CHALLENGE TO APOLLO:

THE SOVIET UNION AND THE

SPACE RACE, 1945- 1974

NASA SP-2000-4408

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO:

THE SOVIET UNION AND THE

SP_CE R;_cE, ! 945- 1974

by

gsif _. Siddiqi

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA History Division

Office of Policy and Plans

Washington, DC 2000
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Siddiqi, Asif A,, 1966-

Challenge to Apollo: the Soviet Union and the space race, 1945-1974 1 by Asif A. Siddiqi

p. cm.--(The NASA history series) NASA SP ; 2000-4408

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Astronautics--Soviet Union--History. 2. Space race--History. I, Title. II. Series. III.

NASA SP : 4408.

TL789.8S65 $47 2000

629,4'0947-dc21 00-03868400031047
To my mother and my father,

who taught me the value o[ knowledge
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.

--_eorge Santayana

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

--Rabindranath Tagore
¢ CHALLENGE TO APOLLO

..........

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ................................................... vii

Preface ............................................................ ix

Glossary .......................................................... xiii

Chapter One: Presage .................................................. I

Chapter Two: First Steps................................................ 23

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Three: Stalin and the Rocket ....................................... 69

Four: Sputnik ................................................ II 9

Five: Designing the First Spaceship ................................. I 1 I

Six: Organizing for the Space Program ..... : ........................ 205

Seven: Gagarin ............................................... 243

Eight : Looking to the Future ..................................... 299

Nine: Space Politics ........................................... 35l

Ten: "There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth . . ." , ................. 409

Eleven: Three Steps to the Moon .................................. 461

Twelve: A New Beginning ....................................... 517

Thirteen: Tragedy ............................................. 565

Fourteen: Getting Back on Track................................... 609

Fifteen: Final Lap to the Moon .................................... 653

Sixteen: Options .............................................. 699

Seventeen: Dreams Unfulfilled .................................... 745

Eighteen: Ashes to Ashes ....................................... 199

Nineteen: Tomorrow Never Knows ................................. 839

Twenty: Coda ............................................... 855
vi

BibliographicEssay.................................................. 861

Tables

IA:

IB:

IC:

Orbital Launch l_ttempts in the Soviet Piloted Space Program, 1960-74 ...... 873

Mission Parameters for Selected Orbital Flights ....................... 876

Nonorbital Launch Attempts Supporting the Soviet Piloted Space Program,

1951-74 .................................................. 819

II: Cosmonaut Selection Groups, 1960-Z4 ............................ 881

III: Administrative Organizations in the Soviet Missile and Space Programs,

1945-91 .................................................. 889

IV: Major Contractor Organizations in the Soviet Space Program, 1945-74 ...... 901

V: Space Launch Vehicle Designations ............................... 917

Vl: Details of Launch Vehicles Used in the Soviet Piloted Space Program, 1957-74 921

VII: Designations for Piloted Space Vehicles ............................. 925

VIII: Automated Launches Related to the Soviet Piloted Space Program, 1957-76 . . 931

IX: Governmental Decrees in the Soviet Missile and Space Programs, 1945-76 .... 935

Appendices

A: Soviet Piloted Space Projects, 1945-74 ............................. 957

B: Dramatis Personae, 1945-74 .................................... 965

Index ............................................................ 979

The NASA History Series............................................. I007

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
ACKNO VLEDGMENTS

This book is, in essence, sixteen years in the making. I first attempted to compile a history of the Soviet space program in 1982 when, encouraged by my mother, I put together a rough

chronology of the main events. P, decade later, while living on a couch in a college friend's

apartment, I began writing what I thought would be a short history of the Soviet lunar landing

program. The first draft was sixty-nine pages long. Late the following year, I decided to expand

the topic to handle all early Soviet piloted exploration programs. That work eventually grew into

what you are holding in your hand now. ] wrote most of it from 1994 to 1997 in Northampton

and Amherst, Massachusetts, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and completed the manuscript

in December 1998.

It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to write this book without the generous

assistance of numerous individuals who have spent years and in some cases decades trying, to

understand and analyze the arcana of the former Soviet space program. Writing this book was

as much an exploration into research as it was a long journey making new acquaintances and

friends from all over the world.

I am indebted to the staff at the N_S_ History Office--in particular to Lee Saegesser,Steve

Garber, and Nadine Andreassen--for assisting me in my research despite their own busy schedules. Louise _Istork, Jonathan Friedman, Patricia Talbert, and John Edison Betts, Jr., were especially patient in proofreading the entire manuscript, making chani_es where necessary, and

helping with the layout and final production. I_ most special note of gratitude to NI_SP,Chief

Historian Roger Launius, whose comments, encouragement, and i_uidance were indispensable

to the completion of this book. This book would not have existed without his untiring support.

Of all the individuals who helped me with this book, I would particularly like to acknowledge the contributions of Peter Gorin, a recent Guggenheim Fellow at the Smithsonian's

National l_ir and Space Museum. He generously shared notes, books, articles, comments, and

his encyclopedic knowledge on any and every topic related to the Soviet space program. He also

provided a lion's share of the illustrations and drawings used in this book.

I would also mention U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel William P. Barry. Our countless exchanges

via e-mail or letters were invaluable to coming to some understanding of the political and institutional processes that drove the early Soviet space program. I would have found it virtually

impossible to write this book without the useof his remarkable analyses of the institutional history of the Soviet space program.

Dwayne Day at the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University was an

invaluable source for recentlydeclassified LI.S. government documents relating to Soviet programs.

His insightful comments allowed me to frame many of my arguments in a more cogent manner.

My exchanges over e-mail with Bart Hendrickx and Mark Hillyer were essential to reexamining old events in a new light and eliminating many errors. Bart was very generous in sharing

any materials that passed his way--a rare quality that set him apart from many other scholars

in the field. Mark's vast knowledge about the sometimes mind-boggling and confusing histories of Soviet-era design bureaus helped me with my own studies on this arcane topic.

I want to give special thanks to T._. Heppenheimer far his support throughout the project.

His exhaustive knowledge of the history of space technology was useful in framing many of the

main arguments of this work.

vii
viii

IgorLissovofVideoCosmosinMoscowwarrantsspecialmention.Hegraciouslyanswered

manyofmyquestions.

AveryspecialthankyougoestoDennisNewkirk,theRussianaerospaceanalyst,forhis

never-endingeffortstoprovidemewithmaterialsusefulformywork.Hewasoneofthefirst

Soviet"spacewatchers"withwhomI communicated,andit waspartiallybecauseof his

encouragementthatIbegan writing this book in the first place.

I would like to thank Glen Swanson, the founding editor of _uest: The History of

Spaceflight Magazine, for his constant material and moral support during the writing of this

book, Glen also graciously shared his complete database of remarkable photographs, many of

which I used in the book.

I would like to acknowledge the tireless contributions of the late Maxim Tarasenko for kindly facilitating my contacts with the RKK Energiya archivist Georgiy Vetrov. Maxim was one of

the most brilliant space historians of his generation, and he will be sorely missed.

A very special note of thanks goes to Sergey Voevodin of Kostroma, Russia, who was an

excellent source of information on the Soviet cosmonaut team.

Special thanks go out to Dr. SergeyKhrushchev, the late Dr. Georgiy Vetrov, and Dr. Gerbert

Yefremov. all of whom graciously agreed to answer questions relating to the history of the

Soviet space program and their own role in its early years. Their comments were invaluable in

ferreting out details of previously hidden events in Soviet space history.

In addition to those named above, I would like to acknowledge the following for not only

providing me with Russian-language material and photographs but also in many cases for

answering detailed questions on various topics. They are: Igor Afanasyev, Vladimir Agapov,

Michael Cassutt, Andrew Chaikin, Phillip Clark, James Harford, Christian Lardier, Jonathan

McDowell, Peter Pesavento, and Joel Powell. I would also like to thank the following for providing many of the diagrams or photographs for the work: R. F.Gibbons, Dietrich Haeseler, Don

Pealer,Charles rick, Mark Wade, David Woods, and Steven Zaloga.

On a personal note, I would like to thank my mentor in Bangladesh, Fazlul Huq, and also

Paul Thompson, Fred Ruppel, Inji, Sabina, Munmun, Karin Bell, Nadeem, Rahita, Bill Sparks,

Rika, Dave Parnell, Pat,Jacqueline, the late musician Greg Black, Becky (who inspires), Heather,

Karen Barth, Jill, and Danny. Thanks to the amazing Mandar Jayawant in the hope that he will

one day forgive me for not sharing my lunch with him. Thanks also to Paul, Iggy. Kurt, and

Maynard.

A very special thank you to gnoo for being her wonderful self and for being so interested.

g very special note of love to my mother, who always told me that I could achieve anything as long as I worked hard enough for it: to my father, who bought me my first encyclopedia on spaceflight when I was twelve years old: to my sister Rochona, who endured years of

my uncontrollable excitement over Soyuzes and Salyuts as an adolescent: and to her husband

David, who graciously offered me an abode in which I could finish the book. Finally, a special

thank you to Karen for being my best friend through all of this. I could not have written this

book without her love and friendship.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
PREFACE

On the Internet one day, I came upon a discussion of the space dog Layka, launched into

orbit by the Soviet Union in 1957. Some people believed that the dog had died when oxygen

finally ran out in her cabin. Others had heard that an automatic injection of poison had put her

to sleep. Still others had read somewhere that poor Layka had literally burned up in the atmosphere when her capsule gradually fell to Earth. No one could point to a single source with any

reasonable claim to authority on Layka's ultimate fate. The same news group carried a spirited

discussion of U.S. space policy. The topic of choice was the heady period after the first Apollo

Moon landing in 1969, in particular the political maneuvering behind the Nixon administration's approval of the Space Shuttle in 1972. Instead of quibbling over historical events, the

emphasis was clearly on interpretation--a problem that had more to do with analysis than sirnply verifying the facts. The contrast between these two threads of conversation perfectly illustrated both the challenges and the differences in writing histories of the Soviet and American

space programs. In one case, we are still disputing elementary facts and sources. In the other,

we are disputing interpretations of facts and sources.

As astonishing as it may seem, the story of the Soviet space program, the world's first, has

never been told in full. That is not to say that much has not been written on the topic. Western

researchers during the 1970s and 1980s were able to interpret official exhortations in the Soviet

press and discern some logic of the inner workings of the Soviet space program. All of these

works had one major drawback: they were written at a time when the Soviets maintained very

strict control over information, especially any that portrayed the space effort in a negative light.

Many "facts"--that is, the raw skeleton of the story--were missing. All we had were accounts

from the official Soviet media and rumor or speculation from unconfirmed sources--or a combination of both. Thus the range of issues that Western or even Soviet historians could address

was severely limited/

Within Russian-language works, there are two relatively clear divisions in the historical

record: those published before 1988, when the Soviet censorship apparatus consistently prevented an impartial representation of their efforts to explore space, and those published after,

when the doors of the archives finally started opening up. The rupture was so great, it was as

if everything written about the Soviet space program--and indeed almost every area of Soviet

history--suddenly became obsolete by the turn of the 1990s. Entire programs, personalities,

and even space missions of which we never knew all of a sudden came into focus, filling huge

gaps in our understanding of the Soviet space effort during the Cold War, But it was not just

a matter of filling in the blanks. The revisions and reassessments have been so pervasive that

we could point to almost any event in the thirty-year span of the Soviet space and missile

I. For the best Western accounts of the Soviet space program, see [. J. Krieger, Behind the Sputniks: I_ Survey

o[ Soviet Space Science (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press. 1958): William Shelton, Soviet Space Exploration: The

First Decade (New York: Washington Square Press, 1968): Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1972); Peter Smolders, Soviets in Space (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1973); Nicholas L.

Johnson, Handbook or Soviet Manned Space[light (San Diego: Univelt, 1980): James E. Oberg, Red Star in Orbit (New

York: Random House, 1981 ); Phillip Clark, The Soviet Manned Space Program, .,qn Illustrated History of lhe Men, the

Missions. and the Spacecralt (New York: Orion, 1988): Dennis Newkirk. ,Z}lmanae or Soviet Manned Space Flight

(Houston: Gulf Publishing Co., 1990); Steven J. Zaloga. Target _merica: The Soviet Union and the Strategie ,Ztrms Race,

1945-1964 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1993): James Harford, Koroleu: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to

Beat Zimerica to the Moon (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997),

ix
programs after World War II and find that our understanding of that singular occurrence has

changed irrevocably?

The recent disclosures have relevance far beyond the limited purview of Soviet space history. In the 1950s and 1960s, U,S. space policy to a large degree was a series of responses to

what the Soviets were doing--or at least what policymakers thought the Soviets were doing.

But despite its key role in shaping American space policy, there continues to be an abundance

of ignorance or misinformation on the Soviet program. Many erroneous conjectures on Soviet

space motives advanced by Western analysts during the Cold War have remained unquestioned by more recent scholars. Ultimately, any effort to make sense of the dynamics of space

exploration during the Cold War, no matter how well-intentioned, will fall short without taking account of the recent revelations from the Russian side. What may be possible now is to

take a second look not only at the Soviet space program, but also the LI.S. space program--

that is, to reconsider again humanity's first attempts to take leave of this planet.

Writing on a topic that has two dynamic parallel histories--one from the Cold War era and

one from the post-Cold War era--is, for obvious reasons, a difficult problem. First, there is the

challenge of creating context. One could easily lose the main thread of the story by annotating

every episode with interpretations from two different time periods--that is, this is how the event

was reported in the 1960s, and this is what really happened. I have tried as much as possible to

avoid the pitfalls of such an approach, but at the same time, I have also not tried to shirk from

the opportunity to contrast these two voices when they have served to embellish my story.

A second problem is one of identifying the right sources for the story. As much as possible, I have relied exclusively on Russian-language archival sources available in the post-1988

era. There are, however, several episodes in the narrative that warrant a wider historiographical

context. Because of the dual nature of the history of the Soviet space program, different players in the effort have continued to promote contradictory accounts of the same event. For

instance, Russian historians have never adequately addressed the use of German expertise in

the immediate postwar period. They have generally minimized the German role as extremely

peripheral. On the other side, the popular press in the West has had a tradition of dismissing

early Soviet successes as merely an extension of German work. Can these two positions be reconciled in a scholarly treatise? In this case, the writing of history as an exercise in impartiality

is caught between what is a somewhat dubiously established paradigm of history in the West

and what is at best a history with missing chapters on the Soviet side. What I have tried to do

is to use recently declassified information to provide a newer perspective, but one that is not

necessarily divorced from the existing paradigms of yesteryears.

There are many such other cases in which Soviet space history has been artificially constrained between propaganda and speculation. This is one reason, I believe, that Soviet space

achievements have generally been marginalized in the West and mythologized at home. For

American historians, there is little debate on the holy grail of space history: it is the first landing of American astronauts on the surface of the Moon in 1969. On that July night in 1969,

two men represented humanity's thirst for exploration, serving as ambassadors of the human

2, For the best recent Russian-language works, see Yu. g. Mozzhorin, et aL, eds., Dorogi u kosmos: I

(Moscow: MP,I, 1992): Yu. P,. Mozzhorin. et aL, eds.. Dorogi u kosmos. II (Moscow: Mgl, 1992): Yaroslav

Golovanov, Koroleu: [akty i mi[y (Moscow: Nauka. 1994): Yu. A. Mozzhorin. et al., eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery,

uospominaniya veteranou raketno-kosmicheskoy tekhniki i kosmonavtiki: vypusk utoroy (Moscow: RNITsKD, 1994);

B. Ye. Chertok. Rakety i lyudi (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1994); B. Ye. Chertok. Rakety i lyudL hli Podlipki

Tyuratam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye. 1996): Yu. P. Semenov, ed.. Raketno-kosmicheskaya korporatsiya

"energiya" imeni S P Koroleua (Korolev: RKK EnergJya, named after S. P. Korolev, 1996): V, V. I:avorskiy and I. V.

Mescheryakov, eds, Voyenno-kosmicheskiye sily (uoenno-istorieheskiy trud): knigo l: kosmonoutika i uooruzhennyye

stly (Moscow: VKS, 1997); B. Ye, Chertok. Rakety i lyudi: goryaehiye dni kholodnoy uoyny (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye. 1997).

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
!

i CHALLENGE TO APOLLO

race in our first visit to another celestial body, For most American historians, everything before

was simply a prelude and everything after has been a disappointment. Historians in Russia see

things much differently. It was, after all, the Soviet Union that launched the first handiwork of

humankind into orbit around Earth in 1957--Sputnik, or "fellow traveler." Only four years later

came the second big milestone: the Soviet Union sent the first human into space, Yuriy

Gagarin. Here was another huge moment, like that of the Apollo landing eight years later: for

the first time since human life emerged on this planet, one of us had broken through the atmosphere that surrounds us and sped into the cosmos. But history has remembered Gagarin's short

flight much differently. With the race to the Moon won, the American view of the Soviet space

program changed dramatically: American historians remembered Sputnik and Gagarin not for

their importance in human history, but only as catalysts for the decision to send humans to the

Moon. There are works, too numerous to mention, on the repercussions of both Sputnik and

Gagarin in the United States, but few on the historical meaning of these events divorced from

geopolitics--as there was on Apollo. It is not surprising that this is so. With little film footage,

paranoid secrecy, and no advance warning, the Soviets themselves were mostly responsible for

consigning these events into that blurry historical limbo between propaganda and speculation.

They eventually lost any claim to resonance that they might have had otherwise.

The Soviet space program was, of course, not simply propaganda nor speculation. It

emerged from the ashes of World War II, when with Stalin's blessing, a group of ambitious

engineers began testing old German missiles from the desert near the Aral Sea. With the onset

of the Cold War and the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949, these experiments

with rockets gained a new urgency. Many considered rockets, especially long-range ballistic missiles, an ideal way to deliver deadly atomic bombs across continents. Throughout the 1950s,

as missile designers made vast advances in rocket design, it became possible to consider

options that had little direct military utility--ideas such as space travel. Spurred by a small

handful of visionary engineers devoted to the cause of space exploration, the Soviets diverted

a strand of their military rocketry program into a single project to launch a satellite into orbit.

Conceived as an exercise in scientific research, Sputnik was meant to be a modest contribution

to an international effort to study Earth and its surroundings. While its scientific dividends

might have been anticipated, no one could have predicted its political repercussions. After the

launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957,in the public image, the Soviet Union moved from being

a nation of obsolete agricultural machines to a great technological superpower. Gagarin's flight

less than four years later eliminated any remaining doubts about Soviet prowess in space exploration. In both cases, the Americans had lagged behind badly. These two pivotal achievements

led eventually to the race to the Moon--a race of epic proportions that culminated in the

Apollo landing in 1969. A span of only eight years separated the resounding victory of Gagarin

and the crushing humiliation by Apollo. So what happened? What kind of effort did the Soviets

mount to compete with Apollo? And why did it fail? I have tried to answer these questions by

weaving together a record of the technical, political, and personal histories behind these three

endeavors: the launch of Sputnik, the flight of Gagarin, and the challenge to Apollo.

My goal was not to write a history simply because it had never been written before.

Certainly, recording the facts is an important exercise, but that would limit the job to a simple

chronology, There are several major questions of interpretation that still have to be answered. I

have only tackled a few of these.

The first major question has to do with discerning the institutional underpinnings of the

Soviet space program, Given the new evidence, can we identify the primary constituencies that

drove the effort? What kind of patterns of decision-making did they display? What interests

were they serving? The record seems to indicate the importance of both individuals and institutions, all of whom emerged to power not because of the space program, but because of its

antecedent ballistic missile development effort.

xi
xii

The second question addresses Soviet space technology. Our conventional understanding

of Soviet space technology is generally framed in terms of obsolete products pushed through

production-line processes that discourage major innovation. In the evolution of their early missile and space programs, did the Soviets adhere to the idea of incremental advances, or were

there technological leaps? Did the Soviets benefit from foreign expertise during these early

years? More often than not, the answers to these questions do not conform to our entrenched

notion of how the Soviets managed technology in the Cold War era. _

Finally, why did the Soviets manage to beat the Americans in launching the first intercontinental ballistic missile, the first satellite, and the first human into space, but fail to beat the

United States in landing the first person on the Moon? Was it simply because the last goal was

significantly more challenging than the previous three? Or was it because, as was conventionally thought for many years in the West. that the Soviets simply did not want to race the

tqmericans to the Moon? The answers to these questions are not simple: personal, institutional. political, and technological issues intersected in the complex schema of the Soviet Moon

program, leading it to its final ignominious failure in 1969.

For this work, I have specifically focused on piloted space programs. In the first four chapters of this book, however, I delve into the origins of the Soviet long-range ballistic missile program and the events leading up to the launch of Sputnik. The following seven chapters cover the

rise of the Soviet piloted space program under the tutelage of its founder, Sergey Pavlovich

Korolev, ending with his premature death in 1966. The next seven chapters take the story up to

1974, covering the Soviet loss in the Moon race under the direction of Korolev's successor,

Vasiliy Pavlovich Mishin. Finally, in the remaining two chapters, I briefly tell the story after 1974.

Note on TransUter_tion

I have used a modified version of the standard used by the U.S. Board on Geographic

Names preferred by the University of Chicago Press. The drawback of this system is that it is

often phonetically inappropriate. For example, the letter "i_" is pronounced as "yo" in Russian.

Thus "Korolev" should actually be pronounced as "Korolyov." There was one major exception

to the Board of Geographic Names system: I have omitted the use of inverted commas (the

"soft" and "hard" signs) within Russian words to reduce clutter in the text for those not familiar with the Russian language.

One other note is that NIqSA's normal convention has been to spell the Soviet

cosmodrome "Baikonur," with an "i" instead of a "y." In this book, to be consistent with the

rest of the transliteration, it is spelled "Baykonur." The reader will also find a difference in the

spelling of some common first names, such as Sergei as Sergey and Yuri as Yuriy,

3 ForWestern works on the history of Soviettechnology, see,for example, RonaldAmann. Julian Cooper,

and R. W. Davies, eds.. The Technological Leuel of Soviet Industry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977):

Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society Under Stalin Origins o/the Soviet Intelligentsia. 1917-1941 (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978): Ronald Amann and Julian Cooper, eds.. Industrial Innovation in the Soviet

Union (New Haven. CT: Yale University Press, 1982): Bruce Parrot. Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union

(Cambridge, Mt_: MIT Press,1983); Matthew Evangelista,Hotu the United Statesand the Soviet Union Develop NeLu

Military Technologies(Ithaca. NY: Cornell University Press,1988); Loren R. Graham, What Have We Learned_bout

Scienceand Technologykom the Russian Experience7(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998)

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO

i
GLOSSARY

l................

AN SSSR

BOR

BS

CIA

CSAGI

DLB

DOK

DOS

EOR

EKR

EPAS

EPOS

EVA

FIAN

FOBS

GAU

GDL

GeoFIAN

GIPKh

GIRD

GKAT

GKB

GKNPTs

GKO

GKOT

GKRE

GMT

GNII AiKM

GOGU

Gosplan

GR

GSKB

GSMZ

GTsP

GU

GUKOS

GULag

GU RVO

IAE

IAKM

ICBM

IGY

IKI

IMBP

USSRAcademy of Sciences

Unpiloted Orbital Rocket-Glider

lateral stabilization

(U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency

Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year

Long-Duration Lunar Base

Engine Orientation Complex

Long-Duration Orbital Station

Earth-orbit rendezvous

Experimental Winged Missile

Apollo-Soyuz Experimental Flight (Soviet name for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project)

Experimental Piloted Orbital Aircraft

extravehicular activity

(P. N. Lebedev) Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences

Fractional Orbital Bombardment System

Chief Artillery Directorate

Gas Dynamics Laboratory

Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences

State Institute of Applied Chemistry

Group for Study of Reactive Motion

State Committee for Aviation Technology

Lead Design Bureau

State Space Scientific-Production Center

State Committee for Defense

State Committee for Defense Technology

State Committee for Radio Electronics

Greenwich Mean Time

State Scientific-Research Institute for Aviation and Space Medicine

Chief Operations and Control Group

State Planning Organ

l_lobal missile

State Union Design Bureau

State Union Machine Building Plant

State Central Range

Chief Directorate

Chief Directorate of Space Assets

Chief Directorate of Camps

Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments

Institute of Atomic Energy

Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine

intercontinental ballistic missiles

International Geophysical Year

Institute of Space Research

Institute for Biomedical Problems

xiii
xiv

IP

IS

KB

KBOM

KGB

KIK

KORD

KPSS

KSU

KVTs

LHz

LII

LK

LKS

LOK

LOR

LOX

MAI

MAP

MEK

MEP

MIAN

MIK

MKB

MKBS

MMZ

MNII

MNIIRS

MO

MOK

MOL

MOM

MOP

MP

MPK

MRP

MSM

MTKVP

MVTU

MZ

NASA

NATO

NEK

NIEIPDS

Nil

NilAP

NilAU

NilIT

NilP

NilPM

MeasurementPoint

SatelliteDestroyer

DesignBureau

DesignBureauofGeneralMachineBuilding

CommitteeforStateSecurity

Command-MeasurementComplex

EngineOperationControl(system)

CommunistPartyoftheSovietUnion

commandandsignalinstrument

Coordination-ComputationCenter

liquidhydrogen

Flight-ResearchInstitute

LunarShip

LightSpaceAircraft

LunarOrbitalShip

lunar-orbitrendezvous

liquidoxygen

MoscowAviationInstitute

MinistryofAviationIndustry

MartianExpeditionaryComplex

MinistryofElectronicsIndustry

MathematicsIntituteoftheAcademyofSciences

Assembly-TestingBuilding

Machine-BuildingDesignBureau

MultiroleSpaceBase-Station

MoscowMachine-BuildingPlant

MoscowScientific-ResearchInstitute

MoscowScientific-ResearchInstituteforRadioCommunications

MinistryofDefense

MultiroleOrbitalComplexorMartianOrbitalComplex

MannedOrbitingLaboratory

MinistryofGeneralMachineBuilding

MinistryofDefenseIndustry

maneuvering,piloted

MartianLandingComplex

MinistryofRadioIndustry

MinistryofMediumMachineBuilding

ReusableVrtical-LandingTransportCraft

MoscowHigherTechnicalSchool

MachineBuildingPlant

NationalAeronauticsandSpaceAdministration

NorthAtlanticTreatyOrganization

Scientific-ExperimentalCompex

Scientific-ResearchandExperimentalInstituteoftheParachuteLandingService

Scientific-ResearchInstitute

Scientific-ResearchInstituteforAutomationandInstrumentBuilding

Scientific-ResearchInstituteforAviationEquipment

Scientific-ResearchInstituteforMeasurementTechnology

Scientific-ResearchInstituteforInstrumentBuilding

Scientific-ResearchInstituteforAppliedMechanics

r

CHP, LLEHG[ TO APOLLO

-]
I

J GLOSSARY

Nil RP

Nil TP

NIIP

NIP

NITI

NKVD

NORAD

NPO

NS

NTK

NTS

OK

OKB

OKB MEI

OPM

OPS

OTK

PKA

PVO

RKK

RKS

RNII

RVSN

SALT

SKB

SKG

SOBIS

SOKB

SOUD

SOZ

SP

SR

TASS

TDU

TGU

TKA

TLI

TMK

TMKB

TMZ

TNT

TOS

TsAGI

TslAM

TsK

TsKB

TsKBEM

TsKBM

TsKIK

Scientific-Research Institute for Rubber Industry

Scientific-Research Institute for Precision Instruments or Scientific-Research

Institute for Thermal Processes

Scientific-Research and Test Range

Scientific-Measurement Point

Scientific-Research and Technical Institute

People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs

North American Air Defense Command

Scientific-Prod uction Association

normal stabilization

Scientific-Technical Committee

Scientific-Technical Council

orbital ship

Special or Experimental Design Bureau

Experimental Design Bureau of the Moscow Power Institute

Department of Applied Mathematics

Orbital Piloted Station

Special Technical Commission

Gliding Space Apparatus

Air Defense Forces

Rocket-Space Corporation

Adjustment of Apparent Velocity

Reactive Scientific-Research Institute

Missile Forces of Strategic Designation (Strategic Missile Forces)

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

Special Design Bureau or Serial Design Bureau

Special Design Group

simultaneous emptying of tanks

Union Experimental Design Bureau

System of Orientation and Motion Control

System for Ensuring Firing

Special Publication (NASA)

Suborbital Rocket-Glider

Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Soviet news agency)

Braking Engine Unit

Third Chief Directorate

Transport-Supply Ship

translunar-injection

Heavy Interplanetary Ship

Turayevo Machine-Building Design Bureau

Tushino Machine Building Plant

trinitrotoluene

Heavy Orbital Station

Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute

Central Institute of Aviation Motor Building

Central Committee

Central Design Bureau

Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building

Central Design Bureau of Machine Building

Central Command-Measurement Complex
xvi

TsNII

TsNIIMash

TsPK

TsSKB

TsUKOS

TsUP

UDMH

UHF

UNKS

UNRV

UPMK

UR

US

USSR

UZKA

VHF

VIAM

VMF

VNII

VNII EM

VNII IT

VPK

VSNKh

VTs

VVS

YaERD

ZIKh

Central Scientific-Research Institute

Central Scientific-Research Institute for Machine Building

Cosmonaut Training Center

Central Specialized Design Bureau

Central Directorate of Space Assets

Flight Control Center

unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine

ultrahigh frequency

Directorate of the Commander of Space Assets

Directorate of the Commander of Reactive Armaments

Cosmonaut Maneuvering and Motion Unit

universal missile

Controlled Satellite

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Directorate of the Deputy Commander of Artillery

very high frequency

All-Union Institute for Aviation Materials

Soviet Navy

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute for Electro-Mechanics

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute for Current Sources

Military-lndustrial Commission

All-Russian Council of the National Economy

Computation Center

Soviet Air Force

nuclear-electric rocket engine

M. V. Khrunichev Machine Building Plant r_

[[

CHALLENGE TO I_POLLO
!

Origins

The rocketry and space programs of the Soviet Union had their origins in the late 1800s

with the farsighted and at times farfetched writings of a deaf, self-taught school teacher named

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskiy. Born in 1857,Tsiolkovskiy had produced a series of thirty small monographs in the late 1800s, culminating in his classic work "Exploration of the

Universe with Rocket-Propelled Vehicles," published in the May 1903 issue of the St.

Petersburg journal Nauchnoye obozreniye (Scientific Review).' In this and later works,

Tsiolkovskiy elucidated his complex ideas on rocketry and space exploration, supporting most

of his conceptions with complex mathematical analyses. In his most revolutionary idea, he

proposed that humans could hope to fly to very high altitudes and ultimately into outer space

only by using liquid-propellant rockets. One of his most important conclusions was that a rocket would be capable of carrying up a cargo of any size, and develop any speed desired, as long

as the rocket was sufficiently large and the ratio of the mass of the propellant to the mass of

the entire rocket was large enough--a relationship that is known as the Tsiolkovskiy Equation:'

While some of his work was clearly in the realm of fantasy, the breadth of his contribution to astronautics is astounding. In his early work, he wrote eloquently on such topics as

multistage rockets, high-energy liquid propellants such as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen,

giant space stations in Earth's orbit with food regeneration systems, and the dangers of high

temperatures on an object returning to Earth. He even investigated the idea of a spacesuit for

activity in open space. Tsiolkovskiy was a generation older than two other equally famous

founders of theoretical and practical astronautics: the American Robert H. Goddard and the

Rumanian Hermann Oberth. All three, quite independently, pursued their extraordinary ideas

on rocketry and space exploration, but 1-siolkovskiy was perhaps a bit more pessimistic than

his peers. Unlike Goddard, who launched the world's first liquid propellant rocket in 1926,

Tsiolkovskiy was unable to build even a small rocket. He apparently believed that few of his

conceptions of the future would ever be brought to fruition.

I. V.P. Glushko, Development of Rocketry and Space Technology in the USSR (Moscow: Novosti Press

Publishing House, 1973). p. 9; Evgeny Riabchikov, Russians in Space (Moscow: Novosti Press Publishing House.

1971 ), p. 98: Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York: Alfred _. Knopf, 1972), p. I 7, The 1903

publication was only the first part of the article. When the journal was closed down with the May issue, Tsiolkovskiy

had to wait until 1911 to see the second part published in Vestnik vozdukhoplaucmiya

2. For an English language summary of Tsiolkovskiy's work. see P_. A Blagonravov, et al., Soviet Rocketry

Some Contributions to its History (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations. 1966), pp. 68-126: Daniloff,

The Krem(m and the Cosmos, pp, 13-17.
In the early part of the 1900s, Tsiolkovskiy's ideas received little if any attention as a result

of both the extreme mathematical nature of his work and a general disinterest from the Czarist

government. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1911 seems to have aroused a modicum of interest

in his ideas from the new Soviet leadership. This was partly to illustrate the Czarist government's lack of foresight, but also tied to new ideology: "In Communist theory, technological

progress was virtually equivalent to the march of history. ''_ The year after the Revolution.

Tsiolkovskiy was elected a full member of the prestigious Russian Socialist Academy. Later in

1921, he was granted a lifetime pension in honor of his groundbreaking scientific contributions

on space exploration and rocketry. 4Given his strong support for the Revolution, the Soviet government was only too eager to promote his writings.

In the Western historiography of the early history of astronautics, Tsiolkovskiy's name is

the best known. But within Russia and later the Soviet Union, there were two other remarkable

visionaries who played as great a role in inspiring a new generation of young amateurs as the

great Tsiolkovskiy himself, One of these was Yuriy Vasilyevich Kondratyuk, a man who had a

life as amazing as any figure in the history of Soviet rocketry. He was born Aleksandr

Ignatyevich Shargey in 1897 in the Ukraine. Brilliant even in his childhood, he published his

seminal works in his twenties and thirties, the first, Tyem, kto budet chitat ehtoby stroyit (To

Those Who Will Read in Order to Build), in 1919 and the second, Zauoyeuaniye mezhplanetnykh prostranstu (The Conquest at Interplanetary Space), in 1929. In these works, Shargey

showed a remarkable grasp of problems in rocket dynamics and engineering. Unaware of

Tsiolkovskiy, he came to many of the same conclusions and extended the field of astronautics

to new areas. Among the topics he described were minimum-energy spaceflight trajectories to

other planets, the theory of multistage rockets, intermediate interplanetary ship refueling bases.

and the landing of probes on planets using atmospheric drag. One of his most famous contributions to the literature was the formulation of a mission profile for a lunar landing using two

separate vehicles, a mother ship in lunar orbit, and a lander on the surface. When American

astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969, they used very much the same idea2

Shargey's career was cut short by the strangest of circumstances. In 1916, he had been

conscripted into the Army to fight on the Caucasus front in Turkey. After the Bolsheviks came

to power in October 1917, Shargey decided to leave the Army, but on his journey back home,

he was conscripted by the rebel White Army to fight the communists, He eventually deserted

but was found by the White Army again in Kiev, where he joined their ranks briefly before

deserting again, l_fter the Revolution, he was in a difficult position. To the Whites, he was a

habitual deserter, and to the Reds, he was an officer in the White Army--both sides wanted

him shot. To save his life, his stepmother sent him some documents of a man named Yuriy

Vasilyevich Kondratyuk, who was born in 1900 and died on March I, 192I, of tuberculosis. On

August 15 of the same year, Shargey assumed his new identity and tried to lead an inconspicuous life, far from the public eye. Terrified of being found out, he did not join the amateur rocketry groups of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s despite his lifelong passion for rocketry.

He died sometime in late February 1942 defending Moscow against the Nazis. His grave was

never found?

3. Walter McDougall.... the Heavensand the Eclrth:A PoliticalHistoryof the Apacetlge (New York:Basic

Books, 1985),p. 27.

4. Daniloff,TheKremlinandtheCosmos.1972,p. 19:William P,Barry."TheMissileDesignBureauxand

SovietPilotedSpacePolicy,1953-1910,"Ph.D.thesisin Politics,Facultyof SocialStudies,Universityof Oxford.1996.

5. G V.Petrovich,ed., The SovietEncyclopediaat SpaceFlight(Moscow:MirPublishers,1969),pp. 209-10.

6. ValeriyRodikov,"Who AreYou,EngineerKondratyuk?"(Englishtitle), inV. Shcherbakov,ed.. Zagadki

zuezdnykh astrauov:kniga pyataya (Moscow: Molodayagvardiya, 1989).pp. 36-53.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
] PRESAGE i

The third major figure of the period was Fridrikh Arturovich Tsander, born in 1887 in Riga,

the capital of Latvia. By his late twenties, Tsander had but one aim: to acquire the necessary

knowledge to make a journey into space. In 192I, he gave a report at an inventors' conference

on his pet project for an interplanetary aircraft. Three years later, he published his landmark work

in the journal Tekhnika i zhizn (Technology and Life) titled "Flight to Other Planets," in which

he expounded on the design of rocket engines, calculations for interplanetary trajectories, and

conceptions of safety systems. One of his favorite ideas was of a combined rocket-aircraft for

takeoff from Earth, which would consume its own metallic wings as propellants after flight

through the atmosphere. He amplified this and several other concepts in another book published

in 1932 titled Problema poleta pri pomoshehi reaktiunykh apparatou (The Problem of Flight by

Means of Reactiue Vehicles). Perhaps Tsander's most famous contribution was his untiring popularization of spaceflight in the late 1920s by lecturing on the topic across the Soviet Union/

The increased visibility of rocketry and space exploration in the public eye in the late 1920s,

through exhibitions and special publications, were crucial to inspiring a new, younger generation of Soviet engineers--those born this century, who would eventually direct the course of

the world's first space program. This group of individuals came to prominence in the 1930s

with the formation of small rocketry societies in Moscow and Leningrad dedicated to the design

and construction of short-range liquid-fueled rockets. In many ways, the influence and power

that these men wielded in their later years was far more imposing than the same possessed by

their counterparts in the concurrent rocketry societies in the United States and Germany. This

is, perhaps, one of the key distinctions in historical perspective in looking at the space programs

of the United States and the Soviet Union. In the former, the pioneers were defined by their

institutions, and in the latter, the pioneers were the institutions.

In the Soviet Union, the most important of these individuals was Sergey Pavlovich Korolev,

a former mechanical engineer who was to become the de facto head of the Soviet space program and remained so until his untimely death in 1966. It would not be an overstatement to

say that without his guidance, administrative powers, and vision, the Soviet Union would not

have become the foremost space-faring nation in the world in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Korolev was born on December 30, 1906, in the town of Zhitomir in the Ukraine. 8 His natural

parents were divorced when he was three years old, and the young Korolev was shuffled from

city to city until his mother remarried. He did not attend school until he was fourteen, studying only at home with tutors.

Korolev's first passionate interest was aeronautics, and from an early age, he read voraciously on the exploits of aviation pioneers throughout the world, sqt the age of seventeen, he joined

a glider club in the town of Odessa and eventually became the leader of the aeronautics club

there. In 1926, he enrolled in the Moscow Higher Technical School in the Department of

Aerodynamics as an advanced student and for the first time came into contact with famous Soviet

aeronautical designers such as t_ndrey N. Tupolev, who was a professor at the university. As part

of his thesis work at the school, Korolev designed and built a full-scale glider that he later flighttested: this and other glider projects were brought to fruition by 1930, and Korolev graduated in

February of that year as an "aeromechanical engineer."9 Immediately following graduation, he was

asked to begin work as an engineer at the V. E Menzhinskiy Central Design Bureau headed by

Chief Designer Dmitriy E Grigorovich, where the work was far more ambitious than his modest

7. Petrovich,ed.,TheSouietEncyclopediaof SpaceFlight,p. 468.

8. A.P.RomanovandV. S.Gubarev,Konstruktory(Moscow:Politicheskoyliteratury,1989),p. 16;Yaroslav

Golovanov,SergeiKoroleu:TheApprenticeshipo/a SpacePioneer(Moscow:Mir Publishers,1975),p. 23.The date

of hisbirth in the "new" Gregoriancalendaradoptedfollowingthe GreatOctoberRevolutionisJanuary12,1907.

9. Golovanov,SergeiKoroleu,pp. 135-36,110:RomanovandGubarev,I<onstruktory.pp. 3I-3Y Among

hisgraduatingclasswasthelaterchiefdesignerof aircraftandmissiles,SemyonA. Lavochkin.
gliders. There, he was part of an engine design group working on a new heavy bomber named

the TB-5. Within five months, he was finally transferred to the prestigious Central

gerohydrodynamics Institute (known as "TsAGI" in its Russian abbreviation) in Moscow. By all

accounts, he was considered a promising aeronautical engineer and by that time had authored

several articles on aviation, gliders, and light aircraft/°

It was during this period that Korolev for the first time became seriously enamored with

the possibilities of space exploration and rocketry. He had maintained a fairly cursory interest

in space travel since the late 1920s as a result of several well-publicized exhibitions in the Soviet

Union that showcased the works of Goddard, Oberth, Tsiolkovskiy, and Kondratyuk. Korolev's

overriding passion during the late 1920s was, however, aeronautics, and it seems that he was

not "converted" until he had contact with several resourceful engineers employed at Ts_qGl in

1930. Among these individuals was the forty-four-year-old Tsander. By that time, Tsander had

unsuccessfully requested the government to support his rocketry experiments, but such practical efforts evoked little interest from the leadership." In December, Tsander posted an advertisement in the Moscow newspaper Veehernyaya moskua calling for responses from those

interested in "interplanetary communications," a euphemism for space travel. '_ Many of the

150 people who responded met several times in early 1931 under Tsander's direction to discuss

the possibility of establishing an amateur group to focus on the practical aspects of rocketry

and space exploration. The early meetings led to the formation, on July 18, 193 I, of the socalled Bureau for the Investigation of Reactive Engines and Reactive Flight. By early September,

the society's name was changed to the Group for the Investigation of Reactive Engines and

Reactive Flight (better known by its Russian acronym "GIRD")." Korolev joined forces with

Tsander at this time, impressed by Tsander's claim that he could build a rocket engine. The

young Korolev had the germ of an idea to combine a rocket engine with a glider and create a

high-altitude aircraft.

Tsander's group at GIRD was formally under the jurisdiction of the voluntary Society for the

Promotion of Defense, Aviation, and Chemical Production (or "Osoaviakhim"), a governmental entity that sponsored amateur and premilitary activities among Soviet youth in such areas

as gliding, auto racing, hot-air balloons, and glider construction. The Moscow branch of GIRD

was only the first of many groups interested in rocketry that sprouted in the ensuing months

in such cities as Arkhangelsk, Baku, Bryansk, Kharkov, Leningrad, Novocherkassk, and Tiflis. By

June 1932, Osoaviakhim had formalized a relationship with the Moscow GIRD (also called the

Central GIRD) that set the stage for modest amounts of financial support for their activities.

Under Tsander's leadership, the Moscow GIRD was particularly successful in its early incarnation and conducted public lectures and courses and even published a number of books on rocketry. Along with these promotion efforts, Tsander and Korolev were also interested in practical

work in the building of rockets and were able to work overtime on their experiments in a small

wine cellar on Sadovo-Spasskiy Street in Moscow. '4

10. gleksandr Romanov,Korolev (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1996), pp, 88 89. The works of the Central

Design Bureauand TsAGI were actually merged at the time.

I I An English language summary of Tsander's work can be found in F.A_ Tsander,Problems o[ Flight by

jet Propulsion: Inferptanetary Flights (Jerusalem:Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1964). See also Barry,

"The Missile Design Bureaux/'

12. Romanov and Gubarev,Konstruktory, p. 35: Christian Lardier.LT_stronautiqueSouietique(Paris:grmand

Colin, 1992), p 19

13. G, S. Vetrov,S. R Koroleui kosmonautika:peruye shagi (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), pp. 35-36. The actual

date for the formation of GIRD has not been ascertainedby Soviet or Russianhistorians, The current interpretation is

that the group was set up sometime between September I and 20. The earliest preserveddocument mentioning the

organization is dated September23, 1931,and is reproduced in Vetrov,S. R Koroleui kosmonautika, p 38

14. Glushko, TheDevelopmento[ Rocketryand SpaeeTechnology.p. 151Riabchikov,RussiansinSpace.p. 105.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
PRESAGE

The original members of the GIRD team are shown here in 1932 Top center is Yuriy Pobedonostseu,

while bottom center is Sergey Korolev. On the extreme right is Fridrikh Tsander,

the space visionary who founded the group. (files of _sif Siddiqi)

Among the other early members of GIRD were Mikhail Klavdiyevich Tikhonravov, who was

thirty-one years old, and Yuriy t_leksandrovich Pobedonostsev, only twenty-four, both of whose

contributions to the early achievements of the Soviet rocketry and space programs would be

invaluable, glthough they were not officially supported by the Soviet government, the engineers and technicians at GIRD were infected by an unusually vivid sense of enthusiasm and

optimism. In particular, Korolev's whole life had begun to revolve around ideas of rocketry and

astronautics, and there were many discussions during GIRD's early days of sending rockets into

space and landing people on Mars. One of the more common inspiring phrases of the engineers was reportedly: "To Mars! To Mars! Onward to Mars!" This was a phrase that Tsander

would use to greet his fellow workers. He had even named his two children Merkuriy

("Mercury") and Rstra. '_ The economic situation in the Soviet Union at the time, however,

necessitated that their interests in rocketry and aeronautics would have to be financed by themselves. These limitations, although considerable, did not cause much hesitation on their part,

and the group often sold family valuables to finance their private endeavors. They usually

labored in their spare time, and the fact that there was no obvious profit in such work was not

an issue of great concern. Unlike Tsander, who had little interest in acquiring leadership skills,

Korolev was a natural focus of the group, and in addition to his increasing technical expertise,

he developed sharp managerial and administrative skills--assets that would serve him well in

his later days. He had become completely absorbed in the idea of spaceflight by this time. It

was a dream that he would never abandon.

15. Riabchikov, Russians in Space. p, 106; YaroslavGolovanov, Korole_ [akty i mi[y (Moscow: Nauka,

1994), p. 132.
OnMayI, 1932,KorolevreplacedtheailingTsanderastheformalleaderoftheGIRDorganization,andsimultaneouslyfourdifferentdivisionswereformedtofurtheroptimizetheirocketryefforts--groupsledbyTsander,Tikhonravov,Pobedonostsev,andKorolevhimself.Mostof

theireffortswerefocusedonthedevelopmentoflow-thrustliquid-propellantenginesforsmall

handmaderocketsandgliders.'_UnderKorolev'sleadership,theworkatGIRDalsotookasignificantturnashebegantoextractlargeramountsoffundingtopayGIRDmembersandobtain

betterequipmentforbuildingrocketsandgliders.Healsoencouragedstrictprofessionalism

amongalltheworkersandquicklybecameknownamonglargercirclesasnotonlyabrightengineerbutalsoanefficientorganizer.JusthreemonthsfollowingKorolev'sappointment,the

Sovietgovernment'sDirectorateof MilitaryInventionsbeganfinancingsomeoftheorganization'swork,althoughthegroupstillremainedsubordinatetotheamateurOsoaviakhim.'7The

workattheorganizationfinallyculminatedinthelatesummerof 1933withthefirstlaunches

ofwhatwouldeventuallybethefirstSovietliquid-propellantrocket.Designatedthe09,the

2.2-meter-tallvehiclehadbeendesignedbyateamunderTikhonravov.Poweredbyjelliedpetroleumburninginliquidoxygen,therocketwasloadedupinatruckandtakentotheNakhabino

firingrangeoutsideofMoscowforitsfirstlaunchonAugustI I, 1933.ThisattemptandasecondoneonAugust13werefailures,butathirdtryonthe17thwentdowninhistory.Aftera

precariouslyslowliftoff,therocketreachedamodestaltitudeofabout400metersduringthirteensecondsof flight/_Inamomentofexhilaration,Korolevauthoredashortarticleforthe

GIRDnewsflyer:

The first Soviet liquid-propellant rocket has been launched. The day of August 17 will

undoubtedly be a memorable day in the life of GIRD, and from this moment Soviet rockets

should start flying above the Union of Republics .... Soviet rockets must conquer space! '_

Although it was the first resounding success for GIRD, the organization's spiritual guide

was not present to witness the event. Tsander had been suffering from exhaustion caused by

overwork, and some of his associates had forced him to take a vacation. On the journey to a

health spa, Tsander contracted typhus and collapsed. He died without regaining consciousness

on the morning of March 28, 1933. '0 In one sense, Tsander's death presaged the end of an era

of amateur Soviet rocketry. Within months, Korolev and his associates would find themselves

in the employ of the Soviet government.

The Soviet military had actually sanctioned the formation of a small government rocketry

research laboratory in Moscow on March 1, 192 I, to conduct work on "rocket projectiles.""

Unlike the GIRD efforts, however, all the research at this laboratory was dedicated to the development of solid-fuel rocket engines for artillery. This group, headed by a chemical engineer

named Nikolay I. Tikhomirov, was moved to Leningrad in June 1928 and renamed the Gas

Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) of the Military Scientific Research Commission. The following year,

in May 1929, a special group (the "Second Section"), headed by a young engineer named

Valentin Petrovich Glushko, had been brought into GDL to specifically conduct research on

electric rocket engines."' Born on August 20, 1906, Glushko had converted to space exploration

16. The main work at GIRD prior to March 1932was the development of the OR I and OR-2 rocketengines

for use with an experimental glider named the BICH-I I. SeeVetrov, 5. P Koroleu i kosmonautika, p. 46.

I 7. Ibid., pp 50, 70.

18. Ibid., p. 69: Golovanov, 5ergeiKorolev, pp. 273-74

19 Golovanov, SergeiKoroleu,pp. 274-75.

20. Riabchikov.Russians in Space. p. 109: Golovanov. Koroleu, pp. 147-48.

2 I. Glushko, The Development of Rocketry and Space Technology,p. 6.

22. Ibid., p. 12: Riabchikov,Russians m Space, p. 86.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
PRESAGE

i

early through his voracious readings of the

works of Jules Verne--so much so that at the

age of fifteen, he had written a letter to

Tsiolkovskiy. _ Just three years later in July 1924,

only eighteen years old, he had published an

article in the popular press titled "Conquest of

the Moon by the Earth." Even more impressively, in 1926, Glushko authored a work titled

"Extraterrestrial Station" in the journal Nauka i

tekhnika (Science and Technology). _4A soft-spoken individual with somewhat of a stern disposition, Glushko no doubt saw a chance at realizing

his dream of space exploration as an engineer for

GDL. Recognizing his exceptional technical capabilities, the leaders of GDL had redirected

Glushko in 1931 to start work on liquid-propellant rocket engines for military applications.

By 193 I, there were two major independent

rocketry organizations in the Soviet Union--

one active in the design of rockets (GIRD) and

the other focused on rocket engines (GDL).

Around this time, the two groups began developing informal contacts with each other and

began negotiations to explore the possibility of

coordinating their work. Following a long and

elaborate series of discussions, aided by strong

The GIRD team is shown here in 1933 feeding liquid

oxygen to the "09." the first Soviet liquid-propeltont

rocket From left to right ore Sergey Koroleu, Nikolay

Yefremou, and Yuriy Pobedonostsev

(files of _si[ Siddiqi)

lobbying from Marshal Mikhail I. Tukhachevskiy, the Deputy People's Commissar for the Army

and Navy, GIRD and GDL were consolidated into one organization in the fall of 1933. The official decree (no. O113) from the Revolutionary Military Council was issued on September 2 I,

1933, and called for the formation of the Reactive Scientific-Research Institute (RNII)? '

Tukhachevskiy appointed Ivan T. Kleymenov, the former head of the now defunct GDL, to serve

as the new RNII's first director. Korolev, no longer an amateur rocketeer, was appointed

Kleymenov's deputy.

Tukhachevskiy had originally envisioned RNII as a breeding ground for advanced liquidand solid-propellant missiles for use by the artillery sector, but this idea faced some resistance

from higher placed military leaders. Uninterested in the future prospects of rockets, the military

refused to let Tukhachevskiy have jurisdiction over the new institute. Instead, a little over a

month after its formation, on October 31, RNII placed under the jurisdiction of the People's

Commissariat of Heavy Industry, the "ministry" responsible for production of several major

ground-based weapons. 2_At the same time, there was a clash between Kleymenov and Korolev

23. Romanov and Gubarev. Konstruktory, p. 274, The letter was dated September 26, 1923 Tsiolkovskiy

replied within a month.

24. Col. M. Rebrov, "Specific Impulse" (English title). Krusnuyu zuezdu, August 26, 1989, p, 4. The 1926

article was published as V. P. Glushko. "Extraterrestrial Station" (English title), Nuuku i tekhniku 40 (October 8,

1926): 3-4.

25. Vetrov. S R Koroleu i kosmonavtiko, p. 76: Glushko, The Deuelopment of Rocketry and 5pace Technology,

p17.

26. Glushko, The Deuelopment of Rocketry end Space Technology, pp. 17-18. This was formalized by a

second decree (no. 104) from the Council of Labor and Defense on October 3 I, 1933.
over the thematic direction of the institute. The former was not a rocketry specialist; it was well

known that he had a poor understanding of the field in general, believing that the institute's

most urgent mandate should be the creation of solid-propellant artillery shells. When Korolev

disagreed, Kleymenov demoted him to the section chief on winged missiles/_ It was a change in

jobs that probably saved Korolev's life in later years. A former GDL veteran and accomplished

solid-propellant engineer named Georgiy E. Langemak was tapped to fill Korolev's old position.

To the latter's disappointment, some of the more interesting projects, such as the development

of liquid-propellant rocket-powered aircraft, were dropped from the institute agenda at the time. 2_

A second reorganization was enacted by Kleymenov in May t935 as RNII was divided into

four major sectors emphasizing solid-propellant missiles, solid-propellant takeoff accelerators

for military aircraft, launch installations for solid-propellant rockets, and liquid-propellant missiles. '9 Korolev's primary interest was the development of rocket gliders, but this area of focus

seems to have rapidly diminished in terms of its value in the eyes of the RNII leadership.

Korolev himself initially worked on several high-altitude rockets before he found himself leading efforts on a number of promising long-range winged missiles for military applications.

Glushko and Tikhonravov undertook most of the work on liquid-propellant engines, and

although some of these engines found use on gliders and missiles, most were never installed

on any working designs.

Unhappy with the work at RNII, Marshal Tukhachevskiy sanctioned the establishment, in

August 1935, of a separate organization in the General Staff's Chief Artillery Directorate, designated Design Bureau No. 7, to focus exclusively on liquid oxygen missiles--an area of

research that the RNII leadership had neglected. "_The original goal of creating a centralized

rocketry research organization gradually became subsumed under conflicts resulting from clashes between the proponents of solid propellants and liquid propellants. Earlier, on the seventyfifth anniversary of Tsiolkovskiy's birth, several speakers from the USSR Academy of Sciences

mocked the great visionary's ideas as impractical and of little use. The conflict was exacerbated by the opinions of former GDL researchers at RNII who continued to view the amateur GIRD

veterans as "crackpots" without any connection to reality. _' After Tsiolkovskiy's death in 1935,

27. Vetrov, S P Koroleu i kosmonautika, p. 77.

28 Yu. Biryukov. "Life. Aspiring to Higher Goals (on the 90th Birthday of S. P. Korolev)" (English title),

Nouosti kosmonautiki I (January I- 12, 1997): 63-67.

29. Lardier.L71stronuutiqueSouietique, pp 31-34.

30. Glushko, Deuelopmentof Rocketry and Space Technology,p. 19: Barry, "The Missile Design Bureaux"

Design BureauNo. 7 (KB-7) was primarilycomposedof engineerswho had "defected" from RNtl. Later historiesof the

earlySovietrocketryprogramdismissedthe efforts of KB-7asa failure, but in truth, the activities at this bureauwerequite

successful given the circumstances. Led by former RNII engineers L K. Korneyev and A. h Polyamiy,

KB-7 developed a series of increasingly complex rockets for exploring high altitudes. One of these, although never

launched,was the R-05.one of the first Sovietrocketsdesignedexclusively for investigationsof the upper atmosphere.

Specialinstrumentswere developedby the Optics Institute and the Chief GeophysicalObservatory for this rocket. KB-7

also designedseveralcomplexguidance and gyroscopesystems, someof them as sophisticatedas those developedat

RNII. A secondindependent effort was continued by amateurengineersof the former GIRDwho had elected not to be

partof the governmental RNII. Solid-propellantmissilessuch as the VR-3 and the TR-3were developedunder the leadershipof I. A. Merkulovin the ReactionSectionof the StratosphericCommittee of Osoaviakhim.The latter organization

also developedsome of the first ramjet engines for rocketapplications. Both theseefforts, however,were discontinued

by the late 1930s KB-7 itself was dissolvedin 1939.following a decision by the Artillery Directoratethat liquid-propellant missile researchwas not a useful avenueof military research.SeeGlushko, TheDeuelopmentolRoeketry and Space

Technology,p. 19: the author writes that KB-7 "failed to produce the desired results." See also I. A Merkulov,

"Organization and Resultsof the Work of the FirstScientific Centersfor RocketTechnologyin the USSR," in Frederick

I. Ordway III. ed., History of Rocketryand Astronautics. Vol. 9 (San Diego,CA: American Astronautical Society, I989),

pp. 70, 72 73; Lardier.L7_stronautiqueSovietique,pp. 39, 41-43: Riabchikov,Russiansin Space,pp. 128-29.

31. For an excellent summary and analysis of the events at RNII in the 1930s, see Barry. "The Missile

Design Bureaux."

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
PRESAGE

interest in rocketry, let alone space travel, very visibly declined as the Soviet government began

to slowly withdraw from its earlier support for such technologies.

Despite the organizational discord in RNII, there was a significant amount of research on

rocketry conducted during that period. Korolev himself made a presentation at the P,lI-Union

Conference on Stratospheric Studies in Leningrad in March and gpril 1934, calling for the development of scientific instruments for high-altitude rockets to study the upper atmosphere) 2 In

December, Korolev authored a slim volume titled Raketnyy polet v stratos[ere (Missile Flight Into

the Stratosphere), in which he considered for the first time the launch of humans to high altitudes. He conceded that given the current state of Soviet technology, such a plan might be

somewhat premature. The following year, Korolev, Glushko, Tikhonravov, Pobedonostsev, and

other engineers at RNII actively participated in a Moscow workshop, the All-Union Conference

on the Uses of Rocket-Propelled Craft for the Exploration of the Stratosphere, dedicated completely to the possibilities of high-altitude science using powerful rockets. 33

Korolev was personally involved in the design of several missiles for military applications

beginning in the mid-1930s. These initially included high-altitude missiles but progressively

encompassed the design and construction of winged missiles. _4Work on the latter rockets was

used as the basis for the development of one of the first practical rocket plane designs in the

Soviet Union, designated the RP-318. Conceived in July 1936, intensive static engine firings

were conducted in late 1937 and early 1938 in preparation for the first flight, which Korolev

intended to make himself? 5 Glushko and Tikhonravov at the same time worked independently

on other projects, the former developing at least fifty different low-thrust nitric-acid-based rocket engines for a variety of applications. Many of these units had relatively high-performance

characteristics, with thrust levels as high as 600 kilograms. Thus, although the original goals of

Korolev, Glushko, and Tsander had been put to the side for the time being, it is clear that the

work at RNII was not only productive but also extremely important in terms of the later achievements of the Soviet rocketry program. Apart from the purely technological advancements and

the mastery of important practical processes, the years at RNII also gave the young engineers

their first active involvement in issues of organization and management. Although the political

and social institutions under which they worked under were obviously vastly different, the work

at RNII in many ways parallels that of the Germans and the _,mericans with their own amateur

rocketry societies, which also attracted the interest of their respective governments. However,

while all three independent early rocketry efforts in the late 1930s had to address the impending war, only one was to face the full brunt of the government's attack on its own people.

32. Vasili Mishin and Boris Raushenbakh. "The Scientific Legacy of Academician Sergei Korolyov." in

History of the USSR:New Research5: Yuri_agarin: ToMark the 25th Anniversary of the First Manned Space Flight

(Moscow: Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the LISSRP,cademy of Sciences, 1986), p.

106: Vetrov.S t_ Koroleu i kosmonavtika, p. 80.

33. Peter Stache. Soviet Rockets, Foreign Technology Division Translation, FTD-ID(RS)T-O619-88(from

unnamed source). Wright Patterson Air force Base,Ohio. November 29, 1988. p. 206. This is a translation of Peter

Stache, Sowjetiseher Raketen (Berlin: Militarverlad der DDR, 1987). See also Mishin and Raushenbakh. "The

Scientific Legacy," p. 106: Vetrov,S. F_Koroleu i kosmonautika, p. 89.

34. Lardier, L'ZtstronautiqueSovi_tique, pp. 35-39. The high-altitude missiles included Objects 209,609-h

RDD-604, and RAS-521,The winged missiles included Objects 48,201,212,216,217, and 218.

35. Ibid., pp. 37-38: Glushko, The Development of Rocketryand Space Technology,p. t8. The original designation of the RP-318was Object 218
I0

The Purges

P,ll Soviet-era histories of early rocketry programs came to an abrupt end in 1937 when

Stalin's Great Purges reached its zenith. The purges had a profound effect, not only on the scientific community but also on almost every other sector of Soviet society. Directed by the secret

police--the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD)--and by Soviet leader I. V.

Stalin's personal vision of suspicion, paranoia, and complete terrorization, the purges effectively decimated a whole generation of the Soviet Union's best engineers, writers, politicians, military officers, academics, and scientists. No one was safe at the time, however tenuous their

ties to ideological trappings: people were picked up off the street for completely arbitrary reasons and never seen again. Not surprisingly, a feeling of paranoia crept into almost every level

of society, fed by the suspicion and mistrust, as millions faced the threat of possible execution

or internment in labor camps. "Informing" on an associate became less a compromise of one's

value system than simply a means to live through the torture of NKVD agents.

RNII had been renamed the Scientific Research Institute No. 3 (NII-3) on January 2, 193z. *°

Within a year after that reorganization, the engineers of the institute were left with little doubt

that their safety was no longer assured. The first effective indication that their luck had run out

came in the late spring of 1937. The NKVD suddenly arrested Marshal Tukhachevskiy, the early

patron of NII-3 and one of the more brilliant strategists of the Soviet military, on May 22, 1937.

Recently appointed the commander of the Volga Military District, Tukhachevskiy was charged

with having been part of an "anti-Soviet Trotskiyite conspiracy. ''_7 Interrogated and beaten savagely along with several other "accomplices" during the ensuing days, Tukhachevskiy was sentenced to death after a short trial. His sentence was carried out on June 12. Executed along with

him were his mother, sister, and two brothers. Almost overnight, the name Tukhachevskiy

became a dreaded word, and association with his name was a sure method of attracting suspicion. The marshal's links to NII-3 were not passed over by the NKVD, and the secret police

seemingly put the entire group under surveillance, allegedly through the services of an ambitious

communications specialist named Andrey G. Kostikov. Having joined NII-3 in 1934, Kostikov

eventually became the prime motivator of the purges at the institute on behalf of the NKVD.

Working with Glushko and others on liquid-propellant engines, Kostikov rose quickly through

the ranks of NII-3: by mid-November 1937, he had become deputy director of the institute.

Kostikov's ascendance to power was preceded by the arrest of former Nil 3 Director

Kleymenov on the night of November 2 on charges of being a member of an anti-Soviet

Trotskyite organization that had been part of a trade delegation to Germany? _ Within days,

Kleymenov's deputy Langemak was also arrested. Despite intense torture, the former refused to

confess to any of the charges: Langemak, on the other hand, believing that he had a chance to

save his life, broke under duress, and he confessed that Glushko had also been a member of

the secret organization. Both were executed after signing false charges--Kleymenov on January

I0, 1938, and Langemak the day after. Kostikov, meanwhile, continued to support the NKVD

36. Valeriy Zharkov, "Pobedonostsev's Criteria" (English title), in Shcherbakov, ed., Za2,adki zvezdnykh

ostrouov, p. 73.

37. /_leksey Khorev, "How Tukhachevskiy k,VasCondemned: The LISSRState Security Committee Has

Declassified MaterialsRelatedto the Conviction of Marshal of the SovietUnion Tukhachevskiyand the Other Military

Leadersin 1937.The /_rchives Have Revealedthe Documents on Their Execution and Cremation" (English title),

Krasnaya zuezda, April 17, 1991,p. 4.

38. N.L. Anisimov and V. G. Oppokov, "Incident at NII-3" (English title), Voyenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal

no. I0 (October 1989): 81-87. Kleymenov had been removed from his post on August 30, 1937.

CHALLENGE TO AI_POLLO
PRESAGE

in their senseless vendetta, having provided fabricated evidence for the arrest of the two executed RNII leaders. _9

Kleymenov and Langemak were the first of many to pay a dear price because of their tenuous links to Tukhachevskiy. By the end of 1937, the NKVD had a statement denouncing

Korolev and Glushko as "wreckers" of the rocket group--a statement probably extracted from

Kleymenov and Langemak. This led to an expanded meeting on February 13, 1938, of the

Scientific and Technical Council of the institute. One of the items on the agenda was the "denigration of the personality" of rocket engine designer Glushko. 4° He was charged with maintaining connections with "enemies of the people," disclosing military secrets, and avoiding

public work. Officially, his accusers included Kleymenov and Langemak. On February 20, a second meeting was held, again to present more "evidence" against Glushko. glt of Glushko's colleagues, save one, denounced him; Korolev was not present at this meeting, P, resolution was

adopted to the effect that Glushko was "unreliable," and a few days later, on March 23, 1938,

he was arrested on charges of being an "enemy of the people."4'

Following Glushko's arrest, the focus shifted to Korolev, certainly the leading NIl-3 engineer

at the time? _ Korolev himself publicly stated that he could not believe that Glushko had intentionally been involved in "wrecking" activities, only to arouse suspicions against him, P,t the

time, Korolev was directing tests of Object 212, a winged surface-to-air missile, but these had

to be temporarily suspended following a head injury on May 29, 1938, that left him hospitalized

for a few weeks. 4_The NKVD, however, moved ahead with their agenda, and after several weeks

of deliberations, on June 20, they formally denounced Korolev on charges of being a member of

an anti-Soviet organization. The final piece of "evidence" against Korolev was a letter signed by

four senior engineers at the institute denouncing Korolev of various disruptive activities/4 The

NKVD proffered five separate charges, including an accusation that Korolev had destroyed the

RP-318 rocket-plane, even though at the time it sat quite intact in the hangar of the institute's

headquarters. The denunciation also stated that both Korolev and Glushko had been "responsible for all errors, omissions, mistakes, and disruptions at the test stands. ''45 Exactly a week later,

on June 27, 1938, Korolev, barely recovered from his accident, was arrested and taken to the

Lubyanka prison. 46By all accounts, Korolev sincerely believed that his conviction and arrest was

a bureaucratic mistake: it seems, however, that his distraught mother, Mariya N. Balanina, had

realized the gravity of the situation and sent at least three letters addressed to Stalin himself

pleading her son's innocence and expressing grave concern for his health. 47

39. The new director of NII-3, B. N. Slonimer,and the new deputy director, Kostikov, were [ormally appointed to their new positions lessthan two weeks after Kleymenov's arrest. SeeGolovanov, Koroleu, p. 235.

40. Rebrov, "Specific Impulse."

41. Vetrov, S R Koroleu i kosrnonautika, pp. 121-22: Mikhail Rudenko, "O chem dymal zhyul veto," Trud,

September I, 1993, p. 3.

42. Korolev had been the senior engineer of Group No. 2 at NII-3 since January 1938.

43. Zharkov, "Pobedonostsev's Criteria," p. 16: Vetrov, S. P Koroleu i kosmonautika, p. 122.

44. Romanov and Gubarev, Konstruktory, pp. 48-49. Further biased evidence was supplied investigators

Bykov and Shestakov.

45. Rebrov, "Specific Impulse." Fora detailed explanation of the charges against Korolev, seeG. Vetrov, "In

Difficult Years" (English title), Ztuiatsiya i kosmonautika no. I (January 1989): 36-37.

46. /_nisimov and Oppokov, "Incident at NIl-3." The order for Korolev's arrest was issued by the Chief

Economic Directorate of the NKVD on the directive of First Deputy Chief Military Procurator G. K. Raginskiy,who

himself was arrested in 1939 SeeB. P,.Viktorov, "Restoration of Name" (English title). Nauka i zhizn no. 5 (May

1988): 78-82. Korolev was arrested under stipulation of article 58 o[ the RSFSRcriminal code, points 7 and II,

which included chargesof being "a member of an anti-Soviet underground counter-revolutionary organization."

47. The first two letters are reproduced in full in/_nisimov and Oppokov, "Incident at NIl-3," and were

dated July 15 and July 22, 1938. An excerpt from the third, dated gugust t9, 1938. was published in Viktorov,

"Restoration of Name."

II
12

Korolevwasinterrogatedtwiceduringthisperiod.Thefirstimehedeniedallcharges. During

the second occasion, after severe torture and beating, he "confessed" and signed a document

implicating himself in the charges. Kostikov had also personally written a letter to the NKVD in

July documenting Korolev's "anti-Soviet character." Combined with the false accusations from

Kleymenov, Langemak, and Glushko, Korolev did not have to wait very long. On September 27,

the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court, under Vasiliy V. Ulrikh, sentenced Korolev to

ten years in a "correctional labor camp," with a "deprivation of all rights" for five years and the

confiscation of all personal property. 4' The second part of the sentence was merely a euphemism

for hard labor at one of the many slave labor camps located throughout the Soviet Union: Korolev

was to be sent to the Kolyma t_rctic death camp at the Maldyak gold mine near Nagayev Bay in

Siberia/'_ Korolev later said of the accusations against him:

During the investigation o[ my case, I could not prove or explain anything because there

was no investigation in the proper sense o[ the word. I was bluntly accused o[ sabotaging

research in new technology. I could not imagine a more absurd and incredible charge

because the development o[ this new technology was the cause of my li[e and the work I

loved.'"

Until his transfer to the labor camps, Korolev continued to make efforts to obtain a retrial.

Put away at the Novocherkasskiy Prison in southern Russia, he wrote to Stalin himself in February

1939, pleading his innocence against the false charges? _

These letters most likely never reached Stalin's eyes and not surprisingly had little effect on

Korolev's fate. There were, however, two factors that intersected in 1938-39 that saved Korolev's

life. Soon after his imprisonment, a close friend of Korolev's, famed pilot Valentina S.

Grizodubova, had joined forces with another famous Soviet aviator, Mikhail M. Gromov, and

Korolev's own mother to author a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party

requesting a review of Korolev's case. 5_The statement apparently reached the office of Nikolay I.

Yezhov, the chairman of the NKVD. Although Yezhov was abruptly arrested in November 1938,

his successor, Lavrentiy P. Beriya, happened to have a particular interest in the Korolev case. Beriya

would eventually make his reputation as one of the cruelest perpetrators of state terror in the

Soviet Union, but when he assumed his new role in January 1939, he was more interested in cultivating an image of himself as a humane and fair person. After Beriya's appointment, prosecutor

Ulrikh himself wrote to the NKVD to protest Korolev's original sentence. Prompted by the lobbying of Supreme Soviet members Grizodubova and Gromov, Beriya was convinced that Korolev

was a good example to display his "humanity." Thus, at a special meeting of the Plenum of the

High Court on June 13, 1939, the NKVD agreed to Ulrikh's protest and signed an order changing

Korolev's official charge from a "member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization" to

the less serious "saboteur of military technology" and requested a new trial? _

48. Vetrov. s P Korolev i kosmonavtika, p. 122: Col. M, Rebrov, "The Leader:Little-Known PagesFromthe

Life of S. P Korolev" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, July I, 1989, p. 4.

49. Romanov and Gubarev, Konstruktory, pp. 48-49.

50 Mariya Pastukhova, "Brighter Than Any Legend" (English title), Ogonek 49 (December 1987): 18-23:

N. Kidger, "Arrests 'Limited' Rocket Development," letter to the editor, Spaceflight 30 (1988): 169.

SI. Anisimov and Oppokov, "Incident at NII-3." Other letterswere also allegedly written in August and

October 1938 and April 1939. SeeRomanov,Korolev, p. 158. Korolev was moved to Novocherkasskiy on October

I0, 1938

52. Viktorov, "Restoration of Name." At the time, it was the All-Union Communist Party (VKP). Gromov's

status in the Soviet Union then was in many ways comparable to that of Charles Lindbergh's in the United States

Gromov, along with A. B Yumashev,had completed the first nonstop airplane [light from the Soviet Union to the

United Statesin 1937.

53. Ibid: Romanov,Koroleu, p, 159.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
PRESAGE I

Unfortunately for Korolev, it was too late. Less than two weeks prior to the new order, on

June I, he had already started his journey to the Kolyma camp. _4 He traveled by rail in an overcrowded cattle car across the Ural and Baykal mountain ranges before being transported in the

hold of a ship along with hundreds of other prisoners across the Sea of Okhotsk. Korolev arrived

at Kolyma in August 1939. Given the conditions at the camp, it would have been surprising if

he ever believed he would leave it alive. He worked as an Earth digger in a gold mine off the

Kolyma River for the ensuing months. It was well known even at the time that of all labor camps

of the GULag system, Kolyma was the most brutal and cruel. _ During operations throughout

World War II, the camp claimed the lives of between 2 and 3 million people. Most of the deaths

were from overwork, famine, cruelty from the guards, and the harsh Arctic climate. In the first

months, Korolev was so brutally treated that he was left with a huge scar on his head and lost

half his teeth from scurvy. He also had the misfortune of arriving at Kolyma during one of the

worst winters in its entire history of operations. Despite the inhuman conditions at Kolyma,

Korolev continued to make efforts to deny his guilt. In a letter dated October 15, he wrote to the

Soviet Union's chief procurator demanding his immediate return to Moscow3 _/_ddressed to

/_ndrey Yu. Vyshinskiy, the powerful lawyer and diplomat who was personally responsible for

sending thousands to their deaths, Korolev wrote, "1 have been foully slandered by the institute

director, Kleymenov, his deputy, Langemak, and engineer Glushko. TM He was apparently

unaware that Kleymenov and Langemak had been executed. _

Glushko meanwhile had been sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison on August 15,

1939, during a special session of the NKVD. They sent him to a prison for scientists and engineers in Tushino near Moscow, part of a larger network of prisons that specifically held the scientific intelligentsia of the country. _9The inmates referred to such prisons as sharashka, a word

deriving from the Russian slang expression meaning a "sinister enterprise based on bluff or

deceit. ''6° Of the other major individuals at NIl-3, both Tikhonravov and Pobedonostsev. for reasons unclear, escaped hardship, and they remained behind to work at a revamped NIl-3. In

November 1937, the institute had been transferred to the Commissariat for t_mmunitions, the

"ministry" responsible for the production of a variety of artillery weapons systems?' This

change also presaged a major thematic restructuring in the direction of work at NIl-3 as

Kostikov was appointed director of the institute in late 1939. Most of the post-purge efforts at

NIl-3 were focused on the development of launch equipment and solid-fuel missiles for use by

the artillery forces. Some work on earlier projects, such as Korolev's 212 missile and the

RP-318 rocket-plane, was allowed to continue, but it is clear that there was a significant turn

in research at the institute--one that effectively stilted many years of fruitful work.

54. Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 264.

55. GULag isthe Russianacronym for Chief Directorate of Camps.

56. Vetrov,S. R Koroleui kosmonautikm,pp. 126 30: Pastukhova, "Brighter Than Any Legend." An earlier

letter to Stalin was dated August 13, 1939.

57. German Nazarov, "You Cannot Paper Space With Rubies: How to Save Billions" (English title),

Molodaya guardiya no. 5 (April 1990): 192-207.

58. In fact, as late asJuly 1940, Korolev was still in the dark about their fate.

59. This was Plant No. 82. Initially, Glushko worked under a section headed by the noted aeronauticalengineer B. S. Stechkin. See Boris Katorgin and Leonid Sternin, "Pushing Back the Missile Technology Frontiers,"

,Zlerospaee]oumal no. 5 (September-October 1997): 88-90: N. L. Anisimov and V. G. Oppokov, "Incident at NIl-3:

I1" (English title), Voyenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal no. II (November 1989): 65-7 I.

60 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First ¢3ircle(New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. ix, referenced in James

Harford, Koroleu.How OneMan Masterminded the SouietDriue to Beat,Ztmericato the Moon (New York:John Wiley

& Sons, Inc., 1997), p. 57.

61. Lardier,L_stronautique Soui_tique, p. 44. Another source suggests that this transfer occurred in 1940.

See B. Ye.Chertok, Raketyilyudi (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1994), p. 35,

13
14

Beriya'schange-of-heartin 1939promptedofficialstosearchoutKorolevinthecamps, l_fter

what must certainly have been the most torturous period of his life, in December 1939, the

starved Korolev was located at Kolyma and put on a train back to Moscow. Of the 600 individuals who had been at the camp when Korolev had arrived, only 200 remained alive when he left.

In Khabarovsk in the Soviet far east, he received medical attention for the first time and eventually ended up in Moscow on March 2, 1940, incarcerated in cell number 66 at the notorious

Butyrskiy Prison, one of the more physically and psychologically degrading facilities of the

GULag system. 6: Soon after, the NKVD, under Beriya's watchful eye, undertook an investigation

into Korolev's case, which concluded on May 28, 1940. The secret police handed down its sentence more than a month later on July I0, effectively sealing Korolev's fate for several years: the

official sentence stated the Korolev would be "deprived of his freedoms" for the next eight

years? _ l_Ithough the verdict saved him from another trip to the death camps, it was another

cruel blow for Korolev. Once again, he wrote several letters to Stalin, Beriya, and the chief procurator in the following months. _ It was clear that he was not willing to give up on his plight.

While his lobbying efforts may not have had an effect on his imprisonment, an unrelated

event at the time would eventually save Korolev from the trials of the Butyrskiy Prison. Famous

Soviet aircraft designer _ndrey N. Tupolev had also been incarcerated during the purges in

October 193/'. He had been sent off first to Moscow's dreaded Lubyanka Prison and then soon

to the slightly "better" Butyrskiy facility also in Moscow. 6_Perhaps because of the impending

war effort, Stalin apparently took a personal interest in those who had worked or studied under

Tupolev. Stalin ordered Tupolev to prepare a list of individuals who could be useful for work in

support of the aeronautical industries. One of those on the list of twenty-five was Korolev, who

had studied under Tupolev as a young college student. 66Thus in September 1940, Korolev was

transferred from Butyrskiy to a newly formed aviation design bureau located in Stakhanov village near Moscow under Tupolev's nominal command. The facility remained under the direct

control of the 4th Special Department (for new technology) of the NKVDf Officially designated the Central Design Bureau No. 29 (TsKB-29), the plant was another of the sharashka

system, with all the engineers serving as prisoners of the Soviet state. The inmates were housed

in a special prison with barracks and were guarded at all times. One of those who was also

incarcerated at TsKB-29 recalled his own arrival at the sharashka:

We were taken to the dining room.., heads turned to our direction, sudden exclamations, people ran to us. There were so many well-known, friendly faces. ,ztt the tables we

can see ,zt. N. Tupolev, V. M. Petliakov. '_ M. Myasishehev. I. _. Neman. S. I_ Koroleu.

,_. I Putilou, V. ,zt. Chizhevskiy. ,z]. M. Cheremukhin, D. S. Makarou. N. I. Vazenkou--

the elite, the cream of Russian aircraft technology.... It was impossible to conceiue that

they had all been arrested, and they were all prisoners--this meant a catastrophe for

Souiet aviation! _8

62. Vetrov.S. P Koroleu i kosmonautika, p 123.

63. l_nisimov and Oppokov, "Incident at NII-3: II."

64 The letter dated July 13, 1940,to Stalin and the documents dated July 23 to the chief procurator and

Beriya and September 13 to the chief procurator are reproduced in full in ibid.

65. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror.A Reassessment(New York:Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 295

66. Thereare differing accounts as to how many names were actually on this alleged list. Forexample, one

fellow prisoner whose name was also on the same list, L. L. Kerber, recounted in 1991 that there were 200 names

on Tupolev's list. SeeHarford, Koroleu, p. 59. Seealso _,. Romanov, "Force of Spirit" (English title), Trud, February

26, 1988, p 3, in which S. M. Yeger.another prisoner, claims that twenty-five people wereon the list.

67 Vetrov, S. P Koroleu i kosmonautika, p. 125; Romanov and Gubarev. Konstruktory, pp. 50-51:

Romanov,Koroleu.p. 160.

68. I_. Sharagin, Tupolevskaya Sharaga (Frankfurt: Georgi _leksandrovich Ozerov, 19Zl), pp 13-14

slightly different translation is used in McDougall.... the Heauensand the Earth, p. 38.

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
PRESAGE

Prisoners of War

The beginning of World War II was an unexpected blow for the Soviet Union. The German

invaders advanced rapidly over Soviet territory toward the major cities of the nation. While the

Great Purges had been a tragic setback for Soviet rocketry, the war provided an unexpected setting for the organization of sporadic and disparate rocketry efforts that trained and gave experience to a new generation of engineers weaned on wartime conditions. In the initial period of

the war, none of the efforts were directed toward anything more than modest solid-fuel rockets for use on either aircraft or as short-range artillery weapons.

For Korolev, the work at TsKB-29 was a far cry from his earlier goals. The primary thematic

work of the group was the quick fruition of project IO3 to build a military bomber designated the

Tu-2. _ The bomber eventually went into operation in October 1942, and it was then that the

NKVD acted on Korolev's repeated requests to be transferred to work on rocket engines. In

November, Korolev was moved to a special design bureau working at Aviation Plant No. 16 in

Kazan/° This facility was also part of the NKVD prison system and effectively operated by the

secret police. It comprised several subordinate teams working on different problems. By coincidence, one of these groups, Design Bureau No. 2, was headed by none other than Korolev's former NIl-3 associate Glushko. The latter had spent the immediate prewar years in Tushino working

for ramjet specialist Boris S. Stechkin before being moved to Kazan in 1940. The primary goal at

the design bureau in Kazan was to develop auxiliary liquid-propellant rocket engines to assist in

the takeoff phases of a variety of propeller-driven aircraft, Korolev himself was appointed chief of

Group No. 5 in charge of reactive units in January 1943. 7' Thus, about five years after his arrest,

Korolev eventually found his way back into the design of liquid-propellant rocket engines, although

clearly it was not with the same goals in mind as RNII or GIRD had proposed years before.

While few personal details are available of Korolev's time at the Kolyma mines, his years

at the Tupolev prison and at Plant No. 16 in Kazan have been better documented. The first

impressions of those who saw Korolev after he first arrived to work for Tupolev were not

encouraging. Another prisoner recalled:

He [Korolev] looked terrible. He was emaciated and exhausted. Tupolev showed a lot of

care in his relationship with Korolev which we could not understand. Apparently. he

valued qualities of Korolev that we did not notice at the time. He was industrious,

responsible, and had an interest in creative solutions."

The NKVD never really relinquished their hold on Korolev. Legend has it that their agents

told Korolev, upon arrival at the Tupolev sharashka, that "our country doesn't need your fireworks. Or maybe you're making rockets for an attempt on the life on our leader?" '' There are

reports that Korolev was "absolutely firm, never disguising his contempt for the regime. ''7°

69, Yuriy Biryukov and Vikentiy Komarov, "S. R Korolev in the 'Sharashka'" (English title), in Shcherbakov,

ed,, Zagadki zuezdnykh ostrouou, p. 103, The airplane flew its first flight in January 1941. Becauseof the rapid

advance of Germans into Soviet territory, TsKB-29itself was moved in July of that yearto a different location at Plant

No_ 166 in Irtysh, near Kulomzino in the Omsk region. SeeBiryukov and Komarov, "S. E Korolev in the 'Sharashka'."

p, 103: Lardier,LTtstronaudque Sov_etique,p. 46.

70. Biryukov and Komarov, %. R Korolev in the 'Sharashka'," p. 104: Romanov and Gubarev, l<onstruktory,

p. 53.

71. Biryukov and Komarov, "S. P.Korolev in the 'Sharashka'." p. t05

72 Rebrov,"The Leader,"The associatewas S M Yeger

73. Conquest, The @eat Terror. p. 294.

74. James E Oberg, "Korolev and Khrushchev and Sputnik," Spaceflight 20 (April 1978): 144-50

15
16

ProfessorGeorgiyA Ozerov, a Soviet engineer who knew Korolev in the sharashka, described

him as "a cynic and a pessimist who took the gloomiest view of the future." One of Tupolev's

deputies also recalled later that Korolev's favorite phrase in prison was "we will all vanish without a trace.":_ Apparently, he was very contemptuous of the regime and fully expected to be

shot. Others say that Korolev never doubted the "honesty and sense of justice" of Stalin.'6 This

is partly borne out by his letters addressed to Stalin from both Kolyma and the Butyrskiy Prison.

It seems that only after the denunciations by Khrushchev in 1956 did Korolev realize the magnitude of Stalin's ruthlessness during the purges. A fellow prisoner of Korolev's at the NKVD

prison, Esfir M Rachevskaya, relayed one particularly touching anecdote. She recalled later how

one day the radio was playing Aram Khachaturyan's violin concerto:

I felt homesick. I wanted to be back home, in Moscow, with ray family and friends. Tears

ran down my cheeks, and I looked round to see Korolev standing beside me with tears

in his eyes too. Zifter looking at him, I began to cry most bitterly. He went back into the

office, and when I returned, he was sitting at his desk absorbed in his work.""

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, no doubt on orders from the NKVD, signed an official order (protocol no. 18) onjuly 27, 1944, officially releasing both Glushko and Korolev from

confinement/_ They were among a group of thirty-five engineers freed at the time, cited for

their "contribution in building aircraft jet boosters." _ The effects of the decree went into effect

on August I0, but it is clear that given the wartime conditions and the continuing threatening

nature of the NKVD, little changed in either of their lives. In fact, both Korolev and Glushko

still officially remained convicts of the Soviet state because their original sentences were not

overturned. With their release, Glushko's group, Design Bureau No. 2 of Plant No. 16, was officially moved from under the jurisdiction of the NKVD to the aviation industry and renamed the

Special Design Bureau for Special Engines (OKB-SD). _ Glushko was appointed the chief designer and Korolev his deputy. The irony of Korolev's position as Glushko's deputy was not lost on

either as their positions had been effectively reversed from the days of RNII in the 1930s.

Still focused more on aviation applications than pure rocketry, all of the work at this location was dedicated to the use of liquid-propellant rocket engines, such as the RD-I KhZ, RD-2,

and RD-3, on Soviet fighter planes designed by Lavochkin, Sukhoy, and Yakovlev2 tn his new

state of "freedom" and as the deputy chief designer of OKB-SD, Korolev apparently made an

attempt to interest the leaders of the aviation industry in long-range missiles. On October 14,

1944. just over two months after his release, he submitted a report to First Deputy People's

Commissar of Aviation Industry Petr V. Dementyev on the possibility of developing two longrange missiles fueled by solid propellants. Both of these, the unguided ballistic D-I and the

winged guided D-2, used elements of a prewar missile named the 217, which had been the

75 Leonid Vladimirov. The Russian Space Btu[[ (New York: The Dial Press. 1973). p. 146: Vetrov, S P

Korolev i kosmonavtika, p 135. The deputy was L. L. Kerber.

76 Pastukhova. "Brighter Than ,_ny Legend."

77. V Lysenko, ed, ThreePacesBeyond the Horizon (Moscow: Mir Publishers. I989). pp. 33-34 Seealso

A. Yu. Ishlinskiy, ed...,qkademik S P Koroleu:ueheniy, inzhenec chetouek(Moscow: Nauka, 1986), p. 14I

78. Romanov, Koroteu pp. 192-93.

79 Katorgin and Sternin, "Pushing Back the Missile Technology Frontiers"

80 Biryukov and Komarov, "S P Korolev in the 'Sharashka'." pp 106-07. When Nll-I was [ormed in May

1944.G]ushko's design bureau may have been subsumed aspart of the Nil I system asa sector in the institute See

C. Wachtel. "The Chref Designerso[ the Soviet Space Program," Journal o[ the British Interplanetary Society 38

(1985): 56t-63: Lardier, LZtstronautique Souieticlue.p. 62

81. g good summary of the work at OKB-SD is provided in Vetrov, S P Koroteu i kosmonavtika pp.

157-74.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
PRESRGE

focus of work at NIl-3. The proposed ranges of the vehicles were, respectively, sixty and a half

kilometers and 115 kilometers. _ The missiles had capabilities comparable to the German A-4

but were obviously derived from different antecedents. In a clear indication of Korolev's longdormant dreams, he even proposed using the D-2 for "manned flight."

In submitting a later report on the D-I and D-2 in December 1944, Korolev laid down a

specific timetable for the development of the two vehicles, emphasizing their military utility.

Korolev did not understate the required leap of technology and management required for such

a project, adding that: "The tasks we face are immense and the altitudes we want to reach are

such as our predecessors and teachers of the pioneer days.., could only dream .... "_ As the

war raced to a close in early 1945, Korolev was allowed to work on a second version of the

D-I/D-2 project draft, although much if not all the work at the OKB-SD remained focused on

rocket accelerators for airplanes. It seems that the leadership of the aviation industry had little

interest in involving itself in the development of ballistic missiles, an attitude that eventually

put the early postwar Soviet efforts in rocketry firmly in the hands of a resourceful group of

artillery people.

The work at OKB-SD may have given refuge to a beleaguered Korolev, but the most important Soviet liquid-propellant rocketry research was carried out elsewhere, in a new institute

formed Jn 1944 by combining the efforts of two other aeronautical and rocketry organizations.

The first of these was Kostikov's NIl-3, which during the early part of the war developed missiles for the famous Katyusha system to which most Russian historians continue to refer in

almost mythical terms. _' On July 15, 1942, the aviation industry took control of NIt-3 at the

same time that Kostikov's rising star reached its zenith, Having gained innumerable honors in

his rise to power, Kostikov was suddenly arrested on March 15, 1944, on charges of deceiving

the Soviet government and Stalin personally in connection with a rocket plane project. _ By this

time, aviation industry leaders had formulated a plan to merge NIl-3, now renamed the State

Institute for Reactive Technology, with a second organization.

This second entity had been formed in Moscow in the mid-1930s as a small aircraft design

bureau under the leadership of Viktor F, Bolkhovitinov. After relocating in 1937 to Kazan, two

years later, the group settled down at Khimki as the Special Design Bureau of Plant No. 293. By

1944, the team, made up mostly of young talented engineers, had developed one of the first

Soviet rocket planes, the BI-I, and they were moving on to more advanced designs. '_ Among

this group were Aleksandr Ya. Bereznyak, Konstantin D. Bushuyev, Boris Ye. Chertok, Aleksey

M. Isayev, Mikhail V. Melnikov, Vasiliy P. Mishin, and Arvid V. Patio--individuals who would

all eventually play critical roles in the emergence of the Soviet space program in the 1950s and

1960s. To consolidate scarce resources during the war, the aviation industry signed a merger

decision on May 29, 1944, which effectively united the old NIl-3 and Bolkhovitinov's team into

a new institute designated Scientific Research Institute No. I (NIl-I). _' Maj. General Petr I.

82. Ibid, pp. 118-85: Biryukov and Komarov, "S, R Korolev in the 'Sharashka'," p. 108. The rangeswere

thirty-two and seventy-six kilometers, respectively,in the initial draft of the project.

83 Stache, Soviet Rockets,p, 162.

84, Riabchikov,Russians in Space, pp. 135-36, The RS-82and RS-182 missiles designed by the executed

Langemakwereusedasa basisto design the Katyusharockets,although Kostikov apparentlytook creditfor their genesis.

85. Anisimov and Oppokov, "Incident at NIl-3': Romanov and Gubarev, Konstruktory, p. 46: Lardier,

LT)stronctutiqueSovietique, p 46; Vetrov, S P Korolev i kosmonavtlka, p, 14I.

86. Riabchikov, Russiansin Spaoe,p 134: Chertok, Rakety i tyudi, pp 18-21.

87, Chertok. Rakety i Iyudi, p, 144; Lardier, L'JqstronautlqueSovi#tique. p. 61: Wachtel, "The Chief

Designersof the Soviet Space Program." The old NIl-3 (known as GIRT sinceJuly 15, 1942) was originally reorganized into the Scientific-ResearchInstitute for ReactiveAviation (Nil RA) on February 18, 1944, The same Nil RA

was then combined with Bolkhovitinov's Plant No. 293 later on May 29 of the same year to become NII-I. See

Rostislav Angelskiy, 'r. , And if not KorolevT" (English title), .7)uiatsiya i kosmonautika uchera, segodnya, zautra

no. 4 ( 1998): 22 26

I1
18

Fedorov, the former deputy director of a major research institute in the Soviet Air Force, was

appointed the first director of Nil-I, with Bolkhovitinov as his deputy. Fedorov established at

least five sections in the new institute, three of which were exclusively dedicated to the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines for use on military aircraft. Although the thematic

direction of the work at the new NII-I was little different from that of its component organizations, the unification served as a means to bring some order into the somewhat chaotic rocketry efforts during World War II.

Raketa

The Soviet leadership in 1944 had no interest in creating a program for the development of

ballistic missiles in support of the war effort. Despite this lack of enthusiasm for indigenous

efforts, there was considerable interest in acquiring and studying concurrent German rocket

technology. Without a doubt, the most technologically sophisticated and advanced rocketry

program during the war existed in neither the United States nor the Soviet Union, but at

Peenem0nde in Germany under the administrative leadership of General Walter Dornberger.

With the young Wernher yon Braun as the technical head of operations, Dornberger's group of

highly talented individuals had, by the end of the war, developed one of the most feared

weapons of World War II, the A-4 ballistic missile. More commonly known as the V-2, or

"vengeance weapon," in German, the A-4 performed its first successful launch on October 3,

1942, after three failures in March, June, and August of the same year. With a maximum range

of about 300 kilometers and a capability to reach altitudes of close to ninety kilometers, the

A-4 was produced in the thousands by slave labor in the latter part of the war as almost a lastgasp attempt by the Nazis to turn the inevitable course of the war. A second weapon, the

Fieseler Fi-103 "flying bomb," also known as the V-I, was part of this intense German campaign to numb Great Britain into submission. Although casualties were relatively low compared

to aerial bombing, the specter of the two missiles produced an unimaginable sense of terror

among the mostly civilian victims.

In a letter dated July 13, 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill personally

requested Stalin's cooperation in locating and retrieving A-4 and Fi-103 production materials

that the Germans were leaving behind with their retreat._ Churchill's prime concern was that

British intelligence officers be allowed to inspect and examine any captured A-4 components

from the experimental missile station at Debica near Krakow in Poland, which, by July 1944,

was only about fifty kilometers from the Soviet frontlines. As they began their retreat in mid1944, the Germans had, however, done a fairly good job of destroying all possible remnants

of their research.

Stalin ordered the formation of a secret expeditionary group of Soviet specialists to investigate the remains at Debica. People's Commissar of Aviation Industry Aleksey I. Shakhurin tapped

the Nil-I organization to help set up an advance team. Under the watchful eye of the NKVD,

on August 5, Maj. General Fedorov led a small group of Nil-I engineers, including Korolev's old

RNII associates Tikhonravov and Pobedonostsev, to Debica?_ Initially, the Soviet team collected

some interesting parts, such as an A-4 combustion chamber and parts of propellant tanks, before

allowing British teams to enter a week later to conduct their own investigations. Highly accurate

aerial maps prepared by the latter were instrumental in locating more fallen A-4 debris from test

firings that the Germans had conducted. Recovered parts from the missile were soon loaded into

88. Thecompletetextof this letteris reproducedin Chertok,Raketyi lyudLpp.86-87

89 Ibid., pp. 87-88: Yu. P.Semenov.ed., Roketno-KosmicheskayaKorporcztsiya"fnergiya" imeniS P

Koroleua(Korolev:RKKEnergiya.namedafterS. R Korolev,1996).p. 18,Othersgoing to DebicawereN. G

Chernyshov,R.Ye,Sorkin,M, Ye.Shekhtman,andYu ,q.Fedosyuk,

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
PRESAGE

Li-2 transport aircraft and returned to Moscow under tight NKVD security. Upon return to

Moscow, with the exception of NIl-I Director Fedorov and Deputy Director Bolkhovitinov, almost

all the employees of NII-I were kept in the dark about the entire operation. Eventually, the NKVD

loosened some of their restrictions, and Bolkhovitinov was ordered to establish a very small

group of talented engineers to study the engineering aspects of the A-4. This section of A-4

researchers was given the top-secret designation Raketa. the Russian word for "missile," and

included RNII veterans Tikhonravov and Pobedonostsev. Plant No. 293 alumni Bereznyak,

Bushuyev, Chertok, Isayev, and Mishin, and newcomers Nikolay A. Pilyugin and Leonid A.

Voskresenskiy?°

Possibly the youngest of the group was Vasiliy Pavlovich Mishin, a specialist in control systems who, twenty years later, would lead the Soviet program to land a cosmonaut on the

Moon. He was born on January 5, 1917, in the village of Byualino not far from Moscow. His

brother and sister died in childhood, and his family disintegrated soon after. The young Mishin

was raised by his grandfather because his father had been jailed for several years for not informing on a person who had told a joke about Stalin. After his father's release, Mishin moved to

Moscow and qualified as one of the lucky entrants into the prestigious Moscow Aviation

Institute Jn 193_5.He was 18at the time and apparently considered a very bright student. There,

Mishin did his prediploma work under the aircraft designer Bolkhovitinov. Passionately in love

with flying, Mishin was also well known as one of the first pilots in the Soviet Union to master a "self-starting" piloting technique without outside assistance. Later in 1940, he was called

up for work at Bolkhovitinov's Plant No. :293 and took part in the development of the one of

the world's first rocket-powered airplanes, the BI-I, which flew successfully in 1942._' Mishin

was one of many of Bolkhovitinov's engineers transferred to Nil-I in early 1944, and after the

A-4 fragments were recovered in August, he became one of the leading members of the group.

Equipped with a very assertive personality, he was instrumental in extracting important information on the workings of the German missile from the few scraps that were recovered.

Because of his father's "suspect" background, Mishin was apparently considered somewhat of

a state risk and was not allowed to travel anywhere without permission.

The primary goals of the 1944 recovery operations were to determine whether the possibility existed of creating an analog of the A-4 weapon in Soviet industry. It seems that the evaluation team was actually organized on two different levels. While the Raketa group at NII-I

was kept busy with a technical investigation of the recovered remains, a second group was

tapped to advise Stalin and the Soviet leadership on the possible uses of such weapons--that

is, their utility in wartime conditions. This process was the catalyst for introducing a second

group of individuals, the artillery officers, who would play a very significant role in the future

development and operation of the Soviet space program.

In the late summer of 1944, the Chief of Staff of the Third Army's Katyusha Rocket

Launcher Unit Operations Group, Major Georgiy A. Tyulin, was recalled from his duties for a

top secret assignment? 2A thirty-year-old officer serving in the Chief Artillery Directorate. Tyulin

had studied at the aerodynamics laboratory at Moscow State University in the late 1930s and,

since 1941, had been one of the leading experts in handling rocket operations. His reassignment led him to a top secret scientific and technical division headed by a Lt. Colonel Anatoliy

90. RomanovandGubarev,Konstruktory,p. 57: Romanov,Koroleu,pp. 203-04;Cher/ok,Rakety[ lyudL

p, 88.Othersin the RaketagroupwereBordachev,A, A. Borovkov,I. F.Florov,andYu.A. Konovalov.

91. A. Tarasov,"Missionsin Dreamsand Reality"(Englishtitle), Prauda,October20. 1989,p. 4: Mikhail

Rebrov,"The LastArgument:A Studyof the Designerin Blackand White" (Englishtitle), Krasnayazuezda.

March25, 1995,p. 6,

92. Lt. Gen (Ret.)G. Tyulin, "The 'Seven':Years,Accomplishments,People"(Englishtitle), Krasnaya

zuezda,April I, 1989,pp.3-4.

19
20

I. Semenov. under whose leadership he was to study captured German E-103 and #,-4 missiles.

The entire effort was coordinated by the Communist Party through the auspices of Maj. General

Lev M. Gaydukov, a member of the Military Council of the Mortar Guards Unit and simultaneously chief of the Party Central Committee's department for artillery affairs? _

It is not clear whether the Nil-I Raketa group had any significant personal interaction with

artillery officers Tyulin or Semenov, but clearly their individual findings were coordinated.

l_ccording to Tyulin, he was to "thoroughly study models of German field rocket artillery, large

quantities of which were available at the captured ammunition depots, and to prepare proposals on developing future rocket systems."_ In studying the Fi-103 cruise missile, Tyulin was evidently not impressed with its wartime capabilities and concluded that it would not be

worthwhile to engage in immediately developing a replica of the vehicle. His reasoning may

have stemmed from its slow speed and vulnerability to anti-aircraft defenses. On the other

hand. it seems Tyulin had been far more impressed with the A-4. On developing some vision

of future military strategy, Tyulin's assessments may have been limited by the minuscule knowledge about the A-4 available to the Soviets at the time. At one early meeting with his superior,

he was asked what his group had learned about the missile: Tyulin recalled saying that "we

know practically nothing about the [A-4] missile except that it flies. ''°_ By late 1944, Semenov

and Tyulin prepared a recommendation for Maj. General Gaydukov that called for heightened

efforts to capture as much _-4 materials as possible; they strongly emphasized the importance

of such weapons for the artillery sector in wartime conditions.

In the NII-I Raketa group, work on reconstituting the A-4 progressed slowly at first but

began to pick up pace by the end of 1944. Engineer Isayev later recalled that:

In the summer of 1944 a pile of bent steel, broken glass, electrical cable, and battered

housing, filled with electronic devices, was brought into the conference room of our

institute .... For the next two months the conference room became a laboratory where

designers reconstructed the Hitlerite "wonder weapon" from broken pieces of sheet

metal, aluminum, and electron tubes .... _

Mishin added: "We quickly traced out from the pieces the layout of the rockets and the

pneumatic systems, and calculated trajectories; our mathematician, Yuriy Konovalov, was outstanding in this task. ''_ What the Soviets extrapolated from the recovered debris stunned the

members of the Raketa group. The capabilities of the/q-4 were far in advance of any missile

produced or even planned by the Soviets during the war. Swallowing their collective pride, in

two months, Raketa head Bolkhovitinov was able to produce a lengthy report on their findings

and submitted it officially to his bosses, Commissar of the Aviation Industry Shakhurin and his

First Deputy Dementyev. 98Bolkhovitinov's recommendations were clear: efforts should be made

to reconstitute and recreate the German _q-4 missile, while at the same time creating a modernized version for the military. Unfortunately for those at Nil-I and the aviation industry in

general, neither Shakhurin nor Dementyev were particularly interested in putting resources into

developing missiles. Both apparently were perfectly happy to let the People's Commissariat of

Ammunitions do that job, given that the latter sector had manufactured the literally thousands

of solid-fuel Katyushas that the Soviets had used to terrorize the Nazis. Shakhurin did not make

93 ForGaydukov'sposts, see.Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 123-24: Lardier.L:,'qstronautiqueSovietique, p 49.

94. Tyulin, "The 'Seven'."

95 Ibid

96 5tache, Soviet Rockets p. 168

97 Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality"

98. Carl FredrikGeust, Under the Red .Star(Shrewsbury, UK:/qirlife. 1993), p. 114.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
PRESAGE

the decision blindly. He apparently called together a meeting of the most prominent Soviet aviation designers, such as Tupolev, Yakovlev, Mikoyan, and Lavochkin, to hear their recommendations on the issue. Not surprisingly, none believed that rockets had any utility as military

weapons in the near future; fighters and bombers would do fine for now.99Shakhurin dissolved

the Raketa team in November and put them back into their earlier worL This decision was

apparently taken very hard by Bolkhovitinov's team, and he, "at his own risk," instructed

Mishin to continue calculations on the A-4 missile based on the analysis of recovered parts. '°°

There was a short resurgence of interest in early 1945, when information was received at

the institute that additional pieces had been located at Debica. To investigate, a second team,

this one headed by NII-I Director Maj. General Fedorov, left Moscow on February 7, 1945.

Unfortunately, over Kiev, the aircraft lost control and crashed, killing all twelve crew members

and passengers on board. Mishin was supposed to be on the flight, but at the last minute Soviet

security officials did not allow him to board the aircraft, replacing him with engineer Aleksey

A. Borovkov. The secret police believed that he would be a security risk because his father had

an unfavorable prison record '°'

Shakhurin's rejection of the possible uses of the A-4 missile in late 1944 eventually had significant repercussions for the institutional backdrop of the Soviet space program. Twenty years

in the future, the Soviet Air Force would pay the price for Shakhurin and Dementyev's decision

to stay out of missiles. While not interested in the A-4, Shakhurin was, however, much more

attracted to the capabilities of the Fi-103 cruise missile. Perhaps because of its physical similarity to aircraft, Shakhurin and Dementyev believed that this weapon held greater promise. This

interest in the cruise missile helped start the third wartime rocketry effort, other than Glushko's

OKB-SD and Bolkhovitinov's Nil-I--one to reproduce the German Fi-103. The job went to a

brilliant thirty-year-old mathematician named Vladimir Nikolayevich Chelomey, whose later role

as one of the powerhouses of the Soviet space program would be the stuff of legends.

Born on June 30, 19t4, in the small Ukrainian town of Sedlets, Chelomey graduated from

the Kiev Aviation Institute in t937--the same institute at which Korolev had studied in the

mid-1920s. He was an exceptionally gifted student. As an undergraduate, Chelomey published

his first textbook on vector analysis, and in 1938 alone, he published fourteen articles on mathematics in the official journal of the Kiev Aviation Institute. In 1939, he defended his master's

dissertation at the Institute of Mathematics at Kiev. Based on his remarkable intellectual gifts,

Chelomey was selected as one of fifty of the most promising students in the Soviet Union and

entered a special postgraduate program soon after. By 1941, he was a sector chief at the P. I.

Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Engine Building and began some fairly important work on

the development of pulse-jet engines--research that in many ways paralleled that of the

Germans on the Fi-103 missile. Unaware of the German work, Chelomey had proposed the

development of a pulse-jet cruise missile in 1943, but his idea had been rejected at the time.

Later in 1944, Stalin had called in Shakhurin and Air Force Commander-in-Chief Marshal

Aleksandr A. Novikov and ordered them to start a crash program to develop an analog of the

German missile. On the night of June 13, 1944, at a meeting of the State Committee for War

99. Mikhail Rebrov,"PlansThat Failedto Liveup to Hopes,or No Prophetsin Our Fatherland"(English

title), Krasnc_yazuezda,December27. 1997,p. 6.

I00. B. Konovalov,"FromGermanyto KapustinYar"(Englishtitle). [zuestiya,April6. 1991,p. 3. Seealso

BorisKonovalov,TaynaSouetskogoraketnogaoruzhiya(Moscow:ZEVS,1992),p. 7.

101. Tarasov, "Missions in Dreams and Reality":Chertok, Rakety i lyudL p. 89: Lardier,t71stronauticlue

Soui_tique.pp. 61-62. Among those killedwere RaketaveteransA A. Borovkovand Yu V. Konovalov,solidpropellantspecialistL. E.Shvarts,and NIl-I SectorHeadsS, S.Dementyevand R.I. Popov.Nll-I DirectorFedorov

wasreplacedby Ya.L.Bibikov,

21
22

attended by Shakhurin and Novikov, Stalin signed an order for Chelomey to proceed with work

on creating a long-range winged missile using a pulse-jet engine. '°2 Chelomey received all the

facilities he needed; on October 19, he was officially appointed chief designer at Plant No. 51

of a design bureau that had been headed by the recently killed famous aviation designer Nikolay

N. Polikarpov. '°_

It seems Chelomey that had enacted a very accelerated program and went through ten different design configurations before settling on a missile that was quite similar to the German

Fi-103. Designated the 10X, Chelomey directed sixty-three launches of the missile between

March and August 1945. '°4 Air-launched from the Pc-8 bomber, the tests produced modest

results, and there was little hope that the missile could be used actively in battle during the

waning days of the war. In March 1945, Chelomey was summoned to the presence of Stalin

and 8eriya to discuss the future of the missile. [n a moment of tension, Beriya bluntly asked

Chelomey whether he had appropriated the design of the 10X from the German Fi-103.

Chelomey replied, "I obviously could not have borrowed their ideas. Whether the Germans

[stole] my ideas is a question for you, Lavrentiy Pavlovich.' .... It was a typically fearless response

from Chelomey, and such ambition and assertiveness would eventually posit him as one of the

major players in the early Soviet space program. As for the fOX missile, in the end it did not

produce very encouraging results, although Chelomey continued to pursue the work by upgrading the performance characteristics of the rocket. Meanwhile, by late 1945, the Soviets had captured the remains of the German Fi-103, and the Fi-10Ys clear superiority to the I OX may have

prompted Chelomey to rethink his future plans. '°°

Chelomey's work at OKB-51 was the third major Soviet rocketry effort during the war. It

seems that all three groups--Nll-l, OKB-SD, and OKB-51--worked fairly independently of

each other, despite the fact that from 1944, all were employed by the same "ministry," the

People's Commissariat of Aviation Industry. Clearly none of the design bureaus conducted any

major work on long-range ballistic missiles, the necessary prerequisite to the early space program. It would, in fact, take firsthand experience with the remains of the German rocketry program in the immediate postwar years to finally integrate and produce the first dedicated ballistic

missile program in the Soviet Union. By 1945, however, each of the major players in that program had served their apprenticeship. For Korolev, and the rest of the aeronautical engineers in

particular, despite severe obstacles and setbacks such as the Purges and the war itself, a solid

training ground in the 1930s and 1940s had produced a number of bright and sharp individuals-all equipped to handle postwar challenges. If the rocket societies of the 1930s can be

called the schools of apprenticeship for Korolev, Glushko, Tikhonravov and others, then the

years 1945 and 1946 were to be their baptism from isolated technicians into pragmatic scientists, who would eventually have the industrial might of the nation behind them.

102 N. N Bogolyubov. et al. eds.. V N Chelomey izbrannyye trudy (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye. I989).

pp. 6-7. 10

103 Rostislav ,qngelskiy, "Like the German 'V There Was the Russian 'Tenth X'" (English title), ,quiatsiyakosmonautika 19 (August 1996): 27-40. Note that another source suggests that the date of his appointment was

September 17. 1994. See Golovanov. Koroleu. p. 727. The official order to produce an Fi-103-type analog was signed

by Shakhurin on January 18. 1945.

104. Angelskiy. "Like the German 'V": Steven Zaloga. Target America The Soviet Union and the Strategic

,qrms Race. 1943-1964 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1993). p. 113, Other sources suggest that the tests began in

December 1944. See Bogolyubov, et al. eds.. V N. Chelomey, p. I0

105. Nina Chugunova, "V. N Chelomey. Highlights of His Biography" (English title), Ogonek no. 4-5

(january 1993): 24-29: Valeriy Rodikov. 'Im vremya dast tainstvennuyu znatnost .... " in Shcherbakov, ed., Zagadki

zuezdnykh ostrouov, pp. 5-7.

I06. One of the major limitations of the 10X was the inaccuracy of its guidance system, and it was this particular factor that seems to have precluded full production of the missile for the Soviet Air Force. See Zaloga, Target

•Zlmerica. p. 113.

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO

H

M

H
i

CHAPTER Two

FIRST STEPS

At the end of World War II in May 1945, the Soviet Union was in almost total ruins. No

other nation in the world was as devastated and crippled by the war. Approximately 27 million

Soviet people lay dead by the end of 1945.' In addition, with as many as 1,700 of the nation's

cities destroyed, the industrial infrastructure was stretched to the limit. Half the housing in the

country that had existed at the beginning of the war was no longer standing, and the productivity of the agricultural sector was close to famine proportions. To add hardship to the lives

of ordinary Soviet citizens, the internal repression that had reached its peak in the late 1930s

did not disappear after the end of the war. The millions who expected the end of hostilities

with Germany to presagean era of societal order were to be very disappointed. In the immediate postwar years, the combined cruelty of Stalin and Beriya reached inhuman proportions,

as wave after wave of Soviet citizens continued to disappear into the depths of the GULag

system.

Given these distressing conditions, one would expect that an interest in such an esoteric

idea as rocketry would have receded from the minds of engineers. In most Soviet accounts of

postwar rocketry, however, descriptions abound in a peculiar sense of patriotism and sense of

purpose that are difficult to explain. Filtering out what is obvious propagandistic prose, there

is a clear subtext of "the mission," not among the bureaucrats and Communist Party officials,

but among the young engineers themselves, most, if not all, of whom had already passed

through immense hardships at the hands of both Hitler and Stalin. Some of this feeling is clearly attributable to the nature of the relentless aggression of the Nazis against Soviet citizens and

the obvious wish to preclude such attacks on the Soviet Union ever again. But this patriotism,

if it can be termed such, was also steeped in contradiction for the military scientist in the

postwar Soviet Union. While one was actively pursuing science in the name of defending one's

native land from attack, one was also implicitly maintaining the status quo of societal oppression that kept the country's paranoid leaders safe in their offices in the Kremlin. And compounding all else was fear. As there is a subtext of patriotism in descriptions of postwar

rocketry, there is also a sense of almost mortal fear of the activities of Stalin and Beriya. It was

this combined fear of the country's leaders and love of the country itself that provided the context within which the young aeronautical engineers of the 1930s and 1940s began slowly to

regroup and start anew in 1945.

I. The post-gMsnost official count was set at 27 million dead, although there is reason to beqieve that the

actual count was as high as 34 million, See Fyodor Setin, "How Many Did We Lose in the War?." NeuJ Times no. 7

(1990): 46-47; Steven Zaloga, Target _meriea: The Souiet Union and the Strategic/_rms Race: 1945-1964 (Novato,

CA: Presidio, 1993), pp. 30. 280.

23
24

in Germany

i% the war in Europe ended in the late spring of 1945, all of the major allied powers began

quickly to investigate and exploit the advances in German military technology. Even before the

conclusive end of hostilities, the major rocketry centers of PeenemiJnde and Nordhausen had

become prime targets for intelligence services. In the case of the Soviet Union, Stalin may have

played a role in diverting troops first toward Peenem_Jnde rather than Berlin in the last few

months of the war. Precisely five days after P,dolf Hitler's suicide in Berlin, on May 5, 1945, an

infantry unit led by a Major gnatoliy Vavilov from the Second Belorussian Front took control of

Peenem_nde. The place was evidently deserted, and Vavilov faced little or no resistance." Later,

when Soviet forces occupied the/_-4 plant at Nordhausen, the soldiers found the remains of

thousands of concentration camp prisoners who had been forced to manufacture A 4s during

the last days of the war. 3

For Soviet officials who had been expecting a treasure trove of important information on the

German rocketry program, the situation was indeed disappointing. As the Soviets would later

learn, almost all the major German engineers working on the A-4 program had willingly surrendered to American military forces. In particular, Wernher von Braun, perhaps the most talented

and powerful engineer among the Germans, had begun making plans for such a move well

before the end of the war. As early as January 1945, yon Braun and others had commenced

preparations to relocate to a region that had a high probability of being occupied by U.S. forces?

By early May, they were securely in the hands of the U.S. Army. They did not come empty handed. Apart from the 525 odd individuals who constituted the elite of the rocketry team, they also

carried documentation on rockets spanning thirteen years. Earlier in April, U.S. forces had also

stumbled into the giant P,-4 plant at Nordhausen. Alongside the stacked bodies of hundreds of

murdered camp slaves were scores of missiles in various stages of assembly. Within days, parts

for at least I00 A-4 missiles were packed and shipped back into the U.S. zone before the arrival

of Soviet forces? i_ major portion of what could not be taken back in the given time was simply destroyed. Soviet leaders who had expectantly awaited capture of this most precious war

booty were in some cases stunned by the efficiency and swiftness with which these weapons

were taken from under their noses. Stalin was reportedly quoted as saying:

This is absolutely intolerable. We defeated the Nazi armies: we occupied Berlin and

PeenemiJnde: but the Zlmericans got the rocket engineers. What could be more revolting

and more inexcusable? How and why was this allowed to happen? _

The Soviet effort to capture both German missile technology and expertise in the last days

of the war seems to have been rather disorganized. There was clearly interest from a variety of

2. Walter A. McDougall .... the Heavensand the Earth: .,qPolitical History of the Space ):lge(New York:

Basic Books, Inc.. 1985). pp, 42-43: FrederickI. Ordway III and Mitchell R Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York:

Thomas Y Crowell, 1979). p. 261. The actual events leading to the capture of Peenemimde by the Soviet,qrmy still

remain somewhat unclear. ,quthoritative sourcesstate that the site first came under Soviet control as earlyas March

9 or I0, 194,5.SeeOrdway and Sharpe'stext on page I I (for March 9) and B. Ye.Chertok, Rakety i lyudi (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye. 1994). p. 98 (for March 10). However, it is clear that when Vavilov's unit first entered

PeenemiJndeon May 5. there were still SStroopers at the site who had been awaiting the arrivat ol Soviet soldiers,

3. The Mittelwerk plant [or the A-4 missiles was actually closer to the town of Niedersachswerfen rather

than Nordhausen, although Soviet teams used the latter name more commonly than the former.

4 Ordway and Sharpe, TheRocket Team, pp. 254-55.

5. McDougall.... the Heauens and the Earth, pp. 44-45.

6. Dr. G. g Tokaty. "Soviet Space Technology," Spaceflight 5 (March 1963): 58-64. This quote is also

excerpted in McDougall.... the Heavensand the Earth. p. 44, but referencedto a different source.

CHALLENGE TO P, POLLO
FIRST STEPS

sectors in the A-4 and the Fi-103. but at least in the first few months of Soviet operations in

occupied German territory, these activities were not well coordinated or clearly defined. The

Soviet Air Force had much incentive to gather information on these missiles, and the

Commissariat of the Aviation Industry tapped its subordinate Nil-I as a source for engineering

knowledge to support initial Air Force missions into newly captured territory. This was an obvious choice because many of the Nil-I engineers who had worked in the defunct Raketa group

in 1944 had a rudimentary knowledge of some of the A-4's systems. Soviet artillery, primarily

represented by the Mortar Guards Unit and the Chief Artillery Directorate, also had more than

a cursory interest in German rocketry, and it seems that there was some degree of overlapping

duties if not outright conflict between the needs of the Air Force and the needs of the Red Army

Artillery in this matter.

Artillery officers viewed these advanced liquid-propellant missiles as merely extensions of

the small Katyusha rockets that had been used so successfully during the war, and thus they

were reluctant to share jurisdiction over missiles. In addition, the recommendations of the commission under Semenov and Tyulin in late 1944 clearly played a major role in the artillery

branch's interest in these weapons. While the artillery and aviation sectors originally had

autonomous and perhaps conflicting goals and duties, at the lower levels, there seems to have

been a significant amount of interdependence. Most of the artillery officers had little or no

expertise in missile technology and relied heavily on the interpretations of the young aviation

engineers from Nll-I. Furthermore, the latter group realized early on that their own bosses

would not be very supportive of expending time and money to study German missiles. The

engineers from NII-I thus developed important relationships with powerful artillery officers

who not only were far more favorable to the exploitation of German rocket technology, but who

also saw missile weapons in general as potent tools of war.

One of the first teams to enter Germany to investigate German missiles was established in

early May under the leadership of Maj. General Andrey I. Sokolov, who at the time was the

deputy chief of the Mortar Guards Unit. He tapped Lt. Colonel Georgiy A. Tyulin to be part of

the initial teams into Germany, presumably because Tyulin was familiar with both the Fi-103

and A-4 missiles. On May 24, the first group flew from Moscow to Berlin to begin the organization of an inspection team. Artillery officers on board included Lt. Colonel Anatoliy I.

Semenov and Colonel Aleksandr G. Mrykin, both from the Chief Artillery Directorate, who were

there to make assessments on production and procurement/The group was rounded out by

several aeronautical engineers who had been asked to assist the artillery officers on technical

issues during their field operations in Germany. The latter group included a number of NII-I

employees, including Aleksey M. Isayev, the leading rocket engine specialist at Nil-I, and Arvid

V. Patio, a pre-Purge associate of Korolev's from NIl-3."

Flying first into Berlin, Sokolov and Tyulin's team slowly made their way to PeenemQnde

by the end of May. The scene that awaited them at the famous rocketry center was not encouraging. Not only was the place almost completely deserted by Germans, but there was almost

nothing left behind to claim for the Soviet side. What still remained had been destroyed by the

fleeing Germans or the P,mericans prior to the Soviet Army's capture of the launch site? For

7. Lt. Gen. (Ret.) G Tyulin, "The 'Seven': Years,Accomplishments, People" (English title), Kmsnaya zuez

da, April 1, 1989, pp. 3-4: Yu. A. Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi v kosmos I (Moscow: MAI. 1992), p. 156: CarlFredrik Geust, Under the Red Star (Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife, 1993), p 115. In this last source, the author suggests

that the May 24 team was led by Lt. General Gaydukov,the Communist Party's point man on artillery affairs, but it

seems that Gaydukov arrived in Germany much later.

8. Chertok, Rakety i tyudL p. 67: Yu.A. Mozzhorin, et GI, eds., Dorogi u kosmos' II (Moscow: MPd, 1992),

pp. 42-43 Others along with Isayev and Pallo included Rayetskiy. Raykov. and Berglyezov.

9. G.A. Tokaty, "Foundations of Soviet Cosmonautics." SpaceFlight 10 (October 1968}: 335-46.

25
26

several days, Sokolov's team literally scoured through piles of garbage attempting to make some

sense of what might have existed at Peenemi_nde. According to Tyulin:

The test beds. the laboratory buildings, the shops of the experimental plant and the

launching equipment of the [,zt-4] were depressing to look at. The bombing of Hitler's

missile citadel.., had attained its goal. The full-scale production plants in the vicinity

of Nordhausen created the same impression, _''

Equally disappointing for the Soviets was the fact that of all the Germans captured at the site,

none were key officials in the development of either the Fi- 103, the A-4, or any of the other many

tactical missiles created during the war, gs the inspection team members interrogated the remaining Germans through May and June, it was increasingly clear that not one was an expert in any

field, although many did have extensive technical experience in manufacturing shops and plants.

On June I, another group of Soviet engineers and officers, the latter from the Air Force,

arrived at PeenemOnde. Among this team was Boris Ye. Chertok, a thirty-three-year-old guidance systems engineer who had worked in the Raketa group at NII-I in 1944. '_gt PeenemOnde,

,_ rare photo showing artillery Colonel Georziy Tyulin (left) and Sergey Korolev in Germany in t946 during the

Z_-4missile recovery operations Tyulin would rise swiftly in later years, becoming one of the most important

managers of the Soviet space program in the 1960s (files of Peter Gorin)

10. Tyulin, "The 'Seven'."

I I. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 66. Chertok had actually arrivedearlier in Germany. He had been on one o(

the first inspection teams to arrive in late April as part of an Air Forcegroup interested in German radar and precision instrument research.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

Chertok took a leading role in making impartial assessments of leftover German remains. The

preliminary impressions resulting from the combined inspection of the artillery and Air Force

groups at Peenem0nde in May and June had repercussions not only on the perceived level of

German missile technology, but they also reflected poorly on the accomplishments of the

Soviets themselves. By the end of the war, the most powerful operational Soviet rocket engine

had a thrust of one and a half tons. The A-4, meanwhile, had used an engine with a thrust of

twenty-seven tons--a staggering gap, especially when one considers the roughly comparable

activities of the rocketry groups in the t930s in both Germany and the Soviet Union. The

Soviets did not have a single program for the development of a long-range ballistic missile.

Tyulin had no doubt as to the reasons for the lag:

In Germany we realized that i[ there were no arrests, we would have reached a very

high technical level as early as the late thirties. Zts a result of repressions in the army

and the scientific community, the development o[ our rocketry had stopped at powder

rockets, and only when our leaders learned about the "V" rockets, Stalin took an interest in rocketry.'2

Despite the apparent weaknesses in Soviet expertise, officials were quick to emphasize that

there was also reason to feel somewhat positive• Following the initial survey of German technology, a member of the Air Forceevaluation team recalled that:

•.. so Jar as theories and projects were concerned, the Soviet rocket scientists and engineers appeared to be. basically, as advanced, as inventive and as clever as their

_erman counterparts. but in putting these theories into practical technology we turned

out to be miles behind the _ermans. '_

Among the more curious finds at Peenem0nde was a German edition of a book by

Tsiolkovskiy on rocketry and spaceflight• To the surprise of the Soviets, almost every page of

the monograph was embellished by von Braun's comments and notes• Elsewhere in the

archives of the Nazi Air Ministry, the Soviets were even more surprised to find detailed drawings of a missile designed by Tikhonravov during the late 1930s at NIl-3, during a time when

all such work was classifiedY There was no apparent explanation of how the information made

its way into German hands•

Chertok and the others arrived at the Mittelwerk plant in Nordhausen on July 14and immediately began to create some sense of order out of the chaotic state at the factory. The visiting

Soviets were without doubt much more impressed by the facilities at Mittelwerk than those at

Peenem0nde. The plant was built into the side of a mountain, with two three-and-a-halfkilometer-length galleries, allowing entire trains to enter the facility• Here, the Soviet team discovered several A-4s in various stages of assembly, and team members carefully documented

all available findings for later analysis and study• German technicians who had remained behind

at Mittelwerk shocked the Soviet occupiers by stating that production levels at the facility had

remained at peak levels until almost the end of May. Approximately thirty-five complete missiles were apparently being turned out every day that month. '_ Having collated the preliminary

12. MariyaPastukhova,"BrighterThanAny Legend"(Englishtitle), Ogonek49(December1987):18-23.

13. Tokaty."Foundationsof SovietCosmonautics."

14. RoaldZ. Sagdeev,TheMakingo[ a .SovietScientist:MyAdventuresin NuclearFusionandSpaceFrom

Stalinto StarWars (New York:JohnWiley & Sons.1993),p. 5. fn.2: MichaelStoiko,SovietRocketry,Past,Present

and Future(New York:Holt,RinehartandWinston. 1970),p, 64.

15. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p 108,

27
28

information on the plant, the inspection group moved to Bleicherode on July 18 and set up

shop at the Villa Franka, which had served as yon Braun's home during the latter days of the

A-4 effort. By this point, the Soviet group had managed to gather together about 200 German

technicians who had worked on missiles during the war, There still seems to have been efforts,

both overt and covert, to capture some of the more important individuals in the A-4 program,

in particular von Braun. A German engineer related to LI.S. authorities on August 15:

I had been for several days in [the] Russian occupied zone around Bleicherode to pick

up my baggage, which had been left there. ,z]t this occasion I spoke to an old collaborator.... He told me that the Russians intended to develop a big rocket for a normal

range of 3.000 miles and that they are needing specialists with knowledge of the theo

ry of[light mechanics and control equipment. He told me that the Russians set big prices

for getting over to Russian area Prof. V_ Braun and Dr 3teinho[f. _

None of these efforts met with success, although several members of the inspection commission

continued to travel to the LI.S. occupation zone to make offers to middle-level engineers.

At Bleicherode, the engineers on the Soviet inspection team settled down with their information and were given permission to establish a joint Soviet-German centralized coordination

center not only for the further collection of information, but also to attempt to reestablish production of the g-4 at the Mittelwerk plant as soon as possible. The Soviet military administration in Germany named it the Institute Rabe, for "raketenbau und entwicklung," which was

German for rocket manufacture and development." Major Chertok was named the co-leader of

the institute along with a German engineer named Gunther Rozenplenter. Nil-I veteran Isayev

was appointed to handle all propulsion issues.

Llpon the formation of the Institute Rabe, a veritable flow of Soviet aeronautical engineers

from Nil-I and elsewhere began to converge first in Berlin and then at Bleicherode. On July 25,

Yuriy ,q. Pobedonostsev, Korolev's old GIRD associate, arrived in Germany, quickly becoming

one of the leading engineers in the A-4 restoration operation. '_ A major influx of technically

competent Soviet engineers occurred in early August. This group was sent to Germany under

extremely strict secrecy, far more than had been subjected to the earlier team in May. All the

individuals in the new group had been summoned the day prior to their departure to a Party

Central Committee department and were only told that they were to leave for Germany the next

day as members of a secret Special Technical Commission. None were told the goal of the mission, and all were given military ranks on the spot to preclude questions from the other Allies

on the role of civilians in the occupied zones. Flying aboard the Li-2 aircraft on August 9, 1945,

were Yevgeniy Ya. Boguslavskiy, Vasiliy R Mishin, Nikolay A. Pilyugin, Viktor g. Rudnitskiy,

Mikhail S. Ryazanskiy, and less well-known engineers Bakurin, Floreyskiy, and Goryunov. '_Both

Mishin and Pilyugin were well acquainted with the A-4's basic elements, having worked on the

examination of parts recovered at NII-I in 1944. Upon his arrival at Rabe, Pilyugin, an expert

on guidance systems, was appointed the first deputy chief of the institute. Further arrivals later

in August represented a variety of fields in rocketry, such as liquid-propulsion rocket engines,

guidance systems, control systems, gyroscopes, launch facilities, and flight testing. The tech16. Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team. p 290.

I 7 Ibid. p. 320: Chertok. Rakety i tyudi, p. I 16, Rabe itself was also the German word for "raven."

18 Valeriy Zharkov, "Pobedonostsev's Criteria" (English title), in V. Shcherbakov,ed. Zagadki zvezdnykh

ostcovov kniga pyataya (Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1989). p. 94.

19 B Konovalov, "From Germany--To Kapustin Yar" (English title), Izvestiya. April 6. 1991,p 3 One

source says that Ryazanskiy had actually arrived in Germany before, in either late April or early May 1945. See

Mozzhorin, et al eds,, Docogi v kosmos I. p. 160.

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
[

FIRST STEPS

nical expertise of the Institute Rabe swelled as individuals such as Vladimir P. Barmin,

Aleksandr Ya. Bereznyak, Vasiliy S. Budnik, Semyon G. Chizhikov, Vasiliy I. Kharchev, Nikolay

M. Kurilo, Viktor I. Kuznetsov, Yevgeniy M. Tsetsior, and Leonid A. Voskresenskiy converged at

the former German rocketry centers in August 1945. _°

While these engineers were essentially part of the technical aspect of the operations, the

artillery sector began to take control over many of the higher decision-making levels. Based on

information received in Moscow through the summer, in August, the commander of the Mortar

Guards Unit, Maj. General Nikolay N. Kuznetsov, established a central command for rocketry

operations in Berlin to serve as the nerve center of the Special Technical Commission (OTK in

its Russian abbreviation). _ As the first head of OTK, Kuznetsov explained to all those involved

that the Institute Rabe and all subsidiary work on restoring A-4 operations would now be under

the command of the artillery sector, specifically the Chief Artillery Directorate. It was understood by the members of OTK that the question of which "ministry" would take over missile

production was still being debated, a result of vacillation on the part of the aviation sector on

its role in ballistic missile development.

Kuznetsov's boss back in Moscow, Maj. General Lev M. Gaydukov, apparently was a vigorous advocate for moving the whole sector to the armaments industry, which had produced

the solid-propellant Katyushas during the war. Gaydukov himself visited Nordhausen in August

to make a personal assessment of the work of the 284-strong team in Germany. Gaydukov and

Kuznetsov appointed the young Lt. Colonel Tyulin as a deputy chief of OTK to be stationed at

Berlin to direct and coordinate field operations of all the aviation engineers. Former Nil-I/Raketa

and GIRD member Pobedonostsev served as the top engineering coordinator of OTK. By this

time, the field of operations in Germany comprised: the Zentralwerke, an assembly plant located at an old A-4 repair depot at Klein Bodungen: the Institute Rabe under Chertok and Pilyugin,

whose duties were focused on reconstructing the A-4 guidance systems: and the propulsion

test stands at Lehesten, where Pallo and Isayev were in the process of cataloguing information

on rocket engines. _2

Perhaps one of the more successful phases of the early work in Germany was carried out at

Lehesten. Located close to Nordhausen in southern Thuringia, OTK engineers Isayev and Pallo

had essentially taken over control of the facility in the early summer of 1945 in the interest of

restoring "normal" levels of testing, which was understood to be more than thirty firings per day.

In July, Pallo became the chief of static testing at about the same time that the Soviets uncovered one of the more significant treasures, a set of more than fifty brand new tested and certified combustion chambers in an underground depot at Lehesten. '_ In addition, the Soviets

discovered fifteen completely undamaged railway cars containing a plethora of equipment, some

of which were also cars used for transporting the A-4 missiles and propellant to various sites.

In their operations in Germany, the Soviets were assisted by German engineers and technicians at every site. While the Soviets early on conceded that the best and brightest from the

PeenemOnde team were in the hands of the Americans, they did not shirk from using the services of those who remained as much as possible. In addition, every effort was made to "capture" more technically adept Germans. In the early fall of 1945, the Soviets started a dedicated

program, designated Operation Ost, to explore the possibility of adding more capable Germans

to the services of OTK. Led by Institute Rabe head Chertok, these efforts were partially

20. Chertok, Rakety i tyudi, pp. 121-22, 124.The assigned military ranksof someof these engineerswere:

Barmin (Colonel), Chertok (Major). Isayev(Lt. Colonel), Kuznetsov (Colonel), Mishin (Lt, Colonel), Polio (Major),

Pilyugin (Colonel), Pobedonostsev (Colonel), Ryazanskiy (Colonel), and Voskresenskiy(Lt, Colonel).

2 I. Ibid., pp. 123-24: Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Dorogi u kosmos:II. pp 75-76,

22. Mozzhonn, et at., eds, Dorogi u kosmos: L p. 137.

23. Chertok. Rakety i lyudi, pp. 155-56

29
30

successful.Hecoordinated several trips by the Burgomeister of Bleicherode, who crossed the

VCerra River into US.-captured territory to make offers to Germans at Witzenhausen. One of

those who responded favorably was Helmut Grottrup, the former assistant to the director of the

Guidance, Control, and Telemetry Laboratory at Peenem0nde, who made at least two secret

trips into Soviet-controlled territory to discuss his future. In mid-September of 1945, Grottrup

and his family finally moved permanently to the Institute Rabe at Bleicherode, adding a very

significant asset to the capabilities of OTK24 Grottrup's reasons for siding with the Soviets had

evidently less to do with political affiliations than his reluctance to leave Germany. Others who

eventually put their lot with the Soviets included aerodynamicist Dr. Vv'erner Albring. design

engineer Josef Blass, guidance and control expert Dr. Johannes Hoch, gyroscope and theoretical mechanics specialist Dr. Kurt Magnus, propellants chemist Dr. Franz Mathes, propulsion

specialist Dr. Joachim Umpfenbach, and ballistics expert Dr. 'vValdemar Wolff/_ While none of

them had played any major roles in the development of the A-4 or any of the other missiles

developed by the Peenem_nde team, their services were indispensable to the Soviets in mastering construction, production, and testing operations.

OTK was augmented by two further and certainly more important additions in September

1945. Maj. General Gaydukov, the Communist Party's representative for OTK and the head of

all A-4 recovery operations in Germany, was apparently very conscious of the need for qualified engineers to be in Germany to participate in the work of the commission. He also happened to be aware of the rich history of rocketry in the Soviet Union, including the activities at

GIRD and NII-3 in the 1930s. In the late summer of 1945, Gaydukov prepared a list of aeronautical engineers who he believed would be great assets to the OTK effort in Germany but

who had all been incarcerated in the late 1930s as a result of the Great Purges/_ It was a calculated move on Gaydukov's part, but it worked. Two of the names on the list given to Stalin

himself were Sergey P. Korolev and Valentin P. Glushko.

Korolev had been working at OKB-SD since July 1944 in Khimki on a variety of rocket

engines to assist fighter planes in taking off. An effort to interest the aviation industry in longrange missiles did not produce fruit/_ In late/qugust, both Glushko and Korolev were finally discharged from work at OKB-SD, the latter immediately returning to Moscow to see his wife

Kseniya and daughter Natalya, whom he had not seen since 1940. It was his first real taste of

freedom in more than seven years. The holiday with his family proved to be unusually short. In

early September, Korolev was summoned to the Commissariat of Armaments in Moscow and

informed of the work of scientists and engineers in Germany working on restoring i_-4 production: he was immediately assigned to join that effort. 2_Summarily given the military rank of

Lt. Colonel, Korolev flew via Warsaw into Berlin on September 8 and was received by

24. Ibid, p 126: PeterSmolders, "I Meet the Man Who Brought the V 2 to Russia," Spaceflight 37 (July

1995): 218-20: Ordway and Sharpe,The Rocket Team, p. 319.

25. Christian Lardier. L'.,qstronauticlueSouietique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1992), pp 72-73: Ordway and

Sharpe, The Rocket Team. p. 335; Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp 125-26.

26. Chertok. Rakety _tyudL pp. 137-38.

27. On June 30. 1945, Korolev submitted a second draft of his D-lID-2 missile proposal to the leaders of

the Commissariat of the Aviation Industry As in his prior report, Korolev advocated the establishment of a special

design bureau attached to NII-I to focus on bringing the D-2 project to fruition. In addition to a list of engineers

that he believed should be transferred to this new bureau, he also set out a timetable for work on the missile, to

begin on November I, 1945. Perhapsmost significantly, Korolev emphasized the need to study not only captured

German missile technology, but also U.S. and British efforts in the field. SeeYuriy Biryukov and Vikentiy Komarov,

"S P Korolev in the 'Sharashka'" (English title), in Shcherbakov,ed., Zagadki zuezdnykh ostrouou, pp. 108-09: G

S. Vetrov. 5 P Koroleu i kosmonautika: peruyeshagi (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 184.

28. PdeksandrRomanov.Koroleu (Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1996), pp. 200-05. First Deputy People's

Commissar of Armaments V. M. Ryabikov informed Korolev of his new assignment.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
FIRST STEPS

Lt. Colonel Tyulin. By this time, the latter, in addition to his duties as a deputy head of OTK,

was also the head of the new Institute Berlin, established to gather and analyze all available

documentation on German missiles in one place. 2_Glushko, given the rank of colonel, arrived

in Berlin at this time, although he did not fly in with Korolev.

The addition of both Korolev and Glushko to OTK added very significantly to the expertise of the investigation team in Germany. They were undoubtedly two of the brightest and

most experienced engineers in the field of rocketry in the Soviet Union, and the majority of the

other members of the team were well acquainted with their work in the 1930s. In late

September, after a few weeks familiarizing himself with the nerve center of operations at the

Institute Berlin, Korolev was taken to the Institute Rabe in Bleicherode. Characteristically, he

did not waste much time, and within days, he began to take a leading part in the operations of

OTK. One of his first actions was to establish a special subgroup of the commission, designated Vystrel ("Shot"), specifically for studying and learning the preparations for launching the

A-4. He appointed two of the former Nil-I veterans, Voskresenskiy and Rudnitskiy, as leading

members of the team to gather and sift through all available documentation. Glushko meanwhile was sent to Lehesten to oversee work on A-4 engines. Isayev and Pallo, both of whom

had been instrumental in laying a solid base for future work at the site, were ordered to return

back to Moscow, and all the work at the plant was taken over by Glushko and his deputy Vitally

L. Shabranskiy2 °

The actual search for documentation turned out to be somewhat harder than anticipated.

For example, in the fall of 1945, rumor reached the Institute Berlin that a railway truck loaded

with missile drawings that were to have been sent to Austria by the fleeing Germans had been

captured by Czechoslovak insurgents near Prague. Mishin, being one of the most well

acquainted with the design of the A-4 rocket, immediately left for Prague to investigate the matter. In the Czech capital, he was able to locate an A-4 production coordination office, which

had directed the supply of parts from scores of companies in Austria, Hungary, Poland, and

Czechoslovakia during the war. Despite this obviously significant prize, he was still unable to

locate the mysterious train. After pleas to the British administration officials nearby fell on deaf

ears, he was able to use some "unorthodox measures" to finally locate and secure all the missile documentation. It seems that OTK engineer Bereznyak's sister Mariya, who had been

imprisoned in a concentration camp by the Germans, played a major but still unknown role in

the find2'

Korolev and Glushko both assumed relatively important roles in the work of OTK by late

1945, and there clearly seems to have been an implicit recognition in the abilities of both individuals by the leadership. Both were highly talented and professional engineers with formidable theoretical and practical backgrounds in missile and aviation technology. In addition,

Korolev had a tremendous ability for administrative and managerial tasks. At least in the initial

stages of cooperation, he was very cooperative with all the German engineers, no doubt helped

by his fluency in the German language. Glushko, on the other hand, while probably a better

engineer, was less successful in dealing with either the Germans or his subordinates. He was a

perfectionist and insisted on being involved in every last detail of the work of his assistants. In

29. Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi u kosmos II, p 76: Chertok, Rakety i lyudL p. 141.The original head of

the Institute Berlin was D. G. Dyatlov.

30. Konovalov. "From Germany--To Kapustin Yar": Chertok, Rakety i tyudi, pp. 144, 147, 157.The Vystrel

group was originally headed by Korolev, but after his appointment as chief engineer of the Institute Nordhausen,

Voskresenskiyreplaced him.

31. Konovalov, "From Germany--To Kapustin Yar": Geust, Under the Red Star. pp. 116-17: Boris

Konovalov, "Soviets Rocket Triumphs Started in Germany" (English title), Izuestiya. March 5, 1992, p. 5.

31
32

addition,it seemsthathehadlittleappreciationortoleranceforanyoftheGermanworkfrom

thePeenem0ndeteam/2Itwasperhapsthecumulativeeffectoftheirdifferentapproachesto

theworkinGermanythateventuallyresultedintheeffectivereversaloftheirrolesduringthe

war.It wasincreasinglyclearbytheendof 1945thatofalltheengineersworkingforOTE,

Korolevwastheonetowatch.

Duringtheirtimein Germany,ononlyoneoccasiondideitherKorolevorGlushkocome

intocontactwithU.S.orBritishforces,InearlyOctober 1945, the three Western powers conducted a series of preliminary firings of the A-4 from Cuxhaven on the North Sea shore. For the

third launching on October 15, Soviet representatives were invited to witness the launch. Five

officials were sent on behalf of the Soviet side, Lt. General Sokolov, who led the initial teams

into PeenemiJnde. Lt. Colonel Tyulin, Pobedonostsev, Glushko, and Korolev. Despite much

"arm waving and shouting," Korolev was not allowed into the launch-viewing area by U.S. Maj.

General Alexander M. Cameron, chief of the Air Defense Division, Supreme Headquarters,

Allied Expeditionary Force. Korolev was escorted outside the compound and had to view the

launch from a much farther distance. Later that day, he was also prohibited from viewing the

assembly and checkout area despite angry complaints. Pobedonostsev, for his part, spoke

briefly with one of the German observers, a Lieutenant Hochmuth, casually telling him that he

was aware that the A-4 material from Mittelwerk was going to White Sands in New Mexico--

a piece of information that was supposed to be top secret at the time. Pobedonostsev also complained of having "a hell of a time" at Nordhausen because the U.S. side had "cleaned the

place out." He offered the Allies a tour of Nordhausen if the LI.S. side would reciprocate with

a similar offer to show White Sands to the Soviets. The LI.S. Army refused the offer, although

it seems that the Allies would definitely have been in a position to gain much more, because

White Sands at the time was essentially barren." The Soviet team returned from Cuxhaven to

their side of Germany with little concrete information. The time ahead was to be critical for laying the groundwork for their own launchings.

Research on the A-4 was only a part of the overall work of the engineers in Germany. A

significant portion of the occupation was focused toward capturing a myriad of other types of

military technology, such as fighters, bombers, and tanks. In the case of missiles, OTK had

groups working on acquiring knowledge on such surface-to-air German missiles as the

Schmetterling, Typhoon, and Wasserfall. Perhaps the most interesting of these areas of investigation was a theoretical study from August 1944 authored by Viennese engineers Dr. Eugen

S_inger and Dr. Irene Bredt of the Ainbring firm Deutsche Luftfahrtforschung, titled "Uber Einen

Raketenantriebe Fernbomber" ("On a Rocket Propulsion Engine for Long-Range Bombers").

The Nazis had evidently published only 100 copies of the study. S_inger and Bredt foresaw the

use of a IO0-ton single-stage piloted rocket-aircraft for dropping 300-kilogram bombs over

transcontinental ranges. The vehicle, also called the "antipodal bomber," was designed to be

launched from a sled, reaching a maximum velocity of six kilometers per second and a maximum altitude of more than 160 kilometers. Sgnger and Bredt theorized that following launch,

the spaceship would dip into the atmosphere at a shallow angle and skip once again back into

space--a process that would be repeated several times until, during one of the dips, the ship

would drop a bomb over the desired target. _ The Luftwaffe had initially supported the project,

32. Zaloga, Target74merica,p. 119

33 Ordway and Sharpe. The Rocket Team, pp. 306-071Tyulin, "The 'Seven'."

34. Irene S_ingerBredt, "The Silver Bird, ,q Memoir," History of Rocketry and 74stronautics, Vol 7. part I

(San Diego. CA: American Astronautical Society, 1986): Kenneth Garland. ed., The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Space

Techr_otogy:74Comprehensive History ofSpaceExploration (New York:Harmony Books, 1984), pp. 199,204: Henry

Matthews. The SecretStory of the Soviet SpaceShuttle (Beirut. Leb: Henry Matthews, 1994). p. 22: Ordway and

Sharpe,The Rocket Team, p. 327.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

encouraged by the assertion that the bomber would be capable of reaching New York City. Little

work on the bomber was carried out by the Germans, however, as the war ground to a halt.

During the exploratory work of Soviet engineers in Germany, Isayev had initially discovered the

document at Peenem0nde in May 1945. The capabilities of the antipodal bomber had apparently startled the Soviets, and news had even reached Stalin's ears. It seems that his interest

was serious enough for him to appoint a special group from the Air Force to investigate the

issue) 5

The months of indecision on the part of the aviation sector o,i the issue of developing

long-range ballistic missiles finally came to a resolution. In November 1945, a representative

from the Central Committee of the Communist Party arrived in Berlin to inform the leaders of

OTK that while the Party leadership was satisfied with the work of the commission, efforts in

Germany would cease in early 1946, until a final decision on which industrial sector to allocate

the work had been made) ° The representative also announced that Maj. General Gaydukov

would take over the position as chairman of OTK, replacing the indisposed Maj. General

Kuznetsov, who was recovering from an automobile accident in late September. Gaydukov's

appointment was propitious for he was not only one of the most vigorous supporters of the

valuable work in Germany, but he had also personally given Stalin the list including Korolev's

name that had added the latter's valuable talents to the work of OTK.

Gaydukov inherited the honor of making perhaps one of the most important policy decisions in the early history of the Soviet rocketry and space programs. Stalin had given him the

responsibility of selecting a "ministry" to oversee the missile effort in Germany. There were

three choices: the Commissariat of the/qviation Industry, the Commissariat of Ammunitions,

or the Commissariat of Armaments. 3_Gaydukov first offered the role to People's Commissar of

the Aviation Industry Aleksey I. Shakhurin, but the latter was not impressed. Similar to his earlier decisions in 1944, Shakhurin saw no future in missiles and continued to believe in the possibilities of rocket-powered aircraft. Shakhurin's rejection had grave implications for OTK

because most of the engineers of the commission were still officially under the employ of the

aviation sector) _ People's Commissar of Ammunitions Boris L. Vannikov was interested, but

Stalin unexpectedly tapped him to oversee administrative aspects of the atom bomb project.

For Gaydukov, this left one remaining choice, the Commissariat of Armaments, headed by a

thirty-seven-year-old former mechanical engineer who would go on to play one of the most crucial roles in the history of the Soviet space program, Dmitriy Fedorovich Ustinov/_

Llstinov was born on October 30, 1908, in Samara, and he graduated from the Leningrad

Military Mechanical Institute as a mechanical engineer in 1934. By 1938, he was the director

of the Bolzhevik Arms Factory, one of the most important armaments facilities in the Soviet

Union. Certainly, his quick rise to this prominent position was partly because of the massive

toll of the Purges in the late 1930s, which resulted in much of the original and more experienced industrial hierarchy being decimated. The lack of qualified individuals at the beginning

of the war prompted Stalin to pick the thirty-two-year-old Ustinov as the People's Commissar

35. Zaloga, Turget7_mericu,p. 122: Chertok. Rakety i lyudi, p. 9 I. The chief of the/_ir Forcedepartment of

the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, Lt. General T. F.Kutsevalov,was the most enthusiastic and vigorous

advocate of the prolect See D. A. Sobolev, Nemetskiy sted u istorii souetskoy auiatsii (Moscow: RtTs Avianbik,

1996),pp 83-85

36. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 137.

37. Ibid, p 138

38. Ibid, p. i60 In late 1945, all Nil I employees who were part of the commission in Germany were

immediately ordered to return to the Soviet Union to resumework on aircraft. A second attempt to reduce the rock

etry recove:y effort in Germany occurred in early 1946. Both of these potentially disastrous orders seemto havebeen

stalled by Gaydukov as he looked for a more acceptable alternative.

39. Ibid. p. 140

33
34

oftheArmamentsin 194I.Theinexperienced

industrialistwasresponsibleforthedesignand

productionofahostofSovietgroundandtacticalweaponry.Ustinovdid not disappoint

Stalin,andit wasclearbytheendof thewar

thathehaddoneanoutstandingjobmarshalingtheresourcesofthestatetoproducehuge

amountsof ammunitions.Youngerthanboth

Korolevand Glushko,Ustinovwaswell

respectedin thegovernmentandseemsto

havemanagedto somehowremainoutsideof

ongoingpoliticalintriguesthatinevitablylandedmanya bureaucratin theGULag. Prior to

finalizing the arrangement of transferring all

Soviet ballistic missile efforts to the

Commissariat of Armaments, Stalin and

Gaydukov had Ustinov send his deputy, Vasiliy

M. Ryabikov, to Germany to personally assess

the level of work at Berlin, Nordhausen,

Lehesten, and elsewhere. It was a short visit,

but it was pivotal for the landmark decisions

of 1946.

Minister of ._rmaments Dmitriy Ustinov, shown here

in the 1940s. was the principal industrial areMtecl of

the Soviet ballistic missile program. In various posts.

he remained the manager o[ the missile and space

programs during a period spanning almost lorry

years. (copyright StevenZaloga)

NII-88

The work of OTK continued in early 1946 with two clear goals: the restoration of wartime

production of A-4 missiles and the accomplishment of the first postwar launches of these missiles from German soil. As Korolev assumed more of a pivotal role in the work of the commission, plans were falling into place for testing a series of P,-4 vehicles in 1946 in coordination

with the scores of German engineers who had either been captured or voluntarily aligned themselves with the Soviets. These plans had evidently originated from suggestions from Korolev following his viewing of the Allied A-4 launches at Cuxhaven in October 194_5. He himself

received official recognition for his work in Germany in February, when he was briefly recalled

to Moscow and promoted to the rank of colonel--the same as such other prominent engineers

of OTK as Pobedonostsev, Glushko, and Pilyugin. 4° During the visit, he also met with Georgiy

M. Malenkov, Stalin's right-hand man, and reported on the general state of OTK's investigations. Arriving back in Berlin in early March, Korolev was in an unusually cheerful mood, no

doubt because he had been told back in Moscow that his name was one of those under consideration as possible engineering head of a central organization for the design of Soviet ballistic missiles/_ Soon after Korolev's return to Germany, Gaydukov officially announced that all of

OTK's operations would now be further coordinated by the new Institute Nordhausen, which

would replace the old Institute Rabe. He also revealed that he himself had been appointed the

director of the institute and that Korolev would now be the first deputy director and chief

engineer. _._

40. Ibid., p. 162; Tyulin, "The 'Seven'."

41. Mozzhorin. et al. eds, Dorogi v kosmos:I, p. I 18.

42. Ibid. p. 137: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 162-63. Note that the first source states that the reorganization was in May and not in March 1946.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

The reorganization in March 1946 led to the formal establishment of the following divisions of OTK, all led by the Institute Nordhausen:

• Plant No. I (also known as the Design Bureau Olimpiya) at Sommerda, about fifty kilometers east of Leipzig, set up at the premises of the Rheinmetall-Borzig firm and headed initially by Budnik and then by Mishin, for the collating of all technical documentation on the A-4

• Plant No. 2 (also known as the Montania Plant) at Lehesten, designated for the assembly,

production, and testing of all rocket engines and headed by Glushko and Shabranskiy

• Plant No. 3 (also known as Zentralwerke) at Klein Bodungen, for pilot production of A-4s

and headed by Kurilo

• Plant No. 4 at Sonderhausen, for the preparation of A-4 guidance systems and other electrical equipment, staffed by those who were formerly at the Institute Rabe, including

Boguslavskiy, Chertok, Pilyugin, and Ryazanskiy

• The Schparkasse group, headed initially by Mishin and then by Lt. Colonel Tyulin and

staffed by several artillery officers, for theoretical problems, including ballistics

• A special Soviet-German bureau, headed by the German Grottrup, which was given the task

of preparing a detailed history of the A-4 development program with a focus on guidance

systems, radiotechnical elements, and the selection of propellants

• The Vystrd group, headed by Voskresenskiy and Rudnitskiy and including Institute Berlin

Chief Engineer Barmin, for mastering launch and testing procedures4;

The primary goal of the entire operation was to restore production of the A-4 missiles sufficiently to manufacture several dozen of the vehicles for flight testing. This goal gradually

became the primary objective for OTK in Germany as Korolev delegated the responsibility for

launch operations to Voskresenskiy. The German engineers under Grottrup were indispensable

in this effort, filling in gaps in the information whenever there were problems. In addition,

because of the geographically scattered nature of the original wartime German production facilities for the A-4s, many of the parts for the missiles were no longer available, because the manufacturing entities now resided in either British or U.S. territory. Resourceful Germans under

Grottrup were, however, able to obtain many components from the Allies by bartering with

food, tobacco, or alcohol. 44 The sights of abandon and wreckage at Peenem0nde and

Nordhausen in the early summer of 1945 had prompted feelings of pessimism among Soviet

officials and engineers. Yet, only a year later, the commission was close to assembling a limited number of full-scale A-4 missiles from Mittelwerk.

Cooperation between the Germans and the Soviets was for the most part harmonious and

to a degree a function of the Soviet engineer who had responsibility for a particular area. For

example, rocket engine firings at Lehesten were evidently conducted at first under the direction

of Dr. Umpfenbach, but were taken over by Glushko once the exact processes had been mastered. While the intensity of the joint activities between the Soviets and the Germans may have

varied, the work of OTK did for the first time bring together scores of Soviet engineers and military officers under a single umbrella organization, Almost all of the major chief designers of

the Soviet space program up until the late 1980s were members of this commission in Germany,

an astonishing historical precedent that has no parallel in the U,S. space program. Many of the

Soviet individuals in fact made their first acquaintance with each other in Germany in the immediate postwar period.

43. Chertok,Raketyi lyudi, pp. 163-64:Mozzhorin,et al, eds, Dorogiu kosmos:I, pp. 137-38;Ordway

andSharpe.TheRocketTeam,pp. 320-2I.

44. OrdwayandSharpe,TheRocketTeam,p. 32I.

35
36

The pivotal nature of the work in Germany in 1945-46 eventually gave rise to the important

question of the elaboration of a national agenda with respect to ballistic missiles. The question

of defending the territory of the Soviet Union after a devastating war was clearly on the minds

of Soviet leaders. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union may have had the most powerful land force in the world, but this power had suddenly become secondary following the events

of August 1945. With the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs, the United

States had revealed its absolute military superiority over any other country in the world. For Stalin

in particular, this was unacceptable. While work on the development of nuclear weapons had

been conducted during the war, the bombings in Japan prompted Stalin to move this work to an

urgent footing. Just eighteen days after Potsdam and fourteen days after Hiroshima, on August

20, 1945, a secret decree of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers called for the

formation of the Special Committee on the Atomic Bomb to direct and coordinate all efforts on

the rapid development of operational nuclear weapons25 This committee was headed by secret

police head Beriya himself, and its work was kept concealed even from some members of the

Politburo. Acutely aware that having a nuclear weapon was only one-half of the solution, efforts

were simultaneously focused on a delivery system for these explosives. Taking a cue from the

magnificent American B-29 bomber, the Soviet leadership began to explore the possibility of creating analogous aircraft for the delivery of nuclear weapons. This effort was in fact taken to

pathological extremes with the construction of carbon copies of a captured B-29 in the postwar

years/_ Unwilling to rule out even the most unlikely of propositions, it also seems that Stalin had

been keenly interested in missiles as weapons of war. The impressive performance of the German

g-4 undoubtedly attracted his attentions, and the possibility of using such vehicles with nuclear

weapons was not an avenue of research he was about to ignore,

On March 18, 1946 at the first session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the rubberstamp parliament of the country, a decree was adopted recommending the development of new

technologies as part of the Soviet Union's rebuilding. In particular, the decree clearly called for

"efforts towards ensuring further increases in the defensive capabilities of the USSR and ensuring the equipping of the armed forces of the Soviet Union with the latest military technology."_"

This first decree set the stage for an official visit by a commission of high industrial and military leaders to Germany to investigate and assess the work of OTK. The chairman of the visiting commission was Marshal Nikolay D. Yakovlev, the commander of the Chief Artillery

Directorate, the military organ that had legal control over most of the artillery officers within

OTK Other members were: the Commander-in-Chief of Artillery Forces of the Red Army,

Nikolay N. Voronov: the current Chief of Staff of the Southern Forces Group of the Red Army,

Col. General Mitrofan I. Nedelin: and People's Commissar of Armaments Ustinov, the defense

industrialist appointed by Stalin to lead the new rocketry sector in the Soviet Union, 4_Nedelin,

at the time forty-three years old, was one of the brightest and most accomplished officers in

45. yu. P. Maksimov, ed., Raketnyyevoyska strategicheskogo naznacheniya (Moscow: RVSN, 1992). pp.

32-33: David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Souiet Union and Atomic Energy:I939-1956 (New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 1994), p. 129: G. A. Goncharov, N I. Komov, and A S. Stepanov. "The Russian Nuclear

Declassification Project: Setting Up the A-Bomb Effort, 1946," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8 9

(Winter t996/I991): 410-16

46 Zaloga. TargetAmerica, pp. ?0-?2.

4? A. P,Romanov and V. S_Gubarev, Konstruktory (Moscow: Politicheskoy Literatury, 1989), p. 60.

48 Tyulin, "The 'Seven'": Mozzhorin, et al, eds.. Dorogi v kosmos: L p 118 Note that according to

Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 233, the commission's visit was in February 1946. Another person on the visiting commission may havebeen B. L. Vannikov, the former People's Commissar for Agricultural Machine Building, who was

currently involved in leading industrial aspectsof the nuclear weapons development program SeeDavid Holloway,

"Military Technology," in Ronald Amann, Jutian Cooper, and R W. Davies.eds, The Technological Leuelof 5oviet

Industry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1917), p. 455.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

the artillery sector and had extensive experience in using the solid-fuel Katyusha rockets in

wartime conditions.

The commission's visit in May 1946 was instrumental in introducing the role of the defense

industrialist, the third major player in the Soviet space program after the aviation engineers and

artillery experts. Represented by such individuals as Ustinov and Ryabikov, these defense industrialists would lay their indelible stamp on the rocketry and space sector, molding its activities

for the next forty years. Ustinov met Korolev for the first time on this trip and was apparently

very impressed with the letter's capabilities. It may have been during this visit that representatives of the commission first informed Korolev that he would be appointed chief designer of all

long-range missile development. 49OTK Chairman Maj. General Gaydukov's high evaluation of

Korolev's work clearly played a critical role in this decision. Korolev himself chose his principal

deputy, a man who would figure prominently in the Soviet reach for the Moon. In early 1946,

after his short trip to Moscow, Korolev had asked OTK engineer Mishin if he would agree to

serve with him back in the Soviet Union. Mishin had declined, at first choosing to return to

spend time with his wife and two daughters. Following the May 1946 visit by the Yakovlev commission, Korolev made a second offer, asking Mishin to head a joint Soviet-German design

bureau as his deputy, the goal of which would be to create a complete set of technical blueprints for the A-4 based on the drawings captured in Czechoslovakia. By this time, Mishin's

family was with him in Germany, and he agreed2 ° As the head of Plant No. I at Sommerda,

Mishin assumed one of the leading roles in OTK, and as later events would attest, he clearly

impressed Korolev with his assertive nature.

Upon the completion of the Yakovlev commission's short visit in May, the members prepared what would become without doubt the most important decree in the history of the

Soviet rocketry and space programs. This decree, the Council of Ministers decree no. 1017-

419ss, titled "Questions of Reactive Armaments," was formally signed into law by Stalin on

May 13, 1946. The primary effect of the decree was to establish a coordinated governmental

mechanism for handling the issue of ballistic and cruise missiles2' First and foremost, Stalin

sanctioned the formation of a top-secret nine-member Special Committee for Reactive

Technology, much like the one for the atomic bomb. The Soviet leader's choice for chairman of

the new committee was somewhat of a surprise: Georgiy M. Matenkov, forty-four, who had

headed the secret Council on Radar since June 1943, but who had very little experience in dealing with any rocketry or artillery matters? _ More curiously, it seems that Malenkov had not been

one of the major power brokers in the postwar Stalin leadership, such as Beriya, Molotov, or

Voroshilov. As future events would attest, he would eventually become a leading player in

upper echelons of the Kremlin, although it would at best be an extremely uneven career ahead.

A natural choice for one of the two deputy chairmen of the committee was the thirty-sevenyear-old Ustinov, who concurrently served as the head of the Commissariat of Armaments. In

1946, the Commissariat of Armaments was reorganized as part of a general restructuring in the

Soviet defense industry, absorbing the military production of the wartime Commissariats

'Munitions, Mortars, Medium Machine Building, and Tank Industry), and redesignated the new

49. Konovalov, "From Germany--To Kapustin Yar."

50. Mozzhorin, et eL. eds., Dorogi u kosmos: L p. 118 Mishin had met Korolev for the first time in Prague

in November 1945. SeeA. Tarasov."Missions in Dreamsand Reality" (English title), Prauda, October 20. 1989,p. 4.

5 I. The complete text of the important decree is reproduced in I. D. Sergeyev, ed, Khronika osnounykh

sobytiy istorii raketnykh uoysk strategicheskogo naznacheniya (Moscow: TslPK, 1994). pp. 227-33. The actual

Russian word "reaktivniy" is alternately translated as "reactive," "jet," or "rocket." The word is most commonly

used to mean "jet-propelled" as in the Group for Study of Jet Propulsion (GIRD), but in this particular case, "rocket" or "reactive" may be a more appropriate choice.

52. Chertok. Rakety i lyudi, pp. 228,233

37
38

MinistryofArmaments?_TheotherdeputychairmanofthecommitteewasIvanG.Zubovich,

forty-five,anexpertin electronicswhountilhisnewappointmenthadservedastheFirst

DeputyPeople'sCommissaroftheElectronicsIndustry.

Oftheothermembers,certainlythemostimportantwasIvanA.Serov,forty,theDeputy

MinisterofInternalSecurityandBeriya'sright-handman.Giventhepervasiveinfluenceofthe

statesecurityapparatusineverylevelofSovietsocietyandgovernment,itseemsthatSerovmay

haveactuallybeenthemostinfluential,if notpowerful,memberofthespecialcommittee,servingasBeriya'sdirectcontactonmissileissues.Beriyaatthetimepersonallykeptabsonthe

muchmoreimportantaomicbombdevelopmentffort,andit isveryunlikelythathewould

haveallowedsomeonesuchasMalenkovto haveoversightovertherocketrysector.Although

officialgovernmentaldocumentsofthisperiodgivelittlehintofBeriya'scontroloverboth the

nuclear and rocketry sectors, personal recollections of participants and observers of the early

Soviet rocketry program give a different view, emphasizing the direct control that both Beriya

and Serov exercised over the missile sector, despite the apparent lack of any formal institutional mechanism? 4 The only military person on the committee was Marshal Yakovlev, who had

headed the visiting commission to Germany in May 1946. S_

In addition to giving the special committee jurisdiction for overseeing all ballistic and cruise

missile efforts, the decree had several other important repercussions. The document specifically called for scientific research and test work, dedicated to the reproduction of the German

P,-4 guided ballistic missile and the Wasserfall surface-to-air missile, using Soviet materials in

the period 1946-48. It appointed Ustinov's Ministry of Armaments as the leading industrial

sector to manufacture these vehicles. Several other ministries were tapped to develop and produce such important parts as guidance systems (Ministry of Electronics Industries), gyroscopes

(Ministry of Ship Building Industries), liquid propellants (Ministry of Chemical Industries),

rocket engines (Ministry of Aviation Industries), and launch complexes (Ministry of Machine

Building and Instrument Building)26

Given the fact that the Ministry of Armaments was responsible for developing a variety of

weapons systems, a special subsection of the ministry, the Seventh Chief Directorate, was

established to handle all ballistic missile research. Ustinov appointed one of his wartime lieutenants, Ser@y I. Vetoshkin, forty, to head this directorate? 7 In the interest of providing a large

facility from which to direct ballistic missile development, the special committee set aside a factory in Kaliningrad, the M I. Kalinin Plant No. 88, which had originally been founded in 1866

in St. Petersburg but was transferred to the suburbs of Moscow in 19187 _ Throughout the war,

the factory had been used for manufacturing artillery weapons and tanks. By an order from

Ustinov on May 16, the plant was turned over to form the base of operations for the new

Scientific Research Institute No. 88, the central entity in the Soviet Union working on the development of long-range ballistic missiles. Known more commonly as NII-88 (pronounced

53 John McDonnell, "The Soviet DefenseIndustry asa PressureGroup," in Michael McGwire, Ken Booth.

and John McDonnell, eds., Souiet Naucd Policy Objeotiuesand (2onstrairtts (Halifax, NS: Centre for Foreign Policy

Studies t975),p. 114

54 See,for example, Col. Gen. A. Maksimov, "White Crow" (English titte), Krasnayc_zuezda. January 12.

1990,p 4: SergeyKhrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu:krizisy i rakety, uzgtyad iznutri: tom I (Moscow: Novosti, 1994),

pp. 13, 143 Both sourcesstate that Beriya had been responsible for controlling the rocketry sector.

55. The remaining original four members of the special committee were: Aksel I. Berg (director of the

Institute of Radiotechnology and Electronics), Petr N. Goremkyn (minister of Agricultural Machine Building), Petr I

Kirpichnikov (deputy chairman of Gosplan), and Nauru E. Nosovskiy (head of the First Chief Directorate of the

Ministry of Armaments). SeeSergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy, p. 227.

56 Ibid, pp. 228-29.

57'. Yu. Mozzhorin and g. Yeremenko, "From the History of Space Science:From the First Ballistics to .:

I1" (English title), .,quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 8 (August 1991): 34-35.

58. Lardier,LZtstronautique Soui.Jtique,p. 72.

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
FIRST STEPS

"nee-88"), all long-range rocketry for the next

ten years was directed from this institution. Maj.

General Lev R, Gonor, the forty-year-old wartime

head of the famous Barrikady Plant at

Stalingrad, was appointed director of NII-88 on

August 16, 19467 _

At the same time, the primary client for

these weapons, the Ministry of Armed Forces,

established the Fourth Directorate within its

Chief Artillery Directorate. This directorate was

heretofore used as the branch of the armed

forces handling all procurement, testing, operations, specifications requests, and basic research

issues dealing with long-range ballistic missiles.

The first chief of the directorate was thirty-fiveyear-old Maj. General Sokolov, who had led the

initial inspection teams into PeenemQnde the

previous year. Maj. General Gaydukov, the chairman of OTK back in Germany, would serve as

Sokolov's deputy. _° In June, Sokolov and

Gaydukov were instrumental in creating the

Scientific Research Institute No, 4 (NIl-4) within the Fourth Directorate to investigate "the

development of methods of testing, acceptance,

storage and combat application of missile

Maj. General LeuGonor was the first director oFthe

FamousNII-88 institute, which was the FocusoFall

eGrty tong-range ballistic missile deuetopment in the

5ouiet Union (files of Peter Gorin)

weaponry. ''_' Known secretly as "unit 25840" and located at Bolshevo near Moscow, the first

director of the institute was Lt. General Aleksey I. Nesterenko, thirty-eight, yet another of the

Katyusha veterans from World War II. Nesterenko was evidently picked for the post in part

because of a definitive scholarly work on missile-artillery operations during the war.

The Fourth Directorate was also tasked with two other jobs: proposing a site from which

the A-4 and other missiles could be tested and forming a unit of troops specifically for acquiring expertise in preparing and launching these large rockets. For the latter goal, on August 15,

1946, the so-called Special Purpose Brigade of the Supreme High Command Reserve was created within the Fourth Directorate to master the required expertise to use the A-4 ballistic missiles for training and wartime situations. Maj. General Aleksandr F. Tveretskiy, an officer who

had served with the ubiquitous Lt. Colonel Tyulin, was appointed the brigade's first commander. Tveretskiy was a curious choice for the post: he had been excluded from membership in

the Communist Party because of an incident during the war. When in a rage, he had shot his

personal chauffeur. The core brigade was established at Sonderhausen in Germany, where they

were sent to first study all available technical documentation on the A-4 to have a thorough

knowledge of its capabilities and operational characteristics. Korolev, Pilyugin. and other senior

59 yu. Mozzhorin and P, Yeremenko,"From the History of SpaceScience: Fromthe First Ballistics to.."

(English title), 7]uiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 7 (July 1991): 40-41: Chertok, Rakety i lyudL p. 234. Fora wartime

account of Gonor's role in the armaments industry, see D. F. Ustinov, Vo imya #obedi zapisky narkoma

uooruzhenlya (Moscow: Voennoye izdatelstvo, 1988).

60. Mozzhorin, et al. eds_ Dorogi u kosmos: II, pp. 22, 88.

61. Mozzhorin and Yeremenko, "From the History of Space Science": Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh

sobytiy, p. 20. The order for the creation of NIl-4 was signed by the Council of Ministers on May 13, 1946, and by

the Ministry of Armed Forceson May 24, 1946. The institute formally came into existence on June2 I, 1946.

39
40

engineersofOTKwereinstrumentalincoordinatingallworkwiththebrigadetroops,someof

whomlaterbecamefull-timengineerswithdifferentdesignbureaus.Forthemostpart,the

brigade,composedofofficersfromtheMortarGuardsUnit,l_rtillery,AirForce,andNavy,traveledto andfromthemajorA-4locationsinGermany,learningoperatingandhandlingtechniquesfromboththeSovietVystretgroupandtheGermansthemselves?2

TheMay1946decreealsohadimportantrepercussionsfortheworkinGermany.Thewritingclearlystressedtheneedtocompletelymasteraspectsofdesign,production,andtestingof

themajorGermanmissiles,suchastheA-4,Wasserfall,Rheintochter,andSchmetterling.AformalplanofactionforfurtherworkinGermanywasrequestedonthebasisofavisitbyUstinov,

Yakovlev,andothersinthecomingweeks.Mostimportantly,thedecreeformallystatedthatthe

workofOTKinGermanywouldendinlate1946withthetransferof all German and Soviet

personnel to Soviet territory, primarily to NII-88. At the time, the Special Committee for

Reactive Technology concealed this order from the Germans and many of the Soviet engineers

working in OTK. Originally, since about late 1945, a major portion of the work in Germany had

been focused toward conducting a similar operation to the one the Allies had conducted at

Cuxhaven, but by the spring of 1946, all such efforts were discontinued in anticipation of the

move to Kaliningrad? _

It is clear both from the language of the decree and concurrent events that the entire operation was subsumed under a cover of secrecy. This was no doubt partly a result of Beriya's control of the sector but also stemmed from the ultimately military nature of the program. Even at

this early point, the ultimate purpose of the Soviet effort in Germany was far from clear to the

Allies. who were in some cases only kilometers away from the Soviets.

In early August 1946, members of the Special Committee for Reactive Technology officially visited Germany to make a second assessment of the P,-4 effort. Arriving at Bleicherode were

Marshal Yakovlev, Ustinov, Gonor, Vetoshkin, and two new members of the committee. One of

them was Georgiy N. Pashkov, thirty-five, the chief of the rocket technology sector (the "2nd

Department") at Gosplan, who had been recently appointed to this new position to serve as a

senior advisor to the Communist Party on rocketry management issues? _ It was evidently clear

to most of the hosts at the Institute Nordhausen that Ustinov and Pashkov were both the most

powerful and influential members of the visiting commission. On August 9, Ustinov officially

appointed the thirty-eight-year-old Korolev as the new "chief designer" of all long-range Soviet

ballistic missiles, to dispense his duties as the head of a special department in NII-88. °_

Korolev's selection for this important position did not come without resistance. Given his time

as a Kolyma inmate and the fact that he was for all intents and purposes still an "enemy of the

state," there were many in the upper Communist Party ranks who were unwilling to allow him

to play such an important role in a top-secret national security program. The first choice to head

ballistic missile development was in fact another OTK engineer named Yevgeniy V.

Sinilshchikov, whose main focus had been work on the German Vv'asserfall surface-to-air missiles? _ It is clear, however, that Ustinov was quite impressed by Korolev's work in Germany, and

the recommendation from Gaydukov no doubt sealed his appointment. One of the new chief

62 Tyulin, "The 'Seven'": Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy, p 5: Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb,

p. 451: Maksimov. ed, Raketnyyeuoyskastrategieheskogonaznacheniya, p. 38.

63. Tyulin, "The 'Seven'": Sergeyev.ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy, p. 23I.

64 Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. I Z1-73. By his own account, Pashkovwas appointed in "March or April

of 1946." SeeMozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorof,i u kosmos II. p. 51. The other visiting member was N I Vorontsov, a

deputy minister o[ the Communications Equipment Industry.

65. Tyulin, "The 'Seven'." Order No. 83-K called for: "The Appointment of Comrade SergeyPavlovich

Korolev as Chief Designer of 'Article No. I' at the NII-88." "Article No I" was the R I missile.

66. Konovalov. "From Germany--To Kapustin Yar."

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FIRST STEPS

designer's first decisions was to appoint Mishin, then only twenty-nine years old, as his "first

deputy," a common Russian term for "first among the deputies." On the same day as Korolev's

new appointment, Mishin and several others from OTK flew back to Moscow to lay the groundwork for "transferring the set of scientific and technical documentation on the [A-4] rocket into

Russian."6' Mishin served as acting head of the ballistic missiles department at Kaliningrad until

Korolev's return from Germany.

For Korolev, his quick reemergence from obscurity and hardship was a vindication of sorts,

although it hardly compensated for the trials of the GULag. Most recent accounts do suggest,

however, that he had a very positive attitude about life during his stay in Germany. In May

1946, a few months prior to his new appointment, his wife and daughter had arrived in

Germany to visit him, staying through the summer. Korolev relished his newfound freedom,

and he tried to make his tour in Germany a holiday of sorts. Between work schedules, he would

take the time to drive around the countryside with his family in a state-sanctioned Opel automobile? _ By this time, his reputation and the idiosyncrasies of his personality had made a great

impression on the other members of the Soviet team. Later accounts from his subordinates and

peers consistently underline his excellent managerial skills and his insistent emphasis on personal responsibility. Over the years, the latter aspect of his character, while assuming almost

mythical proportions, also fostered a genuine feeling of professional workmanship among the

engineers in his department. His strong personality and stubborn character also generated fear,

not often unfounded. An engineer working under him later recalled that "Korolev was never

lenient. He was harsh and hot-tempered. All of us who worked at his design office knew that

he was merciless when he saw someone being careless or inattentive. ''6_At the same time, he

was also known as being extremely kind and giving. Most recollections suggest that he had no

hesitation in sharing or giving credit to those who actually deserved it--a precedent that he

established during these initial months in Germany during the postwar period. As the weeks

wore on, there was almost unanimous belief among Soviet engineers that Korolev was the best

man for the job.

New Organizations

]-he efforts in Germany in 1946 eventually began to split into two different paths. The first

of these roads was the cooperative Soviet-German work to prepare several A-4s from parts that

had been recovered at Nordhausen and elsewhere. By mid-1946, it was clear that only about a

dozen _q-4 articles could be produced given the relatively meager leftovers discovered. To

extend the potential of using these vehicles both as training missiles and as formal armaments

of the armed forces, Korolev at the time was ordered to commence work on a Soviet copy of

the g-4, designated the R-I. 7° The primary difference between the two vehicles was a

redesigned tail and instrument compartment to increase the range of the Soviet version.

Engineers also used a modified guidance and control system designed not only to nominally

increase operational characteristics of the vehicle but also to adhere to production processes in

Soviet industry. It was clear, however, to Korolev and the other leading engineers of OTK that

creating a Soviet copy of the g-4 would only serve as an interim measure, In fact, Korolev had

very little enthusiasm for working on the R-I project, and this issue may have caused some friction with his superiors. Even at that early stage, he had some major reservations about the

61. Mozzhorin,et at. eds..Dorogiv kosmos:I, p I 18

68 Romanov,Koroleu,p, 213.

69. V. Lysenko,ed,,ThreePacesBeyondtheHorizon(Moscow:MirPublishers,1989),p. 45.

70. The "R" stoodfor "raketa,"the Russianwordfor "missile."

41
42

limited capabilities and cumbersome operational characteristics of the _-4 rocket, and he considered merely duplicating the missile a waste of time. Prompted by these considerations, in

early 1946 at Sonderhausen, Mishin and Budnik had begun early work on an uprated A-4 with

a range more than twice as much as its predecessor--that is, 600 kilometers. By the second

half of 1946, Korolev and Glushko had already performed "a critical analysis of the missile. ''_'

Designated the R-2 (and K-I by British intelligence), the new missile was essentially a stretched

P,-4 with a new engine designed under Glushko.

It seems that there had been some major German input into these early R-2 studies. In the

summer of 1946, Gaydukov had asked the Germans to suggest technical improvements to the

_-4 by mid-September. The Germans under Grottrup submitted about 150 recommendations,

most of them based on ideas that had been considered by the original PeenemOnde team during the war. The Soviet side accepted only half of the list and asked that the rest be studied in

more detail prior to a resubmittal./_ccording to the recollections of German engineers, it seems

that Korolev had made "as little use as he could of the Germans at Zentralwerke."" Despite the

coolness in terms of collaboration, the Germans themselves were apparently very impressed

with Korolev's professionalism and courtesy. The latter was reportedly sympathetic to the needs

of the German engineers; on one occasion, Korolev himself helped rebuff the Soviet secret

police's attempts to harass Grottrup's secretary.

For the Germans, the underlying fear that they would be taken back to the Soviet Union

was confirmed in October 1946. On the 21st, Grottrup and several of the leading Germans

attended a meeting on possible improvements to the P,-4. There was a party for the attendees

afterwards, which was rudely interrupted at 4:00 a.m. when the Soviets began their massive

operation to transport about 6,000 Germans from various technical industries to the USSR.

Each individual was handed a document containing the following passage:

_s the works in which you are employed are being transferred to the LISSR. you and your

entire family will have to be ready to leave for the USSR. You and your family will

entrain in passenger coaches. The freight ear is available for your household chattels,

Soldiers will assist you in loading. "You will receive a new contract after your arrival in

the USSR. Conditions under the contract will be the same as apply to skilled workers in

the LISSR. For the time being, your contract will be to work in the Soviet Union for five

years. You will be prouided with food and elothin£ [or the journey which you must

expect to last three or four weeks, '_

The entire operation was prepared and coordinated by Ivan _. Serov, the Deputy

Commissioner of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany and Beriya's point man in the

rocketry program. Some engineers, even from the Soviet side, expressed reservations about taking the Germans wholesale back to the USSR. Korolev himself reportedly remarked that "we

[the Soviets] must have a little more self-respect. ''_4 In the end, the words of Beriya and Serov

were final. In the months preceding the transfer, Serov had requested from Gaydukov a list of

the most capable German rocketry specialists. Gaydukov returned with 152 names, all of whom,

including their families (a total of 495 people), boarded trains for the Soviet Union on

October 22 and 23.

71. Tyulin. "The 'Seven'"; Chertok. Rakety i lyudi, p. 165.

72. Ordway and Sharpe,The Rocket Team. pp. 321-23.

73. Ibid, pp. 323-241Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 118.

74. Tokaty, "Foundations of Soviet Cosmonautics"; Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 117.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

By the time the Germans arrived in Moscow, a vast network of institutions was forming

around the nerve center of NII-88 at Kaliningrad, about sixteen kilometers north of Moscow.

The institute itself, headed by Maj. General Gonor, was divided into three formal structural

units:

• g specialized design bureau to design long-range ballistic missiles

• g scientific branch with subdepartments for materials science, stress, aerodynamics,

engines, fuels, control, testing, and telemetry

• An experimental plant to manufacture the missiles '_

The design bureau was headed by Karl t. Tritko, who had formerly served as the chief engineer of the Barrikady Plant during the war. Tritko was assigned jurisdiction over at least eight

departments in the design bureau, each focusing on a particular thematic direction. P,s the new

chief designer of long-range ballistic missiles, Korolev headed Department No. 3, tasked initially

with restoring A-4 production. '_ Vasiliy P. Mishin served as Korolev's first deputy, while two

other engineers, Vasiliy S. Budnik and Leonid A. Voskresenskiy, also served as deputies.

Konstantin D. Bushuyev, who would go on to direct the Soviet portion of the gpollo-Soyuz

Test Project, joined in November 1946 and served as head of the planning sector of the

The organization o[ the Souiet ballistic missile program under the Special Committee

for Reactive Technology in the late 1940s. (copyright ,,_si[ SiddiqO

75. Mozzhorin and Yeremenko. "From the History of Space Science" The structure of NII-88 was established by Ustinov's order on August 26, 1946.

76. Mozzhorin, et al. eds. Dorogi u kosmos L pp. 67-68. The other known departments were:

Department No. 4 (to develop an anti-aircraft missile based on the German Wasserfall) headed by

Ye.V. Sinilshchikov; Department No. 5 (to develop an anti-aircraft missile basedon the German Schmetterling) headed by S. Yu. Rashkov; Department No. 6 (to develop an anti-aircraft missile basedon the German Typhoon) headed by P. I. Kostin; and Department No. 8 (to develop liquid-propellant rocket engines for the Soviet versions of the

Wasserfall and Schmetterling) headed by N. L Umanskiy. It is clearly evident that at least half of the work at NII-88

was dedicated to efforts other than surface-to-surface long-range ballistic missiles. Korolev was officially appointed

chief of Department No. 3 on August 30, 1946.

43
44

departmentresponsibleforalllong-rangeprojects.':'Manyoftheotherengineerswhowere

employedatDepartmentNo.3wentontoheadtheirowndesignbureausaschiefdesigners

oftheSovietspaceprograminthe1960sand1970s.Amongthemajorindividualswhojoined

in 1946-47wereRefatF.Appazov,ViktorF.Gladkiy,AleksandrS.Kasho,VyecheslavM.

Kovtunenko,DmitriyI.Kozlov,SergeyS.Kryukov,SvyastoslavS.Lavrov,ArkadiyI.Ostashev,

IvanS.Prudnikov,YevgeniyV.Shabarov,andGeorgiyS.Vetrov.Atthetimeofitsformation,

thisdepartmentemployedsixtyengineers,fifty-fivetechnicians,andtwenty-fiveworkers.'_The

successororganizationto thissmallsectionisknowntodayastheEnergiya-RocketSpace

Corporation("RKKEnergJya").

The scientific branch of NIt-88 was headed officially by the new chief engineer of the institute, Yuriy A. Pobedonostsev, who was Korolev's prewar colleague from the GIRD and

NIl-3 days/_ Pobedonostsev oversaw at least five separate departments that focused on specific engineering areas in support of actual design work at the design bureau, Boris Ye. Chertok,

the head of department U for guidance systems, served as Pobedonostsev's immediate

deputy/° There was clearly a visible trend in hiring those who had performed admirably in

Germany to important positions in the NII-88 hierarchy, as evidenced by the new posts for not

only Korolev, but also Mishin, Pobedonostsev, and ChertoL In spite of Korolev's appointment

as chief designer, he was, however, still buried under several levels of the bureaucratic chain.

Officially. he was responsible to Chief Engineer Pobedonostsev and then to NII-88 Director

Gonor. which naturally set limits as to his influence in institute decisions. These multiple levels of leadership proved to be difficult for Korolev to adjust to, given that back in Germany he

had essentially assumed a coordinating role for the entire recovery operation by mid-1946.

The living conditions for those at NII-88 in 1946 were not very conducive to comfort. Even

the more senior engineers had to live in "communal apartments" because of the lack of housing. At least half of the employees of the specialized design bureau were in fact on a waiting

list for a single room for their families. Most of the workers simply lived in overcrowded barracks

and tents, working often through weekends in hastily constructed hangars and "auxiliary structures" at an experimental airfield, which had been given to the institute upon its formation/'

Instead of working tables, the engineers used equipment boxes for drawings. Manufacturing

buildings were in poor conditions, with leaking roofs and puddles on the floor after rainstorms.

One engineer remembers that "the heating didn't work, so it was colder inside the shops than

outside. ,8: Disease was widespread, and hospital facilities were severely lacking. In addition to

their primary job of missile engineering and development, all the engineers had to participate

in the building of work facilities, test installations, and even housing. Additional duties involved

gardening and assisting the kolkhozes they sponsored. During 1946, at least 1,832 people quit

ZT. S.S. Kryukov, "K. D. Bushuyev--Scholart Designer, Technical Director of the 'Soyuz-Apollo Program"

(English title), in B V. Raushenbakh,ed.. Issledouaniye tuorehestuo osnouopolozhnikou kosmonautiki i yeye souremennye probtemy (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), pp. 38-39: Mozzhorin and Yeremenko. "From the History of Space

Science."

18. Yu Ishlinskiy, ed., ,ZtkademikS. P Koroteu: ueheniy, inzhener, chelouek (Moscow: Nauka. 1986), pp

5t4-16: Lardier,L'..qstronautiqueSoui#tique. p. 73: Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Dorogi u kosmos: I. p. 170.

/'9. Pobedonostsevwas appointed to his new position at the same time as Korotev in August f946, See

Chertok, Rakety i/yudi, p. I15. He returned [rom Germany to take up his post on December21, 1946.

80. Theother departments weredepartment M for materials (headed by V. N. Iordanskiy), department Pfor

strength (headed by V. M. Panferov).department P_for aerodynamics and gasdynamics (headed by Rakhmatulin),

and department I for testing (headed by R V. Tsybin). Seeibid., p. 249.

81. B Konovalov, "Dash to the Stars" (English title), Izuestiya, October I, 1981, p. 3: Mozzhorin and

Yeremenko. "From the History of SpaceScience."

82. James Har[ord, Koroteu How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon

(New York:John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997), p. 93.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FIRST STEPS

the institute, while the volume of work was always increasing. It was a pace and level of labor

that were quite unusual for civilians, even given the poor postwar economic conditions in the

Soviet Union. Most of the engineers were in their late twenties or early thirties, fresh from graduation, although in time Korolev managed to recruit some of his old prewar colleagues from

NIl-3 and even GIRD.

The transfer of the Germans in late 1946 significantly augmented the work at NII-88, On

arrival in Moscow on October 28, the 150 or so German rocketry specialists were split into two

groups. One group ended up at the new NII-88 Branch No. I on Gorodomlya Island in Lake

Seliger, about 240 kilometers northwest of Moscow--a remote location that had been witness

to some of the most bitter fighting between the Soviets and the Germans. Needless to say, the

locals were not very welcoming to the Germans. _ Dr. Waldemar Wolff and ]osef Blass were

appointed the German chiefs of the group, The more fortunate of the Germans were transferred

to the northeastern section of Moscow to facilitate easier and direct collaboration with engineers at NII-88 in Kaliningrad. Eventually, however, the latter group dispersed; many were

assigned to various industrial ministries, It became clearer to the "guests" that the only

Germans the Soviets planned to use as a group were the ones at Gorodomlya. The Germans

were to focus on six major themes:

• Consultation on creating a Soviet version of the A-4

• Work on "organizational schemes"

• Research in improving the A-4 main engine

• Development of a 100-ton thrust engine

• Assistance in the "layout" of plant production rooms

• Preparation of rocket assembly using German components _4

Living conditions for the Germans depended greatly on their relative importance and their

education, Grottrup's family, for example, was housed in a six-room villa outside of Moscow

that had formerly been occupied by a member of the Council of Ministers, and they were provided with a chauffeured BMW automobile. Others were housed according to a system based

on the number of members in their families and their academic seniority. The latter criterion in

fact determined their pay scales. Those with the equivalent of a Ph.D. degree, such as Magnus,

Schmidt, and Llmpfenbach, were paid 6,000 rubles a month. Those with engineering diplomas,

such as Grottrup and Schwartz, were paid 4,500 rubles. The rest received 4,000 rubles a month.

By comparison, most of the Soviet engineers themselves were paid much less. Korolev as a

chief designer and head of a department was paid 6,000 rubles a month. NII-88 Chief Engineer

Pobedonostsev earned 5,000 rubles, while Korolev's first deputy Mishin was paid only

2,500 rubles a month. _ Most other Soviet engineers were paid much less.

While NII-88 was the primary institute responsible for the design and development of longrange rockets, it was by no means the only one. Unlike the small-scale vehicles developed by

GIRD and NIl-3 in the 1930s, missiles on the scale of the A-4 used systems that were vastly

83. Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 325. The German "guests" at Branch No. t were put under

the direct command of E.G. Sukhomlinov from the Ministry of Armaments, replaced soon after by P.I. Maloletov,

who had formerly headed the NII-88 experimental plant. SeeChertok, Rokety i tyudi, p. 195. Another source suggests that the first director of Branch No. I was V. D. Kurganov.

84. P.Bork and G. g. Sadovol, "On the History of Rocketry Developedin the U.S.S.R.in the FirstYearsAfter

the Second World War (The Participation of German Specialistsin the Development of Soviet Missile Technology in

the Early PostWar Period)," in J. D. Hunley, ed., History of Rocketry and ,qstronautics, Vol 19 (San Diego, CA:

Llnivelt, 1997). pp. 143-52

85. Chertok, Rakety i tyudi, pp. 196 97: Ordway and Sharpe,The Rocket Team, p 325

45
46

morecomplicated.Inparticular,theguidancesystems,engines,andlaunchplatformswereareas

forwhichNII-88wasforcedtocollaboratewithanumberofotherimportantinstitutesspread

acrossthe Sovietdefenseindustry.P,swith the Ministryof Armamentsandits

NII-88,otherdesignorganizationswereunderthecommandofotherministries.OnJuly3,

1946,theMinistryofthel_viationIndustryestablished the Special Design Bureau No. 456

(OKB-456) at its former Aviation Plant No. 84 in Khimki for the design, development, and production of high-performance rocket engines. Headed by Chief Designer Glushko, the infrastructure and materials at the new design bureau had been transferred wholesale from the Lehesten

plant in Germany. Glushko was also able to assemble about 150 of his old colleagues from the

wartime days at OKB-SD. _6Much of the effort at OKB-456 was focused toward testing existing

A-4 main engines and facilitating the manufacture of its Soviet-made version, the RD-I00

Guidance and control systems for long-range missiles were handled by several enterprises

spread across the Soviet defense industry. The Scientific Research Institute No. 885 (NII-885).

under Director Nikolay D. Maksimov in the Ministry of the Communications Equipment Industry,

was tasked with the design and development of all autonomous guidance systems, radio control

systems, and radiotelemetry systems. _7 Mikhail S. Ryazanskiy, thirty-seven, was appointed the

chief designer of radio control systems for all Soviet ballistic missiles, while simultaneously serving as the chief engineer of the institute. With a background in developing radar instruments for

naval systems, Ryazanskiy had worked at NII-20 until his arrival in Germany. In early 1947,

Nikolay A. Pilyugin, thirty-eight, a veteran of the Nll-I/Raketa effort, was named Ryazanskiy's

principal deputy for autonomous guidance systems as the chief of the l_utomation Department. _

Both these men had played major roles in the work in Germany and would have a significant influence over future events in both the rocketry and space programs of the Soviet Union.

The development of all-command gyroscope instruments for the long-range ballistic missiles was entrusted to Scientific Research Institute No. I0 (NIl-10), in the Ministry of the

Shipbuilding Industry, under new Chief Designer Viktor I. Kuznetsov, who was thirty-three.

With a background in designing gyroscope instruments during the war, Kuznetsov had also

worked in Germany in 1945-46 and based much of his subsequent efforts on the results of this

research. The clearly important job of designing launch pads and associated equipment for the

missiles was assigned to the State Union Design Bureau of Special Machine Building (GSKB

SpetsMash), within the Ministry of Machine and Instrument Building. The appointed chief

designer was Vladimir P. Barmin, thirty-seven, who had headed the production of the Katyusha

missile launch containers throughout the entire period of the war at the famous Kornpressor

Plant in Moscow. _*'During 1945-46, Barmin had also served as chief engineer of the Institute

Berlin in Germany.

86. Chertok, Rukety i lyudi, pp. 196 97: Lardier, L',Z]stronautioueSoui_tique, pp. 73-74. Until Glushko's

arrival, the plant had been beadedby P.D. Lavrentiyev and was producing Li-2 transport aircraft under license.

87 Mozzhorin and Yeremenko, "From the History of Space Science." The NII-885 was established on

February 26, 1938, to develop radio control systems. For a short time beginning May 13, 1946, this institute was

subordinated to the Sixth Chief Directorate of the Ministry of the Electronics Industry and renamed the Scientific

Research Institute for Special Technology {Nil ST). See K. V. Gerchik, ed, Nezabyuayemyy Baykonur (Moscow:

Interregional Council of Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, 1998), pp. 26/-68: Maxim Tarasenko,*'Evolution

of the Soviet SpaceIndustry." presentedat the 46th International Astronautical Congress, IAA-95-IAA 2.1.OhOslo,

Norway, October 2-6, 1995.

88. Yu. A. Mozzhorin. et al. eds.. Naehalo kosmicheskoy ery: uospominaniya ueteranouraketno-kasmieheskoy tekhniki i kosmonautiki uypusk 2 (Moscow: RNITsKD. 1994), p. 2791 Lt. Gen. G. Tyulin. "Look Forward"

(English title), l<rasnaya zuezda, May 18 1988, p. 4; Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 235. 333 Pilyugin's Automation

Department was the Nll-885's Department No. 3.

89 Mozzhorin and Yeremenko."From the History of SpaceScience.": Mozzhorin, el c_L.eds.,Doro£i u kos

mos: II, pp. 50. 76

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
FIRST STEPS

This still from a late-1940s-erafilm shows the original members of the famous Council of Chie[ Designers.

Starting second from left are Chief DesignersVladimir Barmin. Mikhail Ryazanskiy, SergeyKorolev, Viktor

Kuznetsov, Nikotay Pilyugin (standing), and Valentin _lushko. At the far left is Boris Chertok, who was a

deputy chief engineer responsible [orguidance systems at Nil 88. (copyright Christian Lardier)

Korolev, Glushko, Ryazanskiy, Pityugin, Kuznetsov, and Barmin each represented the primary areas of development for long-range ballistic missiles. By the last few months in Germany

in late 1946, the six had in fact begun to have informal meetings to coordinate overall program

goals. After the major organizational changes in t946-47, they continued these informal contacts. As the programs for missile development began to assume greater levels of complexity,

Korolev developed the idea of forming a "Council of Chief Designers" consisting of the six leading chief designers. Established sometime in November 1941, the council was an informal and

separate entity from the institutes and design bureaus and eventually assumed engineering control over much of the early development of the Soviet space program.

The original council consisted of Korolev (who was the chairman responsible for overall

design), Glushko (rocket engines), Barmin (launch equipment), Kuznetsov (gyroscopes),

Pilyugin (autonomous guidance systems), and Ryazanskiy (radio control systems)? ° One of its

outstanding advantages was that it circumvented the normal chain of command in the industry and facilitated swifter and more efficient work. The standard hierarchy in the new missile

industry meant that a particular design bureau or institute would be responsible to the specific ministry that had jurisdiction over it. The new council, however, managed to bring together

individuals who were officially employed by several different ministries. This was clearly a novelty in the very centralized approach of the Soviet defense industry and illustrated Korolev's

early pragmatism and originality in the search for more efficient work.

Apart from the central six organizations involved in the missile sector, there were at least

two other major entities that played very significant roles in the formation of the space program.

The first was Nil-I, the institute that had served as a training ground for so many of the engineers who had ended up under Korolev. On November 29, 1946, a major reorganization in the

9o. Col. M. Rebrov,"Council of Chiefs" (Englishtitle), Krasnnya zuezda, April 8, 1989, p. 3. Pityugin was

technically a deputy chiefdesigner from 1946 until mid-1948, when he was appointed a chief designer.

47
48

institutewasenactedasMstislavVsevolodovichKeldysh,athirty-five-year-oldmathematician,

wasappointedthenewdirector.

KeldyshwasbornonFebruaryI0,191I,inRiga,Latvia.Hispassionformathematicswas

reinforcedbyhismentor,thefamousNikolayLuzin,whoeducatedagenerationf brilliant

Sovietmathematicians.ToLuzin'sdisappointment,Keldyshwasmoreinterestedin applied

fieldsratherthantheoryandendedupwitha researchpositionattheprestigiousN. Ye.

ZhukovskiyCentralAerohydrodynamicsInstitute(orTsAGI).Hisrecordwasoutstanding.In

1938,attheageoftwenty-seven,hesingle-handedlyfoundasolutionto "flutter,"thesharp

increaseinvibrationsbeyondcriticalflightvelocity,afterwhichaircraftwouldtendto simply

fallapart.Later,bytheendofthewar,Keldyshtackledanotherdifficultproblembydiscovering

awaytoavoid"shimmy,"aphenomenondiscoveredbyU.S.engineersthatcausedthefront

wheelofthree-wheeledaircrafttooscillatefromleftto rightuponlanding.Keldysh'swritings

encompassedanastoundinglyvastrangeof scientificareas,includingaerodynamics,pure

mathematicaltheory,hydromechanics,vibrationsandoscillation,andthermalexcitationsof

sounds.Basedontheseaccomplishments,in 1946,theUSSRAcademyofScienceselectedthe

twenty-five-year-oldKeldyshtobeanAcademician,possiblyoneoftheyoungestmeneverto

havesuchanhonor2'

TheprimarygoalofthereorganizedNil-I,stillunderthejurisdictionoftheMinistryofthe

AviationIndustry,wastoexaminetheS_nger-Bredtantipodalbomberproposalforpotentialuse

asan"intercontinentalrocket-plane."°'_Asecondmajorthemeattheinstitutewasbasicresearch

onaerodynamics,ballistics,rocket,andramjetengines.Severaldivisionswerestablishedwith

intheinstitutetostudytheseproblems,includinganaeronauticaldesignbureauheadedbyformerRaketaheadViktorF.Bolkhovitinovandthreeenginedesignbureaus.AlekseyM.Isayev,

theengineerwhohadbeenoneofthefirstSovietstoenterPeenem0ndeinthespringof 1945,

ledthefirstofthesenginedesignbureaus.HehadreturnedfromGermany to the Soviet Union

in September 1945 to resume his work at NII-I following a productive period at the Lehesten

plant. By all accounts, Isayev was one of the most talented rocket engine designers in the country at the time. and it is more than likely that there was some level of rivalry between Glushko

and Isayev at this early stage. Leonid S. Dushkin, tapped to head the second engine design

bureau, also focused on rocket engines, while Mark M. Bondaryuk, appointed to the third

bureau, led the development of ramjet engines for the S_nger-Bredt bomber. All three were to

eventually develop propulsion systems for long-range strategic missiles.

Besides NII-88 and Nil-l, NII-4 was the third organization with a major role in the early postwar rocketry sector. Unlike all the other research institutes and design bureaus, NII-4 was part of the

Ministry of Armed Forces, the primary client for ballistic missiles. Formed at the same time as

NII-88, one of those who had ended up at NII-4 was Mikhail K Tikhonravov, Korolev's old collaborator from GIRD and the designer of the first Soviet liquid-propellant rocket. Tikhonravov had served

at NII-I throughout the war and had spent a short time as part of the inspection commission in

Germany, but he was apparently not deeply involved in its activities. Instead, he took part in research

on the first postwar Soviet missile dedicated to scientific purposes.

In 1943, the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (FIAN) proposed the development of a rocket designed to reach an altitude of forty kilometers to conduct

research on cosmic rays. In April of the following year, while Tikhonravov was still at

Nil-I, he established a group under Pavel I. Ivanov to develop a missile to satisfy these require91 V. S Avduyevskiy and T. M. Eneyev,eds., M _/ Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy raketnaya tekhnika i kosmonautika (Moscow: Nauka, 1988). p. 7: John Turkevich, Souiel Men o/Science (Princeton, NJ: D. van Nostrand,

1963), pp. 152-53.

92. Yu V Biryukov and A. P,. Yeremenko,"50 Yearsfor the Native Rocket-SpaceIndustry. The Early Period

of Development" (English title). Nouosti kosmonautik_ I 0 (May 6-19, 1996): 54-64.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

ments. A plan for an eighty-seven-kilogram rocket was finished in two months and formally presented to FIAN in December 1944. The design combined several RS-132 solid-propellant

Katyusha rockets together into a four-meter-long three-stage vehicle. The rocket was capable of

lifting a mass of instruments (just under fifteen kilograms) to an altitude of forty kilometers; _

Interrupted by Tikhonravov's short stint in Germany, the plan to construct the rocket took

longer than expected, but finally in June 1946, Tikhonravov's team and Sergey N. Vernov, a scientist at the Lebedev Physical Institute who had developed the experiments, assembled in

Leningrad to launch the so-called VR-210. _ The first rocket exploded because of a faulty combustion chamber, the second also failed, and the third, although launched without problems,

did not reach the desired altitude. The program was canceled at that point, and Vernov eventually took his experiments to a more well-equipped team, one under Korolev at NII-88.

As for Tikhonravov, when NII-I was reorganized in November 1946, his group of twentythree individuals from Branch No. I was transferred wholesale to the new military NIl-4 in

Bolshevo, participating in basic research on the application of long-range missiles for the USSR

Ministry of Armed Forces. Staffed and headed mostly by artillery officers, it seems that

Tikhonravov's group had been somewhat of an anomaly at the institute given their background

in aeronautical engineering. Others who ended up at NIl-4 included veterans of operations in

Germany, such as Lt. Colonel Tyulin, who would also play a very significant role in the early

days of the Soviet space program.

The R-I and the Antipodal Bomber

Korolev finally returned to the Soviet Union in February 1947, formally taking over his

duties as chief designer and chief of Department No, 3 at the NII-88 Specialized Design Bureau.

By the time of his return, the investigations in Germany had yielded a massive thirteen-volume

work authored by engineers at OTK titled "Collection of Materials for the Study of Captured

Reactive Technology. "_' The Soviet authors were surprisingly cautious in their assessments of

the level of advancements achieved by the Germans. While acknowledging significant accomplishments on the part of the Peenem0nde team, the study also emphasized the limitations of

the I_-4. These shortcomings included the overall design of the frame of the missile, the design

of the propellant tanks, and the warhead container. The authors did, however, recognize that

they had much to learn in the field of guidance system development. °6

Despite the limitations of the A-4, the Soviet leadership was keen to move ahead with

launches of the native-built version of the missile, the R-I, to acquaint Soviet industry with the

process of manufacturing and operating a long-range missile. Korolev himself was looking

ahead to the much more powerful R-2 rocket based on the earlier work of Mishin and Budnik

in Germany. In January 1947, in an official request to the government, he had proposed the

immediate commencement of work on the latter vehicle. In response, the government declined

93. YaroslavGolovanov, Koroleu:[akty i miD,,(Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 406; PeterStache,Souiet Rockets,

ForeignTechnology Division Translation. FTD-ID(RS)T0619-88 (from unnamed source), Wright-Patterson Air Force

Base, Ohio, November 29, 1988, p, 206. This is a translation of Peter Stache, Sotujetischer Raketen (Berlin:

Militarverlad der DDR, 1987).

94. There was an earlier test firing on March 19, 1946, to test the separation of the stages. See igor

Afanasyev, R 12 Sandalouoye dereuo (Moscow: EksPrintNV. 199/), p. 20; Lardier.LYqstronautiqueSouietique, p, Z1.

Another source suggests that the model actually launched was capableof lilting a mass of twenty kilograms to altitudes o[ fifteen to eighteen kilometers. See V N. Galkovskiy, "Activities of M. K Tikhonravov in the RNII

(1934 1944)" (English title), Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonctutiki 42 (I 980): 23-26

95. Romanov,Koroleu.pp. 214: M. V. Keldysh, ed., Tvorcheskoyenaslediye akademika SergeyaPaulouicha

Korolevo: izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), p. 395.

96, Stache,Soviet Rockets,p. 168

49
50

to approve work on the R-2 and instead opted for a conservative approach focused on the

R-I. 9' Much of the technical details of the R-2 remained in the realm of conjecture at the time,

and the project would face a rather circuitous route to formal approval from the Soviet government. As for the R-I itself, in a letter to the overseeing Special Committee for Reactive

Technology, Korolev cautioned that the "creation of the native R-I missile is not [simply a matter] of copying German technology and substituting their materials with [Soviet] materials.'98 In

other words, it was a note of warning to Soviet leaders that the path to creating such a large

missile, given existing conditions, would take the marshaling of a substantial amount of

resources. The letter from Korolev prompted the establishment of specific schedule, beginning

with launches of the A-4 and then leading into flights of the R-I. Finally, he also called for starting the formal process to create a launch test site for flying the A-4 and R-I missiles.

In design and appearance, the R-I was a near copy of the German /_-4 missile. The

14.65-meter-long vehicle consisted of four primary elements: the tail assembly, the propellant

compartment, an equipment section, and the warhead. The maximum body diameter was

1.6.5 meters. The lower part of the propellant section incorporated an oxidizer tank container,

which carried approximately five tons of liquid oxygen. An insulated feed line was routed from

the top tank for four tons of ethyl alcohol. Both containers were self-supporting, separate from

the outer shell of the missile, and covered by heat insulation made of glass wool. The twentyfive-ton-thrust RD-I00 engine was installed at the base of the rocket with a large turbopump

assembly. The equipment section was situated on top of the propellant tanks and contained

the guidance system with control and gyroscopic instruments. During flight, the system would

control the air rudder at the rear of four large fins at the base of the rocket via servomotors. The

explosive warhead was inserted into the nose cone, which itself was attached to the main body

of the missile? _ The total mass of the rocket was about thirteen and a half tons, approximately nine and two-tenths tons of which was propellant. The maximum flight range was about

270 kilometers, slightly higher than the A-4.

Although Korolev himself was the managerial leader of the project, he also contributed

extensively to technical aspects of development. Other engineers closely involved in the effort

at Korolev's Department No. 3 were Mishin, Abramov, Budnik, Bushuyev, Lavrov, Okhapkin,

and Voskresenskiy. The development of the missile also brought into the forefront the operations of the Council of Chief Designers. While the Germans were not involved in any decisionmaking, they did, however, closely participate in assisting their "hosts" in facilitating the road

to the first Soviet tests. For example, German guidance experts at Gorodomlya Island built a

simulator for missile trajectories in a month's time, which was sent to NII-88 at Kaliningrad. In

addition, a team of twenty German propulsion experts was dispatched to OKB-456 to work

with Glushko, although the latter was evidently uninterested in using their talents. The

Germans were forced to return to NII-88 soon) °°

/_t this time, in early 1947. the Soviet leadership had yet to formulate a specific agenda for

the new missile industry. Much of the effort in the defense industries was in fact focused on

developing the first atomic bomb. A means of delivery, while important, was still clearly secondary. Without a clear idea of what system to pursue for delivery, Soviet Communist Party

97. Yu. V Biryukov. "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles of SergeyPavlovich Korolev" (English title).

in B. V. Raushenbakh,ed,/z istorli sovetskoykosmonavtiki: sbornik pamyati akademika S. P Koroleva (Moscow:

Nauka. 1983), p. 226,

98. Chertok. Rakety i lyudi, pp 205-06.

99. Stache,SovietRockets,p, 173: G. g. Sadovoy. "10 October--40 YearsAfter the FirstSuccessful Launch

of the First Soviet Guided Missile of Long Range R-I (1948)" (English title), /z istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 59

(1989): 94-101.

100 Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 327: Sadovoy. "I0 October--40 YearsAfter."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
i FIRST STEPS

leaders--and in particular Stalin himself--were particularly interested in the old German

S_nger-Bredt idea. Nil-I engineer Isayev had discovered some documents on this German intercontinental bomber project in May 1945 at PeenemOnde: at that time, the projected capabilities of the piloted vehicle had astounded the Soviets. '°_ The need for a IO0-ton-thrust rocket

engine in the vehicle no doubt gave pause to any hopes of an early development of the bomber,

But caught amid the period's appropriation of German technology, the Soviets were not willing

to discard even the most outlandish ideas from their German opponents. A copy of the report

was first turned over to Nll-I Deputy Director Bolkhovitinov in 1945. The following year, he

authored a preliminary study of the vehicle titled "Survey of Captured Technology," which was

in fact published in a slim volume by the Ministry of Armed Forces. _°2Initial Soviet assessments

of the plan were not encouraging: Bolkhovitinov's deputy Genrikh N. Abramovich, evaluating

the proposal, speculated that it would take another decade before the Soviet Union could bring

the project to fruition. This pessimistic view does not seem to have affected the aviation sector's interest, and soon after Academician Keldysh's appointment as director of NII-I in

November 1946, much of the work at the institute was devoted to the S_inger-Bredt problem.

In a document prepared on April 3, 1947, Keldysh for the first time discussed the necessary

technical and industrial requirements for creating a I O0-ton-thrust engine to power an aircraft. '°_

As Keldysh began research work at NII-I on the bomber, in the spring of 1947, scientists

and engineers briefed Stalin on the work on the vehicle. By some accounts, the Soviet leader

was unusually enamored of the S_inger-Bredt concept, and he may have in fact been personally instrumental in pushing for an analog Soviet project to produce the intercontinental bomber

as a delivery system for nuclear weapons. '°_ Several important officials, including representatives from the Soviet Air Force, the Ministry of the Aviation Industry, and the Ministry of

Armaments, were on hand to discuss the project with Stalin in mid-April. Unconfirmed reports

suggest that there were guarded attempts to caution the Soviet leader about drawbacks in the

design's technical details, but that these attempts did not change Stalin's mind. g commission

was allegedly established under Col. General Serov, the first deputy chairman of the state security apparatus, to seriously investigate the program. _°_The S_nger-Bredt commission, if it existed at all, may have been an adjunct to the more important Special Committee for Reactive

Technology, which had been renamed Special Committee No. 2 by June 1947. '°_

Stalin's support notwithstanding, Soviet scientists were not too favorable in their opinion

of the piloted antipodal bomber plan. The initial impressions of both Keldysh and Abramovich

were not encouraging. Both believed that the project could not be brought to fruition in a short

101. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 91.

102 Ibidt p. 93.

103. This document has been reproduced as M. V. Keldysh, "On the Development of ResearchWork on

Aircraft With ZhRDs" (English title), in Avduyevskiy and Eneyev,eds., M. V. Keldysh, p. 20. "ZhRD" is the acronym

in Russian for liquid-propellant rocketengine.

104. Zaloga, Target America, p, 122.

105, Tokaty, "Foundations of Soviet Cosmonautics": Tokaty, "Soviet Space Technology." The accuracy of

both these sources should be viewed with great doubt. Many of the details of the two meetings that the author discusses have serious inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies. The general nature of Stalin's policy on the S_]ngerBredt bomber and the overall tone of the meeting may. however, be fairly indicative of actual events in April 1947.

For a detailed Russian analysis and refutation of Tokaty-Tokayev's accounts, see Golovanov, Koroleu, pp. 392-95,

Note that the date given in both the Tokaty sources is March 14, 1947. Based on information from recent Soviet

reports, it seems that the meeting was on April 14, 1947 See Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 396. Among those named by

TokaW-Tokayev as allegedly present were L P. Beriya, M. V. Keldysh, G. M. Malenkov. A, I. Mikoyan, V. M Molotov,

I. A. Serov, l, V. Stalin. G. A, Tokaty-Tokayev, D. F. Ustinov, K. Ye. Voroshilov. N. A. Voznesenskiy, and A. A.

Zhdanov,

106, Mozzhorin and Yeremenko, "From the History of Space Science: I1."

51
52

Soviet Antipodal Bomber (1947)

Length 28 meters(92feet) ]

Wingspan 15meters(50feet) J

Propulsion RDKS-100100tonthrustliquidrocket

Sustalner 2 x RNIIwing-tipramjets

Weight 100tons

Range 12,000km(7450miles)

The Soviet version of the Sdnger-Bredt antipodal bomber, shown here as it was conceived in 1947 by the

Nll-I institute headed by _cademician Mstislau Keldysh The rocket plane would have been launched from

a special catapult. (copyright Steven Zaloga)

time period given the relatively large leap in technology required. The governmental pressure

was. however, insistent enough for Keldysh to write a lengthy report on the bomber in 1947,

titled "On Power Plants for a Stratospheric High-Speed Aircraft." which examined in detail the

necessary requirements for the creation of an experimental system. '°` The report, prepared

under Keldysh's direction at Nil-1, described a vehicle clearly reminiscent of the original S_ngerBredt concept.

The I O0-ton winged spacecraft was twenty-eight meters long, with a total wingspan of fifteen meters, and it had a full operational flying range of 12,000 kilometers. The basic vehicle

was equipped with three engines, two ramjet units at the tips of the wings, and one traditional liquid-propellant rocket engine at the rear end of the fuselage. As envisioned in the 1947

report, the bomber would be piloted by a single crew member in a special hermetically sealed

cockpit at the front of the vehicle. In one of the more original schemes of the plan, the bomber

would be launched using a special "catapult" equipped with at least five IO0-ton-thrust liquidpropellant rocket engines to impart a total thrust of 500 to 600 tons, for about ten to twelve

seconds, accelerating the vehicle to a velocity of about 500 meters per second. At this point,

the huge ramjets at the wingtips would fire, working until the vehicle reached an altitude of

twenty kilometers, then the main IO0-ton-thrust engine at the rear of the bomber would ignite

to literally "launch" the bomber into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, g nominal mission

would have the bomber fly several "dip-and-skip" trajectories into the atmosphere before reaching the final target. '_'_

107. /_ chapter from the report has been published as M, V. Keldysh. "On Power Plants for a Stratospheric

High-Speed Aircraft" (English title), in gvduyevskiy and Eneyev.eds., M. V Keldysh, pp 22 34

I08 Ibid

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
FIRST STEPS

Active research on the ambitious project began in 1947 under Keldysh's guidance. Apart

from playing the overall role of coordinating work on the project, NII-I also contracted one of

its own subdepartments to develop the kerosene-liquid oxygen rocket engine for the catapult

and the bomber itself. Leonid S. Dushkin, an engineer who had been an associate of Korolev's

in the 1930s, was appointed to lead a team to develop the main engine, designated the

RDKS-IO0. Given the fact that the most powerful Soviet liquid-propellant engine in existence

at the time had a thrust of only twenty-five tons, it was quite an ambitious undertaking for

Dushkin. NII-I also at the time commenced an extensive series of experiments, having established laboratories for gas dynamics, combustion, heat exchange, physical methods of measurement, on-board automatic instruments, and a special ground test stand for very high-thrust

rocket engines. '°9Researchon the two giant ramjet engines was tasked to the Central Institute

for Aviation Motor Building in Moscow--an institution that had perhaps the most extensive

experience in the Soviet Union in the design of such engines. The actual models would be built

in-house at NII-I under Bondaryuk.

Soviet officials also briefly attempted to involve the Germans in the work on the antipodal

bomber. In October 1947, NII-88 Chief Engineer Pobedonostsev forwarded a copy of the original S_inger-Bredt report to the Germans at Gorodomlya. Given the earlier negative assessments

from Keldysh and Abramovich, it is not surprising that the Germans had much the same

impressions of the proposal. Several major problems were found with the project, including

Singer's claim that the mass ratio of the vehicle would be 0.1. In addition, the Germans postulated that each "skip" into the atmosphere would result in unforeseen gravity loads on the

lone pilot and the wing structure, which were not accounted for in the design. They also found

problems with the required exhaust velocity, reentry, and choice of a catapult-sled for launching the vehicle. ''° Despite the German recommendations, Keldysh and his engineers continued

work on this project. In his 1947 report, Keldysh was remarkably optimistic, suggesting that

based on Nil-I's calculations, "it would be possible to create a combined propulsion unit with

liquid rocket engines and supersonic [ramjets] ensuring a range of 12thousand kilometers for

the rocket plane.' .... Researchat the institute focused on those areas in which there were inherent weaknesses in Soviet technology, such as the development of high-temperature resistant

metals and high-thrust propulsion systems. Such was the interest in the bomber that Stalin

reportedly dispatched an Air Force officer name Grigoriy A. Tokaty-Tokayev in 1948 to kidnap

Dr. S_inger,who was at the time living in France. Unfortunately for the Soviet leader, TokatyTokayev took the opportunity to defect to the West, thus providing a key source for information on the Soviet antipodal bomber effort."'

Kapustin Yar

Korolev's February 1947 letter to Special Committee No. 2 accelerated the process to select

a missile test site for testing the A-4 and R-I rockets. The committee, in cooperation with the

General Staff of the USSR Ministry of Armed Forces, had initially settled on a location on the

Azov shore, with launch routes taking the missiles over the Don steppes toward Stalingrad.

Ukrainian Communist Party First Secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev was evidently opposed to such

a move because of the possibility of "resettling '_a large amount of people from the Ukraine.

Khrushchev took the matter directly to Stalin, who asked Beriya to look elsewhere. ''_ On July

109 Lardier,L71stronautiqueSoui_tique.p. 69.

110. OrdwayandSharpe,TheRocketTeam.p. 329.

I I I. Keldysh,"On PowerPlantsfor a StratosphericHigh SpeedAircraft."

II 2. SeeG.A. Tokaty-Tokayev.GomrudeX (London:HarvillPress,1956),foranaccountof hisdefection.

113. Khrushchev,Nikita Khrushcheu,pp. 107-09.

53
54

2T, 1947, from nine other choices, the committee selected a desolate area ninety kilometers

southeast of the town of Volgograd on the banks of the Akhtuba River, a tributary of the Volga.

Officially designated State Central Range No. 4 (GTsP-4), the place was informally called

Kapustin Yar and covered a ninety-six-by-sevenW-two-kilometer stretch of desert land. The

name came from a legend that described a robber named Kapustin who had found refuge in

the small village. The primary motivations for selecting Kapustin Yar were its remoteness from

populated areas, its closeness to established railway tracks, and its proximity to the major

industrial center of Volgograd. In addition, the railroad from Stalingrad to Kapustin Yar did not

go through a single population center, thus isolating the new project from curious citizens.

Apart from selecting a site, the July decree also formalized two other issues. The first launches

of German and Soviet-built A-4 missiles were set for the period September-October 1947.

Furthermore, Lt. General Vasiliy I. Voznyuk, a forty-year-old artillery officer who like many others in the new rocketry sector had participated in the operation of the KaWushas during the

war, was appointed the first commander of the range. ''4

The construction of the modest launch facilities at the desolate area began at the height of

summer in late July and early August 1947. The conditions were terrible, as Voznyuk later recalled:

Barren steppes. 7] little vermouth. Thorn bushes, occasionally some wol['s milk. Little

water. Transport after transport arriving with construction worker[s] who had become

famous [or their efforts during the.., war. Transports and materi_l and equipment

arrived. Families arrived. Where were they to be housed? Its it turned out in tents and,

at best, in small settlements located along a small stream whose water had too high a

salt content to be used for drinking water. Sand, gravel, and bricks for building, water

and food [or personnel had to be brought in. ''_

Some of the engineers from NII-88 and elsewhere were housed in special trains that served

a multipurpose role. Most had live in tents or in the village houses of the local inhabitants, who

were none too pleased with this sudden intrusion into their lives. The temperature in summer

was as high as forty degrees Centigrade, while in winter it was known to drop to as low as

minus thirty degrees. Although spring did bring a temporary respite from the extreme weather

conditions, the workers then had to cope with deadly snakes and tarantulas.'' Necessities,

such as water, food, clothing, and shelter, were not by any means taken for granted, and there

were several fatalities.

In anticipation of the first launches in the fall, Soviet and German engineers, artillery officers, defense industrialists, secret police representatives, and Communist Party officials poured

into Kapustin Yar and were housed in rail cars and tents. Korolev and several of his leading

deputies arrived in early October at the same time as a number of notable dignitaries. These

included Chief of Chief Artillery Directorate Marshal Yakovlev, Minister of Armaments Ustinov,

Chief of the Seventh Chief Directorate Vetoshkin, and Deputy Minister of State Security Serov. ''_

For the series of launches, the Soviet government set up a temporary administrative body called

a "State Commission," whose members were the leading officials involved in the tests. Entities

114 Mozzhorin, et al. eds, Dorogi v kosmos:II, pp. 76-77: JacquesVillain, ed., Baikonour: la porte des

etoites (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994), p, 44; D. V Shatalov, "The History and Formation of the First Soviet

Cosmodrome Kapustin Yar." presentedat the 48th International Astronautical Congress, IAA-9T-IAA2 2 01, Turin.

Italy. October 6-10, 1997.

I 15 Stache.Soviet Rockets,p ITI; Tyulin, "The 'Seven'."

116. Villain. ed, Baikonour, p. 44.

I t 7. Boris Konovalov, "Soviets RocketTriumphs Started in Germany: I1" (English title), Izuestiya, March 1,

1992, p. 5: Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi u kosmos: II, p. 18

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO 1
FIRST STEPS

similar to the State Commission for P,-4 Launches were quite common in the Soviet defense

industry, existing only temporarily to certify each stage of testing of a new weapons system,

such as tanks, aircraft, and rockets. By bringing together individuals from different institutional

boundaries, governmental agencies could make more effective assessments of the capabilities

and limitations of weapons. Eventually, decades later, the same principle would come into use

in the Soviet space program,

Marshal Yakovlev, the head of the Chief Artillery Directorate, was a natural choice for the

post of chairman of the State Commission for _-4 Launches. Officially, his deputies were

Ustinov and Serov, although in actuality, much like the policy-making Special Committee

No. 2, Serov probably played a pivotal role in the new commission's operations. ''_ Numerous

German engineers, including Grottrup, Hoch, Klippel, Magnus, Meier, and Munnich, also traveled to Kapustin Yar in early fall to serve as coordinators for the launches, although they were

not official members of the State Commission. They were well acquainted with most of the

equipment at the range because a large amount of it had been directly collected at Lehesten and

Peenem/Jnde. The actual launch "pad" itself was served by special railcar built under the guidance of Grottrup in Kaliningrad. g "consultant" group of Germans for launch operations was

headed by Fritz Viebach. gpart from the Germans, a small active Soviet launch group was also

established to directly conduct the tests. ''9 tq total of about 2,200 personnel were present for

these historic launches at Kapustin Yar.

There were two different series of i¥4s prepared for launch, each comprising nine rockets.

The first, designated "series N," had been built by the Germans at the Klein Bodungen plant

and tested horizontally at Mittelwerk, The "series T" consisted of those built and assembled

using primarily German and some Soviet parts at NII-88 plant at Kaliningrad, near Moscow. The

first launch of an A-4 missile from Soviet soil took place at 1047 hours Moscow Time on

October 18, 1947, more than a year after the first U.S. A-4 test. The series T rocket lifted off

successfully, and as a result of clear weather, viewers saw the rocket for a few minutes. The

A-4 impacted some 206,7 kilometers from the launch point, a distance of thirty kilometers to the

"left" of its intended target point. '2° Initially unaware of the guidance system failure, there was

almost pandemonium at the launch site when it was announced that the missile had flown the

full intended range. Ustinov held Korolev in a bear hug and engaged in a celebratory dance with

him. Korolev and Grottrup also hugged each other in congratulations. '2_The second launch on

118. The complete State Commission was: Marshal N. D. Yakovlev (Chief of the Chief Artillery Directorate),

D. F.Ustinov (Minister of Armaments), I. A. Serov(First Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs). S. N Shishkin (Deputy

Minister of Aviation Industries), N. I. Vorontsov (Deputy Minister of Communications Equipment Industry), V. P.

Terentyev(Deputy Minister of Ship Building Industry), V. h Vinogradov (Deputy Chief of RearServices and Chief of

Staff of RearServices of the Ministry of Armed Forces),N. h Kochnov (Deputy Minister of Machine Buitding and

Instrument Building), M. P.Vorobyev (Chief of EngineeringForcesof the Ground Forces),M. K. Sukov (Chief of the

Chief Directorateof the Oxygen Industry of the Council of Ministers), S. I. Vetoshkin (Chief of the Chief Directorate

of ReactiveArmaments of the Ministry of Armaments), and P.F.Zhigarev (Deputy Commander in-Chief of the Air

Force). SeeVladimir Ivkin and Aleksandr Dolinin, "They Were the First" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda. October

31, 1997.p. 2.

119. Sergeyev.ed, Khronika osnounykh sobytiy, p 34. This team included brigade officers Major Ya. I.

Tregub(chief of launch command) and Captain N. N. Smirnitskiy (launch operator), Korolev's Deputy for Testing L.

A. Voskresenskiy(launch operator on behalf of the engineers), NII-88 Deputy EngineerB. Ye.Chertok, and NII-885

DepuWChief Designer N, A. Pilyugin. Others in the group included Lieutenant A. P.Bachurin. Captain V. D Boykov,

Lieutenant G.V. Dyadin, Pilyugin's deputy A. M. Ginsburg, and Captain V I. Menshikov, SeeMozzhorin. et al, eds..

Dorogi u kosmos' ]l, p. 78.

120. Chertok, Rakety dlyudi, pp. 186-87, 192-93: IgorYemelyanov, "This YarWasn't So Easyto Come by:

Our First Space Launch Facility Hears the Rockets Less and Less Often" (English title), Kornsotskaya prauda,

November 26. 1993, p. 3; Tyulin. "The 'Seven'."

12I. Ordway and Sharpe,The Rocket Team, p. 333.

55
56

October20,alsoofaseriesTvehicle,wasmoreofadisappointment.Duringtheactivepartof

thetrajectory,themissiledeviatedsharplytotheleftanddisappearedintotheclouds.Aftera

fewseconds,anannouncementcameoverthespeakers,withsomelementofhumor,thatthe

missilehad"fallenintheregionofSaratov,"adenselypopulatedregion.'2_

TheStateCommissionimmediatelymet,andSerovaskedthatalleffortsbe made to ascertain the possibility that the A-4 had indeed landed at Saratov. Because the request came from

Serov, the rocket builders took the order correctly as a veiled threat to their jobs. Eventually, after

tense minutes, investigators discovered that the rocket had actually landed not in Saratov, but

elsewhere, about 180 kilometers from the intended target. Ustinov immediately decided to consult German specialists on the problem. Two of them, Magnus and Hoch, were instrumental in

determining the cause of the guidance failure, allowing the tests to proceed. The last A-4s, the

tenth and eleventh missiles, were successfully launched the same day, November 13, completing the historic first long-range ballistic missile launches in the Soviet Union. Of the total

launched, five were built at Nordhausen and six at NII-88. The record of tests showed that all

were launched successfully, although only five reached their designated targets. '2_

These first A-4 tests were also important for facilitating the first high-altitude scientific

research in the Soviet Union. Scientists at the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR

Academy of Sciences had been disappointed when the postwar VR-2 I0 project had failed to

produce any fruitful results. Aware of the R-I effort at NII-88, Sergey N. Vernov, the nuclear

physicist at the institute, was instrumental in trying to create a rapport between scientists and

the engineers at NII-88, including Korolev. As a result, in 1948, the special Commission for the

Study of Stratosphere, whose work had been on hold during the war, was revived. Academy

President Sergey I. Vavilov met formally with Korolev that year to discuss a plan of operations

for allowing scientists to design payloads for the R-I missiles. By the fall of 1947, a modest

experiment regime involving the study of cosmic rays had been prepared. The nose section of

a few A-4s were equipped with an ionization chamber and a gas discharge counter with appropriate shielding: the main equipment section of the missile was modified to hold electronic

instruments for the amplification, conversion, and coding of signals, which were all connected

using a cable with antennae at the rear of the rocket. The actual cosmic ray detectors were

attached between the rear fins of the A-4. ''4 The total scientific payload mass was about

500 kilograms. The first of three of these "scientific" launches was conducted on November 2

in the presence of Dr. Vernov, the chief experimenter and at the time the deputy director of the

Scientific Research Institute for Nuclear Physics. The missile reached an altitude of eighty kilometers, providing about three minutes of good data. '_

The launches at Kapustin Yar in 194;' were clearly significant events in the history of the

Soviet rocketry and space program. Having recovered only a handful of A-4s from the wreckage

left behind by the PeenemiJnde group, it was a tribute to both the Soviet and German engineers

involved that full-scale launches of these rockets, most of them successful, were resumed in

such a short period after the end of the war. Unlike the U.S. military, which was able to capture I00 A-4s, the Soviets suffered from the limitation of having recovered approximately one122 Chertok, Rakety i lyudL p. 192: Konovalov, "Soviets RocketTriumphs Started in Germany: II."

123. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles of SergeyPavlovich Korolev," p. 226: Mozzhorin. et

al. eds..Dorogi u kosmos:II, p. ?'9:Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 192-93. P,n assessmentof the P, 4 launches is also

given in Sadovoy."I0 October--40 Yearsl_fter"

124. Stache. Souiet Rockets,p 20g: Biryukov. "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles of SergeyPavlovich

Korolev," p. 226.

125. Lardier,LTistronautique Souiotique, p. 76. Seealso Stache,Souiet Rockets,p. 208. ForVernov's role, see

L L. Layko, "I I June--g0 YearsFromthe Birth of Soviet Scholar S. N. Vernov (1910)" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsiii kosmonautiki 64 (1990): 48-54.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FIRST STEPS

fifth of that number. Given the vast number of A-4s that were brought to the White Sands

Proving Ground in New Mexico, the U.S. Army rapidly launched twenW-five of them in rapid

succession in 1946 under the first phase of Project Hermes. '2_Assessing and identifying weaknesses in the A-4 design, the military was able to capitalize on the early tests and move on to

more advanced programs. The Soviets, on the other hand, limited by the number of A-4s they

could launch, simply opted to create their own homemade version, the R-I. Thus, the results

of recovery operations by the Soviet Union and the United States in Germany in 1945 had a

direct effect on the nature of immediate postwar rocketry efforts.

The Debate Over the R-2

Korolev supported the 600-kilometer-range R-2 missile project throughout 1947, but that

project seems to have faced many delays from various sources. Initially proposed as early as

January t 947, Stalin did not seem too keen on the project, given that the A-4s had yet to fly at

the time. A meeting of the Scientific-Technical Council of NII-88 was held on April 25 to 28,

1947, at Kaliningrad in the presence of Minister of Armaments Ustinov. This allowed Korolev

to formally "defend" the R-2 draft project. '2_

The R-2 missile was a significant advance over the German-based predecessor. The basic

external structure of the R-2 was somewhat reminiscent of the A-4, but the new missile had a

range twice that of the R-I. The corresponding increase of dry mass was only about 500 kilograms, while the increase in length was about two and a half meters. Korolev's engineers incorporated at least four major innovations into the vehic[e to achieve the given performance. One

of the two propellant tanks of the missile, the one carrying ethyl alcohol, was incorporated as

an integral part of the overall structure of the rocket, often called a "monocoque" design,

Engineers had to learn to master the complex thermal processes on the exterior of the vehicle

because of such a scheme, which itself contributed to changing internal pressure in the tank.

A monocoque design for the liquid oxygen tank was deemed too complex because of the uncertainties in its behavior in flight, although research was already ongoing on the means to incorporate such practices in succeeding designs. The second major design improvement was the

use of a separable warhead, making it possible to have a much lighter rocket body, because thermal insulation would prove to be unnecessary for the main body after the separation of the warhead and the missile. This problem posed one of the greater challenges for Soviet engineers and

required research on coordinating the separation of the two parts, elements of the trajectories,

precise knowledge of engine performance, and stabilization of the nose section following separation. The R-2 also had a much improved guidance system, developed in cooperation with

groups under Chertok, Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, and Kuznetsov, which would allow increased targeting accuracy and also provide easier access during prelaunch operations to decrease the time

required for preparing launches. Finally, the missile would use an uprated version of the R-I's

RD-100, designated the RD-101, with a thrust of thirty-five tons, and developed at OKB-456

under Chief Designer Glushko. The new engine was achieved by increasing the concentration

of ethyl alcohol and raising combustion pressure. '_ While the total length of the new missile

126. Andrew Wilson, The EagleHas Wings: TheStory of Timerican SpaceExploration: 1945-1975 (London:

BIS, 1982), p. 2: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, pp. 353-54. A total of sixty-four A-4s were launched

between April 16, 1946,and September 19, 1952, from White Sands.

127. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles of SergeyPavlovich Korolev," p. 226: Tyulin, "The

'Seven'." This was the first-ever meeting of the Scientific Technical Council of NII-88. SeeYu A. Mozzhorin, "The

Central Scientific-ResearchInstitute for Machine Building--The Chief Center of the Soviet Rocket-SpaceIndustry"

(English title),/z istorii aviatsii i kosmonavtiki 60 (1990): 20-40.

128, Keldysh, ed_ Tvorcheskoyenaslediye akademika SergeyaPavlovicha Koroleua, p. S44: Stache, Soviet

Rockets. pp. 175-17. The R-2also had a new telemetry system named Don.

57
58

was 17.65 meters, the maximum body diameter was the same as the R-I, 1.65 meters. The total

fueled mass was fifteen and a half tons.

The engineers froze the basic design elements of the R-2 plan by April 1947.Although the

technical improvements were theoretically sound, the engineers did face serious problems translating their plans into reality. Among the major factors were the severe lack of raw materials and

the absence of many important industries, such as advanced metallurgy, which had to be built

from scratch. The industrial infrastructure for manufacturing the myriad of parts was almost

nonexistent at the time, and engineers often had to scrounge through their own possessions for

items such as springs and screws. The issue of quality control would also become a very important issue given the expenses associated with losing complete missiles because of faulty assembly. Finally, the Soviets were forced for the first time to create ground testing infrastructure for

testing key elements of the missile prior to launches. One of the first dedicated engine testing

facilities was established in July t947 as Branch No. 2 of NII-88, about seventeen kilometers

north of Zagorsk near Moscow, initially under the leadership of Gleb M. Tabakov.'2_The R-I's

RD-I00 was the first engine fired on static stands at the branch, while units for surface-to-air

missiles developed at the NII-88 were also among those tested during 1947-48.

The development of the R-2 missile ran into serious problems soon after the April meeting. On June 4, 1947, NII-88 Director Maj. General Gonor hosted another meeting to discuss

the long-range goals of the German specialists affiliated with the institute. At the meeting,

Grottrup, the leading German rocketry specialist in the Soviet Union, proposed the development

of a new missile designated the G- t (later to be confusingly called the R-I0) as a successor project to the R- t, Not surprisingly, there was a much resistance on the part of Soviet engineers to

any German proposal that was competitive with their own plans. In this case, the G-I, with a

range of 600 kilometers, had capabilities and design elements very similar to Korolev's R-2. The

latter was particularly stubborn in his opposition to the G-I plan. One of his closest associates,

NII-88 Deputy Chief Engineer Chertok, later recalled that Korolev's resistance was based more

on personal reasons than any technical considerations. Having suffered through the humiliation

of the Great Purges, he had watched the Soviet rocketry effort crumble while the Germans had

advanced swiftly with their ambitious A-4s. His hostility to the Germans and their designs in

part contributed to his vigorous opposition to creating the R-I copy of the g-4, a matter that

resulted in significant friction with Minister of Armaments Ustinov. ''° The industrial leaders of

the missile industry, in the person of not only Llstinov, but also Ryabikov, Vetoshkin, and others, were evidently in favor of allowing the German engineers a free reign in their design projects. This high level of support was crucial in ensuring that Grottrup's team could accelerate

their work on the G-I after theJune meeting. To the dismay of Soviet engineers, relevant departments at the institute were subordinated to the Germans to assist them in their calculations in

the ensuing months. It is quite likely that Korolev's engineers investigated the design characteristics of many of the German design characteristics for the G-I for their relevance to the R-2

project, but ultimately the "German diversion" seems to have siphoned off resources for work

on the Soviet R-2 missile, delaying its overall progress.

g preliminary draft plan for the German G-I was discussed at a meeting of the ScientificTechnical Council of NII-88 on September 25, 1947. Present were the Germans Grottrup,

Llmpfenbach, Hoch, Albring, Anders, Wolff, and Sheller, along with Chief of the Seventh Chief

Directorate of the Ministry of Armaments Vetoshkin and NII-88 Chief Engineer

129. Mozzhorin,et aL, eds.,Dorogiu kosmos:II, pp. 64-65. Othersourcesstatethat first headof Branch

No. 2 wasV. S.Shachin.

130. Chertok.Raketyi lyudLpp. 199-200.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

Pobedonostsev. TM Korolev himself was not in attendance, but he was represented by two of his

deputies, Mishin and Bushuyev. The design that the Grottrup team presented to the leadership

of the institute had a number of similarities to the Soviet R-2, including the use of a separate

payload section for the warhead and the 600-kilometer range for the missile. There were also

major differences between the two vehicles. Both the liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol tanks on

the G-I had a monocoque structure made of very thin aluminum or steel, unlike the R-2, which

only had one monocoque tank. The Germans increased engine thrust to thirty-two tons by

adopting innovative methods for regulating propellant flow rates. A mass saving of about

180 kilograms was achieved by dispensing with the high-test peroxide generator in favor of

using gases diverted from the combustion chamber to turn the turbopumps. The guidance and

control systems for the G-I were also relocated at the base of the missile in contrast to the forward end on the A-4. Finally, the guidance system would use a then-sophisticated method

known as "beam-riding," which essentially transferred a major portion of such systems to

ground stations, thus saving mass on the rocket itself. The missile looked similar to the A-4,

with a length of 14.3 meters and a total mass of 18.6 tons. According to Grottrup, the new

design would allow vastly increased targeting precision, a much shorter launch preparation

time, and twice as much range compared with the A-4. The payload mass would also rise from

the A-4's 0.74 tons to a new peak of 0.95 tons. '_

Grottrup made a very persuasive case to the NII-88 leadership, and he asked for formal

approval of the G- I project, shrewdly proposing that both the R-2 and the G-I be allowed to

proceed in parallel and completely independently of each other. Many of the Soviet engineers

predictably put up resistance. Mishin, one of the authors of the Soviet R-2, argued that the

institute had two possible roads: exploiting the current technology available and developing a

missile (the R-2), which had a real possibility of being created in a short time, or developing a

rocket (the G-I ), which would necessitate a radical restructuring of the existing Soviet testing

and manufacturing base. '_ In its final decision, the council of the institute, while mentioning

the several attributes of the G-I, declined to approve a full-scale program to develop the G-I,

instead asking that Grottrup's group present a formal and complete "draft plan" for the missile

at a following meeting.'_4 It was evidently a means to delay decisive action on the German project and, in an overall sense, a policy on the use of German expertise in the rocketry industry

in the Soviet Union. The decision pleased no one and clearly indicated that the leadership of

the Ministry of Armaments, in particular Ustinov and Vetoshkin, were at odds with the engineers in their view on the use of German engineers in the Soviet missile program. The matter

was obviously a very sensitive issue. While most Soviet officials were reluctant to use German

expertise, many were amenable to compromise on the issue to accelerate the development of

ballistic missile technology in the Soviet Union. Formally establishing a mechanism for doing

this was much harder. Korolev could clearly not be expected to work under Grottrup, while if

the roles were reversed, Korolev would no doubt exclude Grottrup's group from all work. A third

alternative was equally unpromising: allowing two parallel and independent development projects, which was well outside the capacity of funding at the Ministry of Armaments.

131 Among the others present were V. I. Kuznetsov (NII-IO Chief Designer). M, S. Ryazanskiy (NII-885

Chief Designer), B. Ye. Chertok (NII-88 Deputy Chief Engineer), A. M. Isayev (NII-I Chief Designer), M K.

Tikhonravov (NIl-4 Deputy Director). V. A. Trapeznikov (Automation Institute of the USSRAcademy of Sciences

Director). A. A Kosmodemyanskiy (N. Ye.Zhukovskiy EngineeringAcademy Professorand Special Committee No.

2), and G, A. Nikolayev (Rector of the Bauman MVTU), Seeibid., p. 202.

132 ClA Office of Scientific Intelligence. Scientific Research Institute and Experimental Factory 88 for Guided

Missile Deuelopment. Moskua/Kalinin,grad. OSI C-RA/60-2, March 4, 1960, p. ?; Ordway and Sharpe. The Rocket

Team. pp. 329-3 I; Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 202-04; Bork and Sadovoj, "On the History of Rocketry."

133. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 204.

134. An excerpt from the original document is reproduced in ibid., p. 207.

59
60

ImmediatelyaftertheSeptember1947meeting,theGermansweregivenatemporarylift;

therewasasubtleshiftinfavoroftheirG-Iplan.Itwastobearelativelyshortimetocelebratevictory,glthoughtheGermansspentthebetterpartof1948workingontheG-Iproject,

thereweresomeunexpectedinstitutionalchanges.Beginningintheearlymonthsoftheyear,

theSovietsbeganrelocatingalloftheremainingGermanstoGorodomlyaIslandinLakeSeliger.

GrottruphimselfleftMoscowtojoinNII-88'sBranchNo.I in February.ByMay,almostallof

theGermanshaddepartedthemaininstituteofficesatKatiningrad,ndfewwereever to visit

again. The Germans also later reported that their pay rates were significantly reduced. In addition, Grottrup's position in the German hierarchy was called into doubt by a combination of

Soviet hostility and internal struggle among the Germans themselves. The pace of work on the

G-I dramatically decreased in 1948, as Grottrup began to raise formal complaints with his

Soviet bosses, arguing that only a few of the planned experiments on the project had been

allowed to proceed. '_

The Germans may have lost their access to Kaliningrad, but this did not accelerate a final

definitive decision between the Soviet R-2 and the German G-I. Korolev's long battle over the

R-2 had actually begun more than a year before when he had taken the matter to Stalin himself. On April 14, t947, he was escorted into the Kremlin to meet the Soviet leader in person

for the first time. :-'_Over the years, Korolev gave wildly contradictory accounts of that meeting.

In a rare interview with a Soviet journalist in 1963, he remembered:

I had been given the assignment to report to Stalin about the development of the new rocket .... He listened silently at first, hardly taking his pipe out of his mouth. Sometimes he

interrupted me, asking terse questions. I can't recount all the details .... I had a short..,

synopsis report which I was not allowed to take with myself Stalin replied with a greeting but did not oiler his hand. Stalin was outwardly restrained. I could not tell whether he

approved o[ what I was saying or not. [He] said "no" enough times that these "no's"

became the law [or the moment. These were the conditions to[ the meeting]. '_

In a letter to his wife written after Stalin's death in 1953, Korolev recalled that he was very

nervous at the meeting, which was attended by many others, including Minister of Armaments

Llstinov. Stalin apparently paced around his office during the entire hour, asking many pointed

and pertinent questions about the state of the missile program. '_8One of those attending was

Korolev's first deputy, Vasiliy P. Mishin, who remembers:

135. Ibid. pp 210-1 t: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team. p. 335.

136. The actual date of Korolev's meeting with Stalin has been the subject of some speculation An in-depth

analysis is included in Golovanov, Korolev. pp. 390-98, in which the author concludes that the meeting took place

,n 1949 The evidence [or 1947. 1948, and 1949is equally compelling. In an interview in 1963, Korolev mentioned

1941as the year. whereasTyulins recollections set it in 1948 SeeTyulin. "The 'Seven'." Finally. Golovanov argues.

based on the remembrances of Chief Designer Kuznetsov. that it was in 1949. In a letter to his wife [rom 1953.

Korolev remembered the exact date as March 9 without naming a year.

137. Romanov,Koroteu. pp. I0-I I. This interview was held on November 30, 1963,by T_SS correspondent

g. P Romanov. Many censored and alteredversions of the interview were published over the yearsin different pub

lications The complete unexpurgated text was finally allowed to be published in 1996 in Romanov, Korolev. pp

5-20. For one "censored" version of the interview, see Ivan Borisenkoand Alexander Romanov, Where All Roads

Lead to SpaceBegin [Moscow: ProgressPublishers, 1982). pp. 40-43,

138. Golovanov. Korotev.p 391-92.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

I can remember that [Stalin] walked around the room smoking his pipe. breaking papyrosi [cigarettes] and putting tobacco in. There were about a hundred people there--marshals, ministers, officials o[ the Party. It was in the building of the Oentral Committee

and the subject was liquid rockets. Stalin was a strong supporter of their development.

The U.S. had naval bases in Europe, owned the _-bomb. They didn't really need the

IOBM. They could reach the USSR with bombers. '_9

The Soviet leader asked Korolev about his impressions on the comparative uses of rockets versus bombers in wartime situations, to which Korolev summarized the possible advantages of the

former. After the end of the meeting, Korolev, on request from Stalin, wrote up a short report on

the spot on the rockets-versus-bombers discussion and departed. ''_°The influence of Korolev's

report is still open to interpretation. The chief designer himself recalled somewhat ambiguously:

This meeting played its positive role. Apparently Stalin and his military advisers seemed

to understand that the first experiments at designing jet aircraft, artillery units, and other

things could in the future produce far-reaching positive results.'4'

One of Korolev's goals at the meeting had evidently been to convince Stalin of the need to

move ahead with the longer range R-2 missile. The Soviet leader declined to approve such a

strategy, electing to maintain focus on the Soviet copy of the German A-4 missile. It would be

exactly a year before the Council of Ministers formally adopted a decree on the future of the

missile program. Dated April 14, 1948, the resolution called for the development, testing, and

use of the R-I missile in the Soviet Union. The same document sanctioned "scientific and

experimental work" for the eventual creation of the 600-kilometer-range R-2 missile. '4_

Stalin's decision no doubt gave some impetus to Korolev's arguments against the G-I. The

continuing battle between the German and Soviet proposals continued throughout the year as

the Germans prepared a huge and detailed draft plan for the their missile. The conflict between

the R-2 and the G-I, however, took a hiatus in the fall of 1948 as Soviet engineers once again

trekked to the steppes at Kapustin Yar for the very first launches of a Soviet-made long-range

ballistic missile. Unlike the earlier A-4 tests in 1947, this time none of the Germans were invited, a clear indication of their isolation from the mainstream Soviet program. The test program

for the R-1 envisaged two separate series of launches, the first consisting of about a dozen vehicles primarily to verify the correctness of the newly introduced industrial design and manufacturing methods in the Soviet Union. The second series, to consist of about twenty missiles,

would be flown to increase reliability and eliminate defects that would show up in the first

series. '43The construction of the first flight articles began in May 1948. While the missiles were

officially referred to as R-I, in all technical documentation, the vehicle was designated "product 8KI I." a style of nomenclature, using a number-letter-number system, that would be continued into the space era.

The State Commission for testing the R-I missiles was chaired by Chief of the Seventh

Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Armaments Vetoshkin. His deputy on the commission was

Maj. General Sokolov. the head of the Fourth Directorate of the Chief Artillery Directorate. who

139. Harford. Korotev, p. 234.

140. Golovanov, Korolev, p, 396; Tyulin, "The 'Seven'."

141. Romanov,Korolev, p. I1: Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1972), p. 97; g. Romanov,Spacecra[t Designer The Storyo[ SergeiKorotev (Moscow: Novosti PressAgency, 1976).

p. 27.

142. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 310: Sadovoy,"10 October 40 YearsAfter."

143. Sadovoy," 10 October--40 YearsAfter."

61
62

wasresponsibleforthehundredsofartillerypersonnelinvolvedin theprogram.Korolevwas

theonlyengineerwhowasaformalmemberofthecommission,althoughthefiveotherindividualsintheCouncilofChiefDesignersservedastechnicaladvisors.'44Thefirsttwolaunch

attemptsinmid-Septemberhadtobepostponedbecauseofequipmentfailures.Thethirdvehicle,thefirsttogetoffthelaunchpad,flewintotheskiesonSeptember17,butsufferedamajor

controlsystemsfailure.'4_Almostimmediatelyfollowingliftoff,theR-Iveeredfifty-onedegrees

offitsmaintrajectory,flewnearlyhorizontalto theground,andlandedonlytenkilometers

fromthelaunchsite.Theengineersapparentlyquicklydeterminedthecauseofthemalfunction,forasecondR-Iwaslaunchedsoonafter.Thisonealso[ailed,thistimebecauseofamalfunctioninanoxygenvalveintheengine'scombustionchamber.TheR-Ifinallyliftedoffon

itsfirstsuccessfulflightonOctobert0,1948,travelingafullrangeof288kilometersandattainingatopvelocityof 1,530kilometerspersecond.A secondpartiallysuccessfullaunchtook

placethreedayslater.Afterthesetests,LlstinovandMarshalsYakovlev and Voronov arrived at

Kapustin Yar as observers, lending an unusual importance to the tests. '46 As with the A-4

launches in 1947, agents from the state security apparatus sent by Col. General Serov were on

hand at the testing ground, providing a general feeling of uneasiness to all the proceedings.

Weather was also a problem and at least one of the launches, on November I, had to be postponed because of heavy fog. In addition, a technician was killed while checking a newly

designed gangway to the missile. The final R-1 vehicle was launched on November 5, the ninth

successful flight out of twelve launches. '4_

The nine launches that were deemed successful were classified on the basis of the achieved

range, about 300 kilometers on each flight. The accuracy of the missiles, however, left much to

be desired. Only one of the vehicles impacted in the designated sixteen-by-eight-kilometer target area, raising serious concerns about the missile's possible use in battle. The poor record of

the launches instigated a minor altercation between Ustinov and Marshal Yakovlev, representing different interests of the Soviet government. '4_The latter, speaking for those that would

eventually use the missile as a weapon, was not pleased about the outcome of the launches. It

was a debate that would continue for several years until the Soviet missile finally outgrew its

connection to the German P,-4 missile. In retrospect, these launches comprised a critical period in the development of the future Soviet missile and space industry: many new technologies

were introduced in the production process. New techniques, such as those for the manufacture

of large sheets of special magnesium steels and magnesium alloys, and new types of cables,

relays and sensors, and materials-handling machinery were developed for the R-I. In addition,

the Ministry of Armaments concurrently created assemblies for the storage and transporting of

liquid oxygen with refueling equipment, and it also developed new methods for welding and

protective coatings for the R-I warheads. '4_These industries, a total of thirty-five Scientific

144 The other membersof the State Commission for the R-I were: Lt, Colonel V. I. Voznyuk (Commander

of the GTsP-4), Maj General L. R. Gonor (Director of the NII-8B), and industrial representativesG, I. Muravyev,

V. N Tretyakov, S M. Vladimirskiy. and Yeremeyev.Additional technical advisors were G I. Degtyarenko and

M. I. Likhnitskiy. Seeibid.: Chertok. Rakety i lyudi, p. 313.

145. Biryukov. "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles of SergeyPavlovich Korolev." p. 227: G _q Kustova,

ed.. Ot peruogo Sputnika do "Energii"-"Burana" i "Mira" (Moscow: RKK Energiya. 1994), p. 6

146. Biryukov. "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles of SergeyPavlovich Korotev," p. 227: Lardier,

L7%tronautiqueSouietique. p. 80: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 317-19

147. Konovalov, "Soviets Rocket Triumphs Started in Germany: II." Note that another source suggeststhat

there were nine launches, of which only one (on October I0) reachedits target. SeeYu. E Semenov, ed, RaketnoKosmieheskayaKorporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S R Koroleua (Moscow: RKK Energiya, 1996), p. 32.

148. Golovanov, Koroleu,pp. 402-03: Sadovoy, " I0 October 40 Yearst_fter."

149 Mozzhorin and Yeremenko, "From the History of Space Science": Mozzhorin and Yeremenko, "From

the History of Space Science:I1."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

Research Institutes, and eighteen manufacturing plants later facilitated the relatively quick and

efficient production of larger and more powerful missiles.

Korolev and his engineers returned from Kapustin Yar to Kaliningrad in time to hear the

revised report by the German engineers on their G-I study. On December 18, 1948, the members of the Scientific-Technical Council of NII-88 gathered to make a final decision on the

German proposal. Sitting in for the absent NII-88 director was Maj. General Aleksey S.

Spiridinov, an artillery officer who had hitherto served as a liaison contact between the

Germans and the Soviets. The entire German "high command," including Grottrup, Albring,

Blass, Hoch, Muller, Rudolf, Umpfenbach, and Wolff, were in attendance. Representing the

Soviet assessment team were Bushuyev, Isayev, and Lapshin from NII-88 and Chief Designer

Glushko from OKB-456. Once again, Korolev was absent, perhaps to preclude the Germans

from acquiring information on the real power behind the ballistic missile program. In his report,

Grottrup announced that his group, over the course of the past year, had managed to increase

the design range of the G-I from 600 kilometers to 810 kilometers and had also dramatically

increased targeting accuracy. Dr. Hoch, the author of the new guidance system, also expounded on the advantages of the new redesigned missile. After a long and sometimes acrimonious

session, punctuated for the first time by a discussion of the political implications of using

German expertise, the council formally terminated the parallel approach of work on the R-2 and

the G-I, which had been continuing for close to two years by then. Instead, taking what was

considered "decisive" action, the institute leadership did not approve creation of the G-I,

although Spiridinov explained that the Germans would be allowed to continue work on their

coveted missile. ''°

It was an extremely significant decision that had a profound effect on the role of the German

group on the further development of long-range ballistic missiles in the Soviet Union. The

Germans continued to work on several more major rocketry projects, but none played as major

a role in Soviet planning as the G-I. Work on that effort was continued into 1949 as Grottrup's

group focused on structural aspects and the Doppler radio system of the missile. '_' By then, however, it was increasingly clear that the future did not hold much promise. As the Germans settled into studying further missile projects in the ensuing years, each one raised hopes that the

Soviet side would finally give them the green light to create their first rocket in metal.

Stratonauts and Multistage Rockets

Mikhail K. Tikhonravov, the man who had designed the first Soviet liquid-propellant rocket, the 09, had, as with many of the other engineers of NIl-3, moved from project to project,

first because of the Purges and then as a result of the war. After Korolev's arrest in 1938, the

two did not work together in any capacity, and their efforts moved in different paths. The older

of the two--he was forty-five years old at the end of the war--Tikhonravov had established a

group at Nil-I's Branch No. 2 during the last years of the war to develop a solid-propellant rocket for scientific experiments. When this project, the VR-2 I0, failed to yield any positive results,

he threw his lot into a much more ambitious plan, one with which he had been toying since

at least the late 1930s.

In early 1945, Tikhonravov brought together a group of engineers at the institute to work

on a design for developing a high-altitude rocket for carrying two passengers to an altitude of

p, 7.

150. Chertok,Raketyi lyudi, pp.212,218:CIAOfficeof ScientificIntelligence,ScientificResearchInstitute,

15I. OrdwayandSharpe,TheRocketTeam.p. 335.

63
64

190 kilometers, '_ Designated the VR-190 proposal, it was the very first concrete project in the

Soviet Union for launching humans into space. Tikhonravov's plan envisioned the use of a

modified _-4 rocket with a recoverable nose cone containing a pressurized cockpit for carrying

two "stratonauts." '" The passengers would remain in an upright position in the capsule from

launch until touchdown in two custom-made couches, Tikhonravov formulated four primary

goals for the project:

• To conduct research on the effects of the temporary weightlessness on humans during freefall

• To carry out investigations on shifts in the center of gravity in the cabin and the movement

of the center of gravity subsequent to the separation of the nose cone from the main rocket

• To acquire information on the density, pressure, and temperature of the upper atmosphere

• To test the operational reliability of instruments for separation, descent, stabilization, and

landing of the cockpit

Tikhonravov even went so far as to contract out the development of the special twopassenger cabin for the VR-190 to a designer, g. V. gfanasyev, at OKB-115, an organization led

by the famous Soviet aviation designer Aleksandr S. Yakovlev. Work on a parachute

system for the recovery capsule began simultaneously in May 1946.

Many of the design aspects of the VR-190 were remarkably advanced for the time. In his

conception of the spacecraft, Tikhonravov proposed the use of the following:

• A parachute system for returning to Earth

• A braking rocket engine for soft landing the cabin on the ground

• A system using explosive bolts to separate the cabin from the launcher

• A special probe extended downward beneath the cabin to serve as a sensor to trigger the

soft-landing engines

• A pressurized cockpit with fully equipped life-support systems, thus bypassing the need for a

catapult or ejection seats

• g system of low-thrust attitude control engines to maneuver the vehicle during its vertical

trajectory beyond the atmosphere

Remarkably, all six of these design elements would be adopted for Soviet piloted spacecraft by

the early 1960s. More impressively, Tikhonravov proposed the use of an "arched" protective

heat shield, a design not unlike the one used today on the Soyuz spacecraft. '_

Not wanting his idea to languish from a lack of interest, Tikhonravov tried to elicit interest

from authorities all the way at the top of the Soviet leadership. In June 1946, he and his deputy,

Nikolay G. Chernyshov, authored a letter to Stalin on the VR-190:

152. This group included N. G. Chernyshov, V, N, Galkovskiy,P. I. Ivanov, A. F Krutov, G. M Moskalenko,

and V. A. Shtokolov.

153 V N. Galkovskiy and G. M. Moskalenko. "The VR-190 Project--g Stepin the Road to the Creation of

Space Ships" (English title). /z istorii aulatsii i kosmonautiki 42 (1980): 28-30: Yevgeniy Ryabchikov, "A Russian

Story. In One Moment Sputnik Became Part of the Vocabulary of Mankind. The Beginning of the Space Era

Revealed" (English title), Ogonek 40 (October 3-I0, 1987): I-3; Stache,3ouiet Rockets.pp. 251-58.

154. Ibid.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
FIRST STEPS

Dear Comrade Stalin! We have developed a plan for

a high-altitude Soviet rocket for lifting two humans

and scientific apparatus to an altitude o[ 190 kilometers. The plan is based on using equipment from the

captured V-2 missile, and allows for realization in the

shortest time.., for returning, the cabin has loadbearing parachutes, [and] a braking unit in the form

of [liquid propellant rocket engines], installed together with its propellant tanks at the base of the cabin•

• .. The practical realization of the project would be

possible, given the creation of the required conditions, in close to a year's time!..."

At the same time, Tikhonravov also collated his group's

research and presented the results to the Collegium of the

Ministry of the Aviation Industry, the supervising authority

over NII-I. Reactions from both Stalin and the ministry were

remarkably positive. The bureaucrats all nodded with approval

at the plan and gave the project % positive review and recommendation," while Stalin himself wrote back that "the proposal is interesting--please examine for its realization. "'s_

Unfortunately, it seems that bureaucratic gridlock killed the

effort. Because of "a number of organizational difficulties," the

Ministry of the Aviation Industry never set about funding the

idea, and Tikhonravov's report ended up in the ministry's

library "gathering dust. "_" One can imagine aviation minister

Shakhurin's views on piloted spaceflight given his complete

and total noninterest in rocketry in general.

In late 1946, Nil-t was reorganized to carry out dedicated

work on the S_nger-Bredt antipodal bomber, and consequently Tikhonravov's group at its Branch No. 2 was transferred out

to another military institute, NIl-4, at which scientific research

was geared completely for purposes of defense. NIl-4 itself was

soon brought under the umbrella of a new entity, the USSR

Academy of Artillery Sciences. Established on October II,

1946. this academy, under Lt. General Anatoliy g. Blagonravov,

was formed to provide an institutional setting for educating a

new generation of artillery experts in the technical theories of

long-range ballistic missiles. '5_For the Tikhonravov group, work

drawing of the VR-190,the very

first Soviet conception of a piloted

spacecraft in the postwar era

Conceived by Mikhail Tikhonravov

at NII-I in 1945, the VRdgo

would carry two "stratonauts"

strapped in an upright position on a

200-kilometer "hop" into the upper

atmosphere.Many design

innovations from the project were

later usedin the 1960s-era

spacecraft, such as Voskhod and

Soyuz

(files of 7tsi[ Siddiqi)

at NIl-4 was initially focused on other unrelated areas, and they were forced to follow up engineering work on the VR-190 plan in their own spare time. '_ Surprisingly, it seems that this first

155. Valeriy Baberdin, "Military SpaceStarted Hereand Not Only Military" (Englishtitle), Krasnaya zvezda,

April 30, 1994, p. 4.

156. Ibid: Anatoliy Shiryayev and Valeriy Baberdin, "Before the First Leap Into Space" (English title),

Krasnaya zvezda, April 27, 1996, p. 5: Galkovskiy and Moskalenko, "The VR-190 Project."

157. Shiryayev and Baberdin, 1996: Galkovskiy and Moskalenko. "The VR-190 Project."

158. CIA, Soviet Capabilities and Probable Programsin the C_uidedMissile Field, NIE-II-6-54, October 5,

1954.p. 29: Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi u kosmos: II, p. 9 I,

159 Stache, Soviet Rockets.p. 258: Lardier, L',,qstronautiqueSovi_tique, p 77.

65
66

pilotedspaceeffort had not been coordinated with NII-88 and in particular Korolev's group.

The two had evidently discussed the project in mid-1945, but Korolev was clearly engaged in

more earthly pursuits at the time, and he was not about to set off on a somewhat farfetched

adventure only one year after his release from confinement. In addition, Korolev was a little

more hesitant than Tikhonravov in believing that piloted spaceflight would be facilitated by ballistic missiles. Given Korolev's interest in rocket-powered airplanes, this is not so surprising.

From the early 1930s on, he had preferred the rocket airplane as a means to explore the upper

atmosphere. It was only in the immediate postwar years that there was a fundamental shift in

his strategy, perhaps prompted by the successes of the German A-4 missile.

The changes with NII-I and NII-4 slowed down the VR-190 project, and by early 1947,

much of the early momentum had been lost. That same year, Tikhonravov withdrew from work

on the project, and the program was delegated to a different subdivision in the institute.

Redesignated a "rocket probe" and given a "different tenor," the VR-190 plan was pursued further by others, and in 1948, a preliminary plan for the project was presented for tentative

approval by the Scientific-Technical Council of NII-4. '°° The council allowed further work on the

project with one modification--the launch of humans in the plan was dropped in favor of using

dogs. The following year, the institute finally terminated the project, possibly motivated by

Korolev's own plans to modify the R-I into a missile for scientific purposes. Thus ended the

first serious investigations in the Soviet Union in the interest of piloted spaceflight. The issue

would not be taken up again for several years.

Tikhonravov's move to a new sector of NII-4 in 1947 (the "first sector") as a deputy director of institute precipitated a second major first for the Soviet rocketry program: serious investigations into the possibility of designing very powerful ballistic missiles that could be used to

potentially launch artificial satellites. The same year, on September 16, he established a small

group under Pavel I. Ivanov at the institute to conduct research on the development of multistage rockets. Although not specifically stated as such, the rationale for conducting the study,

at least on Tikhonravov's part, was to develop a satellite launch vehicle in the near future using

available Soviet technology. The responsibility of exploring the details of various possible configurations of multistage long-range ballistic missiles was assigned to Vladimir Ik Shtokolov

and Igor M. Yatsunskiy, two young engineers in Tikhonravov's employ who had both worked

on the VR-190. In December 1947, the group produced a preliminary report, which included

analyses of several different variants of so-called "composite" missiles, in which stages would

be discarded following the depletion of propellant, the overall mass of the booster would be

lightened, and consequently velocity would be increased. '6'

Utilizing the ground-breaking theories of Tsiolkovskiy, Ivanov's group under Tikhonravov's

direction studied two possible variants of combining stages into one multistage booster. The

first was a "tandem" arrangement, with two stages attached successively, and the second was

the "cluster" scheme, with various stages connected in parallel. Despite the apparent simplicity and elegance of the tandem scheme, the engineers saw at least two major drawbacks in that

variant. First, Tikhonravov believed that the problems of developing a rocket engine to fire in

vacuum, as would be required for a tandem configuration, might prove to be insurmountable

16o. I. M. Yatsunskiy, "On the Activities of M K. Tikhonravov in the Period From 1947 to 19S3 on

Substantiating the Possibility of Creation of Composite Missiles" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonnutiki 42

( 1980): 31-38. An English title of this is availableas I. M. Yatsunsky,"The Role of Mikhail Klavdiyevich Tikhonravov

in Creating Stage Rockets, 1947-1953," in John Becklake,ed., History o[ Rocketry and ,Zistronautics: Vol. I I (San

Diego: American Astronautical Society, 1995), pp. 451-56. Seealso Stache, Soviet Rockets,pp. 258-59.

161. B. N. Kantemirov, "15 July--40 YearsFrom the Report of M. K. Tikhonravov on the Possibility of

Achieving Cosmic Velocity Using the Current Levelof Technology" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosrnonautiki

59 (1989): 65-76: Yu. V. Biryukov, "Memorable Dates" (English title), Novosti kosmonnvtiki 13 (June 16-29. 1997):

68-10.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
FIRST STEPS

in the coming years. Second, the extra length of a tandem arrangement of stages would also

pose complicated manufacturing problems. These factors prompted Ivanov's group to focus on

duster-staged rockets in which all the stages would fire at liftoff. In such a design, the length

of the missile would be much less than a tandem variant, in fact being equal to the longest

rocket forming the cluster. Severalvariations of the cluster arrangement were studied, including

one with identical boosters linked together and one with differently sized rockets connected

together in parallel./_ further design, called "missile complexes," envisioned the use of several boosters connected together in parallel, each of them being a multistage vehicle itself. _6_

Because of the absence of electronic computers, the team performed all the mathematical calculations by hand, although this apparently did not slow down the group's work.

In December 1947, Tikhonravov produced a preliminary report on the topic, which specified configurations and capabilities of both tandem- and cluster-type long-range missiles. In the

following months, Shtokolov and Yatsunskiy carried out hundreds of calculations that began to

show the advantages of the cluster scheme, which by this time was given the name "packet."

In their work, the two engineers examined a broad range of topics, including the means to link

up the various rockets in parallel, possible ways to separate the strap-ons, and also ballistics for

the active part of the trajectory. In their formal documentation, the researchers made no mention of a satellite launch vehicle, although the work was clearly aimed at achieving orbital velocity. Tikhonravov's engineers were not the only individuals at Nil-4 involved in space-related

themes. The institute's deputy director for science, Maj. General Yakov B. Shot, focused on a

traditional successively staged missile, while institute Director Maj. General Nesterenko,

Chernyshov, and others were also participants in "discussions" on space themes. '_3

In early 1948, despite the fact that the results of the study on packets were still somewhat

preliminary, Tikhonravov orally presented a summary of the investigations to the ScientificTechnical Council of the institute. '_4The reception of his proposal was divided. The less than

supportive response did not deter Tikhonravov, and he decided to present the paper, now titled

"Paths to Accomplishing Great Ranges by Firing Missiles," at the annual meeting of the

/_cademy of grtillery Sciences, the overseeing authority over NIl-4. Despite Nesterenko's apparent support, Academy President Blagonravov was not easily convinced of the propitiousness of

allowing a presentation of the paper. Fully aware of Tikhonravov's ideas of a satellite launch

vehicle, Blagonravov told Tikhonravov: "The topic is interesting. But we cannot include your

report. Nobody would understand why .... They would accuse us of getting involved in things

we do not need to get involved in.... "'_ Tikhonravov was not easily discouraged and requested a follow-up meeting with Blagonravov the next day. This time, the Blagonravov agreed to

the request, warning Tikhonravov: "Be prepared--we will blush together.' ....

On July 14, 1948, Tikhonravov read his report at the Academy of Artillery Sciences in the

presence of a large group of prominent dignitaries from the military/_7 Apart from Blagonravov

and Nesterenko, Chief Designer Korolev was also present, on visit from NII-88. The audience

listened in pin-drop silence to Tikhonravov's speech "with tremendous attention" as he argued

persuasively that the design of rockets capable of reaching very high altitudes and velocities was

technologically feasible. Not surprisingly, the reaction of most of the audience was negative.

One high-ranking military official reportedly said, "The institute must not have [had] much to

162, Kantemirov, "15 July--40 Years": Yatsunskiy, "On the Activities o[ M, K. Tikhonravov."

163. Mozzhorin, et al.. eds., Dorogi u kosmos IL p. 9 I.

164. Kantemirov, " 15 July--40 Years."

165. Yaroslav Golovanov, "The Beginning of the Space Era" (English title). Prauda, October 4, 1987, p. 3.

166. Ibid.

167. Yatsunskiy, "On the Activities of M. K. Tikhonravov," For a complete reproduction of Tikhonravov's

paper, see M, K. Tikhonravov, "Paths to ttccomplishing Great Ranges by Firing Missiles" (English title), Iz istorii

i kosmonavtiki 67 (1995): 3-26.

67
68

do and decided to switch to the realm of fantasy? ..... Korolev was one of the very few who

reacted positively, telling Tikhonravov after his presentation: "We have some serious things to

talk about .... "'_ For Korolev, it was a small opening for his own nascent dreams of space

exploration. As plans for new longer range missiles to follow the R-2 were beginning to emerge

at NII-88, Tikhonravov's bold report clearly served as a catalyst for combining the disparate

efforts at the two different institutions.

The political climate, and especially the fear of the secret police in the late Stalin era, no

doubt also played a major role in any decision on the part of Tikhonravov or Korolev. Given the

job of creating a long-range ballistic missile for the Soviet armed forces, Korolev was not about

to jeopardize his job and perhaps even his life by making hasty diversions into what the secret

police no doubt considered a pointless endeavor. In Tikhonravov's case, his work on packetbased tong-range rockets was continued into the following year only to face near cancellation.

For reasons still unclear, the leadership of NII-4 disbanded Ivanov's subdivision in early 1949.

Put into a difficult position, Tikhonravov entrusted one member of his team, Yatsunskiy, to persevere with this theme, '_ The latter by this time was employed in a different sector of the institute, thus considerably slowing down work on Tikhonravov's project because of institutional

barriers.

Despite the sudden shutdown of this important work, Tikhonravov's landmark July 1948

speech served as a catalyst for intensive cooperation between himself and Korolev. The two had

known each other since 1927, when they had met as young glider pilots, working together

through the 1930s at GIRD and NIl-3. In the postwar years, although officially at two different

organizations, they reestablished an informal but pivotal communication between each other.

Prompted by the initial satellite launch vehicle studies at NIl-4, it seems that Korolev had decided to take the matter in his own hands and approach the Soviet leadership with a proposal to

fund the launch of an artificial satellite in the near future. It was probably clear to him that neither Blagonravov nor Nesterenko had the political clout to handle such a request, and he opted

to instead appeal to Soviet leader Stalin himself. It was a risky decision to take, but clearly

underlines Korolev's true interests. His group at NII-88 may have been officially working on military rockets, but it is apparent from the many descriptions of Korolev's life in those years that

he never lost sight of the ultimate objective of space exploration. /qs it turned out,

Tikhonravov's early but ambitious studies at NIl-4 on launch vehicles, artificial satellites, and

human spaceflight laid the basis for unexpected opportunities of which Korolev would soon

take advantage to realize his dream of space exploration.

168 Golovanov."TheBeginningof theSpaceEra."

169. Ibid

(70. Yatsunskiy."On the Activitiesof M. K. Tikhonravov."

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
I

CHAPTER THREE

STRLIN RND

THE ROCKET

The first long-range ballistic missile launches during 1947-48 served as watershed events in

the early history of the Soviet rocketry program. Within three years of the end of the war, the

Soviets had managed to establish a level of capability at least equivalent to wartime German

accomplishments, while at the same time initiating ambitious studies on artificial satellites,

launch vehicles, and even a short-lived program to lob humans on vertical trajectories. The problems, both technical and institutional, remained paramount, but allowed the engineering faction,

led primarily by NII-88, to identify several useful avenues for further investigation. The ensuing

years, between 1949 and 19_53,would prove to be even more critical: researchwas focused on a

number of important studies dedicated to advancing the capabilities of the A-4-derived Soviet

missiles. The rate of progress in the rocketry program was astonishing: by the end of that fouryear period, the Soviets had almost completely left behind the German antecedents of their missile program and moved into the realm of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development,

effectively laying the foundation for the birth of the Soviet space program.

Testing at Kapustin Yar

The overriding motivation for the new Soviet ballistic missile program was obviously military, but over the years, a small but vigorous scientific element of high-altitude rocketry research

began to emerge. Primarily because of the efforts of nuclear physicist Sergey N. Vernov, Deputy

Director of the Scientific Research Institute for Nuclear Physics, the work of the Commission

for the Study of the Stratosphere had been revived in the postwar years. To facilitate the design

and development of instruments for flight on board A-4-derived missiles,

NII-88 Chief Designer Korolev met with USSR Academy of Sciences President Sergey I. Vavilov

in 1949 to coordinate this effort. Following their consultations, Vavilov entrusted the organizational problems of this field of research to Academician Keldysh, who, in turn, used the existing Stratosphere Commission to establish in late 1949 the new Commission for the

Investigation of the Upper Atmosphere.' He appointed Academician Blagonravov, the President

of the USSR Academy of Artillery Sciences, as this commission's chair and assigned to him all

I. yu. v. Biryukov,"Materialsin the BiographicalChroniclesof SergeyPavlovichKorolev"(Englishtitle),

in B.V. Raushenbakh,ed.,Iz istoriisovetskoykosmonautiki:sbornikpamyatiakademikaS.P Koroleua(Moscow:

Nauka,1983),p. 229.Accordingto onesource,the CommissionfortheCoordinationof Work for theResearchof

theUpperLayersof the AtmospherewasestablishedonFebruary18, 1953.SeeL.A, Vedeshin," 18February--25

YearsFromthe Dayof Creationof theCommissionof the USSRAcademyof Sciencesfor theCoordinationof Work

on Researchon theUpperAtmosphere(1953)"(Englishtitle), Iz istorii aviatsiii kosmonavtiki35 (1978):24-26.

69
70

duties concerning the coordination of a formal scientific offshoot of the Soviet ballistic missile

program. By that time, under Korolev's leadership, Department No. 3 at NII-88 had already

begun the first tests of the new version of the R-I missile, designated the R- IA. 2

The modification effort to create the R-IA, led by Korolev's assistant Konstantin D.

Bushuyev, was in many ways related to the work on the still-to-be-flown R-2 missile. In particular, in 1949, a series of experimental R-I rockets was earmarked specifically to test the separation of the payload during flight. The first of these test missiles was launched into a ballistic

trajectory from Kapustin Yar on May 7_ 1949, equipped for the first time with a nonrecoverable

nose cone container, as well as two simulated instrument packages, each with a mass of sixtyfive kilograms mounted at the rear of the missile between the stabili7er fins) At least three more

of these R-I A tests were conducted in May under Korolev's direction, essentially confirming the

basic design elements of the separating payload section.

The first vehicle with actual scientific instruments was prepared for its first launch in the

third week of May. The instruments designed to measure air pressure and air composition were

developed at the Geophysical Institute of the Academy of Sciences (GeoFIAN) under the leadership of B. L. Dzerdzyevskiy and Ye. M. Reikhrudol. Vernov himself was involved in the test

preparations. Just prior to launch, special glass containers were emptied of air, hermetically

sealed, and installed in the payload packages. Following the launch of the R-IA missile and

engine cutoff, a mechanism would remove the containers from their host, followed by the

breaking of the glass support, enabling air to enter the containers. This would be preceded by

the ejection of the complete packages from the rocket into a path ahead of the missile's trajectory so as not to collect air contaminated by the exhaust of the R-IA. Newly developed parachutes were then to bring the scientific instruments safely back to Earth/With the exception

of the design of the separable payload, the R-IA was not much different from the military R-I.

The vehicle was just under fifteen meters in length and had a fueled mass of 13,9 I0 kilograms.

The very first R-IA with operational scientific packages, officially designated FIAR-I, was

launched into a vertical trajectory at 0440 hours local time on May 24, t949) The initial phases of the launch were successful, and the FIAR-I packages were ejected without problem, having reached an altitude of about I00 kilometers. Seventeen seconds following ejection, at which

point the containers had dropped twenty kilometers in free flight, the parachute deployed on

schedule, but the shock of its unfurling resulted in damage to the canopy, The landing was

much harder than expected, and both the containers were deformed, thus terminating any hope

of scientific data, An inspection of the recovered capsules showed, however, that the instruments had operated as planned. In the ensuing days, engineers quickly designed a modified

parachute system, while improving the shock-absorption capabilities of the FIAR-I containers.

2. The report on the "new" missile was titled "Plan for the V-I/_ Experimental Geophysical Missile With

a SeparablePayload." SeeBiryukov, "Materials in the BiographicalChronicles," p. 227. Seealso Yu. P.Semenov,ed,

Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S _ Koroleua (Korolev: RKK Energiya, named after S P

Korolev. 1996). p 34

3. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p. 228 Peter Stache, Souiet Rockets, Foreign

Technology Division Translation, ETD-ID(RS)T0619-88 (from unnamed source). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,

Ohio, November 29. 1988, p. 209. This is a translation of Peter Stache,Sowjetischer Raketen(Berlin: Militarverlad

der DDR. 1981). A more recent report suggests that the first launch may have been on April 21, 1949. See G. A.

Kustova, ed., Ot peruogo Sputnika do "Energii"-"Burana" i "Mira" (Moscow: RKK Energiya. 1994), pp. 6. 125.

4. Stache,Souiet Rockets,p. 209.

5. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p. 228. "FIAR" was the Russian acronym for

"Physical Researchof the Atmosphere by Means of Missiles." Soviet sourceshavevariously referredto the containers

as both FIAR-I and EIAN-I. Forthe latter, see,forexample, M. I. Gerasimova,"Embodiment of a Dream" (Englishtitle),

in M I Gerasimovaand A. G Ivanov, eds.,Zuezdniy put (Moscow: Politicheskoy Literatury, 1986), p 18.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

L

g second launch, the last and sixth of the R-IA type, took place on May 28? This time, the

missile reached an altitude of 102 kilometers, and both containers were recovered without incident. Unfortunately for the scientists from GeoFIAN, the measuring equipment worked poorly,

thus affecting the quality of information gathered/Clearly, the scientific results from the two

launches were meager, but the overall outcome of the series was considered satisfactory.

Korolev, summarizing the launches a few years later, recalled that:

I) We were able to experimentally show that it was possible to transport equipment for

the investigation of the upper Myers of the atmosphere by rocket to altitudes of t O0 kilometers, to eject the equipment-filled container, and to safely bring it back to Earth: 2) it

was found that devices for measurement of the high temperature operated normally during ascent, ejection, and freefall, 3) for the first time it was possible to make direct measurements of air pressure at an altitude of approximately I00 kilometers and to take air

samples. Despite the modest results of these first launches and numerous serious technical and methodological deficiencies, as well as serious defects in equipment, these

flights awoke the enthusiasm of all involved and awakened the interest of institutes and

organizations o[ the USSR 7tcademy of Sciences as well as of the industry?

The launches of the R-I/q missiles were only one of numerous rockets conducted at

Kapustin Yar during that period, Perhaps the most important tests at the range were those of

the second series of R-I rockets, designed to incorporate improvements following the poor performance of the first series in late 1948. The initial manufacture of the basic frames of the second group of about twenty missiles had begun as early as August-September 1948 at the

NII-88 plant in Kaliningrad. The launches were carried out between September I0 and October

23, 1949, once again under Korolev's leadership. In contrast to the first series, which had raised

serious doubts among military commanders on the effectiveness of the missiles, these tests

were far more successful and restored confidence in the new rocketry industry. Of the total of

twenty missiles launched, seventeen reached their designated sixteen- by eight-kilometer target

area, while only two were complete failures? P, third series of ten launches of the R-I, called

the "P" series, was also apparently conducted soon after, with seven reaching the target. `°

These launches were critical to the training of the first Soviet rocket troops, and the high

number of manufactured rockets and test launches suggests an unusually important emphasis

on improving the operational characteristics of the rocket as a weapon of war. The path to actual deployment in the armed forces proved to be longer than expected. It was a further year of

6. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p. 228; M. V. Keldysh, ed., Tvoreheskoyenastediye

akademika Sergeya Pavlovicha K,oroleua izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), p 348

7. Some of the results are compiled in B. A. Mirtov and L. A. Vedeshin, "Research of the Upper

Atmosphere--First Rocket Experimentsin the USSR" (English title), International Astronautical Federation, 1975.A

translation of this document is available in the folder on Soviet suborbital launches, translation no. TT 76G3470 by

SaadPublications, NASA History ReferenceCollection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters,Washington, DC

8. Keldysh, ed., Tuoreheskoyenaslediye akademika SergeyaPaulouiefla Koroleua, p. 349 These corn

ments are part of Korolev's speech titled "Investigation of the Upper Atmosphere with Powerful Long-Range

Missiles," given at the All-Union Conferenceon Missile Investigations of the Upper Atmosphere, held in April 1956,

part of which is reproduced in Keldysh, ed,, Tuorcheskoyenaslediye akademika SergeyaPaulouicha Koroleua. pp.

348-61 The six launches of the R-Ig were carried out on May 7, I0, I5, 17,24, and 28, 1949.

9. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles." p. 229: B. Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye, 1994), p. 326. Another authoritative source suggeststhat 45 percent--that is. nine of the twenty-reached the target, which, if true, was still a vast improvement over the first series. See G. A Sadovoy,

"10 October--40 YearsAfter the First Successful Launch of the First Soviet Guided Missile of Long Range R-I

( 1948)" (English title), Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonavfik( 59 ( 1989): 94 I01,

10. Sadovoy,"I0 October--40 YearsAfter,"

71
12

industrial and engineering efforts before a final order was issued on November 28, 1950, formally

adopting the R-I missile as armament of the Soviet armed forces. '_The following month, a new

division of soldiers, the 23rd Special Purpose Engineer Brigade of the Rocket Troops of the High

Command, was formed at Kapustin Yar to receive the first operational batch of R-I missiles as

effective components of Soviet military power. '_The brigade, headed by Col. Mikhail G. Grigoryev,

served as the original core of what would later become the famous USSR Strategic Missile Forces.

Like many of the other artillery officers of the period, Grigoryev would go on to play a leading role

in the Soviet space program as the first commander-in-chief of the Plesetsk launch site.

/qt the time that the R-I was moving ahead with its own road to official deployment,

Korolev was already advancing with work on his coveted R-2, which had faced such a hard road

to approval. Coinciding with the second series of R-I test launches, he was on hand at

Kapustin Yar to direct the first launches of an experimental version of the R-2, designated the

R-2E. The purpose was to primarily test the flight results of a separable warhead container so

important for the further improvement of characteristics of Soviet ballistic missiles. With an

appearance very similar to the planned R-2, the R-2E was just under seventeen meters in length,

about a half a meter shorter than its ultimate successor. The first of five of these experimental

missiles lifted off from Kapustin Yar on September 25, 1949, at the very same time that the second series of R-I tests was in progress. _ The warhead container tests were not completely successful, due to malfunctions in the automatic stabilization system at the time of separation.

These problems were traced to the use of new and advanced gyro-stabilization systems developed at Nil-I0 under Chief Designer Kuznetsov. The obstacles took a considerable time to overcome. The three successes did, however, instill sufficient confidence in Soviet capabilities to

eliminate any doubt about terminating work on the German G-I concept, with which the R-2E

shared many performance characteristics.

The first full-scale launch of an R-2 took place on October 2 I, 1950, a full year after the

R-2E tests. The attempt was a failure and prompted lengthy discussions, which ended up in

conflicts between engineers responsible for the suspected malfunctioning part. Partly as a result

of these discussions, Pilyugin later developed a special electronic dynamic modeling unit to

simulate "steering" effects on the R-2, based directly on the work of Dr. Hoch, one of the

German engineers who ironically had no knowledge of the R-2 tests at the time. The second

attempt on October 26 was a partial success and deposited the payload 600 kilometers from

the launch site. '4 The initial troubles with the missile, however, continued to worry the engineers, and the test series was extended far beyond the initial planned schedule. After one of

the longest series of launches in recent memory, the final R-2 finally lifted off on December 20.

It was also one of the most disappointing series, quite possibly, in the history of the Soviet ballistic missile program. All twelve missiles launched failed to achieve their primary objectives:

there were engine failures, guidance system malfunctions, and warhead trajectory errors.

I I. I, D, Sergeyev, ed. Khronika osnounykh sobytiy istorii raketnykh uoysk strategicheskogo naznacheniya

(Moscow: TslPK, 1994), p. 34. Even after formal adoption by the armed forces, further testing of the R-I was continued at Kapustin Yar. Controlled winter launches in temperatures as low as minus twenty-six degreesCentigrade

were carried out betweenJanuary 29 and February 2, 195I. _qfurther seriesoccurred betweenJune 13 and 27, 195I.

These launches had a lOO-percentsuccessrate in reaching the assigned targets.

12. Col A. Belousov. "They Were Conceived at Kapustin Yar" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, January 3.

1991.p 2.

13. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p. 229: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 336. The five

R-2E missiles were launched on September25 and 30 and October, 2, 8, and II. 1949. Of these, three were considered successes.

14. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p. 230.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STRLIN AND THE ROCKET

Despite the failures, the R-2 launches contributed significantly to the expertise and knowledge of long-range ballistic missiles. It was the first minor step forward from the German origins of postwar Soviet ballistic missiles. The development of the R-2 missile also represented a

marked level of maturation of the Soviet rocket-building industry. The effort to produce a replica of the A-4, in the late 1940s, finally paid off in a swifter and more efficient exchange of information between engineers and production managers. At least twenty-four scientific research

institutes and ninety industrial enterprises coordinated their efforts to produce the vehicle. '5

With such an intensive series of launches at Kapustin Yar, the range remained continually

busy as hundreds of engineers, military officers, and secret police officials traveled to and from

the site, all dealing with the major climactic hazards at GTsP-4. The winter of 19_50was particularly harsh as at least two meters of snow was deposited on the launch site. The following spring,

personnel discovered the thawed body of a soldier who had been frozen to death. Searchers also

found a herd of horses who had met the same fate. For the most part, sleeping quarters remained

either tents or trucks; the concrete buildings were still in the process of construction. '6 Roads

were almost nonexistent at the time, while mail was intermittent at best. Recollections of the

time all describe the area as one of the toughest and demanding for those involved. For the mostly military personnel who were stationed there permanently, the majority of whom had survived

the turmoil of World War II, it was another excursion into incredible hardship.

The R-3 Missile

The R-I and R-2 missiles served as the beginning point for Soviet postwar ballistic missile

programs. Given the ultimate military needs of the Stalin leadership, both were, however, woefully inadequate. The need for a "transatlantic" missile had been formally tabled as early as

1947, at a Kremlin meeting attended by Stalin and then chair of the Special Committee No. 2,

Georgiy M. Malenkov. The latter was one of those who argued vociferously in favor of such missiles, and according to one recollection, "no limits were to be placed on available funding. ''_

At the time, the focus was clearly divided between winged missiles, such as the S_nger-Bredt

bomber, and traditional ballistic missiles, which were developed at the NII-88. As a starting

point to fulfill Stalin's request, in late 1947, Korolev had begun low-level studies to produce a

ballistic missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers, over ten times more than the German A-4.

Even the resident Germans at Kaliningrad and Gorodomlya were concerned with the relatively

modest G-I with its range of 600 kilometers. The concept was evidently discussed at high levels within the Soviet government, for on April 14, 1948, the USSR Council of Ministers issued

a decree sanctioning exploratory work on such a missile, designated the R-3 or "product

8967." '_ Over the following year and a half, a group of Korolev's engineers slowly established

the design specifications of the missile and incorporated them into a twenty-volume technical

document called a draft plan, co-authored by Korolev and completed in June 1949 '° The other

principal authors were Korolev's first deputy Mishin and engineers Bushuyev, Kryukov,

Okhapkin, and Svyatoslav S. Lavrov, a ballistics expert.

15. YaroslavGolovanov. Koroleu:[akty i mi[y (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 420.

16. Col. M. Rebrov. "Where the Cranes Fly" (English title). Krc_snc_yazuezda, September 19, 19BL pp. 3-4:

Belousov, "They Were Conceived at Kapustin Yar": Yu. A_ Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi u kosmos I (Moscow:

MAI. 1992). p. 94.

17. Yu g. Mozzhorin. et al., eds., Naehalo kosmieheskoyery vospominaniya veteranov raketno-kosmich

eskoytekhniki i kosmonautiki: uypusk vtoroy (Moscow: RNITsKD, 1994), p. 7 I.

18. Semenov,ed., Raketrlo-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 629.

19 Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles." p. 227: P.. Yu. Ishlinskiy, ed, ,,qkademik S P

Korolev: ueheniy,inzhener, ehelovek (Moscow: Nauka, 1986). p. 300: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 219-20

73
74

Unlike draft plans for other missiles, Korolev structured this particular work in such a way

that it would serve as a reference work for future efforts in the design of long-range missiles.

The first volume, titled "Principles and Methods of Designing a Missile of Great Range," was a

282-page type-written document that was a detailed theoretical treatise on missile design that

went far beyond the modest German-derived R-I and R-2 missiles. 2°While focusing loosely on

the new R-3, it was also in essence a "how-to manual" for very long-range missiles--that is, a

solid reference work for future efforts that would eventually lead to the creation of the first

Soviet ICBM. The report examined six specific areas of investigation:

• Research on flight characteristics of three variants of single and multistage long-range ballistic missiles

• Preliminary research on flight characteristics of winged (or cruise) missiles with various

types of separable winged warheads

• Research into the principles of separable warheads for long-range missiles

• Research on standard cruise missiles with separable winged warheads both with and without sustainer rocket engines

• Preliminary research on the aerodynamic characteristics of cruise missiles

• The problems of dynamic flight of long-range cruise missiles 2_

P, major portion of the study was clearly focused on cruise missile concepts, perhaps

indicative of Korolev's personal vision of rocketry, which for most of his life had been connected

to winged rather than ballistic missiles. Stalin's own interest in cruise missiles may have also

played a factor in the relative emphasis of the two competing roads, as evidenced by his continuing support for the S_nger-Bredt concept.

In terms of the future of Soviet rocketry, it was the portion dedicated to the ballistic missile that had the most relevance. In examining the possible ballistic configurations, Korolev

advanced three possible ballistic "composite" (BS) or multistage schemes for the next generation of Soviet missiles:

• BS no. I envisioned a classic multistage vehicle with several stages connected together in

tandem, each stage falling off as its propellant was exhausted.

• BS no. 2 examined the use of exterior fuel tanks, which would serve the engine on the core

stage and be jettisoned following propellant depletion.

• BS no. 3, harking back to Tsiotkovskiy's theories, used a parallel arrangement of all the

stages, all firing at liftoff, followed by discarding the strap-ons, after which the core would

continue to fire as the "second stage. ''_

Although the study was focused primarily on the creation of a 3,000-kilometer range missile, throughout the document at key points, Korolev mentioned the possibility of designing an

even more powerful rocket with an intercontinental range. In his introduction, he stated:

20 An edited version of this first volume has been published in Keldysh, ed,. Tuorcheskoye naslediye

akademika 3ergeya Paulouicha Koroleua. pp. 291-318. Kofolev himself co-authored volumes I. II, IV, V, VI, and XIV.

See p. 396.

21. Ibid., pp. 291-92,

22. Ibid., pp. 298-99.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
STRLIN RND THE ROCKET

range equal to 3,000 km can be viewed only as the first stage that makes it possible

to solve certain problems envisaged in the requirement for the R-3. The costs and the

whole complex of technical measures necessary for attaining the range of 3,000 km are

so great that it would be unacceptable to isolate this work from the prospects of further

development, Therefore, [or the following stage, for solving significantly greater tasks, a

range on the order of 8,000 km was projected with an increased payload. 23

In looking at future intercontinental range missiles, Korolev argued that the "most prospective choice" was the cluster concept of BS no. 3, a decision that was to a great degree based

on his friend Tikhonravov's studies on a satellite launch vehicle at NII-4. Tikhonravov's work in

1947-48 clearly pointed in the direction of what he called the "packet" scheme, a euphemism

for using clusters of stages linked together in a parallel arrangement at liftoff. For many of the

same reasons that Tikhonravov had rejected a successive-staged vehicle for the present time,

Korolev himself had begun to accept that a packet scheme would allow for an easier creation

of an ICBM. In conducting his studies, Korolev had also studied the German A-9/A-I0 concept

proposed initially at Peenemfinde during the war. That design used the A-I0 rocket as a first

stage, which would boost the g-9 second stage, essentially a modified A-4, into an intercontinental trajectory. The range was about 5,200 kilometers. _4Tikhonravov's original recommendations for using a packet scheme precluded any serious work on the German plan.

Assessing the level of Soviet technology, and in particular the envelope of high-thrust

engine development, Korolev settled on a standard single-stage ballistic design scheme for the

R-3, its classic cylindrical shape a distinct step away from the German g-4. On December 7,

1949, Korolev formally presented the R-3 draft plan at a meeting of the Scientific-Technical

Council of NII-88. A specially established council of experts enthusiastically approved the fullscale development of the missile, emphasizing the "extraordinary" scale of the effort. 2_

The R-3 program was without doubt the largest and most expensive ballistic missile effort

in the Soviet Union to date. The lead organization for the missile's design was Department No.

3 of Nll-88's Specialized Design Bureau under Korolev. Forthe first time, there was significant

cooperation with other organizations, including the Department of Applied Mathematics in the

V. A. Steklov Mathematics Institute of the LISSRAcademy of Sciences. Led by the ubiquitous

Keldysh, this small department had been established in 1944, and in 1948, it began serious scientific research into such areas as rocket dynamics and applied celestial mechanics. 2_

There were two primary design features of the R-3 that represented deviations from

A-4-derived Soviet ballistic missiles, such as the R-I and R-2. To reduce the lifting mass of

postwar rockets, Korolev had partially incorporated the concept of load-bearing tanks into the

R-2 missile, a configuration that allowed the propellant tanks themselves to serve as the main

frame of the missile. On the R-2, only one tank, the one carrying ethyl alcohol was load bearing. With the R-3, engineers worked to develop a new missile in which both propellant tanks

were load bearing. Second, engineers dispensed with the heavy and large stabilizing fins made

23. Ibid. p. 292. See also David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy:

t939-1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 249. for a similar English translation of the same passage.

24. Frederick I, Ordway III and Michael R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell,

1979), pp. 56-57.

25. The expert panel included _. A. Kosmodemianskiy (Special Committee No. 2). g. I. Makarevskiy

(Ts,qGI), Yu. A. Pobedonostsev (NII-88), Kh. P_. Rakhmatulin (MVTU), and M. K Tikhonravov (NIl-4). See also

Semenov, ed.. Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 40; Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles." p.

229; Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 220.

26. V, S. gvduyevskiy and T. M, Eneyev, eds,, M k/ Ketdysh izbrannyye trudy, raketnaya i kosmonavtiko

(Moscow: Nauka. 1988), p. 7.

75
76

of graphite, which were a standard on the R-I and R-2 vehicles and significantly reduced lifting capacity/_ The fins were retained on the R-2 so as not to introduce too many changes into

the original tq-4 design, but during flight testing, they were responsible for unnecessary aerodynamic resistance and stress on the missile.

Technically speaking, there was a direct connection of lineage from the experimental R-2E

missile to the new R-3 model. The R-2E had tested some new design features that would end

up in the R-3, in particular the integral fuel tank and the separating warhead. These technical

innovations had been largely responsible for the twofold increase in range of the R-2E over the

R-I missile. For the R-3, Korolev's engineers would need to make more departures from the

German antecedents of postwar Soviet rocketry. Perhaps the most risky proposition of the

whole venture was the design of the main engine for the rocket. Korolev's engineers switched

from the tried and tested liquid oxygen-alcohol combination so preferred by the von Braun team

to the more efficient liquid oxygen-kerosene pairing, which allowed an increase in specific

impulse of about 20 percent. To reduce the risk of failure, NII-88 contracted two different

engine design teams to create the main 120-ton thrust engine for the R-3. These were Glushko's

OKB-456 based at Khimki and a department at NII-I under Chief Designer gleksandr P.

Polyarniy, an old prewar associate of Korolev's from GIRD/8 Each group was to offer its own

competitive design. In a direct link to the Soviet version of the Sgnger-Bredt bomber, both these

engines were also earmarked for use on the latter vehicle, a decision that no doubt reduced significant duplication of work.

The Glushko engine, designated the RD-II0, was the very first high-thrust liquid oxygen

engine to be designed under his direction during his twenty-year career. Traditionally, Glushko

had been reluctant to use liquid oxygen because of technical obstacles related to vibration, and

preferred nitrogen-based oxidizers. In his initial conception of the new engine, Glushko, unlike

Korolev, did not choose to adopt any radically new design approach. Instead, he used the old

/_-4 engine combustion chamber and scaled it up to match the required performance characteristics needed for the R-3. Polyarniy evidently preferred to use an alternative approach for his

D-2 engine, also with 120 tons of thrust.

In looking at future variants of long-range missiles, Korolev's engineers had proposed the

use of multistage rockets, but for the R-3's range of 3,000 kilometers, they believed that a single-stage missile would have significant advantages in mass and other parameters over a multistage one. The R-3 design included the use of a separable warhead and a new

aluminum-magnesium alloy as the main structural material. The propellant tanks would be

pressurized with liquid gas vapor rather than compressed air, as had been the practice before.

Engineers improved the missile's mass efficiency by compacting its configuration as much as

possible. They eliminated intertank structures with instrument sections and instead placed control and service devices in previously unoccupied spaces at the rear section of the rocket. In

addition, bolted joints were replaced by welded ones, and the engine's proportional length was

reduced by increasing combustion chamber pressure and adopting a contoured nozzle. :_ These

were all significant innovations in the Soviet rocketry industry that in some cases served to give

birth to new manufacturing technologies that would become common practice in the early

Soviet space program.

27. Mozzhorin, et al., eds. Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery. p. 26t: Yu. Biryukov and A. A. Yeremenko. %0

Yearsfor the Native Rocket-SpaceIndustry. The Early Period of Development" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki

10 (May 6-19, 1996): 54-64.

28. ]. V. Biriukov, "The R-3 Rocket Project Developed in the U.S.S.R.in 194Z-1959 as a Basisfor the First

Soviet SpaceLaunchers," in J D. Hunley, ed, History o[ Rocketryand Astronautics, Vol 19 (San Diego, CA: Univelt,

1997), pp. 193-99.

29. Biriukov, "The R-3 Rocket Project Developed in the U.S.S.R."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

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0

meters

Soviet ballistic missile development between 1946 and 1956. The R-3 missile was a significant leap in capabilities

from the German antecedents o/the Soviet ballistic missile program Incorporating many new technical innovations, the R 3 would have a range o/3.000 kilometers, ten times more than the qerman ,'_-4 The missile was

approved [or development in December 1949. (copyright Peter _orin)

77
78

AS with the engines, Korolev initially contracted the development of the R-3's guidance

system to two competitive groups. P, traditional autonomous system would be developed by

NII-885 under Chief Designers Ryazanskiy and Pilyugin, both of whom had worked on the

R-I and R-2. _ second team, under an ambitious and talented guidance specialist named Boris

M. Konoplev at NII-20 (for radio systems) and P,. I. Charin at NII-49 (for gyroscope units), was

invited to participate for the first time in the ballistic missile program?°

The guidance system for the R-3 missile was selected using the extensive experience from

the German designs on the P,-4 and the successor Soviet modifications on the R-I and R-2 vehicles. The results of the P,-4 flight test program had, in particular, allowed the testing of several

different guidance systems, including an autonomous system developed by Chief Designer

Pilyugin, a German system for lateral radio control designated Hawaii-Viktoria, improved by

Deputy Chief Designer Mikhail I. Borisenko, and a second German telemetry system called

Messina-I, reproduced by the Soviets under Deputy Chief Designer Yevgeniy Ya. Boguslavskiy.

All three individuals were prominent members of NII-885, the leading missile guidance organization in the Soviet Union at the time. The tests with the P,-4 and the R-I had also, however,

showed some limitations. Given the need to achieve increased accuracy in a very short time

period, it had become clear to some engineers that autonomous guidance and control systems

did not offer a quick solution. With this in mind, Korolev turned to the short-term solution of

using active guidance by remote control from the ground--that is, a purely radio-controlled

guidance system. The Germans had already conducted research in this area (on the HawaiiViktoria system), and Chief Designer Konoplev at NII-20 was contracted to develop a new

radio-controlled system for the R-3 designated Topaz. 3_The Topaz project using "variable system architecture" was important for the Soviet missile industry in general because it established

the groundwork for a new engineering discipline called radio ballistics. The decision to use the

Topaz design was also significant for it was opposed by Chief Designer Pilyugin, who by then

had not only become Korolev's most important associate on guidance issues, but who was also

firmly in favor of an autonomous system for the R-3.

The R-3 missile, as envisioned in the December 1949 plan, was a single-stage rocket that

was just over twenty-seven meters long with a base diameter just under three meters and made

of a new aluminum-magnesium alloy. The total fueled launch mass was seventy-one tons,

while sea-level launch thrust was about 120 tons. The vehicle was designed to lob a three-ton

separable warhead a distance of 3,000 kilometers? _ Launches would be conducted from mobile

platforms, much like those of the R-I and the R-2. Given its proposed range, the R-3 would be

the first Soviet ballistic missile capable of reaching Great Britain and Japan, giving the Soviets

their first true strategic missile. I_ stunning qualitative and quantitative leap over any previous

missile in the Soviet Union, the new rocket project was a watershed milestone in the development of Soviet rocketry. To give some indication of Korolev's ambition, it may be instructive to

note that in 1949, the Soviet copy of the German/_-4 had yet to be declared operational by the

Soviet armed forces, while the R-3 had a flight range ten times more than that missile.

Because the R-3 represented such a leap in capabilities for the new Soviet rocketry industry, the Scientific-Technical Council of NII-88 recommended that some of the new technologies

adopted for the R-3 be tested on a smaller experimental rocket known as the R-31_.The latter

rocket, based in design on the much smaller R-2, used an integral oxygen tank as well as a finless rearsection. Models of the experimental missile would also be used to prove out such innovations as high boiling oxidizers, high calorific fuel, and test technologies earmarked for future

30. Chertok.Raketyi lyudLp. 220,

31. Mozzhorin,et aL.eds.,Nachalokosrnicheskoyery,p. 278-80.

32. Stache.SouietRockets,p. I?9:Semenov,ed.,Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya,p. 40.

CHALLENGE TO il_,POLLO
STALIN /_ND THE ROCKET

rockets such as strap-on boosters and winged warheads. With the two basic improvements--

that is, the integral tank and the omission of the rear rudders--the R-3g displayed significantly improved flight characteristics over its antecedent, the R-2. The missile had a mass of almost

twenty-three and a half tons and main engine thrust of forty tons--values comparable to the

R-2--but a range that was one and a half times more than the R-2, about 935 kilometers. _

Flight testing of the R-3A was planned for 195 I, with launches of the R-3 commencing in 1952

or 1953 at the earliest.

At about the same time that work on the R-3 was emerging as the primary thematic goal of

Korolev's team, P,cademician Keldysh's team was winding down work on the S_nger-Bredt

antipodal bomber. Since research on the program had begun in 1946, a variety of technical

obstacles had plagued engineers. In 1948, Keldysh's NII-I was institutionally subordinated to

the Central Institute of Aviation Motor Building (TsI_M), one of the most prestigious Soviet scientific institutions, which focused research on aeronautical propulsion, lls head of the TslgM

section on ramjet engines, Keldysh continued to work on the S_nger-Bredt project, but by 1950,

technological complexities, in particular with the propulsion systems, seem to have overwhelmed any attempt at a full-scale project. Keldysh instead redirected some of the team's work

in December 1950 to a more modest automated intercontinental cruise missile--one that would

use tried and tested technologies. He wrote in his report on the new conception that research

had "confirmed the possibility and advisability of using in the capacity of launch accelerators,

[RD-100] engines from long-range missiles of the R-I type. TM The vehicle could use the same

launch facilities as those for the R-I, P,fter initial launch by these engines, flight at altitude would

be handled by a set of supersonic ramjet engines. The aircraft-cure-missile would be able to carry

a three-ton warhead a distance of 6,000 to 7,000 kilometers, flying most of the way at an altitude of fifteen to twenty-five kilometers at speeds of 3,000 to 3,500 kilometers per hour.

It seems that TslAM was conducting extensive research during this period on the development of ramjet engines for use on such intercontinental designs. Between 1947 and 1950,

efforts at the institute encompassed work on a supersonic "diffuser," which was tested at the

institute at velocities of up to Mach 4. In addition, scientists built and tested an experimental

combustion chamber for the ramjet engine at speeds reaching Mach 2.6. Such a motor, with a

thrust of almost twenty-one tons, was also successfully tested at the institute simulating flight

at an altitude of 8,000 meters. Georgiy I, Petrov, a brilliant scientist in his late thirties under the

employ of Keldysh led most of these early groundbreaking studies. P,warded the LISSR State

Prize for his work on diffusers in 1949, two years later, Petrov was personally responsible for

the design of the first Soviet aerodynamic wind tunnel capable of testing speeds of up to

Mach I0. _ The work on ramjet engines was not without problems. P,lthough Soviet scientists

had a long history of ramjet development beginning the 1930s, the leap to supersonic speeds

proved to be a very difficult transition. In a document from November 195 I, Keldysh lists a

litany of technical obstacles that had plagued the supersonic ramjet program during 1948-5 I,

including the inability to model the working processes of such engines on the ground and the

problems in creating stabilization systems for combustion chambers? _

33. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 40: Biryukov and Yeremenko, "50 Yearsfor the

Native Rocket-SpaceIndustry."

34. Keldysh's document, dated December II, f950, is reproduced in full as M. V. Keldysh, "On the

Composition of Work on PVRDs and Their gpplicatJons" (English title), in t_vduyevskiy and Eneyev,eds., M V_

Keldysh. p. 35-38.

35. M.V. Keldysh, "On the Scientific/_ctivities of G. I. Petrov" (English title), in ibid., pp. 140-42. The

document is dated September21, 1952.

36, M.V. Keldysh, "On the Development of Work on Researchon PVRDs in Flight" (English title), in ibid..

pp. 38-39. The document is dated November 4, 195I.

79
80

The work on the S_inger-Bredt antipodal bomber in 1946 and 1950, and the subsequent

research on ramjet engines and high-speed aerodynamics, had a profound impact on the future

thematic direction of the Soviet efforts to develop a transatlantic missile. The 1947 directive to

develop such a vehicle led to two different but parallel options: a ballistic missile that would travel above the atmosphere for part of its trajectory and a winged cruise missile that would fly within the atmosphere during its entire flight. There was a considerable amount of emphasis on both

fronts, and confidence in one road was often inversely proportional to the level of difficulties

faced in the alternate path. By the turn of the decade, with the advent of the R-3, the overseers

of the Soviet missile program, the omnipotent Special Committee No. 2, seem to have been

favoring the ballistic missile option. Difficulties with the development of ramjet engines no doubt

contributed to such a climate. At the same time, the ballistic R-3 was itself a risky endeavor.

Looking to reduce risk, the Special Committee was unable to firmly decide in favor of one particular approach for an intercontinental delivery system. For almost another decade, engineers

and policy makerswould continue to debate over the propitiousness of one option over the other.

The End of the Road for the Germans

The abortive G-I missile effort did not instill much hope for the Germans at Gorodomlya.

As far as they were concerned, the months of intensive effort on the project effectively turned

out to be a waste of time when the program was terminated in 1949. By then. almost all the

Germans had been transferred to NII-88's Branch No. I at Gorodomlya in LakeSeliger, where the

living conditions continued to be a major obstacle to fruitful engineering work. More than two

years after the formation of the branch, the Germans were still, for the most part, living in huts,

with no effective sewage or sanitation systems, Morale was a serious problem among the group,

compounded by bitter infighting among the Germans and problems of alcoholism and marital

infidelity/_ Only on rare occasions were they allowed to leave the island to visit Moscow. Under

these conditions, the group worked on a series of successor missile projects to the G-I, all of

which were viewed very favorably by Grottrup's men as ways to divert their attentions from their

more earthly problems, This work was performed on request by their Soviet bosses: at no point

were the Germans informed of the ultimate fate of their efforts.

The winding down of work on the G I was followed by work on the more capable G-2 (or

R-12) missile. In 1948-49, a preliminary draft plan for the vehicle was developed that envisioned the use of a missile with a range of 2,500 kilometers--far in excess of the G-I and in

fact much closer to the Soviet R-3. The Germans designed a booster that incorporated a variation of the so-called cluster scheme, in which three engines would fire at liftoff and two of the

engines would be jettisoned. A similar one-and-a-half-stage configuration was used many years

later in the U.S. Atlas ICBM. The total launch thrust of the missile was 100 tons, achieved by

using engines from the abandoned G-I missile. Some of the design elements incorporated into

the vehicle elicited much interest from the Soviet side. For example, the G-2 was the first

post-A-4 missile that rejected the traditional use of gas vanes to steer the rocket, Such a concept was still a novelty for Korolev's engineers, and the Soviets themselves would not in fact

completely dispense with the concept until development of their first ICBM in the mid-1950s.

Furthermore. the Germans introduced a means of regulating total thrust by using a peripheral

group of three engines at the base of the rocket 120 degreesapart. A similar concept would later

be used in the Soviet N I lunar booster in the 1960s._ Despite its technical advancements, work

on the G-2 was shut down in 1949,

31 OrdwayandSharpe.TheRocketTeam,pp.336,340.

38. Chertok,Raketyi lyudLpp.218-19:Clg Officeof ScientificIntelligence,"ScientificResearchInstituteand

ExperimentalFactory88[orGuidedMissileDevelopment,Moskva/Kaliningrad,"OSIC-P_160-2,March4, 1960,pp.7-8.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

A third project during the same period served to marginally raise the spirits of the

Germans. On April 4, 1949, Minister of Armaments Ustinov personally visited the

Gorodomlya facility with a proposal to the Germans to design a missile that could carry a

three-ton warhead a distance of 3,000 kilometers. _ The specifications were identical to those

for the Soviet R-3 missile, and Ustinov's proposal was quite likely a means to augment the

R-3 effort by absorbing as many technical innovations as possible from all sources. This new

German missile project, called the G-4 (or R-14), reinvigorated the energies of Grottrup's team,

which was given only three months to complete a preliminary draft plan on the missile. Given

the circumstances, what they came up with was no less than astounding.

The G-4 was a single-stage, cone-shaped, twenty-five-meter-long vehicle with a single

IO0-ton-thrust engine. The Germans completely dispensed with fins and aerodynamic control

surfaces and also incorporated a full monocoque structure, much like the Soviets did with the

R-3. Perhaps the major difference with the R-3 was the G-4's use of the traditional combination of liquid oxygen and alcohol--a combination that the Germans, both in the Soviet Union

and the United States had favored over other mixtures. The main engine would have its combustion chamber cooled by circulating alcohol through its walls, while the turbopumps for the

propellants would be driven by hot gases "bootstrapped" from the combustion chamber of

the main engine. For roll control, the Germans introduced the idea of using exhaust gases from

the turbopumps diverted through a nozzle that could be swiveled. A similar scheme was in

fact used in the 1950s on the U.S. Jupiter missile by von Braun's team. As was standard in all

post-A-4 missiles, the warhead was to fly separately from the main body of the missile after

a certain point in the trajectory. One of the most impressive elements of the G-4 design was

the plan for a massive underground factory, designed by Heinz Jaffke and Anton Narr, from

which the missiles could be built and launched. Systems were designed that could also extract

oxygen from the air to manufacture liquid oxygen.

On October I, 1949, Ustinov sent NII-88 Director Maj. General Gonor, Chief Engineer

Pobedonostsev, and Chief Designer Korolev to Gorodomlya to be briefed on the G-4 missile.

It was a rare interaction between the latter and the Germans, and it was probably Korolev's

last visit to the island. The Soviets returned to Kaliningrad with the product of the German

team's work: the Germans themselves were given no explanation and heard little about the

project ever again. Some minor redesign effort on the G-4 was continued until February

1950, but by that time, a formal decision on the R-3 had already been taken by N11-88, and

presumably the Soviets saw little use in having the Germans continue with their parallel project. It was another case of German expertise compromised by a variety of factors, including perhaps most importantly an unwillingness to properly make use of their contributions.

Several more abortive projects came the way of the Gorodomlya group during the same

period. The G-IM (or R-13) in the summer of 1949 involved a 1,100-kilometer-range missile

using the same frame as the G-I but with improved A-4-type engines. The G-5 (or R-15) effort

led by Werner Albring was essentially a winged competitor to the ballistic G-4, at a time when

the Soviets themselves were involved in intense debate over the utility of winged versus ballistic configurations. A final project, designated the G-3, with an intercontinental range of

8,000 to 10,000 kilometers and a payload of three to five tons, was also studied in 1949 and

39. OrdwayandSharpe,TheRocketTeam,p. 337.

81
82

1950, but details are still lacking. All these later projects were limited to their initial design,

comprising only diagrams and main parameter calculations? °

Work on the G-4 and G-5 projects coincided with a marked decrease in work among the

Germans. In April 1950, the Ministry of Armaments formally decided to terminate further work

on long-range missiles at Branch No, I at Gorodomlya. Also, by order of the ministry, on March

29 of that year, all access to classified materials was denied to the Germans. 4_Despite the order,

the Soviets continued to ask advice on technical matters well into 19_5I, by which time Grottrup

had been replaced as technical leader of the Germans by Johannes Hoch, who died soon after

from appendicitis. Despite the poor living conditions at Gorodomlya, the NII-88 leadership

operated a well-maintained set of technical facilities at the island that were regularly used by

the Soviets, In early 1951, groups of young Soviet engineers migrated to Gorodomlya ostensibly to be taught by the experienced Germans at these excellent facilities. 42It was the last time

that the Soviets would make active use of German expertise in the postwar years. By this time,

the Germans were spending most of their time playing sports, gardening, or reading available

technical monographs to pass the time.

Already by August 1950, the Soviet government had decided to begin the repatriation of

the Germans back to the German Democratic Republic. The group of several hundred departed

Gorodomlya to return to their homeland in three waves, beginning in December 1951 and June

19.52. The last remaining eight German scientists, including Grottrup, were given permission to

leave the Soviet Union on November 22, 1953. Within a week, they were all gone, ending the

seven-year existence of Nll-88's Branch No. I. The few who remained were moved back to

Moscow under a Dr. Faulstich, and they were provided good salaries and five-year-long contracts in industries unrelated to missile development.

The fate of the Germans after their residency in the Soviet Union was varied. Grottrup

returned at first to East Germany and then eventually to West Germany. Extensively interrogated by U.S. intelligence services in Hamburg, he was offered a chance to move to the United

States to work on the Army's ballistic missile program. His wife Irmgard, however, refused to

ever leave Germany again, and U,S. authorities were reportedly not very pleased with the decision, Grottrup remained in Germany until his death from cancer in 1980, while his wife

authored a revealing memoir of their time at Kaliningrad and Gorodomlya. 4_ Dr. Waldemar

40. E Bork and G. A Sadovoj. "On the History of Rocketry Developedin the U.S.S.R.in the FirstYearsAfter

the Second World War (The Participation of GermanSpecialists in the Developmentof Soviet Missile Technology in

the Early Post-War Period)." in J, D. Hunley, ed, History or Rocketryand Ztstronauties, Vol. 19 (San Diego: Univelt.

1997), pp. 143 52: Chertok, Rakety _lyudi, p. 219. The G-5, essentially a smaller automated version of the S_ngerBredt antipodal bomber, was to constitute a G-I vehicle as the first stage,which would acceleratea small bomber

with a wingspan of just over five meters using ramjet engines to thirteen kilometers altitude before diving down on

its target. The G-5 plans were also submitted to the Scientific-Technical Council of NII-88 in December 19.50,following which the Germansheard little from the Soviets, In 1951-52. Joachim Umpfenbach, one of the leadersof the

German group, was assigned some tasks that may have been related to the G-5 cruise missile, but these were iso

latedjobs that did little to raisethe morale of the personnel at Branch No. I.

41. CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence, "Scientific ResearchInstitute," p 5. Russiansourcesclaim that this

happened in October 1950. See also Bork and Sadovoj, "On the History of Rocketry Developed in the U.S S R ":

Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 221. The Council of Ministers issueda decree(no. 3456-1446) on August 13, 1950, on

the fate of German rocketry specialists in the SovietUnion that called for their repatnation. SeeV F.Rakhmanin and

L. Ye Sterpin, eds,, Odnazhdy i nausegda . : dokumenty i lyudi o sozdatelye raketnykh duigateley i kosmicheskikh

sistemakademikye Valentinye Petrouichye _lushko (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye. 1998), p. 447.

42. Ordway and Sharpe,The Rocket Team, p. 341.

43. PeterSmolders, "I Meet the Man Who Brought the V-2 to Russia," SpaceJlight37 (July 1995): 218-20.

ForMrs. Grottrup's book, see IrmgardGrottrup, Rocket Wile (London: Andre Deutch, 1969).Another personal memoir, by gyroscope specialist Kurt Magnus. has also been published. See Kurt Magnus, Raketenskauen (Stuttgart:

Deutschen Verlags-Anstalt, 1993).

i

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

Wolf, one of the few who remained behind in the Soviet Union after 1953, lived in Moscow

for many years before also returning to Germany. In his remaining years in the Soviet Union, he

had no contact with the ballistic missile program.

The almost eight years of involvement of the German scientists in the Soviet rocketry program clearly proved to be an essential catalyst to its further advancement. During the existence

of the USSR, Soviet historians rarely, if ever, mentioned the use of German expertise in the postwar years, but the collaboration was real and extremely pivotal in furthering Soviet goals.

German expertise was invaluable in 1945 and 1946 in setting up and restoring i_-4 production

in the Soviet Union in the form of the R-I. Without the help of the Germans, the Soviets--and

in particular Nll-88--would have clearly lagged in their efforts, and it might even be argued that

the twelve years from 1945 to the launch of the first Soviet artificial satellite would have been

far longer. This is not to take away from the intrinsic talents and dedication of the Soviet

Union's own scientists. In fact, a similar argument might be made for the launch of the

American Explorer I in 1958. Forthe Soviets, their missile programs were in a state of total disarray by the end of World War II. Decimated by the Purges and then World War II, Soviet

achievements in missile building paled in comparison to the products of the Peenem_nde

group. Grottrup's team was indispensable in quickly transferring the database of German

achievements to the Soviets, thus providing a strong foundation from which to proceed. Even

in more specific areas, the Germans were instrumental in reducing the amount of time needed

to attain an _-4 capability. For example, Grottrup was responsible for building the mobile

launch trains for the P,-4s,while HeinzJaffke helped set up Nll-88's Branch No. 2 testing stands

at Zagorsk.

There are, however, key differences in the role of Germans in the United States versus that

of those in the Soviet Union. The Germans in the Soviet Union never participated in the mainstream rocketry program. In fact, after the restoration of P,-4 production and the G-I debacle,

they worked completely independently and without much influence on Soviet plans. Not a single one of the German missiles designed in 1947 through 1950 was ever built. Following the

significant events of 1946-47, the Germans essentially played a peripheral role, proposing a

number of important technical innovations, only some of which were adopted by the Soviets.

Compounding Korolev's personal resistance toward cooperation with the Germans was a much

more imposing political imperative--one that was grounded in xenophobia and distrust. While

some Soviet engineers may have realized the extremely important value of potential German

contributions to the rocketry program, there was never any concerted effort to make maximum

use of Grottrup's team.

Western historians have debated much on the role of the "German factor" in the postwar

development of ballistic missiles in the Soviet Union. The most common interpretation has

been one very generous to the Germans--that is, that they had a significant influence over

early Soviet developments. One author, writing in 1995, argued:

For years Soviet space leaders put down the contribution that captured Germans and

their V-2 technology made to the Soviet ballistic missile and space programs. "Not signi[icant, " they would say, "we got mostly the technicians. The ,Ztmericans got yon Braun

and his top team. We sent our Germans back after a Jew years." That explanation is

no longer the Party line. In [act, it is now acknowledged that German rocket technology was bedrock to the LISSR, just as it was to the LIS.44

44. JamesHarford,"What the RussiansLearnedfrom GermanV-2 Technology,"presentedat the 46th

InternationalAstronauticalCongress,Oslo,Norway,October2-6, 1995.SeealsoJamesHarford,Koroleu:HowOne

Man Mastermindedthe Soviet Driveto BeatAmerica to the Moon (New York:John Wiley & Sons, 1991). p. 64.

83
84

Such an argument conflates two clearly distinct issues: the use of recovered German technology and the use of the actual German scientists. There is no doubt that the Soviet Union

benefited from _-4 technology in developing its early ballistic missiles. There is compelling reason to believe that the USSR might have floundered for years before moving ahead to such

ambitious concepts as the R-3 had it not been for mastering the design and manufacturing

technologies of the P,-4 rocket. On the other hand, the available evidence suggests that Korolev

and his team made very little use of German expertise, at least after 1947. Their influence over

the direction of the Soviet ballistic missile program was marginal at best. Thus, if the parameters of the debate are limited to "the Germans," their contribution to the rocketry program in

the Soviet Union was far less than that in the United States. In purely technical terms, the gains

to the Soviets were in such areas as the design of guidance systems and the test and launch

equipment. Perhaps some of the more advanced managerial techniques among the Germans

may also have found their ways into Soviet institutions. A CIP, report, authored in 1960 and

declassified in 1980, summed up the total German contribution:

The German scientists made a very valuable contribution to the Soviet missile program[;] however, it cannot be said that without the Germans the Soviet Union would

have had no significant missile program .... There is no doubt that it took the German

wartime success with guided missiles to cause Stalin and his colleagues to devote large

scale support to the Souiet effort in this field. Once this support was forthcoming the use

of _erman scientists permitted the Soviets to achieve results in u much shorter time than

it would have taken them along but there is no reason to believe that the Soviets could

not have eventually done the job by themselves. 4_

Satellites

One of the consistent themes running through most commentaries of Korolev's first years

as a chief designer is an undeterred interest in space exploration. In the minds of most engineers in the rocketry sector, these dreams were tolerated as one of the many idiosyncrasies of

his character, t_t the time he first became acquainted with the Germans in 1945, when the

Soviets had no long-range ba]listic missiles, let alone intercontinental rockets, Korolev tried to

stimulate work by telling the Germans about working together to reach the Moon. Such ideas

were clearly anomalies and were not shared by most of the other leading designers. There were,

in fact, many in the government who suspected that Korolev's "real" objective was space travel, and the development of weaponry for the Soviet defense forces was merely a "Trojan horse"

for his intentions. Given the paranoia and terror inflicted by the Soviet secret police at that time,

Korolev was insightful enough to keep his hopes and plans to himself or his closest friends.

Mikhail K. Tikhonravov, at work at the Academy of/_rtillery Science's NIl-4 organization,

may have been one of the few prominent engineers who shared Korolev's vision. With a reputation for indefatigable curiosity, Tikhonravov was an unusually talented man. In his free time,

he painted oil landscapes, collected wood-eating beetles, and even studied the characteristics

of insects in flight, hoping to extract some insight into the dynamics of flying. 4_ Interested for

a long time in ascertaining the feasibility of launching an artificial satellite, the first steps in that

direction had been taken in 1947, when he had initiated studies on possible configurations for

a powerful multistage ballistic missile capable of reaching orbital velocity. For reasons still not

45. Clp, Office of Scientific Intelligence, "Scientific ResearchInstitute." pp. I0-I I.

46 YaroslavGolovanov. "The Beginning of the Space Era" (English title). Prauda. October 4. 198Z.p. 3.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

clear, his study group at the institute had been disbanded in early 1949. Only one person, Igor

M. Yatsunskiy, was kept on by Tikhonravov to continue his explorations into possible configurations for the booster. In mid-1949, Yatsunskiy finished a series of calculations determining the

relative mass of a three-stage rocket optimized with the specific goal of achieving orbital velocity. 4_Upon seeing the computations, Tikhonravov requested that Yatsunskiy apply his work

specifically to the missiles being developed currently at NII-88 under Korolev--in particular, the

still-to-be-built R-3. To coordinate the work more efficiently, Tikhonravov invited Korolev to

meet him at NII-4's premises at Bolshevo in July 1949. Korolev was clearly impressed with

Yatsunskiy's work, which focused on a launch vehicle composed of three R-3 missiles attached

in parallel like a "packet."'_ Seeing the report, Korolev encouraged Tikhonravov to prepare a formal report addressing the issue of launching a satellite to be presented at the next session of

the Academy of Artillery Sciences.

Boosted by Korolev's support, Tikhonravov reestablished a group to study packet-based

satellite launch vehicles. The original group with A. V. Brykov, Ya. I. Koltunov, G. Yu.

Maksimov, and L N. Soldatova was set up in late 1949: it was augmented by G. M. Moskalenko

and B. S. Razumikhin in 1950 and by I. K. Bazhinov and O. V. Gurko in 1951. All were recent

graduates of the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School, where special advanced engineering courses on missile design, construction, and engineering had been instituted and

taught by such luminaries of the Soviet ballistic missile program as Korolev (1947-49), Glushko

(1947-53), Tikhonravov (1947-52), Pobedonostsev, and others? 9 The lectures themselves

were surprisingly interconnected with actual developments within the Soviet rocketry industry.

For example, Korolev's own lectures incorporated details of the R-I, R-2, and R-3 missiles, albeit

with disguised designations. The courses from this time period were instrumental in training a

new generation of young engineers who would join major design bureaus and research institutes and make important contributions to the Soviet space program. Thus, by the time that

Brykov, Koltunov, Maksimov, and the others joined Tikhonravov's team during 1949-5 I, they

had solid training in actual and proposed Soviet ballistic missiles, providing a key connection

between Korolev's work at NII-88 and ]-ikhonravov's efforts at NIl-4.

The work of the original members of Tikhonravov's newly established group culminated in

1950 with the authorship of what may have been the very first detailed Soviet exposition on

the technical prospects and requirements of launching an artificial satellite of Earth. Titled "On

the Possibility of Achieving First Cosmic Velocity and Creating an Artificial Satellite with the

Aid of a Multi-Stage Missile Using the Current Level of Technology," the paper was formally

presented by Tikhonravov at a special session of the Academy of Artillery Sciences on

March 15, 1950? ° Along with many important military representatives, three engineers from

NII-88 were present to hear his speech: designer Korolev, his first deputy Mishin, and planning

department chief Bushuyev. Technically based around the idea of using the R-3 missile,

Tikhonravov detailed a plan on using a packet-type multistage vehicle capable of launching a

47. I.M. Yatsunskiy, "On the Activities of M. K. Tikhonravov in the Period From 1947 to 1953 on

Substantiating the Possibility of Creation of Composite Missiles" (English title),/z istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 42

( 1980): 31-38. An English translation of this article is availableas h M. Yatsunsky, "The Roleo1 Mikhail Kfavdiyevich

Tikhonravov in Creating StageRockets, 1947-1953, n in John Becklake,ed., History or Rocketry and ,Ztstronautics

VoJ 17 (San Diego, CA: American Astronautical Society, 1993), pp. 451-56.

48. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p 228.

49. Lardier,LT]stronoutique Souietique, p 79: Yatsunskiy,"On The Activities of M. K. Tikhonravov."

50. B.N. Kantemirov, " 15 July--40 YearsFrom the Report of M. K. Tikhonravov on the Possibility of

Achieving Cosmic Velocity Using the Current Level of Technology" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki

59 ( 1989): 65-76. With the phrase "first cosmic velocity," the Russiansreferto the velocity required to attain orbit

around Earth. The title of the paper has also been reported as "Rocket Packsand Their Development Prospects." See

Yatsunskiy, "On the Activities of M. K Tikhonravov."

85
86

smallartificialsatellite,l_Ithoughhedidnotspecificallymentionatimetable,implicitin his

wordswasthepossibilityoflaunchingasatellitebythemid-1950sif giventherequisitesupport.Inanunexpectedmove,neartheendofhismonologue,Tikhonravovalsoraisedtheissue

oflaunchinghumansintoorbitinthenearfutureusinghisproposedrocket. The reaction to

this presentation was much more negative than the earlier session in 1948. Some in the audience were outwardly hostile to Tikhonravov's ideas, others were silent, and many had sarcastic

reactions. Even Mishin himself expressed serious doubts of the technical feasibility of

Tikhonravov's plan?' There was, in fact, a running joke after the conference that Tikhonravov

and a monkey, in each other's arms, would fly off to the Moon. _' Korolev was one of the few

who unconditionally and publicly supported Tikhonravov's ideas.

The March 1950 report precipitated a few extremely fruitful months for Tikhonravov's

group. Each participant was given a separate assignment on the development of a Soviet satellite launch vehicle, with the goal of authoring a detailed and comprehensive study on the issue.

They studied various configurations of clustered and tandem missiles and devised a special

mathematical model for mass analysis based on firsthand information on the R-3 missile provided by Korotev's own engineers. As a result of this work, Moskalenko subsequently authored

Engineering Methods of Designing Missile Dynamics, while Maksimov completed a report on

the ballistic trajectories of an artificial satellite launched by the booster, tqdvanced studies were

also conducted on interorbital transfers and the deorbiting, reentry, and recovery of a satellite.

In designing the launch vehicle, Tikhonravov favored a two-stage packet of three R-3s: calculations showed that this configuration would be able to insert a fairly heavy satellite into orbit.

The results of all of this work was collated into a massive work consisting of three volumes and

published in late 1950. Tikhonravov's own March 1950 paper was also published in a scientific journal in 195 I. Despite the voluminous amount of work, Tikhonravov's group was once

again disbanded at this time. 5' Although this second setback was temporary, the termination of

the launch vehicle effort apparently was related to a number of institutional factors that clearly illustrated the tenuous support for scientific endeavors in a predominantly military industry.

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in a desert south of

Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. -''_The balance of power abruptly shifted between the two major

powers. In the immediate postwar years, Stalin's first and foremost priority was the creation of

Soviet nuclear weapons./qlthough modest rockets were developed during the same period, the

missile industry itself did not have the same kind of political imperative as atomic bombs.

Always holding a second place in the top-secret armaments industry, in 1949, a missile delivery system finally began to receive a pronounced support, and this support was tied to the

nuclear capability. It was painfully clear, however, that the available or planned rockets in the

Soviet arsenal such as the R-I and R-2 were inadequate to satisfy the needs of Soviet defense

policy. Neither of these missiles had the capability to carry the heavy nuclear warheads available at the time, nor were they particularly efficient in terms of preparations for launch and targeting. Most critically, they had very short ranges and could only be useful in tactical battles in

the European theater. Preparatory work on the R-3 program was ongoing at the time, although

51. Yu.A. Mozzhorinetat.eds,Dorogiukosmos:ll(Moscow:MAI, 1992),pp. 9t, 103:B N. Kantemirov,

"From the History of Science: Flight--His Dreams and Affairs" (English title), Zemlya i uselennaya no 6

(November-December 1991): 54-56.

52 Kantemirov, "From the History of Science."

53. Kantemirov, "IS July--40 Years From the Report": Yatsunskiy, "On the Activities of M. K.

Tikhonravov."

54. Yu. R Maksimov, Raketnyye voyska strategicheskogo naznaeheniya voyenno-istorieheskiy trud

(Moscow: RVSN, 1992). p 34

CHALLENGE TO 41:_POLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

even its 3,000-kilometer range was insufficient to cross the Atlantic and reach the shores of

what the Soviets considered their number-one enemy.

In this context, in late July 1949, less than a month prior to the first nuclear test, Stalin

summoned the top leaders of the missile industry to the Kremlin for a briefing on the state of

missile delivery systems. Representing the new rocketry industry were men from both the missile industry and the artillery forces. Also present were Chief Designer Korolev and Igor V.

Kurchatov, the famous nuclear physicist and scientific leader of the Soviet nuclear weapons program? S As the meeting dragged on into the evening, Col. General Mitrofan I. Nedelin, who

headed the Chief Artillery Directorate, and Marshal Nikolay N. Voronov, the chief of Artillery

Forces, gave brief reports on the status of efforts to adopt the R-I as an armament for the Soviet

Army. They were followed by Kurchatov, who reported on nuclear weapons development.

Korolev was apparently a little nervous when it was his turn, but he explained to Stalin that the

R-2 vehicle was almost ready for test launches. He specifically emphasized the advantages of

the vehicle over the original German designs, no doubt knowing that Stalin desired something

more capable of covering transatlantic distances. In a perhaps apocryphal account of the meeting, Stalin is alleged to have followed Korolev's report with the following tirade:

We want long, durable peace. But Churchill. well he's warmonger number one. And

Truman, he fears the Soviet land as the devil's own stench. They threaten us with atomic war. But we are not Japan. That is why you, comrade Kurchatov. and you, comrade

Ustinov. and you as well [turning to Korolev] must speed things up. ,Z]re there any more

questionsP _

With the clear message that the political leadership was not happy with the rate of

progress, Korolev and Nedelin departed together in silence. For Korolev, it was a double disappointment, for he had apparently intended to speak to Stalin about a "space rocket" capable of

traveling the upper reaches of the atmosphere, eventually with humans on board. At the last

minute, he omitted his notes on the subject, perhaps for fear that Stalin would see no interest

in it. Assuming that Nedelin would be more receptive to it, Korolev briefly told him about

Tikhonravov's work at NIl-4 and about the level of resistance it was facing from the general scientific community2 '

Nedelin was not too receptive to Korolev's promotion of Tikhonravov's ideas, irritating

Korolev and prompting him to argue even more forcefully. In the end, Nedelin effectively ended

the conversation with a warning that no doubt did not fall on deaf ears:

There's no need to be irritated .... The history o[ all this has been well known to me for

a long time. You probably don't know this, but our higher Generals have called for the

dismissal o/Blagonravov from his post as the President of the .Ztcademy o/.Zlrtillery

Sciences. Your name has also not been left out? 8

55. P,leksandr Romanov,Korolev (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1996), p. 228. P,mong those present were

Minister of grmaments D. F.Llstinov (who was also the deputy chair of the policy-making Special Committee No.

2), Commander-in-Chief of grtillery Forces Marshal N N. Voronov, Deputy Minister of t_rmed Forcesand former

Commander of the Chief Artillery Directorate Marshal N. D. Yakovlev,and recently appointed Commander of the

Chief Artillery Directorate Col. General M. I. Nedelin. Note that while Romanov states that Korolev was present at

this meeting, another biographer of the chief designer, Ya. K. Gofovanov, does not mention this meeting.

56. Ibid., p. 229.

5?" Ibid., p. 230.

58. Ibid., p. 231.

87
88

Korolevimmediatelygrewgloomy,andthetwoeventuallypartedonanunresolvednote.

Nedelin'swordswerenotonlyawarningaboutKorolev'spositionaschiefdesigner,butalso

hislifeitself.ThereignofBeriya'ssecretpolicehadafewmoreyearslefttogo,andit waswith

greatcareandtactthatmostof theengineershadto negotiateheiractivitiesthroughthe

innardsofthemilitarydefenseindustry.SuchwasBeriya'slogicthatif onewasnotactively

workingtoincreasethedefensivemightoftheSovietUnion,thenonemustbeactivelyengaged

insabotagingit.

Clearly,Korolev'splansforasatellitelaunchvehiclewerenotintheinterestsofeitherthe

militaryortheCommunistPartyatthispoint.ThetenuousnessofKorolev'sownpositionwas

demonstratedmostacutelybyadocumentauthoredbyNIl-4DirectorMaj.GeneralNesterenko

sometimein 1950.AlthoughehadsupportedTikhonravov'searlystudies,forreasonsstill

unknown,NesterenkosentaletterdirectlytotheCentralCommitteesuggestingthatthework

beingcarried out by Korolev and his engineers at NII-88 on developing/_-4-based missiles was

essentially a waste a time and resources. He supported his accusations based on the fact that

the Germans, using untold materials, had produced about 1,500 of the A-4 missiles, making

absolutely no difference to the ultimate outcome of the war. He added a number of criticisms

of the _-4 missile itself, including its poor targeting accuracy. Given Nesterenko's important

position, the letter might have had dire consequences, had it not been for Ustinov's efforts to

"neutralize" the effects of the document. 59For Korolev, who somehow found out about the letter, this was unforgivable: it was a grudge he held against Nesterenko to the end of his days.

Whether this event had any influence on Korolev's curiously cool attitude toward NIl-4 is

unclear, but in 1950, there were some dramatic changes at that institute. The same year, several scholars at NIl-4, including Nesterenko, were awarded the USSR State Prize in recognition

of their role in developing a system for soft-landing scientific apparatus from a high-altitude

missile using parachutes. '° Korolev was apparently displeased that NIl-4 had received such an

honor when his own institute had yet to be recognized for its achievements. By pulling strings,

he was able to significantly reduce such work at NIl-4. At the same time, cooperation between

the institute and other institutions in the military industry were dramatically curtailed. Several

important people lost their jobs in this massive reshuffle. Nesterenko was dismissed from his

post as NIl-4 director, while the president of the Academy of Artillery Sciences, Academician

Blagonravov, was demoted to vice president at about the same time in December 1950. °'

Whether Nedelin's warnings about the military's displeasure over Blagonravov's work or

Korolev's own offensive against NIl-4 was a bigger factor in these dismissals is unclear. Many

of the details of the incident still remain obscure, Given Blagonravov's visibly strong support for

Tikhonravov's launch vehicle studies, it would seem completely irrational for Korolev to actively lobby for his removal. It is more likely that the changes at the institute were an unlikely and

peculiar combination of Korolev's dislike of Nesterenko and the military's displeasure of

Blagonravov.

59 Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Dorogi u kosmos: I p. 113. ,q. A. Maksimov, who gives this account, recalls

that the incident occurred sometime in "1951 or perhaps 1949." Curiously, Nesterenko, in his own account of the

sameperiod, doesnot mention the letter. Instead, he writes. "" Looking back, I would suggestthat if I had not offered

Mikhail Klavdiyevich [Tikhonravov] a place to work at my institute, and if I had not supported his favorite theme,

the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth may have been delayed for some years." See Mozzhorin. el a/.

eds., Naehalo kosmicheskoy ery, p. 14.5.

60 Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Dorogi u kosmos: II, p. 9 I.

61. K.V. Frolov,/_. A. Parkhomenko,and M. K. Usokov,,Ztnatoli _rkadyeuich Blagonrauou: Outstanding

Souiet Scientists (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1986), p. 71. Blagonravov was replaced by Commander-in-Chief of

Artillery ForcesMarshal N. N. Voronov.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

Tikhonravov was the third person to feel the brunt of the changes. During "a routine

check," the Chief Inspectorate of the Ministry of Defense was surprised to find that NII-4 was

involving itself in "wholly non-military affairs in an initiatory fashion." The inspectors recommended that Tikhonravov's group be disbanded?: Tikhonravov was demoted from his position

as deputy director to that of a scientific consultant, a position one of his associates recalls as

being like an "honorary banishment. "_ In the ensuing two years, he and his old staff continued to conduct numerical investigations on different variations of multistage missiles and trajectories of artificial satellites, but the impetus that had driven the group from 1949 to 1950

was lost because of these institutional changes. The early efforts of the group did, however,

serve as an extremely important base from which the Soviet Union embarked on the creation

of an ICBM capable of reaching orbital velocity.

In a curious departure from the pervasive security regarding high-technology efforts, an

article authored by Tikhonravov titled "Flight to the Moon" was published in the newspaper

Pionerskaya pravda in October 1951Y Prominently mentioning the works of Tsiolkovskiy,

Tikhonravov adeptly described a two-person interplanetary spaceship of the future and the

industrial and technological processes required to create it. He ended the short article, written

for young readers, with a clear forecast of the future: "We do not have long to wait. We can

assume that the bold dream of [Tsiolkovskiy] will be realized within the next I0 to 15 years. All

of you will become witnesses to this, and some of you may even be participants in as yet

unprecedented journeys."°_ In perhaps the very first reporting in the West of Soviet space plans,

Tikhonravov's article apparently caused quite a stir. It was the subject of a prominent write-up

in The New York Times two days after the original publication, which explained that:

Dr. Tikhonrauov left no doubt that Soviet scientific development in the field of jet propulsion and rockets was advancing rapidly. He suggested that this science in the Soviet

Union had reached the level at least equaling if not exceeding that in Western countries? °

It was a rare peek into the shrouded world of Soviet rocketry. The fact that Tikhonravov was

allowed to write under his own name on a potentially sensitive topic indicates that the censors

viewed the article as of no importance or relevance to national security.

Organizational restructuring was not unique to NIl-4. Symptomatic of a broader evolution

and maturity in the missile industry, Korolev's home institute, NII-88, was also the center of

some dramatic changes. Since his appointment as chief designer of long-range ballistic missiles

in 1946, Korolev had continually felt a certain sense of powerlessness in the Ministry of

Armaments. At Kapustin Yar, as the technical director of the state commissions, his word was

law, and deputy ministers, chiefs of directorates, and other chief designers would literally subordinate themselves in the face of his incredibly assertive personality. On his return to

Kaliningrad, however, he would come face to face with an overtly complex bureaucracy comprising several layers in the chains-of-command, which gave him very little in terms of legal and

62. Anatoliy Shifyayev and Valeriy Baberdin, "Before the First Leap into Space" (English title), Krasnaya

zvezda, ,qpril 27, 1996. p. 5.

63. Kantemirov, "From the History of Science"; Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi v kosrnos: II, p. 94:

Kantemirov, " 15July--40 YearsFromthe Report."

64. M, K. Tikhonravov, "Flight to the Moon" (English title), Pionerskayapravda, October 2, 195I, p. 2. An

English translation of the article can be found in F J. Krieger.7t Casebook on Soviet Astronautics (Santa Monica,

CA: RAND. 1956), pp. 45-48.

65. Ibid.

66. "Flights to PlanetsForecastin Soviet," TheNew York Times, October 4, 195I.

89
90

institutional authority. He became another one of several chief designers, often with less ministerial capacity than his other colleagues because he was officially the head of a department

within a design bureau, while his contemporaries on the Council of Chief Designers all headed their own bureaus.

Forthe most part, Korolev's predicament was a result of the institutional peculiarities of the

armaments industry, which had essentially been modeled along the lines of the aviation sector.

There was a four-step process in project implementation in the creation of aircraft: the scientific research institutes conducted the basic research on a weapon: the design bureaus carried

out the engineering work: departments in the military subjected the particular vehicle through

a thorough testing regime; and then the product would be declared operational and be formally handed over to the Air Force. In the case of rockets, Korolev believed that such a chain-ofcommand was not optimal. On many occasions, he had attempted to convince Minister of

grmaments Ustinov on the need for total control of the entire process from one centralized

entity--that is, his own organization. During one heated conversation, Korolev was particularly explicit:

Dmitriy Fedorouieh, you and your deputies are trying to make me a designer o[ just a

missile. Not euen a missile, but a uery large automated cannon shell, to be more precise.

Listen, if I work as the airera[t designers do, our whole business would collapse uery

soon. You need to understand: I haue to be Ohie[ Designer of the whole system .... _'_

The disillusionment expressed by both Korolev and his first deputy Mishin was compounded by the fact that the primary thematic direction at the institute was represented by

Korolev's department, although its powers were officially limited to the level of that of the several other minor departments at Nll-88's Specialized Design Bureau. The bureau's Department

No. 3 had clearly outgrown its original mandate by 1950.

The first major change at the institute was precipitated by the departure in the autumn of

1949 of NII-88 Chief Engineer Yuriy A. Pobedonostsev. Ending his extremely fruitful participation in the formation of the postwar ballistic missile programs, in May 1950, he was appointed the rector at the Academy of Armaments Industry? _ It was the effective end of a twenty-year

career, during which he had played major roles in GIRD, in NII-3, on the recovery teams in

Germany, and finally in NII-88. In later years, he participated in the development of early Soviet

solid-propellant ICBMs at Nil-125. He was a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute at the

time of his death in 1973 at the age of 66. Following Pobedonostsev's resignation, in 1950, at

the behest of Korolev, Minister Llstinov agreed to hold a meeting to discuss a complete restructuring of the institute. Attended by Korolev, Llstinov, institute Director Gonor, Chief Engineer

Tritko (who had temporarily replaced Pobedonostsev), and his Deputy Chertok, the session was

held at an all-night restaurant in Moscow, during which the men hammered out the details of

the changes. Llstinov agreed to merge several sectors at NII-88 that were dedicated to antiaircraft missiles, partly because of their poor performance in the postwar years. At the same

time, on April 26, 1950, a number of other departments at the institute were consolidated to

create the new Special Design Bureau No. I (more commonly known as OKB-I) of NII-88.

67. Golovanov,Koroleu,pp. 376-7?'

68 ValeriyZharkov,"Pobedonostsev'sCriteria"(Englishtitle),in V.Shcherbakov, Zagadkizuezdnykh ostrouou(Moscow:Molodayagvardiya,1989),p. 95:Chertok,Raketyi lyudi,p. 344.

CHALLENGE TO I_POLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

Korolev was formally named the chief and chief designer of OKB-I, an organization dedicated

exclusively to the development of long-range ballistic missiles. 69Ustinov formally named the

thirty-three-year-old Mishin as Korolev's first deputy chief designer, who then was already

famous for being a "generator of ideas." Vasiliy S. Budnik, a thirty-seven-year-old engineer who

was responsible for the missile production programs, was appointed the sole deputy chief

designer/°

Ustinov enacted further changes in the overall leadership of the institute. Maj. General Lev

R. Gonor, who had served as director of NII-88 since its inception in t946. was relieved of his

duties in June 1950. 7' g very opinionated and assertive individual, Gonor had continually

clashed with both Korolev and Mishin in the previous years over a variety of technical and thematic issues. There is no doubt that Korolev, with his unpredictable temper and aggressive

nature, was responsible for most of these conflicts. Unable to accept subordination to a number of officials such as Tritko, Gonor, Vetoshkin, Ryabikov, and Ustinov, the chief designer was

prone to be resistant to any efforts originating from Gonor. The artillery general also had the

misfortune of being one of the very few high-ranking Jewish individuals in the rocketry industry. Although there is no evidence to suggest that anti-Semitism played any role in his dismissal,

there was clearly a certain degree of prejudice with which he had to deal as director. Without

Ustinov's strong support for his candidacy in 1946, Gonor probably would not have been

appointed director of such an important institution. Leaving NII-88, Gonor moved to head an

artillery plant in Krasnoyarsk. In January 1953, he and many others were arrested during the socalled "Doctors' Plot" and thrown into prison. Other missile men among the incarcerated were

several officers from the Chief Artillery Directorate, including its former head Marshal Yakovlev,

who had been instrumental in restoring A-4 production in the Soviet Union. Fortunately for

those affected, Stalin died only two months later, and Gonor, Yakovlev, and the others were

released. Formally rehabilitated, Gonor went on to become the chief of a branch at the Central

Institute of Aviation Motor Building at Turayevo, near Moscow. He led a very successful career

in the aviation industry, which was unexpectedly cut short by the development of gangrene in

one of his limbs. He died on November 13, 1969, at the age of sixty-three, 7_

Gonor's replacement at the NII-88 arrived in his office on August 18, 1950, in the person

of Konstantin N. Rudnev, a thirty-nine-year-old graduate of the Tula Mechanics Institute.

During the war, the soft-spoken Rudnev had served as director of a famous munitions plant.

He was received by some apprehension by the engineers at NII-88, but Rudnev's intelligence

and modesty apparently soon won over most of the institute's employees. Much less stubborn

than Gonor, Rudnev developed a good working relationship with Korolev, Mishin, and others,

helped no doubt by his inexhaustible sense of humor. At the time of Rudnev's appointment,

there were rumors abounding in the Ministry of Armaments that Korolev would not only head

the new OKB-I but also be named the chief engineer of the entire institute. Fearful about allowing Korolev too much power at NII-88, Minister Ustinov instead invited NII-885 Chief Designer

69. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles." p. 230. Another bureau. OKB-2. was also estab

lished to consolidate all work on anti-aircraft missiles. It was originally headedby Chief DesignerYe.V. Sinilshchikov

and later by K. I. Tritko. OKB-2, in its original form, was dissolved shortly after, on/_ugust 27, 1951,when all antiaircraft missile development was transferredfrom the armaments industry to the aviation industry.

70. Golovanov, Koroleu. p. 436. Mishin and Budnik's appointment order was signed on June 16, 1950.

71. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 47.

72, Ibid., pp. 245-46: Mikhail Rebrov, "Return to the Loss of God. or the History of a Man About Whom

We Know ,qlmost Nothing _qbout" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda. June 2 I, 1997,p. 6.

91
92

MikhailS.Ryazanskiytogiveuphisengineeringjobdevelopingradio-controlledguidancesystemsto serveaschiefengineerof NII-88.It wasa peculiarsituationbecauseoriginally

RyazanskiyhadbeenoneofKorolev'sasociatesontheCouncilofChiefDesigners,Afterhis

formalappointmentinJanuary195I, heeffectivelyservedasKorolev'ssuperiorasthechief

engineerandfirstdeputydirectoroftheinstitute."

Dogs in Space

It was Korolev himself who served as the

chief driving force behind formulating a dedicated plan to loft animals on short vertical flights

into the upper atmosphere--a program that

directly cleared the way to launch the first

human being into orbit. As early as 1948, he

began to informally consider ways of lifting

human passengers into space using available

technology. Inspired by U,S. programs using

A-4 and Aerobee missiles for launching animals

into space, Korolev mentioned his plans for

human spaceflight to famous aviation designer

gndrey N, Tupolev during a conversation in late

1948/_ In response, Tupolev gave Korolev the

name of Vladimir A Yazdovskiy, a young physician employed at the Air Force's Institute of

Aviation Medicine in Moscow.

The thirty-five-year-old Lt. Colonel

Yazdovskiy had graduated from the Tashkent

Medical Institute before spending the war as an

Army physician. Moving to aviation medicine

after 1945, he evidently made quite a name for

himself as a bright and resourceful researcher. In

January 1949, Korolev telephoned Yazdovskiy,

introducing himself as a builder of "special

equipment" (it was illegal to make references to

military weapons such as missiles over the

phone), and arranged a meeting at the

SergeyKoroleu in july 1954 is with a dog that just

returned to Earth after a lob to an altitude of

I00 kilometers on an R-tD scientific rocket. In 1931,

the Souiet Union became [he first country to safely

reeouer a tiuing organism after a flight in space

(files of/Isi/Siddiqi)

73 Golovanov. Koroteu,p. 565: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 349 The option of transferring M S Ryazanskiy

from Nlf-885 was partly the result of a minor conflict with Chief Designer B, N Konoplev. Both had independent

engineenng teams focusing on developing radio controlled guidance systems at the institute Konoplev had been

transferred to NII-885 from Nil 20 in ,qpril 1950as a full chief designer in recognition of his role in developing the

advanced systems for the new R-3missile Konoplev eventually took over Ryazanskiy's vacant post on the Council

of Chief Designers

74. Mozzhorin. et al, eds, Dorogi u kosmos:II, pp. 119-20. The first US, program for launching animals

into space usedA 4 missiles. BetweenJune I l, 1948,and August 31, 1950,five A 4s (three of them stretched) were

launchedfrom White Sands in New Mexico aspart of the A/bert and Blossom tqtbert programs. All except one carried monkeys. Despite reaching a highest altitude of 136.5 kilometers on the last launch, none of the animals were

recoveredalive, A second program involved Aerobee RTV A-I missiles: three were launched between April 18. 195I,

and May 21, t952 The second flight on September20, 195I. with a monkey and eleven mice was the first LI.S.mission involving the successful recovery of animals after a high-altitude flight (just over seventy kilometers).

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

Petrovsko-Razumovskiy Park near the Institute of Aviation Medicine. Korolev was direct with

the young physician, informing him that:

Andrey Nikolayevich [Tupoleu] suggested I contact you about leading a biomedical program in preparation [or future [lights of spaceships. I would like you to lead this effort,

since I don't know what's being done in this area nowadays and what has already been

done .... ts

Yazdovskiy was resistant at first, but Korolev would not take no for an answer: "Oh, come

on now Volodya .... What's in it for you in all that aviation medicine business? What I'm offering you is far more challenging." Hearing that Yazdovskiy had never seen a launch of a rocket,

Korolev replied, "Well, then, if you've seen it once, it'll stay with you for the rest of your life. "_

Within a few days, Korolev personally arranged with the USSR Minister of Defense Aleksandr

M. Vasiliyevskiy to have Yazdovskiy's current work transferred to others, and the physician was

given a mandate to begin dedicated biomedical studies in preparation for putting a human into

space at an unspecified time in the future. The short-term goals were to use small animals as

test beds for gathering medical data on the effects of rocket flight on living organisms.

The director of the Institute of Aviation Medicine, Maj. General Aleksey V. Pokrovskiy, initially assigned a small group of physicians to work under Yazdovskiy, including Boris G, Buylov,

Vitally I. Popov, and Aleksandr D. Seryapin. At the time, the literature in the Soviet Union on

space medicine was almost nonexistent. Thus, the group began its efforts by studying translations of American texts on the subject in detail and identifying the major areas of focus, In

designing a payload module for a small animal to fly aboard a modified R-I missile, Yazdovskiy

narrowed down three factors that would play important roles: the environment of vacuum, radiation, extreme temperatures, and meteorites in near-Earth space: the presence of parameters

such as vibration, noise, and weightlessness during dynamic flight: and issues associated with

the confinement of organisms in a very small space."

In studying these factors, the group also addressed the question of what type of animal to

use on the launches. The candidates most appropriate for medical use were initially narrowed

down to apes and dogs, but by late 1950, the group began to lean more toward the use of the

latter. Apes were considered to be more difficult to dress and were more likely to get colds and

other diseases. Furthermore, because they were more excitable than dogs, the doctors believed

that they might, for example, bite off important sensors from their bodies. The decision to use

dogs was formally approved at a meeting of important scientists and physicians at a special session organized by the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Academy of Sciences in December

1950/_ Academician Blagonravov, who had just been relieved of his post as president of the

Academy of Artillery Sciences, was nominated and appointed chair of a state commission to

oversee the actual biological launches. Several famous Soviet biomedicine specialists, such as

Vladimir N. Chernigovskiy, Vasiliy V. Parin, and Norair M, Sisakyan, were also inducted as advisors to the commission, emphasizing the importance with which the scientific community

viewed the program.

The selection of dogs as test subjects commenced a search to establish criteria for particular types of dogs. Starting with the rationale that the choice had to be satisfactory to both the

rocketeers and the biologists, Yazdovskiy's group had to negotiate a number of major obstacles.

At the outset, the doctors agreed that at least two dogs would have to be launched in a

75 Ibid,, p. 120

76. Ibid

77. Ibid, pp. 122 24

78. Golovanov,Koroleu.pp. 545-46: Stache,Soviet Rockets.p 212

93
94

common container on each flight because the reaction of one animal would not provide objective results, given the conditions on a particular launch and the peculiarities of the dog. With

the constraint of only 0.28 cubic meters of volume, the dogs had to be relatively small and light,

somewhere between six and seven kilograms. Experts in dog behavior were consulted, and they

reported that small dogs were not compatible with each other, further narrowing the field, The

subjects also had to have a high level of resistance and be easily trainable. In addition, the dogs

had to have a white or brightly colored coat because the plan was to film the behavior of the

animals during flight using a system of mirrors in the poor lighting conditions inside the capsule. Finally, only female dogs were considered because the special anti-gravity suit and sanitation equipment would pose complex problems in the case of males. The requirements were so

stringent that at one point one of the "dog catchers" in exasperation told one of the physicians, "Perhaps you'd like them to also have blue eyes and howl in C major? ....

Such aspects as the posture of the dogs in flight were carefully planned out prior to launch.

Yazdovskiy's team used pairs of dogs in a special centrifui_e with self-contained life support systems to ascertain that a vertical posture would probably kill the animals because of the high

rates of acceleration in the initial stages of flight. Equipment for monitoring the physiological

behavior of the dogs was culled from a variety of sources, including a local military college and

the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Optical Plant, which manufactured a camera capable of holding

120 to 300 meters of film. _°

At Korolev's department at NII-88, the desii_n of modified R-I missiles and a special container to carry the small animals had formally began on December 30, 1949, as part of a coordinated project to develop different variants of the rocket for scientific purposes. The chief of

the planning sector at Korolev's section, Konstantin D. Bushuyev, was appointed to lead the

team that would design two new modifications of the R- I, designated the R- I B and R- I V. The

design of both the rockets and the payload evolved over 1950 and 195 I, with significant interaction between Yazdovskiy's group at the Institute of Aviation Medicine. Both visually and

technically, the new missiles were markedly different from their predecessor, the R-IA missile.

They incorporated many of the mechanisms developed for the R-2 ballistic missile and had a

much more sleek appearance than the R-IA. Each missile was 17.55 meters in length with a

base diameter of 2.56 meters, dimensions significantly exceeding the R-IA. Total liftoff mass

was about 14.32 tons. 8' The total mass of the experimental payload of the vehicle was set at

I,I 60 kilof, rams, of which 590 kilograms was the actual container carrying the doi_s.

Engineers under Bushuyev spent a significant amount of work designing a container that

could be safely recovered. They modified the original nose cone separation mechanism from

the R-IA and raised the reliability of the parachute system during preflight tests. Auxiliary air

brakes were introduced to decrease the rate of descent prior to the opening of the parachute,

primarily to reduce deployment shock. The new rockets also incorporated improved telemetry

systems because the most important aspect of the mission would be the data recorded during

the flight. This in turn necessitated a more accurate orientation and stabilization system. The

end result of the R- I B/R- I V design program in 1951 was the development of a standard nose

cone payload section that could be used in a variety of configurations for different requirements. _2 In addition to the main payload container, the R-IB carried two eighty-five-kilogram

?9. Stache,Souiet Rockets,pp 212-13. EvgenyRiabchikov,Russians in Space(Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

19Zl), p 140.

80 Mozzhorin, et GL.eds., Dorogi u kosmos II, pp 126-27.

81 Keldysh, ed. Tuorcheskoye naslediye akadernika Sergeya Paulouicha Koroleua. p. 536: Biryukov,

"Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p. 229.

82. Stache, Souiet Roeke_s,p. 213.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

scientific modules that were attached longitudinally to the sides of the main body of the missile. These were designed by the Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and

they contained a number of instruments for studying the upper atmosphere. The R-IV, identical in all other respects, carried a large parachute system in place of the science modules to

enable engineers to recover the 4,160-kilogram main body of the rocket.

In mid-summer of 195I, the state commission, headed by Blagonravov, Yazdovskiy, and

other representatives from the Institute of Aviation Medicine, and engineers from OKB-I, led

by Korolev, converged at Kapustin Yar for the first Soviet attempt at launching a living organism into space. A total of nine dogs were selected to form the core pool, including Albina

(Russian for White), Bobik, Dezik, Kozyavka (Gnat), Lisa, Malyshka (Little One), Smelaya

(Bold), and Tsygan (Gypsy). 8_Yazdovskiy chose Dezik and Tsygan for the first flight, set forJuly

22, 1951. The launch, using an R-IV, was held during the early morning hours so the rocket

would be illuminated by the Sun during the ascent portion. Preparations for the launch were

conducted in a mood of unconcealed excitement and anxiety, and following Blagonravov's formal approval, the rocket finally lifted off in a roar amid the dust of Kapustin Yar, carrying its two

canine passengers. During their flight, the animals reached a velocity of 4,200 kilometers per

hour and an altitude of I01 kilometers, and they experienced four minutes of weightlessness.

Approximately 188 seconds following launch, the payload section separated from the main

booster and went into freefall until it dropped to an altitude of six kilometers, at which time the

parachute successfully deployed. Yazdovskiy had personally asked all the members of the state

commission to remain at their viewing positions until the dogs had landed, but about twenty

minutes following launch, a white parachute was visible in the sky, and everyone at the launch

site rushed to their cars, driving off into the desert in a cloud of sand. At the landing site, the

cabin hatch was hurriedly unscrewed, and both dogs were found barking and wagging their

tails. Although Dezik was in perfect condition, Tsygan had apparently sustained a minor injury

on her belly when the inner compartment had curved in upon impact. _4The dogs were the first

living organisms successfully recovered after a flight into space, coming two months before the

United States achieved a similar feat.

This first historical launch was followed by an unevenly successful program. The second

of six total missiles, this one an R-I B, carried Dezik on her second flight with a new dog, Lisa,

on July 29. Unfortunately, the pressure sensor used to trigger the parachute system had been

damaged by vibration, and both dogs were killed upon impact on the steppes of Kapustin Yar.

The on-board data recorders were, however, successfully salvaged._ Korolev himself was apparently greatly grieved by the loss. The third launch almost did not go off. One of the dogs chosen for the flight, Smelaya, unexpectedly ran loose the day before launch, causing great

consternation among the specialists that she had met her fate at the jaws of jackals, which were

known to roam the area. Fortunately, the next morning, Smelaya returned to the launch site,

quite safe, and the launch went off on time. Both dogs survived and were recovered successfully. One of the dogs slated to fly on the sixth and final flight once again disappeared during

a walk prior to launch. Yazdovskiy ordered Seryapin to search for a replacement, and the latter

went to the local canteen and picked up one of the dogs that were known to frequent the place,

making sure that she was suitable in size and temperament. With no previous documentation,

Korolev opted to give her the name ZIB, the Russian acronym for "Substitute for Missing Dog

Bobik." With minimal training, she and another dog were successfully launched on

September 3 on a completely successful mission, reaching an altitude of I00 kilometers and

83. Riabchikov.Russiansin .Space.p. 141.

84. Frolov.Parkhomenko.and Usokov..,qnatoli,,qrkadyevichBlagonravov.pp. 144-45:Mozzhorin.et al.

eds..Dorogiu kosrnos:II. p. 127.

85, Golovanov.Korolev.p. 547.

95
96

finishing the program. _ In total, nine dogs were flown on six launches, three of them flying

twice.

Despite four dog fatalities, the results of the R-tBIR-IV launch program were encouraging. _'

Data gathered on a four-channel recorder included information on fluctuations of skin temperature and pulse and on cabin pressure and temperature. Film from the movie camera proved

extremely useful in observing the behavior of the dogs in flight. In addition, before and after the

missions, physicians obtained an electrocardiogram, an x-ray of the thorax, conditional food

reflexes, and data on body mass. The flights also introduced the first fully functioning life support system for organisms in Soviet rocketry, consisting of a seven-liter globe filled with a mixture

of 70 percent air and 30 percent oxygen. A soda lime cartridge was used to absorb exhaled carbon dioxide, and a silica gel cartridge was used as a desiccant. Among nonbiomedical experiments, the launch of August 15 was the first time that Soviet instruments were used to study the

spectral composition of solar shortwave radiation from an altitude of I00 kilometers. "_ For

Blagonravov, the launches had one important result. After the second launch, when Dezik and

Lisa had been killed, Blagonravov had decided that Tsygan, who had been Dezik's partner on the

first flight, should not fly again. Instead, in early September, he took the lone dog back to Moscow

and adopted her as his own. Tsygan lived to a great old age, and Blagonravov and the dog would

often be seen walking the streets of Moscow. both clearly very much attached to each other. _'

The vertical dog flights of 1951 opened up the era of space biomedicine for the Soviet Union.

At the same time, there was also a significant expansion of the use of ballistic missiles for the

study of the upper atmosphere. Under Academician Blagonravov's chairmanship, the

Commission for the Investigation of the Upper Atmosphere submitted a formal report in 195 I

describing a full-scale program for high-altitude scientific research. Using available R-I-based missiles as a limiting factor, an eight-point program was put forth that encompassed the following:

• Investigations on the chemical composition of air at high altitudes

• The determination of wind velocity

• The development of methods for determining ionization density

• Investigations into the composition of primary cosmic radiation and its interaction with matter

• Spectral measurements of solar radiation

• Research on aerodynamics, boundary layer structures, and surface resistance

• Research on life functions of animals at high altitudes

• The development of integrated recovery systems "'_'

86. Mozzhorin. et al, eds, Dorogi u kosrnos: II, p. 128. The launch dates and results were as follows:

Rocket Date Rescue of Payload Rescue of FIAR- I Rescue of Dogs

R-IV July 22. t951 yes yes yes

R-tB July 29. 1951 no no no

R-IB August 15, 1951 yes yes yes

R-IV August 19, 1951 yes no yes

R-IB August 28, 1951 no yes no

R t B September3. 1951 yes yes yes

See B. V. Raushenbakh, ed_ S P Koroleu i ego deto: suet i teni u istorii kosrnonautiki: izbmnnyye trudy i dokumenty

(Moscow: Nauka. 1998),p 541.

87 Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 35_

88 George Wukelic, ed., Handbook of Soviet Space-Science Research (New York: Gordon and Breach

Science Publishers, 1968). pp. 16-17, 19-20: G. S. Ivanov-Kholodnyy and L A Vedeshin, "First Rocket Experiments

for Researchon SoiarShort-wave Radiation," in FrederickI Ordway II!, ed.. Hislory of Rocketry and ,,qstronautics.

Vol 9 (San Diego: American Astronautical Society, 1989), p 19I,

89 Golovanov. Koroleu. p. 547: Stache,Soviet Rockets.p. 216,

90. Stache.Souiet Rockets,p. 21 I.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

Visits to the Kapustin Yar range were frequent for engineers at OKB-I. Although the launches of the R-IB and the R-IV were no doubt important for the scientific communib,, of much

greater significance was the testing in support of the military ballistic missile program. An intensive effort had been expended in late 1950 during the first series of launches of the new

R-2 missile. P, second series, again directed by Korolev, was carried out between July 2 and 27,

1951, at the same time that dogs were being lofted into space from the same site. 9' Of the total

of thirteen launches in the series, a remarkable twelve successfully reached their targets, finally

allowing engineers to put the results of the dismal first series behind them. The Soviet armed

forces formally adopted the R-2 missile as operational armament by an order dated November

27, 195 I--a decision that emphasized the overriding needs of the military to operate a battleready long-range ballistic missile system? _ The R-2 was, in fact, a vast improvement over the

R-I--in particular, in areas such as ease of training and operation and the capabilities of its guidance system. With a range of 600 kilometers, it could reach twice as far as its predecessor,

although it was still incapable of carrying the heavy nuclear weapons in existence at the time.

With the adoption of both the R-I and the R-2 missiles in the armed forces, the overseeing Special Committee No. 2 addressed the need for establishing a new production facility for

manufacturing the vehicles in quantity. After much discussion, the committee decided on May

9, 195 I, to transfer a large factory in the Ukraine, the Dnepropetrovsk Automobile Plant, to the

jurisdiction of the Ministry of Armaments. Since July 1944, the plant had been manufacturing

automobiles, tractors, and other heavy machinery--at first in support of the war effort, but later

for civilian purposes. After its transfer, the facility was formally named the State Union Plant

No. 586 in 1952. In the interest of coordinating all manufacturing work with OKB-I, Korolev

transferred one of his leading assistants, Deputy Chief Designer Budnik, to the newly reorganized plant on July 6, 195 I. Budnik, the very first of many of Korolev's proteges to become chief

designers in their own right, was instrumental in leading all the engineering aspects of manufacturing the R-I and R-2 missiles. 9_Within twenty years, the plant at Dnepropetrovsk was to

become the largest missile and space launch vehicle manufacturing facility in the entire world.

Themes

The R-3 project, begun in 1949, served as the starting point for preliminary studies into possible configurations for the first Soviet ICBM As Korolev emphasized in his draft plan for the

R-3, the 3,000-kilometer-range missile was seen as a stepping stone to more ambitious rockets.

Concurrent with the early work on the R-3 during 1949-50, engineers at NII-88 were, in fact,

engaged in formulating a long-range strategic plan for the institute--one that would dictate the

general nature of work on Soviet long-range missiles for some time to come. By the end of 1950,

this plan encompassed three specific areas of focus or "themes," as Soviet engineers called them:

• Theme N I called for the design of a new one-stage missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers.

• Theme N2 called for the creation of a missile using storable propellant components.

• Theme N3 focused on exploratory research in developing a Soviet tCBM.

91. Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," pp. 230-31.

92 Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy, p. 34. A final series of fourteen R-2 missiles was launched

between August 8 and September 18, 1952.of which only two failed to reach their targets. By this time, the vehi

cle had a success rating of 86 percent.

93. V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov, and V. Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy tsentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: POYuMZ/KBYu. 1994), pp. 52-53. Production for the R-I and R-2 missiles was transferred to the

plant by personal order of Minister of Armaments D F.Ustinov on June I and November 30, 195I, respectively

97
98

The USSR Council of Ministers formally approved this new research program under the title

"Complex Research and Determination of the Basic Flight-Tactical Characteristics of [LongRange Ballistic Missiles]" by an official governmental decree dated December 4, 19507' Chief

Designer Korolev was the overall scientific leader.

The N I theme subsumed the already concurrent work on the ambitious R-3 missile, which was

specifically geared toward two design innovations: the use of integral tanks for both propellants and

the elimination of graphite rudders for guidance. Both of these were to be tested on the experimental R-3g missile• By 195 I, NII-88 had prepared "The Plan for the R-3P, Experimental Missile

With an Improved Range of Flight," the final technical document containing the workshop drawings for manufacturing the rocket• The flight testing of the missile was set to begin from Kapustin

Yar in October 195 I. 9' The schedule for the R-3 program, however, proved to be overly optimistic.

Given the technological leap required for the R-3 program, it is not surprising that Soviet engineers

ran headlong into some seemingly insurmountable problems, bringing the effort to an impasse

within two years of the start of the project• One official historian of NII-88 recalled later that:

•., serious stumbling blocks prevented the JR-3] engines from being developed in time--

when it became clear that these problems would lead to enormously delaying the production of the R-3 missile, Korolev was blamed [or an unrealistic objective statement.

Critics said that a range a[ 1,000 km aught ta have been assigned, and the rocket model

should have been [progressively] evolved as it had been with the R-2 rocket, which had

been advanced to a preset standard through a certain number of modifications. _"

For his part, Korolev, put the blame squarely on Glushko's shoulders, believing, with some

validity, that Glushko had erred seriously by trying to scale up the old German/_-4 engine to

create the RD-I10 engine for the R-3.

Glushko's primary problem seems to have been due to the use of the new liquid oxygen

(LOX) and kerosene combination• The new pairing, while being more efficient than the LOXalcohol duo, resulted in a higher combustion chamber pressure, which meant that the walls of

the chamber had to be thicker• This in turn would make the engine heavier• More damaging for

the RD-I IO were the problems in cooling the engine, the requirements for which were much

more stringent than [or the German /_-4 engine. Cooling required thin combustion chamber

walls, which would not stand up to the higher internal pressures. Put in a difficult position,

Glushko had to resort to adopting an idea from another noted engine designer, Chief Designer

Aleksey M. Isayev, who during his stint at Nil- I in the mid-1940s had performed some groundbreaking research on high-thrust liquid propellant rocket engines• Isayev's idea, derived from

work at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory and by the German scientist S_inger in the 1930s, was to

use a so-called "integrated solder-welded" design, which had thin "ribs" around each combustion chamber to allow coolant to pass around the chamber• Such a design circumvented

major cumulative problems of operations at high pressures, temperatures, and heat fluxes.

while generating the required high specific impulses?'

94. gvduyevskiyand Eneyev,eds.,M. _1Keldysh,p 139:Ishlinskiy,ed, ]tkademik S t?Koroleu.p 302:Semenov,

ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya.p. 630. The title of the overallprogramis given in Keldysh, ed, Tuomheskoye

naslediyeakademikaSergeyaPavlovicha Koroleua,p. 319./_n alternatetitle, "The Prospectsof the Developmentof LongRangeMissiles," isgiven on p. 328 of the sametext. Fo[generaldescriptionsof the three themes,seeMozzhorin, et al.,

eds.,Nachalo kosmicheskoycry, pp, 71,261: Mozzhorin, et al., eds.,Dorogi u kosmos:I. pp. 107-08.

95. Biriukov, "The R-3 Rocket Project Developedin the U.S.S.R.": Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical

Chronicles," pp. 230-3 I; Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,p. 40.

96. Biriukov,"The R-3RocketProjectDevelopedin the LI.S.S.R.,"p. 197.

97. M h Prishchepa,"History of Developmentof FirstSpaceRocketEnginesin the USSR,"in Ordway,ed., History

o[ Rocketryand ,"_stronauties,pp. 95-98,

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
i STALIN RND THE ROCKET

Glushko had evidently begun work on such a design by the late 1940s. In mid-194?, he

tested a technology demonstrator with a thrust of seven tons and an initial gas pressure of sixty

kilograms per square centimeter. I_ second experimental chamber, designated the KS-50, had a

thrust of fifty kilograms. Used for testing with various propellant combinations, it was fired successfully for the first time on April 26 of the same year. °_While the new design was a positive

step in Soviet rocket engine development, the goal of designing a single chamber LOX-kerosene

engine with a ground thrust of 120 tons eventually proved to be "problematical" for Glushko's

design bureau. Vibration-related explosions during testing continually delayed RD-II0 development, and there were reasons to believe that the overall project might be delayed by as much

as two years. By 195 I, a full four years after work on the RD-I I0 had begun, Glushko had successfully carried out only hydraulic testing of its huge combustion chamber, the turbopump,

the gas generator, and some subsystems. There had still been no integrated ground tests. By

the end of the year, Glushko had temporarily suspended the continuing development of the

RD-II0. Work on the D-2 competitor engine (by Chief Designer Polyarniy at Nil-I) "was also

unsuccessful, due to excessive innovations introduced into the proJect. "_

The problems with the engines for the R-3 forced Korolev to completely reassess his priorities. Having promised the Soviet armed forces a 3,O00-kilometer missile, he was unable to provide anything more than the modest 600-kilometer-range R-2 rocket. In a typically shrewd

move, in the spring of 195 I, Korolev turned his attention to the experimental 900-kilometerrange R-3A missile, which was close to flight testing. Using the latter as a prototype, would it

not be possible to marginally augment its systems and create a "new" missile with a range of

about 1,200 kilometers? He set his engineers to work on the problem, and within months, by

October 30, 195 I, they completed the draft plan for the new missile, designated the R-5. It

would heretofore be known as the "first Soviet strategic rocket. ''°° Given that, unlike the R-3,

this strategic missile was the result of incremental improvements in already existing Soviet rockets, Korolev and the military seemed to have had much more confidence in the new program

than they did in the far too ambitious R-3. Because the development of the R-5 was performed

as part of the original N I theme, there was no formal approval of the program from the Soviet

government. An official USSR Council of Ministers decree on February 13, 1953, for the first

time mentioned the rocket in a document that specified timetables for its testing. '°'

The R-5 missile incorporated many of the design characteristics originally earmarked for the

R-3 and, as such, served as a harbinger of many new innovations in the evolution of Soviet

rocket design. For example, engineers developed a new set of reinforced servo components and

speedier operating servomotors for the small aerodynamic rudders to compensate for the reduction in the size of the main stabilizing fins. The guidance system for the missile, developed at

NII-885 under Chief Designer Pilyugin, used longitudinal acceleration integrators, which

allowed improved precision to time engine cutoff, thus improving targeting accuracy. A team at

NII-88 developed special thermal shielding for the warhead, which was expected to reenter the

98. v.A. Volodin, "2 September--80 YearsSince the Birth of Academician V. P Glushko (1908)" (English

title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 59 (1989): 82-92. For a discussion of the KS-50 and the RD-II 0, although

neither are named, seeV. I. Pfishchepa, "From the History of the Creation of the First Space Engines( 1947-1957)"

(English title), in B, V. Raushenbakh, ed., Issledouaniya po istorii i teorii ruzuitiya uuiatsionnoy i raketno kosmieheskoy nauki i tekhniki (Moscow: Nauka, 1981 ), pp. 128-29.

99. Biriukov, "The R 3 Rocket Project Developed in the U.S.S.R.," p. 198: Prishchepa, "From the History of

the Creation," pp. 123, 129. For the D-2, see also V. Dav'/dov, "The Contribution of N. G. Chernyshev in the

Development of Rocket-SpaceTechnology" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 19(September9-22, 1996): 58-6 I.

I00. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiyo, pp. 40_ 46, 630: Biryukov and Yeremenko, "SO

Yearsfor the Native Rocket-SpaceIndustry."

I01. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 46. The testing would be performed in three

stages--the first two being experimental stages and the last being a targeting series

99
IOO

upperlayersoftheatmosphereatavelocityof3,000meterspersecond,farinexcessofanythingpreviouslybuilt.Becausebothofthepropellanttankswereintegralcomponentsofthe

missileframe,therockethadamarkedlydifferentappearancefromthepredecessorR-Iand

R-2vehicles.Therewasaone-tonreductionindesignmasscomparedtotheR-2,withaconcurrentincreaseof 60percentinthepropellantmass.Thepropellant-to-massratiowasthus

increasedfrom4.2to 6.6in thenewmissile.ThepropulsionunitfortheR-5wasthenew

RD-I03engine,amodifiedvariantoftheRD-IOIusedontheR-2.DevelopedbyOKB-456

underGlushko,thenewsingle-chamberenginehadavacuumthrustof fifty-onetons,a

60-percentincreaseovertheearliermodel.TheperformanceparameterswereattheupperlimitsthenpossiblebytheSovietsusingLOXandalcohol.UnlikeboththeR-IandR-2vehicles,

theR-5hadasleekcompletelyclindricalframeandahighaspectratioof 12.5(ascompared

with10.7fortheR-2).'°_Allofthesefactorsaidedinsignificantimprovementsitherangeof

themissile,despiteagenerallysimilaroverallsize.ThemostadvancedSovietmissileinexistenceatthetime.theR-5was20.74metersinlengthand1.66metersinbasediameter.Total

liftoffmasswas28.57tons.Theinitialrequirementsspecifiedthatthemissilebeabletocarry

aone-tonexplosiveadistanceof 1,200kilometers.

InpreparationforthefirstlaunchoftheR-5missile,KorolevflewoutfromMoscowon

March5, 1953.P,rrivingatKapustinYar,hewastoldthatafteralmostthirtyyearsofruthless

ruleovertheSovietUnion,StalinhadfinallypassedawayintheKremlin.Itwasacrushingblow

formillionsofSovietcitizenswhosepersonalfeelingsontheSovietleaderwithstoodthetest

ofthedevastatingPurges,theinnumerablelaborcamps,andthebreakdownofcivilsociety.Still

unawareofStalin'spersonalroleinthesecretpolice'sreignofterror,orperhapsunwillingto

believeinit,theensuingdayswerespentinshockattheuncertainprospectsforthefutureof

theSovietUnion.Asamanwhollyofhistimes,Korolevwasoneofthose who mourned deeply

over the death. In a series of letters to his wife in early March from the launch site. he wrote

not only about his own personal loss, but also of the collective blow to the future of the Soviet

nation. _'>As the future of the ballistic missile program was threatened by uncertainty, engineers

from the various design bureaus and institutes continued to prepare for the first R-5 launch.

The first launch was initially planned for March 13, but weather reports for that day

described the threat of heavy cloud cover, prompting the commander of Kapustin Yar, Maj.

General Voznyuk, to postpone the launch. As on other occasions, the weather reports eventually turned out to be wrong, and Korolev directed the launch attempt on Sunday, March 15. ten

days after Stalin's death. The rocket never reached its target, and the flight was deemed a failure. By this time, Korolev had caught a bad cold, culminating in a severe fever, which raised the

question of postponing further launches. Korolev managed to endure through to a second

launch attempt on March 18, which also failed, but by then he was in dire need of professional medical treatment. He was put on the next train back for Moscow and was visited there by

Minister of Armaments Ustinov, who found him haggard and sickly looking. Spiritually, he had

also been dealt a personal loss from Stalin's death. Eventually, his health returned to normal,

and Korolev immediately returned to Kapustin Yar in time for the third launch attempt on

April 2. For the first time, the missile successfully flew a nominal flight, thus signaling the introduction of a new generation of ballistic missiles in the Soviet arsenal. Despite minor failures,

the first series of R-5 launches eventually ended formally on May 23, 1953, with the eighth

1o2. Stache,Souiet Rockets,pp. 180-82. The ballistic coefficient, the ratio of the mass of the rocket to the

cross-sectional surface area of the rocket in the direction of flight, was also increasedto 13,240kilograms per square

meter (as compared to 9,500 kilograms per squaremeter for the R-2).

103. Golovanov. Koroleu, p. 422: Mariya Pastukhova,"Brighter Than Any Legend" (English title). Ogonek49

(December 1987): 18 23.

CHRLLENGE TO II_POLLO
STRLIN RND THE ROCKET

launch. 13 second series of seven launches occurred between October 30 and December 9,

1953, also from Kapustin Yar. Of a total of fifteen missiles launched during the two series, only

two vehicles failed to reach their final targets--an unprecedented level of success and a tribute

to the rapidly accumulating engineering prowess of Soviet rocketry engineers. '°4 By the end of

1953, a final test series, to debug modifications enacted as a result of the first launches, was

set for the middle of 1954.

The N I theme initially encompassed the R-3, then the R-3P,, and finally the R-5. The N2

theme, carried out during the very same period at OKB-I, resulted in a new and revolutionary

area of research for the Soviet rocketry industry: the use of storable propellants. By the late

1940s, armed forces officials were expressing concern over the limitations in using missiles propelled by cryogenic or supercooled propellants. Because LOX had to be maintained at extremely cold temperatures, if rockets such as the R-I or R-2 were left on the launch pad for long

periods, then propellant would begin to boil off. This made handling the missiles an extremely cumbersome and lengthy affair, as troops spent an inordinately long time in maintaining the

missiles. To circumvent the problem, Korolev initiated theme N2 to develop a short-range tactical rocket with the performance characteristics of the modest R-I, but which used hypergolic

(that is, self-igniting and storable) propellants.

Chief Designer Isayev at Nil-I originally conducted research in this field in the immediate

postwar years. Isayev's group had studied a small eight-ton-thrust engine originally developed

by German engineers for the Wasserfall surface-to-air missile. Work on developing a copy of

the engine had begun in 1946 in support of the creation of a Soviet copy of the Wasserfall, designated the R-IOI. Ground tests of the engine, in the beginning unsuccessful, had begun at

NII-I premises in February 1948 under Isayev's direction. Unhappy with the state of support

for rocket engine research at the institute, his entire twenty-two-person department was transferred to NII-88 by an order datedJuly I, 1948. '°_ Based in Kaliningrad, Isayev formally assumed

the role of chief designer of Nll-88's Department No. 9. The switch from the aviation sector

(which controlled Nil-I) to the armaments sector (which controlled NII-88) clearly put Korolev

and Isayev into close contact, uniting them for work on the N2 theme. Testing of the Wasserfall

engine continued under the new institutional arrangements as Isayev designed a modified unit

composed of four motors designated the U-2000. In August 1950, he carried out its first successful ground test firing. '°_ Although the R-IOI program was eventually terminated in 1950,

the successful performance of Isayev's engine prompted Korolev to join forces to develop a

modified version as part of the N2 theme.

Isayev, forty-three years old in 195 I, was one of the most talented engineers in the Soviet

rocketry industry. His original claim to fame had been as one of the co-designers of the famous

BI-I aircraft, one of the first Soviet rocket-planes, which had flown its first test flight in May

1942. Through the war, he had continually set the standard for high-performance engines.

Later, Isayev had been one of the first qualified engineers to scour through the remains of the

A-4 facilities in Germany and had been instrumental in setting up initial production runs there,

before handing that job over to the more powerful Glushko. While Isayev's appointment as the

technical leader for storable engines was not a threat to Glushko, it was clearly a sign that

104. Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 424: Biryukov, "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," pp. 232-33; Chertok,

Rakety i lyudi, p 374.

lOS. M K. Kupriyanov and M V. Chernyshev, I vechernyy start : rasskaz o glaunom konstruktorye raketnykh duigateley Ztlekseye Mikhaylouiehye Isayeuye (Moscow: Moskovskiy rabochiy, 1988), p. 21£ Another source

says that the transfer occurred in May 1948. See Yu. A. Mozzhorin, "The Central Scientific-ResearchInstitute of

Machine Building--The Chief Center for the Soviet Rocket-Space Industry" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i

kosmonautiki 60 (I 990): 20-40.

106. Kupriyanov and Chemyshev, I ueohernyy start, p. 219.

IO1
102

industrialleadersdidnotwanttoputheirfaithinonedesigneralone.Soonafterthet950reorganizationatNII-88,inrecognitionfIsayev'swork,hisdepartmentwasrestructuredintothe

SpecialDesignBureauNo.2(OKB-2).

TherocketthatKorolevandIsayevbuiltaspartoftheN2theme,knownastheR-I1,was

builtinaremarkablyshorttimeperiod.Itsmainenginewasthe$2,253,developedonthebasis

oftheoldGermanWasserfall engine, which used nitric acid and a kerosene derivative as propellants. The missile was flown in three series of tests from f 953 to 1955 and formally adopted for operational use by the military on July 13, 1955. _°_In time, the R-II completely replaced

the use of the R-I missiles in the Soviet Union. More significantly, for the first time, military

commanders were alerted to the value of using hypergolic and storable propellants in missiles

for combat applications instead of more high-energy components such as LOX. Isayev's experience in using these propellants also contributed significantly to the future success of the

Soviet space program. His OKB-2 would be assigned to develop spacecraft engines for the first

Soviet piloted spacecraft. The R-II missile itself had an interesting future. It was extensively

used in several modified versions in war conditions by many other nations, including Egypt during the 1913 war against Israel and Iraq during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In its later incarnations, it was given the general North l_tlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) designation

Scud-B. '°8 For Korolev, the development of the R-II seems to have been more of a diversion

than anything else. As one historian noted, "he regarded it with a reserved coldness, realizing

that the Army needed it and was waiting for it, and that he himself needed it in order to rein

force the positions of the OKB, but nothing more.' .... Korolev's real dream was the creation of

an ICBM--one that could reach orbital velocity--and it was theme N3 that focused on this

particular issue.

Designing the ICBM

All three of the themes--N I, N2, and N3--were carried out simultaneously at three organizations: NII-88's OKB-I under Korolev, the Ministry of Defense's NIl-4 led by Nesterenko and

later Chechulin, and the Department of Applied Mathematics of the V. g. Steklov Mathematics

Institute (OPM MIAN) headed by Academician Keldysh. The N3 theme was officially called

"Research on the Prospects of Creating [Long-Range Missiles] of Various Types With a Range

Flight of 5,000- I 0,000 km with a Warhead with a Mass of I - I0 Tons."_'° Both winged and ballistic configurations were examined in the study.

For the ballistic option, focused on the development of an ICBM, work was specifically

geared toward creating a multistage missile using LOX and kerosene with a capability of

carrying a payload of three to five tons over 7,000 kilometers. The starting point for the ICBM

107. Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy, p. 35. The tests occurred between April 18 and June 3,

1953.then between l_pril 20 and May 13. 1954,and finally between December 1954 and February 1955.

108. A nuclear tipped version named the R-I I M was also later developed by OKB-I Testing of this version

was conducted between December30, 1955, and January 19, 1956,then between March 25 and/qpril I I, 1957,and

finally between August 8 and September 2, 1957.This vehicle was declared operational by an order dated April I,

1958 The leaddesigner of the R-I I M was M. F.Reshetnev,a young engineerat OKB-I who later served as head of

the one of the most prolific satellite building organizations in the world, the NPO Prikladnoy mekhaniki at

Krasnoyarsk-26.

109. YaroslavGolovanov, "Portrait Gallery:UnderwaterThunder" (Englishtitle). Poisk 18 (May 1990): 6.

II0. This title is given in Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 73. A different title is given

in Biryukov, "Materials in the BiographicalChronicles," p. 230. Seealso Boris Nikolayevich Kantemirov, "The History

of the Selection of Design Principles for the First ICBM, the R-7" (English title), presented at the lOth International

Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Moscow StateUniversity, Moscow. Russia,June 20 27,

1995

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

effort was Tikhonravov's ground-breaking research at NIl-4, where he developed the so-called

"packet" concept of clustering together several missiles into one unit. In examining the packet

scheme, Tikhonravov's group had emerged with two particular variants: the "simple packet"

and the "complex packet." The former, which was favored by Korolev, had independent systems

for each separate strap-on; the boosters would only be connected mechanically. In the more

sophisticated complex packet, supported by Tikhonravov, the boosters would not only be

connected mechanically, but all systems, such as the propulsion and hydraulic elements, would

be interconnected and function in conjunction with one another.'"

General mathematical calculations by Tikhonravov's group proved that the simple packet,

despite its elegance, would be much heavier than the more sophisticated complex packet arrangement. Korolev, however, continued to support the simpler configuration, and the NIl-4 team

prepared two reports in 1951 on the variant, without making any attempt to optimize the design

in search of improving its mass characteristics. Tikhonravov was evidently so opposed to the

simple packet that he declined to carry out this optimization for Korolev: instead, he continued

to support the complex scheme. The minor rift created an obstacle for further research, and

seeing a possible deadlock, Korolev requested Keldysh's team at the Department of /qpplied

Mathematics to carry out the much-needed optimization. This department at the time was staffed

by a group of young, recently graduated mathematicians who were only too eager to put their

skills to work. Known informally as"Keldysh's boys." they were led by twenty-eight-year-old

Dmitriy Ye. Okhotsimskiy, alumnus of the N. Ye. Zhukovskiy Central eqerohydrodynamics Institute

(TsAGI), and included, among others, Timur M. Eneyev, Sergey S. Kamynin, Vasiliy A. Sarychev,

Galina P. Taratynova, and Vsevolod A. Yegorov, all of whom had been recruited to work in the

relatively new field of missile engineering. ''_

The young team's results were summarized in 1951 in a long report authored by Keldysh,

Kamynin, and Okhotsimskiy titled "Ballistic Possibilities of Multistage Missiles." It examined a

variety of configurations, including simple one-stage models and Tikhonravov's packet schemes.

In inspecting the cluster scheme, the scientists carried out detailed comparisons using the R-2

or R-3 missile as the basic block of each packet. The calculations proved that the R-2-based

variant would not satisfy the necessary payload and range requirements. On the other hand, in

their investigation of Korolev's favored simple packets of three or five R-3s, "Keldysh's boys"

established that the latter could achieve the necessary velocity of 7,500 meters per second, close

to orbital velocity. Subsequently, the men examined different configurations of packets in detail,

including those with so-called "feeding packets," whereby propellants would pour from tank to

tank, and those consisting of independent tanks. In their synopsis, the authors concluded that

a simple packet would indeed be the most efficient path of development, given the relatively

minimal modifications required of a already existing "standard" missile such as the R-3. The

development of such elements as guidance systems, the authors predicted, would be an easier

proposition, While the report was mostly exploratory in nature, the scientists clearly stated that

the most favored variant for an ICBM would be a two-stage missile using two strap-on boosters

in the simple packet configuration, each based on the R-3, whose mass happened to be

practically identical to more sophisticated configurations. ''_

l I I. Kantemirov. " 15July--40 YearsFrom the Report."

112. Golovanov, Korolev. pp. 468-69. /spart from the OKB-I. the OPM MI/SN, and the NIl-4, other organizations involved in the N3 theme were OKB 456 (V. R Glushko), NII-885 (M. S. Ryazanskiy and N. /5. Pilyugin),

NIl-3 (V. K. Shebanin), Tsl/SM (G P. Svishchev), Ts/SGI(/5. /5. Dorodnitsyn and V. V Struminskiy). NIl-6 (V. /5.

Sukhikh). NI1-125 (B. E Zhukov), NI1-137 (V. /5. Kostrov), NI1-504 (S. I. Karpov), NIl-10 (V. I. Kuznetsov). and

NII-49 (/5. I. Charin). SeeSemenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicfleskayaKorporatsiya, p. 73.

113. The complete report is reproduced in/svduyevskiy and Eneyev,eds., M _ZKddysh. pp. 39-142. See

also Yatsunskiy. "On the/sctivities of M. K. Tikhonravov."

103
104

TheN3studiescarriedoutatKorotev'sownOKB-Iprovedto haveessentiallysimilar

results.OnDecember27,1951,heformallypresentedthepreliminaryconclusionsoftheeffort

to theScientific-TechnicalCouncilof NII-88aspartofareporttitled"ThesisReportonthe

ResultsoftheInvestigationof ProspectiveDevelopmentofaLong-RangeBallisticMissile.'....

Thescopeoftheinvestigationwasextremelywide,andengineersatOKB-Iexploredavariety

ofdifferentconcepts,includingsingle-stageandtwo-stagemissiles.Thelatterincludedlooking

attandemdesigns,trap-onorpacketdesignswiththeenginesallfiringsimultaneouslyor

sequentially,andfeedingpackets.Theyalsostudiedmissilesusingmultichamberengines,afirst

forKorolev'steam,underlininganinterestthatwouldeventuallyplayamajorroteindeterminingthefinalookoftheICBM.Ballisticsandperformancecharacteristicsofeachmissilewere

examinedindetailinthereport.Inmakinghispresentationin Decembert95I,Korolevwas

abletonotethathisengineershadcomparedtheflightcharacteristicsofsixspecificmissile

designs(TableI).

Thefirstdesignwouldrequireaverypowerfulengine,whilethesecondusedfluorinebasedtechnology,bothofwhicheliminatedthemasseriouscontendersforfurtherresearch.

Thethirdoption,aconventionaltandemtwo-stagedesign,wasalsoexcludedfromfurther

researchbecauseitwouldrequireasecond-stageenginecapableoffiringinavacuum.Eachof

thethreepacketvariantsconsistedofacoreandtwostrap-ons.Thegenericpackethadthe

strap-onsfiringatliftoff,withthecoreignitingataltitudeafterstrap-onpropellantdepletion.

Intheload-bearingpacket,alltheenginesonthestrap-onsandthecorefiredatliftoff.Inthe

finalconfiguration,propellantswouldbesuppliedtothecorefromtanksonthestrap-ons.At

altitude,thestrap-onswouldbejettisoned,leavingthecoretofireasasingleunit.'_

Table I. ICBM Design Flight Characteristics

Stage I Stage II

Type Range (krn) Length Mass (t) Thrust (t) Thrust (t)

I. Single-stage using

LOX 5,000-7,000 46 325 500 (sl)

2. Single-stage using

fluorine-based oxidizer 7,000 70

3. Two-stage tandem 1.000 39,? II0 110 (sl) 30 (v)

4. Two-stage packet 7,000 17.4 121 2 x 93 (sl) 38 (v)

5, Two-stage packet with 2 x 115 (sl)

load-bearing tanks 7,000 16.5 128 I x 34 (sl) 42 (v)

6. Two-stage packet with 2 x Z0 (sl)

propellant feeding ?.000 16.5 II ? I x 40 (sl) 50 (v)

114. The report is reproduced in Keldysh, ed., Tuorcheskoye naslecfiye akadernika Sergeya Pavlovieha

Koroteua. pp. 319-27

115. Ibid.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

The fifth variant--a central booster with a thirty-four-ton-thrust engine combined with

two strap-ons, each having a sea-level thrust of I15 tons--apparently had been the early

favorite, primarily because it was literally the simplest packet configuration. P, final recommendation was left to the future, apparently because of the uncertainty concerning engine development. Korolev cautioned in his report, "It must be noted that these investigations of ballistic

and long-range missiles may only serve as a basis for the establishment of primary directions

to be followed by detailed elaborations of definite projects and proposals.' ....

One of the notable aspects of Nll-88's work on the N3 theme that distinguished it from

OPM MIlaN's work was over the R-3. By the end of 195 I, the R-3 program was in deep trouble, and this was clearly reflected in Korolev's work on the N3 theme. Perhaps realizing that the

ambitious R-3 might be too large a step to successfully overcome, Korolev's engineers used relatively smaller boosters as components of potential clustered missiles. OPM MIAN's work, on

the other hand, used the R-3, although in some cases they studied packaging five boosters into

one ICBM. As the N3 theme was winding down, Korolev and his deputies combined elements

from both analyses--that is, they derived a new preliminary concept of an ICBM that had a

core and four strap-ons instead of two. Instead of the R-3 as the basis for all the boosters, they

introduced much smaller boosters, each having engines with thrusts in the range of fifty to sixty

tons each. Ballistics analysis clearly showed that with less powerful strap-ons but with a higher number of them, a missile could have the same if not better characteristics than that of an

R-3-based rocket. The use of less powerful engines would also eliminate the bottleneck problems of developing 120-ton-thrust engines such as the one for the R-3. As a result, Korolev's

First Deputy Vasiliy P. Mishin, in consultation with a leading manager at the Ministry of

Armaments, emerged with a revised plan for future Soviet development: terminate all work on

the R-3 and proceed immediately to the creation of a new ICBM. ''_

Like the R-3 proposal itself, the idea to jump from the R-3 directly to the ICBM was uncharacteristic of Soviet military practices because it necessitated a huge qualitative and quantitative

leap in abilities. Officials in the Ministry of l_rmed Forces were, not surprisingly, resistant to the

proposal. They had great hopes for the R-3 as the first Soviet strategic missile capable of hitting

targets deep into Europe. Despite overwhelming resistance, Mishin managed to convince

Korolev that NII-88 should proceed directly to the ICBM instead of wasting more time on the

R-3. Korolev, after "some doubts," finally agreed. Korolev and Mishin had two prominent supporters in the government: Minister of Armaments Dmitriy F. Ustinov and his Deputy Ivan G.

Zubovich. ''_ Despite a formidable array of doubters, Ustinov, Zubovich, and Korolev were able

to persuade leading officials in the armed forces, in particular Col. General Nedelin, the armed

forces' chief person for managing the procurement of new ballistic missiles, of the change in

strategy. After "some hesitancy," Special Committee No. 2 adopted Korolev's proposal. Work

on the R-3 program was abandoned in 1952.

The N3 theme not only encompassed the development of ballistic missiles, but also intercontinental cruise missiles, known by Soviet engineers as "winged missiles." By 1952, there

was still no firm consensus on whether ballistic or cruise missiles would offer a more efficient

mode of delivering nuclear weapons across intercontinental distances. Each variant had its own

disadvantages and advantages, which were the subject of intense scrutiny during the N3

116. Ibid. p. 327: Stache, Souiet Rockets,p. 287.

117. Biryukov and Yeremenko, "50 Yearsfor the Native Rocket-SpaceIndustry"; Biriukov, "The R-3 Rocket

Project Developed in the US.S.R ": V_P_Mishin, *'Problemsof the First Flight of a Man into Space" (English title),

in Cagarinskiye nauehnyyeehteniya po kosmonavtike i aviatsii (Moscow: Nauka. 1991), p. 22: Romanov,Korotev,

pp. 373 74. The official at the Ministry of Armaments was t_. V. Zaytsev, an employee of the Seventh Chief

Directorate

118. Mishin, "Problems of the First Flight," p. 22.

105
106

researchpase.Inthecaseofcruisemissiles,thelesstringentrequirementsforstructuralelementsandpowerplantsforcruisemissilesandtheextensiveexperienceinaircraftconstruction

promptedaseriouslookintoacompetitorpogramfortheICBM.Dedicatedresearchonthe

issuehadcommencedonOctober30,19.50,atNII-88.''_Liketheballisticmissile,Korolevhad

settledonatwo-stageconfiguration.Unliketheformer,however,thecruisemissilewastouse

atraditionalrocketengineonthefirststageandasupersonicramjetengineonthewingedsecondstage.Thelatterhadanadvantageovertraditionalrocketenginesbyhavingasimplertechnicalconstructionaddecreasedmass,althoughitonlyoperatedwithincertainaltitudesand

velocities.LikeconcurrentP,mericandesigns,suchastheNavahoXSM-64cruisemissile,the

Sovietvehiclewasdesignedtotravelitsentireflightintheatmosphere,usingtheatmosphere

itselfasitsoxidizer.

KorolevpersonallysummarizedNll-88'sresearchonintercontinentalcruisemissilesaspart

oftheN3themeatameetingoftheScientific-TechnicalCounciloftheinstituteonJanuary16,

1952,abouttwoweeksfollowingthesimilarpresentationonICBMs.Thereport,itled"Thesis

ReportontheResultsof ResearchontheProspectsof Developinga Long-RangeWinged

Missile,"compriseddetailedanalysistodeterminetheoptimalconfigurationforacruisemissile.'_°Korolev'sengineersbelievedthatthebestdesignwouldbeatwo-stagecruisemissile

withamassofaboutninetyto 120tonsandarangeof8,000kilometers.Thefirststagewould

acceleratethesecondstageto analtitudeof fifteento twentykilometersandavelocityof

900meterspersecond--thatis,inthewindowforignitionoftheramjetengines.Thesecond

stagewouldthenflyataboutMach3in horizontalfashiontoitstargetanddepositswarhead.AswiththeICBMconceptions,oneoftheprimaryproblemswasdevelopingsufficientlypowerfulliquid-propellantrocketenginesforthefirststage.Nll-88'sanalysisindicatedthat

engineswiththrustsontheorderof I00to 16.5tonswouldberequired.Ramjetnginethrusts

wouldbelimitedtoeightotentons.Engineersaloexaminedthreedifferentlaunchconfigurationsforthecruisemissile:horizontallaunch,airlaunch,andverticallaunch.Giventimeand

technologicallimitations,thelastconfigurationprovedtobethebestoption.

Giventheleapintechnologyrequiredto buildanintercontinentalcruisemissile,Korolev

proposedthedevelopmentofanintermediatevehicle,theExperimentalWingedMissile(EKR),

atwo-stagevhiclewithanoverallmassofjustundersixtons.Themissilewouldhaveaflight

rangeofamodest900to 1,300kilometers.Toreducethetimeofdevelopment,engineerselectedtomaximizealreadytestedhardwareonthevehicle.Forexample,themainengineofthe

firststagewouldbethe$2,253enginefromtheshort-rangeR-II tacticalmissile.Thethrust

wasjustundereightons.Thesecondstagewoulduseasingleramjetenginewithathrustof

morethanthreetons.'_'Thedevelopmentofthisparticularenginebenefitedgreatlyfromthe

considerableamountofresearchexpendedovertheabandonedS_nger-Bredtproposal,aswell

assubsequentconceptionsof intercontinentalcruisemissilesproposedatKeldysh'sdepartmentattheCentralInstituteofrqviationMotorBuilding.Theexpansionfthisdepartment's

role in the development of intercontinental cruise missiles prompted aviation industry officials

to detach it from TslI_M and reestablish the old NII-I as a separate entity on March I0, 1952,

II 9. Biryukov. "Materials in the Biographical Chronicles," p. 230.

120. An edited version of the report hasbeen published as S. P.Korolev.et el, "Thesis Report on the Results

of Research on the Prospects of Developing a Long-Range Winged Missile" (English title), in Keldysh, ed.,

Tvorcheskoyenaslediyeakademika SergeyaPaulouicffa Koroleva. pp. 328-4 I.

12I. These data are taken from Korolev. et el., "Thesis Report on the Resultsof Research." Other conflicting data on the EKR aregiven in Semenov. ed.. Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporats_ya, pp. 61-62. The latter may

referto a later version of the EKRwith a flight range of 730 kilometers, a first-stage thrust of more than eight tons.

and a second-stagethrust of 625 kilograms (at an altitude of eighteen kilometers and Mach 3). Seealso I. Afanasyev.

"Without the Secret'Stamp: Halt the Work, Destroy the Materials" (English title), Auiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 6

(June 1993): 42-44.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

with Keldysh as its director. The focus on ramjet engines was also underscored by the establishment of the new OKB-670 in 1950 under Chief Designer Mark M. Bondaryuk, a former

department head at Nil-I, whose team had been conducting research to build the S_nger-Bredt

ramjet. For Korolev's EKR, Bondaryuk was contracted to build the RD-040 ramJet. ':_ Work on

the EKR culminated with the signing of a five-volume draft plan for the vehicle on January 31,

1953, by Korolev, Keldysh, Bondaryuk, and Sergey A. Khristianovich, the Deputy Director of

"i-sAGI, who was one of the leading aeronautical scientists in the Soviet Union. ':_

The complete work on the N3 theme was collated into a three-volume set published in 1952.

The results indicated the most prospective directions for further research on the development of

an intercontinental missile. Both industrial officials and engineers such as Korolev were unwilling

to come out in favor of a ballistic approach as compared to a cruise missile option. There were

intense discussions in late 1952 at various levels, within Special Committee No. 2, the Ministry

of Armaments, the Ministry of Aviation Industries, NII-88, and Nil-I. Among other things, an

ICBM would require the development of a new heat shield for its warhead to protect it during

atmospheric reentry, In addition, engineers would have to design a complex guidance and control system to accurately control the trajectory of the missile. On the other hand, with a cruise

missile, one of the most challenging tasks would be the development of a star-sensing navigation

system capable of operation during both day and night. The ICBM had the advantage of being

invulnerable to defensive measures because it would be flying at altitudes of approximately

1,000 kilometers and speeds of almost 25,000 kilometers per hour. The cruise missile would, however, fly for several hours before reaching its target, at a relatively low altitude, making it vulnerable to defensive measures. Ultimately, the Soviet government opted to pursue both options, at

least for the time, clearly hoping to mitigate the risk of failure if only one variant was pursued.

Stalin himself took a personal interest in the matter. On February 13, 1953, less than a month

prior to his death, he signed an official USSR Council of Ministers' decree that affected work on

all long-range ballistic and cruise missiles in the Soviet Union. The decision officially:

• Terminated work on the R-3 missile

• Stipulated a timetable for testing the R-5 strategic missile

• Terminated work on the NI, N2, and N3 themes

• Approved two new themes--the TI and T2

The TI theme, called "Theoretical and Experimental Research on the Creation of a TwoStage Ballistic Missile with a Range of 7-8 Thousand Kilometers," formally approved the development of a blueprint for a Soviet ICBM based on prior research. The T2 theme officially

sanctioned initial groundwork for the creation of an intercontinental cruise missile--that is. it

gave full approval to build the EKR to prove out new technologies for the program. The prime

contractor for both vehicles would be Korolev's OKB-I at NII-88 based in Kaliningrad. '_4The

122. YevgeniyYerokhin, "The Missiles of Bondaryuk_ (English title), Kryha rodiny no. I I (November 1993):

33-37. OKB-670 traced its lineage back to EKB-I of Nil GVFestablished in 1940. EKB-I was absorbed by NII-I in

1944. Bondaryuk was appointed Chief Designer of a department at NII-I on August 30, 1947.This department

became the independent OKB-670 in 1950.OKB-610 also concurrently worked on ramjet engines for other missiles

and aircraft, such as the R I Shtorm and the Samolet 5.

123. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporalsiya, p. 61.

124. German Nazarov, "You Cannot Paper Space With Rubles: How to Save Billions" (English title).

Molodaya guardiya no. 4 (April 1990): 192-207; Golovanov. "The Beginning of the Space Era": Semenov, ed.,

Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 73, 630: Romanov, Koro(ev, p. 266. For a general description of the

themes TI and T2, see Mozzhorin, et aL, eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery. pp. 71,262. The February 1953 decree

also affected other missile programs. It approvedthe development of the short-range R-I I missile and approved the

transfer of work on a new missile, the R-12, from Nll-88's OKB-I to SKB-586 based in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

107
I08

detaileddesignparametersandconfigurationf bothrocketswouldbedeterminedin the

courseoftheensuingtwoyears.

BythetimethatheTtthemebeganinFebruary1953,Korolev'sengineershadsharpened

theirconceptionftheICBMtofitspecificrequirements.'2_Themissilewouldbeatwo-stage

vehicle--thatis.acorewithstrap-ons--capableofdliveringathree-tonwarheadtoadistance

of 7,000to 8,000kilometers.Overalllaunchmassandlaunchthrustwouldbe190tonsand

270tons,respectively.Thedesignhadadirectlinkto themostpreferredvariantthathad

emergedfromtheN3studiesbetween1950and1953,butit wasoptimizedtofit lesspowerfulenginesandmorestrap-ons.TheICBMwashadbecomeafive-boosterclusteredmissile

withacentralsustainer(called"Blok/5")andfourstrap-onboosters(BloksB.V,G,andD).

/511engineswouldfiresimultaneouslyatliftoff;theywouldbeseparatedataltitude,leavingthe

centralone,servingasthesecondstage,firinguntilfinalcutoff.Eachoftheboosterswouldbe

equippedwithonesingle-chamberLOX-keroseneenginewithathrustof aboutfiftyto sixty

tons./spartfromthenumberofstrap-onsandthepoweroftheengines,athirdmajordesign

changefrom1952to 1953wastheshapeofeachbooster.TheconfigurationoftheICBMin

theoriginalN3studiesowedmuchtotheshapeoftheabandonedR-3missile,whichwasa

classicallyconstructedsleekcylinder.Thenewdesignincorporatedtaperedboosters,similarto

elongatedconesandsuperficiallysimilartotheGerman/5-4.EngineersatOKB-Ievidentlygravitatedto aconicalshapeforthestrap-onsprimarilybecauseof theaerodynamicadvantages

overastandardcylindricaldesign.Furthermore,thesizeof theengines,thepossibilityof

impartingadditionalthrusttothecentralsustainer,andtheopportunityofdecreasingtankwall

thicknesseventuallypromptedtheengineersto droptheclassiccylinderdesign.':'_Theend

resultwasfourconical-shapedboostersattachedtoacentralelement,whichwidenedin its

diametertomeettheapexesofeachofthefourcones.Itwasadecisionthatfrozetheconfigurationofwhatwouldeventuallybecometheworld'smostusedlaunchvehicle,adesignthat

remainsinstantlyrecognizabletoday.

BasedontheN3studies,Korolev'sengineershadexploredthepossibilityofincorporating

thecapabilityofpropellanttransferbetweenthestrap-onblocks,especiallyincasesoffailure

inoneormoreboosters,buttheyrejectedthisdesignbasedonaddedcomplexitiesfromthe

needforhydraulicconnectionsbetweeneachstrap-on.Instead,OKB-IdevelopedtheSystem

forSynchronizationandSimultaneousEmptyingofTankstoensurethatpropellantflowfrom

alltheboosterswasregulatedonacommontimeline.GuidancefortheICBMwouldbeeffectedbyaerodynamicruddersandgasvanesplacedin theengineoutflow,athrowbackto the

pre-R-3days.'"

ThisfirstorderofbusinessforworkonthenewICBM,calledtheR-6,wastheengines.

KorolevapproachedChiefDesignerGlushkofrthejob,butheranheadlongintoconflict.As

oneRussianhistorianwrote:

qlushko refused. He was bothered first of all by the fact that Korolev was violating the

boundaries of his own professional competence. _lushko [eli that he himself knew what

kind of engines the new rocket needed. The kind of engines that Korolev was talking

about had not been produced yet. Clushko was afraid of explosive detonations and

125 The senior engineersat NII-88's OKB-I who worked on the N3 and TI themes included R F.,qppazov.

K D Bushuyev,8. Ye Chertok, V F.Gladkiy, Ya. P.Kolyako, S. S. Kryukov, g. F Kulyabin, S. S.Lavrov.V P.Mishin,

t. S Prudnikov, V. t-. Roshchin. Ye F.Ryazanov, I. N. Sadovskiy, P. F. Shulgin, G. S. Vetrov, P I. Yermolayev. and

P g. Yershov.SeeSemenov, ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 73.

126. Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry," Spaceflight 37 (December 1995): 411. There were also several disadvantagesto the conical design, which are outlined in the same source.

127 Mishin, "Problems of the FirstFlight." pp. 20-2 I.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

acoustic vibrations--the probability of their occurrence increasing with the size of the

combustion chamber. But even if he would have succeeded in producing such a [liquid

oxygen] engine, he didn't have the necessary test rigs on which he could test it. ''_

Under severe pressure from not only Korolev, but other chief designers, Glushko eventually agreed. In 1952, his design bureau, OKB-456, began developing two new LOX-kerosene

engines, the RD-105 and the RD-106. Both designs used Chief Designer Isayev's idea of the

integrated solder-welded configuration, which had opened the door to more powerful singlechamber LOX engines. The RD-105, with a thrust of fifty-five tons, was intended as propulsion

for each of the four strap-ons of the ICBM, while the RD-I06. with a thrust of fifty-three tons

(65.8 tons in a vacuum), was earmarked for the central block. '-'_

The initiation of work on the T I and T2 themes in 1953 was an indication of a remarkable

maturity in the Soviet long-range missile programs. From the modest beginnings of the

300-kilometer-range R-I in 1948, within five years, the Soviets were moving headlong into producing weapons with ranges of 8,000 kilometers. The rate of progress was tremendous, characterized more by technological leaps in capability, contradicting the traditional Western view

of Soviet technology advancing incrementally over decades. Driven by strong personalities such

as Korolev and Ustinov, the missile program also benefited from strong military support. By the

mid-1950s, Korolev would have yet one more major factor on his side: institutional disarray in

the rocketry effort, which allowed him to take advantage of loopholes to divert a portion of the

ICBM program to his own ends.

Korolev and the Party

When Stalin died in March 1953, it instigated the first change of leadership in the Soviet

Union in more than thirty years. It seems that the major thrust of the rocketry program changed

little as the succession to Stalin stabilized over the next few months. There is evidence, however, to suggest that his successors had a less-than-clear understanding of the missile industry,

especially in areas of policy, no doubt because the leadership of NI1-88 had reported directly to

Stalin, often bypassing high Communist Party officials. Even Politburo member Georgiy M.

Malenkov, appointed the chairman of the Special Committee No. 2 in 1946, was apparently

uninvolved with details of the rocketry program. '_° The management of the project remained

firmly in the griphold of the Soviet intelligence services under the dreaded Beriya, who proliferated his henchmen in all layers of the Ministry of Armaments and the Council of Ministers.

Policy decisions adopted by Beriya or Stalin himself eventually trickled down via secret police

operatives before Minister of Armaments Llstinov, under the watchful eye of Beriya, would tackle the task of managing personnel and activities at the various institutes, design bureaus, and

manufacturing plants.

While Ustinov was in general 'a Party man," it seems that he was very protective of engineers such as Korolev and Glushko in cases in which Beriya's people became too threatening.

For example, during the overtly anti-Semitic drive to arrest intellectuals in the last years of

Stalin's life, several Jewish engineers in the rocketry program found their lives in jeopardy. One

night, Llstinov telephoned Chief Designer Ryazanskiy and asked him to go for a walk with him

in a nearby park. Realizing the absurdity of such a request from a minister, Ryazanskiy was

128. Golovanov, Korolev, p. 709.

129. Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space: Part I: From First ICBM to Sputnik

Launcher," Spaceflight 37 (August 1995): 260-63: Prishchepa_ "From the History of the Creation," p. 123:

Prishchepa. "History of Development of First SpaceRocket Engines," p. 99

130. Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 394

IO9
IIO

quick to pick up that something was amiss. During the walk, Ustinov asked Ryazanskiy to

immediately send his Deputy Yevgeniy Ya. Boguslavskiy on a trip "anywhere.' .... When

Ryazanskiy objected to such an unusual order, Ustinov categorically demanded that

Boguslavskiy be immediately sent away on a new mission. Ryazanskiy carried out the order,

possibly saving his deputy from being a victim of Beriya's anti-Semitic pogrom. On another

occasion in 1950, realizing that Beriya was targeting Jewish engineers at NII-88. Ustinov

demoted talented control systems engineer Boris Ye. Chertok to deflect attention away from

him and thus preclude his arrest/_

Upon Stalin's death, as Politburo members jockeyed to assume their niches of power, it was

clear that the only ones who had significant knowledge of the rocketry program were the middle managers, such as Ustinov and Vetoshkin, and of course the secret police. Thus, the upper

echelons in the government were, by some accounts, bewildered to discover a vast institutional apparatus for the development of ballistic missiles. An account from Politburo member Nikita

S. Khrushchev provides a hint of the new leadership's problems:

... while .Stalin was alive he completely monopolized all decisions about our defenses.

including--I'd even say especially those involving nuclear weapons and their delivery

systems. We were sometimes present when such matters were discussed, but weren't

allowed to ask questions. Therefore when Stalin died. we weren't really prepared to

carry the burden on our shoulders. Our experience with Korolev is a case in point.'"

In the weeks following Stalin's death, four major players emerged in the struggle to take

over the leadership of the country: Beriya, Khrushchev, Malenkov, and Nikolay P,. Bulganin, the

newly appointed Minister of Armed Forces, Beriya, with the initial support of Malenkov. consolidated his already immense power by combining the two national security services into one

entity, the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Having effectively assumed personal control over all hightechnology programs in the country, his reign lasted only weeks, and Khrushchev, with the support of high military leaders, eventually had him arrested on June 26, 1953. '_ Following a quick

trial later in the year, Beriya was summarily executed by gunshot on December 23. His arrest

precipitated the first thaws in the indiscriminate terror that had pervaded Soviet society since

the formation of the USSR nearly forty years before.

The confusion in the post-Stalin months prompted a major restructuring of advanced technology industry such as nuclear and rocket weapons. Despite Beriya's elimination from the

scene, many of the managers of the nuclear weapons industry who had served under him, by

default, ended up inheriting major roles in the rocketry program. The process was set off on July

I. 1953--five days after Beriya's arrest--when the Presidium (later the Politburo) created the

new Ministry of Medium Machine Building based on the top-secret First Chief Directorate of

the USSR Council of Ministers, the same entity that had managed the atomic weapons program

since 1946 under Beriya's watchful eye. Vyecheslav _. Malyshev, a fifty-one-year-old former railroad engineer, well known for his role in managing the production of tanks during the war, was

appointed to head the ministry. Unlike other ministers in the Soviet government, however,

31. Ibid, p. 439: Col. M. Rebrov. "The Whiteness of Martian Seas . : Pages Fromthe Life of the Chief

Designer of Radio Control Devices" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda. March I I. 1989, p. 4.

132, Instead of Boris Chertok. Minister Llstinov appointed Mikhail K Yangel as head of the department

becauseYangelwas a long-time member of the Communist Party.

133 Nikita S, Khrushchev. Khrushchev Remembers:The LastTestament(Boston: Little & Brown, 1974). pp.

45-46.

134. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 320.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

Malyshev was also appointed a deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. '_5P, man aligned

with the Malenkov axis in the Presidium, Malyshev was an extremely professional and intelligent individual who worked closely with Beriya on nuclear weapons development during the

postwar years. As the top manager of the Soviet defense industry, Malyshev's appointment

effectively made him the most influential arbiter of defense sector management at the time.

As head of the new ministry, Malyshev was responsible for the management of all three

major top-secret weapons development programs in the Soviet Union: the atomic bomb, the

air defense weapons, and the ballistic missile programs. The first two of these had been operated via three "Chief Directorates" of the Council of Ministers reporting directly to Beriya. With

the formation of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, the First (for atomic weapons), the

Second (for management of the raw material base for the uranium industry), and the Third (for

air defense missiles) were united into one and subsumed under this one ministry. '_ The precise

fate of the mysterious Special Committee No. 2, which had directed the ballistic missile program, is not clear--it may have been disbanded as early as 1949--but there is no doubt that

the new Ministry of Medium Machine Building also had final oversight over the missile effort

after 1953, Management of day-to-day activities remained under the purview of Ustinov at the

Ministry of/_rmaments. '37

Malyshev was not a big supporter of Korolev. Unlike Ustinov, who may have listened with

one ear to Korolev's interests in space exploration, Malyshev was a tried-and-true administrator,

whose only goal was to produce weapons efficiently. There were, in fact, several occasions when

Korolev and Malyshev went head to head. One Russian space historian, gleksandr R Romanov,

pieced together a perhaps apocryphal account of a spat between Korolev and Malyshev over the

R-3. At a high-level meeting to discuss the missile, Korolev almost casually announced to the

attendees that work on the R-3 should be terminated immediately to concentrate forces on going

135. John McDonnell, "The Soviet DefenseIndustry as a PressureGroup," in Michael McGwire, Ken Booth,

and John McDonnell, eds.. Souiet Naual Policy: Objeetiuesand Constraints (Halifax. NS.: Centre for Foreign Policy

Studies, 1975), p. 88. A more recent Russian source suggests that the order [or the formation of the Ministry of

Medium Machine Building was actually issued on April 2, 1953_more than two months before Beriya's arrest See

N. S. Simonov, Voyenno-promyshlennyy kompleks SSSR u 1920-1950-ye Body: tempy ekonomicheskogo rosta, struktura, organizatsiya proizvodstvaiupravleniye (Moscow: ROSSPEN. I996), p. 246.

136. Simonov. Voyenno-promyshlennyy kompleks SSSR v 1920-1950-ye Body, p 246. See also Andrey

Sakharov, Memoirs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 169: Grigoriy Kisunko, Sekretnaya zona (Moscow:

Sovremennik, 1996), p. 267. The FirstChief Directorate had been established on August 20, 1945(headed by B. L.

Vannikov), the Second on December 27, 1949 (headed by V. Ya. Antropov), and the Third on February 3, 1951

(headed by V. M. Ryabikov). SeeSimonov, Voyenno.promyshlennyy kompleks SSSRu 1920-1950-yeBody, pp. 216,

225, 236. A few sources have incorrectly continued to claim that the Second Chief Directoratewas a successor to

the Special Committee No. 2--that is, it also oversaw the ballistic missile sector. See Vladislav Zubok and

Constantine Pleshakov. Inside The Kremlin's Cold War: From Stutin to Khrushcheu (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press. 1996), p. 172: B Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny (Moscow:

Mashinostroyeniye, 1997), p. 19: Golovanov. Koroleu.p. 454.

137. There is someevidence to makean institutional connection between the old Special Committee No. 2,

which had overseen policy aspects of the ballistic missile program from 1946, and the new Ministry of Medium

Machine Building via a third government entity. This was the Third Chief Directorate of the USSR Council of

Ministers established on February3, 1951,under the leadership of V. M Ryabikov (who until then had been D F.

Usitnov's deputy in the Ministry of Armaments). This directorate's primary duties were to oversee all researchand

development work on Soviet anti-aircraft and air defense missiles. When the new Ministry of Medium Machine

Building was established on July h 1953. the Third Chief Directorate was subordinated to the ministry and renamed

the Chief Directorate of Special Machine Building (GlavSpetsMash). Ryabikov remainedthe chief of GlavSpetsMash

with the dual rank of Deputy Minister, Less than a month later, on July 29, 1953, an official governmental decree

moved all ballistic missile work to the jurisdiction of GlavSpetsMash--that is, within the Ministry of Medium

Machine Building under Ryabikov (Deputy Minister) and Malyshev (Minister). SeeArkadiy Kruglov, Shtab atomproma (Moscow: TsNIlatominform, 1998), pp, 103, 106: Irina Bystrova,"The formation of the Soviet Military-Industrial

Complex," Center for International Security and Arms Control. Stanford University, September 1996, p 13.

III
112

directly to an ICBM. When Korolev finished,

Ma[yshev looked at Koro[ev in bewilderment,

unable to believe that the chief designer would

dare to propose cancellation of a missile that

was crucial to the needs of the Soviet armed

forces for the next few years. When some attendees accused Korolev of using the ICBM program as a means to advance his ideas of space

exploration, the chief designer did not back

down, pleading that what was needed was a

technological leap rather than an incremental

advance, Malyshev, true to his character, severely berated Korolev in front of everyone, telling

him that his proposal was out of the question.

Visibly agitated, Korolev blurted out, "1 refuse,

Vyecheslav P,leksandrovich [Malyshev]. I repeat:

this is an anti-state approach to this matter."

Malyshev, not one for being intimidated, replied,

"No! Really? He refuses?... People are not irreplaceable. Others can be found.' .... With this

implicit threat on Korolev's position, there was a

long moment of silence. Malyshev abruptly

adjourned the meeting, saying that any more

discussion on the issue was useless.

The R-3, of course, was canceled just as

Korolev had proposed. There is no record to

suggest why Malyshev eventually capitulated.

Perhaps Ustinov played a key role in convincing

Malyshev's boss Malenkov. Certainly Beriya's

VyechestaaMalysheu, shouJnhere in the early I950s

was the first manager o[ the er_tireS,ouiet militaryindustrial complex From I953 to 1955, as Minister of

Medium Machine Building he ouersauJ[he rise of the

hydrogen bomb and ICBM programs

(copyright SteuenZatoga)

arrest may have prompted Korolev to take risks he might not have previously. Clearly, however,

1953 was a pivotal year in Korolev's life. Both Stalin's and Beriya's departures had profound

effects on the activities of Soviet scientists. Although formal rehabilitation for Korolev's alleged

crimes in the 1930s had yet to occur, the persistently dark cloud of unexpected terror had begun

to move away, and this had a marked result on his mood. Still, given the institutional arrangements of a totalitarian system, the mind-set of the Beriya years took a long time to evaporate.

The history of Korolev's incarceration, in fact, significantly affected his acquirement of power

in the ballistic missile program, as Communist Party officials continued to refrain from supporting an individual who was still officially a criminal of the state. With this handicap, Korolev

was often forced to watch while less experienced engineers leapfrogged ahead.

One particularly important event in this respect was the rise of a talented aeronautical engineer by the name of Mikhail Kuzmich Yangel, who would go on to become the preeminent

designer of strategic ballistic missiles in the Soviet Union. Born in the Ukraine on October 25,

191 I. Yangel had served his apprenticeship in several major wartime aeronautical organizations

led by famous designers such as Polikarpov, Mikoyan, and Myasishchev. Someone in the "higher leadership" had apparently been impressed with Yangel's activities at the Academy of

138 Romanov.Koroteu,pp. 239-40 Thereis one major flaw in this account, sufficient to cast doubt on the

entire anecdote. Malyshev did not become Minister of Medium Machine Building until july 1953.while the R3 pro

gram was officially terminated in February 1953. Prior to july 1953, Malyshev had no connection whatsoever with

the ballistic missile program

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

Aviation Industry in the late 1940s, recommending him to Ustinov for a big promotion

into NII-88. Despite Yangel's apparent lack of

expertise in the area of guidance systems, in

April 1950, Ustinov appointed Yangel chief of

Department No. 5, the sector responsible for

the development of guidance systems at the

institute, '_ Yangel was a strict Party man, having joined in the early 1930s, and combined

with his great technical prowess, within a year,

he advanced to the post of Deputy Chief

Designer at OKB-I under Korolev.

When NII-88 Director Rudnev was unexpectedly promoted to become a Deputy

Minister of Armaments under Ustinov in May

1952, Party officials conducted a search for a

suitable candidate to serve as head of the institute. It came as somewhat of a shock to most

engineers when they were told that Yangel, and

not Korolev, would assume the role as the director of NII-88. Clearly, Yangel's Party credentials

were a significant factor in the new appointment, and Korolev was put in the awkward

position of having to report to an individual

who had been a subordinate for the previous

two years. Both individuals had very strong personalities, and their relationship with each

other was far from smooth, resulting in a very

strained and stressful working environment at

This photo of Chief Designer Mikhad '/angel is from

the mid 1960s. Although he started his career under

Korolev, 'fanget eventually headed an independent

missile design organization in Dnepropetrovsk in the

Ukraine, which produced some of the most important

ICBMs in the Soviet ursenaL (files ol Peter _orin)

the institute. They essentially avoided speaking to each other, and Korolev would often use his

deputies, such as Mishin or Chertok, as intermediaries. '4° The stress was apparently too much,

and on October 4, 1953, Yangel was demoted to the position of Chief Engineer of NII-88. '_'

Although still officially superior to Korolev, Yangel was henceforth primarily involved in the production of missiles at the manufacturing plant in Dnepropetrovsk.

The conflict between Korolev and Yangel also served to set the stage for the formation of

a new organization, only the second apart from NII-88 dedicated to the development of longrange ballistic missiles. The State Union Plant No..586 at Dnepropetrovsk had originally been

involved in the manufacture of older missiles, such as the R-I and the R-2, directed by Korolev's

former prot_g& Chief Designer Budnik. Although the plant primarily handled production,

Korolev let Budnik set up a small design department, officially subordinate to the former, to

explore modifying existing missiles. The work resulted in the development of an improved R-I

named the R-I M, distinguished by its new guidance system. At the same time, Budnik, jointly

with engineers at NII-88, set about on a more ambitious project to define the concept for a new

139. Golovanov. Koroleu. p. 439: Lardier, LTtstronaatique Soui#tique. p 95: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 353.

140. Chertok, Rukety i lyudi, p. 354-355; Golovanov, Koroteu, p. 440.

14I. JacquesVillain, ed., Baikonour la porte deserodes(Paris:Armand Colin, 1994), p. 136:Chertok, Rukety

i lyudi, p. 355. Maj. General A. S. Spiridinov, who had served as liaison officer with the Germans at Gorodomlya,

was appointed the new director of NII-88 at the time. A A. Yeremenko,Chief of the Public Affairs Department of

TsNIIMash, letter to the author, April 14, 1994.

113
114

strategic ballistic missile named the R-12, or "product 8A63," which would use storable propellants, have an autonomous guidance system, and be capable of a range of about 2,000 kilometers. The military was evidently interested in a missile that would have the modern design

characteristics of the R-5 but be as easy to store for long periods as the short-range tactical

R-II. Budnik was lucky to have a collaborator: Chief Designer Dominik D. Sevruk at Nll-88's

OKB-3 had by this time begun work on high-thrust engines using red fuming nitric acid and

kerosene (storable components). Both Korolev and Glushko were lukewarm at best to the

whole idea of the R-12, but on the insistence of the military, they began to take it seriously. '_'

On February 13, 1953. in the same decree sanctioning the ICBM's development, the Soviet government formally transferred all draft plan work on the R-12 from NII-88 to Budnik's command

in the Ukraine. '4_

Because Budnik's design bureau was essentially an entity focused on manufacturing, however, it faced serious problems in funding and staffing. '44The problems at the factory opened

the way for a solution to the conflict between Korolev and Yangel. In early 1954, Khrushchev

instructed Minister Ustinov to draw up a plan to dilute Korolev's absolute monopoly in the

rocket-building business. Ustinov emerged with a plan to create two completely independent

groups, one in the Ukraine and one in the Urals. Korolev was called to a meeting to meet

Khrushchev. who was then the First Secretary of the Communist Party, to discuss the issue.

Korolev was naturally very resistant to competitors, and he suggested to Khrushchev that the

most optimum plan would be to have centrally located design bureaus in the Moscow areaand

a number of branches spread across the Soviet Union. Khrushchev was adamantly opposed,

instead arguing that the two new groups would be completely independent from OKB-I. _

Thus, Korolev finally ceded his monopoly, and the foundation was laid for the expansion of the

missile and space industry.

The first enterprise was the Experimental Design Bureau (OKB-586) formed at the plant in

Dnepropetrovsk in the Ukraine by an order of the Council of Ministers dated April 10, 1954. Its

mandate was to create a new generation of military ballistic missiles. '4°Ustinov offered the chief

designer's job of the organization to Yangel, who accepted without any hesitation. The ambitious engineer had been interested for a while in heading his own design bureau and, like

Korolev, had been unhappy with the situation at NII-88. Yangel was officially named to head

OKB-586 on July 9 and brought with him to Dnepropetrovsk a number of able engineers from

NII-88. With Budnik as his new first deputy, Yangel immediately dove into work on the R-12

missile, considered by the Soviet leadership to be a successor rocket to Korolev's R-5 Originally.

Yangel's new missile would have used an engine designed by Sevruk, who had started this

research in the first place, but ended up collaborating with a much more powerful individual,

Chief Designer Glushko. Although Glushko had been uninterested at first in the

R- 12. once the program gathered steam, he had Sevruk's work on the engine transferred to his

own design bureau. Thus. along with the two engines for the ICBM, in 1952, he began work

on a third engine, the RD-21 I, for the R-12. In contrast to the other two engines, the RD-2I I

would have a multichamber design with four identical combustion chambers fed by one tur142 Biryukov and Yeremenko. "50 Years for the Native Rocket Space Industry": Igor Afanasyev, R-12:

Sanda{ouoye dereuo (Moscow: EksPrint NV, 1997), pp 6-1.

143 Pappo-Korystin. Platonov, and Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmieheskiy tsentr, p. 55.

144. V. F. Prisnjakov and F. IR Sanin. "To the History of Rocket-Space Technique Development in Ukraine."

presented at the 45th Congress o[ the International Astronautical Federation. IAA-94-1AA 2 1613, Jerusalem, Israel,

October 9-14. 1994,

145. Sergey Khrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu: krizisy i rakety: uzglyad iznutri: tom I (Moscow: Novosti,

1994). pp. 281-83.

146. Pappo-Korystin, Platonov, and Pashchenko. Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy tsentr, p, 56.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND THE ROCKET

bopump. Total thrust was about sixty-five tons. '4' The RD-211 would be Glushko's very first

high-thrust liquid-propellant rocket engine using storable propellants, establishing a tradition in

his design bureau that would have dramatic repercussions within ten years.

The second independent branch was opened at Zlatoust in the Urals at the former plants

number 66 and 385, which had up to that time specialized in the serial manufacture of early

ballistic missiles. As part of Ustinov's master plan, Serial Design Bureau No, 385 (SKB-385) was

restructured, and one of Korolev's youngest proteges, apparently at the recommendation of

Korolev himself, was appointed the organization's chief designer on March I I, 1955. `48The thirW-year-old Viktor P. Makeyev was transferred from OKB-I to the new firm to lead the development of a new generation of tactical missiles, with ranges from 200 to 300 kilometers. His

experience as the lead designer of the tactical R-II rocket no doubt played a major role in his

appointment, and Makeyev's SKB-385 would soon inherit all naval rocketry development from

Korolev's OKB-I, moving to become the premier developer of naval ICBMs in the world.

The conflict with Yangel and the subsequent creation of two new and independent rocket

design bureaus in the Soviet Union may have temporarily diluted Korolev's powers, but his

influence, both on an official and a personal level, continued to grow slowly. This was clearly

in no small part because of his change of heart over the issue of membership in the Communist

Party of the Soviet Union. Of the major rocketry designers, he remained one of the few who

never joined the Party. The problem was compounded by the resistance of many local Party

leaders in recruiting a known and convicted "enemy of the state": Korolev, of course, had yet

to be formally rehabilitated for his "crimes" of the 1930s. He attended classes at the

Mitishtinskiy Evening University on Marxism-Leninism, finishing his coursework with distinctions in 1950. Unable to forget the toils of his past, he evidently remained unsure of whether

to join the ranks of card-carrying communists. In 1952, at the prompting of several local Party

officials at Kaliningrad, Korolev finally decided to begin the process of applying for membership. In March, he was accepted as a candidate member. The doubts about his "criminal" past

were put to rest by a number of recommendations from associates such as Pobedonostsev and

Kozlov. Perhaps influenced by Yangel's swift rise to the directorship of NII-88, Korolev formally applied for full membership of the Party in early June 1953, soon after his return from

Kapustin Yar following a series of R-5 launches. _49It was a critical moment in his career, for a

rejection of his application would have surely necessitated his resignation as chief designer at

NII-88's OKB-I, effectively ending his career. Korotev had reason to worry because it was

extremely unusual for a former prisoner to become a Party member. Fortunately, at a meeting

at Kaliningrad the following month, he was finally accepted as a member of the Communist

Party of the Soviet Union.

The joining of the Party was an important factor in getting another distinction. The same

year on October 23, Korolev and Chief Designer Gtushko were elected two of approximately

300 new Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the second highest ranking honor for a scientist in the nation. '5° Being the only two engineers in the entire rocketry

industry who were bestowed such an honor, it was a significant recognition of the power that

141. Biryukov and Yeremenko. %0 Yearsfor the Native Rocket-SpaceIndustry"; Afanasyev, R-12.pp 6-?;

Prishchepa, "From the History of the Creation," p. 130.

148. Khrushehev,Nikita Khrushchev. p. 284 The SKB-385 was originally established on December 15, 1947.

SeeMaxim Tarasenko, "Evolution of the Soviet SpaceIndustry," presentedat the 46th Congress of the International

Astronautical Federation, IAA-95-1AA,2.1.OI, Oslo. Norway, October 2-6, 1995: Ye Tkachenko, "The KB Named

After Academician Makeyev--50 Years" (English translation), Nouosti kosmonautlki 26 (December 15-3 h 1997): 75,

149. Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 441: A P Romanov and V. S. Gubarev,Konstruktory (Moscow: Politicheskoy literatury, 1989), p. 65.

t 50. Keldysh, ed., Tuorcheskoyenaslediye nkademika SergeyaPautouiehaKoroleu& p. 344; Chertok, Rakety

i lyudL p. 391.

115
116

thetwodesignersyielded. As members of the

Department of Technical Sciences in the

Academy. Korolev and Glushko not only gained

widespread recognition for the first time, but

also were privy to a few but important financial

perks given to all Corresponding and Full

Members of that organization.

For Korolev, as the years passed, the workload also increased, and he found less and less

time for pleasure. Most of his personal time was

spent with his second wife Nina P. Koroleva,

whom he had married in May 1947 soon after

she found work at NII-88. While he frequently

traveled to and from Kapustin Yar and

Kaliningrad, Korolev and his wife and daughter

were not allowed to leave the country for any

reason. Although he continued to harbor ill

feelings toward many of the leaders of the

Soviet government, it would be erroneous to

suggest that he suppressed "anti-Soviet" feelings in the hopes of seeing his dreams of space

travel emerge in reality, In fact, by all accounts,

Korolev clearly had a strong and profound love

for his country, and his interest in creating such

deadly weapons as ICBMs was more than just a

byproduct of his love for space exploration. He

did often, however, see the absurdity of being

involved in such sensitive technology programs.

In January 1953, during a sudden warm

period in the weather, an area in the central

Chie[ Designer Sergey Koroteu stands at the Kapustin

Yar firing range m I953. the same year that he

finally joined the Communist Party and was elected

a Corresponding Member of the USSR2:]cademy ol

Sciences (files o/7-tsi] Siddiqi)

LISSR was flooded by melting ice. A missile depot in that region, storing tens of R-I missiles

for battle, was luckily saved from the flood because of the careful construction of storage buildings. Unfortunately, the water entered thousands of subterranean mice burrows, and finding no

other place to take shelter, the mice flocked to the missile depot by the thousands. As it happened, the mice found the insulation wiring of the numerous missiles to be quite edible. When

news of the incident found its way to the higher leadership, the artillery command was furious

and sent Maj. General Lev M. Gaydukov to the depot, where he relieved the local commander,

a General Volkodav, on the spot for "criminal negligence.' ..... Soon, hundreds of cats and repairmen were rushed to the depot to take care of the problem. When Korolev heard about the

entire episode, he reportedly laughed himself to tears, much to the alarm of General Volkodav,

who accused Korolev of building a missile with edible insulation.

Famous physicist Academician Andrey D. Sakharov, who was one of the leading individuals in advanced nuclear weapons research in the Soviet Union, has provided some revealing

insights to Korolev's character. Sakharov, along with the nuclear physicist Igor V. Kurchatov,

met Korolev at the end of 1953 during a break from their work at the famous KB-II, the primary nuclear weapons design bureau in the USSR. According to Sakharov:

15 I. Golovanovt "Portrait Gallery: Underwater Thunder"

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
STALIN AND TIlE ROCKET

Korolev was a brilliant engineer and organizer and a colorful personality who shared

many of Kurchatov's qualities .... Korolev dreamed of the cosmos, and he clung to that

dream throughout his youth and his stint with the [amous Jet Propulsion Research Group

[GIRD]. He never believed, as so many did, that the rocket pioneer Konstantin

Tsiolkovsky was simply an impractical dreamer Korolev also shared Kurchatov's rather

crude sense of humor Both took good care of their subordinates and colleagues and had

a sure grasp of the practical, but Korolev was possibly a bit more cunning, ruthless, and

cynical than Kurchatov.'_2

About the general work of NII-88, Sakharov added:

We had always thought our own work was conducted on a grand scale, but this was

something of a different order. I was struck by the level of technical culture, hundreds of

highly skilled professionals coordinated their work on fantastic objects they were producing, all in a quite matter-of-fact, efficient manner '_

Korolev's relationship with the post-Stalin leadership stabilized over time. Of the four major

players, he had had cursory relationships with Beriya, Bulganin, and Malenkov. The latter two

had headed the important Special Committee No. 2, but they had evidently remained outside

the de facto loop of command over the missile program. Thus, with Beriya gone, the new leadership was in the curious position of inheriting a massive and complex program of research that

had been completely concealed from them. The fourth major power player, Khrushchev, had

met the Korolev a few times during the Stalin regime, but they had never developed a personal relationship at the time. Khrushchev's description of Korolev's first meeting with the new

Party leadership is revealing:

Not too long after Stalin's death, Korolyou came to the Politbureau [sic] meeting to

report on his work. I don't want to exaggerate, but I'd say we gawked at what he

showed us as if we were a bunch of sheep seeing a new gate [or the first time. When he

showed us one o/his rockets, we thought it looked like nothing but a huge cigar-shaped

tube, and we didn't believe it could fly. Korolyov took us on a tour of the launching pad

and tried to explain to us how the rocket worked. We were like peasants in a marketplace. We walked around and around the rocket, touching it, tapping it to see if it was

sturdy enough--we did everything but lick it to see how it tasted.'_4

Speaking of the new ICBM proposal, Khrushchev had unending praise for Korolev:

We had absolute confidence in Comrade Korolyov [sic]. We believed him when he told

us that his rocket would not fly, but that it would travel 7.000 kilometers, When he

expounded or defended ideas, you could see passion burning in his eyes. and his reports

were always models of clarity. He had unlimited energy and determination, and he was

a brilliant organizer '_

152 Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 177.

153 Ibid.

154, Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, pp 45-46.

155. Ibid

II1
118

Firsthand descriptions of his character describe someone who was capable of both outright

belligerence and unexpected generosity--a man single-mindedly driven by the dream of space

travel. Transcending any possible clich_ of the devoted scientist. Korolev was more than the

sum of his attributes, a surprisingly humane and emotionally explosive person with both

strengths and failings, but ultimately possessed of invaluable genius for managing his engineers. One military associate from the 1950s recalled that:

Korolev was not only a scientist and designer, but also a great organizer. He never hesitated to take risks, but his risk-taking was always calculated. Sometimes he would take

a decision which he intuitively knew to be wrong, but he still wanted to test it and try

it out as if he needed to convince himself that it was truly wrong. He would steamroll

anything and anybody that tried to prevent him from making a decision which he

deemed necessary and propen Indeed, his main character trait was his iron will. He was

very sell-disciplined, resolute, certain about what he wanted, and intent on achieving

his goals at any cost. _

Despite increased socialization with the upper leadership of the Kremlin, the cultured

Korolev never overcame the deleterious effects of his time in prison. Anatoliy P. #,bramov, an

engineer at the design bureau, recalled many years later that Korolev:

used to take his meals with his deputies and assistants, all sitting around in a big table

in the canteen .... Korolev had a good sense of humor, and his presence never intimidated the others sitting around the table .... He ate very quickly, paying more attention

to answering questions than to the meal. _[ter finishing the food on his plate, he would

wipe it clean with a piece of bread which he subsequently put in his mouth. He even

scooped up crumbs and ate them. The people around him looked on with amazement

until someone volunteered that this was a habit he had developed during his years in

prison and in labor camps.'_7

The successes of the early Soviet ballistic missile program did not, obviously, belong only

to Korolev. Other engineers, artillery officers, and defense industry bureaucrats were instrumental in the creation of the vast infrastructure that supported the development of the R-I,

R-2, R-5. and R-I I missiles. But Korolev was the heart of that effort, the one who synthesized

the abilities and talents of thousands. By 1953, he was poised to begin the most important

phase of his life. P, man profoundly affected by the history of the Soviet Union, he began to

harness his own energies to affect the history of the world.

156. Mozzhorin,etal, eds, Dorogiu kosmos:I. pp. I 12-13.

157. Mozzhorin, et al., eds, Nachalo kosmieheskoy ery, p. 44.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
[

• i_, ','_'_

CHAPTER FOUR

SPUTNIK

Stalin's death in 1953 signaled the beginning of a new era in the history of the Soviet state•

As with every other arena of Soviet life, the effects on the rocketry sector were not clear immediately. Given that Stalin himself had an unusually important role in approving or canceling

weapons development projects, the new members of the Politburo were less than prepared to

handle the institutional and operational challenges of the emerging long-range ballistic missile

program. While Beriya, Bulganin, Khrushchev, and Malenkov had found themselves as the

major power brokers in the post-Stalin leadership, one by one, three of them were eliminated

from the picture in the ensuing years. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev emerged as the most

powerful and influential Communist Party leader in the country. Of the four individuals,

Khrushchev was, however, the one person least familiar with the workings of the defense

industry. His inexperience with the sector, combined with the necessity of revamping an institutional structure set up in the Stalin days, seems to have set the stage for a great degree of

flux and ambiguity in the chain of command in the missile programs during the four-year period from 1953 to the first Sputnik launch in 1957. This amorphousness engendered a climate

for facilitating the decision to develop and launch the first artificial satellite.

Operation Bayka!

Through the end of 1953 and the beginning of 1954, specific requirements for the first

Soviet ICBM were established at NII-88 during a series of important meetings, which finally

brought together nuclear weapons and rockets to create a potent combination. The first step

prior to using nuclear explosives on the ICBM was deployment of more modest rockets, such

as the short-range R-II and the medium-range R-5. It was during this period that Korolev's

enterprise and the rest of the rocketeers for the first time came into contact with bureaucrats in

the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, the individuals responsible for administrating the

top-secret nuclear weapons program. Following the end of the Stalin and Beriya era, Minister

Malyshev and his deputies from the Ministry of Medium Machine Building almost by default

inherited jurisdiction over the missile effort--an unusual state of affairs prompted in part by the

ignorance of many high Communist Party leaders on the nature of important military programs.

The collaboration with the nuclear scientists began with an exploratory visit to NII-88 on

October 19, 1953, by representatives of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, who met

NII-88 Chief Engineer Yangel to inquire about the basic parameters of the R-5 missile. Korolev

was at the time in Kapustin Yar inaugurating the second series of R-5 testing, and upon hearing of the visit, he quickly flew back to Moscow in time for a formal visit by Malyshev to

119
120

discuss the details of the operation. _What emerged from the meeting was an order to modify

the two existing missiles into their nuclear weapons variants, the R-II M and the R-5M. The

modifications were to rely entirely around issues of reliability, stemming from the understandable concern about putting atomic bombs on inefficient missiles• Given the generally poor performance of newly designed rockets, the pressure was on Korolev to satisfy requirements that

were far beyond anything needed before. Close cooperation was called for with the scientists

from the Arzamas-16, who, by some accounts, often acted condescendingly to the engineers

at OKI3-1. Having been the most coveted defense scientists in the Soviet Union, for the first

time, the nuclear scientists were forced to submit to design requests from the rocketry industry. One OKB-I engineer recalled later:

At the start o/this work Sergey Paulovich [Koroleu] gathered the project leaders to make

a speech concerning the program. This was a meeting before the start of work with the

[Ministry of Medium Machine Building]. The first thing he said was that we ought to be

very careful in our activities, because they had been spoilt, , , due to publicity.. • and

considered themselves superior to everybody else.., after developing the atom bomb

•.. S. P Korolev said that at least in the beginning we should pander to them. but pan

der very carefully such that in the end we would prove to them that we were in the driver's seat and they were merely passengers. 2

Symptomatic of many other rivalries between organizations within the defense industry, the friction

between the nuclear and rocket scientists eventually came to a stalemate, but it was a conflict that

served as a vehicle to dramatically increase the prominence and clout of the missile engineers.

The Soviets conducted a third series of R-5 testing at Kapustin Yar between August 12,

1954, and February 7, 1955, which verified initial concepts for modernizing the base vehicle.

These tests essentially cleared the way for the "nuclear" variant, which had a slated range of

1,200 kilometers and a launch mass of just over twenty-eight and a half tons, slightly less than

its predecessor.' Korolev himself inaugurated the grueling test series for the new R-SM on

January 20, 1955. Coordinating the work with the nuclear weapons engineers and scientists,

OKB-I engineers slowly eliminated a variety of major technical problems during as many as seventeen launches from site 4N at Kapustin Yar, which lasted up to July 1955. Of the launches,

only two deviated from their assigned trajectories; their flight was terminated using a special

system that switched off the engines in flight. Engineers also studied the impact of dummy

steel warheads, which provided information on detonation devices/Korolev was acutely aware

of the importance of the work on the new missile, not only because it represented a new step

for national defense as a whole, but precisely because of its relevance in consolidating the influence and respect for the work at his organization. In many ways, it was the first crucial step

that would make or break the latent aspirations of a future space program under his direction.

I YaroslavGolovanov,Korolev Faktyi mi[y (Moscow: Nauka. 1994), pp. 456 57.Also presentwereMinistry

of Medium Machine Building DirectorateChief G. N Pashkov,Ministry of DefenseIndustriesDeputy K N Rudnev,and

a host of seniorengineersfrom Nil 88. The meeting is said to haveoccurredin November 1953.SeeBoris Nikolayevich

Kantemirov. "The History of the Selectionof the Design Principlesfor the First ICBM, the R-7," presentedat the 10th

InternationalSymposiumon the History of Astronauticsand Aeronautics. Moscow StateUniversity,Moscow, Russia,June

20-27, 1995.

2. Yu. A. Mozzhorin. et at. eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery: uospomineniya veteranov ruketnokosmicheskoytekhniki i kosmonautiki: uypuskvtoroy(Moscow: RNITsKD, 1994),p. 69.

3. Yu. V. Biryukov, "Materials from the BiographicalChroniclesof SergeyPavlovichKorolev" (Englishtitle), in

B. M Raushenbakh.ed,/z istorii sovetskoykosmonavtiki (Moscow: Nauka. 1983).p. 234: B.Ye Chertok. Raketyi tyudi

(Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye,1994), p 302.

4. Golovanov,I<oroleu,p. 460: Chertok. Raketyi lyudL p. 389; StevenJ. Zaloga,Target,,qmeriea:TheSoviet

Union and the Strategic.,Z]rmsRace.1945-19M (Novato, CA: Presidio,1993),p. 138.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
SPUTNIK

AfterfourfinalcertificationlaunchesinJanuary1956,theSovietgovernmentesablisheda

specialStateCommissionfortestingthelivenuclear-tippedmissile;thisorganizationwas

chairedbyPavelM.Zernov,underwhoseleadershiptheKB-IIfirmhaddevelopedthefirst

Sovietnuclearbomb?Theexercisewascode-named Operation BaykaL The fateful day of the

launch, February 2. 1956, Korolev, Voskresenskiy, Pilyugin, and nuclear weapons engineer

Rleksandr P. Pavlov gathered at the command point about six kilometers from site 4N to watch

the launch. Tension was high at the launch site because, for the first time during the Soviet

rocketry program, a live atomic bomb was sitting on top of a rocket. Engineers undertook special measures in case the rocket deviated from its path, One of these included the establishment of the Missile Accident Command Post--that is, a group of engineers who would use

their mathematical acumen in real time to distinguish a nominal trajectory from an unacceptable deviation? The launch went off without a problem, and the observers at the impact site

were able to observe the effects of the spectacular nuclear explosion, telephoning back to

Kapustin Yar: "We observed BoykaL"'

For Korolev and his engineers at NIt-88, this was a watershed moment. The years of uncertainty and suspicion from military leaders evaporated in a flush of euphoria. Especially happy

with the test and NII-88's performance was Marshal Nedelin, at the time the Deputy Minister

of Defense responsible for the procurement of all armaments. Within days, NII-88 was graced

by a visit by the top Soviet leadership, including Presidium members such as Nikita S.

Khrushchev, Nikolay P,. Bulganin, Vyecheslav M. Molotov, Lazar M. Kaganovich, and Nikolay

K Kifichenko/ It was an unprecedented honor, heretofore reserved only for the nuclear

weapons scientists, which contrasted sharply with the treatment the institute had received in

its first ten years of existence. As a mark of recognition of the rocketeers' remarkable work, a

decree on April 20, 1956, awarded the highest civilian honor possible for a Soviet citizen, the

Hero of Socialist Labor, to the entire Council of Chief Designers (Koro[ev, Glushko, Pilyugin,

Ryazanskiy, Barmin, and Kuznetsov) and two other missile experts (Isayev and Korolev's First

Deputy, Mishin)2 Korolev's other employees--twenty of them, including Bushuyev, Chertok,

Okhapkin, Voskresenskiy, Kryukov, and Makeyev--were awarded the less prestigious Order of

Lenin. The R-SM missile itself was formally adopted as armament of the Soviet armed forces by

an order dated June 2 I, 1956, serving as the first operational nuclear-tipped missile in the Soviet

inventory. '° The improvement in the fortunes of NII-88 and OKB-I was particularly significant

for Korolev's future space plans: for the first time since his appointment as chief designer in

1946, he had direct access to the top individuals in the Soviet leadership, facilitating quicker

5. Christian Lardier.L',,qstronautiqueSouietique(Paris: Armand Colin. 1992), p. 84. Other membersof this

state commission were: nuclear weapons experts Ye.A. Negin and N. A. Petrov: military officers M. I. Nedelin (a

Deputy Minister of Defense), N. D Yakovlev (Commander of Ai[ DefenseTroops). g. G. Mrykin (the chief representative from the Chief Artillery Directorate for missile affairs). V. I. Voznyuk (Commander of Kapustin Yar).and

R A. Degtyarev (from the Chief Artillery Directorate): bureaucrats D. F Ustinov (Minister of DefenseIndustries) and

S. h Vetoshkin (Ustinov's FirstDeputy), and engineers S. R Korolev, V P,Glushko, N. g. Pilyugin, M, S. Ryazanskiy,

V. R garmin, and V. I. Kuznetsov.

6. Yuriy R, Mozzhorin. el at., eds., Dorogi u kosmos I (Moscow: MAI, 1992), p. 29. The system installed

on the missile was designated the Automatic Rocket Disablement (APR) system, which switched off the main

engines on a wayward missile. SeeChertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 388.

7. Zaloga, TargetZ]meriea. p. 139.

8. Golovanov, Korolev, p. 464.

9. V Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov, and V. Pashchenko, Dnepropetrovskiy raketno-kosmieheskiy tsentr:

kratkiy ocherk stanouleniya i razuitiya (Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZ/KBYu. 1994), pp. 58-59. Note that Mishin was

the only non-chief designer to be awarded. Note also that Isayevwas given his Hero of SocialistLabor for the development of the S-25 Berkutsurface-to air missile system and not the R-SM.

I O h D Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy istorii raketnykh uoyskastrategicheskogonaznaeheniyo

(Moscow: TslPK, 1994), p 35.

121
122

and often effective decision-making for projects that had elicited little or no interest from both

Communist Party and government leaders during the preceding years.

There was a clear level of flux in the policy and management of the Soviet missile programs

in the years following 1953 and leading up to 1957, when Khrushchev conclusively consolidated his power. The Special Committee No. 2, which in its various incarnations had supervised

all policy decision-making since its inception in 1946, had ceased to exist as an independent

entity in 1949. Later, the nuclear, missile, and air defense programs were all consolidated under

Vyecheslav P,. Malyshev within the Ministry of Medium Machine Building in 1953. This managerial setup lasted only two years before the Soviet leadership--that is, Malenkov and

Khrushchev--decided to concentrate all missile industry supervision under one governmental

entity that superseded ministerial jurisdiction. On April 14, t955, the government created the

"Special Committee for Armaments for the Army and Navy of the USSR Council of Ministers"

by uniting several former departments from the Ministry of Medium Machine Building and subordinating it directly to the USSR Council of Ministers. By December 19.57, this same committee would be renamed the Military-Industrial Commission (VPK), the infamous institution that

managed the Soviet military-industrial complex through the entire Cold War." Officially, the role

of VPK was "to transform the Party's weapons policy decisions into coordinated plans and

assignments, and to ensure that those tasks were accomplished as directed. '''_ As Khrushchev

himself became the sole arbitrator of Party weapons policy by the late 1950s, VPK served as an

implementation mechanism for his pet defense projects. Eventually, there would not be a single

program in the entire defense sector, including the future space program, which would get off

the ground without the signature of the chairman of VPK.

Malyshev, having done much for the growth of the ballistic missile program, was not to be

witness to the Soviet space program. When his "sponsor." Presidium member and chairman of

the Council of Ministers Georgiy M. Malenkov, was demoted in February 1955, Malyshev's fortunes took a dive. Within months, he lost his grip on power and was demoted to a relatively

innocuous position. An ambitious and intelligent man, he was devastated by the course of

events, He died within a year of acute leukemia, '_ For Korolev, Malyshev's removal had positive

implications. Never close to the chief designer, Malyshev had consistently opposed Korolev's

grander plans for space exploration, perhaps suspecting in Korolev a penchant for idle dreaming, which had no relevance to consolidating the defensive might of the Soviet Union.

I I. The new SpecialCommittee traced its ancestry back to the Third Chief Directorate of the USSRCouncil

of Ministers, established on February 3, 195h to oversee the development of all Soviet short- and long-range missiles. On July I, 19_13,the Third Chief Directorate was subordinated to the new Ministry of Medium Machine

Building and renamed GlavSpetsMash (Chief Directorate of Special Machine Building). GlavSpetsMashevidently

supervised Soviet missile development from 1953 to 1955. The role of the Ministry of Defense Industries under

D. F.Llstinov, which had traditionally overseenindustrial development of missiles in the 1940sand 1950s.is unclear

during this period. On April 14, 1955,severalsubordinate departments of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building,

including GlavSpetsMash.GlavSpetsMontazh (Chief Directorate of Special Assembly). and GlavTransMash(Chief

Directorateof Transport Machine Building), wereseparatedfrom the ministry, henceforth releasingthe ministry from

any oversight over missile programs. Someof the newly independent departments, including design bureaus such

as KB- I and OKB-2, were transferred to the Ministry of DefenseIndustries under Llstinov The remainder, including

a largeportion of the old GlavSpetsMash,was consolidated into a singleentity and subordinated directly to the USSR

Council of Ministers, serving as the backbone of the new "Special Committee for Armaments of the Army and

Navy" The chairman of the committee was V. M Ryabikov, The first deputy chairman was G./5. Titov The two

deputy chairmen were A. K. Repin and A. N. Shchukin. The four remaining members were G. N Pashkov, V. V

lllyuvnev, E I. Kaiinushkin, and B. A. Kyasov. SeeGrigoriy Kisunko, Sekretnayazona (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1996),

pp. 305,367: Arkadiy Kruglov, Shtab utomproma (Moscow: TsNllatominform, 1998), pp. I07, II 7.

12. William P.Barry, "The Missile Design Bureauxand Soviet Piloted Space Policy, 1953-1970" Ph.D. thesis m Politics, Faculty of SocialStudies, University of Oxford, 1996.

13 AndreySakharov,Memoirs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 184

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
SPUTNIK

Malyshev's replacement as missile project

coordinator was an unusual choice, but one

who was evidently more sympathetic to

Korolev: Vasiliy M. Ryabikov. The latter had by

far one of the most unusual careers in the

defense industry--and one whose full facet is

still unexplained by declassified information.

Ryabikov had served as Ustinov's First Deputy at

the Ministry of Armaments until 1951, overseeing the work at NII-88. In February 195 I, he was

appointed to lead the Third Chief Directorate of

the USSR Council of Ministers, a top-secret

body established among other things to develop

the first Moscow air defense system." His sudden rise to a position of such great importance

after a stint as a deputy minister is inexplicably

hidden among the minutes of Politburo meetings. From 1953 Ryabikov served briefly under

Malyshev, overseeing Soviet missile programs

before being tapped to be chairman of the new

Special Committee in April 1955. It was a curious position for him because he now served as

Ustinov's boss, whereas only a few years before,

their roles were reversed. '_ One persuasive

Western analysis of Ryabikov's precipitous rise

suggests that Ryabikov was an important element in Beriya's control of top-secret programs,

and after the latter's fall, Malyshev and Ryabikov

VasilO,Ryabikov, shown here in an official

government portrait, headed the so-called "Special

Committee o/the Council of Ministers"/rein t955 to

195Z As manager of the Soviet defense industry

during that period, Ryabikov was the most

important government official responsible for the genesis

of the Sputniksatelliteprogram, (files o/Peter Gorin)

were among many who remained behind from the "Beriya group" to serve as a foil against

Khrushchev's own overtures for a complete monopoly of power. '°

Little is known about Ryabikov's personality or allegiances, although it has been suggested that he was not a strong supporter of Korolev's plans. '7 While he may not have been as supportive as Ustinov, Ryabikov was clearly an improvement over the much more traditional

Malyshev, with whom Korolev had many a spat. Ryabikov's supervision over the implementation of the missile program was facilitated by a number of deputies, including Georgiy N.

Pashkov, a strict Party-line man, who, like Ryabikov, had a long history of involvement in the

rocketry industry, both as a member of the Special Committee No. 2 and also in Gosplan, the

14. Col. Gen. (Rot.) Yu. V. Votintsev, "Unknown Troops of the Vanished SuperpoweF (English title),

Voyenno.istoricheskiyzflurnal no. 8 (August 1993): 54-61.

15. Forreasons that are still unclear, Ryabikov's role as chairman of the new Special Committee has gone

almost entirely unmentioned in Soviet or Russiansources. Rarereferencescan be found in Mozzhorin, et al, eds_

Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, p. 164: Yu. P,Semenov. ed, Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S, P

Korofeva (Korolev: RKK Energiya,1996), pp. 79, 87. Hisstandard biography usually refersto his role as a "committee

chairman in the LISSRCouncil of Ministers" from 1955to 1957.SeeJohn McDonnell, "The SovietDefenseIndustry as

a PressureGroup," in Michael McGwire, Ken Booth, and John McDonnell, eds., SovietNaval Policy Objectives and

Constraints (Halifax, NS: Centre for ForeignPolicy Studies, 1975), p, 119. From 1953 to 1955, Ryabikov had successively served asthe chief of GbvSpetsMash and GlavSpetsMontazhwithin the Min;stry of Medium Machine Building,

titles equivalent to a deputy minister in the ministry. SeeKisunko,Sekretnayazona. p. 276.

16. Barry. "The Missile Design Bureaux"

t7. Ibid

123
124

state economic planning organ. Ustinov, still the Minister of Defense Industries, which oversaw

NII-88 during this period, continued to maintain very close relationships with Korolev and

other chief designers. There is no evidence to suggest that there was any friction between

Ustinov and Ryabikov once their positions were reversed. An extremely valuable ally for

Korolev, Ustinov was crucial in shielding and protecting NII-88 from undesirable orders.

During the mid-1950s, Korolev also benefited from changes in the military--in particular,

the transfer of the important NIl-4 organization from the Academy of Artillery Sciences to the

Fourth Directorate of the Chief Artillery Directorate, the latter being his primary client for missiles. Many military leaders saw this academy as a hostile environment, nurturing scientific

dreamers such as Tikhonravov, but ironically it had become too ineffectual for Korolev's liking.

After a tumultuous lifetime, the academy was eventually dissolved on April 23, 1953, and its

subordinate NIl-4, which included Tikhonravov's group, was transferred directly to the command of the Fourth Directorate, renamed the Directorate of the Deputy Commander of Artillery. '_

With direct access to a sympathetic directorate commander, Maj. General Andrey I. Sokoiov,

Tikhonravov was in a better position to reinforce the important work on artificial satellites carried out at NIl-4. There was a minor reshuffle during 1954-55, when Sokolov was fired from his

post because of a Party "witch-hunt," but the resourceful artillery general struggled his way back

and was appointed to personally head NIl-4 in late 1955/9 An employee of NIl-4 noted later that

"in connection with Sokolov's [appointment] there was a sharp reinforcement of work on space

themes" at the institute, adding that the relationship with NII-88 showed a significant improvement. 2°Furthermore, the number of people in Tikhonravov's satellite and launch vehicle group

increased dramatically following the change in NIl-4 leadership. Another change in favor of

Korolev and Tikhonravov was the appointment of Marshal Nedelin in March 1955 to the new

post of Deputy Minister of Defense for Special Armaments and Reactive Technology."' With a far

more favorable attitude toward Korolev after the success of the R-5M, Nedelin was a key factor

in Korolev's rise, given that the former had direct access to Khrushchev and the rest of the

Presidium. Nedelin's new role was to direct the acquisition and integration of new armaments,

including ballistic missiles, into the Soviet armed forces. If a satellite were to lift off from Soviet

soil, it would be Nedelin who would allow the use of a missile for such a project.

All these changes, seemingly unrelated, each served to reinforce Korolev's standing in key

areas. Without the support of these individuals, the first Soviet satellite would not have lifted

off when it did. The dismissal of Malyshev, the new appointments of Ryabikov, Sokolov, and

Nedelin. the transfer of NIl-4, and most of all the success of the R-SM were pivotal events,

which came at a very opportune moment in the history of the Soviet ballistic missile program.

While a decision on a space satellite was still months away. the pieces in the puzzle were finally beginning to fall into place, as the fortunes of Korolev's group of engineers began to take a

historic turn. The last and perhaps most important element of the picture, the ICBM, was

already in design. The doors were beginning to open up.

18 Yu. A. Mozzhorin, et al. eds,, Dorogi u kosmos: II (Moscow: MAI. 1992], pp. 94 95. Note that

Sergeyev. ed,, Khronika osnounykh sobytiy istorii, p 6, states that the Directorate of the Deputy Commander of

Artillery (LIZKA) was formed on April 18, 1953

19 Ibid., pp. 97-98. LIZKA was itself renamed the Directorate of the Chief of Reactive Armaments (UNRV)

in March 1955 and was headed at the time by Maj. General A. I. Semenov, a veteran of the A-4 recovery effort in

Germany after World War II

20 Ibid, pp. 95.91-98

21 Sergeyev. ed, Khrorziko osnounykh sobytiy istorii, pp. 6-7.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

Alternatives

The T I and T2 directives from February 1953 sanctioned design work to create intercontinental ballistic and cruise missiles, both to be created at Nll-88's OKB-I. Increasingly by late

1953, work on the T2 theme had begun to conflict with the heavy workload on ICBM development-that is, the T I theme. Cruise missile development was effectively limited to the creation of the short-range experimental EKR vehicle, although it was understood that the EKR

would lead directly to a full-scale intercontinental project. By the end of 1953, NII-88 had

begun manufacturing various components of the EKR, while ground tests of OKB-6ZO's ramjet

engine were producing good results. A special commission formed to monitor the EKR progroin's progress, which included Academicians Keldysh and Khristianovich, recommended at

the time that the research results from the EKR had been so positive that they should move

directly to an intercontinental missile instead of building the interim missile." Similar to the

abandonment of the R-3 and the jump to an ICBM, it was the second time that Soviet engineers and scientists decided to forego an interim vehicle in favor of a direct leap to an intercontinental missile. Both Korolev and Keldysh were acutely aware that OKB-I alone would not

be able to handle both tasks, and after some "anguished discussions." Korolev decided to let

go of the cruise missile option and have it transferred to other design bureaus, specifically ones

in the aviation industry whose extensive experience in developing long-range bombers would

come in handy.''_ For Korolev, this was in many ways the most visible manifestation that his

thinking had irrevocably moved from winged missiles, his dream in the 1930s, to ballistic missiles as a means to explore the upper atmosphere and outer space.

Keldysh's NII-I had retained overall scientific supervision over the intercontinental cruise

missile program, but the actual engineering tasks were distributed to two aviation design

bureaus, both of which would eventually become two of the most important organizations in

the Soviet space program. Each would design and build its own intercontinental cruise missile,

in effect competing against each other to deliver a working model to the Soviet armed forces.

In a uniquely Soviet version of "competitive markets," it was not odd for two design bureaus

to be assigned projects simultaneously--programs that were geared toward roughly the same

requirements. Both proposals would often reach the point of flight testing under supervision of

the primary client, the Ministry of Armed Forces (later the Ministry of Defense). Based on the

results, the ministry would choose one for full-scale production and integration into the armed

forces. The decision to adopt not only was, of course, based on the performance of the given

systems in their testing regime, but also was often a function of the level of cordiality between

the given chief designers and the Soviet leadership. Because failure for a design bureau could

quite often mean the termination of its existence, engineers considered the development of

high-stakes weapons such as cruise missiles very seriously.

The organization picked to produce the first cruise missile was the Experimental Design

Bureau No. 301 (OKB-301), located at Khimki and headed by fifty-three-year-old Chief

Designer Semyon A. Lavochkin, one of the most famous airplane designers in the Soviet Union.

Established in July 1937, this design bureau had produced a number of fighter aircraft, such as

the LaGG-3, LaG, La-SF,La-5FN, and La-7, which were used extensively during World War II.

Later, Lavochkin led the development of several experimental jet aircraft, such as the La-160, the

first Soviet aircraft with swept-back wings, and the La-176, the first Soviet aircraft to break the

speed of sound. By the early 1950s, OKB-301 had branched out into missiles: its first

22. I. Afanasyev,"Without the SecretStamp:Halt the Work, Destroythe Materials"(Englishtitte),

,ztuiatsiyai kosrnonautikano.6 (June1993):42-44

23 Chertok,Rake_yi tyud[,p. 290.

125
126

forays into the field included the V-300 missile for the Moscow air defense network, codenamed Berkut, and the "201" ramjet-powered air-launched drone. _4

The second aviation organization tapped was the Experimental Design Bureau No. 23

(OKB-23), a relatively new firm that had no prior experience in designing missiles. Instead, it

was undertaking important work on long-range bomber design. In the spring of 195 I, Stalin

had called in Andrey A. Tupo[ev, the famous aviation patriarch and chief designer of the

Moscow-based OKB-156, to discuss the future of strategic intercontinental bombers. When

asked to start work on a long-range jet-powered bomber, the old airplane designer firmly

refused, arguing that Soviet technology was insufficiently advanced to handle such a task. The

furious Stalin took the matter elsewhere and assigned the job to Vtadimir M. Myasishchev, a

forty-eight-year-old aeronautical engineer who happened to be Tupolev's son-in-law.

Myasishchev's achievements up to 1951 had been nothing to boast about. He had worked on

various airplanes through World War II as a prisoner, first under Tupotev and later at the independent OKB-482, but none of them had been adopted for serial production. Perhaps seeing a

chance to bring some "new blood" into strategic weapons development, Stalin signed an order

on March 24, 195 I, that gave Myasishchev a new organization, OKB-23, located at the legendary State Aviation Plant No. 23 in Fill. For his new team, the new chief designer gathered

up more than 1,500 of the best Soviet aeronautical engineers from the Moscow Aviation

Institute (TsAGI) and from his old prison days, transferring all of them to the Fill plant.

Established on April 30, t 916, in the center of Moscow, this plant had originally produced automobiles but was restructured for aircraft production as early as 1927. The same plant is today

known as the M. V. Khrunichev State Space Scientific-Production Center and is one of the primary participants in the creation of the International Space Station. 2-'

Both the Lavochkin and Myasishchev intercontinental cruise missiles shared common features with Korolev's never-built EKR. Both vehicles were two-stage missiles. The first stages

were powered by liquid propellant rocket engines, while the second stages were equipped with

supersonic ramjets. The Lavochkin design, called the La-350 (or V-350), but better known by

its nickname "Burya" (meaning "storm"), used a cluster of two long rocket boosters, which

served as the first stage. One four-chamber $2.1 I00 engine (later replaced by the lighter

$2.1150) was installed on each of these boosters, generating a total thrust of 137.22 tons at

launch. This engine from the Isayev design bureau was almost identical to the engine used on

the R-II short-range tactical missile. The second cruise stage resembled a large aircraft with

stubby swept wings at a 70-degree angle and conventional tail surfaces. The main ramjet was

the RD-OI2U from the Bondaryuk design bureau. This engine had an average thrust of 7.65 to

7.75 tons. The missile was a little less than twenty meters long and had an overall mass of

24. For Lavochkin's early work, see A. N. Ponomarev, Sovetskiye auiatsionnyye kosntruktory (Moscow:

Voyennoye izdatelstvo, 1990), pp. 183-91: G. E Svishchev, ed., .,qviatsiya entsiklopediya (Moscow: Bolshaya

Rossiyskayaentsiklopediya, 1994), pp. 304-05. Forthe Berkut, see Anatoliy Pokrovskiy, "Three Episodes From the

Lifeof Our ABM Defense: There Is No More 'gerkut': What Kind of GeeseWill Save Moscow Now?" (English title),

Pravda. February 3. 1993, p. 4: Votintsev, "Unknown Troops of a Vanished Superpower," pp. 54-61: S. M. Ganin,

"The First National Anti-Aircraft Systemof the Moscow PVO--The S-25 'Berkut'" (English title), Neusk_ybastion

no 2 (February 1997): 25-32: StevenJ Zaloga, "Defending the Capitals: The First Generation of Soviet Strategic Air

DefenseSystems 1950-1960," TheJournal o[ Slauie Military Studies I0 (December 199?'):30-43.

25. V A. [edotov, "The Scientific-Design Activities of V. M. Myasishchev" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii

i kosmonautiki 50 ( 1984): 3-13; Ponomarev,Souetskiyeauiatsionnyye kosntruktory, p. 233: Zaloga, Target.,qmerica,

pp. 81-82; O Shinkovich, "The Khrunichev Center--80 Years" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki no. 9 (April

22-May 5, 1996): 75-77; S. A, Zhiltsov, ed., _osudarstuennyy kosmicheskiy nauchno-proizuodstuennyytsentr imeni

M V"Khrunicheua (Moscow: RUSSLIT,1997), pp. 12,20. D. N. Osipov was director of the plant from t952 to 196t.

The Ministry of Aviation Industry order for the establishment of OK8-23 was dated May 26, 1951

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

ninety-six tons. The La-350 would be capable of delivering a conventional atomic warhead with

a mass of 2.19 tons over a maximum distance of 8,500 kilometers. :6

The Myasishchev design, designated the M-40 or Buran (meaning "blizzard"), had a similar conceptual configuration as its competitor, with the second stage mounted above the first

stage like a cluster. The M-40, however, had a different mission than the La-350: it would carry

a tflermonudear warhead with a mass of three and a half tons (that is, it had a capacity about

one and a half times greater than the Lavochkin design). The first stage of the M-40 consisted

of a cluster of four booster rockets, each with a single nitric acid-kerosene engine from the

Glushko design bureau. Glushko's concurrent work on the RD-211 engine using these same propellants for Yangel's R-12 intermediate range ballistic missile came in handy for work on the M40. In 1953, Glushko began work on the RD-212, a modified variant of the RD-21 I, specifically

for Myasishchev's new cruise missile. Testing of the original RD-211 in 1953, however, proved

to be fraught with many setbacks. Ground testing of the RD-212 for the Buran was eventually

never finished because of changes in the requirements for the cruise missile. In August 1956,

Myasishchev's engineers recalculated the requirements for the first stage engine, calling for a

22-percent increase in thrust from their original specifications. Thus, Glushko began developing

a third engine, the RD-213, to fulfill this requirement for the Buran. Using these engines, the first

stage of the M-40 had a total thrust of 220 tons at liftoff. The second stage used a single

Bondaryuk RD-OI8A ramjet with thrust of about ten and a half tons. One of Myasishchev's more

original ideas was to use the M-40 as the basis for a rocket-plane--that is, one with a specially

designed cockpit for a single pilot. The pilot would eject out of the vehicle prior to impact. The

length of the overall vehicle was twenty-four meters, and the mass was 125 tons. :_

The work on the cruise missiles was backed up by an immense investment in basic aeronautical research focused primarily at Keldysh's Nil-l--remnants of the considerable efforts

expended on the SSnger-Bredt bomber. Each missile had two-part guidance systems, one based

on inertial guidance using gyroscopic platforms and double integrating accelerometers for the

early stage of flight and the second based on a celestial navigation system that introduced constant corrections to the trajectory during the cruise phase. Scientists at Nil-I designed both systems. The latter was based on years of research at NII-88 under Izrael M. Lisovich, who perfected

an operating system for use by both the Burya and Buran by 1953. The All-Union Institute for

Aviation Materials (VIAM) and the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School (MVTU)

were tasked with the development of heat-resistant structural materials, such as titanium and

high-strength stainless steel, which were indispensable for cruise missile operation, as well as

the technology to weld them. The venerable TsAGI was responsible for setting the aerodynamic parameters for both missiles, in particular the delta wings and the vehicles' thin supersonic

profiles. Although most Western accounts imply that Lavochkin and Myasishchev headed the

programs, in truth Academician Keldysh served as the overall coordinator and manager for both

of these important projects. _8

26 M. Aslanov, "'Soviet Shuttle' o[ the 50s" (English title), _po£ey 5 (June 1993): I: Yakov M. Natenzon,

"The First Cruise Missile 'Burya.'" 5pace Bulletin I (1993): 26-27; Boris V. Rauschenbach. "The 'Burya'

Intercontinental Cruise Missile," presented at the 43rd Congress of the International/_stronautical Federation.IAA92-0187. Washington. DC. August 2B-September 5, 199Z; Afanasyev, "Without the Secret Stamp"; Christian

Lardier, "70 Yearsof Soviet Ramjets," presentedat the 48th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation.

IAA-9T-IAA.2.3.03. Turin, Italy, October 6-10. 1997: YevgeniyYerokhin, "The Missiles of Bondaryuk" (English title).

Krytia rodiny no. I I (November 1993): 33-37.

27. V. Petrakov and M. Chernyshov, "Without the Stamp 'Secret': The Unknown Buran" (English title),

Souetskayarossiya,April I0, 199I. p. 4; Afanasyev, "Without the SecretStamp"; Igor Afanasyev,R-12: Sandalouoye

dereuo (Moscow: EksPrint NV, 1997), p. 8; Lardier, "70 Yearsof Soviet Ramjets": Yerokhin, "The Missiles of

Bondaryuk."

28 Afanasyev, "Without the SecretStamp"; Rauschenbach,"The 'Burya' intercontinental Cruise Missile."

127
128

The cruise missile and ICBM options were two of three possible strategies for the Soviet

search for an intercontinental nuclear delivery system. Given the existing technologies of the

1940s and 1950s, it would have been surprising if the Soviet government had not also been

exploring the possibility of using long-range strategic bombers for reaching the contiguous

United States. The first jet-engine bomber project for such a mission was Project 25, or "M,"

at Myasishchev's OKB-23. The aircraft flew its first mission as early as January 1953, less than

two years after the program's initiation, and eventually emerged into the modified M-4 Molot

bomber, better known by its NATO code-name "Bison-A." Although the bomber entered limited production by late 1955, its operational characteristics (primarily range) fell far short of air

force requirements and, in fact, engendered widespread disenchantment among the military, g

backup option was "Type 95," developed by Tupolev at OKB-156, which used turboprop

instead of jet engines. The project was approved at the same time as Myasishchev's Project 25.

When the airplane was accepted for service in August 1957 as the Tu-95, it was full of problems. It would not be until the late 1950s when the modified Tu-95M fulfilled its original longrange requirements, by which time the slow-moving aircraft was already vulnerable to a host of

American air defense weaponry. '_ By the mid- 1950s, the bomber option began to face serious

competition as an effective intercontinental weapons delivery system. The overwhelming

advantages of missiles and the unprecedented breakthroughs in rocket propulsion technology

in the early 1950s threatened to make bombers a memory of a bygone era. There was no more

apt a symbol of this change in generations than the world's first ICBM. Korolev's R-7,

The R-7 ICBM

Original conceptions of the first Soviet ICBM as part of the TI theme described a missile

with a launch mass of approximately 170 to 200 tons that was capable of delivering a nuclear

explosive weighing three tons over a distance of 8,500 kilometers/_' This was compared to the

warhead used on the R-SM that was just over one ton. These specifications dramatically

changed as a result of developments in the nuclear weapons sector. On August 12, 1953, the

Soviet Union exploded its first thermonuclear device at Semipalatinsk, with a power twenty

times more than its first atomic bomb." The original ICBM specifications had been set based

on earlier atomic bombs, but later, the Soviet leadership was eager to use a thermonuclear

device on the missile. As early as May 1953, there had been preliminary discussions on using

the hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) on the ICBM, but a cementing of this position did not occur

until later in the year./_ndrey D. Sakharov. the brilliant physicist at KB-I I, played an unusual

and critical role in the requirements for the ICBM. In late 1953, Minister of Medium Machine

Building Malyshev had asked Sakharov to write a brief report on the "conception of a second

generation [thermonuclear] device."_: Under pressure and in a hurry, Sakharov was in a difficult

position. He later recalled:

2£ Bill Gunston, The Osprey Encyclopedia o[ Russian Ztircraft: 1875-I995 (London: Osprey Aerospace,

1996), pp 257-58, 424-25: Zaloga, TargetAmerica, pp. 81 88

30 Kantemirov. "The History of the Selection of the Design": Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketrythat

Conquered Space:Part I: From First ICBM to Sputnik Launcher," Spaceflight 3l (August 1995): 260-63.

3 I. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (New Haven,CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1994), pp. 306-07. There

has been some disagreement on whether this particular test was a true hydrogen bomb or merely a "boosted fission" weapon, but the Soviets themselvesclearly viewed the test as a hydrogen bomb. As Holloway states. "It _s.

to some degree, a matter of taste whether one calls it a thermonuclear weapon or a boosted weapon."

32. Sakharov,Memoirs p. 180: Lardier,L'Nstronautique 5_ot:iOtique.p. 90.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

I should have refused, pointing out that such things could not be decided in haste by a

single scientist. they require more serious deliberation. But I had an idea which at the

moment seemed promising (it later turned out to be neither very original nor successful). I had no one with whom to consult. I nevertheless wrote a report on the spot and

gave it to Malyshev) _

Based on Sakharov's report, Malyshev had the basic parameters for the mass and volume

constraints for a next-generation thermonuclear payload. Armed with this information, he soon

arranged a meeting at NII-88's OKB-I in October 1953 to discuss "future work," arriving alone

without any assistants. Malyshev was unusually cheerful and animated during the meeting,

which was attended by Korolev's inner circle, including his First Deputy Mishm The engineers

were quick to suspect that everything was not well. Malyshev casually inquired about the lifting capability of the ICBM, to which Ser@y S. Kryukov, one of its designers, announced "about

3 tons." Malyshev firmly replied that the rocket must be able to lift six tons, at the very least

five) _ There was a brief moment of resistance from Korolev, but Malyshev would hear none of

it. Later. Kryukov firmly told Korolev that this would simply not be possible given the current

design of the missile, tn the end, of course, the rocketry engineers capitulated, and they began

a total overhaul of the design.

The new chairman of the Council of Ministers, Malenkov, sealed the decision to increase

the payload at two meetings of the Presidium in late November 1953. The first one was attended not only by all the members of the Presidium, but also the key nuclear weapons scientists,

including Sakharov. At this meeting, the attendees adopted an official Central Committee resolution to develop and explode Sakharov's new device by 1955. The second meeting was

attended by missile administrators (most likely Ustinov, Ryabikov, and Pashkov) and set the

specifications for the new ICBM so that it could carry Sakharov's thermonuclear device. Based

on Malyshev's advice, Malenkov set the payload mass capability of the new vehicle between

just over five and a half and six tons. In an ironic epilogue to the redesign, the new Sakharov

bomb was never built and was replaced by a concept that was completely different2 _ However,

Sakharov's quick and hasty report significantly influenced the design of the world's first

ICBM--a rocket that in its modern variants continued to loft Russian cosmonauts to the Mir

space station into the late t99Os.

Work on the revised draft plan for the ICBM. by then named the R-7, or "product 8K71,"

began in the fall of 1953, culminating in a major meeting in january 1954 attended by all the

major chief and deputy chief designers to discuss the changes in the missile? _ The biggest challenge for Korolev's engineers was how to improve the lifting characteristics of the missile without any major changes in layout, which might delay the program even further. The most

important factor was clearly propulsion. Preliminary calculations showed that Glushko's singlechamber LOX-kerosene RD-105 and RD-106 engines with thrust ranges of fifty to sixty tons

would prove inadequate for the task of lifting a five-and-a-halflton payload. The engines themselves were performing poorly during ground tests at OKB-456 because of burning instabilities

33. Sakharov,Memoirs, p. 180.

34. Golovanov, Korolev. pp. 473-74.

35. Sakharov,Memoirs, pp. 180-81; Lardier,L'NstronauticlueSovi#tique. p. 90; Kantemirov, "The History of

the Selection of the Design."

36. Mozzhorin. et al. eds., Nachalo kosmieheskoyery, p. 71. The chief designersincluded S. E Korolev

(NII-88 OKB-I), V. E Barmin (GSKB SpetsMash), V. E Glushko (OKB-456), B. M. Konoplev (NII-885). V I.

Kuznetsov (Nil 10), and N. A, Pilyugin (NII-885). The deputy chief designersincluded M I. Borisenko (NII-885),

K. D. Bushuyev (NII-88 OKB-I ), S. S, Kryukov (Nil 88 OKB-I ), and V. E Mishin (Nil 88 OKB- I). SeeSemenov,ed..

Rclketno-Kosmieheskayc_ Korporatsiya, p, 73.

129
130

in the combustion chambers, which led to high-frequency vibrations. Glushko's introduction of

ribbed combustion chamber walls for cooling helped alleviate heating problems, but the

engines had reached the physical upper limits of thrust. A way out of this quandary was offered

by yet another idea tested by Chief Designer Isayev at NII-88. Using a singlechamber forty-ton-thrust engine, he had recently built and tested a multichamber engine that

provided a cumulative thrust much higher than its single component. With Isayev's results in

hand, Glushko could combine four combustion chambers together, all fed by the same turbopump. Although the unstable burning problem remained, its effects were drastically reduced

because of the low thrust of each chamber. The advantages were numerous. Not only were performance values improved, but there also were considerable savings in engine mass compared

to the thrust levels achieved. Furthermore, given that the chambers were identical, research and

development, construction, and testing were simplified to a great extent. The engines that

emerged from this redesign were the RD-107 and RD-108. One of each of the former, with a

sea-level thrust of eighty-three tons, would be installed on the four lateral strap-ons. A single

RD-108 with a sea-level thrust of seventy-five tons was earmarked for the central core. In March

1954, Glushko named Yuriy D. Solovyev, an engineer at his design bureau, to lead the design

and construction of these engines?'

A second redesign was related to the problem of steering during flight after the strap-ons

had been discarded. The engineers had originally settled on using graphite steering rudders,

such as those used on early missiles (for example, the German A-4), but further research proved

that not only would they not tolerate high velocities and temperatures for long periods of time,

they would deleteriously affect the configuration at the base of the missile. Korolev's First

Deputy Mishin suggested the use of small steering engines firing off their own combustion

chambers, which would be integrated into the main engines and use propellants diverted from

the main turbopumps. Korolev had invited Glushko to develop these engines, but he refused

outright, not only fearful of being diverted from his primary work on the main engines, but also

because he believed that "it would be impossible to control a rocket by such thrusters. ''_

Mishin instead facilitated the transfer of a group of young engineers led by Mikhail V. Melnikov

from Keldysh's NIl-I to OKB-I for this project. Mishin's enthusiasm for the idea eventually

resulted in the use of steering thrusters on not only the central block, but the four lateral blocks

as well. Each lateral block had two verniers, while the central block had four, each with a thrust

of two and a half tons, bringing the total number of combustion chambers firing at liftoff to

thirty-two. In later years, when these vernier thrusters performed flawlessly, Glushko apparently asked Korolev if he could take over production of the motors. Not only did Korolev allow

this, but he did not mind when Glushko changed his thinking and began building the verniers

himself, taking full credit for their early development29 These vernier engines had a remarkable

history. They were used as the basis for upper stage engines for the Vostok, Soyuz, Molniya,

N I, and Proton launch vehicles.

The development of an effective guidance system for the R-7 was a major problem for engineers. Because the missile would fly over a larger distance than any previous vehicle, an iner37 Peter Stache, Soviet Rockets, Foreign Technology Division Translation. FTD-ID(RS)T-0619-88 (from

unnamed source), Wright-Patterson Air ForceBase.Ohio, November 29, 1988, pp. 299-302. This is a translation of

PeterStache, SorujetiseherRaketen (Berlin: Militarverlad der DDR, 1981). Also see Var[olomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry

that Conquered Space:Part I": A Yu. Ishlinskiy, ed., Ftkademik S P Korolev: uchenyy, inzhener, ehelovek (Moscow:

Nauka, 1986). p. 2?0: V. E Mishin, "Problems of the First Flight of a Man into Space" (English title), in Oagarinskiye

nauchnyye ehteniya po kosmonautike i auiatsii (Moscow: Nauka, 1991), p. 2 I.

38 Vasiliy P Mishin, " . . He Said, 'Here We Go!'" (English title), Ftuiatsiya i kosrnonavtika no. 4 (April

1991): 13-14: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 394-95: Ishlinskiy, ed.. 71kademikS. P Koroleu. pp. 208-09.

39. Mozzhorin, et el, eds., Noehalo kosmieheskoyery, p. 79. Korolev drew up the production instructions

for the vernier thrusters on August 7, 1954. SeeBiryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles," p. 233

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
SPUTNIK

tial guidance system such as that installed on the German A-4 would be woefully inadequate

because of gross inaccuracies symptomatic of the technology of the time. Korolev proposed the

development of both radio and autonomous guidance systems for the first ICBM.4°Eventually,

the system chosenwas a combination of both. P,fter liftoff, a complex set of inertial guidance

systems would maintain angular stability, apparent velocity, and synchronization of propellant

consumption at nominal levels, At about twenty to thirty seconds prior to core engine cutoff,

the four small verniers on the central block would be fired into operation, after which the radio

control system would be switched on to manually control deviations from the desired trajectory.4' Both guidance systems were developed by Nll-885--the radio-controlled portions led by

Chief Designer Ryazanskiy and the inertial part led by Chief Designer Pilyugin. The development of precisely calibrated gyroscopes for the instrumentation was the responsibility of Chief

Designer Kuznetsov of NII-IO. All three were original members of the Council of Chief

Designers.

The missile itself looked unlike anything created before. At launch, the four conical strapons (Bloks B, V, G and D), eachjust over nineteen meters in length, surrounded the center hammerhead-shaped core (BlokI_), itself 26 meters long. The lateral boosters, each containing about

forty tons of propellant, tapered up to a point at the top and were connected by ball-andsocket joints to the core at the apex and secured by tension bands at the bottom. With the four

strap-ons, the total base diameter was more than ten meters, and the total length of the missile

was thirty-three meters. The launch mass was 270 tons, of which about 247 tons was propellant. At liftoff, the total thrust was 398 tons. After launch, at an altitude of fifty kilometers and

about I00 kilometers from the launch site, shortly prior to propellant cutoff, pyrotechnical

devices would loosen the tension bands at the base of the vehicle, which connected the four

exterior blocks to the core. With the four strap-ons still firing, albeit at much lower thrust by

then, the lateral blocks would by their natural force move away from the central block, rotating

upwards and away from the base, _qt a certain angle, the mountings at the apex of the four

blocks would automatically release. Oxygen valves would also automatically open to exert gentle pressure on the strap-ons to move them independently away from the core. The core stage

(called the second stage by the Soviets) would continue to operate until reaching an altitude of

170 kilometers and a range of 700 kilometers, at which point engine cutoff would occur. Forthe

remaining portion of the flight, the payload would coast on a ballistic trajectory until reentry.4_

One of the most expensive and time-consuming aspects in the development of the R-? was

the design of a launch structure to accommodate the unwieldy looking missile. Originally, the

plan was to assemble the missile at the launch pad in a vertical position. At least three preliminary designs for the launch pad, based on this option, were prepared between September and

December 19.54.4__qllthree plans used a single load-carrying platform with four circumferential

and central supports for the five boosters on the missile, restrained by a variety of weights,

levers, and spring mechanisms. All the plans, however, proved unwieldy because of concerns

about damaging the missile itself at takeoff. It was at this point that Mishin emerged with an

original idea for a launch pad. The conception involved assembling the booster horizontally in

a hangar and then transporting the rocket to the launch pad, where it would be raised into a

vertical position. At the pad, the R-7 would be suspended at "the waist" above its center of

40. Mozzhorin.etal, eds.,i',lachalokosmieheskoyery,p. 282.

41. Var[olomeyev,"SovietRocketrythat ConqueredSpace:Part I"; Zalo@, TargetAmerica, p. 141:

B. Pokrovskiy,"ChiefDesignerof RadioControlSystems" (Englishtitle), Kryliarodinyno.4 (April 1989):44-45.

42. Stache,SovietRockets,pp. 296-98, 30?':Mozzhorin,et al., eds.,Naehalokosmicheskoyery,p. 74:

G.A. Kustova.ed.,Ot pervogoSputnikado "Energii"-"Burana"i "Mira" (Kaliningrad:RKKEnergiya,1994),p. 35.

OKB-I engineerS. P.Parmuzininventedthe ingeniousseparationmechanismfortheexteriorblocksof theR-7.

43. Mozzhorin,et aL,eds.,Naehalokosmieheskoyery,pp. I 16-17.

131
132

gravity, about twenty meters from the base, by four identical and huge "petals." Chief Designer

Barmin. who was responsible for the design of launch complexes, later recalled:

The heauy rocket "hangs" on them [the "petals"] until its engines go into primary thrust

mode. And then they pull away to the side simultaneously, and the gas blasts from all the

operating engines exit in one large opening and escape the steppe through a special concrete conduitY

The petals would swing into motion not by any external hydraulic power, but by an ingenious system of counterbalanced weights that worked because of gravity, The engineers nicknamed the system Tyulpan ("tulip") because of the peeling nature of the petals at launch time,

Each of the petals would contain work gantries and other systems required to fuel and test the

rocket prior to launch. In late 1955, a commission headed by Academician Blagonravov, a

mechanical engineer himself, reviewed this revolutionary idea. While generally supportive of

the idea. the commission recommended that the system could be improved by making the

petaled swing gantries work on hydraulics rather than by gravity. Korolev also weighed in with

the nongravitationa[ option. Barmin did not budge from his position, arguing that there was no

redundancy required for "God's powers."

Korolev eventually gave in, but he added that

"should anything go wrong, you will be liable

with your life. '''_ On September 22, 1955, the

commission approved the launch pad complex

for full-scale construction led by Barmin's GSKB

SpetsMash organization? _ Korolev did not need

to have had any doubts, For more than forty

years. Mishin's original conception has serviced

the space program: it was from the same type of

launch pad that cosmonauts flew to the Mir

space station from 1986 to 1999.

In February 1954, the primary participants

of the work on the R-7 finally agreed to the

revised conception of the ICBM, clearing the

way for governmental intervention. On May 20,

1954, the USSR Council of Ministers issued an

official decree calling for the development of the

two-stage 8K7t R-7 ICBM. A second decree a

month later on June 28 added clarifications to

the schedule for the development of the rocket.

Finally, by order of Minister of Defense

Industries Ustinov on July 6, the Soviet government elevated the development of the ICBM to

a level of "state importance. "4' The same

i 31.07_? 2_

10

R-7 (8K7t) R-7A leK741

Till Vehicle MOdified ICBM

The Soviet R-/ ICBM. The le/t diagram is the original

variant oFthe missile, the 8K7t. as it was flown in

1957 The later operational version, the R77t or

8K74. is shown on the right (copyright Peter Gorin)

44. B Konovalov, "Lessons of the First Satellite" (English title), Izvesti)/a,September29, 1987,p 3

45. Boris Khlebnikov, "Vladimir Barmin: One or the Top Six Designers," Zterospace journGI no. 2

(March-April 199[): 81-83: Mozzhorin, et al. eds., Naehalo kosmieheskoyery. p. II 7.

46 Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Nachato kosmicheskoy ery, p, I 17.

47. Semenov.ed,, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p, 74: Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy

istoriL p 35: Golovanov, Korolev. p 475: "TsNIIMash--One of the Leading SpaceBranches" (English title), Novosti

kosmonavtiki no. 6 (March 15-28 1993): 26-28. Note that in the last source, the missile is referred to as the R-6

and not the R-I

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

month, on July 24, Nll-88's OKB-I completed the draft plan for the rocket, which spanned a

total of fifteen volumes of technical documentation. Unwilling to commit to something that

might prove to be a colossal waste of money, the Soviet government established an "Expert

Commission" of independent scientists and engineers to study the draft plan and recommend

a course of action. Headed by Academician Keldysh, this commission consisted of aeronautical engineers, mathematicians, gas dynamics specialists, propulsion experts, and military officers. Their evaluations were overwhelmingly positive, clearing the way for full-scale industrial

work on the ICBM. On November 20, 1954, in an unusual move, the USSR Council of

Ministers officially approved the draft plan for the R-7 missile--a decision that normally would

have been left in the hands of engineers or scientistsJ 8

The individuals who worked on the Rq began to affectionately call the missile semerka, the

Russian expression roughly equivalent to "old number seven," and it was a nickname that has

remained with the vehicle for more than forty years. Although all of the leading engineers at

NII-88's OKB-I, such as Bushuyev, Voskresenskiy, Okhapkin, Chertok, and Kryukov, were

involved in its design, it was perhaps Mishin more than any other individual who shaped its

took. Many years later, when a noted Soviet journalist asked numerous veterans of the organization who besides Korolev contributed more to the emergence of the R-7, most replied, "This

was, of course, Mishin's rocket."_ Once the documentation and design had been completed,

Korolev assigned one of his middle-level engineers, thirty-five-year-old Dmitriy I. Kozlov, the

man who had encouraged Korolev to join the Communist Party a few years earlier, to oversee

its creation as the "lead designer" of the missile? ° Kozlov had already served in the same capacity for the R-5 missile, A total of 200 institutes and design bureaus within twenty-five ministries

were engaged in the project, which, savefor the development of nuclear weapons, was perhaps

the largest military project undertaken in the Soviet Union up to that point.

The May 1954 decree also specified at least two other items, The first was the official

assignment to develop intercontinental winged cruise missiles to design bureaus within the

Ministry of Aviation Industry. Lavochkin's OKB-301 would design and develop the La-350

Burya, while Myasishchev's OKB-23 would do the same for the M-40 Buran. Finally, the decree

called for the selection of a new firing range for the R-7 ICBM. _'

At the outset, the planners realized that the location and facilities at the State Central

Range No. 4 at Kapustin Yar would be inadequate for the mammoth requirements of the new

rocket. A major concern was the proximity of the Kapustin Yar site to radar stations operated

by U.S. intelligence services in Turkey. In late 1953, Ustinov, Nedelin, Korolev, and other leaders of the rocketry industry had authored a letter to the USSR Council of Ministers containing

the requirements for such a site. The following year, Nedelin appointed Maj. General Vasiliy I.

Voznyuk, the commander of Kapustin Yar, to head a special commission to select an

48. M.V. Keldysh,ed.,Tvorcheskoyenaslediye,ZtkademikaSergeyaPavlouichaKoroleva:izbrannyyetrudy

i dokumenty(Moscow:Nauka,1980),p.398:Golovanov.Korolev,p.475;Biryukov,"MaterialsfromtheBiographical

Chronicles,"p. 233:Yu.V. BiryukovandA A. Yeremenko,%0 Yearsforthe NativeRocket-SpaceIndustry.The Early

Periodof Development"(Englishtitle), Nouosfikosrnonavfikino 10(May 6-19, 1996): $4-64: Semenov,ed.

Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,p. IS. The individualson the R-7 "ExpertCommission"included M. V.

Keldysh(Nil-I), A. A Dorodnitsyn(TsAGI),S.A. Lavochkin(OKB-301),A. M Lyulka(OKB 165),A I Makarevskiy

(TsAGI),A. G.Mrykin(CIZKA),B.N. Petrov{Instituteof ControlProblemsAN SSSR),Kh.A Rakhmatulin(MVTU).

N N Smirnitskiy(GURVO),B. S.Stechkin(OKB-300),G. A. T,vulin(NIl-4), andA. P.Vanichev.

49. Goiovanov,Koroleu,p. 502.

50. AleksandrRomanov.Koroleu(Moscow:Molodaya_¢ardiya,1996),pp. 257-58, 2Z2:V. Drebkova,

"GeneralDesignerD I. Kozlov--75 Years"(Englishtitle), Nouos_ikosmonautikino. 20(September24-October7,

1994):56.

51. Afanasyev,"Without the SecretStamp":JacquesVillain, ed., Ba[konour:In portedes#toiles[Paris:

ArmandColin, 1994),p 47,

133
134

alternativelaunchsite.Perhapsto drawout an impartial verdict, Nedelin told Voznyuk that

"you'll be the chief of the new test range, so make the selection to suit yourself "_ Chief

Designers Korolev, Barmin, and Ryazanskiy were the leading engineering representatives on the

commission. Barmin was to advise on launch complex requirements, and Ryazanskiy was on

hand to make recommendations on the placement of radio stations to control the R-F.

Tikhonravov's team at NII-4 also provided supplementary data for the selection At the end of

the year, the Voznyuk commission emerged with three competitive sites:

• A location in the Yochkar-Orla region in Mordoviya (in the Marl region), where there were

large clear spaces and room for more because of a vigorous lumber industry

• A location near Makhachkala (in Dagestan) on the shores of the Caspian Sea so discarded

lower stages could fall into the sea

• The semi-arid Kzyl-Orda region (in the Kazakhstan Soviet Socialist Republic) near the Syr

Darya River5}

One of the major requirements for the new site was that radio tracking stations be located

on either side of the ICBM's trajectory, and this specification eventually eliminated the first two

choices, leaving the Kazakhstan site, which was formally selected by LISSRMinister of Defense

Georgiy K. Zhukov. Ironically, by the time that the Voznyuk commission finally decided on the

site, the criterion for radio station placement, which had supported the Kazakhstan choice, was

invalidated by some ground-breaking work by Chief Designers Ryazanskiy and Konoplev The

members of the commission were apparently too afraid of Zhukov to inform him that the reason for selecting Kazakhstan had been neutralized) _ In the end, the commission touted six

major advantages of the new site:

• It was far enough from Soviet borders to conduct work in secret.

• The weather was acceptable for launches during at least 300 days of the year.

• The presence of vast areas of desert nearby was useful for dropping stages.

• Radio guidance for the R-7 could be conducted by two stations, which could be constructed 500 kilometers from the launch pad.

• The site was on the railway line between Moscow and Tashkent on the Syr-Darya River for

bringing materials to the range

• The site had the advantage of being located close to the equator, thus imparting the highest possible velocity to airborne payloads? 5

Marshal Nedelin assigned the mammoth task of directing the design, layout, and construction of the new launch range to the Chief Directorate of Special Construction of the LISSR

52. Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Nachalo kosm_cheskoy ery, p. 129: Romanov, Koroleu. p. 248, The actual

Council of Ministers decree for the selection of a launch range was issued on March 17, 1954 The selection commission was obliged to report on its decision by January I, 1955. See K, V. Gerchik, ed, Nezabyuayemyy Baykonur

(Moscow: Interregional Council of Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, 1998), pp. 21-22.

53 Konovalov, "Lessons of the First Satellite": Golovanov. Koroleu, pp 481-82: Mozzhorin, et al., eds,

Dorogi u kosmos I. 175-16: Mozzhorin, et al, eds,, Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, pp, 56-57. There may also have

been a fourth final choice, the village of Kharaboi in the Astrakhan region. See Chertok, Rokely i lyudi, p. 407. For

a mention o[ Tikhonravov's contribution to the selection of the launch range, see I. K. Bazhinov, "The Activities of

M K. Tikhonravov in 1950-1956 in the Sphere of Researching the Basic Problems of the Creation of ISZs" (English

title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 42 (I 980): 39-45

54. Mozzhorin. et al, eds,, Naehalo kosmicheskoy ery. p. 76.

55. Jacques Villain, "A Brief History of Baikonur," presented at the 45th Congress o[ the international

Astronautical Federation, IAA-94-1AA.2.1.614. Jerusalem, Israel, October 9-14, 1994: Villain, ed., Bcfikonour. p. 46.

CHALLENGE TO 41_POLLO
SPUTNIK

Ministry of Defense. The primary task of coordinating the entire effort fell on the shoulders of

a fifty-one-year-old colonel named Georgiy M. Shubnikov. For architectural and structural expertise, the Central Planning Institute No. 31 of the Ministry of Defense established a group under

the tutelage of army Lt. Colonel Aleksey/_. Nitochkin, who, like Shubnikov, was a veteran of

World War II when he had helped build military fortifications? _ It was these two individuals

who perhaps contributed more than anyone else in bringing the project to fruition during the

ensuing two years.

The USSR Council of Ministers signed a decree (no. 292-181), dated February 12, 1955,

that officially sanctioned the creation of a new launch range for the R-7 ICBM and subsequent

generations of new missiles in Kazakhstan. The decree authorized 586 soldiers and 325 blueand white-collar employees to be initially assigned to the test area, officially designated the

Scientific-Research and Testing Range No. 5 (NIIP-5). The first group of thirty blue-collar workers, ted by a twenty-three-year-old lieutenant in the Soviet army, Igor I. Denezhkin, had already

arrived at the projected site exactly a month earlier, on January 12, to prepare for actual construction workers? 7 Marshal Nedelin had an unusual choice for the commander of NIIP-5. He

was a man who had crossed Korolev's path in the early 1950s by authoring a letter critical of

the early ballistic missile effort to Beriya himself. Maj. General _qleksey I. Nesterenko, at the time

forty-eight years old, had been fired as director of NIl-4 in 1950 and spent the next four years

as a head of the "rocketry faculty" at the F. E. Dzherzhinskiy Military Academy in Moscow.

Perhaps his appointment was a not so subtle move to have a range commander who would not

capitulate in the face of Korolev's juggernaut personality,

Nesterenko arrived at NIIP-5 three months offer his formal appointment on March 19, 1955,

in the company of Nedelin himself. His first impressions of the place were not encouraging:

We flew into Dzhusaly, disembarked from the aircraft, and were instantly buffeted by a

hot wind, and with the temperature above 45 degrees [Centigrade] it was like walking

into a blazing furnace. When we arrived at the construction site, our hearts sank: there

was nothing but naked steppe, not a tree in sight, with only piles of sand and an assortment of animals scattered across the countryside. '_

As inhospitable as Kapustin Yar was, those who transferred to NIIP-5 from the former test

range must have wondered whether they were not leaving one part of hell for another. The closest town to the site was named Tyura-Tam, a small settlement of local Kazakhs, which prior to

1955 was "a couple of two-story houses for the railwaymen, a couple of dozen small mud-plastered houses, and the tents of geologists prospecting for oil. ''_9 Tyura-Tam itself was an isolated railway stop on the important Moscow-Tashkent line: earlier in the century, a British mining

company had apparently ran a station not far northeast of the town. The tsars had also used

the location as a place of exile for undesirable citizens. In the late nineteenth century, Nikifor

Nikitin was banished here for "his seditious plans for a flight to the Moon." The judge

56. Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, pp, I ;'7-79: Golovanov, Korolev, pp. 482-85. The

directorate's chief engineer at the time was Lt. General M. G. Grigorenko

57. M. Rebrov, "Chief of the Cosmodrome: The Time Has Come to Tell" (English title), Krasnaya zvezda.

September 18. 1990. p. 2: Yu. P. Maksimov, ed., Raketnyye uoyska strategieheskogo naznaeheni),a, uoyenno-istorieheskiy trud (Moscow: RVSN. 1992), p. 42; Ivan Borisenko and Alexander Romanov, Where All Roads into Space

Begin (Moscow: ProgressPublishers, 1982), p. 14:Council of Veterans of the BaykonurCosmodrome, Proryv v kosmos: ocherki ob ispitate[yakh spetsiatistakh i stroitelyakh kosmodroma Baykonur (Moscow: TOO Veles. 1994).

p. 5; Villain, ed., Baikonour, p. 48.

58. Mozzhorin. et aL. eds., Naehalo kosmieheskoycry, p 146

59. gorisenko and Romanov, Where All Roadsinto Space Begin, p. 33.

135
136

apparentlybelievedthatworkin thelocalcoppermineswouldknocksomesenseintothe

haplessindividual.°''

Shubnikov,thechiefengineerfor theconstructionproject,arrivedat Tyura-Tamon

March5withahostofimportantindividuals,includinga"politicalcommissar."Thefirstcubic

meterofconcretewaspouredinAprilinsupportofbuildingahighwayfromtheinitialtroopsettlementtothelocationoftheactuallaunchpad.Finally,onMay5. 1955,thefoundationstone

wassetatthelivingsettlementatsiteI0,henceforthcalledZarya,followingwhichShubnikov

gaveashortinspirationalspeechtotheattendantworkersandsoldiersonthehardworkstillto

bedonewithinthefollowingtwoyears,g GeneralStaffdirectivedatedJune2fromtheMinistry

ofDefensecalledfortheformationofacomplexorganizationalstructureatNIIP-5,andit isthis

datethatwashenceforthcommemoratedasthebirthdayofthelaunchsite._'

UnderthecoordinationofShubnikov,Nitochkin,Nesterenko,andChiefDesignerBarmin,

constructionatNIIP-5wasfacilitatedatanunusuallyacceleratedpace.ThefirstconcretehousesatZaryawerefinishedbySeptember1955.Atthetime,atwenty-kilometer-longroaddue

northfromZaryawasmarkedout,whichledtotheactuallocationoftheprojectedlaunchpad

oftheR-7ICBM.Theareawasnamedsitet,adesignationthatit stillholdstothisday.The

actuallocationofthelaunchpadwasdeterminedbyNedelin'srequirementthatthefacilitybe

locatedwithinthirtykilometersoftheresidentialarea,butoutofvisualrangeofanypassing

trains?_Anetworkofrailwaylines,whichconnectedthemajorareasoftherange,primarilyto

transportsuppliesandtherocketiself,wascompletedbyearlyNovember.Thisworkwasby

nomeanseasy.Asoneveteranrecalledmanyearslater:

Ztllthe desert offered was a thin layer of clay which disintegrated into dust after a lorry

had passed over it a couple of times. Deep dust-filled ruts were formed. The lorries

would grind to a halt in them, often scratching their chassis. 7t thick cloud of dust hung

all over the area. filling nose, eyes and ears. Cars crawled at a snail's pace. The dust

permeated food, bread and petrol and.., a cloud could be seen from a distance of

20 to 30 kilometers '_

As at Kapustin Yar, the workers once again had to face a wide range of unpleasant temperatures. Although construction was started in mid-1955 to take advantage of the long summers, by the end of the year, the workers were treated to the reality of minus forty-two degrees

Centigrade temperatures with winds of cyclone forces. Work in fact had to be abandoned on

December 26 on a particularly harsh night, significantly delaying construction efforts. When

the work resumed, it was primarily on a system of water pipes in preparation for building the

actual launch pad in 1956.

Although workers began initial construction of the foundation of the launch complex in

August 1955, the pad was not the primary focus of the work at N lIP-5 until early 1956. Between

January and March of that year, about 15,0OO cubic meters of earth were displaced per day at

site I. This was in preparation for pouring concrete for the giant launch pad structure, which

began on April 19 an hour before midnight in front of about 300 people who were present to

witness the event. _4 The 250-by-IOO-by-forty4ive-meter launch platform took almost five

60 Ibid. p 32. The account of Nikitin's sentence was pnnted in an issue of Moskouskiye gubernskiye

nouosti (Moscow Provincial News) in 1878.

61 Villain, ed., Baikonour, pp 48-49: Borisenko and Romanov, Where /711Roads into Space Begin,

pp. 14-t 7: Stache.SovietRockets,pp. 3 I0-I I: Council of Veterans of the BaykonurCosmodrome, Proryu u kosmos,

p. 89. In official documentation, Zawa was named Tashkent-50, no doubt to disguise its real location.

62. Lardier,LYqstronautiqueSoui#tique, p. 91; Mozzhorin, et aL. eds. Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, p 132

63. Borisenkoand Romanov, Where All Roadsinto Space Begin. p. 33.

64. Ibid. p. 58: Villain, ed. Baikonour, pp. 53-54: Lardier,L_stronautique Soui#tique, p. 9 I.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

months to complete and used 30,000 cubic meters of concrete. Finally, on October 5, the workers completed the road and railway system from Zarya to site I.

The engineers responsible for the design and construction of the launch pad were remarkably cautious in their efforts, and prior to work at Tyura-Tam, they had expended a huge amount

of effort to duplicate the entire structure at a plant in Leningrad to e[iminate any potential

defects. Every single element of the launch pad was constructed and assembled over a nineteenmeter-diameter pit in a special building at the Leningrad Metallurgical Plant, and a full-scale test

version of the R-7 was installed in the facility and loaded with water instead of propellant to simulate the expected loads. _ Not only was the missile tested for potential wind effects, but a special lifting beam was used to raise the IO0-ton rocket off the "launch pad" at the plant to

simulate a liftoff and observe the dynamics of the launch. Yevgeniy V. Shabarov and Anatoliy P.

Abramov, two engineers from OKB-I in their mid-thirties, were tasked by Korolev to head the

work at the plant, although, as was usual for Korolev, he kept close tabs on the work with daily

reports. Notorious for exploding into rages of censure, Korolev did not spare any effort to make

sure that the work remained on schedule. As Abramov wrote years later:

Once we reported that a mistake had been committed on the job.., he [Korolev] reacted furiously, verbally ground us into dust. called us imbeciles, and promised to have us

dismissed. ,ztt first we were upset, but then we began to laugh hysterically to release our

pent-up stress. It was not the first time that this had happened. Korolev's diatribes were

the stuff of legend, and he was a master at it, his eyes would flash, his words would

destroy yours, he would threaten to send you home walking between the railway tracks,

tell you to go work at the boiler shop or at the "wood-mill." But we all knew that these

were just words. Nobody was dismissed, and no one took offense. ,Ztnd although people admitted to being afraid of him, they respected him just the same. _°

For this and other work, both Abramov and Shabarov were rewarded well, and both in fact later

went on to become key deputy chief designers at OKB-I.

The tests at the Leningrad plant were conducted between May and/qugust 1956, and much

to the relief of the engineers, both from OKB-I and GSKB SpetsMash. they were all uniformly

successful. The structure was then disassembled and shipped in October to Tyura-Tam for

assembly at site I. Not far from this site, at site 2, a gigantic building designated the AssemblyTesting Building was constructed for assembly of the R-7. With dimensions of

100 by fifty by twenty meters, it was one of the largest buildings in the world at the time, and

it continues to serve as the primary assembly point for many R-7-derived launchers to this day.

Preparations for the first launches were not limited to the Leningrad plant. The extensive testing stands at NII-88's Branch No. 2 at Zagorsk served as the site of a number of important tests

in support of the R-7. These included tests of propellant loading, booster separation systems,

and engine firings. Engineers built three static test stands for the core block, three for the strapons, and two for the complete R-7 at Zagorsk. The initial ground tests of the engines had begun

as early as mid-1955 in the form of experimental single-chamber versions of the main engines.

A step-by-step process led to the use of two combined chambers and eventually full-scale fourchamber versions in January 1956. Within seven months, engineers were able to test-fire the

full core block with the RD-108 engine for periods of twenty seconds. This led up to firings simulating a full cycle of flight. A major accident occurred at Zagorsk during a refueling exercise

65. Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Dorogi v kosmos: I. p 175. On page 52 of this source, it is stated that Chief

Desisner Barmin recallsthat potassium bichromate was used instead of water.

66. Mozzhorin et el, eds., Nachalo kosmieheskoy cry, p. 14

137
138

when a feeding pipe supplying liquid oxygen to the central block broke because of "hydroshock." An extensive series of repairs and a major redesign effort ensued to preclude such a

dangerous incident. °7

OKB-I engineers also launched a number of experimental missiles from Kapustin Yar during 1955-56 to test a variety of systems crucial to the operation of the R-Z missile. Original

concepts of a radio control system for the ICBM were used on the R-2R missile during launches in January 1955 ?8 Later tests used modifications of the original R-SM missile by replacing the

nuclear warhead with large instrumentation containers. Between May 15 and June 15, 1956,

three of the R-5R missiles were launched, the very first Soviet ballistic missiles using radio guidance. The flights utilized a series of ground stations, which served as prototypes for stations

being constructed at NIIP-5 in support of R-7 operations. The experiments also studied the

effects of jet plumes on radio wave propagation. All the launches were successful? _

P, second experimental missile, the M-5RD, also a modification of the R-SM, was launched

in two separate series of five launches each between February and/3ugust 1956. '° These launches focused on perfecting three major systems in the R-7: a guidance system for the gdjustment

of P,pparent Velocity (RKS), a control system for Normal and Lateral Stabilization (NS and BS),

and an electro-mechanical system for the Simultaneous Emptying of Tanks (SOBIS), the last

being a test for propellant feeding from the lateral blocks on the ICBM. 7' Once again, all the

launches were successful, and laying to rest a number of concerns that had troubled the R-7

designers.

gs is true of any large-scale missile program, the work expended on supporting infrastructure and supplementary systems far outweighed the actual amount of effort on the missile

itself./3part from the construction of the launch site at Tyura-Tam, the launches of experimental missiles from Kapustin Yar, the testing of engines at Zagorsk, and the creation of a simulated launch structure at Leningrad, there were numerous other elements that contributed

significantly to the success of the program. These included the development of a nationwide

ground telemetry system--a tracking and command network that was directed by the military

NII-4 entity under the management of institute Deputy Director Yuriy/3. Mozzhorin. This thirty-five-year-old artillery forces colonel, as a result of his remarkable success in this particular

job, earned himself a bright and powerful role in the future Soviet space program.;' From designers to military officers to industrial administrators, the individuals who made noteworthy contributions to the creation and development of the R-7 would emerge quickly in important

positions during the space era. There was, of course, no hint of a space program in 1954 when

work on the R-7 began, but within two years, the state of affairs took a dramatic turn--one

that for the first time in history shifted the focus of much of the work of hundreds of organizations from building rockets to launching satellites into space.

67, Ibid., p. ,54:Vaffotomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space: Part I,"

68, Biryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles." p. 234: Mozzhodn, et al., eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery. pp. 280-81. Details on the R-2Rarestill lacking, although it is known that the radio control system

was designedby Chief Designer B, M. Konoplev. who was at NIl-20 until 1955,when he was transferredto NII-885

69. Mozzhorin. et al. eds,, Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, pp. 53,282: Chertok. Rakety i lyudi, p, 404. The

first launch date may have been May 3 I.

70. Mozzhorin, et al., eds.. Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, p 53. The first series was conducted between

February I6 and March 23, 1956,while the second series was carried out between July 20 and ,qugust I8. 1956.

71. Ibid, pp 76. 169_Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 406.

72. /_ ,_, Maksimov, "People of Science:_ Veteran of the SpaceProgram" (English title), Zemlya i uselen.

naya no. 6 (November-December. 1990): 30-31: Mozzhorin, et aL. eds.. Dorogi u kosmos I, p. 158,

CHALLENGE TO I_.POLLO
SPUTNIK

A Report on an Rrtificial Satellite of Earth

Mikhail K. Tikhonravov's team at NIl-4 laid the conceptual foundation for concrete work

on the first Soviet ICBM. At the same time, he had quietly begun research work on many of the

scientific and technical questions associated with the development of artificial Earth satellites.

By the time that work on the ICBM moved into high gear at NII-88 in 1953, Tikhonravov's team

members had already abandoned work on multistage rockets, instead shifting their thematic

focus exclusively to research on satellites, One of the earliest was started in 1952, when the

group studied methods of dissipating heat and cooling an object reentering Earth's atmosphere

from orbit. Later, the NIl-4 group had continued to conduct "unofficial" research into satellites

in general, and it produced three important memoranda in 1952-53 and early 1954, which

answered a number of important questions required for the creation of a satellite:

• What kind of satellites could be launched by the early version of Korolev's R-Z?

• What kind of equipment could be placed in them?

• How were they to be controlled with special orientation systems?

• What problems could they solve, no doubt including both scientific and military goals? 7}

At Korolev's prompting, Tikhonravov himself played an important role in moving his work

to "official" status. Armed with two large sketchbooks, he made an appointment to meet

Georgiy N. Pashkov, the missile department chief at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building.

One of the books contained a huge number of clippings from the Western press with descriptions of American "plans" for artificial satellites. The other sketchbook contained detailed drawings and calculations proving that not only was such a launch within the grasp of Soviet

technology, but that if given approval, any Soviet satellite would be ten times more heavy than

an American one/_ Pashkov was sufficiently impressed by Tikhonravov's presentation to telephone Marshal Aleksandr M. Vasiliyevskiy, the former Minister of Defense who was at the time

a deputy in the ministry, to permit some modest but official support for Tikhonravov's work.

Subsequently, a two-year dedicated scientific research program on the creation of an artificial

satellite was approved on September 16, 1953, the first official effort in the Soviet Union on

such a topic/_

Tikhonravov's group, composed mostly of the same individuals who had participated in his

earlier ICBM studies, such as Bazhinov, Maksimov, Soldatova, and Yatsunskiy, coordinated the

satellite work closely with Korolev, although the two did not have any formal institutional connections. Korolev also consulted with Academician Keldysh to undertake parallel studies at his

Department of Applied Mathematics of the V. g. Steklov Mathematics Institute. The same

young scientists at the department who had provided much of the brain power for the design

of the ICBM thus began a new effort to solve the problems involved in the "ballistic return of

a space apparatus from Earth orbit and to show the possibility of using this method of

73. I.M. Yatsunskiy, "On The Activities of M. K. Tikhoniavov in the Period From 1947 to 1953 on

Substantiating the Possibility of Creation of Composite Missiles" (English titte), Iz istorii a_iatsii i kosmonautiki 42

(1980): 31-38 An English translation of this can be found as I. M. Yatsunsky, "The Role of Mikhail Klavdiyevich

Tikhonravov in Creating StageRockets, 1947-1953," in John Becklake,ed. History o[ Rocketry and Astronautics,

Vol. 17 (San Diego: American Astronautical Association Publications, 1995), pp 451-56. Seealso Bazhinov, "The

Activities of M. K Tikhonravov in 1950-1956."

74 Nikolay Dombkovskiy. "October - April - Universe" (Englishtitle), Souetskayarossiya, April 12, 1989,

p. 3. Pashkovrecallsthat the visit occurred in 1954, but it seemsmore likely that the meeting took place in late 1953.

75. Valeriy Baberdin, "The Once SecretSpace Nil Will Now Bearthe Name of Tikhonravov" (English title),

Krasnaya zuezda, January 18 1996, p. 6; Yatsunskiy, "On the Activities of M K. Tikhonravov": Ishlinskiy, ed.,

Akademik 5 R Koroleu,p 445.

139
140

Mikhait Tikhonravou's famous "satellite team" shown here in a photo from I970 It was during 1950 54 that

theseyoung men and women developed the f_rstengineering conceptions of a Soviet Earth satellite Basedon

this important research, Tikhonravou authored a landmark report on artificial satellites in t954 that laid the

groundwork [or the early Soviet space program Sitting ]rom left are: Vladimir qatkovskiy. C_lebMaksimov.

Lidiya Soldatova. Tikhonravou. and Igor Yatsunskiy Standing from left to right are: C#igoriy Moskatenko,

Oteg qurko, and Igor Bazhinou (files of _sif Siddiqi)

returning on piloted flights. ''_ Although these studies were not intended to support actual

launches, they were giant steps forward for Korolev and Tikhonravov, for they underscored that

the climate for space research was becoming more favorable, Tikhonravov's two-year research

project consisted of a ten-point program to study the feasibility of launching artificial satellites,

The ten topics studied were:

• Development of practical methods for computing optimal trajectories for inserting satellites

into orbit

• Effects of external factors on lowering orbits of satellites

• Effects of incorrect orbital insertion on the operation of satellites

• Analysis of using solar energy on satellites

• Analysis of orienting satellites in orbit

• Preliminary conceptions of unoriented and oriented satellites

• Research on observing the motion of launch vehicles and satellites during orbital insertion

and later

• Analysis of regulating heat within satellites

• Analysis of the dangers of meteorite impact on satellites in Earth orbit

• /5nalysis on the possibility of returning both automated and piloted capsules from Earth

orbit, which included studies of trajectories, thermal protection, and so on"

?6 V.S. Avduyevskiy and T. M. [ncyev. eds.. M. V Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy: raketnaya tekhnika i kosmonautika (Moscow: Nauka, 1988). p 9: Ishlinskiy. ed, ,,ZtkademikS. R Koroleu, p. 445.

77. Bazhinov, "The Activities o[ M. K. Tikhanravov in 1950-1956 "

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
SPUTNIK

Inlate1953,Korolevbegantoconsolidateallthecurrentworkonspaceissues.Whilein

earlieryearshemayhavebeenreluctanttoformallyrequesttheSovietgovernmenttosanction

somekindofspaceproject,threefactorsplayedintohishandsbytheendoftheyear.First,he

removalofStalinandBeriyafromthepoliticalmilieuearlierin 1953allowedhimto thinkof

proposingsuchideastothehigherleadershipwithoutfearofreprisals.Second,hisICBMwas

finallybeginningto takeshape,andit wasallbutgiventhattheSovietgovernmentwould

enthusiasticallyapprovethatprogram.WithoutanICBM,hewouldnotbeabletolaunchany

satellite.Finally,themajorexpansionfworkonsatellitesunderTikhonravovwouldsupport

hiscausewithsolidscientificresearch.InDecember1953,whenhewaspreparingthedecree

onapprovingworkontheR-7,Korolevinsertedthefollowinglinesintothetext:

We should organize at NII-88 a scientific-research department with the goal of working

on problems [together with the Academy o[ Sciences] of flights to altitudes of 500 or

more kin. and also work on questions associated with the creation of an artificial satellite of the Earth and the study of interplanetary space with the aid of the [R-7],7_

In the seven years he had been a chief designer, it was Korolev's very first formal request

to the government on a matter related to spaceflight. Clearly, he still had some doubts. As one

Russian historian recalled, while the draft of the decree "was making its way to the top," mention of the satellite was crossed out. _°

Knowing that he could not go alone on this matter, in the following months, Korolev marshaled a vast amount of support for his satellite proposal, most significantly from the USSR

Academy of Sciences. Korolev spoke with Academician Keldysh onJanuary 23, 1954, to schedule a meeting between the scientists at NIl-4 and the Department of Applied Mathematics, to

coordinate the entire effort. Approximately two weeks later, on February 7, Korolev spoke for

the first time to Minister of Defense Industries Ustinov on the satellite issue, "sounding his

boss out" on a formal proposal. Ustinov was restrained but promised that he would review any

document when it was on his desk. Korolev immediately telephoned Tikhonravov and asked

him to prepare a formal proposal to launch a Soviet satellite. The document would be based on

his team's extensive research work in 1953-54. With the "ball rolling," Tikhonravov and two

of his principal aides, Yatsunskiy and Maksimov, prepared a rough draft, which was then passed

on to Korolev, who consulted his principal deputies, Mishin and Bushuyev, to make amendments. Chief Designer Glushko, the only other "space fanatic" on the Council of Chief

Designers, also offered comments.

The activity led to a major meeting on March 16 at the offices of Academician Keldysh at

the Academy of Sciences. In attendance were scientists from the Department of Applied

Mathematics and NIl-4, as well as renowned Soviet scientists, including Academician Petr L.

Kapitsa, the nuclear physicistY' g draft version of the report was then typed up at the end of

March, before Keldysh took the matter to Academy of Sciences President Aleksandr N

Nesmeyanov on April 24. Nesmeyanov promised full academy support for the proposal, significantly bolstering Korolev's case. Final revisions of the typed document were carried out on

78. Georgiy StepanovichVetrov, "The First Satellite: Historical Limits" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki

16 (july 28-August 10, 1997): 2-9: G S. Vetrov, "]-he World's First Artificial Earth Satellite Was Launched Forty

YearsAgo" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no. 10 (October 1997): 2-5.

79. James Harford, Koroteu. How One Man Masterminded the Souiet Drive to Beat.Z]mericato the Moon

(New York:John Wiley&Sons, 1997),p 123.

80. B.V. Raushenbakh,ed., Matenaly po istorii kosmicheskogokorabt "uostok" (Moscow: Nauka. 1991),

p. 209: Golovanov, Koroteu p. 519. Also present were S.E Khaykin, I. A. Kibel, astronomer B.V. Kukarin. and physi

cist S. N. Vernov. Vernov was closely involved in scientific suborbital launches in the 1940sand 1950s

14t
J42

May13duringameetingwithKorolev,Tikhonravov,andtwoof "Ketdysh's boys," Timur M

Eneyev and Vsevolod A. Yegorov. Having a final draft in their hands, Korolev and Tikhonravov

then attended a formal ceremony of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences on May 25,

hosted by President Nesmeyanov to draw official support from the academy. The three-hour

meeting ended with a fully approved plan. As Tikhonravov wrote later in his personal journal:

"All has been signed.., one may say that the first stage is finished. "_'

Concurrently with this activity at the academy, both Korolev and Tikhonravov had been

busy convincing key officials in the military of the satellite idea. After all, there would be no

satellite unless the military agreed to relinquish an ICBM for the job. Korotev had first

approached NIl-4 Deputy Director Maj. General Georgiy A. Tyulin, his old friend from the

Germany days. The latter was not, however, particularly enthusiastic, and Korotev only agitated Tyulin more when he began to overtly pressure him to give his consent. Tikhonravov had

more success: he successfully secured the support of Marshal Vasiliyevskiy, who, having read

the report, wrote back with gusto: "Comrade Tikhonravov: If you have any problems, call me

at any moment .... "_: Despite the rebuke from Tyulin, Korolev prepared three copies of

Tikhonravov's report, each attached with a cover letter authored by himself and a set of translations of articles on satellites published in the West. He sent a set of each, two days after the

academy meeting on May 27, 1954, to Ryabikov (a Deputy Minister of Medium Machine

Building), Ustinov (the Minister of Defense Industries), and Pashkov (Ryabikov's department

chief in charge of missiles)? _ Only seven days had passed since the R-7 ICBM project had been

formally approved by the government. Clearly, Korotev was not about to waste any time.

Tikhonravov's document, remarkable even in the present day, was a tour de force of foresight in the mid-195Os. Classified top secret for thirty-seven years, it was finally published in

its original form in 1991, just prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union? 4 The memorandum,

titled "A Report on an Artificial Satellite of the Earth," began:

7tt the present time there are real technological possibilities to achieve sufficient velocity with the use of powerful rockets [or the creation of an artificial satellite of the Earth.

Most realistic and feasible in the shortest time is the creation of an artificial Earth satellite composed of automatic instruments which will have scientific apparatus on the

exterior, carry out radio communications with the Earth, and circle the Earth at a distance on the order of 170-1,1 tO kilometers from the surface Such a capsule will be the

Simplest Satellite? _

The complete report was divided into two broad thematic sections--one focused on

immediate objectives of a space program and one focused on long-term goals. The immediate

goals were to:

8 I. INd

82. GoIovanov, g.orolev, p. 519.

83. Raushenbakh.ed.. Materialy po istorii kosmicheskogo,p. 209: Golovanov, Korolev. p 519: Ishlinskiy,

ed.. Ztkademik S. R Koroteu. p. 445; Biryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles," p. 233. Although

Ryabikov was officially a Deputy Minister of Special Machine Building, he was simultaneously the chief of

GlavSpetsMash("Chief Directorate of Special Machine Building") within the Ministry of Medium Machine Building,

which oversaw missile programs. Pashkov's official position was head of GlavTransMashwithin the Ministry of

Medium Machine Bulding. Note that sourcesdiffer on the date the document was sent to Ustinov, with both May

26 and May 27, 1954,quoted widely.

84. The entire document is reproduced as M. K Tikhonravov, "t_ Report on an Artificial Satellite of the

Earth" (English title), in Raushenbakh,ed., Materialy po istorii kosmicheskogo,pp. 5-15.

85. Ibid. p. 5.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

• Create and launch the Simplest Satellite into Earth orbit

• Launch a human on a "vertical" trajectory into space

• Recover a portion of the Simplest Satellite from Earth orbit

These three goals were to be carried out in parallel with each other and with the development

of the R-7 ICBM, which would facilitate the implementation of the first objective.

Throughout the document, Tikhonravov goes into unusual detail for a report aimed at government bureaucrats, and one wonders, given the times, how much of it Ustinov or the others

truly comprehended. The description of the Simplest Satellite included explanations of its

launch trajectory, the characteristics of various potential orbits, its albedo in the night sky, three

different orientation systems, power sources, and on-board instrumentation. Interestingly, he

mentioned that a "special cassette" with scientific data would be recovered: this presumably

would be exposed film of Earth's surface. Furthermore, a 300-kilogram television system would

be installed on the satellite for transmitting images of Earth. t%knowledging that the creation

of an oriented satellite would be a complex task, Tikhonravov wrote that:

in the event of the impossibility of a speedy solution [to installing an orientation system],

it would be agreeable to have an unoriented [satellite], since aside from its scientific

importance, the launch of the first satellite in our country would also have vast political significance. 8_

The total mass of the vehicle was noted at 3,000 kilograms, composed of orientation systems, power sources, communications systems, a television unit, a recoverable cassette, film,

scientific apparatus, and a container for an animal. The animal container would be installed on

later Simplest Satellites.

The second section of the report addressed the launch of humans on vertical flights into

space. Although particular rockets were not mentioned, it is likely that the reference was not to

the R-7, but rather more modest missiles, such as the R-2 and R-5, in their scientific versions.

Tikhonravov noted that these vertical launches would progress to true suborbital missions

down range. Experience from the aviation industry would be used to design and construct

appropriate cockpits for the single passenger.

In the third section, Tikhonravov addressed the methods of returning either the complete

satellite or a portion of it to Earth Both ballistic return and reentry with the aid of wings were

detailed. The final section addressed future work:

• Creation of an "experimental satellite with humans"

• Creation of a "satellite-station"

• "[P]roblems of reaching the Moon ....

It is clear throughout the entire document that Tikhonravov and Korolev's primary goal was

to put one to two humans into Earth orbit aboard a satellite, In fact, at one point, the Simplest

Satellite is described as "an apparatus without people." Orbital human spaceflight, according

to the writing in the document, would be possible to accomplish in the nearest future based

on the results of the three preliminary goals. The so-called "satellite-station" was merely an

extension of piloted spaceflight: orbital assembly would be used as a means to create a large

space station in Earth orbit crewed by specialists. The final long-term goal was the first-ever

86. Ibid..p. 8.

87, Ibid.,pp 13-14.

143
144

official mention in a Soviet document of plans to send spacecraft to the Moon, Although piloted flight was not explicitly mentioned, Tikhonravov described a one-and-a-half-ton spacecraft

capable of landing on the Moon and then returning to Earth by means of atmospheric braking.

A three-stage "packet"-type rocket with a liftoff mass of 650 tons could be used for this purpose: he acknowledged that engine performance would have to be increased significantly for

such a mission. There was even mention of interplanetary flight, which would be possible after

accomplishment of the lunar expedition.

In the conclusion, Tikhonravov listed a number of goals of the complete program, focusing mostly on the scientific aspects, but noted that the creation of an artificial satellite would

be of great importance to "defense." Korolev's attached letter was short and to the point:

At your request, I am enclosing the memorandum of Comrade M. K. Tikhonravou. ".,zt

Report on an/-_rtificial Satellite of the Earth." and also forwarded materials from the

LI.S.7t, on work being carried out in this field, The current development o[ [the R-7]

makes it possible for us to speak of the possibility of developing in the near future an

artificial satellite. By reducing the mass o[ the payload somewhat, we will be ab(e to

achieve the final velocity of &O00 m/s necessary for a satellite. The product--the satellite-may be developed on the basis of the new [R-Z] being developed now, re[erred to

above, but with major modifications to the latter. It seems to me that in the present time

there is the opportunity and expediency of organizing a scientific-research department

[at NII-88] for carrying out the initial exploratory work on a satellite and more detailed

work on complex problems involved with this goal. I await your decision, _

These two documents were the blueprints for the early days of the Soviet space program

and stand testament to the vision of both Korolev and Tikhonravov. Most of the goals were

eventually accomplished, although in 1954 none of the involved participants could foresee the

eventual impact of the report.

If Korolev's goal was to elicit a formal decree for his proposal, his appeal was not very successful. However. his request seems to have been passed on through various levels of the government and reached the office of defense industry chief Malyshev, officially the Minister of Medium

Machine Building. Prompted by Korolev's persuasive arguments. Malyshev. along with three other

top defense industry officials, submitted a proposal to Soviet leader Malenkov asking permission

to carry out "work on the scientific-theoretical questions associated with space flight," _ No doubt

interested in the military applications of Tikhonravov's satellite. Malenkov approved the suggestion. Armed with a modicum of support. Korolev commenced a modest research project at his

design bureau, coordinated with Tikhonravov's own work at NIl-4. Incredibly. as this research was

taking place, the satellite issue remained divorced from further governmental involvement as

Korolev was diverted to more important matters relating to the operation of the nuclear-tipped

R-SM missile and, of course, the work on the R-7 ICBM. It was. however, the very first intervention by the Soviet government on an issue related to space exploration.

88. The text of this letter in a censored version has been published as S. P Korolev, "On the Possibility of

Work on an Artificial Satellite of the Earth" (English title), in Keldysh, ed., Tuorcheskoyenaslediye ,Z]kademika

Sergeya Pavtouicha Koroleua, p, 343 See also Raushenbakh. ed.. Materiafy po istorii kosmieheskogo, p. 209:

YaroslavGolovanov, "The Beginning of the SpaceEra" (English title), Pravda, October 4, 1987,p. 3: A, P Romanov

and V. S Gubarev.Konstruktory (Moscow Politicheskoy literatury, 1989), p, 75.

89 Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 86. The co-authors of the proposal were B L

Vannikov (First Deputy Minister of Medium Machine Building). M V. Khrunichev (First Deputy Minister of Medium

Machine Building). and K. N Eudnev (Deputy Minister of DefenseIndustries).

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

The International Geophysical Year and the Soviet Satellite

Korolev's satellite work may have continued at a leisurely pace through the mid-1950s with

lukewarm governmental support were it not for some surprising and well-publicized events outside the Soviet Union. In the spring of 1950, a group of American scientists led by James A, Van

Allen met in Silver Spring, Maryland, to discuss the possibility of an international scientific program to study the upper atmosphere and outer space via sounding rockets, balloons, and ground

observations. Strong support from Western European scientists allowed the idea to expand into

a worldwide program timed to coincide with a period of intense solar activity from July l, 1957,

to December 31, 1957. The participants named this period the International Geophysical Year

(IGY) and created the Comit_ speeiale de l'ann_e g_ophysique internationale (the "Special

Committee for the International Geophysical Year," or "CSAGI") to establish an agenda for the

program. Soviet representatives, including Academy of Sciences Vice-President Academician

Ivan P. Bardin, served on CSAGI, but it does not seem that they had any significant contribution

to its proceedings. In fact, the May 1954 deadline for submissions for participating in the IGY

passed without any word from Soviet authorities. At a subsequent meeting in Rome on October

4, 1954, Soviet scientists silently witnessed the approval of a historic U.S.-sponsored plan to

orbit artificial satellites during the IGY? ° The satellite proposal clearly surprised the Soviet delegation, and perhaps it had repercussions within the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the fall of

1954, the academy established the Interdepartmental Commission for the Coordination and

Control of Work in the Field of Organization and Accomplishment of Interplanetary

Communications, a typically long-winded title that obscured its primary role--a forum for Soviet

scientists to discuss space exploration in abstract terms, both in secret and in public?'

The existence of the commission was announced on April 16, 1955, in an article in a

Moscow evening newspaper. Academician Leonid I. Sedov, a relatively well-known gas dynamics expert, was listed as the chairman of the commission? _ Unlike the title of the body, the primary duty of the commission was stated with unusual explicitness: "One of the immediate

tasks of the Commission is to organize work concerning building an automatic laboratory for

scientific research in space. TM In hindsight, it is dear that the commission, a part of the

Astronomy Council in the USSR Academy of Sciences, had very little input or influence over

de [acto decision-making in the Soviet space program. Although one of its functions was to collect proposals from various scientists on possible scientific experiments that could be mounted on future satellites, its more important role was to allow Soviet scientists, but not designers,

to discuss general space issues in a public forum. Sedov played a major role in this respect by

appearing at numerous international conferences talking in very general terms on the future of

space exploration. None of the commission's members had any direct connection or contact

90. Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell, The Partnership: 71 History o/ the 71polloGoyuz Test

Project (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration (NASA) Special Publication (SP)-4209,

1918), p. 16: Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York:/hlfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 54.

91 Ishlinskiy, ed., 71kademik S. P. Koroleu, p. 453: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National

Intelligence Estimate I I-5 58: Souiet Capabilities in quided Missiles and Space Vehicles (Washington, DC: CIA,

August 19, t958), as declassified February 15, [995, by the CIA Historical Review Program, pp. 26-27: Boris

Konovalov, "The Genealogy of Sputnik" (English title), in V Shcherbakov, ed., Zogadki zuezdnykh ostrouou

(Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1989), p. II 5.

92 "Commission on Interplanetary Communications" (English title), Vechernaya moskua, April 16, 1955,

p. 1. An English translation of the article is included in F.J. Krieger,Behind the Sputniks: 7t Suruey o[ SouietSpace

Science (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1958), pp. 328-30. The names of only four other members were

announced at the time: V. A. Ambartsumyan, P.L. Kapitsa. B V Kukarin, and P.E Parenago.A larger twenty-sevenmember list was submitted to the International Astronautical Federationin October 1957.

93. Ibid

145
146

withthemissileandspaceprogram,althoughtheywereclearlyawareofthebroadnatureof

Korolev'swork.Itseemsthatthelatterhadlittletodowiththeformationorworkofthecommission.Heevidentlyattendedonemeetingin 1954toinquireaboutthegroup'swork24

WhilethisCommissionhadlittlerealauthority,ChairmanSedovmayhaveplayedacrucial

roleinconnectingKorolev'ssatelliteeffortswiththeIGY.Thechainofeventswassetoffon

July29.1955,byU.S.PresidentDwightD.Eisenhower'sPressSecretaryJamesC.Hagerty,who

announcedattheWhiteHousethattheUnitedStateswouldlaunch"smallEarth-circlingsatellites"aspartofitsparticipationin theIGY.9_ItwasatthissametimethattheInternational

AstronauticalFederationwasholdingits SixthInternationalAstronauticalCongressin

Copenhagen,Denmark.HeadingtheSovietdelegationwereSedovandKirillF.Ogorodnikov,the

editorof arespectedastronomyjournalin theUSSR.Thetwowerecalledintoactionbyan

announcementonAugust2byFredC.DurantIII,thepresidentofthiscongress,whoreportedtheEisenhower administration's intentions of launching a satellite during the IGY. Not to be

outdone, Sedov convened a press conference the same day at the Soviet Embassy in

Copenhagen for about fifty journalists during, at which he announced, "In my opinion, it will

be possible to launch an artificial Earth satellite within the next two years." He added, "The

realization of the Soviet project can be expected in the near future.' ....

It is quite unlikely that Sedov was speaking on his own authority, and he possibly had

taken cues from highly placed Communist Party officials who were aware of the government's

approval in August 1954 of exploratory research on space issues. Perhaps a Party or Academy

of Sciences official back in Moscow had decreed that Durant's statement warranted a response

from Sedov. Certainly, there had been much discussion on the possibility of Soviet satellites by

that time, although no single project had received approval. What is known is that the two pronouncements, the one by the Eisenhower administration and the one by Sedov, were the subject of relatively intense scrutiny by the press all over the world. This response seems to have

been critical for Korolev.

The May 1954 satellite proposal from Korolev and Tikhonravov had not elicited the kind of

response its authors had wanted. Despite the lukewarm reaction, both continued to appeal to

various senior governmental officials. On January 18. 1955, Tikhonravov, with Korolev's agreement, sent a letter to Pashkov once again describing the possible uses of artificial satellites. By

May, Tikhonravov, also with Korolev's supervision, prepared a series of documents on satellites,

including a rough draft of a governmental decree, and he sent them to Pashkov, now a member of the new Special Committee, and Ustinov's Deputy Rudnev/_: There were also changes

made to the original satellite document from 19_f4. On June 16, 1955, Tikhonravov and

OKB-I engineer Ilya V. Lavrov finished their latest study on artificial satellites. Based on

Tikhonravov's earlier work, the two suggested a reduced mass of 1,000 to 1,400 kilograms for

94 Of the twenty-seven commission members listed in 1957,only two individuals, A. A. Blagonravov and

DYe Okhotsimskiy, were directly involved in the ballistic missile and space programs. The former headed the

Commission for Upper Atmosphere Researchof the Academy of Sciences. which oversaw all scientific vertical

launches. The latter was one ot the leading mathematicians at the Department of Applied Mathematics of the V A

Steklov Mathematics Institute of the Academy of Sciences,who was involved in the early design of the R-7 ICBM.

See Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P Koroteu, p. 453

95 "Statement by James C. Hagerty.The White House,july 29. 1955." reproduced as Document I-I 1 in

John M Logsdon. gen. ed, with Linda J, Lear,Jannelle Warren-Findtey, Ray A Williamson, and Dwayne A Day,

Exploring the Unknotun. Seteeted Documents in the History o[ the U S Ciui_ Space Program: Volume I Organizing

[or Exploration (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4218),pp. 200-01: Ezelland Ezell, The Partnership, p. 18.

96. Robert W. Buchheim and the Staff of the Rand Corporation, Space Handbook Astronautics and its

Applications (New York: Random House, 1959), p. 277: "We'll Launch Ist Moon, and Bigger, Says Russ," Los

;qngeles Examiner, August 3, 1955: John Hillary, "Soviets Planning Early Satellite." Ne_u York Times, August 3, 1955

97 Vetrov, "The First Satellite."

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
, SPUTNIK

the automated satellite. They also proposed the formation of a group of sevenW to eighty people to carry out the task of designing and building the satellite and work on future piloted

spacecraft (Korolev wrote in the margins: "Too many, 30-35 people."). Korolev, more attuned

to the political reality of such a project, also added that "the creation of [a satellite] will have

enormous political significance as evidence of the high development level of our country's

technology. ,,9_

The process seems to have gained extra urgency with the risenhower administration'

announcement in late July. On August 8, Tikhonravov sent both Pashkov and Korolev a report

titled "Basic Information on the Scientific Significance of the Simplest Satellite and Proposed

Costs," Finally, on August 27, Tikhonravov sent another report to Pashkov, Chief Designer

Glushko, and Chief Designer Ryazanskiy on the technical details of the satellite. 99All this seemed

to have had an effect. Pashkov asked his boss Ryabikov to hold a meeting of the powerful Special

Committee to discuss the issue. Perhaps encouraged by the government's interest, Korolev

decided to aim much higher than just a simple satellite. In a move that underscores Korolev's

push for a space program, he had one of his sector chiefs at OKB-I, Yevgeniy F. Ryazanov, quickly prepare a technical report on the possibility of sending a probe to the Moon using modified

versions of the R-Z ICBM. Ryazanov emerged with two different three-stage variants of the missile, one using the traditional liquid oxygen-kerosene combination and the other using fluorine

monoxide and ethyl amine propellant. The former would launch a probe weighing 400 kilograms,

and the latter would have a probe of 800 to 1,000 kilograms.

The meeting at the offices of the Special Committee was held on August 30, 1955. In

attendance, besides Committee Chairman Ryabikov, Korolev, and Keldysh, was an engineer

named Colonel Aleksandr G. Mrykin, Marshal Nedelin's chief means of contact with the missile design bureaus. '* At the meeting, Korolev spoke of both his satellites and lunar probes but

ran into resistance from Mrykin. Notorious for his legendary short temper and larger-than-life

personality, Mrykin was not receptive to Korolev's old arguments of the possibly great political

importance of a Soviet satellite. The artillery officer told Korolev that only when the R-? had

completed its flight testing would they consider a satellite. Fortunately for Korolev, he had

Keldysh's support, and that may have tipped the scales. While details of the deliberations

remain extremely sketchy, it seems that Ryabikov approved the use of an R-7 ICBM for a modest satellite program. Lunar probes were considered too outlandish. There were probably two

factors working in Korolev's favor: the possible use of a satellite for military purposes and the

Eisenhower administration's announcement of an IGY satellite program.

Armed with Ryabikov's approval, Korolev attended a second meeting the same day at the

offices of the "chief scholarly secretary" of the Academy of Sciences, Gennadiy V. Topchiyev.

Many other scientists and designers, including Keldysh, Tikhonravov, and Glushko, were present. Korolev reported to the distinguished assemblage that the Council of Chief Designers at

a recent meeting had conducted a detailed examination of modifying the original R-7 into a

vehicle capable of launching a satellite into orbit. No doubt, he also spoke of the government's

interest on the matter. At the end of his speech, he made a formal call to build and launch a

98. Ibid: Semenov, ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 86-87: Golovanov, "The Beginning of

the SpaceEra." There is some confusion as to who authored this report and when it was issued. The above sources

suggest that it was Lavrovalone who authored the report and that it was dated June 16, 1955. On the other hand,

in his own memoirs, Tikhonravov writes that the memorandum was co-authored by both and that it was dated July

16, 1955. SeeIshlinskiy, ed., 7_kademik S R Koroleu, p. 445.

99. Vetrov, "The First Satellite,"

I00. Semenov, ed.. Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 87. Mrykiffs official post was First Deputy

Commander of the Directorate of the Chief of ReactiveArmaments (LINRV) UNRV was part of the Chief Artillery

Directorate (GAU) of the Ministry of Defense.

147
148

seriesofsatellites,includingonewithanimals,intospace,andheaskedthattheAcademyof

Sciencesestablishaformalcommissiontocarryoutthisgoal.Korolevhadaspecifictimetable

inmind.Hetoldhisassemblage,"Asfortheboosterrocket,wehopetobeginthefirstlaunchesinApril-July1957...beforethestartoftheInternationalGeophysicalYear.'....IfKorolev's

earlierSimplestSatelliteplanshadbeentimedfortheindefinitefuture,theEisenhoweradministration'sannouncementinJuly1955completelychangedthedirectionof Korolev'sattack.

Notonlydidit imbueKorolev'ssatelliteproposalwithanewsenseofurgency,butit alsogave

himaspecifictimetableforwhichtoaim.IftheUnitedStateswasplanningto launchduring

theIGY,thentheSovietswouldlaunchoneafewmonthsbefore the beginning of the IGY. The

attending scientists at the meeting accepted the new satellite proposal. At Korolev's recommendation, Keldysh was designated the chairman of the commission; Korolev and Tikhonravov

were to serve as his deputies.

The following day, on August 31, a smaller group, including Korolev, Tikhonravov, and

Keldysh, met to discuss some of the proposals for satellite instruments that many scientists had

submitted to Sedov's commission during the past year. A few days later, Tikhonravov and

Keldysh convened with some prominent Soviet scientific scholars to explain details of the satellite design and how their instruments were being considered. Korolev himself approved a preliminary scientific program in September 1955, which included the study of the ionosphere.

cosmic rays, Earth's magnetic fields, luminescence in the upper atmosphere, the Sun and its

influence on Earth, and other natural phenomena. The detailed development of a scientific program was left in the hands of the two existing commissions of the Academy of Sciences headed by Blagonravov and Sedov. '°_

The approval by the Academy of Sciences to conduct a purely scientific research program

accelerated matters considerably. In the ensuing months, several important meetings were

held, both by Keldysh's commission and by the Council of Chief Designers, which elaborated

on the details of the project. Between December t 955 and March 1956. Keldysh consulted a

huge number of distinguished scholars to refine the scientific experiments package. They

included numerous famous Soviet scientists, many of whose names were public knowledge,

unlike those who were actually developing the spacecraft. '_ It was a large-scale operation with

a single coordinating mechanism, which, because of its "civilian" nature, had no precedent.

Korolev himself was very conscious of the fact that official governmental approval had yet to

be granted, which meant that a rocket for the project was still not available, but the magnitude

of the immediate tasks obscured that important issue for the time being. There were continuous problems with the program because many of those who were cooperating did not share

Korolev's enthusiasm for the project. For a purely civilian endeavor, the wealth of institutes and

design bureaus with which he had to deal was also unprecedented.

It took about four months for Ryabikov's spoken approval in August 1955 to translate into

a formal decree of the Soviet government. As a purely scientific project managed by the

101 Ishlinskiy, ed, ,,qkademik S P Koroteu p. 455: Golovanov, Koroleu, pp. 523-24: Golovanov, "The

Beginning o[ the Space Era" Others present at this meeting were M A. Lavrentiyev and G A. Skuridin

102. Ishlinskiy, ed, .,qkademik S P Koroleu, pp. 455 56; Lardier, LZtstrortautique Souietictue, p. 107:

Golovanov. "The Beginning of the Space Era." Blagonravov's commission was at the time directing the scientific

investigations aboard suborbital rockets,while Sedov'scommission had recently beenestablished asa public forum

for Soviet scientists to discuss spaceexploration.

I03 These included: atmospheric specialists V. I. Krasovskiy, L. ',Z Kumosovaya, and S. N. Vernov: the

young mathematicians from the Department of Applied Mathematics. T M. Eneyev, M. L. Lidov, D Ye

Okhotsimskiy, and V. A. Yegorov; solar battery expert N. S. Lidorenko: and the more famous Academicians L g.

Artsimovich. V. L Ginsburg A. f Ioffe, P. L. Kapitsa, B. P.Konstantinov, and V. A. Kotelnikov. SeeIshlinskiy, ed.

/qkademik 5. P Koroteu_pp_446,456: Golovanov, "The Beginning of the SpaceEras"

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO in

U

Rn

H

I

[
SPUTNIK

Academy of Sciences, it was not considered a

top priority. In fact, Soviet government officials

probably viewed the satellite project in much

the same manner as they viewed the continuing

series of scientific rocket flights into the upper

atmosphere--an effort that also used military

missiles for civilian purposes. Such flights were

relatively inexpensive, unobtrusive, and ignored

by the political leadership. Consequently, the

USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree (no.

149-88ss) on January 30, 1956, calling for the

creation of an unoriented artificial satellite. The

document approved the launch of a satellite,

designated "Object D," in 1957 in time for the

IGY. As per Tikhonravov's previous computations, the mass of the satellite was limited to

1,000 to 1,400 kilograms, of which 200 to

300 kilograms would be scientific instruments.

Apart from the Academy of Sciences, five industrial ministries would be involved in the project.

The responsibility for preparing a draft plan for

Object D fell on the shoulders of Sergey S.

Kryukov, at the time a department chief at

OKB-I. Tikhonravov served as the "chief scien-

,,3model of the Object D satellite shown susper_ded

in a museum. The (3-ton obseruatory carried

instruments for the study of Earth's ionosphere.

magnetic fields, radiation belts, cosmic rays.

meteoroids, and so [orth (copyright Quest)

tific consultant." '°_ At least two main points of the original report from 1954 were ignored: the

Party squelched any hope that the satellite would have an orientation system or that it would

carry a human. Although the text of the decree remains classified, other evidence hints that one

of the stipulations of the document was to approve exploratory work on a military photoreconnaissance satellite at NIl-4 based on the design of Object D. '')_

At the time that the resolution was adopted, Korolev was at Kapustin Yar in preparation

for the nuclear R-SM test, an experiment that was certainly far more important to the fortunes

of OKB-I than the satellite project. It is apparent, however, that Korolev did not want to consign his dreams of space exploration to a single decree, one among as many as 250 discussed

per month by the Presidium (later the Politburo). He wanted a direct verbal promise from the

Soviet leadership on the satellite project, in particular from Khrushchev himself. His chance

came in February 1956 during a high-level state visit to OKB-I. Khrushchev, escorted by the

top Presidium members Bulganin, Molotov, and Pervukhin, as well as Minister Ustinov, were

on hand to congratulate OKB-I on its recent success with the R-SM and also to review the

progress on the R-7 ICBM project. '°_

I04. Keldysh. ed. Tuoreheskoyenaslediye £tkademika SergeyaPaulouicha Koroteua. p. 362: Ishlinskiy. ed_

Zlkademik S. P Koroleu, p. 445: Konovalov, "The Genealogy of Sputnikt" pp. 116 17: Gotovanov. Koroleu, p. 529:

Semenov, ed, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 87: B. Konovalov. "Dash to the Stars" (English title),

Izuestiya. October I, 1987,p. 3. The five industrial ministries were the Ministry of DefenseIndustries, the Ministry

of Radiotechnical Industry. the Ministry of Ship Building Industry. the Ministry of Machine Building, and the

Ministry of Defense

iO5 See, for example, Valery Menshikov, "Theory and Practice Go Together," .;qerospaeeJournat no 2

(March-Rpril 1997): 28-29. Referring specifically to the January 1956 decree, the author states, "The task of

researching possible applications of defensesatellites,., was entrusted to the country's Defense Ministry."

106. Sergey Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu: krizisy i rakety: uzglyad iznutri: torn I (Moscow: Novosti,

1994). p 97.

149
150

The visit, on the morning of February 27, was important for Khrushchev because it was his

first direct exposure to the top-secret ballistic missile program--an effort that had essentially

been run by a number of industrial bureaucrats since Stalin's death, out of view from Party leaders such as Khrushchev. '°_During the visit, the delegation was escorted by Korolev and NII-88

Director Ateksey S. Spiridinov on a tour that culminated with a presentation of a full-scale

model of the R-7 ICBM. The guests were apparently stunned into silence by the size of the vehicle. Like a good performer, Korolev waited a few seconds for the sight to sink in before giving

a brief presentation on the vehicle. Khrushchev simply beamed after the report, visibly

impressed with the capabilities of the missile.

Glushko then began an elaborate presentation, much different from Korolev's, filled with

extraneous technical details "like he was talking to first course students at the neighboring

forestry institute.., rather than the higher leadership.' .... Recognizing the pointlessness of a

technical treatise, Korolev cut Glushko short, before summarizing with a succinct conclusion.

After a short discussion on the R-/'s capabilities, Korolev innocuously added, "Nikita

Sergeyevich [Khrushchev], we want to introduce you to an application of our rockets for

research into the upper layers of the atmosphere, and for experiments outside the atmosphere.' ..... The Soviet leader expressed polite interest, although it was clear by this time that

most of the guests were becoming tired and bored with the proceedings. Undeterred, Korolev

first showed them huge photographs of suborbital missiles that were used for biological and

geophysical investigations. Detecting that his guests were in a hurry to leave, he quickly moved

ahead and pointed everyone's attention to a display in a corner of the room of a model of an

artificial satellite that had been created as part of the satellite program of the Academy of

Sciences. Invoking the name of a legendary Soviet scientist, Korolev hurriedly explained that it

was possible to realize the dreams of Tsiolkovskiy with the use of the R-7 missile. Korolev

pointed out that the United States had stepped up its satellite program, but that compared to

the "skinny" U.S. launch vehicle, the Soviet R-/could significantly outdo that project in terms

of the mass of the satellite. In closing, he added that the costs for such a project would be meager, because the basic expense for the launcher was already allocated in the R-7 booster.

Khrushchev began to exhibit some interest, and he asked Korolev if such a plan might not

harm the R-7 weapons research program, given that was the primary focus of work at Korolev's

design bureau. Clearly oversimplifying the difficulties involved, Korolev shot back that unlike

the United States, which was spending millions of dollars to develop a special rocket to launch

a satellite, all the Soviets would have to do was replace the warhead with a satellite on the

R-7, Khrushchev hesitated for a second, perhaps suspicious of Korolev's intentions, but

answered back, "If the main task doesn't suffer, do it.' ....

After more than two years of explicit lobbying, the artificial satellite project was a reality.

And it owed its approval to Korolev more than anyone. Tikhonravov had provided the technical expertise, and Keldysh had helped with his political clout, but it was finally Korolev's repeated requests, letters, meetings, reports, and entreaties that finally forced the decision. Korolev

also had a climate conducive to his needs. His standing among the military and industrial community had evolved over the years from maverick engineer to genius manager. His successes

with the series of ballistic missiles pleased both the military and industry. Also, it did not hurt

that both of these sectors, by 1956, were populated by individuals who were sympathetic to

the Korolev's unquenchable thirst for space exploration. Clearly, Korolev alone could not have

107. Barry."The MissileDesignBureaux."

108. Khrushchev,Nikita Khrushcheu:torn/. p. 106

109. Ibid., p. 109.

I IO. Ibid, pp. I I0- I I Forotherbriefdescriptionsof the February1956visit, seeIshlinskiy.ed.,7]kadernik

S P Koroleu.pp.319-20,337-38.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

done it. Events outside his control--such as the Eisenhower administration's announcement,

Sedov's press conference, the fall of the Beriya group in the nuclear weapons industry, and

Khrushchev's rise to power--were pivotal events on the road to approval, But hindsight suggests that the Soviet space program was born on January 30, 1956, and without Korolev, it

would have never been conceived.

From Object D to the Simple Satellite

Object D (or D-I ) was so named because it would be the fifth type of payload to be carried on an R-?. Objects A, B, V, and G were designations for different nuclear warhead containers."' The satellite was a complex scientific laboratory, far more sophisticated than anything

planned for launch in the world in 1956. While Kryukov's engineers depended greatly on

Tikhonravov's early work on satellites, much of the actual design was a journey into uncharted

territory for OKB-I. There was little precedent for creating pressurized containers and instrumentation for work in Earth orbit, while long-range communications systems had to be

designed without the benefit of prior experience. The engineers were aware of the trajectory

tracking and support capabilities for the R-Z missile, and this provided a context for determining the levels of contact with the vehicle. The fact that the object would be out of contact with

the ground for long periods of time (unlike sounding rockets) meant that new self-switching

automated systems would have to be used. The selection of metals to construct the satellite

also presented problems to the engineers because the effects of continuous exposure to the

space environment were still in the realm of conjecture. The experiments and experience from

sounding rocket tests provided a database for the final selection.

On February 25, 1956, the Keldysh commission issued the technical requirements for

building the satellite: detailed design work began on March 5. Tikhonravov's group at

NIl-4 and Korolev's OKB-I at NII-88 were the two most active participants in this process, but

numerous other organizations contributed to various elements of the complete satellite. By

June 14, Korolev had finalized the necessary changes to the basic 8K;'I version of the R-1 ICBM

to use it for a satellite launch. The new booster, designated "product 8A92," would incorporate a number of major changes, including the use of uprated main engines, the deletion of the

central radio package on the booster, and a new payload fairing replacing the one used for a

nuclear warhead. A month later, at a meeting of chief designers on July 24, 1956, Korolev formally signed the initial draft plan for Object D, The document was co-signed by his senior associates Tikhonravov, Bushuyev, Okhapkin, and Voskresenskiy. ''2

The intensive work on Object D was obviously not only project at OKB-I. In fact, officially at least, it was an effort with very low priority, far behind the plethora of military work that

Korolev oversaw during this period. These included the dozens of test launches of the strategic R-5M, the experimental M-5RD and R-5R missiles, and the world's first submarine-launched

ballistic missile, the R-I IFM. He also directed draft plan work on an improved version of the

nuclear R-5M, the experimental R-5R, the basic R-I I FM, and an underwater version of the same

missile. He was the scientific leader for the enormous R-7 ICBM effort and the work on the

short-range R-I t M, both yet to fly. This was in addition to work on scientific missiles such as

the R- IYe, the R-5P,, and of course Object D. There were also various conferences, meetings,

and functions to attend. Given the magnitude of work at OKB- I, it was becoming cumbersome

I I I Raushenbakh,ed.,Materialypoistorii kosmlcheskogo, p. 209._, B, V,G, andD arethe first five lettersol theRussiancyrillicalphabet.

112. Golovanov,Koroleu,p. 530: Ishlinskiy,ed., AkademikS. P Koroleu,p. 446: Varfolomeyev,"Soviet

Rocketrythat ConqueredSpace:PartI." Tikhonravovwasofficiallyanemployeeof NIl-4, but hewastemporarily

workingas thechiefconsultantto NII-88'sOKB I.

151
152

to deal with OKB-I as a functional unit of NII-88. Thus, by an order (no. 3 I0) of the Ministry

of Defense Industries, dated August 14, t956, OKB-I became a separate and independent organization within the ministry, with its own production plant and scientific research

departments. _'' It took ten years for Korolev's small department at a research institute to evolve

into an independent organization with thousands of employees--one that was the leading

developer of long-range ballistic missiles in the Soviet Union, and the only one working on a

space program.

It was at the same time that four of Korolev's deputies were officially named deputy chief

designers of the independent entity: Vasiliy R Mishin (first deputy for planning-design work),

Konstantin D. Bushuyev (deputy for planning), Sergey O. Okhapkin (deputy for design and

documentation), and Leonid A. Voskresenskiy (deputy for ground and flight-testing).'" With

the exception of Korolev and Mishin, Bushuyev was the most powerful person at OKB-I. An

exceptionally intelligent and learned individual, he had played a leading role in the development

of every single ballistic missile at NII-88, beginning with the R-2 rocket in the late 1950s. The

forty-two-year-old engineer was OKB-I's expert in the areas of project planning, project parameter selection, and computation and research work on aerodynamics, ballistics, stability, surface tension, and missile mass balance. Upon Bushuyev's new appointment as deputy at

OKB-I, he inherited all the work on space themes at the design bureau. By 1961, his sole

responsibility was all of the space vehicle development, thus overseeing every single piloted

space project through the 1960s and 1910s. ''_ Bushuyev's new appointment had a second

dimension. For almost two years, Korolev had been lobbying for a transfer of Tikhonravov's productive group at NIl-4 to OKB-I. With the acceleration of work on Object D, the government

finally agreed to the request, and on November I, 1956, Tikhonravov and most of his group of

assistants were institutionally transferred to OKB-I, under Bushuyev's command, to comprise

the new Department No. 9 dedicated to space themes. ''_ Yevgeniy F. Ryazanov was named

Tikhonravov's deputy, while another assistant, Ilya V. Lavrov, was appointed to oversee the

technical aspects of the Object D effort.

By mid-t956, the Object D project was beginning to fall significantly behind schedule.

Some subcontractors were particularly lackadaisical in their assignments, and parts were often

delivered that did not fit the original specifications. On September 14, Keldysh made a personal

plea at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences Presidium for speeding up work, invoking a threat

all would understand: "we all want our satellite to fly earlier than the Americans. "'_ To corn113 Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 356: Golovanov, Koroleu.p, 464; "TsNIIMash--One of the Leading Space

Branches";Ishlinskiy.ed.,7_kademikS.P Koroleu,p 446. Although the orderwas signedin August 1956,it seemsthat the

separation was not enacted until September-October 1956. See Yu ,q Mozzhorin. "The Central Scientific Research

Instituteof MachineBuilding--The ChiefCenter in the SovietRocket-SpaceIndustry" (Englishtitle),/z istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 60 (1990):20-40.

114 Chertok.Raketyi lyudi, p. 356.All had alreadybeenofficially appointeddeputy chief designers,but they had

been servingin that capacity in Nil 88s OKB-I, not the independentOKB-I Mishin had been appointed in April 1950,

Okhapkin in December1952,Voskresenskiyin October 1953.and Bushuyevin 1954 Chertok also suggeststhat A. R

Abramov was one of thoseappointedaschief designersin August 1956.but by Abramov's own account,he was not pro

moted to such a post until 1966.By 1961.at leastnine other engineershad beenappointed deputy chief designers:B.Ye,

Chertok, D I. Kozlov, S S. Kryukov.P I Meleshin. M, V. Melnikov.M, F Reshetnev,Ye,V. Shabarov,M. K. Tikhonravov.

and P V. Tsybin.

II 5 S.S.Kryukov,"K. D. Bushuyev--Scholar.Planner,TechnicalDirectorof the Soyuz-Apollo' Program"(English

title), in B V Raushenbakh,ed., Iss[edouaniyetuorchestuaosnouopolozhnikoukosmonaut_kiee souromennyyeproblemy

(Moscow: Nauka, 1989).p. 4 I: M. V. Keldysh.A. A. Dorodnitsyn,and S, RKorolev, "On the ScientificActivities of K D

Bushuyev"(Englishtitle), in Avduyevskiyand Eneyev.eds..M. _ZKeldysh.pp. 197-98.

116 Ishlinskiy.ed.. ,,qkadernikS,P Koroleu.p. 447. Korolev'sfirst requestfortransferringTikhonravov'sdepartment

was during a meeting with Ustinov on December22, 1954,He repeatedthe requestto Nedelinon December27. 1955.

I 17 An edited versionof Keldyshs speechhas been published as M. V. Keldysh, "On Artificial Satellitesof the

Earth" {Englishtitle), in Avduyevskiyand Eneyev.eds..M k,"Keldysh.pp. 235-40. Seealso Golovanov.Koroteu,p 530.

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
SPUTNIK

pensate for the volume of work, Korolev finalized a plan ten days later to divide the work into

three variants of the basic Object D, each distinguished by the nature of its scientific apparatus. He then signed an amended draft plan for the satellite on September 25. Its eight scientific goals were listed as:

• Measurement of atmospheric density, pressure, and ion composition at altitudes between

200 and 500 kilometers

• Research into solar corpuscular radiation

• Measurement of ion concentrations in the chosen orbit

• Measurement of inherent electrical charges

• Measurement of Earth's magnetic fields at altitudes of 200 to 500 kilometers

• Studies of cosmic rays

• Research into ultraviolet and x-ray portions of the solar spectrum

• Research into the possibility of ensuring the survival of an animal in orbit' '_

Although many of the specifics had changed, much of the basis for Object D was taken

from the historic proposal for the Simplest Satellite, which was submitted to the government in

1954. At a special meeting on September 28, 1956, the Keldysh commission fully approved the

draft plan, thus freezing the final design of the spacecraft. '`°

Tikhonravov's department had by this time emerged with three airtight designs of Object

D, each with a roughly conical shape and a mass between 1,000 and 1,400 kilograms. The most

favored version included a power supply system with solar and chemical batteries and used a

special system of louvers on the exterior and fans on the interior for thermal regulation. There

were also radio communications devices with multichannel capability for transmitting telemetric data and receiving ground commands. Three quarters of the mass of the object consisted of

scientific instruments. In one of the three versions of Object D, engineers ensured the possibility of installing a small cockpit to carry a dog into orbit. ':° This cabin was a direct modification of capsules launched aboard the upper atmosphere sounding rockets throughout the

1950s. Few details have been released on the biological version of Object D, although presumably the animal capsule inside the conical spacecraft was not recoverable, as specified in the

original 1954 document.

Events in the satellite program took an abrupt turn in the waning months of 1956. Actual

test models of Object D, expected to be ready by October, remained unfinished. By early

November. Korolev was suffering from great anxiety, no doubt compounded by his extraordinarily busy plans, as he traveled from Kaliningrad to Kapustin Yar to Tyura-Tam to Molotovsk

and back several times to oversee various projects. '2' Part of this anxiety was from serious concerns that his project would be suddenly preempted with a satellite launch from the United

States. In September 1956, the U.S. Army had launched aJupiter C missile from Patrick Air Force

Baseat Cape Canaveral, Florida, that could have launched a satellite into orbit if it had included

a live third stage. Korolev mistakenly believed that it had been a secret attempt to launch a

_18_The completetext of thedraftplanhasbeenpublishedasS.R Korolev,et aL, "ThesisReportonthe

Developmentof a DraftPlanlot an ArtificialSatelliteof the Earth"(Englishtitle), in Keldysh.ed., Tuorcheskoye

naslediye.ZtkademikaSergeyaPavloviehaKoroleva.pp. 362-68.

tl9 Ishlinskiy,ed, ,qkademikS P Koroleu.p. 441.Thedraftplanwasapprovedby theSpecialCommittee

on September30. 1956.

120. Yu. Biryukov."From the History of SpaceScienceThe Priceof Decision--FirstPlace(The First

Satellites)"(Englishtitle).,Zluiatsiyai kosmonaufikano. I0 (October1991): 3?-39.

121 Kaliningradwasthelocationof OKB I, whileseatrialsof theR-IIFMwerecarriedout nearMolotovsk

153
154

satellite.'_2 A second concern were the results of static testing of the R-7 engines on the ground.

Instead of the projected specific impulse of 309 to 3 IO seconds, the R-7 engines could not produce more than 304 seconds--too low for the heavy Object D satellite. He realized that perhaps

he was making this effort too complicated. Why not attempt to launch something simpler on

the first orbital attempt instead of a sophisticated one-and-a-half-ton scientific observatory?

At the end of November, Tikhonravov was perceptive enough to detect Korolev's anxiety

and verbalized it: "What if we make the satellite a little lighter? Thirty kilograms or so, or even

lighter? ..... Not one to sit still, Korolev immediately took action on the matter. On November

2.5, he ordered a young engineer at OKB-I, Nikolay A. Kutyrkin, to begin designing this new

smaller satellite. Another young man, Georgiy M. Grechko, set about calculating preliminary

ballistics on the launch. Politically, it was not all that easy. Keldysh was dead set against the

idea, which was not surprising because he had invested so much time and energy into Object

D. There were other engineers within OKB- I who were also not too enthused by the new plan.

All eventually ceded to the strong-willed Korolev. As insurance, Korolev decided not to depend

on dozens of other subcontractors. He made sure that the satellite would be designed and manufactured completely within his own design bureau with the help of only two outside organizations: the Scientific-Research Institute of Current Sources under Nikolay S. Lidorenko for the

design of the on-board batteries and NII-885 under Chief Designer Ryazanskiy for the radio

transmitters.

On January 5, 1957, Korolev sent a better describing his revised plan to the Special

Committee. He asked for permission to launch two small satellites, each with a mass of forty

to fifty kilograms, during the period of April-June 1957 immediately prior to the beginning of

the IGY. Once again, his thinking was simple: because the United States had plans for launching satellites during the IGY, he could ensure Soviet preeminence by launching one before the

start of the IGY. This plan would be contingent on the timetable for the R-7 program, which

Korolev admitted was behind schedule: the first launch of the missile was set for March 1957,

at the earliest. Each satellite would orbit Earth at altitudes of 225 to 500 kilometers and contain

a simple shortwave transmitter with a power source sufficient for ten days' operation. Korolev

did not obscure the reasons for the abrupt change in plans:

.. the United States is conducting very intensive plans fior launching an artificial Earth

satellite. The most well-known project under the name "Vanguard" uses a three-stage

missile.., the satellite proposed is a spherical container of 50 centimeters diameter and

a mass of approximately I0 kilograms. In September 1956, the U.S.Zt. attempted to

launch a three-stage missile with a satellite from Patrick Base in the state of Florida

which was kept secret, The _mericans [ailed to launch the satellite,., and the payload

flew about 3,000 miles or approximately 4,800 kilometers. This flight was then publicized in the press as a national record. They emphasized that U.S. rockets can fly higher and farther than all the rockets in the world, including Soviet rockets. From separate

printed reports, it is known that the U.S.,zt. is preparing in the nearest months a new

attempt to launch an artificial Earth satellite and is willing to pay any price to achieve

this priority.'"4

122. The launch about which Kofolev was informed was a Jupiter C missile (no. RTV-I), which flew a distance of 5,300 kilometers on September20, 1956, during a _eentrytest. P_live third stage could have put a small

payload into orbit.

123. Golovanov. "The Beginning o| the SpaceEra": Golovanov, Koroleu.p. _532,

124, The complete text of Korolev's letter is reproduced asS. P,Korolev, "Proposalon the First Launch o[ an

Artificial Satellite of the Earth Beforethe Start of the International Geophysical Year" (English title), in Keldysh, ed.,

Tuorcheskoyenaslediye .,qkademiko SergeyaPaulouieha Koroleua, pp. 369-70.

H

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

While Korolev's information on U.S. plans may have been in error, his instincts were not

that far off. The United States could have launched a satellite by early 1957, but various institutional and political obstacles precluded such an attempt.

By January 25, 1957, Korolev had approved the initial design details of the satellite officially designated the Simple Satellite No. I (PS-I). It seems that his letter had adequately invoked

the specter of U.S. eminence in the field of military technology; Special Committee Chairman

Ryabikov was evidently strongly in favor of the new plan. His support proved to be crucial. On

February I_5, the USSR Council of Ministers formally signed a decree (no. 171-83ss) titled "On

Measures to Carry out in the International Geophysical Year," agreeing to the new proposal. '_'

The two new satellites, PS-I and PS-2, would weigh approximately IOO kilograms and be

launched in April-May 1957, after one or two fully successful R-7 ICBM launches. Meanwhile,

the Object D launch was pushed back to April 1958. Focused on a more modest objective,

Korolev wasted little time. He quickly sent out technical specifications for the initial satellite

PS-I to the two subcontractors. In addition, the Experimental Design Bureau of the Moscow

Power Institute under Chief Designer Aleksey F. Bogomolov modified its Tral telemetry system

on the R-Z for use on the satellite launch. '_6By this time, there was an impressive sight at the

Tyura-Tam launch base: the first flight article of the magnificent R-7 was on the launch pad.

The R-7 in Flight

The R-Z launch program, as with any other important weapons project, was overseen

through its test program under the guidance of a special State Commission, a temporary ad hoc

body comprised of various representatives of the military, industry, and the design bureaus.

TheState Commission for the Sputnik satellite shown in 1957 Seatedleft to right are: Ivan Butychev,

@igoriy Udarou, 7]leksandr Mrykin. Nikolay Pilyugin. Mstislav I<eldysh,Vasiliy Mishin, Leonid Voskresenskiy,

Vasiliy Ryabikov. Mitro[an Nedelin, SergeyI<oroleu.Konstantin Rudneu, V'alentin Glushko. and Vladimir Barmin.

Standing le[t to right are: ;qleksey Bogomolou. Pavel Trubaehev, Viktor Kuznetsov, ,,'qnatoliyVasilyeu.

Konstantin Bushuyeu,,.'qleksandrNosov, Ivan Borisenko,,,qlekseyNes_erenko,_eorgiy Pashkov,

Mikhail Ryazanskiy, and Viktor Kurbatov. (files of ,Z]si[Siddiqi)

125. Semenov, ed., RaketnoKosmieheskaya Korporatsiya, pp. 88, 632; Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S P

Koroleu, p. 441, Other sources say that the decreewas issuedon February 1, 1957.SeeVetrov, "The First Satellite."

126. Lardier, L'/qstronautiqueSoui_tique. p. 108; Ishlinskiy, ed., .gkademik S P Korotev,p. 441. Actual tests

of the instrument wereconducted beginning May 5, 1951.in which a helicopter was usedto track the satellite using

a 200-meter cable. The technical specifications for the PS-I's radio transmitter were approvedon February 15, 1951.

the sameday that the project was approved by the Soviet government.

15S
156

UnlikeformalandpermanentinstitutionssuchastheSpecialCommitteeor theMilitaryIndustrialCommission,theStateCommissionwouldremainexistenceonlyduringthetestingphase,andit wouldserveastheprimaryconduitforcommunicationwithPartyleaders,

suchasKhrushchev,onthestateoftheprogram.TheUSSRCouncilof Ministers--thatis,

KhrushchevandBulganin--establishedafourteen-memberStateCommissionfortheR-7test

seriesonAugust3t, 19.56.VasiliyM.Ryabikov,thepowerfulindustrialbureaucratwhooversawtheentiremissileindustryaschairmanof theSpecialCommitteeforArmamentsof the

ArmyandNavy,wasappointedtoleadthebody.Korolevwasadeputychairmanand"techni

calleader."Theremainderconsistedofthreemilitaryrepresentatives(Mrykin,Nedelin,and

Nesterenko),fivechiefdesigners(Barmin,Glushko,Kuznetsov,Pilyugin,andRyazanskiy),and

fourmenfromthedefenseindustry(Pashkov,Peresypkin,Udarov,andVladimirskiy).Although

theywerenotofficialmembersofthecommission,twoscientists,MstislavV.Keldyshand

AleksandrYu.Ishlinskiy,participatedinitsproceedings.'_7

TheR-7hadrunintosomemajordelaysinlate19.56,primarilyrelatedtotheworkonthe

mainengines.Althoughthefirstlaunchwasoriginallyplannedforearly19.57,it hadbeenprogressivelyshiftedtoMarchofthatyear.Typicaloflarge-scaleendeavors,therewerenumerous

subcontractorandmanagementproblems,all of whichwereaddressedby the State

Commissioninlate1956.AsKorolevreportedinalettertothegovernment,"Thepreparatory

operationsforthefirstlaunchoftherocketareproceedingwithsignificantdifficultiesand

behindschedule.... '.... The static tests of complete first and second stages at Zagorsk finally

cleared the way for launch planning, and the first experimental model of the R-7, the 8K71SN,

was transported from Leningrad and assembled at Tyura-Tam in December 1956 for placement

on the launch pad and subsequent captive tests. The operation of the ground segment of the

telemetry network was also given a thorough checkout at the time, with the first telemetric contact between Tyura-Tam and Moscow established on December 27. The tracking, telemetry, and

command network, officially called the Range Measurement Complex, comprised nine Tayga

stations located at various points between one and a half and 800 kilometers from the launch

pad at site I, as well as six Kama stations placed between thirty-two and 120 kilometers from

127. Semenov.ed. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 79. The official positions of the members of the

state commission for the R-7 were: V. M, Ryabikov (Chairman of the Special Committee). S. R Korolev (Chief

Designerof OKB-I ), A. G. Mrykin (First Deputy Chief of the Directorateof the Chief of ReactiveArmaments), M. I.

Nedelin (Deputy Minister of Defensefor Reactive Armaments), A. I. Nesterenko (Commander of NIIP-5), V. P.

Barmin (Chief Designer of GKSB SpetsMash). V. R Glushko (Chief Designer of OKB-456). V I. Kuznetsov (Chief

Designer of Nil 10), N A Pilyugin (Chief Designer of NII-885), M. S. Ryazanskiy (Chief Designer and Director of

NII-885), G. N. Pashkov (Deputy Chairman of the Special Committee). I. T. Peresypkin (Minister of

Communications). G. R Udarov (Deputy Minister of Machine Building), and S. M Vladimirskiy (Deputy Minister of

RadioTechnical Industry) M. V Keldysh was the Chief of the Department of Applied Mathematics of the V. A

Steklov Mathematics Institute of the Academy of Sciencesand Director of Nil-l, while A Yu. Ishlinskiy was the

Director of the Moscow Institute for Problemsof Mechanics and "Scientific Consultant" to Nil t0. By the time that

launches of the R-7 began in May 1957,several other men were involved with the work of the State Commission,

including I T. Bulychev (Chief of the Communications Directorate of the Ministry of Defense), h S Konev (First

Deputy Minister of Defense), A. A. Maksimov (from the Directorate of the Chief of Reactive Armaments), N. D.

Psurtsev(Minister of Communications), K. N. Rudnev (Deputy Minister of DefenseIndustries). and S. P Shishkin

(Chief Designer of KB II). SeeCouncil of Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, Proryu u kosmos, pp. I0 It:

A. A. Maksimov, "Heat. Water. and Red Buttons, or Rehearsalof the Historic Launch" (English title). Zemtya i uselennaya no. 5 (September-October 1990): 60-65: A A. Maksimov, "The First Launch From Baykonur" (English

title), Zemtya i usetennayano. I (January-February 1991): 89 93.

128. Golovanov, "The Beginning of the Space Era,"

CHALLENGE TO 41_POLLO
SPUTNIK

the target area in the Kamchatka peninsula in the eastern Soviet Union, about 6,500 kilometers

from Tyura-Tam. 2_

On March 4, 1957, Korolev signed the Technical Assignment No. I document, formally

approving preparations for the launch. Through the remaining days of March and April, various

members of the State Commission flew into Tyura-Tam. Korolev, in the company of Chief

Designer Pilyugin, arrived on April 10, followed by Chairman Ryabikov six days later. On the

way to the launch range, Korolev had told Pilyugin that he would not return until the missile

had flown. The presence of high-ranking military officers Nedelin and Mrykin markedly

increased the tension at the launch site, partly because of Mrykin's reputation for terrifying reprimands for those that were not doing their job well. Others remember the atmosphere as being

festive as a result of local troops being relocated to new barracks from their previous homes in

railway cars. On Korolev's suggestion, officials carried out a complete dress rehearsal of the

transportation from the Assembly-Testing Building at site 2 to the launch pad at site I on May

4, '_°At the pad itself, the missile was uprighted over the launch structure and held down by the

pad's four "petals." After installation, engineers established electrical and pneumatic connections with ground equipment. The entire rehearsal was uneventful, save for a humorous incident involving Marshal Nedelin, who had decided to check whether the emergency alarm

system for the launch site was in working order. When the appropriate alarm button was

pressed, nothin8 happened. Fuming at the failure, Nedelin vented with full force at engineer Lt.

Colonel Aleksandr I. Nosov, the Deputy Commander of NIIP-5 for Experimental-Test Work.

Several members of the State Commission entered the command bunker, where they discovered that a young army sergeant on a cigarette break had left a particularly important switch in

the wrong position. Suddenly, the emergency alarm went off, and the fire squadron rushed to

the site as part of the rehearsal and completely doused the bunker with an extinguisher.

Needless to say, all the commission members, fully soaked by accident, were not too happy. '_'

On the afternoon of May 6, the R-7 (product 8K71 number M I-5) was moved once again

to the pad, this time escorted on foot by Ryabikov, Korolev, Nedelin, and others in a ceremonial and solemn act that would become common for future launches. '_2Two days later, the State

Commission formally met to set the first launch window between the 13th and 18th of the

month. The only major problems were some communications difficulties with the center at the

target site near the Klyuchevskhaya-Sopka volcano in Kamchatka. Controllers faced other major

problems in the following days: there was a guidance system problem as a result of a loose

screw on the I lth and a more serious electrical supply malfunction the following day during a

rehearsal launch. '_ Having rectified these problems, the State Commission met on the night of

the 14th to approve the first launch between 1400 and 1700 hours, Moscow Time, the following day.'_ There were several reasons for the time slot selection. The launch time had to be during daylight hours for local optical tracking. The reentry over Kamchatka peninsula of the

129. Councilof Veteransof the BaykonurCosmodrome,Proryuu kosmos,p. 90:Villain. ed, Baikonour.p.

55:Varlolomeyev,"SovietRocketrythat ConqueredSpace:PartI": Mozzhorin,el al., eds.,Naehatokosmieheskoy

ery,p, 57.Eachstationconsistedof asetof buildingsforequipmentandstaffaccommodations.Theequipmentwas

composedof telemetry,tracking,andtimecodereceivers,whichwerepoweredbyanindependentpowergenerator.

In thetotaJRangeMeasureme,ntComplexin earl),/957,thereweretweJveB,,nokJtrackingdevices,eightIrtysb,inter

ferometers,ten KT-50cinetelescopes,two KST-80movietelescopes,threecinetheodolites,andvariousothersmaller instruments

130. Villain. ed., Baikonour,p. 2Z; Maksimov,"Heat,Water,and RedButtons": Romanov,Koroteu.pp

268-69:Lardier,LT_stronaufiqueSouietique p, 92.

13I. Mozzhorin,et at. eds.,Naehalokosmicheskoyery.pp 134-35.

132. Gotovanov,Koroteu,p. 503.ArticlesM I-I to MI-4 wereground-testversions.

133. Villain,ed..Baikoaour,p 27: Maksimov,"The FirstLaunchFromBaykonur."

134. Localtimewasthreehoursaheadof MoscowTime.

157
158

dummy warhead had to be observed in the night sky. Finally, the launch had to occur as close

to nighttime as possible so as to prevent observation by LI.S. optical tracking stations.

Fueling began on the R-7 at 0400 hours Moscow Time, on May 15, under the direction of

Georgiy M. Grechko, a twenty-six-year-old engineer from OKB-I who would fly into space from

the same site eighteen years later. The process was quite a grueling ordeal and something to

which neither the artillery men nor the engineers particularly looked forward. The hardest part

was handling liquid oxygen (LOX), which was maintained at a temperature of minus

190 degrees Centigrade. The oxidizer could not be pumped all at once into the missile because

the sudden change in temperature would have caused undesirable structural changes in the

missile. Thus, a little amount was transferred to wash and chill the tanks of the five boosters.

Only after this could pad workers fill the missile with the bulk of the LOX. Even after complete

fueling, the LOX hoses were kept attached to the rocket to continually compensate for the

change to gaseous state of the LOX in the hot temperatures in Kazakhstan. The entire process

of fueling for the initial variant took close to five hours. '_

Tensions were high during launch day, and there was a major altercation between Colonel

Aleksandr A. Maksimov, the secretary of the State Commission, and Korotev, when the former

detected a large oxygen leak at the base of the rocket. As more and more individuals began to

congregate at the pad, Korolev lost his temper and began to demand to Chairman Ryabikov that

Maksimov be immediately taken off the pad area for insubordination. The matter was eventually

resolved when Korolev admitted that there was

in fact a leak: he apologized in front of the entire

commission to Maksimov. The leak was repaired

quickly, and launch preparations continued. '_

The launch took place at 1901 hours

Moscow Time on May 15, 1957. Deputy Chief

Designer Voskresenskiy and Lt. Colonel Nosov

supervised the launch sequence from a bunker

300 meters from the pad. '_7The launch pad's

"petal" structure performed flawlessly, and the

rocket lifted gracefully into the sky. The expectations of the State Commission turned sour

when incoming telemetry indicated that the

engine in one of the strap-ons (Blok D) had cut

off at T+98 seconds. Engineers later discovered

that the entire strap-on had broken away from

the central core, following which the missile disintegrated, with various parts landing as far

away as 400 kilometers from the launch site.

Chief Designer Bogomolov, responsible for the

Trai telemetry system for the booster, had continued to shout until almost 300 seconds that Thefirst R-7ICBM shown on the single launch pad

at site I at Tyura-Tam in early 195Z Note the

all was well because signals were still coming "tulip" launch structure around the base o[the

in, but Korolev intuitively knew that the rocket rocket Later operational models of the rocket had a

was going nowhere. "We wanted to surprise different payload fairing (copyright .SteuenZatoga)

135 Zaloga. Target,Zimerica, p 144.

136 Mozzhorin, et al. eds., Dorogi v kosmos/, p. 114:Villain. ed, Baikonour, pp. 29-30.

137 The launch button for this first launch from Tyura-Tamwas pressed by thirty-three-year-old Lt. Colonel

Ye. I Ostashev, the chief of the First Testing Directorate of NIIP-5. One source states that the launch was at

1905 hours Moscow Time SeeMaksimov. "The First Launch From Baykonur."

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
SPUTNIK

the world, but the rocket is lying on the ground 300 kilometers from here," he was quoted as

saying. '_ An extensive investigation later revealed that a fuel leak in the Blok D engine's pump

outlet, combined with the heat from the neighboring engines, had led to a fire that had literally engulfed the booster almost from launch. _

Khrushchev was evidently disappointed by the result. Although he was keenly interested

in the proceedings at Tyura-Tam, he was careful enough to let Ryabikov, Korolev, and Nedelin

do their jobs without interference from the higher-ups. He only spoke to Korolev once prior to

the launch. He told his son: "If there is any need, Korolev will call me, that's how we arranged

it. '''4° On the evening of May 15, when the bad news was relayed to him, Khrushchev was

silent and pensive, recognizing that accidents were inevitable in such complex projects. The

failure took a more serious toll with the engineers back in Kazakhstan. Korolev's deputy

Voskresenskiy was severely ill immediately following the failure, and Korolev sent him back to

Moscow along with Chief Designers Barmin and Pilyugin. Most members of the State

Commission also returned to their duties in Moscow until preparations could be made for a second attempt, leaving Korolev to direct the accident investigation and preparations for a second

launch. The fifty-year-old Korolev was not in good health: he had a bad sore throat and had to

take penicillin shots several times. His letters to his wife at the time were punctuated with musings full of doubt and frustration:

When things are going badly, I have fewer "friends." . . . My frame of mind is bad. I

will not hide it. it is very difficult to get through our failures .... There is a state of alarm

and worry .... It is a hot 55 degrees here.'_'

The second R-7 vehicle, 8K71 number M 1-6, arrived at the pad in early June after new heatdeflecting shields had been installed in the tail section of the missile. During a launch attempt

on June 9, there was a sudden abort after the launch command--a problem traced to a nitrogen valve that had remained in the closed position instead of open. The exact same thing

occurred on another attempt the following day./q final attempt at launch on June I I also ended

in a launch abort. Just after the abort, the entire area was drenched in a tropical rainstorm,

which flooded the basement of several buildings, including the tqssembly-Testing Building at

site 2. Luckily, military personnel were able to save almost all of the valuable equipment, some

simply by drying out in the Sun. '42

As the engineers pored over telemetry, they determined one of the causes for the abort relatively quickly: yet another valve was left in a wrong position. It was clear that OKB-I was to

blame for the incorrect assembly, but Korolev tried every trick he could think of to obscure the

fact that it was one of his employees who had made the egregious error, Although Korolev was

magnanimous and fair in his technical evaluations, he was not, by any means, willing to take

the blame when it was a case of his design bureau over another. His usual strategy in such situations would be to either cloud the problem with double-talk or force Glushko or Pilyugin to

admit to errors. If an accident commission had to be established to address the issue, he always

sent either Mishin or Voskresenskiy to defend OKB-I, preferring to remain "above the

138 Mozzhorin,et at.,eds,,Nachalokosmicheskoyery,pp.20,58,77:Councilof Veteransof theBaykonur

Cosmodrome,Proryvu kosmos,p. 173,

139. Mozzhorin,et al, eds.,Naehatokosmieheskoyery,p. 77.Somesourcessuggesthat the failurewas

causedby a rupturein a nitrogenpipeat T+103.6seconds.See_. A. Maksimov,"The Resultsof the FirstLaunch

FromBaykonur"(Englishtitle), ZemIyai uselennayano.2 (March-April 199t): 63-62.

140. Khrushchev,NikitaKhrushehev:tom I, p. 287.

14I, Golovanov,"The Beginningof theSpaceEra."

142. Councilof Veteransof theBaykonurCosmodrome,Proryvv kosmos,pp 2I, 113.

159
160

battle." This time, none of those tactics worked. Ryabikov was too smart for that, reading through

the technical jargon that Korolev had used to obfuscate OKB-l's role in the valve failure. Ryabikov

reportedly told Korolev, "What a cunning man you are, Sergey Pavlovich! So much stink about

what might have been caused by others, and so much perfume for your own shit .... "'_'

After an in-depth investigation, a third rocket, 8K71 number M I-7, was moved to the pad

for launch at 1553 hours on July 12. This time, the missile lifted off into the sky to the cheers

of observers. The euphoria evaporated when at T+33 seconds, all four strap-ons spuriously separated from the core because of a rapid rotation around the longitudinal axis/_"

The days following this failure were the lowest point for Korolev and his associates.

Suddenly, everything for which they had labored over three years had been put into doubt.

There was severe criticism from higher officials and even talk of curtailing the entire program.

For Korolev, the headaches were compounded by the cumulative delays of his Simple Satellite

project. He had originally planned for an orbital launch before the beginning of the IGY. After a

month into the IGY, the R-7 had not flown a successful mission. His dreams, his position, and

his status were all in jeopardy, and this began to affect his temperament. In mid-June, he wrote

to his wife, "Things are not going very well again," adding with a note of optimism, "Here,

right here and now, we must strive for the solution we need!" By July, things began to deteriorate. On the 8th, he wrote, "We are working very hard," but after the second launch failure,

he wrote on the 23rd, "Things are very, very bad. '''4_ One of Korolev's biographers wrote in

1987, "In all the postwar years, no days were more painful, difficult, or tense for Sergey

Pavlovich Korolev than those of that hot summer of 1957. '''_° At this point, it seems that had

abandoned his old ways of pitting design bureau against design bureau and genuinely asked for

cooperation. Anatoliy A. Abramov, the senior designer at OKB-I responsible for launch complexes, later recalled:

Now, if ever. was the time to despair, to lose faith in the whole program. However 5. I_

Korolev's composure and the absence of any attempt to find "scapegoats" made people

realize that we had embarked on a new level of scientific-technical complexity where

no one had gone before. To have fallen into confusion or become mired in apportioning

blame would have destroyed the team, its unity and self-confidence. The weight of

responsibility resting on S. R Koroleu's shoulders was enormous, especially when you

consider that he had still not been formally rehabilitated [after his imprisonment].

_rrest, prison and exile were still fresh in his mind. There were, moreover, certain people gossiping behind his back about the missile being conceptually flawed on the

premise that the 32 parallel combustion chambers could never be made to operate

simultaneously and reliably. '_

Another R-7, 8K71 number M I-8, was brought to the pad, this one lovingly prepared with

the utmost care. The rocket successfully lifted off the pad at site t at 1515 hours Moscow Time

on August 21, 1957. To the delight of the controllers, all the main engines, all the combustion

chambers, the four strap-ons, the launch complex, and the hybrid guidance system--all of it--

worked with clockwork precision. The missile and its payload flew 6,500 kilometers, and the

warhead entered the atmosphere over the target point at Kamchatka. The only damper on the

mission came when the specially constructed heat shield for the dummy warhead disintegrat143 Golovanov. Koroleu pp. 504-06.

144 Mozzhorin. et at, eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, p. 2l: Villain, ed.. Baikonour. p. 31.

145 Golovanov, "The Beginning of the Space Era."

146 Ibid

t47. Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy cry. p. 2 I.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
SPUTNIK

ed at an altitude of ten kilometers because of excessive thermodynamic forces. Despite the

unfortunate end, the R-7 had finally flown, vindicating the hopes of thousands of engineers

who had invested so much in it. Korolev was so subsumed by euphoria that he stayed awake

until three in the morning, speaking to his deputies and aides about the great possibilities that

had opened up, about the future, and mostly about his artificial satellite. '_ As for the missile,

a quickly dispatched search party of approximately 500 men spent almost a whole week gathering the remains of the dummy warhead and its thermal coating.

It was only after the search party returned that the State Commission wrote up an official

communique on the launch--a statement that was published in the Soviet media. It was

extremely unusual for Soviet authorities to publicize successes in any military field, and this

particular anomaly can perhaps be explained by the fact that the press release was aimed as

much at the United States as it was at Khrushchev's own opponents after the dangerous "AntiParty Group" had nearly wrested power from him during the summer of 1957. The communiqu_ included the following:

.,'q few days ago a super-long-range, intercontinental multistage ballistic missile was

launched, The tests of the missile were successful: they fully confirmed the correctness

of the calculations and the selected design. The flight of the missile took place at a very

great, hitherto unattained, attitude. Covering an enormous distance in a short time, the

missile hit the assigned region. The results obtained show that there is the possibility of

launching missiles into any region of the terrestrial globe. The solution of the problem

of creating intercontinental ballistic missiles will make it possible to reach remote

regions without resorting to strategic aviation, which at the present time is vulnerable

to modern means of antiaircraft defense. '_

Clearly, it did not have the intended effect on the U.S. public or media, because, for the

most part, little attention was given it. Those who did pay attention spoke only to dismiss the

claim--a stance justified partly by the black hole of information on Soviet ballistic missiles in

the open press. It would take thirty-eight more days before the entire world would take notice

that a new age had arrived, heralded by that same ICBM.

Sputnik

Work on the Simple Satellite PS-I had continued at an uneven pace since the development

of the object began in November 1956. Between March and August 1957, engineers carried out

computations to select and refine the trajectory of the launch vehicle and the satellite during

launch. These enormously complicated computations for the R-7 program were initially done

by hand using electrical arithrometers and six-digit trigonometric tables. When more complex

calculations were required, the engineers at OKB-I were offered the use of a "real" computer

recently installed at the premises of the Department of Applied Mathematics at Keldysh's

request. The gigantic machine filled up a huge room and may have been the fastest computer

in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s: it could perform I0,000 operations per second, a remarkable capability for Soviet computing machines of the time. '_'

148. Go]ovanov,"TheBeginningof the SpaceEra":Golovanov,Koroleu,p. 514:Councilof Veteransof the

BaykonurCosmodrome,Proryuv kosrnos,pp 25, 174:Villain,ed.,Baikonour,p 3I.

149. "Reporton IntercontinentalBallisticMissile"([ng[ish title), Prauda,August 27, 1957.A complete

Englishtranslationof thepressreleaseis includedin Krieger,BehindtheSputniks.pp.233-34.

150 Ishlinskiy,ed., )qkadernik S. P Koroleu,p, 447: M Lysenko,ed., Three Paces Beyond the Horizon

(Moscow:Mir Publishers.1989). p. 58.

161
162

Engineers, scientists, and military officers expended a major effort in creating a ground infrastructure to track and make contact not only with the PS-t, but also with the much more complex Object D, still awaiting launch in 1958. After fierce competition between the P,cademy of

Sciences and NIl-4 in the Ministry of Defense for the contract to build the tracking, telemetry, and

command network for the satellite, the latter establishment took on the job, in addition to its

duties in connection with the R-7 tracking network. TM This was the beginning of the creation of

the so-called Command-Measurement Complex (KIK), which has served every single piloted,

interplanetary, scientific, and military space mission from 1957 to the present time. Overseen by

NIl-4 Deputy Director Mozzhorin, KIK initially comprised seven major stations spread all across

the country at Tyura-Tam, Makat. Sary-Shagan, Yeniseysk, Iskhup, Yelizovo, and Klyuchi. '_ All the

tracking and telemetry data were relayed to a new Coordination-Computation Center, established

at NII-4's headquarters in Moscow in early 1957, under the command of Pavel g. ggadzhanov,

who was personally responsible for overseeing the tracking of all satellites in the early space program. This center eventually became part of the larger KIK when the KIK command center was

established on July 12, 1957, '5_An analogous group was also stationed at Tyura-Tam to support

the launch of satellites. Although Soviet sources suggest that the center and KIK were primarily

designed and built to support operations of Object D, it is clear that the primary raison d'etre was

to support future operations of military satellites.

Work on the Simple Satellite seems to have slowed down somewhat during the intense

preparations for the R-7 launch in the summer 1957. There were many debates on the shape of

the first satellite, with most senior OKB-I designers preferring a conical form because it fit well

with the nose cone of the rocket, t_t a meeting early in the year, Korolev had a change-of-heart

and suggested a metal sphere at least one meter in diameterJ '4 There were six major guidelines

followed in the construction of the PS-I:

• The satellite would have to be of maximum simplicity and reliability while keeping in mind

that methods used for the spacecraft would be used in future projects.

• The body of the satellite would be spherical to determine atmospheric density in its path.

• The satellite would be equipped with radio equipment working on at least two wavelengths

of sufficient power to be tracked by amateurs and to obtain data on the propagation of

radio waves through the atmosphere.

• The antennas would be designed so as not to affect the intensity of the radio signals

because of spinning.

• The power sources would comprise on-board chemical batteries, ensuring work for two to

three weeks.

• The attachment of the satellite to the core stage would be designed in such a way as to

minimize the possibility of a separation failure.

ISI Mozzhorin, et aL, eds.. Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery. p. 266. The Soviet government issued an official

decreeon September3, 1956. for the creation of the ground tracking network.

152. Many of the major participants involved in the creation o[ KIK arenamed in B. A. Pokrovskiy,"Zaryo"--

pozyunoye zemni (Moscow: Moskovskiy rabochiy, 1987), pp. 58, 10. They included numerous individuals who went

on to powerful positions in the Soviet space program: Pl. I, Sokolov (NII-4 Director), G A. ]-yulin

(Nil 4 First Deputy Director), R A. /_gadzhanov,I, A Artelshchikov, I. K. Bazhinov, A. V. Brykov,Yu V. Devyatkov,

P E, Eliasberg,V. T. Dolgov, G I. Levin, M. P Likhachev, G. S, Narimanov, Ye. V. Yakovlev,and I. M. Yatsunskiy.

Bazhinov, Brykov,and Yatsunskiywere members of Tikhonravov's original satellite researchgroup at NII-4, but they

werenot transferredto OKB-I in 1956like most of their associates.The Pokrovskiytext is a detailedexposition on the

history of KIK. Somemore details wereadded in Mozzhorin, et al.. eds., Nachalo kosmieheskoyery.

153. Pokrovskiy, "Zarya"--pozyunoye zemni, pp. 15-76; Maksimov. ed., RaketnyyeuoyskastrateDcheskogo

naznacheniya, p 49: Mozzhorin. et al. eds.,Naehalo kosmicheskoyery, p. 310. The first commander or the KIK center (TsKIK) was Maj. GeneralA A. Vitruk.

i54, i Minyuk and G,Vetrov, "Fantasyand Reaiity" (Englishtitle), 74uiatsiyai kosmonautika no. 9 (September

1987): 46-47.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
SPUTNIK

The five primary scientific objectives of the mission were to:

• Test the method of placing an artificial satellite into Earth orbit

• Provide information on the density of the atmosphere by calculating its lifetime in orbit

• Test radio and optical methods of orbital tracking

• Determine the effects of radio wave propagation through the atmosphere

• Check principles of pressurization used on the satellite _

The satellite as it eventually emerged was a pressurized sphere, fifty-eight centimeters in

diameter, made of an aluminum alloy. The sphere was constructed by combining two hemispherical casings together. The pressurized internal volume of the sphere was filled with nitrogen at 1.3 atmospheres, which maintained an electro-chemical source of power {three

silver-zinc batteries), two D-200 radio transmitters, a DTK-34 thermo-regulation system, a ventilation system, a communications system, temperature and pressure transmitters, and associated wiring. The two radio transmitters operated at frequencies of 20,005 and

40.002 megacycles at wavelengths of one and a half and seven and a half meters, respectively,

The signals on both the frequencies were spurts lasting 0.2 to 0.6 seconds, and they carried

information on the pressure and temperature inside the satellite. They provided the famous

"beep-beep" sound to the transmissions, The antenna system comprised four rods, two with

a length of 2.4 meters each and the remaining two with a length of 2.9 meters each, all of which

would spring open into their unfurled position once the satellite was in orbit. Engineers had

conducted tests of this radio system as early as May 5, 1957,using a helicopter and a ground

station. The total mass of the satellite was 83.6 kilograms, of which fifty-one kilograms represented the power source. The "lead designer" for the PS-I was Mikhail S. Khomyakov: Oleg G.

Ivanovskiy served as his deputy. '_6

Korolev, of course, kept close tabs on the

development of the PS-I and continuously

made sure that the spherical satellite was kept

spotlessly clean and shiny, not only for its reflective qualities, but also for its overall aesthetic

beauty. On one occasion, he flew into a rage at

a junior assembly shop worker for doing a poor

job on the outer surface of a mock-up of the

satellite. "This ball will be exhibited in museurns!," he shouted. '5' Deputy Chief Designer

Bushuyev telephoned Korolev at Tyura-Tam on

June 24 to inform him that he had just signed

the document specifying the final configuration

of the satellite. Actual construction took place

in P,ugust. The launch vehicle earmarked for the ThePS-Isatelliteis shownhereona riggingtruckin

satellite was a slightly uprated version of the theassemblyshopin thefall of 1957asa technician

basic 8K71 ICBM variant, renamed the 8K71PS. puts finishing touches on it.

155. M. K. Tikhonravov,"The Creationof theFirstArtificialEarthSatellite:SomeHistoricalDetails,"Journal

of theBritishInterplanetarySociety47 (May 1994):191-94.

156. /bid: Kustova,ed., Ot peruogo Sputnika, p. 37: Villain.ed., Baikonour.p. 26: Golovanov,Koroleu,p.

537: O, G. Ivanovskiy,Naperekorzemnomy prityazhenyu (Moscow: Politicheskoyliteratury. 1988).pp. 167-69.

157. Mikhail Florianskiy,"October4--For the FirstTime in the World," MoscowNewsSupplement40

(_98z)

163
164

The modifications included omitting the 300-kilogram radio package from the top of the core

booster, changing the burn times of the main engines, removing a vibration measurement system, using a special nozzle system to separate the booster from the satellite installed at the top

of the core stage, and installing a completely new payload shroud and container, which

replaced the warhead configuration. '_ The length of the booster with the new shroud was

29.167 meters, almost four meters shorter than the ICBM version. Because there was some

doubt as to whether ground observers would be able to observe the tiny satellite in orbit,

Korolev ensured that the central core of the launch vehicle was sufficiently reflective.

Academician Vladimir A. Kotelnikov, the Director of the Institute of Radio-technology and

Electronics at the Academy of Sciences, had one of his scientists develop an angular reflector

for this purpose, which was installed on the booster core. '_9

Apart from competition from the United States, Korolev had to unexpectedly address a different kind of threat at the time, one from within the Soviet Union in the person of Chief

Designer Mikhail K. Yangel of OKB-586. In the first quarter of 1957, Yangel's design bureau at

Dnepropetrovsk, on orders from Ustinov, had begun a study to explore the possibility of modifying its R-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile for a satellite launch. _'_The missile itself, fueled

by storable hypergolic propellants, unlike the R-Z, was the focus of a five-year-long development

program, at first under Korolev's tutelage, but later transferred to Dnepropetrovsk. Prodded by

the unending delays in the R-7 program, Yangel evaluated "the possibility of the immediate

launch of a similar satellite [as Korolev's] using the simplest of booster rockets based on the

strategic R-12 missile.' .... Although analysis proved that a hastily modified two-stage R 12 could

be used for this goal, it did not seem likely that a first launch could be carried out prior to either

the R-7 or the Americans. To Korolev's relief, the plan was shelved. The R-12 meanwhile began

a successful flight test program on June 22, 1957, from Kapustin Yar, at the very same time that

Korolev was watching his R-Ts blow up in the air. '_ Ironically, Yangel did end up using the R-t2

as the basis for a satellite launch vehicle, but that would not be until the early 1960s.

The Council of Ministers had formally approved the Simple Satellite program in February

1957. With one R-7 success under his belt, Korolev needed final permission from the State

Commission to proceed with an orbital launch. Despite the official governmental sanction, it

seems that this process was fraught with difficulty, suggesting that even at this late stage, there

were individuals on the commission who were not interested in the satellite attempt. At a State

Commission meeting soon after the August launch. Korolev formally asked for permission to

launch a satellite if a second R-7 successfully flew in early September. For many of the members, while they were aware of the Object D project, the existence of the PS-I effort was a corn158. Varfotomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space: Part I": Keidysh, ed.. Tuorcheskoyenaslediye

_kademika SergeyaPavlovicha Koroleva. p. 365: Mozzhorin. et aL. eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, pp. 60 61.

159 Ishlinskiy, ed., ,qkademik S. P Koroleu, p. 459. The scientist in question was V M. Vakhnin.

160. Pappo-Korystin, Platonov,and Pashchenko,Dnepropetrouskiy raketno-kosmieheskiy tsentr, p. 60: S. N.

Konyukhov and V. A, Pashchenko. "History o[ Space Launch Vehicles Development." presented at the 46th

International Astronautical Congress. IAA-95 IAA 2.2.09. Oslo. Norway, October 2-& 1995.The rangeof the mis

sile was about 2,000 kilometers.

161 Biryukov. "From the History of SpaceScience." Author's emphasis. Confusingly, Korolev's own OKB-I

had also examined the possibility of a "light" alternative satellite launch vehicle to the R-7. In late 1957.a department at OKB-I had begun studying the possibility of a two stagevehicle, the first using the R-SM and the second

using the R-II M, as a launcher. The study, finished on August 9, 1957,proved that this multistage booster would

not be abre to launch a forty- to fifty-kilogram payload into Earth orbit. OKB-I also studied a possible satellite launch

vehicteus,ng simply the core of the R-7.SeeSemenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 61: Vetrov. "The

First Satellite": Afanasyev. R-I2: Sandatouoyedereuo, pp. 17-18.

162 Sergeyev.ed., Khronika osnounykh sobytiy istorii, p. 36, The seriesended in December 1958. and the

missile was declared operational on March 4, 19.59.The U,S. Department of Defensedesignation for the R-12 was

the SS-4.while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) later named the missile "Sandal"

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO

i

H

H

H

I I

u

n

!

H

H

H

i
SPUTNIK

plete surprise. Convincing the commission proved to be much harder than expected, and the

meeting ended in fierce arguments and recriminations. Not easily turned away, Korolev tried

again at a second session soon after, this time using a political ploy: "I propose let us put the

question of national priority in launching the world's first artificial Earth satellite to the

Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Let them settle it. '''°_ It worked.

None of the members wanted to take the blame for a potential miscalculation, and Korolev got

what he wanted. A final document for launch, "The Program for Carrying out a Test Launch of

a Simple Unoriented ISZ (Object PS) Using the Product 8K/I PS," was later signed by Ryabikov

(Special Committee), Nedelin (Ministry of Defense), Ustinov (Ministry of Defense Industries),

Kalmykov (Ministry of Radio-Technical Industry), and Nesmeyanov (Academy of Sciences). '"4

The subsequent launch of the R-I on September ? was as successful as the one in August,

and the missile, 8K71 number M I-9, flew across the Soviet Union before depositing its dummy

warhead in Kamchatka. Like the previous time, the warhead container disintegrated. '_ For the

engineers working on the satellite, this was of minor significance, because the flight profile on

the orbital mission would be different. In the summer, Korolev, Glushko, and the other chief

designers had informally targeted the satellite launch for the 100th anniversary of Tsiolkovskiy's

birth on September 17th, but achieving this date proved increasingly unrealistic. Instead of

being at Tyura-Tam for a space launch on that day, Korolev and Glushko were both in attendance at the Pillard Hall of the Palace of Unions in Moscow for a special celebration of the great

visionary's birthday. In a long speech to the distinguished audience, Korolev, whose real job

was not revealed, predicted that "in the nearest future the first test launches of artificial satellites of the Earth with scientific goals will take place in the USSR and the USA.' .... The audience, of course, had little evidence to suspect that Korolev's pronouncement was not simply a

vague prediction for an indefinite time.

On September 20, Korolev was in Moscow for a meeting of the State Commission for the

PS-I launch, '_7Chairman Ryabikov, Marshal Ned@n, Korolev, and Keldysh were the principal

participants, and they established October 6 as the launch's target date based on the pace of

preparations. At the same meeting, they decided to publicly announce the launch of the PS-I

after the completion of the first orbit. Ryabikov wrote up a communiqu_ to this effect on

September 23. '68The frequencies for tracking by amateurs had already been announced earlier

in the year in issues of the journal Radio. although details of the program had obviously been

omitted. Korolev meanwhile flew into Tyura-Tam on September 29. staying in a small house

close to the primary activity area near site 2.

I63 Council of Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, Proryu u kosmos,pp. 29-30

164. Semenov.ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 90. "ISZ" is the Russianacronym for "Artificial

Satellite of the Earth.r,

165. Biryukov, "Materials From the Biographical Chronicles," p. 238; Lardier,L_stronautique Soui_tique p

93: Golovanov. Koroleu, p. 517

166. S. P Korolev, "On the Practical Significance of K E Tsiolkovskiy's Proposals in the Field of Rocket

Technology" (English title), in B. V Raushenbakh,ed., [ss[edouan[yapo istonli teorii razuitiya aulatsionnoy i raketno-kosmicfleskoy nauki i tekhniki (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), p. 40. This is a complete version of his speech. An

abridged English translation has been reproduced in Institute of the History of Natural Sciencesand Technology.

History o[ the USSR:New Research 3: Turi _agarin: To Mark the 25th ,ztnniuersaryo/the First Manned SpaceFlight

(Moscow: Social SciencesToday. 1986), pp, 48-63. Note that the latter does not include the abovequote.

167. The State Commission for the Launch of the First Satellite may have been slightly expanded from the

original R7 State Commission. See Yu. A. Skopinskiy. "State Acceptance of the Space Program: Thirty Yearsof

Work" (English title), Zemlya i uselennaya no. 5 (September-October 1988): 73 79; Lardier. L,,'qstronautique

Souietique, p, 285.

168. Ishiinskiy, ed., Z]kademik S F_Koroleu, p 447: LardJer,L'.Z]slronautique Soui_tique, pp. 108-09:

Konovalov, "The Genealogy of Sputnik," pp. 122-23.

165
166

The preparations for launching were for the most part uneventful, save for the last-minute

replacement of one of the batteries on the flight version of the PS- I. Still apprehensive over a lastminute launch from the United States, Korolev abruptly proposed to the State Commission that

the launch be brought forward two days. His concerns were apparently prompted by plans for a

conference in Washington, D.C., to be held in early October as part of IGY proceedings.

According to Korolev's information, American delegates would present a paper titled "Satellite

Over the Planet" on the 6th, the day of the PS-I's scheduled launch. He believed that the presentation was timed to coincide with a hitherto unannounced launch attempt of a U.S. satellite. _

Local KGB representatives assured Korolev that this was not so, but Korolev was convinced that

there would be a launch of an Army Jupiter C on that day. The State Commission buckled under

Korolev's wishes and moved the PS-I launch forward by two days to the 4th: Korolev signed the

final order for launch at four in the afternoon on the 2nd and sent it to Moscow for approval. '7°

The R-7, 8K71PS number M I-PS, was transported and installed on the launch pad in the early

morning of October 3, escorted on foot by Korotev, Ryabikov, and other members of the State

Commission. Fueling began the following morning at 0545 hours local time under Grechko's

supervision. Korolev, although under pressure, remained cautious throughout the proceedings.

He told his engineers, "Nobody will hurry us. If you have even the tiniest doubt, we will stop the

testing and make the corrections on the satellite. There is still time .... '.... Most of the engineers,

understandably enough, did not have time to ponder over the historical value or importance of

the upcoming event. The PS-I's Deputy Designer Ivanovskiy recalled, "Nobody back then was

thinking about the magnitude of what was going on: everyone did his own job, living through its

disappointments and joys.' .....

On the night of the 4th, huge flood lights illuminated the launch pad as the engineers in their

blockhouse checked off the rocket's systems. In the command bunker, accompanying Korotev

were some of the senior members of the State Commission: Ryabikov, Keldysh, Glushko, and

Pilyugin, as well as Deputy Chief Designer Voskresenskiy and Lt. Colonel Nosov, the two individuals overseeing all launch operations. Both viewed the launch pad through periscopes as they

gave the final orders. Boris S. Chekunov, a young lieutenant in charge of pushing the launch button, later recalled the final moments as the clock ticked past midnight local time:

When only a few minutes remained until li[toff, Korolev nodded to his deputy

Voskresenskiy. The operators froze, awaiting the final order, ,Ztleksandr Nosov, the chief

of the launch control team, stood at the periscope. He could see the whole pad. "One

minute to gof." he called'"

OKB-I senior engineer Shabarov, also in the bunker, adds:

With the exception of the operators, everybody was standing. Only N, _. Pilyugin and

S. P Korolev were allowed to sit down. The launch director [Nosov] began issuing commands. I kept an eye on S. R Korolev. He seemed nervous although he tried to conceal it.

He was carefully examining the readings of the various instruments without missing any

nuance of our body language and tone of voice. I[ anybody raised their voice or showed

signs of nervousness, Korolev was instantly on the alert to see what was going on. ,,4

169. Golovanov, Korolev. pp. 537-38.

170 This document was not actually signed until the morning of the launch. SeeIshlinskiy, ed, ,qkademik

S P Korolev. p. 448.

I 7 I. Golovanov, "The Beginningof the SpaceEra": Mozzhorin, elfal, eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoycry, p 63.

172. Golovanov, "The Beginning of the SpaceEra."

173 Borisenko and Romanov, Where 7)11Roadsinto SpaceBegin, p. 66.

174. Mozzhorin, el al. eds., Nachalo kosmieheskoycry,p 63.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

The seconds counted down to zero, and Nosov shouted the command for liftoff.

Chekunov immediately pressed the launch button. At exactly 2228 hours, 34 seconds, Moscow

Time, the engines ignited, and the 272,830-kilogram booster lifted off the pad in a blaze of light

and smoke. The five engines of the R-7 generated about 398 tons of thrust at launch. Although

the rocket lifted off gracefully, there were problems. Delays in the firing of several engines could

have easily resulted in a launch abort. Second, at T+I6 seconds, the Tank Emptying System

malfunctioned, resulting in a higher than normal kerosene consumption. A turbine failure

because of this resulted in main engine cutoff one second prior to the planned moment. _7_

Separation from the core stage, however, occurred successfully at T+324.5 seconds, and the

83.6-kilogram PS-I successfully fell into a free-fall elliptical trajectory. The first human-made

object had entered orbit around Earth. g new era had begun.

With most State Commission members still in the bunker, engineers at Tyura-Tam awaited

confirmation of orbit insertion from the PS-I in a van set up about 800 meters from the launch

pad. As a huge crowd waited outside the van, radio operator Vyecheslav I. Lappo, from NII-885,

who had personally designed the on-board transmitters, sat expectantly for the first signal. There

was cheering once the Kamchatka station picked up signals from the satellite, but Koro]ev cut

everybody off: "Hold off on the celebrations. The station people could be mistaken. Let's judge

the signals for ourselves when the satellite comes back after its first orbit around the Earth." _

Eventually the distinct "beep-beep-beep" of the craft came in clearly over the radio waves, and

the crowd began to celebrate. Chief Designer Ryazanskiy, who was at the van, immediately telephoned Korolev in the bunker. The ballistics experts at the Coordination-Computation Center

back in Moscow had determined that the satellite was in an orbit with a perigee of 228 kilometers and an apogee of 947 kilometers, the latter about eighty kilometers lower than planned

because of the early engine cutoff. The inclination of the orbit to Earth's equator was

65.6 degrees, while the orbital period was 96.17 minutes. '_ Experts at the center had also determined that the satellite was slowly losing altitude, but State Commission Chairman Ryabikov

waited until the second orbit was over prior to telephoning the Soviet leader.

According to conventional wisdom, Khrushchev's reaction to the launch was unusually

subdued for an event of such magnitude, indicating that he, like many others, did not immediately grasp the true propaganda effect of such a historic moment. He told the press:

When the satellite was launched, they phoned me that the rocket had taken the right

course and that the satellite was already revolving around the earth. I congratulated the

entire group of engineers and technicians on this outstanding achievement and calmly

went to bed. '_

Khrushchev's son, however, recalls that his father's reaction was a little more enthused.

The older Khrushchev at the time was on visit to Kiev to discuss economic issues with the

Ukrainian Party leadership. Around I I:00 p.m., these negotiations were interrupted by a telephone call. Khrushchev quietly took the call, then returned back to his discussions without saying anything. Eventually, as his son recalled, the news was too difficult to keep under wraps:

175. Ishiinskiy. ed.. l]kademik S, R Koroleu, pp. 448. 464: B, Ye. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi Fili Podlipki

Tyuratam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996), p. 197.

176, Mozzhorin, et al.. eds.. Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, p. 64.

177. Ishlinskiy, ed., Z_kademik S. I_ Korolev. p. 464.

178. Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos. pp 65-66,

161
168

He finally couldn't resist saying [to the Ukrainian officials]: "1 can tell you some very

pleasant and important news. Korolev just called (at this point he acquired a secretive

look). He's one of our missile designers. Remember not to mention his name--it's classified. So. Korolev has just reported that today, a little while ago, an artificial satellite

of the Earth was launched. "'_

The Soviet leader was animated the rest of the evening, speaking in glowing terms about the

new era of missiles, which could "demonstrate the advantages of socialism in actual practice"

to the Americans.

For the engineers and scientists responsible for the achievement, October 5 was a day like

no other. Korolev's deputy Shabarov ordered the chief of the dispatch office to hand out one

teapot of alcohol to each man at the firing range. During the latter part of the day, there was a

celebration in a small movie theater in Tyura-Taml Ryabikov made a speech congratulating all,

followed by Korolev and Keldysh. It was only later, after nightfall, that Korolev and a small

group of his co-workers took off in an II-14 aircraft from Tyura-Tam to head for Moscow. Most

were exhausted and slept through the flight, having spent the previous night without any rest.

After takeoff, the pilot of the airplane, Tolya Yesenin, came out of the cockpit and bent over

Korolev's seat to tell him that "the whole world was abuzz" with the launch. Korolev quickly

got up and went into the pilot's cabin. Returning back to the passenger's area, he announced

gleefully to everybody, "Well comrades, you can't imagine--the whole world is talking about

our satellite," adding with a huge smile. "It seems that we have caused quite a stir .... '.....

On the morning of October 5, the official Soviet news agency TASS released the communique Ryabikov had authored. Published in the morning edition of Pravda, it was exceptionally low key and was not the headline of the day:

For several years scientific research and experimental design work have been conducted in the Soviet Union on the creation of artificial satellites. Zts has already been reported in the press, the first launching[s] of the satellites in the USSR were planned for

realization in accordance with the scientific research program of the International

Geophysical Year. As a result of very intensive work by scientific research institutes and

design bureaus the first artificial satellite in the world has been created. On October 4,

1957. this first satellite was successfully launched in the USSR. According to preliminary

data. the carrier rocket has imparted to the satellite the required orbital velocity of about

8000 meters per second. ,_t the present time the satellite is describing elliptical trajectories around the earth, and its flight can be observed in the rays of the rising and setting

sun with the aid of very simple optical instruments (binoculars, telescopes, etc ). '_'

The Soviet media did not ascribe a specific name for the satellite, generally referring to it

as Sputnik, the Russian word for "satellite," often also loosely translated as "fellow traveler."

As the media tumult over Sputnik began to mount in the West, the Soviet leadership began

to capitalize on the utter pandemonium pervading the discourse on the satellite in the United

States. On October 9, Pravda published a long report detailing the construction and design of

the satellite. '_: The parties responsible for this great deed were, of course, not named. Having

I ?'9. Khrushchev. Nikita Khrushehev tom I, pp 337-38

180. Golovanov. Korotev.pp 540-41.

181 "ftnnouncement of the FirstSatellite" (English title), Pravda,October 5, 1957.p. I. A complete English

translation of this announcement is included in Krieger.Behind lhe Sputniks, pp. 311-12.

182. "Report on the FirstSatellite" (English title), Pravda, October 9, 1957,p. I. A complete English translation of this article in included in Krieger.Behind the Sputniks, pp. 313-25. This particular article was authored joint

ly by A G Azizyan (Pravda), V P. GIushko (OKB-456), M V Keldysh (OPM MIAN and Nil-I). S. P. Korolev

(OKB-I), DYe. Okhotsimskiy (OPM MIAN), G. A. Skuridin (AN SSSR)_and others, although none were named

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPUTNIK

been involved in the defense industry, the realjob titles of the members of the Council of Chief

Designers had always remained secret, although Tikhonravov and others had freely published

under their own names through the 1950s on topics of general interest. This suddenly changed

as their names disappeared from official histories. Beginning with the launch of Sputnik, of the

major contributors to the success of Sputnik, Korolev, Glushko, and Keldysh were referred in

the open press as the Chief Designer of Rocket-Space Systems, the Chief Designer of Rocket

Engines, and the Chief Theoretician of Cosmonautics, respectively. The fourth, Tikhonravov.

did not even have a pseudonym for himself.

The titles not only hid their identities, but also added an element of enigma to the men

behind the world's first space program. New editions of histories of Soviet rocketry published

prior to 1957 ceased to carry Korolev's name, and Soviet encyclopedias subsequently listed him

as heading a laboratory in an unspecified "machine building" institute in the Soviet Union.

Glushko, meanwhile, was said to be laboratory chief at the Moscow Institute of Mineral Fuels.'_

Korolev, certainly in recognition of the key role he played, was allowed to write in no less an

important newspaper as Pravda, but under the pseudonym "Professor K. Sergeyev." His first

article, titled "Research into Cosmic Space," was published on December 12, 1957.

Khrushchev claimed at the time that as the years went by, "the photographs and names of

these illustrious people will be made public," but that for the moment, "in order to ensure the

country's security and the lives of these scientists, engineers, technicians, and other specialists, we cannot yet make known their names or publish their photographs. '''_

As time went by, the publicity afforded the Soviet space program by its own media became

uniquely perverse. One could read countless books and articles on the effort and not learn anything new about the program. Pagesand pages would often be filled with supposedly amusing

anecdotes about anonymous people without once mentioning a name, a date, a place, or an

institution. Although this state of events marginally improved by the end of the 1960s, there

were four main elements of the veil of secrecy: plans for future space missions were never mentioned; failures were omitted from historical discussion: the names of engineers and administrators were not mentioned until they were deceased: and the military was never implicated in

the operation of the space program. There were, of course, other corollaries, such as the vagueness of details about spacecraft, missions, launching sites, funding, and administrative structure, but by and large, these four elements dominated the reportage of the Soviet space program

from its inception in 1957.

The chief designers toiling in anonymity not only had to have their work go unrecognized,

but they were often the subject of ironic twists of fate. For example, Academician Sedov, the

erstwhile chairman of the Commission for Interplanetary Communications, was allowed to

publicly travel and speak prominently concerning the Soviet space program, presumably

because he had no direct responsibility or connection with anything in the program. Korolev's

engineers would, in fact, joke about the time Korolev invited Sedov to the launch pad at TyuraTam to see an R-7 with a satellite on it. Sedov surprised everyone by asking where exactly the

satellite was on the rocket. Some, such as Academicians Blagonravov and Vernov, who had

peripheral knowledge about the space program were allowed to talk, but as one Russian journalist later wrote, they "were so ensnared by what they had signed about not disclosing governmental secrets, that they uttered only banalities, and thus differed only slightly from the

uninitiated [such as Sedov]. '''_''

183 Soviet Space Programs, 1952 65: Goals and Purposes. ,Z]chievements,Plans, and International

Implications,preparedfor the Committeeon Aeronauticaland SpaceSciences,U.S.Senate,89th Cong.,2d sess.

(Washington,D.C.:U.S.GovernmentPrintingOffice_December1966),pp. 149-50

184. Ibid, pp. 71-72.

185. Golovanov,Korolev,p. 553.

169
I1O

OnecanimaginehowKorolev,Glushko,Pilyugin,Barmin,andTikhonravovmusthavefelt

watchingSedov,Blagonravov,andotherstravelingacrosstheworld,givingspeechesto

awestruckaudiences,whobelievedtheywerelookingatthefoundersoftheSovietspaceprogram.Eventually,thesecrecywasloosened,andthenameswerereleased.Ofthesixoriginal

chiefdesignerswhosenameswereclassifiedtopsecretin 1957,allwouldeventuallylivetosee

theirnamesinthepress--exceptone,thefounderandinstigatorfhumankind'sfirtstepinto

thecosmos,SergeyPavlovichKorolev.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO 'i

!

[

!

M
I

CHAPTER FIVE

DESIGNING THE

FIRST SPACESHIP

On October 4, 1957,in an imperceptible way, the course of human history changed. In the

forty years following that singular event, it is easy to lose sight of the significance of Sputnik.

For the first time in history, humans had managed to break free of Earth's atmosphere and loft

a modest product of their handiwork into the heavens. There were, of course, more earthly considerations. The Soviet satellite served as a distinct milestone: it moved the Cold War into a

new phase--one characterized by the very real possibility of Soviet dominance in the new

a_enaof space, and thus, by extension, on Earth. With only a ball of metal, the Soviets had

managed to achieve what they were unable to convey with decades of rhetoric on the virtues

of socialism: that the USSRwas a power with which to be reckoned. In this climate, the Soviet

space program was much more than the sum of its parts. In reality, its parts were very far and

few in between. Barring a few isolated proposals, there was, in fact, no Soviet space program

in 1957. There were no long-range goals, no governing body for the space program, no financial planning, no agenda, and no direction. This suspension into limbo continued to exist for

the next few years, hidden, of course, beneath the pages and pages of Soviet propaganda hailing the glorious benefits of a nationwide effort.

The Immediate Aftermath

The engineers at OKB-I could be forgiven for hoping for a respite from the relentless

months of hard work in support of both the R-7 and the first Sputnik. At the time, Korolev

allowed all his key deputies to take a short vacation--the first in many years--to rejuvenate

their energies. First Deputy Chief Designer Mishin, Deputy Chief Designer Voskresenskiy, their

assistants, and "a group of the main workers" from the Design Bureau were sent off to the seaside resort of Sochi. _ Korolev, who returned to Moscow on October 5, elected not to take

advantage of the break but instead began to play with an ambitious idea to sustain the successesof the new space program. After Korolev's return, Soviet leader Khrushchev immediately called him to find out all the details of the Sputnik launch. During the conversation.

Khrushchev asked casually whether Korolev could launch another satellite, possibly in time for

the fortieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution on November 7. Without any

hesitation, Korolev suggested that his team could launch a dog. Khrushchev was ecstatic about

the idea, stipulating only that the launch had to take place by the holiday. Korolev assured him

I A. Tarasov."Missions in Dreamsand Reality"(Englishtitle), Prauda,October 20, 1989. p. 4.

171
172

they would do their best to make the deadline/Khrushchev asked his "right-hand man," Frol

R. Kozlov, to handle all logistical issues. The next day, the Central Committee held a meeting

in Kozlov's presence, during which the six key chief designers agreed that to facilitate the

launch in less than a month, the design of the spacecraft would have to be simplified as much

as possible. Kozlov emphasized to Korolev that the launch would have to be in time for the

holidays "without fail. ''_ The official order for the launch was issued on October 12, 1957, eight

days after the launch of the first Sputnik.

Vacations were immediately cut short as Korolev ordered all his deputies back to

Kaliningrad They would have less than a month to bring the project to fruition. The options

available to the engineers were slim: either prepare the biological version of the Object D satellite or create a completely new spacecraft. Because the former was still far from ready, they

adopted a plan to make maximal use of the small PS-I structure used for the first satellite.

OKB-I also had the advantage of a large database of experience in launching dogs and other

animals on "vertical" trajectories into the upper atmosphere through the 1950s on modified

versions of the R-t, R-2, and R-5 missiles. Engineers took a container originally earmarked for

the next launch of the "biological" R-2/3 missile and used it as a basis for the new satellite,

which was designated Simple Satellite No. 2 (PS-2). Once again, Korolev used as few outside

organizations as possible. Chief Designer Semyon A. glekseyev's Plant No. 918 at Tomilino,

which specialized in high-altitude pressure suits, provided the suit for the dog, while the

Leningrad-based Biofizpribor Special Design Bureau was tasked to build a feeding trough for the

animal. Both organizations had participated in the same capacity in the vertical dog launch program of the 1950s. The Experimental Design Bureau of the Moscow Power Institute under Chief

Designer/31eksey F. Bogomolov prepared the modest Tral ("trawl") radio transmitters for the

communication of telemetry on the vital signs of the animal?/3 slow-scan television system

named Seliger was also built to transmit images of the dog in space: it had a capability of

200 lines per frame and ten frames per second.

Technical operations on the construction of the PS-2 formally began on October I0, 1957,

just six days after the launch of the first Sputnik. The satellite, as it emerged in the following

days, was a small stubby cylindrical container for a single dog, which contained life support

systems and instruments for monitoring the life signs of the dog and the internal atmosphere

of the capsule. The life support system included a "regeneration unit" containing chemical

compounds, which absorbed carbon dioxide and excess water vapor. The system was designed

to operate automatically. No provision was made to return the dog from orbit because neither

the technology nor the time was available to prepare for such a mission. Doctors expected to

put the animal to sleep with an automated injection of poison prior to oxygen depletion in the

2 yaroslav Golovanov, Koroleu: Fakty i mify (Moscow: Nauka, t994), pp. 544-45 There are many contradictory accounts o[ the decision Most, however, agreethat Khrushchev suggesteda launch for the holidays, and

Korolev came up with the idea to put a dog in the satellite. Khrushchev had apparently told the six major chief

designers (Barmin, Glushko, Korotev. Kuznetsov, Pilyugin, and Ryazanskiy) at a meeting in early October, "On the

7th of November,we will mark the fortieth anniversary of the 'Great October.' It would be a good idea to do something extra" SeeCol M. Rebrov, "The Whiteness of Martian Seas..." (English title), Krasnaya zuezda. March tl,

1989 p 4

3 Golovanov, Koroleu, pp. 547-48. Present at the meeting were Special Committee Chairman

V M. Ryabikov, Committee Deputy Chairman G N Pashkov, First Deputy Commander of the Directorate o[ the

Commander of Reactive Armaments (UNRV) Lt Gen. A. G. Mrykin, and Chief Designers V. P. Barmin, A f

Bogomolov. S. P Korolev, N. g. Pilyugin, and M S Ryazanskiy.as weir as Korolevs "space" Deputy K D Bushuyev.

4 Ibid. p 548: G. Salakhutdinov, "Once More About Space" (English title), Ogonek 34 (August 18-25,

1990):4-5: Yu A. Mozzhorin el al. eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoyery: uospominaniyaueteranouraketno-kosmicheskoy

tekhr]iki i kosmonautiki uypusk t}toroy (Moscow: RNITsKD, 1994), p. 82: A. V Ponomarev."2June 75 YearsFrom

the Birth of AcademicianA. F.Bogomolov ( 1913)" (Englishtitle),/z istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 59 ( 1989):47-50.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

life support system. The cylindrical container was crowned by a spherical object, identical in

design to the first Sputnik, which housed the radio-telemetry systems, thermal systems, and

power sources. A few scientific instruments were attached externally near the top of the booster core. These were for investigations of solar radiation in the ultraviolet and x-ray regions of

the spectrum and for the study of cosmic rays. The total mass of the payload was 508.3 kilograms, a significant leap from the modest PS-I. Korolev's engineers designed the payload in

such a way that it would remain attached to the central core of the R-7 booster throughout its

time in orbit, thus enabling the satellite to use the same telemetry system as the rocket. This

not only eliminated the development of a new telemetry system for the dog, but it would also

help keep the temperature down in the dog container, a major concern for the designers. By

October 18, a new R-7 ICBM for this next launch had been shipped to Tyura-Tam following a

series of extensive tests at the assembly plant at Kaliningrad) Korolev took an geroflot flight

from Moscow eight days later, arriving back at the launch range via Tashkent.

Originally, there was a pool of ten dogs to choose for the flight, all of them trained at the

Air Force's Institute of Aviation Medicine for previous upper atmospheric vertical flights. From

a final three of Albina, Layka, and Mukha, biomedicine specialist Academician Vasiliy V. Parin

selected Layka ("barker") to have the honor of being the first living being to reach orbit. The

choice was primarily based on the dog's even temperament. Air Force doctor Vladimir I.

Yazdovskiy recalls:

Layka was a wonderful dog .... 9,uiet and very placid. Before the flight to the cosmodrome I once brought her home and showed her to the children. They played with

her. I wanted to do something nice for the dog. She had only a very short time to live,

yOU see,6

Albina, with two prior flight experiences, was named Layka's "double" for the mission. A

group of six physicians, headed by Oleg G. Gazenko, assisted in an intensive training program

for the three dogs in the days preceding the scheduled launch. Before flying to the launch site,

Yazdovskiy and Gazenko operated on the two dogs. They attached wires connected to sensors

to monitor respiration frequency over their ribs and under their skins. A portion of the carotid

artery was also diverted into a piece of skin to record pulse and blood pressure.' Layka was put

in the satellite container at mid-day on October 3 I, and by nighttime, the payload had been

attached to the booster rocket, 8K71PS number M I-2PS. Temperatures at Tyura-Tam were very

cold at the time, and the container was heated via a special hose attached to an air conditioner

during the preparations for launch. Yazdovskiy, the de facto head of all biomedical operations,

asked two of his assistants to keep a constant watch on Layka through the stacking procedures.

5. yu. Biryukov. "from the History of Space Science: The Price of Decision--First Place (The First

Satellites)" (English title). /quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. I0 (October f991): 37 39; Vasili Mishin and Boris

Raushenbakh. "The Scientific Legacyof SergeiKorolev," in History of the USSR:New Research 5. )'uri _agarin To

Mark the 25th ,,qnniuersary of the First Manned Space Flight (Moscow: Institute of the History of Natural Science

and Technology, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1986), pp. II 7-18: Mozzhorin, el aL, eds.. Naehalo kosmicheskoy

ery, p. 82: Golovanov, Koroleu. pp. 547-48: G. S. Vetrov, "On the Launch of the Second Artificial Satellite of the

Earth" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautikl 23 (November 3-16, 1997): 50-54.

6. Golovanov. Koroleu. p. 550.

7. The six physicians were I. S. Balakhovskiy.O. G Gazenko (physiology), A. M. Genin (hygiene), A A.

Gyurdzhiyan (radiation), N N. Kozakova, and A. D. Seryapin. Also involved in general preparations were Ye. M

Yuganov (vestibular apparatus) and g. R Kotovskaya (overloads). See_bid. Aleksandr Romanov,Koroleu (Moscow:

Molodaya gvardiya. 1996). p. 306.

173
114

The8KTIPSboosterliftedoffontimeat

0530hours,42 secondsMoscowTimeon

November3, 1957,fromthepadatsiteI at

Tyura-Tam/Althoughthedog'spulsetripled

duringthelaunchphase,allvitalsignswerenormal.ThePS-2spacecraft,namedthe"Second

ArtificialSatellite"in theSovietpress,successfullyentereda 225-by 1,67t-kilometerobit

withaninclinationof65.3degreestotheequator.Thesatellitepayloadremainedattachedto

thecentralblockoftheR-7vehiclethroughout

itsorbitalfight.Totalmassinorbitwasabout

six and a halftons, approximatelyonethirteenthof whichwastheactualpayload.

DoctorsmonitoringLaykainthefollowingdays

begantonoticeasignificantriseintheinternal

temperatureof the biologicalcompartment,

apparentlya resultof inefficienciesandmalfunctionsin thespacecraft'sthermalcontrol

system.Foralmosttheentireperiodof her

flight,Laykasufferedamodicumofdiscomfort

becauseof thesehightemperatures.Thepoor

dogfinallysuccumbedto heatexhaustionon

thefourthdayofthemissiononNovember7.

Lateranalysisonthegroundbasedonincoming

telemetryconfirmedthesuspicionsof doctors

thatoverheatinghadinfactcausedherdeath2

TheSovietsrevealedonestrikingpieceof

informationunrelatedtoLaykamanyearslater.

Sputnik 2 is shown with its unique payload shroud

at the launch pad at Tyura-Tam in November t957

Warm air was piped into the capsule to keep the

dog Layka comfortable amid the freezing

temperatures (files of Peter Gorin)

The scientific instruments on the PS-2 had performed without any problems for a week and had

detected evidence for the existence of a radiation belt around Earth. Soviet scientists on the

ground who studied the data were, however, "circumspect in their interpretations" of the information. ''_ In the end, the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, returned the same data a few months

later, and the United States claimed one of the great discoveries of the early space age, the existence of a continuous band of radiation belts around Earth. The PS-2 spacecraft finally decayed

from orbit on/April 14, 1958. with its deceased passenger, having contributed to another long

line of "firsts" in the Soviet space program

8. Council of Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, Proryv v kosmos (Moscow: TOO "Veles," 1994),

p 176. Another source states that the launch was at 0722 hours Moscow Time SeeYu. P.Semenov, ed, RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S. P Koroleua (Korolev: RKK Energiya, named after S. P. Korolev.

1996), p 92_

9. Yu A Mozzhorin. et el., eds., Dorogi u kosmos: I (Moscow: MAI, 1992)_ p. 60: Golovanov, Korotev. p.

551 Somereports have suggestedthat the temperature rise was a result of the nonseparation of the central R-7 sus

tainer from the payload, See Biryukov, "From the History of Space Science": K. V. Gerchik, ed, Nezabyvayemyy

Baykonur (Moscow: Interregional Council of Veterans of the Baykonur Cosmodrome, 1998), p. 114.

10 Biryukov, "From the History of SpaceScience."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

As the PS-2 was finding its way into the atmosphere, the engineers at OKB-I were finally

completing preparations to launch Object D, which had originally been slated to be the first

Soviet satellite. Having been usurped from its place by the smaller PS-I and PS-2 spacecraft,

Object D was the last Soviet space project in existence at the time. The fact that government

permission to allow work on Object D was not an endorsement for further space projects had

become all too apparent by early 1958. There was, of course, little suspicion or knowledge in

the West that all the Sputnik launches were either one-off efforts or hastily put-together projects resulting from the suggestions of a few anonymous men. In fact, the breadth and number

of scientific instruments on board the spacecraft was literally a jolt to Western scientists. The

1,327-kilogram observatory made out of aluminum alloy was the first Soviet spacecraft to carry

a "command radio-link" device for the control of instrumentation in orbit. There were twelve

scientific experiments on board for the measurement and detection of:

• Primary cosmic radiation intensity

• The nuclei of heavy elements in cosmic rays

• Micrometeorites

• Atmospheric pressure

• Ion composition in the atmosphere

• The concentration of positive ions

• The magnitude of electric charges

• The intensity of electrostatic and magnetic fields

• The intensity of corpuscular solar radiation

The Tral multichannel telemetry system included a data recorder to store measurements out

of the zone of communications visibility. Power was supplied by the first solar batteries used

on a spacecraft, while internal temperature was controlled via circulating gaseous nitrogen. The

useful payload of the sophisticated scientific observatory was 968 kilograms, and its scientific

program was supported by a team of scientists from various disciplines, many of whom had

been involved in mission planning since the project was approved in early 1956."

Object D was launched by a modified R-? ICBM named the 8A91 on gpril 21, 1958. The

launch vehicle, however, broke up into pieces during the active portion of the trajectory at

T+96.5 seconds because of resonant frequencies, thus destroying two and a half years' worth

of labor. '_ Luckily for the scientists, OKB-I had constructed an identical backup article with the

same instrument complement, This craft was rumored to have been the subject of some political maneuvering prior to launch. There was reportedly some doubt about the functioning capabilities of the Tral-D data recorder built by the Experimental Design Bureau of the Moscow

Power Institute. Korolev, under pressure from Khrushchev to launch the satellite in time to

show support for the Italian Communist Party in the Italian elections, may have taken a gamble and opted to launch without verifying the operation of the device in question. '_

II. Mishin and Raushenbakh, "The Scientific Legacyof SergeiKorolev," pp. 120-21: S. L. Nikolayev, "On

the Work of M. K. Tikhonravov on the Creation of the First ISZ" (English title), Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonautiki 42

(1980): 51-6 I. The primary investigators included Sh. Sh. Dolginov, K. I. Gringauz, V. G Istomin, V. I. Krassovskiy,

L. V. Kurnosova, V. G. Kurt, Yu. I. Logachev,S. L. Mandelshcham, I. S. Shlovskiy, and S. N Vernov.

12. Mozzhorin, et aL, eds,, Naehalo kosmicheskoy cry, p. 65; Biryukov, "From the History of Space

Science." One source saysthat the failure occurred at T+88 seconds. SeeTimothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry

that Conquered Space: Part I: From First ICBM to Sputnik Launcher," Space[light 37 (August 1995): 260-63.

13. RoaldZ. Sagdeev,The Making o/a Soviet Scientist: My Ztdventures in Nuclear fusion and Space From

Stalin to Star Wars (New York:John Wiley & Sons. 1994), pp. 156-58.

175
176

ThelaunchofthesecondObjectDtookplacesuccessfullyonMay15,1958,bymeansof

another8A91booster.Thespacecraftenteredaninitialorbitof 1,881by226kilometersat

65.2degreesinclination.TheSovietpressreferredto thespacecraftsthe"ThirdArtificial

Satellite,"lateretroactivelynamingit "Sputnik3." Duringitsmission,groundcontrollersdiscoveredthatthedatarecorderdidindeedfail,thusdeprivingscientistsofinformationduring

periodswhenthesatellitewasnotwithincommunicationsviewofgroundstations.Thishada

repercussiveeffectonpreventingscientistsfromconfirmingwithoutdoubtheexistenceofa

radiationbeltaroundEarth:therewassimplynowayto provethatthebeltwascontinuous

becauseofgapsindata.Despiteheseriousfailure,therewereI00,000telemetricmeasurements

and40,000opticalobservationsconducteduntilcommunicationwaslostwiththespacecraft

onJune3,1958.Themissionprovidedasubstantialamountofscientificandtechnologicaldata

invariousdisciplines.'_ObjectDfinallydecayedfromorbitonApril6, 1960,leavingbehindthe

recordofhavingbeenthefirstadvancedscientificobservatorylaunchedintospace•

Thelaunchofthesethreesatellites,althoughisolatedfromanymacro-levelspaceprogram,

helpedin manywayscementtheimportantrolesof thechiefdesignersintheSovietdefense

industry.AlthoughallSovietpressreportstoutedtheachievementsofheSputniksasthoseof

theCommunistPartyoftheSovietUnion.it wasincreasinglycearwithintheleadershipthat

theeffortsofthesedesignersalsoservedanimportantpropagandaandpublicrelationsrolefor

theSovietstate.Allofthemajorchiefdesignersbenefitedfromthisstateofaffairs,bothina

tangibleandintangiblesense.KorolevandGlushko,thetwomostpowerfulChiefDesigners,

hadthedistinctionofbeingtheonlyoneslabeledcriminalsofthestateintheiryoungeryears.

ThefallofBeriyain 1953andthesubsequentdenunciationsbyKhrushchevofStalin'sruthless

ruleeventuallysethestagefortheformal"rehabilitation"forboth.Glushko'soriginalccusationshadbeencorrectedinOctober1956.butit tookmuchlongerforKorolev,whohadsufferedmuchmore.HehadappliedtotheSovietgovernmentinaletterdatedMay30,1955,to

dropthefiveremainingcriminalchargesthatstillmarredhisrecord.'_Itwouldbethesummer

of 1957beforehewouldreceivea replyfromtheUSSRChiefMilitaryProcurator.Theletter

merelystatedthatatameetingoftheMilitaryCollegiumoftheUSSRSupremeCourtonApril

18,1951,thechargesagainsthimhadbeenformallydropped,"duetothelackofanycrimes."'_

WhileKorolevtriedtoputthedarkchaptersinhislifebehind,Glushkowasnotasamenable.

Oneoftheirassociateslaterecalled:

• • . Korolev had convinced himself that one should forget about Kolyma. prison, and all

the rest. blot it out from memory and from the heart, Glushko [on the other hand] always

remembered everyone and everything. He had saved many interesting documents .... "

Korolev was bestowed with a doctor of technical sciences degree, the Soviet equivalent of

a Ph.D., on June 29, 1957, even though he had not defended a dissertation. '_ Essentially an

honorary title, it seems that Korolev did not use the title much in his writings. On December

18 of the same year, as a result of the huge successes of the first two Sputniks, he along with

14. Ibid. p. 158: Christian tardier. LTqstronautique.Sovietique(Paris:Armand Colin. 1992), p 113. For a

summary of the results from Sputnik 3, see Nikolayev, "On the Work of M K. Tikhonravov."

t5. This letter is reproduced in full in N. L gnisimov and V G. Oppokkov. "Incident at NIl-3" (English

title), Voyenno.istoricheskiy zhurnal no. II (November 1989): 65-71.

16. Romanov,Korolev, pp. 269-70.

17 Col M Rebrov."Specific Impulse" (English title), Krasnaya zvezda, August 26, 1989,p. 4.

18 Yu. V. Biryukov. "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles of SergeyPavlovich Korolev" (English title).

_n B V. Raushenbakh. ed, /z istorii souetskoy kosmonautiki (Moscow: Nauka. 1983), p. 238. He was officially

awarded the degree by the "High Certification Commission" on October 26, 1957,just twenty two days after the

launch of the first Sputnik

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO

H

M

H

H

H

[

H

H

N

.,'1

H

H

H

H

H

H

R
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

several others, such as Chief Designers Barmin, Glushko, Kuznetsov, Pilyugin, and Ryazanskiy,

Deputy Chief Designer Mishin, and Academician Keldysh, were named recipients of the Lenin

Prize. Three of Korolev's key deputies--Bushuyev, Okhapkin, and Voskresenskiy--were

bestowed the more prestigious Hero of Socialist Labor for their efforts. _9Perhaps the most coveted of all honors came to Korolev and Glushko on June 20, 1958, when both were elected full

Academicians of the LISSR _qcademy of Sciences and thus befit of the highest level of stature in

the scientific community. In truth, neither was a real scientist, and the promotion clearly would

not have been approved by the Soviet scientific community had it not been for the recent successes in space. There were in fact many within the Academy of Sciences who privately scoffed

at the promotions, bemoaning the influence of selective standards and political expediency.

Along with Korolev and Glushko, the remaining four from the Council of Chief Designers--

Barmin, Kuznetsov, Pilyugin, and Ryazanskiy--were promoted to Corresponding Members.

Korolev's First Deputy Mishin also joined their ranks, an indication of the remarkable faith and

trust Korolev had in his right-hand man. Mishin was the only deputy bestowed this honor.

The entry of the chief designers into the Academy of Sciences was extremely significant

for the emerging space program because it provided a formal institutional setting from which

to propose space projects outside of the conventional conduit of the defense industry/° It also

allowed the slow but visible separation of the space program from the missile program,

although in 1958 this division was admittedly somewhat indistinct given the lack of a plan for

space exploration. Academician Keldysh, with connections to both the scientific community

and the defense industry, was an indispensable ally to the space designers, A consummate scientist and mathematician of great repute, Keldysh, in some respects, legitimized the dreams

and proposals of space exploration in the eyes of skeptical Academy of Sciences leaders.

Furthermore, Keldysh had far more influence with government and the Communist Party than

any of the major designers, including Korolev and Glushko. Almost all of Keldysh's work in the

1950s had been in support of defense projects, and even the military depended, to a great

extent, on the talented mathematicians and scientists in his employ at both the Department of

Applied Mathematics and NII-I.

There were also institutional changes in the Soviet government and Communist Party that

entrenched the position of the chief designers. By 1957, after the so-called "Anti-Party Group

Affair," the locus of power in the Soviet leadership shifted from the government to the Party.

Those duties originally administered by the old Special Committee No. 2 in the 1940s eventually ended up in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Leonid I.

Brezhnev, a forty-four-year-old apparatchik from Dnepropetrovsk in the Ukraine was appointed

a member of the Secretariat as a new Secretary of the Central Committee in June 1957, having

served the Party in senior positions in Kazakhstan. Roughly analogous to the Western concept

of a cabinet, the Secretariat itself was typically composed of about a dozen individuals with

specific responsibilities overseeing almost every area of activity on behalf of the Party. _' The

members of the Secretariat provided the all-powerful Presidium (later the Politburo) with analysis and recommendations. In many cases, the recommendations of the Secretariat member in

19, Ibid., p, 239. The actual awards ceremony took place at the Kremlin on December 30, 195Z. See

Romanov,Koroieu. pp. 302'-08: Golovanov, Koro[eu, p. 55 I. Note that Korolev, the other chief designers, Mishin,

and Keldysh had already been awarded the Hero of Socialist Labor in 1956 for the R 5M nuclear program. According

to Mishin, Korolev had requestedthat he [Mishin] receivea second Hero o[ Socialist Labor in December 1957,but

was refused only at the "highest levet." SeeMozzhorin, et at. eds., Dorogi u kosmos I, pp.

20. William R Barry, "The Missile Design Bureaux and Soviet Piloted SpacePolicy, 1953-1974," draft of

University of Oxford Ph.D. diss., 1995.

21. Ibid.: Peter Almquist. Red Forge:Souiet Military Industry Since 1965 (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1990], p. 20.

171
178

questionwereoftenpivotalinthefinaldecisionbythePresidium.After1957,Brezhnev'sportfolioin theSecretariatincluded"questionsof thedevelopmentof heavyindustryandconstruction,thedevelopmentandproductionofmodernmilitarytechnologyandweapons,the

equipmentoftheArmedForceswiththem,andthedevelopmentofcosmonautics"forthe

CentralCommitteeandthePresidium.:2Thisnewrolecarvedoutin 1957remainedinexistence

throughoutthenexthirtyyears,andtheholderofthispostessentiallyactedasthedefacto

policy head of the Soviet space program. Curiously, it seems that Brezhnev, the first appointee

to this post, did not have a very prominent role in determining space policy because the most

important decisions were made by Khrushchev himself. What was significant, however, was

that both Khrushchev and Brezhnev were very strong supporters of the missile industry, and

Khrushchev in particular had been dazzled by the early successes of the Sputniks, thus creating a direct line from Korolev to Khrushchev on matters of future policy.

As power shifted into the Party apparatus, some of the most important supporters of the

missile chief designers gravitated to higher positions in the defense industry, thus cementing

support for the new space program. In particular, the first to benefit from the changes was

Dmitriy F. Ustinov, Korolev's old "patron" from the 1940s, In December 1957, Khrushchev reorganized the Special Committee for Armaments of the Army and Navy, which had overseen the

ballistic missile program since 1955, and created the new Military-lndustrial Commission (VPK)

to manage the entire Soviet defense industry; he put Ustinov in charge of the new governmental body. Staffed by the primary group of ministers in charge of the defense industry, VPK, after

negotiation with the Soviet armed forces, managed the entire process of military procurement

from research and development to production. On paper, its authority was limited to implementation, but because employees of VPK were responsible for drafting Party Central

Committee decrees, the commission's jurisdiction extended to policy formulation." Ustinov, in

turn, made sure that the most important positions within the defense industry were occupied

by individuals who owed their careers to him. In March 1958, Konstantin N, Rudnev became

the new Chairman of the State Committee for Defense TechnoloD,, the "new" ministry overseeing the ballistic missile and space effort. Essentially, the old Ministry of Defense Industries

with a new name, the State Committee had been created in January 1958 as part of a larger

nationwide reform spurred by Khrushchev's goal to decentralize the Soviet economy. He set up

a command system whereby "regional economic councils" (known in Russian as

Sounarkhozes) were established in key industrial cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, and

Sverdolsk. _4Research and development institutions in the former Ministry of Defense Industry,

such as NII-88 and OKB-I, were transferred at the time to the newly created State Committee.

22 Arthur J. Alexander. "Decision-Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement," ,_delphi Paper 14718(Winter

1978/9): 1-64. For a detailed discussion of the role of the Secretariat in the defense and space industry, see pp,

l I - 12 in the same source.

23. V Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov, and V Pashchenko, Dneprovskiy raketno kosmicheskiy tsentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZ/KBYu, 1994), p. 61: Cl,q Directorate of Intelligence_The Soviet Weapons Industry..7]n

Oueruie_u.DI 86 I0016 (Arlington, V_: Central Intelligence Agency, 1986), p. 14 VPK members in March 1958

included the following "ministers": K. N. Rudnev (Defense Technology), P.V. Dementyev (/_viation Technology),

V. D. Kalmykov (Radio-Technical Industry), and B. Ye. Butoma (Ship Building), In addition, V. M. Ryabikov (Deputy

Chairman, RSFSRCouncil of Ministers) and M. I. Nedelin (Deputy Minister of Defensefor Reactivel_rmaments) were

also members. The commission had one First Deputy Chairman (S. I Vetoshkin) and two Deputy Chairmen

(G. N. Pashkovand G _. Titov). Finally, P,. N Shchukin, a respectedradar expert, headed a "Scientific-Technical

Council." which, among other things, approved new membersof the commission.

24 John McDonnell, "The SovietDefenseIndustry as a PressureGroup," in Michael McGwire, Ken Booth,

and John McDonnell, eds.,Soviet Naval Policy Objectives and Constraints (Halifax, NS: Centre for Foreign Policy

Studies. 1975). p. 90;/_lexander G. Korol, Soviet Researchand Development Its Organization. Personnet.and Funds

(Cambridge, Mt¥ The MIT Press. 1965). p. 17

CHALLENGE TO 41_POLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

The entire decentralization process had a

repercussive effect of putting a greater share of

the power over missile and space design and

production into the hands of a new generation

of bureaucrats, nurtured by Brezhnev and

Ustinov, who were not located in Moscow.'_The

forty-seven-year-old Rudnev himself had served

as director of NII-88 in the early t950s and

could be counted on to lend his support to

Ustinov and Korolev at critical decision-making

junctures. He was personally acquainted with all

designers such as Korolev and Glushko and had

also been a member of the State Commission

for the R-7 launches. In his new position as the

Chairman of the State Committee for Defense

Technology, he was to play a much more

"hands-on" role in the new space program,

exceeding that of his predecessors. He was, in

effect, the first industrial manager of the Soviet

space program, akin to perhaps the role played by

NASA administrators. By most recollections, he

was very educated, accomplished, and sophisticated, although little is known about his personal life. An associate later described him as:

Unpretentious in his manner and attentive

to people, he listened with enviable

patience to the opinions o[ opponents without putting them into a rigid provisional

framework. In a difficult moment...

he managed to relieve the tension with a

joke and he was witty, but short-spoken. 26

Konstantin Rudneu was Chairman of the State

Committee [or Defense Technology between 1958

and 1961 In that post, he effectively served as the

first administrator of the emerging Soviet space

program He had served his apprenticeship in the

early 1950s as Director of the famous NII-88 institute

(files of Peter _orin)

On paper at least, Korolev reported through the Chairman of the State Committee for

Defense Technology (Rudnev), to the Chairman of the Military-lndustrial Commission

(Ustinov), to the Secretariat member in charge of defense industrial matters (Brezhnev), and

finally to Soviet leader Khrushchev himself. By all accounts, this chain of command, especially in the case of new proposals, was merely a formality and rarely functioned as intended.

Following the first launches of the R-7 and the Sputniks, Khrushchev regularly consulted with

Korolev himself. The Council of Chief Designers seems not only to have exerted influence over

programs that had been approved by Khrushchev, but also began to have some input into program commencements and approval. In particular, the council would often pass resolutions

that were binding, albeit unofficially, for all the design bureaus and scientific-research institutes

25. McDonnell, "The Soviet DefenseIndustry asa PressureGroup," p. 116. One of those was an individual named S, A. Afanasyev,who was appointed to head the LeningradSovnarkhoz in May 1958, having served his

apprenticeship asa directorate chief in Ustinov's ministry in the 1950s,Afanasyev's careerwould rise with Ostinov's,

and he was to play an important role in the space program in the years to come.

26. Lt, Gen. Georgiy gleksandrovich Tyulin, "Taskfor the Future: Notes of the State Commission Chairman"

(English title), Krasnaya zvezda, April 2, 1988, p. 4.

119
180

involved.Butin theend,it wasalwaysaquestionofKhrushchev'sgeneralssentordissent.

WhileUstinovorRudnevcouldhammeroutthedetails,Khrushchevhadthelastword.

FortunatelyforKorolev,theSovietleaderwasclearlyenamoredof Korolevfrom1956

through1958.TheremarkablesupportKhrushchevextendedtoKorolevatthetimedepended

toagreatextentonhisachievementsinbuildingandsuccessfullylaunchingtheR-7ICBM.But

theoriginsof theKhrushchev-Korolevrelationshipdatebackto February1956during

Khrushchev'sfirtvisitto OKB-Iat Kaliningrad.AsKhrushchev'sson,oneof thosewho

accompaniedtheelderKhrushchevonthatvisit,laterrecalled,"ThemeetingwithKorolevdecisivelyinfluencedthethinkingofmyfather.... Afterthisvisitfathersimplyfellinlovewith

Korolev,hewaspreparedtotalk about him without end. ''_7There were special perks to this

change of heart, most notably demonstrated by allowing Korolev to call Khrushchev directly on

matters, without having to go through "numerous bureaucratic obstacles."_

While the propaganda-type effects of Sputnik were clearly a boon to the Soviet leadership,

the first and foremost goal on the Presidium's agenda was the achievement of strategic parity.

Korolev had used the R-1 as a "Trojan horse" for his more outlandish dreams of space exploration, but he was also clever enough to know that the gains from the creation of the R-Z would

not be unlimited. The next few years had Korolev toeing the fine line between appeasing those

who wanted newer and better ICBMs and those who wanted the world to shudder in the face

of Soviet accomplishments in space. In this sense, 1958 was a watershed year for Korolev and

his associates on the Council of Chief Designers. The forces of institutions, politics, and personalities were in place for them to gradually create a new space program out of pieces of the

missile program. The Object D, PS-I, and PS-2 projects had been short-lived, one-off programs

intended to take advantage of the availability of the new R-7 ICBM to gain a foothold into

space. It was now time to create a plan and a vision of a comprehensive program designed to

put the Red Star firmly into space.

"1 Favor Orbital Flight!"

Two themes stand out in all the proposals for artificial satellites sent to the government in the

]950s by Korolev and Tikhonravov: automated missions to the Moon and piloted flight into space.

At every juncture, both engineers foresaw the two complementary projects as fundamental to the

initial growth of the Soviet space program. Early Soviet conceptions for piloted spaceflight dated

back to 1945-48, to Tikhonravov's short-lived VR-190 project for launching a human on a vertical

flight to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Later. when Korolev tasked doctors at the Air Force's

Institute of Aviation Medicine in 1949 to develop systems to launch dogs into space, he viewed

the effort only as a step to achieving the ultimate goal of human spaceflight/_ The first vertical

launches with animals in 1951 on the R-I B and R-IV rockets were thus not isolated projects for

OKB-I, but rather the first concrete step in a larger thematic direction of piloted space exploration.

These biological flights were followed from 1954 to 1956 by launches on the uprated R-ID and

R-lYe "scientific" missiles, further variants of the basic military R-I rocket.

The flight profile that engineers developed for the R-I D launches was considerably different from that of the R-I B, and it clearly indicated a progression toward human as opposed to

biological spaceflight. The rocket was launched to altitudes of I00 to I IO kilometers, at which

27. SergeyKhrushchev. Nikita Kflrusflefleu: krizisy i rakety: uzglyad iznutri: tom I (Moscow: Novosti.

1994).p 112

28. Ibid. p IO4

29. ,qsearlyas 195I. OKB I may havedrawn up preliminary plans for a small capsule to carry a person on

a high altitude vertical flight using the R-IB missile, which itself was used for the early dog launches. Fora drawing

of one of these conceptions of the R I B seeLardier.LTistronautique Soui)tique. p, 244.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
i DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

point the dog cabin separated, going into a free-fall unstabilized trajectory. The dog seated on

the right of the cabin ejected at altitudes of seventy-eight to eighty-four kilometers and used a

parachute for landing during the following six minutes. The second dog was ejected at altitudes

of thirty-nine to forty-five kilometers. Unlike the earlier flights, engineers dispensed with a pressurized cabin for the dogs and instead equipped each animal with its own life-support system

in the form of a spacesuit. The aviation Plant No. 918 at Tomilino developed a mask-free suit,

which included the suit itself, a detachable plexiglass helmet, an oxygen supply system, and a

retractable tray on top of an ejection trolley. The last item carried the oxygen supply, the parachute system, and the physiological measurement equipment. Like the previous launches, a

movie camera with a five- to six-minute supply of film recorded the dogs' reactions during various parts of the flight/° The total mass of the payload was 1,516 kilograms. In addition to the

dog container, the R-ID carried two 130-kilogram scientific experiments packages from the

Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (GeoFIAN)) _ A group of twelve dogs,

including flight veterans P,lbina, Malyshka, Kozyavka, and Tsyganka, was assembled to train for

the launches, undergoing rigorous simulations with spacesuits in the cramped cabin.

The first R-ID missile lifted off on July 2, 1954, from Kapustin Yar with dogs Lisa and

Ryzhik on board. 3_As planned, the first dog ejected out at an altitude of ninety kilometers,

while the second was cast off at forty-five kilometers. Only two further launches were conducted in the series, in July 19.54, and although none of the launches were completely successful, the engineers and physicians moved ahead with the use of another "new" missile, the

R-lYe. The latter was distinguished from its predecessor by the addition of a heavier complement of scientific experiments, including two 130-kilogram ejectable GeoFIAN strap-on containers. One of these, the DK-2, included five smoke candles whose ignition mechanism

operated at various altitudes to measure wind direction, Unlike the R-ID, the R-lYe main rocket body was also equipped with a system for allowing the recovery of the entire 4,286-kilogram

frame. Four huge parachutes would reduce the rate of descent from 635 meters per second to

a bearable seven meters per second." The container for the dogs and the return profile remained

exactly the same from the R-ID variant. The R-lYe series was inaugurated with an early morning launch on January 25, 1955, carrying the dogs Albina and Tsyganka. _' Engineers carried out

30. Yu. A. Mozzhorin et al eds, Dorogi u kosmos It (Moscow: M_ql, 1992), pp. 130 32, 137: M. V

Keldysh, ed., TuorcheskoyenasJediye_kademika Sergeya Pautouicha Koroteua. izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty

(Moscow: Nauka, 1980), p. 351: George E. Wukelic, ed., Handbook of Souiet Space-ScienceResearch (New York:

Gordon and BreachScience Publishers, 1968), pp. 18-19. The ejection system for the dog container was developed

by N. M Rudniy over a period of three yearsbeginning in January 195I.

3 I. The primary scientific goals of thesesecond seriesof vertical launches were: (I ) researchinto the physical and chemical characteristics of air, measurement o[ the aerodynamic characteristics at high velocities and altitudes, and development of methods of determining the direction and velocity of the wind in the upper layersof the

atmosphere: (2) determination of the physical processes in the ionosphere and the density of ionization at altitudes

of I00 kilometers and researchinto altitudes of the D ionization layer and the distribution of voltage at the poles:

and (3) researchinto the life activities of animals associated with the lifting of rockets to great altitudes and testing

of systems for the rescue of the animals and a system of rescue of a payload with instruments. In addition, the

R-t D rocket was said to be equipped with the STK apparatus and telemeasurementsensors for a special development program. See Keldysh, ed, Tuorefleskoyenas[ediye 71kademika,p. 542.

32. Biryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles," p. 233: Lardier. L71stronaufiqueSouietique, p.

81; Mozzhorin, et al. eds.. Dorogi u kosmos. II. pp. 135-36

33. Peter Stache, Souiet Rockets, Foreign Technology Division Translation, FTD-ID(RS)T-0619-88 (from

unnamed source). Wright-Patterson Air ForceBase.Dayton, Ohio, November 29, 1988. p. 219. This is a translation

of Peter Stache, Sowjetischer Raketen(Berlin: Militarverlad der DDR, 1987). Seealso Keldysh, ed,, Tuomheskoye

naslediye 71kademika,p. 538.

34. Biryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles," p. 234: EvgenyRiabchikov, Russians in Space

(Moscow: Novosti PressPublishing House. 1971), pp. 141-42

181
182

atleastfivemorelaunches with dogs byJune 1956, confirming the selection of the basic design

elements of the systems for ensuring the life support and rescue of the dogs.

The physicians involved in the program found that the test animals suffered no major

changes in breathing and in their pulmonary and circulatory systems during the various phases of the flight. The failures in the R-lYe program were apparently all associated with the rescue of the main body: all attempts to recover the rocket body failed because of the failures of

the parachutes to withstand the shock of deployment. 35Korolev, who summarized the results

of the total of fifteen biological launches from 1951 to 1955, at a Moscow conference in April

1956, recalled that the series yielded "valuable, positive results" despite three major failures. He

added, "The rockets met the numerous, highly complex, often vaguely formulated requirements

constantly levied by our colleagues." '°

The results from the R- I B. R- I D, and R- I Ye biological series of rockets were precisely what

Korolev needed to move ahead with plans for human spaceflight. If the launch of an artificial

satellite was his first overriding goal, then the launch of a human into space was without doubt

the second important step to what he saw as fulfilling Tsiolkovskiy's original dreams of space

exploration. It was during the R-tD launches with dogs in 1954 that the Soviet government

received its first request to engage in piloted spaceflight. Tikhonravov's landmark document on

artificial satellites clearly detailed a plan for immediate vertical launches of humans to I00 to

200 kilometers on existing rockets. A year later, in his annual report to the Academy of Sciences

dated June 25. 1955. Korolev wrote:

fit is necessary to consider] the proposal to create a missile laboratory for the lifting of

I-2 researchers to altitudes of 100 kilometers and the development of a special system

for the return of a laboratory with its crew to the Earth. The importance of such an

experiment is huge not only from a scientific point of view, but also from the point of

view of maintaining the USSR's priority in native missile technology. We know that i/

the necessary scientific and technological base for the accomplishment of the goal is created, in 1956 we will be able to start such flights. We ought not to forget that work in

this direction is being carried out very intensively in the LLS.Zt. _7

In April 1956. at the All-Union Conference on Rocket Research into the Upper Layers of

the Atmosphere. held under the aegis of the Academy of Sciences. Korolev responded to criti

cisms of human spaceflight:

There is the question as to whether or not vertical launches of a manned rocket,., have

any practicality for research.., the effects of stress upon the human organism during

rocket flight would not be for too long and would not be excessive even if the effects of

acceleration would vary in terms of intensity as well as the direction of effect during van

35 Stache, Soviet Rockets.p. 219

36 g portion of the text of Korolev's speech has been published as S. R Korolev, "Researchinto the Upper

Layers of the Atmosphere With the Aid of Long-Range Missiles" (English title), in Keldysh, ed_ Tuorcffeskoye

naslediyeZlkademika, pp 348 61. One failure was relatedto a malfunction in the power supply to the launch facilit,/during a launch, while a second was caused by "a break in connection" that resulted in the "measuring head"

separating prematurely during the ascent phaseof the rocket. Seethe samesource, p_354. Of the three failures, two

were in the R-I Ye series,and one was in the R-I B series.

37 The complete text of Korolev's report to the Academy of Scienceshasbeen published as S R Korolev,

"Account of Scientific Activities in 1954" (English title), in Keldysh. ed, Tuorcheskoyenaslediye ,,qkademika. pp.

344-46.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

ions phases of the flight. This would, of course, still be very unpleasant. Still. it can now

be said with some certainty that ouerstress will not stand in the way of, manned rocket

flight .... We feel that today prevailing difficulties can be overcome and manned rocket flight implemented. This will mean an immense expansion of research possibilities.

aside from the pure significance of such flights. _'

Few in the audience were aware that OKB-I had already begun actual design work on a piloted spaceship using scientific versions of the R-1 and R-2 missiles.

At a restricted session of the 125th anniversary of the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher

Technical School, in September 1955, Korolev had presented his conceptions for vertical piloted spaceflight. He was remarkably forthright about his intentions:

Our mission is to ensure that Soviet rockets fly higher and farther than has been accomplished anywhere else up until now. Our mission is to ensure that a Souiet man be the

first to fly in a rocket. Ztnd our mission is to ensure that it is Soviet rockets and Soviet

spaceships that are the first to master the limitless space of the cosmos. _

The initial exploratory work on the project was carried out between April 1955 and May

1956 at OKB-I under the technical leadership of engineer Nikolay R Belov. Parallel work on the

theme was also undertaken by Tikhonravov at NIl-4. At a meeting in early 1956 to discuss the

continuing vertical launches of dogs into space, Korolev proposed that dedicated work begin

to replace dogs with humans. Enthusiastic to participate in this effort, a group of doctors at the

Air Force's Institute of Aviation Medicine had sent formal requests to Vladimir I. Yazdovskiy,

the department chief at the Institute of Space Medicine, to be considered as test subjects for

the suborbital launches? ° A small team, including Abram M, Genin, Ivan I. Kasyan, gleksandr

D. Seryapin, and Yevgeniy M. Yuganov, was established in March 1956, although it seems that

they did little actual training for space missions?' Having been closely involved in the development of the flight instrumentation for the dog flights, these doctors were primarily engaged in

the design of a capsule capable of carrying a human into space on a single-stage ballistic

missile.

Belov's team at OKB-1 considered a common cabin design that would carry a pilot as the

payload in a scientific variant of the military R-2 ballistic missile. The passenger would sit in a

reclining seat surrounded by instruments and a camera to film the pilot's own reactions to flight

conditions. Although a singular cabin design was considered, Belov's team studied at least five

different methods of returning the capsule to Earth. The first variant used a parachute system

triggered at a low altitude in much the same way as was used on the R-IB shots in 1951.

Following separation from the main body of the rocket, the payload would deploy auxiliary air

brakes as well as stabilizers to reduce deployment shock for the parachutes. Velocity would be

reduced from 2,050 meters per second at the moment of separation from the rocket (forty kilometers) to 185 meters per second within forty-eight seconds and finally to just under one and

a half meters per second at landing. Special thermal insulation would be developed for the air

brakes. The second means of return used a reverse method. The point of separation from the

38. Korolev. "Researchinto the Upper Layersof the Atmosphere," pp. 359-61.

39. Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 598.

40. YaroslavGolovanov, "Cosmonaut No. I: Selection" (Englishtitle), Jzuestiya.April 2, 1986: Mozzhorin,

et al., eds_ Dorogi u kosmos:II, p, 142,:Lardier, L'/qstronautiqueSoui)tique, p. 120: V. P.Mishin, "Problems of the

First Flight of a Man into Space" (English title), in qagarinskiye naueflnyye cflteniya po kosmonaufike i aviatsii

(Moscow: Nauka, 1991), p. 22.

41. Lardier,L',Z)stronautiqueSoui)tique, p, 121: Golovanov, Koroteu, p. 598: Col, V. Gorkov, "History of the

SpaceProgram: Resident of Star Town" (English title), Auiatsiya i kosmonavt.ika no I (January 1990): 20-23.

183
I g4

2_

I--

3--

4

r _ .....

1 8

I--

B

L

5

--8

D

2

2

5 E

Beginning in I955, OKB-I studied flue different types of spacecraft for sending a pilot on short hops into space on

the R 2_ missile. From top left to rigM are: (_) capsule with return by parachute and air brakes, the tatter also [or

stabilization: (B) capsule with return by parachute and solid-propellant rocket engines: (C) eapsute with return by

parachute, stabilization by rocket engines and air brakes, and braking by air brakes and by rocket engines during

terminal phase, (D) capsule equipped with helicopter-type rotors with rocket engines on the blade ends: and

(E) spacecraft with wings for gliding return with the aid of stabilization engines, Legend: ( I) capsule, (2) equipment,

(3) parachute system: (4) braking and stabilizing surfaces; (5) position stabilizing nozzles: (6) rotor; (?) wings: and

(8) braking engine (reproduced from Peter Stache, Sowjetischer Raketen (Berlin Militaruerlad der DDR, t987))

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

main rocket body would be at a much higher altitude, but at a much lower velocity--that is,

similar to the R-lYe biological rockets. Auxiliary brakes would further reduce the velocity of

descent to prevent parachute failures. The third conception was different from anything yet

built and used small rocket engines to ensure stable positioning during the descent portion.

The capsule would also use improved and larger air brakes in the upper portion of the spacecraft, as well as special brakes to reduce the landing shock for the passenger. This was an idea

taken from Tikhonravov's VR-190 piloted rocket project in the 1940s.

The fourth and fifth variants for landing the capsule were perhaps the most ambitious and

innovative. For the fourth system, OKB-I engineers completely dispensed with the problematic parachutes, replacing them with seven-meter-diameter helicopter rotors fixed on the nose

cone of the capsule, tqt the peak of its trajectory, the rotors would deploy and start moving in

a circular motion by means of small rocket engines fixed to the tips. Stabilization during the

descent would be ensured by additional control nozzles on the capsule. Engines for softlanding were also installed at the base of the return capsule. The rotor idea was a design to

which Korolev himself returned many times in the next few years, refusing to abandon what

he considered its elegance. While the first four variants of return were based on the premise of

a directly vertical flight into the upper atmosphere up to 200 kilometers, the fifth envisioned a

true ballistic flight downrange about 600 to 1,000 kilometers, but also with a ceiling of 200 kilometers. The primary reason for taking this approach was the increased time of weightlessness--about fifteen minutes for the passenger. Korolev believed that such a ballistic suborbital

flight could be accomplished without any problems if the return capsule was equipped with

large delta-shaped wings. Stabilization and position control engines as well as aerodynamic

rudders would aid during the descent of the pilot. Such a design would also lay the basis for

the development of a supersonic transport vehicle capable of flying at velocities of 3,500 to

7,000 kilometers per hour. 42

All of these various models would be launched on a modification of the R-2 missile, the

scientific R-2A rocket. The old R-I rocket, essentially a copy of the German A-4, had limited

the range of investigations of the upper atmosphere to I00 kilometers. The introduction of the

R-2 doubled this altitude, allowing the first investigations in what might be considered "true

space." The draft plan for the R-2A rocket was completed in 1956 at OKB-I, The rocket, which

was just under twenty meters long, would carry a payload weighing about 1,340 kilograms with

two dogs as well as two 430-kilogram strap-on containers for scientific studies, The dog capsule itself had an internal volume of just under half a cubic meter and was in fact the prototype of the cabin used on the second Sputnik to carry Layka into orbit. 4; For the first time,

accommodation was made for the ingestion of food by the animals during flight. This third

generation of dog capsule dispensed with the catapult mechanism used in the previous series.

Instead, the dogs, dressed in spacesuits, were strapped into separate chambers in a pressurized

area in the nose cone. At the peak of the trajectory, the payload would separate and go into

free fall. At five kilometers altitude, an improved recovery system with a series of three parachutes would deploy. '_'The design and development of the R-2A biological missile were carried

42. The details of all five designs were included in Korolev's speech at the N. E. Bauman Moscow Higher

Technical School in September 1955and aresummarized in Stache, Sou[etRockets,pp, 26t-71,

43. Lardier,LT_stronautiqueSovi_tique, p 82.

44. Stache. Souiet Rockets,p 222. The following overall scientific goals were listed in the dra|t plan of the

R-2/q:( I ) researchinto the chemical composition of air and measurementof air pressureat altitudes of 150-2OOkilometers:(2) detection of solar ultraviolet radiation in the Lymankovskiy hydrogen seriesat 900-1.200 angstroms and

photographing the surrounding areas:(3) researchinto the possibilities of survival and life support for animals lifted on the rocketsto 200 kilometers: (4) testing of systems for rescuing the payload: and (5) determination of phys

ical processesin the ionosphere and ionization density at altitudes of t50-200 kilometers. In addition, asin the R-t D

program, the R 2& was said to be equipped with the S£K apparatusand telemeasurementsensorsfor a special devel

opment program. SeeKeldysh, ed, Tvorcheskoyenaslediye/qkudernika, p. 546.

185
186

out in parallelwith Korolev'sstudieson humanrocketflight

becausebothwereto usethecommonR-2Arocketasalaunch

vehicle.

ThefirstR-2RwaslaunchedsuccessfullyonMay16,1957,

fromKapustinYar,thedayafterthefirstlaunchattemptof the

R-7ICBM.Thetwodogsonboard,RyzhayaandDamka,experiencedalongsixminutesofmicrogravitybeforereturningsafelyto

Earthafterreachinganaltitudeof 212kilometers.At leastfour

moresuccessfullauncheswerecarriedoutintheinitialseries,the

lastonSeptember9?_Itwaslessthantwomonthslaterthatthe

samecontainerwasusedto carryLaykaintoEarthorbit.These

R-2Alauncheslaidthegroundworkforthepilotedlobsintothe

atmosphere,butbylate1957,it seemsthatKorotevhadbeenlookingforotheroptions.Oneoftheoriginalreasonsforimmediately

commencinga pilotedverticalprogramwasthebeliefthatan

orbitalsatellitewithahumanonboardwouldonlybepossibleas

lateast964-66.4_WiththeadventoftheR-7ICBM,theseprojectionsweredrasticallyshortenedbyaboutfiveyears.As Belov's

group at OKB-I continued work on crewed lobs into the atmosphere, it was increasingly clear, at least to Korolev, that the future

lay elsewhere.

As with many of the new directions in the early Soviet space

program, the most fruitful and groundbreaking work emerged from

Tikhonravov's resourceful group, which had recently been transferred from NIl-4 to OKB-I. On March 8, 1957, Korolev consolidated the work under Tikhonravov and established the new

Department No. 9, comprised of about thirty young engineers. It

was now the "planning department for development of space

apparatus." That is, its focus was narrowed exclusively to space

exploration--a significant event that in retrospect signaled the

beginning of OKB-I's gravitation from creating missiles to designing spacecraft. In April, Tikhonravov facilitated some discussions

among his team members about objectives on which they could

focus. Three basic directions emerged:

• Continuing work on Object D, with expansion of work on a

satellite capable of observation

• Initiating work on a biological satellite capable of carrying dogs

in orbit for more than a day

• Developing a capsule for vertical flights of humans to altitudes

of 300-400 kilometers

At the same time, Tikhonravov identified two future streams of

work: the development of a piloted orbital spaceship and the creation of automated lunar exploration spacecraft.

This is one of the R-2,qmissiles, thirteen of which were

launched between 1957 and

1960 Many of them carried

biological containers with

dogs to altitudes as high as

200 kdometers ,':tsimilar

container was used to carry

Layka into orbit on Sputnik 2.

Far a brief period, Koroteu

also planned to use the R-2,,q

to launch humans on vertical

hops into space

(files of ,Z]slfSiddiqi)

45. Biryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles," p. 238: Wukelic, ed., Handbook of Sourer

Space.Science Research,p. I0.

46. /_1,YU.Ishlinskiy.ed. 7]kademik S.P Koroleu:Ueheniy,inzhene_chelouek(Moscow: Nauka, 1986),p. 506.

I

!

I

!

1

1

i

i

i

!

i

1

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ii

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

Research on these topics had actually begun in November 1956, but it was consolidated

in a document issued in April 1957, titled "A Project Research Plan for the Creation of Manned

Satellites and _qutomatic Spacecraft for Lunar Exploration."4' Still classified, the report laid the

groundwork for the early piloted space programs in the Soviet Union.

This initial work in 1957 at OKB-I helped limit the parameters of the future design of a

piloted orbital spaceship. Engineers found that the mass of such a satellite could be as high as

three to four tons and possibly five tons if the R-Z was augmented by an appropriate upper

stage. They also made advances in methods for computing parameters of the heat stream on

the surface of "a simple" body returning into the atmosphere at hypersonic velocities. Research

between September 1951 and January 1958 was instrumental in narrowing down such factors

as the mass of thermal protection and temperature ranges for various types of reentry bodies.

Finally, scientists at Keldysh's Department of Applied Mathematics confirmed that with a ballistic reentry with zero lift, loads on a returning body would not exceed ten times the force of

gravity. 48

Korolev and Tikhonravov may have been primarily interested in Tsiolkovskiy's ideal of space

exploration, but OKB-I was still an organization funded by the Ministry of Defense.

Tikhonravov's early work on piloted orbital spacecraft was in fact closely tied to goals more in

line with those formulated by the military, a point strongly reflected in Tikhonravov's early conception for a satellite capable of "observation." Using the basic Object D frame as a starting

point, in late 1956, Tikhonravov had begun work on two new variants of the satellite, Objects

OD-I and the OD-2; the "OD" stood for "oriented D." The OD-I was a prototype of a military reconnaissance satellite with a passive orientation system, while the OD-2 was the prototype of a biological version for dogs with an active orientation wstem? 9

It seems that the OD-I reconnaissance satellite had the unofficial support of higher leaders, probably in the Ministry of Defense, although there was no formal approval for the work.

Like most other early space projects, the momentum for the OD-I came not from above but

from below. Korolev and Keldysh had both signed a letter dated April 12, 1957, to the Council

of Ministers on accelerating work on the OD-I. Later on july 2, Korolev apparently sent another letter to the government requesting approval to develop a photo-reconnaissance satellite

using the OD-I design? ° Little information has been revealed on this early proposal. According

to the design, the satellite was to use special recoverable film cassettes, which were designed

by the Institute of Applied Geophysics of the Academy of Sciences. The S. I. Vavilov State

Optical Institute, meanwhile, was tasked to develop the secret cameras for the spacecraft. The

spacecraft itself consisted of two modules: a recoverable conical capsule carrying cameras and

film and a large cylindrical instrumentation section with conical or spherical ends. '_

47 Ibid., p. 441: B. V. Raushenbakh,ed.. Materialy po istorii kosmicheskogokorablya "Vos/ok" (Moscow:

Nauka, 1991), p. 2 I0; S, S. Kostin, "Some Aspects of Planning the 'Vostok' SpaceShip" (English title),/z istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 42 ( 1980): 62-66: Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketrythat Conquered Space:Part 3: Lunar

kaunchings for Impact and Photography," Spocefl,ight 38 (June 1996): 206-08: Semenov, ed, RctketnoKosmieheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 10S.

48. Kostin. "Some ,qspectsof Planning the 'Vostok' SpaceShip": Semenov,ed., Roketno-Kosmieheskoya

Korporatsiya, p. 105,

49. Raushenbakh,ed., Motefioly po istorii, p. 2 IO

50. The text of the first letter hasbeen published as S. P. Korolev, "Proposal far an Oriented Satellite of the

Earth" (English title), in Keldysh, ed,, Tuoreheskoyenaslediye7)kadernika, pp. 373-74. Seealso Georgiy Stepanovich

Vetrov, "The FirstSatellite: Historical Limits" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 16 (July 28-August I0, 1997): 2-9

5 I. Yuriy Mikhaylovich Frumkin, "Without the "Secret'Stamp: The First ReconnaissanceSatellite" (English

title), 71uiatsiya i kosmonaufika no, 3 (March 1993): 41-42: Yu. M. Frumkin. "Development of First Soviet

PhotoreconnaissanceSatellite 'Zenit'" (English title). Prirodc_no, 4 (April 1993): 12-78.

187
188

TheOD-2biologicalvariantapparentlyhadlessupport,evenamongtheengineeringleaderswithinthespaceprogram.Butit seemsthatresearchonthisdogsatellitehadgenerateda

modicumofdiscussionatvariouslevelsontheutilityonhumanspaceflight.TherewereintensivediscussionsattheleveloftheCouncilofChiefDesignersthrough1958onwhethertoeven

attempthumanorbitalspaceflightorwhethertosimplycontinuethemoremodestprogram

aimedatverticalattempts.Somerejectedideasforpilotedspaceflightbasedonconcernsabout

thedangersofstress,weightlessness,meteors,eentry,andevencost.Others,includinganumberofchiefdesignersonthecouncil,believedthattheoptimalwaywouldbetoproceedatleast

initiallywithverticalhopsto theupperatmosphere,aswasbeingstudiedbyTikhonravov's

team.A thirdfactionwithinKorolev'sOKB-Iproposedtruesuborbitallauncheswithflights

about1,000kilometersdownrange,suchasthosestudiedbyBelov'sgroup,arguingthatthe

experiencefromthesemodestlauncheswouldbeadequateforthemoment.Althoughitseems

thatKorolevhadvigorouslyfavoredthelattertwooptionsduringthemid-1950s,by1958his

moodhadbecomemoreambitiousandperhapsimpatient.

Korolev'sideaswereopposedbyanumberofmajorfiguresinthenewspaceprogramduringa meetingat theAcademyof Sciencesattendedbyrepresentativesof variousdesign

bureaus,scientific-researchinstitutes,the military,andthe aviationmedicinesector.

AcademicianNorairM.Sisakyan,aleadingbiomedicinespecialistwhohadbeeninvolvedin

thedogs-in-spaceprogram,cautionedaboutthepublicityaffordedtoapotentiallyfatalattempt

to orbita pilot.ArkadiyS.Tomilin,theChiefof theSeventhChiefDirectoratein theState

CommitteeforDefenseTechnology,alsoopposedanorbitalattempt,callingKoroleva"science

fictionwriter.""Korolevdid,however,havethekeysupportofnotonlyKeldyshandGlushko,

butalsoMaj.GeneralAteksandrG.Mrykin,MarshalNedelin'schiefspecialistonspaceandmissileissuesandaverypowerfulfigureinthemilitary.Throughout1958,thesekindsofdiscussionswereapparentlyquitecommon,butKorolev'sheadstrongsupportfororbitalfightslowly

emergedasawinner.AsinthetremendousstepsintheearlyevolutionoftheICBMprogram,

hebelievedthatwhatwasneededatthatpointwerenotincrementaladvances,butasignificantleapincapabilities.Referringtothemoremodestapproachesadvocatedbysomeofhis

associates,hewasreportedtohavesaidatonemeeting:

These are approaches with no [uture. We need spacecraft for flights around the Earth.

Although gradual visits to space are effective, they are o[ no significance for science and for

spaceflight. I favor orbital flight--we can achieve our goal without intermediate stagesP _

The Object K

On the morning of February 15, 1958, Korolev called Tikhonravov into his office and

tasked him to begin formal work on a piloted orbital spaceship) 4 The vehicle would inherit the

OD-2 designation originally kept for launching dogs into orbit. This project would continue in

parallel with Belov's efforts to develop a suborbital piloted spacecraft. Tikhonravov appointed a

talented thirty-two-year-old engineer in his department, Konstantin R Feoktistov, to lead the

engineering aspects of the effort. A prot_g_ of Tikhonravov's, at the age of ten, Feoktistov was

already making plans for exploring the Moon. In 1942, as a sixteen-year-old scout for Soviet

52. Romanov,Korolev, pp. 326-32: A. R Romanov and V. S.Gubarev. Konstruktory (Moscow: Politicheskoy

literatury, 1989), pp. 312- I L Note that a completely garbledand censoredaccount of this meeting was reproducedin

A. Romanov,SpacecraftDesigner(Moscow: Novosti PressAgency Publishing House, 1976), pp 38-42. Not only were

the namesdisguised (Sisakyan becoming Stepnov and Tomiiin becoming Koptelev), but conversationswere so twist

ed beyond recognition, that in somecasesthe samepersonwas having a conversationwith himself in some passages!

53. Stache, Soviet Rockets, pp. 265-66.

54. Romanov, Korolev, p. 31 I.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

partisan units during the Nazi invasion of the Voronezh region, he had been captured, shot,

and left for dead. By a stroke of incredible luck, he had only been injured by the gunfire and

waited until dark to crawl away to safety. In later years, he graduated from the N. E. Bauman

Higher Technical School before finding work under Tikhonravov at NIl-4. As the Chief of the

Group for Planning Piloted Space Apparatus, he oversaw twenty young engineers at OKB-I

who began work in early 1958 on the design of a vehicle capable of carrying a human into

orbit. >

Feoktistov's group began in March-April 1958 by addressing the problem of safely returning a capsule from orbit. In 1953, Timur M. Eneyev at Keldysh's Department of Applied

Mathematics had conducted some of the earliest research on ballistic reentries of orbital vehicles. Eneyev's landmark work was used, in combination with theoretical work done the same

year by Keldysh, Georgiy I. Petrov, Vsevolod S. Avduyevskiy, and others at Nil-I, on the thermal characteristics of various materials for heat protection. The material eventually selected for

the new spaceship was reinforced plastic of asbestos fabric. _ During calculations for the thickness of this layer, one of the engineers, Konstantin S. Shustin, had mistakenly erred by a factor of two. Fortunately for the spaceship, Korolev had earlier demanded that the required

thickness be multiplied by a factor of four for total safety (to fifty millimeters)) _ Feoktistov's

group chose a simple ballistic means of reentry with no lifting surfaces. Many different landing

systems were examined during this process, including Korolev's favorite helicopter rotor system. Korolev contacted the noted Soviet helicopter Chief Designer Mikhail L. Mil of

QKB-329 on this issue, but he was less than enthusiastic, Mil told one of his deputies:

I simply don't want to get mixed up in this. Just imagine: a man flies into space, makes

a couple of loops around the globe, the whole world applauds, and the superstar begins

his return to the Earth and then--bang! Something happens to him. Who is to blame?

We will be! No, we won't be taking part in this undertaking. _

Also considered was a huge umbrella-type brake for landing. All these exotic ideas were

eventually abandoned, and by April 1958, the engineers adopted a simple parachute system. In

addition, because of the large mass of heat protection, the engineers decided at an early stage

to return only a portion of the spacecraft from orbit--that is, there would be a special "descent

apparatus" that would carry the lone passenger. This compartment would be attached in orbit

to an instrument module.

The next major problem was also resolved in April and May: the shape of the descent apparatus capsule. Feoktistov's group examined several designs, including cones of different lengths

and sizes, half spheres, and full spheres2 _ The last shape was finally chosen for three major reasons: a sphere would not require complicated attitude control devices during reentry to maintain

dynamic stability. A sphere also offered increased internal volume relative to surface area. Finally,

55, Rex Hall, "Soviet Civilian Cosmonauts," in Michaei Cassutt, ed., Who's Who in Space: The

Internalional Space "fear Edition (New York: MacmiLlan, 1992), p. 29 t. The others in Feoktistov's group were K S.

Shustin, O. V. Surguchev. M S. Florianskiy,G. Z Davletshin, V. P Kurayev,Ye. N. Lomonosova, V, G. Vartanyan

(computations), A. A. Alimov. N I. Beresnev,L I. Dulnyev. A k Kochkin, V. Ye.Lyubinskiy, Q. G Makarov, V. I

Petrov,N. M Tereshenkova,D M. Ego (layout scheme, design elements, and so on), V. G Suprun (life support systems), V. A. Yazdovskiy (measurement), P V. Herov. and Ye.N Tsererin (landing system, program of experimental

work). SeeRaushenbakh,ed., Materialy po istoriL p 212.

56 N Chentsov, "World Famous,But Secretin EveryWay" (Englishtitle), Nauka i zhizn no 2 (February

1991): 102-07: Lardier,L',qstronautique 5ovi)tique, p. 12I.

57. Lardier, LTtstronautique Soui_tique, p. 12t.

58. Golovanov, Korolev. p. 600.

59. One conception looked almost exactly like the Apollo Command Module

189
190

sphereswouldbesubjecttolowerthermalstressesbecauseoftheincreasedsurfacearea.The

engineerswereawarethatamorecomplexshapesuchasaconewouldreduceg-loadsduring

reentryaswellasallowforsomecontrolatlanding,butKorolevunderstoodthattheseadvantageswererelativelyunimportantithefaceoftheprimarylimitingfactor--time.Theselection

oftheshapeofthedescentapparatus,whichwasassumedtobethemostdifficulttask,was

evidentlyabreakthroughintheentiredesignprocess,andit wasatthispointhatKorolevprivatelydecidedtoproposeandsupporttheentireprojectatagovernmentallevel?°

InearlyJune,TikhonravovandFeoktistovsummarizedtheresearchdonesofarforKorolev,

elicitingthelatter'sfullapproval.Thereweresubsequentdiscussionsithenextmonthswith

leadingspecialistsfromvariousotherdivisionsatOKB-I.Thenthefourmenprimarilyresponsibleforthework--Korolev(ChiefDesignerofOKB-I), Bushuyev(DeputyChiefDesignerof

OKB-tforSpaceTechnology),Tikhonravov(Chiefof OKB-I'sDepartmentNo.9), and

Feoktistov(GroupChiefforPilotedSpaceApparatus)--preparedandsignedaformalandpreliminaryreportontheresearchonAugust18,1958.Thedocument,titled"OKB-IReport.

MaterialsonthePreliminaryWorkontheProblemof theCreationofanEarthSatellitewith

HumansonBoard(ObjectOD-2),"wasanine-partthesis,plusanintroductionadaconclusion,whichincludedsectionson:

• Primaryflightcharacteristics

• ThelayoutschemeforObJectOD-2

• Theshapeofthedescentapparatusandproblemsofstability

• Thecompositionfequipment,landingsystems,andlayoutofthedescentapparatus

• Heatprotectionofthedescentapparatus

• Problemsofheatcyclesinorbit

• Controlandorientationsystems

• Trackingandcommunications

• Theprogramofexperimentalwork_'

ThepapercontainedfourdifferentpossiblevariantsofthepilotedOD-2,allwithasimilartwocompartmentconfiguration:theconical"instrumentsection"andthespherical"descentapparatus."

Thelatterwasaclassicsphereofabouttwoandahalfmetersdiameter,whichservedasthecrew

compartmentaswellasthereentrymoduleforthesinglepassenger.Allthevariantswerequipped

withalargeejectionseatforthecrewmembertouseduringthedescenttoEarth'ssurface.Inthreeof

thevariants,alargeconical-shapedprssurizedcompartment,theinstrumentsection,whichoused

alltheelectronicsandcontrolsystemsforthespacecraft,crownedthisdescentapparatussphere.The

conicalsectionwasevidentlyderivedfromthemainbodyoftheObjectDscientificsatellitelaunched

asSputnik3.whichsuggestsalineageallthewaybacktoTikhonravov'sriginal1954documenton

spaceexploration.Inthefourthvariant,theinstrumentsectionwasintheformofatorusatthebase

ofthesphere.Allfourconceptionshadalargeengine--the"brakingengineunit"--atheapexof

thecones,toperformreentryburns.Dependingonthevariant,thelengthofthesphere-conecombinationwasaboutfourandahalftosixmeters.Thediameterofthecombinationonthepadforall

theversionswasjustovertwoandahalfmeters,Themassofthedescentapparatuswasjustover

threetons?:

60. Ishlinskiy, ed., .,Zikademik S P Koroleu, p. 506.

61 A slightly edited version of the document has been published as S. P,Korolev, K. D. Bushuyev. M. K.

Tikhonravov, and K P.Feoktistov, "OKB-I Report. Materialson the Preliminary Work on the Problemoi-the Creation

of an Earth Satellite With Humans on Board (Object OD-2)" {English title), in Raushenbakh, ed., Materialy po

islorii, p 20-I 19 Feotistov's "counterpart" for the reconnaissance satellite was Ye. L Ryazanov, a veteran from

Tikhonravov's group at NII-4.

62 Ibid,pp 41 49.71.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO

H

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DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

Shown here are two conceptions of the Object OD-2 spacecraft, which was the first design for on orbiting piloted

ship in the Soviet Union. Dating from August 1958. the OD-2 design was changed by early 1959 into the ship

that was later named Vostok, Both of these conceptions incorporated a spherical return capsule [or the lone pilot,

a layout that was retained for Vostok. Note the conical instrument module on the right of each spacecraft,

very much similar to the Object D satellite launched as Sputnik 3 (reproduced from B V Raushenbakh, ed,

Materialy po istoriJkosmicheskogo korablya "Vostok" (Moscow: Nauka, 199I))

From the writing in the document, it seems that variant number one was the favored version, a five- to five-and-a-half-ton spacecraft capable of ten days crewed orbital spaceflight. To

account for a failure in the braking engine unit, the engineers had calculated that a circular orbit

at 250 kilometers would allow the descent apparatus to reenter by normal decay after ten days,

which was the length of safe operation of the on-board life support system, After reentry, the

single passenger would eject out from the spherical capsule at an altitude of eight to ten kilometers and land separately from the main spacecraft. Although provisions were taken in case

of a water landing, the descent apparatus was designed to touch down on land because this

191
192

wouldprovideamodicumofsecrecytotheentireoperationandalsosimplifiedrescueandsurvivalprocedures.Korolevhadastrongdislikeofparachuterecoverysstems,hencehispreferenceforunusualmethodsofdescent,butheagreedtoaparachutesysteminthiscasebecause

thatwouldensureaquickerdesignprocess.Ballisticscalculations,however,provedthatto

ensureasoft-landingonEarth,parachutesofhugesizeaswellasextralandingengineswould

berequired,addingsignificantmassto thespacecraft. To circumvent the problem, the engineers decided to have the pilot eject at altitude. The descent apparatus would land separately.

A seven-part program of testing was identified in the document:

• Static testing on the ground for verifying the thermal protection, the engine unit, the life

support system, the system of internal thermo-regulation, and the catapult system

• Air testing of the catapult system in various conditions

• Rocket testing of the catapult system in various conditions with the aid of mannequins on

R-2 and R-5 rockets

• Verification of the thermal coating in natural reentry conditions

• The development of the spacecraft for carrying dogs on ballistic trajectories to

130-150 kilometers

• One or two launches of dogs into 250-300-kilometer orbits

• The launch of a human into a 250-300-kilometer orbit

According to the document, the engineers would not implement any design changes in the

spacecraft following the automated flights because it would be difficult to predict the consequences of such actions on a crewed mission. If government approval was granted, Korolev

envisioned a first piloted orbital launch by December 1960 at the earliest. 'J_

Based on the August 1958 document, Korolev prepared an information package on the

course of work on the OD-2 and had it circulated on September 15, 1958, to the other members of the Council of Chief Designers--Glushko, Pilyugin, Barmin, Ryazanskiy, and

Kuznetsov--as well as to other senior officials in the government. _4By this point, Korolev was

faced with a dilemma: whether to focus on the reconnaissance satellite or the piloted spaceship. Continuing both programs simultaneously would tax the resources of his organization.

thus perhaps delaying both efforts. Clearly, he preferred the piloted spaceship program, but that

would posit him in the precarious position of ignoring the needs of the defense sector, a charge

that was paramount to treason. Feoktistov recalls, "The battle in the OKB (a fierce one!) went

on for several months and Chief Designers and other specialists from leading organizations who

were to participate in this work were called in. ''_ The real deciding factor, however, may have

not been any internal consideration, but rather events thousands of kilometers from

Kaliningrad, as the United States was beginning to take its first concrete steps toward piloted

spaceflight.

In August 1958, President Eisenhower assigned the yet-to-exist formal successor to the

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to develop and carry out the "mission of manned

spaceflight. "_ On October I, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) formally came into existence and inherited that goal. Just six days later, NASA Administrator

T. Keith Glennan approved plans for a piloted satellite project, and the primary responsibility of

63 Ibid. pp. 116-18: Mikhaii Rebrov, "A StarTraversingCape Horn" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, April

12, 1994.p 2.

64. Semenov.ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p 633 The source mentions "directive organs,"

which was usually a euphemism for the Communist Party and the government.

65 Ishlinskiy. ed../qkadem_k S P Koroleu.pp. 506-07.

66. [inda Neuman Ezetl. N,z]s,z] Historical Data Book Volume II Programs and Projects I938-t968

(Washington. D.C.: N,qS,qSpecial Publication (SP)-4012. 1988). p. 99.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

coordinating the program was delegated on November 5 to the Space Task Group based at the

Langley Research Center in Virginia, headed by Robert R. Gilruth. Among the many luminaries

of this resourceful group were Maxim A. Faget and Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., both of whom, along

with Gilruth, would play some of the more pivotal roles in the early years of the U.S. civilian

space program. The "human in space" project was officially designated "Mercury" on

November 26, and by earlyJanuary 1959, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation's bid for designing and

producing the vehicle was accepted from a list of ten companies. _7

These events in the United States did not pass without notice. The formation of NASA and

Glennan's push for a piloted space project may have been pivotal during a meeting of the

Council of Chief Designers in November t958. Presentations were made on the suborbital program, the orbital spaceship, and the reconnaissance satellite. The council decided to move

ahead first with the development of a piloted orbital spaceship. Work on the development of

an automated reconnaissance satellite was moved to a secondary priority, and all efforts on

suborbital piloted space programs ceased at this point after a full three years of research. _"

Armed with unanimous recommendations for orbital flight and no doubt using the events

in the Mercury program as added weight, Korolev took his case to the Communist Party and

the government. On January 5, 1959, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the

USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree (no. 22-lOss) officially calling for biomedical preparations for a human spaceflight project. "9 This document, still classified, was the first government decree issued in support of a Soviet "human in space" program. Actual language for the

specific development of a piloted spaceship was included in a second, more detailed decree

(no. 569-264), which was adopted by the Soviet leadership on May 22, 1959/0 Interestingly,

this second secret decree was primarily focused on the approval of an automated reconnaissance satellite program, but Korolev, with the help of Keldysh and Rudnev, had managed to

insert the following line at the end of the document: "... and also a satellite designated for a

flight of a human. "7'

The work on the OD-2 piloted spaceship was significantly accelerated as a result of these

decrees. There were, however, at least two major design decisions prior to the signing of the

final technical specifications for the spaceship. In the original conception of the OD-2, the

instrument section was a large cone-shaped compartment fitted on the forward end of the

spherical descent apparatus. In the interest of maintaining mass constraints, instrumentation

would be designed that could be mounted on the exterior of the instrument section for work

in vacuum. Although Feoktistov himself supported this approach, by early t959, Korolev opted

for a more conservative path--one in which all the systems on the instrument section were

installed internally in a pressurized compartment. In his opinion, this would significantly cut

down on the time needed to design and develop instruments capable of working in open

space.'" The shape and configuration of the spacecraft also changed dramatically, with the

instrument section now becoming a double-coned object fitted at the aft end of the sphere.

67. Ibid, pp. 102, 139-40.

68. Raushenbakh,ed., Material), po istorii, p. 212.

69. Gorkov, "History of the Space Program: Resident of Star Town." Korolev had evidently first raised the

issueof "piloted" as a serious proposal to the government--that is, the Special Committee--in a memorandum in

May 1957 Later in _qugust1958, he also managedto extract a show of support from Nil 4 Director G. g. Tyulin. See

Rebrov,"g Star TraversingCape Horn."

70 S. Shamsutdinov. "Sixty Yearsfor Yu. g Gagarin" (English title), Nouosti kosmonavtiki 5 (Febmar),

26 March II, 1994): 5-7.

71. B. Ye.Chertok, Raket),i I),udi: fili Podlipki T),uratam (Moscow: Mashinostro),eni),e, 1996), p. 424.

72. Ishlinski),. ed,/tkademik S.l_ Korofeu, p. 508.

193
194

RADIO SET, TELEGRAPH KEY,

...... _ ...... ENI_I_A7 _ A TT If_TUIjD2B_2I_IFLO .........

.... "....... =JU ..........±/....... TM .......'-;2 "........ T ORIENTATION

VIEWPORT

,'-'1A_J_ | _..._Q.JD _\ GASTANKS SEOUENCE _ INTERIOR /- CONTROL

• ....._/ .......5

SUPPLY ELECTRICAL POWER

SUPPLY SYSTEM

This is the piloted variant of the Object K spacecrafl that later was called Vostok. The Vostok ship consisted

of two basic modules: a spherical reentry module ("descent apparatus") for launch and recovery of the

lone pilot and an instrument module ("instrument section") to carry the systems necessary[or

flight implementation. (copyright David R Woods)

The second change had more long-range repercussions. Partly because of the operational

limitations of a passive orientation system and partly to conserve resources, the original OD-I

design for the reconnaissance satellite was abandoned. Instead, Korolev adopted the design

of the biological OD-2 for the spy satellite/3 Thus, the OD-2 became a dual-role spacecraft

for military reconnaissance and human spaceflight, a common ancestry that was one of the

more famous aspects of the early Soviet space program. Both missions required the recovery

of portions of the satellite as well as a high degree of reliable systems operation: the use of a

common bus would dramatically reduce the effort and time expended on an already overburdened OKB-I. The idea to merge the two disparate programs may even have been a strategy on

Korolev's part to gain approval for the human spaceflight effort by using a reconnaissance satellite cover. The piloted program seems to have had little support from higher leaders, and in early

1958, it was still a very low-priority effort compared to the development of military ballistic

missiles such as the R-7, the R-I I M, the R-I I FM, and the orbital reconnaissance satellite.

73. There are some inconsistencies as to exactly when the two designs were unified. In publishing the

famous August 1958 report on the OD-2. the editor notes: "Minimum cuts [in the publication of the report] relate

to the automated option of the satellite-ship, in which large-sizephoto-apparatus for survey of the Earth's surface

were to be placed instead of the pilot. Theseoptions were later used as the basis of a separateprogram of development of the 'Zenit' photographic researchsatellite." See Raushenbakh.ed., Materialy po istorii, p. 212, This implies

that the OD-2 design was alreadythe basis for a common bus for both the piloted and reconnaissance satellite versions by August 1958. The official history of OKI3-1, however, states that the unification occurred in 1959 See

Semenov, ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 99. The 1959 date may refer to the unification of the new

design for the piloted spaceship (eventually used on the Vostok). which was markedly different from the OD 2.

CHRLLENGE TO II_POLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

As a result of these changes, the designers dropped the original OD-2 designation and

instead named the spacecraft "Obiect K." The "k" stood for korabl, the Russian word for

"ship." Four different variants were postulated, the I K, 2K, 3K, and 4K. The first was earmarked

as a common prototype for both the reconnaissance and piloted variants. The second and

fourth were exclusively dedicated to photo-reconnaissance missions, while the third was

designed for piloted spaceflight.

Korolev approved the "complex plan for experimental work" on the piloted spaceship on

March 17, 1959, which led to the completion of the draft plan of the Object I K the following

month. Comprising "only a few tens of pages of text and sketches," it allowed the designers,

instrument subcontractors, electricians, and test specialists to begin verifying the layout on

mock-ups of the spacecraft. ;'_Partly to have a dedicated facility for producing the new spacecraft, the Military-lndustrial Commission institutionally transferred an old plant on the other

side of Kaliningrad to OKB-I. During World War II, this plant and its associated Central

Artillery Design Bureau had produced almost half the field guns in the Soviet Union, but as the

missile age dawned in Russia, it was fast becoming an obsolete remnant of the past. By the

mid-1950s, with a change of name to the Central Scientific-Research Institute No. 58

(TsNIt-58), the organization had started mass production of fast neutron nuclear reactors for

the Soviet economy. When Korolev needed an extra plant to focus on the development of new

solid-propellant ballistic missiles as well as the production of new spacecraft, Ustinov agreed

to give the plant and its personnel wholesale to the chief designer. On July 3, 1959,

TsNII-58 was attached to OKB-I as its "Second Territory." Korolev's engineers soon arrived

with their drawings of the Object K, cementing the old artillery plant's giant leap into the

future. 7_Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev, the space systems chief at OKB-I. was transferred to

manage operations at the plant, overseeing the manufacture of all spacecraft at Korolev's enterprise. The very first casings of the spherical descent apparatus rolled off the lines the following

month.

The Object K spacecraft, as it emerged in 1959, was a two-section spacecraft with a mass

of approximately 4.73 tons in its crewed variant. Of this, the descent apparatus was 2.46 tons,

while the instrument section was 2.27 tons. The engineers informally called the descent apparatus sharik ("ball"). The overall length of the spacecraft without antennae was 4.4 meters,

while the maximum diameter was 2.43 meters.

The spherical descent apparatus, which had an internal volume of just over one and a half

cubic meters, was a single-seat capsule covered completely with heat-resistant coating to protect it during reentry. The thickness of the thermal coating varied between just over three and

eleven centimeters, the latter on the side that would face the atmosphere during reentry. The

two-and-three-tenths-meter-diameter capsule had three one-meter-diameter hatches, one for

recovery parachutes, one for access to instrumentation, and one for entry and exit by the pilot.

In addition, there were three portholes with refractory glass located on the module for the crewperson to carry out optical observations, two of which had controllable shutters to block out

the Sun's rays. The bulk of the internal volume in the descent apparatus was taken by a large

/'4. For the "comNex plan for experimental work," see Biryukov, "Materials from the 6iographica¢

Chronicles," p. 241. There is some confusion asto the date of completion of the I K draft plan. One source says it

was completed in l_pri11959. SeeChertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 423./_nother source says late May 1959. SeeIshlinskiy,

ed.,/_kademik S. P Koroteu. p. 509. A third source says April 1960. See Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmieheskaya

Korporatsiya, p. 108.

75. Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, pp. 67-68, 633: Chertok, Rakety i/yudi, p. 274:

Ishlinskiy, ed., .Zlkademik S. P Koroleu, pp 326-27, 342-44,348, 414; Sergey Khrushchev. Nikita Khrusheheu: krizisy

i rakety: vzglyad iznutri: tom 2 (Moscow: Novosti, 1994), p. 410. Note that Khrushchev incorrectly implies that the

absorption of the plant occurred in 1962.

195
196

ejection seat weighing 800 kilograms placed at an angle to the horizontal: it contained a spacesuit ventilation system, a catapult system, pyrotechnical devices, and parachute systems. The

porthole directly forward of the pilot carried an optical device named Vzor ("view"), which

would allow manual control over attitude, gn instrument panel was located above the Vzor

device, while there was a Topaz TV camera below it to provide internal views of the capsule

during flight. The control panel had instrumentation for indicating air pressure, temperature,

humidity, and composition, as well as pressure in the attitude control propellant tanks. Controls

on the panel would also allow the pilot to carry out manual operation of the retrofire engine.

g small partially visible rotating globe named _lobus on the upper section of the instrument

panel showed the pilot the spacecraft's location over the surface of Earth. The pilot's control

stick, a food container, the air regeneration system, an electrical clock, a second Topaz TV camera for side views, a radio receiver, a sanitary system, and electrical supply sources were located on the right-hand side of the large ejection seat. Telemetry units and storage space for

secondary equipment were located underneath the seat.

Initially, Korolev had pressured Chief Designer Ivan I. Kartukov at OKB-81 in Moscow, the

leading designer of solid-propellant rocket accelerators for Soviet tactical missiles, to design a

full-scale launch escape system with a tower similar to Mercury's. Kartukov's design,

however, proved to be too heavy, and despite continuing pressure from Korolev, Kartukov

refused to lighten his tower system, fearful that a less robust system would put the lives of

pilots in danger. Korolev's engineers instead proposed using an ejection seat, which would

serve as a means of escape in case of an emergency during launch up to the first forty seconds.

In the event that the Haunchparameters deviated from accepted levels, a command from ground

controllers could blow the hatch on the descent apparatus and eject the pilot in his seat out of

the capsule. Although unable to produce a workable launch escape system, OKB-81 did participate in designing the complex hatch system for the ejection seat.

For internal atmosphere, Soviet biomedicine specialists selected a cabin pressure equivalent

to/55-775 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg), or about one atmosphere, and a 79/21 nitrogenoxygen composition (essentially the same as Earth's surface). This was in contrast to early U.S.

designs, which had a cabin pressure of 258 mm Hg, about one-third of an atmosphere, and a

pure oxygen environment. For Soviet engineers, the choice was driven by concerns for simplicity and shorter development time. While the oxygen-nitrogen system had the advantage of significantly lowering the danger from internal fires, unlike the American system, the pilot would,

however, be exposed to the possibility of suffering from decompression in case the crewmember had to switch life support from the spacecraft to his or her suit. Foroxygen replenishment,

the Soviets chose a "chemical bed" system based on alkali metal superoxides, which would

release oxygen as it absorbed carbon dioxide. _qcooling and dessication unit consisting of a

heat exchanger would ensure the required temperature and humidity in the cabin. Much of the

technology for life support systems had come directly from the vertical flights of dogs into the

upper atmosphere via modifications of the R-2 and R-5 missiles.

Communications with the spacecraft would be maintained by several systems. These

included the Signal ("signal") system on 19,995 megahertz for the transmission of simple

telemetry. The carrier was on-off keyed, with the key rate equal to the pilot's pulse rate and the

off duration being proportional to the crew member's chest width for respiratory measurements. The system also multiplexed parameters for the retrofire burn, P, second system named

TraI-PI would provide supplementary radio-telemetry capacity. For two-way voice communications between the spaceship and the ground, the lone pilot would use the Zarya ("dawn") system on VHF and UHF. Ground controllers also wanted to have a relatively constant video feed

during the mission: this was the job of the Tral-T system, which would transmit images from

the two Topaz TV cameras aboard the ship. For the landing stages of the mission, there were

the Peleng ("bearing") system comprising a shortwave beacon for position determination

CHALLENGE TO I_POLLO
I DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

during and after reentry and the Raduga ("rainbow") system for radio communications. Finally,

there was the Rubm ("ruby") system for trajectory measurement during the flight.

The pressurized instrument section was composed of two cone-shaped compartments

with their blunt ends facing each other. Its primary role was to carry instrumentation for ensuring piloted orbital flight. Made of an aluminum alloy, the main element of the module was a

large engine for the retrorocket burn. Designated the Braking Engine Unit No. I (TDU-I ), it had

a vacuum thrust of 1.614 tons and was fed by 280 kilograms of an amine-based fuel and nitrous

oxide. Maximum burn time would be forty-five seconds. Internally, the module contained the

following systems: instrumentation for guidance, control, and orientation: units for "commandlogic control": an electrical supply system: apparatus for radio communications: telemetry

instrumentation; and a programmed logic clock. The exterior contained tanks for a nitrogenbased attitude control system that used a dual system with eight nozzles each with a thrust of

one and a half kilograms each. Additional systems on the outside included a solar sensor, a

radiative thermal regulation system using blinds, and several small spheres housing oxygen for

use in cases of emergency by the pilot. Eleven antennae protruded from various locations on

the instrument section. Of these, three were for the Signal system, four were for the Zarya

system, two were for telemetry, and two were for "radio-link" commands. The entire section

was not designed for recovery and was to burn up in the atmosphere following separation from

the descent apparatus/_

The TDU-I would operate once during the mission. Prior to nominal reentry, the capsule

would orient automatically by means of a solar sensor to align it to correct attitude. A traditional ballistic reentry would follow without any further attitude control. OKB-I engineers

designed the sphere in such a way that the center of gravity of the capsule was behind and

below the pilot, thus ensuring the module would be in correct orientation to eject the

crewmember in the seat at the correct angle. After reentry, at an altitude of approximately seven

kilometers, bolts securing the pilot's hatch would sever explosively, blowing the cover away

from the descending spacecraft. Just two seconds later, the crewmember and the couch would

eject together with the aid of two powerful solid-propellant rockets, descending together to

about four kilometers altitude, at which point the pilot would separate and land by parachute

at a calculated impact velocity of five meters per second.

Both the Soviets and the Americans, while driven by many of the same considerations in

building the first piloted orbital spacecraft, deviated philosophically in one important area.

Soviet engineers designed Object K with the goal that an entire mission, from launch to landing, could be carried out without the pilot touching a single control inside the ship. While there

was provision for a pilot to manually orient the vehicle and fire the retrorocket in case of an

emergency, Soviet designers never considered the pilot on board anything more than a passenger. Although partly motivated by concerns about psychological stability of the pilot in outer

space, this was primarily because it was not an aviation firm that was in the driver's seat, but

rather OKB-I, which had only designed strategic ballistic missiles and a few high-altitude

76. V. P Glushko, ed.. Kosmonautika entsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskayaentsiklopediya, 1985), pp.

65-66: K P Feoktistov, "The Development of Soviet Piloted Space Ships (Until the Early ?0s)" (English title), in

B. V. Raushenbakh, ed., Issledouaniya po istorii i teorii razuitiya auiatsionnoy i raketno-kosmicheskoy nauki i tekhni

ki (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), pp. 94-122; G. V. Petrovich, ed, The Souiet Encyclopedia of Space Flight (Moscow: Mir

Publishers, 1969), p. 223: Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, pp. 272, 28?': Ponomarev, "2 June--

75 YearsFrom the Birth"; Lardier, L',ZtstronautiqueSovi_tique, pp. 122-23: R. F. Gibbons and R S. Clark, "The

Evolution o[ the Vostok and Voskhod Programmes," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 38 (1985): 3-I0:

Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell. The Partnership 71 History o/ the ,Ztpoflo-Soyuz Test Project

(Washington, DC: NASA 5P-4209, 1978), pp. 64-67: Golovanov, Koroleu. p 62 I.

197
198

cabinsfordogs.Whileanumberofaviationenterprisesmadeverysignificantcontributionsto

theObjectKeffort,theyworkedassubcontractorsOKB-I.Furthermore,theheavyemphasisonautomationmayhavealsobeenanissueofcontrolandreliability--thatis,OKB-1engineersnotonlydidnottrustapilot'scapabilitytofunctionadequately,buttheyalsowantedto

designthecraft,flyit, andlanditallontheirown.UndueautomationofpilotedspacevehicleswasanissuethatwoulddominatehedesignofallSovietcrewedspacevehiclesand,some

wouldsay,haveanegativeimpactonthecourseofeventsinthe1960s.

ActivityintheObjectKprogramintensifiedprogressivelythrough1959.Inlate1959,the

first"boilerplate"spacecraftwasdeliveredfromtheOKB-Iplant.Feoktistovrecallsthat"itwas

anawesomesight"tofinallywitnessthecreationofhisdesignteam'shandiwork/7Atthesame

time,KorolevassignedtwoofhismostIongtimeassociates,PetrV.FlerovandArvidV.Palto.

todirectaseriesoflandingtestsofthedescentapparatustotestoutthecriticalparachutesystem.FlerovwasquitepossiblyoneofKorolev'smostlongstandingfriends;theyhadmetinthe

late1920swhenKorolevwasflyingglidersasayoungman.Forthesedroptests,General

Designer Oleg K. Antonov personally consigned a specially modified "pot-bellied" An-12

aircraft to OKB-I. Flerov and Pallo took a number of shariks to a military airfield at Saryshagan

near Lake Balkhash and dropped the capsules from altitudes of 8,000 to t0,500 meters. The primary landing parachute itself, designed by the Scientific-Research Institute of the Parachute

Landing Service, headed by Chief Designer Fedor D. Tkachev. had a maximum volume of

330 cubic meters and allowed touchdown at ten meters per second/_ Of the five drop tests,

one was an outright failure when the hatch failed to open, thus preventing seat ejection. The

fifth and last sharik carried dogs. Although the touchdown was successful, the capsule unexpectedly rolled down the hills out of sight of rescuers. After a long search, Flerov and Pallo finally found the dogs "worn out but in one piece. ''_9It was on April I0, 1960. that Flerov and Pallo

returned from Saryshagan and reported back to Korolev that the parachute system was ready

for flight. It was a critical milestone, which allowed him to make concrete plans for the first

automated space missions of Object K.

The spacesuit and ejection system were developed and designed by Chief Designer

Alekseyev's Plant No. 918, which had gathered significant experience during the vertical dog

flights. There was much debate about the utility of a pressurized spacesuit during an orbital

mission, with OKB-I engineers believing that the redundant safety systems in the spacecraft

would eliminate the need for a separate suit. Atekseyev, supported by several prominent biomedicine specialists, believed exactly the opposite. Despite the fact that inclusion of a suit

would add more mass to the spacecraft, Korolev ultimately agreed to their demands and in mid1960 decided to include a suit. Alekseyev's engineers eventually designed a suit. the SK- I Sokol

(" falcon"), which was completely autonomous from the spacecraft's air regeneration system.

In case of depressurization, the suit could provide about four hours of backup support for a

pilot. Of the eleven-and-a-half-kilogram mass of the suit, the helmet alone had a mass of just

over three and a half kilograms. Tests of the new spacesuit and the ejection seat, both designed

and built under Alekseyev, were carried out in July-September 1960 during eight drops from an

11-28 aircraft. One of the participants was famous Soviet parachutist Petr I. Dolgov, who was

ejected at an altitude of 7.000 meters from the ejection seat. 8°

77. Ishlinskiy, ed.. ;qkademik S. P Koroleu, p. 509.

78. Glushko, ed, Kosmonautika entsiklopediya, p. 66rThe designer at the institute in charge of parachute

development was N. A. Lobanov,

79 Golovanov, Koroleu,p. 605.

80. Lardier.L'.'VistronautiqueSouietique, p. 122: V. Svergunand V Ageyev, "The Road to 'Vostok" (English

title), Ziuiatiya i kosmonautika no. 2 (March-April 1994): 42-43. Dolgov,a pilot at the famous M. M Gromov FlightTesting Institute, died in an unfortunate accident on November I. 1962,during a parachutedrop from 24,500 meters

as part of the Volga program. SeeYaroslavGolovanov. "Cosmonaut No. I: Slander" (English title), Iz.uestiya,April

3, 1986. p 6.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

The life support system for the spacecraft

was developed by OKB-t24, headed by Chief

Designer Grigoriy I. Voronin. At least fifteen fullscale tests of the system were conducted from

1960 to 1961 of durations between one and fifteen days, confirming the basic design selection

of the system?' Once again, the experience with

the dog flights proved to be critical in terms of

meeting the given timeframe.

Korolev had originally envisioned the use of

a powerful solid-propellant rocket engine for the

retrorocket burn. tqn initial contract for the

job had been assigned to Nil-12.5, where another of his old prewar associates, Yuriy g.

Pobedonostsev, was appointed to develop the

engine. The contract stipulated a delivery by the

first quarter of 1960. There was, however, much

uncertainty with this effort, no doubt related to

the poor state of advanced Soviet solid-propellant rocketry at the time. As insurance, Korolev's

deputies Tikhonravov and Bushuyev recommended a parallel liquid-propellant effort? _ The

obvious choice for designing such an engine

would have been Glushko's organization, but he

was evidently not interested. As was often the

precedent in such cases, Korolev turned to one

of his most trusted associates, Chief Designer

P,leksey Isayev of OKB-2. Clearly as talented and

resourceful as Glushko, Isayev, however, lacked

the farmer's unfettered ambition, g quiet man

Chief Designer;qleksey Isayeu was responsible for

the design of the majority of rocket engines for

spacecraft in the Souiet spaceprogram. His first big

contract in the space field u;as the design of the

Object K (or Vostok2 reentry firing engine, the

TDU-t His organization, OKB-2, also designed

many other engines for air defense and tong range

ballistic missiles (files of Peter _orin)

with an overwhelming drive for work, Isayev had stood in Glushko's shadow through the

1950s, although some of Isayev's original design schemes had been appropriated by Glushko

for preliminary designs of the R-7 ICBM engines. Isayev's crowning achievement in the 1950s

had been the development of an engine for the Soviet Union's first air defense missile, the

V-300, for which in 1956 he received the Hero of Socialist Labor decoration, the USSR's highest civilian award.

Isayev's design bureau had nominally been part of the old NII-88 but was separated into

an independent organization, the new OKB-2, on January 16, 1959. _ Just one month later,

when Korolev entrusted Isayev with the retrorocket engine for Object K, Isayev was said to have

come back to his design bureau and calmly announced to his senior staff: "[Korolev] has proposed that we quickly carry out one small but very important work: returning a human from

space to the Earth."" Through the ensuing months, Korolev met with Isayev several times, asking him detailed questions on the development program for the TDU-I, but he never once recommended changes, thus implicitly entrusting enormous faith in Isayev's abilities. Within just

81. Lardier.L'ZistronautiqueSoui_tique. p. 122.

82. V. K Kupriyanov and V. V. Chernyshev,I uechernyystart .: rasskazo gtaunom konstruktorye raket

nykh duigateley ,,qtekseyeMikhaylouichye Isayeuye(Moscow: Moskovskiy rabochiy. 1988). pp. 123-24.

83. Ibid.. p. 219. The independent OKB 2 was created by the mergerof the old NII-88 OKB 2 and NII-88

OKB-3. The former had been headed by P,. M Isayevand the latter by D. D Sevruk.

84. Ibid.. p. 125. The lead designer of the _DU-I at OKB-2 was N. G. Skorobogatov.

199
200

seven months of receiving the task, Isayev's OKB-2 had begun ground test firings of the

TDU-I engine. The tests began on the evening of September 27, 1959, under the direction of

Isayev's Deputy Vladimir G. Yefremov, culminating in a major failure on the fifth test because

of a valve design error. After new valves were installed, the next ten tests were without

mishaps, removing any doubts as to the design of the engine. On April 25, 1960, Isayev reported back to Korolev that the engine for the first piloted orbital spaceship was ready. It was less

than a month prior to the launch of the first automated version of Object K? _ The solidpropellant engine was never built.

The Object K program was the first large-scale project that opened the door to cooperation outside the design bureaus of the original members of the Council of Chief Designers. In

fact, with the exception of Korolev's OKB-I. none of them had a major role in the design of the

spacecraft. When Pilyugin's department at NII-885 refused to take on the job, Korolev

contracted a team at NII-I to develop the Chayka ("seagull") attitude control system for

the vehicle. This team was headed by a forty-three-year-old vibrations specialist named

Boris V. Raushenbakh, who had been conducting research since 1955 on the "controlled

motion of space apparatus. TM By 1959. Raushenbakh's small team had created the first

Soviet attitude control system for the Ye-2A lunar probe, one of which, Luna 3, became

the first spacecraft to take pictures of the far side of the Moon. Raushenbakh, a man of

many talents, had led a remarkably interesting life and was one of the many in the space

program who had known Korolev during his apprenticeship days at NIl-3 in the 1930s. He

was also one of those who had been sent off to the GULag. In March 1942, he had been

arrested by the secret police simply for possessing a German surname. Having survived

time at a labor camp where as many as ten prisoners were dying per day, he later worked

for a few years at Bolkhovitinov's famous design bureau before returning to Moscow as a

"free" man in 1948. Given his increased involvement with Korolev's projects,

Raushenbakh's resourceful team was transferred wholesale from Nil-I to Korolev's OKB-I

on January 6, 1960. _7

Attitude control was one of the most important elements of the Object K spacecraft,

not the least because of the necessity to orient the vehicle in the correct direction to fire the

main deorbit engine. Discussions on Object K's orientation system began in early 1959.

Originally, Tikhonravov's team decided to simply use the Luna 3 system, which used the

Moon as a point of reference to posit the vehicle in the correct attitude. This plan fell

through when it became clear that the much brighter Sun would interfere with the light from

the Moon. There were also potential complications caused by the different phases of the

Moon as visible from Earth. By April-May 1959, OKB-I finally issued a report selecting solar

orientation as the chosen mode for Object K. When the system operated, it would posit the

spacecraft such that the axis of the main retrorocket's nozzle would be toward the Sun--

that is, the thrust would be directly in the direction away from the Sun. The biggest advantage of using the Sun was that optical sensors would not mistake the Sun for any other

celestial body. For a nominal reentry, the Sun would have to be "ahead" of the spacecraft,

in the sunrise phase, before its passage across the local zenith. There were also two other

systems of orientation on the spacecraft: an automatic system, which responded to Earth's

85. Goiovanov, Koroleu. p 614. In total, the TDU I engine underwent eighteen stripped-down firings.

followed by sixteen full-scale ground firings

86. V. P Legostayev. "t8 january--75 Years From the Birth of Soviet Scholar and Designer B. V.

Raushenbakh( 1915)" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 64 ( 1990): 4-7.

87 Ibid,: Semenov. ed., Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya. p 633: Golovanov, Koroleu. pp. 572-74.

While Raushenbakh's department was responsible for overall design, the actual Grif sensors for the attitude control

system were manufactured by the Central Design Bureau No, 598 (TsKB 598).

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPACESHIP

infrared radiation and used a complex of sophisticated gyroscopic devices, and a manual

system, which duplicated the solar system. For the latter, the pilot would use the Vzor optical device and observe the Earth moving below the center of the instrument. This would

allow the pilot to control horizontal direction or yaw. Using a circular mirror, the pilot could

also control pitch and roll. _

Given precedent, the radio and telemetry systems for the spacecraft would have been

developed by Ryazanskiy at NII-885, but his existing workload necessitated bringing in several

other organizations. NII-695, under Chief Designer Yuriy S. Bykov, designed the Signal, Peleng,

Zarya, and Raduga telemetry-communications systems, while the Experimental Design Bureau

of the Moscow Power Institute, under Chief Designer Aleksey F. Bogomolov, developed the

Rubin trajectory measurement system and the TraI-Pl telemetry system/_

The original council members continued to provide systems for the launch vehicle:

Glushko's OKB-456 provided engines: NII-885 of Ryazanskiy and Pilyugin designed the control

systems: Barmin's GSKB SpetsMash modified the Launch complex: and Kuznetsov's NII-944

developed gyroscopes. The creation of a launcher proved to be a long and complicated process

for the CounciL of Chief Designers. By early 1958, the two-stage R-7 in its "space" variants, the

8KTIPS and the 8A91, could at best lift 1,400 kilograms into low-Earth orbit. To satisfy the

immediate requirements of launching lunar probes and piloted spacecraft, an increase of threefold over that weight was required. Proposals for building a new third stage for the basic R-7

booster had been tabled in the summer of 1957, and soon after, designers began work on two

unrelated upper stage engines, one at Korolev's OKB-I and one at Glushko's

OKB-456. 9_By the end of 1957, the Council of Chief Designers had finalized plans for two new

modifications of the R-7, the 8K72 and the 8KZ3 boosters. Both were to use the basic 8K71

R-7 ICBM augmented up by different upper stages for launching lunar probes and reconnaissance satellites. The Soviet government ratified the effort on March 20, 1958.

At the center of the decision to develop two different launch vehicles was a minor rift

between Chief Designers Korolev and Glushko--an altercation that in less than five years

would evolve into the most acrimonious and infamous battle within the Soviet space program.

When plans for the upper stage engines for the R-7 were originally drawn up in mid-1957,

Korolev assumed that any new engine would be fueled by the same combination of propellants

as the booster proper--that is, liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene. Glushko, however, had been

impressed by a new synthetic propellant named unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (LIDMH)

developed for the first time in the Soviet Union by the State Institute for Applied Chemistry.

According to the institute's data, the new component promised higher energy characteristics

than the traditional LOX-kerosene combination. In a clear indication of his interests, in 1958,

88. B.V. Rauschenbach, "From the Development History of the Vostok Spacecraft." in J. D Hunley, ed.,

History o[ Rocketry and .,qstronautics,Vol. 20 (San Diego. CA: American Astronautical Society. 1997), pp 156-57.

89 Mozzhorin, et aL, eds.. Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, pp. 272,287: Ponomarev."2 June--15 YearsFrom

the Birth": Semenov, ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 108. Others involved in the design of instru

ments for Object K included: NII-88 (the Mir-2 autonomous data recording device): TsKB-598 (the Vzor optical

device and the Grif photo-electric sensorsfor the solar attitude control system): the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research

Institute (the cockpit control panel): Nl1-137 (the explosive device for automated variants): NII-648 (the MRV-2M

"radio-link" command systems): the All-Union Scientific-ResearchInstitute for Power Sources (the power sources):

NII-380 (the Topaz TV cameras); the Committee for State Security (KGB) and the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant

(jointly the movie cameras for photography of Earth): and the State Scientific-ResearchInstitute of Aviation and

Space Medicine, the Biofizpribor Special Design Technology Bureau, the Scientific-Research Institute of Nuclear

Physics of Moscow State University. and the Institute of Biomedical Physiology of the USSRAcademy of Medical

Sciences(jointly medicine, radiation dosimetric instrumentation, and food serving systems).

90 Vasiliy P. Mishin, "... He Said, "Here We Go!" English title),/quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 4 (April

1991): 13-14: Vadolomeyev. "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space: Part 3."

201
202

Glushko began the development of four new engines using UDMH. three in combination with

nitrogen-derived oxidizers and the fourth in combination with LOX. It was the latter engine, the

RD-109 with a vacuum thrust of just under ten and a half tons, which he intended to offer for

use on the 8K73 lunar rocket. Korolev was not happy with this decision. His primary concern

was time. and he strongly believed that Glushko would be unable to design, develop, and test

the first Soviet rocket engine for work in vacuum with a completely new propellant combination by the deadline, which was late 1958. Despite entreaties to retain the LOX-kerosene combination, Glushko pursued work on the RD-I09 engine. In this case, Korolev proved to be right.

The tests of the engine were not finished in 1958, nor were they in 1959. Then the Council of

Chief Designers formally abandoned any plans to develop the 8K73 lunar launch vehicle/'

Luckily for Korolev, there had been a second option, a small thrust engine (just over five

tons) designated the RD-OI05, developed in his own design bureau. Engineers under Mikhail

V. Melnikov at the OKB-I had already created the small steering thrusters for the R-7 first-stage

engines, whose performance characteristics could be scaled to match those needed for an

upper stage. Korolev, still needing a turbopump to complete the engine, was saved by the help

of a new entrant to the space program. In 1957. he had been impressed by a report on the creation of a new restartable LOX-kerosene rocket engine developed in Voronezh at an aviation

design organization, the OKB-154, headed by Chief Designer Semyon eq. Kosberg. ''_ The fiftyfour-year-old Kosberg had little interest in space or rocketry in general, content in his place in

the aviation sector, but he was eventually swayed by Korolev's persuasive arguments to collaborate with him on a new rocket engine capable of firing in vacuum. Thus, Korolev and Kosberg

signed a memorandum of understanding at Kaliningrad on February I0, 1958, which called for

the delivery of the new RD-OI05 engine in time for the first lunar probe launch attempts. 93The

cooperation with an "outsider" was a slap in Glushko's face, but it worked in Korolev's favor.

Combining a turbopump from Kosberg's organization with thrusters from Melnikov's group, the

two design bureaus produced the RD-OIO5 engine in just nine months, ready for flight by

P,ugust 1958. It was the first Soviet liquid-propellant rocket engine designed for use in vacuum,

The 8K72 rocket was fired nine times between September 1958 and April 1960 for the automated lunar probe program. Six of these launches were failures. The three successes were outstanding: the first probe to fly into solar orbit, the first human-made object to impact on

another heavenly body, and the first probe to take pictures of the far side of the Moon.

Calculations, however, proved that the lifting capacity of the 8K72, approximately four and a

half tons into low-Earth orbit, would be just short of what was required for the piloted spaceship. Beginning in January 1959, l_leksandr S. Kasho, a senior engineer at OKB-I, thus led a

team to modify the launcher to increase lifting capacity by 200 extra kilograms, g new upper

stage engine was required. The original upper stage engine for the 8K72 had been a cooperative venture, but this time, Kosberg took the lone responsibility to improve the performance

91. Igor Afanasyev, "Absolutely Secret:N-I" (English title), Krylya rodiny no. 9 (September 1993): 13-16:

T. Varfolomeyev, "Readers'Letters: On Rocket Enginesfrom the KB of S. A. Kosberg, and Carriers on Which They

Were Installed" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 26 (December 18-31, 1993): 46-48: Varfolomeyev, "Soviet

Rocketry that Conquered Space: Part 3": "S. P, Korolev's Letter to the Deputy Chairman of the SSSRCouncil of

Ministers L. V. Smirnov" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no. 4 (April 1994): 79-80. The other three engines developed by Glushko using UDMH werethe RD-216,the RD-218, and the RD-219.The RD-109was also known as the

GDU-I0, or article 8D19.

92 The particular engine was the RD-OI02 for the Yak-27V aircraft. This was the first Soviet restartable liquid-propellant rocket engine running on LOX and kerosene. See Vladimir Rachuk, "Best Rocket Engines From

Voronezh," .,qerospaceJournal no. 6 (November-December 1996): 30-33.

93. Golovanov, Korolev, pp. 559-60: Biryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles," p. 240: V. N.

Ivanenko, "On the Life and Activities of S. A. Kosberg (on His 80th Birthday)" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i

kosmonautiki 49 (1984): 3-I0.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
DESIGNING THE FIRST SPPACESHIP

characteristics of the engine, beginning work in September 1959. In the new version, the

RD-OI09 with a vacuum thrust of just over five and a half tons replaced the RD-OI05 with a

thrust of just over five tons. 94To denote the difference from the 8K72 booster, a "k" was added

to indicate use in the Object K program, thus becoming the 8K72K booster. This marginally

modified launch vehicle had shorter burn times for all its stages, but compensated with the

increased thrust of all engines, including the core. The total length with a new payload fairing

for the piloted spaceship was more than thirty-eight meters, about five meters longer than the

versions that launched the lunar spacecraft.

The piloted portion of the Object K program was one of three post-Sputnik space projects

to emerge in the Soviet Union. Along with the military reconnaissance satellite effort and the

lunar probe program, it allowed the LISSRto gain a foothold in the cosmos. The United States

also engaged in similar efforts, but by the end of the 1950s, the P,merican civilian space program had a singular organizational platform, NP,Sg, and a long-range vision that was far more

integrative than any in the Soviet space program. The chief designers, led by Korolev, endeavored to keep pace with the institutional changes in the United States, with a flurry of letters

and memos directed to the Soviet leadership. By 1960, change would come on the Soviet side,

but with mixed results.

94. Varfolomeyev."SovietRocketrythatConqueredSpace:Part3." It is possiblethat therewasacompetitorvariantto Kosberg'snewRD-0109engine.

203

I

CHAPTER SIX

ORGANIZING FOR

THE SPACE PROGRAM

The piloted portion of Object K was afforded a modicum of priority by the Soviet defense

industry in 1959 and 1960, but the lion's share of funding in the sector was still focused on

the development of strategic offensive systems, primarily long-range ballistic missiles. The

Soviet space program, as distinct from the Soviet missile program, was still in its infancy, and

it was a difficult transition, which was unknown or misunderstood in the West. A top-secret

OR-sponsored intelligence report in August 1959 noted that:

There is no direct evidence on the priority assigned to the 5oviet space program. From

the launehings of the Sputniks, from statements by Soviet scientists and high government officials and from the fact that hardware was diverted from the high priority missite program, uJe betieue the inference can be drawn that the Soviet space exploration

program has been assigned a very high priority.'

In t 959. there was, in fact, no official macro-level policy or priority on the Soviet space program. The defense management enterprises and the Central Committee Defense Industries

Department, which had overseen ballistic missile development, were simply unprepared to

make the transition from one to the other.

Pleas for Order

Engineering and scientific leaders such as Korolev, Keldysh, and Tikhonravov were seriously concerned about the lack of a coordinated policy on the Soviet space program. The launch of

Sputnik in October 1957 prompted a flurry of discussions on the topic at the designer level,

which eventually led these men to send a number of important letters and documents to the

Soviet leadership. These appeals were formulated in two thematic directions--one aimed at

establishing a management and industrial infrastructure to exclusively support a space program

and the second aimed at establishing specific short- and long-range goals of such a program.

The first salvo on the organization theme came less than two months after the launch of

Layka into space. In a letter titled "On the Establishment of New Powerful Industry for the

Investigation of Cosmic Space," dated December 30, 1957, Korolev and Keldysh addressed

both topics. Following the writings of Tsiolkovskiy very closely, the two listed the primary goals

I, U.S Central Intelligence Agency, "Soviet Capabilities in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles," National

Intelligence Estimate 11-5 58, Washington, DC, August 19, 1958, as declassified February 15, 1995, by the CIA

Historical Review Program, p. 27

205
206

of a well-organized Soviet space program. These would be the development of oriented artificial satellites, the use of solar energy as a power source, the creation of satellites for photographing Earth's surface, the creation of space stations for extended use and the return of

data from space, research on "a number of questions on orbiting the Moon," and "human

flight across interplanetary space. '_ To facilitate these goals, the authors called for the establishment of new scientific-research institutes and design bureaus. As with many other letters of

the time, it seems that the Soviet leadership did not respond favorably to the appeal. The first

official governmental decree on the space program, on March 20, 1958, merely approved the

automated lunar probe effort, without addressing any of the larger questions listed by Korolev

and Keldysh, 3

During the summer of 1958, Korolev and Tikhonravov prepared a more detailed appraisal

of the goals of the Soviet space program/ This landmark document, also faithful to the

Tsiolkovskiy vision, laid out the basis for much of the Soviet space effort during the 1960s,

albeit with many delayed timeframes than originally proposed by its authors. Thematically, the

letter was divided into four parts:

• Investigations using the R-7 and its three-stage modifications such as the 8K72

• Creation of new, more powerful launch vehicles

• Investigations using these new launch vehicles

• Basic scientific-research work for the development of interplanetary technology and search

for newer achievements "in the road to the mastery of cosmic space."

The authors listed investigations using the R-7 and its three-stage modifications as:

• Creation of artificial satellites capable of:

a. Photography of Earth with recoverable film cassettes (1958-60)

b. Unlimited lifetimes and periods of operation (1961-65)

c. Existing in highly elliptical orbits around Earth (1961-65)

• Creation of apparatus for investigations of the Moon, including:

a. Ten to twenty-kilogram stations on the surface of the Moon (1958-6 I)

b. Artificial lunar satellites for photography (1959-61)

c. Satellites in elliptical orbit for circling the Moon and returning film cassettes back to

Earth (I 960-64)

• Creation of a piloted satellite with ballistic reentry in three stages (1958-60):

a. Development of heat protection for the return apparatus

b. Creation of test apparatus for suborbital testing

c. Creation of a piloted satellite for operation up to ten days

2. ]-his document has been reproduced in full as M. V. Keldysh and S. R Korolev, "On the Establishment

of New Powerful Industry for the Investigation of Cosmic Space" (English title), in V. S. gvduyevskiy and T. M.

Eneyev,eds.. M. _/ Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy: raketnaya tekhnika i kosmonautika (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), p, 241.

The letter was said to havebeen sent to "directive organs," usually a euphemism for the LISSRCouncil of Ministers

and the Central Committee.

3. Yu. P. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S R Koroleva (Korolev:

RKK Energiya,named after S. P.Korolev, 1996). p. 93.

4. This document has been reproduced in full in two difference Soviet sources. See S. Korolev and M.

Tikhonravov, "Preliminary Considerations on the Prospectsof the Mastery of Cosmic Space" (English title), in B. V.

Raushenbakh,ed,, Materialy po istorii kosmicheskogokorabl "uostok" (Moscow: Nauka, 1991), pp. 16-19. Seealso

S. P Korolev and M. K Tikhonravov, "On the Prospectsof Work on the Mastery of Cosmic Space" (English title).

in M. V Keldysh. ed., Tuoreheskoyenaslediye Ztkademika SergeyaPavlovicha Koroleva: izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), pp. 405-08.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

[

• Creation of a piloted satellite with return via gliding (1959-65)

• Research on opportunities for the exploration of Mars and Venus via automatic apparatus

and returning to Earth's vicinity with photographic and other data (1959-61)

• Research on processes for bringing together two vehicles in orbit that would require pre

liminary scientific work (1962-66)

The second portion of the document addressed the development of new launch vehicles:

Creation of a space booster with a payload of fifteen to twenty tons lending in 1963 or 1964)

Creation of ion and other engines for interplanetary flight and human flight to the Moon

and nearest planets

In the third portion, Korolev and Tikhonravov addressed the use of the new launch vehicles

enunciated above:

Creation of a piloted satellite with one or two humans to develop conditions for extended

piloted spaceflight and the establishment of satellite stations ( 196l -65)

Creation of a spaceship using ion engines for piloted flight to the Moon and back to a station in Earth orbit (1961-65)

Creation of automated spacecraft for investigations of Mars and Venus and their return to

near-Earth space for research on the surface of the planets and testing long-distance radio

communications (1963-66)

Creation of "artificial settlements" in space with the following goals:

a. Creation of near-Earth stations, work starting in 1962, for:

(i) Studying prolonged weightlessness, artificial gravity, and effects on plants,

humans, and animals

(ii) Studying the effects of radiation on vegetation and living organisms

b. Creation of near-Earth stations, work starting in 1962, for:

(i) Assembly of "interorbital" vehicles

(ii) Creation of a space transportation system with Earth

[iii) Reception of "interorbJtal" vehicles

After accomplishing these objectives, the following two goals would be within reach:

• Flight of humans to Mars and Venus

• Flight of humans to the Moon and their return to Earth

• Construction of a continuously operating "station colony" on the Moon, on which preliminary work would begin in t960

The fourth and final part of the document discussed exploratory work that scientists would

carry out as part of research and development programs:

Researchon rockets propelled by chemical and nuclear propellants for lofting large payloads

to Earth orbit and to the Earth orbital stations (1959-60)

Research on ion plasma and similar types of engines for use on interorbital transport

spacecraft (1959-60)

Research on rendezvous in orbit leading to experimental verification 1958-61)

Research on technologies for orbital assembly of a space station in Earth orbit, using rocket stages as components of the station (1959-63)

207
2O8

• Research on closed-cycle life support systems and spacesuits (1960-65)

• Development of energy sources for Earth orbital stations and interorbital

(I 958-62)

• Research on radio communications over very long distances (1959-65)

apparatus

In conclusion. Korolev and Tikhonravov added that the listed dates were preliminary and that

there would undoubtedly be many other fields of scientific-research work that would accompany the enumerated goals.

Several important thematic directions emerge from closer inspection of the document. By

early 1959, some of the more immediate goals were already part of ongoing programs, in particular the automated lunar probes, the human spaceflight effort, and the military photoreconnaissance program. As far as long-term objectives, Korolev and Tikhonravov clearly give a

nod to Tsiolkovskiy's early theories, with a continued emphasis on Earth-orbital space stations

acting as places of research as well as bases for the further exploration of space. In addition, in

their vision of the future, piloted exploration of the planets is one of the central objectives. This

particular theme would in fact dominate much of the long term research at OKB-I during the

following five years as the Soviet space program was in the midst of expansion, tt is noteworthy that for Korolev and Tikhonravov, who had been raised on a diet of Tsiolkovskiy and

Tsander, a piloted lunar landing was not deemed important enough for short-term consideration but instead was consigned to second place alter interplanetary missions.

Unlike many of Korolev's earlier letters to the government, there is nothing in the text in

the document to suggest that the attainment of these goals would reap political dividends in a

"space race" with the United States. The clear and well-thought out goals listed in the document were really the first concrete attempt by the designer faction to move ahead from isolated Sputniks and lunar probes to a rational and broad plan for the exploration of space.

Korolev and Tikhonravov signed the document and sent it to the Military-Industrial

Commission on July 5, 1958. It is now clear that a number of key proposals in the report were

discussed at a very high level over the course of the following year, although the specifics still

remain classified, Superficial details are available of a meeting in Moscow in February 1959 to

discuss nuclear propulsion for spacecraft, but the nature of debates on the larger issue of the

conception and policy of a civilian and military Soviet space program still remain shrouded in

mystery? What is apparent is that by the summer of 1959, one year after having sent their letter, there had not been a single decree on long-term goals from the Communist Party and government. This lack of response may have been a catalyst for more action on Korolev's part.

In the early summer of 1959, he put his resources together with Academician Keldysh, certainly much more influential and powerful than Tikhonravov, and fired off three documents in

succession to the Soviet leadership. The first one. dated May 20, 1959, was a letter proposing

the addition to current plans of a project for designing an "apparatus for returning from orbit

and landing on the Earth. ''_'This was clearly in relation to the Object K program and referred

primarily to the reconnaissance satellite with a few lines added on the piloted variant. Two days

later, a decree was passed on both projects.

The second letter, sent only a week later on May 27, was much more comprehensive and

exclusively addressed the immediacy of establishing formal institutional mechanisms for the

new Soviet space program. The central proposition of the ten-point plan was to separate the

ballistic missile effort from the space program:

5 The descriptionof the 1959meetingin Moscowcanbefoundin A P RomanovandV. S.Gubarev

Kons_ruktory(Moscow:Izdatelstvopoliticheskoyliteratury.1989),pp,308-10

6. Yu V Biryukov."MaterialsfromtheBiographicalChroniclesof SergeyPavlovichKorolev"(Englishtitle),in

B V. Raushenbakh,ed,/z istonisouetskoykosmonautiki(Moscow:Nauka,1983),p. 24I. Theletterremainsclassified

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

1

At the present time, operations associated with the exploration of space are being conducted mainly by the same organizations that have been developing long-range missiles. This is undoubtedly favorable for progress of these operations. But now, since the

objectives and scope of space exploration earmarked for the nearest future have become

extremely broad, it is the right time to invite new forces and new organizations/

Specifically, the authors called for the creation of a Central Scientific-Research Institute for

Interplanetary Research--a place where all future Soviet spacecraft would be designed. While

Korolev's OKB-I would retain the job of designing and building more powerful space launch

boosters, the institute would be separate from the missile industry and focus exclusively on creating Earth-orbital satellites, piloted spaceships, and automated and piloted interplanetary vehicles. Korolev and Keldysh proposed that the new organization should be created on the basis

of an existing aviation design bureau whose prior commitments would be transferred elsewhere. _ In the authors' vision:

This organization could become in the future a scientific center of space exploration on

an international scale, bearing in mind that the Soviet Union has achieved the first useful results in the field. These results could be fruitfully developed and extended in the

future in cooperation with the socialist countries. _

As part of a general restructuring of the missile and space sector, Korolev and Keldysh also

called for the creation of seven other specialized institutes for ( I ) guidance and control systems,

(2) long-range space communications, (3) radio-telemetry systems, (4) the development of

power supply systems (including nuclear sources), (5) the design and manufacture of scientific instruments for spacecraft. (6) biomedical research on humans and animals in space, and

(7) planetary sciences.

In ending their appeal, Korolev and Keldysh called for the creation of a management and

directing mechanism, the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council of the USSR Academy

of Sciences headed by Keldysh, which would oversee the entire Soviet space effort. The closest

thing to such an entity in the United States was perhaps the extinct National Advisory

Committee for Aeronautics, which had recently been succeeded and replaced by the National

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Putting Keldysh's name as head of this proposed council would clearly work in Korolev's favor, given Keldysh's clout with the upper echelons and his favorable support for Korolev's plans. There is nothing in the document to suggest.

however, that Korolev would relinquish his influence over any new institution dedicated to the

development of space vehicles. This document from May 1959 can in fact be seen from one perspective as a means to consolidate Korolev's hold on the emerging space program. At the same

time, it was also a plea for order and rational thinking--that is, to separate the missile and space

industries and establish a number of institutions exclusively dedicated to space exploration.

Korolev sent a third letter, still classified, to the government on July t3 of the same year

"on considerations for the organization of work" on the space program. '_'The requests were

important elements in the pursuit of establishing a separate space program in the Soviet Union.

7. The complete document, with disguised designations, has been reproduced as S. P. Korolev and M V.

Keldysh, "On the Development of Scientific Researchand Experimental-Design Work on the Mastery of Cosmic

Space" (English title), in Keldysh, ed.. Tuoreheskoyenaslediye7]kademika, pp. 409-12.

8. The aviation design bureau is unnamed in the document, but it was possiblyOKB 256. headed by

Chief Designer RV Tsybin, who was an old associateof Korolev's from the late 1920s.

9. Korotev and Ketdysh. "On the Development of Scientific Research," p. 411.

10. Biryukov, "Materials from the Biographical Chronicles," p. 241,

209
210

andKorolevtookadvantageofhispeakinginfluenceandpowertoproposesomeboldideas,

suchasinternationalcooperation,certainlyasensitivesubjectgiventhespacesector'sorigins

intheICBMprogram.Hehadthesupportofsympatheticfiguresinpowerfulpositions,such

asKhrushchev,Ustinov,Rudnev,andKeldysh,patronagestrongenoughtoquicklyfacilitatehe

launchofthefirstSputniks,aseriesoflaunchesinanautomatedlunarexplorationprogram,

andtogaintheapprovalforapilotedsatelliteproject.Buthissmallwindowofopportunitydid

notlastlong.By1959,avarietyoffactorshadbeguntoerodethepoweroftheCouncilofChief

Designerstoforcethroughavigorousspaceprogram.Theimmediateresponsefromtheleadershiptotheseriesoflettersin 1957through1959remainsunclear.Whenthegovernmentdid

takeactiononthespaceprogram,it ultimatelyfellfarshortofwhatKorolevandhisassociates

desired.

OnDecemberI0,1959,theCentralCommitteeandtheUSSRCouncilofMinistersissued

theveryfirstdecree,number1386-618,onamacro-levelpoicyontheSovietspaceprogram.''

Titled"OntheDevelopmentofResearchIntoCosmicSpace,"thedecreewasamodestfirst

stepin elaboratinggoalsfortheSovietspaceprogram,albeitonewithshort-termgoals.

Evidently,onlyoneoftheMay1959recommendationsforinstitutionalchangeproposedby

KorolevandKeldyshwasaddressedinthedecree:thedocumentsanctionedtheformationof

theInterdepartmentalScientific-TechnicalCouncilforSpaceResearch,anadvisorybodyunder

theaegisoftheAcademyofSciencestooverseethematicandprojectproposalsonlong-range

spacegoals.Councilmembersincludedseniorofficialsfromthedesignbureaus,institutes,scientificommunity,andmilitary.TwodesignersfomOKB-l--Korolevandhis"space"deputy,

Bushuyev--officiallybecamemembersofthecouncil'sPresidiumonJanuary13,1960,'_

Theformationofthecouncil,however,didnotsatisfyKorolevandKeldysh'scallforan

industry-widereorganization.PerhapsarmamentspeopleUstinovandRudnevfoundKorolev's

proposaltoestablishanorganizationintheauiation industry an anathema to their allegiances.

The authors of the decree did, however, mention some of the points in the earlier July 1958 letter of Tikhonravov and Korolev. The government granted approval for the development of a

four-stage variant of the R-7 for a series of automated missions to Mars, Venus, and the Moon,

for piloted missions in the Object K spacecraft, and for exploratory studies on a heavy-lift

booster.' The Ministry of Defense, the primary funding conduit for the design bureau system,

was simply not interested in supporting a flourishing and long-range space program as outlined

in the numerous letters to the leadership in the preceding two years. This clash over defense

priorities was a theme that would grow much larger throughout the 1960s. but in 1959, it was

the first indication to Korolev and the remaining members of the Council of Chief Designers

that an indigenous space program was going to have a painful birth. What little funding was

extracted would have to be continually justified on the basis of defensive needs, certainly a

tricky proposition when one considers Korolev's ultimate goals of large space stations in Earth

orbit servicing piloted interplanetary missions to Mars and Venus.

Within the defense sector, during the latter part of the decade, there had been a noticeable

shift in Soviet strategy shifting from dependence on long-range aviation to ICBMs. This major

I I Raushenbakh,ed Materialy po istorii, p, 2 I0: G. Vetrov. "The Difficult Fateof the N I Rocket" (English

title), Nauka i zhizn no, 4 (April 1994): 78-80: K. Lantratov, "Russia to Mars!" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki

20 (September 23-October 6, 1996): 53-72; Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov, "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles

in the USSR." presented at the IOth International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics,

Moscow State University. Moscow, Russia,June20-27, 1995.

12 B. V, Raushenbakh,ed., S. P Koroleu i ego delo suet i teni u istorii kosmonautiki: izbrannyye trudy i

dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), pp_675-16.

13. Vetrov, "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles": B. Ye.Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: Fili Podlipki Tyuratam

(Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996), p, 425: Lantratov, "Russia to Mars!."

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

shift, along with the advent of the R-7 ICBM and less powerful missiles from the Yangel design

bureau, such as the R-12 and the R-14, necessitated a revamping of the existing command

structure in the procurement and operation of ballistic missiles. Throughout the 1950s, the

Ministry of Defense's control and influence over ballistic missile development was effected

through its subordinate Chief Artillery Directorate in a department called the Directorate of the

Commander of Reactive Armaments. Early proposals from various factions in the summer of

1959 addressed the anachronistic nature of having new generations of ballistic missiles in the

control of artillery forces. Khrushchev elected not to follow the example set by the United

States, where the U.S. Air Force controlled strategic missiles. Despite some significant opposition from within the Ministry of Defense, Khrushchev pushed through the formation of a new

branch of the Soviet armed forces, the Missile Forces of Strategic Designation (RVSN), more

commonly known as the Strategic Missile Forces. Signed into existence by a decree of the

Communist Party and government on December 17, 1959, the Strategic Missile Forces inherited the control of all ballistic missiles in the Soviet Union. ''_

Marshal Nedelin, the fifty-seven-year-old military technocrat behind the successful missile

buildup in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, was appointed the first Commander in Chief of the

new service. Nedelin knew Korolev well. The latter regarded Nedelin very highly and was

reported to have said that when it came to

issues of quality control and delivery dates,

Nedelin was a very principled and demanding

customer. '_All activities carried out by the Chief

Artillery Directorate that were related to longrange missiles were transferred to the Strategic

Missile Forces: by default, the Directorate of the

Commander of Reactive Armaments also

became a portion of the new Forces, thus bringing with it all its duties on operating space

launch vehicles. Confusingly renamed the Chief

Directorate of Reactive Armaments (GURVO),

this growing department continued to handle all

launch, tracking, and communications operations for Soviet spacecraft under the tutelage of

its chief, Lt. General Anatoliy I. Semenov.'_

This unprecedented degree of control over

the Soviet space program consolidated the position of the Ministry of Defense to affect space

policy for decades to come. In the late 1950s

and early 1960s, liaison with the space program

was handled neither by Nedelin nor Semenov, Marshal Mitrofan Nedelinwasthefirst commander

but by two other officers in GURVO, both of of the SouietStrategic MissileForces.Through a long and distinguished career in the 1940sand 1950s.he

whom would go on to play significant roles in had serued in uarlous capacities ouerseeingthe propolicy formation and execution in the space curement of the firs(long-rangeballistic missilesinto

program: Lt. General Aleksandr G. Mrykin and the Souiet armed forces (files of Peter _orin)

14 Thedecreesonthe formationof the RVSNarereproducedin I. D Sergeyev,ed.,Khronikaosnounykh

sobytiyistorii rGketnykhuoyskstrategicheskogonaznacfieniya(Moscow:TslPK.1994).pp. 236-39.The Central

Committeedecreenumberwas "ProtocolNo. 254," whiletheCouncilof Ministersdecreenumberwas 1384-615

15. V.Tolubko,Nedelin(Moscow:Molodayagvardiya.1979),p. 176

16. Sergeyev,ed, KhronikGosnounykhsobytiyistorii,p. 8:Yu.,,q,Mozzhorinet al. eds.,Dorogiu kosmos

II (Moscow:MAI, 1992).p. 117.

211
212

Maj, General Kerim A. Kerimov. The former was the First Deputy Commander of GURVO, while

the latter was the head of GURVO's new Third Directorate. specially tasked to handle "client"

operations related to launch vehicles, satellites, ground equipment, and command and control

on behalf of the Strategic Missile Forces. This Third Directorate, created in September 1960, was

the seed of the Russian Military Space Forces of the 1990s/' Mrykin, a man with a larger-thanlife personality rivaling Korolev himself, was legendary for his hard-headed nature and inflammatory short temper--traits that terrified most officials who came into contact with him. He

did, however, have close relationships with the members of the Council of Chief Designers,

facilitating a relatively efficient mode of communication between the space and missile sectors.

What was remarkable about all four men--Nedelin, Semenov, Mrykin, and Kerimov--was

that all had been involved in missile programs as artillery officers, starting with visits to Germany

in 1945 during the famous operation to study the A-4. The stranglehold of these artillery veterans on the new Soviet space program was not transitory: artillery troops, later subsumed by the

Strategic Missile Forces, launched every single Soviet missile and spacecraft, beginning with the

first A-4 launches from Kapustin Yar in 1947 up to the end of 199 I, when the USSR as an entity

was formally dissolved. The ubiquity of the artillery men in the space program was not limited to

the Strategic Missile Forces. In 1959, artillery veterans of the 1945 German visit headed several

important institutes in the industry, including NIl-4 and NII-88 '_ In the following years, they

would also find positions in design bureaus and bureaucratic positions in ministries. This powerful lobby would pose a significant threat to Korolev's ideas of a grand space program.

Korolev in Trouble?

The conflict over defense spending was not the only threat to Korolev's plans. In 1958 and

1959, four different issues emerged in the discourse over the development of ballistic missiles,

all of which involved Korolev. Although seemingly peripheral to the Soviet space program, the

effects of these four factors were far reaching: together, they had an unprecedented cumulative

effect on the course of human space exploration programs in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

The primary competitor to Korolev's QKB-I in the field of ballistic missiles was

OKB-586 headed by Chief Designer Mikhail K Yangel, In t954, Yangel had inherited Korolev's

efforts with storable propellants, turning a modest program into a full-fledged competitor to

Korolev's own design bureau. Yangel's organization had rapidly developed the R-12 mediumrange ballistic missile, which was formally declared operational on March 4, 1959. '_ Encouraged

by the success of Yangel's first missile, the development of a second more powerful missile, the

R-14. with a range of 4,500 kilometers, had been approved by the USSR Council of Ministers

on July 2, 1958. 20Both the R-12 and R-14 missiles used high-boiling storable components as

17 Yu, R Maksimov. ed.. Raketnyye uoyska strate£icheskogo naznaeheniya: uoyenno istorieheskiy trud

(Moscow: RVSN, 1992), p. 49. For a mention of the Third Directorate, seeBYe Chertok. Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye

dni khotodnoy uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1997), p. 154. Seealso V. V. Favorskiyand I. V. Meshcheryakov.

eds, Voyenno-kosmieheskiyesily (uoyenno-istoricheskiytrud): kniga I: kosmonautika i uooruzhennyye 3ily (Moscow:

Sankt Peterburgskoytipografii no, I VO Nauka. 1997). pp. 56-57. According to Kerimov, he headed "the directorate

which handled the monitoring of the planning and manufacturing of space rockets and craft for flight in the autonratic operation versions" SeeK Issakov,"Breakthrough into the Unknown: Today is Cosmonautics Day" (English

title), Bakmskiy rabochiy, April 12, t988. p 3.

18. By late 1959. NIl-4 was headed by Maj, General A. I Sokolov and Nil 88 by Maj General G g Tyulin,

both artillery officers.

r9 Sergeyev,ed., Khronika osnounykh sobyfiy istoriL p. 36. The first silo launch of the R 12took place on

tqugust 31. 1959

20 V. Pappo Korystin, V Platonov, and V. Pashchenko. Dneprouskiy raketno.kosmicheskiy Isentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZIKBYu. 1994), p. 61

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
: ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

propellants, which had two major advantages over low-temperature cryogenic propellants such

as liquid oxygen (LOX): they allowed missiles to be kept battle ready for long periods, and they

permitted very quick preparations for launch. They also had some drawbacks; they were usually extremely toxic, dangerous to handle, and corrosive to traditional propellant tanks.

Historically, Korolev had always preferred cryogenic combinations, primarily because they

offered high specific impulse ratings and lifting efficiency, important factors for space launch

boosters but much less relevant for military missiles. The first Soviet ICBM, the R-7,used a LOXkerosene combination, a relatively efficient combination for space launch operations, but a poor

choice for battle-ready missiles. In the best case, the R-7s took eight to ten hours to fuel and

too much effort to keep ready. If a launch were canceled, a missile had to be emptied at the pad

within ten hours, a dangerous situation for a rocket designed to be the first element of a Soviet

strategic missile force. As early as August 1956, the all-powerful Council of Defense of the

Politburo had adopted a decision to accelerate work on ICBMs that did not use cryogenic

propellants/'

Concerns about propellants were compounded by the steep costs of building launch pads

for the bulky R-7. Originally, the Ministry of Defense had proposed approximately fifty pads all

over the Soviet Union, but the astronomical costs of such an endeavor quickly squelched any

such plans. The R-7 itself went through a troublesome test regime. The first series began on

May 15, 1957, and ended on July I0, 1958. Engineers incorporated improvements to the ICBM

over the following year and conducted a second series of eight launches between December 24,

1958, and December 27, 1959.:2 Problems with the R-7 were slowly eliminated during these

intensive tests, and the missile was officially declared an operational element of the Soviet

armed forces on January 20. 1960. An improved version, the R-TA, with a lighter warhead and

an all-inertial guidance system, became the standard version once it was declared operational

in September of the same year."' Although it was the world's first ICBM, the R-TA was at best

a very poor element of the strategic rocket forces, The costs of building launch pads, their visibility to overflying reconnaissance, the inordinate time to fuel the rocket, the use of cryogenic

propellants, and the poor accuracy of the warhead were all reasons that prompted Khrushchev

to drastically reduce plans to deploy the missile in large numbers. In the end, a total of four

launch complexes were built, three of which were used as sites by strategic forces and the

fourth for space launchesP

21. The Councilof Defensemeetingmayhavebeenin responseto a proposalfrom ChiefDesignerV. P

Glushkoona newICBM,theR8, whichwouldhaveusedstorablepropellantsinsteadof cryogenicpairings.Korolev

wasinformedof theCouncilof DefensedecisiononOctober16,1956,byMarshalIM I. Nedelin.SeeRaushenbakh,

ed, 5 P Koroteui ego deto,pp.25I. 664-65.

22 Yu.A. Mozzhorinet al.. eds_Naehalokosmieheskoyery:vospominaniyaveteranovraketno-kosmieheskoytekhnikii kosmonavtiki:uypuskvtoroy(Moscow:RNITsKD,1994),p. 59.Of theeightlaunchesduringthe

secondseries,sevenweresuccessful.Thefirst series-producedR-7waslaunchedon February17,1959,while the

first fully fueled,operationalR-7waslaunchedto the PacificOceanonOctober22, 1959.SeeBiryukov."Materials

fromtheBiographicalChronicles,"pp.241-42

23. Sergeyev,ed. Khronikaosnounykhsobyt(yistor(i,p. 37.The R-7/_hada rangeof 12,000kilometers.

Authorizationfor theprojectwasgrantedonJuly2, f958, the first launchwason December23. 1959.and flight

testingendedonJuly1, 1960SeeMaksimov,ed., Raketnyyeuoyskastrate,_ieheskogo, p 47,

24 Of thefourpads,twowereat theScientific-ResearchTestingRangeNo. 5 (NIIP-5)at Tyura-Tamat sites

I and31.Site I wasforthe earlyspacelaunches,Constructionof thelatterwascompletedin late 1958.alongwith

itsown integrationbuildingat site32 Theremainingtwo padswereata new sitein northernRussianearthetown

of Mirnyyat NIIP53.Officiallycalledthe ObjectAngara,the basewasthe siteof two pads,thefirst of whichwas

finishedin 1959(site 16)andthesecondo[ whichwasfinishedin 1961(site 4I). It wasthesetwo latterpadsthat

constitutedthe mainbattle-readyR 7 pads.Thefirst padwenton analertstatuson December15,1959,a month

priorto the orderdeclaringthe R-I operational.SeealsoYe.B. Volkov,ed.. Mezhkontinentalnyyeballistieheskiye

raketySSSR(RF)i SSh,Zt(Moscow:RVSN.1996),p. 269.

213
214

The disappointment with the R-7 was a major blow to the limitless faith Khrushchev had

placed on Korolev's abilities. It was the first of a number of factors that began to adversely affect

the "open line" between the two, that had facilitated many of Korolev's early space plans. In

May 1958, Khrushchev, at one of his many meetings with Korolev, had asked the chief designer about the possibility of finding a more efficient solution to the ICBM problem than the R-7.

To Khrushchev's queries on storable propellants such as nitrogen tetroxide, Korolev merely

replied that it would be impossible to build an ICBM using such components, invoking the difficulty of developing powerful engines using toxic components. Korolev's total insistence at

using cryogenic propellants, no doubt stemming from his visions of space exploration, prompted him to propose a replacement for the R-7, a new missile called the R-9. Cryogenic propellants would still fuel the missile, Korolev promised to use high-speed pumps for quick

preparations during battle, as well as super-cooled LOX to extend the time it could be maintained at flight readiness. In addition, the R-9 would only be half the mass of the cumbersome

R-7. Khrushchev promised to think about the proposal but in general remained unsatisfied with

Korolev. The Soviet leader confided in his son that Korolev appeared to be keener on achieving

space records than work on defense/'

The day after the meeting with Korolev, Khrushchev called in Glushko. The latter was a

strong believer in storable propellants, and Glushko had had problems with LOX for years.

Beginning with his early work in 1930s, Glushko had consistently preferred storable propellants

such as nitric acid, shying away from the vibration and combustion problems associated with

more sophisticated cryogenic designs. Glushko told Khrushchev that an ICBM on storable propellants was possible to build and recommended Yangel as a potential contractor. He was particularly interested in a new combination of red fuming nitric acid and unsymmetrical dimethyl

hydrazine, which would offer a potentially easy fix to the missile storage problems. Khrushchev

took advantage of the advice and met with Yangel soon after. The latter, while conceding that

using toxic propellants would be difficult, was completely amenable to the idea. The notion of

creating an ICBM at OKB-586 had been one of Yangel's ultimate goals for some time. After the

Council of Defense recommendation on building noncryogenic ICBMs, on December 17, 1956,

the USSR Council of Ministers approved exploratory work on a new missile at Yangel's organization, called the R-16. Yanget received encouragement on his work when an independent

panel approved the paper design of the missile in January 1958. _

Khrushchev's meeting with Yangel may have been pivotal in shifting "patronage" away

from Korolev. Perhaps to be completely sure of any future action, he met with Korolev once

again to hear his views on the propellant debate. Once again, Korolev repeated his views on

what he considered "the devil's venom." Hearing that Khrushchev was considering giving

Yangel the contract for a new ICBM with storable propellants, Korolev made an uncharacteristic offer. As Khrushchev later remembered. Korolev told him:

25 Sergey Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu: krizisy i rakety: uzgtyad iznutri torn I (Moscow: Novosti,

1994), pp. 382-83. Note that there are contradictory reports that Korolev first proposed the R-9 ICBM idea to

Khrushchev in September 1958.SeeChertok, Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni kholodnoy uoyny, p 23.

26. Pappo-Korystin, Platonov, and Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskly tsentr, p, 61. The

Council of Ministers decreein December1956approved the development of the R-16ICBM for a first launch by June

1961.Work on the theoretical aspects did not, however, begin until November 195Z,after the initial series o[ R-?

launches. The draft plan for the missile was approved in January 1958, but clearly, there was some unexplainable

delay in the program.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
OitG_NIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

I propose that you give this acid-fueled [that is. storable propellant] missile project to

me. Besides that, I will also make an oxygen-fueled missile that will be capable of nearly instantaneous action. This missile will not require any supplementary equipment, like

those guidance stations that have to be located every five hundred kilometers along the

missile's flight path. _7

Khrushchev was resistant to such an idea, but Korolev was insistent. Finally, the Soviet

leader cut Korolev off sharply, reminding him that he was dealing with the Chairman of the

USSR Council of Ministers. The meeting apparently had a profound effect on the close relationship between Korolev and Khrushchev, as their previous rapport gradually began to coo}.

Korolev had to increasingly resort to normal institutional mechanisms to get his big space plans

approved instead of taking them personally to Khrushchev, Thus he became more constrained

by the wishes of Llstinov, Brezhnev, Nedelin, and others whose primary concern was defense,

not space. Perhaps the only asset Korolev had on his side at the time was Khrushchev's interest in using the space program as a means to advance his prestige and power. This, of course,

put Korolev in the difficult position of having to justify his projects not only in terms of their

military utility, but also their appeal to the imagination of the people of the world.

There was a more damaging secondary effect. Some have speculated that when Korolev

heard that Glushko had decided to cooperate with Yangel on the new R-16 ICBM, it was a move

that Korolev could neither forgive nor forget. While Glushko had developed engines for Yangel's

modest R-12 and R-14 missiles, his support and involvement in a new competitive ICBM project of Yangel was apparently unforgivable. Glushko, having been in Korolev's shadow for

decades, had been longing for independence and a way out from the series of troubling LOX

engines he had been developing in difficulty for Korolev. tt has been suggested that it was also

perhaps jealousy that drove Glushko to switch sides to Yangel--jealousy at Korolev's unprecedented rise in twenty years, from GULag prisoner to preeminent space designer. It was Glushko,

after all, who had written to Tsiolkovskiy as a young child and who had dreamed of space

exploration when Korolev was still flying gliders at the local pilots club back in the Ukraine. '_

The break between Korolev and Glushko was neither sudden nor permanent, at least not

during the R-9 discussions. The first cracks had begun to appear as early as 1954, during design

work for the R-7, when Glushko had refused to design verniers for the missile. The acrimony

broke into open conflict in the summer of 1957 during the series of R-7 launches, when there

had been much finger-pointing about the causes of the failures. In one of his letters to his wife

back in Moscow during that summer, Korolev _rovided a window into the relationship between

the two giants of the Soviet space program:

[Clushko] arrived today and to everyone s amazement (mine included.9, using the dirtiest language and the crudest phrases, began telling us all that our work was utterly

worthless--and this, just half an hour after he arrived. This created a terrible impression

on everyone .... His tirade, unfortunately, could not be considered criticism, certainly not

friendly criticism, but simply mindless malice. I answered him calmly (you can imagine

the nerves that that cost me!) and only criticized him for his intemperance and arrogance. [Pilyugin] demanded that we sit down and analyze his behavior, but is that really possible? If a person behaves in such a way but considers his own opinions "more

intelligent than anyone else's in all issues without exception," then the only way that you

can fight is with facts which refute all that he had blurted out. '_

185.

27. NikitaS.Khmshchev,KhrushcheuRemembers: TheGlasnostTapes(Boston:Little& Brown.1990),p

Author'semphasis.

28. Forthisline of interpretation,seeKhrushchev,NikitaKhrushehev.pp. 382-83.

29. YaroslavGolovanov,Koroleu:[aktyi mi[y (Moscow:Nauka,1994),p. 708.

215
216

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The evolution oi long-range ballistic mlssile development in the Sower Union in the post-Sputnik era.

From the left are YangeFs R-16 (operational in 196 I), Korolev's R-9..z}(1965). Chelomey5 LIR-200 (canceled),

and Korolevs CR-I (canceled) (copyright Peter Corm)

With their unusually headstrong characters, their innate ambitions, and, perhaps most

importantly, their differences over technical matters, it is not surprising that the two found

themselves in serious conflict. The maturation of the missile and space programs finally broke

whatever semblance of friendship they had developed over the years.

Yangel's R-16 ICBM project was officially approved by an official governmental decree on

August 28, 1958. It would be a two-stage intercontinental missile with both stages using

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGRNIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

engines from Glushko's OKB-456, fueled by storable propellants. _°The road to approving work

on Korolev's R-9 was fraught with more difficulty. In April 1958, under severe pressure from

Korolev, the six original members of the Council of Chief Designers, including Glushko, sent an

official letter to the Military-Industrial Commission with a proposal to initiate the formal development of Korolev's missile." Both Korolev and Glushko had motivations to cooperate on the

new program--Korolev because Glushko essentially monopolized the development of highthrust rocket engines in the Soviet Union, and Glushko because he was fearful of being excluded from a contract for a new ICBM project. By December of the same year, the two chief

designers had agreed on the specifications for the two-stage missile. '2 Within weeks, Korolev

was having second thoughts on G)ushko's involvement. On March 7, 1959 he sent another letter to Llstinov and Rudnev proposing the development of tuuo variants of the ICBM--one with

Glushko's engines, called the R-9R, and one with nitric acid-kerosene engines designed by

Isayev's OKB-2, called the R-9V. The latter option emerged for two reasons: it would be

Korolev's stab at making a storable propellant rocket, and it would be insurance against

Glushko's failure to develop a cryogenic engine. _ The Soviet government declined to allocate

resources for two versions of the rocket and, on May 13, 1959, issued an official decree approving R-9 development with only Glushko's engines) 4 The eighty-one-ton missile was to carry a

two-ton warhead a full distance of 12,500 kilometers. Many of the performance characteristics

of the R-9 were quite similar to the Martin Marietta Titan I ICBM, whose very existence was

used by Korolev as justification for the R-9.

The program proved to be a Pandora's box of problems for Korolev. Put on the defensive

by the military, Korolev had to continually defend his creation to a less than enthusiastic client,

whose officials were quickly losing any interest in cryogenic ICBMs. OKB-I First Deputy Chief

Designer Mishin, who was the originator of the R-9 proposal, was instrumental in propping up

Korolev's vehement opposition to storable propellants and enumerating the advantages of LOX.

Mishin persistently supported LOX-based combinations and argued that given the resources, he

could draw up technical plans to overcome the apparent deficiencies of LOX in the eyes of the

military. He emerged with some remarkable technical solutions, including low-cost storage systems and high-speed pumps, which may have saved the R-9 program) _

Glushko, meanwhile, ran into severe problems with his chosen engines. The R-9 first stage

required an engine with a thrust of about 140 tons at sea level. This high thrust level was,

however, far in excess of any engine he had ever produced in his thirty years as an engine

30. Pappo-Korystin, Platonov,and Pashchenko,Daeprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiytsentr,p. 62. The engines

were the RD-218for the first stageand the RD 219 for the second stage The propellantswere unsymmetricaldimethyl

hydrazineand redfuming nitric acid for both engines. Somesourcesstate that government approval [or the R 16 was

granted on May 13, 1959--that is, in the samedecreeapproving Korolev'sR-9 missile See,for example,Gotovanov,

Koroleu p 709.

3 I. Thisdocument, datedApril 18, 1958thasbeenpublished in abridgedform as "On ProspectiveDevelopments

of Oxy@n Missiles," in Raushenbakh,ed., S.P Korotev i egodefo, pp. 249-51.

32 Glushkosent Korolev clarificationson performanceratings tor his first-stageengineson December9. 1958.

Korolevsenta subsequentletterto the government and other chief designerson December19.In it, he proposeda launch

massof seventyto seventy-fivetons and a rangeof 12,000kilometers forthe mobile missile.SeeRaushenbakh.ed., S P

Koro/eui ego ddo, p. 671. Note that Glushko had also proposeda variant of the R-9,known asthe R9B. using storable

propellants(nitric acid-unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine), but Korolevapparently nevertook the ideaveryseriously.

33. Confusingly, Korolev also invited Yangelto participatein R-9V development. The R9V would usefour of

OKB 2's engines o[ forty tons thrust eachon the first stage.Yangel'sOKB-586 would haveresponsibilityfor the general

{ayoutof the missile. Seeibid., pp 595. 672,

34. I. Afanasyev,"The Mysterious'Nine'" (Englishtitle), ,,quiatsiyai kosmonautika no. 8 (August 1992): 34-35.

35. Fora summary o[ Mishin's role in the R-9 LOX debate,seeChertok, Raketyi lyudi: Fill Podlipki Tyuralum.

p. 217: Chertok. Rakdy [/yudl: ,goryachiyedni kfloiodaoy uoyny, pp. 27 28: James Harford.Korotev: HouJOne Man

Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat/qmeriea to the Moon (New York:john Wiley & Sons, 1997), pp 1t4 19.

217
218

designer.Anattempttobuildasimilarsingle-chamberenginein theearly1950shadendedin

complete failure. The new engine, the RD-II I, also ran into serious problems. Like the R-7

engines, the new engine comprised four combustion chambers fed by the same turbopump.

Unlike the earlier engines, however, the RD-I I I had much higher chamber pressures (eighty versus sixty atmospheres), which, as it turned out, was the primary cause of high-frequency self-stimulated vibrations that tore the engines apart during ground tests. 36Anticipating precisely such a

situation, Korolev, with the approval of some key members in the government, had invited a new

engine design organization to usurp Glushko's monopoly in the Soviet missile program: OKB-276,

headed by forty-seven-year-old designer Nikolay Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov, Perhaps the most

famous aviation engine designer of the era, Kuznetsov started his career in 1943 when he joined

the Klimov Design Bureau as a Deputy Chief Designer, working on engines for Yakovlev and

Petiyakov's fighter aircraft. On April 17, 1946, the Soviet aviation industry established a new design

bureau at Plant No. 2 at Kuybyshev, to develop new turbojet engines for postwar airplanes. Three

years later, Kuznetsov, then only thirty-eight years old, was appointed its Chief Designer. His organization went from strength to strength, making engines for some of the most famous Soviet airplanes of the 1950s, including the strategic Tu-95 bomber and the Tu-114 passenger aircraft. '_

Unlike some other aviation chief designers, Kuznetsov was not the slightest bit interested

in either the missile or the space industry. He had a well-established reputation as a designer

of high-performance jet engines for Tupolev, Ilyushin, and Antonov, and he was not willing to

jeopardize his standing by partaking in a high-risk endeavor in which he had no experience. But

in the end, he was a victim of circumstance. By the late 1950s, the aviation sector as a whole

was hit by hard times. As Khrushchev shifted his military strategy from aviation to missiles,

numerous design enterprises found themselves without contracts to survive. In effect, the

Soviet leader forced many of these organizations to make a radical shift in their design profiles.

Kuznetsov was so resistant to shift his design bureau to the missile and space industry that he

took the matter to Frol R. Koztov, who was chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian

Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. Kozlov and Kuznetsov enlisted the aid of Nikolay K.

Kirichenko, possibly the most powerful man in the country after Khrushchev. However, the

Soviet leader was not interested in Kuznetsov's arguments: he would have to shift to the rocketry industry, and that was it. TM

Kuznetsov played right into Korolev's dilemma over the R-9 program. In November 1959,

Korolev, alarmed by the delays in Glushko's engine development program, wrote to Secretary

of the Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev, the nominal head of the Soviet space and missile

program. ''_ His request was unambiguous: first, he wanted Glushko ejected from the R-9

36. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: goryochiye dni kholodnoy voyny, p. 33.

37. ,q. N Ponomarev,Souetskiyeauiotsionnyye kosntruktory (Moscow: Voyennoye izdatelstvo. 1990), pp.

292-95. Kuznetsov wasa Deputy Chief Designerat the M Ya Klimov Design Bureau(OKB-26) from 1943to 1946and

a Chef Designerat the sameorganization from 1946to 1949.Hewas appointed to his postas PlantNo. 2 Chief Designer

in 1949.SeeG P Svishchev,ed., Autatsiya entsiklopediya(Moscow: BolshayaRossiyskayaentsiklopediya,t 994). p. 299.

In June 1953,Plant No. 2 was renamedPlant No, 276. at which time the design bureauwas named OKI3-276.

38. Golovanov,Koroleu.pp. T13-14. Korolevhad beenacquaintedwith Kuznetsov sinceabout 1956-57,when

the latter had begun exploratory work on rocketenginesas part of the generalredirection of work at the firm SeeIgor

Afanasyev."N-I: Absolutely Secret"([nglish title), Krylia rodiny no. 9 (September1993): 13-16. Kuznetsov'searlywork

on rocketengineshad been in cooperationwith OKB-165of Chief Designertt. M Lyulka,anotheraviation engine enterprise,which had redirectedits efforts to developing rocketenginesfor the ballistic missileand space programs.

39. This letter,dated November25, 1959,hasbeen reproducedin full as S. P Korolev, "Letter to L I. Brezhnev

on Reorganizationof Work on ZhRDs" (English title), in Raushenbakh.ed, S. P Koroleu i ego delo, pp. 284-85. By

October 14, 1959,Korolev and Kuznetsov had finished a draft plan forthe new variant of the R-9,designatedthe R-gM

The four NK-9 first-stageengineswere from Kuznetsov'sOKB-276, while second stageengineswould be from Isayev's

OKB 2.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

program, and second, he wanted to proceed

using newcomer Kuznetsov's engines, Ustinov,

the chairman of the Military-Industrial

Commission, took a different view and supported Glushko's participation. Although Ustinov

had for the most part been Korolev's supporter

throughout the 1940s and 1950s, he was not.

by any means, a blind ally of the latter.

Ustinov's primary allegiance was to the militaryindustrial complex, not to any particular designer, and in 1959, Korolev's star in the missile

industry was no longer rising. Under "strong

pressure" from Glushko, Ustinov sided against

Korolev: the latter would have to continue with

Glushko's trouble-prone RD-III engine.

Although ground tests for Kuznetsov's engines

continued for some time, this R-9 variant was

never developed. Glushko, at least for the time

being, maintained his monopoly over the

design of high-thrust rocket engines in the

Soviet Union? °

The R-9/R-16 debacle in 1958 and 1959

brought four major issues to the forefront of the

Soviet space program. The first was

Khrushchev's loss of faith in Korolev as the best

rocket builder in the Soviet Union: Yangel had

Nikotoy Kuznetsou was the aviation designer based

in Kuybysheu who joined [orees with 5ergey Korotev

in 1958 to begin research on high-thrust eryogemc

rocket engines [or/CBMs. In later years, Kuznetsou

would play a critical role in designing engines [or

the NI, the 5ouiet Moon rocket, (/lies o/Peter _orin)

taken that place. The second was Korolev and Mishin's full-fledged support of cryogenic propellants over storable propellants for both ICBMs and space launch vehicles. The third was the

split between Glushko and Korolev over propellant selection. The fourth was the entrance of

the Kuznetsov organization into the fray as a possible alternative to Glushko's monopoly in

high-thrust rocket engine development. These four factors set the stage for the catastrophic dissension among the leading designers of the Soviet space program during the 1960s. In 1959,

of course, the cumulative consequences of these factors could not be known. Korolev was at

the peak of his influence. He had a strong support system within the Communist Party, the

government, the military, and the Academy of Sciences. And he was building the first Soviet

spaceship designed to carry humans into orbit. But as Korolev's monopoly in the missile business began to erode, his leading role in the piloted space program was also challenged in the

late 1950s by three additional organizations led by prominent aeronautical engineers. All of

these chief designers were "outsiders" from the aviation industry, and they entered the foray

without a history in the armaments sector like Korolev. One of these men would compete

fiercely with Korolev for the next decade.

40 Afanasyev, "]-he Mysterious 'Nine'": Semenov. ed., Raketno-K, osmicheskaya Korporatsiya, pp. 121-23:

Harford, Koroleu, p. 114. /_s early as January 18, 1960, State Committee for Defense Technology Chairman K N.

Rudnev sent a letter to Korolev (with a copy to D. F. Llstinov) ordering Koroiev to proceed only with the Glushko

variant of the R-9.

219
220

The Spaceplanes

Most histories of the early Soviet space program mention one human-in-space project from

the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Vostok program, which paralleled NASA's Project Mercury.

Declassifications in the early 1990s clearly show that Vostok was only one side of a much larger effort in human spaceflight. As in the United States, military piloted space proposals had

also interested the Soviet government by the late 1950s. During this time, the aviation industry in the Soviet Union was facing its most severe challenge. A recent convert to the effectiveness of missiles, Khrushchev pushed through a number of reforms from 1957 to 1960, which

effectively curtailed contracts for the majority of aviation design bureaus in the Soviet Union.

Some organizations were even dissolved, and engineers were forced to look for work elsewhere.

Having made the decision in 1946 not to engage in missile design, the leaders of the State

Committee for Aviation Technology faced the consequences of their actions a decade later?' To

sustain the well-being of their design bureaus, a number of chief designers from the aviation

industry were forced to offer proposals related to missiles. Kuznetsov's OKB-276 and Kosberg's

OKB-154. for example, joined with Korolev to work on his missiles and space launch vehicles.

The Soviet Air Force, cognizant of the state of its reduced funding, also shifted its priorities to

space issues at the time. A rare public showing of the Air Force's interest in such vehicles was

illustrated in an article in its own daily newspaper, published soon after the launch of the first

two Sputniks. The author, a V. Aleksandrov. described a "rocket-plane" capable of suborbital

flights at speeds of 15,000 kilometers per hour and altitudes of 200 kilometers? _'At the same

time, a secret Air Force panel in late 1958 examined the primary thematic directions it should

take during the following twenty-five years. Among other things, their report recommended

two areas of further research:

• An early stage with aircraft flying at 6,000 to 7,000 kilometers per hour and altitudes of

eighty to I00 kilometers for research into aerodynamic heating and flight dynamics at high

speeds and altitudes

• _ later stage with velocity and altitude increased to more than Mach I0 and I00 to

150 kilometers, respectively '_'

In its interest in spaceplanes, the Soviet Air Force also had help from the U.S. Air Force.

The latter had been conducting studies on hypersonic vehicles for almost a decade, and a formal program, the Dyna-Soar project, was approved on October 10, 1957, less than a week after

the launch of Sputnik. A three-step program was outlined, leading to the deployment of an

orbital weapons system. 4_The progress in the Dyna-Soar program may have been the final catalyst for similar projects in the Soviet Union, the first of which was undertaken under fifty-twoyear-old Pavel Vladimirovich Tsybin, an aeronautical engineer who had designed gliders in the

late 1920s with Korolev. In the late 1940s, Tsybin had designed several high-speed "flying laboratories" that were powered by solid-propellant rocket engines. Based on this experience, on

41 Fora summary of the aviation versus rocketry debate in the Soviet government in the late 1950s, see

Khrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu, pp 292-94.

42 V Aleksandrov. "Rocket-Plane, the Aircraft of the Future" (English title). Souetskaya auiatsiya,

December I. 1957.An English translation ot the article can be found in Soviet V*/ritiRgSon Earth Satellitesand Space

Trauel(Ereepo_t.NY: Books fo_ Libraries Press, t95g), pp. 196-99.

43 V M. Petrakov,"Two Projectsof V. M. Myasishchev," journal o[ the British Interplanetary Society 47'

(September 1994): 347-54.

44. For a detailed exposition on the events leading to the decision on the Dyna Soar program, see Roy F.

Houchin II, "Why the Air ForceProposedthe Dyna SoarX-20 Program,' _uest The History ofSpczce[lightMagazine

3 (Winter 1994): 5-12

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

May 23, 1955, the Ministry of Aviation Industry established OKB-256 at Podberiozye (later

Dubna), with Tsybin as its Chief Designer, to design and develop a supersonic ramjet-powered

strategic bomber named RS. By 1956, this ambitious undertaking had split into two variants,

one an air-launched bomber, named 2RS, and the other a reconnaissance variant, called 3RS.

Construction and managerial delays eventually prompted Tsybin to focus exclusively on the

supersonic reconnaissance aircraft, renamed RSR, which was comparable to the American

SR-71A ("Blackbird"). The Soviet government formally approved the project on August 3 I,

1956. Within three years, test pilots were flying experimental models of the RSR/_

OKB-I Chief Designer Korolev, still close to Tsybin. was aware of the latter's work and was

particularly interested in the dynamics of the catapulted seat for the pilot, which Tsybin used

on one of his "flying laboratories," the LL-I. At one of their meetings in 1958, Korolev asked

Tsybin if he would be interested in conducting research on a reusable spacecraft that would

return to Earth from space using lifting surfaces--that is, a spaceplane. Korolev specifically

wanted something that could fit under the R-Ts payload shroud. Tsybin, aware of the Air

Force's recommendations and personally interested in the idea. agreed and established a group

in his design bureau to study the problem/_

The predraft plan for this vehicle, the first true spaceplane in the Soviet space program, was

signed by Tsybin on May 17, 1959, and resulted from at least a year's worth of research. The

three-and-a-half-ton (at launch) spacecraft, called the Gliding Space Apparatus (PKA) in official

documentation, was nine meters long and equipped with two large wings, which could be folded upwards during certain portions of the mission. The fuselage itself was three meters wide and

protected by a shield composed of two layers of thermal insulation, one with an organic silicon

compound and the second with ultra-fine fiber. The portions of the vehicle that were expected

to be exposed to the greatest thermal stress--the forward portion of the shield and the leading

edges of the horizontal control surfaces and rudders--were cooled by liquid lithium.

Temperatures at these points were expected to reach as high as 1,200 degrees Centigrade, while

other parts of the vehicle would be exposed to only 400 degrees. The two large wings were protected from heat stress by folding upward, thus entering a "shadow" region.

The main fuselage consisted of two pressurized compartments--a cabin for the single pilot

and a compartment for instrumentation--both of which had additional thermal protection. The

pilot's cabin had an ejection seat much like the LL-I and Korolev's Object K spacecraft, a control panel, and additional support systems. The ejection seat had three different positions.

depending on the phase of the mission: one for launch, one for work, and one for rest. The

pilot would have viewing access to the exterior through two side-mounted large windows and

a smaller one for astro-navigation purposes. As in the Object K spacecraft, in case of a launch

failure at altitudes below I0 kilometers, the pilot could abandon the vehicle with the ejection

seat. If a failure came later in the launch trajectory, the PKA would separate from the 8K72

booster, unfold its wings, and land. The instrument compartment contained the equipment and

systems required for orbital flight and reentry.

45. Piotr Butowski. "Steps Towards 'Blackjack': Soviet supersonic intercontinental bombers before the Tu

160," .,qirEnthusiast 73 (January-February 1998): 36 49: Bill Gunston. TheOspreyEncyclopedia o[ Russian,'qtrera[_

1873 t995 (London: Osprey Aerospace. 1996), pp. 376-78: G Amiryants. "lvensen's 'Chayka'" (Fnglish title),

71uiatsiyai kosrnonautika no. 4 (April 1990): 36-38 The RSRwas eventually known as the R-020.

46. Mikhafl Rebrov, "Recounted for the FirstTime: PKA, or Simply 'Lapotok'" (English title), Krasnaya zuezdo. June 17, 1995, p. 4: Golovanov. Koroteu. p 765 Qn May 18, 1959,Korolev sent a letter to the State Committee

for DefenseTechnology in which he formally proposed inviting OKB-256 to develop a "gliding apparatus" This let

ter has been reproduced as S, P. Korolev, "On Gliding Return from Orbit" (English title), in Raushenbakh. ed.,

S. P Koroteu i ego deto, pp, 271-72.

221
222

Propulsion was provided through a bi-level

system. A suspended propulsion system in the

fairing and adjacent to the main fuselage shielding used two primary engines, with a thrust of

2.35 tons each, working on nitric acid and

kerosene. One of these was the retrorocket,

while the other was the "vernier," presumably

for orbital corrections. The entire main propulsion system with a mass of about 180 kilograms

would be discarded once retrofire had occurred

at an altitude of ninety kilometers. A second

system of propulsion was a set of three-kilogram

thrust engines working on hydrogen peroxide

for attitude control in orbit and for the descent.

The nominal mission length for the PKA

Pavel Tsybin's Gliding Space Apparatus (PKA) was

the Soviet Union's first effort at designing a

spaceplane, Its hinged wings were capable of

attaining different angles for different phases of

reentry. (copyright Igor ,'qfanasyev)

was only twenty-four to twenty-seven hours, after which the spacecraft would de-orbit.

Following reentry, it would use its uniquely shaped fuselage to provide lift. At an altitude of

twenty kilometers and a velocity of 500 to 600 meters per second, the two wings would unfurl

to their full span of seven and a half meters: control would be provided by the hydrogen peroxide thrusters throughout this phase. After a one-and-a-half-hour-long reentry, the 2.6-ton

spacecraft would disembark on a runway at 180 to 200 kilometers per hour using bicycle-type

ski landing gear, with the rear skis landing first. 4_

Tsybin's engineers built models of the spacecraft, which Korolev nicknamed Lapotok (a

sandal made of bark) because it resembled the shape of a sandal, and subjected them to wind

tunnel tests at the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) at Zhukovskiy, the premier

Soviet aeronautics research institution. The development of special materials for the PKA was

undertaken at the Moscow-based All-Union Institute of Aviation Materials. Tsybin was also

able to enlist several key Soviet aeronautical engineers into contributing to the program, including aerodynamicist Sergey A. Khristianovich, thermodynamicist Viadimir A. Kirillin, and

mechanics specialist Vladimir V. Struminskiy, all famous academicians in the country. 4_ Despite

the large amount of work, the program apparently never received the official sanction of the

Soviet Party or government, and it may have been an effort pushed by the Air Force, then in

search of a solution to difficult times. The Air Force never did see the PKA fly. By late 1959,

Tsybin's engineers realized that the thermal protection problem was far more complex than had

been anticipated. Tests in wind tunnels showed that the material of the special thermal shielding would have to be changed if the spacecraft was to endure thermal stress during reentry.

Furthermore, the hinged sections of the wings were prone to retain heat within a "dead zone."

These and other problems prompted the effort's termination, 4_

There may have been institutional problems, too. The downturn in the aviation industry

led industrial leaders of the sector to close down a number of design bureaus; one of those was

Tsybin's OKB-256. It is quite likely that poor research results in 1959 also prompted the chairman of the State Committee for Aviation Technology, Petr V. Dementyev, to suspend work on

the RSR (later renamed the R-020) high-altitude reconnaissance plane, as military strategy was

47. Valentin Bobkov,"Space'Sandal'" (Englishtitle). Krylyarodiny no. I I (November 1991): 25: I. B Afanasyev,

"Unknown Spacecraft(Fromthe History of the SovietSpaceProgram)" (Englishtitle). Nouoyeu zhizni Nauke.tekhnike

Senyakosmonautika,astronomiyano. 12 (December 1991): 1-64; Rebrov,"Recountedfor the FirstTime."

48 Golovanov, Korolev. p. ?'65. Khristianovich was the director of the Institute of Theoretical and /qpplied

Mechanicsor the Academyof Sciences.while Struminskiywas affiliatedwith TsAGI

49 /_fanasyev,"Unknown Spacecraft."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPRCE PROGRAM

evolving more toward space-based reconnaissance. Thus the OKB-256's primary reason for

existence also disappeared. On October I, 1959, the enterprise was subordinated to another

much more famous aviation design bureau, OKB-23 headed by Vladimir M. Myasishchev. By

agreement with Korolev, the complete database on the PKA was handed over to a third firm,

grtem I. Mikoyan's OKB-155, the builder of the famous MiG jet fighters. Tsybin himself was

caught in the center of this maze of changes. He eventually found a place in 1961 at Korolev's

design bureau as a deputy chief designer overseeing piloted space programs. J°

The specialty of Myasishchev's OKB-23 was long-range bombers, but like other aviation

design bureaus, it had begun to make overtures to the missile and space industry. One of its

first forays into the long-range missile business was as part of the stiff competition with

Semyon A. Lavochkin's OKB-301 to develop the first Soviet intercontinental cruise missile as

an alternative to Korotev's R-Z ICBM. The two cruise missile projects, having officially begun in

t 954, had progressed at different paces, with the Lavochkin model, known as the La-350 Burya,

taking an early lead. By 1955, OKB-301 had built and tested an operational model of the

AN-2Sh astro-navigation system for the missile aboard a Tu-I 6 bomber. Signals from the stellar sensors were transmitted to the plane's autopilot for more than four hours, enabling the aircraft to automatically correct deviations in its flight path to less than four kilometers accuracy.

The following year, Lavochkin's engineers had finished construction of the first flight models of

the two-stage cruise missile (at Plant No. 18 at Kuybyshev)?'

Launch attempts of the Burya commenced on August I, 1957, from the Air Force's test

range at Vladimirovka in the Volga delta near Kapustin Yar, at exactly the same time when

Korolev was testing his R-/from Tyura-Tam The initial series consisted of launches of only a

live first stage and a ballast second cruise stage. The first three tests were complete failures: the

missile was, in fact, completely destroyed on the second attempt on September I. During a second phase of eight launch attempts beginning in March 1958, engineers studied the parameters

of the boost stage prior to the separation of the dummy second stage. Only one flight was successful. A subsequent phase of four launch attempts proved to be much more encouraging. On

one of these launches, on April 19, 1959, the Burya performed without problems on a thirtythree-minute jaunt into the skies over a distance of nearly 1,800 kilometers. 5_

Despite the relatively encouraging results, the La-350 Burya was a victim of its times. With

the advent of the ICBM, this cruise missile was an anachronism. Because of its low flight altitude, eighteen to twenty-three kilometers, it was extremely vulnerable to defensive measures.

It also took far too long, more than two hours, to reach its target. By comparison, ICBMs could

do the same job in minutes. The Soviet government was also concerned that work on the Burya

would divert resources from OKB-3OI's primary project, the long-range Dal anti-aircraft missile

50. The actual Plant No. 256, the location of one of the main design departments of OKB-256, was subordinated to the OKB-2-155 headedby Chief DesignerA. Ya Bereznyak, an organization with no connection to the

ballistic missile or spaceindustry. SeeButowski, "Steps Towards 'Blackjack'": Bobkov. "Space 'Sandal'"; Afanasyev,

"Unknown Spacecraft": Amiryants, "Ivensen's 'Chayka'"; JacquesVillain. ed.. Baikonour: In porte des _toiles (Paris:

Armand Colin. 1994), p. 236: Rebrov,"Recounted for the First Time." As part of the researchon the R-020, Tsybin

had developed the NM-I high-speed vehicle, which was flown thirty-two times starting in April 1959, albeit with

poor results.

5 I. Boris V. Rauschenbach, "The 'Burya' Intercontinental Cruise Missile." presentedat the 43rd Congress

of the International Astronautical Federation, IAA-92-OI8E Washington, DC, August 28-September 5, 1992: I.

Afanasyev, "Without the SecretStamp: Halt the Work, Destroy the Materials" (English title), Z_uiatsi),ai kosmonautika no. 6 (June 1993): 42-44.

52. V. Aslanov. "'Soviet Shuttle' of the 50s" (English title), ..Z]pogeyS (June 1993): I: Christian Lardier.

"70 Years of Soviet Ramjets," presented at the 48th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation.

IAA-97-IAA.2.3.03, Turin, Italy, October 6-I0. 1997: Rauschenbach. "The 'Burya' Intercontinental Cruise Missile,"

223
224

system for the city of Leningrad. On February 5, 1960, the Council of Ministers and the Central

Committee issued a decree (no. 138-48) formally terminating all work on the Burya missile. By

this time, nineteen examples of the missile had been manufactured, five of which remained

unflown. The fate of OKB-301 took a further dive on July 9, 1960, when its patriarch, General

Designer Lavochkin, died unexpectedly of a heart attack during missile testing of the Dal at

Sary-Shagan. His successor, Mikhail M. Pashinin, retained the right to launch the remaining

flightworthy models of the Burya. Three of the four launch attempts were spectacular. The last

two in March and December 1960 were complete successes. Both missiles flew complete 6,500-

kilometer flights to Kamchatka. All the remaining groundwork on the missile was, however,

destroyed."

Myasishchev's competitive M-40 Buran fared even worse. Flight tests of the missile were

slated to begin in August t957, but there were innumerable delays in the project, most apparently because of Glushko's engines for the first stage. Two models of the Buran were apparently

manufactured at the giant Plant No, 23 at Fill, but the spectacular success of R-7 ICBM sealed

its fate. One month after the launch of the first Sputnik, the Soviet government canceled the

Buran project without a single launch) 4 It seems that the cancellation of the Buran did not deter

Myasishchev. Although he had a plethora of advanced bomber projects at his design bureau by

the late t950s, unlike many other aviation designers, he was keen to diversify into the space

and missile programs." Myasishchev and Korolev had known each other for decades and had

in fact worked together in the very same incarceration facility as prisoners during the early part

of World War II, Myasishchev had been arrested for belonging to an aviation delegation that

had visited the United States in the late 1930s. The two cooperated on a number of warplanes

at the time and remained on good terms during the next fifteen years.

When Korolev was carrying out serious studies of human spaceflight on ballistic trajectories in late 1957 after the launch of the first Sputnik, Myasishchev began looking at designing

a vehicle that could use aerodynamic surfaces during reentry, As with all aviation designers,

Myasishchev had difficulty shifting his priorities to space. During a visit by Khrushchev to

OKB-23 in August 1958. Myasishchev personally appealed for support to develop "rocketplane" systems. Khrushchev replied, "Vladimir Mikhaytovich [Myasishchev], you are engaged

[in] large themes in the field of aviation. This is your field. But questions of rocket technology

are for us to decide and to provide. ''_ Despite the negative response, Myasishchev's perseverance eventually paid off, and thus emerged the second spaceplane program in the Soviet Union.

OKB-23's reusable spaceplane project, which began in late 1957, was coordinated to a great

degree with engineers at Korolev's OKB-I. Specifications of the R-7 ICBM were given to

53. _slanov, "'Soviet Shuttle' of the 50s": Lardier. "70 Yearsof Soviet Ramjets": Afanasyev. "Without the

Secret Stamp": S. M. Ganin and V I Ivanovskiy, "The Multi-channel 'Dal' /_nti-,qircraft Missile System of Great

Range" (English title), Neuskiy bastion no. I (I998): 7-15.

54. V. Petrakovand M. Chernyshov, "Without the Stamp 'Secret': The Unknown Buranr' (English title),

Souetskaya rossiya. April I0, 1991, p 4: L. L. Selyakov,Maloizuestnyye stranitsy tvorcheskoy deyatelnosti auiatsionnogo konstruktora Vtadimira Mikhaylouich Myasisheheua (Moscow: AO ANTK im. Tupoleva, 1997), pp.

109-12 The actual termination decree was issued on November 28. 1951.

55. Much of the OKB 23's resourceswere focused on the design of supersonic bombers, such asthe M-30.

M-3t. M 32 M 33, and M 34, none of which were ever built His most famous creation of the period was the M50. a technology demonstrator for the M 52 supersonic bomber, whose first prototype flew on October 27, t959

Other projects included the M-53 and M 55 (both supersonic airliners), the M 56 and M-57 (supersonic strategic

bombers), the M-60 (a nuclear-powered bomber), and the M 70 (a flying-boat strategic bomber) See Butowski,

"Steps Towards 'Blackjack'"

56 Petrakov,"Two Projects of V. M. Myasishchev."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

Myasishchev's engineers, who determined the mass of a spaceplane (four and a half tons) as

well as the optimal orbit (400 kilometers). Like Tsybin's PKA, OKB-23 project was also supported by the Soviet Air Force as a counterpart to the American Dyna-Soar, and for a brief period,

there were actually two spaceplane projects in the USSR. Unlike Tsybin's brief stab at developing a hypersonic lifting body, it seems that Myasishchev's project was far more serious.

Designated the M-48, the project was approved by the Soviet government and Communist Party

in the same December 1959 resolution, which was the first macro-level policy statement on the

Soviet space program. It thus became only the second fully sanctioned human spaceflight project in the Soviet Union. As with other efforts of such a scale, OKB-23 cooperated to a great

degree with both OKB-I and other research institutions, such as Keldysh's Nil-I, which had pioneered researchon high-altitude and high-speed aeronautics during the 1940s and 1950s, beginning with work on a Soviet version of the S_nger-Bredt antipodal bomber. OKB-23 also used its

own rich database from the experience in designing the M-40 intercontinental cruise missile,

especially in the area of thermal shielding. In March 1960, a delegation from OKB-23 visited

Korolev's facility in Kaliningrad to acquaint themselves with progress on the Object K program

as well as to facilitate the transfer of important technological innovations:':

A governmental commission attached to the State Committee for Aviation Technology, the

"ministry" overseeing the aviation industry, held a formal review of the project on April 8, 1960.

Present were many leading experts from various aeronautics disciplines, who presented recommendations on the design of the M-48 spacecraft. Among the competing proposals was the

use of a helicopter-landing scheme for the vehicle with a rotor diameter of eight meters. Other

more traditional ideas revolved around using retractable or fixed wings, the use of liquid metal

cooling, and the possibility of ballistic reentry. There was apparently much dissension on the

issue of selecting a singular variant for the spaceplane, given that different aerodynamicists and

aeronautical engineers argued for the benefits of their respective schemes. In a move clearly

emphasizing the program's political importance, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee

Aleksandr A. Kobzarev underscored the necessity of quickly developing an effective counterpart to the Dyna-Soar.

In the ensuing months, engineers proposed at least two major innovations in the development of the M-48. The thermal protection chosen for the vehicle was made of ultra-lightweight

(for the time) ceramic foam characterized by its great fragility. Because it was necessary to have

rigid wing surfaces, OKB-23 engineers chose to use thermal shielding in the form of tiles placed

in layers with special adhesives. To ensure the safety of the shielding, they designed the ends

of the tiles as conics and filled the spaces between them with quartz wadding impregnated

with silicon resin. Tests of this configuration proved the soundness of this unusual design. A

second innovation was the use of "electrodynamic analogs" to simulate behavior of the vehicle under different conditions. Thus the heat conductivity and thermal heat capacity of the construction was replaced by resistors, capacitors, and other electrical components. Resistances

and potential differences at various points in the circuit simulated flight conditions, providing

key information without resorting to actual flight testing. Engineers expended the most effort

on the heat shielding, and they received several patents for the unique materials for different

portions of the vehicle and the leading edge of the wings. At least 40 percent of the spacecraft

was covered in special thermal protection.

Between March and September 1960, Myasishchev's engineers carried out intensive

research on the final configuration of the M-48, leading to two final variants--one with a single fin at the rear (mass of 3.5 to 4. I tons) and one with two fins at the tips of the wings (mass

57. Ibid

225
226

of 3.6 to 4.5 tons). Although both spacecraft

had similar performance characteristics, the former spacecraft was slightly longer (9.4 meters)

than the latter (9.0 meters). Effective wingspan

for both was seven and a half meters. The twofin design, the smarler of the two variants, had

a smooth outer contour resembling the DynaSoar, while the single-fin variant harked back to

the paneled exterior of early proposals from

Myasishchev in 1957-58. Unlike Tsybin's PKA

design, neither of Myasishchev's spaceplane

variants used hinged wings that could change

their dihedral angles. Both spacecraft carried a

cramped crew capsule for a single spacesuited

pilot and an ejection seat. The mass of the seat

and the pilot was limited to only 250 to

260 kilograms. The overall mass of the instrumentation amounted to 600 kilograms and

included systems for navigation control, communications, life support, electrical power, and

telemetry. Some parts of the apparatus for the

Three different conceptions of Vladimir Myasishcheu's

M-48 spaceplane project /it top is the single-fin

variant from 1958 to 1960 with a detachable ablative

leading front edge. ,ztt lower left (in three views) is an

"elongated flying wing" dating from 1960, which was

considered one of the most promising designs. it right

(in three views) is one of the earliest conceptions of

the M-48 from I957 to 1958, which was later

abandoned. (copyright ,zlsi[ 5iddiqO

M-48 were directly taken from Object K: these included the Chayka orientation system developed by NII-I and the Zarya communications system developed by NII-695.

A nominal flight of the M-48 was to start on top of an 8K72 booster. In case of a booster

malfunction, the pilot could eject from the stack at altitudes of up to eleven kilometers. After a

daylong mission, the spacecraft would deorbit using a retrorocket engine with a thrust of

1.6 tons. At an altitude of forty kilometers, the pilot would begin controlled descent with a possible cross-range capability of I00 to 200 kilometers. The pilot would switch on a special turbojet engine at that point to provide final guidance. At an altitude of between five and eight

kilometers, the pilot would eject from the vehicle in the ejection seat and land separately by

parachute. The M-48 would then land independently at an airfield on skids. These skids were

fairly small, with a length of 1.2 meters and a width of 0.25 meter?"

The M-48 spaceplane was not the only visible manifestation of Myasishchev's intentions of

making a name for himself in the new space program. There were other major space-related

efforts at OKB-23, including the development of a conical descent capsule with a diameter of two

and a half meters that had a truncated asymmetrical shape and steering jets for reentry. Tested

successfully in wind tunnels, this was apparently meant for a future crewed space project.

There was also a project to design a new powerful three-stage space launch booster designated the M-I. The first stage of the rocket would be a cluster of four parallel boosters, each

with seven thirty-five-ton-thrust engines. The second stage would comprise four similar blocks

and the third stage one block. Overall length was thirty-six meters. The 700-ton mass launcher would be capable of orbiting a twenty-ton payload into low-Earth orbit, about four times as

much as Korolev's modest 8K72 launcher." Unfortunately for Myasishchev, his bid for moving

58. Ibid.: Petrakov and Chernyshov, "Without the Stamp 'Secret'": Mikhail Rebrov, "Work on the Theme

No. 40, or Myasishchev's Spaceplane" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda. February 27, 1993, p 6: Mikhail Rebrov,

_'DarkJournal, or the Sharp Twist of Fate" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, December9, 1995, p. 5

59 Petrakov_"Two Projectsof V. M. Myasishchev": V. M. Petrakov,"From the History of the Development

of Carrier-Rocketsin the USSR" (English title), in Trudy XXup chteniy, posuyashchennykh razrabotke nauchnogo

nasladeniya i razuitiyu idey K. E Tsiolkouskogo(Moscow: RAN, 1994), pp 166-81

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

from bombers to spacecraft ran headlong into the face of certainly one of the most dominant

figures in the early Soviet space program, Vladimir Nikolayevich Chelomey.

Enter Chelomey

Chelomey, like Myasishchev and Tsybin, was from the aviation industry. In his early career

as a chief designer, his primary focus was air-launched anti-ship cruise missiles, a thematic

direction he started by creating the first Soviet pulse-jet engine during World War II. By 1953,

his design bureau, OKB-5 I, had produced a number of modifications of the German Fi-103 "flying bomb." These missiles, such as the 10X, the 10XN, the 14X, and the 16X, were tested with

varying degrees of success at Kapustin Yar during the same years that Korolev was proving out

his early rockets. Despite a modicum of success with the experimental research, none of them

were ever accepted for operational use by the Soviet Air Force, not only because of technical

limitations but also due to internal organizational conflicts within the military? ° Chelomey's run

with the cruise missiles came to an abrupt end on February 19, 1953, just two weeks before

Stalin's death, when the Soviet leader signed a decree (no. 533-271) disbanding Chelomey's

design bureau. The reason was political intrigue. One of Chelomey's primary competitors was

tqrtem I. Mikoyan's MiG design bureau, OKB-155, which was competing with Chelomey to

build coastal defense missiles. Mikoyan had a powerful ally in Sergey L. Beriya, the son of the

dreaded Lavrentiy P. Beriya, who was the chief engineer at the Moscow-based KB-I, which produced the guidance systems for Mikoyan's KS-I Kometa missile. Mikoyan and Beriya were able

to push through a decision terminating work on all their competitors, including Chelomey. _'

Mikoyan not onJy inherited Chelomey's plant, but a number of his designers and his database

of research.

Chelomey found a research position at NII-642 in Moscow, but he was clearly restless for

better things. Undeterred by the major setback, he found enough support within the Ministry

of tqviation Industry to regroup twenty of his former engineers on June 9, 1954, into a Special

Design Group (SKG) based at the Plant No. 500 in Tushino. The team quietly resumed work on

the ground-launched IOXN, one of his most promising cruise missiles. 62 Being an extremely

ambitious man by nature, he was clearly not comfortable working on small projects. Unlike

other designers of the era, he also considered himself more of a scientist than an engineer and

was one of the few designers in the field who had the equivalent of a Ph.D. He had authored

60. For an exhaustive account of Chelomey's work during 1944-53, see Rostislav gngelskiy, "Like the

German 'V' There Was the Russian 'Tenth X'" (English title), Zluiatsiya-kosmonautika 19(8) (August 1996): 27-40.

See also Valeriy Rodikov, "The 'X's' of Vladimir Chelomey" (English title), Krylia rodiny (August 1989): 6-7; G.

Yefremov, N. Bogolyubov, and P. Kotov, "From War to Space: Notes on General Designer V. Chelomey" (English

title), Krasnaya zuezda, September7, 1991,p, 5.

61. Angelskiy, "Like the German 'V'"; Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu, pp. 368-70: Valeriy Rodikov, "Im

vremya dest tainstvennuyu znatnost .... " in V. Shcherbakov, ed., Zagadki zvezdnykh ostrouou kniga pyataya

(Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1989), pp. 13-14; Mikhail Rebrov,"'Akula' and Others: Fromthe History of Winged

Missiles" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, February 5, 1994,p. 5: YevgeniyYerokhin, "When the 'Storm' Endedas

the 'Still'" (English title), Krylia rodiny no. 10 (October 1995). The same order also terminated work on the R-I

Shtorm missile (at OKB-293 headed by M. R. Bisnovat) and the RAMT-1400 Shchuka missile (at GSNII 642 headed by M V. Orlov).

62. Aleksandr Shirokorad, "Rakety nad morem" (English title), Tekhnika i uooruzheniye no. 11-12

(November-December 1997): 1-80: Gerbert gleksandrovich Yefremov, "NPO Mashinostroyeniya Is Moving Into the

High-Technology Market" (English title), Vooruzheniye, politika, konuersiya 3 (1995): 31-37: M. Tarasenko,

"35 Yearsfor the OKB 'Vympel" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 8 (1998): 43-44. The Ministry of Aviation

Industry signed an order dated May 19,1954,ordering the Plant No. 475 to resumethe manufacture of I00 10XN

missiles. This number was later reducedto fifty. Seegngelskiy, "Like the German 'V'."

227
228

dozens of papers and a number of textbooks on such topics as aerodynamics, the theory of

pulse-jet engines, and the phenomenon of vibration. Within the scientific community, he was

highly respected: as a designer at Kapustin Yar, he was just as prone to be engaged in solving

complex mathematical arcana as directing a launch. In this respect, he was exactly the opposite of Korolev, who had always been a "hands-on" technical person with a talent for managing. Chelomey, on the other hand, was a scientific prodigy of sorts, albeit with sometimes

unrealistic but ambitious goals and less managerial skill than Korolev. Chelomey's gall and

ambition continually surprised his closest colleagues, and the number of setbacks he would

receive in his checkered career never once seemed to stunt his reach for resources and access

to the top.

Clearly at the nadir of his career in t954, Chelomey drew up a proposal for a new naval

cruise missile, He approached a top admiral in the Navy, Pavel G. Kotov, and convinced him in

a few hours that the Navy could not do without such a new and original weapon. By a stroke

of fortune, the Ministry of Aviation Industry had also decided to establish a number of new

design bureaus to focus on naval projects. A panel of famous scientists from the eqcademy of

Sciences, including Keldysh, reviewed the naval cruise missile proposal and recommended it as

a prospective direction of research. Chelomey also had a more powerful backer. Khrushchev

recalled in his memoirs:

One day [Chelomey] asked me for an appointment to show me a model o[ a new missile he'd developed. He explained that it was a tactical missile like the German V-I [lying bomb, but it had special [eatures: the wings could be [olded up, and it could fit into

a long barrel. When it was fired, the wings spread so that it looked like an airplane, l

thought that the comrade had come up with an original and use[ul idea .... _'

There were some in the Ministry of Defense who opposed allowing Chelomey resources,

but Khrushchev had the last word. In gugust 1955, Keldysh telephoned Chelomey and

informed him that he had been assigned an empty tract of land with a tiny factory, the Reutov

Mechanical Plant, located in the outskirts of Moscow. Here he would work on his pet design. _

On Chelomey's personal request, much of his old database was returned to him from Mikoyan's

design bureau. The group that Chelomey established there, by an official order on August 8,

1955, would eventually become one of the largest defense enterprises in the Soviet Union, the

Experimental Design Bureau No. 52 (OKB-52). _

Between 1955 and 1958, Chelomey focused all his energies on his new missile, designated the P-5, which was tested in the North Sea from Soviet Navy submarines. He made an

unprecedented and rapid rise from obscurity and by 1958 was vying for parity with the leading

chief designers in the Soviet defense industry. His small design bureau had also expanded: a

team of skilled engineers under tqleksandr D. Nadiradze was attached to OKB-52 in

December 1951 to focus on solid-propellant missile research. The same Nadiradze would

63 Nikita S. Khrushchev,Khrushchev RemembersTheLast Tesl,amenl,(Boston: Little & Brown. 1974). p 44.

64 Rodikov, "The 'X's' of Vladimir Chelomey," p 14: Khrushchev, Nikil,a Khrushcheu.pp_ 37t 72: Nina

Chugunova, "V. N. Chelomey. Highlights of His Biography" (English title), Ogonek 4-5 (January I6-30, 1993):

24-29: Rebrov, "'Akula' and Others." The review panel for Chelomey's missile inc}uded M V Keldysh, A g

Dorodnilsyn, and A Yu. Ishlinskiy. For a short history of the Chelomey organization, seeRakel,no-kosmieheskaya

ol,rasl rossi (Moscow: Assotsiatsiya sodeystviya kosmicheskoy nauke i tekhnike, 1996), p b 134

65. Not all of the Special Design Group relocated to the Reutov Mechanical Plant in August 1955. It was

only after minor plant renovation in 1956that all of Chelomey's team moved to Reutovfrom Tushino SeeYefremov,

"NPO Mashinosl,royeniya is Moving."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

decades later design one of the most potent missiles in the Soviet arsenal, the so-called SS-20. _6

The P-5 missile itself had a mixed future. It was meant to be the first nuclear-armed Soviet naval

missile, a counterpart to the U,S. Navy's Regulus. Chelomey's rocket, however, was cumbersome to prepare for launch and had poor accuracy. _ Despite these weaknesses, the P-5 was

declared operational on June 19, 1959, and Chelomey and a large number of his staff received

important state awards, including the prestigious Hero of Socialist Labor for Chelomey himself.

Later on July 3, 1959, he was named the general designer of his organization, a title that was

more prestigious than the more common chief designer, but one that only existed in the aviation industry.

Apart from pure ambition and technical expertise, by this time Chelomey had a much more

powerful ally. In March 1958, Khrushchev's son, Sergey Nikitich, joined the OKB-52 as a deputy

chief of the department dedicated to guidance systems. By the younger Khrushchev's account,

it had been his own decision to join Chelomey's design bureau, but it was obvious that

Chelomey capitalized on the unexpected course of events. As one scientist in the space program later observed:

•,. Cheiomey was an absolute master at using their personal triangle for the advancement of his ambitions, It is not that Chelomey got hints or requests from Nikita

Khrushchev to promote his son. The stories I heard gave the completely opposite scenario. It was Chelomey who had taken the initiative? _

Chelomey never hesitated to shower the Soviet leader with stories of his son's great technical expertise. The motives of both the older Khrushchev and Chelomey continue to remain

obfuscated amid plaintive accusations of nepotism and outright jealousy in the eyes of other

designers, but one fact is clear: the Soviet leader displayed a marked favoritism toward

Chelomey by the late 1950s. Whether this was because of his son's unique position or merely

whimsical is probably something that will never be known, The older Khrushchev did not hide

his support of Chelomey. At a major display of military weaponry held at Kapustin Yar as part

66. Nadiradze's team had come from GSNII-642, This institute traced its lineage back to KB 2. which was

established on May 13, 1946, to work on the German Hs-293A missile and later the RAMT-1400 Shchuka airlaunched cruise missile. On December 15, 1951, KB-2 was combined with Plant No 67 and renamed the State

Union Scientific-ResearchInstitute No, 642 (GSNII-642). Although its work on the Shchuka was discontinued in

1953,GSNII-642continued work on other missile programs derived from the Shchuka Chelomey's new OKB-52 was

made a branch of GSNII-642 on November 6, 1957.Their positions evidently reversedon March 8. 1958. A subdi

vision from GSNII 642, SKB-2. was headed by Nadiradze. See Dmitriy Khrapovitskiy, ed., Generatnyy Konstruktor

71kademikV: N Chelomey (Moscow: Vozdushniy transport, 1990), p, 67 The solid propellant theme was not pursued for very long at OKB 52 because Chelomey was apparently not interested in it. In 1958, Nadiradze's SKB-2

separated from Chelomey and was transferred to NII-t within another ministry, the State Committee for Defense

Technology, where it pursued the development of solid propellant ballistic missiles, Nadiradze became the director

of Nil-I in 1961 and went on eventually to develop a seriesof solid propellant ICBMs for the Strategic Missile Forces.

SeeMikhail Rebrov, "When the Topoi Bloomed... The Most Secretot the Designers" (Englishtitle), Krasnaya zvezda, February25, 1995, p. 5: G. A. Yefremov, "Anniversary: V. N Chetomey--80 Years" (English title), Novosti kosmonavtiki 12 13 (June 4-July I. 1994): 68-10: Lardier. "70 Years of Soviet Ramjets": Christian Lardier, "Solid

Propellant Rocketsin the Soviet Union," presentedat the 49th International Astronautical Federation, IAA-98 IAA23.09, Melbourne, Australia, September28-October 2, 1998: R. Angelskiy, "Flying Shchuka" (English title), Tekhika

i oruzhiye no. 2 (1997): 9-16.

67. Steven ]. Zaloga, Target Ztmerica The Soviet Union and the Strategic 71rms Race, 1945-1964 (Novato,

CA: Presidio. 1993), p. 185;Shirokorad. 'r Rakety nad morem."

68. Roald Z Sagdeev, The Making o[ a Soviet Scientist: My ,,qdver_tures in Nuclear Fusion and Space From

Stalin to Star k.Vars(New York:John Wiley & Sons. 1993), p. 202.

229
230

of theOperationBereza in September 1958, Khrushchev made overt gestures in favor of

Chelomey. As a participant recalled: "I noticed that when Khrushchev visited our static display,

he spent a large portion of his time--50 minutes--studying Chelomey's stands, whereas he

only devoted I0 minutes to the missiles designed by Korolev, Yangel, and others. ''_ This was

only six months after his son had joined OKB-52.

Chelomey's ascendance into the upper echelon would not be of any significance for

Korolev or Yangel were it not for Chelomey's one crucial decision in 1958-59 to expand his

horizons, Having spent the previous four years engaged in designing short-range tactical missiles for the Soviet Navy, Chelomey was well aware that the real prestige lay elsewhere--that

is. in designing ICBMs and spacecraft. One of his early stabs at these themes was an ambitious

idea to extend the capabilities of his naval cruise missiles by combining the benefits of winged

and ballistic rockets. The Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a formal

decree on July 2, 1958, permitting initial work on the development of winged-ballistic missiles

at OKB-52. '° After launch on a ballistic trajectory, the payload would reenter Earth's atmosphere

in a capsule and release the winged missile, which, using its own wings and a jet engine, would

guide its self-homing warhead, either conventional or nuclear, to its destination. The primary

targets of these so-called "Aircraft Warheads" were evidently foreign battleships around the

world. The slated range of the winged-ballistic missile was about 8,000 to I0,000 kilometers.

It was during the research on this concept that Chelomey first expanded his reach from missiles into the space arena--specifically, the development of launch vehicles and spacecraft. As

early as July 19_59, he presented some initial space-related concepts to the powerful Defense

Council of the Presidium of the Central Committee.

Based on the experience of developing cruise missiles and his exploratory composite

winged-ballistic research, Chelomey's engineers began to study a wide range of problems.

Unlike Korolev's entry into the space program, Chelomey began thinking big from the start. As

Khrushchev's son later recalled:

[He] started with the most exotic: flight to the other planets. Chelomey fell for plasma

engines.., a spaceship untwisting itself in a spiral around the Earth until it would tear

itself away from it... [and then] lay on a trajectory to Mars or Venus.._nother idea

resembled a ship: a winged rocket in a container would be carried above the atmosphere, do an intricate pirouette: diving into the stratosphere on wings and changing the

trajectory, it would use supplementary engines to direct itself back into orbit. It would

be able to fulfill missions of reconnaissance, photography, or carry out space-targeted

bombings. But most of all Cflelomey wanted to build a winged piloted ship. That would

be highly maneuverable. He did not abandon the idea to the very last days of his life. _'

OKB-52's overall entry into the Soviet space program began under two broad themes called

Kosmoplan ("Space Glider") and Raketoplan ("Rocket Glider"). Research on both tacks began in

1959. Admittedly, engineers used these names somewhat generically in the same way that Korolev's

engineers named their first creations "space ships." In fact, Chelomey used the Kosmoplan and

Raketoplan names precisely because they were different from Korolev's "space ships," to distinguish

his own efforts from what he considered the pedestrian ways of Korolev's engineers.

69. Lt Gen. Aleksey Kalashnikov, "Archives o[ Russian Armaments': Operation 'Bereza': This Was the [irst

View of Our Missile Shield" (English title), Krasnoyo zuezda, December 17, 1994. p. 6: Mozzhorin, et aL, eds.

Doro,gi u kosmos II, p 27

70. E-mail correspondence, Igor Afanasyev to the author, November 23, 1997.

71. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu. pp. 480-81.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

In its initial conception, the Kosmoplan was an automated winged space vehicle designed

to accomplish missions in deep space/-_ The spacecraft would perform its mission in three distinct phases:

• The Kosmoplan would be launched into a low-Earth orbit by existing or future launch vehicles.

• The Kosmoplan would slowly accelerate into a spiral trajectory around Earth using its own

engines, and then accumulate sufficient speed to "shoot off" into a trajectory to the Moon.

Mars, or Venus.

• After completing its mission, the Kosmoplan would return to Earth. '_

It seems that Mars was a primary goal for the Kosmoplan. At the Red Planet, the spacecraft would use special cameras and probing sensors to study the planetary phenomena.

Chelomey's engineers conceptualized a very unique reentry profile for the spaceplane. Just

before reaching Earth's atmosphere, a conical apparatus, shaped somewhat like a folded umbrella, would extend out from the vehicle. Once the Kosmoplan entered the upper atmosphere at

a slight angle to the horizontal, this unfurled "umbrella" would shield the spacecraft proper

from thermal stresses. After atmospheric reentry, at a velocity of Mach 2, the Kosmoplan would

jettison the "umbrella," and the plane would swerve appropriately and finally land at an airport

landing strip/4

From a general perspective, the Kosmoplan theme encompassed only lunar and interplanetary flight, but confusingly, OKB-52 engineers also foresaw using the Kosmoplan in near-Earth

space--that is, specifically, for missions in Earth orbit at altitudes of eighty-five to 105 kilometers for military reconnaissance missions. Thus, ultimately, Chelomey proposed two subclasses of the Kosmoplan, one for deep space missions and one for near-Earth orbital flight.

Missions would originally begin with automated flights and then lead to piloted missions, especially in the near-Earth orbit variant. Ultimately, however, Chelomey's goal was a piloted expedition to Mars with a subsequent return and landing back on Earth.

Functionally, the Kosmoplan was divided into two major sections: a compartment for

engine units and a return compartment. Taking into consideration the requirement for acceleration out of Earth orbit as well as the needs for aerodynamic braking near the atmosphere from

low-Earth orbit, the engineers examined several different possible engine units for both subclasses of Kosmoplans. These included chemical liquid-propellant rocket engines, nuclear rocket engines, and electric rocket engines. After intensive analysis, Chelomey's engineers

concluded that electric rocket engines with a nuclear power source would be optimal for achieving all of the possible goals of the Kosmoplan. The electric rocket engine would consist of

mechanisms to convert a nuclear reactor's heat into electrical power, a plasma engine, and radiators to dissipate heat. The return compartment itself comprised a "braking container"--that

is, a narrow cylinder that unfurled into the umbrella-shaped thermal shield for controlled aerodynamic reentry into Earth's atmosphere. Once the umbrella was discarded, the container

would open up to reveal the spaceplane proper, an aircraft with folded delta wings, short in

length but sharply swept back. The spaceplane would have its own turbojet engine for disembarking on conventional runways,

According to engineering analyses, the Kosmoplan design offered some significant advantages over standard ballistic spacecraft using chemical liquid-propellant rocket engines, such as

72, Interview, GerbertAleksandrovichYefremovby the author, March 3, 1997.

73. E-mailcorrespondence,IgorAfanasyevto the author. November 28, 1997.

74, IgorAfanasyev,"Kosmoplan: Chelomey's Project" (Englishtitle),/(rasnaya zuezda,August 26, 1995,p 6.

231
232

thosedesignedattheKorolevdesignbureau.Forexample,Chetomeybelievedthattheuseful

payloadoftheKosmoplanforamissiontoMarswouldbeashighas15percentoftheinitial

spacecraftmassat low-Earthorbit.Therewas,ofcourse,alsothebenefitof reusabilityby

returningthemostvaluableportionoftheentiresystembacktoEarth/_

TheRaketoplanwasslightlylessambitiousthantheKosmoplan,butit wasstillafarleap

fromKorolev'smodestObjectKeffort.TheprimarygoaloftheRaketoplanprojectwastotransportpayloadsandpeopleoverintercontinentaldistancesbyreusablespacevehicles--thatis,it

wasmeantexclusivelyforuseinnear-Earthspace.UnliketheKosmoplan,however,Chelomey

believedthattheRaketoptancouldserveassomekindoffuturisticspaceweaponsbomber.

somethingmuchakintotheS_nger-Bredtconceptofyearsbefore.TheRaketoplanswouldbe

launchedverticallyonconventionalrocketsandthenperformsuborbitalballisticflightswith

aerodynamicbraking,maneuvering,andthenlandingatairportswithasetofturbojetengines

andlandinggear.Intheirinitialstudies,OKB-52engineersstudiedtwo-stageRaketoplansystemswithbothtandemandparallelstaging.Thesecondstage,theactualspaceplane,would

flytheassignedmission,reachingvelocitiesahighaseightkilometerspersecond.

OKB-52studiedtwobasictypesofRaketoplansin 1959and196I,oneforarangeof8,000

kilometersandoneforarangeof40,OOOkilometers.Themodestversionwouldbelaunched

frompadslocatedatlatitudesclosetoMoscowandthen,byflyingovertheNorthPole,would

beabletolandatairfieldsatlatitudesclosetoWashington,D.C.Ifthespacecraftwaslaunched

fromevenhigherlatitudes,thenpointsassouthasCapeCanaveralwouldcomeintoitsrange

oflanding.ThelongerrangemodelwouldbeabletolaunchoffanypointintheSovietUnion

andflyovertheSouthPoleanduptoanypointintheUnitedStates,evadingtheradarsystems

of theNorthAmericanAirDefenseCommand(NORAD).Afteritsmission,theRaketoplan

wouldlandanywhereintheSovietUnion.

Thetwo-stagedesignoftheRaketoplanconsistedofawingedfirststage,whichwould

returntoalandingstripafteritimpartedsufficientvelocitytothesecondstage.Inonescenario,

thesinglepilotinthefirststagewoulduseturbojetorramjetenginesfixedtotheendsofthe

twowingstoreturntoanairfieldnearthelaunchcomplex.Thecarrieraircrafthadarangeof

600kilometers.Inasecondconception,thefirststagewouldsimplybeaheavyglider.After

launchingthespaceplaneitotheupperatmosphere,thisgliderwouldlandatanairfieldabout

600to800kilometersfomthelaunchpad.g specialsuspendedjtengineinstallationwould

allowthefirststageto returnbacktothelaunchareatsubsonicspeeds.Thelandingwould

beperformedonwheels.

Thespaceplane,orsecondstage,oftheRaketoplanrepresentedahybridofarocketanda

supersonicjetplane.Thevehicleincludedpropellanttanksforthefuelandoxidizer,intertank

compartmentswithsystemsfortankpressurization,andatailcompartmentwihaliquidpropellantrocketengine.Therewasapressurizedsealedcockpitforthepilotattheforwardend

oftheship.Thesweptbackwingswereattachedtothemiddlepartofthemainfuselage.The

aftpartofthespaceplaneicludedacruciformtailassemblyandaturbojetenginenextothe

mainliquid-propellantrocketengine.Overall,givenitsprimarymissionofbombingenemytargets,OKB-52engineersbelievedthatit hadonemajoradvantageoverintermediate-rangeballisticmissiles,uchasYangei'sR-12andR-14:theRaketoplancouldmaneuverin the

atmosphereunlikemissiles,whichwerepreprogrammedwithatrajectorypriorto launch.No

doubt,thefacthattheRaketoplansystemwascompletelyreusableaddedtoitsattractiveness

asanewweaponoftheSovietarmedforces/°

75. Correspondence,IgorAfanasyevtotheauthor,November28,1997. 7& Ibid

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

These grand proposals from Chelomey

would probably have sunk into obscurity, by

1959, had it not been for Chelomey's support

system within the Communist Party, the government, and the military. First and foremost, he

had access to Khrushchev personally on a regular basis, on a par with Korolev's own influence

with the Soviet leader. In the Party, he could

count on Ivan D. Serbin, the chief of the

Defense Industries Department in the Central

Committee, who served as somewhat of a

watchdog within the defense sector, making

sure that the Party's official policy was being

carried out in "proper" ways. Serbin remains

one of the least talked about individuals in the

history of the Soviet space program, a situation

that is completely disproportionate to the

remarkable power he wielded over almost a

quarter of a century. He was apparently a terrifying figure to many, thus inheriting the nickname "Ivan the Terrible" during his tenure as

Party apparatchik for the defense sector. Very

little is known about his background: his biographies merely state that he began working in the

innards of the Party in 1942, rising to his current

position in February 1958. He was forty-eight

years old at the time/'

Ivan Serbin was the chie[ o[ the Central Committee's

De[enseIndustries Department [rom 1958 to t981

More commonly known as "Ivan the Terrible."

he was the doctrinal watchdog [or the Soviet missile

and space programs, wielding considerable

influence over not only personnel changes.

but also policy ([iles o[ Peter _orin)

Within the government, Chelomey also had the strong unequivocal support of Petr V.

Dementyev and/qleksandr A. Kobzarev, the chairman and deputy chairman, respectively, of the

State Committee for Aviation Technology, Dementyev had been one of those who had decided in 1945 to relinquish missiles to the armaments industry, but with Chelomey's strong reach

for missiles and space, he no doubt saw Chelomey as a way out from the near-catastrophe that

was facing the aviation sector. Chelomey also had very powerful enemies, primarily in the person of Dmitriy F. Ustinov, the chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission. Llstinov's initial

dislike of Chelomey was understandable: Chelomey was coming from the aviation industry into

the missile business, which had been dominated by people such as Korolev and Yangel who

had been nurtured under Llstinov within the armaments industry. For Ustinov, this was an

unacceptable intrusion into his affairs. During Khrushchev's reign in power, there was, however, little Ustinov could do. /qlthough he was the chairman of the Military-Industrial

Commission--certainly one of the most powerful jobs in the Soviet defense industry--Llstinov

had to answer to Serbin and ultimately to Khrushchev. It was a no-win situation. Chelomey,

very much aware of the "Ustinov problem," completely bypassed normal institutional means

and usually took his proposals straight to Khrushchev, thus ensuring that they would be given

a fair look without an outright rejection from Ustinov/_

77. Edward L Crowley. Andrew L. Lebed,and Dr. Heinrich E. Schulz, eds., Prominent Personalitiesin the

USSR(Metuchen, NJ:The ScarecrowPress. 1968), p. 547.

18. Telephone interview, SergeyNikitich Khrushchev by the author, October I0, 1996.

233
234

Korolevhimselfwaspredictablyprotectiveofhisdomain.AsChelomeybeganto make

inroadsintothearenaofspace,Korolevwasdismissiveofhisplans,callingthem"acircus"of

ideas.7"Sometimein 1959,soonafterKorolev'ssuccessfullunarmissiontothefarsideofthe

Moon,Chelomeysentwoof hisleadingdeputies,GerbertA Yefremov and Valeriy Ye.

Samoylov, to meet with Korolev to discuss his future plans. When the two explained that

Chelomey was interested in multiple-use spacecraft as part of a complex system of orbital operations, Korolev was aghast. According to Yefremov, Korolev replied at one point: "Why do we

need such a system at the present time? Right now all this is fantastic. In space right now it's

necessary to solve [more specific] goals, for example like.., photographing the far-side of the

Moon."_' By Yefremov's account, it was apparently at that point that the discourse between the

two designers started to degenerate into competition instead of cooperation.

Chelomey, undeterred by Korolev's criticisms, took his complex plan for space exploration

straight to the top at a meeting in early April 1960. The general designer had been eager to meet

with Khrushchev to discuss his plans for some time. During a short vacation in Crimea,

Khrushchev took the opportunity to invite not only Chelomey, but also several important players involved in the development of Soviet naval missiles/_ There were three main problems on

the agenda: the next generationof naval cruise missiles, problems with gyroscopes in naval

missiles, and the question of future anti-satellite systems.

After discussions on naval missiles, Khrushchev allowed Chelomey to present his plans for

space. Chelomey came prepared with a plethora of charts and diagrams and began expounding on a plan for a large-scale Earth-orbital complex made of space stations, winged reusable

transport ships, communications satellites, cargo spacecraft, and huge orbital space factories.

The Raketoplan-Kosmoptan idea was at the crux of much of his presentation, and Chelomey

expounded clearly that one of the major problems of developing such systems would be adequate thermal protection, which would take years to perfect. This first segment was followed

by his offering for a military space complex at the core of which was a battle station equipped

with nuclear projectiles in revolving turrets. Khrushchev was apparently getting bored at this

point by this overtly ambitious plan, and Chelomey quickly changed the subject to more modest plans--in particular, a system for recovering hostile satellites from orbit for inspection.

Once again, one of the central tenets of his plans was a winged vehicle with a large payload

bay for stowing captured satellites. Moving on, he described another space-based system for

intercepting incoming ICBMs, probably the first-ever discussion at a high level in the Soviet

Union on a strategic defense program paralleling the American "Star Wars" program of the

1980s. Chelomey also presented conceptions of new automated space-based anti-satellite and

ocean reconnaissance systems, the kind that would allow operational capability by 1962-63. _

Chelomey finished his prepared speech and then asked Khrushchev for authority to develop his own space launch vehicle. Khrushchev's interest perked up when Chelomey explained

that his space launcher would be designed in such a way that it could also be used as a new

efficient ICBM. Since about 1958, the general designer had explored several conceptions of

launch vehicles (such as the A-300) and ICBMs (such as the A-200) in preparation for this

79 Khrushchev, Nikito Khrushcheu, p. 480.

80 G.A. Yefremov. "Where Salyut Started" (English translation), in Khrapovitskiy, ed, _eneratnyy

Konstruktor Zikademik V N Chelomey. p. 8.

81. Those present included: B. Ye Butoma (Chairman of the State Committee for Ship Building), V. N.

Cheiomey (General Designer of OKB 52). R V. Dementyev (Chairman of the State Committee for Aviation

Technology). Admiral S. G. Gorshkov (Commander in Chief of the Military-Naval Fleet), N. S. Khrushchev (First

Secretary of the Central Committee), S N Khrushchev (Deputy Chief of an OKB-52 Department), and V. I.

Kuznetsov (Chief Designer of NII-944). SeeKhrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu, pp. 484-85.

82 Ibid. pp. 485-89.

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
]

ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

moment. The/5-200 ICBM, later renamed the LIR-200, was the center of Chelomey's proposals. The rocket, in its space launch version, would have a payload capability of three to four tons

to low-Earth orbit, putting it in a lighter class than concurrent Soviet launch vehicles such as

Korolev's 8K72 and 8K12K boosters for the Object K program, g_ In typical fashion, Chelomey

elected not to use the traditional "R" index normally reserved for all previous Soviet long-range

missiles, but introduced the "UR" index, standing for "universal missile" in Russian. This was

a direct reference to his idea that such missiles would have dual use as space launch vehicles

and ICBMs. The "200" was a rough estimate of the total launch mass of the new rocket.

Chelomey wanted approval for the Raketoplan, the Kosmoplan, the UR-200, as well as two

automated military systems, an anti-satellite system named "IS" ("Satellite Destroyer") and a

radar ocean reconnaissance satellite system named "US" ("Guided Satellite"). There was also

the question of the huge battle stations in orbit, but all of this no doubt overwhelmed

Khrushchev, His son recalls that after hearing Chelomey's prognosis about war in space, all the

attendees sat there "looking depressed [and] made no comment."_4 While Khrushchev declined

to approve the more ambitious and outlandish plans, the Soviet leader did see a point in forging ahead with work on the LIR-200 ICBM as a competitor to new missiles from the Korolev

and Yangel design bureaus. He also evidently found the IS anti-satellite proposal worthy of further consideration. His son later wrote that at the end of the meeting, "Father began talking

about how important the proposed program seemed to him. If war reached into space--he

thought Chelomey's arguments were very convincing--then we must not allow ourselves to be

caught unprepared. "_ Chelomey's boss, Chairman Dementyev, also piped in, cautiously supporting Chelomey's grand plans.

All Chelomey needed were the resources to carry out his program. In an incredibly shrewd

move, he took advantage of Khrushchev's favorable impressions and explained that to carry out

such large-scale work, he would need some additional help, maybe another design bureau or a

production plant. Playing on Khrushchev's anathema toward strategic aviation, this ploy

worked. Dementyev suggested that there was Myasishchev's excellent design bureau in Fili with

its adjacent production factory, Plant No, 23, which could be very useful for Chelomey. It was

well known that Khrushchev had been unhappy for a while with the performance of

Myasishchev's bombers. After a cursory discussion on the poor results of some of

Myasishchev's products, Khrushchev told Dementyev to draw up the appropriate governmental decree to transfer Myasishchev's design bureau and his plant, wholesale, to Chelomey.

Thus, the April 1960 meeting was the effective death knell not only for Myasishchev's bombers,

but also his radical spaceplane design, the M-48.

In a strange irony, Myasishchev had been involved in a project to design a new ICBM with

Chelomey. In 1958 and 1959, during the latter's initial exploratory studies for a new generation

of missiles, Chelomey had signed a preliminary agreement with Myasishchev and another aviation designer, Pavel O. Sukhoy of OKB-51, to develop a new two-stage ICBM for the Strategic

Missile Forces. Myasishchev would build the first stage, while Sukhoy would be responsible for

the second stage. Chelomey would build the warhead container. At some point in the autumn

of 1960, ballistics reviews by Myasishchev's designers proved that there were fundamental

flaws in the design submitted by Chelomey. At a meeting to discuss the issue, Myasishchev's

deputies were critical of the proposal as a whole, which no doubt angered the proud Chelomey.

As one of Myasishchev's engineers recalled: "After that meeting the fate of OKB-23, and

83. Dmitriy Khrapovitskiy. "Absolutely Unclassified: The Ground Waves of Space Politics" (English title),

Soyuz 15 (,qpril 1990): 15.

84. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu,p. 490

85. Ibid, p. 492.

235
236

personally of V. M. Myasishchev was determined. Moreover, it was stated that Myasishchev

was a jet expert but now, of necessity, [suddenly] a rocket expert. ''8_

In Chelomey's view, Myasishchev had stepped over the line. It was, however, too late for

him. On October 3, 1960, by Central Committee and Council of Ministers decree no. 1057-434,

Myasishchev's design bureau was formally renamed OKB-52 Branch No. I: all his bomber projects were terminated. His space projects, such as the M-48 spaceplane, the crew return capsule, and the M-I launch vehicle, fared no better. Myasishchev was forced to stand by and

witness as his entire database of research, accumulated over almost a decade, was handed out

part and parcel to two other design organizations, Sukhoy's OKB-51 and Tupolev's OKB-156.

His personnel remained behind at the old design bureau haunts to wait for new orders from

Chelomey?' Myasishchev was apparently offered the luckless job of working under Chelomey

as head of Branch No. I, but he refused and instead moved out of the whole design business

into pure science research as the new director of TsAGI, the most important aeronautics

research institution in the Soviet Union? 8 Chelomey meanwhile inherited a completely new

organization, its excellent engineering staff, as well as one of the largest production facilities in

the USSR, Myasishchev's Fill plant. While yet to make a concrete stab at the piloted space program, Chelomey had left no doubt about the breadth of his ambitions.

The Big Space Plan

Chelomey was not the only one thinking big at the time. All of the several long-range plans

that Korolev had submitted to the government through 1959 required the development of huge

and powerful launch vehicles to support large-scale space operations. Preliminary studies on

heaw-lift launch vehicles began in the Soviet Union in 1956. In August of that year, Glushko

had circulated a proposal to all the other major chief designers and to then-Minister of Defense

Industries Ustinov about a new booster based on the R-Z design, but with each block having

two IO0-ton-thrust engines, thus having a total thrust of 1,000 tons. He had expected a preliminary paper project on the issue to have been completed by November of the following year,

but work on the R-7 ICBM had precluded serious inquiry, g° Korolev had also inaugurated such

studies at his own design bureau. The first mention of such a vehicle in OKB-1 archives is dated

September 14, 1956, and describes a vehicle with a launch mass of 1,000 tons. The question

was once again discussed at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission on July 15, 1957,

with the unanimous recommendation that future heavy-lift boosters not use the cluster configuration used on the R-7. The designers agreed that LOX should be used as oxidizer because

it provided higher specific impulse than storable propellants2 ° The issue was considered premature at the time, but the commission approved further preliminary research on the topic.

OKB-I plans for 1959-60 also mentioned a similar project, and in December 1959, the gov86. Petrakov,"Two Projects of V. M. Myasishchev": Petrakov, "From the History of the Development of

Carrier Rockets."

87 S ,q. Zhiltsov, ed, _osudarstuennyy kosmicheskiy nauehno-proizuodstuennyy tsentr imenl M. V

Khrunieheva. 80 let {Moscow: GKNPTs Khrunichev, 1997), p. 52: Petrakovand Chernyshov, "Without the Stamp

'Secret'": Selyakov, Maloizuestnyye stranitsy tuorchesko, pp. 114-15.

88 V.g. Fedotov, "The Scientific Research,qctivities of V M Myasishchev" (English title),/z istorii auiat

sii i kosmonautiki 50 ( 1984): 3-13: Christian Lardier,L71stronautique5oui_t_que(Paris:,qrmand Colin, 1992), p 152

89. Vetrov. "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles"

90. Ibid., Vetrov, "The Difficult Fateof the N I Rocket." There was also a meeting of the Council of Chief

Designers on the sameday addressing similar topics. One source states that the specifications for the new booster

were a launch mass of 1,000 to 2,000 tons and payload values of forty to ninety tons. See R Dolgopyatov, B

Dorofeyev. and S Kryukov, "At the Readers' Request: The N I ProjecC (English title), ,z:lulatsiyai kosmonautika

no 9 (September 1992): 34-37

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGRNIZING FOR THE SPRCE PROGRP, M

ernmental decree on the space program included a clause authorizing exploratory studies at

OKB-I on the topic of heavy-lift boosters.

The effort to determine the specifications for the next generation of Soviet launch vehicles

was, in more than one way, intrinsically connected with the qualitative nature of the future of

the Soviet space program. The December 1959 decree on space had hesitantly approved a number of projects, but far less than what Korolev had been lobbying for. But between December

1959 and mid-1960, there was a remarkable turnaround in the manner in which the Soviet leadership viewed their space program. Soviet space historians themselves have been unable to

clearly explain the abrupt shift. One respected Russian space historian, Georgiy S. Vetrov, has

suggested that the about-turn was prompted primarily by actions not in the USSR, but by one

individual in the United States, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas.

johnson had played a major role in the formation of NASA, and he continued to criticize the

seemingly ineffectual actions of the Eisenhower administration through the years after Sputnik.

As chairman of the Senate Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, he had authored a

memorandum on the use of the arena of space in the interest of national defense, which had

alarmed the Soviets. In a statement typical of the period, Johnson told the Democratic Caucus

in 1958 that:

Control of space means control of the world .... There is something more important

than the ultimate weapon. That is the ultimate position--the position of total control

over Earth that lies in outer space . . . and i[ there is an ultimate position, then our

national goal and the goal o[ all [ree men must be to rain and hold that position."

Later, in February 1960, Johnson had been primarily responsible for increasing the NASA

budget request for the 1961 fiscal year by a figure of $168 million. Statements by Herbert F.

York, the Director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense, advocating a strong military component to the U,S. space program, were also evidently viewed with

much alarm by the Soviets2'

Prompted by NASA's long-range plans for space exploration, Khrushchev found a sudden

interest in the Soviet space program. On January 2, t 960, he summoned the primary motivators

of the space program--Korolev, Glushko, Keldysh, and Pilyugin--and unexpectedly asserted

that Soviet successes in space were no less important than military rockets. Korolev quoted

Khrushchev's exact words the next day when he met with Keldysh, other chief designers, and

all his principal deputies: "Your affairs are not well. You should quickly aim for space. There's

broad and all-out levels of work in the U.S.A. [in this field] and they'll be able to outstrip us."°_

During the following month, it was clear that the basic thematic direction of the Soviet

space program was going to be military. Believing that pronouncements of Johnson and York

were symptomatic of the military nature of the LI.S, space program, the Soviet leadership wanted to compensate for the overtly "civilian" nature of the December 1959 space plan. Thus, proposals were floated in early 1960 for a plethora of different military projects. As with the U.S.

space program, most of the proposals were centered around the development of a heavy-lift

launch vehicle. In a rush to receive approval in this window of opportunity, both Korolev and

91 Lyndon ]ohnson & The ,'qmeriean Dream (New York: Harper & Row. 1976). p. 145. referenced in

Harford. Koroteu, p. 252.

92. David Baker, The History of Manned Spaceflight (New York: Crown Publishers, 1985), pp 50-51:

Vetrov, "The Difficult Fateo[ the N I Rocket": interview, Georgiy StepanovichVetrov by the author, January 9, 1997

In July 1960,York had threatened the Saturn program with cancellation becausehe believedthat the project had no

military utility.

93 Chertok. Rakety i lyudi Fiti Podtipki Tyuratum. p. 318.

237
238

Glushko offered up wildly differing proposals for heavy boosters. Unlike Korolev, who favored

a qualitative leap in design, Glushko, in 1959 and 1960, had explored the possibility of using

the R-9 ICBM as the basis for a heavy-lift launch vehicle. His conservative approach was to cluster together seven R-9s as the first stage and four as the second stage. The launch mass of the

booster would be 1,500 tons. A subsequent version would replace the R-9's standard RD-I I I

engines with more powerful ones and have a launch mass of 2,000 tons. 94In an April 1960 letter to Korolev on the proposal, Glushko ended on a dramatic note: "... any other decision

[other than proceeding with the R-9-based launcher] will strike a blow to the priority and prestige of Soviet attempts to conquer space .... ""_ Korolev was not impressed, and he sent back

an official letter the following month evidently rejecting Glushko's proposal.

For almost two months beginning early February 1960, Korolev ensconced himself with his

leading deputy chief designers--Vasiliy R Mishin, Sergey S. Kryukov, and Boris Ye. Chertok--

to hammer out the details of a new "big space plan." Initially, the four explored a 1,600-ton

booster with a nuclear engine as the second stage. This idea, although tempting, was tempered

by the uncertainty about nuclear propulsion technology at the time? _ As a result of these studies, the men enumerated three preliminary operational goals for the new launch vehicle:

• Defense-related projects in low-Earth orbit

• The creation of a global system of space-based communications and weather-forecasting

satellites

• The exploration of the Moon and the inner planets "_

Although all the studies were carried out internally at OKB-I, the final recommendations of

the group were apparently circulated to all the principal chief designers in March stating that

OKB-I had finalized all the primary requirements and operational characteristics and missions

of the new booster. This initial proposal recommended using LOX propellants for all stages of

the launch vehicle as well as nuclear, electric, and liquid hydrogen engines for the upper stages.

Kryukov, responsible for assessing different configurations of a new launch vehicle, explored

more conventional ideas of both longitudinal and transverse staging. The designers finally decided to dispense with the old cluster scheme as in the R-7 ICBM and proposed a tandem threestage design. Initially. they agreed on a very broad range of specifications: launch mass of

1.000 to 2,000 tons and payload capability to low-Earth orbit of forty to eighty tons. Under pressure from Mishin, and with objections from Kryukov. Korolev agreed to invite other engine

designers to participate in developing the booster--in particular, Chief Designer Kuznetsov of

OKB-276. who had made a failed bid to develop engines for Korolev's R-9 ICBM. Apart from

boosters, the designers produced an extensive list of plans for the piloted space program, such

as developing ships with electric engines and systems for orbital assembly.

94. Vetrov. "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles": M. Rudenko, "The Moon SlipsAway: Chronicles of

an Unknown Race" (English title), Ekonomikaizhizn 45 (November 1991): 19.The latter source has a slightly different description of Glushko's new booster. According to one of Glushko's deputies, M I. Osokin, GIushko proposed that "the first stage, . . would comprise of [sic] six blocks of the samediameter arranged in a circle, of the

R-7 or the R-9, but augmented in length and having the RD-I I I engine from the R-9 installed in each block. The

central block, also augmented, would haveone RD-I I I engine installed, but for high altitude use and high altitude

firing.... " The two Glushko proposals were known as the R-IO and the R-20, respectively, and both used the

LOX-unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine propellant combination.

95. Rudenko, "/he Moon SlipsAway,"

96 Chertok. Rakety i lyudL Fili Podlipki Tyuratam, pp. 344-45.

97. Dolgopyatov. Dorofeyev, and Kryukov, "At the Readers'Request:The N I Project."

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
I ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

When Glushko first saw the plan, he immediately rejected Kuznetsov's participation in

developing the booster and evidently made an aborted attempt at getting '/angel to offer a competitive proposal. Eventually, he changed his mind and sided with the remaining council members2 _ By early April, Korolev prepared a draft of his proposal in the form of an official Central

Committee and Council of Ministers decree, which he sent to the Military-Industrial

Commission with the agreement of eight chief designers. Within days. he decided to completely revise his conceptions when he realized that his future in space would depend heavily

on Chelomey's rising ambitions. 99 Perhaps with knowledge of Chelomey's recent meeting with

Khrushchev in Crimea, Korotev ceded some of his monopoly over the new Soviet space program. In a revamped version of his draft decree, dated May 30, 1960, Korolev grudgingly included Chelomey's design bureau as a leading player in the piloted space effort. OKB-I retained its

griphold on the development of a super heavy-lift launch vehicle. Korolev met with Khrushchev

in early June 1960 to explain the booster proposal. He emphasized both its military utility as

well as more grandiose plans for the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and Venus. The payload

capability would be ten times more than any existing booster, and Korolev promised that the

booster would be ready by 1963, if given the necessary resources. In a departure from common

practices, Korolev named his new projected series of boosters, "N," denoting nosityeL the

Russian word for "carrier."

The Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers signed the "big space plan"

into law on June 23, 1960. as decree number /15-296. Titled "On the Creation of Powerful

Carrier-Rockets, Satellites. Space Ships and the Mastery of Cosmic Space in 1960-67." it was

the blueprint for the Soviet space program in the 1960sY _ Although the actual decree remains

classified, Korolev's original draft for the "big space plan" has been published: it seems that

many. if not all, of the original points from Korolev's plan were enthusiastically approved by the

Soviet Communist Party and government following Khrushchev's sudden about-turn on the

space program. The draft itself remains a remarkable record of the stunning ambition of the

early Soviet space program. The eleven-point decree had four major sections:

• Enumeration of the major thematic directions of work

• Enumeration of timeframes for future activities

• Robotic exploration

• Earth satellites '°'

The core of the plan was the OKB-I proposal to develop a series of heavy boosters to support various military and civilian programs. Tailored to fit a variety of missions, a general upper

payload limit of seventy to I00 tons to a 300-kilometer orbit was specified in the decree. Launch

mass would vary between 1,000 to 2,000 tons, depending on the variant. Engineers would carry

out initial planning and design work for the boosters during 1960-62, concurrent with research

98. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: FiliPodlipki Tyuratam, p. 345.

99. The text of the first version of the plan, dated April 12, 1960, has been reproduced in full as "Planning

Decree of TsK KPSS and the Council of Ministers for the Future Mastery of Cosmic Space" (English title), in

Raushenbakh,ed., S. R Korotev i ego delo, pp. 289-93. Korolev's attached cover letter, dated April 7, 1960, is also

reproduced in the samesource on pp, 287-89. The eight chief designers were V. P. Barmin. A. F.Bogomolov, V. R

Glushko, N. D. Kuznetsov, V. I Kuznetsov, A M, Lyulka,N. A. Pilyugin. and M. S. Ryazanskiy.

I00. Vetrov, "The Difficult Fate of the NI Rocket": N P. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: kniga peruaya.

1960-1963gg (Moscow: Infortekst IF. 1995). p 19.

I01. The Korolev proposal for the decree, dated May 30, 1960. has been published as "Planning Decreefor

TsK KPSSand Council of Ministers" (English title), in Raushenbakh, ed., S. P Koroteu i ego delo, pp 295-301.

Korolev's coverletter with the decree, published as "Letter to S. I. Vetoshkin and K N. Rudnev" (English title), is in

the samesource on pp. 294 95.

239
24O

ona newgenerationf chemical,nuclear,liquidhydrogen,andlow-thrustelectricrocket

engines.Inaddition,thedecreecalledforthedevelopmentofnewcontrol,guidance,andcommunicationssystems,newlaunchcomplexes,groundcommandandcontrolsystems,anti-satellitebattlesystems,long-durationpilotedspacecraft,and"systemsforsolvingdefense-related

goals"byusingnavigation,geophysical,ommunications,adweathersatellitesystems.Iqlarge

portionofthedecreewasclearlydedicatedtomilitarygoals,reflectingtheSovietgovernment's

newfoundinterestinmilitarizingthisnewfrontier.Thedecreecalledforthecreationofa"militaryspacestation"notonlyforspace-basedreconnaissancebutalsofull-fledgedbattlesin

space.Smaller"militarysatellite-ships"wouldconductradarreconnaissanceandhavethecapabilityto inflictdamageto bothearthlyandspace-basedtargets.Korolevaddeda paragraph

proposingthathesenewrocketboosterscouldalsobeusedto"significantlypromotehedevelopmentofpeacefulscienceandculture,"includingthecreationofradioandtelevisionbroadcasting,weather,navigation,astronomy,andgeophysicalsatellitesystems.

Thesecondportionofthedocumentaddressedspecificprojects.OKB-Ilistedspecificationsforitsnewgenerationofheavy-liftboosters.Therewouldbetwolaunchvehicles:

Booster Timeframe Payload to Low-Earth Orbit Payload to the Moon

N I (or I IP,51 ) 1960-62 40-50 tons 10-20 tons

N2 (or 11/552) 1963-67 60-80 tons 20-40 tons

The N2 vehicle would use liquid hydrogen, ions. plasma, and nuclear engines in its upper

stages. These rockets would allow three new piloted projects to be implemented, all also developed by OKB-I:

Project Designation and

Description Period

Goals (all would have crews of

two to three cosmonauts)

Object KS (piloted heavy

satellite ship)

Reconnaissance and anti-satellite missions: would

1961-63 also have a "civilian" variant

Object KL (piloted lunar ship) 1961-64 Circumlunar and lunar orbital missions

Object KMV (piloted

interplanetary ship) 1962-65 Circumplanetary missions to Mars and Venus

Among the projects addressed in the second portion of the decree were the development

of robotic probes to the Moon, Mars, and Venus and new uprated launch vehicles using the

R-7 and R-9 ICBMs. Draft plans for both new launch vehicles would be ready by 196 I, with

flights initiated the following year. The third part called for the further development of the existing Object K spacecraft in four versions: for piloted missions in 1960 and 1961, for automated

photo reconnaissance from 1961 to t963, for scientific research in 1960 through t962, and for

rendezvous and docking in orbit in 1961 through 1963. All would be launched by R-7-based

launch vehicles. Korolev also included a point on the development of a scientific satellite

named Elektron to study Earth's radiation belts. Three subsections detailed new developments

in small Earth orbiting satellites for communications, meteorology, and scientific research given

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
ORGANIZING FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM

to other organizations, such as Yangel's OKB-586. '_2All this was to be accomplished from 960

to 1967, with OKB-I as the primary contractor for most of the projects.

In retrospect, it is clear that the decree was hastily put together, wildly ambitious and

remarkably unrealistic. Attempting to take advantage of the favorable conditions that existed for

a few months in 1960, the Council of Chief Designers proposed a macro-level plan that completely ignored the limitations of national economic resources as well as organizational barriers. The latter was of particular importance because few of the institutional changes

recommended by Korolev and Keldysh, in their 1959 letter to the government, were addressed

in the decree. The space program remained an arm of the defense industry, and its future course

remained intertwined in the needs, policies, and actions of individuals whose first priority was

much more earthly in nature. Thus, such grandiose goals as piloted flight to the Moon and

planets, which had no obvious military utility, generated zero interest from the primary

financiers of the space program, the Ministry of Defense.

Like Korolev, Chelomey had also proposed a mix of "civilian" and military space programs,

Government officials had evidently worked on the details of Chelomey's specific programs after

the important April 1960 meeting with Khrushchev in Crimea:

• An automated Kosmoplan (Object K) would be developed for flight to the Moon, Mars,

and Venus. capable of returning to Earth on a conventional runway. The spacecraft would

use high-energy liquid propellant, nuclear, plasma, and ion engines. Two variants were projected, one with a mass of ten to twelve tons and a more advanced twenty-five-ton model

for flight in 1965 or 1966.

• g draft plan would be completed by 1962 for a new space launch vehicle with a mass of

600 tons for launching the Kosmoplan.

• A naval reconnaissance satellite (Object US) would be developed in 1962 through 1964 to

aid in targeting Chelomey's P-6 anti-ship missile against U.S. naval assets.

• A Raketoplan (Object R) would be developed for Earth-orbital flights, capable of landing

on any conventional airfield. The spacecraft would have a mass of ten to twelve tons and

a flight range o[ 2,500 to 3,O00 kilometers. The robotic variant would be ready by 1960 or

1961, the piloted variant between 1963 and 1965, and the military anti-satellite variant

between 1962 and 1964. '''_

These and other projects from Chelomey were the subject of a second decree (no. 715-295)

issued on the very same day as Korolev's "big space plan." In Chelomey's case, the actual

decree approved the creation of the piloted spaceplane, the Raketoplan, whose primary mission

102. "Planning Decree for ]-sK KPSS and Council of Ministers," op cir. Boris Arkadyevich Dorofeyev,

"History of the Development of the N I-L3 Moon Program," presented at the 10th International Symposium on the

History of Astronautics and Aeronautics. Moscow State University, Moscow. Russia, June 20-27, t995: M.

Chernyshov. "Why Were Soviet Cosmonauts Not on the Moon?" (English title), Leninskoyeznamya August h

1990,p. 3, There isone source that purports to contain descriptions from the actual decree.SeeGolovanov,Koroteu,

pp. 710-II. According to this source, the details of the decreewere slightly more ambitious, including the development of an Earth o_bJtaJspaceship fo_c_ewsof two to three peopJe,automatic JunarsatelJJtes,and automatic Juna_

landers that would return to Earth. Also listed were researchon carrying out piloted expeditions to the Moon to

investigate its terrain, the selection of sites for establishing lunar settlements, and, after construction of such a base,

the creation ol a transport system for the Earth Moon-Earth route At the same time, a spaceship would be developed [or crews of two to three people to carry out orbital missions to Mars and Venus, which among other things

would select locations for future researchbases on the surface. After these bases were established, regular interplanetary flight of crews woutd begin. A separate paragraph was allegedly also dedicated to launching automatic

spaceships to the outer planets--in particular. Jupiter.

103. "Planning Decreefor TsK KPSSand Council of Ministers," op. oil

241
242

was to conduct anti-satellite missions in Earth orbit. '°4 Additional decrees in October 1960 and

March 1961 dramatically bolstered Chelomey's presence in the Soviet space program by formally initiating his works on the "IS" robotic anti-satellite spacecraft system, the "US" naval

reconnaissance system, and the UR-200 ICBMlspace launch vehicle. '°_

Chelomey's overt pandering to military interests clearly played in his favor. Within a span

of less than a year, Chelomey had entered as a serious competitor to Korolev in almost every

area of the space and missile programs--from ICBMs to piloted spacecraft, from interplanetary

probes to military space systems. Chelomey's new empire was not limited to future creations

but also to more earthly assets, such as the absorption of the Myasishchev design bureau,

OKB-23, and its associated Plant No. 23, in October 1960. At the same time, the June 1960

decree also allocated huge amounts of funds to begin large-scale construction at OKB-52's

premises at Reutov. '°°

The climate of the Soviet space program changed dramatically in the course of the three

years after the launch of the first Sputnik. From a few isolated projects in 1957, by 1960 it was

poised to expand into a large-scale undertaking far in excess of what was planned in the United

States at the time. The internal nature of power and influence had also evolved. Where Korolev

once was the only player in the game, there was fragmentation and competition. In the

Western sense of the word, competition had the connotation of a proactive plurality of opinions, which fostered creativity and efficiency. In the centralized and socialist Soviet system,

with resources restricted by the needs of the defense sector, it gave rise to chaos.

In 1957, Korolev had a singular vision of a Soviet space program moving across the great

expanse. By 1960, Chelomey had made his entry with a plethora of competitive proposals,

which in some cases were diametrically opposed to those of Korolev. Korolev's favored engine

designer. Glushko, had arrived as a powerful force of his own, but estranged from his former

friend. Finally, Yangel had taken Korolev's place as the favorite missile designer, thus shifting

allegiances in the military, the primary financiers of the space program. All this, of course, happened behind a wall of secrecy. Only the best and the brightest were shown to the public. In

that respect, the crowning achievement of the public Soviet space program was still to come.

1o4. ibid

105. There isevidenceto suggestthat the Sovietgovernment may haveapproved preliminary researchon the

IS, US. and UR 200 systems in the sameJune 1960 decree SeeSergeyKhrushchev, Nikito Khrusheheu: krizisy i

fakery: vzgtyad iznutri: tom 2 (Moscow: Novosti. 1994), p. 50 Note that the author states that the decree in support of these programs was in July 1960. not June 1960. This seems to be a typographical error. The robotic "IS"

satellite program was officially initiated by a Communist Party and government decree on October 3, 1960. See

Raushenbakh, ed, S P Koroleu i ego delo, p. 680; N, S. Simonov. Voyenno-promyshlennyy kompleks SSSRu

1920-1950-ye gody: tempy ekonomicheskogo rosta, struktura, organizatsiya proizvodstva i uprauleniye (Moscow:

ROSSPEN,1996), p. 301. The "US" programwas approved by two decrees, on March 16, 1961(no. 420-174), and

on June 3, 1962. SeeMikhail Rudenko. "Designer Chelomey's Raketoplans" (English title), Vozdushniy trGnsport

48 49 (1995): 8-9. The development of the UR-200 ICBM/launch vehicle was officially approved by decrees on

March 16. 1961. and August h 1961.SeeI. Afanasyev, "35 Yearsfor the "Proton' RN" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki ]-2 (1998): 45-48.

106 Yefremov, "NPO Mashinostroyeniya is Moving."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
I

CHAPTER SEVEN

GAGARIN

In the three years from 1958 to 1960, a continuous series of proposals and counterproposals set the stage for establishing policy directions for the new Soviet space program. If, at

the time of the first Sputnik, the space program was a minor offshoot of the ballistic missile

effort, then by 1960 it began to emerge as a separate field ready for exploitation and support.

Because of its origins in the rocketry program, the military's involvement in the space effort

continued to be pervasive. The piloted component of the Soviet space program had in fact risen

hand-in-hand with the development of the first Soviet reconnaissance satellite. And when it

came time to select volunteers for the first outbound voyages into space, it was once again the

armed forces that served as a pool for qualified individuals.

The Cosmonauts

Discussions on the type of passengers to be used for the first orbital space missions began

concurrently with the January 1959 decree calling for biomedical preparations for human spaceflight. Four months later, representatives from the military, the science sector, and the design

bureaus met at the offices of the tqcademy of Sciences, under Vice-President Keldysh's supervision, to discuss means and standards for selecting volunteers for the space missions. The

attendees considered individuals from a variety of professional backgrounds, such as aviation.

the Soviet Navy, rocketry, and car racing. It was at the insistence of Air Force physicians that

Keldysh approved a plan to narrow the pool to only qualified Air Forcepilots. The doctors convincingly argued that Air Force training, which included exposure to hypoxia, high pressure, gloads along various axes, and ejection seat experience, would all be relevant to training for

space missions: One other factor may have also affected the decision to choose pilots. In April

1959, NASA selected its first astronauts, all seven coming from aviation backgrounds in the

American armed forces.

The Soviet Air Force issued a document at the time, titled "Directive of the General Staff

of the [Air Force] for the Selection of Cosmonauts," which entrusted a Deputy Commander-inChief of the Air Force, Col. Gen. Filipp eq.ggaltsov, with the administrative duties to carry out

the task./qgaltsov's job was made easier by the fact that the space medicine group at the Air

Force's Institute of Aviation Medicine had had a long history of involvement in the rocketry

business. Led by the ubiquitous Lt. Col. Yazdovskiy, this team developed basic and initial

requirements for the candidates in coordination with OKB-I engineers./_t an early meeting to

I. Yu. A Mozzhorin eta/., eds., Dorogi u kosmos. II (Moscow: MAI, 1992), p. 144.

243
244

discuss these specifications, Chief Designer Korolev presented the specifications for the wouldbe "cosmonauts." The men, and only men were considered, were to be between twenty-five

and thirty years of age. no taller than 1.70 to 1.75 meters, and with a weight no more than seventy to seventy-two kilograms--all requirements sufficient to allow for accommodation in the

small 3KA capsule, the piloted variant of Object K. Korolev was candid about the skills of these

would-be cosmonauts:

As has been repeatedly demonstrated in our automated flights and those with animals

on board, our technology is such that we do not require, as the American Mercury project does, that our early cosmonauts be highly skilled engineers. The .;qmerican astronauts must help control the rocket systems at every stage of the flight."

While this was strictly not true, it was an indication of the depth to which automation was

an intrinsic factor in the early Soviet piloted space program. During the entire selection phase,

Korolev emphasized repeatedly that one of the primary criteria for the pilots would be the

necessity to carry out precisely programmed functions--a requirement that in truth left the candidates with much less control than they would have had flying a simple aircraft. The final specifications for the future cosmonauts were frozen by June 1959 in a document approved by three

Air Force institutions--the Institute of Aviation Medicine. the Central Scientific-Research

Aviation Hospital. and the Central Commission for Aviation Medicine--as well as the USSR

Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences.'

Yazdovskiy's team at the Institute of Aviation Medicine, being a large group of physicians

with a variety of interests, had been organized into different departments for the selection

process, with sections for general physiology, psychology, life support systems and hygiene,

and the actual selection of candidates. Yazdovskiy appointed Nikolay N. Gurovskiy and

Yevgeniy A. Karpov. two Air Force physicians, to oversee the candidate selection process?

Groups of doctors in pairs were then sent to a number of major/_ir Force bases in the western

Soviet Union. Doctors at the bases were also consulted on the issue, and by August. the selection process had commenced with inspections through the records of more than 3,000 pilots.

Most were eliminated at an early stage because of height, weight, and medical history. Grounds

for exclusion, based on the last criterion, included certain diseases such as chronic bronchitis,

angina, predisposition to gastritis and colitis, renal and heptic colic, and pathological shifts in

cardiac activity. The remaining pilots were then interviewed beginning September 3 with questions on their health, goals, moods, work, and quality of life. Even at this point, none of the

volunteers were aware of the nature of the mission, which was disguised under the euphemism

of "special flights." Gurovskiy recalled later:

The conversation [with the pilots] had nothing whatsoever to do with space. Some officers had no idea what we were getting at and why we had come. while others on the

contrary ,got the point immediately and asked permission to consult with their family.

2. Yevgeni Karpov, "Beginnings," in Viktor Mitroshenkov, ed, Pioneers o] Space (Moscow: Progress

Publishers, t989), p 18

3 Mozzhorin, et aL, eds. Dorogi v kosmos:II, p. 147

4 Eachdoctor at the institute wasassigned a specialty in the field of space biomedicine in preparation for

piloted missions They were: V I. Yazdovskiy (chief), O. G. Gazenko (physiology). A M Genin and A. D. Seryapin

(hygiene and life support systems), F D. Gorbov (psychology)_ and N. N Gurovskiy and Ye.A Karpov (selection

and preparation of cosmonauts, which was the Department 7 at the institute) Apart from the Air Forces Institute

of Aviation Medicine, the Central Scientific-ResearchAviation Hospital (TsNIAG) and the CentralCommission for

Aviation Medicine (TsVLK) were also involved in the preliminary stagesof cosmonaut selection.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

We had to absolutely forbid this: it was a new, top-secret project, and the prospectus

had to make the decision himself, without outside assistance. "_

Just over 200 individuals passed this early screening and were then sent in groups of twenty for further testing at the Central Scientific-Research Aviation Hospital in Moscow. Testing

under the "Theme No. 6" program formally began on October 3, Scores of individuals dropped

out of the race at this point as the resilience and will of the young Air Force pilots faltered in

the face of the extremely demanding and rigorous tests. Apart from further interviews, there

were a number of physical tests. One involved spinning the pilot in a stationary seat to test the

vestibular apparatus. Another subjected the volunteers to low pressure in a barometric chamber. A third was a classical centrifuge to test high gravity loads. It seems that original plans

called for a small group of seven or eight pilots, but Korolev insisted on tripling this number

because he wanted a group much larger than the NASA astronaut team. At the end of 1959, a

team of doctors approved twenty men to serve as candidates for the first team of cosmonauts. _

They were told to return to their units to await further orders.

On January II, 1960. Soviet Air Force Commander-in-Chief Marshal Konstantin A.

Vershinin formally signed plans to establish a center exclusively dedicated to the training of the

cosmonauts for the upcoming piloted flights. The directive called for the use of an old twostory building situated on the premises of the M. V. Frunze Central Airfield on Leninskiy

Prospekt in Moscow. Institutionally, the new center, officially called the Cosmonaut Training

Center (TsPK), was subordinated to the Air Force's Institute of Aviation Medicine. The thirtyeight-year-old Karpov. who had been involved in cosmonaut selection, was appointed the first

Director of TsPK by official order on February 24.' The initial staff at the facility numbered about

250. Although the new center was nominally under the control of physicians, the Air Force

General Staff ultimately exercised total supervision of all cosmonaut affairs via one high-ranking officer who would become one of the most prominent personalities in the history of the

Soviet human space program. Nikolay Petrovich Kamanin,

A lieutenant general in the Soviet Air Force. Kamanin was well known to the Soviet populace even before the existence of the Soviet space program. As a twenty-five-year-old pilot in

February 1934. he had led a daring rescue mission to the Arctic to save the crewmembers of

the ship Chelyushkin, who had been stranded on floating ice," For this particular act. Kamanin

had the distinction of being the very first Soviet citizen bestowed with the "Hero of the Soviet

Union" title, an honor reserved for great acts of bravery. By the late 1950s, Kamanin was serving as the first deputy chairman of a voluntary youth organization dedicated to training boys

and girls for future service in the armed forces. Clearly, his stature as a famous public aviator

was crucial to his appointment because it seems that he had not been involved in any significant high-priority military projects in his entire career. He was relieved of his previous duties at

5. Col. v. Gorkov, "History of the Space Program: Resident of Startown" (English title), ,qviatsiya i kosmonoutika no, I (January 1990): 20-23.

6. Mozzhorin, et al, eds, Dorogi u kosmos: II, pp 147-148: Christian Lardier,LYtstronautiquegouietique

(Paris: Armand Colin, 1992), pp, 125-26. The selection commission included V I Yazdovskiy, N N. Gurovskiy,

Ye. A, Karpov, and F,D. Gorbov [tom the Institute of Aviation Medicine and K F.Borodin, I. I. Bryanov. Ye. A.

Fedorov,and M. D, Vyadro from TsNIAG and TsVLK,

7. Gorkov, "History o[ the Space Program": V Ponomarenko and I. Alpatov, "Our Contemporaries: The

Source o[ Cosmonautics" (English title), ,z]viatsiya i kosmonavtika no.12 (December 1990): 38-39 Karpov's

deputies at TsPKwere Air Force officers N F. Nikersayov (political worker). Ye.Ye. Tselikin (director of flight training), V. V. Kovalev (head of the training section), and A. I. Susuyev (head of the logistics section) TsPK's "real"

designation was the military unit no. 26266.

8. Pavel Popovich and Alexander Nemov, "Galactic Secrets." in Mitroshenkov. ed, Pioneers of Space,

pp. 200-01

245
246

thetimeandofficiallyappointedtheDeputyChiefoftheSirForce's,GeneralStaffforCombat

Preparations.Hisdutiesincludedsupervisingtheselection,training,andadministrationofthe

newcosmonautsandreportingdirectlyto thehighcommandof theAirForce,including

Commander-in-ChiefMarshalVershinin/AlthoughthejuniorKarpovofficiallyheadedthe

Cosmonaut Training Center, it was effectively the fifty-one-year-old Kamanin who controlled its

most important activities. For the following ten years, no Soviet cosmonaut would get off the

ground without his blessing.

On February 2.5, Kamanin formally approved the final short list of twenty candidate cosmonauts selected by the end of 1959. These young men, along with seven others across the world,

represented the first group of people to prepare for voyages into outer space. The twenty were:

• Senior Lieutenant Ivan N Anikeyev (twenty-seven years old)

• Major Pavel I. Belyayev (thirty-four)

• Senior Lieutenant Valentin V. Bondarenko (twenty-three)

• Senior Lieutenant Valeriy F. Bykovskiy (twenty-five)

• Senior Lieutenant Valentin I. Filatev (thirty)

• Senior Lieutenant Yuriy g. Gagarin (twenty-five)

• Senior Lieutenant Viktor V. Gorbatko (twenty-five)

• Captain Anatoliy Y. Kartashov (twenty-seven)

• Senior Lieutenant Yevgeniy V. Khrunov (twenty-six)

• Captain Engineer Vladimir M. Komarov (thirty-two)

• Lieutenant Aleksey A. Leonov (twenty-five)

• Senior Lieutenant Grigoriy G. Nelyubov (twenty-five)

• Senior Lieutenant Andrian G. Nikolayev (thirty)

• Captain Pavel R. Popovich (twenty-nine)

• Senior Lieutenant Mars Z. Rafikov (twenty-six)

• Senior Lieutenant Georgiy S. Shonin (twenty-four)

• Senior Lieutenant German S. Titov (twenty-four)

• Senior Lieutenant Valentin S. Varlamov (twenty-five)

• Senior Lieutenant Boris V. Volynov (twenty-five)

• Senior Lieutenant Dmitriy g. Zaykin (twenty-seven) '°

Of the group, five had not met the age criteria of being between 25 and 30, but this condition was waived because of their performances in the selection procedures. Two in particular, Belyayev and Komarov, were the most educated and experienced members of the team,

having already graduated from Air Force academies. Because of the age restriction, none of the

selected were test pilots, unlike some of their U.S. colleagues. Komarov had some experience

as a test engineer flying new aircraft, but the most experienced pilot, Belyayev, had accrued

only 900 hours of flying time. Others such as Gagarin had flown only 230 hours. Only one

pilot, Popovich, had flown what was then considered a high-performance aircraft, the MiG-19."

To a large extent, this was a direct result of the high degree of automation in Soviet piloted

9 Kamanin nominally reported to four Air Forceofficers: his immediate superior/%ir Force General Staff

Chief Col Gen. P h Brayko, Air Force Deputy Commander-in-Chief Col. Gen. F./q. Agaltsov. Air Force First Deputy

Commander in-Chief Marshal S. h Rudenko, and Vershinin.

IO "At the Request of the Readers:Detachment of Air Force's Cosmonauts" (English title), Auiatsiya i

kosmonautika no 5 (May 1990): 46-47

II YaroslavGolovanov, Koroleu Fakty i mi[y (Moscow: Nauka, 1994). p. 605: Rex Hall, "Soviet Air Force

Cosmonauts." in Michael Cassutt. ed., Who's Who in Space The International Space Year Edition (New York:

Macmillan, 1993), p. 210.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
GAGARIN

The original 1960 group of cosmonauts is shown in a photo ,from May t961 at the seaside port of SochL The

names of many of these men were considered state secrets for more than twenty-flue years Sitting in front from

lelt to right: Pave/Popouich, Viktor _orbatko, Yeugeniy Khrunou, Yuny _agarin, Chief Designer Serge/Koroleu,

his wife Nina Koroleva with Popovich's daughter Natasha, Cosmonaut Training Center Director Yevgeniy

Karpov, parachute trainer Nikolay Nikitin. and physician Yevgeniy Fedorov. Standing the second row from left to

right: ,q[eksey Leonou, ,qndrian Nikolayev, Mars 17,aflkou. Dmitriy Zaykin, Boris Votynov, Cierman Tdov. _rigoriy

Nelyubov, Valeriy Bykovskiy. and _eorgiy Shonin. In the back from left to right: Valentin Filatyev, Ivan ,:qnikeyev,

and Pavel Belyayev. Four cosmonauts were missing ,from this photograph _natoliy Kartashov and Valentin

Varlamov had both been dropped from training because of injuries Valentin Bondarenko died in a training

accident a few months before. Vladimir Komarov was indisposed The original photo was taken by I Snegirev

(files of _si[ Siddiqi)

spaceships: there was simply no requirement for significant piloting experience or skill at that

point. The candidates had to be intelligent, comfortable with high-stress situations, and most

of all physically fit.

In late February 1960, twelve of the twenty selected cosmonaut candidates arrived for final

medical tests at the Central Scientific-Research Aviation Hospital. It was there on March 7 that

Marshal Vershinin gave a welcome speech, which one witness characterized as "parting words

prior to departure on a long, difficult journey." '_The same day, Kamanin signed final orders officially inducting them into the cosmonaut team and instructing them to return to their Air Force

units, settle all pending matters, and then arrive at the new training center. Orders for the

remaining eight trainees were signed between March 9 and June 17, 1960, after which all twenty were permanently stationed at the center. '_ Training classes for the candidates began at

0900 hours Moscow Time on March 14with an introductory lecture from physician Yazdovskiy.

During the initial four months, the training was evenly divided between a heavy emphasis on

academic disciplines and general daily physical fitness regimes. The latter included two hours

12, Gorkov. "History of the Space Program/'

13, The first twelve to officially join the team on March 7. 1960, were Anikeyev, Bykovskiy, Gagarin,

Gorbatko, Komarov, Leonov, Nelyubov. Nikolayev, Popovich, Shonin, Titov, and Volynov Khrunov joined on March

9, Zaykin and Filatyev joined on March 25, Belyayev, Bandarenko, Rafikov, and Varlamov joined on April 28 and

Kartashov joined on June 17 Their official orders were signed by Commander in-Chief of the Soviet Air Force Marshal

K. A. Vershinin. See V. Semenov. I Marinin, and S, Shamsutdinov, Iz istorii kosmonautiki: Wpusk I: nabory u otryady

kosmonavtov i astronautov (Moscow: AO Videokosmos, 1995), p. 12

247
248

of intensive calisthenics per day initially conducted at the Central Army Stadium in Moscow. In

later months, a dedicated exercise facility was built on the premises of the training center itself.

To provide a distinct link between the spacecraft they would be flying and their training, three

times a week, various engineers from OKB-I and other leading space firms served as part-time

lecturers at the center, teaching classes covering rocket-space systems, space biomedicine, navigation, radio communications, geophysics, and astronomy. _

Parachute training, which prepared the cosmonaut-trainees for both emergency and nominal mission events, was commenced on April 13, when most of the pilots were flown to the

Saratov region near Engels to begin jumps from a converted An-2 aircraft. Within about six

weeks, each had made approximately forty to fifty jumps, and became acclimated to landing on

water and land, from high and low altitudes, and in nighttime conditions. _ At the same time,

trainee Bykovskiy became the first individual to undergo a fifteen-day-long test in the TBK-12

anechoic chamber, beginning April 6, to simulate the effects of complete psychological isolation.

Other medical testing included the use of the Khilou swing to test the vestibular apparatus, the

Barani and Rotor rotating armchairs, a low-pressure barometric chamber to simulate altitudes of

up to twelve kilometers, a centrifuge capable of inducing up to ten g's, and a thermal chamber

to subject the trainees to temperatures up to seventy degrees Centigrade for one or two hours.

Regular medical tests were administered before and after each exercise. Not surprisingly, of all

the training regimes, the cosmonauts were most resistant to the medical and endurance tests,

and it apparently took much convincing for them to agree to subject themselves to the neverending series. To maintain their piloting skills, the trainees were allowed to fly MiG-15UTI trainer aircraft under the supervision of Mark L. Gallay, one of the most renowned test pilots in the

Soviet Union, on loan from the prestigious M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute at

Zhukovskiy. Under Gallay's direction, the trainees flew parabolic trajectories to simulate microgravity for periods up to thirty seconds in specially equipped Tu 104 aircraft. '_

Because of the space limitations of the existing facilities for training, the Air Force tasked

the staff at the new center to explore the possibility of moving to a location more amenable to

the needs of cosmonaut training. Officers initially recommended two potential sites near

Moscow: one at Balashikha and the other near the Tsiolkovskiy Railway Station at Shelkovo.

After assessing the pros and cons, the Air Force decided to move the entire training program to

the latter area because of its isolated location and large area. The proximity to several key facilities, including OKB-I, a large housing complex, the Academy of Sciences, and the Monino airfield were also important factors in the selection. The staff of the training center and the

cosmonauts formally relocated to the new location on June 29, 1960." This new suburb of

Moscow, about the thirty kilometers northeast of the capital city, was renamed Zelenyy

("Green"). The location is known, however, by its more recent name Zvezdniy Gorodok

("Starry Town" or "Star City"), the site where Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts

trained during the 1990s and will be training in the early 2000s for flights to the Russian space

station Mlr and the International Space Station. '_

14. In the initial stages, lecturers from OKB-1 included K D Bushuyev, K P Feoktistov,M. K Tikhonravov.

B. V Raushenbakh, V I. Sevastyanov. and Ts. V Solovyev. Biomedicine lectures were initially given by O G

Gazenko, V V. Parin. and V. I Yazdovskiy. See Mozzhorin, et at. eds., Dorogi u kosmos II, p 150: Golovanov,

Koroteu, p 610: _q.Yu Ishlinskiy. ed.. ,'qkademikS P Korotev Ueheniy,lnzhener, chetouek (Moscow: Nauka, 1986),

p471

15 Lardier. LT:tstronautiqueSoui#tique, p. 126: Golovanov, Koroteu, p. 610 The parachute training was

directed by TsPKinstructors I. M. Dzyuba, M. I. Maksimov, N. K. Nikitin, ,q. K Starikov,and K D Tayurskiy

16. Vladimir Yazdovsky, "They Were the First," Aerospace journal no. 2 (March-,qpril 1996): 69-71:

Lardier.L)qstronautique Soui#tique, pp. 122, 126-27.

17 Gorkov, "History of the Space Program."

18 The location was renamed Zvezdniy Gorodok on October 28, f968

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

As the basic training for the trainees neared completion, a rudimentary spacecraft simulator

named the TDK-I, the first of its kind in the Soviet Union, was built at the M M. Gromov FlightResearch Institute to allow training in various mission modes. `° Because doctors believed that it

would be inefficient to train all twenty men on one simulator at this early phase, Korolev, Karpov,

and Kamanin recommended that the center staff select a core group of six pilots who would

undergo accelerated training. This group would carry out the first piloted flights, while the remaining fourteen would continue basic training and fly at a later time, Some such as Volynov, who

was too broad-shouldered, and Shonin, who was too tall, were not considered for the primary

group. Nomarov, who was cJear_y the strongest candidate, being an engineer and a capabJe pJJot,

would have been included on the team had it not been for a cardiac anomaly that doctors inadvertently detected during a training exercise. The Air Force eventually drew up a short list of six

names on May 30, 1960. Informally titled "The Vanguard Six," they were Gagarin, Kartashov,

Nikolayev, Popovich, Titov, and Varlamov. To meet with them, Korolev visited the center for the

first time on June 18/'_ The cosmonauts had first learned of his existence only three months earlier, although even then he was simply referred to as the "chief designer" to conceal his identity.

The Vanguard Six in turn repaid the honor with a visit to the OKB-I premises the following

month, thus for the first time seeing the spacecraft they were destined to fly.

The core group of six cosmonauts suffered their first casualties, both coincidentally in July

1960, soon after moving to the new location at Zelenw. On July 16, following a centrifuge test

of up to eight g's at TsPK, physicians discovered a reddening of trainee Kartashov's spine.

Subsequent centrifuge tests confirmed the original diagnosis of hemorrhages, which implied

weaknesses in his blood vessels. An otherwise completely healthy person, Kartashov was immediately dropped from the Vanguard Six, although he remained at the center continuing basic training with the other cosmonauts. Despite entreaties from his close friends, such as Titov, Kartashov

was eventually dismissed from the team in April 1962 without having been assigned to any missions. Little more than a week after Kartashov's accident, on July 24, a second trainee from the

inner six, Varlamov, was involved in a swimming accident at the Medvezhiy Lakes while swimming with two other pilots, Bykovskiy and Shonin. During a dive, Varlamov hit the bottom of the

lake with his head and injured his spine. Following diagnosis, he was found to have a displaced

cervical vertebra, which disqualified him from further trainingJ' Nelyubov and Bykovskiy, respectiveJy, took the positions of Kartashov and VarJamov. Bykovskiy was apparently favored because

of his slight appearance, low weight, and high tolerance for g-loads/_ Thus by the end of July. six

men were in line to compete for the grand prize of being the first Soviet citizen in space: Gagarin.

Bykovskiy, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Popovich, and Titov. If all went according to Korolev's plan, one

of them would also have the distinction of being the first person in space,

19. The simulator was designed and built by the State Experimental Design Bureau of the Flight-Research

Institute (SOKB LII). headed by Chief Designer S. G. Darevskiy.

20. Rex Half, "The Soviet Cosmonaut Team 1956-i967, '¢' j'ournaf of _hegrzdsh fnterp(anetary Society 41

(1988): 107-10. A brief description of this first meeting can be found in Ishlinskiy. ed., ,qkademik S P Koroteu,

pp 49O-9 I.

2 I. Kartashov officiafly resigned from the cosmonaut team on April 7. 1962, following which he becamea

test pilot for the Ministry of Defense. He worked [or many years at GSOKB-473 of O. K Antonov before retinng

Varlamov officially resigned from the cosmonaut team on March 6, 1961.After his resignation, he served asa deputy

chief of the center's spaceflight control post and later as a chief instructor He died on October 2, 1980. the result

of a brain hemorrhage

22 Golovanov. Koroteu, pp. 616-t 7: Yazdovskiy,"They Were the First"

249
250

KorabI-Sputnik

The testing program for the first Soviet piloted spacecraft began in 1960. By that time, the

ship was given an actual name: Vostok ("East"). By April, OKB-I engineers under Bushuyev

and Tikhonravov had completed the draft plan for the first version, designated the I K (or

Vostok I), essentially a "boilerplate" variant for testing the primary spacecraft systems in orbit.

Also mentioned in the draft plan were the 2K (Vostok 2) and the 3K (Vostok 3), The former

would be the automated reconnaissance satellite, while the latter would be the actual piloted

spaceship. There was considerable pressure to accelerate the Vostok 3 schedule, primarily

because of the stream of news on Project Mercury, By the early summer of 1960, NASA officials were expecting to fly the first suborbital piloted Mercury not before January 196 I. This

deadline marked an informal target for OKB-I; for Korolev in particular, it was absolutely imperative that the first piloted Vostok be in orbit prior to a suborbital Mercury. The "end of 1960"

deadline was specified in an official document from the Soviet government, dated

June 4, 1960, titled "On a Plan for the Mastery of Cosmic Space"; all testing for a piloted

Vostok flight would be completed by December 1960/_

The testing program to support the attainment of this goal involved not only launching

automated Vostok I and Vostok 3 capsules, but also firing a series of short-range missiles into

the upper atmosphere to prove out various elements of the life support system and biological

support instrumentation. While none of these lobs into space used the actual Vostok spacecraft, the flights made an important contribution to the progress of the Vostok program as a

whole. Most of these launches were announced publicly by the Soviet media as being extensions of the IGY scientific program of 1957-58. Two different types of missiles were used for

these experiments, the R-2/_ and the R-SA, both "scientific" variants of military ballistic missiles. At least five successful biological launches of the R-2P, in 19.57 were followed by six more

from July 1959 to September 1960, all to altitudes of approximately 212 kilometers. Each carried two dogs. :4 i_ more advanced but less intensive program of launches was undertaken by

the R-SA, which allowed the time in weightless conditions for the passenger dogs to be doubled. Four launches were carried out between February and October 1958, each carrying two

dogs to altitudes of about 470 kilometers, a world record for a single-stage ballistic missile.

The success of the vertical launches of these missiles helped reinforce the confidence in

the overall Vostok program, From a political standpoint, however, the piloted project was still

in competition with more pressing military goals. Since late 1958, OKB-I had been concurrently working on the parallel reconnaissance satellite effort designated Zenit. INthough initially there was implicit support to emphasize the piloted portion, by early 1960, perhaps prompted

by the changing strategic positions between the two superpowers, the Soviet government

expressed increased impatience in the timetable for the surveillance project. At a meeting on

January 9, 1960, Military-lndustrial Commission Chairman Ustinov reminded the leaders of

OKB-I that "there was no goal more important at the present time" than the reconnaissance

program. :_ The criticism was clearly aimed directly at Korolev's idealistic enthusiasm for piloted

spaceflight, and it also underlined the growing rift between civilian and military goals in the

Soviet space program. When the Council of Chief Designers had originally decided in late 1958

to bestow a higher priority to Vostok than Zenit, the Ministry of Defense was still

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

RKK Energiya, named after S. P Korolev, 1996). p. 109.

24 This second serieswas inaugurated on July 2, 1959, and ended on September 22. 1960.SeeGeorge E.

Wukelic. ed., Handbook of SouietSpace-ScienceResearch(New York: Gordon and BreachScience Publishers. 1968),

p 17.There were two additional failures in the program out of a total of thirteen launches.

25. BYe. Chertok, Rakety i tyudi: Fili Podtipki Tyuratam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996), p 319

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
[

[ GRGARIN

relatively unsure of the requirement of space-based reconnaissance. That position had

drastically changed in less than two years, possibly exacerbated by the launches of the U.S. spy

satellite CORONA under the cover-name Discoverer.

The Vostok program as a whole achieved a significant milestone in the early summer of

1960, as the first flight-ready article was transported to Tyura-Tam for launch. Supervising the

test program for Vostok was yet another ad hoc "State Commission," this one originally established to oversee the series of ongoing R-ZA ICBM launches. Marshal Nedelin, the Commanderin-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, served as commission chairman, his presence

underlining the unbridled influence of the military over a "civilian" project.

The first Vostok I article readied for launch was a subvariant designated the I KP (or Vostok

I P), with the "p" denoting that it was a simple ("prostoy") spacecraft not designed to be

recovered from orbit. The spacecraft had no thermal shielding for the spherical descent apparatus and no life support system. Instead of the large ejection seat that would carry a pilot, the

spacecraft carried a mock-up of the contraption to simulate the correct loads. Unlike later

Vostok spacecraft, two solar panels shaped like semicircles were installed on a boom heading

out forward from the descent apparatus. This system, designated Luch ("ray"), would provide

power to the spacecraft as an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of solar power over

chemical batteries._ The primary goal of the mission was to test the basic elements of the vessel, in particular the complex Chayka orientation system, which would put the spacecraft in

the proper attitude for reentry. Although the vehicle would burn up on reentry, telemetry data

would indicate whether the spacecraft had been properly angled. Total spacecraft mass was

4,540 kilograms.

Engineers began arriving at Tyura-Tam on April 28, 1960, in preparation for the flight,

which was planned for early May. There were numerous problems with the Chayka system that

threatened to delay the mission. Engineers delivered a flight-ready system several days late and

installed it on the spacecraft only on May 5. Continuing anomalies with the system forced

Marshal Nedelin to reschedule the launch on May 15, exactly three years after the first R-7

launch. It was an early morning launch with the Sun shining brightly in the sky when the 8K72

launch vehicle raced toward orbit with its Vostok IP payload. The vehicle successfully entered

a 312- by 369-kilometer orbit at an inclination of sixty-five degrees. As soon as they received

news of successful orbital insertion, the senior members of the State Commission gathered to

draw up a communique for the Soviet press. There was some indecisiveness over what to call

the vehicle in the open media: Korolev livened the discussion by suggesting the useof the word

korabl (ship): "There are sea ships, river ships, air ships, and now there'll be space ships! ....

Although the term "space ship" was used for the first time in the official TASS news agency

announcement on the mission, the craft itself was simply designated Korabl-Sputnik ("satellite-ship" ). There was no indication that the mission had any relevance to a piloted space effort.

The flight, planned to last three or four days, proceeded without incident, with successful

tests of the electrical and power source systems. Reentry, the most critical juncture of the mission, was scheduled for the early morning of May 19. Prior to the scheduled firing of the

TDU-I engine, the control group at Tyura-Tam (Group T) had detected anomalies in the primary system of attitude control, which used the infrared sensor. Although the system as a

whole seemed to be functioning fine, the sensor itself was not responding correctly. The TyuraTam team reported the problem to the control group at Moscow (Group M), but the designer

26. The solarpanelsystemwasdesignedbythe All-UnionScientific-ResearchInstituteof CurrentSources

(VNIIT) headedby N S.Lidorenko.SeeLardier,L','qstror_autiqueSoui#tique,p. 123.

22'. Chertok.Raketyi lyudLp. 385.The otherattendeeswereL. A. Grishin,A. Yu Ishlinskiy.and M V.

Keldysh.

251
252

of the system, Boris V. Raushenbakh, refused to agree to Group T's recommendation to use the

backup system of orientation. OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Boris Ye. Chertok, who was the

head of Group T, quickly called a meeting at Tyura-Tam and reached a consensus that the primary system not be used, in favor of the still-operating solar-based @if sensor. He then passed

this recommendation on to Moscow. Although it seems that Korolev agreed with Chertok at

first, he gave in after persuasive arguments by Keldysh and Raushenbakh to go ahead with the

primary system. Unfortunately, on the sixty-fourth orbit, the primary system malfunctioned,

and the fourteen thrusters working on compressed nitrogen (ten kilograms thrust each) inserted the spacecraft in the exact wrong attitude. The TDU-I retrorocket automatically fired on time

at 0252 hours Moscow Time, but the spacecraft, instead of reentering the atmosphere, was

boosted into a new high orbit of 307 by 690 kilometers. The descent apparatus eventually

decayed more than five years later on October 15, 1965. Korolev, indignant at the control error,

slapped reprimands on several of his engineers, including Vostok designer Feoktistow '_

After a short investigation of the malfunction, OKB-I opted to remove the infrared system

from the Vostok 3A piloted variant of the spacecraft. Those spacecraft would instead be

equipped with two systems: a solar-based automatic system and a manual system using Earth's

horizon. The second Vostok I spacecraft readied for launch, while having the old set of orientation systems, was far more advanced than its modest predecessor: it was equipped with an

operational life support system and a means of recovery. Two dogs, Chayka and Lisichka, were

trained to fly into orbit on board. Korolev was particularly fond of Lisichka, a feeling that was

evidently mutual: the usually calm dog would invariably become animated when Korolev would

visit during prelaunch operations. The two dogs were launched on July 28, 1960, but the mission went awry right from the beginning, just nineteen seconds after launch, the booster began

"to fork to one side" as a result of a fire and a breakdown of the combustion chamber in one

of the strap-on engines (in Blok G). The inert strap-on broke away from the main vehicle, and

the booster eventually exploded into pieces at T+28.5 seconds. Although the descent apparatus separated from the stack, the explosion killed both passengers. _'

The accident forced serious consideration for testing a launch escape system on the 8K72

booster. Tikhonravov's department, responsible for the design of the spacecraft, proposed a

system in late August that would ensure that any on-board cosmonaut would have the capability to abort the mission at four different stages of the ascent to orbit. The first forty seconds

of the launch were considered the most dangerous portion, and in the case of a booster malfunction, the pilot would eject from the capsule via a catapult and land separately by parachute. _°The addition of a launch escape system as well as the change in orientation systems

were unusual for a program whose flight testing had already begun. The Vostok program indeed

had the odd distinction of being perhaps the only piloted space program whose draft

28. Ibid.. pp 386-87: "The Program of ResearchSuccessfully Completed. TASS Communique on the

Movements of the KorabI-Sputnik" (English title), Prauda. May 21 1960: Ishlinskiy. ed.,/qkademik S P KoroIeu p

513 The burn time of the engine was about twenty-six seconds, implying that the TDU-I was shut down be[ore a

full burn, or it was also the victim of a malfunction.

29. Semenov, ed., Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p II I: Chertok, Rokety i tyudi, p 389: S

Shamsutdinov, "Sixty Years[or Yu A, Gagarin" (English title), Novosfl kosrnonavtiki S (February 26-March 11,

1994): 5--7: Timothy Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketrythat Conquered Space:Part 3: Lunar Launchings for Impact and

Photography'." Spacelhght 38 (June 1996): 206 08: S P. Korolev, "On the State of the Experimental Work on

'Vostok' Ship" (English title), in B. V. Raushenbakh, ed.. Materialy po istorii kosmieheskogokorablya "Vostok"

(Moscow: Nauka, 1991). pp. 136-45. Note that the last source states that the failure occurred on July 23, 1960

30 Semenov,ed., RaketnoKosmieheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 113. Note that in Korolev's 1961 document

summarizing the Korabl Sputnik launches, he statedthat the systemwas installed on all Vostok flights following the

july 1960 accident, which implies that such a system was used on the August 1960 launch. SeeKorolev, "On the

Stateof the Experimental Work," p 136.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

plan--that is, the technical document specifying its design--continually evolved over the period of the project. _'This was no doubt attributable to the time constraints set in part by plans

for Project Mercury.

The next Vostok mission was set to carry two new dogs. Belka and Strelka. into orbit.

Along with the dogs, there were numerous other biological specimens. The pressurized cabin

contained twelve mice, insects, plants, fungi, cultures, seeds of corn, wheat, peas, onions,

microbes, strips of human skin, and other specimens. In addition, there were twenty-eight mice

and two white rats outside the ejection seat, but within the descent apparatus. Two internal

TV cameras, developed by NII-380, would provide views of the dogs during the spaceflight.

The spacecraft itself was fully equipped with a functioning catapult, a life support system, and

parachutes. The launch, originally set for August 15, was delayed because of problems with an

oxygen valve in the booster, but the dogs were finally sent on their way with a successful

launch at 1144 hours 6 seconds Moscow Time on August 19. Upon successfully entering its

306- by 339-kilometer orbit at 64.%-degree inclination, the spacecraft was named the "Second

KorabI-Sputnik." Total mass in orbit was about 4,600 kilograms. News of the launch was

immediately relayed to the Hall of Columns during the minutes when judges were considering

the sentence for American Francis Gary Powers, who was shot down by a Soviet S-75 missile

system in May of the previous year.

Throughout the one-day mission, doctors continuously monitored the medical condition

of the clogs while various parameters of the life support system were given a rigorous workout.

Because there were two cameras aboard the spacecraft, Yazdovskiy's biomedical support group

was able to observe the reactions of the dogs while in flight, The pictures coming back were

not encouraging. Initially, the dogs appeared deathly still, and without the incoming data

stream on their life signs, it would have been impossible to tell if they were alive or not, later

they became more animated, but their movements seemed convulsive. Belka squirmed and

finally vomited on the fourth orbit. Yazdovskiy silently watched the video and gloomily reported to the State Commission that a flight with a cosmonaut be limited to one orbit and no

longer. There were simply too many unknowns about the effects of weightlessness on the

human organism2 _ g number of scientific experiments were carried out during the mission,

including those for the detection of cosmic rays and the monitoring of high-energy emissions

in the ultraviolet and x-ray wave lengths.

Telemetry showed that the infrared orientation system had failed once again. After a busy

night verifying its capabilities, engineers recommended using the backup solar orientation system. The latter system performed without any anomalies on the spacecraft's eighteenth orbit,

and the descent apparatus successfully entered Earth's atmosphere at the correct angle. The

catapult system operated on schedule and ejected the cabin with the dogs in the mock-up of

the ejection seat. The cabin landed safely by parachute only ten kilometers from the designated point of touchdown in the Orsk region in Kazakhstan after a one-day, two-hour spaceflight.

Belka and Strelka thus became the first living beings recovered from orbit. The spacecraft itself

was only the second object retrieved from orbit: the American Discoverer 13 had preempted

KorabI-Sputnik 2 by nine days. _ Doctors found both dogs in good condition despite the

3 I. The draft plan for the Vostok 3A spacecraft (the piloted variant) was officially completed on july 3 I,

196h well after the first piloted orbital spaceflight.

32 Golovanov, Koroleu.p. 622.

33. Discover 13 was a CORONA reconnaissance satellite diagnostic mission without on board cameras

Note also that one source suggests that the descent apparatuso[ the KoraN-Sputnik 2 spacecraft landed as much

as 200 kilometers from its target site. SeeMozzhorin, et at., eds.. Dorogi u kosmos II, p_46.

253
254

concerns during the mission. Extensive physiological tests proved that there had been no fundamental changes in their health.

This particular flight of the Vostok I spaceship was a watershed moment and verified

almost all the primary elements of the spacecraft design. Korolev returned to Moscow on

gugust 28 to hear reports from Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev and Group Chief Feoktistov

on the progress of the design of the Vostok 3/q piloted variant. Very satisfied with the work

done, Korolev, in coordination with the other leading chief designers involved in the program

(Glushko, Ryazanskiy, Pilyugin, Barmin, Kuznetsov. Bogomolov, Isayev, Kosberg, P,lekseyev,

and Yazdovskiy), prepared a document titled "Basic Status of the Development and Preparation

of the Object 3KP, (The Piloted Space Ship 'Vostok-3@')," which included listings and descriptions of all the major systems on the spaceship as well as a cyclogram for a nominal flight with

contingency plans for all possible failuresM

The importance of the document, dated September 7, 1960. was not so much for its technical details, but because of the remarkable concern for safety of the pilot that comes through

in each section of the report. One section is completely devoted to enumerating the redundancies and safety measures for each of the spacecraft's major systems, from the critical orientation systems to the tiny pyrotechnical cartridges on the ejection hatch. Finally, in what must

have been Korolev's personal touch, the authors emphasized that previous management practices in the missile industry would no longer hold for the Vostok project because failure was an

unacceptable outcome. The complete Vostok system consisted of a six-unit three-stage launch

vehicle with as many as thirty-three thermally, statically, and dynamically loaded systems, such

as turbopumps, for the rocket engines, The spacecraft itself consisted of 241 vacuum tubes,

more than 6,000 transistors, fifty-six electric motors, and about 800 relays and switches interconnected by about fifteen kilometers of cable, in addition to 880 plug connectors having up

to 850 contacts per connector. Clearly, the entire system could not be regarded as failure-proof.

Here Korolev used his managerial technique to emphasize to each chief designer, plant director, and military operations manager that the life of a cosmonaut depended on his or her part

of the work. The chain of responsibility was delegated down to the lowest ranked worker in the

assembly shop. The eleven signatories of the document indirectly represented 123 organizations, including thirty-six plants, that were participating in the project. _

The preparation of this document proved to be the catalyst for a state-level intervention in

the program. Three days later, on September I0, the ten most powerful leaders in the Soviet

defense industry (led by Ustinov) and the armed forces, along with the six original core members of the Council of Chief Designers, signed and sent a document on the Vostok program to

the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Declassified finally in 1991, the letter for the

first time formally set a timetable for accomplishing the first piloted spaceflight. It began:

The successful launch, space [light, and landing of the spacecraft (the object "Vostok-I ")

sheds new light on the dates [or performing a piloted [light into cosmic space. An analy34 This document has been reproduced in its entiretyas S. R Korolev. V. P Glushko, M S. Ryazanskiy,

N. tq PilyuDn. V R Barmin, V. h Kuznetsov, A. F.Bogomolov, _q.M. Isayev.S. A. Kosberg. S. M glekseyev, and

V. I Yazdovskiy, "Basic Status of the Development and Preparation of the Object 3K,q (The Piloted Space Ship

"Vostok 3P,')" (English title), in Raushenbakh, eck. Materialy po istorii kosmieheskogo, pp. 125-28

35 Raushenbakh, ed., Materialy po istorii kosmicheskogo, p, 213. There was also another document titled

"Regulations for the 3Ktt," which was issued in December 1960 and specified production and design responsibilities for each chief designer, plant director, and so on See Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya,

p 565

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
L GAGARIN

sis of the telemetric measurement data received during the flights of the "Vostok-I" suggests the possibility of creating normal living conditions for a human during space flight. _

The authors recommended that one or two further Vostok 1 flights be carried out in

October-November 1960, followed by two automated missions of the Vostok 3A variant in

November-December 1960. By December I, the cosmonauts training for their mission would be

ready, and a full-scale piloted flight could be accomplished in a Vostok 3A in December, in time

to beat a Mercury launch. Unlike all earlier Soviet space projects, the fact that this document was

signed by ministerial heads rather than the standard deputy ministers clearly underlines the

importance with which the Soviet leadership viewed the program. If in 1959 there was some hesitation on the part of the government to fully commit to a piloted space program, by the end of

1960, those concerns had no doubt been overridden by the imminent threat of Project Mercury.

Having consistently taken the lead in the early space race, the Soviet Union was forced to make

efforts to continuously maintain that preeminence. Despite the national priority in strategic missiles, space had become an arena not only for military applications but also simply national

pride. In a sense, the chest-beating self-congratulatory euphoria that had followed the launches

of Sputniks and Lunas pushed the Soviet government into maintaining the image of the new

advanced Soviet state. It was a race that they had started and were in no position to call off.

The petition by the sixteen leaders of the Soviet space program was received in the Central

Committee of the Communist Party--that is, by Nikita S. Khrushchev and Frol R. Kozlov. Both

approved the plan and issued a top-secret reply dated October II, listing each of the ministerial jurisdictions of the signatories:

I. The proposal of the USSR Council of Ministers State Committee of Defense Technology,

the LISSR Council of Ministers State Committee on Radio-Electronics, the USSR Ministry of

Defense. the USSR Council of Ministers State Committee for Ship Building. the USSR

Council of Ministers State Committee for ,Ztviation Technology. and the USSR /qcudemy of

Sciences, which has been examined and approved by the Commission of the Presidium of

the USSR Council of Ministers for Military-Industrial Issues, on the preparation and launch

of a spacecraft (the object "Vostok-3_") with a man on board in December of 1960, is

approved, because it is a task of great importance) 7

Thus the stage was set for the launch of the first human into space in the last month of

960. It was an ambitious timetable. There was no precedent for the rapid pace of the schedule--OKB-I had managed to conduct three launch attempts in three months in the summer of

t960, and that rate would have to be almost doubled. The decision was clearly made after

36. An edited version of this letter was published in V. Belyanov. L. Moshkov, Yu. 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), Izuestiyu TsKKPSS5 ( 1991): I01-29. The signatories to the document were {in order of their

signatures): D. F. Ustinov (Chairman of the Military-lndustriaf Commission), R. Ya. Malinovskiy (Minister of

Defense), K. N. Rudnev (Chairman of the StateCommittee for DefenseTechnology), V. D. Kalmykov (Chairman of

the State Committee for Radio-Electronics), R V. Dementyev (Chairman of the State Committee for Aviation

Technology). B. Ye. Butoma (Chairman of the State Committee for Ship-Building). M. I. Nedelin (Commander in

Chief of the Stratesic Missile Forces),S. I, Rudenko (Deputy Commander in Chief of the Air Force),V M Ryabikov

(Deputy Chairman of the RSFSRCouncil of Ministers). M. V. Keldysh (Vice-President of the USSRAcademy of

Sciences), S R Korolev (Chief Designer of OKB-I). V. R Glushko (Chief Designer of OKB-456). M. S. Ryazanskiy

(Chief Designer and Director of NII-885), N. A. Pilyugin (Chief Designer of NII-885), V R Barmin (Chief Designer

of GSKB SpetsMash):and V. I. Kuznetsov (Chief Designer of Nil 944).

37. This decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the USSRCouncil of Ministers has

been reproduced in full in ibid., p. 103.The title of the document was "On the Object 'Vostok-3A'."

255
256

exhaustive discussion, and there is no evidence to suggest that Korolev would have approved

such a timetable if he did not think it was realistic. The plans of the Soviet government were,

however, suddenly and tragically thwarted by one of the worst-ever disasters in the history of

rocketry, a dark reminder of the perils of the new technology at its disposal.

Disaster and Delays

On the evening of October 24, Korolev called OKB-I senior engineer Arkadiy I. Ostashev

into his office to give him some important information. The chief designer had just received a

call from Tyura-Tam on restricted communications lines from his Deputy Yevgeniy V. Shabarov

concerning a major accident at the launch range in which Ostashev's older brother, Yevgeniy,

had been involved? _ Still unaware of the scale of the accident, Korolev immediately permitted

the younger Ostashev to fly to the launch site. The magnitude and catastrophic nature of the

accident only became clear to Korolev through the night as more and more reports arrived from

both Tyura-Tam and indirect sources in Moscow. The disaster was beyond the comprehension

of even the most darkest nightmares, and it involved a rocket designed not by Korolev, but by

his rival. Chief Designer Yangel.

Offering up stiff competition to Korolev to design a new generation of ICBMs, Yangel had

brought his first offering, the R-16, to the launch pad in mid-October for its first launch. After

the relative failure of Korolev's R-7 as an operational ICBM, there was a tremendous amount of

import focused on bringing Yangel's new R-16 to operational status. It would finally give the

Soviet Union an active and large-scale strategic deterrent backing up the Khrushchev's bluster

and bragging about Soviet might. Days before the planned launch, the Soviet leader, in a speech

at the United Nations, had boldly stated that strategic rockets were being produced in the

Soviet Union "like sausages from a machine," a claim that was clearly not true in the case of

ICBMs. _ Numerous important officials were at Tyura-Tam to witness the first launch, including

Strategic Missile Forces Commander-in-Chief Nedelin, who also chaired the State Commission

for the R-16.

Fueled by storable, hypergolic, and highly toxic propellants, there had been much difficulty

prior to launch, especially in fueling procedures, which caused great consternation at the site.

The first launch was originally set for October 23, but a major propellant leak that evening forced

a postponement to the next day. On the orders of the State Commission, all repairs to the missile were carried out in a fully fueled state, creating a remarkably dangerous situation at the pad.

The repairs were successfully completed through the night, and all prelaunch operations proceeded as planned until thirty minutes prior to the set launch time on October 24. At this point,

there were still approximately 200 officers, engineers, and soldiers near the pad, including

Marshal Nedelin, who scoffed at suggestions that he leave the pad area. "What's there to be

afraid of? Am I not an officer?," he was reported to have asked. _' By a fateful stroke of luck,

Yangel himself was convinced to enter a safe bunker to smoke a last cigarette by Maj. General

Aleksandr G. Mrykin. Nedelin's point man for missiles and space, Mrykin was apparently thinking of quitting smoking, and he had decided to smoke his last cigarette right then. It was at that

moment, exactly thirty minutes prior to the scheduled launch, that the missile suddenly exploded on the pad, releasing an expanding inferno of destruction around the pad area.

38. Chertok. Rakety i tyudi, p. 396

39 Steven Zaloga. Target_meriea: The 5ouiet Urrior_arid the Strategic .,qrmsRace, 1945 I964 (Novato,

C/_: Presidio. 1993). p 195_

40 S Averkov. "Top Secret:Explosionat 8aykonur Cosmodrome: Only After 30 YearsAre We Learningthe

Truth About the Death of Marshall Nedeti_ and a LargeGroup of Rocket Specialists" (English title). Rabochaya tribur_a_December6, 1990, p. 4

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

This stitl from a [dmo[ the R-16 explosion shows the expandin£ fireball around the missile as pad workers

desperately tried to flee the scene of the catastrophe Approximately I30 people perished as a result of the

explosion, many of whom were identified only by medals on their jackets or rings on their fingers

(copyright Rudy, Inc, via Quest magazine)

Within seconds, the rocket broke in half and fell on the pad, crushing any one who might

have still been left alive. At that point, the fire and the heat increased in intensity as all the propeflants ignited in a crescendo. Some people were simply engulfed in the fire, while others who

managed to run in a burning state succumbed to the toxic gases within minutes. Technicians

remained hanging from their harness from special cranes as their bodies burned. Deputy

Chairman of the State Committee of Defense Technology Lev A. Grishin, who had been standing next to Nedelin, managed to jump over a high railing, run across the molten tarmac, and

jump to the high gate of the ramp from a height of three and a half meters, breaking both legs

in the process to reach safety. Tragically, he succumbed to his burns soon after he was taken

to the hospital/' P,s the temperature raged to around 3,000 degrees, people just simply melted

in the firestorm, many being reduced to ashes.

Through the ensuing days, workers began the gruesome task of identifying bodies./q special commission headed by Yangel was formed immediately to investigate the accident. The failure had evidently occurred when the second stage of the R-16 had spuriously started firing on

the pad because of a control system failure, thus igniting the propellants in the first stage. This

control system, developed by the Kharkov-based 0KB-692, had lacked a circuit to block spurious commands from reaching the second stage. It took fourteen hours of torment before the

41. Grishin was still alive four days after the disaster,on October 28. At the time. his injuries were listed as

"2nd, 3rd, and 4th degreeburns on the face, head, neck. left half o| the thorax. Open fracture in both bones oI right

and left shins. Left lower extremity amputated from the middle third of the shin."

257
258

young Ostashev identified his brother. Nedelin himself was identified only by his Gold Star

medal attached to his uniform. OKB-692 Chief Designer Boris M. Konoplev, the talented guidance systems engineer who was among the rising stars in the Soviet missile and space program,

was identified by his height, having been one of the tallest men at the pad. All told, 126 individuals died in the blast, including senior military officials, deputy chief designers, and numerous soldiers. 42The entire incident was kept under tight wraps, and Marshal Nedelin was said

to have died in an aircraft accident, a piece of fiction that the Soviets officially maintained until

early 1989. The prohibition on discussing the disaster among the survivors was not lifted until

1990, thirty years following the tragedy. 4_

The R-16 disaster was a devastating blow to the Soviet missile program. Although it did

not have any direct connection to the piloted space effort, there was clearly a repercussive delay

on the Vostok program. Many of the same design organizations, such as OKB-456 (Glushko),

NII-944 (Kuznetsov), NII-88 (Tyulin), and NII-229 (Tabakov), had major contributions to both

the R-16 and Vostok projects. Marshal Nedelin, apart from his role as Commander-in-Chief of

the Strategic Missile Forces, had also chaired several important State Commissions, including

Vostok, thus capping his fifteen-year-long role as one of the most important figures in the

growth of the Soviet missile and space programs. Kirill S. Moskalenko, the fifty-eight-year-old

Commander of the Moscow Military District, was brought in as the new commander of the

Strategic Missile Forces. He had the unusual distinction of being one of the men to participate

in NKVD Chairman Beriya's execution in December 1953. Konstantin N. Rudnev, forty-nine,

the industrial leader of the space and missile program, took Nedelin's place as the chair of the

State Commission for Vostok24 It was the peak of Rudnev's ten-year rise to influence as one of

the top industrial managers in the Soviet Union. His first job in the rocketry effort had been as

director of the famous NII-88 in the early 1950s.

It would be more than two weeks following the R-16 disaster that active work on the

Vostok effort resumed again. By this time, it was clear that the original schedule for a piloted

flight in December 1960 was unrealistic. In a letter dated November I0, Ustinov, Keldysh,

Korolev, Rudnev, and Moskalenko asked the Central Committee for formal permission to launch

two Vostok I precursor craft prior to commencing testing of the piloted Vostok 3P, variantJ _ In

the best-case scenario, a first piloted flight could not be carried out before late February 1961.

By this time, NP, S_ was also looking at the first suborbital flight in early spring. Thus, despite

the delays associated with the R-16 disaster and other technical problems, there was still a slim

margin of safety in the new schedule.

42. Chertok, Rakety i lyudL p 397. There are still many discrepancies in reports of the fina[ human toll of

the R-16disaster, ranging from a lower limit of ninety two to an upper limit of 165. ByOctober 28, seventy-four people had been identified as dead. t_ number of previously classified important documents related to the disasterwere

published in 1994.These included the original communiqu_ sent by Yangelto Moscow minutes after the disaster, a

preliminary accident report by the technical commission on the day after the accident, and lists of those who had

been identihed(both deceasedand injured) by October 28, SeeI. D Sergeyev,ed, Khronika osnounykh sobytiye

iston'i raketnykh uoyskstrategicheskogo naznacheniya (Moscow: TsIPK, 1994), pp. 240-63.

43 Therearenumerous Russianlanguagesourcesthat describethe incident. The ones primarily usedin the

abovenarrativewere: Averkov, "Top Secret:Explosionat Baykonur Cosmodrome": Col. A. Radionov, "The Time Has

Come to Tell: It Happened at Baykonur: At the First Launch of the New Rocket. How Marshall Nedelin Died. The

Memory o[ the Living" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, October 24, 1990, p. 2: ,q. Bolotin, "Site Ten" (English

title), Ogonek 16 (/_pril 15-22, 1989): I0 14. For a recent English language account of the R 16 disaster, see&sir

_. Siddiqi, "Mourning Star," 9,uest3 (Winter 1994): 38-47.

44 Zaloga, Target.,Zimerica.p. 99: Chertok, Rakety I lyudL p. 41 I.

45. This letter is reproducedin full, but with disguised designations, as D F.Ustinov, M. V. Keldysh, S. P.

Korolev, K. N Rudnev, and K. S. Moskalenko, "On Launchesof the 'Vostok-P/ Korabl-Sputnik" (English title), in

V. S g_vduyevskiyand T M. Eneyev.eds_ M _/ Keldysh: izbrannyye trudi: raketnaya tekhniku i kosmonczutika

(Moscow: Nauka. t988), pp. 355-56.

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

Permission to launch the two Vostok I spacecraft, the fourth and fifth in the series, was

granted almost immediately by the Central Committee, which allowed processing at the

OKB-I plant and at Tyura-Tam to pick up speed. Both spacecraft were identical to the ship

launched in August, save for the omission of the infrared orientation system that had been the

source of so many problems on the previous missions. 4_The first one was launched without

incident on December I, 1960, into an orbit exactly mimicking the one planned at the time for

an actual piloted mission: 180 by 249 kilometers at a 64.95-degree inclination. Aboard the satellite, called the Third KoraN-Sputnik in the Soviet press, were two dogs, Pchelka and Mushka.

Total mass in orbit was 4,563 kilograms. There was apparently improved biomedical instrumentation on board, as well as a different set of instruments for cosmic and radiation studies.

The flight went well, and there were twelve successful communications sessions for

telemetry reception. After about twenty-four hours in orbit, on the seventeenth orbit, the main

TDU-I engine was to fire to initiate reentry. Unfortunately, there was a malfunction in the stabilization system of the engine: the resulting firing was far shorter than had been planned.

Although the spacecraft would still reenter, computations showed that the landing would overshoot Soviet territory. The spacecraft made one and a half more orbits, after which the descent

apparatus with the dogs separated from the rest of the vehicle. An additional communications

session with the craft confirmed the failure of the TDU-I. At this point, a special and unusual

system was called into operation--one that was installed to address this precise situation.

During earlier mission planning, there had been much concern about the possibility of having

a spacecraft land off course and on "foreign territory." Given the extreme secrecy and xenophobia of the missile and space programs, the only option for designers was to install a selfdestruct system aboard the vehicle to destroy the "evidence" before recovery by non-Soviet

parties. Designed by NII-137, the system for the emergency explosion of the object was

designed to detonate if the on-board g-sensor did not detect reentry at the assigned moment.

Mercifully, such a system was only earmarked for the Vostok precursor missions and not for any

actual piloted craft. In the case of Korabl-Sputnik 3, the system went into operation at the

beginning of reentry and destroyed the spacecraft along with its hapless passengers. 4_At the

time, the Soviet press merely announced that because of the incorrect attitude, the descent

apparatus had burned up on reentry.

The problem with TDU-I was identified quickly by "adopting means for ensuring normal

work of the Braking Engine Unit," and the next Vostok I spacecraft was brought to the launch

pad at site I in the third week of December. There was a slight change in the boosterspacecraft stack for this flight. All earlier KorabI-Sputnik missions had used the 8K72 launch

vehicle also used for the Luna launches. This particular flight would be the first to use a slightly modified variant designated the 8K72K, which substituted the RD-OI09 (just over five and a

half tons) for the RD-OI05 (just over five tons) as the third orbital insertion stage. 4_The nominally increased thrust would allow a slightly higher mass planned for the piloted variant, Thus,

the fifth Vostok I spacecraft, carrying the dogs Kometa and Shutka, was sent on its way at

104.5 hours Moscow Time on December 22, 1960. 49The first two stages of the 8K72K booster

46. Korolev, "On the State of the Experimental Work."

4/. Ibid.: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 411-12. Although the system was not used on any piloted Vostok

mission, it was standard on all variants of the Vostok spacecraft for reconnaissancemissions

48. Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketrythat Conquered Space:Part 3." The first tests of the 8K-12Kvariant may

haveoccurred earlier.There were two suborbital launches related to the R--1(or R-7A) on July 5 and -1,1960,during

which the payloads were deposited in the Pacific. SeeLardier,LYqstronautiqueSouietique. p. 122: 7] Chronology o[

Missile and Ztstronauticczl Events. prepared for the Committee on Science and Astronautics, US. House of

Representatives.87th Cony,, Ist sess (Washington, DC: LI.S.Government Printing Office. March 1961), p. I 19.

49. N.P. Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos:kniga peruaya, 1960-1963gg (Moscow: Infortekst IF. 1995), p. 9. Note

that this source suggeststhat the names of the dogs were Zhemchuzhnaya and Zhulka.

259
26O

performed without fault, but the new third stage engine prematurely cut off at T+425 seconds

because of the destruction of the gas generator in the engine. The emergency escape system

went into operation, and the spacecraft successfully separated as its flight trajectory described

an arc across the Soviet Union. The payload reached an altitude of 214 kilometers and landed

about 3,500 kilometers downrange from the launch site in one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of Siberia, in the region of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River close to the impact

point of the famed Tunguska meteorite. By the late hours of December 22, rescue forces began

to detect signals from the descent apparatus, and a search party led by Korolev's old friend,

Arvid V. Pallo, was dispatched to try and locate the capsule.

The rescue mission turned out to be one of the most harrowing episodes of the time. Once

the rescue group was dropped at the general area of the landing site two days late on December

24, Pallo and his associates found themselves in waist-deep snow. By having aircraft fly in the

direction of the object, they managed to reach the capsule. Once the team found the spacecraft,

they had to approach it with extreme care because the emergency explosive system was to automatically detonate the vehicle sixty hours after landing. By the time they reached the spacecraft,

it had already been sixty hours, but the capsule had still not exploded, forcing them to disengage the explosive in minus-forty-degree Centigrade temperatures. They later discovered that the

cabling in the explosive system had burned through, neutralizing the bomb. /qlthough both

hatches on the descent apparatus had been discarded, the ejection seat had remained within the

spherical capsule instead of ejecting out with the dogs. Later investigation showed that during

ejection, the seat had slammed into the side of the exit porthole and remained within the spacecraft. Pallo and his deputy returned to the site the next day, and the dogs were finally taken out

of the capsule, a little cold but alive, and flown to safety, arriving in Moscow on December 26.

Bringing the descent apparatus itself back to Moscow proved to be much more difficult as they

used a variety of strategies to literally drag the capsule through kilometers of snow. At one point,

Pallo's team had to terminate all rescue operations and spend the night in the middle of the ice

and snow when the temperature dropped to minus sixty-two degrees Centigrade. It was the first

week of January 1961 before the vehicle finally arrived in Moscow) ° Despite Korolev's entreaties

that the failure be announced in the Soviet press, the State Commission vetoed the idea.

An analysis of the launch abort on December 22 showed that there were a number of major

anomalies on the mission. Following the booster third-stage failure, the Vostok I craft was to

separate into its component descent apparatus and instrument section modules. This never

happened. The two capsules severed their connections only because of the thermal heating on

reentering the atmosphere. Furthermore, the ejection seat was to have shot out of the capsule

two and a half seconds after the hatch was jettisoned: on this mission, both events occurred

simultaneously, causing the craft to deform from the shock of the failed ejection. _' Then there

was the fortuitous failure in the self-destruct system. All of these, for obvious reasons, were not

encouraging. The KorabI-Sputnik program now had two major failures in a row. The State

Commission's provisional date of February t961 for a piloted flight was no longer viable, gt a

meeting of the commission on January 5, 1961, Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev laid out a

schedule for the forthcoming months, tqs per earlier plans, the next two launches in the series

were to be automated flights of the actual piloted variant, the Vostok 3A. The first would fly

on February 5 and the second on February 15-20Y Contingent upon their successes, the commission would approve a piloted mission.

50. Mozzhorin. et al.. eds_ Dorogi u kosmos: II, pp. 47-5 I: M. Rebrov, "But Things Were Like that--Top

Secret:The Painful Fortuneof the NI Project" (English title). Krasnaya Zuezda, January 13, 1990. p. 4.

51 Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos,p. I0

52. Ibid. p II

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

The Road to Vostok

The training of the core group of six cosmonaut-trainees selected as a pool for the first

piloted mission reached a turning point in January t961. By that time, all six had finished final

regimes in simulators lasting three days, as well as full-scale parachute and recovery training.

Over two days in mid-January, the six--Captain Bykovskiy, Lieutenant Gagarin, Lieutenant

Nelyubov, Captain Nikolayev, Captain Popovich, and Lieutenant Titov--took their final exams

to assess their degree of readiness. A special interdepartmental commission under Lt. General

Kamanin's supervision would review the results of the tests and recommend the most likely

candidates for the very first mission) _ On January 17, each candidate spent forty to fifty minutes in a simulator at the M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute describing the operation of

the spacecraft, its instruments, and various phases of a mission, after which the members of

the commission asked specific questions. Particular attention was devoted to the operation of

the TDU-I engine and spacecraft orientation, both of which had failed at various times in the

previous KorabI-Sputnik missions. On the first day, Nikolayev, Popovich, Gagarin, and Titov

received grades of "excellent," while Bykovskiy and Nelyubov were given "very good" scores.

The following day, the candidates took a written exam, which completed the program. The

results were collated soon after, and the commission recommended the following order for

using the trainees in flights: Gagarin, Titov, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Bykovskiy, Popovich) _ This

particular series of tests helped narrow down the pool of cosmonauts for the first mission to

the three best candidates: Gagarin, Titov, and Nelyubov. Although nontechnical factors such

as psychological characteristics and ideological issues would narrow the three men down to

one for the very first mission, all three would travel to Tyura-Tam in a few months.

Even at this early stage, the twenty-six-year-old Yuriy Gagarin seemed to be the clear

favorite. He had come from working-class origins in the Smolensk region west of Moscow, graduating from secondary school in 1949. He spent the following few years in various technical

institutes before joining the Orenburg Higher Air Force School in 1955. Until his selection as a

cosmonaut-trainee, he had served as an active duty pilot at Zapolyarniy, north of the Arctic

Circle. By all accounts, he was a very likable and intelligent individual, and he had fortuitously

made an extremely favorable impression on Korolev the first time the cosmonauts had met the

chief designer in mid-1960. Although there has been a tendency to hero-worship the young

man, even those less prone to hyperbole had nothing but positive things to say about him.

Cosmonaut Khrunov later remembered that:

Gagarin was extraordinarily [ocused. and when necessary, very demanding o[ himself

and of others. Which is why I think that concentrating on that [amous smile o[ his might

miss the mark entirely and might even diminish the image of who he really was? S

53 The members of the commission were: Maj. General A. N Babiychuk (Chief of the Soviet Air Force

Medical Service), Lt General M Ya.Klokov (Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine), V. I. Yazdovskiy (Institute of

Aviation and Space Medicine), Colonel Ye.A. Karpov (Director of TsPK),Academician N. M. Sisakyan(Department

of Biological Sciencesof the LISSRAcademy of Sciences),K R Feoktistov (OKB-I), S. M. Alekseyev (Chief Designer

of Plant No 918), and M L Gallay (test pilot at the M. M. Gromov Flight-ResearchInstitute) In addition, FlightResearchInstitute Director N S Stroyev was present during the tests. See Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos, p 12; L. N

Kamanin, "A Minute's ReadinessHas Been Announced ..." (English title}, Znamya no. 4 (April 1989): 134-46.

54. The remaining eleven active cosmonauts--Anikeyev, Belyayev,Filatyev,Gorbatko, Khrunov, Komarov.

Leonov, Rahkov, Shonin, Volynov, and Zaykin--took their test on April 4, 1961.Out of a total possible of "5/'

Komarov and Leonov received 5+, Anikeyev, Filatyev. Shonin. and Volynov received 5, and Belyayev,Gorbatko,

Khrunov, and Rafikov received4 SeeGolovanov, Koroleu, p. 633.

55. Ibid. pp 628-29.

261
262

OKB-I engineer Raushenbakh recalls that "Gagarin would never try to ingratiate himself,

nor was he ever insolent. He was born with an innate sense of tact." In an early evaluation of

his personality dating from/qugust 1960, when he was simply one of twenty men in training

for a flight, a commission of Air Force doctors wrote with remarkable unambiguity of Gagarin's

positive attributes:

[M]odest: embarrasses when his humor gets a little too racy: high degree of intellectual

development evident in Yuriy; fantastic memory; distinguishes himself from his colleagues by his sharp and far-ranging sense of attention to his surroundings: a welldeveloped imagination: quick reactions: persevering, prepares himself painstakingly for

his activities and training exercises, handles celestial mechanics and mathematical formulae with ease as well as excels in higher mathematics: does not feel constrained

when he has to defend his point of view if he considers himself right: appears that he

understands life better than a lot of his friends? _

When the cosmonaut group had carried out an informal and anonymous survey to see

whom among the cosmonaut group they would like to see fly first, all but three of the twenty

named Gagarin. Apart from his high qualifications, he also satisfied the Communist Party's

unwritten criterion that the first Soviet person in space be from a completely Russian and working-class background.

German Titov, twenty-five years old at the time, had grown up in the Kosikhinskiy District

in t_ltay Territory before entering the Kacha Higher Air Force School in 1953. Following his graduation in t957, he served as an active duty pilot in the Leningrad District. He struck many as

being the most worldly and well read of the six, and he was noted for rebelling against what

he called "silly questions" during the selection processes in 1959Y The youngest of the six. he

had performed excellently and without problems throughout the past year in training and was

a close competitor of Gagarin. The last of the three, the twenty-six-year-old Grigoriy Nelyubov,

was perhaps the most talented and qualified of the group of six. Raised in Crimea, he had graduated from the Yeisk Higher P,ir Force School in 1957 and served as a MiG-19 pilot with the

Black Sea Fleet. Soon after selection as a cosmonaut, he had consistently demonstrated his

expertise as one of the top members of the group of twenty. He also had influential supporters

at OKB-I: Department Chief Raushenbakh was said to have supported Nelyubov's candidacy

to be the first Soviet person in space. On the negative side, Netyubov was also extremely outspoken and individualistic. For P,ir Force overseer Kamanin, a diehard old-school Stalinist,

Nelyubov's otherwise remarkable record in training was neutralized by his direct and critical

nature. Gagarin, who was "quiet in character," was a far more suitable candidate from an ideological perspective? _

In terms of preparing for the first Vostok mission, the training of cosmonauts was only the

tip of the iceberg of a mammoth undertaking. Tracking requirements for a piloted mission were

a lot more stringent than for the modest Sputniks in the years before, and the military NII-4

institute was once again tasked with coordinating the establishment of a network to support

the new project. The original seven communications points spread out across the Soviet Union

(at Tyura-Tam, Makat, Sary-Shagan, Yeniseysk. Iskhup, Yelizovo, and Klyuchi) to support the

early satellite program were augmented by six new stations (at Leningrad, Simferopol, Tbilis,

56 Ibid..p. 629.

57 RexHall,"SovietAir ForceCosmonauts,"in Cassutt,ed, Who'sWho in Space,p. 266.

58 Ibid.,p, 25I: Golovanov,Korolev,p. 630.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

Kolpashevo, Ulan-Ude, and Moscow)/_ Although the Soviet Union stretched close to two and

a half times more in width than the contiguous United States, there were clear limitations to

monitoring space missions from a single landmass, especially given the heightened requirements of a piloted mission. Perhaps reluctant to negotiate treaties as NASA did to station tracking points on foreign soil, the Soviets instead resorted to fully equipped self-contained naval

vessels stationed all over the world. The first generation of Soviet overseas tracking ships--

Sibir, Suchan, Sakhalin, and Chukotka--were stationed originally to monitor ICBM nose cone

impacts and later for mission-critical events of the KorabI-Sputniks. These ships were commissioned as part of the officially named Pacific Ocean Hydrographic Expedition No. 4. These were

augmented in August 1960 by a newer second generation stationed in the Atlantic that were

built specifically for the Vostok, lunar, and interplanetary programs: Dolinsk, Ilichevsk, and

Krasnodar. The duration of communications contact between each surface point and the orbiting spacecraft was limited to five to ten minutes, with an altitude envelope reaching out to

1,500 to 2,000 kilometers. _°

For the early piloted space missions, NASA opted to use a control center at the launch site

at Cape Canaveral. While the Soviets maintained such a control point at Tyura-Tam, the nerve

center for all the early piloted Soviet spaceflights was in the Bolshevo suburb of Moscow at the

premises of the military NIl-4. It was here that the so-called Command-Measurement Complex

Center was located, under direct control of the Strategic Missile Forces. The center was staffed

primarily with officers from NIl-4 and headed from July 1959 by Colonel Andrey G. Karas, a veteran of the early Kapustin Yar launches. Ballistics and computational support during missions

were provided by three different computation centers, each with its own operations group--one

at NIl-4 and two in the Academy of Sciences. Although Karas was nominally the head of the

entire Command-Measurement Complex, the day-to-day technical operations were handled by

Colonel Amos A. Bolshoy, a military scientist who would play a prominent role in controlling all

early Soviet piloted missions by providing the State Commission with recommendations on mission-critical events. _ The fact that this position, roughly analogous to the Western concept of a

flight director, was occupied by a colonel in the Strategic Missile Forces was merely another

symptom of the outgrowth of the Soviet space program from the ballistic missile effort. This was

one of the reasons that until the 1970s, the Soviets steadfastly refused to identify the location

of its primary control center for the early piloted space program. Apart from command and control, the Soviet Air Force accepted the burden of organizing recovery forces for landing cosmonauts. The huge armada consisted of twenty-five aircraft (twenty 11-4s, three An-12s, and two

Tu-95s) as well as ten helicopters. In addition, seven separate parachute teams were established

to quickly reach a returned cosmonaut to provide firsthand medical support. _

50. Yu. A. Mozzhorin. et al, eds., Naehalo kosmicheskoy ery: vospominaniya veteranov raketno-kosmicheskoy tekhniki i kosmonavtiki vypusk utoroy (Moscow: RNITsKD. 1994). p. 272. Eachof these centers was called

a Scientific Measurement Point (NIP). and each had a separatenumber: NIP-I (Tyura Tam). NIP 2 (Makat). NIF4

(Yeniseysk).NIP 5 (abandoned in 1958), NIP-6 (Yelizovo). NIP 7 (Tyura-Tam), NIP-8 (not built), NIP-9 (Leningrad),

NiP-I0 (Simferopol), NIP-12 (Kolpashevo). NIP-13 (Ulan-Ude). and NIP-14 (Moscow).

60. Ibid, pp. 265,272-73. Seealso B. A. Pokrovskiy,Kosmos nachinayetsya na zernlye (Moscow: Patriot,

1996). pp. 34 I, 345-46. A fourth ship to the "second generation," 7_ksay,was added in September 1962. Seealso

Lardier,LT_stronautiqueSovi#tique, pp. 122 23.

61. Bolshoy was replaced by P A. Agadzhanov in the mid-1960s. See Pokrovskiy,Kosmos naehinayetsya

na zemlye,pp. 239,365: "On the Scientific-TechnicalActivities of Yu. A. Mozzhorin (On the 70th Yearof HisBirth)"

(English title),/z istorii aviatsii i kosmonautiki 60 (1990): 4-II.

62. Lardier, L_stronautique Soui#Iigue, p. 123; Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos,p 39 There were also apparent

ly three II- 18teams headedby V. M Pekin,M. A. Chernovskiy, and G. RPerminov. Among the physicians who were

part of the parachuteteams was B. B. Y%orov. later to be the first physician in space. The commander of the search

and rescue servicewas Air ForceLt. General A. h Kutasin.

263
264

Through January and February 1961, there were intensive preparations for the launches of

the remaining two Vostok precursor missions. Each of these spacecraft would be identical to

the actual piloted variant, save for the fact that each would carry a single dog into orbit, g lifesize mannequin would be strapped into the main ejection seat, while the dog would be put in

a container separate from the ejection mechanism. Unlike the previous dog flights, the missions

were to last a single orbit--that is. exactly the same as planned for the first human flight. The

preparations leading up to a piloted launch were not smooth by any means. _qt a meeting of

the State Commission presided by Rudnev on February 22, schedules were laid down for the

two preliminary missions. The first Vostok 3P, with a mannequin would be launched in the first

days of March prior to completion of ground testing and the elimination of all defects in the

mode[; the second Vostok 3/q would reach orbit only after full-scale ground testing was completed. The problems with the first spacecraft were limited to anomalies in the life support and

ejection systems, certainly important elements for a biological satellite. _ gt a meeting on

February 27, Chief Designers Semyon A. /qlekseyev (Plant No. 918) and Grigoriy I. Voronin

(OKB-124), responsible for the ejection mechanism and life support systems, respectively,

approved a detailed plan for testing these systems for the second Vostok 3tq spacecraft. In particular, Voronin had introduced a new air conditioning system, which had to undergo a complete thirteen-day test to simulate the contingency of having a cosmonaut in orbit for that

length of time in case of retrorocket failure.

On March 2, OKB-I Group Chief Feoktistov and his assistant Oleg G. Makarov, both destined to be cosmonauts themselves in later years, prepared a detailed set of instructions for the

pilot of the first mission, which included courses of actions for various stages of the mission

as well as a number of different emergency situations. The two engineers took provisions to

include instructions for manually altering the attitude of the spacecraft in orbit and conducting

a completely manual retrofire, both of which were not planned for execution during a nominal

mission. The finished document was passed on to Korolev, Keldysh, Bushuyev, and

Voskresenskiy, who all significantly shortened the list, arguing that during the first mission, the

pilot should not actively control any instrument on the spaceship. A vigorous fight was put up

by Kamanin, test pilot Gallay, and physician Yazdovskiy, who argued that the cosmonauts were

extremely well trained and could be expected to perform any assigned tasks without problem.

In the end, after a long discussion with Academician Keldysh on the merits of human control

of a space vehicle, Korolev and the others backed down, and the original lengthy set of instructions was formally approved, glthough the first cosmonaut would have the choice of manually controlling certain systems, all members of the State Commission were in agreement that the

activities of the pilot should be as conservative as possible. The only concession to scientific

research was the inclusion of dry seeds, drosophila, and lysogenic bacteria as part of the payload for biomedical studies."

In early March 1961, several leading designers and high-ranking Strategic Missile Forces

officials left Moscow for the city of Leninsk near Tyura-Tam to direct the preparations for the

two upcoming automated missions? ' P, total of thirty to forty days would be spent during this

period at the launch site to test every system of the third spacecraft, the one that would carry

a human, and its launch vehicle. By this point, the first Vostok 3A was scheduled for March 9,

and the second for late March at the earliest. The pressure was building on the Soviets as Project

Mercury seemed to be close to a piloted launch, The option to launch the first Vostok 3A with63 Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos,p. 2 I.

64 Ibid. p. 23: Wukelic. Hand6ook of Sauiet Space-ScienceResearch,p. 54

65. K Isaakov."Breakthrough into the Unknown: Today is Cosmonautics Day_'(English title), Bakinskiy

rabocMy, April 12, 1988, p. 3. Thetown o[ Zarya next to the Tyura-Tamlaunch site was renamed Leninskon january

28. 1958. SeeIvan Borisenko and Alexander Romanov, '_v'here7tll Roads Lead to Space Begin (Moscow: Progress

Publishers. 1982), p 22.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

out the benefit of full-scale ground testing was clear evidence that OKB-I was not only trying

to keep up with its own timetable, but aiming to outrun its chief rival thousands of kilometers

away. Back in the United States, in mid-February, NASA's Space Task Group had recommended moving ahead with a suborbital piloted mission on the next Mercury-Redstone attempt. In

a last-minute move that seems pivotal in retrospect, Wernher von Braun, on the advice of his

booster specialists, argued that an additional automated Redstone flight was necessary before

certification for a human launch. Von Braun's recommendation was accepted, thus pushing the

first launch of an astronaut from April 25 to early May?_

For Korolev, whose decades-old competition with yon Braun was only exceeded by his

intense urge to be first, this window proved propitious. Korolev proposed to First Secretary

Khrushchev that the first piloted mission could be launched in late April to coincide with the

celebrations for May Day. The Soviet leader was, however, categorically against timing such a

major space mission with a national holiday, no doubt concerned about the possibility of a catastrophic failure. Instead, Khrushchev asked Korolev to move the launch either forward or backward. Thus, the option was clear: the chief designer informally set the first piloted Vostok

launch for mid-April. In a curious twist, Khrushchev himself announced on March 14 during

an interview widely reported in the West: "The time is not far off when the first (Soviet) spaceship with a man on board will soar into space.''_

The first human-rated Vostok 3/3 spacecraft lifted off successfully at 0929 hours Moscow

Time on March 9, 1961,and entered a 1835- by 2488-kilometer orbit inclined at 64.93 degrees

to the equator. The spacecraft was called the Fourth KorabI-Sputnik in the Soviet press. A small

pressurized sphere in the spacecraft carried the dog Chernushka (" Blackie") together with forty

white and forty black mice, several guinea pigs, reptiles, plant seeds, human blood samples,

human cancer cells, micro-organisms, bacteria, and fermentation samples. Unlike the previous

dog flights, the main ejection seat was taken up by a life-sized mannequin (Ivan Ivanovich)

fully dressed in a functional SK-I Sokol spacesuit. Additional mice, guinea pigs, microbes, and

other biological specimens were placed in the mannequin's chest, stomach, thighs, and other

parts of the "body, .6, This virtual menagerie of animals and plants was the subject of intensive

biomedical experimentation during the single orbit flight. An unnamed designer of the Vostok

later revealed an interesting aside to the mission:

IT]he main purpose was to ensure reception o[ voice transmissions from [the ship]. We

rejected a numerical countdown, [earing Western radio stations would monitor the

human voice and raise a clamor throughout the world alleging that Russia has secretly

put a man into orbit. ZI song also aroused objections because it would be said in the

West that "the Russian" cosmonaut had lost his head and started singing! It was then

decided to tape a popular Piatnitsky Russian choir, and when the dummy, clothed [or

purposes of decency in a white smock, suddenly sang like a choir, it was very [unny. 6_

In rehearsal for the exact sequence of events on an actual piloted flight, the retrorocket

TDU-I engine fired on time for just under forty-two and a half seconds. Almost ten seconds

later, the instrument section separated from the descent apparatus, the latter making a ballistic

reentry into the atmosphere. The mannequin was safely ejected out of the descent apparatus

66. DavidBaker,TheHistoryo/MannedSpaceflight(New York:CrownPublishers,1985),p. 65.

67. The New York Times, March 15, 1961, p 8: Sergey Khrushchev,Nikita Khrushchev:krizisy i rakety

vzgtyad iznutri: torn2 (Moscow: Novosti. 1994),p. 97

68 Mozzhorin,et at, eds.,Dorogiv kosmos:II pp. 141-42.

69. R.F.GibbonsandP.S.Clark,"The Evolutionof theVostokandVoskhodProgrammes,"Journalof the

British InterplanetarySociety38 (I 985): 3-10.

265
266

after reentry, while the main capsule with the dog landed separately by parachute. The mission

had lasted only one hour, forty-six minutes. The two objects from the spacecraft settled down

about 260 kilometers northeast of Kuybyshev in the middle of a large open field covered by

snow. There was apparently some delay in having an OKB-I representative get to the main capsule to neutralize the self-destruct system. The rescue team led by Lt. General Kamanin elected to take the dog out of the capsule before the arrival of the OKB-I expert to prevent the dog

from freezing to death/°

The unequivocal success of Korabl-Sputnik 4 was a clear boost to the fortunes of the

Vostok program, which had lacked a completely trouble-free mission since August 1960. The

euphoria over the flight was, however, marred to some extent by a tragedy that struck the cosmonaut team in the most unexpected of ways. On March 23, just two days before the launch

of the last Vostok 3P, precursor, cosmonaut-trainee Bondarenko was on the tenth day of a fifteen-day exercise in an isolation chamber at the premises of the Institute of Aviation and Space

Medicine in Moscow. The chamber contained 50 percent oxygen at a reduced pressure to simulate the atmosphere of a spaceship, and it was completely soundproof to test the effects of

isolation. Upon completion of some medical tests at the conclusion of his isolation period,

Bondarenko removed the sensors attached to his body and with a cotton-wool pad soaked in

alcohol cleaned the places where they had been attached. Without looking, he threw the cotton pad away, and the latter landed on the ring of a live electric hotplate. It immediately caught

on fire, and the flame blazed up in the oxygen-rich atmosphere. At first, instead of ringing the

alarm, Bondarenko tried to put the fire out himself, but his woolen training suit caught fire. The

doctor on duty, Mikhail A. Novikov, tried to open the door as soon as he became aware of the

fire, but this operation took several minutes, by which time Bondarenko was completely burnt.

As he was dragged out of the chamber, he reportedly kept repeating, "It was my fault, no one

else is to blame. ''7'

The chief physician at the nearby hospital where Bondarenko was taken recalled later that

the cosmonaut's "body was totally denuded of skin, the head of hair; there were no eyes in the

face--everything had been burnt away. It was a total burn of the severest degree." _ Bondarenko

finally died at 1500 hours Moscow Time on March 23, eight hours following the accident, of

shock resulting from burns. It was the very first death of a space trainee in the history of the

space program. Just twenty-four years of age and the youngest trainee on the team, he was

buried in his birthplace of Kharkov, where his parents lived. His wife Anya and their son Sasha

remained behind at Zelenyy, supported by a special pension as a result of a direct order from

Minister of Defense Marshal Rodion Ya. Malinovskiy/3 News of the accident was completely suppressed in the interest of morale, especially considering that the first piloted Vostok mission was

then scheduled in less than three weeks. It is not clear whether any of the other cosmonauttrainees were told about the tragedy at the time, or several weeks later. As it happened, the accident or even the existence of Bondarenko was not revealed until 1986 as part of a series of

articles in the newspaper Izuestiya celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first piloted

Vostok mission.

Preparations for the last precursor mission continued with the Bondarenko tragedy firmly

in mind. The six core cosmonauts flew to Tyura-Tam on Ma,ch 17 to witness the prelaunch

operations of the next Korabl-Sputnik, where they engaged in some last-minute training

70. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos,pp 25-26.

71 Ibid., pp. 33-34: YaroslavGolovanov, "Cosmonaut No. I: Slander" (English title), Izuestiya. April 3,

1986. p. 6: Golovanov. Koroleu,p. 633.

72 Vladimir Golyakovsky, RussianDoctor (New York:St. Martin'slMarek, 1984), p. 130

/3. Golovanov, "Cosmonaut No. I: Slander." The order was signed on May 15, 1961,and included the following: "Furnish the family of First Lt. Bondarenko with everything they need, asbefits the family of a cosmonaut"

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

exercises. The trainees completed a varieW of tests, including a question-and-answer problem

session with Korolev. There was a minor delay of the launch because of a problem with the onboard communications apparatus, but this proved to be unimportant. Launch operations were

also halted briefly because of a failure in a sensor on the third stage of the booster, and on orders

from Chief Designer Kosberg, workers rapidly replaced the unit. Prior to launch, controllers conducted communications tests between the blockhouse near the pad and the spacecraft to simulate conditions on a crewed mission. Kamanin, Korolev, and cosmonaut trainee Popovich took

turns testing the system. Popovich had been assigned to serve as the prime communicator during the launch, analogous to the "capcom" role in the U.S. space program. '4

The spacecraft, named the Fifth KorabI-Sputnik in the Soviet press, was successfully

launched at 0854 hours Moscow Time on March 25, just two days after Bondarenko's death.

The 4,695-kilogram vehicle carried another coterie of animals and biological samples, including

the dog Zvezdochka ("Starlet") on a single-orbit mission. Orbital parameters were 178.1 by

247 kilometers at a 64.9-degree inclination, close to what was slated for the piloted flight. The

mission was uneventful, and all reentry procedures were conducted without problems. As with

several of the previous missions, the recovery of the animals and the mannequin was delayed

by bad weather. The descent apparatus and the ejection seat landed during a heaw snowstorm,

causing difficulties in locating the exact touchdown point. By the time that a group of engineers from Plant No. 918 reached the site, it had been twenty-four hours since the landing.

After several hours traveling on horse-drawn sleighs over the one-and-a-half-meter-deep snow,

the rescuers finally reached the descent apparatus with the dog, and they eventually found the

mannequin in a nearby forest. The neighboring villagers were apparently very suspicious of the

recovery teams, suspecting that they might do some harm to the "man" that had landed by

parachute. The villagers finally retreated when they were shown conclusive proof that the

"man" was indeed just a mannequin/_ Academy of Sciences Vice-President Aleksandr V.

Topchiyev summarized the results of the five successful KorabI-Sputniks in a press conference

in Moscow on March 28. In attendance were not only Soviet and foreign journalists, but also

Gagarin, Titov, and other cosmonauts in the front row of the audience. No one, of course, had

any knowledge that one of them was slated to fly in a spacecraft within days.7_

The safe landing of KorabI-Sputnik 5 effectively cleared the way for the launch of the first

piloted Vostok spacecraft. For Korolev and Tikhonravov, this would be the apex of their long

careers in rocketry, which began thirty years before with the amateur GIRD team in a basement

in Moscow. In a fitting move, Korolev invited some of the original GIRD veterans to his offices

at Kaliningrad in March 1961,a month prior to the first scheduled piloted launch. It was a surprise reunion for the guests, punctuated by much reminiscing, although they had little idea of

Korolev's real work because of its classified nature. Near the end of the conversation, Korolev,

speaking of the fruitful work at GIRD, added that "now we have come very far[" He invited the

guests to a nearby assembly shop. Nikotay I. Yefremov, one of the GIRD veterans, later

described the trip:

When we walked into the spacious, well-lit shop. we immediately saw our long time

dream. Sergey Pavlovich [Korolev] introduced it, literally introduced it as if it were a living thing, the beautiful rocket. Off to the side, on a special pedestal, we saw the cockpit of the spacecraft prepared for manned flight. It was the "Vostok" spaeecrafiY

74. Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos,pp.29-33, 34-35.

75 "VostokProgram,1961-1963,"RussianSpaceHistory(New York:Sotheby's,1993),descriptionfor lot I I.

76. Golovanov,Korolev,p. 625.

77. Ishlinskiy,ed...,qkadermkS.P Korolev.pp. 164-65.

267
268

Even in the hectic days leading to the first Vostok flight, a link was underlined between the

pioneering work in the 1930s and the Soviet space program of the 1960s. After thirty years of

postulating and hypothesizing, the reality of human spaceflight was only a few days away.

Gagarin in Orbit

After the Korabl-Sputnik 5 mission, Korolev returned to Moscow on the evening of March

28. The following afternoon at a meeting of the State Commission presided over by Chairman

Rudnev, Korolev presented the results of the complete Vostok program and declared readiness

to launch a human into orbit on the next Vostok 3g spacecraft. '_ Later in the evening, the leading members of the State Commission met once again to draw up a formal document requesting permission from the Communist Party to launch a human into space. For the first time. a

high-ranking official from the Committee for State Security (KGB), its First Deputy Chairman,

Petr I. Ivashutin, was present. .'° The memorandum, addressed to the Central Committee and

classified "Absolutely Secret," began:

In accordance with the decree of the Central Committee of the KPSS and the USSR

Council of Ministers of I I October 1960 on the preparation and launch of a space ship

with a human, all the necessary work on ensuring human/light into cosmic space has

been finished at the present time .... Two "Vostok-3Z_" satellite-ships have been prepared for this purpose. The first ship is at the [launch] range, and the second is being

prepared for launch. Six cosmonauts are prepared for the flight. The satellite-ship with

a human on board will be launched for one orbit around the Earth and will land on the

territory of the Soviet Union on a line running through Rostov-Kuybyshev-Perm. _''

A section of the document detailed contingency procedures in the case of unforeseen events:

For the orbit chosen/or the satellite-ship, in the event that the ship's system for landing on

the Earth fails, the ship can descend by natural breaking in the atmosphere over the course

of 2-7 days, with a touchdown between latitudes of 63 _ north and south. In the event o/

a forced landing in foreign territory or the rescue of the cosmonaut by a foreign ship, the

cosmonaut has appropriate instructions. In addition to a ten day supply of food and water,

the cosmonaut's cabin is outfitted with a portable emergency supply of food and water that

will last for 3 days, and also means o/radio-communications and the "Peleng" transmitter whose signals can be used to determine the landing site of the cosmonaut. The satelliteship is not equipped with a system for emergency destruction o/the Descent Apparatus. _'

The issue of installing a self-destruct system on the ship was discussed at length during

the meeting. All those present, with the sole exception of KGB representative Ivashutin, strongly opposed including such a system on a piloted vehicle. Ivashutin only backed down when all

18 Thedocument presentedby Korolev isthe previouslyreferenced"On the Stateof the ExperimentalWork"

g second document, titled "The Orientation Systemof the Vostok' SatelliteShip," was also signed by Korolev on the

same day This document has also been reproduced in Raushenbakh,ed, Materialy po i.storiikosmicheskogo,pp

133-35

79. Accordingto Kamanin,5krytiy kosmos,pp 38 39, those presentat this meeting were:S P Korolev(Chief

Designerof OKB-I ). G. I. Voronin (Chief Designerof OKB 124), S. M Alekseyev(Chief Designerof Plant No. 918), [

I Gusev(Director of NII-695). M. V. Keldysh (Vice-Presidentof the USSRAcademyof Sciences).P I Ivashutin (First

Deputy Chairman of the KGB), S, I Rudenko (First Deputy Commander-in-Chief o[ the Soviet Air Force),and N P

Kamanin (Deputy Chief of the Air ForceGeneralStaff for Combat Preparations).

80 This document hasbeen reproducedin full in Belyanov,et el. "Yuriy Gagarin'sStarVoyage." pp 103 04

81. Ibid, p 104,

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

the other members refused to go along. _"The State Commission also took pains to carefully detail

the manner of publicity given to the mission by the Soviet media. There was no attempt by the

members to obfuscate or lie about a potential failure, despite the almost paranoid secrecy of the

space program. Every attempt was made to give precedence to the safety of the cosmonaut over

other political considerations, such as having to admit failure:

We consider it advisable to publish the first TZtSS report immediately after the satelliteship enters orbit for the following reasons:

(a) if a rescue becomes necessary, it will facilitate rapid organization of a rescue:

(b) it precludes any foreign government declaring that the cosmonaut is a spy with

military goals.

If the satellite-ship does not enter orbit because of insufficient speed, it can land in the

ocean. In that case. we also consider it advisable to publish the TZtSS report, so as to

facilitate rescue of the cosmonaut. _

There had also been discussion for some time on what to actually call the spaceship in the

open press. One side proposed retaining the KorabI-Sputnik name for the mission, merely listing it as the next in the series--that is, the Sixth KorabI-Sputnik. It was Tikhonravov who passionately argued that such a momentous mission not be referred to by such a generic

designation. Instead, he proposed disclosing the top-secret "Vostok" name in the TASS report. __

Korolev agreed, and the State Commission ratified this position. The memorandum from the

State Commission for Launch ended with the following: "We request permission to launch the

first Soviet satellite-ship with a human on board and approval for the preparation of planning the

TASS communiquds. ''_' The flight was set between and April I0 and 20. 1961. The document

was signed by Military-Industrial Commission Chairman Ustinov, State Commission Chairman

Rudnev, defense industry "ministers" Kalmykov. Dementyev. and Butoma, Academician

Keldysh, Strategic Missile Forces Commander Moskalenko. Air Force Commander Vershinin. Air

Force representative Kamanin. KGB representative Ivashutin, and Chief Designer Korolev, _

82. Kamanin, Skryliy kosmos, p 39

83. Belyanov.et ul, "Yuriy Gagarin's Star Voyage." pp 104-05.

84. Mikhail Rebrov, "Was This Just a Tragicomedy?" (English title). Krasnaya zuezda, June 1995.

85. Belyanov, et ul, "Yuriy Gagarin's Star Voyage," p. 105.

86. Note that K. N. Rudnev was also the chair ol the State Committee for DefenseTechnology, the "min

istry" overseeingthe ballistic missile and space programs. V. D Kalmykov was the chair of the State Committee [or

Radio-Electronics,E V. Dementyevwas the chair of the State Committee for Aviation Technology,and B. Ye. Butoma

was the chair of the StateCommittee lot Ship-Building It is apparent from the list that some important changeshad

been made since the original decree on Vostok in October t960. Marshal Moskalenko had taken the place of the

deceasedMarshal Nedelin as Commander-in-Chief of the StrategicMissile Forces,thus maintaining a high-level repre

sentation from the old artillery lobby. TheAir Forcehad gained in strength with two memberson the commission Air

ForceDeputy Commander in-Chief Marshal Rudenko was replaced in favor of Commander in-Chief Marshal Vershinin

and [t. General Kamanin Rudenko was. however, still closely involved in preparations [or the flight, but the ,mportance of the mission perhapsnecessitatedthe inclusion of Vershinin. Kamanin's "promotion" is noteworthy in tetra

spect for it hints at his rapidly rising influence. Forobvious reasonsof security. KGBrepresentativeIvashutin had been

added to the commission, and this underscoresthe importance with which the Communist Partyviewed the project

The notable omissions from the core group from October 1960 were Soviet Minister of DefenseMalinovskiy, former

Sputnik StateCommission Chairman Ryabikov,and the rest of the Council of Chief Designers.Malinovskiy probably

relinquished his role to Moskalenko and Vershinin. The omission of Ryabikov is somewhat puzzling becausehe had

been involved in the missile and space programs since 1946, rising to the very powerful position of chair of the socalledSpeciatCommittee by I955, thus overseeingevenhis former boss Ustinov. With alliancesin the defenseindustry continually changing, it seems that Ryabikov'sroad to power had reacheda plateau by 1960 At the time of the

first Vostok mission, he was the chair of the Council of National Economy of the RussianSoviet FederatedSocialist

Republic. certainly a "demotion" from his previous roles in the defense industry.

269
270

The memorandum was formally addressed to the Central Committee of the Communist

Party, which on paper was composed of a very large group of individuals. In practice, however, especially in the case of such a high-priority project, only two individuals were involved in

the final go-ahead: Nikita S. Khrushchev and Frol R. Kozlov. The latter had inherited the top

Communist Party position for the space, missile, and defense sectors in the Secretariat in July

1960Y From then on, as the member of the Party "cabinet" responsible for important policy

decisions on the space program, Kozlov only had one person who could overrule his word. l_s

the new Secretary of the Central Committee for defense and space, he helped define and reinforce a position that had been handled unevenly at best by his predecessor Leonid Brezhnev,

who after Kozlov's promotion found himself in a largely ceremonial post.

On April 3, three days following receipt of the State Commission memorandum, the following "Strictly Secret" decree titled "On the Launch of the Space Satellite-Ship" was issued

by the Presidium (later the Politburo) of the Central Committee:

I. The proposal of Ustinov, Rudnev, Kalmykov, Dementyev. Butoma. Moskalenko.

Vershinin. Keldysh. Ivashutin, and Korolev on the launch of a satellite-ship "Vostok-3, z]"

with a cosmonaut aboard is approved.

2. The plans for T,zlss to announce the launch of the space ship with a cosmonaut

aboard an Earth satellite is approved, and grants the Commission [or Launch the right.

if necessary, to introduce updates on the results of the launch and the Commission of

the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers [or Military-Industrial Issues. the right to

publicize it. _8

The actual T/qSS communiques were authored by the military NIl-4 under the supervision

of institute Deputy Director Colonel Yuriy P,. Mozzhorin. The preparation of the news report

was a strangely surreal process, as remembered by Mozzhorin years later:

In order not to lose time for writing and transmitting the necessary texts of the communiques to radio and television, these communiques were prepared at our institute, with

the agreement of S. R Korolev and the leadership, and sent in advance to radio, television. and T,ztSS in sealed envelopes. In the case that [the cosmonaut] successfully entered

orbit, they would receive a signal authorizing them to open them, and write down the

orbital parameters [which would be communicated] by telephone, and the information

would then be publicized internationally. There were also two more packets o[ material

with the above [envelope] ... with.., communiques for unfortunate [outcomes]. [The

first one was] brief--in the event of death of the cosmonaut during insertion into orbit or

at liftoff. The second one was in case of not having reached orbit, but having landed in

some foreign territory or in the equatorial regions of the world's oceans. This contained

an appeal to all governments, in particular the government on whose territory the cosmonaut had landed, requesting them to render assistance for [his] search and returnY

87 Michael Tatu. Power in the Kremlin From Khrushchev's Decline to Collective Leadership (London:

Collins, 1969). pp 88-89. Note that Koztov's appointment into the Secretariat was announced on May 5. 1960.

although his predecessorBrezhnev was not formally releasedfrom his prior duties until July 1960.

88 Belyanov, et aL, "Yuriy Gagarin's Star Voyage." p. 105. Note the curious omission of Kamanin's name

from the Communist Party decree, although he was a signatory to the original request. The Commission of the

Presidiumof the USSRCouncil of Ministers for Military-lndustrial Issueswas more commonly known as the MilitaryIndustrial Commission (VPK),

89. Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, p. 276.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

The official Communist Party approval for the launch may have been the last de facto step

in getting a human into space, but technical problems with the Vostok spaceship continued to

thwart the possibility of a launch on time. On March 24, OKB-124, responsible for the life support system, reported at a meeting of the State Commission that there were serious limitations

in the air drying units of the Vostok 3/_ spaceship. Long-duration tests on location at the

Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine had proved that impregnated lignin in the system

began to leak after absorbing a certain amount of moisture, resulting in large amounts of brine

forming inside the spacecraft. At a second meeting on March 28, OKB-124 Chief Designer

Voronin vehemently defended his system, claiming that the lithium chloride would be harmless to the cosmonaut. P, competitive proposal by institute doctor Abram M. Genin to use a

newer drying system on the vehicle was the subject of much debate. 9°

The problem with the life support system remained unresolved when Korolev flew into

Tyura-Tam from Moscow late on April 3. The six core cosmonauts arrived on the afternoon of

April 5 as part of a group of three chartered II-14 airplanes, followed by State Commission

Chairmen Rudnev the following day. Leaving behind their wives back in Moscow, the cosmonauts were instructed to tell their spouses that the launch was set for April 14, three days later

than actually intended--to reduce worry. The first meeting of the full State Commission at

Tyura-Tam took place immediately after Rudnev's arrival, at I 130 hours Moscow Time, at which

point the primary issue of discussion was the life support system and the results of additional

testing of the spacesuit and ejection system. Chief Designer Voronin reported, somewhat unconvincingly, that the suspect drying unit was completely ready for a contingency ten-day mission.

Because an actual nominal flight was to last only an hour and a half, concerns were somewhat

allayed: there would simply not be enough time for brine to form in the spacecraft?' The commission also approved cosmonaut trainer Mark L. Gallay's proposal to have the cosmonaut candidates conduct training sessions in the actual flight-ready spacecraft rather than a backup one.

These tests were carried out on/_pril 7 without incident by Gagarin and Titov, by then the primary contenders for the flight. Nelyubov, the third candidate, was considered out of the running.

The State Commission conclusively addressed the question of who would fly the first mission at a meeting on April 8. Lt. General Kamanin, as overseer of the cosmonaut team, clearly

had a major role in the selection. Both Gagarin and Titov had performed without fault during

training, with Gagarin edging out Titov in the January 1961 examinations. /although Gagarin

was a marginal favorite, Kamanin apparently began to lean toward Titov in the final days leading up to the launch. On April 5, he wrote in his personal journal:

Both are excellent candidates, but in the last few days I hear more and more people

speak out in favor of Titov and my personal confidence in him is growing too .... The

only thing that keeps me from picking [Titov] is the need to have the stronger person for

a [second] one clay flight. _2

While Kamanin himself may have been a key player in the selection, there has been much

speculation in the West that the final choice was in fact made by "higher ups," as one would

expect in a highly centralized society such as the Soviet Union. Days before the scheduled

launch, photographs and biographies of Gagarin and Titov were evidently sent to the Defense

90. Kamanin, 5krytiy kosrnos, pp. 34 38: Yu. ,q Mozzhorin et ul., eds., Dorogi v kosmos:I (Moscow: MAI,

1992). pp. 61-62.

91. Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 637: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos, pp. 43-45; Neville Kidger, "Yuri Gagarin's

Immortal Day," Spaceflight 33 (April 1991): 124-29.

92. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos, pp. 44-45: Bart Hendrickx. "The Kamanin Diaries 1960-1963," Journal of

the British Interplanetary Society 50 (January 1997): 33-40

271
272

Department of the Central Committee, the curator of the space program. Each candidate had

two photos, one in civilian clothing and one in military attire. Here a number of Party apparatchiks mulled over their files and reported to Ivan D. Serbin, the feared head of the Defense

Department. Serbin then showed the photographs to Kozlov, who in turn showed them to

Khrushchev. Upon seeing the photos, the Soviet leader was reported to have said, "Both pairs

are excellent[ Let them decide for themselves! ..... A noted Russian aerospace historian, Yaroslav

K. Golovanov, suggests that the only reason such a convoluted procedure was carried out was

simply to allow the Party apparatchiks to be able to say that the decision had been made at the

' highest level."

In the end, at the State Commission meeting on April 8, Kamanin stood up and formally

nominated Gagarin as the primary pilot and Titov as his backup. Without much discussion, the

commission approved the proposal and moved on to other last-minute logistical issues. It was

assumed that in the event Gagarin developed health problems prior to liftoff, Titov would take

his place, with Nelyubov acting as his backup. The launch date was limited at the meeting to

April II or 12. Orbital parameters would be 180 by 230 kilometers, and the mission would last

a single orbit. There was some discussion on the idea of registering the mission as an absolute

world record. In the interest of maintaining the ever-pervasive secrecy, some members of the

commission, in particular Moskalenko and Keldysh. opposed having sports commissioners

involved. In the end, the commission decided not to disclose the launch site or the type of

launch vehicle, but to file documents with international organizations to establish a world

record. Although the mission would be completely automated, commission members proposed

giving the codes to unlock the manual orientation system for reentry in an envelope to the cosmonaut. In case of a failure of the automatic system, the cosmonaut would open the sealed

envelope and activate the manual system.'" The meeting ended with a decision to hold a last

session, more as a formality, two days later.

The following day, Kamanin invited Gagarin and Titov privately to his office and

announced to them that Gagarin was going to fly and that Titov would serve as his backup.

When asked years later how he felt, Titov replied, "Why even ask! Painful or not--it was at

least unpleasant.'" The two men relaxed the rest of the day as prelaunch procedures for the

8K72K booster continued at the Assembly-Testing Building, Remarkably, Korotev and his principal deputies Mishin and Chertok were at the same time involved in the first critical launch of

the new R-9 ICBM from nearby site 51. It was an extremely high-priority program for not only

OKB-I itself but also the Soviet Union as a whole, and one wonders how hectic operations at

Tyura-Tam must have been during this second week of April 196 I. '_ The first R-9 launch took

place on April 9. just three days prior to Gagarin's slated launch from site I.

The following day at I I00 hours, a large meeting of the State Commission took place at a

site overlooking the banks of the majestic Syrdarya River. This session was simply a formality.

primarily for the Soviet press, but it was open to many curious workers who had not yet had a

glimpse of the cosmonauts. In attendance were seventy people, including chief designers (such

as Korolev, Glushko, Pilyugin, Barmin, Ryazanskiy, Kuznetsov, Isayev, Kosberg, Alekseyev,

Voronin, Bykov, and Bogomolov), ministers, Air Force officers, Strategic Missile Forces officers,

and representatives from the Communist Party and the Academy of Sciences, as well as the six

core cosmonauts. Chief Designer Korolev, State Commission Chairman Rudnev, Strategic

93, Golovanov. Koroleu pp. 634 35

94. Ibid. p 638: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosrnos, pp. 46 47: Lardier,L_stronautique Souietique, p. 129.

95. Golovanov, Koroleu. p 638

96. Vassily Mishin, "He Would Make You Work to the Best of Your Ability," ZierospaceJournal no. 6

(November December 1996): 2'6-78: Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp, 432-33.

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
GAGARIN

Missile Forces Commander Moskalenko, and Cosmonaut Training Center Director Karpov all

made short but dramatic presentations on the impending mission, followed by thank-you

speeches by Gagarin, Titov, and Nelyubov. At the end, Kamanin singled out Gagarin to become

the first human to go into space. The young cosmonaut gave an acceptance speech, which was

cut short in the middle when a movie cameraman let it be known that his film had inadvertently run out. Gagarin repeated his entire speech so that it could be recorded againY Earlier in

the morning, the 8K72K booster had been moved to the pad at site I. The launch was set for

the morning of April 12, 1961. Engineers had calculated the exact launch time, 0907 hours

Moscow Time, because it would afford the best solar illumination for the orientation system's

sensors somewhere over Africa right before retrofire.

The day before the launch, OKB-I engineers Raushenbakh and Feoktistov briefed Gagarin

and Titov for an hour and a half on various mission events. Raushenbakh recalled later that he

was still having trouble coming to terms with the magnitude of what was going on:

I looked at [qagarin] and in my mind I understood that tomorrow this kid was going to

awaken the whole world. But at the same time I just could not make myself believe that

tomorrow something would happen which the world had not yet seen--that this First

Lieutenant sitting in front of us would tomorrow become the symbol of a new epoch. I

would start giving him instructions, such as, "Turn this on, don't forget to switch this

on."--all these normal, pedestrian, even boring remarks, and then I would become

silent and some sort of internal imp would begin whispering to me, "This is all a bunch

of erap. You know that nothing of this sort is going to happen tomorrow. ,,9_

Being at the center of everything, the cosmonauts were perhaps less conscious of their

centrality in this vortex of events, Witnesses remember Gagarin smiling the whole day, happy

that he had been chosen for the mission. The cosmonauts also visited the pad to meet the

young soldiers, officers, and sergeants who had worked on the rocket the past few days. It was

a pragmatic managerial move--one that not only lifted morale among the lower rank workers,

but also played a role in instilling a sense of responsibility, both among the cosmonauts and

the work teams. Gagarin and Titov were assigned to a special cottage near the pad area, which

had previously been the late Marshal Nedelin's place of choice to stay at Tyura-Tam That night,

they had a light meal with Lt. General Kamanin and were asleep by 2130 hours when Korolev

quietly visited to check up on the two. Physicians attached sensors to both cosmonauts to

monitor their vital systems during the night. In addition, unbeknown to both, special strain

gauges were attached to their mattresses to monitor whether the trainees had had a fitful night

of tossing and turning. 9_As it turned out, both men slept remarkably peacefully.

Korolev did not sleep at all that night. Among the many worries on his mind, perhaps the

most troubling was the prospect that the rocket's third stage would fail during the ascent to

orbit, depositing the Vostok spacecraft in the ocean near Cape Horn on the southern tip of

Africa, an area infamous for its constant storms. The chief designer had demanded that there

be a telemetry system in the launch bunker at Tyura-Tam to confirm that the third stage had

worked as planned. If the engine worked nominally, the telemetry would print out a series of

"fives" on tape: otherwise, there would be a series of "twos." Despite all the precautions, all

97. KamaninSkrytiykosmos,pp.48-49: Golovanov.Koroleu,p. 638

98. Golovanov,Koroleu,p. 640.

99. Ibid., p. 641.The primaryphysiciansin chargeof GagarinandTitovat the timewerel. T. Akulinichev

andA. R KotovskayaThe straingaugesweredesignedbyengineersI. S.ShadrintsevandF.D.Gorbov.

273
214

the testing, and all the preparations, Korolev still had his doubts. One military officer recalled,

"For some reason, it was just Cape Horn that would not give Korolev a moment's peace." '®

Prelaunch pad operations at site I began at 0300 hours on April 12, just before dawn, as

controllers began taking their stations not only at Tyura-Tam, but all over the Soviet Union. A

very brief readiness review meeting of the State Commission at 0600 hours ended with an "all

prepared" conclusion, after which the members dispersed to various duties. Gagarin and Titov

themselves had been woken up half an hour earlier by Cosmonaut Training Center Director

Karpov and presented with a bunch of early wild flowers, a gift from the woman who had previously owned the cottage. After a short breakfast with food from a tube (meat paste, marmalade, and coffee), a group of doctors led by Yazdovskiy, almost ten years after he had led the

first historic flight of dogs from the deserts at Kapustin Yar, examined the cosmonauts. Two

assistants helped Gagarin and Titov don their bulky Sokol spacesuits--first a pale blue pressurized suit, followed by a bright orange coverall. Titov was the first to suit up to prevent Gagarin

from overheating because the suits depended on external power sources for the cooling fans,

which were only on the transport bus. Within an hour of waking up, both cosmonauts were on

the bus, accompanied by eleven other individuals, including cosmonauts Nelyubov and

Nikolayev and two cameramen who recorded the entire trip. ''_ The jaunt was short, and there

was apparently much joking between Gagarin and the rest. Numerous photos of that short bus

ride show a sometimes pensive Gagarin, seemingly unaffected at being at the center of this massive undertaking.

On arrival at the pad, Gagarin and Titov were greeted by Korolev, Keldysh, Kamanin,

Moskalenko. State Commission Chairman Rudnev, and other officials. By all accounts, Korolev

clearly looked fatigued and tired as he quietly watched Gagarin say his final goodbyes. As

onlookers stood around, Gagarin turned to Rudnev and reported very briefly that he was ready

for the mission. One of the more enduring myths of the flight was that before he took the elevator up to the top of the rocket, Gagarin made a farewell speech. Soviet-era journalists for years

outdid each other by putting together and embellishing disjointed quotes from Gagarin with

sugar-coated melodramatic flourishes, such as "I was seized by a total lifting of all my spiritual forces, with all of my being I heard the music of nature .... " To this day, documentaries

often play a tape of Gagarin speaking to the assembled crowd at the base of the booster, but

this speech was in fact taped much earlier, in Moscow, when Gagarin was essentially forced to

utter a stream of banalities prepared by anonymous speechwriters. Similar speeches by Titov

and Nelyubov were also taped. '°_ After last-minute embraces with Rudnev, Moskalenko, and

Korolev, Gagarin was escorted to the service elevator, where he halted and waved excitedly one

last time before the two-minute ride to the top. Titov was left behind, thus separating the

futures of these two men--one into history and one into posterity.

Vostok lead designer Oleg G. Ivanovskiy helped Gagarin into the spacecraft, who switched

on the radio communications system at 07 I0 hours. For the next two hours, he chatted effusively with Korolev and "capcom" cosmonaut Popovich. Kamanin, Chief Designer Bykov, and

100 Mikhail Rebrov, "/_ Star TraversingCape Horn" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, P,pril 12. 1994, p, 2,

101 Golovanov, Koroleu, pp. 644-55. The individuals apart from Nelyubov and Nikolayev who wereon the

buswere TsPKDirector Ye.P, Karpov.Plant No. 918 Chief Designer S.M, _lekseyev. F.g. Vostokov, V I. Svershchek.

G S Petrushm,Yu D Kilosanidze (all from Plant No. 918), physician L G. Golovkin, and cameramen V g. Suvorov

and/_. M Fdippov.

t02 Ibid. p. 649 The preparedspeech included the following passage:"Dear friends, you who areclose to

me, and you whom I do not know, fellow Russians.and people of all countries and all continents: In a few minutes

a powerful space vehicle will carry me into the distant realm of space. What can I tell you in these last minutes

before the launch? My whole life appearsto me asone beautiful moment. All that I previously lived through and did,

was lived through and clone for the sake of this moment." SeeEvgenyRiabchikov,Russtansin Space (Garden City,

NY: Doubleday& Company, 1911), p. 19

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GRGRRIN

Commission Chairman Rudnev also took the mike

on occasion to wish him well. The main command

bunker, comprising several rooms, was walking

distance from the actual launch pad. On the day of

the launch, officials had set up a small table with a

green tablecloth specifically for Korolev in the main

room. Here there would be a two-way radio and a

single red telephone for giving the password to catapult the cosmonaut in case of an emergency during the first forty seconds of the launch. Only three

people knew the password: Korolev, his Deputy

Leonid A. Voskresenskiy, and Colonel Anatoliy S.

Kirillov, a Strategic Missile Forces officer who had

recently been appointed to head the First

Directorate at Tyura-Tam--that is, the division

responsible for launch operations. His predecessor

had been killed in the recent R-16 disaster. For

Voskresenskiy, it was the culmination of a long

career as Korolev's deputy for flight testing. His

exploits in testing the German A-4s at Kapustin Yar

A pensive Yuriy _agarin is in the bus on the way to

the launch pad on the morning o[,rlpril 12. 1961

Behind him. seated, is his backup, _erman T_tov.

Standing are cosmonauts Oigoriy Nelyubov and

]:lndrian Nikolayev. (files o[,,'3si[Siddiqi)

in the 1940s were by then part of legend. Apart from Korolev, Voskresenskiy, and Kirillov, the three

men primarily responsible for directing the launch, others in the main room included Mark L. Gallay,

the renowned Soviet test pilot who had assisted cosmonaut training. Korolev apparently allowed him

to witness the launch, not for his piloting skills, but because Gallay was an accomplished author--

one who could chronicle the events for those who did not have the fortune to actually be present.

Most of the members of the State Commission, as well as senior engineers such as Glushko and

Feoktistov, were housed in a second room called the "guest room" of the bunker. In the third room,

Chief Designer Ryazanskiy served as head of telemetry systems. '°_ Gagarin's call sign was Kedr

("Cedar"), while the ground call sign was Zarya-I (" Dawn-I"), most likely named as such because

of the same designation of the primary voice communications system on Vostok.

At 0150 hours, the hatch was closed, but one of the contacts indicated that it was not

pressed down properly. Three engineers at the top of the rocket removed all thirty screws in the

hatch and shut the hatch a second time when all the indicators were positive. This action took

almost an hour, and the technicians finally left the vicinity of the Vostok about thirty minutes

prior to the scheduled launch. An excerpt from the communications from Kedr to Zarya-I

shows that despite the risks involved, there were attempts to alleviate some of the tension:

081,t hours

Popovich:

Gagarin:

Popovich:

Yuriy. you're not getting bored there, are you?

If there was some music, I could stand it a little better

One minute.

0815 hours

Korolev:

Popovich:

Station Zarya, this is Zarya I. Fulfill Kedr's request. Give him some

music, give him some music.

Did you read that? Zarya answers: We'll try to fulfill your request. Let's

have some music or I'1l get bored.

103. Others in the main room included OKB-I engineer B. A. Dorofeyev, Air Force officer N. P. Kamanin,

NII-885 Chief Designer N. A. Pityugin, cosmonaut "capcom" R R. Popovich, and NII-885 Deputy Chief Designer

V. R Finogenov.Seeibid, pp. 647-48.

275
276

0811 hours

Popovicfl:

Cagarin:

Korolev:

Cagarin:

Well, how is it? Is there music?

No music yet, but I hope there'l[ be some soon.

'Well, they gave you music, right?

Not yet.

0819 hours

Korolev:

Gagarin:

O[ course, that's the way musicians are: now they're here, now they're

there, but they don't do anything very fast. as the saying goes. Yuriy

7]lekseyevich.

They gave me love songs. _o4

At T (launch) minus fifteen minutes, Gagarin put on his gloves and ten minutes later closed

his helmet. The tower was taken away from the pad at the same time. By this time, the tension

was clearly rising, and Korolev and Voskresenskiy both took tranquilizer pills to calm their hearts.

The record of the 8K72K booster was not something that instilled confidence. Up to that time,

there had been sixteen launches of the R-7 with the Blok Ye third-stage combination, which was

to send Gagarin to orbit. Of those sixteen launches, six had failed because of faults in the R-7,

while two had failed because of the Blok Ye itself--that is, a success ratio of exactly 50 percent.

In the case of the seven Vostok spacecraft flown, two spacecraft had failed to reach orbit because

of booster malfunctions, while two others had failed to complete their missions. '°_ For an

endeavor that theoretically required a I O0-percent guarantee of success, if the past record was

any indication, the potential for an accident was significant on Gagarin's mission.

While Korolev and Voskresenskiy may have needed to calm their selves down, Gagarin,

removed in some way from the hubbub of activity at the pad, was as calm as ever:

0841 hours

Kamanin:

Gagarin:

Kamanin:

Cagarin:

How do you read me?

I read you well. How do you read me?

Your pulse is 64. respiration 24. Everything is going normally.

Roger. That means my heart is beating. '°'

Gagarin's pulse rate reached an excited 157 beats per minute seconds before liftoff,

although his tone remained completely calm. Finally, at exactly 0906 hours, 59.7 seconds on

April 12, 1961, the Vostok spacecraft lifted off with its twenty-seven-year-old passenger, Senior

Lieutenant Yuriy glekseyevich Gagarin. His first exuberant words were: "We're Off! ....

Korolev, Voskresenskiy, and Kirillov had the abort codes in case the 8K72K booster did not

achieve nominal performance, but the launch trajectory was on target. For the first few minutes

after launch, Gagarin reported feeling the g-loads on him rise, but he gave no indication of any

lack of comfort. In fact, he maintained his sense of humor:

104. Belyanov. et aL, "Yuriy Gagarin's Star Voyage," p. I I0.

105 Riabchikov,Russians in Space. p. 21; Semenov,ed., Raketno-Kosrnicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. II 3.

106 Belyanov. et al., "Yuriy Gagarin's Star Voyage," p. I II.

107. Ibid

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

0909 hours

Korolev:

Gagarin:

T plus tO0. How do you feel?

I feel fine. How about you? '°_

At T+I 19 seconds, the four strap-on boosters of the base R-7 missile separated, allowing

the center sustainer to continue to fire. The payload shroud separated from the Vostok spaceship exactly fifty seconds later as planned. At about five g's, Gagarin reported some difficulty

in talking, saying that all the muscles in his face were drawn and strained. The g-load steadily

increased until the central core of the launcher ceased to operate and was detached at T+300

seconds, '°_Following the separation of the spent core and strap-ons, the RD-OI09 upper stage

engine ignited to accelerate the craft to orbital velocity.

Korolev was literally shaking through all of this, having obsessed over the possible landing

in the ocean south of Cape Horn if the upper stage failed. The incoming telemetry began to

stream in a series of "fives," indicating all was fine. Then, suddenly, the numbers changed to

a series of "threes." There were brief seconds of terror--a "two" was a malfunction, but what

was a "three"? After a few agonizing seconds, the numbers reverted back to "fives." Engineer

Feoktistov remembers that "these interruptions, a few seconds in length, shortened the lives of

the designers.' ....

During the powered leg of the flight, Gagarin's pulse reached a maximum of 150 beats per

minute, Although Popovich was officially the "capcom" for the mission, Korolev's excitement

most likely got the better of him, and he took over communications personally for a good portion of the ascent to orbit, constantly asking Gagarin about his well being:

0910 hours

Korolev:

Gagarin:

Korolev:

_agarin:

Korolev:

The fairing has been jettisoned, everything is normal, How do you feel?

•.. Nose [airing jettisoned .... I see the Earth• The g-load is increasing

somewhat. I feel excellent, in a good mood•

_ood boyf Excellent! Everything is going well.

I see the clouds. The landing site .... It's beautiful. What beauty.r How

do you read me?

We read you well. continue the flight. _'

Orbital insertion occurred finally at T+676 seconds just after shutdown of the third-stage

RD-OI09 engine. For the first time in history, a human being had escaped the bonds of Earth's

gravity and entered outer space. Initial orbital parameters for the Vostok spaceship were 175 by

302 kilometers at a 65.07-degree inclination to the equator. The orbit was much higher than

had been planned for the flight; the apogee was about seventy kilometers over the planned altitude, indicating a less than stellar performance for the launch booster. When the parameters

were reported back to Tyura-Tam from the flight control center at NII-4 in Moscow, no doubt

there was some anxiety because the higher orbit could have resulted in a longer mission given

retrofire failure.

Immediately after entering orbit, Gagarin reported that he was feeling excellent and vividly described the images outside his porthole. In his secret postflight report, he recalled his feelings of being the first human being to experience prolonged microgravity:

108. Ibid.p. I12.

109. GibbonsandClark,"The Evolutionof theVostokandVoskhodProgrammes."

I I0. Rebrov,"A StarTraversingCapeHorn."

I II. Belyanov,et el., "YuriyGagarin'sStarVoyage,"p. II 2.

277
278

I ate and drank normally. I could eat and drink. I noticed no physiological difficulties.

The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions, Here. you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel

as if you are suspended, Obviously, the tightly fitted suspension system presses upon the

thorax .... Later I got used to it and had no unpleasant sensations. I made entries into

the logbook, reported, worked with the telegraph key. When I had meals. I also had

water I let the writing pad out of my hands and it floated together with the pencil in

front of me. Then. when I had to write the next report. I took the pad. but the pencil

wasn't where it had been. It had flown off somewhere. The eye was secured to the pencil with a screw, but obviously they should have used glue or secured the pencil more

tightly. The screw got loose and flew away. I closed up my journal and put it in my

pocket. It wouldntt be any good anyway, because I had nothing to write with. ''2

Once the orbital parameters had been accurately determined, controllers at NIl-4 sent the

numbers to news agencies in Moscow, instructing reporters to open their secret envelopes.

Because of simple gross inefficiency, the Soviet news agency TASS was unable to announce the

launch until almost an hour after Gagarin took off. Everyone back at Tyura-Tam was bewildered.

unsure as to why the news was not on the radio despite assurances that it would be so. Finally,

a full fifty-five minutes after launch, famous Soviet radio personality Yuriy B. Levitan announced:

The world's first satellite-ship "Vostok" with a human on board was launched into an

orbit about the Earth from the Soviet Union. The pilot-cosmonaut of the spaceship satellite "Vostok" is a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Major of ,Zlviation

Yuriy ,Ztlekseyevich _agarin. '"

U.S. intelligence services were already cognizant of the mission prior to the announcement. An electronic intelligence station in Alaska had picked up transmissions from the spacecraft, just twenty minutes after launch. Further real-time interceptions of communication

thirty-eight minutes later clearly showed a human moving inside the spacecraft. ''4

Most of Gagarin's single orbit was spent observing the view through the porthole and the

systems in the craft itself. No experiments were planned for the mission, and no anomalies were

detected during his time in orbit. Because of physicians' concerns about the adverse effects of

weightlessness on the psychology of the cosmonaut, precautions were taken to ensure that the

cosmonaut could not control the spacecraft and endanger his life. A special six-digit code was

programmed on a special "logic clock" to lock the controls on the ship: Gagarin was not told

three of the missing digits. If the Vostok was to lose its ground command link, then Gagarin

could unseal a special envelope that contained the code (I-2-5) and thus unlock the controls.

Otherwise, all the flight actions took place automatically or were controlled by the ground.

When contact with Zarya-I at Tyura-Tam was lost about seven minutes after launch,

Gagarin maintained contact with Zarya-2 at Kolpashevo and Zarya-3 at Yelizovo.'' Prior to

112. Ibid.,p. 119.

113 "]-ass Communique on the World's FirstFlight of a Human into Cosmic Space" (English title), Pravda,

April 13, 1961.This report hasalso been published in Raushenbakh,ed., Materialy po istorii kosmicheskogo,p. 146.

114 Dwayne Day, "Those Magnificent Spooks and their Spying Machines," Spaceflight 39 (March 1997):

98- 100.

II5. The communicators at Zarya-2 wereAir ForceLt Colonel G. I. Titarev and military unit no. 32103 representativeLieutenant B. V. Seleznez.The communicator at Zarya-3was Air ForceColonel M F Karpenko. In addition, communications were also maintained with the station at Khabarovsk (Air ForceColonel M. R Kaduskin) and

in Moscow (Desna) at NIl-4 (Captain V. I. Khoroshilov).

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
[

i GAGARIN

retrofire, the Vostok ship was oriented to the correct attitude using the solar sensor system,

resulting in three commands to fire the small thrusters. The TDU-I retrorocket system successfully fired at 1025 hours, and Gagarin noted the status of all the systems, recording his

comments on a tape recorder because he was out of range of ground communications:

The braking rocket fired for exactly 40 seconds. During that period, the following

occurred..,Zts soon as the braking rocket shut off, there was a sharp jolt, and the craft

began to rotate around its axis at a very high velocity. The Earth passed in the "Vzor"

from top right to bottom left. The rate of rotation was about 30 degrees per second, at

least. I was an entire "corps de ballet": head. then feet, head, then feet, rotating rapidly. Everything was spinning around. Now I see .Ztfrica (this happened over Africa), next

the horizon, then the sky. I had barely enough time to cover myself to protect my eyes

from the Sun's rays. I put my legs to the porthole, but didn't close the blinds. ''_

Following the firing of the retrorocket engine, the large instrument section of the vehicle

was to separate from the spherical descent apparatus, with the latter descending into the upper

layers of the atmosphere. It was precisely at this point that the only major malfunction occurred

on the mission:

I wondered what was going on and waited for the separation. There was no separation,

I knew it was scheduled in I0 to 12 seconds after actuation of the retrorocket. When it

was actuated, all the lights of the control board went out. I felt that more time had

passed, but there was no separation. The light panel "Landing-I " failed to go out. ' 7

The separation mechanism, comprising four metal strips that came together in a single

lock. evidently released the two modules on time, but the compartments remained loosely connected by a few cables: the heavier descent apparatus remained below the lighter instrument

section as the combined spacecraft reentered the atmosphere. Although the situation was of

serious concern, it does not now seem that Gagarin's life was in jeopardy, as suggested by some

Western analysts when this incident was finally revealed in 199 I. Gagarin, who was clearly cognizant of the situation, remained remarkably calm:

. .. still no signs of separation. The "corps de ballet" continues. I thought that something had gone wrong. I checked the time on the watch. Ztbout two minutes had passed

but there was no separation. I reported through the [high-frequency[ communications

channel that the [retrorocket] had worked normally. I estimated that I would be able to

land normally anyway, because the distance to the Soviet Union was six thousand kilometers and the Soviet Union was about eight thousand kilometers long. That meant that

I could land before the Soviet far east. So I decided not to make much ado about that. I

used the telegraph key to transmit the "VN" message meaning "all goes well.' ....

Separation finally occurred at 1035 hours, approximately ten minutes later than intended,

saving the spacecraft from a dangerous tumbling reentry. Gagarin's description of a ballistic

reentry, the first such in history, was vivid and full of illuminating details:

116. Betyanov. et al.. "Yuriy Gagarin's Star Voyage." p. 120.

I 17. Ibid.

118. Ibid, pp 120-21.

279
280

• BEGIN ORIENTATION

FOR RETRO BURN AT

8000 KM FROM • FINAL STAGE SHUT DOWN,

LANDING SITE • RETRO BURN AND ORBIT INSERTION AT 676 SEC.

AT 9:51 MT INSTRUMENT MODULE

SEPARATION AT 10:25 MT

BEGIN REENTRY AT 10:35 MT _"_,,_--___

.EmSONCORESTAGE. //___/ _'_ _

i EINAL'STAGEIGNITION //- _X X _ LATER AT 10'55MT

..c, Y

/-- "\ "7

I/ "!EE'!SW 'J

II . .'.ATESTRA"--ON _

I/ ST"°E=AT,,OSE_. "-" \'i /

' • COSMONAUT LANDS

IN SARATOV REGION

• LAUNCH FROM BAIKONUR AT 11:05 MT (EST.}

KOSMOOROME AT LENINSK

AT 9:07 MT

This is the mission profile[or YuriyGagarin's pioneering[Iighlinto space. (copyrightR F.Gibbons)

Suddenly a bright purple light appeared at the blind edges. The same purple light could

be observed in the small opening of the right-hand porthole. I felt oscillations of the

spaceship and burning of the coating. I don't know what caused the crackling sounds:

whether it was the structure or because of the heat-resistant casing expanding as a

result o[ the heat, but I heard crackling sounds. The frequency was approximately one

crackling per minute. Generally. I felt the temperature was high .... Next the overloads

began to rise gradually. The ball was constantly oscillating along all axes. ,Ztsthe load

factor was reaching its peak, I could see the Sun. Its rays penetrated into the cabin

through the porthole of hatch I and the right-hand porthole. By the reflected rays o/the

.Sun I could tentatively determine how the spaceship was rotating. By the time the load

factor reached its peak, the spaceship oscillations reduced to 15 degrees ,zlt that

moment I felt that the load factor reached about lOg. There was a moment for about

CHRLLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

2 or 3 seconds when the instrument readings became blurred. My vision became

somewhat greyish. I strained myself again. This worked, and everything assumed their

proper places. ''9

At an altitude of 7,000 meters, the main descent apparatus parachutes opened, and then

hatch number one shot off from the capsule. Gagarin was shot out of the craft, still in his seat,

just two seconds later. Looking down at the land, he immediately recognized that the region

of landing was near the Volga River. He separated from his seat, and his personal parachute

then opened. He recalled }ater:

When I was parachute training, we had jumped many times over this very site. We had

flown much here. I recognized the railroad, a railroad bridge over the river, and a long

spit of land extending far into the Volga. I thought that was probably Saratov. I was

landing in Saratov. '_°

Ground control spent several minutes in tension following reentry, when communications

were cut off. Soon after the command for retrofire occurred, Korolev telephoned Khrushchev,

who was at the holiday resort at Pitsunda, telling him that "the parachute has opened, and he's

landing. The spacecraft seems to be OK!" Khrushchev asked excitedly, "is he alive? Is he sending signals? Is he alive? Is he alive?...' ....

GagarJn, very much alive, landed relatively softly in a field next to a deep ravine at

1055 hours, just one hour and forty-eight minutes following launch. The landing point was

twenty-six kilometers southwest of the town of Engels in the Saratov region, close to the village of Smelovka. Immediately after landing, he had some trouble opening up the air valve in

his spacesuit, and it took him six whole minutes of wrestling before he was able to breathe natural air. His first concern was reporting that he was safe:

I had to do something to send a message that I had landed normally. I climbed a small

hill and saw a woman with a girl approaching me. She was about 800 meters away from

me. I walked to her to ask where I could find a telephone. So I was walking to her, when

I saw that the woman was s/ouJing down and the girl uJas going away [tom her and running back. When I saw that, I began to wave my hands and shout. "I'm a friend, I'm

Soviet!" She told me that I could use the telephone in the field camp. I asked the woman

not to let anyone touch my parachute while I was going to the camp. ,Zlswe approached

the parachutes, we saw a group of men, about six all in all--tractor drivers and mechanics from the field camp. I got acquainted with them. I told them who I was. They said that

news of the space flight was being transmitted at that moment over the radio. '_

Eventually, rescue teams arrived and drove him to a military unit not far from Engels, where

he received a telegram of congratulations from Khrushchev and reported officially by telephone

to tqir Force Commander-in-Chief Vershinin on having completed his assigned mission.

Vershinin's deputy, Col. General Agaltsov, was the first high-ranking space official to meet the

cosmonaut, and after further cursory congratulatory phone calls from Khrushchev and Brezhnev,

Gagarin was quickly escorted out to seclusion at Kuybyshev in the Zhiguli Hills on the Volga.

119 Ibid_p 121,

120. Ibid,p. 122.

121. M Rebrov,"The DifficultPathto April 1961,or WhyWe'reNot FindingOut theEntireTruthAboutthe

Flightof Yu.GagarinUntilToday"(Englishtitle), Krosnayazuezda,March28, 1992,p 3.

122. Belyanov,et al., "YuriyGagarin'sSta[Voyage,"p. 122.

281
282

Back at Tyura-Tam, once news arrived that Gagarin was safe, the tensions that had pervaded the entire mission instantly dissipated. After a short meeting of the State Commission,

champagne was passed around amid much mutual congratulations. Korolev was completely

beside himself, laughing and smiling for the first time in days, excited and animated beyond

what many of this colleagues had ever seen from him. The members of the commission flew

to the landing site to inspect the descent apparatus; witnesses remember that Korolev could

simply not take his eyes off the capsule, touching it and checking it all over. After the inspection, they flew off to Kuybyshev to finally meet with Gagarin, who had just minutes before

been promoted from a senior lieutenant directly to major. Upon seeing the Korolev, Gagarin

reported quietly, "Ali's well, Sergey Pavlovich, things are just fine." According to one journalist, Korolev was so beside himself with the shock of euphoria that he was speechless: "[He]

had no clue what to say or how to reply [to Gagarin].' ....

During the next morning, there was an official and final meeting of the ad hoc State

Commission, during which Gagarin described his entire flight in great detail, a narrative that

was preserved on tape. Following the monologue, commission members asked him a series of

questions on various aspects of the flight. On April 19, Marshal Vershinin formally presented

the transcripts of both sessions to the Central Committee. Both were classified "Top Secret"

and unavailable to researchers until 1991, thirty years after the mission. '_4

Earlier on April 14, Gagarin returned to Vnukovo Airport in Moscow while thousands of

onlookers cheered him on. g procession of scores of automobiles finally led the way to Red

Square, where Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Kozlov, and other leaders of the Soviet state basked in

the unqualified success of the first mission into space by a human. It was a moment unlike any

other in Soviet history, quite possibly the absolute zenith of the more than forty years of Soviet

achievements in space. Derided for years by the West for its backwards technology and antiquated customs, the Soviet Union had abruptly taken one of the most important steps in the

history of humankind, the first voyage of a human into space. It was a day full of hyperbole

from thousands of people on the streets, but anything less would not have done justice to it.

Korolev, the chief architect of this achievement remained, as ever, anonymous among the multitudes. He traveled several cars behind the leading motorcade in a nondescript vehicle, prevented from wearing his previous state awards on his lapel for fear that Western agents would

suspect something. Such was the curious and perhaps sad legacy of a powerful and great

nation, unencumbered by notions of political freedom.

The flight of Yuriy A. Gagarin will undoubtedly remain one of the major milestones in not

only the history of space exploration, but also the history of the human race itself. The fact

that this accomplishment was successfully carried out by the Soviet Union, a country completely devastated by war just sixteen years prior, makes the achievement even more impressive. Unlike the United States, the USSR had to begin from a position of tremendous

disadvantage. Its industrial infrastructure had been ruined, and its technological capabilities

were outdated at best. A good portion of its land had been devastated by war, and it had lost

about 25 million citizens. Thus, comparisons of the uncannily close race between the two

superpowers in the early years after Sputnik are in some ways flawed by the absence of context. In the crudest of terms, it was a devastated totalitarian society with old-fashioned

machines competing against an intact and democratic one equipped with far better technology, Both exercised the political imperative to explore space, but it was the totalitarian state that

overwhelmingly took the lead.

I23. Golovanov,Koroleu,pp.654-56.

124 Bothhavebeenreproducedin full in Belyanov,etal, "YuriyGagarin'sStarVoyage,"pp. It7-28.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGRRIN

[

The Secret World

In attempting to maintain a tight shroud of

secrecy around the Vostok mission and the

space program as a whole, Soviet officials went

to great and sometimes ludicrous levels of effort.

Having told the full story of his flight to the

State Commission, Gagarin was later forced to

partake in a gross obfuscation of the truth. To

satisfy international standards for an aerospace

record for a piloted orbital flight, the passenger

was required to take off and land in the same

vehicle. Gagarin, of course, parachuted out of

his descent apparatus prior to touchdown.

Soviet authorities went to great lengths to conceal this fact, in many cases forcing Gagarin to

blatantly lie during various press conferences,

The first conclusive admission came ten years

later in 1971, by which time Gagarin's flight was

widely accepted as an international record.'_

The press conferences themselves were exercises in control and secrecy. A transcript from

Gagarin's first postflight press conference illustrates the sometimes comic aspects of Gagarin's

unenviable job:

The first human in space. "furiy _agarin, seems very

happy in this photo from 1961, taken soon after his

historic mission (NASA photo)

_uestion:

_agarin:

_uestion:

Gagarin:

When were you told that you were the first candidate?

I was told in good time that I was the first cosmonaut.

You said yesterday that your fellow pilot-cosmonauts are prepared [or

another cosmic flight. How many are there? ]:ire there more than a

dozen?

In accordance with the plan to conquer cosmic space, pilot-cosmonauts

are being trained in the country. I believe that there are more than

enough to undertake important flights ....

_uestion:

Gagarin:

When will the next spaceflight take place?

I think that our scientists and cosmonauts will undertake the next flight

when it is necessary. '_

As was typical during the aftermath of the first Sputnik launch, a number of important academicians were used for elucidating some of the technical aspects of the mission, thus implying that they were in some way connected to the facilitation of the mission. The most

prominent of these was Academician gnatoliy g. Blagonravov, whose official title was

Academic Secretary of the Department of Technical Sciences of the USSR Academy of

Sciences. The sixty-six-year-old machine sciences expert had some tenuous ties to the space

125. To the knowledge of this author, the first reliable confirmation that Gagarin indeed landed in his cap

sute was in Riabchikov. Russians in Space, p 36.

126_ Peter Smolders, Soviets in Space (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co, 1973), p. 115.

283
284

establishment, but his high-visibility trips to various congresses cemented the myth that he

was in some manner one of the leaders of the entire effort.

Forced to formally report a launch location for the Vostok spacecraft, the Soviets also created the fiction of a great new spaceport named "Baykonur." P, few days following Gagarin's

mission, a team led by Maj. General Kerimov, the head of the Third Directorate in the Chief

Directorate of Reactive Armaments of the Missile Forces, prepared a document to submit to the

International Astronautical Federation on the details of the mission. Prohibited from mentioning Tyura-Tam, Kerimov and his assistants picked the small settlement of Baykonur, 370 kilometers northeast of the actual launch site. '_ Although Western observers were quickly able to

identify the real location with the aid of tracking data, the Soviets continued to insist on the

Baykonur name for the launch area for close to thirty years. At first amused by the sudden fame

of their native town, the inhabitants of the actual city of Baykonur tried to use the confusion

over names to their own advantage, They put in orders for all sorts of scarce raw materials, such

as cement and wood, to officials in Moscow, all of which they received in vast quantities,

Moscow officials later stopped all such disbursements once they realized that they were the

victims of a shrewd scam. '2_In a twist of which George Orwell would have been proud, the

"Baykonur Cosmodrome" designation eventually came into accepted usage even among workers at Tyura-Tam. In 1996, the town of Leninsk was officially renamed Baykonur, the center of

the Baykonur Cosmodrome.

Gagarin's flight had a large-scale repercussive effect on the growing space industry. Awards

and promotions were liberally handed out to numerous important individuals, while space as

a component of the ballistic missile program began to acquire an independent character. By an

order dated June 17, 1961, 6,938 men and women were honored with various awards, including a number with the Hero of Socialist Labor, the highest and most prestigious national civilian honor in the Soviet Union. Characteristically, the Soviet press only named seven of the

almost 7,O00, all of them high officials in the Communist Party and government. The seven

who were named for the Hero of Socialist Labor were Khrushchev (for the third time), Kozlov,

Brezhnev, Ustinov (for the second time), Rudnev, Kalmykov, and Academician Keldysh (for the

second time). Among those who remained unnamed, five of them were chief designers receiving the award for the second time. Korolev, Glushko, Barmin, Pilyugin, Kuznetsov, and Yangel

were invited to the Kremlin at a secret ceremony on June 20. :_

Concurrent with the bestowal of these honors, a major reshuffle in the Soviet space industry took place. At the apex of these changes was the replacement of the chairman of the State

Committee for Defense Technology, the "ministry" with control over the space program. The

Soviet press announced on June I0, 1961, that Committee Chairman Konstantin N. Rudnev

t27 Mozzhorin, etat, eds. Nachalokosmieheskoyery, pp 320-21. The others involved with Kerimovin

making the decision were Colonel A A. Maksimov (GURVO) and Major V D Yastrebov (NIF4). Seealso Jacques

Villain, ed. Baikonuor ta porte des eroiles (Paris:Armand Colin, 1994). p. 47.

128. Golovanov. Koroleu, p. 642.

I29. Of the ninety-five people who received their Hero of Socialist Labor awards for the first time were the

following chief designers or institute directors: S M. Alekseyev (Plant No. 918), Yu. S. Bykov(NII-695), L I. Gusev

(NII-695), G, Ya. Guskov (Nil MikroPribor), A. G. Iosifyan (NII-621), S. A. Kosberg (OKB-I54), N A. Krivoshein

(TsKB TyazhMash), V. P. Makeyev (SKB-385), I. g. Rosselevich (VNII-380). N A Semikhatov (Nil Rvtomatiki),

V G. Sergeyev(OKB 692), V. S Shpak (GIPKh), G. M. Tabakov{Nil 229), and G. I Voronin (OKB-124) Among

the major omissions from the list were Chief DesignersM. S. Ryazanskiy (Nil 885) and A. M. Isayev(OKB-2). Both

had, however, receivedthe Hero of Socialist Labor in 1956.although Ryazanskiywas the only member of the original Council of Chief Designerswho had not been bestowed the honor a second time in 1961.SeeChristian Lardier,

"Soviet Space DesignersWhen They Were Secrets," presented at the 47th International Astronautical Federation.

IAA-96-1AA.2 209 Beijing, China, October 7-t I, 1996: Albert Parry, The New Class Diuided Science arid

Technology Versus Communism (New York: Macmillan. 1966), p. I lO: Golovanov, Koroleu. p. 660.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

had been released from his post and would chair the State Committee for the Coordination of

Scientific Research, the "ministry" overseeing pure science in the Soviet Union. Rudnev, having played a leading role in facilitating the Vostok program, was in effect moved directly out of

the so-called defense industry structure, thus relinquishing any further direct role in the space

program. In an ironic twist, The New York Times reported his new appointment, suggesting

that Rudnev had been appointed "coordinator of the Soviet Union's rocket and space programs" when it was exactly the reverse. '_° Rudnev's vacating of the defense technology post

caused a row of individuals to move up, positing them as key players in the space program during the 1960s. Rudnev's own replacement was an unlikely choice, a forty-five-year-old former

electrical engineer named Leonid V. Smirnov, who was without doubt the fastest rising star

within the Soviet defense industry. He had served for almost ten years as the director of the

mammoth State Union Plant No. 586, where the USSR manufactured most of its ballistic missiles. In mid-1959, during a visit to the plant site at Dnepropetrovsk in the Ukraine, Khrushchev

had been unusually impressed with Smirnov's work.' While this visit no doubt played a pivotal role in his rapid promotion in the following years, Smirnov also owed his every promotion

to the powerful Ustinov, who had begun to populate various defense industry positions with

his prot_gds, building a support system that played to his advantage for many years.

Smirnov himself vacated the post of First Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for

Defense Technology, thus allowing the promotion of Maj. General Georgiy A Tyulin to fill that

position. '32Tyulin had served as the director of the important NII-88 from August 1959 until his

new appointment. One of the most ubiquitous persons in the history of the Soviet space program, the artillery officer was reportedly a close supporter of Korolev's. The appointment of an

artillery officer to such a high position in the defense industry was clearly a strong indication of

the artillery Iobby's ambitions to dominate the space program, Tyulin's appointment was, in fact,

the first of many in which high-ranking artillery officers were moved from the Ministry of Defense

directly to high managerial positions within the defense industry--that is, from the client sector

to the design sector. This not only cemented their influence on both sides, but it prevented other

armed services such as the eqir Force from making inroads to control the space program.

The second artillery officer to move from the client side to the design side was Colonel

Yuriy A, Mozzhorin, the individual who had directed the development of the Soviet groundtracking network in support of ICBMs and satellites. On the recommendation of both Korolev

and Tyulin, Mozzhorin took over the latter's vacated post as director of NII-88 on July 3 I,

1961. '_ During the years that Korolev's OKB-I had been subordinated to NII-88 in the 1940s

and 1950s, the institute had served as the de [aGo center of long-range ballistic missile developments in the Soviet Union. This responsibility had been somewhat diluted after 1956, when

OKB-I became an independent institution, because the locus of activity had moved from

NII-88 to OKB-I, As a research institute instead of a design bureau, however. NII-88 continued

basic research into many new technologies that were eventually used on space vehicles and

130 "Rudnev Heads Soviet SpaceDrive," The NezuYork Times,June It, 1961.

131 V Pappo-Korystin, V Platonov, and V. Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy tsentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZlKBYu, 1994), p 67: John McDonnell, "The Soviet Defense Industry as a Pressure

Group," in Michael McGwire, Ken Booth, andJohn McDonnell, eds.,SouietNaual Policy Objectiuesand Constraints

(Halifax. NS: Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, 1975), p 120: SergeyKhrushchev. Nikita Khrushcheu krizisy i rakety

uzgtyad iznutrL tom t (Moscow: Novosti. 1994), p. 433

132 I V. Kostryukov. "The Development in TsNIIMash of Branch Experimental Basesfor the Development

of Rocket-Carriersand Space Apparatus" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 60 (1990): 41-55.

133. "On the Scientific Technical Activities of Yu g. Mozzhorin": Yu. A. Mozzhorin. "The Central

Scientific Research Institute of Machine-Bui]ding--The Main Center for Soviet Rocket-Space Industry" (English

title), /z istorii auiatsil i kosmonautlki 60 {1990): 20-40: Letter. A. A. Yeremenko, Chief or the Public Affairs

Department of TsNIIMash, to the author, April 14. 1994.

285
286

boosters.Bythelate1950s,underTyulin's

command,theentitygraduallyestablisheda

mandateforfocusonappliedthemesrather

thanpurescience.AtthetimeofMozzhorin's

appointmentto thedirectorshippostin 1961.

NII-88'sagendatookadramaticturn.Nolonger

consignedexclusivelyto researchanddevelopmentefforts,theinstituteassumeda pivotal

roleintheformulationof Sovietspacepolicy.

Anofficialdecisionofthegovernmenti 1961

designatedN11-88asthe"primaryscienceinstitution"in theSovietspaceprogram,'_4The

scopeof responsibilitiesof NII-88weresummarizedby a Sovietspacehistorianusing

rhetoricalquestions:

Whatrocket-space hardware is needed?

Which areas need to be developed first?

Which of the systems proposed by the

chief designers need to be developed and

uJhieh need to be refused?... Ztll that

[was] worked out.., under the supervision of Yu. A Mozzhorin. '_

yuriy Mozzhorin was the director of Nil 88 from

1961 to t990. Daring that period. HII-88 served as

the "primary scientific institution" in the Soviet

space program Mozzhorin was personally responsible for rejecting or recommending to the government

dozens of proposals from various chief designers

(files of Peter Gorin)

Thus, although the space chief designers were

not officially subordinate to Mozzhorin, by the

force of his new responsibilities, he would have

the duty of recommending or rejecting proposals

and then submitting them to the ministerial level.

The mind-boggling confusion of hierarchy that was the Soviet space program in the 1960s

was tempered only by the institutional loopholes that allowed design bureaus and chief designers to push their programs through informal channels. The research and development process

in the Soviet space industry and in the defense industry as a whole originated in four possible

ways, by:

• Having the military identify a need for a capability and forward a request called a "tacticaltechnical requirement" to the ministry in question, in this case the State Committee for

Defense Technology

• Having the chief designer of a particular design bureau propose a project in the form of a

ten- to twenty-page "predraff plan"

• A combination of the first two--that is, having the chief designer cooperate with the military to develop a tactical-technical requirement simultaneously with a predraft plan

• P, political imperative--that is, a directive from the Communist Party '_

134. M.V. ]-arasenko,Voerrnyyeaspekty 5ovetskoi kosmonautiki (Moscow: Nikol, 1992), p. 17.

135. A A. Maksimov, "People of Science:A Veteran of the Space Program" (English title), Zemlya i vselarrnaya no. 6 (November-December, 1990): 30-3 I.

136. William E Barry. "The Missile Design Bureauxand Soviet Piloted Space Policy, 1953-1974," draft of

University olOxford PhD diss., 1995.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

In the case of the space program, it is now becoming clear that the second mode of operation was the most prevalent--that is, the most powerful chief designers, principally Korolev,

Chelomey, Glushko, and Yanget, essentially drove space policy with a plethora of proposals in

the form of predraft plans. At this poinL a number of similar bodies, called scientific-technical

councils, would come into play to review the plans and recommend a particular approach.

The number of scientific-technical councils was another indication of the way in which

checks and balances were instituted in the space program. There was usually such a council in

each design bureau to review proposals, there was one in NII-88, and there was one in the State

Committee for Defense Technology. Within the military itself, there were at least three councils with relevance to the space program--one in the Ministry of Defense General Staff headed at the time by artillery Col. General Nikolay N. glekseyev, one in the Strategic Missile Forces

headed during the 1960s by Maj. General Viktor P. Morozov, and one in NIl-4, which was

responsible for devising the tactical-technical requirements. Finally, as the space program began

to emerge as an independent entity from the ballistic missile effort, the government created a

unique body called the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for Space Researchwithin the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1958.'_' Headed by t3cademician Ke]dysh, who had

assumed the position of academy president on May 19, 196 I, soon after Gagarin's flight, the

council included representatives from the major space design bureaus and institutes, NIl-4, the

Strategic Missile Forces, and the Soviet Air Force. In the case of actual spacecraft proposals, it

was this council rather than the others that had the final say, usually after a review period by

the other bodies. The presence of military officers on the academy's council ensured a strong

military component in each "civilian" proposal.

The result of the council review process was only a recommendation, albeit one that had

the support of major players. The recommendation was then passed on to the ministry level,

and eventually to the powerful Military-Industrial Commission headed by the all-watching

Ustinov. Party support, indispensable for any program, was usually ensured by the appropriate

chief designer prior to this point, usually with a meeting with Khrushchev or Kozlov. Given the

sanction of Khrushchev or Kozlov, the project was formally approved by a joint decree of the

USSR Council of Ministers and the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The program

then would be managed under Ustinov, who was something of a genius in working through

the paper-logged Soviet system. A "draft plan" for the project--that is, a detailed technical

document describing the vehicle and its characteristics--was prepared during the process,

often before official approval, perhaps to elicit interest from the military. In many cases, the scientific-technical councils were used to screen draft plans from competing proposals before

being passed on to the top. The draft plan served as the final document from which the design

bureau, in cooperation with its plant, produced the first experimental models of the spacecraft

or launch vehicle.

The entire process of Soviet space policy was, of course, not derived from a formal hierarchical process. Unlike other defense industries, the space program was driven to grow by the powers of the leading chief designers. Thus, the approval or rejection of a project was often a function

of the relationship that the chief designer had with key members of the Communist Party and

government, in particular Khrushchev, Kozlov, and Ustinov. Even at that level, it was a complex

process influenced by the fortunes of certain individuals. Forexample, Khrushchev strongly supported both Chelomey and Korolev, while Ustinov was a "patron" of both Korolev and Glushko

and hated Chelomey: Kozlov meanwhile had a marked aversion to Korolev, The story of the

13L Ibid. Mozzhorin,et al., eds, Dorogiu kosmos:II, pp. 101,103:Sergeyev,ed, Kflronikaosnounykh

sobytiye,pp. 85-86: V. S.,qvduyevskiyandM. Ya.Marov,"MstistavVsevolodovichKeldyshand SpaceResearch"

(Englishtitle), Zemlyai uselennayano.3 (May-June1991):46-52.

287
288

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
GAG&RIN

Soviet space program was thus in many ways a story of interpersonal rivalries and political expediency. Clogged by a rigorous process of review and unending red tape, there were many worthy

proposals that simply fell by the wayside as the fortunes of chief designers rose and fell.

The important chief designers were clearly Korolev, Glushko, Yangel, and Chelomey, but it

would be an oversimplification to suggest that others had no say. For example, the other members of the original Council of Chief Designers, while not performing in the capacity of "primary contractors" for space vehicles, could often derail or provide critical support to a project.

In 1961, the Soviet government passed a decree defining the rights and status of the Council

of Chief Designers, ensuring that the decisions of the body were binding to all the concerned

ministries and agencies, '_ These decisions were most likely related to operational actions, such

as to force a subcontractor to deliver on time or to approve a particular launch, rather than actual policy. On purely technical issues, the council operated in a fairly democratic manner in the

early years. For example, if a problem occurred in a given engineering area, a meeting of the

council would be held at the particular design bureau that had specialty over the problem in

question. Although Korolev presided over the meetings, the chief designer whose expertise

covered the matter most appropriately resolved each disagreement in technical matters. Chief

Designer Barmin has recalled, however, that "we never, I should emphasize, never turned the

council into a trade-union meeting of sorts, in which decision was made by a mechanical

majority of votes. "'_ Thus, the veto of Pilyugin or Barmin on a particular issue could bring a

matter to a standstill regardless of whether Korolev or Glushko believed otherwise.

This photo of the Council of Chief Designers dates from 1959 during control of a Luna mission to the Moon. From

the left are/31eksey Bogomolov. Mikhail Ryazanskiy. Nikolay P@ugin. Serge), Korolev. Valentin _lushko.

Vladimir Barmin, and Viktor Kuznetsov. Most reproductions of this picture have Bogomolov on the left cropped

off because he was not one of the original membersof the council _rom the 1940s. (files of/_sif Siddiqi)

138. B. Konovalov, "Dash to the Stars" (English title), Izvestiya, October I, 1987, p. 3: B, Konovalov.

"Lessons of the FirstSatellite" (English title). Izvestiya, September 29. 1987.p 3.

139. Konovalov, "Lessons of the FirstSatellite."

289
290

In the original 1959 letter of Korolev and Keldysh to the government on organizing for the

space program, they had laid out a number of potential options, all of which implied a formal

separation of the space program from the ballistic missile program. The central tenet of their

proposal was the formation of a dedicated scientific research institution focused exclusively on

the exploration of space. By 1961, even after the euphoria surrounding Gagarin's flight, few of

their proposals were implemented. The only visible manifestation that the Soviet leadership

was interested in space as separate from military policy was the formation of the ad hoe

Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for Space Research within the Academy of

Sciences. OKB-I, the most dominant space organization in the immediate post-Sputnik era.

continued to maintain its multitude of ballistic missile programs as its primary raison d'etre.

Augmented by the addition of a number of subsidiaries and branches in the recent past,

Korolev was overseeing about 15.000 employees in t961, far more than any other design

bureau in the field. _4°OKB-I also served as a tool for foreign policy. In August 1958, a group

of senior engineers from the design bureau were sent to China, along with some R-2 missiles,

to assist the Chinese ballistic missile program. Although the team returned to the Soviet Union

in early 1960, the exchange was a significant boon to Chinese aspirations to develop a strategic force and to aid in the emergence of the future Chinese space program. _4'

A Day in the Ufe

Gagarin's flight had been a singular event in the planning of the Vostok program. Although

there were orders for the manufacture of many more Vostok spacecraft, actual plans for subsequent piloted missions were remarkably vague. Unlike the Mercury effort in the United States,

the Soviet program essentially advanced in stops and starts. From the outside, all of the missions, of course, seemed as if they were parts of a well-planned program, but in truth the missions were formulated as the project advanced. Vague plans for the second piloted Vostok flight

dated back to early 1961, when conceptions were focused on a daylong mission. These ideas

were the subject of vigorous discussion at the Sochi resort on the Black Sea in mid-May, where

Korolev, his wife, all the cosmonauts, physicians, Air Force officers, and cosmonaut trainers

140. The first OKB-I branch was located at Ostashkov-3 on the island of Gorodomlya, where the German

scientists captured after the war developedtheir own missile proposals.This subsidiary, called OKB-I BranchNo. I,

was established in 1957 to design gyroscopes, SeeMargarita Shii, "Secrets of Island N: What Are They Doing on

the Island of Gorodomlya? Some Say They Are Producing Bacteriological Weapons, Others--Strategic Missiles"

(English title), Nouoye uremya 30 (july 1993): 16-17. A second subsidiary, OKB-I Branch No. 2, was established

on June 4, 1959, at Plant No. 1001 in Krasnoyarsk-26, under the leadership of Deputy Chief Designer M. F.

Reshetnev,to overseethe manufacturing of the R-9 ICBM. On December 18, 1961,the branch was formally sepa

rated from OKB-I and became the independent OKB-I0. Its initial focus was design and manufacturing oversight

over ICBMs. but in 1962, it began to design and develop its own satellites. In later years, as NPO Prikaldnoy

mekhaniki, it became one of the largest developersof satellites in the world, focusing primarily on communications

satellites. SeeS Golotyuk. "Anniversaries: After Thirty Yearsand a Thousand Satellites (On the Anniversary of the

Launch of the FirstSpacecraft Developedat the NPO Applied Mechanicsat Krasnoyarsk-26" (English title), Nouosti

kosmonautiki 17 (August 13-26, 1994): 42-43. The third subsidiary of OKB-t was establishedat Kuybyshevto pro

duce the R-7 ICBM On April 3. 1958, the manufacturing of the missile was moved to the StateAviation Plant No.

I. Lateron July 23. 1959.the Serial Design Department No. 25 was established on the premisesof the plant to over

see R 7 manufacturing and upgrades.On July 17. 1960,this department became OKB-I Branch No. 3 under the

leadership of Deputy Chief Designer D I. Kozlov. The latter had earlier served asthe "lead designer" of the R-5 and

R-7 missiles SeeV. M. Drebkova. "On the Anniversary of the TsSKB" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 15 (July

16-29. 1994): 43-44. An additional branch, although not designated as such, was established on July 3, 1959, at

Kaliningrad at the former Central Scientific-ResearchInstitute No. 58 (TsNII-58). It was headed by OKB-I Deputy

Chief Designer K. D. Bushuyev. SeeSemenov,ed, Raketno.KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 633.

I41. A. V. Ponomarev. "24 April--20 Years From the Launch of the First Chinese Rocket-Carrier 'Long

March t' with the Satellite China-I'" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 64 (1990): 30-33.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIIq

went on a well-earned vacation after Gagarin's mission. In the process of formulating plans for

the following mission, discussions ended in a deadlock as Korolev insisted that the flight last

a complete day. On the other side, Kamanin, the biomedicine specialists, and the cosmonauts

themselves were inclined toward a more modest three- to four-orbit flight with a landing in

eastern Soviet Union. Buoyed by the success of Gagarin, and unwilling to carry out what he

saw as only an incremental advance, Korolev refused to back down. Unknown to anyone present at Sochi, Korolev was so sure that his one-day proposal would be approved that he had

already summoned Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev to Sochi to begin preparations for the

longer plan. '_

The conflict eventually spilled over to the General Staff level within the Soviet Air Force,

which had nominal control over the cosmonauts. Air Force Deputy Commander-in-Chief

Agaltsov convened a meeting in June with some of the most prominent physicians in the space

medicine field: Oleg G. Gazenko, Nikolay N. Gurovskiy, Norair M. Sisakyan, Vasiliy V. Parin,

Vladimir I. Yazdovskiy, Yevgeniy M. Yuganov, and others. Also in attendance were the six core

cosmonauts and Cosmonaut Training Center Director Karpov. All the physicians unanimously

supported the triple-orbit (or five-hour) option; even Gagarin, who had recently been named

the commander of the cosmonaut group, offered his full support. When Korolev heard the

news, he was indignant. The matter was eventually taken to the ministerial level and decided

by State Committee for Defense Technology Chairman Smirnov. Korolev had his way: the mission was planned for a full twenty-four hours and seventeen orbits. '43

Titov, Gagarin's backup for the first mission, was considered a natural choice for the flight.

Said to have been a much more sophisticated and worldly person than the shy and uncomplicated Gagarin, Titov was one of the most well-read and astute cosmonauts on the team, as

adept as quoting Hemingway as he was in the technical arcana of rocketry. His individualistic

streak lent itself to many a conflict with the cosmonaut physicians, who were as notorious in

their search for problems to bar candidates from flight as the ones in the United States. In

selecting Titov's own backup, the most likely choice would have been Nelyubov, but Titov

apparently had been irritated by Nelyubov's constant wishes to move ahead in the cosmonaut

roster. Kamanin dropped him from consideration and instead moved in Nikolayev as the backup. This would be the first of many times that Nelyubov would be the center of a "personality conflict." In early June 1961, a new State Commission, headed by Smirnov, convened to

discuss details of the flight, tentatively approving Titov and Nikolayev as the likely candidates.

The launch was provisionally set for August, only two months later. '4_

Once all the parties agreed on the length of the mission, Keldysh, Korolev, Kamanin, and

Mozzhorin signed a detailed technical document on mission objectives on July 7, 1961. '45The

primary goal of the mission would be the accomplishment of an orbital piloted space mission

lasting seventeen orbits with a landing on the start of the eighteenth. In addition, six specific

objectives were listed:

142. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos,p. 56: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 666.

143. Golovanov, Koroleu. pp. 667-68. Gagarin had been appointed commander of the military unit no.

26266 (the cosmonaut team) on May 25, 196I, SeeSergeyA. Voevodin. VS,Zt053.October 23, 1994, newsletter on

the Internet.

144. Golovanov, Koroleu. p. 666; William Shelton, _C, oulet Space Exploration: The first Decade (New York:

Washington Square Press, 1968), pp. 102-04: iqleksandr Romanov,Koroleu (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1996).

p. 420.

145. This document has been reproduced in full as M. V. Keldysh, S. P.Korolev, N. P.Kamanin, and Yu. A

Mozzhorin, "On the Flight of the 'Vostok-2' Space Ship" (English title), in _vduyevskiy and Eneyev,eds.. M _/

Keldysh: izbrannyye trudi, pp. 418-20.

291
292

• Research on a human conducting extended flight in orbit and landing

• Verifying the possibility of accomplishing manual orientation of the spacecraft and evaluating the possibility of return with the use of manual control

• Research on the working capabilities of a human in conditions of extended stay in a state

of weightlessness

• Performing direct communications with ground points by the Zarya radio-telephone line

• The use of a film camera aboard the spacecraft by the pilot

• Observations via the porthole with the aid of simple optical instruments '4_

Various emergency modes of landing were also described in the document.

The timing of the mission was the source of some unusual dynamics. In mid-July,

Khrushchev had invited Korolev and a number of other prominent chief designers to meet with

him during a vacation in Crimea. Korolev told the Soviet leader that a second Vostok mission was

under preparation. At the end of the meeting, Khrushchev casually added that Titov's launch

should occur no later than P,ugust 10. '4` Korolev assured him that this would be so, although at

the time he clearly had no understanding of why Khrushchev would make such an unusual

request. Later, in mid-/_ugust, the reason was absolutely clear: the building of the Berlin Wall

began on August 13, and Khrushchev had wanted to give the socialist world something of a moral

boost at a time of great crisisJ 4_While it was not the first case in which Khrushchev had suggested a particular time for a specific launch, it was clearly the first occasion in which the launch

of a mission was timed to play a major role in the implementation of Soviet foreign policy.

There was some concern about the launch date because of heavy solar activity in mid-July,

but these storms abated soon after, and the flight was set to start on P,ugust 6. In much the

same way as for the earlier flight, the cosmonauts arrived at Tyura-Tam a few days prior and

were present at various State Commission meetings to review the course of launch preparations. There was only a minor hitch during prelaunch operations when there was a leak in the

core stage of the booster--a problem that was swiftly handled by Korolev's Deputy

Voskresenskiy. On the morning of t_ugust 6, Titov and Nikolayev were taken by bus to the pad

at site I. ggain, formalities and farewell speeches were kept to a minimum. With an exclamatory "She's off and running!," the twenty-five-year-old Major German S. Titov lifted off at

0900 hours Moscow Time on top of a thundering 8K72K booster and headed straight for orbit

from the steppes of Kazakhstan. Orbital insertion occurred without problem. Unlike Gagarin's

flight, booster performance was nominal, and the spacecraft, renamed Vostok 2, reached its

slated 178- by 257-kilometer orbit inclined at 64.93 degrees. Immediately after entering orbit,

Titov began to feet disoriented. As he later described, he felt as he was flying upside down, as

if he was turning in a somersault with his legs up. He recalled that he was in a "strange fog,"

unable to identify Earth from the sky or to read his instrument panel. '4_Titov apparently tried

146. The cosmonaut would havethe opportunity to makean independent decision to land by using the orientation system manually on the fourth, fifth, and seventeenth orbits. The spacecraft could be automatically

returned on the third or sixth orbit. If landing at the beginning of the eighteenth orbit failed, then the pilot would

havethe opportunity to land by manual orientation on eachof the nineteenth to twenty-second orbits.

147. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu:tom 2, pp. 124-25.

148. Korolev's FirstDepuW Mishin later also confirmed that the Vostok 2 mission was timed to coincide with

the construction of the Berlin Wall. SeeG. Salakhutdinov, "Once More About Space" (English title), Ogonek 34

(August 18-25, 1990): 4-5.

149 Golovanov, Koroleu, pp. 672-73: Shelton, Soviet Space Exploration. p. II 7: Riabchikov, Russians in

Space. p. 163: Smolders. Soviets in Space.pp. 117-18.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAGARIN

The State Commission for the Vostok 2 mission is shown here before the launch of cosmonaut _erman Titov In

the front row from the left are .Ztcademy of Sciences President Mstislav Keldysh, State Commission Chairman

Leonid Smirnov. Chief Designer Serge), Korolev. and Chief Designer Vladimir Barmin. (copyright Christian Lardier)

moving sharply in his seat to clear his head, but the upside-down feelings remained. The

unpleasant sensations continued to grow, and by the second orbit, he even briefly contemplated asking permission to return to Earth. Aerospace medicine specialists had predicted such

sensations for several years, based on research on the inner ear. Doctors believed that otoliths,

minute bone concretions that press against the wall of the inner ear as a result of graviW and

pass on information on posture, would not provide the same indications to the brain in microgravity, thus causing spatial disorientation.

Doctors on the ground were aware of the situation on the spacecraft from pneumographic,

electrocardiographic, and kinetocardiographic sensors on Titov, and on the third orbit, they

inquired about his general physical and psychological condition. Titov, resistant to alarm people on the ground, reported, "Everything is in order." P,s per his preflight instructions, he decided to take his first meal in space at the time of his sixth orbit, a three-course lunch in paste

form delivered in tubes. Television pictures beamed to the ground showed Titov with his soup

puree, liver p_t_, and black currant jam in plastic dispensers. The cosmonaut, who was still reeling from feelings of nausea, elected not to eat much, and only squeezed some black currant

juice into his mouth, which eventually made him vomit. Later, he also ate a small piece of bread

and peas with added vitamins and drank some water. The meal was, however, extremely unappetizing to the still-suffering cosmonaut, and he took the opportunity to rest for a short while

before conducting experiments, manually firing the attitude control jets on the spacecraft. It

was the first such experiment on a Soviet space vehicle, and Titov encountered no problems

during the two occasions he took over manual control, on the first and seventh orbits of his

mission. He was scheduled to begin his sleep period at the end of the seventh orbit, but as he

293
294

later reported, "1 was having a difficult time maintaining a sense of balance.' .... Kamanin

recalled in his diaries that the scope of Titov's discomfort was fairly serious and included "vertigo, nausea, aches in the head and eyes, disorders of the vestibular system, [and] loss of

appetite.' .... At 181.5 hours, he passed over Moscow and reported, "Now I'm going to lie down

and sleep. You can think what you want, but I'm going to sleep. '''_ Sleep rules necessitated

that his helmet visor be closed at all times, but Titov was feeling incredibly stuffy inside his helmet, and feared that if he had to vomit, it might pose a hazard. He attached a piece of string

to immediately jerk open the visor in case of an emergency while asleep.

Except for two minor incidents of waking up (on the tenth and eleventh orbits), Titov rested peacefully. He overslept by about thirty-five minutes, waking at 0237 hours on August 7 on

his twelfth orbit. Contrary to most Western reports, the hapless cosmonaut felt just as worse

after waking up: he still felt worn out and had a headache. He tried some cursory experiments.

such as handwriting, opening and shutting his eyes, and testing coordination, and he was

encouraged to observe that his reflexes were much better than during the first portion of the

flight, although the "strange fog" was still with him. He also drank a little liquid chocolate, but

immediately regurgitated what little food he had in his stomach. Having reached the nadir of

his daylong excursion into space, for inexplicable reasons, at the end of his twelfth orbit, he

suddenly began to feel better. With each passing minute, his outlook on the mission began to

improve, and by the later orbits, he was completely functional and fully fit. _5_

Among the experiments that he did manage to conduct included the use of the special

Konuas movie camera to take a ten-minute-long movie of Earth's horizon when both entering

and exiting from Earth's shadow. Despite a malfunctioning exposure meter, the results of the

experiment were fairly impressive, and they were later published in the Soviet media amid much

fanfare. He also used a special optical sight named Zritel, which provided magnifications of three

to five times over the naked eye. Internal TV cameras were improved from Gagarin's mission. Of

the two cameras, one had a resolution of 400 lines over the 100 lines on the first Vostok. Both

had a capacity of ten pictures per second. Another difference with the Gagarin capsule was the

use of a new cabin atmosphere regeneration system. There were no major technical anomalies

during the orbital phase of the mission, although at one point the temperature apparently

dropped to ten degrees Centigrade. Engineers later found that both the primary and backup cooling fans had been inadvertently turned on at launch, thus causing the cool temperatures. '_

The reentry was as traumatic as the first Vostok mission. After retrofire, Titov heard a loud

crack, indicating that the two compartments of the spacecraft had separated. Soon after, however. he heard a light rapping sound and realized that the instrument section was still attached

to the spherical descent apparatus by means of several straps. In a situation uncannily similar

to Gagarin's return, the two wobbling modules reentered Earth's atmosphere, with the instrument section eventually burning up.'" Titov ejected safely from his capsule and landed without further incident at 1018 hours near the village of Krasniy Kut in the Saratovskaya Oblast

after a record flight of one day, one hour, ar_i eleven minutes.

The young cosmonaut was in a fit of euphoria after landing, and on the flight back to

Kuybyshev for the postflight briefing, he talked excitedly of his flight. To the alarm of accompanying doctors, he opened up a beer and downed it quickly in complete violation of postflight

codes. At the briefing, Titov was candid about all the problems he had encountered, describso Shelton, Souiet SpaceExploration, p. 12I.

51. L. Kamanin. "Work in the FirstTwo Years:Space Diary" (English title), Prauda. April 8, 1991,p. 2.

52. Riabchikov,Russians in Space,p. 168.

53 Golovanov,Korolev. pp 673-74.

54 Kamanin, Skryhy kosrnos, p 84.

55 Golovanov, Koroleu,p. 674.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
GAG&RIN

mg in great detail his experience with motion sickness. None of this was, of course, reported

publicly at the time. In later summaries of the mission, Soviet journalists downplayed the extent

to which Titov had suffered from discomfort during the flight. It was said that Korolev himself

had been greatly perturbed by Titov's experience. At the time, there was little unanimity in the

causes of his sickness. Some physicians were inclined to attribute the problems to the length

of the mission, others to Titov's particular physiological makeup. Clearly, it raised the concerns

of both engineers and physicians on proceeding with longer missions. Titov himself suffered

no permanent effects of his tribulations, and like Gagarin before him, he was sent off on a requisite world trip, a traveling advertisement for the Soviet Union. By the end of 1961, Gagarin

and Titov, escorted by Kamanin, had visited Afghanistan, Brazil, Canada, Ceylon, Cuba,

Czechoslovakia, India, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, with many more

countries to come in 1962.

It seems that the trials o[ dealing with instant fame caught up with both these young men.

They were both severely disciplined at a Communist Party meeting on November 14 for

"acknowledged cases of excessive drinking, loose behavior towards women, and other offenses."'_° In what seems to have been a case of womanizing, in mid-October, Gagarin jumped out

of a window of a young woman's room at a resort when his wife came knocking. He sustained

a severe injury on his forehead, which left him in a hospital for a while. All photos of the cosmonaut past that point show a deep scar over his left eye. Gagarin later explained to the Soviet

press that he had fallen down while playing with his daughter, adding "it will heal.., before

my next space flight." '_

As the scars of the Soviet space program remained hidden, the public face was a massive

propaganda juggernaut aimed at consolidating the image of the Communist Party. In 1961, the

Soviets had reason to exult. They had launched two men into orbit, the second [or a full day,

opening the era of human spaceflight. On the other side, the United States had little reason to

celebrate. The first American in space, thirty-eight-year-old Navy Lt. Commander Alan B.

Shepard, Jr., was launched on May .5, 1961, in a Mercury spacecraft. '_ Whereas Gagarin had

flown a complete orbit, twenty-three days later, all NASA could manage was a fifteen-minute,

twenty-two-second suborbital hop into space. A second similar flight in July by Major Virgil I.

Grissom II was meager consolation. The Soviets had consistently preempted the United States

in every major endeavor in space, and Khrushchev continued to take personal credit for the

accomplishments. Soon after Titov's flight, and a week after the building of the Berlin Wall, the

official Communist Party newspaper Pravda reported:

[Khrushchev] participates in the discussion o] all the most vital experiments, directs the

development o[ the major directions o[ technical progress in the country, and the deter

ruination o[ the basic directions and establishment of genera@ planned growth o[ space

science and technology. In his able proposals, there is evidence again and again o[ the

great conviction in the triumph of Soviet rocket technology. '5_

In contrast, at least in the eyes of the world, the U,S. space program had been lacking in strong

leadership since the immediate aftermath of Sputnik.

156. Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos,p, 66.

157. Ibid.

158. LinclaNeumannEzell.NZ]S_Historical Data Book:VolumeI1:ProgrGmsand Projects1958-1968

(Washington,DC:NASASpecialPublication(SP)-4012,1988),p 143.

159. Vladimir Orlov, Pravda(August26, 1961).referencedin NicholasDaniloff. The Kremlinand the

Cosmo3(New York:AlfredA. Knopf, 1972),p. 73.

295
296

N/_S_, which was the most visible manifestation of the U.S. desire to explore space, had

formulated a long-range plan by late 1959,

which among other goals, called for "the

manned exploration of the moon and the nearby planets,' .... _ preliminary target date for the

"First launching in a program leading to manned

circumlunar flight and to [a] permanent nearearth station" was 1965-6/, while actual

"manned flight to the moon" was left to

"Beyond 1970." President Eisenhower, while

very much cognizant that a vigorous space race

with the Soviet Union had emerged, was clearly

unwilling to commit resources to win it at any

cost. This impasse changed dramatically by the

early spring of 1961 as a new Democratic

President, John F. Kennedy, and a new NASA

Administrator, James E. Webb, took up their

responsibilities. Spurred and shocked once again

Second cosmonaut Qerrnan Titov (right) appears

with N_SA astronaut john Glenn and President john

Kennedy at the White House in 1962 The twenty

live-year-old Titov was the youngest person to ever

go into space--u record that still stands to this day

(files of ,Z]sifSiddiqi)

by Gagarin's triumphant single-orbit mission, a flurry of activity ensued, prompted by a memorandum on April 20 in which Kennedy asked Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson for recommendations on activities in space that would provide "dramatic results" and a chance to beat

the Soviets. '_'/_fter intensive discussion among representatives of N/qSP,, the U.S. Department

of Defense, members of Congress, industry, and academia, Johnson's report was formally

accepted by Kennedy during a meeting on May I0, five days after Shepard's launch. The report

included a call for an unprecedented acceleration of US. efforts to explore space, specifically

"to pursue projects aimed at enhancing national prestige."'_2Based on this report, Kennedy

declared a national objective for the U.S. space program at an unusual second "State of the

Union" address to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961. In perhaps the most important public policy statement in the history of U.S. space exploration, Kennedy told his audience of a new nationwide program that would restore U.S. prestige:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade

is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space

project in this period wi(l be so difficu[t or expensive to achieve. '_

160 Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, "The Long Range Plan of the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration," December 16, 1959, with excerpts published as Document III 2 in John M kogsdon, gen.

ed.. with Linda J. Lear.JannelleWarren Findley,Ray A. Williamson, and Dwayne A Day, Exploring the Unknown:

Selected Documents in the History of the U.S Civil Space Program, Volume I Organizing [or Exploration

(Washington, DC: NASA SP-4407), pp 403-07.

161. John F.Kennedy. Memorandum for Vice President,April 20, 1961,published as Document III 6 in ibid,

I: 423-24.

162. James E. Webb, NAS_qAdministrator, and Robert S. McNamara. Secretary of Defense, to the Vice

President, May 8, 1961, with attached: "Recommendations for Our National Space Program: Changes, Policies,

Goals." published as Document III-I in ibid., I: 439-52.

163 U. S. Congress, SenateCommittee on Aeronautical and SpaceSciences, Documents on International

_qspectsoI the Exploration and Useso/Outer Space, 1934-1962, 88th Cong.. Ist sess..S. Doc. 18 (Washington.

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963), pp. 202-04.

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
GAGARII_I

Kennedy's speech on May 25, 196I, was a declaration of a national objective: there was

no explicit indication in the language that the United States would have to get to the Moon

first, only that an American should stand on the Moon before January I, 1970. But implicit in

his declaration was also a challenge--a challenge not only to "every scientist, every engineer,

every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant" to harness capabilities in this

great endeavor, but also a challenge to the Soviet Union itself.

From the Soviet perspective, this challenge was not perceived as such. From the beginning

of the space era, the Soviets had been in the position to make the challenges, with the spectacular launches of a plethora of Sputniks, Lunas, and Vostoks. Given the rigorous secrecy that pervaded their space efforts, it would have been unusual for them to announce these projects in

advance. Every challenge was manifested in hardware, in launches, and in accomplishments.

The speeches came afterwards. The United States, of course, also responded with hardware, but

all of them--Vanguard, Explorer, and Mercury--paled in the eyes of the public to Soviet accomplishments. Thus for the Soviet Union, on May 25, 196I, the dimensions of the space race

changed little. Kennedy's speech was in fact not even widely reported in the Soviet media, and

few in the space program took notice. 6'_There were no major reassessments of Soviet goals and

plans for space exploration. It was, after all, only a speech, and in the mind of the Soviet citizen, speeches were better left to celebrate victories, not plans for victories. What was a momentous occasion in US. space policy thus passed without a response in the Soviet Union. The

Soviets never guessed that regardless of Kennedy's own commitment to space exploration, the

wheels of a mammoth and well-oiled machine had been set into motion--one that would eventually humiliate the great Soviet space program of Sputnik and Vostok.

164 Interview,GeorgiyStepanovichVetrovwith the author.November15,1996.

297

I

CHAPTER EIGHT

LOOKING TO

THE FUTURE

There is a tendency in the Western discourse on the Soviet space program to make repeated allusions to "the Soviets." It was always the generic "Soviets" who decided on a particular

goal or the "Soviets" who launched a satellite, while in the United States, one could comfortably write about Nt3Sg or the Department of Defense. In the face of pervasive secrecy, the inner

workings of the program were as unknown as the secrets of the cosmos itself. It was as if there

was a monolithic structure located in some far away place, an almost mythological quantity,

which ran a program of gargantuan proportions. To a great degree, this myth has remained a

fundamental characteristic of the Western writing on the history of the Soviet space program,

some of it perhaps derived from the cultural divide in language, custom, and history that separated the Soviet Union from the rest of the world during the Cold War. What this myth did

was to obscure a story of fallible people seeped in battles that were all too human. It was never

"the Soviets" who made decisions or launched Sputniks, nor was it one single person either.

Like any other scientific endeavor, there were different individuals and institutions with varying

motivations and histories vying for the same resources. And having reached the absolute zenith

of its trajectory in 1961, the Soviet space program was now to face a different kind of batt]e--

one among institutions and individuals. This battle irrevocably altered the course of the Soviet

space program.

Chelomey's Reach for Space

The official government decrees in June 1960 were the green light for Vladimir Chelomey's

grand entrance into the space program. Khrushchev, perhaps dazzled by Chelomey's sophisticated ways, or simply favoring his son's employer, continued to maintain his unabated support

for OKB-52, which grew at an unprecedented pace. This expansion was also abetted by the

economic depression in the aviation sector, as numerous design bureaus had to postpone or

terminate projects. In fact, with the singular exception of OKB-52, all aviation design entities

were forced to curb their efforts. Taking advantage of such an unusual situation, Chelomey literally gobbled up organizations one after another.

The first to come under the Chelomey umbrella was Myasishchev's former OKB-23, which

had been attached to OKB-52 in October 1960 as the latter's Branch No. I. Production at its

associated giant factory, the M. V. Khrunichev Machine Building Plant (ZIKh) located in the Fill

suburb of Moscow, was now redirected toward manufacturing for Chelomey's various projects.

g second factory, Plant No. 642 in Moscow, which briefly series-produced Chelomey's naval

cruise missiles, was made the new Branch No. 2 in March 1963 under DepuW General Designer

299
300

Vladimir M. Baryshev.' The facility was used herein for designing ground equipment for various

missiles and spacecraft operations.

Another acquisition was more notable: OKB-301 headed by General Designer Semyon A.

Lavochkin, one of the most renowned aviation organizations in the Soviet Union. The beginning of the decade was not a good time for this design bureau. In February 1960, the Soviet

government canceled work on the La-350 Burya intercontinental cruise missile. Four months

later, Lavochkin was dead of a heart attack. Chelomey took advantage of this weak position.

Within days of Lavochkin's death, he invited thirty of the senior-most engineers from OKB-301

--the so-called "brain" of the organization--to work for him in Reutov at his own design

bureau. Among the relocated individuals was Naum S. Chernyakov, the lead designer for the

Burya missile, and N. A. Kheyfits, a well-known pioneer of high-speed flight in the Soviet

Union, who was no doubt an asset to Chelomey's burgeoning dreams of winged reusable space

vehicles/

The former Lavochkin design bureau's fortunes continued to decline. In 1962, the Soviet

military finally terminated the remaining work on the Dal air defense network for the city of

Leningrad. With nowhere to go, OKB-301 finally succumbed to Chelomey's growing power.

The Chief of the Defense Industries Department, Ivan D. Serbin, a powerful Chelomey supporter in the Central Committee, agreed to Chelomey's request to take over the entire design

bureau. By an executive order dated December 18, 1962, the old Lavochkin bureau at Khimki

became the new OKB-52 Branch No. 3)

These various absorptions allowed Chelomey to spread out all of his work from the central

Reutov branch. With a larger number of engineers and more facilities, he was able to take on

an incredibly wide range of military work that ran the gamut from naval cruise missiles to

ICBMs to spacecraft. By the end of 1962, in terms of personnel, the OKB-52 empire was, in

fact, far larger than Korolev's OKB-l, the founder of the Soviet space program?

Chelomey's claims on the space program were to be effected in five different thematic

directions. These were the development of:

I, Plant No. 642 was the location of KB-2 between 1946 and 195t and GSNII 642 between 1951 and

1958. In 1958,GSNII 642 was closed down, and its plant was eventually tasked with producing Chelomey's P-25

naval cruise missile in 1961and 1962.The new OKB-52 Branch No. 2 was established at Plant No. 642 on the basis

of a department for ground equipment for missiles and spacecraft transferred from OKB 52s Branch No I This

department was transferred in March 1963. See M Tarasenko, "35 Yearsfor the OKB Wympel'" (English title).

Nouosti kosmonautiki 8 (1998): 43-44: Aleksandr Shirokorad, "Rakety nad morem." Tekhnika i uooruzhemye no 6

(November-December 1997): I 80: Christian Lardier, "10 Years of Soviet Ramjets," presented at the 48th

International Astronautical Federation,IAg-97-bqA.2.3,03, Turin, Italy, October 6-10, 1997.

2 Sergey Khrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu krizisy i fakery uzglyad iznutri: tom 2 (Moscow: Novosti.

1994). pp. 42-44: YarostavGolovanov, "The 'Burya' Which Did Not BreakOut" (English titie). Komsomotskaya

prauda, March 18, 1998, p. 3. Among the individuals transferred from OKB-301 were Acting General Designer N. S.

Chernyakov, Fedorov, Kheyfits, and Yefimov See also Mikhail Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes"

(English title). Vozdushniytransport 41 (1995): 8-9. Note that in the last source, the transfer is incorrectly said to

have taken place in May 1958.

3. Christian Lardier. LT]stronautique Soui_tique (Paris: grmand Colin. 1992), p, 152, OKB 52 Deputy

General Designer A. I, Eidis was appointed to head Branch No, 3 at the time The branch was to aid in the development of the P-25 surface-launched anti-ship missile, the P-I0 Ametist submarine-launched anti-ship missile, the

"IS" anti-satellite, and the "US" ocean reconnaissancesatellite programs.SeeS. M. Ganin and V. I. Ivanovskiy, "The

Multi-channel 'Dal' Anti-Aircraft Missile Systemof Great Range" (English title), Neuskiy bastion no. I ( 1998): 7-15:

Shirokorad. "Rakety nad morem."

4. Theremay havebeena fourth addition to OKB-52 at the time. NIl-2, headed by V. A. Dzhaparidze,was

said to have been attached to Chelomey's design bureau sometime in the early 1960s Seegndrey Tarasov,"Space

Science of the Future: SeLectionof Paths and Orbits" (English title), Prauda. May 17, 1990, p 3. In addition, the

design bureau also had production affiliates at Dubna and Saratov.See Gerbert Ateksandrovich Yefremov. "NPO

Mashinostroyeniya is Moving Into the High-Technology Market" (English title). Vooruzheniye.politlka, konuersiya

3(10) (1995): 31-37.

CHALLENGE TO Jl_POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

• • i_ series of new boosters to serve as ICBMs and space launch vehicles

• An automated anti-satellite system

• An automated ocean reconnaissance system

• Spaceplanes for the exploration of near-Earth space

• Spaceplanes for lunar and interplanetary space

The centerpiece of his expanding move into the space sector was the first "theme," specifically the UR-200 ICBM, which the Soviet space leadership approved for preliminary development in June 1960 The Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued supplementary

decrees on its development on March 16 and August I, 1961. _ In a move no doubt intended to

ensure full support for the OR-200 project. Chelomey offered up the booster first as a new generation ICBM and then as a space launch vehicle Chelomey, unlike Korolev, was also not resistant to using hypergolic storable propellants for the missile, thus pacifying powers in the

Strategic Missile Forces who were initially alarmed by Chelomey's rapid encroachment into the

missile business from the aviation sector

As Chelomey's reach expanded, he also farmed out his own projects to the OKB-52

branches. While his leading deputies would maintain overall design supervision of particular

vehicles, detailed design work would be undertaken by engineers at the branches• In the case

of the UR-200, Chelomey gave the project to his new Branch No. I at Fill: with Myasishchev

now gone, the engineers there resigned themselves to Chelomey's new projects and, in fact,

went on to produce some of the most important Soviet space vehicles. The UR-200, formerly

called the R-200, was a two-stage vehicle with a total launch mass of 138 tons. Payload capability to low-Earth orbit was limited to four tons, making it somewhat of a light launch vehicle, which is exactly what Chelomey had in mind. Overall length was thirty-five meters with

a base diameter of three meters. In its ICBM version, the missile would carry a single warhead

ranging from hve to fifteen megatons over 10,000-12,000 kilometers. ° Instead of Glushko's

engines, which were standard for all long-range Soviet ballistic missiles, Chelomey contracted

an aviation organization, OKB-154 headed by Chief Designer Semyon Kosberg, to design the

new engines for the rocket. It was another step forward into the space business for Kosberg,

whose first successful contribution to the Soviet space program was to design the upper stage

engines for boosters that had launched the Lunas and Vostoks into orbit." All the engines for

the UR-200 used toxic components, specifically nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical

dimethyl hydrazine (CIDMH). _

5. I. Afanasyev, "33 Yearsfor the 'Proton' RN" (English title), No_osti kosrnonautiki I-2 (1998): 45-48

6. Mikhail Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 48-49

( 1995): 8-9: A V, Karpenko, Rossiyskiyeraketnoye oryzhiye, 1943- t9938g (St. Petersburg:PIKA. 1993), p. 12: Ye.

B. Volkov, ed., Mezhkontinentalnyye baltisticheskiye rakety SSSR(RF) i SSh/q(Moscow: RVSN, 1996), p. 322

7. The UR-200was powered by the RD-0202engine on the first stageand the RD-0205 engine on the second stage. The RD 0202 itself was composed of three RD-0203 engines and one RD-0204 engine, while the

RD-0205 was composed of the RD-0206 sustainerand RD-0207 vernier.Total first-stage thrust was about 200 tons.

The development of theseengines began in March 196I. SeeVladimir Rachuk. "Best RocketEnginesfrom Voronezh,"

Z4erospacejournal no, 6 (November December 1996): 30-33: "Engines for Combat Missiles." RussianSpaceBultetin

4(3) ( 1997): 13-15: KB KhimZtutomatiki Stranitsy istorii tom I (Voronezh: KB Khim,qvtomatiki, 1995), pp 51-54

8, Apart from use as a space launch vehicle and an ICBM the UR-200 was also the focus of two other

proposals. In July 196I, Chelomey offered up the missile asan orbital bombardment system that could drop nuclear

warheads on enemy targets from orbit, In this variant, the missile would be called the Global Missile No I (OR I).

Later in February 1962. a second proposal involved UR-200s equipped with guided ballistic warheads, which would

reenterfrom orbit and guide themselves with aerodynamic surfacesto US naval ships that were seenasa threat to

the Soviet Navy. While work on both these proposals were undertaken to a preliminary stage, like many of

Chelomey's projects, they were never tinished. SeeKhrushchev, Nikita ;<hrushcheu:tom 2. pp. 122, 155.

301
302

TheUR-200wasonlythefirststepin

Chelomey'splansforaseriesofnewICBMsand

spacelaunchvehicles.Planningat hisdesign

bureaushowedthat to meet Chelomey's more

grand plans for space exploration, he would need

a second booster that could lift as much as twenty tons into orbit. Possible payloads would

include piloted spaceplanes, space stations, and

large military payloads. In late 1960, concurrent

with the addition of Branch No. I to OKB-52,

Chelomey's deputies began preliminary planning

work on a new ICBM with a space booster that

would have a capacity for launching heavy payloads into Earth's orbit. This vehicle would eventually emerge as one of the most important

launch vehicles ever created in the Soviet space

program, the Proton booster. Chelomey picked

Pavel A. Ivensen, an old acquaintance of

Korolev's from the late 1920s, to lead the project

to develop the rocket, Ivensen, like Korolev, had

been thrown into prison in the mid-193Os, and he

was rehabilitated only in 1956. In the late 1950s,

he initially worked on high-speed reconnaissance

aircraft at the Tsybin design bureau, but the confusing series of changes in the aviation industry

led him first to the Myasishchev organization and

finally to work under Chelomey?

Chief Designer Sernyon Kosberg designed numerous

upper stage engines for Soviet space launch vehicles

He closely cooperated with Vladirnir Chelomey in

developing the UR-IO0 UR-200, and UR-500 ICBMs

(files of PeIer Gorin)

In Ivensen's preliminary research on the possible designs for the booster, he made maximal

use of technology from the smaller UR-200 as well as Myasishchev's own abandoned M-I

launch vehicle. The new rocket, designated UR-500 in design documentation, was planned

from the very beginning as a two-stage ICBM and a three-stage space launch vehicle, lqt the

time, Chelomey's engineers were closely watching the development of the American Titan I

ICBM: in many ways, the UR-500 was posited as a parallel development with similar capabilities and equivalent possibilities for turning it into a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Ivensen's team

studied a number of different possible designs for the first stage, including grouping together

four two-stage CIR-2OO rockets together with a third stage, that itself would be a modified

UR-200 second stageJ ° What emerged by 1963 was an unusual plan to cluster six long cylindrical propellant tanks around a central cylindrical tank. Unlike parallel-staged vehicles in which

each strap-on was a self-contained unit, in the UR-500, the central cylinder would carry all the

oxidizer while the tanks on the outside would carry the fuel. Thus, although it visually resembled a strap-on-type booster, the vehicle in fact had a standard tandem-type first stage with

clustered tanks. There would be a single powerful engine at the base of each tank powered by

9. G. Amiryants, "Ivensen's 'Chayka'" (English title), ,Zlviatsiyai kosmonavtika no. 4 (April 1990): 36-38:

M. Yakovenko,"The Subterranean.Earthly. and HeavenlyCreations of Ivensen" (English title), Nauka _zhizn no. 9

(September 1991): 20-2L

I0. Fordescriptionsof variousearlyconceptions of the UR-500, see/qfanasyev,"35 Yearsfor the 'Proton' RN"

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH, the same highboiling propellants as the smaller UR-200." The

diameter of the central tank was limited to just

above four meters: this was the maximum

dimension that the Soviet railway system could

accommodate for transportation from the manufacturing plant to the launch site. In its ICBM

version, the UR-500 was designed to have a

standard cylindrical second stage with four

engines: a third stage would be added in the

projected space launch vehicle version. Both

these upper stages would have design

antecedents in the smaller LIR-200 ICBM.

Chelomey's choice of storable propellants

was clearly related to his plans to use the

UR-500 as an ICBM. Such propellants, he

believed, would also significantly simplify engine

design because the components would be

hypergolic--that is, self-igniting. Having decided on the basic design scheme and the choice of

propellants, the next step was to choose a subcontractor. In late 196 I, there was only one organization in the Soviet Union designing extremely

high-thrust rocket engines for ICBMs: Glushko's

OKB-456. At the time, Chelomey was fortuitously placed to take advantage of the increasing acrimony between Korolev and Glushko,

which was beginning to incapacitate Korolev's

grander plans of space exploration. As the bicks

This shows the original variants o[ the UR-200 and

UR-500 ICBMs as conceived by Vladimir Chelomey

in the early 1960s_ (copyright Peter _orin)

ering between the two reached a critical point, Chelomey stepped in. In November 1961, he sent

a group of three senior engineers from Branch No. I on a visit to Glushko's enterprise to explore

the possibility of cooperating on the UR-500. '_ Glushko took the chance, perhaps to prove to

Korolev once again that he was not dependent on the latter for anything, and he signed an agreement to deliver to Chelomey the first-stage engines for the UR-500. In what may have been additional insult to Korolev, Glushko simply took the engines that he had offered for Korolev's giant

N 1 booster, modified them a little bit, and offered them to Chelomey. With six similar RD-253

engines firing at liftoff, the UR-500 missile would develop a total thrust of about 900 tons at

launch, far in excess of any rocket in the world at the time. '_

I I. V. A Vyrodov, M. K Mishetyan, and V. M. Petrakov, " 16July--25 YearsFromthe Time of the Start of

Operations of the 'Proton' Rocket-Carrier" (English title), /z istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 64 (1993): 58-67: G.

Maksimov, "Space Flight Support: The Proton Launch Vehicle" (English title), Auiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 8

(August 1988): 40-41. In the early version of UR-500 missile, the first stage had four powerful Glushko engines on

the core and one gimbaled low-thrust Kosbergengine on each of four strap-ons.

12. V. Petrakovand I. Afanasyev, "'Proton' Passion" (English title),/quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 4 (April

1993): 10-12: Vyrodov, Mishetyan. and Petrakov," 16 July--25 YearsFromthe Time of the Start." The individuals

who visited were D. A. Polukhin (Chief of the Complex for Engine Units). V A. Vyrodov (Lead Designerof the project), and G. D. Dermychev (Chief of the Planning Department).

13 Petrakovand Afanasyev. "'Proton' Passion"

303
3O4

Glushko was taking a gamble in agreeing to produce these engines, the first "closed cycle"

engines in the Soviet Union using storable propellants. Known in the West as "staged

combustion cycle" engines, Glushko had had little luck with such motors since the failure of

the RD-I IO in the early 1950s. P, technology demonstrator built at NII-I in 1958-59 instilled

growing confidence that the task could be accomplished. The relatively high-performance characteristics demanded by Chelomey's designers were principally because of the selection of the

closed cycle scheme, which would allow extremely high chamber pressures to be derived without losses in specific impulse, thus adding significantly to performance. Glushko addressed this

problem by installing the turbines for operating the fuel pumps inside the combustion chamber of the gas generator. During firing, the chamber would receive the full amount of oxidizer,

but only a part of the fuel. This mixture would then burn in the preliminary combustion chamber at a relatively low temperature, thus driving the turbine. Later, the combustion gas would

enter the main combustion chamber of the engine, where the remaining fuel would be added.

The resulting reaction would be a total burning of the propellant components With this

layout, power used to drive the turbines could be reduced to nonexistent levels, while combustion pressure would be dramatically increased without losses of propellant. Finally,

Glushko's feared combustion oscillations would be eliminated because of the extremely high

temperatures of burning. '4 For Soviet engine design technology, this would be a new step forward: Chelomey, ever the ambitious scientist, took the idea and banked his future on it.

For the upper stages, Chelomey contracted Kosberg once again. The engines slated for the

second and third stages of the UR-500 were, in fact, very similar to the ones earmarked for the

first two stages of the smaller UR-200 booster. '_ In effect, the larger UR-500 was simply a new

huge first stage with a thinner version of the UR-200 (albeit with modified engines) sitting on

top of it. This sort of design decision, whereby "each of [their] launch vehicles was supposed to

become part of a more powerful one," was a conscious design strategy of the Chelomey people. who held the belief that incremental testing of components separately was a more pragmatic

idea in the face of technological and manufacturing limitations of the Soviet defense industry. '_

Thus, by extension, there were even preliminary plans at the time to use the UR-500 itself as the

upper stages of an even bigger booster, one to launch hundreds of tons into Earth's orbit.

The development of the large UR-500 booster advanced very quickly along with work on

the UR_200 and Chelomey's first automated satellite projects, the "IS" anti-satellite system and

the "US" naval reconnaissance system. During a meeting with Khrushchev in February 1962 at

the vacation resort of Pitsunda, Chelomey for the first time acquainted the Soviet leader with

the UR-500 proposal. In a perfect example of how chief designers went about "selling" their

space projects to the Soviet leadership, Chelomey introduced the UR-500 not as a space launch

14 Peter Stache, Souiet Rockets, Foreign Technology Division Translation, FTD-ID(RS)T0619-88 (from

unnamed source). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,Dayton, Ohio, November 29. 1988, p. 405 This is a translation

of Peter Stache.5otujetischer Raketen(Berlin: Militarverlad der DDR, 1987)

15. In the initial variant of the UR-500. the second stage consisted of three RD-O208engines and one

RD-O209engine Each had a vacuum thrust of about sixty tons. When the three-stagevariant of the UR-SO0was

introduced, new engines were used on the second stage:three RD-0210 engines and one RD-O211engine. Forthe

three-stageUR-500 (called UR S00K), the third stagewould be equipped with a single RD-0212 engine, which consisted o[ the primary RD-0213 engine and the RD-0214 verniers. Total vacuum thrust would be sixty-two tons. See

T Varfolomeyev, "Readers'Letters: On Rocket Enginesfrom the KB of S. A Kosberg, and Carriers on Which They

Were installed" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 26 (December 18-31, 1993): 46-48: KB KhimZtutomatiki tom

I. pp 54-55

16. The quote is from Dmitriy Khrapovitskiy. ",qbsolutely Unclassified: The Ground Waves of Space

Politics" (English title), Soyuz 15 {_qpril1990): 15.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

vehicle, but as a super-powerful ICBM named the GR-2, capable of launching warheads of thirty megatons at the enemy. The warhead would be launched into Earth orbit and eventually deorbited at the appropriate time to reach the target. Military-Industrial Commission Chairman

Ustinov, who loathed Chelomey. was categorically against the idea. In the end. Khrushchev, perhaps dazzled by the booster's military applications and persuaded by aviation "minister"

Dementyev's arguments, agreed to the proposal, asking both Ustinov and Dementyev to draw

up the necessary documents for moving ahead with the project. '7 Less than three months later,

on April 29, 1962, the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee issued a decree formally approving the UR-500 ICBM and space launch vehicle. _ Within a month. Chelomey's engineers froze the final design scheme of the vehicle. The rocket, in its various models, would be

ready in three years. While the principal design of the vehicle would be focused at Branch No.

I, manufacturing would be undertaken at the giant M. V. Khrunichev Machine Building Plant.

which was essentially at Chelomey's disposal by this time. '_

The UR-200 and UR-500 boosters were only the means by which Chelomey intended to

undertake his assault into space. The actual payloads would consist of a variety of different

sized spacecraft for a wide array of goals. From Chelomey's own perspective, perhaps the most

important projects he worked on during the early t 960s were his spaceplanes, subsumed under

two different thematic directions, the Kosmoplan and the Raketoplan. The research on the

Raketoplan-Kosmoplan theme was evidently conducted in a remarkably haphazard manner.

Sergey N. Khrushchev, the Soviet leader's son who was the deputy chief of a department at

OKB-52, recalled later Chelomey's idiosyncratic behavior regarding the Kosmoplan-Raketoplan

themes:

[He would say] "let's try to make the Kosmoplan using nuclear engines." and then in two

weeks there would be another idea. some [more] drawings, some [more] calculations.

and then he would say that, "No, this is crazy, it'll never work, forget about it... let's

try plasma [engines] and this time we'll [I)1 to Mars! _

Irrespective of Chelomey's own whims, the project was real, and hardware was built. It

would, in fact. not be an overstatement to say that of all Chelomey's space-related projects

through his long career, the spaceplane work held the greatest emotional resonance for him. He

would pursue this dream almost continuously unabated for close to a quarter of a century.

Funding for preliminary research on the Kosmoplan-Raketoplan theme was approved in the

same June 1960 government decree that accelerated the Soviet space program on a wide range

of thematic directions/' The degree of state commitment to these ambitious projects remains

open to interpretation, but a few recollections suggest that it was significant. Georgiy N.

Pashkov, a Deputy Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission, recalled in t989 that:

17. Khrushchev, Hikita Khrushchev tom 2, pp. 157-58.

18. Vyrodov. Mishetyan, and Petrakov, "16 july--25 Years From the Time of the Start"; Petrakov and

Afanasyev, "'Proton' Passion."

19. Previously named the State Aviation Plant No. 23, the plant was renamed the M. V Khrunichev

Machine Building Plant in July 1961 soon after the death of M. V. Khrunichev, the former Minister of Aviation

Industry.

20. Telephone interview, SergeyNikitich Khrushchev by the author, October 10, 1996

2 I. Anatoliy Kirpil and Olga Okara, "Designer of SpacePlanes Vladimir Chetomey Dreamed of Creating a

Space Fleetof Rocket Planes" {English title), Nezauisimaya gazeta. July 5, 1994, p. 6. The authors state in the article. "In 1960 the government of the USSRdecided to develop a rocketplane design at OKB 52."

305
306

•.. at the time [1960-61] a decision was taken that, in actuality, shifted the "firms" of

S. P Korolev and M K. )'angel from primary to secondary roles. There appeared two

projects which were given preference over all the others• Zlecording to the author of the

idea [Chelomey]. the first apparatus was planned for ensuring flight in near-Earth space

[the Raketoplan], and the second, flight from planet to planet [the Kosmoplan]. Both

apparatus were to be [urnished with appropriately shaped wings, and each would have

the capability to land at any assigned airport• I was astonished the author was undertaking to prepare the project in three years. Naturally, on the orders of Nikita

Sergeyeuich Khrushchev, he was immediately allocated the means, and large projects in

which major work had already been started were stripped [o[ their support]. In short,

starting in 1961 our rocket-space industry began to be subsumed by confusion, which

left us dearly stalled/_

Funding for the research was coming from the Ministry of Defense, in particular the Soviet

/qir Force, which had watched two of its most promising spaceplane projects, from Tsybin and

Myasishchev, canceled one after another/' The tqir Force was banking on the success of the

effort, perhaps seeing in the program its means to counter the dominance of the Strategic

Missile Forces. As with most military endeavors, dissension existed within the Air Force on the

idea itself: some were more prone to ally themselves with Korolev's more traditional spacecraft

designs, arguing that there was a greater chance of success, while others were reluctant to let

go of winged conceptions and thus put their support with Chelomey. :4 At various points during the early 1960s, the Soviet Air Force issued "tactical-technical requirements," which were

specifications for orbital vehicles to support Air Force objectives. For example, at a secret military conference in January 1962, the final recommendations included the development and creation of:

• An air-spaceplane with a flight altitude of sixty to 150 kilometers and an orbital spaceplane

with an altitude of 1,000 to 3,000 kilometers

• A carrier-aircraft for launching "air-to-space" and "space-to-air" spacecraft and rockets 25

Chelomey clearly catered his Raketoplan-Kosmoplan research to such proposals, although

it is apparent that there was never a clear consensus on the issue at the time even within the

P,ir Force. While winged reusable vehicles were preferable, senior military strategists also had

to address the possibility that such vehicles would not be a reality in the near future.

There was an additional issue that factored into the military's intentions: the Soviet military closely followed the U.S. Air Force's X-20A Dyna-Soar spaceplane program. While some

people considered Chelomey's Raketoplan research some sort of "raging fantasy," others in the

General Staff could point out that the United States was conducting similar research. This is,

in fact, what exactly happened on occasion. As the fate of the Dyna-Soar shifted up and down,

the Ministry of Defense became less or more liberal with funding. According to some reports,

funding for Chelomey's grand project periodically dwindled to zero as the wildly different news

on US. hypersonic efforts filtered through to the General Staff in Moscow. One participant later

22 Nikolay Dombkovskiy, "October April -- The Universe" (English title), Sovetskayarossiya, April 12,

1989, p. 3

23 Igor gfanasyev. "Kosmoplan: Chelomey's Project" (English title), Krasnaya zvezda, August 26, 1995,

p. 6

24 SeeN. P Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos:knlga pervaya. 1960-1963gg (Moscow: Infortekst If. 1995), p. 27,

for a brief discussion over the Korolev versusChetomey issue from the Air Forceside.

25 Ibid, p. 87.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

observed that "it created the impression that

our work was directed not from Frunze Street,

but rather from the Pentagon. ''2_

gs indicated in the younger Khrushchev's

observations about Chetomey, the goals of the

Soviet program evolved and changed almost as

fast as the designs of the vehicles themselves. By

January-February 1961, the Kosmoplan theme

encompassed automated and piloted missions

to the Moon, Mars, and Venus, with the possibility of extended reconnaissance missions in

low-Earth orbit. This last type of mission was

probably its selling point to the Air Force.

Through 1959-61, engineers had worked on

numerous different designs of the Kosmoplan,

but four of these offered the most promise:

This is one conception o[ Vladimir Chelomeys idea

o[ a robotic Kosmoptan to visit Mars. The design

dates from the early 1960s. (copyright Asi[ Siddiqi.

based on a drawing by Igor _[anasyeu)

• The automated AK-I-7 would be for flights to Mars or Venus. The spaceplane would be

launched into orbit by a three-stage variant of Korolev's R-7 ICBM.

• The automated AK-I-300 would also be for flights to Mars or Venus. The A-300 booster,

an early conception of a launcher developed at OKB-52, would launch this spaceplane.

• The automated AK-3-300 would be for both flights to the planets and missions in lowEarth orbit. Launch would be by the A-300 rocket.

• The piloted AK-4 spaceplane, studied in 1961, would be designed for carrying a single pilot

into Earth orbit on the A-300 booster. The spaceplane would return from orbit in a special

container, which would be discarded after atmospheric reentry at an altitude of twenty kilometers. The AK-4 would then glide 200 kilometers to a landing on an airstrip/_

Despite heavy research on the ambitious program, by 1961. Chelomey's engineers were

running into some major problems. Clearly. one of these obstacles was OKB-52's lack of experience in operating any space vehicles, let alone piloted ones. A step to creating a winged spaceplane for a flight to Mars proved to be a little too ambitious, given OKB-52's sole experience in

developing a number of short-range naval cruise missiles, There were also purely technical

issues, such as ensuring the reliability of the main spacecraft systems for such long-duration

missions in conditions of vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and so forth. One of the major

problems was developing a nuclear power source, its proximity to the rest of the vehicle, and

ensuring its return back to Earth.

Through 1961, OKB-52 prepared a predraft plan for the Kosmoplan project, which may

have been examined by an ad hoc commission to assess its realistic prospects. Chelomey,

apparently faced with the great technical and logistical difficulties of the effort, decided in 1961

to redirect the resources expended on the effort to more realistic proposals. These included the

development of the "US" ocean reconnaissance satellite system, which would also use a

nuclear power reactor during its missions in Earth's orbit. At the same time, Chelomey did not

26 SergeyKhrushchev. Nikita Khrushcheu krizisy i rakety uzgtyad iznutrL tom t (Moscow: Novosti,

1994), p. 48 I.

27. E-mail correspondence. Igor Afanasyev to the author. November 28. 1997: Rudenko, "Designer

Chelomey's Rocket Planes," 48-49 Note that in the latter source, the AK-4 is referredto as the A-4.

307
308

completely abandon the Kosmoplan idea.

Despite a significant reduction in work on this

theme, engineers used the extensive research

data base on the project, all on paper at that

point, to explore various further options for piloted spacecraft to explore the Moon and Mars/"

Like the Kosmoplan theme, work on the

Raketoplan project also advanced swiftly in

1959-61. The program was originally conceived

as a suborbital system for piloted missions,

including anti-satellite missions, photo-reconnaissance, the identification of foreign satellites,

and even bombing runs over the United States/'

All the various models of the Raketoplan conThis is a model o[ Chelomey's air-launched piloted

Roketoplan for suborbital and orbital missions for

the Soviet ,rtir Force The model was displayed at an

exhibition in the 1990s (copyright SteuenZaloga)

ceptualized by the end of 1961 had common features in design, and they were given the name

"SR" (for Suborbital Rocket-Glider). There were only variations in specific design components,

such as the presence or absence of jet engines for the returning first stage, the possibility of

having folding wings for the second stage, or using a "flying wing" or canard type configuration for both stages. Each particular design choice was closely tied to the stage arrangement of

the Raketoplan--that is, either tandem or parallel--and thus affected the overall takeoff mass

of the various conceptions. For example, one variant, the SR with a tandem arrangement of

stages, had an engine unit for the first stage that allowed it to return back to the launch area.

In general, the Raketoplans had a launch mass of about 45 percent higher than the R-7

launch mass, the most powerful Soviet booster of the period. Based on early research, OKB-52

studied two major models of the Raketoplan, one for 8,000 kilometers range and the other for

40,000 kilometers. In dimensions and appearance, both models were relatively similar. The pilot

sat in the central portion of the vehicle. The long-range version had three propellant tanks: a

conical one with oxidizer at the forward end, a cylindrical one with fuel in the center, and

another cylindrical one with oxidizer in the aft part of the fuselage. The short-range model had

only two tanks: the conical one with oxidizer in the forward end of the spacecraft and a short

cylinder with fuel in the aft end. Instead of the omitted third tank, the short-range spaceplane

had a small passenger cabin for four to six seats. Engineers proposed that halflscale models of

the Raketoplan could be launched on test flights to a range of 5,OO0 kilometers by Chief

Designer Yanget's R-14 intermediate-range ballistic missile or to a range of 18,000 kilometers by

Chelomey's own yet-to-be-developed UR-200 ICBM. Actual full-scale models of the spaceplane

second stage could use two-stage variants of the R-7 for flights to 40,000 kilometers. These

models would have folded wings for the initial ascent.

Given its ambitious nature, it is not surprising that Chelomey ran into serious problems

with the Raketoplan program, too. Because the system combined elements of two different

vehicles--an airplane and a rocket--it also inherited the weaknesses of both. The system as a

whole was extremely complex and was very large, requiring the development of highperformance liquid-propellant rocket engines, new construction materials, and miniaturized

electronics--technologies that posed great challenges for Soviet industry at the time. Like the

Kosmoplan, the Raketoplan project also suffered from the limitations of OKB 52's experience

in the field of developing missile-space systems

28. ,_fanasyev correspondence. November 28. 1997.

29. _fanasyev, "Kosmoplan: Chelomey's Project"; Kh[ushchev, Nikita Khrushchev: tom t, pp. 480-81

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

An official decree of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers, dated May 13,

1961, and titled "On the Revision of Plans for Space Objects Towards Accomplishment of

Goals of a Defense Nature," had a direct effect on both the Raketoplan and Kosmoplan projects/° As a result of this governmental decision, preliminary work on both themes was terminated. The news was not all bad. Apparently, people in the government and Communist Party

believed that the research carried out on the Raketoplan theme had great prospects for future

work. The decree authorized OKB-52 to use the accumulated research work to proceed on a

new piloted variant of the Raketoplan for military missions in Earth's orbit and deep space." For

Chelomey's fortunes in general, this particular decree was perhaps one of the more important

ones in his career. A leading designer from Korolev's OKB-I later recalled:

In May 1961, just ten [sic] days prior to President Kennedy's speech on the U.S.

commitment to go to the Moon, the Soviet government issued another decree on space

matters. It actually reversed the previous decree of June 1960. Funds were taken from

OKB-I and transferred to the Chelomey design bureau. The same thing happened to subcontractors of OKB-I : they were ordered to shift their efforts to support Chelomey. _

A significant amount of funding that had originally been allocated to Korolev was now

shifted to Chelomey. The decree thus effectively killed the overtly far-reaching space program

that Korolev proposed in the major June 1960 decree. Two factors played a role in this astonishing turnaround. The first was clearly Chelomey*s continuing rise in prominence in the

defense industry and his unmatched clout with Khrushchev. Second, there were the needs of

the defense sector. While Korolev was pursuing projects that were predominantly for exploration, Chelomey's programs, especially the Raketoplan, catered to a Ministry of Defense

increasingly uneasy about the possibility of war expanding to space.

In this climate, Chelomey continued to pursue work on the Kosmoplan project, despite an

official order suspending such efforts. The amount of work on both the Kosmoplan and

Raketoplan in 1960-64 was, in fact, unprecedented and compared very favorably with spacerelated work at the Korolev design bureau. OKB-52 engineers built mini-dimension ballistic

models of their spaceplanes for aerodynamic testing in the wind tunnels at the Central

Aerohydrodynamics Institute at Zhukovskiy, and they performed work on spacesuits for cosmonauts and catapults for rescuing cosmonauts during various phases of the mission. Other

enterprises involved in the work included Nil-I, NII-88, KB-I, NIl-2, the M. M. Gromov FlightResearch Institute, the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine, and the Central Institute of

Aviation Motor Building." The pace of work was breathtaking. An engineer involved in the program later recalled, perhaps a little immodestly:

The most amazing thing was how we tore ahead, skipping even the initial drafts, immediately going on to the working plans stage, and even with such a speed how we nevertheless created heat shielding for the vehicle which even today has no analog in the

world with respect to reliability and practical feasibility. TM

30. The decree is mentioned in Yu, P. Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya "Energiya" imeni

S P Koroleva (Korolev: RKK Energiya, named after S. P. Korolev, 1996). p. 248.

3 I. Afanasyev correspondence. November 28, 1997.

32. Boris Arkadyevich Dorofeyev, "History of the Development of the N I L3 Moon Program" (English title),

presented at the 10th International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Moscow State

University, Moscow, Russia. June 20-27, 1995.

33. Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes,'* 48-49.

34. Mikhail Rudenko, "'Star Wars'--History of the 'Death' of a Unique Spaceplane" (English title), Trud,

August 26, 1993, p 6.

309
310

Allofthis,ofcourse,producedsometangibleresults.Theworkinlate1960andearly1961

culminatedinthecreationofthefirstautomatedtestbedcalledtheMP-I(the"MP"standing

a littleprematurelyfor"Maneuvering,Piloted").Althoughengineersneverfinishedaformal

draftplanforthevehicle,thespacecraftwasmanufacturedanreadyforflightbylate1961.

TheMP-I,developedprimarilybythegroupofengineerstansferredfromtheLavochkin

designbureau,wasasmalltwo-meter-lengthwingedspacecraftwihamassof1,750kilograms.

Thevehiclehadadjustablebrakingpanelsintheformof anumbrellamountedattherearto

ensureproperbrakingduringreentryintotheatmosphere.Engineersaloinstalledgraphiteruddersonthevehicleforguidance,similartothoseonoutdatedballisticmissiles.Thetestprogramforthevehicleincludeda singlesuborbitalflightwithballisticmaneuveringduring

descentMaximumaltitudewouldbe405kilometers.Thespacecraftwouldliftoffandfly

downrange1,760kilometersbeforeenteringtheatmosphereatavelocityof3,760metersper

second.Afterthemaneuveringphase,thevehiclewouldland1,880kilometersdownrangefrom

thelaunchsite.Recoverywouldbeeffectedbyathree-levelsystemofdrawing,braking,and

primaryparachutesworkingataltitudesofeighttofourkilometers,thusreducingverticaldownwardvelocitytoabouttenmeterspersecond.''_BecauseChelomeydidnothaveanyboosters

readyforlaunchatthetime,hesignedanagreementwihYangeltoobtainanR-12mediumrangeballisticmissilefortheMP-Itestflight.

Thedaybeforethelaunch,setforDecember27,1961,theyoungerKhrushchevreceived

hisgraduatedegree,andtherewasaprivatedinnerpartygivenbyChelomeyataMoscow

restaurant.Khrushchevrecallsthateveryonewasquiteabitdrunkbythetimetheygotonthe

planethatnightandheadedouttothelaunchrangetodirecttheflight.S°Unlikeallprevious

space-relatedlaunches,thisonewasto takeplaceattheAirDefenseForcesTestRangeat

Vladimirovka,justafewkilometerssoutheastoftheKapustinYarsite.Preparationsproceeded

withouttroublethenextmorningamidheavysnowfall.TheMP-Iwasmountedontopofthe

R-12,anditwasclearlyvisibleasaspaceplanefromadistance, The rocket lifted off successfully from the pad at site I, and about forty minutes later, controllers received news that the

vehicle had passed through the atmosphere and landed successfully by parachute? 7The launch

was kept secret for more than thirty years, but it was a landmark in the history of space exploration. It was the world's first hypersonic flight of a lifting body during which aerodynamic

forces were used to control the atmospheric phase of reentry. When engineers inspected the

spacecraft the following day, they were elated to discover that the heat shielding was almost

completely undamaged: unexpected burning had been primarily limited to connection points

between the ailerons and the wings28

The relative success of the MP-I flight no doubt added to the engineers' confidence that

they were on the right track in their work. By 1963, engineers at OKB-52 had completed the draft

plan for the Raketoplan project, which contained the details of four variants of such a vehicle:

• A single-seat orbital anti-satellite spaceplane

• A single-seat orbital bomber of ground targets

• A seven-seat passenger ballistic spacecraft for intercontinental ranges

• A two-seat scientific spacecraft for circumlunar flight '9

35. Kirpil and Okara, "Designer of Space Planes"; Mikhail Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Space Planes"

(English title). V'ozdushniy transport 51 (1995): 8-9: Khrushchev interview.

36 Khrushchev interview.

37. Rudenko, "'Star Wars'--History of the 'Death' of a Unique Spaceplane."

38 Khrushchev interview.

39. E mail correspondence, Igor Afanasyev with the author, November 23, 1997.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

The first, second, and fourth vehicles would be launched by the UR-500 rocket, while the

third would be launched by the UR-200. One of the more interesting elements of this modified

Raketoplan theme was the piloted circumlunar mission. A number of Russian sources have suggested over the years that there was a firm state-level commitment to a piloted circumlunar project from as early as 1961. 40 Other reliable sources are vehement that there was no such

commitment/' It is more than likely, given the generally nonspecific nature of the entire

Raketoplan-Kosmoplan effort, that the idea elicited only cursory interest from higher authorities, much like several of Korolev's piloted lunar plans of the period. Overwhelming evidence

suggests that in the immediate years following Kennedy's speech, there were a litany of proposals from various chief and general designers to develop spacecraft to carry out piloted circumlunar flight, but that none of these prompted any serious consideration from Khrushchev,

Kozlov, Ustinov, or Smirnov. Perhaps Chelomey grasped on the idea of circumlunar flight after

hearing of similar proposals from the Korolev design bureau during the 1962-63 period. Little

is known about Chelomey's 1963 vintage circumlunar spacecraft. It was one of the "scientific"

versions of the Raketoplan and had a low lift-to-drag ratio. The vehicle was apparently a wingless spacecraft, capable of carrying one to two cosmonauts, that would carry out a ballistic

reentry into Earth's atmosphere after flight around the Moon/2 Chelomey also continued work

on the Kosmoplan theme at a low level from 1961 through 1964. Although the scope of the

research remains unclear, it probably included work on a vehicle called "K" for automated flight

to the Moon, Mars. and Venus, followed by a return to a regular airport on Earth.

Despite continuing problems, Chelomey's engineers obtained further data applicable to the

Raketoplan-Kosmoplan theme from another active experiment in the early 1960s. In the framework of OKB-52's research on "aircraft warheads," the engineers developed a second hypersonic vehicle, the M-12, to test the technology for guided reentry into the atmosphere.

Although the spacecraft was built specifically for the military warhead program, it served a dual

purpose by continuing the research program begun by the first MP-I spaceplane launched in

1961. The "conceptual design" of this vehicle was completed in October 1962, and the ensuing months were spent building a flight-test article at the design bureau's plant/_ The M-12 was

similar in design to the MP-I, although the engineers finally dispensed with the umbrellashaped braking panels and introduced new aerodynamic graphite rudders. The new vehicle was

also equipped with on-board control systems far more complex than its predecessor.

The only launch of the M-12 model took place on March 21, 1963, from the same pad at

site I at Vladimirovka where the MP-I had lifted off. The launch on another of Yangel's R-12

missiles was successful at 1440 hours Moscow Time, and the engineers had to wait fifty minutes before they received news that the spacecraft had been destroyed upon reentry into the

40. See,for example,S. Golotyuk. "First PeopIeon the Moon (A Quarter of a Century Later)" (English title),

Nouosti kosmonautiki 15 (July 16-29, 1994): 32 40: M. Chernyshov, "Why Were Soviet Cosmonauts Not on the

Moon?" (English title), Leninskoyeznamya, August I. 1990. p. 3; V. P Mishin. "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"

(English title), Znaniye tekhnike: seriya kosmonautika, astronomiya no 12 (December 1990): 3-43. In the last

source, Mishin writes that in " 1961V. N. Chelomey's firm was assigned to work on a rocket-spacesystem intend

ed for circumlunar flight." One source hints that the circumlunar decision was a part of the major June 1960space

policy statement by the Soviet Communist Party and government. See Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket

Planes." 48-49

41. Interview, Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov by the author, January 9, i991.

42. Interview, Gerbert Aleksandrovich Yefremov by the author, March 3. 1997.Note that one OKB-52 engineer, A. Petrov.recalled in 1995 that his diploma project in 1962 had been on a winged spacecraftfor flight around

the Moon and return to Earth. The lift to drag ratio was 1.0-3.0 "with suppression of overloads during reentry in

the atmosphere up to 1.0." SeeRudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes."

43. Yefremov interview.

311
312

atmosphere.Thefailurenodoubtdemoralizedthedesignteam,buttheyapparentlyreceived

usefuldataviatelemetry,whichallowedthemtomakecertainrefinementstothespaceplane

researchanddevelopmentprocess.Theengineerslaterascertainedthattheheatshieldhadnot

beensturdyenoughtoprotectthevehiclebecauseofatechnicaldefect.44

ItseemsthattheSovietAirForce,thechiefsponsorof Chelomey'sRaketoplanproject,

begantocooloffontheeffortbythistime.Thischangeof heartmayhavehadmuchtodo

withthefateoftheX-20ADyna-SoarprogramintheUnitedStates.Promptedbyavarietyof

reasons,principallySecretaryofDefenseRobertS.McNamara'sbeliefthatthespaceplanehad

noeffectivemilitaryuse,theJohnsonadministrationannouncedtheterminationoftheproject

onDecemberI0,1963.4_TheSovietsthemselvesmayhavealsoseenthepotentialpoliticaland

publicrelationscostof pursuinga space-basedsystem,oneof whosegoalswasnuclear

weaponsdelivery.TherewereotherSovietAirForceconcerns,primarilythelonglead-time

expectedfortheoperationalcapabilityofsuchasystem.InJanuary1963,theAirForcesenta

numberof high-rankingrepresentativesto visitOKB-52to discusstheRaketoplanproject.

Commentingonreportsontheproject'sprogress,Lt.GeneralKamaninwrote:

iF]or the present it's not even on paper, although we've been assured that the Draft Plan

[will be ready] by February. Chelomey has already had a long two years to work on this

theme, and in ]anuary 1961 when we were there with the Gommander-in-Chief--then

he made many promises--but nothing that _uas promised has been carried out. The real

space ships in the future 3-5 years will be Korolev's ships, and only his--all the rest are

unlikely to advance outside the bounds of experimentation? °

Ironically, two of Chelomey's automated space projects may have contributed to the lack of

interest from the military. Both the "IS" anti-satellite and the "US" ocean reconnaissance programs were geared toward many of the same objectives slated for the Raketoplan. Undoubtedly,

automated systems were much cheaper. The question of whether one was more optimal than

the other was one that would not be adequately answered for many years, but given the strong

inclination of senior military personnel to support robotic versus piloted military systems, the

fortunes of the Raketoplan did not look too bright. Through the overwhelming obstacles, both

technical and political, Chelomey continued to doggedly pursue his pet project, fielding even

more advanced versions of single-seat military fighters in space.

Despite the setbacks, Chelomey was still at his peak at the time. If the June 1960 decree

was meant to seal Korolev's preeminence as the leading space designer, the May 1961 decree

effectively reversed that trend. In search of "revisions" to the original decree, the Soviet

Communist Party and government stepped back from the original grandiose plans of a massive

Soviet space program heading outwards into the solar system. The changed tenor of goals was

now explicitly redirected to "goals of a defensive" nature--that is, anti-satellite weapons, reconnaissance satellites, and orbital bombers, tqnd who better to pick to lead these programs than

someone who had not only been doing work on these topics for some time, but a designer

whose rising star was abetted and protected by the Soviet leader himself? Oddly enough, the

revised decree was issued almost exactly a month after Gagarin's flight, a point in time one

would suspect was the peak of power for Korolev. There were, however, simply too many forces

44. Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Space Planes": Yefremovinterview: Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos, p 239:

Afanasyev correspondence,November 23, 1991.

45. Roy F Houchin II, "Why the Dyna Soar X-20 ProgramWas Cancelled," _uest 3 (Winter t994): 35-37.

46. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos, p 21 I.

CHRLLENGE TO AI_POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

This rare photo dating from the early t9FOs shows Vtadimir Chelomey with some of the leading scientists from

the USSRAcademy of Sciences In the foreground_ left to right, are TsNIIMash Deputy Director Vseuolod

,quduevskiy. political scientist Piotr Fedoseev, General Designer Chelomey, and Academy President _natoly

,qleksandrov. In the immediate background, the two men facing each other are Korolev's successor Vasitiy Mishin

and nuclear weapons scientist Yeugeniy Velikhou (files of Peter Gorin)

working against Korolev and too few dramatic victories such as the Gagarin flight to

compensate.

In 1963, the breadth of the projects at Chelomey's OKB-52 was staggering. The projects

included three new ICBMs (UR-200, LIR-500, and UR-I00), two orbital bombardment systems

(GR-I and GR-2), two space launch vehicles (UR-200 and UR-500), a nationwide strategic

defense system (Taran), an Earth-orbital spaceplane (Raketoplan), a lunar and interplanetary

spaceplane (Kosmoplan), plans for an automated anti-satellite project (IS), and an automated

naval reconnaissance program (US). This was in addition to his old work on as many as ten different naval cruise missiles/'_ All this was from an organization whose sole contribution to the

defense industry by 1959 was a single short-range cruise missile. On April 29, 1962, he was

elected a full Academician, joining the select ranks of Keldysh, Korolev, and Glushko. His influence in seemingly casual matters was also said to be without precedent. In a perhaps apocryphal

story, a Soviet defector recalled years later that in the early 1960s, Chelomey wanted to build a

dacha (a cottage) for his family in an area near Moscow where no buildings were allowed. He

first appealed to the chairman of the Moscow Party Council to have the standard regulations

waived in his case, but the chairman refused. Chelomey took the matter personally to

Khrushchev. After hearing his story, the Soviet leader telephoned the chairman and told him, "1

understand you have turned down comrade Chelomey's request. Aren't you forgetting you are

an elected official?" Soon after, Chelomey was given his dacha. 4_

47. The naval cruise missiles included the early P-5 and P 5D models, the P-6 and P-35 (both approved on

August 17, 1956). the P-70 Ametist (approved on April I_ 1959). the P-7 (approved on June 19, 1959), the P-35

Redut (approved on August 16, 1960), the P25 (approved on August 26 1960), and the P-120 Malakhit and

P-500 Bazalt (both approved on February 28, 1963). All were anti ship missiles, either launched from submarines or

surface ships. SeeShirokorad, "Rakety nad morem"

48. And[ew Cockburn, The Threat: Inside the Souiet Military Machine (New York: Vintage Books. 1984).

p 136.

313
314

It is easy and far too simplistic to attribute this immense growth of the Chelomey empire to

the personal whims of Khrushchev. The Soviet leader was not deeply involved in much of the

decision-making in the space program, weighing in only for the most important projects or for

macro-level policy statements. He may not even have been partial to Chelomey simply because

his son worked for the general designer. It is clear, however, that those under Khrushchev who

were responsible for important decisions, well aware of the younger Khrushchev's location in the

space industry, would only be too happy to favor Chelomey. Thus, it was probably never a case

of direct gratuitous support as many historians have claimed. It was more likely a case of the

upper ranks in the space program, such as Serbin, Ustinov, Smirnov, and Dementyev, making

decisions that they believed would put them on the Soviet leader's good side.

In the two years since 196I, the entire climate of the Soviet space program had changed

immensely as Kennedy's challenge began to finally infiltrate the stratum of the secret Soviet

space program. The problem was no longer reaching the Moon, but reaching the Moon first.

Having been mired for two years in various spaceptane projects, Chelomey, now certainly the

most dominant designer in the Soviet space program, was not about lose out on this race. It

was a race not only with the Americans, but, in a far more deleterious way, with his primary

competitor and nemesis, Korolev.

Rocket Engines on the Frontier

The central goal of the comprehensive space plan issued by the government in june 1960

was the development of a series of heaw-lift launch vehicles--specifically the N I and N2--to

support a variety of future space projects. They were also to be OKB-I's means to maintain its

preeminent position as the dominant Soviet space organization. The post-Sputnik euphoric climate-when OKB-I Chief Designer Korolev was the toast of Party, military, and government

leaders--was in its last breath. Despite the glowing successes of the Luna spacecraft and the

flights of Gagarin and Titov, there was trouble on the horizon for Korolev's design bureau. The

pressure was coming from all sides. Khrushchev had found in Yangeland Chelomey better alternatives to the strong-headed Korotev. Both Yangeland Chelomey were more interested in gearing their products toward military needs than some abstract youthful dream. Chelomey had

ascended literally from nowhere, threatening to run over any in his path. The military continued to have problems with Korolev over his pathological insistence on using cryogenic propellants over storable ones. Finally. Korolev had broken ranks with his closest collaborator,

Glushko. over a variety of technical issues related to engine design.

/qs astonishing as it seems, mid-1961, right after Gagarin's flight, was a time of great uncertainty for Korolev. In a revealing episode from the period, Korolev clearly let the stress show

through. In [ate July 1961, Korolev met secretly with another beleaguered Chief Designer,

Grigoriy V. Kisunko of the KB-I design bureau, which was responsible for designing the Soviet

Union's first anti-ballistic missile system, to discuss the "attack' from Chelomey. Kisunko later

recalled Korolev's words vividly: "This is the second time they have tried to cross me out of

life. '''° The two designers discussed writing a letter to other individuals in the Central

Committee about Khrushchev's favoritism, but they decided to abandon the idea, perhaps so

as not to risk their own careers, tn this climate, the N I and N2 boosters were not simply the

"next" of Korolev's projects, but his lifeline to maintaining singular domination of the space

program. Most of his grand plans from the June 1960 decree--the development of large piloted space stations, piloted lunar space vehicles, and interplanetary ships--all rested on the fate

49. MikhailRebrov,"Project'Taran'"(Englishtitle), Krasnayazuezda,Junet8. 1994,p 6

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

of these boosters. They assumed an increasingly symbolic and mythological proportion in his

life, becoming literally "the last love of his life" as some of his biographers have claimed.

The June 1960 decree specified that the draft plan for the first vehicle, the N I, would be

completed by the end of 1962. With this date in mind, OKB-t issued a formal "technical

assignment" on October I, 1960, to four rocket engine design bureaus for the development of

very high-performance engines. All the engines would be closed cycle with high-pressure combustion chambers, high specific impulses, and relatively small mass. The subcontracting organizations were Glushko's OKB-456 at Khimki, Isayev's OKB-2 at Kaliningrad, Kosberg's

OKB-154 at Voronezh, and Kuznetsov's OKB-276 at Kuybyshev) _

While Glushko, Isayev, and Kosberg had been involved in rocket engine design for ballistic missiles, it would be a relatively new field of work for Kuznetsov. He had become involved

in the missile business in the late 1950s during the open conflict between Korolev and Glushko

over the R-9 ICBM. When Kuznetsov's engines were eventually rejected for a variant of the

R-9, under pressure from OKB-I First Deputy Chief Designer Mishin, Korolev invited him to

work on the N series boosters. The invitation was clearly related to Kuznetsov's preference for

working with Korolev and Mishin's favored cryogenic combinations as opposed to Glushko's

storables. Kuznetsov's OKB-27'6 was also located very close to OKB-I's subsidiary manufacturing plant, the Progress Machine Building Plant in Kuybyshev. Despite Korolev's somewhat

desperate act of inviting Kuznetsov to participate, Glushko was clearly far ahead of the game:

he was already in the midst of developing a powerful series of new engines for Yangel's ICBMs

with storable propellants. Kuznetsov, on the other hand, would have to start from scratch)'

At some point soon after, it seems that Kosberg's OKB-154 dropped out from the running

because of commitments to Chelomey's projects, to be replaced by another aviation engine

design organization, OKB-165) 2 Headed by fifty-two-year-old General Designer Arkhip M.

Lyulka, the design bureau, established in March t946, had primarily designed turbojet engines

for a variety of Soviet military and civilian aircraft, remaining outside the mainstream of the missile and space programs) _ Thus the four remaining designers--two from the aviation industry

(Kuznetsov and Lyulka) and two from the armaments industry (Glushko and Isayev)--signed

an amended technical assignment document on March I, 1961) _ Somewhat comparable to the

Western concept of a request for proposals, the technical assignment included specific recommendations for particular areas for each designer on which to focus in creating the N I and N2

boosters. Glushko and Kuznetsov were assigned to develop engines for the first three stages,

while Lyulka and Isayev would focus on high-energy upper stages, as follows:

50. Igor Afanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret" (English title), Krylya rodiny no 9 (September 1993): 13- t6.

51 B. Ye.Chertok, Raketyi lyudi: Fill Podlipki Tyuratam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996), pp 345-46.

52. Note that atthough Kosberg did not sign the adjusted technical assignment document, his design

bureau did produce a powerful 150 ton-thrust engine, the 8D415K, in support of the NI program. The propellants

were liquid oxygen and kerosene. SeeVarfolomeyev, "Readers'Letters:On Rocket Engines"

53_ Lt.-Coh S Vachayev, "From the Origins of the ReactiveEra" (English title), ,Zluiatsiya _ kosmonavtika

no. 3 (March 1988): 31-32: S. P Kuvshinnikov, "23 March--75 YearsFrom the Birth of A. M Lyulka (1908)"

(English title), /z istorii auiatsii _ kosmonautiki 48 (I 984): 87-95. Lyulkadid, however, cooperate with Kuznetsov

during the development of the NK-9 rocket engine for the abandoned R-9M missile in 1958-59_

54. G. Vetrov, "The Difficult Fate of the NI: Part II" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no. 5 (May 1994):

20 28: Afanasyev. "N I: Absolutely Secret."

315
316

Propellant

Designer Combination Thrust Stage on the N I

Glushko LOX-UDMH 150 tons Stage I

Glushko NzO4-UDMH 150 tons Stage I

Glushko LOX-UDMH t80 tons Stage II

Glushko N204-UDMH t50 tons Stage II

Glushko Fluorine, etc. 20-25 tons Stage III

Kuznetsov LOX-kerosene t 50 tons Stage I

Kuznetsov LOX-kerosene 45 tons Stage II

Kuznetsov LOX-kerosene 45 tons Stage III

Lyulka LOX-LH_ 40 tons Stage II

Lyulka LOX-LH, 40 tons Stage III

Isayev LOX-kerosene Not available Stage II

Isayev LOX-LH2 1.5 tons Stage lip

Key: LOX = liquid oxygen: UDMH = unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine: N204 = nitrogen tetroxide: and LH, = liquid hydrogen.

The rationale behind Glushko's selection was obvious: his propellants were all geared

toward dual use on military ICBMs as well as space launch vehicles, a strategy that makes perfect sense given the economic exigencies of the day. Of the four first- and second-stage engines,

the favored ones for the N boosters would be the two nitrogen tetroxide (N_O4)-UDMH

engines, known as the RD-253 and RD-254, respectively. These were the first closed-cycle rocket engines developed by Glushko. 5° By the early 1960s, Glushko had all but abandoned liquid

oxygen (LOX) because of problems associated with high-frequency oscillations, and the two

proposals for LOX-based engines for the NI/N2 program seems to have been his last stab at

LOX before focusing fully on storable propellants. The fluorine-based engine was more of a

curiosity than anything else. Theoretically. fluorine-type rocket engines would offer high specific impulses, but this remained to be proved in test conditions,

The origins of Kuznetsov's engines were far more interesting. OKB-276's first foray into the

development of high-thrust liquid-propellant rocket engines had been developing the NK-9

engine for the first stage of an abandoned variant of Korolev's R-9 ICBM, named the

R-gM. The organization's extensive experience in designing aircraft engines was little use in this

project, and to hasten development, there was significant cooperation with the rocket engine

department at OKB-I. Foreseeing a possibly difficult time in engine development, Korolev

allowed Kuznetsov's engineers to have full access to propulsion research data on one of

OKB-I's new upper stage engines27 The R-gM missile was eventually never built because of

severe pressure from Glushko, and Kuznetsov simply decided to use the same engine as a basis

55 Ibid.: Semenov,ed.. Raketno-Kosmieheskaya KorporaZsiya, p. 262.

56. The lesswell-known RD 254 is mentioned by journalist A. Bolotin in M Rudenko, "The Moon Slips

Away" (English title). Ekonomika i zhizn 48 {November 1991): 19.

57 Korolev's engine was the SI,5400, and it served as the fourth stageengine for the 8K78 (or Molniya)

booster used to launch the early Mars and Venus interplanetary spacecraft. See Semenov, ed., RaketnoKosmieheskayaKorporatsiya. p 123.

CHALLENGE TO il_POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

to design ones for the N I and N2. The forty-ton single-chamber NK-9 would serve as the foundation for different directions of development. First, Kuznetsov's engineers would scale up its

performance characteristics to produce an engine with a 150-ton thrust; second, they would

produce high-altitude variants of the engine for use on the N l's second and third stages. To

shorten development periods, all three engines would retain basic design elements of Korolev's

upper stage engine.

High-energy engines for the upper stages--in particular those using liquid hydrogen (LH2)

and LOX--were assigned for development to Lyulka and Isayev. In 1961, manufacturing of LH_

for rocketry purposes in the Soviet Union was almost nonexistent. Neither the technology nor

the resources were available. It was well-known among most space enthusiasts, as far back as

Tsiolkovskiy, that of all the chemical sources of propellants, the LH:-LOX combination was the

most efficient; specific impulses were significantly higher with LH: than with either Glushko's

storable components or the R-Ts LOX-kerosene pairing. Unfortunately, LH_ was also extremely

difficult to manufacture, maintain, and use as propellant. The boiling temperature of LH_ is

-252.6 degrees Centigrade, necessitating refrigeration techniques well beyond the means of

Soviet industry at the time. Despite these difficulties, the same belief in its performance led the

Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Department of Defense to issue a contract for

the development of a LH:-LOX engine in late 1958. This engine, which became part of the

Centaur upper stage, was flown as early as May 19627'

Korolev was without doubt the primary instigator for a similar effort in the Soviet Union.

One would have expected Glushko to support these efforts, but his historic dislike of cryogenic

propellants veered him away from committing to the design of a high-energy LH_ stage.

Glushko's opponents in fact like to quote one of his more infamous exhortations, authored in

1935, when as a twenty-seven-year-old engineer he had written: "liquid oxygen is far from the

best oxidizing agent, while liquid hydrogen will never be of any practical use in rocket equipment."_'_ Korolev, with a much more solid faith in the capabilities of LH_, fired off a letter to the

government on April 8, 1960, in which he argued:

OKB-I considers it extremely necessary to deuelop on a wide front of work the creation

of an industrial base for the creation of liquid hydrogen, for work on methods of its storage and transportation and also the study of its characteristics and the operational characteristics of hydrogen, and preparation of recommendations for the design of special

aggregates and fixtures for working with hydrogen? °

A draft plan on the use of LH2, "On the Possible Characteristics of Space Rockets Using

Hydrogen," dated September 9, 1960, was also addressed to Keldysh, Glushko, Lyulka, and

Academician P,natoliy E Aleksandrov, the erstwhile Director of the P,cademy's Institute of

Atomic Energy? Resistance from Glushko may have played a significant part in downplaying

the need for such work. Although preliminary work on LH2 engines began at the Isayev and

Lyulka design bureaus in 1960, these efforts had very little funding. In addition, the military, for

58 Linda Neuman Ezell, NASA Historical Data Book, Volume I1: Programs and Projects 1958-1968

(Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication (SP)-4012. 1988), p. 44 The May 1962 launch was a failure. The sec

ond launch in November 1963was successful.

59. A. Tarasov,"Missions in Dreamsand Reality" (English title), Prauda, October 20, 1989, p. 4. Thequote

is from Glushko's monograph Khimicheskiye istochniki energii (Chemical Sources of Energy), which was published

in 1935while he was working at the RNII.

60 G Vetrov, "The Difficult Fateof the N I: Part I" (English title). Nauka i zhizn no. 4 (Aprii 1994): 78-80.

61. Ibid: Semenov. ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 248.

317
318

obviousreasons,hadlittleinterestinthem.ItwasastrategicmistakethatcostheSovietspace

programuchintermsofcapabilityandefficiency,butKorolevalonedidnothavetheforceto

single-handedlycreateanewindustryintheSovietUnion.Initialversionsof theNI andN2

rocketswouldhavetorelyonlessefficientcombinations.

Anotherareaofadvancedresearchwasnuclearengines,apipe-dreamofsortsthathadbeen

bandiedaboutbydifferentdesignersthroughthepostwaryears.Nuclearenergy,ofcourse,could

theoreticallyprovideevenhigherspecificimpulsesthan LH_.While the best

LH2-LOXrocketenginescouldbeexpectedto havespecificimpulsesin therangeof 400to

450seconds,nuclearenginescouldpotentiallyhavevaluesashighas800to 1,000seconds(with

solidfuel)oreven2,000to5,000seconds(withuraniumcompoundplasmas)?2Evenpriortothe

launchofthefirstSputnik,n 1955and1956,theadvancedprojectsNil-Iresearchinstitute,headedbytheubiquitousKeldysh,hadinitiatedpreliminaryplansfornuclearpopulsiondevelopment.

GovernmentinterventiononthematteroccurredonJune30,1958,withtheissuingofatop-level

decreerequestingadraftplanonanuclearengine/'_Suchapreliminarydocumentwasprepared

andapprovedbyKorolevonDecember30,1959.By1960,atleastsixdesignbureausandfour

scientific-researchinstituteswereinvolvedintheeffort?4Aswithnumerousotheradvancedtechnologyprograms,theUnitedStatesandtheSovietUnionengagedinresearchalmostsimultaneously.Afterdiscussionsdatingbacktothemid-1940s,theU.S.DepartmentofDefenseandthe

AtomicEnergyCommissionbegansuchresearcheffortsasKiwiandNERVAatthesametime?_

Applicationsfortheuseofnuclearengineswerealsostudiedvigorouslyatthetime.In1959

and1960,theOKB-Iproposedthreenewrockets--twospacelaunchvehiclesandanICBM--

thatwouldusenuclearenginesinsomecapacity.EngineswouldbeprovidedbyGlushko'sOKB456andanotherdesignbureau,theOKB-670headedbyChiefDesignerMarkM.Bondaryuk,a

specialistin thedevelopmentof ramjetengines.Bondaryukhadpreviouslydevelopedthe

enginesfortheabandonedBuryandBuranintercontinentalcruisemissilesinthe1950s.One

ofthespacelaunchvehiclesproposed,theYaKhR-2,hadanunusualconfiguration:itlookedjust

likethestandardR-7excepti hadsixinsteadof fourstrap-ons.Thecoreitselfwouldbe

equippedwiththenuclearengine.Theotherlaunchertabledwasa"super-rocket' with a lifting

capacity of 150 tons to Earth orbit and a launch mass of 2,000 tons. The second stage would

use a powerful nuclear engine? _ None of these proposals were pursued with any seriousness

after late 1960 as a result of intensive research, which proved that for immediate purposes, chemical sources of propulsion would be more fruitful. Many of the design bureaus in the nuclear program also lost interest. It would be the mid-1960s before both nuclear and LH2 engines received

sufficient support to commence dedicated projects to develop such engines.

62 Joseph R. Wetch, Alexey Ya. Goldin, Anatoly A. Koroteev, Alexander D. Konopatov, Vladimir A.

Pavshook, Nikolai N Ponomarev-Stepnoy,Vitaly F. Semyonov, and Ivan Fedik, "Development of Nuclear Rocket

Enginesin the USSR," AIAAINASAIOAI Conferenceon Advanced SEITechnologies,AIAA 91-3648, September4-6.

199I; A Koroteyev,"From the History of SpaceScience:The Scientific-ResearchInstitute of Jet Propulsion" (English

title). ,quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 6 (November-December 1993): 39-41.

63. The title of the decreewas "On the Creation of Missiles with Engineson the Basisof Using Nuclear

Energy" SeeSemenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 248: Leonid Kvasnikov. Anatoliy Kostylev. and

Vladimir Maksimovskiy, "Nuclear Rocket Engines" (English title). Vestnik uozdushniy [Iota no. 6 (June 1996): 53-55.

A high level meeting in February 1959 purportedly about nuclear propulsion research is described in Aleksandr

Romanov,Koroteu (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1996), pp. 323-26

64. The design bureauswere OKB I (S. P Korolev), OKB-165 (A. M. Lyulka), OKB-301 (S. A Lavochkin),

OKB-23 (V. M Myasishchev), OKB-670 (M. M Bondaryuk). and OKB 456 (V. P Glushko). The institutes were

Nil-I (M V. Keldysh). the P I. Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Motor Building or TslAM, the I. V Kurchatov

Institute of Atomic Energy(A. P Aleksandrov), and VNII NM. SeeKvasnikov, Kostylev, and Maksimovskiy, "Nuclear

Rocket Engines."

65. Ezell, ;qAS,z:lHistoricat Data Book, Volume I1,pp 482-83.

66. Semenov.ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 248

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Korolev Versus Glushko: No Compromise

In January 196t, a large meeting of chief designers, senior military officers, and defense

industry representatives took place at Tyura-Tam, ostensibly to discuss the future of heavy-lift

boosters in the Soviet Union. Glushko, as one of the leading chief designers in the space program, served as the ad hoe chairman of this meeting. The proceedings for the most part went

remarkably smooth, with agreement on the principal design of the N I and N2, both of which

would dispense with the old "cluster" design of the R-7 and instead use the structurally simpler "tandem" design?'

Progress on the N series of boosters was dramatically affected by the May 1961 government decree that effectively gave Chelomey a dominant role in the space program. As recalled

by a senior OKB-I engineer, "government authorization of the N I development was downsized

to further paper studies."_/q number of subcontractors for the N I, including Kosberg's design

bureau, were ordered to redirect their efforts toward Chelomey's projects. Whereas in the earlier government order from 1960 the dates for completion of the project were 1960-63 (for the

N I ) and 1963-67 (for the N2), the new decree pushed the timetable back further to 1962-65

(for the N I ) and 1963-70 (for the N2)? 9

The delays and uncertainties in the program no doubt negatively affected the KorolevGlushko relationship over the issue of propellants. In July 196 I, two weeks before Titov's daylong Vostok 2 mission, Korolev paid a personal visit to Glushko's design bureau at Khimki,

intent on trying to convince the engine designer to consider the possibility of using cryogenic

propellants. The conversation began calmly but quickly escalated into an accusative tone.

Glushko, standing his ground with toxic storable propellants, called Korolev's ideas about

designing the N I akin to "dilettantism ''7° He reminded Korolev of the infamous failure of the

120-ton cryogenic engine for the R-3 program in the early 1950s, which had delayed the entire

Soviet rocketry program. The problems with high-frequency oscillations in that LOX-kerosene

engine had been simply too much to overcome. For his part, Korolev reminded Glushko of the

1960 disaster involving the R-16 ICBM, a rocket that used toxic self-igniting propellants. The

meeting ended without resolution, as rational arguments began to be increasingly couched in

terms of personal attacks. It was symptomatic of many more meetings to come."

The propellant issue came to a head in December 1961, when Glushko decided to take

action. In an official letter to Korolev, he demanded that the N I be redesigned to be equipped

with storable propellants, with N204 instead of LOX. As one Soviet space historian recalled, it

67. Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov. "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles in the USSR," presented at the

IOth International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics. A serious conflict occurred only

when Glushko abruptly informed Korolev that contrary to their earlier agreed-on technical assignment, he would

develop engines of 100 tons thrust instead of 150 tons. Calling this a violation of their earlier agreement, Korolev

argued that this was unacceptable becauselower thrust engineswould require a higher number of engines. The matter was eventually left unresolved, as was the final choice of propellants for the boosters, which was a far more

thorny issue between the two designers.

68. Dorofeyev, "History of the Development of the N I-L3 Moon Program."

69. Mishin. "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"; Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya,

p 248.

70. Romanov.Koroleu, pp. 425 27.

7 I. As earlyas 1960, Korolev had begun to attack what he considered Glushko's monopoly in the creation

of high thrust liquid-propellant rocket engines in the Soviet Union. In a letter dated July 4. 1960. written to

Commander in-Chief of the Strategic Missile ForcesMarshal M. I. Nedelin, Korolev wrote that "OKB-I has reason

to believethat there is a lag arising.., there are too few OKBs at the present time which are engagedin work on

rocketengines." SeeVetrov. "The Difficult Fateof the N I: Part I," p 80.

319
32O

was"asortof ultimatum.''_ Glushkoclaimed

thathehad"specialuthority"to makesucha

demand,apparentlyat the behestof

Khrushchevhimself.Inretrospect,thetimingof

thelettergoesalongwaytoexplainGlushko's

apparent"ultimatum."In November1961,a

monthbeforethisletter,hehadmoreorless

committedtobuildingthet50-tonstorablepropellantenginesfor Chelomey'snewUR-500

booster.Ifheagreedto Korolev'sdemandson

theNI engines,hewouldnowhaveto design

yetanothersimilar150-tonengine,onlywith

LaX-kerosene--aneffortthat he reasonably

consideredaduplicationandawasteoftime.

CombinedwithhisearlierproblemswithLax

andthemilitary'sfondnessforstorablepropellants,fromGlushko'spointof view,therewas

simplynootherationalchoice:hewouldstick

withhisRD-253andRD-254enginesandproposethemfor the NI andN2 boosters.

Glushko'sletterservedtobringthedebateto a

standstill.Withindays,theSovietgovernment

establishedacommission,headedbyAcademy

of SciencesPresidentKeldysh,to specifically

Thereare almost no photos o/Korolev and Glushko

together This is an extremely rare shot of the two

giants of the Soviet space program dating from

around 1959 and taken at Tyura Tam

(files of Peter Gorin)

look into the matter and make a formal recommendation on the propellant issue. The commission meetings started out as acrimoniously as one would expect. Perhaps sensing that Keldysh

would side with Korolev, Glushko, for the first time, openly quarreled with Keldysh. Glushko

had reason to be defensive: by January 1962, after a visit to the Kuznetsov engine design bureau

in Kuybyshev, it was becoming clear that the commission was indeed favoring Korolev.

The matter was finally taken to the "ministry" level with a series of intensive meetings

between February I0 and 21, 1962, at the premises of the State Committee for Defense

Technology in the Kremlin. Presiding was the State Committee Chairman Smirnov, who having

been appointed to the position only nine months earlier was having to face a battle of gargantuan proportions. Apart from purely technical issues, it was clear that both Korolev and

Glushko needed each other to move ahead on the N series boosters. If anything, Korolev needed Glushko far more than the reverse. It would be a significant risk for Korolev to build the centerpiece of the future Soviet space program without the help of the most successful engine

builder in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Glushko could possibly do without Korolev's

N I: he had, after all, sided with Chelomey on his new UR-500 booster, and given Chelomey's

continuing rise to power, he could continue to ride on his coattails. The meetings at Smirnov's

proved to be the breaking point for the conflict. On one particular occasion, the discussions

degenerated into a shouting match of insults and personal attacks between the two. Korolev

was insistent that storable propellants were far too toxic and explosive. When Korolev began

talking about "powder kegs," Glushko shot back, "Oh, I understand, you'd ideally like a steam

engine! . . . So you want to fly in space but remain Mr. Clean?! ..... Glushko began to invoke

"state interests"--that is, the military's preference for storables--but Korolev would not hear

72. Vetrov, "Development ol Heavy Launch Vehicles in the USSR."

73 YaroslavGolovanov, Koroteu fakty i miD" (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p 712

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FOTU RE

tt. Yelling by this time, Korolev cut him off: "Listen, if you don't want to, then don't do it! We'll

get by without you!"74 Dead silence followed as even Smirnov refrained from saying anything.

The deputies of both Korolev and Glushko quietly left the room, letting the two old men deal

with each other's demons.

The Propellant Commission, after these meetings, recommended the following pairs of propellant for the N boosters, in order of their preference: LOX-kerosene, LOX-UDMH, and nitric

acid-UDMH. Forobvious reasons, Glushko was not happy with the decision, and as the intransigence of both designers came to the fore, "a number of high-ranking officials" found themselves trying to mediate the discord. 7_Buoyed by the commission's decision and unwilling to

compromise with Glushko, Korolev immediately began resorting to his contingency plans--

that is, put his lot with the inexperienced Kuznetsov design bureau. Of the four engine designers contracted in the initial technical assignment, only Kuznetsov and Glushko had agreed to

design the first- and second-stage engines. With Glushko out, there was simply no other

choice. Despite the commission's decision, the future of his boosters was not guaranteed.

Korolev had a number of major opponents in powerful positions to overcome before the

N booster project was allowed to continue. His new R-9 ICBM had been performing poorly

since test flights began in gprit 1961: this had deleterious effect on OKB-I's relationship with

important individuals in both the Communist Party and the military. The ascendance of Frol R

Kozlov as the Party leader of the space program was also a big stumbling block to Korolev's

plans: Kozlov had consistently sided against Korolev at important junctures and may have been

responsible for the May 1961 decree favoring Chelomey. Given that Kozlov was the most

important decision-maker in the Soviet space program, the N program's fate depended to a

great extent on Kozlov's assessment of the situation.

In early 1962, immediately after the commission's recommendations, there was a major

design change in the conception of the N I and N2 boosters. Korolev's engineers scrapped the

original N I proposal (forty to fifty tons to low-Earth orbit) and renamed the more powerful N2

proposal (fifty to eighty tons to low-Earth orbit) the "new" N I launch vehicle. The nominal

payload capability was set at seventy-five tons, sufficient to allow the accomplishment of a variety of long-term goals, including military missions and a piloted mission to Mars (the latter

being one of the more favored future plans at OKB-1 at the time). 7_It was clear to Korolev that

a direct jump from the modest Vostok booster (about six tons) directly to the N I (seventy-five

tons) would be a tremendous leap and a significant risk. Before receiving further funding and

support to continue the project, he would not only have to justify the effort in terms of the

needs of the defense industry, but he would also have to provide some kind of guarantees to

the various reviewing scientific-technical councils that a leap from six tons to seventy-five tons

would be feasible given the current state of Soviet rocket technology. Any argument in support

of Korolev's position would no doubt also suffer from the fact that Glushko was no longer a

willing participant in the endeavor.

To ease the jump in payload capabilities, Korolev hatched a brilliant strategy. In 1961,when

discussions on orbital weapons systems had first been discussed at high-level government

meetings, OKB-I had also begun studying a similar project. Designated the Global Missile No.

I (GR-I), the rocket would launch a 2.2-megaton warhead into a 150-kilometer orbit around

74. Ibid

75. Vetrov."The DifficultFateof the NI: PartI1_,r

76. SeeSemenov.ed, RaketnoKosmieheskayaKorporatsiya.p. 249, where it states_"Computations

provedthe majorityof goalsof militaryandspacenaturecouldbe solvedby a [rocket-carrier]with a payloadmass

ot 70-100tons put into a circularorbit aroundthe Earthat analtitudeof 300kin" This massanalysismayhave

beenundertakenincooperationwith themilitary,inparticulartheresearchanddevelopmentinstituteof theStrategic

MissileForces,Nil 4.

321
322

Earth. In case of hostilities, the warhead container would deorbit, reenter, and hit the "designated target. ''_7In one sense, Korolev's GR-I proposal was meant to appease an increasingly

restless military, who were disappointed with the erratic performance of the trouble-prone R-9.

On the other hand, the missile would also serve as a perfect test bed for N I engine technology. The engine for the first stage of the GR-I, the NK-9, was the same one used for the abandoned R-9M ICBM The GR-l's second stage would simply use a variant of the NK-9, named

the NK-9V, whose only difference was that it was modified for altitude use. Both these engines

were prototypes for engines for the first three stages of the giant N I. Finally, the third stage of

GR-I would be equipped with the 8D126 engine, yet another prototype for an upper stage

engine for the N I. '_ P,II the stages would use Korolev's favored LOX-kerosene combination. As

a proposal, it was perfect in all respects. The GR-I would fly dozens of test missions proving

out important aspects of N I architecture; by the time that the N I would come on line in the

mid-1960s, all of its primary propulsion components would be tested and ready. The only hurdle was the approval to undertake both proJects. '_

In early February 1962, Korolev received an invitation from Khrushchev to attend a meeting of the top-secret Council of Defense at the holiday resort of Pitsunda. The entire high command of the Soviet defense industry, Communist Party, armed forces, and design bureaus were

to attend. _° It would not be an overstatement to suggest that it was perhaps the single most

important policy meeting in the early Soviet space program, as the three main space designers--Korolev, Chelomey, and Yangel--vied for a slice of the cosmos. To Korolev, it was clear

that this would perhaps be his last opportuniW to save the N I project. An endorsement from

Khrushchev himself would remove a number of problematic obstacles, in particular the lessthan-enthusiastic Kozlov. Each of the three designers arrived at Pitsunda in late February armed

with beautifully illustrated posters of their respective proposals and projects, intent on coercing

the minds of the most powerful in the Soviet state. The first day of the meeting, February 22,

was dedicated to briefings by several naval commanders, ending with a presentation by

Chelomey. His performance was flawless. By the end, he had earned the green light to proceed

with a new version of the UR-200 ICBM, as well as a completely new all-purpose ICBMlspace

launch vehicle/orbital bombardment system, the famous UR-500. Because of time limitations,

Korolev's speech was delayed to the second day.

17 Ibid. pp. 128-30

78. Ibid. pp. 129.252: PeterA Gorin, "The Dark Side of the Moon Race," presented at the annual meflting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boston, MA, November 14 17, 1996.

79. Korolev had already apprised the Sovietleadership of the GR I proposal. In September 1961, he sent a

letter on the issueto the government, and in November, one to Khrushchev himself The latter was signed by S. P

Korolev, N D. Kuznetsov. N. A Pilyugin, M. S. Ryazanskiy,and V. P. Mishin, implying that at least three of the "big

six" chief designers--Korolev, Pilyugin, and Ryazanskiy--were supportive of the idea.

80. Among those known to have been presentat the meeting were N. S. Khrushchev (First Secretaryof the

Central Committee). F R. Kozlov (Secretaryof the Central Committee for DefenseIndustries and Space),I. D Serbin

(Chief of the Defense Industries Department of the Central Committee), A. N Kosygin (First Deputy Chairman o[

the Council of Ministers), A. I. Mikoyan (First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers), R. Ya. Malinovskiy

(Minister of Defense), A. A. Grechko (First Deputy Minister of Defense), M. V. Zakharov (Chief of the General Staff

of the Ministry of Defense), S. S. Biryuzov (Commander in-Chief of Air Defense Forces), S. G. Gorshkov

(Commander-in-Chief of the Navy), K S. Moskalenko (CommaNder-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces), S P

Ivanov (Secretaryof the Council of Defense). D. F.Llstinov (Chairman ol the Military-lndustrial Commission), L V.

Smirnov (Chairman of the State Committee for DefenseTechnology), P. V. Dementyev (Chairman of the State

Committee for l_viation Technology), B. Ye. Butoma (Chairman of the State Committee for Ship Building), Ye. P.

Slavskiy(Minister of Medium Machine Building), M. V. Keidysh (President of the Academy of Sciences),S. P.Korolev

(OKB I Chief Designer), V. P. Glushko (OKB-456 Chief Designer), V. N Chelomey (OKB-52 General Designer),

M K Yangel (OKB 586 Chief Designer). V. P. Makeyev (SKB-385Chief Designer), N. A. Pilyugin (NII-885 Chief

Designer), V h Kuznetsov (Nil 944 Chief Designer), and S. N. Khrushchev (OKB-52 Deputy Department Chief)

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

In contrast to the smooth and sophisticated Chelomey, Korolev spoke in concise, choppy

phrases. He showed his posters of the N I to the assemblage, briefly reviewing the work done

since the June 1960 decree. Emphasizing the delays and problems with funding, he casually

brought up the need to raise the payload capability of the vehicle from its current forty tons to

seventy-five tons. Calculations had showed that forty tons would be simply insufficient for missions to the Moon and the other planets. Two variants were conceptualized at that point: one

with twenty-four 150-ton-thrust engines and one with a smaller number of 600-ton engines.

All the engines would use LOX and kerosene, with the upper stages using LH2. Korolev apparently startled Khrushchev by saying that all these engines would be designed not by Glushko

but by a new entrant to the space program, Kuznetsov. When asked why Glushko was not participating, Korolev was forthright, saying Glushko had refused to work on the engines and that

he was also burdened by orders from Yangel and Chelomey. Amazingly, Glushko and Korotev

began to argue vociferously in front of the distinguished assemblage, threatening to derail any

notion of rationality. Khrushchev, silent all this time, cut them off, and instructed Ustinov to

carefully assess Korolev's modified proposals and prepare recommendations. _ Korolev's proposal on the GR-I was brushed away, mainly at the behest of Central Committee Secretary

Kozlov, who had been opposed to the idea all along. The continuing problems with Korolev's

R-9 ICBM had put a wedge in the relationship between his design bureau and the Central

Committee.

Yangel spoke after Korolev and put a new twist on the entire situation. Yangel had always

been somewhat of an "odd man out" in the Soviet space program. Although he had made

quick progress in converting his old medium-range ballistic missiles, such as the R-12 and the

R-14, into space launch vehicles, he had not expressed any explicit interest in the piloted space

program. His primary domain was the development of Soviet ICBMs, and he seemed relatively

content to limit his activities in the space arena to modest automated satellites for military purposes. Unlike Korolev's flashy Zenit reconnaissance satellites, '/angel's smaller spacecraft were

for research on Earth's ionosphere, meteoroid concentration in Earth orbit, cosmic rays, and

Earth's magnetic field--areas that had indirect application to military goals? 2 At the meeting in

Pitsunda, Yangel proposed a massive new ICBM (the R-36), yet another orbital bombardment

system (the R-36-O), and a heavy-lift space launch vehicle (the R-56). The latter would have a

launch mass of 1,400 tons and a lifting capability of forty tons to a 200-kilometer orbit, specifications remarkably similar to Korolev's original N I plan? _ Dazzled by the performance of

Yangel's design bureau in the rapid development of new high-performance military systems, the

81. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu: tom 2, pp, 149-62. In another one of those curious contradictions of

the study of Soviet spacehistory, an account of this very important meeting at Pitsunda hasbeen published that differs completely from the one given in the above source. SeeGolovanov, Koroleu, pp. 717-19. In the latter source,

the author suggeststhat it was Khrushchev himself who proposed the change in NI payload mass from forty tons

to seventy-five tons. invoking the need to develop a huge battle station that could not only keep a watch on the

U.S. mainland but also serveas a station point for nuclear warheads. Khrushchev was concerned about the differ

ences in times for a nuclear attack. U.S. missilescould reachthe Soviet mainland in eight to ten minutes, while Soviet

missiles would take twenty to thirty minutes. By Khrushchev's reasoning, such a battle station, to be launched on

the N I, would go a long way in redressingthis imbalance.

82. Fora detailed summary of the early Yangel satellite launches, seeV. Agapov. "Marking the First ISZ of

the 'DS' Series"(English title). Nouosti kosmonautiki 6 (March 10-23, 1991): 54-64.

83. Khrushchev. Nikita Khrushcheu:tom 2, pp, 162-66, 169-70; S N. Konyukhov and V, A Pashchenko,

"History of Space Launch Vehicles Development." presentedat the 46th Congress of the International Astronautical

Federation, IAA-95-1AA,2.2.09, Oslo, Norway, October 2-6, 1995 A fourth proposal, the R-46 ICBM, was also

apparently tabled at this time. This rocket was an ICBM capable of carrying a fifty-megaton warhead. The military,

evidently, had no interest in this proposal. Seealso Mikhail Rudenko, "Space Bulletin: 25 YearsFromthe Landing of

American Astronauts on the Moon" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 29 (1994): 8-9. for descriptions of the

Pitsunda meeting.

323
324

Soviet leadership, especially those in the Communist Party, were very receptive to the new proposals. All three of them were approved for further development.

If Korolev had gone into the meeting with some hope of salvaging his beloved N I. those

hopes must have sank to heretofore unseen depths with the issuance of a formal decree of the

Central Committee of the Communist Party and the USSR Council of Ministers on April 16.

1962, titled "On Important Work on Intercontinental Ballistic and Global Missiles and RocketCarriers for Space Objects." The decree specified that all work on the N I in 1962 should be

limited to work on the draft plan with "necessary economic substantiation of the cost of its

creation. TM The slowdown in the project was clearly related to the conflict between Glushko

and Korolev. The decree specified that each of the different versions proposed--that is, the one

with Glushko's engines versus the one with Kuznetsov's engines--be appraised in financial

terms to come to a decision. While Korolev's lot was sinking, both Yangel and Chelomey

gained significantly. The decree approved all three of Yangel's proposals, thus positing the latter's R-56 as a direct competitor to the N I, threatening to completely sink the entire N I project. _ A second decree in late April granted Chelomey the approval to move ahead with his

Pitsunda proposals. With two parallel orbital bombardment systems, Yangel's R-36-O and

Chelomey's UR-500, there was little need for a third one from Korolev. The OKB-I chief designer had effectively left Pitsunda empty-handed

The Keldysh Commission

Since the issuance of the June 1960 decree on approving preliminary work on N series

boosters, OKB-I had been engaged in intensive study oriented to selecting a single design configuration for the vehicle. During the period 1960-62, a department at the design bureau studied at least sixty different versions of the booster, from multiple-component configurations to

monocoque designs, in both tandem and parallel configurations. Feasibility studies and analyses of each variant's advantages and disadvantages were considered during this phase. Early

research had already resulted in the rejection of the parallel or strap-on configuration used on the

R-7. Although there were advantages of that design in terms of manufacturing processes, transport, and assembly, the less than optimal mass characteristics as well as the existence of far too

many pneumatic, hydraulic, and electrical connections would negate any of the favorable factors. The configuration eventually selected was a three-stage tandem or successive-staged

scheme with a semi-monocoque design. In a full monocoque design, the mainframe of the rocket also served as the propellant tanks, thus allowing a number of significant mass savings.

Perhaps the most unusual design characteristic of the chosen N I design was the use of

giant spherical propellant tanks. These would be suspended within the main load-bearing outer

frame of the rocket, held in place by the forces on them. Engineers theorized that at liftoff, air

from the surrounding atmosphere would be ejected by the exhaust streams of the rocket

engines into the internal space beneath the lower spherical tank. These exhaust gases would,

in theory, form a huge jet engine, which would include the entire lower part of the first stage.

Even without the standard expectation of "afterburning" of the rocket engine exhaust, the engineers believed that this phenomenon would provide a significant augmentation of rated thrust.

The connections between the first and second as well as the second and third stages would be

made up of huge networks of lattice structures, allowing gases to exit at the moment of "hot

launch" of the next stage. In the interest of simplicity, the engineers completely dispensed with

84. Semenov,ed., Rakelno-KosrnicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 248.

85. V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov. and V, Pashchenko, Dr]eprovskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy tsentr

{Dnepropetrovsk: POYuMZ/KBYu, 1994), pp. 68-69. Note that another source saysthat Yangel'splan was approved

on May 12. 1962 SeeKhrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev: torn 2. p. 165.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

the idea of using gimbaled rocket engines on the rocket for yaw and pitch, and instead they

opted to incorporate a system whereby opposing rocket engines on the stages would develop

mismatched thrusts. Roll maneuvers would be carried out by small thrusters fed by gases diverted from the turbopump assemblies.

In formulating a comprehensive economical and technical analysis of the final version, the

engineers also addressed the issues of construction, transportation, and assembly of the rocket. One of the major obstacles encountered was moving the vehicle from the manufacturing

plant to the launch site at Tyura-Tam. Because the individual stages were expected to be huge,

rail transportation was out of the question. Preliminary options included designing the outer

shell of the vehicle in such a way that it could be disassembled; similarly, the propellant tanks

would be made of petal-shaped strips that would be assembled at Tyura-Tam. Clearly, there was

a paramount need for a massive new assembly building at the launch site specifically built for

the N I program--an associated cost that was factored into the preliminary projections? _

Of the elements of the N I studied during this stage, perhaps the most important were the

determination of the number of engines required for the first stage of the giant launch vehicle and

their thrust. After extensive analysis of the possible options, OKB-I settled on using a large number of medium-thrust engines instead of a small number of high-thrust engines, as NASA would

do in the case of the Saturn V. OKB-I's reasoning was justified by four factors;

• The development and manufacture of engines with thrust levels of 150 tons could be carried out with the current existing technical base without extensive remodeling or construction as would be required for larger engines of 600 to 900 tons thrust.

• Engines with thrusts of 150 tons used on the first stage could also be used on the second

stage without significant modification, thus saving an entire level of development as would

be required for more powerful engines.

• Because the reliability and capacities of the engines would depend on the quantity of

ground tests, greater reliability could be achieved with an equal expenditure for engines of

smaller thrust over engines of larger thrust.

• 'With the use of a large number of engines, a failure of one or two engines would not pose

a catastrophic risk to a mission, because the remaining engines could compensate for the

failures. 87

To address the last point, the engineers conceptualized a system known as the Engine

Operation Control (KORD) system, which would have the capability to quickly switch off malfunctioning engines as well as units diametrically opposite to the suspect engine. In practice,

this system turned out to be much more difficult to operate than was anticipated at the time.

Korolev's engineers addressed the propellant issue in the final stages of the preliminary

analysis. Perhaps to give this process a note of impartiality, this analysis was carried out not

only at OKB-I, but also at other research institutions, such as NIl-4. It seems that costbenefit and technical analyses were conducted of two complete variants of the N I: one with

Korolev's favored LOX-kerosene combination and one with Glushko's N2Q-LIDMH combination. The analyses clearly proved that the latter was far inferior to the former in terms of operational characteristics. The storable propellant variant would decrease the potential payload

mass (while keeping the launch mass constant), lower specific impulse, increase propellant

mass (because of higher elasticity of the components), and significantly increase the costs

associated with the development of a large industrial base for storable components. "_ tqll the

86. IgorAfanasyev,"Nl:,qbsolutelySecret:Partll"(Englishtitle),Krytyarodinyno. 10(October 1993): I-4.

87. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 249.

88. Ibid. p. 250.

325
326

This famous picture is of the so-called "Three K's" of the Soviet military-industrial complex Fromfar left are

SergeyKoroleu from the missile program. Igor Kurchatou from the atomic bomb program, and Mstislau Ketdysh

from the Academy of Sciences On the extreme right is Korolevs firsl Deputy Vasiliy Mishin Thephotograph

dates from July 1959, when Korotev_Ketdysh,and Mishin visited Kurchatou's institute. (files of Peter C_orin)

engines on the cryogenic variant were designed to be of the closed cycle type, allowing higher

combustion pressure and better performance. Engineers chose such a scheme no doubt because

both OKB-I and Kuznetsov's OKB-276 had experience with closed cycle units. In contrast, all

of Glushko's aborted efforts at designing cryogenic engines in the 1950s and early t960s had

been of the open cycle type, better known in the West as "gas generator cycle" engines.

The research and development effort leading to the preparation of the N I draft plan was not only

carried out at OKB-I. At Korolev's insistence, a large number of other design bureaus and scientificresearch institutes were involved in the process "for reducing the number of critics we would run up

against in subsequent work. That way, the component manufacturers would know that their ideas

had been taken into consideration from the very beginning of the design process."_ At OKB-t itself,

the complete effort was directly overseen by Korolev and his immediate deputy, Vasitiy E Mishin, both

perhaps seeing the future of their design bureau in the project. For someone who was primarily a manager rather than an engineer at this point in his life, Korolev's personal contribution to the design of

the N I was remarkably significant. For example, a set of notes to a deputy chief designer authored by

Korolev on February 5, 1962, detailed recommendations and comments on a variety of issues, including launch mass, engines, payloads, manufacturing, assembly, welding of parts, propellants, storage

facilities, and ground testing. In addition, he had detailed suggestions for how drawings of various

N I systems should be prepared, as well as standard managerial assignments on the project. °°

89. R. Dolgopyatov, B. Dorofeyev,and S. Kryukov, "At the Readers'Request:The NI Project" (English title),

..,quiatsiyai kosmonautika no. 9 (September 1992): 34-37.

90. _. Yu. Ishlinskiy, ed, Ztkademik S. P Korolev. ucheniy, inzhener, chelovek (Moscow: Nauka, 1986). pp.

195-97 Note that the NI is not actually mentioned anywhere in the source, becausethe existenceof the rocketwas

still classified information at the time The deputy chief designer in question was S. S. Kryukov, one of the primary

designersof the NI rocket. A declassified version of these samenotes has been published as S. E Korotev, "Notes

on the N I" (English title), in B. V. Raushenbakh, ed.. S. P Koroleu i ego delo: suet i teni u istorii kosmonavtiki

izbrannyye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1998). pp. 355-57.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

The forty-five-year-old Mishin, officially OKB-I's First Deputy Chief Designer for PlanningDesign Work, was one of the most aggressive individuals in the design bureau's "high command." gn outspoken and assertive engineer, he had served as Korolev's right-hand man since

the establishment of OKB-I as an entity in 1946. His particular engineering specialties were ballistics, dynamics, aero-gas dynamics, and stress, but he oversaw almost every single program

at the design bureau. By his own account, he was "groomed" by Korolev to be his successor.

In fact, at every point in the history of the design bureau, Mishin was promoted or given awards

together with Korolev. In 1961, after Gagarin's flight, Korolev had nominated Mishin for an

unprecedented second Hero of Socialist Labor award, reserved only for chief designers: the proposal was ultimately rejected "at the highest level," and instead Mishin was conferred the less

prestigious Order of Lenin2'

Mishin's own relationship with Korolev was dictated to a great extent by the idiosyncrasies of

both personalities. Mishin later recalled, "It should not be thought that just becauseI was Korolev's

first deputy, this meant that I was both a very close friend and counselor.., we would not speak

for weeks because of some disagreement. ''_' Both apparently agreedthat they "would only sort out

[their] differences in private with no witnesses in attendance."_ While he was certainly one of the

most creative engineers at the design bureau, hewas endowed with lessthan stellar diplomatic talents, putting him into confrontations on many occasions with various people. More passionate

about the useof LOX on missiles and rockets than even Korolev, Mishin had continuously and vigorously argued the oxidizer's use on the R-9 and the N I at every step of the way. Mishin's relationship with Glushko was even worse than Koroiev's, perhaps resulting from an incident in 1960

when Glushko had insulted Mishin to his face in front of a group of leading designers amid a discussion on the merits of closed cycle versus open cycle LOX engines24 If Korolev had any inclination to compromise with Glushko on the propellant issue, he was most likely swayed by Mishin,

who was adamantly against capitulating to the powerful engine designer.

Apart from Korolev and Mishin, the importance of the N I project in the framework of

OKB-I's long-range plans was demonstrated by the inclusion of no less than eight other deputy

chief designers at the design bureau. They were to oversee various aspects of the design work:

Konstantin D. Bushuyev and SergeyS. Kryukov (planning and computational-theoretical work),

Sergey O. Okhapkin (design and strength), Boris Ye, Chertok (guidance systems), Mikhail V.

Melnikov (rocket engines), Leonid g. Voskresenskiy and later Yakov I. Tregub (testing systems),

Rnatoliy R tqbramov (ground complexes), and the famous Mikhail K. Tikhonravov (general thematic research, continuing his pioneering work in the evolution of the Soviet space program)2-'

Korolev signed the initial hffeen-volume draft plan for the N I on May 16, 19622{ The draft

plan for the related GR-I missile had already been completed and signed a month earlier. The

N I draft plan, as prepared at the time, included a detailed step-by-step plan for the program,

encompassing different variants of the basic N I vehicle. In its basic configuration, the vehicle

would be a three-stage (each known as Blok A, Blok B, and Blok V) rocket augmented by two

upper stages (Blok G and Blok D). Perhaps responding to criticism on moving from the modest Vostok launcher to the giant N I, the May 1962 draft plan included proposals for three progressively powerful launch vehicles--the N I, N I I, and N I I I--all sharing common elements.

A fourth rocket, the GR- I, would test the remaining components of the N I.

9 I. Yu.A. Mozzhorin.et at.,eds_Dorogiu kosrnos:I (Moscow:MAI, 1992).pp, 119-20.

92. Tarasov,"Missionsin DreamsandReality,"p. 4.

93. VasiliyMishin, "We Would MakeYouWork to the Bestof YourAbility," #erospaceJournalno. I

(January-February1997):76-78.

94. Chertok,Raketyi lyudi: FiliPodlipkiTyuratomp. 343.

95. Semenov,ed.,Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,p. 250

96. Golovanov,Korolev.p. 71I.

321
328

The N I I would use the second, third, and fourth stages of the N I, omitting the giant first

stage. The N I I I would use only the third and fourth stages of the base N I and a third stage

transferred from the second stage of the R-9A ICBM. There were two significant advantages to

this plan. First, it would make the design and flight testing of the basic N I booster much more

efficient by testing vital stages and instrumentation on smaller sized test articles. Second, it

would introduce three new classes of launchers for satisfying very different mission requirements. The GR-I orbital bombardment system would be almost the same as the proposed

N I I I: the only difference would be the use of the N l's critical fifth stage (Blok D) as the

GR-I's third stage. This particular stage, designed for use in vacuum conditions, was required

to carry out multiple firings on the same mission: vigorous testing on the GR-I would qualify

the engine for nominal operation on the base N I. In effect, with such a progressive booster

program, by the time the N I flew its first mission, all the stages, save the first stage, would

have already been tested and qualified in flight conditions. The payload capabilities and launch

masses of the three N series boosters would be:

Booster Variant Stage Designations Launch Mass

Payload Capability

to Earth Orbit

NI (or " I tA52") Biok A (Stage I) 2,160 tons 75 tons

Blok B (Stage 2)

BIok V (Stage 3)

Blok G (Stage 4)

Blok D (Stage 5)

NI ("1 IA53") Blok B (Stage t) 700 tons 20 tons

Blok V (Stage 2)

Blok G (Stage 3)

NI I ("1 IA54") Blok V (Stage I) 200 tons 5 tons _

Blok O (Stage 2)

R-gA Blok B (Stage 3)

The proposed requested amount for the manufacture of the first ten rockets of the series was

457 million rubles/"

A special "expert commission" affiliated to the LISSR Academy of Science examined the

complete project materials on the N I project, spanning twenty-nine volumes and eight appendices, during an intensive series of meetings held between July 2 and 16, 1962. Members of the

commission included the leading chief designers, industrial representatives, military officers,

scientists, and Party apparatchiks involved in the Soviet space program. Academician Mstislav

V. Keldysh, the President of the Academy of Sciences, served as chairman. As one would

expect, the primary issue of contention was the selection of propellants--a conflict that threatened to bring the project to a complete standstill. Both Glushko and Korolev were allowed to

make cases for their respective variants--the former with the N_Q-LIDMH combination and

the latter with the LOX-kerosene combination. Glushko supported his position with several

argumentative points. He believed that:

97. Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev. and Kryukov, "At the Readers' Request: The NI Project": Semenov, ed.,

Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 250.

98. S Kryukov. "The Brilliance and Eclipseof the Lunar Program" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no. 4 (April

1994): 81-85.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

• The creation of very powerful LOX-based engines would be the source of paramount problems because of such factors as intermittent combustion and the need to protect the combustion chamber and nozzle walls from overheating, His design bureau had faced these

problems in the development of several single-chamber LOX-kerosene engines (in particular the RD-I I0 and RD-I I I) during the 1950s and 1960s.

• The creation of very powerful LOX-based engines would be plagued by high-frequency

oscillations, which had served as significant obstacles in the development of the RD-II0

andRD-lll.

• The use of storable propellants, which produce steady combustion in the engine chamber

at temperatures 280 to 580 degrees Centigrade lower than those with LOX, would allow

for a quicker development phase.

• The use of hypergolic or serf-igniting propellants would allow for a simpler engine design.

• The development of storable propellant engines for the N I would not necessitate significant additional resources on his part--that is, take less time and money--because his

design bureau was already developing similar engines for Chelomey's boosters (in particular the RD-253).

Korolev countered each point based on the analysis conducted at his design bureau as well

as in other organizations. His belief was that:

Glushko's concerns about the problems associated with the development of the LOXkerosene engine were invalidated to a great degree because OKB-I was advocating the use

of a closed cycle scheme for the design of the engines--a design that circumvented most,

if not all, of the problems enumerated by Glushko. OKB-I and OKB-2Z6 already had significant experience in the design of closed cycle rocket engines (with the SI.54OO and

NK-9 engines). In his report, Korolev stressed that:

Ztll arguments about the di[ficulty o[ developing oxygen-kerosene engines were based

only on the experience of the OKB o[ Glushko of developing [liquid-propellant rocket

engines] with an open scheme, in which the oxidizer (oxygen or nitrogen tetroxide) is

delivered to the chamber in a liquid and cold state. It should be emphasized that the di[-

ficulties to which the OKB o[ _lushko re[er to have nothing to do with the engines having been adopted for the N I with a "closed" scheme, in which the oxidizing agent

(oxygen) is delivered to the chamber in a hot and gaseous state .... _

• The use of storable propellants would significantly decrease the specific impulse of the

engines, thus lowering payload mass.

• The use of storable propellants would significantly increase the mass of the propellant

tanks,

• The use of cryogenic propellants would be significantly less expensive than storable propellants, In the case of the one-time capital expense for the development of the engines,

the former would be two times less expensive: in the case of the components themselves,

the cost of the former would be seven times less expensive.

• The use of storable propellants would dramatically increase the danger in working with the

rocket not only because of the high toxicity of the propellants, but also because of their

hypergolic characteristics. On this point, Korolev cautioned:

99. Vetrov,"The DifficultFateof the NI: PartII," p. 20.

329
33O

These components are self-igniting and toxic, which increases the potential o[ pressurizing the components. Especially great is the danger to the service personnel at times of

abnormal functioning of the aggregates and the systems. ''_

The arguments went back and forth for days without much compromise, sometimes fracturing the modicum of unity among the other chief designers. Eventually. the commission

arrived at a consensus: it voted to recommend Korolev's LOX-kerosene variant, adding in its

official report that the N I draft plan fulfilled "high scientific-technical standards" that had been

originally demanded in the initial proposals. '°' Glushko was aghast, Despite the decision, he

insisted on a total revision of the N I plan, allowing for the use of N20_-UDMH: he simply

refused to make the LOX engines necessary for the project. Several other prominent chief

designers, including Barmin and Ryazanskiy as well as Strategic Missile Forces Lt. General

Mrykin, apparently made great efforts to mediate the issue by having G1ushko participate in the

project, but the two designers refused to work together. By default, the job to develop the N I

engines ended up in the lap of Nikolay D. Kuznetsov of Kuybyshev,

The July 1962 decision by the Keldysh Commission effectively fractured the space program

into the Korolev and Glushko camps, destroying any semblance of unity that may have existed

during the Sputnik days. Although the break between the two was over purely technical issues,

the repercussions were far-reaching: the two giants of the Soviet space program would not live

to cooperate on another project. Korolev had turned his back on the most powerful and successful rocket engine designer in the country, resorting to someone who had almost no experience in the field, while Gtushko lost his role in what was to be the most expansive and greatest

project in the history of the Soviet space program. In a sense, it was the end of the beginning

of the dramatic road from Sputnik. Western observers did not even suspect the break between

the two until more than a quarter of a century later during the glasnost era. Over that twentyfive-year period, there was only one single hint of the discord, and it came from the pen of Nikita

Khrushchev himself. In his smuggled-out memoirs, published in 1974, he had written:

The principal designer of the [R-7] booster was Koroleu's friend and collaborator, whose

name I [orget. The best booster rocket in the world won't make a broomstick fly. So while

Korolev designed the rocket, his colleague designed the engine. They made an excellent

team Unfortunately, they split up later. I was uery upset and did everything to patch up

their friendship, but all my efforts were in vain.'°_

The troubled N I was conceived during an unexpected window of opportunity _n 1960. Its

path to birth was marred not only by the Korolev-Glushko battle, but also marked indifference

from the Soviet leadership. P,t the Pitsunda meeting in February t962, Khrushchev had been

remarkably ambivalent about the N I, instead forcing through a number of alternative proposals from Yangel and Chelomey. There had been some cursory orders to continue "paper

studies," which eventually resulted in the Keldysh Commission's positive appraisal of the effort

in July. Despite the acrimony over the propellant issue, the commission's recommendations

I00. The summary of the arguments are taken from ibid; Semenov, ed.. Raketrlo-Kosmicheskaya

Korporatsiya. pp. 249-5 I: ,qlanasyev, "N I: _qbsolutelySecret:Part I_": Kryukov. "The Brilliance and Eclipse of the

Lunar Program." OKB-I's complete defenseof the NI draft plan has been published as S. P.Korolev, "Report on the

Powerful N-I Carrier-Rocketat the Meeting of the Expert Commission" (English title), in Raushenbakh, ed., S P

Koroleu i ego delo. pp. 363-82

lot Kryukov. "The Brilliance and Eclipseof the Lunar Program."

102 Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev Remembers:The Last Testament(Boston: Little. Brown & Co, 1974),

pp. 46-47

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

clearly pushed the project into overdrive: within two months, the Soviet leadership was finally

ready to give the go-ahead On September 24, 1962, the LISSR Council of Ministers and the

Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a joint decree (no. 1021-436), which

approved full-scale work on the development of the N I booster, its component N I I and N I I I

launch vehicles, and the GR-I orbital bombardment system. Beginning with the bold challenge

to achieve "the goal of ensuring the leading position of the Soviet Union in the exploration of

space," the decree called for work on the creation of the 2,200-ton booster with a lifting capability of seventy-five tons to low-Earth orbit. _°_In versions with upper stages using LH2, the

booster would have lifting capacity of about ninety to 100 tons. The September 1962 decree

enumerated a fairly ambitious program leading to the first launch of the N I in 1965. 'o4Although

it would be the most powerful space launch vehicle ever built in the Soviet Llnion. it would still

fall short of the baseline capability of the early version of the equally giant Saturn C-5, which

was formally approved by N/3SA Headquarters on January 25, 1962. '°_

Literally hundreds of organizations were invited to participate in the N I program, notable

only by the absence of Glushko's OKB-456. Korolev's OKB-I would serve as the primary contractor responsible for overall design. Its affiliate Branch No. 3, located at Kuybyshev and headed by Deputy Chief Designer Dmitriy I. Kozlov, was assigned to oversee manufacture and

production at its adjacent Progress Plant. P,s in the postwar days of building modified A-4 missiles, the inertial guidance and radio control systems would be developed by NII-885 under

Chief Designers Pilyugin and Ryazanskiy, respectively. GSKB SpetsMash under Chief Designer

Barmin would design and build a new large launch complex at Tyura-Tam specifically for N I

operations. The development of the main rocket engines of the base N I variant were, of course,

tasked to OKB-276 at Kuybyshev. Other major subcontractors included NIl-4 (for ground

telemetry complexes): OKB-12 (for propellant loading systems); NII-88, the Central

Aerohydrodynamics Institute, and Nil-I (for aerodynamics research): the B. Ye. Paton Institute

of Welding and NITI-40 (for manufacturing processes); and NII-229 at Zagorsk (for ground

testing of all components). '°_

The Keldysh Commission and the subsequent governmental decree also addressed the

problematic issue of transportation and assembly of the N I. Because the entire rocket would

not be transportable in one piece, the commission recommended further research on means to

transport the rocket via air, sea, or land. OKB-I's initial proposal was to manufacture the components of the rocket at the Progress Plant at Kuybyshev, assemble and test the entire rocket at

the same location, disassemble the vehicle, and then transport the parts to Tyura-Tam P,t the

launch site, the parts would then be assembled and tested once again, which would be carried

out horizontally in a massive assembly building near the pad area. There was apparently much

103. Vetrov. "The Difficult Fateof theNl: Partll"

104. The decreestated that ( I ) autonomous firing work on the engines of the third, second, and first stages

would be finished in 1964, 1965, and 1965, respectively; (2) cluster firing work on engineson the stagesand units

would be carriedout from 1964to the first quarter of 1965: (3) the manufacture of two complexes of ground equip

ment at Tyura-Tamwould be in 1964: (4) preparation in 1964 of launch and technical sites would ensure the first

launch of the rocket: (5) work on ground complexes together with the rocketwould be in 1965:and (6) completion

of construction of the launch position and converting to operational activities wouid be in 1965. SeeSemenov,ed,

Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 251.

105. Roger E. Bilstein. Stages to Saturn. .,q Technological History of the Ztpollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles

(Washington, DC: NASA SP4206, 1996), pp. 58-59. The low-Earth orbit capability of the Saturn C-5 was prolected as 113 tons at the time

106. Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev, and Kryukov, "At the Readers' Request: The NI Project": Semenov, ed.,

Raketno-KosrnicheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 248-49; Dorofeyev, "History of the Development of the NI L3 Moon

Program."

331
332

resistance to this idea because it involved the design and construction of a massive new building at Tyura-Tam dedicated exclusively for the N I. Studies in 1962-63 explored several alternatives, which included using a single dirigible with a lifting capacity of 250 tons or using two

Katamaran-type connected dirigibles. Land transportation in the form of a major highway was

also considered but dismissed by the Ministry of Defense because of the costs involved in

building a 1,300-kilometer road from Kuybyshev and Tyura-Tam. Eventually, by mid-1963, the

military conceded their position and agreed on the original OKB-I proposal to transport the

rocket part by part to the launch site and assemble it in a giant building. The giant spherical

propellant tanks themselves would be manufactured in the form of flower petals, which could

be assembled and disassembled as needed. '°_

When the N I rocket was originally conceived in 1960, the issue of suitable payloads for

the booster was left sufficiently vague so as to include a variety of missions. In fact, unlike

NP,SP,'s Saturn C-5 launch vehicle, the N I was never proposed as a rocket for a dedicated single mission such as a lunar landing project. Conceptualized as "a universal launch vehicle," the

series of decrees in 1960-62 was remarkably ambiguous as to its ultimate use, merely alluding

to unspecified military, scientific, and interplanetary missions of the future Soviet space program. Korolev, clearly cognizant that the Ministry of Defense would be the primary funding

conduit for the project, continually targeted the rocket for use on vague military projects. It was

a "Trojan horse" strategy that had worked well for the R-7 ICBM, and like the R-7 effort, he delicately phrased his requests so as not to alarm military officials into believing that funding the

N I would siphon off resources from the huge strategic arms buildup in the 1960s. This tradeoff between the scientific and military needs of the country, while symptomatic of the nuances

of civilian-military relations in many other countries, was accentuated in the Soviet Union to a

great extent by the inherent outgrowth of the space program from the ballistic missile effort.

The original June 1960 decree had tasked the Ministry of Defense, in cooperation with the

defense industry, to formulate a set of missions for the use of new spacecraft for exclusively

military purposes. But space as a component of strategic military policy had clearly not emerged

at such an early period: space simply did not "fit into then-existing notions of defense" in the

Soviet Union. The Ministry of Defense tactical-technical requirement document for the N I had

not been issued by 1961, prompting Korolev to action. In a letter dated January 15, 1961, to

Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces Marshal Moskalenko, Korolev reminded

Moskalenko that no such document had been received by OKB-I. In a second letter signed the

same day, he addressed then-Chairman of the State Committee of Defense Technology

Konstantin N. Rudnev:

The in-depth study o[ the project plan and the discussions that were carried out with the

leading chie[ designer-workers and a number of specialists and scholars leads to the conclusion that all the enumerated space objects have military importance. [There are a number o[ ways] to reach new standards in the sphere of rocket technology.., necessary for

the successful solution of the problems the defense industry faces nowadays .... The creation of the heavy carrier N I occupies a special place among these. '°_

Korolev added that the heavy booster could play important roles in the orbiting of heavy

space stations, which could provide ideal conditions for conducting space-based

107 Vetrov,"The DifficultFateof the N I: Part I1":Dorofeyev,"History o[ the Developmentof the N I L3

Moon Program":Kryukov."The Brillianceand Eclipseof the LunarProgram":Afanasyev,"N I: AbsolutelySecret:

PartI1."

IO8 Ib_d

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

reconnaissance, carrying out early warning missions for detecting launches of foreign strategic

missiles and nuclear explosions, and determining levels of solar radiation. The military

remained unusually uninterested in the N I through 1962, perhaps dazzled by concurrent proposals of Chelomey and Yangel, such as the UR-500 and the R-56. Perhaps the military simply

believed that the more modest payload capabilities of these latter two boosters would be sufficient to meet any possible demands of the Ministry of Defense.

The July 1962 decision in favor of the N I by the Academy of Sciences did not help either.

According to Korolev's First Deputy Mishin, the "decision of the Academy of Sciences was supposed to define the objectives and produce a proposal for the development of space vehicles to

be inserted into space by [the N I]. "'°_The academy refrained from doing so, leaving the project

in somewhat of a lurch. The final governmental decree in September of the same year also did

not address the question of specific payloads for the booster, merely referring to the catch-all

"universal launcher" terminology. The dearth of suggestions from either the Ministry of Defense

or the academy did not prevent a plethora of internal OKB-I studies on possible N I payloads.

Much of these in the early 1960s were clearly focused on military applications and remain classified amid the still-secret archives of the design bureau. It is known, however, that thematically speaking, these military spacecraft were geared toward exotic goals, such as anti-satellite and

anti-ballistic missile defense, something of a precursor to the U.S. "Star Wars" program of twenty years later. According to one of the "fathers" of the NI, OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer

Kryukov, the N I was to launch into orbit multiple spacecraft as well as giant spacecraft "for

accomplishing inspection, control and ... means of destruction.' ......While the details still remain

obscure, it is clear that none of these studies of a military "Orbital Belt" were considered anything more than proposals: they remained consigned to paper, proposed only to ensure the survival of the N I project as an insurance policy to the primary financiers of the program.

To Mars

Beginning with Tsiolkovskiy in the early part of the century, Soviet space scientists had

consistently targeted the planet Mars as the singular most important objective in plans to

explore space. Piloted flight to Mars had figured prominently in the famous June 1960 decree

on the Soviet space program: Korolev's draft of the decree includes mention of an Object KMV

for sending cosmonauts around Mars and back to Earth again. Proposals for such missions

remained on the forefront of the Soviet space program's agenda after Sputnik and Vostok, seemingly unaffected by President Kennedy's 1961 pronouncement on the challenge to reach the

Moon prior to the end of the decade. To a great extent, it was Korolev's personal interest in

Mars. perhaps motivated by the dreams of his idealistic youth spent poring over the works of

Tsiolkovskiy. It had been a long thirty years since the late Fridrikh A. Tsander's "Onward to

Mars!" exclamation, and now Korolev was in a position to make that call for arms a reality.

Initial exploratory work on this issue began as early as 19.59, when a group under Gleb Yu,

Maksimov at OKB-I began toying with designs for a large interplanetary spaceship capable of

flight to the other planets. Maksimov, a veteran of Tikhonravov's studies on artificial satellites

in the early 1950s, was at the same time heading OKB-I's work on automated lunar and interplanetary stations. It was the research under Maksimov from 1959 to 1960 that may have been

the primary reason for freezing the N I payload mass at seventy-five tons, which was sufficient

for a piloted interplanetary spacecraft.

t09. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"

I10 Kryukov. "The Brilliance and Eclipse of the Lunar Program," p. 84.

333
334

The research on an interplanetary spacecraft

culminated in a proposal for a Heavy

Interplanetary Ship (TMK), which was aimed at

"rapid realization of the program with the

resources at hand.' .... Maksimov's plan called for

the N I to launch a seventy-five-ton payload into

Earth orbit, composed of a transplanetary boost

stage and a fifteen-ton spacecraft with a threeperson crew. Because there was still much

uncertainty concerning the reliability of the N I

at the time. a second backup option involved the

launch of an uncrewed TMK and its booster

stage into Earth orbit by the NI, followed by

delivery of the crew in a Vostok-type spaceship

to the TMK. Following systems checkout in

Earth orbit, the TMK would be sent on a trajectory toward Mars using a conventional LOXkerosene acceleration stage, conduct a flyby of

the planet, and then, using Martian gravitational pull, fly back to near-Earth space. At that

point, a detachable return apparatus with the

crew would separate and land on Soviet territory by means of parachute.

On paper, the cylindrical TMK had a length

of about twenty meters and a maximum diameter of four meters. The spacecraft had three main

compartments: one for biological research, one

for instrumentation, and a pressurized section

for the crew, Their volumes were seventy, twenty-five, and twenty-five cubic meters, respectively. The instrumentation compartment would

contain a specially shielded radiation shelter for

This is a model of the Heavy Interplanetary 5hip

(TMK) proposed in the early I960s to carry humans

around Mars on a multiyear-/ong trip ,'_ proposed

Earth.orbital station doting [ram the sameperiod

also used the same design as this interplanetary

spacecraft Note the docking nodes in the middle

of the cylinder for visitfng spacecra[t ,1evera/

"[toors" are visible on the lower half o[ the model

(copyright Mark Wade)

the crew during peak periods of solar activity as well as a "chlorella reactor" for generating the

crew's food needs. The spacecraft would be rotated around its axis through most of the twoto three-year-long mission to generate artificial gravity. Large solar panels would ensure a constant power supply during the mission. The initial technical design for this conception of the

TMK, known as the TMK-I, was completed on October 12, 1961.':

Maksimov's group, up to then involved only in the design of automated spacecraft, was an

unusual choice to design such a complex spacecraft, and this seems to have raised the specter

of competition _uithin OKB-I. The group of designers led by Feoktistov, who had served as the

chief architects of the Vostok spacecraft and were afraid of being left behind by the Maksimov

group, took it upon themselves to join the fray and began work "in an underground manner"

with a plan to surprise Korolev with their diligence. Curiously, both men reported to

t I I I. B Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft(From the History of the Soviet Space Program)" (English title).

Znaniye novoye v zhizni, nauke, tekhnike: seriya kosmonavtika, astronomiya (December 1991): 1-64.

112. Raushenbakh,ed., ,1 P Korolev i egodelo, p. 623: Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya.

p. 279: Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Mikhail Rebrov. "Saga from the Archives of Document No, 23891 and

an Unknown Space Project" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, May 13, 1995, p. 6: Ishlinskiy. ed, _kademik _I P

Korolev. pp. 99- 100

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Tikhonravov, who as Department No. 9 chief oversaw both the Maksimov and Feoktistov

groups. On the evening of April 30, 1960, after a presentation by Maksimov on his TMK plans,

Feoktistov unfurled the results of his own preliminary research. Korolev was apparently ecstatic that there was such interest in Mars. ''_ Feoktistov got the green light to move ahead on his

proposal, which in all ways was far more ambitious than Maksimov's plan because it involved

the landing of humans on the surface of Mars.

The Feoktistov variant, also called the TMK, would be assembled in orbit via two N I launches with seventy-five-ton payloads, making a grand total of 150 tons in Earth orbit. The linkedup spacecraft resembled a daisy flower with a compact seven-kilowatt nuclear reactor in the

center and radiator-emitters serving as petals. The crew cabin was located at one end of the

cylindrical stem. Primary propulsion would be performed by a set of low-thrust (seven and a half

kilograms) electrical rocket engines working off a nuclear energy source. These engines were to

fire slowly over a period of months as the TMK gathered enough speed to boost itself out of

Earth orbit toward Mars. At the Red Planet, the entire spacecraft would enter orbit, followed by

separation of the landing vehicle, which would alight on the surface. The landing vehicle itself

was composed of five "platforms": one for the crew cabin and drilling equipment, one for a glider for conducting reconnaissance over the Martian surface, two rockets for returning the crew

back into Martian orbit, and one for nuclear power sources. Over the course of one year, the

mobile vehicle would move across the Martian surface carrying out scientific research while

transmitting information back to the orbiting vehicle. A portion of the lander would then take

off, dock with the orbiter, and then head back to circumterrestrial space with the aid of the same

electrical rocket engines. The total mission for a ten-person crew would last three years. ''4

OKB-I expended a significant amount of effort on both these projects in the early 1960s,

diverting resources especially to the development of electrical rocket engines working on

nuclear energy, as well as the development of closed-loop life support systems. Electric rocket

engines, which unlike regular liquid-propellant engines allow the working fluid to be accelerated to discharge velocities, had been a focus of intensive research since Glushko's pioneering

work in the early 1930s. Post-Sputnik research work on such propulsion systems began anew

at OKB-I in 19.58 and were coordinated to a great extent on the plans for the TMK project. The

design bureau, working hand-in-hand with the Physical-Power Institute at Obninsk, preferred

using a nuclear power source for the engines: the research was thus carried out in parallel with

research on nuclear rocket engines. The preliminary studies conclusively proved that electrical

rocket engines would significantly increase the performance characteristics of the TMK with

regard to multiyear-long missions. The june 1960 decree on the Soviet space program approved

a proposal by OKB-I to commence full-scale work on the electric engines, and by 1962-63,

many institutes and design bureaus were involved in the project. ''s

113. Ishiinskiy, ed.,/qkademik S P Korolev, pp 99-100

114 Ibid: Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 280: Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft":

Igor Afanasyev, "Piloted Flight to Mars . . A Quarter Century Ago" (Engtish title), Vestnik uozdushniy flora no. 7-8

( 1996): 103-05. There were different conceptions of the TMK lander proposal Forexample, one predraft plan finished in May I966 consisted of a six-section TMK spacecraft These included (I) an expedition ship to carry the

crew during the mission, (2) an orbital complex with living and working compartments, (3) a descent apparatus for

descending to the Martian surface, (4) a return apparatusfor carrying the crew from the surface back to the expedJ

tion ship, (5) a return rocket for sending the return apparatus from the surface of Mars either into Martian orbit or

on a trajectory back to Earth, and (6) a planetary station for piloted researchon the Martian surface, At least four

different mission profiles were considered for this ambitious proposal, all using the N I. Raushenbakh, ed., S P

Korolev i ego delo, pp. 633-34.

I I 5. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 409: G. V Petrovich_ed., TheSovietEncyclopedia

o[ 5pace Flight(Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1969), 120.Among the other institutions involved in the researchon electric

rocketengineswere NII-I. NII-88, OKB-670, TsAGI.TslAM, IAE,VNIIEM. MAI, OKB-456, OKB-586. and OKB Zarya.

335
336

The research on electrical engines was a serious component of the TMK studies and, as

one of Korolev's leading ballistics experts, Mikhail S. Florianskiy. recalled, critical in affecting the

design of the spaceship itself:

The interplanetary ship was o/the form resembling a rifle bullet with a hatch "at the

head." I took part in the computations and showed Sergey Pavlovieh [Korolev] that by

using electric rocket engines of low thrust for mouement to Mars. the launch mass to

orbit could be possibly reduced to 125 tons. Then for approximately two years, the interplanetary ship would fly around Mars with its crew of three people .... "_

By P,pril 1963, OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev was ready to present a report to

the Council of Chief Designers titled "On the TMK for the N I," which summarized all the possible options for the interplanetary spaceship. The two most serious options considered at that

point involved a massive 680-ton spaceship using chemical propellant engines assembled in

Earth orbit from ten N I launches and a seventy-five-ton spaceship launched on a single N I

launch equipped with electric rocket engines. '_7

The question of developing life support systems that could function autonomously for two

to three years was the subject of serious attention. In 1962, Korolev created a special department

at OKB-I under Ilya V. Lavrov to specifically design and develop a closed-cycle life support system designated the Scientific-Experimental Complex (NEK). For obvious reasons, existing life

support systems based on nonrenewable resources of water, food, and air were not considered

for the project. Lavrov opted not to use chemical sources for regenerating resources, turning

instead to biological systems, which could replicate the closed ecological system of Earth on a

micro level. To simplify the process of early research, only water and oxygen were considered

essential for recycling. Some of the required water would be produced from moisture breathed

into the internal atmosphere of the ship and purified by ion-exchange resins. Bodily wastes

would provide the remaining portion using physio-chemical and biological processes. Oxygen

would be regenerated from carbon dioxide exhaled by the cosmonauts by using chiorella-type

algae, the latter also being used to treat human waste. Food for the multiyear-Iong trip would be

stored in freeze-dried form selected on the basis of calorific value and specific mass. Vegetables

grown in special hydroponic greenhouses would augment the primary food rations, allowing the

crew to economize in terms of food mass by 20 to 50 percent. Large external solar reflectors.

instead of internally generated light, would deliver sunlight to the greenhouses. ''_

Given the limited resources and funding available, Maksimov's Mars flyby design was considered a more realistic proposition than Feoktistov's landing expedition. Initial plans in the

early 1960s forecast a circum-Martian flight as early as 1968-70. The landing project, on the

other hand. was considered a distant prospect, ready for realization perhaps in the early 1970s.

Eeoktistov himself recalled that although Korolev was well aware that the landing was not a

realistic prospect of the near future, the thought of developing such a spacecraft "excited him

terribly.' By all accounts, he considered these seemingly fantastic proposals more

engineering problems than unrealistic dreams, continually keeping close watch on the work of

II6 Golovanov. Koroleu. p 768.

I t7 This was evidently part of a larger report presented by Bushuyev on ,qpril 22. 1963. to the ScientificTechnical Council of OKB-I, which was titled "Proposals on the Development of SpaceObjects on the Basiso[ the

N I Carrier'_One early conception of a Mars landing mission envisioned the useof twenty to twenty five launches,

allowing for the assembly of a huge 1,630-ton spaceship in Earth orbit. /q nominal Mars landing mission of this

Martian Piloted Complex (MPK) would take two and a half years. After a landing mission, the crew would return to

Earth in fifteen-ton reentry module. SeeAfanasyev, "Piloted Flight to Mars."

118 Afanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft": Golovanov. Koroleu p. 768

119 Golovanov. Koroleu. p. 768,

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

both Maksimov and Feoktistov. This is underlined to a great extent by a set of priceless notes

in Korolev's own handwriting, which were declassified nearly twenty years after he had jotted

them down in September 1962. He goes into detail on a variety of factors in the development

of the TMK, including artificial gravity, life support systems, biological investigations, and so

on. He also mentions a Heavy Orbital Station (TOS), which would have many design commonalties with the TMK. As Korolev wrote, "maybe the Heavy Interplanetary Station will be

the Heaw Orbital Station during the first phase, thus contributing to the reliable debugging of

all systems in the vicinity of the Earth, e.g. during one year.' .... Very preliminary work on a

unique variant of the TOS, specifically for military goals, had also begun at OKB-I by 1960.

These objectives included reconnaissance, anti satellite missions, the targeting of ground

assets, and communications. An initial predraft plan for this station was completed as early as

May 3, 1961. This concept may have eventually evolved into a huge four-story space station

named Zuezda ("Star"), which was reportedly the focus of some research in the mid-1960s. '''

Until much of the work at OKB-I was declassified in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the

work on the TMK and the TOS, like many other projects, was consigned to the black hole of

Soviet space history. But the program was very real, and it tied up a modicum of resources within OKB-I, Although the N I was developed as "a universal launcher" in the early 1960s, barring

unspecific military satellites, the primary payload of the giant booster was a piloted Martian

spaceship. In many ways, in that time period, the ambitions of the Soviet space program were

much more far-reaching than NAStq's seemingly dramatic road to the Moon. For the Soviets, and

in particular Korolev, the Moon was certainly a worthy goal, but it was not the end-all of everything: it was merely an important step in the ultimate goal of sending cosmonauts to the surface of Mars. Thus, while President Kennedy's speech awoke a sleeping giant into action in the

United States, the Soviets continued to persevere slowly but deliberately on their own road to

Mars, first with Earth-orbital stations serving as bases and finally with interplanetary ships. It

was a step-by-step plan that was remarkably faithful to half-century-old ideas of Tsiolkovskiy. If

Korolev had his way, by the end of the 1960s, there would be a proliferating Soviet space program spreading through the solar system from giant stations in Earth orbit. These plans, of

course, never came to fruition. The architects of the Soviet space program finally began to take

notice of an awakened giant, and its gaze was not at Mars, but directed toward the Moon.

Designing for a New Generation

Plans for a new spacecraft to succeed the Vostok ship existed well before Gagarin's historic

launch. In 1958 and 1959, engineers at OKB-I considered various mission objectives of such a

vehicle before settling on two primary goals that dominated the thinking on piloted spacecraft

for the ensuing half decade: circumlunar flight to the Moon and the mastering of rendezvous and

docking that would eventually lead to the establishment of space stations in Earth orbit. The

Moon itself figured prominently in OKB-I's plans for automatic research, but in the context of

piloted exploration, it remained essentially a component of the design bureau's ultimate plans to

reach Mars. While the salient details on exactly why a circumlunar project was targeted remain

120. S E Korotev."Notes on Heavy Interplanetary Ships and Heavy Orbital Stations (I 962)" (English title),

in M. V. Keldysh, ed, TvorcheskoyenastediyeZtkademika SergeyaPavtovicha Koroleva: izbrannyye trudy i doku

menty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), pp. 450-56.

121. Golovanov. Korotev, p 768. On several occasions, Korolev proposed the use of the TOS for military

applications. In a letter to the then-Chairman of the State Committee for DefenseTechnology K N. Rudnev dated

January 15, 1961, Korolev proposed launching the TOS into orbit to carry out military missions. A fifteen part treatise on the TOS was prepared by OK8-1 at the time. SeeS. P Korolev, "Letter to K. N. Rudnev on Planning Work

at OKB-I in 1961-62" (English title), in Raushenbakh,ed_ S P.Korolev i ego delo. pp. 316 19. 621-23.

337
338

undisclosed, it is highly likely that the relative simplicity of such an effort was what attracted

Korolev to begin work on this issue. In addition, cosmonauts successfully flying around the

Moon would not only provide the space designers with valuable experience in a variety of technical areas, but would also be a tremendously exciting public relations extravaganza prior to more

substantial missions to Mars. Rendezvous and docking on the other hand were considered logical extensions of Soviet plans to gain a permanent foothold in space. All of Tsiolkovskiy's early

plans clearly hint at orbital assembly in Earth orbit as a starting point to move further into the

cosmos. There was another more earthly reason for mastering rendezvous and docking: the lack

of powerful enough launch vehicles to accomplish the ambitious goals of OKB-I. By 1961, the

most powerful booster in the Soviet canon, the 8K78, could manage to send only a modest one

and a half tons toward the Moon, while the 8K?2K, which had launched Gagarin, could launch

about just over four and a half tons into Earth orbit. With the larger N I still years away from

flight, orbital assembly was the only avenue for piloted lunar exploration.

These two considerations--circumlunar missions and orbital assembly--dominated the

design of the first post-Vostok spacecraft. The choices and decisions engineers made from 1959

to 1963 based on these requirements had a profound impact on the shape and look of the

Soyuz spacecraft as it eventually emerged in the late 1960s. Initially, the engineers studied at

least two different spacecraft, both of which were geared to Earth orbit. Work on the first, the

Seuer ("North"), began in P,pril 1959. Initial plans envisioned a large spacious vehicle with

room for three cosmonauts dressed in spacesuits. _ second proposal emerged from Pavel V.

Tsybin, the man who had worked on the unfulfilled PKt_ spaceplane project. Tsybin's new idea

encompassed a spacecraft capable of carrying seven cosmonauts, certainly a large leap from the

modest Vostok, _::His proposal was apparently rejected very early in the design process, and by

1959 and 1960, engineers were harnessing their energies in the development of the Sever

spacecraft, which became the focus of the second-generation Earth-orbital spacecraft. It was

slated to fly its first mission by the second half of 1962.'_ _ pitoted spacecraft capable of lunar

flight designated the " IL" was also studied concurrently, sharing numerous design characteristics with the Sever.

It was originally the famous Department No. 9 at OKB-I, with such luminaries as

Tikhonravov and Eeoktistov, that began studying the next generation of Soviet spacecraft. By

1960, it had issued a "scientific-technical prospectus," proving that rendezvous and docking in

orbit were realistic goals achievable in the near future. Based on this premise, in 1960 and 1961,

the department studied a number different variants of the Severand IL ships, proposing that a

circumlunar flight could be achieved by linking up several booster stages in Earth orbit to reach

escape velocity in the direction of the Moon. By this time, the effort to a design new spaceship

essentially took on a competitive character within OKB-I itself. Departments No. 9 and It,

headed by Tikhonravov and Vladimir F. Roshchin, respectively, proposed parallel design concepts of the new vehicle, while the development of lunar spacecraft as a whole was subordinated to Department No. 3 under Yakov P. Kolyako. This peculiar sort of competition in such

a centralized command system was clearly contrary to all Western conceptions of the Soviet

defense industry at the time. Most outside analysis attributed a simpler monolithic scientific

infrastructure, which had no allowance for this almost Western notion of competitive ideas,

The overall research was overseen by Deputy Chief Designers Bushuyev and Kryukov.

The two most important areasof research during the design of the Severand I L spacecraft

were the identification of an optimal reentry profile and the selection of the shape of the

122. Golovanov,Korofeu.p. Z20:S.S.Kostin."Some,qspectsof Planningthe Vostok'SpaceShip"(English

title), Iz istorii auiatsiii kosrnonuutiki42(1980):62-66.

123. Karnanin.Skrytiykosrnos,p. 56 ByMay1961,Korolevwasplanningthefirst Severlaunchin thethird

quarterof 1962.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

spacecraft--factors that were clearly interdependent. In terms of the reentry and landing on

Earth's surface, engineers considered two broad approaches: an aviation perspective using aerodynamic surfaces and a missile perspective using a ballistic reentry with landing by parachutes.

Beginning in 1960, the engineers under Bushuyev's supervision at the various departments

studied three specific variants of the reentry capsule of the new spacecraft:

• One with large wings such as an aircraft from Department No 9 (called the "canard"

scheme)

• One for a simple ballistic reentry such as the Vostok spacecraft

• A hybrid version with a blunt nosecone such as NASA s Mercury capsule but with wings

(called the "tailless" configuration)

Comparative analysis on the three different variants included studying their aerodynamic

characteristics, types of trajectories, thermal protection, mass characteristics in relation to their

chosen methods of landing, and the layout of instrumentation. By t961, winged designs were

abandoned, because of the attendant problems with mass and heat protection, in favor of guided or what the Soviets termed "glancing" reentries, which would allow significant reductions

in stress as compared to direct ballistic profiles.

Having narrowed the possibilities down, Roshchin's department carried out more detailed

analysis on reentry profiles with special regard to reentry at high speeds following a flight

around the Moon. Because the spacecraft would return from the Moon. the engineers dispensed with a special orbital braking rocket such as the one used on Vostok, saving valuable

mass on the ship. Instead, they settled on a profile that called for a "double-dip" into the

atmosphere to reduce both velocity and gravitational loads on the crew. In the first stage, the

return capsule would graze off the upper atmosphere before entering again, by which time, the

g-loads would have decreased significantly. The requirements showed that the spacecraft

would have to have sufficient lift characteristics to allow the "double-dip" profile as well as permit a landing on Soviet soil following a travel down a 3,000- to 7,000-kilometer-long corridor

from the south to the north of the planet. Gravitational loads would be limited to three to four

g's, while landing could be achieved with a plus/minus fifty-kilometer error.

Forobvious reasons, the concerns over reentry profiles significantly affected the decisions

over the shape of the reentry capsule. Apart from engineers within OKB-I, scientists at other

institutions, including Nil-I, the Central gerohydrodynamics Institute, and NII-88, were

involved in this stage of research. They examined three different configurations:

• g socalled "segmented sphere'

• _ "sphere with a needle"

• _ "sliced sphere"

Once again the investigations focused on a comparative analysis of aerodynamic charac

teristics determinations of optimal return trajectories the selection of the structure itself and

requirements for thermal protection The results of the research proved that from a technical

perspective the most rational choice from the criteria of mass and volume was Department No

I Is segmented sphere with a displaced center of gravity in the transverse direction By 1962

Roshchins group had modified this idea into an asymmetrical segmented sphere similar in

shape to an automobile headlight in which the length of the capsule was equal to the base

diameter Computations showed that such a design would increase lift during reentry thus

avoiding the pitfalls of direct ballistic return into the atmosphere The ScientificTechnical

Council of the OKB I rejected a competitive variant from Department No 9 of a

339
340

semi-spherical capsule, and after approval by Korolev and Bushuyev, the "headlight" idea was

adopted formally for the Sever spacecraft by 1962,

Yet another important issue was the means of landing on Soviet soil. Water landings were

apparently not considered at all, and all research focused on hard landings on Soviet soil. P,

plethora of proposals crowded the research on this issue, so much so that even after a final decision on the landing was made in 1963, researchon alternative versions continued up until 1966,

a full five years after this work had begun. Korolev himself was apparently reluctant to continue

using parachutes and instead tried to explore much more unusual approaches, as evidenced by

his interest in helicopter-type landings for the Vostok spacecraft. Numerous organizations were

involved in this stage of the research, including OKB-329 (on a subsonic rotor system), the

Mozhayskiy Academy (hypersonic rotors), OKB-300 (fanjet engines), OKB-2 (liquid-propellant

rocket engines), Plant No. 81 (solid-propellant rocket engines), NIEI PDS(controlled parachutes),

Plant No. 918 (an ejection system as a reserve method), and Nil RP (external inflatable shockabsorbing balloons). OKB-I itself studied the use of turbojet engines. The proposals from all

these organizations, to a great degree, affected the design of the spacecraft itself, and it was not

until 1963 that Korolev approved the recommendation of Department No. I I to use a combination parachute-reactive system with solid-propellant engines. The return capsule would deploy a

series of parachutes during descent, followed by the firing of powerful solid-propellant rocket

engines a few seconds prior to contact with the ground to lessen the shock of impact.

The issue of rendezvous and docking in space, critical to any mission goals foreseenfor the near

future, was the subject of intensive researchat Department No. 27 headed by BorisV. Raushenbakh,

designer of the first Soviet space orientation systems. The overall work was supervised by Deputy

Chief Designer Boris Ye. Chertok, one of the most senior veterans at OKB-I. The research,conducted between 1960 and 1963,divided the rendezvous phase of two Earth-orbiting spacecraft into

two components: the long-range and the close-range portions. The former would depend to a great

extent on putting the spacecraft into an optimal trajectory at orbit insertion, based on composite

ground measurements and computational models. Ground stations would compensate for errors by

sending appropriate commands to the orbiting ship to perform the required orbital changes to bring

the active spacecraftto its target. Theoretical calculations by engineers showed that with the existing systems, the two spacecraft could be brought within a twenty five- by fifteen- by fifteenkilometer volume in spacewith a relative velocity of plus or minus forty meters per second.

ForRaushenbakh's group, the more problematic portion of the rendezvous maneuver was the

close-range approach. The "free trajectory" from launch was clearly not sufficient to allow two

spacecraft to dock. In addition, ground measurements would not distinguish two vehicles at such

high altitudes to ensure the required precision. Shipboard measurements were also ruled out

because of the need for the presence of powerful and compact computing machines aboard the

spacecraft, which were simply beyond the limits of Soviet miniaturization technology for the time.

Raushenbakh's team developed a combination system using the so-called "parallel approach," in

which a line of sight extending from the active to the passive spacecraft would be established for

movement. A special on-board radar would then take over control of the spacecraft to bring the

two spacecraft to docking, Four different institutions offered competitive proposals to design and

build the radars. The two finalists were the Experimental Design Bureau of the Moscow Power

Institute and NII-648. After detailed analysis, the former's Kontakt ("Contact") was rejected in

favor of the latter's Igla (" Needle") in 1963. Raushenbakh's group at OKB-I developed the algorithms for the logic command instruments for the entire rendezvous and docking procedure. '4

124. Semenov, ecL, Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, pp. 162-65. The other two competitors in radar

design wele TsNII-108. whose design was too heavy, and TsKI3 Geofizika, which proposed a laser-optical system

See B Ye Chertok, Rakety i iyudi: goryachlye dni kho(odnoy uoyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye. 1997),

pp. 395 96.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Korolev's engineers finalized the configurations

for both the Sever and I L spacecraft by early 1962.

The Sever, slated only for Earth-orbital operations,

was much larger than the Vostok spacecraft, although

it, like the Vostok, was divided into two main sections: a cylindrical instrument module and a headlightshaped return capsule attached at the forward end of

the spacecraft. ':5 The former would carry all the guidance and control systems, propulsion units, power

sources, and propellant tanks. The latter would carry

the crew and be equipped with life support systems

and controls for the crew to guide the spacecraft. The

I L spacecraft, meant for lunar missions, had a more

complicated configuration, prompted by the concerns

of engineers who wanted to ensure comfortable conditions for a crew during a potentially weeklong circumlunar mission. As early as 1960, Department No. II

had proposed the addition of adding a third pressurized module to the spacecraft, called the orbital module, which would allow cosmonauts more volume than

the cramped quarters of the return capsule. _ competitive proposal from Department No. 9 retained the old

two-module configuration, with the crew remaining in

the return capsule for the duration of the mission. Like

many of the latter department's proposals, this conservative arrangement was rejected in favor of Department

No. l l's idea to use a third module.

The placement of the new module as part of the

I L spacecraft was the subject of much debate. Initial

conceptions showed the return capsule at the top of

the spacecraft, followed by the new orbital module

below it between the other two compartments, The

crew would be able to open a hatch in the heat shield

at the base of the return capsule to move into the

orbital module, The instrument module would remain

at the base of the spacecraft and would not be accessible to the crew. Tests at the time proved that having

This is one conception of an early Earthorbital station dating from I902 ,zt visiting

spacecraft called the Seueris shown docked

to the station at the bottom of the drawing

The design of the Seuereuentually euolued

into the future Soyuz spacecraft

(copyright R. F Gibbons, based on a

drawing by Igor _fanasyeu)

a hatch in the heat shield was not an optimal arrangement and raised all sorts of potential dangers for burn-through during reentry. The engineers eventually adopted a novel arrangement,

with the orbital module at the very forward end of the spacecraft. A hatch at the apex of the

return capsule would allow the crew to move [oruJard into the cylindrical orbital module. '_

125. The Severhas not been described in any detail in any Russiansources The abovedescription is based

on a drawing published in Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft."

126. There has been some speculation that the three-module design adopted for the IL spacecraft was

appropriated by OKB-I engineersfrom a publicly available study by U.S. defense contractor General Electric. During

1960, NASA, in planning for a post-Mercury spacecraft,had asked for proposals from severalmajor aerospacecom

panies.The concept submitted by General Electric on October 9. 1960, had a similar configuration to the I L, in particular with relation to the placement of the reentry module between the "mission module" and the "propulsion

module" SeeP S. Clark and R F.Gibbons, "The Evolution of the Soyuz Programme," TheJournal of the British

Interplanetary Society 36 (1983): 434 52.

341
342

This is the design of the Vostok-7/IL complex for a piloted circumlunar spacecraft. The legend is:

(1) [orward section of the It spacecraft: (2) tL living compartment: (3) I L descent apparatus:

(4) solar panel: (5) IL instrument compartment: (6, 7, and 8) three "rocket block" propulsion modules:

(9) jettisonable section o[ the final rocket stage: and (10) Vostok-7 spacecraft (copyright Igor _t[anasyeW

The I L design was also distinguished from the Sever spacecraft in terms of several other

aspects. The instrument module was shaped like a cylindrical skirt, with two disk-shaped solar

panels attached at the end of two booms to provide power--a first for a Soviet piloted spacecraft. This instrument module was also equipped not only with a propulsion system, but also

a docking system at the aft of the spacecraft. The return capsule itself harked back to early conceptions of segmented spheres and was shaped more like a cylinder than the later "automobile

headlight" design adopted for the Sever. By 1962, when engineers finalized the design of the

t L spacecraft design, it had four separate sections from aft to fore:

• A cylindrical skirt-shaped instrument-aggregate compartment

• A segmented spherical descent apparatus

• A cylindrical living compartment

• A conical nose propulsion system _7

The nose propulsion system was simply a small compartment at the forward end of the spacecraft for carrying out attitude control during rendezvous and docking in Earth orbit.

Elements of both the Sever and the I L spacecraft would eventually serve as the basis for

the development of the famous Soyuz spacecraft, certainly the most important piloted spacecraft of the Soviet space program, The final variants of both the I L and the Sever, as well as of

the still-flying Vostok spacecraft, were part of an idea proposed by Korolev on January 26,

1962. for a four-module fifteen- to twenty-five-ton "space train" ensuring circumlunar flight. "_

The first results of the research on this theme were summarized in a "scientific-technical

prospectus" titled "Complex for the Assembly of Space Vehicles in Artificial Earth Satellite

127 gfanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft."

128 Lardier,L_stronautique Sovietique, p. 155.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Orbit," which was signed by Korolev on March t0, 1962. '_ The project as a whole was designated Soyuz, the Russian word for "union." There were three different goals of the complex:

• The creation of an orbital piloted station for military missions

• The creation of piloted spaceships capable of circumlunar missions

• The creation of a global communications satellite system

A nominal circumlunar mission would be achieved by assembling a series of rocket stages

in Earth orbit into a multistage rocket that would boost the payload toward the Moon. The four

major components of the complex were:

• A modified Vostok spacecraft designated the Vostok-/

• A "rocket block," three of which would be launched

• A jettisonable toroidal compartment attached to the base of each rocket block containing

rendezvous and docking instrumentation

• The primary payload, a I L spacecraft

The Vostok-7 was a modified Vostok-3A spacecraft that had launched Gagarin. In contrast

to Gagarin's spacecraft, the "new" vehicle would include rendezvous and docking gear, a multiuse primary propulsion system capable of orbital changes, and attitude control engines. '_°

While these changes would increase mass by 1,100 to 1,300 kilograms, in all other respects,

the spacecraft was similar in design configuration to the old Vostok-3A vehicle. The rocket

blocks, 4,800 kilograms each, were simply short cylindrical modules capable of independent

flight and equipped with engines for work in vacuum. '_' The Vostok-7 spacecraft, the rocket

blocks, the I L vehicle, and the Sever spaceship would all be launched into orbit by means of

improved versions of the old 8K72K booster equipped with a more powerful third stage. '_2

A mission to perfect rendezvous and docking techniques would start with the launch of a

Vostok-7 spacecraft with a single cosmonaut, designated a "pilot-assembler." At a designated

129. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft." This document, in a censored version and with a different title, has

been published as S. P. Korolev, "Proposal for the Creation of Means for Orbitat Assembly" (English title), in

Ketdysh. ed.. Tuorcheskoye nasledlye ,qkademika. pp. 445-49 Note that Korolev sent a letter to the Military

Industrial Commission, dated March 5, 1962,requesting permission to develop this complex: he enumerated several military goals for the system, including reconnaissance and anti sateIlite operations An abridged version of this

letter has been reproduced as S P.Korolev, "Proposal for Complex for the Assembly of SpaceApparatus in an Earth

Satellite Orbit (Theme 'Soyuz')" (English title), in Raushenbakh,ed., S. P Koroleu i ego delo, pp. 359-60.

130. The Vostok-7 would include the following systemsin addition to the onesalready existing on the Vostok3A: ( 1) apparatusfor controlling rendezvousas part of the orientation and control system: (2) apparatusfor search

and targeting: (3) on board radio systems: (4) the coordination engine system with eight engines and a reserveof

propellant: (5) optical systemsfor observing rendezvousand docking: (6) a docking node with mechanical locks and

electrical connections: (7) apparatus to control mechanical and electrical connections: (8) and additional power

sources The following systems would be modified from those on the original Vostok-3A: (I ) orientation and control

systems: (2) the cosmonaut's control panel: (3) the TV system: (4) the Zarya communications system: and (5) the

retrorocket engine. SeeKorolev, "Proposal for the Creation of Means for Orbital Assembly."

131 Each rocket block would have the following systems: (I) engines: (2) armature for firing, controlling,

and shutting down the engines: (3) propellant tanks: (4) systems for ensuring proper propellant flow: (5) guidance

systems: and (6) mechanical systems for connecting with other spacecraft. Thejettisonable portion of each rocket

block would include: (I) systems for coordinating the engines; (2) orientation systems: (3) systems for measuring

orbital parameters: (4) communications systems: (5) systems for search and targeting: (6) communications systems

for work with other spaceships: (7) TV cameras:(8) lights for optical signals to other ships: (9) the Signal telemetry system: (I O) docking nodes: (11) apparatus for controlling mechanical and electrical connections between the

ships: (12) thermo-regulation systems for the propellants: and (I 3) power sources

132 This booster was the 8K11t,

343
344

time when the spacecraft would pass over the launch site, the first rocket block would be

launched into a similar orbit. The pilot would then switch on the automatic system of

approach, which would bring the Vostok-7 spacecraft to a distance of about five to ten kilometers from the rocket block. The second stage of rendezvous with the aid of radars would

decrease the distance to I00 to 200 meters. After docking by manual control, the pilot would

establish electrical and mechanical connections between the two vehicles, now with a total

mass of eleven to twelve tons. The jettisonable torroidal section of the rocket block would then

separate and be discarded, revealing a docking node on the opposite end of the cylinder-shaped

block. The mission would continue with further launches of at least two more rocket blocks

which would connect to the complex, creating a four-vehicle "space station." After performing

some military experiments, the Vostok-7 spacecraft would separate from the first rocket block

of the complex and return to Earth.

In the case of a circumlunar mission, a fifth vehicle, the IL would be launched with a crew

of one to three cosmonauts and perform a docking at the end of the final rocket block by literally backing into the complex. At this point, the Vostok-7 spacecraft, its job done. would undock

from the complex and return to Earth. The remaining rocket stages would fire one by one, gaining sufficient velocity to boost the I L spacecraft and its crew on a simple circumlunar mission.

The prospectus also described the launch of large I,I00- to 1,200-kilogram communications satellites into geostationary orbit by means of the three similar rocket stages and the

Vostok-7 spacecraft. In such a mission profile, the satellite would replace the I L as the primary payload of the complex. Another mission mode proposed in the same document was the

creation of a small piloted orbital station crewed by three cosmonauts. The station itself would

consist of two units: a "living section" and a science-package unit. Four large disk-shaped solar

panels on two booms would provide on-board power. The crew would travel to and from the

station by means of the Sever spacecraft, equipped with the headlight-shaped guided reentry

vehicle. The primary objective of such a station was apparently Earth observation, presumably

for military purposes, A final mission for the complex would be in conjunction with the 5KM

piloted military "space fighter.' ....

Among the multitude of goals planned for the Vostok-7 complex, possibly the most important for Korolev was the piloted circumlunar mission, which had become somewhat of a priority among Soviet space organizations at the time. General Designer Chelomey's OKB-52 was

also exploring such missions with its own resources during the same period. Furthermore. in

1962. Academician Keldysh's "brain center," at the Department of Applied Mathematics of the

V. A. Steklov Mathematics Institute of the Academy of Sciences, had just completed a detailed

mathematical study on the technical aspects of a piloted circumlunar mission with a particular

focus on having the return capsule land on Soviet territory. '_'_In documents dating back to

January 1962, Korolev was already requesting the manufacture of eight Vostok-7 spacecraft

specifically for the circumlunar mission, most likely set for the 1963-64 timeframe."

The high priority on the accomplishment of a circumlunar mission as early as possible

resulted in many of the odd design elements of the Vostok-711L plan. Because there would be

no heavy booster to carry out a single mission profile, Korolev opted instead to carry out a multitude of dockings in Earth orbit. The use of the Vostok spacecraft for such an ambitious

133. ,_fanasyev,"Unknown Spacecraft": Korolev, "Proposalfor the Creationof Means for Orbital gssernbly "

134. This report has been published as M. V. Keldysh, M L Lidov, A. M. Mikish, and G. I. Taratynov. "Flight

Around the Moon With a Return to Earth and Landing on the Territory of the Soviet Union" (English title), in V. S

Avduyevskiy and T. M. Eneyev. eds., M _/ Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy: raketnaya tekhnika i kosmonautika (Moscow:

Nauka, 1988), pp 422-57.

I35. Kamanin, 5krytiy kosrnos_p. 88

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

mission, despite research on a next generation of spacecraft, was clear indication that the plan

was somewhat of a hasty idea. Korolev, in fact, at one point even explored the possibility of

using solid-propellant rocket engines, five of them, as propulsion for the rocket stages, but he

was talked out of this idea by the combined persuasive efforts of Kryukov, the nominal head of

the design project, and design engineer Feoktistov. '_

Regardless of the merits of the plan, a month after the Vostok-7/l L technical prospectus

was issued, on April 16, 1962, the Soviet Communist Party and the government signed a decree

on Korolev's Soyuz theme, apparently prompted by its military applications. '_' Quite possibly,

the circumlunar nature of the project was an added bonus for the leadership. The timing of the

decree was clearly an anomaly; it was issued during a period when Chelomey was the dominant figure in the space program, and Korolev's star had dropped to its literal nadir. Judging by

the subsequent events, it seems that the decree had little effect. Like much of Korolev's efforts

during this period, the Party and government failed to back up a commitment with actual

action. Despite the ambivalent repercussions of the decree, there was a marked shift in

Korolev's strategy of piloted space exploration around the early summer of 1962. The complicated Vostok-7/l L plan was put back on drawing boards for major changes in its weak points,

especially the use of the Vostok spacecraft as part of a circumlunar mission. In addition, perhaps to focus limited resources on the circumlunar plan, the center of Korolev's Earth-orbital

plans, the innovative Sever spacecraft, was completely abandoned. The experience in designing both the Sever and the I L did, however, have a lasting influence on the shape of a famous

Soviet spacecraft of the future.

The Soyuz

The redirection of OKB-I plans in mid-1962 resulted in at least one positive outcome: the

development of a more optimal second-generation spacecraft, much more advanced than the

Vostok-7. By taking elements from the I L and the Sever spaceships, by late 1962, engineers at the

design bureau emerged with a new spacecraft, simply called the Soyuz or "the product 7K,"

which would become the basis of Soviet piloted space exploration for the next thirty years. The

engineers retained the three-module configuration of the I L, but they adopted the headlightshaped return capsule and the cylindrical instrument module from the Sever. _ significant alteration from both the I L and the Sever was the marked decrease in the size of the return capsule.

Originally, Department No. I I had adopted a capsule with a diameter of 2.2 meters (2.3 meters,

including the thermal protection), but to decrease the overall mass of the spacecraft, Feoktistov

proposed reducing the dimension down to two meters, thus creating very cramped conditions

within the module. Upon being told of this proposal at a meeting, the unconvinced Korolev

marked off an area in his office the size of the capsule and ordered one of the authors of the idea

to spend the remaining time of the meeting in the area. Despite the discomfort, the engineer continued to pursue the idea. Korolev finally caved in, and by late 1962, the size of the return capsule on the 7K/Soyuz was reduced to two meters. In retrospect, this decision proved to be

"irrational" when, by 1968, an extra 200 kilograms had been shaved off the mass of the spacecraft, thus no longer requiring the smaller dimension. But by that time, it was too late. The cosmonauts would have to endure the launch in relatively cramped conditions. '_

136. Golovanov, Korolev, pp. 720-21.

137. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 635. Note that this source saysthat the title of

the decreewas "On the Development o[ the 'Soyuz' Complex for Piloted Flight Around the Moon" This is probably an error Seealso Raushenbakh, ed, S. R Koroleu i ego delo, p 685.

t38 Ishlinskiy, ed, 7]kademik S R Koroleu, p. 96: Semenov, ed. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,

p. 170.

345
346

The use of multiple rendezvous and docking as part

of a circumlunar mission was not abandoned, despite

reservations from key engineers at OKB-I. One particularly insistent opponent of the plan was Deputy Chief

Designer Leonid P,. Voskresenskiy, one of Korolev's most

trusted aides who had worked with him since World

War II. tqlthough he did not have any formal higher education, Voskresenskiy had earned his reputation by a

seat-of-the-pants decision-making and a remarkable intuitive capability, which had allowed him to earn the

respect of OKB-I engineers. The deputy was simply

against the idea of conducting four dockings in Earth

orbit, rightly seeing in the profile immense possibilities

for failure. The design bureau had begun the development of a complex docking system only in the summer

of 1962, but the two engineers leading the project, Viktor

P. Legostayev and Vladimir S. Syromyatnikov, ran into

significant obstacles. As Syromyatnikov recalled:

The Chief Designer was not satisfied either with

the organization of the work. nor with its

results. The designs turned out to be cumbersome, complex to control, and contained many

separate mechanisms. Significant simplification

and greater compactness was required. Only by

the spring of 1963 did the outline of the future

design for the docking assembly become clear:

a moving pintle on an active spacecraft and an

aceeptor cone on the passive one. '_

The delays in the development of a docking system, as well as the attendant obstacles of designing

rendezvous systems, did not deter Korolev from adopting yet another multiple docking plan for his coveted

circumlunar mission. _ "new" plan involving the twoperson 7K/Soyuz spacecraft, the 9K translunar injection rocket stage, and the IlK propellant tanker was

finalized in a preliminary draft plan signed by Korolev

on December 24, 1962, only months after the abandonment of the earlier Vostok-7/IL multiple docking

scheme. _4_Over opposition from some of his deputies,

the final technical draft plan for the 7K/Soyuz spacecraft itself was signed by Korolev on March 7, 1963,

thus committing OKB-I to forge ahead with the development of the ship as the center of its immediate goals

of human spaceflight.

6

5

4

3

2

1

The 7K-gK-tIK pilotedcircumlunar complex

emerged in 1963 us a successor to the

Vustok-7/ll_conception. The image hereshows

the7Kspacecraftdockedto the9K trunslunar

injectionstage,which hasbeenloadedwith

propellantby meansof severalIlK orbital

tankers. The legend ts:(1) and (7)jettisonable

compartments: (2) 7Kaggregatecompartment;

(3) 7Kinstrument compartment: (4) 7Kdescent

apparatus: (5) 7Kliving compartment: and (6)9K

rocket block Note the closeresemblance of the 7K

to the[uture5oyuz spacecra[t,(reproducedfrom

M V Ketdysh.ed. Tvorcheskoyenaslediye

AkademikaSerge,/aPavlovichaKoroleva:

izbrannyyetrudy i dokumenty

(Moscow:Nauka. f980))

139. Ishlinskiy. ed.. ,ZlkademikS P Korolev. p_23 I. Author's emphasis.The author of the "pin-needle" docking mechanism was OKB I engineer L. B. Vilnitskiy.

140 Semenov,ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 163,

CHALLENGE TO _,POLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

These internal design bureau deliberations in favor of the multiple docking circumlunar

plan were aided to a large degree by external shows of support. The Interdepartmental

Scientific-Technical Council on Space Research, the intera@ncy forum composed of the most

important chief designers, academicians, and military officers of the space program, for the first

time addressed Korolev's 7KISoyuz spacecraft proposal at a meeting in early December 1962.

Under the direction of Academician Keldysh, the council recommended the creation of an

"expert commission" to examine the salient details of the program. _ This commission, with

four subsections representing interests other than OKB-I, was able to suggest amendments to

the technical design of the space complex during the ensuing few weeks.'4" A second meeting

of the council was held on March 20. 1963, once again presided by Keldysh to decide on the

project, based on the expert commission's recommendations. Among those in attendance were

Chelomey and Glushko, both erstwhile opponents of Korolev's own plans for space exploration. '43In his speech at this meeting, Korolev expounded on the primary goals of the Soyuz

project, mentioning both rendezvous and docking as well as piloted circumlunar missions.

Keldysh, Chelomey, and Glushko spoke after Korolev and made approving comments on the

proposal: not surprisingly, Chelomey and Glushko had some additional comments on the

potential "of great difficulties in its realization." Despite their words of caution, Korolev had

sufficient support to obtain the full-fledged approval of the project, optimistically projecting the

first test flight of the 7KtSoyuz spacecraft by the summer of 1964.

The council's unanimous decision in favor of Soyuz was, of course, not binding because neither the Communist Party nor the government had issued a document in support of the new proposal. The recommendation did, however, have the effect of shoring up Korolev's relatively weak

position in the space industry at the time. With continuing troubles with the N I, Korolev pinned

his hopes at regaining a flash of his glory days on the Soyuz project. Less than two months after

the council's meeting, on May I0, 1963, OKB-I issued a new "technical prospectus" titled

"Assembly of Space Vehicles in Earth Satellite Orbit," which described in detail the 7K-9K-I I K,

or the Soyuz complex, which was to take the first Soviet cosmonauts around the Moon.'"

The center of these plans was the 7K or Soyuz spacecraft, a LT-meter-Iong three-module

vehicle designed by meshing together the I L and the Sever ships. The three primary components from aft to fore were:

• The cylindrical instrument-aggregate compartment

• The headlight-shaped descent apparatus

• The cylindrical living compartment

141. Kamanin, Skrytiykosmos, pp. 191-92. Among thosepresentat the meeting on December6, 1962,wereS.

R Korolev(OKB-I), V. N. Chelomey (OKB-52), M. K. Yangel(OKB-586), A. F.Bogomolov (OKB MEI), V. I. Kuznetsov

(NII-944). M. V. Keldysh (,ZtNSSSR),A. Yu. Ishlinskiy (NII-944), N. M. Sisakyan(AN SSSR).P_.A. Blagonravov (,qN

SSSR).A I. Sokolov(RVSN). K. A Kerimov (RVSN). N P Kamanin (WS). and N N. Alekseyev(MO NTK).

142 One of the subsections was from the Air Forcetwhich recommended three changesto the Soyuz spacecraft: the use of spacesuitsat all times for cosmonauts: the use of wings to provide aerodynamic lift: and the useof

catapults for launch escape. None of them were accepted by OKB I. Seeibid, p 21 I.

143. Ibid., pp. 23%40 Among those presentwere M. V. Keldysh (AN SSSR),S. R Korolev (OKB I), V. N.

Chelomey (OKB-52), A. Yu. Ishlinskiy (NIl 944), V. R Glushko (OKB-456), A. A. Kobzarev (GKAT), G I. Voronin

(OKB 124), N. S. Stroyev (LII), N. P.Kamanin (VVS). M ROdintsov (TsPK), V. I. Yazdovskiy (GNII AiKM), Ye.A.

Karpov (TsKP), Yu. A. Gagarin (TsPK). G S. Titov (TsPK), A. I. Sokolov (NIl-4), and N. N. Yuryshev (RVSN).

144. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft." The document has been reproducedwith censored designations as

S. P. Korolev, "The 'Soyuz' Orbital Rocket Complex" (English title), in Keldysh, eeL. Tuoreheskoyenaslediye

,Zikademika. pp. 489 500

341
348

The instrument-aggregate compartment had four components analogous to successive

"slices" down the cylinder, none of which would permit access by crewmembers. These subcompartments were from aft to fore:

• The jettisonable orbital compartment in the form of a torus at the base of the spacecraft,

which contained rendezvous instrumentation, radio systems to control its orbit, apparatus

for transmitting guidance commands, thermo-regulation systems, automatic guidance systems, and tracking systems

• The aggregate compartment, which carried the primary "approach-correction" engines of

the 7K vehicle, as well as attached solar batteries to serve as power sources

• The instrument compartment, the largest section of the cylinder, which contained the

essential instrumentation of the vehicle to ensure extended flight in space, including longrange radio apparatus, orientation and attitude control systems, radio-telemetric systems,

primary thermo-regulation systems, power sources for the ship, programmable timer

devices, on-board switching systems for controlling the automatic guidance systems, and

sensors and "switchboard-relay apparatus" for tracking

• The transfer compartment, which contained the attitude control engines on the exterior

and their propellant tanks in the interior

The descent apparatus was merely a smaller version of the headlight on the Sever,with life

support systems, thermo-regulation systems, optical and TV systems for observation and guidance. control panels for the crew, radio communications systems, systems to guide the capsule

in the atmosphere, and a parachute system for landing on Earth. Thermal protection at the base

of the capsule would provide sufficient defense during high-speed reentry from lunar distances.

The living compartment was the additional cylindrical module, with approximately the same

diameter as the instrument-aggregate compartment, a little more than two meters. This section

would contain life support systems, elements of the thermo-regulation system, microphones

and "dynamic" systems of communications, scientific instruments, and movie cameras. The

cosmonauts could also use the compartment as an airlock for extravehicular activity. In addition, the apex of the living compartment, and thus the whole spaceship, would have a large

docking system for linking up with other spacecraft. The total mass of the 7K/Soyuz ship was

5.500 to 5,800 kilograms.

The single rocket stage, designated the 9K, was designed to accelerate the 7K/Soyuz vehicle on a translunar trajectory. The 7.8-meter-long spaceship was shaped like a simple cylinder

divided into two primary sections, the large 9KM rocket block and the smaller 9KN jettisonable

compartment. The latter contained an orbit correction engine, control systems, and rendezvous

instrumentation, as well as a docking node on one side, which would allow the transfer of propellants from the tankers. The former carried the main translunar rocket engine with a thrust of

four and a half tons, as well as more instrumentation and a second docking node on the opposite end of the spacecraft. Launch mass was 5,700 kilograms.

The final element of the complex was the 4.2-meter-long cylindrical tanker named the I I K.

It had two major compartments, the I IKtq for the oxidizer and the I IKB for the fuel. The

remaining portion of the spacecraft consisted of attitude control engines, electronic instrumentation for guidance, and a docking node. The total fueled mass was 6,100 kilograms. All

the three components, the 7K, the 9K, and the II K, would be launched by new three-stage

versions of the R-7, designated the Iig55 and 11/556.

The primary mission of the Soyuz complex, a piloted circumlunar mission, would begin

with the launch of the 9K rocket stage. The automated spacecraft would carry out the necessary changes to its orbit by means of its small orbit correction engine until it had reached the

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

desired orbital parameters. When the 9K passed over Tyura-Tam, the first I IK tanker would be

launched into orbit carrying 4,155 kilograms of extra propellant. The initial orbital trajectory

would posit the tanker within twenty kilometers of the 9K rocket block. If because of errors in

orbital insertion the I I K module did not approach its parry to within a twenty-kilometer range,

then the 9K block would carry out the necessary orbital adjustments to bring the two spacecraft within twenty kilometers. Automatic radars on both spacecraft would then complete the

final approach, and the 9K (active vehicle) would dock with the II K (passive vehicle). The

docking would be carried out on the aft end of the 9K (with the jettisonable compartment).

After the transfer of propellants through linked lines across the docking node, the IiK tanker

would separate and be discarded.

At least three more tankers would be launched until the 9K was fully loaded with twentyfive tons of propellant. At this point, the 7KISoyuz piloted ship would launch into orbit with

its crew of two to three cosmonauts. The crew could either try manual or automatic docking:

unlike the tankers, the 7K/Soyuz would dock on the 9K rocket stage's forward end. The jettisonable compartment on the 9K would continue to carry out necessary orbital maneuvers following docking. This compartment would then be discarded, finally revealing the powerful

main engine of the 9K rocket block, which would then fire to boost the 7K/Soyuz, rear end first,

toward the Moon. The 7KISoyuz propulsion system itself would be used for trajectory corrections during flight to and from the Moon. After return to the vicinity of Earth, the 7K/Soyuz

spacecraft would separate into its three component modules, with the descent apparatus making a controlled descent into the atmosphere, landing by parachute on Soviet territory. '4_

Mastering rendezvous and docking operations in Earth orbit may have been one of the primary objectives of the Soyuz complex, but the incorporation of five consecutive dockings in

Earth orbit to carry out a circumlunar mission was purely because of a lack of rocket-lifting

power in the Soviet space program. The May 1963 document on the Soyuz complex thus

emerged less as a technical exercise than from an inclination to promote a space project before

the advent of the N I. It was a risky gamble--and one that evidently had the support of most

of the major players in the space program, as evidenced by the Interdepartmental Council's

unanimous approval two months earlier. Contracts for the Soyuz complex were also handed

out in 1963. In a move motivated by limited resources at OKB-I, Korolev signed agreements

with two relatively new organizations that until then had zero involvement in the piloted space

business. Both of them were led by proteges of Korolev: SKB-385 at Miass under Chief Designer

Viktor P. Makeyev to produce the important 9K acceleration block and OKB-I0 at Krasnoyarsk26 under Chief Designer Mikhail F. Reshetnev to build the IlK tanker. '46Both Makeyev and

Reshetnev had been key engineers at OKB-I in the 1950s, rising to senior positions in management before being sent by Korolev to head independent organizations focusing on naval

missiles and automated spacecraft, respectively.

The agreements of Korolev with Makeyev and Reshetnev were symptomatic of the remarkable decentralization of the Soviet space industry that had taken place between 1960 and 1963.

At that point, no longer only competing with the Americans, Soviet space designers found

themselves in battles among themselves, with institutions rising and falling with the tides of

political favoritism. Chelomey's dramatic entrance and support from Khrushchev had clearly

put him in a much more powerful position than Korolev, but there was still one important factor on which Korolev could count within the confines of the Soviet defense industry, and that

145. Korolev,"The 'Soyuz'Orbital RocketComplex":Afanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft."

146. Golovanov.Koroteu,pp 721-22.Othersourcesclaimthat both the9Kand I IKmodulesweretobe

manufacturedat theProgressPlantin Kuybyshev.

349
350

was prestige. It was, after all, he who had launched Sputnik and then Gagarin. The Soyuz complex was partly an attempt to maintain that prestige in the near future, while the N t would take

care of it in distant years. For the present time, in 1962 and t963, Korolev's ace in the hole was

still Vostok, and it was with the Vostok spacecraft that the Soviet space program continued to

accrue its accolades from a vast and unsuspecting public all over the world.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
CHAPTER NINE

SPACE POLITICS

The Soviet space program was neither a high priority nor a central tool of Soviet state policy. The spectacular achievements of the late 1950s and early 1960s were pushed by the chief

designers, grudgingly approved by the Communist Party and government, and then used as

propaganda vehicles by Soviet leaders for selling the virtues of the socialist system. Thus, while

Communist Party functionaries eagerly extracted maximum political mileage from the Sputnik,

Luna, and Vostok missions post [aeto, the political utility of these launches did not figure significantly into the original formulation of the flights. On the odd occasions when political considerations did enter into the equation, they were also instigated not by higher-ups in the

decision chain, but rather the middle men involved in the space program. In the post-Gagarin

period, many chief designers in fact offered up a variety of proposals to the leadership, all

couched in terms of advancing the Soviet image across the world One immediate example of

such behavior was the launch of the first woman into space in 1963. Another was competing

with the United States in the "race to the Moon." Both had little to do with a rational program

of space exploration--and even less to do with scientific research. But both were symptomatic

of the chaotic nature of the Soviet piloted space program during the 1960s.

Twinsin Space

Because the Vostok program did not have any formal long-range program of missions,

Soviet space officials planned flights based purely on the number of such vehicles that were

rolling off OKB-I's production plant in Kaliningrad. Immediately after Gagarin's flight, in May

1961, there were orders for eighteen Vostok-type spacecraft, half of which were for piloted flight

and the remainder being the reconnaissance satellite version.' To a great degree, future plans

for piloted missions depended on Korolev's unwritten rule that each mission be a significant

advance over the previous one. Thus, the two identical suborbital flights of astronauts Shepard

and Grissom in 1961 would have been unthinkable in Soviet mission planning. Based on this

somewhat unsound premise, in September 1961, one month after Titov's flight, Korolev proposed a triple-spacecraft joint flight in November: three Vostok spacecraft, each with a single

cosmonaut, would be launched on three successive days. The first pilot would conduct a threeday mission, while the two others would be in space for two to three days. There would be one

day during the joint mission when all three spacecraft would simultaneously be in space/

I. N.P. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos knlga peruaya, 1960-1963gg (Moscow: Inlortekst IF, 1995), p. 56.

2. Ibid., p. 60: Niko&y Kamanin, "Work in the First Two Years: Space Diary" (English title), Prauda, April

8. 1991, p. 2.

351
352

Both /_ir Force representatives and the physicians in charge of biomedical preparations

strongly opposed the plan. The latter were particularly concerned about unduly extending the

duration of future missions after Titov's startlingly poor experience in/_ugust. By late October,

after opposition from highly placed Air Force leaders, including Commander-in-Chief Vershinin,

Korolev limited the plan to two simultaneous launches of Vostok spacecraft. This more modest

proposal was motivated by the limitations of the Soviet tracking and rescue networks, which

would have been put under significant strain for a triple-flight plan. On the matter of mission

length, Korolev was less interested in compromise, and the issue remained unresolved with a

month left to launch. The schedule was seriously interrupted in late October when the Soviet

Party and government abruptly adopted a decision to focus all resources on the Zenit-2 reconnaissance satellite program instead of Vostok, clear evidence that the piloted space program was

not only not a priority for decision makers, but in many ways was hindered by work on the reconnaissance effort. The crewed Vostok mission was delayed until January 1962 at the earliest.

The cosmonauts themselves were put on continuous training regimes, ready to be able to

undertake a mission within one month of the final order. In October, six cosmonauts--

Bykovskiy, Komarov, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Popovich, and Shonin--were assigned to train for

the dual mission. All of them conducted three-day training sessions in the new TDK-2 simulator delivered to the Cosmonaut Training Center at the time. The selection and training of cosmonauts took an interesting turn at the end of 1961--one that was primarily driven by political

considerations. In the summer of t961, Lt. General Nikolay Kamanin, the/_ir Force General Staff

representative overseeing the cosmonaut group, somewhat abruptly emerged with the idea to

send a woman into space on one of the following Vostok missions. He apparently attempted

to get highly placed leaders, such as Korolev, Keldysh, and even USSR Minister of Defense

Rodion Ya. Malinovskiy, interested in his idea, but they all were unanimously opposed to the

proposal.' On why the Soviet Union needed to send a woman into space, Kamanin wrote in

his journal:

I. Women will definitely fly into space--thus it is better to begin training them for this kind

of mission as soon as possible.

2. Under no circumstances should an ,Zlmerican become the first woman in space--this

would be an insult to the patriotic feelings of Souiet women.

3. The first Souiet cosmonaut will be as big an actiue aduocate for communism as _agarin

and Titov turned out to be.'

Despite the high degree of opposition he faced, Kamanin did not drop the idea: he claimed

that he took the matter directly to Khrushchev, who approved the plan. Whether indeed he did

do so continues to be a matter of debate, but clearly his lobbying produced results. On

December 30, 196 I, the Central Committee approved a plan to select sixty new cosmonauts for

the Soviet space program, including five women? Although it seems that the plan to select the

men was postponed indefinitely, physicians from the Air Force's Institute of P,viation and Space

Medicine contacted aviation clubs from all over the country to prepare a master list of

3. Yaroslav Golovanov, Koroleu: [akty i mi[y (Moscow: Nauka, 1994). p 689: Christian Lardier,

L',Z]stronautiqueSoui_tique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1992), p. 132: Email correspondence, SergeyVoevodin to the

author. January 30, 1997.

4 Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos 1960-1963. p 62: Debra D. Facktorand Valentina Ponomareva, "Women in

the Early Soviet Spaceflight Program," presentedat a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of

SlavicStudies. Boston, MAt November 14-t 7, 1996;Bart Hendrickx. "The Kamanin Diaries 1960-1963," Journal of

the British [nterptanetary Society 50 (January 1997): 33-40.

5. Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos 1960-1963, pp 238-39.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

400 women candidates Women with significant aviation or parachuting experience were given

preference over others, the latter qualification being especially important for ejecting from the

Vostok capsule after reentry Having cut the list down to fifty-eight candidates by January 1962,

the women were subjected to an intensive battery of medical testing, including runs on cen

trifuges, pressure chambers, and vibration stands A special Mandate Commission, which

included Gagarin himself narrowed the list down to three women at a meeting on March 3; the

formal orders inducting them into the cosmonaut team were signed nine days later Orders for

an additional two women were signed on April 3 The five were:

• Tatyana D Kuznetsova (twenty years old)

• Valentina L Ponomareva (twentyeight)

• Irina B Solovyeva (twenty four)

• Valentina V Tereshkova (twenty four)

• Zhanna D Yerkina (twenty two) _

While they were not Air Force pilots, each had well-suited assets for competing to be the first

Soviet woman in space. Solovyeva, an alumni of Ural University, had 900 parachute jumps to her

credit, followed by Tereshkova with seventy-eight and Ponomareva with ten. Ponomareva was

clearly the most accomplished pilot, with 320 hours to her credit accrued on PO-2 and Yak-18 aircraft at her local sports club. She also had the distinction of having graduated from the prestigious

Moscow Aviation Institute and having served as a scientist at the Department of Applied

Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Unwittingly, however, Ponomareva became the

center of a controversy when Gagarin opposed her inclusion into the team because she was the

only candidate who was a mother. Social stigma in the Soviet Union to mothers risking their lives

in dangerous endeavors was significant enough for some vacillation on the issue. In the end,

Academy of Sciences President Keldysh, who had encouraged her application in the first place,

weighed in behind her, and her name was included in the final selection. One candidate,

Tereshkova, did not have the academic honors to compete with the others, but had some other

prized assets--for example, she had been an active member of the local Young Communist League

near her home in the Yaroslav Region on the upper Volga. 7 As plans stood in early 1962, the

women were to compete for a single seat on a Vostok mission during the latter part of the year.

The women cosmonauts arrived at the Cosmonaut Training Center at Zelenyy near

Moscow at a time of great uncertainty about the next Vostok mission. Many of the systems

and resources used for the Vostok program were common to the military Zenit-2 project, and

having declared the latter an immediate priority, dates for the former were continuously delayed.

The first Zenit-2 was launched on December II, 1961, but it failed to reach orbit because of a

failure in the third stage of 8K72K booster, the same launch vehicle used for the Vostok missions. _ A second launch attempt in January 1962 had to be aborted at the last moment. Forced

to conduct an examination of the booster problems, Korolev postponed the duaI-Vostok launch

again. There were also problems with both the parachutes and life support systems on the

Vostok spacecraft, which had emerged during ground testing in early 1962, instilling doubt in

the ability of the spacecraft to carry out missions safely. The somewhat lackadaisical attitude

6. v. Semenov, I. Marinin. and S. Shamsutdinov./z istorii kosmonautiki uypusk L nabory u otryady kosmonautou _astronautou (Moscow: AO Videokosmos. 1995). pp. 8. 12:S. Yegupovand I Karpenko. "At the Request

of Readers:Detachment of Air Forces'Cosmonauts" (Englishtitle) ,quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 5 (May 1990):46-47.

7. Golovanov. Koroleu. p 691: Facktor and Ponomareva, "Women in the Early Soviet Spaceflight

Program."

8. V. _gapov, "Pages From History: Launchesof the 'Zenit-2' Space Apparatus" (English title), Nouosti

kosmonuutiki I0 (May 6-19, 1996): 65-77.

353
354

from the government on piloted space exploration was given a sudden jolt by news from the

United States. Since January 23, NASA had been attempting to launch Major John H. Glenn,

Jr., on the first U.S. piloted orbital spaceflight. Although the launch was delayed several times

over the following weeks, all the preparations were carried out amid a torrent of media attention, contrasting sharply with the extreme secrecy of the Soviet program.

The publicity surrounding Glenn's Mercury launch had a dramatic effect. With curious

abruptness, Military-Industrial Commission Chairman Ustinov called Korolev on February t7,

just three days before the NASA launch, and ordered the Vostok launch in mid-March, no doubt

to take some of the steam out of the Mercury flight. Glenn's spectacular mission on February

20 began the ball rolling in the Soviet Union. The day after, Lt. General Kamanin short-listed a

group of seven cosmonauts to begin intensive training for the duat-Vostok flight, with two flying and two serving as backups. Kamanin himself captured the haphazardness of the decisionmaking in his diary:

I was unofficially notified (by Ustinov) that the next flight should take place around

March 10-12. ,Zipparently. after Glenn's [light, Khrushchev demanded that our next

piloted flight be brought forward. In order to fly around the lO-t2th, we'll have to fly

to the launch site on March 2-3. This is the style of our leadership. They've been doing

nothing for almost half-a-year and now they ask us to prepare an extremely complex

mission in just ten days time. the program of which has not even been agreed upon.'

The seven cosmonauts--Bykovskiy, Komarov, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Popovich, Shonin,

and Volynov--began mission-specific training at the time, but the resources were simply

unavailable to mount a mission within thirty days. Month by month, the launch was again

delayed as resources were tied up in the Zenit-2 program. At least two launches of the reconnaissance satellite were planned before Korolev could focus on the Vostok mission. The first of

these finally occurred on April 26 with the successful orbital insertion of the first Soviet reconnaissance satellite. The second, using a slightly different model of the launch vehicle, was

delayed several weeks and did not take place until June I, 1962, from the launch pad at site I,

the same pad planned for use on the Vostok flights. In this case, the rocket landed 300 meters

from the launch site, while one of the strap-ons remained at the pad, seriously damaging the

structure as a result of a fire. '° The response to Glenn's flight was hopelessly delayed as engineers estimated a month of repair work to bring the pad back to operational status.

As with Titov's flight, the issue of the length of the two ensuing Vostok missions was the

source of arguments that lasted months. Korolev was absolutely insistent that the first mission

last three days and the second two days. This was in the face of the opinions from all the Air

Force physicians, the cosmonauts, Kamanin, Academy President Keldysh, Chairman of the

State Committee for Defense Technology Smirnov, and top Air Force leaders, all of whom

favored a more conservative one-day mission for each, prolonged to two days if everything went

well. Korolev, in typical fashion, bulldozed his opinions over a period of weeks and, by the end

of June, had persuaded almost all of the key leaders directing the Vostok program, including the

leading biomedicine specialist Vladimir I. Yazdovskiy. The latter capitulated despite a formal

document signed by the leading physicians on September 23, 1961, stating: "At the present

time there is no basis to plan the next space flight for more than one day. If during a day long

flight the cosmonaut is in good physical health, then the flight can be prolonged, but not to

9. Kamanin,Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963, p. 94: Hendrickx."The KamaninDiaries 1960 1963 "

I0. Agapov."PagesFromHistory":Kamanin.Skrytiykosmos1960-1963,pp. 118-19.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
SPACE POLITICS

I

more than two days."" Kamanin refused to give in, but as the weeks wore on, he found himself in a minority.

At the first meeting of the ad hoc State Commission for Vostok on 16 July, the members

set the dual Vostok launches for August 5- I0, 1962. The second spacecraft would be launched

into orbit the day after the first. One of the primary goals of the mission was to launch the

spacecraft in such a way that the two vehicles would pass by each other in close proximity.

Although a rendezvous was beyond the means of the modest Vostok spacecraft, such a mission profile had an important application to long-range plans at OKB-I. One of the key elements of the 7K-9K- I I K Soyuz circumlunar project was rendezvous in Earth orbit. The first part

of the rendezvous, an approach to within twenty kilometers, would be achieved simply by the

trajectory imparted to the spacecraft by the launch booster. This meant that the second spacecraft would have to be launched at a specific time, to a specific inclination, and the cutoff

velocity had to be perfectly timed to enter the designated orbit and orbital plane. The whole

procedure was complicated by Earth's rotation; the "rendezvous" had to be based on computations of the velocity at which Earth rotated the launch pad underneath the first overflying

Vostok spaceship. According to the plan, the two spacecraft would pass by each other at a relatively far distance, continue their own missions, and then land simultaneously, the first Vostok

after three days and the second after two days. On July 26, in a meeting at OKB-I, leading participants, including OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev, Department Chief Raushenbakh,

Gagarin, and Cosmonaut Training Center Director Karpov, discussed the possibility of having

the cosmonauts observe each other's spacecraft in orbit. Because of propellant limitations in

the attitude control systems, they limited observations to two options for the first cosmonaut:

viewing the upper stage of the 8KZ2K launcher after orbital insertion and detecting the launch

of the second Vostok while flying over Tyura-Tam. '_ Observations of each other's spacecraft

were not ruled out, but this was not a primary mission goal.

One safety concern that officials addressed in the weeks leading up to the launch of the

Vostoks was nuclear radiation. On July 9, 1962, the United States detonated a nuclear warhead

in space with the aid of a Thor missile over the johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. This generated high amounts of radiation that scientists believed was trapped in Earth's magnetic fields.

Alarmed by the possibility that such radiation might harm the cosmonauts, the State

Commission depended on the investigations of two small automated satellites, Kosmos-3 and

Kosmos-5, which had been launched earlier in the year. The latter, in particular, was used to

assess the degree of potential danger to humans flying over the Pacific. Noted nuclear physicist Sergey N. Vernov reported at a commission meeting on July 16 that as long as the launch

was three to five days after a U.S. explosion, there would be no real danger to the cosmonauts. _

After a final meeting of the State Commission presided over by Chairman Smirnov on

July 30, the first participants, including the five cosmonauts training for the joint mission--

I I. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963, pp. 125-26. g description of a meeting on the issueof mission

length in March 1962,attended by S. P.Korolev. K. D. Bushuyev_M K Tikhonravov. O. G Gazenko. N. P Kamanin,

and Ye. A. Karpov, is described in Aleksandr Romanov,Korotev (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya. 1996), pp. 445-49.

12. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos 1960-1963, pp. 128-29: William Shelton, SouietSpace Exploration TheFirst.

Decade (New York:Washington SquarePress, 1968), p. 139.

13. V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov. and V. Pashchenko, Dneprouskiy raketno-kosmicheskiy tsentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZ/KBYu. 1994), p 69: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963. p. 125.The summary report

on the effects of Project Starfish has been published as M. V. Keldysh, "On Radiation as a Result of High-Altitude

Nuclear Explosions" (English title), in V. S, Avduyevskiy and T. M. Eneyev,eds,, M. V. Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy:

raketnaya tekhnika i kosmonautika (Moscow: Nauka. 1988), pp. 459-60, Another source suggests that Kosmos-?

was also used for the sametask. SeeV. P.Glushko. ed., Kosmonautika entsiklopediya (Moscow: SovetskayaentsikIopediya, 1985), p. 20 I, Kosmos-3 and Kosmos-5 were "2MS" class satelliteslaunched on April 24 and May28. 1962,

respectively (nos I and 2). Kosmos-7 was a Zenit-2 reconnaissancesatellite (no. 4) launched on July 28, 1962.

355
356

Bykovskiy, Komarov, Nikolayev, Popovich, and Volynov--began flying into Tyura-Tam on

August 2. By the time Korolev and the other major chief designers arrived the following day,

cosmonaut overseer Lt. General Kamanin was leaning toward Nikolayev and Popovich as the

likely candidates for the two missions. One of the few bachelors in the cosmonaut team, the

thirty-two-year-old Nikolayev began his career as a lumberjack before later joining the Soviet Air

Force and receiving his pilot's wings in 1954. Possessed of a remarkably calm disposition, his

completely unflappable manner in potentially life-threatening situations as both a pilot and a

cosmonaut-trainee had guaranteed a place for him on such an early Vostok mission. The ebullient Popovich. also thirty-two, was Nikolayev's polar opposite in temperament. He had had a

distinguished career in the Soviet Air Force before receiving the Order of the Red Star for an

assignment in the Arctic. His wife Marina was one of the most accomplished women test pilots

in the USSR.'"

Training for Nikolayev, Popovich, and their three backup cosmonauts continued almost to

the day of their scheduled launch, which was set for August I0-1 I. On August 4, the cosmonauts received instructions on how to orient their spacecraft for observations as well as for

maintaining a smooth roll motion throughout the mission for equitable heating from the Sun's

rays across the entire spacecraft. Veteran cosmonauts Gagarin and Titov were intensively

involved in all premission operations, having jumped from being mere cosmonauts to being

important members of the State Commission participating in all the key decisions regarding the

flights. Gagarin arrived at Tyura-Tam on August 6, along with State Commission Chairman

Smirnov, who presided over a prelaunch technical review meeting the same night. The formal

"go-ahead" session of the commission was held on the night of August 7. It was at that point

that Kamanin formally nominated Nikolayev and Popovich to fly the missions. Cosmonauts

Bykovskiy and Komarov were named their backups, while Votynov was named "reserve."'"

Among the speakers at the meeting was First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air

Force Marshal Sergey I. Rudenko, who in his two-minute speech twice referred to cosmonaut

Popovich as "Popov." The [aux pas, recorded on film at the time, was later excised no doubt

to save both Popovich and Rudenko from embarrassment. Remarkably. Rudenko repeated his

error at a subsequent commission meeting the following day.

There were no major anomalies during the remaining days leading up to the first launch.

On the morning of the liftoff, August II, all the leading chief designers--Korolev, Alekseyev

(ejection seat), Barmin (launch complex), Bogomolov (telemetry systems), Gusev (radio communications), Isayev (Vostok engine). Kosberg (upper stage engine), Kuznetsov (gyroscopes).

Pilyugin (guidance systems for the booster), Tkachev (parachutes), and Voronin (life support

systems)--met and declared their respective systems ready for flight. '6

At 1130 hours Moscow Time, exactly as scheduled, the 8K72K booster lifted off with

Captain Andrian G. Nikolayev aboard: his first words were "Full speed ahead! .... Perhaps aware

of the recent booster failures, Korolev was unusually nervous throughout the ascent phase of

the flight as he held on tight to the red telephone with which he would give the vocal order to

abort the mission in case of a booster failure. At T+687 seconds, ground controllers breathed

a sigh of relief as the spacecraft, renamed Vostok 3, was successfully inserted into orbit. Initial

orbital parameters were nominal: 180.7 by 234.6 kilometers at 64.98 degrees inclination to the

equator. Approximately two hours into the mission, at the end of Nikolayev's first orbit, news

14 Shelton,SovietSpaceExploration,pp, 134-35,142.

15. Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos:1960-1963,pp, 133,136-31,

16. The chiefdesignerswereheadsof the followingorganizations:S. M. Alekseyev(PlantNo. 918), V. P

Barrnin(GSKBSpetsMash),A, F.Bogomolov(OKB MEI).L. I, Gusev(Nil 695).A. M. Isayev(OKB-2),S.A Kosberg

(OKB-154),V.I. Kuznetsov(NII-944),N.A. Pilyugin(NII-885),F.D.Tkachev(NIEIPDS),andG.I. Voronin(OKB-124).

17. EvgenyRiabchikov.Russiansin Space(Moscow:NovostiPressPublishingHouse.1911),p 186

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

of the launch was reported to Khrushchev, Kozlov, and Ustinov back at the Kremlin. Kozlov

called into launch control at Tyura-Tam, mistakenly promoting Nikolayev to lieutenant colonel

instead of major before correcting himself. Throughout the mission, physicians on the ground

kept a close watch on the cosmonaut's health to detect signs of the malaise that had afflicted

Titov. A battery of sensors and instruments were attached to the cosmonaut's body, bringing in

continuous telemetry; these included measurements for electrocardiograms, pneumograms, electroencephalograms, skin-galvanic reactions, and electro-oculograms. To measure movements of

the eyes, doctors had attached tiny silver electrodes at the outer corners of Nikolayev's eyes to

record the biocurrents of the muscles of the eyeballs. Electrodes placed on the front and lower

third of the cosmonaut's right shin detected skin-galvanic responses. As was standard, the

spacecraft also carried samples of drosophila, dry seeds, lysogenic bacteria, and microspores. '*

The telemetric information was augmented by a continuous stream of oral reports on appetite,

adaptability to noise, vibration, overstrain, and the ability to work and sleep.

Nikolayev reported none of the problems that Titov had experienced. For the first time on

a Vostok mission, a cosmonaut was allowed to unstrap himself from his seat to float freely in

the zero gravity inside the cabin. Air Force physician Yazdovskiy had warned Nikolayev that he

may experience nausea and drowsiness on his sixth and seventh orbits. '9 Nikolayev felt none

and completed the "floating" experiment without any problems, bolstering Korolev's idea to

have the mission last three days. During the mission, Nikolayev also had specially prepared

meals, which, for the first time, were not packed in tubes.

Soviet leader Khrushchev spoke to Nikolayev from the ground control station of Simferepol

about four hours into the mission, visibly excited as Nikolayev smiled on TV from outer space.

In a surprise move, on the spacecraft's seventh orbit, a little more than six hours after liftoff,

Soviet TV broadcast the first live pictures of Nikolayev. Viewers were able to see the cosmonaut move his arms and head via the two cameras mounted in the cabin. In a politically motivated move, the U.S. embassy was handed a document during the early part of the mission

stating: "The United States must refrain from carrying out any measures which could in any

degree hinder the exploration of outer space for peaceful purposes or endanger the cosmonaut's

life. ''_' It was an implicit reference to Project Starfish a month earlier, which had raised the possibility of delaying the Vostok 3 mission. U.S. officials assured the Soviet government that there

were no plans for such upper atmospheric explosions in the near future, wishing Nikolayev "a

safe flight and a happy landing,"

Except for minor communications problems with the ground, Nikolayev's first day in space

ended without incident: he went to sleep at 2200 hours. After a seven-hour nap, he awoke

refreshed, awaiting the dramatic events of the new day. Activity at Tyura-Tam had continued at

a feverish pitch following Nikolayev's launch. The pad at site I was cleaned out, and a new

8K72K booster with a Vostok spacecraft was wheeled in for launch. Major Pavel R. Popovich was

launched successfully at 1102 hours, 33 seconds Moscow Time on August 12 into a 179.8- by

236.7-kilometer orbit inclined at 64.95 degrees to the equator. His spacecraft was named

Vostok 4 upon orbital insertion. It was the first time in the history of spaceflight that more than

one piloted spacecraft, or indeed more than one human, had been in orbit. Vostok 3's ground

track had passed directly over Tyura-Tam at the time, and ten minutes prior to Vostok 4's launch,

Nikolayev had manually oriented his ship so as to observe the launch plumes on the ground. He

18. GeorgeWukelic,ed., Handbooko[ SouietSpace-ScienceResearch(New York:Gordonand Breach

SciencePublishers,1968). pp. 54-55: Kenneth Gatland.MannedSpacecraft(New York: Macmillan, 1976),

pp. 118-19:Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos:1960-1963.p_141.

19. Riabchikov,Russiansin Space.p. 181.

20. Shelton,SouietSpaceExploration,p. 138.

351
358

was, however, unable to see anything. The surprise of the second launch was without precedent. The press in the West was literally agog

with the possibility that the two craft might link

up in space. Western "experts" on the Soviet

space program, such as the British astronomer

Sir Bernard Lovell, helped dramatize the situation

by pronouncements claiming that the flights of

Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 were "the most remarkable development man has ever seen."2_

The two spacecraft were in very similar

orbits and reportedly passed each other as close

as five kilometers on Vostok 4's first orbit. During

a postflight conference, Popovich claimed that

he actually managed to see the other ship in

Cosmonaut Pavel Popouich is shown in a still

picture during his Vostok 4 mission in Ztugust 1962

(files of _sif Siddicti)

orbit as "something like a very small moon. '''2 It seems, however, that neither cosmonaut ever

spotted the other's spacecraft in orbit, Gradually, the distance between the two ships increased

over the day to approximately 850 kilometers. The experiment was clearly a boon to Korolev's

plans to use the 7K-9K-I I K Soyuz complex for a circumlunar flight to the Moon because the latter mission required a precision of about twenty kilometers upon orbital insertion. Popovich and

Nikolayev followed precisely synchronized schedules, dining and sleeping at the same time. In

contrast to the reticent Nikolayev, Popovich was far more animated and jocular during his TV

transmissions, showing viewers floating pencils and logbooks inside his cabin.

During the remainder of the missions, both cosmonauts performed modest physical exercises as well as sessions manually changing the attitude of their respective ships. The men also

regularly communicated with each other, although there was some amount of static and noise

that hindered fruitful exchanges during the early part of the missions. The cosmonauts ate four

meals a day consisting of meat cutlets, roast veal, fillet of chicken, pastries, special sweets, miniature loaves, sausages, dragees, and chocolate. They also conducted extensive visual and photographic observations. Based on Titov's early experiments with movie-camera photography, both

Nikolayev and Popovich used similar instruments. Nikolayev focused on imaging Earth's surface,

while Popovich photographed Earth's horizon and terminator during several runs. 2_

Originally, the State Commission had approved Korolev's proposal that the Vostok 3 mission last three days while the Vostok 4 flight last two days. By the late hours of August 13, the

night before their scheduled landing, most State Commission members were of the opinion that

Nikolayev's flight could be prolonged to [our days. Kamanin was once again the only major participant who resisted the proposal, raising some fairly serious issues. The temperature aboard

the Vostok 3 ship had abruptly dropped from 27 to 13 degrees Centigrade on Nikolayev's twenty-ninth orbit. Although the temperature had remained static since then, Kamanin believed that

the mission should be kept to its original three-day length to preclude negative effects on the

cosmonaut's health. Because 13 degrees was still above the limit considered for aborting a mission, and given that all other systems aboard the ship were performing nominally, all the chief

21 Ibid.. p 140: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos 1960-1963, p 149.

22. Soviet Space Programs. I962-65 Goals and Purposes...,qehieuements. Plans. and International

Implications. prepared for the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences. U.S Senate, 89th Cong. 2d sess

(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. December 1966). pp 536-39. Reports differ as to the closest

approach,varying from live to six and a half kilometers.

23. Yu, P, Semenov, ed.. Raketno-KosmieheskayuKorporatsiya "Energiya" imeni S P Koroleua (Korolev:

RKK Energlya,named after S. P.Korolev, 1996), p. 116:Gatland, Manned Spacecraft. p. 120

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

designers, including Korotev, Bogomolov, Kuznetsov, rqlekseyev, and Pilyugin, voted to prolong

the mission. In the end, Commission Chairman Smirnov had Gagarin personally ask Nikolayev's

opinion on prolonging the mission. Although the brief communications session did not permit

an informed decision on Nikolayev's part, he gladly agreed to the extension, saying that he felt

"excellent. ,,24

The State Commission finally decided to prolong the Vostok 3 mission to four days and the

Vostok 4 flight to three days on the early morning of August 14, just hours prior to the originally

scheduled return of both cosmonauts. Thus, if all went well, both men would land in the late

morning of the following day within minutes of each other. During their last scheduled day in

orbit, Nikolayev and Popovich conducted some more Earth observation sessions. Popovich carried out an experiment with a pressurized flask two-thirds full with water. If the flask was left

undisturbed, he reported that all the air coalesced in the middle of the flask. Upon shaking the

container, Popovich discovered that the air would scatter in hundreds of small bubbles, which

eventually came together into a single large air bubble in the middle. :_ In an experiment to reproduce Titov's strange sensations, Nikolayev, on his fourth day in space, sharply turned his head

from side to side repeatedly but felt no apparent discomfort. Popovich, on the other hand, experienced "some abnormalities," although it was nothing on the level of Titov's sickness.

On the night of P,ugust 14, Khrushchev and Kozlov telephoned Commission Chairman

Smirnov and unexpectedly raised the issue of prolonging Popovich's flight another day to four

days in the interest of not "offending" the cosmonaut, gn unplanned meeting of the inner

members of the State Commission--Smirnov, Korolev, Keldysh, Rudenko, Pilyugin, and

Kamanin--was convened immediately to discuss the issue. Most of the members were in favor

of extending Popovich's mission. Korolev himself was diplomatic:

The ,goals having been completely fulfilled, we have already extended Nikolayev's flight

to four days, raising some risk. There's no reason to end Popovich's mission due to technical or medical reasons, but I do not see any great gains in prolonging his flight,

although I will not vote against such a decision/_

This time, not only Kamanin but also Gagarin, Bushuyev, Feoktistov and others opposed the

proposal based on concerns about shifting landing zones as well as, incredibly, dropping temperatures in Vostok 4, which were down to eleven to twelve degrees Centigrade. This was just

above the limit for safe conditions in the vehicle. Clearly under pressure to carry out the directives of Khrushchev and Kozlov, Smirnov did not want to give in and asked Korolev to put the

question to Popovich. t_s one would expect, Popovich replied that he was ready to fly for four

days. Srnirnov, perhaps relieved, telephoned Khrushchev on the State Commission's decision to

prolong the flight, adding that Kamanin, Gagarin, and others had opposed the recommendation.

All these plans fell to the wayside the following morning, August 15. During a regular meeting of the State Commission, controllers reported that the temperature on Vostok 4 was down

to I0 degrees Centigrade, below safe levels, and the humidity had decreased to 35 percent.

Popovich reported that he was feeling well when he woke up, but he added, "The temperature

and humidity are continuing to drop, and I've tried all necessary measures but the decline is

continuing."2t It was clear to most ground controllers that by Vostok 4's forty-eighth orbit, the

safety of life support was threatened, gt that point, Kamanin, Keldysh, and Rudenko demanded

24. Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963. pp. 144-45.

25. Gatland, Manned Spacecraft, p 120.

26. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963. p. 15Z

27. Ibid., p. 153.

359
360

that Popovich be brought back on the next pass over Soviet territory, which as it turned out was

the very next orbit, the originally planned time for landing. Smimov continued to insist that the

flight be continued. These arguments became somewhat academic when Popovich reported

that he was "observing a thunderstorm." Before the flight. Popovich had agreed to use a series

of coded phrases to communicate any abnormalities during the flight. "Observing a thunderstorm" meant that he was suffering severe motion sickness. Not surprisingly, Popovich's report

caused great alarm on the ground, and controllers tried to confirm the report by asking how he

was feeling. Popovich, realizing his error in terminology, replied. "I'm feeling excellent. I

observed a meteorological thunderstorm and lightning. ''_8 Both Kamanin and Gagarin were

skeptical of Popovich's second report, believing that the cosmonaut had overcompensated for

his first call of distress, perhaps because of embarrassment. Controllers later discovered that

Popovich had in fact been observing a real thunderstorm over the Gulf of Mexico and that he

was feeling perfectly fine.

The "thunderstorm" issue sealed the matter of Popovich's landing on the forty-eighth

orbit. Thus, both Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 fired their retrorockets within six minutes of each other

in the ]ate morning of August 15. Nikolayev landed by parachute after a three-day, twenty-twohour. twenty-two-minute flight, during which he had circled Earth sixty-four times. Popovich

landed 200 kilometers away from his comrade after a two-day, twenty-two-hour, fifty-sevenminute flight and forty-eight orbits/9 It was a triumphant end to two missions that were. by all

standards, spectacular achievements for the Soviet space program. Not only had ground services displayed the capability to rapidly launch piloted spacecraft in succession from the very

same launch pad. but the entire ground tracking network had given an exemplary performance

of its capabilities. Nikolayev, with his four-day mission, had also broken the previous world

endurance record set by Titov a year before. By comparison, the longest U.S. piloted space mission at the time was a modest five hours. The cosmonauts themselves were recovered in good

health, although cardiovascular responses did not return to normal until seven to ten days after

landing. Both men's good physical state was a significant reassuring factor after Titov's performance had thrown doubt into the possibility of long-duration missions.

Nikolayev and Popovich, after their formal report to the State Commission on the evening

of August 16, flew into Moscow two days later for a tumultuous reception at the Red Square

hosted by Khrushchev, Kozlov. and others. In typical fashion, Soviet officials maximized the

stunning effect of the duaI-Vostok mission. At a press conference for the Moscow press on

August 21 attended by both Nikolayev and Popovich, Academy of Sciences President Keldysh

announced quite melodramatically:

The [lights of ,Zlndrian Nikolayeu and Pavel Popovich in the Vostoks 3 and 4 mark a

new. notable stage on this road which brings us closer to the realization of interplanetary flights. The group flight o[ the spaceships is of great significance for the deuelopment of interplanetary stations. [or the creation o[ spaceships and for the conquest of

interplanetary routes. _'

28 Ibid.: Gotovanov. Koroleu. p. 686.

29. These times are for the tanding of the cosmonaut. In the case of the descent apparatus of the two

Vostok spacecraft, the times were three days. twenty-two hours, nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds for Vostok 3 and

two days, twenty two hours, forty-four minutes for Vostok 4. SeeGlushko, ed., Kosmonautika entsiklopediya, p. 66.

30. Soulet SpacePrograms, 1962-65. p. 537. During the pressconference, Popovich inadvertently stated in

answer to a question that "Like Titov and Gagarin, I landed besidethe ship," implying that Gagarin had parachuted

out of the Vostok descent apparatusprior to landing. This was clearly contrary to the official position that Gagarin

landed inside his ship. It is not clearwhether Popovich was penalized for this "slip" from the official Party line.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
SPACE POLITICS

Such statements, backed up by the lack of detailed information on the Vostok missions,

helped foster a climate of awe about the Soviet space program: many Westerners believed that

the Soviets could have docked the two spacecraft with each other. Korolev's First Deputy Chief

Designer Mishin commented many years later on the building of myths:

The group flight.., well. a day after launch, the first craft was over Baykonur. If the

second craft were launched now with great precision, then they would turn out to be

next to each other in space. ,Zind that's what was done .... The craft turned out to be

3 kilometers from each other! Well, since, with all the secrecy, we didn't tell the whole

truth, the Western experts, who hadn't figured it out, thought that our Vostok was

already equipped with orbital approach equipment. ,Zis they say. a sleight of hand isn't

any kind of fraud. It was more like our competitors deceived themselves all by their lonesome. Of course, we didn't shatter their illusions. 3'

Woman in Space

The program of flights in the Vostok program remained indistinct throughout the life of the

project. Proposals would be floated--many of them rejected, some considered for months--

and then they were eventually laid to the wayside. A major reason for such disarray was partly

because of the military's cool attitude toward the missions, partly because of the fact that science played very little role in mission planning, but mostly because the Soviet leadership was

not very interested in establishing a coordinated plan. One additional factor may have been

Korolev's health. Foryears, he had been in poor shape, plagued by a variety of physical ailments

exacerbated to a great degree by his overstretched schedule. Working eighteen hours a day

straight for several weeks on end was not anathema to him: he was an incurable workaholic

with the need to have his hand in the most trivial of matters in his giant organization. Soon

after the Vostok 314 mission, he had been beset by intestinal bleeding, resulting in unbearable

pain that had landed him in a hospital. After a long stay in the hospital, he was released on

September 15 and was ordered to take a short vacation at the seaside resort of Sochi. True to

his nature, he took his work there and spent hours on the phone or with visitors such as

Kamanin and Yazdovskiy planning future Vostok missions. 3_

After the Nikolayev and Popovich missions, it was clear that the next Vostok mission

would include a woman, but the clutter of proposals from various factions made pursuing a

particular course of action impossible. Days after the successful Vostok 314 mission, Chairman

of the State Committee for Defense Technology Leonid V. Smirnov, the "ministerial" head of

the space program, was foreseeing a lone flight of a woman as early as late October 1962.

Kamanin, on the other hand, believed that it would be more prudent to carry out the flight in

March-April 1963 as part of a joint flight with men on one or two other spacecraft. The men

would perform seven- to eight-day missions, while the woman would be in space for two to

three days) _Given the delays associated with previous missions, the March-April 1963 date

proved to be much more realistic, although, by November, it was still not clear whether the

female mission would be a solo or a group flight.

The women themselves engaged in intensive training throughout 1962. The program

included time in centrifuges being subjected to loads as high as ten g's, weightlessness training in Tu-104 aircraft, regular physical exercises, flight training in MiG-15LITI trainers, water

3I. G, Salakhutdinov,"OnceMoreAboutSpace"(Englishtitle), Ogonek34 (August18-25, 1990):4-5.

32. Riabchikov,Russiansin Space.pp. 198-99:Golovanov.Koroteu.p. 772.

33. Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos:1960-1963,p. 158.

361
362

survival techniques, and theoretical studies on astronomy, astronautics, and the Vostok spacecraft itself. They also performed between seventy to eighty parachute jumps from II-14 aircraft

to master the landing phase of a Vostok mission. To a great extent, the women's training was

marked by different motivations than the earlier training of the men. While the men could

count on later missions if passed over at first, no such luxury was afforded the women. Only

one woman out of the five would make it into space, the rest most likely being consigned to a

footnote in history. This singular fact was not lost upon the women themselves, and it characterized their interpersonal relationships with an unusual sense of competitiveness rather than

any sense of unity? 4

P,t the end of the training program, the youngest of the lot, twenty-one-year-old

Kuznetsova, dropped out of the running, having performed poorly in the pressure chamber and

the centrifuge. Ponomareva, the only scientist in the group, was a clear favorite based on her

excellent health and theoretical performance. However, given the peculiar combination of sexism and political standards that was propagated by Kamanin, she was deemed to have

"unsteady" morals. She was very independent, self-assured, and probably much more accomplished than some of the men--that is, completely unacceptable in Kamanin's mind. The other

contender for first place, Tereshkova, on the other hand, was reticent, modest, and "a model

of good breeding.""

In late November 1962, four of the five women took their final exams: Kuznetsova was

absent at the time because of poor health. The remaining four all received excellent grades and

were awarded the military rank of junior lieutenant and were formally inducted as Air Force cosmonauts. Kamanin summarized their strengths and weaknesses in his journal on November 29:

Ponomareva has the most thorough theoretical preparation and is more talented than

the others--she exceeds all the rest in flight--but she needs a lot of reform. She is arrogant. self-centered, exaggerates her abilities and does not stay away from drinking,

smoking and taking walks (although she has a husband and four-year old son).

Solovyeva is the most objective of all, more physically and morally sturdy, but she is a

little closed off and is insufficiently active in social work, Tereshkova--she is active in

society, is especially well in appearance, makes use of her great authority among everyone who she knows. Yerkina has prepared less than well in technical and physical qualities, but she is persistently improving and undoubtedly she will be a rather good

cosmonaut. We must first send Tereshkova into space flight, and her double will be

Solovyeva .... Tereshkova, she is a _agarin in a skirt? 6

Although the four women were ready for their flight, there was still much uncertainty about

the mission. There was still no clear consensus on whether it would be a joint mission with a

second Vostok, and if so, whether the second spacecraft would carry a man or a woman. There

were also purely technical issues: Plant No. 918 had run into serious problems in designing a

pressure suit specifically for women. Rs with many other flights, the Soviet Party and government proved unable or perhaps uninterested in setting a specific timetable by which all its subordinate organizations could work. The two spacecraft for the proposed women's missions had

already been manufactured and almost ready for flight by mid-1962, but the lack of action from

the Military-Industrial Commission and the Central Committee kept them on the ground for

another year.

34

Program"

35.

36

Golovanov, Korolev, p. 691: Facktor and Ponomareva.

Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963, p. 182.

Ibid, pp. 187-88.

"Women in the Early Soviet Spaceflight

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

The options available for the women's flights were discussed at a meeting at OKB-I in midJanuary 1963. Three options were given serious consideration for the flight, then set for

April-May:

• A single flight of a woman on a Vostok ship lasting one to three days

• A group flight of two ships with women one launched a day after the other and both land

ing on the same day

• A group flight with one ship carrying a man for five to seven days and one ship carrying a

woman for three days

The Air Force seemed to be leaning toward a group flight of two women, but these plans were

thrown into flux by opposing institutional viewpoints. Forexample, at one point in late January,

State Committee for Defense Technology Chairman Smirnov had expressed the opinion that

only one spacecraft (3KA no. 7) be used for the women's flight, while the second one

(3KA no. 8) be consigned as a museum piece. The implication was clearly that the female flight

would be limited to a single ship and not a joint mission? 7

Apart from OKB-I, the primary motivator in supporting the Vostok program was the Air

Force. Having been completely kept out of the entire missile business by the armaments people

in the Strategic Missile Forces, the Air Force, as the overseerof the cosmonauts, was taking steps

to vigorously support piloted space activities. While it may have been purely an interservice rivalry issue, the lobbying did produce results. Top Air Force leaders, including Commander-in-Chief

Vershinin, were able to convince Ustinov and Smirnov of not sending a perfectly good spacecraft sent to a museum. On March 18, several leading Air Force generals along with Korolev met

with Secretary of the Central Committee for Defense and Space Frol R. Kozlov. On the question

of the female mission, Kozlov asked many questions, some pointed (Why is this necessary?)

and some simply ignorant (Who among you is deciding to prepare the women?). It seems that

the combined effort did produce results. On March 21, the Central Committee formally decided

to move ahead with a group flight with one woman and one man, thus quashing any plans for

a double-woman mission. The flight was tentatively set for "no earlier than" August 1963.

OKB- I also received formal approval to manufacture four additional Vostok spacecraft by the end

of 1963) 8Thus, a whole seven months following the Nikolayev-Popovich flight, the Soviet leadership finally committed itself to the next Soviet piloted space mission.

There was some adjustment to this plan when Korolev's engineers discovered that the

design lifetime of both the slated spacecraft was to expire in May-June 1963, well before the

August deadline. Korolev had asked his men to explore the possibility of extending "the shelf

life" of the vehicles, but he was informed that this would not be possible. Thus, OKB-I was

put in a bind: either launch the two spacecraft byJune 15or throw them out. The revised plan

was passed up to the Military-lndustrial Commission and the Central Committee. The latter, on

April 29, formally approved carrying out the group flight earlier, in May-June of 1963. The first

spaceship would carry a man into orbit for a full eight days, while the second would carry the

first woman into space for two to three days.

Cosmonauts Bykovskiy, Khrunov, Leonov, and Volynov were the four candidates for the

male seat. Of the four, Bykovskiy and Volynov had been sporadically training for the possibility of such a mission since September 1962, but dedicated preparation for the joint flight did

not begin until mid-April 1963,just two months before the planned launch. Such an unusually short preparation period, impossible in the case of NASA astronauts, was possible in the

37. Ibid.,pp.208,216-17,223 24.

38 Ibid. pp. 238 39,240.

363
364

Soviet Union because cosmonauts in training groups were in a continuous state of preparation

for months prior to being assigned a particular flight. Through the month of May, the four went

through an accelerated and compressed training program involving more parachute jumps,

three- to four-daylong ground simulations, and tests on the centrifuge. Air Force officials

expected that Bykovskiy and Volynov, the best trained of the four, would be ready for launch

by May 30, while Khrunov and Leonov would be ready by June 15, just in time to make the

mission2 '_In a very telling comment in his journal, Kamanin wrote:

Because of the squabbling between various departments, we make very poor use of our

technical capabilities, hastily preparing flight programs, and doing a lot of other stupid

things..,_ space mission, or to be more exact, its preparation should begin with giving

the crew a flight program, but we are doing exactly the opposite: we first prepare the

ships and their equipment and then tailor the crew's flight program to the ship's configuration and equipment. 4°

The flight program of the ensuing two missions was very similar to the Vostok 3/4 flight a year

before. The length of seven to eight days for the first mission necessitated some changes in timing: the only requirement was that the two spacecraft fly in space at the same time for at least one

to two days. None of the earlier Vostok missions had included any serious scientific experiments,

and it seems the scientific community had taken steps to include some observational research on

the new mission. On May 17, 1963, Academy of Sciences President Keldysh submitted a formal

document to the Council of Ministers suggesting experiments on the next Vostok missions. These

dealt with the study of the brightness of Earth's atmosphere system, especially the horizon, the

structure of the clouds, the light regime, and the transparency of the atmosphere by means of

black-and-white and color photography with subsequent photometric observations. A program of

research that included these experiments was apparently prepared for the next dual-Vostok flight,

although it is not clear whether all the instrumentation was actually carried into orbit. 4_

The first meeting of the State Commission for Vostok took place on May t0. Presiding was

a new commission chairman, forty-eight-year-old Artillery Lt. General Georgiy A. Tyulin, at the

time the First Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Defense Technology. His career with

the missile had begun in 1944 when, as a young lieutenant colonel, he had been tasked to

study captured portions of the German A-4 missile, g close friend of Korolev's, Tyulin had petitioned several times to be transferred to OKB-I as an engineer, but these requests had been

denied because his expertise was needed elsewhere. After the year in Germany in 1945-46, he

had ended up at the military research and development NIl-4 organization directing the development of ground tracking stations for the R-7 ICBM and later sea-based tracking for space

satellites. In August 1959, Tyulin was tapped to become director of the famous NII-88, the former "overseer" institute of Korolev's OKB-I. Within two years, both Ustinov and Korolev

strongly supported Tyulin's nomination to enter the State Committee for Defense Technology,

the "ministry" responsible for the space program. Tyulin, more committed to scientific and

engineering research, was reluctant to leave his job at NII-88, but he agreed in June 1961 to

39 Ibid. p 258. Cosmonaut Komarov was also briefly considered for the mission from early February to

May 9, when he was dropped because of health problems.

40. lbid, p. 261: Hendrickx, "The Kamanin Diaries 1960 1963."

41. The Academy of Sciences document has been published as M V Keldysh, "On A Program of

Observation in the Launches of the 'Vostok Spaceship" (English title), in Avduyevskiy and Eneyev,eds., M V

Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy, p. 477 An instrument for the study of luminescence in the upper atmosphere was also

proposed for the mission, although Keldysh states in his letter that there would be some difficulty in placing the

instrument in the Vostok capsule.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

become the committee's First Deputy Chairman. Tyulin stayed with his new job, clearly gaining a foothold in the top levels of the space industry? _ One of the most overlooked characters

in the tapestry of the Soviet space program, he was also one of the most ubiquitous.

Traditionally, the position of chairman of the ad hoe State Commission for Vostok was held

by an individual with a "ministerial" rank: the appointment of Tyulin, who had a rank of first

deputy "minister," was unexpected. Clearly, the Communist Party no longer viewed the project as

sufficiently important as before. Under Tyulin's supervision, the State Commission met on May I0

to discuss preparations for the flight. In attendance were all the principal participants preparing the

woman flight, including both Korolev and Glushko. This was at the zenith of their fight over the

N I propellants, and it is surprising that the two of them actually managed to sit in the same room

and discuss a neutral project. Also present were several Strategic Missile Forces and Air Force officers, chief designers, scientists from the Academy of Sciences, veteran cosmonauts, and Air Force

physicians. 43The relevant chief designers reported that both spacecraft slated for the flight had

been tested and all defective instruments replaced. Korolev in particular complained of the poor

quality of the workmanship of a particular plant, which had produced twenty-eight defective parts.

After the formal meeting, a smaller group provisionally agreed to set the two launches for

June 3-5. The preliminary choice for the first mission was Bykovskiy, more than likely because

he was the lightest of the men competing for the position; the Vostok spacecraft was already

pushing the limit of the launch vehicle's capabilities with a variety of modifications. The decision on the woman was a little more difficult. A year before, when the five women had come

to Tyura-Tam to see the launches of Vostok 3 and Vostok 4, Korolev had clearly been pleased

with Tereshkova and had even confided this to then-Director of the Cosmonaut Training Center

Col. Yevgeniy A. Karpov. Before the weeks leading to launch, however, two clear factions had

emerged in picking a single woman. On one side, Korolev, Karpov, Kamanin, and parachute

training instructor Nikolay K. Nikitin strongly supported Tereshkova's candidacy. There were,

however, powerful forces behind the clearly well-qualified Ponomareva: Institute of Aviation

and Space Medicine Director Lt. General Yuvenaliy M. Volynkin: leading space medicine specialist Vladimir I. Yazdovskiy, of the same institute: Academician Aleksandr Yu. Ishlinskiy, one

of the most influential scientists in the space program: and, most important of all, Academy of

Sciences President Keldysh. Gagarin, a powerful member of the State Commission, at first did

not have an opinion on the issue, but on being pressured insistently by Keldysh, he "rebelled"

against Keldysh and sided against Ponomareva. At the meeting on May I0, the vote on

Tereshkova versus Ponomareva was split again, but the tide began to turn against Ponomareva

soon. During a visit to the Cosmonaut Training Center on May 2 1 by Keldysh, Korolev, Mrykin,

Rudenko, and others, Bykovskiy and Tereshkova were named the primary crewmembers of the

two missions. According to former Cosmonaut Training Center Director Karpov, if Keldysh and

physician Yazdovskiy had not been lobbying so intensely for Ponomareva, she would have been

the first woman in space. At one point during his visit to the center, Korolev asked Ponomareva

why she looked so sad. She simply answered, "1 am not sad, I'm simply serious, as always. "44

42. Col. M Rebrov."Where the Cranes Fly" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, September 19, 1987,pp. 3-4:

Yu. ,q. Mozzhorin, "The Central Scientific-ResearchInstitute of Machine Building--The Main Center in the Soviet

Rocket-SpaceIndustry" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 60 (1990): 20 40: Yu g. Mozzhorin, el al,

eds., Dorogi u kosmos:I (Moscow: MAI, 1992), p 168.

43. Among those present were G. ,q. Tyulin (GKOT), G. N. Pashkov (VPK), S. R Korolev (OKB-I). V P

Glushko (OKB-456), V. R Barrnin (GSKB SpetsMash), _q.Yu. Ishlinskiy (Nil 944). G. A Skuridin (/qN SSSR),A. G.

Mrykin (GURVO). K. A. Kerimov (GURVO), S. M. Alekseyev (Plant No. 918), G. I. Voronin (OKB-124), N. P

Kamanin (VVS), A. I. Kutasin (VVS). Yu. M Volynkin (IAKM), L. I. Goreglyad(WS), M. I. Odintsov (TsPK). V. I.

Yazdovskiy (IAKM), Ye./q Karpov (TsPK), Yu A. Gagarin (TsPK), and V. A. Smirnov (WS).

44. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963, pp. 261, 266; Golovanov. Koroleu, p. 691: Facktor and

Ponomareva, "Women in the Early Soviet Spaceflight Program."

365
366

On May 27, the members of the State Commission flew into Tyura-Tam to oversee the

launch preparations for the two 8K72K boosters and their respective payloads. Various chief

designers identified a number of significant failures during a meeting on May 3 I, including problems with communications and TV systems, which prompted some heated exchanges. Tyulin

delayed the launches to June 7-10 to eliminate all the anomalies. The cosmonauts, primary

members Bykovskiy and Tereshkova. as well as backups Votynov, Solovyeva, and Ponomareva,

arrived from Moscow the following day with about thirty other prominent space program leaders. The complete State Commission for Vostok assembled on the morning of June 4 to discuss

and finalize preparations for the historic missions. All systems were declared ready for launch,

although the possibility of launching on June 7 was put in doubt by the chance of high winds

at the launch site. ¢q"ceremonial" version of the State Commission meeting was later held for

the benefit of a small group of Soviet journalists who were flown into Tyura-Tam. Kamanin officially nominated Bykovskiy for the eight-day flight of the first spacecraft, Vostok 5. His backup

would be Volynov. Cosmonaut Tereshkova was nominated for the second mission, which would

last between one and three days, based on the state of the cosmonaut and her spacecraft,

Vostok 6. Solovyeva and Ponomareva would serve as backups for Tereshkova.4_

Once again, so as to fool the Western tracking stations that would monitor voice communications, the State Commission drew up a short list of coded messages the cosmonauts

could send to the ground. "Feeling excellent, the ship's equipment is working excellently"

would imply that there were no problems and that flight should continue. In place of "Feeling

excellent," "Feeling well" would indicate that the cosmonaut had doubts about being able to

fulfill the flight: "Feeling satisfactory" would mean that the flight had to be terminated immediately. The launch, set for June 8, had to be delayed by three to four days when a major problem with the remote radio command system arose. This and other malfunctions in the guidance

and communications systems were the subject of a long State Commission meeting on June 7,

during which the institute chief responsible for the offending radio system, Chief Designer

l_rmen S. Mnatsakanyan of NII-648, explained that the failure in the system had occurred

because of a single failed triode, a product of poor workmanship at the production plant? _The

first launch with Bykovskiy was rescheduled for June I I. Tereshkova would follow into orbit two

days later. ¢qn alternate variant was for Tereshkova to launch into space five days after

Bykovskiy. Thus, the two could return to Earth together after Bykovskiy's eight days in space.

The delay proved to be only the first of many. On the night of June I0, P,cademy of Sciences

President Keldysh, back in Moscow, sent a message to the State Commission in Tyura-Tam that

solar activiW had sharply increased, significantly raising radiation levels in the upper atmosphere.

The commission decided to postpone the launch again. On the night of June I I, the solar activity issue was discussed in depth: a solar storm had evidently broken out on June 8 and was

expected to last between five and perhaps up to eight days. Astronomers predicted a possible

peak the very next day. The launch was postponed again to June 14-I 5 at the earliest.

Continually delaying the flight contributed to increased tensions at the launch site. Korolev

had been seriously ill in recent weeks. He had a fever for several days and was diagnosed with

inflamed lungs. He looked "pale and wane" to everyone, his voice hoarse from talking. °_The

stress on not only Korolev but also the other chief designers reached a breaking point on

June 14, the day of the launch. At a last-minute, early-morning meeting of the State

Commission, the members recommended a launch at 0900 hours Moscow Time, based on

reduced solar activity. Trouble began soon after Bykovskiy arrived at the pad and was helped

45. Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos:1960-1963.pp. 268,274,276-78.

46. Ibid.,p. 282.

47 PavelPopovichandAlexanderNemov,"GalacticSecrets/'in V. Mitroshenkov,ed., Pioneersof Space

(Moscow:ProgressPublishers,1989),p. 206.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
SP&CE POLITICS

into the ship. Controllers reported that both of the ultrashortwave transmitters on the Vostok ship were not functional.

tqfter a brief meeting, they decided to continue with the countdown and rely only on the short-wave transmitters for the mission. A little later, a pin stuck in the ejection hatch forced a

thirty-minute delay. Finally, at T-5 minutes, the indicator light

on the control panel for the Blok Ye third stage of the booster

refused to light up. The problem was traced to a failure in the

gyroscope-instrumentation unit on the stage. Korolev's first

response was to yell, "Where the hell's Kuznetsov?! ....

Chief Designer Viktor I. Kuznetsov of NII-944, one of the

original members of the Council of Chief Designers, was ultimately responsible for all gyroscopes on Soviet space launch

vehicles. Perhaps the least well-known member of the council, he was originally a naval engineer. In the late 1930s, he

had designed fire control stabilizers for the famous Kirou and

Maksim Corky cruisers in the late 1930s. In October 1940,

Kuznetsov had been assigned to Germany during the brief

period of the Stalin-Hitler pact. Once the Nazis attacked the

Soviet Union, Kuznetsov suffered through a dramatic trip out

of Germany into Turkey and finally back to the Soviet Union.

After the war, he reluctantly joined the inspection teams into

Germany, where he met Korolev, Glushko, and other soon-toChief Designer Viktor Kuznetsou was

responsible for the design of the gyroscope instrumentation for Soviet

missiles, launch uehicles, and spacecroft He was one of the six original

membersof the Council of Chief

DesignersBy the 1960s.his organization, NII-944. had become the

Scientific-Research Institute o[,,Ztpp[ied

Mechanics. (files of PeterGorin)

be chief designers. Kuznetsov told his associates, "Somewhere, they are producing new ships,

while I must mess around with the fascist [V-2].'4_In 1946, Special Committee No. 2 appointed him chief designer of NII-IO, with the responsibility to create all gyroscope systems for

Soviet long-range ballistic missiles. The tall, lanky chief designer was one of several men who

had been spared a gory death during the R-16 disaster in October 1960 because of their need

to smoke last-minute cigarettes. After the accident, he had headed the technical commission

investigating the disaster when he came into conflict with the "total incompetence" of Soviet

leaders. Kuznetsov remembers:

Brezhneu did not delve into the situation. He sat in his hotel room in his pajamas and

constantly reminded [Kuznetsou]: "Moscow is waitin£ for the report. Don't dawdle over

the details, just a [eva general conclusions--that is all .... '....

Unlike the other members of the council, Kuznetsov was unusually reticent and quiet.

Dressed perpetually in his leatherjacket, he would always sit to one side of the room, rarely ever

taking part in discussions during meetings of the State Commission. S_At the time of the

Vostok 5 launch, Kuznetsov was fifty years old.

With tempers flaring, Korolev and Kuznetsov began heatedly arguing in front of their

colleagues about the failure, which had potentially devastating consequences, If Kuznetsov's

48 Golovanov. Koro[ev,p. 694: Yu. g. Skopinskiy. "State Acceptance of the SpaceProgram: Thirty Yearsof

Work: Fromthe History of Science" (English title), Zem/ya i uselennaya no 5 (September October 1988): 73-79:

KamanJn,Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-t953, pp. 286, 288-289.

49. Col. M. Rebrov, "The Seven Facesof Fate: PagesFrom the Life of the Chief Designer of RocketSpace

Command Instruments" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda, January 7, 1989, p. 4.

50 Ibid.

51. Golovanov, Koroleu.pp. 698-99.

367
368

engineers did not fix the failure within six hours, then the launch would have to be postponed

for another day because of poor weather conditions during the landing opportunities for later

launch windows. And if the launch was postponed, the 8K72K booster would have to be unfueled. taken back to the Assembly-Testing Building, and disassembled. In that case, the launch

would have to be delayed to August. By August, the lifetime of the two Vostok spacecraft

would have expired. Korolev and Kuznetsov thus had hours to make a decision that could

potentially derail the piloted space program for another year. One of Kuznetsov's deputies finally reported that his engineers could replace the offending unit with a new one within two to

three hours. Kuznetsov, in consultation with Pilyugin and Ryazanskiy, decided to go with the

plan. State Commission Chairman Tyulin opted to keep Bykovskiy in his capsule through this

period as the repairs dragged on to a full six hours. _

As the final minutes clocked down to liftoff, the hopes for a successful launch seemed to

be abruptly thwarted by indications in the ground bunker that the booster had not disengaged

the cable connecting itself to the external power sources that fed the rocket during the entire

countdown. With the seconds ticking away to launch, Korolev, Voskresenskiy, and Strategic

Missile Forces launch operations chief Kirillov looked at each other in a moment of panic. In

the handful of seconds remaining, they unanimously decided to launch. Although the launcher was still plugged into the ground supply, power had evidently switched to on-board systems.

At ignition, the cable simply tore off its sockets and fell to the wayside. _

Unaware of the drama, twenty-eight-year-old Major Valeriy F. Bykovskiy lifted off in his

Vostok 5 spacecraft at 1458 hours, 58 seconds Moscow Time. His initial orbital parameters

were 174.7 by 222.1 kilometers at 64.96 degrees inclination to the equator. The orbit achieved

was slightly lower than anticipated, evidently because of the less-than-nominal performance by

the third stage of the launch vehicle. Instead of the standard ten-day lifetime predicted for the

other Vostok missions, Bykovskiy was given about eight days in space prior to natural decay.

To maintain adequate safety margins, it was clear that Bykovskiy would not be able to stay in

orbit for the seven to eight days originally planned. To the joy of ground controllers, the

ultra-short-wave transmitters came back on line soon after orbital insertion. Bykovskiy was also

able to observe the upper stage of the 8K72K booster moving away from him after orbital insertion. Soviet leader Khrushchev spoke to Bykovskiy, on a then-standard exchange of messages,

on the fourth orbit. During his first two days, Bykovskiy carried out the usual flight program

perfected over the previous Vostok missions, including checking and reporting on spacecraft

parameters and his own health and conducting Earth observations. During one orbit, he tested the manual orientation system, finding that the pressure in the nitrogen bottles had reduced

to ten atmospheres pressure. Because at least five atmospheres was required in case of manual orienting for reentry, Bykovskiy put the spacecraft in a thermal roll mode at one revolution

per eight minutes. Later on his eighteenth orbit, he removed himself from his restraining straps

and floated about in the relatively spacious capsule. TV transmissions continued to send down

an endless stream of video of Bykovskiy's antics. _

Through the first two days he spent alone in orbit, as part of his Earth observations program, Bykovskiy used a special movie camera to take black-and-white pictures of the horizon,

the Moon. and Earth. Unfortunately, one of the film cartridges remained stuck in his camera:

he found another cassette to be empty of film! One of the few scientific experiments included

noting the growth of peas and observing the behavior of liquids in microgravity. The rest of his

52. Skopinskiy, "State Acceptance of the Space Program": Kamanin, Skryt(y kosmos: 1960-1963, p. 289:

Lt Gen. Georgy t_leksandrovich Tyulin, "Task For the Future: Notes of the State Commission Chairman" (English

title). Krasnaya zuezda, April 3. 1988, p. 4

53 Golovanov, Koroteu, p. 699.

54 Riabchikov. Russiansin Space. pp 200-01: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos 1960 1963, p. 298.

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
T ..............

l SPACE POLITICS

time was divided between

physiologicaq research or

more Earth observation.

The former program included modest calisthenics and

noting the change of his

vision in orbit with special

binoculars (which he

found difficult to use). tqs

part of the latter program,

Bykovskiy used optical

instruments with special

light filters to observe Earth

and Sun's corona (which

he was unable to see). gs

with the previous Vostok

missions, a large complement of biological speciHere are three women cosmonauts at Tyura-Tam prior to the launch of

Vostok 6 Left to right are Valentina Ponomareva, backup Irina 5olovyeva,

and prime crewmember Valentina Tereshkova Behind the women are State

Commission Chairman Georgiy Tyulin (left) and Strategic Missile Farces

Commander-m-Chief Sergey Biryuzov. (files of Ytsi[ Siddiqi)

mens accompanied Bykovskiy: these included cancer cells, amnion and fibroblast cells, frog ova

and sperm, drosophila insects, plants, air dried seeds, chlorella algae, and bacteria? _

As Bykovskiy finished up his second day in space, back on the ground, Tereshkova was

preparing for her moment of fame. Late on June 15, a final meeting of the technical group of

the State Commission had taken place: Tereshkova's launch was set for 1230 hours Moscow

Time the following day. Earlier, Commission Chairman Tyulin had received a message from

Moscow announcing that in Tereshkova's launch communique, TtqSS would announce that she

was a civilian and not a military officer. By this time, only Tereshkova and Sotovyeva were

involved in actually preparing for the mission: third trainee Ponomareva was consigned to

ground support functions. On the day of the launch, Tereshkova arrived at the pad in the late

morning and was greeted by Korolev, Tyulin, and other members of the State Commission. This

time, the prelaunch preparations were far more uneventful. Jr. Lieutenant Valentina V.

Tereshkova, twenty-six, lifted off at 1229 hours, 52 seconds Moscow Time on June 16 in her

Vostok 6 spacecraft. Within minutes, she had successfully entered orbit, thus becoming the

first woman in space. Her initial orbital parameters were 180.9 by 231.1 kilometers at a

64.95-degree inclination to the equator. The orbit of Vostok 6 was in an orbital plane about

thirty degrees apart from that of Vostok 5, in contrast to the Vostok 3/4 combination when the

second vehicle had been launched as the first was directly over Tyura-Tam. Because of the

slightly different mission profile, the two new vehicles only approached each other twice for a

few minutes every orbit? _

Throughout the world, Soviet news services poured forth a plethora of rhetoric linking the

flight to the inevitable progress of socialism. While there were some Westerners who correctly identified the flight as an exercise in pure propaganda, most were further cowed by the

breadth and ambition of the Soviet space program. As Kamanin had predicted two years before,

the flight was a brilliant political success all over the world.

Vostok 5 and Vostok 6 flew closest to each other immediately after launch, when they

passed each other at a range of about five kilometers. Bykovskiy later reported that he had not

55. Wukelic, ed, Handbook of Soviet Space Science Research, pp. 346 48: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos:

1960 I963. pp. 298-99.

56. PhillipJ. Klass,"Vostok 5 May Have SeparatedToo Early," Aviation Week&SpaceTechnology. June

24, 1963, pp. 34-35.

369
370

spotted Vostok 6, while Tereshkova thought she might have glimpsed Vostok 5. Like Bykovskiy,

she did, however, view the third stage of the booster rocket. The two cosmonauts established

communications contact with each other by 1300 hours, and within three hours, Moscow TV

was showing live shots of Tereshkova in her capsule. It seems that Tereshkova may have briefly

suffered from the same affliction that marred Titov's flight two years before. The Soviets later

reported that she:

was not feeling so well on the first/ew orbits. The commission was euen discussing the

possibility o/ ending the [light o/Vostok-6 ahead o/ schedule. [Tyulin] talked it over with

Tereshkoua by radio. She asked that the flight not be interrupted, said that she already

/elt better (that was later verified with the telemetry data), and assured the State

Commission that she would carry out "everything that the program called for" and

would do "everything as we were taught. ,,_7

On the morning of June 17, the technical group of the State Commission decided to curtail Bykovskiy's mission down to five to six days because of his lower-than-nominal orbit.

Unless there was an emergency, Tereshkova's flight would last the complete three days. Both

cosmonauts reported feeling excellent through the day: communications between the two vehicles were maintained only in the first part of the day, apparently the last communications the

two had during the remainder of the mission. On the morning of June 18 the State

Commission finally decided on landing times for both cosmonauts: Bykovskiy would return on

his eighty-second orbit at the end of his fifth day, with Tereshkova coming back on her fortyninth orbit at the end of her third day. The former would set an absolute world endurance

record, far surpassing the longest LI.S. piloted space mission of the time. s°Tereshkova continued to report that she felt excellent, but TV transmissions on June 18 showed her tired and

looking a Little weak. Ground controllers were very disappointed when Tereshkova failed to perform one of the major goals of her mission: manual orientation of her spacecraft. For reasons

that are unclear, it seems that she had attempted to use the attitude control system but was

unable to do so. This caused much anxiety on the ground because if the automatic system

failed during reentry, Tereshkova would have to orient the ship manually.

Kamanin ordered Gagarin, Titov, Nikolayev, and OKB-I Department Chief Raushenbakh to

send up instructions to Tereshkova on manual orientation. On the morning of June 19, on her

forty-fifth orbit, Tereshkova successfully carried out a twenty-minute experiment in manual orientation, keeping her vehicle in the correct attitude for reentry for a full fifteen minutes. Korolev

and the other members of the State Commission were somewhat reassured by her performance,

mitigating concern that she might not be able to orient the craft manually if needed for reentry. 59Bykovskiy raised somewhat of a scare a day earlier when he transmitted a message to the

Khabarovsk ground station on short wave that "At 9 hours .5 minutes there was the first space

knock."_' This report was immediately passed on to Korolev and Tyulin, and there was lively

57 Skopinskiy. "State Acceptance of the Space Program." p. 76.

58 This was L. Gordon Cooper's Mercury Atlas 9 mission in May 1963, which had lasted one day, ten

hours, and twenty minutes.

59 There is still some confusion about Tereshkova'smanual orientation exercisesin orbit. Someotherwise

reliable sources suggest that she never completed any of these tests. SeeGolovanov. Korolev. pp. 700-01: B. Ye.

Chertok. Rakety i lyudi: goryachiye dni khotodnoy voyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1997), pp. 235-38. On the

other hand. N P Kamanin, in his personatdiaries from the time of the mission, suggests otherwise. SeeKamanin,

Skrytiy kosrr'_os1960-1963. p 295.

60. Chertok. Rakety i lyudL p. 236: Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963, p. 295: Gatland. Manned

5pacecra/t pp 122-23.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

speculation on everything from meteor strikes to extraterrestrials. Soon, when ground control

directly asked Bykovskiy about the incident, he replied that what he had said was that "there

had been the first space stool," the Russian word for "stool" (stul) being mistaken for the word

for "knock .... (stuk). Either way, it was a historic moment because it was the first time a human

had had a bowel movement in space, another dubious first for the Soviet space program.

The postflight reports by both cosmonauts were illuminating. Bykovskiy commented that

he excitedly looked forward to the scheduled periods when he would float unstrapped inside

his ship (which he did on the eighteenth, thirty-fourth, fiftieth, and sixty-sixth orbits). On one

occasion, he floated for an entire orbit, although he found it difficult to orient himself when his

eyes were closed. He also had some comments about instrument placement inside the Vostok

cabin, suggesting that although the switches were accessible, the indicators were hard to read.

In addition, the food rations were placed in a difficult position to access, and the medicine cabinet was simply too far to reach without unfastening himself. His helmet also apparently

weighed him down. Problems with the waste management system also cropped up during the

last portion of his time in space. Despite these minor inconveniences, he claimed that he felt

excellent throughout the mission.

Tereshkova was more candid in her postflight report:

I took movie films of cities, clouds, and the Moon... removing the film [from the camera] was very difficult. I didn't conduct any biological experiments--I was not able to

reach the objects, The dosimeter remained at zero. The sanitary napkins moistened very

poorly and were too small. It's necessary to have something to clean teeth. I carried out

observations with light-filters. The horizon was luminous over the poles. Over South

America I observed a storm, At night the cities were defined very sharply. The Moon

illuminated the Earth and the clouds very beautifully. It was difficult to determine the

constellations. I didn't observe the solar coronaY

She was very forthright about the conditions in the vehicle and the difficulties she had faced:

On the first day I didn't [.eel the spacesuit. On the second day there was a nagging pain

on my right knee and by the third day it had begun to worry me. The helmet bothered

me pressing against my shoulder... [it also] pressed against my left ear The sensor belt

[around my head] did not disturb me. [However] the sensors themselves gave me itches

and headaches? 2

These experiences were more than likely a comment about the poor level of comfort afforded by the Vostok spacesuit than any bad experiences on Tereshkova's part. Throughout her

reports from orbit and in her postflight report, she emphasized that she had felt well during her

mission:

Weightlessness did not arouse any unpleasant sensations .... The bread was dry and

so I didn't eat it. The juice and the cutlet were pleasing. I threw up once but this was

due to the food. and not to any vestibular disorder? _

61. Kamanin,Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963, p. 300.

62. Ibid., pp 300-01

63. Ibid., p 301.

371
372

The order for firing the reentry engine on Vostok 6 was sent at 0939 hours, 40 seconds

Moscow Time on June 19. Tension was high at the control center at NIl-4 near Moscow

because Tereshkova had not reported on the proper work of the solar orientation system. In

fact, for some inexplicable reason, she remained silent throughout the reentry, not reporting on

the retrofiring or the separation of her spacecraft modules. She safely ejected from her capsule

at six and a half kilometers altitude, but while she was parachuting down, in violation of the

training procedures, she had looked up to the side of the parachute canopy at the upper line of

the pressure suit's helmet, when a piece of metal hit her straight on the nose# 4 She touched

down without further incident after a two-day, twenty-two-hour, fifty-minute mission about

620 kilometers northeast of the town of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. Bykovskiy's reentry was

more eventful. As with Gagarin and Titov, his instrument compartment failed to separate on

time from the spherical descent apparatus prior to reentry into the atmosphere. He recalled later

that the separation was "disorderly," but the problem seems not have perturbed him too much.

He landed after a record-breaking four-day, twenty-three-hour, six-minute mission about three

hours after Tereshkova and 800 kilometers away. _

Tereshkova's health during her mission has been the subject of much speculation for many

years, with the more sensationalist stories suggesting she was completely sick when she landed/'_'

There were clearly two factors that played against her: she was unable to test the attitude control

system when required and did not conduct any medical experiments. After touchdown, she had

also apparently given all the remaining food in her capsule to the villagers who greeted her, completely contrary to mission rules. This made it difficult for doctors to verify her assertion that she

had eaten 60 percent of the food aboard the Vostok 6 spaceship during her three days in space.

As physicians led by Yazdovskiy jumped to attribute a pitiful performance on her part, Tereshkova

became defensive, claiming that she had felt well during the flight, although she had suffered from

fatigue and lack of sleep. Yazdovskiy eventually wrote up a hypercritical report on Tereshkova's

mental and physical state during the mission, stating that she had felt poorly on the thirty-second and forty-second orbits, had vomited, had a poor appetite, and had "weak cardiac activity."

All of this eventually reached Korolev's ears, and he invited the young cosmonaut on July II to

speak one-on-one about her flight. What they spoke about is not known, but Korolev was clearly displeased with her performance. Kamanin wrote later: "1 remember well all our troubles during the Tereshkova flight. There were many disruptions, and when Tereshkova finally landed,

Korolev said: 'Ill ever get involved with broads again...'."_ Korolev's First Deputy Mishin was even

more extreme: "Tereshkova turned out to be at the edge of psychological stability. It would seem

that her flight.., should have discredited Khrushchev."_

Part of this hostility toward Tereshkova was clearly because she was a woman. The standards by which all the engineers, physicians, and military officers judged her performance were

completely different than for the men. Titov, who had suffered severe motion sickness and was

unable to do many of the tasks assigned to him during his mission, was never considered a

pariah after his flighL Unlike Tereshkova, he was recycled into other space projects, and neither

64. Tyulim "Task Forthe Future": Riabchikov.Russians in Space, pp. 204-05.

65. The times given are[or the landing of the cosmonaut in his or herparachute The mission durations for

the descent apparatus of the two vehicles were: four days, twenty-two hours, fifty six minutes_and [orty one sec

onds (for Vostok 5) and two days, twenty-two hours, forty minutes, and forty-eight seconds (for Vostok 6). See

Glushko. Kosmonavtika entsiktopediya, p. 66.

6& See, for example. Leonid Vladimirov, The RussianSpace Btu[[ (New York: The Dial Press, i973), pp.

114-15

67 L N Kamanin. "In the FutureHis Name Will ProbablyBe.." (English title), Ogonek 7 (February9 16,

1991):28 31;Kamanin, Skrytiykosmos: 1960 t96& pp. 308. 315.

68 Salakhutdinov, "Once More _qboutSpace." p. 5

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO I

t
SPACE POLITICS

Kamanin nor Korolev believed that he had failed their trust in him. Thus, while Tereshkova's

flight was not an outright success, it was also by no means the complete failure as that seen

by Kamanin and Korolev, At the time, of course, all this was talked about behind the curtain

of the Soviet space propaganda machine. One of the most publicized aspects of Tereshkova's

mission was that she had flown in space longer than all the six Mercury flights combined, certainly a fantastic achievement considering the political dimension of the "space race,"

Bykovskiy, for his part, had also claimed a new victory for the Soviet space program. Traveling

a total distance of 3,325,957 kilometers during his flight, he had set an absolute world duration record, For a single-crew spaceship, it is a record that still stands today, thirty-five years

after his mission.

At the time that Bykovskiy and Tereshkova completed their flights, there were no approved

plans for subsequent missions in the Vostok series, Korolev was probably keen to discontinue

the program and instead concentrate resources on flying the more advanced 7K-9K-I I K Soyuz

complex and the N I booster projects. The flights in June 1963 were thus effectively the last in

perhaps the most historically important Soviet piloted space project. Between 1961 and 1963,

despite growing political bickering, the Soviets had managed to launch the first human into

space, conduct the first daylong flight, carry out the first "group flight," conduct the longest

space mission to date, and launch the world's first woman into orbit. It was a stunning show

of form for a nation whose technological capacity had been dismissed by many.

Cosmonauts Under the Public Eye

The publicity afforded to Tereshkova's historic mission was capped off by an even more sensational public relations extravaganza: Tereshkova's wedding to the "most eligible Russian bachelor," Vostok 3 pilot Nikolayev. A few Russian historians have cynically suggested that their union

was a public relations exercise, perhaps engineered by Cosmonaut Training Center Director

Karpov or his boss Kamanin. This may have indeed been true. Although Nikolayev and

Tereshkova were good friends, most accounts from the time suggest that the two were hardly

close enough to be husband and wiley Regardless of their own feelings on the matter, the plans

for marriage began to take a life of their own. In the first state-hosted wedding in Soviet history,

Nikolayev and Tereshkova were married to each other on November 3, 1963, just four months following the latter's spaceflight. Attendees included all the top leaders of the space program:

Khrushchev, Malinovskiy, Biryuzov, Smimov, Keldysh_ Rudenko, Serbin, and others. In what must

be considered the rarest of opportunities, both Korolev and Glushko were allowed to attend this

most public of ceremonies at the Government Reception House. The names of neither were, of

course, announced, nor were they allowed to sit close to Khrushchev or Tereshkova. Western correspondents who were also invited evidently discovered through informal conversation that the

"chief designers" of the Soviet space program were in attendance. Within a week, a New York

Times correspondent was able to file the following report:

Reports circulating in Moscow's Western community last week have mentioned two

rocket pioneers as likely key figures in the Soviet space program./qlthough the identities

of the top scientists in these jobs remain an official secret, a number of unofficial reports

have been pointing to two academicians. Valentin R _lushko, a combustion engineer.

and Sergei R Korolyov. a mechanical engineer. These reports cannot be confirmed from

official sources. The leading figures in the Soviet space effort have been cloaked behind

69. Golovanov. Korolev, pp. 703-04

373
374

such designations as Chief Designer and Chief Theoretician, which always appear in

the Soviet press with capitalized initials/°

With the identification of Korolev and Glushko, one might have believed that the machinations of the enigmatic Soviet space program would become clearer to Western observers. But

even U.S. intelligence services seemed to be having a difficult time in determining exactly who

ran the Soviet space program--a question that no doubt often boggled those within the program itself. As late as April 196 I, the Central Intelligence Agency was claiming that the Soviet

space effort was directed by the "Interagency Commission for Interplanetary Communications

under the Astronomy Council of the Academy of Sciences," a body that had been publicized

by the Soviet media in the mid-1950s ostensibly to serve as a public forum for their participation in the International Geophysical Year."

In the early 1960s, the six cosmonauts who had flown in space were the most visible

ambassadors of the Soviet space effort, and they were packed off to scores of countries. They

were portrayed as flawless representatives of the socialist system at levels often approaching

hero worship. Behind the veils of secrecy, they were, of course, as fallible as any other men and

women. Trainee Major Rafikov was dismissed from the cosmonaut team on March 24, 1962,

because of a variety of offenses, including womanizing and "gallivanting" in Moscow restaurants, and so forth. 'z Although Rafikov had requested that he be reinstated into the team after

a few years, he never returned to cosmonaut training.

A much more serious loss to the team occurred a year later on March 27, 1963, when three

unflown cosmonauts--Nelyubov, Anikeyev, and Filatev--were returning to the training center

at Zelenw after dinner in Moscow. They had apparently been drinking and became involved in

an altercation with a military patrol on a railway platform. Nelyubov threatened to go over the

head of the offended officers if they filed a formal report against the three of them. Top officials

at the Cosmonaut Training Center requested that the duty officer not file a report against the

three, and the latter reluctantly agreed, provided that Nelyubov apologize for his behavior.

Although Anikeyev and Filatev agreed to make amends, Nelyubov categorically refused. The

offended duty officer filed a report against the three of them, and within a week, the top Air

Force leaders decided to dismiss all three from the cosmonaut team. Their official dismissal

orders were signed on April 17. Losing Nelyubov, one of the most qualified and brightest cosmonauts, was particularly hard to accept for the other pilots. He had served as Gagarin's second backup during the first Vostok mission, and he certainly would have gone on to fly one of

the early Vostok flights had it not been for Kamanin's disapproval of his "individualistic" ways.

There was some discussion among Kamanin and the cosmonauts in later months on bringing

Nelyubov back into cosmonaut training, based on Nelyubov's performance at his new assignment in an Air Force unit in the Soviet far east. This never happened. It seems that Nelyubov

suffered from a psychological crisis through the following years, as cosmonaut members junior

to him started flying their space missions. By 1966, he was despondent. The final Air Force

report in his name merely stated: "On Feb. 18, 1966, while in a state of drunkenness, he was

killed by a passing train on a railroad bridge at Ippolitovka station on the Far Eastern Railroad. "'_

7o. Theodore Shabad, "Soviet SpacePlanners' Identity Believed Known." Ne_u "fork Times, November 12,

1963, p. 2: Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremtinand the Cosmos (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1972), pp. 67-70. A Soviet

defector named G. A Tokaty-Tokayevhad claimed that Korolev and Glushko werekey figures in the Sovietspace program in a lecture to the British Interplanetary Society as early as September 1961. SeeG. A. Tokaty, "Soviet Space

Technology." Spaceflight 5 (March 1963): 58-64.

71 US. Central Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate 1t-5 61: Soviet Technical Capabilities

in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles." Washington, DC. ,qpril 25, 1961,p. 50.

72 Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963. pp. 99-100.

73 YaroslavGolovanov, "Cosmonaut No. I: Selection" (English title), Izuestiya, April 5, 1986, p. 3.

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
SPACE POLITICS

He was thirty-one years old at the time. The other two--Filatev and Anikeyev--also did not

resume cosmonaut training. Filatev returned to the Air Defense Forces before eventually becoming a teacher. He passed away on September 15, 1990, at the age of sixty. Anikeyev died two

years later on August 8, 1992, at the age of fifty-seven.

Of the cosmonauts who had flown, the most prominent was clearly Gagarin, but his timeconsuming unofficial job as ambassador-at-large for the Soviet Union did not seem to be a role

he particularly relished. In part because of his importance as a national monument, Air Force

officials were incredibly reluctant to allow him to resume training for space missions. To keep

him on the ground in a high-visibility position, in July 1963, Kamanin seriously considered

offering Gagarin the job of director of the Cosmonaut Training Center. As one would suspect,

Gagarin was not at all enthusiastic for a desk job and declined several times, despite pressure

from the general. Later in the year, he finally buckled under continuing pressure that he become

a deputy director at the center. Having been promoted from an Air Force major to a colonel in

the space of two years, Gagarin was appointed Deputy Director for Flight and Space

Preparations at the Cosmonaut Training Center on December 2 I, 1963/_ For the moment, his

chances of making it back into space were nil.

When Gagarin assumed his new job at the Cosmonaut Training Center, while he may not

have been in flight training, there were plenty of others from which to choose. A brand new

group of cosmonaut-trainees had in fact arrived at Zelenyy in 1963 to complete a yearlong training program before assignment to future Vostok and Soyuz missions. While the first batch of

twenty cosmonauts were young Air Force pilots with little higher education, the new group of

fifteen military officers all had higher degrees from a military academy or a civilian university.

The selection was limited not only to pilots, but also to military engineers and navigators,

adding significant expertise to the cosmonaut team from a wide variety of backgrounds. Of the

group, eight were from the Air Force, four from the Strategic Missile Forces, two from the Air

Defense Forces, and one from the Navy. The age limit on this second group, raised to forty,

meant that the new trainees were almost all older than the Gagarin group. Air Force

Commander-in-Chief Vershinin signed orders formally inducting the fifteen men into the cosmonaut corps on January I I, 1963/_ The most qualified member of the group, thirty-five-yearold Air Force Major Vladimir P,. Shatalov, was appointed the informal leader of the group, as

they conducted their preliminary training programs through the next twelve months.

During the period 1960-63, the Cosmonaut Training Center itself grew at a rapid pace on

the promise of a vast and expansive piloted space program of the future. While originally the

cosmonauts conducted training sessions at simulators on the premises of the Air Force's

Institute of l_viation and Space Medicine or at specific design bureaus, by the mid-1960s they

no longer needed to leave the center. Buildings around the original complex were annexed as

at least seven new devices were added: a Treadmill Facility and an Ontokinetic Drum in 1960,

the Rotor three-stage rotating cab and a Rocking Platform in 196 I, a Shielded Room and a Hot

Room in 1962, and an Anechoic Chamber in 1963. A specially equipped Tu-IO4L flying laboratory was consigned to the center in 1961 for flying parabolic trajectories to simulate short

periods of weightlessness. Although most of the original cosmonaut-trainees were Air Force

pilots, they had refrained from dedicated air training until 963, when a top Air Force test pilot,

74. Lardier,L_stronautique Soui_tique, pp. 137-38. Gagarins immediate superior was Maj. General N. F.

Kuznetsov, the new director o1the Cosmonaut Training Center, who had been appointed to his post on November

20. 1963. He replaced Maj. General M. E Odintsov, who had clashed repeatedly with the cosmonauts during his

short eleven-month stint in the position.

75. Yegupov and Karpenko, "At the Requestof Readers": Semenov, Marinin, and Shamsutdinov, /z istorii

kosmonoutiki: uypusk I, p. 8; Rex Hall, "Soviet /_ir Force Cosmonauts," in Michael Cassutt, ed., W'ho's Who in

Space: The International SpaceYear Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1992), p. 21 I.

375
376

Vladimir S. Seregin, was tapped to head an air squadron specifically for the cosmonauts. Money

was also apportioned for an athletic stadium, a large swimming pool, a huge housing complex,

and even a restricted-access train station for employees and cosmonauts commuting from

Moscow."' The center employed 600 people by 1963.

Until 1963, the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine provided all the ground and flight

medical support to the piloted space program. Officially, the Cosmonaut Training Center was

subordinate to this institute, By 1962, however, the center had clearly outgrown its original

mandate as a temporary training ground for cosmonauts, evolving into the Soviet Air Force's

primary means to maintain some control over the Soviet space program. On April I0, 1962, the

center became a separate and official entity, no longer subordinate to the Institute of Aviation

and Space Medicine." In addition, underlying the growing importance of space exploration to

a newly interested Air Force, the service introduced the new post of First Deputy Chief for Space

of the General Staff, As the first holder of this ranking, Lt. General Kamanin would continue to

be the primary overseer of all activities related to cosmonaut training and the planning of piloted space activities on behalf of the Air Force.

These changes had the one negative effect of limiting the influence of the Institute of

Aviation and Space Medicine. Its diminished authority was tempered by its critical say over

every single aspect of space biomedicine in the Soviet space program, but even this function

began to slip out of its hands by late 1963, The Ministry of Health, yet another party of the

Soviet government eager to covet for itself a place in the Soviet space program, heavily lobbied

through the year to bring all space biomedicine research under its wings, thereby leaving the

Air Force institute without a mandate. The Air Force could only helplessly watch as the ministry's request was parlayed through the right political corridors during the summer of 1963. On

October 26, 1963, a new entity, the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IMBP), was established

in the Third Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Health. '_ The idea to establish a dedicated

space biomedicine entity was not new: as early as May 1959, Korolev and Keldysh had written

to the government on the need for such an institution. In many ways, the formation of the new

institute was a delayed, but nonetheless concrete response to that important letter. The new

institute itself was established by joining together several subdivisions from the Air Force's old

Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine, thus neutralizing much of the agenda of the latter.

As many military physicians migrated to the new institute, the Air Force entity lost its all-important place in the pantheon of Soviet space exploration. Having been involved in space biomedical research since 1949, after 1963, it faded into the background.

The new IMBP became the first civilian institution in the Soviet Union dedicated to the

study of the physiological effects of space exploration. It eventually became responsible for all

Soviet medical and biological support for human spaceflight, including providing ground support to piloted missions, planning and carrying out space biology experiments in space, selecting and training cosmonauts, and developing various generations of life support systems.

Andrey V. Lebedinskiy, sixty-two, a student of the famous Soviet scientist Pavlov, was appointed to head the new institution. Among its eventual employees were all the progenitors of the

space biomedicine field in the Soviet Llnion--Oleg G. Gazenko, Abram M. Genin, Nikolay N.

Gurovskiy, and Vasiliy V. Parin--atl of whom served as visible ambassadors to the Soviet space

program at conferences throughout the world in the 1960s. It continued to play the same role

for the Mir space station into the late 1990s.

76 Col V. Gorkov, "History of the Soviet Space Program" (English title), _uiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 2

(February 1990): 42-43.

77, Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963, p. 102.

78 Lardier,LPqstronautique3oui#tique, p. 147.The negotiations on the establishment o[ the new institute

had begun as early as P_pril1963.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
SPACE POLITICS

Fighting in the Military

Supervision over biological research in the space program was only one facet of the control

that the Air Force relinquished during this period. As the space program gained strength in the

early t960s, there was a vigorous battle within different armed services within the Ministry of

Defense to gain operational control over the space program• The so-called "artillerymen" had

inherited the role of primary clients of the ballistic missile program in 1946, consolidating their

position through the 1950s with the strong arm of the late Marshal Nedelin. Their position was

entrenched in 1959 with tiqe formation of the Strategic Missile Forces, which through its Chief

Directorate of ReactiveArmaments served as the primary financiers of all missile weapons• With

the emergence of the space program, the Strategic Missile Forceswidened their agenda to the new

area, forming new departments within the Chief Directorate dedicated to space• Key Strategic

Missile Forcespersonnel were also sprinkled throughout the space industry at various levels, influencing every aspect of the space program, including such key programs as the N I and Soyuz.

The early 1960s proved a difficult time for the Soviet military as a whole. As the famous

Soviet physicist Andrey D. Sakharov later wrote, "Khrushchev appeared anxious to limit the

resources invested in military technology and [wanted to] concentrate on the most effective

programs. "7_These attempts to "curb military expenditures and to demilitarize the economy

•.. provoked resistance in the armed forces•" The one service that benefited from the restructuring was the Strategic Missile Forces, which threw all their resources into the development of

new ICBMs. Space as a component of military policy was only barely emerging at the time, and

the Strategic Missile Forceswere remarkably uninterested in the piloted space program, seeing

the Vostok, Soyuz, and N I projects as a colossal waste of money• These programs were funded and supported only grudgingly by the two Strategic Missile Forces Commanders-in-Chief

during the 1960-63 period: Marshals Kirill S. Moskalenko and Sergey S. Biryuzov. Their opinions were bolstered significantly by USSR Minister of Defense Rodion Ya. Malinovskiy and his

Deputy Andrey g. Grechko, both of whom on more than one occasion took the opportunity to

rail at the "uselessness" of the piloted space program.

The Air Force stepped in and tried to take advantage of this vacuum• Through the early

1960s, it vigorously attempted to establish for itself what it saw as its rightful position as the

leader of Soviet piloted cosmonautics. All its proposals were aimed at the use of cosmonauts for

military purposes--ideas that were discussed at a number of conferences dedicated solely to the

military applications of pi!9ted spaceflight• Although Air Force leaders such as Commander-inChief Marshal Vershinin supported Chelomey's Kosmoplan-Raketoplan approach, they were also

of the opinion that immediate goals could be achieved by modifying the Vostok spacecraft•

Korolev was in a difficult position over this conflict. Until t960, OKB-I had almost no contact

with the Air Force•Through the development of various ballistic missiles in the 1940s and 1950s,

it had been the artillerymen who had worked closely with Korolev's engineers• They had developed close relationships, and among Korolev's engineers at least, there was a definite allegiance

with the Strategic Missile Forces stemming from these long friendships. But it was the Air Force

pushing piloted human spaceflight, while the Strategic Missile Forces were remarkably uninterested in spaceflight in general. Korolev clearly had to negotiate the matter delicately because he

did not want to alienate either side. On several occasions in 1962-63, he promised the Air Force

that he would convince Malinovskiy and even Khrushchev on the need to have the Air Force

fully take over the Vostok program. At the same time, he continued to promise the Strategic

Missile Forcesthat he could produce better ICBMs for them. s°

79. ,qndreySakharov,&_moirs(New York:,qlfredA. Knopf,1990),pp. 210-11.

80. Chertok. Raketyi lyudi,pp. 229-30: Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos: 1960-1963, p. 166,

377
378

The core of gir Force proposals, beginning in late 1961,addressed the issueof ordering the

construction of ten Vostok spacecraft specifically to fly military missions. In September 1962,

cosmonauts Nikolayev and Popovich, fresh off their joint flight during the summer, were asked

to report to the scientific-technical council of the Ministry of Defense's General Staff on the

possible uses of the Vostok spacecraft for military purposes. Issues such as reconnaissance,

interception, and attack--that is, those things analogous to maneuvers of a fighter aircraft--

were on the agenda. The cosmonauts suggested that while the Vostok spacecraft could be used

for piloted reconnaissance, newer vehicles would be needed for interception and attack. But Air

Force leaders such as Vershinin had to ultimately clear their proposals with Malinovskiy,

Grechko, and General Staff Chief Marshal Matvey V. Zakharov, and none seemed to have any

inkling to pursue the idea. Lt. General Kamanin recalled:

After an hour... I was once again convinced of the utter callousness of our military

leadership. Grechko, and then Malinovskiy twice refused to order the "Vostoks." The

General Staff's [Scientific-Technical Committee] and Zakharov. altered our document,

asking the Minister to order 4 "Vostoks. " Malinovskiy refused, declaring literally the following: "The _/ostok' ship does not have any military importance, and we will not

accept it into armaments or order it.... "_

Somewhat dramatically, Kamanin added:

History repeats itself." exactly 50 years ago, the Tsar generals evaluated the military

applications of aircraft in the same exemplary fashion. Malinovskiy. Grechko, and

Zakharov let pass the possibility for the creation of the first military space power...._2

As was customary in the Soviet space program, this was not the final word on the issue.

It seems that Marshal Zakharov had a change of heart, and on November 9, 1962, the lqir Force

finally issued a proposal on new Vostok missions in support of the Air Force. These were to

include:

• Ordering ten new Vostok spacecraft

• Equipping the Vostok for military applications, such as reconnaissance, interception, and attack

• Carrying out two military missions in 1963, one with a man irj orbit for eleven to twelve

days and another with a dog for thirty days

• Launching ships with dogs to extremely high orbits

• Carrying out special experiments, including landing by manual orientation, landing within

the ship, depressurization of the ship in space, and so on_

The persistent lobbying by highly placed P,ir Force representatives ' eventually produced a

compromise result. On February 8, 1963, the Military-Industrial Commission issued a formal

decree (no. 24), signed by its Chairman Ustinov, calling for future Vostok missions for biomedical research. As part of this plan, four Vostok spacecraft, dowr_ from the ten requested by

the gir Force, would be constructed by OKB-I within the first half of 1963. Ustinov also called

for a formal report in two weeks' time on the possibility of augmenting the fairly rudimentary

capabilities of the Vostok spacecraft. In a month's time, all the major players in the space pro8I. Kamanin.Skrytiykosrnos1960-1963.p. I74.

82 Ibid., pp 174-75.

83 tbid. p. 178.

CHALLENGE TO 41_POLLO
SPRCE POLITICS

gram--the State Committee for Defense Technology, the Ministry of Defense, and the Academy

of Sciences--were to submit to the Military-Industrial Commission a report on "a program of

work on the mastery of cosmic space with the aid of piloted space objects in the next two

years, which would ensure the absolute primacy of the USSR in this direction. TM A Central

Committee decree the following day, February 9, gave the decision a forceful measureP Fighting

over limited resources, the Chelomey camp, in the person of State Committee for Aviation

Technology Chairman Dementyev, immediately protested the decision, invoking "other important goals"--those presumably worked on by Chelomey--but it seems the Air Force had

invested sufficient support into the decree to neutralize the opposition.

The approval of the plan to build four new Vostok spacecraft, supported by both OKB-I and

the Air Force, accelerated the planning for post-woman-flight missions during the t963-64 period. As Air Forceplans stood in February 1963,three of the new vehicles would be used for flights

of single cosmonautson flights lasting up to six to ten days. The fourth would carry a dog on a

thirty-day mission. All four, Vostoks 7, 8, 9, and t0, would be equipped with experiments supplied by the Air Force.Korolev addressed the salient points of this plan in a report to the Central

Committee on March 21 as part of a larger discussion on the future of the Soviet piloted space

program. Knowing full well that he would find no allies within the Strategic Missile Forces,

Korolev tried to rush headlong into an alliance with the Air Forceby suggesting that all functions

related to the preparation and accomplishment of Vostok flights be transferred to the Air Force.

The Air Force's insistence on assuming a lead role in the piloted space program came at a

time when the Soviet space program finally began to assume an independent character,While

the Strategic Missile Forcesmay not have been particularly interested in financing human space

projects, they were not exactly amenable to giving up control over space program operations

inherited by default in the late 1950s. The question of who controls space program operations-that is, launches, command, control, communications, military space forces, and most

importantly finances--was an issue that pit the Air Force and the Strategic Missile Forces in a

vicious interservice battle within the Ministry of Defense during 1963-64. At risk lay the future

of Korolev's grand vision of Soviet human exploration: the Strategic Missile Forces would halfheartedly support it and in most cases oppose it, while the Air Force could be counted on to

give its full support.

On March 28, 1963, Marshal Biryuzov, the new chief of the USSR Ministry of Defense

General Staff, signed a decree (no. 216888) calling for the formation of a commission to discuss the military future of the 3KA variant of the Vostok spacecraft, implicitly addressing the

issue of control between the Strategic Missile Forces and the Air Force. The odds were heavily

stacked against the Air Force: of the eight members, only one person was from the lqir Force

(Marshal Vershinin), while the rest were from the Strategic Missile Forces. Vershinin immediately proposed Air Forcecontrol over "orders, adoption, launch, and control," and just as quickly, the Strategic Missile Forces rejected it. Through the following months, the two services

continued to fight the matter out. Korolev visibly threw his full support behind the Air Force

and may have tried to influence high military officers. At one point in late 1963, Biryuzov and

new Strategic Missile Forces Commander-in-Chief Marshal Nikolay I. Krylov seemed to have

considered handing control over to the Air Force. This brief interlude was temporary. In

December 1963, the Ministry of Defense General Staff tabled a final proposal for the formation

of a "directorate" within the Ministry of Defense that would unite the various agencies in the

military engaged in space activities, with the exception of cosmonaut training and the search

84. Ibid.. pp.222 23.

85. A seconddecreefromtheCentralCommitteeandtheUSSRCouncilof Ministryon theconstructiono[

the fourVostokswasissuedonApril 13,1963 Seeibid. p. 253

379
380

and recovery services for space capsules, which would remain with the Air Force, _ It seems that

the Air Force resisted the idea, but in vain. In October 1964, the Ministry of Defense established the Central Directorate of Space Assets (TsUKOS), whose agenda was "modernization

of existing [space complexes] and the creation new space complexes, and the carrying out of

the constantly expanding activities of multi-goal space systems."_7

TsUKOS was established on the basis of an existing department within the Strategic

Missile Forces's Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments (GURVO), which, since September

1960, had been overseeing space operations for the military. The effect of the 1964 reorganization was to separate TsUKOS from GURVO and subordinate it directly to the commanderin-chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, Henceforth, TsUKOS served as the primary "client"

entity for almost all assets created for the Soviet space program--that is, specifications for all

space projects had to be approved by TsUKOS. Subordinated to it were two control centers:

one created in March 1963. called the Center for Leading the Development and Production of

Space Armament Assets, and the other, the Center of the Command-Measurement Complex,

which oversaw the nationwide tracking, communications, and flight control stations of the

space program7 _ The first commander of TsUKOS was Maj. General Kerim A. Kerimov, a fortysix-year-old artillery officer who was one of the many who had gone to Germany to capture

g-4 remains after World War 112' Kerimov was a natural choice for the position, having served

as the head of the smaller Strategic Missile Forces department on space issues. He was also a

prominent member of the State Commission for Vostok, representing Strategic Missile Forces

interests within the piloted space program. Although Kerimov was well liked and respected by

Korolev, the formation of TsUKOS was a setback to the chief designer's long-range plan for

human space exploration. With the Air Force effectively shut out of financing the space program, all the major leaders of the military--Malinovskiy, Grechko, Biryuzov. and Krylov--were

decidedly "anti-space" in their actions, and reluctant to fund Korolev's "idle dreams." The

artillerymen had won again, And Korolev would suffer the consequences.

The Genesis of Voskhod

The Soviet Air Force had lost much of its clout during the deliberations that led to the creation of TsUKOS in 1964, But the battles left behind one important legacy: the approved order

from the Communist Party and the government in the spring of 1963 allocating funds to build

four Vostok spacecraft in support of piloted missions during 1963-64. These four vehicles

formed the basis for all immediate planning for piloted spaceflight in the near future. For the

more distant future, OKB-I envisioned the use of the 7K-9K-I I K Soyuz complex, whose pri86. Ibid. pp. 245-46,398.

87 Yu. P Maksimov. ed.. Roketnyye uoyska slrategieheskogo naznacheniya (Moscow: RVSN, 1992), p. 49:

I D Sergeyev, ed., Khronika osnovnykh sobytiy istorii raketnykh voysk strategicheskogo nazrracheniya (Moscow:

TslPK, 1994), p. 17 N. P.Kamanin in his diariessuggests that Marshall S. S Biryuzov and ,q. A. Grechkowere strong

supporters ot putting TsCIKOSunder the control of the Air Force.Apparently, a commission createdby Biryuzov in

1964 had come to this conclusion. Kamanin implies that after Biryuzov's death in October 1964 in an air crash,

pro Strategic Missile Forcesofficers used the opportunity to put TsUKOS under the Strategic Missile Forces.See

N P. Kamanin. 5krytiy kosmos kmga u_oraya, I964-1966gg (Moscow: Infortekst IF, 1997). pp. 113,247

88 V V Favorskiy and I. V. Meshcheryakov, eds, Voyenno-kosmieheskiye sity (uoyenno-istorieheskiy trud):

kniga I. kosmonautika i uooruzhennyye sdy (Moscow: Sankt Peterburgskoy tipografii no I VO Nauka, 1997). pp

10t. II2.

89 Ibid, p. II 2: Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p.. 603. Kerimov's first deputy was

V I Shcheulov. His two other deputies were A. A Maksimov (also chief of the Center [or Leading the Development

and Production of SpaceArmament Assets) and A G. Karas(also chief o[ the Center of the Command-Measurement

Complex).

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

mary goals were rendezvous and docking in orbit, leading to circumlunar flight. Korolev's plans

for the Soyuz complex were characteristically far too optimistic. In August 1962, he set the first

automated Soyuz mission for May 1963. The work burden at OKB-I was, however, far too

heavy to maintain such an ambitious schedule. Apart from intensive work on Vostok, engineers

at the design bureau were also engaged in the development of the Zenit-2 reconnaissance satellite: the Molniya-I communications satellite: the Elektron scientific satellite: automated lunar,

Venusian, and Martian probes: and new launch vehicles such as the N I. Work also included

modifications to the Vostok booster. Certainly the most important work at OKB-I in the early

1960s was not space but the development of long-range ballistic missiles for the Strategic

Missile Forces. These included the R-9 ICBM and its modifications, the RT-I and

RT-2 solid-propellant ballistic missiles, and the GR-I orbital bombardment system. While

Korolev's heart may have been in space exploration, it is a gross miscalculation on the part of

Western analysts to suggest that OKB-I was overburdened with space-related projects. By far,

the largest portion of its resources continued to be siphoned off for missile-related programs.

The general direction of the Soviet space program was the subject at hand during a meeting of the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for Space Research on December 6,

1962. In attendance were all the major chief designers as well as representatives from the

Academy of Sciences, the Strategic Missile Forces, and the Air Force. The council proposed a

summary list of goals in the 1963-64 period for approval by the Military-Industrial

Commission. Besides the numerous automated programs suggested, the council recommended the launch of ten to twelve Vostoks and four to six Soyuz spacecraft as part of the Soviet

human space program, d° These issues were discussed at the Central Committee level in March

1963, but as a result of the battle between the Air Force and the Missile Forces, the orders for

the Vostok were curtailed: the Soyuz program was simply delayed by technical problems as well

as poor resource management. After the historic Bykovskiy-Tereshkova mission in June t963,

Korolev was adamant about moving full-speed ahead with the Soyuz program, leaving Vostok

to the Air Force. But delays in the former were significant enough to revise that approach.

Instead, Korolev looked to the Air Force to use its four Vostok vehicles as a stopgap effort to

continue piloted exploration in Earth orbit until the Soyuz came on line.

Taking a cue from original Air Force conceptions, Korolev produced a plan in early july 1963

for near-term Vostok missions. He proposed four missions. The first would be a ten- to elevenday flight of a dog in Earth orbit at an altitude of 600 to 1,000 kilometers in February-March

1964. The goals of the mission would be twofold: to study the physiology of the dog in an

extended period of weightlessness and to investigate the effects of radiation at high altitudes on

a living organism. Based on the results of the dog flight, the remaining three Vostoks would carry

single cosmonauts on flights in orbit up to ten days each. The spacecraft themselves would be

modified from the original 3KA variant to accommodate a wide range of scientific and military

experiments. The new missions were discussed at another huge gathering of space program leaders on July 26, 1963, dedicated to the future use of the Vostok spacecraft--a vehicle that was

rapidly nearing obsolescence, almost five years after its original conception. OKB-I Deputy Chief

Designers Konstantin D. Bushuyev and Pavel V. Tsybin presented reports that there remained a

wide variety of tasks that the Vostok could carry out, including flight to altitudes of 1,000 to

1,200 kilometers for up to ten days with a single cosmonaut. Most of the other speakers--from

the military, the defense industry, and various design bureaus--supported this conclusion. It is

not clear why all these individuals, clearly cognizant of the limited capabilities of the Vostok,

continued to support the "old" Vostok. A rational course of action would have been to

90. Kamanin. Skryti¥ kosmos: 1960-1963. pp. 191-92

381
382

completely abandon the by-then primitive spacecraft and focus all resources on the Soyuz spacecraft--a vehicle that was a significant qualitative leap in space operations. One of the factors

may have been the delays in the Soyuz project itself and the need to maintain a significant piloted presence in space during the interim. Korolev, in his report at the meeting, concluded that:

The "Soyuz" ship will fly no earlier than 1965, therefore in 1964 we should fly the

"Vostok." We have already built four "Vostoks," and it's necessary to build 6-8 more.

Zt program o[ flight to altitudes of 1,200 kilometers with extended [light to I0 days with

significantly broadened scientific and military research is fully acceptable and can be

carried out. It will be necessary to install a reserve breaking engine, work on the accomplishment of soft-landing, have improved long-range communications and television

[systems], as well as to [increase] the volume and capacity of scientific research?'

The serious intent of OKB-1 in modifying the original 3K,q Vostok variant was emphasized

by a study completed at the design bureau at the time that resulted in the issuance of a document

titled "On the PossibiliW of Using the 'Vostok' Ship for Experimental Research on the Prospective

Problems of Cosmonautics."_2 The eight primary objectives of the series of missions were:

• Extended piloted flights up to ten days

• Flights in orbits with apogees up to 1,000-1,200 kilometers

• The training of cosmonauts in realistic conditions of spaceflight

• Earth and astronomical observations as well as communications experiments

• Scientific studies of Earth's upper atmosphere

• Biomedical investigations

• Manual landing of the descent apparatus, with the goal of achieving a more comfortable return

• The "exit" of a test animal from the ship into open space

To achieve these goals, engineers would modify the original 3KA Vostok spacecraft in the

following ways:

• Install a parachute-reactive system for landing on Earth

• Expand biomedical instrumentation

• Install equipment for the Vykhod ("Exit") experiment, which would include a depressurizable special container for an animal

• Add new scientific experiment instrumentation

• Add improved guidance and control systems, communications systems, and optical sensors °'

The Air Force drew up a final manifest for Vostok missions in December 1963, which

included four missions:

91 Ibid. p. 325.

92. This document, a scientific-technical "certificate," has been reproduced in full in as S. R Korolev, "On

the Possibility of Using the 'Vostok' Ship for Experimental Researchon the ProspectiveProblems of Cosmonautics"

(English title), in M V. Kddysh, ed. Tvorcheskoye naslediye akademika Sergeya Pavlouicha Koroleva: Izbrannyye

trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), pp 457-60.

93 Ibid. Details of the goals and modifications can be found in Asif A. Siddiqi, "Cancelled Missions in the

Voskhod Program," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 50 (January 1997): 25-32.

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO
SPACE POLITICS

• Vostok7:aflightofananimalforthirtydaysintoanorbitof600kilometers

• Vostok8:aflightofacosmonautuptoeightdays

• Vostok91VostokI0:agroupflightoftwocosmonautsptotendays9°

Tosupportthesemissions,theCosmonautTrainingCenterformedagroupofeightcosmonautsonSeptember17,1963,consistingofalltheremainingmembersoftheoriginalGagarin

groupwhohadstillnotflowninspace?S

ThesepilotedmissionsweretimedtoconcludetheVostokprojectatatimewhenthefirst

Soyuzspacecraftwouldbeginflyinginearly1965.Progressonthe7K-9K-IIKSoyuzprojects

hadbeenremarkablysowsincetheInterdepartmentalScientific-TechnicalCouncilonSpace

Researchhadapprovedthebasicgoalsandtechnicalspectsoftheprogramin May1963.

Originally,Korolevhadplannedthefirstautomated7K missions by mid-1964, but because of

a combination of technical and financial difficulties, he continually revised this timetable

through the months. Money was clearly a significant factor, exacerbated by the lack of a government decision in favor of the project. By early November 1963, Korolev was publicly complaining that he "had no money" to continue to work on Soyuz. By the end of 1963, OKB-I

had plans to build the first four Soyuz spacecraft in 1964, which would consume 80 million

rubles: at the time, the Military-Industrial Commission had only committed to 30 million. °_

The Communist Party and the USSR Council of Ministers issued a joint decree on

December 3, 1963, finally committing to the 7K-9K-I I K Soyuz project with an ultimate goal of

piloted circumlunar flight? 7 The primary client of the new generation of Soviet space spacecraft

would be the Strategic Missile Forces. The Air Force and the Air Defense Forces would only

"take part" in the development of tactical-technical requirements for the Soyuz and its test

flights. As specified in the decree, the first flight-ready model would be available by August

1964, with the second and third by September. This decision effectively put OKB-I in the position of having to work simultaneously on the manufacture of two completely different piloted

spacecraft, the Vostok and the Soyuz, for the following year. The situation raised management

problems in assigning priority of one over the other. Korolev was insistent that the Soyuz fly

by the end of 1964, a mantra he had repeated through the preceding year endlessly to all those

who would hear. There was clearly a reason for the insistence, and it had less to do with maintaining previously set timetables than to respond to actions thousands of kilometers away.

NASA had carried out the last Mercury mission successfully in May 1963, thus verifying

the technology necessary to maintain a human in Earth orbit for a short period of time. Well

before that last flight, plans for a second-generation spacecraft were already on the drawing

boards. As early as December 7, 1961, NASA Associate Administrator Robert C. Seamans formally approved a "Mercury Mark I1" vehicle proposed by the former Space Task Group, which

had been renamed the Manned Spacecraft Center2 _ This new spacecraft would be capable of

conducting extensive rendezvous and docking operations in Earth orbit, allowing astronauts to

acquire experience in advanced operations required in the Apollo lunar landing program. By

January 1962, the project had been renamed Gemini. and in March 1963, NASA established

guidelines for conducting extravehicular activity (EVA) operations in orbit by the pilots of successive crews. The Gemini project was clearly a qualitative leap in abilities over either the

94. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1960-1963. p. 39 I. In an OKB-I report prepared in December 1963, Korolev

proposed four preliminary biological missions with dogs (instead of one), plus three human flights.

95. The eight cosmonauts wereP. I. Belyayev,V. V. Gorbatko, Ye.V Khrunov, V. M Komarov, A. t_. Leonov,

G. S. Shonin, B. V Volynov, and D. g. Zaykin. Seeibid., p 382.

96. Ibid., p. 388

97 Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 163.

98. Linda Neuman Ezell, NZ]SZ_Historical Data Book, Volume t1. Programs and Projects 1938 1968

(Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication (SP)-4012, 1988), p 155.

383
384

MercuryorVostok;itwouldbecapableofchangingorbits,itwouldcarrytwoastronauts,and

itwouldallowflightslastingaslongastwoweeks.Theonlycompetitorit hadwastheSoyuz

spacecraft,butbyearly1964,it wasclearto KorolevthatSoyuzwouldnotbereadybylate

1964orearly1965.Bythattime,Geminiwouldalreadybeflying.

WithGeminiloomingoverthehorizon,Sovietspaceofficialswereinadifficultsituation.

Theiroptionswereslim:noneofthefourprojectedVostokmissionsin 1964wouldcompareto

aGeminiflght.TheSovietflightswereallwithasinglecosmonaut,noneofthemincludedEVA,

andnoneofthemwouldhavethecapabilitytochangeorbits.Inthisclimate,amostunlikely

ideaemerged--onewhoseoriginsremainobfuscatedtothisdayamidcloudedmemories.Most

accountsfromthisperiodsuggestthatSovietleaderKhrushchevcontactedKorolevandordered

himtoconverttheVostokspacecraftintoavehiclecapableofcarryingnottwobutthree cosmonauts. Such a mission, if successfully accomplished, would be guaranteed to retain the Soviet

lead in space, at least in the public eye. Korolev's First Deputy Mishin recalled in 1990 that

"Khrushchev phoned Korolev and ordered the launch of three cosmonauts right away. ''_' Air

Force Lt. General Kamanin's personal diaries seem to confirm that the idea did not originate from

Korolev, but he does not mention Khrushchev specifically. On February 5, 1964, Kamanin wrote:

lust yesterday Koroleu received an order: no longer work on the "Vostoks." and use the

4 available "Vostoks" to prepare and accomplish a flight o[ a three-person crew in

1964. This high-level decision took place for two reasons:

I. The Soyuz will not fly in 1964.

2. The ,Zlmericans. preparing to launch the "Gemini" and "Zlpollo" ships into space,

may already overtake us in 1964. '_"

According to Kamanin, Korolev was not pleased with the order:

It was the first time that I had seen Korolev in complete bewilderment. He was very distressed at the relusal to continue construction o[ the "Vostok" and could not see a clear

path on how to re-equip the ship [or three in such a short time. Several times he repeated:

"1 don't understand how one can refuse to continue the building o[ the 'Vostoks.' . . It

will be impossible to turn a single-seater ship into a three-seater in a few months .... '.....

A respected Russian space historian, Georgiy S. Vetrov, later revealed that Korolev agreed

to Khrushchev's order to build a three-person version of the Vostok only if Khrushchev would

make a more firm commitment to a piloted lunar program. Vetrov added, "This agreement was

never spelled out openly, nor was the staff of OKB-I ever told that 'Khrushchev personally

ordered us to do this or that.' That was not the practice at the time. "_°2 Not surprisingly,

Khrushchev's son begs to differ. In an interview in 1996, he confided that:

The three people [in a spacecraft concept].., it was Korolev's idea. It was Korolev's

idea... Korolev. he wanted to be first as long as _ossible. And he used everything. ,Zlnd

99. Salakhutdinov, "Once More About Space." One eng,neer at OKB-I claims to have actually been pre

sent during this phone call. A. S. Kasho, the "lead designer" of three stagevariants of the R-I booster, told OKB I

Deputy Chief Designer B. Ye. Chertok that he was in Korolev's office when Khrushchev made this phone call. See

Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, pp. 181-82.

I00 "The SpaceDiariesof N P Kamanin" (English title), Nouosti kosmonavtiki I (January 1-12. 1997): 76.

IOI. Ibid

102. James Harford. Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat 7tmeriea to the Moon

(New York:John Wiley & Sons. 1997), pp. 180 81.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
SP/_CE POLITICS

he knew about the American [plans] . . . Khrushchev had never heard about this

American program. ,Zlnd he didn't care too much about these things. It was very important for Korolev. but it was not so important for Khrushchev. ,Ztnd especially such a stupid thing [as] "If you'll do this. I'll give you permission to go to the Moon! "'°_

Other reliable sources also strongly suggest that it was Korolev and not Khrushchev who

had originally proposed the idea to modify the Vostok ship. '°4The record is more muddied by

evidence that suggests that Korolev was thinking of a three-seated Vostok as early as February

1963.'°_

This particular issue of who ordered the three-person Vostok effort has a crucial importance

from a historical perspective. This is not only because this new diversionary project essentially

derailed the Soviet piloted space effort for two years, but also because it serves as supporting

or contradictory evidence for one of the central tenets of historical inquiry into the Soviet space

program for the past thirty years: that Khrushchev was personally involved in distorting the

"normal" evolution of the Soviet space program to extract short-term political gain. While it

seems more than likely that someone in the Communist Party or government ordered Korolev

to convert the single-seated Vostok into a three-seated ship to beat Gemini, the evidence that

it was Khrushchev does not completely hold up to in-depth study. Perhaps it was Leonid I.

Brezhnev, the Secretary of the Central Committee for Defense Industries and Space,or perhaps

it was someone lower on the ladder of power. Ultimately, we may never probably know until

the minutes of Central Committee or Presidium meetings are declassified. _°_

From Kamanin's diaries, it is clear that Korolev was not too happy with the idea, at least in

the initial days after the decision. But it is easy to forget that Korolev himself had an almost

pathological desire to be first--to beat the Americans at all cost. It would not have been contradictory to his personality to pursue the three-cosmonaut-in-a-Vostok plan simply to upstage

the early Gemini missions. He was, after all, strongly committed to flying an additional four

Vostok spaceships in 1964, all of which would tenuously extend to the limit the capabilities of

a vehicle that was fast becoming obsolete. The three-cosmonaut-in-a-Vostok idea may have been

a challenging technical problem, but in terms of vision and planning, it was not so much different from some of the technological changes on his four "extended Vostok" missions planned

for 1964. Ultimately. the proposal to usurp Gemini proved to be one of the most deleterious decisions in the early Soviet piloted space program. It completely ignored the natural progression of

space vehicles and inserted a diversionary program that would ultimately result in little qualitative gain for Korolev's grand vision of an expansive space program. For the Soviets, the "space

race" had degenerated into a little more than a circus act of one-upmanship.

With the order to move ahead with the interim program, Korolev dropped his earlier plans

to fly four "extended Vostok" missions in 1964. Instead, OKB-I would use the same four vehicles for the new politically motivated effort. The Soyuz program was put on the backburner. To

present the image that the Soviet Union was engaging in a new and qualitative leap in space

exploration, Soviet officials named the new project Voskhod ("Sunrise"). If the publicity

machine in the LISSRworked as well as it had in previous years, no one would guess that the

Voskhod spacecraft was simply a modified Vostok packed with three cosmonauts. Officials

103. Telephoneinterview,SergeyNikitich Khrushchevwith the author,OctoberI0, 1996.

104. See.for example,Golovanov.Koroteu,p. 731 Interestinglyenough.Military-industrialCommission

ChairmanL.V.SmirnovhadrejectedKorolev'splanfortheseriesof "extendedVostok"missionson FebruaryI, 1964.

just threedaysbeforetheorderto builda three-manship.Quitelikely,thetwo eventswereconnected.

105. See,forexample.Romanov.Koroleu,pp.454-57.

106 Kamaninsuggestsin hisdiaryentryforMarch2I, 1964,thatthe "initiators"of the three-seatedVostok

wereD.F.Ustinov,L.V Smirnov.S P Korolev_and M.V. Keldysh.SeeKamanin,Skrytyykosmos:t964-1966,p 30

385
386

discussed the proposal at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission on March 13, 1964,

and Chairman Smirnov signed a decree (no. 59) the same day, which called for the creation of

four three-seated spaceships based on the Vostok. The commission set the first piloted launch

for the first half of August 1964, which was less than five months' time. '°`

tn the weeks after the Military-Industrial Commission decree, Korolev added or was forced

to add a second diversionary mission before moving on to Soyuz: a flight to carry out an EVA.

The decision was again evidently motivated by impulses to prevent the U.S. space program

from racing ahead of the Soviets. As early as March 1963, NASA had established guidelines for

performing spacewalks during the Gemini program. Through the remaining part of the year, the

Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston evaluated various proposals for an EVA life support package. By January 1964, officials at the Houston center had completed the final details of the plan,

Gemini IV, then scheduled for February 1965, would have the crew pilot open the hatch and

stand up for a short period. '°8 Once again, the Vostok spacecraft presented the most realistic

vehicle for performing a Soviet EVA mission, in a modified variant known as Vykhod (" Exit").

The design would be based in part on the preliminary studies on EVA by animals in the original "extended Vostok" mission plans.

On April 13, 1964, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the USSR Council

of Ministers issued a decree fully approving both the Voskhod and Vykhod missions. The

decree provided the green light to build two "new" classes of spacecraft in support of the

Voskhod program, both derived from the old 3KA Vostok spacecraft that had carried all six

Soviet cosmonauts into orbit from 196t to 1963. The "new" ships were: the 3KV spacecraft

for a crew of three cosmonauts (Voskhod) and the 3KD spacecraft for a crew of two cosmonauts (Vykhod), which would allow EVA in Earth orbit. '°9 Specifically, the Central Committee

and the Council of Ministers sanctioned funding for the manufacture and launch of five of the

new vehicles, three for Voskhod and two for Vykhod. The program itself would be carried out

in two stages: the launch of a dog into Earth orbit to test out each model, followed by a second flight with an actual crew. Presumably, the fifth vehicle would remain as a spare. With the

decree on April 13, 1964, Vostok was irrevocably over, and Voskhod had begun.

Moving to a Standstill

On January 25, 1962, NASA formally approved the development of a three-stage booster,

designated the Saturn C-5, for use in the Apollo lunar landing missions. ''_By August, all the primary contracts had been awarded for the giant vehicle. The Saturn V (as it was renamed in

February 1963)would have a total length of III meters and a liftoff thrust of 3,404 tons. Unlike

the baseline version of the N I, engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center opted to use highenergy cryogenic propellants in the upper stages of the Saturn V, taking advantage of the valuable experience gained from the development of the Centaur high-energy upper stage. The

Saturn V would have an eventual capability to orbit a 130-ton payload to a 195-kilometer Earth

orbit, far in excess of the N I. The effort was supported by a vast infrastructure spread across the

107. I. Marinin, "The First Civilian Cosmonauts" (English title). Nouosti kosmonautiki 12 13 (June 3 30.

1996): 81-87: Kamanin, Skrytyy kosmos: 1964-1966, p 32. gccording to the VPK decree, the first ship would be

readyat the launch site by June 15. 1964, the second by June 1964, and the third and fourth by july 1964.The contents of this decreewere basedon an OKB-I document dated February8, 1964, titled "On Preparationsfor a ThreeSeaterSatellite-Ship." In the document, Korolev noted that such a mission would "maintain the preeminenceof the

Soviet Union in the development of space and rockettechnology."

I08 David Baker, The History of Manned Space[light (New York: Crown Publishers, 1985), p. I84

109. Semenov, ed, Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya. pp. 116, 636. Another source says that the

Voskhod decree was issued on June 14. 1964. See Chertok. Rakety i [yudi. p. 242.

I I0 Ezell,N,,qS,qHistorical Data Book, Volume II, p. 61.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SP_CE POLITICS

United States, with hundreds of subcontractors and a management philosophy that was unparalleled in producing results. With a budget of which Soviet engineers could only dream, technology that was beyond the reach of Soviet industry, and management techniques that fostered

creativity and responsibility, the Saturn V program was the living antithesis of the N I program.

The Soviet counterpart program was bestowed official sanction by the Soviet Party and

government in September 1962, after several years of preliminary research on heavy-lift boosters. That decision allowed OKB-I engineers to put together the design documentation for the

N I in preparation for its manufacture. P, good portion of the work at the time was focused on

developing the engines for the first three stages of the N I. The effort, earlier beset by personal

battles, was plagued by technical obstacles. With Glushko ejected from the program, the onus

of designing the engines fell on the shoulders of General Designer Nikolay D. Kuznetsov, the

head of OKB-276 based at Kuybyshev. By the end of 1962, Korolev and Kuznetsov had finalized the layout of engines for the stages of the N I, as follows:

Stage Engine Type Number Thrust (sea level of vacuum)

Stage I NK-15 24 x

Stage II NK-15V 8 x

Stage III NK-21 4 x

153.4 tons thrust (sea level)

178.6 tons thrust (vacuum)

41.0 tons thrust (vacuum)

Korolev had sent clarifications for the original technical assignment for designing the

NK-15V and NK-21 engines to Kuznetsov earlier in July 1962.'" Although Kuznetsov had little

experience with developing liquid-propellant rocket engines, there was a fairly substantial database of research into which his engineers tapped. The design schemes of all three of the

N I engines had antecedents in the two engines developed for Korolev's GR-I orbital bombardment system, as shown here:

Original Use on New Use

Engine GR- I Thrust Changes to: Engine on N I Thrust

N K-9 Stage I c. 40 tons Scaled-up version NK-15 Stage I c. 150 tons

(sea level)

Altitude version of NK-15V Stage II c. 180 tons

scaled-up version (vacuum)

NK-9V Stage II c. 40 tons Similar NK-21 Stage III c. 40 tons

(vacuum)

Similar NK-19 Stage IV c. 40 tons

(vacuum) ''_

II I. Igor gfanasyev, "NI: P,bsoluteiy Secret: Part I1" (English title), Krylya rodiny no, 10 (October 1993):

I-4: V, P. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Flyto the Moon?" (English title), Znaniye: tekhnike, seriya kosmonautika,

astronomiya no. 12 (December 1990): 3-43: V. S. Anisimov, T, C. Lacefield, and J. t_ndrews. "Evolution of the

NK-33 and NK-43 ReusableLOXfKeroseneEngines," presentedat the 33rd AIP,A/ASMEIS_qE#qSEEJoint Propulsion

Conference & Exhibit, Seattle.Wg, July 6-9, 1997:Mikhail Rudenko, "Space Bulletin: 25 YearsFrom the Landing of

gmerican Astronauts on the Moon" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 29 (1994): 8-9

112. _nisimov, LaceIield, and _qndrews,"Evolution of the NK33 and NK-43,"

387
388

The original NK-9 and NK-9V engines themselves were distinguished by the fact that the

latter was merely a high-altitude version of the former. The NK-9 had also been offered as the

first-stage engine for an alternative version of Korolev's R-9 ICBM, but it was rejected in favor

of a Glushko engine.

Technical problems plagued the program throughout the early years. During the first eleven

months of 1962, there were fifty-seven ground firings of the NK-9 engine with a new gas generator. Of these, twenty-six were outright failures, twenty-three displayed high-frequency oscillations, and only eight were completely successful. The results of these tests no doubt had an

influence on the improved NK-t5 engine, although participants later claimed the engineers of

Kuznetsov and Korolev were remarkably resourceful in overcoming obstacles:

Z_t the stage of design-related research on the deuelopment of sustainer engines in 1962

and 1963. despite the lack of any experience and despite its being, Jar removed from the

test stands. N, Kuznetsov's OKB solved problems associated with the fundamental functioning of the engines and their assemblies. _'_

Throughout 1963, during a period of intense "optimization" toward the N I booster

design, engineers from Kuznetsov's organization remained permanently stationed at OKB-I to

ensure that the changes in booster design were taken into account in the design of the NK-15

engines, Intriguingly enough, there seems to have been a collaboration of sorts between the

design bureaus of Kuznetsov and Glushko, certainly rival organizations at the time. Glushko,

based at Khimki, was then developing the RD-253 for Chelomey's UR-500 missile--an engine

that he had originally offered to Korolev for the N I. Given that the RD-253 shared a number of

design characteristics with the NK-15, engineers under Kuznetsov "were familiar with all the

basic documentation on the Khimki engines and often traveled to Glushko's firm to exchange

information."" By April 1964, Kuznetsov's engineers were able to build and display a full-size,

nonfunctional mock-up of the NK-15 in their assembly shop.''

The baseline design of the N I used only liquid oxygen (LOX)-kerosene engines. Later models were to use LOX-liquid hydrogen and perhaps even nuclear engines to significantly increase

payload capability from the modest seventy-five tons in the first N I model. As per the original

tactical-technical assignment signed by engine designers in 196 I, Isayev's OKB-2 and Lyulka's

OKB- 165 were to develop high-performance LOX-liquid hydrogen engines for the upper stages

of the N I. Korolev also commenced planning for the use of such engines on other more modest launch vehicles, such as the GR-I and the 8K18; in short, OKB-I believed that the use of

such propellants would have to be an integral part of any future Soviet space program. By April

1964, Korolev had also invited Kuznetsov at Kuybyshev to begin developing a series of LOXliquid hydrogen engines based on the NK-9, despite the severe load of having to design all the

more traditional N I engines. ''*

All this enthusiasm on Korolev's part could not save the overall effort from near oblivion.

Two factors played deleterious roles: the lack of a liquid hydrogen production industry in the

Soviet Union and the absence of testing grounds and facilities for the static firing of these

engines. Korolev's almost-desperate letters from the early 1960s to the military and government

113. R. Dotgopyatov. B. Dorofeyev. and S Kryukov, "At the Reader's Request: The NI Project" (English

title), Aviatsiya i kosmonavtika no. 9 (September 1992): 34-31.

114. IgorAfanasyev,"N I: Absolutely Secret:Part II1"(in Russian),Krylya rodiny no. I I (November 1993):4-5.

115 Afanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret:Part I1": Rudenko, "Space Bulletin: 25 YearsFromthe Landing." The

building of the model had apparently begun in March 1963.

tl6. These OKB-216 engines would be developed in three stages, with progressivelypowerful engines of

forty five, sixty, and eighty tons.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

remained more or less ignored as both OKB-2 and OKB-165 were still drawing up designs by

the time that NASA's Centaur was actually flying on top of the Atlas booster. Work on building static testing stands for LOX-liquid hydrogen engines did not even begin until 1965, when

construction began at the vast NII-229 test facility in Zagorsk. ''_

Nuclear, electrical, and electrical-nuclear engines for the N I were also the focus of much

effort at OKB-I. In March and April 1963, the Central Committee and the Military-Industrial

Commission hosted discussions on such engines--consultations that led to the establishment

of an interdepartmental commission to oversee work on electric and nuclear engines. ''8 By this

time, under the leadership of Deputy Chief Designer Mikhail V. Melnikov, OKB-I, together with

researchers from the Physical-Power Institute at Obninsk (which was under the Academy of

Sciences) and Keldysh's NIl-I, had examined several different approaches of converting the

heat energy from a nuclear reactor into electrical energy. What they chose eventually was a socalled thermo-emission converter (often called thermionic) reactor, which scientists believed

had significant advantages over other schemes, such as steam turbines or gas turbines. In 1962,

Melnikov completed his initial studies with the issuance of a document on applications of

nuclear engines for a heavy interplanetary spacecraft. ''9 As with the liquid hydrogen program,

the nuclear engine effort never received the funding required for intensive development. It was

only in August 1965 that Korolev signed the draft plan for a low-thrust nuclear electric-rocket

engine, the YaERD-2200, designed specifically for use on piloted interplanetary spaceships. The

8.3-kilogram thrust engine had a dual block scheme, with each block generating 2,200 kilowatts. Unfortunately, given the limited support and funding few plants were willing to take on

the work to develop such engines. One of those that did was Chief Designer Kosberg's Design

Bureau of Chemical Automation at Voronezh, which began work in 1965 on a more powerful

nuclear engine with a thrust of forty tons. '2° With the generally slow pace of the research, neither engine was expected to come on line before the end of the decade.

The funding problem, compounded by institutional and technical obstacles, cut across

almost every aspect of the N I program and its GR-I testbed precursor, By the end of 1962,

OKB-I planned to fly the first GR-I missile from Tyura-Tam by the third quarter of 1963. Within

weeks, this completely unrealistic deadline was pushed back as a variety of factors all resulted

in delays. The military, lukewarm early on to the use of the GR-I, was even more indifferent to

it by 1963. Despite pressure from OKB-I, the Strategic Missile Forces--more specifically its

Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments--refused to agree to a common tactical-technical

assignment for the missile, naturally delaying its design. One of the most challenging problems

was the development by OKB-I of a third-stage engine that would be capable of operating in

vacuum. A similar engine was also projected for use on the N I, but if its early development

record was any indication, there was little to be optimistic about: there was failure after failure

during ground tests in 1963.

I 17. NII-229 was the primary static testing facility for liquid-propellant engines in the Soviet Union. All high

thrust engines beginning with the RD-IO0 for the R-I in the late 1940shad been tested at this location. It was originally subordinate to NII-88, but it separatedin August 1956 at the sametime asOKB-I.

118. The commission, whose chairman was Yu. I. Danilov, included representatives from OKB-I, Nil-b.

NII-88, OKB-670, TsAGI, I-slAM, OKB-456. IAE, VNII EM, MAI, and OKB-586.

119. Semenov,ed, Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 409: S. E Umanskiy, "Manned Flight to Mars"

(Englishtitle), Zemlya i uselennayano. 6 (November-December 1994): 22-32. The document was entitled "Materials

for a YaERDfor Heavy Interplanetary Ships." "YaERD" isthe Russianabbreviation for "nucleaselectric rocketengine."

120. The August 1965 draft plan, drawn up in coordination with the Physical-PowerInstitute at Obninsk,

also included a design for a forty-ton thrust nuclear electric-rocket engine. It was probably the sameengine proposed

by the Design Bureau of Chemical Automation. See also Semenov, ed., Raketno-Kosmieheskaya Korporatsiya,

pp. 408 09.

389
390

Progress with the GR-I was critical to maintaining the original N I schedule, but the problems with the N I were even more severe. The primary bottleneck was money--a factor compounded by economic depression in the region where the most intense activity on the booster

was carried out: Kuybyshev, the location of Kuznetsov's OKB-276, and the nearby Progress

Plant, the primary manufacturing site for the N I. Partly because of general economic

mismanagement and partly because of the downturn in the aviation industry stemming from

Khrushchev's abrupt about-turn in favor of missiles, plants and subcontractors in the region

were unable to cope with Korolev's orders. Korolev personally appealed to several high-level

Communist Party administrators at Kuybyshev to offer all the assistance they could. ''_ P,s a

result of their actions, as many as twenty-eight different industrial firms located in and around

Kuybyshev were brought into the N I program. Most of these institutes, plants, or design

bureaus had earlier been involved in producing parts for aircraft but had lost all their orders and

thus means of existence in recent years. '_ OKB-276 had extremely poor engine testing facilities, with certainly nothing to allow it to test-fire 150-ton-thrust engines--a factor that was no

doubt an issue of concern when Glushko. with his much better resources, pulled out of the

program. An OKB-I engineer later remembered:

Kuznetsov did not have the necessary facilities or test stands. This would result in great

losses of time. Korolev wrote "stern" letters to Kuznetsov and simultaneously appealed

to the then-secretary of the oblast committee V. I. Vorotnikou. to help Mikolay

Dmitriyevich [Kuznetsou]. Zt third letter immediately went to V E. Dymshits of the

Council of Ministers: "The people in Kuybyshev are having a hard time. Help them!"

That's how Sergey Pavlouich strove to "press all the buttons.' ....

The N I program literally became the provider for the entire Kuybyshev region, although it

still remained a state secret. In fact, an individual employee at a particular plant would quite

possibly have been unaware of exactly where his or her particular part was ultimately destined.

The management of the N I program--certainly the most ambitious "civilian" Soviet space

project of its time--was mired in the gridlock symptomatic of the poor performance of the Soviet

civilian economy. Thus, it never mattered whether a particular production order was supposed

to be carried out; the job might never get done were it not for some personal favor or "unconventional" input. Deadlines often depended on a personal visit, a letter, or a telephone call from

a well-placed individual, not on a signed and sealed document. This type of management naturally resulted in a chaotic system in which parts were often delivered months later or in some

cases not at all. There was no "single plan of action" to coordinate the hundreds of plants and

research institutions. Because the military was not particularly interested in the project, by

default, many of the subcontractors were from the "civilian" economy. OKB-I First Deputy Chief

Designer Mishin, one of the leading architects of the entire program, recalled later that:

121. Among those to whom Korolev appealed was V. Ya. Litvinov. the then-chairman of the Kuybyshev

Council of National Economy (Kuybyshev Sovnarkhoz), the local economic administration entity. Until 1962,

Litvinov had served as the director of the Progress Plant, and thus he was well acquainted with the rocketry and

space industry. The ProgressPlant (also known as Plant No. I) had been manufacturing R-7-based boosters since

1959,Others at Kuybyshev who were instrumental in offering help to Korolev were V. Orlov and V. I. Vorotnikov.

both secretariesof the Communist Party's Regional Committee. SeeSergeyLeskov, "How We Didn't Get to the

Moon" (English title). Izuestiya. August 18, 1989,p. 3: Mishin. "Why Didn't We Flyto the Moon?"

122. These "firms" included the Institute of Aviation, Plant Nos. 24. 207, 276. 305, 525, and 454, OKB-I

Branch No 3, the ProgressPlant. and OKB-276,

123, Col. M, Rebrov, "But Things Were Like That--Top Secret:The Painful Fortune of the NI Project"

(English title), Krasnaya zuezda, January 13, 1990. p. 4.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SP&CE POLITICS

The N I was being made by 500 organizations in 26 departments. O[ these, only nine Jell

within the jurisdiction of the Military-Industrial Oommission. The rest had to be begged

[or. Resolutions [rom the Council of Ministers did not help at all: the tasks were just outside their competence and delivery schedules were not met.., we Jailed to agree with

minister after minister as they made the rounds, and often it ended in checkmate. '_4

The enormous problems related to management and finances did not hinder a remarkably

productive period of design through 1963 and up to the first quarter of 1964, when the primary

design documentation was prepared under Deputy Chief Designer Sergey O. Okhapkin. His

engineers addressed and resolved significant problems related to the manufacture of large-scale

welded propellant containers, thermal protection for tanks maintained at cryogenic temperatures, the use of new metallic and nonmetallic materials, the welding of large and thick materials, the assembly of large-scale compartments, and the development of means for assembling

and disassembling large sections of the tail and payload compartments. Specific groups were

established within the design bureau to complete studies addressing flight ballistics, the computation of load variances during flight, the issue of stability of movement, the pneumohydraulic and thermal process associated with ascent to orbit, and the design of electrical and

pneumo-hydraulic connections between the stages. One of the most challenging areas was the

development of armature--that is, pipelines, umbilicals, valves, and so on--which necessitated a very high degree of precision until then unknown to the Soviet rocketry industry. '_5

The luckless job of overseeing the design of

the NI fell on the shoulders of OKB-I Deputy

Chief Designer Sergey S. Kryukov, who was

fifty-five years old in t 963. t_ tall, bespectacled,

and quiet man who was outwardly unemotional, Kryukov had graduated from the Moscow

Higher Technical School after World War II

before being sent to Germany as part of the P,-

4 recovery teams. His technical and managerial

expertise made a good impression on Korolev

through the years as he contributed to all ballistic missile projects at OKB-I, in particular the

famous R-7. In 1961, Korolev appointed him a

deputy chief designer, putting him in league

with the so-called "high guard" of the design

bureau--that is, those at the top levels of decision-making. Along with Korolev, Mishin,

Bushuyev, Okhapkin, and Chertok, he was one

of the most powerful men in the organization,

as evidenced by his leading role not only in the

N I program, but also in the Soyuz project, the OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Sergey Kryukov was

perhaps the leading architect o[ the N I Moon rocket.

R-9 ICBM effort, and a variety of classified He oversaw the initial design layout o[ the g_ant

military programs. His very existence, not to booster during the early 1960s (files of Peter C_orin)

124. A. Tarasov, "Missions in Dreams and Reality" (English title). Prauda. October 20. 1989. p. 4

125. S. Kryukov, "The Brilliance and Eclipseof the Lunar Program" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no 4 0qpril

1994): 81-85: Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p. 25 I. The work on new precision criteria with

consideration to the specific loads on the rocket was headed by Deputy Chief Designer S. O, Okhapkin The work

on the armature was carried out under II. N. Voltsifer at Department No. 4 I. The ballistics work was led by S S.

Lavrov,and the computations of load variances was led by V. F.Gladkiy.

391
392

mention his significant contribution to the overall direction of the Soviet human space program, was a state secret until the early 1990s. '_ Kryukov's official duties were to oversee

"design and computational-theoretical" work on the N I, but he effectively led the team that

designed the rocket in its initial stages.

Kryukov, along with Korolev and Mishin, participated in one of the most fatal decisions of

the N I program. P,s early as March 1963, they were considering the elimination of ground testing of the complete first stage with its full complement of twenty-four engines. This particular

issue has been clouded in recent years by conflicting information; some argue that the decision

to omit first-stage static testing was imposed by space program leaders, while others maintain

it was a purely internal decision at OKB-I. Both sides agreed that it was taken primarily because

of a lack of funds. Large amounts of money would be required to build giant static test stands

for the completed first stage, and no such facility then existed in the Soviet Union. _ second

factor was time. Even if never overtly stated as such, the N I booster came to be a direct competitor to the Saturn V. Having a payload capability of seventy-five tons (compared to the

Saturn V's 130 tons) was embarrassing enough, but introducing the booster much later than

the Saturn V was simply unacceptable to Korolev. Vladimir V. Vakhnichenko, a senior engineer

working on the N I, recalled almost three decades later:

In discussing the fate of the N I. it is impossible to be silent about the fact that. in the

creation of the launcher, the unwritten law of rocket building was violated: that the

bugs in the burn of the rocket stages must be worked out on the test stand. In order to

save time and money, it was decided not to construct a stand for the first stage, which

meant that the crucial final tests would be shifted to the flight-test stage. The underestimation of the scale factor--the immense size of the launch vehicle, each launch of

which was an event in the life of the country--played a fatal role in the erroneousness

of this decision. Earlier when smaller launch vehicles and military missiles were being

developed, many ground-test "flaws" would be eliminated during [light testing. ,_nd it

was no big deal that [or some rockets it was necessary to carry out 40-.50 launchings

before they "learned" to fly. But that approach was unsuitable/or the NI.'":

Korolev was even unwilling to launch an N I with simply a live first stage and dummy

upper stages, preferring "all-up" testing, with flight-ready versions of all the stages. This was

a recipe for disaster because the first stage with its complement of twenty-four engines would

not be tested a single time before flight. "If the rocket takes off with dummies instead of the

second and third stages, how I can I show my face when I get out of the bunker?," he evidently

used to tell his associates. ''_ In one sense, the decision to move ahead with "all-up" testing for

the N t was not as risky a decision as might seem in retrospect. In 1963, Korolev had one big

ace up his sleeve: the GR-I. By the time that a fully stacked N I was on the pad, OKB-I expected to have finished testing the orbital bombardment system, thus reducing the risk of failure

on the upper stages of the N I. That, of course, still left the most critical and weakest link of

all, the first stage, open to possible catastrophe.

In the hope of compensating for the decision to dispense with first-stage ground testing

in concurrence with "all-up" testing, OKB-I adopted two measures, One of them was the use

126. Semenov, ed_ Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, p. 252; Golovanov. Koroleu, pp. 474 75:

Mozzhorin, et at, eds, Dorogi v kosmos. I, pp. 101-09. Note that Kryukov himself claims that he was appointed a

deputy chief designer "in 1959-1960": Golovanov states that it was in 196I.

127. Rebrov, "But Things Were Like That--Top Secret."

128. Leskov,"How We Didn't Get to the Moon."

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
SPACE POLITICS

of the KORD system, which was designed to shut off particular engines in the circle of twenty-four if the slightest malfunction was detected. The control system was highly complex, difficult to design, and pushed the limits of Soviet computer technology, but OKB-I, in

cooperation with Korolev's old friend Chief Designer Pilyugin. doggedly pursued the idea. That

the system was reactive rather then predictive does not seem to have given pause to either

Korolev or Pityugin, although there was criticism from many other quarters. The second compensatory measure was to "extrapolate" results from the static firings of the eight-engine second stage to the similar but larger first stage. There was a weak link even in these

"extrapolations." In a decision taken sometime later, OKB-I and OKB-276 agreed not to test

each and every NK-15 engine on the ground: instead, a statistical program was devised in

which a group of six engines would be selected randomly from a batch of manufactured units.

Of the six, two would be selected randomly and tested thoroughly at a static stand: if they

passed the tests, the remaining four would be cleared for flight. ''" Such was the price of the

lack of time and money.

Delays also plagued the design of the launch complex for the NI. In December 1962,

OKB-I and the GSKB SpetsMash signed "The Initial Data and Primary Technical Requirements

for Designing the Launch Complex for the N I Rocket" with the State Committee for Defense

Technology. Progresson this issue was bogged down, however, in an intense conflict between

Korolev and Chief Designer Barmin over launch complex design. It took a year to resolve the

matter: it was only on November 13, 1963, that the Supreme Council of the National Economy

formally approved the "interdepartmental" schedule for work on the design documentation for

construction of the complex, enumerating in detail the technical and material needs for the job.

A governmental resolution a month later, on December 24, was a promise to ensure that this

goal was indeed achieved on time. However, as was typical, the Ministry of Defense, the "owners" of the Tyura-Tam range, refused to follow up on the governmental decree: GSKB

SpetsMash, the primary launch complex design organization, was left with little money to do

anything. By this time, engineers and architects had marked out a vast area at the range, comprising sites 110, 112, and 113, for all N I operations. Two launch complexes would be built at

site I10, the giant assembly building and fueling area at site 112, and the residential zone and

welding facilities at site I 13. gctual construction at the sites began in 1964 under the direction

of Chief Designer Barmin, but it was at a snail's pace. The Ministry of Defense allocation for

launch complex construction for the year 1965 was one-third of what was requested. '_°

Funding for the space program had always fallen short of what was requested by the leading chief designers, but one factor in the severe crunch may have been Chelomey's rising dominance within the missile and space programs. Although his organization, OKB-52, had little

to show in terms of actual accomplishments by 1963 or 1964, the scope of work at the Reutovbased organization was breathtaking. With its several branches spread out across the Moscow

area, it was engaged in the development of ICBMs, orbital bombardment systems, space launch

vehicles, radar ocean reconnaissance satellites, anti-satellites, various models of piloted and

automated spaceplanes, naval anti-ship cruise missiles, and a nationwide ballistic missile

defense system.

Chelomey's first entry into the space program came in late 1963, although, in an ironic twist,

he needed Korolev's assistance to facilitate it. By the end of 1962,it was clear that the first launch

of his coveted UR-200 ICBM would be delayed past the original deadline. Tests to qualify it as a

129. Kryukov,"The BrillianceandEclipseof the LunarProgram."

130. Semenov.ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya,p. 251; I. g. Marininand S Kh Shamsutdinov,

"Soviet Programs[or Piloted Flightto the Moon" (Englishtitle), Zemtya i uselennaya no. 5 (September-October

1993): 77-85

393
394

space launch vehicle

would take even longer.

Chetomey's first space

vehicle, the IS anti-satellite,

would in the meantime be

ready for a first test launch,

but without the booster

needed to put it into orbit.

On January 20, 1963,

Chelomey, escorted by a

large entourage, paid an

official visit to see Korotev

at Kaliningrad. An agreement was hammered out

whereby OKB-I would

provide a number of

R-7-based boosters for

launches of the early

This is a model o[ the first space vehicle developed by the Chelomey design

bureau, the "IS" anti-satellite spacecraft Upon launch in November t963

the satellite was named Polet I (copyright Dtetrich Haeseter)

Cheiomey satellites in the "IS" and "US" series until the UR-200 came on line. The visit itself

was remarkably amiable, and the two were polite and friendly with each other in contrast to the

dismal relationship between Korolev and Glushko. As Sergey N. Khrushchev later recalled,

"Although their rivalry [in space] was growing, their personal relationship remained friendly. This

was not insignificant when one considers the complexity of their characters.' .... There was a little conversation on the N t, but Korolev did not go into great detail on the project in front of his

primary competitor. Meanwhile, Chelomey neither conveyed his grave doubts on the N I program, nor did he express any curiosity about its current status: to do so would have been indiscreet in the given circumstances. Through the ensuing years, despite the intense professional

competition, both remained on friendly terms whenever they met at government receptions,

meetings, or the launch range.

Using a variant of the basic R-7 ICBM, named the I IA59, Chelomey launched his first "IS"

satellite into orbit on November I, 1963, from site t at Tyura-Tam. The general designer could

not resist being different from the other space designers. Unlike all other generic military satellites, which were named "Kosmos," Chelomey picked the name Polet ("Flight") for his little

vehicle. The spacecraft became the first-ever satellite to maneuver in space by changing orbits,

a crucial capability needed for anti-satellite operations. ''_ Just two days after the Polet- I launch,

which caused quite a stir among Western observers, Chelomey launched the secret LIR-200

ICBM on its first test flight with only a live first stage. It was the first visible manifestation of

Chelomey's emerging dominance in the space and missile programs, and coincidentally or not,

it came during the most difficult financial time for Korolev.

While Chelomey's rising star may have played a role in the funding problems for the N I,

clearly the most important factor in the equation was the indifferent attitude of OKB-I's

13I. A long description of this meeting between Korolev and Chelomey is covered in SergeyKhrushchev,

Nikita Khrushchev. krizisy i rakety: uz.glyad iznutri: tom 2 (Moscow: Novosti, 1994). pp. 441-43: See also Rudenko,

"Space Bulletin: 25 Years From the Landing."

132. A second such satellite, Polet-2, was launched in April 1964. For descriptions of the Polet-I and

Polet-2 missions, see V. Polyachenko, "In Orbit--'Polyot'" (English title)..,qviatsiya i kosmonavtika no. 12

(December 1992): 36-3?: Mikhail Rudenko, "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes" (English title), Vozdushniy trans

port 51 (1995): 7-8: Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu: tom 2, pp. 465-66: lqsif/_ Siddiqi. "The Soviet Co-Orbital

l_ntisatellite System:_ Synopsis,"journal o[ the British Interplanetary Society 50 (June 1997): 225-40,

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

primary financier and client, the Ministry of Defense. The original 1962 decree approving the

N-I's development had tasked the Ministry of Defense to formulate a set of missions for the use

of new spacecraft for exclusively military purposes. But the powerful N I simply did not "fit into

then-existing notions of defense" of the Soviet Union. '_ As one Soviet journalist later wrote:

.. , the work [on the N I] was influenced by the nonavailability of resources and financing. It was clear there was an absence of interest from the main client of rocket-space

technical issues--the Ministry of Defense, because the objectiues and the payloads for

the NI had not been specified. '_4

The disinterest from the military was catastrophic for the N I program as a whole. As the

primary financier of the N I project, the Ministry of Defense refused to let loose its purse

strings, being more interested in achieving strategic parity with the United States. In 1964,

OKB-I was allocated only 23 million rubles of the 45 million requested, OKB-276 received

20 million even though 50 million was needed, and the Kuybyshev Council of National

Economy was apportioned 9 out of the 23 million rubles requested. Through all this, under the

supervision of Kryukov and Okhapkin, OKB-I finished the preparation of the "primary set" of

design documentation for the N I in March 1964, thus ready to move into the actual manufacturing of flight articles. '_ But with money completely drained, by early 1964, the unthinkable

had happened: work on the N I was at a complete standstill as plants, institutes, and design

bureaus ceased work on the vast program, leaving idle all that had been built. Faced with a serious situation, Korolev, in effect, took the problem out of the hands of the Ministry of Defense.

If the military would not define a payload for the N I, then he himself would.

The Decision to Go to the Moon

Piloted exploration of the Moon had been discussed seriously in the early 1960s at the top

levels of the Soviet leadership, but only as it concerned circumlunar missions. By 1963,

Chelomey was exploring the possibility of sending his Raketoplan with crews around the

Moon, while Korolev had received full-scale approval in December 1963 with his 7K-gK-I I K

Soyuz proposal. Both efforts suffered delays that stemmed more from technical considerations

rather than institutional factors. Originally, Chelomey had considered a wingless Raketoplan

capable of a ballistic reentry from lunar distances, but such a profile would impose too high

thermal stresses on the returning spacecraft, in addition to severe gravitational loads on a

potential crew. In late 1963, he dropped all his ballistic circumlunar plans and adopted a "new"

plan, which allowed for a guided reentry into the atmosphere, ''° Unlike the Vostok's spherical

return capsule, he chose to adopt a design that had originated elsewhere--in the United States.

Kept abreast of NJqSA's Gemini project, it seems that Chelomey had appropriated its design

into a Soviet version of the vehicle, named the LK-I ("Lunar Ship No. I"). Khrushchev's son

Sergey, who was an engineer at OKB-52 at the time, later recalled, "1 think he used the Gemini

idea, because he began to speak about this after [Gemini] was published.' .... Original or copied,

the LK-I was to be Chelomey's grand entry into the Soviet piloted space program, by sending

the first Soviet cosmonauts around the Moon.

133. G. Vetrov, "The Difficult Fateof the N I Rocket" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no. 5 (May 1994): 20-27.

134 Afanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret:Part I1," p. 3.

135. Kryukov, "The Brilliance and Eclipseof the Lunar Program"; Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev, and Kryukov, "At

the Reader'sRequest: The NI Project."

136. Interview, Gerbert Aleksandrovich Yefremov with the author. March 3, 1997

137. Khrushchev interview, October I0, 1996.

395
396

Chelomey pursued the idea with great vigor and spoke personally to Khrushchev about it

during the summer of 1964 while the Soviet leader conducted an official visit to his design

bureau. '_ Although the topic of the meeting was ICBMs, Khrushchev apparently sanctioned

Chelomey's LK- t idea at the time, another in a tong line of new projects for the general designer. An official decree on the program was apparently issued on May 22, 1964. The same governmental decision also formally terminated all further work on Chelomey's ambitious Martian

Kosmoplan project and the circumlunar Raketoplan/_ After close to five years of pursuing a

pipe dream, Chelomey was forced to admit that his ideas were a little ahead of his time. While

he would vigorously continue wide-ranging efforts to develop new spaceplanes, conceptions

of lunar and interplanetary flight by such vehicles receded out of view. The focus would be on

competing with Apollo.

Compared with the Apollo program, Soviet piloted circumlunar projects were a poor second. Even now, it is difficult to rationalize the persistence with which designers such as Korolev

and Chelomey pursued these efforts. If public accolades formed the primary objective of a circumlunar effort, what gain could be extracted in the face of Apollo, which would actually land

Americans on the Moon? The only possible explanation is that the Soviets simply never

believed that the LI.S. lunar landing effort was serious enough to warrant a response. This

mode of thinking is, in fact, borne out by the unusually indifferent response to Apollo during

the 1961-63 period. The primary N I missions were either for defense or for piloted Martian

flights: while the former was never defined, the latter was pursued with some vigor up to about

mid-1963, when there was a major shift in thinking at OKB-lY 4°

The Central Committee of the Communist Party, in the persons of Khrushchev and Frol R.

Kozlov, had no serious cause to feel threatened by the murmurs of activity from NASA. By the

end of 1963, the Soviet Union continued to maintain its undisputed lead in space exploration,

springing one "first in space" after another at a continually shocked American audience. The

Central Committee's primary concern, as with the military, was achieving strategic parity. In a

bid for common resources, the space program had a sparse chance of being a priority over the

development of newer long-range ballistic missiles. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the space

program was not a central component or instrument of Soviet state policy. At best, it was an

added bonus--a perk that allowed the Party and the military to add to its resume in extolling

the virtues of a socialist state. The unprecedented successes of Gagarin, Tereshkova, and others

formed a useful but not indispensable tool in helping destroy the standard image of the Soviet

Union as a nation of obsolete tractors and factories. And while Kennedy may have made Apollo

an instrument of American state policy, given the track record of the U.S. space program up to

the early 1960s, there was no reason to believe that the United States would actually put a

human on the Moon before the end of the decade.

The earliest serious indication that highly placed Soviet space officials such as Korolev and

Academician Keldysh were moving their thinking from a Mars expedition to a lunar landing

138. The visit is described in Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu: tom 2, pp 476-78.

139 E-mailcorrespondence, Igor/_fanasyev to the author. November 23. 1997: E-mail correspondence, Igor

_qfanasyevto the author_ November 28. 1997

140. In the document dating from July t962 defending the N I proJectto the KetdyshCommission, OKB t

listed five major goals for the N I rocket, presumably in order of their importance: (I) defense objectives: (2) scientific objectives: (3) "researchand mastery of human [flight] to the Moon and near planets of the solar system (Mars.

Venus): launches of automatic apparatusto the Sun and planets of the solarsystem with scientific goals": (4) "solu

tion of separateapplied obJectivessuch as universal communications and radio broadcasting and television, weath

er service, solar service, etc."; and (5) problems involving ballistic flight. This document is reproduced in full as

"Report on the Powerful N-I Carrier Rocket at the Meeting of the Expert Commission" (English title), in 13.V.

Raushenbakh, ed, S. P Koroleu i ego delo: suet i teni u istorii kosmonautiki: izbrannyye trudy i dokument),, (Moscow:

Nauka, 1998),pp 363 82

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

came in late April 1963. At the time, Keldysh held a meeting of his Interdepartmental ScientificTechnical Council for Space Research to discuss a response to the Kennedy speech almost two

years earlier. Besides Korolev, in attendance was his "high guard": Deputies Mishin, Bushuyev,

Chertok, Kryukov, and Okhapkin. In a report, Korolev summarized the progress on the N I program and argued that its capabilities would allow a lunar landing mission as well as various

military tasks in Earth orbit. The council acknowledged "the advisability of reporting to the

[Central Committee] on issuing a special decree on accelerating this work. "_4' Deputy Chief

Designer Kryukov recalled later that this reassessment toward the Moon had taken place because

of "reports of American work on Saturn and the start of flight work of this complex." By this

time, NASA had conducted four (Block I) Saturn I launches as part of the "first step to perfecting the Saturn V vehicle for lunar missions."'4_ Although fired with only a live first stage, the

launches, all successful, were hard evidence of NASA's commitment to the lunar landing goal.

If before there had been some doubts about the seriousness of the U.S. commitment, there

was ample evidence of it in 1962 and 1963. By the summer of 1962, NASA engineers had finalized the basic external configuration of the Apollo spacecraft complex, and on July I I, 1962,

NASA officials announced that they had selected the lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR) profile to

accomplish the lunar landing mission. '4_The LOR profile used the launch of two separate lunar

spacecraft. One would serve as "a mother ship" and orbit the Moon, while a second would

land on the surface of the Moon. Once surface exploration was over, the lunar lander would

lift off, dock with the "mother ship," and be discarded. Following lunar operations, the crew

would boost the orbiter on a trajectory back to Earth. All elements of the Apollo complex would

be launched on a single Saturn V. Work on the actual Apollo spacecraft was also progressing

at an impressive pace. On August 14, 1963, NASA signed a definitive contract with the Space

and Information Systems Division of North American Aviation to design and manufacture the

Apollo Command and Service Module that would carry three astronauts to the Moon. A contract for the lunar lander, called the Lunar Excursion Module, was signed with Grumman

Aircraft Engineering Corporation on March II, 1963. '44

Acutely aware of falling behind the Americans, Korolev took his case to the top. During a meeting in early June 1963, days before the launches of Bykovskiy and Tereshkova, Khrushchev invited

Korolev and Glushko to his private dacha ostensibly to try and "make peace" between the t_vo warring designers. Later in his memoirs, Khrushchev recalls the conflict and his mediation efforts:

... differences of opinion started to pull them apart and the two of them couldn't stand

to work together. I even invited them to my dacha with their wives. I wanted them to

make peace with each other, so that they could devote more of their knowledge to the

good of the country, rather than dissipate their energy on fights over details. It seemed

to me that they were both talented, each in his own field. But nothing came of our meeting. Later Korolev broke all ties with _lushko. He switched to... Kuz.netsov, a young,

talented engine designer.'4_

141. Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 230. This meeting was held on April 28, 1963.

142 Ezell,N_STI Historical Data Book, Volume II, p. 56. The first four Saturn I launches were accomplished

on October 27, 1961.April 25, 1962, November 16, 1962,and March 28, 1963.

143 Ibid, p. 182. Seealso RogerD. Launius, )qpollo: _ Retrospective71nalysi_,Monographs in Aerospace

History, No. 3 (Washington, DC: NASA History Office, July 1994), pp. I0-12, which is an excellent account of the

battles over the decision to opt for the LOR profile [or the Apollo program. NASA Administrator JamesI: V/ebb offi

cially announced the LOR decision on November 7. 1962.

144. Ezell, NAS..ztHistorical Data Book, Volume II, pp. 172, 183.

145 Nikita Khrushchev,Khrushchev Remembers:The _tasnost Tapes(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1990),

p. 186

397
398

Khrushchev, Korolev, and Glushko spent the morning of their meeting discussing, among

other things, the N I and its role in a piloted lunar landing. Using a number of beautifully illustrated drawings of his N I rocket and proposed lunar spacecraft, Korolev painstakingly

explained the requirements and mission profile of a Soviet lunar landing project. At the time.

OKB-I plans seem to have involved an Earth-orbit rendezvous profile using three N I rockets to

launch portions of the lunar ship into Earth orbit. These components would link together and

then fly toward the Moon carrying its cosmonaut crew. According to Khrushchev's son, Sergey,

who was also present during this private discussion, the elder Khrushchev was:

enthralled by Korolev's idea. But he could also not forget Earthly concerns. He inquired

how much this project would cost. This time Korolev had a separate list stating all lhe

computations. By his estimation, approximately ten to twelve billion [rubles] would be

necessary to accomplish the project over the same number of years. [Hearing the

amount] Father wavered. '_°

Korolev continued his presentation with a display of the N I, its emerging configuration,

its launch complexes, and logistical problems, such as modes of transporting the booster to the

launch site. Korolev expressed confidence that given the right amount of financial support, the

N I program could beat Apollo. At the end of his monologue, Khrushchev merely replied, "111

think about it, you prepare your proposals. We wilt discuss and decide this in the Presidium of

the Central Committee.' ....

Cost was a particularly important factor in space policy planning at the time, particularly

because of an agricultural crisis that peaked around 1963 that prompted the Soviet Union to rely

increasingly on imported grain. Despite phenomenal industrial growth in the late 1950s, the poor

record of the agricultural sector may have served as a catalyst for more conservative levels of funding in areas not essential for national defense. '_" The enormous amounts of money pouring into

the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles were clearly taking their toll, and

attempts to downsize conventional weapons systems to compensate did not alleviate the crisis. '49

Food shortages and rising prices across the Soviet Union may have given pause to Khrushchev's

consideration for a highly expensive space extravaganza whose political utility was dubious at best.

Khrushchev's wavering on the lunar landing issue did little to deter Korolev's single-mindedness. A little over a month after the high-level meeting, on July 27. 1963, Korolev sent a formal

146. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu:tom 2, p 446. The o[ficiat conversion rate of the ruble to the dollar at

the time was one to one.

147. ibid. p. 448 This meeting in earlyJune is said to have occurred on June 13, 1963, in another source

See Rudenko, "Space Bulletin: 25 YearsFromthe Landing." It seems, however, that Korolev was at Tyura Tam on

June 13 for the Vostok 5/6 launches. As for asthe personal conflict between Korolev and Glushko, the issuewas the

subject of a l,orty minute discussion among the three men behind closed doors No one knows what was said, but

all three emergedgloomy and obviously disturbed from the meeting. SergeyKhrushchev claims to haveheard Korolev

mutter under his breath that Glushko was "a snakein the grass." There wereno further attempts by the Sovietleader

to bring them together

148. For mentions of the agricultural crisis, seeDaniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos. pp. 143-44: PeterA.

Gonn. "The Dark Side of the Moon: Political Decisions Behind the Soviet Lunar Programs." presented at the

American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Science. Boston. MA, November 14-17, 1996: Alexander A

Danilov, Michael M. Gorinov, SergeiV. Leonov, Ekaterina IR Lugovskaya,Alexander S. Senyavski, and Alexander P.

Naumov, The History of Russia: The Twentieth Century {North Sydney,Australia: Heron Press, 1996), pp. 288-89.

149 The new military doctrine of relying on ICBMs was outlined in a major policy speech by Khrushchev on

January 14, 1960 at the 4th Sessionof the SupremeSovietof the USSR.He ended his speechwith the following call:

"In modern times a nation's defensecapability depends on firepower, not on [the] number of men under arms. Hence,

due to possessionof nuclear weaponry, the manpower of the Sovietarmed forceswould be reduced." SeeHarriet Fast

Scott and William F.Scott. TheArmed Forcesof the USSR(Boulder, CO: Westview Press,1979), p. 42

CHALLENGE TO ,'I_POLLO
SPACE POLITICS Z

proposal to key leaders in the defense industry that established clear, specific objectives the N I

could accomplish. He listed three primary goals in order of their importance: exploration of the

Moon, exploration of the planets, and the launch of an Earth orbital station. Whereas before lunar

exploration was consigned as a secondary objective, Korolev was unequivocal in his strategy:

The accomplishment of a [landing] expedition of humans to the surface of the Moon

should be considered the primary goal in the program of study and familiarization of the

Moon. All remaining goals enumerated here should be concurrently achieved to facilitate

the solution of the primary goal--the accomplishment of a [landing] expedition.'5°

In the July 1963 document, Korolev proposed eight specific projects, the first of which was

a piloted landing on the surface of the Moon. The preliminary conception involved launching

three N I rockets to assemble a 200-ton complex in Earth orbit through rendezvous and docking.

A five-ton lander would perform the landing itself. To ensure safety, a reserve lander would supplement the main lander. The second and third goals were the creation of robotic lunar rovers with

masses of six to eight tons and piloted lunar spacecraft with masses of ten tons. The remaining

five objectives pertained to missions to Mars and Venus: the piloted TMK-I for circumplanetary

flights, automated spacecraft to orbit the planets, robotic vehicles to land on them, a piloted landing on Mars, and the development of a family of spaceships for further planetary exploration.'2'

Ironically, just as Korolev was beginning to marshal all his skills to convince the Soviet leadership of the need to respond to Apollo, the public discourse on whether or not the Soviets were

in a "race to the Moon" reached its apotheosis. Much of this near hysteria was set off by a letter from British astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell to NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden

concerning future Soviet plans in space. Lovell had toured a number of important aerospace facilities in the USSR between June 25 and July 15, 1963, and met a number of prominent scientists

from the Academy of Sciences. Based on his experiences, he informed Dryden in a letter dated

July 23 that Academy President Mstislav V. Keldysh had informed him that the Soviet Union had

rejected "(at least for the time being) . . . plans for the manned lunar landing.' ....

Lovell's assertion set off a remarkable level of parrying back and forth between the U.S.

media and NASA as the space agency sought to quell suggestions that it was in fact racing to

the Moon by itself. '_ The U.S. hoopla was not reported in the Soviet press, although it is less

certain whether individuals such as Khrushchev, Keldysh, and Korolev were kept abreast of the

150. This document, addressedto S A. Zverev (State Committee for DefenseTechnology). V. D Kalmykov

(State Committee for Radio-Electronics),and M V. Keldysh (USSR Academy of Sciences). has been reproduced in

full as S. R Korolev, "Report on the Use of the N-I ( I IA52) Carrierand the Creation of First-Order SpaceObjects on

Its Basis" (English title), in Raushenbakh.ed, S P Korolev i ego deto, pp. 410-16. An identical letter was sent on

july 30, 1963, to Chief Designers N. D. Kuznetsov (OKB-276), N. A. Pilyugin (Nil AP), and M. S. Ryazanskiy

(Nil 885). Seealso Kryukov, "The Brilliance and Eclipseof the Lunar Program."

151. Korolev, "Report on the Use of the N-I (I IA52) Carrier." The circum Martian TMK-I would have a

mass of-seventeen tons. The piloted Mars landing, on the other hand. would be accomplished by creating a mas

sire 330- to 660-ton complex in Earth orbit requiring between six and twelve N I launches. Among supplementary

goals mentioned in the document arerobotic exploration of Mercury (six tons), Jupiter (three tons), Saturn (one and

a half tons), Uranus (one ton), and Neptune (eight-tenths of a ton). The orbital station, called an "Orbital Space

Institute." would be constructed in two stages. Initially, the N I would launch a seventy-ton station in a

50a-kilometer orbit, followed by a larger200- to 300-ton version assembled by using three to four N I launches. The

station would be servicedby 7K Soyuz spacecraft.

t52 Sir Bernard Lovell, letter to Hugh L. Dryden_July 23. 1963. file on Sir Bernard Lovell, NASA History

ReferenceCollection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters,Washington, DC.

153. For a detailed discussion of the repercussions of the LovelI letter, see Dodd L. Harvey and Linda C.

Ciccoritti, US-Soviet Cooperation in Space (Miami, FL:Center for Advanced International Studies. University of

Miami, 1974), pp. 114-19.

399
4OO

discourse in the United States. The issue was further muddied by President Kennedy's bold

announcement, in front of a United Nations audience on September 20, proposing the discussion of "a joint expedition to the moon."_4 Judging by the response in the Soviet press, the

USSR was simply not interested; Kennedy's offer was publicly ignored. Khrushchev added to

the confusion with another ambivalent statement on Soviet lunar plans made at the third

World Meeting of Journalists in Moscow on October 25:

Z]t the present time we do not plan flights of cosmonauts to the Moon. I have read a

report that the .,Zlmericans wish to land on the Moon by 1970. Well, let's wish them success. Zlnd we will see how they fly there, and how they will land there, or to be more

correct "moon" there. ,Z]nd most important--how they will get up and come back. We

will take their experience into account. We do not wish to compete in sending people

to the Moon without thorough preparation. It is obvious there would be no benefit from

competition. _

Once again, Khrushchev's pronouncements were taken as an indication of the Soviets' lack of

interest in the Moon.

It is difficult to speculate on the true nature of events actually occurring within the Soviet

leadership at the time without access to still-classified documents. But if we are to believe the

Soviet leader's son, Khrushchev was close to making an about-turn in his thinking on the lunar

landing issue. Sergey N. Khrushchev, then an engineer at Chelomey's design bureau, recalls

that in the second week of September, just days after Kennedy's United Nations speech, his

father for the first time openly spoke about jointly cooperating with the United States on a lunar

landing project. Previous overtures from Kennedy on this issue had been rejected outright as a

result of the Soviet military's great reluctance to engage in any major joint space endeavor. It

seems that Khrushchev, however, had been steeling for a fight to change the military's position

on the issue, certainly a difficult undertaking given the kind of secrets that would be put at risk

in implementing such a joint project. When his son argued that cooperation was simply a bad

idea, the older Khrushchev replied: "You don't understand that the P,mericans can design anything they want and our secrets will not be secrets forever.., and now that we have enough

missiles they already know that we are strong.' ....

There is no doubt that Khrushchev's intentions were partly motivated by economic considerations. Surprised by Korolev's estimated cost of a lunar landing at the meeting in June,

Khrushchev was already backtracking on his lukewarm support from three months before. The

fact that Khrushchev was indeed having a change of heart is evidenced by his only public comment on Kennedy's speech. On November I, a little over a month after the call for cooperation,

Khrushchev told the press:

We consider with due attention to the proposal of the U.S. President. that it would be

useful if the USSR and the United States pooled their efforts in exploring outer space for

scientific purposes, specifically for arranging a joint flight to the Moon. Would it not be

fine if a Soviet man and an Zlmerican woman flew to the Moony Of course if would. '_

t54. Ibid.p. 123.

I55. SovietSpace Programs. 1962-65, p. 360

156. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev tom 2, pp. 459-61; Khrushchev interview, October I0, 1996.

157. Harvey and Ciccoritti, LIS.-SovietCooperation in Space, p 125.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

The chance to address a cooperative venture never came. Before Khrushchev could

respond, President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The new administration

of Lyndon B. Johnson was significantly less interested in a joint lunar landing program.

Khrushchev also dropped the matter, never officially responding to Kennedy's United Nations

speech.

Three factors--the rising interest from the Soviet leadership, the challenge from Apollo,

and the question of how exactly to use the N I--all intersected in late 1963, prompting the

Soviet space program to reassess its trajectory. The last issue, the utility of the N I, found its

way into the debate in a roundabout way. g year before, in December 1962, an Academy of

Sciences proposal had excluded the use of the N I and ambitious piloted space expeditions

from the immediate future of the Soviet space program. This suggestion apparently had the

support of some highly placed defense industry officials. '_8Alarmed by this indifference to the

N I, Korolev had fired off a letter on May 7, 1963, imploring the Academy of Sciences to revise

its recommendation to include the N I in its plans: fortunately, the academy responded favorably to Korolev's call. On August 10, Korolev received a revamped proposal from the academy

that explicitly included both the N I and human space exploration in its plans. Probably

prompted by the increased visibility of the Apollo program, the academy suggested large-scale

exploration of the Moon and planets, With the academy recommendation in hand, and also

encouraged by Khrushchev's lukewarm interest, Korolev and his associates at OKB-I produced

a detailed technical document on September 23, 1963, titled "Proposals for the Research and

Familiarization of the Moon." This document served as the first specific response to Kennedy's

challenge to go to the Moon. Both robotic and piloted space missions to the Moon figured

prominently in the report. '_'_

Korolev divided his lunar plan into five major programs or "themes," each encompassing

a specific goal, leading to a lunar landing in 1967 or 1968:

Type Mission Spacecraft Launcher No. of Launches

L I Circumlunar 7K crew vehicle Soyuz 6

9K upper stage

I I K tanker

L2 Lunar roving 9K upper stage Soyuz 6

I I K tanker

13K rover

L3 Lunar landing 7K crew vehicle (modified) Soyuz

Lander N I

I (Soyuz)

3 (NI)

L4 Lunar orbit 7K crew vehicle (modified) N I I

L5 Advanced lunar Lunar rover N I I

roving

158. StateCommittee for Radio-ElectronicsChairman V. D Kalmykov apparently proposed delayingthe conceptualization of payloads for the N I until a later time See Raushenbakh,ed., 5. P Komleu i ego delo, p. 424.

159. This document has been reproduced in full as S. R Korotev, "Proposal for the Research and

Familiarization of the Moon" {English title), in ibid, pp. 416-26.

401
402

ThemeLI wasidenticaltothe7K-9K-IIKSoyuzcircumlunarcomplexthathadbeenproposedbyKorolevsince about 1963. It involved launching a series of tankers into Earth orbit to

fuel a translunar-injection stage, which would send a 7K Soyuz spacecraft around the Moon.

Theme L2 was an initial concept for a robotic lunar rover to travel on the lunar surface for scientific research. This, too, would be assembled in Earth orbit with a combination of tankers

and acceleration stages.

L3 was clearly the center of Korolev's plan. glthough several different mission profiles were

considered, engineers chose the conservative Earth-orbit rendezvous approach to accomplish

the flight. The primary crew vehicle would be a modified Soyuz spacecraft. The main landing

payload would be launched into Earth orbit by an N I, followed by two more N I rockets, which

would carry extra propellant for the translunar injection stage, A fourth launch of an

R-Z-derived booster was to carry a crew to the complex. Total mass in Earth orbit would be

200 tons: twenty-one tons would actually accomplish the landing on the Moon. Theme L4 was

to conduct piloted lunar orbital missions using a modified Soyuz spacecraft with a special booster stage. Theme LS's primary goal was advanced roving missions on the Moon: cosmonauts

could use these large five-and-a-half-ton rovers to travel long distances across the surface. '_°

On the same day that he signed his lunar plans, Korolev sent a letter to senior officials at

his ministry proposing an eleven-point plan for space research during the period 1965 to 1975

and outlining the primary steps leading to a piloted lunar landing. Curiously, even as his financial troubles were rising, he refused to abandon old dreams. He continued to include as future

goals piloted missions to Mars and Venus and giant Earth-orbital stations.

The September 1963 document laid the conceptual foundation for the Soviet reach for the

Moon in the late 1960--a clear and unambiguous response to competition from Apollo.

Korolev, however, had to address not only competition from the outside, but also competition

from within. Starting with a primary focus on strategic ICBMs, Chief Designer Mikhail K.

YangeFs OKB-586 had slowly moved into designing smaJl military satellites for a variety of purposes. The design bureau also fielded a series of new launch vehicles for the most highsecurity military payloads. None of this would have any relevance to the piloted space program

had it not been for Yangel's proposal for a heavy-lift launcher named the R-56, for which a

development program had been approved in April 1962. From the beginning, it seems that

Yangel had had his mind set on a particular goal for the R-56. As one of his deputies described:

This launch vehicle was predicted in a monoblock variant, and according to [the] evaluation of specialized institutes, it was the optimum rocket [or realization of the programs given, including auxiliary tasks on Moon exploration .... '_'

i_ draft plan for the vehicle and possibly its lunar spacecraft complex was prepared by

1964. thus positing it as a direct threat to Korolev's beloved N I. Chelomey, not content to

watch his two rivals whiz past him, was also thinking of conceptions of a lunar landing spacecraft. His efforts were far behind the curve as compared to either Korolev or Yangel. and his participation in such a project did not figure in any significant way. at least not at the time.

At the beginning of 1964. the complacency that had marked the Soviet response to Apollo

no longer existed, and notwithstanding Yangel's R-56 idea, no one more than Korolev was

160. Ibid

16I. S.N. Konyukhov and V. A. Pashchenko."History of Space Launch Vehicles Development." presented

at the 46th International Astronautical Congress. Oslo, Norway, October 2-6, 1995 The R-S6 was a three stage

rocket with a launch mass of 1.400tons, capable of putting roughly fifty tons into orbit. The sixty-eight-meter-tall

booster was derived from an earlier proposal for a giant booster named the RK-100, which was studied by Yangel in

the early 1960s.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

responsible for this change. Yangel may have been the best individual

in the USSR to build missiles, but it was Korolev who had unbridled

passion for space exploration. He clearly had more to lose if the "space

race" was lost: he had bet his life on preeminence and was not about

to lose it to a government that was unwilling to be sympathetic to his

grand ideals• By early 1964, there were finally murmurs of political

activity on the topic. On February I1, 1964, Air Force representatives

visited the offices of the Military-Industrial Commission in the Kremlin,

a visit prompted partially "by the appearance of a series of reports that

the Americans already have trainers for work on a lunar landing. "_°_

One of the Air Force generals _resent, Lt. General Kamanin, wrote in

his journal the following day:

•.. the Central Committee Is approving a plan [or sending an

expedition to the Moon in 1968-1970. The NI rocket, which is

capable of putting into orbit a payload of 72 tons will be used

[or this purpose. The mass o[ all the systems (lunar ships),

computed [or [light to the Moon, lunar landing, and recovery

on Earth, will comprise about 200 tons, i.e. it will require three

NI rockets and two dockings in orbit. The plan is still only on

paper, while the ._Imericans already have done much for

carrying out [lights to the Moon. '_

To accelerate the process, Korolev, accompanied by his First

Deputy Mishin and Chief Designers Kuznetsov and Pilyugin, met with

Khrushchev on March 17, 1964. Although the meeting was ostensibly

about the general progress of the Soviet space program, a Moon landing seems to have been foremost on the agenda. After discussing

robotic exploration and the Soyuz and Voskhod programs, Korolev

raised the topic of the future of the N I rocket. In his preparatory notes

for the meeting, he had outlined several topics of discussion: the use

of the N I for the Ministry of Defense, a piloted lunar landing, piloted

interplanetary missions, the development of liquid hydrogen rocket

engines and nuclear rocket engines, and a global communications

satellite system/_4 What was precisely said at the meeting still remains

a mystery, but recent evidence suggests that it was that day that

Korolev extracted a promise from Khrushchev to politically commit to

a full-scale lunar landing program to compete with _pollo. '_ It is still

unclear as to why the Soviet leader agreed at this time, when just six

months before, financial considerations had prompted him to seriously consider cooperating with the United States. His son's observations

on Khrushchev's views on the lunar landing allow some insight into his

thinking at the time:

This is one conception of

Mikhail )'angel's R-56

booster at a museum in

Moscow. Yangel

proposed the R-56as a

competitor to Korolev's

N/ Moon rocket in

1962-64. The modular

eonstruchon was based

on clustering several

heavy R-46 ICBMs The

R-46was designed to

carry fifty-megaton

warheads.

(copyright Mark Wade)

162. N. Kamanin, "A Goat Worth Working for . : The Space Diaries of a General" (English title),

Vozdushniy transport 43 (1993): 8

163. Ibid.

164. Korolev's notes have been reproduced in lull as S. E Koroiev, "Plan of Notes to N S. Khrushchev"

(English title), in Raushenbakh,ed., 5 R Korolev i ego delo, pp 442-44.

165. Interview with Georgiy S. Vetrov, Historian, RKK Energiya.November 15. 1996.

403
4O4

His feeling [on the lunar landing] was uncertain. He wanted to be ahead of the

_qmericans, but for free. So when Kennedy announced the lunar program he did not

accept Korolev's pressure that we have to do the same. And in the end, all of them [the

chief designers] pressed him and said that it would be much less expensive than the

71mericans and that we have to do this, and [it was] then that he accepted this ....

So he approved it. but I don't think that he spent too much of his own time thinking

about this and discussing it. It was not such a national priority as in the United States. '_

From Korolev's perspective, there were clearly two differing motivations to the decision to

go to the Moon: one was to compete with Apollo and the second was to salvage the N I rocket from the scrap heap of history. Consigned to oblivion by the lack of funding, the project was

at a standstill in early 1964. No one, least of all the Ministry of Defense, had defined a reason

for its existence. He had just given it one. Both these motivations are crucial to an understanding of the eventual fate of the program. The former--that is, to compete with Apollo--

was a major and unprecedented shift in vision from the Tsiolkovskiy-influenced ideas of

Earth-orbital stations leading to interplanetary flights. The latter--that is, to save the N I--was

simply a management strategy. Within five days of the meeting, Korolev signed off on a new

plan of action at his design bureau for 1964 through 1966, focused on the NI, with special

attention to advanced liquid hydrogen engines for the upper stages.

Khrushchev had made the promise, but it was still a verbal commitment. There was a

bureaucratic gridlock to address. The February-March discussions were to have led to a formal

decree of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers, This, however, was constantly

delayed. Party and state officials were unconcerned with the N I because it had not been

included in the original program of research for the next five-year plan. As a result, money for

the N I remained tied up. In three letters dated May 15, Korolev wrote to the leading administrators in the defense industry to include the N I as part of future funding allocations. '_=_

The draft of a fourth desperate letter was prepared by Korolev on May 25 and addressed

directly to Leonid I. Brezhnev. the Secretary of the Central Committee for Defense Industries and

Space. the top space program leader in the country at the time. Declassified thirty years later, the

draft stands testament to the complete disarray of the Soviet human space program by 1964. It

began auspiciously with the phrase: "We have been wasting a lot of precious time on the N I."

Through paragraph after paragraph, Korolev mentioned the litany of problems in the N I program:

It will be sufficient to point out that the initial sum o/ I I million rubles, which was

decided on in 1964 by the Ministry o/Defense for construction o/the launch and technical position for the M I. was at [their] discretion unexpectedly reduced to Z million

rubles and now to 4 million rubles overall. The Ministry of Defense has refused to

finance further the construction o/the N I despite the existing decrees. In May of the current year all the money will be used up for this [program], and construction of the

launch [complex] o/the M l will completely stop in a few days. Up to now the plants

have not been supplied with the necessary equipment and materials, and a lot of decisions and orders have not been carried out by the involved organizations. For more than

two years, a whole number of assignments and orders agreed in decrees has remained

166. Khrushchev interview, October I0, 1996.

167 S. R Korolev, "Report FromS. R Korolev to the Secretaryof the TsK KPSSL I. Brezhnev" (Englishtitle),

Nauka i zhizn no. 5 (May 1994): 21-23, commentary to the document. The letters were addressedto Chiel of the

Defense Department o[ the Central Committee I, D. Serbin. Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission L V

Smirnov, and Chairman of the StateCommittee for DefenseTechnology S. ,q. Zverev.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
SPACE POLITICS

unfulfilled, and no one is questioned about it. With regard to many problems and plans

prepared for the Nil, many months go by and no one even examines them .... '_

Korolev then made a politically motivated plea:

This is an absolutely intolerable situation with the N I. not only for Soviet science and

technology but also for maintaining the priority of our state in that roost important and

difficult sphere, space, as the first socialist country in the world, the birthplace of great

revolutionary ideas and a progressive nation leading the world in the socialist system.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev has always supported progressive science, and in particular, much new work in the sphere of new technology and space research, and he has

said more than once that socialism--this is the hopeful starting point from where all

our rockets and ships will be launched. Very recently Nikita Sergeyevich listened to and

supported the proposal of a group of Designers to speed up work on the N I. Two

months have passed since then and nothing has been accomplished and nothing has

changed with the N I ... it's evidently clear that once again the N I hasn't received

enough attention while time is slipping away .... "_

He then mentioned the U.S. space program:

The scope and progress of the work on "big space" in the U.S.A. is a reason for great

alarm. Ztlready in May o[ this year, the U.S.Zt. is preparing to fly the two-stage "Saturn"

rocket with a full-scale model of the "Ztpollo" ship designated as part of the project to

land American researchers on the Moon. This model is without people on board now. but

this flight undoubtedly will be followed by others. Zit the present the U.S.Zt.'s "Saturn"

rocket takes a useful payload of 11-12 tons with a total mass of around 17 tons into an

initial orbit around the Earth. In this, the US.T]. has already surpassed the Soviet Union. '_°

Conscious of the fact there was a real competition in the piloted circumlunar effort between

Chelomey's LK-I and Korolev's Soyuz, Korolev reminded Brezhnev of the pathetic state of the

Soyuz program:

To fly around the Moon with a crew (without landing) it is sufficient for the U.S.A. to

double this load iv[ 12 tons], for example, by using a single-docking method in the initial orbit. We have been working on such a theme, the "Soyuz," for a number of years.

but unfortunately, just like the N I, it has never received adequate support, and [the

work on it] has not been fully satisfactory. I[ urgent additional measures are not adopted on the "Soyuz" theme, the Soviet Union will lag behind the Ug.,zl. in this area too.'"

Following more complaints about the poor state of the liquid hydrogen industry and the industry's favoritism in the use of toxic propellant components, Korolev finally ended with a focused

and specific plea for a Soviet response to Apollo:

The U.S.ZL is planning to land people on the Moon in 1969 (instead of the earlier date

of 1970) and according to their plans, they will be in a position to fly around the Moon

168. Ibid.. p. 21.

169. Ibid. pp 21-22.

170. Ibid.. p. 22,

171. Ibid.

405
406

(in 1966): in 1967 the U.S./Zl. expects and evidently will have a working variant of the

"Saturn-5" with a launch mass of 2.?'00-3,000 tons, at which time the LI.S.A will be

able to fly into space many times without limitations. It's possible to visualize the following scenario: what is to prevent the LLS./Zt. from accelerating its work a little bit

(which is of enormous scale and part of a well coordinated plan), to not only fly around

the Moon, but also to land men on its surface in 1967. the year of the fiftieth anniversary

of the first 5oviet state on our planet? There are three years left to that momentous date.

In this time, we can pay attention to and organize our work to solve the problem of landing Soviet researchers on the surface of the Moon and secure their return to Earth .... _

Only the draft of the letter has been declassified, but Korolev's language strongly hints at

his priorities of the period. The piloted lunar program had clearly split into two disjointed

efforts: a circumlunar track with proposals from Chelomey (LK-I) and Korolev (Soyuz) and a

landing track with proposals from Yangel (R-56) and Korolev (N I). With Apollo rising, the

chief designers all rushed to respond. There is no question that the leading space designers

were indeed scared to the bone by Apollo. Although Western observers had nary a clue, the

heydays of Sputnik and Gagarin were irrevocably over.

Just three days after signing the draft of the letter to Brezhnev, on May 28, 1964, the first

dummy Apollo spacecraft was inserted into Earth orbit by the sixth Saturn I booster. '7_For those

"within the know" in the Soviet space program, the contrast between the obsolete Vostok and

the flying Apollo was crystal clear. The impetus to approve Korolev's program, if on shaky

ground before, had a more imposing imperative. Within two months, the Central Committee

and the Council of Ministers issued two landmark decrees that finally responded to Apollo. The

first one, on June 19, guaranteed additional funding for the N I lunar rocket and reset the start

of flight testing to 1966 from the originally mandated 1965. '7' Given the damage caused by the

inactivity in 1963-64, some engineers privately believed that even 1966 was too optimistic. To

support the future Soviet space projects, a total of sixteen N I boosters were to be manufactured between 1966 and 1968. '_

172 Ibid, p 23. Author's emphasis

173 Roger E Bilstein, Stages to Saturn. A Technological History o[ the /qpotlo/Saturn Launch Vehicles

(Washington, DC: NASA SP-4206. 1996), pp. 328-29.

174. Note that one source suggests that this decreewas issued on July 27, 1964. not June 19 Forthe for

mar, see Raushenbakh.ed, S R Korolev i ego deto, p 444 Forthe latter, seepp. 692-93 in the same source_This

decree also "invited" OKB-586 and OKB-456 to cooperate with OKB-I on developing the N I.

175. Afanasyev, "N I: Absolutely Secret:Part I1." Another reliable source states that twelve N i boosters were

to built as per the original plan. SeeBoris Arkadyevich Dorofeyev, "History of the Development of the N I-L3 Moon

Program." presentedat the 10th International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Moscow

State University, Moscow. Russia,June 20-21, 1995. Four days after this decree was issued, on June 23, 1964,

Korolev convened for the first time atl the leading chief designersof the space program to discuss both the NI and

its use for a piloted lunar landing. The central point of debate was whether to directly develop a high energy liquid

hydrogen-equipped N I or to begin with a conventional propellant variant and then move to the more advancedver

sion. Given the government's poor responsein supporting liquid-propellant engine development, the chief designers overwhelmingly supported initial development of the conservative "K" variant: Korolev proposedthat they would

"gradually" develop the most preferredliquid hydrogenversion, the "V3," for future missions. Fivedifferent models

of the N I wereconsidered: K, V l. V2. V3, and D A. These differed as follows: K liquid oxygen (LOX) keroseneon

all stages: VI--LOX-liquid hydrogen on first stage: V2--LOX-liquid hydrogen on second stage: V3--LOX-liquid

hydrogen on third stage: and D-A--nitrogen tetroxide-unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) on all stages.

The D-A was proposed by Chief Designer V. P. Glushko, who evidently had not abandoned his quest to use storable propellants on the N I despite the July 1962 decision by the Academy ol Sciencesrecommending the use of

cryogemc propellants on the booster, Gtushko believedthat a "new" fuel, hydrazine-50, would allow better charac

teiistics than his earlier proposal in 1962to use UDMH Korolev compromised with Glushko and agreedto let three

teams assessthe usefulness of Glushko's proposal. These teamswere led by V, S. Budnik (OKB-586), V. P Mishin

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
SPACE POLITICS

The following month, on July 24, 1964, at a meeting hosted at the Military-Industrial

Commission, its Chairman Smimov fully sanctioned Korolev's proposal on the L3 lunar expedition as well as further work on liquid hydrogen rocket engines. '_6A week later, on August 3, the

second decree (no. 655-268), titled "On Work on Research on the Moon and Outer Space," was

signed into law, _7 It was a comprehensive "five-year plan" on space, which covered everything--scientific satellites, probes to Venus and Mars, spaceplanes, military satellites, and the

Soviet piloted space program. Within the framework of the piloted space program, the Soviet

Llnion committed to two separate piloted lunar projects to retain its status as the world's preeminent space power. The first was a human circumlunar project, and the second was a lunar

landing project. The former was tasked to Chelomey's OKB-52: his new LK-I single-pilot spacecraft would be launched on a modification of the LIR-500 ICBM to accomplish a circumlunar

flight before the beginning of the second quarter of 1967--that is, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution later in the year. '7. Funding was apportioned for the construction

of twelve LK-I vehicles. In addition to the circumlunar program, a program of four test launches to convert the LIR-500 missile into a space launch vehicle was approved. Each of the boosters would carry a new heavy scientific satellite to be developed by Chelomey in cooperation with

the Scientific-Research Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University. '79

The commitment to Chelomey's LK-I circumlunar proposat was clear evidence of the

astounding confusion inherent in the Soviet space program at the time. less than two years

before, the Soviet leadership had approved Korolev's 7K-9K-I I K Soyuz complex for the exact

same mission. Yet another victim of the rising and falling fortunes of chief designers, Korolev's

program effectively received its death knell on August 3, 1964, despite at least two years of continuous work on elements of the Soyuz complex. What prompted this change of heart remains

in the realm of speculation. Perhaps it was the complexity of the 7K-9K-tlK plan, which

required four to five dockings in Earth orbit. Perhaps Chelomey's plan offered advantages that

Korolev's did not. Perhaps it was a case of Chelomey's charms winning over Korolev's charms.

Or perhaps it was simply a decision made with no rational thought. What is clear is that

Korolev fought hard for the Soyuz complex but lost. What is also clear is that true to character, he refused to give up on the circumlunar effort, raising the specter of many more battles

between the two big designers.

(OKB-I). and V. P Radovskiy (OKB 456). Given the allegiances of Mishin and Radovskiy.their recommendations

were no doubt a foregoneconclusion. The overall meeting was attended by S.P. Korolev (OKB- I ), A. F.Bogomolov

(OKB MEI), Ye.Ya. Boguslavskiy (Nil 885), V. R Barmin (GSKB SpetsMash)_V. S. Budnik (OKB-586]. V. RGlushko

(OKB-456). M. A Golubev (OKB-154), A. Yu. Ishlinskiy (AN SSSR).M. V. Keldysh (AN SSSR),M. A Kuzmin

(OKB 165), N. D. Kuznetsov (OKB-276), V I. Kuznetsov (NII-944), A M. Lyulka (OKB 165). V. F_Mishin

(OKB-I). N ,q. Pilyugin (Nil AP), M. S. Ryazanskiy (Nil Priborostroyeniya), M. K. Yangel (OKB-586). and A P

Yeliseyev(OKB-2). OKB-I notes on the meeting have been reproduced as "Minute Notes at the Meeting of Chief

Designerson the Course of Work on the N-I Heavy Carrier" (English title), in Raushenbakh,ed.. S R Koroleu i ego

deto, pp. 455-60.

176. Raushenbakh. ed, S P Koroieu i ego deto. p. 693. In attendance, besides Smirnov, were V N.

Chelomey, M. V. Keldysh, and S. P. Korolev.

177 Semenov, ed. RGketnoKosmieheskoyoKorporatsiya. p. 252: V Filin, "At the Requestof the Reader:

The N I-L3 Project" (English title). ,'qvic_tsiyai kosmonczutikano. 12 (December 1991): 44-45: Vetrov, "The Difficult

Fateof the N I Rocket":Afanasyev, "Nl:AbsolutelySecret: Partll":N Kamanin."AGoaIWorth Fightingfor.. "

(English title). Vozdushmy transport 44(1993): 8-9.

178. Kamanin, "In the Future His Name Will ProbablyBe...": Igor Alanasyev, "Without the StampSecret':

Circling the Moon: Chelomey's Project" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda. October 28, 1995. Note that the latter

source suggests that the title of the decree was "On Researchon the Moon and Future Development Work on

Researchinto Cosmic Space."

t 79 Khrushchev, l',likita Khrushcheu: tom 2, pp. 47;'-78: V. Petrakovand I_Afanasyev. "'Proton' Passion"

(English title), Z]uiatsiya i kosmorzautikGno. 4 (April 1993): 10-12. There were evidently other provisions of the

decree related to Chelomey_including the development of more Raketoplans and winged and ballistic missiles.

407
408

The most important element of the August 1964 decree was clearly the commitment to a

lunar landing competitive with the Apollo program. According to the guidelines of the document, which still remains classified, the lunar landing was to take place in 1961 or 1968, to

roughly coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Revolution. For the Soviets,

the Kennedy deadline of 1969 was far less an important factor than the national celebration

slated for 1967, a factor that was accurately picked up by both NASA and U.S. intelligence services in the mid-1960s. The actual landing was to be accomplished with the aid of the "L3"

lunar complex launched on a single N I booster. OKB-I was given the contract to design and

build the L3. While Korolev had lost out to Chelomey for the circumlunar program, he did win

over Yangel's R-56 proposal. In the same decree approving further work on the N I, dated June

19, the Soviet government ordered the cessation of all work on the R-56 booster. In the world

of political infighting among the designers, Yangel's engineers did not take the decision lightly. As one recalled, "[the R-56 was canceled] without any visible causes and reasons, this development work was suddenly stopped... [and] many specialists and scientists were sorry about

this decision.' .... Perhaps there was some sense in the decision: Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and

Smirnov may have been ready to squander piloted space program resources on both Chelomey

and Korolev, but adding a third participant may have been simply too much. Khrushchev himself was reportedly reluctant to allow Yangel's heavy participation in space programs, believing

that such a state of affairs might divert the otherwise focused designer from building better

missiles for the Soviet state, i_:

It took the Soviet Union three years and three months to respond to Kennedy's speech to

go to the Moon. Given what we now know about the relative poverty and ferocious infighting

symptomatic of the Soviet piloted space program, this is not so odd. Westerners in the 1960s,

with little information, naturally assumed that the piloted space program was a huge priority to

the Soviet state--an indispensable vehicle for publicity relations that was at the center of Soviet

science and technology policy. The blunt and sometimes caricatured propaganda that emanated from the Soviet press merely confirmed the worst fears of Western alarmists, tn the Western

writing on Soviet space history, it almost became customary to tout in every third paragraph

how Khrushchev was continuously scheming to extract more propaganda benefits from his

hapless pawn Korolev by ordering him to do this or that. The reality could not have been further from that. Khrushchev, it seems, was more concerned about money and missiles than he

was about cosmonauts and the cosmos. Perhaps influenced by his son, or perhaps by his own

instincts, he was never particularly interested in competing with Apollo. '_: It was only Korolev's

singular persistence--in letters, at meetings, and during conferences--that resulted in the

August 1964 decision, It may have been the most important decision in the history of the early

Soviet space program for it set the stage for ten long years of elusively searching for the Moon.

In the end, the Moon proved to be as elusive for the Soviets during the era of Apollo as being

first in space was for the Americans during the era of Sputnik.

180. Konyukhov and Pashchenko,"History of SpaceLaunch Vehicles Development/' One factor that played

against the R-56was that it would only be capableo[ accomplishing circumlunar [light or robotic lunar exploration.

Becauseit was even less powerful than the N It the R-56would have had to fly multiple missions to perform a single piloted landing on the Moon

181. See,for example, Khrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu: tom 2. p. 169.

182 One Sovietjournalist remarkedin 1990that one of the reasonsfor Khrushchev's apparent reluctance to

commit to a lunar landing program may have been becauseof advice from his son Sergey.who was an engineer

under Chelomey. SeeLeonard Nikishin. "Inside The Moon Race," Moscow News, April I I. 1990,p 15.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
CHRPTER TEN

THINGS IN HERVEN

RND EARTH,,,"

The Voskhod project effectively diverted attention from the natural progression of piloted

space plans at OKB-I. The Soyuz program was temporarily in oblivion, having lost its primary

raison d'etre, while more adventurous plans such as interplanetary ships and huge space

stations began to fall by the wayside in the competition with Apollo. As a result, the twelve

months spanning the two Voskhod missions was a period best characterized as limbo for

OKB-I: two spectacular missions emerged from the mysterious vacuum of the Soviet space

program, disappearing forever, leaving no visible trace of exactly what gain had been extracted

from the effort.

How to Design a Voskhod

A group of fifty engineers at OKB-I under "lead designer" Yevgeniy A. Frolov were

assigned the task of modifying the basic 3KA Vostok vehicle into the 3KV Voskhod vehicle

within five months. The primary goal was to ensure a spaceflight by three crewmembers: all

the other objectives were supplementary• There seems to have been a fair degree of opposition

to the entire effort from Korolev's staff. Konstantin P. Feoktistov, the resourceful engineer who

played a critical role in the design of the Vostok, was on the Voskhod design team. He later

recalled how Korolev neutralized his internal opposition:

• . . we argued that it would be unsafe, that it would be better to be patient and wait

for the Soyuz spaceship to be built .... In the end, of course, [Korolev] got his way. In

February 1964 he outwitted us. He said that if we could build a ship based on the

Vostok design which could carry three people, then one o[ those places would be offered

to an [OKB-I] engineer. Well, that was a very seductive offer and a few days later we

produced some rough sketches. Our first ideas were accepted. We unveiled our plans for

this new ship in March or .Ztpril._

Feoktistov was the first to propose omitting both the ejection seat and spacesuits from the

Vostok, thus allowing three men to cram into the spherical capsule in regular clothing. There

were "heated discussions" between physicians and engineers on the spacesuit issue, but the

argument was settled by physical impossibility: it would have been simply impossible to fit

I. "The Russian Right Stuff: The Dark Side of the Moon," NOV, q television show. #1808, WGBH-TV.

Boston, February 27, t99 I.

409
410

three men in a ship in pressure suits. 2 The deletion of the ejection seat had serious safety implications for both launch and landing. During launch, none of the three cosmonauts would be

able to eject from the spacecraft in case of a launch failure: during landing, the cosmonauts

would have to remain within the descent apparatus all the way to the dangerous impact on hard

ground. Korolev addressed the first problem by tasking KB-2 of Plant No. 81 to speed up the

development of a solid-rocket-propelled launch escape system that its Chief Designer Ivan I.

Kartukov was creating for the Soyuz spacecraft. For the landing, OKB-I engineers proposed the

use of a "parachute-reactive" system first proposed for the modified Vostok missions in 1963.

This was a three-level parachute system augmented by powerful solid-rocket motors to decrease

velocity at the moment of landing. A final modification to the original Vostok design was the

introduction of a secondary retrorocket engine. In the early Vostok missions, the cosmonauts

could depend on natural atmospheric reentry if the retro engine failed. In the case of Voskhod,

there would be no such luxury because the life support system would ensure optimal conditions for three people for only one day. If the retro engine failed after that day, the crew would

die by the time of natural decay. The backup engine would ensure against such a possibility.

Engineers benefited from the fact that almost all the major modifications to the original Vostok,

such as the use of a reserve retro-rocket engine, had already been planned for the unflown

"extended Vostok" missions in 1963. Thus the Voskhod design project was much less of a hurried process than typically described by Western historians.

Engineers completed the draft plan for the 3KV spacecraft in August 1964, and they began

construction of two flight articles) As plans stood at the time, the spacecraft would fly for one

day in a 180- by 240-kilometer orbit with three cosmonauts. Unlike the earlier Vostok vehicles,

the Voskhod spacecraft would be launched by an uprated three-stage booster known as the

II/q57, which was originally developed for launching Zenit-2 reconnaissance satellites. _

The primary changes to the Vostok spacecraft were:

The removal of:

- Spacesuits with their air-conditioning systems

- The catapult, its survival kit, and parachute system

The movie camera

- Biological experiment instrumentation

2 G Salakhutdinov, "Once More About Space" (English title), Ogonek 34 (August 18-25, 1990): 4-5:

YUrA. Mozzhorin, et al. eds., Dorogi u kosmos: I (Moscow: MAI, 1992), p. 63.

3 The draft plan has been reproducedwith disguised designations asS. P.Korolev, "On the Possibilityof

Creating the Three-Seat 'Voskhod' Space Ship" (English title), in M. V Keldysh. ed., Tuoreheskoyenaslediye

/qkademika SergeyaPaulouicha Koroleua: izbrannyye _rudy i dokumenW (Moscow: Nauka, 1980). pp. 470-76.

4. This rocket, also called "Voskhod," was yet another one in the long line of modifications of the basic

R-7 ICBM that Korotev was producing to launch a variety of robotic payloads. The smaller Vostok spacecraft had

been launched by the 8K72K booster, which was essentially the R 7 with a new upper stagewith a thrust of just

under thirty and a half tons That rocket could put about just under five tons into orbit, far less than the five and a

half tons neededfor Voskhod. Instead of creating a new powerfut engine for the upper stage. Korolev's people took

the engine from the second stageof the R-9A ICBM and installed it in place of the old upper stageengine on the

Vostok launcher. The new engine, the RD-OI08 developed by Chief Designer Kosberg's OKB-154, had a vacuum

thrust of 304 tons. The second-stage engine of the R-9/qhad the designation RD-OI06 and had a thrust of about

thirty tons. This engine was used as the basisfor several different engines, each with a similar level of thrust for a

variety of three-stage R-7 launch vehicles. SeeTimothy Varfotomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space:Part

4: The Development of a Four-Stage Launcher, 1958-1960," Spaceflight 40 (January 1998): 28-30: Timothy

Varfolomeyev, "Soviet Rocketry that Conquered Space: Part 6: The Improved Four-Stage Launch Vehicle,

1964-1972," Spaceflight 40 (May 1998): 181-84

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

• The installation of:

- Three shock-absorbing Elbrus couches

- New survival kits

- A reserve solid-propellant braking engine

- A spacecraft orientation system using ion sensors

• The replacement of:

- A TV system of ten frames per second in favor of a system of twenty-five frames per

second

- The old radio-channel system with a new one

- The old landing beacon in the descent apparatus with a new one5

By the time that the draft plan was completed, it was clear that Plant No. 81 would not

have a working version of a tower-equipped launch escape system ready for the Voskhod

launch. Korolev and his engineers took the risky step of moving on with a launch despite this

glaring disregard for safety. In its 3KV draft plan, OKB-I merely stated that it would be "difficult" to rescue the cosmonauts up to the first twenty-five to forty-four seconds of a launch: a

more accurate term might have been "impossible." tqfter the forty-fourth second, if there was

an explosion, an identical mission profile to Vostok would be used whereby the payload would

simply separate from the launcher, travel along a ballistic trajectory, and land by parachute.

Before T+501 seconds, this landing would be in Soviet territory: after T+501 seconds and up

to orbital insertion at T+523 seconds, the landing would be elsewhere.

In orbit, the three cosmonauts would have little to do except monitor the ship's systems

and take pictures. The new TV system, developed in a cooperative venture by the Experimental

Design Bureau of the Moscow Power Institute and NII-380, would consist of a camera within

the cabin to observe the crew and one on the outside of the vehicle that could be controlled

by the crew. One of the goals was apparently to take video of the third stage of the ITA57

booster after orbital injection as well as of Earth's surface and the Moon. The cosmonauts

would at most have one full day of safety in orbit: the engineers had predicted an outflow of

air from the Voskhod at 180 liters per minute as opposed to the fifty liters per minute on

Vostok--a significant regression in capabilities. The new automatic ion orientation was to supplement a manual system for positing the vehicle correctly prior to retrofire. The primary motivation for installing the new system was to allow the ship to orient itself during passage

through the "dark" side of their orbit, when the Sun was not in view. This had been a problem

during the Vostok missions in which the vehicles were equipped only with a solar sensor. Ionsensitive sensors would use the thin ionization layer around Earth to provide information on

the longitudinal axis of the ship relative to the primary velocity vector.

The spacecraft had the standard TDU-I liquid-propellant engine for the reentry burn. The

supplementary retro engine was fueled by eighty-seven kilograms of solid propellants; total

mass of the engine itself was 143 kilograms. The engine would provide a single powerful burst

of 12,000 kilograms thrust, lasting approximately two seconds, which was sufficient to deorbit

the descent apparatus. Following reentry, a triple-level parachute system consisting of an

exhaust, a braking, and two primary parachutes would bring the sharik down to the ground, g

probe, formally called the "distance contact instrument," would be deployed from the base of

the descent apparatus to a length of 1.2meters to make contact with the ground in advance of

the spacecraft itself. At contact point, just prior to landing, one solid-propellant engine affixed

to the base of the parachute would fire, dropping final velocity from about eight to ten meters

per second to a bearable two-tenths meter per second. The Elbrus couches were designed to

5. Korolev, "On the Possibility of Creating."

411
412

mitigate the effects of touchdown by reducing loads from twenty to thirty g's for only

five-hundredths second by the use of a special spring suspension system, which would allow

movement of 200 to 300 millimeters back and forth/'

Because of the placement of three new couches, the internal look of the spacecraft differed

considerably from Vostok. The three seats were placed side by side in a triangular shape, with

the middle one raised forward. The main instrument panel and the Vzor optical sight were

located to the left side of the three couches instead of in front as in the Vostok vehicle. The

dimensions of the 3KV Voskhod spacecraft were similar to the old Vostok: a length of five

meters and maximum diameter of 2.43 meters. The spherical descent apparatus had a mass of

2,900 kilograms, about 500 kilograms heavier than Vostok. The complete two-module combination weighed .5,320 kilograms.

The landing profile of the Voskhod spacecraft with the parachute-reactive system and its

landing probe was the focus of much testing throughout 1964, interrupted not only by failures

but also by Korolev's own schedule. Astonishingly, OKB-I did not have a single 3KV article to

simulate landings, an indication of the poverty of the piloted space program. Meanwhile, there

were literally dozens of similar vehicles coming off the factory line in support of the Zenit-2 and

Zenit-4 reconnaissance satellite programs. In a desperate move, Korolev asked one of his old

pre-GIRD associates, Petr V. Flerov, to take cosmonaut Titov's Vostok 2 descent apparatus from

the OKB-I museum, equip it with the necessary instrumentation, and test-drop it.

In the middle of the Voskhod development program, Korolev was allowed an unusual privilege: permission to leave the Soviet Union on a holiday. Through the year, he had been beset

by worse-than-usual afflictions. On February I I, t964, in the middle of a meeting at his office

in Kaliningrad, he suffered a heart attack and spent several days in the hospital.' Doctors had

prescribed a long holiday, which was delayed several times by more pressing work. Korolev had

always wanted to go abroad and had a particular fascination for going to England, but Secretary

of the Central Committee Brezhnev opposed any visit to the West. In the end, he and his wife

were allowed to fly to Czechoslovakia on June 27, the only time between 1947 until his death

that Korolev left the Soviet Union. Secrecy was tight, and he was not even permitted to register in the guest book of the Czech Communist Party's Central Committee, a standard honor for

important dignitaries. At the end of his visit of three weeks, he told his hosts, "When I come

to Czechoslovakia the next time, you wilt know who I am. ''_

Korolev was unusually ambivalent about his anonymity. Noted Russian journalist Yaroslav

Golovanov, in his 800-page magnum opus Koroleu: [akty i mify (Koroleu: Facts and Myths),

writes that the designer rarely, if ever, talked about the issue with anyone. If the conversation

moved in that direction, he would only say that anonymity allowed him to live a calmer life.

Golovanov argues convincingly that Korolev may have even liked it in some perverse way. He

liked the aura that surrounded his existence. When he read press accounts that speculated that

Academicians Sedov, Blagonravov, or others were possibly the anonymous "Chief Designer,"

he never felt angry or irritated, evincing only a kind of weariness and "secret joy" at the ignorance of the authors. Secrecy itself was a way of living for Korolev, and it seems that he did not

outgrow it through his life. He never kept any diaries, never brought any secret documents

6. Ibid.: A. V Ponomarev, "2 June--75 YearsFrom the Birth of Academician A. F. Bogomolov (1913)"

(English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 59 (1989): 47-50: K R Feoktistov. "The Development of Soviet

PilotedSpaceShips (Up to the Early 1970s)" (English title), in B. V Raushenbakh,ed., Issledouaniya po istorii i teorii

razuitiya auiatsionnoy i raketno-kosmicheskoynauki i tekhniki (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), p. II 3

7. YaroslavGolovanov, Koroleu fakty i mify (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 77 I.

8. Ye Chernykh_ "Was Gagarin Reallyin Space?:Cosmonaut No i Flew Around the Planet One Time

But This Fairly Shabby 'Canard ts Making the Umpteenth Orbit" (English title), Komsornolskaya prauda.

September 22. 1990, p 3

CHALLENGE TO i_POLLO

!

R

M

H

H

I !

i

m

N
"THERE P, RE MORE THIHGS IN HERVEN RND ERRTH..."

home, and never jotted down unauthorized comments in private notebooks. He may have told

his wife Nina Ivanovna about some of the people involved with the space program, but he

never talked about the program itself. When, after Gagarin's flight, she pressed him for details,

he made her repeatedly swear an oath of "eternal silence," explaining to her a dozen times the

need for secrecy. Finally, all he would tell her was that the rocket Gagarin flew into orbit had

three stages• Once when she innocently uttered the word "Tyura-Tam" in the kitchen, Korolev

instantly pricked up his ears, interrogating her for a long time on where she had heard such a

word2 About the secrecy in the Soviet space program, Golovanov writes insightfully that:

• . . this is exactly the path that we chose [or the space program.., during Korotev's

time. everybody and Korolev included, naively believed that secrecy was necessary

because we were ahead. Secrecy was necessary so that no one would overtake us. But

later when they did overtake us, we maintained secrecy so that no one knew that we

had been overtaken."

Upon returning to Moscow on July 16, Korolev immediately dove back into the Voskhod

preparations. Flerov had finished outfitting Titov's capsule for the drop-test, which was carried

out on September 6 at the testing range at Feodosiya in Crimea. The test was a disaster: the

parachute hatch failed to open, jamming the parachute in its container, and the descent apparatus, the second vehicle ever to carry a human into space, was shattered into smithereens. ' It

was clear that there were deficiencies in the new parachute system. Engineers from the

Scientific-Research and Experimental Institute of the Parachute Landing Service, the subcontractors for both the Vostok and Voskhod parachutes, were closely involved in diagnosing the

problems with the systems over the following weeks• Originally, Korolev had promised

Khrushchev that the first Voskhod mission would be carried out in August 1964. This deadline,

for obvious reasons, proved to be too ambitious• Following the accident with the landing, the

launch was moved back a complete month to troubleshoot the problem. As per original plans,

OKB-I planned to launch an automated version of the 3KV vehicle into orbit for a one-day

shakedown flight, albeit without dogs as originally slated•

Pilots, Engineers, and Doctors?

The question of who would fly on the Voskhod mission was an issue that was completely grounded in bureaucratic politics and clouded by personal interests unrelated to the mission

goals. For several years, Korolev had publicly spoken about sending "passengers" into space on

his ships. "Passengers" for Korolev was at that time merely an euphemism for young engineers

from his own design bureau. He was of the opinion that the ones who actually built the ships

should also have a chance to fly in them. This opinion was stated in a letter to the Soviet government in February 1962, but it was only with the Voskhod mission that there was state action

9. Golovanov, Korotev,pp 686-89.

10. Ibid., p. 688.

II. There are contradictory dates referring to this accident. One source suggests that it was in "late

August" Seeibid., p. 736 Kamanin implies in his diaries that the accident took place in early September•See N F

Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos:kaiga vtoraya. 1964-196699(Moscow: Infortekst IF,1997), p. 80. A third source suggests

February6, 1964,which is probably an error for September6, 1964. SeeB. Ye.Chertok, Rakety i lyudi: goryaehiye

dni kholodnoy voyny (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1991), p. 243. Note that there were severalearlier tests of the

Voskhod parachute system, but these probably did not use full-scale descent apparatus modules• For example,

Kamanin, in his diary entry for September 2, 1964, wrote that there was a failure on August 29 because of a

"spurious" jettisoning of the parachutehatch. According to Kamanin, by August 14, 1964.there had been ten landing tests of the parachute system, all probably without descent apparatuses.

413
414

onthematter.':WhileoneseatcouldbereservedfortheusualAirForce pilot, the remaining

two could be nonaviators. Korolev was well aware that the Air Force would find this completely

unacceptable: the military had already firmly refused Korotev's earlier efforts to train OKB-I

engineers for spaceflight.

For Voskhod, Korolev wanted to fly an OKB-1 engineer and a doctor in the extra seats. For

the engineer spot, he enlisted the support of President of the Academy of Sciences Mstislav V.

Keldysh. although it is clear that Keldysh was more inclined to propose a scientist rather than

an engineer, a difference in interpretation that later threatened to divide Keldysh and Korolev.

Deputy Minister of Health Avetik I. Burnazyan, a veteran of the medical service for the nuclear

weapons program, also threw in his support to Korolev for a doctor on the flight. '_ The pilotengineer-doctor combination was specified in the March 13 decree of the Military-Industrial

Commission, which had first approved the Voskhod mission. It seems that the Air Force had

conceded its position, retreating under the combined lobbying of Korolev, Keldysh, and

Burnazyan. '_ The fact that it was acceptable for these "passengers" to undergo training for a

space mission for a period of only three or four months suggests something about the manner

in which the leading officials viewed cosmonauts for the Voskhod and Vostok spacecraft--that

they were more inert observers than active participants. With the exception of the politicians

who flew on the U.S. Space Shuttle in the mid-1980s, it was quite possibly the most compressed training schedule ever for people preparing for spaceflight.

The Mandate Commission, responsible for approving individuals for cosmonaut training,

examined applications from a number of physicians from various military and civilian institutions during April and May, naming the following four finalists on May 26:

• Lt. Colonel Vasiliy G. Lazarev (thirty-six years old)

• Major Boris I. Polyakov

• gleksey V. Sorokin (thirty-two)

• Boris B. Yegorov (twenty-six) +

Yegorov and Lazarev were strong contenders, and both had influential supporters. By some

twist of fate, Korolev had recently met with Yegorov's father, Boris G. Yegorov, who was an

influential medicine specialist and a full member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences.

The older Yegorov had confidentially told the chief designer of his young son's desire to fly in

space. The latter clearly had the qualifications. Although a civilian, he had worked for a while

at the Air Force's Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine and, in February 1962, was selected as one of the leading doctors who were part of parachute teams for recovering the Vostok

cosmonauts. For some reason, Korolev was enamored with Yegorov, and with Deputy Minister

Burnazyan's support, he was well placed as a primary contender for the mission. Yegorov's

direct competitor was Lazarev, an accomplished Air Force officer and physician, also from the

12. Yu P Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya KorporatsiTa "Energiya" imeni 5 P Koroleva (Korotev:

RKK Energiya,named after S E Korolev, 1996), p. 425.

13 Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 73I.

14 At a meeting of Air Force officials on March 24, 1964, Air Force officers, including Kamanin and

Gagarin, agreedthat two OKB-I engineerscould fly in the "passenger" positions in the Voskhod. If such engineers

were not ready for the [light, then they could be replaced by two Air Forcepilots. The Ministry of Health proposal

for a doctor seemsto have been formalized by edict on April 2. 1964. SeeViktor Mitroshenkov. Zemtya pod nebom

(Moscow: Sovetskayarossiya, 1987), pp. 337-38.

15 V Semenov I. Marinin, and S+Shamsutdinov, Iz istorii kosmonautiki: uypusk I: nabory u otryady kosmonautou i astronautou (Moscow: AO Videokosmos+ 1995), pp. 21, 24 The date of birth and age of Polyakov is

unknown. There were four other doctor finalists: I. S. Ivanov, G P. Prostakishin, Yu. P,. Senkevich, and G L

Yaroshenko SeeKamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964-1966, p. 52

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE IVIORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine, with extensive research experience, exemplary flying

skills, and the support of every Air Force general involved in the space program. '6

To compete for the third seat, Korolev had sent fourteen of his engineers to participate in

medical screening: only one was accepted for training on June II, the ubiquitous Feoktistov,

certainly one of Korolev's most accomplished proteges. '7 Even at this early point, it was clear

that more than anyone else, it was the thirty-eight-year-old Feoktistov whom Korolev favored

for the coveted "engineer-or-scientist" seat on Voskhod. But the aloof Feoktistov had stiff competition from a real scientist, one whose presence on a space mission would be a significant

advance in bringing pure science into the Soviet piloted space program. Georgiy P. Katys, also

thirty-eight, and a Ph.D. from the Institute for Telemechanics and Automation, was known

informally as "Keldysh's man." He was then a researcher at the Institute of Automation and

Heat Technology of the Academy of Sciences. having been involved in a variety of spacerelated projects through the 1950s and early 1960s. Keldysh was not his only supporter: several other academicians, all heavily involved in the space program, declared their support for the

congenial Katys, who was chosen from a list of eighteen academy scientists on May 26, 1964.i_

There was an additional candidate, perhaps for the commander's seat, forty-year-old Vladimir

N. Benderov. a test pilot from Tupolev's OKB-156, who was apparently proposed by the State

Committee for Aviation Technology. '_

Benderov, Feoktistov. Katys, Lazarev, Polyakov, Sorokin. and Yegorov arrived at the

Cosmonaut Training Center in early June. Two of them, Benderov and Polyakov, dropped out

of the program within a month because of medical problems, leaving five--Feoktistov, Katys,

Lazarev, Sorokin, and Yegorov--to compete for the two "passenger" seats. _° For the commander's seat, the Air Force selected 1960 batch pilots Komarov and VolynoW' Both had served

extensively in a backup capacity during the Vostok program, although Komarov had been

briefly grounded for a cardiac problem similar to the one that had plagued NASA astronaut

Donald K. "Deke" Slayton. Even with the Air Force cosmonauts, Korolev put his personal

imprint on the selection. During an early training session in the TDK-3V Voskhod simulator at

the Cosmonaut Training Center, Korolev had quietly observed Komarov's performance during

training, and he made an on-the-spot decision, telling one of his deputies, "Here is the comrade who will command the 'Voskhod'.""' Although there were at least a dozen other powerful

16. Golovanov, Koroleu. pp. 733-34. Another source says that Yegorovjoined the parachute teams in

January 196l, See "People and Fates: In Memory of Boris Yegorov" (English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki 19

(September 10-23, 1994): 57-58.

17. Of the fourteen OKB-I engineers, six were eliminated at a very preliminary stage. These included O. I

Kozyuba and Ye.A. Frolov,the latter being the "lead designer" for the Voskhod spacecraft.The remaining eight men

were K E Feoktistov,G. M. Grechko. V. N. Kubasov,O. G. Makarov.V N Volkov, A. M. Sidorov, V A. Yazdovskiy,

and V. E Zaytsev. SeeKamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964-1966. pp. 51, 54.

18. The academicians in favor of Katys were A. Yu. Ishlinskiy. G. I. Petrov.and V. A. Trapeznikov. Apart

from Katys, there was one other finalist from the Academy of Sciences,O. B Moskalev Seeibid, p. 52.

19. Benderov's candidacy asa cosmonaut had actually been put forward asearly asFebruary9. 1964,before

the initiation of the Voskhod program. Seeibid, p. 19.

20. Six of the seven men arrived at the Cosmonaut Training Center (TsPK) on June I, 1964:the exception

was Feoktistov. who arrived on June 12. Although Benderov was out of the running for the Voskhod mission, his

candidacy for a cosmonaut seat was an issue of discussion as late as February6, 1965. Seeibid, pp. 61, 138.

21. Initially, by April I, 1964, the Air Force candidates for the commander position were V. F.Bykovskiy,

P. R. Popovich. and G. S. Titov. By April 22, the list had been expanded to include P. I Belyayev.Bykovskiy. L. S.

Demin, Ye.V. Khrunov, V. M Komarov, A. A. Leonov, Popovich, Titov, and B. V. Volynov. By May 2 t, the list was

narrowed down to four: Khrunov. Komarov, Leonov, and Volynov. Of these, only Komarov and Volynov would train

for Voskhod. The remaining two, Khrunov and Leonov,were to train for the forthcoming Vykhod EVA mission See

ibid, pp. 33-34, 43, 51.

22 Golovanov, Koroteu. p. 132.

415
416

individualswhomhehadtogoover,bylateAugust,Korolevwaspubliclystatingthatoneand

onlyonecrewwouldflytheVoskhodship:Komarov-Feoktistov-Yegorov.Anythingelsewould

beunacceptable._qsit turnedout,afinaldecisiononthecrewwasnotmadeuntiljustweeks

beforethelaunch.

OnAugust21,1964,theMilitary-IndustrialCommissionmetodiscusspreparationsfor

theVoskhodflight.Korolev,alongwiththeleadingchiefdesignersandmilitaryofficers,reportedonthestatusoftheprogram.Alsopresentwerethesevencosmonautstrainingfortheflight,

eachofwhombrieflyreportedthathewasreadyforthemissionlessthantwomonthsafter

selection.Thecommissionagreedtolaunchanautomatedprecursorwithmannequinspriorto

September5andtheactualpilotedmissionwithintheperiodofSeptembert5-20.Lt.General

Kamanin.oneoftheattendees,laterwroteinhisjournal:

The Voskhod. . . has a number of shortcomings. Most important among them is the

absence of crew rescue equipment.., in the first 27 seconds of flight, and in the case

of failure of the craft's parachute system during descent from orbit. Moreover, there is

absolutely no way the Voskhod can land safely through natural deceleration--the

reserves of air. water and food are small, and there is a high probability of over-heating,

The crew is very cramped in the Voskhod: There is five times less space and air in the

craft "per capita" than in the Vostok. In general, the life-support and safety conditions

are considerably worse in the new craft than in the Vostok/_

These feelings were no doubt exacerbated by the drop-test crash at Feodosiya in early

September. The failure delayed the launch dates of both flights--the automated one to

September 15 and the crewed one to late September or early October.

During this period, each side began to take its place in the battle to send its own representative into space in Voskhod. Kamanin insisted on Komarov. Volynov, and Lazarev--that is,

an all-military crew with an Air Force doctor. This position was supported by higher Air Force

officials until the hand of the Central Committee interfered. Volynov's mother was Jewish, and

his candidacy was unacceptable to Chief of the Defense Industries Department Ivan D. Serbin,

one of the most feared Party apparatchiks of the defense sector in the Soviet Union/_ More

commonly known by the moniker "Ivan the Terrible," Serbin had an impassive face but the

"doctrinal" clout that could make or break people's careers. Officially, "all personnel issues and

issues related to the dismissal, promotion, awarding or punishment of administrators needed

Serbin's approval," but his de facto influence over the space program was obviously much

wider, often encroaching into matters of policy/_

There was another casualty to political doctrine. The Mandate Commission was aware that

scientist Katys's father had been arrested and shot in 1931 during the Great Purges. Although

he had been fully exonerated of his "guilt" in 1957, his son was considered suspect because of

23. L, N Kamanin, "1Would Never HaveBelieved Anyone ." (English title), Souetskayarossiya,October

If. 1989, p 4.

24 Kamanin proposed the first tentative crews on July 6. 1964. They were: Volynov. Katys, and Yegorov

(primary) and Komarov. Feoktistov, and Sokorin (backup), These pairings were offered at an official meeting of the

StateCommission on August 12, 1964, By September 14, 1964, Kamanin was proposing Komarov, Volynov. and

Lazarev(primary). SeeKamanin, Skrytiy kosmos. 1964-1966, pp. 63, 69, 84: Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 737.

25 Boris Chertok, "At the Dawn of RussianCosmonautics," ZterospaeeJournalno. 4 (July-August 1996):

17-78 See also John McDonnell, "The Soviet Defense Industry as a PressureGroup," in Michael McGwire, Ken

Booth. and John McDonnell, eds.. SovietNaval Policy: Objectives and Constraints (Halifax, NS: Centre for Foreign

Policy Studies, 1975), pp 102 03 The Defense Industries Department was one of twenty-two sections in the

Central Committee

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

his father's fate. The KGB also discovered in August 1964 that Katys's stepbrother and stepsister had resided in Paris, although they had emigrated in 1910--a connection that cast suspicion on Katys's adherence to working-class ideology. Kamanin noted in his diary, "All this

spoils the candidate for flight. More suitable candidates should be found. ''_ In both cases,

Korolev was put in a difficult position. Although he preferred Komarov over Volynov as commander, he was also resolutely not anti-Semitic but was helpless to make amends for the poor

Volynov. Katys's predicament hit home deeper: Korolev himself had been incarcerated during

the Purges, serving at Kolyma, and here was the Communist Party throwing insult in his face

by refusing to "clear" the son of another Purge victim.

Feoktistov, Korolev's chosen man for the engineer spot, faced stiff opposition from the Air

Force. Despite his undeniable talents as a designer--Feoktistov probably knew more about the

design of the Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft than any other engineer at OKB-I--he was also

"a difficult, unsociable, and uncompromising man." His health was also not up to par. When

Kamanin first heard of Feoktistov's candidacy, he was reported to have blurted out, "How can

you put a man into a space ship if he is suffering from ulcers, nearsightedness, deformation of

the spine, gastritis, and even has missing fingers on his left hand? ''_ Doctors had in fact

brought in all sorts of documents stating that Feoktistov was unfit for the mission. In the end,

Deputy Minister of Health Burnazyan, under pressure from Korolev, signed a medical certificate

in Feoktistov's favor, and Air Force officials backed down. The deletion of Volynov and Katys

from the running and the support for Feoktistov meant that there were now two possible variants of the crew:

• Komarov-Feoktistov-Lazarev

• Komarov-Feoktistov-Yegorov

On September 14, Kamanin proposed the first version to Korolev. The chief designer, however, stuck to his earlier position and categorically refused to launch the crew without Yegorov

aboard, perhaps as a result of a promise he made to the young doctor's father. Both Korolev

and Kamanin came away from the meeting refusing to budge an inch, laying the ground for

more battles in the ensuing days.

Korolev was clearly under great stress at the time, and it showed in his behavior toward

other chief designers and junior engineers. Despite his poor health, he consistently tried to have

his hand in the most trivial of operations, losing himself in fits of temper if he was displeased

with something. There was also familial stress brought on by news that his wife would have to

undergo a major operation on October I. He twice flew to Moscow from Tyura-Tam to be with

her during the most intensive pretaunch preparations.

On September 18, at a meeting of the State Commission for Vostok, OKB-I Deputy Chief

Designer Boris Ye. Chertok reported that the misfiring of the parachute cover during the earlier

drop-test at Feodosiya was the fault of the design bureau itself. The main firing circuit would

have to be redesigned and rebuilt from scratch. Engineers scheduled new drop-tests, although

it was becoming clear that the automated precursor vehicle would have to be launched before

the results of the new tests were in. After the main meeting, a smaller group of the leading State

Commission officials met to discuss the makeup of the crew. Commission Chairman Tyulin fell

in with Korolev and proposed the Komarov-Feoktistov-Yegorov crew, with only Air Force First

Deputy Commander-in-Chief Marshal Sergey I. Rudenko and Kamanin in opposition. Korolev

lost his temper, yelling, "The Air Force is perpetually jamming up the works! Looks like I'm

26. I. Marinin,r'RussianCosmonaut-Scholars"(Englishtitle),Nouostikosmonautiki3 (January28-February

I I, 1996):49-54: Kamanin,Skrytlykosmos:1954 1956,pp. 76,17.

27. Golovanov.Koroleu,p. 737.

417
418

gonna have to train my own cosmonauts .... ":_ The following day, perhaps under pressure

from the Central Committee back in Moscow, Marshal Rudenko buckled under Korolev's

whims, and Kamanin was the only one remaining who supported Lazarev. He finally gave in

from exhaustion over the issue. Komarov, Feoktistov, and Yegorov would fly, just as Korolev had

predicted two months before.

For weeks, the seven cosmonauts had been in the dark about which of them would fly in

space. Their only source was rumor, Katys, for example, noted that before flying out to TyuraTam for the launch. Feoktistov and Yegorov were given Volga automobiles for travel around

Moscow, while he was given "a clunker." Kamanin, with his authoritarian character, did not

bother to include the cosmonauts in any discussion of the issue. As one Russian journalist

wrote, "True to form, Kamanin did not inform the cosmonauts of the State Commission's decision for a very long time, consciously keeping them in a state of suspense, helping him, or so

he thought, to maintain control over them. ''_9Over two weeks after the final State Commission

decision, the seven cosmonauts were still relying on rumor, unsure of who exactly would fly.

Operation Kedr

The intense prelaunch preparations for Voskhod were punctuated by an important state

event. On the morning of September 24, Khrushchev, accompanied by an entourage of the

highest defense officials in the Soviet Union, flew into Tyura-Tam to view demonstration

launchings of new ICBMs and space rockets. _r' The exercise, code named Operation Kedr

("Cedar"), was the second military event in September, following a similar demonstration near

Moscow of tank, artillery, and naval weaponry. The main goal of the grandiose visit was evidently to decide between competitive ICBMs that were on display: Chelomey's LIR-200 versus

'/angel's R-36, and Yangel's R-16 versus Korolev's R-91_. The three main designers, Korolev,

Chelomey, and Yangel, greeted Khrushchev at the airfield at Tyura-Tam before taking the Soviet

leader immediately to the launch pads. Launches were carried out over the next two days as

Khrushchev. Brezhnev, Llstinov, and the others watched. Although the decisions were not

strictly based on the performance of the missiles, when Chelomey's UR-200 failed during its

launch, he found himself in an embarrassing position. On the second day, Yangel successfully

launched his new R-36, followed by spectacular simultaneous launches of three R-J6 missiles

from underground silos? _

28. Kamanin, "I Would Never HaveBelievedAnyone .... " The StateCommission for the Voskhod launch

was established by decree of the Central Committee and the LISSRCouncil of Ministers on August 3, 1964.The

commission consisted of Chairman G g. Tyulin (GKOT), S P, Korolev (OKB-I), M. V Keldysh (AN SSSR),I. T.

Bulychev (MO), L. I. Gusev (GKRE), N, P. Kamanin (WS), A, _. Karas (TsKIK]. Kasatikov (affiliation unknown),

K. A. Kerimov (TsUKOS). A. A. Kobzarev (GKAT), g. G. Mrykin (GURVO), G. S. Narimanov (NII-4),

V N Pravetskiy (Ministry of Health), S. I. Rudenko (WS), Yakunin (affiliation unknown), and A G Zakharov

(NI[P 5), SeeKamanin, 5krytiy kosmos: 1964-1966. pp 73-/4.

29. Golovanov. Koroleu, p. 738.

30. Ibid. p. ?'40; gleksandr Zakharov. "Operation 'Kedr' or How the 'Proton' Was Saved" (English title),

Krc]snayazuezda, July 15. 1995, p. 4. Among those escorting Khrushchev were L. [ Brezhnev (TsK Secretary for

Defenseand Space), I. D, Serbin (TsK Defense Industries Department), A P Kirilenko (TsK KPSS), D. F.Llstinov

(Chairman. VSNKh). L V. Smirnov (Chairman. VPK). G. N. Pashkov(Deputy Chairman. VPK), R, Ya Malinovskiy

(Minister, MO), g. A. Grechko (Deputy Minister. MO). S. S. Biryuzov (General Staff Chief, MO), S. G. Gorshkov

(Commander, VMF). N I Krylov (Commander. IRVSN), V. A. Sudets (Commander, PVO). K. A. Vershinin

(Commander, WS), P. V. Dementyev (Chairman, GKAT), V. D. Kalmykov (Chairman. GKIRE),S. g. Zverev

(Chairman, GKOT), and G A. Tyulin (First Deputy Chairman. GKOT).

31 Golovanov, Koroleu.p. 740. The fact that these tests would occur was announced publicly by the Soviet

press See"Russians SchedulePacific RocketTest," New York Times. August I, 1964, p. 8.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

The YangeI-Chelomey battle over the new ICBMs had little to do directly with the piloted

space program• The political maneuvering over the missile sector did, however, have a profound

relevance to the Soviet space program• Khrushchev's son Sergey recalled later that the decision

to pick Yangel's R-36 over Chelomey's UR-200 may have had less to do with technical considerations than with the whims of Ustinov:

The military men at the test range had already begun to show a preference for the Yangel

missile. They were actively backed by Dmitry Ustinov. Ztlthough he was not directly

involved in defense matters at the time, as one of the fathers of missilery in our country,

he had extraordinary authority and his word meant a lot. As second secretary, Brezhnev

was responsible for supervising the defense industry, but typically--with his softness of

character--he had not expressed a definite opinion .... The energetic and single-minded Ustinov dominated the pliable Brezhnev. _2

This was definitely trouble for Chelomey and his plans to dominate the space program. Ustinov

had consistently opposed any and every Chelomey plan: during the Khrushchev era, Ustinov

had to be careful in opposing Chelomey because it was almost a matter of state policy to favor

the general designer. Chelomey had continually ignored Ustinov by going directly to Khrushchev

with this plans, although Ustinov served as the chair of the Military-Industrial Commission from

1957 to 1963. The battle beb,veen them was also personal, gs Sergey N. Khrushchev recalled:

• . . the personal behavior of both of them was not very polite .... Chelomey tried to

blame lJstinov for many things. Of course, Chelomey never did this openly in Llstinov's

presence. He tried to [exercise self-restraint] but could not stop himself. Zind of course

these people reported back to lJstinov .... I heard many times when Chelomey in his

own circles used certain words for Ustinou. . . and I'm sure that somebody reported

back to Ustinov on this _

Chelomey did not take kindly to Llstinov's hostility. Once when Khrushchev ordered

Llstinov to go see Chelomey about his LIR-500 rocket, Chelomey intentionally kept Ustinov waiting in his reception room while other designers and junior engineers were escorted into the general designer's office. Rumor has it that Ustinov never forgave Chelomey for this humiliation) 4

Llstinov and Chelomey would remain at loggerheads throughout the rest of their lives, and more

often than not, Chelomey remained a victim to Ustinov's single-minded crusade to destroy any

and every single program the ambitious general designer proposed, including space projects.

The results of Operation Kedr seriously threatened Chetomey's dominance, and

Khrushchev did nothing to stop it. For the first time since 1961, Chelomey was witness to a

cancellation of one of his projects. The LIR-200 was the critical center of all of Chelomey's early

plans for space exploration--the launch vehicle that would open the door to independence and

more grand boosters such as the LIR-500. Its cancellation was a severe blow because it was

supposed to have launched the first series of "IS" and "US" military satellites into orbit, while

also serving as a new generation of ICBM Despite the embarrassing failure during Operation

Kedr. the missile itself had performed without much trouble throughout its testing program,

which had begun in November 1963. All at OKB-52 were apparently demoralized by the

32. SergeiKhrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev: An Inside 7_ccounto[ the Man and His Era (Boston:

Little, Brown & Co.. 1990), p. 103

33, Telephone interview, SergeyNikitich Khrushchev with the author, October I0, 1996,

34. Golovanov, Korolev, p. 728.

419
42O

cancellation.Asanengineerrecalled: "[Chelomey] was obsessed with the recent meetings at

the test site and very upset about our failure. He blamed the latter mostly on Ustinov, for whom

he found some choice epithets. ''_5

True to Chetomey's ambitious disposition, he took the opportunity of Khrushchev's visit

to Tyura-Tam to propose a new project--one that was far more adventurous than the UR-200

or any other ICBM. Before coming to the launch site, he had his assistants prepare colorful

models and posters of his new conception, ready to unveil it in front of the gathered militaryindustrial complex of the Soviet Union. This opportunity came during a visit of the Khrushchev

entourage to the first launch pad for the UR-500 ICBM. All those assembled were clearly awed

by the beauty and grace of a full-size mock-up of the new booster, one that was being developed to launch the first Soviet cosmonauts around the Moon. Construction had also begun on

two huge silos for the UR-500, possibly the largest missile silos anywhere in the world.

Chelomey then unveiled a model of the two-stage UR-500, removed its payload, and put a third

stage on top of it, stating that such a model would double the lifting capability of the rocket.

Khrushchev pointedly asked, "Why not make a three-stage rocket from the beginning? .....

Chelomey replied that he preferred developing rockets gradually, step by step, to ensure the

greatest possibility of success; it was a pointed attack at Korolev's "all-up" testing idea for the

N I. When Khrushchev, visibly pleased with Chelomey's diligent ways, asked Chelomey what

the next step was. Chelomey unveiled a beautifully illustrated poster of his new proposal, the

giant UR-700 booster. Dementyev, Smirnov, and Ustinov watched in stunned silence as

Chelomey pointed to a drawing of the 4,500-ton heavy-lift launch vehicle that could send

Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon.

The UR-700 booster, a multistage behemoth, emerged from 1963 to 1964 at OKB-52, partly as a result of Chelomey's strong belief that the N I was a technically inferior competitor to

the Saturn V. He had argued over and over that the combination of Earth-orbit rendezvous and

lunar-orbit rendezvous for the N I was technically dubious at best, that its development program was flawed, and that its design itself was haphazard. In his opinion, Korolev had little

chance to "beat" the gmericans to the Moon with the NI. What was needed was a larger

booster capable of direct ascent to the Moon and back, something that would dwarf the Saturn

V, and something that was designed on the basis of existing missiles such as the UR-500 to

shorten development problems. This competitive proposal was the most ambitious attack on

Korolev that Chelomey had ever mounted. This sort of chaotic design process, whereby already

approved programs such as the N I lunar landing project were threatened by continually new

emerging proposals, was uniquely symptomatic of the Soviet piloted space program.

Chelomey explained to Khrushchev that with his UR-700, the Soviet Union could reach

the Moon with less money and in less time than with Korolev's N I. Khrushchev, swayed by

the dazzling presentation, asked Chelomey to prepare the necessary technical documentation

while he instructed Military-Industrial Commission Chairman Smimov to draw up the necessary decree ordering a high-level comparison of the merits of the N I and UR-700 lunar landing

proposals, g commission would examine the two projects and make a final decision. _'

Khrushchev and the others also visited with Korolev during their short visit. On the first

day, with his guests viewing, Korolev had launched a Zenit-2 reconnaissance satellite into

35 Khrushchev, Khrushcheu on Khrushcheu, p, 123. The ninth and last UR-200 missile was launched on

October 23, 1964.

36. SergeyKhrushchev, Nikita Khrushcheu: krizisy i rakety: vzglyad iznutri: tom 2 (Moscow: Novosti,

1994). 493-94: Zakharov, "Operation 'Kedr' or How the 'Proton' Was Saved": V Petrakovand I. _fanasyev, "'Proton'

Passion" (English title)./quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. 4 (April 1993): 10-12.

3? Khrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu: tom 2, p. 494; Khrushchev interview, October IO, 1996.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO H
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

orbit. _8 Khrushchev visibly perked up on a visit to the assembly-testing building where the

Voskhod ship was being mated to its I IgST booster. He was also shown a mock-up of the

Vykhod EVA-equipped spacecraft by cosmonauts Gagarin, Belyayev, and Leonov. The latter ably

demonstrated how a cosmonaut would be able to exit and return to the spacecraft in orbit. There

was also a successful launch of the much-delayed R-9P, ICBM. Korolev had been informed of

Chelomey's surprise lunar landing proposal before Khrushchev's visit to Tyura-Tam, but he

seemed not to have been perturbed by it at the time. _°The N I program was well into its hardware-building stage, and despite its problematic genesis, it did have the support of Brezhnev,

Smirnov. and especially Ustinov. Stressed by the state visit, the fate of his R-9P, ICBM, the threat

of Chelomey's LIR-700, and various other issues, Korolev was working at his most strained

level2 ° In a letter to his wife written immediately after the state visit, Korolev stated:

I passed these days as if I was in some sort o/o toxic furnace. In essence all of our work

of the past years was subjected to a reuieua of effeetiueness, arzd it wasn't only our firm

but others also. Fortunately everything worked out extremely well and I am in a good

mood. Tomorrow we start back up again uaith our usual work program. 4_

The "usual program" was, of course, the Voskhod launch.

Three Men in a Capsule

There were numerous glitches as engineers counted down the days to the two Voskhod

launches--one an automated test and one with a crew aboard. On September 29. Voskhod

lead designer Frolov reported that the fastening bolts for the Elbrus couches were three millimeters out of alignment with the corresponding holes. The shell of the vehicle had apparently deformed during the flight from Kaliningrad to Tyura-Tam. During the same afternoon, the

Tral-I P telemetry instrument on the spacecraft had failed. Chief Designer Aleksey F. Bogomolov,

from the Experimental Design Bureau of the Moscow Power Institute, confirmed at the regularly scheduled State Commission meeting that the entire spacecraft would have to be completely dismantled and the suspect part replaced and tested, delaying the flight by a week. The

fifty-one-year-old Bogomolov was not a new participant in the space program. It was in fact he

who had provided the telemetry equipment for the first Sputnik launcher. He also directed the

design of radio systems, on-board data recorders, telemetry systems, TV systems, and antennae for the ground communications segment. Despite his clearly significant contributions, for

inexplicable reasons, his influence and earned respect were marginal at best. He had been perhaps unfairly blamed for the Sputnik 3 failure to detect the van Allen radiation belts, and with

the latest Voskhod malfunction, Korolev tore into him during a meeting on October 5.

Bogomolov desperately tried to defend his position for an hour. Kamanin commented that:

38. This was Zenit 2 no. 43, which was launched by an 8A92 launch vehicle. It was named Kosmos-46

upon entering orbit. SeeZakharov, "Operation 'Kedr' or How the 'Proton' Was Saved."

39. That Korolev was cognizant of the UR-700 proposal is indicated in Kamanin's diaries in a description

of a conversation between Korolev and Kamanin on September 14, 1964 Kamanin wrote: "In SergeyPavlovich's

opinion, a Moon orbit using Chelomey's UR 500 rocket would be impossible without intermediate docking. Korolev

said that he asked Chelomey to work on the docking procedure, but the latter decided to make a new rocket, the

UR-IO0, which would makeit possible to avoid docking in space." SeeKamanin, "1Would Never Have Believed

Anyone,..": Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964-1966. pp, 84, 9 I,

40. SergeyN. Khrushchev states that the R-9P,programwas actually terminated at the time, being reacti

rated only after the falt of Khrushchev. SeeKhrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu: tom 2, p. 492.

41. Golovanov. Koroteu,p. 740

421
422

all of [Korolev's] carryings-on are no longer as effective as they used to be three or four

years ago. Korolev was going over the edge. and he did not want to understand that the

main reason for the shortcoming and mistakes lay in the absence of a firm plan. 4_

The possibility of a Voskhod launch to a great degree still depended on further drop-tests

of the descent apparatus to verify the new parachute-reactive system. Underlining the importance of the exercise, Korolev visited Feodosiya on October 5 to observe the test himself along

with his old cohort Flerov. Korolev flew in by airplane to Crimea, then directly transferred to a

helicopter, which would escort the tqn- 12 aircraft that would drop the sharK. Despite cloudy

conditions, he was able to view the complete landing sequence as the engines under the parachute fired to slow the capsule down to almost zero velocity. 4_With the success behind him,

Korolev flew back to Tyura-Tam on October 6, in time for the launch of the first 3KV vehicle,

spacecraft no. 2, into orbit. The launch took place at IO00 hours Moscow Time on October 6,

1964. Upon entering a 177- by 413-kilometer orbit inclined at 64.77 degrees to the equator, the

spaceship was designated Kosmos-47 to disguise its true mission. The spacecraft remained in

orbit overnight while ground controllers tested various systems. There were no major anomalies

during the mission, and the descent apparatus with its three mannequins safely landed by parachute on October 7 after a one-day, eighteen-minute flight. High-powered winds dragged the

capsule about 160 meters from the landing point, but a crew on board would not have had to

endure such an ordeal because they could have manually detached the parachute. *_

The results of the FeodosJya tests, combined with the successful Kosmos-47 mission, allowed

the State Commission to move ahead with a concrete launch schedule for the crewed flight. The

commission, under Tyulin's chairmanship, met on October 9 to discuss final technical issues. A pestering problem during ground testing of the RD-OI08 third-stage engine was attributed to problems

with the test stands. Lt. General Kamanin at this time formally proposed the Komarov-FeoktistovYegorov crew for launch, and the commission members unanimously confirmed the choice. The

cosmonauts themselves were present during the meeting: Korolev, Gagarin, Tyulin, Rudenko, and

others wished them good luck on their flight. The launch was set for the morning of October 12.

Trouble struck on October i I, the night before the scheduled launch, when Chief Designer

Bogomolov arrived at Korolev's office with news that there was an additional problem with the

Tral- I P telemetry system, which would require the replacement of the transmitter (a delay measured in minutes).Korolev, under stress, completely lost his temper and humiliated Bogomolov

in front of Tyulin, Rudenko, Kamanin, and others. Kamanin recalled:

That report enraged Korolev. He called Bogomolov a "cowardly gutter snipe" and

announced: "I don't want to have anything more to do with you. Co away--I can't even

be in the same room with you!" It was a very uncomfortable scene .... With that outburst of rage. Korolev toppled himself from his pedestal as a talented organizer into the

mire of petty passions. In four years of joint work. that was the first time I had ever seen

him in such a state. I was sad and sorry for Sergey Pavlovich [Korolev]. It was 15 minutes before he was able to calm himself down and coherently report tomorrow's flight

to Llstinou by telephoneP _

42. Kamanin. "1 Would Never Have BelievedAnyone .... "

43. Golovanov, Korolev, p. 741.

44. Note that the apogee(413 kilometers) for Kosmos-47was much higher than originally planned for the

Voskhod mission (240 kilometers) At some point after issuing the draft plan, there was probably a modification to

the planned orbital parameters.There was also a 10-percentdecline in third-stage engine operation for three seconds

during the ascent to orbit. The engine regainedfull-thrust mode soon after, and the spacecraft reachedthe desired

orbit. SeeKamanin, Skryliy kosmos: 1964-1966. pp. 96-97.

45. Kamanin. "1 Would Never Have BelievedAnyone .... "

CHALLENGE TO I_POLLO
j"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

The fault was quickly repaired, and the launch

did not have to be delayed.

There was a brief State Commission meeting on the chilly but clear morning of launch

day, October 12, held only 200 meters from the

launch pad. All the chief designers declared the

ship ready for launch. The bus carrying the

three cosmonauts arrived at the pad at

1015 hours local time. The crew were dressed

in lightweight, gray woolen trousers and shirts

and light blue jackets. Each had a headset with

attached earphones and microphones. Tyulin,

Korolev, Gagarin, and others saw the three men

up to the elevator before the cosmonauts took

the elevator up to their ship. l_t the top, the

crew removed their jackets and boots, donned

slippers, and entered the spacecraft: Yegorov

first, then Feoktistov, followed by Commander

Komarov. The tension was higher than perhaps

any other mission since Gagarin's flight.

Without a viable launch escape system during

the first minute or so of the mission, there was

absolutely no way that the crew could be saved

in case of booster failure. Korolev was apparently so nervous that he was shaking.

From left to right. Viadimir Komarou, Boris "fegorou,

and Konstantin Feoktistou. the crew of the first

Voskhod spacecraft, make their way to the launch

pad on October 12, 1964, prior to the launch. Note

their casual attire, a contrast to the bulky suits worn

on the earlier Vostok flights. (files of Peter _orin)

The Voskhod spacecraft, 3KV no. 3, lifted off the pad at site I at exactly 1030 hours,

I second Moscow Time on its I 1t_57 booster. On board were Lt. Colonel Vladimir M. Komarov

(thirty-seven years old), Konstantin E Feoktistov (thirty-eight), and Boris B. Yegorov (twentysix), representing the Soviet Union in yet another "space spectacular." Controllers watched the

booster take off, and there was a final collective sigh of relief once the clocks reached T+523

seconds: Voskhod had achieved orbital velocity and the launcher had worked without a flaw.

Initial orbital parameters were 177.5 by 408 kilometers at 64.9 degrees, exactly as planned.

Once again, the reaction from the West was unprecedented, prompting another round of discussions on Soviet plans to go to the Moon/6 Following orbital insertion, there was the customary conversation with Presidium members Khrushchev and Anastas I. Mikoyan, as well as

greetings transmitted to the participants of the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Each member of the Voskhod crew was trained to perform his own individual tasks during

the daylong mission. Komarov, as crew commander of the flight, had overall responsibility for

the functioning of the vehicle's systems. Among his specific duties was the operation on the

sixth and seventh orbits of a set of electrostatic ion engines installed on the exterior of the ship.

According to the Soviets, this was the first occasion when such engines were tested during

orbital flight. Feoktistov carried out a number of visual, photometric, and photographic observations of Earth and its atmosphere, the polar aurora and luminescent particles, and azimuthal

and stellar backgrounds for navigational and orientation purposes/_ At several points during the

46. See, for example, Souiet Space Programs, 1962-65: C_oals and Purposes, Achievements. Plans. and

International Implications, prepared for the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences. US. Senate, 89th

Cong., 2d sess.(Washington, DC: LI.S.Government Printing Office, December 1966), pp. 384-86.

47. George Wukelic, ed., Handbook of Souiet Space-ScienceResearch (New York: Gordon and Breach

Science Publishers, 1968), p, 59; G. V Petrovich, ed,, The Souiet Encyclopaedia of Space Flight (Moscow: Mir

Publishers, I969), p, 124. Note that the presenceof ion engines was not described in the original draft plan.

423
424

flight,hedescribed"luminousparticles"outsidetheporthole,verysimilartothefamous"fireflies"observedbyNgS_astronautJohnGlennduringhismissioni 1962.AnunnamedsextantwasalsousedbyFeoktistovaspartofanexperimenttoaccuratelymeasuretheelevation

ofthestarsrelativetothehorizon.

Themostextensiveon-boardesearchwasfocusedonbiomedicaltests.Forsuchashort

andconservativemission,thebreadthofthemedicalexperimentswasquiteimpressive.The

Polinom instrument carried aboard the ship was used for carrying out several functional tests.

These included: a series of eye movements in a predetermined sequence before and after ten

turnings of the head while recording electro-oculograms: periodic closing and opening of eyes

during the recording of electroencephalograms: and rhythmic pressing with the hand of a constant force for a duration of one minute, whose results were recorded by a dynamograph. The

cosmonauts also carried out a test to measure the coordination of movements while writing

four complex spirals, four figures of "6," and a signature with their eyes open and closed. The

results were measured by an electromagnetic transducer. Yegorov, the first trained medical doctor in space, actively participated in seven areas of medical experiments:

• Observation of the condition and behavior of the crewmembers

• Research on tactile, pain, and tendon reflexes

• Observation of oral activity

• Psychophysiological tests to determine the rapidity and accuracy of processing data by

using correction tables

• Measurement of arterial pressure

• Determination of thresholds of sensitivity to adequate and inadequate stimuli

• Determination of the acuteness of vision and fusion capabilities of the eye muscles

In addition, he took blood samples. Apart from the crew. other biological specimens carried in the ship included human cancer cells, amnion and human fibrolast cells, frog ova and

sperm, drosophila insects, tradescantia melanogaster plants, winter wheat seeds, pine seeds,

algae, and two types of bacteria/_ Drosophila were carried on most of the piloted missions

because they multiply so rapidly that the effect of microgravity and radiation on successive generations could be observed.

The extremely shortened training program for Feoktistov and Yegorov showed through in

their reactions to weightlessness. Within two to three hours of the launch, both began to experience disorientation in space. Yegorov felt as if he was bent over face downward, while

Feoktistov actually felt he was upside down. P,lthough the sensations apparently did not impair

their ability to work, both suffered these feelings throughout the entire length of the mission--

an anomaly that had not been detected on any of the earlier Soviet space missions, Both cosmonauts also felt dizzy when they moved their heads sharply. It seems that Yegorov had been

more afflicted, with his unpleasant sensations peaking about seven hours after launch? _

The short mission proceeded without much incident. On the sixth and seventh orbits, the onboard Topaz TV camera beamed down live pictures of the crew to the control center.

48 Yu M Volynkin, I. T. Akulinichev, P V Vasilyev./q D. Voskresenskiy,I. I. Kasyan,and D. G, Maksimov,

"Some Data on the Condition o[ Cosmonauts During the Flight of the 'Voskhod' Spaceship" (English title),

Kosmicheskiyeissledouaniya4 (September-October 1966): 755-67: Wukelict ed. Handbook o[Souiet Space-Science

Research.pp. 346-48.

49 Volynkin, et aL, "Some Data on the Condition of Cosmonauts": R V. Buyanov, V. V. Kovalev, V G.

Terentyev,Ye A Fedorov,and G, F.Khlebnikov, "Results of Medical Examination of the Crew of the Space Ship

'Voskhod' Beforeand After its Flight" (Englishtitle), Kosmieheskiyeissledouaniya4 (January-February 1966): 151-55.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO
"THERE ARE _V_ORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

Communication with the cosmonauts was supported only by the Signal VHF transmitters because

the LIHF transmitters were not operational, due to interference from Earth's radiation belts. There

was a communications blackout for six orbits, from the eighth to the thirteenth orbits, but when

controllers regained contact, all the parameters aboard the ship were within acceptable ranges. The

only anomalies on the flight involved minor issues. During the first six orbits, the temperature inside

the ship rose from fifteen to twenty-one degrees Centigrade, suggesting some sort of component

overheating. Later on the seventh orbit, Lt. General gleksandr N. Babiychuk, the Chief of the Air

Force Medical Service, raised some alarm when telemetry showed that Yegorov's pulse had fallen to

forty-six while he was asleep! In panic. Kamanin asked Komarov to verify the value, and the latter

reported that Yegorov's pulse was sixty-eight. This was later confirmed by other telemetry. _°

The mission was set to last exactly one day, but as Korolev was ready to give the order to

deorbit, Komarov evidently felt more adventurous:

Korolev:

Komarov:

Korolev:

Komarou:

Korolev:

Are you ready to proceed to the completion of the final part of the program?

The crew is ready. But we would like to prolong the flight.

I read you, but we had no such agreement.

We've seen many interesting things. We would like to extend the observations.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of

in your philosophy." We shall go nevertheless, by the [original] program, _'

With the quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Korolev ordered the cosmonauts to begin

preparing for descent on the seventeenth orbit. As with several of the Vostok missions, there

was no communication during the descent because of the failure of the short-wave transmitter, and controllers awaited tensely as the critical minutes passed by. No doubt, images of the

smashed descent apparatus at Eeodosiya passed through Korolev's mind. As the clock counted down, the chief of the Air Force search service finally radioed that one of his helicopter pilots

had seen the capsule coming down by parachute at the designated area. There was a final

report that the helicopter pilot was in visual contact with the Voskhod spacecraft, which was

lying safely on the ground: all three of its passengers were outside waving at the search team.

There was thunderous applause at the control room, Korolev was beyond relief:

Is it really true that it's all over, and that the crew has returned from space without a

single scratch? I would never have believed anyone that the Voskhod could be made out

o] the Vostok, and that three cosmonauts would [ly it into space .... __

The men landed successfully 3t2 kilometers northeast of the town of Kustanay in

Kazakhstan on October 13. The flight had lasted one day, seventeen minutes, and three seconds.

The cosmonauts were first flown to Kustanay, where they were scheduled to speak with

Khrushchev on the telephone, but Military-Industrial Chairman Smirnov sent a message asking

50. Kamanin. "1 Would Never Have Believed Anyone . . ."; Kamanin, Skryliy kosmos 1964-1966, pp.

102-03.

5 I. There aremanydifferent accounts of this exchangebetween the cosmonauts and Korolev Somesources

suggest that Korolev did not finish the quote from Shakespeare.SeeNicholas Danitoff, TheKremlin and the Cosmos

(New York: Affred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 161: Evgeny Riabchikov, Russians in Space (Moscow: Novosti Press

Publishing House, 1971), p 209. Other sources suggest that Korolev did complete the phrase See Gotovanov,

Koroleu, p. 743. Another source claims that it was Feoktistov, not Komarov, who made the request for the extension. SeeAleksandr Romanov.Koroleu (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, t996)t pp 474-75. Finally.one source sug

gests that Korolev nevereven quoted Shakespeare.SeeChertok, Rakety i lyudi, p. 248.

52. Kamanin. "1Would Never Have BelievedAnyone ....

425
426

them not to wait and to fly directly back to Tyura-Tam. Although the three cosmonauts felt

slightly fatigued, they were fit enough the next morning to give full postflight reports to a rapt

audience of 200 individuals, including the State Commission. A lunch followed with boisterous

toasts raised not only to the cosmonauts, but also to Korolev and those who had prepared the

flight. It was late the same day when Korolev, Kamanin, and others first got wind of the monumental changes back in Moscow. News had come in that there would be a special meeting

(Plenum) of the Central Committee the same evening, a complete surprise to the chief designers. By the morning of October 15, it was all clear: Khrushchev was no longer in power and had

been replaced in his two posts by gleksey N Kosygin (Chairman of the Council of Ministers)

and Leonid I. Brezhnev (First Secretary of the Central Committee). Kamanin had already been

instructed to change the cosmonauts' prepared speeches: instead of saluting Khrushchev, they

would salute Brezhnev and Kosygin." Thus, in a twist worthy of Orwell, Khrushchev's name

was scratched out and Brezhnev and Kosygin scribbled in. It was the end of one era and the

beginning of another, not only for the Soviet space program but for the entire nation.

Khrushchev's Twilight

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was one of the most important political figures in the origin and emergence of the Soviet space program. More than any other Soviet leader since, he

developed and nurtured the kind of personal relationships with the leading space chief designers that fostered a space era driven less by institutions than personalities. Institutions, of

course, existed to administer and support his agenda. In particular, he was responsible for shifting the burden of directing missile and space program policy from the government to the

Communist Party?4By introducing the specific post of Secretary of the Central Committee for

Defense and Space in July 1957, Khrushchev effectively laid the blueprint of strict Party control

over the space program, which lasted until the early 1990s. He successfully populated both

Party and government positions with individuals such as Brezhnev, Kozlov. Ustinov, Nedelin.

and Smirnov, who could be counted on to support his radical shift in military strategy from

conventional armaments to ballistic missiles. There is no question that without this firm change

in direction, a rethinking for which Khrushchev was singularly responsible, the Soviet space

program might have been a pale imitation of what it really was. As funding for the ICBM

programs grew to astronomical levels, the space program, being merely an arm of it, rode its

coattails to glory for the cause of the Soviet state.

tn the historiography of the Soviet space program, Khrushchev has been bestowed a character often approaching levels of caricature. This was to a great degree reinforced by his unwaveringly loud and often crude outbursts in the public eye--pronouncements that extolled the

raw power of socialism against the capitalist world. Western historians have generally depicted

a simple two-sided process, with the "reckless" Khrushchev always interfering with the apolitical "dreamer" Korolev. In this scenario, the former was always craftily manipulating the latter

into meaningless circus extravaganzas, thus diverting talents from more worthy endeavors. The

"manipulation paradigm," however, is far too simplistic a viewpoint to stand up to serious historical scrutiny. Khrushchev's policy on the space program largely depended on his support for

the concurrent ICBM program--that is, the former was funded to the extent that it did not

infringe on the latter. This is not to say that he did not use the space program as a propaganda

playground not only abroad, but also to curb off his political opponents within the Soviet Union.

53. Ibid.

54. William R Barry."The MissileDesignBureauxandSovietPilotedSpacePolicy,1953-1974,"draftof

Universityof OxfordPhD diss. 1995.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AHD ERRTH..."

Many of his speeches from the era clearly draw

attention to his role in the successes of the

space program. But this self-congratulatory

prose did not take away from the fact that he

was not particularly interested in micro-managing space policy in a manner that Western historians have attributed to him. Contrary to

accepted notions, Khrushchev never ordered

Korolev to launch anything because of a personal whim. The power came from implicit threats

of support, which he had the power to cut off.

In this respect, his personal relationships with

Korolev, Chelomey, and Yangel over missiles

were, in fact, far more important determinants of

the space program's direction.

Khrushchev met all three for the final time

in late September 1964 during his first and only

visit to Tyura-Tam as part of Operation Kedr. His

final brush with the space program was on the

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushehev appears in this

photo probably dating [ram the Vostok 3/4 mission

in ,Ztugust 1962 During his visit to the Sim[erepol

control center in Crimea. he personally spoke to both

cosmonauts Nikolayev and Popouich in orbit On the

right is Maj. C_eneral Pavel _. ,Ztgadzhanou. the lead

"[light director" o[ Soviet piloted space missions in

the 1960s (copyright Sergey N Khrushehev)

very last day of his reign. As was customary after each major space launch, a leading minister

or general would call Khrushchev from the test range to inform him that such and such launch

had gone off successfully. In the sycophantic world of Soviet Party politics, this was an honor

that was literally fought over. On the day of the Voskhod launch, the phone call never came.

The wheels of power had already begun to move ahead with the secret overthrow. After about

forty minutes without word from Tyura-Tam, Khrushchev had an aide call Military-Industrial

Commission Chairman Smirnov. Khrushchev's son later described their conversation:

"Comrade Smirnov," he began, restraining himsel[, "what's going on with Korolev's

launch? Why haven't you in[armed me?" The irritation could be heard in his voice,

Smirnov must have answered that the launch had gone as planned .... "Then why

didn't you in[arm me?" The irritation was turning into anger. "You're obliged to report

the results to me immediately." Smirnov must have said that he hadn't had time to call

O[ course, he already knew everything and was in no hurry to telephone Father. For him.

the change in power had already taken effect .... "What do you mean. you haven't

had time? I don't understand you! Tour behavior is disgrace[ul!" raged Father. Judging

[ram the reaction. Smirnou was hal[heartedly trying to justi[y himsel[. "Comrade

Smirnou, bear in mind that I demand more e[[ieieney [ram you! It's your [ault that things

are getting resolved so slowly! ....

Soon Khrushchev had a brief conversation with the Voskhod crew in orbit, by which time,

completely unknown to him, the change in the leadership was almost over. Within hours, with

the cosmonauts still in orbit, he was under house arrest. During ceremonies to honor the three

crewmembers of the Voskhod mission on October 23, Khrushchev, on a whim. got into his

automobile and ordered his driver to take him to his dacha. The fact that Khrushchev was going

in the direction of the public ceremonies was relayed immediately to Brezhnev, who was in the

midst of the function at Red Square. Seen on TV by millions, Brezhnev's face darkened at the

realization that Khrushchev might be heading to Red Square to cause a public scene with the

55. Khrushchev.Khrushchev on Khrushchev, pp. I29-3&

427
428

newleadership. /qides were sent scurrying off to telephones, until they discovered that

Khrushchev was indeed heading for his dacha3 _ It was his last brush with the workings of the

Soviet space program. He died, exiled from his past, on September II, 1971, at the age of

seventy-seven.

Ustinov, Smirnov, and Afanasyev

The immediate post-Khrushchev leadership was one characterized by a relative dilution of

leadership responsibilities: power was spread out between the Communist Party and the government. P,s one Western analyst put it, "Khrushchev's simultaneous assumption of Party and

government leadership was unacceptable to his successors, who restored the principle of collective leadership."_' In the new Brezhnev-Kosygin era, at least initially, questions of policy were

influenced by a set of checks and balances between the two arms of the Soviet state:

It [was] unlikely that a single official at the Politburo or other high-level would be able

to intervene success[ully and systematically without risking the combined wrath of his

peers. This was one of the key charges leveled against Khrushchev. _

This new "collective leadership" had deep repercussions for piloted space policy in the

post-Khrushchev era. In the new climate, the lines of de facto authority and power among the

competing designers were much less clear after 1964 as a result of the diffusion of power

among their chief sponsors. By the end of 1965. within a year of Khrushchev's fall, a

triumvirate of individuals rose to the top of the space and missile programs, and they each had

varying motivations that drove these sectors for the next two decades.

Prior to Khrushchev's ouster in October 1964, there had been much discussion among the leadership on creating a new governmental entity to administer and manage the space and missile programs. Through the late 1950s and early 1960s, this function had been undertaken by the State

Committee of Defense Technology, the "ministry" that had inherited ballistic missile development

from the post-World War II era. Originally, the Seventh Chief Directorate within the State Committee

carried out the management of the missile and space programs. Other directorates focused on

weaponry, such as tanks, artillery, small arms, and ammunition. The Seventh Chief Directorate had

clearly outgrown its initial mandate, and using it as a base, it seems that Khrushchev wanted to focus

all missile and space-related design and production in a new "ministry." By the time this entity was

formed, Khrushchev was out of power. In a move designed to reverse Khrushchev's drastic and failed

decentralization attempts in the late 1950s, the new Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership recreated the centralized ministry system by official order on March 2. 1965) _ Six State Committees concerned with

weaponry were renamed ministries, while a seventh, the Ministry of General Machine Building, was

created on the basis of the old Seventh Chief Directorate."

The Ministry of General Machine Building, more commonly known by its Russian abbreviation "MOM," became the center of all missile and space-related design and production activ56, Ibid. p. 173

57. Arthur J Alexander. "Decision-Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement," /qdelphi Paper 147-48

(Winter 1978/9): 6.

58 Peter Almquist, Red Forge:Soviet Military Industry Since 1965 (New York: Columbia University Press.

1990). p. 75.

59, McDonnell, "The Soviet DefenseIndustry as a PressureGroup," p. 90,

60. Yu Mozzhorin and A. Yeremenko."From the History of SpaceScience:Fromthe FirstBallisticsto.. : I1"

(English title), .,qviatsiya i kosmonautika no. 8 (August 1991): 34-35: N. Tarasenko, "Space Economics:

Achievements. Problems. Prospects.S. Afanasyev: 'The Rain of Gold' is a Myth" (English title). Ekonomika i zhlzn

16 (April 1991): 6-7.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

ity in the Soviet Union. Whereas before, space and missile design bureaus, scientific-research

institutes, and production plants were scattered among various ministries, the establishment of

the new ministry was a giant step forward in knocking down bureaucratic walls by bringing

them all together under one roof. MOM had official jurisdiction over almost all Soviet entities

involved in the design, experimental production, and serial production of long-range ballistic

missiles, space launch vehicles, artificial satellites, piloted spacecraft, liquid-propellant rocket

engines, launch complexes, and guidance and control systems. _ Curiously, one important element of the space program was not brought into MOM at the time, thus being the source of

serious problems later. As one leading administrator later recalled:

• . . with respect to rocket-space radio electronics we quickly fell behind since microelectronics and radio-electronic technology remained outside of the influence of the

MOM, instead remaining within the [Ministry of Radio Industry] and [Ministry o/

Electronics Industry] .... .Zts a result, it was a great inconvenience to satisfy the MOM's

demands for modern electronic equipment, and ultimately our [country's] space radioelectronic technology began to lag behind that of the/3mericans in terms of development periods, quality, and general scientific-technical level? _

Among those actively involved in the piloted space program, the design bureaus and institutes that were brought into MOM were:

• From the State Committee for Defense Technology:

- GSKB SpetsMash (V. R Barmin)

- OKB-456 (V. R Glushko)

- OKB-2 (A. M. Isayev)

- OKB-I (S. E Korolev)

- NII-88 (Yu. A. Mozzhorin)

• From the State Committee for Aviation Technology:

- OKB-52 (V. N. Chelomey)

- OKB-154 (S. g. Kosberg)

• From the State Committee for Radio Electronics:

- Scientific-Research Institute of Radio Instrument Building (M. S. Ryazanskiy)

- ScientifioResearch Institute of Automation and Instrument Building (N. g. Pilyugin)

• From the State Committee for Ship Building:

- NII-944 (V. I. Kuznetsov) _

6 I. There was apparently considerable resistance to transferring the guidance systems entities to MOM

from their original positions within the Ministry o| Radio Industries. SeeMozzhorin. et at. eds., Dorogi v kosmos.

/. pp. 44-45.

62. Yu, A. Mozzhorin, e! aL, eds.. Nachalo kosmieheskoy ery: uospominamya veteranov raketno-kosmicheskoy tekhniki i kosmonautiki, vypusk vtoroy (Moscow: RNITsKD, 1994). p. 288. The comment is by L. I. Gusev.

who briefly served as a deputy minister of MOM in 1965.

63. The remaining design bureausand institutes of the Sovietspace/missile program--that is, those that had

little or no involvement in piloted spaceflight--were spread out over various ministries. They included: SKB-385

(M R Makeyev) and OKB-IO (M. F. Reshetnev) in the Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM); OKB-117

(S. R Izotov), OKB-276 (N D. Kuznetsov), OKB-300 (S. K. Tumanskiy), and OKB-124 (G. I. Voronin) in the Ministry

of Aviation Industry (MAP): NII-627 (A. G. Iosifyan) in the Ministry of Electronics Industry (MEP): NII-I

(A. D Nadiradze) and NI1-125 (B. R Zhukov) in the Ministry of DefenseIndustry (MOP): and OKB-41 of KB-t

(A. A. Raspletin and g. I. Savin) in the Ministry of RadioIndustry (MRP).

429
430

The new ministry itself had several functional divisions

formally called chief directorates, each one dedicated to a

particular aspect of the space and missile industry. These

thematic divisions included strategic missiles, space vehicles, liquid-propellant rocket engines, guidance systems,

and launch complexes. _ The development of piloted spacecraft seems to have been limited to the Third Chief

Directorate, which probably functionally included both the

Korolev and Chelomey design bureaus? _

The man appointed to lead the new ministry was a surprise: forty-seven-year-old Sergey A. Afanasyev, an individual who was not one of the many experienced deputies

from the old State Committee for Defense Technology

expecting a promotion, Afanasyev had an interesting background, heading various "technical directorates" in

Ustinov's Ministry of Armaments through the 1950s.

Although Afanasyev was one of the famous "Ustinov

group" who rose to important national positions by the

early 1960s, it seems that he made a break from his main

sponsor sometime soon after. This may have had something to do with an incident in 1952 when Afanasyev was

This is the official portrait of Minister

of CieneralMachine Building Serge),

,;qfanasyev He served in that capacity

from 1965 to t983. during which

time he managed [he Soviet ballistic

m_ssde and space programs.

(files of Peter Gorm)

in danger of being shot by Beriya's henchmen because of

problems with engine production. Ustinov did not bother to defend the young gfanasyev, and

the latter was only saved when one of Ustinov's deputies risked his career for him. r° Afanasyev

left Ustinov's ministry in 1957, rising to become the chair of the All-Russian Council of the

National Economy in June 1961, where he became primarily responsible for managing the

defense economy. His appointment to head MOM seems to have been a move made to put a

check on Ustinov's grip on the defense industry, and in particular the space program, Afanasyev

had, by then, aligned himself not with Ustinov, but with Marshal Andrey A. Grechko. the

Deputy Minister of Defense.

Most of those who remember Afanasyev recall someone with whom one should not trifle.

A scientist later wrote:

[.._fanasyev] was a huge man with large, sturdy hands. Like "a hammer striker," we

said. When he chaired a meeting, the figure of the minister induced fear. His sentences

for employees of the ministry, whether they were general designers or simple engineers.

were brief and ruthless .... I was told that the man was vindictive and had a very long

memory. Members of his team secretly referred to him as "the Big Hammer.' ....

64 Not all the chief directorates and their specific functions have been identified A preglasnost account

identified four chief directorates in MOM--for ground equipment, for rocketengines, for guidance and control systems, and [or missiles. SeeAlexander, "Decision-Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement." p 22: Almquist, Red

Forge.pp 144-45 There were at least thirteen chief directorates in MOM by 1985

65. The FirstChief Directorateof MOM included OKB-I0 and MZ Khrunichev. the Second Chief Directorate

included OKB-456 and Nil-I, the Fourth Chief Directorate included GSKB SpetsMash and the ProgressPlant, and

the Fifth Chief Directorate included Nil Priborostroyeniya and Nil AP.

66 ForAfanasyev's own account of the event, see Mozzhodn, et aL. eds., Dorogi v kosmos: I. pp. 40-42.

67 Roald Z. Sagdeev. The Making of a Soviet Scientist: My Z_dventures in Nuclear Fusion and Space From

Stalin to Star Wars (New York:John Wiley & Sons. 1993), pp, 198-99.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND ERRTH...

gfanasyev had one First Deputy Minister, Georgiy A. Tyulin, Korolev's old friend and the former artillery officer who was concurrently the chair of the ad hoe State Commission for

Voskhod. The fifty-one-year-old Tyulin might have expected to head the new ministry after a distinguished and long career with good connections to both the military and the "Ustinov group,"

but his appointment as Afanasyev's chief deputy exemplified how latent friction was built into

the space industry by that time, as different factions jockeyed for key positions. Afanasyev and

Tyulin administered six deputy ministers, each with a different portfolio; 8

Afanasyev was one point of the triumvirate that would dominate the missile and space program into the 1980s. The second individual was Leonid V. Smirnov, the forty-nine-year-old

chair of the Military-Industrial Commission. More commonly referred to by its Russian abbreviation "VPK," the Military-Industrial Commission was the heart of the Soviet militaryindustrial complex. In the mid-1960s, VPK consisted of the heads of the seven ministries

involved in the design and production of military equipment: the chair of the State Planning

Organ (Gosplan) responsible for budget appropriation: the commanders-in-chief of the Air

Force, the Strategic Missile Forces, the Navy, and the Air Defense Forces: the deputy minister of

defense for armament procurement: and the president of the Academy of Sciences. The chair

of VPK was also simultaneously a deputy chair of the USSR Council of Ministers/_

In some sense, Smirnov was the head of the Soviet military-industrial complex, overseeing

the creation and manufacture of not only missiles and spacecraft, but also tanks, ships, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, submarines, nuclear bombs, guns, cannons, and so on. Thus

Smirnov was not only Afanasyev's boss, but also the boss of the remaining seven military

industrial heads. What is most significant is that Smirnov had also served his apprenticeship in

the space and missile industry. He was picked out by Ustinov in the late 1940s to head a

research institute specializing in radar instrumentation and was launched on a spectacular

career under the latter's sponsorship. Between June 1952 and March 196t, Smirnov served as

the director of Plant No. 586 at Dnepropetrovsk, which was associated with Yangel's design

bureau and was possibly the largest missile production facility in the world. When Khrushchev

had boasted about building missiles like sausages, it was Smirnov's plant to which he was referring. The Soviet leader had been duly impressed with Smirnov's performance during a visit to

the plant in 1959, and within four years, the young Smirnov had risen far ahead of contemporaries. On May 13, 1963, he was appointed chairman of VPK, replacing Ustinov, who had been

"promoted" to a higher post/°

68. The six deputy ministers of MOM were L. I. Gusev (guidance systems). N. D. Khokhlov (quality control), V. Ya. Litvinov (space and missile programs). Ye.V. Mazur (material-technical supply), G. M Tabakov (rocket

engines), and G. R Udarov (launch complexes). Gusev lelt his position in late 1965 and was replaced by M. A.

Brezhnev. SeeMozzhorin, et al, eds.. Dorogi v kosmos: I. pp. 38-39: Christian Lardier,LT_stronautiqueSouietique

(Paris:/_rmand Colin, 1992), p. 164:Almquist, Red Forge,pp. 141-45.

69. In March 1965, the seven industrial ministries that were part of VPK were the Ministry o[ Defense

Industry (S./_. Zverev), the Ministry of ,qviation Industry (P V. Dementyev), the Ministry of Ship Building Industry

(BYe. Butoma), the Ministry of Electronic Industry (A. I. Shokin), the Ministry of the Radio Industry (M D

Kalmykov), the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (Ye P.Slavskiy), and the Ministry of General Machine Building

(S. g. Afanasyev). An eighth and ninth ministry were added in February 1968 and 1974, respectively, These were

the Ministry of Machine Building (V, M Bakhirev) and the Ministry of the Means of Communications (N. D.

Psurtsev). See Alexander, "Decision Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement," p. 22: McDonnell, "The Soviet

DefenseIndustry as a PressureGroup," pp. 90-91; Chertok, Rakety i lyudL pp_311-13.

70. Michael Tatu, Power in the Kremlin. From Khrushehevs Decline to ColleetcueLeadership (London:

Collins, 1969), p 330: V. Pappo-Korystin, V. Platonov,and V. Pashchenko,Dneprovskiy raketno-kosmieheskiytsentr

(Dnepropetrovsk: PO YuMZIKBYu, 1994), pp. 54, 67, 10. Khrushchev's visit to the Dnepropetrovsk plant and his

impressions of Smirnov aredescribed in SergeyKhrushchev, Nikita Khrusheheu: krizisy i fakery: uzglyad iznurri tom

I (Moscow: Novosti, 1994). pp. 432-33.

431
432

SmirnovowedhisentirecareertoUstinov.Withinthe

spaceprogramitself,hewasclearlyinfavorofYangel'sprojectsandthenperhapsKorolev.Certainly,givenUstinov's

predilectionfortryingtocurbChelomey'sefforts,Smirnov

couldbeexpectedtodothesamein givensituations.He

was,of course,ultimatelyresponsibleto thewhimsof

CommunistPartyleaders.AsoneRussianhistorianwrote:

"[Smirnov]knewthatpriortodecidinganykindofissue,he

hadto clearlyunderstandwhatkindof a decisionwas

expectedfromhigherup."Likemanyother"cardinals"of

theSovietmilitary-industrialcomplex.Smirnovinstilledtotal

fearinhissubordinates.OneRussianhistorianwrotelater:

"PeoplealwaysfounditdifficulttomakeareporttoSmirnov

becausehisfacewassoimpassivethatit wascompletely

impossibleto seea hintofanyreactionthatyourwords

mightarouseinhim.''7' Srnirnov's responsibilities were first

detected in the West during negotiations of the first series

of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) in May 1972. His

active participation in the negotiations convinced U.S,

diplomats that he was a "tough and skillful negotiator" with

a "'technician's grasp of the issue' superior to anyone at the

table.""' Others remember him differently. Although he sucLeonid Smirnov was the Chairman of

the Military-Industrial Commission

('v'PK)from 1963 to 1985 He was the

effective head of the Soviel militaryindustrial complex during that period

{flies o[ Peter Gorin)

ceeded Ustinov as chairman of VPK, one engineer recalls that Smirnov was simply % rote

bureaucrat" who was "not as clever as Ustinov." _ Rote bureaucrat or not, Smirnov had the distinction of managing the entire Soviet defense industry through nearly a quarter of a century,

outlasting Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Kosygin, Andropov, and Chernenko. He would not retire until

the Gorbachev era. '_

Officially, Smirnov's VPK was "the principal coordinating body for military research, development, and production. It also [played] a key role in technical evaluations of new weapons proposals." _ Given that the space program was simply an institutional arm of the military missile program,

VPK did exactly the same for the space program. Every proposal that surfaced up from the design

bureaus past ministry heads eventually ended up at the office of the Military-Industrial

Commission, set deep within the fortress of the Kremlin. Because staff members of VPK composed

the draEs of all defense research and development decrees, VPK's rote straddled the boundaries

between policy formulation and policy implementation. Even in the mid-t960s, U.S. intelligence

officials seem to have been unsure of the very existence of VPK In a top-secret brief on the Soviet

space program dating from January 1965, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (ClA) wrote simply

that "responsibility for the direction of the Soviet space program apparently rests with an unknown

authority directly under the Council of Ministers." Much of the space program was still said to have

been coordinated by "the Commission on the Exploration and Utilization of Cosmic Space," the

1950s-era front organization publicized by the Soviets. The ClP, added that it had "been unable to

identify many of the individuals responsible for research and development."_

71. Golovanov. Koroleu. pp. 668-10.

72. Alexander, "Decision Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement," p. 20.

73. Khrushchev interview, October I0, 1996.

74. Golovanov, Korolev, p. 670.

75. Alexander, "Decision-Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement," p. 2 I.

76. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, "National Intelligence Estimate II-1-65: The Soviet Space Program,"

Washington. DC.January 27, 1965, p. 29, as declassified in 1997 by the CIA Historical Review Program.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE II_RE MORE THIH(;S IN HERREN RND ERRTH..."

If Smirnov and Afanasyev were the managers of Soviet space policy, then Dmitriy Fedorovich

Ustinov was its ultimate master. Since the formation of the Soviet rocketry industry in May 1946,

he had served as the industrial manager for the Soviet ballistic missile and space program in a

series of positions, culminating with his appointment as chairman of VPK in December 1957.

Through the years, he had been involved on an almost day-to-day basis with chief designers

such as Korolev, Glushko, and '/angel: it would not be an overestimation to say that with the

exception of Korolev, Ustinov was the single most important figure in the history of the Soviet

space program. His signature can be found in almost every single decree and decision of the early

missile and space programs, spanning a period of almost forty years. Until 1965, Llstinov had

remained a public servant of the Soviet government--that is, engaged in administering projects

rather than formulating policy--and it was evidently a job at which he excelled. Sergey

Khrushchev recalls that:

Ustinou was a brilliant man [but he] was very bad in strategy. He could not create a

strategy.., what to do, where to go... [things] like state policy or defense policy. But

once he received the order from Stalin or Khrushchev to do something, he knew how to

do it in the best way. When he was Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission...

when he received the order to do something, like putting together a decree of the Central

Committee and the government on a Chelomey design, he did this in one shot. He knew

how to do this. 77

On March 26, 1965, soon after the establishment of MOM, Ustinov was moved from the

government (that is, management) to the Party (that is, policy formulation). His new title was

Secretary of the Central Committee for Defense Industries and Space, the top-ranking leader of

the Soviet space program, He was also inducted as a Candidate Member of the Presidium

(which was renamed the Politburo in April 1966). '8

As a secretary of the Central Committee, Ustinov was one of about a dozen individuals overseeing every sector of Soviet society as part of a smaller group called the Secretariat, roughly analogous to the Western concept of a cabinet. Officially, the Secretariat's goal was to provide

"analysis and recommendations" to the members of the Politburo. In the case of the space program, however, Ustinov may have exerted a singularly powerful force that essentially laid the foundations of Soviet space policy. He decided which programs to emphasize, which directions to

conduct research, how to compete with the LI.S. space program, whether to time space missions

for certain holidays, when and how to penalize chief designers, the appointment and dismissal

of chief designers, and so forth. In Soviet publications of the time, Llstinov was said to have:

coordinated and led the work of institutions, design bureaus, [and] industrial enterprises with the goal of the most complete fulfillment of the tasks of the party and the government in the long-range strengthening of the economic and defense potential of the

nation, fund he] took up active participation in organizational work in the area of the

development of technology used for the research and mastery of space/9

There were also, of course, other full Politburo members with varying degrees of stake in

the Soviet space program. The son-in-law of one, Andrey P. Kirilenko, was a senior engineer at

77. Khrushchev interview, October IO 1996.

78. Edward L. Crowley, Andrew I. Lebed,and Dr. Heinrich E. Schulz, eds., Party and _ouernment Officials

ol the Soviet Union t9I 7-I967 (Metuchen. NJ:The ScarecrowPress, 1968), p. 84.

79. ,qtmquist. Red Forge.p. 2 I.

433
434

OKB-I. Brezhnev himself favored Yangel, both having come

from Dnepropetrovsk in the Ukraine. Ustinov was a little

more shrewd in his patronage. He clearly favored Korolev

throughout the latter's career, defending his proposals at

critical junctures, perhaps even saving his life during the

Stalin era. But while most historians do not question

Ustinov's support for Korolev, it is also an inarguable fact

that Ustinov was a strong supporter of Glushko. For obvious reasons, this caused complications in his relationships

with both.

Little is known about Ustinov's personal life or his

character. P,s with a number of other Soviet bureaucrats of

the time, people considered him "temperamental, impulsive, and rude. "=° MOM Minister P,fanasyev, appointed to

be a foil against Ustinov's bulldozing over the space program, recalled that for Ustinov, work was the only thing:

' He seemed to have no other interests such as hunting or

fishing. "_' Others say that:

He made his decisions alone .... After D. £ made

up his mind. a commission would usually be set

up to study the issue. It was composed of people

who knew the boss's mind and never missed a cue.

The decisions of the Central Committee and the

Council of Ministers were taken after a report of

the commission. The minister's personal opinion

was never cited to justify this or that decision? _

Dmitriy Ustinou is shown here in a

photo from the mid-1960s. With the

exception of Sergey Korolev. he was the

single most important individual in the

history of the Soviet missile and space

programs. His influence was not limited

to missiles and space: from t965 to

1976. he was the ranking Central

Committee secretary overseeing the

entire Soviet defense industry.

(files of Peter Gorin)

It is known that VPK or MOM, rarely, if ever, failed to approve rulings originating from the Defense

Industries Department in the Central Committee--that is, one of Ustinov's departments? _

Ustinov, Smirnov, and P,fanasyev were the three men who ran the Soviet space program

from the 1960s on. For Ustinov and Smirnov, the space program was only part of their responsibilities: both also administered the entire Soviet defense industry as it raced to reach strategic

parity with the United States, It is in itself a significant fact that the men who facilitated most

of the Soviet rise to gargantuan military superpower were also both intrinsically involved in the

goings-on of the space program. It underlines that inseparability of the Soviet space program

from military efforts and hints at the domination of former space program managers in the rule

of the Soviet state.

The Ustinov-Smirnov-Afanasyev trio, part of the so-called "Ustinov group" from the armaments industry in the 1940s and 1950s, was obviously not a solid monolithic block. _4 The

changes in 1965 had one institutional effect related to the military's position on space. Several

major artillery officers were moved into the Ministry of Machine Building from the Strategic

Missile Forces--all of them very strong supporters of a vigorous Soviet space program. Given

80. Nina Chugunova, "Notes on the Margins" (English title), Ogonek 4-5 (January 1993): 29-30

8 I, Mozzhorin, et at, eds., Dorogi v kosmos:/, p 47.

82. Chugunova, "Notes on the Margins." pp. 29-30.

83. Stephane Chenard. "Twilight of the Machine Builders," Space Markets 5 ( 1991): II-19.

84 For discussions of the "Ustinov group,' see Julian Cooper. "The Eliteof the Defence Industry Complex."

in David Lane, ed. Elites and Political Power m the LISSR(Cheltenham, LIK: Edward Elgar, 1988). pp. 167-87.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO

i

I 'i

N

I

|
Z

"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND ERRTH..."

pARTY MILITARY

The 1965 organization of the administrative bo&es in the Sower space program (copyright Zls_[ Siddiqi)

the cool attitude of the Strategic Missile Forces toward piloted space exploration, it is not clear

whether this was done to punish the officers for their views or to infiltrate MOM to expand the

influence of the Strategic Missile Forces)_ Given the sketchy evidence, it seems that the former

was more likely than the latter. One of those "moved out" was, in fact, the Commander-in-Chief

of the recently established Central Directorate of SpaceP,ssets, Maj. General Kerim/_. Kerimov,

whom the more "trustworthy" Maj. General /_ndrey P,. Karas replaced._ Thus, with the few

85, Barry, "The Missile Design Bureaux." Four officers of the Strategic Missile Forces have been identified

in this move: Lt. General G. A. Tyulin, who was appointed the First Deputy Minister of MOM: Maj General K. g.

Kerimov. who was named the Chief of the Third Chief Directorate of MOM, Colonel Yu. A. Mozzhorin, who had

been serving as Director of NII-88 since 1961, and Maj. General A. G. Mrykin, who was appointed First Deputy

Director of NII-88 under Mozzhorin.

86. For Kerimov, see N. Kamanin, "A Goal Worth Working For..." (English title). Vozdushniy transport 44

(1993): 8-9. See also "Col -Gen. A G. Karas" (English title). Krasnaya zvezda, January 4, 1979. p. 3, in which Karas

is said to have served as chief of a chief directorate in the Ministry of Defense between 1965 and 1979. The second

officer, Lt. General A. G. Mrykin, had served as the First Deputy Chief of the Chief Directorate of Reactive Armaments

(GURVO) since July 1955. Elpon the formation of the Strategic Missile Forces, GLIRVO was transferred to their juris

diction, and Mrykin had become one of the leading advocates of a stronger role for the Strategic Missiles Forces within the Soviet space program. He was next in line to command GLIRVO. but in August 1964, a junior officer (Maj.

General A. A. Vasilyev) was picked to head GLIRVO Mrykin evidently refused to work under Vasilyev, a former subordinate, and instead left the Strategic Missile Forces in March 1965 and joined the Ministry of General Machine

Building's NII-88 as its First Deputy Director. Ironically, at NII-88, Mrykin ended up working for a former subordinate,

NII-88 Director Yu A. Mozzhorin. See Mozzhorin, et al. eds., Nacflalo kosmicheskoy ery. p. 256.

435
436

space proponents out of the way, the Strategic Missile Forces were even less likely than before

to support "civilian" projects such as the Moon landing. The Air Force, fighting a losing battle,

did not manage to put a single representative into the Ministry of General Machine Building.

There was a final element of the 1965 shake-up--one that was motivated by allowing Soviet

scientists in space research. As early as 1959, Korolev and Keldysh had been calling for the establishment of an institution dedicated solely to conducting scientific research in space, but the scientific lobby, having served as lackeys for the military-industrial complex, were simply unable to

fortify their position into action. After much discussion within the Academy of Sciences, in July

1963, Keldysh fired off a specific proposal on behalf of the scientific community for the establishment of the Institute for Space Research. _ What changed the Soviet government's mind at

the time is not apparent, but it may have been motivated by the need to have a public forum to

represent Soviet space scientists abroad. Because the Soviets could hardly send Smirnov or

Ustinov abroad to talk about their space programs, it would be much more convenient to have

a real institution to indicate that the Soviet space program was one operating as a completely

separate entity from the military. The institute was formally established on July 14, 1965, under

the directorship of Academician Georgiy I. Petrov, a chain-smoking six-foot-tall, brilliant aerodynamics specialist who had contributed significantly to ICBM development. 8_It was officially subordinate to the USSR Academy of Sciences, Despite Petrov's best intentions, through its first few

years of existence, the institute found itself mired in bureaucratic politics: different scientific

communities all vied for a piece of the funding that they had all been waiting for since Sputnik.

It would not be until the early 1970s that the institute finally became a world-class institution

supporting high-quality scientific research on space phenomena.

Chelorney in Trouble?

Khrushchev's fall from power had immediate and dire consequences for the beleaguered

Chetomey. Propped and supported for the preceding four years by the Khrushchev administration, Chelomey all of a sudden lost his chief sponsor. Khrushchev would say many years

later: "1 am not ashamed to say that I gave Chelomei my support back then. He fulfilled many

of the hopes we placed in him .... "_' One wonders what Chelomey must have thought in

the days after October 13 when Brezhnev and Kosygin assumed power. Chelomey was

reportedly nervous as gossip in and around the organization reached a feverish peak on the

possible future for OKB-52 and its associated branches. Still reeling from the abrupt decision

to terminate the UR-200 ICBM program, Chelomey's first move was to telephone Kosygin.

Brezhnev would have been a more risky proposition given his close relationship with Ustinov.

Kosygin was, however, inordinately rude to Chelomey, and he refused to even discuss the

possibility of reconsidering the decision on the LIR-200. 9° The LIR 200 ICBM program was

8Z. This letter has been reproducedin full as M. V. Keldysh, "On the Organization of the Institute of Space

Research*'(English title), in V S. Avduyevskiy and T, M, Eneyev,eds., M. V Keldysh: izbrannyye trudy raketnaya

tekhnika i kosmonautika (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), pp. 4ZZ-78.

88 Yu, I Zaytsev, " 14July--25 YearsSince the Organization of the Institute for SpaceResearchof the AN

SSSR(1965)" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 64 (1990): 54-58. Pinofficial decreeof the Academy

o[ Scienceson the institute's formation was issued on July 9, 1965.

89. Nikita S Khrushchev, Khrushcheu Remembers The C_lasnostTapes (Boston: Little & Brown. 1990),

p. 188.

90 Khrushchev. Nikita Khrusheheu: tom 2, pp. 514-15. The ninth and last UR-200 was launched on

October 23, 1964,from Tyura Tam. SeeS. A. Zhiltsov, ed., Gosudorstuennyy kosmicheskiynauehno-proizuodstuennyy

tsentr imeni M V Khrunieheua (Moscow: RLISSLIT,1997), p. 58: Mikhail Rudenko. "Designer Chelomey's Rocket

Planes" (English title), Vozdushniy transport 51 (1995): 8.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

formally terminated soon after, squelching one of Chelomey's primary means to gain access

to space. 9_

Because one of the early goals of the Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership was to "reverse" the

decisions of the Khrushchev era, the entire OKB-52 came under great scrutiny. There was even

talk of completely dissolving the design bureau. Several special commissions were established

in October to investigate, among other things, "the value of storage materials, book-keeping,

the completion of plans, [and] the observance of secrecy" at OKB-52? 2 Everything--from the

size of the carpet in Chelomey's dacha to the finances for the UR-200 program--was audited

or inspected. One of the first casualties of this unusual backlash was the size of Chelomey's

empire. By late 1964, he was overseeing a design bureau and branches twice the size of

Korolev's OKB-I. Thus, the first order of business was to deprive OKB-52 of its branches. The

most vulnerable of these was Branch No. 3 located at Khimki. This subsidiary, consisting of

the old Lavochkin design bureau and its associated plant, had been tasked by Chelomey to work

on anti-ship cruise missiles, such as the P-70 Ametist in the early 1960s. allowing him to concentrate on ICBMs and space programs at the central office. The winds of change were, however, too quick for Chelomey. The very day after the change of power, on October 15, the

Lavochkin bureau "unofficially" separated itself from Chelomey? _ Many of Chelomey's representatives, including Chief Designer Arkadiy I. Eidis, returned to Reutov with their files and

work on the Ametist missile, while the original Lavochkin people found a new calling: automated lunar and interplanetary spacecraft.

For some months, Korolev had been discussing the possibility of "farming out" specific

themes related to space exploration to other organizations. While his OKB-I had developed

the first piloted spacecraft, communications satellites, robotic lunar vehicles, automated interplanetary spacecraft, scientific satellites, and reconnaissance satellites, Korolev's primary interest was piloted spaceflight. To allow him to focus on piloted spaceflight without a significant

distraction of time and resources, Korolev separated three space efforts from his own design

bureau and transferred them wholesale to other organizations. Reconnaissance satellites went

to OKB-I's Branch No. 3 at Kuybyshev in 1964, while communications satellites went to

OKB-IO at Krasnoyarsk-26 in late 1965. 94 A third thematic direction Korolev considered for

transfer was work on robotic lunar and interplanetary spacecraft. As soon as the employees of

the Lavochkin design bureau found themselves free from Chelomey's control, Korolev began

discussions on handing over all his work on the Luna, Mars, and Venera spacecraft to them.

The Lavochkin group officially separated from Chelomey on March 2, 1965, becoming the

Experimental Design Bureau of the S. A. Lavochkin State Union Machine Building Plant. Georgiy

91. The "official" reasonfor the termination of the UR 200 varies in Russianliterature. One source suggests

that the cancellation was because of the belief that it had inferior characteristics as compared to Yangel's

R-16 ICBM. SeePetrakov and Afanasyev, "'Proton' Passion." A second source suggests that the cancellation was

"owing to the urgency of the mission of creating a new generation of missile complex as a counterpart to the

American 'Minuteman'." The UR-200 also had deficiencies in silo defense characteristics See Zhiltsov, ed.,

Gosudarstuennyy kosmieheskiy, p. 58. In an official history of the Strategic Missile Forces,the authors write that

work on the project was "terminated in connection with the successful completion of flight work and organization

of military serviceof the R-16, R 16U and R9A ICBMs" SeeYe.B. Volkov, ed_,Mezhkontinentalnyye ballisticheskiye

rakety S%R (RF) i Sgh,q(Moscow: RVSN, 1996), p. 139

92. Khrushchev. Nikita Khrusheheu. tom 2, p. 515: Rudenko. "Designer Chelomey's Rocket Planes":

"Interview with Academician A. A. Dorodnitsyn" (English title), in Dmitriy Khrapovitskiy, ed., Ceneralnyy kon

struktor ,_kademik _ N. Chelomey (Moscow: Vozdushniy transport, 1990), pp 13-14.

93. N.G. Babakin, A. N Banketov,and V. N Smorkalov__ N Babakin: zhizn i deyatelnost (Moscow:

Adamant, 1996), pp. 29, 32.

94. Semenov.ed., Raketno_KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, pp [01, [54-155. Note that OKB-I's BranchNo. 3

was technically still subordinate to the OKB-I main center at Kaliningrad Formal separation did not occur until

July 30, 1974_

437
438

N. Babakin, a fifty-year-old radio-technical systems expert who had worked under Lavochkin

for many years, was appointed the new chief

designer of this design bureau. By late 1965,

Korolev had handed over all work on automated deep space exploration to Babakin? _ Thus,

by a circuitous route, the Lavochkin design

bureau went from designing airplanes in 1940s,

intercontinental cruise missiles in the 1950s,

and anti-ship missiles in the early 1960s to

finally spacecraft beginning in the mid-1960s. It

would eventually become one of the most

important space research organizations in the

Soviet Union.

The commissions that investigated

Chelomey's fortunes did not only do away with

his branches, but also his works. One of the

commissions, headed by Academy of Sciences

President Keldysh, was tasked with assessing

each and every space and missile project at

Chelomey's design bureau. Among the programs

threatened with cancellation were the nationwide anti-ballistic missile system known as

Taran and the LIR-500 ICBMlspace launch vehicle: the former was simply terminated, while the

latter came under severe attack. By this time, the

Wadimir Cheiomey (righU next to Academy o/

SciencesPresidentMstistav Keldysh

(files o/.;qsi/Siddiqi)

Strategic Missile Forces were turning away from their earlier doctrine of super-heaw ICBMs to

lightweight ICBMs: in this climate, the UR-500 lost its primary reason for existence. Luckily for

Chelomey, the UR-500 program had strong supporters, both in the military and in the person of

Academician Keldysh. The latter "firmly and persistently" argued that despite its shortcomings

as an ICBM, the UR-500 would make an excellent space launch vehicle, v"

The reasons for Keldysh's support remain obscure even today. He was, in fact, known more

for his staunch attachment to the Korolev faction through the late 195Os and early 1960s. His

connections to Chelomey did, however, go back a long way, and Keldysh may have even been

instrumental in the original establishment of OKB-52 in 1955. Regardless of Keldysh's ultimate

motivations, one academician recalls that "[the only reason] Chelomey remained standing was

owing to the intervention of M. V. Keldysh. ''_' Defended by Keldysh, Chelomey took advantage of the reprieve to quickly put together a test program for the launch of the UR-500.

Originally, there had been plans to test-launch the vehicle as a two-stage ICBM, to be followed

by three-stage orbital launches. Given the urgent situation, Chelomey revised these plans and

decided to use the two-stage version directly for orbital launches. Activities at the M. V.

95 Ibid.. p. 145: S. V. Romanova, " 13 November--Z0 YearsFrom the Birth of G. N Babakin (1914)"

(English title), Iz istorii auialsii i kosrnonautiki 51 (1984-1985): 62-68: Babakin, Banketov,and Smorkalov, _. N

Babokin. p. 29.

96. Petrakovand Afanasyev, "'Proton' Passion."

91 "Interview with Academician A. P,.Dorodnitsyn," p. 14. Note that Keldysh had been the one to inform

Chelomey in August 1955of the order to establish OKB-155. SeeNina Chugunova, "V. N. Chelomey. Highlights of

His Biography" (English title). Ogonek 4-5 (January 1993): 24-29.

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
i"THERE _RE MORE THINGS IN HEAYEN AND EARTH..."

Khrunichev Plant in Fill were accelerated in support of this plan, as the "investigation commissions" continued to scour through Chelomey's design bureau in search of things to shut

down. 9_ If the four test launches were successful, then Keldysh would have a much better

chance of defending the threatened booster.

A success on the first launch was mandatory, and engineers at OKB-52 and its Branch

No. I were ready to ensure that this goal was achieved. One of the perks of the large amounts

of financial support Chelomey received during the 1961-64 period was the ability to testlaunch vehicle elements on the ground. Approximately 28,000 model and full-scale tests were

conducted during the development of the UR-500: in addition, sixteen full-sized test stands

were designed and built to verify the standard systems of the booster both separately and connected together. The design bureau also purchased powerful computers to extensively simulate

flight conditions, allowing the elimination of numerous possible problems before actual flights.

Between June 1963 and January 1965, Glushko's design bureau fired the first stage's RD-253

engine numerous times in tests that closely simulated actual flight conditions. There had been

original plans to launch large scientific satellites into orbit using the three-stage version of the

UR-500; these plans were modified and smaller variants of the satellites, designated N-4, were

created at the design bureau. Chelomey contracted the Moscow-based Scientific-Research

Institute of Automation and Instrument Building, headed by another of Korolev's allies, Chief

Designer Pilyugin, to develop a modified control system for the space launcher version2 _

In the spring of 1965, a flight-ready version of the UR-500 was transported to Tyura-Tam.

During the heyday of the Khrushchev years, Chelomey had been allocated a vast area in the socalled "Left Flank" of the test range, about thirty-five kilometers northwest of the original city

of Leninsk and thirty kilometers west of Korolev's main pad at site I. Construction had begun

on launch complexes for both the UR-200 and the UR-500 during 1960-62. The 'Chelomey

area" of Tyura-Tam was the focus of massive levels of construction during the early 1960s. To

support operations with the UR-500, engineers had begun the construction of:

• Two launch complexes adjacent to one another (at sites 81 and 200), each with two launch

pads 600 meters apart

• A refueling station

• An assembly-testing building for space objects (at site 92g)

• A building for integrating the upper stages

• An assembly-testing building for the complete launch vehicle (at site 92)

g residential zone (at site 95), designed to accommodate I0,000 people, was also in the

process of construction at the time. '_ All this was in addition to the pads for the smaller

LIR-200 ICBM/space launcher: when the LIR-2OO program was terminated, its support complexes and pads were handed over to Yangel. '°_

98 v. ,q. Vyrodov. M. K. Mishetyan, and V. M Petrakov, "16 July--25 YearsFrom Beginning of Operation

of the 'Proton' Rocket-Carrier" (English title), Iz istorii auiatsii i kosmonautiki 64 (1990): 58-6/.

99. Dmitriy Khrapovitskiy, "Absolutely Unclassified: The Ground Waves of Space Politics" (English title),

Soyuz 15 (April 1990): 15: Petrakovand Afanasyev, "'Proton' Passion": I. Afanasyev, '35 Yearsfor the 'Proton' RN"

(English title), Nouosti kosmonautiki I-2 (1998): 45-48.

I00. V. Menshikov, "Cosmodromes: Rocketsand People: Baykonur' (English title), ,Z]uicztsiyai kosmonautika no. 4 (April 1993): 8-9: JacquesVillain, ed., Baikonour la porte des _toiles (Paris:Armand Colin, t994), p. I I0.

I01. V.L. Menshikov, Baykonur moya uoli lyubou (Moscow: MEGLIS, 1994), p. 158. A formal decision on

transferring the UR 200 pads to Yangel'sR-36 ICBM program was issued on August 24, 1965.

439
440

Chelomey'sengineerspreparedaflight-readytwo-stageUR-500boosterforflightinJuly

1965fromsite81withtheN-4satellite,whichwasa 12.2-ton(8.3-tonmassinorbit)scientificobservatorydesignedtostudycosmicraysandtheinteractionbetweenhigh-energyparticlesandmatter.Thesatellitewasmanufacturedonthebasisof theUR-5OO'sthird-stage

tankage.Thehastewithwhichthelaunchwaspreparedaffectedtheprelaunchpreparations.

Duringfuelingoperations,anitrogentetroxidelakthreatenedtoseriouslydamagethebooster

itself:emergencyinspectionsprovedthatherocketwassafeforliftoff.TheUR-500tookoffon

July16,t965,andsuccessfullyinserteditspayloadintoanominalorbit.TheunqualifiedsuccessofthelaunchsignaledtheofficialentryofChetomeyintothe"spaceclub"thathadbeen

dominatedbyKorolevandYangel.TheSovietpressmademuchofthemassofthesatellite,far

heavierthananythingyetorbitedbytheSovietUnion.Perhapstoaffirmtheconnectionwith

itsscientificprogram,thesatellitewasnamedProton-I. "Proton" was the name later used to

refer to the launch vehicle itself in Soviet press reports, although engineers had originally

planned to call the rocket Gerkules ("Hercules"), a name that was painted on the side of the

booster on its first launch. The media releases at the time touted the launch as a new stage in

Soviet space exploration. While the performance of the UR-500 booster may have been flawless, the same could not be said of the Proton-I satellite. Once the satellite was inserted into

orbit, ground stations failed to receive any word from the payload. For several orbits, desperate

ground controllers at the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow attempted to make

contact with the satellite, and they finally gave up when they conclusively ascertained that

there had been a major failure aboard the craft. ''_'

Notwithstanding the failure of the Proton-I satellite, Chelomey's people carried out three

more orbital launches of the UR-500 in 1965 and 1966, of which only one was a complete failure--a good record for a completely new booster. ''_ The successful tests of the Proton launcher were pivotal in convincing the Soviet leadership that perhaps this was one of Chelomey's

projects best left untouched. 'c_It seems that the faith that Keldysh and Chelomey invested in

creating this launch vehicle had been well worth it. The Proton rocket would go on to become

one of the most dependable and famous launch vehicles ever created by any nation, launching

commercial satellites into space and serving well into the 1990s. It was a curious destiny for a

missile originally conceived as a super-heavyweight ICBM capable of launching Armageddonstrength megaton warheads at the enemy.

Chelomey had two major piloted space projects under way at his design bureau when

Khrushchev was ousted: the Raketoplan reusable hypersonic spacecraft effort and the LK-I cir102. Col. (Res) I. Zamyshlyaylev, "Supporting SpaceFlights: Signal Suitable for Processing" (English title).

,quiatsiya i kosmonautika no. II (November 1990): 44-45. The official TASSannouncement for the Proton launch

stated: "Analysis of the telemetric information received indicates that the apparatus on board the space station

'Proton-I' is operating normally. The coordination-computation center is processing the incoming information" See

"'Proton I' in Flight" (English title), Komsomolskaya prauda, July 17, 1965. p. I. Another source suggests that

although the controllers did not have initial contact, they did establish contact after a few hours SeeAfanasyev.

"35 Yearsfor the 'Proton' RN"

103. The launches were on November2, 1965. March 24. 1966. andJuly6, 1966. The March launch wasa

failure The November launch was the first from the second pad at site 81. SeePetrakov and Afanasyev, "'Proton'

Passion."

104. Ustinov was apparently one of those who was convinced of the need to continue with the program.

SeeZakharov. "Operation 'Kedr' or How the 'Proton' Was Saved." Note that without doubt, the most important

work at OKB-52 during this period was the UR I00 ICBM project. The program had been formally approved on

March 30, 1963 Due to strong support from Deputy Minister of Defenseg. A. Grechko, the program was allowed

to continue after Khrushchev's fall. The missile was launched for the first time on April 19, 1965,continuing its test

launches until October 27, 1966.The missilewas declaredoperational in July 1967 after approximately sixty launches. SeeZhiltsov. ed.. _osudarstuennyy kosmieheskiy, pp. 58-60: h D. Sergeyev,ed, Khromka osnounykh sobytiy

istorii raketnykh uoysk strategicheskogo naznacheniya (Moscow: TslPK, 1994). p. 38

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
i

"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH ... "

I

cumlunar program. Each suffered the repercussions of the leadership change, but in different

ways. The Raketoplan project had stumbled forward through the years despite technical problems related to protecting the spaceplane from the stresses of atmospheric reentry--problems

that had destroyed the M-12 spaceplane during its suborbital flight in 1963. Originally intended for piloted circumlunar missions, by May 1964, the Raketoplan had only military goals, such

as anti-satellite operations, reconnaissance, and orbital bombing, all from Earth orbit,

Chelomey's idea apparently interested powerful forces within the military. On June 18, 1964,

USSR Minister of Defense Rodion Ya. Malinovskiy signed the ministry's five-year plan for spacebased reconnaissance covering 1964-69. Among the projects included for approval was a

spaceplane program designated "R. "_°_ By this time, Chelomey's engineers, based on their

Raketoplan research from 1961 to 1963, had produced the technical designs for a new iteration

of the design, comprising two different Raketoplans, the automated R-I spacecraft, and the

piloted R-2 vehicle.

The R-I was essentially a test model for the piloted version. It would be used for testing

all essential systems in Earth orbit, including:

the orientation and stabilization systems, heat shielding, systems/or triggering separating

components and [also/or testing] the dynamics o[ uncoupling, ballistic and aerodynamic parameters of the Raketoplan and engine [and] the operation of all on-board systems."_

The R-2, a heavier variant of the spaceplane, was designed to allow "the pilot-cosmonaut

[to] check out control-monitoring, communication, and observation functions from space.' ..... A

nominal orbit for this single-pilot military spaceplane would be 160 by 290 kilometers with a

total flight time of twenty-four hours. Maximum acceleration during reentry would be limited to

three and a half to four g's. Presumably, both the R-I and R-2 "boost-glide" vehicles would deorbit in a thermally protected container that would be discarded after atmospheric reentry, deploy

wings, turn on a turbojet engine, and then land on a conventional runway. Either Korolev's R-7

or the UR-500 would serve as the launch vehicle for the R-I and R-2 spaceplanes.

The primary goal of the R-2 spaceplane project was photo-reconnaissance and/or antisatellite operations, and both were objectives that were vigorously supported by the Soviet Air

Force in its quest to get a piece of the Soviet piloted space program. Marshal Vershinin, the

Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, publicly spoke of the Raketoplan effort in August 1964,

saying that spaceplanes were not only feasible, but that Soviet engineers were engaged in a

development program that was "not without success.' ..... By 1964, OKB-52 engineers had evidently completed the design of the R-2 boost-glide vehicle "at the Air Force's request." '°_ They

had already begun the construction of flight models when Khrushchev's ouster threw the program into jeopardy, leading to the "temporary suspension" of work sometime in 1965 or 1966.

There continues to be conflicting information on why the project was closed down at the

time. Some suggest that it was related directly to the post-Khrushchev vendetta against

Chelomey. One engineer recalls that the termination order came from "upstairs" at a time when

105. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964-1966. p. 58.

106. Anatoliy Kirpil and Olga Okara, "Designer of Space Planes.Vladimir Chelomey Dreamedof Creating a

Space Fleet of Rocket Planes" (English title). Nezauisimaya gazeta. July 5. 1994, p. 6,

10/'. Ibid.

108. "Soviets Developing Spaceplane." Space _usinessDaily. August 18. 1964, p. I.

109. I. B. Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft(From the History of the Soviet Space Program)" (English title),

Nouoye u zhizni Nauke, tekhnike Seriya kosmonautika, astronomiya no. 12 (December 1991): I 64.

441
442

the most formidable technical

problems had already been

solved. `'° Five days after

Khrushchev's fall, on October 19,

1964, Marshal Vershinin apparently telephoned to inform

Chelomey that all materials related to the Raketoplan project

would be turned over to another

design bureau. By this point,

OKB-52 had already finished the

construction of a "life-size"

model of the R-2 spaceplane with

a functioning cabin for one cosmonaut. Despite the order, by

March 196_5, Chelomey had finished the final draft plan for the

R-fIR-2 models. He apparently

Thts is a drawing o/the R-2 piloted spaceplane as it emerged during

1964-65 at the Chelomey design bureau. The program was suspend

ed at the time, because o[ a combination o/technical and political

[actors (copyright _si[ SiddiqO

met with Brezhnev himself on P,ugust 3, 1965, to persuade him to sign an agreement with the

Navy to develop a piloted Raketoplan, but nothing seems to have come out of the meeting.

There is a second version to the story that suggests that the work on the Raketoplan was

terminated at the time because of internal reasons. Sergey N. Khrushchev suggests that

"Chelomey understood that it would be impossible to enter the atmosphere with wings with

that time's technology," prompting him to put the idea on hold"' _ senior designer at

OKB-52, Gerbert A. Yefremov, who would go on to succeed Chelomey, also recalled in an interview: "Termination (not prohibition from above) of the rocket-plane program in the first half of

the 1960s was induced by [the] reorientation of [OKB-52] towards developing [the] LK-I oneman space vehicle for a flight around the Moon. ''''2

The most likely scenario is that Chelomey opted to temporarily suspend the program around

1965 because of both technical and political difficulties. The Air Force, still itching for a spaceplane of its own, ordered OKB-52's research database transferred to another organization. If

Chelomey would not do it, then they would have someone else do it. This someone else turned

out to be General Designer P,rtem I. Mikoyan, head of OKB-155 and the developer of the famous

MiG jet fighter aircraft. In 196.5, a number of Chelomey's best designers on the Raketoplan program left his design bureau, taking with them the results of their research to join Mikoyan's organization. _'3It was a strange irony. In 19.53, when Stalin had closed down Chelomey's original

design bureau, much of his research work had also been transferred to Mikoyan. The move to

Mikoyan in 1965 was the end, at least temporarily, of Chelomey's persistent quest to fly a spaceplane into orbit./qt the same time, it was the beginning of yet another Soviet spaceplane project,

one named Spiral, which would continue on for more than a decade.

I I0. Mikhail Rudenko, "Space Bulletin: Lunar lqttraction: Historical Chronicles" (English title), Vozdushniy

transport 24 (1993): II.

I II. Khrushchev interview. October I0, 1996.

112. Interview, Gerbert ,qleksandrovich Yefremovwith the author, March 3, 1991.

113. Kirpil and Okara, "Designer of Space Planes."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
I

[ "THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

The LK-I Circumlunar Program

If, as OKB-52 designer Yefremov claimed, the Raketoplan project was suspended to focus

resources on the LK-I circumlunar project, then there was good reason to do so. When the

UR-5OO/LK-I project had been approved in August 1964, it was Chelomey's first solid entry into

the piloted space program. Based on the design of the return capsule of NASA's Gemini spacecraft, the LK-I spacecraft was to carry a single cosmonaut around the Moon by the second

quarter of 1967--that is, before the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. With a mandate like that. it was probably best to focus the limited resources on the most fruitful projects.

This program to send humans around the Moon was curiously one of Chelomey's projects that

survived the scrutiny of the days following Khrushchev's fall. The "investigation commissions"

probably carried out some level of assessment of the project in late 1964, and it seems that they

voted in favor of continuing work on the program.

This was in spite of the fact that Korolev possibly took advantage of the anti-Chelomey

sentiment in the government to mount a vigorous attack on Chelomey's circumlunar project in

the waning days of the year. This time, perhaps under pressure from his deputies, Korolev abandoned the highly unwieldy multiple-docking mission profile for the 7K-9K- I I K Soyuz complex.

Instead, he offered up the N I I booster, which would launch a twenty-ton spacecraft into Earth

orbit. The payload, comprising a translunar-injection (TLI) stage and a Soyuz spacecraft, would

then head for the Moon, carrying out a simple circumlunar flight/'4 For reasons that are unclear,

the Soviet government was not interested at the time, perhaps unwilling to abruptly change

directions in a program whose key determinant of success was doing it before the Americans.

An unconfirmed source states that the Military-Industrial Commission signed a decree on

October 28, 1964, essentially confirming Khrushchev's old plan of dividing up the piloted lunar

program: Chelomey retained the circumlunar portion and Korolev retained the landing. '_

Chelomey signed off on the "experimental design" of the LK-I ship on August 3, 1964,

the same day that the government passed the decree committing to the piloted lunar program. _6Unlike Korolev, whose proposed 7K-9K-II K circumlunar effort would use a multitude

of different spacecraft linking up in orbit. Chelomey completely bypassed the idea of Earth-orbit

rendezvous as an element of his plan. His UR-500 booster was, after all, far more powerful than

any booster in Korolev's canon. Originally, Chelomey's engineers conceived of a spaceship

launched on the two-stage UR-500 booster, which would allow a payload of roughly twelve

tons to be inserted into Earth orbit. This, however, proved to be inadequate to comprise a TLI

stage as well as the spacecraft proper. Within a few months, boosters were switched in the circumlunar project: engineers opted to use a three-stage version of the UR-500, designated the

UR-5OOK. More payload capacity was added by increasing the length of second-stage tankage

and introducing slightly modified engines. The new third stage was essentially a shortened version of the second stage. This would allow a payload of almost eighteen tons to be inserted

into Earth orbit, sufficient for a piloted spacecraft and its TLI stage. On November II, 1964,

Chelomey outlined the program of launches for the UR-5OOKand its lunar LK-I payload. '_'

114. V. P. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?" (English title), Znaniye: tekhnike: seriya kosmonautika, astronomiya no. 12 (December 1990): 3-43.

115. Rudenko, "Space Bulletin: Lunar Attraction."

116. A[anasyev, "Unknown SpacecrafL"

I I 7. Igor Afanasyev, "Without the Stamp 'Secret': Circling Around the Moon: Chelomey's Project" (English

title), Krasnaya zuezda, October 28, 1995: Afanasyev, "35 Years for the 'Proton' RN." A conception of the original

two-stage variant is shown in I. A. Marinin and S. Kh. Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programs for Lunar Flights" (English

title), Zemlya i uselennaya no. 4 (July-August 1993): 62-69.1-he new engines for the UR-SOOK second stage were

the RD-0210 and the RD-021 I. The third stage used the RD-0212, which consisted of the RD-0213 and the RD-0214

443
444

The payload of the UR-5OOK would consist

of the following four sections, each for a different part of the mission:

• BlokA--theTLI stage

• Blok B--the instrument-aggregate compartment or service module

• Blok V--the return apparatus, which

would carry the crew

• Blok G--the launch escape system ''_

Blok A was powered by the R6-II 7 liquidpropellant rocket engine with a thrust of thirteen

and a half tons in vacuum. ''_ The propellants

were the same as the UR-5OOK booster itself:

unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen

tetroxide. The development of the R6-1 t7

/

Chetomey'sLK-I spaeeera[t was designed in 1964-65

[or u circumlunar mission The ship would be

launched by a three-stage Proton booster augmented

by the special Blok ;q translunar-injection stage

(copyright/qsif Siddiqi)

engine was a first for OKB-52: not only did the organization have minimal experience in the

design of rocket engines, it had never designed one for operation in vacuum. In comparison,

Korolev's OKB-I, with years of experience, was facing severe problems during the same period

with its own upper stage engine for the N I and other boosters.

Bloks B and V comprised the LK-I spacecraft itself. Blok B, similar to the Apollo Service

Module. was a cylindrical compartment carrying power sources, electronic instrumentation,

engines for mid-course corrections and attitude control, and propellant tanks• Soon after TLI

and separation of Blok A, the spacecraft would unfurl a set of two solar panels to provide power

during the remaining portion of the mission• Total wingspan was on the order of about seven

meters• The panels were not attached to the side of the cylinder, but rather to pylons extending rearwards from the base of Blok B. OKB-52 also studied the possibility of using fuel cells

working on hydrogen and oxygen in the spacecraft, but it is not clear whether this was adopted for the final design. A small high-gain antenna was located at the base of the module for

communications• Blok V was a simple cone, similar to the Apollo Command Module, which

was installed on the forward end of the cylindrical "service module•" The single cosmonaut

would spend the entire mission in here. Attitude control engines were installed on the exterior

for motion control prior to reentry, while the internal space carried a single couch, scientific

apparatus, communications systems, life support systems, and TV and still cameras for both

live broadcast and stored film. The conical shape would allow the vehicle to use a better liftdrag ratio for a controlled reentry into Earth's atmosphere following the return from the Moon. '_°

Finishing up the payload was Blok G, which was the launch escape tower. It was the first

such system installed on a Soviet piloted spacecraft and was powered by solid-propellant

engines capable of taking the Blok V capsule far away from a malfunctioning launch vehicle.

The complete LK-I spacecraft was remarkably small for a piloted vehicle earmarked for flight to

the Moon. Although spacecraft masses have still not been revealed, one Russian space historian with access to design bureau documentation has stated that:

18. lqfanasyev, "Without the Stamp 'Secret'."

19, Yefremov interview, March 3, 1997.

120 Afanasyev. "Without the Stamp 'Secret'":

Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Lunar Flights."

_fanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft": Marinin and

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

noteworthy in the LK-I design was the rather small mass and size of the return apparatus. _radually optimizing the characteristics o[ the systems of the spacecra[t and the

launcher, the designers managed to increase the return apparatus' mass and make room

[or another [second] cosmonaut. '_'

The base diameter of the conical return apparatus was on the order of two and three-quarters

meters, and mass of the entire LK-I spacecraft was probably limited to about four tons. The

return apparatus weighed approximately two tons. lighter than even the Vostok crew capsule.

Engineers at OKB-52 designed the UR-5OOK/LK-I complex with very little margin for error.

The very low mass of the spacecraft indicates that many systems were probably not backed up,

even though the dangers of instrument failure were much greater for a circumlunar mission than

for a simple Earth-orbital flight. The primary constraint on the whole mission was clearly the lifting power of the UR-5OOK and its capacity to insert into Earth orbit a fully fueled TLI stage plus

a crewed spacecraft. Thus, the success of a mission would have to depend on the perfectly nominal performance of the UR-5OOK and the "booster unit," both working at the limits of their

design levels. Perhaps to compensate, Chelomey planned a long and extensive flight program for

the project. This plan, finalized in late September 1964. called for twelve consecutive launches

during 1965 through 1967 using both the two-stage UR-500 and the three-stage UR-5OOK. '__

Work on the project was uneven. This was the first serious attempt by Chelomey to develop life support systems, heat shields, high-thrust rocket engines, highly complex avionics, and

spacesuits: there is no evidence to suggest that there was any osmosis of information on these

topics from the Korolev organization to the Chelomey design bureau. Chelomey simply had to

start from scratch. The draft plan for the LK-I spacecraft was finished by July 1965, coincidentally during the same month that the UR-500 Proton booster was launched on its first flight."'

The plan apparently "fully fulfilled the requirements" of the original conception of the circumlunar mission. '_

For Chelomey. his whole claim to the cosmos depended on the UR-5OOK/LK-I piloted circumlunar program. The immediate post-Khrushchev era was a time of great difficulty for the

ambitious general designer and his organization. Two of his most coveted instruments for

entering the Soviet space program, the UR-200 launch vehicle and the Raketoplan program, had

been canceled or suspended. Thus, after almost five years as the reigning designer in the Soviet

space program, he had little to show in terms of concrete achievements, g number of Soviet

historians have argued that this period--1961 to 1964--when Chelomey was bestowed unlimited funds, was a gross miscalculation on the part of the Soviet leadership, for it primarily

deprived Korolev of support to successfully carry out his own programs. The N 1 had almost

died a slow death because of a lack of money, while the 7K-9K-I I K Soyuz program had been

the subject of innumerable delays. Korolev had been forced to resort to one-off "spectaculars"

such as the Voskhod mission in 1964 to maintain his apparent eminence in the space program.

Georgiy S. Vetrov, a historian at Korolev's design bureau, has argued:

121. gfanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft"

t22. L N Kamanin, "In the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be..." (English title). Ogonek 7 (February9 16,

1991): 28-31: Rudenko, "Space Bufletin: Lunar Rttraction" Note that in the latter source, the author states that

there would be two sets of twelve launches in the entire program.

123. Yetremovinterview, March 3, 1997 More specifically, Dr. Ye[remov statedthat the "conceptual design"

of the LK I was finalized at the time.

124. Afanasyev, "Without the Stamp 'Secret'."

445
446

The situation with the creation of V M. Chelomey's OI<B was only one example o[ the

wasting o[ [orces and resources which proved to be disastrous [or the realization o[ [our)

space program. The organizational context giving exclusive rights to the leading designer was good at the beginning, but eventually proved to be negative. The Chief

Designers, feeding on their power and authority, started ruling without consulting anybody and their orders entirely determined the direction of the work. '_

Vetrov's claim has some basis in reality. Because the institutional makings of the Soviet

piloted space program were steeped so deeply amid the ballistic missile effort, the chief designers had to resort to personal machinations to sustain programs. Both Chelomey and Korolev

were thus put in the position of steering space policy. Because Chelomey happened to be the

favored designer during this period, his ideas and proposals benefited, to the detriment of

Korolev. It would be difficult and, in fact, pointless to speculate what would have happened

had the tables been turned. Georgiy N. Pashkov, the influential deputy chairman of the MilitaryIndustrial Commission said many years later that favoring Chelomey wasted a full five years of

the Soviet space program. "° Chelomey's people, of course, had other opinions. Perhaps referring to the anti-Chelomey sentiment following Khrushchev's fall, Chelomey's deputy Yefremov

recalled:

When you look back, you're surprised at how o[ten, at the top, unsound decisions were

made which delayed [or many years the realization o[ some o[ the space developments

of our collective or completely stopped developments. There's no doubt that had to do

with the subjectivity and incompetence o[ certain leaders. Our "evil genius" turned out

to be the Deputy Chairman o[ the Military-Industrial Commission _. N. Pashkov. '_'

Each side had their own views, and unable to redress their grievances in the press, they kept

their complaints to themselves, bottled up for more than a quarter of a century. Such was the real

tapestry of the early Soviet space program, hidden behind the glories of Vostok and Voskhod

R YValk in Space

The Voskhod mission in October 1964 claimed more glories for the Soviets. While most of

the Western press were understandably more interested in the change in leadership at the

Kremlin, the general reaction in the West to the Voskhod flight was unprecedented. In the eyes

of most people, the Soviet Union had again achieved another important milestone in the space

race while the United States was still attempting to catch up. With little concrete information

on which to depend, the media were awash with speculation, and as always, the Soviets did

little to fill the black hole of information. There were no descriptions of the spacecraft, no indication that it was merely a modified Vostok, and no hint of its extremely limited capabilities.

Many in the West simply believed that the Voskhod was a Soviet spacecraft comparable to

NP, Sg's gpotlo vehicle, which was still on the drawing board. '_8 P,t a press conference on

October 21 following the Voskhod mission, gcademy of Sciences President Keldysh added to

125. G. Vetrov. "The Difficult Fateof the N I Rocket" (English title). Nauka i zhizn no. 5 (May 1994): 20-28.

126 Lardier.LT:]stronautiqueSovietique. p. 153.

127. Khrapovitskiy, "Absolutely Unclassified." p. 15.

128 On October 14,a journalist from The Washington Post. Howard Simon, reported that the Soviet Union

was building a "giant new rocketwhich could be capable of taking Russiancosmonauts to the Moon " He added

that the Soviets were preparing "to run the Moon race fast and hard. notwithstanding recent statements suggesting

the opposite." SeeSouiet SpacePrograms. I962 65. pp. 386-8?'.

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
l

i "THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH...

the myth of the Soviet space program by stating: "In the Soviet Union purposeful and systematic work goes on in connection with manned space flights. This is not for effect, but in the

interests of progress. ''_9Such a claim was especially galling in the light of this particular flight,

which had no other purpose than to upstage Gemini. Within OKB-I itself, sentiments may

have been different. Korolev's First Deputy Mishin recalled twenty-five years later: "The

[Voskhod] program made no contribution whatsoever to the further development of space

research. It was simply a waste of time. Sending three people into space together was done

purely for prestige.' ....

The original decrees in March and April 1964 in support of Voskhod had specified five

launches, two of which would be piloted: the first was scheduled for August and the second for

November. Specific mission goals for the second mission were formulated from the hodgepodge

of Air Force and OKB-I proposals for "extended Vostok" missions over the previous two years.

From about March 1964, it was clear to Korolev that the second Voskhod mission would include

a "spacewalk" by one of the crewmembers. '_ These plans seem to have partly stemmed from

earlier Air Force and OKB-I suggestions to conduct extravehicular activity (EVA) with a dog on

one of the later Vostok missions. Certainly, most of the motivations were external--that is,

NASA's publicly announced plans to carry out EVA during the Gemini program. Once again, it

was unacceptable for Korolev to lose the edge over the Americans. In fact, during early planning,

Air Force General Staff Deputy Lt. General Kamanin had proposed sending a single cosmonaut

into orbit as a test of the EVA-equipped ship. Korolev outright rejected this approach:

He was troubled not by technical considerations, but by purely political considerations--

a one day test flight with one cosmonaut would not represent a new triumph in space.

In the opinion of many, each manned spaceflight should be a new. major aduanee. _

Korolev called the EVA project Vykhod ("Exit"), a term originally used in 1963 studies at OKB-I

to describe spacewalks.

The delays in the first Voskhod mission obviously pushed the Vykhod mission beyond the

original November deadline, but it seems that Korolev had been insistent that the flight be carried out prior to the end of the year. In a diary entry from early September 1964, Kamanin wrote:

•.. Korolev is pestering all his associates, and assuring them that before the year is out.

he will launch the Vykhod--a modification of the Voskhod adapted for an EVTt by a

cosmonaut. ,Zts always, Koroleu is in a hurry: He prefers a caualry charge to wellconceiued and methodically prepared o[[ensiues on the "space fortress.' ....

One of the reasons for Korolev's haste may have been political: he had apparently made a

promise to Khrushchev that he would launch the Vykhod in November in time for the anniversary of the Great October Revolution. With Khrushchev out of power, the deadline no longer

seemed as important, and by the time that the three Voskhod cosmonauts landed in October.

the Vykhod mission was tentatively planned for early 1965.

129. Ibid, p. 554.

130. "The Russian Right Stuff," NOV, z] television show.

13I. The cosmonauts' trainin 6 for the "spacewalk" mission began training in April 1964. See Peter Smolders,

Souiets in Space (New York: Taplinger Publishin 8 Co., 1973), p. t39.

132. L. N Kamanin, "Pages From a Diary: He Soared Freely Above the Earth: On the 25th Anniversary ol the

Flight of Pilot-Cosmonauts P I. Belyayev and A. A. Leonov in the Voskhod 2 and the First Spacewalk" (English title),

SouetskayG rossiyu, March 17, 1990, p. 6.

133. Kamanin, "1 Would Never Have Believed Anyone .... " p 4.

447
448

The goal for engineers was of a similar scale to the first Voskhod: to modify a Vostok

spacecraft in such a manner as to carry a crew of two cosmonauts, of whom one would conduct a spacewalk. The Vykhod team was headed by OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Pavel V.

Tsybin, a veteran of a number of aerospace projects, including the infamous PKA piloted

spaceplane, which was abandoned in the late 1950s. Tsybin's team never seriously considered

the Gemini approach of depressurizing the entire spaceship during an EVg, evidently because

of the less-than-stellar performance characteristics of the life support system, tn addition, even

if the spacecraft could be depressurized, the internal instrumentation in the ship would not

function, because it had not been designed for operation in vacuum. Instead, Tsybin's engineers drew up a plan for the design and installation of an airtock on the side of the basic vehicle. Both cosmonauts would wear fully operational pressure suits throughout the mission. One

of the three Elbrus couches from the three-person Voskhod vehicle was eliminated, allowing

fully suited cosmonauts to fit into the small internal volume of the ship. Prior to the spacewalk, the pilot would crawl into the airlock, shut the hatch behind him, pressurize the airlock,

open an outer hatch, and then step out into space. Given the limited mass and volume capabilities of the I IASZ launch vehicle, a large rigid airlock was out of the question. Consequently,

an engineer at OKB-I, S. I. gleksandrov, proposed the use of an inflatable cylindrical airlock--

one that could be packed at launch on the ship's hatch and then unfurled to full length in

flight. Korolev signed the draft plan for the "new" spaceship, designated product 3KD, sometime in late 1964.'_

The principal modifications to the 3KD as compared with the 3KV were the installation of:

• The Volga airlock on hatch no. 3 on the descent apparatus

• Two Elbrus couches modified for spacesuited cosmonauts

• Air conditioning and life support systems for the cosmonauts' spacesuits

• An autonomous life support system in a backpack for the EVA cosmonaut

• gn emergency oxygen-ventilation system for the cosmonauts during landing in case the

spacecraft life support failed

• Automatic systems for the operation of the airlock, spacesuit life support, and the two

hatches

• Special valves for equalizing pressure between the airlock and the descent apparatus capable of being operated both automatically and manually

• A control panel for manually operating the airlock and hatches

• Supplementary bottles of air for both the EVA spacesuit and the descent apparatus, which

would be installed on the exterior of the instrument compartment '_'

In all other respects, the Vykhod was exactly like the first Voskhod. The mass of the "new"

vehicle was approximately 5,685 kilograms. A nominal mission would last a single day.

Plant No. 918 located at Tomilino built the Volga airiock, although OKB-I engineers

designed it, This was the same organization that had designed the SK-t suits and ejection seats

for the earlier Vostok spacecraft, In January 1964, thirty-seven-year-old Gay I. Severin, an aeronautical engineer and former glider pilot, was appointed chief designer and director of the plant.

More than any other individual, Severin was personally responsible for the design of the Volga

as well as the EVA suit. When work on the project began in June 1964, Korolev told his senior

134. ]-his documenthasbeenpublishedwith disguiseddesignationsasS. P. Korolev."The 'Voskhod2'

SpaceShip"(Englishtitle), in Keldysh,ed, Tuoreheskoyenaslediye7:lkademika,pp 477-88.

135, Ibid

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
I "THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

RESERVE SOLID RETRO

- THRUST 12,000 KGF

- BURN TIME 2 SEC. _T- EVA FILM CAMERA ;

- SPECIFIC IMPULSE 225 SEC. (RETRIEVED)

- MASS 143 KG

EVATVCAMERA

COSMONAUT ON

A 5.35 M TETHER

REENTRY J

MODULE

EXPANDIBLE AIRLOCK

- DIAMETER 1200 MM

- LENGTH 2500 MM

- EXIT HATCH 700 MM

- MASS 250 KG

ZRUMENT

MODULE

This diagram shows the EVA-equipped Voskhod spacecra[L (copyright D R. Woods)

designer responsible for the Vykhod, "From now on there is another commander aside from me

at our enterprise, and that's Severin. You should carry out his orders faster than mine.' ....

Severin's airlock was an ingenious creation. In a packed state, the Volga had a length of

seven-tenths meter, extending to two and a half meters in its operational position. Each end of the

136. "To Save Man: g Conversation With the General Designer of Life-Support and Rescue Systems, Hero

of Socialist Labor G. I. Severin" (English title), Pruudu, June 26. 1989, p. 4

449
450

cylinder was terminated by a rigid ring with a hatch with an external diameter of 1.2 meters. The

internal diameter was one meter, while the diameter of the hatchway was only 0.65 meter, an

extremely tight fit for a completely suited cosmonaut with a backpack. The complete airlock system had a mass of 250 kilograms. In typical Soviet fashion, the equipment was a sturdy technological marvel. An engineer recalls the first time Korolev visited Plant No. 9t8 to see the airlock:

"_ay Ilich [Severin]." Sergey Pavlovich addressed the director of the enterprise where

various aggregates for the spacecraft were being developed, "demonstrate to us the

durability of your airlock chamber." _ay Ilich, a tall, stately, athletic looking man who

was still young, easily jumped up and hung on one end of the cylinder .... Sergey

Pavlovich smiled coyly. He was happy with the technical design.'_7

The airlock itself was made of a double-walled pressurized material made from rubber. The

space between the layers was divided along its longitudinal axis into forty full-length partitions,

which would be pressurized to extend the airlock to its full length, not unlike an inflatable

water raft, The partitions were divided into three independent sections: two were enough to

ensure that the airlock would unfurl to its operational state. An extra layer of thermal insulation covered the entire airlock. Four tanks at the base of the Volga carried pressurized air. One

each were for the forty partitions and to pressurize the airlock after the EVA (which would take

seven minutes), while the remaining two were emergency supply for the spacewalking cosmonaut. There were four cameras placed at various points to record the egress of the EVA pilot.

Two sixteen-millimeter movie cameras were installed within the airlock, and a third sixteenmillimeter camera was on a boom outward from the airlock to record the spacewalk. A fourth

TV camera, a Topaz developed by Leningrad-based NII-380, would provide live pictures to both

ground control and the crew commander (the cosmonaut who would remain behind in the

spaceship). Engineers designed the entire system such that the commander could carry each

operation out both automatically or by manual control. In addition, there was a small control

panel installed within the airlock itself to allow the EVA cosmonaut to control hatch openings,

and so forth, in the case of an emergency. :_

The Berkut ("Golden Eagle") spacesuit, also designed under Severin's leadership, was the

first Soviet spacesuit created for EVA operations. It consisted of two primary "pressurized membranes" that allowed minimal mobility in an airtight state. There were two settings for pressure,

one at 0.35 to 0.4 atmosphere (normal) and one at 0.2 to 0.27 atmosphere (for increased

mobility during emergencies). The helmet had two pressurized visors and a filter for the Sun's

rays. The Berkut also included a self-contained backpack, which contained a ventilation system

as well as three two-liter tanks at 220 atmospheres pressure. Air was pumped into the helmet

at a rate of twenty liters per minute from where it passed to the rest of the suit through a pressure regulator. A five-meter cord would connect the cosmonaut to the ship during the EVA.

The total mass of the suit and backpack was forty-five kilograms (twenty plus twenty-five kilograms, respectively). The maximum time in an "open" exposed state would be limited to only

ten to fifteen minutes during the mission. The self-contained backpack was designed to provide life support for a maximum of forty-five minutes, while the emergency tank on the outside

of the airlock could provide eighty additional minutes of air. OKB-I and Plant No. 9 8, how137 A. Yu. Ishlinskiy, ed., ,qkademik S E Koroleu. ucheniy,inzhener, chelouek (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), pp.

421-22.

138. Korolev, "The 'Voskhod-2' Space Ship": Dietrich Haeseler, "Leonov's Way to Space: Airlock of

Voskhod-2," Spaceflight 36 (August 1994): 280-82. The Topaz used a 625-Iine, twenty-five-frames-per-second

system

CHALLENGE TO _I_POLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

ever, formulated mission plans to be as conservative as possible. A nominal EVA would last

only ten to fifteen minutes, sufficient to achieve the main objective of the flight. '_9

In late 1964, Korolev and his engineers drew up a detailed test program leading to the actual EVA mission. The five-step program included testing the 3KD at plants, training and testing

in conditions approximating microgravity in a Tu-104 aircraft, vacuum testing in the TDK-60

barometric chamber, the launch of an automated version of the 3KD into orbit, and finally the

piloted flight. The first simulator for the Vykhod spacecraft, the TDK-3TD, arrived at the

Cosmonaut Training Center in November 1964. '4° Four of the remaining 1960 batch of cosmonauts who had yet to fly a mission--Belyayev, Khrunov, Leonov, and Gorbatko--were grouped

together by July 1964 to begin training for the challenging mission. Belyayev and Gorbatko

trained for the commander's seat, while Khrunov and Leonov prepared themselves for the EVA

position.

From the beginning, the training for the Vykhod mission was without doubt the most

demanding of all the Soviet piloted flights to date. As part of a general calisthenics regimen,

Leonov, the informal favorite to carry out the spacewalk, cycled about a thousand kilometers in

less than a year, carried out more than 150 EVA training sessions, and jumped by parachute

117 times. Weightlessness simulations were carried out in a specially equipped Tu-104 aircraft,

which flew parabolic arcs to simulate microgravity for about thirty seconds at a time. A complete replica of the 3KD spacecraft was installed in the airplane for the cosmonauts to rehearse

each aspect of the EVA, including rigorous operation of the airlock. Vacuum tests with full

spacesuit garb were also conducted in the ground-based TBK-60 barometric chamber, which

simulated high-altitude pressure and atmospheric conditions. The cosmonauts were

"launched" to altitudes of five, ten, and thirty-two to thirty-six kilometers to carry out their

flight program. In addition, physicians were evidently unsure of the possible psychological state

of a spacewalking cosmonaut and subjected Leonov to a month-long isolation chamber test

when he was completely cut off from the rest of the world. Immediately after the end of his

session, he was taken directly to a MiG-15, whose pilot performed several complicated flight

maneuvers. The flight ended with Leonov ejecting out and landing safely by parachute as a test

of his reflexes after an extended period of isolation. '4'

The State Commission for the flight, by then renamed Voskhod 2, met for the first time on

January t 3, 1965, under the chairmanship of Maj. General Tyulin. Engineers reported that two

Voskhod vehicles and their associated launch vehicles were essentially ready for launch. Final

testing would be completed on February 15. The launch of the robot variant was set for late

January or early February, while the crewed mission was set for March. '42By this point, the best

candidates for the primary crew were Belyayev and Leonov. The thirty-nine-year-old Pavel

Belyayev had been the oldest candidate selected among the "Gagarin group" of 1960. He had

graduated from the Yeisk Higher Air Force School in 1945 and flew combat missions against

the Japanese during the final days of World War II. Later, in 1959, he graduated from the

famous Red Banner Air Force Academy, and thus he was only one of two cosmonauts in the

1960 class who had a higher education. Belyayev might have flown earlier into space had it not

been for a severe ankle injury sustained in August 1961 during a parachute jump, which left

139. Korolev, "The 'Voskhod-2' SpaceShip": RussianSpace History, Sale 6516 (New York:Sotheby's, 1993).

description for Lot 40.

140. Lardier, L',,qstronautiqueSovi_tique, p. 143.

141_ Ibid: Riabchikov, Russians in Space, pp. 212-18: Smolders. Soviets in Space, pp 139-40: I. £

/_kulinichev, et aL, "Some Results of Medical Supervision of the State of the Cosmonauts E I. Belyayev and

A. A. Leonov During Their Training and Orbital Flight" (English title), Kosmicheskiye issledovaniya 4 (March-April

1966): 311 19: Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 747.

142. Kamanin, "Pages Froma Diary."

451
452

himoutof theloopforawholeyear.Hisco-pilotontheflightwasthirty-year-oldAleksey

Leonov,oneofthemostcolorfulcharactersontheteam.Bornin Siberia,hegraduatedfrom

theChuguyevHigherAirForceSchoolintheUkrainein 1957beforeservingasajetpilotin

EastGermany.Certainlyoneofthemostwell-trainedcandidatesontheteam,healsohada

passionforpainting.Thefutureauthorofmanyartbooks,intheearly1960s,hewastheeditor of a satiric cosmonaut newsletter called Neptun (" Neptune"). Leonov also had the distinction of being the first person whose name was uttered in space, during his shift as capcom for

Gagarin's historic flight. _43

Belyayev and Leonov, along with their backups Zaykin (who had replaced Gorbatko) and

Khrunov, continued to train intensively for the mission throughout February, carrying out runs

in both the Tu-104 and the TKB-60. By February 19, the State Commission had decided on a

specific timetable for the two missions: the automated one would be launched on February 21

or 22, while the piloted flight was set for March 4 or 5. In addition to these two missions, three

small satellites in the Kosmos series were set aside for launch prior to the piloted launch to

ensure that radiation levels were safe for an EVA. The orbital parameters of Voskhod 2 were

intended to be 180 by 500 kilometers, far higher than any previous piloted flight. The EVA itself

would be carried out immediately after orbital insertion, at the end of the first orbit or at the

beginning of the second one. In the case of abnormalities in the spaceship, the crew could elect

to carry out the spacewalk on any orbit from the second to the sixth, ensuring that the vehicle

would be over Soviet territory during the critical event. '4'_

Throughout the preparations for the EVA mission, engineers were acutely conscious of yet

another race with the United States. By February, the race began to have deleterious effects on

the 3KD program. Chief Designer Severin recalled that "the Americans planned to do their EVA

in three months and had announced it beforehand. So we felt very rushed. We were hurrying

and were nervous .... ,,,4_ In this climate, the first 3KD spacecraft was launched successfully

into orbit at 1030 hours Moscow Time on February 22, 1965. Initial orbital parameters were

175 by 512 kilometers at a 64.7/-degree inclination to the equator. As was usual, the Soviet

press did not attribute the satellite any particular mission, merely naming it Kosmos-SL The

fully equipped spacecraft was to simulate all the necessary airlock operations: checking the airlock, inflating the airtock, transferring air from the descent apparatus to the airlock depressurization of the airlock, turning on the air supply from oxygen bottles to a spacesuit, opening and

closing the outer hatch, repressurizing the airlock, and finally ejecting the airlock assembly on

the sixteenth orbit. '4_Despite LL General Kamanin's reservation that "we were most doubtful

that the airlock would function reliably," all the preliminary operations, save for the ejection.

were carried out without anomalies. Satisfied that the mission was going smoothly, Kamanin

left the control center in Moscow. When he returned about five hours after launch, he greeted

Korolev with "Good evening!" Korolev dryly replied, "No, Nikolay Petrovich, the evening, it

seems, is not good. It looks like the craft has blown up .... ,,,4,

Kosmos-57 had evidently exploded into approximately 180 pieces. _ cursory inspection by

engineers revealed that for unknown reasons, the reentry cycle of the satellite had been spuri143 Rex Hall, "Soviet Air Force Cosmonauts," in Michael Cassutt, ed., Who's Who in Space: The

Internationa[ Space Tear Edition (New York:Macmillan. 1992), pp. 219 20. 246-47: William Shelton, Soviet Space

Exploration: The First Decade(New York: Washington SquarePress, 1968), pp. 173-14.

144 Note that in the original document describing the 3KD mission, a nominal orbit is listed as 180 by

400 kilometers. Evidently, sometime between the issuance of that document and February 1965, the State

Commission elected to raise the intended apogeeto 500 kilometers. Seealso Kamanin, "PagesFrom a Diary."

145. r'To SaveMan: A Conversation With the General Designer"

146. Korolev, "The 'Voskhod 2' SpaceShip."

147. Kamanin. "PagesFroma Diary."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

ously activated. The retrorocket engine had been fired, but being in the wrong attitude, the

satellite had entered an incorrect orbit after engine cutoff. As per programming, the spacecraft's

automatic self-destruct system had activated upon entering the incorrect orbit. The cause for

the command to reenter remained a mystery until further examination of telemetry. On

February 25, Chief Designer Armen S. Mnatsakanyan of NII-648, responsible for telemetry

instrumentation, and Colonel Amos A. Bolshoy, the head of the Chief Operations and Control

Group for the Voskhod missions, presented reports on the analysis of the data. The findings

pointed to ground control error. As per original planning, the controller at one of the ground

stations, Measurement Point No. 6 (IP-6) at Yelizovo in Kamchatka, sent a message, command

no. 42, to transfer air to the airlock. By an amazing coincidence and contrary to orders, a controller at the backup station, IP-7 at Klyuchi in Ussuriysk, sent the same coded command at the

exact same moment. The two commands were received simultaneously, thus becoming a new

command, no. 5--that is, the command to descend. '_ Thus the spacecraft was exonerated of

any fault.

The Kosmos-57 spacecraft had accomplished most, but not all, of the tasks necessary to

instill faith in a piloted mission. Because the robotic precursor had exploded, there had been

no test of the airlock release, nor a test of a full reentry of the descent apparatus with the large

airlock ring attached to the side of the capsule. The ground tests for these aspects of the mission were beset by failures. When a test version of the descent apparatus was air-dropped from

a plane at Feodosiya, the parachute system failed, smashing the capsule into pieces. Another

airlock, one built for the flight, was destroyed on January 13,when it was accidentally dropped

during mating with the flight version of the 3KD. The spate of failures seriously unnerved all

personnel. Severin recalls, "The situation was really grave. Almost the entire testing program

had been disrupted. Only part of it was completed in the unmanned flight .... '.....There was

even talk of postponing the flight until better results were obtained on the ground. The competition with Gemini reached such a state that Soviet security personnel arrived at Tyura-Tam.

Severin recalls:

The Chairman o[ the K_B [V_ Ye. 5emichastnyy] appeared unexpectedly at Baykonur

[on February 20]. He arrived at the testing area and came up to us at the engineering

site, where we were preparing the airloek .... It's possible that the KGB thought that all

o[ our accidents were the result of imperialist intrigue. I don't know. But they established

strict monitoring, which made us very nervous. '_°

The reliability of landing a capsule with the large airlock ring installed was still an issue of

great concern because Kosmos-57 had never had the opportunity to land. The ring apparently

induced sharp rotations as high as one revolution per second around the main axis of the reentry capsule during descent by parachute. By late February, Korolev, Pilyugin, and Ryazanskiy

proposed a new revised testing program that would include more ground tests as well as inflight testing of the airlock ring. The chief designers received permission from the State

Commission to equip a Zenit-4 reconnaissance satellite with the suspect ring. A safe landing

by the military satellite would clear the way for a piloted launch. On March 7, a Zenit-4 was

launched into orbit as Kosmos-59. The descent apparatus successfully landed on March 15,

about 170 kilometers south of Kustanay in Kazakhstan. Although the on-board data recorder

148. Ibid.: Yu.A. Mozzhorin,et at, eds, Dorogiv kosmos II (Moscow: MAI, 1992), pp. 34-35 The accident commission was headed by TsUKOSCommander Maj. GeneralK g. Kerimov.

149. "ToSave Man: g ConversationWith the General Designer"

150. ibid.

453
454

failed to record the rotations of the capsule during landing, indirect evidence suggested that the

descent apparatus was subjected to only a forty- to l O0-degree-per-second rotation--within

the acceptable limits for a crew, '_' The success was a much-needed boost to the morale of the

engineers. Korolev wrote to his wife on March 8:

We are trying to accomplish all our work without hurry. Our chief motto is "the safety

of the crew comes first." God grant us the strength and the wisdom to always live up

to this motto and to never experience its opposite. I personally always believe and hope

for the best outcome even though all my efforts, my mind, and my experiences are

directed towards trying to foresee and outguess the worst that can happen--an ominous presence that stalks us every step into the unknown.'_2

The mission of Kosmos-59 seems to have finally cleared the way for this "new step into the

unknown," then scheduled for the third week of March 1965.

Under Tyulin's direction, the State Commission held a meeting at site 2 at Tyura-Tam on

March 9 to discuss the composition of the crew who had arrived at the launch site the same

day. Despite some reservations about Belyayev's health and his possible replacement by

Khrunov, all unanimously approved Belyayev and Leonov as the primary crew. Khrunov would

serve as the only backup cosmonaut, ready to take over from either of the primary members.

as he had been trained for both positions.'" Korolev met with the cosmonauts on March 13,

saying: "1 want to caution you once more that the most important thing in your flight is to

return to Earth healthy, We do not need thoughtless heroics.' .... The primary and backup crews

and the flight program were formally approved at a State Commission meeting on March 16,

The launch was set for either March t8 or 19, less than a week before the first piloted Gemini

mission, Gemini II1.

Korolev was beset by poor health throughout the last few weeks leading up to the launch.

At one point, he had had to spend some time under medical attention because of a pulmonary

inflammation. Nothing, of course, deterred him from his work, and looking tired and gaunt, he

showed up for the launch on the morning of March 18. It was a cold and snowy day at TyuraTam. Belyayev and Leonov arrived at the launch, the former "as always, completely unperturbed" and the latter "visibly excited."'s_ Korolev, Gagarin, Kamanin and others were there to

see the cosmonauts off. In a farewell message, Korolev told Leonov, "1 won't give you a lot of

advice and ask a lot of you Lyesha, just don't outsmart yourself. I only ask you one thing: just

exit the ship and come back in, keeping in mind all the Russian sayings that have helped a

Russian man during difficult times. May you have a fair solar wind.' .....

The Voskhod 2 spacecraft, vehicle 3KD no. 4, was launched successfully at I000 hours

Moscow Time on March 18, 1965. On board were Colonel Pavel I. Belyayev, thirty-nine, and

Lt. Colonel _leksey P,. Leonov, thirty. As with the earlier Voskhod mission, the tension during

151. Kamanin, Skrytiykosmos: 1964-1966, p. 166.

152. Golovanov, Korolev, p, 749.

153. The concerns about Belyayev'shealth were apparently misplaced. During a training session in the

TDK 60 altitude chamber, Belyayev had begun gasping for breath. Physicians had attributed the problem to

Belyayev'shealth. It was later discovered that Be[yayevwas not receiving any oxygen because of a malfunction in

the equipment, According to Kamanin, Belyayev"displayed admirable composure, found the problem, and corrected it," SeeKamanin, "PagesFroma Diary." Note that Kamanin had decided that backup cosmonaut Zaykin was not

suitable for a primary crew

154_ Ibid

155 Ibid

156 Gotovanov. Koroiev. p. 749: Lt. Gen. Georgiy Aleksandrovich Tyulin, "Task for the Future: Notes of the

State Commission Chairman" (English title), Krasnaya zvezda, April 5, 1988,p. 4

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
"THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

the first few seconds was without measure. There were apparently numerous alarms during the ascent. Korolev, a nonsmoker, lit up a cigarette once the spacecraft reached orbital

velocity at T+530 seconds. Initial orbital parameters were 173

by 498 kilometers at a sixty-five-degree inclination. The two

cosmonauts began preparations for the EVA as soon as they

reached orbit. First, Belyayev expanded the Volga airlock to its

full length. Then Leonov, aided by Belyayev, strapped on his

life support backpack within the cramped capsule, making

sure that all systems were operational. Once the pressure

between the airlock and the ship was equalized, Belyayev

flipped a switch to open the inner hatch. Leonov crawled head

first into the airlock and hooked himself up to the 5.35-meterlong tether. After all the tests proved satisfactory, Belyayev

commanded the first hatch shut and depressurized the airlock. Through all this strenuous activity, Belyayev kept up a

constant stream of conversation, cautioning his crewmate,

"Take it easy, Aleksey .... Be patient. Take it easy .... '....

Belyayev opened the external hatch by remote control

just an hour and a half after liftoff, at 1132 hours, 54 seconds

Moscow Time on March 18. Leonov was evidently impatient,

eager to leave the airlock, and Belyayev had to order his pilot

to stick to the preset program. Within two minutes, at 1134

hours, 51 seconds, Leonov emerged from the airlock, thus

becoming the first human to walk in space. At first, he merely poked his head out, but then gradually pushed out his

entire body. The Sun was evidently very bright, almost blinding, forcing the cosmonaut to squint as he held on to the

outer rim of the spaceship. His first words upon entering free

space were: "1 can see the Caucasus. "'_ As Voskhod 2 was

flying over the Black Sea, Leonov stayed with his EVA program

and removed the cover from the camera on a boom outside

the spacecraft, '_9Toying with the cap, he eventually let it go,

watching it fly into its own orbit. He removed one hand, then

the other, and let go of the ship, floating out into space at

28,000 kilometers per hour over the surface of Earth. He

recalled later:

It was an extraordinary sensation. I had never felt quite

like it before. I was free above the planet Earth and I

saw it--saw it was rotating majestically below me.

Suddenly in the silence, I heard the words ",ztttention!

7tttentionf Man has entered open space. "'_'

These three stills are from the external movie camera on Voskhod 2,

which recorded ,'qlekseyLeonov's

historic spacewalk in March 1965.

(flies of._sff Siddiqi)

157. Riabchikov. Russiansin Space, p. 219.

158. Ibid.

159. Golovanov, Koroleu. p. 749. Some sourcessuggest that he manually installed the camera on the outside of the ship. See.[or example, Kenneth Gatland, Manned Spacecraft (New York: Macmillan. 1976), p. 13.5.

160. "The Russian Right Stuff," NOVT] television show.

455
456

The Topaz TV camera mounted on the inflatable airlock transmitted live pictures of

Leonov's movements, not only to Belyayev but also to ground control. Leonov apparently had

a still photo camera attached to his spacesuit, and during his short jaunt into open space, he

tried several times to depress the shutter to take pictures of the exterior of the spaceship but

was unable to do so. P,fter about ten minutes, by which point he was over the Pacific, Leonov

began preparations for reentering the airlock, First, he removed the movie camera from the

boom, but evidently he had great difficulty in placing it in the airlock. In returning to the airlock, Leonov was to enter feet first, thus allowing him to slip back into his seat from the other

side of the airlock. The internal diameter of the airlock was not designed for a somersaulting

cosmonaut. But after twelve minutes and nine seconds in open space. Leonov found himself

in a difficult situation:

Near the end of my walk I realized that my feet had pulled out of my shoes and my

hands had pulled away from my gloves. My entire suit stretched so much that my hands

and feet appeared to shrink. I was unable to control them. It was as if I had never tried

the suit on even once. '_'

With little control over his limbs, he had trouble entering the airlock:

I couldn't get back in straightaway. My space suit had ballooned out and the pressure

was quite considerable. I was tired and couldn't go in feet first as I had been taught to

do. But using a valve... I decreased the pressure to just under 027 atmospheres. Then

I felt freer and I could move about more easily. Then I pushed myself into the airlock

head first, with my arms holding the rails. I had to turn myself upside down in the air

lock in order to enter the ship feet first and this was very difficult.'""

Leonov's pulse was racing as high as 143 beats per minute, his breathing rate was twice

normal levels, and his body temperature was up to thirty-eight degrees Centigrade. He was

drenched in sweat and in serious danger of fatigue. '_ An exhausted Leonov finally closed the

outer hatch, pressurized the airlock, and opened his helmet in violation of instructions. After a

short rest, he opened the inner hatch and slipped back into the descent apparatus. The outer

hatch was closed at t 15 t hours, 54 seconds, giving a total depressurized time of only twentythree minutes and forty-one seconds.

Soviet leaders back in the Kremlin followed the EVA closely. It was the first big spaceflight

of the new Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership, and as such, it was almost surely considered an

important benchmark for future space programs. An operator from the main flight control center of the Strategic Missile Forces was driven twice to the Kremlin to explain the details of the

EVA, which was piped in live on TV. Brezhnev, Kosygin, Mikoyan, Ustinov, and other members sat and watched the proceedings attentively. Brezhnev later recorded a congratulatory

message for the two cosmonauts. '64

161 Thomas O'Toole, "The Man Who Didn't Walk on the Moon." New York Times Magazine. July 17,

1994. pp. 26-29. The quote ison p. 28

f62. "The RussianRight Stuff," NOVa television show.

163 The official medical report on the flight included the following: "During emergence from the lock into

spaceand return to the ship, Leonov's heart fate was approximately 1.5times higher than the rates observed during

the training sessionand reached 150 162 perrain." See_kulinichev, et al, "Some Resultsof Medical Supervision,"

p 289. Seealso Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 750.

164. Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, pp 323-24.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
i

I "THERE

i

ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH..."

Having completed the primary task of the flight, the crew cast off the concertina-shaped

airlock and settled down to a one-day mission, not unlike that of the first Voskhod. The ejection of the airlock seems to have imparted a twenty-degree-per-second rotation rate to the

spacecraft, several times greater than the nominal rate. The State Commission, after consulting

with the crew, decided to rectify the rotation only prior to landing, possibly to conserve attitude control propellant. There was another problem: the EVA exit hatch on the ship had not

been shut tight completely, causing an automatic mechanism on the spacecraft to overcompensate for the incremental drop in air pressure. Instead, the life support system filled the interior of the ship with oxygen, which reached levels as high as 45 percent. The danger was

obvious: a tiny spark could set off a fire and explosion within the ship. The two men spent

much effort trying to lower the oxygen content during the remainder of their mission, apparently managing to bring it down to manageable levels before the planned reentry. In terms of

science, there were some minor experiments related to color perception in microgravity. The

crew apparently also carried out some movie and still photography. The usual complement of

biological samples was also carried aboard. _

The problems with the mission continued to accumulate as reentry approached. By the

thirteenth orbit, pressure in the cabin pressurization tanks had dropped from seventy-five to

twenty-five atmospheres, raising the threat of a complete decompression of the spacecraft.

gfter careful analysis, Chief Designer Grigoriy I. Voronin, responsible for the life support systems, "firmly stated that the pressure in the craft's cabin could not fall below 500 millimeters,

in which case there would be more than enough oxygen for three hours"--that is, until landing on the seventeenth orbit. Belyayev reported on the fourteenth orbit that the pressure had

indeed stabilized at twenty-five atmospheres, although it seems that oxygen content was still

sufficiently high to have made the last few hours nerve-racking for both ground controllers and

the crew. Every minute was an agony as the specter of cosmonaut Bondarenko's death in a

pressure chamber four years before passed through everybody's minds. _6_

On the seventeenth orbit, the controllers, along with Korolev, Keldysh, Tyulin, and

Gagarin, waited expectantly for word that the reentry burn had occurred on time. gfter some

tense minutes, Belyayev calmly reported, "Negative automatic retrofire"--meaning that the

retrorocket engine had not engaged. '_7Within seconds, the controllers conjectured that the

solar attitude control sensor had malfunctioned: a circuit to prevent retro-engine ignition in

such cases had operated as planned. As the tension in the control room began to rise. there

was a brief flurry of conversation among the leading members of the State Commission. The

question was: What should we do now? An engineer at the control room recalled:

No one understood what the problem was. There were many guesses, frantic proposals-everyone had clearly begun to get nervous .... Korolev took supervision into his

own hands. He established silence and asked everyone to sit down. Then he calmly listened to the work supervisor in charge of the control system. He asked him to tell him

the possible causes and to give a suggestion for further action, '_

165 These included human lung cancer cells, frog ova and sperm, drosophila melanogaster insects, trades

cantia paludosa plants, winter wheat and pine seeds, chlorella algae, and bacteria. See Wukelic, ed, Handbook of

Soviet Space-Science Research. pp 346-48. For general descriptions of their time in orbit, see Kamanin. Skr),tiy kosmos: t964-1966, pp 167 69: Golovanov, Koroleu. p. 751.

i66. Golovanov. Korolev. p. 75 I: M. F. Rebrov, Kosmicheskiye katastrofy: Russkiye sensatsii (Moscow: lzdAT.

1993), p. 38: Kamanin. "Pages From a Diary"

167_ Tyulin. "Task for the Future."

168. Ishlinskiy, ed., Ztkademik S. P Koroteu, p 486.

457
458

After a short conference, Korolev proposed that Belyayev use the manual system of orientation for reentry. OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Yevgeniy V. Shabarov, responsible for flight

testing, and control systems engineer Boris V. Raushenbakh began a frantic race to gather the

necessary data to transmit to the crew to carry out manual reentry. Once the data were found,

the numbered code was written on a piece of paper and signed by each of the engineers. The

paper was then handed to Gagarin who, under Korolev's direct orders, transmitted the information to Belyayev.'_9Ballistics computations showed that the landing could be achieved on

the eighteenth, twenty-second, or twenty-third orbit. In all cases, the landing area would be

well north of the nominal site.

The exercise in simply orienting the spacecraft into its correct attitude using the Vzor optical device became an ordeal in itself, exacerbated by the fact that both men were clad in bulky

spacesuits. In the cramped quarters of the ship, Belyayev had to place himself horizontally

across both seats of the capsule, while Leonov remained out of the way under his seat. At the

same time, Leonov manually held Belyayev in place so as to keep Belyayev in front of the orientation porthole. That way, Belyayev could use both his hands to orient the ship to Earth's

terminator using hand controls. Having completed this task, both men quickly returned to their

seats to reestablish the ship's center of gravity before firing the deorbit engine. It took the two

men a whole forty-six seconds to get back into their original positions before Belyayev hit the

engine fire button. This forty-six-second delay caused a serious overshoot of their original targeted landing point. '_°Other reliable accounts suggest that only Belyayev managed to get back

into his seat by the time of engine ignition. Leonov was evidently still out of his seat, thus displacing the ship's center of gravity, raising the specter of a wildly spinning capsule reentering

the atmosphere. In an amazing stroke of luck, the ship did not spin out of control, probably

saving the lives of the cosmonauts.

The ordeal did not end there. As in several previous Vostok missions, the instrument compartment failed to separate from the descent apparatus: the two modules remained connected

to each other loosely with steel straps. The unsteady mass of the two rocking modules linked

to each other did not produce the required lift for a nominal ballistic trajectory. Instead, the capsules headed on a steep trajectory with severe loads on their bodies. The gravitational force

burst blood vessels in both men's eyes as the load reached ten g's. Each man felt as if they

weighed about 700 kilograms for a few seconds. '7'

Control centers at both Tyura-Tam and Moscow received word that the capsule had landed, but for an agonizing four hours, there was no communication on the health of the crew.

One thing was clear: the ship had landed way off course in the dense forests of the Russian

tayga. One of Korolev's greatest fears was that if the capsule landed in a densely forested area,

the soft-landing sensor at the base of the descent apparatus would "think" that the ship was

near ground if it hit a tree branch high up in the air. With such a premature firing, the capsule

would hit the ground with a thunderous impact, seriously injuring the crew. Fortunately, one

of the pilots in a search helicopter reported:

On the forest road between the villages of Sorokouaya and Shchuchino. about 30 kilometers southwest of the town of Berezniki, I see the red parachute and the two cosmonauts. There is deep snow all around .... The craft touched down in dense woods, far

from any population center. ,72

169. Mozzhorin,et aL.eds..Dorogiv kosmos:/. p. 179.

170. Kamanin,Skrytiykosmos:1964-1965,pp I90, 197.

171. Golovanov,Korolev,p. 752:O'Toole."The ManWho Didn'tWalk on theMoon"

172. Kamanin."PagesFroma Diary."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
!"THERE RRE MORE THINGS IN HERREN RND ERRTH..."

The mission had ended with touchdown at 1202 hours Moscow Time on March 19, 1965,

after a one-day, two-hour, two-minute mission. The ship had landed 386 kilometers from the

designated target area, about 180 kilometers northwest of the town of Perm. The area in which

they landed was so densely packed with trees that it was impossible for helicopters to land.

Instead, thermal flight clothing was dropped from one helicopter while another landed five kilometers away. The areawas completely covered with snow, and the temperature was minus five

degrees Centigrade. The cosmonauts themselves had no clue where they were, being surrounded by dense forests and snow two meters deep at places, When Leonov asked how soon

rescuers would pick them up, Belyayev joked, "Maybe in three months, they'll pick us up with

dog sleds.'''_ A helicopter found a place to land about five kilometers from the landing point,

and a search team set off on foot to find the capsule. Another team in two vehicles from the

Air Defense Forces was meanwhile attempting to reach the crew on land. Both parties were

unable to find the spaceship before nightfall and had to cut short their searches. Fortunately

for Belyayev and Leonov, a helicopter had dropped thermal clothing for the cosmonauts earlier

during the day.

The men spent an extremely frigid and uncomfortable night in the woods. In the morning,

a helicopter once again flew over the landing site and reported that two people, both wearing

flight clothing, were spotted near the landing site, one chopping wood and the other arranging branches to start a fire. At 0730 hours, a group headed by a Colonel Sibiryak of the Air

Defense Forces disembarked from an Mi-4 helicopter with the objective of reaching the crew on

skis. It took the group three hours to cover the one and a half kilometers to the descent apparatus, finally arriving around 1030 hours. The cosmonauts were reported to 6e in good condition with no injuries. A twist was added to the whole rescue operation by the insistence of

Soviet Air Forces Commander-in-Chief Marshal Vershinin that the crew only be evacuated by

motorcycle, or if that was not possible, then by helicopter, but only if it landed near the capsule. Despite fierce objections from both Korolev and Kamanin, who advocated simply hoisting the cosmonauts onto hovering helicopters, the cosmonauts were forced to spend an

additional night in uncomfortable conditions. Even Korolev's attempts at convincing the Soviet

leadership were in vain; Vershinin had told Brezhnev that hoisting them to a height of five to

six meters might be dangerous. The irony was that they were only three or four hours away

from Tyura-Tam. '_4

The second night was more comfortable, as the cosmonauts had additional food, clothing, and tents. Finally, at around I000 hours on March 2 I, Belyayev and Leonov arrived at Perm

airport in an Mi-6 helicopter on their way to Tyura-Tam. At the launch range, all the leading

personalities involved with the flight, including Korolev, Keldysh, Tyulin, Rudenko, Pilyugin,

Barmin, Kerimov, and Kamanin, had gathered to greet the crew on their arrival. There was a

mixture of euphoria and relief in the air as the months of grueling work had finally paid off in

yet another spectacular advance for the Soviet space program. Korolev raised a toast to the

future: "Friends! Before us is the Moon. Let us all work together with the great goal of conquering the Moon. Do you remember how our collective worked in such a friendly manner? .....

This evidently elicited a quiet but sarcastic comment from Chief Designer Barmin. who muttered, "We worked in a friendly manner when we were all leaders.... Now there's one head

theoretician [referring to Keldysh] and one head designer .... ,,,7_

173. O'Toole, "The Man Who Didn't Walk on the Moon," p. 29.

174. Kamanin, "Pages From a Diary."

175. Kamanin, "In the Future His Name Will Probably Be .... " p. 28,

176. Ibid.

459
460

The cosmonauts finally arrived at Tyura-Tam at 1730 hours, both in good moods. On the

morning of March 22, Belyayev and Leonov briefed the State Commission on their mission.

They were then flown to Moscow for a massive government reception in Moscow held the following evening. The requisite postflight press conference became the subject of much dispute,

when Kamanin insisted that the truth be told about the cosmonauts' daring landing ordeal. ,As

was typical, the more conservative Academy of Sciences President Keldysh was adamantly

opposed, demanding that Belyayev write in his report to the press that the spacecraft landed

at the precisely designated site, but had spent two days "resting" at the landing area. Kamanin

was supported in his crusade by Korolev, but it seems that the latter's entreaties to Keldysh and

Smirnov did not make a difference. The press conference on March 26 at the assembly hall of

Moscow State University was filled with generalizations and half-truths. Keldysh maintained

tight control over the proceedings. At one point, Belyayev was forced to say that the cosmonauts had been "delighted" that the automatic system of orientation had failed, because this

provided them with an opportunity to use the manual system.'" Belyayev also added that the

Voskhod-class ships could change orbits in space, a blatant lie that was repeated by Keldysh

in a journal article the following month. ''_ The references to orbital maneuvering were clearly

aimed to take the wind out of the Gemini III flight, when for the very first time a piloted spacecraft had changed orbits.

Cosmonaut chief Kamanin was party to an even more bizarre postscript to the Voskhod 2

mission at the premiere showing of the Leonov EVA film in Moscow on August 24, 1965, a

couple of months after NASA astronaut Edward H. White II carried out the first American

spacewalk. Kamanin announced that the White spacewalk had benefited greatly from information supplied by the Soviets. He added, "P, small group of American specialists, with the

permission of our government came to the Soviet Union and talked with Belyayev and Leonov

about their flight, and we didn't hide anything." When a reporter asked who these "American

specialists" were, Kamanin replied that either three or five persons had interviewed the Soviet

cosmonauts for several days, but that he could not remember their names! Asked if the

Americans were from NASP,, Kamanin answered, "I don't know .... Officially, they were here

with a television company--allegedly.' ....

The postflight hyperbole at the press conference did not in any way diminish the value of

the Voskhod 2 mission. The flight was a major landmark not only for the Soviet space program,

but for the human exploration of space as a whole. The importance of the event is more magnified by the story of the amazing resourcefulness of Soviet engineers and cosmonauts--a

story that was hidden from the public for a quarter of a century. The Voskhod 2 flight had two

other distinctions, neither of which were clear when Korotev raised his toast to the Moon. The

first was the astonishing fact that the Soviets would not launch a single piloted space mission

in the following twenty-four months, one of the longest gaps in the history of the Soviet space

program. Voskhod 2 was, in effect, the last in the series of spectacular flights that had raised

the specter of Soviet domination in space. It was the absolute zenith of the Soviet space program, one never, ever attained since. Voskhod-2's second distinction was of a more personal

nature: it was Korolev's swan song. As he turned to finally run hard in a race to the Moon

against the United States, he had little hope of knowing that he would not live to see another

Soviet cosmonaut launched into space. It was truly the end of an era.

177 Souiet 5pace Programs, 1962-63, p. 557.

l/8. See Priroda (April 1965): 9-16, referenced in ibid., p. 365. P, Soviet journalist also reported in Prauda on

March 19. 1965. that "This spacesuit may be used for prolonged work in space and for landing on the lunar surface."

119. "Russian Suggests Soviet Data Helped U.S 'Walk' in Space," New York Times, gugust 25, 1965. p. 24

Kamanin also wrote about this claim in his diary entry for October 20, 1965. See Kamanin. Skrytiy kosmos:

1964-1966. p. 241.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
1

I

t

i CHAPTER ELEVEN

!

THREE STEPS

! ' TO THE MOON

I

!

I ....... i

When cosmonauts Belyayev and Leonov landed after their historic Voskhod 2 mission, it

had been approximately four years since the first flight of Gagarin in 1961. Each of the eight

piloted missions during that period had been proposed, directed, and executed under the auspices of one organization using essentially a single model of spacecraft. In this respect, the year

1965 was a watershed point in the history of the Soviet piloted space program, as several new

vehicles were put on the drawing boards for a variety of long-range goals, including civilian and

military operations in Earth orbit, circumlunar flight, and a lunar landing. The most important

of these was a spacecraft that would eventually fly more missions than any other spaceship

built in the Soviet Union, the Soyuz.

A New Direction for Soyuz

OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer Konstantin D. Bushuyev,

Korolev's de facto assistant for all piloted space projects, over

saw the earlywork on the ?K-9K-I IK Soyuz program. Bushuyev

and Korolev's First Deputy Mishin had come up through the

same ranks. They graduated together from the Moscow

Aviation Institute in the 1930s and joined Bolkhovitinov's rocket-plane group in the 1940s at the same time. The two would

have gone to Germany together, but Bushuyev's wife's brother

had been killed by lightning at the time, and Bushuyev had to

attend the funeral. Later,Mishin invited Bushuyev to Kaliningrad

to join Korolev's rocket design group. It was here that he would

make his mark, working on a variety of design problems during

the 1950s,including missile nose cones.

Bushuyev had a remarkably reticent and unassuming personality. He did not drink, he exercised regularly, and he liked

to go hiking into the woods--a pleasure he rarely shared with

anyone. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he never wore

any of his medals and awards at official ceremonies, preferring to remain in the background. He may have been

Korolev's principal aide for piloted space projects, but the

two men had a very complex relationship. Russian historian

Yaroslav K. Golovanov, who knew Bushuyev, wrote about

him:

OKB I Deputy Chief Designer

Bushuyev was the senior person at

the design bureau responsible [or

piloted space programs His identity

was revealed in 1971 when the

Soviets announced that he uaoutd

head the Soviet team participating

in the/qpotlo-Soyuz Test Project

This photo dates from early 1972.

(N,'qS,,qphoto)

461
462

To be quite honest. I was never able to understand why Korolev would have named

Bushuyev as his deputy for all space projects, or in other words--for all the projects

which were closest to Korolev's heart. It was well known that Korolev treated Bushuyev

with the utmost severity, and at times was downright unjust, that Korolev treated

Bushuyev at times like an errant delivery man. Bushuyev was, in fact, the very antithesis of Korolev in character, behavior, and interpersonal relations.'

Bushuyev apparently considered resigning from the design bureau many times, but ultimately Korolev would invariably "call Bushuyev into his office and calmly, even gently--and

what is more, with genuine trust--involve him in a discussion, ask for his views, share his own

quandaries .... " In the end, Bushuyev stayed on.

In June 1959, Korolev sent Bushuyev to the so-called "Second Territory" in Kaliningrad, a

recently acquired artillery plant with 5,000 new employees, to focus on spacecraft and solidpropellant ballistic missiles.: By late 1962, the Second Territory had come to focus exclusively on

space-related projects, and Bushuyev took charge of a variety of important OKB-I programs. He

did not stay there very long. One story is that someone hinted to Korolev about Bushuyev's

alleged ambitions to separate his branch from the main OKB-I center, leaving Korolev to focus

only on the development of missiles. Others claim that Bushuyev, although a brilliant engineer,

was simply a poor manager. Either way, Korolev pulled the plug. In May 1963, Korolev abruptly

ordered Bushuyev back to the central location to oversee other profiles at the giant organization)

Perhaps to preclude any of his other deputy chief designers from harboring dreams of carving out a piece of the pie, Korolev redistributed various space-related programs across both the

main OKB-I center and the affiliate Second Territory. The Soyuz program came under the direction of Deputy Chief Designer Sergey S. Kryukov, also responsible for the N I rocket, while Boris

Ye. Chertok, one of Korolev's most senior men, was sent off

to head the Second Territory. Chertok, fifty-one years old at

the time, was the overseerof all work at the enterprise on control, guidance, and orientation systems for spacecraft and

missiles. P, tall, balding man with a powerful voice, he was

also one of the few Jewish men in the top ranks of the Soviet

space designers. He was born in the Polish town of Lodz, and

he developed an interest in radio during his adolescence. In

the 1930s. Chertok found a job at Plant No. 22 outside

Moscow, the same plant that is today known as the M. V.

Khrunichev State Space Scientific-Production Center. In 1946.

hejoined the famous NII-88. During Stalin's later years, thenMinister of Defense Industries Ustinov saved Chertok from

imprisonment by demoting him to an innocuous position to

divert attention away from his Semitic background. As his

power grew within the Soviet space program, Chertok, like BorisChertokwasa DeputyChief

many of his other contemporaries, was allowed to write about Designer at OKB-Iwhoparticipated in

space in the Soviet media in later years, but under the pseu- several key Sovietspaceprojects such

as Soyuz In lateryears,he was also

donym "Boris Yevseyev." After the shakeup in 1963, Chertok one of the principal flight eontrollers for

was closely involved in the development of the Soyuz and piloted spacemissionsat the

was instrumental in saving the program from oblivion. Yevpatoriya center. (files of Peter _orin)

I YaroslavGolovanov.Korolev:[akty i mify (Moscow:Nauka,1994),pp. 589-90.

2. B.Ye,Chertok,Raketyi lyudi:fili PodlipkiTyuratam(Moscow:Mashinostroyeniye.1996),pp 275-76.

3. Golovanov,Korolev.pp. 589-91: Chertok.Raketyi lyudi: Fili Podlipki Tyuratam.p 276; Yu. E

Semenov,ed..Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya"Energiya"imeniS P Koroleua(Korolev:RKKEnergiya,named

afterS.P Korolev,1996),p. 167.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

By the first months of 1964, OKB-I's Department No, II, subordinated to Deputy Chief

Designer Kryukov, had redesigned the basic 7K Soyuz spacecraft for flying not two, but three

cosmonauts. Technical documentation for the vehicle had been prepared in early 1964, and by

the spring, the first "boilerplate" had rolled off the plant at Kaliningrad. When Korolev first

viewed the spacecraft, he allegedly told everyone present that "this was the machine of the

future. '4 A full-size trainer of the 7K, along with one-thirtieth-size models of the 9K and I I K,

was installed at TsNII-30 in Noginsk by February 1964 to allow cosmonauts to rehearse docking procedures in orbit. _/5 stripped-down mock-up of the Soyuz descent apparatus was also

prepared for a suborbital flight from the old proving range at Kapustin Yar. OKB-I engineers

launched the mock-up on the morning of September 26, 1964, to test the aerodynamic qualities of the capsule, but the payload shroud broke up between T+33 and T+39 seconds because

of excessive aerodynamic loads. _

Despite the advances in the Soyuz effort, the program was stopped dead in its tracks less

than a year after it had received a formal go-ahead in December 1963. When in August 1964

the Soviet Communist Party and government selected Chelomey to carry out the circumlunar

program, Soyuz effectively fell through the cracks. There were other factors--for example,

Korolev was knee-deep in a variety of unrelated projects at the time, including the interim

Voskhod missions. In addition, primary operations for piloted lunar exploration at OKB-I had

shifted subtly from circumlunar projects to a lunar landing effort, more specifically the N I-L3

project. By the second half of 1964, the overall Soyuz program was "practically paralyzed," and

it was ready to join the many other projects of the time as a footnote in Soviet space history.

In the fall of 1964, Korolev established a small group under Chertok to come up with proposals on the potential use of the basic 7K Soyuz spacecraft. In late 1964, Chertok's team suggested that the docking of two 7K vehicles in Earth orbit should be considered the primary goal

of a redirected Soyuz program. Such a docking mission would aid in the development of rendezvous and docking systems, as well as provide experience in carrying out EVA operations in

orbit from one Soyuz to another. Although the experiment had merits of its own, there were

more pragmatic reasons for picking such a project as the primary goal of the Soyuz program. In

early conceptions of the NI-L3 landing project, the engineers had proposed an elaborate

scheme of crew transfer from one spacecraft to the other in lunar orbit via EVA. The 7K Soyuz

could test out this complicated maneuver in Earth orbit before actual operations in lunar orbit.

In February 1965, Korolev presented his new conception of the Soyuz program, restructured

from a circumlunar objective to operations in Earth orbit, to the Scientific-Technical Council of

the State Committee for Defense Technology. The "ministry" granted approval for the program,

taking into account that the design bureau had already finished the initial technical plan for the

7K vehicle, that it had been coordinated with a specific launch vehicle, that engineers had issued

the complete design documentation, and that the manufacturing of portions of the vehicle had

already begun. The 7K Soyuz would also enable cosmonauts to master complex Earth-orbital

operations as a true second-generation spacecraft to follow the Vostok. 7

4. Semenov,ed_ Raketno-KosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 168.

5. N P. Kamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: kniga vtoraya. 1964-1966gg (Moscow: Infortekst IF, 1997), p 24:

Viktor Mitroshenkov, Zemnya pod nebom (Moscow: Sovetskayarossiya, 198T).p. 330

6. Yu. V. Biryukov, "Materials from the BiographicalChronicles of SergeyPavlovich Korolev" (Englishtitle),

in B. V. Raushenbakh,ed,/z istorii Sovetskoykosmonavtiki (Moscow: Nauka, 1983), p 251: V. Semenov,I. Marinin,

and S. Shamsutdinov, /z istorii kosmonavtiki: uypysk I1: zapuski kosmieheskikh apparatov po programmam

pilotiruyemykh poletou (Moscow: AO Videokosmos, 1995), p. 5 I: E-mail correspondence, Igor Lissov to the author,

June 10, 1997.This was evidently the first launch of the R-5V variant of the R-5missile.

7 Semenov, edt Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya, pp 168-69.

463
464

LIVING COMPARTMENT

DOCKING PROBE

.....TCHTO_ _,

SALYUT SPACE STATION

PRESSURE INTEGRITY

CHECK PANEL

'_ p /- MEO,C,NE CHEST

WASTE FOOD STORAGE

MANAGEMENT _ _. _/_'__ FO .........

x \"x _

....ENSER ",-'")<_"4''Y'¢ I 7 "I 71 ;xc:a:,:_.

PRESSURE INTEGRITY J REGENERATOR

CHECK UNIT (OXYGEN SUPPLYI

SHORTRANGE

TRANSPONDER

LONG RANGE

TRANSPONDER

DITSC ENT APPARATUS

RECOVERY --_

dEACON

ANTENNA

....T......_ GOTDH

aVERY

W

't,_';T'_TRE_7 ....,

2- 2gTS

--I

PANEL BEACON _ _ LANDING RADAR

THRUSTER (2] J

YAW _

BASE HEATSHIELO /_

(JETTISONED AFTER

REENTRY HEAT PHASE)

This and the next page show the three main sections o[ the Soyuz spaceera[t This particular model is the/K-T.

a slightly di[[erent variant than the 7K-OK, which was used during 1966-70 The primary di[[erence was in the

docking equipment. At the top o[ this page is the living compartment, which provided tile support [unctions during

independentfltght .Bt the bottom o[ thispage is thedescentapparatus, which carried the crew during launch and

recovery The next page shows the instrument-aggregate compartment, which provided electrical power, thermal

control, attitude control, and maneuvering capability. (copyright D. R Woods)

CHP, LLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

INSTRUMENT-AGGREGATE COMPARTMENT

In early 1965, all work on the Soyuz spacecraft was moved to Department No. 93 at

OKB-I. As per Chertok's original recommendations, the Soyuz program was reduced to the

development of a single spacecraft, the product 7K-OK, with the "OK" standing for the

Russian acronym of "orbital ship." Like all other missiles and spaceships, the vehicle also had

a production index, the II F615, which was the designation used in all plant documentation.

The two remaining portions, the 9K tanker and the I IK translunar-injection (TLI) block, which

would have been developed by other design bureaus, were eliminated from the program.

Engineers delivered the draft plan for the 7K-OK ship in May; because of delays it was not until

October 23 that they completed a final version, thus allowing designers to issue the technical

documentation for the manufacture of the spacecraft. A new tactical-technical requirement was

issued by the chief client, the Ministry of Defense, in August 1965/

The 7K-OK variant was an evolutionary design stemming from the years of work on the

abandoned Sever, LI, and 7K spacecraft in the early 196Os. It would be this model, publicly

called the Soyuz, that the Soviet Union would launch on thirty-eight piloted flights between

1967 and 1981.

8. Ibid, p. 636.

465
466

The general design scheme of the 7K-OK variant was quite similar to the original 7K variant

intended for circumlunar missions. Like its predecessor, the spacecraft had three major compartments from the forward end to the rear end, the living compartment, the descent apparatus, and the instrument-aggregate compartment. The descent apparatus and the

instrument-aggregate compartment retained their earlier shapes, but the living compartment

was redesigned to be more like a spheroid rather than the earlier cylinder because the former

provided a better mass-volume ratio. The total length of the spacecraft was about just over

seven and a half meters, and total mass was 6,460 to 6,_560kilograms, up from the Vostok's

modest 4,800 kilograms, t_ nominal mission would last three to ten days.

The cylindrical instrument-aggregate compartment--often called the "service module" in

the West--like the one on the 7K, was divided into four separate sections along the length of

its cylinder from the aft end to the forward end: the jettisonable compartment, the aggregate

compartment, the instrument compartment, and the transfer compartment. The jettisonable

compartment was a remnant of the original 7K vehicle's mission: circumlunar flight. It was originally a toroiclal section at the base of the vehicle that would carry electrical systems for rendezvous and docking and be discarded following translunar injection. In redesigning the 7K to

the 7K-OK, early models of the Soyuz evidently retained this compartment for chemical batteries, while all rendezvous and docking instrumentation was moved to the spheroid living

compartment at the forward end of the vehicle.

The unpressurized aggregate compartment carried the thermo-regulation radiator system,

the main and attitude control engines of the spacecraft, and two large solar panels (which

charged the chemical batteries in the spacecraft). Each solar array was made up of two [oursegment wings approximately a little more than three and a half meters in length, with a total

surface area of fourteen square meters, that would provide thirteen and a half volts, for a total

of twenty-seven volts. The solar arrays were folded up flat against the side of the aggregate

compartment during the launch phase, unfurling to their full lengths once in orbit. During an

Earth-orbital mission, the panels would be turned toward the Sun by orienting the entire vehicle by means of a solar sensor system and attitude control engines. The aggregate compartment

also contained the main 7K-OK engine, located at the center rear of the spacecraft. This engine,

the $5.35, had a thrust of 417 kilograms. The system also included a backup engine with two

additional nozzles around the main exhaust, with a thrust of 41 I kilograms, operating from the

same propellant supply. The propellants of unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (fuel) and nitric

acid (oxidizer) were carried in four spherical tanks mounted at the base of the aggregate compartment. The engine's development had begun in 1962 for the original 7K variant at OKB-2 in

Kaliningrad. In addition to the main engine system, the Soyuz also carried a set of twenty-two

attitude control motors. Of these, ten thrusters of ten kilograms thrust were placed on the

exterior of the transfer compartment; four at ten-kilogram thrust and eight at one-kilogram

thrust were installed elsewhere. A backup system of eight thrusters consisted of four at onekilogram thrust and four at ten-kilogram thrust.

Forward of the aggregatecompartment was the instrument compartment, a pressurized section containing the guidance and rendezvous system instrumentation, radio communications systems, environmental control systems, and attitude control engines on the exterior. The final

section, the transfer compartment, was a small part of the spacecraft, located between the crew

capsule and the service module, carrying hydrogen peroxide tanks for the attitude control thrusters.

The complete instrument-aggregate compartment had a mass of 2,560 kilograms. The

cylinder had a diameter of 2.2 meters flaring out to a skirt-shaped base, with a diameter of

2.72 meters for attaching to the upper stage of the launch vehicle. The length of this section,

including all its four sections, was approximately 2.3 meters.

The descent apparatus--that is, the crew module--was affixed forward of the instrumentaggregate compartment. Affording an internal habitable volume of two and a half cubic meters,

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

the capsule included one, two, or three seats for the crew. depending on the mission. The

shock-absorbing seats were angled at eighty degrees to the horizontal. Forward of the center

seat, belonging to the commander of the crew, was the main instrument panel, comprising only

readouts and visual displays of various on-board systems; most system operations were preprogrammed or controlled from the ground. The panel also included the _lobus instrument for

identifying the location of the ship over the planet, a TV screen used in conjunction with two

TV cameras on the exterior of the spacecraft, and the Vzor viewfinder for use during attitude

control maneuvers. The Vzor was connected to a periscopic protrusion from the top of the

descent apparatus, which allowed the crew to orient the ship relative to Earth. Two joysticks--

the left one for changing velocity during maneuvers and the right one for attitude control--

were located below the main panel. There were two smaller control panels on each side of the

main one, each called a command and signal instrument (KSU). These included switches for

various primary and backup systems and medical instrumentation--that is, a means for allowing the crew to tweak with on-board functions. Of the approximately 200 buttons and

250 warning lights on the control panels, seventy and ninety-six, respectively, were for the

spaceship's movement--for attitude orientation, rendezvous and docking, and reentry. The

lights had a fairly rudimentary system of operation, with red denoting failures and green and

blue for various states of nominal operation. A fourth set of switches was installed below the

left KSU for regulating the spacesuit environment in the case of accidental depressurization. All

the control panels were designed and built by the Special Experimental Design Bureau of the

Flight-Research Institute headed by Chief Designer Sergey G. Darevskiy, the same institution

that was responsible for the development of ground simulators.

Apart from the couches and control panels, the crew module also included a black-andwhite TV camera at 625 lines per frame and twenty-five frames per second, one among a total

of four in the Soyuz spacecraft as part of the Krechet system. Two others were fixed outside the

ship for use during rendezvous, and one was inside the living compartment. One porthole on

each side of the capsule was for visual cues during rendezvous as well as for celestial observations. For attitude control prior to and during reentry, six ten-kilogram-thrust hydrogen peroxide micro-engines were installed in pairs on the exterior at critical points for pitch, roll, and yaw.

These would come into use once the module had separated from the instrument-aggregate

compartment. The base of the crew module consisted of an outer shield manufactured from

high-temperature-resistant ablative material for protection during reentry. After passage through

the atmosphere and the opening of parachutes, this heat shield would be discarded, exposing

the actual base of the descent apparatus, equipped with a set of solid-propellant engines for

ensuring a soft-landing.

The precise shape of the descent apparatus was determined not only by the earlier studies

on "headlight-shaped" modules in the early 1960s, but also by studies at the Nil-I aeronautics

institute, where scientists by 1964 had developed a highly efficient principle of guided reentry

using a low lift-drag ratio. Nil-I also contributed to computations of heat exchange and thermal protection, which were confirmed by experimental results. The crew capsule had a nominal mass of 2,800 kilograms and a length of two and two-tenths meters.

Directly forward from the center couch of the descent apparatus was the circular hatch leading to the spheroid living compartment, often called the "orbital module" in the West. It had a

mass of 1,200kilograms and a maximum diameter of two and a quarter meters. The module had

a bunk, a cupboard, certain elements of the life support systems, a control panel for operating

scientific instruments, TV cameras, hatch controls, spacesuit functions, radio equipment, and

so on. Given a particular mission, spacesuits would be packed below the cupboard for the cosmonauts to don in the compartment. The cupboard could carry a food and water supply for a

potential month-long mission. Internal volume for the crew was six and a half cubic meters. The

living compartment also had four portholes and a set of rendezvous antennas on the exterior.

467
468

• VOSKHOD

• VOSTOK 4725 kg

I I

• SOYUZ

5682 kg

6850 kg

?

@

u===,==========:==_b

f_

t"

i

"|V tl U ul"

Here are the early generations o[ 5ouiet piloted Earth orbital spaeecra[t side by side. The Voskhod variant shown in

the middle is the ]KD or spacewalk uersion. .,_lmost identical versions o[ the R-TA core plus strap-on would be

below each o/these payloads. The launch uehicles are the 8K72K [or the Vostok. the I l.ZtS? /or the Voskhod.

and the 1IA511U /or the 5oyuz (copyright D. R Woods)

CH/_LLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

The module, apart from being an additional space for cosmonauts to sleep, rest, or conduct scientific experiments, also had an additional but very important role: to serve as an airlock for EVA

operations when depressurized as "a buffer" between the descent apparatus and outer space. °

The Soyuz development program, beginning with the 7K and leading up to the 7K-OK,

lasted over half a decade, During that period, engineers made a number of evolutionary changes

as a result of testing and research. For the first time in a Soviet piloted space project, the designers introduced a true launch escape system, much like the one used on NASA's Mercury spacecraft, The system consisted of a tower fixed on top of the Soyuz shroud with a set of nozzles

for a single seventy-six-ton-thrust solid-propellant rocket engine. During the period from

T-20 minutes up to T+I60 seconds, in the case of a booster accident, the payload shroud would

split into two, the descent apparatus and living compartment of the Soyuz would separate from

the instrument-aggregate compartment, and the tower engine would fire to lift the stack away

from the booster. Four grill-like petals would then open at the base of the shortened spacecraft

to stabilize the vehicle during its trajectory. Three asymmetrical engines would ignite to guide

the stack on a proper heading, following which the backup parachute would open. A crew

could potentially expect to endure a load of up to ten g's in such a system, landing about three

kilometers away from the pad in the case of a pad abort. Engineers completed the design of this

system in 1964 at OKB-I in cooperation with its Branch No. 3. The critical main solidpropellant engine was built by the Design Bureau No. 2 of the Moscow-based Plant No. 8 I,

headed by Chief Designer Ivan I. Kartukov. °

The Soyuz and all its variants would use a modification of the IIA57 booster that had

launched the Voskhod spacecraft during 1964-65. This "new" variant had essentially the same

configuration--a basic R-TA missile topped off with an upper stage from Chief Designer

Kosberg's OKB-154. The primary difference was the use of an uprated engine for the third

stage, the RD-OI I0 instead of the earlier RD-OIO8, thus increasing thrust from 30.0 tons to

30.4 tons. The new booster, known as the II AS I I, was specifically developed for the Soyuz

program, an extremely rare case of a Soviet launch vehicle developed first for "civilian" goals,

With a Soyuz spacecraft, the length of the booster was 49.91 meters. Total launch thrust at sea

level was 41 I.I tons. The rocket, which was itself also called the Soyuz, could launch a

6,900-kilogram payload into a 200- by 450-kilometer orbit.

One of the most challenging tasks for designers at OKB-I was developing on-board systems for the /K-OK that were far superior to the ones used on Vostok. OKB-I's Department

No. 27, under the leadership of Boris V. Raushenbakh, was responsible for designing the

System of Orientation and Motion Control (SOUD), which allowed the craft to orient in orbit

using both an inertial system and an orbital coordinate system, to carry out orbital maneuvers,

to conduct rendezvous approach profiles, and to orient the solar panels to the Sun. The system consisted of four components:

• The attitude control sensors and the Vzor sighting device

• Gyroscopes and an "electronic computer"

• The Igla radar system for searching and homing other vehicles

• Attitude control engines

9. Ibid.. p. 169: Christian Lardier, L'.,qstronautiqueSovi#tique (Paris: grmand Colin. 1992). pp. 180-82:

G. S. Narimanov. ed., Ot kosmicheskikh korabley - k orbitalnym stantsiyam (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1911),

pp. 23-29: Peter Smolders, Soviets in Space (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1973). pp, 152-54: Kenneth

Gatland, Manned Spacecra/t (New York: Macmillan, I976), pp. 260-61: g. Koroteyev, "From the History of Space

Science: The Scientific-Research Institute of Jet Propulsion" (English title), ..,qviatsiyai kosmonavtika no 6

(November-December 1993): 39-4 I.

I0. Semenov. ed_ Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. p 172-73: Lardier. L',Z]stronautiqueSovi#tique.

p. 182.

469
470

R-7 (8K71)

Test vehicle

1_37

i

8K71 P$ 8K72K

Sputnik JPS) launcher Vostok {3KA) launcher

1957 1960

11A57 11A511

Voskhcd (3KV) launcher Soyuz (7K_K) launcher

1963 1966

40

ThLsshows the evoluhon o/ Soviet space launch vehicles in the early years.From the te[t are the R-7ICBM. the

Sputnik launcher, the Vostok launcher, the Voskhod launcher, and the Soyuz launcher (copyright Peter _orin)

To face the solar arrays toward the Sun, the cosmonauts would roll the Soyuz using the

attitude control thrusters until the Sun appeared in the cross hairs of the Vzor device below the

main control panel. _ second command would put the vehicle into rotation around the Sunspacecraft axis, allowing direct continuous illumination of the panels. For orbital maneuvers,

the cosmonauts would roll the ship until Earth appeared in the Vzor, activate a set of gyroscopes, and fire the main engine. For guidance, the engineers developed a three-step gyroscope

system, two with two degrees of freedom each (for inertial orientation) and one with three

degrees of freedom (a sensor for angular velocity), There were also devices for effecting orientation using infrared sensors relative to Earth's vertical, as well as stellar, solar, and ion sensors

(for the velocity vector), all installed on the exterior of the instrument-aggregate compartment.

Celestial orientation would be carried out by setting an optical sensor in such a position that

the angle between the sensor and a solar sensor corresponded to the relative locations of the

Sun and a given star.

The Igla radar system for measuring parameters relative to motion was developed by the

Moscow-based NII-648 headed by Chief Designer _rmen S. Mnatsakanyan, The primary elements of the system were two long antennas (short- and long-range transponders) attached on

the exterior of the living compartment at a ninety-degree angle to each other, a rendezvous TV

camera, a third antenna attached at the rear of the spacecraft to allow an approach from

"reverse," and the Stels system for protecting the system from secondary radio interference. The

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE [VIOON

Igla system would automatically bring the spacecraft to a distance of only 200-300 meters relative to its target vehicle from a distance of hundreds of kilometers by continually measuring

the relative velocities and distances between the two spacecraft and carrying out attitude

control and main engine boosts. The cosmonauts would take over manual control from

200-300 meters. The complex approach algorithms and the great volume of data exchanged in

guidance circuits during rendezvous necessitated extensive ground testing of the Igla and the

SOUD as a whole in three-stage rotating stands named the Kardan and Platform, simulating a

spacecraft's motion through space. Igla itself was tested in a nonecho radio chamber built by

NII-648. Engineers eliminated at least ten major defects in the SOUD during testing in 1965-66.

As early as 1962, engineers had begun the development of a docking system for the Soyuz

spacecraft. A team led by OKB-I engineers Viktor E Legostayev and Vladimir S. Syromiatnikov

developed a "pin-cone" scheme, which allowed two spaceships, one with an active docking

unit and one with a passive unit, to connect together. No provision was made for internal transfer because the original conception was for a circumlunar mission, with dockings with various

tankers. In 1965, when the Soyuz program was redirected, Korolev proposed that the system

be changed to allow for the internal transfer of crews, but because of the significant amount of

work already done on the original system, as well as a lack of time, Korolev accepted designer

Feoktistov's proposal to keep the original design. This system included a pin on the active vehicle that would be captured in the cone-like funnel of the passive vehicle, canceling any remaining velocity and angular displacement. The system required a significant degree of precision

because the docking system included electrical umbilical connectors in the face of the docking

ring to link the two spacecraft. These multiple prong and socket connectors were precisely

aligned by using 152-millimeter- and twenty-five-millimeter-diameter guide pins. Once capture

was made, an electric motor would retract the probe for final structural latching. Unlike the

Apollo spacecraft, the system allowed repetitive dockings and undockings.

Given that originally the Soyuz was meant for circumlunar flight, the designers had created a long-range communications system for the spacecraft, which was later modified for Earthorbit operations in 1964. The multifunctional long-range version was developed by NII-885,

under Chief Designer Ryazanskiy of the Council of Chief Designers, and it included command

radio links, television and telemetric channels, and voice communications. Later, these components were split up between different organizations. The Krechet TV system was designed by

NII-380 at Leningrad under Chief Designer Igor A. Rosselevich, the same team that had developed the famous imaging system that first photographed the far side of the Moon in 1959. The

radio-telemetry system for the 7K-OK Soyuz was created by Ryazanskiy's NII-885, while the

Zarya voice communications system was the work of NII-695, led by Chief Designer Yuriy S.

Bykov. Both had worked in the same capacity for Vostok. The telemetry system was composed

of forty small T-shaped antennas around the aft end of the descent apparatus. The Zarya was

a comprehensive ultra-shortwave and shortwave system ensuring communications in orbit,

during reentry, and after landing. The Mir-3 autonomous data recorders developed under Chief

Designer Ivan I. Utkin at NII-88 rounded out the telemetry and communications systems on

the Soyuz spacecraft.

Engineers developed the life support system for the 7K-OK using the experience on the

Vostok and Voskhod vehicles. It included systems for maintaining internal atmosphere, ensuring a supply of water, food, and clothing, providing a means of waste collection, controlling

medical indices, and providing an emergency kit for use in the case of an emergency landing.

Like the earlier spacecraft, the Soyuz maintained normal atmospheric conditions at temperatures of twenty plus or minus three degrees Centigrade. Cabin pressure was set at 710 to

850 mm Hg and relative humidity at 40 to 55 percent. Temperature and humidity were controlled by a single-loop series of heat exchangers. The ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide was

ensured by a superoxide chemical, which released oxygen, and lithium hydroxide for absorbing

471
472

carbon dioxide. On-board sensors constantly measured the atmospheric conditions and adjusted

them accordingly. OKB-124 developed the primary atmospheric regeneration systems. Plant No.

918 created the flight suits, water holders, emergency kits, and sewage disposal systems. The

Institute of Biomedical Problems developed the food and medical instrumentation. The Analytical

Instrument Building Special Design Bureau provided the gas analyzer for the atmosphere.

Engineers expended much effort on the development of a landing system. Despite

Korolev's interest in exotic schemes, such as helicopter rotors, a more conservative parachute

system was the frontrunner and was eventually adopted. Starting in 1961, OKB-I, in cooperation with the famous M. M. Gromov Flight-Research Institute, Plant No. 918, the ScientificResearch and Experimental Institute of the Parachute Landing Service, and Plant No. 81, carried

out coordinated work on a parachute system leading to the development of a "hi-cascade" system with a solid-propellant braking engine at the base of the primary parachute, much like in

the Voskhod spacecraft. The parachute-reactive system would reduce velocity down to eight

and a half meters per second. In the case of engine failure, the velocity would be a barely to]

erable ten meters per second. The backup system of parachutes would not employ any engine.

Such a system was tested at the Flight-Research Institute beginning in 1962 in mass models of

the 7K Soyuz. Subsequent modifications of the parachute-reactive system in 1963 and 1964 by

Plant No, 918, however, revealed inconsistencies in the operation of the backup system, when

used in conjunction with the primary parachute.

In late 1964 and early 1965, on orders from Deputy Chief Designer Bushuyev, engineers

began a search to revamp the whole system. The engineers had two requirements: that the

landing velocity with the primary system be reduced to at least six and a half meters per second, and that the braking engines be removed from the parachute and installed instead at the

base of the descent apparatus. A reduction of velocity was achieved by increasing the dome

size of the primary parachute from 574 to 1,000 square meters. In addition, Chief Designer

Kartukov's Plant No. 81 developed a set of four small solid-propellant engines positioned at the

bottom of the descent apparatus that would be exposed following the jettisoning of the outer

thermal base. The engines were extremely compact and capable of operating after a lengthy

stay in vacuum and even in conditions of soil blockage."

The landing sequence of the Soyuz 7K-OK was standard for all Soviet piloted missions for

thirty years. At an altitude of nine and a half kilometers, the parachute system would go into

operation by shooting off the parachute hatch and issuing a primary fourteen-square-meter

drogue parachute, followed in seventeen seconds by the main parachute. Both would be compressed and folded in a container with a volume of only 0.3 cubic meter. Subsequently, the thermal shield would be discarded at three kilometers, and at about one and a half meters prior to

touchdown, a gamma-ray altimeter would issue a command to fire the four solid-propellant

motors at the base of the descent apparatus to reduce landing velocity to a final two to three

meters per second. In the case of a main parachute system failure, a second hatch would fire

off and deploy a drogue plus backup parachute combination, the latter with a dome area of

574 square meters. These two would be packed in a second container with a volume of

0.2 cubic meter. When using the smaller parachute, the landing would be rougher, but certainly

survivable. A worst-case scenario, with the backup parachute and loss of soft-landing engines,

would subject a crew to four- to nine-meter-per-second velocities at landing.

The parachutes were built by the Scientific-Research and Experimental Institute of the

Parachute Landing Service. an aviation industry enterprise headed by Chief Designer Fedor

II. Semenov, ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, pp 170-771 Edward CFinton Ezell and Linda

Neumann EzeII, The Partnership _ History o[ the Ztpollo Soyuz Test Project (Washington, DC: NASA Special

Publication (SP)-4209, 1978), pp. II 6 t7: Lardier.L_stronautique Souietique, pp 180-82: Narimanov, Ot kosmicheskikh korabley, pp. 21-54.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

D. Tkachev, who had also designed the Vostok and Voskhod parachutes. They were tested

through the mid-1960s in various conditions, including sea landings and drops from An-12 aircraft from altitudes of ten kilometers. The aircraft drops consisted of seven tests in 1965 and

1966 at the Air Force's testing station at Feodosiya. It was during this time that engineers identified and eliminated problems with hydrogen peroxide leaks on the parachutes. '_

The 1K-OK was not the only variant of the Soyuz spacecraft developed in the mid-1960s.

Given that the primary financier of the project would be the Ministry of Defense, Korolev proposed parallel variants in 1962 for exclusively military purposes. These were part of the SoyuzP and Soyuz-R projects. The former was a piloted anti-satellite interceptor program, while the

latter was a piloted reconnaissance station effort. In 1963, because of the workload at

OKB-I, Korolev transferred further work on the two projects to his Branch No. 3 at Kuybyshev,

whose primary area of work at that point was work on the Zenit-2 and Zenit-4 automated

reconnaissance satellites and R-7 booster manufacturing. The head of the branch was Deputy

Chief Designer Dmitriy I. Kozlov, one of Korolev's old proteges who had served as the "lead

designer" of the R-7 ICBM during the 1950s.

The Soyuz-P used the 7K-PPK variant of the basic Soyuz craft. Few details on the vehicle

have been declassified: Kozlov's engineers evidently designed a mission-unique launch vehicle, the I I/q514, specifically for the project. The project was put on hold in mid- 1964 and terminated in 1965, evidently because of the military's preference for automated anti-satellites,

such as Chelomey's "IS" system, which had already flown two successful missions in 1963

and 1964.

The Soyuz-R consisted of two separate vehicles, a small space station named the II FTI

and a ferry craft, the I IF72 (or 7K-TK), to take crews there. The former was designed by using

the instrument-aggregate compartment of the basic Soyuz craft as crew living quarters and substituting the remaining two modules with a single compartment housing equipment for electronic- and photo-reconnaissance. The 7K-TK ferry was similar to the basic Soyuz, but it

included an internal hatch transfer system to allow cosmonauts to move from the ferry to the

station without having to exit into space. On June 18, 1964, the LISSR Ministry of Defense

signed its five-year plan on space-based reconnaissance covering the years 1964-1969. The

Soyuz-R complex was included as part of that plan, which also included several other programs, including Zenit (photo-reconnaissance), Morya-I (ocean reconnaissance), and Spiral

(military spaceplane). '_ Soon after, Kozlov's engineers prepared the predraft plan for the SoyuzR, which was approved by the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for Space

Research, the interministerial structure supervising space program proposals.

The Soyuz program as a whole was not guaranteed implementation despite OKB-I's signing off on a draft plan for the spacecraft as well as ministerial support. Sometime in 1965, the

Soviet government may have even considered transferring the whole project to another design

bureau. In a perhaps desperate move, Korolev ordered his subordinates to organize an exhibit

on the Soyuz program for Communist Party and government officials to demonstrate that it

would be a gross mistake to move the project to another enterprise. An engineer who participated in organizing the displays recalled Korolev's visit to evaluate the exhibit:

Our many years of work. said Sergey Pavlovich [Korolev], may go for naught. The topic

may be assigned to another enterprise, and the experience of our collective, which has

12. Semenov_ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, pp. 170-71.

13. Konstantin Lantratov, "Dmitriy Kozlov's 'Zvezda'" (English title). Nouosti kosmonavtiki 3 (January

27 February 9, 1997): 50-55. Kozolv signed the predraft plan for the Soyuz Rcomplex on July IS, 1965.

413
414

gone through such a difficult path, will remain unused. Korolev spoke quietly and

thoughtfully. We all understood that this was very difficult for him. It was painful to see

this will[ul, fearless man suppressed by such circumstances. But he was able to control

his feelings and concluded his conversation on an upbeat note: we will fight and defend

our brainchild.'4

Defend it they did, and the Soyuz program remained behind at OKB-I. On August 18,

1965, the Military-Industrial Commission signed decree no. 180 titled "On the Order of Work

on the "Soyuz' Complex," which for the first time approved a schedule for the execution of the

project, thus legitimizing the new, redirected Soyuz. Final air and sea testing of the descent

apparatus was set for the third and fourth quarters of 1965, while the beginning of flight tests

in Earth orbit for automated versions was scheduled for the first quarter of t966. tn total, seven

Soyuz 7K-OK spacecraft were approved for manufacture by the second quarter of 1966.'"

The redirection of the Soyuz program in 1964 and 1965 laid the basis for the most prolific Soviet piloted spacecraft in its history. In 1965, the/K-OK Earth-orbital Soyuz was, however, only one of three thematic directions of research at OKB-I. The other two were aimed at the

exploration of the Moon in competition with the United States. In the interconnected world of

Soviet space politics, by a fortuitous set of circumstances, designers would use the Soyuz

spaceship as a starting point to develop vehicles for both Moon programs.

From EOR to LOR

From 1961 to mid- 1964, all conceptions of possible piloted lunar landings studied by Soviet

engineers used the Earth-orbit rendezvous (EOR) mission profile, whereby a lunar spacecraft

would be assembled in Earth's orbit through multiple launches of the N I. This spacecraft complex would then fire itself toward the Moon to carry out its designated mission. In 1963 and

1964, at a time when the lunar landing began to eclipse a circumlunar flight as a primary obJective of the Soviet piloted space program, OKB-I designers considered a quadruple launch

scheme. The plan involved launching three N I s into Earth orbit--that is, assembling a 200-ton

behemoth spacecraft in Earth orbit. The crew would fly into orbit on a fourth rocket, a standard

Soyuz launcher such as the llP,511. '_ Despite the high costs and multiple dockings, the

increased payload afforded a sufficient margin to build large spacecraft equipped with redundant systems to ensure the safety of the crew and spacecraft systems.

All this changed with the August 1964 decree in support of a Soviet lunar landing program.

It was at that point that OKB-I decided to effectively shift the focus from an EOR profile to a sint4. t_ Yu. Ishlinskiy, ed., _kademik S P Korofev: ucheniy, inzhener, chelouek (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), pp.

337-38. The identity of the other design bureau is not known. One unconfirmed source suggests that the Soyuz

program was to havebeen transferred to Chelomey's OKB-52 so that OKB-I could focus exclusively on the N I program See Lardier,LZJstronautiqueSoui_tique. p. 158.

15 I Marinin, "The First Civilian Cosmonauts" (English title), Novosti kosmonautiki 12-13 (June 3-30,

1996): 81-87. The manufacturing schedule was two ships by the fourth quarter of 1965,two by the first quarter of

1966, and three by the second quarter of 1966. SeeKamanin, Skrytiy kosmos: 1964 1966, p. 220.

16 For alternative proposals, such as a double-launch scheme, see h B. l_fanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft

(From the History of the Soviet Space Program)" (English title), Nouoye u zhizni Nauke, tekhnike Seriya kosmonavtika, astronomiya no 12 (December 1991): 1-64 Fordifferent triple-launch schemes,see I. l_. Marinin and S Kh

Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programs for Piloted Flight to the Moon" (English title), Zemlya i vselennaya no 5

(September October 1993): 77-85: N. Kamanin, "_ Goal Worth Working for...: The Space Diariesof a General"

(English title), Vozdushniy transport 43 (1993). See also Yu. g. Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Dorogi u kosmos: II

(Moscow: M@I, 1992), p. 59; V. E Mishin. "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?" (English title), Znaniye: tekhnike:

seriyu kosmonautika, ustronomiya no. 12 (December 1990): 3-43.

CHALLENGE TO II_POLLO

H

H

N

H
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

gle-launch lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR) profile, identical to the one adopted for Apollo. Despite

the historical importance of the decision, the reasons for this abrupt shift still remain obscure.

Korolev's First Deputy Mishin recalled years later: "The American program nudged our country's

highest leaders into issuing the assignment for the development of designs for launch vehicles

that could support a lunar mission with a single launch. "'_ Another engineer at OKB-I attributes the switch to the single-launch idea to Mishin himself. Others say it was Korolev.'SThere were

probably two motivations behind the shift in strategy. There may have been pressure from the

industrial leaders of the space program to adopt a mission profile similar to the American one.

This sort of "parallel" response was chronically evident in weapons systems development. While

less common in the space program, there was precedent throughout the history of the Soviet

space program for technical decisions driven by mirroring American technical choices. A second

motivation was most likely simple economics. One rocket would cost less than the two or three

required for FOR, and cost was certainly a big factor in the N I program.

The decision to move with a single-launch profile came hand in hand with the adoption

of LOR for the lunar landing mission; a direct ascent plan, the third option, was out of the reach

of the N I booster's capability. The LOR profile had originally been proposed as early as 1929

by a Russian contemporary of Tsiolkovskiy named Yuriy V. Kondratyuk. '_ Korolev, Glushko, and

others were, in fact, intimately familiar with the approach even before the Apollo selection,

although its adoption in the N I-L3 program raised a Pandora's box of problems that plagued

the project throughout its existence.

The N I design of mid- 1964 had a lifting capability of approximately seventy-five tons. All

calculations had conclusively proven that this figure was simply not enough to comprise a TLI

stage, a lunar orbiting module with one pilot, and a lunar landing vehicle with two cosmonauts.

By comparison, the payload in Earth orbit projected for NASA's Saturn V was close to 130 tons.

Korolev evidently promised the space industry leaders at the time that he would be capable of

carrying out a single launch for a lunar landing by two means: decreasing the mass of the payload and increasing the effective carrying capacity of the N I. For Korolev, both roads became

"maniacal" obsessions as, through the end of 1964 and the first part of 1965, engineers

explored every avenue to shave off kilograms, even grams, from the L3 stack that would go to

the Moon. One engineer working on the lunar lander recalled:

At the time, the developers were racking their brains about how to keep within the rigid

framework of the initially adopted energy capabilities of the launcher. The search went

out in all directions. For each saved or "found" kilogram of mass, the Chief Designer

paid a bonus of 50-60 rubles. To us young engineers, that was a lot of money/°

There was even an apocryphal story that one engineer had managed to get a bonus for

proposing to suck out all the air from the tubular design of the rocket, because even air had

mass. All proposals, no matter how outlandish, were given consideration. But the gains proved

to be incremental. Korolev, in frustration, told his Deputy Chertok, "I don't need your ten kilograms. I need a ton. ''_

17. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Flyto the Moon?." Author's emphasis,

18. for Mishin, see PeterSmolders, "It Made Senseto Build a SpaceStation," Spaceflight 38 (April 1996):

I 13- I5. ForKorolev, seeMozzhorin, et al., eds., Dorogi u kosmos: II, p. 59.

19. Golovanov. Korolev. p. 757.

20. V. Filin, "At the Requestof the Reader:The NI-L3 Project" (English title), 7]viatsiya i kosmonavtika no.

12 (December 1991): 44-45.

2 I. Golovanov, Korolev. pp 757-58.

415
476

The first approach was to incrementally raise the payload of the rocket. Korolev asked his

designers to improve the lifting capabilities of the N I, first from seventy-five tons to eighty-five

tons, and then finally to ninety-five to I00 tons. Studies at the design bureau had in fact shown

that ninety-five to I00 tons would be the absolute minimum to achieve a lunar landing mission. _'_Engineers under Deputy Chief Designer Kryukov altered the original N I design in six fundamental ways to increase the N I payload:

• Increase the number of engines on the first stage from twenty-four to thirty

• Lower the altitude of the orbit around Earth prior to lunar boost from 300 to 220 kilometers

• Shift the launch azimuth further to the south to a more favorable 51.6 degrees

• Increase the propellant load for the booster by having cylindrical inserts in the equatorial

part of the tanks and lowering the fuel and oxidizer temperatures

• Install four latticed stabilizers at the tail of the Blok A first stage

• Increase the thrust of the engines on the first three stages by an average of 2 percent by

introducing a "flexible" program for controlling engine thrusff

With these changes, especially the addition of six new engines to the first stage, the N l's total

launch mass increased from 2,200 tons to 2,750 tons. Payload capability would theoretically

increase to ninety-two to ninety-five tons, just barely enough for its slated mission.

Korolev signed the predraft plan for the uprated N I booster and its L3 lunar stack, specifying the new requirements of the mission--single launch, increased payload mass, and LOR--

on December 25, t 964/_ The document contained "initial data for the development of working

documentation" for the L3 complex/_ While the N I consisted of three stages called Blok A,

Blok B, and Blok V, the L3 comprised the following:

• Blok G (the fourth stage, for translunar injection)

• Blok D (the fifth stage, for lunar-orbit insertion and lunar descent)

• The Lunar Orbital Ship or LOK (the "mother ship")

• The Lunar Ship or LK (the "lunar lander")

In the interest of conserving mass, OKB-I decided to dispense with the idea of a threeperson crew like on Apollo, reducing the total crew size to only two. One cosmonaut would

stay in orbit in the LOK, while the other would land on the Moon in the LK. The risks in the

plan increased almost day by day as the plan was continuously revised.

This whole effort to optimize the capabilities of the N I, and the N t-L3 program as a whole,

was the source of much discord within OKB-I--an unusual situation for a design bureau that

had displayed a united front on all previous space projects. Ilya V. Lavrov. one of Korolev's best

22. R Dolgopyatov. B. Dorofeyev,and S. Kryukov, "At the Readers'Request:The N I Project" (English title),

Auiatsiya i kosmonautika no, 9 (September 1992): 34-37.

23. Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"; Dolgopyatov, Dorofeyev, and Kryukov, "At the Readers'

Request:The N I Project": Boris Arkadyevich Doro[eyev, "History of the Development of the NI -L3 Moon Program,"

presented at the IOth International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics, Moscow State

University, Moscow, Russia,June 20-27, 1995: Semenov, ed, RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiya. p. 255. fuel

temperature was reduced to minus Iifteen to minus twenty degrees Centigrade, while oxidizer temperature was

reduced to -19t degreesCentigrade. There were also additional structural changes made to later NI boosters to

increaselifting mass.

24 Afanasyev, "Unknown Spacecraft"; Igor Afanasyev, "NI: Absolutely Secret: Part I1" (English title),

Krylya rodiny no. 10 (October 1993): I-4; Semenov, ed, Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 636. Another

source notes that OKB-I and OKB-586 jointly finished the NI-L3 predraft plan on December30, 1964 See B V

Raushenbakh.ed, S P Koroleu i ego delo. suet i teni u istorii Kosmonautiki (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), p. 628.

25 Semenov,ed.. RaketnoKosmicheskaya Korporatsiy& p. 254.

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

engineers, at the time working on Mars spacecraft, recalled that the L3 program "was on the

brink of fantasy."26 Another engineer, Gleb Yu. Maksimov, one of the pioneers of Soviet space

technology who had participated in the earliest landmark studies on artificial satellites in the

1950s, wrote a personal letter to Korolev in August 1964, imploring Korolev not to go ahead

with the L3 single-launch approach. Maksimov, who had led the design teams for automated

lunar probes and piloted Martian spaceships, was reassigned, on Korolev's orders, away from

the central branch so that the autocratic Korolev would not have to deal with his criticisms.

Feoktistov, the engineer behind the Vostok spacecraft, also disagreed with Korolev:

From the beginning I rejected this project because the parameters o[ the N I were not

right .... The flight to the Moon did not appeal to me very much. because the N I could

not place more than 90 tons in low Earth orbit . . . 90 tons was not enough: the

,Zimericans had calculated 120 tons in low Earth orbit and we were building everything

heavier than the Americans. So I was not in [auour o[ our approach and we constantly

had conflicts about it/7

The conflict over the N I-L3 plan prompted Korolev to request the formation of an "expert

commission," under Academy of Sciences President Keldysh, to examine the technical pros and

cons of the project. But Korolev had resistance even from the outside. Yuriy A. Mozzhorin, the

director of the space policy advisory NII-88, came out against the single-launch scheme at a meet

ing of the commission in July 1965. Keldysh for the first time also sided against Korolev. The usually imperturbable scientist was furious: "What kind of nerve must we have to disembark one

man on the Moon?!... Imagine for a minute being alone on the Moon! That's a straight road to

the psychiatric hospital. "2_ Psychological considerations aside, Keldysh's objections were in fact

based on more concrete concerns: he believed that the whole program had evolved by pushing

systems to the extreme--that is, there were no reserves at all, a sure road to failure.

Perhaps the biggest casualty of the N I-L3 project was OKB-I Deputy Chief Designer

Leonid A. Voskresenskiy. One of Korolev's most beloved deputies, he was also certainly the

most colorful. He had been born to the family of a priest and therefore was penalized later by

the Communist Party. which prevented him from getting a higher education. Perhaps the only

deputy of Korolev without a college education, Voskresenskiy had an intuition about testing

rockets that outshone many of his more scholarly colleagues, whom he dismissed as "men burdened by higher education." His utter fearlessness in the face of danger characterized not only

his work with rockets, but also his passion for riding fast cars and motorcycles--a hobby that

landed him in the hospital on occasion. One associate described him as "a baron with aristocratic manners. On the other hand, he came across as a peasant full of crude jokes. Paunchy,

unsmiling, and wearing a tie, he made a majestic impression, and he was clearly well-respected. ''_ Voskresenskiy was appointed a Deputy Chief Designer in October 1953 and oversaw

flight and ground testing of every single missile and spacecraft from the days of the A-4 up to

the Vostok and R-9 launches during the early 1960s.

By 1963, perhaps as a result of his misadventures, Voskresenskiy's health was seriously failing. He gave up his coveted role as director of flight testing at Tyura-Tam, preferring to work

indoors. Despite a serious heart attack in early 1964, Voskresenskiy was closely involved in

26. Golovanov, Korotev, p 758.

27. Smolders, "It Made Senseto Build a SpaceStation," p 114.

28 Golovanov, Korotev, p 758

29, Yu. A. Mozzhorin. et al., eds, Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery: uosporninaniya veteranov raketnokosrnieheskoy tekhniki i kosmonautikL vypusk utoroy (Moscow: RNITsKD. 1994). p. 46: Yu. A. Mozzhorin, et al.

eds., Dorogi v kosmos I (Moscow: M_I, 1992), pp. 83-84.

477
478

workontheNI,especiallyinthepreparationof

itsdraftplan.Whenworkonthegiantlaunch

complexesfortheNI beganatTyura-Tamthe

sameyear,Voskresenskiywasof theopinion

thatOKB-Ineededtofundtheconstructionf

afull-sizedteststandforthefirststagedespite

thedelayitmightcause.Korolevwasenragedat

Voskresenskiy'stone,perhapspreciselybecause

heknewthatVoskresenskiywasright•One

engineerrecalledanaltercationbetweenthetwo

overtheissuein 1963:

Koroleu came up to Voskresenskiy,

walked around him. raised his fist to the

latte(s face and said between clenched

teeth. "You should be beaten with a stick

for what you did! With a stick.., a stick

• . . a stick!" Korolev was punctuating

every word with his fist. I had not seen

the Chief Designer in such a state of

anger for a long time. But Voskresenskiy

parried with his words: 'Tm fifty years

old, this is not the time to be threatening

me with a stick." ,,zi[ter a short pause.

Korolev stepped up to him, embraced

him and said. "Sorry Leonid. No offense

intended. I was overreacting. "_

keonid Voskresenskiy was the person responsible for

flight-testing all missiles and spacecraft at OKB I

[rom the 1940son. He led the launch teams[or both

the first Sputnik and Vostok launches and was

perhaps the most well loved of all of Korolev's

deputies (files of Peter qorin)

When Khrushchev released the first 500 million rubles for the N I program, it was

Voskresenskiy who stated that OKB- t would need ten times more to achieve the goals set forth

in the program, Korolev merely replied that if they asked the government for such enormous

amounts of money, the project would be terminated?'

Voskresenskiy eventually refused to sign a single document related to the N I until Korolev

agreed to a test stand. The stalemate came to an end when Voskresenskiy offered his resignation from OKB-I in 1964. Korolev accepted. It was an enormous loss to the fortunes of the

design bureau. Voskresenskiy stayed on as a consultant to Korolev, participating in operations

at the new space-launching base at Mirnyy, but he was no longer involved with the N I-L3 project. Just a year later, on December 14, 1965, he had returned from a concert with his wife when

he collapsed and died from a brain hemorrhage at dinner. The fifty-two-year-old legend was

buried with honors at the Novodevichiy Cemetery in Moscow. Korolev, who openly cried at the

funeral, in his eulogy said, "Leonid, you were the first to open this road [to space]," _'_In typical fashion, in his obituary, the Soviet press described Voskresenskiy only as "a scholar in the

field of the elaboration and testing models of new machinery. "_

The objections from Voskresenskiy, Keldysh, Lavrov, Maksimov, Mozzhorin, Feoktistov,

and others notwithstanding, Korolev bulldozed his own version of the N 143 project through

30. Mozzhorin, et al, eds., Nachalo kosmicheskoy ery, p. 48.

31 S. Leskov, Kak my ne sletali na lunu (Moscow: Panorama, 1991 ), pp, 21-22,

32. Mozzhorin, et al., eds., Doro,gi v kosmos: I, p. 84: Golovanov, Koroleu, p. 760.

33 %. P,. Voskresenskiy" (English title), Izvestiya, December 18, 1965, p. 6.

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

the members of the "expert commission" in 1965. The commission was a temporary body

probably related to the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council on Space Research, also

headed by Keldysh, which had been created in 1958 to serve as an advisory body to recommend particular space projects to the government. Composed of various high representatives

of the Ministry of General Machine Building, the Strategic Missile Forces, the Air Force, the

design bureaus, and the Academy of Sciences, the council was supposed to prevent a single

faction from pushing a program without oversight by other branches. It was not uncommon,

however, for the important chief designers to "recruit" important allies on the council to support their positions? 4

On February I0, 1965, the Keldysh Commission, no doubt crumbling under Korolev's

headstrong opinions, capitulated and formally approved Korolev's predraft plan for the creation

of the L3 lunar system. According to the signed document, OKB-I and its subcontractors were

to come to an agreement on the technical goals for developing the primary systems by the end

of the month and finish the final draft plan for the L3 lunar complex by August 1965. If all went

according to plan, flight testing of the N I-L3 complex would begin in late 1966) _ Predictably,

delays crept into the schedule, and throughout 1965, OKB-I engineers, led by the so-called

"high guard"--Mishin, Bushuyev, Chertok, Kryukov, and Okhapkin--directed an intensive

revision process to fit the N I into the stringent conditions set by the preliminary requirements.

By late 1965, the draft plan had still not been finished, and the designers were still engaged in

heated debates on the virtues of particular technical choices, some even arguing at this late

stage if one booster was sufficient. By early September 1965, engineers had pushed the payload up to ninety-one and a half tons. On October 23, Kryukov presented his ideas on changing the inclination and other structural redesigns to increase mass to ninety-three tons. At the

same time, Chertok was engaged in cutting systems from the lunar orbiter.

Apart from the internal dissent at OKB-I, Korolev's N I-L3 also had more organized opposition. Despite any formal involvement in the project, Glushko's plans continued to pose a

threat to the project. In 1962, Glushko had begun the development of a new powerful engine,

designated the RD-270, with a sea level thrust of 640 tons, more than four times more powerful than the modest NK-I 5s slated for use on the first stage of the N I) 6 It was powered by

unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, the combination that Korolev called

"devil's venom." The new engine was quite possibly the most powerful storable propellant

engine ever built and had unusually high chamber pressures, By 1965, still supporting his stand

on storable propellants, Glushko evidently proposed that the N I be completely redesigned to

use the RD-270 engine instead of the NK-15. His argument was that a smaller number of

RD-270s could achieve the same performance as the thirty NK-tSs, thus bypassing the complex problems associated with synchronizing thirty engines) 7

34 Descriptions of the organizational underpinnings of the Interdepartment Scientific-TechnicalCouncil on

SpaceResearchand its associated ad hoc commissions arestill rare.One source describes an N I commission in the

early 1960sto determine the adequacyof seventy tons [sic] for a piloted lunar misslon. This commission had four

subcommittees, headed by Chief DesignersN A, Pilyugin (NII-885), V. I. Kuznetsov (NII-944). V. P.Barmin (GSKB

SpetsMash),and Colonel A. S. Kalashnikov (Chief of the Third Directorate in GURVO in the Strategic Missile Forces)

SeeMikhail Rebrov, "The Secretsof Rocket Codes" (English title), Krasnaya zuezda June 3, 1995,p. 6.

35. Other deadlines set in the document were: to finish the working documentation for manufacture

between April and June 1965: to begin the manufacturing of experimental units, systems, and samples of the rocket (technological-model samples) in the first quarter of 1966 and (the first flight sample) in the fourth quarter of

1966; and to finish experimental work on the aggregates and blocks by 1966, See Semenov, ed.. RaketnoKosmieheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 254.

36. Dietrich Haeseler,"Soviet Rocket Motors on View," Spaceflight 35 (February1993): 40-41.

37. The "number of engines" argument between Korolev and Glushko is summarized in SergeyLeskov,

"How We Didn't Fly to the Moon" (English title). Izuestiya. August 18, 1989,p. 3: Mozzhorin, et al. eds., Dorogi

u kosmos: I, pp. 30-31.

479
48O

Inthreeyearsofdevelopment,Glushko'sdesignbureauhadnotachievedanysignificant

progresswiththeengine,butin1965,Glushkomountedanunprecedentedlobbyingeffortinsupportoftheengine.HeenlistedthesupportofUstinovandnewlyappointedMinisterofGeneral

MachineBuildingSergeyP_./_fanasyev, two of the most powerful leaders of the space program.

gfanasyev evidently supported exploring a redesign of the N I with the use of Glushko's engines.

This was a full three years after the commencement of work on the N I, when the manufacturing

of booster portions had already begun at plants all over the Soviet Union. tt was the apotheosis

of organizational and managerial chaos inherent in the lunar programs. Glushko himself attacked

the N I with "unrelenting fervor," eventually "securing the support of every chief designer in a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, blaming Korolev for every imaginable shortcoming." '_ Korolev, hurt by the abrupt changing of alliances among his old comrades-in-arms,

such as Barmin, found himself with his back to the wall. The absurd proposal to redesign the N I

eventually came to naught. P, formal recommendation from NII-88 Director Mozzhorin may have

finally convinced P,fanasyev that it was an option not worth pursuing. _

The N I retained its old engines, but the RD-270 development program was not by any

means over. Instead, once again Glushko found an ally in General Designer Chelomey. It was an

eerie repeat of the events of 1961-62 when Glushko had offered another engine for the N I, the

RD-253, which had been refused by Korolev and eventually used on a Chelomey booster. What

made the more recent challenge particularly ominous for Korolev was that this time Chelomey

and Glushko vigorously supported a competitive proposal for landing a Soviet cosmonaut on the

Moon. In the final days of Khrushchev's reign, Chelomey had first emerged with his UR-700

booster plan for competing with N I-L3. Khrushchev had given an order to make an informed

and technical comparison between the two projects. Despite Khrushchev's ouster, this order

hung over the fates of both efforts, threatening to either destroy Korolev's hard-earned gains or

put a cap on Chelomey's ambitions--two outcomes that were mutually exclusive.

On October 20, 1965, Minister Rfanasyev, a growing supporter of Chelomey's plans,

issued an official order allowing Chelomey to draw up a formal draft plan in support of the

UR-700. The proposal was supported not only by Glushko, but also by two of Korolev's oldest

friends, Chief Designers Viktor I. Kuznetsov and Vladimir R Barmin. '_ Both their "defections"

were paramount to treason in Korolev's eyes because both were significant participants in the

N I-L3 project. Kuznetsov, head of NII-944, was developing guidance systems for both the N I

and the L3, while Barmin's GSKB SpetsMash was responsible for the design and construction

of the giant launch complexes for the N I at Tyura-Tam Barmin evidently believed that the two

pads for the N I could be redesigned with minimal structural readjustments for Chelomey's

LIR-700. Georgiy S. Vetrov, the official historian of Korolev's design bureau, later called the

RD-270 program "a useless initiative," adding:

Its development was supported by D. £ Ustinov and led to wasting a lot of time and resources.

There was a scientific consensus that this engine would not be usable. In spite of this. a new

project was started based on it--the heavy carrier LIR-700. This diverted attention from the

M I heavy currier project meant to carry out promising space and military programs/'

38. Rebrov, "The Secretsof Rocket Codes."

39. Georgiy Stepanovich Vetrov, "Development of Heavy Launch Vehicles in the USSR," presented at the

I Oth International Symposium on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics. Glushko also evidently attempted to

elicit Korolev's interest in engines using more exotic propellants. There is an account of a visit by Korolev to

Glushko's ground static stands at Primorsk to inspect the testing of a fluorine oxidizer-based engine in 1964 See

Golovanov, Korolev. pp 71I -12. Glushko also developedthe RD-502engine, which used highly concentrated hydro

gen peroxide (oxidizer) and pentaborane (fuel), in 1960-66.

40. Interview. Georgiy StepanovichVetrov with the author, November 15, 1996.

41 G Vetrov. "The Difficult Fateof the N I Rocket" (English title), Nauka i zflizn no 5 (May 1994): 20-27.

CHALLENGE TO dl_POLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

In "a desperate attempt to stop the dispersal of funds" to the UR-700, Korolev prepared a

number of letters to Afanasyev. One letter dated September 29, 1965, co-signed by OKB-I

Deputy Chief Designers Mishin, Bushuyev, Kryukov, and Melnikov, was a virtual testament to

Korolev's belief in the use of high-energy propellants during the future Soviet space program. 4_

In a second letter from early November t965, prepared but apparently never sent, Korolev

referred to the decision in 1962 to move ahead with the liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene combination, arguing that the future lay in liquid hydrogen and LOX combinations, only a step away

from LOX-kerosene. He also engaged in a vitriolic attack on Glushko's design bureau:

One cannot but mention that for a number of years, the 0KB-456... ceased to work

effectively on development of realistic engines which could be used for practical purposes. The OKB is completely isolated from the demands of life and spends its "activities" in unneeded developments, spending tremendous sums of money for that. 7111 this

is at a time when there is an acute need for good engines3'

There was also an acute need for money. At the very moment when the N I-L3 project

required the most investment into fixed resources, such as ground testing stations, launch complexes, transport systems, and manufacturing jigs, the abrupt support for the UR-700 seems to

have had a deleterious effect on Korolev's dream. Mozzhorin recalled later:

Work on the NI project in 1964-1966 was carried out under difficult conditions.

Production capacities were inadequate: plans called for the fabrication o/four N I rockets in a year's time, but only one and a half were constructed. There were delays in the

timetable. Delivery of completed units was stalled. There were difficulties in solving the

problem of constructing the necessary stands and experimental installations. The Chief

Designers allowed serious deviations from the requirements for the final ground tests:

"Too long and costly." they said. "We'll debug it in flight. ,,44

Marshal Malinovskiy, the USSR Minister of Defense, told Air Force officials during a meeting in January 1965, "We cannot afford to and will not build super powerful space carriers and

make flights to the Moon. Let the Academy of Sciences do all that."4_ Mishin recalls that "construction of the production base [for the N I] was delayed two years."4_ Compared to the Saturn

V project, the N I was a disaster waiting to happen. There were the inevitable accusations that

the N l's capabilities were markedly inferior to those of the Saturn V. Korolev tried his best to

respond. For example, in a memorandum dated May 29, 1965, he put his persuasive capabilities to work with new Minister Afanasyev, making the outlandish claim that the performance

differences between the two vehicles were "insignificant," despite the fact that the N I weighed

20 to 40 percent more than its American counterpart. 47Through all the setbacks and problems,

Korolev remained surprisingly optimistic. During a conversation with an Air Force officer on

42. s.P. Korolev, V. R Mishin, S. S. Kryukov, K. D. Bushuyev. and M. V. Melnikov, r'Onthe Inexpediency

of Development of the AT-NDMG Engine" (English title), Nauka i zhizn no 5 (May 1994): 27-28.

43. James Harford. Korolev: HouJOne Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat/qmeriea to the Moan

(New York:John Wiley & Sons, 1997), p. 273.

44. M Rebrov, "But Things Were Like That--Top Secret:The Painful Fortune of the N I Project" (English

title), Krasnaya Zuezda, January 13, 1990, p. 4

45. N Kamanin, "_ Goal Worth Working [or: General Kamanin's SpaceDiaries" (English title). Vozdushniy

transport 44 ( 1993): 8-9.

46. _. Tarasov."Missions in Dreamsand Reality" (English title), Prczvda,October 20. 1989, p. 4.

47. Harford, Korolev. p. 266.

481
482

September I, the latter recalled, "[Korolev] told me with visible satisfaction about the state of

the N I rocket. It was his baby, and it should be ready in metal by the end of 1965."_

The testing program for the N I greatly depended on the fate of the GR-I orbital bombardment system, because the former used modified versions of engines used on the latter. To add

to the almost incomprehensible level of problems with the N I, the GR-I came under severe

attack in January 1965. The thinking from the Soviet leadership was not without good reason.

The Soviet government had already invested in Yangel's R-36-O orbital bombardment system,

later designated the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) by Western observers.

There was simply little reason to proceed with Korolev's GR-I, especially because the R-36

ICBM, in its basic missile version, had already flown several successful test flights from TyuraTam. All activity related to the GR-I, meanwhile, was limited to work in the plants. There were

also serious delays in developing the NK-9 engines for the first stage, which did not bode well

given that similar engines were set to be used on the first stage of the NI. Ustinov and

Afanasyev terminated the GR-I project sometime in mid-1965, although Korolev was not eas

ily convinced and evidently tried to continue manufacturing some elements. In early August,

Deputy Minister of General Machine Building Gleb IVl.Tabakov expressly forbid the OKB-I plant

from continuing the construction of the missile's second stage. Later in the month, Korolev

made an aborted attempt at getting Ustinov interested in a space launch vehicle version of the

GR-I, designated the 8K513, for orbiting military satellites. It was, however, too little too late.

The project was permanently terminated. 4_Vetrov recalled later:

[The GR-I's] engines were similar to the NI engines. Many NI problems would have

been solved beforehand, if the [_R-I] had been tested. It was ready for test flights, but

Korolev was not allowed to launch it Why? Apparently. somebody was afraid it would

have been a success,s°

The missile was later called the "Intercontinental Missile From Moscow to Leningrad,"

because that was about how far it had traveled--from one plant to another. Although it was

never flown, full-size models of the GR- I were displayed with much fanfare at Moscow parades

celebrating the Great October Revolution.

The loss of the GR-I was a severeblow to the N I program. Its death knell effectively meant

that all elements of the N I would have to be tested in flight without any prior research and

development tests on smaller vehicles. Originally, the N I project had included smaller versions

of the giant booster designated the N I I and the N I I I for exactly this purpose. But with the

delays in work on the base N I, work on the other two variants progressively moved into the

background. Throughout 1965, after the GR-l's demise, Korolev continued to desperately push

the N I I booster, a launch vehicle using the second, third, and fourth stages of the N I, as the

only means to ensure a rational development program for the N I. On September 28, 196.5,

Korolev signed internal documents in support of developing the N I I, in addition to the development of nuclear rocket engines for future boosters, but as the months passed by, it was

increasingly clear that the Ministry of General Machine Building was not interested. As Korolev

discovered painfully throughout 1965, the glory days of blank checks from the late 1950s were

over. The Soviet piloted space program was in the midst of acrimony and fragmentation

unimaginable during the Sputnik days. By comparison, the work on Apollo and Saturn V was

48. L N. Kamanin."In theFutureHisNameWill ProbablyBe..." (Englishtitle), Ogonek;z(February9-16,

1991):28-31.

49. The 8K513is mentionedin Semenov,ed.,Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya,pp. 129-30 Seealso

I P,fanasyev,"The Mysterious'Nine'" (Englishtitle), ._viatsiyoi kosmonovtikono.8 (August 1992):34-35.

50. Vetrov."Developmentof HeavyLaunchVehiclesin the USSR."

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

virtually a designer's dream. There were, of course, technical and managerial problems in

NtqStq's development of the Apollo-Saturn system, but the chronic waste and infighting that

characterized the Soviet lunar program at the time was of a remarkable level. It is surprising that

engineers managed to get anything done at all.

At the same time, the Western perception of the Soviet space program was one of deliberate and sustained progress, NgSg Administrator James E. Webb, in testimony before the

Senate Space Committee on March 8, 1965, told his audience:

We do not know whether they have selected some specific goal, such as a lunar landing, or even a duplication of our Z_pollo mission .... There is no evidence that they are

building a booster as large as the Saturn _ . . . I think the information of most value to

the U.S. Government is that they are conducting a very broadly based program, developing every competence necessary to select those missions that they believe will be to

their advantage as they develop their competence?'

The N I Rocket

One of the "competences" that the Soviets were not busy developing was a high-energy

cryogenic engine for the N I. From 1960 to 1964, every technical plan for the N I had included

LOX-liquid hydrogen rocket engines for the upper boost stages of the N I, much like the Saturn

V. As a result of Korolev's vigorous push, and despite Glushko's attempts at smothering such

attempts, Chief Designers Isayev and Lyulka were tasked with the creation of three different

engines:

• The

• The

• The

ID54, with a thrust of forty tons for the N l's Blok V third stage

ID56, with a thrust of seven and a half tons for the N l's Blok R upper stage

I DS?, with a thrust of forty tons for the N l's Blok S upper stage _2

The ID56 was developed by Isayev's design bureau, while the remaining two were developed by Lyulka's organization. By 1965, work on the engines was moving at a snail's pace.

Isayev's engine was further ahead in the development program, but the lack of adequate testing facilities at NII-229 in Zagorsk forced significant delays in ground testing. Not one engine,

in fact, had been fired on the ground by the end of 1966. With continuing delays in the liquid

hydrogen program, Korolev and tsayev decided to delay the use of such engines to later versions of the N I. Thus, OKB-I engineers had to explore other options in redesigning the N I.

The solution was simple, but it cost the N I significant losses in lifting capabilities. Gone were

the liquid hydrogen third stages and Bloks S and R; instead, the engineers introduced two additional stages as part of the L3 payload, both powered by the more traditional LOX and kerosene.

To minimize significant new work, OKB-I engineers decided to use already prepared stages and

engines. The first of the two additional stages, Blok G, was merely a single engine of the same

type as the N l's third stage, but it was modified for higher altitude operation. The second of

the stages, Blok D, was appropriated from the canceled GR-I's third stage? _

51. Soviet Space Programs. 1962-65: Coals and Purposes, Achievements. Plans, and International

Implications, prepared for the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, US. Senate, 89th Cong, 2d sess.

(Washington, DC: LI.S.Government Printing Office, December 1966), pp. 388-89.

52. Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p. 262. The I I D54 had a fixed chamber,while the

I I D57 was capable of gimbaling.

53. Ibid., p. 252. Strictly speaking, the I I D58 engine on Blok D was developed on the basis of both the

8D726 engine (GR-I third stage) and the I I D33 engine (8K78 fourth stage). Seeibid, p 226.

483
484

N1-L3 (11A52) N1-L3 (11A52)

Test Vehicle 3L Test Vehicle 7L

1969 1972

105.3 106

100

9O

8O

7O

6O

4O

3O

2O

10

metels

On the le[t is the early test uariant o[ the NI rocket as originally eonceiued in the mid-1960s. On the right is a

slightly mod_[ied uers_on designed in the early 19ZOs The main external di[[erences were in the [airing at the bottom

o[ the first stage and the length o[ the uertical conduits on the first and second stages (copyright Peter _orin)

CHALLENGE TO _POLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

The adoption of LOX-kerosene for the first five stages of the N I-L3 complex allowed

OKB-I engineers to inch slowly to the completion of the final draft plan, which was completed and signed by Korolev and Mishin on November II, 1965, amid the cacophony of uncertainty surrounding the fate of the project. Once again, the Keldysh Commission convened to

examine the technical details and characteristics of the N I-L3, this time within the framework

of the more detailed draft plan rather than the predraft plan. The approval was quick. In

December 1965, the commission approved the plan, giving it the formal recommendation to

begin manufacture based on the revised specifications. _

The Soviet N I booster had the highest liftoff thrust of any rocket built in the history of

space exploration. The basic rocket consisted of three conical rocket stages--Blok g (first

stage), Blok B (second stage), and Blok V (third stage)--with a total length of 61.55 meters.

The first stage was powered by thirty NK-15 engines, each having a ground level thrust of

154 tons. Of the thirty engines, twenty-four were installed around the perimeter, while the additional six were located at the center in the form of a ring. Total liftoff thrust was 4,620 tons,

compared to the Saturn V's 3,404 tons. Burn time for the stage was in the range of 114 to

120 seconds. The stage also had four independent engines for roll control developed by

OKB-I, each with a thrust of seven tons. The upper portion of the stage was not a solid frame,

but rather was composed of a lattice-type structure that served as an interstage section between

the first and the second stages. The top portion of the gigantic kerosene tank was visible

through this lattice. _qtotal of twelve conduits installed around the lower part of the exterior of

the stage served as a means to carry fuel from the upper propellant tank to the engines at the

base of the stage. The 30.09-meter-long stage had a base diameter of 16.87 meters, which did

not include four large grating-type stabilizers near the base positioned orthogonally at ninety

degrees to the main vertical axis.

The 20.46-meter-long second stage was powered by eight NK-15V engines, each with a

thrust of 179 tons, giving a total stage thrust of 1,432 tons. Burn time was in the range of

130 seconds. The N K-15Vs were essentially N K- 15engines modi fled for work at high aItitudes

with longer and thinner nozzles. There were eight conduits for propellant transfer attached

around the exterior of the stage, g lattice structure connected this stage to the next one, while

roll control was effected by means of three small engines, each with six tons thrust. The third

stage was powered by four NK-21 engines, each with a thrust of forty-one tons, giving a total

third-stage thrust of 164 tons. The length of the third stage was just over eleven meters. Four

external conduits on the exterior allowed propellant transfer, while four 200-kilogram thrusters

provided roll control, tqll the engines of the first three stages used LOX as oxidizer and kerosene

as fuel. were of the staged combustion cycle type, and were developed by OKB-276 under Chief

Designer Nikolay D. Kuznetsov.

There were some unique features of the N I that set it apart from most other space launch

vehicles of the time. The propellant compartments of the first three stages of the vehicle were

suspended spherical tanks separate from the external frame of the booster. The load-bearing

configuration, and the relatively low density of the layout because of the use of spherical tanks,

resulted in a significant diminution of the payload mass of the rocket. To circumvent this weakness, the engineers designed the tanks with unusually low specific mass, which, when combined with the high performance of the engines, effectively compensated for the drawbacks of

having a nonmonocoque main rocket body. The spherical tanks were subject not only to loads

from the pressure associated with tank pressurization but also the hydrostatic pressure of the

liquid in them. Inertial loads and engine thrust were absorbed by the propellant compartments'

load-bearing structure.

54. Vetrovinterview,November15, 1996.

485
486

There were both advantages and disadvantages to the spherical design of the tanks, certainly one of the most unusual features of the rocket. Spheres have minimal surface area relative to volume, and thus they are subject to lower heating loads and require minimal surface

insulation. The engineers also concluded that with spherical tanks and prepump engine assemblies, the mass of propellant tanks would be smaller than those of rockets with regular propellant tanks as load-bearing structures. Although participants in the N I program later claimed

that the selection of tanks separate from the main body was primarily motivated by the search

for better characteristics, in truth there was a more pressing reason for such an unusual design:

the Soviet metallurgical industry was unable to produce aluminum sheets more than thirteen

millimeters thick. For integral tanks, the engineers calculated that the thickness would have to

be much greater: therefore, the only option was to use nonintegral tanks. One major deleterious factor was the fixed cost resulting from the design and construction of numerous sizespecific welding jigs and dies, one for each of the six tanks. The booster's six spherical tanks,

two in each stage, had diameters between 12.8 and 4.9 meters. The tanks themselves were built

from a special magnesium-nickel alloy named AGM6, while the external casings of the N I were

built from duralumin D I6. The Ye. O. Paton Institute of Electrical Welding at Kiev, led by

Academician Boris Ye. Paton, developed a new method of arc argon welding with subsequent

tests by x-rays, which allowed for the creation of lighter tanks than possible with earlier assembly methods.

Superior engine performance was achieved by the use of built-in impeller-type preliminary

pumps and automatic control with igniters, a first for Soviet rocket engines and possibly in the

world. This design was evidently based on the earlier NK-9 for the abandoned GR-I booster,

which had removable preliminary pumps. The idea stemmed from attempts to boost the performance of the engines for conditions that were more severe than projected launch conditions.

The exhaust from the starter turbine of the engines of all the N I main engines was directed

below by using a diverter duct outside the nozzle exit area. This particular duct, in fact, was

the reason why the engines themselves had a peculiar appearance--that is, they were closedcycle (staged combustion cycle) engines, but with an exhaust duct outside the nozzle originating from the turbopump assembly. Through the entire period of development, Kuznetsov

was forced to make significant changes to his original conceptions from 1962. One of Korolev's

stringent requirements was that the engines be extremely lightweight. Despite major difficulties, Kuznetsov's NK-15 engine had one of the best dry mass-thrust ratios of rocket engines of

this class and type.

A third unusual feature of the rocket was the built-in redundancy of the engines installed

on the stages. Becausethere were so many engines on the first stage, Korolev's engineers raised

the total reliability of the propulsion system by means of the in-flight shutdown of faulty

engines. Forexample, if there was a malfunction in one of the engines on Blok A, signals from

the Engine Operation Control (KORD) system's sensors were immediately sent to valves that

mechanically cut off the feed of propellant components to the malfunctioning engine. In addition, the engine diametrically opposite to the faulty one would be switched off simultaneously to preclude unbalanced loads during the powered portion of the trajectory. In such a

situation, the remaining engines would continue to burn for an extended period of 168 seconds

with slightly increased thrust. If two pairs of engines failed, the remaining engines would burn

to as much as 2 I0 seconds, depending on the parameters of the trajectory. The KORD system

also operated on the second and third stages. It could shut down two engines on Blok B and

one engine on Blok V, with other engines continuing to fire.

Guidance and control systems for the N I, including the KORD system, were developed by

Chief Designer Pilyugin at the Scientific-Research Institute of Automation and Instrument

Building. OKB-I developed the N l's tri-level telemetry system. This included the RTS-9 for

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
!

[ THREE STEPS TO THE MOON E

slow-changing parameters, the BRS-4 for fast-changing processes, and the APG-4 automatic

data recording system.

Another departure from previous Soviet rockets was the manner in which thrust vectoring

was accomplished on the vehicle. Pitch and yaw on the first two stages were effected by mismatching the thrusts of opposing fixed peripheral engines. The third stage had the ability for

traditional gimbaling. Roll maneuvers were accomplished by the small swiveling nozzles on the

periphery of the rocket, the gases for which were transferred from the turbines of the turbopumps of the main engines.

Power for on-board systems was ensured not by batteries, as on all previous Soviet rockets, but by a special "electrical station" developed by Chief Designer Andronik I. Iosifyan's

NII-627 in cooperation with Chief Designer Arkhip M. Lyulka's OKB-165. Electric turbogenerators operating on pressurants such as air or helium from the propellant tanks provided twenty

kilowatts of power that was essentially "free of charge," fully automated, and maintained to a

stable output by the use of a quartz oscillator/'

The N I-L3 lunar complex as a whole was designed at OKB-l's Department No. 3 headed

by Yakov E Kolyako. under the overall direction of Deputy Chief Designer Kryukov? _

The 1.3 Lunar Rocket Complex

The total length of the complete N I-L3 on the pad was IO5.3 meters, of which the L3 portion was 43.2 meters. The L3 complex consisted of the following sections: Blok G (fourth stage)

of the N I-L3 complex and the Lunar Orbital Station consisting of vehicles for work in lunar

space. Blok G served as the TLI stage and was powered by a single NK-19 engine, almost identical to the engine used on the N l's third stage. With an external diameter of just over four

meters and a length of eight meters, the stage was sufficiently small to be transported by rail

to the launch site much like Chelomey's Proton booster, which had the same external diameter. Blok G would ensure a 480-second burn sufficient to reach II.2 kilometers per second--

that is, enough to boost the Lunar Orbital Station toward the Moon.

The Lunar Orbital Station consisted of the following components, in order from bottom to

top on the launch stack:

• Blok D

• The Lunar Ship (LK)

• The Lunar Orbital Ship (LOK)

The Blok D stage, effectively the fifth stage of the N I-L3. was one of the most important

components of the entire complex, because it would perform several burns critical to a successful lunar landing. These would include two to three burns on the way to the Moon for

course corrections, the lunar-orbit-insertion burn, two to three corrections in this orbit, and the

initial portion of the powered descent burn from lunar orbit. The stage thus had to be equipped

55. v.A. Lebedev. "The NI L3 Programme," Spaceflight 34 (September 1992): 288-90; Semenov. ed.,

Raketno-Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya pp. 248-55; Lardier. L'.,Z]stronautiqueSoui_:tique,p. 166: Afanasyev, "NI:

Absolutely Secret: Part I1"; Igor Afanasyev. "N I: Absolutely Secret: Part II1" (English title). Krylya rodiny no. II

(November 1993): 4-5; Dorofeyev. "History of the Development of the N I-L3 Moon Program": N. I. Panichkin.

"Some Resultsof NI Development with Multi-Engine Powerplants." presentedat the 10th International Symposium

on the History of Astronautics and Aeronautics: Rebrov,"But Things Were LikeThat": Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly

to the Moon?": Marinin and Shamsutdinov, "Soviet Programsfor Piloted Flight to the Moon."

56 Semenov,ed.. Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya, p, 252.

487
488

witharocketenginethatnotonlycouldfunction reliablyin conditionsof vacuumand

weightlessnessformorethanaweek,butalso

becapableof repeatedfirings.Thecritical

engineusedonthestage,derivedfromworkon

theGR-Iandthefourthstageof the8K78

Molniyaspacelauncher,wastheIID58witha

vacuumthrustof eightandahalftonsanda

specificmpulseof349seconds.Engineersused

anewkerosenederivativenamedRG-Iasthe

fuel,whichensuredbettercoolingcharacteristicsthanearlierkerosenederivativessuchasT-I.

Propellantboiloffduringspaceoperationswas

alsopreventedbythermalinsulationonB]okD

itself.TheoxidizerwasLOX.Inadditiontothe

mainengine,theBlokDstagealsoincludedtwo

SystemforEnsuringFiring(SOZ)engineunits,

eachwithtwothrottle-capablemotorsof ten

kilogramsthrust(onereserve).Thesengines

wereforsettlingtheremainingpropellantof

BlokDpriorto firingin weightlessconditions

andweredevelopedbyTMKBSoyuz(formerly

theTurayevobranchof OKB-300)headedby

ChiefDesignerVladimirG.Stepanov.TheBlok

D enginewasoneof thefewrocketengines

developedin-houseat OKB-I,whosederivationscanbetracedbackadecadeto thesteeringthrustersusedontheoriginalR-7ICBM.

/

The Lunar Ship (LK) of the L3 lunar landing complex

would carry a single cosmonaut to the surface o[ the

Moon Note the honeycomb structure on the docking

plate at the top of the lander, which was capable

of receiving the active docking probe on the LOK

lunar orbiter (copyright VideoCosmos Co, via

Dennis Newkirk)

Like the earlier engines, Blok D work was overseen by OKB-t Deputy Chief Designer Mikhail V.

Metnikov." The stage was 5.7 meters in length, with an outer jettisonable cylindrical shell, and

had an external diameter of 3.7 meters.

The central component of the entire lunar stack was the LK lander, positioned on top of

Blok D on the pad. Engineers at OKB-I's Department No. 93 under Ivan S. Prudnikov were

responsible for designing and developing the vehicle under the overall supervision of Deputy

Chief Designer Bushuyev. Although the predraft plan for the spacecraft was finished at the end

of 1964, the primary elements of the design of the lander underwent significant changes by the

time that the final scheme was adopted in 1967 or 1968.

The primary constraint that dictated the eventual design of the LK was mass.

Computations showed that with the new and improved N I, along with Bloks G and D, such a

lunar lander could weigh a maximum of five and a half tons. This was in comparison to the

almost fifteen tons that NtqSA's Lunar Module weighed. Given the generally heavier microelectronics components and the relatively poor capabilities of Soviet computers, this was indeed a

tall order for Korolev's engineers. The Soviets benefited from having only one cosmonaut in the

lander, although this raised a number of other questions that would compromise safety. The

mass limit meant that the Soviets would have to do with one set of engines for both landing

and liftoff, instead of the two separate units as on the Apollo Lunar Module, This meant that

unlike the two stage Lunar Module, the Soviet lander would essentially be a one-stage vehicle.

57. Ibid.pp 226 28

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

Save for its landing supports and some associated instrumentation, at liftoff, the LK would

essentially be the same vehicle that had landed. After several changes in design in 1964, the

basic chosen design was of a rocket stage with landing supports, topped off by a crew cabin.

The crew cabin went through four different iterations before arriving at its roughly spherical

shape. The final layout of the LK consisted of the following three sections:

• The Lunar Landing Aggregate

• The Lunar Takeoff Apparatus

• Blok Ye

The Lunar Landing Aggregate and the Lunar Takeoff Apparatus were analogous to the descent

stage and the ascent stage, respectively, of the Apollo Lunar Module.

The Lunar Landing Aggregate was a 2 27-meter-diameter frame shaped like two truncated

and ribbed cones with their bases attached to each other, The dimension of the chassis was

determined by the distance from the main engine's nozzle exit section to the mainframe of the

oxidizer tank, a scant 600 millimeters. A pressurized suspended instrument compartment with

the Planeta ("Planet") landing radar and research equipment, with a mass of 105 kilograms,

was attached on the exterior of the Lunar Landing Aggregate This compartment included an

"operational manipulator" (5917 kilograms) and a lunar surface drill, which was capable of

operating for sixty minutes The Lunar Landing Aggregate also included two folding pencilbeam parabolic antennas of the radio communications system, in addition to three storage batteries, a fold-down ladder to allow the single cosmonaut to step down onto the surface, and

four water-filled cylinders for the evaporator of the thermal regulation system. Later models

were to include a small automated four-wheeled rover as well as a second scientific experiments

package

The actual landing supports for the ship, four legs attached to a frame, were collectively

known as the Lunar Landing Unit. Because knowledge of the lunar surface in 1964 was still

rather sparse, it was a challenge to set specifications for the landing supports Korolev gave his

engineers two primary requirements: (I) the ship should be able to safely drop from a height

of one meter with a lateral velocity of one meter per second and (2) the landing gear should be

able to prevent the lander from capsizing, even if the surface was sloped Assuming that the

"most likely" diameter of lunar craters would be seven meters, the slope limit for a landing was

set at twenty degrees to the horizontal. These two restrictions served as the basis for almost

twenty different proposals for landing supports, including a supporting ring much like an inflatable inner tube at the base of the vehicle. After examining tripod-support schemes, engineers

finally settled on a four-support design as the most stable in the given conditions.

In its final conception, the Lunar Landing Unit was simply a honeycomb shock-absorbing

structure with four legs, on which the spacecraft would rest on the Moon. Lateral supports for

the legs muffled loads by compression and extension, while compressible near-vertical struts

that ended in saucer-shaped footpads were for setting down on the surface. Four solidpropellant "hold-down" engines at the upper end of the landing legs were to fire at the exact

moment of touchdown to ensure that the vehicle would not topple over on the surface or

"hop" following first contact with the lunar surface.

The Lunar Takeoff Apparatus was the roughly spherical crew module for the lone cosmonaut during the lunar surface stay. It consisted of a pressurized cabin, a stubby cylindrical

instrument compartment enclosed by a dome stuck to the side of the sphere, and a section for

attitude control engines attached at the top. The cramped cabin itself was two and three-tenths

meters by three meters in size and had an internal volume just enough for a standing cosmonaut in a spacesuit who would be harnessed securely in front of the instrument display and

main control panel. The latter was designed and built by the Special Experimental Design

489
490

Bureau of the Flight-Research Institute at Zhukovskiy-2, near Moscow, under the leadership of

Chief Designer Sergey A. Borodin. The panel was located to the right of the cosmonaut, allowing the pilot's right hand to control key parameters of the vehicle. All systems had both an

automatic mode of control and a manual override.

A hemispherical concavity in the forward portion of the module contained a view port and

a collimator device with a seven-degree angle of view on which an image of the landing site

would be projected. During descent, the device would allow the cosmonaut to observe the

landing area and the landing supports visually and take over manual control in an emergency

situation. A large control stick would allow the cosmonaut to align the landing site on the collimator with the planned landing site, forcing the ship to travel to the desired location. A second port with a wide-angle sight was located above the concavity for the pilot to observe

docking operations in lunar orbit with the "mother ship." The exterior of the cabin included

four antennas, two omni-directional ones and two for rendezvous operations. Most of the

instrumentation associated with the functioning of the crew cabin (orientation and control

instrumentation, radio communications devices, and so on) was "pushed out" into the laterally placed oval instrument module. Two batteries, similar to the ones on the Lunar Landing

Aggregate, were also installed on the instrument section to power the spacecraft after liftoff.

The docking unit of the LK was installed on top of the vehicle much like on the U.S, Lunar

Module. g flat annular radiator screen of the thermal regulation system around the docking unit

protected the cabin against collision during a potentially incorrect alignment during docking in

lunar orbit.

The designers chose the internal atmospheric pressure based on careful analysis because

the pressure influenced the thickness of the main shell of the spacecraft, which in turn affected the mass. Unusually for the Soviet piloted space program, engineers initially chose a pure

oxygen atmosphere, but because that would require the creation of extra accessories, special

production technologies, and more safety measures, they fell back on the traditional ordinary

air composition, but with a reduced nitrogen content. In the 560-mm Hg pressure, the cosmonaut would be able to remove his spacesuit helmet for eating and drinking. At the time, Soviet

space engineers overwhelmingly preferred using airlocks for extravehicular activity (EVP,), but

installing an airlock on the LK was out of the question because of mass constraints.

Depressurization, as with the Apollo Lunar Module, was the only remaining option. The cabin

was designed such that both ground control and the cosmonaut could manually lower pressure. The internal climate of the cabin was maintained by a gas-liquid heat-exchange system

and ventilator. The life support system was designed for a nominal operation of forty-eight

hours, also limited by the power of the on-board batteries. All life maintenance systems, including the thermal regulation systems, were designed and developed by Chief Designer Voronin's

KB Nauka (formerly OKB-124).

Throughout all operations from lunar orbit to landing and then subsequent takeoff, the

commander of the mission would wear a special new semi-rigid spacesuit developed by KB

Zvezda (formerly Plant No. 918) based at Tomilino under the leadership of Chief Designer

Severin. The suit had to be flexible enough to allow for not only surface operations on the

Moon, but also EVA in lunar orbit, when the moonwalking cosmonaut would transfer from the

lander to the mother ship via a spacewalk. Severin's engineers developed a "portable suit" with

armored head and torso portions and soft arm and leg sections. Instead of donning the suit like

a typical article of clothing, the cosmonaut would literally enter the suit via a door at the backside. The suit's life support system was mounted in a large backpack attached to the door at

the back of the suit. The backpack, nicknamed Kaspiy, included a life support system that

would ensure thermal control, suit pressurization, air collection, purification, and dehumidification via a network of water-cooled plastic tubes, g hinged control panel on the chest of the

cosmonaut provided control over eleven parameters of suit operation in addition to communiCHALLENGE TO APOLLO
i THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

cations, each with a primary and backup loop. The suit also included a beacon system to allow

ground controllers to determine the exact position of the cosmonaut relative to the lander.

Within the lunar lander, because of mobility constraints, the cosmonaut would use a special

finger control unit to reach inaccessible control buttons. The size of the spacesuit necessitated

the use of a large oval hatch on the side of the Lunar Takeoff Apparatus, the first in the history of the Soviet space program. Severin's engineers named the suit Krechet-94 (" Falcon"), with

the "94" coming from the production index of the lunar lander, which was I IE94.

The guidance and control system of the LK was the heart of the ship. Several different

design bureaus and institutes under the leadership of the Scientific-Research Institute of

Automation and Instrument Building, headed by Chief Designer Pilyugin, designed and developed this system. The goal of the system was to control powered descent from lunar orbit, the

landing, the takeoff, and the subsequent docking with the LOK. For the first time in a Soviet

piloted vehicle, engineers used an on-board microcomputer to evaluate all incoming information from a variety of sensors, to evaluate the state of the lander based on preprogrammed algorithms, and then to take a course of action. The primary sensor system consisted of a set of

gyroscopes as part of a three-axis gyrostabilized platform for spatial orientation, the Planeta

landing radar for measuring velocity and altitude, the collimating sight, and other electronic

measurement systems. These gyroscopes were developed by the Scientific-Research Institute

for Applied Mechanics headed by Chief Designer Kuznetsov. Pilyugin's guidance system also

included a semi-automatic system for controlling horizontal movement and angular velocity

during rendezvous and docking operations, as well as a manual control system that would

allow the pilot to select a landing site using the collimating sight. The pilot would use a twochannel lever for controlling attitude and relative change of horizontal velocity of the lander.

Using the collimator to view the landing site, the pilot would feed data to the computer to produce commands for the necessary maneuvers to achieve an on-target and safe landing. Solar

and planetary sensors would verify the accuracy of the orientation of the axes of the gyrostabilized platform.

At the time of liftoff from the Moon, the Lunar Takeoff Apparatus would detach itself from

its landing supports (the Lunar Landing Unit) and additional instrumentation (the Lunar

Landing Aggregate) attached to it. The Lunar Takeoff Apparatus would lift off with only the

pressurized spherical compartment with the cosmonaut and the same engine unit that had

landed it. Electrical and hydraulic connections between the two spacecraft, provided via an

umbilical tower, would move away at a safe range prior to liftoff. One of the advantages of the

design was that there was no need to develop a special and separate landing stage. For landing, the Blok D stage would reduce velocity in lunar orbit sufficiently so that only a relatively

small engine was required for the disembarking operations. The throttleable main engine would

enable the cosmonaut to hover over the lunar surface for a very short time to select a safe landing area. The hover time was less than a minute and was dictated by fuel volume of the main

engine. Because of mass constraints, any science package aboard the LK would be very small,

thus limiting actual scientific exploration,

The primary attitude control complex was located on top of the crew cabin in a 0.68-metertall compartment underneath the docking collar. The system consisted of two vacuum-fueled

tanks (fuel and oxidizer) carrying 100 kilograms of liquid propellant and a propellant delivery system. There were four sets of engines, each with four thrusters, of which eight would have a

thrust of forty-nine kilograms and eight would have a thrust of ten kilograms. The complex was

divided into two independent circuits to overcome failure in one circuit. Each circuit controlled

two forty-kilogram thrusters for pitch, two forty-kilogram thrusters for yaw, and four ten-kilogram

thrusters for roll. The impulses from the thrusters were accurate enough to provide only nine

milliseconds of thrust. Although Chief Designer Stepanov's TMKB Soyuz designed and

developed the engines for the attitude control system, the organization declined to develop the

491
492

remainingcomponents, such as the actuator system, the propellant tanks, and the propellantfeed system, which were all created at OKB-I under First Deputy Mishin's direct leadership.

During a nominal mission, the LK would communicate with Earth and the lunar orbiter via

antennas that would operate in the meter, decimeter, and centimeter ranges. One antenna was

installed on the docking ring for "weak" signals, while two omni-directional antennas were at

the base of the crew cabin and two TV antennas were on the Lunar Landing Aggregate. A TV

camera installed above the ladder would transmit live pictures of the cosmonaut's disembarkation onto the lunar surface.

A large docking assembly was installed on the top of the Lunar Takeoff Apparatus. Because

of the mass and constraints, Korolev's engineers opted to design a system that, like the Soyuz

7K-OK, did not allow for internal transfer. While this considerably lightened and simplified the

docking systems on the lunar lander and the lunar orbiter, this also meant that the landing cosmonaut would have to spacewalk his way from one ship to the other during transfer operations.

Engineers rationalized this extra EVA by arguing that the cosmonaut would have to leave the

spacecraft for surface operations anyway, and two more EVAs would not significantly add to

mission complexity, as would a heavy and unique internal transfer system. In contrast to the

Soyuz docking system, which had a pin-cone system, the lunar lander-orbiter system was

designed exclusively for one docking. The active assembly on the orbiter ship had a pin and

simple shock absorbers, while the passive assembly on the lander consisted of a flat circular

honeycomb structure one meter in diameter, This plate contained 108 recessed hexagonal honeycomb components. During the single docking required in lunar orbit, it would be sufficient

for the lunar orbiter to place the pin in any location in the plane of the passive assembly. The

pin would penetrate the honeycomb structure and be captured by "claws" within, pulling the

two spacecraft together. The connection was only mechanical: there were to be no electrical or

power transfers between the two vehicles. The main rendezvous radar was placed adjacent to

the passive docking unit, somewhat similar to a chimney, and was part of the Kontakt system

designed and developed by NII-648 under Chief Designer Mnatsakanyan, the same organization responsible for Soyuz's Igla radar system. Two more antennas, also part of the Kontakt system, were installed on the exterior of the crew module,

Blok Ye, with a mass of two tons. was the main propulsion unit for landing on and lifting

off from the surface of the Moon. This most critical component of all was not developed by

OKB-I. When Korolev had first begun planning for the L3 complex, he had repeatedly stressed

that the effort be a collaborative effort with some of the other major design bureaus involved

at the time in aviation and missile development. As part of this conception of the lunar effort,

Korolev had signed a preliminary agreement with Chief Designer Mikhail K. Yangel of OKB-586

to design and develop the rocket stages for the entire L3 complex: the Blok G, Blok D, Blok Ye,

and Blok I stages. In January 1965, Yangel's First Deputy Chief Designer Vasiliy S. Budnik, one

of Korolev's old proteges from the 1940s, wrote back to Korolev that OKB-586 would be unable

to honor its commitment because of an overload of other work. In the following months, however. Korolev and Yangel eventually came to an agreement: the latter agreed to create only the

engine for the LK.

The project to create this engine was fraught with difficulty, not the least because of its

paramount importance in the N I-L3 lunar landing profile. Engineers calculated that the main

and backup engine of Blok Ye had to have a reliability of 99.976 percent, certainly an unheardof level in Soviet rocket engine industry. The overall responsibility for the stage's development

fell on the shoulders of OKB-586 Chief Engineer Boris I. Gubanov, the same man who would

twenty years later go on to head the development of the giant Energiya booster.

Being the heaviest element of the spacecraft and accounting for half the total mass. the

Blok Ye engine unit was installed as low as possible within the lunar lander to ensure maximal

stability. Its oxidizer (nitrogen tetroxide) tank was installed as a torus around the main engine

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

itself. There was also a lenticular tank (unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine) for the fuel. It was

rigidly attached to the lower part of the Lunar Takeoff t_pparatus and had a throttleable singlechamber engine (RD-858) and a two-chamber nonthrottleable backup engine (RD-859), each

with a thrust of 2.05 tons. The backup engine had two nozzles, one on each side of the primary engine nozzle in the center underneath the vehicle. The engine nozzles had covers to prevent debris from blocking the exhaust pathway. At liftoff, both engines were to fire until the

primary one reached full thrust, at which time, following a computerized diagnosis of the operational characteristics of the primary engine, the backup unit would be turned off The main

engine of Blok Ye was designed to ensure vertical braking and horizontal maneuvering from an

altitude of one to three kilometers down to a few hundred meters off the surface. Thrust could

be reduced from two tons down to 860 kilograms. _

The third major component of the lunar stack, after Blok D and the LK, was the LOK. The

spacecraft was designed as a modification of the early Soyuz 7K spacecraft, upgraded for operations in lunar orbit. Also known as the 7K-LOK, the lunar orbiter would be yet another variant of the basic 7K spacecraft, underlying the status of Soyuz as truly a universal spaceship for

the next generation of Soviet piloted programs, r°

Like the basic Soyuz spacecraft, the 7K-LOK consisted of three major compartments: the

major difference was the addition of a fourth section. These compartments were, from the forward end of the ship to the aft end:

• The living compartment

• The descent apparatus

• The instrument-aggregate compartment

• The Bloklengine

The first three sections served in much the same capacity as they would on Earth-orbital

Soyuz missions. The living compartment was a spheroid section, which would allow the crew

to rest on the long lunar trip and also serve as an airlock chamber for EVA operations. The

2.26-meter-long module had two hatches, one in the rear for transfer into the descent apparatus and one on the lateral side for exit into open space. The module also included a cupboard,

one Orlon ("Bald Eagle") EVA suit, food, water, cameras, and life support systems. A control

panel at the forward end of the sphere would allow the flight engineer cosmonaut to control

the vehicle during approach and docking in lunar orbit. One major difference from the Earthorbital Soyuz was the installation of the large orientation engine complex at the forward end of

the entire spacecraft. This 800-kilogram section with a length of just over one and a half meters

58. Ibid., pp. 252-54: V. filin, "At the Requestof the Reader:The N I-L3 Project" (English title), ,quiatsiya

i kosmonautika no. I (january 1992): 28-29, 40: gfanasyev. "Unknown Spacecraft"; Marinin and Shamsutdinov,

"Soviet Programs [or Piloted Flight to the Moon": Luc van den gbeleen, "Soviet Lunar Landing Programme."

Spaceflight 36 (March 1994): 90-92: K Lantratov. "The FallFromOrbit of the LastSoviet Lunar Ship" (English title),

Nouosti kosmonautiki 25 (December 3-16, 1995): 32-36: Russian SpaceHistory, Sale 63t6 (New York: Sotheby's,

1993), description for lot 49: Yu, V. Biryukov, "Seventieth Birthday of Vladimir Fedorovich Utkin" (English titte),

Zemtyo i uselennaya no. 3 (May-June 1994): 45-50: S. N. Konyukhov and V. A. Pashchenko, "History of Space

Launch Vehicles Development," presented at the 46th Congress of the International /_stronautical Federation,

IAA 95 I/q/q 22.09, Oslo, Norway. October 2-6, 1995: S. Konyukhov and L. ,qndreyev, "M. K Yangek The

Unknown Pages of Biography," presented at the 45th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation.

I_q/q-94 IAA.2,2.619, Jerusalem,Israel,October 9-14. 1994; Interview, Vladimir ggapov with the author. September

30, 1996:,q. Yasinskiy,"To Touch the Moon" (English title), ,Z]pogey3 (January 1993): 2-3.

59. By 1965, the following variants of the Soyuz were under study or in design: 7K-OK for Earth-orbital

operations: 7KVI for Earth-orbital military operations: 7K-LOK for lunar-orbital operations: and 7KPLK 7K OKT.

and 7K-LI for circumlunar missions

493
494

included six spherical tanks containing a total of

300 kilograms storable propellant (unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide)

as well as four gas-filled cylinders for supercharging the tanks. The tanks would service

four sets of engine units placed around the forward end of the spacecraft with their own rendezvous antennas. This orientation engine

complex would carry out all attitude control for

the large spacecraft during the critical operations in lunar orbit. The active end of the

Kontakt docking system was placed at the very

apex of the orientation engine complex, allowing for a single docking with the lunar lander.

The beehive-shaped descent apparatus was

similar to the one on the basic Soyuz. It was

2.19 meters long and 2.2 meters wide and would

carry the two-person crew during launch and

landing. It contained control panels for the ship's

systems, life support systems, an on-board computer, and a hatch at its apex for transfer into the

living compartment. Throughout the flight, the

capsule would be covered by thermal shielding

insulation and a strengthened heat shield at the

base, which would be cast off following reentry,

but prior to touchdown on the ground. Like the

/K-OK Soyuz, the lunar 1K-LOK Soyuz was

equipped with hydrogen peroxide engines for

guiding the ship during reentry.

The cylindrical instrument-aggregate compartment was analogous to the one on the basic

Soyuz, and it had a diameter of 2.2 meters and

The Lunar Orbital Ship (LOK) of the Soviet L3 lunar

landing complex would play an analogous role to

the Z]pollo Command-Service Module, remaining in

lunar orbit while the lander carried a single cosmonaut to the surface o[ the Moon. Note the skirt at the

base of the spacecraft, a visible difference pore the

basic Earth orbital Soyuz (copyright VideoCosmos

Co. via Dennis Newkirk)

a length of 2.82 meters. It consisted of three sections: the pressurized instrument compartment, the unpressurized transfer compartment, and the aggregate compartment. The instrument compartment carried equipment for the ship's radio communications, telemetry, and

command radio-link systems, as well as several attitude control engines for use during rendezvous, all of which were vastly improved from the version carried on the Earth-orbital Soyuz.

The fourth and final section of the Lunar Orbital Ship was the one that distinguished it

from the original Soyuz, the Blok I engine stage. Unlike the Soyuz, the aft end of the ship ended

in a unique skirt-shaped compartment, which contained the restartable Blok I engine as well as

the power compartment. This engine, known as the 5D5 I, had a singular mission: to fire the

spacecraft out of lunar orbit on its way back to Earth. The engine consisted of a two-chamber

propulsion unit with a thrust of 3.388 tons, whose exhaust nozzles were located at the base

of the large skirt. P, separate single-chamber engine with a thrust of 417 kilograms, which was

almost identical to the primary engine of the Soyuz spacecraft, was also installed at the rear

end of the skirt. Capable of multiple firings (up to thirty-five times), this smaller engine would

ensure orbital changes during lunar-orbit operations. Both engines were fed by a common propellant supply composed of a large 1.9-meter-diameter spherical tank separated by an internal

partition for isolating the unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. The major

portion of the tank was within the cylindrical aggregate compartment, with part of it jutting

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

into the skirt. Although Yangel had agreed initially to build the Blok I engine, by May 1965,

Korolev had signed a technical requirement with Chief Designer Isayev of OKB-2 to design,

develop, and deliver the engine. Isayev was also responsible for the smaller engine, which was

virtually identical to the one he was designing for the Earth-orbital Soyuz. The skirt at the end

of the 7K-LOK spacecraft also included sixteen tiny engines for attitude control, fueled by the

same tanks for the two main engines. The power compartment contained the Volna-20

("Wave") fuel cell for ensuring an electrical supply throughout the mission. It would be the

first time that hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells were used on a Soviet piloted spacecraft. On contract

to the Ural Electrochemical Company, the system had a mass of seventy kilograms and was

capable of providing one and a half kilowatts at twenty-seven volts for a period of 500 hours.

Maximum flight time for a fully equipped ship was about thirteen days. The LOK as a whole

was just over ten meters in length, with a maximum diameter of 2.93 meters and a mass in

lunar orbit of 9.85 tons? °

The final element of the N I-L3 stack was a launch escape tower, similar in design to the

one on the Soyuz booster, but scaled upwards to support the increased masses of the living

compartment and descent apparatus. The system, consisting of two levels of solidpropellant engines fixed to a tower above the launch stack, was equipped to remove the crew

a further distance away from the pad than for standard R-7-class boosters, because the power

of an N I explosion on the pad would have a far wider radius of destruction.

The complete N I-L3 profile, as tweaked and modified over 1965-69 was as follows. The

2,750-ton complex is launched from Tyura-Tam with its two-cosmonaut crew. During operation

of the Blok B second stage, the huge external fairing of the L3 and the emergency rescue system is jettisoned. The first three stages--Bloks A, B, and V--of the N I then insert the entire

ninety-one-and-a-half-ton L3 stack into a 220-kilometer orbit around Earth nine minutes after

launch. Following a thorough systems checkout in Earth orbit for about 24 hours, the Blok G

stage fires at a predetermined point on the complex's seventeenth orbit with a burn of 480 seconds at orbital perigee to insert the stack on a "free-return" translunar trajectory. A few minutes later, the Blok G stage is discarded. If something prevents the burn, the crew can try again

two orbits later. During the l 0 I-hour coast to the Moon, the Blok D stage is used for two minor

mid-course corrections, the first about eight to ten hours after translunar injection and the second about twenty-four hours prior to the start of deceleration as the ship approaches the Moon.

After the approximately four days in coast, during the final approach to the Moon, the BIok

D stage fires again for several seconds to reduce velocity of the stack to enter lunar orbit at an

altitude of 150 kilometers. On the fourth and fourteenth orbits, the cosmonauts fire the BIok D

engine to lower the altitude and insert the combined spacecraft into its operational landing

orbit at I00 by twenty kilometers. The crew then checks all systems of the LOK-LK-Blok D stack

from the living compartment of the LOK. At this point, the LK is still located inside a cylindrical adapter section, part of the internal fairing of the L3 complex: the commander of the crew

then exits the LOK via a hatch in the living compartment wearing the Krechet-94 suit. g

mechanical arm/boom is used to transfer the commander from outside of the orbiter to the fairing outside the lander. Once there, the cosmonaut opens an outer hatch and then an inner one

to enter the crew compartment of the LK. The flight engineer of the crew wearing the Orlan

spacesuit remains in the depressurized living compartment the entire time of the EVA to assist

the commander if necessary.

After the commander checks all the systems in the lander, the LOK and the LK-Blok D combination separate from each other. The adapter sections then open around the LK and separate

60. MarininandShamsutdinov,"SovietProgramsfor PilotedFlightto the Moon":lqfanasyev,"Unknown

Spacecraft";Lardier,LTlstronautiqueSouietique,pp. 167-68.

495
496

_2

9

\ 7

(,2

The NI.L3 lunar landing mission profile: (I) launch: (2) insertion o/L3 complex into Earth orbit by three-stage

NI: (3) firing of Blok _ (fourth) stage [or translunar injection, jettisoning of Blok G, and discarding of lower and

median payload [airings over Blok D; (4) mid-course correction by Blok D; (5) lunar-orbit insertion by Btok D:

(6) EV,Ztby commander from the LOK orbiter to the LK lander: (7) separation of the LOK from the LK and Btok D

combination, followed by jettisoning of upper payload fairing over the complex and deployment of lander legs

(8) firing of Btok D [or initial powered descent from lunar orbit until three kilometers altitude, [allowed by Btok D

separation and LK ignition to complete landing; (9) exit o[ commander from LK onto lunar surface, wi_h lunar

surface time limited to twenty four hours, (t0) point of impact of spent Blok D s_age: (1 I) Lunar Takeoff

,Ztpparatusliftoff from the Moon: (t 2) lunar-orbit insertion for the Lunar Takeof[.,qpparatus. followed by

rendezvous operations between the LOKand LK:(I3) docking of the LOK and Lunar Takeoff Z_pparatus. followed

by EV/3 for commander to transfer from the apparatus to the orbital ship and then the undocking of the _wo

ships: (14) LOK main engine firing for trans-Earth-injection maneuver: (15) mid-course correction by the LOK:

(l 6) separation of the descent apparatus with the two cosmonauts from the rest of the LOK: (I 7) guided descent

into Earth's atmosphere: and (I8) landing of the descent apparatus by parachute onto Soviet territory.

(flies of Asi/ Siddioi)

from the vehicle, revealing the lander for the first time. At this point, the Blok D stage fires for

the last time to begin the landing phase. As a result of a command from the Planeta landing

radar, at an altitude of one and a half to two kilometers, the Blok D stage ceases to fire, separates from the LK, and crashes near the landing site. The lander main engine, Blok Ye, then

begins to fire, allowing the lander to hover over the landing site, with the engine being manually throttled by the cosmonaut• The commander has about twenty-five seconds to select a

landing site and begin terminal descent procedures• The moment the landing pads touch the

lunar soil, the four "hold-down" engines on the lander legs ignite to stabilize the lander: the

entire time from Blok Ye engine ignition to landing takes one minute. If for some reason the

landing fails, the commander has the option of throttling the Blok Ye engine back to full power

and reentering lunar orbit to dock with the LOK.

Following landing, the cosmonaut rechecks the lander systems and the Krechet-94 lunar

surface suit, depressurizes the LK, and exits through the small oval hatch on the side of the

vehicle. A TV camera monitors the descent to the surface along a ladder. The cosmonaut, after

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

disembarking on the surface, deploys a small set of scientific instruments on the surface, plants

the Soviet flag, and takes photographs. The time on the surface is limited from one and a half

to six hours. After reentering the spacecraft, the cosmonaut then pressurizes the lander cabin,

removes the suit, and begins a rest period. At a predetermined time, the electrical, pneumatic,

and mechanical links to the Lunar Landing Aggregate are severed, and the Blok Ye engine retires

to lift the Lunar Takeoff Apparatus off the surface and enter a low lunar orbit.

The LOK then takes over the active role and performs a rendezvous using the Kontakt radar

scanning system unique to the LOK. The complete rendezvous and docking regime is carried

out automatically without the intervention of either the crew or ground control, although the

flight engineer in the LOK has the option of taking over manual control. The maneuvering in

orbit is carried out by the smaller engine similar to the Soyuz. After docking, the commander

reenters the LOK via another EVA, bringing along surface samples. On the thirty-eighth lunar

orbit, the docked lander crew cabin is jettisoned. On the following orbit, attitude control

thrusters at the base of the LOK are then used to position the vehicle to fire its main Blok I

engine on the far side of the Moon to boost itself on a trans-Earth trajectory. The total time in

lunar orbit is limited to seventy-seven hours. During the eighty-two-hour coast back, the same

engine carries out two mid-course corrections, the first at twenty-four hours and the second at

forty-four hours after leaving lunar orbit. Near Earth, about two hours prior to reentry, the LOK

separates into its three component parts, and the small descent apparatus with the crew performs a double-skip reentry to reduce velocity and reenters the atmosphere. Parachutes subsequently deploy for a crew landing on Soviet territory?'

Above and beyond the technical arcana, the N I-L3 complex was the most visible manifestation of the Soviet Union's response to U.S. President Kennedy's 1961 challenge. It was the

mirror image to Apollo-Saturn, a shadow project given birth, designed, and created in complete

and utter secrecy, whose only raison d'etre was to send a Soviet citizen to the Moon before an

American. Perhaps in the distant future, Apollo will probably be seen as a representation of the

human imperative to explore space and leave the planet--an effort devoid of boundaries and

races and cultures. But in the 1960s, both N I-L3 and Apollo were borne of more nationalistic

and ideological concerns. These two behemoth projects were the representatives of two countries in a race for technological supremacy. For the Soviets, however, the race to the Moon was

not only one to reach the surface of our only natural satellite, but also one to reach its vicinity

first. This latter goal, a circumlunar mission, underwent some profound changes in 1965, creating yet another schism in the loosely held conglomerate of the Soviet space industry.

The Birth of the New LI

Chelomey had signed the draft plan for his LK-I circumlunar spacecraft in mid- 1965. A special commission, composed of several subcommittees representing leaders from the government, military, Academy of Sciences, and design bureaus, was then supposed to examine the

complete technical plan for the complex and approve further work. Rarely in the piloted space

program had a project come to a stop at this late stage, and Chelomey no doubt fully expected to begin producing flight models at this point. Korolev, however, had other plans. Since

1961, he had repeatedly put forward his own piloted circumlunar proposals on an almost annual basis, but all had fallen victim to either political expediency or simply poor planning on the

part of Korolev's engineers. Some of these proposals, such as the 7K-9K-I I K plan, depended

on the use of smaller boosters to achieve their mission. A more pragmatic approach was to use

61. P,fanasyev,"UnknownSpacecraft":Marininand Shamsutdinov,"SovietProgramsfor PilotedFlightto

the Moon": Harford,Koroleu,pp 309-I0.

497
498

the N I booster, thus making the circumlunar mission simply a step in the achievement of a

lunar landing. Korolev's First Deputy Mishin later recalled:

S. 1RKoroleu made repeated attempts to consolidate both our programs [circumlunar and

landing] or to at least use the developments of one for the other as much as possible. The

first attempt was made in 1961, when he proposed using the NI (the first version, but

with a 75-ton payload mass) for sending two cosmonauts around the Moon .... He made

a second attempt in 1964, when, for that same purpose, he proposed using a rocket consisting of the [N I 's] upper rocket stages B, V, and _ .... _

Korolev doggedly pursued the latter idea, designated the N I I, despite the Soviet government's full sanction of Chetomey's competitive circumlunar project. In retrospect, Korolev's

idea seems to have made much more sense, given the exigencies of the Soviet lunar program

at the time. Making the circumlunar project a part of the landing would have significantly alleviated the financial burden of moving ahead with two separate, parallel, and unrelated piloted

lunar projects--Chelomey's to circle the Moon and Korolev's to land on it.

In January 1965, Korolev and his deputies commenced discussions to coordinate OKB-I's

lunar plans. The N 1 would launch the L3 to land on the Moon, while the smaller N I I would

launch the new LI spacecraft to circle around the Moon. Although details are still lacking on

the L I, it seems to have been a modified Soyuz spacecraft, one designated 7K-PLK, intended

exclusively for lunar orbital missions. Depending on the variant chosen, the mass of this new

spacecraft would be in the range of 6.8 to 7.7 tons, On February 5, 1965, Korolev signed a preliminary technical prospectus on the L t lunar orbital spacecraft, in anticipation of mounting a

last-minute attack on Chetomey's project, which had the more modest goal of circumlunar

flight. Such was the import given this shoestring effort that by March, Korolev and Mishin were

both seriously considering making the L I the primary thrust of OKB- I instead of the L3, despite

the complete absence of any official support. This effort may have been motivated by news of

the "unhappy state of affairs" of Chelomey's program. 63It seems that Korolev was simply waiting for the most opportune moment to attack his competitor's ambitions. In June 1965, Korolev

ordered his deputies to prepare working documentation for the N I I-LI proposal in anticipation

of the impending conflict between the two designers24

Between August 5 and t2, 1965, the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for

Space Research conducted a detailed evaluation of Chelomey's LK-I project. According to a

respected Russian historian:

,Z]ll the subcommissions that reviewed the various sections of the design commended its

feasibility and recommended it [or implementation following the rectification of individual reproofs. However, the representatives of S. P. Korolev's OKB-I expressed their dissent. which came down to the fact that the creation, within the OKB-52 [that is,

Chelomey's design bureau] of a special vehicle for flying around the Moon was inadvisable, since the Soyuz ship produced in Podlipki [that is, at OKB-I] [or the achievement of the same objectives was already in the process of being readied for flight

testing2 _

62 Mishin, "Why Didn't We Fly to the Moon?"

63 Semenov,ed., Raketno-KosmicheskayaKorporatsiya. pp. 232-33,

64, Vetrov interview, September30, 1996

65, Igor gfanasyev. "Without the Stamp 'Secret': Circling the Moon: Chelomey's Project" {English title),

Krasnaya zuezda, October 28, 1995

CHALLENGE TO APOLLO
THREE STEPS TO THE MOON

Korolev's engineers ardently criticized the LK- I for its limited number of crewmembers, its

cramped internal volume, and its poor technical characteristics. In their opinion, many of the

concepts used in designing the LK-I, which was Chelomey's first serious foray into piloted

space vehicles, were based on half-baked ideas. In Korolev's written testimony at the end of the

inspection phase, he alluded to the inability to fulfill deadlines for lunar missions and contended, "The development of a circumlunar vehicle in isolation from the primary objective [of

a lunar landing] would be irrational." Thus, flying around the Moon should be "an experimental stage that will make it possible, under field conditions, to perfect the design and the

systems of a spacecraft intended for carrying out a [landing] expedition to the Moon. ''_ One

of the few factors in Chelomey's favor during this period was the recent first successful orbital

launch of the UR-500 booster, the same launcher intended for the circumlunar project.

At this time, Military-lndustrial Commission Chairman Smirnov announced that he would

preside over a meeting in late August to determine, once and for all, the course of the piloted

lunar program. To fortify his position, Korolev prepared a letter to Soviet leader Brezhnev on

August 14, which he intended to be the final blow to Chelomey. Speaking of the piloted lunar

project, he wrote:

The problem is being solved in both the Soviet Union and the U.S.,Zt. There are the following two stages to the solution of this problem: flying around the Moon with automatic apparatus and crews with the goal o/carrying out observations and research of

a preliminary character close to the Moon: and the landing of automatic apparatus and

manned stations on the surface o[ the Moon with the goal of the continuous study...

of the Moon. In our opinion, both these goals can be successfully solved with the N I

complex. The N I complex will allow a more complete achievement of the first stage o[

work--circular flight around the Moon with a crew by creating a heavy artificial satellite of the Moon, carrying the necessary apparatus which would release lunar probes,

radio-beacons, etc,[,] to the surface of the Moon. In this case with the first launch o[ the

N l, the crew can be brought into [Earth] orbit with the aid of the well-tested carrier of

the R-7 type. The second stage--landing on the surface o/the Moon[--]ean be accomplished with the aid of one flight of the N I to... lunar orbit with the subsequent return

of the lunar ship from its surface. The state of work on the N I complex gives hope that

within a year we can start flight work of the carrier and lunar systemY

Once again, he invoked the Apollo program:

In the U.S.A. work on preparations and accomplishment o[ landing 71merican astronauts on the Moon... has been accepted as a major national priority. The scale of

work on the Saturn-7tpollo theme with the effective utilization of liquid hydrogen and

oxygen and the investment of forces and resources is huge. Judging from the work

achieved, the U.S.,Zt. will be able to accomplish a landing on the Moon in 1968.

66. Ibid. That Korolev was personally opposedto Chelomey's LK-I proJect is testified in N. R Kamanin's

diaries. His diary entry for August 16 includes the following: "Korolev called me and expressed his dissatisfaction

with the fact that Chelomey was beginning to build a spacecraftto fly around the Moon. A long time ago Ko[olev

had expressedthe idea of a monopoly on the construction of spacecraftin his Special Design Bureau,and turned to

find support on this issuefrom the military... [but] to develop cosmonautics it was useful for spacecraftto be created not by one but severalfirms." SeeKamanin, "In the FutureHis Name Will Probably Be.... "

67 S.P. Korolev, "Report on the Organization of Work on the N I Carrier" (English title), Nauka i zhizn

no. 5 (May 1994): 24 26.

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