin, Vladimir Shatalou, and _leksey Yeliseyeu.Standing from left to right are Viktor _orbatko,

_natoliy Fitipehenko, and Vladislau Volkou. (files of Peter _orin)

system and the Kosmonaut Vfadimir Komarou. _5A military component of the Soyuz 6 mission

was the Fakel ("Torch") experiment for visually detecting the launch plumes of ballistic missiles

from orbit. _ Evidently using the Svinets apparatus, Shonin later reported that he could clearly see

special light projectors on ground targets and that the measurement of background illumination

was not difficult. On three occasions on October 12, R-16 ICBMs were launched from

Tyura-Tam while Soyuz 6 passed over the launch range. All the launches were at night, limiting

the applicability of the experiment. It is unlikely that the Svinets instrument would have been

capable of detecting launches during daytime.

25. Older ships, such as the Bezhitsa. BorouichL Dolinsk, Kegostrou, Morzhouets, NeueL and Ristna. were

also used[or communications, SeeEvgenyRiabchikov.Russians in Space (Moscow: Novosti PressPublishing House,

1971). p. 273. For the general experiments program, see Smolders, Souiets in Space, pp 181. 184; Riabchikov.

Russians m Space. pp, 273-74: Kenneth Gatland. Manned Spacecraft (New York: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 143-45:

Lardier, L_stronautique Soui_tique, p. 188: Narimanov, Ot kosmieheskikh korabley, p. 72.

26. "In Memory o[ Cosmonaut G S. Shonin" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 7(March 24-April 6,

1997): 25-27.

707
7O8

By October 14, the three spacecraft were in a common orbit of roughly 200 by 225 kilometers at a 51.7-degree inclination, gs planned, the Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 spacecraft approached each

other to within a distance of 500 meters, while Soyuz 6 watched nearby. Docking between Soyuz

7 and Soyuz 8 had been planned to be semi-automatic, with the Igla system bringing the two

ships to a distance of IO0 meters of each other, after which Shatalov would take over manual controt. As backup cosmonaut Sevastyanov recalled later, the ships did not come closer than

500 meters of each other:

There was a mistake during the preliminary stage of the docking and the [Igla] radio

system didn't work [on Soyuz 8]--it didn't give the information on where the second

spacecraft was. They tried to use an optical channel, but at that time they didn't

have a special laser device for measuring the distance, and they had no possibility to

measure the distance between the two spacecraft/_

The "optical channels" were evidently bright light signals on the ships used at range

distances of 1,5OOmeters and 500 meters. In two attempts to close in on Soyuz 7 manually

from those distances, an increasingly stressed Shatalov on Soyuz 8 found it too difficult to

measure the relative distance to the passive spacecraft while the ships were in Earth's shadow.

The cosmonauts' frustrations were exacerbated by on-board indicators showing that the Igla

system was completely operational. Recent reports indicate that one or more of the ships may

also have been inserted into the wrong orbit, further complicating matters? BBecause of the

malfunctioning Igla system, the Soyuz 8 cosmonauts were unable to move close enough

to Soyuz 7 to transfer to manual control and dock. As a last desperate move, ground control

decided to try and maintain station-keeping between the two ships using only ballistics data

transmitted from the ground. The docking attempt was rescheduled for the following day,

October 15. Unfortunately, without the use of the Igla system, the cosmonauts were unable

to bring the ships closer than 1,700 meters. The third ship, Soyuz 6, which did not carry the

Igla system, was unable to independently complete any close approaches to the other

two spacecraft.

That the mission was a complete mess was underlined in a U.S. intelligence report, which

was declassified in 1997. The CIA wrote:

The five rendezvous attempts made during the mission were all unsuccessful for

several different reasons. The first failed because the automatic rendezvous system [that

is, Igla] would not indicate radar lock-on between Soyuz 7 and 8. Two orbits later the

first manual rendezvous attempt was made but it was broken off after Soyuz 8 used

more than the authorized amount of attitude-control propellant, zl second manual

attempt, made the next day. failed because Soyuz 8 did not properly control its lateral

velocity relative to Soyuz 7. The attempt by Soyuz 6 to carry out a cosmonaut-controlled

rendezvous with the other two spacecraft failed because of insufficient time to correct

for a three kilometer out-of-plane separation between it and the other vehicles. The final

manual attempt at rendezvous and docking between Soyuz 7 and 8 was poorly timed

and the vehicles could not establish the correct interval and relative velocity between

them required for a docking operation before they entered the earth's shadow.""

27. HooperandVis, "MeetingtheSpaceExplorers:Vitali Sevastyanov."p. 36.

28. ' In Memoryof CosmonautG. S.Shonin."

29. LI.S.CentralIntelligenceAgency,"NationalIntelligenceEstimateII I 71:The SovietSpaceProgram,"

Washington,DC,July I, 1971,p 29,asdeclassifiedin 1997bythe CIA HistoricalReviewProgram.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

According to official Soviet data, during three days of jointly coordinated flight, the ships

completed thirty-one orbital maneuvers. Using Soyuz 7 as a target vehicle, Soyuz 6 and Soyuz

8 completed three and four close rendezvous, respectively. On two occasions, the approaches

were simultaneous--that is, all three vehicles were in very close proximity for a total of four

hours and twenty-four minutes of "co-orbiting" Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8, meanwhile, spent as

much as thirty-four hours and nineteen minutes "co-orbiting" with each other, l° During these

rendezvous exercises:

The crews made observations o[ the other spaceships, took photographs, and used

movie cameras to determine the visibility o[ objects at various distances. They also

investigated the possibility of exchanging information by means of light indexes and

visual optical devices. _

The exchanging of information was probably related to military experiments, g former CtA

official later recounted that:

The cosmonauts experimented with methods of communicating with each other and

used light sources that could not be monitored by normal electronic intelligence listening devices. They also conducted experiments to determine the visibility of objects at

various distances from their spaceships, which among other things is the type of information used by military planners [or designing equipment for photographing and

inspecting hostile satellites. _

No pictures taken during the mission have ever been published by the Soviet or Russian

press in the thirty years since the mission. With the disappointments of the several failures

behind them, Chief Designer Mishin had the unfortunate task of telephoning both Brezhnev

and Ustinov to inform them of the situation.

It was on October 16 that cosmonauts Shonin and Kubasov on Soyuz 6 prepared for one

of the main goals of the entire experiment, the welding exercise with the Vulkan unit. The

instrument itself was a squat green cylinder resembling "a round refrigerator" with a mass of

about fifty kilograms, installed in the living compartment of Soyuz 6. The object consisted of

two sections, one of which contained various instruments and power sources, measuring and

converter devices, and communications and automation equipment in a pressurized nitrogen

atmosphere. The other section contained the welding devices. Scientists at the Paton Institute

had painstakingly designed the unit based on extensive tests in vacuum chambers and on parabolic weightless flights in aircraft. On their seventy-seventh orbit, the Soyuz-6 cosmonauts

shut the hatch between the descent apparatus and the living compartment and depressurized

the latter module. Flight Engineer Kubasov, using remote-control switches, then turned on the

welding unit, initiating three different methods. The system first performed a low-pressure compressed arc welding. This was followed by an attempt at electron beam welding. The final

method was arc welding using a consumable electrode. The actual welding was performed

using an electron gun with samples of titanium, aluminum alloys, and stainless steel. All the

welding was automated, and the only major role of the crew was to turn on the system and

recover the samples. Kubasov was, however, able to follow the work of the unit with a special

30. Lardier,LT]stronauticlueSovi_tique, p. 188

3 I. Riabchikov,Russians in Space, p. 273.

32. PeterN James,SovietConquestFromSpace(New Rochelle,NY:Arlington HousePublishers 974).p. I16.

709
710

indicator panel in the descent apparatus, while data were also directly transmitted to ground

stations. '_ Academician Paton later glowingly reported that:

The experiment in welding in orbit had opened a new page in the exploration of space,

31n engineering procedure involving the heating and melting o[ metal has been per-

[ormed in space [or the first time. The age o[ space metallurgy has dawned. '4

While much was made of the fact that welding would be a requisite for future orbital

assembly operations in space, the Vulkan experiment was. in fact. a near catastrophe for the

Soyuz 6 crew. Soviet authorities revealed twenty-one years later that "the welding experiment

which was supposed to be carried out on one of the ships, ended unsuccessfully. They almost

burned a hole in the ship."'_ During one of the three methods tested, possibly the low-pressure

compressed arc. the Vulkan unit evidently incorrectly aimed a beam and melted the internal

wall of the living compartment. The cosmonauts were apparently unaware of the danger during the experiment, and they only discovered the damage once the living compartment was

repressurized to recover the samples of the experiment) _

Soyuz 6 returned to Earth almost as soon as the Vulkan exercise was over. The two cosmonauts landed at 1252 hours Moscow Time on October 16. 1969. in the frozen and barren

steppes of Kazakhstan. 180 kilometers northwest of the town of Karaganda. Their mission had

lasted four days. twenty-two hours, forty-two minutes, and forty-seven seconds. It was chilly

cold with a powerful wind at the landing site, and despite landing twenty kilometers from the

intended landing point, rescue services were able to reach the cosmonauts relatively quickly.

The Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 cosmonauts continued their missions in Earth orbit. The remainder of the mission was uneventful except for a malfunction on Soyuz 7 on October 17. One of

three cosmonauts accidentally activated the automatic landing system display in the descent

apparatus. The unit was supposed to turn on automatically at an altitude of eleven kilometers

after reentry for use during the parachute descent. Because the display was to be used on the

last leg of the mission, there was no provision to turn it off in orbit. Some ground controllers

were concerned that if the display remained continuously turned on for more than a day. there

might be a possibility of failure during descent. '_ With little to do to rectify the situation, the

crew continued to orbit Earth with the system left active. The Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 crews carried out the perfunctory medical experiments and Earth photography exercises during the

remainder of their missions before preparing to return to Earth. Soyuz 7 cosmonauts Volkov and

Gorbatko, in particular, carried out complex spectrophotometry and photography of the twilight

aureole of Earth, its clouds, and its underlying surface using the handheld RSS-2 spectrograph.

The experiment was carried out on the spacecraft's eighty-seventh orbit over northeast Africa

from an altitude of 218 kilometers. An earlier session on October 13 over the Arabian penin33 Soviet SpacePrograms. 1966-70. p. 237: kardier,L'_stronautique 3ovi#ticlue. p. 188:Garland, Manned

Spacecraft. p 143: Riabchikov. Russiansin Space, p. 2?4: Narimanov, Ot kosm_eheskikhkorabley, p. 73

34 Riabchikov, Russians in Space, pp 274-75.

35. German Nazarov. "You Cannot Paper Space With Rubles: How to Save Billions" (English title),

Molodaya gvordiya no. 4 (/_pril 1990): 192-207.

36. The inference that it was the low-pressure compressed arc that caused the problem is based on the

premise that the Soviets at the time touted the successof the other two methods, but refrained from doing so for

the compressedarc test. SeeGarland. Manned Spacecraft. pp. 143-45. for positive evaluations of arc welding, and

see Soviet Space Programs. 1966-70, p. 237, for the same for electron beam welding. See also "In Memory of

Cosmonaut G. S. Shonin."

37 I N, Kamanin, "Removing the Cosmetic Retouching: N. Kamanin--Erom HisJournai Entries for 1970"

(English title) Souetskayakultura, July 14, 1990, p 15

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

sula was coordinated with ground observatories and two specially equipped Li-2 scientific

aircraft flying at altitudes of 2.7 kilometers) 8

The three-cosmonaut Soyuz 7 crew returned to Earth without incident, landing safely

155 kilometers northwest of Karaganda at 1226 hours Moscow Time on October 17, 1969,

almost exactly a day after Soyuz 6. Their mission had lasted four days, twenty-two hours, forty

minutes, and twenty-three seconds. The weather was worse this time, with stinging cold winds

of snow and sleet as well as low visibility. Soyuz 8 crewmembers Shatalov and Yeliseyev settled

down a day later at 1210 hours Moscow Time on October 18, 145 kilometers north of

Karaganda in a raging blizzard. The last crew had completed a mission lasting four days, twenty-two hours, fifty minutes, and forty-nine seconds. The triple Soyuz flight was over.

As much as the flight bewildered Western observers with its meandering nature and lack

of docking, Soviet spokespersons went on the offensive after all three ships had touched down.

They had had little to celebrate during the year, and the modest achievements of Soyuz 6,

Soyuz 7, and Soyuz 8 would have to do. The cosmonauts' return to Moscow was made into a

celebratory event of national proportions. As bands played and salutary guns fired, Communist

Party and government leaders and thousands of Muscovites welcomed the seven men./qt the

ceremonial reception at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, all the cosmonauts were awarded,

like their predecessors, the title "Hero of the Soviet Union." _ This occurred, despite the obvious failure to achieve the primary goal of the mission--the docking between Soyuz 7 and

Soyuz 8--which was, of course, not announced as such. All Soviet press reports of the time

clearly put forward the notion that docking had not been planned for the flight. As for the failure, the cosmonauts were exonerated of any wrongdoing during the mission. A thorough investigation that took three months proved that the failure in the Igla system had been caused by

errors in ground preparations. When the Scientific-Research Institute for Precision Instruments

had tested Igla on the ground for pressurization, engineers had used a 9S-percent helium mixture. Investigators later discovered that this particular mixture harmed the radio components

and thermostats of the flight units. After two more instruments from the same institute had

failed in orbit by the end of 1969, engineers changed the mixture to either inert gases or a

5-percent helium solution/°

The postflight period for the triple Soyuz mission was particularly important because of the

insistent and precise nature of Soviet statements on orbital stations. It finally seemed that the

apparent confusion of the earlier part of the year on future prospects for the Soviet space program was finally over. Academician Sedov, the man who had made the infamous announcement

on the launch of a Soviet satellite during the International Geophysical Year in 195.5, told

reporters in Peru in late October 1969 that the Soviet Union had never announced that it would

send men to the Moon2' Fortunately for Sedov, no one bothered to read to him his pronouncements on the topic from earlier in the decade. Perhaps the most important public policy statement by a top Soviet figure emerged amid the celebrations for the Soyuz 6/7/8 mission. In a

speech on October 22 at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses that retrospectively proved to be as

important for the Soviet space program as Kennedy's speech in 1961 was for the United States.

First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Leonid I. Brezhnev made no

bones about the "true direction" for the future Soviet cosmonaut:

38 K, Ya. Kondratyev, A A. Buznikov, B. V Vinogradov. V. N. Volkov, V, V. Gorbatko. and O I. Srnotky.

"Spectrophotometry of the Earth FromManned Spacecraft," in K. Ya.Kondratyev. M. J. Rycroft, and C. Sagan,eds.,

Cospor: SpaceResearchXf: Volume I (Berlin: gkademie-Verlag, i971), pp. 619-32.

39. Riabchikov, Russiansin Space. p. 276.

40. Yu. A Mozzhorin, et at., eds.. Dorogi u kosrnos II (Moscow: MAI, 1992), pp. 35-30.

41 Souiet SpacePrograms. 1966-Z0. p. 378,

711
712

Our country has an extensive space program, drawn up for many years. We

are going our own way: we are moving consistently and purpose[uUy. Soviet cosmonautics is solving problems of increasing complexity... , Our way to the conquest

of space is the way of solving vital, fundamental tasks, basic problems of science and

technology .... Our science has approached the creation of long-term orbital stations

and laboratories as the decisive means to an extensive conquest of space. Soviet science regards the creation of orbital stations with changeable crews as the main road

for man into space. They can become cosmodromes in space, launching platforms for

[lights to other planets. Major scientific laboratories can be created for the study of

space technology, biology, medicine, geophysics, astronomy, and astrophysics?"

He added a second thread--that of a Soviet space program working purely for improving the

welfare of Soviet citizens: "Space for the good of people, space for the good of science, space for

the good of the national economy. Such in brief, is the substance of the Soviet space program--

its philosophical credo. '''_ The implication was clear: while Americans were chasing the Moon

with Apollo, an empty, politically motivated enterprise, Soviet cosmonauts were doing their all for

the advancement of science and ultimately for the benefit of humankind. From the moment

Brezhnev finished his speech, it was clear to most participants in the Soviet space program that

the age of the space station had begun--an era that ultimately led to the Mir space station.

At a postflight press conference for the Soyuz 617/8 mission on November 4, Academy of

Sciences President Keldysh stressed that Soviet efforts in space would focus on the creation of the

first permanent orbital space station. The timeframe would "certainly be within ten years, and

[probably] less than five years.., literally in the nearest future. TM On October 24, Keldysh told

the Swedish press that "we no longer have any scheduled plans for manned lunar flights. '''_

Commentators through the end of the year also repeatedly stressed the importance of cost in

future planning, suggesting that automatic exploration of the Moon was far cheaper than piloted

exploration. The suggestion was that the high cost of space exploration had forced a redirection

in the overall effort? _All this worked to neutralize the success of Apollo. In one of the more bold

pronouncements of the period, The New York Times claimed in a page-one story in late 1969

that:

according to some observers in Washington and some ,Zlmerican scientists, the Russians

may never have had a high-priority goal and timetable for a lunar landing in the same

sense as the Apollo project's commitment to land men on the Moon in this decade.""

42. Thisexcerptfromhisspeechisa slightlymodifiedversionof that publishedin ibid. p, 378 Somecorrectionshavebeenaddedbasedon theexcerptsinJamesF.Clarity,"BrezhnevSaysSovietis Followingthe 'Main

Roadin Space,"NewYorkTimes,October23, 1969,p. 20.

43 Riabchikov.RussiansinSpace.p. 278.

44. BernardGwertzman,"SovietExpertPredictsSpaceStationin 5 Years,"NewYorkTimes,November5.

1969,p 16.Therewasanamusingexchangeat thepressconferencethatwasnot reportedintheWest.Uponbeing

askedby a U.S reporterwhetherthe Sovietswerepreparingto senda manto theMoon. Keldyshrepliedconfus

ingly. "I think the Moonhasto besentto the man."The audienceburst intolaughter,but it took Keldysha long

timeto realizewhytheaudiencewaslaughing.It wasonly whenShatalovpromptedhim that theacademiciantried

to correcthimself,buthedid it soclumsilythattherewasmorelaughter.SeeKamanin,"1FeelSorryforOurGuys,"

no 14.

45. JohnNobleWilford, "SovietApparentlyDropsPlanto PutMenon Moon," NewYorkTimes,October

26. 1969 pp I, II

46. See,for example.BernardGwertzman,"SovietCurbsSpaceWork for Economy,"New "YorkTimes.

December31, 1969.

47 Wilford, "SovietApparentlyDropsPlanto PutMenonMoon," p h

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

From an outside perspective, the direction

of the Soviet space program seemed simple.

While the Soviets may have been looking to compete with _qpoIlo in the early 1960s,

they abandoned that goal early, perhaps around

1964-65, and had then focused only on the development of an Earth-orbital space station. For

almost twenty years, this would indeed be the

dominant paradigm in understanding Soviet

motives during the 1960s and 1970s. 48

If Westerners proved to be easier to convince

of Soviet intentions, the CISSR's own citizens

proved less gullible. _ Moscow-based journalist,

recalling the Brezhnev speech, wrote with sarcasm

in 1990:

Orbital stations at that time did not represent an end itself, but a political response.

Following the spectacular lunar landing by

Nell Armstrong and Edwin ,Ztldrin in July

1969, Brezhnev was obhged to come up

with an alternative space project to save

face, as well as the badly tarnished myth

of Soviet superiority in space. He was told

about an alternative. Brezhnev mentioned

the U.S. success in reaching the moon and

said that "we are following a different

course, which is consistent and purposeful." Designers, cosmonauts, and thousands of other people probably laughed up

their sleeves, knowing full well that the

General Secretary was lying. 4°

USSRAcademy of Sciences President Mstislav

Keldysh's scientific, managerial, and advisory

contributions to the Soviet space program were

matched by only a few individuals during the

Soviet era. Keldysh also had the distinction of being

one o/the few high-ranking individuaJs in the

space program whose identity was public

knowledge. (files of Peter Corin)

Brezhnev's pronouncements notwithstanding, in reassessing the trajectory of the Soviet

piloted space program in 1969, a few questions come to mind. Did the Soviets really abandon

their piloted lunar program in 19697 In other words, was the space station option put forward

as a substitute or a complement to the lunar program? Why space stations? As with most policy issues in the Soviet space program, the answers to these questions are not simple, nor can

they be isolated from the myriad of programs and proposals dating from the Korolev era.

The Space Station Rrrives

By the late spring of 1969, Soviet space officials had already decided on three options available for a suitable response to Apollo, prompted by the stunning success of Apollo 8 in

December 1968. These options were a piloted mission to Mars, the modification of the N I-L3

48. See,for example, Nicholas Danitoff. The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York: Alfred A. Knopl, 1972),

pp. 153, 164: William H. Schauer, The Politics o[ Space: ..ztComparison of the Soviet and American Space Programs

(New York: Holmes and Meier. 1976). pp. 164-78:

49. Leonard Nikishin, "inside the Moon Race," Moscow News, April I1. 1990, p 15.

713
714

programforextendedvisitstotheMoon,andthecreationofEarth-orbitalstations.Although

Brezhnev'sspeechservedto movethethirdoptionintotheforefront,theSovietspace

establishmentdidnotgiveuptheothertwooptionsin late1969.Infact,if fundingwasany

indication,moneyfortheNI-L3pilotedlunarprogramreachedapeakinappropriationsfor1970,

about$1.8billion,ayearafterApolloI I.s°Whiletherewascertainlyastatecommitmentforthe

lunarlandingprogramwellpast1969,aswellasamodicumofinterestintheMarsproject,the

spacestationprogramseemsto haveofferedthequickestreturn.Ustinov,Smirnov,and

Afanasyevneededsomethingbig,perhapsasearlyas1910.NeithertheNI-L3noranyproposed

Marsexpeditionwouldbereadybythen.Spacestationswereseenasanacceptableaternative.

AswithmostSovietspaceprojectsoftheperiod,therewasanotherexternalfactor.The

U.S.DepartmentofDefensehadforgedaheadwiththeMannedOrbitingLaboratory for the latter part of the 1960s, but that program had been canceled in May 1969. On the civilian side,

NASA had been studying space station options almost since its birth in 1958, and in 1965

these studies evolved into the Apollo Applications Program--a project that would make maximal use of Apollo hardware to build a modest space station in Earth's orbit. In July 1969, NASA

selected a final design for the project, a "dry workshop" based on an upper stage of the Saturn

V booster. A month later, the space agency "definitized" a contract with McDonnell Douglas

to build the station, renamed Skylab in February 19/0. __The station was expected to be ready

for launch by mid-1972. Afraid of losing another race in space, Ustinov did not want to react

with too little too late. $2

In some ways, the space station option was one hoisted upon Soviet space engineers.

Many in the upper echelons of the Soviet space industry, having invested almost ten years on

the N I-L3 lunar program, were reluctant to see it consigned to second place behind some hastily put together space station program. TsKBEM Deputy Department Chief and veteran cosmonaut Feoktistov hinted later at the discord brewing within the design bureau.

In the 1960s it was clear to us engineers that the most important development for

manned flights would be the creation of orbital space stations, but the administration

was against it. Mishin, the Design Bureau Chief, was totally opposed to this. He thought

that it was important to carry on with the Moon program. Everything else was nonsense

and not worth doing? _

The debate over the space station versus the Moon program split the design bureau into

opposing factions, and in a few years, this small fracture in unity would ultimately lead to cataclysmic consequences. But even as early as 1969, the "pro space station" group had powerful supporters in highly placed positions and managed to pull the right strings. Feoktistov later

described how his faction managed to influence the content of Brezhnev's famous October

1969 speech:

50. V. £ Mishin. "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?" (English title), Znaniye: tekhnike: seriya kosmonautika, astronomiya no. 12(December, 1990): 3-43. The amount in Soviet currency, according to Mishin, was 600 million rubles. The total appropriations for the NI-I.3 program up to January I. 19ZI, was 2.9 billion rubles, or roughly

$8 Z billion.

51. Linda Neuman Ezell, NASA Historical Data Book, Volume III Programs and Projects 1969-1978

(Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication (SP)-4012, 1988), pp. 98-100: Roger D Launius, NAS,zt: 7] History o/

the US, Ciuil SpaceProgram (Malabar. FL:Krieger Publishing Co.. 1994), pp. 97-98.

52. The Skylab option as a rationale for the Soviet space station program is mentioned in Semenov, ed.,

Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 264.

53. "The Russian Right Stuff: The Dark Side of the Moon," NOVA television show, #1808, WGBH-TV,

Boston, February 27, 199I.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

We didn't know how to get the bosses to change their minds, but some we(I-wishers in

the Party Central Committee cunnin£1y inserted a passage into Brezhnev's speech saying

that orbital stations promised the right way forward? 4

While the identity of the "well-wishers" remain undisclosed, one of them was probably

Dmitriy F. Ustinov, who, unhappy about the results of the lunar program, apparently wanted

some immediate results from an aimless space program? 5 He also had his own reputation to protect. As the secretary of the Central Committee for Defense Industries and Space, he was directly responsible for the Soviet space program. When his boss Brezhnev announced the space

station as the "main road into space," it cemented the pro space station faction's position. The

N I-L3 program would, of course, continue, as would work on a Mars project, but results from

the new option were expected in 1970 or 1971.

Since the early 1960s, the late Korolev had tasked engineers at his design bureau to explore

the possibility of designing what was generically called the Heavy Orbital Station (TOS).

Reportedly nicknamed Zvezda, work on the proposal continued throughout the 1960s with neither official sanction nor much financial support? 6 Diverted by more pressing programs such as

Soyuz and eventually the N I-L3 effort, it seems that Korolev had viewed the idea as one left for

fruition during the 1970s.

_q special subdivision of the Korolev design bureau studied several different variants of the

TOS during the 1960s, from relatively small designs to giant space stations. One small space station design consisted of three floors: the living quarters, a controlling compartment, and an airlock chamber. One end of the station had a multiple docking adapter for four visiting Soyuz-type

spacecraft. In this variant, the TOS was six meters in length, just under three meters in diameter,

and cylindrical in shape, with the floors akin to "slices" along the longitudinal axis. A mock-up

of the station was built in assembly shop no. 444 at the Experimental Machine Building Plant at

Kaliningrad, the very same site where workers assembled Soyuz ships?'Another similar conception, also apparently built, had four floors. The floors were for lockers and "cupboards," for a crew

compartment with a kitchen and toilets, for a laboratory and a control post, and for a multiple

docking unit for five visiting spacecraft. The docking unit would also serve as an airlock adapter

for performing EVAs. _" By 1969, as space stations began to assume a more crucial role in the

future of the Soviet space program, a group at TsKBEM began work on a much more ambitious

version of the TOS, a IO0-ton behemoth to be launched into Earth orbit by the N I rocket. The

station proper was a cylinder twenty meters long and six meters in diameter. Four Soyuz spacecraft could dock at a special multiple docking section at one end of the station, each node angled

at thirty degrees to the main axis of the vehicle, giving the entire station the look of an arrow with

feathers? _ None of the TOS conceptions went beyond exploratory studies. As one Soviet space

historian later recalled, "Eorolev assumed that he would be able to realize [the] notion of a

manned station, but he was so overloaded with other work, he wasn't able to do it."_

54. Ibid.

55. Kamanin suggeststhat it was Ustinov, Smirnov, and Keldysh who were instrumental in "putting these

words into IBrezhnev's] mouth." SeeKamanJn,"1 FeelSorry for Our Guys." no. 14.

56. The designation Zvezda is from YaroslavGolovanov. Koroleu: [akty i mi[y (Moscow: Nauka, 1994),

p. 768.

57. V.M. Petrakov, "Soviet Orbital Stations," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 47 (September

1994): 363-72.

58. C. Wachtel, "The Chief Designersof the Soviet Space Program," Journal of the British Interplanetary

Society 38 (December 1985): 561 63.

59. Semenov, ed, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 278.

60. I. 13.Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft(From the History of the Soviet SpaceProgram)" (English title),

Nouoye v zhizni Nauke, tekhnike: Seriya kosmonautika, astronomiya no. 12 (December 1991): 1-64.

715
716

TheIO0-tonvariantoftheTOS,datingfrom1969,mayhavebeenapartofamuchlarger

conceptualdesignthathadslowlyevolvedatTsKBEMthroughoutthelate1960s.Around1965,

Korolevhadapprovedxploratorystudiesofanintegratedlargemodularspacestationin Earth

orbit,verymuchsimilartotheideasofTsiolkovskiyandOberthfromtheearlypartofthecentury.DesignatedtheMultiroteSpaceBase-Station(MKBS),it wouldbepartof thelarger

MultiroleOrbitalComplex[MOK).KorolevhadevidentlyentrustedthisearlyworkontheMOK

toFirstDeputyMishin,whocontinuedtopursuethetopiconcehehadbecomechiefdesignerafterKorolev'sdeath?'WorkontheMKBSinvolvednotonlythemaindesignbureau,but

alsoTsKBEM'sbranchatKuybyshevunderFirstDeputyChiefDesignerKozlov.Discussionsduringthepost-Apollo8periodhadfocusedontheMOK/MKBSasapossiblevehicleforrespondingtothesuccessofApollo.Someofficialsatthetimesuggestedintegratingdefensegoalsinto

theeffort,perhapstoelicitsomeinterestfromtheMinistryofDefensetofundtheendeavor.In

earlyAugust1969,soonaftertheApolloI I mission,Ustinovhadexpressly ordered Mishin to

accelerate work on the MKBS.

While the MOK/MKBS was an attractive long-term option, it suffered from the same

limitations in time as piloted Mars missions and an expanded lunar landing project: the earliest

possible flight would not be until the mid-1970s at best. Keeping the MOK/MKBS as a future

proposition, Ustinov instead turned his attention to existing hardware to bring his space

station idea to a realistic conclusion. At the end of 1969, the Soviets had two modest space

station programs in progress, although neither had any actual hardware to fly in space. Both

were primarily military in nature, and they were products of two different design bureaus. The

smaller of the two was TsKBEM's Soyuz-VI station, consisting of the OB-VI block, which was

about the size of a Soyuz spacecraft, and a ferry vehicle, the 7K-S, a variant of the basic 7K-OK

Soyuz modified for internal crew transfer into the OB-VI block. Under Deputy Chief Designer

Okhapkin's control, the design bureau had already issued the complete design documentation

for facilitating a program of experimental work on the station? '_ Early plans to launch the

Soyuz-VI in 1969, however, proved to be too optimistic. Given Mishin's lukewarm support for

creating the OB-Vt, it was not surprising that delivery dates for flight-ready articles had been

pushed back into 1970. Mishin was much more supportive of the 7K-S Soyuz ferry, arguing at

many meetings in 1969 that the Ministry of Defense increase funding support for the project.

Touted as an improved and more reliable version of the trouble-prone Soyuz, he believed that

it was important that the 7K-S be introduced into service as quickly as possible.

Going through the list of options, Ustinov was not particularly enthused by the Soyuz-VI

as an appropriate response to Apollo. What the Soviet image needed was something more

substantial, something more "thick." And Ustinov found his "thick" solution not in Mishin's

hands, but in the empire of General Designer Vladimir N Chelomey. Since about 1966,

Chelomey's TsKBM had been engaged in the development of the Almaz space station complex,

aiming provisionally to launch the first completed product into orbit by the t00th birthday of

V. I. Lenin on April 22, 19707 _ For the most part, progress on the project had been steady. By

late 1969, work on the actual hull of the station and certain service systems was on schedule,

although there were major delays in some of the internal instrumentation. As of 1970,

Chelomey's engineers had built the hulls of eight test stand units and two flightworthy

vehicles. At the same time, ground testing of the control system, solar panels, and some of the

61. The MKBS and the MOK were mentioned at a meeting in late 1965 to discuss changes in the 1966-70

five yearplan for space exploration. SeeV. Denisov, "The Last Lesson"(English title),/quiatsiya i kosmonautika no.

12 (December 1991): 40-43. Korolev preparednotes on a tactical-technical requirementfor the MKBS on September

30 1963

62 Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmieheskayoKorporatsiya. p. 211

63. Lardier, L_stronautique 5oui#tique. p, 189.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
OPTIONS

station's other components was under way. _' A small group of cosmonauts had been training

for the tqlmaz program from as early as December 1961, and by 1969, four crews had been

formed for the first flights to the station, headed by veteran commanders Belyayev, Popovich,

Volynov, and Gorbatko/' Even more impressive, taking a page from Mishin's book, Chelomey

had dozens of civilian engineers from his organization screened for cosmonaut training. Three

of those passed tests and began further training in 1969 in anticipation of the formal selection

process by the State Interdepartmental Commission, the body with the final word on selecting

cosmonauts in the Soviet Union. _

The Almaz option was ideal for Ustinov's push to get a space station into orbit as soon

as possible--ideal except for two major problems. First, there was the lag in developing and

testing the Almaz's "auxiliary" systems, such as control and guidance systems, power supplies,

and so forth. There were conflicts with the military in sharing instrumentation on the station,

which also contributed to delays in configuring and delivering on-board systems. Chelomey

was trying his best, but he expected the problems with the systems to put a wrench in the

works and delay a launch to early 1972 or late 1971 at best/7 Second, Ustinov despised

Chelomey. Having opposed Chelomey's plans at critical junctures throughout the 1960s, it

would put Ustinov in an awkward position if, of all people, it was Chelomey who would chalk

up a victory for the Soviet space program.

In late 1969, Ustinov began wholeheartedly supporting an unthinkable, but typically

brilliant solution: why not have Mishin's design bureau use one of the almost-finished _qlmaz

units, complete it with instrumentation from the Soyuz, and then launch it into space, all

within one year? _*;There is still some confusion on the source of this idea. Some attribute it to

Ustinov and some to a group of Mishin's subordinates at his design bureau. One common story

is that three leading deputy chief designers at TsKBEM--Bushuyev, Chertok, and Qkhapkin--

in alliance with three important department chiefs--Feoktistov, Kryukov, and Raushenbakh--

approached Ustinov with a proposal to use elements of the Rlmaz orbital station re-equipped

with the auxiliary systems that had already been tested in orbit on the Soyuz spacecraft. In

addition, they would build a delivery vehicle, a modified Soyuz named the 7K-T, specifically to

serve as a ferry to and from the station. According to Bushuyev and the others, a preliminary

analysis had evidently showed that the idea was not only feasible but could be fulfilled in the

shortest time. _* According to one source, Mishin, who wanted to maintain the N I-L3 lunar

program as the primary focus of his organization, was bypassed in these initial discussions

in late 1969, being on holiday at Kislovodsk at the time. Possibly, this was not a coincidence,

and Mishin's deputies may have taken advantage of the chief designer's absence to solidify the

64. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Vladimir Polyachenko. "The 'Pep'of Almaz" (English title), Kry/ya

rodiny no. I (january 1992): 18 19.

65. Polyachenko. "The Pep' of Almaz," Another source suggests that there were three commanders in

1969: R R. Popovich, V. D. Shcheglov, and O. A Yakovlev. SeeE-mail correspondence, SergeyVoevodin to the

author, January 30, 1997.

66. The three candidates from TsKBM were A A. Grechanik, V G. Makrushin, and D. A, Yuyukov.SeeNina

Chugunova, "Chelomey's Cosmonauts: Why There Are No Crews From NPO Mashinostroyeniya in Outer Space"

(English title), Ogonek 4-5 (January 1993): 24-29

67. Petrakov, "Soviet Orbital Stations": Chugunova. "Chelomey's Cosmonauts": Semenov, ed..

Ruketno-KosmieheskoyuKorporatsiyG p. 264.

68 Dmitriy Payson, "Without the 'Secret Stamp: 'Satyat' and Star Wars" (English title), Rossiysk_yeuestL

November 21, 1992. p. 4

69 Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmieheskoyaKorporutsiyo, p. 264. In one source, the idea for using the Almaz

as a basis for the new station is attributed to Mishin himself, but given later events, this is extremely unlikely,

See S. A. Zhiltsov, ed., _osudarstvennyy kosmieheskty nauehno-proizuodstvennyy tsentr imeni M V Khrumcheva

(Moscow: RUSSLIT,1997), p, 74.

717
718

"prospacestation"contingentwithinthedesignbureau.Ustinovwasclearly supportive of the

idea. not the least because it would be a big blow to Chelomey's indefatigable ambitions. As

the ball started rolling on the idea, Chelomey was acutely aware that it was Ustinov who was

the main sponsor to this latest blow against his empire. '° At a meeting of TsKBEM senior staff

on January 3, 1970, Ustinov offered his complete backing and ordered the preparation of a formal Communist Party and government decree on the matter/'

It may have been a brilliant idea for Ustinov, but implementing the concept proved to be a

little more difficult. Ustinov did not want to deal directly with Chelomey's central organization,

and thus he invited a subsidiary of Chelomey's design bureau, his Fill Branch, to the

preliminary discussions with Mishin. This cooperation between two unlikely partners was, in

fact, stipulated in Ustinov's initial order to Mishin to:

• Have the space station ready in a year to a year and a half

• Make maximal use of ready instrumentation from the Soyuz spacecraft

• Arrange with the chief of TsKBM's Fill Branch, Viktor N. Bugayskiy, concerning the participation of that branch in the new program t_

TsKBM's Fill Branch had a long and distinguished history in the Soviet aviation, rocketry,

and space industries. In the 1950s, it had been an independent design bureau (OKB-23),

headed by the famous Chief Designer Myasishchev, and had built some of the most famous

long-range bombers for the Soviet Air Force. Among its more ambitious, albeit unrealized,

achievements was the conceptualization of one of the Soviet Union's first spaceplanes, the

M-48, as well as an intercontinental cruise missile, the Buran. After it was subordinated to

Chelomey's design bureau in 1960 as Branch No. I, the organization slowly shifted its design

focus to ICBMs and space launch vehicles. Under Chelomey's general leadership, the branch

created the UR-200 ICBM (later canceled), the UR-I00 ICBM, and the UR-500 (Proton)launch

vehicle. '_ All of these rockets were manufactured at the massive M. V. Khrunichev Machine

Building Plant, collocated with the Fill Branch in Moscow.

Detailed discussions on the cooperation between I-sKBEM and TsKBM's Fill Branch took

place in January 1970 at Bakovskiy near Moscow, where Mishin was on holiday at the time.

Ustinov evidently presided over the negotiations, which were attended not only by Mishin

and Bugayskiy, but also the director of the Khrunichev Plant, Mikhail I. Ryzhikh. It was

then that "basic questions were solved about the joint work of the three organizations in the

development and creation of the orbital station. "'4 There were also exchange visits among the

three entities. On january 4, Mishin visited the Khrunichev Plant, while the following day

Bugayskiy and Ryzhikh returned the favor by visiting Mishin's design bureau at Kaliningrad.

Ustinov completely excluded Chelomey from the negotiations, despite the fact his First Deputy,

Bugayskiy. was an essential participant in the talks. The discussions culminated with a decree

(no. I05-41) of the Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers dated February 9,

70 SeeChugunova. "Chelomey's Cosmonauts," for Chelomey's reaction upon hearing of the idea and his

suspicions of Ustinov.

71 The preparation of the decreewas entrusted to _q.I_Tsarev(VPK), K. A. Kerimov (MOM), and K D.

Bushuyev (TsKBEM).

72. Petrakov,"Soviet Orbital Stations."

73. Zhiltsov, ed, _osudarstuennyy kosmicheskiy, pp. 56-65. By 1970, it had already begun the development of two modifications of the UR-I00 ICBM, designatedthe UR-100M and the UR-IOOK. Note that the UR-500

Proton had begun development as an ICBM with-orbital-weapons delivery system

74. Petrakov,"Soviet Orbital Stations."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

1970, which called for the development of a new space station complex, the DOS-TK/_ "DOS"

stood for "Long-Duration Orbital Station" and represented the station proper, while the 7K

denoted the Soyuz ferry vehicle. In later years, it would publicly be known first as Salyut and

later as Mir. Apart from formally approving the project, the decree also stipulated the transfer

of an already manufactured hull of Chelomey's Almaz station to the hands of Mishin's

engineers. The latter, in cooperation with people under Bugayskiy and Ryzhikh, would reequip

the _Imaz to create the DOS vehicle. 7_

By the time that the Soviet leadership issued a formal decree on the DOS, the leaders

of the relevant organizations had already shuffled their priorities to bring a high priority to the

program. By late December 1969, Bugayskiy's Fill Branch had established a group of "lead

designers" for the orbital station project headed by Vladimir V. Pallo, which included veterans

of the group that had designed the Proton booster.77At Mishin's design bureau, the senior staff

had proposed the appointment of thirty-four-year-old Yuriy P. Semenov as the "lead designer"

of the DOS-IK complex, a position that gave him direct design control over the project.

Semenov had served in the same capacity since May 1967 for the LI circumlunar project, a

remarkable distinction for such a young man. A clearly competent engineer, it was rumored that

his rapid rise was owed in part to the fact that he was the son-in-law of Politburo member

Andrey P. Kirilenko78 On February 4, Mishin handed out assignments on the DOS-7K project.

As one would expect, most of the key assignments went to those who had proposed the

project in the first place, including Bushuyev, Chertok. and Feoktistov/_

In Soviet terms, the pace and acceleration of the project were remarkable. By December 3 I,

1969, literally in the course of a few days, TsKBEM engineers prepared a document, "Basic

Provisions for an Orbital Station," which was the precise origin of the DOS-7K design. In

February 1970, the design bureau's Department No. 241 issued the technical plan for the

DOS, with which the leadership of TsKBM's Fill Branch concurred. In early March, a group of

engineers from TsKBEM, TsKBM's Fill Branch, and the Khrunichev Plant met for the first

time to discuss the project and agreed on the basic requirements and direction of work. 8°The

distribution of labor among the three enterprises laid the foundation for a cooperation that

75. Ibid.; Semenov,ed., RaketnoKosmicheskoyaKorporatsiya.p. 267: Zhiltsov, ecL,Cosudorstuennyy

kosmicheskiy,p. 75.

76. A subsequent decree (no. 57ss) of the Ministryof GeneralMachine Building(MOM) dated February

16, 1970,alsospecifiedmoredetailsof eachside'sparticipationin the project.SeeZhiltsov,ed.,_osudarstvennyy

kosmieheskiy,p. 75.

77. Ibid; G.Amiryants,"Ivensen's'Chayka'"(Englishtitle),,Zluiatsiyai kosmonautikano. 4 (April 1990):

36-38: _qndreyTarasov."SpaceScienceof theFuture:Selectionof PathsandOrbits" (Englishtitle), Prauda,May[L

1990,p 3.

i'8. Semenov'sofficial appointmentasleaddesignerof theDOS-TKcomplex,datedJanuary20. 1970,has

beenreproducedin full in Semenov.ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya,p. 265-66. Fora biographyof

Semenov,seeK. Lantratov,"Yu. P.Semenov(on 60 Years)"(Englishtitle), Nouostikosmonautiki6 (April 9-22,

1995):54-55 Forthe Kirilenkoconnection,seeRoaldZ Sagdeev,TheMakingo[ a SovietScientist:My 71duentures

in Nuclear Fusionand Space FromStalin to Star Wars (New York:John Wiley & Sons, 1993),p. 180.

79. Themainassignmentswere:Yu.P.Semenov(leaddesignerforthe DOS-7Kcomplex),K. D.Bushuyev

(chief of DOS-?Kdevelopment),K. R Feoktistov(deputy chiefof DOS-7Kdevelopment),R V. Tsybin (lead

designerforthe 7Kferryship), k A. Gorshkov(leaddesignerfor theDOSorbital block),B.Ye.Chertok(chiefof the

guidancesystem),B. V. Raushenbakh(deputychiefof the guidancesystem),h Ye,Yurasov(deputychiefof the

guidancesystem).Ya.I. Tregub(chiefof flight tests),V. h Zelenshchikov(deputychiefof flight tests),and/q. R

Abramov(chiefof thegroundcomplex,technicalposition,andfuelingequipment).

80. Semenov. ed., Raketno-KosmJcheskaya Korporatsiyu, p. 266. tqmong those present were:

Ye.A Bashkin. E. K Demchenko, K. P. Feoktistov.L, A. Gorshkov,iq. A. Nesterenko. and Yu. P. Semenov from

TsKBEM:V. N. Bugayskiy.G D Dermichev,Ya.B. Nodelman,and V. V. Pallofrom TsKBM'sFill Branch:and

B.G. Britkov,Ye.M Kupryakov,M. P.Parfenov,andA. h Tsimmermanfromthe KhrunichevPlant.

719
720

existed among the same three entities into the 1990s in the design, development, testing,

and launch of the Mir space station and its various add-on modules. Never before had the Soviet

space industry engaged in such a cooperative project that was primarily civilian in nature.

Mishin's TsKBEM worked on the overall design of the station, supplied almost all the complete

systems, developed new systems for the station, ensured the launch and return of station crews,

and had control over flights, It also manufactured the basic systems of the station and carried out

preflight testing of the fully built station. Bugayskiy's TsKBM Fill Branch developed the layout of

the station, carried out modeling, developed a small portion of the systems, issued the design doc

umentation, supervised the manufacturing at the plant, and participated in the preparation of the

station at the launch site. The Khrunichev Plant had already manufactured the pressure hull, manufactured new ones at its Building 160, and carried out the full assembly of the product/'

As soon as the official government decree was issued, the leading architects for the DOS--

Bushuyev, Feoktistov, and Semenov--developed a simplified initial concept for the station, which

was then delivered to Bugayskiy's team. At the basic level, the designers introduced

four major modifications to Chetomey's Almaz station to turn it into the DOS:

• A new transitional compartment with a passive docking node, which forced a redesign of the

forward bulkhead

• A truncated airlock compartment at the rear of the station with deletion of the associated passive docking node

• A new aggregate compartment at the rear of the station with a much smaller diameter than

the rest of the station, which would contain the main engines

• New large solar panels installed like wings on the transitional and aggregate compartments

(the old Almaz panels would be deleted) ':

These initial changes to the Almaz station design were incorporated into a special wooden

mock up of the station built to specifications at the Fili Branch. More difficult was the actual appropriation of the several complete Almaz models, which Chelomey naturally was reluctant to give up.

In March 1970, DOS lead designer Semenov for the first time met with Chelomey at the latter's

offices in Reutov. The meeting was long and did not go very well; the proud Chelomey evidently

gave Semenov an earful. The younger man invoked the recently passed Central Committee and

Council of Ministers decree, but Chelomey refused to give in. It was only after personal intervention by Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev that the matter was resolved, Chelomey

capitulated and handed over four already-built hulls of the Almaz station to Mishin's engineers?'

Ultimately, eight station hulls, associated equipment, and documentation were transferred to the

DOS program. All of this was done via Chelomey's Fill Branch--that is, without going through the

general designer. One of Chelomey's deputies recalled:

The TsKBM Branch uJas instructed to hand over all blueprints related to the TsKBEM project. Chelomey's Deputy at the Branch implemented the order, having made the diazotype copies of our drawings, and he had not even wiped out our signatures from the

developed drawings related to the DOS... which he handed overY

8 I. Ibid. p. 268: Zhiltsov. edr Gosudarstuennyy kosmicheskiy, p 74.

82 Zhiltsov, ed,, Cosudarstvennyy kosmicheskiy, p 75: Petrakov,"Soviet Orbital Stations."

83, Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p, 267. Another source says that the MOM order

dating from February 16, 1970. stipulated that six Almaz stations were to be turned over from Chelomey to Mishin.

SeeK /antratov, "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda'" (English title), Novosti kosmonavliki 6 (March 10-23. 1997): 74-80.

84, Polyachenko. "The 'Pep' of Almaz," p. 19

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

The convoluted story behind the genesis of the DOS could

have been the brainchild of an author intent on confusing readers, a maze of abrupt turns, shifting alliances, and ultimately

betrayal. No one could have possibly predicted such an outcome.

Chelomey was ordered to hand over all his Almaz materials to

Mishin, while at the same time, one of Chelomey's own branches was ordered to cooperate with Mishin on the project. And all

this happened when both Chelomey and Mishin opposed the

idea. For Chelomey, this was a blow of proportions comparable to

the immediate post-Khrushchev period when the bottom fell out

of so many of his programs. After that near catastrophe, he saw

one after another of his piloted space projects disappear.

Although he had a fairly strong automated space program, he

staked all his hopes to claim some of the glory of the piloted

space effort on glmaz. But his tqlmaz was near death. He was

consoled by the fact that Ustinov was not singularly

powerful enough to completely kill the military Almaz. Although

it would be delayed, perhaps as much as two or three years,

Ministry of Defense support ensured that eventually Chelomey

would see his coveted/qlmaz fly in space.

Bugayskiy was put in an awkward position. He had had a distinguished career working as a deputy to renowned Soviet aircraft

designer Sergey V. Ilyushin at OKB-240, where he led work on the

famous 11-2 during World War II. He joined Chelorney's design

bureau in 1960 to direct the plant production of the P-5 naval missile. The two men evidently had "excellent relations" with each

Viktor Bugayskiy was the chief o[

the Chelomey design bureau's

Branch No. I at Fill in Moscow

7t veteran of the Ilyushin design

bureau, Bugayskiywas primarily

responsible [or the serial

production of Chetomeys many

ballistic missilesand spacecraft

He was one of the principal

architects of the first Salyut space

station in t970-7t,

(files of Peterqorin)

other: while Chelomey had the creative vision, Bugayskiy knew how to work at the plant level, converting that vision into reality? _ When, in 1960, Chelomey inherited the Fill Branch, he put

Bugayskiy in charge. Throughout the 1960s, Bugayskiy was officially Chelomey's First Deputy, and

thus ultimately responsible to him and no one else. But torn between Llstinov's whims and

Cheiomey's rank, he became a consistent supporter of the DOS despite heavy criticism from his

boss. Chelomey was unable to dismiss Bugayskiy. With the help of the Ministry of Defense,

Chelomey did manage to pass through an order limiting the number of employees at the Fill

Branch who could work on the DOS. Opinions within the branch were divided--some supporting Chelomey, others Bugayskiy2 _ It was a remarkably discordant management situation. For his

part. Chief Designer Mishin had been adamantly opposed to the DOS decision, believing it to be

a diversion from the N I-L3 program. Writing twenty years later, his opinions apparently had not

changed:

The decision made no sense to me (and it still makes no sense to me now), inasmuch as

the work on the ,qlmaz orbital station was being done at the same time that work was

being done on [the DOS] .... It would have been wiser to combine the efforts o[ both OKBs

to deue[op a unified orbital station and to entrust that work to... Che[omey's firm, which

85. Telephone interview, Sergey Nikitich Khrushchev by the author. October I0, 1996: V. M. Petrakov.

"from the History of Development and Creation of Carrier Rocketsin the USSR" (English title), in Trudy XXup chteniy. posvyashchennykh razrabotke nauchnogo nasladeniya i razvitiyu idey K E. Tsiolkouskogo (Moscow: RAN.

1994), p. 170.

86 Petrakov, "Soviet Orbital Stations."

721
722

had long been working on that area. Such a decision would have relieved the burden

being carried by our OKB substantially and would have given us the opportunity to concentrate our e[[orts on the work on the N I-L3 program. B'

He added:

The decision could not help but complicate our relations with _Z N. Chelomey, which

were already strained because o[ the trans[er to us (while Sergey Pavlovich [Korolev]

was still alive) o[ subsequent work on the circumlunar flight? _

It was one of those rare instances when Chelomey and Mishin actually agreed on

something, but their combined might could not stop the newest space station program. The

manufacture of the first DOS flight article began at the Khrunichev Plant in February 1970, the

first in a line of space vehicles that would ultimately lead to the Mir space station.

Eighteen Days

The Almaz was not the only casualty of the DOS decision. Concurrent with the decision

to proceed with the DOS, on February 9, 1970, all work on the Soyuz-Vl small military orbital

station was terminated. Given the capabilities of the DOS, Ustinov believed that there was no

rational need to have two space station programs at TsKBEIVl. The cancellation of Soyuz-Vl

was opposed by certain individuals in the military who had been patiently waiting for more

than five years for a military version of the Soyuz, seeing each program neutralized one after

the other. There was one bright spot in the otherwise dismal state of piloted military programs:

while Minister Afanasyev canceled work on the OB-VI station portion of Soyuz-Vl, he allowed

work to continue on the 7K-S transport ship of the complex because he considered it "promising and having many improved characteristics compared to the [basic] 7K-OK [Soyuz]. ''_ The

7K-S, with improved avionics, communications, safety, and capability characteristics over the

basic Soyuz, would serve as the basis for autonomous military research Soyuz spacecraft in the

7K-S-I and 7K-S-II variants. A third version would serve as a ferry spacecraft to future DOS stations in Earth orbit. Mishin's interest in pursuing the 7K-S variant meant that funding for it was

increased significantly by mid-1910, although progress was evidently slow because of a lack of

facilities at the design bureau's plant. A first piloted flight was not expected until 1912-73.

The first DOS mission was scheduled for early 197'I at best. To fill the gap between piloted flights, Mishin had plans to conduct two Soyuz missions during 1970, each comprising two

7K-OK spacecraft that would dock with each other using the lunar Kontakt rendezvous radar

system. One of these missions would also include a twenty-day long-duration flight of two

cosmonauts in Earth orbit. By late December 1969, it was clear that the Kontakt system would

not be ready for the lOOth birthday of Lenin in April 1970, the target date for the first docking

mission. Instead, Mishin formulated a plan to launch a single 7K-OK, spacecraft no. 17, with

two cosmonauts on the twenty-day flight in April 1970. 9o In January 1970, the MilitaryIndustrial Commission issued a formal decree for an eighteen-day flight, with the length of

87 Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"

88 Ibid

89. I_antratov, "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda'": Semenov, ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 21 I.

The cosmonaut Stoup for the Soyuz-Vl program finally disbanded in Ausust 1970.

90 There were apparently at least three other options to celebrate the April 1970 deadline, including one

usin8 the 7K-OK to dock with an Alrnaz Orbital Piloted Station (OPS) and another using the 7K-Sto dock with an

Almaz OPS

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

duration determined by the safety reserves aboard the relatively cramped Soyuz spaceship. Such

a flight would break the fourteen-day record set by the two Gemini VII astronauts almost five

years earlier. This eighteen-day flight would then be followed by the Kontakt docking mission, perhaps as early as August 1970.

Six cosmonauts had begun training for the long-duration mission by November 1969, including primary contenders Nikolayev and Sevastyanov, who had lost their chance to fly on Soyuz 8

earlier in the year because of poor preflight preparations.9_Insufficient training of the crew was

also evidently a factor in postponing the new mission from early April to late May 1910. Apart

from the purely physiological goals of monitoring the effects of prolonged microgravity, the two

cosmonauts were also to reperform some of the rendezvous maneuvers tried in vain during the

triple-Soyuz flight in late 1969. Their Soyuz ship would carry a new computer, named the

Spacecraft Analogical Machine, to allow rendezvous in orbit with an imaginary target.°2 The

computer was capable of locating targets at a range of thirty to fifty kilometers and of providing

input on subsequent maneuvers. Throughout early 1910, the cosmonauts training for the flight

performed extensive full-length flight simulations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center

at Zvezdnyy gorodok to prepare for the mission. These were carried out to establish a "proper

balance between reserve capacity of the air regenerative system and the metabolic processes of

the crew. TM Simulations included complete eighteen-day missions with ground crews matching

the exact schedule planned for the mission. The cosmonauts used new state-of-the-art

biomedical monitoring equipment as well as improved waste disposal systems.

On May 20, 1970, the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces launched a Zenit-4 reconnaissance

satellite into orbit from site 31 at Tyura-Tam. Named Kosmos-345 by the Soviet press, the

satellite was launched from the same pad that was set aside for use for the long-duration flight.

Because of extremely high winds at the launch site, up to and above twenty meters per second,

there was some damage when the plumes from the rocket exhaust singed the launch trusses

and cables of the pad structure. Padpersonnel assured the Soyuz State Commission that repairs

would be finished prior to the planned launch on May 3 t. Subsequent problems during ground

testing of the 7K-OK vehicle at Tyura-Tam put that target date in question. During the integrated

testing of the ship, engineers detected intermittent currents in its electrical system, measuring

as much as sixty volts, instead of the nominal thirty-eight volts. Unusually, most of the

members of the twenty-person State Commission had not arrived at the Baykonur Cosmodrome

by this time. Air Force Aide Kamanin noted in his diary on May 22: "The attitude toward the

preparations for the prolonged space flight, beginning with the highest leaders and ending with

the rank-and-file workers, is mostly nonchalant. TM

There was somewhat of a minor crisis on the evening of May 25, when Kamanin

discovered primary crew Commander Nikolayev smoking a cigarette in direct violation of orders

not to do so at the Baykonur Cosmodrome. Later, Sevastyanov also admitted that he had also

been smoking contrary to medical orders. Kamanin was aghast, especially given that Nikolayev

had been caught doing the same thing the previous December and had promised to quit

smoking. The general noted with frustration that:

If I had learned o[ this a month ago, would have been against allowing Nikolayev and

5euastyanov to fly, but now. when there are only a few days left until the launch, and

91. Theothercosmonautsintrainingby April 1970were g. V. Filipchenko,G.M. Grechko,V, G. Lazarev,

andV. I. Yazdovskiy.

92. HooperandVis, "Meetingthe SpaceExplorers:Vitali Sevastyanov."

93. "Big BoosterPacesSovietMannedFlights."ZiviationWeek& SpaceTechnology, July6. 1970,p. 18.

94. Kamanin,"RemovingtheCosmeticRetouching."

723
724

Nikolayev's crew has already been confirmed in [act as the primary crew in the Party's

Central Committee and the government, it is impossible to raise the matter of replacing

the cosmonauts with their backups. _

In the meantime, Minister of General Machine Building/qfanasyev telephoned Mishin at

Tyura-Tam that the Politburo had just discussed the impending flight. They had recommended

that the press communique_s regarding the mission be low key, without all the pomp associated

with past Soyuz missions.

On the evening of May 3 I, the complete State Commission met to formally approve the

launch date and time of the launch, set for exactly midnight local time on June I. At a subsequent press conference, Nikolayev and Sevastyanov were forbidden to talk about the main feature of the flight, its record-breaking length, and instead uttered the usual generalities. There

seems to have been some tension between factions in the State Commission over the issue of

length, a latent conflict that did not abate through the following weeks. Some, like Kamanin,

were adamant that the length be limited to eighteen days, while others, like Mishin, were hoping

for a possible extension to twenty days. On the afternoon of launch day, Kamanin tried to preempt any conflicts on the issue by explicitly forbidding either cosmonaut from asking for an extension of the flight over eighteen days once they were in space. Kamanin's concern was that any

extension would severely strain the capabilities of the old Soyuz spacecraft and perhaps put the

lives of the crew in jeopardy.

Throughout the day, Strategic Missile Forces personnel carried out all prelaunch procedures

on time. The cosmonauts arrived at the pad a little over two hours prior to launch. Without further ado, the Soyuz spaceship lifted off precisely on time at 2200 hours Moscow Time on June I,

1970, with forty-year-old Colonel Andrian G. Nikotayev as the commander and thirty-four-yearold civilian Vitally I. Sevastyanov as the flight engineer. The spaceship, named Soyuz 9, entered

an initial orbit of 208 by 220.6 kilometers at a 51.7-degree inclination. For Nikolayev, it was his

second spaceflight, having flown in space eight years before in 1962 as the pilot of Vostok 3.

Sevastyanov was the fourth civilian engineer from TsKBEM to fly in space. NP,S/q astronaut Nell

/q. Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the Moon, was on an official visit to the Soviet

Union at the time. On the night of the launch, at the Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow,

he was clearly surprised when his host, cosmonaut Maj. General Beregovoy, turned on the TV to

view film of the Soyuz 9 launch. Beregovoy reportedly told P,rmstrong, "This is in your honor."'_

On their first day in space, the Soyuz 9 crew carried out two orbital maneuvers--the

first on the fourteenth orbit to 213 by 267 kilometers and the second on the seventeenth orbit

to 247 by 266 kilometers--sufficient enough to prevent orbital decay without additional

maneuvers. _' These maneuvers may have also been related to the mock rendezvous with an

imaginary target. The two men began their extensive scientific experiments program by the end

of the their first orbit. Within the first three to four days in orbit, ground controllers were already

finding out that they would have to plan future long-duration missions differently. For example,

the cosmonauts reported that they required nearly fifty minutes to complete their set of physical

exercises, whereas they managed to do them in a half-hour during preflight training.

On June 4, most of the members of the State Commission, including Chairman Kerimov,

Minister Afanasyev, Chief Designer Mishin, and Commander of Space tqssets Karas, left

Tyura-Tam for Moscow. In charge at the control point at the launch site were Col. General

Kamanin and TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designer Yakov I. Tregub. During the latter part of the day,

95. Ibid.

96. Smolders, Soviets in Space, p t86: Riabchikov,Russians in Space. p. 277.

97. Petrov,Conquest o[ Outer Space, pp. 17t-73.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
OPTIONS

there was some alarm when ground readings showed that because of intermittent operation of

the solar arrays' automatic equipment, the storage buffer batteries were showing higher levels

of charge than normal. On the forty-seventh orbit, Sevastyanov reported that although the

solar arrays had been turned off, the current in the batteries was twenty-six amperes, clearly

indicating a malfunction in the control switch for the panels. During the previous two days of

flight, the crew had to turn off the solar arrays manually more than twelve times, close to the

limit of fifteen times the operation could be repeatedd _ One reason for the excess power was

beyond the control of the ground or the crew. On this flight, the duration of "nighttime" was

only forty seconds instead of the dozens of minutes on earlier Soyuz missions. Because

the orbit of the current mission was such that the ship's orbit was nearly parallel with the

terminator, the solar arrays were generating a nearly continuous stream of electric current. To

compensate, the flight control team ordered the crew to turn the ship around at a rate of a half

degree per second to turn the arrays away from the Sun. The solar panel switching system

began operating normally the following day, indicating that either Sevastyanov had reported

incorrect readings the previous day or that it had been a "self-repairing" problem.

_q week into the mission, already the longest Soviet space mission, all systems seemed to

be nominal. The cosmonauts reported that they felt significantly better on the sixth day than on

the first two to three days of the flight. There were again murmurs of talk about extending the

flight to twenty days, but such prognostication proved too premature at this point. One of the

few negative indicators of the crew's health was the reduced consumption of drinking water (one

liter per day) and oxygen (seventeen liters per day), indicating some fatigue. On June I0,

Nikolayev and Sevastyanov had their first day off, and they spent time playing a game of chess

with Kamanin and veteran cosmonaut Gorbatko on the ground. The players advanced their pieces

twenty-five times over three orbits before agreeing to a draw."" The crew displayed the first real

signs of fatigue and decrease in working efficiency on their twelfth day in orbit. Kamanin wrote

in his diary that:

Nikolayev and Sevastyanou look somewhat puffy, and listlessness and irritability can

be sensed in their actions. 71[ter talking things over with the cosmonauts, we decided to

shorten si£nificantly for the subsequent days of the fli£ht the volume of experiments and

to increase the rest periods. '°°

The activities of the Soyuz 9 crew in space were fairly intensive for such a relatively small

spacecraft, with working days lasting on average between fourteen and sixteen hours. Both

exercised twice a day in the living compartment with an expansion device that required an

exertion tension of ten kilograms. On occasion, they wore a special suit named Pingvin

("Penguin") to simulate some of the effects of Earth's gravity. They assessed their condition

before and after each exercise regime, recording arterial pressure, pulse, respiration, and

contrast sensitivity of their eyes, The average daily calorific content for each cosmonaut was

about 2,600 kilocalories. For the first time, a Soviet piloted spaceship carried a food heater,

which allowed the crew not only to heat up their food, but also to get a fresh cup of coffee in

the "morning." The men could not take baths in the ship, but they used wet and dry towels

for rubdowns twice a day for personal hygiene. They were allowed a change of underwear once

98. Kamanin, "Removing the Cosmetic Retouching." The limit of fifteen times was becauseevery time the

cosmonauts turned the switch off, hydrogen accumulated in the instrument compartment. With increasing amounts

of hazardous hydrogen in the module, the controllers would havehad to cut the flight short after eight days in space.

99 Ibid.: Riabchikov, Russians in Space, p. 280,

I00 Kamanin. "Removing the Cosmetic Retouching."

725
726

a week. On this first space mission lasting more than two weeks, the cosmonauts maintained

only intermittent contact with their families. On the birthday of Nikolayev's daughter Elena, she

came to the Flight Control Center with her mother, former cosmonaut Valentina V. NikolayevaTereshkova, to talk to her father via both video and audio. '°'

The actual scientific experimentation consisted of fifty experiments in various categories. On

their fourth day in space, the crew used a new stellar sensor to calculate the orbital parameters

and geographical latitude of the point above which the ship was flying, relative to the position of

a selected star above the horizon, Vega in the Lyra constellation. The cosmonauts carried out this

experiment, complicated by the motion and drift of Soyuz 9, over a period of two complete orbits

without any communications with the ground as they manually maintained attitude and

measured drift of the ship's gyroscopes. Other navigational exercises involved the use of the SMK-6

sextant, used in combination with solar and stellar sensors and an optical device in the spacecraft.

On their fourteenth day, the cosmonauts explored the possibility of checking orientation with less

"popular" stars, such as Arcturus, Deneb, and others, in conjunction with ground reference points

on Earth, including lakes and mountains in Africa and South America. All these experiments led to

precise determination of orbital elements to refine future rendezvous exercises.'°'

As usual, Earth photography comprised a large part of their work time and resulted in

t,000 pictures by the end of the mission. These included a special experiment on June t3 on

Soyuz 9's 189th orbit. The crew investigated weather formations in the atmosphere and western

portion of the Indian Ocean as part of an integrated exercise that included a Meteor-I satellite at

an altitude of 600 kilometers, the Soyuz 9 vehicle at 240 kilometers, and sounding balloons

launched from the scientific research vessel .,qkademik Shirshou of the USSR Hydrometeorological

Service located in the Indian Ocean. Less intensive observations included those of a large tropical storm in the Indian Ocean on their fifth day and forest fires in Africa near Lake Chad the day

after. On the thirteenth day, the crew used both black-and-white and multispectral color film to

identify different kinds of rock and soil on Earth, the moisture content of glaciers, the location

of shoals of fish, and timber reserves. They studied aerosol particles in the atmosphere by

observing twilight glow and carried out spectrographic measurements of the horizon to enhance

definition of the horizon for navigational purposes. They also used the RSS-2 handheld spectrograph to make 200 spectrophotometric measurements of natural formations in different parts

of the world. The same type of instrument had been used on Soyuz 7 the previous year. On day

seventeen, they performed some brief photography of the Moon.'"'

Biomedical tests comprised a major part of their activities. On their ninth day in space, they

reported that they were collecting air samples of their breathing before and after exercise to

study the ration of oxygen and carbon dioxide. On day thirteen, Sevastyanov carried out

a test of his mental capabilities by performing a simulated set of commands that had been

preprogrammed into the on-board computer. His results would be compared to his performance

before the flight on the same test. Nonhuman studies included those related to the micro and

macro genesis of plants, the division of chlorella cells, the propagation of bacterial cultures in

liquid media, and the development of insects in weightlessness.

As they were winding down their experiments program, there were some minor problems.

P,t the scheduled beginning of their communications session on June 15, ground controllers

were unable to wake up the crew despite three minutes of increasingly frantic calls. Both men

t01 Riabchikov, Russians in Space, p. 280: Narimanov, Ot kosmicl_eskikhkorabtey, pp. 77-80: Smolders.

Souiets in Space, p, 192: Souiet Space Programs. 1966-70, p. 238.

102. Narimanov. Ot kosmicheskikh korabley, pp. 81-83.

103. Riabchikov,Russians in Space,pp. 280-81: SouietSpacePrograms, 1966-70, p 239: K. Y. Kondratyev.

et al. "Some Resultsof Spectrophotometry of Natural Formations Fromthe Manned Spaceship Soyuz-9" (English

title). Kosm_chesklyeissledouaRiya 10 (March-April 1972): 245-54.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

apologized for sleeping through their wake-up time, but Sevastyanov, groggy from having been

woken up, inadvertently switched on the button for the automatic landing system display when

attempting to switch on the cabin light. It was an exact repeat of the situation on Soyuz 7,

when the system, designed to operate after reentry at an altitude of eleven kilometers, remained

turned on in space through the rest of the mission. Later the same day, the crew altered their

orbit a third time, by firing their engine on orbit number 208. The following day, there was

further anxiety when one of the batteries of the telemetry system failed, dropping out telemetry

for a number of important parameters on the ship's systems, Both Chief Designers Mishin and

Ryazanskiy, the latter responsible for the offending component, assured the State Commission

that this was not a threat to continued flight.

There was an expanded meeting of the State Commission on June 16, when Mishin

casually asked ballistics experts what the orbital parameters would be on the twentieth day of

flight, clearly implying that he was interested in extending the mission from the planned

eighteen days. The issue over mission length, a common conflict during many Soviet piloted

space missions of the era, spilt out in the open during lunch the same day, when Mishin and

Kamanin went head to head against each other. According to Kamanin:

Mishin did not hold back and asked me, am I o[ a mind to fight? Knowing what he was

driuing at, I responded that, [or the time being, I see no reasons for shortening the flight

program, I did not begin to talk about the [act that members of the landing commission

/tom the industry--[Chief Designers] Severin, Tkacheu, and Darevskiy--had urgently

requested that I not permit an increase in the duration of the Soyuz-9's flight beyond the

[eighteen-day] program. '_

From Soyuz 9 Commander Nikolayev's reports, it was clear that while food rations could

be extended to twenty days, it would be difficult at best, and probably not worth the risk, The

issue was finally resolved at a meeting of the inner circle of the State Commission on June 16.

Both State Commission Chairman Kerimov and Mishin were clearly under political pressure to

extend the flight to twenty days. Mishin's suggestion for an extension was, however, not taken

lightly by the other attendees. Five men came out against Mishin. In frustration, Mishin turned

on Ministry of Health representative Yevgeniy I. Vorobyev, responsible for dietary needs, accusing him of not providing enough food for twenty days. The final decision was to perform the

landing on June 19, after eighteen days. Kamanin noted in his diary: "V. P. Mishin and

K A. Kerimov, having promised the high command in Moscow that they would carry the flight

out to 20 days, will now have to concur with our decision.' ....

The last two days in orbit were relatively quiet for both the crew and ground controllers.

On the morning of June 17, Kerimov, Mishin, and Kamanin congratulated the two cosmonauts

on officially exceeding the record set by Gemini VII in 1965, thus reclaiming for the Soviet

Union the absolute endurance record for a spaceflight. /_ day later, the State Commission

approved a plan to land Soyuz 9 on its 287th orbit. In case of a possible ballistic reentry.

the commission stationed a contingent of recovery forces, including amphibious craft, three

IO4. Kamanin, "Removing the Cosmetic Retouching." The chief designers were G. I. Severin of KB Zvezda

(for spacesuits), N. ,q. Lobanov of Nil _qU(for parachutes), and S. G. Darevskiy of SOKB I_11(for ground simulators

and avionics).

105. Ibid. The other members of the inner circle were P.t_. t_gadzhanov (Deputy Chief of TsKIK and also

Chief of GOGU). B. Ye. Chertok (Deputy Chief Designer of TsKBEM), N. R Kamanin (Air Force Commander-inChief's Aide for Space), K. _. Kerimov (Chief of the Third Chief Directorate, MOM), Ya I. Tregub (Deputy Chief

Designer of TsKBEM), and Ye.I. Vorobyev (Chief of the Third Directorate, Ministry of Health).

127
728

helicopters, five sea launchers, and fifteen fishing vessels, in the Aral Sea. Nikolayev and

Sevastyanov's journey back to Earth began on the afternoon of June 19, At least 150 people,

including Minister Afanasyev, were present at the Flight Control Center at Yevpatoriya to observe

the proceedings. Air Defense Forces radars tracked the capsule from an altitude of eight-three

kilometers all the way down to parachute deployment. The whole crowd at the center burst into

applause upon hearing Nikolayev's radioed message on a safe landing. Because of the precision

of the landing, two helicopters were able to film the descending capsule and landed almost simultaneously with the cosmonauts. The Soyuz 9 ship landed seventy-five kilometers west of

Karaganda at 1459 hours Moscow Time after a flight lasting seventeen days, sixteen hours, fiftyeight minutes, and fifty-five seconds. For the first time in more than four years, the Soviet Union

held the absolute record for the longest piloted spaceflight.

When ground crews reached the cosmonauts, they found that the cosmonauts were unable

to get out of the ship themselves and had to carry them out. After much discussion and dissent

on the issue, Military-lndustrial Commission Chairman Smirnov finally decided to cancel the

immediate flight of the crew to Moscow's Vnukovo Airport. Instead, the cosmonauts remained

at Karaganda for a day and arrived in Moscow on June 20 at Chkalovskaya Airfield. The plan

was to escort the cosmonauts to the Cosmonaut Training Center for a press conference, but

once Kamanin entered the aircraft to talk to the crew, these plans were changed. He wrote in

his journal:

When I entered the aircraft's cabin, Sevastyanov was sitting on the sofa. while Nikolayev

was at a small table. I knew they were having a hard time enduring the return to the

ground, but I had not counted on seeing them in such a sorry state. Pale, puffy, apathetic, without the spark of vitality in their eyes--they gave the impression of completely emaciated, sick people. ,oo

The crew was eventually escorted off the plane by cosmonauts Shatalov and Yeliseyev,

although both had said earlier that they could walk by themselves. In a weak voice, Nikolayev,

the more debilitated of the two, gave a very brief speech about fulfilling their mission and being

ready for another one. He and Sevastyanov were then put into cars and sent to the care of an Air

Force medical support group at Zvezdnyy gorodok.

Over the period of the next few days, it was increasingly clear that part of the reason for the

very poor shape of the Soyuz 9 crew was the slow spin of the spacecraft throughout the mission.

The spinning also produced a weak field of artificial gravity, which affected the clarity of results

of several experiments aboard the ship. Nikolayev and Sevastyanov spent several days in quarantine, not only to protect their weak bodies from infections, but also, as it turns out, because of

the discovery of a mutation of two microbes not occurring on Earth that were found in their

metabolic systems. For five days after their return, the microbes spread very rapidly but then

died from the effects of gravity. During this period, the two cosmonauts were fed through a safe

bio-interface system. '°7 Briefing sessions were held during their confinement with engineers,

physicians, and other scientists. One journalist wrote: "They were pale, and their faces

furrowed with wrinkles. They tried to carry on a lively conversation and even make jokes: but

they tired rapidly, and there were frequent lapses.' .... For the first four or five nights, they slept

106. Ibid.

107. Gordon R Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Volume 2: Cosmonaut Biographies (Lowestoft, UK:

GRH Publications, 1990), p. 264: Thomas O'Toole. "Soviet Union Still Trails U.S. in Space," Washington Post,June

17, 1913. pp. #,1. _8.

I08. Riabchikov,Russians in Space, p. 282.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

fitfully, and the feelings of "acceleration" did not disappear until five or six days after landing.

All ill symptoms finally disappeared eleven to thirteen days after landing. The men were sent

off on short postflight vacation soon after.

The poor state of Nikolayev and Sevastyanov prompted a spate of debate over the issue of

long-duration spaceflight. At one large postflight meeting at the Cosmonaut Training Center,

two opposing factions expressed their views. Some believed that subsequent space missions

should not exceed eighteen days by more than one or two days, and if the crew returned well

after that, future missions could be extended conservatively. Other doctors argued that much

longer missions were possible, but only with preventative measures such as medicine and

exercising. '°9The debate over this issue to a significant degreeaffected plans for both the Almaz

and DOS missions, with Soviet space officials looking to artificial gravity for very long missions

on the Multirole Base-Station. Regardlessof the condition of the cosmonauts, the Soyuz 9 mission was a landmark success for the Soyuz space program, precisely because it was the first

fully unqualified success since the Soyuz 415 mission more than a year before.

Still Aiming for the Moon

It has been customary for Western observers of the Soviet space program to assume

that the Soyuz 9 mission was the turning point for those involved the program--a signpost

indicating their progression from quitting their piloted lunar program to creating Earth-orbital

stations. This impression, partly supported by many official Soviet statements, has not been

borne out by recent revelations. Even after Apollo 8, Apollo II, and Apollo 12, the Soviets

continued their vigorous search for successes on the Moon. When, in January 1969, Soviet

space officials decided to move ahead with three different thematic directions--Earth-orbital

stations, expanded lunar landings, and missions to Mars--all three were pursued for several

years. Thus, in many ways, the story of the race to the Moon does not end in 1969--at least

not for the Soviets. From both political and propaganda perspectives, future advanced lunar

landings of cosmonauts offered a means to restore lost faith in the Soviet space program.

Much of the success of future lunar landings depended, of course, on the fate of the N I

rocket. The program had already been delayed by at least four years, and its record had been

marred by two untimely failures in 1969. The investigation into the second failure in July 1969,

which had destroyed one of the two available N I pads at Tyura-Tam, was long and tedious.

It took a full year before a formal report was ready on the accident, and even then there were

multiple opinions on the cause of the accident within the investigation commission headed by

Mishin. The reconstruction of the most probable chain of events was an exercise in detective

work. A quarter of a second prior to liftoff, a metallic object, probably a portion of a steel

diaphragm of a pressure oscillation sensor, had entered an oxidizer pump and caused engine

number 8 of the first stage to explode. This disrupted the work of the on-board cabling network

and damaged engines and telemetry instrumentation in the vicinity. As the lower part of

the first stage was engulfed in fire, at T+0.6 second, the KORD system (for engine operation

control) issued a command to shut down engine nos. 7, 8, 19. and 20. At T+8.76 seconds, it

shut down engine no. 21 and its opposing engine no. 9. By T+I0.15 seconds, all engines were

shut down, except for engine no. 18,which continued to fire. The rocket, meanwhile, lifted up

to a height of about 200 meters, and then it began to fall back vertically toward the launch pad,

having been unable to turn on its nominal course because of the disruption of the cable

network. The only operational engine gradually turned the rocket around its axis and, after

109. Yu.,q.Mozzhorin,et aL.eds.,Dorogiu kosmos:I (Moscow:MAI, 1992),p. 64.

729
/30

This remarkable photo o/an N I booster on the still-intact pad at Tyura- Tam u:as taken [rom a U.S CORONA

photo-reconnaissance satellite on June 4, 1970 The three stages o/the rocket, probably booster no. 6L, are clearly

uisibte as is the associated pad structure (copyright Charles P. Vick, KH-4B mission 11 t0 2. launched

May 20, 1970, Frame_148)

a twenty-three-second flight, the booster fell almost broadside onto the launch pad and

completely exploded. Earlier, at T+14.5 seconds, the emergency rescue system activated and

shot off the descent apparatus of the/K-L IS spacecraft. ''°

Mishin's commission had found in its investigation that during ground testing of the

first stage's NK-15 engines, large metal objects (dozens of millimeters in diameter) had the

propensity to get into the oxidizer pump, damaging the impellers and causing ignition and

explosion of the pump. Small metal objects (chips, fillings, and so on) burning in the gas

generator resulted in the destruction of the turbine vanes. Finally, nonmetallic objects (rubber,

rags, and so on), which were fed into the inlet of the turbopump assembly, did not cause

disruption of engine work. Booster 5L, which had exploded in July 1969, had been among the

first batch of manufactured N Is, and thus it did not have filters for foreign objects installed in

the inlets to the pumps./_ccording to the program specifications, these filters were scheduled

to be installed beginning with booster no. 8L--that is, on the fifth launch attempt of the N I,'"

Mishin met with both Minister _fanasyev and Central Committee Secretary Ustinov in

P,ugust 1969, explaining that the N I-L3 complex would still remain the primary system for

researching the Moon. At a later meeting with Ustinov in September, Mishin was told that there

would be a decision on the fate of the N I-L3 complex only after the causes of the July failure

II0. Igor Afanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret" (English title), Krylya rodiny no. 9 (September 1993): 13-16:

Semenov, ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 257. The official report on the accident of booster 5L, in

describing the initial cascadeof events, states: "In the time interval between -0.2 second and +0.25 second, the following happened: (a) the rocket's airframe was subjected to pulsed loading; (b) there was a sharp rise in temperature in the vicinity of engine nos. 7. 8, and 9: (c) the telemetry equipment of engine nos. 8 and 9 failed." SeeR.

Doigopyatov. B Dorofeyev, and S. Kryukov, "At the Readers'Request: The N I Project" (English title), _luiatsiya i

kosmonautika no. 9 (September 1992): 34-37.

II I. Afanasyev, "NI: Absolutely Secret"

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

had been determined. The immediate plans after the July 1969 failure of booster 5L had been

to perform full-scale one-way automated landings of the Lunar Ship (LK) on the Moon on

N I boosters 6L, ?L, and 8L. gs the investigation into the disaster took longer and longer, these

plans had to be shelved.

The fate of the N I rocket itself seemed central to the future of the Soviet space program as

a special governmental commission examined the program as a whole following the second

accident. Coming at the nadir of the Soviet hopes in the "space race," the recommendations

of the commission were positive in outlook: the commission believed that the N I would be

able to support all planned Soviet space projects for the subsequent ten to fifteen years. ''_ In

December 1969, after a review of the July catastrophe, the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic

Missile Forces, Marshal Nikolay I. Krylov, made his feelings known on the program. Traditionally

an opponent of piloted space programs, Marshal Krylov wrote to Minister of General Machine

Building Afanasyev that:

The resulting analysis of the two failed launches of the N I-L3 complex, and also statistics

from launches of other complicated rocket-space complexes show that the existing

methods of developing rocket-space complexes do not ensure a high level of reliability

upon entry into [flight-testing]. The existing methods of ground work on [rocket-space

complexes], for the most part, are analogous to the methods of developing military missiles, which, as a rule, are considerably simpler than [rocket-space complexes] of the

N I-L3 type. ,ztt the same time. the processes of [flight-testing] of military missiles differ by

some tens of articles (from 20 to 60) to bring them up to a high level of reliability. In

carrying out the [flight-design testing] of heavy [rocket-space complexes] the possibility

of extended flight work is not feasible because of the great expensesof the rocket-carriers.

In view of this, expedient changes in the volume and character of the ground work on

these complexes up to the moment of entry to [flight-testing] should be introduced. In our

opinion, new methods of ground work on heavy [rocket-space complexes] should include

the basis for multi-use operations and [creation of] a large stock of resources of the complete system and equipment: preliminary firing tests of engines and rocket blocks without

subsequent sorting out with the goa( of discovering production defects and expirations of

their working lives should also be carried out. ''_

The recommendations of Krylov, all clearly worthy of attention, were apparently taken into

consideration in future planning for the program. One of the major changes during the 1969-70

period was reworking the procedural system by which engines for the first three stages of the N I

were selected for flight. The original method, know n as KONRID, consisted of an efficiency control system in which a batch of six randomly selected engines were submitted for a flight article. Of these, two would be static tested on the ground. Depending on the results, the remaining

four would then be consigned for the flight article. This meant that the actual engines used on

the N I were never tested prior to installation on the booster. Becausethe KONRID system had

proved inadequate in the face of multiple engine failures on the first two launches, in July 1970,

the Trud Design Bureau, under Chief Designer Kuznetsov, began using the old NK-15, NK-15V,

and NK-21 engines of the first, second, and third stages of the booster to develop a new

uprated set of three engines. According to the technical assignment issued by TsKBEM, these

112. GeorgiyStepanovichVetrov,"Developmentof HeavyLaunchVehiclesin the USSR,"presentedat the

10thInternationalSymposiumon theHistoryof AstronauticsandAeronautics,MoscowStateUniversity,Moscow,

Russia,June20-27, 1995.

II 3. Semenov,ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsqa, p. 257.

731
132

new engines would be capable of multiple firings, have much longer service lives, be delivered without reassembly after acceptance tests,

and be tested on the ground prior to flight.

Until these new engines were ready for flight,

expected in late 1972, TsKBEM would use the

older Kuznetsov engines. "4

Apart from the engines, many other

systems were reworked from 1969 to 1971.

These included:

• Increasing the reliability of the oxidizer

pumps (by increasing clearances and

reducing the loads on bearings)

• Improving the quality of the manufacturing and assembly of the turbopump

assembly

• Installing filters in front of the engine

pumps to eliminate the entry of foreign

objects

• Introducing the Freon fire extinguisher system

• P,dding thermal protection elements into

the instrumentation and cable system

located in the tail section of the first stage

• Introducing blocking commands in the

emergency engine shutdown system during the first fifty seconds of flight ''s

Furthermore, all piping in the N l's pneutoo-hydraulic systems were still of the older

flange pipe joint type. t_ffer the failure in July

1969, when engineers checked the alreadymanufactured and -tested units of another N I booster, they found that many of the flange

joints with fluorine plastic seals had leaked after long periods of storage. In July and/qugust

1969, engineers decided to replace the flange joints with automated welded ones--an extensive redesign procedure that was performed by the Moscow-based Nil TekhnoMash (formerly

NITI-40) organization. Since 1970, all pipelines in Soviet launch vehicles have been joined

during integration assembly by automated welding. "_

The work on improving the characteristics of the recalcitrant booster was concurrent with

continuing work on the L3 complex. Because of a continuous redesign process on the two

This ground model o[ the LK lunar lander is displayed

at a museum in Kaliningrad (now Korolev) near

Moscow The four main landing legs are shown in

retracted vertical position. The small spherical

window at the upper center would have been used

by the cosmonaut to observe the surface during

landing. Sets of small attitude control engines can be

seennear the top o[ the lander. (copyright Quest, via

tuc van den .,_beleen)

114. Ibid. p. 258: Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev. and Kryukov. ",qt the Readers' Request: The NI ProJect";

Mozzhorin. et al. eds. Dorogi v kosmos:/, p. 129: Igor tqfanasyev,"N I: _qbsolutelySecret" (English title). Krylya

rodiny no. II (November 1993): 4-5.

I 15. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 258.

II 6. Oleg E Ostrovsky and Valentin /_. Kazakov, "Quality Provision [or the Welded Joints of Pipelines for

Space-RocketComplexes," Space Bulletin 2(2) (1995): 9-II. NITI 40 was headedby O. Ye. Ostrovskiy during the

late 1960s

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
OPTIONS

major components of the L3--the LK lander

and the Lunar Orbital Ship (LOK)--neither

component was ready for flight during 1969

and 1970. In the case of the LOK, sixteen

ships had been originally ordered. Of these, by

February 1970, seven had been manufactured,

although only three were being ground-tested

for future flight operations. As Mishin and his

deputies stubbornly continued to pursue the

old lunar landing plan, uncertainty in the mission profile continued to pervade the proceedings. In January 1970, six months after Apollo

I I, engineers were still disagreeing about specifications of the Blok Ye engine for the LK lander. One of the major bottlenecks seemed to

have been the components manufactured at

the Arsenal Machine Building Plant in

Leningrad. Engineers there faced many problems with tank production, thus missing deadlines for the delivery of the attitude control

engines of the LK and the Engine Orientation

Complex of the LOK, Consequently, there

were changes in the powered descent profile of

the lander, such as reducing the Blok D stage's

deorbit operation time. In addition, they

had still not adequately solved the question of

mutual relationships among the LK, the

LKR (the reserve LK), and the Ye-8 rover. At a

meeting of the TsKBEM leadership in May

1970, the prognosis was not good: although

work on the N I was proceeding relatively

well, work on the L3 was, by far, in the worst

condition at the design bureau, behind in its

schedules than many other unrelated projects.

Funding for the N I-L3 program in 1970 was

evidently short by about 60 million rubles.

/qs far as the lunar landing itself, Mishin

This isa close-upof the spherical living compartment

of a ground model of the LOK lunar orbiter on display at

a museum. Note the slightly asymmetrical shapeof the

module, signiJtcantly different from a standard Soyuz

hving compartment The protrusion on the upper portion

of the module is a porthole [or a cosmonaut to directly

observe rendezvous approaches with the LK landec

7tttltude control thrusters,similar to the oneson the LK,

are visible on the top left. Thetwo small spherical protrusions on the top are propellant tanks [or these

engines.Curiously, the LOK living compartment seems

to have been mounted on an LI descent apparatus

barely visible at the bottom o[ the photograph. (copyright Quest, via Lue van den Abeleen)

had informed Minister Afanasyev of a provisional schedule of N I launches at a meeting in July

1970:

Date Boosters Missions Engines

1970 6L, 7L Automated lunar missions Old engines

1971 8L, 9L, IOL /_utomated lunar missions Old engines

1972 I I L, 12L, 13L Piloted lunar-orbit missions New engines

1973 14L, ISL, 16L Two piloted lunar landings New engines

The early automated flights would consist of robot variants of the LOK or LK or simply ballast,

depending on what was available at the time. In the case of the LOK, the ships would carry special photographic equipment for imaging potential landing sites. Before an actual landing, it seems

733
Z34

that Mishin had planned a fully automated lunar landing and return flight. The veracity of these

projections depended to a great extent not only on the fortunes of the N I but obviously on the

flight rating of the L3 payload itself.

There was some good news in the L3 development program. Several vehicles were flown in

1970 that were directly part of the Soviet lunar exploration program. One of these was the 7K-LI E

payload block, which consisted of a simplified 7K-LI circumlunar vehicle, an experimental Blok D

stage, and the payload fairing. The Blok D stage, the primary payload, was equipped with supplementary sensors for transmitting more complete information on the internal processes of the stage

during firings in Earth orbit. The stage had special transparent "portholes" through which the

internal volume of the tanks was illuminated. During the maneuvers in Earth orbit, special cameras

would photograph the movement of propellants. ''_ N#'S/_ had performed a very similar mission

early on in the #,polio program during the mission of AS-203 in July 1966. ''8 The first launch

attempt of the 7K-LIE, spacecraft no. I, had been at 1200 hours Moscow Time on November 28,

1969, on top of a three-stage Proton booster. Because of a third-stage failure, the payload never

reached orbit. LI.S. intelligence assets clearly monitored the telemetry from the attempted launch

as pieces of the suspect stage inadvertently fell on Chinese territory about 200 kilometers north of

Harbin. ,,9

It was yet another in an unprecedented series of failures of the Proton booster in 1969. It took

more than year to prepare a second L I E complex ready for launch. Spacecraft no. 2K was launched

at 2000 hours Moscow Time on December 2, 1970. #'fter reaching orbit, it was named

Kosmos-382. Under the direction of TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designer Tregub, the Blok D stage was

fired seven times in the course of six days in Earth orbit, simulating mid-course corrections, lunar

orbit insertion, and powered descent from lunar orbit, thus rehearsing as closely as possible Blok

D's nominal performance during an actual L3 lunar landing mission. #'II pertinent data on the

stage's activities were transmitted successfully to Earth, adding significantly to confidence in the

future use of Blok D. '_° During the mission, Western intelligence services were able to hear simulated voice transmissions from the spacecraft, prompting suggestions that the flight was related to

a piloted project. '_'

#'nother L3-related precursor program was the flight of Earth-orbital versions of the LOK and

the LK, designated the TI K and T2K, respectively. The original ambitious plans had been to fly these

two spacecraft with crews on board to prove out both vehicles, much like the Apollo 9 mission

flown a few months prior to the first lunar landing, Pressure from the Ministry of General Machine

Building, in the form of financial restrictions, meant that Mishin had to completely eliminate flights

of the T I K from the program: instead, the LOK would fly directly to the Moon on its first mission

sometime in the future. The same fate probably would have befallen the T2K had it not been for

intense pressure from Chief Designer Mikhail K. Yangel, whose organization, the Yuzhnoye Design

Bureau (KB Yuzhnoye), created the main engine for the LK, Yangel's lobbying produced results, and

Mishin was allowed to carry out three full flight tests of the T2K in Earth orbit in 1970-71--missions similar in many ways to the automated flight of the Lunar Module on Apollo 5.'""

I 17. Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 228.

118. Roger E. Bilstein. Stages to Saturn: /q Technological History o[ the 7tpollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles

(Washington, DC: NASA SP4206, 1996). pp. 338-40.

119. E-mail correspondence, Vladimir Agapov to the author, September30, 1996. Fora Western report on

the launch failure, see "Salyut Elements Separate,Signals Lost," .,_uiation Week & Space Technology, April 30,

1973), p. 21.

120. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 228.

12I. See,for example, "Cosmos Changes," _uiation Week& Space Technology,December2 I, 1970,p. 25;

"Russian Moves," ._uiation Week & Space Technology,May 3, 1971. p. 13.

122 V Filin, "At the Requestof the Reader:The N I-L3 Project" (Englishtitle), ,z]uiatsiyai kosmonautika no.

2 (February 1992): 40-41

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

The T2K, while similar to the lunar version of the LK, was not identical to the latter.

A number of systems necessary only for a real lunar landing were removed, while others necessary

for testing were added. The most obvious difference was the omission on the T2K of the four landing legs comprising the Lunar Landing Unit with their stabilizing rocket engines. Engineers also

removed the cosmonaut's ladder and two omnidirectional parabolic antennas on the rocket stage

for deep space communications. As a substitute, a "weak" directional antenna was installed on

the engine orientation compartment at the top of the lander. In addition, in place of the small suspended instrument compartment on the right side of the LK, designers added a large suspended

compartment on the left side equipped with an ellipse-shaped cover. This compartment contained

supplementary instrumentation for control and guidance, as well as an antenna system for radio

control of the spaceship's maneuvers. The T2K also included an ionic orientation sensor instead

of the standard adjusting and aiming sensors. On the pressurized cabin proper, there was also an

additional telemetry antenna. The spaceship itself was equipped with a special control system

capable of complete automated flight. The total launch mass of the T2K was around 5.7 tons, low

enough to be launched by a modified variant of the Soyuz booster named the II AS I IL. The rocket had an unusual "large-caliber" payload fairing to accommodate the spaceship.'_

The flight program of the T2K was directed by yet another State Commission, this one

headed by Maj. General Aleksandr A. Maksimov, the Deputy Commander of the Chief Directorate

of Space Assets of the Strategic Missile Forces.One of Maksimov's more notable career duties had

been service as the secretary of the State Commission for the R-Z ICBM and the early Sputnik

launches during the 1950s. The T2K serieswould consist of three missions. The first flight would

simulate a routine lunar landing, while the second and third would simulate potentially anomalous

situations during a landing. About twenty primary systems would be monitored on each mission,

In attendance for the first launch were Korolev's second wife Nina Ivanovna Koroleva and his

daughter Natasha, who were at Leninsk for the opening of a new memorial in Korolev's honor.

The first T2K, vehicle no. I, lifted on November 24, 1970, at 1400 hours Moscow Time

and entered a 19I- by 237-kilometer orbit inclined at 51.61 degrees. The spaceship was named

Kosmos-379 by TASS: there was no hint that the flight had any relation to the piloted space

program. After a thorough check of the on-board systems, at 0744 hours on November 25,

controllers fired the main T2K engine under heavy throttling to simulate a landing on the lunar

surface, including a "hover" phase. The resulting orbit was 192 by 1,210 kilometers at

51.65 degrees. Once again, controllers performed various checks of the T2K as it "rested on the

Moon" for a day and a half. Finally, on November 27 at 18.59hours, the Lunar Landing Apparatus

(the descent stage) was jettisoned, and the main engine fired once again, this time at maximum

thrust, simulating a liftoff and entry into lunar orbit. After this maneuver, orbital parameters were

highly elliptical: 177 by 14,041 kilometers at 51.72 degrees. The vehicle spent some subsequent

time in stabilization mode to simulate maneuvers for rendezvous and docking with the LOK before

the mission was declared a complete and unequivocal success?_

The momentum of this rare successin the piloted lunar program extended to the two remaining tests of the T2K The second test was to simulate an aborted landing on the Moon.

The spacecraft, named Kosmos-398 upon entering Earth orbit, was launched at 1514 hours

Moscow Time on February 26, 1971. Initial orbital parameters were similar to the earlier ship:

191 by 258 kilometers at a 51.61-degree inclination. After two days in orbit, the Blok Ye main

engine was fired at 0721 hours on February28, simulating a landing attempt. After this, the descent

stage was jettisoned, and the primary engine fired once more to insert the vehicle in its final

orbit at 200 by 10,905 kilometers at a 51.59-degree inclination. Once again, the mission was flawless. The third and final test of the T2K was almost six months later. The ship, named

123. K. lantratov,"TheFallFromOrbitof theLastSovietLunarShip"(Englishtitle),Nouostikosrnonautiki25

(December3-16, 1995):32-36:_fanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft."

124. Ibid.

735
736

Kosmos-434, was launched at 1250 hours Moscow Time on August t 2, 197 I, into an initial orbit of

189 by 267 kilometers at a 51.60-degree inclination. On this mission, the goal was slightly different:

to use only the backup engine for liftoff "from the Moon," assuming that the primary one had failed.

Less than a day after launch, at 0634 hours on August 13, the primary engine was fired, for the

longest time on any of the missions, simulating a landing on the Moon. The new orbital parameters were 190 by 1,261 kilometers at the same inclination. Kosmos-434 remained static "on the

Moon" for more than three days before using its reserve engine at 0840 hours on August 16 to fire

into a new orbit of 186 by 11,804 kilometers at a 51.54-degree inclination. The second firing had

been planned for an earlier time, but had to be delayed because of some minor technical problems,

which did not detract from the completion of a successful mission. '2_

At the time of these apparently mysterious missions, Western observers closely monitored

the orbital changes, concluding that the flights were part of a renewed Soviet effort to land

cosmonauts on the Moon/26 One of the more interesting postscripts to the T2K missions was

the demise of Kosmos-434. In the summer of 1981, when the spacecraft was about to reenter, there

were intermittent reports in the West that Kosmos-434 was a satellite with nuclear

materials aboard, thus posing a threat to any people living over its descent track. The vehicle eventually reentered over Australian territory and fell harmlessly into the sea off the coast of China.

To allay continuing fears, a spokesperson from the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs assured

the Australian government on August 26, 1981, that the satellite did not carry any nuclear materials because it was "an experimental lunar cabin" with no "energy source. '''27 Because "lunar cabin"

was the term the Soviet press normally had used to describe the Apollo Lunar Module,

the statement was a major landmark: it was the first official, albeit oblique, confirmation that the

Soviet Union built hardware designed to land cosmonauts on the Moon.

The successful missions of the LIE and the T2K were significant morale boosters to the many

thousands of engineers engaged in a program that had evinced few fruitful results. Firm commitments on a date for the lunar landing were fixed several times throughout 1970 and 1971. The original schedule produced by Mishin in July 1970, however, proved to be too optimistic. The launch

date of the next N I (booster 6L) was delayed primarily because of new concerns about discrete

vibrations at launch. In addition, Mishin decided to begin using the new and improved Kuznetsov

engines much earlier than planned (on booster 8L), requiring that rocket to be sent back to the plant

for extensive redesign. The new schedule, truncated from before and prepared in September 1970,

looked like this:

Date Boosters Missions Engines

1971 6L, 7L Automated lunar missions Old engines

1972 8L. 9L, 10L Automated and piloted

lunar missions New engines

1973 IlL, 12L, 13L Piloted lunar landings New engines

1974 14L, 15L Piloted lunar landings New engines ''_

125. Ibid.

126. See.for example.RichardD. Lyons."ExpertsSayRussiaPlansMannedLanding on Moon." New YorkTimes,

September6. 197t, pp I, 33: DonaldC Winston, "SovietsPreparefor Manned Moon Landing.".',TtutationWeek & Space

Technology,March 8, 197t, pp. 43-46: "Recent Cosmos Believed Advanced Hardware." 7]uiation Week & Space

Technology,March 15, 1971,p 18: "RussianMoves," _uiation Week&Space Technology,May 3, 1971,p. 13.

127 Robert Gillette, "SovietsHint 'Experimental'FallenSatelliteLost ItsWay to Moon," WashingtonPost.August

30. 1981.p. A25

128. The first piloted lunar landing would usea second booster,probably the unflown booster4L, to launch the

reserveLK known as the LKR.SeeK Lantratov,"Anniversaries:The 'Deceased'Lunar Plan" (Englishtitle), Nouosti kosmonautiki 14 (July 2-15. )994): 60-61.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

The final launches in 1974 would officially end the N I-L3 program, at the same time that

more advanced lunar missions, still in the early stages of planning in 1970, would begin in

1974, Mishin personally briefed Soviet leader Brezhnev with this schedule at a meeting in

October 1970. Even at this late date, Mishin continued to appeal to Brezhnev to commit to

funding to build a full-scale static test stand for the N I first stage, but these entreaties fell on

deaf ears. If Mishin's promised schedule was met, however--and it seemed a fairly realistic

assessment given the current pace of operations--then a Soviet cosmonaut would finally land

on the Moon sometime in 1973, four years after Apollo I I.

The Scooper Comes Home

The untimely failure of Luna 15during that historic week in July 1969 had not discouraged

the design bureau at the S. A. Lavochkin State Union Machine Building Plant at Khimki

in pursuing its primary objective of using the Ye-8-5 robotic spacecraft to recover lunar soil and

bring it back to Earth. Although the unusually high stress of the summer of 1969 had evaporated, the pressure never completely disappeared. Because one of the new public doctrines of

the Soviet space program was the automated exploration of the Moon, Chief Designer Georgiy

N. Babakin had the dubious role of serving to fit the needs of the Soviet propaganda by

delivering a successful sample return mission. The first attempts to do so after the July 1969

debacle were in the fall of 1969. On September 5, 1969, Maj. General Tyulin, the chair of the

State Commission for the Ye-8 series of probes, reported that the central cause of the Luna 15

failure had still not been determined by engineers. Despite the gap in data, Tyulin opted to

launch another scooper, the third in the series, on September 23. 'z_

Ye-8-5 probe no. 403 was launched from site 81 at Tyura-Tam at 1700 hours Moscow Time

on September 23, 1969. The Proton booster successfully inserted the payload into Earth orbit,

but the BIok D translunar-injection stage failed to fire a second time to impart Earth escape

velocity to the probe. Telemetry the following day indicated that a fuel injection valve had

evidently become stuck during the first firing of Blok D to insert the payload into Earth orbit,

and all the liquid oxygen had been sucked out before the second firing. Remaining as an inert

payload in Earth orbit, the Soviet press quietly designated the satellite as Kosmos-300 and

promptly forgot about it. Ground controllers evidently attempted to control the descent of the

probe for about four days, but the spacecraft eventually reentered harmlessly over the oceans.

A second try came less than a month later. Ye-8-5 probe number 404 was launched on October

22 and successfully entered Earth orbit. After an hour, when the Blok D engine was timed to

fire, the readings abruptly went off the scale, and communications were interrupted. For two

hours, the flight control team attempted to regain communications, before finally receiving

a report from the Kamchatka tracking station that not only had the probe not left Earth orbit,

but that it had reentered and fallen in the ocean near Australia. This time, there was a failure

in one of the radio-command blocks. Apparently a "minus" sign had not been removed from

a program to command the guidance system for the firing. '_°The stranded probe was named

Kosmos-305.

129. Kamanin,"1FeeJSorryforOur Guys,"no. 13.

130. K. Lantratov,"The'Late'LunarSoil"(Englishtitle),Nouostikosmonautiki15(July16-29, 1994):41-43:

Kamanin,"1Fee[SorryforOur Guys,"no. 14:O A Sokolov,"TheRaceto theMoon:A LookfromBaikonur/'presentedatthe45th Congressof theInternationalAstronauticalFederation,IAA-94-2.1.610,Jerusalem,Israel,October

9-14, 1994.Notethat thedescriptionof thefailuregivenin thelastsourceprobablyrefersto Kosmos-305andnot

Kosmos-300,asindicatedby theauthor.

737
738

Trudging on, Babakin's engineers prepared the fifth sample returner, Ye-8-5 probe no. 405,

for a launch in early 1970. The launch went off on February 6, 1970, but 126 seconds into the

flight, the first stage exploded, destroying any hopes of a success.'_' Clearly, one of the bottlenecks in the program was the performance of the LIR-SOOKProton launch vehicle. Its record

during 1967-70 had been perhaps one of the most dismal in the record of any launch vehicle

developed by any spacefaring nation. Out of nineteen launches of the four-stage variant of the

Proton booster up until February 1970, ten had completely failed to deposit their payloads into

orbit, three had reached orbit but failed to send their payloads to escape velocity, and only the

remaining six had been completely successful:

No. Launch Date Payload Mission Result

I March I0, 1967 7K-LI/Zond Kosmos-146 Success

2 April 8, 1967 7K-LI/Zond Kosmos-154 Blok D failure

3 September 28, 1967 7K-LI/Zond Stage I failure

4 November 22, 1967 7K-LI/Zond Stage II failure

5 March 2, 1968 7K-L I/Zond Zond 4 Success

6 April 23, 1968 7K-LI/Zond Stage II failure

7 September 14, 1968 7K-LI/Zond Zond S Success

8 November I0, 1968 7K-I_I/Zond Zond 6 Success

9 January 20, 1969 7K-LI/Zond Stage II failure

I0 February 19, 1969 Ye-8/Luna Shroud failure

II March 27, 1969 M-69/Mars Stage III failure

12 t_pril 2, 1969 M-69/Mars Stage I failure

t3 June I, 1969 Ye-8-5/Luna Blok D failure

14 July 13, 1969 Ye-8/Luna Luna 15 Success

IS August 7, 1969 7K-LI/Zond Zond 7 Success

16 September 23, 1969 Ye-8-5/Luna Kosmos-300 BIok D failure

17 October 22, 1969 Ye-8-S/Luna Kosmos-305 Blok D failure

18 November II, 1969 7K-LIE/Kosmos Stage III failure

19 February 6. 1970 Ye-S-S/Luna Stage I failure

in fact, if there was any one reason why the coveted LI circumlunar program had achieved

success so late, it was Chelomey's Proton rocket. The failures were so glaring that after the

secret February 1970 launch failure, some Western observers were claiming, correctly so, that

the Proton was a severe bottleneck in Soviet space ambitions. ''_

Babakin was naturally concerned about the Proton's record. In March 1970, he met with

Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev and asked him to stipulate that Chelomey

address the dismal record of the rocket and make necessary changes. For his part, Chelomey's

design bureau undertook a short development program to requatify the booster, especially

its first and third stages. As part of this effort, on August 18, 1970, at 0645 hours Moscow

Time, TsKBM launched a three-stage LIR-500K rocket on a suborbital mission to verify certain

systems of the launch vehicle. '_ The flight, named 82EV, was evidently successful, as

131 N G Babakin.A. N. Banketov,and V. N. Smorkalov,_. N. Bobakin.zhizn i deyatelnost(Moscow:

Adamant,1996),p. 66.

132. See.forexample,StewartAlsop. "SaltandApollo 13,"Newsz.ueek(April 27. 1970):I12.Accordingto

thesource,the Sovietshadspentabout$2billionon theProtonprogramupto 1970,

133. Agapovcorrespondence,September30. 1996;Babakin.Banketov,andSmorkalov._. N Babakin.p. 86.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

space-related Proton launches finally resumed the following month after a long gap. In fact, the

record of Proton flights following August 1970 showed a dramatic improvement, with failures

becoming an occasional rarity.

The sixth scooper probe, Ye-8-5 no. 406, was launched at 1626 hours Moscow Time on

September 12, 1970, into a parking orbit around Earth. First Deputy Minister of General

Machine Building Tyulin once again served as chair of the State Commission. _qbout seventy

minutes after entering orbit, the Blok D stage fired to boost the payload toward the Moon.

There was a short mid-course correction the following day before the spacecraft, named

Luna 16, successfully flew into lunar orbit on September 17 using the IID417 engine,

The orbit was circular at an altitude of II 0 kilometers at a 70-degree inclination to the lunar

equator. There were two planned burns to adjust the orbit on September 18 and 19, the final

firing leaving Luna 16 in a low elliptical orbit at fifteen by 106 kilometers at 71 degrees. The

landing approach began as soon as the ship reached its low perigee. Unlike the Apollo Lunar

Module, which followed a complex shallow approach to the landing site, the Ye-8-5 ship simply fired the main engine to cancel orbital velocity, causing a drop toward the surface, and then

performed a final burn to ensure a soft-landing. The spacecraft's on-board control system fed

attitude and altitude information into the internal gyro, and the ship's two side units were

cast off just before commencement of the descent to the Moon. The engine fired for about

270 seconds, beginning at II 12 hours on September 20, The free-fall itself followed a preprogrammed instruction set modified by radar altimeter information on altitude and rate of

descent. At a height of 600 meters, with the spaceship falling at a rate of 700 kilometers per

hour, the on-board computer fired the main engine again. The engine cut off at twenty meters,

prompting the two smaller engines to ignite to complete the descent. Luna 16 landed safely in

the northeast portion of the Sea of Fertility about 100 kilometers east of the Webb crater. The

landing velocity was nine kilometers per hour. ,34

Two cameras similar to the ones used on the earlier Ye-6 landers were installed on the main

instrument section to swivel and return facsimile stereo images of the area between the ship's

two landing pads to determine a precise spot for obtaining a sample. The spacecraft, however,

landed in an area not illuminated by the Sun. and it is probable that the cameras were of no

use. The hollow rotary/percussion bit, a hollow cylinder with cutters on the edge, was driven

thirty-five centimeters into the surface for a seven-minute period to capture a small soil

sample. During this phase, ground controllers were alarmed when telemetry information

showed that soil resistance to the drill increased with depth, and then abruptly decreased,

raising the possibility of a broken drill, Luckily, there was no damage, although Tyulin's team at

Yevpatoriya terminated drilling at that point. The boom then lifted the sample to the open hatch

of the small spherical return apparatus. Evidently, a significant amount of soil dropped out of the

scooper during this upward movement. The total amount in the capsule was 105 grams. At

t043 hours on September 2 I, after more than a day on the surface, the ascent stage of Luna 16

fired its $5.61 engine to lift itself on a direct return trajectory to Earth. Roll thrusters provided

spin control during the trip, ensuring proper thermal regulation, The remaining portion of Luna

16 continued to return data on local temperature and radiation conditions.

Straps holding the return apparatus to the ascent stage were severed at 0450 hours on

September 24 at a distance of 48,000 kilometers from Earth. While the ascent stage burned up

over Earth, the spherical capsule hit the atmosphere vertically at thirty degrees, traveling at

eleven kilometers per second. As temperatures reached an incredible 10,000 degrees

Centigrade, the capsule decelerated at up to 350 g's: a signal from a barometer commanded the

134. AndrewWilson, SolarSystemLog(London:Jane'sPublishingCo., 1987).p. 60-6I. Theexactlanding

coordinates were: 0 ° 41'5 and 56 ° 18'E. See SouietSpace Programs, 1966-70, p, 198.

739
740

ejection of the top of the sphere at an altitude of fourteen and a half kilometers, thus unfurling

the drogue parachute. The main parachute and four beacon antennas deployed at eleven

kilometers. The capsule landed safely at 0826 hours, about eighty kilometers southeast of the

town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. After a trip to the Moon and back, the landing was only

thirty kilometers from the projected target. '_

This first recovery of soil from a planetary body by automated means was an outstanding

accomplishment and a tribute to the ingenuity of Soviet engineering expertise. State

Commission Chairman Tyulin recalled later that "the emotional strain on the State Commission

and the technical leadership, as well as on all of participants of this unusual operation, was

clearly noticeable, especially over the last 12 days," but that when the signals were received

confirming a safe return of Luna 16, there was "boundless rejoicing" at the Flight Control

Center. ''_ Rescue teams located the capsule within minutes of the landing. They removed the

soil container, which was flown to Moscow. There it was unsealed in a sterile chamber filled

with inert helium. The analysis of the soil, performed by the V. I, Vernadskiy Institute of

Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry's Laboratory of Comparative Planetology, showed the

composition of the dark powdery basalt material to be very similar to samples returned on Apollo

12 in November 1969. In June 1971, three grams of the Luna 16 sample were forwarded

to NASA as part of a scientific agreement in exchange for three grams from the Apollo II

samples and three grams from the Apollo 12 collection.'"

The success of Luna 16 raised the inevitable comparisons with the Apollo program. Soviet

commentators naturally made much of their recent accomplishment. Academician Boris N.

Petrov told TASS on September 24 that automatic exploration cost one-twentieth to onefiftieth as much as piloted space exploration. TsKl3EM Department Deputy Chief Raushenbakh

was more specific in his comparisons, suggesting on September 28 that the cost of the samples returned by Luna 16 were considerably less than those brought back by the Apollo missions. '_8While the two programs are difficult, if not impossible, to compare, it is a fact that the

two Apollo missions up to that point had returned a far greater amount (sixty kilograms) of

lunar rocks and soil than Luna 16 (0.105 kilograms). Based on the per capita cost of a kilogram

of lunar soil from the Luna mission versus the Apollo missions, there is no doubt that the tatter were far superior. But the amount of lunar soil returned is clearly poor measure of the true

scientific value of a mission. In purely scientific terms, the LI.S. astronauts conducted a wide

array of experiments on the surface while Soviet controllers were extremely limited in their

choice of research. The Apollo astronauts, for example, had a much greater ability to choose

particular samples from a very large area compared to Luna 16. Finally, the costs of Apollo were

associated with numerous intangible benefits--primarily associated with prestige--which

clearly cannot be measured in the traditional sense. Luna 16 was certainly a remarkable technological accomplishment, but it was probably not, as Soviet officials of the day touted, a

"cheaper and better" alternative to Apollo.

Luna 16 was followed, also in 1970, by another equally impressive achievement in the Soviet

lunar exploration program: the flight of the Ye-8 lunar rover, which was named Luna IZ

Incorporated into the L3 piloted lunar landing plan, the rover effort had by then assumed a life

of its own. The first attempt to launch the mobile crawler had failed in February 1969. It was

135. Wilson, Solar SystemLog, pp. 61-63; Sokolov. "The Raceto the Moon": N. Kamanin. "I l:eel Sorry for

Our Guys" (English title), Vo_dushniy transport 15 (1993): 12.

136. Mozzhorin. et aL, eds., Dorogi u kosmos:L p. 164.

137. Elizabeth K. Newton, ,zt Preliminary Study o/the Soviet Civil Space Program, Volume I. Organization

and Operations (Pasadena,CA: Jet Propulsion Laboratory,JPLD-7513, 1990). pp. 3-4, 33-34: Wilson, Solar System

Log. p. 63.

138. SouietSpace Programs. 1966-70. p. 383,

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
I OPTIONS

almost two years before the second flight model, spacecraft no. 203, was ready for launch. At

1744 hours Moscow Time on November 10, 1970, a four-stage Proton lifted off and injected the

spacecraft toward the Moon soon after. Following two mid-course corrections on November 12

and 14, Luna 17 entered orbit around the Moon on November 15.The parameters were eightyfive by 141 kilometers. The following day, the perigee was lowered to nineteen kilometers. The

spacecraft deorbited and safely landed at 0646 hours, 50 seconds Moscow Time on November

I? in an ancient crater in the Seaof Rains. The landing profile was identical to that used on Luna

16. Two sets of ramps were lowered, and the five-person steering team at Yevpatoriya in Crimea

commanded the strange-looking eight-wheeled robot down to the surface about an hour and a

half after touchdown. Contact with the Ye-8 lunar rover, called Lunokhod I in the Soviet press,

was limited to about six hours a day when the Moon was above Earth's horizon. _°

Among the scientific experiments aboard Lunokhod I was a penetrometer to test the soil's

mechanical characteristics, which was used more than 500 times during the rover's soiourn.

The Rifma x-ray fluorescence spectrometer, used about twenty-five times, was used to irradiate soil and record induced radiation to identify quantities of different elements. Adding a

slightly international flavor to the mission, Lunokhod I also carried a three-and-a-half kilogram

French-supplied instrument above the forward cameras, consisting of fourteen ten-centimeter

silica glass prisms to bounce back pulses of ruby laser light fired from observatories in Crimea

and France, Scientists first used this reflector on December 5 and 6, allowing the Earth-Moon

distance to be measured down to an accuracy of thirty centimeters. Similar instruments, with

less reflective capacity, were also carried on the Apollo landing flights. There was also an x-ray

telescope and a gamma spectrometer on the spacecraft. Lunokhod I, the first mobile vehicle to

travel on the surface of another planetary body, had an initial design life of three lunar days

(about twenty-one Earth days), but in fact operated for eleven lunar days (about seventy-seven

Earth days). Tyulin's team commandeered the rover across 197 meters during the first lunar day,

peaking on the fifth by covering 2,004 meters between March 7 and 20, 197I. Steering through

the lunar landscape was evidently very difficult for the control team, primarily because of the

six-second delay between the command and the execution of a maneuver. '4°

The crawler's remarkable journey came to an end at 1605 hours Moscow Time on

September 14, 1971,when the last communications session was finished. The day after, TASS

reported that the internal temperature of the rover had fallen because of decay of the nuclear

heater during the night. For several days, controllers tried to reestablish contact with Lunokhod

I, but with no success, and all attempts to do so were terminated on October 4. Lavochkin

Deputy Chief Designer Ivanovskiy, one of the principal architects of the mission, later recalled

that the rover's internal batteries had been designed for only a certain number of cycles of

charging and recharging, equivalent to three months. After exceeding their design lifetimes

by almost eight months, the batteries simply gave up. Ultimately, the mission had been an

outstanding success. Lunokhod I had covered an area of 80,000 square meters and taken

20,000 photographs and 206 panoramas of the lunar surface. During its 301-day, six-hour, and

thirty-seven-minute mission, it had traveled 10,540 meters. It had crossed craters, climbed

inclines, observed solar eclipses, and even found its way back to its mother stage in January

197 I, taking one of the more impressive photos of the mission--a beautiful shot of Luna I7

139. Wilson, SolarSystemLog.p. 63: KonstantinLantratov,"Anniversaries:25 YearsFromLunokhod-I"

(Englishtitle), Nouosttkosmor_autiki 24 (November19-December2, 1995):70-79. Thefivepersonteamwaspart

of alargereleven-memberteamof N. YeremenkoandI Fedorov(commanders),G. LatypovandV Dovgan(drivers),

K. Davidovskiyand V. Sarnal(navigators),L. Mosenzovand _. Kozhevnikov(engineers),V. Sapranovand N.

Kozlitin (omnidirectionalantennaoperators),andV. Chubukin(reservedriverand operator).The landingcoordinatesfor Luna17were38° 17'N,35° 00' W.

140. Wilson,SolarSystemLog,pp, 63-64: Lardier,LZistronautiqueSoui_tique.p. 269.

141
7'42

with its ramps lowered to the lunar surface. For ten months, it had withstood temperatures

ranging from the intense cold of the lunar night (minus 150 degrees Centigrade) to the searing

heat of the lunar day (over I00 degrees). Before losing contact, the controllers had managed to

park the rover so that the laser reflectors remained in a usable position. _4'

Both the Luna 16 and Luna 17 missions were not only important scientific and technological achievements in their own right, but they also added weight to Soviet claims of the benefits

of automated over piloted lunar exploration. It was only fitting that a third robotic lunar flight in

1970. the very last gasp of the LI piloted circumlunar program, was sandwiched between

the Luna 16 and Luna 17 missions. Although the circumlunar project had long since lost its

political utility, there was still hardware remaining, specifically three flight-ready 7K-LI vehicles.

Piloted flights in the series had been suspended in the spring of 1969, but Mishin had doggedly

pursued the idea of launching a crew regardless of the decisions from above. His view did

have some rationale: the entire circumlunar system, the 7K-LI vehicle, Blok D, and the Proton

booster were, by mid-1970, ready for piloted flight. Such a mission, perhaps even multiple

missions, would provide valuable experience in mounting more complex crewed lunar operations in the future. But the pressure not to do so was intense, and he eventually abandoned the

idea. As a compromise, he was allowed to continue automated technological flights. Thus, in

the fall of 1970, TsKBEM prepared one final LI ship, spacecraft no. 14, to fly around the Moon.

The vehicle was launched at 2255 hours, 39 seconds Moscow Time on October 20, 1970, a

month after the recovery of lunar soil samples by Luna 16. Following the standard checkout in

parking orbit around Earth, the ship. called Zond 8, headed for the Moon. The flight trajectory of

the spaceship differed with respect to earlier Zonds because, on this mission, engineers planned

to use a different reentry profile--one in which the spacecraft would fly in over the Northern

Hemisphere instead of the South Pole. Such a profile would allow ground stations on the contiguous Soviet territories to control most portions of the flight: in addition, the profile "was more

advantageous in terms of power consumption and ensured a more precise splashdown."'4'

The day after launch, during the trip to the Moon, scientists at the Shternberg Astronomical

Institute, at an observatory in the Zaylinskiy gltay, photographed the spacecraft against the stellar background, partly to confirm the accuracy of its trajectory. Photomuttiplier tubes allowed

identification of the ship, which was 328.000 kilometers from Earth at the time. Zond 8 itself photographed Earth on October 21. Besides cameras, the spacecraft carried unshielded aluminum foil

"targets" similar to those on the Apollo solar wind collector packages. These were mounted on

the outside of the descent apparatus to detect the isotropic composition of the solar wind. There

was one mid-course correction at a distance of 250,000 kilometers on the following day, allowing the spacecraft to circle the Moon on October 24 at a minimum distance of 1,200 kilometers.

The standard black-and-white and color photographs of the lunar surface were taken at distances

of 9.500 and 1,500 kilometers. On the way home, there were two further mid-course corrections

to sharpen its trajectory for the new reentry profile. Ground stations within the Soviet Union were

able to control the dynamics of reentry as the Zond 8 descent apparatus flew over the North Pole

during a ballistic reentry. It eventually splashed down 730 kilometers southeast of the Chagos

Islands, in the Indian Ocean, at 1655 hours Moscow Time on October 27. The landing was only

twenty-four kilometers from the intended target--and twelve kilometers from the nearest ship, a

Soviet oceanographic vessel named the Taman. which picked up the capsule fifteen minutes later.

Rescuers then transferred the vehicle to the Semyon Chelyuskin, which took it to Bombay. India,

from where it was flown to Moscow. '4_

141 Lantratov, "_,nniversaries: 25 YearsFrom Lunokhod-I": Wilson, Solar SystemLog. p. 64.

142. Mishin. "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"

143. Glushko, ed, Kosmonautika entsiklopediya, p. 130: Gatland, Robot Explorers, 150-51: Semenov,ed.,

Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 246: Soviet SpacePrograms. 1966- ?0, pp. 244-45: Joel Powell, "Research

FromSoviet Satellites."Spaee[hght 25 (January 1983): 33-34, One source states that originally a guided reentry was

planned, but becauseof a failure in an attitude control sensor, the vehicle performed a direct ballistic reentry. See

Alanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OPTIONS

The LI program was finally over. Started by the late Korolev in 1965, it was originally to have

been a symbol of Soviet power during the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the Great

October Revolution in 1967. But after eleven launches and billions of rubles, the program receded into the background as an example of how politics, poor planning, a terrible launch vehicle,

and bad luck could sabotage even the best of intentions• The results were, of course, not all bad.

TsKBEM had performed two fully successful (Zond 7 and Zond 8) and two partially successful

(Zond 5 and Zond 6) automated circumlunar missions• Much of the technology and expertise

cultivated during the project were invaluable for the well-being of more ambitious efforts, such as

the L3 landing program• An official history of the Zond program rightly notes a remarkable list of

technical accomplishments from the project, but ultimately does not shirk from listing the most

glaring omission: that no LI spacecraft was ever flown with a crew on board. '4_It is, however,

undeniable that had the Soviets chosen to fly a crew around the Moon in 1970, they could have.

TsKBEM still had two flightworthy vehicles remaining. But as Mishin noted twenty years later:

•.. as a result of a decision by the higher authorities, the circumlunar flight by two cosmonauts in the LIR-5OOK-LI program did not take place, despite the fact that the material

base and the cosmonauts [or the [light were ready. This decision resulted from the/act that

the United States had already taken the lead from us in that direction. I feel that the decision was erroneous and that it did not take into consideration the opinion of the rank-andfile people and specialists who had labored heroically to execute the program .... '_

The Zond program took its place in history as yet another Soviet space program that was

unfulfilled in its dreams•

144. Semenov,ed..Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya,pp.246-47.

145 Mishin,"Why Didn'tWeFlyto theMoon?"

743

CHRPTER SEVENTEEN

DREAMS

UNFULFILLED

Following the Soviet drive to reach the Moon during the Cold War is like chasing a trajectory that turns and twists at the least expected moments, often splintering into multidirectional paths, each road with its own story of triumph, tragedy, and irony. In 1969, the Soviet lunar

program was at a crossroads and split into three distinct options for Soviet planners: the space

station in Earth orbit, expanded lunar landing missions, and a Mars landing project. The Mars

option was the most ambitious element of this triad, and the fact that it existed at all is testament to the often unrealistic ambitions of both space industry officials and the chief designers.

Aelita

One of the first Soviet-era science fiction novels was published in 1923. Authored by the

well-known prose writer P,leksey N. Tolstoy, the novel was a narrative on the adventures of two

Russian cosmonauts on the surface of Mars, a planet governed by a ruthless emperor. The

novel, named .,Z]elitaafter its main character, the "Queen of Mars," was later turned into a

movie of the same name, and it eventually became a widely popular film that was part of the

cultural vernacular of the 1920s.' When the time came in 1969 to assign a cover name to the

new Soviet Mars program, officials chose P,elita. Piloted expeditions to Mars had, of course,

been part of exploratory studies in the Soviet Union well before 1969. Ten years earlier, a team

under Maksimov at OKB-I had begun research on the so-called Heavy Interplanetary Ship for

flight around Mars and back. Another team, led by Feoktistov, studied a concept for landing a

crew on Mars in a larger vehicle, also called the Heavy Interplanetary Ship. None of these studies had official sanction or funding from the Communist Party and government, but Chief

Designer Korolev was sufficiently engrossed in the idea to assign a permanent team to study

the problem. In the autumn of 1964, he established Department No, 92 under llya V. Lavrov

to specifically study the prospects for a piloted Mars landing mission?

l_s the NI-L3 program gathered steam during the mid-1960s, the work on the Heavy

Interplanetary Ship moved ever so slowly to the sidelines. Still, Korolev managed to maintain

his commitment to the idea and was particularly interested in the closed-loop life cycle systems

that would be necessary for the long trip to Mars. Some of this researchwas carried out at the

I. Peter g. Gorin, "Rising From a Cradle . . ,: The Evolution of Public Perception of Spaceflight in Russian

Prior to Sputnik," presented at the conference "Reconsidering Sputnik: 40 Years Since the Soviet Satellite,"

Washington, DC, September 30-October I, 1997.

2. Yu. R Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya "Energiya" imeni 5. t? Koroleua (Korolev:

RKK Energiya, named after S P. Korolev, 1996), p 168,

145
746

Physics Institute of the Siberian Department of the llcademy of Sciences at Krasnoyarsk. Legend

has it that two of the young scientists working on the problem once met with Korolev and

offered him water regenerated by chlorella from human urine. The chief designer declined

the offer, but remained very interested in the problem. The same institute designed a closed

biosphere designated Bios-l, which was first tested by losif I. Gitelzon, a thirty-five-year-old

medical doctor who had been one of the men who had met with Korolev. _Other organizations

were also involved in the overall research. The Tomilino-based KB Zvezda designed one version

of a system for the spacecraft in which food consisted of sublimated provisions based on two

criteria: high nutrition value and low specific mass. Ii small hydroponic hothouse equipped

with external solar concentrators would be used for additional nutrition.

Eventually by the late 1960s, presumably to optimize all work on Martian spacecraft, the

two different Heavy Interplanetary Ship designs were unified into one, the Feoktistov proposal.

P, special ground test simulator for the ship was built after Korolev's death, and it was there on

November 5, 1967, that three men--physician German _l. Manovtsev (group leader), biologist

llndrey N. Bozhko, and technician Boris N. Ulybyshev--entered the laboratory complex for a

simulation of a long-duration piloted spaceflight. The team used water and oxygen regenerated from body waste, including urea, transpiration moisture, and exhaled carbon dioxide. For

food, the researchers used freeze-dried food and green vegetables grown in a ground-based

greenhouse. The greenhouse used simulated sunlight and ion-exchange resins saturated with

nutrient substances instead of soil. Solid biological waste was simply removed from the cabin.

They finally exited on November 5, 1968, a year after their entry/

The work on the Heavy Interplanetary Ship slowed down after Korolev's death, but with

the renewed interest in Mars after tqpollo 8, these studies assumed an increased importance.

Coincidentally or not, in 1969, TsKBEM issued an "experimental design" of a piloted Martian

landing spacecraft, the most detailed technical description yet of such a vehicle. Spurred by the

abrupt interest from Ustinov and P,fanasyev to pursue a Mars project, engineers could be forgiven for hoping that this design would see the light. The ship, now called the Martian

Expeditionary Complex (MEK), consisted of:

• P,n interplanetary orbital ship carrying the crew and primary on-board systems

• _t Martian landing ship for landing on the surface of Mars

• tt return apparatus for flight to Earth in which the crew would reenter Earth's atmosphere

• Powerful engine units with nuclear reactors and electric rocket engines

The basic requirements for the 1969 mission were to carry out a Mars landing during a 630-day

(or 1.7-year) mission, with thirty days spent orbiting Mars. tq total of six cosmonauts would

be aboard the ship: three of them would spend at least five days on the surface. The primary propulsion system on the Martian ship would be electric rocket engines using nuclear power sources for

the main part of the journey and liquid-propellant rocket engines for operations near Mars?

3. V. Nelyubin, "Three Flights to Mars. Soviet 'Cosmonauts' Made Them in the Early 1960's Without

Leaving the Earth" (English title), Komsomolskaya prauda, January 15, 1992, p. 4. The other doctor who offered

Korolev the recycled sample was I. Terskov.

4_ G. M Petrovich, ed.. The Souiet Encyclopaedia o/Space Flight (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1969), pp,

376-77: Mikhail Rebrov,"Sagafrom the/trchives of Document No. 23891 and an Unknown SpaceProject" (English

title). Krasnayn zuezda, May 13, 1995,p. 6. Earliersimulations of ten to 120days duration werecarried out by 1964.

See"For FutureSpaceFlights: t_ Unique Experimentof Soviet Scientists" (Englishtitle), Prauda, September II, 1964,

p4.

5. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 280; Igor ttfanasyev, "Piloted Flight to Mars...

tt Quarter Century Ago" (English title), Vestnik uozdushniy/Iota no. 7-8 (1996): 103-0.5.

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

This is a model of the pencil shaped MEK

piloted Martian spacecraft offered in 1969

by Mishin's design bureau as part of the

..Ztelitaeffort. ,,zltthe base of the stand is

another model evidently showing the

Martian lander with its atmospheric

braking oeroshell (shown in more detail

in the bottom photo), On the right is a

robotic Martian spacecraft.

(copyright Mark Wade)

In Earth orbit, the MEK looked like a long needle. The I50-ton complex would be assembled in Earth orbit after two launches of a modified N I booster. The first rocket would carry

two components: the Martian Orbital Complex (MOK) and the Martian Landing Complex

(MPK). The second N I would carry a fully functioning low-thrust electric rocket engine powered by two nuclear reactors. Each reactor was installed on one extreme end of the complex

and protected from other systems by a "shaded shield": the cone-shaped propellant tanks for

the electric rocket engines would provide additional protection to the crew from radiation from

the reactors, The actual propulsion nozzles would be placed between the shade and the tanks.

The complex would also have an extensible telescopic thermionic radiator for the energy

sources, which would have a node to allow for docking and undocking to the MOK and MPK.

747
748

The MOK formed the main areasof living for the crew. From one end to the other, the complex had seven sequential sections: the instrument-aggregate compartment, the working compartment, the laboratory compartment, the biotechnology compartment, the living

compartment, the "salon" compartment, and the orientation engine compartment. The

MPK had an unfurlable aeroshell for aerodynamic braking into the Martian atmosphere. It was

located behind the "shaded shield" of the main spacecraft. After separating from the main

spacecraft complex in Martian orbit, it would discard its docking apparatus used for operations

in Earth orbit and then use a liquid-propellant rocket engine to soft-land on the surface of

the planet. The aeroshell encased a cylindrical "living compartment" linked to the main crew

quarters via a hatch, as well as a two-stage ascent stage with a spherical cabin,

The MEK also contained the main crew return apparatus for returning the crew to Earth.

The capsule was essentially a larger version of the "headlight-shaped" Soyuz descent apparatus with a lift-to-drag ratio of about 0.45, sufficient to significantly reduce g-levels upon

terrestrial reentry. The capsule had a base diameter of 4.35 meters and a height of 3.15 meters.

The MOK and MPK would dock in Earth orbit with the electric rocket engine plus nuclear

reactor payload. Docking would be followed by the ignition of the electric engines to begin its

slow acceleration into ever larger spirals around Earth. After the complex cleared Earth's radiation belts, a Proton rocket would launch a 7K-LI Zond-type spacecraft into Earth orbit with a

crew. The Blok D fourth stage would accelerate the Zond to meet with the MEK in high orbit.

Having entered the MEK, the crew would verify the operation of all systems on the complex

with the option of abandoning the vehicle if there were serious problems. After reaching transplanetary velocity, the MEK would "shoot" out of Earth orbit in a trajectory toward the Red

Planet. The electric engines would shut down at this point and stay in "cold storage. ''_

Calculations at the time had allowed engineers to compute the cumulative dose of radiation during periods of high solar activity that doctors believed would be acceptable for interplanetary crews. Based on these data, the crew of the MEK would stay in the special radiation

shelter, which was in the form of a passage in the main instrument-equipment bay of the ship.

The workload of the cosmonauts during both the outbound and inbound trips would be

reduced as much as possible by making operations almost fully automated. Computers would

deliver information on the spacecraft systems' operation based on an algorithm producing three

values: "normal," "not normal," and "failure." The crew would be able to carry out any

in-flight repair of the ship's radio and electronic equipment, designed to be easily accessible in

the form of replaceable units. The effects of long-term gravity on the crew was still a potential

unknown in 1969, and one option engineers seriously considered was the use of artificial gravity by rotating individual portions of the giant spacecraft around its axis. Research later proved

that such rotations would be harmful to the body because of the appearance of "Coriolis"

acceleration that distorted the human perception of gravity.'

The coast to Mars would take 150 days, after which the electric engines would start

operating again to perform Mars orbit insertion. The MEK would take sixty-one days to brake

into high orbit and a further twenty-four days to shift to low orbit. The crew would spend an

additional week surveying possible landing sites for the MPK. Three of the six cosmonauts

on board would then enter the lander and touch down on the surface. After about a weeklong

mission on the surface, the ascent stage of the MPK would lift off and automatically

rendezvous with the MOK. The crew would transfer from the former to the latter's living

compartment, and the no-longer-needed lander would be discarded. A week later, the

6. Pffanasyev,"PilotedFlightto Mars."

7. I.B. Pffanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft(FromtheHistoryof the SovietSpaceProgram)"(Englishtitle),

Nouoyeu zhizni Nauke.tekhnike:Seriyakosmonautika,astronomiyano. 12(December1991):1-64_

CHRLLENGE TO _POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

crewmembers would begin their return trip in the MOK--seventeen days to escape Mars and

another sixty-six days to gather velocity to reach Earth. During passive flight, the spaceship

would pass as close to the Sun as possible, flying between the orbits of Venus and Mercury to

accrue more velocity. Another seventeen days of active engine firing would lead to a second

passive phase. Three days before reaching Earth, the electric rocket engines would be switched

on again. The crewmembers would separate from the main MEK spacecraft in their return apparatus and land by parachute back on Earth with the results of their scientific experiments and

Martian soil samples._

Serious work on closed-cycle life support systems in support of the Mars program was carried out at the premises of the Moscow-based Institute for Biomedical Problems. In J970, as

part of the MEK project, scientists at the institute created a Scientific-Experimental Complex

(NEK) for "special biomedical testing of prospective space life-support systems." The NEK consisted of three modules: one with a volume of 150 cubic meters, the second with a volume of

I00 cubic meters, and the third, the aggregate compartment, with a volume of fifty cubic

meters. Each module was connected with an airlock and had radio-television systems, anti-fire

alarm systems, and extinguishers. Two of the modules had special areas for rest and athletic

training. There was also a special kitchen for preparing food from sublimated products, as well

as a doctor's area with a full complement of medication and instruments;

One of the most intensive areas of focus in the design of the MEK was the nuclear energy

source, not only to power the ship, but also to provide power to the electric rocket engines. In

the 1960s, scientists and engineers at TsKBEM had engaged in research on creating a new class

of slow-melting and high-temperature materials and new heat carriers--that is, new technologies for facilitating the creation of small-scale thermionic reactors. Severaldifferent complex test

stands were built for testing methods, materials, and equipment at very high temperatures.

Between 196.5 and 1968, TsKBEM, together with the Physical-Power Institute at Obninsk,

designed and manufactured a new thermionic reactor using fast neutrons. By 1910, they had

created the new FS-I critical test stand, essentially a reactor of zero power, to verify changes in

the structure, geometry, composition, and configuration of the primary components of the

nuclear-physical model of the thermionic reactor. Eight critical assemblies were made at the

time, leading eventually to the creation of the I I B97 nuclear energy source.

Based on this research, for the MEK, TsKBEM engineers worked on a draft plan between

1966 and 1910 for nuclear energy units and electric rocket engines for the spacecraft and its

launch vehicle. The power units and the rocket engines were created in single block (YaE-I and

YaE-IM) and triple block (YaE-2 and YaE-3) configurations, with each block consisting of one

thermionic reactor. The performance characteristics were:

Unit Power Output

YaE-I 2,500-3,000 kilowatts

YaE-IM 5,000 kilowatts

YaE-2 Three by 3,200 kilowatts

YaE-3 Three by 5,000 kilowatts

The spacecraft would have two low-thrust electric rocket engines of 6.2 and 9.5 kilograms

thrust, respectively. Their specific impulses were remarkable, attesting to their high-performance

8.

9.

1994,p 6.

gfanasyev,"PilotedFlightto Mars."

gleksandrAndryushkov,"The SecretCosmodrome"(Englishtitle), Krasnayazuezda,December3.

749
150

capabilities: 5,000 and 8,000 seconds, respectively. All of the materials on these energy units

and associated engines were examined and approved by an expert commission of the Academy

of Sciences under the leadership of Academicians Aleksandr P. Aleksandrov and Boris N. Petrov.

The commission recommended further work to create the YaE-2 and YaE-3 units on an experimental basis.'° Through early 1969, TsKBEM engineers were seriously considering using a recouerable nuclear reactor aboard the Mars spacecraft.

Work on the MEK was, of course, not isolated from the development of a suitable launch

vehicle for sending the spacecraft to Mars. Conceptions of an uprated N I to use for the

mission remained in constant flux throughout 1969 as different models were proposed at

different points. Early in the year, the most favored version was the NIF-V3, a technical

proposal distinguished from the original N I by the use of improved first and second stages and

a completely new third stage using high-energy liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen (LOX) as

propellant. By March 1969, the most likely plan was to use two N l-derived boosters for launching components of the MEK into Earth orbit. One of the N I s would use the new liquid hydrogen-LOX Blok S on fourth stage. Based on this research, throughout April, there was intensive

work on a radically improved variant, called the N IM. On May 28, 1969, Mishin signed the predraft plan for the N IM booster, designed specifically to carry out a Mars landing project.

Among five projected variants of the N I M, three used liquid hydrogen-LOX engines on the second and third stages. The first stage would use thirty powerful 250-ton-thrust engines."

Mishin's N I M-MEK Mars landing plan was not the only component of the new Mars offensive in 1969. When Soviet space leaders such as Smirnov and Afanasyev provisionally approved

a Mars program to take the steam out of Apollo, there was a clear consensus that this would

have to be a massive integrated project involving the major Soviet space design organizations.

The official decree in support of the Aelita program was issued by the Ministry of General

Machine Building in resolution no. 232 on June 30, 1969, two weeks before the flight of Apollo

I I to the Moon. '_According to the order, the assigned chief designers were to deliver "materials" for the Aelita program by the third quarter of 1970. Participating in the effort was not only

Mishin's TsKBEM, but also General Designer Chelomey's TsKBM and Chief Designer Yangel's

KB Yuzhnoye. By August 1969, there were, in fact, three complete predraft plans for a Soviet

Mars landing project, one each from the three design bureaus. The volume and scale of the

work, however, seem to have discouraged even the most enthusiastic of participants. By

the end of 1969, both Mishin and Yangel pulled out of Aelita, leaving it wholesale to Chelomey.

Mishin clearly had a good reason: by the end of 1969, he was knee-deep in a new space

station program. At the same time, his organization was involved in the flight testing of the

troubled N I and formulating variants of the N I for improved piloted lunar landing missions for

the early 1970s. It would simply be impossible to manage a Mars program concurrently.

10. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmiehesknyaKorporatsiya, pp, 411-12; _. Koroteyev,Yu. Demyanko, and Ye.

Kuzmin, "From the History of SpaceScience:The Scientific-ResearchInstitute of ReactivePropulsion" (English title),

Z_uintslya i kosmonautikn no. 6 (November-December 1993): 39-4 I.

II For mentions of the NIM in Russian documentation, see Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskayn

Korporatsiya. pp 280,412.

12. V.M. Petrakov, "Soviet Rockets for SpaceApparatus," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 49

(July 1996): 211-80: V. M. Petrakov, "From the History of the Development and Creation of Carrier-Rocketsin the

USSR" (English title), in Trudy XXup chteniy, posuyushchennykh razrubotke nauchnogo nasludeniya i ruzuitiyu idey

K E Tsiolkouskog,o (Moscow: RAN, 1994). p. 173;SergeyKhrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu krizisy i rakety uzglyud

iznutri tom 2 (Moscow: Novosti, 1994), p 526 One somewhat unreliablesource states that the order cameon June

30, 1968. See Mikhail Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 52

( 1995); 8-9.

CHALLENGE TO ll_POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

Nothing is known about the Yangel offer, but given his previous record with piloted space

projects, it is not surprising that he, too, did not participate in Aelita after 1969. '3

Characteristically, Chelomey's offer for Aelita was far more ambitious than Mishin's

N IM-MEK idea, bordering almost on fantasy. His own stab at a lunar landing project, the

UR-7OO/LK-700 project, had died a slow death in early 1969, but it had provided a sound basis

to consider more advanced concepts for the Mars effort. For Aelita, Chelomey used the UR-700

as a springboard and offered the even more gigantic UR-7OOM rocket--a launch vehicle so

massive that it was quite possibly the most powerful booster ever seriously conceptualized

anywhere in the world. The only comparable studies were NASA's Nova heavy-lift booster

proposals dating from the early 1960s. '4

By April 1969, General Designer Chelomey was looking at several different preliminary

variants of the UR-7OOM, each with differing capabilities and configurations. The mass and

performance characteristics were unprecedented:

Variant Launch Mass Payload to Earth Orbit Propellants

I 4,820 tons 130- 150 tons Conventional

2 7,890 tons 230 tons Conventional

3 7,890 tons 300 tons Liquid hydrogen-LOX

4 Unavailable 350 tons Nuclear

5 Unavailable 1,700 tons Nuclear

Variants I and 2 differed by the composition of the number of strap-ons or engines.

Among the missions being considered for these two versions were lunar landing expeditions

lasting thirty days, automated flight to Mars and Venus with the landing of eleven-ton

modules on the surface, and piloted landing expeditions to Mars with three cosmonauts on

Mars for thirty days. In addition, on variant 2, two payload blocks of 230 tons would allow

for the testing of a special nuclear rocket engine on an upper stage. Variant 3 would use highperformance cryogenic propellants, allowing for a landing on the Moon of six cosmonauts

for missions lasting from one month to one year, piloted flight to Mars and Venus using

atmospheric braking, and, with the use of two 230-ton payload blocks linked in Earth orbit, a

landing expedition to Mars of four cosmonauts. Certainly, the most ambitious early conceptions

were variants 4 and 5 using nuclear rocket engines on the third stage of the UR-7OOM Engineers

considered two different design schemes for the engine, one using a gas-phase reactor and the

other a solid-phase reactor. '_

These initial exploratory studies of the LIR-ZOOM led to two different layouts for the rocket.

The first variant of the UR-7OOM was similar to the UR-7OO in basic design--that is, it

consisted of a core of three modules (the second stage) surrounded by three strap-on clusters

(the first stage), each consisting of two modules. The change was in the engines: Chelomey

substituted each RD-270 with four RD-253s. Thus, despite Chelomey's intensive criticisms of

13. In Petrakov, "Soviet Rockets for Space Apparatus," the author states that "Mishin, already heavily

involved in manned spacecraftwork for the space station programme, declined the work [on the Mars expedition],

leaving the [sKBM in sole chargeof t_elita."

14. For an overview of the Nova studies, see Keith ]. Scala and Glen E. Swanson, "They Might Be . .

Giants," _uest 1(3) (Fall 1992): 12-27: Keith J. Scalaand Glen E.Swanson, "They Might Be.. Giants," __uest2(I)

(Spring 1993): 17-26: Keith J. Scalaand Glen E.Swanson, "They Might Be... Giants," quest 2(2) {Summer 1993):

4-20.

15. Foranother version of the UR-70OM,see Christian Lardier,LTlstronauticlue Soui_fique(Paris: Armand

Co)in, 1992), p. 252

751
752

the N I booster for having too many engines on its first stage, he was now choosing that same

option. One wonders if his criticisms of the N I abated with the emergence of the LIE-ZOOM

Chelomey's new rocket, with a total of thirty-six engines firing at liftoff, would develop about

5,400 tons of sea-level thrust. The rocket was topped off by a third stage of four modified

RD-253s for altitude use, as in the UR-700. Its fourth stage was a bold new step in rocket design

technology: Chelomey proposed the use of a nuclear rocket engine, the RD-410, a relatively

unknown engine developed by Glushko's EnergoMash design bureau. Total Earth-to-orbit payload capability for this version of the UR-7OOM was 240 tons. '"

Very little is known about the RD-410 engine, except that it had a thrust of seven tons. It

is not clear whether the RD-410 engine was the same unit as the similarly designated RD-04 I0,

also a nuclear rocket engine developed at the very same time as a cooperative effort between

the Design Bureau of Chemical Automation (formerly OKB-IS4) and the Scientific-Research

Institute of Thermal Processes. The RD-0410, with a thrust of just over three and a half tons,

was a highly advanced engine, exceeding in its performance characteristics even concurrent

American nuclear engine models, A stand for testing the engine was built beginning 1962 by

KB Luch at a secret site about fifty kilometers southwest of Semipalatinsk-2 I. Testing began in

1971. '_

The second variant of the UR-7OOM was truly a monster. Instead of the standard modules

just over four meters in diameter so favored by Chelomey, engineers came up with a central core

twelve and a half meters in diameter surrounded by four nine-meter-diameter blocks. The core

(the second stage) would use twelve 600-ton-thrust engines, while the strap-ons (the first

stage) would each use eight of the same engines. These engines, working on LOX and

kerosene, would be developed by Glushko, who evidently had finally decided to abandon his

boycott of LOX engines. A third stage, with a diameter of twelve and a half meters, would use

six NK-35 engines, each with a thrust of 220 tons. These were new high-performance liquid

hydrogen engines developed by Kuznetsov's KB Trud. Compared to the Saturn V's modest

130 tons, this behemoth would be capable of lifting 750 tons to Earth orbit. With a launch

mass of 16,000 tons and a length of about 145 meters, this variant of the UR-7OOM was

evidently the most preferred version for Aetita because it satisfied one of the main criteria of the

plan--to use only a single docking (that is, assembly of a 1,500-ton complex) in Earth orbit to

accomplish the Mars landing. Other requirements included simultaneous development of all

the rocket engines, a "packet" layout for the booster, the use of multiple engines on each block,

the possibility of manufacture of the giant in a major city, and extensive ground testing. '_

Very little is known about the MK-7OO Martian landing spacecraft conceptualized for the

Aelita program. No doubt, the actual ship traced its lineage to the abandoned LK-7OO lunar

lander. The spacecraft looked roughly like a series of four truncated cones one on top of the

other. The ship had a pair of large solar panels to provide power during the trip. As a whole,

the development of the UR-IOOM rocket was assigned to TsKBM's Branch No. I at Fill,

although Chetomey's main center at Reutov took the responsibility of developing the MK-7OO

piloted spaceship. Chelomey was enthusiastic about the entire effort, perhaps seeing in it a

possibility to vindicate his various defeats in the space program at the hands of his enemies.

Minister Afanasyev, a staunch supporter of Chelomey's, seems to have been the primary

16 V. Karrask.O. Sokolov. and M Shishov, "Known and Unknown Pages of the Russian Khrunichev

Center's Space Activity." presented at the 47th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation. Beijing,

China, October 7-1 I, 1996.

17. Leonid Kvasnikov, Anatoliy Kostylev, and Vladimir Maksimovskiy, "Nuclear Rocket Engines" (English

title), Vestnik uozdushniy flora no. 6 {November-December 1996): 53-55.

18 Petrakov, "Soviet Rocketsfor Space/_pparatus"; Petrakov, "From the History of the Development and

Creation of Carrier-Rockets."

J

U

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

This is a close-up view o[ Chelomey's MK-700 Martian lander spaeeera[t that was proposed as part o[ the 71elita

program to send Soviet cosmonauts to Mars in the late 1970s In the background is a model o/a variant o[ the

Satyut space station. (copyright Mark Wade)

instigator in the government in favor of Chelomey's Aelita project. Remarkably, Chelomey

delivered on his promise• In gpril 1970, he completed the predraft plan for the MK-700, and in

October of the same year, he signed off on the predraft plan for the UR-7OOM rocket. '_

Somewhat unrealistically, Chelomey promised that he could bring the project to fruition within three years.

At the time, Aelita not only included the URqOOM-MK-700 project but also encompassed

a larger Mars-directed offensive, including automated missions in 1971, 197'3, and 1975,

leading to a piloted landing between 1978 and 1980. One of the more interesting missions of

this armada was the 5NM mission planned for launch on the N I rocket. Also known as the

Heavy Interplanetary Automatic Ship, the project was supervised by the Lavochkin Design

Bureau under Chief Designer Babakin. Inspired by the success of the Luna 16 sample return,

Babakin proposed using the 5NM spacecraft to recover a sample of Martian soil. The launch

would occur in 1915, the ship would land on Mars in 1976, and then it would return to Earth

in 1977. t°

For all of the enthusiasm of Afanasyev and Chelomey for Aelita, the goals of the program

could not be justified given the enormous amounts of expenditures involved. As a respected

Russian space historian noted in 1991:

•.. even as the proposals ]or [the UR-7OOM-MK-700] program were being developed, it

became clear that the impact of the first flight o[ a man to Mars on public opinion

would be disproportionately small in comparison with the material expenses that would

attend the flight/'

AelJta really had no chance. By September 1970, the Military-Industrial Commission

considered eliminating Aelita from its next five-year plan, 1971-75, but apparently after further

discussions opted to include it. The participants were to produce a draft plan for the project in

19. Khrushchev. Nikita Khrushchev: tom 2. p. 526: Petrakov,"Soviet Rocketsfor SpaceApparatus."

20. K. Lantratov, "To Mars!" (English title), Novosti kosmonavtiki 21 (October 7-20, 1996): 41-51.

2 I. Afanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft." p. 40

?53
754

1972. The forces against the massive undertaking, however, proved to be too strong. Soon after

Chelomey finished the predraft plans for his booster and spacecraft, his ambitious idea died a

slow death. By the end of 1972, the Soviet piloted space program remained engrossed in both

its space station and the lunar landing projects: cosmonauts on Mars would have to remain a

dream of the future. Like most of Chelomey's other projects, disinterest from the Soviet leadership did not deter him from quietly pursuing his own ideas, and it is quite likely that some low

level of work continued on the UR-7OOM and its MK-?'OO ship for several years into the early

19?'Os. Some components of P,elita escaped outright cancellation. In particular. Babakin's 5NM

project remained a strong contender for approval. In general, however, the aborted Soviet Mars

offensive of 1969-70 was a child of political circumstance. Born out of the shock of Apollo 8.

it did not have sustainability to survive into less politically charged times of the space race.

R Month on the Moon

In July 1969, when the N I rocket exploded on its pad at Tyura-Tam, no one could have

guessed that it would take two years before another N I launch took place. The investigation

into the accident did not finish until July 1970; in fact, it was as late as May 1971 before one

of the subcommissions submitted its findings, concluding that the explosion had occurred

because of a problem in an oxygen sensor. By December 197'0, Mishin was looking ahead to

the next launch of booster no. 6L in January 197'I, with booster no. ?'L following in June.

Throughout December 1970 and January 19?' I, the Council of Chief Designers in charge of the

NI-L3 program met several times to discuss the prelaunch preparations. _ There were still

doubts on many technical issues that were not clarified to the satisfaction of several members,

including such perennial problems as data on the pulsation pressure of the tanks and pipelines.

On February I0, 1971, the technical leadership of TsKBEM met specifically to discuss the

N I-L3 program, assessing the pace of preparations for future launches in the effort. The next

N I launch would carry a mass model of the L3 stack instead of the actual orbiter and lander--

a decision most likely taken so as not to lose flight models of the Lunar Orbital Ship (LOK) and

the Lunar Ship (LK) in case the N I rocket failed to deposit its payload in orbit.

The assessment of preparations for the two subsequent launch stacks, boosters 7K and 8L,

was mixed. While both N I rockets were on schedule, there was still much uncertainty regarding their payload blocks, primarily because of delays in the delivery of components from subcontractors, in particular, the P,rsenal Machine Building Plant, responsible for manufacturing

the attitude control blocks for the orbiter and the lander. Booster ?'Lwould carry an automated

LOK and a mass model of the LK, while 8L would carry automated models of the LOK and LK.

These two vehicles would carry out a fully automated lunar landing on the surface of the Moon.

Booster IOL would carry the first piloted LOK in addition to an automated LK for a repeat of a

robotic landing. The first piloted landing on the surface of the Moon was set for March 1973

on booster II L.z_Tests throughout 197'I continued for certifying the LOK for piloted flight.

22. The Council of Chief Designers for the NI-L3 program in December 1970 were: V. P Mishin (TsKBEM

and council chief), &. P.gbramov (TsKBEM), V. P. Barmin (KB OM), /_. G. losifyan (VNII EM), A. M Isayev (KB

KhimMash), I. I. Ivanov (KI3 Yuzhnoye), N. D. Kuznetsov (KB Trud), N. _. Lobanov (Nil AU), A. M. Lyulka(KB

Saturn), /_. S. Mnatsakanyan (Nil TP), N. A. Pilyugin (Nil AP), M. S. Ryazanskiy (Nil Priborostroyeniya), G. I.

Severin(KB Zvezda), V. G. Stepanov (Turayevo Branchof MMZ Soyuz), G. I. Voronin (KB Nauka), and M. K Yangel

(KB Yuzhnoye). Additionally invited to participate in the proceedings were: P A. _gadzhanov (TsKIK), A Yu.

Ishlinskiy (Institute of Mechanics AN SSSR),A. G. Karas (GUKOS), M V Keldysh (AN SSSR),V. Ya.Likhushin (Nil

TP), G. P.Melnikov (NII-4 Space Branch), Yu. A. Mozzhorin (TsNllMash), B. N. Petrov (Interkosmos), G. I. Petrov

(IKI AN SSSR),and V. P. Pukhov (Nil KhimMash).

23. N. Kamanin. "I FeelSorry for Our Guys" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 15 (1993): 12.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

These included water-landing tests and the verification of the giant launch escape tower for the

L3 stack. The LOK would be the first Soviet piloted spacecraft whose primary landing target was

the Indian Ocean. TsKBEM engineers also overcame major technical obstacles in building the

first fuel cells for a Soviet piloted spacecraft, six years behind the United States. By 1971 and

1912, the engineers were ground-testing a four-and-a-half-kilowatt power supply unit called

Volna for the LOK, which ran on alkaline and hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells with an efficiency

rating of about 60 percent. Volna would provide electricity, oxygen, water for drinking, and

support services during the lunar mission. 24

Preparations for the next N I launch were bogged down in technical delays, compounded

by a lack of confidence in a success. It was only in late May 1911 that the rocket was finally

moved to the second NI launch pad at site I lOk the one that had remained intact after

the catastrophic explosion during the summer of 1969/_ Evidently, Chief Designer Barmin's

engineers had not yet begun reconstructing the destroyed pad at site I IOP. By December 1910,

the consensus was to carry out the remaining N I test launches from I IOL while, at the same

time, begin the construction of two completely new pads elsewhere at the launch range.

Booster 6L's payload consisted of mass mock-ups of the LOK and LK. There was no functional emergency rescue system on top of the L3 stack. The primary objective of the mission

was to test, as simply as possible, the operation of the first three stages of the N I. No lunar

operations were planned, and, in fact. the N I was to be launched outside a convenient lunar

launch window. 26There was some minor drama during the searing hot days preceding the

launch attempt. In an unexpected act of nature for arid Tyura-Tam, there was a violent rainstorm

at the launch site while the N I rocket was installed at the pad. For Kazakhstan, this was

quite an anomaly, and engineers were very worried about the effect of rain on the N I rocket's

electronic circuitry. Some State Commission members proposed bringing the booster back to

the assembly-testing building and then "drying" it, but M/shin was against this, apparently

fearful that such a move would serve no purpose other than delaying the launch by days if not

weeks. In the end, M/shin got his way27 The State Commission originally set the launch for

June 20. but postponed it initially by two days to June 22. But there were more delays, t_ir Force

representative Col. General Kamanin wrote in his diary on June 24 that:

The launching o[ the N l has again been put off Now M/shin hopes to put it into space

on June 27, but there are so many [allures and mat/unctions that this date may also

prove unrealistic. General [Z_leksandr G.] Karas [the commander o/the Chic/Directorate

of Space Zlssets] called from the launch site today. He is dejected. The telemetry equipment on the N I has given out, and there are other important malfunctions which may

again delay the launching. This bad rocket is a great liability to our space program. _8

The "bad rocket" was finally launched at 0215 hours, 8 secondsMoscow Time on June 27,

1971. As soon as the booster lifted off, telemetry on the ground indicated that the roll control

system was behaving abnormally. There were unexpected gas-dynamic moments (eddies and

countercurrents) at the base of the booster, which caused the N I to roll around its axis. l_s the

rate of roll increased steadily, by T+48 seconds, the large amount of torque began to destroy

the second stage. Three seconds later, the KORD system shut down all the engines. As the

24. Serge/Khudyakov,"PowerUnits Runon FuelCells,"ZterospaeeJournalno. 6 (November-December

1996):42-43.

25. "SovietLunarBoosterSouvenir,"Spaceflight34 (August1992):214.

26. Afanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft."

27. MikhailRudenko,"FourStepsFromtheMoon" (Englishtitle),Moskouskayaprauda.July19,1994,p. I0.

28. Kamanin,"I FeelSorryfor OurGuys,"p. 12.

755
756

This photo captures the spectacular night launch o[ the third HI rocket in June 1971/3lthough the booster

cleared the tower, unanticipated rotations around the main vertical axis of the vehicle led to yet another

catastrophic failure (copyright QuesU

rocket continued to break up in the air, it flew about twenty kilometers from the pad and hit

the ground, creating a crater thirty meters wide and fifteen meters deep. Fragments of the rocket were scattered across an area of several l<i]ometers/9 While it was the first time that all of the

N l's engines had fired together, the third failure in a row, not surprisingly, affected morale. Boris

A. Dorofeyev, at the time the "lead designer" of the N I rocket, remembered that:

such major accidents had a depressing e[[ect on the personnel. But no one entertained

the thought that the N I was doomed, or that its defects uJere of a chronic nature. People

worked energetically, many asked to haue their stay on the firing-range extended, and

eueryone felt that the rocket would "grow out o[ it," and that success was not Jar o[[. _°

This bottom-up enthusiasm for a project that had spanned nearly a decade without any

tangible results may sound irrational from a Western perspective, but the Russians were clearly in it for the long run. Despite three consecutive failures, many space officials continued to

believe that the future of the Soviet space program depended on the N I rocket.

The N I may have become ensconced as a national, albeit secret, Soviet asset, but the L3

lunar landing program was in much bigger trouble by mid- 197 I. Already almost three years late,

much of the technology and design approaches for the creation of the L3 complex were becoming outdated, Many continued to believe, with good reason, that flying the L3 to the Moon with

29 Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Igor Afanasyev, "NI: Absolutely Secret" (English title), Krylya

rodiny no. II (November 1993): 4-5.

30. SergeyLeskov,"How We Didn't Get to the Moon" (English title), Izuestiya, August 18. 1989. p 3.

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

the limited capabilities of the LOK and the LK would be a risk not worth taking. The early-1969

talks on a post-Apollo response had led to considerations of an improved lunar landing project

with better characteristics, something that would not only guarantee the safety of a crew, but also

be a significant improvement over any Apollo mission. In April 1969, Mishin told Brezhnev that

his design bureau would work on a lunar project capable of sustaining a crew of three

cosmonauts for extended periods on the Moon and equipped to travel long distances on the lunar

surface. By September of the same year, Mishin was examining the preliminary documents on

such a plan, and byJanuary 1970, the proposal had a name, the L3M, which was a modified L3.

[ngineers approached the formulation of the L3M with the weaknesses of the original

L3 plan in mind--that is, what kind of improvements could be made given existing hardware

and technology? Clearly, one of the vulnerable links in the chain was the docking of the LK

with the LOK once the lander had lifted off from the lunar surface. Given Soviet weaknesses in

microelectronics technology, the engineers had faced great difficulty in designing a completely

automated rendezvous and docking system, as evidenced by the docking failures on Soyuz

2/3 and Soyuz 7/8. Lunar dockings would be even more complex given the poor knowledge

of navigation conditions around the Moon and the difficulty of assisting the cosmonauts from

Earth. One possibility was to design a very heavy launch vehicle capable of a direct ascent

profile to the lunar surface, bypassing the need for rendezvous. Studies, however, proved that

such a profile would require a very heavy launch vehicle well outside the capabilities of the N I

in the near future, even if augmented with high-energy stages. The other option was to launch

huge components of the lunar ship separately and have them link up in lunar orbit. The extra

mass afforded would allow the spacecraft to carry reliable rendezvous and docking instrumentation. It was the second option that the engineers decided to adopt for the L3M?'

The L3M lunar landing proposal depended on two major upgrades: an improvement of the

N I and a redesign of the L3. Upgrades to the N I had, of course, been talked about for years.

The most famous such modification was the N IM, proposed for use on TsKBEM's ambitious

and abandoned Mars landing project. For the L3M plan, it seems that Mishin had returned

to the old ideas of using high-performance liquid hydrogen-LOX upper stages for launching

huge payload stacks into Earth orbit. Thus, the problem in many ways depended on the

progress of developing these high-performance upper stages. Four such stages had been under

development for several years, but only two--Blok S (to replace the current N t stage IV} and

Blok R (to replace stage V)--had achieved any modicum of success. Certainly, one of the major

problems was the lack of support from higher authorities to finance such efforts. While NASA

was already flying several excellent high-performance upper stages, Soviet engineers were still

writing unanswered letters on the importance of such propellant combinations. Throughout

1969. work on Blok R and Blok Swas given high priority, with Mishin meeting several times with

Chief Designers Lyulka and Isayev, who were responsible for the two engines, respectively.

The results of testing of these two stages changed the design of the uprated N I for the

long-duration lunar expeditions. In February 1970. the most favored option was to launch three

N Is, two with Lyulka's Blok S and one with a modified variant of Blok D, named Blok DM,

which used conventional propellants. To optimize the work being done and also to unify disparate efforts, Mishin's engineers at the time emerged with a conception for a new upper stage,

designated Blok SR, with a fueled mass of 77.9 tons. This block was examined in two different

versions, the first with one of Lyulka's I ID5/engines and the second with either two or four

of Isayev's I ID56M engines? z In March 1910, the L3M proposal was narrowed down to an

3I. gfanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft."

32. Semenov.ed.,Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya,p. 262.The I ID56Mwasamodernizedvariantof

the older I ID56.

757
758

option with two sequential missions, each using a much more improved version of the LK

lander called the LKM:

• One launch of the N I with Blok SRand the LKM for an automated lunar landing and return

to Earth

• Two launches of the N I, one with a Blok S and one with a Blok SR,which would link up

in Earth orbit and take its piloted LKM on an extended visit to the surface of the Moon

While the L3M plan offered significant advantages over the original L3 profile, it was still

by no means a certainty with respect to the Soviet space leadership. Throughout February and

March 1970, there was much discussion on the preparation of an official governmental order

from the Ministry of General Machine Building on the L3M proposal, but none seems to have

been forthcoming at the time, evidently because of dissension among the chief designers on

the details of the plan.

Mishin was clearly the primary sponsor of the L3M proposal, and it seems that he had trouble, at least initially, in gathering the necessary support to facilitate an official decree. Academy

of Sciences President Keldysh offered lukewarm support, advising that TsKBEM first needed to

perfect the old N I-L3 before moving on to the L3M. He cautioned that funding for all these proposals were limited and thus Mishin should reduce his requests to cater to the exigencies of the

day. With wavering support, by the end of t970, there was still no official word on the proposal. Meanwhile, Mishin, on his own initiative, had continued to focus work at his design

bureau on L3M, simultaneously with all the work on the N I-L3 and of course the new space

station program. This time, he did not want to make the same mistake of going with an "allup" testing philosophy, which had, to an extent, crippled the N I program. It was clearto him

that one of the most important elements of the new L3M plan was the use of the high-energy

upper stages. To fully test these out prior to their actual use on a lunar mission, Mishin's engineers, by April 1970, emerged with a proposal to develop a smaller version of the N I, called the

Nil. Such an idea, with the exact same designation, had been offered by Korolev in the early

1960s, but had never gotten off the ground because of a lack of funding. As envisioned at the

time, the N I I was a three-stage rocket with:

Stage Origin

I

II

III

Blok B (stage II) from the N I

Blok V (stage III) from the N I

Btok SM (modification of the high-energy Blok SR)

In October 1970, Mishin met with Brezhnev to brief the Soviet leader on the course of the

piloted lunar landing program. One of the main topics o[ conversation was the creation of an

improved NI-L3 complex--effectively the NI-L3M proposal--and the use of high-energy

upper stages for both the N I and the N I I. TsKBEM was evidently short of money to build test

stands for the stages/' As was typical of many other test programs, the N I I as a viable option

did not last very long. Although it was discussed at the Military-Industrial Commission level in

October 1970, by December, there were doubts about the feasibility of rapidly building the N I t

in its current configuration. Eventually, it was completely abandoned. Mishin's engineers would

have to make the direct jump from the N I to its modified version with high-energy stages.

33. ThesestagesincludedBlokS,, BlokSR,andBlokSM.Therewereat leasttwo conceptionsof the N I I:

onethe basicNII andtheothercalledtheNI IS.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

The N I I may have been dropped from consideration, but Mishin was allowed to proceed

with his important Blok SR stage. In May 1971, a formal decision was taken on the development of Blok SR replacing the various previous incarnations of high-energy upper stages,

such as Blok R and Blok S. Blok SI_would be a universal upper stage for launching heavy

space apparatus into geostationary Earth orbit and for sending heavy automatic stations on

trajectories to the planets. Its primary job, however, would be to serve as the lunar-orbit

insertion stage for the L3M mission. After an initial planning stage involving comparisons of

different liquid hydrogen-LOX engine configurations for a single variant, engineers adopted

Chief Designer Isayev's I ID56M engine for the stage because it would "ensure the best

characteristics. TM In the final analysis. Blok SR was equipped with two of Isayev's II D56M

engines with a primary thrust regime of 15.08 tons and a medium thrust regime of eight tons.

It was capable of being fired up to five times over a period of eleven days in a state of weightlessness and vacuum--that is, deep space. The performance characteristicsfor this first Soviet

liquid hydrogen-LOX engine were remarkably high, comparing very favorably to NASA's

Centaur RL-10 engine in terms of specific impulse. According to preliminary calculations, Blok

SRcould deliver a mass of 23.8 tons (for a piloted ship) or 24.1 tons (for an automated ship)

into lunar orbit, twenty tons to geostationary orbit around Earth, or 21.8 tons to a trans-Martian

trajectory. The stage itself was sixteen and a half meters in length and just over five meters in

diameter/_

The decision to select Isayev's I ID56M engine over Lyulka's I I D57 engine for Blok SR had

as much to do with technical considerations as it did with bureaucratic infighting. Lyulka's

engine had run into serious technical trouble in 1970. By July, it was clear that its testing

program was severely lagging, and by the end of the year, planners had all but given up on

its use in the immediate future. The technical issues were compounded by interministerial

jealousies. Lyulka's organization, the design bureau of the Saturn Plant, was part of the Ministry

of Aviation Industry, and thus outside the "mainstream" of the Soviet space industry, which

was part of the Ministry of General Machine Building. The latter's head, Minister Afanasyev,

was evidently unwilling to have another chief designer from the aviation industry "interfere" in

the N I-L3 program. '_ While Lyulka doggedly continued his work on Blok R, his engine was

temporarily sidelined from the N I program.

specific technical design for Blok SR enabled more precise definition of the N I-L3M

proposal in 1971 because the capabilities and mission profile depended to a great extent on

the performance characteristics of the upper stage. The main component of the plan was the

N IF,an upgraded N I that would incorporate improvements in each of its stages. The first three

stages would use the new and better Kuznetsov engines capable of multiple firings, which

were under development since 1970. Each replacement engine had the same thrust level as its

predecessor. The fourth and fifth stages, strictly a part of the payload, would be replaced by a

single high-energy upper stage, Blok SR. The final configuration for the upgraded N I was:

34. Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya.p. 262.

35. Ibid.

36. GermanNazarov."You Cannot PaperSpaceWith Rubles:How to SaveBillions" (Englishtitle),

MolodGyagvardiyano. 4 (April 1990):192-207:Lardier,L71stronautiqueSovi#tique,pp. 174-75.

759
760

Stage Stage Name Engines Thrust Levels

I Blok _, 30 X NK-33

II Blok B 8 × NK-43

III Blok V 4 X ND39

IV (payload stage) Blok SR 2 X I I D56M

30 X 154 tons (sea level)

8 X 179 tons (vacuum)

4 X 41 tons (vacuum)

2 X 7.54 tons (vacuum) 37

The L3M flight plan would use two of these N IFs to carry out the mission, The payload

block for the first N I would consist of Blok SR and a Blok DM stage with a total mass of

104 tons. The payload block for the second N I would consist of another Blok SRand the actual lunar lander, the LKM. with a total mass of 103 tons.

Little has been revealed on the technical details of the LKM. In appearance, it looked like a

greatly enlarged version of the smaller LK from the L3 project. The mass of the LKM--

23,7 tons, which was about four times more than its predecessorwwould seem to indicate a

dramatic leap in abilities. The LKM had two distinct stages, the descent stage (or landing

adapter) and ascent stage (the living compartment). The descent stage consisted of four long

legs attached to a central framework, which included various systems. The nineteen-and-a-halfton ascent stage was shaped like a huge cocoon consisting of two major portions, both within its external spherical hull: the descent apparatus and the instrument compartment.

The almost eight-and-a-half-ton descent apparatus was shaped somewhat like an enlarged

Soyuz reentry capsule and installed on the upper portion within the cocoon. It was internally

connected to the cylindrical instrument compartment in the lower portion of the cocoon. After

launch and during flight, the cosmonauts would leave the descent apparatus and crawl into the

instrument compartment to carry out all in-flight operations, including landing on the Moon.

The instrument compartment afforded a large internal space with viewports to select an optimal landing site? _ The main engine complex of the LKM was attached to the ascent stage and

would be used several times throughout the mission. It included a primary and backup throttle-capable engine unit. both using storable hypergolic propellants; these may have been contracted to KB Yuzhnoye. which developed the LK main engine. The increased mass of the LKM

over the earlier LK afforded significant upgrades in systems. One historian noted:

The use of the "direct configuration" made it possible to equip the craft with a complicated system o[ more advanced radio gear for the precise and reliable performance of

maneuvers connected with searching, meeting, and docking in lunar orbit. Such a larger

LK would moreover have had greater freedom of maneuver close to the surface to select

a landing site. _

37. ,_fanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": I. P_fanasyev,"The 'Lunar Theme' After NI L3" (English title),

Z]viatsiya i kosmonautika no. 2 (February 1993): 42-44; Jeffrey M Lenorovitz, "Trud Offering Liquid-FueledEngines

From NI Moon Rocket Program," @viation Week & Space Technology, March 30, 1992, pp. 21-22 P,n early version of glok SRwas equipped with four I I DS6M engines instead of two. SeeSemenov.ed.. Raketno-Kosmicfleskc_ya

Korporatsiya, p 262 The total mass of the N IF was 3,025 tons, and launch thrust (probably in vacuum) was

5,070 tons The booster was capable of inserting I05 tons into Earth orbit, thirty-lout tons to the Moon, and twenty-two tons into lunar orbit.

38. P,fanasyev, "The 'Lunar Theme' _qfterN I-L3," There was evidently another LKM configuration considered. This design resembleda Soyuz with its modules switched--that is, the descent apparatus on top of the living

compartment. The crew would move from the former to the latter by means of "a crawlway-chute"--that is, not

through a hatch in the heat shield. See_fanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft."

39 Afanasyev, "The 'Lunar Theme' P,fter N I-L3," p. 43.

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

Each NIF would launch its payload block

toward the Moon using its own Blok SRto accelerate to translunar injection. Near the Moon, the

same stages would fire to put their respective payloads into lunar orbit. Once there, the two Blok SR

stages would be discarded, and the Blok DM stage

would dock with the large LKM If for some reason

the docking failed, the cosmonauts could simply

return to Earth in their LKM spacecraft without

having to carry out any extraneous spacewalks. In

case of a successful docking, Blok DM would

decelerate the complex from lunar orbit and initiate

a powered descent to the lunar surface. Much like

the earlier L3 plan, after Blok DM's propellants

were exhausted, the LKM would take over the

remaining portion of the descent to the surface

using its own engine. Depending on the size of the

crew, the stay on the Moon would last from five

(three cosmonauts) to fourteen days (two cosmonauts). After the entire surface exploration was

over, the cosmonauts would lift off from the Moon

in the living compartment, leaving behind the large

descent stage on the surface. Once again, using its

own engine, it would directly fire itself on a transEarth trajectory. Another less preferableoption was

to enter an intermediate orbit around the Moon

before returning to Earth. Once near Earth, the living compartment would open up into two pieces,

much like a clam, and release the actual descent

apparatus containing the crew. After a controlled

reentry into Earth's atmosphere, the cosmonauts

would land either on Soviet territory or in the

Indian Ocean._

The N I F-L3M plan offered the hope of carrying out a series of impressive lunar landing missions. However, while the Communist Party,

government, and industry had been lukewarm at

best on the N143, would they commit to the

expanded version of it? The central question was

obviously financing, and money was, in fact, one

m R _

D

,vcv_v

,_. Go

NIF (11A52F)

1972 (project)

'9o

'80

' 7o

Eo

'5o

40

30

2O

10

o

meter5

TheNIF variantof the basic NI rocket was

intended to launch the advanced L3Mcomplex

for long-durationstaysontheMoon.The

program receivedpreliminaryapprovalby

the Councilof ChiefDesignersin May 1972.

(copyrightPeterCorin)

of the crucial issues in L3M planning within TsKBEM. There was also the question of what to

do with the old L3 project. To resolve these issues, the Politburo signed an order on February

17, 1971, titled "On the Designation of an Expert Commission on NI-L3 Under the

Chairmanship of M. V. Keldysh." The new Expert Commission would be tasked with three

goals:

40. Ibid.:V. P.Mishin,"Why Didn'tWe Flyto the Moon?"(Englishtitle), Znaniye:tekhnike,seriyakosmonautika, astronomiyano. 12(December 1990):3-43: tqfanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft."

761
762

• To evaluate the possibility of carrying out a lunar landing with one cosmonaut (that is, the L3)

• To evaluate the optimal program of work with regards to the Moon

• To evaluate prospective programs (that is, the L3M)

Col. General Kamanin, who was not a member of this Expert Commission, had some interesting comments on the body in his journal entry dated March 4, 1971:

For several years I have argued (I made two special visits to the Central Committee or

the Party and repeated visits to the Military-Industrial Commission) that the N I rocket

and the lunar L3 spacecra[t were hopelessly outdated and that our Moon mission program should be drastically revised. Finally, the Central Committee and the Council of

Ministers have appointed a commission, chaired by Keldysh. which has been given until

May I. 1971. to answer the question o[ what to do with the lunar complex and with the

existing mission-to-the-Moon program. My answer would be most definitely that the N I

rocket and the L3 spacecra[t should be scrapped, that Chelomey's UR-700 rocket should

be modified and a new lunar probe designed with a view to sending the first mission to

the Moon in 1974-75. Mishin and his supporters are a[raid o[ such a prospect: they

have stalled the panel with people who will toe their line. The most likely outcome will

be that the Keldysh panel will recommend continued attempts to "cure" a bad rocket

and an equally bad spacecra[t."

Kamanin was not entirely correct that the commission was staffed with people sympathetic with

Mishin. Keldysh presided over six different subcommissions whose heads were chief designers

and academicians from various branches of the aviation and missile industry, many of whose

organizations had not participated in the N I-L3 program, nor had any vested interest in the

project. Only five senior officials from TsKBEM were members of these subcommissions. 4_

At a meeting of the commission on May 31, Keldysh asked TsKBEM to prepare a formal

proposal on the future of the N I-L3 program by June 15. Immediately, Mishin assembled his

senior deputies, and through the ensuing days, there was much discussion on the issue. The

preliminary plan was to follow through on piloted lunar exploration in three stages:

• Use the N I-L3 for piloted lunar-orbital flights with automatic landings of the LK

• Use the N I-L3 for a lunar landing, using both Earth-orbit rendezvous (to deliver the crew)

and lunar-orbit rendezvous

• Use the N I E-L3M to link up elements in lunar orbit for an extended lunar landing and then

directly return to Earth 4_

The pressure to completely abandon any thought of using the L3 for a piloted lunar landing was formidable. At a meeting in tote July 1971, Minister of General Machine Building

Afanasyev, Academy of Sciences President Keldysh, and Ministry Chief Directorate Chief

41. Kamanin, "1 FeelSorry for Our Guys," p. 12.

42 Among the subcommissions were Subcommission no. I chaired by MKB FakelGeneral Designer P D.

Grushin, Subcommission no. 3 chaired by TsKBAlmaz General DesignerB. V. Bunkin, Subcommission no. 4 chaired

by USSRAcademy of SciencesVice PresidentM A. Kotelnikov, and Subcommission no. 5 chaired by Deputy Minister

of Health A. t. Burnazyan. TsKBEM representativeson the subcommissions included S. O. Okhapkin and K D.

Bushuyev(on no. I). M. V. Melnikov (on no. 2). B. Ye.Chertok (on no. 3), and Ya,I. Tregub(on both nos.4 and 6).

43, There was an additional possibility within the second option: to carry out the N I-L3 mission with a

single launch. This would, however, only be possible if engineers could increase the lifting capability of the N I,

which was still not up to design levels by 1971.

CHALLENGE TO IlbIPOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

KerJmov all agreed that the original NI-L3 complex should not be used for landing a

cosmonaut on the Moon. They were even against using the N I-L3 for an automatic landing,

as proposed by Mishin earlier. While debate over automated L3 landings continued, the original L3 piloted lunar landing plan received its final death knell at a meeting of the Keldysh commission on August 16, 197 I. It had been almost exactly seven years to the day since the Soviet

government had approved Korolev's L3 idea. The question of whether to use the remaining

components of the L3 complex was left unresolved. At the same time, TsKBEM would commit

its resources to perfecting the L3M plan. Mishin, in fact, signed the preliminary materials for a

"prospective" lunar expedition--that is, the new L3M plan--on the same day as the Expert

Commission's meeting. He was instructed to have the predraft plan ready by early 1972.

Throughout the latter part of 1971, Mishin's engineers continued evaluating various

options for L3M. 44This effort included freezing the design of the new descent apparatus with

two new parachutes and reexamining the most optimal trajectories to and from the Moon--an

exercise that evidently included studying data from the recently completed Apollo 15 mission.

Support for the L3M option was growing at the time. Mishin later recalled:

We finally managed to get technical tasking from the USSR Academy of Sciences for a

lunar mission [that is, the L3M] with a list of problems that it was supposed to solve. It

must be noted that no such specifications had ever been received from the Academy for

the first version of the mission [that is, the L3], 4_

The Expert Commission's recommendation and the "technical tasking" of the Academy

of Sciences were important factors in providing some much needed impetus to the N I F-L3M

proposal. By the end of 1971, Mishin's engineers had evidently completed the detailed draft

plan for the project. Even the all-powerful Military-Industrial Commission took an interest, issuing a decree on February 16, 1972, in support of further work on such a project. If obstinate

opponents of the N I such as Chief Designer Glushko opposed the plan early in 197 I, they all

came around to the same point of view. On May 15, 1972, the Council of Chief Designers for

the lunar program formally adopted the NIF-L3M plan, titled "Technical Proposals for the

Creation of the N I -L3M Complex." Even Glushko signed the final document. 46

In contrast to the utter chaos that had pervaded the birth of the N I-L3 in the early 1960s,

this new project was not born out of jealous infighting among the chief designers, nor from

external political imperatives. For the first time in a major Soviet space project, the pace was not

dictated by what the United States was doing. This alone could have made the proposal worth

pursuing, but the L3M also had excellent technical characteristics, well-planned schedules, and

painstaking cost assessments to back it up. Mishin originally had planned for launches in the

new program to begin simultaneously with the winding down of the original L3 project--that

is, in 1974. According to preliminary plans in September 1970, there would be two launches

in 1974 and four in 1975, the latter perhaps including actual piloted landings. By the time of

the May 1972 decision, the timeframe was moved back by about two years, with launches

44. Forexample, options explored in late September 1971included: (I) a two-launch schemewith docking

in lunar orbit with either (a) a direct flight from the Moon to Earth or (b) with a second docking in lunar orbit and

then returning to Earth; and (2) a two-launch scheme with docking in Earth orbit with either (a) a direct landing

on the Moon and direct return to Earth or (b) a plan similar to the original N 143 in lunar orbit. One of the more

interesting possibilities was using the new 7K-SSoyuz variant in lunar orbit.

45. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Ely to the Moon?"

46. Ibid.; Boris Arkadyevich Dorofeyev, "History of the Development of the NI-L3 Moon Program."

presented at the 10th International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics. Moscow State

University, Moscow, Russia,June 20-27, 1995.

763
764

beginning in 1976 and landings in 1977. These latter missions would include initial cosmonaut

surface stays lasting fourteen days, leading up to full-fledged lunar surface missions lasting an

unprecedented month on the Moon? _

What was even more astonishing about the L3M plan was that the Soviets did not stop

there. There were even plans for permanent piloted bases on the lunar surface--plans that actually harked back to about 1965. Sometime before his death in January 1966, Korolev had discussed this idea with Chief Designer Barmin of the Design Bureau of General Machine Building.

Although Barmin's main line of work was the design and development of ground launch complexes for Soviet missiles and launch vehicles, he was sufficiently interested in the topic to take

on a modest subcontract from OKB-I to explore the design of permanent lunar bases. These

studies continued well after Korolev's death. Mishin's TsKBEM remained in overall charge of the

research, but cooperated with Barmin's design bureau in formulating the goals of the base, the

principles of construction, the stages of development, and the composition of scientific and

special manufacturing equipment. Barmin's engineers also studied civil engineering methods,

questions of life support systems and their maintenance, and power supply and radio communications systems?'

The overall effort was generically called the Long-Duration Lunar Base (DLB) and consisted of several different thematic directions with names such as Kolumb ("Columbia"), Bolshoye

koltso (" Big Ring"), Dal (" Distance"), and Osuoyeniye (" Mastery"). Engineers designed a veritable menagerie of various insect-like vehicles for work on the lunar surface, including:

• Vehicles equipped with radio beacons (whose design was based on the Ye-8 descent

stage), which would guide spacecraft down to specific landing sites

• Huge "closed" lunar rovers with pressurized compartments for crews to collect samples

using long and jointed remote manipulator arms without leaving the comfort of their cabin

• Large utility vehicles for transporting vast amounts of raw materials across the lunar surface

• General crew mobiles capable of sustaining independent forays for days at a time

• Different automated rovers equipped with core-drilling manipulators built by Barmin's engineers for gathering soil samples

The L3M lander would serve as the initial transport vehicle to the lunar surface, and later

N Is would bring the remaining assortment of rovers and beacons, many of which would be

built by the Lavochkin Design Bureau--an appropriate choice given its experience in designing

automated lunar and interplanetary probes. Long-term plans included mining the Moon for

helium-3, hydrogen, oxygen, silicon, titanium, aluminum, and iron for various manufacturing

and industrial processes. For the actual bases, Barmin considered different alternatives. In one

conception, the cosmonauts would live underground to efficiently use sublunar heat-exchange

processes. The actual production structures, landing sites for transport rockets from the Earth,

and refueling stations would be located far away from these laboratories, but they would be

connected via special tunnels, either by foot or by means of moving "strips" similar to those

in airports today. Anothe[ option studied was to have residential and operational structures on

the surface with dome-like protective coverings built from transparent material. The entire complex would contain perhaps three habitation modules, equipment for the production of oxygen

and other gases, installations for the extraction and transportation of lunar materials, and a

nuclear-type power plant? 9

47

48.

49.

1994, p. 6.

Mishin. "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"

Yu A. Mozzhorin, et al. eds., Dorogi u kosmos I (Moscow: MAI, 1992), p. 55.

Mikhail Rebrov, "Touching Upon the Legend of the DLB" (English title). Krasnaya zuezda, June 18.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

Small models of elementsof the Long-Duration Lunar Base (DLB) areshown here in a museum display case

Note the models of the NI-L3 LK lunar lander at the left of the photograph...ztt least one of Babakin's Ye-8 descent

stages is visible at center right. Severat[arge mobl[e "crawlers _ areplaced at the top from left to right.

(copyright Mark Wade)

All of these proposals, for both the L3M and the DLB, were, of course, restricted by the realities of the day, primarily financial ones. Neither had, by 1912, received formal approval from the

Council of Ministers and the Central Committee. Sanction from the Soviet leadership would prove

difficult, but given the multiple recommendations in favor of the L3M, it was not thought to be

impossible. All would depend on the success of the remaining launches of the older N I model.

Their success would be critical to convincing the Soviet leadership that the N I rocket project was

an effort worth pursuing and funding for the long run. Awaiting a formal decision on the L3M,

Mishin elected to doggedly continue to flight-rate the older LOK and LK spacecraft, because much

of the technology from these vehicles would be used in upgraded form on the L3M. Thus, if his

plans were approved, the Soviets would fly the remaining L3 hardware to the Moon by the mid1970s, begin the advanced L3M missions by the late 1910s, and then slowly move to the DLBs

by the first years of the following decade, possibly initiating the first colonization of the Moon.

Ironically, at the very same time that the Soviets were conceptualizing such grand projects,

the U.S. civilian space program was suffering from post-l_pollo malaise. In its early days, NASA

had been well equipped to cope with repeated failures of its rockets and satellites, but in the aftermath of Apollo I I, it was unable to cope with success. Having been a single-issue agency, NASA

leaders were facing the problem of using dwindling financial and human resources to create a tenable vision of the future. One of the most compelling components of this new vision was to create the means for "routine access to space"--that is, a shuttle vehicle that would service future

space stations and haul scientific and applications satellites into space. Initially, in the fall of 1969,

NASA had hoped that President Richard M. Nixon would approve an ambitious plan to build a

space station, the Space Shuttle, and a piloted Mars project. As the financial realities sank in, this

aggressive plan was reduced ultimately to just the Space Shuttle, which itself was redesigned several times to meet budget limitations, thus sacrificing much of its original raison d'etre--that is,

"routine access to space." In January 1912, Nixon met with NASA Administrator James C.

Fletcher and issued a statement announcing the decision to "proceed at once with the development of an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to help transform the space

frontier of the 1970s into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavor in the 1980s and

165
766

'90s."_° Without a space station or a Mars mission, the United States was left with a plan of piloted space exploration that was lacking in a concrete vision, a means that had no end./_t the

same time, the Soviet Union was dramatically planning to up the ante, squarely targeting the

Moon and building new space stations, including both the small DOS and the giant MKBS.

Building the Salyut Long-Duration Orbital Station

The Long-Duration Orbital Station, better known by its acronym "DOS," was designed,

built, and tested over a remarkably short period of time. Not surprisingly, the mainframe of the

station was identical to Chelomey's/_Imaz station--that is, roughly shaped like three cylinders

of different diameters connected end on end. For the DOS (or product I ?'K), this design was

augmented by a fourth cylinder. The total length in orbit was about 16 meters. From the station's forward end to its rear, the "cylinders" of the 18.9-ton station were the:

• Transfer compartment

• Working compartment (consisting of two of the "cylinders")

• Aggregate compartment

The transfer compartment at the forward end was equipped with the passive docking node

for receiving Soyuz ferry vehicles. The length of this section, including the node, was three

meters, and the diameter was two meters. This compartment primarily contained equipment for

life support and thermal regulation. The major scientific component was the Orion-I ultraviolet telescope, which included a locked chamber for removable photo cassettes. Part of the telescope, designed by the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, jutted out of the compartment in

a hemispherical depression embedded on the outside of the section. Other equipment included cameras and biological instrumentation. The short compartment also included an eightycentimeter-diameter hatch for allowing crews to egress from the station for spacewalks. On the

exterior of the compartment, there were two large solar panels fixed like bird wings, each with

four paneled sections. With a wingspan of eleven meters, these were created on the basis of

the solar panels on the 7K-OK Soyuz spacecraft. Other equipment on the exterior of the transfer compartment included the Igla rendezvous system antennas, lights for docking approaches,

one of two external TV cameras, panels for heat regulation, ion sensors for the attitude control

system, and panels for micrometeoroid detection.

Swimming from the Soyuz into the transfer compartment, a cosmonaut would open a

second hatch and then enter the working compartment, the largest portion of the station. Its

two cylinders of different diameters were connected via a conical transfer section. The smaller

cylinder had a diameter of 2.9 meters and a length of 3.8 meters, while the measurements for

the larger cylinder were 4.15 meters and 2.7 meters, respectively. The smaller diameter section

contained the central command post for controlling the station with a control panel and onboard computers. The control system for the station was derived from the original 7K-OK Soyuz

system, a measure adopted to eliminate extra effort. One movie camera and one still camera

were installed on the "upper" wall of the section, allowing direct access to the outside. The

small diameter area also contained a table for work and eating, facilities for heating food, drinking water, on-board documentation, a tape recorder, a library, a sketch album, and other items.

50. John M Logsdon, "The Evolution of U.S. SpacePolicy and Plans," in John M. Logsdon, gen. ed., with

Linda J Lear,Jannelle Warren-Findley, Ray/_. Williamson, and Dwayne P,. Day, Exploring the Unknown Selected

Documents in the History o/the U.S. Civil Space Program. Volume E Organizing [or Exploration (Washington. DC:

N_S#, Special Publication (SP)-4218). pp. 386-88; Roger D. Launius. N,_t571:7t History o[ the U.S. Ciuil Space

Program (Malabar, FL: KriegerPublishing Co, 1994), pp. 107-10.

CHALLENGE TO /I_POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

Hereis a mode/simulation o[a 7K-TSoyuz spacecra[t (felt)docking,with the early modelo[the

DOSspacestation(Salyut).(N.,ZiS/7photo)

Moving aft, a cosmonaut would then enter the large diameter area. The primary equipment

here was a large cone with its base on the "floor" and its apex almost to the "ceiling": it was

called the scientific apparatus compartment. The latter consisted of, among other instruments,

the OST-I two-meter-diameter solar telescope designed by the Crimean Astrophysical

Observatory. At the mar of the large-diameter area, there were three posts for work on other

scientific apparatus, which included the _nna-3 gamma-ray telescope, the TEB telescope for

studying charged particles in the upper atmosphere, the Kalina ("Viburnum") instrument, and

the FEK-71_photo-emulsion camera. Other scientific instrumentation on the station included the

RT-4 Roentgen telescope built by the Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, the ITSK

infrared telescope-spectrometer, and the OD-4 optical visor instrument. The _FP,-41/20 and

AFA-M-3I cameras were for Earth resources surveys. Disciplines apart from Earth observation

and astrophysics were also represented. There was a virtual menagerie of medical instrumentation with their own enigmatic names: Polinom-2M, Levkoy-2M ("Gillyflower"), Tonometr,

Rezeda-2M (" Mignonette"), Impuls (" Impulse"), Vertikal-M ("Vertical"), Plotnost (" Density"),

Raduga ("Rainbow"), and Kreslo ("Seat"). During exercises, the cosmonauts would wear the

_tlet ("Athlete") suit, while at other times they would don the Pingvin (" Penguin") suit, which

would force the crew to act against allowing the suit to assume its normal fetal position. In addition, the Chibis (" Lapwing") was a special "suit" designed to generate negative pressure on the

lower body to reduce orthostatic intolerance during the return to Earth. Finally, there was also a

special "antigravity" suit for the cosmonauts to wear before the end of the mission. The total

mass of all scientific devices on the station was one and a half tons.

The large-diameter area also contained sleeping areasfor the cosmonauts, physical trainers

(including a stationary running track capable of ten kilometers per hour and a "veleergometer'), a refrigerator with a supply of food products and water, and a toilet with its own

forced ventilation system isolated from the rest of the station. All around the large-diameter

area, there were panels on the walls giving easy access to instrumentation for controlling

the station--those for life support, thermal regulation, power supply, radio communications,

767
768

trajectory measurement, and command radio links. So as not to disorient crews in space, the

station had a specific color scheme: the front and rear were light gray, one side was apple gray,

the other wall was yellow, and the "floor" was dark gray. The exterior of the working compartment had various antennas from the station's radio complex and micrometeoroid impact panels.

The DOS contained seven specific locations for manually controlling the scientific apparatus

and station systems. Station no. I, the central command post of the station, was located in the

lower part of the small-diameter portion. Equipped with two chairs, cosmonauts could control

the basic on-board systems and part of the scientific equipment from here. Station

no. 2. the "astropost," was also located in the small-diameter area: it was designed for manual

astro-orientation and astro-navigation. Station no. 3 was in the large-diameter section and was

exclusively for controlling the scientific apparatus. In addition to scientific research, Station no.

4 was for medical investigations and was located in the conical section between the smalland large-diameter sections. Station no, 5 was specifically for controlling the Orion-I stellar

telescope and was located in the transfer compartment. Station no. 6, like Station no. 2, was

for astro-orientation and navigation; it was located in the small-diameter section. Finally, Station

no. 7 was for controlling scientific apparatus focused on studying "atmospheric resonance"

using the ERA instrument and was located opposite to Station no. 6.

The final section of the station was the aggregate compartment at the very aft end of the

DOS. Not accessible by the crew, this compartment was a simple cylinder with a diameter of

4.15 meters and a length of 1.4 meters hooked to a semispherical shell attached to the station

proper. The cylindrical portion was appropriated directly from the aggregate compartment of

the Soyuz spaceship, and it contained the main maneuvering engine of the space station, the

$5.66. The engine, almost identical to the Soyuz main engine, was developed by the same

enterprise that had developed the one for Soyuz, Chief Designer Isayev's Design Bureau of

Chemical Machine Building (formerly OKB-2). The $5.66 had a primary single-chamber engine

with a thrust of 417 kilograms and a reserve two-chamber one with a thrust of 41 I kilograms.

In addition to the main engine, the station was equipped with a set of thirty-two small attitude

control thrusters of ten kilograms thrust each, developed by the Scientific-Research Institute of

Machine Building based at Nizhnyaya Salda. The attitude control complex consisted of two

independent systems--a primary and a backup--each consisting of sixteen engines (six for

yaw, six for pitch, and four for roll). The propellant tanks for these engines were installed in the

aggregate compartment.

Two large solar panels, identical to the ones at the forward end of the station and derived

from the Soyuz spacecraft, were installed on the aggregate compartment, lending the station

a bird-like appearance. Electrical energy for the station was passed through independent

systems--the SEP-I and SEP-2--each with a potential difference of twenty-seven to twentyeight volts. These could work simultaneously using the two pairs of solar panels, with a total

surface area of twenty-eight square meters, to charge two internal nickel-cadmium batteries.

SEP-2was designed for intermittent work and was only for the scientific instrumentation?'

From an overall perspective, the DOS spacecraft was essentially created by combining the

P,lmaz space station with the Soyuz spaceship. The number of systems appropriated from the

latter were numerous, including the entire orientation and approach control systems, the Zarya

radio-communications systems, the RTS-9 telemeasurement system, the Rubin orbital radio51. I Marinin,"QuarterCenturyfor 'Salyut'"(Englishtitle), NouostikosmonautikiI0 (May6-19. 1996):

78-84: tardier, lTlstronautiqueSoui_tique,pp. t99-202; V. P.Glushko.ed., Kosmonautikaentsiklopediya(Moscow:

Sovetskaya entsiklopediya. 1985). pp. 343-44: M. R Vasilyev.et al.. eds.. 'Salyut"Space Station in Orbit

(Washington.DC:N_qS1qI-I F-15450,1974),pp.3-8. Thislastsourceis a translationof M. P.Vasilyev,et al., eds.,

_Salyut'naorbite(Moscow:Mashinostroyeniye,1973).

CHRLLENGE TO _I_POLLO
DRERMS UNFULFILLED

control system, the DRS command radio-link system, the central pilot control panel, the Igla

rendezvous system, and the life support systems. The thermo-regulation system used on the

DOS was an updated version of the one on Soyuz. There was widespread cooperation in the

building of the DOS. Apart from TsKBEM, TsKBM's Moscow Branch, and the M. V. Khrunichev

Machine Building Plant, numerous other organizations contributed to the rapid pace of

progress/_

One of the essential components of creating the DOS-YK complex was developing a ferry

version of the Soyuz spacecraft, which would ensure internal crew transfer after docking. The

original Soyuz docking system was, of course, designed in such a way as to precisely prevent

such internal passage. By late 1969, TsKBEM had begun redesigning the 7K-OK Soyuz into the

"new" 7K-T Soyuz specifically for the DOS program. In early 1970, Department No. 231 at the

design bureau issued the draft plan for the ferry vehicle under the overall leadership of Deputy

Chief Designers Bushuyev and -lsybin. The 7K-T ship had an active docking unit with a rod

compatible with a cone on the passive docking node on the DOS ship. Given the rapidity with

which Mishin's engineers managed to design a complex docking mechanism capable of internal crew transfer, it is quite likely that they used the experience in creating a similar mechanism

for the "advanced" but still-not-yet-flown ?K-S variant of the Soyuz. The /_zov Machine

Building Plant carried out the manufacture of the new docking mechanism, which had a

O,8-meter-diameter hatch.

Unlike the basic Soyuz, the ?K-T had a simplified life support system because it did not

need to ensure autonomous flight for very long. The systems related to the Igla rendezvous

system were transferred to the living compartment at the forward end of the ship, and one of

the command radio links was removed completely, allowing for the elimination of the toroidal

compartment around the engine unit at the rear of the original Soyuz. The 7K-T transport ship

had a launch mass of 6,700 kilograms, which was about fifty kilograms in excess of its predecessors; its descent apparatus weighed 2,800 kilograms. As a whole, the ship was 6.98 meters

in length. The vehicle would be capable of carrying three cosmonauts without pressure suits

and return only twenty kilograms of scientific results back from the station, suggesting that the

Soviets were pushing the upper limits of what they could squeeze out of the Soyuz boosterspacecraft system at the time. The new Soyuz was rated for sixty days of flight time, of which

three days would be autonomous. In a clear departure from previous Soviet practices, TsKBEM

elected to forego automated missions of the ?K-T Soyuz and go directly to piloted launches. _

If the DOS program had, at least in the initial phases, a temporary feel to it, by the end of

1970, TsKBEM had tabled several ambitious plans to extend its capabilities far beyond its

modest origins. One crucial design issue was the addition of a second docking node to allow

resupply visits to the station. Mishin recalled later that he had proposed the use of two docking ports on the very first DOS vehicle, but he had been overruled by Ustinov "in order to hasten our success. ,,54By May 1970, engineers apparently planned for the second DOS to have two

docking ports, allowing for visits simultaneously by two "advanced" ?K-S Soyuz vehicles.

Changes crept into the plan in the subsequent months. In a preliminary conception of the fiveyear space plan for the Soviet Union covering 1971 to 1975, prepared in [ate September 1970,

52. Semenov, ed., Roketno-l<osmieheskayal(orporatsiya, p. 268. The other organizations included VNII

Televideniya under I./_. Rosselevich (for TV systems), MNII Radiosvyazi under Yu. S. Bykov (for communications

systems), K8 Nauka under G. I. Voronin (for life support systems), KB Zvezda (for spacesuits), -I-sKBGeofizika under

V. _. Khrustalev (for attitude control sensors), OKB MEI under,q. F.Bogomolov (for telemetry systems), IMBPunder

O. G. Gazenko (for biomedical support), VNII IT under N. S. Lidorenko (for power sources), VNII EM under A. G.

losifyan (for remote-sensingequipment), and Nil KhimMash under N. M. Samsonov(for ground testing).

53. Ibid., p. 187: Marinin, "Quarter Century for 'Salyut'."

54. A. Tarasov."Missions in Dreams and Reality" (English title), Prauda, October 20, 1989, p. 4.

769
770

the Soviets were tentatively visualizing the launches of ten such space stations over the course

of five years--that is, two per year. By this time, the third DOS vehicle would be the first

standard model with two docking ports; the remaining vehicles would all be identical save for

the internal complement of scientific equipment. The DOS number 3 would also be the first

station to be serviced by the 7K-S Soyuz. Work on the second DOS had already started by the

end of 192'0, before the launch of the first DOS, with work advancing to the crew selection

stage. Apart from the basic l_Imaz-based DOS model, Mishin's engineers also conceptualized

much more advanced versions. In early September 1970, Ustinov visited TsKBEM to hear

reports on the progress of the DOS program and, at least tentatively, approved "prospective"

developments, specifically a station named the DOS-N, to be launched by an uprated N I rocket.

Later, in March 1971, Mishin reported to Ustinov on another DOS variant, the DOS-A,

evidently proposed as a direct competitor to NASA's Skylab space station, which was far

larger than the original DOS variants based on Almaz.

The DOS program may have been primarily a politically motivated program, but there was

much debate over what kind of scientific instrumentation to have on the station. In July 1970,

Mishin spoke with Academician Georgiy I. Petrov, the Director of the Institute of Space

Research under the Academy of Sciences, to discuss the possibility or installing a radio telescope with a fifteen-meter-diameter parabolic antenna on a DOS. Later in the month, Mishin

also sent a letter to various scientific (and probably military) organizations asking what kind of

goals they would like to be solved on the station--a significant change from the haphazard

nature of scientific research on piloted space missions throughout the 1960s. In early February

1971, Mishin met with Viktor A. Ambartsumyan, a Vice President of the Academy, to discuss

the long-term scientific goals of the DOS. Several requirements were established:

• The Soviets needed a program for space-based astronomy research.

• Resources were needed for creating optical and radio telescopes in Earth orbit.

• Four of the future DOS vehicles should be equipped with telescopes of I meter in diameter

for astronomy research.

• A space-based parabolic antenna should be developed with a diameter of thirty to fifty meters.

• A telescope with a mirror of three meters diameter should be created for seven to eight

years of operation in orbit.

While all of these were not intrinsically related to the DOS, the space station program seems

to have served as a catalyst for this new cooperation between the scientific and space communities.

Crews for the first DOS were slow to train for the first space station missions because of

the inevitable acrimony over crew selection that had continuously plagued the Soviet piloted

space program. On April 23, 1970, Mishin had initially proposed a set of four crews for the two

planned missions to DOS-I. Not surprisingly, Air Force representative Col, General Kamanin

refused to approve the choices. He believed that one man, TsKBEM civilian engineer Feoktistov,

was not medically suited for flight. Feoktistov had also recently been divorced from his second

wife, which would make him unsuitable for space flight. Another man, Air Force Colonel

Volynov, who had earlier flown the Soyuz 5 mission, was unacceptable to Kamanin because he

was Jewish. Kamanin had been instructed by Ivan D. Serbin, the chief of the Defense Industries

Department in the Central Committee, not to allow Volynov to fly again. Finally, a third man,

Air Force Colonel Khrunov was deemed inadequate because of his behavior after a recent

hit-and-run accident in which he had failed to come to the help of the victim. After a major

reshuffle of the crews, Kamanin and Mishin agreed to four new crews on May 13. The first two

crews who would fly the first space station missions were: (I) Shonin, Yeliseyev, and

Rukavishnikov and (2) Leonov, Kubasov, and Kolodin.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

Both commanders and flight engineers were veterans of previous missions. Leonov, in

particular, had finally terminated his training for piloted lunar missions in May 191'0 after close to

four years of work. Different members of the crews began their training at various points in 1910,

but the two main crews plus a third backup crew did not begin integrated training until September

18, 1970, a few scant months prior to the expected launch of the first DOS. The fourth crew, who

were not actually expected to fly, but whose commander would play an important role in the

history of this first space station program, did not even begin training until January 1971._5

From the outset of the DOS program, it was clear that the Soviet space bureaucracy

was managing this program with much more verve than its lackluster performance during the

piloted lunar programs. There were regular meetings at the highest levels to assess the pace of

preparations with necessary actions to compensate for potential delays. Publicly, Soviet

spokespersons were c]aiming left and right that the future of space travel depended squarely on

the development of Earth-orbital space stations. But these words would have to be backed up

by actions. In late August 1970, word came down from the Central Committee that the first

DOS article would have to be launched in time for the 24th Congress of the Communist Party

of the Soviet Union, to be held in the spring of 1971. Later, in September, Minister Afanasyev

called Mishin to ensure that the launch would be in January 1971 before the opening of the

Party Congress, thus distinctly linking socialist doctrine with the Soviet expansion into space.

On September 23, 1970, Ustinov presented Mishin with a deadline for the launch of

DOS-I--February 5, 19/l--that is, a few weeks before the Congress. According to the plan,

ground testing of the station would be complete by December I0, and the station would be taken

to Tyura-Tam January I- I0, 197 I. The timing with the Party Congress significantly upped the ante

of the program, gfanasyev personally visited the Khrunichev Machine Building Plant on October

I, demanding that engineers complete the assembly of the first flight vehicle within forty-five

days. Despite assurance from the leading officials at the plant that this would be impossible,

_fanasyev did not back down. Working overtime, the workers at the plant eventually managed to

fulfill the minister's demands, completing the manufacture of the first DOS by the end of

November 1970. The assembled station was then transferred to TsKBEM for final ground testing2 _

Despite the hectic pace, there were delays. By mid-November, it was clear that Ustinov's schedule

would not stand. On December 2 I, the first State Commission meeting for the DOS-7K complex took place in Moscow. The launch was postponed to March 15, 1911, still just a scant

twelve months after the DOS program had been inaugurated. One issue of discussion during

this period was the length of the two missions to DOS-I. Based on the resources of the

station, Mishin had originally envisioned the first lasting thirty days and the second forty-five

days. Several cosmonauts met with the chief designer in October 1970, proposing that the first

flight be shortened to twenty to twenty-two days--a request apparently based on the abysmal

condition of the Soyuz 9 crew after returning from their eighteen-day mission. The length issue

was discussed at the State Commission meeting on December 2 I, but it was left unresolved

because of opposition from Kamanin on performing a thirty-day mission? 7

55. Marinin, "Quarter Century for 'Salyut'."

56. Ibid: S,/_. Zhiltsov, ed., _osudarstuennyy kosmicheskiy nnuehno-proizuodstuennyy tsentr imeni M. V_

Khrunicheua (Moscow: RUSSLIT, 1997), p, 76: Semenov, ed, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatslya, p. 269.

TsK_EMengineers designed severalmodels of the DOSapart from the flight model. These included a unit for working on the assemblyof the payload fairing, a heat model for creating the thermo-regulation and life support systems,

a unit for working on the engine system, an antenna model for checking the directions of the antennas of the [adar

system, and the designers' model for installing instruments.

57. Marinin, "Quarter Century for 'Salyut'."

771
772

The stage was set for the Soviet revenge on t_pollo. The leap that the Soviets took in t 971,

however, proved to be of a different nature, It was a story mired in the most bitter of ironies,

the most dramatic of events, and certainly the most tragic of consequences.

_lyut

On February 5, 1971, just over a month prior to the scheduled launch of DOS-I, P,ir Force

Colonel Georgiy S. Shonin, the commander of the first space station crew, did not report to

training at the Cosmonaut Training Center. Kamanin personally took over the investigation and

found to his surprise that this was not the first time that there had been such an absence. P,fter

further investigations, he found that Shonin had, without authorization, checked into a hospital for an unspecified "illness," which had come to light after a recent trip to the Tyura-Tam

launch site. Leonov, the commander of the second crew, made a vain attempt to defend

Shonin's actions, but it was too late. When Mishin discovered this lapse in training, he immediately asked Kamanin to dismiss Shonin from the mission and, in "a fit of temper," proposed

an all-civilian crew to fly the first mission. In the end, Mishin backed down on his all-civilian

proposal, and Kamanin removed Shonin from the primary crew. The "ill" cosmonaut was sent

off to Burdenko Hospital and was found to have an unstated "reactive condition" as well as

"psychological faults." Shonin. one of the original 1960 group of cosmonauts with Gagarin,

never flew another space mission, although it seems that he recovered from this censure and

trained again for space missions in the late 1970s. _8

On February 12, Kamanin named revised crews for the first missions, inserting two-time

veteran Shatalov as the commander of the first mission. It could not hurt that Shatalov was the

only cosmonaut in the entire detachment who had experience in docking in space. With the

hapless Shonin gone, the first two crews to the DOS became: (I) Shatalov, Yeliseyev, and

Rukavishnikov and (2) Leonov, Kubasov, and Kolodin. The third and fourth crews were accordingly shuffled. In a switch that only had meaning in retrospect, the third crew--essentially a

back-up crew for the two primary crews--was Dobrovolskiy, Volkov, and Patsayev. 5_ None of

them expected to fly. In fact, Dobrovolskiy had only begun training in January 1971.

The frantic pace of preparing the space station began to catch up with its developers, as

errors and delays crept into the preparations. On March 2, 1971, a readiness review meeting of

the Council of Chief Designers took place, during which significant delays were acknowledged.

There had been continual postponements in vibration testing of the station flight article, while

serious malfunctions had cropped up in the ground testing of the Igla docking system to be used

on the Soyuz transport spacecraE. Of four Igla systems built by the Scientific-Research Institute

for Precision Instruments, three had failed testing; the fourth was working only marginally.

Furthermore, there were also major delays in the packing of the parachutes in the Soyuz capsule

and the testing of the station's life support system. The flight version of the DOS had arrived at

the Baykonur Cosmodrome in March 197 I, allowing engineers to begin a forty-day working cycle

to test the product. Here, engineers had to perform their tasks almost by a seat-of-the-pants

approach, with makeshift equipment doing tasks that required "difficult physical work."_ Mishin

arrived at the launch site in late March, noting that many instruments had been removed from

the station and that there had been mistakes during the assembly of ground systems. The delays

58. Ibid Shonin trained for a military Transport-Supply Ship (TKS) mission in 1977-79 before officially

resigning from the cosmonaut team on gpril 28, 1979 The all-civilian crew that Mishin proposed was Yeliseyev.

Kubasov,and Rukavishnikov.

59 S Shamsutdinov and I. Marinin. "Flights Which Never Happened" (English title), Ziuiatsiya i kosmonautika no_ 3 (March 1993): 43-44.

60. Semenov, ed.. Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 269.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

meant that the launch was delayed by another month, April 15 at the earliest; the Shatalov crew

would be launched on April 18-20 to begin the first space station occupation.

Originally, Mishin had decided to call the station Zarya ("Dawn") in the open press, but

at some time immediately prior to the launch, there was some discussion on the issue.

Apparently, the Chinese had used the same name for one of their satellites. Instead, Mishin

himself suggested at the launch site that the station be renamed Salyut (" Salute") as a mark of

respect for the late Yuriy g. Gagarin, the tenth anniversary of whose historic space mission was

also in April 1971. The original Zarya name remained inscribed on both the station and the

Proton rocket's payload fairing because it was too late to change it. _'

The three main crews training for the flight were in the process of finalizing their training

program by March 1971, although there was still no final word on the length of the first mission-twenty to twenty-two days or thirty days. The overwhelming feeling was that the State

Commission would vote for the latter. Mishin had evidently spoken at length with representatives of the Institute for Biomedical Problems on the issue, and he had decided that thir W days

would not do significant harm to the human body. On March 16, the cosmonauts took their

final exams, all of them doing splendidly, confirming their full preparedness for the mission.

During a meeting on March 19, the State Commission adopted a final decision to launch the

station between April 15 and 18. The cosmonauts themselves flew into Baykonur on March 20

to acclimatize themselves with prelaunch preparations at the Kosmonavt Hotel. They were witnesses to another failure during testing of the Igla rendezvous system, and one wonders

whether their morale was not affected by the accumulating errors. After a brief training period,

they returned to Moscow. Shatalov and Yeliseyev attended the 24th Congress of the

Communist Party, which opened on March 30. Five days earlier, the Military-Industrial

Commission formally approved plans for the two missions to the station. 6_

The cosmonauts, Air Force officials, and many other industry representatives returned to

the launch site on April 6. Three days later, the State Commission, headed by Ministry of

General Machine Building representative Maj. General Kerimov, approved the launch of the DOS

ship, spacecraft no. 12 I, on April 19. There were no major delays or unexpected occurrences

during the last days leading to the launch. In anticipation of the launch, the Soviets, in their

customary manner, dropped hints of an impending spectacular. On March 14, the anonymous

"Chief Designer of Spaceships'--that is, Mishin--declared in an interview with the Moscow

economic daily Sotsialisticheskaya industriya (Socialist Industry), that the Soviet Union was

preparing to launch another piloted spacecraft for a long-duration mission as a prelude to building a permanent Earth-orbiting space laboratory. 6_The world did not have long to wait. At

0440 hours Moscow Time on April 19, 191 I, a three-stage Proton booster successfully lifted off

from site 81 with its precious payload, DOS-I. The initial orbital parameters for the station,

called Salyut in the press, were 222 by 200 kilometers at a 51.6-degree inclination. By the end

of the first orbit, ground controllers discovered that the large cover on the exterior protecting

the scientific apparatus compartment--that is, the OST-I telescope--had not been jettisoned,

thus jeopardizing the scientific value of any visiting expedition. Apparently, the explosive

devices for the cover had failed to fire. During the second day of flight, there were also failures

61. Ibid., p. 70: V. M Petrakov, "Soviet Orbital Stations," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 41

(September 1994): 363-?2. Another source suggests that the name change was because Zarya was also used

as a call sign [or the ground segment of the Soviet Command-Measurement Complex, thus raising the possibility of

confusion between the station and Earth during communications sessions. See Dmitriy Payson, "Without the

'Secret' Stamp: 'Salyut' and Star Wars" (English title), Rossiyskiyeuesti, November 2 I, 1992, p. 4.

62. Marinin, "Quarter Century for 'Salyut'." The commission approved the plan for a thirty-day [light for

the first mission and a possible forty-five-day for the second one.

63. Theodore Shabad, "New Manned Orbital Flight Seen," New York Times. March 15, 19I I, p. I 7.

773
774

of two ventilation units used for the life support system, although this seems not to have

caused any major concern on the ground. _

The day after the Salyut launch, the primary crew for the first mission was presented to the

Soviet press, with the accompanying announcement that their launch would take place on April

22 at 0320 hours Moscow Time--a night launch. Shatalov, Yeliseyev, and Rukavishnikov took

their places in their Soyuz spacecraft, despite some concern with respect to heavy showers during the night: the State Commission, however, agreed to proceed with the launch. The Soyuz

launch vehicle was filled with propellant, and all prelaunch procedures seemed to be going

according to schedule until T minus one minute. At that point, one of the masts on the launch

system did not retract as planned. Officials feared that if there was a launch, the launch escape

system would be spuriously activated and cause an explosion, as had occurred during a Soyuz

launch in December 19667_ Mishin opted to reluctantly postpone the launch. The commission

quickly decided to keep the booster on the pad fully fueled and try again the following day.

During the second launch attempt, the exact same thing occurred again: a mast from

the launch structure refused to retract. Mishin was apparently aware of the reasons for this

deviation from normal procedures, and he took control of the situation. Taking complete

responsibility for any negative consequences, he called out for the launch to proceed. There

were no problems, and the first 7K-T Soyuz spacecraft, vehicle no. 31, lifted off at 0254 hours

on April 23, 1971, with its three-cosmonaut crew of forty-three-year-old Colonel Vladimir/_.

Shatalov (commander), thirty-six-year-old Aleksey S. Yeliseyev (flight engineer), and thirtyeight-year-old Nikolay N. Rukavishnikov (test engineer). Shatalov and Yeliseyev were the first

Soviet cosmonauts to make a third spaceflight, having flown their first missions just two years

before. Rukavishnikov, the only rookie on board, had extensively trained for the L I lunar

program in the late 1960s. The vehicle, named Soyuz I0 by the press, entered a nominal orbit

of 209.6 by 248.4 kilometers at a 51.6-degree inclination.

Despite a successful launch, the prognosis for the mission was dim. The lid on the scientific compartment was still lodged in its place and threatened to sabotage at least 90 percent

of the scientific experiments program. Furthermore, of the eight ventilation units in the life

support system, six had failed, raising the prospect of an internal atmosphere full of carbon

dioxide and "other harmful materials. "°_ During Soyuz lO's fifth and sixth orbits, there were

difficulties in modifying the ship's orbit to intersect with that of Salyut. The first time, there

was an error in the programming logic of the command, while the second time, the burn was

abandoned because of insufficient time to prepare. Soyuz-lO's ionic orientation system was

apparently inoperational because of contamination of the optical surfaces. Shatalov eventually

took control of the situation and asked for permission to manually change the orbit, which he

did without any problems.

The following morning at a distance of sixteen kilometers from the station, Shatalov switched

on the Igla system, which successfully brought the Soyuz to within 180-200 meters of 5alyut. At

that point, he took over manual control, successfully linking up at 0447 hours on April 24. About

ten to fifteen minutes following soft-docking, Shatalov radioed to the ground that the docking

indicator light was not on in the Soyuz, suggesting that hard-docking had not taken place.

Ground telemetry confirmed that full docking had not occurred and that there was still a

nine-centimeter gap between the two vehicles, Shatalov attempted to tighten the two ships by

firing the Soyuz engines, but this did not prove successful. On their fourth orbit together, orders

64 I. Marinin,"QuarterCenturyfor 'Salyut':PartII" (Englishtitle), NouostikosmonautikiII (May 20-

June2. 1996):46-51: Petrakov,"SovietOrbitalStations."

65. Therewasa launchfailureon December14, 1966,whenaSoyuz(or I I/_511) boosterexplodedat site

3_at Tyura-Tam,killingonepersonandinjuringmany.ThepayloadwasanautomatedSoyuzspacecraft

66. Marinin,"QuarterCenturyfor 'Salyut':PartII."

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
I DREAMS UNFULFILLED

were received from the ground to try and undock the Soyuz I0 spacecraft and attempt a redocking. At this point, the crew ran into "incredible difficulty" in trying to undock from the station. °'

On the fourth orbit of combined flight, Shatalov attempted to unlatch the Soyuz I0 ship from

the Salyut station, but the spacecraft refused to dislodge. The problem was not taken lightly

because such a situation could lead to the loss of the station--and perhaps the crew as well.

Being unable to undock by normal means, there were two options: ( I ) dismantling the docking

apparatus, detaching it from the Soyuz, and moving away from the station or (2) detaching the

spheroid living compartment from the Soyuz spacecraft and separating, thus leaving the living

compartment docked to .Salyut. In both cases, the station would be unusable in the future

because the single docking node would be occupied. The situation was compounded by the fact

that there was only a limited amount of oxygen left in the Soyuz spaceship (about forty hours),

within which time all of this would have to be done. Luckily for everyone, on the fifth orbit

of combined flight at I017 hours on April 24, Shatalov once again tried to undock and was

successful. The two spacecraft had been docked for five and a half hours? _

Shatalov maintained station-keeping distance from Salyut as ground control debated

whether to attempt a second docking with the station. After assessing the state of the on-board

gyroscopes, propellant levels, and internal air, the Chief Operations and Control Group

at Yevpatoriya, headed by TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designer Tregub, decided to abandon the

mission and prepare for an emergency return to Earth. Before leaving the vicinity of the station,

the Soyuz I0 crew flew around Salyut and photographed the docking node to assist engineers

on the ground in determining the cause of the malfunction/_ The crew successfully landed

without incident at 0240 hours on April 25, 120 kilometers northwest of the town of Karaganda

in Kazakhstan. It was the first-ever night landing in the Soviet human space program. The mission had lasted only one day, twenty-three hours, forty-six minutes, and fifty-four seconds.

While the Soviet media at the time characteristically claimed that entry into the station was

not even on the agenda and all the objectives of the flight had been successfully achieved, the

mission had clearly been a bitter disappointment.

The investigation into the Soyuz I0 failure was completed by May I0, by which time

engineers ascertained that the Soyuz docking apparatus had been damaged during the docking

maneuver, There had been a breakdown in the coupling shock-absorbing claws in the active

part of the docking node when the two ships had attempted hard dock. The system had been

subjected to 160-200 kilograms of force during the maneuver, although the force at docking

was projected to be only eighty kilograms. The coupler could withstand up to 130 kilograms.

The increased force had been partly caused by the failure to stop the motion of the Soyuz after

soft-docking. Engineers decided to reinforce the docking system twofold, while introducing the

capability of the crew to manually control the pins of the docking system. In the meantime,

Mishin proposed that despite the failure of Soyuz I0, plans should now include two further

missions to the Salyut station to complete the original objectives of the program, The first would

begin on June 4 and the second on July 18, 1971. Mishin also proposed to have the following

crew reduced to two cosmonauts to carry bulky spacesuits that would allow an EVA by one

cosmonaut to visually inspect the docking node on the station, as well as to remove the cover for

the scientific experiments package. Kamanin categorically rejected this idea, arguing that the

cosmonauts had not been trained for FV_ and adding that the Zvezda Machine Building Plant,

67. Ibid; Nazarov,"YouCannotPaperSpaceWith Rubles."

68. N. Kamanin,"This ShouldNeverHappenAgain!" (Englishtitle), Vozdushniy_ransport23 (1993):

12-13; Marinin,"QuarterCenturyfor 'Salyut':PartII."

69. Petrakov,"SovietOrbitalStations."

775
776

which produced the spacesuits, would not be able to certify flight-ready suits by the launch date.

In the end. the matter was dropped--a cruel irony considering the later course of events, r°

P,t a meeting of the major leaders of the program on May II, 1971, in Moscow, there was

further disagreement between Mishin and Kerimov on one side and Kamanin on the other. The

former proposed two missions lasting thirty days each. Kamanin opposed this idea based on

his belief that on-board supplies on Salyut might be all used up before the end of the second

expedition, thus creating a dangerous situation for any crew. In the end, officials decided

that the goal of each mission would be to dock with the station and "revive" its systems; any

decision on duration would be made during a particular flight. For the benefit of planning,

Mishin used information from ballistics computations to tentatively plan for a twenty-five-day

flight beginning on June 6. 1971.

There were a number of failures once again in the Igla system during preparations for the

next mission, but the State Commission assessed the anomalies and on May 24 certified the

Soyuz vehicle (with modifications to the docking system and improved autonomous capabilities) as fully ready for flight. The failure of the Soyuz I0 crew to carry out their primary

mission of manning the space station meant that the third crew for the DOS, who would have

been consigned to only a backup role during the program, moved up to the second spot. Thus,

the crews who were named for the two newly scheduled missions to DOS-I were: ( I ) Leonov,

Kubasov, and Kolodin and (2) Dobrovolskiy, Volkov, and Patsayev. The latter would also serve

as the backup crew to the former. Both crews arrived at Tyura-Tam late on May 28 in preparation for the launch."

All the plans for the mission were thrown into complete uncertainty on June 3 when

doctors from the Moscow-based Institute for Biomedical Problems detected a swelling in

primary crew flight engineer Kubasov's right lung/_ Suspecting that this was the beginning of

tuberculosis, they unanimously called for his removal from the crew. According to the rules of

the Ministry of General Machine Building and the Ministry of Health:

•.. if one of the members of the crew is taken ill prior to departure to the cosmodrome,

he should be replaced by the corresponding member of the other crew. Carrying out the

replacement of the individual at the cosmodrome is not possible. In case of such a necessity, it is only possible to carry out the replacement of the [entire] crew."

The verdict was simple but difficult to accept for the crews: the Leonov-Kubas0v-Kolodin team

would have to be replaced by the Dobrovolskiy-Volkov-Patsayev crew.

Yaroslav Golovanov, then a correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda who

was at Tyura-Tam at the time, recalled later that "what happened at the Kosmonavt [Hotel,

where the crews were staying] is hard to describe." Leonov broke down and visibly lost his

temper. Kubasov, who was the center of the controversy, was simply stunned. That night,

Kolodin, the third primary crew member, arrived at the hotel completely inebriated on vodka,

bemoaning the fact that he may never go to space. Leonov later took the matter directly to his

superiors and pleaded that the State Commission only replace the indisposed Kubasov with

his backup Volkov, thus making the new crew Leonov, Volkov, and Kolodin. It seems that the

70. Kamanin, "This Should Never Happen Again!," no. 23; Marinin, "Quarter Century for 'Salyut': Part II":

Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 188; K. Lantratov, "20 YearsFromthe Flight o[ 'Soyuz-12'"

(English title), Novosti kosmonauliki 20 (September 25-October 8, 1993): 39-40.

7 I. Kamanin, "This Should Never Happen Again!," no. 23; Marinin, "Quarter Century for 'Salyut': Part II,"

72. One source suggeststhat the doctors found "a dark spot on the lungs." Seelosi[ Davydov,"How Could

That Have Been?:Slandered Space" (English title), Ros._iyskayagazeta. June I I, 1992. p. 5.

73. Marinin, "Quarter Century for 'Salyut': Part II," p. 50 Author's emphasis.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

commission was in fact leaning toward this solution despite the ministry's edict. All the

cosmonauts, physicians, Cosmonaut Training Center chiefs, and Kamanin himself decided to

call for only Kubasov's replacement. Mishin and State Commission Chairman Kerimov tentatively agreed with this recommendation until Mishin had further discussions with participants in

Moscow, when he changed his mind and insisted on replacing the entire primary crew. The next

day, June 4, two days before the launch, after the Soyuz booster had been transported to the

launch pad, a final session of the core members of the State Commission was held. Again,

Kamanin recommended replacing only Kubasov. This time, Mishin had the support of most of

the other attendees, including Maj. General Nikolay F. Kuznetsov, the Director of the Cosmonaut

Training Center. The commission finally decided to replace the entire Leonov crew and launch

the Dobrovolskiy crew. '_ Later that evening, during Mishin's visit to speak to the cosmonauts,

Kolodin, in a moment of outrage, "lectured [Mishin] with a lot of extraneous items, which he

later much regretted."" According to one report, Kolodin told Mishin that "history would never

forgive him" for his decision to send the backup crew/_

The original backup crewmembers of forty-three-year-old Lt, Colonel Georgiy T,

Dobrovolskiy (commander), thirty-five-year-old civilian Vladislav N. Volkov (flight engineer),

and thirty-seven-year-old civilian Viktor I. Patsayev (test engineer) were successfully launched

at 0755 hours on June 6, 1971, in their 7K-T spacecraft, vehicle no. 32. The Soviet press

announced the mission as Soyuz t l. Both Dobrovolskiy and Patsayev were making their

first flights, while Volkov was making his second, having flown as part of the "troika" Soyuz

mission in late 1969. Most unusually for a space mission, the crew had been formed less than

four months before the launch day, having no expectations to fly on such short notice. The

Soyuz I I spaceship entered an initial orbit of 191._5by 220.5 kilometers at a 51.64-degree inclination, After two orbital changes, the spacecraft was within seven kilometers of the Salyut

station. The Igla system was switched on, and successful docking was accomplished at

1045 hours. Ground control at Yevpatoriya in Crimea had to wait a tense half-hour before

Dobrovolskiy announced that the docking had successfully taken place. During the fourth orbit

of joint operations, pressurization checks proved to be acceptable, and the crew opened the

hatch to the station. Patsayev was the first one in the station: the crew immediately turned

on the air regeneration system and replaced two of the six faulty ventilation units of the life

support system. Unfortunately, the crew sensed a strong odor of burning in the air, which

forced them to spend a tense night in their ferry craft. The next day, they returned to the

station to discover the odor gone and immediately set about activating instruments on the

station in support of their experiments program. '7

As the days turned into weeks, the three men managed to carry out a remarkably full experiments program despite many attendant problems. By June 9, medical and biological experiments had begun, while experiments in other areas were started on June II, consisting of

spectrographic measurements of natural formations and water surfaces in the Soviet Union. Each

day for the crew consisted of eight hours of work, two hours for meals, two hours for exercises,

and two hours of personal time. By the sixth day on the station, the men had settled into a rotating routine--that is, when Dobrovolskiy was having breakfast, Volkov would be having supper

and Patsayev dinner. Thus two men were always awake while the third one slept/"

74 Ibid.

75. Gordon R. Hooper, The .%uiet Cosmonaut Team. Volume 2: Cosmonaut Biographies (Lowestoft, UK:

GRH Publications, 1990), p. 131.

76. Lardier.LT]stronautique Soui#tique, p. 190.

77. Kamanin. "This Should Never Happen Again!," no 23: Marinin, "Quarter Century [or 'Salyut': Part I1."

78. Lardier, L'.,qstronautiqueSoui_tique, p. 202: Peter Smolders, Souiels in Space (New York: Taplinger

Publishing Co., 1973). p. 241.

777
778

During their mission, the cosmonauts performed about 140 scientific

experiments, far more than on any

other Soviet space mission. The medical studies included experiments

involving the cardiovascular system

(using the Polinom-2M), blood tests

(,Zlmak-3), the density of bone tissue

(Plotnost), pulmonary circulation

(Rezeda-5), the measurement of wrist

strength, tests of visual acuity, measurements of radiation dosages, and

the study of microflora. Strictly biological experiments included those on the

growth of plants (using the Oazis-I

hydroponic greenhouse starting on

june 13), the study of the vestibular

apparatus of tadpoles, the genetic

mutations of flies, the growth of

chlorella algae, and the development

of grain in microgravity.

P,lthough the crew was unable to

use the OST-I telescope because of

the sealed cover, they did manage to

conduct an extensive series of astrophysics-related experiments using the

Orion-I ultraviolet and the /_nna-3

gamma-ray telescopes. The latter was

named after its designer's daughter

P,nna because "like [her] daughter,

gamma-ray astronomy has still a great

deal to learn.''79Cosmonauts used the

P,nna-3, capable of registering gamma

rays with energy of up to I00 megavolts, for the first time on June I I. The

Orion-I telescope, built by the

Armenian Academy of Sciences, was

used on June 18 and 21 to make six

and nine ultraviolet spectrograms of

Theprimarycrewof SoyuzI I is shownat thetop of theservice

mastpriorto enteringtheirspacecraftFromleft are_eorgiy

Dobrouolskiy(commander).ViktorPatsayeu(testengineer).

and Vladislau Volkou (flightengineer)_(N,z]s,ztphoto)

celestial targets, such as Beta (Centaurus) and Vega (/_Ipha-Lyra). The study of charged particle flux was accomplished with a third telescope named the TEB. The cosmonauts also used

the FEN-7emulsion chamber to register primary cosmic rays for over a period of 1,728 hours.

One inert instrument was the MMK-I, which measured micrometeoroid flux on the exterior of

the station.

79. Smolders,Sovietsin Space,p. 245.Thescientistin questionwasI_.M. Galper.The/_nna-3wasdevel

opedby theMoscowInstituteof EngineeringandPhysicsunderthe supervisionof V. G.Kirillov-Ugryumov.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

Other experimental disciplines included studying the geophysical properties of Earth with

various cameras, such as the AFA-M, the KFA-2 I, and the handheld RSS-2spectrograph, which

was developed by the Department of Atmospheric Physics at Leningrad State University.

Researchers used the same spectrograph from An-2 and II-18 aircraft at altitudes of 300 and

8,000 meters simultaneously with the cosmonauts to determine pollution and precipitation

levels in the Caspian Sea.The crew also used the RSS-2onJune 14and 15to determine humidity of the soil in areas around the Caspian and Aral Seas. On June I I, 19, and 22, they used

the spectrograph to measure the optical characteristics of Earth's atmosphere and the degree of

polarization of sunlight reflected by Earth. The crew also measured the chemical composition

of the atmosphere with a mass spectrometer and used the ERA instrument for studying atmospheric resonance in the ionosphere. Earth observation research included coordinated studies

with a Meteor-I satellite over several days using two hand-operated devices on the station.

Strictly technological experiments were related to the station itself. The crew observed

luminous particles outside the station with a photometer, and also they studied the dynamic

characteristics of the station with a stellar camera._

Throughout the mission, reports from the cosmonauts in Salyut were shown on Soviet

television. Many of their exchanges on TV were humorous in nature, contrasting sharply with

the morose image of the Soviet spacefarer, and it was clear that the three men were having the

time of their lives. By mid-June, the three men had become household names in the Soviet

Union--a new breed of folk hero for a country whose prestige had been trampled by the

success of Apollo. Forthe first time in many years, the Soviet human space program could claim

a genuine advance and victory over the United States. It would not be an overstatement to

claim that much of the general population anticipated the return of the three cosmonauts in a

unified way that had not been witnessed for many years.

The continuing TV reports did not, of course, tell the whole story behind the mission.

There were, in fact, many problems for the crew aboard the station--problems that on

occasion hindered productive work. For example, during the first two weeks of the mission,

there were a number of personality clashes between the members of the crew, which were

mediated by cosmonauts on the ground at Yevpatoriya who served as "capcoms. "8' Although

these difficulties were resolved, a more serious emergency occurred on June 16, when flight

engineer Volkov suddenly radioed to capcom Shatalov that he sensed a strong odor of smoke.

Assuming the worst-case scenario of a fire in the station, cosmonauts Nikolayev and Yeliseyev

on the ground ordered the crew to immediately evacuate to their Soyuz ferry craft and begin

preparations for undocking. Having quickly moved into the Soyuz, the crew first began attempts

to establish the cause of the emergency by switching on the backup electrical supply system

on Salyut and turning on filters to purify the atmosphere. Following a tense period, during

which instruments tested the atmosphere in the station for safety, the cosmonauts entered the

Salyut station once again. 82

The drama seemed to have intensified the discord brewing among the crew. Veteran

cosmonaut Bykovskiy, at Yevpatoriya,.recalled that during the emergency, Volkov had become

extremely nervous and had tried to resolve the situation by himself, ignoring the assistance of

80. Lardier,LTtstronauticlueSoui_tique,pp.202-03: BertDubbelaar,TheSalyutProject(Moscow:Progress

Publishers.1986),pp 12-16.

81. The cosmonautsinvolvedin groundcontrolwereV F,Bykovskiy,V. V. Gorbatko,A. G. Nikolayev,

V. tt. Shatalov,andtt. S.Yeliseyev.

82. Kamanint"ThisShouldNeverHappen/_gain!,"no, 23:I. Marinin,"QuarterCentury/or 'Salyut':Part

III" (Englishtitle), Nouostikosmonavtiki12-13(June3-30, 1996):77-8I.

779
780

hiscrewmatesDobrovolskiyandPatsayev.Inanunusualmove,ChiefDesignerMishincommunicated personally with Volkov, informing him that all operational decisions should be taken

by the commander (Dobrovolskiy) and that mission-critical operations should be carried out

only at his discretion. Volkov irritatedly responded that the entire crew was aggravated and that

all decisions should be made collectively. In an amplification of the event, Mishin recalled in

a 1989 interview that a personality clash had developed between Dobrovolskiy and Volkov,

during which Volkov, the only spaceflight veteran on board, declared himself the commander

of the mission, usurping Dobrovolskiy's role• There were apparently several "complicated

conversations" between Mishin and Volkov after the incident. _ In Kamanin's opinion, Volkov

had acted hastily and had a disdainful attitude to those at ground control. Mishin also added

that there may have indeed been a fire on the station originating from a power cable, and the

crew apparently asked for permission to return to Earth immediately but were dissuaded by ground

control. _ The entire situation was diffused following extensive consultations with cosmonauts on

the ground, who were able to bring the crew back to their experiments program.

The Soyuz I I crew was scheduled to observe the third N I lunar rocket during its launch on

June 20 from Tyura-Tam using the Suinets instrument designed for military purposes. The launch

was, however, moved to June 22 and eventually to June 27, and the crew's ground track was not

over the launch site at the time of the N I launch. Dobrovolskiy was able to skillfully use Svinets

on June 24 and 25 to observe night launches of solid-propellant ballistic missiles from Tyura-Tam.8_

The cosmonauts' medical program was not completely successful. The cosmonauts were

apparently reluctant to exercise, and the problem was compounded by several failures on the

station. Kamanin wrote in his diary on June 23 that:

•.. the readaptation will be particularly diHicult [or Volkov: during the flight he has been

more reluctant to do physical exercises than the other ereud members, he has totally rejected meat [cod. he has o[ten been irritated and has already been making a lot o[ mistakes. 8_

The running track was rarely used because of unexpected vibrations when exercising,

which shook the solar panels and communications antennas. The Chibis vacuum suit used for

shifting blood to the upper regions of the body was the source of many problems and was

rarely used. The load-bearing Pingvin space suits also tore at various places during exercises,

neutralizing their impact. Naturally, the lack of calisthenics was a great concern to doctors on

the ground, who believed that the crew would be in extremely poor shape after a near-monthlong mission. Given the problems on the mission, Mishin backed away from his insistence on

a thirty-day mission, instead opting for a more conservative flight of twenty-two to twenty-four

days. On June 22, the State Commission confirmed the decision to land the crew on June 30,

on that day's third orbit, early in the morning.

The three cosmonauts began preparations to return to Earth on June 26. They had exceeded the world-record endurance for a single piloted spaceflight two days earlier on their eighteenth day in space. Despite increasing numbers of mistakes on the part of the crew, attributed

to fatigue, the crew completed all their return procedures on time, and on the evening of June

29, they transferred to the Soyuz II spaceship and closed the hatch between the two space83. Tarasov,"Missionsin Dreamsand Reality."

84. /bid

85. NikolayKamanin,"ThisShouldNeverHappenAgain!" (Englishtitle),Vozdushniytransport 24( 1993):

12: Marinin, "QuarterCenturyfor 'Salyut':Part III." The cosmonautsalso usedthe OD-4 optical "visor-range

finder" to performmilitaryobservationsof groundtargets.

86. Kamanin."ThisShouldNeverHappenAgain!." no.24,p. 12.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
_ DREAMS UNFULFILLED

craft. The crew then moved into the descent apparatus and shut the hatch between it and the

spherical living compartment. There was a major crisis at this point when the "Hatch Open"

indicator light between the Soyuz living compartment and the descent apparatus failed to turn

off. Fatigued and anxious, Volkov excitedly called out to ground control: "The hatch isn't pressurized, what should we do, what should we do?!! ''_7Cosmonaut Yeliseyev, who was the

capcom at the time, calmed Volkov down and gave the crew detailed instructions to go through

the entire hatch-closing procedure once more. Dobrovolskiy and Patsayev expertly followed the

instructions, but the indicator light remained turned on. All the members of the crew grew

increasingly nervous because in a few minutes that hatch would be the last barrier between the

crew and open space.

After intensive discussions, the Chief Operations and Control Group on the ground recommended placing a piece of paper over the sensor that detected hatch closing, presumably in

the belief that it was a sensor error. Dobrovolskiy found a piece of plaster, which he placed over

the sensor, and shut the hatch once more. This time the indicator turned off, and all subsequent pressurization checks proved satisfactory, The twenty-minute crisis with the hatch had

strained the nerves of the crew, but following the tests, the cosmonauts apparently calmed

down and proceeded with preparations to undock from the station. At 2125 hours, 15seconds,

the Soyuz I I spaceship undocked from Salyut and flew around the station, and Patsayev took

a number of photographs. At around 0135 hours on June 30, Volkov reported that the

"'Return' indicator light is on." Ground control replied, "Let it be on. It's correctly on.

Communications are ending. Good luck! "88After that, communications were cut off as the

Soyuz drifted out of voice contact, and they were evidently never regained. According to the

preprogrammed sequence of reentry, the main Soyuz engine was to begin firing at 0135 hours,

24 seconds Moscow Time on June 30, followed by separation of the three Soyuz modules at

0147 hours, 28 seconds. Ground control was, however, unsure whether this had indeed taken

place because of the loss of communications. Search-and-rescue services proceeded on the

assumption that all was going according to plan on the Soyuz I I ship, and the teams from the

Soviet Air Defense Forceand Air Forcedetected the descent apparatus of the spacecraft on time

in the assigned location. The capsule landed at 0218 hours Moscow Time about 202 kilometers east of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. The mission had lasted twenty-three days, eighteen

hours, twenty-one minutes, and forty-three seconds. As soon as rescue teams opened the vehicle hatch, they found the crew lifeless in their seats.

The recovery teams attempted to revive the cosmonauts after bringing them out of the capsule, but it was all in vain. In the meantime, the State Commission at Yevpatoriya received a

message back from the rescue services concerning the deaths. Immediately, Afanasyev,

Kerimov, Mishin, Kamanin, DOS lead designer Semenov, and others flew directly to the landing site. Other officials, including doctors, also flew in from Moscow. An on-the-spot investigation indicated that there was blood in the crew's lungs, nitrogen in their blood, and

hemorrhages in their brains, which were all obvious indicators of death by depressurization. An

inspection of the ship's interior showed that all the radio transmitters had been manually turned

off, the shoulder straps of all the cosmonauts were unfastened, and Dobrovolskiy himself had

been tangled in his straps. Everything in the Soyuz II descent apparatus appeared normal,

everything except one of two valves in the respiratory system, which was in an open position,

strongly supporting the hypothesis that there had been a rapid decompression) _

8T Marinin, "QuarterCenturyfor 'Salyut': PartII1": N, Kamanin,"This ShouldNeverHappenAgain"

(Englishtitle). Vozdushniytransport 25(1993):12.

88 O. Ye.teonov,"Until We Meeton Earth"(Englishtitle), Otechestuennyyarkhiuu3 ( 1994):71-80.

89 Semenov.ed, Ruketno-KosrnicfleskayaKorporcztsiya. p. 188:Marinin, "QuarterCenturyfor 'Salyut':

PartII1,"

781
782

CosmonautOeorgiyDobrouolskiy.Soyuz I I commander, is shown herejust minutesafterdeath as medical

workerstry to reuiuehim The beard was fromapproximately twenty-fourdays spent on the Salyutspace station

inrune 1971.,zltthe time, this was the longestpiloted space mission in history. (copyrightRudy, Inc., uiaQuest)

The shock not only to the space industry but also the Soviet Union as a whole was devastating. An unprecedented wave of grief swept through the country, not unlike the collective

mourning in the United States after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Official Soviet

TV and radio changed their formats to accommodate for the tragedy, while countless condolence messages poured in from leaders all over the world. Apart from the human loss itself, the

Soyuz I I tragedy was a severe blow to the Soviet space program, coming at a time when it had

been so close to reclaiming the lost glory of the Korolev years. In a cruel twist of fate, the Soviet

space program was not even accorded a consolation prize in the space race. It was beset with

problems far more imposing than simply political cost. If 1969 was the year of humiliation for

the Soviet space program, 1971 was its nadir--an absolute low unthinkable a few years before.

The bodies of the three cosmonauts were flown back to Moscow only a few hours after

landing, and the following day, on July I, they were already lying in state in Moscow.

Thousands of Soviet citizens flocked to pay their last respects. Unlike the Komarov funeral,

when no NASA representative was present, veteran astronaut Brig. General Thomas P. Stafford

was on hand, representing the NASA Astronaut Office. Behind the scenes, on July 3, 1971,

Ustinov established a governmental State Commission to investigate the accident and recommend changes in the DOS-/K program. As one would expect, Academician Keldysh headed the

commission. Chief Designer Babakin from the Lavochkin Design Bureau was the deputy chair.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

The remaining members included Chief Designer Glushko and Minister _fanasyev2 ° On July 12,

the commission issued a preliminary report, which gave general details of the accident to the

general public for the first time:

During the descent of the spaceship. 30 minutes before landing, pressure in the return

capsule dropped rapidly, which led to the unexpected death of the cosmonauts. This

has been confirmed by medical and pathological-anatomical examinations. The drop

in the pressure was the result of failure of the hermetic sealing of the spaceship ....

Technical analysis indicates that there are several possible explanations of the desealing. Investigation into the exact cause continues?'

The following day, the commission met and agreed that the most probable cause of the

accident was depressurization resulting from the premature opening of the second respiratory

valve in the descent apparatus. Already, two senior members of TsKBEM's staff, Bushuyev and

Korzhenevskiy, were recommending that future Soyuz crews be brought down to two cosmonauts with full spacesuits.

Through the following weeks, an analysis of the Mir on-board memory device showed

that at the moment of separation of the living compartment from the descent apparatus, at

an altitude of more than 150 kilometers, the pressure in the descent apparatus dropped in the

course of thirty to forty seconds to a near vacuum. The rate of the pressure drop corresponded to the respiratory system's valve opening. The conclusion was obvious: at the moment of

separation of the two modules, the valve had prematurely opened. More difficult was determining exactly why it had been jarred open. Engineers carried out dozens of experiments simulating various loads on the suspect valve, but no one particular cause stood out. Only when

all types of deviations from normal parameters were introduced simultaneously did the valve

fail? 2 Based on the Keldysh commission's analysis of voice tapes and telemetry, as well as

Kamanin's own diary entries, it was, however, possible to reconstruct the sequence of events

that led to the tragedy.

It seems that the reentry burn was on time and completely successful. Subsequently, at

the very moment that the Soyuz spacecraft separated into its three component modules, also

on time, twelve explosive bolts used for separation produced an overload, displacing a ball

joint from its seating2 _ This accidentally jerked open the ventilation valve, which was to have

opened only after landing: suddenly, there was a direct passage from the crew compartment

to the vacuum outside. The crew immediately noticed the drop in pressure inside the capsule: Dobrovolskiy quickly unfastened his seat belts and rushed to the frontal hatch, thinking that the problem was the faulty hatch seal from the undocking incident. The hatch was

completely secure, yet the pressure continued to drop in a whistle that continued to get

louder. In fact, the sound of the air whistling out of the spacecraft was coming not only from

90. Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicfleskuya Korporatsiyu. p, 188. The remaining members of the commission were: A. I. Burnazyan (Ministry of Health), S. G. Frolov (WS), P. D. Grushin (MKB Fakel),V. A. Kazakov

(MAP), M. N. Mishuk (WS), V. A. Shatalov (WS), V. I. Shcheulov (TsLIKOS), and A. I, Tsarev(VPK).

9 I. Smolders, Sovietsin Space. p. 248. One reportsuggeststhat the early hypothesis of the doctors on the

ground was that the cosmonauts died becauseof the effects of gravity after such a relatively long period of weightlessness. Dr. Portugalov, the chief of the Morphology Department at the Institute for Biomedical Problems of the

Ministry of Health, howevercame to the conclusion that it had been a valve failure resulting in depressurization. The

sameconclusion was also reachedby anatomists at the Kirov Academy.SeeMozzhorin, et al., eds., Dorogi u kosmos:

Lp64.

92. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskuyaKorporatsiya. pp. 188-89.

93. Tarasov."Missions in Dreamsand Reality."

783
784

thesuspectvalve,butalsofromon-boardadiotransmittersandreceivers,makingit difficult

to isolatethetruesource.Atthispoint,VolkovandPatsayevunfastenedtheirbeltsand

switchedoffallcommunicationssytemstofindthesourceofthewhistling:thesoundwas

apparentlycomingfroma point underDobrovolskiy'sseat--theventilationvalve.

DobrovolskiyandPatsayevattemptedtomanuallyclosethevalve,butthetimewasjusttoo

short?4Bothfellbackintheirseats,withDobrovolskiyhavingtimetorefastenhisbeltsina

hurriedmove,whichleftthemtangled.

Thespeedofthepressurelossin thecapsulewasincrediblyswift.Justfourseconds

aftertheventilationvalvefailure,Dobrovolskiy'sbreathrateshotupfromsixteen(normal)

to forty-eightperminute.Afterthebeginningof pressureloss,thecosmonautslostthe

capacitytoworkin tento fifteensecondsandweredeadin forty-eightto forty-nineseconds.Theywereapparently"inagony"threeto fivesecondsafterseparationuntilabout

twentytothirtysecondsbeforedeath.Allthepressureinthe capsule dropped from a normal level of 920 millimeters to zero in a matter of 1 12 seconds? 5 As one Russian journalist

later put it, the cosmonauts "passed away fully aware of the tragic consequences of what

had happened. TM Both Kamanin and Mishin seemed to believe that the crew could have

prevented their deaths by simply blocking the suspect "hole." In an interview in 1990,

Mishin added: "They could hear the hiss of escaping air. They could have put a finger over

the hole and that would have done it."97 Some believed that the crew had not been properly trained in the operation of the valve, which was to be operated only after Soyuz landing.

The technical documentation on the valve stipulated: "If in case of a water landing, the

hatch does not open due to rough seas, or rescue teams are late in coming for over an hour,

the cosmonauts may open the valve."_8

The reason why the seal failed is still unknown, although an article in The Washington Post

in 1973 by Thomas O'Toole provided some interesting clues. O'Toole's description, based on

a "classified report," was the first and only Western report to accurately describe the hatchclosing emergency prior to reentry in great detail. The author added: "[When] the exhausted

cosmonauts were fighting the warning light on the hatch they apparently failed to notice that

the cabin pressure had crept up to almost 20 pounds per square inch. What this did was to

exaggerate any weakness in the hatch seal. ''_ O'Toole's report was apparently culled from a

classified CIA brief issued the day after the accident, in which the CIA detailed the undocking

and reentry problems at the end of the mission. '®

94. Mishin says that it was only Patsayevwho attempted to close the valve. SeeG. Salakhutdinov, "Once

More About Space" (English title), Ogonek 34 (August 18-25. 1990): 4-.5.

95. Kamanin, "This Should Never Happen Again," no. 25; Marinin. "Quarter Century for 'Salyut': Part liE"

96 Mikhail Rebrov, "With a One-Way Ticket" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, September26, 1996. p 4.

I_ somewhat different explanation was given to NASP, officials in October 1973: "At approximately 723 seconds

after retrofire, the 12 Soyuz pyrocartridges fired simultaneously instead of sequentially to separatethe two modules.

The force of the dischargecaused the internal mechanism of the pressureequalization valve to releasea seal that

was usually discardedpyrotechnically much later to adjust the cabin pressureautomatically. When the valve opened

at a height of 168kilometers, the gradual but steady loss of pressurewas fatal to the crew within about 20 seconds."

See Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell. The Pertnership: 7] History of the _pollo-Soyuz Test Project

(Washington, DC: NASA SP-4209. 1978). p. 230.

97. "The Russian Right Stuff: The Dark Side of the Moon," NOVI] television show. #1808. WGBH-TV,

Boston. February27. 1991;Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality." The valve was apparently a millimeter across.

SeePayson, "Without the 'Secret' Stamp."

98. Kamanin, "This Should Never Happen Again!," no. 24.

99. Thomas O'Toole. "Soviet Union Still TrailsU.S. in Space," Washington Post.June 17, 1973,pp. P,I, i_,8.

I00. U.S. Central Intelligence P,gency, "National Intelligence Estimate I I-I-71: The Soviet SpaceProgram,"

Washington, DC, July I, 1971,pp. 30-32, as declassified in 1997 by the CIP, Historical Review Program

CHALLENGE TO _.POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

The members of the Keldysh commission signed the final version of the accident investigation on August 17, 1971, about a month and a half after the accident. '°' The commission collectively made some specific recommendations: increase the stability of the valve with respect to

shock loads, install quick-acting (within seconds) manual chokes for valves, and use spacesuits

during conditions when depressurization was possible. '°_ The final point, the use of spacesuits,

was evidently a much-debated issue, with individuals such as Mishin and Feoktistov arguing

against it. Mishin summarized his opinion on the matter twenty years later when he wrote:

In principle, all the recommendations of the commission were correct, but with one I do

not agree to this day--the introduction of the spacesuit which Korolev had abolished

[rom the "Voskhod" spaceship .... In multi-seat spaceships it is necessary to ensure collective safety, which can be better ensured by duplicating the systems that pressurize the

entire Descent ,Ztpparatus .... The spacesuits required additional complex devices, thus

increasing weights and volumes. The commission's recommendations to introduce

spacesuits . . . made it necessary to reduce the crew of the spaceship to two and [to

reduce]_ the conduct of, special experiments._°_

Unfortunately for Mishin, one of those pushing the use of spacesuits was Central

Committee Secretary Ustinov. When Mishin and his Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev met with

Ustinov on August 6, Ustinov was firm on the issue: it was impossible for any more Soviet

crews to fly in space without pressurized spacesuits. The Zvezda Machine Building Plant under

Chief Designer Gay I. Severin was asked to accelerate its current efforts to prepare a new suit,

named the 5okol-K, specifically for the Soyuz spacecraft. At the same time, two different

departments at Mishin's design bureau began the process of redesigning the ZK-T Soyuz spacecraft to meet the recommendations of the Keldysh commission.'°4 Later, the Ministry of General

Machine Building handed out special reprimands for the disaster to six leading personalities,

including Mishin, Bushuyev, and Tregub. '°_

As far as future missions to the Salyut station, they were out of the question at that

point. During the flight of Soyuz II, the State Commission had met to set the launch date of

the second expedition to the station for July 20. This crew, composed of Leonov,

Rukavishnikov, and Kolodin, along with their backup crews, began joint training on June 16.

Training for all the crews was terminated on July 9, 197 I, nine days after the Soyuz I I tragedy.

The immediate goal was to make changes to the Soyuz spacecraft and introduce mandatory

spacesuits for all the crewmembers. Because the introduction of spacesuits would take additional volume and mass, TsKBEM reluctantly decided to truncate further crewmembers from

three to two, eliminating the test engineer position. The Salyut station, meanwhile, continued

to circle Earth, Ground controllers fired its main engines at least five times to prevent orbital

decay over the course of three months. Finally, on October I I, its supplies already expired in

August, the station was commanded to reenter Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

Among the many stranger-than-fiction ironies of this first space station project, clearly one

of most chilling was the last-minute replacement of the Soyuz I I primary crew. In an interview

I0 I. The signatories were M. V. Keldysh (President, Academy of Sciences),L. V. Smirnov (Chairman, VPK),

S. A Afanasyev (Minister, MOM), I. D. Serbin (Chief, TsK KPSSDefense Industries Department), V. A. Kazakov

(Deputy Minister, MAP), M. N. Mishuk (WS), P. D. Grushin (General Designer, MKB Fakel),_. I. Tsarev (Deputy

Chairman, VPK), and V. ID Mishin (Chief Designer. TsKBFM).

102. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 188-89.

IO3. Mozzhorin, et al,. eds., Dorogi u kosmos.I, p. 124 Seealso Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality,"

104 Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 188-89,

105. The reprimands were stipulated in a ministry resolution (no. 259ss) on August 19, 1971.

785
786

in June 1988, one of those replaced, Petr I. Kolodin, confided that the deaths of Dobrovolskiy,

Volkov, and Patsayev still played on his conscience: "I was to fly, and Dobrovolski and his

colleagues were to have remained on Earth. They were killed and l'm alive."'°6 Although he was

scheduled to fly a Soyuz mission in 1978, Kolodin did not, in fact, ever join the ranks of "true"

cosmonauts. Leonov and Kubasov, the two remaining members of the crew, were recycled back

into training for future DOS missions. Kubasov's lung problem, which had effectively saved his

life--and those of Leonov and Kolodin, too--later turned out to be only an allergic reaction. '°7

Military Space

At the time of the Soyuz II disaster, the Soviet space program was almost fifteen years

old. Forged out of the innards of the Soviet military-industrial complex, the space effort, by and

large, remained hostage to the whims of military requirements and the opinions of those leaders who were responsible for building and maintaining the defense might of the Soviet Union.

Typically, the triumvirate of individuals responsible for the defense industry--Llstinov, Smirnov,

and P,fanasyev--were ultimately accountable for dictating the direction of the space program.

However, the needs of the Ministry of Defense--the primary clientele for all space products--

also played a major role in the formation of long-range state policy. In March 1967, Marshal

Andrey _q. Grechko, a former Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Ground Forces, became the new

USSR Minister of Defense. Subordinate to Grechko were all the heads of the armed services,

including Marshal Nikolay I. Krylov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces.

Both were extremely influential in defining the long-term goals of the Soviet space program--

the Five-Year Space Plans. _°_The fact that both were regarded as virulently against "big funding" for the piloted space effort was a major factor in the military's lack of interest in an active

human space program. P,ir Force Col. General Kamanin, one of the few high-ranked men within the military supportive of strong piloted operations in space, lamented in June 1970:

Grechko has still not been at the [Cosmonaut Training Center] although he promised

three times to uisit it. I do not know i[ he will keep his word this time, but his possible

trip to us does not make me uery happy: the minister obuiously underrates the importance o/the space program [or the country's science, economy and deJense. However

we are totally dependent on Marshal _rechko and it would be [oolish not to attempt to

*'relate" to him with space.'°_

The effects were repercussive: because all space products, whether they were Soyuz ships or

space stations, were ultimately built for and operated by the Strategic Missile Forces, most of

the major chief designers, such as Mishin, Glushko, Chelomey, and Yangel, had to pander to

Grechko and Krylov for their blessing.

The Strategic Missile Forces remained in tight control over all operational activity in the

Soviet space program. Its subordinate Central Directorate of Space Assets, headed by

Lt. General P,ndrey G. Karas, had inherited this job from the old artillery days. The other armed

106, Hooper, The Souiet Cosmonaut Team.Volume 2. p. 132,

107. Davydov. "How Could That Have Been?"

I08. There are few published details of these Five-YearSpace Plans. One account--of a meeting between

MOM Minister S. Pl. _qfanasyevand USSRFirst Deputy Minister of DefenseM. V. Zakharov in August 1969--clearly indicates the influence of the Ministry of Defenseover the content of these plans. See Mozzhorin, et aL, eds.,

Dorogi u kosmos:I, pp. 218-19.

109 L N. Kamanin, "Removing the Cosmetic Retouching: N Kamanin--From HisJournal Entriesfor 1970"

(Enslish title), Souetskayakultura, July 14, 1990. p. 15.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

services--the Air Defense Forces, the Air Force, and the Navy--were naturally hostile to this

monopoly, and in 1970, a detailed plan was drawn up to have this directorate subordinated

directly to the Ministry of Defense, thus circumventing the stranglehold by the Strategic Missile

Forces over space operations. Even Marshal Krylov initially supported the idea, but at the last

moment, senior Strategic Missile Forces officers opposed the idea. Karas stalled the plan by

suggesting that his directorate remain under the Strategic Missile Forces for two to three more

years, to allow a more detailed look at the issue. In March 1970, the directorate was reorganized into the Chief Directorate of Space/_ssets (GUKOS), but it still remained an operational

arm of the Strategic Missile Forces, carrying out launch, command, and control over every single Soviet spacecraft launched into orbit. The "two to three years" that Karas had proposed

eventually stretched into nearly twelve years. It was only on November I0, 1981, that GUKOS

was removed from Strategic Missile Forces jurisdiction. ''° The successor to GUKOS eventually

became the Russian Military Space Forces--in the 199Os.

Influencing the direction of the Soviet space program was not just a matter of power but

also patronage. Minister of Defense Grechko was a strong supporter of Minister of General

Machine Building/_fanasyev, who in turn helped prop up many of Chelomey's tenuous programs, such as the Almaz space station. On the other side, Central Committee Secretary

Ustinov, a well-known anti-Chelomey partisan, was on the side of Chief Designers Yangel and

Mishin. This peculiar bicameral noninstitutional factionalism helped sustain tension between

the Mishin and Chelomey factions for many years. In terms of the ICBM program, the GrechkoUstinov enmity resulted in a severely acrimonious battle--a "civil war" between Chelomey and

Yangel over the development of a third generation of strategic missiles. Unable to make the

decision between a Chelomey proposal and a Yangel proposal, Soviet leader Brezhnev succumbed to pressure on both sides by approving the development of two concurrent ICBMs

with almost identical capabilities, thus squandering billions of rubles."'

The negative attitude of the military toward piloted space projects meant that a number of

important programs suffered during the late 1960s and early 1970s. One program that fell under

Grechko's vendetta against space was the Spiral piloted spaceplane program. By 1967, engineers at the "space branch" of the Mikoyan design bureau (MMZ Zenit) gave out subcontracts

to build testbeds for Spiral. The first such testbed was an 800-kilogram, three-meter-long scale

model of Spiral's Experimental Piloted Orbital Aircraft (EPOS), named BOR-I. It was designed

and built by two major research institutions, the N. Ye. Zhukovskiy Central Aerohydrodynamics

Institute (TsI_GI) and the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute. Manufacturing was carried

out at Plant No. 166 at Omsk. The creation of BOR-I was part of a larger research program in

support of Spiral to investigate aerodynamics, thermal protection, the prospects of using hypersonic scramjets, and the rescue of the object after its return from space. The program would

include studying atmospheric return from altitudes of 200 to ten kilometers and velocities

of 7,500 down to 2_50 meters per second--that is, about Mach 27.5 down to Mach 0.8. The

initial suborbital flights of BOR vehicles would last about three minutes; these would lead to

"orbital" missions lasting fifteen to twenty minutes.

I I 0. MozzhorJn,et al., eds., Dorogi u kosmos:I. pp. 221-22; I. D. Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy

istorii raketnykh uoysk strategicheskogo naznacheniya (Moscow: TslPK. 1994), p, 17.

I I I. Brezhnev's final decision led to the development of Chelomey's UR-100N missile (approved by the

Soviet government on August 19, 19/0) and Yangel'sMR UR-IO0 missile (approved by MOM in September 1970)

For a discussion of the "civil war," see Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi u kosmos:I, pp. 149-50: Roald Z. Sagdeev,

The Making of a Souiet Scientist: My .,Zlduenturesin Nuclear Fusion and Space From Stalin to Star Wars (New York:

John Wiley & Sons. 1993). pp. 205-06; B. Ye. Chertok. Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye, 1997), 68-70: V1adimir Gubarev, "Southern Launch" ([nglish title), Nauka i zhizn no. I0

(October 1997): 36-45.

787
788

This flown model of the BOR-2 lifting body was recently on display at a Russian exhibition Note the damage from

thermal loads during reentry on the bottom face of the vehicle. Theinsignia of the Gromou Fhght-ResearchInstitute

is visible near the nose of the spacecraft. This vehicle was launched sometime between 1969 and 1974 on a

suborbital mission. (copyright StevenZatoga)

BOR-I was specifically designed to separate from a conventional ballistic launch vehicle at

an altitude of IOO kilometers and a velocity of 3.7 kilometers per second and then complete a

gliding flight into the atmosphere. Within two years, engineers were able to develop adequate

thermal shielding for the vehicle, which would potentially face angles of attack at up to

forty-five degrees upon entry into the atmosphere and endure temperatures as high as

1,5OO- 1,6OO degrees Centigrade. gfter intensive ground trials, the first and only BOR- I spaceplane was launched on July 15, 1969, on an R- 12 missile, just six days before the gpollo I I

landing. One Russian historian later summarized the outcome:

Test results showed that the "lifting body" was marvelously balanced even at angles of

attack exceeding 60 °. ,Zind although the first model was made of wood and was

equipped with the gear of a sizeweight mock-up, it was the model from which scientific results were obtained, before its burnup at altitudes of 60-70 kilometers. ''2

Efforts in other fronts in the Spiral program also continued at the time. P, twentykilometer-long landing strip was in the process of construction. Engineers had also evidently built

a subsonic model of the spaceptane equipped with instrumentation transferred from the Tu-95

bomber. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that at least three drop flights were performed during this

I12. v. ggeyev, "Unknown Pagesof Space Science: In Flight--The 'BOR'" (English title). Z4viatsiya i kosmonavtika no I (January 1992): 42-43: E-mail correspondence, Igor t_fanasyevto the author. December II. 1997.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

period from altitudes of 9,000 meters, which "fully confirmed the design characteristics of the

Spiral airplane. "''_ At the same time, MMZ Zenit, under its BOR program, emerged with plans for

two new subscale lifting bodies, BOR-2 and BOR-3. Again, the purpose of the work was to carry

out research on aerodynamic characteristics, heat exchange, and thermal shielding of the Spiral

design at hypersonic velocities. The data gathering was limited to altitudes of ten to I00 kilometers, speeds of Mach 5 to 13.5, and angles of attack of fifteen to sixty-five degrees. Another variant. the BOR-4 model, which was designed on the basis of BOR-2, would be the basic "working

horse" of the BOR program and use new heat-shielding material. ''4

TsAGI also carried out a huge amount of research on the carrier aircraft for Spiral, the

so-called Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft (GSR), which would accelerate the actual spaceplane to

speeds of Mach 4-6 during operational missions, Scientists studied two variants of the carrier,

GSR-I and GSR-2, both of which went through a full cycle of testing in wind tunnels at the

institute. A large part of this work, performed between 1965 and 1975, was research focused

on methods of testing models with air ducts over the "gondola" propulsion units during flight

at hypersonic velocities.'"

Trouble struck the Spiral program in 1969. By this time, engineers needed a formal decree of

the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers to continue serious work. Unfortunately for

Spiral Chief Designer Lozino-Lozinskiy, this is where Minister Grechko stepped in. Although the

appropriate ministers and Communist Party leaders, in 1969, evidently signed the project order,

Grechko scrawled on the document "This is a fantasy. ..... Lozino-Lozinskiy, perhaps being generous to Grechko, recalled later that "the Soviet leadership felt it would take too much time and

money to bring the program all the way to completion.' .... A variety of other problems, all related to money, seems to have slowed down the project. Despite the considerable theoretical work

on the GSR, the creation of flight models required a huge financial commitment, which was

unavailable. By the early 1970s, scientists were also coming to the opinion that an air-launched

reusable spaceplane system might not be the best route to take; a vertical missile-launched system might offer a much cheaper and efficient alternative. Research on liquid hydrogen engines for

the carrier aircraft also stalled sometime in 1967 or 1968, apparently because the Soviet government was "biased" against this work, carried out by Struminskiy and Lyulka, at the Institute of

Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Novosibirsk, which was under the Academy of Sciences. ''_

Despite Grechko's prohibition on Spiral work, MMZZenit's space branch continued

low-level work "semi-legally" on the Spiral project. The scope of the post-1969 work was, in

fact, quite remarkable, and one wonders how Lozino-Lozinskiy managed to sustain it. Between

1969 and 1974, the Gromov Flight-Research Institute and TsAGI launched seven BOR-2 and

BOR-3 subscale spaceplanes using the R-12 missile on suborbital and/or vertical launches to

113. Gleb E. Lozino Lozinskiy and Vladimir E. Plokhikh, "Reusable Space Systems and International

Cooperation," ,qerospaceZlrnerica (June 1990): 37-40; G. Titov. "... This Is Needed for All of Us" (English title),

l]uiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 4 (April 1993): 2-3. Unconfirmed Western sources also suggestthat there may have

been drop tests of the spaceplanein the late 1960s.See, for example, Peter N. James,Soviet Conquest FromSpace

(New Rochelle. NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1974), p. 129 Note that these drop tests, if they did occur, were

different from subsequent tests in 1976-78.

114. Afanasyev correspondence, December II, 1997,

I15. Ts_l-Osnounyyeetapy nauehnoy deyatelnostL 1968-1993 (Moscow: Nauka, 1996), p. 156.

116. Titov, "... This Is Needed for All of Us," P,nother source saysthat Grechko's inscription was "We will

not engageourselveswith a fantasy." SeeVyecheslav Kazmin, "The 'Quiet' Tragedyof EPOS" (English title), Krylya

rodiny no. I (January 1991): 4-5.

II 7. Lozino-LozinskJy and Plokhikh, "ReusableSpaceSystems and International Cooperation," p. 38

II 8. Lardier,L'ZistronautiqueSouietique, p. 175;V. Struminskiy, "Hydrogen on Earth and in Space" (English

title), undated and unsourced article provided by Christian Lardier: E-mail correspondence, Igor Afanasyev to the

author, December7, 1997.

789
790

IOO-kilometer altitudes, testing them at hypersonic velocities between Mach 3 and Mach 14.

Unlike their BOR-I predecessor, both BAR-2 and BAR-3 were metalloid vehicles. Their

characteristics were:

Model Length Mass Scale to EPOS

BAR-2 3 meters 1.2 tons I/3

BAR-3 4 meters 1.5 tons 1/2

The BAR-2 and BAR-3 flights allowed engineers to clarify the balance and characteristics of

longitudinal stability and compare the data to those from ground wind tunnels. Experimental data

were obtained on the conversion of the laminar boundary layer into a turbulent layer and on

the effects of altitude and flight speed on the distribution of pressure across the surface of an

airframe apparatus with a complex geometric shape. In addition, algorithms for the control of

the vehicles' movements were tested, and extensive research was conducted on aerodynamic

heating, heat exchange, and thermal protection of various surface elements."9 Despite the significant research in the early 1970s, the program, as a whole, lost sight of its future after

Grechko's pronouncement in 1969. The ambitious plans of the mid-1960s--of having a versatile reusable small-scale spaceplane--disappeared amid the military's favoritism for automated

systems.

Grechko and Krylov also influenced the course of the N I program. Since the genesis of

the program in the early t960s, Korolev had attempted to interest the military in the rocket's

capabilities, knowing that strong military interest would ensure robust funding for the effort.

t_ffer Korolev's death, Mishin continued to lobby the military, proposing various forms of military complexes that could be orbited by the N I. Research on large-scale space-based armaments systems had begun as early as 1968; in gpri[ 1969, Mishin had briefed Soviet leader

Brezhnev on the uses of the N I rocket for launching powerful anti-ballistic missile complexes

into space. Later, in the autumn of 1969, Mishin had also personally visited the top-secret

Institute of Nuclear Physics at Novosibirsk to talk to scientists about the possibility of designing transportable particle beam accelerators that could be launched on the N I. '_°

Many such concepts from TsKBEM were studied in cooperation with various Academy of

Sciences and industrial scientific institutes in 1970 and 197I. While these were not programs

to which the Soviet government fully committed, they were in fact considered at very high

levels. In June 1970, Mishin discussed the prospects of the Luch (" Ray") system, a space-based

laser weapons system, with P,fanasyev and Keldysh. By September of the same year, concrete

work on Luch was planned for 1973, simultaneously with operational launches of the N I

booster. Later, in November t970, Mishin met with Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet P,ir

Defense Forces Marshal Pavet F. Batitskiy to brief him on Luch. All Soviet anti-ballistic missile

and anti-satellite forces were under Batitskiy's command at the time. From the available

evidence, Mishin faced a very difficult road in convincing military leaders of the need for the

N t. P,s with their American counterparts, Soviet generals and marshals could find little use for

very heavy-lift launch vehicles to accomplish military goals. One scientist recalled later that at

the initial stages of research on space-based particle beam accelerators, there was a peer review

119. _geyev,"Unknown Pagesof SpaceScience";Lardier.L_stronautique Souietique. p. 250: P_ndrey

Batashev,"SteepTurnsof theSpiral./_QuarterCenturyDidNot Sufficefor Implementingthe ProJectCreatedbythe

'Father'of the SovietShuttle" (Englishtitle). Trud,June30, 1994.p. 4: K. K. Vasilchenko,et al.. eds.,Letnyyeissle

douaniya i ispytaniya: [ragmenty istoriii souremennoyesostoyaniye nauchno-tekhnieheskiysbornik (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye. 1993), pp. 34. 54-55. 62; Ts,zlCil-Osnounyyeetapy nauehnoy deyatelnosti, pp. 154: Henry

Matthews,TheSecretStoryo[ theSouietSpaceShuttle(Beirut,Leb.:HenryMatthews,1994),p. 3I.

120. Sagdeev,TheMakingo[ a SouietScientist,pp. 123-24.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

of Mishin's proposal, and that by the end of 1970, scientists had managed to terminate the

project, although Mishin did give a modest contract to the Institute of Nuclear Physics to

continue work on the topic. '_'

Opening Up

In light of the fundamental connection between the space and military programs of the

Soviet Union, it was all the more curious when, in the early 19TOs, the Soviets began to very

slowly open up their space program to the general public. In an unprecedented act that would

have been unthinkable just five years earlier, the Soviet censors allowed the name of Valentin

P. Glushko to be published openly for the first time. In March 1971, a one-volume encyclopedia

of "cosmonautics" was published, with Glushko listed as its editor. Previous editions had

merely listed the editor as G. V. Petrovich, a pseudonym for the chief designer. The Moscow

newspaper Prauda, in a postpublication article, clearly linked Glushko to Petrovich, confirming

what many in the West had long suspected. '2_That it was Glushko, and not Chelomey or

Yangel, whose name was declassified hints at the growing eminence and power the rocket chief

designer wielded. Of the six original members of the old Council of Chief Designers, Glushko

was the first one to see his name in print after the launch of Sputnik. Few biographical details

were, of course, released, and it would not be until the early 1990s before even the name of his

organization, the Design Bureau of Power Machine Building (KB EnergoMash), was allowed to

be published.

Mishin was also in the news, albeit in an oblique manner. In 1972, a French journalist,

Pierre Dumas, authored an article in the journal La Recherche Spatiale (Space Research) in

which he named Academician Mishin as one of the authors of a project to send "A Manned

Space Train to Mars in 1978.' .... It was the very first publication linking his name with the

Soviet space program. Coincidentally or not, Mishin also wrote his first article for the Soviet

media under the pseudonym "Professor M. Vasilyev" in lqpril 1972. In this article in Prauda,

"Vasilyev" glowingly praised the achievements of the late Korolev. ':4 Ironically, at exactly the

same time, a Ukrainian {migr{ published a remarkable analysis of the organization of the Soviet

space program. Taking a cue from the French article mentioning Mishin, the author accurately

named Mishin as the still-unknown "Chief Designer" of the Soviet space program. ':_ Without

exception, all Western analysts, including the CIA, ignored this claim, and for at least the next

15 years or so, "expert observers" in the West continued to tout the names of Yangel or

Chelomey as the successor to Korolev.

Unlike Mishin, one employee of TsKBEM was allowed to speak and appear under his

own name: Department Chief Boris V. Raushenbakh. In a revelation that caused a mini-sensation in the West, the fifty-five-year-old Raushenbakh was identified as a "specialist in space

engineering" during the press conference following the Soyuz I0 flight in late April 1971. '26It

121. Ibid., p. 124.

122. "Soviet SpaceChief Identified as Editor of an Encyclopedia," New York Times, March 19, 1971,p. 3.

123. Pierre Dumas. "Un Train Spatial Habit_ Vers Mars En 1978." [a RechercheSpafiale no. 3 (May-June

1972): 26. Seealso Christian Lardier, "Soviet Space Designers When They Were Secrets," presented at the 47th

Congress of the International Astronautical Federation,IAA-96-1AA.2.209.

124 Professor M Vasilyev, "Sputnik: Start of the Space Era" (English title), Prauda, April I0, 1972. Further

articles under the same pseudonym were published in Izuestiya on December 28, 1973, and Krasnaya zuezda on

April 12, 1974.Seealso Lardier, "Soviet Space DesignersWhen They Were Secrets."

125. S. Yu Protsyuk, "Technical Chronicle: Who Runs the Program of Mastering Space in the USSR?"

(English title), Ukrainian Engineering News 23 (March-April 1972): 60-72. This article is available as NAS_

Technical Translation TT-14882, dated May 1913.

126 Theodore Shabad, "Soviet Identifies 'SpaceSpecialist'," Ne_uYork Times. May 2, 1971.

791
792

may have been Raushenbakh's considerable talents as a scholar, an orator, a writer, a scientist,

and an engineer that posited him with this opportunity, Hailing from German origins, in 1948, he

had edited a Russian translation of a classic work

by Hermann Oberth on space navigation. He had

obtained the equivalent of a Ph.D. in 1958 and

become a Corresponding Member of the USSR

Academy of Sciences in July 1966. His engineering specialty was satellite orientation systems--a

field that he had pioneered in the Soviet Union in

the mid-1950s--but his interests were far and

wide. He eventually became a doctor of theology.

studying the relationship between science and

religion, and he wrote several books on the mathematical analyses of perspectives in ancient and

modern art,"

In another unprecedented move. the Soviet

government allowed an American journalist to

visit the Cosmonaut Training Center, In March

1972, John Noble Wilford, a reporter for The

New York Times, took a one-day visit to

Zvezdnyy gorodok (Starry Town) in support of a

page-one write-up, which was published later

that month. A dark bronze statue of first cosmonaut Yuriy A. Gagarin welcomed Wilford into the

closed city. located about forty kilometers northChief Designer Valentin _lushko appears here in

his official portrait dating from the late t960s

His name _uas officially declassified by Souiet

authorities in t97t. the first major chief designer m

the Soviet space program to receive this honor

before his death (files of Peter Corin)

east of Moscow near the industrial town of Shchelkovo. /qs with many secret Soviet cities,

Zvezdnyy gorodok was not identified on any public maps and was hidden from the major highway by a forest. By Wilford's estimates, the population of the town was 1,500 to 2,000. He was

the first Westerner to see many of the ground trainers used by cosmonauts prior to their flights.

While his hosts, cosmonauts Shatalov and Yeliseyev, spoke mostly about the future of

Earth-orbital space stations, they did not shy away from the obvious question of a piloted lunar

landing. When asked whether Soviet cosmonauts might land on the Moon by 197.5, Yeliseyev

replied. "Yes. By that time we will probably send our people to the moon.' ..... Wilford himself

got the impression of an active and expanding Soviet space program.

U.S. perceptions of the Soviet space program in the early 1970s differed dramatically,

depending on the perspective. Having fallen prey to Soviet denials about their Moon program,

most public observers tended to discount claims by a few lone analysts that the Soviets

had ever tried to send cosmonauts to the Moon. The CIA, on the other hand, was clearly in a

better position to assess what the Soviets were doing. Through the failures and delays of

their lunar program. LIS. intelligence was keyed into the hidden arcana of the Soviet space

127. Yaroslav Golovanov. Koroteu. fakty i mily (Moscow: Nauka. 1994), pp. 575-76 Among other revelations m 1971 was the identification of K N. Rudnev as the chair o[ the State Commission for the first Vostok mis

sion in t961. See "Brezhnev Space Director Since 1963." Space Daily, April 15 197 I: Nicholas Danilof[. The Kremlin

and the Cosmos (New York: Alfred g. Knopf. 1972). pp. 80-81.

128 John Noble V,/itford. "Soviet Space Center: Hope Amid Expansion." New York Times. March 22, t972,

pp. I. 20

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

program. In a top secret National Intelligence Estimate issued in March 1970, the CIA very

accurately predicted that:

Technical problems with both the [NI] vehicle and the [Proton] booster will delay a

manned lunar landing mission until 1973 at the earliest and probably beyond.

Nevertheless, a lunar landing mission remains on the books as a venture to be carried

out in due course. ''_

CORONA photo-reconnaissance satellites were able to discern remarkable detail of hardware. By the time of their July 1971 estimate, the CIA produced a detailed drawing of the still

secret N I and its ground infrastructure. Analysts apparently attributed a far greater ability to the

N I rocket than it actually had: according to CIA analysts, the rocket was capable of injecting

as much as 125 tons into Earth orbit when its real capability was closer to ninety tons.

The errors in analysis were compensated by the speed of information collection: the July 1971

estimate was issued just four days after the third N I launch failure but contained detailed information on the accident. Listing all major liquid hydrogen upper stage programs, the CIA also

added quite correctly: "All things considered . . . we think it is unlikely that development of

high-energy upper stages has progressed far enough for the Soviets to begin flight-testing them

on the [Proton] or the [N I] in the near future.' .....

The Soviets' increased openness and the CIA's much better intelligence collection means

were both big factors in the early 1970s as the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in

their first major cooperative venture in space in the backdrop of detente. Intensive discussions

on a cooperative human spaceflight effort had begun as early as 1969 between then-NASA

Administrator Thomas O. Paine and USSR Academy of Sciences President Mstislav V. Keldysh.

Apart from the purely political value in support of d_tente, any potential joint mission would

have functional advantages for both sides. For NASA, the year 1972 would be the end of an

era in space history as the Apollo lunar landing missions began to wind down. Apollo 16 was

set for April 1972, while the last mission, Apollo 17, was scheduled for December 1972. Flights

in the NASA Skylab space station program were set for 1973 and 1974, followed by a hiatus in

the piloted space program for at least five years before the introduction of the reusable Space

Shuttle. A joint flight in the interim period would provide NASA engineers with valuable piloted spaceflight experience. For the Soviets, a joint mission would be most useful from a public

relations perspective--that is, to demonstrate that its space technology was on a par with that

129. u.s. Central Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate II-1-69: The Soviet SpaceProgram,"

Washington. D.C., March 26. 1970, p, 3, as declassified in 1997 by the ClA Historical Review Program.

130. CIA, "National Intelligence Estimate If 1-71: The Soviet Space Program," pp, t0, 12, 13. The actual

and suspected characteristics of the NI, calledthe "j-vehicle" by the Chq, areshown in the [oltowing table. The CI/q

data are [rom July 1971.

Item Actual ClA Estimation

Total Length 105.3 meters (m) 96.6 m

StageI Length/BaseDiameter 303 m/16.9 m 25.6 m/17.1 m

StageII Length/BaseDiameter 205 mllO,3 m 2 I0 m/l 1.3m

StageIII Length/BaseDiameter 11.5m/6,0 m 13.1 m179 m

StageIV Length/BaseDiameter 8.0 m16.0m 17.4m16.1m

Launch Mass 2,820 tons 4,536 tons

Si:age I Thrust 4.615 tons 5,897-6,350 tons

StageII Thrust 1,432tons 1,58Btons

StageIII Thrust 164tons 544 tons

StageIV Thrust 4 _tons 200 tons

Payloadto Low-Earth Orbit 90 tons 125tons

793
794

of the U.S. space program--a claim that had been difficult to support in the previous few years.

By early April 1972, Vladimir A. Kotelnikov, the Deputy Chairman of Interkosmos, and George M.

Low, Deputy Administrator at NASA, had agreed to a formal technical agreement on the docking

of a Soyuz and an Apollo spacecraft in orbit around Earth in July 1975. A formal document,

"Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful

Purposes," confirming this arrangement was signed by President Richard M, Nixon and Council

of Ministers Chairman Aleksey N. Kosygin on May 24, 1972.'" The American side called the project the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, while the Soviets used the phrase Apollo-Soyuz Experimental

Flight (EPAS).

The birth of EPAS coincided with major changes within TsKBEM, secretly the prime

contractor firm for the joint program. For several years, Chief Designer Mishin had been proposing for a fundamental change in the hierarchical makeup of his design bureau. With the blessing

of the Ministry of General Machine Building, on July 14, 1972, the TsKBEM structure was reorganized, for the first time introducing a new level of chief designers within the design bureau.

Mishin would remain the Chief Designer and Chief of TsKBEM. Under him, there

were six chief designers, each responsible for one of six projects: the N I rocket, the L3M lunar

landing complex, the DOS-7K space station, the 7K-S military Soyuz, the EPAS international project, and the RT-2PU ICBM. '_ As before, Sergey O. Okhapkin remained Mishin's First Deputy

Chief Designer for all programs. Both Mishin and Okhapkin oversaw four other deputy chief

designers who were in charge of specific technical areas.'" One of Mishin's key deputies was

Konstantin D. Bushuyev, whose name was also added to the growing roster of people revealed

to the world. In June 1971, the Soviets named him as the director of the Soviet portion of the

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The Americans had, for obvious reasons, no knowledge of Bushuyev's

extraordinarily important role in the creation of the Soviet space program.

The Soviet public, like those abroad, continued to be fed a steady diet of propaganda

concerning their space program. While the space effort may have engendered a strong degree of

support in the late 1950s and early 1960s, by the early 1970s, as the country's economy ground

into the "great stagnation," people were less prone to be vocally in favor of it. g story in The

Washington Post in 1971 illustrates the point. In February 1971, a large portion of potatoes sold

in Moscow had been too rotten to eat. Outraged by the dearth in quality in a staple Russian food

item, one indignant grandmother declared to a crowd waiting to buy potatoes at a central farm

market: "We have rockets, right7 Of course, right. We have Sputniks, right? Of course, right, They

fly beautifully in outer space. So I say to you, dear friends, Why don't we just send these rotten

potatoes into outer space too." There was a small round of applause for her modest proposal. A

New York Times correspondent added from Moscow that "Although criticism [of the space program] is kept muted by the controlled Soviet media, it is well known here that many Russians are

irritated by the costly space ventures when life here is still far from satisfactory." ,,4

131. Ezelland Ezell.TheParlnersflip, pp. 182-93: Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporalsiya, p. 195

132. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 160, 639. The six chief designerswere B. /_.

Dorofeyev{NI), V. A. Borisov(L3M), Yu. P.Semenov(DOS 7K), Ye.V, Shabarov (7K-S),K D. Bushuyev {EPAS),and

I. N. Sadovskiy(RT-2P).

133. The four deputy chief designerswere M, V. Melnikov ("special themes"), V. V Simakin, A. P. Abramov

(ground equipment and experimentalwork), and Ya. I. Tregub (testing and flight control). There were also several

deputy chiefs of TsKBEMwho were not designers:M. I Samokhin (standard testing), A. P.Tishkin (coordination), G

M Paukov{cadres), G M Yakovenko(regimes). and B. Ye. Chertok (guidance systems). The First Deputy Chief of

]-sKBEMwas G. V. Sovkov (redesign,construction, and generalproblems). Seeibid., p. 160.

134. The first story is from the March 5, 1971,issueof TheWashington Post The second is from the February

28, 1971,issueof The New York Times Both arereterencedin SouietSpacePrograms,1966-70: _oa/s and Purposes,

Organization, Resources.Facilitiesand Hardware. Manned and Unmanned Flight Programs,Bioastronautics_Ciui/ and

Military Applications, Projectionso[ FuturePlans..7]ttitudes Toward International Cooperation and SpaceLaw, prepared forthe Committee on Aeronautical and SpaceSciences,U.S.Senate,92d Cong., I st sess.(Washington, DC:U.S.

Government Printing Office. December1971), p. 35,

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

While the criticisms may have been valid, the Soviet public actually knew little about the

workings of the Soviet space program. In all unclassified documentation, TsKBEM was merely

known as the nondescript "post office box number 65 I." Despite the anonymity, the town of

Kaliningrad near Moscow seems to have been a major beneficiary of the massive industrial

infrastructure built to support operations at TsKBEM. Dozens of high-quality households,

apartment complexes, and well-stocked stores were built in the 1960s as more and more

engineers from the best educational institutions all over the country joined the design bureau.

At the time of the 1972 shakeup, Mishin oversaw an enterprise of 28,959 employees, most of

whom were based in Kaliningrad. Because all work at TsKBEM was classified top secret,

engineers were constantly shadowed by individuals from the "First Department," whose job it

was to maintain tight security. As a compensatory measure, wage rates at TsKBEM were about

25-30 percent higher than those in similar institutions engaged in scientific or engineering

work. Korolev's death, however, seems to have had some deleterious effects on the workforce.

A former engineer who emigrated to the West in the late 1970s recalled:

,its long as Korolyov was alive. TsKBEM personnel of conscription age were not required

to serve in the army. The situation changed dramatically under Mishin. Towards the end

o/the 1960s all deferments were canceled and men were called up in droves. In June

I_968, a virtual round-up was carried out in Kaliningrad .... Even though several

months later many of the men began returning, one o/the incentives for working at

TsKBEM was gone, Many began to seek jobs elsewhere. It was under these circumstances that the author left TsKBEM in 1970 .... ,35

Losses in human potential were not limited to TsKBEM In 1971, the Soviet space program

lost three of its major leaders. On June 25, 1971, Chief Designer Aleksey M. Isayev of the

Design Bureau of Chemical Machine Building in Kaliningrad passed away at the age of sixtytwo after a heart attack. His organization, previously known as OKB-2, had designed almost all

space-based propulsion systems in the Soviet space program, including those for the Vostok,

Voskhod, Soyuz, Salyut, L I, and LOK spacecraft. One of the first engineers to travel to Germany

in 1945, Isayev had later headed a group at the famous NII-88, where he had led efforts to

develop rocket engines for various ballistic, cruise, surface-to-air, and anti-ballistic missiles,

eventually moving into the space field. One of his major contributions was the development of

the first Soviet high-energy cryogenic engine, created for an upper stage of the N I rocket. Isayev

had been offered the honor of becoming an academician of the Academy of Sciences, but he

had refused on the grounds that he was an engineer, not a scientist. His name was revealed to

the general public only upon his death. '_°

Less than two months later, on August 3, 1971, fifty-six-year-old Chief Designer Georgiy

N. Babakin passed away. As head of the design bureau of the S. A Lavochkin State Union

Machine Building Plant since 1965, Babakin had overseen the tremendous successes of the

Soviet automated lunar and interplanetary programs. In the piloted space programs, he had

played prominent roles in determining policy by participating in various councils involved in the

N I-L3 lunar programs. The crowning successes of Babakin's tenure were the Luna 16 soil sample return and the Lunokhod I lunar rover missions in late 1970, both of which were critical to

135. Victor Yevsikov,Re-EntryTechnologyand the SovietSpaceProgram (SomePersonalObservations) (Falls

Church, V/q: Delphic Associates, 1982). pp. I, 3, 5, 12

136. "Aleksei Isayev, Engineer in Russian Space Efforts," New York Times, June 27, 1971, p. 46: "Alexei

Isayev,Space Scientist Dies." Washington Post. June 21, 1971, p. 10: Peter/qlmquist, Red Forge:Soviet Military

Industry Since 1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 179, footnote 7.V. N Bogomolov succeeded

Isayevas Chief Designer of KB KhimMash.

795
796

supporting the Soviet claim that they were focusing exclusively on automated lunar exploration. One of Babakin's final dreams had been to recover soil samples from the far side of the

Moon. Work on such a project had, in fact, begun in 1970 during his lifetime. The plan consisted of an orbiter and a lander--the former to serve as a communications satellite between

the latter and Earth. The mission was evidently scheduled for launch sometime in 1972, but

after Babakin's death, the idea gradually fell to the wayside, partially because of the high level

of technical complexity. '_7Academy of Sciences Corresponding Member Babakin had been

working as the deputy chair of the Soyuz I I investigation commission at the time of his death.

A third loss in 1971 was perhaps the most important from a historical perspective. One of

the most influential figures in the Soviet missile and space programs, Chief Designer Mikhail K.

Yangel died on October 25, 197 I, at the age of sixty. '_ As the architect behind the new generation of Soviet strategic ballistic missiles, Yangel perhaps had more of an influence on the history of the Soviet Union than Korolev. Under his tutelage, KB Yuzhnoye created several

high-performance ICBMs. such as the R-16, the R-36, and the R-36M, for the Strategic Missile

Forces. In the space sector, his team was responsible for a variety of military satellites and satellite launch vehicles. Yangel had never had a strong interest in the piloted space program,

although, from time to time, had tabled proposals such as the R-56 plan for a lunar landing or

an even more ambitious Mars mission proposal in 1969. He was also closely involved in the

development of the N I-L3 system, participating actively in all meetings related to the program--an interest partly stoked by his organization's help in creating the main lunar lander

engine. In the last years of his life, he had been beset by serious illnesses and had had to relinquish some of his day-to-day duties. On his sixtieth birthday, October 25, 197 I, there was a

big reception in his honor at the offices of Minister Afanasyev. During the celebrations. Yangel

complained about not feeling well and went to lie down on the sofa in an adjacent room, For

a long time, there was no word from the room. After some time, attendees discovered him dead

on the couch. It was his fifth heart attack.'"

A final transitory event in the space program was not a death, but a retirement. In October

1971, sixty-year-old Col. General Nikolay P. Kamanin formally resigned as the Air Force

Commander-in-Chief's Aide for Space, a post he had held since May 1966. Officially, he had

been responsible for the Cosmonaut Training Center, the Air Force Biomedical Service, and

the Air Force Solar Service, Throughout a ten-year period, Kamanin had not only served as the

doctrinal leader of the cosmonaut corps, but also as a vocal and insistent supporter of piloted

space programs. Despite speculation in the West that Kamanin was a casualty of a post-Soyuz

II disaster shakeup, the general had, in fact, decided to retire before the end of that tragic

mission. '_° His rote in the Soviet space program has often been compared to that of Donald K.

"Deke" Slayton at NASA--that is. as a major player in the selection and training of flight

crews. But Kamanin, in many ways, exceeded that mandate by his important contributions to

137, "Georgi Babakin. Soviet Scientist," New York Times. August 5, 1971, p. 36: N G Babakin. A. N

Banketov,and V N. Smorkalov, _. N Bobakin: z.hizn i deyatelnost (Moscow Adamant. 1996). pp. ?3-75 Babakin

was succeeded by S S Kryukov as Chief Designer of the design bureau of GSMZ S. A. [avochkin.

138 "Mikhail Yangel. Soviet SpaceAide: Chief Designer of Rocketsfor Exploration Dies." New York Times,

October 27 1971,p. 50.

139 Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu: tom 2, pp. 86 87: Yu. V. Biryukov. "Seventieth Birthday of Vladimir

Fedorovich Lltkin" (English title), Zemlya i vselennaya no. 3 (May-June 1994): 45-50. Yangelwas succeeded by

V. F.Lltkin

140r Kamanin, "This Should Never Happen Again!," no. 24. The decision to replace Kamanin with a veter

an cosmonaut was adopted on June25, 197I, five days before the return of the Soyuz I I crew. Seealso "Memorable

Dates" (English title), ix!ovosti kosmonautikl 12-13 (June 3-30, 1996): 76. For Kamanin's appointment to become

the Air ForceCommander-in Chief's Aide for Space,seeN. R Kamanin. 5krytiy kosmos:krtiga utoraya, 1964-t966gg

(Moscow: Infortekst IF, 1991), pp. 321,339. 341.

CHRLLENGE TO FLPOLLO
DREAMS UNFULFILLED

the definition of state policy as well as his direct participation on flight control teams for almost all Soviet

piloted space missions between 1961 and 1971.

Having retired from the public eye, Kamanin did not

return to it, He died on March 13, 1982, at the age of

seventy-three. '*'

Perhaps in retrospect, Kamanin's greatest contributions to the history of the Soviet space program were his

personal diaries. Meticulously written between 1960

and 1974, they provide an undeniably rare view into the

emergence of the Soviet space effort. With an eye for

analysis and reflection, Kamanin recorded much of the

arcana of the decade through the lens of an active participant. Even with the declassification of archival material from the early days of the Soviet space program, his

journals, which have been published piecemeal by his

son in the Soviet and Russian media since 1989, add

richly to a history often devoid of documentation. But

like most figures of that era, Kamanin wrote with his

own biases--prejudices that often leap out of his writings. A diehard Stalinist to the end, Kamanin was quick

to criticize everyone but himself in the failures of the

Soviet space program, repeatedly castigating Korolev.

Mishin, Ustinov, Smirnov, Afanasyev, and many cosmonauts. The cosmonauts, especially, did not have an

General Nikotay Kamanin was the 7tir force

Commander-in Chief's Aide for Space His

personal diaries, spanning a fourteen-year

period from 1960 to 1974. have been central

to understanding the intricacies of the Souief

piloted space program during #_e 1960s

(files of Peter C_orin)

easy relationship with him. In summing up Kamanin's relations with the cosmonauts, one

famous Russian journalist, Yaroslav K. Golovanov, later accurately summed up the general's own

personality:

I think that the majority of the cosmonauts did not like him .... Some of them confided this to me even back in the 1960s .... Kamanin kept a tight rein on them, demanding utter discipline and unquestioning obedience. He indulged himself in what was

essentially a lack of responsibility that allowed him to demean young men tar superior

to himself, and he forced this style o[ leadership onto the whole first echelon o[ cosmonauts. To Kamanin it was flattering that these world famous people had to obey him,

just like new recruits obey their corporal, It was even easier/or him to control the people who still had to make a [light, Zt[ter all. it largely depended on Kamanin when. with

whom, and on which mission they flew .... Kamanin was [eared, but not loved. Unlike

his big idol Stalin, he did not succeed in being loved and feared at the same time. ''_'

141. Glenn Fowler. "N R Kamanin. Soviet General," New York Times. March 15. 1982, p B6.

142, Golovanov. Koroieu. p. 665: Bart Hendfickx. "lhe Kamanin Diaries 1960-1963." ]ournal of the British

Interplanetary 5ociety 50 (January 1997): 33 40.

797

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ASHES TO SHES

The early 1970s in the Soviet piloted space program was a period characterized by a noticeable lack of self-confidence, As substantial achievements began to dwindle dramatically, officials and engineers began to grasp desperately for any dim possibility of success. The Soyuz I I

tragedy was obviously a severe blow. but if Ustinov. Mishin. and others believed that the spate

of misfortune was over. they were wrong. In the two years following the deaths of

Dobrovolskiy. Volkov. and Patsayev. the Soviet space establishment was beset by failure after

failure--at the very same time that the Soviets were engaged in a bid to prove their parity with

the United States in space achievements. Ironically, it was precisely during these troubled years

that engineers produced, for the first time, a realistic and expansive vision of future space

exploration--one that had good reason to succeed. These projects, such as the construction

of giant space stations in Earth orbit and the long-term exploration of the Moon, were all, of

course, dependent on the political caprices of the key influential players. In the end, as political imperatives had played a role in creating much of the early Soviet space program, they

would also play a role in destroying the new vision.

The Multirole Orbital Complex

Throughout the setbacks of the DOS program, Chief Designer Mishin continued to focus

efforts at his design bureau on two major long-range goals: the accomplishment of advanced

lunar landing missions and the establishment of large-scale stations in Earth orbit. The former

consisted of the Multirole Orbital Complex (MOK), whose central element was the Multirole

Space Base-Station (MKBS)--a giant space station that had been under study since the mid196Os, Like the long-term lunar bases that Mishin expected to establish in the 1980s, the MOK,

in spirit at least, had more of a connection with the science fiction ideas from the pre-Sputnik

era than the incremental developments of the 1970s. These two projects were essentially what

he conceived as the first steps in the human migration into space--a vision foretold by the

early-century pioneers such as Tsiolkovskiy, Oberth, and Kondratyuk. To Mishin's credit, he

made sure that the MOK not only had a cogent vision but also detailed substantiation from a

funding perspective.

The basic idea behind the MOK was the establishment of a large-scale complex in Earth

orbit to support a variety of goals, all focused on improving life on Earth. The heart of this complex would be the MKBS, a giant piloted space station launched by the N I, which would be

tended by a menagerie of smaller spacecraft flying to and from orbital factories. Mishin's own

description from 1989 touches on the essence of the effort, which would involve:

799
8O0

a broad program for space exploration in eircumterrestrial space within the Earth-Moon

radius, including participation in solving food. energy, and ecology problems. Using a

minimum number of fully equipped, standard space facilities in ground and orbital

bases, the plan was to saturate local space with numerous useful vehicles.'

Some of the goals of the MOK sounded positively outlandish:

[Elements of the MOK] would even be able to influence the climate and lighting for cities,

using a system of mirrors and solar light. It was a quite realistic project. [There would

also be the] removal of harmful production facilities into space and full use of the opportunities in space--high and low temperatures, high vacuum, conditions close to weightlessness. 7tnd 90 percent of all these operations would be carried out without humans."

The ongoing DOS program in the early 1910s was seen as something of a precursor to the

MOK and therefore was seen less as a competitor than a complement to the new proposal.

Mishin's timetables were fairly ambitious. By September 1970, he was planning to have the

draft plan for the MOK ready by 1972 and to start flying station components into orbit using

uprated versions of the N I by 1974.' In November 1970, Mishin met with Military-Industrial

Commission Chairman Smirnov to discuss the MKBS, but a decision was postponed until further evaluation by a review commission. One of the obstacles to a decision may have been a

factor that had perennially slowed down many other programs: interest from the military. In

May 1971, Mishin discussed the issue of a military tactical-technical requirement with

Commander of the Chief Directorate of Space Assets Lt. General Andrey G. Karas. The possibility of including both passive and active military systems aboard the MKBS had been considered for many years, and some of these proposals were linked to the N I-related anti-ballistic

missile systems of the day.

By mid- 197 I, Mishin's engineers were engaged in revisions of the technical plan for the first

two stations, MKBS-I and MKBS-2, presumably based on military, scientific, and technological limitations. Ustinov's blessing was evidence that the effort was gathering support. In

August 197 I, a month after the Soyuz I I disaster, Mishin and Ustinov discussed the long-range

plan for Soviet Earth-orbital stations during the 1971-80 period. The Soviet space effort would

start off with Mishin's DOS, then move to Chelomey's military Almaz, and then finally migrate

to the giant MKBS-I in the mid-1970s and MKBS-2 by the end of the decade. Mishin already

had plans to launch the first components of MKBS-I on NI boosters 10L and IlL, perhaps

amid the initial lunar exploration phase of the L3 project. The last few months of 1971 were an

intense period for sharpening the vision of the MOKIMKBS proposal. Discussions focused on

technical aspects, such as the docking systems for heavy add-on modules for the station, and

managerial aspects, such as the preparation of a formal decree in support of the program. On

November 12, 197 I, Mishin met with Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev and his

First Deputy Tyulin specifically to discuss the MOK/MKBS proposal. Both agreed to a new tactical-technical requirement, drawn up with the cooperation of the military. The meeting resulted in a recommendation for a Military-Industrial Commission decree on the issue and a rough

timetable for the development of the complex. Mishin's engineers could expect to defend the

technical plan for the MKBS at the Scientific-Technical Council of the Ministry of General

Machine Building by mid-December 1972.

I A Tarasov."Missions in Dreams and Reality" (English title), Prauda. October 20, 1989. p. 4

2 Ib_d

3 lhe uprated NI boosters would use the BIok S and Blok Sa upper stages

CHALLENGE TO _,POLLO
ASHES TO AI_SHES

On February 23, 1972, the Military-Industrial Commission issued a formal decree calling

for work on a technical proposal for the creation of the MOK. 4gs a result, throughout the second half of 1972 and the first half of 197"3_engineers at TsKBEM, including several leading

Deputy Chief Designers, such as gnatoliy P. Abramov. Boris Ye. Chertok, Mikhail V. Melnikov,

and Igor N. Sadovskiy, were involved in drawing up a detailed draft plan for the project. Many

other organizations were also involved at this stage of the work.

The MOK as a whole was designed for a wide range of goals in support of science (astrophysical research and "fundamental scientific-technical research in conditions of outer space"),

the national economy (the study of Earth's natural resources from space: activities related to

guidance, navigation, and communication; research to study forestry, agriculture, geology, and

deep sea fishing: and so on), and national defense. The MOK would consist of the following

primary components:

• A circumterrestrial orbital system on the basis of the MKBS and autonomous spaceships

• A transport system on the basis of transport supply ships and, in the future, a reusable system and an orbital launch vehicle system

• A ground launch complex

• An automated control system and search-and-rescue complex

The MKBS, as the central link in the system, would serve as the primary place of residence for

crews, the orbiting control center, and a base for supply and technical maintenance of the entire

complex. Independently functioning apparatus unified with the MKBS would have separategoals,

carrying out coordinated activities and maneuvers with their own transport systems,s

In designing the MOK, engineers took into account two main limitations: minimum funding and extended operation. Given these requirements, TsKBEM, in its technical plan for the

MOK, addressed and adopted specific technical solutions in five major areas:

• To reduce the number of orbital elements while at the same time maximizing the scale of useful activities, engineers used the principles "one and the same goal solved by various apparatus" and "various goals solved by the same ship." In addition, planners selected a

Sun-synchronous orbit with an orbital inclination of ninety-seven and a half degrees to

achieve the widest range of goals. An increase in the active lifetime of the MOK to up to

seven to ten years would be accomplished by making useof reservesand service repair work.

• Designers reduced the required traffic on the "Earth-to-orbit" and "orbit-to-orbit" routes

by using the lowest number of consumed materials. Specifically, they used reserve propellants to maintain the complex's orbit and orientation (with electric engines), exposed film

and reentry capsules for their delivery (by transferring urgent information by radio and

delivering less urgent information to Earth by transport and supply ships), and special light

modifications of 7K Soyuz-type ships with remote manipulator arms for intersatellite transport. Also, autonomous modules based on the MKBS would engage in regular repair work.

• Engineers reduced the cost of developing MOK systems by maximizing the use of auxiliary

systems and apparatus of standard size and form that had already been developed, but with

the necessary modifications. Continuity between previously created and proposed materials would be partly facilitated by the use of 7K Soyuz-type ships launched on the Soyuz

booster. Apart from its direct use as a transport ship, engineers proposed automated

4. Yu.P.Semenov,ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya"Energiya"imeniS R Koroleva(Korolev:

RKKI!nergiya,namedafterS P Korotev.1996),p. 639.

5. Ibid. p. 2Z8

801
802

modificationsitheformof "multi-goalvisitingmodules."Inaddition, they would use a

new modified spacecraft module, the 19K, launched on the Proton booster, as a modified

observation module, as well as heavier special modules launched by the N I. Using upper

stages such as Blok SR,the N I would be able to launch special apparatus for the MOK to

geostationary orbit.

Engineers would make maximal use of already developed ground-based systems to support

MOK operations, such as current launch complexes and the ground tracking network.

Finally, planners expected to reduce the cost of transportation for orbital operations on the

MOK by limiting operations as much as possible to a single orbital plane coinciding with

the inclination of a standard Sun-synchronous orbit. TsKBEM would also develop new economical reusable transport systems, allowing for the lifting of payloads and consumables

to polar orbits at inclinations of ninety-seven and a half degrees or higher?

One of the main selling points of the MOK, according to its developers, was its great flexibility and adaptability in relation to its program of research--that is, the design of the complex

would make it relatively easy to change and renovate the makeup of the orbital system without

disrupting the basic interconnected functionalism. The creation of the MOK would unfold in

two major phases: the first in an experimental orbit at a fifty-one-and-a-half-degree inclination

and the standard at an inclination of ninety-seven and a half degrees at 400 by 450 kilometers.

Obviously, one of the main links in the creation of the MOK was the N I launcher, which

in its N IF configuration would be the primary launch vehicle for elements of the MKBS portion. Engineers also explored the possibility of using a partially reusable version of the N l--a

rocket whose first stage, Blok i_, would be powered by combined liquid and air-compressed

engines firing on the liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen (LOX) combination.

The MKBS. the main component of the MOK, looked roughly like a giant pencil in orbit

and probably had design elements common to the abandoned Martian piloted spaceship proposal from 1969. P,t one end of the spacecraft, there was a nuclear energy unit and electric plasma engines to maintain attitude and altitude. The primary engine complex of the MKBS would

use liquid-propellant rocket engines with thrusts of 300-I,000 kilograms. Attitude would be

maintained by a combination of liquid-propellant (ten to forty kilograms thrust) and electric

engines (100-300 grams thrust). The nuclear power unit would supply the primary power to

the station, about fifty to 200 kilowatts. Solar panels, with a total surface area of 140 square

meters and jutting out from various points along its main body, would provide an additional

fourteen kilowatts. The nuclear energy unit was placed as far away as possible from the habitation quarters, which were on the other side of the "pencil." This opposite end would begin

with a large compartment for "scientific and special equipment." Total scientific instrumentation on the MKBS would comprise about fifteen to twenty tons. Moving aft, there would be a

multiple docking adapter, much like the one later used on the Mir space station, but far bigger.

Here, at least four visiting spacecraft would dock, some of them based on the 7K Soyuz design

and some of them "special modules." The docking adapter was connected to the main living

and working quarters--a huge cylindrical compartment, about the size of Skylab, for crew

activities. There would be six permanent crewmembers on the MKBS and up to ten for short

periods. In the first two years of operation, crews would switch over about two times a year.

The life support system would have a reserve of I,I00 crewperson-days with the capability to

regenerate water from condensate. Ultimately, the atmosphere and water would be fully regenerated from the life support system.

6. Ibid.,pp 278-79.

CHALLENGE TO t_POLLO
ASHES TO _SHES

Further aft, there was the instrument and aggregate compartments, containing a variety of instrumentation to support MKBS operations in Earth orbit.

About one-third of the way down the "pencil," the

station had two long arms, each twenty to thirty

meters long and 180 degrees apart, both of which

ended in small cylindrical compartments, Here, in

these modules, each with a volume of twenty-five to

thirty cubic meters, cosmonauts could spend time

and enjoy the effects of artificial gravity from the spin

around the station's main axis. According to preliminary calculations, an angular velocity of a half degree

per second would generate up to 0.6-0.8 g's. The

central node for these artificial gravity arms would

also include an EVA airlock. Moving aft down the station, the cosmonauts would then find the main laboratory quarters, yet another cylindrical module, with

its own adjacent multiple docking adapter with four

ports. Here, the station proper would end, and three

long pylons, about half the length of the station itself,

would extend affwards, ending in the nuclear reactor

package on the other end. The total mass of the

MKBS with four attendant visiting modules would be

in the range of 220 to 250 tons, requiring assembly in

orbit because the N I would be rated at eighty to

eighty-eight tons of useful payload. The station

would have a total length of about I00 meters and a

main body diameter of about six meters. Each MKBS

was expected to function about ten years in orbit. 7

Like the L3M lunar landing plan and its related

Long-Duration Lunar Base, the MOK proposal was

clearly a leap in ambition and capability rather than

This is a drawing o[ the Multirole Space

BaseStation (MKBS),the huge Earth-orbital

complex proposed by Vasiliy Mishin in the

early 1970s,(copyright Mark Wade)

the incremental advances to which the Soviets were generally prone, While the fantastic nature

of these plans would give pause to any American conception of a space program in the 1970s,

the Soviets, despite losing the race to the Moon and despite the series of attendant disasters

that plagued their piloted program in the early 1970s, saw these proposals as vehicles for regaining some lost glory, Thus, both at a designer level--in particular Mishin--and at a bureaucratic level--Ustinov, Smirnov, and Afanasyev--these proposals were taken very seriously and

were incorporated into the long-term vision of the Soviet space program. In 197 I, this vision

was, however, less of a problem than the short-term one. Having just recovered three dead cosmonauts from orbit, any clarity about regaining momentum was lost amid continuing setbacks

in the small space station program.

Trying to Fly

In the immediate post-Soyuz II disaster climate, it was clear that there would be no

further missions to the first Salyut station. _ One possibility was to fly the long-delayed dual

7_ Ibid, p. 41o.

8. One unconfirmed reportsuggeststhat there mayhavebeen brief plans to fly a short Soyuz mission to the

Salyut station in September 1971.The crew would havebeen _. t:1.Leonov, E I. Kolodin, and g. _q.Gubarev. See

Mikhail Rebrov,Kosrnicheskiyekatastro[y: stranichki iZ sekretnogodosye (Moscow: Eksprint NV. 1996), pp. 72-73.

803
804

Soyuz-dockingmissiontotesttheKontaktrendezvousradarsystemslatedforuseonthelunar

landingproject.Conceivedsometimein 1968,themissionwasrepeatedlyelayedbecauseoi

pooresultsduringthesystem's ground testing. In May 1970, the docking mission was set for

August of the same year, using 7K-OK vehicles 18 and 19. The flight was then delayed to

October 1970. Eventually, space program head Ustinov opted to delay the Kontakt flight in favor

of the DOS space station flights in 197 I, thus moving the docking flight further back to late

197 I. At least four crews for the mission, including primary crews of Filipchenko with Grechko

and Lazarev with Makarov, continued their training despite the increasingly gloomy prospects?

With the slowdown of the original L3 plan and the imminent adoption of the new L3M project,

Kontakt lost much of its importance. In October 197 I, Mishin officially closed down Kontakt. '°

Crews training for the mission were instead transferred to training for other projects.

With the prospect of piloted flights only within the framework of orbital stations in the

near future, the focus of discussion shifted to both the DOS-7K complex and Chelomey's

glmaz space station. In early August 1971, Mishin met with Ustinov to discuss long-term

plans. Ustinov was clear on several points, including the urgent need to accelerate work on the

Sokol-Kl spacesuit for the Soyuz spacecraft. In addition, he made it clear that he wanted the

next Soviet space station to be Mishin's DOS rather than Chelomey's Almaz. I_II resources

should be marshaled so as to launch the next DOS before NASA's much larger Skylab space

station. Based on the discussions, Mishin had a provisional schedule for work on the DOS:

Station Munch No. of Visits Visiting Ship

DOS-2 First quarter of 1972 3 to 4 7K-T Soyuz

DOS-3 Fourth quarter of 1972 3 to 4 7KT Soyuz

DOS-4 Fourth quarter of 1973 4 7K-S Soyuz

The 7K-T Soyuz variants would be equipped with the old Igla rendezvous system, while

the advanced 7K-S Soyuz would have a new system, designated Lira. Each DOS spacecraft

would have a four-month lifetime for its life support system and a six-month lifetime for all

other systems. The urgency of launching the next DOS as soon as possible was underlined at

a meeting in early November 1971 that was attended by all the major leaders of the Soviet space

program," There was a general consensus that DOS-2 should be launched so as to take some

of the publicity from the Apollo 16 Moon landing planned for April 1972.

In October 197t, Col. General Kamanin retired from his post as the manager of the cosmonaut corps and was replaced by Maj. General Vladimir A. Shatalov. the forty-four-year-old

veteran cosmonaut. It was a very powerful rank for a cosmonaut to hold, and his appointment

order, signed earlier in June 1971. probably stemmed from Shatalov's cool disposition during his

three Soyuz missions during 1969-7 t. One of Shatalov's first actions was to select crews for

the DOS-2 space station flight. For the honor of the first visiting mission, he picked the LeonovKubasov team that would have flown on the ill-fated Soyuz II had it not been for Kubasov's

9 The four crews, m December 1970. wereg. V Filipchenko/G. M Grechko, V. G. Lazarev/O G Makarov.

L V Vorobev/V _, Yazdovskiy,and G. T. PobrovolskiylV. I. Sevastyanov.

I0 K Lantratov, "20 Years Rom the Flight of 'Soyuz-t2'" (English title}. Nouosti kosmonoutiki 20

(September 25 October 8, 1993): 39 41.

II. In attendance, among others, were D. F Ustinov (Secretary,TsK KPSS), h D, Serbin (Chief. TsK KPSS

DefenseIndustries Department). M. V Keidysh (President. AN SSSR),G A. Tyulin (First Deputy Minister. MOM}.

A. I Tsarev (Deputy Chairman. VPK), B. P,. Komissarov (Department Chief, VPK). B. R. Stroganov (TsK KPSS

DefenseIndustries Department). and K./_. Kerimov (Chief, Third Chief Directorate, MOM),

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
Jl_SHESTO ASHES

brief illness.':' Given the success of the first mission, there would be two or three additional

flights to the station. For reasons that are not dear, the DOS-2 launch was significantly delayed

from the first quarter to the beginning of the third quarter of 1972. The delay may have had less

to do with the station itself, which was almost identical in design to the first __alyut. than problems with requalifying the 7K-T Soyuz spacecraft for flight. To test the improved life support

systems with the new Sokol-Kl spacesuits, Mishin inserted a flight of an automated Soyuz into

the schedule. It would be almost an entire year after the Soyuz II disaster that this Soyuz

would be ready for launch. _

Soyuz 7K-T spacecraft no. 33L was launched successfully at 1453 hours Moscow Time on

June 26, 1972, into an initial orbit of 195 by 342 kilometers at a 51.6-degree inclination. The

spacecraft was named Kosmos-496 upon entering orbit. Little is known about the flight except

that there was one orbital maneuver. After about six days in orbit, the descent apparatus separated from the rest of the vehicle and returned to Earth. The successful mission gave some

much-needed confidence to the continuing preparations for the next DOS flight. Crews for the

first flight flew into the Baykonur Cosmodrome in preparation for their own launch. By this

time, the usual rumors were mounting in the West that a spectacular mission was imminent.

On March 9. 1972, the Paris-based ,qgence France Presse reported that two crews were ready

to fly to a new Salyut space station for missions lasting up to thirty days. '_ Shatalov added fuel

to the rumors by telling the Czech press in early April that there would be additional piloted

missions "probably this year." '_

The State Commission for Soyuz, still headed by Maj. General Kerimov, approved the launch

of DOS-2 for late July 1972. Subsequently, Soyuz 12 with Leonov and Kubasov would lift off

during the last week of August, Another crew, Lazarev and Makarov on Soyuz 13, would fly to the

station in the third week of October 1972. All these plans were not to be. The twenty-ton space

station, spacecraft no. 122, was launched in the early morning, at 0620 hours, 57 seconds Moscow

Time, on July 29, 1972, on top of a three-stage Proton booster. During the boost phase, at T+162

seconds, the control systems of the second stage of the launch vehicle failed, preventing orbital

insertion. The mission had to be aborted. U.S. over-the-horizon sensors evidently monitored

telemetry from the launch attempt, prompting subsequent news reports that one of the four

second-stage engines had stopped firing during the ascent through the atmosphere. '_

The loss of DOS-2 continued the series of strikes against the Soviet piloted space program.

To take advantage of two flight-ready 7K-T Soyuz vehicles, which had been ready to deliver

crews to the lost station, the State Commission in August 1972 considered launching a single

Soyuz on a solo mission in Earth orbit, primarily to test the new spacesuits and redesigned

12. Four crews trained for DOS-2: A. A Leonov/V. N. Kubasov, V. G Lazarev/O, G Makarov, A. A.

Gubarev/G M Grechko, and E I. Klimuk/V I. Sevastyanov SeeLantratov, "20 YearsFrom the Flight of Soyuz-12."

Note that originally, in September 1971,the Gubarev and Klimuk crews were slightly different. SeeS. Shamsutdinov

and I Marinin, "Flights Which Never Happened" (Eng)ish title), _viatsiya i kosmona_tika no, 3 (March t993):

43-44.

13 A prototype of the Sokol K I suit was produced in 1971,with further revisions added between August

19ZI and March 1972. SeeRussianSpace History. Sale 6753 (New York: Sothebys. 1996}. description for Lot 147.

14 ,qgenceFrance Presse.untitled press release.Paris. 1554GMT. March 9, 1972. in English

15. Soviet Space Programs, 19,71-13: Overview. Facilities and Hardware. Manned and Unmanned Flight

Programs. Bioastronautics. Civil and Military 7]pplieations, Projections of FuturePlans, prepared for the Committee

on _qeronaaticaland SpaceSciences,US, Senate,94th Cong, 2d sess.(Washington, DC: US Government Printing

Office. August 1976). p. 534

16. V M. Petrakov."Soviet Orbital Stations." journal of the British Interplanetary Society 47 (September

1994): 363-72: I. B Afanasyev. "CJnknownSpacecraft(Fromthe History of the Soviet SpaceProgram)" (Englishtitle),

Novoye v zhizni Nauke, tekhnike Sefiyc_kosmonavtika, astronomiya no 12 (December 1991): 1-64: "Orbiting of

Second Satyut Ends Soviets'Hiatus in Manned Space,"/qviation V/eek EJSpace Technology,April 9, 1973, p. 21

805
806

systems aboard the ship. Crews began training for this flight, scheduled for sometime in

late August or early September 1972 on vehicle no. 34. After roughly a month of preparations,

two crews--Gubarev-Grechko and Klimuk-Sevastyanov--successfully passed their final exams,

but by this time, the commission began to get cold feet. Members expressed reservations

for such a flight, believing it to be "inopportune," most likely because a solo Soyuz flight in

Earth orbit would pale in comparison to the impending launch of Apollo 17 in December 1972.

The solo flight was canceled. '7

Besieged by failure and delays, the Soviet space station program needed some drastic help.

Assistance came from neither Ustinov nor Afanasyev, but rather from the unlikely person of

General Designer Chelomey and his Almaz space station program. Since the February 1970

decision to move ahead with DOS at the cost of delaying Almaz, Chelomey had doggedly and

quietly pursued work on his coveted station, methodically coordinating his efforts with his

primary clients, the Ministry of Defense. Although the focus of activities at the massive

Khrunichev Plant during 1970-72 was on the DOS effort, representatives from Chelomey's

TsKBM continued work on their own space station hulls. Engineers tested an updated

version of the Almaz control system on a complex test rig. Tests of the Almaz power system

included firings of the flywheel micro-liquid-propellant rocket engines at a test stand near

Moscow. Various hulls were remanufactured for Almaz, including those for stress, vibration,

and heat testing. A special orbital block simulator was also built at the Institute of Aviation and

Space Medicine, where testers spent thirty-six days in a "flight regime," which ended on

January I I, 1972. After their "mission," they reported back that "the configuration of the work

and living compartments is comfortable," that "the air is good and odorless," and that they

had "soon become used to the hum and vibrations caused by the instruments." _"Crews whose

missions had been sidelined because of DOS resumed their training on station components in

hydrolabs and aboard Tu-104 aircraft.

In the original conceptions of the Almaz space station from the mid-1960s, Chelomey

had always envisioned his station as an orbital complex rather than simply a station supplied

by small ferry vehicles such as the DOS. The key to these plans was the use of a large module,

about the size of the Almaz station itself, which would not only serve as a ferry craft for crews,

but also add significantly to the volume and capabilities of the station once linked to the

station proper. Most likely because of an overload of work, Chelomey was unable to carry out

substantial work on this add-on module, called the Transport-Supply Ship (TKS). Like many

of his other projects, he entrusted the work on developing the TKS to his Moscow Branch headed by First Deputy General Designer Viktor N. Bugayskiy. There, under Bugayskiy's overall

supervision, engineers completed the initial technical project for the TKS (or product II F72)

in 1969.'gWhile the decision to create Mishin's DOS in February 1970 may have delayed the

overall Almaz program, it does not seem to have squelched Chelomey's ambitions of creating

the TKS. With Minister of Defense Grechko's support, Chelomey managed to extract an official promise to commit to developing the TKS. On June 16, 1970, the Central Committee

and the Council of Ministers issued a decree (no. 437-160) that officially approved the TKS

program. The TKS would have the following goals:

17. Lantratov, "20 YearsFrom the Flight of "Soyuz.12'."

18 Vladimir Polyachenko. "The 'Pep'of Almaz" (English title), Krylya rodiny no. I (January 1992): 18-19.

19. S g. Zhiltsov, ed, _osudnrstuennyy kosmicheskiy nouchno-proizuoclstuennyy tsentr imeni M/ _'

Khrunicheua (Moscow: RUSSLIT,1997), p. 89.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
J _SHES TO ASHES

• Docking of twenty-ton spaceships to each other (the TKS and the Almaz)

• Delivery and return of crews from the Almaz station

• Delivery of supplies and apparatus for carrying out functional work on the Almaz station

• Delivery of life support supplies for the crew

• Raising of station orbits

• Orientation and extended (up to ninety days) control of the flight of the entire complex

• Possibility of autonomous descent from orbit :°

In its design, the TKS served as a direct intermediary between early Chelomey designs,

such as the lunar LK- I and LK-700 spacecraft from the 1960s, and the Mir modules and Zarya

module of the International Space Station in the 1990s The spacecraft consisted of two major

components: the return apparatus and the functional cargo block (FGB). The reusable return

apparatus (or product II F74) was almost identical to the one used on the original Almaz station for returning crews to Earth. At some point in 1968, Chelomey had evidently abandoned

the use of this large module on the Almaz station, opting instead to use the smaller Soyuz to

return crews from the station. There were probably also technical considerations, because the

hatch-in-the-heat-shield design necessitated a long and exhaustive series of tests to verify its

safety before use with crews.

The functional cargo block (or product I I F77) was a large and roughly cylindrical structure

connected to the base of the return apparatus. At the base of the FGB, the cylindrical shape

expanded into a skirt with a maximum base diameter of 4.t5 meters. The spacecraft

was completed by a terminal cone fixed at the flat base of the cylindrical skirt with the apex

facing aft. The main body diameter of the FGB was 2.9 meters, the same as that for the smaller section in the Almaz space station. The docking assembly of the TKS was located at the

aft end of the spacecraft in the larger diameter area After rendezvous with the Almaz station,

the crew, in spacesuits, would be next to the docking assembly and observe operations through

a viewport. The simplified docking procedure and expanded view would make it possible

to abandon the cumbersome system of periscopes and TV cameras used on the Soyuz spacecraft. The docking assembly itself was significantly different from that used on the ?K-T Soyuz;

time from the moment of docking to hatch opening would be three to four minutes, as

compared to the eighteen to twenty minutes on the Soyuz-DOS combination. One of the supplementary goals of the TKS was to deliver the small recoverable capsules used on the Almaz

station to return exposed film of military targets from space. Overall, the TKS would

have a mass of just over twenty-one and a half tons at launch and seventeen and a half tons

in orbit; it would afford as much internal space as the Almaz space station. Two Almaz-type

solar arrays with an area of forty square meters would provide about three kilowatts of power.

It would be both a qualitative and quantitative leap in abilities over the modest Soyuz ferry

spacecraft/_

As a result of cumulative delays, the TKS was not expected to fly operational missions prior

to the mid-1970s. In the meantime, in 1971, Chelomey had signed an agreement with Mishin

to use variants of the 7K-T Soyuz spacecraft to deliver and recover crews from the Almaz space

station. Work on this version of the Soyuz began the same year, and by early 1972, TsKBEM's

Department No. 037 had completed the redesign of the ;'K-T to support piloted missions to

20. Ibid, p. 88.

21. Afanasyev,"Unknown Spacecraft";Zhiltsov.ed., Cosudarstuennyykosrnicheskiy,pp. 88-89: Nina

Chugunova,"ChelomeytsCosmonauts:Why ThereAre No CrewsFromNPOMashinostroyeniyain OuterSpace"

(Engtishtitle), Ogonek4-5 (January1993):24-29.

80F
808

Here is a model o/Wadimir Chelomey's Transport Supply Ship (TKS) which was meant to be part of the }tlmaz

military space station complex The conical segment at the left is the reenlry capsule, apparently patterned after

the U 5 Air forces Gemini B spacecraft The vertically placed component at the felt _sthe launch escape system.

(copyright Dietrich Hc_eseter)

the tqlmaz station." By May 1972, four crews were in the midst of intense preparations for the

first missions to P,lmaz/_ Thus, by mid-1972, the Soviet Union had two full-fledged and

parallel space station programs--one dedicated to primarily civilian goals, Mishin's DOS, and

one for military research, Chelomey's/qlmaz. The path of these projects had always been interdependent, but in mid-1972, they forged a most unlikely alliance.

For Mishin, the DOS had always represented an unnecessary diversion from what he con

sidered the main thematic directions of work at the design bureau: large-scale space stations

such as the MOK and the lunar landing project. The DOS project had essentially been hoisted

upon him at a most inconvenient juncture. That TsKBEM had managed to fulfill the original

order within the given period of one year was partly because Mishin had been forced to redirect much of the resources at the design bureau to the DOS program. Mishin's primary goal was

to shift the focus back to his two pet projects--the MOK and the L3M. Both had received

resounding shows of support with official decisions in February and May 1972, respectively. It

was time to make sure that the DOS did not hinder their implementation. P,t the same time,

Chelomey had every reason to resent the DOS space station program--an effort that had been

essentially appropriated from his own coveted Almaz project. Having seen the latter sidelined

by the DOS. Chelomey was in the unlikely position of being of the same mind as Mishin on

22. Semenov.ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporalsiya. p 190. Both the DOSand/qlmaz versions had the

samedesign bureau designation that is. 7KT--but had different production designations: I IF615Ag(for DOS).

and I IF615/_9(for P,lmaz)

23 These four crews were P. R Popovich/l_ S. Detain. G. V. Saralanov/Yu R ,qrtyukhin. B. V. Volynov/

V M. Zholobov. and V. D Zudov/V. I Rozhdestvenskiy.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
_.SHES TO AI_SHE$

this matter--that is, the small space station program, specifically the DOS and Rlmaz, needed

to go back to Chelomey. With this in mind, on April 14, 1972, Mishin and Chelomey signed

an agreement proposing to Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev that after the first

four DOS space stations, work on the project would be terminated. In addition, all continuing

research for science and the national economy would be carried out on/U,lmaz space stations,

in addition to its own primarily military activities. Initially, the Almaz space station would be

serviced by the 7K-T Soyuz, then eventually the advanced 7K-S Soyuz, and finally the TKS. One

final note in the letter was to use a proposal allowing the use of Chelomey's TKS on Mishin's

MOK. _

There was apparently much opposition within Mishin's design bureau against this unlikely alliance, presumably from individuals, such as Bushuyev and Feoktistov, who had wholeheartedly thrown their lot in with the DOS program. Minister Afanasyev, however, under

"pressured circumstances," agreed to ratify the proposal, giving it his signature on April 21,

1972, In retrospect, this agreement was quite possibly the origin of a serious fracture within

TsKBEM between the "pro-lunar program" and the "pro-DOS" factions. The hostilities that

would build from this decision would prove to have cataclysmic consequences. While Mishin

may have believed that an agreement to hand over the DOS to Chelomey was a pragmatic

choice at the time, it is clear that he neglected to consider the personal and managerial consequences within his own organization. Worse for Mishin, while he had strong supporters for the

lunar program and the MOK, his opponents were formidable, including Deputy Chief Designers

Bushuyev and Chertok and the influential Department Chief Feoktistov.

The Mishin-Chelomey agreement in April 1972 meant that Almaz was less of a competitor than a complement to the DOS. New flight models of both stations were, by coincidence

or not, ready to fly by early 1973. Mishin's new DOS vehicle, spacecraft no. 123, differed in

many respects to its two predecessors launched in 1971 (as Salyut) and in 1972 (the launch

failure). The original design, while adequate given the short timeframe for its creation, had

some major shortcomings, limiting the effective use of the station. One of these design compromises was the configuration and location of the station's two solar panels, To have these

panels face the Sun on the original Salyut, crews had to turn the entire station and maintain

attitude continually to receive power. This resulted in high consumption levels for the on-board

propellant, which was in relative short supply. The complicated solar orientation system also

affected the amount of scientific experimentation possible on the station because of fluctuating power levels. The primary difference of the "new" DOS, whose development had actually

begun as early as 1970, was to remove the two pairs of solar panels and instead install three

self-rotating solar panels, which would turn around their own axes independently of the station. The three new panels, appropriated from Chelomey's TKS, would be installed directly in

a "T" shape on the main working compartment and provide over two times more power than

the earlier ones. To compensate for the additional mass from the new panels, engineers

removed the number of tanks from the main engine unit. To reduce the amount of propellant

required to maintain a working orbit, planners also increased the operational orbit to an altitude

of 350 kilometers. '_

There were many other changes in this "second-generation" DOS. Engineers designed a

new "highly economical" orientation system named Kaskad and an experimental navigation

system called Detta to replace the older ones. There was also a new thermo-regulation system

24. The enti[e letter has been reproducedin Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya.

pp.295-96 An additionalpointin the letteraddressedtheuseof theSoyuz(a variantknownasthe TK-M)instead

of theSalyut spacestationfor the/_pollo-SoyuzTestProject.

25 /bid.. p. 271:P,fanasyev,"UnknownSpacecrait."

809
810

and an early version of a closed-cycle water supply system using the SRV-K water regeneration

device. The total guaranteed lifetime of the station was increased from the ninety days for the

first DOS to 180 days on the third one. The scientific complement was slightly different from

the earlier model. The new one included a Roentgen telescope-spectrometer, the RT-4 Roentgen

telescope mirror, and the ITS-K infrared telescope. Finally, there were some cosmetic changes,

such as thicker walls, an altered frame, changes in the aggregate compartment, and the use of

a unified welding installation in the main scientific apparatus compartment. ;_

There were additional changes to the 7K-T Soyuz ferry in 1972 and 1973. Anticipating that

a ferry vehicle would not need to fly independently for more than two days, engineers deleted

the two heavy solar panels from the spacecraft, making the ship rely completely on its modest

internal chemical batteries. These batteries could be recharged once docked to a space station

using power generated from either the DOS or tqlmaz. The mass of this second iteration of the

Soyuz ferry was about 6,800 kilograms, up from the original 6,700 kilograms.

By the time that these changes were made to the DOS and Soyuz designs, Chelomey was well

advanced with preparations for the launch of his own first Almaz station. On June 15, 1972, a decree

of the Ministry of General Machine Building specified a schedule for immediate operations in the

Almaz program. The Khrunichev Plant was to complete the assembly of the first flight model of the

/qlmaz station and deliver it for preliminary testing by June 30, leading to delivery to the testing station at the Baykonur Cosmodrome by November of the same year,2' If all went welt. the launch would

take place in late 1972 or early 1973--that is, at about the same time as Mishin's DOS-3. The concurrent and timely preparations were very much colored by activity in the United States. NASA at the

time was wrapping up final preparations for the launch of its first space station, Skylab, scheduled in

April 1973. If successful, it would host three crews during the year, with missions lasting twentyeight, fifty-six, and fifty-six days, respectively. Having taken the lead in terms of space stations, with

5alyut, Soviet space officials, especially Llstinov, were particularly sensitive to the possibility that

Skylab would completely overshadow the achievements of Salyut. It was absolutely imperative that

the Soviet Union have a space station in orbit before Skylab. Luckily for Ustinov, both Mishin and

Chelomey were ready with their respective space stations at just the right time. It seems that Ustinov,

as a means to upstage Skytab, wanted to fly both the DOS and tqlmaz in 1973. Given Ustinov's predisposition to oppose Chelomey, one would have expected the DOS to have the honor of going first,

but evidently in October 1972, Soviet leader Brezhnev had the last word: Chelomey's Almaz would

get the first try: '8

The first Almaz station, vehicle no. I01-1, arrived at the Baykonur Cosmodrome in January

1973. Ground testing was completed within three months. The fact that Mishin's DOS was also

undergoing ground testing at the launch site simultaneously led to problems because of stretched

resources. Both stations used the same pressure chamber and fueling stations. In fact, there was

a great degree of cross-pollination between the two programs, partly because TsKBEM engineers

had to be involved in the tqlmaz effort as they were responsible for the Soyuz spacecraft/_ Four

26. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 272: Petrakov,"Soviet Orbital Stations."

27 Zhiltsov, ed., _osudarstuennyy kosmicheskiy, pp. 78, 89. The order also specified the details of manufacture All production would be carried out at the M V. Khrunichev Machine Building Plant for the prime customer.

which was TsKBM (for all components except the transfer compartment and the engine unit for which the customer

was TsKBM's Fili Branch) In addition, the order specified that the Khrunichev Plant would complete production

preparation for the manufacture of the TKS blocks in the fourth quarterof 1912.

28. The first Almaz was originally scheduled to fly in December 1972, but there were serious delays in the

delivery of subsystems. MOM first Deputy Minister Tyulin finally issued a memo to Chelomey on November 23,

1972, noting that because Skylabwould fly by April 30, 1973,the first Almaz had to be in orbit by March 1973

29. Semenov, ed, Rake_noKosmicheskayo Korporatsiya, p. 273: Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft":

Shamsutdinov and Marinin. "Flights Which Never Happened": V. Polyachenkoand A. Tumanov, "From the History

of SpaceScience: The Controllable 'AImaz'" {English title), ,quialsiya i kosmonautika no. 8 (August 1993): 41-43.

CHALLENGE TO II:_POLLO
_SHES TO FISHES

two-person crews were on standby for two consecutivemissions to the station--the first consisting of cosmonauts Popovich and Artyukhin lasting fifteen days and the second made up of

Sarafanov and Detain. There were apparently serious problems with the Soyuz parachute system

that threatened to disrupt the Almaz schedule. Despite these potential disruptions, Chelomey

pushed ahead with the liftoff.

Launch day for the Almaz station was April 3, 1973, a little more than a month before the

Skylab launch. As the clock ticked down to booster ignition, at T-I 5 minutes, there was a sudden alarm: propellant was apparently leaking from the Proton rocket's filling system. The danger

of a terrible explosion was on everyone's mind. Chelomey fearlessly announced that he wanted

to go directly to the pad. After an inspection of the situation, he returned to the blockhouse and

recommended that the launch proceed. State Commission Chairman Col. General Mikhail G.

Grigoryev of the Strategic Missile Forces concurred, and at exactly 1200 hours Moscow Time on

April 3, 1973, Almaz lifted off into the sky, eventually entering an initial orbit of 215 by 260 kilometers at a 51.6-degree inclination? ° A full thirteen years after proposing his first space project,

Chelomey had finally launched a piloted spacecraft into orbit around Earth, the first piloted military spacecraft in space.

Chelomey might have been forgiven for believing that his beloved space station would be

named ,z]lmaz by the Soviet press. But highly placed space officials, possibly including Ustinov.

were adamantly opposed to this. Some have claimed this was because they "were dead against

the presence of a second figure in the Soviet space program, ''_' Others believe it was to hide

the fact that Almaz was a purely military space station." In any case, Chelomey, apparently

humiliated, was explicitly ordered to have the name 3alyut 2 painted on the station. The

shrewd general designer told his engineers to paint the offending name on the outside fairing

of the station; once the fairing jettisoned in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the station

revealed _Imaz clearly written on it. The Soviet press, of course, referred to it as Salyut 2.

Launch of the first crew, on Soyuz 12, had been planned for April 13, but had to be delayed to

May 8 because of continuing problems with the Soyuz parachute system. In their initial press

releases on the mission of the station, the Soviets refrained from making any connection with

piloted flights. At least two major orbital corrections, on April 4 and 8, resulted in a new orbit

of 261 by 296 kilometers."

Throughout the first few days in orbit, the Chief Operations and Control Group at

Yevpatoriya, led by Yakov Ya.Sirobaba, tested the attitude control systems, life support systems,

and radio communications systems, and all seemed to be working without fault. Trouble struck

on the thirteenth day of flight, on April 15, on the 188th orbit of Salyut 2. Controllers reported that the main telemetry system had failed: according to "support" telemetry, pressure in the

main hull had dropped by half, and precise measurements of the station's orbital trajectory

showed that its path had deviated slightly, as if given some kind of thrust. Clearly, some type

of catastrophic failure had occurred on the station, squelching the possibility that any crew

would be heading in its direction any time soon. Early the next morning, the senior members

of the State Commission, including Col. General Grigoryev and Space Assets Commander Lt.

General Karas, met at Chelomey's offices to discuss the situation. An accident investigation

commission under Karas was established. Throughout the next few days, engineers pored over

ground models of Almaz to ascertain the cause of this sudden event by simulating various

30. Polyachenko,"The 'Pep'of Almaz."

31. Chugunova,"Chelomey'sCosmonauts."

32 RoatdZ. Sagdeev,TheMakin£of a SovietScientist:My ,'rtdventuresin NuclearFusionandSpaceFrom

StalintoStarWars(New York:JohnWiley & Sons,1994).p. 207.

33. KennethGarland,MannedSpaceera[t(New York:Macmillan,1976),p. 234.

811
812

conditions. Specialists also flew to

Yevpatoriya to look into the matter.

The initial prognosis was that there

might have been some ground error,

but this hypothesis was eliminated

when investigators ascertained that

each command transmitted to Salyut

2 had been without fault/_ On April

18, unofficial Soviet sources in

Moscow denied that piloted visits had

ever been planned for Salyut 2. On

April 28, the Soviet news agency TASS

announced that Salyut 2, "having

checked the design of improved

on-board systems and carried out

experiments in space, had completed

its flight program," notably omitting

This drawing shows the [hght variant o] the Almaz space station

with its unique docking node visible on the left. The viewport

for the ,Zlgat-I reconnaissance camera was located on "the

underside" o[ the vehicle, not visible in this image (copyright

VideoOosmos Co., via Dennis Newkirk)

the word "successfully," which it normally used in such press releases, _

The Karas Commission arrived at the conclusion that there had been a manufacturing flaw

in the main engine of the Almaz station, which, when fired, had caused punctures in the main

hull. '_ One cosmonaut who trained for Almaz later recalled that there had been "an electrical

fault in one of the station's devices which had eventually caused the rupture of the external

hull." '_ Western reports, presumably filtered through to the open media from classified sources,

suggested that the actual hull breach had been so violent that the station's solar panels and

boom-mounted rendezvous radar and radio transponder had been ripped off, leaving 5alyut 2

tumbling in space. The engine, these reports suggested, could not be turned off once it was

turned on. '_ Some of the station's designers begged to differ with the verdict of a malfunctioning engine, and there was apparently never any unanimity with the verdict. For example, an inhouse investigation at Chelomey's design bureau concluded that the station might have been

hit by residual debris from the Proton booster on April 15. _ Perhaps the most curious claim

advanced for the failure--a claim no doubt proposed to exonerate its designers of any fault--

was that a meteorite had hit the station and blown a hole in its hull. Chelomey himself was

said to subscribe to this opinion? ° April was a bad month for the general designer. On April 25,

one of his radar ocean reconnaissance satellites, the US-A, failed to reach orbit, depositing its

nuclear isotope payload in the Pacific Ocean. U.S. Air Force planes apparently flew high above

34. Vladimir Potyachenko. "The 'Pep' of glmaz: Part I1" (English title), Krytya rodiny no. 4 (P,pril t992):

30-32: B. A. Pokrovskiy. Kosmos nachinayetsya na zemlye (Moscow: Patriot, 1996). pp. 411-12.

35 Gatland. Manned Spacecraft. p. 234: Soviet Space Programs 1976-80 (With Supplementary Data

Through 1983): Manned Space Programs and Space Life Sciences prepared for the Committee on Commerce,

Science. and Transportation, US Senate, 98th Congress, 2d sess. (Washington, DC: US. Government Printing

Office, October 1984), 541-48.

36. Polyachenko. "The 'Pep of ,qlmaz: Part II": gfanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft."

37 Neville Kidger, "Almaz: A Diamond out of Darkness." Space/light 36 (March 1994): 86-89

38 Thomas O'Toole. "Soviet Union Still Trails US in Space." Washington Post. June 17, 1973. pp A A8:

Soviet Space Programs I976-80. p. 548.

39 Pokrovskiy, Kosmos nachinayetsya no zemlye, p. 412,

40 Sagdeev. The Making o/a Soviet Scientist. pp. 176,207-08. To confuse matters further. Chief Designer

Mishin has claimed that the failure was caused by a malfunction in the attitude control system of AImaz. See V P,

Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?" (English title), Znaniye: tekhnike seriya kosmonavtika, astronomiya

no. 12 (December 1990}: 3-43

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
_SHES TO _IISHES

the Pacific to sample the upper atmosphere for radiation from the accident?' Meanwhile, Salyut

2, lost and tumbling in space, eventually decayed from orbit on May 28, 1973. Popovich and

the remaining cosmonauts training for their long-awaited flight would have to wait longer.

Chelomey did not expect to have the next Almaz station ready for flight before, at least, the

end of the year.

With Almaz out of the picture, things were desperate for the 1973 version of a space public relations offensive. The Skyiab launch was imminent. On February 14, NASA's Manned

Space Flight Management Council met and set May 14 as the launch date for the huge space

station. 42Acutely conscious of the U.S. schedule, TsKBEM engineers accelerated the preparations for the next DOS, no doubt under severe pressure from Brezhnev and Ustinov. The station had arrived at Tyura-Tam for final preflight testing in December 1972, and by late April

1973, State Commission Chairman Kerimov set May 8 as the launch date. This would be just

six days prior to the Skylab launch. Troubles during prelaunch operations, however, threatened

to thwart the Soviet plans. Engineers detected a depressurization in one of the propellant valves

in the Proton launch vehicle, resulting in a major fuel leak. As personnel from the Khrunichev

Plant began repairs, Chief Designer Mishin, under stress and being "emotional," refused to

have his station launched by this particular Proton rocket, booster no. 284-01, even if the repairs

were successful. Mishin, perhaps remembering the July 1972 DOS launch failure, remained

characteristically stubborn, and he refused to budge from his position despite insistent arguments from other members of the State Commission. It was only through the intervention of

other senior officials from TsKBEM that Mishin conceded 4_The delays with the propellant leak

pushed the launch back to May I I. The first crew, cosmonauts Leonov and Kubasov, would lift

off three days later, the same day Skylab was slated to reach orbit.

Officers of the Strategic Missile Forces successfully launched DOS-3 on May II, 1973, at

0320 hours Moscow Time. Initial orbital parameters were 2t8 by 266 kilometers at a 51.6-degree

inclination. The spate of troubles with the Soviet space station continued with DOS-3. Kerimov

recalled many years later that "suddenly, on the very first orbit, on a segment in which our control points did not control the operation of the spacecraft, the attitude-control rockets began

working irregularly. As a result, all the fuel reserves were burning up. TM Later analysis showed that

the attitude control engines had spuriously begun firing because of a failure in an ion sensor. As

telemetry continued to stream into Yevpatoriya on the situation, one controller exclaimed in horror, "The tanks are almost empty!"_ Representatives from TsKBEM were, evidently, slow to react

and were unwilling to believe the telemetry. One engineer, Yevgeniy V. Bashkin. explained that

such a quick consumption of propellant was impossible: it was 1,500 times faster than what was

maximally possible. When subsequent telemetry confirmed rapid propellant loss, TsKBEM

Deputy Chief Designer Yakov I. Tregub, the flight director from the design bureau, finally accepted the initial conclusion. Unfortunately, by this time, little would have been accomplished

by turning off the orientation system because all of the station's attitude control propellant was

depleted. The possibility of crewing the station was effectively eliminated. The fact that the

failure was detected in the first few orbits allowed the Soviet press to disguise the mission by

calling it by the next number in the Kosmos satellite series, Kosmos-55Z, instead of using the

Salyut name.

4 I. Thomas O"[oole, "2nd RussianSpaceShot Fails," Washington Post, May 4, 1973.p. AI; "Soviet Space

Attempt on April 25." Space Dady, May 8, 1973, p. 46. Note that both these articles incorrectly identified both the

launch vehicle (the Proton) and the payload (Lunokhod). The actual launch vehicle was a Tsiklon 2 booster.

42. David Baker,TheHistory o/Manned Spaceflight (New York:Crown Publishers, f 985). p 463.

43. Semenov. ed, Rakelno-Kosmieheskaya Korporalsiya, p. 272,

44, M Ovcharov and L. Chernenko, "Recommended by Korolev' (English title), Souelskaya rossiya, August

22, I987. p 2.

45. Pokrovskiy, Kosmos Ilachirlayetsya na zemlye, p. 4t0.

813
814

An interdepartmental commission under Vyecheslav M. Kovtunenko, a Deputy Chief

Designer at KB Yuzhnoye, was established to investigate the Kosmos-557 failure and recommend compensatory measures. KGB representatives apparently participated in the deliberations,

perhaps suspecting sabotage. The commission eventually found that the failure could have been

averted if the flight control team had reacted faster. In the end, members prepared a plan to deorbit the station safely from orbit to preclude it from burning up over populated areas of Earth. 4_

After a careful series of commands to the station, Kosmos-55Ts main engine was fired on May

22, 1973, to raise its orbit, but because of improper orientation, the spacecraft reentered the

atmosphere and burned up over the Indian Ocean. 4_The repercussions of the accident were

wider than simply the loss of a station. -I-sKBEM Deputy Chief Designer Tregub was dismissed

from his post as the flight director of all subsequent piloted missions and fired from the design

bureau, Department Chief Raushenbakh was demoted to the position of a "consultant," and he

left TsKBEM soon after.There were apparently others who lost their jobs. It was the first time that

such dismissals had taken place in the piloted space program, despite the earlier deaths of the

Soyuz I and Soyuz II crews. 4_

In the official history of TsKBEM, the episode with the loss of DOS-3 is described as "a big

blow to the program."49 The timing of the Almaz and DOS losses in the spring of 1973 could

not have been worse. NASA launched Skylab I, the first American space station, into orbit on

May 14, 1973 NASA, of course, had its own problems with Skylab. During launch, the meteoroid shield tore off, causing one of the solar panels to be ripped off and the other one to be

jammed in an inert position. But the remarkable resourcefulness of NASA engineers and astronauts was demonstrated amply in late May, when three astronauts docked with the station and

revived it to almost full capacity. On June 22, 1973, they returned to Earth after a

twenty-eight-day flight, regaining once more the absolute endurance record in space for the

United States. s° Now the Soviet Union was lagging behind the United States in both the lunar

landing and space station areas of piloted space exploration. Another reason for the ill-timing

was the acceleration of work on the Apollo-Soyuz Experimental Program, better known in the

West as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Although there had been nary a word on both the

Salyut 2 and Kosmos-557 failures from the Soviet press, there was much speculation in the

Western press on these two missions. Official representatives from the Soviet side were no doubt

embarrassed by this attention. In October 1973, Academician Boris N. Petrov, one of the "figurehead" leaders of the Soviets, told NASA's George M. Low that "there had been no plans to

send men to occupy" Salyut 2, _ In another outright lie, he added that the flight of Kosmos-557

had not been related to the piloted space program.

The Ught at the End of the Tunnel

The loss of both Salyut 2 and Kosmos-557 meant there would be no Soviet space station

missions during the remainder of 1973. Crews for both the Almaz and DOS programs would have

to wait much longer to carry out their long-delayed space station flights. One particular crew,

40. Ibid., pp. 410-1 I.

41 Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft."

48. Semenov.ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. pp 273. 355: Pokrovskiy,Kosmosnachinayetsya

na zemlye, p. 41 I. Tregubwas replaced by TsKBEM Deputy Chief Designer B. Ye. Chertok, and Raushenbakhwas

replaced by V. E Legostayev.

49. Semenov, ed_ Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 273.

50. LJnda Neuman Ezell, N/qS_ Historical Data Book, Volume IIh Programs and Projects I969-1978

(Washington. D.C.: NASA Special Publication (SP)-4017, 1988), p I04.

5 I. Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neumann Ezell, The Partnership 7] History o[ the/qpollo-Soyuz Test

Project (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4209, 1978), p 232.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
i _SHES TO _I_SHES

cosmonauts Leonov and Kubasov, had perhaps the most trying experience in their arduous

training program for the DOS. In June 197 I, they had trained to fly the first Salyut, DOS-I, only

to be dropped days before the launch because of Kubasov's illness. They would have flown the

second mission to the station in July, had it not been for the deaths of the Soyuz I I crew. In

July 1972, they were ready to fly to the DOS-2 station when it exploded in air before ever reaching orbit. Then, for the fourth and final

before the fatal attitude control system

for DOS missions, on May 25, 1973,

announced that Leonov and Kubasov

Apollo-Soyuz Experimental Program"

past few years.

time, they were days from flying to DOS-3 in May 1973

failure destroyed that hope. After three years of training

just days after the Kosmos-557 failure, Soviet officials

would be the primary crew for the Soviet side of the

Naturally, there was no word on their activities of the

Having no space station to which to go meant there was the possibility of an even longer

hiatus in Soviet piloted spaceflights. To take advantage of the gap, Mishin drew up a plan to

thoroughly test the new 7K-T Soyuz ferry variant on an independent flight. In addition, he

inserted a second solo Soyuz mission, which would carry out some of the astrophysics experiments they had been forced to abandon because of the loss of two consecutive DOS spaceships, In July 1973, crews began training for these two missions. S_

As a prelude to these two missions, TsKBEM inserted a third solo Soyuz mission--an automated flight to verify all the new design changes on the vehicle that had been introduced in

1972-73. That Mishin did not fly such a robot flight prior to the May 1973 space station

attempts indicates that those missions were under time pressure to get off before Skylab.

Having lost the battle over space stations, there was no incentive not to fly a precursor mission

anymore, Soyuz 7K-T spacecraft no. 35 lifted off without incident at 0900 hours Moscow Time

on June 15, 1973, into an initial orbit of 209 by 268 kilometers at a 51.55-degree inclination.

During its two-day, nine-minute flight, the 6,790-kilogram spacecraft, named Kosmos-SZ3 in

the Soviet press, performed a single orbital maneuver to lower apogee before returning to Earth

on June 17. Presumably, the first flight of the "solar panel-less" Soyuz variant was sufficiently

successful to warrant dedicated preparations for a "return-to-flight" mission in the program.

It had been more than two years since a single Soviet cosmonaut had been in space.

The honor to break this dubious record fell on the shoulders of two seasoned veterans of the

cosmonaut corps, neither of whom had ever flown in space before, At age forty-five,

Commander Lt. Colonel Vasiliy G. Lazarev's involvement in the space program dated back to

the early 1960s, when he had taken part in the Volga high-altitude balloon flights to test

prototype pressure suits, during which pilots parachuted from altitudes as high as thirty-two

kilometers. Later, in 1964, he had been considered a prime contender to fly the historic threecosmonaut Voskhod flight. It was only at the last minute, after insistent opposition from the

late Korolev, that another candidate replaced him on the primary crew. An Air Force doctor by

profession, he had "officially" joined the cosmonaut team on January 17, 1966, just days after

Korolev's death." Flight Engineer Oleg G. Makarov, at age forty, was an old-timer from TsKBEM

52. K. Lantratov, "Do You Remember How All This Began?(20 YearsFrom the Docking of "5oyuz' and

'Apollo')" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 15 (July 16-29, 1995): 42-52.

53. Lantratov, "20 YearsFrom the Flight of 'Soyuz-12""; E-mail correspondence, SergeyVoevodin to the

author, January 30, 1997.Crews for the first mission were V. G. LazarevlO, G. Makarov, A. A. Gubarev/q. M

Grechko, and P.I. KlimuklV. I. Sevastyanov.Crews for the second mission were L. V. VorobevlV. A. Yazdovskiy,P I.

KlimuklYu I_. Ponomarev, and V. V, KovalenoklV. I. Sevastyanov.

54. Lazarev had actually replaced a new cosmonaut candidate V/_. Degtyarev,who resigned on the same

day that Lazarevjoined. SeeV. Semenov,I. Marinin, and S. Shamsutdinov, fz istorii kosmonautiki: vypusk I: nabory

v otryady kosmonavtou i a.ttronautov(Moscow: AO Videokosmos, 1995), pp, IO, 12; Rex Hall, "Soviet Air Force

Cosmonauts," in Michael Cassutt, ed., Who's Who in Space: The International Space Year Edition (New York:

Macmillan, 1992), pp, 245-46.

815
816

whohadworkedonthedevelopmentoftheVostok,Voskhod,andSoyuzspacecraft.Hejoined

thecosmonautteamaspartofthefirstcivilianengineerintakeonMay23,1966.Later,Makarov

hadactivelytrainedasoneoftheprimarycontendersforthefirstLIcircumlunarandL3lunar

landingmissions,beforefinallymovingtotrainfortheKontakt project in April 197"0. When

that effort was also canceled in September 1971, he began training for DOS space station

flights2 _

The launch of 7K-T Soyuz spacecraft no. 36 took place at 1518 hours Moscow Time on

September 27, 1973. On board were Commander tazarev and Flight Engineer Makarov, The

spaceship, openly named Soyuz 12, entered an initial orbit of 193 by 248.6 kilometers at a

51.61-degree inclination. Within seven hours of launch, the cosmonauts fired the Soyuz main

engine to alter their orbital parameters to 326 by 345 kilometers, similar to the apogees of the

earlier Kosmos-496 and Kosmos-573. both automated precursors to the Soyuz station "ferry

version." The crew seemed to have been simulating the first portion of a rendezvous profile

with an imaginary station. Perhaps to preclude rumors of a failed mission, the Soviet press

announced publicly during the first day of flight that the Soyuz 12 mission would last only two

days. sufficient to test its capabilities as a crew transport ship to the DOS)"

Events were evidently normal during the first day of flight. Few scientific experiments were

included in the program. The most prominent one announced was the use of the nineobjective LKSA multispectral camera developed by Moscow State University. Makarov took

Earth resources photographs using the hand-held camera, while Lazarev simultaneously took

photographs of the same targets using a standard camera. Other experimenters in airplanes

took photographs of the same areas to compare distortions introduced by the atmosphere.

Small biological payloads were apparently carried aboard Soyuz 12. although the Soviet press

did not release any details. Contact with the ground was maintained by the ship 7]kademik

Sergey Koroleu, stationed in the Atlantic, and by a Molniya-I communications satellite? 7

One of the primary goals of the flight was to test the Sokol-Kl pressure suits, At some

point during the mission, Lazarev and Makarov depressurized part of their ship to test these

suits. On the second day, however, there were "serious defects" in the life support system, followed by a failure in the ship's attitude control system."" Soon afterwards, the cosmonauts

wrapped up their activities and successfully returned to Earth wearing their new suits, landing

at 1434 hours Moscow Time on September 29, after a one-day, twenty-three-hour, fifteenminute, and thirty-two-second flight. There was a curious postscript to the flight. Both

cosmonauts had candidly and bluntly written about the problems during the mission in their onboard journals When the State Commission examined their comments, officials reportedly tried

to "muffle" their complaints, calling the flight a closed subject. For a time, the cosmonauts were

unsure whether their reports would affect their future careers, but soon both were assigned to

another flight) _

The Soyuz 12 mission may not have been an unequivocal success, but the flight did serve to

instill some confidence in the space program. It was the first Soviet piloted mission in more than

three years that had fully achieved its objectives. The flight was followed in quick succession by

two more launches of the 7K-T ship before the end of the year. The first of these was the flight

of vehicle no. 34L to simulate a full two-month stay in orbit. Launched at 0820 hours Moscow

55 Semenov. Marinin. and Shamsutdinov, Iz istorii kosmonautiki uypusk L p 13: Voevodin correspondence. January 30. 1997

56. Peter Smolders,Souietsin ,Space(New York:Taplinger Publishing Co., 1913), p, 250.

57 Ibid: Gatland, Moaned Spacecraft.p. 237: Christian Lardier,L'ZtstroaauticlueSoui_ticlue(Paris:Armand

Colin. 1992), p. 19t: SouietSpacePrograms 1976-80, p. 518

58 Rebrov,Kosmieheskiyekatastrofy, p. 73: Lantratov. "20 YearsFromthe [light of '5oyuz-12'."

59. Rebrov.Kosmichesklye katastro[y, pp. 73-74.

CHALLENGE TO ilb.POLLO
_SHES TO _SHES

Time on November 30, 1973, the spacecraft was disguised under the designation Kosmos-613.

Initial orbital parameters were 195 by 295 kilometers at a 51.6-degree inclination. Fewdetails have

been released on the flight. Over a period of six days, the spacecraft maneuvered into a "working

orbit," similar to ones planned for future DOS missions, and then powered down, simulating conditions when such ferries would bedocked to a space station. After an apparently successful sixtyday, nine-minute mission, Kosmos-613 returned to Earth successfully on January 29, 1974.

The final Soyuz flight in 1973 was a piloted mission, launched primarily to perform scientific experiments that had been delayed because of the repeated failures in the DOS program. The

main payload on the Soyuz ship was the Orion-2 astrophysical telescope designed by Dr. Grigor

Gurzut, a Corresponding Member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. The instrument,

designed to observe stars in the ultraviolet band of the electromagnetic spectrum, was installed

in place of the deleted large docking apparatus at the forward end of the spaceship. In addition,

the living compartment of the vehicle was transformed from the normal living quarters into a dedicated scientific laboratory, and the spacecraft was equipped with solar panels. The mission itself

was timed to coincide with Comet Kohoutek's approach to Earth in late 1913. Since July 1973,

the primary crewmembers for the mission were cosmonauts Lt. Colonel Lev V. Vorobyev and

Valeriy g. Yazdovskiy. The former, a forty-two-year-old Air Force pilot, had almost been victim to

political intrigue in the 1960s. Having joined the cosmonaut corps on January I0, 1963, as one

of a new batch of trainees who would fly to the Moon, Vorobyev immediately got into hot water

when, in early 1964, he and another trainee, Eduard P. Kugno, publicly criticized the Communist

Party. When asked to make a speech in front of a local Party meeting, Kugno had evidently told

a senior Party official, "1will not speak to a Party of swindlers and sycophants! .... He was expelled

from the cosmonaut team on April 16, 1964. Vorobyev survived the "purge" because he was

already a member of the Communist Party. He eventually went on to train for the Almaz and

Kontakt programs.

Civilian engineer Yazdovskiy, forty-three years old, played an important role in drawing up the

experiments program for the Orion-2 mission. He joined TsKBEM during the Korolev era in 1957

and was a part of the teams that designed the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz spacecraft. Like

Vorobyev, this would be his first spaceflight, although he had served in backup capacities.

Unfortunately for both, the two had an extremely difficult time getting along with each other.

At one point during the training, they even refused to sit at the same table during a lunch break,

preferring to sit on opposite sides of the lunch room. A month before the scheduled launch,

cosmonaut overseer Lt. General Shatalov had no choice but to remove the two men from the

flight and substitute the backup crew into the primary spot._'

The two new cosmonauts--thirty-one-year-old Major Petr I. Klimuk (commander) and

thirty-one-year-old civilian Valentin V. Lebedev (flight engineer)--lifted off in ?K-T spacecraft

no. 33 at 1455 hours Moscow Time on December 18, 1973. The vehicle, named Soyuz 13

in the Soviet press, entered an initial orbit of 193.3 by 272.7 kilometers at a 51.6-degree

inclination. Both cosmonauts, like the original primary crewmembers, were rookies. Klimuk,

something of a child prodigy, was the first of his batch of cosmonauts, selected on October 28,

1965, to make a spaceflight. He trained for many years in the LI and L3 lunar programs before

his assignment to the current mission. Lebedev was a civilian engineer from TsKBEM who had

joined the cosmonaut team on March 22, 1972, just over a year prior to the flight, It was one

of the shortest times from selection to flight in the history of the Soviet space program. Both

60. N.P. Kamanin,Skrytiykosmosknigautoraya.1964-1966gg(Moscow:InfortekstIF,1997),pp.26,40:

Hall,"Soviet_qirForceCosmonauts,"p 244.272:V. Moichanov,"DisgracedCosmonaut"(l:ng)ishtitle). ,_pogey2

(January1993):4. KugnowasofficiallydismissedonJune17,1964.

61. Hall."SovietAir ForceCosmonauts,"p. 316.

817
818

men had trained extensively at the Byurakan Observatory in Armenia where the Orion-2 telescope had been built. As soon as the two cosmonauts entered orbit, it marked the first time in

the history of spaceflight that men from both the United States and the Soviet Union were in

space at the same time. NASA astronauts were then in the middle of their marathon Skylab 4

mission. By Soyuz 13's fifth orbit, the cosmonauts had performed a series of orbital maneuvers,

depositing their ship in a 225- by 272-kilometer orbit at 51.6 degrees.°'

During the course of their immensely successful flight, Klimuk and Lebedev performed

a wide range of scientific experiments in the fields of medicine, biology, Earth resources, astronomy, and navigation. Medical experiments included one called Leukoy-3 to investigate the

circulation of blood to the brain in micrograviW. The main biological experiment centered

around the use of the Oazis-2 unit used for research into protein mass in space, which the cosmonauts activated on their second day in orbit. In the experiment, the waste products of one

type of bacteria served as the initial material used by other bacteria to accumulate protein mass.

During the Soyuz 13 mission, this regenerative process increased the biomass by thirty-five

times, an encouraging sign for those attempting to design a closed-cycle life support system.

Plants used in the experiment included chlorella and duckweed.

The Earth observation experiments included use of the RSS-2 spectrograph for photographing the day and twilight horizons. The cosmonauts also used a nine-lens camera with

different color filters to expose three strips simultaneously to Earth's surface. Two of the films

were sensitive to visible light and the third to infrared light. Navigational exercises consisted

of activities in autonomous navigation to determine the accuracy of control systems. The

primary goal of the mission was the useof the Orion-2 telescope. Unlike Orion-I on the Salyut

station, Orion-2 was mounted completely outside the spacecraft. The telescope was mounted

on a three-axis stabilized platform with a pointing accuracy of two to three seconds of arc.

The pointing was performed both by moving the ship and the telescope, using thirteen electric

motors. The Orion-2 telescope complex also included an instrument for studying x-ray

emissions from the Sun--the crew performed such experiments on the third day during the

sixty-fifth orbit concurrent with Earth-based observations. During the Soyuz 13 mission, the

crew took I0,000 spectrograms of more than 3,000 stars in the constellations of Taurus, Orion,

Gemini, Auriga, and Perseus. All the spectrograms, using NASA-supplied film, were in the

spectral classes of 2,000-3,000 Angstrom units, which cannot be studied from Earth._

The two men successfully returned to Earth after a seven-day, twenty-hour, fifty-fiveminute, and thirty-five-second mission, landing at 1150 hours Moscow Time on December 26,

1973. The flight was an unqualified success--an encouraging sign that Mishin and his engineers had bounced out of the dismal dregs of the past few years. In retrospect, the Soyuz 12

and Soyuz 13 missions came at a particularly important juncture in the history of the Soviet

space program. Forthe first time in many years, consecutive piloted missions had instilled hope

instead of despair. Clearly, both of these flights had modest objectives, but for years, the Soviets

had difficulty in achieving even modest goals in space. After years of doubt, it also seemed that

engineers had managed to eliminate all the bugs from the troubled Soyuz spacecraft. Finally, in

what no one could guessed at the time, the mission was the very final piloted mission under

Mishin's command. An era was about to end.

The Saga Continues... Barely

The third N I failure, on June 27. 1971, occurred three days before the deaths of Soyuz I t

cosmonauts Dobrovolskiy. Volkov, and Patsayev. One can only imagine the spirits of those

62 SouietSpacePrograms.1976-80,p, 518.

63. Ibid.,pp. 520-21:Garland.MannedSpacecra[t,pp. 238-39.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
_SHES TO _$HES

engineers who had to peruse through all the debris and telemetry of the N I accident in the late

summer of 197I. The obligatory accident commission met several times throughout July and

August to determine the cause of the explosion of booster no. 6L. By October I5, Academician

Keldysh had signed the final conclusion of the commission on the causes of the accident.

During the launch, all the engines worked normally for the first time after ignition, but

roll stabilization of the rocket was not nominal. The roll error gradually increased and was at

fourteen degrees by T+14.5 seconds--that is, the rocket had turned fourteen degrees around

its main axis despite the counteraction of vernier nozzles to correct the roll. In fact, by T+7.5

seconds (at an altitude of 250 meters), the verniers had hit their mechanical stops (at forty-five

degrees), unable to turn anymore. Furthermore, at T+39 seconds, the gyro instruments of the

N I terminated operation, and for the remainder of the flight, the rocket was not stabilized along

its axes. At T+47.8 seconds, the booster began to break up in the area between the third stage

and the L3 payload. The latter separated from the main body of the rocket and fell not far from

the launch pad, while the "beheaded" rocket continued to fly. Finally, at T+50. I seconds, when

the uncontrolled roll had reached 200 degrees, the KORD system switched all the first stage

engines off as a result of an emergency command from the limit switches of the gyro instruments." N I Chief Designer Boris A. Dorofeyev later described why the roll error had occurred:

The 6L vehicle lost roll control due to a design error. The designers misjudged the air

pressure signature in the bottom part of the rocket in flight• They also misjudged the

influence of the pyrotechnical starter exhaust tubes, guhieh u, ere located asymmetrically on each of the 30 engines. The shape of the rocket's bottom and two rings of closelyinstalled engines created two zones of air depression behind the booster. The

asymmetrical location of the exhaust tubes created a high-torque rotating force on the

borders of those depression zones. The six control thrusters were unable to compensate

[or that [orce. That ef[ect did not take place on the first two launches because not all

the engines worked at that time. The non-working engines of the outer rings created "air

gaps." wide enough to diminish the depression zones' effect? _

The third failure of the N I evidently raised the possibility of terminating the rocket program

completely• Yuriy A Mozzhorin, the influential Director of the Central Scientific-Research

Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash), recalled that there was a meeting of the MilitaryIndustrial Commission on the issue after the third N t failure. He explained later:

•.. when the question of shutting the project down was being decided, I came out against

it. Why? By that time. we had acquired the experience, many of the engineering objectives

had already been achieved, and we had the ability to expose the weak points .... 66

Despite the third failure, confidence was, in fact, growing among the rocket's leading engineers that they were close to success. The next booster, no. 7L, would be a significantly

improved model, while the following one, no. 8L, was an altogether different variety with completely new multifiring engines on the first three stages, as well as highly optimized systems.

64. R.Dolgopyatov,B.Dorofeyev,andS.Kryukov,"_t theReaders'Request:TheN I Project"(Englishtitle),

.,qviatsiyai kosmonavtikano.9 (September1992):34-37: Igor Afanasyev."N I: AbsolutelySecret"{Englishtitle),

Krylyarodinyno, II (November1993):4-5.

65. Boris_qrkadyevichDorofeyev,"Historyof theDevelopmentof theN I-L3 MoonProgram,"presentedat

the 10th InternationalSymposiumon the History of Astronauticsand Aeronautics,MoscowStateUniversity,

Moscow,Russia.June20-27, 1995.

66. Col.M. Rebrov,"tq Portraitin the Lightof Glasnost:A Call After Midnight"(Englishtitle), Krasnaya

zuezda,DecemberI, 1990,p. 4.

819
820

The extensive changes on booster no. 7L were crucial for achieving orbit. Many of these

alterations were performed not only to improve chances for a success, but also to increase the

mass of the payload itself. Designers had improved the aerodynamic characteristics of the first

stage by reducing the area of the bottom of the first stage by replacing part of the lower conical skirt with a cylindrical section, thus reducing the base diameter from 16,9 to 15.8 meters.

They also introduced tapered fairings to replace the rounded ones, improved the N l's thermal

protection characteristics, and optimized the thermal insulation of the propellant tanks, Flight

control would be performed by an on-board computer from commands issued by a gyro-stabilized platform developed by Chief Designer Pilyugin's Scientific-Research Institute for

Automation and Instrument Building, To improve roll control, engineers introduced four

I IDI21 vernier liquid-propellant rocket engines, developed under Deputy Chief Designer

Mikhail V. Melnikov, to replace the six old exhaust nozzles on the first and second stages. The

rocket would also have the Freon passive fire extinguisher system as well as new mechanical

and thermal protection for instrumentation and the on-board cable system. Finally, the telemetry measurement systems had been modified, by the Experimental Design Bureau of the

Moscow Power Institute under Chief Designer Bogomolov, with the use of miniature radiotelemetry gear. The new system made it possible to receive information from approximately

700 newly mounted sensors, making a total of 13,000 sensors on the booster)'

With respect to the problems of the main engines of the first three stages, one of the most

irksome was the burn-throughs of the internal propellant lines, especially of the LOX lines,

caused by the design choice of having the engines' components very close together to reduce

tubing length. The N I State Commission, having investigated the matter, concluded on January

I, 1972, that this problem had finally been eliminated. _ The engines on 7L also had aerodynamic shields on their exterior to protect them from high-velocity air streams. Meanwhile,

Kuznetsov's new engines, capable of being retired, and with very high-performance characteristics, underwent ground testing from t971 through 1972. Engineers completed the interdepartmental tests of the NK-33 (first-stage) and the NK-43 (second-stage) engines in September

1972. _ Mishin's original planning from the 1970 period was to use the new engines beginning

with N I booster no. 8L, contingent on a schedule in which ground testing of the new engines

would finish in time for installation on booster no. 8L. Not surprisingly, there were delays in

preparing for the next N I launch: booster 7L's launch was set for the fourth quarter of 1972, by

which time Kuznetsov's new engines were ready for flight. The natural question was: what

point was there in launching the N I with old engines when the new engines were ready? Senior

designers in the program recalled later that:

. . . certain ministry heads were of the opinion that [booster no. ZL with the older

engines] should be mothballed. But such a decision would have led to a further delay

in the creation of the launch vehicle of at least two and a half years./qnd while the new

engines were being manufactured and stand tests of the sections were being performed,

the launch of rocket no. 7 could be used to check out the dynamics of the flight control

ca1 Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev, and Kryukov. "At the Readers' Request: The N I Project": Afanasyev, "N I:

/qbsolutely Secret": Semenov, ed., RaketnoKosmieheskoya Korporatsiyo, p 258: I. /q. Marinin and S Kh.

Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programs for Piloted Flight to the Moon" (English title), Zemlya i uselennaya no. 5

(September-October 1993): 77-85: Alexander Yasinsky, "The N-I Rocket Programme," Spoeeflight 35 (July 1993):

228-29

68. N I Panichkin, "Some Resultsof N I Development with Multi-Engine Powerplants," presented at the

10th International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics.

69. Dolgopyatov. Dorofeyev, and Kryukov, "At the Readers'Request: The NI Project." Tests [or the thirdstageengines (NK-39) were completed by November 1973.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
_SHES TO ASHES

with the new vernier engines and the essentially new control system, as well as check

out many other designs. _[ter a number o[ discussions, the State Commission decided

to go through with the launch [o[ 7L using the old engines]. '°

In August 197 I, the Keldysh Commission had effectively terminated the L3 program with

the recommendation that further work on the Lunar Orbital Ship (LOK) and Lunar Ship (LK)

cease in favor of more capable lunar spaceships. The official decision to close down further production of L3 components was apparently issued in a September 1972 governmental decree on

the N I-L3 program." At the time of that order, there were several fully built models of both the

LOK and the LK at the TsKBEM plant. Some of these would fly the remaining N I-L3 launches,

performing automated and piloted flights to the Moon. The payload for booster no. 7L was the

first flightworthy model of the LOK, vehicle no. 6A. and a mock-up of the LK lander installed

underneath the L3 payload fairing. Quite possibly, the total lifting capability of booster no. 7L

was not sufficient to carry both a functional LOK and an LK

The flight plan for booster 7L was signed on July 18. 1972, by Mishin and his three principal Deputy Chief Designers--Okhapkin, Chertok, and Tregub. The plan detailed a complete

lunar-orbital mission for the LOK from launch to landing. The N I was to lift off from site I IOL

with a 89,803-kilogram L3 payload consisting of the Blok G fourth stage, the Blok D fifth stage,

the LK mock-up, the LOK, and associated fairing. The nominal orbit would be 200 by 740 kilometers at a 50.Z-degree inclination. If all operations were within acceptable parameters, the

L3 complex would circle Earth for a period of twenty-four hours, with translunar injection taking

place by firing the Blok G stage on the sixteenth or seventeenth orbit. Once the

Blok G tanks were empty, the stage would cease firing and ignite the Blok D stage for a period

of forty-four seconds to impart sufficient escape velocity to the payload. There were contingencies to go for translunar injection on the eighteenth or nineteenth orbits if the earlier attempt

failed. In case of a complete failure to escape Earth's orbit, the LOK would simply separate from

the stack, carry out a thorough testing flight in Earth orbit, and splash down in the Indian Ocean.

The LOK-LK-Blok D complex would spend just over four days in transit to the Moon, during which the Blok D would fire twice for mid-course corrections--the first at eight to ten hours

after launch and the second ten to twenty-four hours prior to achieving lunar orbit. For most of

this period, the stack would be in a slow roll mode of a half degree per second, accelerating

during one period to two degrees per second to ensure proper thermal equilibrium in Blok D.

_qt T+98.5 hours, the stack would enter lunar orbit. The initial and transitional lunar orbits were

selected to ensure the best conditions for surface photography during the mission of booster

no. 7L. The initial orbit would be near circular at 175 plus or minus seven and a half kilometers, while the later orbit would be elliptical with a perilune of forty plus or minus five kilometers. Both orbits would have inclinations to the lunar equator of 180 degrees plus or minus two

degrees. Corrections to the orbit were to take place on the fifth and twenty-seventh orbits.

During the LOK's time in lunar orbit, special cameras were to take detailed photographs of

the selected landing sites on the fourteenth, seventeenth, thirty-fourth, and thirty-sixth orbits.

The LOK would separate from the LK mock-up and Blok D after a command from Yevpatoriya

subsequent to the completion of photography on the thirty-sixth orbit. The LOK's living compartment would also detach from the rest of the vehicle on the thirty-ninth orbit, followed three

orbits later by a firing of the Blok I engine to impart sufficient velocity to send the spacecraft

back to the direction of Earth. Total time in lunar orbit would be about 3.7 days.

70. ibid. p. 36 One reliable source suggeststhat NI booster no 7t usedthe old engines becausethe new

engines were not ready for flight at the time See_fanasyev. "N I: _qbsolutelySecret."

71. V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov, and V. Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy rakelno-kosmicheskiy tsentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZIKBYu. 1994). p. 82: Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 574,

821
822

On the way back to Earth, the LOK would carry out two mid-course corrections--the first

about a day after leaving lunar orbit and the second about six hours prior to approach into

Earth's atmosphere, l_bout eight minutes prior to entry into the atmosphere, the ship would

separate into its remaining components, the descent apparatus and the instrument-aggregate

compartment. The landing of the descent apparatus would be in the Indian Ocean after a flight

from a northwesterly direction. _2

Throughout 1972, as this mission was being prepared, there were the occasional leaks in

the Western press suggesting that the Soviets had resumed their piloted lunar landing program.

One of the most precise predictions came from Charles S. Sheldon II, an analyst at the Library

of Congress who distinguished himself by being one of the few Western observers who continued to strongly believe that the Soviet Union was still planning piloted lunar expeditions.

Without knowing the details of the L3M program, Sheldon accurately exclaimed, "When they

get that big booster back in shape, the Soviets will go to the Moon." He summarized his beliefs,

confirmed twenty years later by Russian disclosures, by saying, "The Soviets are simply waiting to play one-upmanship with us when we have nothing going on in manned spaceflight. '''_

Rumors of the next N I launch also filtered through. In September 1972, U.S. reconnaissance

satellites evidently witnessed the N I being taken back to the assembly-testing building at

Tyura-Tam, thus spurring reports that no launch was imminent. '4 In fact, activity at Tyura-Tam

was significantly accelerated in the waning months of 1912, primarily related to the fourth N I

launch attempt,

For the first time during an N I launch, Chief Designer Mishin, in the hospital because of

illness, was not present to direct technical operations. He assigned Deputy Chief Designer

Chertok to serve as "technical director" of the State Commission." Minister Afanasyev, who

served as the chair of the commission, was apparently unsure of whether to risk a completely

flight-ready LOK on an N I equipped with the old engines. In a last minute appeal to N I Chief

Designer Dorofeyev on launch day, he proposed replacing the expensive LOK with a mock-up.

In the final analysis, Dorofeyev convinced the Afanasyev that it would be advantageous to have

a real "live" ship on the rocket. _

The fourth N I lifted off at 091 hours, 5_5 seconds Moscow Time on November 23, 1912,

To observers, the flight seemed to be completely successful. Telemetry indicated that the engines

were operating normally, and all parameters appeared normal. Passing the sevenb/-second mark,

it was already flying longer than any of its predecessors. The six core engines shut down automatica]ly at T+90 seconds, apparently without problems. It was only at T+I04 seconds that

the first sign of trouble appeared, but within the rapid seconds passing by, there was literally no

chance to react. Within three seconds, a powerful explosion in the tail section of the first stage

destroyed the lower portion of the spherical oxidizer tank. The booster exploded and broke

up into pieces in the air. There had been just seven seconds left before first-stage shutdown and

second-stage firing. This time, the difference between success and failure was measured in

seconds. The emergency rescue system activated on cue and saved the LOK descent apparatus

from virtual destruction. 77

72. E-mail correspondence,Vladimir Agapov by the author, September30, 1996

13. Jack Hartsfield. "Russians Seen Landing Crew on Moon in 1975," Huntsville Times, April 2, 192'2,

pp 17-18.

14 RichardD Lyons, "Moon Shot Delay by Soviet Likely," /'dewYork Times, October I, 1912, p. 51.

75. Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality."

16. V. E Gladkiy. "The Last Launch of the NI Rocket" (English title),/qviatsiyc_ i kosmonavtika: ucherc_,

segodnya, zavtra no. 8 (August 1991): 28-3 I.

77. Afanasyev, "N l: Absolutely Secret"; Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporGtsiya, p. 258.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ASHES TO I_.SHES

The investigation into the 7Lfailure, likethe ones for the previous N I accidents, was longand

arduous. The process, however, differed in one substantive way from the previous times: this time

the investigation was bogged down in inter-design bureau rivalries and politics. At the

initial hearing of the State Commission to discuss the accident, Chertok reported that preliminary

data indicated that one of the engines on the periphery of the first stage had shut off spuriously

before the destruction of the tail compartment, But engine Chief Designer Kuznetsov was

reluctant to agree, believing that if the fault of the accident was placed on the shoulders of his

design bureau, then Minister of Aviation Industries Petr V. Dementyev would shut down his entire

operation--a threat that Dementyev had in fact hinted before the launch, In his defense,

Kuznetsov argued that the N I had been destroyed because of design vibrations in the frame of the

rocket as a result of the scheduled shutdown of the six central enginesjust before the explosion.

Afanasyev drew up a compromise solution in which the suspect engine had been destroyed

because of the unexpected influence of oscillations in the rocket. Parties on both sides,

however, refused to accept this version.'" Kuznetsov eventually sharpened his version of the

causes of the accident, suggesting that the failure had occurred as a result o[ an explosion in

a pipeline leading to an engine--that is, not in the engine itself, but in the armature of the rocket. The engineers who wanted to exonerate the N I rocket gathered a formidable array of

supporters to back their cause, including researchers from the Scientific-Research Institute of

Thermal Processes (the former Nil-I) and the Scientific-Research Institute of Measurement

Technology (Nil IT). Their combined investigation of sensor readings from the N I showed that

a shock wave had passed through the booster's body as a result of the engine explosion.

Kuznetsov argued back that the sensor readings were incorrect, but Nil IT Director Oleg N.

Shishkin persuasively showed through further investigation that all sensor readings were Jn

fact completely reliable. Given the evidence up to this point, the State Commission accepted a

provisional version that the accident had occurred because of a failure in the suspect engine

and that Kuznetsov's assumption on depressurization of the oxygen pipeline before the explosion was not supported by sensor measurements,

The situation was complicated because TsKBEM Chief Designer Mishin had very good

personal relations with Kuznetsov. The former was clearly put in a difficult position: most of

his subordinates were opposed to Kuznetsov's argument that the blame lay in the rocket rather

than the engines, On Kuznetsov's personal request, Mishin agreed to have the matter investigated by the N I Council of Chief Designers--a body that did not include representatives from

the dueling ministries. The central issue at hand was the reliability of the data from N I sensors.

The council's findings were also not to Kuznetsov's liking, and heapparently scoured through their

report trying to unsuccessfully find any fault in their logic./_ccording to one witness, "he simply

could not believe that [the engines] had blown up at the end of their resources.... ,,,9Minister of

Aviation Industries Dementyev, Kuznetsov's somewhat unsympathetic boss, then established an

independent panel of aeronautics specialists to examine Kuznetsov's claim that the failure occurred

as a result of a break in a 250-millimeter line that fed LOX to engine no. 4 on the first stage. The

rupture, according to Kuznetsov, had been caused by "a water hammer" from the sudden cutoff

of the six central engines of the N I, which turned off on schedule between eighty and ninety

seconds after launch to reduce the g loads during injection and to save propellant. Dementyev's

commission came to the same conclusion: that the engine cutoff had not led to the explosion. *°

78 The principal individuals on the TsKBEM side were D. I. Kozlov (Deputy Chief Designer, TsKBEM),

B. A. Dorofeyev (NI Chief Designer, TsKBEM), V. V. Simakin (Chief, NI Design Complex, TsKBEM), and

A. S. Kirillov (Chief, Chief Directorate, MOM). See Gladkiy, "The Last Launch of the N I Rocket"

79. Ibid., p. 29.

80 [bid: _qfanasyev, "NI: P,bso(uteiy Secret": Panichkin, "Some Results of N I Development."

823
824

Despite the compelling evidence and the rising opposition against the N I engines,

Kuznetsov refused to budge. Debates and arguments continued for some time over what

Kuznetsov believed was inadequatedynamic testing of the N I on the ground for precision loads,

especially as compared to the Saturn V. Newly discovered sensor tapes near the impact site of the

accident promised to throw the investigation into a lurch, but the new data only confirmed that

Kuznetsov was wrong. In the final analysis of the fourth N I launch, the State Commission stuck

to the evidence of the "anti-engine faction," noting that there were other opinions. In its report,

the commission stated that the flight had gone normally until T+I06.93 seconds. Analysis of the

probable causes of the failure indicated that:

• The damage to the aft compartment of the first stage because of a failure in engine no. 4

caused the explosion.

• The hypothesis that the engine failure occurred because of internal causes [that is,

the engine] did not contradict the telemetry data from engine no. 4 and from the stand tests,

the findings of an inspection of the physical materials, or the physical pattern of the development of the failure of the rocket.

• The hypothesis of the depressurization of the main lines feeding propellant to the main

engines and the vernier engines before the beginning of the failure [Kuznetsov's version] was

not confirmed by the telemetry data. 8'

As the fingers all pointed to Kuznetsov, questions were rising all over the place on not only

the old engines used on the N I boosters so far, but also the newly improved engines his design

bureau had been developing for two to three years. The issue had important long-term consequences precisely because of the tenuous connection between the old and new engines.

If Kuznetsov was unable to build engines for the N I after a ten-year researchprogram, what guarantee was there that he would succeed with his new versions? Mishin himself recalled:

The difficulties encountered during the modification of those [liquid-propellant rocket

engines}, which were accompanied by repeated failures to meet delivery deadlines, generated in a certain circle of peop{e (primarily, leaders such as D. E.Ustinov, L. V_Smirnou,

S. A. A[anusyeu) the opinion that N. O. Kuznetsov. given the existing attitude of the leadership of the Ministry of Aviation Industry toward the work. would not be able to bring

the engines up to the specified level of reliability any time soon, and consequently, there

would be neither an N I launch vehicle nor its modified versions. _

Perhaps to compensate for what many believed were Kuznetsov's shortcomings, the Soviet

space leadership sanctioned parallel efforts in two other design bureaus in 1973 to develop

substitute engines for the N I.

One of these two was a surprise participant in the N I program: Chief Designer Valentin E

Glushko's Design Bureau of Power Machine Building (KB [nergoMash). More than ten years after

the conflict with Korolev over the N I, which permanently fractured the Soviet space program,

Glushko was finally ready to swallow his pride and join forces in the N I program, He created a

special team at his design bureau to investigate various ways to increase the reliability of the

N I rocket. One of these approaches was to outfit the first and second stages of the booster with

engines that already had been repeatedly tested in flight, specifically altered versions of the

RD-253 engines from the Proton rocket. Research, however, showed that an N I equipped

with such engines would lose significant lifting capacity because of the use of noncryogenic

81. Dolgopyatov,Doroleyev,andKryukov,"At theReaders'Request:TheNI Project."

82. Mishin "Why Didn'tWe Flyto the Moon?"

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO

i
_b,SHES TO ASHES

propellants and also would cost the rocket in terms of reliability because the N I would have to

have a huge number of such engines on the first stage. A second option was to use a new and

much more powerful engine. Since about 1968, Glushko had been talking of a 1,000-ton-thrust

engine for a superheaw-lift launch vehicle. The idea eventually evolved by early 1970 into a

600-ton engine using kerosene-LOX, the same propellants that Glushko had opposed using for

the N I in the early 1960s. With the clouded future of the Kuznetsov engines, Glushko also

directed a team under SergeyR _qgafanovat his design bureau to study a 5,000-ton-thrust engine

with an annular combustion chamber and a nozzle of external expansion, with a central body

that could be used on the first stage of the N I. Needless to say, the prospect of developing such

a massively powerful engine was not very encouraging. _ The most realistic conception was a

more modest 500-ton-thrust four-chamber engine, also using the kerosene-LOX combination.

Another organization, the Design Bureau of Chemical Automation (KB KhimAvtomatiki),

the old Kosberg bureau led by Chief Designer Aleksandr D. Konopatov, also looked into

substitute engines. They proposed a 250-ton-thrust motor working on LOX and kerosene,

which would be developed on the basis of an old storable propellant engine developed many

years ago for Chelomey's abandoned URq00 rocket.

Despite the rising doubts about Kuznetsov's engines for the N I, Mishin's design bureau

worked on two new N I boosters, 8L and 9L, "under a new technical task. TM Both of these

rockets would be equipped with the new Kuznetsov engines on its first three stages. Just in

time, ground static testing of the third-stage engine, the NK-31, had finished in November

1973, thus qualifying engines for all three stages. In preparing booster no. 8L for launch, engineers took account of all the results of the prior four N I launches, painstakingly making sure

that such failures would not occur again. Booster no. 8L was significantly heavier than its

predecessors, partly because of new oscillation dampers installed in propellant lines to preclude

the type of depressurization suspected by Kuznetsov. The new rockets were also the first

equipped with filters at the inlets to the oxidizer pumps of the engines, the absence of

which had caused the catastrophic July 1969 failure. Other changes included an improved fire

extinguisher system and a faster acting version of the KORD engine control system. There was

also talk of installing a system to separate the first and second stages in case the former was

damaged: if there had been such a system at the time of the fourth failure, the malfunctioning

first stage could have separated from the rest of the booster, whose upper stages would have

compensated for the loss of seven seconds of first-stage firing. _

By early 1974, engineers had assembled booster no. 8L, allowing workers to begin

installing Kuznetsov's new NK-33, NK-43, NK-31, and NK-41 engines on the rocket. The

payload for the rocket was the first complete L3 complex, consisting of working versions of the

LOK, the LK, and Blok D. The complex would enter lunar orbit, perform complex maneuvers,

and then return to Earth without accomplishing a landing. _ Launch was scheduled for August

1974. Subsequently, booster no. 9L would fly before the end of the year. Confidence was at a

high in early 1974. As some participants later recalled:

The people [rom the plants. Desi£n Bureaus, and enterprises that had taken part in the

development were preparing the rocket [or [light with their former enthusiasm, because

they had reason to believe that the launch would produce a positive result._7

83, Afanasyev,"N I: AbsolutelySecret"

84. Tarasov,"Missionsin DreamsandReality"

85, ,qfanasyev."UnknownSpacecraft":Afanasyev,"NI: AbsolutelySecret."

86. Afanasyev,"N t: AbsolutelySecret."In anotherarticle,thesameauthorstatesthat theflight program

of boosterno, 8L would havebeen a complete L3 mission, including landing. SeeAfanasyev,"Unknown

Spacecraft."

87. Dolgopyatov,Dorofeyev,andKryukov,"_qttheReaders'Request:The NI Project,"p. 29.

825
826

By all accounts, the N I designers strongly believed that their faith in the rocket would be

vindicated after so many years--that this last flight in 19M would be the final test launch of

the giant rocket, allowing the State Commission to declare the vehicle operational. Four additional boosters--IOL, I I L, 12L. and 13L--were in various states of assembly at the time, in the

queue for launches in 1974 through 1976, Even the most pessimistic forecasts suggested that

the N I would be flying regular operational missions by 1976. "_

Curtains

Early 1974 was a particularly important time for TsKBEM, precisely because it seemed, for

the first time in a long time, that the unending setbacks of the previous three or four years were

over. Chief Designer Mishin was presiding over six major new programs, all focused on piloted

space exploration, which promised significant dividends in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Three programs involved the development of new variants of the Soyuz spacecraft, the most

important of which was the 7K-S, This spacecraft had been in development since 1968, originally as a ferry vehicle to a long-abandoned military space station, but it had eventually

emerged as a new generation of Soviet piloted spacecraft. In P,ugust 1972, Mishin had signed

a supplement to the original draft plan for the 7K-S, which allowed engineers to proceed with

the manufacture of the test and flight models. P,lthough the spacecraft was externally almost

identical to the older Soyuz, it was a completely new ship inside, with every essential system

replaced by a new or modernized substitute. 8_ By May 19M, engineers had already built eight

models of the IK-S, one of which was almost ready for launch, although Mishin noted later

that "the work was greatly slowed down by delayed deliveries by suppliers."_' In later years, this

model was called the Soyuz "£

There were two other Soyuz variants in the works at the time, the first of which was the

7K-TM, built specifically for the gpollo-Soyuz Test Project. In the fall of 19-12, engineers began

work on this variant: Mishin signed the final draft plan on December 15, 19722' The variant

had common systems with the new 7K-S, but it was designed particularly with the short timeframe of the joint project in mind: the most important addition was the new androgynous

docking system developed jointly by the two sides. By mid-1974, six of these ships were ready

for flight. The first one, vehicle no. 71, was launched on l_pril 3, 1974, as Kosmos-638. TsKBEM

introduced a new variant of the emergency rescue system for the I I/_.51 I launch vehicle. The

ten-day flight was successful, although it performed an unplanned ballistic, instead of a guided, return to Earth?:

A third variant of the Soyuz was the 7K-TG--a spaceship designed to serve as a cargo ship

to future space stations--that is, to bring propellant, food, and other supplies to crews staying

on DOS ships in Earth orbit. It was a revolutionary idea for the Soviet space program and one

of the most fundamental components of the USSR's ultimate goal of a permanent presence in

space. Engineers began work on the tanker, later called Progress, in mid-t973 and issued the

draft plan in February 19742 _

88 gfanasyev, "NI: Absolutely Secret": Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p 258;

SergeyLeskov,"How We Didn't Get to the Moon" (English title), Izuestiya, August 18, 1989, p 3. In one source,

Mishin states there were seuentotal N I boosters in various states of readinessin 19M. suggesting that the addF

tional boosters were IOL. I IL, 12L, 13L.and 14L.SeeMishin. "Why Didn't We Flyto the Moon?"

89 Semenov,ed., Raketno.KosrnicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 21l.

90. Yu g. Mozzhorin, et aL, eds., DoroD u kosrnos:I (Moscow: MAI. 1992), p. 125; Tarasov,"Missions in

Dreams and Reality."

91. Sernenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 198.

92. ibid., p. 202; Tarasov."Missions in Dreams and Reality": Mozzhorin, et aL, eds.. DoroD u kosmos I,

p 125; g Yasinskiy, "Getting Sway Fromthe Fire" (English title), _pogey 4 (1993): h 3.

93. Semenov.ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 334.

CHRLLENGE TO PIPOLLO
ASHES TO ASHES

Mishin had also significantly advanced work within the DOS program. Station no. 124, the

fourth in the series, was almost ready for launch, being in "a state of 20-day readiness for

launching" in late April 1974. _4Station no. 125, the first third-generation station with two docking ports, was already in the process of assembly at the Khrunichev Plant in Moscow2 _ These

two stations were later launched as Salyut 4 and Salyut 6, in 1974 and 1977, respectively. There

was also significant work on the Multirole Orbital Complex (MOK) during the 1972-74 period. As per the agreement in 1972, Mishin expected to fully focus on the MOK after the flight

of DOS no. 125.

The status of lunar programs remained in flux. Although the L3 program had been effectively terminated in late 1972, Mishin would fly out the remaining available hardware on several N I launches, Boosters 8L and 9L would carry out automated missions to the Moon. If

those two were successful, the first Soviet piloted landing on the Moon would be on booster

IOL or II L. The subsequent five or six boosters would carry out further piloted landings or

launches of the components of the MOK. Depending on the success of the early missions,

designers planned to eliminate the use of the backup LK and the Ye-8 rover to support the later

piloted landings2 _ The fate of the advanced L3M program is less clear. The available evidence

suggests that after the closure of the Rpollo program (after December 1972), the Soviet space

leadership lost interest in the Moon. /_s one respected Russian historian noted at the time:

"Money for the N I-L3M variation was not allotted."Q' As with many other programs of the period, however, it seems that Mishin doggedly carried on work on the L3M proposal without the

benefit of an official Communist Party or government decree on the matter. According to his

forecast in 1973-74, a successful L3M landing on the Moon could be achieved in 1978-80

"with only a small increase in spending in 1975-1976" above what was already allocated for

the N I program. 98

If progress on these programs were to Mishin's credit, his record as TsKBEM Chief Designer

during the previous eight years was nothing to brag about. It was during his tenure that two of

the worst accidents in space history occurred--the Soyuz I and Soyuz II fatalities, which

killed four Soviet cosmonauts. There were also the docking failures in Soyuz 2/3, Soyuz 7]8, and

Soyuz I0, the repeated failures in the LI and DOS programs, and finally--most glaringly--the

incredible catastrophes and delays in the N I rocket project. One could argue that Mishin was

possessed of nine lives to have even survived this spate of failures: any other man would have

been fired long ago. Some claim that he was protected in his position because of/_ndrey P.

Kirilenko, the powerful Politburo member, whose son-in-law, Yuriy P. Semenov, was a chief

designer at Mishin's design bureau. _ Mishin was also not the easiest man with whom to get

along, continually alienating his subordinates and associates with his abrasive behavior. In

addition, he apparently had an unhealthy affinity for alcohol. But Mishin's vehement critics--

and there are many--forget that he did not play a personal role in each and every failure that

beset the design bureau in the late 1960s and early 197Os. His deputies--particularly Bushuyev,

Chertok, Okhapkin, and Tregub--were responsible for managing many of the key programs

during this period, gnd ultimately, Mishin had the poor luck of the draw. Handed too little

money, too little time, and too many demands, possibly any other manager would have had the

same results.

94. Mozzhorin, et aL. eds., Oorogi u kosmos:E p. 125.

95. Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality."

96. K. Lantratov, "Anniversaries: The 'Deceased' Lunar Plan" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 14 (July

2-15, 1994): 60-61.

91. I. Afanasyev, "The 'Lunar Theme' l_fter N I-L3" (English title)..,quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 2 (February

1993): 42-44.

98. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Ely to the Moon?"

99. Sagdeev, The Making o[ a Soviet Scientist, P 180.

827
828

During the worst series of failures, in February 1973, the Ministry of General Machine

Building issued a devastatingly censorious document on the TsKBEM's activities, which was

partly a direct criticism on Mishin's performance as its leader:

. , . in the past years the e[fedweness o[ the work at the enterprise has noticeably

dropped .... Deficiencies exist at the enterprise in questions ensuring high quality and

reliability of the apparatus created which have been repeatedly discussed in the

Ministry Collegium (this has been reflected in a whole series of orders) which TsKBEM

has been eliminating slowly.., on the question of the internal organization of TsKBEM,

there are yet more exisZing deficiencies which have negatively manifested themselves in

the work of the enterprise .... _'

There was also dissension growing within the design bureau. In 1973, three of Mishin's

most powerful deputies, Bushuyev, Chertok, and Kozlov, along with former OKB-I Deputy

Chid Designer Kryukov and TsKBEM Department Chief Feoktistov, drew up and signed a letter, with the preliminary agreement of Central Committee Secretary Ustinov, to the Central

Committee and the Council of Ministers pointing out the unsatisfactory work of Mishin as the

Chief and Chief Designer of TsKBEM. They finished their letter with a request to dismiss Mishin

from his post.'"

The names of the signatories to the letter were not surprising. Bushuyev, Chertok, and

Feoktistov had been vehement supporters of the DOS program, and all, especially Feoktistov,

were increasingly lukewarm to continuing the trouble-plagued lunar program. Kozlov had had

a falling-out with Mishin over the military 7K-VI program in the late 1960s and subsequently

had an increasingly difficult time getting along with him. Kryukov had evidently had a spat with

Mishin in 1966 soon after Korolev's death over an unknown matter, after which Mishin had

demoted him from the post of deputy chief designer to department chief. Kryukov, like

Bushuyev, Chertok, and Feoktistov, had also authored the important proposal in late 1969 to

propose the DOS program in the first place.'"' The fracture clearly developed over the DOS program. By all accounts. Mishin believed that the N t-L3 lunar program was his life's work. As one

journalist recalled, he considered it "to be his duty in Korolev's memory, as perhaps the most

important accomplishment of his life.' ..... His deputies, Bushuyev and Chertok, were perhaps a

little more pragmatic, believing that it was time to admit failure and move on to more manageable projects--that is. the DOS program, They had also clearly felt betrayed by Mishin's

197'2 agreement with Chelomey in which the former promised to transfer the small space station program to the latter after the flight of DOS-5.

The N I versus DOS debate split the design bureau in half. Mishin did have support within TsKBEM. Okhapkin. Dofofeyev. Shabarov, and others--deputies who were responsible for

the N I-L3 program--apparently stood behind the besieged chief designer. Mishin also had the

support of DOS Chief Designer Semenov, no doubt because the latter owed his career to

Mishin. Both Semenov and local Party Secretary Anatoliy P, Tishkin evidently came out against

the letter that called for Mishin's dismissal. In the official history of the design bureau, the

100. Semenov,ed.. Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporots_ya,p. 161.

IOl. Ibid

102 gushuyev, Chertok, l:eoktistov,and Kryukov were four of the six men who proposed the DOS program

in late 1969, Seei6id. p 264, Forthe Kozlov-Mishin falling out over the 7K-VI, see K Lantratov. "Dmitriy Kozlov's

'Zvezda'" (English title), Novosti kosmonavtiki 6 (March I0 23, 1997): 74-80. For the Kryukov-Mishin failing-out

in 1966. seeMozzhorin, etat,eds,Dorogiukosmos /, p I01.

103, Mikhail Rebrov. "The Last /qrgument: /q Study of the Designer in Black and White" (English title),

Krasnaya zvezda. March 25. 1995. p 6

CHALLENGE TO _.POLLO
i _$HE$ TO ASHES

authors claim that Mishin managed to neutralize the effects of the damaging letter by coming

to an agreement with space program head Ustinov. The latter was on visit in early 1973 to

TsKBEM to mediate this growing conflict. Mishin was not informed of this sudden visit, perhaps to allow Ustinov free reign to discuss the matter with the "anti-Mishin" contingent. Upon

finding out that Ustinov was at the premises of his design bureau, Mishin rushed to meet his

boss and found Ustinov inspecting the DOS-3 model. The story goes that DOS Chief Designer

Semenov mentioned in passing that it would be useful to have two docking ports on a future

DOS vehicle, Llstinov liked the idea. In a subsequent conversation with Mishin, Ustinov, in a

conciliatory mood, offered Mishin an implicit deal: if the chief designer would agree to have

two docking ports on a future DOS vehicle, then Mishin could keep his job, The official historians add: "Thus V. P. Mishin found the possibility of continuing his work and at the same time

was compelled to support the idea of a new station.' .......

gs with other tales of Soviet space history, it is difficult to discern the exact details of this

story. The account clearly hinges on the idea that Mishin was in some way opposed to having

two docking ports on a DOS spacecraft. Completely contradictory evidence comes from Mishin

himself. In an interview in 1989, he clearly states that he wanted to have the first DOS with

two docking ports but was overruled by Ustinov "in order to hasten our success." '°_Notes from

Mishin's own office records of 1970-71 clearly attest to the serious considerations given to a

station with two docking ports, as well as Mishin's own enthusiasm for such a station.' ....

Despite these two irreconcilable accounts, one thing is clear: the 1973 letter calling for Mishin's

dismissal was a key factor in the growing opposition against Mishin.

The trajectory of Mishin's career was, of course, undeniably intertwined with that of the

N I-L3 program--an effort that was also under increasing attack at the time. Given the rising

lack of confidence in Kuznetsov's engines, there were murmurs of discontent asking whether

the program as a whole should be continued. As one historian noted:

The creators of the N! were being "called onto the carpet" more and more, and they

had to prove their correctness each time. The rhythm of the work was disrupted owing

to the confusion, and rumors were circulating in the corridors of the "firms" of the supposedly imminent "shutdown" o[ the NI. '''_

At one meeting on December 8, 1973, Central Committee Secretary Llstinov bluntly asked

whether it was still worth it to "ride the horse" any longer. One unnamed chief designer argued

that it was time to terminate the program. When it was TsNIIMash Director Mozzhorin's turn,

he made a case for continuing with the N I, but abandoning the lunar landing project:

To repeat what the 7tmericans have done--this is to openly admit to the world our lag

behind them. But as far as our N I carrier, what will canceling it do for the situation?

After all. satellites are getting heavier each year; in time, such a carrier will nevertheless

be neededJ To throw away the N J at the hallway point--then the development of a new

rocket of such lifting power will take a long time and vast resources.., work on the N I

must be continued! '°_

104 Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosrnicheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 294.

105 Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality."

106. Interview, PeterGorin by the author, November 18, 1997

107. Alanasyev, "The 'Lunar Theme' After N t-L3," p 43

108. Mikhail Rudenko, "four Steps from the Moon" (English title). Moskouskaya prauda, July 19. 1994, p.

IO It is possible that this meeting may have occurred on December8, 1972 The year is not given

829
830

As influential as Mozzhorin may have been, among the upper echelons of the Soviet space

industry, his word could not compare to more powerful players.

Perhaps aware that the fate of the N t was on shaky ground, Mishin continued to appeal

to both the Ministry of Defense and Communist Party officials that the continuing work on the

booster would be invaluable for ultimately building the MOK, which would have both military

and civilian mission goals. To get a firm word on the matter, Mishin, in cooperation with N I

engine Chief Designer Kuznetsov, prepared a detailed memorandum for Soviet General

Secretary Brezhnev on the MOK and on the general lag of the Soviet Union in the exploration

of space. They proposed and argued various measures that would allow the LISSR to move

ahead of the United States. Mishin was not unaware that Kuznetsov was under fire at this time

[or his poor contributions to the N I program. In an attached section on the causes o[ the fourth

N I failure, Mishin agreed to share the blame for the accident with Kuznetsov, hoping this

would put Kuznetsov in a favorable light to Brezhnev. Mishin's closest aides thus put together

a report on the entire N I program, the reasons for each failure, and the measures adopted to

preclude future accidents. As far as the critical fourth failure in 1972, they noted--contrary to

the official State Commission conclusion--that oscillations in the hull of the rocket caused by

the switch-off of the central engines, accompanied by additional loads acting on pipelines--

and the fact that the engines and their instrumentation were at the end of their resources--

caused the subsequent explosion. Therefore, it was a compromise variant of the accident

report. The two designers emphasized that in the succeeding launches, the level of vibrations

would be decreased by throttling down the thrust levels of the central engines prior to cutoff. '_

In late March 1974, Mishin and Kuznetsov sent their memorandum to Brezhnev with a

request to accept their proposals on the MOK and the N I. Brezhnev handed the report over to

Ustinov to evaluate the proposal, and Ustinov turned it over to the defense ministries to handle the matter. Parties within the Ministry of Aviation Industry were of the opinion that the two

chief designers' conclusions on the N I--that is, reducing the thrust of the engines prior to

engine cutoff on future N Is--were completely unfounded, because without sufficient dynamic

testing, it would be almost impossible to predict the outcome of such a profile, Thus, given the

chance for failure, it would be foolhardy at best to give authorization to launch further N Is based

on their recommendation. Llstinov eventually invited a number of prominent chief designers to

discuss the Mishin and Kuznetsov proposal. Glushko, having waited for more than a decade to

air his personal vendetta against the N I, did not hold back his words. He argued that new engines

or not, the N I was doomed for failure because of the great number of engines in the first stage.

Instead, Glushko proposed a new family of launch vehicles with very high-thrust engines.

In essence, Mishin made a fatal mistake by compromising his position and accepting

Kuznetsov's views on the reason for the fourth accident. It was the last nail in the coffin. The pace

of events in April and May 1974 was breathtaking. The maneuvering behind the scenes was done

in absolute secrecy, with few people really aware of the wheeling and dealing. Perhaps as few as

half a dozen people at TsKBEM were cognizant of the impending changes. One of Mishin's senior

deputies, YevgeniyM Shabarov, an old-timer from the Korolev days, recalled later:

• . absolutely unexpectedly for us one day in 1974 we received an invitation, well not even

an invitation, but an order to assemble all the Deputy Chiefs of the {design bureau] in the

office of the Chief Designer. We gathered in complete ignorance. There we sat and waited.

Suddenly the door opened, and [Minister of _eneral Machine Building] 5ergey

_leksandrovich _fanasyev entered, accompanied by Valentin Petrovich _lushko and a

number of other employees lrom the Ministry. "Good afternoon, comrades," [,Z]fanasyev]

IO9. Gladkiy,"The LastLaunchof theNI Rocket."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
_SHES TO _SHES

said .... [He] announced that. "The Politburo has taken a decision--Vasiliy Pavlouich

Mishin has been relieved of his post as Chief Designer of your organization, and Valentin

Petrovich Glushko has been named the General Designer, Your organization from now on

will be known as the 'Energiya' Scientific-Production Association. I wish you all success."

With that he left. All this happened so unexpectedly and quickly (in the course of two-three

minutes) that we were stunned and did not really understand what had occurred, ''°

What happened was certainly the largest reorganization within the Soviet space industry since

Korolev's death. On May 22, 1974, Mishin, at the time ill in the hospital, was officially released

from his duties as TsKBEM Chief Designer.On the same day, his former design bureau, (TsKBEM),

with all its affiliates, was combined with another powerful space organization (Glushko's KB

EnergoMash) to form the new Energiya Scientific-Production Association (NPQ Energiya). It was

evidently Glushko who had personally thought of the "Energiya" name. The sixW-five-year-old

Glushko was named the new Director and General Designer of this new and gargantuan empire,

which included:

• The former TsKBEM, renamed the Lead Design Bureau (GKB) at Kaliningrad

• The former TsKBEM branch at Kuybyshev

• The Experimental Machine Building Plant at Kaliningrad

• KB EnergoMash at Khimki

• KB EnergoMash's Primorsk Branch

• KB EnergoMash's Kamskiy Branch

• KB EnergoMash's Privolzhsk Branch

• The EnergoMash Experimental Plant"'

Thus, Glushko would supervise the development of almost all Soviet piloted spacecraft,

launch vehicles, automated reconnaissance satellites, and high-thrust rocket engines and

oversee their manufacture and testing. It was more power than Korolev held in his heyday.

Being ill at the time, Mishin was out of the loop throughout this period. As Mishin told a

journalist many years later:

To be frank with you, the decision to fire me came to me as a complete surprise ....

[After leaving the hospital] I was invited for a talk to the Staraya Square [the residence

of the Central Committee of the Communist Party], and Ustinov, the Central Committee

Secretary in charge of space affairs, told me. "Leonid Ilyieh [Brezhnev] asked me to convey his thanks for your work, and provide help in finding other employment.' ....

Presumably, Mishin would have been demoted to a senior position in the design bureau,

but Glushko would have none of that. When Mishin left the hospital, Glushko revoked Mishin's

clearance pass to enter the design bureau. ''3The new general designer wanted to make sure that

Mishin never stepped into his old haunting grounds again.

The natural question is: why Glushko? How did Glushko manage to end up as head of

the enterprise that was founded by one of his most famous opponents, Korolev? Glushko was

I I0. Mozzhorin, et at., eds., Oorogi u kosmos I. p. 183. The Politburo meeting to discuss the reorganization

was held on May 14, 1974

I I I. Semenov, ed., Rakelno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 288 Note that the TsKBEM branch at

Kuybyshev separated from NPO Energiya on July 30, t974, and became the independent Central Specialized Destgn

Bureau (TsSKB).

I 12, Rebrov, "The Last Argument."

113 Tarasov, "Missions in Dreams and Reality"

831
832

clearly well placed and also ambitious. Since the birth of the missile program in the mid-1940s,

he had always played second fiddle to Korolev. He was always the engine designer, while

Korolev was the designer of the rocket or the spacecraft. His claim to become the chief designer had no support while Korolev was alive. But with the less-powerful Mishin, Glushko could

take advantage of the former's failings, such as the repeated failures in the late 1960s and early

1970s in the piloted space program. By 197 I. Glushko was clearly the most respected and influential chief designer in the business, as evidenced by the unprecedented declassification of his

name. His organization had designed the engines for the first stages of almost all Soviet strategic ICBMs. including the R-7 (SS-6), the R-9A (SS-8), the R-16 (SS-7), the R-36 (SS-9), and the

R-36M (SS-18). This does not include his design bureau's work on engines for a family of

launch vehicles based on the R-7. as well as Yangel's Tsiklon and Kosmos series of boosters.

Still, he remained only the engine designer. Presumably during the discussions in early 1974

over the N I, when he offered a replacement for the old rocket, he proposed uniting his rocket

engine organization with that of Korolev's old spacecraft design bureau. From a managerial and

institutional perspective, it seemed to make sense to unite these two powerful entities into one.

Forces would be consolidated, and waste would be eliminated. Who was better to head the

whole organization than Glushko, one of the pioneers of Soviet rocketry? On a more fundamental political level, Glushko had the support of two key individuals, Brezhnev and Ustinov.

Their support was invaluable to his appointment."4

The N I-L3 project was the first victim of the May 1974 reorganization. The fate of the

project was clearly decided at the highest levels of the Soviet Communist Party and government, but it was also a decision that stemmed from a confluence of forces that all intersected

in mid-1974. Clearly one of the most important factors was the Mishin-Kuznetsov report sent

to Brezhnev in March. The repercussions of this report spiraled out of control until it reached

the offices of the primary client for the N I, USSR Minister of Defense gndrey A, Grechko. Given

his generally negative attitude toward the N t booster and its military uses. he was only too

happy to side with those who were clamoring for some definitive action. On May 19, 1974.

three days be/ore Mishin's official dismissal, Grechko signed an order suspending further

launches of the rocket. '_ The timing could not have been better. Glushko's first act as General

Designer of NPQ Energiya, signed on June 24, 1974, was to suspend all work on the N I-L3 program. ''_ The suspension of work on the N I meant that all programs associated with its development were also terminated. These included the L3M advanced lunar landing missions, the

giant MOK in Earth orbit, and proposed conceptions of anti-ballistic space-based weaponry.

The massive expansion of the Soviet space program, envisioned for the late 1970s by Mishin,

all disappeared with a few signatures.

In the official history of NPO Energiya, the authors wrote that the decision was taken with

the "tacit agreement" of/qfanasyev, Keldysh, Smirnov, and Ustinov."' One person who may

have been against this abrupt decision was Minister of General Machine Building Afanasyev,

who, while not always supportive of Mishin, was a strong proponent of the N I program. Some

reliable sources claim that both Glushko's appointment and the cancellation of the N I-L3 program "was made by the Politburo behind Minister ¢qfanasyev's back .... It was [Glushko's] initiative, not of his boss--Rfanasyev.' .... In recent years, Mishin has been very candid about who

114 SeeCol. M. Rebrov, "Specific Impulse" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, August 26, 1989. p. 4

I 15. Gladkiy, "The LastLaunch of the N I Rocket."

116 Semenov,ed,, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p 639,

117. Ibid., p, 258

I18. Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov, "Development oI Heavy Launch Vehicles in the USSR," presentedat the

IOth International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Moscow StateUniversity, Moscow,

Russia.june 20-27, 1995

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
JlbJSHES TO _I),SHES

he believes were responsible for scuttling a program that had sucked in billions of rubles, but

was so close to success:

I think the main culprit was Dmitriy Fedorovich Llstinov. The reason for winding up the

program--at least from his standpoint--was that the ,Ztmericans had beaten us to it.

This was a turning point in his career. Prior to this. he had not been a Politburo member, much less the Minister of Defense. He reached these positions after winding up the

[I'41] program. 71[anasyev could not have cared less. 7tl1 these failures were of/eating his

career. So he did not oppose winding up the NJ program. '_

Both Ustinov and Afanasyev kept their jobs. However, Mishin was not the only one whose

job came under fire. Maj. General Kerim A. Kerimov, the Chief of the Third Chief Directorate at

the Ministry of General Machine Building, was apparently demoted as part of the N I cancellation shakeup. He continued to serve as chair of the State Commission for Soyuz, but he would

no longer oversee the Korolev design bureau within the ministry. '> Others who fell under the

blade included several leading engineers responsible for the N I-L3. Once Glushko came into

power, he sidelined some of the senior personnel involved in the N I project. N I Chief Designer

Dorofeyev was "forcibly dismissed," while Mishin's First Deputy Okhapkin, who had guided the

program since 1962, was demoted to an innocuous position.'"' The men who inherited senior

positions at NPO Energiya were, for the most part, those individuals who had little involvement

in the N I-L3 effort during the past few years. '2_

The termination of the N I-L3 program was a complete surprise to most people at NPO

Energiya, and it sent shock waves throughout the entire space industry. Engineers, confident

beyond hope that success in the program was within reach, were simply stunned at the irony

of cancellation at the cusp of victory. Especially galling was the fact that "not a single session

of a scientific council, not a single conference of specialists, not a single meeting of the Council

of Chief Designers" was convened prior to taking the final decision--it was all decided behind

closed doors among less than half a dozen individuals. As one journalist wrote: "It was far less

dangerous to transfer the responsibiliW onto other shoulders and to declare the N I a mistake." ,2; Perhaps the biggest victims were the engineers: without any intention of hyperbole,

one observer noted:

119. What StarsAre We Flying to? (English title), Moscow Teleradiokompaniya Ostankino Television, First

Program Network, Moscow, April 9, 1992,0825 GMT,

120. Leonard Nikishin, "Inside the Moon Race." Moscow News 7 (April II, 1990): 15. Kerimov's new post

was First Deputy Director ot TsNIIMash

12i. ForDorofeyev. seeS. Kryukov, "The Brilliance and Eclipseof the Lunar Program" (English title), Nauka

i zhizn no. 4 (April 1994): 81-85 Dorofeyev evidently did not leaveNPO Energiya.ByDecember 1977,he was Chief

of Complex 10 at NPO [nergiya, responsible for ground testing, which was definitely a demotion from his post in

1972-74. Okhapkin's fate is less clear.His official biography states that he was a deputy chief designer until 1976

SeeV. P.Glushko, ed., Kosmonautiku entsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskayaentsiklopediya, 1985). p. 286. However,

complete lists of deputy chief designersat NPO Energiyafrom t974 to 1917do not include his name SeeSemenov.

ed., Roketno-Kosmicheskayo Korporatsiyo, pp. 288-93

122. The new structure of NPO Energiya was approved on June 28, 1974 Glushko had two First Deputy

General Designers. One of them was Yu. N. Trufanov, appointed to his post on July 16, 1974.Trufanov was an odd

choice for the position, becausehe had come from Chelomey's TsKBM fili Branch. The other was V. R Radovskiy.

who had served under Gtushko for a long time at KB EnergoMash Glushko had five Chief Designers under him--

K. D. Bushuyev,Ya. P Kolyako, h S. Prudnikov, h N. Sadovskiy,and Yu, P.Semenov--responsible for particular thematic areasin the organization. There were also seven Deputy General Designers:A. R Abramov, BYe. Chertok, M.

S. Khomyakov, A. k, Rzhanov, Ye. V. Shabarov, V. V. Simakin, and k S Yeliseyev. See Semenov, ed., Raketno

Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya pp. 288-90,

123 Leskov, "How We Didn't Get to the Moon."

833
834

,Zts [or such a "detail" as the honorable work of thousands of people who had devoted

their best years to the N I, this was not even considered, these people did not even

receive any explanation, let alone consultation.,, and many of them. I am convinced.

received such a psychological blow that they have been unable to create anything o[

equal worth. _nd these were Korolev's best cadres.'_4

Another participant remembered how Brezhnev and Ustinov compensated for their actions:

On the eve of those sorrowful events, many people who had taken part in the work in

the lunar project.., were presented with decorations. I admit that at that time I did not

really understand why. It later became clear: we were decorated as a consolation and

so that we would hold our tongues. '_

Unable to comprehend the rationality of such a seemingly uninformed decision, many

unusual reasons filtered through the grapevine. Perhaps the most compelling one was that Soviet

space officials were simply afraid that the N I would succeed on its next launch. As one engineer

working on the program recalled: "A successful launch of no. 8... would require new investments

that would be both considerable and immediate.' .... Military-lndustrial Commission Chairman

Smirnov seemed to confirm this claim, when, in 1991, he admitted that the general consensus,

even among the upper leadership, was that the next launch would have been a success. '_:

When he took control of the giant Energiya organization, Glushko did not come emptyhanded. He had promised Ustinov that he could do better than the N I. and in one sense, he did

not disappoint. During his first days as general designer, he invited the technical leadership

of the organization and presented his vision of the future of Soviet space exploration: a new

family of superheavy-lift launch vehicles, ultimately leading to the establishment of large-scale

permanent bases on the surface of the Moon. While most attendees viewed the lunar base idea

with "great skepticism," it seems that Glushko had Ustinov's support, at least at the proposal

level. ''_ Why, after canceling Mishin's L3M and Long-Duration Lunar Base, Ustinov would

support Glushko's "new" ideas might mystify even the most cursory observer of Soviet space

history. Many within NPO Energiya were against the idea, correctly noting that the proposal

was completely absurd after the N I debacle. By October 1974, Glushko's engineers worked

up a formal technical proposal for a lunar base, called Zvezda, which was examined by an

independent expert commission of scientists and engineers headed by USSR Academy of

Sciences President Keldysh. Looking at the costs, the technical complexity, and the timeframes

proposed, the commission unanimously rejected Zvezda. In desperation, Glushko tried to get

signatures from leading Soviet scientists on the viability of his proposal. But even Brezhnev,

when told that this project would cost "only" 100 billion rubles, sobered up and declined to

approve it. Zvezda died soon after. _'_

124. Ibid

125 Vad. Pikul, "The History of Technology: How We Conceded the Moon: ,a, Look by One o[ the

Participants of the N I Drama at the ReasonsBehind It" (English title), Izobrelatel i ratsionalizator no. 8 (August

1990): 20-21

126. Ibid.

127 V.L. Menshikov, Baykonur: moya uoli lyubov (Moscow: MEGUS, 1994), p. 199,

128. Semenov. ed,, Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p, 288. The family of new launch vehicles were

informally known as Groza. Groin, and Vulkan Their ground-to-Earth orbit payload capabilities were: RLA-120Groza

(thirty to thirty-fivetons), RLP,-135Groin ( IO0tons), and RLA-150Vulkan (170-250 tons). Grozaand Groin, respectively, became Energiya-Mand Energiya,

129 Sagdeev,The Making of a SovietScientist. pp. 182-84: Afanasyev, "The 'Lunar Theme' After N I-L3":

Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": German Nazarov, "You Cannot PaperSpaceW'ith Rubles: How to SaveBillions"

(English title). Motodaya guardiya no. 4 (April 1990): 192-207.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
ASHES TO _SHES

If Zvezda proved to be too much for the Soviet space leadership, there was more interest

in Glushko's new family of superheavy-lift launch vehicles. The military had at last found a use

for such powerful boosters. Since 1912, the United States had embarked on the development

of the reusable Space Shuttle. Believing the Space Shuttle to be a military threat to the Soviet

Union, officials in the USSR Ministry of Defense found little interest in lunar bases or giant

space stations. What they wanted was a paral}el deterrent to the Shuttle. The story of exactly

why the Soviets believed the Space Shuttle was such a threat has, like many others, assumed

mythological proportions, with the truth probably buried forever in secret archives. The most

commonly propagated story, disseminated even by the most respected historians in Russia, has

an air of a folk tale:

Leonid Smirnou. former [Military-Industrial Gommission] Chairman . , . in his regular

report to Brezhnev on the state of our space efforts once mentioned.., that the Americans

are intensively working on a winged space vehicle. Such a vehicle is like an aircraft: it is

capable through a side maneuver of changing its orbit in such a way that it could find

itself at the right moment over Moscow--possibly with a dangerous cargo. The news disturbed Leonid liyich [Brezhnev] very much--he contemplated it intensively, and then said,

"We are not country bumpkins here. Let us make an effort and find the money. "_°

Several different organizations offered their services to develop a counterpart to the

American Shuttle. In the initial stages, none of them resembled the LI.S. spacecraft in the

slightest. Glushko proposed a radically new design for a Soviet counterpart, the Reusable

Vertical-Landing Transport Craft (MTKVP), a wingless system based on his new superheavy

launcher proposal. Chelomey offered up the twenty-ton Light Space Aircraft (LKS)--an

advanced reusable spaceplane concept to be launched on the Proton rocket. The MiG design

bureau's old "space branch" in Dubna, after years of fruitful work on such concepts, offered up

its old Spiral spaceplane. In February 1976, the chief of the space branch, Yuriy D. Blokhin, visited the Central Committee to persuade top Party leaders that the Spiral would be the most cost

effective and efficient response to the American Space Shuttle, citing NASA's work on such

experimental aircraft as the X-24. It was all in vain. Brezhnev, Smirnov, and particularly Keldysh

were unwilling to budge on their requirement for a system identical to the NASA Space Shuttle,

despite overwhelming opposition from most senior chief designers in the Soviet space

program."' In 1993, Efraim Akim, a scientist at Keldysh's Institute of Applied Mathematics,

elaborated on the precise rationale behind the "parallel response":

When the LI.S. Shuttle was announced we started investigating the logic of that

approach. Very early our calculations showed that the cost figures being used by N7157t

were unrealistic. Jt would be better to use a series of expendable launch vehicles. Then.

when we learned of the decision to build a shuttle launch facility at Vandenberg [,,_ir

Force Base] for military purposes we noted that the trajectories from Vandenberg allowed

an overflight of the main centers of the USSR on the first orbit. So our hypothesis was

130. B. Olesyuk. "The 'Buran' Blind Alley" (English title). Kuranliy. December 21, 199h p. 8. See also

YaroslavGolovanov. "Just Where Are We Flying to?" (English title). Izuestiya, December 12, 1991,pp. I, 3.

13I. l_fanasyev,"Unknown Spacecraft"; Mikhail Rudenko, "'Star Wars'--History of the 'Death' of a Unique

Spaceplane" (English title), Trud. August 26, 1993,p. 6; Anatoliy Kirpii and Olga Okara, "Designer of SpacePlanes.

Vladimir Cflelomey Dreamed of Creating a Space Fleetof Rocket Planes" (English title), Nezauisimaya gazeta, July

5, 1994,p, 6; Vyecheslav Kazmin, "The 'Quiet' Tragedyof EPOS" (English title). Krylya rodin), no, I (January 199l):

4-5. Note that by this time, the "space branch" was no longer under the MiG design bureau's jurisdiction, It had

become a part of DPKO Radugaon June 19, 1972.

835
836

that the development of the shuttle was mainly for military purposes. Because of our

suspicion and distrust we decided to replicate the shuttle without a full understanding

of its mission. 'vVhen we analyzed the trajectories from Vandenberg we saw it was possible for any military payload to reenter from orbit in three and a half minutes to the

main centers of the USSR, a much shorter time than [a submarine-launched ballistic missile] could make possible (ten minutes from off the coast), You might feel that this is

ridiculous but you must understand how our leadership, provided with that information,

would react. "_

Despite almost no interest from the Ministry of Defense, Keldysh managed to bulldoze the

Soviet space shuttle idea was bulldozed through the Communist Party and government. On

February 17, 1976, the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a formal decree,

which approved the creation of a reusable space system consisting of:

• P, launcher stage

• eqn orbital aircraft

• An interorbital tug-ship

• A complex control system

• A launch-landing and assembly-work complex

The orbital aircraft would ensure delivery of up to thirty tons of payload to a 200-kilometeraltitude orbit, and it would be capable of returning twenty tons back to Earth.'" Glushko's NPO

Energiya would serve as the primary contractor for the entire system. The decree committed the

Soviet Union to certainly the most expensive space project in the country's history--one that

would almost bankrupt the space program. Chasing after the U,S. Space Shuttle over the following twelve years, it would work on a new launcher, the I I K25, later called Energiya, and a

new reusable space shuttle, the I I F25, later called Buran.

To build the new shuttle, Glushko evidently did not want to work with organizations such

as the Mikoyan or Chelomey design bureaus, which had decades of experience in developing

hypersonic reusable vehicles. Instead, he subcontracted the development of the Buran shuttle

to a new organization, the old Molniya Scientific-Production Association (NPO Molniya), created specifically for this task on February 24, 1976. NPO Molniya was established in Tushino

near Moscow on the basis of the old Molniya Design Bureau (the former OKB-4) led by Chief

Designer Matus R. Bisnovat--an entity that had hitherto zero experience in designing such

spacecraft. Bisnovat's specialty had, in fact, been developing air-to-air missiles for Soviet fighters. NPO Molniya also included the Burevestnik Design Bureau (the former KB-82) led by A. V.

Potopalov, which had specialized in the design of surface-to-air missiles and the manufacture

of Sukhoy's advanced T-4 supersonic bomber. The third component was the Experimental

Machine Building Plant (the former KB-90) led by Chief Designer Vladimir M. Myasishchev,

who had been pushed out of space design work many years previously by Chelomey. '_4As a

single act of concession to earlier spaceplane research, Llstinov appointed Spiral program chief

132 James Harford. Korofev. How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat ,Z]mericato the Moon

(New York:John Wiley & Sons. 1997), p 314,

133, Semenov, ed,, Raketno-Kosmicfleskaya Korporatsiya. p, 362.

134 StepanMikoyan, "'Molniya': From 'Spiral' to MAKS" (Englishtitle), Vestnik vozdushnogo [lot t ( 1997):

60: G P Svishchev, ed., ,ztuiatsiya entsiklopediya (Moscow: Bolshaya Rossiyskayaentsiklopediya, 1994), p 372:

E-mail correspondence, Mark Hillyer to the author, March 29, 1998. Additional manufacturing [or guran would be

carried out at the Tushino Machine Building Plant (the former Plant No. 82) under Director S. G. ,qrutyunov. Note

that both KB Molniya and KB Burevestnikwere also located on the premisesof the Tushino Machine Building Plant

(TMZ).

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
I_SHESTO _SHES

Lozino-Lozinskiy to be the Director and Chief Designer of NPO Molniya, transferred from his

old duties at the MiG design bureau. Despite Lozino-Lozinskiy's undeniable expertise, NPO

Molniya seems to have been ill-equipped to handle such a monumental task as building a copy

of the American Shuttle. One Soviet historian wrote:

/qnd can we manage to explain why the building of such a unique design as our first

space plane was assigned to NPO Molniya and the Tushino Machine Building Plant

(TMZ)? I'm not trying to insult those renowned, talented collectives, but everyone knows

that MPO Molniya came about in the consolidation of two small design offices, Molniya

and Burevestnik, which not only never had anything to with brainstorming about a spaceplane, but also had no experience in developing ordinary airplanes from start to finish. ''_

Ignoring the decades of spaceplane research by Tsybin, Tupotev, Myasishchev, Mikoyan,

and Chelomey, institutional discord and bad judgment once again set the Soviet space program

on a poorly managed endeavor. Thus, Chelomey's Light Space Aircraft died an ignominious

death by 1981, while Spiral puttered on until September 1978. Despite some extraordinarily successful subsonic drop tests in 1977 and 1978 from a Tu-95K bomber, the space branch at

Dubna was eventually shut down. In December 1981, forty-eight senior engineers from the

Spiral design bureau were ordered to pack up and join NPO Molniya to help with the creation

of Buran. "_

Fittingly, the same decree approving work on the IKI IK25 system (as the complete

Fnergiya-Buran system was called at the time) also conclusively terminated all work on the

N I-L3 program. The official reasoning was "the necessity to commence large-scale activities

(involving allocation of huge sums of money) on the [Energiya-Buran] project" and more

ironically "the absence of heavy payloads suitable for the lifting capacity of the launcher.' ....

Amazingly, this was the same decree that approved the 1i K25 superheavy-lift launch vehicle!

In one of the multiple ironies of the time, Glushko elected to develop cryogenic propellant

engines for the I IK25, despite having literally cracked the Soviet space program in half during

the early 1960s by refusing to build engines with those propellants. Given the use of LOXkerosene engines, there was some talk of using the Kuznetsov's new N 1 engines for the job.

At his own risk, Kuznetsov had continued his test certification program for the new engines,

which continued as late as January 1977. His results were impressive: in running forty different

NK-33 first-stage engines for test regimes of 1,200 seconds, they ran an average of

7,000-14,000 seconds without failures. One engine fired for a sum total of 20,360 seconds during repeated testing. To pass the certification process, they needed to run for only 600 seconds. In

addition, he had boosted the thrust of the original NK-33 engines from 154 tons to 205-20;' tons

through the minor reworking of the turbopump assembly, moving the engines into a completely different class of thrust. Glushko naturally tell threatened by all this. In 1977, as his power

increased to unprecedented levels, he forced a formal decision from the Council of Ministers to

terminate all work done on powerful liquid-propellant rocket engines at not only Kuznetsov's

design bureau, but also any place under the Ministry of Aviation Industry. Kuznetsov was also

forced to hand over some of his test equipment to Glushko. '_"

135. yaroslav Golovanov, "Just Where Are We Flying to?," p I.

136. Kazmin, "The 'Quiet' Tragedyof EPQS": Lardier.LTtstronautigue Soui6tique, p. 254.

137. Forthe formerquote, seeS.Shamsutdinov. "First Flightof Buran With Tourists on BoardWill TakePlace

on April 12. 1994" (English title), Nouosti kosrnonavtiki 21 (October 9-22, 1993): 40-45 Forthe latter quote, see

gfanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret"

138 gfanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret."

837
838

The total cost of the N I-L3 program up toJanuary I, t973, was 3.6 billion rubles, of which

2.4 billion rubles was specifically for the N I. _39By rough estimates, total expenditures by the

mid-1970s may have been as high as 4.0-4.5 billion rubles. _ it is difficult to convert this figure to a dollar value, but a rough estimate, in 1960s dollars, would be about $12-13.5 billion--

that is, about half of that spent on the gpollo program. But there was a human cost, too, and

many, having received such a crushing blow, were reluctant to let the dream go. In a desperate

gambit that ultimately met with little success, former Chief Designer Mishin lobbied hard to

obtain permission to launch two of the fully prepared N I rockets into the Pacific Ocean. In

1976, N I Chief Designer Dorofeyev wrote letters to members of the 25th Congress of the

Communist Party for the test launches. In November 1976, Mishin and Chertok sent a proposal

to the Ministry of General Machine Building to convert the N I to launch the new reusable

space shuttle for the Ministry of Defense. _4'

None of it worked. Glushko was dead set against it: he was not simply satisfied with consigning the N I program to history, but he also wanted to erase it from history. He ordered all

the remaining N I rockets--the two fully prepared for launch and five others--to be destroyed.

P,II associated technical documentation was also destroyed, thus squelching any possibility

that the rocket would make a phoenix-like reappearance in the Soviet space program. Former

OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Sergey S. Kryukov, one of the "fathers" of the N I, later wrote:

"Glushko incinerated every notion of the N I with a hot iron. '''42 Glushko also made sure that

there was no indication of the program's existence in the design bureau's private museum. The

project would only exist in the memories of its participants. The dream that had begun with

Sergey Pavlovich Korolev in Germany in 1945 ended with a few signatures in 1976. Russian

journalist Yaroslav K. Golovanov, Korolev's most well-known biographer, perhaps wrote the

most eloquent of epilogues on the life and death of the N I project:

The un[ulfilled dream o[ Sergey Koroleu. who died on the operating table--a dream that

was decimated by Valentin Glushko, that was unde[ended by Vasiliy Mishin, and that

took years o[ labor by Nikolay Kuznetsov--uanished in the gull o[ ministerial paperwork and the [lames o[ [ailed launches that turned billions o[ rubles into ashes. '_

Mishin added:

We [elt a deep sense o[ sadness. It was a colossal project to which we dedicated our

best years. I was young at the time. And it was the work of a great many people and it

vanished overnight. The Americans had won. I was made the scapegoat. '_

139 Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev, and Kryukov. "_qtthe Readers'Request:The N I ProJect."Total planned cost,

including that for sixteen flight models, was 4.97 billion rubles.

140 For 4 billion rubles, see Kryukov, "The Brilliance and Eclipse of the Lunar Program." For 4.5 billion

rubles, seeLeskov, "How We Didn't Get to the Moon"

141. teskov, "How We Didn't Get to the Moon": Panichkin, "Some Results of N I Development": Lardier,

LTtstronautique Souidtique. p. 174.

142 Kryukov, "The Brilliance and Eclipseof the Lunar Program"

143 Golovanov. "JustWhere Are We Flying to?." p. I.

144 "The Russian Right Stuff: The Dark Side of the Moon." NOV,q television show, #1808. WGBH-TV,

Boston. February 27, 1991,

CHRLLENGE TO _POLLO
CHAPTER NINETEEN

TOMORROW

NEVER KNOWS

In the history of the Soviet space and missile programs, three singular events stand out as

defining moments: the birth of the effort in 1946, the death of Korolev in 1966, and the end

of the N I-L3 program in 19?4. History, of course, does not separate itself into neat little segments of time, but it would be difficult to find a moment so cataclysmic in the U.S. space program as the Soviet events of 1974. In essence, the year divided the old with the new and a lack

of vision with clarity. Completely unknown to the West until the late 1980s, the changes in

1974 were effectively a watershed moment that closed the door on Korolev's determined journey, begun in 1946. What happened after 1974 warrants particular attention, not only as a

matter of historical interest, but because the nature of the Soviet piloted space program

changed in ways that would have been difficult to foresee at the time of NPO Energiya's formation. Having trudged through failure after failure in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet

Union finally made its arrival as a formidable space superpower in the late 1980s--a full two

decades after its only competitor had done the same.

The Rise and Fall of a Space Power

Glushko's ascendance to power at the top of the pyramid coincided with a dramatic shift

in fortunes for the Soviet piloted space program. All the failures and catastrophes of 1971

through 1973, especially in the space station effort, seem to have exorcised the demons of the

Soviet space program. In 1975, NPO Energiya performed its first fully successful space station

mission on Salyut 4, one of the two DOS vehicles readied under Mishin. The other one,

launched in September 1977 as Salyut 6, would finally put the Soviet space program on the slow

but persistent track to success. The station's mission was one of the finest success stories in

the Soviet space program. In the four years after launch, it hosted sixteen crews, four of which

set absolute endurance records for time in space, significantly exceeding the eighty-four-day

record set by N_Sft's Skylab 4 crew during 197'3-74. NPO Energiya also introduced two new

spacecraft: the Progress, an automated tanker and supply ship, and the Soyuz T, an advanced

version of the Soyuz. Ironically, both programs had been initiated by Mishin. It was not simply

a matter of setting records but of remarkable maturity in operations. Engineers perfected the very

first refueling operations in space, mastered the logistics of having two ships dock to the same

station, directed complex repair spacewalks outside the station, managed real-time solutions to

contingencies in space, and accumulated a wealth of ground-breaking information on the

effects of microgravity on the human organism, The Soviets also extracted maximum political

gain from the mission of Salyut 6 by sending "guest-cosmonauts" from other socialist countries on "friendly" visits. There were no fatalities in the program, It was a stunning return to

839
84O

form, prompting many Western observers to conclude that the Soviets were "ahead" in space.

During the same period, the United States accomplished only one piloted flight.

The string of successes in the space station program continued with the operation of

Salyut 7 during the 1982-86 period, culminating with the launch of Mir ("World") in February

1980. Crews began visits to Mir almost immediately after its launch. In September 1989, two cosmonauts, Viktorenko and Serebrov, began a historic run of ten years of continuous crewed operations. Through the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in late 199 I, Mir remained

occupied. In 1994-95, Valeriy A. Polyakov, a doctor from the Institute for Biomedical Problems, set

the world's endurance record for continuous time spent in space: 438 days.

What had been a closed and secret program began to open up during the early 1990s. Mir

played a central role in cooperative agreements with Western nations. As part of an arrangement

between the United States and the Russian Federation, NASA astronauts began visiting the Mir

space station in 1995. Seven NASA astronauts, beginning with Norman E. Thagard, spent approximately two and a half years aboard the Mir space station between 1995 and 1998. Their quarters

were living, breathing, orbiting artifacts of the amazing history of the Soviet space program. The

main Mir hull is almost identical to the original DOS vehicle that was designed and launched as

the first Salyut in 197 I. The same triumvirate that had built the original Salyut created the newer

station, but these organizations exist now with different names: RKK Energiya, the Salyut Design

Bureau, and the Khrunichev State Space Scientific-Production Center.' The primary four Mir modules--Kristall. Kuant-2, Spektr, and Priroda--were all based on the design of the Transport-Supply

Ship's main hull, itself part of Chelomey's conception of the Almaz space station complex proposed in the late 1960s. The launch vehicle for Mir and its modules is the Proton--a rocket originally known as the UR-5OOK, proposed by Chelomey as an ICBM in 1960. The delivery vehicles

for the complex are the Soyuz TM and the Progress M spacecraft, both derived from Korolev's

beloved 7K-OK Soyuz spacecraft, designed in the early 1960s.

Mir, with all its historical significance, was planned for deorbiting by the end of this century.

By that time, there will be a more impressive sight in Earth orbit, the International Space Station, a

cooperative project involving sixteen countries. As the primary participants, the United States and

the Russian Federation will provide most of the materials for this largest ever joint program in the

history of space exploration/The first component of the station, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block,

was launched in November 1998 on a Proton booster. The station will be supplied by various modifications of the Soyuz spacecraft, Mir operations will probably cease once activities on the

International Space Station commence. That singular event will probably mean the end of an independent Russian piloted space program--the end of the journey that Yuriy Alekseyevich Gagarin

began in 196t. It will be the beginning of a new and perhaps more exciting voyage.

The Salyut and Mir space station programs were the most publicized components of the

Soviet space program in the 1980s, but they were not, in fact, the most important. The lion's share

of the Soviet space budget during the 1980s was taken by the Energiya-Buran effort, the most

expensive program in the history of the Soviet space program. After years of delays and cost overruns, NPO Energiya finally launched the first Energiya booster in May 1987. It was the first successful Soviet rocket comparable in power and performance characteristics to NASA's long-defunct

Saturn V giant. It was also the first time that the Soviets fired a high-performance LOX-liquid

hydrogen rocket engine in operational conditions. What little joy there may have been in such

a test was tempered by history. All of the pleas by Korolev and Mishin during the 1960s to

develop such engines had fallen on deaf years, leaving Soviet rocket capabilities far behind that

I The Salyut Design Bureau (KB Salyut) is actually part of the Khrunichev State Space Scientific

Production Center (GKNPTs Khrunichev).

2. Paul Mann, "U.S.. RussiaDraft Historic Space Pact," Z]viation Week & Space Technology September

6, 1993, pp 22-23,

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

of the United States. It finally took Glushko's change-of-heart about cryogenic propellants before

Korolev's dream became a reality. The Energiya booster was fired a second time, in November

1988, when it launched the Soviet space shuttle Buran on a highly impressive fully automated

orbital flight. After decades of trying to build a spaceplane, 8uran turned out to be the only such

Soviet vehicle that ever made it into orbit. It was only fitting that much of the success of Buran

benefited from the intensive testing of the small-scale BOR spaceplanes in the 1980s--vehicles

that were left over from the ambitious Spiral project from the t 960s.

Despite early expectations of a vigorously expanding Soviet space program, the inevitable disenchantment crept in. As the Soviet economy began to implode, an increasingly free press

became the forum for rising criticism of the Energiya-Buran program. By 1993, the effort was in

near shambles, with ground models of the Energiya and the Buran rotting away in various plants.

In May 1993, the project's Council of Chief Designers requested a final decision from the Russian

government? The project was formally shelved after seventeen years and 14 billion rubles. For

the second time, thousands of Soviet space engineers saw their handiwork disappear into rubble. Many of those who witnessed the demise of the Energiya-Buran project were the same ones

who had watched in silence at the abrupt termination of the N I-L3 program. Both projects had

their own complex raison dYtre and their own reasons for fall from grace, but both had one

thing in common: they never fulfilled their original promise. The two projects together span the

entire period of the piloted space program of the former Soviet Union. For those looking at waste

of technology, of knowledge, of money, and ultimately of people, during the postwar

Communist era, they need look no further than the N I-L3 and the Energiya-Buran programs.

The End of a Generation

Some would say that Vladimir Nikolayev Chelomey had a career worthy of a great Russian

tragedy, After the cancellation of the N I-L3 program, his star seemed to rise for a brief period.

In June 1974, he was elected as one of the approximately 1,500 deputies of the Supreme Soviet,

the USSR's rubber-stamp parliament. While the legislature had no independent power in the

country, membership usually indicated national prominence. In fact. Western observers scouring through the lists of the Supreme Soviet, upon finding Chelomey's name, believed that he

was the "new head" of the Soviet space program, a "job previously held by... Yangel. ''4 For

perhaps a couple of years, he may have also resurrected his ambitious UR-7OOM Mars landing

project. He continued work on the Almaz military space station, two of which were launched

between 1974 and 1976 as Salyut 3 and Sa(yut 5. respectively. He was evidently planning for

a major expansion of activities at his design empire, planning much larger versions of glmaz

stations serviced by the new Transport-Supply Ship. He even returned to one of his lifelong

dreams--the development of an orbital spaceplane, s

3. Utco.Moscow Ostankino Television,FirstChannetand Orbita Networks,Moscow, May25, 1993, 1845GMT:

S. Shamsutdinov."FirstFlightof BuranWith Touristson BoardWill TakePlaceon April 12, 1994" (Englishtitle). Nouosti

kosmonautiki 21 (October 9-22, 1993): 40-45.

4, Theodore Shabad, "Russians Indicate Rocket Specialist Heads Space Effort," New YorkTimes, July 14, 1974,

p.&

5. For the "resumption" of the URqOOM program, see Christian Lardier,L'Ztstronautique Soui_tique (Paris:

Armand Colin, 1992), p. 252 Forthe Almaz program, seeVladimir Polyachenko."The 'Pep' of Almaz" (Englishtitle),

Krylyn rodiny no. 4 (April 1992): 30-32: Olaf Przybilski,.,qlmaz:Dos supergefleimemitit_nscfleOrbitalstationsprogramm

der UdSSR(Dresden, Get.: Institut f0r Luftfahrt, 1994). ForadvancedAlmaz projects, seeI. B. Afanasyev,"Unknown

Spacecraft(From the History of the SovietSpaceProgram)" (Englishtitle), Nouoyeu zhizni. Nauke. tekhnike: Seriyakosmonautika, astronomiya no. 12 (December1991): 1-64. Forthe orbitalspaceplane,seeAnatoliy Kirpil and Olga Okara.

"Designer of SpacePlanes.Vladimir Chelomey Dreamed of Creating a SpaceFleet of Rocket Planes" (English title),

Nezcwisimc_yagazetcLJuly 5, 1994,p. 6

841
842

Allofthissimplyprovedtoogoodtobetrue.Inearly1976,oneofChelomey'schiefsponsors,Ministerof DefenseGrechko,succumbedto a heartattack.Chelomey'sopponents--

primarilyGlushkosponsorsUstinovandKirilenko--reactedimmediately.A fewweeksafter

Grechko'sdeath,theybestowedGlushkowithanunprecedentedhonorthathithertonodesignerinthespacesectorhadeverheld:membershipintheCentralCommitteeoftheCommunist

Party.Gtushkowasofficially"elected"atthe25thCommunistPartyCongressin 1976/'Asone

observernoted:"Fromthismomentonward,Glushkoconcentratedinhishandsnotonlythe

powerofanenormousspaceempire,butalsothepoliticalpowerofacommissar,capableof

overwhelminganyonein thespaceestablishment."7Glushko'sfirstmovewasto deny

Chelomeyanyroleinthespacestationprogram.Byt978,toChelomey'sgreatalarm,thepilotedportionoftheAlmazprogramwasterminated.ChelomeyhadnohelpfromtheMinistryof

Defense,hisusualsupporters.Theywereoftheopinionthatpilotedorbitalplatformswereless

efficientforoverheadreconnaissancethanautomatedsatellites.8

ThenewsjustgotworseforChelomey.In1916,Ustinov,asthenewMinisterofDefense,

tookit uponhimselftocompletehejobhehadsetoutto domorethanadecadebefore, Ustinov:

methodically started to strangle Chelomey. He annulled all the military contracts given

to Chelomey's enterprise for space [lights: he canceled even those that were scheduled

in unmanned mode and originally requested by the military/

Perhaps the biggest blow to the Chelomey empire came on June 30, 1981, when Ustinov

and Kirilenko pushed through an order that severed Chelomey's important Fill Branch from the

main organization and instead made it a branch of NPO Energiya. '° Given that Chelomey had

farmed almost all the key projects to this branch, then known as the Salyut Design Bureau (KB

Salyut), he lost all his space- and missile-related projects in one felt swoop. Finally. on

December 19, 198t, the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a decree formally terminating not only all work on the Almaz program, but also forbidding Chelomey from

any further involvement in the Soviet space program. The official reason for the decision was

to "concentrate forces on the creation of the 'Buran' space system.""

Brought to his knees by Ustinov, Chelomey quietly continued to develop naval cruise

missiles for the armed forces, which was the original profile of his organization in the 1950s.

6. Two other chief designers in the defense industry were also elected to the Central Committee in 1976:

R D. Grushin from MKB Fakel(air defense and anti-ballistic missiles) and V_F Utkin from KB Yuzhnoye (ICBMs,

spacecraft, and launch vehicles) Grushin had been the first chief designer in the defense industry accorded this

honor_with his elections in 1966and 1971.Seejulian Cooper. "The DefenseIndustry and Civil Military Relations."

in Timothyj. Colton and Thane Gustafson, eds.,Soldiersand tfzeSovietState:Civil-Military RelationsFromBrezhnev

to _orbachev (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 168

7. RoaldZ. Sagdeev.TheMaking of a SovietScientist. My/qdventures in Nuclear Fusion and Space From

Stalin to Star Wars (New York:John Wiley & Sons. 1993), p. 209

8. Maxim V Tarasenko. "The U.S. and Soviet Space Systems Developments as Driven by the Cold War

Competition." presented at the 45th Congress of the International/_stronautical Federation, IAA-94 IA_q2 2 622,

Jerusalem. Israel,October 9-14. 1994.

9. Sagdeev,The Making o/ a SovietScientist, pp, 209- I0,

I0. Yu. P.Semenov, ed_ Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S P Koroleva (Korolev:

RKK Energiya,named after S. P. Korolev, 1996), p. 643: Nina Chugunova, "Chelomey's Cosmonauts: Why There

Are No Crews FromNPO Mashinostroyeniya in Outer Space" (English title), Ogonek 4-5 (January 1993): 24-29

I I. G A. Yefremov, "Anniversary: V. N Chelomey--80 Years"(English title), Novosti kosmonautiki 12-t 3

{June 4-July I, 1994): 68-70: S. A. Zhiltsov, ed., C_osudarstvennyykosmicheskiy nauehno-proizvodstvennyy tsentr

imeni M V Khrunicheva (Moscow: RUSSLIT,1997), p. I00; Chugunova, "Chelomey's Cosmonauts."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TOMOi_ROW NEVE_ KNOWS

By all accounts, he never really gave up on his dreams of an ambitious space program, proposing various strategic defense programs throughout the early 1980s. He was not kind

to Korolev's memory. In an interview with a journalist late in his life, Chelomey was blunt:

Well, what can I tell you about Koroleu? Koroleu was a man with a limited education.

But he commanded a remarkable technical intuition and was enormously talented as

an organizer. "Yes.But he couldn't perform even a simple mathematical operation with

integrals. He took the circumlunar [program] away [rom me and then he didn't do it

himself You call that talent? '_

Ejected from the Soviet space program, Chelomey's will and his reach for success never

diminished to his last days. In early December 1984, still in lively health, he was at his dacha,

getting ready to go somewhere in his Mercedes. Leaving the car running, he walked out to open

the garage door, but the car, still running, moved by itself and pinned his legs against the gate.

He was admitted to the hospital with a simple fracture. While in the hospital, he learned that

his nemesis Ustinov had suffered a massive heart attack, was paralyzed, and could not speak.

Chelomey could be forgiven for believing that his fortunes were about to improve. On the third

day in the hospital, on the early morning of December 8, he was speaking to his wife on the

telephone when the conversation suddenly stopped. She desperately called the hospital staff,

who rushed to his room to find him dead. Doctors suspected a sudden fatal stroke apparently

caused by the broken leg. He was seventy years old at the time of his death. Legend has it that

Ustinov was brought a piece of paper with a handwritten message stating "Chelomey

just died." Ustinov read it and closed his eyes in satisfaction. The first name on the list of

signatories of Chelomey's obituary was that of Ustinov. '_

Today, Chelomey's former organization is called the Scientific-Production Association for

Machine Building (NPO Mashinostroyeniya) and is still located at its old grounds at Reutov

outside Moscow. Having relinquished hold of its Moscow Branch in 198 I, it has little connection to the Russian space program. Its current General Designer, Gerbert g. Yefremov, who

succeeded Chelomey, continues to focus mostly on naval cruise missiles. Its only major spacerelated project is a continuation of the Almaz program--a robotic remote-sensing platform for

Earth resources surveying. Three such spacecraft were launched--in 1986, 1987, and 1991-

but despite Yefremov's best efforts, funding for a fourth is on a shoestring budget. By September

1994, the organization was in a severe financial crisis, planning to lay off thousands of employees.'4While the organization may have been in dire straits, Chelomey's legacy, in some ways,

remains much more visible than even that of Korolev. Given that Chelomey had his Fill Branch

produce most of his space work, the thriving nature of that branch has maintained Chelomey's

long shadow across the current Russian space program. The Proton rocket, the Mir space station (derived as it was from the original rqlmaz design), and the Mir modules (such as Spektr

and Priroda) all attest to a vision that has remained intact despite the best intentions of Ustinov

or Glushko. If Chelomey were alive today, he might have some comfort in knowing that the first

12. Yaroslav Golovanov, Korolev: [akty i mi[y (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 124.

13. fb[d. p. Z29: Valeriy Rodikov, "Academician Chelomey and His Times" (English title), in V.

Shcherbakov, ed.. Zagadki zvezdnykh ostrouou kniga pyataya (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1989), pp. 35-36:

"Vladimir N. Chelomei, Soviet Rocket Scientist," New York Times. December 15, 1984, p. 28: Christian Lardier,

"Soviet Space Designers When They Were Secrets." presented at the 47th Congress of the International

Astronautical Federation, IAA-96-1AA.2.2.09, Beijing, China, October 1-l I, 1996

14. I. Cherniy, "NPO Mashinostroyeniya Reduces Staff" (English title), Novosti kosmoncwtiki 20

(September 24-October 7, 1994): 49-50: Gerbert Aleksandrovich Yefremov, "NPO Mashinostroyeniya Is Moving

Into the High-Technology Market" (English title), Vooruzheniye, pal_tika, konversiya 3(3) ( 1995): 31-37.

843
844

element of the International Space Station, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block, is based on the

design of the service module of the Transport-Supply Ship--a program that he pushed into

approval in 1970. Zarya was designed, built, and delivered to NASA by the Khrunichev State

Space Scientific-Production Center, a conglomerate of Chelomey's former Fill Branch (now

called the Salyut Design Bureau) and the Khrunichev Machine Building Plant, established by

governmental order on June 7. 1993.'"

Chelomey's nemesis Ustinov had a meteoric career. With the exception of Korolev, Ustinov

may have been the single most important individual in the emergence of the Soviet space program At the same time, he is probably also the most overlooked. Scarcely mentioned in the

Western historiography of the Soviet space program, Ustinov was at the center of the vortex of

events of the Soviet space effort from 1946 to 1984, close to a forty-year span of time. Even in

Russia, there have been no biographies of the man, nor is their evidence to suggest that he left

personal memoirs. Of course, Ustinov's importance was not limited to the space program. He

directly oversaw the tremendous growth and arrival of the Soviet Union as a formidable military player in world politics. Between 196S and 1976, Llstinov was the Secretary of the Central

Committee for Space and Defense, but he did not achieve his lifelong dream of entering the

ranks of the Politburo until April 1976 with his appointment as the first Soviet civilian to serve

as the Minister of Defense. His tenure at the post was a time fraught with unprecedented tensions with the United States, particularly over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the

Americans' stationing of Pershing missiles in Western Europe. He was reportedly in ill health in

the early t980s and was fast becoming a victim of Communist Party politics. '° Ustinov died on

December 20, t984, after a two-month illness at the age of seventy-six. '_ In one of the bitterest of all ironies, his death came just twelve days after Chelomey had passed away. In an indication of new times, his death was first announced by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, considered at the

time a fast-rising personality in the upper of echelons of power. Not surprisingly. Westerners

writing about his life's achievements at the time almost completely missed his contribution to

the creation and sustenance of the Soviet space program. 's

Among the other heavy hitters of the Soviet space program. Leonid V, Smirnov, the former

Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission, served in that position from March 1963 to

December 1985, managing the development and creation of several new generations of Soviet

weaponry. During the reshuffling after Ustinov's death, Smirnov retired--the last of the powerful defense industry juggernauts who built up the military might of the USSR. Although still

alive at the time of this writing, the eighty-three-year-old Smirnov has remained completely out

of the public eye. His personal reminiscences would no doubt be a priceless asset to understanding Soviet motives during the Cold War.

Sergey g. Afanasyev, the Minister of General Machine Building--that is, the "space and

missile" ministry,--served in that capaciW from March 1965. After the death in 1976 of his

chief sponsor, Minister of Defense Grechko. Afanasyev's star dropped rapidly. In April 1983.

Ustinov finally had him fired. He was given the far less important job of Minister of Heavy and

Transport Machine Building, which was a sector outside the defense industry. With his ambition of one day entering the ranks of the Politburo crushed, Afanasyev trudged through his new

dreary job. before finally being forced to retire prematurely in July 198Z. '° The "Big Hammer,"

15. Zhiltsov, ed., Gosudurstuennyy kosmicheskiy, pp. 126-27.

16. Sagdeev. The Making of a Souiet Scientist, pp. 258-59.

IZ Serge Schmemann, "Defense Minister of Soviet Union Is Dead at Age 76." New York Times. December

22. 1984, pp, I, 6.

18. See, for example, Eric Page. "Ustinov Had Key Roles in Military and Politics." Ne_u York Times.

December22. 1984. p. 6.

19. Sagdeev.The Making of a Souiet Scientist. p. 200.

CHALLENGE TO /I:LPOLLO
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

as he was nicknamed by many in the space industry, has retained contacts with the Russian

space industry as a "Chief Scientific Consultant to the General Designer" of RKK Energiya. In

one of his very rare published memoirs of the space era, he had only favorable words to say of

Ustinov, despite the obvious clashes between the two men."' At the time of this writing, he was

eighty-one years old.

The Soviet space program had originated as an arm of the artillery sector of the Soviet

armed forces, and as such, there were a number of important artillery officers who played

prominent roles in guiding the entire effort. There was probably no one officer more important

than Lt. General Georgiy g. Tyulin, whose involvement in the Soviet missile program began in

1944, when he was a young lieutenant charged with assessing German rocket technology. In

March 1965, he was appointed Afanasyev's First Deputy in the Ministry of General Machine

Building. During the 1960s, he served as the chair of various State Commissions, including

those for the later Vostok missions, the Voskhod program, the LI circumlunar project, and various lunar and interplanetary probes. He remained at his ministerial post until 1976, when,

rumor has it, Afanasyev fired him for being part of the "Ustinov camp.""' Forced into retirement, the quiet and reticent Tyulin returned to teach theoretical mechanics at the M. V.

Lomonosov Moscow State University?: In 198L he began writing publicly about his deep well

of experience in the missile and space programs--articles that have been remarkably valuable

in filling in the gaps of this secret history. After a long illness, he died in gpril 1990 at the age

of seventy-five/'

Tyulin was certainly better known than Vasiliy M. Ryabikov, who chaired the State

Commission for Sputnik. One of the most mysterious figures in the early Soviet space program,

Ryabikov was instrumental in the process of approving the first Sputnik launch. His early career

was under Ustinov's shadow, but for a brief period in the 1950s, he emerged as one of the

power players in the defense industry, only to disappear into relative oblivion, Almost nothing

is known about his personal history, After his "ejection" from the defense industry, he served

as the First Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Organ (better known as "Gosplan") until

his death on July 19, 197"4,at the age of sixty-seven. Even in recent years, Russian historians

have generally shied away from any in-depth analysis of Ryabikov's role in the genesis of

Sputnik. It is a curious omission for a man who may have facilitated the inauguration of the

space era in 1957,

Qf the two other major artillery officers from the space era, one remains alive. Lt, General

Kerim A. Kerimov was demoted out of his ministry position in 1974, but remained the chair of

the State Commission for Soyuz until 1991, a position he had assumed in 1966. He oversaw

the launch of every single Soyuz spacecraft to the Salyut and Mir space stations during that

period/_ ,qt the time of his retirement, he was officially the First Deputy Director of the Central

Scientific-Research Institute for Machine Building (TsNIIMash), the leading research and development institution in the Soviet space industry/_ At this writing, he was eighty-two years old.

Lt. General Yuriy A. Mozzhorin, the powerful Director of TsNIIMash, remained in that post until

December 1990, completing almost thirty years of service as one of the primary policymakers

in the Soviet space program. He continued to be active in chronicling the history of the Soviet

missile and space programs and served as editor of the series of memoirs titled Dorogi u

20. See yu A. Mozzhorin, et el. eds., Oorogiu kosmos. I (Moscow: MAI, 1992), pp. 34-48.

2 I. Sagdeev,The Making o/a Soviet Scientist,p. 201.

22. Col. M. Rebrov,"Where the Cranes Fly"(Englishtitle), Krasnayazuezda, September 19, 1987,pp 3-4

23. "G. P_.Tyulin," Krasnayazuezda.Rpri125,1990,p. 4.

24. The only exceptionsweresomeof the SoyuzT missionsand a)lthe Soyuzmissionsto the military

Almazspacestation.

25 Russian SpaceHistory.Sate 6516 (New York:Sotheby's, 1993), description[or Lot58.

845
846

kosmos (Roads to Space), the first volume of which was published in 1992. He died on May 15,

1998, at the age of seventy-seven.

The Designers

All six members of the original Council of Chief Designers are deceased. Korolev, of course,

was the first to go in January 1966. Academician Nikolay A. Pilyugin, Korolev's closest friend on

the council, died on August 2, 1982, at the age of seventy-four, after a long bout with diabetes. :_

His obituary was signed by Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev, and Chernenko, all heads of the

Soviet state at various points. Chief Designer Mikhail S. Ryazanskiy died after a long battle with

cancer of the prostate gland on August 7, t 987. Academician Viktor I. Kuznetsov passed away

four years later on March 22. 1991. The last member (aside from Glushko). Academician

Vladimir F_Barmin, lived to the age of eighty-four, heading the organization he had founded until

his death on July 17, 19937 _ In one of his last interviews, Barmin waxed philosophical about the

constraints of the Communist era:

. . I have been working as a Chief Designer for more than fifty years, and have been

"open" to the press only in recent years, My articles in the newspaper Prauda used to be

under a pseudonym, Professor Wadimirou .... ":_

Although he was not a member of the original council, General Designer Academician

Nikolay D. Kuznetsov, responsible for creating the N I's rocket engines, played a major role in the

rise and fall of the huge project. Despite Glushko's order to have all N I-related materials

destroyed, Kuznetsov, at his own risk, preserved ninety-four engines of the first, second, third,

and Fourth stages at the storage facilities of the Trud Scientific-Production Association. All were

completely ready for operational use. In addition, he also hid away fifty to sixty experimental

units, ready for future developmental work. Kuznetsov's gamble paid off when in the early

1990s, major U.S. aerospace companies expressed interest in using the engines for the next generation of expendable U.S. launch vehicles. In late 1993, the Aerojet Propulsion Division imported a flight-ready version of the NK-33, believing the design to be of "very modern technology

compared with what the U.S. has in LOXIkerosene engines.":9 In 1995, Kuznetsov's organization went head-to-head with Glushko's firm bidding for their respective engines on new versions

of the Atlas or Delta rockets. Although Glushko's engines won that bid, the N I engines may still

see the light of day. e°In 1996-97, Kistter Aerospace Corporation of Kirktand, Washington, signed

an agreement with Kuznetsov's former organization to use the N l's NK-33 and NK-43 engines

on the company's K-I reusable launch vehicle. In what could be a fitting legacy of the N I rocket, the first K-I vehicle is expected to use the very same engine units that were meant for use

on the canceled 8L launch of the N I in 19742' Sadly, Kuznetsov himself will not be witness to

their use, At the age of eighty-four, he died on July 3 I, 199572

26 "Academician N A Pilyugin." Prauda. August 3. 1982, p 3: "Nikolai A Pilyugin, 74. Dies: Was Key

Soviet SpaceFigure," NeuJYork Times.August 3, 1982, p. A I9.

27, "Academician V. E Barmin," Nrasnaya zuezda,July 22, 1993, p. 4

28. V Smirnov, "Topical Interview: SpaceStartsWith the People on the Ground" (English title), Ziuiatsiya

i kosmonautika no. 10 (October 1992): 2-3.

29. Michael A Dornheim, "Aerojet Imports Trud NK-33 Engine," Ztuiation _A/eek& Space Technology.

October 25, 1993. p. 29

30 Dennis Newkirk, Russian SpaceReuieu_1996 (Roselle, IL: Dennis Newkirk, 1997)

31, V.S. Anisimov, T C, Lacefield, and J Andrews, "Evolution of the NK-33 and NK-43 Reusable

LOX/Kerosene Engines," presented at the 33rd AIAAiASMEISAE/ASEEJoint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit,

Seattle, Washington, July 6 9, 1997.

32. "Academician N D, Kuznetsov," Krasnaya z.uezda,August 3, 1995

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

The legacy of the N I also survives in the highperformance LOX-liquid hydrogen engines that were

developed and tested in the early 1970s but were never

used in flight. Most notable was Chief Designer

Lyulka's IID57 engine. The engine's production

stopped in 197"5 after 105 were built. During the testing period, the engine had accumulated more than

53,000 seconds of full-engine run time. In late 1993,

_erojet expressed interest in using the engine for its

single-stage-to-orbit program? _ Chief Designer Isayev's

IID56, another LOX-liquid hydrogen engine developed for the N I, became the center of controversy in

1993, when the sale of the engine to the Indian Space

Research Organization was blocked by the U.S. government, which had concerns over their potential application in military missile systems?" After further

negotiations, the Russian Federation delivered the first

such engine to India in September 1998.

Although their names have not been prominent in

Western histories of the Soviet space program, a number of men from the old Korolev design bureau played

very critical roles in the road that led to Sputnik,

Certainly from an engineering standpoint, there was no

other individual more important in the genesis of

Sputnik than Mikhail K. Tikhonravov. Overshadowed

by the much more famous Korolev. Tikhonravov's role

in the early space program was quite likely as important

as that of his boss. With his landmark 1954 report on

artificial satellites, he set off a process that ended with

the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Palter Sputnik,

Tikhonravov led the teams that designed the first piloted spacecraft, the first automated lunar probes, and the

Mikhail Tikhonravou was one of the most

important engineers behind the emergenceo[

the Soviet space program He designed the

fzrst Soviet liquid-propellant rocket (in the

1930s), performed research to optimize early

ICBM designs (in the 1940s and 1950s), and

was the leading engineer behind the genesis

of Sputnik In tater years, he was also

instrumental in the design of the Vostok

spaceship. (f_les of Peter qorin)

first Soviet reconnaissance satellites. He also contributed to policy by co-authoring important

long-range plans for Korolev's design bureau. He continued work under Korolev, vigorously supporting piloted space exploration against those who believed in robotic exploration. He seems to

have retired from the design bureau after Korolev's death and returned to teaching and writing. He

died on March 4, 1974, at the age of seventy-four, after a spectacular career that had begun with

his design of the first Soviet liquid-propellant rocket, the "09" in 1933./% with many other important individuals in Soviet space history, his life and his remarkable contributions remain drowned

out by the flood of writings on Korolev. As a mark of respect to his memory, in February 1995,

the Russian Military Space Forces renamed their leading space research institute, TsNII-50, after

Tikhonravov. _

33. "Aerojet. Lyulka Push D-57 for SSTO Validation," ;qviation Week & Space Technology, October II,

1993. pp. 50-51.

34. Jeffrey L, Lenorovitz, "Space Systems/Loral Books Proton Launches," ,Zluiation Week & Space

Technology,September20, 1993, pp. 90-91.

35. Valeriy Baberdin, "The Once SecretSpace Nil Will Now Bearthe Name of-fikhonravov" {English title),

Krasnaya zvez.da,January 18, 1995. p. 6. TsNll-50 separatedfrom the original military NII-4 on April 3. 1972, to

focus exclusively on military space researchas opposed to ballistic missile research.

847
848

With respect to the Korolev "high guard"--his key deputies--most have passed away.

The de facto head of all piloted space programs at OKB-I throughout the 1960s and 1970s,

Konstantin D. Bushuyev, lived to serve as the director of the Soviet side of the gpollo-Soyuz

Test Project in 1975. Although his true position, a Chief Designer at NPO Energiya, was kept

tightly under wraps, he told his LI.S. counterparts on one occasion that "he had started working with Korolev right after World War II .... "" Officially, during the entire joint proJect, he

was forced to pretend that he was actually an employee of the Institute of Space Research under

the USSR Academy of Sciences. This charade played out right up to his sudden death of a heart

attack on October 26, 1978, at the age of sixty-four. He was apparently suffering from a

toothache and was headed to the hospital when he suddenly dropped dead in a corridor.

Unsure of how to facilitate the funeral of a figure in the Soviet space program whose identity

was known belore his death, Soviet officials chose the most ludicrous path. As one observer

noted later: "After his death, instead of having a decent funeral at the former Korolev Design

Bureau, where he had spent most of his active working life, the final sad ceremony was moved

to the [Institute of Space Research], simply as a cover .... ,,_7

As for the two "fathers" of the N I, Sergey O. Okhapkin died in March 1980 at age seventy? 8 Given a different course of events in 1974, Okhapkin might very well have succeeded

Mishin as head of the organization, because he had served as Mishin's First Deputy since 1966.

The other N I designer, Sergey S. Kryukov, remains alive today, and he occasionally writes in

the Russian media on the topic. He had one of the more interesting careers of any of Korolev's

proteges. A few years after Korolev's death, on March 30, 1970, Kryukov left TsKBEM and

joined the Lavochkin Design Bureau as the famous Babakin's First Deputy, thus turning his back

on the N I and piloted spacecraft to locus on robotic probes. After Babakin's death, on August

26, 1971, Kryukov took over the design bureau and guided the organization through a mixed

bag of lunar and interplanetary missions. Having become the victim of political maneuvering

over a proposed Martian sample return project, Kryukov returned to his original place of work,

then NPO Energiya. On November 17, 1977, he was appointed the First Deputy General

Designer under Glushko. After overseeing the immensely successful 5nlyut 6 space station missions, he retired in January 1982. '_ Still a "scientific consultant" to Energiya, Kryukov. at the

time of this writing, is eighty-one years old.

Of all of Korolev's deputies, perhaps the most well known is Boris Ye. Chertok. His career

started with Mishin and Bushuyev at the famous Bolkhovitinov Design Bureau in the late

1930s. Chertok remained a powerful figure at Energiya through the 1980s, but he never rose to

the top of the organization. Although he retired in 1991 from his official duties as Deputy

General Designer, he continues to maintain his offices at the giant organization as a "Chief

Scientific Consultant." Still full of verve and energy at the age of eighty-seven, Chertok recent-

]y admitted that "in the NI-L3 project we... made serious mistakes. ,"° He is one of the few

men who, having lived through those historic times, has put pen to paper, and he is in the

midst of publishing a multiple-volume set of priceless reminiscences. Incredibly detailed and

remarkably devoid of partiality, these memoirs, titled Raketi i lyudi (Rockets and Men), cover

everything from Chertok's early forays into Germany in search of A-4 missiles in 1945 to the

36 Edward Clinton Ezell and [inda Neumann Eze}l. The Partnership ,'7History of fhe _potlo-Soyuz Test

Project (Washington. DC: NRSP,Special Publication (SP)-4209, 1978), p. 288.

37 Sagdeev,TheMaking o/a Soviet Scientist, p. t 74.

38. Golovanov. Koroteu. p. 480

39. Yu Markov. Kurs na Mars (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1989). pp. 25-26: Semenov. ecL,RaketnoKosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 641. Note that the firstsource gives a slightly different date, December i, 1977,as

Kryukov's dismissal and subsequent appointment at NPO Energiya

40 PeterSmolders, "I Meet the Man 'Who Brought the V_2 to Russia." Spaceflight 31 (July 1995): 218-20.

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

demise of the Energiya-Buran system during the early 1990s. Much more accessible than many

other old-timers, Chertok continues to travel all over the world, including the United States, to

speak of his life. He also has one foot in the future. His current project is a modest system of

communications satellites in low-Earth orbit to serve the general populace. 4'

From the scientific community, there was probably no one individual who wielded as much

influence as Academician Mstislav V. Keldysh, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences

from 1961 and one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation. Unlike Korolev,

Keldysh's personal contributions span the gamut from purely technical to purely managerial.

During the 1950s. Keldysh personally participated and directed top-secret studies on the optimal design characteristics of multistage rockets, the question of returning a satellite from Earth

orbit, the theory of passive gravitational stabilization of satellites, the calculation of various

satellite orbits, and the mathematical analyses of optimal trajectories for flight to the Moon,

Mars, and Venus. This research was performed at two institutions, both of which Keldysh headed simultaneously: the Department of Applied Mathematics of the V. g. Steklov Mathematics

Institute under the Academy of Sciences and NtI-I under the Ministry of Aviation Industries.

At the latter institute, Keldysh also initiated work on high-performance ramjet engines and

nuclear rocket engines.

From 1961, after he was appointed to head the Academy of Sciences, Keldysh's most

important contributions were as the chair of the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council

for Space Research. With Keldysh as chair, various permutations of this council served as

"expert commissions" for several dozen different military and space programs. 4_ In 1975,

Keldysh stepped down as President of the Academy of Sciences because of ill health. A man

with a calm disposition who rarely, if ever, lost his temper, Keldysh's favorite form of relaxation

was collecting prints of the Impressionists. He died on June 24, 1978, at the age of sixty-seven,

sitting at the wheel of his car in the garage of his country home:" Keldysh's ashes were interned

in the Kremlin Wall, an honor reserved for only the most revered Soviet citizens of this century, All fourteen members of the Politburo signed his obituary. Throughout his extraordinary life,

there were probably few sectors of the Soviet military-industrial complex Keldysh did not influence with his scientific contributions or advisory activities.

Glushko

Academician Valentin Petrovich Glushko effectively headed the Soviet space program from

1974 for a fifteen-year period, and during that time, some would argue, there was almost a cult

of personality surrounding his name. Glushko, having a hand in the editorial supervision of all

books related to space exploration, made sure that his role and contributions to the development of Soviet space technology were placed in a favorable light. If in a 1957 speech at

Korolev's fiftieth birthday, Glushko could say "Korolev occupies first place after Tsiolkovskiy"

in the development of Soviet rocketry, he did not hesitate in later years to insert his name before

Korolev in all histories of the Soviet space program/4 But with so much power, Glushko was

still unable to carry out one of his most coveted dreams--piloted landing expeditions to the

41. Ibid.

42 N. Chentsov, 'rWorld Famous.But Secretin EveryWay" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no. 2 (February

1991): 102-07: V. S Avduyevskiy and M. Ya. Marov, 'rMstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh and Space Research"

(English title). Zemlya i uselennaya no. 3 (May-June 1991): 46-52.

43. "M. V. Keldysh Dies: Mathematician ted P,cademy in Soviet," NeuJYork Times. June 27, 1978.

44, For an interesting analysis of Glushko and his role in rewriting history, see German Nazarov, "You

Cannot PaperSpace With Rubies: How to Save Billions" (English title). Molodaya guardiya no. 4 (April 1990):

192 207. Seealso Sagdeev,TheMaking ofa Souiet 5cientist, p 182 Foran edited version of his 1957 speech, see

A. Yu. Ishlinskiy, ed.. l_kademik S. P Koroleu: ucheniy,inzhener, cflelouek (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), pp. 191-95.

849
850

Moon and Mars. At various points throughout the 1980s, he continued to bring this idea up to

the Soviet leadership, but each time it was rejected. Knee-deep in the Energiya-Buran program,

the Soviet military had little interest in funding another repeat of the N I-L3 debacle? _

Despite Glushko's remarkable rise to prominence as the reigning emperor of the Soviet

space program, he was still a man trapped within his times. Few photographs of him were published, and apart from the cursory details of his professional history, outsiders had no clue

about his personal life. Recently, there has been a tendency to paint Glushko as some kind of

evil player of the Soviet space program, the man who single-handedly destroyed the N I program--first when he broke off relations with Korolev in the 1960s and second when he canceled the program in the 1970s. But this revisionism comes perhaps more from haphazard

retroactive assessments than any in-depth analysis. While Korolev has been humanized by

countless biographies, Glushko still remains an enigma--a man whose only motive, it seems,

was to sabotage Korotev's dreams. Is it possible to bring Glushko down to the level of a human,

flawed perhaps, but at the end of the day having the same ideals of space exploration as those

of Korolev? He was apparently well versed in the finer arts, such as music, painting, and literature, was good at drawing, spoke fluently in five languages, and regularly kept up with nonscientific foreign journals. His deputies remember him as a man who had an "eye for style and

flair for detail.., he would always be elegantly dressed."_ He was married several times. Apart

from his clearly notable contributions to the space program, Glushko also spent years completing a forty-volume series for the Academy of Sciences on the topics related to rocket propulsion theory. Overall, he published more than 250 scientific works.

In 1989, Mikhail F. Rebrov, a Soviet military journalist acquainted with Glushko, wrote a

very candid account of the general designer's life:

He was never weak nor banal--traits that frequently accompany material and pro[e>

sional success. As he himself said, his life was a long, difficult search which essentially

consisted of attempting to reach the desired level of simplicity upon mastering incredibly complex designs. He apparently gave himself over fully to his life's main work. and

was ready to sacrifice [or it. But that was only the way things seemed. Where Korolev

could at some point, after judiciously evaluating his capabilities, reserve the main

strategic problem for himself, and turn some problems over to his students, Glushko did

not let anything out of his hands? 7

Referring to the final years of his life, Rebrov wrote:

Nothing it seems could quench his thirst for activity, his frenzied passion to go down in

history by completing what would come to be called "the first in the world." He was

compared to the director of an enormous orchestra who was enchanted by the dream

o/playing something in such a way that would make the world talk about "the new

Russian triumph in space." ,qnd. to a certain extent, he succeeded in this .... _

45. Glushkoalsotriedto generatepublicinterestin hisMarsplansbywritingin newspapers,See,forexample,V. Glushko,Yu Semenov,andL Gorshkov,"Fantasyon theDrawingBoard:The Roadto Mars"(Englishtitle),

Prauda,May24, 1988,p. 3

46. BorisKatorginandLeonidSternin,"PushingBacktheMissileTechnologyFrontiers,"llerospaeeJournal

no.5 (September-October1997}:88-90.

47. Col M Rebrov,"SpecificImpulse"(Englishtitle), Krasnayazvezda,August26. 1989,p.4

48. Ib_d

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
I TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

The Korolev-Glushko fallout has been discussed much in recent years, but most accounts

attribute this fracture to personal vendetta more than professional opinions. It seems more like-

[y, however, that both men were acting perfectly within the bounds of their experience over the

N I propellant issue, with Glushko supporting storabies and Korolev cryogenics. Both men had

solid reasons for their choices--rationales that had almost nothing to do with personality

conflicts or outright hatred. The two had. after all. worked together through the Purges, through

prison, and through the Stalinist era and maintained their cooperation. Recent accusations

notwithstanding, there is no evidence to suggest that Glushko's testimony led to Korolev's

imprisonment in the 1930s. In fact, both men acted with remarkable honor, given the exigencies of the day. Perhaps the tragedy of Glushko's life, if there is one, is that his ultimate

ambition of being known as the most important person in the tapestry of the Soviet space

program will never come true. He will always be behind Korolev, and he probably knew this fact

very well. As early as 1968, a couple of years after Korolev's death, when a journalist asked

Glushko about Korolev, Giushko replied. "But why are you always going on about Korolev!

Korolev! And what was Korolev? He was just a thin metallic pipe. Inside it I placed my engines.

Pilyugin--his instruments. Barmin put it on the launch pad and it flew .... .49

By the late 1980s. Glushko was seriously ill and partially paralyzed, to the point that a special stamp was made for him because he could not even sign his own name. While he was able

to attend the first launch of his life's dream. Energiya, he was too ill to be at the Baykonur

Cosmodrome for the launch of Buran. He continued working from his bed. asking for reports

from his deputies on every little detail. In August 1988, knowing his days were numbered, he

told one of his deputies that he wanted his ashes to be placed in an urn and kept in a safe place

so that one day it may be taken to the surface of Venus) ° Just fifty-six days after the first and

last flight of the Buran space shuttle, on January [0, 1989, Glushko passed away in Moscow at

the age of eighty?' Even Gorbachev paid his respects. Thus ended the journey that had begun in

1923, when a fifteen-year-old boy had written to Tsiolkovskiy about rockets traveling in space.

Mishin

If Glushko is conventionally known as the man who sabotaged the N I program, then the

popular retrospective evaluations of the contributions of Academician Vasiliy Pavlovich Mishin

have been even less generous. One can almost randomly pick up any article on the history

of the Soviet space program, and there will probably be a disparaging remark about Mishin. The

hapless Mishin, after all, presided over the most ignominious period in Soviet space history.

What better way to explain away all those failures than to attribute it to a short-tempered,

impulsive, and unskilled manager who had a drinking problem? In all likelihood, there is

probably much truth in the negative assessment of Mishin's role as a chief designer. He made

some exceptionally poor decisions and pursued causes that collectively had seriously regressive

repercussions on the effort as a whole. But like any figure in a complex history, his contributions were not one dimensional. In fact, quite possibly, his role has been demeaned unfairly.

After he was fired in May 1974, Mishin declined to take up Brezhnev's offer to help find a

job, and he returned to full-time teaching at the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute, his alma

mater. He had originally founded the Cosmonautics Faculty at that institute in 1959 and taught

49. Golovanov,Koroteu.p, 70i'.

50, Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiyo,p, 434: KatorginandSternin."PushingBackthe

MissileTechnologyFrontiers."Notethat in thefattersource,the authorsstatethat Glushkowantedhisashestaken

to the Moonor Mars.

5I. "AcademicianV. P.Glushko,"Prauda,January13,1989,p. 8: "ValentinGlushko,80, RocketPioneer

for Sovie_Program." NewYorkTimes.January13, 1989, p BS.

851
852

on a part-time basis for fifteen years. /_fter his dismissal, he went back only once to his old

design bureau, as part of a project to document Korolev's scientific heritage. While he was no

longer involved in the mainstream Soviet space program, Mishin continued to pursue an academic career focused on space technology. As part of his teaching, he directed a design project

that led to the creation of the Radio-I and Radio-2 amateur communications satellites) "_His

name was, of course, never mentioned in any histories of the period. Glushko apparently

wished to remove Mishin from history. Although he was allowed to publish under his own

name, Mishin wrote only technical books or contributed to historical works without being able

to admit his own personal role in any space or missile project? _

His relatively obscure existence was interrupted dramatically in 198.5 when the KGB abruptly summoned him for questioning about his relationship to a journalist named Suslov who had

interviewed him. The KGB agents told him that Suslov was under arrest on charges of passing

Soviet secrets to the West: they believed that Mishin was his accessory and threatened to strip

him of membership in the Communist Party and put him on trial. The KGB finally dropped the

case when they could not find evidence to implicate Mishin. He had simply been one of the

people Suslov interviewed) _

Given that Mishin was not allowed to talk about his role in the history of the Soviet missile

and space program, few people in the West were even aware of his significant role. His name

was first mentioned by a Soviet emigre in 1982 and later by a French journalist in 198_5,but most

Western analysts remained unconvinced, believing that it was '/angel or perhaps Chelomey who

had succeeded Korolev in 19667 _ As the new era of glasnost ("openness") dawned on the

Soviet Union during the mid-1980s, it slowly opened up the cellar doors of long-forgotten tales.

I_ nation began to rewrite its history, In 1986, journalist Yaroslav K. Golovanov was allowed, by

special clearance of the Central Committee, to write on the original group of cosmonauts. In a

six-part article in the official Soviet newspaper Izuestiya, Golovanov revealed the events behind

Gagarin's historic mission) _Among the more tantalizing revelations were the names of all twenty men who had been selected as cosmonauts in 1960. Until then, Soviet censors had allowed

the publication of only the twelve who had flown into space.

Llnflown cosmonauts were not the only ones who benefited from this free exchange of

information. In late 1987, as part of celebrations for the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of

the first Sputnik, the Soviet astronomy and space journal Zemlya i uselennaya (Earth and Universe)

published a short article by Mishin in which he openly revealed that he had succeeded Korolev) 7

Clasnost may have meant openness, but Glushko made sure that there was no talk of the piloted

lunar program, for to admit such a history was to admit that not only did the LISSR race the United

States to the Moon, but that it had lost. It finally took Glushko's death in January 1989 to change

the climate. In July 1989, a relatively obscure newspaper named Poisk (Search) published a short

article consisting of a few diary entries from the personal journal of Air Force General Nikolay P.

Kamanin. There was no ambiguity in his writing: the Soviet Union had had a piloted lunar

52. JacquesVillain, ed., Baikonour la porte des_toiles (Paris: _rmand Colin, 1994), p. 136.

53 Two of his books from the 1970sand 198Osare:V. P.Mishin, Vvedeniye u mashinnoye proyektirovaniye

letatelnykh apparatou (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1978), and ",Z R Mishin, Osnouyproyektirouaniya letatelnykh

apparatou (Transportnyye sistemy) (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1985).

54. Mikhail Rebrov, "The Last /qrgument: P_Study of the Designer in Black and White" (English title),

Krasnaya zuezdd, March 25, 1995, p. 6

55. For the emigre, seeVictor Yevsikov.Re-EntryTechnologyand the Soviet SpaceProgram i'SomePersona_

Observations) (Falls Church, VA: Delphic ,qssociates, 1982). Forthe Frenchjournalist, seeC. Wachtel, "]-he Chief

Designersof the Soviet SpaceProgram,"Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 38 (December 1985): 561 63

56 The articles were titled "Cosmonaut No. I" and were published between gpril 2 and 6, 1986.

51. "Our Interviews" (EngIish title), Zemlya i vselennaya no. 6 (November December 1981): 2-5

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

program, timed to compete with ApolloD The following month, veteran cosmonaut Valeriy F.

Bykovskiy, one of those who had trained for the project, admitted the same thing in his justpublished biography? _ These two publications burst the floodgates. Within weeks, there was a

major in-depth article in Izvestiya on the N I program, and by October 1989, Mishin gave a long

interview on the project, covering his role as one of the pioneers of the Soviet space program? °

In this and subsequent interviews, Mishin did not hide his bitterness at having been wiped

from the history of the Soviet space program. He took aim at Glushko, Ustinov, and all the

other individuals who had silenced him for fifteen years. He also did not have kind words for

the current Soviet space program:

Very little has been done about what we thought about and dreamed about 20 },ears ago.

even 30 years ago with Korolev. It is simply vexing that so few useful and efficient space

vehicles are in Earth orbit.., we have become addicted to the long, monotonous tong-duration manned missions in the tight Salyut-Mir which repeat each other. It is very wastefulY

When asked how there could be a vigorous forward-looking space program, he replied:

Space exploration has been hampered by monopoly and secrecy, and by nepotism and

politically dealing in the allocation of buildings and subsidies• We need broad, open

competition in projects/or a unified technical task. And discussion of tasks, ideas, and

proposals, and independent expert evaluations, and open selection of the winners. Only

after this, in full view of everyone, should there be implementation of projects in which

the whole of society is convinced of their need and soundness. _'

He might as well have been talking of an alien world as compared to the Soviet system.

Mishin also added his own two cents to the emerging debate over whether if Korolev had lived,

the Soviets might not have had more success in their ventures into space:

•.. in the main thing, in the desire to create a well-considered strategy for space exploration, we were. I hope, fellow thinkers. No, I probably did not possess the kind o/will

and sharp tongue that distinguished Korolev. I am prepared to admit that. But in our

space situation, the replacement of one character for another and the replacement of

leading personalities did not play any decisive role?'

In the initial flurry of publicity concerning the Soviet Union's aborted piloted lunar program, Mishin wrote extensively and granted many interviews, but in recent years, he has

remained out of the public eye, except to occasionally author pieces paying tribute to his mentor, Sergey R Korolev. The latter clearly had a very high regard for Mishin, having picked the

thirty-year-old Mishin to serve as principal deputy in 1946. Korolev told a journalist once:

I found this to be true and recurring regardless of circumstances: every now and again,

all of a sudden a man would come from out of nowhere, from the great unknown, a

58. Lev Kamanin. "From the Earth to the Moon and Back" (English titte), Poisk 12 (July 1989): 7-8.

59. Grigoriy Reznichenko. Kosrnonavt-5 (Moscow: Politicheskoy literatury, 198% p. 98.

60 SergeyLeskov."How We Didn't Get to the Moon" (English title), Izvestiya August 18, 1989, p 3: A

Tarasov, "Missions in Dreams and Reality" (English title), Prauda, October 20, 1989, p 4.

6f. Tarasov, "Missions in Dreamsand Reality."

62. Ibid

63. lbid

853
854

man that would be remarkable precisely [or the qualities you sought: he is gifted, courageous, honest .... He would introduce himself, extend his hand in a trustworthy manner, modestly speak of the work he has done, and a miracle would happen, the

unknown is no longer the unknown. ,qnd then you would say to yourself "This is he,

precisely the man I need. ,,_4

He was evidently speaking of Mishin.

Perhaps wanting his story to be told, Mishin put his personal diaries--thirty-one volumes

covering the period from t960 to t974-- up for sale at a special auction of Soviet and Russian

space artifacts at Sotheby's in late 19937 S The Perot Foundation purchased the diaries for

$190,000. Unfortunately at the time of this writing, the institution has yet to make these priceless writings available to scholars. Portions have been exhibited as part of the National/qir and

Space Museum's "Space Race" exhibit opened in 1997. Mishin himself continues to teach at

the Moscow Aviation Institute, having just turned eighty-two. He wrote perhaps the best epitaph to his own contribution to the Soviet piloted lunar program in a monograph he authored

in 1990 on the N I-L3 program:

I do not want the readers to think that I am trying to relieve myself as Chief Designer of

responsibility [or certain errors committed (including by me personally) during work on

the lunar program. Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes. We. the successors

of S. P Korolev, did everything we could, but our efforts proved to be inadequate, °_

64. Rebrov, "The Last grgument."

65 Russian Space History, Sale 6316 (New York: Sotheby's, 1993), description for lot 29: John Noble

Wilford. "Soviet Space PapersGoing on Sale," New York Times. December5, 1993,p. 36.

66 V.P. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?" (English title), Znaniye tekhnike seriya kosmonavhka, astronomiya no. t2 (December, 1990): 3-43.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
CHAPTER TWENTY

COD&

For a brief period in the late 1950s and early 1960s, one could reasonably argue that the

Soviet Union was the leading spacefaring nation in the world. In the light of the ultimate

demise of the Soviet empire, however, thinking of the USSR as launching humanity's first steps

into the cosmos seems a strange abstraction--the memory feels oddly empty, almost irrelevant

perhaps. When we do remember, we tend to divorce Sputnik from its origin as a uniquely

Soviet artifact--an eighty-four-kilogram sphere that was designed and built by men who lived

through a war in which their country lost more than 25 million people, experienced the terror

of Stalinist times, and defined themselves as Communists. Instead, we focus overwhelmingly

on the impact of Sputnik rather than the construction of the artifact itself. I do not mean to

suggest that meanings are unimportant. But in privileging only Sputnik's impact, we have told

only half the story. Certainly, this is partly because the Soviet space program was given birth--

and given flight--behind closed doors. Peeking through the now opened curtains, what I have

tried to present here is an account of the missing half of that tale. This is only one version of

the story, and certainly not the only one. But in sifting through the evidence and constructing

the narrative, three broad themes have served as guidelines.

The first theme has to do with the institutional framework and the interplay among different factions within the Soviet space program and its antecedent missile project. Four primary

constituencies were fundamental to establishing a Soviet ballistic missile program in the 1940s

and 195Os. They were the engineers, the artillery officers, the defense industrialists, and the

Communist Party. Each faction had its own agenda, but for a period of about fifteen years following the end of the war, their motivations intersected at crucial points to give rise to the

world's first space program. The engineers were driven by their somewhat idealistic dreams of

exploring space--dreams that had taken flight when they were young rocketry enthusiasts in

the 1930s. The artillery officers were in need of a new generation of strategic weaponry to

transform their backdated service into a powerful deterrent force. The defense industrialists had

the not inconsiderable task of expediting the development of a strong military. Rnd the Party

leaders--in particular Stalin and Khrushchev--were driven by the political exigencies of the

Cold War to direct the three other factions to elevate the Soviet Union from a nation afraid to

defend itself to one that could threaten with offense.

The collusion of these four groups was necessary for the development of the world's first

intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7. This missile, of course, was simply a military

weapon--a tool for mass destruction. In the hands of one visionary--Sergey Pavlovich

Korolev--it became something entirely different. In the unlikely marriage of military imperative

and idealistic ambition, the R-7 missile fired the first salvo in the space era--not by exploding

a nuclear warhead, but by sending a small ball of metal around Earth on October 4, 1957. P,

855
856

country that had been dismissed as a nation of farmers and factory workers had suddenly

arrived on the world's stage with an achievement that was too impressiveto ignore.

There was more to come. Within four years, using the same rocket that had launched

Sputnik, the Soviet Union, now armed with a new tint to the old socialist doctrine of harnessing technologies in the interest of the state, reached the apotheosis of its dizzying trajectory

into the heavens. Historian Walter A McDougall, writing in the introduction of his seminal

work.., the Heavens and the Earth, compared the event to the migration of the fish

Eusthenopteron from the seas to the land:

In ll.D. 1961 Homo sapiens, in turn. le[t the realm o[ solids and gases and lived, [or 108

minutes, in outer space. Li[e again escaped, or by definition extended, the biosphere. The

earth's crust and canopy of air became another platform to a new universe as in[inite

as soil and sky must have seemed to Eusthenopteron.'

Only the vicissitudes of history will decide whether the flight of Yuriy Alekseyevich Gagarin

in the spaceship Vostok will be remembered with such sweeping comparisons in the centuries

hence. Even as the decade of the 1960s passed through tumult and chaos, humankind's first

trip into space began to recede into the background. By the time that the first humans landed

on the surface of the Moon in 1969, Gagarin's flight had been eclipsed in the popular conception of space exploration by the spectral images of two tqmerican men who left their footprints

on another planetary body. The technology, the men, the pictures, and even the parades

seemed so much more compelling to a new generation. In the historiography of space exploration, Gagarin's excursion assumed more importance for how it affected the American decision

to aim for the Moon than for its own place in the history of human evolution.

But Gagarin's flight, both from a historical and a technological perspective, warrants more

scrutiny. This is not only because it was achieved by a nation that was not expected to do so,

but, simply and ultimately, because it was, as McDougall pointed out, an event that, like perhaps

Apollo II, transcended nations, languages, cultures, and continents and, for 108 minutes, represented the planet Earth: for the first time since the origin of life on this planet, one life form

had managed to escape it. At the same time, we should not minimize more earthly considerations. Gagarin's flight did not, after all, happen in isolation from the political, economic, and

social dimensions of the Cold War. P,nd ironically, as this book has shown, the same forces that

allowed the Soviet Union to send the first human into space--the need to arm themselves with

powerful new weapons--deprived the country of further national triumphs in the space race.

Considering the post-Gagarin era leads to the second major theme of this work: the Soviet

effort to beat the United States in landing the first person on the Moon. After an unprecedented

catalogue of firsts in the late 1950s and early 1960s. the Soviets failed dismally in this quest.

The road to failure began almost as soon as Gagarin had floated down in his parachute. After

196I, the Soviet space program, jostling for a role in the new Soviet military technocracy, began

to stumble and slide in trying to attain a stable position of growth. Different factions were all

vying for the same piece of pie. The artillery officers, now subsumed under the Strategic Missile

Forces, increasingly declined to fund the primarily civilian endeavors of the human space program. The military, it seems, was more interested in missiles than the Moon. Grand visions of

space exploration, as the one Korolev proposed in 1960, died under their own weight as the

military siphoned off funding from important space projects in favor of developing a new generation of strategic weapons systems. Because their primary job was to design intercontinental

I. WalterMcDougall.... theHeavensandtheEarth:,ztPoliticalHistoryo/the SpaceAge(New York:Basic

Books,1985).p. 3.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
CODA

ballisticmissiles,themainspacedesignorganizationshadtosacrificeambitiousspaceplans

onthealtarofstrategicnecessity.TheColdWar,havingivenbirthto the Soviet space program, would seriously threaten its very existence. In this climate, important avenues of

research, such as the development of high-energy cryogenic rocket engine technology, never

reached beyond the exploratory stage.

Despite the visible firebrand rhetoric of Nikita S. Khrushchev in the early 1960s, his support of a coherent long-range civilian space program was lukewarm at best. In 1961, when U.S.

President John F. Kennedy laid down the challenge of reaching the surface of the Moon prior

to the end of the decade, the Soviet space leadership hardly took notice. Organizational chaos

emerged as a flurry of competitors began to dilute the hard-earned gains of the space program.

The engineer faction, so united at the time of Sputnik, began to fragment in the face of limited funding. Between 1961 and 1964, Korolev ran his program on a shoestring budget, as proposal after proposal ended up in ministry file cabinets, never to be seen again. In desperation.

he mounted two hastily prepared spectaculars in the mid-1960s--missions that had no value

other than to please the Party leaders: the launch of the first multicosmonaut crew in 1964 and

the accomplishment of the first spacewalk in 1965. The diversion cost the Soviets dearly. It was

only in 1964 that Khrushchev sanctioned a piloted lunar landing program, three years after

Kennedy's own challenge. The commitment itself was never followed up as the military continued to withhold funding, prompting the engineers to omit crucial phases in the ground testing of their lunar rocket. The shortcuts inexorably led to the series of crushing failures just as

the United States was landing its first citizens on the surface of the Moon.

With the loss of the Moon race in 1969, the Soviets diverted much of their resources in

the following years to space station programs. Korolev's successor, Vasiliy Mishin, has argued

in recent years that despite the success of/_pollo, there was no cause to abandon the massive

N I-L3 lunar program simply because the Americans had arrived at the Moon first. As sound as

this logic seems to be, engineers in the 1970s had to deal with a political climate that was vehemently hostile to expensive civilian programs such as lunar missions. Soviet leaders saw little

need for such projects, because their success would raise inevitable questions about the original failure to beat Apollo.

The third and final theme of this work addresses the manner in which the Soviets handled

technological innovation in the space program. The evidence both confirms and counters our

a priori conceptions of Soviet technology as one characterized by evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes. In the space program, the Soviets used a combination of both: the decision to forego the former in favor of the latter often had as much to do with accident as with

political expediency. For example, having built the first piloted spaceship Vostok by 1960, the

Soviets tried hard to extend its capabilities by introducing relatively minor changes that cumulatively added to moderate gains. They abandoned Vostok as a viable piloted spaceship only in

1966 when they absolutely had to--that is, when the Soyuz spacecraft, which represented a

qualitative leap in design and performance, was virtually ready. The decision to fly one over the

other in 1966 had as much to with the impossibility of fulfilling contemporary objectives in

space with the Vostok as with the fact that flying the Vostok (or its surrogate Voskhod) in 1966

would have demonstrated a visible and obvious lag to U.S. space technology.

In the thirty-year period spanning from 1945 to the mid-1970s, I looked at two cases of

technological leaps: the R-7 ICBM and the N I Moon rocket. Both projects required immense

coordination in scale and scope across a Byzantine state-controlled landscape of research,

development, and production. The success of the R-7 resulted not only from the high degree

of financial commitment afforded by the state, but also because of the use of unorthodox management institutions such as the Council of Chief Designers. For example, in 1952, when

Korolev decided to skip an intermediate stage in missile development and move directly to the

ambitious ICBM project, the council proved to be a key and influential forum through which he

85Z
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could substantiate the proposal and ultimately convince the Soviet government of its feasibility. The council also served as an unusual managerial mechanism that allowed chief designers

to intervene at key points in the development of the ICBM. Ultimately, the Council of Chief

Designers managed to circumvent the internal self-generated inertia of Soviet industry, which

discouraged major technological leaps and favored short-term gains.

In his important study on the origins of the Soviet atomic bomb. Stalin and the Bomb,

David Holloway concluded that "[a]fter Stalin's death, nuclear scientists.., enjoyed unprecedented authority among the political leaders,''_ The evidence from the space program suggests

that the privilege of authority granted to the nuclear scientists was eventually expanded to

include the engineers who played influential roles in the rise of the Soviet ballistic missile program. Although Western observers have long thought that it was Sputnik that changed the fortunes of these engineers such as Korolev and Glushko, their relationship to the political

leadership changed more than a year before Sputnik with the successful test of the first Soviet

strategic missile, the R-5M. The landmark test dramatically escalated the space engineers' leverage with both the Communist Party and the government and eventually led to the formation

of a loose coalition of designers who would wield considerable power and influence. Although

after 1960 they rarely, if ever, acted as a united front, the missile and space designers represented a formidable constituency that profoundly affected the direction of space policy beginning the late 1950s.

Because the Soviet political leadership lacked a clear understanding of the new technologies of the missile and space program, they needed the engineers to actively participate in policy formulation. The chief designers obliged willingly by forming lobbies, and, in the process,

they acquired sufficient power to oppose important mandates from the top. There should be

no confusion as to how the designers attained their powerful positions--it was not space, but

rather their contribution to missile development that empowered them. Becausethe space program was largely a byproduct of missile production, the privileges almost by default were

extended from the latter to the former. Both Nikita Khrushchev and Sergey Korolev played key

roles in this process: Khrushchev because he allowed the rise of a constituency, and Korolev

because he strongly pushed for it. But as the powerful chief designers vied for limited resources,

they began to abuse the patronage system through various contacts within the Central

Committee. "The favor of not even Khrushchev, Brezhnev, or Ustinov, but of a totally forgotten Central Committee agent," one Russian journalist wrote, "could determine the prospects

for the development of the highly complex [space] sector for years.''_ The chaos was one of the

key factors in the failure of the N I program.

Korolev did not live long enough to witness the ultimate decline of the juggernaut he helped

create. He did, however, leave behind an unmatched legacy--one that continues to be debated

more than thirty years after his death. Most historians, both in Russia and in the West, have not

argued with the holy grail of the history of the Soviet space program: that Sergey Pavlovich

Korolev was its founder and central motivator. Given what is known about the vortex of events

surrounding the launch of both Sputnik and Gagarin, it would be hard to dispute that claim. But

at the same time, there has been an eagerness to attribute to Korolev roles that he clearly did not

play, at least in his later life. It is particularly noteworthy that Sergey Korolev, the person who

was most responsible for Sputnik was neither a scientist nor an engineer, but rather a manager

with a vision. Boris V. Raushenbakh, one of Korolev's close associates from the 1960s, later

wrote:

2. DavidHolloway,Stalinand the8omb:The_ovietUnionandAtomic Energy.1939-1956(New Haven,

CT:YaleUniversityPress,1994).pp.366-67.

3. S Leskov."Salyut-T is Falling.No OneKnowsWhereandWhen" (Englishtitle), Izuestiyo,January

18,1991.p. 8.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
CODA

Sometimes one hears it said that Korolyov was an excellent engineer and scientist. It is

difficult to agree with this if the terms "engineer" and "scientist" are accorded their

usual meaning, l<orolyov himself did not devise any especially interesting solution to a

complicated structural problem, as is the ease with brilliant engineers. He was also not

a scientist in the usual sense of the word: his name is not linked with any original scientific theory or with any prolonged and extensive study of a complicated phenomenon,

However, these statements are not to be construed as a deprecation of the role which he

played in the birth of space travel. There are many outstanding scientists and engineers,

and Korolyov is a unique individual, His uniqueness, moreover, is linked to the fact that

he was to introduce a new era into human history: the space age. 4

The rise of the Soviet space program was one of the most significant processes in the history of science and technology in this century, not only because it opened what Raushenbakh

calls "the space age," but also because it had profound sociopolitical consequences all over the

world. Within the context of the Cold War itself, the Soviet space effort was a benchmark--a

milestone that turned history from one path to another. For the first decade after Sputnik, the

space age was indistinguishable in many ways from the space race. As the breadth of retrospect

grows longer and longer, the import of the latter--that is, the space race--will no doubt recede

far into the background, as perhaps it should. But for a short period in this century, the race

provided the impulse for humankind to depart from this planet and reach the Moon. The

Soviets, of course, lost this race, although they managed to throw shreds of doubt onto the victor's parade by denying that they had even signed up for the event. This deception existed for

more than two decades, and when the truth was finally revealed, few took notice.

In 1999, during the thirtieth anniversary of the landing of humans on the surface of the

Moon, the memory of Apollo spurred a brief but important resurgence of the sense of wonder

and fascination that humans attach to space exploration, But lost amid the reevaluations and

archaeology digs through Apollo, perhaps the greatest technological adventure of humankind

was the other side of the coin--the story of those who had given reason to embark on Apollo

in the first place. Buried under history was Korolev's "last love," the N I program, That the N I

program was consigned to the status of a footnote is not so unusual: history has a way of privileging successes over failures. Our understanding of this dichotomy, between success and failure, is intrinsically tied to a second one--that between inevitability and contingency. On the

one hand, we tend to see an inevitability in history's trajectory to the present--for example,

that given the set of prevailing circumstances, the N I program had to fail and that Apollo had

to succeed. On the other hand, the story is compelling precisely because the outcome was not

inevitable--that is, it was contingent on thousands of circumstantial factors. The tension

between contingency and inevitability has contributed much to the enduring myths we now

associate with the race to the Moon. The story of the Soviet space program has tong been part

of that myth. We have tended to seeSoviet successes in space (such as Sputnik) as contingent

and Soviet failures (such as the N I) as inevitable. This myth, it seems, is far too simplistic and

takes away from the genuinely worthy accomplishments of Sputnik and Gagarin. The myth

served its purpose during the Cold War, but now with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the

opening of the Russian archives, it is finally time to put it away.

4. BorisV. Rauschenbach,HermannOberth:TheFatherof SpaceFlight(Clarence,NY:West-Art, 1994),

p. 172.

859

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSRY

Writing a history of the Soviet space program poses some interesting historiographical

challengesin terms of source selection. As much as possible, I have tried to rely on Russian language sources. With very little exception, Western literature on the history of the Soviet space

program has been a hodgepodge of speculation and sensationalism. Problems abound within

Russian-language literature. Almost everything published prior to about 1988 was filtered

through the Soviet censorship apparatus: details were sparse, and accounts often filled with

inaccuracies. A major problem in the post-1988 literature is the dearth of primary sources. All

archival sources, both at the governmental and Communist Party levels as well as within specific design bureaus, remain off limits to Western researchers.

Almost all of the Russian-language books and journals I have listed below are available at

the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Others are available at libraries with large Russianlanguage collections, such as the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh, the

NASA Headquarters Library, the NASA History Division archives, and the University of

Massachusetts-Amherst. Many articles from the Russian media have also been translated into

English by the Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) under the JPRS-USP (Central Eurasia:

space), JPRS-UAC (aviation and cosmonautics), and the JPRS-UMA (Soviet/Russian military

affairs) titles. The JPRSapparently discontinued the first two series by 199.5.Space articles are

now continued under the JPRS-UST (science and technology) series. I would encourage all

researchers of Soviet space history to begin with the JPRS issues, especially those covering

1988-95. All JPRS issues are available at the Library of Congress in both paper and microfiche

forms. Most large university libraries also carry the entire series on microfiche.

I have used a combination of eight different types of materials to piece together this narrative:

I. Primary documents that have been published as collected works by Russian historians with

access to archives

2. Official histories from Soviet-era space organizations

3. Biographies of major participants of the Soviet space program

4. Oral histories and memoirs from veteran participants of the Soviet space program

5. Articles and books by historians of the Soviet space program

6. English-language sources

7. Declassified documents

8. Interviews and correspondence

Primary Russian Documents

Falling into the first category, four works were invaluable as the backbone of this current

work. The most important of these was Tuorcheskoye naslediye ,Ztkademika Sergeya Pavlovicha

Koroleva: izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (The Creative Legacy of ,Ztcademician Sergey Pavlovieh

Korolev: Selected Works and Documents) (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), collectively edited under the

leadership of Academy of Sciences President Mstislav Keldysh, This particular book is a collection of many of Korolev's technical works spanning 1930 to 1965. What the book suffers in

terms of Soviet-era censorship is more than compensated by the remarkable breadth of materials. A less than stellar English translation of this book is available at the NASA History Division

as prepared by the Translation Division of the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson

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Air Force Base in Ohio. The translation reference number is FTD-ID(RS)T-0504-81 ; it was issued

on September 3, 1981. The main compiler of the Russian-language work was Georgiy S. Vetrov,

a historian at RKK Energiya who died in October 1997. P,t the time of his death, he had completed a second complementary volume of similar documents titled Korolev i yego de/o: suet i

teni v istorii kosmonautiki (Koroteu and His Works: Light and Shadows in the History of

Cosmonautics), which was published by the Nauka publishers in Moscow in mid-1998. This

volume contains many documents on secret programs that could never have been published

during the Soviet era, Unfortunately, I was only able to make minimal use of Vetrov's new work

because my own manuscript was already completed at the time of its publication.

There are two other book-length works that are collections of primary documents. They are

V. S. Avduyevskiy and T. M. Eneyev's M. V. Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy: raketnaya tekhnika i

kosmonavtika (M. _ Keldysh: Selected Works: Missile Technology and Cosmonautics)

(Moscow: Nauka, 1988), and B. V. Raushenbakh's Materialy pc istorii kosmicheskogo korabl

"uostok" (Materials on the History of the "Vostok" Space Ship) (Moscow: Nauka, 1991). I

would recommend the latter especially for those interested in the development of the Vostok

spacecraft. This slim volume also contains the completely unexpurgated version of Korolev and

Tikhonravov's landmark 1954 letter to the Soviet government.

Several works from these three books have been translated into English. Some of them,

including the complete 19.54report, can be readily seen at the NP,S_qHistory Office Web site at

http://tututu_hq.nasa.gou/office/pao/History/sputnik/ussr.html.

Soviet-era military organizations have published their own histories. The two most useful

texts of the Strategic Missile Forces are Raketnyye uoyska strategicheskogo naznacheniya

(Missile Forces of Strategic Designation) (Moscow: RVSN, 1992) and Khronika osnounykh

sobytiy istorii raketnykh uoysk strategicheskogo naznacheniya (Chronicle of the Primary Events

in the History of the Missile Forcesof Strategic Designation) (Moscow: TslPK, 1994). The latter

is a particularly important book because it includes the complete text of the famous May 1946

decree on the formation of the Soviet missile program. The book also contains unedited reproductions of many relevant documents from the famous R-16 disaster in 1960, which killed more

than I00 people. The original decree on the formation of the Strategic Missile Forces is also

included. There is also Ye. B. Volkov's Mezhkontinentalnyye ballisticheskiye rakety SSSR(RE) i

SSh,Zt(Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles of the LISSR(RF) and the US,Zt)(Moscow: RVSN, 1996),

which is an official history of the missile programs of the Strategic Missile Forces, handy for a

technical overview. Finally, a recent history of the defunct Military Space Forces that contains

much previously classified information is worth seeking out for understanding Soviet military

space policy during the Cold War. See V. V. Favorskiy and I. V. Meshcheryakov, eds., Voyennokosmicheskiye sily (uoyenno-istoricheskiy trud): kniga I: kosmonautika i uooruzhennyye sily

(Military-Space Forces [Military-Historical Work]: Volume I: Cosmonautics and the ,Ztrmed

Forces) (Moscow: Sankt-Peterburgskoy tipografii no. I VO Nauka, 1997).

There is also a remarkable work available on the evolution of the Soviet military-industrial

complex, based exclusively on primary archival documentation. I would highly recommend the

following book for any scholar attempting to gain insight into the interactions among the Soviet

military, industry, and state during the Cold War. See N. S. Simonov, Voyenno-promyshlennyy

kompleks SSSRv 1920-1950-ye gody: tempy ekonomicheskogo rosta, struktura, organizatsiya

proizuodstva i uprauleniye (Military-Industrial Complex of the USSRfrom 1920-1950s: Rate of

Economic _rotuth, Structure, Organization of Production and ,,qdministration) (Moscow:

ROSSPEN, 1996).

I would add some more sources into this first category. One Soviet-era journal has published

a remarkable set of original and unedited documents from Gagarin's flight in 196 I. These included the complete downlink during the launch phase of the mission and Gagarin's own report to

the State Commission following landing. They can be found in V. Belyanov, L. Moshkov, Yu.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO I

I
J

i BIBLIOGRAPHIC EssAy

Murin, N. Sobolev, A. Stepanov, and B. Stroganov, "Yuriy Gagarin's Star Voyage: Documents

from the First Flight of a Human into Space" (English title), Izuestiya TsK KPSS 5 (1991):

101-29. In addition, the journal Voyenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal (Military.History Journal) has

published complete texts of many of the documents related to Korolev's arrest and incarceration in the late 1930s. These can be found in its October and November 1989 issues.

All of Georgiy Vetrov's works should also be included in this first category. His book S. R

Koroleu i kosmonautika: peruye shagi (S. R KoroJeu and Cosmonautics: First Steps) (Moscow:

Nauka, 1994) is quite possibly the best scholarly work on Korolev's pre- 1945 work on rocketry,

Vetrov's April and May 1994 articles in Nauka i zhizn (Science and Life) on the N I rocket

include reproductions of several original design bureau and governmental documents from the

1960s on the development of this booster. Before his death, Vetrov prepared a number of manuscripts that contain original documentation or interpretations of primary sources. These

include S. P Koroleu: Nauchnaya bio£ra[iya (S. P Koroleu..,q Scienti[ic Biography). co-authored

with his wife K. A. Krasnova. He also prepared a book called Otkrytiye kosmosa (Opening

Space), which is a history of the early space program, Excerpts from this book have been published in issues 16 and 23 of the journal Nouosti kosmonautiki (News of Cosmonautics) in

1997 as well as the October 1997 issue of Nauka i zhizn. Another book, not completely finished, was Taynyye tropy kosmonautiki (Hidden Ways of Cosmonautics), which is a nontechnical account of the relationships among Korolev, Glushko, and Ustinov. A final book

apparently also completed is Sekrety ostroua _orodomtya (Secrets of _orodomtya Island),

about the German rocket scientists in the Soviet Union following World War I1.Most of these

books were to have been published in 1997-98, but financial problems at the Nauka publishers have delayed their issuing. Vetrov's death seems to have delayed plans for publishing even

further.

Official Organization Histories

In the second category, at least three Soviet-era space organizations have published

detailed institutional and technical histories. I would highly recommend RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S. R Koroleua (The "Ener,giya" Rocket-Space

Corporation Named ,,qfter S. R Koroleu) (Korolev: RKK Energiya, named after S. P. Korolev,

1996), which is a massive work covering the entire history of the Korolev design bureau. The

book reproduces many of original documents from the space program: the entire narrative is

based completely on the internal archives of the organization. Less useful is Cosudarstuennyy

kosmicheskiy nauchno-proizuodstuennyy tsentr imeni M. _Z Khrunicheua (State Space

Scienti/ic-Production Center Named After M. _/ Khrunicheu) (Moscow: RUSSLIT, 1997), a

somewhat Soviet-era style history of the Khrunichev Machine Building Plant. Chief Designer

Yangel's Yuzhnoye Plant has also published a detailed chronology of its participation in the missile and space programs. This is V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov, and V. Pashchenko's

Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy tsentr (Dneprou Rocket-Space Center) (Dnepropetrovsk: PO

YuMZ/KBYu, 1994), This work has an incredibly detailed chronology of the life of the organization and is packed with previous classified information relevant to the evolution of the Soviet

space program.

Participant Biographies

Without a doubt, the most essential biography of any player in the Soviet space program

is Yarostav Golovanov's Koroleu: fakty i mify (Koroleu: Facts and Myths) (Moscow: Nauka,

1994). This 800-page work, sixteen years in the making, is not only an indispensable historical

863
864

work,butalsoa magnificentpieceof literature,unrivaledin its scopeandlyricalquality.

Anotherrecommendedbiographyof Korolevis AleksandrRomanov'sKoroleu (Moscow:

Molodaya gyardiya, 1996), which has been updated several times since its original publication

in 1976, Romanov's work has a different tenor to Golovanov's biography in that it is slightly

more anecdotal and lacks critical analysis.

Unfortunately, there have not been any in-depth treatments of other Soviet chief designers

or officials in the post- 1988 era. Researchers can search out N. G. Babakin, A. N. Banketov, and

V. N. Smorkalov's _. N. Babakin: zhizn i deyatelnost (_. N. Babakin: Li[e and ,Zlctivities)

(Moscow: Adamant, 1996), which is a fairly good post-Soviet account of Babakin's life. There

is also V. K. Kupriyanov and V. V. Chernyshev's I vechernyy start...: rosskaz o glaunom konstruktorye raketnykh dvigateley ,Zllekseye Mikhaylovichye Isayeuye (Evening Launch l ] ":

,Zleeounts on the Chie[ Designer o[ Rocket Engines 7]leksey Mikhaylovich Isayev) (Moscow:

Moskovskiy rabochiy, 1988), which suffers a little from Soviet-era censorship. One book, A. P.

Romanov and V. S. Gubarev's Konstruktory (Designers) (Moscow: Izdatelstvo politicheskoy literatury, 1989), contains substantial biographies of Glushko and Yangel in addition to Korolev.

Although strictly not a biography, another book, A. Yu. Ishlinskiy's _kademik S. P. Korolev:

ucheniy, inzhener, chelouek (_cademician S. P Korolev: Scholar. Engineer. Person) (Moscow:

Nauka, 1986), is a very useful gathering of recollections by dozens of men and women who

knew Korolev. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Korolev's life. A complete English

translation of this is available at the NASA History Division prepared by the Translation Division

of the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The translation

reference number is I:TD-ID(RS)T-1140-87; it was issued on April 29. 1988. Comparable in spirit. but vastly more informative is a work on Glushko, Odnazhdy i nausegda.. ,: dokumenty i

lyudi o sozdatelye raketnykh duigateley i kosmicheskikh sistem akademikye Valentinye

Petrovichye Glushko (Once and Forever .... l Documents and People on the Creation of Rocket

Engines and Space Systems o[ 71cademician Valentin Petrovich _lushko) (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye, 1998), edited by V. F. Rakhmanin and L Ye. Sterpin. This particular book

on Glushko illuminates many episodes from the Soviet space program from a completely different perspective--that is, the story from "the other side," as it were, Less helpful is Dmitriy

Khrapovitskiy's _eneralnyy Konstruktor Akademik '_ N. Chelomey (General Designer

,Ztcademician V. N. Chelomey) (Moscow: Vozdushniy transport, 1990). There is also B. V.

Raushenbakh's Iz istorii Souetskoy kosmonautiki: sbornik pamyati 7_kademika S. P Koroleua

(From the History o/Soviet Cosmonautics: z] Collection o[ Memories o[ 71cademician S. P

Koroleu) (Moscow: Nauka. 1983), which has an extremely detailed chronology of Korolev's

entire life. including dates for many of his missile and spacecraft studies.

Oral Histories and Memoirs

The fourth category is memoirs. The most thorough and impartial memoirs authored by any

participant in the Soviet space program have been those by Korolev's deputy Boris Chertok. By

1998, he had published three thick volumes: Rakety i lyudi (Rockets and Men) (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye, 1994), which addresses roughly the period 1945 to 1957: Rakety i lyudi: Fili

Podlipki Tyuratam (Rockets and Men: Fill Podhpki Tyura-Tam) (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye,

1996), which contains events from 1957 to 1961: and Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni kholodnoy

uoyny (Rockets and Men: Hot Days o/the Cold War) (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1997),

which covers 1961 to 1968.These three volumes collectively should be the starting point for any

scholar interested in the history of the Soviet space program. Chertok is an amazingly astute

observer with a stunning memory for detail. These are invaluably rich contributions to this history. A fourth volume on the lunar program is evidently on the way.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
BIBLiOGRRPHIC ESSAY

L..............

Equally essential are the diaries of General Nikolay Kamanin. Since 1989, his son Lev

Kamanin has published excerpts from his diaries piece by piece in various newspapers. His journals from 1960 to 1966 have been collected into two very handy volumes, Skrytiy kosmos: kniga

pervaya, 1960-1963gg (Hidden Space: Volume One. 1960-1963) (Moscow: Infortekst IF. 1995)

and Skrytiy kosmos: kniga vtoraya, 1964-1966gg (Hidden Space: Volume Two, 1964-1966)

(Moscow: Infortekst iF. 1997). Further additions to the series are expected in the near future. In

the meantime, those interested in diary entries for 1966 to 1974 can search out issues of the

Russian newspaper Vozdushniy transport (,ZlirTransport), which has published extensive entries

in issues 12 to 15, 23 to 25, and 43 to 50 in 1993 and in issues 9 to 19 in 1994. Almost all of

these newspaper issues have been translated into English and are available at the NASA History

Division as NASA 13--21658 dated December 1994. Researchersshould note that the translations

have been compiled in some cases without regard to chronological order.

Other memoirs relevant to Soviet space history include Sergey Khrushchev's two-volume

Nikita Khrushchev: krizisy i rakety: vzg/yad iznutri (Nikita Khrushchev: Crises and Missiles:

View From the Inside) (Moscow: Novosti, 1994). A slightly different English version of these two

volumes is to be published in 2000 under the title The Creation o[ a Superpower (_ View From

the Inside), One designer of the Soviet lunar lander has published a book on its development,

Vospominaniya o lunnom korablye (Recollections on the Lunar Ship) (Moscow: Kultura, 1992).

An invaluable addition to the literature on Soviet space history are the Dorogi u kosmos

(Roads to Space) series prepared by the Scientific-Research Center for Space Documentation in

Moscow. These volumes include reminiscences from some of the most important players in the

1950s and 1960s--most notably some politicians, who have been notoriously absent in writing their memoirs. The contributors to this series include Minister Afanasyev, Military-Industrial

Commission Deputy Pashkov, Chief Designers Barmin and Mishin, N I designer Kryukov,

Vostok designer Ivanovskiy, artillery officers Mozzhorin, Nesterenko, and Tyutin, and physician

Yazdovskiy. Three volumes have been published so far: Dorogi v kosmos: I (Roads to Space: I)

(Moscow: MAI, 1992), Dorogi u kosmos: II (Roads to Space: II) (Moscow: MAI, 1992), and

Nachalo kosmicheskoy cry: vospominaniya ueteranov raketno-kosmicheskoy tekhniki i kosmonavtiki: vypusk vtoroy (The Beginning of the Space Era: Memoirs o[ Veterans o[ RocketSpace Technology and Cosmonautics: Volume Two) (Moscow: RNITsKD, 1994). A large

selection from these three volumes has been translated into English and published as one book

under the title Roads to Space (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995). Unfortunately, I would not recommend the translation: it is filled with egregious errors and distorts many of the original passages and quotes from the Russian edition, The NASA History Division has translated two

chapters from the first volume of the Russian edition. These can be found in NASA TT-21770

dated 1995.

For those interested in the development of the Soviet ground communications network, I

would recommend Kosmos nachinayetsya na zemlye (Space Begins From the Earth) (Moscow:

Patriot, 1996), which is written by B. A. Pokrovskiy, one of the major players in the network's

creation. There have been many memoirs published on the creation of the Baykonur

Cosmodrome. Perhaps the best one is the Council of Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome's

Nezabyvayemyy Baykonur (UnForgettable Baykonur) (Moscow: Interregional Council of

Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, 1998), which among other things contains a blow-byblow detailed chronology of the launch range from 1957 to 1961. I would also recommend the

same council's Proryv v kosmos: ocherki ob ispitatelyakh spetsialistakh i stroitelyakh kosmodroma Baykonur (Breakthrough Into Space: Essays on Test Specialists and Builders of the

Baykonur Cosmodrome) (Moscow: TOO Veles, 1994).

Some participants have published isolated articles in the Soviet and Russian media. Former

NII-88 Director Yuriy Mozzhorin has co-authored an excellent two-part series of articles with

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A. Yeremenko on the origins of the Soviet missile and space program. These can be found in

the July and August 1991 issues of _uiatsiya i kosmonautika (/3uiation and Cosmonautics).

Translations of these can be found in JPRS-UAC-92-O02 dated February 3, 1992, and

JPRS-UAC-92-003 dated February 13, 1992. An amplification of these articles by Biryukov and

Yeremenko was published in Nouosti kosmonavtiki in issue I0 from 1996. Artillery officer

Aleksandr Maksimov has authored an illuminating series of articles on the first launches from

Baykonur. These can be found in the September-October 1990, November-December 1990,

January-February 1991. and March-April 1991 issues of Zemlya i uselennaya (Earth and

Uniuerse). Before his death, artillery officer Georgiy Tyulin authored a wonderful series of memoirs from his experiences covering the early years of the space program. These were published

in the newspaper Krasnaya zvezda (Red Star) on April 2, 3, and 5, 1988, May 18, 1988, and

April I, 1989. The April 1988 issues have been translated in JPR,S-USP-89-O01issued on January

18, 1989. The April 1989 article can be found in JPR,S-UMA-89-OI3 issued on May 26, 1989.

N I designers Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev, and Kryukov published an article on the giant rocket in the September 1992 issue of llviatsiya i kosmonavtika. N I designer Kryukov has also written on the rocket in the April 1994 issue of Nauka i zhizn. Chief Designer Mishin wrote a long

article on the same project in the December 1990 issue of Znaniye: tekhnike: seriya kosmonautika, astronomiya (Knowledge: Technology: Cosmonautics. ,ztstronomy Series). This is a very

important piece because it is Mishin's only in-depth commentary on the Soviet piloted lunar

program, the central thematic goal of his design bureau during the late 1960s. There is a complete translation of this in JPR,S-USP-91-006dated November 12, 199I. Vladimir Polyachenko,

a senior designer of Chelomey's Almaz program, has published a two-part article on glmaz in

the January and April 1992 issues of Krylia rodiny (Wings of the Motherland). These are available in English translation at the NASA History Division as NASA -I--I--21769dated 1995.

Historian Articles and Books

The fifth category includes articles by Russian and Soviet journalists on the history of the

Soviet space and missile programs. Many of these researchers have access to both primary documents and major participants in the effort. Certainly one of the most useful works by a Soviet

researcher is Igor Afanasyev's "Unknown Spacecraft (From the History of the Soviet Space

Program)," which was published in the December 1991 issue of Znaniye: tekhnike; seriya kosmonavtiku, ustronomiya. This was the very first declassification of a plethora of Soviet piloted

space projects that never reached fruition or were considered secret for more than thirty years.

This work has been translated into English in JPR,S-USP-92-O03 dated May 27, 1992. gfanasyev

has also authored an excellent series of articles on the history of the N I rocket in the journal

Krylia rodin), in the September, October, and November 1993 issues. Translations are available

in JPRS-USP-94-002-L dated July 7, 1994.Viktor Kazmin's ground-breaking articles on the Spiral

program were published in the same journal in November and December 1990 and in January

1991. A translation of this is in JPR,S-USP-91-007dated November 22, 1991. A useful article on

Chelomey was in issues 4-5 of Ogonek (Light) in January 1994. An English translation of this

is available at the NASA History Division as NASA TT-21771 dated 1995.

Several journals and newspapers were indispensable for research on this book. First and

foremost was Novosti kosmonavtiki, which is a monthly (formerly biweekly) publication produced from Moscow. Many unprecedented revelations about previously hidden aspects of

Soviet space history have come forth through this magazine, probably the best publication in

the world devoted to space exploration. For the most part, authors tend to focus on technical

rather than political or institutional aspects. The editors can be reached at i-cosmos@

mtu-net,ru. An irregularly published journal that is very useful for historians is Iz istorii auiatsii

1 __

CHALLENGE TO PiPOLLO
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

i kosmonavtiki (From the History o[.Zlviation and Cosmonautics). I particularly recommend its

issue number 42 from 1980, which contains a series of informative articles on the works of the

pioneer Mikhail Tikhonravov.

The Russian military newspaper Krasnaya zvezda often has had revealing articles on space

history by its history correspondent, the late Mikhail Rebrov. Rebrov authored a wonderful sixpart series on the original members of the Council of Chief Designers, which was published on

October 22, 1988 (Barmin), January 7, 1989 (Kuznetsov), February 25, 1989 (Pilyugin), March

II, 1989 (Ryazanskiy), July I, 1989 (Korolev), and August 26, 1989 (Glushko). A seventh article on April 8, 1989, was on the council itself. In the following years, Rebrov wrote dozens of

more articles on various aspects of Soviet space history in the same newspaper. Many of these

have been collected into one work, Kosmicheskiye katastrofy: stranichki iz sekretnogo dosye

(Space Catastrophes: Pages From the Secret Dossier) (Moscow: Eksprint NV. t996).

English-Language Sources

For those without knowledge of the Russian language, studying Soviet space history presents significant obstacles. Most of the English-language works are dated because they were

published during the Soviet era. Fortunately, many of them are still worth perusing as excellent

starting points for an introduction to the Soviet space program. I would highly recommend

Nicholas Daniloff's The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York: Alfred g. Knopf, 1972), which is

a well-researched book that still stands up incredibly well, almost thirty years after its publication. F.J. Krieger's Behind The Sputniks: 7t Survey o[ Soviet Space Science (Washington, DC:

Public Affairs Press, 1958) is an excellent collection of translations of pre-1958 articles on space

exploration from the Soviet media. Certainly, the most famous book on the Soviet space program is James E. Oberg's Red Slur in Orbit (New York: Random House, 1981), a still-readable

account of what we knew about the Soviet space effort in the early 1980s. For those interested in more technical matters, Phillip Clark's The Soviet Manned Space Program: ,,ZtnIllustrated

History o[ the Men, the Missions, and the Spacecraft (New York: Orion, 1988) is an incomparable treatise on all Soviet piloted space missions. Equally useful is Dennis Newkirk's lllmanac

o[ Soviet Manned Space Flight (Houston: Gulf Publishing Co,, 1990), which is essentially a

strict chronology culled from hundreds of sources. A good starting point for those interested in

Soviet lunar and planetary exploration is Andrew Wilson's Solar System Log (London: Jane's

Publishing Co., 1987).

One of the few post-1989 works on Soviet space history is James Harford's Korolev: How

One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (New York: John Wiley

& Sons, 1997). Although strictly a biography, Harford masterfully weaves a larger history from

dozens of priceless interviews with many participants of the Soviet program from the 1950s

and 1960s. I would highly recommend 1-.A. Heppenheimer's Countdown.'Z_ History o[ Space

Flight (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), a superbly written history of the early space era

with considerable attention to Soviet achievements. A book exclusively on the Soviet piloted

lunar program is Nicholas k Johnson's The Soviet Reach [or the Moon (Cosmos Books, 1995).

It is now out of print.

Two books peripherally related to the Soviet space program that were very useful for my

own work were David Holloway's Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and .Zttomic Energy:

1939-1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) and Steven J. Zaloga's Target Ztmerica:

The Soviet Union and the Strategic _rms Race, 1945-1964 (Novato, Cfq: Presidio, 1993). Both

benefit greatly from the fact that the authors were able to extensively use recently declassified

information from Russian sources. Combined together, these two works are probably the best

existing studies in English on the development of Soviet strategic weapons in the immediate

postwar era.

867
868

TheCongressionalResearchServiceattheLibraryofCongresspublishedaseriesofexcellentsummariesoftheSovietspaceprogramduringtheColdWartitledSoviet Space Programs.

They covered the years 1962, 1962-65, 1966-70, 1971-75, 1916-80, and 1981-87. Packedwith

vast amounts of information, all of these books are now out of print but can be found at any

major university library. I highly recommend these volumes to any serious scholar of the Soviet

space program. Unlike many other works on Soviet space history, these books are particularly

useful for analyses of space law, institutions, resource burdens, political motives, and international cooperation in the Soviet space program. Soviet-U.S. international cooperation in space is

also the subject of Dodd L. Harvey and Linda C. Ciccoritti's excellent U.S,-SouietGooperation in

Space (Miami: Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1974).

The political motives of the early Soviet space program are the subject of two seminal

works. These are Walter McDougall's... the Heavens and the Earth: .,z]Political History o[ the

Space Zlge (New York: Basic Books, 1985) and William H. Schauer's The Politics o[ Space: I_

Comparison o[ the Souiet and _]meriean Space Programs (New York: Holmes & Meier, t976).

Although both have dated somewhat in terms of their interpretations of the Soviet space program, I would particularly recommend McDougall's work as an excellent starting place to

understand the Soviet government's views toward the role of technology in society. For a more

recent scholarly view from a political science perspective, I would recommend William P.

Barry's excellent The Missile Design Bureaux and Soviet Piloted Space Policy. 1953-1974.

which is a doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford from 1995.

The American Astronautical Society (AgS) publishes a series titled History o[ Rocketry and

Astronautics as part of the gAS History Series. Many of these volumes contain very informative articles by direct participants of the Soviet space program. The AAS can be reached at AAS

Publications, PD. Box 28130, San Diego, CA 92198.

One important English-language source for Soviet space history are papers presented at the

annual congresses of the International Astronautical Federation. These can be obtained at the

International Astronautical Federation, 3-5 Rue Mario-Nikis, 75015, France, There are usually

several papers every year that address important aspects of Soviet space history.

Uncovering the institutional machinations of the Soviet defense industry, and thus their

space program, has been a difficult process, but some Soviet-era works have been useful as

starting points. These included Michael McGwire, Ken Booth, and John McDonnell's Soviet

Naval Policy: Objectives and Constraints (Halifax, NS: Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, 1975),

David Holloway's The Soviet Union and the Zirms Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

1984). Jiri Valenta and William C. Potter's Soviet Decisionmaking [or National Security

(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), David Lane's Elites and Political Power in the USSR

(Edward Elgar, 1988), Timothy J. Colton and Thane Gustafson's Soldiers and the Soviet State:

Civil-Military Relations From Brezhnev to C;orbachev (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

1990), and Peter Almquist's Red Forge: Soviet Military Industry Since 1965 (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1990). Arthur J. Alexander's still-remarkable work "Decision-Making

in Soviet Weapons Procurement" in the Winter 1978/1979 issue of ,Zidelphi Papers is a gold

mine of information on the operations of the Soviet defense industry. A useful summary o[

information on the organization of the Soviet space program is contained in the August and

September 1994 issues of the magazine Space[light. There is also an excellent Web site maintained by the Federation of American Scientists that contains detailed historical information on

dozens of Soviet-era design bureaus and institutes specializing in space and missile technology. See http://www.[as.org/spp/civil/russia/index.html.

Despite its age, particularly useful in excavating the shifts in the Kremlin power structure

during the Khrushchev era was Michael Tatu's Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev's Decline

to Collective Leadership (London: Collins, 1969). An indispensable reference of information on

the Soviet government and Communist Party was Edward L. Crowley, Andrew I. Lebed, and

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO !
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

Dr. Heinrich E. Schulz's Party and Gouernment Officials of the Souiet Union 1917-1967

(Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1968), which contains lists of all senior Party and government officials in the Soviet era up to 1968/q post-Soviet English-language book highly recommended for those interested in the Cold War in general is Vladislav Zubok and Constantine

Pleshakov's Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushcheu (Cambridge. MA: Harvard

University Press, 1996), which is based on recently declassified archival material

A vast amount of technical information on the history of the Soviet space program has

been published in English since 1989. _uest: The Journal o[ Spaceflight History should be a

starting point for anyone with a cursory interest in the topic. Although not strictly focused on

history, Spaceflight, a magazine of the British Interplanetary Society, has published many interesting articles on the history of the Soviet space program, For those interested in technical

aspects, I would recommend articles by Timothy Varfolomeyev in the August 1995, February

1996, June 1996, January 1998, March 1998, and May t998 issues on the development of

Soviet launch vehicles. The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society also publishes an annual Soviet astronautics issue. For example, readers can search out an article by Mikhail

Tikhonravov in the May 1994 issue of the magazine on the creation of Sputnik. _,n ongoing

series in the same journal on military space topics, edited by Dwayne Day, has also included

several important articles on Soviet space history.

I would highly recommend two books written in neither English nor Russian. The first is

Christian Lardier's L_stronautique Soui_tique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1992). For those interested

in the technical arcana of the Soviet space program, this is the best book euer written on the

subject It uses much information declassified by the Soviets following 1988 and is incomparable in its breadth and ambition to any other book published on the subject in either English or

Russian Although published during the Soviet era, I would also highly recommend Peter

Stache's Sowjetischer Raketen (Berlin: Militarverlad der DDR, 1987), which is in Polish

Fortunately, a complete English translation is available at the NASA History Division as prepared

by the Translation Division of the foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force

Base. The translation reference number is FTD-ID(RS)T-0619-88; it is dated November 29,

1988.

Declassified Documents

A vast number of the CIA's National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) on the Soviet space and

missile programs have now been declassified. Forthe space program in particular, these include

NIEs issued on:

• December 5, 1962 (NIE I I-I-62)

• January 27, 1965 (NIE 11-1-65)

• March 2, 1967 (NIE I I-I-67)

• April 4, 1968 (NIE I I-I-68)

• June 19, 1969 (NIE 11-1-69)

• March 26, 1970 (NIE I I-I-70)

• July I, 1971 (NIE 11-1-71)

• December 20, 1973 (NIE 11-1-73)

• July 19, 1983 (NIE 11-1-83)

• July 19, 1983 (NIE 11-1-83iX)

• December 1985 (NIE I I-I-85J)

All of these were titled The Souiet Space Program or (from 1973) Souiet Space Programs.

869
870

Forthe Soviet missile program in particular, most of the NIEs have also been declassified.

Llntil 1962, assessments of the Soviet space program were included with the missile reports. I

would recommend the following:

• October 5, 1954 (NIE 11-6-54)

• August 19, 1958 (NIE I I-5-58)

• November 3, 1959 (NIE 11-5-59)

• May 3, 1960 (NIE 11-5-60)

• April 25. 1961 (NIE 11-5-61)

These were titled Soviet Capabilities and Probable Programs in the Guided Missile Field (in

1954) and then Soviet Capabilities in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles. All of these NIEs are

invaluable for confirming or debunking unsubstantiated claims from the Russian media on various aspects of the Soviet space program, t_,tthe same time, I would caution researchers to use

them with care, because it is clear that in certain areas, such as the institutional backdrop of

the Soviet program, the CIA knew very little until well into the late 1960s

One particularly useful CIA document is the agency's Office of Scientific Intelligence's

Scientific Research Institute and Experimental Factory 88 /'or Guided Missile Development,

Moskua/Kaliningrad This report is numbered OSI-C-RA/60-2 and was issued on March 4,

1960. It addresses LI.S. knowledge of the famous NII-88 institute in the late 1950s. Another

useful report is the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology's Scientific and Technical

Intelligence Report: The Major Soviet Missile Design Bureaus. This report was issued in June

1973 The study is notable because it illustrates not only what the CIA knew but also what it

guessed completely wrong For the defense industry in general, I would recommend the CIA

Directorate of Intelligence's The Soviet Weapons Industry: ,Ztn Oueruiew, numbered DI

86- I O016 and dated September 1986. A useful report on Soviet science is the NIF I 1-6-59 titled

"Soviet Science and Technology," issued on July 2 I, 1959. Several articles in the CIA journal

Studies in Intelligence on the Soviet space program have also been declassified as part of the

CIA's Historical Review Program All of the declassified CIA documents are readily available to

any researcher at the National Archives at 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001.

The phone number is (301) 713-6645. The National Archives can also be reached by e-mail at

cer@nara,gov.

Interviews and Correspondence

The final category is interviews and correspondence. These are listedin chapter references.

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Table III

Rdministrative Organizations in the Soviet Missile and Space Programs, 1945-91

Policy

Special Committee for Reactive Technology of the USSR Council of Ministers

(established on May 13, 1946)

History: This committee was established by official decree no. I017-419ss of the USSR Council of Ministers,

dated May 13. 1946, to oversee the development of all long-range ballistic, cruise, and air defense missiles The

committee was dissolved in 1949. By 1957, policy aspects of the missile and space programs were moved to the

Central Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers.

Designations

• Special Committee for Reactive Technology of the

USSR Council of Ministers

• Special Committee No. 2 of the USSR Council of Ministers

Date From Date to

May 1946 June 1947

June 1947 October 1949

Chairmen

• G. M. Malenkov May 1946 March 1947

• N.A. 13ulganin March 1947 October 1949

Secretary for Defense Industries and Space of the Secretariat of the Central

Committee of the Communist Party (established in June 1957)

History: The position was established in June 1957 by Nikita S. Khrushchev as the locus of power in the Soviet

Union shifted from the USSR Council of Ministers to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The holder of the post was the most powerful leader in the USSR in determining Soviet space policy during the 1957-9 I

period.

Secretaries Date From Date to

• L. I. Brezhnev July 1957 July 1960

• F. R. Kozlov July 1960 June 1963

• L. I. Brezhnev June 1963 March 1965

• D. F. Ustinov March 1965 October 1976

• X P. Ryabov October 1976 April 1979

• A. P. Kirilenko April t979 August 1983

• G. V. Romanov August 1983 July 1985

• I.. N. Zaykov July 1985 February 1988

• O. S. Baklanov February 1988 August 1991

Central Committee Defense Industries Department

History: The origins of this department are obscure, but it clearly assumed a greater role beginning in 1958, when

I. D. Serbin became its chief. Its role was to serve as doctrinal overseer of the defense industrial and space sectors. The department reported directly to the Secretary of the Central Committee for Defense Industries and

Space. The department was abolished in June 1990

Designations

• Defense Industries Department of the Central Committee

• Defense Department of the Central Committee

Date From Date to

Unknown September 1988

September 1988 June 1990

Chiefs

• I. D, Serbin February 1958 February 198)

• I. F. Dmitriyev February 1981 August 1985

• O. S. Belyakov August 1985 June 1990

889
890

First Deputy Chief

• I. E Dmitriyev 1965 February 1981

• N. M Luzhin 1988 June 1990

Sector Head for Space

• B g. Stroganov 1960s Unknown

Instructor for Space

• VL A. Popov 1960s Unknown

Implementation

Military-Industrial Commission (VPK) of the Presidium of the USSR Council of

Ministers (established on April 14, 1955)

History: VPK traces its ancestry back to the Third Chief Directorate (TGU) of the USSR Council of Ministers,

which was established on February 3, 195 I, to manage the development of all Soviet missile weapons (cruise,

ballistic, air defense, and naval), On July I. 1953, the TGU was combined with the First Chief Directorate of the

USSR Council of Ministers to form the new Ministry of Medium Machine Building (MSM). The TGU, now known

as GlavSpetsMash (Chief Directorate of Special Machine Building), became a subordinate department to MSM.

On April 14. 1955. GiavSpetsMash was separated from MSM. A portion, including all subordinate design bureaus

and subdivisions, was moved to the Ministry of Defense Industries. Simultaneously, the remainder (that is, the

old structure of the TGU) was used as the basis for the new Special Committee for Armaments for the Army and

VMF (the Navy) and subordinated directly to the USSR Council of Ministers. From then on, this Special

Committee supervised all tactical and strategic missile programs in the Soviet Union, In December 1957. this

Special Committee was renamed the Commission of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers for MilitaryIndustrial Issues-or more familiarly, the Military-lndustrial Commission (VPK). Its supervisory duties were

expanded from missiles to the entire Soviet defense industry.

Designations

• Special Committee for Armaments for the Army and

VMF of the USSR Council of Ministers

• Commission of the Presidium of the USSR

Council of Ministers for Military-lndustrial Issues

• State Commission of the USSR Council of

Ministers for Military-lndustrial Issues

Date From Date to

April 1955 December 1957

December 1957 1986

1986 August 1991

Chairmen

• V, M. Ryabikov

• D. f Ustinov

• L. V. Smirnov

• Yu. D. Maslyukov

• I. S. Belousey

• Yu D. Maslyukov

April 1955 December 1957

December 1957 March 1963

March 1963 December 1985

December 1985 February 1988

February 1988 January 1991

January 1991 August 1991

First Deputy Chairmen

• G. A. Titov

• S. I. Vetoshkin

• N. S. Stroyev

• V. L, Koblov

April 1955 December 1957

December 1957 1964

1977 1981

1987 August 1991

Deputy Chairmen

• A K. Repro

• A. N. Shchukin

• G N. Pashkov

• G A. Titov

• N. S Stroyev

• L, I. Gorshkov

• S A. Arzhakov

Date From Date to

April 1955 Unknown

April 1955 1969

December 1957 1970

December 1957 1974

1966 1977

1966 1970s

Unknown Unknown

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
TABLE !11

• g. A. Komissarov 1970s Unknown

• A I. Voznesenskiy Unknown Unknown

• L. B. Vasilyev March 1988 Unknown

Ministry of Rrmaments (MV) (established on January II, 1939)

History: This ministry was originally established in January 1939, having being split off from the People's

Commissariat of Defense Industry. Through its various incarnations, it managed the development of the Soviet

ballistic missile and space programs from 1946 to 1965 via its subordinate Seventh Chief Directorate. In March

1965, the Seventh Chief Directorate was removed from the ministry and became the basis for the new Ministry

of General Machine Building, Since that time, the ministry had little involvement in the ballistic missile and space

programs.

Designations

• People's Commissariat of Armaments (NKA)

• Ministry of Armaments (MV)

• Ministry of Defense Industry (MOP)

• State Committee for Defense Technology (GKOT)

People's Commissars/Ministers/Chairmen

• B. L Vannikov

• D. F. Ustinov

• A.V. Domrachev

• K N. Rudnev

• L. V. Smirnov

• S. A Zverev

First Deputies

• V M. Ryabikov

• A. V. Domrachev

• S. I. Vetoshkin

• S. A. Zverev

• G. A Tyulin

Deputies

• V N. Novikov

• K M. Gerasimov

• I. G Zubovich

• A. V, Domrachev

• S. A. Zverev

• K, N, Rudnev

• P. N. Gommykin

• K M. Gerasimov

• V. N, Novikov

• S. A. Zverev

• L A. Grishin

• G. N. Kozhevnikov

• V. M Larionov

• S. N. Makhonin

• L V Smirnov

Chiefs of the Chief Directorates

• N. E. Nosovskiy (First GU)

• K. M. Gerasimov

• K. M. Gerasimov

• L. A. Grishin

• S. A. Zverev (Second GU)

• S. A. Zverev (Eighth GU)

• V. N Novikov (Fifth GU)

Date From Date to

January 1939 March 1946

March 1946 March 1953

March 1953 December 1957

December 1957 March 1965

January 1939 June 1941

June 1941 December 1957

December 1957 March 1958

March 1958 June 196 I

June 1961 March 1963

March 1963 March 1965

1940 February 195 I

1951 1957

1955 December 1957

December 1959 March 1963

June 1961 March 1965

1941 1948

1949 1951

October 1949 March 1953

1951 1951

March 1952 March 1953

May 1952 March 1958

August 1953 April 1955

1954 1957

1954 April 1955

March 1954 December 1959

March 1958 October 1960

Late 1950s Unknown

Late 1950s Unknown

Late 1950s Unknown

February 1961 June 196l

1940 1947

1941 1949

1951 1954

October 1952 March 1958

March 1952 March 1952

March 1952 March 1954

1953 1953

891
892

• E V, Finogenov (Sixth GU) t963 March 1965

• S. I. Vetoshkin (Seventh GU) 1939 October 1949

• I G Zubovich (Seventh GU) October 1949 August 1951

• L. V. Smirnov (Seventh GU) August 1951 June 1952

• M S, Ryazanskiy (Seventh GU) June 1952 1954

• V A Kotychev (Seventh GU) December 1955 Unknown

• A S. Tomilin (Seventh GU) Late 1950s Unknown

• B. A, Kamissarov (Seventh GU) Early 1960s Unknown

Ministry of Aviation Industry (MAP) (established on January I I, 1939)

History: This ministry was originally established in January 1939, having being split off from the People's

Commissariat of Defense Industry As more and more aviation organizations began participating in the missile

and space sector beginning the late 1950s, the ministry took a greater role in such efforts, Note that from March

to August 1953. it was part of the Ministry of Defense Industries, Many of the space and missile organizations

were transferred from the Ministry of Aviation Industry to the new Ministry of General Machine Building upon

the latter's formation in March 1965

Designations

• People's Commissariat of Aviation Industry (NKAP)

• Ministry of Aviation Industry (MAP)

• State Committee for Aviation Technology (GKAT)

• Ministry of Aviation Industry (MAP)

Date F[om Date to

January 1939 March 1946

March 1940 December 1957

December 1957 March 1965

March t965 January 1992

People's Commissars/Ministers/Chairmen

• M. M. Kaganovieh January 1939 January 1940

• A. I. Shakhurin January 1940 March 1946

• M V. Khrunichev March 1946 March 1953

• P V Dementyev August 1953 May 1977

• V. A. Kazakov june 1977 February 1981

• I S Silayev February 1981 November 1985

• A. S. Systov November 1985 November 1991

First Deputies

• P V Dementyev 1941 1946

• V E Balandin August 1953 1957

• S M Leshchenko 1957 1964

• V A Koztov 1964 1965

• S. I. Kadyshev 1965 1974

• V A Kazakov I974 June 1977

• I S. Silayev t977 December 1980

• A. S. Systov February 1981 November 1985

Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM) (established on March 21 1965)

History This ministry was established on the basis of the Seventh Chief Directorate of the State Committee for

Defense Technology (GKOT). which oversaw all ballistic missile and space programs MOM managed the devel

opment of almost all Soviet ballistic missiles and spacecraft from 1965 to 1991 It was officially abolished in

November 199 I.

Ministers Date From Date to

• S A. Afanasyev March 1965 April 1983

• O. D Baklanov April 1983 February 1988

• V. K. Doguzhiyev April 1988 July 1989

• O N. Shishkin July 1989 August 1991

• R R Kiryushin August 1991 November 1991

First Deputy Ministers Date From Date to

• G. A. Tyulin March 1965 1976

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
TABLE III

• B V. Balmont t976 February 1981

• O. D. Baklanov February 1981 April 1983

• M N, Konovalov April 1983 1987

• V. K. Doguzhiyev t987 March 1988

• O N Shishkin February 1988 July 1989

• R. R Kiryushin July 1989 August 1991

Deput), Ministers

• V. Ya. Litvinov March 1965 1973

• G. M. Tabakov (engines) March 1965 1981

• Ye V. Mazur (construction) March 1965 1982

• G R Udarov (launch complexes) March 1965 1979

• N. D. Khokhlov (quality) March 1965 i983

• L, I. Gusev (guidance) March 1965 1965

• M. g. Brezhnev (guidance systems) 1965 Unknown

• B V. Balmont 1973 1976

• M. V. Lobanov (finances) January 1974 1980s

• O. D. Baklanov t976 1981

• V. N Konovalov (naval) Unknown April f983

• V. N. Soshin (construction) 1982 Late 1980s

• V. K. Doguzhiyev 1983 1987

• Ye. A. Zhelonov 1984 Unknown

• A. S. Matrenin (quality) 1984 November 1991

• 0. N. Shishkin (space) Unknown February 1988

• G. f. Grigorenko f980s November 199i

• Yu. N. Koptev Unknown November I991

• AYe. Shestakov Unknown November 1991

• R. R Kiryushin Unknown 1989

• V, Ye, Sokoiov Unknown 1990s

• S. S Vanin (complexes) Unknown 1980s

• V, N Ivanov Mid-1980s Unknown

Chiefs of Chief Directorates

• K. A. Kerimov (Third GU) March 1965 June 1974

• v, D. Vachnadze (Third GU) June 1974 June 1977

• A. K. Vanitskiy 1974 1976

• B.V. Balmont (Sixth GU) 1965 1972

• B, V. BaJmont (Eighth GU) 1972 1973

• A, S. Matrenin (Seventh GU) 1969 1984

• A. S. Kirillov June 1969 November 1977

• Yu. N. Koptev (Third GU) Mid-1980s Unknown

• V, A. Andreyev (First GU) january 1989 Unknown

• A, I Dunayev (Thirteenth GU) June 1985 November 1991

• L N Gabetko Unknown November 199l

Ministry of Medium Machine Building (MSM) (established on July I, 1953)

History: This ministry was responsible for the manufacture of all Soviet nuclear warheads from 1953 to 199i, Its

lineage goes back to August 20, 1945, with the formation of the First Chief Directorate (PGU) of the USSR

Council of Ministers. On March 16, 1953, the PGU absorbed the Second Chief Directorate of the Council of

Ministers. On July I, 1953, the PGU and the Third Chief Directorate combined to form the Ministry of Medium

Machine Building (MSM). MSM oversaw all missile programs through its subordinate GlavSpetsMash between

July 1953 and April 1955.

Designations Date From Date to

• First Chief Directorate August 1945 June 1953

• Ministry of Medium Machine Building (MSM) July 1953 March 1963

• State Committee for Medium Machine Building (GKSM) March 1963 March 1965

• Ministry of Medium Machine Building (MSM) March 1965 June 1989

893
894

ChiefsMinistersChairmen

• B. L, Vannikov August 1945 June 1953

• V. A, Malyshev July 1953 February 1955

• A. P Zavenyagin February 1955 December 1950

• M. G Pervukhin April 1957 July 1951

• Ya. P. Slavskiy July 1957 November 1986

• L. D. Ryabev November 1986 June 1989

State Commissions in the Early Space and Missile Programs

Product Chairmen Dates

A-4 N.D. Yakovlev 1941

R-I S.I. Vetoshkin 1948-50

R-2 G. I loffe 1950-51

R-5 P.A. Degtyarev 1953-55

R-II A. !. Nesterenko 1953-55

R-tiM P A Degtyarev 1954-56

R-7 V M. Ryabikov August 1956-57

K. N. Rudnev 1951-59

R-TA M.I. Nedelin, A. G. Mrykin,

A. I. Nesterenko, K, V Gerchik 1959-60

Scientific vertical launches A. A Blagonravov 1951-61

Sputnik V M Ryabikov 1957-58

Luna K.N. Rudnev 1958-00

M. I. Nedelin 1960

G. A. Tyulin 1903-76

Product Chairmen Dates

Vostok M.I. Nedelin 1960

K. N. Rudnev 1960-61

L. V. Smirnov 1901-63

G. A Tyulin 1903

Voskhod G. A Tyulin August 1964-66

Soyuz. DOSISatyut. Mir K. A, Kerimov October 1966-91

V, L. Ivanov 1991-96

UR-5OOK-LI G. A Tyulin December 1960-70

N I -L3 S.A. Afanasyev 1967-72

T2K A. A Maksimov 1970-71

AlmazlSalyut M. G Grigoryev t973-77

MP-I A.G. Zakharov 1961

Clients

Ministry of Defense (established in postwar form on February 25. 1946)

History The Ministry of Defense was the primary client of the Soviet missile and space programs. Its subordinate Strategic Missile Forces managed all missile and space operations during 1959-8 I. The Deputy Minister of

Defense for Armaments was responsible for weapons (and spacecraft) procurement. Note that between 1900 and

1970, N. N Alekseyev was the Chairman of the Scientific-Technical Committee (NTK) of the General Staff of

the Ministry of Defense. essentially performing the same duties as the Deputy Minister of Defense [or

Armaments. a post that did not exist during that period.

Designations Date From Date to

• Ministry of Armed Forces (MVS) February 1940 February 1950

• Ministry of War February 1950 March 1953

• Ministry of Defense (MO) March 1953 January 1992

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
TABLE II!

Ministers

• 1. V. Stalin February 1946 March 1947

• N.A. Bulganin March 1947 March 1949

• A. M. Vasilyevskiy March 1949 March 1953

• N.A. Bulganin March 1953 February 1955

• G. K. Zhukov February 1955 October 1957

• R, Ya, Malinovskiy October 1957 March 1967

• A. A. Grechko April 1967 April 1976

• D, £. Ustinov April 1976 December 1984

• S. L. Sokolov December 1984 May 1987

• D. T. Yazov May 1987 September 1991

• Ye. I, Shaposhnikov September 1991 December 1991

Deputy Ministers of Defense for Armaments

• M I. Nedelin March 1955 December J959

• N. N, Alekseyev 1960 1978

• V. M. Shabanov 1918 Unknown

Missile Forces of Strategic Designation (RVSN) (established on December IL 1959)

History. RVSN managed all Soviet missile and space operations during 1959-8 I.

Commanders Date From Date to

• M, I. Nedelin December 1959 October 1960

• K. S. Moskalenko October 1960 April 1962

• S. S. Biryuzov April 1962 March 1963

• N, I. Krylov March 1963 February 1972

• V. F. Tolubko February 1912 July 1985

• Yu. P. Maksimov July 1985 August 1992

First Deputy Commanders

• V, F. Tolubko March 1960 1968

• M. G. Grigoryev 1968 December 198 I

• Yu. A. Yashin December 1981 1989

• A. P. Volkov 1989 1994

Chiefs of the Scientific-Technical Committee (NTK)

• V. P, Morozov June 1962 1967

• A, A. Vasilyev 1967 1969

• A. S. Kalashnikov 1969 1914

• S. A. Sergeyev 1974 1979

• V. M, Ryumkin 1979 1989

• V. G. Popov 1989

Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments (GURVO) (established on May 13, 1946)

History: From 1946, GURVO, in its various incarnations, oversaw the procurement of ballistic missiles into armaments of the Strategic Missile Forces, Between 1960 and 1970, GURVO's subordinate TsUKOS was the primary

client of the Soviet space program.

Designations

• 4th Directorate of the Chief Artillery Directorate

• Directorate of the Depu W Commander of Artillery (UZKA)

• Directorate of the Commander of Reactive Armaments (UNRV)

• Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments (GURVO)

Date From Date to

May 1946 April 1953

April 1953 March 1955

March 1955 December 1959

December 1959 1993

Commanders

• A. I. Sokolov

• A, I. Semenov

Date From Date to

May 1946 August 1954

August 1954 August 1964

895
896

• A A. Vasilyev August 1964 1967

• N. N. Smirnitskiy 1967 December 1975

• Yu A. Pichugin December 1975 1984

• A. A. Ryazhskikh 1984 1993

Chief Directorate of Space Assets (GUKOS) (established in October 1964)

History: In October 1964, the Third Directorate of the Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments (GURVO) of the

Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) was reorganized into TsUKOS. In March 1970, TsUKOS was combined with the

Center for Leading the Development and Production of Space Assets (itself established in March [963 within

GURVO) to form the new GUKOS and subordinated to RVSN On November I0, 198t, GUKOS was separated

from RVSN and subordinated directly to the Ministry of Defense. GUKOS was the primary client for the Soviet

space program, responsible for all operational aspects, including tracking and launch activities. It had jurisdiction

over NIIP 5 (Tyura Tam), military units at Mirnyy (Plesetsk), the Command-Measurement Complex (KIK). the A

F. Mozhayskiy Military Academy, TsNIt-50, 28 Arsenal (Karian-Stroganov), and military representatives to

research and development organizations,

Designations

• Third Directorate of the Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments

• Central Directorate of Space Assets (TsUKOS)

• Chief Directorate of Space Assets (GUKOS)

• Directorate of the Chief o[ Space Assets (UNKS)

Date From Date to

September 1960 October 1964

October 1964 March 1970

March 1970 November 1986

November 1986 August 1992

Commanders

• K. A Kerimov September 1960 March 1965

• A G. Karas March 1965 January 1979

• A. A. Maksimov January 1979 1989

• V L. Ivanov 1989 October 1996

First Deputy Commanders

• A. A. Maksimov Unknown January 1979

• G S. Titov July 1979 October 1991

• V L Ivanov 1984 1989

Command-Measurement Complex Center (TsKIK)

(established by order dated September 3, 1956)

History ]-he Command-Measurement Complex (KIK) was the ground communications network for the Soviet

space program. It was established on the basis of the Range Measurement Complex network of tracking stations

established for early R-7 ICBM launches. In 1956-57, the Range Measurement Complex was reconfigured into the

KIK to support the launch of the Object D satellite (launched as Sputnik 3) The KIK, including its main center,

the CommandMeasurement Complex Center (TsKIK), was subordinate to NIl-4 until March 7. 1962. when it

was subordinated directly to the Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN). The TsKIK began operations on July 12, 1957.

In January 1982, the TsKIK was reorganized into the Chief Scientific-Research Testing Center for Space Assets of

the Ministry of Defense (GNIITs KS MO). The center operated tracking for all Soviet-era space operations via its

various Scientific Measurement Points {NIP) spread across the Soviet Union.

Commanders of Military Unit No. 32103/TsKIK Date From Date to

• A. A. Vitruk July 1957 1959

• A G Karas 1959 March 1965

• I. h Spitsa March 1965 January 1973

• I, D Statsenko January 1973 January 1976

• N F. Shlykov January 1976 1989

• V. N. Ivanov 1989 1989

Scientific-Measurement Points (NIP) Location

• IP I Tyura-Tam

• IP-2 Makat

• IP 3 Sary-Shagan

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
T;_BLE III

• NIP-4 Yeniseyesk

• IP 5 Iskhup

• NIP-6 Yelizovo (near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka)

o IP-7 Klyuchi

• NIP-9 Krasnoye selo (near Leningrad)

• NIP-I0 Simferopol

• IP-II Sartychaly

• NIP-12 Kolpashevo

• NIP-13 Ulan-Ude

• NIP-14 Shchelkovo (near Moscow)

• NIP 15 TsDRS Galenkiy (near Ussuriysk)

• NIP-t 6 TsDKS, Yevpatobya

• NIP-17 Yakutsk

• NIP-18 Vorkuta

• NIP 19 Dunyevtsy, Khmeinitskaya oblast

• NIP 20 Sotnechnyi (near Komsomolsk na Amur]

• NIP22 Yevpatoriya?

• IP-4 lye Simeiz

• IP-42Ye Moscow

Air Force (VVS)

History: The Deputy Chief of Combat Preparations of the Air Force was directly responsible for the selection and

training of cosmonauts and the selection of crews for all piloted space missions. By an order dated April 10.

1962, the holder of these duties was made the General Staff Deputy Chief for Space. On March 29, 1966, the

holder ot these duties was made the Commander-in-Chiefls Aide for Space The Aide for Space officially supervised the Cosmonaut Training Center, the Air Force Biomedical Service, and the So(or Service.

Commanders-in-Chief Date From Date to

• K, A. Vershinin 1946 1949

• P. F.Zhigarev 1949 1957

• K A Vershinin 1957 March 1969

• P S. Kutakhov March 1969 December 1984

• A. N. Yefimov December 1984 1990

• Ye g Shaposhnikov 1990 August 1991

First Deputy Commanders

• S. I. Rudenko 1958 July 1968

• R S. Kutakhov July 1968 March 1969

• A. N. Yefimov March 1969 December 1984

Deputy Chiefs of Combat Preparations

• N. R Kamanin 1958

• V. A. Shatalov October 1911

October 1971

June 1986

Science Sector

USSR Academy of Sciences (_.N SSSR)

History: The Russian Academy of Sciences was established on January 28, 1724. In 1925, it was renamed the

USSR Academy of Sciences.

Presidents Date From Date to

• S. I. Vavilov July 1945 January 1951

• A. N. Nesmeyanov January 1951 May 1961

• M.V. Keidysh May 1961 November 1975

• A. IR Aleksandrov November 1975 1986

• V. A. Kotelnikov 1986 October 1986

• G. I. Marchuk October 1986 1991

897
898

Launch Sites

Kspustin Ysr/State Central Test Range No. 4 (GTsP-4)

(established by order dated May 13. 1946)

History The specific location of the range was confirmed by an order dated Jury 27. 1947.

Commanders Date From Date to

• V I. Voznyuk August 1946 /_pril 1973

• Yu. A. Pichugin April 1973 1975

• P..G. Degtyarenko 1975 September 1981

• N Ya. Lopatin September 1981 1983

• N V. Mazyarkin 1983 1991

Tyura-Tam/Scientlflc Research and Testing Range No. $ (NIIP-$)

(established on June 2, 1955)

History: On January 29, 1958, the town of Zarya was renamed Leninsk. In December 1995. Leninsk was renamed

8aikonur (also spelled Baykonur)

Commanders Date From Date to

• A. I. Nesterenko June 1955 July 1958

• K V. Gerchik July 1958 April 1961

• A. G. Zakharov May 1961 March 1965

• g. A. Kurushin March 1965 1973

• V. I. Fadeyev 1973 1978

• Yu N Sergunin 1978 1983

• Yu. A. Zhukov 1983 1989

• A. L. Kryzhko 1989 1991

Mirnyy/Scientific-Research and Testing Range No. 53 (NIIP-$3)

(established on January II, 1957)

History: On August 30, 1963. this became a space launch center. In 1982, one portion of NIIP-53 became

GTslPKS-1278.

Commanders Date From Date to

• M G. Grigoryev January 1957 1962

" Sr _i Shtanko 1962 1963

• G. Ye, Alpaidze 1963 August 1975

• Yu. A. Yashin August 1915 1979

• V. L. Ivanov 1979 1984

• G A. Kolesnikov 1984 1985

• t. I. Oleynik 1985 1991

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
TABLE !11

Selected Sources

I. Peter Almquist, Red Forge: Souiet Military Industry Since 1965 (New York: Columbia University Press.

1990).

2. Central Intelligence Agency, Directory o_ 5ouiet Officials, VoL I. Personnel in the Communist Party,

Government, and Mass Or£anizutions o[ the US.SR and RS.F.SR. (Washington, DC: Department of State,

1960),

3. B. Ye. Chertok. Rakety i lyudi (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye. 1994).

4. B. Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: Fili Podlipki Tyuratam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996).

5. B. Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1997).

6. Julian Cooper, "The Elite of the Defence Industry Complex." in David Lane, ed., Elites and Political Power

(London: Edward Elgar, 1988), pp. 167-87.

7. Edward L Crowley, Andrew I. Lebed. and Dr. Heinrich E Schulz. eds_ Party and C;ouernment Officials o[

the Souiet Union 191Z-1967 (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1968).

8. Grigoriy Kisunko, Sekretnaya zona (Moscow: Sovremennik_ 1996).

9. Christian Lardier, L715tronautique Saui_tique (Paris: Armand Colin. 1992).

10. Yu. P. Maksimov, ed., Raketnyye uoyska strategicheskogo naznueheniya (Moscow: RVSN, 1992).

II. I. D. Sergeyev, ed., Khronika osnounikh sobitiy istorii raketnikh uoysk strategicheskogo naznacheniya

(Moscow: TsPIK, 1994).

12 Michel Tatu, PauJer in the Kremlin: From Khrushcheu's Decline to Collectiue Leadership (London: Collins,

1970).

899

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TABLE V

Table V

Space Launch Vehicle Designations

Missile

U.S. Dept. Soviet Derived

of Defense Sheldon Public From

SL-I A Sputnik R-7

Sb2 A Sputnik R-7

SD3 A-I Luna R-7

SL-3 A-I Vostok R-7

SU3 A-I Vostok R-ZA

SL-3 A- I Vostok-M R-7A

SL-4 A-2 Voskhod R-7A

SL-4 A-2 Soyuz R-TA

SL-4 A-2 Soyuz-L R-7A

SL-4 A 2 Soyuz-M R-7A

Sb4 A-2 Soyuz-U R-7A

SL-4 A-2 Soyuz U2 R-7A

SL-5 A I m R-7A

SL-6 A-2e Molniya R-7A

SL-6 A 2e Molniya-M R-TA

SL-7 B- I Kosmos-2 R- 12

SL-7 B- I Kosmos-2 R- 12

SL-8 C-I Kosmos-I R-14

SD8 C-I Kosmos-3 R-14

SL-8 C-I Kosmos-3M R-14

Sb8 C-I - R-14

SL-9 D Proton LIR-500

SL-IO A-m - R-TA

SL-II Fir - R-36-O

SL-II F-Ira Tsiklon-2A R-36

SL-II F-Ira Tsiklon-2 R-36

SDI 2 D-le Proton-K UR-50OK

SD 13 D- I Proton-K UR-5OOK

SL-14 F-2 Tsiklon-3 R-36

SL-I5 G-le NI -

SL-16 ]-I Zenit-2

SL-17 K- I Energiya -

SL-17 K- I Energiya -

Production

Index

8K11PS

8A9 I

8K12

8K72K

8A92

8A92M

IA57

IASII

IA511L

IA511M

IA51 lU

IA51 lU2

IASIO

8K78

8K78M

63SI

63SIM/I IK63

65S3

I I K65

I I K65M

K65MR

8K82

I I A59

8K69

I I K67

I I K69

8K82K

8K82K

I I K68

I I A52

I I K77

14A02

I I K25

First

Orbital

Attempt

Oct. 4, 1957

April 27, 1958

Sept. 23, 1958

Dec. 22, 1960

July 28. 1962

March 17, 1966

Nov. 16, 1963

Nov. 28. 1966

Nov. 24. 1970

Dec. 27, 1971

May 181 1973

Dec. 28, 1982

Dec. 22. 1965

Oct. I 0, 1960

Feb. 19. 1964

Oct. 27, 196 I

Oct. 19, 1965

Aug. 18, 1964

Nov. 16, 1966

May 15, 1967

June 3. 1982

July 16, 1965

Nov. I. 1963

Dec. 16. 1965

Oct. 27. 1967

Aug. 6. 1969

March I0, 1967

Nov. 16, 1968

June 24, 1977

Feb. 21, 1969

June 21, 1985

May 15, 1987

Nov. 15, 1988

Payload

Sputnik

Sputnik

Luna

KorablSputnik

Kosmos-7

Kosmos- I 12

Kosmos-22

Kos mos- 133

Kosmos-379

Kosmos-470

Kosmos-559

Kosmos-1426

Kosmos-102

Mars

Venera

Kosmos

Kosmos-93

K-38139/40

Kosmos

Kosmos- 158

Kosmos- 1374

Proton- I

Polet I

OqCh

Kosmos- 185

Kosmos-29 I

Kosmos- 146

Proton-4

Kosmos-92 I

L3S

Polyus

Buran

917
918

U.S. Dept.

of Defense

SUI8

SL-19

Name

A-300

UR-2OOK

UR-2OOA

UR-700

UR-ZOOM

UR-530

RL& 150

Vulkan

YaKhR-2

KhR-3

MR

NI

N2

Nil

NIII

GR-I

M-I

Tsiklon I

SK-I00

R-56

Soviet

Sheldon Public

b I Start- I

Rokot

- Start

- Start- 1.2

- Shtil-I N

Missile

Derived Production

From Index

RT-2PM -

UR-100N -

RT-2PM -

RT-2PM

R-29RM -

Abandoned Projects

Production Design

Index Dates Bureau

First

Orbital

Attempt

March 25, 1993

Dec. 26, 1994

March 28, 1995

March 4, 1997

July 7. 1998

Payload

Start-I- I

RS-15

Gurwin- I.

UNAMSAT,

EKA

Zeya

Tubsat-N,

Tubsat N I

Description

- Late 1950s Chelomey For Raketoplan

8K81K 1960-64 Chelomey For IS and US

8K83 1960-64 Chelomey Orbital bomb

1964-69 Chelomey Moon rocket

- 1969-71 Chelomey Mars rocket

I I K99 Late 1970s Chelomey For heavy Almaz

- 1974-76 Glushko Heavy lift

- 1974-76 Glushko Heavy lift

8A93 1957-60 Korolev For recon, satellite

8K73 1958-59 Korolev Lunar rocket

- Early 1960s Korolev Nuclear rocket

- Early 1960s Korolev Nuclear rocket

Early 1960s Korolev Heavy lift rocket

8K71 I 1960-62 Korolev For Sever

I IA55 1962-63 Korolev For Soyuz-A

t IA56 1962-63 Korolev For Soyuz-B/V

I IA51 1960-62 Korolev Early N I

I IA52 1960-62 Korolev Early N I

I I,q53 1962-65 Korolev N I variant

I Ig52 1962-65 Korolev N I variant

8K5 t 3 1962-65 Korolev GR- I variant

I hq514 1964-65 Kozlov For Soyuz-R

1959-60 Myasishchev

64S2 Early 1960s Yangel Based on R-16

Early 1960s Yangel Heavy rocket

1962-64 Yangel Moon rocket

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
T;_BLe V

Notes

I. The "SL" column refers to U,S. Department of Defense designations for "Satellite Launcher." The system

is roughly chronological from SL-8 to SL-17 in order of introduction of the launcher. The first mention of

the "SL" system in a declassified CI_ document dates from March 2, 1967. This was in U.S. Central

Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate I I-1-67: The Soviet Space Program," Washington, DC,

March 2, 1967, as declassified December I I. 1992, by the CIA Historical Review Program.

2. The one major discrepancy in the "SL" system is with SL-5 and SL-IO. For almost three decades, Western

analysts have equated SL-5 with the Polet launches in 1963-64 and SL-I0 with two isolated Kosmos launches in 1965-66. When ClA NIE I I- 1-67 was declassified in December 1992 (see first note above), it turned

out that in truth it was exactly the opposite-that is, SL-5 launched Kosmos-102 and Kosmos-105 in

1965-66, while SL-10 launched the two Polet satellites in 1963-64.

3. The "Sheldon" column denotes the system devised by Charles S. Sheldon II, who was the Chief of the

Science Policy Research Division at the Library of Congress. It was first described in Charles S. Sheldon 11,

"The Soviet Space Program: A Growing Enterprise," TRV¢ Space Log 8(4) (Winter 1968-69): 3-23.

4. If the payload is ]isted in italics, it indicates that the payload failed to attain Earth orbit.

Selected Sources

I. B. Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1997).

2. S. N. Konyukhov and V, A. Pashchenko, "History of Space Launch Vehicles Development," paper presented at the 46th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, IAA-95-1AA 2.2.09, Oslo, Norway,

October 2-6, 1995.

3. V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov and V. Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy tsentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZIKBYu, 1994).

4. Yu. P. Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S. P Koroleua (Korolev: RKK

Energiya, named after S. P. Korolev, 1996),

5. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate II-1-71: The Soviet Space Program."

Washington, DC, July I, 197 I, as declassified in 1997 by the CIA Historical Review Program.

919

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CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
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CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
APPENDICES

APPENDIX jl_

Appendix A

Soviet Piloted Space Projects, 1945-74

I. VR- 190

Lead institutions

Lead designer

Initiation of studies

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

NII-I (1945-46), NII-4 (1946-49)

M K. Tikhonravov

1944-45

1949

VR-190

g-4 derivative

Launch of "stratonauts" on vertical [lights to upper atmosphere

2. Antipodal Bomber

Lead institutions

Lead scientists

Initiation of studies

Preparation of design documentation

Project termination

Spacecraft

Objective

Nll-h TslAM

M. V. Keldysh, V. F. Bolkhovitinov

1945-46

1947

1950

S_inger-Bredt winged bomber

Transatlantic upper atmospheric piloted flight

3. Vertical/Suborbital Program

Lead restitutions

Chief Designer

Lead designer

Initiation of studies

Preparation of design documentation

Termination of studies

Launch vehicles

Objective

NII-88 OKg- L OKg- i

S. R Korolev

N P, Belov

April 1955

May 1956

November 1958

R-I Ye, R-2A

Launch of humans on vertical and suborbital trajectories

4. Vostok

Lead institution

Chief Designer

Deputy Chief Designer (for Vostok)

Chief of Planning Department

(for Vostok)

Group Chief (for Vostok)

Lead designers

Initiation of studies

Preparation of design documentation

Approval by Council of Chief Designers

TsK KPSSISM approval

Draft plan signed

First orbital launch attempt

Last orbital launch attempt

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Objective

OKB-I

S. P. Koroiev

N. D. Bushuyev

M K Tikhonravov

K. P. Feoktistov

O. G. Ivanovskiy, Ye. A. Frolov

April 1957

August 18, 1958

November 1958

January 5, 1959, May 22, 1959

April-May 1959 (for IK), July 31. 1961 (for 3KA)

May 15, 1960 (KorabI-Sputnik)

June 16, 1963 (Vostok 6)

March-April 1964

IK/I IF61, 3KA/I IF63

8K12tLuna. 8K72KlVostok

Piloted orbital flight with a single cosmonaut

5. Gliding Cosmic Apparatus (PICA)

Lead institutions

Chief Designer

OKB-256 (spacecraft), OKB-I (launcher)

P. V. Tsybin

957
958

Initiation of design studies

Predraft plan signed

Termination of studies

Spacecraft

Launcher

Objective

1957-58

May 17, 1959

October I, _959

PKAILapotok

8K72K/Vostok

Piloted military operations in Earth orbit with reusable spaceplane

6. M-48/VKA-23

Lead institutions

General Designer

Initiation of design studies

TsK KPSSISM approval

ProJect termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Objective

OKB-23 (spacecralt and launcher), OKB-I (launcher)

V. M. Myasishchev

1957-58

December I0, 1959

October 3. 1960

M-48

8K72K/Vostok. M-I

Piloted military operations in Earth orbit with reusable spaceplane

7. Sever/Space Station/I L Circumlunar Spacecraft

Lead institution

Chief Designer

Initiation of studies

Technical prospectus signed

Termination of studies

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

ObJectives

OKB-I

S. P. Korolev

April 1959

March I0, 1962

mid-1962

5KISever, 5KA & 5KBlspace station, 7K/Vostok. 9Klrocket stage.

I L/circumlunar vehicle

8K71 I

All-purpose Earth-orbital operations with guided reentry, space

station, piloted circumlunar flight

8. Heavy Interplanetary Ship (TMK)

Lead institution

Chief Designers

Chief of Planning Department

Group Chiefs

Initiation of studies

Predraft plan signed

Experimental design signed

Termination of studies

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objecbve

OKB-I

S. E Korolev. M E Mishin

M K. Tikhonravov

G Yu. Maksimov, K R Eeoktistov

1959

May 1966

1969

1969

MEK

NI. NIM

Piloted spacecraft for orbiting and landing on Mars

9. Raketoplan

Lead institutions

General Designer

Initiation of studies

TsK KPSStSM approval

First launch attempt in program

Draft plan signed

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Obiective

OKB-52 (spacecraft and launchers): OKB-586, OKB-I, and

OKB-52 Branch No. I (launchers)

V. N. Chelomey

1959

June 23. 1960

December 22. 1961 (MP-I)

1963

1965

SR, MP-I, M-12, R-I, R-2

R-12, R-14, 8K81K, 8K82/Proton

Piloted reusable spaceplane for suborbital, orbital, and lunar missions

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
APPENDIX

I O. Kosmoplan

Lead institutions

General Designer

Initiation of studies

TsK KPSSISM approval

Predraft plan signed

ProJect termination

Spacecra ft

Launch vehicles

Objective

OKB-52 (spacecraft and launchers), OKB-I and OKB-52 Branch

No, I (launchers)

V. N Chelomey

1959

June 23, 1960

1961

May 22. 1964

/qK-1-7, _qK-1-300. ,qK-3-300. ,qK-4

8KZ2K, ,q-300, 8K821Proton

Automated and piloted reusable spacecraft to the Moon. Mars,

and Venus

I I. Soyuz Complex

Lead institutions

Chief Designer

Initiation of studies

Predraft plan signed

Technical prospectus signed

TsK KPSSISM approval

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Objective

OKB-I (TK and launcher). SKB-IO (I IK). SKB-385 (9K)

S. P. Korolev

January 26, 1962

December 24, 1962

May 10, 1963

December 3, 1963

l_ugust 3, 1964

7K/Soyuz-l_. 9KISoyuz-B. II K/Soyuz-V

I bq55, I I_56

Piloted circumlunar flight

12. R-56

Lead institution

Chief Designer

TsK KPSStSM approval

Termination of studies

Launch vehicles

Objectives

OKB-586

M. K. Yangel

April 16, 1962

June 19, 1964

R-56. SK-IO0

Robotic lunar landing, piloted circumlunar missions

13. ZvezdalHeav,/Orbital Station (TOS)

Lead institution

Chief Designers

Initiation of design studies

Predraft plan signed

Termination of studies

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

OKB-I

S. R Korolev, V. R Mishin

1960

May 3, 1961

1969

TOSIZvezda

N I derivatives

Large piloted space station in Earth orbit

14. Soyuz-R

Lead institution

Chief Designer

Initiation of studies

MO approval

Predraft plan signed

Program termination (l l FTI station]

Program termination (ZK-TK ferry)

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

OKB-I Branch No. 3

D. I. Kozlov

1962-63

June 18, 1964

July 15, 1965

Early 1966

June 21, 196Z

7K-TK/I I FZ21Soyuz-R. I 11:71 station

Soyuz-type

Piloted reconnaissance platform in Earth orbit

959
960

15. Soyuz-P

Lead institution

Chief Designer

Initiation of studies

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

16. NI-L3

Lead institution

Chief Designers

Deputy Chief Designers

Initiation of studies

TsK KPSStSM approval

Predraft plan signed

Draft plan signed

First orbital launch attempt

Last orbital launch attempt

Project suspension

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Objective

I 1. Voskhod

Lead institutions

Chief Designers

Lead designer

Initiation of studies

VPK approval

TsK KPSS/SM approval

Draft plan signed

First orbital launch attempt

Last orbital launch attempt

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

ObJective

18. UR-50OK/LK- I

Lead institutions

General Designer

Initiation of studies

Predraft plan signed

TsK KPSSISM approval

Draft plan signed

Project termination

Spacecralt

Launch vehicle

Objective

OKB-I Branch No. 3

D I. Koztov

1962-63

1965

7K PPK/Soyuz-P

IIA514

Piloted anti-satellite spacecraft in Earth orbit

OKB-I

S. R Korolev. V. P Mishin, B. A. Dorofeyev

K. D. Bushuyev, S. S. Kryukov, S. O. Okhapkin

March 1963

August 3, 1964

December 30, 1964

November II,1965

February 2 I, 1969

November 23, 1972

June 24. 1914

February 18. 1976

?K-LISII IF92, ZK-LOKII IF93, LKII IF94, TIK, T2K, 7K LIE,

Blok D (originally included LI, L2, L3. L4, and L5)

N I, N I derivatives. 8K82KIProton-K

Landing of one cosmonaut on the Moon

OKB-I (spacecraft). OKB-I Branch No. 3 (launcher)

S. P. Korolev, V. P Mishin

Ye. A. Frolov

December 1963

March 13, 1964

April 13. 1964

August 1964

October 6, 1964 (Kosmos-47)

February 22, 1966 (Kosmos- I I0)

September-October 1966

3KVII IF63, 3KDII IF63

II A57Noskhod

Propaganda goals in Earth orbit (multicrews, EVA, long

duration, tethers)

OKB-52 {spacecraft), OKB-52 Branch No. I (launcher)

V. N Chelomey

Late 1963

August 3, 1964

August 3. 1964

July 1965

April 27, 1966

LK- h Blok A

8K82K/Proton-K

Piloted circumlunar |light

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
APPENDIX

19. UR-700/LK-700

Lead institutions

General Designer

Initiation of studies

Approval for work on draft plan

Predraft plan signed

Program suspended

TsK KPSS/SM approval

LK-700 draft plan signed

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

OKB-52 (spacecraft). OKB-52 Branch No. I (launch vehicle)

V. N. Chelomey

1964

October 20, 1965

August-September 1966

November 1966

September 17, 1967

October 1968

Early 1969

LK-700

UR-700

Direct ascent piloted lunar landing

20. Soyuz

Lead institutions

Chief Designers

Lead designers

Initiation of studies

VPK approval

Draft plan signed

First orbital launch attempt

Last orbital launch attempt

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Objectives

OKB-I (spacecraft), OKB-I Branch No. 3 (launcher)

S E Korolev, V. P. Mishin, V. P. Glushko

Ye. A. frolov. A. F. Topol, Yu P. Semenov, Ye. P. Vyatkin.

V. P. Guzenko

Late 1964

August 18, 1965

October 23, J965

November 28, 1966 (Kosmos-133)

May 14, 1981 (Soyuz 40)

May 198 I

7K-OK/I IF615, 7KT/I IF615,q8, 7K-Tt_tl IF615A9,

7K-TMfl 1[615AI2

I IASI IISoyuz, I IASI IUJSoyuz-U

Master rendezvous and docking techniques in Earth orbit,

station ferry

21. Almaz Orbital Piloted Station (OPS)/Salyut

Lead institutions

General Designer

Lead designer

Initiation of studies

Draft plan signed

TsK KPSSISM approval

first orbital launch attempt

Last orbital launch attempt

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

OKB-52 (spacecraft). OKB-52 Branch No. I (launch vehicle)

V. N. Chelomey

V. A. Polyachenko

October 1964

June 23, 1967

August 14, 1967

April 3, 1973 (Salyut 2}

June 22, 1976 (Salyut 5)

December 19, 1981

OPS/I I F71 station, 7K-TK/I I F72 ferry, 7K-TAt I I F6159 ferry

(see also TKS)

8K82KIProton-K

Piloted military station in Earth orbit

22, N I I -Soyuz

Lead Jnstkution

Chief Designer

Initiation of studies

Technical prospectus signed

Termination of studies

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

OKB-J

S. P. Korolev

Late 1964

February 5, 1965

/_ugust 1965

7K-PLK

Nil

Piloted lunar orbital flight

961
962

23.7K-VI Zvezda

Lead institution

Chief Designer

Initiation of studies

TsK KPSS/SM approval

Draft plan signed (first variant)

Draft plan signed (second variant)

MOM approval

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

24. Spiral

Lead institutions

General Designer

Chief Designer

Initiation of studies

Predraft plan signed

First launch attempt

Last launch attempt

First airdrop

Last airdrop

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

25. Zvezda Spaceplane

Lead institution

General Designer

Initiation of studies

Termination of studies

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

26. Zond

Lead institutions

Chief Designers

Lead designers

Initiation of studies

TsK KPSS/SM approval

MOM approval

Predraft plan signed

First orbital launch attempt

Last orbital launch attempt

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

ObJective

OKB-I Branch No. 3

D. t. Kozlov

Late 1964

August 24. t965

1965

1967

July 7, 1966

January-February 1968

7K-VI/I I F73/Zvezda

I IASIIM/Soyuz-M

Piloted military operations in Earth orbit

OKB-155 and Gromov LII (spaceplane), OKB-I

(conventional launcher), OKB-52 (booster), OKB-156 (GSR)

A t. Mikoyan

G. Ye. Lozino-Lozinskiy

1964

June 29. 1966

july IS, t969 (BOR-i)

1974 (BOR-3)

October II. 1976 (105.1 I)

September 1978 ( 105.11 )

September 1978

Orbital AircraftlSO, EPOS, booster rocket. BOP I, BOR-2, BOR-3,

1051 I, 105.12, I05.13

GSR/50-50, I I AS I I ISoyuz, Tu-95K

Reusable military spaceplane for Earth-orbital operations

OKB 156

g. N. Tupolev

Early 1960s

1966

Zvezda

Tu-95K

Air-launched reusable military spaceplane

OKB-I (spacecraft and upper stage), OKB-52 Branch No. I

(launcher)

S. P. Korolev, V. R Mishin

B. V. Rublev, Yu. P Semenov

August 1965

October 25, 1965

November 13, 1965

November 30, 1965

March I0, 1967 (Kosmos-146)

October 20, 1970 (Zond 8)

October 1970

7K-L Ill I F911Zond. 7K-OK-TISoyuz

8K82K/Proton-K

Piloted circumlunar flight

CHALLENGE TO I_FOLLO
APPENDIX jl_

27. Multirole Orbital Complex (MOK)

Lead institution

Chief Designers

Initiation of studies

VPK decree on issue of technical plan

Draft plan signed

Program termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Objective

TsKBEM

S. P. Korolev. V. P Mishin

September 30. 1963

February 23, 1972

Early 1973

May 1974

MBKS. 19K modules, TKS

N I. N I derivatives

Massive piloted complex in Earth orbit

28. Long-Duration Lunar Base (DLB)

Lead institutions

Chief Designers

Initiation of studies

Termination of studies

Spacecraft

Launch vehicles

Objective

KB OM (spacecraft), GSMZ Lavochkin (spacecraft), TsKBEM

(spacecraft and launcher)

V. P. Barmin. V. P. Mishin

1965-66

Late 1970s

Bolshoye koltso, Kolumb. Dal, Osvoyeniye

N I. N I derivatives

Permanent piloted base on lunar surface

29. Transport-Supply Ship (TKS)

Lead institutions

Initiation of studies

Draft plan signed

First orbital launch attempt/TKS

Last orbital launch attempt/TKS

First orbital launch attemptlTKS VA

Last orbital launch attempt/TKS V_

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

OKB-52 and OKB-52 Branch No, I (spacecraft), OKB-S2 Branch

No. I (launcher)

1966-67

1969

July 17, 1977 (Kosmos-929)

September 27, 1985 (Kosmos-1686)

December 15. 1976

May 23, 1979 (Kosmos-I I00/I I01)

1986

TKSll IF72, TKS V_/I IF74. TKS FGB/I IF77

8K82KfProton-K

Transport ship for glmaz and Salyut space stations

30. Soyuz-VI

Lead institutions

Chief Designers

Initiation of studies

Project approval

Draft plan signed

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objectives

TsKBEM an TsKBEM Branch No. 3 (spacecraft), TsKBEM Branch

No. 3 (launcher)

V, P. Mishin, D, I, Kozlov

Late 1967

January-February 1968

June 23. 1968

February 1970

OB-Vl station/I IF731, 7K-SII IF732.7K-S-Itl I F733.

7K-S-II/I IF734, ZK-Gll IF735

111_51IJSoyuz

Small military space station in Earth orbit with different ferry craft

31. UR-700MIMK-700

Lead institutions

General Designer

Initiation of studies

MOM approval

Predraft plan signed (MK-700)

TsKBM (spacecraft), TsKBM Branch No. I (launcher)

V. N. Chelomey

Early 1969

June 30, 1969

/_pril 1970

963
964

Predraft plan signed (UR-Z0OM)

ProJect termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

October 1970

Late 1970

MK-700

UR-7OOM

Piloted landing on Mars

32. Long-Duration Orbital Station (DOS)lSalyut

Lead institutions

Chief/General Designers

Lead designer

Initiation of studies

TsK KPSISM approval

First orbital launch attempt

Last orbital launch attempt

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

TsKBEM and TsKBM Branch No. I (spacecraft}, TsKBM Branch

No I (launcher)

V. P. Mishin. V, E Glushko, Yu, E Semenov, V, N Bugayskiy

Yu. E Semenov, V. V. Pallo

December 1969

February 9, 1970

April 19. 1971 (Salyut)

February 19, 1986 (Mir)

17K/DOS, 17KSIMir, I 7KSM/ISS

8K82KIProton-K

Small piloted station in Earth orbit with ferry craft

33. N I-L3M

Lead institution

Chief Designers

Initiation of studies

Draft plan signed

Approval by Council of Chief Designers

Project termination

Spacecraft

Launch vehicle

Objective

TsKBEM

V. E Mishin, V. g. Borisov

1969-70

Late 197 I

May 15, 1972

May 1974

L3M

NIF

Long-duration piloted landings on the Moon

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
APPENDIX B

Full Name

Deszgnersand Scientists

Abramov, Anatoliy Petrovich

Alekseyev, Semyon Mikhaylovich

Avduyevskiy, Vsevolod

Sergeyevich

Bahakin, Georgiy Nikolayevich

Barmin, Vladimir Pavlovich

Blagonravov, Anatoliy

Arkadyevich

Blokhin, Yuriy Dmitryevich

Bogomolov, Aleksey Fedorovich

Bogomolov, Vladislav Nikolayevich

Boguslavskly, YevgenJy

Yakovlevich

Bolkhovi/inov, Viktor Fedorovich

Bondaryuk, Mikhail Makarovich

Borodin, Sergey Aleksandrovich

Budnik, Vasiliy Sergeyevich

Bugayskiy, Viktor Nikifirovich

Bushuyev, Konstantin Davidovich

lqppendix B

Dramatia Personae, 1945-74

Contribution to the

Date of Birth/Death Soviet Space Program

1919-August 15, 1998

1909-

July 28, 1920-

November 14, 1914-

August 3, 1911

March 17, 1909-

July 17, 1993

June I, 1894-

February 4, 19T5

Unknown

June 2, 19f3-

September 14, i919-

February 9, 1997

1917-May 18, 1969

1989-1970

1908-1969

1935-

June 24, 1913-

Unknown

May 23, 1914-

October 26, 1978

Deputy Chief Designer in 1966-80 at OKB

Korolev worked on launch complexes.

Chief Designer in 1952-73 at OKB Zvezda

worked on spacesuits and airlocks.

Scientist at NII-I in 1953-73 and First

Deputy Director at TsNllMash in 1973-87.

Chief Designer in 1965-71 at OKB Lavochkin led

work on lunar and interplanetary spacecraft.

Chief Designer in 1941-93 at GSKB

SpetsMash designed launch complexes.

President of the Academy of Artillery

Sciences in 1946-50 and public spokesperson.

Head of Mikoyan KB space branch worked on the

Spiral spaceplane.

Chief Designer in 1954-88 at OKB MEI worked on

telemetry and guidance systems.

Chief Designer in 1971-85 at OKB isayev worked

on rocketengines and succeeded Isayev.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1950-69 at

Ryazanskiy Nil worked on spacecraft guidance

systems.

At NH- I. he worked on the S_,nger Bredt

antipodal bomber.

Chief Designer in 1950-69 at OKB-670 worked

on ramjet engines for gurya and Buran.

Chief Designer from 1975 on at SOKB of Gromov

LII designed simulators and cockpit consoles.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1954-72 at OKB

Yangel worked on missiles and was a korolev

prot4g4.

He headed OKB Chelomey Branch No. I in

1960-73 and worked on rockets and spacecraft.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1954-72 at

OKB Korolev led piloted spacecraft projects

965
966

Full Name

Bykov, Yuriy Sergeyevich

Chelomey, Vladimir Nikolayevich

Chertok, Boris Yevseyevich

Darevskiy, Se_geyGrigoryevich

Dorofeyev, Boris Arkadyevich

Eidis, Arkadiy Ionovich

Feoktistav, KonstantinPetrovich

Gazenko, Oteg Georgiyevich

Glushko, Valentin Petrovich

Gubanov, Boris Ivanovich

Gubenko, Yevgeniy Stepanovich

Gusev, Leonid Ivanovich

Iosffyan, Andronik Gevondovich

Isayev, _leksey Mikhailovich

Ishlinskiy, gleksandr Yulevich

Ivanov, ivan Ivanovich

Ivanovskiy, Oteg Genrikhovich

Date of Birth/Death

1916-1970

June 30, 1914-

December 8, 1984

March I, t912-

Unknown

November 25, 1921-

July 9, 1999

1913-

February 7, 1926-

December 12. 1918-

September 2. 1908-

January I0, 1989

March 14, 1930-

March 18, 1999

Unknown-1959

1922-

1905-1993

October 24. 1908-

June I0, 1911

August 6. 1913-

1918-

January 18. 1922-

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

Chief Designer in 1959-70 at NII-695 worked on

communications systems for piloted spacecraft,

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1955-84 at

OKB-52 led work on cruise missiles, ICBMs. and

spacecraft.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1956-91 at OKB Korolev

worked on guidance systems.

Chief Designer in 1965-75 at SOKB of Gromov Ltl

designed simulators and cockpit consoles.

Deputy Chief Designer at OKB Korolev, was Chief

Designer for NI rocket in 1972-74 (demoted in

1974).

He headed OKB Chelomey Branch No. 3 in

1962-65 and was later Chelomey's First Deputy

General Designer.

Department Chief at OKB Korolev worked on

Vostok and other piloted spacecraft

Director of IMBP in 1969-88 performed early work

on space medicine.

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1946-89 at

OKB-456 designed rocket engines for missiles and

launchers.

He was First Deputy Chief Designer/General

Designer in 1912-82 at OKB Yangel and in 1982-93

at OKB Korolev

Chief Designer in 1950-59 at SKB-567 worked on

ground communications segment,

Director of NII-695 and from 1965 on Director of

NIl P led work on guidance systems.

Chief Designe_in 1941-74 at NII-621 worked on

power sources and remote-sensing craft.

Chief Designer in t947-11 at OKB-2

led work on engines for piloted spacecraft

Director of Institute of Mechanics in 1964-89 prepared space communiques

Deputy Chief Designer at OKB Yangel, led work on

LK lander engine.

He worked at OKB-I on Sputnik and Vostok and

was Deputy Chief Designer in 1971-83 at OKB

Lavochkin.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
11_P P EIq D I X B

Full Name Date of Birth/Death

Ivensen, Pavel glbertovich 1908-

Izotov, Sergey Petrovich June 30, 1917-

May 6. 1983

Kartukov, Ivan Ivanovich Unknown

Keldysh, Mstislav Vsevolodovich February I0, 191lJune 24, 1978

Kemurdzhian, Aleksandr Leonovich Unknown

Khomyakov, Mikhail Stepanovich Unknown

Khristianovich, Sergey November 9 1908-

A]eksandrovich

Khrushchev, Sergey Nikitich

Kisunko, Grigoriy Vasilyevich

Konopatov, Aleksandr Dmitriyevich

Konoplev, Boris Mikhaylovich

Korolev, Sergey Pavlovich

Kosberg, Semyon Ariyevich

Kotelnikov, Vladimir

Aleksandrovich

Kovtunenko, Vyecheslav

Mikhaylovich

Kozlov, Dmitriy llich

Kryukov, Sergey Sergeyevich

1934-

July 20, 1918-1998

March I0, 1922-

1912-October 24, 1960

January 12, 1907-

January 14, 1966

December 14. 1903-

January 3, 1965

September 6, 1908-

August 31, 1921-

July I0, 1995

October h 1919-

1918-

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

At OKB-52, he worked on the early development o[

Proton and Salyut

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1960-83 at

OKB-! 17 worked on Chelomey's lunar lander

engines

Chief Designer of KB-2 at Plant No. 81 worked on

solid-propellant engines for spacecraft.

Director of Nil-I in 1946-55, Chief of IPM in

1953-78, and President of/qcademy of Sciences in

1961-75 led scientific work on missiles/spacecraft.

Chief Designer at VNII-100 worked on robotic lunar

rovers.

At OKB-I, he was lead designer for Sputnik: later,

he was Deputy General Designer at NPO Energiya.

He worked on ICBMs at TsAGI in 1942-53 and

then at Institute of Theoretical and Applied

Mechanics.

Deputy Department Chief in 1958-68 at OKB

Chelomey is son of Nikita Khrushchev.

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1953-75 at KB-I

and later at OKB-30 led work on early anti-ballistic

missilelASAT.

Chief Designer in 1965-93 at OKB Kosberg led

work on rocket engines

He worked on guidance at NII-885, NII-695. and

OKB-692 and died in the R-16 accident

Chief Designer in 1946 at OKB-I and founder of the

Soviet space program, his early prewar rocketry work

was at GIRD and NIl-3.

Chief Designer in 1941-65 at OKB-154 led work on

engines for ICBMs and launchers.

He was at OKB MEI in 1947-54 and then at the

Institute of Radio Technology and Electronics.

With early work at OKB Yangel. he later was Chief

DesignedGeneral Designer at NPO Lavochkinin

1977-95.

As head of OKB Korolev Branch No 3/TsSKB from

1959 on, he worked on reconnaissance satellites.

He was Deputy Chief Designer in 1961-65 at OKB

Korotev then Chief Designer in 1971-77 at OKB

Lavochkin.

967
968

Full Name

Kurchatov, Igor Vasilyevich

Kuznetsov, Nikolay Dmitriyevich

Kuznetsov, Viktor Ivanovich

Lapygin, Vladimir Lavrentyevich

Lavochkin, Semyon Alekseyevich

l..ebedinskiy, Andrey Vladimirovich

IJdorenko, Nikolay Stepanovich

llkhushin, Valentin Yakovlevich

l.obanov, Nikolay Aleksandrovich

Lozino-Lozinskiy, Gleb

Yevgenyevich

Lyulka, Arkhip Mikhaylovich

Makeyev, Viktor Petrovich

Melnikov, Mikhail Vasilyevich

Mikoyan, Artem Ivanovich

Mishin, Vasiliy Pavlovich

Mnatsakanyan, Armen Sergeyevich

Myasishchev, Vladimir

Mikhaylovich

Nesmeyanov,/_leksandr

Nikolayevich

Date of Birth/Death

January 12, 1903-

February 7, 1960

June 23, 191 IJuly 30, 1995

April 27, 1913-

March 22, 1991

February 4, 192SSeptember II. 1900-

june 9, 1960

1902-January 3, 1965

April IS, 1916-

May 29, 1918-

December 4, 1982

1909-1978

December 25, 1909-

March 23, 1908-

June 2, 1984

October 25, 1924-

October 25. 1985

September 22. t919-

1996

August 5, 1905-

December 9, 1970

january 18, 19t7-

November 7. 1918-1992

September 28, 1902-

October 14. 1978

September 9, 1899-1980

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

At KB-111 he worked on first hydrogen bomb-work

coordinated with OKB-I.

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1949-94 at

OKB-276 worked on rocket engines for the N I and

GR-I.

Chief Designer in 1946-89 at Nil I0 and N11-944

worked on missile and spaceship gyros.

Deputy Chief Designer at Pilyugin Nil worked on

guidance and succeeded Pilyugin in 1982

Chief Designer in 1939-60 at OKB-301 worked

on Burya cruise missile

He was first Director of IMBP in 1963-65 and an

early space medicine pioneer.

Chief Designer at Nil IT worked on power sources

[or spacecraft, including Sputnik.

Director of Nil-I in 1955-88 worked on advanced

engines.

Chief Designer in 1968-77 at NIEI PDS worked on

parachutes and succeeded Tkachev.

Chief Designer in 1966-76 at OKB Mikoyan led

work on the Spiral spaceplane.

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1946-84 at

OKB-165 worked on cryogenic engines for the N I.

This Chief Designer/General Designer in 1955-85

at SKg-385 was a Korolev proteg_

Deputy Chief Designer in 1960-74 at OKB Korolev

worked on engines, including Blok D

Chief DesignerlGenerai Designer in

1942-69 at OKB-15S led work on the Spiral spaceplane system

Chief Designer in 1966-74 at OKB Korolev led work

on the N I-L3 lunar program, was fired in 1974, and

was later at MAI.

Chief Designer in 1953-69 at N11-648worked on

spacecraft telemetry and radar systems.

Chief Designer in 1951-60 at OKB-23 worked on a

spaceplane and was later Director of TsAG1.

President of the Academy of Sciences in 195 I-6 I

approved the first satellite project.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
APPENDIX B

Full Name

Nudelman, #,leksandr

Emmanuilovich

Okhapkin, Sergey Osipovich

Okhotsimskiy, Dmitriy

Yevgenyevich

Polio, ViadJmir Vladimirovich

Parin, Vasiliy Vasilyevich

Paton, Boris Yevgenyevich

Pelrov, Boris Nikolayevich

Petrov, Georgiy Ivanovich

Pilyugin, Nikolay #,lekseyevich

Pobedonostsev, Yuriy

#,leksandrovich

Polukhin, Dmitriy #,lekseyevich

Radovskiy, Viktor Petrovich

Rasplefin, #,leksandr _tndreyevich

Raushenbakh, Boris Viktorovich

Reshetnev, Mikhail Fedorovich

Rosselevich, Igor #,leksandrovich

Ryazanskiy, Mikhail Sergeyevich

Savin, #,natoliy Ivanovich

Date of Birth/Death

1912-August 2, 1996

19IO-March 1980

February 26, 1921-

Unknown

March 18. 1903-

June Is, 1971

November 27. 1918-

March II. 1913-

#'ugust 23, 1980

May 31, 1912

May 11. 1987

May 18. 1908

#,ugust 2. 1982

February 7. 1907-

October 1973

March 12. 1927-

September 7, 1993

May II, 1920-

_qugust25, 1908-1967

January 18. 1915-

November I0, 1924-

January 26, 1996

1918-1991

April 5, 1909-

#,ugust 7, 1987

April 6, 1920-

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

Chief Designer in 1965-87 at OKB-16 worked on a

space cannon for Chelomey and Kozlov.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1952-76 at OKB Korolev

led work on the N I and was Mishin's First Deputy.

This scientist at OPM MI#,N did research work on

an early ICBM.

Deputy Chief Designer at OKB Chelomey Branch

No. I led work on the DOS and Salyut stations.

Director of IMBP in 1965-69 was a premier space

medicine specialist.

Director of Institute of Electrical Welding from 1953

on worked on the NI and the Vulkan unit.

Department Chief in 1951-1980 at Institute of

Control Problems was a public spokesperson

Z1fterconducting aerodynamic research at Nil-I,

he was Director of Institute of Space Research in

1965-73.

Chief Designer in 1948-82 at NII-885 and Nil #,P

worked on missile and spaceship guidance.

He was Chief Engineer in 1946-49 at NII-88 and

was later at NII-125.

Chief Designer in 1973-93 at OKB Chelomey

Branch No. I led the development of Proton.

Deputy Chief Designer at OKB-456 worked on

rocket engines and succeeded Glushko in 1989

Chief Designer in 1953-67 at KB-I worked on the

RORS#,T,EORS#,T.and #,SAT programs.

Department Chief in 1960-73 at OKB Korolev

worked on guidance systems.

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1961-96 at

OKB-10 led work on communications satellites and

was a Korolev protege.

Chie[ Designer in 1954-83 at NII-380 worked on

TV systems for spacecraft

Chief Designer in 1946-51 and 1955-87 at Nil 885

worked on missile and spacecraft radio guidance.

General Designer from 1962on at KB-I and TsNII

Kometa worked on the RORSgT, EORS#,T,and

#,S#,T programs.

969
970

Full Name

Semenov, Yuriy Pavlovich

Sedov, Leonid Ivanovich

5everin, Gay llich

Shabarov, Yevgeniy Vasilyevich

Sheremetyevskiy, Nikolay

Nikolayevich

Si_kyan, Norair Martirosovich

Solovyev, Vsevolod Nikolayevich

Stechkin, Boris Sergeyevich

Stroyev, Nikolay Sergeyevich

Sttuminskiy, Vladimir Vasilyevich

Tikhonravo% Mikhail K1avdiyevich

Tkachev, Fedor Dmitriyevich

Tregub, Yakov Isayevich

Tritko, Karl Ivanovich

Trufanov. Yuriy Nikolayevich

Tsybin, Pavel Vladimirovich

Tumanskiy, Sergey Konstantinovich

Date of Birth/Death

April 20, 1935-

November 14. 1907-

July 24, 1926-

192ZNovember 5, 1916-

January 25, 1907-

March 10. 1966

Unknown

1891-_pril2,1969

1912-1997

April 29, 1914-

July 29, 1900-

March 4, 1974

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

December 23, 1905-

february 4. 1992

May 21. 1901-

September 9. 1973

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

He was the lead designer of Soyuz and Zond at

OKB Korolev and then General Designer at RKK

Energiya from 1989on.

He chaired the Commission for Promotion of Interplanetary f,lights and was a public spokesperson.

Chief Designer/General Designer from 1964on at

OKB Zvezda worked on spacesuits and EVA aiflocks.

Deputy Chief Designer at OKB Korolev led the flight

testing of piloted spacecraft.

Chief Designer in 1974-91 at Nil losifyan in

1974-91 worked on power sources and Earth survey

satellites,

At the Second Division of Biological Sciences under

the Academy oF Sciences, he was an early medicine

specialist.

Chief Designer in 1963-92 at KB TransMash

designed space launch complexes

Chief Designer in 1955-69 at OKB f,akelunder the

Academy of Sciences performed attitude control

engine work.

Director of Gromov LII in 1954-66 worked on

spacecraft testing and later was at VPK

Director of Institute of Theoretical and Applied

Mechanics in 1966-71 worked on liquid hydrogen,

Designer at NIl-4 and OKB Korolev worked on

Sputnik and Vostok and performed early ICBM work

and early work at GIRD and NIl-3.

Chief Designer at NIEI PDSworked on parachutes

and was fired in 1968 after Soyuz I.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1964-73 at OKB Koroiev

ted flight control for piloted flights.

Chief of SKB at Nil-88 in 1946 49 led work on early

missiles.

He was Deputy Chief Designer at OKB Chelomey

Branch No. I and was then at NPO Energiya and

NPO Lavochkin.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1960s at OKB Korolev

performed early spaceplane work at OKB-256

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1955-73 at

OKB-300 worked on spacecraft attitude engines.

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
APPENDIX B

Full Name

Tupolev, Andrey Nikolayevich

"ryurin, Petr Aleksandrovich

Utkin, Ivan Ivanovich

Utkin, Vladimir Fedorovich

Vemov, Sergey Nikolayevich

Vinogradov, Aleksandr Pavlovich

Vitka, Vladimir Andreyevich

Voronin, Grigoriy Ivanovich

Voskresenskiy, Leonid

Aleksandrovich

Yangel, Mikhail Kuzmich

Yefremov, Gerbert Aleksandrovich

Zaslavskiy, Mark Efimovich

Military Officers

Agadzhanov, Pavel Artemyevich

Agaltsov, Fillip Aleksandrovich

Alekseyev, Nikolay Nikolayevich

Anokhin, Sergey Nikolayevich

Babiychuk, Aleksandr Nikolayevich

Beregovoy, Georgiy Timofeyevich

Bibikov, Yakov Lvovich

Date of Birth/Death

November 10, 1888-

December 23, 1972

June 25, I917-

February26, 2000

April 23, 1910-

August 29, 1985

October 17, 1923-

February 15, 2000

July II, 1910-

September 26, 1982

August 21, 1895-1915

November 19, 1901-

January 10, 1989

December 21, 1906-

1987

July 14, 1913-

December 15, 1965

October 25, 191lOctober 25, 1971

March 15, 1933-

1920-1995

May 2 I, 1923-

January 8, 1900-1980

1914-November 12,

1980

March 19, 1910-

April 15, 1986

Unknown

April 15, 1921-

June 30, 1995

Unknown

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

Chief Designer/General Designer in 1943-72 at

OKB-156 worked on spaceplane carrier aircraft.

Chief Designer in 1953-gi of KB Arsenal worked on

L3 components and later performed EORSAT work,

Chief Designer in 1960-70 at Nil IT worked on

spacecraft memory data recorders.

He was Deputy Chief Designer in 1961-71 at OKB

Yangel and succeeded Yangel in 1971.

Director of NII-YaFof Moscow State University in

1960-82 worked on science experiments.

Director of Institute of Geochemical and Analytical

Chemistry worked on lunar samples,

First Deputy Chief Designer in 1954-61 at OKB

Glushko worked on rocket engines.

Chief Designer in 1939-85 at OKB-124 worked on

life support systems [or spacecraft.

Deputy Chief Designer in 1953-64 at OKB Korolev

led flight testing of missiles.

Chief Designer in 1954-71 at OKB-586 led work on

missiles and robotic spacecraft.

Deputy General Designer in 1971-84 at OKB

Chelomey succeeded Chelomey in 1984.

He was Chief Designer in the 1960s at TsNII-108.

Department Chief in 1957-71 at TsKIK led flight

control for piloted missions.

Air _orce Deputy Commander-in-Chief in 1958-62

prepared the selection of cosmonauts.

He chaired the Science and Technical Committee,

General Staff, Ministry of Defense, in 1960-70.

He was a test pilot for Gromov LII in 1941-64 and

then worked at OKB Korolev,

Chief, Biomedical Service, at Air Force oversaw the

early Vostok missions,

He was a cosmonaut who later became Director of

the Cosmonaut Training Center in 1972-86.

He was Director of Nil-I during German recovery

operations in 1945-46.

971
972

Full Name

Biryuzov, SergeySemenovich

Bolshoy, Amos Aleksandrovich

Bulychev, Ivan Timofeyevich

Chechulin, Petr Petrovich

Fedorov, Petr Ivanovich

Gaga[in, Yuriy Alekseyevich

Gallay, Mark Lazarevich

Gaydukov. Lev Mikhaylovich

Genin, Abram Moiseyevich

Gerchik, Konstantin Vasilyevich

Goreglyad, Leonid Ivanovich

Grechko, Andrey l_ntonovich

Grigoryev, Mikhail Grigoryevich

Gurovskiy, Nikolay Nikolayevich

Kamanin, Nikolay Petrovich

Karas, Andrey Grigoryevich

Karpov, Yevgeniy Anatotyevich

Kerimov, Kerim Aliyevich

Date of Birth/Death

August 21, 1904-

October 19, 1964

Unknown

Unknown

September IO, 1906-

September 16, 1971

1898 February 7. 1945

March 9, 1934-

March 27, 1968

19t4 1998

January 14, 191IMay 12 1922

September 27 1918-

I915 1986

October 17, 1903-

April 26, 1976

October 23, 1917-

November 12, 1981

Unknown

1909-March t3. 1982

September 27, 1918

January 21 1979

192l-May 1990

November 14, 1917

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

He was Commander-in-Chief of RVSN in 1962-63

and later Chief of General Staff Ministry of Defense.

Department Chief at TsKIK led flight control teams

for early missions

He was Chie[ of Communications Directorate,

Ministry of Defense. in 1956-58.

He was Director of NIl-4 in 1951-55 during early

research on satellites.

First Director of Nil I in 1944-45 oversaw the early

search for the A 4

First human in space later became Deputy Director

of the Cosmonaut Training Center m 1963 67 and

then died in a plane crash

Test pilot at Gromov LII led training at the

Cosmonaut Training Center.

Chief of the Interdepartmental Technical

Commission in Germany in 1945-46

He was Directorate Chief at Institute of Aviation

and Space Medicine in 1964-75.

He was Commander o[ Tyura-Tam during the R-I 6

dlsaster in 1958-61

He was General Staff representative at the

Cosmonaut Training Center and an aide to Kamanin.

Deputy Minister of Defense in 1967-76 was against

piloted space programs

First Commander of Mirnyy site in 1957-62 later

chaired the State Commission for Almaz.

He was a doctor at Institute of l_viation and Space

Medicine and later Deputy Director at IMBP

Deputy Chief of General Staff in 1958-66 and then

Aide to Air ForceCommander in 1966-71 oversaw

cosmonaut training.

He was Chief of TsKIK in 1959-65 and later

Commander of TsL!KOSIGUKOS in 1965 79.

He was first Director of the Cosmonaut Training

Center in 1960%3.

First Commander of TsUKOS in 1964-65 and

Directorate Chief atMinistry oF General Machine

Building in 1965-74 chaired the State Commission

[or Soyuz in 1966-91

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
APPENDIX m

Full Name

Kirillov, Anatoliy Semenovich

Krylov, Nikolay Ivanovich

Kurushin, Aleksandr

Aleksandrovich

Kutakhov, Pave[Stepanovich

Kuznetsov, Nikolay Fedorovich

Kuznetsov, Nikolay Nikobyevich

Maksimov, Aleksandr

Aleksandrovich

Malinovskiy, Rodion Yakovlevich

Morozov, Viktor Pavlovich

Moskalenko, Kirill Semenovich

Mozzhorin, Yuriy Aleksandrovich

Mrykin, Aleksandr Grigoryevich

Nedelin, Mitrofan Ivanovich

Nesterenko, Aleksey Ivanovich

Nitochkin, Aleksey Alekseyevich

Nosov, Aleksandr Ivanovich

Odintsov, Mikhail Petrovich

Ostashev, Yevgeniy Ilich

Date of Birth/Death

December 3 I, 1924-

March 30, 1987

April 29. 1903-

february 9, 19T2

March 14, 1922-

August 6, 1914-

December 26, 1916-

March 5, 2000

1903-1983

August 29, 1923-

October 12, 1990

November 23, 1898-

March 31, 1967

November I, 1918-

july 4, 1981

May II. f902-June 17.

1985

December 28, 1920-

May 15, 1998

August 15, 190SOctober 6, 1972

November 9, 1902-

October 24, 1960

March 30, 1908-

July 18, 1995

Unknown

March 27, 1913-

October 24, 1960

1921-

March 22, 1924-

October 24, t960

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

Chief, First Directorate, at Tyura-Tam in 1960-67

oversaw launch teams.

Commander-in-Chief. Strategic Missile Forces, in

1963-72 was against piloted space programs.

He was Commander of Tyura-Tam in 1965-73

during the NI launches.

Commander-in Chief of kir Force in 1969-84 succeeded Vershinin.

He was Commander of the Cosmonaut Training

Center in 1963-72 during the Voskhod and Soyuz

programs.

He was first Chief of the Interdepartmental

Technical Commission in Germany in 1945.

Deputy Chief o[ TsKIK was later Commander of

GUKOSIUNKS in 1979-89

Minister of Defense in 1957-67 was against piloted

space programs.

He chaired the Scientific Technical Coremittee of the

Strategic Missile Forces in 1962-67.

He was Commander-in-Chiel of the Strategic Missile

Forcesin 1960-62 and succeeded Nedelin.

Director of NII-88 in 1961-90 oversaw Soviet space

policy

He was First Deputy Commander of GLIRVO in

1955-65 and Strategic Missite Forcesliaison with

space.

Deputy Minister of Defense in 1955-59 was first

Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces

and died in the R-16 accident.

He was first Director of NIl-4 in 1946-50 and then

first Commander of Tyura-Tam in 1955-58.

Engineer at TsPI-31 designed Tyura-Tam launch

range.

Chief of launch command at Tyura Tam in 1955-58

died in the R-16 disaster.

Director of the Cosmonaut Training Center in 1963

was fired.

First Directorate Chief at Tyura-Tam in 1956-60 died

in the R-16 disaster.

973
9Z4

Full Name

Pokrovskiy, Aleksey Vasilyevich

Rudenko, Sergey Ignatyevich

Semenov, Anatoliy Ivanovich

Shatalov, Vladimir Aleksandrovich

Shubnikov, Georgiy Maksimovich

Smimitskiy, Nikotay Nikotayevich

$okolov, Andrey fllarionovich

Spiridinov, Aleksey Sergeyevich

Spitsa, Ivan Ivanovich

Titov, German Stepanovich

Tolubko, Vladimir fedorovich

Tveretskiy, Aleksandr Fedorovich

Tyulin, Ceorgiy g]eksandrovich

Vasilyev, Anatoliy Aiekeseyevich

Vershinin, Konstantin Andreyevich

Vitruk, Andrey lqvksentyevich

Volynkin, Yuvenaliy Mikhaylovich

Voronov, Nikolay Nikolayevich

Date of Bi_hlDeath

1903-1988

October 71 1904-1990

November 12, 1908-

April 16. 1973

December 18, 1927-

May I. 1903-July 31,

1965

August 9, 1918-

l_pril 15, 1993

October 30, 1910-

February 5, 1976

Unknown

1919-1992

September II, D35-

November 25, 1914-

June 17, 1989

November 17, 1904-

December 3I, 1992

October 9, 1914-

April 22, 1990

November 28, 1921-

November 12, 1973

June 3, 1900-

December 30, 1973

1906-

February 7, 1907

1899-February 28,

1968

CHALLENGE TO

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

He was Director of Institute of Aviation and Space

Medicine from the 1940s to 1959.

First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Air Force in

1958-68 oversaw cosmonaut training.

He was Commander o[ GURVO during Sputnik and

Vostok in 1954-64.

Commander-in-ChieFs Aide of Air Force in 1971-87

succeeded Kamanin.

He was Chiel- of Construction Directorate at

Tyura-Tam in 1955-65.

Commander of GLIRVO in 1967-75 later moved to

Ministry of General Machine Building.

He was Director of NIl-4 during the early space

program in 1955-70.

He was in Seventh Chief Directorate of Ministry of

Armaments and Director of NII-88 in 1953-59.

He was Commander of TsKIK during the N I

launches in 1965-73.

Second human in orbit was later First Deputy

Commander of GUKOS in 1979-91.

First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic

Missile Forcesin 1960-68 was later Commander-inChief in 1972-85

He was first Commander of Special Purpose Brigade,

precursor to the Strategic Missile Forces,in 1946-49

First Deputy Chairman of GKOT in 1961-65 and

First Deputy Minister of General Machine Building in

1965-76 oversaw many State Commissions

Commander of GURVO in 1964-67 later chaired

the Scientific-Technical Committee of the Strategic

Missile Forces in 1967-69.

He was Commander of Air Forceduring the Vostok,

Voskhod, and early Soyuz missions in 1957-69.

He was first Commander of TsKIK during the

Sputnik and Luna missions in 1957-59

He was Director of Institute of Aviation and Space

Medicine in 1960-69 during Vostok.

Commander o[ Artillery Forces in 194 I- 1950 later

became President of Academy of Artillery Sciences

_POLLO

H
Jl_PPEN DiX B

Full Name

Votintsev, Yuriy Vsevolodovich

Voznyuk, Vasiliy Ivanovich

Yakovlev, Nikolay Dmitryevich

Yazdovskiy, Vtadimir Ivanovich

Zakharov, Aleksandr Grigoryevich

Zakharov, Matvey Vasilyevich

Zhukov, Georgiy Konstantinovich

Party and _ouernrnent Officials

Afanasyev, Sergey PJleksandrovich

Balmont, Boris Vladimirovich

Beriya, Lavrentiy Pavlovich

Brezhnev, Leonid Iltich

Brezhnev, Mikhail t_leksandrovich

Bulganin, Nikolay Aleksandrovich

Burnazyan, Avetik Ignatyevich

Butoma, Boris Yevstafyevich

Dementyev, Petr Vasilyevich

Drnitryev, Igor Fedorovich

Domrachev, Aleksandr Vasitiyevich

Date of Birth/Death

1919-

January I. 1907-

September 12, 1976

1898-May I0, 1972

1913-

February 20, 1921-

1898-January 3 I, 1972

December I. 1896-

June 18. 1974

August 30, 191aOctober 6 1927-

March 29, 1899-

December 23, 1953

December 19. 1912-

November fO, (98Z

Unknown

June Ih 1895-

February 24, 1975

19O6-

May I, 1907-july II,

1976

January 24, 1907-

May 14.1977

1909-

October t906-

January 26, 1961

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

First Commander of PROIPKO forces in 1967-85

was in charge of ASAT forces,

First Commander of Kapustin Yarrange in 1946-13

selected the Tyura-Tamsite.

He was Chief of Chief Artillery Directorate in

194t-48.

Deputy Director of Institute of Aviation and Space

Medicine was a space medicine pioneer.

He was Commander of Tyura-Tam range during

Vostok and Voskhod in 1961-65.

He was Chief of Ministry of Defense General Staff in

1960-73.

He was Minister of Defense in 1955-57 during the

selection of Tyura-Tam.

First Minister of General Machine Building in

1965-83 oversaw N I project.

He was Chief of Chie[ Directorate at Ministry of

General Machine Building in 1965-73 and First

Deputy Minister of General Machine Building in

1976-8 I.

He was Soviet security apparatus chief through 1953.

He was Secretary of Central Committee for defense

and space in fgJT-60 and 1963-65.

Deputy Minister of General Machine Building was

responsible for guidance systems.

Minister of Defense in 1947-49 and 1953-55

chaired Special Committee No. 2 in 1947-49.

Deputy Minister of Health [rom 1947 was involved

in Voskhod crew selection

He was Minister of Ship Building Industry in

1957-76

Minister of Aviation Industry in 1953-77 was a

supporter of Chelomey.

First Deputy Chief, Central Committee Defense

Industries Department, in 1965-81 succeeded

Serbin.

First Chairman of GKOT in 1957-58 participated in

Tyura-Tam's selection.

975
976

Full Name

Gonor, I.ev Robertovich

Grishin, Lev Arkhipovich

Ivashutin, Petr Ivanovich

Kalmykov, Valeriy Dmitriyevich

Khokhlov, Nikolay Dmitriyevich

Khrunichev, Mikhail Vasityevich

Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich

Kozlov. FrotRomanovich

Leshchenko, Sergey Mikhaylovich

Utvinov. Valentin Yakovlevich

Malenkov, Georgiy

Maksimiliyanovich

Malyshev, Vyecheslav

Aleksandrovich

Mazur, Yevgeniy Vasilyevich

Pashkov, Georgiy Nikolayevich

Petrovskiy, BorisVasilyevich

Pleshakov, Petr Stepanovich

Pravetskiy, Vladimir Nikolayevich

Rudnev, Konstantin Nikolayevich

Date of Birth/Death

1906-November 13,

1969

1920-October 24 1960

1903-

August 28, 1908-

March 22, 1974

Unknown

April 4, 1901-

June 2, t961

April 5, 1894-

September II, 1971

August 18. 1908-

January 30. 1965

Unknown

1910-1983

January 2, 1902-

January 23. 1988

February 16, 1902-

February 20, 1957

Unknown-1982

1911-

June 27, 1908-

July 13, 1922-

September II. 1987

Unknown

June 22, 1911-

August13,1980

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

First Director of NII-88 in 1946-50 was dismissed

in 1950

Deputy Chairman of GKOT in 1958-60 died in the

R-16 disaster.

First Deputy Chairman of KGB during Vostok in

1959 63 was later GRU Chief in 1963-88

He was Minister of Radio-Technicallndustryin

1954-74.

Deputy Minister of General Machine Building m

1965 83 was responsible for quality control

Minister of Aviation Industries in 1946-53 was later

in Gosplan

First Secretary of Central Committee in 1953-64

during the early space era chaired Council of

Ministers in 1958 64.

He was Secretary of Central Committee for defense

and space during Vostok in 1960-63.

He was First Deputy Minister of Aviation Industries

in 1957-64

Director of Progress Plant in )944-62 later was

Deputy Minister of General Machine Building in

1965-73

First Chairman of Special Committee No. 2 ,n

1946-47 oversaw missile program,

Minister of Medium Machine Building in

1953-55 was first manager of Soviet defense industry.

He was Deputy Minister ol General Machine

Buildingin 1965-82.

He was at Gosplan Second Department in 1946-51

and Deputy Chairman of Military-lndustrial

Commission in 1957-70

Minister of Health from 1965to 1980 operated on

Korotev.

Director of TsNII 108 in 1958-64 was then Minister

of Radio Industry 1974-87

He was Chief of Third Chief Directorate in Ministry

of Health.

Director of NIl-88 in 1950-52 later chaired GKOT

during Vostok in 1958-61

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
_IPPENDIX B

Full Name

Ryabikov, Vasiliy Mikhaitovich

Serbin, Ivan Dmitryevich

Serov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

Shakhurin, Aleksey Ivanovich

Srnirnov, Leonid Vasilyevich

Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovich

Stroganov. Boris_leksandrovich

Tabakov, Gleb Mikhaylovich

Udarov, Grigoriy Rafailovich

Ustinov, Dmitriy Fedorovich

Vetoshkin, Sergey Ivanovich

Vladimirskiy, Sergey Mikhaylovich

Zubovich, Ivan Gerasimovich

Zverev, SergeyAlekseyevich

Date of Birth/Death

January 14, 1907-

July 19, 1974

1910-February 16, 1981

September 29, 1905-

July I, 1990

February 25. 1904-

July 3, 1975

@pril 16, 1916-

December 21, 1879-

March 5, 1953

Unknown

1912-1993

1904-1991

October 30. 1908-

December 20. 1984

September 25, 1905-

July 19, 1991

Unknown

19of-July )8, 1956

October 18, 1912-

December 17, 1978

Contribution to the

Soviet Space Program

Chie[ of Third Chief Directorate of Council of

Ministers in 1951-53 chaired Military-Industrial

Commission in 1955-57 and Sputnik State

Commission.

He was Chie[ of De[ense Industries Department

in 1958-81.

First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs later chaired

KGB in 1954-58.

He was People's Commissar for Aviation Industries

in 1940-46.

Director of YuzhMash Plant in 1952-61 chaired

Military Industrial Commission in 1963-85.

General Secretary of Central Committee in 1924-53

was Chairman of Council of Ministers in 1941-53

He was Sector Chief, Central Committee Delense

Industries Department.

Director of Nil 229 in 1958-63 was later Deputy

Minister of General Machine Building in 1965-81

Deputy Minister of General Machine Building in

1965-79 was responsible for ground complexes

Chairman of Military-Industrial Commission during

Sputnik and Vostok in 1957-63 was later Secretary

of Central Committee for defense and space in

t96%76.

Directorate Chief in Ministry of l_rmaments was

then First Deputy Chairman o[ Military Industrial

Commission in 1958-65

Deputy Minister of Radio-Technical Industries in

1954-79 was earlier at KB-I.

Deputy Chairman of Special Committee No. 2 was

then Deputy Minister of Armaments in 1949-51.

He was Chairman of GKOT during the Voskhod

program in 1963 65.

977

|NDEX

Numbers

09 rocket, 6.63. 847

IK spaceship, 195,250: see also Object K spaceship

I KP spaceship, 251 ; see also Vostok-I P spaceship

I L circumlunar spaceship, 338-45, 346

I M I test vehicle of N I rocket, 555

2K spaceship, 195,250

2RS high-speed aircraft, 22J

3K spaceship, 195,250

3KA spaceship, 363,382, 386: see also Vostok-3A spaceship

3KD spaceship. 386.448, 451-54, 506: see also Voskhod 2

3KV spaceship, 386,410-13,422,423,506,507, 522,523.

524: see also Voskhod

3RS high-speed aircraft. 221

4K spaceship, 195

5D51 engine. 494

5KM space hghte,', 344

5NM Mars sample return project. 753-54

7K spaceship, 345-50. 383, 463, 493, 719, 801, 802; and

design of, 347-48: see also Soyuz circumlunar project

7K G spaceship. 635

7K-LI spaceship, 497-50& 546, 556-61. 654,699 701: and

launches in early 1967, 561-64: and launches in 1967-68,

610-22: see also L I circumlunar spaceship and Zond

7K-LIE spaceship, see LIE spaceship

7K L I S spaceship, see L I S spaceship

7K-LOK spaceship. 493,494,495: see also LOK lunar orbiter

7K-OK spaceship, 465-73. 492, 494. 501. 502. 503, 546,

556, 557, 561. 565. 567, 569. 570,571. 573. 575, 59t, 596,

624-26. 629-33, 635, 636, 659. 670, 701, 102, 705. 706.

716, 722. 723. 766, 804. 840: see also Soyuz spaceship

7K-OK-T spaceship, 559

7K-PLK spaceship. 498. 502

7K-PPK spaceship, 473: see also Soyuz-P spaceship

7K-S spaceship, 635. 636, 716,722. 769,770. 794,804,809:

and preparations for flight. 826

7K-T spaceship, 717, 774. 777, 804,805, 807. 809. 815,816:

and design of, 769,807-08, 810

7KTG spaceship, 826. see also Progress spaceship

7K-TK spaceship, 473,591. 592,597, see also Soyuz-R spaceship

7K-VJ military spaceship, 527, 596-99. 633, 828; see aJso

Zvezda military station

8,_91 booster, 175, 176, 201

8t_92 booster, 15 t

8D423 engine, 545

8D726 engine. 322

8KII missile, see R-I

8K7t missile, see R-7

8K71PS booster, 163 64, 166, 173-74, 20 I: see also Sputnik

booster

8KTISN missile, 156

8K72booster, 201 02.203.206,226,235,251.252

8K?2K booste¢: 203,235,259, 273,276, 338, 343,353,355,

356, 366, 368: see also Vostok booster

8K73 booster, 201-02

8K78 booster, 328. 388, 488, 525, 529: see also Molniya

booster

8K78M booster, 640: see also Molniya booster

8K513 booster, 482

9K rocket block, 346-50. 463,465: and design of. 348: see

also Soyuz circumlunar project

10X cruise missile, 22, 227

IOXN cruise missile, 227

I I_51 booster, see N I booster

I I_52 booster, see N2 booster

IIA55 booster, 348

I IP.56 booster, 348

lhq57 booster, 410, 41 I, 421,448,469, 507. 523. 524, 525,

571: see also Voskhod booster

I IA59 booster, 394

I l,a,511 booster. 469,474,503,571,573,574,581,596,605.

610, 705. 826; see also Soyuz booster

* Note that page numbers in italics indicate photographs.

979
98O

IhqSI IL booster. 735

IIA511M booster, 596

I IA514 booster 473

I ID23 engine, 543

ID54 engine. 483,649. 677

I D56 engine. 483,548,649. 847

ID56M engine, 757. 759

ID57 engine, 483, 649, 757. 759,847

I D58 engine, 488

IDI2t engine, 820

ID416 engine. 543

t D417 engine, 53 I, 642. 739

1[25 space shuttle, see Buran space shuttle

IF71 spaceship, 473: see also Soyuz-R spaceship

1[71 station (of Almaz), 591, 592: see also Almaz

I[72 spaceship, 473: see also Soyuz-R spaceship

IF72 spaceship (of Almaz). 806: see also Transport Supply

Ship

IF74 spaceship (of Almaz), 592

IF75 spaceship (of Almaz), 592. 807

IF76 spaceship (of Almaz), 592. 593

IF77 spaceship (of TKS), 807: see also FGB

IF91 spaceship, 503; see also 7K-LI. LI. and Zond spaceship

IF94 lunar landeL 491: see also LK lander

IF615 spaceship. 465; see also Soyuz spaceship

IFTtl station, 597

IK spaceship. 346-50, 463, 465: and design of, 348: see

also Soyuz circumlunar project

tK25 booster, see Energiya booster

IS824 payload block. 556

14X cruise missile, 227

15DI3 engine. 543

16X cruise missile, 227

17K space station see DOS station

19K module 807

23rd Special Purpose Engineer Brigade of the Rocket Troops

of the High Command, 72

25 bomber, see M bomber

45K attitude control sensor. 575, 582, 583. 584, 589. 625.

626

50-50 spaceplane proJect, see Spiral

95 bomber, see Tu-95 bomber

99K attitude control sensor, 557, 655

lOOK attitude control sensor, 616,618, 654

IOI attitude control sensor, 557

I01K attitude control sensor, 655

103 bomber. 15

I IOK attitude control sensor. 557

130 spaceplane carrier, 600,605

212 missile, II 13

217 missile. 16

A

A 4 German missile, 18-2 h 24-32.34-35, 37. 40, 41-42, 45,

46, 49 50, 53.54, 58-60. 62, 64, 66, 68, 73, 76, 78.8I,

83 84,88.92.98, lOI, 107, 130 13t, 185,212,275,33t,

364. 380. 477, 538, 570. 848: and Soviet launches of.

55 57

A-9/A I0 German missile concept, 75

A-200 ICBM, see UR 200 ICBM

A-300 booster, 234, 307

Abramov, Anatoliy R, 50, 118, 137, 160, 801

Abramovich, Genrikh N, 5t, 53

Academy of Armaments Industry, 90

Academy of Sciences, see USSR Academy at Sciences

Admira camera, 510

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)I 317

ADU-I00 communications antennas. 536

Aelita Mars project, 745-54

Aelilo novel. 745

Aerobee missile. 92

Aerojet Propulsion Division, 846. 847

AFA 41t20 camera. 767

AF,q M 31 camera. 767, 779

Afanasyev, A V, 64

Afanasyev, Sergey A, 433,480.48 I, 482. 500, 503, 514.517,

5t8, 527. 538, 539, 547, 553. 554, 570, 585, 591, 613,

62t, 631, 632, 634, 644. 645, 646, 64Z, 648, 649, 658,

659, 671, 675, 678, 679, 680, 699, 701. 703, 714, 720,

722. 724, 728, 730. 731. 733, 738, 746. 750, 752, 759,

762. 771. 781, 783. 786. 790, 796. 797, 800, 803, 806,

809. 824: and background of, 430-31; and end of NI-L3

proJect, 832-33: and firing of Mishin. 830-3 I; and fourth

Nl launch, 822: and Iatter day career, 844-45: and on

LJstinov, 434: and second NI launch, 692: and supported

by Marshal Grechko, 787

Agadzhanov, Pavel A., 162. 427. 53L 583, 584. 656

Agafanov, Sergey P, 825

Agaltsov. Filipp A. 243.28 I, 291

Agat-I telescope. 592

Agence France Presse agency. 805

Air Force Medical Service, 425

AK I 7 Kosmoplan, 307

AK-1-300 Kosmoplan. 307

AK 3 300 Kosmoplan, 307

_qK-4 Kosmoplan, 307

Akademik Sergey Koroteu communications ship, 816

Akademik Shirshou research ship. 726

Akim, Efraim, 835

Albina (dog), 95, 173. 181

/Mbring, Werner, 30, 58, 63

Aldrin. Edwin E, Jr, 694, 695. 696. 713

Aleksandrov, Anatoliy P. 3f3. 317, 750

Aleksandrov, S I, 448

Aleksandrov, V, 220

Aiekseyev. Nikolay N, 287, 635

Alekseyev. Semyon A. 172, 198. 199, 254, 264, 272, 356,

359

All-Union Conlerence on Rocket Research into the Upper

Layers of the Atmosphere, 182-83

All-Union Conlerence on Stratospheric Studies, 9

All-Union Conference on the Uses of Rocket Propelled Craft

[or the Exploration of the Stratosphere, 9

Aft-Union Institute for Aviation Materials, see VIAM

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
[NDEX

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute for Digital Computer

Technology. 594

All-Union ScientifioResearch Institute for Etectromechanics,

594,683; see also NII-627

Almaz program, 597. 598, 607. 633. 635. 729,766, 768. 770,

78L 800,804, 814,840; and conversion to DOS, 720-21:

and coordination of schedules with DOS. 808-09: and

delays in late 1960s, 116-17; and description of spaceship, 592-96: and first crews for, 808: and origins of,

590-92; and preparations for launch of Almaz I tSatyut 2,

810-11: and Salyut 2 mission, 811-t2: and work in

1970-72,806-07: and work in 1970s and 1980s. 841-43

Amak-3 experiment. 778

Ambartsumyan, Viktor A, 770

An-2 aircraft, 248

An-12 aircraft, 198, 263. 422,473,569, 630. 656

Analytical Instrument Building Design Bureau, 472

Anders (a German}, 58

Anders, William/q., 667, 674

gndropov, Yudy, 432, 846

Anikeyev. Ivan N, 246, 247, 374-75

Anna-3 telescope. 767, 778

Anokhin, Sergey N, 566. 567, 588

Anti-Party Group affam 161, 177

antipodal bomber, see Singer Bredt bomber

Antonov, O1% K, 198. 218

gppazov, Refat F. 44

Apollo Applications Program (NASA). 714: see also Skylab

Apollo program/spaceship (NASA), 383,384. 396,397, 398.

399, 402, 405. 406, 408, 409, 444. 446, 47t, 475, 482.

483, 49L 499. 502, 539, 544, 550. 553, 554, 562. 595,

607. 614, 64h 646, 655, 661, 662, 668, 712. 736, 739,

741, 742, 750, 757. 772. 779, 827, 853, 857, 859: and

financial comparison with N I-L3, 838: and Soviet comparison with [una sample return missions. 740

Apollo I fire, 554, 562,629 65 h 658

Apollo 4 mission, 643,644

Apollo 5 mission, 734

Apollo 7 mission, 658 660, 663

Apollo 8 mission, 667, 674, 693,701,713. 716: and decision

on, 662-63: and Soviet response to, 665-68, 674-678,

687, 746, 754

Apollo 9 mission, 684. 734

Apollo 10 mission, 684, 686, 687

Apollo II mission, 687. 688, 693, 694 96, 699, 714, 729,

733, Z37, 740. 750. 765,788,856: and Soviet response to,

696-97, 703

Apollo 12 mission, 729, 740

Apollo 15 mission, 763

Apollo 16 mission. 793. 804

Apollo 17 mission, 793,806

Apollo-Soyuz Experimental Flight (EPAS}, see Apollo-Soyuz

Test Project

Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), 43. 814, 848: and crews

for, 814 15: and origins of. 793-94: and test flights for,

826

Argon-I I computer. 558,614

Argon 12A computer, 594

Armenian Academy of Sciences. 778, 817

Armstrong, Neil A., 694, 695,696. 699,713, 724

Arsenal Machine Building Plant. 648, 733, 754

artificial gravity experiments, see IT project

Artyukhin, Yuriy, 811

Arzamas-t6, 120

AS-203 Apollo mission, 734

ASA-34R camera, 593

Atlas booster. 846

Atlas ICBM 80

Atlet spacesuit. 767

atomic bomb development. 36.51, 86

Avduyevskiy, Vsevolod S, 189, 313

_tuiation Week & Space Technology journal. 552

Azov Machine Building Plant, 769

B-29 bomber, 36

B-52A bomber, 600

Babakin, Georgiy N, 437-38, 528, 533, 534, 547, 548 640,

668, 675, 679, 687, 688, 737, 738. 753. 782, 848: and

background of, 530: and death of, 795-96: and development of Ye-8-5 lunar sample return spaceship, 641-43:

and Luna 15 mission, 694-96: and Mars sample return,

753 54

Babiychuk. Aleksandr N, 425

Bakurin, 28

Balanina, Mariya N., II

Barani training device. 248

Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Engine Building see

TslAM

Bardin, Ivan E, 145

Barmin. Vladimir R, 29, 35, 46, 4[. 132, 134, 136, 155, 156,

159 170, 177, 192, 201, 254, 272, 289, 293, 330, 331,

356, 393. 429, 459, 480. 504 538, 545. 550, 560, 563,

61 h 619, 647. 692, 704, 755, 851: and background of.

5491 and becomes Academician, 519-20: and death of,

846: and gets first Hero of Socialist Labor, 121: and gets

second Hero of Socialist Labor, 284: and Long Duration

Lunar Base. 764-66

Baryshev. Vladimir M. 300

Bashkin, Yevgeniy V, 813

Batitskiy, Pavel F, 790

Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School, 3. 85. 127, 183.

189

Baykonur Cosmodrome, 512, 574, 579, 62 h 625, 629. 655,

658, 659. 665, 680, 68h 688. 699, 700, 703, 705. 723,

772. 773, 805, 8t0, 851: and creation of name, 284: see

also Tyura-Tam

Bazhinov. Igor K., 85, 139, 140

Belka (dog), 253

Belov, Nikolay R, 183, 186

Belyayev. Pavel I, 246. 247, 421. 461, 506, 512. 55h 609,

620, 7t7: and background of, 451-52: and Voskhod 2

mission, 454 60

genderov, Vladimir N_ 415

geregovoy, Georgiy T., 522, 524, 622, 629, 630, 674, 693,

724: and Soyuz 213 mission, 657-62

Bereznyak, Aleksandr Ya . IL 19, 29, 31

981
982

Beriya. Lavrentiy R. 12, 14, 22. 23, 36, 3L 38, 42. 53. 88,

I09-12, 117. 119, 123, 135, 140, 151, 176. 258.430,503,

704-05

Beriya, Sergey L. 227

Berkut spacesult. 450-5 I. 509

Bezhitsa tracking ship, 534

Bezverbiy, Vitally K. 676

BI-I rocket-plane, 17, 19

Biofizpribor Special Design Bureau, see SKB Biofizpribor

Bios I biosphere. 746

Biryuzov. Sergey S. 369,373,327, 379. 380

Bisnovat, Matus R, 836

Bison-A bomber, see M 4 bomber

Blagonravov, Anatoliy A, 65.67-69, 8L 88. 93.95.96. 132.

148. 169. 283,412, 685, 697

Blass, loser, 30.45, 63

Bleicherode, 28, 30.3 I, 40

Blok g stage of LK-I project, 501,502, 503

Blok D stage of N I and Proton, 327, 328,483.49 I, 492.493,

495-96,530. 532,562,563. 638, 640. 642,648,650, 654,

681. 688,733, 737, 739,742. 748.82t, 825: and accident

with. 62 I: and description of, 487-88: and Earth orbit test

of, 734: and ground firings of, 639: and LI Zond project.

501-06. 556-59, 663: and summary of flights in

1967-70, 738

Blok DM stage of NI, 757. 760,761

Blok I stage of N i, 492. 493,494.495,497, 548

Blok R stage of N I, 483. 548 649,757, 759

Blok S stage of N I. 483,649,687, 750. 757, 758. 759

Blok S_, stage of N I. 758

BlokS, stageof NI. 757 61. 802

Blok V stage of N I. 483. 485

Blok Ye stage of N I. 492 493. 497. 548. 639. 733. 735-36:

and first ground firing of. 684

Blokhin. Yuriy D, 601,835

Bobik (dog), 95

Bogomo/ov, Akeksey F 155. 155, t57. 172, 201, 254, 272,

289, 356, 359.42 I, 422,820

Boguslavskiy. Yevgeniy Ya, 28.35, 78, I I0

Bolkhovitmov, Viktor F. I 7. 18, 20, 2 I. 48.5 I. 200, 46 I. 848

Bolshevo, 39, 49, 85, 263. 535,618

Bolshoy. Amos A, 263. 453, 535

Bolshoye koltso lunar base. 764

bombers, strategic. 126, 128

Bondarenko. Valentin V. 246: and death of. 266

Bondaryuk, Mark M, 48, 53, 107, 126. t27, 318

BOR-I spaceplane. 606,787-88, 790

BOR-2 spaceplane. 606, 789, 790

BOR-3 spaceplane, 606, 789, 790

BOR-4 spaceplane, 789. 841

Borisenko. ivan 155

Borisenko. Mikhafl I. 78

Borman, Frank, 51 I, 662. 667, 674,696: and visit to Moscow,

693

Borodin, Sergey A, 490

Borouichi ship, 656

Borovkov. Aleksey A. 2 I

Bozhko Andrey N. 746

Bredt. Irene. 32

Brezflnev, Leonid I, 177. 178, 179, 215, 218-19, 270. 281,

282, 367, 385, 404, 406. 408. 412, 418, 426, 427. 428,

432. 434, 436, 437, 459. 499. 513, 518, 552, 555, 577,

579. 587, 590, 598, 600,627, 628, 644. 658. 674. 686-87,

692. 701. 703. 705. 709. 737, 758, 787, 790, 810, 813.

830, 834, 846, 858: and firing of Mishin, 831: and gets

second Hero of Socialist Labor, 284; and origins of Buran,

835: and space station speech in 1969. 711-13, 714-15:

and Voskhod 2 mission, 456

Brykov. A V.. 85

Budker. Andrey I., 635

Budnik. Vasiliy S.. 29.35.42.43.50.91.97. 113. I14, 492

Bugayskiy, Viktor N, 646. 806: and background of, 721: and

space station decision in 1969. 718-22

Bugrov. Vladimir N, 566. 567

Bulganin. Nikolay A. II0. II 7. 119, 12 I, 149, 156

Bulychev, Ivan. 155

Buran cruise missile. 127, 130 224, 225,318. 718

Buran space shuttle, 842, 849, 850. 851 : and end of proJect

840-4 I: and origins of, 835-36,837

Bureau for the Investigation of Reactive Engines and Reactive

Flight. 4

Burnazyan, Avetik I, 414. 417, 525,567, 647

Burya cruise missile, 126, 127, 130. 300. 318: and flights of,

223-24

Bushuyev, Konstantin D., 17, 19.43, 50, 59, 63, 70. 73, 85,

94. 121, 133, 141. 151, t55. 163, 190, 195, t99,254, 260,

264,291. 327, 336, 338-40, 355. 359,365,381,391. 397,

472, 479. 481. 488, 518, 572. 576, 578. 580, 588, 634,

636, 644. 645, 665. 769, 783. 785, 809. 827: and back

ground of, 152,461-62: and death of, 848: and gets Hero

of Socialist Labor, 177; and name revealed, 794; and power

struggle in TsKBEM. 828: and space station deosion in

1969, 717-22

Butoma, Boris Ye., 269

Buylov, Boris G., 93

Oykov, Yuriy S. 201. 272, 274, 47t

Bykovskiy, Valentin F.. 246. 247. 248, 249. 261. 352. 353,

356, 363, 364, 381, 397, 551, 568, 577. 615, 620. 622

653, 655. 657. 667. 678, 779, 853; and lunar program

training, 684: and Soyuz I, 577-80. 588: and Vostok 5t6

mission, 365-73

Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, 766,818

Cameron, Alexander M, 32

Cape Canaveral. 263

Cape Kennedy, 643. 644,667

Centaur upper stage, 317, 389. 759

Central Artillery Design Bureau, see TsAKB

Central Commission for Aviation Medicine, 244

Central Directorate of Space Assets. see TsLJKOS

Central Intelligence Agency, see CIA

Central Planning Institute No 3 I. see TsPI-31

Central ScientifioResearch Aviation Hospital, 244, 245, 247.

508. 567, 623

Central Scientific Research institute No 58, see TsNIF58

CHRLLENGE TO AI_POLLO
INDEX

Central Scientific-Research Institute of Machine Building, see

TsNllMash

Cernan, Eugene, 526

Chaffee, Roger B., 562

Charm, A. I. 78

Chayka (dog), 252

Chayka orientation system. 200, 226, 25 t

Chechulin, Petr, 102

Chekunov, Boris S., 166, 167

Chelomey, Vladimir N,. 227-36. 239, 287, 289, 313. 314.

320,322-24,330, 333-45. 347, 349. 379, 395,396,400,

402. 406 08,429,432,463,473. 480,487. 512. 520, 530,

548, 556, 560, 599, 600l 601, 602, 613, 616. 619, 62t,

633, 635, 642, 679, 687. 762, 766, 786, 791, 804. 825,

828. 836,831, 840,852; and Aelita Mars project, 750 54:

and agreement with Mishin on space station, 808-09: and

Almaz ItSaiyut 2 mission, 810-12: and becomes

Academician, 313; and "big space plan," 241-42: and

"civil war" over missiles. 78?; and early life. 21: and early

work, 21-22: and end of life, 841-43: and gets Hero of

Socialist Labor. 229: and in trouble after fall of

Khrushchev, 436-46: and Li launches in early 1967,

561-64; and launch of Potet-I, 393-94: and LK-I circumlunar program, 443-46.497-502: and LKS proposal. 835;

and Operation Kedr. 418-21 : and opinion of Korolev, 843:

and origins of Almaz program. 590-96: and personality of,

227-28,427: and problems with Proton rocket. 738-39:

and relationship with Khrushchev. 314: and relationship

with Korolev, 234. 394: and relationship with Ustinov,

233, 419-20. 787: and rise of in early 1960s, 299-314:

and space station decision in 1969, 716-22; and supported by Minister gfanasyev, 787: and UR/OOILK 700 program. 538-46, 645-46

Cheremukhin, gleksey M, 14

Chernenko, Konstantin, 432,846

Chemigovskiy, Vladimir N., 93

Chernushka (dog), 265

Chernyakov, Nauru S. 300

Chernyshov, Nikolay G., 64, 67

Chertok. Boris Ye, 17, 19, 26-31. 35, 44. 57. 58. 90. II0,

113, 121. }33,238,252,272,327. 340. 391,397, 417, 463.

465. 475, 479, 514, 515, 518. 537, 562. 571, 572, 582.

584. 589, 618, 631, 634, 644, 645. 675, 676. 681, 80h

809, 821, 827, 838; and background of, 462; and fourth

NI launch, 822-23: and latter-day work. 848-49: and

power struggle in TsKg[M 828: and space station decision in 1969, 717-22

Chibis suit. 767. 780

Chief Artillery Directorate, see GAU

Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments, see GLIRVO

Chief Directorate of Space Assets, see GLIKOS

Chief Directorate of Special Construction, 134-35

Chief Operations and Control Group (GOGU), 453, 535-38,

572. 582. 584,616,625,656. 659,775, 781,811

China, 290

Chizhevskiy Vladimir A, 14

Chizhikov, Semyon G,, 29

Chukotka tracking ship. 263

Churchill, Winston, 18.8?

CIA, 84, 205, 374, 432, 550-51, 641, 662, 687, 708, 709.

784.79 l,792-93

circumlunar projects, early conceptions of, 337-45,395-96

Clark, Evert, 550

Collins. Michael, 609. 694

Command-Measurement Complex. see KIK

Commission for the investigation of the Upper Atmosphere,

69.96

Commission for the Promotion of Interplanetary Flights, 6 I0

Commission for the Study of the Stratosphere, 56, 69

Committee for State Security, see KGB

!

Coordination-Computation Center, at Nil 4. 162. 167: and at

TsNIIMash, 618. 655

CORONA program, 251. 793

cosmonauts, selection of 1960 batch, 243-46: and disreputable behavior of. 295; and from USSR Academy of

Sciences, 623-24: and journalist cosmonauts. 624; and

political "correctness" of, 4t6-17, 817; and selection of

civilians, 565-69: and training for Moon program, 561,

650-51,657, 684-85

Cosmonaut Maneuvering Motion Unit (LIPMK). 509, 526-27

Cosmonaut Training Center, 246, 352. 353, 365, 374, 383.

415, 451. 513. 561, 623. 627. 650, 667, 684, 693, 723,

724, 728. 729, 777, 786, 796: and expansion of, 375-76:

and first civilian cosmonauts, 566-69: first Western visit

to, 792: and formation of, 245

Council for the Problems of Mastering the Moon, 553,644

Council of Chief Designers, 47, 50, 62, 90.92, 141, 148, 169,

179. 188, 193, 200, 201, 210. 217, 241, 250, 254, 336,

367. 503. 505, 519, 554, 560, 581, 594, 632, 675, 677,

704, 705, 754, 772, 791, 823, 833, 841: and approval of

piloted project, 192: and as innovative institution.

857-58: and fate of members, 846: and style of work, 289

Council of Defense, 322,598

Crimea, 292. 413,422,536, 642. 777

Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, 767

cruise missiles, early development of. 105-07, 125-27

Cuba, 295,535, 547

Cuxhaven. 32.34.40

Czechoslovakia. 31, 37. 295, 412. 587

D-I missile, 16-17

D-2 engine, 76, 99

D 2 missile. 16-17

Dal anti aircraft missile system, 223-24

Dal lunar base, 164

Damka (dog), 186

Darevskiy, Sergey G., 467. 727

Debica (Poland). 18, 21

Defense Industries Department, of the Central Committee.

205,233. 271-72,300, 515. 553. 568,675

Delta booster, 846

Delta navigation system, 809

Dementyev, Petr V., i6, 19, 20, 21,222,233,235,269,379,

420, 547. 613, 631, 647, 823

Detain, Lev. 522,811

Denezhkin, Igor I. 135

983
984

Department of Applied Mathematics in the V A Steklov

Mathematics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

see OPM MIAN

Design Bureau No 7. see KB-7

Design Bureau of Chemical Automation. 592.615. 752,825:

see also OKB I54

Design Bureau of Chemical Machine Building, 548. 557, 649.

768. 795: see also OKB 2

Design Bureau of General Machine Building, 549, 764; see

also GSKB SpetsMash

Design Bureau o[ Power Machine Budding 613, 79(: see also

OKB-456

Design Bureau of Precision Machine Building, 594. 596: see

also OKB- 12

Design Bureau Olimpiya, 35, 37

Dezik (dog} 95, 96

Directorate of the Commander of Reactive Armaments, 2 _l

Directorate of the Deputy Commander of Artillery. 124

Discoverer 13 mission. 253

Discoverer program. 25 I

Dnepropetrovsk 97, 113, 1t4. 164, 177,285,43i 434

Dobrovolskiy. Georgiy T. 613,799,818: and becomes primary crew for Soyuz I l, 776-77: and reconstruction of Soyuz

II accident, 783 84: andSoyuz II mission, 777-81,785:

and training for Satyut/DOS h 772

Dobrynin, Anatoliy, 693

dogs in space, 92-97

DOK, see Engine Orientation Complex, 648

Dolgopotov, Gennadiy A 566, 567

Dolgov, Petr I, 198

Dotmsk tracking ship, 263. 703

Dornberger, Walter, 18

Dorofeyev. Boris A 681. 756. 819. 822,838: and fired from

TsKBEM. 833; and power struggle in TsKBEM. 828

DOS space station. 729, 816, 817. 828: and conflict over two

docking ports_ 829: and design of, 766-69: and DOS-2

mission, 804 06: and DOS-3 mission, 813-14, 815: and

first crews for, 770: and future plans tor. 769-70: and

improved DOS changes, 809 I0: and initial schedule [or,

771 72: and launch of DOS-I. 773-74; and modernized

variants in 1973-74 826-27: and origins of, 713 22: and

relationship to MKBS, 800: and schedule coordinated with

Almaz, 808-09: and work in 1970s and 1980s. 839-40:

see also Sdtyut stabons

DOS 7K space station complex, 719, 769, 771. 782, 794,

804: see also DOS and Sulyut space stations

DOS A station, 770

DOS-N station. 770

Dryden, Hugh L. 399

Dryden Flight Research Center, 599

Dubna Machine Building Plant, 601

Durant, Fred C,. 146

Dushkin. Leomd S 48, 53

Dymshits, Verfiamin E. 390

Dyna Soar spaceplane, 220, 225, 306, 312 590. 599, 601,

606, 607

Dzerdzyevskiy g 70

Dzerzhinsk G Military Academy, /35

Eidis, Arkadiy I., 437

Eisenhower. Dwight D, 146. 147, 151, 193. 237

EKR cruise missile, 106. IO7, 125, 126

Elbrus couches, 41 l, 42 I

Elektron satellite, 381

Energiya booster, 492,836,837. 840-4 h 849,850, 851

Energiya Rocket-Space Corporation, see RKK Energiya

Energiya Scientific-P[oduction Association, see NPO Energiya

Eneyev. Timur M., 103, 142. 189

Engine Operation Control system, see KORD system

Engine Orientation Complex (DOK), 648, 733

EPOS spaceplane testbed, 605-07. 787 90: see also Spiral

ERA instrument. 768, 779

EU-t5 test stand, 638

ELl 16 test stand, 638

EU-2z test stand, 638

EU-28 test stand, 638

EU-29 test stand. 638

Experimental Design Bureau of the Lavochkin State Union

Machine Building Plant. see OKB-30I

Experimental Design Bureau of the Moscow Power Institute.

see OKB MEI

Experimental Machine Building Plant {of Myasishchev). 836

Experimental Machine Building Plant (of TsKBEM), 637. 7t5.

83 I: see also Plant No 88

Explorer I satellite 83, 174

l'aget, Maxim A,, 193

Fakel experiment, 707

Fartushniy, Vladimir G, 623,702

Eatkullin, Mars N, 623

Faulstich (German scientist). 82

l_edorov, Petr I, 17-19, 21

Fedorov. Yevgeniy, 24/

Fedoseev, Piotr. 313

FEK emulsion chamber, 778

FEK 7A camera, 767

Feodosiya testing ground, 413,416. 422. 473,561,569,624

Feoktistov, Konstantin R, 194, 198,252,254. 264. 273,275.

334-38,345. 359. 422. 477, 478. 504,507. 547. 581,609,

693, 745, 746. 770, 785, 809: and design of first piloted

spaceship, 188 93: and design of Voskhod, 409: and

power struggle in TsKBEM, 828: and role in space stahon

decision, 714, 717: and selection for Voskhod mJsslon

415-18: and Voskhod (I) mission. 423-26

FGB module, 807, 840, 843

Ei 103 German cruise missile, 18, 19-20.21, 22.24-26,227

228

RAN institute, 48, 49, 56. 767

FIAR-I. 70

Filatev. Valentin I, 246, 247, 374-75

Fi{ipchenko, Anatoliy V. 804: and Soyuz 6t718 mission,

705- t I

Finogeyev. Vladlen R, 676

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
|NDEX

FirstChiefDirectorateftheUSSRCouncilofMinisters,III

Flerov,PetrV.198,412.413

Fletcher,JamesC,765

FlightControlCenter(TsUP)atKaliningrad,618

Floreyskiy,28

Flonanskiy.MikhailS,336

Fotoncommunicationssystem,547

FourthDirectoratefChiefArtilleryDirectorate,39,61,124

FractionalOrbitalBombardmentSystem(FOBS),482

FreonfirextinguishersystemForNh732

Frolov, Yevgeniy A, 409, 42 I

Frunze Central ,qirfield, 245

Functional Cargo Block (FGB). see FGB module

funding of Soviet space program 552-53, 838: and public

displeasure with, 794

G I German missile, 58, 59.60, 61, 63, 72, 73, 80, 81.83

G-IM German missile, 81

G-2 German missile, 80

G-3 German missile, 81-82

G 4 German missile, 81, 82

G-5 German missile, 81, 82

Gagann, yuny/q, 246, 24z, 249. 271, 273. 287, 290. 291,

295, 312, 314, 337, 343. 350 351, 353. 355, 356. 359,

365,370, 372,374,383,396,406,413, 421-23, 45 i, 454.

458, 461. 513. 551, 568. 575, 577 579, 607, 616. 619,

622, 625, 669, /05. 772, 773, 792, 840, 852. 856 858,

859: and background. 261-62: and death of, 627-29: and

moves to desk job, 375: and postflight press conference,

283; and selection for first spaceflight, 271 72: and Soyuz

I mission, 577, 579, 580, 581, 584. 588: and Vostok (I)

mission, 276-82: and Vostok (I) mission preparations.

274-76; and work in 1960s, 568-69,626-27

Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. see Cosmonaut Training

Center

Galkovskiy, Aleksandr, 140

Gallay, Mark L, 248,264, 271, 275

Gas Dynamics Laboratory, see GDL

Garland. Kenneth. 695

GALl. 8, 19, 25, 29, 36, 54, 55, 6h 87, 91, 124, 211

Gaydukov, Lev M. 20, 29.30, 33.34.37. 39.40.42. I 16

Gazenko, Oleg G, 173. 291. 376

GDL. 6-7, 8, 98

Gemini program (N_qS_qL 383 86,395,443,447, 453, 5/2.

513,522,525,526, 553. 565,577, 668

Gemini-B spaceship, 590, 595

Gemini III mission, 460

Gemini IV mission, 386, 526

Gemini V mission, 510

Gemini VI mission, 51 I

Gemini Vll mission 510,511,522. 526,702. 723,727

Gemini VIII mission. 674

Gemini IX mission, 526

Gemini XI mission. 526

Genin. Abram M, 183. 271. 376

GeoFIAN institute, 70, 7 h 18 I

Geofizika Design Bureau. 618

Geophys<al Institute of the Academy of Sciences, see

GeoFIAN institute

German scientists in the USSR, 57 63.80-84

Germany, 3, 18. 367, 380: and recovery mission in 1945-46,

25-37, 40-42. 212,364. 461, 570,704, 838. 848

Gilruth, Robert R. 193

GIRD, 4 7, 8, 15, 28, 30, 44, 45, 48, 68, 76.90, 117, 267-68,

412

Gitelzon, Iosif I, 746

Gladkiy, V_ktor F, 44

Glenn. John H, Jr. 296,354,424

Glennan. T Keith, 192

Gliding Space Apparatus, see PKA

Globus instrument. I96,467

Glushko, Valentin P, 6-7. 8, 10 12. 22, 34, 46, 47, 57. 76,

98, I00, IOI, 114-16, 127, 129, 141, 147, 150, 155, t56,

159. 165, 166. 177, 179, [92. 199,201. 224. 237-39,242.

254,258, 272,275,287. 289,301, 3i9 21,328-330,335,

347, 365, 387, 388, 390, 429, 433, 434 475, 479. 480,

483. 504, 510 512. 519, 520, 538, 541, 545. 546, 549,

563, 613, 649, 687, 704 763 783, 786. 792. 836. 837.

838,841. 842. 843,846,848. 852,853,858: and arrest of,

IL 13: and at OKBSD in Kazan, 16: and becomes

Academiciam 1771 and becomes head of NPO Energiya,

830-32: and conflict over R-9 and R 16 ICBMs, 214 19:

and conflicts with Korolev, I08-09, 130. 202, 214-19,

237-38. 397-98: and continuing criticisms of NI. 548:

and death o[, 851: and development of UR-500 Proton

booster, 302-04: and early discussions on N I engines.

314-18: and engine development in early 1970s, 824 25:

and gets first Hero of Socialist Labor 12 I: and gets second

Hero of Socialist Labor, 284: and in Germany, 30-32.

34-37: and Korolev's memory in later years, 849-51; and

MTKVP proposal, 835: and name publicly revealed, 791:

and new booster and Moon base proposals in 1974, 834:

and nuclear rocket engines, 318: and personality of, 850:

and reaction to Koroiev's death, 515: and rehabilitation for

"crimes," 176: and secrecy, 169-70, 373-74: and support

of UR 700, 646-47: and suspends N I proJect, 832: and

UR 70OM, 752

Goddard, Robert H, I 4

GOGU, see Chief Operations and Control Group

Golovanov, Yaroslav K, 272, 412, 46h 624, 176. 797, 838,

852

Gonor, Lev R., 39, 40, 43 58, 81.90: and death o[. 91

Gorbachev, Mikhail S. 432,844 846, 85

Gorbatko, ViktorM 246 247,451. 509, 567, 577, 588, 631.

717 725; and Soyuz 6/7/8 mission, 705-I I

Gorodomtya Island, 45, 50, 53, 60.73, 80-82

Goryunov, 28

Gosplan, 123,431. 654. 845

GR-I orbital bombardment system (Chelomey), 313

GR I orbital bombardment system (Korolev), 321-22, 323,

327, 328. 381. 387, 388. 392,483,486. 488: and approval

of, 33 I: and problems in development of, 389-90, 482

GR 2 orbital bombardment system, 305. 313

Grechko, kndrey A. 377, 378,380,430, 555. 786, 787, 806,

842,844: and Spiral program, 789 90: and suspends N I

project, 832

985
986

Grechko, Georgly M. 154. 158 166, 566,567, 645,804, 806

Grif attitude control sensor. 252

Grigorovich Dmitriy P. 3

Grigoryev, Mikhail G, 72.81_

Grishin, Lev A, 257

Grissom, Virgil I (Gus). 295,351,562

Grizodubova. Vatentina S. 12

Gromov. Mikhail M, 12

Gromov Flight Research Institute, 248. 249. 261. 309. 472,

561. 566 588, 624, 650, 684, 685, 78L 789: and Spiral

spaceplane program. 599

Grottrup, Helmut, 30.35, 42, 45.55.58. 59.60, 63, 80, 8L

83

Grottrup. Irmgard, 82

ground communications network, see KIK

Group for Study of Reactive Motion, see GIRD

Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, 397

GSKB SpetsMash, 46, 132, 137, 201,331,393,429,480. 549:

see also Design Bureau of General Machine Building

GTsP-4.54. ?3. 133 see also Kapustin Yar launch range

Gubanov. Boris I. 492

Gubarev, Aleksey A, 636. 806

Gubenko. Yevgemy S, 536

Guinea 535

GLJKOS 7351 and formation o[. 787: see also TsUKOS

GULag, 13. 14.23.34.41,200, 215,549

Gulyayev. Rudolf A, 623

Gurko Oleg V. 85. I40

Gurovskiy NikolayN. 244 29t. 376

GURVO, 211-12,284. 377 380. 389

Gurzut, Grigor, 81 ?

Gusev. Leonid, 356

Hagerty, James C 146

Hamburg, 82

Hawafi-Viktoria radio control system, 78

Heavy Interplanetary Automatic Ship, see 5NM Mars sample

return project

Heavy Interplanetary Ship. see TMK

Heavy Orbltai Station, see TOS

heavy hft boosters, early conceptions of. 236-40

Hermes Project 57

Hiroshima, 36

Hitler. Adolf, 23 24 367

HI_ I0 lifting body 599

Hoch johannes 30.55 56.58,63,72,82

Hochmuth M, 32

Holloway David. 858

Hungary'. 31. 295 551 620. 685

Hypersonic Booster-Aircraft (GSR) [or Spiral, 789

Iceland 295

Igla radar system, 340. 469-7 I, 492,580. 581. 625,639,659.

661. 701. 708, 71 h 766, 769, 772. 774. 771, 804

IGY, see International Geophysical Year

II 2 aircraft. 72 l

II 4 aircraft, 263

11-14 aircraft. 271. 362

11-18 aircraft, 585

Ificheusk tracking ship, 263, 534

liyin, 674

Ilyushin, Sergey V, 218. 521. 721

IMBP, see Institute o{ Biomedical Problems

Impuls instrument, 767

India 295,742,847

indian Ocean. 559. 61 h 654. 655. 656, 657. 664, 726, 742.

755, 8L4

Indian Space Research Organization. 847

Institute Berlin, 3l, 35, 46

Institute for Biomedical Problems (IMBP). 472. 508 51 I, 523,

524. 565, 749, 773, 776: and formation of, 376

institute Nordhausen, 35

Institute of Applied Geophysics, 187

Institute of Applied Mathematics, 537, 624, 64 I, 835

Institute of Atomic Energy. 317

Institute of Automation and Heat Technology. 415

Institute of Aviation (and Space) Medicine, 92, 93, 94, 173,

183. 243-45. 266, 271, 309, 352, 365 375 76, 4t4-15

508, 614. 806

Institute of Nuclear Physics, 635. 790, 791

Institute of Radio-technology. 164

Institute of Space Research, 586, 623, 770, 848: and forma

tion of. 136

Institute of Telemechanics and Automation. 415, 507

Institute of Terrestnal Magnetism, Ionosphere. and Radio

Wave Propagation, 624

Institute of Theoretical and Jqpptied Mechanics, 602. 789

Institute Rabe, 28 31, 34, 35

intelligence information on Soviet space program, see US

intelligence on Soviet missile and space programs

intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). early development

of, 74-75, 89, 97-98, 102-09, 128-33

Interdepartmental Commission For the Coordination and

Control of Work in the Field of Organization and

Accomplishment of Interplanetary Communications, 145,

169, 374

Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council of the USSR

Academy of Sciences, 209, 287, 290 347 349,381, 383,

397. 473, 479. 498. 519. 532,849: and formation of, 210

Interkosmos agency, 794

International Astronautical Federation OAF) 146_ 661

international cooperabon, Soviets with NASA. 793 94

International Geophysical Year (IGY), 145-48, 154 155, 160.

166, 250. 374.71)

International Space Station (ISS), 126, 248, 80Z, 840 844

Iosiiyan, Andronik I. 487. 594

tS satellite, 235,242,304. 312, 394,419_ 473,540, 598

Isayev, AlekseyM.. 17. _9,20,25,28,29.3/,48 51,63,98,

I01 102. 130, t99 200. 217. 254, 272, 315, 317 356

388, 429. 483. 495, 519. 543, 545. 548, 557, 649, 757

759, 768, 847: and death of, 795: and gets Hero of

Socialist Labor, 12_

Ishlinskiy. Aleksandr Yu. 156, 365

Iskhup ground tracking station. 162,262

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
INDEX

IT artificial gravity project, 507-08, 522. 527

ITSK spectrometer, 767

Ivanov, Pavel I., 48, 66, 68

Ivanovskiy, Oleg G, 163, 166,274, 530, 741

Ivashutin, Petr h, 268

Ivensen, Pavel A. 302

Izotov, Sergey, 543

[zvestdya newspaper, 266,852,853

)affke. Heinz 81.83

Jodreli Bank radio telescopes, 529,655

Johnson, Lyndon B. 237, 296. 312, 590

jupiter missile. 81

Jupiter C missile, 153, 166

K

Kaganovich, Lazar M, 12t

Kalina instrument, 767

Kaliningrad, 38.40, 41, 43.45, 50.57, 60.63, 7h 73, 81, 82.

89, IOh IO7, 115, 153, 172, 195, 225,315, 351,421, 46h

462,463,466.5OI. 52I, 53 I. 537. 61 t. 618 631. 649, ?15,

7t8, 795. 831

Kalmykov, Valeriy. 165,269: and gets Hero of Socialist Labor.

284

Kama stations. 156

Kamanin, Nikolay P. 247, 249, 261. 262,264, 266,267, 269,

273. 274, 276, 29h 294, 195. 312 352, 354. 364, 374,

375,378,384,403,42h422.508-I0,511 512,513,522.

525, 545. 552. 553, 555, 560, 561. 563, 571, 573. 598,

611-12,615. 616 619,622,625,626,630, 63h 634,646,

647, 650 651. 653, 655. 657, 658. 659. 665. 667. 668.

669. 675 679, 686. 693. 701. 703, 762, 770, 771, 772.

786: and background of, 245-46: and crew change on

Soyuz lh 776-77: and death of, 797: and death of

Gagarin, 627-29: and diaries of, 852 53: and personality

of. 797: and promotions. 376: and retirement oL 796. 804:

and selection of civilian cosmonauts, 566 69: and selection ol Gagarin. 271-72: and selection of Voskhod crew,

416-18; and Soyuz I mission, 576 90: and Soyuz 9 mission. 723-29; and Soyuz I I mission, 780 781, 783, 784:

and Voskhod (I) mission. 423-26: and Voskhod 2 mission. 447, 452, 454. 459-60: and Vostok 3/4 mission,

353-6t: and women cosmonaut training, 362

Kamchatka peninsula, 157, 160, 167, 177, 224

Kamynin, Sergey S. 103

Kapitsa, Petr L, 141

Kapustin Yar launch range, 54.55, 56, 60-63, 70-72, 73, 89.

95, I00 t01, 116 119, 120_ 133, 135, 136, 138. 149, 153,

159 164. t8t, 186.2¢2, 223,227-30, 263,274, 275, 3¢0.

463, 503. 538, 570. 574, 614: see also GTsP 4

Karaganda, 322,630, 661. 672,710 11 h 728, 775

Karas, Andrey G., 263. 435, 634, 655, 659, 724, 755, 786,

787. 800. 81 I, 812

Kardan ground test system, 47 I

Karpov. Yevgeniy A, 244-46. 241. 249, 273, 274, 29h 355,

365. 373

Kartashov, gnatoliy X. 246, 249

Kartukov, Ivan I, 196, 410, 469,472

Kasho, gleksandr S., 44,202

Kaskad orientation system, 809

Kaspiy suit backpack, 490

Kasyan Ivanl, 183

Katys, Georgiy P, 507, 510, 522, 623, 624: and selection for

Voskhod, 415-18

Katyusha rockets, 17, 19, 20, 25, 29, 46, 49, 54. 549

Kazakhstan, 134, 158, 253, 292, 372, 453 558, 611, 619,

630,660, 661,669. 672, 700. 710, 740, 755,775

KB-L 222 309, 3J4

KB718

KB-Ih 116, 128

KB-82,836

KB-90. 836

KB 8urevestnik, 836, 837

KB EnergoMash, 752, 791 824-25; and becomes part of

NPO Energiya, 830-31: see also OKB-456

KB Molniya. 836,837: see also OKB-4

KB Nauka, 490, 56l: see also OK8-124

KB Salyut. 840. 842, 843: see also OKB 23 and TsKBM

Branch No I

KB Saturn, 649, 759: see also OKB 165

KB Trud, 638. 752: and modernization ot N I engines,

731-32: see also OKB-276

KB Yuzhnoye, 639, T34. 760, 796,814: and Aelita Mars pro

ject. 750; see also OKB-586

KB Zvezda, 490, 527, 561,640. 746, 775,785; see also Plant

No 918

Kegostrou tracking ship, 534

Keldysh, Mstislav V, 48, 51. 52, 53, 69. 75, 79, 102, 103

107. 125, 127. 130, t33. 141, 142, 147. 148, 150-52. 155,

;56, 165-67, 177, 187, 189, 193, 225. 237. 241. 243, 251,

258, 264. 269, 272, 274. 290, 291, 293, 317, 318. 320,

326, 328, 330. 344, 347, 352-54,359, 260, 364-66. 373,

376, 389, 396. 397, 399, 436, 446, 457, 459, 460, 477,

478, 479. 501. 508, 519, 532. 536, 538. 539, 546, 560,

567, 583, 585. 587, 590. 623, 624, 632, 644, 659, 661

758. 790, 819, 821: and becomes President of USSR

Academy of Sciences, 287; and death of. 849: and formation of OKB 52, 228: and gets second Hero of Socialist

tabor, 284; and origins of Buran. 835-36: and proposals

for reorganization of space industry, 205-06, 208-09: and

response to Apollo 8 627-78: and role in ASTP, 793-94:

and saves Chelomey, 438 40: and selection of Voskhod

crew 414 18: and Soyuz II accident investigation.

782-85: and space station announcements in 1969,

712_t3: and termination of original 1_3 project, 761-64:

and use of secrecy, 169

Kemurdzhian, Aleksandr L 529, 530

Kennedy, john f,, 296, 297, 309, 3fi' 3(3 333, 337, 396,

400, 40 h 404. 408,497, 554, 65 h 653,694, 71 h 782. 857

Kennedy Space Center, 643

Kerimov. Kerim A 284, 459. 629, 63l, 632, 634. 647, 671,

701, 724, 727 763. 773 781,805 813: and appointment

as Chairman of State Commission for Soyuz. 570: and

appointment as Chief of Third Directorate of GURVO,

212: and appointment as Chief of TsUKOS_ 380; and crew

987
988

change onSoyuz Ih 776-77: and demotionof 833: and

latter day work, 845: and Soyuz precursor missions,

571-76: and Soyuz I mission, 576 90

KFg 21 camera, 779

KGB, 166,268 453,568, 587. 814,852

Khachaturyan. gram, [ 6

Kharchev, Vasiliy I. 29

Kharkov. 4, 257

Kheyhts. N g.300

Khidrin. I. 621

Khilov training device. 248

Khlmkl. 17, 30. 46, 76. 125, 300. 315, 319, 388 437. 530

831

Khlebtsevich, Yu S. 529

Khomyakov. Mikhail S 163

l<hristianovich. Sergey A, 107, 125,222

Khrunichev Machine Building Plant 299-300. 305. 438-39,

539 769 77{ 806, 810. 813, 827. 844: and space station

decision in 1969, 718-22: see also Plant No 23

Khrunichev State Space Scientific-Production Center, 126

462 840. 843

Khluno_, Ye_gemy V 246 24Z, 26h 363. 364 45 h 454,509.

567. 568 577, 579 583. 588. 632,684, 770: and selection

for Soyu/ 4!5 630 31: and Soyuz 4/5 mission. 669-74

Khrushchev NikitaS 16 53 I10 114 1/7, 119, 122, 124

149-51 156. 159, 161 175, 178 179. 180 210.21h220

224 233 237 239, 241. 256. 281 282 285. 287 295,

299 304. 305, 309, 311, 314. 373, 377. 396 399. 405.

413. 423 432 443 445,447,480 538. 549, 552. 591.

601 699, 721. 855 857 858; and approval of first piloted

spaceflight. 255 56 270: and conrmitment to space program. 408, 426-27 and cooperahve lunar project,

400 0[: and death of 428: and debate over R 9 and R 16

ICBlvls, 214 19 and decision on Vostok group flight.

351-52: and early meetings with Cheromey 234-35: and

fall o| Chelomey. 436-46: and lavoritlsm for Chelomey,

229-30 314: and gets third Hero of Sociahst Labor 284:

and influence of. _77: and Korolev-Glushko split. 330,

39?-98: and only visit to Tyura-Tam, 418-21: and origins

of Voskhod, 384 86: and overthrow of, 426-28: and

Rtsunda meeting in i962. 322 24: and public responsl

bility for space program, 295: and selection of Gagarin,

272: and setting of launch date for Vostok 2 mission, 292:

and Soviet decision to go to Moon. 397-98. 403: and

Sputnik (I) launch. 167 68: and Sputnik 2 launch

I/I Z2: and hmetable [or first pdoted spaceflight, 265:

and Vostok 3t4 mission, 354-60: and Vostok 5/6 m_ss_on.

368

Khrushchev. Sergey N, 167 229, 235 305, 310, 394, 398,

4O0, 403-04, 419. 427, 442, 645 46

Kiev Awation Institute. 21

Kiev Institute of Ovil Aviation Engineers. 685

KIK ground tracking network. 262 63, 380: and establish

ment of 162: and expansion of. 534-38: and sea based

networks. 703-04

Kirichenko Nikolay K, 12 I, 218

Kidlenko. gndrey P. 433,645. 719, 82Z. 842

Kiriltin, Vladimir A 222

Kirillov, gnatoliy S 275. 276 368 536. 563,574

CHALLENGE TO

Kisunko, Grigoriy V. 314

Kiwi nuclear rocket project, 318

Klein godungen, 29, 35, 55

I<leymenov, Ivan T., 7-9. 12, 13: and arrest o[, I0- II

Kiirnov, Vladimir Ya, 218

Klimov design bureau see OKB. I 17

Klimuk. Petr I. 610. 657, 806: and Soyuz 13 mission. 817 18

Klippel. Alfred. 55

Klyuchi ground tracking station. 162,262. 453

Kobzarev. gleksandr A 233

Kolodin. Petr I, training for Sotyut/DOS l, 270, 776-ZL 785:

and on Soyuz I1 accident. 785 86

Kolomiytsev, Ordinard P., 623

Kolpashevo ground tracking station, 263,278

Koltunov Ya I 85

l<olumb lunar base 764

Kolyako, Yakov P, 338. 487

Kolyma, 12, 13. 151 16, 4 0

Komarov Vladimir M. 246, 249, 352. 353. 356 422

551 52,569 607. 609 611 613.620,622.660.669:and

background of 568: and Soyuz I mission 576-90: and

Voskhod crew selection. 415-18: and Voskhod (I) mission 423 26

Komarova Valentma Ya (Valya) 582 588

Kometa (dog), 259

Kometa missile, see KS I Kometa missile

Kompressor Plant. 46, 549

Komsomol_kuyu prouda newspaper, 624

Kondratyuk, YuPy V (gleksandr Shargey}, 2, 4,475. 799

Konopatov, gleksandr D 592,615. 687, 825

Konoplev BorisM 78. 134,259

Konovalov Yuriy, 20

KONRtD engine selection system for N I. 731

Kontakt radar system 340 492, 494 497, 639, 701; and

plans for Earth orbit tests. 722-23,804,817

Konvas camera. 294

KorabI-Sputnik (I) mission. 251 52

Korabl Sputnik 2 mission. 253-54

KorabI-Sputnik 3 mission 259

Korabl Sputnik 4 mission 265 66

Korab[ Sputnik 5 mission, 26Z. 268

KorabI-Sputniks. 263

KORD system on N I rocket. 325. 393-94 486, 682, 683

684,692, Z29. 755 819 825

Korolev. Sergey P 22 25. 26 28. 34, 43 45, 4Z. 49-50,

53 55. 57-61. 63, 66-68, 69-7h 73-81 84 86 89-91.

92, 93,95,97-I00, 103 07. ilO 15, ;_6 120. 121. 123.

124. 129 132-35. F37 139 44. 146, 152. 153 155. 156,

157 179,182.186 90. 192,193,195, 196, 198-200.203,

21 I. 220-21 223 224, 226-28 230. 233, 242. 244, 246

249-51, 258, 200. 264. 265.26Z 68, 272. 285, 287 289

290-92. 293, 295, 301-03, 306, 30Z. 3l 1-13, 326. 334,

336, 331, 340. 341, 344-47. 349, 350, 363, 376, 377, 3Z9

42?. 429, 432-34, 436: 437, 439, 443-46. 461, 462, 463,

411. 472, 473, 483, 486, 488. 489, 492, 495, 517, 519.

520 52h 522, 536, 538. 540, 547, 548, 549, 559. 565,

566, 5ZO, 578. 591. 594 602, 624, 628. 631, 645, 649,

668 669, 674, 677 687, 702, 704, 715. 7_6, 722, 735,

743, 745 746, 763, 764. 785,790, 791 795, 796, 797

11_,p O L L 0
INDEX

815. 817, 824. 831. 832. 833, 838, 839, 840. 841 843,

844, 847. 848, 849, 850, 851, 852. 853, 855, 856. 857

858: and approval of first piloted spaceflight, 254-56,

268-70: and arrest of and incarceration at Kolyma. I I - 14:

and at OKB-SD in Kazan, 16-17: and awarded Ph D, 176:

and becomes Academician, 177: and "big space plan" of

1960, 237 411 and change to single-launch scheme for

N I-L3 program, 474-83: and conflict with Voskresenskiy,

477-78: and conflicts over R 9 and R-16 ICBMs, 2i2-i9:

and conflicts with Glushko, 108-09, 130, 202 214 19,

237-38, 3t9 21,328-30, 397-98: and death of. 513-16:

and debates over Voskhod crew selection, 413 18: and

decision on Sputnik/PS-I, 154-55: and decision on

Sputnik 2, 171 73; and design of Voskhod, 409-12; and

early development of N I rocket, 386-95: and early ti|e, 3:

and early options forNI engines. 3/4 /8: and early satellite proposals, 139-51: and "extended Vostok" plans,

380-83: and first R-7 ICBM launches. 158-61: and gets

first Hero of Socialist Labor, 121: and gets second Hero of

Socialist Labor, 284: and in Germany, 30 32, 34-37,

39 42; and in GIRD, 4, 5. 6, 7: and in RNII, 8-9: and

incarceration at sharashka, 14-16: and joins Communist

Party, 115 16: and last days of. 51 I-131 and liquid hydrogen engines, 397 98: and meets with Stalin. 60-61,

87 88: and nuclear rocket engines. 318; and Operation

Kedr, 418 21: and opinion of Mishin. 853-54: and onDns

of LI Zond program, 497-506: and origins of Voskhod,

384 86: and personality o[. 41, 116-18: and Pitsunda

meeting in 1962, 322 24: and preparations for Voskhod

launch, 42L 23: and proposals for long range space plans.

206-08: and proposals for reorganization of space industry, 205 06 208 I0: and rehabilitation for "crimes," 176:

and relationship with Chelomey, 234, 394: and relation

ship with Khrushchev 180: and robotic lunar probes.

527 30: and role as manager, 858-59; and secrecy,

169-70. 373 74, 412-13: and Soviet decision to go to

Moon. 395 408: and Spiral program, 605,606: and vacation in Czechoslovakia, 412; and Voskhod (I) mission,

423-26: and Voskhod 2 mission, 448-60: and Voskhod

proposals in 1965-66, 506 II; and Vostok {I) mission.

274-77. 282: and Vostok 3/4 mission. 353-61: and

Vostok 5/6 mission, 365-73

Koroleva, Kseniya 30

Koroleva. Natalya, 30

Koroleva. Nina P. 116, 413. 513,735

Korostylev. 574

Korzhenevskiy, Eduard 783

Kosberg, Semyon A. 202. 203. 220,254,267, 272, 30L 302,

304. 315,356,389. 469,510. 541. 543,545: and death of.

511

Kosmonavt Hotel, 619, 773 776

Kosmonaut Vladimir Komarou tracking ship, 703-04, 707

Kosmoplan spaceplane, 241, 305-06, 31 I. 313. 377, 396,

429: and early conceptions of, 230-32: and project

description, 307-09

Kosmos booster, 832

Kosmos 3 mission 355

Kosmos 5 mission, 355

Kosmos 47 mission, 422

Kosmos57 mission 452-53

Kosmos 59 mission, 453 54

Kosmos I lOmission 522 24

Kosmos-133 mission 571 73

Kosmos 140 mission, 575-76. 630

Kosmos-146 mission 562. 738

Kosmos 154 mission, 563 64, 738

Kosmos 159 mission, 640

Kosmos-186/188 mission. 625-26. 629,657

Kosmos-212/213 mission. 629 30,631,657

Kosmos-238 mission. 633

Kosmos 300 mission. 737, 738

Kosmos 305 mission. 737 738

Kosmos-345 mission. 723

Kosmos-379 mission, 735

Kosmos-382 mission, 734

Kosmos-398 mission, 735

Kosmos-434 mission, 734-35

Kosmos-496 mission, 805,816

Kosmos 557 mission. 813-14

Kosmos 573 mission, 815,816

Kosmos-613 mission, 817-18

Kosmos 638 mission 826

Koshkov. AndreyG I0 Ih 13, 17 549

Kosygin, Aleksey N, 426,428,432,436, 437, 456 555, 598

627, 628 692, 703. 794

Kotelnikov. Vladimir A , 164. 794

Kotov, Pavel G. 228

Kovtunenko, Vyecheslav M. 44. 814

Kozlov, Dmitrly I, 44, 115 133. 331.52h 693, 716: and rallies against Mishin 828: and Zvezda military space sta

tion, 596-99, 633 35

Kozlov FrolR 172,218.255.270, 272, 282 287.311, 32h

322,363,396. 426. 473,521 591 592,675: and gets second Hero of Socialist Labor, 284: and Vostok 3/4 mission,

354 60

Kozyavka {dog) 95, 181

Kraft, Christopher C, Jr. 193

Krasnaya zuezda newspaper 600

Krasnodar tracking ship, 263. 534

Krasnogorsk Mechanical Optical Plant 94

Krasnoyarsk 26, 349. 437, 746

Krechet camera system, 467. 471

Krechet-94 spacesuit. 49h 495,533. 647, 668. 685

Kreslo instrument 767

Kristatl module for Mir, 840

Krylov, Nikolay I., 379. 380, 647. 786, 787. 790

Kryukov. Sergey S , 44, 73, 121, 129, 133 149. 15h 238 327,

333. 338. 345. 395, 397, 462, 463. 476. 479. 481, 487

518, 675,676, 73h 838: and background of, 391-92: and

latter-day work, 848: and power struggle in TsKBEM 828:

and space stabon decision in [969,717

Krzhizhanovich Power Institute, 53 I

KS-I Kometa missile, 227

KS 50 combustion chamber, 99

Kubasov, Valeriy N , 566. 567 568, 577. 588. 631,805. 813:

and moves to /qSTR 814 15; and Soyuz 6/7/8 mlsslom

705 I I: and training for 5olyut/DOS, 770. 776-77, 786.

804-05

989
990

Kugno. Eduard P, 817

Kuklin. Anatotiy P. 657

Kurashov. Sergey V 515

Kurbatov, Viktor, J55

Kurchatov. lgorV 87. 116,326

Kureytis. Stanislav g., 568

Kurilo. Nikolay M. 29.35

Kurushin. gleksandr _q, 574. 680

Kustanay, 425 673, 700

Kutakhov. Pavet S. 693

Kutasin, Aleksandrh 619. 656

Kutyrkin. Nikolay A, 154

Kuybyshev. 218. 266,281,282,294. 315. 320. 330 32,387.

388. 390. 395, 437. 473, 508. 521. 549, 591. 596, 598,

633,646,692. 716, 831

Kuznetsov, Nikolay D, 218-19,220, 238, 239, 315. 316-17,

320, 32_ 323. 330. 403, 485, 486. 547. 548. 638. 649.

684. 693. 732,752. 759. 832. 837. 838: and death of. 846:

and investigation into fourth NI launch, 823-24: and

modified NI engines. 820-2I, 825 26: and NI engine

development, 387-88: and rising criticism of N I engines.

829-30

Kuznetsov, NikolayF 5t3,627. 777

Kuznetsov, Nikolay N, 29, 33

Kuznetsov, Viktor I . 29, 46, 4Z, 57, 72, 13h /35, 156. 177.

192. 201. 254, 258, 272, 289, 356. 359, 368, 397, 429.

480, 491. 504. 538, 545, 594, 704; and background of,

367: and death of, 846: and gets first Hero of Socialist

Labor, 12 I: and gets second Hero of Socialist Labor. 284

Kuznetsova. Tatyana D, 353, 362

Kvant module for Mir, 840

Kvant 2 module for Mir 840

LI circumlunar spaceship. 546. 554,567, 570, 579,588. 590,

607. 609, 624. 626, 633 636, 639. 643. 648, 654, 661,

666 699-701, 719, 734, Z48. 774, 795. 827, 857: and

crews for. 657, 816 817: and deadlines for, 559-61: and

design of spaceship, 556-58: and early conception of,

401-02: and end of program, 701. 743: and ending plans

for piloted flights, 686-87: and final conception of,

497-506: and launch in early 1969, 678-79: and launch

record. 738: and launches in early 1967. 561-64: and last

mission 742 43: and mission profile of. 558 59: and

response to/_pollo 8 674-78: see also Zond program

[I [ test spaceship, 639, 643, 648. 676, 736. 738: and flight

of, 734

LIStestspaceship. 546 648,679,682,688,730

L2 lunar rover, 401-02, 529-30

L3 lunar landing program 401-02. 408. 463. 483,485,498.

556 557. 560. 567, 570 579, 588. 590. 607. 609. 633

636 643, 658. 686-87, 697, 713-t4, 715, 717, /21 22,

731, 740 743. 745, 758. 759, 760, 761, 765. 795, 796.

800, 804, 819, 828, 841. 850: and comparison to LK 700

lunar lander project, 538-46: and conceptions of, 476-79;

and cosmonaut training for 684-86, 816, 817: and

decrees in. 554 55: and design of, 48Z-95: and development in 1970-71. 732-34: and establishing deadlines for,

553-56: and expenditures for, 838: and funding for, 714,

733: and limitations of. 756-57: and mission profile of

lunar landing mission, 495-97; and move from EOR to

LOR, 474-76: and plans for sequence of missions.

546-47: and preparations in 1967-69, 636-43: and problems in development of, 548: and program approved, 407:

and refinements to plan, 527. 532-34, 546-47: and

response to l_pollo 8. 675-78: and schedule in early

1970s, 754-55: and termination of original proJect,

761-63,821,827, 832,837

L3M project, 765, 794, 803,804. 822. 827: and approval of,

761-64: and design of, 759-61: and origins of, 756-59:

and termination of, 832. 834

L3S payload, 680, 681,691

L4 lunar orbiter, 401-02

L5 advanced lunar complex, 676

L5 lunar rover, 40_-02

L 18 flying laboratory, 606

La- 176 supersonic aircraft. 125

La-350 cruise missile, see Burya

[a Recherche Spatiale journal. 791

Langemak, Georgiy F, 8. 12. t3: and arrest of. tO-II

Langley Research Center, 193

Lappo, Vyecheslav I. 167

Lapshin, A 1,63

Launius. Roger D. 662

Lavochkin, Semyon A. 16, 21. 125, 126, 127, 133. 223-24,

3OO, 437 53O

Lavochkin State Union Machine Building Plant. 528, 529_

530, 640, 675,676, 764, 782, 795. 848: and development

of lunar sample return spaceship, 641-43: and tuna missions in 1970-7h 737-42; see also OKB-301

Lavrov, llyaV, 146 152,336. 476, 478, 745

Lavrov, Svyastoslav S., 44, SO, 73

Layka (dog), 173-74, 185

Lazarev, Vasiliy G., 508.804, 8051 and selection for Voskhod,

414-18: and Soyuz 12 mission. 815-16

Lebedev. Valentin V, and Soyuz 13 mission, 817-18

Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences,

see FIAN institute

Lebedinskiy, Andrey V,, 376 511 t2

Legostayev, Viktor P, 346. 471

Lehesten. 29.3 h 34, 35, 55

Lenin. Vladimirl. 716 722

Leningrad, 4, 6, 9. 178, 262

Leningrad Metallurgical Plant. 137

Leningrad State University. 779

Leninsk, 26& 439,625. 735

Leonov. _qleksey A, 246,247, 363, 364, 42 h 461. 506. 509,

512, 551. 563, 585. 610, 613, 615, 627, 657, 667, 669,

674, 690. 805. 813: and background of, 451: and moves

to ASTE 814-15: and training for Moon program. 561,

65 h 684 86. 699: and training for Solyut[DOS. 770-7 h

776-77, 785. 786. 804-05: and Voskhod 2 mission,

454 60

Letunov, Yuriy V, 624

Levitan. Yuriy B, 278

Levkoy 2M instrument, 767

Levkoy-3 experiment, 818

CHALLENGE TO FkPOLLO
INDEX

Li-2 aircraft, 18, 711

Lidorenko, Nikolay S., 154

Light Space Aircraft, see LKS

LJnkov, ,q., 598

liquid hydrogen rocket engines, 33 I, 388-89. 483,548,649

687, 750. 757, 758, 759, 840, 847: and development of,

639; and early research on, 317-18

Lira radar system. 804

Lisa (dog), 95, 96. 181

Lisichka (dog), 252

Litvinov, Valentin Ya., 570, 580

LK lunar lander, 476, 495-97, 527, 531 532-33, 547 548,

647, 657, 676-77, 684, 73(, 751, 754. 757, 760, 762, 765,

822, 825: and design of, 488-93: and development in

1970-7 I, 732-33; and Earth orbit test flights of 735-36:

and ground tests of, 640. 684-85: and termination of

work on, 821

LK-I circumlunar program. 395-96. 406, 407, 440, 442,

497-502, 539. 540. 543, 544, 594, 595, 807: and design

of, 443-46

LK-700 lunar lander, 594. 595. 807: and conception and

design of, 538-46: and resurrection of, 645-46

LKM lander of L3M lunar project, see L3M lunar project

LK_ reserve lunar lander, 533,547, 676, 733,827

LKS spaceplane proposal, 835,837

LKSA camera, 8 t6

LL-I "flying laboratory." 22 I

Lobanov, Nikolay A., 590

Lodz (Poland), 462

LOK lunar orbiter, 476,495-97, 533,547, 548,639,657, 676,

754,757, 765,795,822,825: and design of, 493 95: and

development in 1970-7h 732 733: and ground tests of.

640, 685: and termination of work on. 821

Long-Duration Lunar Base (DLB). 764 66. 803,834

Long-Duration Orbital Station. see DOS

Lovell, Sir Bernard, 358, 399

Lovell, James A, jr. 51 I. 667, 674

Low. George M., 662, 794, 814

Lozino Lozinskiy. Gleb Ye, and Spiral program, 601 07. 789:

and Buran, 836-37

Luch laser weapon system, 790

Luch solar panels, 251

Luch-I cosmic ray detector. 630

Luna probes, 297, 506: and far side sample return proposal,

796

Luna I probe (Cosmic Rocket), 527

Luna 2 probe (Second Cosmic Rocket), 527

Luna 3 probe [Automatic Interplanetary Station), 200, 201,

527

Luna 9 lander. 528-29,530, 534: see also Ye 6 lander

Luna I0 orbiter, 533-34,640,641

Luna II orbiter, 534, 640, 641

Luna 12 orbiter, 534, 640. 641

Luna 14 orbiter, 640-41,641. 642

Luna 15 lander, 693-96. 737 738; see also Ye 8-5 lander

Luna 16 lander, 739-40. 742,795: see also Ye 8 5 lander

Luna I Z landerrover, 740-42: see also Lunokhod I rover and

Ye-8 rover

Lunar Module (Apollo). 488,489,490

Lunar Orbital Ship. see LOK, 476

Lunar Ship, see LK, 476

Lunokhod I rover. 741-42, 795: see also Ye-8 rover

LuzJn, NJkotay, 48

Lyulka, Arkhip M., 315, 317. 388, 483, 649, 677, 757, 759,

847

M

M bomber, 128

M-I booster, 226-27, 236,302

M2-F2 lifting body, 599

M-4 bomber, t28

M 5RD missile, 138. 151

M 12 spaceplane, 31 ;-12. 441

M 40 cruise missile, see Buran

M-48 spaceplane, 600,718: and cancellation o[, 235-36: and

design of, 224-26

M-69 Mars probe, 738

M-220 computer, 614

Magnus. Kurt, 30, 45, 55, 56

Makarov, Dmitriy S. 14

Makarov, Oleg G. 264. 566, 567, 657 684, 690, 700, 804

805; and Soyuz 12 mission, 8t5-16

Makat ground tracking station, 162, 262

Makeyev, Viktor P. 115, 12h 349, 517

Maksimov, Aleksandr A, 158. 735

Maksimov, Gleb Yu, 85, 86, 139, 140, 141,333-37, 477, 478,

745

Maksimov, Nikolay D., 46

Malenkov, Georgiy M, 34. 37, 73, 109-12, 117, 119, 122

129. 144

Malinovskiy, Rodion Ya, 266, 352. 373,377, 380, 44l, 481

Malyshev. Vyecheslav A, I10, Ill, 112, 119, 122-24.

128-29, 144

Malyshka (dog}, 95, q81

Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOt), 590, 591,595,596, 607,

714

Manned Spacecraft Center, 383,386. 662,663

Manovtsev, German g., 746

Mars. early proposals for human flight to, 207, 210: and projects for human flight to, 333-38: and proposals in late

1960s. 677-78. 686-87. 697, 713-14: see also Aelita Mars

project

Mars robotic probes, 506

Marshall Space Flight Center, 386

Martian Expeditionary Complex (MEK), 746-51, 802: see

also Aelita Mars project

Mathes. Franz, 30

McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, 193

McDonnell Douglas, 714

McDougall, Walter A, 856

McNamara, Robert S, 312

Meier, Otto, 55

Melnikov, Mikhail V., 17, t30, 202, 327, 389. 481,488.80l.

820

Menshikov, Valeriy A,, 690, 691

Menzhinskiy Central Design Bureau. 3

991
992

Mercury program (NASA). 193 I96. 220, 244, 250, 253

255 264-65 290.295 297.339 354,323,383.384.469

Mercury Mark II, 383: see also Gernini

Messina I telemetry system 78

Meteor I satellite, 726, 779

Mezon conrmunieatlons system, 547

Mi-4 helicopter 459

MP6 hehcopter 459, 576. 630

Mi-8 helicopter 684

Mi 9 helicopter 684

MIG fighters. 223

MiG 15 aircraft. 451. 628

MiG 15U]I training aircralt, 248, 361 627-29

MtG {7 aircraft. 606

MiG 19 awraft 246

MiG 21 aircraft 606 628

Mikoyan Anastas I 423. 456

Mikoyan. Arteml 2h [12.223.227 228. 442 836 83?:and

Spiral program 599 607. 787 90

Mil M,khaki L 189 545

mflKary control of Soviet missile and space programs.

210-12 786-87 856 5?: see also Strategic Missile Forces

and TsUKOS

Military-Industrial Commission (VPK), 122, 156. 179. 195,

208 21Z 219. 233, 239, 250, 255. 269, 270. 287, 305,

362 378 379. 383, 391. 403, 407. 414, 4_6. 419, 425,

433 443. 474 500 502. 505. 506, 5/[ 512. 525. 530,

559, 506, 569, 57L 592, 596, 613, 633, 655. 722. 753,

758. /62 763, 773,800, 801; and approves Voskhod program 385 86: and duties of, 431-32. 434: and establishment of. 178: and response to Apollo 8. 667 68. 675

Mflrtary Space Forces. 841: and origins of 212; see also

TsUKOS and GUKOS

Ministry of Armaments, 38, 46. 51, 59. 62, 82 89 91 97.

107, 109. II/ 123,430 704: see also Ministry of Defense

Industries

Ministry of Armed Forces, 48, 49. 51. 53. 125: see also

Mimstry o[ Defense

Ministry of Aviation Industries. 38.46.51.65, 107, 133,221,

227 228,601 759 824.830,837,849

Ministry of Chemical Industries. 38

Ministry of Communicabons Equipment Industry. 46

Ministry of Defense. 89 125. 135. 136, 162. 165, 18/. 241

250 306 309 332, 333. 379, 393, 395 404. 440, 473,

509, 535 554. 560 591 592, 598, 636. 716. 721. 80&

830, 835, 836 838, 842: and control of space program,

2 I0-12 786 87: see also Ministry of Armed Forces

MinlstryofDefenselndustries 124, 152 165, 178, 59Z: see

also Ministry of Armaments

Ministry of Electronics Industries. 38

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 736

Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM), 479,482,500,

503 504. 514, 520. 538 545 548, 553. 566. 570, 596,

6t3 623. 634. 635, 644 645 655, 734 Z50, 758 773.

Z?6. 785. 800, 810, 833, 838: and censures Mishin. 828:

and Formation and duties of 428-36: and Formation of

NPO Energiya. 830-3 l: and reorganizes TsKBEM 794

M_nistry of Health, 376. 508. 524, 776

Ministry of Internal AFfairs I I0

Ministry of Machine Building and Instrument Building, 38

Ministry of Medium Machine Building. II0, l lh 119, 120,

122, 139, 677

Ministry of Radio Technical Industry. 165

Mimstry of Ship Building Industries. 38

Mir data recorder. 783

Mir space station 132, 248. 376 527. 567. 618 722 802,

807. 840. 843. 845. 853

Mir-3 data recorder. 471

Mirnyy launch site, 549: see also Plesetsk

Mishin Vasiliy P., 17. 20, 2 h 43 45, 49. 50, 59, 60, 73.85,

86 90. 91. 105 I13. 129-31. 133, 141, 152 155 159,

171, IZI, 211, 219, 238, 212, 313. 315. 326, 333. 361,

372,384,390,391,392 397, 403.447.461 475,419.48h

492, 498 501, 514, 515, 527, 539 546, 54L 54& 549,

553, 554, 555, 557, 561, 591, 642, 665. 668-69. 67h

686 87, 688,699. 709 734. 186, 787 797. 199,806. 810

815,818 840. 848 857: and Aelita Mars prolect 750 51:

and agreement with Chelomey on space stahons 808-09:

and ballist< missi{e detense, 790-9[: and becomes

/_cademician. 519-20; and cancellabon of Voskhod program, 522-27: and cancellation of Zvezda, 633 35: and

crew change on Soyuz I I 776-77: and debate over

engines m early 1970s 825 26: and DOS station plan.

ning, 769-70: and DOS I/Satyut launch, 772 13: and

early lile of. 19: and end of NI LS. 832 33,838: and fired

as Chief Designer 830 32: and first LI launches in 1967.

561 64: and first NI launch, 679 84; and fourth NI

launch. 822; and gets Hero o[ Socialist Labor. _21: and

health of, 692: and in Germany, 28, 3h 35, 37. 41 42: and

investigation into fourth NI launch. 823 24: and

Kosmos-557 mission 813-14: and I..3 development m

1967 68. 636 43: and [3M lunar project, 757 64: and

last LI circumlunar mission, 742 43: and latter day life of,

851 54: and MOKtMKBS, 799-80h 803; and new projects in 1973-74. 826-27: and opposition against,

827-29: and persona[ity of, 326 27,518 19 644 45: and

plans for fourth N/ launch, 820-21: and plans lot Soyuz

in 1969, 701 03: and preparations for first DO5 launch,

770 72: and preparations forNI launch in 1968 643-51;

and reorganizes TsKBEM, 794-95: and response to Apollo

8,674 78: and second NI Jaunch, 688 93: and selection

ol civilian cosmonauts, 566-69: and Soyuz precursor missions in 1966 62 569-76: and 5oyuz precursor r'rllsslon5

in 1967-68, 624-26 629-33: and Soyuz I mission,

576 90; and Soyuz 2/3 misslom 657-62: and Soyuz I0

mission Z74 76: and Soyuz 11 mission 780 85: and

space station decision in 1969. 714 22: and succeeds

Korolev. 517-21: and suspected in West as Chief

Designer. 791: and third N I launch, 755-56: and work on

NI in 1969 71 729-33. 736-37: and Zond missions m

1967-68,610 22:and Zond5 missmn 653 51

Missile Forces of Strategic Designahon see Strategic Missile

Forces

Mittelwerk plant, 27, 28, 35, 55

MK 700 Mats spaceship. 751 54

MKBS, 677-78. 716, 729, 766. 799 80i: and description of.

801-03

MMK-I instrument, 778

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
INDEX

MMZ Zenit, and Spiral project. 601-07 787-90, 835 837:

see also OKB- 155

Mnatsakanyan, Armen S, 366,453,470,492,571,573,639,

659

MOK station complex. 716, 809, 827, 830: and background

to, 799-801 : and description o[. 801-03: and termination

of, 832

MOL see Manned Orbiting Laboratory, 590

Molniya booster, 130,488. 640: see also 8K78 and 8K78M

Molniya I satellite, 381 506, 51 I, 525. 703, 706, 8/6

Molotov, Vyecheslav M, 37, 121 149

Montania Plant, 35

Moon, early proposals for human flight to, 207: and early pro

posals for human landing on. 399. 401: and program

approved: 407: and Soviet decision to go to 395 408: see

also L3 program

Morozov, Viktor P, 287

Mofya-I ocean reconnaissance satellite. 473

Morzhouets tracking ship, 534

Moscow Aviation Institute, 19, 90, 353,461,851,854

Moscow State University, 19 460, 816. 845

MoskaJenko, GdgorJy M. 85.86. J40

Moskalenko, KirillS.258,269 2Z2 74,332.377

Moskvitin, A, 53L

Mozhayskiy Academy. 340

Mozzhorin, Yuriy A, 138, 162. 270. 285. 286. 291 429. 477

478, 480. 481,554, 675, 676, 678: and death of 845-46:

and fate of NI rocket, 819. 829-30; and role in press

reports, 696-97

MP I spaceplane, 3i0. 311

Mrykin. AleksandrG. 25. 147, /55, 156. 157, 188, 211 12

256, 330 365

MTKVP reusable ship, 835

Mueller, George E, 637

Mukha {dug), 173

Muller. Rudolf, 63

Multirole Orbital Complex, see MOK

Multlrole Space Base Station, see MKBS

Munnich Karl, 55

Mushka (dog), 259

Myasishchev, Vladimir M. 14. 112, 126-2& 133 223 27,

242, 301, 302, 521 599. 600. 606, 718. 837: and fired

fromOKB 23 235 36: and NPOMolniya. 836

N

NI booster. 80, 130, 303,333,334,336. 337. 338. 350, 373.

377, 381,420, 52h 529.61l, 657, 752. 758,765. 794, 795,

799 800 802, 803, 839, 841, 846 850. 851, 857 858,

859: and "all up" testing. 392: and approval of, 331: and

changes made because of switch to single launch profile.

474 83: and circumlunar proposal, 498-501: and compar

isons with LIR-700,538-46: and debates over engines and

early design. 319 33; and decision to go to Moon.

396-408: and defense of draft plan 328 31: and design

changes in 1971-?2. 819-20: and design of, 483-87: and

destruction of rockets, 838: and development in i967-68,

636 43; and development in 1969-71. 729-33, 736 37:

and development of launch complex 393. 549 50: and

draft plan signed. 327: and early conceptions of. 314-17:

and engines [or. 387-88: and expenditures on, 552-53

643 44,838: and fate of its Chief Designers, 848: and first

launch of, 679 84: and ground testing of, 477-78: and

improved N I vehicles, 649-50, 676, 677 750: and initial

specifications, 328: and investigation into fourth launch.

823-24: and KORD system, 325: and lack of funding.

394 95, 478-79, 733: and military missions. 332-33,

790 91:and new engines for in early 1970s, 824 26: and

oogms of. 236 41: and plans in 1973-74. 827: and preparations for launch in 1968 643-51: and problems in devet

opment in mid-1960s, 546 49, 554-56: and problems in

early development of, 386-95,481: and profile for fourth

launch, 821: and program canceled, 832-34. 837: and

program suspended, 830-31: and publicly revealed.

852 53: and response to Apollo 8,674-78: and rising crit

iclsm of 829-30: and second launch of 688-93, 701

729 30 754: and third launch of. 754 56. 780 818-19:

and US intelligence on. 550 51, 636 37. 647. 792-93

822

NI R._,Dtheme. 97-99 I01 102

NIFbooster. 759 61. 802

N I F V2 booster. 649

NIF-V3 booster, 649 50, 676 677, 750

N IF-V4 booster. 649-50,676

N I L3 program see L3 program

NIM booster, 750 757

N2 booster. 240, 319: and early development of 314-17

N2 R&Dtheme. 97 I01 102

N3 R&Dtheme 97, 102-09

N-4 satelhte, 439-40: see also Proton satellite

Nt I booster, 327-28 482, 758-59: and approval of. 33l:

and circumlunar project 443. 498-501

NI/I booster, 327-28, 482: and approval of, 33J

Nadiradze, AleksandrD 228-29

Narr, Anton. 8t

NASA, see National Aeronautics and Space Administration

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 192. 209

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N,'qSA).

179, 203. 250. 258, 263, 265. 295 296, 299, 325. 331,

354. 383, 389, 397, 399 408, 443. 446, 460 475, 483,

488 502. 511 522 525, 526. 535, 540. 541, 55t. 553.

562 565, 599, 623, 629. 631. 636. 637, 639 648. 650

651 658, 662 682, 684 687, 688. 694, 695r 702. 714,

724. 734, 740 75[ 757, 759, 765, 770. 782. 796, 804,

810, 813. 814, 818, 835, 839: and astronauts, 245, 363,

415,624: and cooperation with Russians, 840: and coop

eration with Soviets, 793-94: and decision on Apollo 8.

662-63: and decision to go to Moon. 296-97: and formation of, 192, 193 209

National Air and Space Museum. 854

NATO. see North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Navaho missile, 106

Nedelin. Mitrofan I, 36-37, 87, 88. 105, 121, 124, 133-36,

155, 156, 157, 159 165, 215, 25h 273. 377, 426: and

appointed as Commander of Strategic Missile Forces, 21 I :

and R-16 disaster. 256 58

Nedelin disaster, see R 16 disaster

NEK. see Scientdic-Experimental Complex

993
994

Nelyubov. Grigoriy G. 246, 24(. 249, 26 h 272-74, 291. 352.

353: and background. 262: and dismissal and death of,

374-75

Neman, loslf G, 14

NERVA nuclear rocket proJect, 318

Nesmeyanov. Aleksandr N. 141. 142. 165

Nesterenko, Aleksey I. 39.67, 88. 102. 135. 136, 153. 156

Neuel tracking ship, 534

Newsweek magazine, 666

New York Times. The. 89. 285,373-74, 515. 550, 620. 712,

792. 794

NI[I PDS institute, 198. 340, 413. 472,524. 589-90

NII-I institute. 17-21, 22, 25.26.28.29, 46, 47-48 51-53.

66, 76, 79, 98, 99. I01, 106. I07, 125, 127. 130. 177, 189

200, 225 226 304. 309, 318. 331, 339. 389, 467. 823

849: see also Scientific-Research Institute for Thermal

Processes

Nil i Branch No 2.63.65

NII-2 institute (o[ Ministry of Avlation Industries), 309

NII-2 institute (of Air Defense Forces)598

NII-3 institute, I0-13. 15 17. 30, 44, 63, 68, 90. 200: see

also RNII

NII-4 institute. 39, 48, 65, 66. 68, 75. 84. 85, 88, 89, 102,

103, 124 134 135. 138, 139. 141, 142, 144, 149, 151

152, 162. 183 186 212. 262-63,270,277, 278,287,325,

331, 364. 372 535. 536,537.582,618

NIl-10 institute 46, 72, 131,367

Nil 20 institute 46. 78

Nil 49 institute, 78

NIl 88 institute 38 39 43 46, 48.49 50, 54.56-58, 63, 65,

66 68 71 73. 76. 78.81-83.85 90 92, 94, 98, 99. lOh

104, 105. 107, I13-117. 119 i21. 123, 125 129 130 133

139 441 150, 151 178, 212, 258 285. 286 309. 33]

339 364,429 462 471,477 480 530.675.704. ?95: see

also TsNtlMash

Nil 88 Branch No 1.45.80.82

NII-88 Branch No. 2, 58, 83, 137

Nil 125 institute. 90. 199

NI1-137 institute, 259

NII-229 institute, 258. 331. 389. 483: see also Scientific

Research Institute for Chemical Machine Building

Nil 380 institute 353.41 h 450

NII-627 institute 481. 594: see also Aft-Union ScientificResearch Institute for Electromechanics

NII-642 institute, 227

Nil 648 institute. 340 366. 453. 470, 471. 492: see also

Scientific Research Institute for Precision Instruments

NI}-695 institute, 201,226,272,274,471

NII-885 institute. 46, 78, 9 h 99, 13 h 200, 20 h 33 h 47 I. 503,

504, 536. 704. 705: see also Scientific-Research Institute

o[ Radio Instrument Building

Nil 944 institute 20t,258.367,429,480, 594

Nll RP msbtute. 340

Nil TekhnoMash, 732

NIt Yar institute, 56, 69, 407

NIIP51aunch range, 135 136. 13& 157: see also Tyura-Tam

Nikitin. Nikilor, 135

Nikitin, Nikotay K 247 365

CHALLENGE

Nikolayev, Andrian G.. 246. 247, 249, 261, 274, 291, 292,

352, 353, 363. 370. 378, 568 577, 580, 588. 607, 631.

674, 703, 779: and background of, 356: and Soyuz 9 mission. 723-29: and Vostok 3/4 mission, 356-61: and wedding of. 373-74

Nikolayeva, Elena, 726

NIP-16 ground tracking station. 536, 582, 703: see also

Yevpatoriya

NITI 40, 331, 732

Nitochkin, Aleksey A. 135, 136

Nixon. Richard M. 765, 794

NK-9 engine. 316-17, 322,387, 388,482. 486

NK-9V engine, 322,387, 388

NK-15 engine, 387, 388, 479, 485. 486. 548. 644. 692. 730.

731

NK-15Vengine, 387, 485 547, 649, 731

NK 19 engine, 38Z, 487

NK 21 engine, 387, 485. 731

NK 31 engine. 825 825

NK-33 engine, 820. 825,837, 846

NK-35 engine, 752

NI<41 engine, 825

NK-43 engine, 820, g25, 846

NKVD secret police, IO-IS. 18, 19,258

NORAD, see North American Air Defense Command

Nordhausen, 24, 27, 29, 32, 34, 35, 40.56

North American Air Defense Command (NORAD}. 232

North American Aviation, 397

North Atlanbc Treaty Organization (NATO), 102

Nosey Aleksandrl 155. 157, 166

Nova heavy boosters 541 75 I

Novikov. Aleksandr A, 2 I

Novikov, Mikhail A, 266

NPO Energiya. 833,834. 839,848: and acquires Chelomey's

Fili Branch. 842: and Energiya-Buran program. 836: and

formation of. 830 31: and work in 1970s and 1980s.

839-41: see also OKB-I and TsKBEM

NPO Mashinostroyeniya, 843: see also OKB 52 and TsKBM

NPO Molniya. formation of, 836 37

NPO Trud, 846: see also OKB 276 and KB Trud

nuclear power sources 335, 749 50

nuclear rocket engines. 318, 389, 482, 677, 752: and discusslons about, 208: and early proposals for, 207

Nudelman, Aleksandr E., 594. 596

O

Oazis-I greenhouse. 778

Oazis-2 greenhouse, 818

Oberth. Hermann. I, 4, 716, 799

Obiect g warhead. 15 I

Object B warhead, 15 I

ObJect D satellite, 149, 150. 151, 152, 154, 155, 162, 164,

172, 180, 186. 187, 191: and goals of. 153: and instru

ments on. 175: and launches of. 175-76: see also Sputnik

3

Object G warhead, 151

Object K Kosmoplan see Kosmoplan

TO APOLLO
INDEX

Object K spaceship. 193-95, 205. 210, 221, 225, 226, 232,

235. 240, 244: and design o[, 195-201: and renamed

Vostok, 250: see also Object OD-2 satellite and Vostok

spaceship

Object KI. spaceship, 240

ObJect KMV spaceship, 240, 333

ObJect KS spaceship. 240

ObJect MV tracking station, 536

Object OD-I satellite, 187

Object OD-2 satellite, 187. 188: and design of. 189 92,

193-95

ObJect R Raketoplan, see Raketoplan

Object V warhead, I 5 I

Obraztsov {Academician), 609

OD-4 viewfinder. 767

OD 5 viewfinder, 593

Ogorodnikov. Kinll F, 146

OKB-I (Korotev), 90-91, 104. 107, 108, 113. 115, 120, 121_

125, 129, 130, 133. 137. 138, 146, 149. 159, 160, 161_

162, 172, 175. I78, 183, 185. 186, 187, 189. 190, 195,

197, 198 200-03, 208. 209, 212,220,224. 225. 236, 238,

239-41, 243, 248-50, 252. 255. 256, 259, 264, 266, 273,

285,309. 319,321, 324 27, 329, 331,332.35L355,363,

364,370, 3?7-79,414,417, 429. 434-45,462, 463. 472.

473, 474, 511, 512, 513, 514. 517. 521. 529. 536, 538,

602, 745. 764, 848: and decision to pick successor to

Korolev, 517-21: and design of 152: and design of NI,

483-87: and design of post-Vostok spaceship, 337-45:

and design of Voskhod. 409-13: and early development of

N I rocket, 386-95: and "extended Vostok" plans,

380-83: and L3 lunar landing program. 474-83; and lack

o[ money, 383, 395,404: and projects for Mars missions,

333-37: and renamed TsKBEM, 520: and selection of NI

engines 314 18: and separation from NII-88, 151-52:

and size of, 290, 437: and Soviet decision to go to Moon,

395-408: and Soyuz circumlunar project. 345-50: and

Voskhod 2 mission. 448-60: and Voskhod proposals for

1965-66, 506-II: see also TsKBEM and NPO Energiya

OKB-I Branch No 2,437

OKB-I Branch No 3,331. 437, 469 473. 508,521: see also

TsKBEM Branch No. 3

OKB-2 (Isayev). 102, 199,217, 315. 340,388,389.429,466,

495, 53 I, 548,768, 795: and separation from NII-88,200:

see also Design Bureau o[ Chemical Machine Building

OKB-3 (Sevruk), 114

OKB 4 (Bisnovat), 836

OKB-I0 (Reshetnev}, 349

OKB-12 (gbrarnov), 331

OKB-16 (Nudelman), 594

OKB-23 (Myasishchev). 126. 128, ]33, 223-26: and

attached to OKB-52. 235-36.242,299-300. 718: see also

OKB-52 Branch No I

OKB-36 (Kolesov), 604

OKB 51 (Sukhoy), 235, 236

OKB-52(Chelomey),229 32,305 307, 308,309, 310, 312,

344. 393-94. 395. 407, 419. 420, 429: and end of conception of LI Zond project, 497-506: and expansion of.

299-300: and fall of Khrushchev. 436 46: and formation

of, 228: and projects in early 1960s, 313; and renamed

TsKBM 520: see also TsKBM

OKB-52 Branch No. I. 236. 301. 302, 303, 439: see also

TsKBM Branch No. I

OKB-52 Branch No. 2. 299-300

OKB 52 Branch No. 3. 300.437

OKB I15 (Yakovlev), 64

OKB-II 7 (Izotov), 545

OKB 124 (Voronin), 199 264. 27h 472. 490, 524: see also

KB Nauka

OKB-154 (Kosberg). 202,220, 301,315. 389,429.469.51 I.

524, 525, 541, 592, 752: see also Design Bureau of

Chemical Automation

OKB 155 (Mikoyan), 223, 227. 442; and work on Spiral

spaceplane, 599-607: see also MMZ Zenit

OKB-156 (Tupolev), 126, 128. 236,415,599. 600,605

OKB-165 (Lyulka). 315, 388, 389, 487: see also KB Saturn

OKB-240 (llyushin), 721

OKB 256 (Tsybin), 221-23

OKB 276 (Kuznetsov), 218-19, 220, 236, 3t5,316-17, 326,

331. 387, 390, 393, 395,485,547, 548: see also KB Trud

OKB-300 (Tumanskiy). 340, 488

OKB-301 (Lavochkin), 125-26, 133, 223-24, 300, 437-38,

530: see also OKB-52 Branch No, 3 and Lavochkin

Machine Building Plant

OKB 329 (Mil), 189,340

OKB 456 (Glushko), 46, 50, 57. 76, 100, 109, 129. 201,217,

258. 303, 315, 318, 329, 331. 481, 613: see also KB

EnergoMash

OKB 482 (Myasishchev). 126

OKB-586 (Yangel/, 1t4, i64,212,214. 241,492: see also KB

Yuzhnoye

OKB-670 (Bondaryuk), I07, 125,318

OKB 692 (Konoplev). 257 58

OKB MEI (Bogomolov). 155. f72. 175, 201, 340, 41t, 421,

820

OKB SD (Glushko), 16, 17, 21, 22_ 30, 46

Okhapkin, SergeyO, 50. 73, 121 133, 151, 152, 327. 391,

395, 397, 479. 554, 580, 634. 638, 644. 716, 794, 821,

827: and background of, 32/: and death oL 848: and

demotion of, 833: and gets Hero of Socialist Labor. 177:

and power struggle in TsKBEM. 828: and space station

decision in 1969, 717

Okhotsimskiy, Dmitby Ye., 103,641

Operation Bereza, 229 30

Operation Kedr, 418-2 I. 427

Operation OsL 29-30

OPM MIAN, 75, 102, 103, 105. 139, 141, 161, 177_ 187. 189,

344. 353,849

Organization of Soviet space industry_ description of,

284-90; and proposals for, 205,206, 208-10. 428-36

Orion-I telescope, 766, 768, 778, 818

Orion-2 telescope, 817, 818

Orlan spacesuit. 493,647, 668

OSK-4 optical instrument. 597

Osoaviakhim. 4_ 6

OS]I telescope. 767, 773, 778

Ostashev, grkadiy I, 44,256

Ostashev, Yevgeniy, 256

995
996

Osvoyemye lunar base. 764

OTK technical commission in Germany. 28.29-37, 40, 4 h 49

O'Toole. Thomas, 784

Ozerov, Georgiy ,q, 16

P 5 naval cruise misstle. 228-29. 721

P 6 naval cruise missile. 24 I

P 70/qmetist naval cruise missile. 437

Pacific Ocean Hydrographic Expedition No 4. 263

Paine, Thomas O, 663. 793

Pallo, ,qrvid V. 17, 25, 29.3h 198. 260

Pallo, Vladimir V, Z 19

Parin. Vasiliy M. 93. 173. 291. 376. 620

Pashinin. Mikhail M, 224

Pashkov. GeorgJy N. 40, 123, 129, 139. 142, 146, 147, J55,

15@ 305 06, 446, 547, 655

Patrick Air Force Base, 153

Patsayev Viktor I. 684,799,818: and becomes primary crew

for Soyuz I I, 776-77: and reconstruction of Soyuz II

accident• 783 84: and Soyuz II mission, 777-81, 785:

and training for SaIyuUDOS I, 772

Paton, Boris Ye • 486, 623, 710

Paton Institute of Electro Welding, 33 t, 486. 623, 702

Parlor, Aleksandr E. 12 I

Pchelka (dog) 259

Pe 8 bomber, 22

Peenem0nde 18, 24-27, 30, 32, 35, 42, 5h 55.56, 75, 83

Peleng beacon system 192, 201

People's Commissariat of Ammunitions, 33

People's Commissariat of Armaments, 30, 33, 37

People's Commissariat of Aviation Industry, 20, 22, 25, 33

People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry, 7

People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. see NKVD

Peresypkin, Ivan, 156

Pershing missiles 844

Pervukhin, 149

Petlyakov, Vladimir M 14, 218

Petrov. Boris N. 740,750, 814

Petrov. Georgiy I 79. 189. 586. 770: and appointment to

Institute of Space Research, 436

Petrovich G (pseudonym forGlushko) 791

Petrovsk_y, Bons V. 514

Phillips SamueIC 662.663

Physical-Power Institute. 335,389

PtK ground tracking network, 156-57

piloted spaceships approval of, 193: and early design of.

189 92: and early work on, ]86-89: see also Object OD2 satellite, Object K spaceship, and Vostok spaceship

Pilyugin, Nikolay ,q 19, 28, 29, 34, 35, 39, 46, 4/. 57, 72,

78.99, t20. 131, 153. 156. 157 159, 166, 177, 192. 200.

201. 237. 254. 272, 289 331, 356, 359 393, 403. 429,

439. 453 459 486 491 510, 519, 558, 676, 677, 704,

820, 85t: and background o[, 503-05: and becomes

Academic,an, 519 20: and death of, 846: and gets first

Hero of Sociahst Labor 121: and gets second Hero of

Socialist Labor 284

Pingvin spacesuit 725 767, 280

Pdsunda. 281. 304; and meeting in 1962. 322 24,330

PKA spaceplane, 225, 226, 338. 448. 600: and design of,

221 22+ 223

Planeta radar, 489, 49 I. 496,639

Plant No I (in Germany), see Design Bureau Olimpiya

Plant No 2. 218

Plant No 2 (in Germany). see Montania Plant

Plant No 3 (in Germany), see Zentralwerke

Plant No 4 (in Germany), see Sonderhausen

Plant No 16 15, 16

Plant No 18,223

Plant No. 19. 613

Plant No 22 462

Plant No. 23, 126, 224. 235-36, 242: see also Khrunichev

Machine Building Plant

Plant No 5h 23,227

Plant No 66. 115

Plant No 81, 196,340, 410. 469,471

Plant No 84 46

Plant No 88, 38: see also Experimental Machine Buitding

Plant {of TsKBEM)

Plant No 166,606.787

Plant No 293, 17, t9

Plant No 385, ll5

Plant No 500, 227

Plant No 586, 97. i 13. 285 43 I

Plant No 642,299

Plant No 918, 172, 181, t98, 264, 267, 340, 362,472 490.

509, 51 t: and Voskhod 2 airlock, 448-50: see also KB

Zvezda

Platform ground test system, 471

Plesetsk, 72, 549; see also Mirnyy

Plotnost instrument, 767, 778

Pobedonostsev, Yuriy A, 5, 6, 7.8. 13, 18. 19, 28, 29, 32, 34,

44, 45, 53, 59, 8h 85, 90, 115, 199

Podgorniy, 628

Potsk newspaper. 852

Pokrovskiy, tqleksey V, 93

Poland, 18 31

Polet I satellite 394

Polikarpov. Nikolay N, 22, 112

Potinom 2M instrument. 767, 778

Politburo, 36, 109, tlO 129. 149, J77 178. 180 213, 270.

385,423,428.433,517,598.703 724,831_832,844.849

Polyakov. Boris I 414

Polyakov, Valeny P_, 840

Polyarniy. Aleksandr P. 7& 99

Ponomareva, Valentina L 353,362. 365, 366 369, 509

Popkov, Ivan M 512

Popov, Vitally I, 93

Popovich, Pavel R. 246, 24Z. 249,261, 267, 274. 352, 353.

363, 378 563 58h 598, 610. 613. 615, 616. 627. 653.

655. 667, 717. 81 I. 813: and background of, 356: and capcorn on Vostok (I) mission, 275-76. 277: and Soyuz-VI

program, 636: and training Ior Moon program. 561, 657:

and Vostok 3/4 mission, 357-61

Potopalov, gleksandr V, 836

Potsdam conference. 36

POU II instrument. 593

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
iNDEX

Powers. Francis Gary, 253

Prauda newspaper. 16& 169. 295. 529, 79 I, 846

Presidium, see Politburo

Priboy life support instrument, 593

Priroda module for Mir, 840, 843

Progress M spaceship, 840

Progress Machine Building Plant, 315, 33 I, 390, 549, 598,

646

Progress spaceship, 826,839

Project Starfish. 357

propellants, debates over, 212-19. 320-21,327, 328-30

Proton booster. 130.440 487, 54L 542,548, 550, 559. 560,

563 59h610,612,615,616,621,639,641-42,654,665.

666, 679, 681, 687, 688, 693, 718, 719. 734. 741. 742.

748, 773, 793, 802, 81 I, 812, 813, 824. 835, 840, 843:

and summary of poor launch record in 1967-70, 738-39:

see also UR-500 and UR-5OOK boosters

Proton satellite, 440

Prudnikov. Ivan S, 44, 488. 576

PSI satellite, 154-55. 160. 172. 175. 180: and design oi,.

161-64: and launch of. 166-68: and permission to

launch, 165: see also Sputnik

PS-2 satellite, 154-55, 174. 175, 180: and design oi, 171-73:

see also Sputnik 2

Putilov, Aleksandr I,, 14

R

R-020 high-speed aircraft, see RSR high-speed aircral,t

R I missile, 41, 49, 53, 56, 57, 58, 72-76, 78, 79, 83, 85, 86.

93, 94, 96, i00, I01. 109, 113, 118, 172, 180, 183, 538;

and approval of, 61: and description oil 50: and launches

of. 61-62, 71

R-I Raketoplan, 441 42,599,600

R-IA missile. 70. 71, 94

RIB missile, 94-97, 180, 182, 183

R-ID missile. 180-81

R-IM missile, I13

R-IV missile. 94-97, 180

R-lYe missile, 151, 180, 181-82, 185

R 2 missile 42, 49-50, 59-61, 63 68, 72, 74-76, 78, 79.85.

86,97, I00, 103 113. 118, 143, 152, 172, 183, 185, 192;

and description of, 57-58; and launches of, 72-73: and

sent to China. 290

R 2 Raketoplan. 441-42,599. 600

R-2A missile, 172 185, 186,250

R-2E missile, 72.76

R 2R missile. 138

R-3 missile, 73-80, 81, 84-86, 97-99. IOh 103, 105, 108.

125: and approval of, 73; and cancellation o1, 105.

II 1-12: and description of. 78

R-3A missile, 78 79.98, 99, I01

R 5 missile, 99, 114, 119, 143. 172, 192: and description of.

99 I00: and launches of, IO0-Oh 115. 120

R-5/q missile, 15I, 250

R 5M missile, 124, 12& 151,838: and launches of. 120, 149

R-5R missile, 138. 151

R-5V missile. 506

R6 I 17 engine, 444

R7 ICBM. 128, 129. 130. 135-43, 147. 149-51, 154, 156,

163, 173, 175, 119, 180. 186, 187, 195, 199, 201, 202,

206, 210, 211, 215, 22h 223, 224, 236, 240, 251, 256,

276. 217, 307, 308, 319. 332, 364, 394, 402, 473, 488,

495. 499, 500, 549. 561, 605. 659, 735, 832. 855, 857:

and declared operational 213: and design oL 131-33: and

launches of. 157-61,213

R-7_q ICBM, 251,469: and declared operational, 213

R-9 ICBM 238,240, 272.31& 321-323,327, 381,388, 391

and origins and debate over, 214-19

R 9_ ICBM, 217, 328, 418,421,832

R-gM ICBM 316,322

R 9V ICBM, 217

Rql missile. 102, 106, 114, 115, II& fl9, 126

R-IIFM missile, 15h t95

R tIM missile. 120, 151, 195

R t2 missde. 114, 127, 164, 211, 212. 215. 232, 310, 31

323: and BOR spaceplanes, 788-89

R 14 missile. 21 I. 212,215, 232, 308, 323

R 16 disaster in 1960. 256-58, 275,319, 367

R-16 ICBM. 418, 707, 796,832: and conflicts over, 214-19,

256-58

R-36 ICBM, 323. 418, 419. 482,796,832

R 36M ICBM, 796,832

R-36-0 orbital bombardment system, 323. 324,482

R-56 booster. 323,324,333,402-03. 406, 408,539, 796

R I01 missile, I01

Rachevskaya, Esfir M. 16

Radio journal. 165

Radio satellites. 852

Raduga communications system, 197, 201

Raduga instrument, 767

Rafikov, Mars Z, 246,247, 374

Raketa group, 19-21, 25, 26.29, 46

Raketi i tyudi memoirs, 848

Raketno-kosmieheskaya tekhnika journal. 595

Raketoplan spaceplane, 305-06, 313, 377. 395, 396, 443,

445. 540: and early conceptions of 230,232. 241-42: and

project. 308-12: and termination of. 440-42,599

Range Measurement Complex. see PIK

Raushenbakh. Boris V, 252, 262, 213, 340. 355, 370, 458,

469. 507-08, 573. 575, 580, 582, 584. 585. 740: and

background of, 200. 792: and evaluation of Korolev,

858-59: and leaves TsKBEM. 814: and name revealed,

791-92: and space station decision in 1969, 717

Razumikhin. B, 85

RD-OI2U ramjet engine, 126

RD 018_ ramjet engine, 127

RD-O40 ramjet engine, 107

RD-OI05 engine, 202,203. 259

RD-OI08 engine, 422. 469

RD-OIO9 engine, 203,259. 277

RD-OI IO engine, 469

RD-O215 engine, 541

RD-0225 engine, 592

RD-O410 nuclear engine. 752

RD- IKhZ engine, 16

RD 2 engine. 16

RD-3 engine. 16

997
998

RD-36-35K turbojet engine. 604

RD I00 engine. 46. 50. 57. 58. 79

RD I01 engine, 57, 100

RD-IO3 engine, 100

RD-IO5 engine. 109. 129

RD 106 engine, 109. 129

RD 107 engine, 130

RD-IO8 engine, t30. 137

RD-109 engine. 202

RD I I0 engine. 76. 98. 99. 304. 329

RD-II I engine_ 2t8. 219. 238. 329

RD-211 engine, l i4-1S. 127

RD-212 engine. 127

RD-213 engine. 127

RD 253 engine. 303. 316. 320. 329. 388. 439. 480. 543. 548.

751. 824: and LIR-7OOM booster. 7SI-52

RD-254 engine. 316. 320. 542.5,43

RD-270 engine. 479.480 751: and UR-700 booster. 541-46

RD-410 nuclear engine. 752

RD 858 engine. 493

RD-859 engine. 493

RDKS-IOO engine. 53

Reactive Scientific-Research Institute, see RNII and NIl-3

Rebrov, Mikhait F, 850

Regulus missile, 229

Reikhrudol, Ye. 70

Reusable Vertical-Landing Transport Craft see MTKVP

Reutov Mechanical Plant. 228

Rezeda-2M instrument 767

Rezeda-5 experiment, 778

Rheinmetall 8orzig company, 35

Rheintochter, 40

Rifma spectrometer, 741

Ristne tracking ship. 534

RKK Energiya, 44. 567, 840,845,848: see also NPO Energiya

RL IOengine 759

RNII institute, 7 I0, IS, 16, 19, 45: see also NIl-3 institute

Romanov, Aleksandr P. II I

Roshchin, Vladimir F., 338, 339

Rosselevich. Igor A. 471

Rotor training device, 248

Rozenptenter, Gunther. 28

RP-3t8 rocket-plane, 9, Ih 13

RS high speed aircraft, 22t

RS- 132 rocket, 49

RSR high-speed aircraft. 22 I. 222

RSS I spectrograph, 672

RSS2 spectrograph 710. 726, 779,818

RTI missile, 381

RT2 ICBM. 381. 645, 658

RT-2PU ICBM. 794

RT-4 telescope. 767, 810

RTS 9 telemeasurement system, 768

Rubm trajectory measurement system, 197, 201,768-69

Rudenko. Sergey I. 356. 365. 373. 417, 418. 422. 459. 567.

629

Rudnev. Konstantin N. 91. 113. 146 155. 178. 180. 193.

210 215. 2t7. 264. 269. 284. 285. 332. 359. 585: and

background o[, t79; and becomes Chairman of State

Commission for Vostok, 258: and gets Hero of Socialist

Labor. 284: and Vostok (I) mission, 271-75

Rudnitskiy, Viktor A. 28.3 h 35

Rudolf. 63

Rukavishnikov, Nikolay N., 657, 684. 690, 785; and Soyuz I0

mission. 774-76: and training for SalyutlDOS-h 770, 772

Ryabikov Vasiliy M. 34, 37, 58.91, 123. 124, 129, 142, 147,

_48, /55, 157, 158, 159, t60, 165. 166. 167, 168; and

appointment as Chairman of State Commission for

Sputnik, 156; and death of. 845

Ryazanov, Yevgeniy F. 147, 152

Ryazanskiy, Mikhail S., 28, 35, 46, 47. 57, 78, 921 IO9-10,

131, 134, 146, 154, 135, 156, 167, 177, 192, 201, 254

272, 275. 289. 330, 331, 429, 453. 471, 503. 504, 505,

536, 562, 573, 611, 675, 676, 727: and background of,

704-05: and death of. 846: and gets Hero of Socialist

Labor, 121

Rybinsk Design Bureau oi Engine Building, 604

Ryzhaya (dog), 186

Ryzhik (dog). 181

Ryzhikh, Mikhail I, 718. 719

SI 5400 engine. 329

S21100engine. t26

$2 15OOengine. 126

$2253 engine. 102. 106

S55A engine, 528

$5.35 engine, 466. 673

$5.53 engine. 558

$561 engine. 642. 739

$5.66 engine. 768

S-75 missile system. 253

Sadovskiy. Igor N. 8OI

Sagdeyev. Roald Z • 623

Sakhatin tracking ship. 263

Sakharov. Andrey D. 116. 117. 128. 129. 377

SALT talks. 432

Salyut- I computer. 614

Scflyut (I) space station (DOS-I). 795. 803. 809. 840_ 845.

853; and crews for. 770-71. 772: and launch of, 773-74

and naming of. 773: and reentry of. 785: and Soyuz I0

mission. 774-76: and Soyuz II mission. 777-82: see also

DOS space station

Salyut 2 space station. 811-12. 814

Salyut 3 space station, 841

Salyut 4 space station, 827, 839

Salyul 5 space station. 841

Salyut 6 space station, 827, 839 848

Salyut 7 space station. 840

Samoylov, Vateriy Ye., 234

S_nger. Eugen. 32.53

SSnger-Bredt bomber. 32.48.65.73.74.76.79.80. 107. 127.

225. 232. 6061 and description of. 5t-53

Sarafanov, Gennadiy V, 8tl

Sarychev. Vasiliy A.. IO3

Sary-Shagan launch range. 162. 198. 224. 262

Saturn I booster. 397. 406

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
INDEX

Saturn IB booster, 502. 553

Saturn C-5 booster, 331. 332,386,541

Saturn V booster. 325_ 386-87, 382. 397, 420,475. 481,482,

483. 497. 499. 502. 543. 551. 553, 61 I, 636, 637, 643,

644. 646,648, 649,651. 662, 714. 824,840

Schmetterling missile. 32, 40

Schmidt. T., 45

Schwartz. R., 45

Scientific-Experimental Complex (NEK), 749

ScientifioResearch and Experimental Institute of the

Parachute Landing Service, see NIEI PDS

Scientific-Research and Testing Range No 5. see NIIP-5 and

Tyura-Tam

Scientific-Research Institute for Applied Mechanics. 491,594:

see also Nil 944

Scientific Research Institute for ,qutomated Devices. 624,

629,665; see also NIEI PDS

ScientifioResearch Institute for Chemical and Construction

Machines, 640

Scientific-Research Institute for Chemical Machine Building,

638: see also NII-229

Scientihc-Research Institute for Current Sources, 154

Scientific-Research Institute for Nuclear Physics, see Nil YaF

Scientific-Research Institute for Precision Instruments. 57h

639,659, 71 I, 772: see also NII-648

Scientific Research Institute for Thermal Processes (NIl TP),

541, 752. 823: see also NII-I

Scientific-Research Institute of Automation and Instrument

Building. 429,439,486, 491. 504,505. 677, 820

Scientific-Research Institute of Digital Electronic Computing

Technology, 558

Scientific-Research Institute of Machine Building, 768

Scientific Research Institute of Measurement Technology, 823

Scientific-Research Institute of Radio Instrument Building,

429. 505,704: see also NII-885

Scott, David R., 609

Scud-B missile. 102

Seamans. Robert C. 383

Second Chief Directorate of the USSR Council of Ministers,

Ill

Second Territory, of OKB-I. 195,462

secrecy in Soviet space program, t69-70. 791-92, 795: and

loosening of during gtosnost, 852-53

Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

177-78, 179

Sedov. Leonid I. 145, 148, 151, 169, 4t2,610,661. 662,667,

697. 711

Seliger TV system, 172

Semenov. Anatoliy I. 19. 20, 25.211-12

Semenov, Yuriy R, 827: and background of, 719: and power

struggle in TsKBEM. 828: and space station decision in

1969. 719-22

Semichastnyy, V., 453

Semyon Chetyuskin transport ship, 742

Serbin, Ivan D. 233,272. 300, 314. 373,416, 515,554, 568,

590. 61 I. 675, 770

Serebrov, _leksandr, 840

Seregin, Vladimir S, 376. 627-29

Sergeyev, K. pseudonym for Korolev, 169

Serov, Ivan g, 38, 42, 5 h 54-56, 62

Seryapin,/_leksandr D., 93, 183

Sevastyanov, Vitatiy I., 615, 616, 657, 666, 667, 703, 708.

806: and Soyuz 9 mission, 723-29

Seventh Chief Directorate of Ministry of Armaments (or State

Committee for Defense Technology), 38.54, 61, 188. 428,

704

Sever spaceship, 338-45. 348,465: and space station, 344

Severin, Gay I., 448-50, 452. 490, 491, 509, 561, 580, 587,

632,640, 647, 727, 785

Sevruk, Dominik D, 114

Shabarov, Yevgeniy M, 44. 137. 166. 168. 256.458, 518. 61 I.

616,619. 654,830: and power struggle in TsKBEM, 828

Shabranskiy, Vitally L. 3 I, 35

Shakespeare, 425

Shakhurin, Aleksey I, 18, 20-21, 33

Shargey, ,qleksandr, see Kondratyuk, Yuriy V.

Shatalov. Vladimir ,q.. 375. 522. 524. 657. 658. 685. 779.

792. 805. 817: and background of. 669: and replaces

Kamanin as _qir Force aide for space, 804-05: and Soyuz

4/5 mission, 669-74: and Soyuz 617t8 mission, 703,

705-t1: and Soyuz I0 mission. 774-76: and training for

SalyullDOS-I. 772. 773

Shcheulov, Viktor I, 677

Sheller. Ursula. 58

Sheldon, Charles S., 822

Shepard. Alan B. Jr. 295. 296.35 I

Sheremetyevskiy, Nikolay N., 683

Shishkin, Oleg N., 823

Shonin, Georgiy S. 246, 247, 249, 352. 353, 509. 631: and

preparations for Voskhod 3. 522-24: and Soyuz 6t7/8 mission. 705-I1: and training for Salyut/DOS-h 770, 772

Shot, Yakov B., 67

Shparkasse group, 35

Shternberg Astronomical Institute, 742

Shtokotov, Vladimir _q. 66.68

Shubnikov, Georgiy M., 135. 136, 512

Shuster, Petr A, 60 I

Shustin, Konstantin S., 189

Shutka (dog). 259

Sibir tracking ship, 263

Signal communications system. 196. 201. 425,524

Simferopoi. 262,640, 642

Sinilshchikov, Yevgeniy V., 40

Sirobaba, Yakov Ya, 8tl

Sisakyan, Norair M, 93, 188, 29h 524

SKB-385, I 15,349, 517

SKB-567. 536

SKB Biofizpribor. 172

Skylab program. 714. 770, 793,802. 804.81 h 815. 818,839:

and competition with Soviets, 810: and launch of, 813-14

Slayton, Donald K (Deke), 415, 796

Smelaya {dog). 95

Smirnov, Leonid V, 285. 291. 293, 31 I, 314, 320-21, 363,

373. 386,407, 408,420,425-27, 499. 500, 50l. 509,525,

526, 545, 547, 553, 554, 560, 561, 61 I, 618, 620, 631.

632, 634, 682, 699, 701, 703, 714, 728, 750. 786. 797,

800. 803, 824: and background of. 431-34: and end of

N I L3 project, 832-34: and latter-day career. 844: and ori999
I000

gins of Buran, 835: and Soyuz I mission, 577; and Vostok

3/4 mission. 354-61

SMK-4 sextant. 705. 706

SMK-6 sextant 726

Sochl. 171. 291

Sokol (SK-I) spacesuit, 198-99, 265, 274

Sokol-Kl spacesuit. 785,804,805,816

Sokolov, Andrey I, 25, 26, 32, 39, 61. 124

Soldatova. Lidiya N. 85, 139, 140

Solovyev. Yuriy D. 130

Solovyeva. tnna B, 353_ 362, 366. 369, 509

Sommerda. 35

Sonderhausen, 35, 39, 42

Sorokin. gteksey M 414- t5, 508

SotsialistJeheskaya industriya newspaper, 773

SOUD, see System of Orientation Motion and Control

Soviet Air Defense Forces, 375. 393, 43h 728. 781. 786, 790

Soviet Air Force. 2 h 24, 5 h 90, 173, 183,220, 222.22L 262.

28?, 291 306, 312,352,354,363.314-76,381-383,403,

425. 431, 441, 459, 479, 481, 506, 507, 508, 509. 510.

572, 574. 576, 586, 606, 607, 614, 623, 624, 625, 632.

650, 679. 684, 718 728. 770, 773. 781, 796. 816, 817:

and debates over Voskhod crew selection 413-18: and

resistance to civilian cosmonauts. 565-69: and selection

of 1960 cosmonauts. 243-49: and struggle to control

space program. 377-80, 786-87

Soviet Army 628, 680

SovJet Navy, 228, 230. 243. 375, 431, 536. 561. 786

Souiet Ne_us journal, 666

Soyuz booster, 130, 40h 502. 605. 769: see also I IA511

Soyuz circumlunar project, 345-50, 355, 358, 373,375, 377,

380 82,384,386,395. 402,405. 406 409,443,445, 46 h

497: and approval of. 383: and cancellation of, 407: see

also 7K spaceship, 9K rocket blok, and I I K spaceship

Soyuz spaceship/program. 64,402 46 I, 465,492,493,494,

495, 497, 498. 501, 502. 504, 513, 522, 526, 527, 535,

546, 556, 557, 560, 561. 562, 564, 565. 567, 590, 607,

613, 614. 622, 675, 715, 717. 766. 768, 769, 772, 779.

786, 795, 801, 802, 807, 810. 815. 816, 817, 839, 840.

857: and decisions over piloted missions in 1968, 631-33:

and design olr 463-73: and docking system of, 471: and

early stage of project. 345-50: and launch escape system

of 469: and plans for missions in 1972, 805-06: and precursor missions m 1966 67. 571-76: and precursor missions in 1967 68 624-26 629-30: and precursors to,

337 45: and preparations for flight in 1966, 569-7k and

redesign for two cosmonauts. 783. 785; and rendezvous

system of, 469-71: and variants in the early 19705, 804,

810: see also 7K-OK spaceship and 7K-T spaceship

Soyuz i mission. 597, 609,610,622. 625,629, 63 h 632,657.

669. 814. 827: and actual mission. 581-88: and crews for,

568-69: and investigation of 588 90: and preparations

[or, 576 81

Soyuz 2/3 mission 657-62, 757. 827

Soyuz 4/5 mission, 675, 678, 680, 701, 103. 729. 770: and

actual mission 668-74

Soyuz 6/7/8 mission, 723. 726, 727, 757, 777, 827: and actual mission, 705-1 I: and plans [or. 701 02

Soyuz 9 mission, 77 I; and actual mission, 724 29: and back

ground to, 122-24

Soyuz IO mission, 774-76, 791. 827

Soyuz I I mission. 796. 799, 803,804,805, 814, 8f8,827:

and accident investigation. 782 86: and actual mission,

777-81

Soyuz 12 mission, 816

Soyuz 13 mission, 817-18

Soyuz P anti satellite spaceship, 473

Soyuz-R reconnaissance spaceship, 473.59 I. 597, 635

Soyuz-T spaceship, 826, 839

Soyuz_M spaceship. 826, 840

Soyuz-Vl military station program, 633-36, 716: and termi

nation of. 722

spaceptanes, early research on. 220-23, 224-27: see also

PKA. M-48. Raketoplan, Kosmoplan. and Spiral

Space Shuttle (NASA). 4t4. 793, 835-37: and decision to

build, 765-66

space stations, decision to build in late 1960s, 677-78, 686.

697, 713-22

Space Task Group at Langley Research Center, 193

Special Committee for Armaments for the Army and Navy,

146, 147, 155, 156, 165: and formation of, 122-23

Special Committee for Reactnve Technology, 37-38. 40, 50,

5 I: see also Special Committee No 2

Special Committee No 2, 51, 53. 55, 73. 80, 97. 105, I07,

109. III. I17, 122, 177, 367

Special Committee on the Atomic Bomb. 36

Special Design Bureau No. I, see OKB-I

Special Experimental Design Bureau of the [light Research

Institute, 467, 490 614,650

Special Purpose Brigade of the Supreme High Command

Reserve, 39

Special Technical Commission in Germany, see OTK

Spektr module for Mir. 840,843

Spiral spaceplane program, 442 473. 836, 841: and design

of, 602-07: and end of. 835, 837: and origins of,

599-602: and work in late 19605, 787 90

Spiridinov, Aleksey S. 63. 150

Spitsa, Ivan I, 535

Sputnik (11 171, 173, 220. 224, 242. 243. 295. 297. 314.

318, 330, 335, 350. 406, 408, 42h 482, 512, 653, 694.

79h 845,847. 852,855,858 859; and design oil 161-64:

and launch of. 166 68: and origins of, 154 55: and per

mission to launch. 165: and press release [or, 168: see also

PS- I

Sputnik 2, 174, 185: and design of. t71-73: see also PS-2

Sputnik 3, 176, t9h 421: see also Object D

SR Raketoplan, 308

SR 71A Blackbird, 221

SS I missile, see R-I missile

SS 2 missile, see R-2 missile

SS-3 missile, see R-5 and R 5M missiles

SS 4 missile, see R-12 missile

SS-5 missile, see R-q4 missile

SS-6 missile, see Rq missile

SS 9 missile, see R-36 missile

SS-IO missile, see UR-2OO missile

SS-II missile, see UR-IO0 missile

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
INDEX

SS 18 missile, see R-36M missile

SS-20 missile, 229

Stafford, Thomas P, 782

Stalin, Iosif M. IO, 14, 16, 19, 21-24.33_ 36, 37, 51, 53. 5L

60,64,65,68.73,74,86.87,91, 112, 117, 119, 126, 140,

176,227, 367, 442,462. 705,855,858: and death ol, IO0_

109-10

Star City, see Zvezdnyy Gorodok

State Central Test Range No 4, see GTsP-4

State Commission for A-4.54-55

State Commission for Almaz, 8I I

State Commission for LI. 560-61, 687, 845: and in 1969,

678-79, 701: and launches in early 1967, 561 64: and

launches in late 1967 and early 1968, 610-22: and Zond

5 mission, 653 57

State Commission for Luna landers, 694 96, 737_ 739-42

State Commission for N i, 826: and first launch. 679-84: and

fourth N I launch. 822-24, 830: and second launch, 692;

and third launch, 820

State Commission [or R h 61

State Commission for R-5, 121

State Commission for R-7. 155-56, 157, 159, 161. 164, 165,

179

State Commission for R-16. 256

State Commission [or Satyut, 771, 773, 774. 776, 777, 780,

78 h 785

State Commission for Soyuz, 570, 57h 572,624-26,629-33,

668, 670, 701, 816, 833. 845: and Soyuz I mission.

576-90: and Soyuz 2/3 mission, 657-62: and Soyuz 9

mission. 723-29

State Commission for Sputnik. 165, 166, 167, 845

State Commission for Voskhod. 422. 426, 43 h 451. 845: and

Voskhod 2 mission, 454-60

State Commission for Vostok, 25h 253, 258, 260, 264, 283,

291. 355,845: and Vostok (I) mission, 268-75,282: and

Vostok 3]4 mission. 356-61: and Vostok 5/6 m_ssion.

364-70

State Committee for Aviation Technology, 220, 222. 225.

233,255,379,415. 429

State Committee for Defense Technology. 178, 179, 188,255.

257, 284, 285, 287, 291, 320, 332, 354. 364. 379. 393.

429,430,463

State Committee for Radio Electronics, 255,429

State Committee for Ship Building. 255,429

State Committee [or the Coordination of Soentific Research,

285

State Committee for War. 21

State Institute for Applied Chemistry, 202

State Institute for Reactive Technology, 17

State Red Banner Scientific Research Institute of the Air

Force, 568, 669

Stechkin Boris S 15

Steinhof[, Ernst 28

Stels radar system 470

Stepanov, Vladimir G, 488, 491

Strategic Missile Forces, 25l 258, 263, 264, 269, 287. 301

306, 330, 332, 363. 368, 381, 383, 389, 431, 457, 479,

509.570. 625,677, 679. 706. 723,724 73 h 796. 813: and

control of ground communications network, 535-38: and

formation of, 211-12_ 235: and struggle to control space

program. 377-80, 786-87: and transfer of men to Ministry

o[ General Machine Building_ 434-36

Strelka (dog), 253

Stroganov. Boris A, 553. 675,680

Struminskiy, Vladimir V. 222,602

suborbital piloted program (1980s), 183-85

Suchan tracking ship, 263

Sukhoy. Pavel O. 16,235,604, 836

Suslov, M., 697

Svinets experiment, 522, 597. 702, 707, 780

Syromyatnikov. Vladimir S, 346,471

System of Orientation Motion and Control {of Soyuz spaceship), 469,471

T

TI R&D theme, IO7-09, 125, 128

TI test spaceship. 639 40, 643,676, 734

T2 R&D theme, 107, 109, 125

T2 test spaceship, 639-40,643,676: and description of, 735:

and flights of, 734-36

T 4 experimental aircraft. 836

Tabakov, Gleb M., 58, 258. 482

Taman rescue ship, 742

Taran anti-ballistic missile system, 313,438

Taratynova. Galina P. 103

T,qSS (news agency), 168,251. 269,270 278.369, 515 563.

57h 575,587. 616, 625,685,696. 706. 735. 740, 741,812

Tayga hypersonic program, 606

Tayga stations, 156

TB-5 bomber, 4

Tbilis ground tracking station 262

TBK 12 training chamber. 248

TBK-60 barometric chamber, 45 h 452

TDK I spaceship simulator. 249

TDK-2 spaceship simulator. 352

TDK 3TD spaceship simulator. 451

TDK 3V spaceship simulator, 415

TDU-I engine. 197. 200, 25h 252,259,261. 265,279,411

TEB telescope, 767, 778

Tereshkova, Valentina V, 353,362,369, 381,396,397, 508,

674. 726: and selection of for Ilight, 365: and Vostok 5/6

mission, 365-73: and wedding of, 373 74

Thagard, Norman E, 840

thermonuclear weapons see hydrogen bomb

Third Chief Directorate of the Ministry of General Machine

Building, 430. 570, 634,833

Third Chief Directorate of the LISSR Council of Ministers,

III, 123

Third Directorate of GURVO, 212 284. 380

Thor missile, 355

Tikhomirov, Nikolay I, 6

Tikhonravov Mikhail K, 5, 6.8, i3, 18, 19, 22, 27, 48.49,

63-66, 75, 87, 103, 124. 134, 140, 153, 154. 169, 180

183, 185-87, 199, 2OI, 210. 267, 269, 327, 335,338, 529:

and death of. 847: and design of first piloted spaceship.

189-92: and early satellite studies. 84 86, 88-8 I. 139-44.

146 5t: and launch vehicle studies in late 194Os. 66 68:

IOOI
1002

and moves from NII-4 to OKB-h 152: and proposals for

long-range space plans. 200-08: and secrecy. 169 70

Tishkin. Rnatoliy P. 828

Titan I ICBM 217. 302

Titan IIIC booster. 590

Titov. German S. 246.24/. 249. 261. 271-74. 296. 314 319.

351. 352. 3.54. 356. 357. 370. 372. 412. 413. 627. 667.

693: and background of. 262. 291; and Spiral. 606-07:

and Vostok ( I) mission preparations. 274-76; and Vostok

2 mission. 292-95

Tkachev. Fedor D. 198. 356. 472-73. 524. 587_ 589. 629.

632. 727

TKS spaceship, see Transport-Supply Ship

TMK Mars spaceship. 334-37. 745-46

TMK-I Mars spaceship. 334. 399

TMKB Soyuz. 488. 491

TNA 400 communications dish. 640

Tokaty-Tokayev. Grigony ,q. 53

Tolstoy. Aleksey N.. 745

Tomilin. Arkadiy S 188

Tonometr instrument, 767

Topaz camera system, t96. 424,450

Topaz radio control system. 78

Topchiyev, Gennadiy V. 147

TOS space stabon 337. 715 16; see also Zvezda station

Tral telemetry system, 155. 157. 172. 175. 573

Tral D telemetry system. 175

TraI-PI telemetry system, 197, 201

TraI-T communication system, 197

Tral-I P telemetry system, 42 h 422

Transport-Supply Ship (TKS) 595. 809, 841. 844: and

approval of, 806: and design of. 807

Tregub, Yakov I 327. 537-38, 576. 578, 582,644. 650,724.

734, 775, Z85. 813,821,827: and fired from TsKBEM 814

Tritko, Karl I, 43, 90, 91

Trubachev. Pavel. /55

Trufanov, Yuriy N. 616, 654

Truman, Harry S. 87

TsAGI institute. 4. 48. I03. 126. 222. 236. 309. 339. 599.

600. 602. 606. 787. 789

TsAKB, 195

Tsander. Fridrikh A 3.4.5, 6, 9. 208. 333

Tselinograd. 630

Tsetsior. Yevgeniy M. 29

TslAMinstitute 21.53.79.91. 106.309. 541. 692

Tsiklon booster. 832

Tsiolkovskiy. Konstantin E. 1 2.4.7. 8. 27 66. 74.89. 150.

[82. 205. 206. 208. 215 317. 333. 337. 404. 475. 512.

686. 716. 799. 851: and loOth birthday of. 165

TsKB 29. 14. 15

TsKBEM. 520. 527. 537. 539. 561. 563. 607. 623. 665. 676.

677. 685. 700. 742, 743. 755. 764. 783, 190. 791. 809.

810. 815. 817. 821 848: and/qelita Mars project. 746-51:

and becomes part of NPO Energiya. 830-31: and cancellation of Voskhod program. 522 2Z: and conception of LI

circumlunar project. 556-61; and decision on space station in 1909.714 22: and development of N I -L3 complex

in 1967 68. 636-43: and DOS design. 769 70; and

finances. 549: and Kosmos-557 mission. 813-14: and LI

launches in 1967-68. 610-22: and L3M proiect. 158-64:

and MOKIMKBS station, 801-02: and new projects in

1973-74, 826-27: and organization of. 520-2 I, 794-95:

and power struggle within. 827-29: and preparations for

first DOS launch. 770-72: and preparations for N I launch

in 1968. 643-51: and problems in N I L3 development in

mid-1960s. 546-56: and selection of civilian cosmonauts,

565 69. 669. 724: and Soyuz precursor missions in

1966-67. 569-76: and Soyuz precursor m_sslons in

1967-68. 624-26. 629-33: and Soyuz I mission. 576-90:

and Soyuz 213 mission. 657-62; and Soyuz 5 accident.

673-74: and Soyuz-Vl program. 633-36: and termination

of original L3 project. 761-63; and work on NI in

1969-71. 729-33. 736-37: see also OKB-I

TsKBEM Branch No. 3. 591. 646. 716-17: and Zvezda mill

tary space station. 596-99 633-35: see also OKB I

Branch No. 3

TsKBM. 520. 716-18. 738; and Aelita Mars proJect. 750-54;

and Almaz llSdlyut 2 mission. 810-12: and cosmonauts

from. 717: and UR-IOOILK-700 program, 538-46: and

work on TKS. 806-07: see also OKB-S2

TsKBM Branch No I (at Fih). 539. 752, 169, 843: and

becomes part of NPO Energiya. 842; and development of

T KS. 806 07; and space stabon decision in 1969, 718-22;

see also OKB-52 Branch No I

TsNII-30 institute, 463

TsNII-50 institute, 847

TsNlI-58 institute, 195

TsNIIMash institute. 537, 552,554, 618. 637, 655,675,678,

684. 696,819. 829, 845: see also NII-88

TsPI-31 institute, 135

TsUKOS. 435. 634,655; and becomes GUKOS, 786 87: and

formation of. 380

Tsybin. Pavel V., 220-23 225-27, 302, 338, 448, 573 580,

587. 599. 600. 60L 615. 636, 650. 769. 837

Tsygan (dog). 95.96

Tsyganka (dog). 181

Tu 2 bomber. 15

Tu-16 bomber. 223. 630

Tu 95 bomber. 128 218,263. 600. 605. 788

Tu-95K carrier aircraft. 837

Tu 95KM carrier aircraft. 605

Tu-104 aircraft. 248 36h 45t, 452,610, 806

Tu-fO4L aircraft. 375

Tu-i 14 aircraft. 218

Tu 124 aircraft. 615

Tukhachevskiy. Mikhail I. 7. 8. IO. II

Tupolev. Andrey N. 3. 14-16 21. 92. 126. 218. 415. 521.

604. 605. 837: and spaceplane research. 599 601

Tushino Machine Building Plant. 837

Tveretskiy. lqleksandr F. 39

Typhoon missile. 32

Tyulin. Georgiy A. 19.20. 25.26.27. 29.31.32.35.39.49.

142. 258. 285. 369. 417. 422 451, 457, 459. 518. 536.

560. 563. 566. 570. 621. 647, 678,687. 701. 737. 741: and

background of. 364-65: and death of. 845: and LI program. 610. 615. 616. 618. 619. 655, 657; and Luna 15

mission. 694 96; and Luna 16 mission. 739-40: and

CHALLENGE TO /I_POLLO
INDEX

Voskhod program cancellation, 522-25: and Vostok 5t6

mission, 366-70

TyuIpan launch pad. 131-32

Tyura-Tam launch range, 135-3& 153. 156, 157, 159. t62.

165. 168. 173, 174, 223. 251. 252, 256, 26h 262, 264,

266, 27t-75. 277, 282, 292,319, 325,331. 332, 349,355.

357, 365, 366, 394, 413. 417, 418, 422, 426, 427, 431.

453, 454, 458, 460, 477-478, 480, 482. 495. 512. 525.

528, 532, 537, 555, 559, 560, 561, 562, 563. 571. 573.

575 578, 579, 582. 583, 584. 585, 586, 611, 613, 615.

619, 621, 625, 629, 636. 643, 646, 648. 649, 653, 659.

663, 666, 667, 668, 675, 678, 681, 693, 705, 707. 723.

724, 737, 754, 771, 772, 776 780, 813, 822: and construction of. 135-37: and construction of N I complexes.

393. 549-50, 755: control siteat, 535 36: and creationof

Baykonur name. 284: and description of, 439; and

Operation Kedr, 418-421 : and second N I launch. 688-93:

and selection of. 133-34: see also NIIP-5

Tyurin. Petr A.. 648

U

U-2000 engine, 101

Udarov, Gngoriy. I55. 156

Ugolek (dog), 523-24

Ulan-Ude ground tracking station, 263

Utrikh, Vasiliy V, 12

Ulybyshev, Boris N, 746

Umpfenbach, Joachim. 30, 35, 45, 58 63

United Nations. 256,400, 401

UPMK, see Cosmonaut Maneuvering and Motion Unit

UR 100 ICBM, 313,539,540, 545. 602,603. 718

UR-200 ICBM, 234-35. 242, 302 05. 308, 31 h 313, 322,

393 94. 439, 445, 541, 600, 718: and cancellation of,

418-20,436-37: and description of, 301

UR-500 booster, 31 I, 313, 320. 322,333, 388. 407, 419 20,

438, 443,445,499. 500, 545,549_ 718: and approval for,

324: and development of. 439: and first launch of, 440:

and origins and design of. 302-05: see also Proton booster

UR-5OOK booster, 530, 532. 541, 546, 548, 554, 591, 610,

639, 679, 687. 701_ 743, 840; and LI launches in early

1967, 561 64: and LI launches in 1967-68,611-22:and

LK-I project. 443-46: and origins of [I Zond project,

500-06: and role in L I circumlunar program, 556-61 : and

summary of poor launch record in 1967-70, 738-39: see

also Proton booster

UR 700 booster, 420, 480, 481, 75 h 762,825: and concep

tion and design of, 538 46: and resurrection of, 645-46

UR-7OOM booster, 751-54,841

Ural Electromechanical Company, 495

US ocean reconnaissance satellite. 235, 241-42, 304, 307,

312. 394. 419,540,812-13

US Air Force, 21 I, 220, 599, 606

US. intelligence on Soviet missile and space programs, 133.

205, 278, 374, 408, 432. 550-51. 620. 636-37, 647, 662.

687, 708. 734,784, 792-93,822

US Navy, 229,656

USSR Academy of Artillery Sciences, 65. 67. 69.84, 87. 88

93, 124

USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, 93,244. 414

USSR Academy of Sciences, 8, 48, 71, 93, 95. II5, 14I.

145-49, 152, 165, 177. 181, 182. 187, 188. 219,228. 243.

244. 248, 255. 263, 272. 283, 287. 320. 328. 333, 353,

379. 38h 399, 431, 438, 479, 481, 497, 508, 519, 520,

535. 537, 610, 641. 677, 696, 703, 750, 763, 770, 789,

792. 795. 848, 849, 850: and cosmonauts from, 623-24:

and decision to go to Moon, 401: and formation of

Institute of Space Research, 436

USSR Hydrometeorological Service. 726

Ussuriysk tracking station. 561

Ustinov, Dmitriy F, 33-34.36.37. 40, 54-60.62.8t, 87. 88,

90, 91, IO0, 105, IO9-14. 123, 124. 129, 132, 133. 14I,

142. 146, 149. 164, 165. 179, 180. 210, 215. 217, 219,

250, 254. 258, 269, 285, 287. 305, 31 I. 314, 323, 354.

357, 363, 378. 418, 426, 430. 431, 456. 462, 480, 482,

517, 518, 539, 545, 553 554. 555. 560. 561, 563, 577,

579. 586. 587, 590, 61 h 613, 618, 620. 628, 63L 632,

633, 645, 688, 699. 701. 702, 703, 714, 730. 746, 769,

770, 771, 782, 785, 786, 797, 799. 800. 803, 804, 806,

810. 813. 824, 836, 845, 853, 858: and background of,

433 34: and becomes VPK Chairman, 178: and critical of

NI. 829: and death of, 844: and end of NI-L3 projecL

832-34: and firing of Mishin, 830-31: and gets second

Hero of Socialist Labor. 284: and power struggle within

TsKBEM, 828-29: and relationship with Chelomey, 233,

419-20,787. 842-43: and space station decision in 1969

715 22

Utkin. Ivan I, 471

Utkin. Viktor V, 588 624. 626, 657

V

V-I missile, see Fi 103

V 2 missile, see A 4

V-10 helicopter, 650

V-300 missile. 126, 200

Vakhnichenko, Vladimir V., 392

Van Allen. James, 145

Van Allen radiation belts, 523,524

Vandenberg Air Force Base, 835 36

Vanguard project 154. 297

Vannikov. Boris [, 33

Varlamov. Valentin S.. 246, 249

Vas_'liy _otounin ship, 656

Vasiliyevskiy, Aleksandr M, 93, 139, 142

Vasilyev, Anatoliy, 155

Vasilyev, M (pseudonym for Mishin). 79t

Vavilov, Anatoliy. 24

Vavilov, Sergey I, 56

Vavilov State Optical Institute 187

Vazenkov, Nikolay I, 14

Vechernaya Moskue newspaper, 4

Velikhov, Yevgeniy, 313

Venera robotic probes, 506

Vernadskiy Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical

Chemistry. 740

1003
1004

Veme. jules 7

Vernov. Sergey N 49. 56.69, 70, 169 355

Vershinin, KonstantinR.245,246,269 281. 282 352,363,

375. 377 379 44L 442,459,509 651

VertikaI-M instrument, 767

Veterok (dog). 523-24

Vetoshkin, Sergey I. 38, 40, 54. 58. 59, 6h 91, II0

Vetrov, Georgiy S,, 44, 237, 384 445,480

VIP, M institute, 127, 222 541

Viebach. Fritz. 55

Viktorenko Aleksandr 840

Vishnevskiy. gleksandr _q. 514

Vladimirov. Professor (pseudonym for Barmin) 846

Vladimirovka launch range. 223. 310. 311.5Z4,614

Vladimirskiy. Sergey 156

VNII 100 institute. 529

Volchok simulator. 614

Volga aidock. 448 50,455

Volga high altitude tests. 815

Volga infrared instrument. 593

Volga river. 281

Volga simulator 622

Volgograd. 54

Volkodav 116

Volkov. Vladislav N. 566 567. 799. 818: and becomes pnmary crew for Soyuz I I. 776 77: arrd _econstructlon of

Soyuz II accident. 783 84; and Soyuz 6i7!8 mission,

705- I I: and Soyuz I I mission. 777 81. 785: and training

for £]tyut!DOS h 772

Vo]na-20 fuel cell 495 755

Voloshm Valeriy,'q 610 615 657

Volynkin. Yuvenaiiy. 365

Volynov. Bons V., 246 247, 249, 353. 356. 363. 364, 366,

657. 658 7IL 770: and preparations for Voskhod 3,

522-24: and selection [or Soyuz 4/5, 630-31: and Soyuz

4/5 mission. 669 74 and Voskhod crew selection,

415-18

yon Braun Wernher, 18, 24 27 28, 76 81 83,265,519,687

Vorobyev LevV 817

Vorobyev Yevgemy I. 72/'

Voronezh 189 315 389 524

Voronin. Grigony I . 199 264 271. 272. 356. 457 490, 510

523. 525. 561. 632

Vorooov. Anatohy F. 684

Voronov. Nikolay N. 36 87

Voroshilov Khment. 37

Vorotmkov. V 390

Voskhod program, 421 463. 471. 472 513, 535, 565. 567.

570. 578, 590. 623. 669. 673. 674. 785. Z95. 815. 816,

817. 857: and approved. 386: and cancellation of. 525-27:

and debates over crew selection 413 18: and design of.

409-13: _nd origins o{. 384-86: and proposals for

1965-66. 506 II

Voskhod (I) mission. 507 510. 669: and actual mission,

423 26: and Khrushchev overthrow. 427-28: and preparations for launch. 421 23

Voskhod 2 mission. 461 506. 507, 508. 509. 51 h 551, 561,

578: and actual mission, 454 60: and design of spaceship,

448-51: and preparations for 446 54

Voskhod 3 (proposed) mission. 50Z- I h 533. 597, 658: and

preparations for, 522 27

Voskhod 4 (proposed) mission 50_'- I I. 522

Voskhod 5/6 (proposed) missions. 511. 522: see also

Voskhod program

Voskresenskiy, Leonid ,q. 19. 29, 31, 35. 43. 50. 121 133.

151. 152. 155 157. 158. 159 166. 171 264. 275. 276.

292. 327, 346 368, 512, 681; and conflict with Korolev.

477-78: and death of. 478: and gets Hero of Socialist

Labor. 177

Vostok booster. 130 202-03, 321, 381, 542: see also 8K72

and 8K72K boosters

Vostokprogram 220. 297, 334,337. 338,339, 341. 350.375.

377, 384-86, 395,409-13,446, 448, 463, 469, 471. 477.

512, 530, 535, 565, 567, 570, 590 673. 795 816 817

857: and approval for first piloted spaceflight 254-55: and

approval of, 193: and design of spaceship, 195 201: and

"extended Vostok" plans, 378-79, 380 83,385,447: and

plans [or group flight, 351-52: and plans for women

flight, 362-64: and precursor missions of, 250 56,

264-68: see also Object OD 2 satellite

Vostok (I) mission. 6t9: and actual mission 276 81: and

preparations for, 274 76

Vostok 2 mission. 319, 412: actual mission, 292-95: and

goals of. 292

Vostok 3f4 mission, 364 369. 561 724: and actual mission.

356-61: preparations for. 353-56

Vostok 5/6 mtssion preparations for, 362-68

Vostok 7 8 and 9 (proposed) missions 382 83

Vostok I spaceship variant 250 252. 254 255 258 60: see

also I K

Vostok IP spaceship variant. 251: see also IKP

Vostok 3A spaceship variant, 250, 252. 254,255. 258. 260

264 66,268 271 343; see also 3K,q

Vostok 7 spaceship variant, 342 46: see also IL spaceship

Voznyuk, Vasiliy I. 54. I00. 133, 134

VPK. see Military Industrial Commission

VR-190 missile. 64.65.66. 180 185

VR-210 mnssde. 49.56.63

V@kan welding instrument. 623 702. 705: and expenment

on Soyuz 6. 709 I0

Vykhod EVA experiment. 382. 386 421 447. 451: see also

Voskhod 2 mission

Vyshinskiy,/)ndrey Yu. 13

Vystrelgroup 31.35,40

Vzor instrument, 196, 412. 467. 469 70

W

Washington Post The. 784. 794

Wasserfall missile. 32 38 40. I01. E02

Webb, James E, 296. 483. 551. 637

White Edward H . 460. 562

White Sands, 32, 57

Wilford, John Noble, 620. 792

Wolff, Waldemar. 30.45.58.63.82-83

women cosmonauts, selection of. 352-53: and proposal for

second mission. 508 09. 526: and training of. 361-62

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
INDEX

X

X 15 rocket plane. 600

X 20A Dyna Soar, see Dyna Soar

X-24 lifting body, 835

Y

YaERD-2200 nuclear rocket engine, 389

Yak-18 aircraft. 353

YaKhR-2 booster, 318

Yakovlev. Aleksandr S. 16, 21_ 64. 218. 604

Yakovlev Nikolay D. 36.37. 38.40 54 55.62 91

Yakubovskiy. ivan I 635

Yangel. Mikhail K. 112. /J3, 114. 115, 119 J27. 164_ 230.

233.241,242,306.308,3J0.31L314.315 322-24_330.

333,427,432 34. 439,482,495. 512.539,684.734 786

791. 837 841. 852: and Aelita Mars project. 750: and

agrees to build [K lander engine, 492: and becomes

Academician, 519-20: and "civil war" over missiles. 787:

and death off 796: and gets second Hero of Socialist Labor,

284: and Operation Kedr, 418 21; and R 16 disaster.

256-58: and R 56 proposal 323 324 402 03,406. 408:

and struggle over R 9 and R 16 ICBMs, 212-19: and supported by Ustinov. 787

Yantar reconnaissance satellites, 635

Yantar 2K reconnaissance satellite. 634

Yastreb spacesuiL 559. 580,668. 671

Yatsunskiy, Igor M.. 66.68_ 85, 139. t40. 141

Yazdovshy Valeriy A. 817

Yazdovskiy. Vladimir A 92 94. 173 183, 243, 244. 247,

253,254, 264. 274 291.354. 357. 365, 372

Ye I lunar probe 527

Ye 2 lunar probe 527

Ye 2A lunar probe 200

Ye-3 lunar probe, 527

Ye-4 lunar probe. 527

Ye61unarlander 51h 528 533: see alsoLunamisslons

Ye-6LF lunar orbiter 534

Ye 6LS lunar orbiter. 534,640, 643

Ye-6M lunar lander 528

Ye-6S lunar orbiter, 533

Ye 7 lunar orbiter, 528

Ye-81unarrover_ 541, 547,641-43 647.676, 733, 738,827:

and design of. 530-33: and first launches of. 679. 681:

and launches in 197h 740-42; see also Luna missions

Ye 8 5 lunar sample return spaceship, 668, 738: and design

of, 641 43: and launches in 1969. 687 88, 693-96: and

launches in 1970 737 40: see also Luna missions

Ye 8LS lunar orbiter, 532. 643

Yefremov. Gerbert A, 234,442,443,843

Yelremov. Nikolay I, 7, 267

Yefremov. Vladimir G 200

Yegorov_ Boris B 422: and selection [or Voskhod, 414 18:

and Voskhod (I) mission, 423 26

Yegorov, BorisG 414.417

Yegorov Vsevolod A 103. 142

Yeliseyev. Aleksey S 566, 567, 568,568. 577, 579,583,588.

632. 684. 773. 779. 792: and selection for Soyuz 4/5

630 31; and Soyuz 4J5 mission. 669 74: and Soyuz 6/7/8

mission 703, 705-Jl; and Soyuz I0 mission. 774-76:

and training [or SaJyut/DOS h 770 772

Yeiizovo ground tracking station, 162. 262. 278. 453

Yeniseysk ground tracking station 162,262

Yerkina Zhanna D,353.362

Yershov_ Valentin G., 623. 624

Yesenin Tolya, 168

Yevpatoriya ground tracking station 536-37, 572. 582, 583.

584. 586, 616, 618, 625. 629, 654 655, 656, 659, 703,

728 777 779. 781,812.813: seealso NIP-16

Yezhov. Nikolay I. 12

York, Herbert F 237

Yuganov. YevgeniyM 183. 291

Z

Zagorsk. 58, 83, 137, 138, 156,331. 389 483. 638,642 685

Zakharov, Matvey V, 378. 560

Zarya communications system, 19L 201,226,471,524. 768

Zarya module of International Space Station, 807, 840, 843

Zarya village, 136. i37

Zaykin, Dmitriy A. 246, 24Z, 452. 509

Zelenyy 248. 249,266 353,374.375. 513: see also Zvezdniy

Gorodok

Zemtya i uselennayc_ journal, 852

Zerfit reconnaissance satellites. 250. 323. 473. 590

Zenit 2 reconnaissance satellite. 352, 354, 38h 412. 420.

473, 506

Zenit 2M reconnaissance satellite. 634

Zenit 4 reconnaissance satelhte. 412. 453. 473,506, 57h 723

Zenit-4M reconnaissance satellite, 634

Zentralwerke. 29.35.42

Zernov, Pavel M. 121

Zhukov Georgiy K, 134

Zhukovskiy Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute. see Ts,qGI

Zhukovskiy Military Air Engineering Academy 568. 606,

626 27

Zond program, 678, 748; and end of program, 70h 743: and

launch in early 1969. 678-79: and launch record, 738; and

launches in late 1967 and early 1968, 610-22; see also LI

program

Zond4 mission 616 19,666. 738

Zond 5 mission, 653-57, 663. 666,704 738. 743

Zond 6 mission, 663 65, 666, 678, 738, 743

Zond 7 mission, 699-0h 738, 743

Zond 8 mission. 742 43 743

Zritel optical sight. 294

Zubovich, ivan G, 38 105

Zvezda heavy space station, 337, 715

Zvezda military space station. 607: and cancellation of,

633 35: and origins and design of. 596-99

Zvezda Moon base 834-35

Zvezda spaceplane, 600

Zvezdniy Gorodok. 248, 723 728 792: see also Zelenyy

Zvezdochka (dog). 267

1005

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I011