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by Boris Chertok

Asif Siddiqi, Series Editor

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The Moon Race
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ISBN 978-0-16-089559-3
Rockets and People

Volume IV:The Moon Race

Boris Chertok

Asif Siddiqi, Series Editor

The NASA History Series

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Office of Communications

History Program Office

Washington, DC

NASA SP-2011-4110
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chertok, B. E. (Boris Evseevich), 1912– 

 [Rakety i lyudi. English] 

 Rockets and People: The Moon Race (Volume IV) / by 

Boris E. Chertok ; 

 [edited by] Asif A. Siddiqi. 

 p. cm. — (NASA History Series) (NASA SP-2011-4110) 

 Includes bibliographical references and index. 

 1. Chertok, B. E. (Boris Evseevich), 1912– 2. Astronautics—

Soviet Union—Biography. 3. Aerospace engineers—Soviet Union—

Biography. 4. Astronautics—Soviet Union—History.

I. Siddiqi, Asif A., 1966– II. Title. III. Series. IV. SP-2011-4110.

TL789.85.C48C4813 2011

629.1’092—dc22
I dedicate this book

to the cherished memory 

of my wife and friend,

Yekaterina Semyonova Golubkina.

Contents

 Series Introduction by Asif A. Siddiqi 

1

vii

Series Introduction

has 

In an extraordinary century, Academician Boris Yevseyevich Chertok 

lived an extraordinary life. He has witnessed and participated in many 

important technological milestones of the 20th century, and in these volumes, 

he recollects them with clarity, humanity, and humility. Chertok began his 

career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory near Moscow. Thirty 

years later, he was one of the senior designers in charge of the Soviet Union’s 

crowning achievement as a space power: the launch of Yuriy Gagarin, the 

world’s first space voyager. Chertok’s 60-year-long career, punctuated by the 

extraordinary accomplishments of both Sputnik and Gagarin, and continuing to the many successes and failures of the Soviet space program, constitutes the core of his memoirs, Rockets and People. In these four volumes, 

Academician Chertok not only describes and remembers, but also elicits 

and extracts profound insights from an epic story about a society’s quest to 

explore the cosmos.

Academician Chertok’s memoirs, forged from experience in the Cold War, 

provide a compelling perspective into a past that is indispensable to understanding the present relationship between the American and Russian space 

programs. From the end of World War II to the present day, the missile and 

space efforts of the United States and the Soviet Union (and now Russia) have 

been inextricably linked. As such, although Chertok’s work focuses exclusively 

on Soviet programs to explore space, it also prompts us to reconsider the entire 

history of spaceflight, both Russian and American.

Chertok’s narrative underlines how, from the beginning of the Cold 

War, the rocketry projects of the two nations evolved in independent but 

parallel paths. Chertok’s first-hand recollections of the extraordinary Soviet 

efforts to collect, catalog, and reproduce German rocket technology after 

World War II provide a parallel view to what historian John Gimbel has 

called the Western “exploitation and plunder” of German technology after 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

the war.1 Chertok describes how the Soviet design team under the famous 

Chief Designer Sergey Pavlovich Korolev quickly outgrew German missile 

technology. By the late 1950s, his team produced the majestic R-7, the 

world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile. Using this rocket, the Soviet 

Union launched the first Sputnik satellite on 4 October 1957 from a launch 

site in remote central Asia.

The early Soviet accomplishments in space exploration, particularly the 

launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the remarkable flight of Yuriy Gagarin in 1961, 

were benchmarks of the Cold War. Spurred by the Soviet successes, the United 

States formed a governmental agency, the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration (NASA), to conduct civilian space exploration. As a result of 

Gagarin’s triumphant flight, in 1961, the Kennedy administration charged 

NASA to achieve the goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him 

safely to the Earth before the end of the decade.”2

 Such an achievement would 

demonstrate American supremacy in the arena of spaceflight at a time when 

both American and Soviet politicians believed that victory in space would be 

tantamount to preeminence on the global stage. The space programs of both 

countries grew in leaps and bounds in the 1960s, but the Americans crossed 

the finish line first when Apollo astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin 

E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., disembarked on the Moon’s surface in July 1969.

Shadowing Apollo’s success was an absent question: What happened to the 

Soviets who had succeeded so brilliantly with Sputnik and Gagarin? Unknown 

to most, the Soviets tried and failed to reach the Moon in a secret program that 

came to naught. As a result of that disastrous failure, the Soviet Union pursued 

a gradual and consistent space station program in the 1970s and 1980s that 

eventually led to the Mir space station. The Americans developed a reusable 

space transportation system known as the Space Shuttle. Despite their seemingly 

separate paths, the space programs of the two powers remained dependent on 

each other for rationale and direction. When the Soviet Union disintegrated 

in 1991, cooperation replaced competition as the two countries embarked on 

a joint program to establish the first permanent human habitation in space 

through the International Space Station (ISS).

Academician Chertok’s reminiscences are particularly important because 

he played key roles in almost every major milestone of the Soviet missile and 

 1. John Gimbel, 

x
Series Introduction

space programs, from the beginning of World War II to the dissolution of the 

Soviet Union in 1991. During the war, he served on the team that developed 

the Soviet Union’s first rocket-powered airplane, the BI. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Chertok, then in his early 30s, played a key role in studying 

and collecting captured German rocket technology. In the latter days of the 

Stalinist era, he worked to develop long-range missiles as deputy chief engineer 

of the main research institute, the NII-88 (pronounced “nee-88”) near Moscow. 

In 1956, Korolev’s famous OKB-1 design bureau spun off from the institute 

and assumed a leading position in the emerging Soviet space program. As a 

deputy chief designer at OKB-1, Chertok continued with his contributions to 

the most important Soviet space projects of the day: the Vostok; the Voskhod; 

the Soyuz; the world’s first space station, Salyut; the Energiya superbooster; 

and the Buran space shuttle.

Chertok’s emergence from the secret world of the Soviet military-industrial 

complex, into his current status as the most recognized living legacy of the 

Soviet space program, coincided with the dismantling of the Soviet Union as 

a political entity. Throughout most of his career, Chertok’s name remained a 

state secret. When he occasionally wrote for the public, he used the pseudonym 

“Boris Yevseyev.”3 Like others writing on the Soviet space program during the 

Cold War, Chertok was not allowed to reveal any institutional or technical 

details in his writings. What the state censors permitted for publication said 

little; one could read a book several hundred pages long comprising nothing 

beyond tedious and long personal anecdotes between anonymous participants 

extolling the virtues of the Communist Party. The formerly immutable limits 

on free expression in the Soviet Union irrevocably expanded only after Mikhail 

Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1985 and the introduction of glasnost’ (openness).

Chertok’s name first appeared in print in the newspaper Izvestiya in an 

article commemorating the 30th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik in 1987. 

In a wide-ranging interview on the creation of Sputnik, Chertok spoke with 

the utmost respect for his former boss, the late Korolev. He also eloquently 

balanced love for his country with criticisms of the widespread inertia and inefficiency that characterized late-period Soviet society.4

 His first written works in 

the glasnost’ period, published in early 1988 in the Air Force journal Aviatsiya 

i kosmonavtika [Aviation and Cosmonautics], underlined Korolev’s central role 

 3. See, for example, his article “Chelovek or avtomat?” [“Human or Automation?”] in the 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

in the foundation and growth of the Soviet space program.5 By this time, it 

was as if all the patched up straps that held together a stagnant empire were 

falling apart one by one; even as Russia was in the midst of one of its most 

historic transformations, the floodgates of free expression were transforming 

the country’s own history. People like Chertok were now free to speak about 

their experiences with candor. Readers could now learn about episodes such 

as Korolev’s brutal incarceration in the late 1930s, the dramatic story behind 

the fatal space mission of Soyuz-1 in 1967, and details of the failed and abandoned Moon project in the 1960s.6

 Chertok himself shed light on a missing 

piece of history in a series of five articles published in Izvestiya in early 1992 

on the German contribution to the foundation of the Soviet missile program 

after World War II.7

Using these works as a starting point, Academician Chertok began working 

on his memoirs. Originally, he had only intended to write about his experiences from the postwar years in one volume, maybe two. Readers responded so 

positively to the first volume, Rakety i lyudi [Rockets and People], published in 

1994, that Chertok continued to write, eventually producing four substantial 

volumes, published in 1996, 1997, and 1999, covering the entire history of 

the Soviet missile and space programs.8

 5. B. Chertok, “Lider” [“Leader”], 

xii
Series Introduction

My initial interest in the memoirs was purely historical: I was fascinated by 

the wealth of technical arcana in the books, specifically projects and concepts 

that had remained hidden throughout much of the Cold War. Those interested 

in dates, statistics, and the “nuts and bolts” of history will find much that is 

useful in these pages. As I continued to read, however, I became engrossed by 

the overall rhythm of Academician Chertok’s narrative, which gave voice and 

humanity to a story ostensibly about mathematics and technology. In his writings, I found a richness that had been nearly absent in most of the disembodied, 

clinical, and often speculative writing by Westerners studying the Soviet space 

program. Because of Chertok’s storytelling skills, his memoir is a much-needed 

corrective to the outdated Western view of Soviet space achievements as a 

mishmash of propaganda, self-delusion, and Cold War rhetoric. In Chertok’s 

story, we meet real people with real dreams who achieved extraordinary successes under very difficult conditions.

Chertok’s reminiscences are remarkably sharp and descriptive. In being 

self-reflective, Chertok avoids the kind of solipsistic ruminations that often 

characterize memoirs. He is both proud of his country’s accomplishments and 

willing to admit failings with honesty. For example, Chertok juxtaposes accounts 

of the famous aviation exploits of Soviet pilots in the 1930s, especially those 

to the Arctic, with the much darker costs of the Great Terror in the late 1930s 

when Stalin’s vicious purges decimated the Soviet aviation industry.

Chertok’s descriptive powers are particularly evident in describing the chaotic nature of the Soviet mission to recover and collect rocketry equipment in 

Germany after World War II. Interspersed with his contemporary diary entries, 

his language conveys the combination of joy, confusion, and often anticlimax 

that the end of the war presaged for Soviet representatives in Germany. In one 

breath, Chertok and his team are looking for hidden caches of German matériel 

in an underground mine, while in another they are face to face with the deadly 

consequences of a soldier who had raped a young German woman (Volume I, 

Chapter 21).9

 There are many such seemingly incongruous anecdotes during 

Chertok’s time in Germany, from the experience of visiting the Nazi slave labor 

camp at Dora soon after liberation in 1945, to the deportation of hundreds 

of German scientists to the USSR in 1946. Chertok’s massive work is of great 

consequence for another reason—he cogently provides context. Since the 

breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, many participants have openly written 

 9. For the problem of rape in occupied Germany after the war, see Norman M. Naimark, 

xiii
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

about their experiences, but few have successfully placed Soviet space achievements in the broader context of the history of Soviet science, the history of 

the Soviet military-industrial complex, or indeed Soviet history in general.10

The volumes of memoirs compiled by the Russian State Archive of ScientificTechnical Documentation in the early 1990s under the series Dorogi v kosmos

[Roads to Space] provided an undeniably rich and in-depth view of the origins 

of the Soviet space program, but they were, for the most part, personal narratives, i.e., fish-eye views of the world around them.11 Chertok’s memoirs are a 

rare exception in that they strive to locate the Soviet missile and space program 

in the fabric of broader social, political, industrial, and scientific developments 

in the former Soviet Union.

This combination—Chertok’s participation in the most important Soviet 

space achievements, his capacity to lucidly communicate them to the reader, 

and his skill in providing a broader social context—makes this work, in my 

opinion, one of the most important memoirs written by a veteran of the Soviet 

space program. The series will also be an important contribution to the history 

of Soviet science and technology.12

In reading Academician Chertok’s recollections, we should not lose sight 

of the fact that these chapters, although full of history, have their particular 

 10.

xiv
Series Introduction

perspective. In conveying to us the complex vista of the Soviet space program, 

he has given us one man’s memories of a huge undertaking. Other participants 

of these very same events will remember things differently. Soviet space history, 

like any discipline of history, exists as a continuous process of revision and 

restatement. Few historians in the 21st century would claim to be completely 

objective.13 Memoirists would make even less of a claim to the “truth.” In his 

introduction, Chertok acknowledges this, saying, “I...must warn the reader 

that in no way do I have pretensions to the laurels of a scholarly historian. 

Correspondingly, my books are not examples of strict historical research. In 

any memoirs, narrative and thought are inevitably subjective.” Chertok ably 

illustrates, however, that avoiding the pursuit of scholarly history does not 

necessarily lessen the relevance of his story, especially because it represents 

the opinion of an influential member of the postwar scientific and technical 

intelligentsia in the Soviet Union.

Some, for example, might not share Chertok’s strong belief in the power 

of scientists and engineers to solve social problems, a view that influenced 

many who sought to transform the Soviet Union with modern science after the 

Russian Revolution in 1917. Historians of Soviet science such as Loren Graham 

have argued that narrowly technocratic views of social development cost the 

Soviet Union dearly.14 Technological hubris was, of course, not unique to the 

Soviet scientific community, but absent democratic processes of accountability, 

many huge Soviet government projects—such as the construction of the Great 

Dnepr Dam and the great Siberian railway in the 1970s and 1980s—ended up 

as costly failures with many adverse social and environmental repercussions. 

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Chertok’s views, they are important to 

understand because they represent the ideas of a generation who passionately 

believed in the power of science to eliminate the ills of society. As such, his 

memoirs add an important dimension to understanding the mentalité of the 

Soviets’ drive to become a modern, industrialized state in the 20th century.

Chertok’s memoirs are part of the second generation of publications on 

Soviet space history, one that eclipsed the (heavily censored) first generation 

published during the Communist era. Memoirs constituted a large part of the 

second generation. In the 1990s, when it was finally possible to write candidly 

 13.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

about Soviet space history, a wave of personal recollections flooded the market. 

Not only Boris Chertok, but also such luminaries as Vasiliy Mishin, Kerim 

Kerimov, Boris Gubanov, Yuriy Mozzhorin, Konstantin Feoktistov, Vyacheslav 

Filin, and others finally published their reminiscences.15 Official organizational 

histories and journalistic accounts complemented these memoirs, written by 

individuals with access to secret archival documents. Yaroslav Golovanov’s 

magisterial Korolev: Fakty i Mify [Korolev: Facts and Myths], as well as key institutional works from the Energiya corporation and the Russian Military Space 

Forces, added richly to the canon.16 The diaries of Air Force General Nikolay 

Kamanin from the 1960s to the early 1970s, published in four volumes in the 

late 1990s, also gave scholars a candid look at the vicissitudes of the Soviet 

human spaceflight program.17

The flood of works in Russian allowed Westerners to publish the first 

works in English. Memoirs—for example, from Sergey Khrushchev and Roald 

Sagdeyev—appeared in their English translations. James Harford published his 

1997 biography of Sergey Korolev based upon extensive interviews with veterans 

of the Soviet space program.18 My own book, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet 

 15.

xvi
Series Introduction

Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974, was an early attempt to synthesize the 

wealth of information and narrate a complete history of the early Soviet human 

spaceflight program.19 Steven Zaloga provided an indispensable counterpoint to 

these space histories in The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s 

Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945–2000, which reconstructed the story of the Soviet 

efforts to develop strategic weapons.20

With any new field of history that is bursting with information based 

primarily on recollection and interviews, there are naturally many contradictions and inconsistencies. For example, even on such a seemingly trivial issue 

as the name of the earliest institute in Soviet-occupied Germany, “Institute 

Rabe,” there is no firm agreement on the reason it was given this title. Chertok’s 

recollections contradict the recollection of another Soviet veteran, Georgiy 

Dyadin.21 In another case, many veterans have claimed that artillery general 

Lev Gaydukov’s meeting with Stalin in 1945 was a key turning point in the 

early Soviet missile program; Stalin apparently entrusted Gaydukov with the 

responsibility to choose an industrial sector to assign the development of 

long-range rockets (Volume I, Chapter 22). Lists of visitors to Stalin’s office 

during that period—declassified only very recently—do not, however, show 

that Gaydukov ever met with Stalin in 1945.22 Similarly, many Russian sources 

note that the “Second Main Directorate” of the USSR Council of Ministers 

managed Soviet missile development in the early 1950s, when in fact, this 

body actually supervised uranium procurement for the A-bomb project.23 In 

many cases, memoirs provide different and contradictory information on the 

very same event (different dates, designations, locations, people involved, etc.).

Academician Chertok’s wonderful memoirs point to a solution to these 

discrepancies: a “third generation” of Soviet space history, one that builds 

 19.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

on the rich trove of the first and second generations but is primarily based 

on documentary evidence. During the Soviet era, historians could not write 

history based on documents since they could not obtain access to state and 

design bureau archives. As the Soviet Union began to fall apart, historians 

such as Georgiy Vetrov began to take the first steps in document-based history. Vetrov, a former engineer at Korolev’s design bureau, eventually compiled 

and published two extraordinary collections of primary documents relating 

to Korolev’s legacy.24 Now that all the state archives in Moscow—such as the 

State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of 

the Economy (RGAE), and the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences 

(ARAN)—are open to researchers, more results of this “third generation” are 

beginning to appear. German historians such as Matthias Uhl and Christoph 

Mick and those in the United States such as myself have been fortunate to 

work in Russian archives.25 I would also note the enormous contributions of 

the Russian monthly journal Novosti kosmonavtiki [News of Cosmonautics] as 

well as the Belgian historian Bart Hendrickx in advancing the state of Soviet 

space history. The new work has opened opportunities for future research. 

For example, we no longer have to guess about the government’s decision to 

approve development of the Soyuz spacecraft; we can see the original decree 

issued on 4 December 1963.26 Similarly, instead of speculating about the 

famous decree of 3 August 1964 that committed the Soviet Union to competing with the American Apollo program, we can study the actual government 

 24.

xviii
Series Introduction

document issued on that date.27 Academician Chertok deserves much credit 

for opening the doors for future historians, since his memoirs have guided 

many to look even deeper.

The distribution of material spanning the four volumes of Chertok’s memoirs is roughly chronological. In the first English volume, Chertok describes 

his childhood, his formative years as an engineer at the aviation Plant No. 22 

in Fili, his experiences during World War II, and the mission to Germany in 

1945–46 to study captured German missile technology.

In the second volume, he continues the story with his return to the Soviet 

Union, the reproduction of a Soviet version of the German V-2 and the development of a domestic Soviet rocket industry at the famed NII-88 institute 

in the Moscow suburb of Podlipki (now called Korolev). He describes the 

development of the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the 

R-7; the launch of Sputnik; and the first-generation probes sent to the Moon, 

Mars, and Venus.

In the third volume, he begins with the historic flight of Yuriy Gagarin, the 

first human in space. He discusses several different aspects of the burgeoning 

Soviet missile and space programs of the early 1960s, including the development of early ICBMs, reconnaissance satellites, the Cuban missile crisis, the 

first Soviet communications satellite Molniya-1, the early spectacular missions 

of the Vostok and Voskhod programs, the dramatic Luna program to land a 

probe on the Moon, and Sergey Korolev’s last days. He then continues into 

chapters about the early development of the Soyuz spacecraft, with an in-depth 

discussion of the tragic mission of Vladimir Komarov.

The fourth and final volume is largely devoted to the Soviet project to send 

cosmonauts to the Moon in the 1960s, covering all aspects of the development 

of the giant N-1 rocket. The last portion of this volume covers the origins of 

the Salyut and Mir space station programs, ending with a fascinating description of the massive Energiya-Buran project, developed as a countermeasure to 

the American Space Shuttle.

It was my great fortune to meet with Academician Chertok in the summer 

of 2003. During the meeting, Chertok, a sprightly 91 years old, spoke passionately and emphatically about his life’s work and remained justifiably proud 

of the achievements of the Russian space program. As I left the meeting, I 

was reminded of something that Chertok had said in one of his first public 

 27.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

interviews in 1987. In describing the contradictions of Sergey Korolev’s personality, Chertok had noted: “This realist, this calculating, [and] farsighted 

individual was, in his soul, an incorrigible romantic.”28 Such a description would 

also be an apt encapsulation of the contradictions of the entire Soviet drive to 

explore space, one which was characterized by equal amounts of hardheaded 

realism and romantic idealism. Academician Boris Yevseyevich Chertok has 

communicated that idea very capably in his memoirs, and it is my hope that 

we have managed to do justice to his own vision by bringing that story to an 

English-speaking audience.

Asif A. Siddiqi

Series Editor

October 2004

 28.

xx
Introduction to Volume IV

In this, the fourth and final volume of his memoirs, Boris Chertok 

concludes his monumental trek through a nearly 100-year life. As with the 

previous English-language volumes, the text has been significantly modified and 

extended over the original Russian versions published in the 1990s. The first 

volume covered his childhood, early career, and transformation into a missile 

engineer by the end of World War II. In the second volume, he took the story 

up through the birth of the postwar Soviet ballistic-missile program and then 

the launch of the world’s artificial satellite, Sputnik. This was followed, in the 

third volume, by a description of the early and spectacular successes of the 

Soviet space program in the 1960s, including such unprecedented achievements 

as the flight of cosmonaut Yuriy Gagarin. The fourth volume concludes his 

memoirs on the history of the Soviet space program with a lengthy meditation 

on the failed Soviet human lunar program and then brings the story to a close 

with the events of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

In the summer of 1989, Soviet censors finally allowed journalists to write 

about an episode of Soviet history that had officially never happened: the massive Soviet effort to compete with Apollo in the 1960s to land a human being 

on the Moon. U.S. President John F. Kennedy had laid down the gauntlet 

in a speech in May 1961 to recover some of the self-confidence lost by the 

series of Soviet successes in space in the wake of Sputnik. Kennedy’s challenge 

was embodied in an enormous investment in human spaceflight in the 1960s 

and culminated in the landing of NASA astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and 

Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., on the surface of the Moon in 1969 during the 

Apollo 11 mission.

Although a number of Western analysts and observers (not to mention 

U.S. intelligence analysts) suspected that the Soviets had been in the race to 

the Moon, Soviet spokespersons officially disavowed or rejected the notion 

that they had tried to preempt the Americans. This façade eventually cracked 

at the height of glasnost (“openness”) in the late 1980s. In the summer of 

1989, Soviet censors permitted the publication of a number of articles and 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

books that admitted the existence of a human lunar program in the 1960s.1 As 

more and more information emerged in the early 1990s, some salient features 

began to emerge: that the program had been massive, that it had involved the

development of a super booster known as the N-1, that all efforts to beat the

Americans had failed, and that evidence of the program had been whitewashed 

out of existence.2

It has become increasingly clear to historians that it would be impossible

to understand the early history of the Soviet space program without accounting 

for the motivations and operations of the human lunar landing program. By the 

late 1960s, the N1-L3 project constituted about 20 percent of annual budget

expenditures on Soviet space exploration; by some estimates, total spending

on the Moon program may have been about 4 to 4.5 billion rubles, which

roughly translated to about 12 to 13.5 billion dollars in early 1970s numbers.3

But beyond the numbers, the program was undoubtedly one of the most

dramatic episodes in the history of the Soviet space program. During the

eventful and troubled period that Chertok covers in this volume, from about

1968 to 1974, the Korolev design bureau, now led by the talented but flawed

Vasiliy Mishin, stumbled from one setback to another. The heart of the program during these years was the giant N-1 rocket, a massive and continually

evolving technological system whose development was hobbled by difficult

compromises in technical approaches, fighting between leading chief designers, lack of money, and an absence of commitment from the Soviet military,

the primary operator of Soviet space infrastructure.

Chertok begins his narrative with a discussion of the origins of the N-1 in 

the early 1960s and the acrimonious disagreement between Sergey Korolev, the 

 1. These included Lev Kamanin, “S zemli na lunu i obratno” [“From the Earth to the Moon 

xxii
Introduction to Volume IV

chief designer of spacecraft and launch vehicles, and Valentin Glushko, the chief 

designer of liquid-propellant rocket engines. On one level, theirs was a disagreement over arcane technical issues, particularly over the choice of propellants 

for the N-1, but at a deeper level, the dispute involved fundamental differences 

over the future of the Soviet space program. Korolev and Glushko’s differences 

over propellants date back to the 1930s when Glushko had embraced storable, 

hypergolic, and toxic propellants for his innovative engines. By the 1940s, 

Korolev, meanwhile, had begun to favor cryogenic propellants and believed 

that a particular cryogenic combination, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, 

was the most efficient way forward. Korolev was not alone in this belief. In 

the United States, NASA had invested significant amounts in developing such 

engines, but Glushko had an important ally on his side, the military. When 

Korolev and Glushko refused to come to an agreement, a third party, Nikolay 

Kuznetsov’s design bureau in the city of Kuybyshev (now Samara), was tasked 

with the critical assignment to develop the engines of the N-1.

Having known both Korolev and Glushko, Chertok has much to say about 

the relationship between the two giants of the Soviet space program. Contrary 

to much innuendo that their relationship was marred by the experience of the 

Great Terror in the late 1930s, Chertok shows that they enjoyed a collegial and 

friendly rapport well into the 1950s. He reproduces a congratulatory telegram 

(in Chapter 3) from Korolev to Glushko upon the latter’s election as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. It obviously reflects a warmth 

and respect in their relationship that completely disappeared by the early 1960s 

as the N-1 program ground down in rancorous meetings and angry memos.

Chertok has much to say about the development of the so-called KORD 

system, designed to control and synchronize the operation of the 42 engines 

on the first three changes of the giant rocket (see Chapters 5 and 7, especially). 

One of the main challenges of developing the N-1’s engines was the decision to 

forego integrated ground testing of the first stage, a critical lapse in judgment 

that could have saved the engineers from the many launch accidents.

Chertok’s descriptions of the four launches of the N-1 (two in 1969, one 

in 1971, and one in 1972) are superb. He delves into great technical detail but 

also brings into relief all the human emotions of the thousands of engineers, 

managers, and servicemen and -women involved in these massive undertakings. His accounts are particularly valuable for giving details of the process 

of investigations into the disasters, thus providing a unique perspective into 

how the technical frequently intersected with the political and the personal. 

His account in Chapter 17 of the investigation into the last N-1 failure in 

1972 confirms that the process was fractured by factional politics, one side 

representing the makers of the rocket (the Mishin design bureau) and other 

representing the engine makers (the Kuznetsov design bureau). Some from the 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

former, such as Vasiliy Mishin, made the critical error of allying themselves 

with the latter, which contributed to their downfall. Historians have plenty of 

examples of the impossibility of separating out such technological, political, 

and personal factors in the function of large-scale technological systems, but 

Chertok’s descriptions give a previously unseen perspective into the operation 

of Soviet “Big Science.”4

Chertok devotes a lengthy portion of the manuscript (five chapters!) to 

the emergence of the piloted space station program from 1969 to 1971. We 

see how the station program, later called Salyut, was essentially a “rebel” movement within the Mishin design bureau to salvage something substantive in 

the aftermath of two failed launches of the N-1. These “rebels,” who included 

Chertok himself, were able to appropriate hardware originally developed for 

a military space station program known as Almaz—developed by the design 

bureau of Vladimir Chelomey—and use it as a foundation to develop a “quick” 

civilian space station. This act effectively redirected resources from the faltering human lunar program into a new stream of work—piloted Earth orbital 

stations—that became the mainstay of the Soviet (and later Russian) space 

program for the next 40 years. The station that Mishin’s engineers designed 

and launched—the so-called Long-Duration Orbital Station (DOS)—became 

the basis for the series of Salyut stations launched in the 1970s and 1980s, the 

core of the Mir space station launched in 1986, and eventually the Zvezda

core of the International Space Station (ISS). In that respect, Chertok’s story is 

extremely important; when historians write the history of ISS, they will have 

to go back to the events of 1969 and 1970 to understand how and why the 

Russian segments look and operate the way they do.

Chertok’s account of the dramatic mission of Soyuz-11 in the summer 

of 1971 is particularly moving. The flight began with an episode that would 

haunt the living: in the days leading up the launch, the primary crew of Aleksey 

Leonov, Valeriy Kubasov, and Petr Kolodin were replaced by the backup crew 

of Georgiy Dobrovolskiy, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev when Kubasov 

apparently developed a problem in his lungs. The original backup crew flew 

the mission and dealt with some taxing challenges such as a fire on board the 

station and personality conflicts, and then they were tragically killed on reentry 

when the pressurized atmosphere of the Soyuz spacecraft was sucked out due 

 4. For important literature on large-scale technological systems, see particularly Thomas 

xxiv
Introduction to Volume IV

to an unexpected leak. The funeral of these three cosmonauts was made all the 

more painful for, only days before, Chertok had lost one of his closest lifelong 

friends, the engine chief designer Aleksey Isayev (see Chapter 16).

A chapter near the end of the manuscript is devoted to the cataclysmic 

changes in the management of the Soviet space program that took place in 

1974: Mishin was fired from his post, the giant Korolev and Glushko organizations were combined into a single entity known as NPO Energiya, and 

Glushko was put in charge. These changes also coincided with the suspension of the N-1 program and the beginning of what would evolve in later 

years into the Energiya-Buran reusable space transportation system, another 

enormously expensive endeavor that would yield very little for the Soviet 

space program. Since the early 1990s, there have appeared many conflicting accounts of this turning point in 1974, but Chertok’s description adds 

a useful perspective on the precise evolution from the death of the N-1 to 

the beginning of Energiya-Buran.5 A recent collection of primary source 

documents on Glushko’s engineering work suggests that Glushko came to 

the table with incredibly ambitious plans to replace the N-1 and that these 

plans had to be downsized significantly by the time that the final decree on 

the system was issued in February 1976.6

In a final chapter (Chapter 18) on the later years of the Soviet space program, Chertok picks through a number of important episodes to highlight 

the tension between human and automatic control of human spacecraft. 

These included the failed Soyuz-2/3 docking in 1968, the short-lived flight of 

DOS-3 (known as Kosmos-557) in 1973, a series of failed dockings of crews 

flying to Salyut space stations (including Soyuz-15 in 1974, Soyuz-23 in 1976, 

and Soyuz-25 in 1977) as well as successful dockings (including Soyuz T-2 in 

1980 and Soyuz T-6 in 1982). All of these accounts underscore the enormous 

investments the Soviets made in rendezvous and docking systems and procedures that have paid off in the ISS era, when no Russian spacecraft has ever 

failed to ultimately dock with its target.

 5. For other accounts on this period, see B. I. Gubanov, 

xxv
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

On the human dimensions of the Soviet space program, Chertok shows a 

rare ability to make small incidents both evocative and poignant. In Chapter 

8, for example, he describes how, during a break while controlling a space mission in 1968, Chertok and his colleagues visited Sevastopol, the site of some 

of the most brutal fighting during World War II. When a war veteran noticed 

that Chertok had a “Hero of Socialist Labor” medal pinned on his lapel, he 

inquired as to why. Chertok explained that he had been honored for his role 

in the flight of Yuriy Gagarin. Given that Chertok’s identity and job were state 

secrets, this was a rare moment of candor; bursting with pride, the war veteran 

eloquently equated the sacrifices made during the war with Soviet successes in 

space, a connection that many made during the 1960s.

I am often asked by interested readers about the relative worth of Chertok’s 

memoirs in the literature on the history of the Soviet space program; in other 

words, where do these memoirs fit in the broader historiography? Chertok’s 

memoirs stand as probably the most important personal account of the history 

of the Soviet space program. His ability to integrate technical detail, human 

yearning, high politics, and institutional history makes Rockets and People

unusual for a memoir of the genre; the breadth of Chertok’s recollections, 

covering nearly 100 years, makes it unique. As I have mentioned elsewhere, 

in the absence of any syncretic work by a professional historian in the Russian 

language on the history of the Soviet space program, the contents of Rockets 

and People represent probably the most dominant narrative available.7 Its 

availability in both Russian and English means that it will have a significant 

and enduring quality. That Chertok’s memoirs are taken to be important and 

reliable does not mean, however, that it is the only narrative of this history 

worth considering. In underscoring the significance of Chertok, we should 

also acknowledge the abundance of other memoirs by Soviet space veterans. 

Collectively considered, they provide an extremely rich resource for historians. 

If Chertok represents the starting point for future researchers, I would recommend some other memoirs as crucial both in filling in spaces unexplored 

by Chertok and in providing a counterpoint to Chertok, especially on those 

events considered controversial. In this category of essential memoirs, I would 

include those by the following individuals:

 7. Asif A. Siddiqi, “Privatising Memory: The Soviet Space Programme Through Museums 

xxvi
Introduction to Volume IV

•	 Vladimir Bugrov, the designer under Korolev (The Martian Project of 

S. P. Korolev, 2006);8

Konstantin Feoktistov, the cosmonaut who played a key role in the design 

of Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, and DOS (Life’s Trajectory, 2000);9

Oleg Ivanovskiy, the engineer and bureaucrat (Rockets and Space in the 

USSR, 2005);10

Vyacheslav Filin, the designer under Korolev (Recollections on the Lunar 

Vehicle, 1992, and The Road to Energiya, 2001);11

Boris Gubanov, the chief designer of the Energiya rocket (The Triumph and 

Tragedy of Energiya: Reflections of a Chief Designer, four volumes in 1999);12

Aleksey Isayev, the rocket engine designer (First Steps to Space Engines, 

1979);13

Kerim Kerimov, the chairman of the State Commission (Roads to Space, 

1995);14

Sergey Khrushchev, the son of the Soviet Party Secretary (Nikita Khrushchev: 

Crises and Rockets, 1994);15

Grigoriy Kisunko, the chief designer of antiballistic missile systems (The 

Secret Zone, 1996);16

Sergey Kryukov, the leading designer of the N-1 rocket (Selected Works, 

2010);17

Vasiliy Mishin, the successor to Korolev (From the Creation of Ballistic 

Missiles to Rocket-Space Machine Building, 1998);18

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

 8. V. Ye. Bugrov, 

xxvii
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

Yuriy Mozzhorin, the head of the leading space research institute (How It 

Was: The Memoirs of Yuriy Mozzhorin, 2000);19

Arkadiy Ostashev, the senior operations manager (Testing of Rocket-Space 

Technology—The Business of My Life, 2001);20

Boris Pokrovskiy, the senior official in the communications network (Space 

Begins on the Ground, 1996);21

Valentina Ponomareva, the female cosmonaut trainee (A Female Face in 

Space, 2002);22

Vladimir Polyachenko, the leading designer under Vladimir Chelomey 

(On the Sea and in Space, 2008);23

Vladimir Shatalov, the senior cosmonaut and cosmonaut manager (Space 

Workdays, 2008);24

Vladimir Syromyatnikov, the docking system designer under Korolev 

(100 Conversations on Docking and on Other Rendezvous in Space and on 

the Earth, 2003);25 and

Vladimir Yazdovskiy, the senior space biomedicine specialist (On the Paths 

of the Universe, 1996).26

I would also include in this category volumes that collect the recollections 

of dozens of key actors in the Soviet missile and space programs:

Academician S. P. Korolev: Scientist, Engineer, Man (1986);27 and

Roads to Space (three volumes in 1992 and 1994).28

 19.

xxviii
Introduction to Volume IV

In addition to these memoirs, a stream of highly valuable collections of 

primary documents has been published in Russia in recent times. These volumes 

are essential starting points for anyone conducting a serious investigation into 

the history of the Soviet space program. While one must exercise prudence in 

the use of published documents—particularly the obvious problem of selection 

bias—these volumes are excellent starting points for historians. In chronological order, they include the following:

•	 Pioneers of Rocket Technology: Vetchinkin Glushko Korolev Tikhonravov: 

Selected Works, which contains many documents on the early years (1972);29

Path to Rocket Technology: Selected Works, 1924–1946, on the works of 

Valentin Glushko, (1977);30

The Creative Legacy of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev: Selected Works and Documents, 

a pre-glasnost volume that has held up remarkably well (1980);31

M. V. Keldysh: Selected Works: Rocket Technology and Cosmonautics, containing important documents on early ICBM development (1988);32

S. P. Korolev and His Affairs: Light and Shadow in the History of Cosmonautics: 

Selected Works and Documents, an indispensable collection of documents 

on the early history of the Soviet space program (1998);33

The Tender Letters of a Hardheaded Man: From the Archive of the Academician 

S. P. Korolev Memorial House-Museum, a collection of letters Korolev wrote 

to his wife during his life (2007);34

The Soviet Space Initiative in Government Documents, 1946–1964, probably 

the best in the list, which includes many declassified documents from the 

Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (2008);35

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

 29.

xxix
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

Selected Works of Academician V. P. Glushko, which collects a vast amount 

of original documents on Valentin Glushko’s entire career (2008);36

A Goal of Special State Importance: From the History of the Creation of 

Rocket-Nuclear Armaments and the Strategic Rocket Forces (1945–1959), a 

collection of declassified documents on the development of ballistic missiles in the postwar period (2010);37

Man. Ship. Space: A Collection of Documents on the 50th Anniversary of the 

Spaceflight of Yu. A. Gagarin, an 874-page collection of documents about 

the creation of the Vostok spacecraft, the training of the first cosmonauts, 

and the flight of Gagarin (2011);38

The First Piloted Flight, a two-volume work collecting government documents from 1946 to 1961 on all aspects of the early Soviet space program 

but focusing particularly on the Vostok and Vostok-2 missions in 1961 

(2011);39 and

Soviet Space: A Special Edition on the 50th Anniversary of the Flight of Yuriy 

Gagarin, a 720-page compendium of declassified government documents 

on all aspects of the Soviet space program from 1955 to 1966 (2011).40

Certainly, one should also include in this category the four-volume set of 

diaries of Nikolay Kamanin, the Air Force representative in charge of cosmonaut training from 1960 to 1971. These volumes have been published under 

the general title Hidden Space.

41 This brief list should give the reader a sense of 

the richness of the literature on Soviet space history but no one should have 

any doubt that Chertok’s memoirs are the starting point. It is the foundation 

upon which all the others rest.

 36.

xxx
Introduction to Volume IV

I’d like to conclude this final introduction with a few words on the implementation of this enormous project. Working on this series for the past eight years 

has been an extraordinary honor and pleasure for me. I owe a debt of gratitude 

to many for their hard work in bringing these stories to the English-speaking 

world. As before, I must thank NASA historian Steve Garber, who supervised the 

entire project at the NASA History Program Office. He also provided insightful 

comments at every stage of the editorial process. Former NASA Chief Historians 

Roger D. Launius and Steven J. Dick supported the birth of the project with firm 

hands, and their eventual successor, William P. Barry, enthusiastically brought it to 

its completion. Bill read the entire manuscript carefully and offered many useful 

suggestions. Thanks are due to Jesco von Puttkamer at NASA for his sponsorship 

of the project. He also facilitated communications between the two parties in 

Russia and the United States and tirelessly promoted Rockets and People at home 

and abroad. Without his enthusiasm, sponsorship, and support, this project 

would not have been possible. I’d also like to thank Nadine Andreassen at the 

NASA History Program Office for her support throughout the past eight years. 

NASA History Program Office intern Anna J. Stolitzka is also due some thanks.

We were very fortunate to have a capable team of translators at the awardwinning Houston-based TechTrans International to facilitate this project. Their 

team included translators/editors Cynthia Reiser, Laurel Nolen, Alexandra 

Tussing, and Ksenia Shelkova, as well as document control specialists Lev 

Genson and Yulia Schmalholz.

Thanks also are due to those who handled the post-editorial stage of the 

work at the Communications Support Services Center (CSSC) at NASA 

Headquarters: editors George Gonzalez and Lisa Jirousek; designer Chris Yates; 

printing specialist Tun Hla; supervisors Gail Carter-Kane and Cindy Miller; 

and civil servant Michael Crnkovic.

Every one of these aforementioned individuals put in long, hard hours to 

ensure that we produced the best product possible.

I would like to thank David R. Woods and Alexander Shliadinsky for 

kindly contributing supplementary images for Volume IV. Unless otherwise 

noted, all images are from the collection of Chertok.

As the series editor, my job was first and foremost to ensure that the English 

language version was as faithful to Chertok’s original Russian version as possible. At the same time, I also had to account for the stylistic considerations 

of English-language readers who may be put off by literal translations. The 

process involved communicating directly with Chertok in many cases and, with 

his permission, occasionally taking liberties to restructure a text to convey his 

original spirit. I also made sure that technical terms and descriptions of rocket 

and spacecraft design satisfied the demands of both Chertok and the Englishspeaking audience. Readers should be aware that all weights and measures are 

xxxi
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

in the metric system; thus “tons” denotes metric tons (1,000 kg or 2,205 lbs) 

and not the English ton (2,240 lbs) or the American ton (2,000 lbs). Finally, 

I provided numerous explanatory footnotes to elucidate points that may not 

be evident to readers unversed in the intricacies of the Soviet space program, 

or Soviet history and culture in general. Readers should be aware that all of 

the footnotes are mine unless cited as “author’s note,” in which case they were 

provided by Chertok.

Asif A. Siddiqi

Series Editor

February 2011

xxxii
A Few Notes About

Transliteration and Translation

consists 

The Russian language is written using the Cyrillic alphabet, which 

of 33 letters. While some of the sounds that these letters symbolize 

have equivalents in the English language, many have no equivalent, and two 

of the letters have no sound of their own, but instead “soften” or “harden” the 

preceding letter. Because of the lack of direct correlation, a number of systems 

for transliterating Russian (i.e., rendering words using the Latin alphabet), 

have been devised, all of them different.

Russian

Alphabet Pronunciation

U.S. Board on

Geographic Names

Library of

Congress

ă a a

b b b

v v v

g

d

g

d

g

d

ye

yō

zh

ye* / e

ye* / e  ̈  ̈

zh

e

ë

zh

z z z

ē i i

shortened ē

k

y

k  ̆i

k

l l l

m m m

n n n

o o o

p p p

r r r

s s s

t t t

ū u u

f f f

kh kh kh

ts ts ts

ch ch ch

sh sh sh

shch shch shch

(hard sign)

guttural ē

(soft sign)

e ̆

“

y

‘

e

“

y

‘

 ̆i

yū

yă

yu

ya

iu

ia

*Initially and after vowels

xxxiii
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

For this series, editor Asif Siddiqi selected a modification of the U.S. Board 

on Geographic Names system, also known as the University of Chicago system, 

as he felt it better suited for a memoir such as Chertok’s, where the intricacies 

of the Russian language are less important than accessibility to the reader. The 

modifications are as follows:

•	

•	

The Russian letters “Ь” and “Ъ” are not transliterated, in order to make 

reading easier.

Russian letter “ё” is denoted by the English “e” (or “ye” initially and after 

vowels)—hence, the transliteration “Korolev,” though it is pronounced 

“Korolyov”.

The reader may find some familiar names to be rendered in an unfamiliar 

way. This occurs when a name has become known under its phonetic spelling, 

such as “Yuri” versus the transliterated “Yuriy,” or under a different transliteration system, such as “Baikonur” (LoC) versus “Baykonur” (USBGN).

In translating Rakety i lyudi, we on the TTI team strove to find the balance 

between faithfulness to the original text and clear, idiomatic English. For issues 

of technical nomenclature, we consulted with Asif Siddiqi to determine the 

standards for this series. The cultural references, linguistic nuances, and “old 

sayings” Chertok uses in his memoirs required a different approach from the 

technical passages. They cannot be translated literally: the favorite saying of 

Flight Mechanic Nikolay Godovikov (Vol. 1, Chapter 7) would mean nothing 

to an English speaker if given as “There was a ball, there is no ball” but makes 

perfect sense when translated as “Now you see it, now you don’t.” The jargon 

used by aircraft engineers and rocket engine developers in the 1930s and 1940s 

posed yet another challenge. At times, we had to do linguistic detective work 

to come up with a translation that conveyed both the idea and the “flavor” 

of the original. Puns and plays on words are explained in footnotes. Rakety i 

lyudi has been a very interesting project, and we have enjoyed the challenge 

of bringing Chertok’s voice to the English-speaking world.

TTI translation team

Houston, TX

October 2004

xxxiv
List of Abbreviations

AAP Apollo Applications Project

ABM antiballistic missile

ABMA Army Ballistic Missile Agency

AFU antenna feeder unit

APAS Androgynous-Peripheral Docking Assembly

APO emergency spacecraft destruction

APR emergency missile destruction system

ARS emergency x-ray system

ASTP Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

ATG autonomous turbo generator

ATV Automated Transfer Vehicle

AVD emergency engine shutdown

BINS strapdown inertial navigation system

BO Living Compartment

BTsVM on-board digital computing machine

BUS rendezvous control unit

BV DPO ignition assembly for approach and attitude-control engines

CEP circular error probability

ChP emergency event

CSM Command and Service Module

DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DO control engine

DOS Long-Duration Orbital Station

DP remote switch

DRS remote radio communications system

DUS angular rate sensor

DZZ Remote Sensing of Earth

EIIM equivalent isotropically radiated power

EKhG electrochemical generator

EO Primary Expeditions

xxxv
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

EPAS Experimental Apollo-Soyuz Flight

ERD electric rocket engine

ESTEC European Space Research and Technology Center

EU power plant

EYaRD electric nuclear rocket engine

GAI State Automobile Inspectorate

GDL Gas Dynamics Laboratory

GEO geostationary Earth orbit

GKNII VVS Air Force State Red Banner Scientific-Research Institute

GKNPTs State Space Scientific-Production Center

GKOT State Committee on Defense Technology

GKRE State Committee on Radio Electronics

GLONASS Global Navigation Satellite System

GMKS Global Meteorological Space System

GOGU Main Operations Control Group

Gossnab State Committee for Logistics

GP State Enterprise

GPS Global Positioning System

GR Global Rocket

GRTs State Rocket Center

GRU Main Intelligence Directorate

GSKB State Union Design Bureau

GSKB Spetsmash State Union Design Bureau of Special Machine Building

GTsP State Central Firing Range

GUKOS Main Directorate of Space Assets

GURVO Main Directorate of Missile Armaments

HEO Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate

ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile

IKI Institute of Space Research

IKV infrared vertical

ILS International Launch Services

IPM Institute of Applied Mathematics

IS Satellite Fighter

ISS International Space Station

ITMiVT Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Technology

KB Design Bureau

KB Khimmash Design Bureau of Chemical Machine Building

KB Transmash Design Bureau for Transport Machine Building

KB OM Design Bureau of General Machine Building

KDU correction engine unit

KGB Committee for State Security

xxxvi
List of Abbreviations

KIK Command-Measurement Complex

KIS monitoring and testing station

KLA heavy space vehicle

KONRID Engine Performance Monitoring System

KORD Engine Operation Monitoring

KP command post

KPP airfield checkpoint

KRL command radio link

KTDU correcting braking engine unit

KV shortwave

KVO circular probable deviation

kW kilowatt

LII Flight-Research Institute

LK Lunar Vehicle

LKI flight-developmental testing

LM Lunar Module

LOK Lunar Orbital Vehicle

LV Lunar Vehicle

MAI Moscow Aviation Institute

MAP Ministry of the Aviation Industry

MFTI Moscow Physics and Technology Institute

MGU Moscow State University

MIAN Mathematics Institute of the Academy of Sciences

MIIGAiK Moscow Institute of Engineers of Geodesy, Aerial 

Photography, and Mapping

MIK Assembly and Testing Building

MIK KO Assembly and Testing Building for Spacecraft

Minobshchemash Ministry of General Machine Building

Minsredmash Ministry of Medium Machine Building

MIRV multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle

MIT Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology

MKAD Moscow Automobile Ring Road

MKB Machine Building Design Bureau

MKB Fakel Torch Machine Building Design Bureau

MKBS Multipurpose Base/Station

MKTS reusable space transportation system

MNTS-KI Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council on Space 

Research

MO Ministry of Defense

MOK Multipurpose Orbital Complex

MOM Ministry of General Machine Building

xxxvii
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

MOP Ministry of the Defense Industry

MPSS Ministry of the Communications Equipment Industry

MSM Ministry of Medium Machine Building

MV Mars-Venera

MVTU Moscow Higher Technical School

NACA National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NII Scientific-Research Institute

NII IT Scientific-Research Institute of Measurement Technology

NIIAP Scientific-Research Institute of Automatics and Instrument 

Building

NIIERAT Scientific-Research Institute for the Operation and Repair 

of Aviation Technology

NIIKP Scientific-Research Institute of Space Instrumentation 

Building

NIIP Scientific-Research and Testing Range

NIISchetmash Scientific-Research Institute of Calculating Machines

NIITP Scientific-Research Institute of Thermal Processes/

Scientific-Research Institute of Precision Instruments

NIItransmash Scientific-Research Institute of Transport Machine Building

NIIYaF Scientific-Research Institute of Nuclear Physics

NIOKR scientific-research and experimental-design work

NIP Ground Tracking Station

NIP-15 Ussuriysk tracking station

NIP-16 Center for Deep Space Communications

NITsEVT Scientific-Research Center for Electronic Computer 

Technology

NKVD People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs

NPO Scientific-Production Association

NPO Geofizika Geophysics Scientific-Production Association

NPO PM Scientific-Production Association of Applied Mechanics

NPP Scientific-Production Enterprise

NS-BS normal stabilization-lateral stabilization

NZ emergency supply

OAO Joint-Stock Company

OKB Experimental-Design Bureau

OKB MEI Special Design Bureau of the Moscow Power Institute

OKB SD Experimental Design Bureau for Special Engines

OPM Department of Applied Mathematics

OPS Orbital Piloted Station

xxxviii
List of Abbreviations

OTI technological firing test

OTR operational and technical management

PAO Instrumentation System Compartment

PELSHO enamel-, lacquer- and silk-coated winding wire

PKO antispace defense

PO Production Association

POS Permanent Orbital Station

PRO antimissile defense

PUNA science equipment control console

PVO antiaircraft defense

PVO Strany National Air Defense Forces

PVU programmable timing instrument

p/ya post office box

RKK rocket-space complex

RKK Rocket-Space Corporation

RLA rocket flying apparatus

RNII Reactive Scientific-Research Institute

RORSAT Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite

RSFSR Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic

RVSN Strategic Rocket Forces

SA Descent Module

SALT Strategic Arms Limitations Talks

SAS emergency rescue system

SDI Strategic Defense Initiative

ShPU silo launch unit

SIO effector system

SKD rendezvous and correction engine

SKDU approach and correction engine unit

SKTDU approach and correction braking engine unit

SLBM submarine-launched ballistic missile

SOI Strategic Defense Initiative

SOUD orientation and motion control system

Sovnarkhoz Council of the National Economy

SSVP docking and internal transfer system

STR thermal control system

SUBK on-board complex control system

SUS descent control system

TASS Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union

TE fuel cell

TKS Transport-Supply Ship

TMK Heavy Interplanetary Ship

xxxix
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

TNA turbopump assembly

TP engineering facility

TsAGI Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute

TsENKI Center for the Operation of Ground Space Infrastructure 

Objects

TsIAM Central Institute of Aviation Engine Building

TsKB Central Design Bureau

TsKBEM Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building

TsKBM Central Design Bureau of Machine Building

TsNIIKS Central Scientific-Research Institute of Space Assets

TsNIImash Central Scientific-Research Institute of Machine Building

TsSKB Central Specialized Design Bureau

TsUKOS Central Directorate of Space Assets

TsUP Flight Control Center/Mission Control Center

UKP universal space platform

UKSS Universal Rig-Launch Complex

UNKS Directorate of the Chief of Space Assets

US Controlled Satellite

VA Return Vehicle

VAB Vehicle Assembly Building

VDNKh Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy

VLKSM All-Union Leninist Communist Union of Youth

VMF the Soviet Navy

VNII All-Union Scientific-Research Institute

VNIIEM All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Electromechanics

VNIIT All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Television 

Technology

VNIIT All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Current Sources

VPK Military-Industrial Commission/Military-Industrial 

Corporation

VSE Vision for Space Exploration

VSK cosmonaut’s special visor/sight

VSNKh Supreme Council of the National Economy

VVS the Soviet Air Force

YaRD nuclear rocket engine

ZAS encrypted/secure communications system

ZEM Factory of Experimental Machine Building

ZhRD liquid-propellant rocket engine

ZIKh M. V. Khrunichev Factory

ZIS Stalin Factory

ZOMZ Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Factory

xl
Introduction

Voice of the People...

On 20 July 1969, the first human being from the planet Earth set foot 

on the surface of the Moon. This person was a citizen of the United States of 

America.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”—Neil 

Armstrong’s words flew around the entire world beneath the Moon.

In August 1969, getting into a taxi, I told the driver my home address: 

“Academician Korolev Street.”1

 En route, the elderly taxi driver let me know 

that he was aware of who lived in the “Korolev” apartments. Evidently he 

decided that it was all right to tell me what the “man on the street” was thinking: “Korolev is not with us anymore and the Americans have become the first 

to land on the Moon. Does that mean that they haven’t found another mind 

like his among us?”

Until 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was so active that people associated our 

triumphant victories in space with his name. In January 1966, the world 

discovered that our success was primarily the result of the creative work of 

Academician Sergey Pavlovich Korolev. But after Korolev’s death, once again 

everything happened “under the wise leadership of the Communist Party 

Central Committee.”

For our people, who had grown accustomed to the cascade of achievements 

in Soviet cosmonautics, the Americans’ brilliant success was a complete surprise. 

During the Cold War, the Soviet mass media made no mention of our work 

on a human lunar program. All of this was strictly classified. Reports on the 

Americans’ outstanding space achievements were also more than modest, but 

not because they were classified. Television coverage of the first lunar landing in 

the history of humankind was broadcast worldwide, with the exception of the 

USSR and the People’s Republic of China. In order to see the U.S. broadcast 

 1. The original 3rd Ostankino Street in Moscow was renamed Academician Korolev Street 

xli
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

that was available to the entire world, we had to drive over to NII-88 [the main 

Soviet missile and space research institute], which received the television footage via cable from the television center.2

 The television center in turn received 

the footage via the Eurovision channel, but a live broadcast was forbidden. 

Later, one of the television employees said that their request for a live broadcast 

had passed through the entire hierarchy, but eventually Central Committee 

Secretary Suslov had put a stop to it.3

For those of us involved in the Soviet lunar program, the Americans’ 

achievements were not surprising. The open press wasn’t our only source of 

information about the progress of the Americans’ projects. After the death of our 

cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov on Soyuz-1 in April 1967, we had an 18-month 

break in piloted flights.4 During this interval, the Americans completed their 

first piloted flight of the Apollo program.5

 Our Soyuz launches resumed with 

maximum intensity. Three piloted Soyuzes lifted off before July 1969.6

 Our 

newspapers tried to write up these flights as enthusiastically as those of the first 

cosmonauts, beginning with Yuriy Gagarin. From 1961 through 1965, this 

enthusiasm was genuine and sincere. It emanated from our national soul and 

touched all social strata. The populace attributed the tragic death of Komarov 

in April 1967 to the death of Chief Designer Korolev. No one knew who 

was actually in charge of our space programs now. Only insiders were aware 

that thousands of our specialists at secret enterprises and at the now-famous 

Baykonur complex were preparing for a landing expedition to the Moon.

From 1957 through 1967, the Soviet Union was the clear leader in all 

space endeavors and had achieved universally recognized superiority in piloted 

space programs.7 During the first decade of the Space Age, the Soviet Union’s 

intellectual, industrial, and organizational potential enabled it to solve such 

top-priority challenges as developing the world’s first intercontinental ballistic 

missile; launching the first artificial satellites; delivering to the Moon the first 

object from Earth (a pendant inscribed with the emblem of the Soviet Union); 

photographing the far side of the Moon; being the first to launch a human 

 2. NII—

xlii
Voice of the People...

being (Yuriy Gagarin) into space; being the first to launch a woman (Valentina 

Tereshkova) into space; conducting Aleksey Leonov’s spacewalk; executing the 

soft landing of an automatic station on the Moon; televising the transmission 

to Earth of a panoramic shot of the lunar surface; achieving the first penetration into the atmosphere of Venus; and completing the world’s first automatic 

docking of spacecraft. This list of our “firsts” is described in detail in numerous 

publications, in the memoirs of those involved, and in historical works.

After such a storybook succession of cosmic breakthroughs, it seemed completely natural that the next conquest to shake the imagination of Earthlings 

would be the landing of Soviet cosmonauts on the surface of the Moon and 

their safe return to Earth. But Americans turned out to be the first Earthlings 

on the Moon. Today, few are aware that it was not until 1964 that the top 

political leaders of the Soviet Union resolved to consider the landing of Soviet 

cosmonauts on the Moon no later than 1968 a task of utmost importance. 

The Soviet expedition to the Moon, which was conceived in Korolev’s lifetime 

and supported by Khrushchev, simply never took place. Work on the Soviet 

N1-L3 program—the piloted landing expedition to the Moon—ended in 1974.

Everything that had to do with the N1-L3 program remained a secret 

until the late 1980s. The first publications, which primarily looked into the 

technical problems of this program, appeared in the early 1990s.8

 As for other 

aspects of the “Moon race,” the authors of the majority of the publications I 

have read greatly simplified or distorted the actual situation in an attempt at a 

sensational revelation of secrets. And today, 40 years later, for many it remains 

an unanswered question: “Why wasn’t there a Soviet person on the Moon?”9

In Volume III of my memoirs, the chapter “The Hard Road to a Soft 

Landing” provides insight into the initial phase of lunar exploration involving the Ye-6 program, the world’s first soft landing of an automatic spacecraft 

on the lunar surface.10 In this volume, I continue my story with the Soviet 

human lunar expedition programs. In the process, I attempt to weave my narrative over the background of the general history of the development of rocket 

and space technology, cosmonautics, and the military and political rivalry of 

the two superpowers. During the 20th century, the USSR and United States 

implemented global military technical programs on an unprecedented scale. 

 8. The first articles in the Soviet media confirming a human lunar landing program appeared 

xliii
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

For this reason, a considerable portion of this volume is spent reminiscing 

about events that took place at the same time as the N1-L3 lunar program. 

Unfortunately, professional Moscow taxi drivers who are capable of expressing 

the opinion of the “man on the street” are a thing of the past, too.

xliv
Chapter 1

Rocket-Space Chronology

(Historical Overview) 

When comparing the economic and scientific-technical capabilities of the 

USSR and the United States, one can’t help but wonder how the Soviet Union, 

which lost more than 20 million people during World War II and sustained 

inconceivably enormous material damage, overcame extraordinary economic 

difficulties and—in just two decades from 1956 through 1976—made an 

amazing breakthrough into space, forever leaving its mark on world history 

and in the annals of the 20th century.1

The most outstanding successes in the development of space technology 

and the highest rates of nuclear missile buildup both in the USSR and in the 

U.S. took place during the period from 1960 through 1975. During this same 

time, the so-called “Moon race” was also getting under way. The beginning and 

end of operations on the N1-L3 program coincided with the tensest periods 

of the nuclear arms race. Everything that happened after that, up to the end 

of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, was, to a significant degree, 

predetermined during that very period. I am certain that an overwhelming 

majority of readers cannot imagine the true scale of the operations of the two 

superpowers in these areas. For this reason, I think it might be helpful, before 

getting into the memoir part of this volume, to start out with some historical 

information. This information, in the form of a list of the main projects, will 

provide some idea of everything that was happening in the rocket-space field. 

But it is also essential because the collective heroism of the intellectuals and 

workers who secured strategic parity for the Soviet Union has yet to be properly 

appreciated in historical works. If a similar list were also compiled for all the 

 1. Chertok’s figure of “more than twenty million” has been borne out by recent studies. 

1
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

other areas of scientific and technical progress in the defense industries, then 

today’s readers would find an impressive picture.

The Soviet Union’s centralized and authoritarian power system created a 

progressive, mobilization-economy system for science and the defense industry.2

 In the field of liberal arts and sciences, the Iron Curtain partially closed 

off Soviet society from the culture of the outside world. However, in the field 

of hard science and science-driven technologies, it was state policy to surpass 

world achievements by any means.

Contemporary Russia is experiencing an extreme ideological and systemwide crisis. If Russia still enjoys the respect of the world community, it is due 

to the scientific-industrial potential accumulated by the Soviet superpower, 

rather than her democratic achievements at the end of the 20th century.

In the process of developing strategic missile armaments and rocket-space 

systems, both we and the Americans, in the majority of cases, strove to achieve 

the very same ultimate objectives. However, the U.S. sailed toward these objectives over a magnificent expressway that war had not touched, and we were 

negotiating an unpaved, crater-pocked wilderness. Having spread out over 

a very broad front of scientific-technical progress with surprising speed, we 

pursued lofty goals and accomplished deeds comparable, in terms of heroism, 

with the feats of the wartime years.

After we launched the first artificial satellite, and especially after Gagarin’s 

triumph, the safe, sound, and self-satisfied U.S. realized that its many-fold 

superiority in strategic nuclear weapons was clearly insufficient to win the 

Cold War. A lavish investment of billions of dollars into a national campaign 

to gain the upper hand in space ensued. We were ahead of the Americans in 

the space race, but we repeatedly lost to them in the strategic nuclear arms race.

“All for the front, all for victory!” This was the call that went out to all 

Soviet people during the war, no matter where they worked. Spurred on by this 

rallying cry, the Soviet economy gathered such dynamic energy that for many 

years after the war it continued to galvanize the most diverse social strata, united 

by the military-industrial complex, the army, militarized science, and even art.

The defense industry’s managerial system was characterized by the strict 

centralization of Party and state leadership, which made it possible, by dint of 

the maximum concentration of financial, intellectual, and material resources, 

to develop new complex weapons systems within extremely tight timeframes. 

 2. “Mobilization economics” was a term used to describe the wartime Soviet policy of 

2
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

This is how the challenges of developing a broad spectrum of strategic nuclear 

weapons, ground-based nuclear missiles, atomic submarines, missile-carrying 

aircraft, and a surface naval missile fleet were met. Resolutions of the Central 

Committee and Council of Ministers were required to implement priority arms 

programs and to develop scientific-production facilities. The Military-Industrial 

Commission painstakingly prepared these resolutions.3 As a rule, the technical 

gist of the programs remained strictly secret. The progress of the most crucial 

projects was discussed at sessions of the Politburo. The chief function of the 

Commission was to coordinate the activity of all the ministries and departments 

involved in the complete and mandatory execution of the task assigned to the 

general designer or general director of the production enterprise.

The N1-L3 lunar rocket-space complex was under development concurrently with dozens of other high-technology programs. The highest governmental agency that was monitoring work on the program was the Military-Industrial 

Commission under the auspices of the Presidium of the USSR Council of 

Ministers.4 In 1965, the Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM) became 

the lead ministry responsible for program implementation.5 Its primary “subcontractors” were the Ministry of Defense (MO), the Ministry of the Aviation 

Industry (MAP), the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (MSM), the 

Ministry of the Electronics Industry, the Ministry of the Radio Industry, the 

Ministry of Heavy Machine Building, the Ministry of the Defense Industry 

(MOP), the Ministry of the Communications Equipment Industry (MPSS), 

the Ministry of the Electrical Engineering Industry, and many others.6

Neither the VPK nor the lead ministry, much less the other ministries, 

had any specialized “main directorate” that dealt exclusively with the N1-L3 

program.7

 OKB-1, headed by Chief Designer S. P. Korolev, remained the lead 

 3. The Military-Industrial Commission (VPK), established in December 1957, was a 

3
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Administrative structure of USSR Military-Industrial Complex.

organization for N1-L3 development.8 In March 1966, after Korolev’s death, 

OKB-1 was renamed the Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine 

Building (TsKBEM).9

 Chief Designer V. P. Mishin was in charge there until 

May 1974. The main subcontractors for engines, control systems, on-board 

and ground radio complexes, the ground-based launch complex, and dozens 

of other systems were the chief designers who had already fulfilled a multitude 

of other assignments and who continued to receive new projects pursuant to 

Central Committee and Council of Ministers decrees.

 8. OKB—

4
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

The production, optimization, and testing of launch vehicles, which were 

unprecedented in terms of their scale, required the construction of specialized 

shops, colossal assembly buildings, and launch complexes with numerous 

support services.

Although the N-1 rocket was developed under Cold War conditions, it 

was not intended for a possible preventive or retaliatory nuclear strike, and the 

prospects for using it for military purposes were very vague.10 For this reason, 

the nation’s top political leaders were ambivalent toward the development of 

this rocket and toward the whole lunar program.

In the early 1960s, the threat of a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union 

seemed entirely realistic. Although they had fallen behind in the space race, the 

Americans had held the lead in the development of strategic nuclear systems 

from the very beginning. Even the most glorious triumphs in space were no 

guarantee against a sudden switch from a “cold war” to a hot one.

According to data cited by Robert McNamara, U.S. superiority over the 

USSR in the field of strategic arms was overwhelming until the mid-1970s.11

The table below provides some idea of only the quantitative side of the missile 

race dynamic.

People who are far-removed from technology in general, and nuclear missile 

technology in particular, cannot gain a sense of the true scale of this national 

feat of science and labor, which is concealed behind dry statistics. Colossal 

economic resources were invested into these projects, and millions of people 

participated in them. However, a well-organized system of secrecy, which had 

endured until recently, prevented an assessment of how much more difficult 

and costly it was than the Moon race. The majority of those involved weren’t 

even aware of what a potentially lethal game they had been drawn into. Unlike 

the millions who toiled on the home front during World War II, these workers 

were unwitting of their cause.

When analyzing the piloted lunar expedition programs of the U.S. and 

USSR, one should take into consideration the crucial factor of the vastly 

superior U.S. postwar economy. By the 1960s, it enabled the U.S. to achieve 

a twentyfold advantage over the Soviet Union in terms of the total number of 

 10.

5
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Ratio between U.S. and USSR strategic nuclear forces (1960–1980)

Year 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980

Warheads U.S. USSR U.S. USSR U.S. USSR U.S. USSR U.S. USSR

Missiles 60 some 1050 225 1800 1600 6100 2500 7300 5500

Bombs 6000 300 4500 375 2200 200 2400 300 2800 500

Total: 6068 300 5550 600 4000 1800 8500 2800 10100 6000

Delivery Systems U.S. USSR U.S. USSR U.S. USSR U.S. USSR U.S. USSR

Bombers 600 150 600 250 550 145 400 135 340 156

ICBMs 20 some 850 200 1054 1300 1054 1527 1050 1398

SLBMs 48 15 400 25 656 300 656 784 656 1028

Total: 668 165 1850 475 2260 1745 2110 2446 2046 2582

Ratio between 

U.S. and USSR 

strategic 

nuclear forces

20.2 : 1 9.2 : 1 2.2 : 1 3 : 1 1.6 : 1

Notes:

ICBM: intercontinental ballistic missile

SLBM: submarine-launched ballistic missile

strategic nuclear weapons. Having secured such a margin of safety, the American 

administration could allow itself to spend a significant portion of the taxpayers’ 

funds on the lunar program, which promised a real political victory over the 

Soviet Union. Striving to achieve a decisive upper hand in all types of missile 

armaments, the U.S. took the lead in more than the sheer number of ICBMs. 

For a long time, the U.S. maintained an advantage in target accuracy and was 

the first to develop missile systems using multiple independently targetable 

reentry vehicles (MIRVs).

For the optimization of the N-1 rocket—the launch vehicle for the lunar 

landing expedition—we executed four experimental launches. Experts’ assessments showed that most likely another four or five launches would have been 

required to bring the launch vehicle to the necessary degree of reliability. Usually 

hundreds of launches are conducted in the process of flight-developmental 

tests (LKI), both before combat missiles are put into service and afterwards to 

6
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

confirm their reliability.12 All told, the Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN) and 

Soviet Navy (VMF) conducted thousands of launches of combat missiles.13

Large-scale mass production of nuclear weapons and various missiles—

intercontinental missiles, mobile missiles, so-called medium-range and shortrange missiles, submarine-launched missiles—in and of itself was not the only 

deciding factor in achieving parity. It was missile systems that needed to be put 

into service, not missiles. For each medium-range and intercontinental missile, 

a launch silo needed to be built; systems for transport, remote monitoring, 

control, and launch needed to be developed; thousands of soldiers and officers 

needed to be trained; and then rocket regiments, divisions, and armies needed 

to be formed. For naval missiles, submarines needed to be redesigned and built. 

Each of them cost considerably more than the missiles they carried.

It took truly an incredible amount of work and an extreme amount of 

strain on the economy in order to bring the ratio between the strategic arms 

of the U.S. and USSR from 20.2:1 to 1.6:1 in 20 years! In so doing, an overwhelming portion of this heroic work was carried out at enterprises and in 

organizations that also performed assignments for the N1-L3 program. Having 

lost the Moon race, the Soviet Union achieved parity with the U.S. in nuclear 

missile armaments.

The triumphant space achievements of the USSR had a much greater 

psychological impact on the world community than the boastful reports 

about the number of U.S. Minuteman missiles and the capabilities of the 

U.S. bomber fleet. Our cosmonauts, who visited various countries, and our 

effectively delivered propaganda campaign demonstrated the advantages of the 

Soviet system. That is why the U.S. government wagered billions of dollars in 

the early 1960s and embraced the space program, figuring on surpassing the 

USSR not only in terms of nuclear might, but also through the awe-inspiring 

peaceful exploration of space.

There was one more sector of the broad front of the Cold War where the 

rivalry between the two powers went on with alternating success or, more 

accurately, almost on an equal footing. This was the direct use of space in the 

interests of defense and the armed forces. The first phase of the use of space 

for military purposes coincided with the period of the Moon race. In contrast 

with the so-called “peaceful” programs, this activity was classified, and until 

 12.

7
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

the late 1980s there were very few overt publications about the achievements 

in this field.

The most complete and historically authentic information about the 

Military Space Forces in the Soviet Union did not appear until 1997.14 This 

is the definitive achievement of Lieutenant General Viktor Vyacheslavovich 

Favorskiy, the former deputy chief of the Main Directorate of Space Assets 

(GUKOS), and of Lieutenant General Ivan Vasilyevich Meshcheryakov, 

the former chief of the Central Scientific-Research Institute of Space Assets 

(TsNIIKS) No. 50.15 It is regrettable that no similar work about the history of 

the Strategic Rocket Forces and strategic forces of the Navy has yet emerged.16

I believe that the reader will find it interesting to peruse the list of programs 

and developments in the field of rocket technology and cosmonautics in the 

Soviet Union. I have grouped them by head organizations rather than by subject 

matter. In so doing, I have limited myself to the 1960s and 1970s—the period 

of the Moon race. I begin with my own home organization.

OKB-1, later known as TsKBEM, then NPO Energiya, and currently S. P. 

Korolev RKK Energiya

1. From 1957 through 1960, flight tests were conducted, and in early 1960 

the first R-7 intercontinental missile went into service.

2. On 12 September 1960, the updated R-7A missile went into service.

 14.

8
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

3. From 1957 to 1970, the R-7A underwent modifications and development 

for use as a launch vehicle for the execution of various space programs. 

Working jointly with the Kuybyshev branch of OKB-1 and with related 

organizations, six main modifications were developed in two-, three-, and 

four-stage versions.17 These were repeatedly updated.

4. Between 1959 and 1965, the R-9 (8K75) intercontinental missile was 

developed and put into service. From 1965 through 1979, missile systems 

using the R-9 missile were on combat alert. TsKBEM conducted tests on 

and participated in routine firings of these on-alert missiles.

5. The GR-1 (8K713) global missile was developed from 1962 through 1964. 

Just two missiles were fabricated, and a special launch complex with fully 

automated launch preparation was built. In developing the design for the 

GR-1, proposals were elaborated for the destruction of enemy combat 

satellites.

6. In 1959, scientific-research and design projects for the RT-1 (8K95) 

solid-propellant medium-range missile and RT-2 (8K98) intercontinental missile got under way. Flight tests for the RT-1 were conducted from 1962 through 1963. The RT-1 was not put into service.

 Flight testing for the RT-2 began in 1966, and in 1968 the RT-2 

went into service. The modified RT-2P (8K98P) solid-propellant missile 

underwent flight testing from 1970 to 1971, and in 1972 it was put into 

service. In all, over the course of its flight testing and duty, 100 launches 

of the RT-2 and its RT-2P modification were conducted. Missile systems 

using RT-2 and RT-2P missiles were on duty for more than 15 years. 

The RT-2 missile was the first Soviet solid-propellant intercontinental 

ballistic missile. Aleksandr Nadiradze, the chief designer of the Moscow 

Institute of Thermal Technology, continued to develop solid-propellant 

missile technology.

7. From February 1960 through March 1966, development continued on the 

four-stage 8K78 launch vehicle using the R-7A for the exploration of Mars 

and Venus. In all, from 1962 through 1966, 19 interplanetary stations in 

four modifications were launched for the Mars-Venera (MV) program. 

Later, the projects in this field were handed over to the S. A. Lavochkin 

OKB, which was headed at that time by chief designer Georgiy Babakin.

8. In 1961, research began to develop an automatic spacecraft to perform a 

soft landing on the Moon and transmit panoramic shots of its surface to 

 17.

9
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Earth. Flight tests, including an attempt at a soft landing on the Moon, 

were conducted from 1963 through 1966. During this period, 12 Moon 

launches took place. Only the last station executed the assignment completely.18 It was developed jointly with the S. A. Lavochkin OKB, which 

then continued operations in this field.

9. From 1961 through 1965, research and development (NIOKR) was 

conducted on space communications systems.19 The first launch of the 

Molniya-1 experimental satellite took place in June 1964. In 1967, after 

seven launches and after the space communication system was put into 

operation, subsequent operations were handed over to OKB-10, which 

was located in Krasnoyarsk-26, the closed city of atomic scientists.

10. The Elektron satellite was developed over the course of 1962 and 1963. 

In 1964, four of these satellites were launched and used to gather data to 

model phenomena in space.

11. Automatic spy satellites equipped with cameras and special radio reconnaissance facilities were developed from 1959 through 1965. During this 

time, the first Zenit-2 spy satellite was developed, underwent flight testing, 

and was put into service and the Zenit-4 satellite was developed. In 1965, 

spy satellite projects were transferred to the OKB-1 branch in Kuybyshev.20

 Piloted programs comprised a huge portion of OKB-1’s and later 

TsKBEM’s intellectual load.

12. The first phase of the piloted programs was the flights of Vostok spacecraft. 

From 1960 through 1963, four unpiloted spacecraft and the first six piloted 

spacecraft were successfully launched.

13. In 1964, after the experimental launch of the unpiloted 3KV (Kosmos-47) 

vehicle, a three-seat Voskhod spacecraft was launched with a crew of three.

14. On 22 February 1965, the experimental launch of the unpiloted Kosmos-57

spacecraft occurred, and from 18 to 19 March, the flight of a two-seat 

piloted Voskhod-2 vehicle took place. During the latter flight, the world’s 

first spacewalk was performed.

15. From 1962 through 1963, the Soyuz design was developed for a piloted 

circumlunar flight. The scenario for this flight entailed using four launches 

of a launch vehicle based on the R-7: inserting into Earth orbit a piloted 

 18.

10
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

7K vehicle, a 9K booster stage, and two 11K refuelers. To implement this 

idea, it was first necessary to solve the problem of automatic rendezvous 

and docking. The Soyuz design was completed in 1963. Considerable 

efforts were expended on selecting the Descent Module for the return to 

Earth at escape velocity and on developing a profile for guided descent.21

This multiple-launch configuration of the Soyuz space complex was not 

successfully implemented. The most important results of the project were 

the development of a new type of piloted spacecraft, the 7K-OK, which 

inherited the name “Soyuz,” and the solution to the problem of automatic 

rendezvous and docking. Completely new on-board motion control, 

radio communications, telemetry, integrated power supply, television, 

life-support, correcting engine, descent, landing, and emergency rescue 

control systems were developed for the spacecraft. OKB-1 developed 

the special ground complex 11N6110 for testing the new spacecraft.22

 The first flight of an unpiloted Soyuz spacecraft (7K-OK No. 2—

Kosmos-133) ended on 28 November 1966 with its emergency destruction during an attempt to return to Earth. The second unpiloted launch 

on 14 December 1966 (7K-OK No. 1) never got off the ground. The 

rocket burned up on the launch pad at Site No. 31. The third unpiloted 

vehicle (7K-OK No. 3—Kosmos-140) landed on the ice of the Aral Sea 

on 7 February 1967. The flight of the fourth, piloted Soyuz-1 (7K-OK 

No. 4) ended tragically with the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.23

 In October 1967 and April 1968, two pairs of Soyuzes (Kosmos-186, 

-188 and Kosmos-212, -213) were launched to test the rendezvous and docking systems. The qualification flight of the unpiloted 7K-OK (Kosmos-238) 

vehicle took place from 28 August through 1 September 1968. Flights of 

piloted Soyuz vehicles started up again in October 1968 with the launch 

of Soyuz-3. During the period from January 1969 through June 1970, six 

more Soyuz vehicles were launched. This ended the flight-testing phase 

of the first version of the Soyuz vehicle.

16. In 1969, in conjunction with Long-Duration Orbital Station projects, 

development began on transport versions of the Soyuz spacecraft—7K-T 

(11F615A8) and 7K-TA (11F615A9).24

 21.

11
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

17. In 1973, the design process got under way on a modification of the Soyuz 

for docking with the American Apollo spacecraft.

18. In all, during the period from 1971 through 1975, 18 Soyuz spacecraft 

flights took place for various programs.

19. TsKBEM started developing Long-Duration Orbital Stations (DOS) in 

1969.25 By 1977, five DOS-7K Long-Duration Orbital Stations had been 

manufactured and launched: DOS No. 1 (Salyut), DOS No. 2 (was not 

inserted into orbit), DOS No. 3 (Kosmos-557), DOS No. 4 (Salyut-4), 

and DOS No. 5 (Salyut-6).

20. The history of Soviet piloted circumlunar flight programs is quite convoluted. The resolution of the Central Committee and USSR Council of 

Ministers, dated 3 August 1964, “On Work to Research the Moon and 

Outer Space” named OKB-52 (General Designer Vladimir Chelomey) 

as the head design bureau for circumlunar flight using the augmented 

UR-500K launch vehicle. The deadline was the first half of 1967.

 From 1964 to 1965, the optimal version for the circumlunar flight 

was being selected from among three alternative configurations:

a. Soyuz-7K, -9K, and -11K (OKB-1);

b. UR-500K with piloted vehicle LK-1 (OKB-52); and

c. UR-500K with booster stage Block D, adopted from the N1-L3 program, 

and a modified 7K vehicle (OKB-1 working jointly with OKB-52).

On 25 October 1965, the next resolution, “On Concentrating the Efforts 

of Industrial Design Organizations in Industry to Create a Rocket-Space System 

for a Circumlunar Flight and Preparing for the Subsequent Organization of a 

Landing of an Expedition on the Surface of the Moon,” was issued. Despite its 

leading role and being loaded down with the N1-L3 program, OKB-1 received 

the assignment to perform the circumlunar flight using a piloted spacecraft 

and the UR-500K launch vehicle. This same resolution proposed that OKB-52 

concentrate on developing the UR-500K launch vehicle and the booster rocket 

stage designed to support the circumlunar flight. Thus, OKB-52 was relieved 

of manufacturing the piloted spacecraft.26

OKB-1 was assigned to develop the piloted spacecraft for the circumlunar 

flight and the booster stage (on a competitive basis) using the UR-500K launch 

vehicle. The circumlunar flight program was conducted independently of the 

 25.

12
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

development of the N-1 launch vehicle and also independently of the Lunar 

Orbital Vehicle (LOK) and the Lunar Vehicle (LK) for landing on the Moon.27

In December 1965, Korolev and Chelomey approved the “Fundamental 

Principles for the UR-500K–7K-L1 Rocket-Space Complex.”

21. TsKBEM and collaborating organizations developed and manufactured 14 

7K-L1 spacecraft for circumlunar flight. In all, from 1967 through 1970, 

there were 13 launches of UR-500K-L1 complexes in the unpiloted version. After a series of failed launches, they achieved satisfactory reliability.

 Unlike the 7K-OK and the LOK of the L3 complex, the L1 control system 

did not have to perform rendezvous and docking tasks. For the first time, special 

99K and 100K solar and stellar orientation sensors, plus a gyrostabilized platform, w ere installed on an orbital vehicle. The Scientific-Research Institute of 

Automatics and Instrument Building (NIIAP) was named the lead organization 

for the development of circumlunar flight control systems.28 At the initiative of 

N. A. Pilyugin, the Argon-11 on-board digital computer (BTsVM) was used for 

navigation and propulsion systems control for the first time.29 S. A. Krutovskikh 

originally developed this system for airplanes at the Scientific-Research Center 

for Electronic Computer Technology (NITsEVT).30 The working groups of the 

departments of my complex, under the supervision of B. V. Rauschenbach, I. 

Ye. Yurasov, and V. A. Kalashnikov, were tasked with developing orientation and 

navigation systems using the optical sensors developed at NPO Geofizika, the 

on-board control complex systems, emergency rescue systems, antenna-feeder 

systems, and emergency destruction systems for unpiloted flights. The control 

specialists at OKB-1, NIIAP, and NII-885 imbued the design with the experience they had gained from the development of Vostoks, Voskhods, the vehicles 

for the Mars and Venera missions, and the numerous Luna Moon-shot vehicles.

A large rocket-space system with a fundamentally new control system 

was actually developed. In addition to it, during the process of flight tests, 

Block D—the UR-500K’s fourth stage—also underwent experimental development. This booster stage subsequently proved useful for other programs and was 

 27.

13
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

put into service. However, after the flight of Apollo 8 [in 1968], there was no 

sense in performing a piloted circumlunar flight, and the decision was made to 

suspend further L1 operations. The UR-500K-L1 program did not fulfill its 

main mission, a piloted circumlunar flight. Fundamentally new developments 

were, however, further refined in subsequent space programs.

22. Beginning in 1960, OKB-1, and later TsKBEM, conducted research and 

developed designs for a landing expedition to Mars. The 1960 scenario 

called for the use of electrical rocket engines and a nuclear reactor as 

power sources. OKB-1 formed a special subdivision for this field of work. 

In 1965, studies began on a project for an expedition to Mars using the 

N-1 launch vehicle. The Mars expedition complex was supposed to have 

been assembled in near-Earth orbit by means of several launches of the 

N-1 launch vehicle.

Dozens of scientific-research institutes, design bureaus, and institutes of 

higher learning were enlisted to develop the nuclear power plants for the heavy 

interplanetary spacecraft. OKB-1 had the lead role in this project. From 1960 

through 1975, a one-of-a-kind experimental facility was created for these purposes. Research and development showed that it would be realistically possible 

to create nuclear power plants using reactors with thermionic converters with 

an electric output of up to 550 kilowatts.

23. Beginning in 1959, at OKB-1 and later at TsKBEM, a scientific, design, 

and production facility was created for the integrated development of spacecraft control systems, antenna-feeder units, power supply systems, actuator 

assemblies for motion control in space, on-board life-support systems, and 

docking assemblies. At the same time, spaceflight control methods and 

methods for training test-engineers for spaceflights were being developed.

24. Despite the fact that a number of industry organizations had been successfully involved in the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines 

(ZhRDs), OKB-1 created its own design and process facility for the production of low-thrust engines.31 It developed and introduced six types of 

power plants for booster rockets and for spacecraft control.

25. And finally, the N1-L3 rocket-space complex to fly two cosmonauts to 

the Moon, land one cosmonaut on the lunar surface, and return to Earth 

was developed at OKB-1 and later at TsKBEM. This is the program that 

I shall tell about in this volume.

 31.

14
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

From the list cited above, it is clear that for the lead organization OKB-1, 

headed by Korolev, and later for TsKBEM under Mishin’s leadership, the N1-L3 

program, despite its large scale, was only one of 20 programs!

During Korolev’s time, OKB-1 had three branches. Branch No. 1 was the 

territory of TsNII-58, which was transferred to OKB-1 in 1959. Branch No. 2 

was created in Krasnoyarsk and Branch No. 3 in Kuybyshev (now Samara). The 

latter two branches eventually became independent rocket-space organizations. 

The first chiefs of the branches during Korolev’s lifetime were his deputies 

Chertok, Reshetnev, and Kozlov, respectively.

OKB-1 Branch No. 2, later known as OKB-10, then NPO PM 

(Krasnoyarsk-26), currently Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Academician 

M. F. Reshetnev Scientific-Production Association of Applied Mechanics”32

Branch No. 2 was formed in 1958 at the initiative of Korolev to set up 

production of R-11M (8A61) tactical missiles for the ground forces. OKB-1 

Deputy Chief Designer Mikhail Reshetnev, the missile’s lead designer, was 

appointed chief of Branch No. 2.33 In 1961, Branch No. 2 became the independent OKB-10, which was located in Krasnoyarsk-26, the closed city of 

atomic scientists. Reshetnev was placed in charge of OKB-10 and became 

its chief designer. In 1966, OKB-1 handed over its work on the Molniya-1

communications satellite and all work related to communications satellites 

to OKB-10. OKB-10, subsequently the Scientific-Production Association 

of Applied Mechanics (NPO PM), became the nation’s primary developer of 

communication and navigation satellites.34 Here is a list of its projects:

1. Medium-class launch vehicle for the insertion of satellites up to 1,000 

kilograms into medium elliptical and circular orbits. Developments began 

in 1962 (used design inventory of OKB-586 in Dnepropetrovsk).35

2. Strela (Arrow) system satellites for official communications. From 1962 

through 1970, four modifications were developed and put into operation.

 32.

15
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

3. Molniya-1 (Lightning-1) high-elliptical orbit satellite. Mastery of production and upgrading for broadcasting television programs. Beginning of 

development—1968. Put into service in 1975.

4. Molniya-2 television communications satellite. Beginning of development—1967. Put into service in 1972.

5. Tsiklon (Cyclone) system navigation and communications satellite. 

Beginning of development—1966. Put into service in 1972.

6. Molniya-3 communications satellites. Developed for long-range telephone 

and telegraph communications, for transmission of television programs 

to Orbita (Orbit) system stations, and for the needs of the Ministry of 

Defense. Put into service in 1974.

7. Raduga (Rainbow) geosynchronous television communications satellite. Beginning of development—1970. First launch took place on 22 

December 1975.

8. The Sfera (Sphere) system geodesic and topographical survey satellite. Put 

into service in 1973.

9. National, special departmental, and governmental communications systems 

and navigation systems for the Navy produced using NPO PM developments. The following systems that were put into service should go down 

in the history of cosmonautics:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

the Orbita national space-based telephone communications and Central 

Television broadcast relay system;

the Korund (Corundum) integrated system of space-, air-, and groundbased governmental communications networks;

the Sfera complex updating the geodesic survey of the continents;

the Tsiklon navigation and long-range two-way radio communication 

support system with active relay for submarines and surface ships; and

the Strela standardized official communications space system using 

standardized satellites.

10. Tsikada (Cicada) space navigation system providing global navigation support for naval and civilian vessels. Its development began in 1974 based 

on the Tsiklon system.

NPO PM developments were extremely important in providing effective 

information support for the armed forces and creating a single national communications and television broadcast system.

16
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

From the author’s archives.

Dmitriy Kozlov (left) and Boris Chertok at a meeting in Samara (formerly Kuybyshev).

OKB-1 Branch No. 3, later known as TsSKB (in Kuybyshev, now Samara), 

currently GNPRKTs “TsSKB-Progress”36

Branch No. 3 was formed under the auspices of Kuybyshev aviation Factory 

No. 1, which soon thereafter was renamed the Progress Factory. Beginning in 

1957, instead of aircraft, the factory was supposed to start up series production 

of R-7 and R-7A combat missiles. R-7 missile lead designer Dmitriy Kozlov 

was named chief of Branch No. 3. He faced the difficult task of setting up the 

series production of combat missiles and launch vehicles for the first spacecraft. 

Considering the crucial nature of this sector of operations, in 1961, Korolev 

named Kozlov his deputy chief designer. In 1964, on Korolev’s recommendation, the government approved a decree calling for the Zenit-2 and Zenit-4 spy 

satellite projects to be transferred to Branch No. 3 and the Progress Factory. 

In 1966, Kozlov became the first deputy chief of TsKBEM and the chief and 

chief designer of the TsKBEM Kuybyshev branch.

In 1974, the branch was spun off as an independent organization—the 

Central Specialized Design Bureau (TsSKB). Dmitriy Kozlov was appointed as 

its chief and chief designer. From 1983 through 2003, he was general designer 

of TsSKB, the head design bureau for the development of space complexes 

 36.

17
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

for strategic photographic and optical-electronic reconnaissance, cartography, exploration of Earth’s natural resources, ecological monitoring, and also 

medium-class launch vehicles based on the R-7A missile. Dmitriy Ilyich Kozlov 

is a two-time Hero of Socialist Labor and corresponding member of the USSR 

Academy of Sciences (now the Russian Academy of Sciences).37

The Progress Factory thereafter became the head enterprise for the series 

production of all modifications of launch vehicles based on the R-7, of R-9 

combat missiles, of spacecraft developed at TsSKB, and of N-1 launch vehicles.

Here I shall list only the main projects of Branch No. 3 and TsSKB from 

1960 through 1975.

1. Branch No. 3 was responsible for management of production setup, 

modernization, and design follow-through on R-7, R-7A, and R-9 

combat missiles.

2. From 1966 through 1974 and later, the branch was independently in charge 

of development of three- and four-stage launch vehicles using the R-7A 

missile. Branch No. 3 (and later TsSKB) became the head organization 

for the development of the USSR’s only rocket for the piloted program, 

and D. I. Kozlov was the chief designer of all versions of launch vehicles 

derived from the R-7A. Right up until 2003, the three-stage Soyuz-U 

rocket was the only single-use ballistic launch vehicle in the world that 

was trusted to insert piloted spacecraft into space.38

3. In 1964, design development began on a second generation of photoreconnaissance satellites—Zenit-4. It was put into service in late 1965. From 

1965 through 1967 alone, 55 launches of Zenit-2 and Zenit-4 satellites 

took place.

4. In 1970, the Zenit-2M photoreconnaissance satellite went into service 

and in 1971, the Zenit-4M. Subsequently, the Zenits were modified four 

more times.39

5. In 1972, a special precision cartography satellite—Zenit-4MK—was 

developed.

6. In 1970, development began on the next generations of Yantar (Amber) 

reconnaissance spacecraft. By all parameters, this model of spacecraft surpassed the Zenits. They provided detailed high-resolution surveillance of 

small objects, supplied a great degree of real-time information acquisition, 

and performed cartographic and topographic missions.

 37.

18
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

7. Zenit-Resurs spacecraft for the exploration of natural resources, Foton

(Photon) spacecraft for scientific research, and Bion spacecraft for biomedical research were developed from 1968 through 1975 using Zenits.

8. Between 1968 and 1971, the Ministry of Defense ordered the development 

of the 7K-VI piloted military spacecraft. Subsequently, this field of endeavor 

was transferred from Branch No. 3 to TsKBEM. This development laid 

the foundation for the development of the 7K-S piloted spacecraft, which 

replaced the first generation of Soyuz (7K-OK) spacecraft.40

I shall not provide such a detailed list of the projects conducted in the entire 

rocket-space industry. The list cited below contains only the main projects of 

the other head organizations.

OKB-52, later known as TsKBM, currently OAO VPK NPO Mashinostroyeniya 

and Khrunichev Factory (ZIKh)41

Submarine-launched cruise missiles constituted the main thrust of the 

postwar work at OKB-52, where General Designer Vladimir Nikolayevich 

Chelomey was in charge. In October 1960, a government decree attached 

OKB-23 to OKB-52 as its Branch No. 1. Until that time, well-known designer 

of heavy bombers Vladimir Mikhaylovich Myasishchev headed OKB-23. The 

production facilities of OKB-52 became the M. V. Khrunichev Factory (ZIKh) 

in Fili—one of the best enterprises of the aviation industry. The personnel of 

ZIKh and OKB-23 demonstrated a high degree of manufacturing refinement 

and discipline, which was often lacking in recently created enterprises of the 

rocket industry. Chelomey—two-time Hero of Socialist Labor and full member 

of the USSR Academy of Sciences—remained the permanent chief of TsKBM 

until his death in 1984.42

From 1960 through 1975, OKB-52 worked in the following areas:

1. The design bureau developed the UR-100 (8K84) combat intercontinental ballistic missile. The first modification went into service in July 1967. 

After this, the UR-100 underwent several upgrades. More than 1,000 

 40.

19
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

UR-100 missiles in silo launchers constituted the main offensive force of 

the Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN).43

2. The production of UR-100s, their upgrading, and their operational support constituted ZIKh’s main workload until the mid-1970s. A modification (of the UR-100) known as the UR-100K (RS-10 or 15A20) went 

into service in December 1972. The next modification, the UR-100U, 

which went into service in September 1974, had a nose cone containing three warheads with a TNT equivalent of 350 kilotons each. At a 

maximum range of 10,000 kilometers, the inertial control system provided a circular error probability (CEP) of 900 meters.44 Between 1972 

and 1974, the new UR-100N missile was developed, and in 1975 it was 

put into service. It was equipped with six individually targeted warheads 

with a TNT equivalent of 0.75 megatons each. During the 1980s, it was 

replaced with the modified UR-100NU, which is still in service today.

 The UR-100N and UR-100NU intercontinental ballistic missiles, which 

are relatively inexpensive and simple to operate, were mass-produced and 

placed in lightly protected silos. According to Chelomey’s concept, in the 

event of a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, there must always be enough 

missiles on hand for a retaliatory strike.

3. The Taran (Ram) project, which called for the use of the UR-100 as 

an antiballistic missile, was developed from 1964 to 1965. It was never 

implemented.

4. After the UR-100, launch vehicle projects cropped up one after the other: 

the medium-class UR-200, heavy-class UR-500, and super-heavy UR-700. 

A small series of UR-200 launch vehicles underwent flight tests from 

1963 to 1964. Chelomey proposed using the UR-200 as an all-purpose 

launch vehicle for various payloads. The UR-200 carrying a nuclear warhead was capable of reaching distances in excess of 12,000 kilometers. 

Among the payloads developed at OKB-52 for the UR-200 were the 

IS (Satellite Fighter) maneuvering spacecraft, satellites for global naval 

reconnaissance, and even satellites capable of striking ground targets.45

 43.

20
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

 Operations on the UR-200 stopped in 1965. By that time, Yangel’s 

 46.

21
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

7. The three-stage UR-500K was developed in response to the aforementioned decree of 3 August 1964 and in accordance with Khrushchev’s 

admonition, “Don’t let the Americans have the Moon!” The decree named 

OKB-52 as the top executor of the piloted circumlunar flight program. 

The deadline: 1966 to the first half of 1967. There remained only two 

and a half years from the day that Khrushchev signed the decree until the 

piloted circumlunar flight. Understanding the vulnerability of the highly 

complex Soyuz program for circumlunar flight, after the successful launch 

of the two-stage UR-500, Korolev instructed his designers to study the 

possibility of using stockpiled inventory from the piloted vehicle of the 

Soyuz program and the Block D upper stage of the N1-L3 program.

 After the overthrow of Nikita Khrushchev in October 1964, the top 

governmental officials had the opportunity to exercise some common sense. 

The Military-Industrial Commission, the head ministries, and the defense 

department of the Communist Party Central Committee understood 

that it was an unjustifiable dissipation of efforts to pursue two circumlunar flight projects—Korolev’s Soyuz using a three-stage Semyorka and 

Chelomey’s using the UR-500K launch vehicle. In August 1965, the VPK 

recommended that Korolev and Chelomey resolve the issue of whether it 

would be possible to unify the piloted vehicles for the circumlunar flight 

and use the UR-500K rocket in the Soyuz system program. The result of 

this difficult joint operation of OKB-1 and OKB-52 was the development of a version of the launch vehicle in which the third stage of the 

UR-500K rocket fell into the ocean rather than inserting the circumlunar 

flight vehicle into orbit. The Block D booster stage, adapted from N1-L3, 

provided the acceleration to leave Earth orbit and achieve escape velocity. 

In all, from March 1967 through December 1970, there were 25 launches 

of the UR-500 and UR-500K rockets.51 Today, the UR-500K under the 

name Proton is one of the most reliable heavy launch vehicles.

8. After the first successful launches of the UR-500, OKB-52’s initiative in 

cosmonautics was not limited to ideas of circumlunar flight. In 1965, 

Chelomey and his deputies Gerbert Yefremov and Arkadiy Eydis proposed 

creating an Orbital Piloted Station (OPS) for integrated surveillance and 

reconnaissance. The Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) was extremely 

interested in this.52 It was assumed that the presence of cosmonauts on 

 51.

22
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

board a spy spacecraft and their involvement in obtaining information using 

optical, television, radar, and high-resolution cameras would help to make 

a qualitative leap compared with specialized unpiloted spy satellites. The 

Almaz (Diamond) orbital station was developed. We subsequently proposed 

using its first hulls for the Salyut Long-Duration Orbital Stations (DOS).

 The first Almaz launch took place on 3 April 1973. The three-stage 

UR-500K, which underwent development testing with launches for the 

L1 and DOS programs, inserted it into orbit. However, the station malfunctioned before a piloted vehicle could lift off to meet up with it. For 

reasons of secrecy, the Almaz was called Salyut-2 so there would be no doubt 

that it had the same peaceful purpose as our DOS—the first in the Salyut 

series. Almaz launches ended in 1976 due to an expansion of international 

collaboration and concentration of efforts on a single type of Salyut piloted 

Long-Duration Orbital Station. The 

Almaz spacecraft that were inserted 

into space were called Salyut-2, -3, 

and -5. The DOSes were referred 

to as Salyut-1, -4, -6, and -7 all the 

way up until the Mir station.

Chelomey’s successor Chief Designer 

Gerbert Yefremov (left) and Boris 

Chertok.

From the author’s archives.

9. MOM supported the design that Chelomey proposed for the UR-700 

super-heavy launch vehicle. The only work that OKB-52 performed on 

this project was on its draft plan. However, Glushko at OKB-456 began 

working on engines for the UR-700 and got as far as the manufacture 

of prototype models.53 A design was developed for an engine operating 

on such propellant components as nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical 

dimethyl hydrazine with a thrust of 640 tons. This engine was proposed 

for use with the first stage of the UR-900 super-heavy launch vehicle.54

But the design for this launch vehicle failed to find support.

 53.

23
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

10. Between 1968 and 1973, US (Controlled Satellite) model satellites for a 

naval space reconnaissance and target designation system were developed 

and put into service.55

11. Despite its broad range of developments in the field of strategic combat 

missiles and space technology, OKB-52 continued to produce new models 

of naval cruise missiles. In 1965, due to successes in the development of 

naval ballistic missiles, operations were halted on submarine-launched cruise 

missiles for striking land-based targets. OKB-52 concentrated its efforts on 

the production of antiship missiles—first designed for surface launch and 

then for underwater launch. In 1968, the world’s first Ametist (Amethyst) 

antiship cruise missile launched from underwater was put into service on 

submarines. In 1972, the more advanced Malakhit (Malachite) cruise missile 

was put into service. Both missiles used solid-propellant engines. In 1969, 

OKB-52 began developing long-range antiship missiles using turbojet and 

ramjet engines, including ones armed with nuclear warheads.

New generations of cruise missiles have gone into service on nuclear 

submarines outside the timeframe we are examining here. However, for the 

sake of history it is important to note that Vladimir Chelomey, while putting 

forward new designs of super-heavy launch vehicles, did not stop arming the 

Navy with small cruise missiles.

OKB-586, now known as GP M. K. Yangel KB Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash 

Factory (Dnepropetrovsk)56

I have already discussed the creation of the rocket-building enterprise in 

Dnepropetrovsk in my previous books. To recap, beginning in 1954, the chief 

designer and later the general designer of OKB-586 was Mikhail Kuzmich Yangel. 

The main managerial staff of OKB586 from 1949 to 1952 was made up 

of NII-88 staff members, including 

individuals from Korolev’s OKB-1, 

which was part of NII-88 until 1956. 

I will also remind the reader that in 

Former Chief Designer Vladimir 

Utkin (Yangel’s successor) and Boris 

Chertok (right).

From the author’s archives.

 55.

24
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

1951 Yangel worked as chief of department No. 5 of OKB-1, and I was his deputy. 

Before moving to Dnepropetrovsk, Yangel was briefly the deputy of Chief Designer 

Korolev and later director of NII-88.57 Yangel passed away in 1971. Vladimir 

Fedorovich Utkin replaced him as general designer. Both general directors were 

two-time Heroes of Socialist Labor, and both were academicians.58 Yangel became 

an Academy of Sciences member in 1966, and Utkin in 1984. From 1990 through 

2000, Vladimir Utkin was director of TsNIImash (formerly NII-88).59

The first director of Factory No. 586 was Leonid Vasilyevich Smirnov. 

Under his management the factory mastered the series production of Korolev’s 

R-1, R-2, R-5, and R-5M rockets and Yangel’s R-12, R-14, and R-16 rockets. 

In 1961, Aleksandr Maksimovich Makarov replaced him in the post of director 

of Yuzhmash. The list of developments cited below spans the period of time 

when Makarov ran the factory.

1. The R-12 (8K63) medium-range strategic ballistic missile was put into 

service in 1959; its upgraded modification, the R-12U in a silo-based 

version, was put into service in 1963. The R-12 is considered a recordholder: in all, more than 2,300 missiles were manufactured, and the R-12U 

remained in service for 30 years.

2. The R-14U medium-range strategic missile is a modification of the R-14 

missile. Its first launch took place in 1962. It went into service in 1963. 

The missile was supposed to be dismantled by 1990 in accordance with a 

treaty regarding medium- and short-range missiles.60

3. After the disaster of 24 October 1960, the R-16 (8K64) missile was modified.61

Its flight tests resumed in February 1961. In 1963, the upgraded silo-based 

version of the R-16U went into service. It was taken out of service in 1975.

4. The second generation of the R-36 (8K67) intercontinental strategic missile 

gave rise to an entire line of Soviet heavy intercontinental strategic rockets carrying super-powerful warheads (the TNT equivalent of 18 to 25 megatons). 

The R-36 went into service in 1967. This rocket was equipped with Glushko’s 

engines, which operated on high-boiling components, just as its precursors 

 57.

25
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

had.62 The missile’s control system was produced at OKB-692 in Kharkov 

(later NPO Elektropribor) under the supervision of General Director and 

Chief Designer Vladimir Sergeyev.63 It was retired in the late 1970s.

5. The R-36M intercontinental strategic missile (15A14), or RS-20A, which inherited all the best features of the R-36, was the third generation for OKB Yuzhnoye. 

It became the most powerful in its class. Flight testing began in 1973, and in 

1975 the R-36M missile went into service. A fundamentally new proposal came 

out: arm the missile with a 24-megaton monoblock warhead or with eight independently targetable reentry vehicles, each with a 0.9-megaton warhead. The 

missile’s flight and preparation control system was developed using an on-board 

computer. An advanced gyrostabilized platform equipped with a full set of inertial navigation command instruments made it possible to ensure a high degree 

of target kill accuracy. According to flight-test data, the CEP was 430 meters. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) called this missile Satan.

 Yangel and Utkin developed the R-36M missile according to the concept 

“fewer but better is best.” The sophisticated and heavy missiles were substantially better than the initial R-36. They had great resistance to the destructive 

factors of a nuclear explosion, had better protected silo launchers (ShPU), and 

had a high degree of combat readiness.64 A fundamentally new concept was 

the use of a so-called “mortar launch” from a container.65

6. The RS-16A intercontinental strategic missile, or MR-UR-100 (15A15). 

This missile is distinguished by a high degree of automatic control over all 

the launch systems and an increased capability to overcome the enemy’s 

antiballistic missile systems.66 The RS-16A missile went into service in 1975.

7. Mobile missile systems using heavy tank chassis and railroads. These systems 

were also produced at KB Yuzhnoye, although in terms of their tactical 

performance data, they were inferior to the mobile missile systems that 

Aleksandr Nadiradze developed.

8. Two lines of Kosmos-series launch vehicles for small spacecraft were developed from 1959 to 1967 on the basis of R-12 and R-14 rockets. The light 

 62.

26
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

Kosmos-2 launch vehicle was launched from 1961 through 1977. The 

heavier launch vehicle, the last model of which was named Kosmos-3M, 

has been used from 1967 to the present. It first went into series production 

at the Krasnoyarsk Machine Building Factory (design support was handed 

over to OKB-10), and later at PO Polet in Omsk.67

9. The Tsiklon line of launch vehicles with a mass up to 3 tons. It was produced on the basis of R-36 and R-36P rockets. Testing began in 1967 for 

a two-stage model and in 1977 for a three-stage model. They are used for 

various space programs to this day.

10. R-56 super-heavy launch vehicle. From 1964 to 1965, Yangel developed a 

draft plan incorporating Glushko’s high-boiling component engines with up 

to 640 tons of thrust. The proposal aimed to develop alternatives to Chelomey’s 

UR-700 and Korolev’s N-1. Operations were ceased during the draft plan phase.

 In addition to combat missiles and launch vehicles, OKB-586 began 

to design various spacecraft. Chief Designer Vyacheslav Kovtunenko, 

subordinate to the general designer [Yangel], managed the majority of the 

developments. The main areas of endeavor of KB-3, which he headed and 

which was part of KB Yuzhnoye, were electronic reconnaissance spacecraft, 

monitoring and calibrating complexes, and target satellites.

11. Tselina (Virgin Land) electronic reconnaissance satellites for surveillance and 

detailed observation were developed for the Navy beginning in the mid1960s jointly with the TsNII-108 Radio Engineering Institute. The Tselina

electronic reconnaissance space complex went into service in the mid-1970s.

12. DS-P1-Yu, DS-P1-I, and Tayfun (Typhoon) monitoring and calibrating 

space complexes for the experimental development and testing of antimissile and antispace defense (PRO and PKO).68 They were produced from 

1967 through 1973.

13. The Lira (Lyre) auxiliary spacecraft was developed as a target for testing 

IS satellite fighters. It went into service in 1973.

14. Block Ye was the propulsion system for the LK lunar landing vehicle 

of the L3 complex. The project was conducted in accordance with the 

governmental resolution on the N1-L3 program per design specifications 

approved by OKB-1. The Block Ye underwent flight testing as part of 

the LK mockup during three launches using the 11A511L (based on the 

R-7A) launch vehicle.69

 67.

27
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

S. A. Lavochkin Factory and NPO, now known as S. A. Lavochkin 

Scientific-Production Association or NPO imeni Lavochkina (Khimki)

The design bureau and Factory No. 301 of illustrious aviation designer 

Semyon Lavochkin switched over from developing airplanes to producing 

antiaircraft missiles in 1947. The transfer in 1949 of Georgiy Babakin’s staff 

from NII-88 to Lavochkin contributed to the success in this field. In 1965, 

Georgiy Babakin was appointed chief designer of Lavochkin’s firm. Korolev 

trusted him and handed over the projects for automatic interplanetary vehicles 

for the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and Venus for him to continue.

The design bureau and factory, transformed into NPO Lavochkin, were 

transferred from the Ministry of the Aviation Industry to the Ministry of 

General Machine Building.70 Nowadays, this is the head organization for the 

development of spacecraft for the exploration of the Moon and planets of 

the solar system.71 When developing automatic spacecraft, the most complex 

aspect is ensuring the reliability of the control system, radio communication, 

and data transmission. Per government decrees, NII-885, KB Geofizika, NII944, NPO Elas, the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute (VNII) for Power 

Sources, and a number of other organizations that had cooperated earlier on the 

development of L3 systems participated in the development of these systems.72

From 1966 through 1975, NPO Lavochkin developed 10 types of spacecraft, which maintained the Soviet Union’s superiority in solving fundamental 

scientific problems. Here is a list of accomplishments:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

soft landing on the surface of the Moon;

delivery to the Moon of the Lunokhod self-propelled lunar exploration 

vehicle;

exploration of the Moon from an orbital satellite;

delivery of lunar soil to Earth by an automatic spacecraft;

exploration of Venus from an orbital satellite;

landing of an automatic spacecraft on the surface of Venus;

exploration of Mars from an orbital satellite;

landing of an automatic spacecraft on the surface of Mars; and

research on the physics of the Sun and on geomagnetic and radiation 

conditions.

 70.

28
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

A formidable experimental facility for the developmental testing of automatic spacecraft was set up at NPO Lavochkin. The organizer of the design 

school for this most crucial scientific research was Georgiy Babakin, who 

received the title Hero of Socialist Labor and was elected Corresponding 

Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.73 Each of the interplanetary developments and the results of the explorations of the Moon, Venus, and Mars 

performed using spacecraft developed at the NPO Lavochkin have been broadly 

discussed in the mass media and in special literature. As a rule, though, no 

mention was made of the failed interplanetary program launches in those days.

After Babakin’s death in 1971, Korolev’s close associate Sergey Sergeyevich 

Kryukov became chief designer. Under his supervision, projects for the development of more advanced interplanetary spacecraft continued. NPO Lavochkin 

remains the only space organization in Russia after OKB-1 that developed 

automatic interplanetary spacecraft.

SKB-385, now known as Joint-Stock Company V. P. Makeyev State 

Rocket Center (OAO GRTs imeni V. P. Makeyeva) (Miass)74

From 1960 to 1975, the nation’s leadership devoted exceptional attention 

to achieving nuclear parity with the help of not only ground-based missile 

systems, but also nuclear submarine–launched missile systems. Former OKB-1 

lead designer Viktor Makeyev was in charge of these projects. I wrote about the 

beginning of work on ballistic missiles for submarines in Volume II of Rockets 

and People.75 Viktor Makeyev was in charge of SKB-385 in the city of Miass 

in the Ural Mountains. In addition to all of his other achievements, Makeyev’s 

integrated systemic approach to the process of designing a large and complex 

system should be considered one of his defining achievements.

The chief designer of a missile was in charge of a complex that, in addition 

to the missile itself, comprised the launcher, the shipboard computer system 

controlling the missile firing, the missile checkout equipment, the data-control 

system processing the firing data, etc. The chief designer was also responsible for 

preparing for and conducting launches. For this reason, governmental decrees 

instructed Makeyev to develop a system rather than a missile.

The four head organizations that Korolev (followed by Mishin), Yangel 

(and after him, Utkin), Chelomey, and Nadiradze oversaw produced surfaceto-surface missile systems for the Strategic Rocket Forces. The cooperative 

 73.

29
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

network that Viktor Makeyev oversaw was virtually the exclusive producer of 

strategic missile systems to arm nuclear submarines. In terms of the numerous 

parameters, especially the control system, a submarine-launched missile system 

is more complex than a land-based missile system.

The first independent development of SKB-385 under Makeyev’s leadership 

was the single-stage R-13 missile with a firing range of up to 600 kilometers. 

The missile was the foundation of the D-2 system, which went into service in 

1961 and remained in operation until 1973.

The first missile that SKB-385 produced specifically for subsurface launch 

was the R-21 of system D-4. The first launch of a missile from a submerged 

submarine took place on 10 September 1960, 40 days after the launch of the 

U.S. Polaris missile from a submerged submarine.76 The D-4 system with its 

R-21 missile went into service in May 1963. However, it was appreciably inferior 

to the U.S. Polaris A-1 systems with a firing range of 2,200 kilometers and the 

Polaris A-2 with a range of 2,800 kilometers. In 1962, development began on 

the D-5 system, which was meant to bridge the qualitative gap between the 

missile armaments of Soviet and U.S. nuclear submarines. The D-5 system’s 

R-27 missile control system provided inertial navigation using a gyrostabilized 

platform that had sensitive navigation elements mounted along three axes. The 

missile was equipped with a homing warhead for firing against naval targets. 

Isayev, who developed the engine for this missile, called it the “sinker”—in the 

initial models the engine was “sunk” within a recess in the fuel tank.77 Later, 

the “sinker” was also developed for an oxidizer tank.

The D-5 system with the R-27 missile went into service in 1968. In 1974, 

the D-5U with R-27U missile, equipped with either a single warhead or three 

independently targetable warheads, went into service. A modification of the 

R-27U missile was also developed. Its warhead had a homing system for striking pinpoint targets on the shore and surface ships.

In 1974, system D-9 with the first R-29 naval intercontinental missile 

went into service. Eighteen Murena-class submarines were equipped with this 

system. The R-29 missile gave rise to three modifications with independently 

targetable warheads. All three were given the designation RSM-50. A stellar 

correction system was developed to control the missiles of the D-9 system. 

This substantially improved the system’s firing accuracy.

 76.

30
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

In 1971 under Makeyev’s leadership, development began on the D-19 

system with R-39 missiles, which received the designation RSM-52. The payload of this missile had 10 independently targeted warheads. The D-19 system 

went into service on Akula-class heavy nuclear submarine cruisers.

In all, during Makeyev’s lifetime, his design bureau developed seven basic 

models of submarine-launched missiles.78 Six of these had several modifications each. The missile systems and submarines were modified accordingly. All 

told, over the 15 years from 1960 through 1975, hundreds of launches were 

conducted for the developmental testing of naval missile systems before putting 

them into service, to train personnel, and to check out the missiles in operation.

Makeyev was twice awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor.79 He was 

elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1968 

and full member in 1976. Those who headed up design projects for submarines 

and missile system control systems also became academicians and Heroes of 

Socialist Labor.

Today, the submarines that comprised the naval fleet during that period 

have outlived their service life. The thousands of missiles that were on them 

need to be destroyed. By the late 1990s, in Severodvinsk alone, more than 150 

nuclear submarines were decommissioned because they had reached the end 

of their service life.80 They were disarmed and destroyed in accordance with 

international agreements. In and of itself, this figure provides an impression 

of the colossal work, in terms of both volume and cost, performed to achieve 

superiority over the U.S. in the field of strategic ballistic missile submarines.

Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology (MIT), originally known as NII-181

Until the end of his life, Chief Designer Aleksandr Davidovich Nadiradze 

was in charge of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, which joined 

the Ministry of the Defense Industry system after 1964. The primary focus 

of this organization was the production of short-range tactical missile systems 

for the infantry.

The experience that OKB-1 had gained developing RT-2 solid-propellant 

rockets, and the achievements of industry, which mastered the production of 

 78.

31
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

effective composite solid propellants, enabled Nadiradze to develop first shortrange, and then medium-range, missiles that were supposed to replace the 

R-5M, R-12, and R-14 liquid-propellant rockets. The main advantage of the 

new missile systems was their abandonment of the silo-based launcher and use 

of a mobile deployment mode. Mobile launchers could be covertly relocated, 

and the uncertainty of their whereabouts offered substantially increased viability.

The design process for the short-range Temp-2S system began in the late 

1960s. One of the most difficult tasks was the development of a control system 

that ensured a high-degree of combat readiness and precision when the launch 

site changed. Temp and Temp-2S were the first mobile systems using solidpropellant ballistic missiles to be put into service. The missiles of these systems 

were the first to be destroyed by the end of the 20th century in accordance 

with U.S. demands during offensive arms reduction talks.82

The development and testing of medium-range Pioner (Pioneer) missiles 

(factory index 15Zh45) lasted for more than six years. In March 1976, the 

Pioner mobile missile system (or RSD-10) went into service for the Strategic 

Rocket Forces. NATO declared these Soviet missiles the “menace of Europe” 

and assigned them the index SS-20.83

The governmental decree assigned NIIAP the task of developing the inertial control system for the Pioner. In the early 1970s, NIIAP was overloaded 

with control system projects for N1-L3 and for Chelomey’s and Yangel’s new 

generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Nevertheless, Chief Designer 

Pilyugin gave his consent for the development of the system for the Pioner

despite the objections of the minister of general machine building.84

The self-propelled launcher carrying the Pioner missile was placed on a 

Minsk Automobile Factory special six-axle tractor truck. The industry delivered more than 500 Pioner mobile missile systems to the Strategic Rocket 

Forces. The wealth of experience gained by MIT from operating the Pioner

systems enabled them to switch to the production of Topol (Poplar) mobile 

solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile systems. A list of them goes 

beyond the limits of the period of time we are studying here. However, the 

successes in this field made it possible to drastically reduce the production and 

 82.

32
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

upgrading of stationary liquid-propellant combat missile systems. Aleksandr 

Nadiradze became a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1981 

and was twice awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor.85

NII-627, later known as All-Union Scientific-Research Institute 

of Electromechanics (VNIIEM), now known as the ScientificProduction Enterprise All-Russian Scientific-Research Institute of 

Electromechanics with the A. G. Iosifyan Factory (NPP VNIEM)86

Beginning in 1947, NII-627 was in charge of developing on-board electrical 

equipment for the rapidly growing field of rocket technology and later space 

technology. As far back as during World War II, the institute had assembled 

a staff of first-class scientists and engineers in the field of electrical machines, 

electromechanical devices, and electroautomatic control engineering.

The scientific potential and experience accumulated during its 12-year 

association with leading rocket-space organizations, plus the initiative and 

irrepressible energy of the institute’s director, Andronik Iosifyan, enabled 

NII-627 to take on the role of lead organization for the production of spacebased meteorological systems. A governmental decree on 30 October 1961 

named NII-627 as the lead organization for the development of the Meteor

spacecraft. The Main Directorate of the Hydro-meteorological Service (under 

the auspices of the USSR Council of Ministers) and the Ministry of Defense 

served as the customers.

In 1964, the first Meteor satellite was manufactured. From 1964 through 

1967, four satellites underwent flight testing. As experience was gained, the 

spacecraft became more advanced. From 1967 to 1971, a global space meteorological system was produced based on Meteor, then Meteor-2, and Meteor-3

satellites. The next advancement in this field was the development of the 

Meteor-Priroda satellite for conducting research and meteorology observations 

and ecological monitoring.87

In addition to the lead organization, VNIIEM, specialized organizations 

that had already been involved in the programs of OKB-1 and its branches, 

and also OKB-52, participated in the creation of meteorological satellites. OKB 

Geofizika developed the sensitive elements for the attitude-control systems; 

VNII-380 (subsequently VNIIT) developed the television system for observing 

 85.

33
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Earth’s surface and transmitting color images of it; and NII-648 (later NIITP) 

developed the orbital monitoring and command transmission radio complex.88

VNIIEM was the only organization that independently developed spacecraft outside the Ministry of General Machine Building system. However, 

launch vehicles were manufactured and preparation at the cosmodrome and 

liftoff were carried out through the efforts of the Ministry of Defense and 

Ministry of General Machine Building.

The nine organizations listed above

were the lead organizations responsible for 

achieving the ultimate goal: putting the final 

product into service, into operation, or fulfilling unique assignments for fundamental 

research. A cooperative network comprising 

dozens of scientific-research institutes and 

design bureaus and hundreds of factories 

worked for these lead organizations. They, 

too, had their own lead entities in their 

respective fields:

•	

•	

•	

OKB-456 (V. P. Glushko NPO 

Energomash) and OKB-2 (A. M. Isayev 

KB Khimmash) were the lead organizations for the development of liquidpropellant rocket engines;89

NII-885 (Russian Scientific-Research 

Institute of Space Instrument Building) 

was the head organization for the radio 

system;

NIIAP (N. A. Pilyugin Scientific-Production Center for Automatics and 

Instrument Building) was the head organization for autonomous control 

systems;

From the author’s archives.

Valentin Glushko in a photo 

probably taken in the 1970s.

88. VNIIT—Vsesoyuznyy nauchno-issledovatelskiy institut televizionnoy tekhniki (All-Union 

Scientific-Research Institute of Television Technology); NIITP—Nauchno-issledovatelskiy institut 

tochnykh priborov (Scientific-Research Institute of Precision Instruments).

89. Author’s note: The contemporary names of these enterprises are given in parentheses. 

The Isayev organization is now formally part of the M. V. Khrunichev State Space ScientificProduction Center (GKNPTs im. M. V. Khrunicheva).

34
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

•	

•	

GSKB Spetsmash (V. P. Barmin Design Bureau of General Machine 

Building) was the head organization for the ground complex;90 and

NII-648 (Scientific-Research Institute of Precision Instruments) was the 

head organization for command radio links and rendezvous radio systems.

Each of these organizations in turn had its own collaborative system set up. 

Each head general designer was at the top of the pyramid. The pyramids were 

built on the common foundation of the manufacturing industry, regardless 

of the field—radio electronic, electrical, instrumentation, optical, mechanical 

engineering, metallurgical, chemical, etc.

The atomic industry was another story, isolated in the Ministry of Medium 

Machine Building (MSM). Almost all of its lead design bureaus, scientificresearch institutes, and factories were located in closed cities.91 They developed 

a special warhead for each model of missile. The MSM surpassed other industry 

ministries of the military-industrial complex in terms of its intellectual and 

manufacturing power.

The common foundation for all the pyramids was a powerful base—the 

Ministry of Defense. It was the Ministry of Defense that financed, built, and 

equipped the rocket-space firing ranges Kapustin Yar, Baykonur, and Plesetsk, 

as well as the sea-based firing ranges; the ministry also developed a universal 

Command and Measurement Complex (KIK), including its own control 

centers and ballistics centers.92 In all, the Ministry of Defense system had 

more than 20 launch pads just for inserting spacecraft into space. This was not 

much compared with the thousands of combat missile launchers, but combat 

launchers were single-use and “on alert,” while space rocket launch facilities 

could be reused. They were used for hundreds of launches. In 1973 alone, the 

total number of space launches exceeded 100.

Ground Tracking Stations (NIPs), consolidated under a single command 

authority; a common timing system; and a common control, communications, and data transmission and processing system, formed the foundation 

of the KIK.93

 90.

35
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Sixteen NIPs were created on the territory of the USSR, including seven 

at the firing ranges.94 In addition, shipborne and airborne stations performed 

the role of NIPs. All told, as many as 15 naval vessels composed a command 

and measurement complex. At first, naval transport vessels retrofitted and 

equipped with the necessary systems were used, and then they were replaced 

with specially designed ships using the latest achievements in radio electronics 

and antenna technology—these ships were the Academician Sergey Korolev, 

the Cosmonaut Yuriy Gagarin, the Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, and others.

The Command and Measurement Complex, the firing ranges, and the 

military NIIs were subordinate to the military-space command, which in turn 

was subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces. 

By the late 1970s, permanently operating systems had been put into service 

to provide the strategic forces with the space information needed to employ 

nuclear missiles. The space forces implemented measures that enabled the armed 

forces to achieve strategic parity with the U.S. not only in terms of nuclear 

arms, but also in terms of the efficiency and precision of their employment!

Large military-space systems were produced on the basis of automatic 

spacecraft developments:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

a network for photographic surveillance and cartography using Zenit, 

Yantar-2K, and Yantar-1KFT satellites;

the Tselina-2 radio-technical surveillance complex;

an integrated system of communications satellites using the Molniya-2, 

Molniya-3, and Raduga spacecraft;

the Global Meteorological Space System (GMKS) consisting of the 

Meteor-2 and Meteor-3 spacecraft;95

the Tsikada space navigation system;

the Tayfun calibration complex;

the Strela space-based official communications system;

a system to provide the branches of the armed forces with real-time local 

and global weather information; and

a system for real-time meteorological reconnaissance of regions scheduled 

to be photographed by space-based photosurveillance facilities.

The development of an efficient military acceptance system should be 

considered a great achievement of the Ministry of Defense. Historically, the 

Institute of Military Acceptance had been in existence since the time of Peter I. 

 94.

36
Rocket-Space Chronology (Historical Overview)

Matters of quality and reliability in the rocket-space industry were under the 

control of military representatives at all stages of the engineering process—from 

the draft plans until the hardware was released into service. The military acceptance engineering cadres weren’t just brought in to perform inspections when 

fulfilling orders for the armed forces. They actively participated in production 

processes and in all types of testing of launch vehicles and space technology 

for scientific and economic missions.

So that I will not be chided because the list of projects of the rocket-space 

industry head organizations cited above is incomplete, I shall once again remind 

the reader that I have intentionally confined myself to listing those projects that 

were contemporary with the N1-L3 program. Therefore, I shall not mention 

developments that were completed before 1960 or begun after 1974.

I am deliberately not mentioning the sophisticated antiaircraft and antiballistic missile systems. This special field deserves serious scientific historical 

research. Even given these temporal and thematic limitations, this list provides 

an idea of the scale, the nomenclature, and the material and intellectual contributions that dramatically changed the military-political situation in the world.

One more important factor contributed to the achievements of Soviet 

military-industrial technology: almost all types of missile and space technology, as well as strategic nuclear assets, were developed with the highly active 

participation of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Almost all the chief designers 

of the leading organizations of the rocket and nuclear industry were Academy 

members. As a rule, the president of the Academy of Sciences was appointed 

chairman of the expert commissions that the nation’s top political leadership 

tasked with drawing up the proposals for the selection of strategic weapons. 

Fundamental academic research and the applied science of the industry ministries enriched one another.

37

Chapter 2

U.S. Lunar Program

The history of our N1-L3 lunar program can be compared with the U.S. 

Apollo-Saturn program. Later, the American program came to be called simply 

“Apollo,” like the lunar vehicle. Comparing the technology and operational 

organization for the lunar programs in the U.S. and the USSR, one is compelled 

to pay tribute to the efforts of the two superpowers in their realization of one 

of the greatest engineering projects of the 20th century.

So, let’s take a brief look at what was happening in the U.S.1

 As soon as it 

was founded in February 1956, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) dealt 

with the production of long-range ballistic missiles. The Redstone Arsenal in 

Huntsville, Alabama, which is a center for practical missile developments, was 

part of the agency. One of the arsenal’s directors was Wernher von Braun, who 

headed a staff of German specialists who were transferred from Germany to the 

U.S. in 1945. That same year, 127 German prisoners of war from Peenemünde 

started to work under von Braun’s supervision. In 1956, in addition to them, 

1,600 Americans were working at the Redstone Arsenal. Incidentally, by 1955, 

having obtained American citizenship, 765 German specialists were working in 

various branches of the U.S. defense industry. The majority of them had come 

to the U.S. from West Germany voluntarily and worked on a contractual basis.

The first Soviet satellites stunned the U.S. and made Americans ask themselves whether they were really the front-runners of human progress. Indirectly, 

the Soviet satellites helped to strengthen the authority of the German specialists 

in America. Von Braun convinced the American military leadership that only 

a launch vehicle that was considerably more powerful than the one that had 

inserted the first Soviet satellites and the first lunar vehicles would be able to 

surpass the level of the Soviet Union.

 1. We have preserved the spirit and content of Chertok’s original narrative on the U.S. space 

39
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Von Braun had dreamed of super-heavy rockets for interplanetary expeditions even before the first artificial satellite was launched. In 1953, von Braun 

and Willy Ley published the results of the research and the basic design data for 

a three-stage launch vehicle intended for the creation of a large orbital station 

and for piloted expeditions to the Moon. One of its versions was designed for a 

mission with a crew of 25. The vehicle’s launch mass exceeded 7,000 metric tons.2

Von Braun’s team spent its first years working for the U.S. Army under 

conditions of rivalry between the Army, Air Force, and Navy. After the launch 

of the second Soviet satellite, the U.S. Secretary of Defense ordered the ABMA 

to begin preparation for the launch of an artificial satellite using the Jupiter-C 

rocket that von Braun’s team had developed.3

 It was a version of the Redstone 

rocket with three additional solid-propellant stages. Von Braun requested 60 

days for this task. General John Medaris, his boss, who was quite familiar with 

von Braun’s optimism and enthusiasm, gave him 90 days. The team of rocket 

specialists managed to fulfill their assignment in 84 days! On 31 January 1958, 

Explorer 1—the first U.S. satellite—went into orbit. America had entered the 

space race.

Before the launch of the first Soviet artificial satellite, the attitude of 

the U.S. military toward spaceflight was cool, to say the least. In September 

1957, von Braun’s team was working at the Redstone Arsenal on developing 

intermediate-range combat missiles.

I shall cite an excerpt from the memoirs of Ernst Stuhlinger—one of von 

Braun’s closest associates:

Von Braun’s satellite project was brought to a complete halt by order 

of the secretary of defense. My urgent appeal that von Braun go to 

the Department of Defense requesting one more time that they allow 

him to continue with our satellite project was to no avail.

 “Please, leave me alone,” he said. “You know very well that my 

hands are tied.”

 Then on 27 September, I went to see General Medaris, our 

commanding officer at the Redstone Arsenal.

 “A Russian satellite is going to be in orbit soon. Aren’t you going 

to try one more time to ask the Secretary of Defense for permission to 

work on our satellite? It will be an incredible shock for our nation 

if they are in space first!”

 2. Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley, 

40
U.S. Lunar Program

 “Listen,” said the general, “Don’t get all worked up! You know how 

In December 1957, von Braun proposed a design for a heavy rocket, 

the first stage of which had an engine cluster with a total thrust at Earth’s surface 

of 680 tons (the reader will recall that the R-7 five-engine cluster had a thrust 

of 400 tons).

In August 1958, impressed by the roaring success of our third satellite, 

the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 

consented to finance the development of a design for the Saturn heavy launch 

vehicle.5 Subsequently, launch vehicles of varying capacities and configurations 

were given the name Saturn with different alphanumeric designations. They 

were all built for a common program with a single final objective—to produce 

a heavy launch vehicle that far surpassed the achievements of the Soviet Union.

 4. Ernst Stuhlinger (1913–2008) was a guidance systems expert who worked with von 

41
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

The company Rocketdyne received the order for the development of the 

H-1 engine for the heavy rocket in September 1958, when it became obvious 

that the Americans had fallen behind. To speed up operations, the decision was 

made to make a relatively simple engine, achieving, above all, a high degree 

of reliability rather than record-setting specific indices. The H-1 engine was 

produced within a record-setting short period of time. On 27 October 1961, 

the first launch of the Saturn I rocket took place. It had a cluster of eight H-1 

engines, each with a thrust of 75 tons. The initial plans for the production of 

heavy rockets in the U.S. had nothing to do with a peaceful lunar program.

Commander in Chief of the U.S. Strategic Air Command General Thomas 

S. Power, supporting the allocation of funds to the space programs, declared: 

“Whoever is first to make their claim in space will own it. And we simply 

cannot allow ourselves to lose this contest for supremacy in space.”6

Other U.S. military officials also spoke rather candidly, declaring 

that whoever controls space will control Earth. Despite President Dwight 

D. Eisenhower’s obvious aversion to supporting the hysterical hype regarding 

the “Russian threat” from space, the general public demanded that measures be 

taken to get ahead of the USSR. Congressmen and senators demanded decisive 

actions, arguing that the U.S. was running the risk of complete annihilation 

by the USSR. Under these conditions, one can only marvel at the resoluteness 

of Eisenhower, who insisted that space must not under any circumstances be 

used for military purposes.

On 29 July 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics 

and Space Act, authored by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. This act defined the 

basic programs and administrative structure for space exploration. A professional 

military man, General Eisenhower clearly defined the civilian orientation of 

operations in space. The act stated that space exploration must be developed 

“in the name of peace for all mankind.” Later, these words were engraved on 

a metal plaque that the crew of Apollo 11 left on the Moon.7

But first, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) 

was transformed into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 

(NASA). This enabled the government of the United States to create a new, 

powerful government organization within a brief period of time. Subsequent 

events showed that appointing Wernher von Braun as director of the design 

and testing complex in Huntsville, Alabama, and making him responsible 

 6. General Thomas S. Power headed the U.S. Strategic Air Command from 1957 to 1964.

42
U.S. Lunar Program

for developing heavy launch vehicles was crucial for the success of the lunar 

program. On 21 October 1959, Eisenhower held a meeting during which the 

decision was made to transfer the Redstone Arsenal to NASA. On 15 March 

1960, the president signed a directive transforming the Huntsville center 

into the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. The transfer took place on 

1 July 1960, and Wernher von Braun officially became the director and sole 

manager of the Center.8

This event was particularly significant for von Braun personally. His affiliation with the Nazi party had tainted him in the eyes of American democratic 

society, but despite this, he had been given a high degree of trust. Finally he had 

been given the opportunity to fulfill his dream of human interplanetary flight, 

which had been under discussion back in Peenemünde! In 1944, the Gestapo 

had arrested Wernher von Braun and Helmut Gröttrup simply for talking 

about interplanetary flight, thus taking their time away from work on the V-2.

The successes of Soviet cosmonautics didn’t leave the Americans time to 

catch their breath for a calm reorganization and recruitment of personnel. 

Scientific research organizations from the NACA, the Army, and the Navy 

were hastily transferred to NASA. In December 1962, this federal agency had 

more than 25,000 people working for it, and of these employees, 9,240 had 

degrees in science or engineering. Scientific research centers, flight-testing 

centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, large testing complexes, and specialized 

manufacturing plants were immediately subordinated to NASA. New centers 

began to be set up.

In Houston, Texas, a government center for the development of manned 

spacecraft was created.9

 The headquarters for the development and launch of 

the Gemini and future Apollo spacecraft was located here.

A group of three men appointed by the President of the United States was 

in charge of NASA. In Soviet terms, these three men fulfilled the function of 

general designer and general director of all of NASA. The U.S. administration tasked NASA with attaining superiority over the USSR in the next few 

years in all crucial areas of space utilization and exploration. The organizations 

composing NASA were entitled to recruit other government organizations, 

universities, and private industrial corporations.

 8. The ABMA was subordinated to NASA on 1 July 1960 and renamed the George 

43
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had created a 

powerful governmental organization to develop atomic weaponry.10 Young 

President Kennedy now used this experience. He strengthened NASA in every 

way possible and monitored its work to see that the national goal was achieved: 

overtake the USSR no matter what.

Von Braun convinced the NASA leadership that the only effective response 

to the Soviet Union would be to develop more-powerful heavy rockets. NASA 

gambled on “von Braun’s brigade” to develop a super-powerful launch vehicle. 

The first stage of the new Saturn I launch vehicle was designed to use kerosene and liquid oxygen. The Marshall Space Flight Center proved capable of 

manufacturing it on its own. It was proposed that liquid hydrogen and liquid 

oxygen—revolutionary components for those times—be used in the second and 

third stages. In addition, the third liquid-hydrogen stage required guaranteed 

reliability for repeated firings to accelerate toward the Moon.

In January 2007, NASA’s leading historian on cosmonautics, Dr. Jesco von 

Puttkamer, gave a speech entitled “My Years Working with von Braun’s Team 

on the Saturn Project” in Moscow at the Korolev Lectures.11 Von Puttkamer has 

been responsible for the publication 

of the volumes of my book Rockets 

and People at NASA Headquarters.

I shall cite an excerpt from his 

speech: “In von Braun’s view, to be 

an effective leader, which means to 

be both planner and doer, a manager should ‘keep his hands dirty 

at the work bench.’ This approach 

derived directly from the ‘Arsenal’ 

concept first used at Peenemünde, 

then also encountered at ABMA. By 

always being in the forefront and 

immersing himself intimately in the 

whole vehicle, with all its minute 

From the author’s archives.

Wernher von Braun shown at the 

base of a Saturn V launch vehicle. 

 10.

44
U.S. Lunar Program

technical working-level details, von Braun constantly set an example himself. 

In my 45 years with NASA (as of now), I have never met anyone else who 

came even close to him in that respect.” 

This is a German writing about a German. But I heard approximately the 

same opinion about von Braun as a director from Jerry Clubb, a 100-percent 

American who worked at Marshall Space Flight Center during the development 

of the Saturn V launch vehicle and the lunar landing expeditions.12 According 

to the testimonials of von Puttkamer and Jerry Clubb, von Braun’s lifestyle 

represented the highest degree of technical expertise.

Reading or listening to testimonials about von Braun’s working style 

and methods, I compared them with my own personal experience and close 

acquaintance with S. P. Korolev and yet again realized what a decisive role an 

individual plays in history. What these two now legendary but very different 

leaders from the epoch of the development of the first rockets and the conquest 

of space had in common was the exceptional ability to create a unified first-class 

creative team in which each individual felt valued and strove to demonstrate 

his or her best qualities.13

New ideas that had been generated “at the grass roots,” at the level of 

frontline workers, quickly reached the chief designer. He gave them an objective 

evaluation or called for additional elaboration. As a rule, both here and there, 

promising long-range plans were developed with such enthusiasm that the 

authors had no doubt that it would be possible to implement them. Von Braun’s 

and Korolev’s “teams” never abandoned their leaders in difficult situations.

American politicians and historians did not hide the fact that the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration was created in response to the gauntlet 

that the Soviet Sputniks had thrown down. Unfortunately, neither we, the Soviet 

rocket scientists, nor the top political leadership of the Soviet Union appreciated 

back then the crucial importance of these actions by the U.S. administration. 

The main mission of the cooperative network under the aegis of NASA was 

a national program to land an expedition on the Moon before the end of the 

1960s. Expenditures on this mission in the first years already amounted to 

three-quarters of the entire NASA budget.

Gagarin’s flight was a very strong incentive for speeding up the U.S. lunar 

program. After 12 April 1961, the world had no doubt about the Soviet Union’s 

 12.

45
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

supremacy in space. The intimidating (to the Americans) slogan “the Russians 

are coming” was used in America as proof of the military superiority of the 

USSR over the U.S. After 12 April 1961, the young U.S. President John F. 

Kennedy frantically searched for an answer to the question, is there any field 

in which we can catch up with the Russians? He understood that he needed 

to maintain his own leadership and return the American people’s confidence 

and pride in their country and the respect that had been lost overseas.

On 20 April 1961, Kennedy sent a memorandum to Vice President Lyndon 

B. Johnson calling on him, as chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space 

Council, to conduct a general assessment of achievements in space exploration 

and to answer the question, “Do we have a chance to beating the Soviets by 

putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to 

go to the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space program which 

promises dramatic results in which we could win?”14

Lyndon B. Johnson was an avid proponent of developing a project for 

landing a human being on the Moon. President Kennedy’s request spurred 

him to active consultations with NASA, the Defense Department, various 

agencies, committees, and finally with von Braun, whose work he held in very 

high esteem. Von Braun answered the questions concerning the U.S. national 

space program in great detail and cogently. He assured Johnson, “We have an 

excellent chance of beating the Soviets to the first landing of a crew on the 

moon.... With an all-out crash program, I think we could accomplish this 

objective in 1967/68.”15

After intensive negotiations, meetings, and consultations, President 

Kennedy reached a decision, and on 25 May 1961, he addressed Congress 

and in fact all Americans. In his speech he said: “Now it is time to take longer 

strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take 

a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the 

key to our future on Earth.... 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 the Earth. No single space project in this period 

 14.

46
U.S. Lunar Program

will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range 

exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”16

Congress approved the decision to send an American to the Moon almost 

unanimously. The mass media showed broad support.

Soon after Kennedy’s address, Keldysh paid a visit to Korolev at OKB-1 to 

discuss our comparable program.17 He said that Khrushchev had asked him: 

“How serious is President Kennedy’s announcement about landing a man on 

the Moon?”

“I told Nikita Sergeyevich,” said Keldysh, “that technically the mission 

can be accomplished, but it will require a very large amount of resources. They 

will have to be found at the expense of other programs. Nikita Sergeyevich 

was obviously worried and said that we would revisit this issue very soon.”

At that time we were the indisputable leaders in world cosmonautics. 

However, the U.S. had already passed us in the lunar program because right 

away it was proclaimed a national cause: “For all of us must work to put him 

[the first man on the Moon] there.” “Space dollars” had begun to penetrate 

into almost every area of the American economy. Thus, the entire American 

public was in control of the preparations for a landing on the Moon. Unlike 

the Soviet space projects, the U.S. lunar program was not classified.

The U.S. mass media did not cover up the fact that Yuriy Gagarin’s flight 

on 12 April 1961 had shocked the nation. Americans were afraid that the rocket 

that had carried Gagarin was capable of delivering an enormously powerful 

hydrogen bomb to any point on the globe. One has to give President Kennedy 

credit. He was able to find a quick response, reassure a nation, and simultaneously mobilize it to achieve great feats.

Titov’s flight on 6 August 1961 struck another blow against American 

public opinion. But the lunar “psychotherapy” had already begun to take effect. 

On 12 September 1962, speaking at Rice University, Kennedy declared: “We 

choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because 

they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize 

and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one 

 16.

47
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which 

we intend to win, and the others, too.”18

In 1941, Hitler assigned von Braun the top-secret national mission of 

developing the V-2 ballistic missile—the secret “weapon of vengeance” for 

the mass annihilation of the British. In 1961, President Kennedy openly, in 

front of the entire world, once again entrusted von Braun with a national mission—to develop the most powerful launch vehicle in the world for a piloted 

flight to the Moon.

For the liquid-propellant rocket engine (ZhRD) of the first stage of the 

new multistage Saturn V rocket, von Braun proposed using components that 

were already well mastered—liquid oxygen and kerosene. On the second 

and third stages, he proposed a new pair of components—liquid oxygen and 

liquid hydrogen. Two factors stand out here. First, there were no proposals to 

use high-boiling components (like nitrogen tetroxide and dimethylhydrazine) 

for the new heavy rocket despite the fact that at that time, the Titan II heavy 

intercontinental missile was being designed to run on these high-boiling 

components. Second, right off the bat, as opposed to some time in the future, 

they proposed using hydrogen for the other stages. By proposing hydrogen 

as a propellant, von Braun showed his appreciation for the prophetic ideas of 

Konstantin Tsiolkovskiy and Hermann Oberth.19 Moreover, for one of the 

versions of the Atlas rocket, the Centaur second stage with a liquid-propellant 

rocket engine operating on oxygen and hydrogen was already being developed. 

The Centaur was later also successfully used as the third stage of the Titan 

III rocket. Pratt & Whitney developed the RL-10 liquid-hydrogen propellant engine for the Centaur. It had a thrust of just 6.8 tons. This was the first 

liquid-propellant rocket engine with what was, for that time, a record specific 

thrust of 420 units.20

In 1985, the encyclopedia Kosmonavtika [Cosmonautics] made its debut. 

Its editor-in-chief was Academician Valentin Glushko. In this publication, 

 18.

48
U.S. Lunar Program

Glushko paid tribute to liquid-hydrogen propellant rocket engines and to the 

work of the Americans. The article entitled “Liquid-propellant Rocket Engine” 

states: “Given the same [launch vehicle] launch mass, [liquid-propellant rocket 

engines operating on oxygen and hydrogen] were capable of inserting on orbit 

a payload that was three times greater than that of [liquid-propellant rocket 

engines] operating on oxygen and kerosene.”21

However, early in his career developing liquid-propellant rocket engines, 

Glushko had a negative attitude toward the idea of using liquid hydrogen 

as a propellant. In his book Rockets, Their Design and Application, Glushko 

provided a comparative analysis of rocket propellants for a case of motion in 

space described by a Tsiolkovskiy formula. Summarizing his calculations, the 

analysis of which is not part of my task here, the 27-year-old RNII engineer 

wrote in 1935: “Thus, a rocket with hydrogen propellant will have greater 

speed than a rocket of the same weight operating on gasoline, only if the 

weight of the propellant exceeds the weight of the rest of the rocket by more 

than 430 times.... From this we see that the notion of using liquid hydrogen 

as a propellant must be abandoned.”22

Judging by the fact that he later signed off on a decree calling for, among 

various other measures, the development of a liquid-propellant rocket engine 

operating on liquid hydrogen, Glushko had understood his youthful error at 

least by 1958. Unfortunately, the USSR was behind the U.S. in practical developments of liquid-hydrogen rocket engines at the very beginning of the Moon 

race. Over time, this gap widened, and ultimately it proved to be one of the 

factors that determined the substantial advantage of the U.S. lunar program.

Glushko’s negative attitude toward pairing oxygen and hydrogen as propellant components for liquid-propellant rocket engines was one reason that 

Korolev, and especially Mishin, harshly criticized him. Among rocket fuels, the 

pairing of oxygen and hydrogen as propellant components ranked in second 

place behind fluorine-hydrogen fuel. The announcement that Glushko was 

creating a special branch for testing fluorine engines on the shore of the Gulf 

of Finland caused particularly strong feelings. Mishin ranted, “He could poison 

Leningrad with his fluorine.”

 21.

49
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

To be fair, I must mention that, after becoming general designer of NPO 

Energiya, during the development of the Energiya-Buran rocket-space complex, 

Glushko decided to create a second stage using an oxygen-hydrogen engine. A 

government resolution entrusted the development of the Energiya’s second-stage 

oxygen-hydrogen engine to OKB Khimavtomatiki Chief Designer Aleksandr 

Konopatov. He fulfilled this assignment, but it took place 15 years after the 

Americans landed on the Moon.23

Reliability and safety were the strict conditions for all phases of 

the U.S. lunar program. They were achieved as a result of thorough groundbased developmental testing so that the only optimization performed in flight 

was what couldn’t be performed on the ground given the level of technology 

at that time. The Americans succeeded in achieving these results thanks to 

the creation of a large experimental facility for performing ground tests on 

each stage of the rocket and all the modules of the lunar vehicle. It is much 

easier to take measurements during ground-based testing. Their accuracy is 

increased, and it is possible to analyze them thoroughly after the tests. The 

very high costs of flight-testing also dictated this principle of the maximum 

use of ground-based experimental development. The Americans made it their 

goal to reduce flight-testing to a minimum.

Our scrimping on ground-based development testing confirmed the old 

saying that if you buy cheaply, you pay dearly. The Americans spared no 

expense on ground-based developmental tests and conducted them on an 

unprecedented scale. They built numerous firing test rigs for the developmental 

testing of both single engines and all the full-scale stages of the flight rockets. 

Each series-produced engine underwent standard firing tests at least three times 

before flight: twice before delivery and a third time as part of the corresponding 

rocket stage. Thus, engines that were intended for one-time use according to 

the flight program were actually multiple-use engines.

One must keep in mind that to achieve the required reliability, both we 

and the Americans had two basic types of tests. The first are conducted on a 

single prototype unit (or on a small number of articles) in order to demonstrate 

how reliably the design executes its functions in flight; at the same time, the 

unit’s actual service life is determined. The second are conducted on each flight 

article in order to guarantee that they have no random production defects or 

flaws from the series production process.

 23.

50
U.S. Lunar Program

The first category of tests includes development tests during the design 

phase. These are the so-called design-development tests (in American parlance—qualification tests) performed on test articles. In this case, when testing 

individual engines, we and the Americans operated more or less the same way. 

For the second category, entailing the acceptance testing of engines, rocket 

stages, and a number of other items, in terms of procedures, it took 20 years, 

during the development of the Energiya rocket, before we were able to catch up 

with the Americans. A broad spectrum of tests, which could not be shortened 

for the sake of deadlines, made it possible to achieve a high degree of reliability 

for the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo spacecraft.

The transfer to von Braun’s German team of all technical management over launch-vehicle production in its entirety played a decisive role in the 

success of the American lunar program. Even in the gyroscope technology for 

the inertial navigation systems, they used two-gimbal gyrostabilized platforms, 

which were based on earlier developments for A-4 rockets, which the Germans 

had not managed to realize during the war.

The third-stage Instrument Unit contained the main portion of the flight 

control equipment. This compartment housed the rocket’s “brain.” The German 

specialists of the “von Braun team,” who utilized the latest breakthroughs of 

American electronics, achieved a fundamentally new development. After the 

basic design issues and the experimental development had been resolved, production of the entire Instrument Unit was handed over to IBM.

Firing rig tests on each stage were combined with the flight tests. 

Flight testing began with the brief flight of Saturn I rocket number SA-1 as 

early as 22 October 1961. Only its first stage was operational, and this launch 

confirmed the viability of von Braun’s concept of clustering powerful engine 

units. On 9 November 1967, a full-scale Saturn V lunar rocket executed the first 

unpiloted flight in automatic mode. During this flight, the Americans tested 

the refiring of the third stage in space after it had been in orbit for 3 hours. 

For the first time, they tested out the return of the Apollo Command Module 

into the atmosphere at a velocity corresponding to the lunar return velocity.

Failures, explosions, and fires on the test rigs occurred. The most horrible 

disaster was the fire during ground testing of the Apollo spacecraft: three 

astronauts perished on the launch pad on 27 January 1967.24

 24.

51
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

It is worth noting that the Americans developed the structure and equipment of the Apollo spacecraft itself independently, without the input of von 

Braun’s team.

Soon after the assassination of President Kennedy, at one of our routine meetings concerning the lunar operations schedule, Korolev disclosed 

some information that he said our top political leaders had at their disposal. 

Supposedly, the new American President, Lyndon B. Johnson, did not intend 

to support the lunar program at the same pace and on the scale that NASA 

proposed. Johnson was inclined to spend more money on intercontinental 

ballistic missiles and economize on space.

However, our hopes that the Americans would cut back on space programs did not pan out. New U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a letter to 

Congress, giving an account of the projects in the field of aerospace performed 

in the U.S. in 1963. In this letter he said: “Nineteen sixty-three was a year of 

continued success in the exploration of space. It was also a year of thorough 

re-examination of our space program in terms of the interests of national security. Consequently, a course to achieve and maintain our supremacy in space 

exploration in the future has been broadly endorsed.... The achievement of 

success in space exploration is crucial for our nation if we want to maintain 

superiority in the development of technology and effectively contribute to 

strengthening peace throughout the world. However, to achieve this goal will 

require the expenditure of considerable material resources.”

Even Johnson recognized that the U.S. lagged behind the USSR “due 

to the relatively late start of operations and the lack of enthusiasm for space 

exploration in the beginning.” He noted: “During that period our chief rival 

was not standing still and physically continued to set the pace in some fields.... 

However, our remarkable success in the development of large rockets and 

complex spacecraft is convincing proof that the United States is on its way 

to new successes in space exploration and is catching up completely in this 

field.... If we have made it our goal to achieve and maintain superiority, then 

we must keep up our efforts and maintain our enthusiasm.”

Listing the achievements of 1963, Johnson felt it was necessary to mention: “The Centaur rocket has been successfully launched.25 It is the first 

rocket using high-energy fuel. One in a series of tests on the first stage of the 

Saturn rocket with a thrust of 680,000 kilograms-force has been successfully 

conducted. It is the biggest of the launch vehicle first stages tested to date. 

 25.

52
U.S. Lunar Program

By late 1963 the U.S. has developed more powerful rockets than the USSR 

has at this time.”

Switching directly to the lunar program, Johnson noted that in 1963 nine 

mockups of the Apollo spacecraft had already been manufactured, the spacecraft 

propulsion systems and numerous test rigs were being developed, and an escape 

system in the event of an explosion on the launch pad was undergoing testing.

A similar report about operations on Saturn rockets confirmed our sketchy 

information about the successful fulfillment of this program. In particular, the 

report mentioned that the J-2 hydrogen engine designed for the second stage 

of the Saturn V launch vehicle had successfully undergone factory tests and 

the first deliveries of these engines had begun.26 Finally, the report removed all 

doubt as to the selection of the model of rocket for the lunar expedition: “At 

this time, the most powerful Saturn V launch vehicle, designed to deliver two 

men to the surface of the Moon, is in the developmental phase.”

Then the members of Congress were told in detail about the structure 

and parameters of the Saturn V, its lunar mission flight plan, the production 

status of the test rigs and launch facilities, and the development of the means 

for transporting the gigantic rocket.

A comparison of the status of operations on the respective lunar programs 

in the U.S. and USSR in early 1964 shows that we were at least two years 

behind on the project as a whole. In regard to engines, at that time we had not 

developed oxygen-kerosene liquid-propellant engines with a thrust on the order 

of 600 tons and powerful oxygen-hydrogen liquid-propellant engines at all.

The information that had come to us through open channels over the course 

of 1964 confirmed that operations on the lunar program were not preventing the Americans from developing combat missiles. Our foreign intelligence 

service gathered more details. The scale of operations for the construction of 

new assembly shops for the Saturn V and Apollo, test rigs, launch complexes 

on Cape Canaveral (later the Kennedy Space Center), and launch and flight 

control centers made a strong impression on us.27 Lunar program developers 

and von Braun’s entire team, which had developed the Saturn series, no longer 

had anything to do with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Leonid Voskresenskiy told me his most pessimistic thoughts on this subject 

after several serious conversations with Korolev and then with Georgiy Tyulin 

 26.

53
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

and Mstislav Keldysh.28 He wanted to persuade them to demand more vigorously that funding be increased, first and foremost, to develop a firing test rig 

for the full-scale first stage of a future rocket. He received no support from 

Korolev. Voskresenskiy told me, “If we disregard the Americans’ experience 

and continue to build a rocket, hoping that if it doesn’t fly the first time, then 

maybe it will fly the second time, then we’re up the creek without a paddle. 

We did a full-scale burn for the R-7 rocket on the rig in Zagorsk, and even 

then it took four attempts for it to take off.29 If Sergey continues this game 

of chance, I’m getting out of it.” The drastic deterioration of Voskresenskiy’s 

health might also have explained his pessimism. However, his inborn tester’s 

intuition, which amazed his friends time after time, proved to be prophetic.

In 1965, the “Americanese,” as Korolev used to say, had already performed 

development tests on reusable engines for all the stages of the Saturn V and 

had moved on to their series production. This was critical for the launch 

vehicle’s reliability.

Single-handed creation of the Saturn V design itself proved to be beyond 

the power of even the most powerful aviation corporations in the U.S. For this 

reason, the design stage and manufacture of the launch vehicle were divided up 

among the leading aviation corporations: Boeing manufactured the first stage; 

North American Aviation, stage two; Douglas Aircraft, stage three; and IBM, 

the world’s largest producer of electronic computers, delivered the Instrument 

Unit and the hardware that it contained. The Instrument Unit contained a twogimbal gyrostabilized platform, which performed the function of a coordinate 

system platform. It controlled the rocket’s spatial position and navigational 

measurements (using a digital computer).

The launch complex was developed at the Kennedy Space Center on Cape 

Kennedy (now Canaveral).30 The rockets were assembled within a building 

of imposing dimensions.31 This structural-grade steel building is used to this 

day. It is 160 meters high, 160 meters wide, and 220 meters long. Next to 

the assembly site, 5 kilometers from the launch site, is the four-story mission 

 28.

54
U.S. Lunar Program

control center, where, in addition to all the necessary services, there are also 

cafeterias and even a gallery for visitors and distinguished guests.

The launch took place from a launch pad, but not one like ours. It was 

arrayed with computers for conducting tests, equipment for the fueling system, 

an air conditioning system, ventilation, and water supply systems. During 

launch preparation, 114-meter-tall mobile service towers with two high-speed 

elevators were used. The rocket was transported from the assembly site to the 

launch site in a vertical position on a crawler transporter that had its own diesel 

generator power plants. The mission control center had a control room that 

accommodated more than 100 people sitting at electronic screens.

All subcontractors were subject to the most stringent reliability and security 

requirements, which encompassed all phases of the program—from the design 

phase until the spacecraft was inserted into its flight trajectory to the Moon.

Developmental flights of the Apollo lunar vehicles began with 

the use of an unpiloted version. Experimental models of the Apollo spacecraft 

were tried out in unpiloted mode using the Saturn I and Saturn IB launch 

vehicles. For these purposes, from May 1964 through January 1968, five 

Saturn I launches and three Saturn IB launches took place. Two launches of 

the Apollo spacecraft carrying no crew took place on 9 November 1967 and 

on 4 April 1968 using a Saturn V launch vehicle.

When the crewless Apollo 4 was launched on the Saturn V launch vehicle 

on 9 November 1967, a boost maneuver towards Earth was executed at a 

velocity of more than 11 kilometers per second from an altitude of 18,317 

kilometers! The unpiloted experimental development phase of the launch 

vehicle and spacecraft was completed in 1968.

Launches of spacecraft carrying crews began considerably later than called 

for by the initial plan. The day of 27 January 1967 became the darkest in the 

history of the U.S. lunar program. At Cape Kennedy, three astronauts inside 

the Apollo 1 spacecraft atop the Saturn IB launch vehicle perished in a fire. The 

tragedy of the situation was intensified by the fact that neither the crew nor 

the ground personnel were able to quickly open the hatch. Gus Grissom, Ed 

White, and Roger Chaffee either burned to death or suffocated. The cause of 

the fire turned out to be the atmosphere of pure oxygen that was used in the 

Apollo life-support system. As fire specialists explained it to us, in an atmosphere of pure oxygen everything burns, even metal. That is why all it took 

was a spark from electrical equipment, which would be harmless in a normal 

atmosphere. It took 20 months to perform fire-prevention modifications on 

the Apollo spacecraft.

In our piloted spacecraft, beginning with the Vostoks, we used a gas composition that did not differ from normal air. Nevertheless, after what happened 

55
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

in America, in connection with our Soyuzes and L3, we launched studies that 

culminated in the development of standards for materials and designs that 

ensured fire safety.

A crew executed the first piloted flight in the Apollo 7 Command and 

Service Module, which was inserted into Earth orbit by a Saturn IB in October 

1968. The spacecraft without its Lunar Module was thoroughly checked out 

during an 11-day flight.

In December 1968, a Saturn V inserted Apollo 8 on a flight trajectory to 

the Moon. This was the world’s first flight of a crewed spacecraft to the Moon. 

Apollo 8 completed 10 orbits around the Moon. In flight, the navigation and 

control system was checked out on the Earth-Moon flight leg, during orbit 

around the Moon, on the Moon-Earth flight leg, and then during the entry 

of the Command Module carrying the crew into Earth’s atmosphere at reentry 

velocity, ensuring the accuracy of splashdown in the ocean.

In March 1969, the Lunar Module and Command and Service Module 

underwent joint testing in near-Earth orbit on Apollo 9. The Americans checked 

out methods for controlling the entire lunar complex as an assembled unit and 

verified communications between the vehicles and the ground, as well as the 

procedures for rendezvous and docking. The Americans performed a very risky 

experiment. Two astronauts in the Lunar Module undocked from the Command 

and Service Module, separated from it, and then tested the rendezvous and 

docking systems. If a failure had occurred in those systems, the crewmembers 

in the Lunar Module would have been doomed. But everything went smoothly.

It seemed that now everything was ready for a landing on the Moon. But 

lunar descent, liftoff, and navigation for rendezvous in orbit around the Moon 

had still not been tested. The Americans used one more complete Apollo-Saturn 

complex. They held a “dress rehearsal” on Apollo 10 in May 1969, during which 

they checked out all the phases and operations except the actual landing on 

the lunar surface.

In a series of flights, step by step, the range of procedures tested under 

actual conditions leading to a reliable lunar landing gradually increased. Over 

the course of seven months, Saturn V launch vehicles lifted four piloted vehicles 

into orbit, making it possible to check out all the hardware, eliminate defects 

that were discovered, train all of the ground personnel, and instill confidence 

in the crew who had been entrusted to carry out this great mission.32 For 

comparison, one should keep in mind that it would be almost an impossible 

 32.

56
U.S. Lunar Program

task to carry out four piloted Shuttle flights to the International Space Station 

in seven months’ time, let alone the Moon!

By the summer of 1969, everything had been tested except the actual landing and activities on the lunar surface. The Apollo 11 team had concentrated 

all of its time and attention on these remaining tasks. On 16 July 1969, Neil 

Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin lifted off on Apollo 11

to go down in the history of cosmonautics forever. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 

21 hours, 36 minutes, and 21 seconds on the surface of the Moon. In July 

1969, all of America celebrated, just as the Soviet Union had in April 1961.

After the first lunar expedition, America sent six more! Only one of the 

seven lunar expeditions proved unsuccessful. Due to a malfunction on the 

Earth-Moon leg of the flight, the crew of Apollo 13 was forced to abort its 

landing on the Moon and return to Earth. This failed flight gave us engineers 

even more cause for admiration than the successful lunar landings. Officially, 

this was a failure, but it demonstrated high margins of reliability and safety. 

In December 1972, Apollo 17 executed the last lunar expedition on the 12th 

Saturn V. The United States spent around 25 billion dollars (at 1972 monetary 

rates) on the entire program (at the time I am writing this chapter, this would 

be at least 125 billion).

Having created the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, Wernher 

von Braun left his team and transferred to work at NASA Headquarters in 

Washington, DC. Two years later, he retired from NASA and went to work 

in private industry. On 16 June 1977, von Braun passed away at the age of 65 

after an operation for colon cancer.

Thirteen piloted flights on Saturn rockets, developed under the technical 

management of von Braun’s German team, are convincing proof of the high 

reliability and safety that technology and the political will of government 

leaders in the 20th century could provide. At a roundtable discussion in 1997 

dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the launch of the first Sputnik, Ernst 

Stuhlinger, a veteran of von Braun’s team, cited the words of von Braun in a 

conversation with a friend shortly before he died: “If I had had the opportunity 

to meet and talk with any one of the many pioneers of space who helped to 

make space flight a reality over the course of the last 80 to 100 years, then I 

would have picked Sergey Korolev.”

57

Chapter 3

N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

Someday, not before the mid-21st century, I believe that historians will 

argue about whose idea it was to use atomic energy for interplanetary rocket 

flight. In the early 1950s, after rocket scientists began to have access to the 

operating principles of nuclear reactors, ideas emerged for using the energy 

of nuclear reactors to convert rocket engine propellant into high-temperature 

gas. An indisputable advantage of a nuclear rocket engine (YaRD) is its lack 

of oxidizer.1

 Liquid propellant is converted into gas, the temperature of which 

is much higher than in the combustion chambers of liquid-propellant rocket 

engines. When this high-temperature gas is discharged from the reaction 

nozzle, thrust is generated. According to the thinking of these enthusiasts, 

the nuclear reactor would replace the conventional liquid-propellant rocket 

engine combustion chamber.

At NII-1, the scientific chief of which was Mstislav Keldysh at that time, 

Vitaliy Iyevlev was the initiator and head of operations on nuclear rocket 

engines.2 In 1957, he reported on this subject to Igor Kurchatov, Anatoliy 

Aleksandrov, and Aleksandr Leypunskiy.3 These people were able to make 

decisions without waiting for instructions from higher up. At their initiative, 

within an unprecedentedly short period of time, a one-of-a-kind graphite reactor was constructed at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. The initial successes 

 1. YaRD—

59
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

provided the impetus for the subsequent steps toward the development of a 

nuclear rocket engine.

The U.S. also announced that it was funding research for the development 

of a rocket with a nuclear engine. This information also reached the nuclear 

energy enthusiasts in the USSR. We could not lag behind in these matters.

Research work in this field began at the Institute of Atomic Energy under 

Kurchatov, at OKB-456 under Glushko, at NII-1 under Keldysh, and at OKB670 under Bondaryuk.4

 On 30 June 1958, the first Central Committee and 

Council of Ministers decree calling for the development of a heavy-lift rocket using 

a nuclear rocket engine was issued. This same decree called for the development 

of heavy-lift rockets with liquid-propellant engines using cryogenic high-energy 

components—oxygen and hydrogen. Kurchatov, Korolev, Keldysh, Aleksandrov, 

and Glushko actively participated in drawing up the decree. Although Glushko 

had never undertaken any developments for liquid-propellant engines using 

hydrogen, the idea of a nuclear rocket engine interested him. At his design bureau 

in Khimki he organized design work in this field jointly with NII-1.

At OKB-1, Korolev assigned Mishin, Kryukov, and Melnikov to look into 

the possibility of producing a rocket with a nuclear rocket engine.5 Throughout 

1959, they performed calculations, estimates, and layouts for various models of 

heavy launch vehicles with oxygen-hydrogen liquid-propellant engines on the 

first stage and nuclear rocket engines on the second. The decree of 30 June 1958 

formalized these studies. A draft plan of a rocket using a nuclear rocket engine 

was developed at OKB-1 and approved by Korolev on 30 December 1959.

The design called for using six R-7 first-stage blocks as the rocket’s first 

stage. The second stage—the central block—was essentially a nuclear reactor 

in which propellant was heated to a temperature in excess of 3,000 kelvins. 

OKB-456 proposed using ammonia as the propellant, while OKB-670 proposed using a mixture of ammonia and alcohol. The engine itself comprised 

four nozzles through which streams of gases escaped, having been intensely 

heated by the nuclear reaction.

The draft plan examined in detail several versions of rockets with nuclear 

engines. The most impressive was a super rocket with a launch mass of 2,000 

tons and a payload mass of up to 150 tons in Earth orbit. The first stage of 

 4. Mikhail Makarovich Bondaryuk (1908–1969) was a prominent Soviet engine designer 

60
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

this “super rocket” carried the number of liquid-propellant rocket engi

that enabled it to obtain a total launch thrust of 3,000 tons. For this, Glus

proposed developing a liquid-propellant engine using toxic high-boiling c

ponents with a thrust of from 500 to 600 tons. Korolev and Mishin categ

cally rejected this version and used only Nikolay Kuznetsov’s oxygen-keros

liquid-propellant rocket engines in the design.6

 His NK-9 engine for the 

stage of the global rocket (GR) with a thrust up to 60 metric tons was stil

its initial stage of development.7

 Fifty of these engines were required for

first stage of the rocket with a nuclear engine! This alone made the desig

the nuclear super rocket rather unrealistic.

At an early stage, the draft plan proposed a hybrid rocket with a lau

mass of 850 to 880 tons that would insert a payload of 35 to 40 metric tons i

orbit at an altitude of 300 kilometers. The first stage of the rocket, with a bl

structure similar to that of the R-7 rocket, was composed of six liquid-propel

rocket engine blocks. The central block was a nuclear-chemical rocket.

Despite the top-secret nature of all the work on nuclear rocket engi

the engineers remained extremely optimistic about the exceptional efficie

of nuclear power for rockets. Rumors that emanated not only from Kurchat

institute, but also from Keldysh’s NII-1, heated up the nuclear boom. Tup

was working on the design of an airplane for which an aircraft nuclear po

plant was being developed.8

 Such an airplane would be capable of supers

speed and unlimited flight range.

Almost simultaneously, both we and the Americans were spending g

amounts of resources on research in this field and conducting experime

work with various reactors. However, to this day, nuclear rocket engines 

obtained no practical use in aviation or in rocket technology. And comp

disappointment has replaced the optimism kindled by examples of the 

cessful use of atomic energy on submarines, icebreakers, and heavy warsh

But it took a while for attitudes toward nuclear rocket engines to cool, an

nes 

hko 

omoriene 

first 

l in 

 the 

n of 

nch 

nto 

ock 

lant 

nes, 

ncy 

ov’s 

olev 

wer 

onic 

reat 

ntal 

have 

lete 

sucips. 

d in 

1959 Korolev, who had access to Tupolev’s work, was still chiding his deputies 

 6. Nikolay Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov (1911–1995) headed a major design bureau in 

61
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

Two rocket engine designers: Aleksey Isayev (left) and Valentin Glushko.

for insufficient zeal in the nuclear field, saying that they mustn’t let an airplane 

with a nuclear engine come out before a rocket with a nuclear engine.

However, the overwhelming majority of design engineers were in agreement on the fact that it was quicker, more reliable, and safer to develop 

heavy-lift rockets only using liquid-propellant rocket engines, while nuclear 

rocket engines would find an application in the distant future. The Americans 

demonstrated in practice the advantages of liquid hydrogen by producing the 

Saturn I rocket with a second stage that ran on hydrogen. At that time, our 

leading chief designers of liquid-propellant rocket engines—Glushko, Isayev, 

and Kosberg—were carrying on heated debates on the problems of producing 

liquid-propellant rocket engines using hydrogen.

Opponents and skeptics of the use of liquid hydrogen exaggerated the 

difficulties of its practical usage. Supposedly, the low density of liquid hydrogen would require the creation of inordinately large fuel tanks, which would 

increase the rocket’s dimensions. The rocket specialists told the engine specialists that that wasn’t their problem. Then the engine specialists were afraid 

that at a temperature of –235°C all the metals would become brittle. Impact 

strength would supposedly drop by 30 percent. Under these conditions, the 

use of pyrotechnic valves could not be allowed. Even schoolchildren knew that 

a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen was an explosive gas and during the fueling process the least bit of sloppiness would cause an explosion. Just imagine, 

the skeptics fretted, that the hydrogen leaks out imperceptibly and saturates 

62
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

the area around the launch site. All it will take is the slightest initiator and a 

fuel-air explosion will take place. Whoever doesn’t die from the shock wave 

will suffocate from lack of oxygen and burn up with the hydrogen. I mention 

only the main arguments, but many more objections explained our lag in the 

production of liquid-propellant rocket engines using hydrogen.

After all manner of discussions and consultations, the Military-Industrial 

Commission (VPK) began to draw up a decree hoping to speed up work on 

high-power rockets and, consequently, on high-performance engines. Korolev 

personally inserted a demand for the development of liquid-hydrogenpropellant engines into the draft text.

On 23 June 1960, the Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers 

decree “On the Creation of Powerful Launch Vehicles, Satellites, Spacecraft, 

and the Mastery of Cosmic Space in 1960–1967,” which had been coordinated with the Ministry of Defense and the ministers and State Committee 

chairmen of all the necessary defense industries, was issued. This was the first 

attempt to confirm the prospects for the development of cosmonautics at the 

very highest level in the form of a seven-year plan. To some extent, the decree 

was a response to Brezhnev’s visit to OKB-1.9

 By that time, Khrushchev felt 

it was advisable to plan the development of the entire economy in seven-year 

increments rather than the Stalinist five-year plans.

For history, the content of the decree can serve to illustrate that political 

figures are not the only ones who make unrealistic, populist promises. Back 

then, no one dared challenge Khrushchev’s announcement that “our generation 

will live under communism.” Khrushchev himself probably sincerely believed 

that would be the case. This remained on his conscience, and none of us was 

required to take an oath that we actually promised to live to see communism.

The “top secret—of special importance” decrees were a different story. They 

contained much more specific deadlines and spelled out the names of the responsible 

administrators. They were the ones who had proposed writing down unrealistic 

deadlines for their own organizations in the government plans. The administrators 

were the chiefs of large staffs, and by that time they were already experienced chief 

designers. The ministers, who had drawn up the decrees, had passed through the 

grueling school of managing industry during wartime. They remembered quite 

well that disrupting deadlines that Stalin had set or failing to fulfill promises could 

cost your life. Now they all signed their names to unrealistic promises.

The decree called for the development from 1961 through 1963 of the 

new N-1 high-power launch vehicle with liquid-propellant rocket engines that 

 9. See Boris Chertok, 

63
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

would be capable of inserting into orbit a satellite with a mass of 40 to 50 tons 

and accelerating a payload with a mass of 10 to 20 tons to escape velocity. Next, 

on the basis of this rocket, from 1963 through 1967, the plan was to develop a 

launch vehicle that would insert into Earth orbit a payload with a mass of 60 to 

80 tons and accelerate a 20- to 40-ton payload to escape velocity. At the same 

time, this decree ordered “the use of newly developed [nuclear rocket engines], 

engines running on new chemical energy sources, and low-thrust electric rocket 

engines on stage two and subsequent stages.” The decree stipulated developing 

high-thrust liquid-hydrogen engines, autonomous control and radio control 

systems, and experimental facilities for these projects and the performance 

of scientific research work. On 9 September 1960, Korolev signed the report 

“On the Possible Characteristics of Space Rockets Using Hydrogen,” which 

demonstrated the advantages of hydrogen.

Let’s return to the figure of an 80-ton payload in Earth orbit. That’s the 

maximum figure that all the chief designers combined took a stab at. Nobody 

at the top dictated this figure by government directive to Korolev, Keldysh, the 

other chiefs, and all the aides, deputies, planners, and designers. It so happened 

that we ourselves did not dare go any further.

In the history of the Moon race, this was our first design error. As painful 

as it is to admit, Korolev, Keldysh, and the entire Council of Chiefs all committed this conceptual error. What we should have taken into consideration 

was what we actually needed to land on the Moon and return to Earth, rather 

than what we could demand of the launch vehicle within the timeframe stipulated in the directive. We should have begun our calculation of tons from the 

surface of the Moon, not Earth.

But there were two extenuating circumstances. For one thing, Korolev 

and all of us deputies could be excused by the fact that in 1960 we did not yet 

consider a piloted landing expedition to the Moon to be our main, top-priority 

mission and we had not imagined all the problems that we would have to deal 

with. Secondly, back then, Korolev was already thinking about the possibility 

of a multilaunch lunar flight plan. By assembling the spacecraft in Earth or 

lunar orbit, the critical mass of the payload could be doubled or even tripled.

In September 1960, during a large “convention” of chief designers at the 

firing range before the first launches of the four-stage 8K78 launch vehicles 

carrying the 1M spacecraft for the exploration of Mars, a standing-room-only 

meeting took place.10 During this session, we discussed the status of the draft 

 10.

64
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

development of the “N-1 phase one integrated rocket system.” While discussing 

the mass of the payload that would be inserted into orbit, Mikhail Tikhonravov 

gave the most radical presentation. He proposed that, in selecting our launch 

vehicle version, we proceed from the assumption that in-orbit assembly was 

the primary means for ensuring the payload’s requisite mass.

The universal triumph of 12 April 1961 threatened to decrease the zeal 

of designers and scientists in the military field. At the initiative of the Central 

Committee and the Ministry of Defense, a new decree soon appeared: “On 

Revising Plans for Space Objects Dedicated to the Fulfillment of Defense Goals.”

It is significant that this decree appeared on 13 May, on a significant day 

for USSR rocket technology. On 13 May 1946, the first decree calling for the 

organization of operations for the production of long-range ballistic missiles 

in general and the R-1 missile in particular was issued. Fifteen years later, on 

13 May 1961, the order went out to produce the N-1 rocket in 1965.

We were actually quite serious that we would produce it in 1965! Perhaps 

not for a landing expedition to the Moon, but certainly for defense and other 

purposes. Overconfidently, we sought to produce the desired rather than 

the feasible. Of course, the authorities encouraged us to behave like that. 

However, the failure to meet deadlines for long-range projects is an international phenomenon.

From the author’s archives.

In the early 1950s, Wernher 

von Braun published in the open 

press his vision of a heavy threestage rocket to provide vehicle traffic between satellites and spacecraft 

in Earth orbit, to construct a permanent orbital station with a mass 

of 400 metric tons, and to launch 

interplanetary spacecraft. For his 

rocket, von Braun proposed a 

launch mass of 7,000 tons, a height 

of 80 meters, and a diameter of 20 

meters. The first stage was to have 

51 engines with a thrust of 275 

tons each. The second stage was to 

have 22 engines, and the third—5 

The Saturn V rocket shown here 

exiting the Vehicle Assembly Building 

(VAB) on the Crawler-Transporter.

65
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

engines each with 55 metric tons of thrust. In 1953, von Braun asserted that 

the creators of a structure such as this and an orbital station faced fewer problems than the inventors of the atomic bomb had faced in 1940. Von Braun 

surmised that the flight of such a rocket would take place in 1977. Ten years 

later, the same von Braun argued that it was not necessary to produce such a 

rocket and that a launch mass of 3,000 tons, which his Saturn V launch vehicle 

had, was quite adequate to land an expedition on the Moon.

Decrees aimed at long-range developments with knowingly unrealistic deadlines caused a rush of new enthusiasm in the various design teams. The awareness 

of being involved in great achievements and of drawing the attention of the 

nation’s top leadership boosted the ambitions of everyone who was responsible 

for fulfilling the Central Committee and Council of Ministers decrees.

On 25 May 1961, 12 days after the Kremlin signing of the top-secret, highimportance decree, President Kennedy quite openly appealed to the American 

people on the very same subject. I am certain that espionage intrigues were 

beside the point here. The idea of producing heavy rockets and expeditions to 

the Moon “hung in the air,” as the saying goes. After Gagarin’s feat, this had 

to be the next historical step for humankind.

In the preceding chapter I wrote that the U.S. publicly announced this 

historic step as a national mission. In 1964, from the congressional podium, 

President Lyndon B. Johnson exhorted Americans “to keep up their efforts 

and enthusiasm.” Every American had to know that their country was preparing for a flight to the Moon. In the Soviet Union all programs and plans of 

operations for piloted flights to the Moon were classified, and for that reason, 

only those involved on the front lines of the secret programs with access to 

the ongoing projects showed real enthusiasm. It is amazing that all the “top” 

designers, who drew up and signed the decrees, believed that absolute secrecy 

was every bit as necessary as when producing new combat missiles. At that 

time, we had no specific ideas regarding the possible use of the Moon, even in 

the distant future, for military purposes.

All three of the aforementioned decrees [from 1958, 1960, and 1961], 

signed by First Secretary of the Central Committee and Chairman of the 

USSR Council of Ministers Khrushchev, assigned the leading role in the 

development of the new heavy launch vehicle to OKB-1 and, consequently, 

to Chief Designer Sergey Korolev. The conflicts between Korolev and Glushko 

in their views on the prospects for developing heavy launch vehicles had 

escalated by that time. At first Glushko was critical, and then openly hostile, to Korolev during the selection of propellant components for the new 

liquid-propellant engines. For the first stage of the new heavy rocket, all of 

the proposals from OKB-1 called for the use of a liquid-propellant rocket 

engine that ran on liquid oxygen and kerosene. Subsequent stages called for 

66
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

the use of engines that ran on liquid hydrogen and, finally, in the distant 

future, nuclear rocket engines. However, despite the wealth of experience 

that Glushko and his design team had accumulated since 1946 in the production of oxygen-kerosene engines, and despite the creation in Khimki of 

a one-of-a-kind test rig facility for liquid-propellant rocket engines that used 

oxygen, Glushko stubbornly proposed using high-thrust liquid-propellant 

rocket engines operating on high-boiling components—nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine—for the future heavy rocket. 

Glushko’s position can be explained by the fact that during this time he was 

developing high-boiling component engines for Yangel’s and Chelomey’s 

intercontinental ballistic missiles. A large experimental facility for these 

engines had been created in Khimki.

The discord between Korolev and Glushko over propellant components, 

which had arisen during the period from 1959 to 1960 in connection with the 

design of the R-9A rocket, also affected the personal relationships of the two 

pioneers of Soviet rocket technology.11 Glushko did not forgive Korolev for 

recruiting aviation industry engine-building organizations to produce powerful 

liquid-propellant rocket engines: Lyulka’s OKB-165, which was developing a 

liquid-hydrogen engine, and Kuznetsov’s OKB-276, which was producing an 

engine that ran on liquid oxygen and kerosene.12 This was a direct affront to 

Glushko—Korolev’s old comrade-in-arms from the RNII, the design bureau in 

Kazan, the Institute Nordhausen, and the Council of Chief Designers, where 

Glushko ranked second after Korolev.

As a rule, historians of cosmonautics mention the disagreements between 

Korolev and Glushko either indirectly or not at all. The true causes of this 

acrimonious conflict, which many of my contemporaries and I witnessed, 

and which we were obliged to take sides on because of our duties, have not 

been sorted out to this day. I cannot agree with the explanation that Glushko’s 

towering ambition caused the downfall of our operations on powerful liquidpropellant rocket engines in the 1960s. Supposedly, he envied Korolev and, 

dreaming of rising above him and all the chief designers of rockets, he wanted 

to prove, “Hey, look here, I am an engine expert; without me you can’t do 

anything, and I’m the only one who can help you out.”

 11.

67
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

While discussing the problems of engines for the first stage of the N-1, 

at all levels, Glushko declared that it would not be particularly difficult for 

his organization to develop engines with a thrust as high as 600 tons using 

high-boiling components: nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethyl 

hydrazine. At the same time, the creation of an engine of this size and capacity running on liquid oxygen and kerosene, in Glushko’s opinion, would take 

way too much time.

In the U.S., von Braun was the one who came up with the idea for using 

liquid hydrogen for the Saturn launch vehicle series. The NASA leadership 

approved it, and in a relatively short time the U.S. aviation industry was able 

to produce high-thrust liquid hydrogen engines. The American experience, 

and later our own experience in Voronezh, showed that there was nothing 

supernatural in the hydrogen engine manufacturing process.

Alas! Korolev’s will and even Central Committee and government decrees 

proved insufficient for the oxygen-hydrogen liquid-propellant rocket engines 

under development for the N1-L3 program to be produced in time to take 

their place on the “lunar” rocket.

I worked with Korolev for 20 years, and with Glushko from 1974 until he 

died. I was a deputy to both of them. I’m very well acquainted with Mishin, 

who remained an ardent opponent of Glushko’s high-boiling component 

concept (and Glushko reciprocated the opposition). I often met, both at and 

outside of work, with engine specialists who were Glushko’s deputies, old and 

young, colleagues who sincerely respected him. They all considered Glushko 

to be a very complex human being, sometimes excessively fault-finding and 

demanding not only in dealing with his immediate subordinates, but also 

with subcontractors. At the same time, nobody doubted his technical prowess, 

erudition, general refinement, and ability to quickly identify the main issue in 

the heap of complicated day-to-day problems in large systems.

In the interests of business, Korolev sought to avoid conflicts, tried to 

meet people halfway, and if any hope remained, he tried to persuade everyone 

all the way up to the highest government officials. Glushko made it a point 

to only defer to the highest-ranking leaders—the Party General Secretary 

and members of the Politburo. Relationships with ministers certainly did not 

always turn out to his benefit. Ustinov, who was very attentive to Glushko’s 

ideas and proposals, was an exception.13 While he was logically methodical in 

 13.

68
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

most of his creative work, Glushko, especially in cases involving the selection 

of propellants, sometimes engaged in actions that were logically inexplicable.

In March 1961, Korolev sent Glushko an official letter. In essence, it contained a question rather than a complaint: “OKB-456’s unexpected position 

concerning the use of supercooled liquid oxygen for the R-9A rocket is incomprehensible and difficult to explain. You have apparently forgotten that in our 

joint report to the Central Committee in April 1959, which you signed, the 

main and only version of the R-9A called specifically for the use of supercooled 

liquid oxygen and kerosene. All this time, the design and experimental work, 

in which your representatives have participated, by the way, was conducted 

on the R-9A with the intention of using supercooled oxygen.”

Instead of a calm, businesslike discussion of an issue so vital not only for 

the R-9A rocket, but also for the entire future of cosmonautics, Korolev and 

Glushko were exchanging letters that were anything but amicable, copies of 

which they were sending to the ministers and VPK. Lev Grishin, who was 

a deputy minister at that time, attempted to bring Korolev and Glushko 

together in his office for a private meeting during the summer of 1960.14

Mishin and I were present during the conversation. With his innate sense of 

humor, Grishin very calmly said that in a matter such as selecting a type of 

liquid-propellant engine and propellant components for rockets, letters to the 

Central Committee were not the best way to solve the problem. “Why drag 

Khrushchev into matters that he tasked us to solve? Khrushchev trusts us, but 

it turns out we don’t trust each other.”

A heart-to-heart conversation didn’t pan out. Glushko began to speak 

very calmly, but in the process he stepped on Korolev’s pride, accusing him of 

“playing footsie” with the aviation industry, where he, Korolev, wanted to have 

new, obedient, but completely incompetent liquid-propellant rocket engine 

developers. Korolev exploded. Tit for tat, both began to fling such insults at 

each other that Grishin, Mishin, and I quickly left the office. Completely 

despondent, we stood out in the corridor for about 20 minutes.

“I’m worried they’ll get into a fistfight there...,” Grishin fretted. But both 

chief designers, red as boiled lobsters, came flying out of the office without 

looking at each other, or at us, as if they didn’t realize where they were, and 

bolted out of the ministry. Korolev didn’t want to see anyone and got in his 

car and drove away without offering Mishin or me a ride. Grishin summed 

 14.

69
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

up the situation, saying, “It seems to me that two members of the Russian 

intelligentsia just parted company after exhausting their entire repertoire of 

obscenities.” After this absolutely wild altercation, I don’t recall Korolev having 

a single warm, friendly conversation with Glushko.

The State Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics contains a globe of the 

world—a gift from V. P. Glushko to S. P. Korolev with the following inscription: 

“I send you this globe, Sergey, with the profound hope that one day we will 

see the living Earth at the same size with our own eyes. 25.4.1952.” This same 

museum contains an original telegram that Glushko received from Korolev 

on 25 October 1953. Below is a reproduction of the text from a Xerox copy 

that was kindly provided to me:

MOSCOW GORKOGO NO.43 APT 94

TO GLUSHKO VALENTIN PETROVICH

KAPUSTIN YAR 11:50

I EMBRACE YOU WARMLY FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY 

HEART MY DEAREST FRIEND AND CONGRATULATE 

YOU ON YOUR ELECTION TO THE USSR ACADEMY 

OF SCIENCE STOP I RECALL THE MOUNTAINS 

OF WORK THE DIFFICULTIES THE BITTERNESS 

OF FAILURE AND JOY OF ACHIEVEMENT STOP I 

WISH YOU MUCH GOOD HEALTH AND STRENGTH FOR 

GREAT NEW TRIUMPHS FOR THE GOOD OF OUR 

BELOVED SOVIET MOTHERLAND STOP I SEND MY 

GREETINGS TO YOUR MAMA MAGDA AND A STRONG 

HANDSHAKE TO YOU

YOUR SERGEY KOROLEV

In October 1953, Korolev and Glushko were simultaneously elected corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

I was on an expedition to the State Central Firing Range (GTsP) in 

Kapustin Yar with Korolev.15 At that time, the second phase of the flight tests 

on the R-5 rocket was under way.16 The rocket was equipped with a new engine 

 15.

70
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

developed by Glushko, which ran on liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol.17 In terms 

of its performance specifications, it greatly surpassed the preceding engines for 

the R-1 and R-2 rockets, which were basically reproductions of the German 

V-2 rocket engines. Glushko was also supposed to be at the firing range, but 

because of their elections to the Academy of Sciences, Korolev decided that 

one of them should stay in Moscow—just in case....

The news of their election brightened Korolev’s mood so much that no 

amount of flight headaches could dampen his joy. Glushko was still the person 

with whom he had to share these feelings. The words “my very best friend” 

were undoubtedly sincere and came from the bottom of his heart. Just seven 

years later, Korolev was no longer able to call Glushko “my very best friend.”

Korolev’s proposal to recruit Kuznetsov and Lyulka, chief designers of 

aircraft turbojet engines, to develop powerful liquid-propellant rocket engines 

[in the early 1960s] was accepted by Khrushchev and codified in decrees.

Glushko was the nation’s universally recognized chief authority on liquidpropellant rocket engines. Forty years later, it seems to me that he made a big 

mistake by refusing in the early 1960s to develop powerful oxygen-kerosene 

and oxygen-hydrogen engines. It took us 20 years to overtake the U.S. in this 

field with the production of the Energiya rocket! Glushko finally produced 

an oxygen-kerosene engine, about which Korolev did not even dare to dream 

in the early 1960s, when he occupied Korolev’s place as general designer of 

NPO Energiya.18

The schism in the chief designers’ camp over engines for intercontinental 

ballistic missiles and the new heavy rockets widened. Two new chief designers—Yangel and Chelomey—joined the dispute between the two pillars of Soviet 

rocket technology. Korolev’s monopoly in heavy launch vehicles threatened their 

active participation in future space programs. A powerful attack began on the 

government bureaucracy from various sides, as did criticism of earlier decisions.

Consequently, yet another decree appeared, signed by Khrushchev on 16 

April 1962: “On the Creation of Models of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, 

Global Rockets, and Launch Vehicles for Heavy Space Payloads.” This decree 

proposed limiting N-1 operations to the draft plan phase and a cost assessment of the rocket system. At the same time, it called for the development of 

a three-stage global orbital rocket on the basis of our R-9A, but using the new 

NK-9 engines being developed at Korolev’s initiative by Nikolay Kuznetsov 

 17.

71
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

in Kuybyshev, rather than using Glushko’s engines. The document also called 

for the production of Yangel’s new super-heavy R-56 rocket.

Then, on 29 April 1962, a decree was issued in which OKB-52, i.e., 

Chelomey, was tasked with developing the UR-500—the future Proton. The 

expert commission under the chairmanship of Academy of Science President 

Keldysh was not supposed to give its recommendations until it had reviewed 

the draft plans. The decrees made no mention of organizing operations specifically oriented toward piloted flights to the Moon.

Throughout 1962, the selection of the design and launch mass for 

the N-1 launch vehicle continued. According to Korolev’s concept, it would 

perform numerous scientific and defense missions and by no means just deliver 

an expedition to the Moon. In a letter to Sergey Kryukov, chief of the design 

department, Korolev wrote: “Work with M. V. Melnikov to determine the 

required weight for a flight using ERDs [electric rocket engines] to carry out 

the primary missions: Moon, Mars, Venus (i.e. the TMK).”19

The Ministry of Defense was not interested in super-heavy launch vehicles. 

At the same time, without the consent of military officers to directly participate 

in the development of such a launch vehicle, the expert commission could not 

approve the draft plan.

Korolev approved the draft plan of the rocket space systems based on the 

N-1 on 16 May 1962. The plan was issued in accordance with the decree of 

23 June 1960 mentioned above and officially responded to the latest decree 

of April 1962. It contained 29 volumes and eight appendices. The draft plan, 

which all of Korolev’s deputies, myself included, signed, assigned the following primary objectives:

a. Insert heavy space vehicles (KLA) into orbit around Earth to study the 

nature of cosmic radiation, the origins and development of the planets, 

solar radiation, the nature of gravity, and the physical conditions on the 

nearest planets, and to discover organic life-forms under conditions different from those on Earth, etc.20

b. The insertion of automatic and piloted heavy satellites into high orbits to 

relay television and radio broadcasts, for weather forecasting, etc.

 19.

72
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

c. When necessary, the insertion of heavy automatic and piloted military 

stations capable of staying in orbit for long periods of time and making it 

possible to perform a maneuver for the simultaneous orbital insertion of 

a large number of military satellites.

The plan declared the main phases for the further exploration of space:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

Execute circumlunar flight of a spacecraft with a crew of two or three 

missions capable of captivating thousands of enthusiasts. It is unfortunate that 

not only were none of these missions ever announced to the public, or even 

to the scientific community, but they were also shrouded under a “top secret” 

classification. One might ask us, “In 1962, did you really not understand 

that, aside from a lunar landing and the dispatching of automatic stations, the 

remaining phases should have been planned for the 21st century?” Korolev and 

everyone who signed the list of prospective missions had hoped to impart to 

them the status of State plans. However, in the higher echelons of power, aside 

from Khrushchev himself, there were no romantics who would be enthralled 

with interplanetary expeditions.

The draft plan proposed a three-stage N-1 launch vehicle with a launch 

mass of 2,200 tons capable of inserting a satellite with a mass of up to 75 

tons into a circular orbit with an altitude of 300 kilometers. All three stages 

of the rocket were designed for Kuznetsov’s liquid-propellant rocket engines 

using liquid oxygen and kerosene. The first stage—Block A—would be 

equipped with 24 engines each with 150 tons of thrust at liftoff. The second 

stage—Block B—and the third—Block V—had eight and four engines, 

respectively. Blocks A and B were equipped with Kuznetsov’s virtually identical 

73
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

NK-15 engines.21 Block V would have NK-9 engines with 40 tons of thrust 

(sorokatonniki).22

Back when the R-7 was still in the design phase, Mishin came out with the 

idea of controlling the rocket by boosting and throttling diametrically opposed 

engines. At that time, his idea was not met with approval: Glushko disagreed 

with regulating engine thrust over a broad range, which required diametrically 

opposed engines to create control moments by means of varying thrust.

On the N-1, 24 engines arranged around its 15-meter diameter made it 

possible to implement this idea, especially since the OKB-276 engine specialists 

did not oppose it. For them, the aircraft engine developers, the requirement of 

regulating thrust within the broadest limits was completely natural.

The structural layout of the rocket proposed in the draft plan was unconventional. Since the days of the R-2, we had been proud of the fact that we 

had been the first to implement the concept of integral tanks: the metal tanks 

were load-bearing and at the same time formed the outer shell of the rocket. 

All of our combat missiles and launch vehicles were constructed using this 

principle, as were the Americans’. Kryukov’s designers were studying a rocket 

model that used fuel and oxidizer tanks as a load-bearing structure. Beginning 

with the R-2 rocket, this principle had worked splendidly. The dimensions 

of the tanks of the first and second stages for the N-1 prevented them from 

being delivered from the Progress Factory in Kuybyshev to the firing range by 

rail, by ship, or by air.

A factory for the welding of the tanks, and the manufacture and assembly 

of all three stages of the rocket, had to be built at the firing range. The thickness 

of the metal of the load-bearing tanks was selected taking into consideration the 

internal pressure and the static and dynamic loads on the structure of the entire 

rocket. The technology at that time could not ensure the weld reliability and 

strength on a shell of that thickness. For this reason, after heated arguments, 

the designers persuaded Korolev to forgo what had become the traditional 

rocket technology design principle of integral tanks. The structural layout of 

the rocket was an external load-bearing shell with thinner-walled spherical fuel 

tanks, engines, and all the systems arranged inside it.

To weld the spherical tanks, Boris Paton, director of the Ye. O. Paton 

Institute of Electric Welding, proposed a new technology and special welding 

equipment. But in this case, the dimensions of the spherical tanks precluded 

 21.

74
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

their transportation from the factory to assemble them at the firing range. The 

tanks would have to be manufactured right at the cosmodrome.

By no means had everything been considered in the design layout of the 

rocket and its control system. Arguments continued over the methods for 

delivering the untransportable parts. According to the decree, flight development tests were supposed to begin in 1965. Over the three years that remained 

before this deadline, they would first have to build a modern rocket-assembly 

plant on the barren steppes and then master a new tank-welding process, 

assemble the stages, and put the entire rocket as a whole there. All sorts of 

rocket assembly operations and testing, except for firing tests, would have to 

be performed for the first time at the firing range. This meant that, among 

other things, they would have to build a residential town for the new factory’s 

workers and specialists.

It was proposed that the project for the military be implemented in two 

phases. First, on the basis of the second and third stages, produce a separate 

N-11 rocket with a launch mass of 750 tons, capable of inserting a satellite with 

a mass up to 25 tons into Earth orbit. Then produce the actual super-heavy 

three-stage N-1 rocket with a launch mass of 2,200 tons. Despite its obvious 

logic, this proposal to begin operations on the N-11 ultimately found no support from expert commissions, from the military, or in subsequent decrees.

In history, one should not resort to the “what ifs,” but I am not a historian and I can allow myself to conjecture how everything would have 

unfolded if our 1962 proposal had been enacted. There is no doubt that 

we would have produced the N-11 considerably sooner than the first N-1 

flight model. We could have conducted developmental testing on the second 

and third stages of the rocket on the firing rigs near Zagorsk at NII-229 (as 

later happened).23 The launch systems that were constructed for the N-1 

would have been simplified to be used for the N-11 during the first phase. 

We missed a real opportunity to produce an environmentally clean launch 

vehicle for a 25-metric-ton payload. To this day, world cosmonautics has a 

very acute need for such a clean launch vehicle. But at that time, that idea 

could have interfered with Chelomey’s proposals for the UR-500 and Yangel’s 

proposals for the R-56.

 23.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Today, as I write this in 2007, Roscosmos is attempting to correct this 

historic error, having called for the development of the Angara launch vehicle 

in the Federal Space Program in the 21st century.24

The lunar landing expedition was still not the launch vehicle’s primary 

mission in the draft plan [in 1962]. The mated configuration of two vehicles 

(lunar orbital vehicle and the landing LK) and booster Blocks G and D was 

very prosaically referred to as L3. Actually, there was not yet a design for the L3 

vehicle in 1962. Moreover, to avoid getting anyone riled up, as S. P. sometimes 

used to say, we intentionally did not calculate the distribution of the masses for 

the lunar complex, and in particular, the requisite mass of the lunar (landing) 

vehicle to perform a landing with a maneuver, a reliable liftoff from the lunar 

surface, and subsequent rendezvous with the orbital vehicle.

At the plenary session of the expert commission Korolev reported that the 

draft presented only the N-1 launch vehicle without the payload. He listed the 

missions that such a launch vehicle would carry out in the following order:

•	

•	

•	

•	

Defense missions, including a permanent system (several hundred satellites) for tracking, detecting, and destroying enemy missiles;

Scientific missions;

Human exploration of the Moon and closest planets of the solar system 

(Mars and Venus); and

Global communications and radio and television broadcast relay.

It is interesting that the first mission on this list predated the development 

of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) concept, which the Americans started 

20 years later!25 And 10 years after that, in 1995, the U.S. sponsored an effort 

to create a system of several hundred satellites for the purposes of global communications. In 1962, in his report, Korolev referred to a similar system as an 

“orbital belt.” The hundreds of satellites comprising this belt could have been 

used for global monitoring and to observe everything happening on Earth 

and in near-Earth space.

In the end, two rather large global personal communications systems were 

deployed, Iridium and Globalstar, in which, all told, more that 100 satellites are 

 24.

76
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

operating. The historical paradox is that to create this orbital belt, the Americans 

used Russian and Ukrainian launch vehicles: the Proton, Zenit, and Soyuz.26

Even though a single UR-500 rocket was not yet ready in 1962, the 

decision to develop it was one of the reasons why the expert commission did 

not support OKB-1’s proposal on the N-11 rocket. In July 1962, the expert 

commission approved our draft plan for the N-1 launch vehicle capable of 

inserting a satellite with a payload mass of 75 tons into circular orbit at an 

altitude of 300 kilometers. Academy of Sciences President M. V. Keldysh 

approved the findings of the expert commission on the N-1 project, which 

named defense rather than lunar missions as the primary tasks for the N-1. 

The VPK kept a very attentive eye on the status of operations on the N-1. 

Despite the general background of success in the piloted space programs, the 

triumphant press conferences, and lavish postflight receptions at the Kremlin, 

Khrushchev once again reminded us of the N-1.

On 24 September 1962, a new Central Committee and Council of 

Ministers decree on the N-1 came out. The main purpose of the document 

consisted of the approval of the basic operations and the beginning of flightdevelopmental tests of the launch vehicle in 1965. Despite the fact that the 

main chief designers had worked with Korolev on the document’s text under 

the supervision of Deputy Chairman of the State Committee on Defense 

Technology (GKOT) Georgiy Tyulin, its specified deadlines for wrapping up 

the work in the various phases prompted many ironic comments among the 

main authors.27

In the preceding decrees of 1960 and 1961, we were ordered to produce 

the N-1 in 1965. In April 1962, the same government and Central Committee 

and the same First Secretary of the Central Committee Khrushchev proposed 

that we limit ourselves strictly to the draft plan. The very cool attitude of the 

Ministry of Defense toward the N-1 project and the influence of Yangel’s and 

Chelomey’s proposals on Khrushchev resulted in the appearance of this interim 

decree. A year before this decree came out, Leonid Smirnov, the director of 

 26.

77
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Dnepropetrovsk Factory No. 586, was named deputy chairman of GKOT, and 

soon thereafter, minister of the USSR—GKOT chairman.28

Considering the nation’s very difficult economic situation and Khrushchev’s 

eagerness to find funding for residential construction, agricultural improvements, and the production of fertilizers, he could have halted the funding of 

the N-1 altogether. In the spring of 1962 Khrushchev was still wavering, but 

the decree of 24 September showed that the wavering ended in the autumn. 

The new decree ordered that rig testing of the third-stage on-board engines end 

in 1964, and of the second- and first-stage engines in 1965. The rig testing of 

the engines integrated into stages and propulsion systems was to end in the 

first quarter of 1965. Completion of the launch site construction, its startup, 

and beginning of flight tests—all were to happen in 1965.

Vladimir Barmin, who was stubbornly against signing his initials to what 

was in his opinion an absurd plan, approached Korolev and stridently declared:

“According to the government decree, I officially have the right to sign 

the certificate of clearance for the first launch at the launch site with all its 

systems and facilities on 31 December. Until this document appears, you, 

Sergey Pavlovich, do not have the right to deliver the flight rocket to the 

launch pad. And there won’t be anything to transport it on because, at your 

recommendation, I also have the right to clear the erector for it no later than 

31 December. You understand that the builders and I will use our rights in full. 

What does that leave us for preparation and launch? Zero point zero seconds 

right on New Year’s!”

Many similar sarcastic remarks were expressed as well in the offices of 

the VPK, Council of Ministers, and even in the Central Committee. But in 

the “halls of power” they threw up their hands—these deadlines were coordinated with Korolev, and he not only didn’t protest, but he even declared that 

no one had given us the right to revise the dates for the beginning of flightdevelopmental testing, which had been set by previous decisions of the Central 

Committee and Council of Ministers.

Besides the unrealistic deadlines, there was in fact one more serious problem, which evoked a pained reaction from Korolev. With Korolev’s consent, 

an item on the construction of a rig for technological firing tests (OTI) for 

the first stage had been crossed out of the draft of the latest decree at some 

stage during the coordination process.29 When the draft plan was issued, 

Voskresenskiy temporarily came to terms with this, but now he went on an 

 28.

78
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

all-out offensive: he demanded the construction of rigs for full-scale testing of 

each stage, including the first stage with all 24 of its engines.

Korolev and Voskresenskiy had fundamentally different opinions on matters 

of experimental operations. Korolev wanted to completely avoid the need to 

build new and very expensive firing test rigs for the rocket stages. He hoped that 

the firing test rigs for all the stages could be limited to single-unit firing tests 

on engines after adapting the already existing rigs of NII-229. Voskresenskiy 

stubbornly insisted on designing and constructing the rigs, making it possible 

to conduct firing tests on the rocket stages under conditions that were as close 

to real as possible.

Novostroyka director Gleb Tabakov supported Voskresenskiy.30 Novostroyka

was the unclassified name of the former branch of NII-88 in the Zagorsk 

area.31 After becoming independent, this branch was later called NII-229, 

and then NIIkhimmash.

Tabakov and I had been colleagues at one time—in 1949 we both worked 

as deputy chief engineers at NII-88. Before that, I often bumped into Tabakov 

when he was taking higher engineering courses at the Moscow Higher Technical 

School (MVTU) where I taught a 

course in control systems.32 Later 

I ran into him at Novostroyka near 

Zagorsk when we were conducting 

firing rig tests on rockets. Beginning 

in 1948, Tabakov worked as chief 

engineer at Novostroyka, then after 

a break for design work, he returned 

to Novostroyka in 1956 as director. In 1958, Tabakov became my 

neighbor on 3rd Ostankinskaya 

Street, and so our families also 

became acquainted.

From the author’s archives.

Gleb Tabakov had a storied career in 

the Soviet space program, beginning 

as director of NII-229 and ending as 

a deputy minister of general machine 

building.

 30.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Voskresenskiy and I—particularly Voskresenskiy—formed very trusting 

relationships with Tabakov. He often told us: more than 10 years’ experience 

developing firing rigs, putting them into operation, conducting firing tests, 

fighting fires and explosions, “plus common sense” cry out for and demand 

full-scale firing rig tests for the first stage of the N-1, but.... That’s when the 

“buts” started. It wasn’t possible to build such a rig at NII-229. That is to say, 

it would be possible to build such a grandiose structure, but there was no way 

to deliver the first stage there. In actuality, the first stage of the N-1 rocket 

would first be manufactured and then assembled in the new “large” MIK at 

the firing range. It was not transportable. For that reason, they also needed to 

build a firing test rig at the firing range near the launch sites and use all their 

available fueling, measurement, launch control, security, and other services.... 

But if you manufacture the first stage for the sake of performing tests on it 

right at Novostroyka—that means another factory needs to be built! So wouldn’t 

it be better if one of the two launch sites at the firing range were used as a 

firing test rig? But that requires time and finances. Tabakov would talk calmly, 

simply acknowledging this departure from the experience and traditions that 

had emerged in rocket technology, while Voskresenskiy would fly into a rage, 

without regard for the authority of Mishin, Korolev, or the government leaders 

standing over all of us.

A structural diagram of the lunar landing expedition had not yet 

been selected before the end of 1963. Initially our designers proposed a version with a good mass margin. It called for a three-launch configuration with 

assembly of the space rocket with a total launch mass of 200 tons (including 

fuel) in near-Earth assembly orbit. The payload mass for each of the three N-1 

launches did not exceed 75 tons. The mass of the system for the flight to the 

Moon in this version reached 62 metric tons, which was almost 20 tons more 

than the corresponding mass of Apollo. The mass of the system executing the 

landing on the Moon’s surface was 21 tons in our proposals, while it was 15 

tons for Apollo. But, on the other hand, we had not just three launches in 

our configuration, but four. It was proposed that a crew of two to three be 

inserted into space on rocket 11A511—that is what the future rocket based 

on the R-7A was named in late 1963.33 The Progress Factory was supposed to 

manufacture it for piloted launches of 7K (Soyuz) spacecraft.

 33.

80
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

Two giants of the Soviet missile and space program: Valentin Glushko (left) and 

Mikhail Yangel.

From the author’s archives.

Theoretically, the three-launch configuration would enable us to compensate for the large number of advantages of the American design, which used 

hydrogen fuel for the second and third stages of the Saturn V launch vehicle. 

Of course, in terms of cost-effectiveness and general system reliability at that 

time, we were losing.

If Korolev had exhibited his inherent firmness in the subsequent defense 

of this configuration when the project was passing through all the levels of 

bureaucracy, the history of the N-1 might have been different. However, the 

situation developed in such a way that he was forced to compromise in order 

to simplify and reduce the costs of the project. The opposition from Chelomey, 

Glushko, Yangel, and the Ministry of Defense proved to be too powerful.

On 17 March 1964, Korolev met with Khrushchev. Mishin, Nikolay 

Kuznetsov, and Pilyugin accompanied him. In his report to Khrushchev 

about the status of work on the N-1 project, Korolev put particular emphasis on the need to develop hydrogen and nuclear engines and to optimize 

docking. According to Mishin and Pilyugin, on the whole, Khrushchev 

supported proposals for the promotion of lunar operations, but he displayed 

absolutely no enthusiasm for the idea of stepping up operations on hydrogen 

and nuclear engines.

After the meeting with Khrushchev, there were no subsequent decisions to 

revive the operations. The VPK and State Committees (or ministries) were preoccupied with implementing the programs of Chelomey, Yangel, and Makeyev 

81
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

for the series production of combat missiles and preparing the UR-500 for 

flight tests. As for OKB-1, all of the attention of VPK and State Committee 

on Defense Technology officials was directed at ensuring the launch of the 

three-seat Voskhod vehicle and determining the causes for the streak of failures 

of the four-stage 8K78. And really, how is a highly placed official supposed 

to react to complaints about insufficient funding for a program involving a 

lunar expedition in the distant future, if this very pushy chief designer has had 

four failures in a row during launches of automatic stations to Venus and for 

the soft landing of automatic vehicles on the Moon on 21 March, 27 March, 

2 April, and 20 April?34

A week after the failed launch of Ye-6 No. 5 (20 April 1964), I was in 

Korolev’s office to explain the causes of the failure in the power supply system 

between Blocks I and L and to explain the reason why a heated argument had 

flared up between Iosifyan and Pilyugin over the root cause.35 I was expecting to be grilled and accused of poor quality control on our part. However, 

instead of this, Korolev began to speak, with a pessimism that was rare for 

him, about the very difficult situation surrounding all of our future plans. 

State Committee and VPK officials were not monitoring the progress of operations on the N-1 at the majority of our subcontractors at all. The Ministry of 

Defense had practically cut off funding for the construction at the launch site 

and engineering facility. He continued, “Our old friend Kalmykov, to whom 

you are partial, is not only not involved with the production of N-1 systems, 

but he even proposed to Smirnov that these operations be postponed for a 

couple of years because the radio electronic industry is overloaded with more 

important defense orders.”36

Korolev told me for the first time that Glushko actively supported 

Chelomey in his development of the super-heavy UR-700 rocket, promising 

to produce engines with 600 tons of thrust running on nitrogen tetroxide 

and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine. According to Korolev, Glushko had 

 34.

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

not only agreed to make powerful engines for Chelomey, but he was also 

taking the liberty of criticizing the design and layout of the N-1. Supposedly, 

somewhere among the top brass the opinion already existed that Korolev and 

Glushko had been the first to produce the R-7 using a cluster configuration, 

and now Korolev was rejecting this progressive path for the N-1 and Glushko 

considered this a mistake.

“Under these circumstances we need to reconsider the concept of the 

three-launch profile with a landing on the Moon. The whole time they will 

accuse us of having a complicated, unreliable, and expensive version compared 

with the Americans’ single-launch profile. But the Americans already have a 

hydrogen engine and it’s already flying, while all our engine specialists have 

for the time being are promises,” concluded Korolev.

Among the ministers/State Committee chairmen who were VPK 

members, only Kalmykov found time to seriously study the situation with the 

future payloads for the N-1 and with the lunar vehicles in particular.

In 1963, the organizations of chief designers Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, Bykov, 

and Rosselevich were subordinate to the State Committee on Radio Electronics 

(GKRE), which Minister Kalmykov headed.37 In April 1963, instead of making 

a soft landing, Luna-4 flew past the Moon due to a control system error. I wrote 

about this in detail in Hot Days of the Cold War, volume III of my memoirs.38

Soon after the investigation into the actual causes, Kalmykov telephoned 

Korolev and asked him whether he would have any objection to my coming 

over to see him in order to acquaint him in depth with control problems for 

a soft landing on the Moon. Not only did Korolev not object, but right then 

and there he scheduled me to visit Kalmykov and at the same time to tell him 

about our problems with Ryazanskiy and Pilyugin as far as their inactivity in 

developing a radio complex and control system for the lunar landing expedition vehicles.

When I was one on one with Kalmykov, to my surprise he confessed that 

rather than wanting to find out why the spacecraft flew past the Moon on 

6 April 1963, he was more interested in the state of affairs with the designs of 

the vehicles and their systems for the execution of a piloted landing expedition 

 37.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

in 1967.39 Korolev and the chief designers directly subordinate to Kalmykov 

had proposed this date in the draft decree that they had prepared. I was not 

prepared for this turn in the topic of our conversation and began by telling 

him what the Americans were doing, rather than by describing our developments. In the course of our casual conversation, Kalmykov realized that at this 

point we not only had a poor grasp of control technology, but we had not even 

decided who was responsible for what and, most importantly, who would be 

general designer of the entire control systems complex.

Kalmykov had gotten a very good feel for what sort of complex this would 

be and what sorts of problems it would entail during the development of air 

defense (PVO) and missile defense systems (PRO) while working with such 

headstrong chief designers as Raspletin and Kisunko.40 After Kalmykov had 

pulled out of me an approximate list of problems that needed to be solved, he 

asked: “Tell me frankly, forgetting for a minute that I am a minister, a member 

of the Central Committee and all that—you want to do all of this in three 

years so that in 1967, the 50th anniversary of the Revolution, you can have a 

fully tested system, and on 7 November, after returning from the Moon, our 

cosmonauts can stand on Lenin’s Mausoleum [and watch the parade go by]? 

Is this really what you thought?”

I confessed that I wasn’t certain that this date was realistic, but if a later 

date were proposed, we would risk having the project prolonged indefinitely.

“This is not a reason,” objected Kalmykov. “I have already consulted with 

Ryazanskiy and Pilyugin. I believe that everyone, and your OKB-1 first and 

foremost, needs not three years, but six or seven years. Considering the actual 

work load on the industry, you all deserve to have monuments erected to you in 

your lifetime if our cosmonauts fly to the Moon and return safely before 1970.”

Soon after this conversation with Kalmykov, Korolev telephoned me on 

the direct line. He was so angry he almost shouted: “Kalmykov sent a letter 

to Smirnov and to the Central Committee. He is proposing that the dates for 

the development of the lunar vehicles and spacecraft for the N-1 in general be 

postponed indefinitely. I will not let this stand!” And Korolev actually personally 

composed and sent a letter protesting Kalmykov’s position to the same recipients.

 39.

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

My neighbor Bushuyev on 3rd Ostankinskaya Street, known today as 

Academician Korolev Street, had the habit of stepping out for a breath of fresh 

air late in the evening before going to bed.41 Usually he called me up requesting 

that I keep him company. On such evening strolls around Ostankino, which in 

those days was not yet polluted by automobile exhaust, we shared our thoughts 

more calmly and in greater depth than under our hectic work conditions. 

Korolev had placed the main design responsibility for the L3 on Bushuyev. His 

designers Feoktistov, Ryazanov, Frumkin, Sotnikov, and Timchenko managed 

to put two and two together and convince him that the situation with mass 

for future lunar vehicles in a single-launch scenario was already critical.42 In 

this regard, Bushuyev had very pointed squabbles with Mishin, who at that 

time did not consider the Moon to be a primary objective and did not wish 

to listen to proposals for launch vehicle modifications.

“If, with this launch mass,” lamented Bushuyev, “we could use hydrogen 

on the second and third stages, then instead of 75 tons, we would have at least 

all of 100 tons in Earth-orbit.”

This figure of 100 tons was mentioned in the draft plan as what we could 

look forward to when hydrogen engines were introduced on the second and 

third stages. This was understood up and down the chain of command, but for 

the time being none of the engine specialists had developed liquid-hydrogen 

rocket engines, and the leadership at that time couldn’t order them to.

That’s when Bushuyev and I arrived at a seditious thought. If the nation were 

ruled by “Uncle Joe” and someone reported to him that new liquid-hydrogen 

rocket engines needed to be developed to solve a problem that he had assigned, 

you can bet that he would call in everyone he needed, set deadlines, ask how 

he could help—and we would have engines as good as the Americans’.43 Like 

everyone else, great scientists, and especially chief designers, are not without sin 

and are not free of vanity. If you combine that with fear and give them everything 

they ask for to enhance the design bureau and production facility, they could 

work wonders. Stalin understood this and used it to the full extent.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Designing the L3 vehicles and rocket stages and also developing the 

plans for the lunar expedition began in earnest in late 1963. Over the following 

two years the engineering drawings of the actual rocket were released and the 

predraft plans of the lunar vehicles appeared.

Dozens of government officials needed to grasp the immense production 

and technical scale of the entire lunar program, to determine the gross volumes of capital construction, and to make preliminary calculations of the total 

required expenditures. The economics of those years did not require very precise 

calculations. Nevertheless, the veteran Gosplan economists, with whom Korolev 

usually consulted, warned that the actual figures of the required expenditures 

would not make it past the Ministry of Finance and Gosplan.

44 In addition to 

expenditures on the nuclear-missile shield, the USSR needed to find funding 

for the new proposals for Chelomey’s and Yangel’s heavy-lift rockets. This was 

the most aggravating thing. Even the officials understood what a disadvantage 

it was to disperse funding for super-heavy launch vehicles. “But even that’s not 

the most important thing,” said Korolev once after his latest meeting in the 

offices of the Council of Ministers. “On Khrushchev’s command, all of them 

are feverishly searching for a couple of billion rubles for agriculture.”

The figures that had been submitted to the Central Committee and Council 

of Ministers were understated. The officials from the State Committee on 

Defense Technology, Council of Ministers, and Gosplan made it clear that it 

was not a good idea to frighten the Politburo with documents calling for many 

billions of rubles. Otherwise, Chelomey and Yangel would start arguing that 

their projects were much cheaper. Georgiy Pashkov, who had a great deal of 

experience with Gosplan politics, advised: “Turn out production of at least four 

launch vehicles per year and get everyone you need involved in the work, but 

according to a single timetable. And then we’ll issue yet another decree. There 

is hardly anyone who would decide to shut down a project of that scale. It’s 

going to work—we’ll find the money!”45

Ustinov tasked NII-88 to conduct an objective comparative assessment of 

the lunar exploration capabilities of the N-1 (whose military index was 11A52), 

UR-500 (8K82), and R-56 (8K68) to sort out the design controversies of Korolev, 

Chelomey, and Yangel. The calculations of Mozzhorin and his specialists showed 

 44.

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

that to ensure absolute superiority over the U.S., a 200-ton rocket complex 

should be assembled in Earth orbit using three N-1 rockets.46 This would require 

three N-1 rockets or 20 UR-500 rockets. In this case, we could manage a lunar 

landing of a vehicle weighing 21 metric tons and return a vehicle weighing 5 

tons to Earth. All the economic calculations were in favor of the N-1. Despite 

the positive assessment of the leading 

institute [NII-88], Korolev firmly 

decided to move forward only with 

the single-launch format.

“While the going is good, do a 

study of a two-launch scenario with 

your designers,” I recommended to 

Bushuyev during our next evening 

stroll. “Mozzhorin is right. We won’t 

manage to overtake the Americans 

using a single-launch scenario now, 

and with a two-launch scenario, we 

might be two or three years behind 

them, but we can land five or six 

people on the Moon instead of two 

and throw a real party up there for 

the whole universe.”

Bushuyev didn’t support my 

idea. That sort of study couldn’t 

be conducted without the knowledge of Mishin and Korolev, and 

he would end up in serious trouble. 

Korolev demanded that the designers study ways to increase the loadbearing capacity of the N-1 launch 

vehicle alone. After that came a 

series of proposals for modifications of the launch vehicle, first and 

Alexander Shliadinsky

The final configuration of the N-1 

rocket (with the six extra engines on 

the first stage).

 46.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

foremost, the installation of six more engines on the first stage and, unlike the 

Americans’ layout, the appearance of fourth and fifth stages—Block G and 

Block D for the boost to the Moon. The launch mass of the N1-L3, taking the 

new proposals into account, had grown to 2,750 tons. All the measures made 

it possible to increase the in-orbit payload mass from 75 tons to 93 tons. But 

we still needed to work and work on these ideas!

Under these circumstances, the deadlines specified in the decrees for the 

beginning of flight-developmental tests in 1965 looked absurd. Everyone 

up and down the chain of command understood this. We needed an official 

reason to revise the deadlines and, finally, a decision about the main mission 

for the super-heavy N-1 launch vehicle that was under development. On 

19 June 1964, the Central Committee and Council of Ministers issued a 

decree allowing the deadlines for the beginning of flight-developmental tests 

to be postponed to 1966.

Ryazanskiy had this to say about that: “Fox terriers get their tails docked 

when they’re puppies. But in our case, so that it won’t be so painful, they’re 

going to chop off a little piece every year.”

Everyone knew that shifting the deadline back a year wouldn’t save us—

common sense called for the deadlines for the beginning of flight-developmental 

tests to be moved back at least three years. But no one dared go to the Central 

Committee and then to the Politburo with such seditious proposals. This same 

decree calling for a technical and scientific expert review of controversial issues 

established a council on the N-1 complex under the chairmanship of Keldysh.

On 23 June 1964, Korolev convened the Council of Chief Designers to 

discuss operations on the N-1 in view of the latest decree. In his introductory 

speech, Korolev outlined the state of affairs, taking the opportunity to say that 

the two design schools of engine specialists had not helped in the selection of 

the type of liquid-propellant rocket engine and had delayed the design process.

Korolev informed them that there was a chance that another decree would 

come out, which would finally say that a landing expedition to the Moon was 

the main mission for the N-1. Then, going up to a poster, he briefly discussed 

and showed what the whole rocket complex would look like for the flight 

to the Moon. The three-stage N-1 launch vehicle would insert the upper 

stage—the payload—into Earth orbit. The following were installed under the 

fairing of the upper stage: Block G, which would initiate acceleration toward 

the Moon; Block D, which would accelerate and brake to make the transition 

into lunar orbit and brake to descend from lunar orbit; and two vehicles—the 

Lunar Orbital Vehicle (LOK) and the Lunar (landing) Vehicle (LK). Each of 

the vehicles had its own propulsion system. On the LOK this was Block I, 

and on the LK—Block Ye. An Emergency Rescue System (SAS) was mounted 

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

over the fairing.47 The mass of this system was also included in the total mass 

of the launch vehicle’s payload.

Keldysh, who had nodded off, woke with a start and remarked that our 

greatest shortcoming was the fact that there was no hope that the liquidhydrogen engine would appear in the coming year. In his opinion, the chief 

designers of engines, who had not fulfilled the preceding government decisions 

with regard to the hydrogen problem, bore the responsibility for this lack of 

progress. Korolev stood up for the engine specialists and said that we were 

already developing a hydrogen block for the upper stages. This would be the 

booster block instead of Blocks G and D to set the spacecraft on a trajectory 

toward the Moon. He noted that “We are conducting the design with reference 

to Isayev’s hydrogen engines with 7 to 8 tons of thrust. Lyulka’s OKB-165 is 

working on an engine for the third stage with up to 40 tons of thrust.” If we 

managed to build a third stage using these engines, we would get rid of all our 

mass deficit problems for the lunar expedition.

Glushko did not miss the opportunity to remind us that three years ago 

he had proposed developing a launch vehicle that ran on high-boiling propellant components.

“Today we would already have closed-loop configuration engines with 150 

tons of thrust each for all of the stages,” he declared.48

Keldysh suddenly pounced on Glushko: “Valentin Petrovich, you have had 

more opportunity to develop powerful oxygen-kerosene and oxygen-hydrogen 

engines than the others. Returning to conversations about high-boiling components 

for the N-1 today means killing the project completely. All the decisions on that 

matter have been made. We don’t have time for arguments about the selection of 

engines for the N-1. We must clearly define the priority objective for the launch 

vehicle—this landing expedition to the Moon. We need to immediately nail down 

the number of cosmonauts—two or three, the entire expedition plan, and revisit 

the problem of reliability. First and foremost, I’m concerned about reliability issues.”

“Reliability is exactly what I had in mind,” Glushko retorted to Keldysh 

very calmly. “The engine that we developed for the UR-500 has been optimized 

and has already been handed over for series production.”49

 47.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Pilyugin felt compelled to remind us that in addition to the engines there 

was also the control system: “We must unequivocally understand that we still 

have to develop a system for the flight to the Moon with controlled landing 

and return, and not simply some sort of all-purpose system. I request that 

Sergey Pavlovich provide us with comprehensive baseline data for the upper 

blocks and the vehicles. This is new work for us.”

Barmin also spoke up: “We have managed to speed up construction of 

the launch site lately. There are a lot of problems there. But keep in mind that 

we have made no provisions for hydrogen. If you decide to use it, even if only 

for the booster block, for us this will be a new assignment, new funding, and 

new deadlines.”

In closing, Korolev asked the Council to make the following decisions:

•	

•	

•	

•	

Approve the configuration proposed by OKB-1 for the N-1 heavy launch 

vehicle;

Consider a landing expedition to the Moon to be the launch vehicle’s 

primary mission;

Use liquid oxygen and kerosene as the propellant components for the 

launch vehicle’s rocket blocks, but at the same time speed up work on 

hydrogen propellant; and

Task all project participants with studying the plans and schedules stemming from the decree of 19 June, and in a month convene once again to 

consider one more decree, which would be issued in conjunction with our 

proposal about the lunar expedition as a primary objective.

Everyone present nodded in approval, but Glushko, despite Keldysh’s reprimand, said that if a protocol would be drawn up on this meeting, then he had 

a dissenting opinion regarding the reliability of the engines under development 

at OKB-276. This comment was directed at Nikolay Kuznetsov, who responded 

that he had never rejected the advice and assistance of OKB-456 and would 

be very grateful if, to speed up the optimization process, Valentin Petrovich 

would make available his advice and test rigs. Glushko gave no response, and 

on that note, Korolev closed the Council session.

On behalf of all the chiefs, Korolev and Keldysh asked for VPK 

Chairman Leonid Smirnov to resolve the matter about the primary objective 

at the governmental level. Smirnov was in no hurry to approach Khrushchev 

on his own. It was high time to face up to the radical decisions on a whole 

gamut of problems—deadlines, construction of the factory and launch complexes, production of the lunar vehicles, and finally crew training. Korolev and 

Keldysh, with Ustinov’s support, approached Khrushchev: “Are we going to 

fly to the Moon or not?” These were Khrushchev’s instructions: “Don’t let the 

Americans have the Moon! Whatever resources you need, we’ll find them.”

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

The Americans prompted the decision. This appeal fell on fertile soil. 

On their desks VPK leaders had copies of “white TASS,” which had reported 

about the flight of the heavy Saturn I rocket, which inserted the main unit 

of the lunar orbital vehicle into geocentric orbit for a trial run on 28 May.50

On 3 August 1964, a decree was issued that mentioned for the first time 

that the N-1 rocket’s most crucial objective in space exploration was to explore 

the Moon by landing expeditions on its surface and then returning them to 

Earth. The second most important item of the decree was new deadlines. The 

year 1966 remained in place as the starting date for flight-developmental tests, 

and a new date appeared for the expedition to the Moon—1967 to 1968.

This decree was the first to name the main chief designers and organizations 

that would be responsible not only for the N-1 launch vehicle, but also for the 

entire N1-L3 complex (the designation L3 denoted the part of the complex 

that was needed only for the flight to the Moon).

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

OKB-1 was the lead organization for the system as a whole and for the 

development of Blocks G and D (including the engines for Block D) and 

the lunar orbital and lunar landing vehicles;

OKB-276 (N. D. Kuznetsov) was responsible for developing the engine 

of Block G;

OKB-586 (M. K. Yangel) was tasked with developing the rocket Block Ye 

of the lunar vehicle and the engine for this block;

OKB-2 (A. M. Isayev) was responsible for developing the propulsion 

system (tanks, pneumohydraulic systems, and engine) of Block I of the 

lunar orbital vehicle;

NII-944 (V. I. Kuznetsov) was assigned to develop the control system for 

the lunar complex;

NIIAP (N. A. Pilyugin) was tasked with developing the motion control 

system for the lunar landing and lunar orbital vehicles;

NII-885 (M. S. Ryazanskiy) was responsible for the radio measuring 

complex;

 50.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

•	

•	

GSKB Spetsmash (V. P. Barmin) was responsible for the L3 system groundbased equipment complex;51 and

OKB MEI (A. F. Bogomolov) was tasked with developing the mutual 

measurement monitoring system for vehicle rendezvous in lunar orbit.52

The addendum to the decree containing a complete list of all those involved 

in developing systems for the L3 was a bulky document that showed that “no 

one and nothing was forgotten.” Nevertheless, baffled questions about the 

detailed breakdown of work—who issued requirements, to whom, and for 

which systems—continued to be asked, and answers to them were written in 

all sorts of individual resolutions and protocols for another three years.

Once the text of the government decree had been received, Korolev decided 

to convene a wide-ranging technical review meeting in his office right away 

to explain to everyone what we had come up with and what we would ask of 

those involved in the project. This meeting took place on 13 August 1964. 

All the chief designers; chiefs of the State Committees’ main directorates; 

Council of National Economy (Sovnarkhoz) chairmen involved in the program; 

officials from the VPK and Central Committee; officials from the Air Force 

Command, rocket forces, and Ministry of Defense space assets; representatives of the Academy of Sciences; and directors of NII-4, NII-88, and the 

firing range were invited.53 Ryabikov, Pashkov, Zverev, Afanasyev, and Tyulin 

attended the meeting.54

In his opening comments, Korolev remarked that this was the first 

representative-level gathering for the lunar program. And the reason for this 

was the latest decree of 3 August, which challenged us with a crucial government 

mission. We, OKB-1, were the head organization, but each of us was personally 

 51.

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

From the author’s archives.

These men were the principal architects behind the design of the N-1. From left to right, 

Yakov Kolyako, Sergey Kryukov, and Pavel Yermolayev. Here, they are shown looking over 

a drawing of the L-1 circumlunar spacecraft.

responsible for that part of the system specified in the decree. Next, Kryukov 

and Bushuyev, referring to posters, presented the schematic diagram of the 

N1-L3, its basic performance data, and its flight program. It was difficult for 

Bushuyev to deliver his report. The draft plan of the lunar vehicles had not yet 

been completed, the specifications had not been drawn up for the subcontractors, and the whole plan for the flight to the Moon was still very rough.

At the risk of overloading my memoirs with details, I nevertheless feel that 

I need to discuss the main issue and, in particular, provide a description of 

the lunar expedition rocket-space complex. The N1-L3 rocket space complex 

consisted of the three-stage N-1 rocket and the L3 lunar complex. The N-1 

was a three-stage rocket with transverse division of structurally similar stages. 

Intermediate trusses connected the stages, ensuring the free escape of gases 

when the engines of the subsequent stage started up.

Liquid-propellant rocket engines operating on oxygen and kerosene developed at OKB-276 were used on all three stages of the rocket. The rocket’s 

load-bearing structure was a braced shell taking up the external loads. Spherical 

propellant tanks were housed inside this frame. In all the stages, the fuel 

tanks were in front. The first-stage (Block A) propulsion system comprised 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

24 NK-15 engines with a thrust of 150 tons each on the ground. Kryukov 

reported that we were conducting a study to see if the number of engines 

on the first stage could be increased to 30. Six engines would be mounted 

around an inner ring, and the 24 engines on the outer ring would remain in 

their places. The second stage (Block B) had eight of the same type of engines, 

but with NK-15V high-altitude nozzles. The third stage (Block V) had four 

NK-19 engines with high-altitude nozzles. All the engines would operate on 

a closed-loop configuration, i.e., with after-burning of the gas after passing 

through the turbopump assembly.

The instruments of the control and telemetry systems were arranged in 

special compartments in their respective stages. The main instruments of the 

control system for the three stages were in the third-stage instrument compartment. The accepted aerodynamic layout made it possible to minimize 

the requisite control moments and to control pitch and yaw by using the 

principle of thrust offset of opposing engines on the first and second stages. 

Special control nozzles would be used for roll control. The special KORD 

diagnostic system was being developed to monitor engine operation.55 This 

system would issue an engine shutdown command when signs of possible 

failure occurred. The diametrically opposite engine would shut down simultaneously. Unlike all contemporary rockets, the electric energy source was an 

alternating current turbo generator.

The rocket’s stages and compartments were very large. For that reason, the 

factory/manufacturers would produce only transportable parts. The welding 

of tanks and blocks and the assembly of the entire rocket were to be carried 

out in the Assembly and Testing Building, which was then under construction 

at the firing range. There would actually be a branch of the Kuybyshev-based 

Progress Factory—the main rocket manufacturing plant—at the firing range.

In order to insert a payload with a mass of 90 to 93 tons into Earth orbit 

at an altitude of 200 kilometers, we were undertaking a series of measures, the 

most important of which was mounting six more engines on the first stage. 

The height of the rocket including the L3 nose cone was 105.3 meters. The 

launch mass was 2,820 tons. The mass of the oxygen was 1,730 tons, and the 

mass of the kerosene was 680 tons. The L3 system consisted of the rocket 

booster Blocks G and D; the LOK (the vehicle itself and the rocket Block I) 

and the LK (the vehicle itself and the rocket Block Ye); the payload fairing, 

 55.

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

which would be jettisoned upon reaching specified acceleration loads; and the 

emergency rescue system propulsion system.56

The LOK consisted of the Earth-descent module and the habitation 

module, on which were mounted a special compartment containing the 

docking and attitude control engines and the docking system assembly, the 

Instrumentation System Compartment (PAO), and the power compartment, 

containing the rocket Block I and a power plant (EU) and three electrochemical 

generators (EKhG) for the power supply system using hydrogen-oxygen fuel 

cells.57 The LOK habitation compartment would serve simultaneously as an 

David R. Woods

This shows the LOK’s Habitation Compartment (or Orbital Module) at the Moscow 

Aviation Institute (MAI). The Compartment was cut in half for the benefit of engineering 

students at MAI. The left half shows the circular hatch where the LK pilot would exit 

and return for the surface phase of the mission. To the left of that is a large-format 

camera for photography during the lunar orbital phase. The large rectangular opening is 

where one of the two spacesuits would be carried. The other half shows the rack for the 

other suit, controls for the various camera systems on the right, and the rendezvous and 

docking control panel at the top.

 56.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

RKK Energiya and David R. Woods

The LOK was the Soviet equivalent of the Apollo Command and Service Module and 

served as the living quarters of the two-person crew during most of the lunar trip.

airlock chamber when a cosmonaut was transferring through open space into 

the lunar vehicle before descent to the Moon and during return. Cosmonauts 

would execute the entire journey from Earth to the Moon without spacesuits. 

They would don spacesuits before transferring from the LOK to the LK.

The LK consisted of the pressurized cosmonaut cabin, a compartment 

with attitude control engines and “passive” docking assembly of the instrument 

compartment, the lunar landing unit, and the rocket Block Ye. Storage batteries mounted on the exterior provided power for all the LK systems. For the 

first time in our space program, landing control would be conducted using an 

on-board digital computer and partial backup would be provided by a manual 

system, which would enable the cosmonaut to execute a limited maneuver to 

select a landing site.

The N1-L3 flight would be executed according to the following program:

Insertion of L3 into Earth orbit by the N-1 launch vehicle, where the readiness of all L3 systems to depart for the Moon is tested over a 24-hour period;

Boost of L3 onto Earth-Moon flight trajectory by Block G. In so doing, 

the engine of the Block G completely exhausts its fuel supply, after which 

Block G is jettisoned;

Reboost using Block D until the designated velocity is attained, and then 

two trajectory corrections and deceleration, followed by insertion of the 

L3 system into lunar orbit. The flight time to the Moon will be three and a 

half days, and the time spent in lunar orbit will be no more than four days;

•	

•	

•	

96
N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

Transition using Block D from circular orbit to elliptical orbit;

Transfer of one of the cosmonauts from the LOK to the LK through 

open space;

Separation from LOK of lunar landing system—Block D and LK;

Orientation of system using Block D and deceleration for descent from orbit;

Separation of Block D and its escape maneuver to the side to avoid collision with the LK;

Deceleration for landing using Block Ye, maneuver to select landing site, 

and landing on Moon;

Egress of cosmonaut onto lunar surface, performance of specified exploration, collection of soil samples, and return to the LK. Time of stay on the 

lunar surface no more than 24 hours;

Liftoff of the LK from the Moon using Block Ye, rendezvous and docking 

with the LOK, transfer of cosmonaut from the LK to the LOK through 

open space, and jettisoning of the LK;

Acceleration of the LOK using Block I on Moon-Earth trajectory, performance of one to two correction maneuvers. Flight time—three and a 

half days; and

David R. Woods

This simplified graphical description of the Soviet lunar landing profile using a single 

N-1 rocket highlights details of the Earth-to-Moon and Moon-to-Earth segments. This 

schematic is based on a plan issued in January 1970.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

•	 Separation of the LOK Descent Module, its entry into Earth’s atmosphere 

at reentry velocity, gliding descent, and landing on USSR territory.

Total time of expedition: 11 to 12 days.

The majority of those attending the meeting were learning about 

the N1-L3 complex and the flight configuration for the first time and with 

great interest. Questions followed:

“Aren’t we afraid to let the cosmonaut descend to the lunar surface alone?

“What if he falls and can’t return to the LK? What decision will the commander who has remained in orbit make?”

“Why are the Americans planning to have two astronauts land on the 

Moon, and we’re only going to have one cosmonaut?”

David R. Woods

This graphic shows the operations of the LOK, LK, and Block D near the lunar surface. 

The Lunar Takeoff Apparatus lifts off the lunar surface after a short stay and enters lunar 

orbit, where it acts as a passive target for the LOK.

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N1-L3 Lunar Program Under Korolev

But other questions were the most difficult: “In what phase of development are all the blocks, vehicles, and systems? When will the general plan and 

schedule of operations come out? When will the developers receive all the 

baseline data? What experimental facilities are being provided and when will 

the factories receive the working documentation for production?”

So that there would be no doubts, Korolev himself answered all the questions, sometimes humorously, but for the most part seriously, trying to show 

that the success of the entire program depended on each person there.

This first, very broad meeting on the N1-L3 program was held when 

preparation was under way for the flight of the three-seat Voskhod. It ended 

on an optimistic note, despite the fact that in August 1964, there was still 

no detailed design of the system as a whole. A design that more or less made 

sense finally appeared in December 1964. Keldysh’s expert commission quickly 

reviewed and approved it.

Decrees and subsequent orders from GKOT obliged us to issue specifications to all project participants before the end of 1964. This was extremely difficult, since we had to lay down conditions for assignments without yet really 

understanding what answers we wanted to receive. In these cases, groups of 

brainstorming enthusiasts helped to formulate the work statement and guided 

us along the path of decision. The most heated debates flared up between the 

customers and the contractors when, after stipulating principles and parameters, 

the time came to specify the mass. Under pressure from Mishin and Korolev, 

who were responsible for the launch vehicle’s performance characteristics, and 

from Bushuyev, who was responsible for the design of the lunar vehicles, the 

designers—rocket specialists and vehicle specialists—occupied an irreconcilable 

position in the struggle to reduce the mass of the systems. All the developers of 

on-board systems listed in the decrees, without exception, demanded that the 

mass limits be increased. Sometimes they haggled for tons, sometimes for tens 

of grams. However, the total amount of excess weight for all the systems and 

assemblies, which for the time being was only on paper, already looked appalling.

Nowhere in our previous experience had the mass of the manufactured 

systems matched what was stipulated in the designs. Frequently, after production and modifications based on test results, the mass approved during the 

design process was exceeded by as much as 100 percent.

99

Chapter 4

A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

In mid-December 1964, I tore myself away from our futile searches for 

and arguments about ways to reduce the mass of the L3 and immersed myself 

in frenetic production and testing work. We were preparing for the launch of 

the third Molniya (the previous launches were failures) and a Voskhod with 

a cosmonaut performing a spacewalk, and for communication sessions with 

an automatic interplanetary station on its way to Mars with solar arrays that 

had failed to open.1

 Noisy colleagues were sitting in my office smoking when 

the rapid jingle of a direct call from Korolev rang out. Everyone in my office 

quieted down and listened to my responses.

“Are you alone?”

“No, Sergey Pavlovich, my office is full and I’m surrounded by a cloud 

of smoke.”

“Here’s the thing: tell everybody to get out, open the windows, and air the 

place out. I’m on my way over there to curse at you, and I mean it!”

“But, why come over to my smoky office? I’ll hurry over right now.”

“No, I want to curse at you on your territory. Make sure no one will 

bother us.”

“What should I brace myself for, should I ask anyone to join the 

conversation?”

“I don’t need to see anyone but you. The conversation is going to be difficult for both of us!”

There was nothing left for me to do but to follow instructions. Intrigued 

by the purpose of S. P.’s sudden visit, the crowd left my office.

OKB-1’s ninth Party conference had taken place on 10 November. In 

his speech, Korolev criticized me and my deputies for technical errors we had 

 1. The third 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

committed recently.2 Could it be he felt he needed to speak with me more 

harshly in private?

“It’s a good thing that Zoya Grigoryevna is on duty today as my receptionist,” I thought. S. P. had the habit of finding fault with disorder in the reception 

rooms when he visited the offices of his deputies. Sometimes he would test the 

secretaries by giving them tasks and checking to see how quickly and precisely 

they carried them out. It was a disaster if something rubbed him the wrong way. 

Rather than berate the secretary, he chewed out the one in charge of the office 

and advised him to either retrain or replace the secretary. But Korolev himself 

had hired Zoya Grigoryevna for the job. She was the wife of a staff colleague 

at RNII, rocket propellant specialist Nikolay Chernyshev.3

 Before Korolev’s 

arrest in 1938, they had lived in the same building on Konyushkovskaya Street. 

The Korolev, Pobedonostsev, and Chernyshev families were friends. After 

Chernyshev’s sudden death in 1953, Korolev offered Zoya Grigoryevna a job 

at OKB-1. Thus, she became Bushuyev’s secretary, and when he was moved 

to our first territory, she remained in her post in the reception room, which 

was shared by two offices—Rauschenbach’s and mine.4

I warned Zoya Grigoryevna that S. P. was on his way over, that he was very 

angry, and he should be received as amiably as possible. While S. P. called for 

a car to pick him up and made his way to our second territory, we managed 

to air out our offices and the reception room, posted a lookout in the adjacent 

hallway to drive away loiterers, and a small group gathered in Rauschenbach’s 

office in case I needed help in my conversation with S. P.

Looking out my window and seeing an approaching ZIS, I decided to go 

out into the hallway to meet S. P., but Zoya Grigoryevna advised me: “Stay 

 2. Criticism of Chertok is evident in the published version of the proceedings. See 

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A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

in the office.”5 She greeted Korolev in the reception room with a lovely smile. 

He had to pause and ask questions showing that he did not forget old friends 

and abandon them in time of need. Korolev stayed less than a minute in the 

reception room, but when he entered my office he was hardly furious, as I had 

expected him to be. His tired face had an expression of conciliation.

For a few moments his eyes, usually attentive to his company, looked 

somewhere off in space. It seemed that he was trying to recall why he was 

here. But this only lasted a few seconds. Sergey Pavlovich approached my 

desk, saw a thick volume—the report on the Americans’ Saturn project—and 

immediately his demeanor changed. He slowly paced about my office, looking 

things over and entering a new “coordinate system.” Then a long conversation 

took place. I read so much nonsense now in my old notebooks, but this meeting I reconstruct from memory. I’d say that over the entire course of 20 years 

working together, this was the only one-on-one meeting I ever had with him 

in my office that lasted so long.

Over the phone, S. P. had warned me that he wanted to chew me out. Now 

he had either forgotten or changed his mind, but the conversation began very 

amicably. So many problems tormented him that he needed to talk, to think 

out loud, and to take people whom he trusted into his confidence. On one of 

my evening strolls along 3rd Ostankinskaya Street, I learned that Korolev had 

spoken with Bushuyev and Voskresenskiy before me about the same thing. 

Perhaps, they said, he had also met with Mishin and with Okhapkin.6

I must interrupt my account of my meeting with Korolev to explain the 

urgency of the issues that were about to be discussed. After the three-launch 

scenario was rejected, a very serious “weight crisis” developed for the entire 

lunar expedition program.7

 It was not just the chief designer’s deputies and 

leading design engineers who were grumbling about very strong pressure from 

Korolev; the subcontractors’ chief designers were, too. After a detailed study of 

the crisis situation that had formed during the very first phase of development 

of the lunar vehicles, Korolev started looking for ways to save the project. In 

so doing, he started at the very bottom. Here he discovered what appeared at 

first glance to be insurmountable difficulties inherent to the project. But, at the 

same time, there were redeeming features. The most radical was the installation 

of an additional six engines on the first stage of the N-1 rocket.

 5. The ZIS suffix was added to all automobiles that were produced by the ZIS—

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

In and of themselves, the engines with all their systems also constituted 

tons of metal, but they added 900 tons of thrust, the thrust of Chelomey’s 

entire Pyatisotka at that time.8 It was necessary to modify the pneumohydraulic 

and electrical systems of the first stage, manufacture additional instruments, 

upgrade the engine control algorithms, increase the capacity of the tanks, review 

the ballistic analysis, remake the bottom shield, and take into consideration a 

whole array of odds and ends that come to light during any serious modification of such a complex system.

According to preliminary calculations, the totality of these measures 

increased the mass of the spacecraft to be inserted into orbit to 93 tons. 

Compared with 75 tons in 1962, this was significant progress. Korolev 

knew from experience that relaxing the rigid weight discipline would lead 

to unchecked weight increases in dozens of systems, which would bring the 

gains made from all the measures to naught. The situation was complicated 

by the fact that the Progress Factory—the lead factory for the manufacture of 

the N-1—had already built up some production inventory. If the factory was 

informed that it would have to make modifications and needed to wait for new 

drawings, then this would also affect the already missed production deadlines 

for the first launch vehicle. Okhapkin and Kozlov, who supervised the work at 

the Progress Factory, proposed introducing the measures in a phase-by-phase 

plan: the in-orbit payload mass would not reach approximately 93 tons until 

the rocket’s fourth flight model.9

Despite the current events, the latest piloted Voskhod launches, and 

the development of the Soyuz—a circumlunar flight project using a “Baron 

Münchausen plan”—S. P. tried to be up to date on all the N-1 modifications. 

He demanded that margins be sought everywhere, to the point of changing 

the orbital inclination and altitude.

The meeting with Korolev described below took place during a period when 

numerous measures were being developed to save the project from the fierce 

criticism of experts. Despite the completely benevolent attitude of Keldysh, who 

headed the expert commission, the most meticulous of its members, especially 

the rocket design specialists, criticized the fact that the “rocket transports air,” 

and there’s nothing left over for payload. You may laugh about it, but there 

were development engineers who proposed purging all the air from the tubular 

structural elements before liftoff, thereby gaining a few kilograms of payload.

 8. 

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A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

The initial version of the proposals for the N-1 called for three crewmembers to participate in the lunar expedition. However, while drafting the decree 

that came out in August 1964, it was determined that the three-cosmonaut 

configuration simply wouldn’t work with our launch vehicle. Assessing the situation with a clear eye, Bushuyev’s design engineers came to the firm conviction 

that we could only carry out the expedition using a “2 + 1” configuration. In 

this case, “2 + 1” did not equal three: two cosmonauts would fly to the Moon 

in the LOK, and after the vehicle transferred to lunar orbit, just one of them 

would perform a spacewalk, enter the LK landing vehicle, and descend to the 

surface of the Moon. He would stroll around on the Moon in sublime solitude, 

and, a couple of hours later, return to orbit to dock with the LOK, and once 

again spacewalk over to his waiting comrade. After this, they would undock 

the LK and jettison it to the Moon, and the LOK, using its propulsion system, 

would return to Earth.

To coordinate the developments of the control system for the L3 vehicles 

and for the landing and liftoff rocket blocks and the rendezvous and docking 

system, OKB-1 and the organizations of Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, Bogomolov, 

Bykov, and Khrustalev created integrated brigades.10 The assignment of these 

brigades was to “search for weight” so that there would be enough for the 

“2 + 1” configuration. When I assembled plenary sessions of specialists, it 

turned out that each time we strayed farther from the limits that Bushuyev’s 

design engineers had given us. The situation seemed catastrophic.

But now I’ll return to the conversation with Korolev in my office. 

The first subject of our meeting was, of course, the L3. I remember his request/

ultimatum quite well: “Boris, give me back 800 kilograms.”

Grabbing a previously prepared weight report with numerous handwritten amendments, I tried to demonstrate that “giving back” was out of the 

question. All the systems for which my departments were responsible already 

required more than 500 kilograms above our allotment. And there was still 

so much documentation that hadn’t been issued, dozens of expert commission recommendations that hadn’t been implemented, and not a single bit of 

experimental work had been completed yet! The automatic landing of the LK 

was the least developed part of the program. For reliability, we needed triple 

or, at least, double redundancy, diagnostics, and good communications with 

Earth, and all of this meant weight and more weight.

 10.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Korolev was not about to look at the weight report. He interrupted my 

explanations and calmly repeated, this time looking me straight in the eye (he 

had a real knack for this): “All the same, give me back 800.”

Without allowing me once again to switch to a forceful defense, S. P. said 

that he had held a very difficult discussion with Keldysh. He [Keldysh] didn’t 

believe that we had yet solved the weight problem for landing even one cosmonaut on the Moon. For that reason, in Keldysh’s opinion, the design as 

a whole still had loose ends. Chelomey, who had his own alternative design 

proposals, was putting pressure on Keldysh.11

Tyulin was forming a new ministry, but evidently they weren’t going to 

appoint him minister of his own ministry.12 “Uncle Mitya” had his own people, 

and now in the Politburo you couldn’t get past Ustinov.13 The only one there 

who really knew what we were doing was Khrushchev. Now he’s gone, and all 

those who had seized power were not yet accustomed to making independent 

decisions. The military officials couldn’t understand at all why it was necessary 

to fly to the Moon. It’s a big headache that since Nedelin, “infantry” marshals 

had been in command of space.14 The Air Force should have piloted programs—they had a better understanding of human capabilities. Incidentally, 

Air Force Commanders-in-Chief were being appointed, as a rule, from the 

ranks of combat pilots. They knew human capabilities, but it was difficult for 

them to get a sense of the scale of space systems.

“The ‘Americanese’ don’t hesitate to say that the master of space will be 

the master of the world,” continued S. P.15 “They have greater opportunities 

than we do. We are poorer, and therefore our leaders, especially the military, 

must be wiser.”

S. P. expressed these thoughts as if verifying his reasoning to justify his 

demand to “give back 800 kilograms.” Now, in his opinion, I knew everything and I understood everything, and by hook or by crook I must bring 

the weight reports down by 800 kilograms in the design materials. It turned 

 11.

106
A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

out that he wanted to get 800 kilograms less than the limit stipulated in 

Bushuyev’s design materials! This was completely unrealistic. But I wasn’t 

about to argue. I knew that S. P. was “padding” his request. Feigning annoyance, he said that because of such obstinate people as Voskresenskiy and me, 

in our current situation they might cut back appropriations for the N-1. 

Then the “Americanese” would certainly pass us. They are getting billions 

for the Saturn V. The president is monitoring the program personally, while 

our program is divided between aviation, rockets, and agriculture. Now, after 

Nikita, Brezhnev is going to support Yangel. The Ukraine has a stranglehold 

on this Central Committee Presidium.16

Here, I remember saying that perhaps this was a good thing—Pilyugin 

wouldn’t be able to cope with the N-1 without the Kharkov instrumentation 

group, and we also had the Kievpribor Factory working for us in Kiev.17 We 

would also have a difficult time without its help. As for Yangel, I reminded 

Korolev of the quip the military officers had come up with: “Korolev works 

for TASS, Chelomey’s [work] goes down the toilet, and Yangel’s is for us.”

S. P. had already heard this aphorism, but it clearly offended him to hear it 

repeated. His mood darkened. His facial expression, the glint in his eyes, and 

the position of his head always betrayed Korolev’s mood and state of mind. 

He did not have Glushko’s ability to maintain a completely impenetrable and 

imperturbable appearance regardless of his inner state.

“What stupidity,” said Korolev, “and military men from Dnepropetrovsk 

[where Yangel’s design bureau was located] started it. And they’ve got no grounds 

to poke fun at Chelomey. He’s got Myasishchev’s magnificent aviation designers 

and an aviation factory with production culture the likes of which Dnepropetrovsk 

has never dreamed.18 That’s precisely where Chelomey’s main strength lies, rather 

than any special relationship he has with Nikita Sergeyevich.”

When Korolev mentioned the factory, I couldn’t restrain myself and boasted: 

“The factory in Fili set me up in life and even provided me with a wife.”19

 16.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

“Did your Katya really work there, too?”

“Yes, all my personnel forms mention that.”

“I haven’t studied your personnel forms, but don’t forget to say hi to Katya 

for me.”

After that little breather, Korolev returned to his thoughts about Chelomey’s 

projects.

“Now that they’ve given Nikita the boot, officials whom Chelomey has 

really annoyed have decided to show him who’s boss. Ustinov and Smirnov 

talked Keldysh into heading a commission to investigate the work of OKB-52. 

I advised him not to, but he consented. Look what’s happening. Keldysh is 

chairman of the expert commission on the N-1, he was chairman of the commission on Yangel’s combat missiles, and now he has been assigned the role of 

inspector over all of Chelomey’s work. He has taken on a very large responsibility. It will be interesting to see how he will act with the circumlunar flight 

project using the UR-500.20 After all, the deadline for that was just recently 

set for the first quarter of 1967. God willing, the rocket will fly for the first 

time in a year, and in two years they’re already planning a piloted circumlunar 

flight. I think that we should join forces with regard to the vehicle, rather 

than fritter away our strength. Now, since we’re soon going to be in the same 

ministry, maybe we can make some arrangement. In any event, I gave Kostya 

[Bushuyev] the assignment to look into whether it would be possible to adapt 

a 7K from a Soyuz [launch vehicle] to a UR-500 launcher. After all, honestly, 

I am not very convinced that your beloved Mnatsakanyan will make a system 

that will go through three dockings in a row without a hitch.”21

“Sergey Pavlovich! According to information from our ‘fifth column,’ 

Chelomey hasn’t really gotten moving on the vehicle yet, while our landing on 

the Moon is set for a year after the circumlunar flight, and we have to make 

not just one, but two completely new vehicles.”

“That’s why you have to give me back 800 kilograms,” he said very sternly.

Suddenly Korolev brightened up.

“But still, Yangel is doing a great job. I honestly didn’t expect that he would 

voluntarily shut down his R-56 project and agree to make Block Ye for us. You 

 20.

108
A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

and Pilyugin must quickly decide who will provide the baseline control data 

so that Yangel’s work will under no circumstances be delayed.”

“Right before you arrived I broke up a big free-for-all here in my office 

having to do with the allocation of projects between us and Pilyugin. Everything 

worked out fine regarding the launch vehicle, but when it came to the vehicles, 

especially the LK, there were heated debates. We still haven’t come to an agreement as to who will make the integrated test rigs.”

At the mention of the test rigs, Korolev once again started talking about 

Voskresenskiy. He was outraged with Leonid’s behavior regarding the construction of a test rig for full-scale firing tests of the N-1’s first stage. The rough 

estimates that Voskresenskiy made with the assistance of the design institute 

and NII-229 in Zagorsk showed that the production of this rig would cost 

a hundred million and would take at least three to four years. At least a year 

would be spent in the coordination and design process. As a result, no testing 

would begin before 1968. And here’s another question: where would it be 

built? If we built it in Tyuratam, the primary construction of the large MIK 

and launch site were still in their embryonic stages there. There were enough 

funds for materials, and that’s precisely the excuse the military builders were 

using for their own falling behind.

“I paid a special visit to Dymshits,” continued Korolev, “to discuss funding.22 He is, you know, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and 

chief of Gossnab.

23 I thought he could do anything. Ustinov himself advised 

me to meet with him. Ustinov said, ‘In such cases personal contacts are more 

reliable than decrees.’”

“So what happened?”

“The meeting went just fine. He inquired about the N-1 in great detail. 

It’s true, he didn’t understand why we or the Americans needed to fly to the 

Moon so urgently. Dymshits is a smart but very tired Jew. He miraculously 

survived under Stalin and supported Khrushchev’s idea about councils of 

national economy (Sovnarkhozy). Now they were eliminating them and restoring complete centralization of control and supply only from Moscow. There 

were once again shakeups at Gossnab and Gosplan, reconsiderations of the 

allocation of appropriations and funds, and everyone tried to grab the biggest 

 22.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

piece of the pie. They hinted to Dymshits that he had given way too much 

to the rocket specialists and it was time to restore ship building and aviation 

after the toll Khrushchev had taken on them.”24

As he told me about his meeting with Dymshits, Korolev looked at me 

searchingly and suddenly recalled the 1953 “Doctors’ Plot.”25 For the first time, 

S. P. confessed that back then he had had a great deal of trouble defending me 

against the personnel officers who were getting out of hand, especially since 

he too was still somewhat tainted.26

“Even Ustinov, who knew you well, said that he would help, but if they 

put any more pressure on him, he was not omnipotent. Then there was a call 

on the ‘Kremlin line.’ Boris, you can’t even guess who called, and I’ll never tell 

you. Among other things, this person told me that I shouldn’t worry about 

you. Nobody’s going to touch you. I’m telling you this 11 years after the fact, 

but who called—that I won’t tell you.”

To this day I haven’t unraveled the mystery and I haven’t confided with 

anyone on this subject. The circumstances were too convoluted and complicated in the upper echelons of power. But that is a completely different subject.

S. P. never hinted to anyone and never implied that he required some sort 

of reciprocity for his good deeds. All he required was work with full commitment, enthusiasm, and decency. S. P. had a knack for discerning and appreciating honest and decent people. He drew people to himself based on their 

professional qualities, and in his inner circle he appreciated this same cultured 

integrity. At one time it seemed to me that Voskresenskiy was more a kindred 

spirit to him than the other deputies. Actually, S. P. appreciated Leonid not 

just for his exceptional qualities as an investigative tester. He loved him as a 

man of integrity and a comrade with whom he could “scout around.” And all 

of a sudden, Leonid comes out publicly against the N-1 program of operations 

that Korolev had approved.

During one of our evening strolls along 3rd Ostankinskaya Street, 

Voskresenskiy joined Bushuyev and me. Leonid was genuinely surprised by 

the stance that all of us deputy chiefs had taken. He took Korolev’s rejection 

 24.

110
A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

(with Mishin’s active support) of the construction of a full-scale firing test 

rig so personally that during this evening stroll that’s all he would talk about. 

Leonid, who had quite recently recovered from a heart attack, appealed to my 

experience, conscience, and common sense, saying that if the decision on the 

test rig failed to come through, he would no longer be on good terms with 

Korolev. He was prepared to go on fishing trips and mushroom hunts with 

us, but he would refuse to be involved in N-1 projects.

Since Korolev started the conversation about Voskresenskiy, already knowing about their damaged relationship, I changed the subject to the monitoring, 

diagnostics, and engine shutdown system (KORD). The development of this 

system had forced my comrades and me to delve into the state of affairs with 

Kuznetsov’s new engines. I expressed my misgivings to Korolev regarding the 

deadlines for the experimental testing of the entire KORD system for the 

simple reason that the very hardware that we were supposed to be performing 

diagnostics on and save from a catastrophic explosion was still so unreliable 

that it was difficult to select a stable parameter for diagnostics. We were firmly 

convinced that the KORD system, on the whole, needed to be a lot more reliable than each individual engine, especially all 30 on the first stage.

“In this sense,” I said, “conducting firing rig tests on the entire fullyassembled first stage is a better way to verify and confirm reliability.”

I tried to start my pitch in favor of the test rig, but S. P. once again scowled, 

and his mood darkened. “You and Leonid think that I don’t understand the 

rig’s benefits. Don’t defend Leonid! I asked you to give up 800 kilograms, and 

don’t bring up the issue of the test rig. We can’t pose that question now, we don’t 

have the right to, if we want to produce the N-1. You all want to be squeaky 

clean, you demand rigs, experimental testing, reliability, but I, Korolev, don’t 

allow you this! Look, we’re putting in equipment for the manufacture of the 

second and third stages at Tabakov’s facility in Zagorsk. After modifying the 

existing rigs, they can be tested there. It’s unrealistic to build a test rig for the 

first stage.”

I was afraid that now our calm conversation would fall apart, S. P. would 

stand up and leave. Despite this danger, I nevertheless took a chance and insisted 

that S. P. pay some attention to the status of the KORD system’s development. 

He promised to have a word with Kuznetsov about the final proposals for the 

diagnostics program very soon.

“I just ask that you make sure, Sergey Pavlovich, that when any emergency 

condition is determined, we will need 4 to 5 hundredths of a second to shut 

down the engine along with Pilyugin’s control system. If the engine is going 

to explode in thousandths of a second, there’s nothing we can do.”

Korolev smiled sadly. He was well aware of the state of affairs with the 

experimental testing of engines at Kuznetsov’s facility. I had heard fragmentary 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

information from our engine specialists and KORD system experts that the 

engine was going through its phase of childhood diseases. The Kuybyshev 

developers had no experience with liquid-propellant rocket engines. They 

were just learning and were still far from the level of the Khimki specialists.27

Without a pause the conversation switched to the current Ye-6 program: 

a soft landing on the Moon.

“How are things with Morachevskiy on the next Ye-6?” asked Korolev.28

I was ready to roll on this subject and wanted to explain in detail about 

our efforts and the progress on this project, but once again S. P. stopped me.

“We absolutely must not let the Americans make the first soft landing. 

Look what’s happening: we have already conducted five launches and only 

reached the Moon once. Your beloved astronavigation didn’t help us out. By 

the way, what’s going on with Lisovich and those nice ‘star’ ladies who worked 

in his shop?”29

I told him everything that I knew about them, jumping on the chance to 

remind S. P. that he had inquired about these ladies back in 1949 and now 

they were 15 years older. And then I started to justify myself: “The Americans 

have also had five failures with their Rangers and it wasn’t until their seventh 

launch that they obtained an image of the lunar surface.30 And they aren’t 

planning a soft landing until October 1965 with the Surveyor.”31

“If we work like that,” countered S. P., “then in 1966 our soft landing will 

fail too. Keep in mind, from now on, I am not about to forgive you for an 

astronavigation failure. Any day now, Keldysh is getting ready to hear in his 

Council once again about the state of affairs on the Moon, Mars, and Venus 

projects.32 I am arranging for you or Kostya [Bushuyev] to report.”

 27.

112
A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

“I’ll report, but there is a reason why our people are losing enthusiasm 

for the Ye-6 and MV. If we transfer all the work to Babakin next year, then 

naturally the main incentive disappears—the prospect of being involved with 

this achievement.33 All our people will have left will be the failed launches.”

S. P. retorted that the point of honor for us was to ensure a soft landing 

ourselves and as soon as possible. “Let Babakin continue to work on other 

automatic spacecraft. Mars and Venus are programs that will go on for many 

years. People need to understand that. After the Moon, we’ll need to use the 

N-1 to insert heavy automatic spacecraft in orbit toward Mars and Venus, and 

beyond. And what about the TMK—the Heavy Interplanetary Ship?34 Do you 

really think that has no prospects? We can’t manage it all. Lavochkin’s factory 

is going to transfer into our new ministry; let it develop these projects to the 

full extent of its capacity.”35

“I like Babakin. You’ve been on friendly terms with him for a long time; you’re 

not about to hide anything from him. Keep in mind, I know that too. Explain 

everything to the people. They will understand,” said S. P. as consolation to me.

Then we once again talked about the reliability of the Ye-6 and the dates for 

the upcoming launch. S. P. said that he personally would travel to Simferopol 

as soon as there appeared to be hope for a soft landing.36

Korolev was right on the verge of leaving when it seemed something 

occurred to him and he said: “Keldysh telephoned me. He wants to hear the 

state of affairs with the L3 control system one more time in the expert commission. I told him that I wouldn’t be able to be there. You and Kostya go. 

I’ve already told Pilyugin about it; he’s not about to complain about us. Don’t 

you stir anything up. It’s very important now for us to show that there are no 

disagreements and everything should work out. Keep in mind there are “friends” 

who are just waiting for an opportunity to bark that all our work is coming 

apart at the seams. Incidentally, Keldysh is now in over his head. His task is 

to make sure that the Academy of Sciences comes to no harm under the new 

[Brezhnev] regime. He had a smooth-running relationship with Khrushchev. 

Nikita even forgave Keldysh for exposing Lysenko and for the failure of his best 

 33.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

friend—Nuzhdin—to enter the Academy during the most recent elections. 

Keldysh had the courage to listen to Sakharov rather than Khrushchev, who 

asked him not to offend Lysenko.37 Now Keldysh is complaining that in the 

new Politburo he doesn’t understand very well with whom he is dealing. So 

don’t worry, for the time being Keldysh doesn’t have time for us!”

These were Korolev’s parting words on that very long day. S. P. smiled 

almost imperceptibly, struggled to get up from the deep armchair, and went 

out into the reception room. Remembering Zoya Grigoryevna’s warning, I 

did not see him out. As soon as Korolev’s ZIS pulled away, everyone whom I 

had asked to leave before the meeting crowded back into my office. Having 

patiently waited for more than 2 hours, my comrades demanded that I give 

them a report.

As I was editing this chapter for the new edition of my memoirs, I 

recalled the words of Yuriy Mozzhorin, which he managed to tell me in 1996 

after that year’s Korolev Lectures.38

“You described Korolev as if you, his deputies, knew about the flaws and 

unreliability of the N1-L3 design, and he, Korolev, stubbornly refused to look 

into it. As director of NII-88 at that time, at the personal request of Uncle Mitya 

[Ustinov], I tried to gain an understanding of all the lunar problems, 

including what motivated people, 

on whom much depended, in their 

attitude toward the Moon. I was 

convinced that Korolev, perhaps 

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok and A. K. Medvedeva, 

the scientific secretary of the Korolev 

Readings.

 37.

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A Difficult Conversation with Korolev

better than we, felt and understood the general situation. Those 800 kilograms that he demanded from you were a test of your loyalty to his policy. He 

needed a super-heavy-lift launch vehicle and as soon as possible. Even if we 

didn’t fulfill the mission in a one-launch version, then at least we were testing 

out the launch vehicle. And then we could come out with new robust proposals 

for the Moon and Mars.”

115

Chapter 5

N1-L3 Control

We always had heated debates centered around the assignment and supervision of work concerning motion control, electronic systems, and radio systems. My comrades at work were split into two camps. The most aggressive 

enthusiasts had already experienced the joy of creative satisfaction during the 

independent development of systems for robotic spacecraft and Vostoks. The 

successes of the first years of the Space Age gave my closest colleagues courage 

and confidence in their strengths and capabilities. 

Why farm out interesting work, they asked, if we 

understand better than others what needs to be 

done and how to do it? It’s easier to do it ourselves 

than to explain what we want to a new person at 

an outside firm.

These enthusiasts included department chiefs 

Viktor Legostayev, Yevgeniy Bashkin, Oleg Babkov, 

Yuriy Karpov, and Petr Kupriyanchik. They had not 

only experienced the pangs of creation, but had 

also tasted the first fruits of secret celebrity. Those 

who stood closer to the problems of the launch 

vehicle—Viktor Kalashnikov, Oleg Voropayev, 

Leonid Alekseyev, Lev Vilnitskiy, and Viktor 

Kuzmin—held the “pro-Pilyugin” position. They 

felt we needed to have a share-and-share-alike relationship with Nikolay Pilyugin’s firm and with all 

others we might be able to recruit.1

From the author’s archives.

Petr Kupriyanchik was 

a department chief at 

TsKBEM who worked 

under Chertok on the 

design of spacecraft 

control systems.

 1. Chertok is referring here to the distribution of responsibility in the development of control 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

I felt particularly strong pressure from the design departments and the 

factory. They were overloaded with routine work on Mars, Venera, and Ye-6 

systems; R-9, RT-1, RT-2, and GR combat missiles; and piloted vehicles. In 

the shops of the instrument factory, hundreds of sophisticated instruments, 

antenna-feeder units, control surface actuators, and thousands of cables of 

every description were being manufactured simultaneously.

Korolev often intervened in our disputes. He didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the most aggressively disposed portion of my staff, who sought to seize 

everything they could, but he did convince them that one cannot do everything. 

Pilyugin and his powerful staff should be used to the greatest extent possible 

rather than pushed away. This was his imperative demand, which he expressed 

to Boris Rauschenbach and me in the form of an ultimatum.2

Finally, as 1964 was drawing to a close, a distribution of work assignments 

for N1-L3 was devised, which for the most part continued throughout the next 

decade of the program’s existence. Pilyugin was the head chief designer of the 

N-1 launch vehicle control system. A government decree put this in writing. 

My complex [at OKB-1] was given responsibility for assembling all the baseline 

data needed to develop the control system and handing it over to Pilyugin.3

The baseline data on aerodynamics and gas dynamics, mass and inertial loads, 

centers of gravity, external disturbances, necessary control moments, the effect 

of liquids in the tanks, structural flexibility, engine characteristics, and many 

other parameters of a large rocket system needed to be converted into a system 

of differential equations. Voropayev’s department was responsible for this 

mental processing. The multivolume calculations that were modestly referred 

to as the launch vehicle’s mathematical model could only be performed using 

computers that had only just begun to appear in our computer center. Back 

then, the first computers were distributed by government decision. Korolev 

and Mishin personally, wherever they could, pushed through decisions on 

the procurement of computers for OKB-1. The leadership of the computer 

center was entrusted to the “chief ballistics expert”—Svyastoslav “Svet” Lavrov. 

Junior engineer Vladimir Stepanov was in charge of bringing the first computer 

“monsters” on line and servicing them.

Thanks to the initiative and perseverance of Vladilen Finogeyev, head of 

the integrated department at NIIAP—as Pilyugin’s new organization split off 

 2. Rauschenbach was the chief of the control systems department (subordinate to Chertok) 

118
N1-L3 Control

From the author’s archives.

Shown here are the developers of the control system for the N-1 at Pilyugin’s 

organization (NIIAP): B. P. Tkachev, V. I. Nikiforenko, A. V. Skripitsyn, V. P. 

Finogeyev, and V. M. Bessonov.

from NII-885 was then called—in two years they rolled out the integrated stand 

for the N-1 launch vehicle control system. A web of cables interconnected the 

hundreds of different-caliber instruments for all the systems installed on the 

launch vehicle. That’s how the working model of the full control system looked.

In the launch vehicle control system, I was responsible for developing all 

the drives for Kuznetsov’s engines that controlled thrust and for all the types of 

control surface actuators that might be needed for any of the stages and lunar 

vehicles. Andronik Iosifyan’s firm developed the on-board 5-kilowatt power 

plant for all the launch vehicle’s electrical systems.4

 Iosifyan and his deputy, 

Nikolay Sheremetyevskiy, very actively promoted this new idea. They undertook the development of the turbo generator, which would replace the set of 

heavy storage batteries. Arkhip Lyulka designed the high-speed turbine for it.

The reliability prediction specialists were filled with superstitious fear at 

the thought of 36 engines on the launch vehicle’s three stages. They were completely crushed when the proposal to install six more engines on Block A [first 

 4. This firm was the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Electromechanics (VNIIEM).

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

stage] came out. The statistics of the last few years showed that even among 

the well-tested engines of missiles that had been put into service, the frequency 

of failures caused by propulsion systems was at least two per 100 launches. 

Now they would have to figure the reliability for the N-1 with 42 engines. 

Consequently, for the N-1 there would certainly be at least one failure every two 

launches. To protect against the catastrophic consequences of engine failures, 

back in 1960 the decision was made to develop a system that monitored engine 

operation, performed diagnostics, and shut down the engine when signs of an 

emergency situation arose. We called it KORD (Engine Operation Monitoring 

[System]). Pilyugin refused to develop it for understandable reasons: “We are 

not engine specialists and we can’t be responsible for the failure of a liquidpropellant engine. God forbid that we shut down dozens of good engines and 

send the rocket flying abroad.”

Once again Korolev gave me an ultimatum: “If you can’t persuade Pilyugin 

and can’t find another reliable contractor—develop KORD yourself.”

I assembled my “small council of small chiefs,” as Kalashnikov joked, and 

we ascertained by a poll that there were “no fools” as far as we could see and we 

would have to make this system ourselves. I put Kalashnikov in charge of development and assigned the electrical and circuitry problems to Viktor Kuzmin’s 

department and the construction of instruments to Semyon Chizhikov’s and 

Ivan Zverev’s departments. Nikolay Kuznetsov’s engine specialists specified the 

emergency criteria. And, working with these criteria, it was up to us to develop 

sensors and electrical instruments that would process information and manage 

to shut down the engine before an explosion occurred, inevitably resulting in 

a fire and loss of the rocket. The task of selecting the emergency criteria in this 

system proved to be complicated and very contentious. A special laboratory 

was set up to develop the KORD system, whose chief Yuriy Kunavin and a 

small number of young colleagues bore such an important responsibility for 

the fate of the N-1 that we felt it “ponderously, crudely, and tangibly” on the 

very first launch.5

We once again realized that even under the most favorable conditions, 

subcontracting organizations do not want to develop emergency systems. It 

was that way with the emergency missile destruction (APR) and emergency 

spacecraft destruction (APO) systems, the emergency rescue system (SAS) and 

emergency landing system, and now with the KORD system.6 If the emergency 

 5. The phrase in quotes is a reference to a 1930 poem (“At the Top of My Voice”) by 

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N1-L3 Control

system performed its task properly, then no one would say thank you, because 

thanks are not in order for an accident. And if the emergency system were to 

be erroneously activated, then there would be hell to pay—the system itself 

might cause the destruction of a rocket or a spacecraft. I can remember at least 

two such tragic events—the failure during the attempted launch of the first 

Soyuz on 16 December 1966 and the failure of the first N-1 rocket.7

 I shall 

tell about the latter event later on.

When it came to the very complex problems of controlling the flight of 

the L3 lunar vehicle, which consisted of rocket Blocks G and D and the LOK 

and LK spacecraft, it turned out that my staff received a sizable portion of the 

work. My comrades grumbled that our branch was doing the lion’s share of 

the total volume of control work for the entire lunar complex, while according 

to the decrees, Pilyugin’s staff was considered to be the head team. I countered 

such conversations by suggesting that anyone who wasn’t satisfied with the work 

assignments could transfer from Chief Designer Korolev to Chief Designer 

Pilyugin. I must say that I found no takers.

Vladilen Finogeyev and Mikhail Khitrik were quite helpful to me in coordinating the work assignments. Formalism and the bureaucratic approach were 

foreign to these two absolutely outstanding engineers, very decent men, and 

future deputies of Pilyugin.8

 They talked Pilyugin into taking on as much of 

the work as possible. Their efforts paved the way for us to work jointly in harmony, without any serious conflicts. They proposed an arrangement in which 

NIIAP developed the L3 complex control system for the flight segments during 

which the engines of Blocks G, D, Ye, and I were in operation; the automatic 

control equipment for propulsion systems; and the means to maintain control 

during the braking maneuvers to leave lunar orbit and decrease velocity for 

the descent segment. They also took on control of the automatic soft landing, 

control of the LK during liftoff from the lunar surface and insertion into lunar 

orbit in the vicinity of the LOK, and a system to control descent during return 

to Earth at reentry velocity.

We still backed up the automatic lunar landing system with manual control. Rauschenbach solved this problem very cleverly on paper and in graphic 

models. Legostayev and Khitrik coordinated the automatic and manual dynamics, while Savchenko invented the optics needed to select a landing site on the 

surface of the Moon.

 7. For Chertok’s account of the second (and aborted) attempt to launch a Soyuz spaceship 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

The theory of the motion control system of the N-1 rocket was developed by 

scientists at NIIAP: A. G. Glazkov (left) and M. S. Khitrik.

The distribution of responsibilities among the radio firms was relatively 

easy. The fierce struggle between the Kontakt (Contact) and Igla (Needle) 

rendezvous radio systems for a spot in the lunar program continued for several 

years. It clearly convinced us of the benefit of healthy competition even under 

conditions of strictly centralized planning. It is difficult to say what the fate of 

the Kontakt system would have been if our lunar program had been successfully 

implemented. The small staff that took on this project at OKB MEI under the 

supervision of radio enthusiast Petr Kriss demonstrated infinite capabilities in 

inventing new technical systems using old principles of radio physics.

For some time the fate of the main sources of electrical power for the 

lunar vehicles remained unclear. The option of using fuel cells (TE) or electrochemical generators (EKhG) started to be aggressively “promoted.”9

 Nikolay 

Lidorenko (of VNIIT10) proposed his option first. At OKB-1, in view of the 

complexity of the problem of oxygen and hydrogen supplies, we entrusted 

Viktor Ovchinnikov’s team, which was experienced in cryogenic technology 

and hydraulic automatic equipment, to oversee these orders and to develop a 

pneumohydraulic system. Along the way, the projects changed hands among 

 9. TE—

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three EKhG development firms, until finally one of the atomic energy enterprises in the Urals found a brilliant solution to this problem.11

It wasn’t until February 1965 that the VPK authorized the ministries to 

develop and coordinate a plan for the production of the L3 lunar system. The 

date of August 1965 was set for the draft plan as a whole. As for the schedule 

for the development and manufacture of the L3 complex, the VPK did not 

approve it in 1965 or in 1966.

Unlike conventional plans, where the design documentation is released 

before the working documentation, in planning the N1-L3 production schedule, the development of the draft plan for the system as a whole was scheduled 

for completion in August 1965, and the working documentation—in April 

through June 1965.12 This meant that we would prepare and issue the baseline 

data to our designers and subcontracting organizations before the release of 

the multivolume draft plan. The date for the manufacture of the experimental 

units, the first models of the systems, and the mockups and engineering models 

of the launch vehicle was the second quarter of 1966. “All of 1966” was set 

aside for the experimental development of the engines, new blocks, systems, 

and vehicles. The schedule also called for flight development testing (LKI) of 

the N1-L3 complex in 1966.

Intelligent people worked in the offices of the VPK. They understood 

full well that the proposed document contained a lot of “phony” dates, and 

not wanting to put their own superiors on the spot, they were in no hurry to 

present the plan schedule for approval.

Throughout 1965, I had to meet more often than usual with Pilyugin, 

his deputies, and leading specialists. NIIAP developed the control system for 

the N-1 launch vehicle more quickly than the others. For them, however, 

as for the many other organizations involved, the development was one of a 

kind. Pilyugin demanded from his developers that the main criterion for the 

development of the system must be reliability, regardless of OKB-1’s “hysterics” regarding weight. Wherever possible, there must be triple redundancy!

The N-1’s triple-redundant flight control system had three gyrostabilized 

platforms, nine longitudinal accelerometers (instead of three), and 18 normal 

 11.

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stabilization and lateral stabilization accelerators (NS-BS), in addition to three 

on-board digital computers with peripheral devices and code-analog and analogcode converters.13 All of the command and measurement circuitry operated on 

the “two out of three” voting principle. Due to the very heavy vibro-acoustic 

and temperature loads anticipated in the area of the launch vehicle’s propulsion system, the automatic control equipment for each engine had additional 

backup. In this case, the entire cable network had redundancy, and in addition, 

the most crucial circuit nodes also had part-by-part redundancy. The total 

number of instruments developed by NIIAP alone exceeded 200, while the 

mass of the cable network, according to various data, ranged from 3 to 5 tons.

Pilyugin loved to boast about the scope of work on the launch vehicle 

control system: “We have to manufacture all of this almost simultaneously—for 

the integrated stand, for type tests, for the first engineering model of the rocket, 

and for the first flight model. Over the course of a year, just for the N-1 (not 

counting all the other orders) I have to manufacture more than 2,000 new 

instruments. My factory does not have the capacity for this. But others will 

not take it up because there is still no tried-and-true documentation. But I’m 

not about to be the first to raise a ruckus about it. We will not be last. We’ll 

see how you meet your deadlines with the new engines and who debugs their 

part quicker.”

These were the sorts of conversations that went on about the launch vehicle. 

And designers and the factory still had to manufacture the equipment for the 

lunar vehicles as soon as possible. As Roman Turkov, the director of our factory, loved to say in 1965, “We haven’t gotten in gear yet.”14

When some new idea captivated Pilyugin, he could talk about it glowingly 

and at great length, disregarding the fact that we had come over with the tough 

assignment of coordinating dozens of designs.

Pilyugin telephoned to have them bring him the “latest thing” in gyroscopic 

technology—the floating angular rate sensor. “The weight and dimensions 

of Vitya Kuznetsov’s platforms are going to sink us all! Look here, we made 

everything on floats and it’s all half the size and weighs half as much.”

Indeed, during the period from 1965 to 1967, NIIAP began to independently develop and manufacture gyrostabilized platforms and accelerometers—

sensitive instruments for measuring accelerations. Despite the government 

decree, at Pilyugin’s initiative, NIIAP’s gyro platforms were installed on the 

 13.

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N-1 (and later on the L3) rather than those platforms produced at Viktor 

Kuznetsov’s NII-944. This added fuel to the fire of disagreement over technical 

matters between Pilyugin and Kuznetsov. My comrades and I had to observe 

a strict “benevolent” neutrality. Kuznetsov’s gyroscopic instruments were not 

only installed on all of our previous rockets and spacecraft, but they had already 

been developed for a new spacecraft—the Soyuzes.

During the second half of 1965, my comrades and I visited NIIAP almost 

every week to coordinate dozens of technical issues. Sipping tea and munching 

on biscuits in Pilyugin’s office, we arrived at the off-the-record conclusion that 

if the engines were ready, then we could still somehow manage to launch the 

launch vehicle in 1968, but the LOK and LK—no way! The conversations 

once again returned to the volume of production work and burdening of the 

factories. We often departed from the hospitable Nikolay Alekseyevich without 

having reached any sort of agreement, but with promises from both sides “to 

think about it for another week, and then give each other a phone call.”

The weight of the N-1 control system was a major issue of discussion in late 1965. On Monday, 20 December 1965, Pilyugin telephoned me 

on the Kremlin line: “Boris! Come on over. There’s something I need to talk 

to you about. Keldysh was interrogating me about the L3 weights. Someone 

filled his head with the idea that the weight deficit is greater than what you and 

Bushuyev are reporting. He wants to investigate and he’s called for a session of 

the expert commission on Wednesday. I telephoned Sergey [Korolev], and he 

said that you are going to report about the work assignments and at the same 

time, ‘among other things,’ about the weights too. I’m only going to report on 

my part, and I’m not about to talk about deadlines. That’s the wrong place.”

Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev after him, considered Academy 

of Sciences President Mstislav Keldysh the most competent and objective scientist, standing above departmental interests and personal ambitions. Keldysh’s 

authority was so great that they put him in charge of the widest range of 

expert commissions—from selecting combat missile systems to measures to 

save Lake Baikal.15

As chairman of various expert commissions on rocket-space technology 

and of the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council on Space Research, 

he was forced to conduct a myriad of closed sessions on this subject, and as 

 15.

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president of the Academy of Sciences, he held public press conferences.16

Keldysh’s primary workplace was considered to be the president’s office in the 

palatial building of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences at 14 Leninskiy 

Prospekt. However, Keldysh held meetings on rocket-space matters in the small 

office of the director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics on Miusskaya 

Square. This was one of the “secure” institutes. Within its walls one could talk 

about top-secret projects. This was forbidden in the Academy Presidium building because, among other reasons, foreign scientists, foreign delegations, and 

the press visited it. Keldysh would arrive at Miusskaya Square in the afternoon, 

spending the first very difficult and troublesome half of the day at the Academy 

of Sciences on Leninskiy Prospekt. This time he convened the meeting of the 

expert commission that Korolev had warned me about when he demanded: 

“Give me back 800 kilograms.”

Bushuyev, Rauschenbach, and I arrived a little bit before the appointed 

time of three o’clock, and I tacked up a poster displaying information about 

the distribution of L3 work assignments. Opening up the expert commission 

meeting, Keldysh said: “Korolev authorized Boris Yevseyevich to give us a 

report on the distribution of work assignments and on the status of developments on the L3 systems. The main issue, which disturbs all of us, is weight. 

I request that in your report you tell us what is really going on according to 

the latest figures.”

I knew full well that you had to get up pretty early to fool Keldysh, but 

nevertheless decided to draw out the report so that there would be no time left 

for serious discussion of the weight reports. Before our departure Korolev had 

instructed Bushuyev and me: “Two dozen curious individuals will be gathered 

there. Don’t get into a discussion with Keldysh about our weight problems 

in front of them—under any circumstances! If it becomes difficult, Kostya 

[Bushuyev] must help you out. He didn’t study at a diplomatic school for 

nothing.” Korolev did not pass up the opportunity to take a jab at Bushuyev, 

who had been enticed into diplomatic service before beginning his space career.

I began to talk about the number of systems and the distribution of 

responsibility between the main contractors. In the interests of history I shall 

cite its main content.

I noted that OKB-1 was performing the role of the lead organization but 

at the same time independently was developing a number of systems for the L3 

 16.

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lunar complex. By agreement with NIIAP, we had taken on the development 

of systems with which we already had experience.

I noted that OKB-1 was developing the following systems:

1. The attitude control system for the entire L3 complex.

2. The LOK attitude control system.

3. The LK attitude control system.

4. The LOK-LK rendezvous control system.

5. The autonomous manual attitude control and navigation system.

I added that Geofizika (TsKB-589) and the Ministry of the Defense 

Industry’s Arsenal Factory in Kiev were developing the sensitive elements—

the optical-electronic devices—for all of these systems. The Kontakt radio 

system developed at OKB MEI would be used for the rendezvous of the two 

spacecraft. In order to draw out 

the time and pay a compliment to 

Keldysh, I said: “Boris Viktorovich 

Rauschenbach is responsible for 

these five items. Since his transfer to 

us at the initiative of you and Sergey 

Pavlovich, his staff has tripled in 

size. If there are any questions on 

this part, Boris Viktorovich can 

brief you in greater detail.”

From the author’s archives.

The Lunar Vehicle (LK), the Soviet 

version of the American Apollo 

Lunar Module (LM), shown here 

in an assembly shop. The lander is 

positioned on a trusslike circular 

dolly set underneath the base.

Unfortunately, there were no questions, and I continued the list:

6. The control system that would run the LOK and LK on-board systems and 

instruments in accordance with the flight program, the integrated electrical circuit, and the on-board cable network. This system would receive, 

transmit, and process the on-board systems’ control commands in order 

to execute the logical operations that would run the on-board equipment.

7. The vehicles’ integrated power system. Electrochemical generators developed by a Minsredmash factory would serve as the electric power source 

(EKhG) for the LOK, and silver-zinc batteries developed by the All-Union 

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Scientific-Research Institute of Current Sources (VNIIT) would power 

the LK.17

8. The antenna-feeder units for all radio systems except the Kontakt system 

and radio altimeter.

9. The ground testing equipment for the LOK and LK at the factory, engineering facility, and launch site.

I continued, stating that NIIAP and their cooperative network were 

developing and manufacturing the following:

1. The motion control system for flight segments when the engines of Blocks 

G, D, I, and Ye would be in operation. This system would provide stabilization about the center of mass and control the motion of the center of mass.

2. The control automatics for propulsion systems, including the apparent 

velocity control automatics.

3. The motion control system during braking segments for lunar deorbiting, 

deceleration during descent, and soft lunar landing.

4. The control system for lunar liftoff and lunar orbital insertion in the area 

of rendezvous with the LOK.

5. The system for the controlled descent to Earth at reentry velocity.

6. The gyrostabilized platforms for all segments when the following would 

be operational: the motion and attitude-control system, accelerometers 

controlling accelerations about all three axes, and the on-board computer.

Furthermore, NII-885 was developing the following:

1. An integrated radio system providing transmission of control commands 

and trajectory measurements to the spacecraft during all flight segments.

2. Telemetry systems and telemetry transmission lines.

3. Television-image transmission equipment (jointly with NII-380).

4. Equipment for the transmission of voice and telegraph signals (jointly 

with NII-695).

5. An Earth-seeking radio direction-finding system for orientation of pencilbeam antennas.

6. An altimeter and computer providing measurements and control during 

the lunar vehicle’s landing segments.

 17.

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N1-L3 Control

I noted that NII-695 was developing the following:

1. The autonomous communication system between cosmonauts when one 

of them would egress onto the lunar surface and perform a spacewalk 

while transferring from one vehicle to the other.

2. The radio system for descent module search after its return to Earth.

OKB MEI was developing the new Kontakt relative-motion parameter 

measurement system. I noted that because of its smaller mass and layout advantages, we had decided to use this system instead of Igla, which was developed 

for the Soyuzes.

I informed those assembled that draft plans had been issued for all of the 

aforementioned systems. The working documentation had been partially developed, but not a single system was yet in production for the flight version. Taking 

into consideration the production cycle and subsequent debugging in the developers’ shops and on our experimental units, in the best-case scenario it would be 

possible to deliver the systems for the flight vehicles and blocks in late 1967. Thus, 

flight testing of the vehicles and L3 blocks would begin no sooner than 1968.

I had taken a forbidden tack. One was “not supposed” to mention 1968 in 

official meetings. According to decrees, and also Korolev’s and Keldysh’s promises, flight testing was supposed to begin in 1967 when the 50th anniversary 

of the Great October Socialist Revolution would take place.

The meeting started to get noisy—to start a discussion about deadlines was 

dangerous for everyone. Keldysh understood this very well and, without asking 

me any questions, he said, “Let’s hear what Nikolay Alekseyevich [Pilyugin] 

and then Mikhail Sergeyevich [Ryazanskiy] have to say. First and foremost, 

the fate of the control systems depends on them.”

Bearing in mind my faux pas, Pilyugin and Ryazanskiy reported in optimistic tones about the state of affairs, bypassing the problem of masses and 

deadlines. But both men felt they needed to turn the expert commission’s 

attention to problematic issues that still had to be resolved. Pilyugin brought 

up his achievements in the field of gyro platforms and accelerometers on 

floating gyroscopes and said that he had established close contact with the 

Scientific-Research Center for Electronic Computer Technology (NITsEVT) 

for the development of on-board digital computers.18

“We know how to control rockets and satellites without using on-board 

digital computers,” remarked Pilyugin, “but for a descent to the Moon we 

 18.

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RKK Energiya & David R. Woods

These three views of the LK provide a good sense of the main systems of the Soviet 

lunar lander. The on-board LK propulsion system is used for the final phase of 

descent plus ascent from the surface back to lunar orbit. The propulsion system 

consists of a variable-thrust primary system that can be throttled for landing, 

plus a fixed-thrust backup system for emergency return to lunar orbit should the 

primary system fail.

must have one. Without a computer we could burn up so much fuel trying to 

land that there wouldn’t be enough for the return trip.”

Ryazanskiy supported Pilyugin with regard to the on-board digital computer, saying that for NII-885 the most complex problem was the lunar altimeter, the measurements of which must be processed by a high-speed computer. 

After back-and-forth banter about the reality of producing a computer within 

the necessary timeframe Keldysh asked what was going on with the EKhG—the 

so-called “fuel cells.”

“The thing is,” said Keldysh, “that Slavskiy called me and complained 

that one of his Sverdlovsk factories supposedly is being dragged into the ‘lunar 

adventure,’ but he, the minister of Medium Machine Building, doesn’t know 

anything about this and is asking us not to count on them very much for the 

time being.”19

 19.

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N1-L3 Control

This information came as a complete surprise to Bushuyev and me. The 

day before, Viktor Ovchinnikov and Mikhail Melnikov, who had supported 

him by means of his connections at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building 

(MSM), reported to Korolev that in Sverdlovsk everything had been arranged 

and we would receive much more reliable EKhGs than [Nikolay] Lidorenko’s 

firm was offering.

We promised Keldysh “to look into it and report back.”

We looked into it about 10 days later and could hardly stop laughing. 

Here is what Ovchinnikov, who was responsible for the EKhG negotiations, 

told us. They really had come to an agreement with one very reliable design 

bureau of an atomic industry plant in the Urals. The nuclear engineers were 

very interested in the problem of obtaining electric energy from liquid oxygen 

and liquid hydrogen, and also providing breathing oxygen and clean drinking 

water for the cosmonauts. In order to authorize the agreement they needed the 

blessing of the MSM—the atomic ministry. The officials didn’t object but said 

that it would be good if someone from outside reported about this interesting work to Slavskiy, and it would be bad if he were the last to hear about it.

A rather complicated relationship had formed between Korolev and 

Slavskiy. Myriad problems had cropped up since the time when, under the 

leadership of [Korolev’s deputy] Mikhail Melnikov and with the very active 

support of Vasiliy Mishin, we had set up a large branch dealing with electric 

nuclear rocket engines (EYaRD).20 These problems required the involvement 

of professionals from atomic firms under the nuclear ministry. The MSM 

bureaucracy was very anxious about Korolev’s “independent activities” [in 

nuclear energy].

Korolev felt that at the present time it was premature to turn to the allpowerful Slavskiy. But then Melnikov decided to battle his way through to 

the ministry of the atomic industry on his own. Someone in the bureaucracy 

helped him, and he wound up in Slavskiy’s office. The rather short and thin 

Melnikov boldly went on the attack against the tall, powerful minister and 

former swashbuckling soldier of Budennyy’s.21 Slavskiy listened to Melnikov’s 

long speech in which he described the future of atomic technology in cosmonautics, his problems and requests for MSM regarding electric nuclear rocket 

engines, and thanked him for beginning operations on the fuel cell. In closing, 

 20.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Melnikov committed an unforgivable mistake—he switched to the issue of 

controlled thermonuclear reaction.

“We have achieved great success,” he boasted, “in mastering deep vacuum 

technology. Your specialists haven’t mastered this technology—let us teach them.”

Ovchinnikov found out about the meeting’s finale from the aide who was 

in the office at that time. At this point, according to the aide, Yefim Pavlovich 

[Slavskiy] turned red in the face, stood up to the full extent of his imposing 

height and, pointing toward the door, he said:

“And you can go f—— yourself....”

Melnikov understood his mistake by the time he reached the reception 

area, where the aide consoled him and explained that this kind of treatment 

from Slavskiy is a good sign.

“He has made a mental note of everything and will certainly help.”

Evidently Slavskiy’s telephone call to Keldysh followed this “conversation.”

Everyone was already rather tired when Keldysh asked a question that I 

really didn’t want to answer: “Well now, Boris Yevseyevich, the time has come 

to have a look at what’s happening with weights. Please brief the commission 

on the latest data.”

I could not conceal from the expert commission that now, while we were 

coordinating work assignments, issuing working documentation, and designing new systems, the most sensitive issue remained not the hardware, but 

its weight. Keldysh was demanding that I specify the actual numbers of the 

weight deficit. I did not wish to frighten the experts and did my best to avoid 

a direct answer. Finally, having lost patience and become irritable, Keldysh 

said: “Boris Yevseyevich, if you do not know what is really going on with the 

systems’ weights, then at least give us a hint as to who at OKB-1 is capable 

of answering this question. If there are no such people, it means that nobody 

has a grip on this project and everything is happening willy-nilly. But I don’t 

believe this. Don’t make me complain to Sergey Pavlovich.”

Bushuyev decided that it was time to come to my rescue.

“Mstislav Vsevolodovich, we have every gram under the strictest control. 

The designers in my department are responsible for the weight report. We are 

keeping track of all the systems, and Chertok does not have the right to exceed 

the limits allotted him.”

Keldysh smiled knowingly and stopped tormenting us. But this didn’t 

make our lives any easier.

132
Chapter 6

We’re Behind, but We’re Not Giving In

From 1963 to 1965, Dmitriy Ustinov was chairman of the Supreme 

Council of the National Economy (VSNKh) and first deputy chairman of the 

USSR Council of Ministers.1

 Having dove into the problems of coordinating 

the work of the Councils of the National Economy, which exercised regional 

authority over industry, Ustinov had temporarily stepped away from the management of rocket-space technology. After Khrushchev’s ouster the VSNKh 

was phased out. Its functions were transferred to the Council of Ministers and 

to the reinstated industry ministries.

Ustinov had not been actively involved in the overthrow of Nikita 

Khrushchev, but in terms of his “specific gravity” after the “October Revolution 

of 1964,” he could certainly count on the post of Chairman of the Council of 

Ministers. However, many members of the new Brezhnev Politburo were apprehensive about Ustinov’s strong-willed nature and the possible consequences 

of offering him the second position in the Party and government hierarchy.2

Instead, Aleksey Kosygin was named chairman of the Council of Ministers. 

Kosygin had not been involved in the plot against Khrushchev and was nonthreatening because, involved in economics, he was not interested in political 

leadership. Ustinov was offered the honorary post of Central Committee secretary for defense matters. He was a candidate to become a Politburo member, 

while Minister of Defense Rodion Malinovskiy was a Politburo member. 

 1. The Supreme Council of the National Economy was a short-lived body established by 

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Central Committee General Secretary Brezhnev headed the Defense Council.3

The ministers of all the branches of industry were subordinate to the Council 

of Ministers. Anastas Mikoyan, Nikolay Podgornyy, Andrey Kirilenko, and 

other members of the Politburo could feel more secure with this alignment of 

forces in the upper echelons of power.4

Some strictly secret “water cooler” anecdotes and jokes circulated after 

Khrushchev’s downfall. Supposedly at the Plenum of the Central Committee, 

some delegates from Odessa spoke out against Nikita Sergeyevich’s removal from 

his post as General Secretary of the Central Committee: “Odessa will survive 

without meat, but we can’t live without jokes.” Historians, meanwhile, came up 

with this quip: “There was Russia before Peter (dopetrovskaya), then there was 

Russia under Peter (petrovskaya), and now there’s Russia under Dnepropetrovsk 

(dnepropetrovskaya).5 This last joke referred to the new makeup of the Politburo, 

where former Party leaders from Dnepropetrovsk played a decisive role.

Having ended up in the post of Central Committee secretary for defense 

issues, Ustinov actually didn’t meddle in the affairs of the Ministry of Defense.6 The 

Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff preferred to deal directly with 

Brezhnev. Ustinov focused all of his energy on the defense industry [rather than 

the military] and was quite familiar with all of its branches. Between him and the 

ministries was VPK Chairman Leonid Smirnov, whom Ustinov had promoted.7

 3. The Defense Council was a highly secret body attached to the Politburo that was respon

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We’re Behind, but We’re Not Giving In

The leaders of the shipbuilding and aviation industries did not forget the 

active support that Ustinov had rendered to Khrushchev in the development 

of missiles at the expense of naval submarines and bomber aviation.8

 Ustinov 

had to seek out new ways to work with the industry. Officially, he did not have 

the authority to order or forbid or permit. However, the Central Committee 

was the Central Committee—all the ministers understood that. The personal 

fates of the minister, his deputies, chiefs of the main directorates, and directors of large enterprises depended on the offices of the Central Committee 

and its defense department. The manager of the Department of the Defense 

Industry, Ivan Serbin, was now officially subordinate to Ustinov. However, 

this “unsinkable” official of the Central Committee bureaucracy was feared 

more than Ustinov himself. The Central Committee offices did not prepare 

any resolutions or decisions concerning the defense industry. That was done 

by the VPK and offices of the Council of Ministers. But not a single government resolution was issued without the Central Committee’s thorough review 

and blessing.

After the death of Korolev, our letter to the Central Committee about 

the appointment of Mishin as chief designer prevented Ustinov from putting Georgiy Tyulin in this post.9

 He, Ustinov, had prepared everything. All 

that remained was to obtain the signatures of the other Central Committee 

secretaries and to brief Brezhnev. With our appeal we had short-circuited the 

established system for appointing chiefs. We had not even consulted with 

Ustinov and had not warned him. Perhaps for this reason, and possibly due to 

other circumstances, for the first year and a half he “had no time for” the N-1.

One after another, intelligence reports and surveys—“white TASS” 

articles reporting on the Americans’ successes—appeared. In August 1966, the 

U.S. press reported on the second successful flight of the Saturn IB carrying 

an experimental model of the Apollo.10 Ustinov appealed directly to MOM 

Minister Sergey Afanasyev and to USSR Academy of Sciences President Mstislav 

Keldysh with a proposal to review the state of affairs with the lunar program 

and to determine why we were lagging behind the Americans and failing to 

meet the deadlines stipulated by the resolutions of the Central Committee and 

 8. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Khrushchev had reduced the size and funding of the 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Council of Ministers. Ustinov assigned TsNIImash chief Yuriy Mozzhorin to 

prepare a detailed and objective report.11

In December 1966, Mishin was on vacation, and Sergey Okhapkin was performing the duties of chief designer of TsKBEM (as OKB-1 was now known). 

It was an unpleasant surprise for him to be invited to give a presentation about 

the status of operations on the N-1 project at a Central Committee meeting 

in Ustinov’s office. He asked Bushuyev, Kryukov, and me to provide him with 

all the necessary reference materials for the report. I advised Okhapkin, either 

through the minister or directly, to persuade Ustinov to postpone the meeting 

until Mishin returned from vacation. He answered: “I have already tried to 

do that. They insinuated that, on the contrary, Ustinov wants to conduct the 

conversation in Mishin’s absence.”

Okhapkin knew better than others the state of affairs regarding the launch 

vehicle’s design development. But he depicted what was going on with the 

vehicles and their systems as utterly a “total failure.” I suggested, “You can’t 

say ‘total failure,’ you need to say that, through the fault of subcontractors, 

operations on the vehicles are ‘under threat of missing deadlines.’ ”

From our TsKBEM, only Okhapkin was invited to the meeting. From 

among the other chiefs, Pilyugin and Barmin, who enjoyed Ustinov’s special 

favor, were invited. Keldysh, Smirnov, Afanasyev, Tyulin, Serbin, Strogonov, and 

Pashkov also participated in the meeting.12 After citing American information 

sources, Ustinov said that the Americans are rigorously executing their plan 

and had already announced the commencement of Saturn V flights in July 

1967 and the beginning of piloted flights in 1968. According to him, we had 

become bogged down with the circumlunar flight programs, we were missing 

deadlines for the 7K (or Soyuz) vehicles, and it was unclear when we intended 

to begin flight-developmental testing (LKI) on the N-1 launch vehicle. He, 

Ustinov, asked Mozzhorin—the director of the head institute of the rocketspace industry—not only to honestly speak about the status of operations, but 

also to give an objective evaluation.

According to the accounts of Okhapkin and Mozzhorin himself, the report 

he gave was in a completely different style than that to which Ustinov was 

accustomed. First, Mozzhorin made his colleagues, who knew the fundamentals of economics and information about the state of affairs in our industry 

 11.

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We’re Behind, but We’re Not Giving In

and among the subcontractors, honestly assess the scope of the operations. 

Many years later, Mozzhorin recounted that he had prepared himself very 

thoroughly, knowing that the report would provoke outraged surprise rather 

than calm discussion.

Mozzhorin put up posters that very clearly displayed the year-by-year 

schedules of expenditures that would be needed to support a lunar landing 

expedition, compared with the actual funds that the state budget was capable 

of setting aside for all cosmonautics programs. From Mozzhorin’s posters and 

report, one could deduce that, even with the most heroic efforts, it would be 

impossible to implement the project in 1968. It would be possible to assign 

tasks for the beginning of flight-developmental testing in 1969, but this would 

require new decisions to dramatically increase funding for this project. The 

existing plans and timelines for the N-1 at this time were unrealistic.

In addition to everything else, Mozzhorin believed that significantly greater 

resources needed to be spent on ground developmental testing than had previously been assumed. It was wrong to approach testing a rocket like the N-1, 

using the rocket method of testing reliability in flight, when the number of failed 

launches didn’t matter. By spending perhaps a greater percentage of funding 

on ground developmental testing, in the final analysis, we would manage to 

lower costs rather than raise the cost of the program as a whole.

Mozzhorin’s report caused an explosion of outrage. For the first time at 

such a level, officially, a leader of a head institute had, in no uncertain terms, 

declared that plans dictated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party 

of the Soviet Union were unrealistic. Ustinov was more indignant than anyone. 

Airing a report like this to the Politburo threatened his personal authority. 

They might ask him: “And where were you all this time, Comrade Ustinov? 

After all, you were both minister of the defense industry and VPK chairman.”13

Keldysh and Serbin supported the perturbed Ustinov. Mozzhorin was nearly 

branded an enemy of the people, as in the old days. Keldysh was worked up 

because, as chairman of the expert commission on the N1-L3 project, such 

figures had not been available to him and he had approved the clearly underestimated expenditures that were shown in our drafts. According to established 

practice, we made everything cheaper on paper so as not to frighten the minister 

of finance and Gosplan. Everyone knew about this practice but pretended that 

no one was being deceived.

 13.

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As a first step, Keldysh proposed reviewing Ministry of Defense expenditures on spy satellites and other military space needs and reducing them in 

favor of the N-1. He reluctantly proposed doing the same thing with Babakin’s 

automatic stations for scientific space exploration. However, Mozzhorin had 

foreseen these proposals. He showed on each poster that the total funding for 

all the space programs taken together was just one-fifth of the amount that 

needed to be added on to the expenditures for the N-1. Even if funding were 

found from other sources, at this time it was not really possible to trim the 

cycles of construction, production, and subsequent reliability testing. He told 

us to assume that at the beginning of next year, by some miracle, full-scale 

funding would begin for the needs of all the operations’ participants. In that 

case, in terms of the turnaround time for such a system, based on the available 

inventories of stock and experience, we’d still need at least three years before 

we could begin flight-developmental testing. Consequently, if there were full 

funding and the necessary funds were transferred for construction and production, we would be looking at the end of 1969 or more likely 1970!

Ustinov was a very experienced manager. Having suppressed his initial 

flash of outrage and wanting to calm himself and the others, he posed the 

following question to Okhapkin: “And you, the prime contractors, what do 

you think about this?”

After returning from the meeting, Okhapkin told us: “What could I say? 

My back was already drenched with sweat. I knew that this question was coming 

and I answered: ‘Dmitriy Fedorovich, if they help us, then we will fulfill the 

work within the deadlines set by the Central Committee.’ ”

Outwardly, Ustinov seemed satisfied with the response. He did not dare 

question Barmin, who had spent enormous amounts on the construction of 

grandiose launch facilities. Barmin then said that inwardly he agreed with 

Mozzhorin but decided that if they weren’t going to ask, he would remain silent.

Turning to Afanasyev, Ustinov proposed that the minister get to the bottom 

of the “unhealthy attitude” of the director of the industry’s head institute. 

Mozzhorin was not so naïve that he had not familiarized his minister with 

the figures beforehand. Afanasyev gave his word that he would “get to the 

bottom of things” with Mozzhorin. Afanasyev and Mozzhorin understood 

that Ustinov and Keldysh were playing up their indignation. In actual fact, 

they had a better grasp of the general situation than the others, but out of 

“instructional” considerations they could act no other way.

During the last two years of his administration, Khrushchev managed 

to significantly reduce expenditures on conventional weapons, the construction of large surface ships, the production of heavy bombers, and the army 

in general. Now, in order to please the military officials who supported him 

in 1964, Brezhnev was supposed to correct Khrushchev’s “mistakes.” Under 

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these conditions, Ustinov was leery of coming out with proposals to increase 

funding for the lunar landing expedition project, the necessity of which the 

marshals could not comprehend at all.

After finding out the details of the meeting, we once again realized that 

if the actual status of the programs stipulated by the decrees of the nation’s 

higher political leadership did not coincide with what they desired, then 

even individuals with extensive experience in technology like Ustinov could 

bring down their wrath on the one who dares speak the truth. Even Keldysh, 

the chairman of the interdepartmental expert commission on N1-L3, who 

had realized a year ago that we were in a very difficult “weight” crisis from 

which we had yet to find a way out, supported the indignant Ustinov, rather 

than Mozzhorin!

When Okhapkin called us together and gave us a detailed account of the 

meeting in the Central Committee, Konstantin Bushuyev, who was responsible 

for design work for the lunar vehicles; Dmitriy Kozlov, who was responsible 

for monitoring design compliance during manufacture of the launch vehicle 

at the Progress Factory and who had just flown in from Kuybyshev; and I let 

it be known that we thought Mozzhorin was right. Before it was too late, we 

needed to draw up proposals with his input for new deadlines and arrangements. Taking advantage of Mishin’s absence, Bushuyev even went so far as to 

say that we needed to draw up proposals for an alternative two-launch scenario. 

I stated that my friend Bushuyev, who was now proposing a two- and even 

three-launch scenario, was allotting values in his weight reports for the entire 

control system that were one and a half times less than those we were aware 

of from American data. Our control system was supposed to perform the very 

same functions as the system of the future American lunar expedition. We 

could reduce the mass, but only at the expense of reliability.

Bushuyev forcefully declared that the launch vehicle, which could insert 

just 85 tons into orbit, would not allow him to give weight limits for systems 

“on demand.” We had to honestly admit that the rocket was not suited for 

landing a human being on the Moon.

Kryukov, cut to the quick, said that his departments had completed all 

the design work for the installation of an additional six engines on the first 

stage. This and other measures would make it possible to bring the in-orbit 

mass up to 95 tons. Kozlov reproached Okhapkin for not having mentioned at 

the meeting that the installation of 30 engines on the first stage instead of 24, 

regardless of any measures, would move the deadlines for the readiness of the 

first launch vehicle flight model back another year. We had agreed to have 30 

engines installed on the first stage beginning with the first N-1 flight model, 

No. 3L. The first two engineering models of the rocket—for static tests and 

fit operations at the launch site—would have to be modified “during testing.”

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Almost 2,000 enterprises and organizations were involved in one 

way or another with the preparation of the Soviet landing expedition to the 

Moon. Two years—from 1966 to the beginning of 1969—had become the 

most intense period in this program, and despite the avalanche of problems, 

the people involved remained optimistic. The successes of the Vostoks and 

Voskhods, the entry into service of one combat missile after another, the operation of the Molniya communications satellites, and the automatic docking of 

the Soyuzes inspired hope for success.

Everything we had tackled under Korolev had panned out. But he had 

been there when things had panned out. How would it be now without him 

and his efforts? In 1966, Mozzhorin had predicted the beginning of flightdevelopmental testing no earlier than 1969. It really did begin in 1969. The 

Americans spent three and a half years on flight-developmental testing (before 

the first landing on the Moon) if you consider the first flight of the Saturn IB 

carrying the unmanned model of the main Apollo vehicle as the beginning of 

testing. If we had come up with a more realistic schedule in 1966, we should 

have set the deadline for accomplishing the mission in 1972!

I sensed in myself and realized in my comrades that in the general breakdown of our time and attention, the N1-L3 was not our top priority. The 

7K-OK and 7K-L1, the Molniyas, the R-9, and solid-propellant RT-2s had 

flown. Each flight brought new worries. An event such as the death of Komarov 

had a decelerating effect on the N1-L3 program, if only because the management of TsKBEM and many of the subcontracting organizations cut themselves completely off from N1-L3 project issues for months. Myriad, various 

smaller headaches also ripped us away from the lunar program. Incidents that 

individually received a minimum of attention combined into a stream capable 

of disrupting the most realistic planning. And nevertheless, the scope of operations over the entire front began to bring visible results.

Hills and valleys were few and far between in the topography of the 

Tyuratam steppe. Site No. 2 and its hotels rose up barely perceptibly over the 

surrounding countryside. Old-timers knew that if you looked from the top 

stories of buildings, all you could see for dozens of kilometers to the northwest 

was bare desert steppe. In 1964, despite the “hue and cry” about insufficient 

funding, this desert was converted into a colossal construction site. By 1967, 

hundreds of permanent structures had sprouted up. The enormous assembly 

factory building, which we called the big MIK and a few smart alecks called 

the “big barn,” was the centerpiece of the industrial landscape. Crowded all 

around it were all kinds of entry gates, transformer sheds, and warehouses. 

There were paved roads and railway lines. In the west, a large residential town 

of five-story buildings went up. Insulated water lines stretched along the 

roadways and, to the north, high-voltage power transmission towers advanced 

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toward the launch complexes. There, the launch site teemed with its own 

construction activity. Around the clock, dump trucks traveled over the dusty 

steppe roads and motorized cranes and heavy hauling equipment crept along. 

In 1967, engineering equipment was installed in the big MIK and production 

activity began. Staff workers and engineers in white shop coats replaced the 

dusty construction workers.

The largest-scale experimental work being done at that time was 

the experimental integrated developmental testing of the propulsion systems. 

At NII-229, Gleb Tabakov, whose face had grown markedly drawn from the 

sheer volume of work that fell upon him, not only had to manage the firing 

tests of the propulsion systems, but also had to set up the manufacture of the 

second- and third-stage rocket blocks. Because the N-1 launch vehicle stages 

couldn’t be transported, the tanks of the second and third stages, which had 

been stipulated for firing rig tests, were welded on the grounds of NII-229. 

The Progress Factory set up its production there.

The firing rig tests took place in the specially retrofitted “facility No. 2,” 

which until then had served as the firing rig for tests on the Semyorka. EU-15 

was the experimental unit that simulated Block B, the second stage. When 

its eight engines were started up, a total thrust of 1,200 tons was generated.

It wasn’t until 23 June 1968 that the first firing took place. This was the 

most powerful firing test that the rig and the surrounding environment had 

experienced since the Novostroyka facility had begun operation in 1948. Unit 

EU-16, which also held four engines, simulated the third stage—Block V. This 

made it possible to conduct three firing tests by early 1969. Block A with its 

30 engines remained untested on the ground. Firing rig tests on individual 

engines under the supervision of Nikolay Kuznetsov at OKB-276 were supposed to prove the reliability of the first stage.

Mishin could not conceal his pleasure over the fact that once upon a time 

he had persuaded Korolev to give Nikolay Kuznetsov the requirements for the 

unique parameters to perfect the liquid-propellant rocket engine. Indeed, compared with the parameters of the Saturn V oxygen-kerosene engines, the NK-15 

engines of the N-1 first stage had very high indices. The specific impulse—the 

main characteristic of a liquid-propellant rocket engine—was 294 seconds for 

the NK-15 on the ground and 331 seconds at high altitudes. The Saturn V 

first-stage engines had a specific impulse of 266 seconds on the ground and 

304 seconds in space. To achieve these indices, Kuznetsov had to bring the 

pressure in the combustion chamber to 150 atmospheres. The Saturn V F-1 

engines had just 70 atmospheres of pressure in the combustion chamber.

OKB-276 was considered one of the nation’s leading design bureaus for the 

development of turbojet aircraft engines. Nikolay Kuznetsov and his specialists 

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did not think that it would be particularly difficult for such a highly qualified staff to develop these relatively simply designed “pots,” which is what the 

liquid-propellant rocket engines seemed like. However, life showed that the 

main reasons why unreliable engines appeared on the first N-1s were a complete 

lack of design experience and production discipline for liquid-propellant rocket 

engines, no experimental facilities, and, above all, no firing rigs.

Mishin sent our engine specialists Raykov, Yershov, and Khaspekov on 

temporary assignment [to OKB-276] in Kuybyshev to provide continuous 

supervision, monitoring, and assistance. Raykov—my neighbor in building 

No. 5 on Academician Korolev Street—told me when he was in Moscow that 

in the new engines it was very difficult to achieve stable combustion in the 

combustion chambers. At such a high pressure they needed to find a way to 

get the oscillation energy out of the chamber. They already understood this 

at OKB-276. The greatest difficulties showed up where they didn’t expect 

them—in the turbopump assembly. It would seem that, of all places, in the 

turbojet OKB it would be easier to deal with a turbine and pumps than with 

a combustion chamber, injector assemblies, and burnt-through nozzles.14

Sometimes they observed instantaneous flame erosions of the oxygen pump that 

could not have been foreseen using any measurement techniques. The flame 

erosion process lasted less than one-hundredth of a second from the moment 

it began until the engine was completely destroyed. It was not as necessary to 

have methods for the early warning of a defect as it was to preclude the very 

possibility of this phenomenon. An engine explosion in flight inevitably would 

lead to destruction in the immediate surroundings. An armor shield could not 

be installed in the aft section.

“Your KORD isn’t likely to help there,” Raykov told me. “Your boys have 

installed a KORD device on Kuznetsov’s rigs, and it often comes to the rescue, 

but it can’t save engines from explosions like these.”

“Along with military acceptance,” explained Raykov, “we are obliged to 

accept engines using the KONRID” system, which has been approved by 

Mishin and Kuznetsov and coordinated with military acceptance.15 Using 

this system, engines are issued in batches of six. From each batch, a military 

inspector selects two engines for firing tests. If they pass the tests, then the 

other four engines from this batch are shipped off for assembly in rocket blocks 

without any firing tests. The engines are strictly for one-time usage. After firing 

 14.

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tests on such an engine, it is no longer fit to be installed on a rocket. This is 

the fundamental distinction between Kuznetsov’s engines and the Americans’. 

Each rocket engine installed on the Saturn has previously undergone three 

firing tests without overhaul.

“Who can guarantee,” I asked, “that there isn’t some technological defect 

lurking in those four engines that will manifest itself only under the conditions of a real firing mode with all its vibrations, temperatures, mechanical and 

acoustical loads, and other delights that rockets have to offer?”

“That is precisely the danger of such a system, that there is no absolute 

guarantee. I argued that to Mishin, but for the time being he could recommend 

only making the selection more rigorous. We need to have batches of eight 

engines and select four of them for firing tests,” answered Raykov.

“That means,” Raykov continued, “in order to put 30 engines plus 8 plus 4 

on the rocket—42 in all—we need to manufacture, test-fire, and then throw out 

another 42 engines? According to the resolution for LKI [flight-developmental 

testing], we’re supposed to use up 12 rockets. So the series production factory 

is supposed to manufacture around 500 flight engines. So we’ll be left with 

engines, but we’ll lose the shirts off our backs and any other accessories!

“We’ve already persuaded Kuznetsov’s boys in Kuybyshev, on the sly for 

the time being, to urgently begin modifying the engine so that it can be used 

multiple times, so that it will endure at least three or four runs without overhaul. But this won’t happen soon—it will take a couple of years.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime we’ll be carrying on using the KONRID method. The 

latest hypothesis for the sudden explosions, which they speak about only in a 

whisper, is a shifting of the oxygen pump rotor. Under large loads, off-nominal 

axial and radial shifting greater than the gap between the rotor and the housing is possible. In an atmosphere of pure oxygen, all it takes is for the rotor to 

scrape against the housing and an explosion is guaranteed.”

“But perhaps everything is much simpler. What if there is dirt or ‘foreign 

objects’ in the tanks on the firing rig—this would also cause explosions.”

“We tested that. We intentionally threw metallic shavings and even nuts 

(which supposedly could turn up in the tanks) into the turbopump assembly.16 And nothing happened! The turbopump assembly swallowed them up 

without a cough.”

 16.

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I had this gloomy conversation in 1967 with Raykov, whose eyes were 

rimmed with the dark circles of fatigue. I was tormenting him with questions 

in order to find out about the effectiveness of the KORD system. If we were to 

determine the readiness of the lunar launch vehicle only through the development tests on the propulsion systems, then based on this indicator, by 1968, 

the N-1 would be five years behind the Saturn V.

144
Chapter 7

KORD and ATG

Back at the very beginning of the N-1 launch vehicle design process, the 

need to create a diagnostics system to monitor the operation of the more than 

40 engines of the N-1’s three stages was obvious. This system differed from the 

telemetry system monitoring the parameters of the propulsion systems in that 

not only did it identify the status of this or that parameter, but it also issued 

a command to the control system to shut down the engine if the parameters 

it was monitoring exceeded the permissible limits.

The inescapable need to develop the KORD system using our own resources 

was becoming more and more obvious since all the subcontracting organizations to whom we had offered this project immediately understood the degree 

of responsibility it involved, its labor intensity, and the lack of prospects in 

terms of any credit for a job well done. After many hours of discussion with 

very close comrades, we decided to assign conceptual development of the 

electrical circuitry and its optimizing to Viktor Kuzmin’s department and 

the design implementation and manufacturing application to Ivan Zverev’s 

department. A VPK decision assigned the series production of KORD system 

electronics to the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Factory (ZOMZ) using our 

technical documentation.1

After studying the structure of Nikolay Kuznetsov’s equipment, our electronics engineers decided that they were fully capable of rescuing a propulsion system from a fire, explosion, and other disasters if the engine specialists 

concisely formulated the criteria for the pre-emergency state. After insistent 

appeals from Korolev, Chief Designer Kuznetsov finally specified which engine 

parameter deviations would cause the KORD system to respond. In the process 

of this work, Kuznetsov and his specialists changed both the list of parameters 

that were to be monitored and the critical values that would prompt the KORD 

system to transmit the engine shutdown command to the control system.

 1. ZOMZ—

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Initially, four parameters were selected for diagnostic control of the engines 

of the first flight model of the N-1 launch vehicle: the temperature of the gas 

downstream from the turbopump turbine, the pressure pulsation in the gas 

generator, the rotation speed of the main shaft of the turbopump, and the 

pressure in the combustion chamber. When these parameters exceeded the 

limits set by the engine specialists, the KORD system would issue a command 

prompting the control system, based on its own algorithm, to completely shut 

down the suspect engine.

Each of the 42 engines had its own monitoring equipment consisting 

of primary sensors, an electronic block of amplifiers, a communication line, 

and a system control block linked with the engine control automatics system. 

The primary sensors—converters of physical values into electrical signals—

measured the critical parameters. Thus, for example, a triple-redundant 

membrane-type contact sensor was especially developed to monitor pressure. 

For other control channels, they developed generator-type sensors: piezoelectric transducers in the pressure pulsations channel, induction sensors 

in the rotational speed channel, and rapid-response thermocouples in the 

temperature channel.

The amplifier/converter block performed the general coordination and 

conversion of measurements into commands. This was a rather complex electronic instrument made up of 1,600 elements. Various organizations developed 

all of the sensors from 1962 through 1963, and our engineers debugged them 

on firing rigs during tests of the first-, second-, and third-stage engines.

The mandatory and most stringent requirement for an emergency system 

is that it must be on the lookout for and respond only to an emergency flag. 

Issuing a false signal in flight could cause a healthy engine to be shut down, 

and for the first stage, a second, diametrically opposite engine as well.

The N-1 launch vehicle had a 25 percent margin in terms of thrust-toweight ratio. This allowed two pairs of liquid-propellant rocket engines to 

malfunction even during liftoff. After receiving an engine failure signal, the 

control system was supposed to augment the power of the working engines 

and increase the total operating time of the first stage. On the second stage, 

when emergency signals were received, no more than two engines could be 

shut down; and on the third stage, one.

The most difficult problem during the development testing of the system 

was protecting the KORD system against interference. During tests at the 

engineering facility in the big MIK, interference—voltage up to 15 volts at 

a frequency of 1,000 Hertz—was detected on the system’s power buses. This 

dangerous interference came from the rocket’s main electric power source—the 

special turbo generator. To shield against this interference we introduced a block 

of capacitors, which bypassed the source and made sure that the interference 

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KORD and ATG

was reduced to 1 volt. We relaxed too early—1,000 Hertz soon came back to 

haunt us under “aggravating circumstances.”

Subsequent events showed that much of what had happened during the 

first flight could have been discovered if there had been a full-scale firing rig to 

test the first stage with the nominal cable network and nominal power sources 

and control system.

During previous projects involving the development of rocket systems 

and spacecraft, Korolev had always encouraged business contacts between 

managers strengthened by personal long-lasting friendship. When Pilyugin or I 

was asked to resolve something related to the integration of propulsion systems 

with control systems and actuators, we easily came to terms with Glushko, 

Kosberg, Isayev, or their specialists. We quickly found common ground, and 

then for the sake of “formality” we filled out the appropriate protocols.

The deputies of all the chief designers were on familiar “ty” terms with 

one another, and in difficult situations they made arrangements among themselves about how best to “handle” one chief designer or another for the quick 

acceptance of a decision that they had coordinated.2

Nikolay Kuznetsov and his engine experts, who had become part of our 

cooperative network, were new to us. Moved by the desire to bring us together, 

Korolev invited his closest deputies—Mishin, Bushuyev, Okhapkin, and me—

over to the “Korolev cottage” on 3rd Ostankinskaya Street. We were sure that 

we were in for more shoptalk. But it turned out that it was Nina Ivanovna 

who was hosting us rather than S. P., and the main guests of this companionable dinner were Mr. and Mrs. Kuznetsov. We arrived without our wives, and 

Nina Ivanovna realized the gaffe that S. P. had committed, but it was too late 

to correct his mistake.

At the dinner table, S. P. tried in every way possible to sustain the dying 

conversations about culinary achievements, the latest movies (which hardly 

anyone had seen), the theaters that almost none of us had visited, the weather, 

and mushrooms. No matter how hard the mistress of the house tried, all one 

had to do was mention rocket engine matters and the conversation livened 

up. Kuznetsov said something about the construction of firing rigs away from 

his factory; Mishin extolled the one-of-a-kind engine parameters used for the 

development; I waited for a convenient moment to talk about the omnipotence of the KORD system, which was capable of saving this one-of-a-kind 

 2. The Russian language has two different ways to express the second-person singular: 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

engine; and Bushuyev diplomatically attempted to switch the conversation to 

Kuznetsov’s latest achievements in the development of aircraft turbojet engines.

On our way home Okhapkin was the first to speak his mind: “S. P. arranged 

this dinner to bring us together with Kuznetsov. He feels that after the rift with 

Glushko a void has formed in our personal contacts with the engine corporation and he understands that if worse comes to worst, we can weld our own 

tanks and rivet the shell, but the engines will determine everything.”

Bushuyev agreed and added: “But Chertok would have been better off 

keeping his mouth shut about his KORD. He hinted too soon about the 

inevitability of engine failures.”

“Time will tell,” I said.

While the KORD system was being debugged and put through test 

runs on the rigs in Kuybyshev, many changes were introduced to it. The KORD 

system was sometimes forgiven for unauthorized shutdowns, but in general 

the engine experts had faith in it.

Kalashnikov, Kuzmin, and Kunavin came to me with disturbing news. 

They had just received a phone call from Kuybyshev and were told that an 

explosion had taken place on the rig and the engine was destroyed. So, the 

KORD system was unable to prevent this event. Raykov reported on the incident to Mishin, convincing him that the engines had a defect that could lead 

to destruction so rapidly that the KORD system wouldn’t even have time to 

register the parameters’ deviation from the norm.

In early 1967, by decision of the VPK, an interdepartmental commission 

was created to determine the reliability of the engines, to make the decision to 

start up their series production, and to clear them for installation on the first 

flight models of the rocket. Deputy Chief Valerian Levin of the P. I. Baranov 

Central Institute of Aviation Engine Building (TsIAM) headed the commission, and Glushko was one of its members.3

 It seemed that the commission 

could give an objective assessment of the new engines, which had such unique 

performance characteristics for that time. As Raykov recounted to me, at one 

of the commission sessions Glushko spoke out to the effect that no diagnostics 

and monitoring system was capable of healing “rotten engines.”

Actually, the KORD system couldn’t save a rocket from the split-second 

process of an engine explosion. It also had its own flaws that we discovered too 

late. One of them is the previously mentioned sensitivity to spurious electrical 

 3. TsIAM—

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KORD and ATG

pickup at a frequency of 1,000 Hertz, which from time to time exceeded the 

emergency signal in the KORD system.

“You and Andronik [Iosifyan] thought up this primary alternating current 

source instead of the reliable storage batteries that we’ve been flying with all 

our lives. And now we are going to take the blame,” the testers reproached me. 

These reproaches were justified.

Here I must tell about one more unique development that we undertook 

solely for the sake of the N-1. Recalling my prewar research on an alternating 

current system for heavy bombers, back in 1960 I figured how much mass 

we could save on current sources and power cables if we did away with traditional storage batteries and installed a special generator driven by one of the 

turbopump assemblies of the main liquid-propellant rocket engines.

In order to go anywhere with this proposal I needed Pilyugin’s consent and 

support. The main electric power consumer on board a heavy launch vehicle 

was the control system, and its chief designer, Pilyugin, would have to do away 

with conventional power sources. I was almost certain that Pilyugin would 

have a negative attitude—why should he take on yet another “headache” with 

a system in which, as it is, everything needed to be done from scratch? First off, 

I presented my proposals to Georgiy Priss, who was considered the head guru 

of on-board electrical complex circuitry at NIIAP, and to Serafima Kurkova, 

who managed the laboratory for on-board power source systems at NIIAP.

To my surprise and great pleasure, they had arrived at similar ideas on 

their own. There was no argument over authority, especially since the only 

organization that could be responsible for the new electric power system was 

VNIIEM. It didn’t take long to persuade Andronik Iosifyan to take on the 

task of developing the powerful alternating current power source. Right off the 

bat, Andronik invited his deputy for science matters, Nikolay Sheremetyevskiy, 

and Yevgeniy Meyerovich, Naum Alper, and Arkadiy Platonov, people with 

whom I was very familiar from the institute, and assigned the task to accept the 

proposal and begin work immediately! Working together, OKB-1 and NIIAP 

would need to determine the parameters and the outputs, select the voltages 

and the frequency, and figure out how to turn the generator. He decided he 

needed to have his own drive rather than get mixed up with the engine experts.

Thirty-five years later I admire the enthusiasm of Iosifyan, Sheremetyevskiy, 

and other VNIIEM specialists—their work was literally at a boil. They quickly 

rejected the idea of using the turbopump assembly of the main engines. They 

decided to make an independent autonomous system. After debates and months 

of calculations, VNIIEM came up with a draft plan, which revealed that the 

optimal version would be a three-phase on-board turbo generator operating 

on 60 volts and at a frequency of 1,000 Hertz. The generator turbine must run 

on various gas components—compressed air, nitrogen, or helium—products 

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available in abundance on board a rocket. Such a source did not require the 

development of a capricious “ground-to-spacecraft” power transfer system; it 

was reusable and made it possible to precisely maintain frequency and voltage.

Doubling the supply voltage substantially reduced the mass of the on-board 

cable network. Creating a one-of-a-kind turbo generator also required a oneof-a-kind turbine. The Saturn Factory, which was headed by Arkhip Lyulka, 

was located on the bank of the Yauza River, just 10 minutes’ drive from my 

house. When I drove out to see Chief Designer Lyulka—Hero of Socialist 

Labor, Stalin Prize laureate, and corresponding member of the Academy of 

Sciences—with a kind and crafty smile, he asked whether I’d come to persuade 

him to develop a liquid-hydrogen engine for the third stage of the N-1.4

“Korolev will do a better job of that than I,” was my reply.

“Perhaps you remember how we used to gulp down that bilimbaikha in 

the Urals?” Lyulka asked me.5

He clearly wanted to know why I had shown up first thing in the morning, even before I could come out with my explanation. When I explained 

what had brought me to the office of the esteemed chief designer of aircraft 

turbojet engines, he was somewhat disappointed. Developing such low-power 

turbines—that was no problem, but there would be a lot of trouble with them. 

To fan his interest I talked a lot about reliability, the precision control of the 

rotation speed, the low mass—but he had already grasped all of this just fine 

on his own.

“We can make the turbine,” Lyulka said. “Just let your boys come up with 

how you’re going to make it turn and you figure out how much and what kind 

of gas it will take. That’s where the problem will be—not in my little wheel.”

Lyulka agreed to do this work. And subsequently, beginning in 1962, 

VNIIEM developed autonomous turbo generators (ATGs) for the N-1 in 

very close collaboration with the Saturn Factory.6 Korolev assigned the OKB-1 

engine specialists to develop the assemblies’ pneumohydraulic delivery systems, 

compressed gas tanks, heat exchangers, filters, and pneumatic valves. At our 

OKB-1, Petr Shulgin’s department took on these responsibilities. Korolev, 

 4. In the early 1960s, Lyulka’s OKB-165 had been contracted to develop a 40-ton-thrust 

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KORD and ATG

Pilyugin, Iosifyan, and Lyulka solemnly approved the technical specifications 

for the whole system.

During the development process, the idea of a simple turbo generator became 

overgrown with pressure regulators, valve blocks, throttles, dual frequencyregulator channels, helium heat exchangers, and an electropneumatic converter 

of an electrical signal into regulating pressure. Compared to this, a contactless 

alternating current synchronous generator and direct current generator proved 

to be the simplest and most reliable devices. Frequency and voltage regulators and the pneumohydraulic mechanisms that surrounded them caused a 

lot more trouble during test runs than the main issue—the turbine and two 

electric motors.

The VNIIEM branch in Istrinsk had set up an integrated test stand to test 

out all the assemblies jointly with the nominal “working fluid” feed system. Each 

N-1 rocket had two turbo generator sources—one on Block A to supply all the 

first-stage consumers and a second on Block V for the second and third stages.

At the same time that the on-board turbo generators were being produced, 

VNIIEM was developing their on-the-ground equivalent, including a block 

that contained a network frequency converter, transformers, and rectifier units. 

During the testing process, the ground-based equivalent made it possible, 

without consuming the on-board reserves of compressed air or helium, to feed 

60 and 40 volts of alternating current at a frequency of 1,000 Hertz and 28 

volts of direct current on board.

For the development tests alone, the project teams at VNIIEM and Saturn 

manufactured 22 “air version” turbo drives, which ran for almost 3,000 hours, 

and 17 “helium version” drives, which ran for 1,000 hours, for a flight time of 

just 12 minutes! The reliability margin was enormous. The individual turbo 

drives ran for more than 8,500 flight cycles.

At my request, one of the lead developers of the system at VNIIEM, 

Vladimir Averbukh, compiled a briefing paper in which he listed the primary 

individuals involved in the system’s development—developmental engineers 

and testers. VNIIEM alone had more than 90 of these individuals working 

there, not counting the production workers and machine operators—the onthe-spot manufacturers of assemblies “in metal.” Not counting the production 

engineers, Lyulka had 15 engineer specialists at the Saturn Factory who were 

the hands-on creators of the air-helium turbo drive system. If you add to this 

list the people who worked at NIIAP on the electric power supply system (at 

TsKBEM on the rocket’s design and pneumohydraulic system, telemetry, and 

test documentation) plus the military acceptance staff in all the organizations 

and firing range specialists assigned solely to this project, then it turns out that 

the implementation of a seemingly simple idea required the self-sacrificing 

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creative work of more than 200 specialists. Once again, this does not count 

the “working class,” which eventually cranked out the finished products.

My reason for dwelling in such detail on this instance was certainly not to 

boast about my part in the project. The experience of the subsequent flight tests 

on this system confirmed its reliability. One can consider this as the achievement of each individual participant in the development. But, first and foremost, 

this was a victory for VNIIEM managers Iosifyan and Sheremetyevskiy, who 

were unyielding in their demands for ground testing and conducted it on the 

proper scale, despite cries from higher up the chain of command—from the 

offices of the ministries and VPK—about missed deadlines.

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Chapter 8

Once Again We’re Ahead 

of the Whole World

During the last years of Korolev’s life we could not foresee, overburdened 

as we were with a myriad of routine technical and organizational tasks, which 

of our undertakings would attain further development and which projects that 

seemed highly promising would prove to be dead ends. Forty years have passed. 

Given today’s pace of scientific and technical progress, that is a considerable 

period of time.

Practically all airplanes, rockets, and spacecraft developed in the 1960s in 

the USSR and U.S. have long since become obsolete and removed from production. But there are also exceptions. The R-7 and Proton launch vehicles, the 

Soyuz spacecraft, and Molniya communications satellites are still alive in the 

world of cosmonautics. The American Atlas and Titan launch vehicles, retaining 

the basic designs of the 1950s and 1960s, continued to operate until the first 

years of the 21st century. After Korolev, the Semyorka (R-7) launch vehicle, the 

Soyuz spacecraft, and the Molniya communications satellite underwent numerous updates. This process is natural for any article of hardware. Nevertheless, 

the basic parameters, the look, and even the names remained the same.

One of the parameters determining the longevity of any rocket-space system 

is reliability. Despite obsolescence, it is this high degree of reliability up until 

the early 21st century that ensured the utilization of the Semyorka and Soyuzes.

Up until the end of the 20th century, the world had only two space transport systems capable of inserting a human being into space—our Semyorka, in 

conjunction with the Soyuz, and the American Space Shuttle. In 2003, China 

disrupted the American-Russian monopoly in piloted space systems for the first 

time. In October 2003, from its cosmodrome, China inserted a man into space 

in a Chinese spacecraft on a Chinese launch vehicle. Various mass media sources 

suggested that the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft was very similar to the Russian 

Soyuz vehicle. Indeed, the Chinese had studied our Soyuz very well, but this 

in no way detracts from their own achievements. Our automakers have every 

opportunity to study the best automobiles in the world down to the tiniest detail. 

But for many decades they simply have not managed to reproduce anything even 

approaching contemporary Mercedes or Toyota models.

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The history of the Soyuz series is rich with examples of successful engineering designs and just as many mistakes, which sometimes had tragic results. In 

this respect, it is quite instructive for all creators of space technology.

In 1966, Korolev’s OKB-1 underwent a structural reorganization. We 

were given a new name—Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine 

Building (TsKBEM). Minister Sergey Afanasyev approved the structure of 

TsKBEM, the main elements of which were issue-related “complexes” that 

combined a group of departments. A deputy chief designer was in charge of 

each complex. A ministerial order appointed Sergey Osipovich Okhapkin first 

deputy.1 By early 1968, Okhapkin was up to his neck in N-1 issues—he had to 

be involved in the design of rocket stages, structural tests on the launch vehicle 

model, materials selection, aerodynamics, and a plethora of miscellaneous 

everyday matters. If a director is in charge of more than 1,000 individuals, a 

good half of whom are responsible for pending technical documentation, then 

everyday matters don’t leave him time for the in-depth understanding of the 

strategic objectives of space politics.

After the edifying conversation that the minister held on 23 January 1968, 

Mishin fell ill for a short while.2 His first deputy, Okhapkin, recognizing his 

responsibility, set aside the hundreds of drawings on Whatman paper and 

tracing paper awaiting his review, and the pile of correspondence, and invited 

Konstantin Bushuyev, Yakov Tregub, Viktor Klyucharev (who had been named 

factory director—in 1966, Roman Anisimovich [Turkov] retired), and me to 

come see him.3

 Okhapkin reminded us of the minister’s observation that we 

were in the position of a rabbit facing a boa constrictor. 

“Afanasyev saw the American space program as the boa constrictor,” said 

Okhapkin. “But we have our own domestic, albeit smaller ‘boas’—7K-OK, 

7K-L1, N1-L3, and military-purpose RT-2s. If we have been unable up until 

now to cope with any one of them without missing deadlines by one or two 

years, then there’s no way we can deal with four. Let’s put our heads together 

and see how we can deal with these ‘little boas’.”

I can’t reconstruct everything that we said back then word for word, but 

the gist was that our nation did not have a high-level managerial organization 

that could rationally select the most urgent tasks and distribute them among 

 1. A “first deputy” was the person ranked first among the deputies.

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Chelomey, Yangel, aviation, and us. There was a time when Khrushchev had 

personally convened the chiefs and determined who should do what, but even 

he could not bring peace between Korolev and Glushko, who had refused to 

develop the oxygen-kerosene engine for the N-1 rocket.

After sitting together an entire evening, we simply couldn’t come up with 

any redeeming ideas. However, after calmly discussing the due dates for each 

project and the actual volume of work necessary for their successful implementation, we once again proved to one another their complete irreconcilability.

Each of us thought to himself: what would Korolev have done in this 

situation? He would have certainly come up with something, but what? It is 

amazing that even our awareness of impending failure did not take away our 

optimism. Perhaps the source of this optimism was precisely the vast amount 

of assignments of “critical government importance” that we had been saddled 

with. Ultimately, out of all the critical piloted space programs, history itself 

selected only two: Soyuzes and orbital stations. But at that time, in 1968, 

we didn’t know this yet and didn’t foresee that the Soyuzes would make up a 

transport system without which the orbital stations would not be able to exist. 

An enormous amount of work was invested in developing reliable Soyuzes. We 

worked on these spacecraft at the same time we were conducting operations 

on the L1 and N1-L3 lunar programs.

On 4 April 1968, the Americans launched an orbital vehicle, the sixth 

Apollo spacecraft, into high elliptical orbit on a Saturn V rocket. The goal 

was to check out the rocket-spacecraft system during orbital insertion, after 

acceleration to escape velocity, before entry into the atmosphere, and during 

landing.4 Descriptions and photographs of the American Mission Control 

Center in Houston appeared in the press. Judging by the enormous presence 

of electronic computer technology and automatic data-processing and display 

facilities, they had gotten so far ahead of us that our comment about our own 

Center for Deep Space Communications in Yevpatoriya was: “It’s the Stone 

Age, and we are cavemen admiring our cave drawings.”

From the literature that we could obtain, which was available to the whole 

world but was “for official use only” for us, we knew that the American operators and flight control directors sat in an enormous hall, in comfortable seats, 

with each individual at an electronic monitor displaying essential data in real 

time. At any moment the flight director could request that any specialist tell 

him what data is displayed on his screen, listen to his report, and study the 

 4. This was the AS-502 launch (also known as 

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problem without creating a ruckus. In contrast, when we were controlling a 

flight, we sat on creaky chairs facing a wall covered with charts, grabbing for 

various telephone receivers, and we still made correct decisions.

We were motivated far more effectively by American achievements—the 

10 successful piloted Gemini flights, American public announcements about 

their rendezvous and docking system tests scheduled for late 1968, and a piloted 

circumlunar flight—rather than being constantly urged on by “the brass.”

The automatic docking of unpiloted vehicles Kosmos-186 and Kosmos-188, 

which we had dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, 

was not a full-fledged gift.5

 Few knew about that. Annoying mechanical negligence during assembly at the engineering facility (TP) prevented complete 

retraction and mating of the electrical connectors of the two vehicles.6 Adding 

insult to injury, one of the vehicles was destroyed by the emergency destruction 

system. Komarov’s ashes pounded in our hearts and beseeched us: “Spare no 

effort in testing reliability!”7

Within our staff there were no arguments about whether we needed to repeat 

the experimental docking of two unpiloted 7K-OK vehicles, solidly executing 

the four phases—automatic rendezvous, docking, guided descent, and soft landing. There had not yet been any serious discussion of the program of subsequent 

operations. When disagreements cropped up with the Air Force representatives 

concerning the makeup of the future crews, I avoided arguments and said: “First, 

let’s achieve reliability in the unpiloted mode, and then we’ll come to an agreement.”

At the engineering facility, work continued on the preparation of vehicles 

7K-OK No. 7 and No. 8 and the latest Zond L1 No. 6 throughout February 

and March 1968. In volume three of my book Rockets and People: Hot Days of 

the Cold War, I mentioned that in 1968, my comrades and I had to celebrate 

Cosmonautics Day in the air en route from Moscow to the Crimea, and then 

in Yevpatoriya at NIP-16, the control center at that time, which was officially 

called the Center for Deep Space Communications. Based on the number of 

portraits and the mood, 12 April at NIP-16 had turned into a memorial day 

for Gagarin. Just a month ago he had been here with us for the last time.

The launch of the rocket carrying the active vehicle, 7K-OK No. 8, was 

scheduled for 1300 hours on 14 April. The next day, 15 April, they planned 

 5. See Chertok, 

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to launch the passive vehicle, 7K-OK No. 7. The precise liftoff time of the 

passive vehicle was determined based on the trajectory parameters of the active 

vehicle. An analysis of the various nominal and off-nominal situations, debates 

about documentation and whether it conformed to what had actually been 

done, and a readiness check of all the flight control groups confirmed that 

“everything should pan out as long as they don’t shove some rag between the 

vehicles’ docking interfaces again.” That was how the guys in Yevpatoriya badmouthed the assembly workers who had prepared the preceding pair of vehicles.

At exactly 1300 hours on 14 April, 7K-OK No. 8 lifted off. Communication 

with the cosmodrome was excellent. We received the same running commentary that was taking place in the bunker. After 530.9 seconds, spacecraft No. 8 

entered Earth orbit. The first reports were soothing: everything that should 

have deployed, deployed.

At 1430 hours during the second orbit, active control from our center 

began. We had already been informed from Moscow that instead of the TASS 

report that had been prepared for publication announcing the launch of an 

automated Soyuz, they were providing low-key information about the latest 

launch of Kosmos-212.

During the second orbit, all 10 ground tracking stations reported good 

telemetry reception. Eight stations measured orbital parameters. GOGU Chief 

Pavel Agadzhanov polled each of the stations in succession.8 They all reported 

the normal operation of all systems. During the third orbit, spacecraft No. 8 

began normal spinning on the Sun. For the first time in seven Soyuz launches, 

we began to hope that everything would go according to the program despite 

the fact that, just to be on the safe side, even when the mission was a success, 

the Soyuzes would be called Kosmoses with the latest numbers attached.

At 1630 hours, at the recommendation of the ballistics specialists, the 

operational and technical management (OTR) made the decision to perform 

an orbital correction maneuver using the approach and correction engine 

unit (SKDU) to reduce the perigee altitude.9 Performing orbital correction 

maneuvers was also a way to carry out general checkout procedures for all the 

on-board motion control systems.

 8. GOGU—

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Beginning with vehicle No. 7, all Soyuzes had 76K infrared vertical sensors 

installed on them. We should have done this on the very first vehicle. Our overestimation of the infallibility of the ionic system prevented us from using such 

a natural, tried-and-true design on the Zenit [reconnaissance satellite] series.

The correction maneuver during the fifth orbit went as calculated. The apogee 

was increased by 6 kilometers, while the perigee was reduced by 22 kilometers. We 

had now reached the point where we needed to send a telegram to the cosmodrome 

with the official report granting clearance for the launch of the second vehicle.

On the morning of 15 April, after “silent” orbits, we were convinced that 

everything was okay on board. When we received the T-minus-2-hours alert 

from the cosmodrome, something pulled me into the room of the analysis group.

“If everything is going well, it means we missed something.” I had only 

just recalled this law of rocket-space launches when it made itself apparent. I 

was hoping to receive assurances from Irina Yablokova, a specialist on storage 

battery power sources, that the obvious overcharging of the silver-zinc buffer 

batteries with a large amount of “solar current” during the “silent” orbits would 

not require a report to the State Commission. All of Boris Rauschenbach’s available staffers, headed by Lev Zvorykin, were crowded together in the analysis 

group room arguing and gesticulating. Fretting, he began to explain that they 

had just discovered a serious glitch. Twice during solar inertial spin mode, the 

effectiveness of the attitude-control engines (DO) for roll control had been 10 

times lower than the design value.10 Perhaps the culprit was the main instrument 

of the attitude-control system—the ignition assembly for the approach and 

attitude-control engines (BV DPO), which issues the commands to the engines 

controlling the rendezvous process?11 If that were the case, we were in danger 

of messing up the upcoming rendezvous. Zvorykin was so perplexed by this 

discovery that he proposed that I ask the State Commission to postpone the 

launch of No. 7 for 24 hours.12 I was exasperated: “It’s T minus 2 hours at the 

launch site! They’ve finished fueling the launch vehicle. Do you have any idea 

what you are saying? Hold the rocket for 24 hours with tanks full of oxygen?!”

 10.

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Before reporting to Mishin at the cosmodrome, I tried to track down 

Rauschenbach and Legostayev over the high-frequency communication line. 

They hadn’t flown anywhere and were following events from Podlipki. Zvorykin 

and his junior associate Pimenov began to explain themselves in an unbearably long conversation with Legostayev over the high-frequency line, during 

which the latter, breaking away from the phone, consulted with other on-duty 

analysts. I lost patience, snatched the receiver, and demanded an official and 

immediate statement from Rauschenbach authorizing the launch.

The analysts on the other end of the line debated and wavered. At this 

point I did not care about the overcharged batteries anymore. After running 

back to the control room, I barely had time to tell Agadzhanov about what 

had happened, and I found Feoktistov on the direct communication line at 

the command post at Site No. 2. After explaining the situation to him, I asked 

him to brief Mishin.13 Feoktistov said that everyone was at the launch site; 

he promised to drive out to the “apron” and to find Mishin, but he for one 

thought that it was unacceptable to postpone the launch by 24 hours!

“These Rauschenbachers are always skeptical of something,” concluded 

Feoktistov, “and no one will understand you.”

Ten minutes later Yurasov was calling from the bunker. He immediately 

understood our misgivings.

“I’m going to find Vasiliy Pavlovich right now and bring him here,” he said.

Five minutes later an aggravated Mishin was on the line. Technically, he 

had acted properly.

“Where is GOGU Chief Agadzhanov?”I handed the receiver to Agadzhanov.

Mishin demanded: “We’re supposed to announce T minus 1 hour. I’m 

giving everyone 10 minutes. Either you send us a ZAS-telegram confirming 

readiness for launch or forbid us flat out and provide reasons.14 In any event, 

you and Chertok will bear the responsibility.”

Agadzhanov took the secret notepad for the encrypted communications 

system telegram and wrote the text confirming the readiness of the entire KIK 

(Command and Measurement Complex) and vehicle No. 8 to work with vehicle 

No. 7. He prepared the decoding of signatures and began polling the review 

team. All members were “in favor” except for Zvorykin, Dubov, and Pimenov.

 13.

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I asked Mishin to give us 10 more minutes. He gave us 2. I used up 3 just 

determining that Rauschenbach and Legostayev were still wavering. These 

were moments when our people in Tyuratam, Yevpatoriya, and Podlipki had 

no time left for technical analysis of the situation and we needed to either 

immediately make a risky decision or abort the program. Agadzhanov handed 

me the notepad, which already contained nine signatures. I signed, and the 

telegram [approving the launch] was sent off then and there.

Kerim Kerimov, the chairman of the State Commission, called up 

Agadzhanov from the bunker: “Where have you been? We’re announcing 

T minus 30 minutes. Why couldn’t you get to the bottom of this? You have 

all the specialists over there. What kind of a situation are you putting me and 

the entire State Commission in?”

What could Agadzhanov say in his defense? The State Commission chairman 

was right. But now the telegram had been sent—the decision had been made.

Agadzhanov handed me the telephone and Kerimov repeated the very same 

questions to me. After hanging up, I tried to cheer up everyone who was standing 

around waiting for feedback: “ ‘Cavemen’ who didn’t have all the information at 

their disposal made correct decisions guided by their innate instincts.”

After receiving instructional compliments from the firing range, Agadzhanov 

and I felt the urgent need to let off some steam, and right then and there we 

convened the operational and technical management for a public excoriation 

of Kravets and Zvorykin, the leaders of the analysis group.

At T minus 5 minutes, Kerimov requested that I be on the line at all times 

and report to him personally about the process after insertion, and he would 

relay my reports to everyone in the bunker.

At 1234 hours, we heard the “Liftoff” announcement. After what was now 

the standard 530 seconds for insertion came the announcement of entry into 

orbit, and then after 20 seconds of intense anticipation came the soothing 

message: “All elements have deployed.” I reported to Kerimov that the Igla was 

activated on the active vehicle and was ready to work with the passive one.15

Now all hope was on information from “35,” which was the code name used 

in voice communications for NIP-15 in Ussuriysk.16

The well-being of dozens of people packed into the bunker at the cosmodrome’s Site No. 1 and in the control room in Yevpatoriya completely depended 

on the speed with which the telemetry specialists in Ussuriysk could sort out 

 15.

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the information being sent from the two vehicles flying over them. At 1254 

hours, Ussuriysk reported that its data indicated that we had radio lock-on 

and the distance between the vehicles when they left the coverage zone was 

just 335 meters and the relative approach rate was 2 meters per second. The 

vehicles left the coverage zone at 1253 hours.

“What a job we’re doing!” Colonel Aleksandr Rodin boasted for all the 

telemetry specialists. “Just 1 minute for decoding, deliberation, and the report!”

Now, somewhere over the ocean for just the second time in the world, 

the process of rendezvous, final approach, and docking of unpiloted spacecraft 

was beginning and we had no way of monitoring it. I couldn’t shake a feeling 

of aggravation over the incident caused by Zvorykin’s recommendation that 

we postpone the launch. While we were in suspense awaiting the beginning 

of communication, I said: “The ballistics specialists have lined up the passive 

with the active so precisely that they’re going to meet up even without the BV 

DPO.” Zvorykin and his comrades hung their heads in silence. They would 

be the guilty ones no matter what. If the docking took place, they would be 

a laughingstock for playing it too safe. And if it failed, they would be asked 

sternly: “What happened there with you guys and why didn’t you insist on 

postponing the launch? Your lack of principles has destroyed a good vehicle.”

Yuriy Bykov had supplemented the Zarya system on both vehicles with 

a low-capacity shortwave telemetry line.17 There was a faint glimmer of hope 

that the shortwave centers would receive information before the vehicles 

entered our station’s coverage zone. If the three members of the operations 

and technical management who voted to postpone the launch were right, 

then the irreversible process of DPO fuel depletion would now occur and the 

active vehicle, which had appeared in our coverage zone, would only be able 

to execute a ballistic descent.

Kerimov and Mishin drove over from the bunker to the KP (command 

post) at Site No. 2 and requested reports: “Why is Zarya silent?”18

We were pestering the communications operators, although they would 

scream on their own as soon as Zarya detected signs of change in the shortwave 

signals. But they calmly responded: “No changes in ‘parameter two.’ Shortwave 

centers are receiving.”

“Parameter two” was the code name of the channel for controlling the 

electrical connection of the two vehicles’ interfaces. If the level jumped from 

 17.

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zero to 100 percent, it meant that the vehicles had not only mated mechanically, but that they had actually connected electrically.

“At 1320 hours there are no changes,” reported the chief of communications.

And then at 1321 hours, the situation quite clear, unable to restrain his 

excitement, he shouted over the public address system: “Three shortwave 

centers—Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, and Tashkent—have reported: Parameter 

two—100 percent!”

Someone mumbled a muffled “hoorah,” someone sobbed, but for the time 

being, even blabbermouths fell silent out of superstitious caution.

Two more shortwave centers confirmed: “We have parameter two at 

100 percent.”

And there on the screen of the jubilant television operators, obscurely 

through a mesh of interference, one could make out the contours of a stationary spacecraft. This was the hull of the passive vehicle in the field of vision 

of the active vehicle’s television camera. There were applause, embraces, and 

handshakes. In short—there was universal jubilation. The television operators 

felt like the main heroes.

Amidst all the noise, the telemetry specialists’ report came in confirming 

complete mechanical and electrical mating. Now the telemetry specialists were 

the heroes. In the general tumult, nobody remembered those who had developed and debugged the attitude-control, rendezvous, and docking systems. 

After all, they weren’t the ones who had reported the earthshaking success. 

Let them sort out the recordings and prepare the report about the rendezvous 

and docking process.

Now everyone needed to quickly grab some lunch. The State Commission 

would be flying out to us [at Yevpatoriya]. We needed to prepare a detailed 

report about the rendezvous process before they arrived. I stayed behind so 

that I could congratulate everyone who had suffered through this experience 

on the high-frequency communication line in Podlipki. At 2100 hours, the 

photogenic, smiling “Academy of Sciences research associate” Viktor Pavlovich 

Legostayev appeared on our television screens. Wielding his pointer at the wall 

charts, he told the television viewers of the Soviet Union (and the broadcast 

was being relayed to all the countries of Eastern Europe over “Intervision”) 

how the automatic hard docking of Kosmos-212 with Kosmos-213 took place.19

For some reason it was sad when, just 4 hours after such a long-awaited and 

exciting docking, we gave the command to undock and separate the vehicles. 

 19.

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Each assumed its own orbit. Multiple orbits of work lay ahead of each of them 

to thoroughly check out their systems.

Mishin and Kerimov arrived. The future Soyuz cosmonauts also flew in to 

Yevpatoriya. Now began mundane, strenuous work with all sorts of tests. The 

developers of all the systems tried to track down a comment [from the mission 

transcripts] that, rather than bring yet another State Commission investigation, would prove that it was precisely their system that had conducted itself 

intelligently; it shouldn’t be forgotten in future glamorous reports and stories 

about the docking.

On 16 April, newspapers published a TASS report that stated: “The second 

automatic docking is of great importance in space exploration.” Measures enhancing 

the dynamics of the rendezvous process, which our specialists conducted in concert 

with the developers of Igla, proved to be effective. The misgivings of Zvorykin and 

his friends turned out to be unjustified. Compared with the preceding docking, 

the process had gone considerably more smoothly. Instead of 28 engine burns 

to accelerate, brake, and neutralize lateral velocity, in this case we had “just” 14.

On 17 April, discussing our first impressions about the docking processes 

with Legostayev over the high-frequency communications line, I thanked him 

and Rauschenbach both on my behalf and that of the State Commission for the 

substantial improvement of the rendezvous process, and I asked him to pass along 

our gratitude and congratulations to NII-648 for Igla. For my own part I added: 

“It’s terrific that you didn’t flinch when it came to the BV DPO.” In response 

came the assurance, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.” To be on the safe side, he asked 

that all the BV DPO units that were still on the ground be thoroughly retested.

“Look how much work you’ve thrown at us. Don’t think that you there in 

Yevpatoriya are the smartest. We’re searching too, and maybe soon we’ll come 

up with a way to do without it altogether,” relayed Legostayev.

Alas! We weren’t able to substantially simplify the BV DPO until the 

computer came on board. But we had to wait five more years for that!

The vehicles had flown for just 3 hours and 50 minutes in a hard-docked 

state. These were joyful orbits for everyone, sort of like the “victory laps” that 

a speed skater takes after winning a race. The difficult prelanding workdays 

had begun, interrupted by local emergencies. And once again Zvorykin’s team 

stood out.

During the 51st orbit we were supposed to perform a test orbital correction maneuver of vehicle No. 8 in attitude-control mode using the infrared 

vertical (IKV) and the ionic system followed by solar inertial spin mode.20 All 

 20.

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the settings and commands for this mode proceeded normally on board, but 

the correction engine unit (KDU) failed to start up.21

Ten minutes after this first real emergency after 50 successful orbits, 

Zvorykin appeared, accompanied by his advisers.22

“We’ve got it,” they reported. “We’ve got a device in the unit, in the amplifier of the ionic orientation system, to check the whole circuit. It polls the 

main circuit and, if it determines it’s malfunctioning, it switches the control 

loop to the second backup circuit. That’s how we backed up the ionic system 

for reliability. After receiving the system poll about the performance of the first 

ionic orientation circuit, this diagnostic system failed. The reliability monitoring system itself turned out to be unreliable.”

“A fundamental rule was broken during the development of these instruments,” is how I began my defense to Mishin. “They overlooked the fact that 

this circuit, which was supposed to determine the reliability of the other circuits, 

was itself unreliable! This is a conceptual error.”

When Zvorykin and I reported to Kerimov after Mishin, Kerimov did 

not miss the opportunity to take a slight jab at us: “So I’ve been told that 

supposedly the Japanese press is writing that the ‘second automatic docking 

is a testament to the superiority of Soviet electronic computer technology’.”

It was very annoying. A mere test circuit wouldn’t allow the functional 

primary one to operate. The traditional question followed: “What are we 

going to do?”

I proposed using manual control. We would replace the future cosmonaut 

with commands from the ground. We would hold a “circus with acrobatics,” 

using the television services of Bratslavets and Krichevskiy. One of the television 

cameras was installed so that in attitude-control mode it could look at Earth just 

like a cosmonaut in the vehicle. Using the position of the horizon in the television 

camera’s field of vision and also making note of Earth’s course, we would monitor 

the position of the vehicle, having excluded the failed ionic system instrument 

from the readiness loop. After orientation using the infrared vertical and television, we would switch to gyroscopic stabilization. Before descent, we would avail 

ourselves of the other ionic system for acceleration. For the time being, it was in 

good working order. As had already been done, we would swing once around 

180 degrees and fly “on gyroscopes,” monitoring the image on the screen from 

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the ground; we would have first loaded the settings for the calculated time of 

the firing of the correcting braking engines (KTDU).23

During the landing orbits the control room was overflowing with spectators. 

No one was asked to “clear out.” We understood how personal the success and 

failure of any spacecraft system of the new generation was to each one there.

On 19 April, the active vehicle landed in guided descent mode. The 

“acrobatics” of the ionic system during acceleration, the orientation using 

the infrared vertical for pitch and roll, the 180-degree turn according to the 

previously loaded settings, and the hour-long gyrostabilized flight proceeded 

normally. We had had heated arguments—full of passion and feeling—over 

the development of this program, since we had feared going outside the limits 

of the emergency vehicle destruction “corridor.”

When this method of orientation is used, errors in determining the moment 

to issue commands to begin the descent cycle or braking pulse could lead to 

significant deviations from the calculated time. In such cases, the APO is 

triggered. If we were to blow up such a good vehicle, after erring in dozens of 

settings, we would not be forgiven.

At five o’clock in the morning, Feoktistov and I tracked down Pavel 

Elyasberg over the high-frequency communications line at the NII-4 ballistics 

center and asked him to perform one more control calculation of all the descent 

parameters.24 Our designated ballistics specialist, Zoya Degtyarenko, was already 

at NII-4. She came up with someone else from among the TsNIImash descent 

specialists. By 9 a.m., Elyasberg reassured us that “everything would be okay.”

The passions calmed down, but the tension did not abate. The landing 

took place precisely according to schedule, although a strong wind in the 

touchdown area prevented the parachutes from pooling on the ground, and 

they dragged the Descent Module over the steppe for about 5 kilometers. The 

following day, the passive vehicle touched down more smoothly.

Search groups confirmed that in both cases the soft landing system had 

been actuated upon receiving a command from the gamma ray altimeter. This 

instrument was the first serious work of a young special design bureau organized 

by Professor Yevgeniy Yurevich at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Oh, 

what a lot of trouble this altimeter would cause! We provided a command to 

jettison the parachutes so that they would not drag the Descent Module over 

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the steppe in a strong wind. We left out this command for vehicles No. 7 and 

No. 8. Nevertheless, some time after the forced “stroll” over the steppe, the 

parachute of vehicle No. 7 was jettisoned. It turned out that while it was dragging over the ground, static electricity accumulated in the parachute material, 

which then ignited the pyrocartridges.

On 21 April, TASS reported that “all vehicle systems functioned normally 

and showed a high degree of reliability.” The main point in the TASS report was 

a prediction that was soon proven true: “The entire complex of operations...is a 

new major step in the creation of orbital stations and interplanetary spacecraft.”

A new set of cosmonaut candidates showed up in Yevpatoriya, in addition to 

cosmonauts we knew well. Mishin picked a comparatively quiet time and organized an unofficial meeting “for sizing each other up.” “We’re always associating 

with future cosmonauts through Kamanin or at official conferences,” he said. 

“Let them talk with us themselves.” That was his reasoning behind the meeting. 

We agreed that our side would have four representatives—Mishin, Feoktistov, 

Kerimov, and myself. Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel Georgiy Beregovoy 

and Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Shatalov met with us and spoke their minds.

These were certainly not the young lieutenants who had made up the 

first cosmonaut corps. Beginning in 1942, Beregovoy had fought as a pilot 

on the famous Il-2 fighter-bombers. He decided to fly into space, having 

a great deal of experience as a test pilot at the Air Force State Red Banner 

Scientific-Research Institute (GKNII VVS).25 He was already 47 years old 

and did not aspire to go into space for the sake of glory. Shatalov was 41 

years old. He had already waited his turn for five years in the cosmonaut 

corps.26 After graduating from the Air Force Academy in 1956, Vladimir 

flew a great deal in a variety of airplanes.

Since the times of Korolev, we had been accustomed to the fact that the 

cosmonauts treated the technical management with pronounced respect. Shatalov, 

who was the first to speak his mind, did not exhibit this respect. He said that the 

plans, not just for the distant future, but for the immediate future as well, were 

completely unclear to them, the future cosmonauts. They were being kept in the 

dark about what the chief designers and their closest associates thought. They 

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needed to determine, not in a week, but in a year or even sooner, who would fly 

on what vehicle, and be bolder in recruiting them—experienced pilots—not just 

for flight training on a vehicle that was already ready, but for the actual development of the spacecraft, like they do in the field of aviation.

I liked Shatalov’s blunt observations. They differed from the speeches of 

the obedient kids from Gagarin’s class. He spoke fervently and was not afraid 

to step on our toes, having brought up the Americans’ successes and the opportunities afforded their astronauts for training sessions on special simulators.

When Beregovoy had his turn to speak, he was less vehement than Shatalov. 

He said that the review team, State Commission, and other managers were too 

cautious. They needed to first begin launching new vehicles with a cosmonaut 

on board and not drag on for years with unpiloted launches. Then new space 

technology would be developed faster. In his opinion, Komarov’s death was 

not a disaster. In aviation, over a year’s time, at least a dozen crashes take place, 

and two dozen crashes occur during the testing of new aircraft. And there’s 

nothing horrible in that. It’s all to be expected. In aviation this is called an “air 

accident with grave consequences.”

On the evening of 20 April, we conducted a ceremonial closing meeting 

of the operational and technical leadership. Agadzhanov emphatically called 

each of the systems testing managers up to report, while Volodya Suvorov, 

who had specially prepared for this festive event, having arranged spotlights 

around the entire hall, shot the first secret film about automatic docking at the 

Yevpatoriya mission control center (TsUP).27 When Suvorov was still alive, I 

asked him if he could track down this film. He promised but didn’t manage 

to do so. I simply haven’t set aside time to search without him.

On 21 April, the State Commission and command of military unit 32103 

rewarded all docking participants with an excursion to Sevastopol.28 Setting 

out for the hero-city, everyone got dressed up. I pinned my Hero of Socialist 

Labor star to my lapel. Mishin complained that he wanted to go with us but 

 27.

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was unable to since he had to fly back to the firing range to participate in the 

latest 7K-L1 circumlunar flight.29

We visited all the sites; their very names would inspire anyone who knew 

the history of this truly Russian hero-city to pay tribute to the heroism of 

those who lie beneath its earth and at the bottom of the sea. There were a lot 

of tourists at Sapun Mountain outside the entrance to the city.30 A middleaged sailor in a pea jacket covered in military medals walked up to me. He 

was clearly “in his cups,” but steady on his feet; he had something he had to 

say to a new person. After politely pointing to my gold star, he asked: “What’s 

it for, buddy?”31

Instead of the usual evasive answer that I gave in such situations, I pulled 

out the award certificate booklet and showed it to him. He read aloud:

For outstanding services in developing rocket technology models 

and ensuring the successful flight of a Soviet cosmonaut into space, 

the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR by Decree on 17 

June 1961 has awarded YOU the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

L. Brezhnev

Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

M. Georgadze

Kremlin, 19 June 196132

“Look who I’ve stumbled into,” said the sailor after closing the booklet 

with particular reverence and returning it to me. “So, I guess you received this 

for Gagarin, and now the spacecraft are flying, docking, and landing without 

people—why is this?”

Violating official security regulations, I said that we control those flights 

here in the Crimea from Yevpatoriya. The spacecraft are undergoing tests, and 

soon people will be flying again.

 29.

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“So then my friends did not drench this land with their blood in vain. 

You’re really doing something there. I must tell you, when they retreated, and 

then we stormed this mountain, 1 hour of that pandemonium is worth many 

days there, in your space. How many heroes fell here for our Russian glory! 

Forgive me if I said something wrong. Take care.”

I extended my hand and couldn’t help but embrace him. Weaving a bit, 

he hurried off to look for his comrades.

We returned to Yevpatoriya late that evening, and that night (it 

was already 23 April), we gathered in anticipation of the L1 launch. The 

commentary came to us from Chelomey’s bunker. Liftoff took place at a few 

seconds after 0201 hours. Separation of the spacecraft from the launch vehicle 

was supposed to take place 589 seconds into the flight. But the launch vehicle 

didn’t make it that far. What bad luck we were having with the lunar programs! 

At 260 seconds the second-stage engines shut down and once again the emergency rescue system (SAS) worked excellently. The spacecraft was unscathed. I 

saw it in excellent condition several days later in shop No. 439. It landed 520 

kilometers from the launch site. Three failures of the UR-500K launch vehicle 

proved the high reliability of the emergency rescue and landing system that 

we had developed for the L1.33 As our confidence in the reliability of the SAS 

grew, our hope that a Soviet cosmonaut would fly around the Moon before 

the Americans waned. For the time being, our May Day present was just the 

docking of the Kosmos-212 and -213. Why they couldn’t be called “Soyuzes,” 

if only in honor of the holiday, no one could really understand. This playing 

it safe was not a secrecy issue, but a political one.

The airplane that was supposed to transport the main contingent of people 

from the Crimea to Moscow had been delayed in Tyuratam. Mishin and Tyulin 

had counted on flying into Yevpatoriya on it. After the nighttime crash of the 

UR-500K, the aviation schedule had been disrupted. I flew to Moscow with 

cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov on a Tu-124—the brand new Air Force airplane 

equipped for the navigational training of the cosmonauts, which still had its 

pleasant, fresh-from-the-factory smell.34

Throughout the entire flight up until the landing at Chkalovskiy airfield, 

we argued about the role of a human being in the control of spacecraft. The 

cosmonauts saw me as one of the chief proponents of purely automatic control 

 33.

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and, using examples of the two latest Kosmos flights, they argued that docking 

would have been more reliable if just one cosmonaut had been on each spacecraft.

All I had left as a defense was to refer to the Komarov tragedy. Whoever 

had been in his place still wouldn’t have been able to open the solar array and 

pull the parachute out of the container. We made a mistake by deciding to let 

a human being fly before we had tested all the new vehicle’s systems. The last 

two Kosmos flights confirmed that, with a few exceptions, everything had been 

tested out and the decision could be made to resume piloted flights.

The next day all of our comrades who had returned from the Crimea were 

greeted at work like heroes. Naturally—the second automatic rendezvous and 

automatic docking! This was an absolute victory for the control specialists. 

The Americans still didn’t know how to do this. We were once again “ahead 

of the whole world.”

170
Chapter 9

“Sort It Out, and Report 

on Your Endeavors”

Saturday, 21 December 1968, the weather was fine, but the mood was 

anything but festive. At NII-88 on a big screen we were watching the liftoff of 

a Saturn V carrying Apollo 8. Considering the complicated relay arrangement, 

the image quality was quite decent. Even on a television screen the liftoff was 

a sight to behold. When the first and second stages separated, everything was 

shrouded in billows of smoke and flame. It created the impression that an 

explosion had taken place, but seconds later the bright, pure plume rushed 

onward. We compared everything that we had seen with our own liftoffs and 

could not help but think about the launch of the first N-1 No. 3L coming 

up in February.

The next day, Sunday, I went cross-country skiing around the Botanical 

Garden. The snow wasn’t deep, and from time to time my skis scraped the 

ground. I didn’t experience the usual pleasure I got from the exertion of skiing.

Usually while skiing I managed to escape all burdensome thoughts and tried 

to look at things from an outside perspective. This time it didn’t work. First I 

thought about Vladimir Shatalov and Aleksey Yeliseyev—they were supposed 

to fly in January, dock, and transfer from vehicle to vehicle. Then I thought 

about the upcoming difficult State Commission on the N-1—this was at the 

firing range—then I’d have to fly to Yevpatoriya. At the firing range and in 

Yevpatoriya, we’d meet with Babakin—the launch of two Veneras was coming 

up. On 20 January, there would be another L1 launch.... How would all of 

this go? But most of all, the February N-1 launch would not let my mind rest.

On Monday, 23 December, “Uncle Mitya” summoned the leadership of the 

“cuckoo’s nest” (as we privately referred to Ustinov and the MOM building on 

Miusskaya Square, respectively) to his office. According to the shock waves that 

had reached us by that evening, the conversation boiled down to the standard 

questions and instructions: “How are we going to respond to the Americans? 

Sort it out and tell me what you’re going to do. The main problem is how to 

shorten the timeframes. We have to report our proposals to the Politburo.”

Having come out to see us after the hoopla in the Central Committee, Viktor 

Litvinov told us: “Dmitriy Fedorovich was complaining that the Americans 

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have borrowed our basic method of operation—plan-based management and 

networked schedules.1

 They have passed us in management and planning methods—they announce a launch preparation schedule in advance and strictly adhere 

to it. In essence, they have put into effect the principle of democratic centralism—free discussion followed by the strictest discipline during implementation.”

According to Ustinov, we had let ourselves go. We had returned to the 

times of feudalism. Each ministry was a separate feudal fiefdom. Instead of 

working harmoniously, the chief designers were adopting aggressive stances 

against one another; they had even stopped listening to their own ministers. 

The Americans were concentrating enormous efforts. They had either 500,000 

or 1,500,000 people working on the lunar program, and 20,000 companies. 

And a government organization—NASA—was organizing and managing all of 

this. We were presumptuous, Ustinov upbraided us, and it was time to make 

a sober assessment of the situation.

On Monday, Mishin called in sick and didn’t show up at work. The minister instructed Litvinov to ask Sergey Okhapkin—the chief designer’s first 

deputy—for proposals for the upcoming meeting at the VPK with Smirnov 

or in the Central Committee with Ustinov.

Okhapkin invited Konstantin Bushuyev, Sergey Kryukov, and me to consult 

about what to do. I recalled Saltykov-Shchedrin, who last century wrote, “Any 

administration acts through endeavors.”2 We needed to compose umpteen necessary and useful endeavors and propose them to the minister. He will cross out half 

of them because there won’t be enough money or authority for all of them, but 

he’ll take some sort of action on the other half and at least render moral support.

I proposed: “Let’s consult with Pilyugin. He knows his way around the 

political scene better than we do now. He meets almost every other day with 

Keldysh, often with Yangel, the deputy Commander-in-Chief of the rocket 

forces spends an hour drinking tea with him, and Ustinov is betting on him 

to develop control systems for Nadiradze’s rockets.”3

We accepted this proposal as the “first action.” Litvinov flared up: “What 

are you doing to me? I’ve been ordered to report to the minister this evening 

about your actions, and you’re about to go on a field trip to see Pilyugin.”

 1. Valentin Yakovlevich Litvinov (1910–1983) served as a deputy minister of the Ministry 

172
“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

“Viktor Yakovlevich,” reassured Okhapkin, “first of all, we’re not going on 

a field trip, we’re going for serious deliberation; and second, in a day or two, 

Vasiliy Pavlovich [Mishin] will be back on the job, and anyway, without him 

we won’t deliver any actions to the minister.”

Litvinov gave a wave of his hand and left for the factory floor. He could 

breathe easier there.4

Okhapkin telephoned Pilyugin on the “Kremlin line” and arranged for us 

to come over on the 25th after lunch. “We can’t go see Pilyugin empty-handed; 

we need to have proposals, an outline, so that the conversation will be more 

concrete. I propose that we switch to the dual-launch scenario [for a lunar 

landing],” I said, having decided to take advantage of the good company for 

such a conversation.5

“But that means putting off the mission for four to five years,” objected 

Bushuyev.

“We’re already behind by at least three to four years. If we come out with 

a scenario in three years—in the best case—that is clearly worse than the current Apollo, then what good does this do anyone?”

After returning to my office, I convened a “small council” of my deputies 

and department chiefs, who to a great extent determined both the deadlines 

and weight reports. They did not always follow the instructions of management, but they had their own opinions in store. Rauschenbach, Kalashnikov, 

Karpov, Yurasov, Krayushkin, Vilnitskiy, Kuzmin, Chizhikov, Zverev, Penek, 

and Babkov came. The group, whose members often clashed with one another 

and got embroiled in heated arguments, supported me this time very keenly 

and harmoniously. Only Rauschenbach was skeptical and said: “This won’t 

get past Mishin.”

Yurasov retorted: “I will persuade Vasiliy Pavlovich.”

The dual-launch scenario that I drew on the board, referring to my notebook to avoid using the secret notepad, was the subject of a heated discussion. I 

like this scenario even today. If humankind had possessed N-1 launch vehicles, 

then such a scenario could have been used for a long-duration expedition to 

the Moon even in the early 21st century. I shall give a brief account of the 

proposal as it has been preserved in my notebook.

 4. For most of his early career, from 1944 to 1962, Litvinov had been director of one of 

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The Saturn V inserts into Earth orbit a payload weighing 135 tons, of which 

45 tons fly to the Moon, and of that amount, if one rounds off, 30 tons is in 

the primary payload (what we call the LOK—the Lunar Orbital Vehicle), and 

15 tons is in the lunar module. En route the Americans perform a restructuring operation—the primary payload swings around and mates with the lunar 

module.6

 This is their first docking. They perform the second after liftoff from 

the Moon. And so the Americans have two dockings.

When we send off the N-1, then in the best-case scenario, instead of 45 

tons to the Moon, we will be able to send just 30 tons. However, with the 

dual-launch plan, we’ll be able to send 60 tons! Instead of restructuring with 

a docking en route to the Moon, we will perform a docking of a piloted LOK 

with the unpiloted LK in lunar orbit. We will necessarily develop a docking 

assembly with internal transfer—there will be no need to crawl through open 

space. Three cosmonauts will transfer to the new LK. One will remain in the 

LOK. In all, we’ll need to send at least four or five cosmonauts. That will be 

sensational! The second docking, just as in the Americans’ plan and in our 

current plan, will take place during the return from the Moon.

Each increment of payload needs to be designed so that when the launch 

vehicle’s power generation increases, there would be the potential for expanding the missions. The control and navigation systems need to be backed up 

with manual operations. In the next two years, we absolutely must manage to 

develop a reliable computer for the LOK and for the LK.

We will begin to design both spacecraft all over again. We will make them 

more spacious and with reliable systems backup. The vehicles should stay in lunar 

orbit and on its surface for a total of at least 30 days. That is the only way that 

we will achieve technical and political advantage, by deliberately overtaking the 

Americans rather than just catching up. We can substantially increase the value 

of the lunar expedition if, before the piloted flights, we perform a preliminary 

launch with an automatic landing on the Moon in order to deliver part of the 

payload there and thus reduce the load of the subsequent piloted vehicles.

That is how the three-launch scenario shapes up. The first launch is an 

unpiloted transport vehicle, and then there is a two-launch piloted expedition. 

In this case, only the launch of the launch vehicle carrying the new LOK is 

piloted. It will carry four or five cosmonauts. They will dock in lunar orbit with 

the lunar module, which will have arrived there beforehand. The first unpiloted 

reconnaissance vehicle could drop an electric power plant with an output of 

3 to 5 kilowatts, a radio station with a pencil-beam antenna for television 

 6. In NASA parlance, this was known as the transposition and docking maneuver.

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“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

broadcasts, and supplies of oxygen, water, and food for a month or so on the 

surface of the Moon in advance. The same flight could deliver a lunar rover. 

Such an automatic LK doesn’t need a liftoff stage, and therefore the mass of 

the deliverable cargo is very great. The vehicle carrying the cosmonauts would 

land next to this first automatic vehicle.

To speed up the design process, we need to separate permanent modules 

that don’t change from launch to launch and variable ones that depend on 

specific tasks. Permanent modules should perform all functions: orientation, 

navigation, on-orbit docking, return to Earth, descent, and landing. These 

functions need to be tested out in automatic and manual modes and in ground 

control mode “until they are perfect.” We need to create the maximum comfort 

level in the LOK and LK for the crew in view of the amount of time they will 

be in orbit and on the surface of the Moon.

Having laid out these first, very general principles of the lunar program, 

I hoped to receive the moral support of my comrades. Discussion of this proposal and its details began immediately and turned up many full-fledged and 

alarming problems. First and foremost, we needed to make a decision and stop 

the development of modifications and new orbital vehicles, stop updating the 

L1, halt operations on the already obsolete LOK and LK, and make a really 

progressive leap. We needed to persuade Pilyugin to refine the launch vehicle 

control system. We also needed to speed up the development of a system with 

an on-board digital computer in order to have flexible trajectories. This would 

give us an additional 3 to 5 tons of payload and would increase the reliability 

of the launch vehicle, especially of Blocks G and D.7 Nikolay Kuznetsov would 

need at least a year to debug the engines of all three stages!

My still quite crude proposal found such ardent support among my comrades that I tried to “back up.”

“Don’t cause a stir before it’s time. We haven’t discussed these proposals 

with Mishin. If word gets around about a new version, we risk disrupting our 

current work.”

Yurasov and Bashkin were more excited than the others.

“We’re in a real dead end in terms of weights. We’re trying to pull the wool 

over the eyes of the expert commission in the hope that in time everything will 

sort itself out somehow. During the process of landing on the Moon, we need 

to give the cosmonaut the ability, if only for a minute, to hover, look around, 

and maneuver to select a spot so that he doesn’t topple into some crater. For this 

 7. Block G and Block D were the translunar injection stage and lunar orbit injection stage, 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

we need propellant, and there is neither room nor weight for that. The same is 

true for the second docking, if the first one goes awry. There are no reserves!”

Everyone unanimously supported the idea but at the same time expressed 

apprehension that this wouldn’t get past “the brass.”

On 25 December, we met in Pilyugin’s office. The conversation was long 

and tumultuous. We started at 3 p.m. and it was after 9 p.m. when we left, 

having drunk an incalculable number of cups of tea. Among those participating 

in the conversation on the eternal subject of “what to propose” were Pilyuginites 

Finogeyev and Khitrik.8 He did not invite any other staff members. Finogeyev 

and Khitrik received my revolutionary proposals concerning the two-launch 

plan with interest and obvious sympathy, but Pilyugin showed no enthusiasm.

“Under the current circumstances, only Sergey [Korolev] could allow himself to deliver such proposals—and even then, only if Nikita [Khrushchev] were 

in power. But whom can we turn to today? Glushko claims that Kuznetsov’s 

engines are rotten and that it’s useless to make the N-1 using them. And instead 

of one rocket using ‘rotten’ engines, you propose launching three.

“Chelomey will be against it. After all, you didn’t leave him anything, and 

you’re even proposing that the L1 be shut down. You’re not enticing Yangel 

with anything either. You want to do everything yourself. They will publicly 

announce that Mishin won’t be able to cope with this work. Grechko is completely against it.9

 He now believes that our association with the Moon has 

been on the whole all for naught, and he’s outraged that at the expense of the 

Ministry of Defense budget, they’re paying expenses for naval telemetry ships, 

Crimean tracking stations, all the preparation at Baykonur, and cosmonaut 

training. Grechko believes that this is Ustinov’s policy, and supposedly he stated 

flat out in the Defense Council that the Academy of Sciences and interested 

ministries should pay for space. He, Grechko, does not need the Moon.

“You figure that Nikita merely threatened that we can make rockets like 

sausages, but supposedly spared no expense for space. But they didn’t provide 

money for the N-1 on a large scale until late 1964. And before that, Nikita 

wavered: is it necessary or not? Now [i.e., early 1969] we’re about three years 

behind the Americans and we need to catch up in terms of missiles in silos, 

submarine-launched missiles, and the number of cosmonauts, and now you 

announce that we’ve been doing it all wrong and that we need to do everything 

differently for the Moon, so give us some more money.

 8. Vladilen Petrovich Finogeyev (1928–) and Mikhail Samuilovich Khitrik were Pilyugin’s 

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“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

“Everyone whom Nikita had squeezed—sailors, shipbuilders, aviation—is 

now rushing to restore what had been wrecked while he was in office, and this is 

no small sum of money. And currently, to be honest, the Americans have three 

times more nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines. That’s where we need to catch up and move ahead. That’s the only point 

that Ustinov agrees on with Grechko. But, once again, whose rockets will they 

be: Yangel’s or Chelomey’s? Uncle Mitya has outwitted everyone, he’s dragging 

out Nadiradze, and I am helping him in this. We’re ending up with an interesting system. Sergey started focusing on solid-propellant engines late, and Vasiliy 

came out against them; if their development had begun earlier, you wouldn’t 

be involved with the Moon now, and everyone would be working for Grechko.

“The other day Tolubko was sitting in my office here.10 He said that the 

generals were riled up: Afanasyev is now in charge of all rocket production, 

and they are diverting him to lunar problems. Let Keldysh deal with that.

“Sergey is the only one who could accept everything that Boris just proposed. He would have won over Keldysh and the two of them would have 

gone to Brezhnev. If they ‘swung’ Brezhnev, he would have brought up the 

discussion in the Defense Council or right in the Politburo. The problems are 

not so much technical as they are political. Someone needs to find the courage 

to say that we are not hurrying to the Moon, but instead we are going to settle 

down there in around five years the right way. But who is that brave? Nobody.

“Now there is no one to turn to with these proposals. Look at Kosygin, 

who proposed a good plan for industrial management, and they supported it 

verbally but then didn’t let him do anything but experiment on taxi fleets.11

“Let’s finish up the N-1 as it was conceived. Now the most important 

thing is for the first launch vehicle to fly. I am going to finish my system for the 

time being without a computer. But they’ve talked so much to Keldysh about 

Kuznetsov’s engines that he has already complained to me in the Academy 

presidium, but he doesn’t know what’s to be done.”12

We talked about all of this with interruptions and distractions.

 10.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Pilyugin was a creative individual who got carried away at any given 

time with some particular idea. We diverted him with our N1-L3 problems from 

his own musings about problems that were totally different and quite removed 

from the lunar expedition. Now he was absorbed in working on the control 

system for the Temp mobile missile system, the chief designer of which was 

Aleksandr Nadiradze. Pilyugin simply could not keep silent about his project. 

He didn’t need our advice; he needed us as an audience that could appreciate 

the difficulty of the assignment. He demanded a great deal of himself and his 

specialists when it came to his philosophy of the creative process.

“Chelomey and Yangel are disputing whose rocket is better. But Nadiradze 

and I aren’t developing a rocket, but a new weapons system. By the way, Sergey 

began to understand this when he first proposed the RT-2. You and Yangel 

both had proposals for mobile missiles come up, but it’s interesting to work 

with Nadiradze because he has an integrated approach that many of our military men lack. We are helping him a lot now, although our ministry is clearly 

insinuating that if it weren’t for Ustinov, they would forbid me to work for 

an outside agency.13

“Dmitriy Fedorovich, in my opinion, now has a better grasp of how 

good these mobile complexes are than the military. After all, this is much less 

expensive than building a silo for each missile, which a satellite will detect 

sooner or later. And now, submarines are always being followed by another 

submarine. But if our land-based mobile complexes are well camouflaged, no 

reconnaissance will detect them.”

The project that had engrossed Pilyugin at that time was not a passing 

fancy, but a field that the NIIAP staff would be working on for decades. The 

Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, which Aleksandr Nadiradze headed 

until the end of his life, developed the Temp, Temp-2S, Pioner, Kuryer, and 

finally the Topol and Topol-M mobile missile systems, which were supposed 

to become the main domestic strategic nuclear forces in the 21st century.14

“Our system is set up so that battlefield marshals become defense ministers. But in my opinion, if Ustinov were to be put in that post, it would make 

a lot more sense,” said Pilyugin. His words proved to be prophetic. In 1976, 

 13.

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“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

Ustinov was appointed USSR Minister of Defense. Pilyugin said then what 

many of us were thinking: “The appointment is correct. It just would have 

been good to do this about ten years earlier.”

Back then, Politburo member and Defense Minister Ustinov essentially 

could have become the second-ranking individual in the state leadership. 

Combining the knowledge and experience of industrial management with 

ascendancy over a great power’s armed forces in a single individual, especially 

given the authority that Ustinov enjoyed in the scientific-technical sphere, he 

could have influenced the nation’s history if he had continued an active life 

for another five years or so. But Ustinov survived Pilyugin by just two years.15

Both of them were severely ill during the last year of their lives.

Here it is appropriate to write about how the missile projects in those days 

were distributed between ministries. Short-range tactical missiles for land-based 

troops were developed in the Ministry of the Defense Industry (MOP) system. 

The main developer of these missiles was the Moscow Institute of Thermal 

Technology, the chief designer of which was Aleksandr Nadiradze, and the 

main customer was the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces.

Medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear 

warheads, and also ballistic missiles for submarines, were developed in the 

Ministry of General Machine Building system. The customers for these missiles, 

which were called strategic, were the Strategic Rocket Forces Commander-inChief and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, respectively.

The Ministry of the Aviation Industry developed missiles for PVO (air 

defense) and PRO (missile defense) systems and for arming airplanes, and the 

customers were, respectively, the PVO and VVS Commanders-in-Chief.16 Each 

of the ministries had its own internal cooperative network for the development 

of missile guidance and control systems.

Ministry of the Defense Industry organizations also developed control systems for Nadiradze’s tactical missiles. There were projects enough for everyone. 

However, in the mid-1960s, with the very active support of Ustinov, Nadiradze 

went outside the bounds of his departmental framework and began to develop 

medium-range and then intercontinental missile systems. This was an area that 

had been allocated to MOM and the Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN), but not 

to MOP and the Ground Forces. In so doing, it became clear that the MOP 

 15.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

system did not have an organization capable of developing control systems 

for such complexes. Therefore, it was necessary to make use of the experience 

and power of MOM’s main control system organization—Pilyugin’s NIIAP. 

Thus, Ustinov found an optimal solution.

But in so doing, MOM’s monopoly on the development of medium-range 

and intercontinental strategic missile complexes was broken. It turned out 

that the head organization for control systems, NIIAP, together with other 

instrument-building factories, was now obliged to work for MOP, the head 

ministry for Nadiradze’s missile complexes. Meanwhile, Pilyugin was inundated 

with orders for his own chiefs: Mishin, Yangel, and Chelomey. But the truth 

was that nobody twisted Pilyugin’s arm. He voluntarily agreed to work for 

another ministry without having asked for the approval of his own minister 

[i.e., Afanasyev], who couldn’t have liked all of this.

We drove out to see Pilyugin in Okhapkin’s official car. Reckoning on a 

long conversation, we arranged to have the car and driver stay on the premises in 

a warm garage. After 8 p.m., Okhapkin remembered and started to fret: “We’ve 

just drunk our 10th glass of tea with toast and our driver is starving out there!”

Pilyugin himself telephoned the garage. They reassured him: “We’re keeping the car from Podlipki warm. We’ve served the driver tea.”

Pilyugin was very pleased that, even without his intervention, they had 

shown such hospitality.

Returning to the subject of our meeting, Pilyugin said that we also shouldn’t 

particularly count on Keldysh. He was up to his ears with problems at the 

Academy. And relations had become even more strained with Suslov and the 

entire Central Committee staff because of Andrey Sakharov. There were some 

zealous types who were demanding that Keldysh make the decision in the 

presidium to expel Sakharov from the Academy. He argued that this was a 

gross violation of regulations. For the time being he seemed to have warded 

them off.17

We continued to argue, discussing Chelomey’s and Yangel’s programs 

more than our own problems, which was the reason we had driven out 

there. Finogeyev and Khitrik were to a great extent better informed than 

 17.

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“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

we. When it came to a discussion of the lunar landing plan, Khitrik listed 

so many yet-to-be-resolved tasks concerning control of the Lunar Vehicle 

alone that Bushuyev, who was supposed to find “weight” from the margin 

for all of this, said frankly: “I’ve got nothing left. You solve these problems 

at the expense of your own systems. Day after 

tomorrow I have to report to the VPK about 

what caused the failed landing of 7K-L1 No. 

12—Zond-6.”

Pilyugin did not pass up an opportunity to 

take a dig: “Finally all the L1 systems activated 

without a glitch during the circumlunar flight, 

and you managed to shoot off the parachute when 

it was almost on the ground and crash the Descent 

Module. And you were dreaming that we were 

about to launch a human being on the L1!”

Indeed, the incident was extremely annoying. 

The launch of vehicle 7K-L1 No. 12 took place 

on 10 November 1968. The vehicle executed a 

circumlunar flight. It managed to take blackand-white and color photographs of the lunar 

surface from distances of 8,000 and 2,600 kilometers. The most important event was the return 

to Earth. For the first time in the history of 7K-L1 

launches, a guided descent to the territory of the 

USSR was taking place during a return from the 

Moon at reentry velocity. The Descent Module 

came down just 16 kilometers from the launch 

site from which it had lifted off to the Moon.

For the long-suffering circumlunar flight 

control system of the L1 vehicle, this was a 

great and long-awaited success. But just before 

reaching the ground, once again a vexing slipup occurred. The cords of the fully deployed 

parachute shot off at an altitude of 5,300 meters. 

Fortunately, when it hit the ground, the 10 

kilograms of TNT in the APO system failed to 

Alexander Shliadinsky

The cutaway of the Proton-K/L-1 stack clearly 

shows the Zond spacecraft and the Block D stage. 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

RKK Energiya & David R. Woods

The mission profile of the Zond circumlunar mission was relatively simple in 

comparison to a more complex lunar orbital mission.

RKK Energiya & David R. Woods

This breakdown of the Zond reentry profile shows the double-dip reentry into 

Earth’s atmosphere designed to reduce stresses on the Descent Module. The normal 

mode was to approach from the south with the first dip into the atmosphere over 

the Indian Ocean, followed by a second dip and landing in the southern Soviet 

Union. Zond-8 used a northern approach with the first dip over the Soviet Union 

for more precise tracking, followed by a landing in the Indian Ocean.

explode. Bushuyev flew out to the crash site to lead the “minesweeping” of 

the Descent Module and recovery of the intact film.

“Konstantin Davidovich, if you could please tell us, after such a good 

flight, why did you crash the Descent Module?” Pilyugin insisted.

“Because,” answered Bushuyev, “depressurization occurred.” On the sixth 

day of the flight the pressure fell to 380 millimeters of mercury, and during 

descent it fell to just 25 millimeters.

“But why? After all, that could doom a crew!”

“It was an engineering error. There was a leak due to a bad seal in the 

edging strip around the hatch. After power was supplied to the landing system, 

a corona discharge occurred in the gamma-ray altimeter circuit due to the low 

pressure. It issued a false command to start up the soft landing engines and, 

simultaneously, to shoot off the parachute.”

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“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

I felt partially responsible for the unforeseen occurrence of a corona discharge in the gamma-ray altimeter. This was a blatant oversight that I had 

committed along with my subordinates working on the landing system, which 

the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute OKB had supervised. Professor Yevgeniy 

Yurevich, the chief designer of the gamma-ray altimeter, admitted that no one 

had tested the electrical reliability of the system at low pressures. The gammaray altimeter was supposed to activate as the Descent Module neared the 

ground. The instrument was simply dead until the module reached an altitude 

of 5,000 meters. The pressure in the Descent Module was also supposed to be 

normal; otherwise the cosmonauts would die. It was all so logical that it never 

occurred to anyone to test out the altimeter at a pressure of 25 millimeters of 

mercury. Again and again we realized that in our technology, coincidences of 

the “not-in-your-wildest-dreams” variety do occur.

The day after our conversation at Pilyugin’s office, no one from 

the ministry harassed us regarding a lack of “actions.”

On 27 December, Bushuyev gave his account of the L1 failure in the 

State Commission. Yurevich came forward with a confession, accepting full 

responsibility for the occurrence of the corona discharge. One complaint was 

lodged against me: the engineering specifications had mentioned high vacuum 

conditions, but nothing had been said about the pressures at which a corona 

discharge occurs.

Tyulin on the State Commission confined himself to a verbal castigation 

of Yurevich and TsKBEM, but there would be no retaliatory organizational 

consequences. The fact of depressurization aggravated everyone more than the 

corona discharge. They decided to execute the next unpiloted launch of vehicle 

7K-L1 No. 13 with the objective of a circumlunar flight on 20 January 1969.

When Tyulin was already bringing the State Commission session to a 

close, Mrykin loudly asked: “But why should we launch No. 13 at all? After 

all, tomorrow three Americans are returning to the Earth after flying around 

the Moon. If, God forbid, something happens again [to our L1 spacecraft], 

our launch will be considered a failure of our lunar landing program.” In their 

thoughts, the majority of the State Commission members agreed with Mrykin, 

but no one uttered a word in reply.

On 28 December, ministry leaders and our small group on the “special list” 

were granted the opportunity to watch the splashdown of Apollo 8, which had 

lifted off on 21 December. The vehicle consisted of a main section weighing 30 

tons, which was supposed to have been inserted into selenocentric orbit carrying 

three astronauts. From our point of view, this event stole the thunder from our 

lunar program by the very fact that it was a piloted lunar orbital flight. This 

was the first instance of using the Saturn V rocket to launch a piloted vehicle. 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Apollo 8 made 10 orbits around the Moon. Numerous television broadcasts 

followed the flight along its route to and around the Moon. Television viewers saw images of Earth, the Moon, the cabin interior, the crew at work, and 

activity in the mission control center.

We received the broadcast via the Eurovision channel. It didn’t go over the 

airwaves but was transmitted via cable to TsNIImash. When the crew capsule 

entered the atmosphere, it passed over Siberia and China and splashed down 

in the Pacific Ocean 6 kilometers from the precalculated position where the 

aircraft carrier Yorktown was located. The splashdown, the search, the approach 

of the rescue boats, the placement of the pontoons under the spacecraft, the 

approach of the helicopters, and the evacuation and transport of the crew to 

the aircraft carrier took just an hour and a half.

The splashdown area had waves up to 2 meters high, and a drizzly rain was 

falling. In the dim predawn light the helicopter hovered over the Command 

Module and illuminated it with its searchlight. Judging by the television pictures, the astronauts were delivered on board the aircraft carrier hale and hearty, 

and during the festive reception on board the aircraft carrier they felt pretty 

well. Besides the subsequent landing expeditions to the Moon, the flight of 

Apollo 8 was the greatest success in the entire history of American astronautics, 

showing the whole world that the U.S. had finally managed to overtake the 

Soviet Union in space.

On 30 December, at the demand of Ustinov, the VPK held an emergency session to discuss just one issue: “How can we respond to the Americans?” 

From our organization only Okhapkin was present. Mishin was ill. Okhapkin 

later told us: “Opening the session, Smirnov reminded us that on 3 August 

1964, the Central Committee and Council of Ministers had adopted the resolution ‘On Work on Researching the Moon and Cosmic Space.’ According to 

this resolution, a vehicle launched by the UR-500K rocket was supposed to 

execute a circumlunar flight in the first half of 1967. Comrade Chelomey—

OKB-52—was named prime contractor.18 This same resolution called for the 

landing of a crew on the surface of the Moon from a vehicle inserted by the 

N-1 heavy launch vehicle, and the crew’s return and landing on Earth sometime 

in 1967 or 1968. The prime contractor for the launch vehicle, the spacecraft, 

and the expedition as a whole was OKB-1 (Chief Designer Korolev), later 

TsKBEM (Chief Designer Mishin).”

 18.

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“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

“After this, a whole series of VPK decisions appeared with further specifics 

on the programs. On 25 October 1965, the resolution ‘On Concentrating the 

Forces of the Industry’s Design Organizations on the Creation of a RocketSpace Complex for Flight Around the Moon’ came out. In fulfillment of these 

resolutions, the Military-Industrial Commission routinely made decisions calling for a circumlunar flight through the joint efforts of TsKBEM and OKB-52 

sometime between late 1967 and early 1968.

“These projects had remained crucial for the entire space industry over the 

last three years. The first launches of the 7K-L1 vehicles for the circumlunar 

flight program took place in March 1967.19 Since then, nine unpiloted 7K-L1 

vehicles have been launched using the UR-500K launch vehicle.20 However, 

either through the fault of the launch vehicle or of the spacecraft systems, a 

decision cannot yet be made to go ahead with a piloted flight. Flight tests on 

the N-1 launch vehicle have not even begun. Thus, all the deadlines stipulated 

in the resolutions do not correspond to reality.”

Discussion of the 7K-L1 projects ended in the opening remarks. The main 

subject of this pre–New Year’s VPK session was to approve the Ye-8-5 program—the delivery to Earth of lunar soil by an automatic spacecraft. Back in 

early 1968, Babakin had told me about this idea with his inherent enthusiasm 

and confidence that everything would pan out and we would deliver a little 

lunar soil to Earth, just around 100 grams, but before the Americans would 

bring back a dozen kilograms on their Apollos. The project had so many purely 

engineering problems that I expressed my doubt as to whether the problem 

could be solved in the upcoming year. Babakin’s proposal seemed very bold, 

but it found support in the Central Committee as a backup scenario that was 

inexpensive.

Now, having become aware of the lack of prospects for the 7K-L1 and the 

vague deadlines for the N1-L3, even Keldysh spoke out in favor of accelerating the Ye-8-5 project: “We can show that our way of studying the Moon is 

through automatic spacecraft. We have no intention of foolishly risking human 

life for the sake of political sensation.”

They made a tacit decision to give this explanation to the mass media.

 19.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

The year 1969 began with a jumble of events, among which the first 

launch of the N-1 rocket appeared to be far from the most important. In this 

situation it would seem that we needed to throw everything “to the devil” and 

use everything in our power (and we had an enormous arsenal) in order to cut 

the Americans off at the pass.

Fat chance! The behavioral algorithm loaded into our consciousness for 

adhering to Central Committee directives did not allow for showing such 

initiative. Other space programs had gained such kinetic energy and had been 

reinforced with such a number of Central Committee, Council of Ministers, 

and VPK resolutions and ministers’ orders that a radical restructuring of plans 

was out of the question. Despite genuine space patriotism and the enormous 

potential of science and industry, Soviet cosmonautics had no true leader at 

the helm capable of turning around its development as decisively as Korolev 

had done in 1961.

After our long pre–New Year’s conversation with Pilyugin I realized that 

even he, a true compatriot of Korolev, did not consider landing a crew on the 

Moon to be our main mission. Personally, most of his time was devoted to 

launching Nadiradze’s solid-propellant missiles from mobile launching systems, 

the technology for MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle) 

separation, the development of his own on-board computers, and a competitive 

system for remote control, monitoring, and launching of missiles. From time 

to time Pilyugin was so enthralled with the very development process that it 

was as if he had forgotten about the final objective.

However, there was no time left to indulge in grim reflections. At the beginning of the year we celebrated our latest victory in space: on 14 and 15 January 

we launched Soyuz-4 carrying cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov and Soyuz-5 carrying cosmonauts Boris Volynov, Aleksey Yeliseyev, and Yevgeniy Khrunov. 

The Soyuz vehicles executed an automatic docking, after which Yeliseyev and 

Khrunov performed a spacewalk to Shatalov’s vehicle. The cosmonauts carried 

out the risky trek through open space splendidly.

During these space operations, Tregub, Rauschenbach, Bushuyev, and I 

were at the control center in Yevpatoriya. After the launch of Soyuz-5, Mishin 

flew in with Kerimov and Minister Afanasyev. Of course, along with us there 

were dozens of leading specialists involved in this truly engrossing work who 

had a great deal of work left to do on the N1-L3 project. But during such 

events we all forgot about N1-L3. This included Minister Afanasyev, who was 

chairman of the State Commission on N1-L3.

The first piloted docking, which included a vehicle-to-vehicle spacewalk 

to boot, went very smoothly. Among all the flight participants, Shatalov stood 

out in particular for the organization and integrity of his reports and his work.

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“Sort It Out, and Report on Your Endeavors”

Shatalov’s launch had been scheduled for 13 January. We did not believe 

that 13 was an unlucky number. This time the ancient superstition proved 

true. At 1030 hours Shatalov was comfortably settled into the spacecraft and 

had begun to communicate with the bunker. Everything was going fine. Right 

before the launch, when the launch site had already been cleared, the control 

console issued a report revoking the readiness status of the launch vehicle 

gyroscopes. At a temperature of –24 degrees [–11.2°F] and a slight wind, to 

begin replacing gyroscopes when there was a cosmonaut on board was risky. 

Shatalov was safely removed from the spacecraft. He was upbeat and joked that 

he had “performed the most precise landing.” The gyroscopes were replaced, 

all the ground cables were rechecked, and the launch took place successfully 

the following day.

I followed these events with a large group of specialists and enthusiasts at 

Yevpatoriya based on scanty dispatches from the firing range. Vehicle rendezvous 

was conducted automatically. At a range of 100 meters in accordance with the 

program, Shatalov and Volynov switched to manual control. Approach and 

docking proceeded very precisely. The vehicles flew for more than 4 hours in 

a mated state.

Soyuz-4 executed a normal landing, while the landing of Soyuz-5, which 

carried cosmonaut Volynov, was off-nominal. The Instrument Systems 

Compartment (PAO) didn’t want to separate when the electrical command 

was issued from the Descent Module.21 It broke away only upon entry into the 

atmosphere. Descent was ballistic with great g-forces; the hull of the Descent 

Module was turned 180 degrees when it entered the atmosphere and almost 

burned up. After the ballistic descent, when the main parachute came out, 

its cords began to twist up. Before reaching the ground the cords untwisted, 

but the landing was very hard. However, miraculously, Volynov was alive and 

well. In this connection, local poets composed blank verse using the surnames 

of the crewmembers:

PoShatalis,

PoVolynili,

Ni Khruna ne sdelali,

Yeli seli.

They swayed,

They dawdled,

They didn’t do a thing,

They barely landed. 

 21.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

It was four days after Volynov’s hard landing that the Soyuz-4 and -5

cosmonauts were exposed to mortal danger. On 22 January, Moscow fêted 

the new heroes. They were traveling to the traditional Kremlin banquet from 

Vnukovo Airport in a motorcade. Right at the Kremlin’s Borovitskiy Gates, 

someone hoping to kill Brezhnev fired on the motorcade. He fired on the 

wrong vehicle. Eight shots were fired at the car carrying Beregovoy, Leonov, 

Nikolayev, and Tereshkova. Their driver was mortally wounded, and a motorcyclist in the motorcade escort detail received a minor injury. The celebration 

at the Kremlin took place as if nothing had happened. We found out about 

the incident much later and enjoyed ourselves at the Kremlin Palace as we 

had before. But our laughter didn’t last long. The launch of N-1 No. 3L was 

approaching, literally hanging over us.

From the author’s archives.

After the completion of the Soyuz-4/5 mission, the cosmonauts met with various 

officials from TsKBEM, the military, and the government for an official portrait. 

Sitting in the front row (left to right) are K. A. Kerimov, A. N. Ponomarev, V. A. 

Shatalov, B. V. Volynov, Ye. V. Khrunov, A. S. Yeliseyev, V. P. Mishin, N. P. Kamanin, 

and V. D. Vachnadze. In the second row (left to right) are B. Ye. Chertok, B. A. 

Strogonov, M. I. Samokhin, S. O. Okhapkin, P. A. Agadzhanov, A. A. Leonov, I. P. 

Rumyantsev, A. I. Tsarev, unknown, V. M. Klyucharev, A. S. Smirnov, G. T. Beregovoy, 

and N. A. Terentyev. In the back row (left to right) are A. T. Karev, M. F. Besserezhnov, 

G. V. Sovkov, A. A. Nazarov, I. T. Bobyrev, B. A. Radionov, A. P. Pedan, and G. S. Titov.

188
Chapter 10

1969—The First N-1 Launch

On 18 January, in Yevpatoriya over lunch in the officers’ dining hall, we 

“actively” celebrated Vasiliy Mishin’s birthday and Boris Volynov’s miraculous 

deliverance.1

 After a good meal, Mishin, Kerimov, Kamanin, Ponomarev, and 

Beregovoy flew out to the firing range to greet the cosmonauts and send them 

off to the Moscow festivities. The next morning we, too, flew home. When we 

returned to Moscow, having celebrated the happy ending of our tribulations 

a good bit on the airplane, I said to Bushuyev, “This is the 12th 7K-OK landing, and look at the unexpected tricks it threw at us. For the L3 we’re going to 

design a different Descent Module and a different descent system. How many 

modules need to first execute a descent at reentry velocity for us to be sure?”

He dismissed my question, saying, “Right now it’s better not to think 

about this.”

It was noisy and festive in the airplane. Jokes and laughter relieved the 

tension of four stressful days.

Babakin’s group had remained at the Yevpatoriya center controlling the 

Venera-5 spacecraft launched on 5 January and the Venera-6 vehicle that had 

lifted off on 10 January. For the time being, everything was going just fine 

for them. I would say even more than just fine. Sometimes things just line 

up so well! In the interval between the 

launches of these two Veneras, on 8 

January, the Central Committee and 

USSR Council of Ministers issued 

the resolution “On the Plan for 

Researching the Moon, Venus, and 

Mars Using Automatic Stations.”

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok (left) and Georgiy Babakin.

 1. Mishin turned 52 in 1969.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Babakin had developed this resolution with Keldysh’s very active participation and support. The next five years for Babakin’s staff and the many scientists 

associated with them had been concisely mapped out. The automatic spacecraft 

“baton,” which Korolev had passed to Babakin, had fallen into the hands of 

enthusiasts who could not conceal their joy both from their first successes and 

from the prospects that had opened up for them. Associating with Babakin 

and his comrades, I noted with chagrin that a similar optimistic joie de vivre

had faded away among the TsKBEM staff. And this was not just the result of 

the disarray and vacillation in connection with the program of piloted flights 

and the Americans’ successes.

On 22 January the entire TsKBEM management did practically no work—

first they got ready and then set out for the Kremlin for the latest red carpet 

reception for four new cosmonauts all at once. Even Ivan the Terrible held feasts 

in the Kremlin for a reason.2 A lavish table relieves stress for a while. Despite 

the abundance of the best sorts of alcoholic beverages and superb Kremlin hors 

d’oeuvres for every taste, at our “designer” table, conversations turned again and 

again to the latest UR-500K failure and the upcoming N-1 launch.

The latest 7K-L1 launch failure during the 501st second of the powered 

flight segment wedged itself between the safe return to Earth of four cosmonauts and their festive reception at the Kremlin.3

 The launch vehicle’s safety 

system issued the command to the emergency rescue system (SAS) to save the 

spacecraft. For the umpteenth time we had seen for ourselves how reliable 

the SAS was! But the circumlunar flight had once again been stymied. At the 

festive table in the Kremlin, State Commission Chairman Georgiy Tyulin was 

clearly envious of State Commission Chairman Kerim Kerimov.4

On the morning of 23 January, Mishin called around to all his deputies 

to report that [MOM Minister] Sergey Afanasyev had decided to check on 

how we all felt after the banquet; he had hinted that it wouldn’t be a bad idea 

if in the next few days we convened a small meeting of the Council of Chiefs 

regarding the upcoming N-1 launch and chat about the lunar landing expedition program in general.

We arranged to hold the council on 27 January. This council, which, as I 

understood it, had been convened at the insistence of Afanasyev and Keldysh, 

was unusual. The chief designers did not report on the readiness of their systems 

 2. Ivan IV (better known as Ivan the Terrible) (1530–1584) ruled Russia at a critical time 

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

for the first launch. These reports were postponed until the large gathering 

at the firing range. Mishin began with a report about appropriations for the 

N1-L3 program. He argued rather emotionally that the program would not be 

fulfilled. For 1969, the plan budget retained production funding at the existing 

level, but no funding was stipulated for the construction of the experimental 

facilities that we needed.

“Gosplan considers experimental facilities to be capital investments,” said 

Afanasyev, “You do know that that money is different.”

“Let it be different,” retorted Mishin, “But ultimately we must have facilities for ground developmental testing.”

Then Ivan Serbin jumped in: “They released a lot of funds to the ministry 

to build Chelomey’s experimental facilities in Reutov.5 Why can’t you use 

those facilities?”

“We’re working on that,” explained Afanasyev.

Judging by the course of the discussion, no one was prepared to come 

forward with any new proposals...except Keldysh. At first he was dozing. In 

the thick of the ruckus over experimental facilities he took the floor and said 

what neither Mishin, the minister, nor any of us could bring ourselves to say: 

“The status of operations on the N1-L3, in my opinion, is such that we need 

to postpone the date for the Moon landing to 1972 and make a decision in 

this regard as soon as possible.”

Serbin showed his alertness: “And who gave you the right to cancel dates 

signed by the Central Committee?”

Keldysh remained very calm; Serbin’s attack did not stop him.

“The assignment was decreed, it was written in a government resolution, 

no one is canceling it, but we need to take a sober look at things. Resolutions 

must be such that they don’t discourage the working teams. One must not 

underestimate the prestigious role of our successes in space. We still don’t 

know which has had the greater importance for our nation’s defense—the 

intercontinental ballistic missile or the first satellite. Let’s be honest, do we all 

really believe that landing a single human being on the Moon will be a priority? Can we surpass the Americans in this, or, perhaps we should be thinking 

today about Mars? Automatic spacecraft on the Moon and even lunar rovers 

will show up even without the N-1. Meanwhile, Barmin is designing the 

 5. Ivan Dmitriyevich Serbin (1910–1981) was the chief of the defense industries depart

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

lunar base.6 They even told me that it has already been named ‘Barmingrad.’ 

What for? Is a base-station needed on the Moon? Perhaps it would be more 

beneficial to have a base in the form of a satellite station circling the Moon? 

Or circling the Earth? Who has analyzed this? It is difficult to anticipate how 

people’s psychology will change tomorrow. They will simply speculate that 

Soviet scientists couldn’t get ahead of the Americans. Especially since our 

program is classified, while the Americans put out an hour-by-hour schedule 

a year in advance. I brought up the matter of greater openness in the Central 

Committee, but I wasn’t able to convince them. We need to proceed from 

this and think about other priority programs. That is what, it seems to me, 

we should have a serious discussion about.”

Only Keldysh could have given such seditious speeches with Serbin present.

Tyulin gave a reply from his seat: “We are doomed to continue the N1-L3 

program, but this work does not guarantee us priority, we understand that.”

Keldysh continued: “The Americans have developed a program for 10 

years. The American people believed in this program. It was publicized and 

the president reported on it. Now they are going to land a man on the Moon, 

they will celebrate, and it isn’t even clear to them what they will do next. In 

my opinion, they will be thinking about this for another three years. Perhaps, 

we can take advantage of this confusion. I am not convinced that we need to 

update N1-L3 for the sake of the Moon, although, in principle, I am in favor 

of hydrogen.7

 But we need to have a goal. I am concerned that we don’t have 

such a clear goal. Today we have two missions: a lunar landing and a flight to 

Mars. Aside from these two missions for the sake of science and priority, no 

one is naming others. The Americans will accomplish the first mission either 

this year or next year. This is clear. What’s next? I am for Mars. We can’t make a 

complex [launch] vehicle like the N-1 for the sake of the vehicle itself and then 

look around for a purpose for it. The year 1973 will be good for the unpiloted 

flight of a heavy spacecraft to Mars. We have faith in the N-1 launch vehicle. 

I’m not sure about 95 tons, but we’ll certainly have 90. The latest Soyuz flights 

proved that we have docking down pat. In 1975, we can launch a piloted Mars 

satellite using two N-1 launch vehicles with a docking in orbit. If we were 

the first to find out whether there is life on Mars, this would be the greatest 

 6. In the late 1960s, Chief Designer Vladimir Barmin’s design bureau, KB Obshchego 

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

scientific sensation. From a scientific point of view, Mars is more important 

than the Moon.”

Given Keldysh’s speech, there was the danger that there would be opposition despite directives from the highest levels. Afanasyev understood this. 

Considering it extremely undesirable to hold this discussion in front of Serbin, 

he [Afanasyev] came forward with a proposal that everyone give these matters a 

lot of thought, and since Mstislav Vsevolodovich [Keldysh] was in favor of the 

N-1 for any program, he asked Mishin to have a look at everything one more 

time before the first launch and ensure that all the chiefs and responsible parties 

have a timely departure for the firing range. The meeting did not progress any 

farther than this action. For us—developers of the N1-L3 program—Keldysh’s 

behavior at this council meeting was a signal, a sort of request, for more active 

and concerted support for a new strategy in the policy of big space. In 1969 

it was still not too late. The history of our cosmonautics could go differently 

if we would be more courageous. Ah, this is when our history really missed 

Korolev! Yes, he had dreamed about Mars more than about the Moon. An 

open-minded and far-thinking government leader could make a decisive change 

in course. But we were not destined to have such a leader.

Rereading my notes of Keldysh’s speech a little less than 40 years later, I 

believe that it is even more relevant today. The role of personality in the history 

of cosmonautics has been great. It depends to a great extent on the personalities of state leaders. History simply did not bestow such talented commanders 

as Korolev and Keldysh, either in science or in politics, on the Soviet Union 

or on Russia, which inherited the USSR’s space projects after its collapse. 

The only consolation, small as it may be, is that other nations also lack great, 

standout individuals. Incidentally, China might not have the talent of great 

commanders, but it exhibits Eastern wisdom capable of making an enormous 

nation into a great world power.

And now, once again we return to the firing range. I settled in 

on the second floor of hotel No. 1. This hotel had permanent rooms assigned 

to Samokhin, Shabarov, Dorofeyev, Klyucharev, and Kozlov.8 Mishin was 

 8. These were all senior management at TsKBEM involved in the N-1 program. Yevgeniy 

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From the author’s archives.

Leading specialists from TsKBEM are shown here at the K. E. Tsiolkovskiy 

State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga. From left to right 

(standing) are Yu. P. Antonov, B. Ye. Chertok, M. S. Khomyakov, unknown, 

E. B. Brodskiy, Ye. V. Levashev, M. V. Melnikov, R. F. Appazov, V. F. Gladkiy, 

L. B. Vilnitskiy, A. S. Kasho, Z. F. Dorofeyeva, V. M. Arsentyev, V. N. Korzhenevskaya, 

E. I. Korzhenevskiy, B. A. Dorofeyev, and unknown. Dorofeyev served as the chief 

designer of the N-1 rocket from 1972 to 1974.

left to stay in a cottage. The hotels gradually filled up as the date of the N-1 

launch approached. More and more people arrived from all over the country 

to participate, observe, monitor, and report. The brass preferred to live at Site 

No. 2. It was primarily the “working class” that populated the new residential 

development—Site No. 113.

Any first launch of a new rocket is an event. But for a rocket like the 

N-1, it was an exceptional event. Despite the fact that a good 4 kilometers 

separated the MIK of Site No. 2 and the enormous buildings of the N-1 

assembly factory, the psychological tension that was generated around the 

gigantic rocket reached everyone, even those who had nothing to do with it. 

And people whom you knew well and were formerly cheerful, jocular, and 

prone to laughter now arrived at Site No. 2 at the “Luxe” dining hall or simply 

to meet with friends looking haggard from lack of sleep and ground down by 

the crush of responsibility.

Afanasyev, who headed the State Commission on the N-1, was also 

appointed chairman of the Lunar Council by government decision. The atmosphere in the crowded sessions of the State Commission on the N-1, which 

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

From the author’s archives.

The leadership of TsKBEM stands in front of an N1-L3 stack at the assembly and 

testing building at Site No. 112 at Tyuratam. From left to right are Ya. P. Kolyako, 

V. V. Kosyakov, G. N. Degtyarenko, V. A. Kalashnikov, O. I. Malyugin, I. A. Zubkov, 

V. F. Gladkiy, A. N. Voltsifer, K. K. Pantin, Yu. P. Ilin, V. V. Simakin, P. I. Meleshin, 

G. A. Fadeyev, D. I. Kozlov, P. F. Shulgin, A. P. Abramov, I. S. Prudnikov, A. P. Tishkin, 

K. M. Khomyakov, V. K. Bezverbyy, F. I. Ryabov, M. I. Samokhin, P. A. Yershov, K. D. 

Bushuyev, S. S. Kryukov, V. Ya. Litvinov, N. N. Ganin, V. M. Klyucharev, V. P. Mishin, 

I. A. Mordvinov, M. S. Khomyakov, B. G. Penzin, Yu. P. Antonov, and A. N. Ivannikov.

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were conducted by the minister, was much more tense than in ordinary commissions on piloted launches.

The scale of operations on the N-1 required the creation of a special directorate at the military installation at the firing range, which coordinated all the 

preparation for tests and acceptance of the launch facilities, and the test fueling 

and launching equipment.9 A new tribe of testers appeared, whose careers had 

spanned the R-7, UR-500K, and combat missiles, and of quite young ones, 

whose careers were just beginning with the N-1. The constituent parts of this 

army were still getting broken in and learning to work with one another.

The State Commission met for the first time in this enlarged form in the 

conference hall of the manufacturing plant building at Site No. 112. All you 

had to do was put on a white lab coat, descend to the first floor, present a 

pass to the Progress Factory security detail at the entrance, and you entered 

a realm of fantastic dimensions. In the bays stood rigs on which the lobes of 

the spherical tanks were welded. A first-time visitor couldn’t help but notice 

From the author’s archives.

Senior designers discussing the assembly of the N-1 rocket at the assembly and 

testing building. From left to right, Dmitriy Kozlov, unknown, Boris Paton, and 

Sergey Okhapkin. Paton was a prominent full member of the Academy of Sciences 

and an expert in welding.

 9. This was the Sixth Testing Directorate at Tyuratam (also known as Military Unit 96630) 

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

the assembled first, second, and third stages laid out there according to some 

mysterious principle. Tiny assemblers in off-white coveralls and engineer technicians in white lab coats were scurrying around on the openwork rigs. The 

bays were filled so tightly by the rocket stages in various degrees of readiness 

that it was impossible for someone at the front of the bay to make out where 

it ended. This made the hall seem even longer.

At the old MIK at Site No. 2 I knew and understood every piece 

equipment, stand, console, rocket block, and spacecraft. At the N-1 MIK, 

everything was new, unfamiliar, and had overwhelming dimensions. The 

fundamental distinction of the new building was that the rocket was manufactured here, and its testing was the last technical operation. The majority of 

the people moving unhurried through the bays were not firing range testers, 

but workers who were making the rocket here. Each person was involved 

with his or her own work. The curious superiors descending from the upper 

floors just got in the way.

Nominal, assembled, and launch-ready, launch vehicle N-1 No. 3L had 

undergone a cycle of factory horizontal tests and was awaiting the decision of 

the State Commission. Checking out the mating of the launch complex with 

an engineering model of the rocket was a dress 

rehearsal. This rocket was a complete structural, 

electrical, pneumatic, and hydraulic analog. All 

of the prelaunch operations except for the actual 

firing of the engines had been worked out on it 

for several months. During this trial run process 

numerous glitches occurred in the interaction 

of systems, but the primary outcome was the 

interaction of personnel and systems.

The State Commission session on 9 

February 1969 had the primary objective of 

making a decision regarding the N-1 launch. All 

the chief designers flew in. Commander-in-Chief 

of the Strategic Rocket Forces Marshal Nikolay 

Krylov himself came to the State Commission 

meeting.10 For this reason the “jackets,” as civilFrom the author’s archives.

The N-1 in a ground-up shot.

 10.

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ians were referred to, got lost in a throng of officers and generals, who had 

hurried to take their places in the new meeting hall. There were many unfamiliar 

faces. Not only chief designers, but also deputy ministers, directors, and chief 

engineers of the main factories were invited to this historic meeting.

Despite the large confluence of people, Afanasyev took his time as he 

conducted the State Commission session and analyzed the readiness of each 

system in detail. Each chief designer had to report about the readiness of his 

system to begin flight-development tests, and the testers gave summary reports 

about the glitches that had occurred.

Two ministers who had flown in for the State Commission session—Petr 

Dementyev and Valeriy Kalmykov—also listened patiently to all the reports. 

Dementyev’s arrival was understandable—his Ministry of the Aviation Industry 

was half responsible for the fate of the N-1. He oversaw Nikolay Kuznetsov’s 

design bureau and the series-production engine factory in Kuybyshev.

During a break in the proceedings, after catching sight of me, Kalmykov 

greeted me very warmly and with genuine admiration said: “I have heard a lot 

about N-1 in the VPK, but now, after seeing it with my own eyes, I am simply 

amazed what a huge operation you managed to conduct during those three years 

while I wasn’t here. I think that no matter what Afanasyev and Krylov decide 

concerning the first launch, groundwork has already been laid here for what 

would ensure us success not only for today’s situation, but for many decades 

in the future. When Korolev first came with you to visit me at NII-10, God 

bless me, I can still recall, about 20 years ago, even science fiction writers had 

not dreamed of such scales.”11

Of all the ministers with whom I used to meet back then, Kalmykov seemed 

the most capable of romantic flights of fancy from the prosaic managerial routine. We were able to indulge in reminiscing during the long break in the State 

Commission meeting, which Afanasyev had announced due to the fact that 

the chief of the firing range, General Kurushin, had come out with objections 

against the launch of N-1 No. 3L.12 Based on the test results, the rocket and 

the ground equipment had many glitches, which they had not yet managed 

to eliminate. During the break, Afanasyev and Mishin worked on Krylov to 

get him to remove Kurushin’s objections. Ultimately, Kurushin had to give in 

after assurances that all the glitches would be eliminated before the launch.

 11.

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

The individual delivering the main report at the State Commission was 

Mishin, chief designer of the head enterprise, TsKBEM. He reported about 

the work that had been conducted over the past year in accordance with the 

recommendations of the expert commission to increase the N-1’s reliability 

and payload capacity. Unlike the [original] draft plan for the first stage, six 

additional NK-15 engines were installed [on the flight model]. Twenty-four 

engines arranged around the outer circumference of the bottom part of the first 

stage had variable thrust to control and stabilize the rocket. The six engines 

of the inner ring were not involved in control. Eight of these same NK-15V 

engines with high-altitude nozzles were installed on the second stage, and on 

the third stage—four NK-19 engines with high-altitude nozzles. The power 

margin in terms of thrust would enable the launch vehicle to fulfill its mission 

even if four first-stage engines failed in flight.

The launch path inclination was changed from 65 to 52 degrees. Another 

measure to increase the payload mass was to reduce the orbital altitude from 

300 to 220 kilometers. On subsequent launch vehicles, the following changes 

would be implemented: placing inserts in the equatorial portion of the tanks 

to increase the working fuel margin; maintaining thermostatic control of the 

fuel’s temperature to –15 to –20 degrees [°C or 5 to –4°F] and supercooling 

of the oxygen to –191 degrees [°C or –311.8°F]; and augmenting the thrust 

of the propulsion systems of all three stages by 2 percent.

While performing strength development tests of the rocket on a model, 

glitches occurred that required that the exterior panels of the hull be significantly reinforced.

The developmental testing of the rocket blocks (or stages) was conducted 

at NII-229 on special rigs. There, Blocks B, V, G, and D underwent both 

cold tests and firing tests. There were three firing stand tests on unit EU-16, 

simulating a full-scale Block V, and one firing stand test on unit EU-15, which 

had a full-scale model of Block B with eight engines producing a total 1,200 

tons of thrust. Comments made about glitches during the integrated firing 

tests were taken into account and implemented on N-1 No. 3L using the 

electrically, hydraulically, and structurally similar 1M mockup of the rocket.13

Developmental testing of the mating of the rocket with the ground transportation, erecting, fueling, and launch equipment was completed.

For the first launch they used a simplified L3 system upper stage with an 

unpiloted 7K-L1S vehicle instead of the LOK and LK. The emergency rescue 

 13.

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system was standard on the first launch. Liftoff was proposed to take place on 

18 February 1969.

Boris Dorofeyev and Boris Filin reported on the results of the tests on the 

launch vehicle and upper stage. The majority of system chief designers gave 

brief reports recommending clearance for launch. Barmin gave a more detailed 

report than other chief systems’ suppliers. He concluded that all the fueling 

equipment and all the launch systems should be cleared for the installation of the 

first flight rocket and, upon readiness, it should be cleared for the first launch.

Only the State Commission could make the decision to roll out the first 

N-1 No. 3L flight rocket to the launch site and prepare it for launch. However, 

long before this decisive meeting, rocket No. 3L had already been at the launch 

site and had undergone a cycle of electrical tests there, including a launch 

simulation. This wasn’t done because we had “an abundance of resources,” 

but for the simple reason that a full electrical equivalent—an integrated test 

stand—was not yet ready. Integrated developmental testing of all the electrical systems was supposed to have been conducted on a test stand in Pilyugin’s 

department at NIIAP.

In keeping with longstanding practice, instruments, cables, and all the 

other production accessories were delivered first of all for the flight vehicles 

and then—much later, after the developers had howled hysterically—for the 

experimental test units and rigs on which the developmental tests for these 

very instruments were supposed to be performed. Everyone considered this 

procedure to be faulty, but no one could change it. The dates for the deliveries 

of the standard instruments for the flight rockets were under the strict control 

of the entire administrative staff. All other deliveries were almost considered 

to be the developers’ whims.

The assembly of rocket N-1 No. 3L was completed before integrated 

electrical developmental testing on the stand. Therefore a daring decision was 

made: to roll out the rocket to the launch site and conduct all the necessary 

checkout procedures there jointly with all the ground equipment, after which 

the rocket would need to return to the engineering facility at the big MIK for 

electrical developmental testing. In addition, numerous other modifications 

had to be performed at the MIK according to the results of the strength tests.

The year 1968 proved to be unusually difficult for Sergey Okhapkin 

and the design, strength, and materials departments that he supervised. 

The strength department at TsNIImash conducted structural strength tests 

on models. When Korolev was still alive, a decision was made to build at 

NII-88 a modern facility for researching the strength of rocket designs. After 

Korolev’s death, Okhapkin and NII-88 scientists Viktor Panferov and Aleksandr 

Karmishin showed initiative and perseverance; as a result, in accordance with 

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

the N-1 resolution, a laboratory was built and fitted out with one-of-a-kind 

equipment for all manner of static-dynamic tests on full-scale assemblies, parts, 

and rocket models as a whole. The tests proceeded simultaneously with the 

production process. It was necessary to really hurry so that the factories did 

not make too many rejects.

Completely exasperated by the glitches he’d encountered during these tests, 

Okhapkin persuaded me to commiserate with him and drop by NII-88 to have 

a look at the equipment for strength testing. For me, a person unversed in the 

newest strength test methods, the scales of these operations and the laboratory 

equipment made quite an impression.

At the Progress Factory in Kuybyshev and at the big MIK at the firing 

range, they were wrapping up manufacturing the first No. 3L flight rocket, 

and production of the next two flight models was under way at full speed. At 

that time, the staff at the NII-88 “strength” building were performing roundthe-clock testing that destroyed the main structural elements.

The destruction of the main load-bearing structural ring of the first stage—

a ring with a diameter of 14 meters—delivered a most crushing blow for the 

strength engineers. The tests had begun back in 1967, and at first it seemed 

that they would be able to avoid major modifications.

“But look what happened after reaching design conditions,” said Okhapkin, 

pointing to a jumbled heap of amorphous pieces of metal.

It was a depressing sight. In many cases, the load-bearing capacity of 

the panels of the exterior load-bearing hull also proved lower than required. 

Karmishin explained that, in the opinion of his specialists, our designers’ calculations had not taken into consideration the impact of “marginal effects”—

structural weakening on sharp corners and edges. On the R-7, R-9, and other 

“old” rockets, more ductile alloys were used and the “marginal effect” could 

be disregarded. New materials were selected for the N-1 with a view toward 

reducing its mass. These materials proved to be more brittle.

After the destruction of the load-bearing ring at NII-88, Mishin ordered 

that the lead TsKBEM specialists for strength and structural analysis be reprimanded. Modifications needed to be made to the “marginal effect” areas on 

the already manufactured rocket compartments in Kuybyshev and at the firing 

range, new parts needed to be manufactured, and sometimes it was necessary 

to return to old tried-and-true materials. But this meant time, time, and once 

again an increase in the mass!

The long-suffering assembly of the Block A (first stage) load-bearing 

structure was modified and underwent strength testing 10 times. Ten load 

applications resulted in premature destructions, and only after this did we 

manage to receive a satisfactory result. Production could not wait that long. 

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They decided to launch first one or even two flight rockets in light-duty mode 

and not make all the modifications to them.

But the designers’ troubles did not end here. Two years after the beginning 

of production at the Progress Factory, highly unusual phenomena started to 

occur. Cracks were discovered under the rivets in riveted structural parts. Their 

appearance was first thought to be incidental. However, cracks were found not 

only at the factory in Kuybyshev, but also on a massive scale on the assembled 

units at the MIK. They immediately replaced impact riveting with pressure 

molding. Cracked parts were to be replaced with new ones. Where this was 

not possible, they attached special fastening plates. But that wasn’t all. On the 

finished assembly they discovered a broken steel fastening bolt. An examination 

confirmed that the failure of the fastener, which was made of a new grade of 

steel, was not an isolated occurrence. The failure of bolts and screws subjected 

to loads began to take on a large-scale pattern. All of the fasteners made of the 

new grade of steel had to be removed and replaced.

All told, it took almost a year to resolve all of these problems and to modify 

the first two flight vehicles. However, this was not the main reason for the 

delay in the start of flight testing. It took so much time to complete the construction and acceptance of all the launch site systems and to set up and begin 

tests with a mockup spacecraft at the engineering facility and launch sites that 

the strength and miscellaneous modifications going on at the same time did 

not ultimately determine the completion time [of preparations for launch].

The N-1 No. 3L rocket was modified in response to all possible comments 

by the time of the January session of the State Commission. All that remained 

were deviations permitted by the technical management. On the second stage 

(Block B), contrary to the design, Kuznetsov’s main engines did not have highaltitude nozzles. The control system’s on-board digital computer, developed 

at NIIAP in 1969, produced so many malfunctions and such errors that it 

was impossible to clear it for flight. Deviating from the design, they made the 

decision to begin flight testing on an analog control system, which did not 

require an on-board digital computer. This impaired the parameters of the 

control system and of the rocket as a whole, but it was not possible to wait any 

longer for the on-board computer to be ready. The main concern was, would 

the three stages be tested out?

Barmin did not follow the American procedure of transporting the rocket 

to the launch site in a vertical position. He remained true to our tradition—the 

rocket was moved from the engineering facility to the launch site in a horizontal position on a transporter-erector, which moved in keeping with the 

erstwhile principle “cannons travel to battle backwards.” True, this “backside” 

had a diameter of 17 meters. Four motor locomotives moved the erector along 

two parallel railroad tracks. Laying the rocket on the erector, securing it, and 

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

preparing it for rollout took several days, as did the commission’s arguments 

before and after. Finally, 9 February was announced to everyone as the day of 

departure to the launch site, Site No. 110.

During the days commemorating Korolev’s 90th birthday [in January 

1997], I had the opportunity to refresh my memory and reexperience this 

ceremonial process reproduced in the frames of a documentary film. The 

cameraman had selected a good angle. The gigantic rocket was comfortably 

bedded down on the platform of the erector as if that was its rightful place. 

Under the roof of the MIK, the rocket and erector seemed monolithic and 

grandiose. The entire bottom portion of the first stage filled the lens of the 

movie camera. With its 30 nozzles it was looking at dozens of people thronging below in white lab coats. They were not working; they had gathered for 

the ceremonial rollout process. Most were smiling lightheartedly. The image 

of a laughing Mishin flashed by. Afanasyev’s usually worried face lit up when 

a bottle of champagne was smashed against the erector. Shards of green glass 

were immediately snatched up as precious souvenirs. The N-1 did not abandon 

the traditions that Korolev established during the time of the first Semyorka. 

Operations at the engineering facility ended with a ritual gathering of those 

who contributed to the rocket all that they could. Then in a couple of hours, 

four motor locomotives would deliver the first flight model from the bright, 

warm MIK to the launch site where it would undergo several days of tests and 

begin launch preparation in a burning, frosty wind.

The launch was scheduled for 20 February. The day before, the weather 

service forecast low cloud cover hampering visual monitoring during the firststage operation flight segment. The launch was postponed to 21 February. In 

keeping with the principle “God helps those who help themselves,” the population at large was evacuated from Sites Nos. 112 and 113. The launch control 

“guest” hall, which out of habit we called the “bunker,” was jam-packed with 

those involved with launch preparation, VIPs, and various representatives of 

similar status. Television screens made it possible to observe liftoff from here 

without using periscopes.

Chief of the firing range’s Sixth Directorate Colonel Yevgeniy Moiseyev, 

Deputy Chief of the firing range General Anatoliy Kirillov, and N-1 Deputy 

Chief Designer Boris Dorofeyev occupied their places at the periscopes in the 

launch control hall. State Commission Chairman Sergey Afanasyev and technical manager Vasiliy Mishin were also here. At 12 hours 18 minutes 07 seconds, 

the rocket shuddered and began to lift off. The roar penetrated underground 

through several meters of concrete. The report of telemetry operators followed 

for the first seconds of flight announcing the shutdown of 2 of the 30 engines. 

Observers, who, notwithstanding the high security, managed to track the flight 

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From the author’s archives.

Launch of the first N-1 vehicle on 21 February 1969.

from the ground, said that the plume seemed unusually rigid, “it didn’t flap,” 

nd it was three or four times longer than the body of the rocket.

After around 10 seconds the thunder of the engines faded in the distance. 

e hall was completely silent. The second minute of flight had begun. And 

uddenly—the plume extinguished.... It was the 69th second of flight. The 

ery rocket drifted away without a plume from its engines. At a slight angle 

o the horizon, it was still moving upward; then it tilted over, and, leaving a 

moky trail, without breaking up, it began to fall.

It isn’t alarm and it isn’t dismay; it’s more a certain complex mixture of 

ntense inner pain and a feeling of absolute powerlessness that you experience 

hile watching a crashing rocket approach the ground. Dying before your 

yes is a creation with which you have become so intertwined over a period 

f several years that it sometimes seemed that this inanimate “article” had a 

oul. Even now it seems to me that each lost rocket has a soul made up of the 

eelings and experiences of the hundreds of creators of that “article.”

The first flight rocket fell along the flight route 52 kilometers from the 

aunch site. A distant flash confirmed: it’s all over! The strained, stressed, tightly 

ound string is broken. The last stage of work on the rocket begins. It’s time 

o look for what happened and why. The immediate start of the search is a 

edative that always brings relief. Barmin attempted to offer the first consolaion: “Don’t feel bad, the launch site is unharmed.”

a

Th

s

fi

t

s

i

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o

s

f

l

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t

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

On 15 May 1957, Barmin had breathed the same sigh of relief when he 

learned that the first Semyorka, which crashed in the 100th second of flight, 

did not damage the launch site. Back then, all of us, not just Barmin’s team, 

had not been too upset: after all, reaching 100 seconds the first time—that’s 

already an achievement. Now there are a lot more people, but far fewer people 

who can offer calming words and can crack a joke. The N-1 is indeed a very 

great rocket to be lost so easily and quickly after five years spent creating it.

Mishin was too 

impatient to wait for 

investigations lasting 

many days. Turning to 

Iosifyan, he said right 

there in the bunker 

that the turbogenerator was the culprit 

for everything. Only 

its failure could have 

caused the simultaneous shutdown of all 

28 engines. Minister 

Sergey Afanasyev—

also chairman of the 

State Commission—

appointed Mishin

chairman of the accident investigation commission before he left the bunker. 

Iosifyan and Sheremetyevskiy were unusually insistent and proposed searching 

the impact area immediately and delivering the turbogenerators for verification.

The search team hunted for the turbogenerators. Surprisingly, they turned 

out to be whole and suitable for “repeat use.” They were immediately transported 

to the test rig at the Istrinskiy facility, and after minor repair they started up! 

Telemetry also confirmed that the turbogenerators had operated up until the 

moment of impact with the ground. Who then shut down all 28 engines at 

once, and what was the offense of the two engines—No. 12 and diametrically 

opposed No. 24—that switched off during liftoff from the ground? What kind 

of devil had made short work of all 30 engines?

From the author’s archives.

Senior management shown prior to the launch of the first 

N-1. From left to right, Anatoliy Kirillov, Vasiliy Mishin, 

Sergey Afanasyev, Boris Dorofeyev, and V. I. Snegirev.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

All the telemetry recordings were sent to Site No. 10.14 The analysis 

bureau began its feverish round-the-clock deciphering. Scarcely 24 hours 

had passed when the first information emerged. At first it traveled like a 

rumor, then it began to be written up in reports, and finally it could be 

put out at the level of an accident investigation commission and then the 

State Commission.

At the end of this unusually long launch day I already knew that the 

shutdown of the first 2 engines during liftoff and of the remaining 28 during 

the 69th second of flight were prompted by a KORD system command. That 

night KORD system specialists, looking haggard from all the calamities that 

had come down on them, gathered in my hotel room. We wanted to have a 

talk without any outsiders eager for the latest news so that we could be the 

first to report to the higher-ups.

We had worked on the KORD system for three years! We could assuage our 

guilt for the failure only after a thorough study of the true causes. We would 

“brainstorm” all the possible scenarios. By morning we had drawn up a main 

list of experiments that needed to be conducted on the next flight model N-1 

No. 5L in Podlipki on the equipment and at NIIAP on the integrated stand.

Mishin, after making arrangements with the minister, made the decision 

to create a special commission to analyze the KORD system’s operation. “We 

don’t need a lot of people,” said Mishin. “Chertok will be the chairman.”

It wasn’t until early March, after arguments and calculations, and following 

repeated microanalysis of the telemetry films, that we began to establish a logical 

connection between all the events on board the rocket that had resulted in the 

tragic end. Analysis of such failures is truly a creative process and somewhat like 

the work of a criminal investigator getting to the bottom of a crime. However, 

the logic of cunning analysis available to lone geniuses such as Sherlock Holmes 

will not save you in these situations. A single human being is not capable of 

digesting all the multisystem and contradictory information, analyzing it after 

rejecting instructions from management and the hunches from people on the 

sidelines, and writing up incontrovertible findings. Dozens of people thought, 

pored over films, and argued.

After spending three sleepless days, the telemetry specialists provided 

unequivocal information: all of the engine shutdowns were prompted by 

KORD system commands. On 7 March there was a meeting of the technical management in which I felt myself to be the main culprit in the demise 

 14.

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1969—The First N-1 Launch

of the rocket. In keeping with the established tradition, the chairman of the 

investigation commission appoints each “suspect” to be his own investigator. 

My commission had the following membership: Vladilen Finogeyev—control 

system; Nikolay Sheremetyevskiy—electric power; Ivan Utkin—KORD system 

sensors; and Aleksandr Cherkasov—engines.15 By the time the commission had 

been created, the KORD system specialists and I had already pieced together a 

picture of the system’s behavior. Now we needed to explain it to all the other 

commission members, concisely write up our objective findings, and present 

them to the State Commission. “He who honestly seeks will always find” is a 

true statement for this sort of investigation.

I shall remind the reader that to monitor the operation of all the engines 

of Blocks A, B, and V, the KORD system used four control channels: pressure in the combustion chambers; pressure pulsations in the gas generator; 

revolutions per minute, i.e., rotation speed of the turbopump assembly; and 

temperature of the gas generator. No deviations from normal operation were 

detected in the pressure and temperature channels. The channel monitoring 

the rotations per minute (rpm) of the Block A turbopump assembly activated 

upon receiving the command “ignition” and functioned normally until receiving 

the command “main.” Then, 0.34 seconds after the “liftoff” contact actuated, 

the control system shut down engine No. 12 after receiving a KORD system 

signal. The KORD system ostensibly reacted to the sharp increase in the rotation speed of the turbopump assembly. We determined that the command was 

false. The control system executed it and, in accordance with the logic, shut 

down engine No. 24.

Studies conducted in KORD system laboratories and at NIIAP showed 

that the KORD system unit of engine No. 12 responded to external interference, which occurred in the form of a spike of damped vibrations of voltage 

between the KORD system power buses and the hull; this spike occurred at the 

moment of detonation of the explosive cartridges opening the valves feeding 

propellant components to the engines upon receiving the command “main.” 

The frequency and amplitude of the electrical vibrations that occurred when 

the pyrocartridges detonated simulated the emergency mode—“racing” of the 

turbopump assembly. The KORD system did not tolerate this.

 15.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

A spike of similar damping vibrations usually occurs in an electrical loop 

containing capacitance, inductance, and resistance if a sharp change in current 

strength “strikes” it. This strike was the impulse that activated dozens of pyrocartridges. The capacitance and inductance of the cable network determined 

the vibration frequency. The cable network, in addition to performing its main 

task, simulated a sort of “ringing loop.”

But why did this “ringing” cause only engine No. 12 to shut down? We 

performed an experiment on the integrated stand at NIIAP with a real cable 

network and real KORD system instruments. The investigative experiment 

confirmed the hunch that the parameters of the long lines of the cable network in the area of engine No. 12 were the most critical. The culpability of 

the KORD system in shutting down this engine with a false command was 

proven unequivocally. At the discretion of the layout designers, the subsequent 

assembly and length of the cables for the other engines could also prove “critical.” In these “presumed” instances, in the very first second, so many engines 

could shut down that the rocket would not take off. In this horrible scenario 

the destruction of the launch pad was inevitable. However, the remaining 28 

engines held up until the 69th second. “Like the 28 Panfilovtsy heroes outside Moscow in 1941,” joked Kirillov grimly.16 And all of them to a man fell 

simultaneously. Why?

What other “ringing” occurred there? The answer came from other investigating groups. Rigorous analysis showed that during the 6th second of 

flight, elevated vibrations caused the sample probe sensor tube measuring the 

gas pressure downstream from the turbine to break off. Twenty-five seconds 

into the flight, the fuel pressure sensor tube upstream from the gas generator 

broke off. “Acid” gas at a temperature of 340°C [644°F] spewed out through 

the ruptured tube and mixed with kerosene gushing out of the other broken 

tube. A cloud of fuel mixture formed and burst into flame 55 seconds into the 

flight. The fire engulfed a large portion of the aft section of Block A. Sixty-eight 

seconds into the flight, the flame that was raging in the aft section burned 

through the insulation of the cable network, including the alternating current 

 16.

208
1969—The First N-1 Launch

1,000-Hertz power cables. These cables and the cables of the KORD system’s 

sensitive channels were bound in common bundles.

The 1,000-Hertz current of the power system of the functional turbogenerator found its way to the KORD system’s sensitive inputs, which perceived it 

as inadmissible pulsations in the gas generators. Twenty-five volts of interference (given a maximum permissible value of 15 volts) penetrating through the 

fire-damaged insulation bypassed all the filters and shut down all 28 engines 

virtually simultaneously. Moreover, this interference also passed upward to the 

KORD system units of Blocks B and V.

The causes for the demise of the first N-1 flight rocker were unequivocally 

identified. Mishin’s main commission and my commission on the KORD 

system developed measures that would be introduced immediately on the 

next N-1 No. 5 flight model. The cable bundles were made separate. They 

reinforced the thermal insulation around the engines wrapping them with an 

asbestos blanket. For the KORD system units themselves, they devised a protective system for the power circuits. And working according to the principle of 

“God helps those who help themselves,” despite the objections of Kuznetsov’s 

organization, they decided to disconnect the pulsation monitoring channel 

from the execution of the emergency shutdown command and keep it just for 

telemetry. After analyzing everything that had happened and approving antifire and anti-interference measures, the State Commission made the decision 

to launch N-1 No. 5L in June 1969.

When it came down to signing the certificate of findings, I recalled the 

dispute between Voskresenskiy and Korolev concerning the integrated stand 

for the development testing of Block A, the first stage. What had happened 

with No. 3L was not a random occurrence, but the logical result of our economizing on the development of a stand for ground testing. Subsequent events 

completely confirmed this truth.

Having returned from the firing range after such a painful failure, I arranged 

with my deputies and department chiefs to hold a wide-ranging discussion of 

our mistakes and the lessons that each developer should take away from this 

event. We held a conference of sorts in this regard at the very end of February. 

I had reckoned on celebrating my birthday on 1 March.17 Feeling not the least 

bit festive, I announced that I had no plans to mark the event and asked that 

nothing interfere with work.

Nevertheless, without asking for my consent, Nikolay Golunskiy led a 

group of telemetry specialists—none of whom were officially subordinate to 

 17.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

me—and burst into my office with a bottle of cognac. After brief speeches 

listing my shortcomings and my achievements blown out of all proportion, 

Golunskiy grabbed his guitar and strummed our old firing range song of 

unknown authorship. The words made us nostalgic because this song appeared 

soon after our space triumphs of the early 1960s.

I shall take the risk of reproducing the lyrics in their entirety. As for the 

tune, each performer selected one according to his or her own fancy.

The rocket is filled, of course, not with water,

And it’s high time to push the launch button.

Come on, friend, let’s get out of the way,

If only it would fly away, God forbid we should have to drain it.

REFRAIN:

I know, my dear friends, many years will pass by,

And the world will forget our all our pains,

But in the wreckage of many a rocket

The mark we made always remains.

Let us be stumbling drunk tomorrow,

The rocket flew away; pour another glass.

We finished the job, and now it’s time to hit the road,

Now let Comrade Levitan talk himself hoarse.

REFRAIN

Rockets are flying to points unknown,

Cosmonaut heroes—too many to count,

Space maps fill the plotting boards,

And they’ve given us our travel orders again.

REFRAIN

Hotels with bedbugs and dusty roads—

All of this, old pal, we had to endure.

Let the newspapers write that we live like gods.

Let’s crumple the newspaper and go...for a stroll.

REFRAIN.

210
Chapter 11

After the Failure of N-1s 

No. 3 and No. 5

We were not capable—not at the highest levels of political leadership, not 

at the ministerial level, and especially not within our rocket space engineering community—of concentrating our efforts on a single mission of “crucial 

national importance”: a lunar landing expedition. Having realized that it was 

impossible to catch up with the U.S. in the execution of a piloted circumlunar 

flight and an expedition to the lunar surface, we continued to expend our 

resources on a number of disparate goals: on an unpiloted circumlunar flight 

using L1 vehicles; on the automatic delivery of lunar soil; on accelerating the 

piloted flight program using 7K-OK model Soyuz vehicles; and on designing 

new, more advanced vehicles—modifications of the Soyuzes.

In March 1969, the accident investigation commissions and groups concluded their investigation into the causes of the failure of the first launch and 

From the author’s archives.

These two images show the N-1 being erected on its pad at Site No. 110.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

developed the latest batch of measures to increase the reliability of the N-1 

rocket. The technical management gave the “green light” to prepare for the 

launch of rocket N-1 No. 5L. Why not N-1 No. 4L? For planning reasons, 

rocket N-1 No. 4L had been set aside “in reserve” so that a whole series of 

modifications, which they had not managed to implement for N-1 No. 3L 

and N-1 No. 5L, could later be performed on it.

From the author’s archives.

These three images show the N1-L3 stack being prepared (lower inset) in the MIK 

and then being transported to the launch pad.

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

From 3 through 13 March, the U.S. successfully conducted the experimental flight of the entire Apollo 9 space complex in Earth orbit.1

 After this the 

Americans announced the program for the next two flights, having confirmed 

that a lunar landing expedition was planned for July of that year.

The TsKBEM staff headed by Mishin bore primary responsibility for 

compensating for the psychological damage inflicted on domestic and world 

public opinion, which had sincerely believed in the absolute priority of the 

socialist world in space. I cannot say that feelings of dismay or despondency 

reigned among my comrades on our staff. On the contrary, we were so busy 

with other programs under way at the same time that we simply did not have 

time to be demoralized. In conversations among ourselves we agreed that it was 

impossible to achieve victory advancing over a whole broad front. We needed 

to stop and concentrate our efforts on a single area, or perhaps two areas, as 

the Americans had done.

On one of these working evenings Pilyugin called me up on the “Kremlin 

line” and reported with indignation: “Aside from the fact that Chelomey is 

once again proposing his UR-700 in place of the N-1, he is now planning to 

adapt this design for a flight to Mars. I’ve been informed that Afanasyev is 

preparing an order in this regard. I will not take part in this risky venture.”

I knew about Chelomey’s work at OKB-52 (renamed TsKBM) in Reutov 

and at his branch in Fili on a design for the super-heavy UR-700 launch 

vehicle and the LK-700 lunar vehicle. All of my friends and I were miffed by 

this blatant redundancy.

When I started up a conversation about this with Tyulin, he said: “I 

objected, but as you know, my relationship with the minister is very complicated. If you and Mishin mess up with the N-1, he needs other proposals, even 

if only in the form of a draft plan.”

Much later, by the time that our N1-L3 program had been shut down and 

the UR-700/LK-700 design had been placed in the archives, we established 

completely normal relations with Chelomey. At one of the regular meetings 

of our Academy department, after inviting me to the canteen for a “glass of 

tea and cookies,” Chelomey asked an unexpected question: “Admit it, if 10 or 

12 years ago they had accepted my proposal for the UR-700, we would now 

have a launch vehicle for both lunar and Mars expeditions that no one would 

 1. During the 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

be able to shut down. Three UR-700 stages have completed the debugging 

stage, and now everyone needs them.”2

I had to admit that the UR-700 launch vehicle had its advantages. The 

design of the new rocket was based on the three-stage UR-500K, which had 

already been in service. The UR-500 was installed as the second stage [of the 

UR-700], whose first stage was undergoing development. The latter consisted 

of nine blocks with a single RD-270 engine in each of them. The total thrust 

of the first-stage engines near the ground was 5,760 tons. This made it possible 

to insert into orbit a payload with a mass up to 140 tons.

“We would have a launch vehicle that was just as good as the Saturn V, 

but with the advantage that the three upper stages would always be in series 

production, regardless of the lunar program,” said Chelomey.

In this sense he was right. For the Mars expedition, Chelomey proposed 

a new version of the launch vehicle: the UR-900. The very same UR-500 

comprised the second, third, and fourth stages of this launch vehicle. Unlike 

the UR-700, the first stage had 15 RD-270 engines. According to the design, 

the UR-700 had six RD-270 engines. This made it possible [for the UR-900] 

to insert a mass of up to 240 tons into a near-Earth reference orbit.

At one time Glushko had proposed RD-270 engines with a thrust of 640 

tons to Korolev for the N-1. They were developed for use with high boiling components—geptil (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) and nitrogen tetroxide.

“Can you imagine, Vladimir Nikolayevich, what would have happened if 

a rocket such as the UR-700 or, God forbid, the UR-900 came crashing down 

near the launch site? All of our pads and all the facilities would be turned into 

a dead zone for 15 to 20 years.”

“Well, first of all, they wouldn’t come crashing down because now the 

engines of your general designer Valentin Petrovich Glushko are failsafe. And 

second, the Pyatisotka [UR-500] flies without a hitch using these propellant 

components and hundreds of combat missiles have been standing on duty 

in silos and at sea on submarines for years. The fear of these components is 

quite exaggerated.”

But in 2007, I realized that I had been right. Many years ago I had posed 

a somewhat provocative question to Vladimir Chelomey. By the beginning of 

the 21st century the Proton rocket had proven itself to be completely reliable. 

The Proton launch vehicle did not let us down during the construction of the 

Mir station and the Russian segment of the International Space Station. The 

 2. Chelomey is alluding to the notion that the upper stages of the UR-700 were derived 

214
After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

leaders of friendly Kazakhstan grumbled about ecological troubles that resulted 

from first stages falling onto the steppe after exhausting their fuel, but they 

tolerated them. However on 6 September 2007, a Proton came down en route 

after 140.7 seconds of flight. Wreckage fell 50 kilometers to the southwest 

of Dzhezkazgan, poisoning a large area of formerly pristine steppe with the 

toxic propellant components of the second stage.3

 Launches were temporarily halted. Russia promised to pay Kazakhstan a large sum for the economic 

damages inflicted....

In 1969, Reshetnev, Kozlov, and Babakin provided consolation with 

the successful launches of Molniya-1, Kosmos reconnaissance satellites, and the 

Venera automatic interplanetary stations. Two dozen various Kosmos spacecraft 

were launched during the first six months of 1969. Our newspapers, which 

observed a ban on information about the American lunar successes, finally 

had the opportunity to fill their front pages with flights of enthusiasm over 

the successful arrival of Soviet automatic interplanetary stations Venera-5 (16 

May) and Venera-6 (17 May) on Venus. A pennant bearing an image of Lenin 

in bas-relief and the emblem of the Soviet Union was delivered to the surface 

of Venus. On 19 May 1969, the front pages of all of our newspapers were 

filled with salutes from the Central Committee, Supreme Soviet, and Council 

of Ministers to the scientists, designers, engineers, technicians, workers, and 

all the staffs and organizations, thanks to which “our Soviet motherland had 

secured one more outstanding victory in space exploration.”

Correspondingly, in the same order, “scientists, designers, engineers, technicians, and workers” who had been involved in the development, launch, and 

flight support of the interplanetary stations, and also in receiving and processing 

scientific information, reported to the Central Committee, Supreme Soviet, 

and Council of Ministers about the successful execution of the program: 

“We dedicate this achievement of Soviet science and technology to the 100th 

anniversary of the birth of the organizer of the Communist party, founder of 

the Soviet state, and standard-bearer of workers all over the world Vladimir 

Ilyich Lenin.”4

The evening before, 18 May, we were watching television coverage of the 

Apollo 10 liftoff and flight to the Moon, and the next morning, 19 May, we 

attempted to find information in the newspapers about the Americans’ piloted 

 3. The launch was operated by International Launch Services (ILS) to carry 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

flight.5 It proved anything but simple to track down more than a modest report 

on this event, even in the very back pages.

After meeting with Babakin, I congratulated him warmly and tried to joke 

about the fact that the latest “Venusian” successes were thanks to the January 

resolution “On the Plan of Work for Research on the Moon, Mars, and Venus 

using Automatic Stations.” Babakin beamed, but swore good-naturedly and 

complained that excessive attention from the “brass” was already beginning to 

grate on his nerves and distract him from his work. These achievements to a 

certain degree compensated for the failure of the “lunar excavator,” the Ye-8-5.6

“We timed our landing on Venus specially so as to muffle the Apollo 

liftoff,” Babakin laughed it off.

In Yevpatoriya and at the firing range we often met with television correspondent Yuriy Valeryanovich Fokin.7

 He was firmly entrenched in our rocketspace community, and we all treated him with great respect, understanding how 

difficult it was for him to water down information about cosmonautics, leaving 

only the ceremonial window dressing. So, we heard from him, or perhaps it was 

from some other representative of the press, that before the Apollo launches 

newspaper, radio, and television journalists fly out to Cape Canaveral from every 

nation except the Soviet Union. And it wasn’t the American authorities who 

prohibited this, but our own Soviet governmental agencies. International rules 

of etiquette require reciprocity. If our correspondents accepted an invitation 

and visited Cape Canaveral, then we would be obliged to invite Americans to 

our firing range for some launch. In those days even thinking such a thought 

could not be tolerated.

At the press conferences devoted to Venera-5 and -6, in response to foreign 

journalists’ cautious questions about our plans regarding the Moon, Keldysh 

gave vague explanations: that we had no intentions of being the first to send a 

human being to the Moon, or that we believed that a great deal could be learned 

using automatic stations before the need arose to risk landing a human being.

It is very difficult, from the standpoint of common sense, to explain the 

total blackout of space information where no state secrets were concerned. 

During a discussion of this problem within our “inner circle,” we concluded 

 5. The 

216
After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

that the reason was the obtuseness or stupidity of the Central Committee staff. 

However, among the Party officials we mixed with and who sponsored us, I 

never met anyone who was either stupid or obtuse. When asked point-blank 

why there were information bans, they could not give any clearly defined 

answer. It made Academy of Sciences President Keldysh look foolish.

On 29 and 30 May, the technical management and State Commission 

convened at the firing range to officially “close” all the incidents regarding 

the launch of N-1 No. 3L and to make the decision to launch N-1 No. 5L. 

At a conference in Litvinov’s office, the Minobshchemash section rehearsed its 

presentation for the next day’s State Commission meeting.8 For the umpteenth 

time I repeated my account of the KORD system’s behavior on N-1 No. 3L 

and gave assurances that all necessary measures had been implemented on N-1 

No. 5 and testing had confirmed their effectiveness.

“We are powerless to predict the behavior of the system if the cable networks are damaged by fire,” I said. “The most unpredictable connections can 

occur when cable insulation breaks down.”

“It’s best not to mention that in the State Commission,” advised Litvinov.

Barmin disrupted the peaceful dialogue at this meeting.

“The failure of N-1 No. 3L could also have occurred 50 seconds sooner. 

Who can guarantee that this will not happen? If the rocket isn’t immediately 

diverted farther away, we are putting all the launch facilities at risk. I propose 

to let the control specialists completely inhibit the ability for the engines to 

shut down for the first 15 to 20 seconds and during that time the rocket will 

move a safe distance away.”

Because of his proposal, we started to argue, as a result of which Barmin 

agreed not to bring this up in the State Commission, while Dorofeyev, 

Finogeyev, and I promised to give it some thought and work it out. We obviously did not have time to come up with these measures in time for No. 5L.

In the State Commission meeting on 30 May in the conference hall of the 

big MIK, Mishin gave the report on the failure of N-1 No. 3L and proposals 

for N-1 No. 5L. Afanasyev still insisted that I give a more detailed account of 

why the KORD system shut down operational engines when there was a fire 

in the aft section. Barmin reported on the readiness of all the ground fueling 

and launching systems. He kept his promise not to raise the issue of preventive 

engine shutdown inhibits. As for the rest, the commission proceeded rather 

 8. 

217
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

amicably until it came to the matter of verifying the status of the upcoming 

N-1 No. 6L rocket. The commission got “hung up” on this problem because, 

beginning with the N-1 No. 6L, Mishin promised to insert the Lunar Orbital 

Vehicle (LOK) capable of flying around the Moon as part of the “payload” 

rather than mockup L3S-type vehicles.9

Lidorenko asked whether anyone had investigated using a test procedure 

on the electrochemical generators (EKhG) at the monitoring and test facility. 

Electrochemical generators require liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. How 

does one work with such an explosive mixture if there are dozens of testers right 

around the corner? Finogeyev tried to calm everyone down, announcing that 

they were optimizing the procedure beforehand on a rig at their NIIAP facility in 

order to have a reliable EKhG equivalent and that the fueling process would take 

place only at the launch site. Ovchinnikov assured Afanasyev and the military 

officers, who had begun to pose difficult questions, that everything had been 

thought through. The EKhG would not be fueled with hydrogen until it was 

on the launch pad and the safety of the operation had been verified many times.

One was not supposed to close sensitive issues in State Commissions without a good explanation. Afanasyev proposed, “Set up a commission to review 

this problem under the leadership of Comrade Lidorenko and appoint Comrade 

Finogeyev as his deputy. And who shall we have from TsKBEM?” I suggested, 

“Ovchinnikov, Penek, Kupriyanchik, and Sosnovik. And put some military 

types on the commission, 

subject to approval.”

“I’ll ask those who guarantee the safety of hydrogen 

on board to sign in blood,” 

stated Afanasyev.

Similar commissions, 

as a rule, were set up when 

issues requiring additional 

tests and time arose during 

From the author’s archives.

A panoramic view of two N-1 

vehicles on their respective 

launch pads at Site No. 110 

at Tyuratam.

 9. “L3S” was the combined designation of the L-1S circumlunar vehicle and a dummy 

218
After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

State Commission sessions. The protocol usually noted, “Make a joint reasoned decision on such-and-such a date, and have it approved by the technical 

manager.”10 Per Mishin’s proposal, a State Commission decision set a deadline 

of 3 July for the launch readiness of N-1 No. 5.

Hundreds of testers, designers, engineers, technicians, and workers faced 

stressful work in the fierce heat that had set in. For the first time they had gotten 

an air conditioning system in the new big MIK and the atmosphere was quite 

tolerable. But at the launch site there was no reprieve from the direct rays of 

the sun. No. 3L was prepared in January and February when the temperature 

was –25°C [–13°F]. Back then, people who had run to the heated sheds to 

warm their frozen hands and rub their frost-bitten noses said that the summer 

heat was better. Now, when guzzling liters of water that couldn’t quench their 

thirst, those same testers recalled, “And when it was freezing cold you didn’t 

feel thirsty at all.”

On 1 June, I parted for a while from my comrades who were staying 

behind to work on No. 5L; packed my travel bag with a pile of letters, papers 

with instructions, and “off-the-record” comments; and hurried to the airfield 

From the author’s archives.

Another view, this from an aerial perspective, of two N-1s on the pad in 1969.

 10.

219
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

to depart for Moscow with Afanasyev and Mishin. On the airplane Afanasyev 

tipped us off that the previous evening Smirnov had telephoned him and, on 

behalf of Ustinov, asked us—TsKBEM management—to gather to discuss the 

program of upcoming N-1 launch vehicle launches.

On the morning of 3 June in Mishin’s office—formerly Korolev’s “big 

office”—a select company of chiefs gathered. We jokingly referred to similar 

gatherings as meetings of a “tight circle of limited people.” Keldysh, whom 

we told about this aphorism, was quite amused. In attendance were Serbin, 

Smirnov, Keldysh, Afanasyev, Tyulin, Litvinov, Kerimov, Pashkov, Tsarev, 

Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, Barmin, Iosifyan, Mozzhorin, and Galin.11 From our 

side Mishin, Okhapkin, Bushuyev, Tregub, Abramov, Kryukov, and I attended.

Smirnov warned, “This meeting is very important—the Central Committee 

is very concerned about the status of the N1-L3 and about the state of affairs 

in general at TsKBEM. In view of the Americans’ successes,” added Smirnov, 

“the administration finds our failures particularly troubling. They would like 

to hear an objective report about the true status.”

Mishin had not prepared himself very thoroughly for such an imposing 

meeting. He briefly reported about the results of the accident investigation of 

the flight of N-1 No. 3L and about the status of the preparation of N-1 No. 5L. 

He announced the launch date: “Exactly one month from now—on 3 July.”

With an optimism that was natural for a chief designer, Mishin said 

that, despite its failure, the N-1 No. 3L launch had provided very important 

experimental material. We had learned the bitter lessons of using the KORD 

system, had protected it from interference, and therefore, in the upcoming N-1 

No. 5L launch, we could boldly go on with the circumlunar flight program. 

Without having consulted with his deputies, Mishin then promised to launch 

N-1 No. 6L in its full standard configuration for the execution of a circumlunar 

flight and return to Earth in unpiloted mode.

“All of our systems and instruments are fully equipped; the matter is in 

the subcontractors’ hands.”

Looking at the briefing sheet prepared for him earlier, Smirnov asked, “Is 

this really so? According to our information, there is still a very large amount 

of missing equipment.”

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

Igor Bobyrev had most likely prepared the briefing paper for Smirnov.12

The other deputies and I often associated with him in the Kremlin offices of 

the VPK, not passing up the opportunity to ask for help to cover the deficit in 

equipment shipments, especially when we were dealing with outside ministries. 

Bobyrev himself traveled around to the organizations and knew about the 

actual state of affairs better than the other Kremlin officials of the VPK offices.

As was proper in such cases, I was supposed to come to Mishin’s aid. “It 

is feasible to complete the manufacture and delivery of all the missing instruments for N1-L3 No. 6L this year,” I reported. “But after we receive them 

they will need to undergo a cycle of testing—a test run of all the systems in 

the complex.” Next I listed the most critical systems for this testing: the EKhG 

automatics, the NIIAP computer and its interface with the other systems, and 

Geofizika’s optical sensors.

Keldysh interrupted my wordy response and asked whether it would be 

possible to provide N-1 No. 6L and N-1 No. 7L in two versions. If the N-1 

No. 5L launch were to show insufficient reliability, N-1 No. 6L and N-1 

No. 7L could be equipped just with mockups and the launch vehicle itself 

could be tested out.

“Ultimately,” he said, “today we are arguing about instruments for lunar 

vehicles, without having a launch vehicle on which to send them to the Moon. 

It seems to me that we need to give people the opportunity to calmly prepare and test out the LOK and LK—that’s where there are still so many 

unresolved problems, and independent of that, we need to speed up launch 

vehicle launches. Your L3S vehicle is, after all, not the LOK, but its ‘ersatz.’ By 

specifying a circumlunar flight at any cost, we once again tie our own hands. 

To this day we have been unable to reliably execute a circumlunar flight and 

return to the Earth using the special L1 vehicle. Where is the guarantee that 

the L3S will perform this mission better? In the coming year our task will be 

to optimize the launch vehicle.”

Tyulin supported Keldysh. He went further and said that we needed to 

think through backup plans for launches even with a dummy model instead 

of a vehicle. Mishin fervently objected. He promised to have N-1 No. 7L in 

full flight configuration enabling the LOK not only to be inserted into lunar 

orbit, but also to ensure the automatic landing of the LK on the lunar surface.

“We don’t need to make a mistake here,” broke in Bushuyev. “The N-1 

No. 6L launch is possible this year only in a simplified L3S version; we can’t 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

guarantee any circumlunar flight. We need to plan an insertion into Earth orbit 

or a highly elliptical orbit that does not involve the Moon.”

Serbin could not tolerate this hint at revising the Central Committee 

decision on the circumlunar flight, which he detected in the words of Keldysh, 

Tyulin, and Bushuyev.

“We have no right to abandon the circumlunar flight. If you pose a question like that, then you need to report to the Central Committee about it,” 

he declared. Smirnov nodded his head in agreement; Afanasyev quickly jotted 

something down on his notepad. Everyone else kept quiet. The discussion 

ended with an instruction to the minister to look into the matter and give an 

additional report to the Central Committee.

They then talked about the N-11 model and a Mars landing expedition project.13 These discussions proceeded with breaks for tea and sandwiches, 

which Kosyakov provided in abundance. Okhapkin gave a passionate speech 

in defense of the N-11 rocket. Mishin rather tactlessly quipped that neither 

Keldysh nor Afanasyev had given the proper support to the so-obvious advantages of this proposal.

Taking advantage of the fact that my tea-drinking neighbor was Pashkov, 

I asked, “And actually, Georgiy Nikolayevich, if we had begun with the N-11, 

as Korolev proposed, wouldn’t we already have a launch vehicle every bit as 

good as the UR-500, but safe, with the two upper stages of the N-1 already 

tested out? That was the way the Americans operated, first developing the 

Saturn IB. If you became acquainted with Chelomey’s UR-700 design, you’d 

see he came out with the very same idea: its upper stages were the alreadytested-out UR-500.”

“Now is not the time. The military is completely against the entire program. We already have to fight to tear hundreds of millions away from purely 

military missions every year.”

Pashkov was right in the sense that the chiefs who had come out to this 

gathering with us today had their heads crammed with more than just lunar, 

let alone Mars, missions. The famous “little civil war” had flared up between 

the camps of Yangel and Chelomey. The selection of either of the two models 

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

of strategic missiles ran into several billion rubles.14 Competing for scales of 

expenditures with the land-based strategic nuclear missile forces, the navy and 

atomic scientists had also proposed their own doctrine of “nuclear retaliation.”

Socializing with Isanin and Makeyev at the latest Academy meeting, I 

already knew that work of unprecedented proportions was under way to rearm 

the fleet with ballistic missile submarines, each of which was equipped with 

16 of Makeyev’s missiles.15 In the next five years there were plans to build 

more than a dozen strategic missile submarine cruisers. The conversation with 

Makeyev took place in a festive mood—the two of us had just been elected to 

the Academy of Sciences.16

“You must excuse me,” said Makeyev, “as you know, I don’t like to brag, 

but the atomic submarine cruiser with our 16 missiles is as expensive as the 

From the author’s archives.

Shown here are Chief Designer Viktor Makeyev (center) and Ye. N. Rabinovich 

congratulating Chertok (left) on his 60th birthday in 1972.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

N-1, and perhaps, as complex. We are constantly working on new designs. In 

two or three years, at a maximum, along with ships, we are going to deliver 

cruisers with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Find the time to come over 

and see for yourself.”

I am very sorry that I didn’t find the time and didn’t make the trip out to 

Miass to see Makeyev. I found out about the tough problems with the submarine missile control system after visiting Semikhatov in Sverdlovsk.17 Five 

years later, shipbuilders put the manufacture of atomic submarine cruisers on 

line. Missiles literally had to be made “like sausages” in order to arm them. In 

modern terminology this was sleek and high technology.

Ustinov was also absorbed in a new undertaking: Nadiradze’s mobile missile 

complexes. Afanasyev opposed the development of such missile systems outside 

his ministry. With that stance he spoiled good relations with Ustinov. All of 

these problems addled the minds of our bosses far more than the prospects of 

the Moon and Mars.

Nevertheless, at this meeting Keldysh came out in support of Mars expedition studies that we had begun back when Korolev was still with us. He asked 

Mishin to briefly report on the status of the project. The Mars expedition 

project called for the preliminary assembly of an interplanetary expedition 

complex in Earth orbit. The main modules of the complex were an interplanetary orbital vehicle, a Mars landing vehicle, a module for the return trip to 

Earth, and a nuclear reactor–based power plant. The power plant supported 

the operation of electric rocket engines in interplanetary orbit en route to 

Mars and the return of the expedition to Earth orbit. The expedition would 

take two to three years. The use of artificial gravity was assumed. At that time 

the medical community did not believe that human beings would be able to 

maintain their health and performance under conditions of weightlessness for 

more than two or three months.

Work on the Mars expedition project was enthralling. But it distracted 

our main gurus from current problems that couldn’t tolerate delays. Mishin’s 

Mars report was received very unenthusiastically. On the contrary, the chiefs 

who had gathered let it be known that it was a total waste of our time. Only 

Keldysh spoke out in favor of continuing operations, “but not to the detriment of the L3.”

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

“At OPM we’ve also looked into such possibilities.18 I must say,” declared 

Keldysh, “that if the N-1 launch vehicle flies reliably and if it’s modified, 

making the third stage operate on [liquid] hydrogen, then the dual-launch 

scenario might prove sufficient for a piloted flight to Mars. I am not in favor 

of diverting efforts to the N-11 now. We already have the UR-500 with the 

same capabilities. We need to quickly test out the N-1.”

Mishin assured everyone that we were working on the Mars project without 

diverting people from the L3, but had not abandoned the hydrogen block for 

the fourth stage, and in a year we would have it ready for rig testing.19

At the very end of the conversations, after glancing at his papers, Smirnov 

asked Mishin, “You promised the flight of three Soyuzes before the October 

Revolution anniversary. Can I convene a commission to make a decision and 

report to the Central Committee?” Coming to Mishin’s aid, Bushuyev and I 

attested that preparation was under way for the program, which entailed the 

docking of two Soyuzes, while a third one would fly around them and provide 

television coverage. Litvinov supported us saying that the only things holding 

us up for the time being were technical bugs with Igla.

At the mention of Igla, Afanasyev looked at me and said, “These launches 

are extremely important for us. Let Chertok stay here and resolve all the issues 

with his friend Mnatsakanyan and look after the docking assembly. Disgracing 

ourselves with the piloted Soyuzes is the last thing we need right now. They’re 

all we have for the time being.” This instruction was one of the reasons why I 

was not at the firing range on the day of the launch of No. 5L.

At the mention of docking assemblies, Klyucharev came to my aid and 

chimed in, “Docking assemblies are being manufactured. They are very complex 

mechanisms, but we have mastered them. Machine tool builders and the Azov 

Optical-Mechanical Factory have helped us a lot.”

On that note, the high-ranking guests who had been in conference with 

us for almost 4 hours went their separate ways after first agreeing that in late 

June, when prompted by State Commission chairman Afanasyev, they would 

gather at the firing range for the launch of N-1 No. 5L.

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However, the minister did not turn a deaf ear to the “Martian” conversations. On 30 June [1969], Afanasyev issued an order obligating Chelomey, 

over the course of a year, to develop a design for a Mars complex comprising 

the UR-700M (or UR-900) launch vehicle and the MK-700M Mars vehicle. 

After learning about this and having been officially relieved of my duty to fly 

out to the firing range to take part in the launch of N-1 No. 5L, I found the 

time to discuss proposals for the Mars expedition control system....

In August 1997, Igor Gansvindt dropped by to see me. In the 1960s he 

was the lead planner of the piloted vehicle’s landing control system for both the 

Mars landing and its touchdown on Earth after returning from the expedition. 

At that time, he handed over a sketch of the vehicle, which he had received 

with the baseline data for designing the landing control system, and handwritten notes of my report. Gansvindt recalled that in the summer of 1969 I had 

convened a large technical conference with all the subcontractors concerned 

and delivered an audience-inspiring report about the makeup and structure of 

the Mars expedition control system. If it hadn’t been for my inimitable handwriting, I might have questioned the authorship of the “Martian” manuscript. 

But I confess that a quarter century later I read this document with as much 

interest as I had read Aleksey Tolstoy’s famous Aelita 75 years before.20

But my modern-day “Martian” activity didn’t end there. A week after my 

conversation with Gansvindt, a BBC team that had flown in from London 

descended on me to make a television documentary about the history of Mars 

explorations. I told them about the incidents described in my third book, 

Rockets and People: Hot Days of the Cold War, in the chapter “The Cuban Missile 

Crisis...and Mars.”

“We hadn’t even dreamed of such success—finding a living participant of 

the first Mars rocket launch during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis! The world 

stood on the brink of an exchange of nuclear missile strikes across the Atlantic, 

and you were preparing for a launch to Mars!”

The young British woman leading the team peppered me with questions. 

She was very well versed in the history of all of mankind’s attempts to send 

automatic interplanetary stations to explore Mars and promised that British 

television viewers would be receptive. In December that same year I received 

a videocassette from the BBC in which I discovered my own “talking head.” 

However, Academician Sagdeyev, the former director of the USSR Academy 

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

of Sciences’ Institute of Space Research (IKI), who moved to the U.S. after 

his marriage to the granddaughter of President Eisenhower, proved to be in 

the forefront and unrivaled in the documentary....21

The failure of N-1 No. 3L was a painful but instructive example of 

what happens when new methods for testing the reliability of complex rocketspace systems are disregarded. Catastrophic failures that developed during the 

first launch should have occurred earlier during integrated firing rig tests on 

the flight-ready first stage. Now we were paying for the fact that Korolev had 

resigned himself to the draft plan’s lack of requirements for the construction of 

a rig for such tests. With the exception of the deceased Leonid Voskresenskiy, 

we all had humbly consented to this. We in Korolev’s camp sympathized with 

the rebel Voskresenskiy, but no one dared side with him publicly.

The history of our aviation and the first years of atomic and rocket technology are rich with examples of the successful borrowing from outside experience in order to catch up. After World War II, our science, technology, and 

industry quite successfully, rapidly, and efficiently duplicated German V-2 

missiles, which we called R-1, and the American B-29 Flying Fortress, which 

we called the Tu-4. Such duplication (right down to exact reproduction) was 

not only permitted, but it received the status of governmental decrees. Yet, the 

reliability-testing methods that the Americans used during the development 

of Saturn V proved to be unattainable in our rocket industry’s economy. In 

rocket technology the “maybe it will work” method didn’t work. We had not 

yet conducted a radical restructuring.

Mishin got drawn into arguments with Kamanin over the list of 

candidates for the lunar expedition crews. This irritated Bushuyev and me; it 

seemed premature to us. It was presumed that, by virtue of their positions, 

Bushuyev and Mishin would champion our interests. After the list was finally 

approved at the most recent meeting on that issue, Mishin announced that we 

would complete an expedition to the Moon before the end of 1970. Corporate 

solidarity and years of discipline would not permit the exercise of active rebellion or disobedience.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Mishin made the decision to launch N-1 No. 5L for a circumlunar 

flight. Therefore, together with NIIAP, we assembled a hybrid complex (retaining the L3S designation) from the systems of the 7K-L1, new developments 

of the future LOK, flight-worthy Blocks G and D, and also the Lunar Vehicle 

(LK) cargo mockup. Instruments installed in the L1 Descent Module were 

supposed to control Blocks G and D according to the circumlunar flight program, after which all three N-1 stages would actuate normally. Only the SAS 

equipment on the L3S was completely standard.

Since the times of Korolev, our ballistics specialists had been considered 

the most critical thinkers on our staff. But an order is an order, and hoping 

for a safe circumlunar flight, the ballistics specialists had calculated the launch 

time for 3 July, 2318 hours. And what if such a miracle actually happened?

I was among the enthusiasts who had gathered, as usual, in Podlipki, in 

the large office of the chief—the running commentary from the bunker came 

here. Rather than relying on my own impressions, I am forced to describe 

everything that happened during the second launch based on information 

received from participants and eyewitnesses, and using documentary evidence.

The launch of N-1 No. 5L proceeded precisely according to the calculated time. As the engines of Block A were building up for operation 0.25 

seconds before liftoff from the launch pad, peripheral engine No. 8 exploded. 

The remaining engines operated for a certain period of time, and the rocket 

lifted off. It managed to lift off vertically for 200 meters, and then the engines 

From the author’s archives.

The catastrophic night launch of the second N-1 rocket (vehicle No. 5L). The image 

shows the moment when the Emergency Rescue System began to operate.

228
After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

began to shut down. In 12 seconds all of the engines had shut down except 

for one—No. 18. The only operating engine began to turn the rocket about its 

transverse axis. Fifteen seconds into the flight, the solid-propellant engines of 

the emergency recovery system actuated, the fairing segments opened—and the 

Descent Module [of the L1], which had broken away from the launch vehicle, 

flew off into the darkness. Twenty-three seconds into the flight the rocket fell 

flat on the launch site. A series of violent explosions followed.

In a white flame, 2,500 tons of kerosene and liquid oxygen burned, illuminating the steppe under the night sky for dozens of kilometers. The inhabitants 

of the town of Leninsk, 35 kilometers from the launch site, observed a bright 

glow, shuddering at the terrible thoughts. Their family and friends were there 

at the launch site. The blast waves blew out the windows not only in the buildings close to the launch site, but also in the residential areas of Site No. 113 

and even at Site No. 2—6 kilometers from the launch site.

The firing range chief did not grant permission for Afanasyev, Dorofeyev, 

Kirillov, and Moiseyev to exit the bunker and go to the surface until a half 

hour later.22 “When we emerged,” recounted Dorofeyev, “an unusual mist was 

still drizzling down. Drops of kerosene, which had not managed to burn, were 

falling to the ground. They had been lifted high into the sky by the blast waves 

and were now precipitating out in the form of rain.” The safety measures that 

the firing range command had taken proved to be effective. All reports about 

destruction ended with the reassuring words, “no one was harmed.”

“Wrong!” exclaimed Barmin in a fit of temper, shaken by what had happened. 

“There are many hundreds of people who were harmed—all of us who built 

the launch site. Now we have to rebuild it. We are the ones actually harmed.”

Barmin was in charge of the commission concerned with “ground destruction.” He assessed damage not in rubles, which were of little interest to anybody, 

but in deadlines—rebuilding would take at least a year, even with the most 

intensive all-hands effort. It seemed amazing that the second launch position—

the left launch pad located just 3 kilometers from the one that exploded—was 

practically unharmed.

“Flight testing can continue,” joked (with very bad timing) someone from 

the accident investigation commission that had just been created.

“Impossible,” objected Barmin. “I will not give my consent now for a 

launch until the rocket is modified so that the engines won’t shut down right 

over the launch site. Take it out into the steppe and blow it up there! You can 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

slap together a couple dozen rockets if you want, but we only have one launch 

site, and even that one still needs to be modified.”

First thing in the morning, they began a cursory and then a rigorous study 

of the telemetry recordings. There were no particular differences of opinion 

about the source of the explosion. Everyone concluded that it had begun in 

engine No. 8. The investigators of the accident investigation commission 

painstakingly gathered the remains of the engine assemblies that had been 

strewn over a 1-kilometer radius from the launch site. Unlike the other 29 

assemblies, which had retained their external shape, the turbopump assembly 

of engine No. 8 was melted and mangled by the internal explosion.

The rocket could not survive after such an explosion. The lines in the adjacent engines were broken and damaged. A fire broke out, and with a snowballing 

effect the lower section of Block A [first stage] began to disintegrate. With its 

last breath, the KORD system managed to identify permissible limits violations 

for pressure and rpms in engines No. 7, 19, 20, and 21 and issue commands 

to shut them down. Telemetry did not determine how the other engines shut 

down. In the midst of the general chaos, engine No. 18 continued to operate 

right up until the crash—at least, that is what the telemetry experts reported. 

For inexplicable reasons, this fact sparked keen interest during spur-of-themoment debates, although it was obvious that it had nothing to do with the 

root cause of the accident.

From the author’s archives.

N-1 rocket engine 

designer Nikolay 

Kuznetsov (left) and 

senior space forces official 

Andrey Karas (right).

The main heated 

arguments that flared 

up among the engineers 

were about the root 

cause. Kuznetsov and his 

entire team stood solidly 

behind the hypothesis of 

a “foreign object” in the pump. In their opinion, the steel diaphragm of the 

pressure pulsation sensor ended up in the oxidizer pump. They could not 

imagine any other foreign objects that could have become dislodged and then 

sucked into the oxygen pump. A study of the pressure sensor and experiments 

involving the forced breakaway of the steel diaphragm in question from its 

place did not clarify the situation. It was difficult to convince skeptics that the 

sensor was at fault. The assumption that the pump had exploded on its own, 

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

without a “foreign object,” had dangerous implications. If the pumps exploded 

spontaneously, it meant that flight tests must not be continued. Kuznetsov’s staff 

categorically rejected any scenarios other than the foreign metallic object one.

Raykov dared to tell his hypothesis only to Mishin: “A ‘foreign object’ 

has nothing to do with it. Most likely an axial shift of the rotor occurred. The 

clearances in the pump are negligible. A very small bit of play in the bearings, 

combined with extreme tolerances and deformations, could result in the rotor 

striking the stator. Local heating of hundreds of degrees would occur in the 

liquid oxygen medium and an explosion is inevitable.”

Mishin wasn’t about to blame Kuznetsov. Together they had made the 

decision to clear the engines for flight, relying on the findings of the interdepartmental commission, which in late 1967 had confirmed that the engines 

were fit for flight-development tests. Mentioning, even in the mildest of terms, 

that the explosion of the oxidizer pump could have been caused by design or 

process shortcomings meant the suspension of N-1 flight tests due to faulty 

engine technology. It was natural that Kuznetsov, all of his specialists, and even 

the military representatives argued that the explosion could only have been 

caused by the interference of a “foreign object.”

Just when meetings and heated debates of the accident investigation commissions were in full swing and we were working out schedules for 

rebuilding the launch site, we received news of the Apollo 11 Moon launch.23

The next eight days of the Americans’ flight, the stunning stroll on the Moon, 

and the delivery to Earth of 25 kilograms of lunar soil samples might make 

high-ranking officials reconsider the N1-L3 program.24

We watched the Apollo 11 flight on the television at TsNIImash. After the 

happy conclusion of the lunar expedition, Tyulin proposed stopping by the 

director’s office. There, over a glass of cognac, he said: “This is all Chertok’s fault. 

In 1945 he came up with a scheme to snatch von Braun from the Americans 

and didn’t manage to pull it off.”

“And it’s a very good thing that Vasya Kharchev and I failed in that undertaking.25 Von Braun would have sat for some time in our country uselessly on 

an island, and then he would have been sent to the GDR, where as a former 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Nazi he wouldn’t have been cleared to work anywhere.26 And so with the help 

of the Americans, he fulfilled not only his own dream, but also that of all 

mankind,” I replied bitterly.

Two N-1 failures due solely to the low reliability of the first stage should 

have been enough to halt flight tests, enact a thorough review of the strategy 

for testing reliability, and develop and propose a new project for an expedition 

to the Moon. Neither Mishin nor we, his deputies, dared to come out with 

such proposals. Neither the chairman of the expert commission—Academy 

of Sciences President Keldysh—nor Chairman of the State Commission and 

“Lunar Council,” Minister Afanasyev, nor Central Committee Secretary 

Ustinov, nor the Politburo standing over all of them told us to stop. Ustinov 

invited Glushko to a private conversation under some appropriate pretext. 

Actually, Ustinov wanted to hear the opinion of the nation’s most authoritative 

engine specialist about Kuznetsov’s engines. Glushko told Ustinov that he didn’t 

believe there was an evil spirit that tossed foreign objects into the pumps....

The larger the project being implemented by a nation’s resources and 

its people, the more clearly the features of an epoch stand out in its history. 

The sanctity of the Central Committee decisions was above criticism, and 

we all were tied to this dogma. Cosmonautics should have abandoned the 

dogmatism of artillery and missile technology. A fundamentally different 

approach was needed. A large rocket-space system must fulfill its primary 

mission on the very first attempt. To do this, everything imaginable needed 

to be tested on the ground and tested out before the first dedicated flight. 

Preliminary experimental flights are needed to test out only those systems 

and processes that basically cannot be simulated under ground-based conditions. The Americans surpassed us in the practical implementation of this 

principle, and this enabled them, beginning in 1969, to take the position 

of the leading power in space exploration.

The first people who dared criticize our work methods were not scientists 

on expert commissions, but the military. Back when Korolev was still alive, 

they had prepared a démarche concerning the large number of failed Moon, 

Mars, and Venus launches. In 1965, I was present when Kirillov alerted Korolev 

that he had received the command assignment to prepare material incriminating the chief designers and industry in a large number of failures as a result 

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

of erroneous testing procedures. Subsequent triumphs, however, subdued the 

military’s aggression toward cosmonautics.

But four years later, in response to the failures of two N-1s, failures in 

the circumlunar flight program using the 7K-L1, and the failed launches of 

Babakin’s “Lunar excavators,” the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket 

Forces, Marshal Nikolay Krylov, was finally persuaded to sign a letter addressed 

to Afanasyev containing constructive criticism directed at us.27 The letter said:

The results of the analysis of the two failed launches of the N1-L3 

complex, as well as the statistics from the launches of other sophisticated rocket-space complexes show that the existing procedure for 

developmental testing of rocket-space complexes does not ensure 

that they have a high degree of reliability when they are released 

for [developmental flight testing]. The existing procedure of ground 

developmental testing of [rocket-space complexes] is basically analogous to the developmental testing procedure for missiles, which, as 

a rule, are significantly simpler than a [rocket-space complex] like 

the N1-L3. At the same time, during the process of [developmental 

flight testing] of missiles, several dozen articles (from 20 to 60) 

are expended for their optimization to the required level of reliability. When conducting [developmental flight testing] on heavy 

[rocket-space complexes] it is not possible to perform [such] prolonged 

troubleshooting during flight when it involves the consumption of 

a large number of launch vehicles. In view of this, it seems expedient to change the customary scope and nature of ground testing of 

these complexes before they are released for [developmental flight 

testing]. In our opinion, new methods for ground testing of heavy 

[rocket-space complexes] must be set up so that they are reusable, so 

that their component systems and assemblies have large service-life 

reserves, and so that engines and rocket blocks are tested without 

subsequent reassembly in order to expose production defects and 

[thus] undergo a breaking-in period.28

We were aware of the main thrust of Krylov’s letter long before its official 

distribution. When a copy of the letter with the minister’s resolution reached 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

us in Mishin’s absence, Okhapkin in his capacity as first deputy assembled 

a meeting of his inner circle to discuss the wording of the response to the 

Commander-in-Chief’s démarche. Melnikov and I announced that we were 

in full agreement with Krylov’s proposals. As a matter of fact, we had proposed the same thing a long time ago; and the Americans operate the same 

way. Our response needed to be that we accept the proposal of the Minister 

of Defense and to that end we consider the following necessary: to develop 

a reusable modification of Kuznetsov’s engines; to design and build a rig for 

technological firing tests (OTI) on Block A; and to perform the assembly 

of subsequent rockets only after each of the Blocks A, B, V, and G have 

undergone firing rig tests.

Some reacted to our stance with sarcastic remarks, although we were all 

of the same mind, all part of the same staff, and had passed through Korolev’s 

school. People argued with all earnestness. Okhapkin attempted to find an 

accommodating compromise. Summing up the results, he said essentially what 

we all anticipated and prepared in advance.

He noted that we had to propose a list of actions that we would introduce 

for the upcoming launches. We needed to show that measures were being taken 

in response to all probable causes for the failures, precluding the possibility of 

repeating them, and substantially increasing reliability. Specifically:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

Increasing the stringency of the system for accepting the engines;

Modifying the oxidizer pumps at OKB-276, reducing the load on the 

bearings, and increasing the clearances;

Installing filters upstream from the pumps to protect against the intrusion 

of foreign objects;

Filling the aft compartment with nitrogen before launch and performing 

an in-flight nitrogen purge;

Introducing a Freon fire-extinguishing system;

Providing additional protection of instruments, cables, and the most critical structural elements against high temperature;

Relocating instruments, moving them to safer areas; and

Introducing inhibits to completely preclude the possibility of engine 

shutdown for the first 50 seconds of flight.

Arguments broke out over this last item.

“But what if the turbogenerators malfunction during the first seconds and 

all of the systems lose power?”

Petr Shulgin, Emil Brodskiy, and Sofya Lobanova—Iosifyan’s curators 

specializing in the pneumatic system feeding compressed helium to the turbogenerator—helped me defend the honor of the autonomous turbogenerator. 

It had come to the point where the development of a sophisticated and heavy 

emergency power supply system using storage batteries might be required.

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

Almost all the actions were approved after heated debates during the work 

of the accident investigation commission that analyzed the causes of the N-1 

No. 5L disaster. They increased the rocket’s reliability but did not guarantee 

that the launch facilities would remain intact in the event of a failure during 

the first seconds after liftoff. If an emergency situation occurred during the first 

seconds, it was imperative to divert the rocket further into the steppe. Such a 

requirement seemed completely unconventional: since the times of the V-2 all 

short-range, medium-range, and any other range and size of ballistic missiles 

had launched vertically. It would be only 5 to 6 seconds after launch that they 

would be at a relatively safe distance from the launch site. Before the failure 

of N-1 No. 5L, no one had dared violate this 25-year tradition.

A collective and intense use of intellect, with the participation of individuals who are truly creative, rather than obedient, almost always brings success. 

Here is a list of the authors in alphabetical order: Degtyarenko, Dorofeyev, 

Gasparyan, Shutenko, Vilnitskiy, Voropayev, and Zelvinskiy. These are the 

men who came up with the “method” and the “device” for which an inventor’s 

certificate was later issued. The invention guaranteed that the rocket would 

clear the area even if the electric power supply system of all the control surface 

actuators shut down, provided that the main engines were operating. Springs 

in the mechanisms of the control surface actuators, pre-armed for actuation 

in the event of an accident, set all the thrust control throttles of the first-stage 

engines in the proper position to divert the rocket “further into the steppe.” 

This invention found application not only on subsequent N-1 rockets, but 

also in an appropriately altered form 15 years later on the Energiya rocket.

From the author’s archives.

Shown here are senior specialists on the dynamics of rocket control at OKB-1: 

G. N. Degtyarenko, Ye. F. Lebedev, O. N. Voropayev, G. S. Vetrov, and L. I. Alekseyev.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Iosifyan considered the failure of the autonomous turbogenerator impossible, and when discussing ideas for diverting the rocket he did not miss the 

opportunity to comment: “There will always be Eskimos who will try to teach 

Africans how to avoid heatstroke.”

When all the actions had been evaluated in terms of labor intensity 

and deadlines, we came up with a disappointing picture. After gathering one 

more time in Okhapkin’s office before the final approval, we realized that it 

would take at least a year to implement all the proposals along with the additional experiments. Our engine specialists Melnikov, Sokolov, and Raykov, 

who had achieved success in their own developments of the multiple-firing 

engines for Block D and who had seen enough of the experience of Kuznetsov’s 

OKB-276, announced that they were developing new design specifications. In 

their opinion, it was completely feasible to develop reusable main engines. This 

would make it possible to radically 

increase the engines’ reliability. But 

these engines would not be available before 1972. Echoes of similar 

conversations and attitudes made 

their way to ministry offices, the 

VPK, and the Central Committee.

From the author’s archives.

B. A. Sokolov (left) was a leading 

engine specialist at TsKBEM who 

worked on the N1-L3 program 

while G. N. Degtyarenko (right) 

worked on spacecraft and rocket 

control.

Yet another day of celebration was drawing nigh—the 100th anniversary 

of the birthday of V. I. Lenin. In the Politburo, Afanasyev, Smirnov, and 

Ustinov would inevitably be asked, “What’s going on with our lunar program? 

You promised by the 100th anniversary to land a cosmonaut on the Moon, 

who would plant a Soviet flag and place a bust of Lenin beside it. Then you 

decided to argue that we don’t want to take that risk and we would first send 

an automatic spacecraft that would drill, collect lunar soil, and deliver at least 

100 grams to the Earth. But that’s not working out, either!”

During the last seven years of his administration, Khrushchev secured 

indisputable precedence for the Soviet Union in space exploration and put to 

shame the most powerful nation in the capitalist world—the U.S. But after 

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

overthrowing Khrushchev, Brezhnev’s cohorts eroded these achievements, and in 

the most important arena of space, America had now surpassed the Soviet Union.

The highest-ranking political leadership viewed success in space as an effective factor of ideological influence on its people and the peoples of the Warsaw 

Pact nations. Brezhnev could not invite foreign guests to a lunar launch of 

Soviet cosmonauts like the Americans could. Nevertheless, in late 1969 he dared 

to fly with a Czech delegation to the firing range and drove out with them to 

the left-hand N-1 launch site, which had remained intact.29 An impenetrable 

fence surrounded the launch site to the right, which was “under repairs.” Traces 

of the recent fire and explosions weren’t visible. An N-1 engineering mockup 

stood on the left-hand launch site.30

“This rocket will enable us to go beyond the limits of the solar system”; 

that, according to the accounts of members of his entourage, was how Brezhnev 

ad libbed, showcasing the miracle of Soviet rocket technology.

In critical circumstances, the mind often works more intensely and the 

search for new ideas produces greater results than during periods of relaxation 

after a victory. Everyone jumped at the idea of immediately organizing a group 

flight of three piloted Soyuzes as a proposal that would partially restore our 

cosmonautics program. After the docking of Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 in January 

1969 came the announcement that “the world’s first orbital station was Soviet.” 

We needed to solidify this important triumph in space by performing another 

docking and broadening the program of experiments. In particular, working 

with the Ye. O. Paton Institute of Electric Welding in Kiev, we began to study 

the possibility of performing a welding experiment under conditions of weightlessness in a vacuum. Future President of the Ukrainian Academy of Science 

Boris Paton assured us that they would be able to create the experimental 

conditions for these purposes by the required deadline.31

Meanwhile, all we had on hand were Soyuzes, and we were rushing to 

squeeze out of them everything that they were capable of giving us. In April 

 29.

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we still did not have a clear program of subsequent piloted Soyuz flights. May 

passed under the impression of the successful landing on Venus of Venera-5

and Venera-6 and of the lunar orbital flight of Apollo 10. On 14 June, the liftoff 

to the Moon of Babakin’s Ye-8-5 fell through for the second time. Thus, our 

hope to surpass the Americans in delivering samples of lunar soil to Earth 

melted away.

Our third Ye-8-5 “Lunar excavator,” announced as Luna-15, lifted off on 13 

July, flew to the Moon, and entered lunar orbit. But its soft landing failed—for 

inexplicable reasons the spacecraft crashed into the surface of the Moon. They 

decided to launch the next “Lunar excavator” in September. Accident investigation commission sessions continued through July 1969. During breaks we 

discussed the Apollo 11 flight, which had flown to the Moon on 16 July. We 

had not had the occasion to experience such a conjunction of personal defeat 

and foreign triumphs since wartime.

We had a small celebration in August in connection with the successful 

flight of 7K-L1 No. 11, called Zond-7. On 8 August, L1 No. 11 lifted off; 

on 11 August, it executed a pass around the Moon, and on 14 August, after 

plunging twice into Earth’s atmosphere, it executed a soft landing [on Earth]. 

On 22 August, Pravda published black-and-white images of Earth delivered by 

the station before it dropped behind the rim of the Moon. Spectacular color 

photos appeared in magazines. These color shots became very popular as gifts 

for space-related anniversaries.

The last two 7K-L1 programs—Zond-7 and Zond-8—owe a great deal 

to the energy of lead designer Yuriy Semyonov. It was up to him to keep in 

check the centrifugal forces of four leading organizations—TsKBEM, NIIAP, 

TsKBM, and ZIKh.32 In any case, Chairman of the State Commission for the 

L1 Tyulin said that he resolved many issues with Semyonov more quickly and 

simply than with Mishin.

In August, the program for the group flight of three Soyuzes finally materialized. Two Soyuzes would dock and form an orbital station with a mass of 13 

tons. A third Soyuz, maneuvering around this station, would confirm via television that the station actually existed. Preparation for the flight, which involved 

three vehicles and seven cosmonauts, took place in a very tense atmosphere. 

The process of fitting out the vehicles caused continuously missed deadlines, 

so tests at the monitoring and testing station (KIS) had to be hurried up to 

 32.

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

accommodate the readiness deadlines of the systems, frustrating previously 

approved plans. Once again part of the problems carried over for followup 

work at the firing range.

It wasn’t until 18 September that Smirnov conducted a session of the VPK, 

which made its final decision concerning the group flight of three Soyuzes in the 

first half of October. I was at that session, and in keeping with tradition, after 

the reports of Mishin and the other chief designers, I confirmed the readiness 

of the control systems of all three vehicles to execute the program. Cosmonauts 

Georgiy Shonin and Valeriy Kubasov (Soyuz-6); Anatoliy Filipchenko, Vladislav 

Volkov, and Viktor Gorbatko (Soyuz-7); and Vladimir Shatalov and Aleksey 

Yeliseyev (Soyuz-8) reported their readiness to execute their mission with 

enviable pride and optimism. Everyone was in high spirits and shared the 

hope that we would emerge from a streak of back-to-back failures. The color 

photographs of Earth and the Moon marked the beginning of an upswing in 

our mood and a strengthening of faith in our efforts.

On 19 September, Tyulin convened the State Commission on the L1, 

which after two successful circumlunar flights suddenly found empowerment, 

and Mishin even hinted about a possible piloted circumlunar flight on the 

L1 in 1970.

“Now if we can finally get the Ye-8-5 to the Moon and back five days from 

now,” fantasized Tyulin.

On 23 September, the first three stages of the UR-500 operated normally, 

but the Block D failed to work through to the second firing, and the entire 

lunar complex stayed in Earth orbit, receiving the name Kosmos-300.

Our nation possessed enormous capabilities. However, during this period 

in history, there was no one at the helm of power capable of soberly analyzing 

the course of events, of displaying farsightedness, and of altering the official 

political course without regard for the established dogmas. In space politics, 

the Politburo under Brezhnev lacked the boldness of Khrushchev’s time.

NASA management, inspired by its historic triumph, sent a report to the 

President of the United States’ special committee on space in September 1969.33

The document summarized the first results of the Americans’ work in the field 

of the “peaceful” use of space and contained proposals concerning the program 

of operations for the next few decades. The military aspects, which the Pentagon 

managed, were not considered in the report. Throwing aside all my work, I read 

 33.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

this 130-page document as if it were an absorbing novel. After reading any novel, 

it can be set aside and forgotten. Even now, after almost 40 years, this report 

serves as an object lesson in the advantages of a centralized government technocratic planning system [i.e., NASA] in developing large-scale systems. The most 

capitalistic country in the world, despite Marxist teaching about the anarchy of 

production, despite the infamous democratic principles of the free market and 

private initiative, created the most powerful state organization in the world, 

which develops nonmilitary space programs and coordinates and monitors the 

activity of all the nation’s organizations in the field of space exploration. NASA 

management considered highly qualified experienced personnel to be a primary 

national asset. NASA had close ties with industrial firms and universities. This 

relationship increased NASA’s capabilities many times over.

In 1969, NASA had a staff of 31,745. Of this number, 13,700 were scientists and engineers. The total number of personnel at that time who worked 

on NASA programs reached 218,345. In terms of numbers of personnel, we 

had just as many as the Americans, and even surpassed them. Without exception, all scientists and engineers worked only in government organizations, 

and as subsequent association with the Americans has shown, they were just 

as qualified and experienced.

What, then, was their advantage? The U.S. had a single unified government organization, which was endowed with the exclusive rights to develop 

nonmilitary space programs and received funding from the federal budget to 

finance them. In the USSR, each head, chief, or general designer came forward 

with his own concept for the development of cosmonautics based on his own 

capabilities and personal, subjective views. Rare enthusiasts attempted to occupy 

themselves with the development of an integrated long-range plan for decades 

into the future. The plans proposed by the head government organizations were 

reviewed in five places: in the head ministry, MOM; in the General Staff [of the 

armed forces]; in the Central Directorate for Space Assets (TsUKOS), which 

was subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces; 

in the Central Committee; and in the apparat of the Council of Ministers, 

the VPK. Next, they were coordinated with dozens of ministries and, if they 

managed to make their way through, they were approved by a decision of the 

Politburo and the Council of Ministers. Each project participant received 

separate funding from the state budget according to these plans. Even in the 

offices of the VPK and in the Kremlin our cosmonautics management system 

was sometimes called “state feudalism.”

And one more important feature distinguished the American organization 

of work from the Soviet. NASA management, its administration, and thousands of scientists and engineers bore no responsibility for arming the Army 

and Navy with nuclear missiles. Their time, intellect, and enthusiasm were 

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After the Failure of N-1s No. 3 and No. 5

devoted solely to the lunar landing expedition and to the problems of blazing 

a trail into space for humankind and for automatic stations.

Our head ministry, which was responsible for implementing each space 

program, bore even greater responsibility for producing combat missiles. The 

head organizations, their chief designers and leading specialists, who developed 

the nuclear missile shield, were “soldiers of the Cold War” and at the same 

time labored on a second front—space.

NASA’s report began on what was for us an unexpected downbeat note:

At the moment of our space program’s greatest triumph, the U.S. is 

going through a critical period. The decisions made this year will 

determine the nature of operations in space for several decades to 

come. At stake is the leading role of the U.S. in scientific and technical progress, the faith of 200 million Americans in their country, 

its achievements, and the practical advantages, which the broad 

program provides for the people, whose money in the form of taxes 

makes it possible....

However, further on came several unexpected proposals:

One of the main elements of the recommended program for the 

development of non-military projects in space is the creation of a 

long-duration habitable station in near-Earth orbit to accumulate 

experience in long-duration human space flight, to obtain practical 

benefit from observation of the Earth and near-Earth space, and 

also for the performance of scientific experiments.34

They proposed building the first habitable station in near-Earth orbit no 

later than 1977. Between 1980 and 1984, base-stations were supposed to appear 

in near-Earth orbit with a crew of 50 persons, and by 1989 their number would 

increase to 100. Truly “dreams, dreams, where is your sweetness!”35

Now, the U.S. together with Russia, Western European nations, and Japan 

are building the International Space Station (ISS), which, according to plan, 

 34.

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should have a crew of just six persons by 2009, with an active service life of 

15 years. At first, it was assumed that by 2002 it would have a total of 8 to 10 

crewmembers. Actually, in the first decade of operation (up until 2008), most 

of the time there was a crew of just three on the ISS. The crew numbers 10 

members only during “visiting expeditions,” which the Space Shuttle delivers 

to the Station.36

Later, the 1969 report describes missions that must have staggered the 

imagination not only of “average Americans,” but also seasoned congressmen:

The continuation of flights to the nearest planets—Mars and Venus, 

and then to Jupiter and other distant planets of the Solar System—

Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

The primary scientific mission of these flights was to search for extraterrestrial 

life. An expedition to Mars could take place as early as 1981! As far as the further 

use of vehicles from the Apollo program was concerned, it was assumed that 

eight more expeditions to the Moon would be carried out from 1970 through 

1972. From 1978 to 1980, the Americans were preparing to build a habitable 

station in near-Earth orbit, and from 1980 through 1983 they were on the verge 

of beginning construction of a habitable base station on the Moon.

What a historical paradox! In the USSR, our lunar program crisis was a 

result of failures and disasters. The Americans’ crisis—at the moment of their 

greatest triumph—was because they hadn’t yet decided what to do next. And 

there was one more paradox: neither the Americans’ triumph, nor our failures, 

nor subsequent joint efforts helped implement the plans of 1969!

 36.

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Chapter 12

Long-Duration Space Stations 

Instead of the Moon

The highest-ranking bosses weren’t just simply tormented by thoughts 

that we absolutely had to come up with something to compensate for our N-1 

failures; these thoughts literally just “hung in the air.” For us, the employees 

of Korolev’s firm, there was one more factor that motivated us to conduct an 

intensive search for new priority achievements. In 1967, OKB-52, which had 

been renamed TsKBM, started to develop its own version of an orbital station. Vladimir Chelomey understood that the only way to “win away” lunar 

conquest projects from Korolev’s firm and the Americans would be to create 

a new launch vehicle that was more reliable and could carry a greater payload 

than the N-1 and was every bit as good as the Saturn V. The most optimistic 

calculations showed that it would take at least six or seven years to solve this 

problem. And it would require so much more effort!

Five years later, in a private conversation with Bushuyev and me, Chelomey 

confessed that he had not been assertive in implementing the design of the 

UR-700—the launch vehicle for the lunar expedition—because this work could 

have swallowed up all the other projects, and anyway the Americans already 

had the upper hand. The UR-500, a.k.a. the already-flying Proton, was capable 

of inserting a spacecraft with a mass of 20 tons into Earth orbit. An orbital 

station with that mass could thus be inserted in a single launch, and that was 

a lot better than launching two Soyuzes at 6.5 tons each.

Chelomey’s new orbital station design was called Almaz. In 1968, mockups of the Almaz orbital station had appeared in Reutov, and in Fili on the 

territory of my old Factory No. 22, now the M. V. Khrunichev Factory (ZIKh 

for short), the manufacture of station hulls was under way at full speed.1

 For 

Myasishchev’s great design team—the former OKB-23, which had become a 

 1. The factory was named after Mikhail Vasilyevich Khrunichev (1901–1961), one of the 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

branch of Chelomey’s OKB-52—the development of large orbital space station 

hulls was not a very difficult task. In any event, the designers together with 

the process engineers and workers of ZIKh came to grips with it quicker than 

the designers at our TsKBEM and ZEM could have.2

 In this sense, Fili had a 

clear advantage over Podlipki. The experience, traditions, and manufacturing 

process of aircraft builders played their roles.

Officially, the Almaz was developed per Ministry of Defense specifications. 

It consisted of an Orbital Piloted Station (OPS), a Return Vehicle (VA) for 

the crew’s descent from orbit to Earth, and a large-capacity Transport-Supply 

Vehicle (TKS).3

It was assumed that the Almaz OPS would be a more state-of-the-art space 

reconnaissance vehicle than the Zenit automatic unpiloted photoreconnaissance 

satellites. The Almaz’s large camera only used up film to photograph groundbased objects at the cosmonauts’ discretion. They could examine Earth in the 

visible or infrared spectrum through powerful “space binoculars,” and if they 

saw something suspicious, they gave the command for a series of snapshots. The 

films were developed on board under the crew’s control. Fragments of images 

deserving the attention of military intelligence were transmitted to the ground 

over a television channel. These and any other sections of the planet could also 

be scanned using side-scan radar. Reconnaissance conditions required that the 

OPS be continuously oriented to Earth while the camera could be turned and 

aimed at various objects. These conditions required that the station’s control 

system provide a high degree of precision in maintaining three-axis orientation 

for an extended period, rotation about the longitudinal axis at specified angles, 

and orientation of the solar arrays on the Sun. At the same time, [limiting] 

working fluid consumption enabled the spacecraft to actively operate for at 

least three to four months.

Following our example, Chelomey organized his own team responsible 

for developing the entire control system complex. The absolute philosophical 

priority of Chelomey’s control specialists was the installation of the electromechanical stabilization system developed at VNIIEM, which used a spherical 

rotor and ring flywheel with great kinetic momentum. The spherical rotor 

 2. ZEM—

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Long-Duration Space Stations Instead of the Moon

suspended in an electromagnetic field was an original development in which 

Sheremetyevskiy took great pride.

Many years later, speaking at an election gathering of my Academy department in support of Sheremetyevskiy’s candidacy, I praised this development: 

“Nikolay Nikolayevich managed to create an electromagnetic field in near-Earth 

orbit that could support a 20-metric-ton station.” During a break in the meeting Pospelov rebuked me, “What nonsense! It’s a sphere scarcely larger than 

a soccer ball that hovers in the electromagnetic field, not an orbital station.”4

I objected: “According to the theory of relativity, an observer located on the 

surface of a sphere is justified in asserting that his own field keeps the metallic 

‘sky’ surrounding him, i.e. the station, from falling. Remember the debates of 

our student days in philosophy seminars on the theory of relativity.”

Nikolay Sheremetyevskiy was later elected corresponding member of the 

USSR Academy of Sciences, and the Almaz played no small role in this event.5

Another innovation that was exotic for those times was the use of Argon-16

on-board digital computers to control the surveillance equipment. I mention 

these because the developer—the Scientific Research Center of Electronic 

Computer Technology (NITsEVT)—soon refined these Argons for a new 

Soyuz modification, and 15 years later they were installed on the Mir station, 

where (in a very updated version, of course) they crossed over from the 20th 

century into the 21st!6

The development and manufacture of all the components of the sophisticated control complex for the Almaz and its special-purpose photo-television 

and radio equipment required significantly more time than Chelomey had 

assumed. Over the course of 1969, ZIKh manufactured the station’s hull, but 

meanwhile there was nothing to fill it with. Thanks to good relations with 

colleagues involved with control systems at subcontracting organizations, I 

 4. Germogen Sergeyevich Pospelov (1914–), a specialist in automatic control, was elected 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

had a more comprehensive idea of the prospects for the Almaz as an orbital 

station than other managers and specialists at TsKBEM.

Back in Korolev’s day at OKB-1, the idea of a Multipurpose Space Base/

Station (MKBS) had come up.7 After becoming chief designer, Mishin assigned 

planner and ballistics specialist Vitaliy Bezverbyy to manage this project. The 

MKBS was supposed to serve as a spaceport, where other spacecraft, primarily 

reconnaissance vehicles, would dock to hand over their photographic materials, 

reload them, refuel, and perform maintenance and repairs. A well-trained crew 

on the MKBS was supposed to perform this servicing. The presence of a base 

station of this sort in near-Earth orbit would make it possible to prolong the 

service life of spacecraft, which even in the present day, once they exhausted 

their resources or in the event of a failure, we are currently forced to descend 

to Earth or scuttle in the ocean.

It was intended that the Multipurpose Space Base/Station would be outfitted with various types of missile-defense and space-defense weapons, including particle-beam weapons. In this regard, Academician Gersh Budker from 

Novosibirsk gave us a lecture on the possibility of developing accelerators for 

particle-beam weapons using uncharged particles.8 There were enthusiasts 

who immediately began studying this problem. Besides these exotic (for those 

times) ideas, it was intended that all sorts of reconnaissance photographic and 

radio systems be installed on the MKBS. The plan was to use the N-1 launch 

vehicle to insert the base/station into space. Thus, until there was an N-1, 

there could be no MKBS. On the other hand, the Almaz did not require a 

new launch vehicle. The UR-500 had already gotten through its period of 

“childhood diseases.”

While we at TsKBEM were experiencing a period of disarray and vacillation, the combined forces of Reutov and Fili were able to create a real orbital 

station for the Ministry of Defense. I told Bushuyev, Okhapkin, and Tregub 

about my thoughts on the possibility of our joining forces with Chelomey. 

But they just laughed at me and said that Chelomey and Mishin would never 

agree with each other. Tsybin took my idea more seriously: “If our ‘godfather’ 

[Stalin] were alive, he would settle all these differences himself in about 20 

minutes or he’d hand it over to Lavrentiy Pavlovich to sort it out. Comrade 

Beriya, in such cases, didn’t meddle in differences between chief designers. If 

Stalin instructed him to sort it out, he’d call in both parties and say: ‘If two 

 7. MKBS—

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Long-Duration Space Stations Instead of the Moon

communists can’t come to an agreement with one another, it means one of 

them is the enemy. I don’t have time to figure out which one of you is the 

enemy. I’ll give you 20 minutes. You decide for yourselves’.”9

“I assure you,” continued Tsybin, “that after such action, Chelomey and I 

would work like the best of friends. However, one must take into consideration 

that certain powers of today will not see our friendly association with Chelomey 

favorably. We could become too powerful and independent a corporation, 

and the Central Committee and ministry need humble and obedient staffs.”

One day in August 1969, after a heated discussion of the program 

for the flight of three Soyuzes, Rauschenbach, Legostayev, and Bashkin stayed 

behind in my office. They asked me to listen to their proposal to develop an 

orbital station within a mind-bogglingly short period of time, enabling us 

to beat out the Almaz. The idea entailed taking any Semyorka tank, filling it 

with Soyuz systems, adding on more powerful solar arrays and of course a 

new docking assembly with internal transfer, and the station would be ready! 

We just needed to come in at 18 tons in order to use the UR-500. We could 

build such a station in a year.

At first I tried to resist: “The thermal control and life-support systems of 

the Soyuz are completely unsuited for this tank.”

“No problem! We already discussed this with Oleg Surguchev and Ilya 

Lavrov. It wasn’t we who convinced them, but they who convinced us that it was 

completely feasible to produce the new systems within a year using tried-andtrue Soyuz pumps, assemblies, and fittings. Piping and cables are no problem.”

“That’s not all,” I resisted, “a new correction engine and attitude-control 

engine system will also be needed. Although....”

Right then and there I telephoned Isayev on the Kremlin line.

“Aleksey! How much time do you need to adapt your correction engine 

from the Soyuz to a new vehicle, after tripling the volume of the propellant 

tanks and increasing the time spent in space from two weeks to three to four 

months?”

“You know,” answered Isayev, “we already solved that problem for the 

Almaz. Maybe it will work for you too. Take a look.”10

What a tip! Combine already existing tried-and-true systems of an operating Soyuz with the Almaz production stock—this thought quickly got a strong 

 9. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beriya (1899–1953) was the feared manager of the Soviet security 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

hold on our minds. “Theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized 

the masses,” as Karl Marx once wrote.11

I am not capable now of reconstructing in detail who first voiced this 

proposal, which radically affected the future of cosmonautics in our country. 

Moreover, now one can assert that the 21st century program for the creation 

of the International Space Station originates from the ideas discussed in the 

autumn of 1969 among a relatively small circle of people. Konstantin Feoktistov 

joined this circle and seized the initiative. A group of “conspirators” of sorts 

formed. I cannot reliably name the author of the most seditious and aggressive 

portion of the proposals developed. Such enlightenment descends all at once 

on a group of individuals the way that great ideas dawn simultaneously on 

inventors in different countries. Someone first merely mentioned it, and then 

all the “conspirators” enthusiastically snatched it up: why mess with tanks at 

all? In Fili, there were ready-made hulls for the Almaz orbital station lying 

around. We needed to use them filled with Soyuz systems adapted for great 

new purposes—this was so much easier!

Presenting a half-formed idea to somebody higher up the chain of command is dangerous. Especially since right away it would encounter the fierce 

resistance of Chelomey, from whom we had suddenly decided to take readymade Almaz hulls. The Almaz military customers would also be bound to 

object. Nor could we count on the approval of our own chief—Mishin. He 

would be against it because this proposal would harm work on the MKBS. 

Minister Afanasyev and his deputy Tyulin would not support us directly, 

either: they might be accused of thwarting the resolution on the development 

of the Almaz. It meant that we needed to “skip over” everyone and take this 

proposal straight to the Central Committee, to a person who was capable 

of understanding its advantages. The only one there that fit that description 

was Ustinov. And he, Ustinov, in particular really needed new proposals to 

present to the Politburo.

It was time for us to fly our separate ways for the launch of the three 

Soyuzes: some of us went to the launch site, others to Yevpatoriya. Not putting 

things off, Feoktistov organized the development of proposals in one of his 

design groups and flew off to the cosmodrome with Bushuyev. Rauschenbach, 

Bashkin, and I departed for Yevpatoriya having left instructions to render 

Feoktistov’s designers whatever assistance might be needed.

 11.

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On 11 October 1969, Soyuz-6, carrying [Lieutenant-Colonel] Georgiy 

Shonin and Valeriy Kubasov, successfully went into orbit. On 12 October, 

Soyuz-7 lifted off into space with [Lieutenant-Colonel] Anatoliy Filipchenko, 

Vladislav Volkov, and [Lieutenant-Colonel] Viktor Gorbatko on board. On 

13 October, Soyuz-8 went into orbit carrying Colonel Vladimir Shatalov, the 

commander of the space fleet, and flight engineer Aleksey Yeliseyev.

We hoped that in Yevpatoriya, the group of “conspirators” would be able 

to refine its tactics for promoting the design of the new orbital station using 

the Soyuz and Almaz. But this was not to be.

According to the program, the docking of Soyuz-8 with Soyuz-7 was supposed to take place on 14 October. After orbital corrections, Soyuz-7 began the 

rendezvous process from a distance of 250 kilometers. The vehicles approached 

to a range of 1 kilometer, but the Igla equipment simply could not establish 

intercommunications between the active and passive vehicles: the “capture” 

command did not go through. Consequently, the active Soyuz-8 did not have 

the relative motion parameters required for further rendezvous control. The 

crews reported that they could see each other, and Shatalov requested permission for manual rendezvous control. After consulting with us, Mishin gave 

his permission. But while we were arguing and weighing our options, the 

spacecraft drifted more than 3 kilometers apart. Shatalov, the active one, had 

no means to achieve reliable mutual orientation, and he didn’t risk consuming 

precious fuel supplies.

The situation in Yevpatoriya at the command post, in the workrooms, 

in hotels, and even in the dining halls was red hot, despite the cool autumn 

weather. Minister Afanasyev and Kerimov interrogated Mnatsakanyan with 

the faint hope that he would resurrect the failed Igla. Mishin consulted with 

Tregub, Agadzhanov, Rauschenbach, Feoktistov, the ballistics specialists, and 

me trying to prepare instructions. On 15 October, after a series of maneuvers, 

the spacecraft converged to within 17 kilometers of one another. Shatalov fired 

the docking and attitude-control engines four times, but without the ability to 

measure the rate of approach and line-of-sight rate he was unable to generate 

a burn of the necessary magnitude and direction. Naturally the crews were 

nervous. The on-duty medical officer reported that the heart rates of all the 

cosmonauts exceeded 100 beats per minute. At the command post, nobody 

took our pulse, but most likely it was just as high. It wasn’t the Igla’s failure 

that had us worked up so much as our powerlessness to perform rendezvous 

working together with the crews of the space vehicles.

Flight director Pavel Agadzhanov was under extreme stress. He commanded the entire network of ground- and sea-based tracking stations and 

was supposed to be able to task each of them to issue real-time commands 

at the strictly specified time determined by the coverage zones. But in order 

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to do this, he first had to receive the decision of the technical management, 

which continued to shout and argue until the very beginning of the brief 

communication session. Usually, the shorter the time before communication 

with the crews, the more alternative proposals and recommendations appeared. 

Given the primitive data-processing and display technology that we had back 

then, and given the need to continuously report about all of our actions to 

the chairman of the State Commission, to the minister, and sometimes to 

Moscow as well, Vladimir Pravetskiy hypothesized that the adrenaline levels 

in the bloodstreams of the chiefs at the command post were higher than those 

of the spacecraft crewmembers.12

For us, the developers of the control system, the failure to execute rendezvous and docking was a harsh and painful lesson. In two years’ time we had not 

figured out how to provide the spacecraft with basic instruments measuring 

mutual parameters in order to perform manual rendezvous. I could not pass up 

the opportunity to reproach Rauschenbach, Bashkin, and Zvorykin, who at one 

time had accused Beregovoy of performing an unsuccessful manual docking: 

“If Shatalov and Yeliseyev, well-trained cosmonauts with previous flight experience, could not manage to make it to the berthing phase with our constant 

prompting, it means that we are to blame, not the Igla. Electronics can fail, 

but we simply did not come up with a simplified system for manual control.”

On 16 October 1969, the Soyuz-6 crew returned to Earth safe and sound. 

On 18 October, the flight of the entire Soyuz space group ended. The eight 

days of flight of the three Soyuzes provided such a wealth of experience that 

right away we agreed to immediately modify the systems, something that we 

had not even dreamed of earlier. After that kind of stress there were more 

than enough proposals. As soon as he learned that the rendezvous program 

had failed because of the Igla, Minister Afanasyev arranged with Kerimov and 

Mishin to name me chairman of the commission to investigate the causes for 

the failure. I requested Yevgeniy Panchenko as one of my deputies. He served 

as department chief at the Main Directorate of Space Assets (GUKOS), and we 

had become friends in Kapustin Yar back in 1955 during the testing of R-2R.13

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After his time at Kapustin Yar, Panchenko had quickly risen through the 

military ranks. His fundamental radio engineering training combined with 

his innate erudition encompassed an entire complex of sophisticated spacecraft control problems. As a military officer, Panchenko was officially supposed to play the role of the exacting customer, 

who wasn’t obliged to delve into the systems 

developers’ problems. However, he was happy 

to immerse himself in the process of studying 

the systems, especially when investigating numerous off-nominal situations. His suggestions were 

sometimes quite useful. Together we got to know 

the Igla rendezvous system during the process of 

its frequent failures.

From the author’s archives.

Yevgeniy Panchenko was a leading official in the 

Soviet space forces who helped investigate the 

docking failure of Soyuz-7 and Soyuz-8.

As often happens in such situations, the immediate developers of a system 

guess the true causes of a failure before the high commission tracks them down. 

This time we quickly concurred that capture had not taken place due to a 

discrepancy between the frequencies of the transmitters and receivers, which 

were stabilized by special quartz resonators. The piezoquartz crystals were supposed to be in thermostats at a strictly constant temperature. A thermostat 

malfunction caused the failure to create the second piloted orbital station.14

The low degree of reliability of our electronics elements caused off-nominal 

situations in rocket-space technology time after time.

On 19 October 1969, everyone departed from the Crimea, convinced that 

there would be reprisals for the flubbed program or at least notification of reprimands and strict warnings in the ministry collegium. However, Moscow received 

us with such delighted greetings from the Central Committee, Presidium of the 

Supreme Soviet, and Council of Ministers, which were published in all the mass 

media, that it simply would have been a shame after that to impose some sort of 

punishment. Then, on 22 October came decrees about awards for the crews, who 

were celebrated in a manner befitting them at a Kremlin banquet. A week later the 

 14.

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traditional press conference took place, at which Keldysh in his opening speech 

mentioned that “in January of this year a spacecraft docking was performed and 

the world’s first experimental orbital space station was created.” Without having 

uttered a single word about the intentions to create another orbital station, he 

announced that “the multiday group flight of three Soyuz spacecraft successfully 

worked out cutting-edge problems pertaining to the creation of piloted orbital 

space systems and the testing of the vehicles’ interaction while they performed 

wide-ranging maneuvers in Earth orbit.”

Cosmonauts Shatalov, Kubasov, Shonin, Filipchenko, Gorbatko, Volkov, 

and Yeliseyev spoke at the press conference describing their work in space. They 

shared their observations, which were very interesting for specialists, but not 

one of them dared hint that the program’s main mission had not been accomplished. And no one recalled that this had happened because of an ordinary 

quartz-stabilizer thermostat.

Very few knew about one other off-nominal incident on Soyuz-6. Kubasov 

had performed an in-flight plasma arc welding experiment. While welding, he 

almost burned through the hull of the vehicle’s Living Compartment, which in 

the absence of spacesuits could have resulted in a catastrophic situation. At the 

press conference and in the press there was talk of a unique experiment that had 

been performed with complete success.

“We can’t allow the thought to 

even occur to our people about our 

having mishaps in space. We have 

our own path, our own road, and 

if the Americans also achieve success, then it is somewhere to the 

side of our general line.” This is 

more or less the directive that the 

Central Committee issued not only 

to all the mass media, but even to 

the president of the Academy of 

Sciences, all the cosmonauts, and 

the publicly known scientists working on space issues.

From the author’s archives.

Cosmonauts (left to right) Georgiy 

Shonin, Valeriy Kubasov, Vladimir 

Shatalov, and Aleksey Yeliseyev are 

shown during the parade in Moscow 

following the Soyuz-6/7/8 mission in 

October 1969.

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After the first days of euphoria, which we endured with mixed feelings 

of pride for what we had accomplished and disappointment over the actual 

failure (unbeknownst to the world) of the program, our group of “conspirators” gathered in Bushuyev’s office to develop a plan of further actions to enlist 

Ustinov into our “conspiracy.” Bushuyev, being discreet, proposed that we wait 

until Mishin left on vacation.

“We can’t just approach the Central Committee secretary without having 

informed our own chief designer.”

Everyone agreed with this, and each of us pledged, if Ustinov would receive 

us, to prepare a presentation arguing the feasibility and necessity of creating 

an orbital station within a timeframe that was inconceivable for everyone 

except for us.

“We need to take advantage of the buzz that the group flight is still generating. And as deputy chief designer for piloted flights, Bushuyev should call 

Ustinov on the Kremlin line.” That was my proposal. Bushuyev didn’t like it. 

Feoktistov summoned up his courage and offered to make the call himself. But 

we questioned whether this would be proper: why should non–Party member 

Feoktistov appeal directly to the secretary of the Communist Party Central 

Committee while Party members vacillated in doing this?

I hesitate after the passage of almost 40 years to come up with an explanation as to why Ustinov decided to invite Okhapkin, Bushuyev, Feoktistov, 

Rauschenbach, and me to his office right after Mishin departed for Kislovodsk.15

Officially, we did not ask for the meeting and we didn’t know what to think. 

Each of us received a phone call from the Central Committee, and no one 

dared refuse. Not even non–Party member Feoktistov.

When we entered the office on Kuybyshev Street, we saw Keldysh, 

Afanasyev, Tyulin, and Serbin, who had probably already come to an agreement 

on something. Sitting there were three Central Committee defense department staffers—Boris Strogonov, Vyacheslav Krasavtsev, and Viktor Popov. All 

three were from Podlipki. We had no doubt about their goodwill and active 

participation in organizing this event.

While we were coping with the three Soyuzes, Krasavtsev, who looked out 

for our TsKBEM in the Central Committee bureaucracy, had received information from Bushuyev’s designers about our underground operations on a new 

orbital station. Information was properly checked and reported to Ustinov. 

He was informed about the disastrous state of the Almaz. Independent of us, 

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the Central Committee understood that in the best case it would be two years 

before the Almaz could become an orbital station. But even if this happened, 

then we couldn’t make a fuss for the whole world: the Almaz must remain a 

secret military spacecraft. If possible, we needed to have a nonsecret station 

and demonstrate to the whole world that we offer international cooperation 

in the interests of science and economics. We needed to do all of this quickly, 

before the Americans hit upon the idea of taking an astronaut from some 

European country with them to the Moon. An unexpected report from NASA 

to the president (which I mentioned in Chapter 11) also hinted at the idea of 

accelerating operations on a nonmilitary orbital station.

At the meeting, as we had expected according to our script, Feoktistov was 

called upon to speak first. Konstantin Petrovich talked very convincingly about 

the advantages of our proposal and assured them that, given the proper monitoring and assistance, a Long-Duration Orbital Station could be inserted into 

space within a year. I, in turn, assured them that I foresaw no serious problems 

for the control system because everything that we needed had already been 

tested in space on the Soyuzes. However, there would be a new element—a 

docking assembly with internal transfer. It was currently being manufactured 

and would undergo a cycle of development tests, but we would manage to do 

that within a year.

After the pertinent presentations of Bushuyev and Okhapkin, Keldysh 

asked an unexpected question: “So, you all say that this can be done in a year 

if you get help setting up the operations and have no days off and even work 

practically around the clock. But how is all of this going to affect your work 

on the N1-L3?”

Okhapkin answered for all of us: “A whole different group of people should 

work on the Long-Duration Orbital Stations (DOS). In our shop a permanent 

contingent is working on the N-1, and we, God forbid, won’t bother anyone 

there.” Sergey Osipovich kept silent about the fact that if all the brass were 

to start managing the DOS “storm,” this would inevitably affect all the other 

operations, and the N1-L3 first and foremost.

We were already headed in the direction in which the “hand of Fate” was 

pointing: we should be in charge of developing an orbital station. It seemed 

to me that something dawned on all of the participants of this momentous 

meeting. Evidently our proposal came at the best possible time.

The meeting ended with an instruction to immediately prepare a ministerial order, a decision, and a VPK timetable, and to issue a Central Committee 

and Council of Ministers resolution concerning the development of an orbital 

station no later than January.

Certain of Ustinov’s support, after arriving at work the day after the meeting in the Central Committee, we announced the dawning of a new era: in a 

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year’s time we must develop a heavy-duty orbital station. It is most astounding that this new project was perceived among the majority of staffs as very 

timely. What’s more, one heard choruses of voices asking: “And where were 

you before? It’s about time we merge with ZIKh and develop a real station 

instead of having our heads in the clouds with whimsical projects.” Taking 

advantage of the situation, many specialists who were needed for the lunar 

program crossed over from L3 developments to the DOS. Bushuyev openly 

expressed his apprehensions for the fate of the L3 program.

Once they had gotten wind of the conference in the Central Committee, 

staffs subordinate to me started to celebrate. Three or four days later this 

gave way to lawful requirements concerning the “legalization” of projects via 

the appropriate timetables, introducing them into monthly schedules, and 

reviewing other projects benefiting the DOS. Rauschenbach, after banding 

together the main “troublemakers” (as he referred to them)—Legostayev, 

Bashkin, Karpov, Sosnovik, Knyazev, and Babkov—appeared with this noisy 

delegation in my office and delivered an ultimatum: “Immediately give us a 

timetable for coordinating projects with the draft designers and the designers 

from Fili, shift dates for lunar vehicles, and speed up preparation of the order 

about the new project and its ‘legalization.’ This project can’t be conducted 

on enthusiasm alone.”

It was unacceptable to hold off on organizational decisions any longer. But 

how could an order be issued in the absence of the chief designer, being fully 

aware of his negative attitude? We urgently needed both a ministerial decree 

and a VPK timetable for the subcontracting organizations.

In the intervals between our noisy shouting matches, I found the 

time to look into the state of affairs with the new docking assembly [allowing 

internal transfer]. Kalashnikov, Vilnitskiy, Syromyatnikov, and Utkin were full 

of designers’ optimism. The original electromechanical assembly, despite its 

apparent complexity, looked pretty good. The main thing was that we needed 

to believe in it. The team of designers that was working on the drawings was 

made up of realists, who understood what was required and what the capabilities of our technology were. Now it was a matter of production. That was 

our general opinion.

The day after the meeting in the Central Committee, we familiarized 

factory director Klyucharev with the upcoming work. A day later, Klyucharev 

and chief engineer Khazanov discussed with us in detail the problems of 

manufacturing and performing experimental development testing on the new 

docking assembly. We agreed to have a special team sent on an urgent mission 

to the Azov Optical-Mechanical Factory—the primary manufacturer of the 

docking assembly mechanisms. Kalashnikov and I found the time to visit the 

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Mashinoapparat Factory in Moscow, which had been tasked with producing 

the electric motors and damping devices. We had enjoyed excellent relations 

with this factory and its chief designer, Georgiy Katkov, for 20 years now, since 

the time when the first control surface actuators were mastered.

Okhapkin, Bushuyev, and I decided that we needed to take the risk and 

appoint a lead designer to coordinate operations, prepare the ministerial decrees 

and the government decisions, and maintain constant contact with OKB-52 

and its branch.16 Naturally, he needed to be freed from all other concerns.

“In my opinion,” said Okhapkin, “operations on the L1 are wrapping up 

today. Well, perhaps there will be another one or two launches. It doesn’t matter 

what Mishin promised the ‘brass,’ no one dares conduct a piloted circumlunar 

flight. And who needs it now? How about if we transfer Semyonov from the 

L1 and make him lead designer on the DOS?”

I agreed with Okhapkin: “After all, he is the only one of the potential 

candidates who has dealt with Fili, and if something happens, he won’t be 

cowed by Chelomey.”

I proposed that he [Okhapkin] issue a directive. But he said that, first of 

all, he would consult with the Party committee; second, he would telephone 

Mishin; and third, he would contact the minister as well.

“I have a feeling, “ continued Okhapkin, “that this place is going to be 

very hot, and I don’t want to catch hell for untimely independent action.”

But the fat was in the fire. The candidacy of Yuriy Semyonov passed 

through the entire hierarchy. This determined his subsequent fate. In late 

1969, we who had promoted Semyonov as a candidate for the lead designer 

for the DOS, and Semyonov himself couldn’t and didn’t even attempt to 

predict the subsequent development of events based on what seemed such 

an ordinary decision. But the future, over which we had no command, took 

charge in its own way: 20 years later Semyonov occupied that historic office 

from which Academician Korolev departed forever in January 1966.17

People working in a group that seethes with creative impulses are completely immersed in internal problems and not always capable of properly 

assessing external circumstances. The idea of drawing up a six- or sevenyear plan for the development of domestic cosmonautics and reporting to 

the Politburo came to fruition under such critical circumstances for our 

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rocket leadership. Feverish preparation of the latest resolutions began in 

December 1969.

On Saturday, 6 December, Minister Afanasyev came out to see us at 

TsKBEM for a managerial conference. At his request, Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, 

Viktor Kuznetsov, and Chelomey’s deputy—Arkadiy Eydis— also came.18

Afanasyev announced that he had received instructions to consult with us and 

work out additional proposals for the six-year plan and objectives for the next 

two years for the Central Committee and the Politburo to discuss.

“How can we fix things so that the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birthday 

and Twenty-fourth Party Congress might be properly celebrated?” With that 

question Afanasyev began his long speech.19 “We have a proposal to update 

piloted 7K-OK vehicles and execute a flight of record-setting duration in 

recognition of the 100th anniversary. Things are still going badly with the 

orbital stations. Chelomey is way behind on the Almaz. You hinted at how to 

correct the situation: take an Almaz hull and place a passive Igla unit and a 

passive docking assembly on it and provide life support for the station using 

the active 7K-OK vehicle. There are objections to the 7K-S.20 We need to 

decide what to do with this vehicle. The military needs it very much. This 

does not mean that we intend to abandon the Almaz. We need to think of a 

way to set up joint projects.

“When it came to the L1, the majority [of Central Committee members] 

spoke out against the piloted circumlunar flight. We need to use the available 

vehicle production stock for scientific purposes, after installing additional equipment. We should design the orbital station more thoughtfully and put together 

a phase-by-phase developmental testing plan. Would it be worth it to make 

a piloted L1 vehicle using the Pyatisotka [UR-500]? Everyone is complaining 

that very strict weight limits have been imposed on the N1-L3. They say that 

the LK has just 20 seconds to maneuver before landing. That’s ridiculous! If 

things keep going like that, we’ll only be able to land half a man on the Moon. 

Some people propose removing the backup systems. This is a risk that reduces 

reliability. You need to guarantee that at least one man can safely land on the 

Moon! The designers’ attitude is unclear. There is no certainty when it comes 

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to [liquid]-hydrogen Blocks S and R and the two-launch scenario—N1-L3M.21

We’ve already come up with a name, but the work isn’t organized!

“If this configuration provides weight advantages, I promise you: we will get 

the ministry enterprises involved and we will do everything as soon as possible.

“I ask that you thoroughly work out and present a plan for N1-L3. We 

have Mars proposals. We do not want to retrace the Americans’ path. We must 

have forward-looking plans.

“Squeezing all the proposals for equipment weights, the TsKBEM designers 

put the subcontractors in an extremely difficult position. Why did the Americans 

have an engine chamber pressure of 50 atmospheres on the Saturn, while 

Kuznetsov had 150?22 You chased after super parameters and you reduced reliability. I heard that the initiative is coming not from Kuznetsov, but that Mishin 

and Melnikov demanded these parameters from him so that the engine would 

be the best in the world. It really is the ‘best’—in terms of explosion hazard.

“We need to radically revise the organization of operations. To eliminate 

noncompliance with program cycles. Stop biting off more than you can chew. 

For example, Mishin has one control system and Chelomey has another. Why? 

Perhaps, transfer all the operations to Pilyugin? Let him decide the tasks for 

everyone.”

After a brief pause, Afanasyev explained what he wanted from us: “Very 

soon we will be granted a hearing in the Central Committee and Politburo. 

We must explain what is going on and provide specific plans and tangible 

commitments. These matters are very serious. I ask that you speak candidly, 

from the heart, without looking to your neighbor.”

After the minister’s long, emotionally charged speech, there was a brief 

pause. Pilyugin was the first to take the floor.

“We need to break all the tasks into groups and think about how to tackle 

them. We can’t prepare for a flight to Mars without careful consideration. We’ll 

get into hot water like we did with the L1. We need to decide and not draw 

things out with this program. As for the L3, I sense that we are going to end 

up in the same situation as we did with the L1. They pushed me out of the 

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way and I’m standing on the sidelines unable to make decisions.23 At OKB-1 

(Pilyugin used our old name; he didn’t like the new abbreviation TsKBEM) the 

assignments are supposed to be worked out and coordinated with the subcontracting organizations. The organization of the L3M project is inept. We need 

to admit this without hesitation. It is difficult to speak calmly with Mishin. 

Let’s organize the work ourselves. We won’t wait for the ‘brass’ to do it for us.”

Bushuyev spoke out in favor of preparing for a long-duration flight, saying 

that this mission could be accomplished very soon. Bashkin made two specific 

proposals: execute a flight of record-setting duration with a single 7K-OK 

vehicle for the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birthday and launch a prototype 

of the heavy orbital station for the Twenty-fourth Party Congress. He expressed 

confidence that these two missions could absolutely be accomplished in the 

time remaining. Kryukov also proposed preparing for a long-duration flight 

of the 7K-OK for the Twenty-fourth Party Congress. He reminded us that we 

had wanted to perform a circumlunar flight with the L1 in 1967 for the 50th 

anniversary of Soviet rule.

“I am attending the third such meeting, “ said Kryukov, “and I am convinced that many comrades are approaching the matter casually, making 

promises that are not technically sound. We are not prepared today to take 

on commitments for an orbital station in time for the Twenty-fourth Party 

Congress. Moreover, even given all of our failures, the L1 was not a useless 

project. It has provided great results. The Ye-8 and Mars-N designs have come 

into being and Block D has already been tested out. We mustn’t consider a 

circumlunar flight unnecessary. We had to go through it.”

Kryukov sighed and continued, “The N1-L3 is a very complex and difficult matter. We will achieve the weights that were promised today, but this is 

minor, very minor. We have to admit that we underestimated the difficulties 

we have encountered. The most important thing is that we need to combine 

our efforts. We are working with different approaches in different organizations 

on the same missions. Why?”

Feoktistov took the floor. “I am going to speak only about my personal 

vision of our missions. I am not going to hide the fact that my position is 

quite different from the others. The 7K-OK needs to be launched for a 16-day 

mission—this is a leap that we must make. The orbital station can be created using the load-bearing structure of the Almaz. Konstantin Davidovich 

[Bushuyev] estimated the time necessary for that at a year and a half; Yevgeniy 

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Aleksandrovich [Frolov] said one year.24 There are difficulties, and big ones at 

that. As an engineer, I believe that it can be done in less than a year if TsKBEM 

is given the assignment and if specialists from the TsKBM branch provide 

assistance.25 If we all make a concerted effort we will do it. But I have to tell 

you straight that this work will delay the N1-L3, and especially the L3M. We’re 

all leaving ‘for the front,’ for the station, and we won’t have anything left for 

the Moon. This is an enormous experimental project, and there is no doubt 

that the N1-L3 will suffer.

“It’s a shame to abandon the L1. We need to use the hardware as long as 

we have it. We need to go into the Zond orbits and try to use the L1 production stock for the sake of science, for example, for radio interferometry. The 

astrophysicists have ideas like this. If the Central Committee wants an orbital 

station to be developed, the N1-L3 program needs to be reconsidered, and it 

needs to be shifted two or three years.”

Looking over the rough drafts of our speeches at this conference recently, 

I could not recall whether we had stated everything that we had prepared. It 

turned out that I spoke for 25 to 30 minutes. By the way, this time the minister 

did not interrupt anyone. He diligently jotted down notes on his notepad.

I attempted to impart to my presentation a sense of program and history.

“During the development of the R-7, we got way ahead of the Americans 

because the demands of the atomic scientists forced us to design a very farsighted configuration. Twelve years have passed since the first launch, but the 

capabilities of the launch vehicle have yet to be depleted and there is no end 

in sight to the upgrades.

“We were ahead of the Americans for many years despite our weak economy. 

During the R-7 phase, we really managed to combine ‘Russian revolutionary 

sweep with American efficiency.’26 During the development of N1-L3 the scope 

was not revolutionary; in many cases efficiency contributed to a reduction in 

the volume and scale of experimental operations.

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“Today we are struggling for a mass in Earth orbit of 95 tons, while the 

Americans have achieved more than 130. The difference is so palpable that 

we cannot be silent about it! We didn’t have [liquid] hydrogen—it was just a 

wish. The experimental hydrogen Blocks S and R are appearing on the scene 

only now. One of the reasons for our falling behind is that after Korolev’s death 

there wasn’t an organ like the Council of Chief Designers that could organize, 

conduct business, and provide guidance. Neither ministerial nor VPK directives could replace the Council of Chiefs. Once we had come to grips with 

this situation, we did not find the courage to review the decisions made during 

Korolev’s time on the expedition concept, and planned a glaring shortfall of 30 

to 40 tons of mass inserted into Earth orbit. This triggered a series of crucial 

subsequent decisions. I shall cite several of them.

“The expedition has two persons, rather than three, and only one of them 

lands on the Moon. This is not just a foreign policy failure, but also a loss of 

reliability. It would be frightening for a single cosmonaut on the Moon: if he 

were to stumble in his heavy spacesuit, no one could lift him up or drag him 

away. The weight restrictions compel us to do away with automatic backup of 

manual control on the LOK in the piloted version, which reduces reliability. 

For this same reason, we did away with the docking assembly configuration 

with internal transfer between vehicles. The fatigued cosmonaut must execute 

a circus act of questionable safety: making his way from the LK to the LOK 

in an external transfer. Now a docking assembly with internal transfer is being 

urgently developed for 7K-S, for 7K-T, and for the future DOS.27 Unfortunately 

this can’t be achieved for the lunar vehicles as there are no weight reserves.

“We left a ridiculously small amount of time for ‘hovering’ over the surface of the Moon while selecting a site for landing: just 15 to 20 seconds. The 

Americans had 2 minutes, and still they consider this very little, even though 

there are two astronauts looking and controlling, and they have a good view.

“We did away with television en route there and back, even black-andwhite, while Apollo had color television along the entire route.

“We are taking a step backwards in autonomous navigation even compared 

with the L1. On the L1 we regularly conduct orientation sessions to determine 

navigational parameters. On the L3 we have the equipment, but not enough 

fuel for these measurement sessions.

“The time margin for the LK to function autonomously is very small—

just 12 to 16 hours. If an error occurs again, then it will be all over for the 

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cosmonaut in the LK. The Americans have 48 hours, and if docking does not 

take place right after liftoff from the Moon, then they can make one more 

attempt, with some risk.”

“We have done away with a backup automatic descent control system 

during return to Earth. This is one more step backward compared with L1.

“Apollo’s gyrostabilized platform activates while still on the ground, before 

liftoff, and corrects itself once every 24 hours using the stars. A similar system 

that we have was tested out for Lavochkin’s Burya and underwent testing in 

1959.28 But the Americans have advanced even further thanks to television star 

trackers. They developed a sextant that automatically scans and enters data into 

a computer. We have not managed to place an order for such a star tracker.

“We have pitiful ground-based flight control facilities. As yet no center 

has been set up in Moscow like the one in Houston, and automatic processing 

and real-time display facilities are primitive.

“All of this has a bearing on N1-L3. Hence the following proposals:

1. A long-duration flight up to 16 to 18 days on 7K-OK for the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birthday can be executed. This is a problem only for the 

life-support systems. The control systems can cope with this mission.

2. Create a reliable Long-Duration Orbital Station through the joint efforts 

of the two head organizations, ours and Chelomey’s, together with the 

Fili branch and ZIKh.

“During the first phase for the DOS we will use 7K-OK systems, which 

have been standardized both for the vehicles and for the station itself. We’ll be 

in a position to realize this phase in 14 to 15 months and to insert the station 

into space in the spring of 1971.

“Having gained experience operating piloted DOSes with 7K-OK vehicles, 

we can move on to the second phase—the creation of an orbital station using 

more state-of-the-art control equipment. We can use Almaz production stock, 

but our 7K-OKs will still be the piloted transport vehicles. During the final 

phase, we’ll create a transport vehicle with a control system using an on-board 

digital computer and an orbital station that meets all the requirements of the 

Ministry of Defense.

“Over the next 12 to 18 months, our primary resources need to be aimed 

at the creation and developmental testing of a complex of orbital stations. 

Therefore, the N1-L3 project plans should be reviewed. The main task for 

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the upcoming year is to increase the reliability of the [Proton] launch vehicle. 

We should not distract specialists involved with the N-1 launch vehicle with 

work on DOSes. In this case, the process of perfecting the launch vehicle will 

not suffer. In actual fact, if we want to have orbital stations in 1971, work 

on lunar vehicles will stop of its own accord. And perhaps this is for the best.

“During that time we need to redesign the L3—transition to a dual-launch 

L3M configuration. We will be able to land at least two cosmonauts on the 

Moon in 1975. We need five years to develop and produce a new design that 

will enable us to surpass the Americans’ lunar successes. Over the course of 

those five years we will produce orbital stations, we’ll secure superiority in that 

field, and at the same time we’ll have the opportunity to work on the lunar 

vehicles with no rush.”

During my long speech I kept an eye on Afanasyev’s reaction. When I listed 

the shortcomings of N1-L3, he took elaborate notes all the while contritely 

shaking his head. When I moved on to proposals, his face brightened, and as 

he took notes, he nodded his head in agreement. But when I mentioned the 

date for the expedition to the Moon—1975—tearing himself away from his 

notes, he looked at me with reproach and remarked: “Keep this in mind: God 

help you if you ever mention these dates.”

Our proposal to Ustinov and the Central Committee to develop an orbital 

station did not envision Pilyugin’s participation in these operations. He wasn’t 

even invited to take part in the discussion. Chelomey designed Almaz without 

Pilyugin, too. At the same time, the control systems of the entire N1-L3 complex were developed primarily by Pilyugin’s NIIAP. In my program-oriented 

speech, Pilyugin sensed the danger of the lunar operations being phased out 

in favor of orbital stations and he took the floor for a second time.

“If that’s the way we’re going to treat the L3, then before too long we’ll 

end up the same way on this project as we did with the L1. We need to get to 

the bottom of what’s going on with the launch vehicle as soon as possible. In 

order to work confidently, we need a launch vehicle. And let’s be honest—we 

don’t have one yet. But we don’t have lunar vehicles either. Mishin, Bushuyev, 

and Feoktistov keep demanding that we reduce the weights. But we have a 

job to do besides reducing the weight! We don’t have any weight left at all 

for scientific and military missions. Then what are we flying into space for?

“Chertok and Feoktistov are trying to make you afraid that they’re going to 

stop work on the lunar vehicles for the sake of the orbital stations. I think this is a 

mistake. If things don’t pan out for you, honestly admit this and correct your old 

mistakes instead of throwing yourselves into a new project. We’re prepared to help 

salvage the N-1. If we can pull off the project for the launch of three cosmonauts 

using a dual-launch scenario, we need to revamp the vehicles right away. We are 

prepared to modify our systems: our organization will take care of everything. 

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Using what we already have, we are prepared for reconfigurations. We already 

have a new on-board computer for the launch vehicle.29 People are working very 

enthusiastically. There’s no need to draw it out any further with decision making. 

We are not participating in projects involving orbital stations, therefore our L3 

projects are not going to suffer, but make a decision! Don’t dawdle!”

Keldysh also took up this appeal of “Don’t dawdle!” and ran with it.

“The situation with the weights is really very tense. I think that if we can 

guarantee the landing of one cosmonaut on the Moon, we need to do this as 

soon as possible, and then we can make the complex more sophisticated and 

move to a dual-launch scenario or one that is even more complicated. But 

if there are no guarantees, and we get ourselves tied up with already existing 

plans and developments, then this is unacceptable. It is better to say it now, 

rather than a year and a half from now, that the weights won’t work. The 20 

seconds already mentioned here serve as an example. I am announcing that I 

will not give my consent for selecting a lunar landing site within just 20 seconds. It will be a tragedy for all of us if before liftoff it turns out that we can’t 

launch. We need to stop obscuring the issue here and now and tell the truth 

and nothing but the truth. I am sorry that Vasiliy Pavlovich [Mishin] isn’t here 

today. I have the impression that our comrades on the expert commission are 

being deliberately obscure and are not laying out all the difficulties they’ve 

been having with weights. This is unacceptable.

“I propose that we assign a group comprising Mishin, Okhapkin, Bushuyev, 

Chertok, Kuznetsov, Likhushin, and Ryazanskiy to review the program, and 

if there is no guarantee for landing two cosmonauts, we switch over to a duallaunch scenario.30 But only if there are no ‘ifs’.

“One particular issue that worries me very much is the reliability of the 

engines on the N-1. I have the impression that the investigations into the 

causes of the latest failure were not very objective. It seems to me that this 

matter needs further examination. I want to speak with Dementyev about this.

“We can’t make a decision on the N1-L3M configuration without a thorough reliability analysis. We should work out the dual-launch scenario using 

reusable engines. If we don’t attain reliable engines, they need to be changed.”

Viktor Kuznetsov brought up an objection to Keldysh: “Even given a high 

degree of reliability in the program for landing one cosmonaut on the Moon, we 

need to review it and come up with a new strategy. Today we need to plan a lunar 

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landing of not one cosmonaut, but two or three. We must have two full-fledged 

launches. We can’t work without a backup. This will ensure the reliability of the 

dual-launch scenario. Chertok’s observations are very serious, but where were you 

before? Does the expert commission know about them? We need to seriously 

examine what automatic systems can do. I do not agree that they supposedly can 

do everything. A cosmonaut in the LOK is both a backup and a controller of the 

automatic systems. During phase one we need to launch the N-1 and the LOK 

carrying a cosmonaut without landing on the Moon. We will gain experience, which 

we don’t yet have right now. The safe return of a human being after a circumlunar 

flight is also a phase that we need to pass through before landing on the Moon.”

Ryazanskiy took the floor next: “Switching to a fully automatic vehicle for 

a lunar landing and liftoff should be well argued not only from the standpoint 

of weight. Krayushkin’s antenna experts have developed a good antenna array. 

But the instruments for switching the arrays have no backup—Bushuyev isn’t 

setting aside weight for that. This puts us in a stupid position. We’re expected 

to provide a full guarantee of reliability, but then the head design bureau 

[TsKBEM] refuses the several kilograms needed for it. If you want to set a 

record of lunar conquest with the lightest weight, then don’t demand guarantees.

“We have been approaching the ‘man or machine’ problem in several 

stages. The main trend must be switching to machine. It will be a while before 

the dual-launch scenario appears. Chertok estimates it will take five years. We 

need to find the courage and say that we’re going to give up landing on the 

Moon during this phase. Orbital stations must serve as compensation. I agree 

with the proposition that the first station can be produced rapidly using the 

fabricated stock that we all have.”

Afanasyev had invited Chelomey to this conference, but the latter sent his 

first deputy, Eydis, instead. He took the floor, defending the Almaz program 

and proposed a compromise.

“We are proceeding from the premise that the Almaz program will continue. 

We have begun developing Dmitriy Fedorovich’s and Sergey Aleksandrovich’s 

assignment calling for the docking of our station with 7K-OK. We will finish 

the study by 1 January. We are having difficulties with life support for Almaz—

this is now the most crucial issue. I disagree with Boris Yevseyevich’s proposal 

for the control system. You want to take an empty Almaz hull and fill it with a 

completely different system. Such a large undertaking requires the involvement 

of many organizations. You can disregard us or dash us to pieces, but there 

will be no benefit from that because we can’t influence the Ministry of the 

Aviation Industry [MAP] and the Ministry of the Defense Industry [MOP]. 

These projects require a body vested with the authority that will be able to 

handle everything. This is a decisive issue. Almaz is standing there without its 

main military “innards” and without life-support systems.

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“Let me remind you that we have been working on Almaz since 1965 and 

all of our ideas were coordinated with the Ministry of Defense. The military 

needs an orbital station to conduct comprehensive surveillance. Together with 

the Central Directorate of Space Assets [TsUKOS] and the Main Intelligence 

Directorate [GRU], we have done a thorough study of the state-of-the-art 

capabilities. Accordingly, government decisions have placed orders for systems 

making it possible to conduct surveillance in the infrared and visible ranges 

at high resolution. For the first time, surveillance footage will be transmitted 

via television channel.

“The participation of our branch and of ZIKh in the manufacture of 

DOSes will disrupt operations on Almaz. We agree to combine our efforts 

with TsKBEM to produce a transport system using the 7K-OK spacecraft. 

Help us get it fitted out and there will be an orbital station.”

The minister thanked everybody for their comments. Exercising caution, 

he neither praised nor criticized anyone. He alerted us that in the near future 

many of us would take part in a conference with Ustinov. Afanasyev was in 

the most difficult situation. He answered to the Politburo for the entire area of 

endeavor. Ultimately he would have to “make a decision and report.” But what?

On 26 December 1969, Ustinov convened a conference at his office on 

Kuybyshev Street. Okhapkin, Chertok, Bushuyev, Rauschenbach, and Feoktistov 

represented TsKBEM. Mishin was still on vacation in Kislovodsk. Neither 

Chelomey nor his deputies had been invited. Once again, the chief designers of 

the old council attended—Pilyugin, Kuznetsov, Ryazanskiy, and Barmin. As I 

understood it, Glushko had not been invited so that he would not alienate us 

with his fiercely negative attitude toward the reliability of Kuznetsov’s engines.

Keldysh did not bring with him anyone representing “pure science.” In 

addition to us, cosmonautics’ highest ranks of leadership were represented 

by Smirnov, Serbin, Afanasyev, Tyulin, Mozzhorin, Kerimov, and Karas. In 

1964, Kerimov became the head of the recently created Ministry of Defense 

GUKOS, but by March 1965 he had transferred to MOM as Chief of the Main 

Directorate for Space.31 Karas was appointed chief of TsUKOS.32 Officially, he 

alone represented the Ministry of Defense at meetings.

Chelomey’s absence made the discussion of problems concerning orbital stations one-sided. We had already received preliminary information to the effect 

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that Ustinov was not the only one in the Central Committee who supported 

our proposal for the production of a DOS and that in the very near future we 

would be “turning ourselves inside out” to pay for our initiative. Chelomey 

vigorously objected and asked the military for help. But the prospect of building a space station in a year and a half—something the Americans didn’t have 

yet—on the eve of the report to the Twenty-fourth Party Convention was so 

tempting that all the objections were swept away.

During the time between the two meetings, we conducted an intense 

study of the scenario using Almaz hulls to build our orbital station. Without 

waiting for Mishin’s return, at the request of Okhapkin and Bushuyev, Yuriy 

Semyonov as acting lead designer took on the coordination of organizational 

issues and the preparation of ministry orders and of the governmental resolution concerning DOSes. While working on the L1, Semyonov had established 

good contacts with the design bureau and with the production plant in Fili. 

Their assistance was decisive. Unlike Chelomey, his deputy in Fili—branch 

chief Bugayskiy—didn’t object to the use of Almaz stock, and he also supported 

our proposal with unconcealed enthusiasm.33

At the very beginning of the meeting, we understood that this gathering 

at the office of the Central Committee Secretary was not intended as a forum 

to discuss problems and work out certain program decisions, but was primarily a motivational lecture. Each of us, this time very briefly, gave assurances 

that, working with the TsKBM Fili branch and with the active participation 

of ZIKh, we could produce a DOS in one and a half years. It should be mentioned that we had agreed in advance to whenever possible avoid conversations 

concerning N1-L3, since we knew that we would be “lectured,” and with such 

a preponderance of forces in favor of the topmost leadership, any resistance 

was not only futile, but also dangerous. Therefore, our speeches were short.

As we had anticipated, Ustinov summed things up with a lecture.

“We have conducted a sensible, serious conversation. I want you not only 

to understand what is troubling the Central Committee, but I also want you 

to follow up this understanding with actions. What we discussed today is a 

course. Get set on this course and scrupulously fulfill this line. God forbid 

you should stop thinking about landing a man on the Moon. That’s a shallow 

and irresponsible attitude. You all are being shown the greatest trust, you’re 

spending enormous state resources, you’re praised throughout the world, and 

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suddenly you’ve questioned the mission that the Party assigned. Keep in mind 

that the Central Committee’s patience will soon come to an end, too.

“Now we have our only chance to correct the situation. We need to use 

the DOS not to disrupt operations on the N1-L3 project, but to fix the situation. For the time being the Americans have gotten ahead of us in one very 

important area. But, after all, we have the Molniya, the Meteor, spy satellites, 

and Soyuzes. We are first everywhere, except the Moon. Above all, we must 

prove it to ourselves: we will have our revenge. We need to work on that, and 

I repeat, God forbid that you should doubt that we can land our man on the 

Moon. Stop all your doubting. Communists need to be in charge of the operations. The number one task should be concern about reliability. Spare no one 

and nothing to get this work organized. If someone doubts, let him yield his 

place to someone else. I’ve been told that Mishin has a tendency to dig in his 

heels. He is often wrong. MOM must have a heavy hand. I gave instructions 

to prepare a decree regarding the DOS. A month has passed and there is still 

no draft. What is the minister doing? In such a critical situation, we must 

intensify our insistence on high standards, not let up on it.

“We won’t see each other again before the new year. Accept my best wishes, 

stay healthy, and I hope for new success in the new year.”

We left in high spirits. The working groups involved in the creation 

of the DOS felt enthusiasm that was neither affected nor perfunctory, but 

sincere. We didn’t need any meetings or slogans calling for acceptance of 

socialist obligations.

During this period (late 1969 and essentially all of 1970), new problems cropped up like mushrooms after a summer rain. Over the course of the 

workday, the attention and energy of each manager was spread out in many 

directions. A five-, six-, or seven-year integrated plan for the development 

of cosmonautics was never even approved by a government decree. But the 

spectrum of operations remained exceptionally broad.

After the Americans’ successes, a lunar expedition gradually ceased to be 

perceived as a “critical” mission as the old decrees had demanded. Throughout 

1970, the Soviet Union inserted 88 different spacecraft into space. Kosmos 

spacecraft alone accounted for 72 of these. Twenty-nine of those 72 Kosmoses 

were various models of Zenits developed at the TsKBEM Kuybyshev branch 

and manufactured at the Progress Factory in Kuybyshev.34

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I should remind the reader that the Progress and ZIKh Factories, former 

giants of the aviation industry, at that moment determined the industrial 

potential of Soviet cosmonautics. The Progress Factory worked on OKB-1 

projects, i.e., those of Korolev, then Mishin, and Chief Designer Kozlov, who 

soon thereafter became independent. The Progress director was responsible for 

manufacturing R-9 missiles, space reconnaissance satellites, all modifications 

of the R-7 launch vehicle for all piloted and unpiloted vehicles that it could 

insert into space, and the N-1 super rockets in Kuybyshev and at its branch at 

the launch site. The ZIKh director first and foremost facilitated the production 

and servicing of Sotka (UR-100) missiles, the most common intercontinental 

missiles. He also rolled out Pyatisotka rockets (Protons), and now he would 

be manufacturing the Almaz and DOS.

Also among the Kosmoses was the experimental lunar vehicle, the LK of 

the L3 complex. It is amazing, but the flight-developmental testing of the lunar 

landing vehicle—the LK (11F94)—was ahead of the developmental testing 

of the main lunar orbital vehicle—the LOK (11F93). The spacecraft for the 

L3 program (LOK and LK), all models of 7K spacecraft, and booster Blocks 

D for the N-1 and UR-500 launch vehicles were small-scale production. It 

was the domain of our ZEM. I say “our” because the director of ZEM was 

subordinate to Chief Designer Mishin, and the directors of Progress and ZIKh 

were immediately subordinate to the ministry. The planners of Feoktistov’s 

department were responsible for the LOK. Having been responsible for the 

piloted Soyuz flights, many of them switched over to the DOS project.

The LK was set apart for independent development. Contributing to a 

speedup of the operations was the fact that Yangel, who absolutely demanded 

near-Earth flight development, was developing Block Ye, which was part of 

the landing and liftoff propulsion system. The first flight of the LK, referred 

to as T2K (Kosmos-379), took place on 24 November 1970 without significant 

glitches and involved the multiple firings of Block Ye. To a great extent, this 

was the result of the self-sacrificing efforts of Department No. 222 Chief Ivan 

Prudnikov; his deputy, Yevgeniy Ryazanov; Sector Chief Yuriy Frumkin; and 

also Yuriy Labutin and Vyacheslav Filin. In all, there were three launches.35

The Central Committee, VPK, the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of 

General Machine Building, and the Ministry of Defense nevertheless agreed 

to prepare a five-year space plan. The primary motivator of this development 

was our Ministry of General Machine Building. Afanasyev understood that 

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Alexander Shliadinsky

The launches of the T2K (an Earth-orbital version of the lunar lander) used a 

unique version of the Soyuz launch vehicle known as the 11A511L that used a 

special payload shroud.

RKK Energiya & David R. Woods

This cutaway shows the special Earth-orbital version of the LK. The test version 

was flown three times in Earth orbit in 1970 and 1971.

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Long-Duration Space Stations Instead of the Moon

he bore the main responsibility for developing the plan. All the head design 

bureaus and scientific-research institutes had submitted their proposals in March 

[1970]. We had a certain clarity, if not for five years, then at least for the next 

three years about the following programs: the near-Earth piloted programs 

(Soyuz, DOS, and Almaz); the Meteor, Molniya, and Zenit programs; the 

lunar, Venus, and Mars launch programs; and miscellaneous odds and ends, 

as the N1-L3 and orbital station builders put it.

The decree on the development of Long-Duration Orbital Stations came 

out in the version that we needed on 9 February 1970. In this regard, after 

summoning 3 of my deputies and 11 department chiefs subordinate to me and 

their deputies, I began my speech as follows: “Mikhail Zoshchenko wrote that 

some people will find their way into a bathhouse accidentally, others—under 

pressure from those around them.36 Up until now, we have had accidental 

elemental plans coming from below. Now ‘under pressure from those around 

us’ we must take a steam bath in an organized fashion in accordance with a 

multiyear—most likely, five-year—plan, but the first Long-Duration Orbital 

Station must fly in a year.”

How close these various people were to me! They were all already scorched 

by the launch site sun, they had been through numerous rush production 

jobs, had also had reprimands and rewards, but had not lost their sense of 

humor, optimism, and faith in their own strength. I could trust my life to 

any of these people.

On 5 May 1970, Afanasyev, Litvinov, and Kerimov once again came out 

to consult with us at TsKBEM. After some tongue-in-cheek comments regarding the five-year plans, at the end of the meeting we announced: “We’ll make 

DOSes too!” But the minister decided to speak his mind on the lunar program.

“The situation with the N1-L3 has become extremely complicated,” 

Afanasyev said. “I talked long and in detail with Keldysh. He believes that 

landing a single cosmonaut on the Moon is uninteresting from the standpoint 

of large-scale science. It is a matter of technology and engineering, but we 

won’t obtain any fundamental results. I tried to object and argued that any 

lunar expedition is large-scale science. Unfortunately, neither of us changed our 

opinion. A platoon of cosmonauts isn’t necessary to plant a flag and collect some 

soil. We need to determine how many men we are going to land on the Moon.

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“I went over to consult with Ryabikov.37 I posed the question: ‘Maybe we 

shouldn’t come out with a proposal to land one cosmonaut on the Moon?’ He 

answered that no one in the Politburo would understand giving up on landing 

on the Moon. A Soviet cosmonaut needed to set foot on the Moon. This was 

now a matter of Big Politics rather than science. In his opinion, this operation 

needed to be fulfilled in the interests of testing out the launch vehicle. As you 

see, everything boils down to the fact that the N1-L3 must not be abandoned. 

What worries me most of all is how we are going to guarantee the reliability of 

this whole operation. The Americans, even with their Apollo 13 failure, pulled 

the rug out from under us.38 Ustinov has ordered that we report on the reliability 

of the N1-L3 project proceeding from the Apollo 13 experience. TsNIImash 

confirms that, given a similar situation, we would not be able to return our 

people to Earth. So, just order somebody to report to Ustinov?

“After the explosion of N-1 No. 5L, Politburo members reacted in different ways. Brezhnev asked: ‘Is everybody alive? Well, thank God! Although you 

have told us little to be glad about, think about what needs to be done next!’ 

Kosygin rebuked us: ‘So, without having studied the situation, you once again 

took such a risk? Why? Who is it that decides things over there? Look through 

the stage-by-stage development testing process one more time.’ I realize that 

Kosygin doesn’t determine these issues, but he needs to be reckoned with. The 

other Politburo members said nothing. Understand this, each one has his own 

adviser there too.

“The N1-L3M stirs up various opinions. If one insists on [liquid] hydrogen, 

then the issue of its storage needs to be resolved. We risk losing 1 cubic meter 

to evaporation every 24 hours. When I mentioned constructing two more 

launch sites for the L3M program, this made the people at Gosplan and the 

Ministry of Finance grin: ‘So you want to blow up two more launch sites?’ In 

my opinion, all one can stipulate in the five-year plan for the L3M is a draft 

plan. Is a new hydrogen-engine launch vehicle necessary? You must set a goal 

and explain why.

“My opinion: we need to plan for a landing in 1973—that gives us three 

to three-and-a-half years. Keldysh is demanding that the five-year plan include 

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N-1 flights to Mars and the development of new power-generation trends. 

Nuclear engines, high-capacity systems for using solar energy—this is very 

enticing, but where are we going to find the resources for all this?

“We have examined the problems of orbital stations once again. The 

DOS and Almaz are very similar stations in terms of design and purpose. If 

one listens to you, we need to include a multipurpose station on the basis of 

the N-1 in the plan.

“You yourself have brought forward the decision on the MOK-N1.39 This 

is a 70- to 80-ton orbital station for new space weaponry. What should we 

do with it? If we are to plan a launch, then in what year should it take place?

“There’s a VPK decision regarding that, and it’s already two years old. 

Before we start up a war in space, we need to catch up with the Americans on 

Earth. We still lag way behind in terms of the number of missiles in silos and 

on submarines. That’s where our main resources are going now. Gosplan and 

the Ministry of Finance will budget enormous amounts of funding for the 

next five-year plan to ensure the state’s military and technical power. They’re 

allocating 9.4 billion rubles for research and development activities plus 3.3 

billion just for major construction work, of which 2.1 billion rubles is just for 

experimental facilities. And this doesn’t even count the expenditures of the 

Ministry of Medium Machine Building. The atomic scientists have their own 

account, but nobody is aware of it.

“And now, according to our information, the U.S. will have a satellite just 

for television broadcasting by 1975.40 Why aren’t we working on this? You need 

to sort things out with orbital vehicles more quickly. I feel like we will soon be 

in a mess—7K-OK, 7K-VI, 7K-S, 7K-T—and what else is Vasiliy Pavlovich 

proposing for us?”41 Afanasyev paused, studying his notes. He found the sorest 

spot for the N-1: “Keldysh has once again reminded me about the firing tests. 

He has been informed that the Americans’ engines for the Saturn undergo firing 

tests three times, and after the burns in the stage, they go into flight without 

reassembly. And you and Kuznetsov don’t allow a single one. How do you want 

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me to respond to that? Dementyev promised me that Kuznetsov would also 

start to develop reusable engines. So, maybe we should wait? Should we not 

hurry with the N-1, go to the ‘brass’ and repent and request that we postpone 

the flight to the Moon? I’m just afraid that after that they will shut down the 

N-1 project completely. Mark my words.”

This calm conversation was one more way to contemplate the situation. 

At OKB-276, in July 1970, Kuznetsov had just begun developing reusable 

engines for the N-1 with a long service life. The work had been downplayed 

to avoid the question of what exactly are they going to do now.

In early 1970 it was still not too late to halt flight testing on the N-1 with 

the old engines. Three years later, new engines really did appear that were so 

reliable that a quarter century later the Americans were delighted with them 

and wanted to get some to install on their own launch vehicles.42 However, 

back then it seemed inconceivable that the N-1 flight tests with the new engines 

could be started up again before the end of 1973.

Neither Keldysh, nor Afanasyev, nor Mishin, nor Kuznetsov dared take 

a three-and-a-half-year break in flight testing. Only their joint action, coordinated with the military, brought about by the need to use new engines and 

promising proposals for the new L3M system, was able to stop the N-1 from 

creeping towards its ultimate demise. A certain herd instinct came over everyone. Everyone—from the assembler at the big MIK to the minister—took off 

like a stampede of horses, in which the ones at the back inevitably push those 

at the front into the abyss.

The people who created cosmonautics made up a very thin layer of Soviet 

society. If those people, scattered among various design bureaus and factories, 

main directorates and ministries, launch sites and even Central Committee 

departments, had gained some general understanding of the situation, an 

idea about the reality—if a general solidarity had formed that removed the 

psychological pressure from the higher political leadership—then the history 

of cosmonautics could have been different. The ideology of struggle “for the 

plan” permeated all forms of social life. Decrees of the Central Committee and 

Council of Ministers were not subject to criticism. Incidentally, this affected 

more than just cosmonautics. After the removal of censorship restrictions on 

publications on the history of missile technology and cosmonautics, when 

describing one development or another, they began to refer to the date and 

 42.

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number of the appropriate Central Committee and government decree. During 

the era of Stalin, a few days, or even hours, were spent on issuing decrees on 

the beginning of new projects. Stalin made a decision personally in his office 

after the individuals summoned there had made their report. If he approved, 

modified, added to, or rejected the document, it was, without exception, a 

final decision, which in a matter of hours was duplicated and distributed to 

those responsible for its execution.

The post-Stalinist state apparat [Party bureaucracy] gradually began to 

acquire certain traits of democratization. Khrushchev allowed significantly 

more free discussion. The fear that had muzzled it before disappeared. But 

a final decision could not be made without Khrushchev’s approval. As with 

Stalin, the state apparat did not risk passing off to him the necessary paper for 

his signature. Discussions ended only with his personal participation.

During the post-Khrushchev era, the bureaucratization of the apparat

intensified, and sometimes it took months for the text of a decree to be approved 

and for the necessary authorizations to be gathered. The issuance of each new 

decree was all the more significant an event.

Finally, it became clear that there was a need to produce a single decree 

and doctrine plan for the future development of cosmonautics. Confusion 

with the distribution of the priorities in the preceding decrees, disruption of 

deadlines for many of them, and the successes of the U.S. space program gave 

rise to the inevitability of developing a single policy defining the main goals 

and missions and precisely drawing up the priorities. Each chief designer had 

his own ideas, biases, and supporters in the Party and state apparat.

Decisions were drawn up not only in the calm of offices, but also at the 

launch sites, and matured in the intense discussions of expert commissions 

and in the councils of chief designers. Ultimately, however, a decree was implemented only after a report to the Politburo and after approval by the Central 

Committee apparat. Among the many routine minor and even erroneous 

decisions were those that defined the fate of space technology for many years.

The initiative for the issuance of one decree or another for the development of a new rocket-space system could originate “at the top” and descend 

“below” as a directive. In this case, ministries and chief designers transformed 

this initiative into a form suitable for execution, the bureaucracy imparted 

the necessary formalization to the text, and the latest law obligating everyone 

appeared. Such were the decrees obligating Korolev as chief designer to develop 

the intercontinental delivery vehicle for the hydrogen bomb in 1954, and the 

decree of 1964, which named him chief designer of the system for landing a 

Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon.

But, after Stalin’s time, an initiative “from below” could also be the source 

of decrees. A chief designer could propose developing something extremely 

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unconventional and effective that would guarantee the superiority of our science 

and technology, but only under the condition that a special decree of the Central 

Committee and Council of Ministers be issued. This was necessary for funding, for receiving various benefits, for enlisting the cooperation of factories, etc. 

General Designer Chelomey was the record holder for issuing proposals for an 

initiative “from below.” He was ordered to develop the UR-100 intercontinental 

ballistic missile and the heavy UR-500 only after he himself proposed them and 

prepared the draft decree. Next he submitted the IS satellite fighter [antisatellite 

system] and Almaz piloted orbital station for space reconnaissance.

All of these proposals “from below” gave rise to decrees, from the texts of 

which it was impossible for an uninformed individual to know whether an allseeing, all-understanding, wise [Communist Party] General Secretary himself 

had realized that this needed to be done or a general designer had “enticed” 

the nation’s top political leadership to assign this development project to him.

The competition between the schools of Korolev, Yangel, Chelomey, 

and Nadiradze existed under the conditions of a totalitarian state and in the 

absence of the notorious market economy. Subcontractors—the developers of 

systems for the top chiefs—also competed among themselves. The government 

encouraged such a rivalry within a scientific and technical context; it yielded 

positive results.

Not just our experience, but that of China, market-based U.S., Japan, 

Great Britain, and France shows the indispensable need for competent, firm 

government leadership and tight control over the development of large-scale, 

high-technology defense systems or systems of large-scale economic importance.

The activities of a chief designer’s deputies also included unofficial technical 

policy discussions of the most urgent problems in the offices of the Kremlin, 

Central Committee, and ministries. To begin with, one could count on hearing 

a litany of criticisms: how bad we all were, how many deadlines we had missed, 

that our minds were not focused, that our plans were obscure, that our designs 

lacked perspective and a sense of purpose, that our testing lacked discipline, 

that we didn’t insist on high enough standards from our subcontractors, and 

that all of our work, in general, was a mess.

If there weren’t any bystanders in their office, apparat workers allowed 

themselves to say what they really thought about the behavior of Chief Designer 

Mishin or General Designer Chelomey. Sometimes they hinted that they 

marveled at our long suffering with regard to the animosity between Mishin 

and Glushko. When these conversations were irritating, I played the fool and 

retorted: “Why do you criticize them behind their backs? You’re the authority; 

tell somebody higher up to set things right if you know everything.”

They explained to me and, as I understood, to other deputies, that “You 

should set things right in your own house on your own. We can only help. The 

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building superintendent makes sure that the garbage chute is working, but the 

mistress of the house is supposed to clean up the apartment.”

On the one hand, visiting the offices of high-ranking bureaucrats gratifies 

one’s sense of vanity—“I am among a small group of people who are invited 

here”—but on the other hand, you experience a certain discomfort from the 

awareness of your own second-class standing compared with the elite who sit 

here. The apparat recognizes your talent and high academic and other titles 

but lets you know, even during the most cordial meeting, that it, the apparat, 

nevertheless stands over you.

277

Chapter 13

Preparing for the Launch of DOS

The new year of 1971 brought a profusion of conferences where the topic 

of discussion was how to develop cosmonautics. A conference was prepared in 

the Central Committee on the prospects for orbital stations and the status of 

operations on the N-1. We gathered preliminarily in Mishin’s office to work 

out the platform from which we should proceed. During the “rehearsal” I 

attempted to articulate some ideas, which had taken about 30 minutes, when 

Mishin interrupted me: “You’re saying a lot of valid things, but this is for 

students. It’s pointless to tell Ustinov these truths. Uncle Mitya isn’t the same 

now as he was before.”

What did I manage to say?

Here is what I have saved in a notebook:

For more than a year we have been working on developing the first 

Long-Duration Orbital Stations. DOS-1 will soon be delivered to 

the launch site; DOS-2 will arrive at the KIS [monitoring and test 

facility] to undergo factory tests. More than a year of work experience makes it possible to make a series of important conclusions and 

proposals. After completing work on DOS No. 1 and No. 2, we must 

concentrate our efforts on the next, more advanced generation of 

stations. In collaboration with the TsKBM branch [at Fili], Iosifyan’s 

institute, NITsEVT, the microelectronics center in Zelenograd, 

academic science, military institutes, and all the other cooperative 

networks, we must develop a station that can carry out the primary 

missions of the Almaz and, at the same time, perform operations in 

the interests of fundamental science and the national economy. The 

first requirement: performance capability in space for at least one 

year, low propellant consumption with precise orientation—5 to 10 

angular minutes in the orbital system and 1 to 2 angular seconds 

when performing a precise celestial orientation.

 Thanks to its non-gimbaled precise orientation system and superprecise stabilization of scientific instrumentation, this station will 

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be able to perform a broad range of scientific missions. If we create 

such a station [sometime] in 1973 or 1974, it will be used to test 

out the main systems of the future MKBS in space.

 The MKBS should be planned for a 1975 to 1976 [timeframe]. 

Over the course of 1971, we must figure out what we want from the 

MKBS. DOS No. 1, No. 2, and then No. 3 will provide a wealth 

of experience. A cardinal issue will be the problem of artificial gravity. For the time being, it can be asserted that if a human being 

maintains his or her ability to perform in weightlessness for 20 to 

30 days, then this is sufficient to ensure the station’s performance 

capability. We need to introduce crew turnover. With good training 

on Earth, 90 percent of the tasks can be performed automatically 

or semiautomatically. I do not see defense missions that require the 

permanent presence of a human being in orbit.

 Science missions are another matter. The insertion into space of a 

large, well-equipped laboratory with highly skilled research scientists 

could lead to fundamental discoveries that will ensure the superiority 

of our science and, possibly, lead to far-reaching ramifications for 

the use of space. It is difficult in our time to be a prophet of scientific 

discoveries. However, the experience of the history of science teaches 

that underestimating the potential for the rapid practical use of the 

results of fundamental research can have tragic consequences.

 In 1933, the father of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford, ridiculed the idea of the practical use of nuclear energy.1

 This dampened 

the enthusiasm of many scientists. But just seven years later in his 

famous letter to Roosevelt, Einstein demanded that practical research 

begin immediately on a broad scale to develop an atomic bomb. 

The world was saved only because scientists who had experimentally 

proven the potential for the occurrence of a chain reaction had 

escaped from fascist Germany, Italy, and Hungary.

 The argument about the role or advantages of a human being 

versus a machine in space is often of a subjective or scholastic nature. 

It is much less expensive to deliver machines on lunar rovers to the 

Moon. But even Luna-16, successfully repeated three times, was 

not capable of providing that information and producing those 

 1. Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) was the New Zealand–born British chemist and 

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observations that enriched humankind after six astronauts returned 

from the Moon.2

 The high-priority political factor is also very great. A human 

being must become acclimated and learn to exist in space, in an 

environment that is new. No machines could replace people on the 

first North Pole 1 station in 1937.3

 After the Great Patriotic War 

there were no more skeptics regarding Arctic exploration. Now we 

are proud of our achievements in this field.

 We also need to solve the problem of artificial gravity. It is much 

more beneficial to take advantage of a natural satellite—the Moon 

and its natural gravity. It makes more sense to conduct long-term 

studies there over a broad range of military and scientific problems 

rather than wracking our brains over artificial gravity designs on 

the MKBS. We have accumulated our own wealth of experience, 

but we must not ignore the Americans’ experience either. It is time 

to return to ideas of long-duration lunar bases. This mission was 

assigned back during Korolev’s time and written in decrees by the 

Central Committee and Council of Ministers.

 Researchers can be sent to a lunar base for two or three months, 

and perhaps even for a half year. This idea is completely realistic 

for the state-of-the-art level of technology. The main difficulty, most 

likely, is not in the development of the base itself, but in the transport 

system and, first and foremost, a reliable launch vehicle.

 But what should we do on the Moon before that?

 As early as 1972 we need to combine the L3 program with the 

Lunokhod programs and create a “Lunar Orbital Station–Lunar 

Vehicle–Lunokhods” project. To do this, it will be necessary to overcome a psychological barrier and combine various programs [and] 

various chiefs, as we did when we combined the DOS, Almaz, and 

Soyuz programs.

 We can begin with unpiloted programs. This is even simpler 

and less expensive than landing a single cosmonaut on the Moon 

for 5 or 6 hours, as some are demanding, citing the old Central 

Committee decree.

 2. 

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 Do we need to rush to land a cosmonaut on the Moon? If we fail 

When I reread my speech out loud, I understood that in the best case, 

even if I read it as fast as I possibly could, it would take me 40 minutes. This 

was completely unrealistic. Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to redo it and shorten 

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it. I decided to play it by ear. I didn’t manage to say everything; my full load 

for the program speech simply went unused.

Ustinov once again called a conference in his office in the Central 

Committee building on 15 February [1971]. The office was filled to capacity. 

Ustinov announced that we had gathered to review the status of operations on 

the DOS and lunar landing expedition. He had determined in advance that 

he would give the floor for the report to the minister, rather than to the chief 

designer of the DOS (for the time being officially there was none), to avoid 

jealousy between Mishin and Chelomey, so as not to preordain which of them 

would be the chief designer.

Afanasyev reported in a calm and serious tone: “Work at the factory on 

the first DOS has been completed. We are shipping it to the launch site, but 

there are still a number of issues. First, the quality is not completely satisfactory. 

Second, experimental work has not been completed. To date, the life-support 

system has not been completely debugged and vibration testing has not been 

completed on the effectors system and thermal systems. At the end of March, 

upon completion of the experiments, we have the opportunity to launch station No. 121. Station No. 122 will be transferred to the KIS in Podlipki. The 

documentation for DOSes No. 3 and No. 4 will come out in February—this 

is according to schedule, but actually we expect it in April or May. I must say 

that DOSes No. 3 and No. 4 are not updated stations as the designers had 

explained to us earlier, but new ones. No. 5 and No. 6 are already in the design 

process. These are absolutely brand-new stations.”

After mentioning the brand-new stations, Afanasyev shifted the course of 

the conference to the chief designers.

Here Ustinov said: “The briefing paper prepared for our conference mentions dates from the decree of 9 February 1970. For No. 1 and No. 2 this is 

the fourth quarter of 1970, and for No. 3 and No. 4 it’s the third quarter of 

1971. During the period from 1971 through 1975, it proposes that two stations 

be launched each year. In my opinion, the state of affairs is out-and-out bad, 

out-and-out abnormal. I thought that we would settle on one single model 

of station and would duplicate it. But you want to rework and change the 

documentation so that it’s always in a state of developmental testing. When 

will it be time to fly and carry out missions? Don’t forget that aside from the 

DOSes we really don’t have anything else up our sleeves. Until the N1-L3 and 

MKBS, we have to tide ourselves over with just the DOS program.”

Mishin couldn’t stand it. He could not conceal the fact that he didn’t support all of this “DOS monkey business.”

“Work on DOSes No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 is really going badly. ZIKh 

cannot carry on this many new, sophisticated spacecraft projects simultaneously, 

and then Almaz to boot. We shouldn’t pretend that we don’t understand this. 

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We still don’t have VPK documents regulating the deliveries for DOSes No. 3 

and No. 4. ZIKh is occupied with Almaz, too. But the concept of the Almaz 

project as such is risky. We need to combine the DOS and Almaz missions 

and make a DOS-A.”4

Mishin’s speech provoked quite a stir. Ustinov, trying to calm the crowd, 

proposed: “Let’s define our position, and you, here in attendance, tell us what 

to do after DOSes No. 1 and No. 2. Perhaps DOS-A right off the bat? Or the 

Multipurpose Space Base/Station (MKBS), and maybe continue a series of 

continuously modifiable DOSes? Precisely define your stands. Mishin, what 

do you propose?”

“DOS-A plus the MKBS.”

“Chertok?”

“DOS-A, and then give it some more thought.”

“Bushuyev?”

“Also DOS-A and then decide.”

“Feoktistov?”

“DOS-A isn’t necessary. The MKBS straight away.”

“Bugayskiy?”

“DOS-A. I don’t know what the MKBS is.”5

Keldysh and Smirnov both said that they didn’t know why DOS-A was 

necessary. It was better to build the MKBS.

When it was his turn, Mozzhorin responded as was befitting the director 

of a head institute: “We aren’t going to decide an issue like this by voting. This 

requires serious studies. We are involved with that now.”

ZIKh Director Ryzhikh evaded a direct answer but said that DOSes No. 

3 and No. 4 were 95 percent new vehicles and very significant in terms of 

 4. The rather confusing series of pronouncements from various luminaries at this meet

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Preparing for the Launch of DOS

technology.6 No more than 40 percent of the hull parts would be retained, 

and 10 percent of the internal gear.

“Nevertheless, if I were given drawings for DOS No. 3,” he declared, “we 

would make the vehicle this year. We need to consult and determine where we 

stand with the Almaz and the Transport Supply Vehicle. It’s difficult to digest 

the DOS and Almaz documentation together at workstations. The factory is 

in a very difficult position, but we are trying to do both jobs. However, this 

combination does not bode well.”

Here, Barmin broke in: “We need to modify the launch facility for DOS 

No. 4. This means 3.5 million rubles for cryogenic technology. We need to 

resolve issues taking into consideration the actual situation. The Almaz will 

appear before DOS-A. The preferred scenario is DOSes No. 1, No. 2, No. 

3, No. 4, DOS-A, and then the MKBS. Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov, 

like a snipe away from his own bog, has delivered a verdict on the Almaz in 

advance. But at Site No. 92 we are already completing the construction of 

a luxurious three-story bunker for the Almaz. Not even Hitler had one like 

this. If DOS-A is more promising than Almaz, then we have an issue and it 

needs to be examined seriously. Almaz consists of two vehicles.7

 We need to 

compare two conceptual chains: one consisting only of DOSes, the other of 

DOSes and Almazes.”

“I am not a snipe,” Feoktistov said indignantly, “and you forget that all 

the Almaz missions can be entrusted to the MKBS.”

“And what does the Ministry of Defense think about this?” asked Ustinov.

Karas answered, “I report that the KIK and launch site are ready to work 

with DOS. However, one needs to take into consideration that we are constantly refitting the launch sites at the request of the designers. We don’t have 

any materials for DOS-A and we can’t give an assessment. It is clear that Almaz 

and DOS-A cannot be pulled off at the same time. In terms of timeframes, 

certainly the Almaz will appear earlier. We need to concentrate all our efforts 

on the MKBS—take the bull by the horns right away. Until we have the 

MKBS, the Almaz should fly: it has everything conceived for our military 

requirements. The MKBS is good for wartime, but we need the Almaz before 

that. Everything must be explored and researched. We will test the role of a 

human being on the Almaz. This role cannot be downplayed. A direct report 

 6. Mikhail Ivanovich Ryzhikh (1910–1982) served as director of the M. V. Khrunichev 

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from space, having screened out superfluous information, an assessment of 

the situation—that is work for a human being.”

Tsarev from the VPK administration also spoke out against DOS-A: “We’re 

getting proposals for five modifications in a single Almaz hull—five control 

systems!8

 That’s outrageous! Our general line must be the MKBS.”

Tyulin said, “DOSes No. 3 and No. 4 need to be completed—there is 

surplus production stock—otherwise, it will be a fiasco. As for DOSes No. 5 

and No. 6 or DOS-A, this matter has not been studied sufficiently. The materials won’t be ready until May, and the MKBS hasn’t been studied in depth at 

all. There’s a lot of science fiction surrounding that. I think that when we have 

materials to compare, then we will decide the matter in favor of the MKBS. 

In the American materials, the issue of the MKBS is disputed. Above all, we 

need to delineate a set of missions and see how to get them resolved. We must 

study the matter of transport vehicles. To date, no one is doing anything on 

reusable transport vehicles. We need to quickly organize research activities 

under the leadership of TsNIImash and make TsAGI and NIIAP work.9 We 

won’t solve this problem without the MAP.”

Keldysh listened to everyone without interrupting and seemed to be dozing. 

Finally he decided that it was time to put an end to the arguments, and he 

spoke so long and in such detail that it became clear: when he was “half asleep” 

he was listening, remembering, and processing all the speeches.

“We’re in a critical situation with the orbital stations. They ‘loaded’ the 

Almaz about five years ago. Then they demanded that it be split into phase 

one and phase two. Today we have six different orbital stations—phase-one 

Almaz, phase-two Almaz, DOSes No. 1 and No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4, DOS-A, 

and the MKBS. It is unrealistic to let such a number of different stations pass 

through development, factory, and flight tests. DOS-A appeared unexpectedly. 

We arranged with [VPK Chairman] Leonid Vasilyevich [Smirnov] not to make 

DOSes No. 5 and No. 6 at all. Now this matter is up for review again. DOSes 

No. 3 and No. 4 are sufficient for us in 1973.

“Why is DOS-A necessary? If you want to replace the Almaz, then go 

ahead and make DOS-A.

“Our life is full of contradictions. It was said that the MKBS would appear 

in 1973. But the control system can’t be finished within that timeframe. Now 

they claim that supposedly it can be. They say that DOS-A has the very same 

 8. Aleksandr Ivanovich Tsarev served as deputy chairman of the Military-Industrial 

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system. The deadlines for DOS-A and MKBS are very close. We imagine the 

MKBS as an experimental station. Chertok told me that he wanted to test out 

its systems on the DOS-A. Our positions must be clearly delineated.”

“The Americans are developing automatic systems for all of the service systems. An orbital station is an experimental laboratory. In this sense, it must be 

very flexible and large. We can focus on the MKBS if it will be ready in 1973. 

Let’s go for it. But it seems to me that it’s unrealistic. I am not repudiating Almaz, 

but the two Almaz phases don’t make sense to me. If the military thinks that they 

need the Almaz as an intelligence-gathering tool, then why is some half-hearted 

system necessary? We need to make one habitable intelligence-gathering station. 

We are not coordinating the work of the designers, and each one does his or her 

own thing, wants only to push through his or her own work at any cost. This beats 

us up terribly. I don’t want to make the final decision. I don’t hide the fact that I 

am inclined toward Feoktistov’s point of view: DOSes No. 1 and No. 2, No. 3 

and No. 4, and right away the MKBS. But don’t think that we can work miracles 

with the MKBS. We need to draw up a joint Central Committee and VPK report 

on habitable stations, otherwise every two weeks new viewpoints will emerge.”

After Ustinov and Keldysh had the floor, it was difficult to expect anything 

different from Leonid Smirnov’s turn. Officially, the VPK was the organization 

primarily responsible for formulating the nation’s space plans. Smirnov said, “I 

can’t understand why we are having these arguments. We defined the line we 

would follow when we put together the five-year plan. Operations on DOSes 

No. 1 and No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 must be carried out without any wavering 

or doubt and in full force. The five-year plan calls for two DOSes per year. 

Series production is supposed to be set up on the basis of DOSes No. 3 and 

No. 4. Let’s carry out this clear-cut line for the DOSes to the end.

“In my opinion, this MKBS is a completely new matter. Is it worth it to 

make a draft plan? Someone said earlier that the MKBS is the main line of the 

five-year plan. Now we are revising that. DOS-A should not be made either 

instead of or as a substitute. Which path to the MKBS is shorter? The path 

through DOS-A to MKBS is a long way off. For the time being, let’s firmly 

resolve to make DOSes No. 1 and No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4. Perhaps at midyear, when we gain experience from the flight of DOS No. 1, the situation 

will become clearer. Then we will be able to meet again and, if necessary, we 

will reconsider the decisions.”

Serbin had the opportunity to break his silence. An ardent supporter of 

the Almaz, he hadn’t wanted to speak at such a blatantly pro-DOS meeting. 

Nevertheless, he did, although, aside from the usual criticism regarding the 

failure to fulfill the previous Central Committee decisions, he said nothing new.

“We need to finally bring order into this mishmash. We have a Central 

Committee decision, but the MOM allows willfulness. OKB-1 and Comrade 

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Mishin are involved in all sorts of hodgepodge to cover up their own inactivity. A 

totally half-baked, totally unprepared issue is passed on to the level of the Central 

Committee in order to explain why the deadlines have been missed for DOSes 

No. 3 and No. 4. Such a method is unacceptable. New ideas were hatched over 

two or three days and rushed over here to wreak havoc. This is inflicting a great 

deal of damage on our work. We need to seriously sort things out with Almaz. 

Are two phases necessary there? For the DOSes they’re proposing that we have 

three phases—No. 1 and No. 2, then No. 3 and No. 4, and DOS-A as a special 

treat. All of this is being dumped on ZIKh. When will the minister sort out the 

mess with the workload at ZIKh? Almaz and DOS will interfere with each other 

there. To date there are no proposals from the MOM. A small amount of time 

needs to be set aside to sort out the mess and report to the Central Committee. 

We need to demand documents from Mishin, not his word.”

It was no picnic for Mishin to speak after being accused of inactivity and 

“all sorts of hodgepodge.” Especially since the majority of participants knew 

about his negative attitude toward our DOS initiative.

“I disagree with the accusation of inactivity. Actually, the first orbital station 

was produced within an exceptionally short period of time. This is a highly 

sophisticated spacecraft with 980 instruments installed on it, with more than 

1,000 cables running through it, which are connected among themselves and 

with instruments using 4,000 connectors. If you were to stretch out all the 

wires in a single strand the total length would exceed 350 kilometers. The onboard cable network alone weighs 1,300 kilograms. It is an incredibly difficult 

task to manufacture, assemble, debug, and test all of this within the timeframe 

known to all of you. But the people have been working and continue to work 

with exceptional enthusiasm, and you mustn’t make any claims against them. 

Developing spacecraft of this degree of complexity within such a timeframe is 

also an exceptional task because their reliability needs to be ensured. That is 

why I don’t think the two-series Almaz and DOS stream should be developed 

simultaneously. We should limit the number of DOSes to the first four and 

then curtail their further production. All the missions that we are assigning to 

the DOSes should be entrusted to the Almaz. It should perform both military 

and economic missions. For our part, we are ready to provide 7K-T transport 

vehicles for the Almaz and then replace them with the 7K-S, which are being 

developed per the military operational requirements of the Ministry of Defense.

“For us at TsKBEM, the main mission should be MOK—the Multipurpose 

Orbital Complex—and its main component, the MKBS. The launch vehicle for 

the MKBS and for the lunar mission is where we need to concentrate our efforts. 

We mustn’t forget that the lunar vehicles are a much more crucial project than the 

DOSes. We have this summer ahead of us to conduct the third N-1 launch. If all 

goes well, then we’ll throw all our efforts at the Moon. Please keep that in mind.”

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After Mishin’s speech the discussion threatened to go into a second round. 

Ustinov decided that it was time to move along to issuing position papers and 

ending the haphazard conversations.

“We mustn’t rely on good intentions, but rather proceed from the situation and prospects that have developed. The Almazes are already two years 

behind schedule. This is very bad. However much we have criticized the 

developers, the DOS is a go. The DOS is on its way! That’s clear to everybody. Four DOSes are scheduled; we need to schedule more, two per year. 

These DOSes can provide a lot. We have no right to treat them like routine 

work. Rather than a phaseout plan, we need to draw up a plan for the 

development and support of these operations. The work is complicated, I 

agree, but we must not completely ignore the deadlines; also unacceptable 

is the superficial attitude toward the developmental testing of systems and 

subsystems. I believe that we have an obligation to produce DOSes, and the 

Almaz, and the MKBS.

“It will be necessary to bring in other organizations, new forces, but under 

no circumstances should we change the old teams. Don’t forget that there is 

one more very complex problem: a reusable spacecraft. We must not view it as 

some additional burden. Meanwhile, we have a very limited number of people 

working on these vehicles. But, after all, a problem like this won’t be solved 

in one or two years. Then we might lose our priority status. Meanwhile, we 

are still talking, and the Americans are already acting. Our design bureaus are 

concealing their projects from one another more stringently than they would 

from foreign spies. We need to organize an active exchange of information and 

experience on a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ basis. If we all believe 

that the MKBS is necessary, then why are we dragging our feet?

“Immediately prepare a decree in which everything is spelled out in hard 

and fast specifics. This same decree should also cover the reusable shuttle 

spacecraft. But you need to show the prospects for the MKBS.

“It seems to me that you talk about it a lot, but you still haven’t thought 

everything through yet. Before you try to sell us on it, you yourself must have 

an appreciation for its prospects. It’s time to stop arguing and assess the role 

of a human being. We have to stop swinging from one extreme to the other: 

either a human being decides everything or a machine decides everything. 

We need to take advantage of the capabilities of both a human being and a 

machine to the maximum extent. A human being isn’t needed to compete with 

a machine when it comes to pushing buttons, but for research and discoveries, 

where his heuristic capabilities and mental reserves are needed. We are not yet 

using these reserves in space.

“We are going to launch the first DOS in March. We need to get under 

way with the second right away and breathe life into the third and fourth. This 

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is clear, and there will be no more discussions on this matter. We’re going to 

ask a lot of tough questions regarding the disruption of deadlines.

“Now, regarding the N-1. Today we have no more time for a thorough discussion. In addition to the lunar expedition, we also intend to insert the MKBS on 

this launch vehicle. I have gotten the impression that we’re arguing and raising a 

ruckus here, and the N-1 is floating along, all by itself. The situation with the N-1 

couldn’t be worse, couldn’t be more difficult. But instead of dealing with the N-1 

to the full extent of our power, we’re creating a sort of a vacuum around it. Keep 

in mind: you need to immediately prepare a decree describing the prospects for 

the DOSes and MKBS, and for the N-1 we will soon begin to mete out severe 

punishment for the complete collapse of not just the lunar program, but also of 

all of the projects associated with this launch vehicle.

“I thank you all. I hope that our next meetings will be more productive.”

The meeting had lasted 4 hours. We stepped out onto Staraya ploshchad

(Old Square), which was now bathed in twilight, and hunted for the cars waiting for us. Bushuyev, Okhapkin, and I were about to get into our car, when 

Mishin came up to us and said: “It’s all your fault! Mixing everything together 

in one pile. But just you wait, soon we’ll unscramble it all!”

Rumors about the historic meeting (for DOSes) in the Central 

Committee quickly spread throughout all the design bureaus and factories, 

MOM, and related ministries. According to the law of “conservation of attention,” 

midlevel administrators had now weakened their attention with regard to N1-L3.

On our staff, almost all the leading specialists knew about Mishin’s negative attitude toward the DOS project. Nevertheless, the wave of enthusiasm 

for the development of the first DOSes did not decline. The main focus of 

work—preparing our first orbital station for launch—shifted in March from 

ZIKh and ZEM to the engineering facility at Site No. 2 in Baykonur, which we 

all stubbornly continued to refer to as the firing range. We were preparing the 

DOS and the piloted transport vehicle 7K-T No. 31, or Soyuz-10, at the same 

time. A VPK meeting approved the first crew of the orbital station—Vladimir 

Shatalov, Aleksey Yeliseyev, and Nikolay Rukavishnikov. None of us doubted 

their competence in the least.

Testing of DOS No. 1 began at Site No. 2 in the new assembly and testing 

building, which, unlike the old facility, was called the Assembly and Testing 

Building for Spacecraft (MIK KO).10 As before, launch vehicles and transport 

vehicles were prepared in the old MIK.

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From the author’s archives.

Leading managers of TsKBEM are shown here during the annual May Day 

parade at Kaliningrad. From left to right are B. Ye. Chertok, A. P. Abramov, 

V. D. Vachnadze, A. A. Zuyev, V. P. Mishin, G. V. Sovkov, V. M. Klyucharev, A. P. 

Tishkin, and I. B. Khazanov.

Yuriy Semyonov, lead designer for the DOSes, set up strict control to 

eliminate all the glitches that had occurred during tests on DOS No. 1 and 

that had begun once again to appear at the KIS, where DOS No. 2 had been 

delivered. At operational meetings, when the conversation drifted to shortages 

and delays in deliveries, he insisted on precise record keeping and accountability 

for any minutiae “down to the last nail!” Even when there were hundreds of 

such “nails,” it was necessary to deal with each one individually. On Bugayskiy’s 

side, the lead designer was Vladimir Pallo.11 Usually, for the sake of brevity, 

among ourselves we referred to an organization using the chief’s last name or 

its location. Thus, a specific jargon developed:

TsKBEM was called Podlipki or Mishin;

TsKBM was called Reutov or Chelomey;

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The TsKBM branch was called Fili or Bugayskiy;

M. V. Khrunichev Factory was called ZIKh, Fili, or Ryzhikh;

ZEM was called Podlipki or Klyucharev.

In conversations one of the possible names was used, while in correspondence the enterprises were usually concealed behind a “post box” number. 

Thus, for example, TsKBEM was called p/ya V-2572.12

After the meeting in the Central Committee I found some time and 

assembled my comrades. Despite the fact that it wasn’t proper to talk openly 

about such meetings “at the very top,” I felt that my comrades at work should 

receive their information from a primary source rather than have to resort 

to rumors. When I had finished my 1-hour story about the 4-hour meeting, 

Yurasov commented: “The steeds, the men all disassembled.”13

“And what’s Lermontov’s next line?” asked someone.

“And cannon volleys’ sound resembled / a moaning o’er the land....”

“That’s it—that’s what I was trying to remember. Only we’re going to be 

the ones moaning,” quipped the usually circumspect Sosnovik.

None of those gathered could have been accused of skepticism or indifference. They greeted success with unconcealed joy, and they never gave up when 

faced with failure. Wrapping things up, I said, “Each of us needs to distribute 

his efforts carefully in order to ensure failure-free operation at the firing range 

while preparing the first DOS, and we must not allow work to be disrupted 

at the factories on the second DOS and subsequent spacecraft.”

“But why aren’t you saying anything about N1-L3?” asked Zverev. “Did 

the Central Committee decide not to fret any more after Apollo 14?”14 “We’re 

running at full speed to upgrade the KORD system series of instruments at 

the instrumentation factory of an outsider ministry. These aren’t toys.” The 

department provided documentation and supervised the production of KORD 

system instruments for the N-1 at the Zagorsk Optical Mechanical Factory 

(ZOMZ). ZOMZ supplied 50 sophisticated electronic instruments for each 

N-1 and the backup. The Ministry of the Defense Industry, which was in 

charge of ZOMZ, in order to give tit for tat, approved a plan for it until the 

end of 1971. This plan provided N-1 launch vehicles up to and including 

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No. 10 with these instruments. Similar fabricated stock was also available at 

other series-production factories.

Chizhikov, who had similar troubles at the Ufa and Kiev instrumentbuilding factories, chimed in to support Zverev by noting, “Series production factories don’t understand our jokes.” He added, “Bashkin and Zvorykin 

are changing their rendezvous-control, angular rate sensor, and docking and 

orientation engine ignitions again. We’ve already lost count of the changes. 

Let them go over to the factories themselves; otherwise they leave for the 

firing range, while we don’t know how to look the workers in the eye. We’re 

modifying and resoldering a single instrument 20 times, so that the military 

rep refuses to accept it. They’re continuously resoldering in Karpov’s electrical 

‘boxes’ too. When is this going to end?”

Similar instances of “score settling,” sometimes very contentious ones, 

broke out when concept developers and designers, who converted an idea into 

an electrical circuit in a working diagram for production, gathered together 

in my office. After heated conversations, we usually made decisions regarding 

the modification methods; we were careful in the wording of the reasons for 

the changes so that “dirty laundry” from our instrument department would 

not be aired in front of the “powers that be,” especially the Party committees.

These are just a few episodes from a succession of events, which to a 

great extent determined the path that our cosmonautics would take from this 

point onward.

On the clear, warm morning of 5 April 1971, at 0730 hours, Bushuyev 

and I left Academician Korolev Street and drove to our company airport, 

Vnukovo-3. By a florist shop on Prospekt Mira we picked up Yevgeniy Yurevich, 

who had just arrived from Leningrad. He dragged a green box filled with spare 

instruments for the emergency x-ray system (ARS) over to our car from the 

taxi.15 This brand new x-ray system was supposed to assist the cosmonauts with 

controlling the active vehicle during manual rendezvous. In this case, the x 

rays were not analytical tools, but rather they served to measure the relative 

position parameters during the final approach segment.

Almost all the chiefs who were supposed to attend the State Commission 

meeting had gathered at the airfield service building. Our Il-18 took off at 

0910 hours. Kerimov, Bushuyev, Shcheulov, Bugayskiy, Severin, and I were 

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sitting in the forward cabin.16 Yurevich settled into the main cabin so that he 

could “catch up on his sleep away from the bosses.” Now one could relax and 

enjoy the view of the ground from a cloudless sky. Below was a typical April 

scene—black fields with white patches of snow that hadn’t melted yet running 

off into the hollows and ravines. Dirty snow could be seen between the bare 

trees of the black forest. For some reason there was a lot more snow in the 

steppes beyond the Urals than in the area surrounding Moscow.

Squadron Commander Khvastunov had instituted a mandatory ritual for 

the passengers in the forward cabin: tea and cookies. After 3 hours of flight 

everyone had their noses pressed up against the windows to admire the Aral Sea. 

The glare from the bright sun on the white ice in the inlets was blinding. The 

ice had already vanished from the middle of the sea. The bright azure surface 

of the open water was calm. Murky streams flowed into this pure blueness in 

the delta of the Syrdarya River.

I tore my fellow travelers away 

from their gazing at the Aral, which 

was then still alive and filled with 

water, in order to show them the 

TASS alert about the American 

large orbital station project.17 The 

Americans had been conducting 

design work for more than two 

years, having drawn many private 

companies into it in addition to 

NASA’s Centers, but they weren’t 

rushing to implement it. They felt 

that the idea needed to undergo 

comprehensive scientific and design 

evaluation before a decision would 

From the author’s archives.

Soyuz-18 cosmonaut Vitaliy 

Sevastyanov signed this photo on 

board the Salyut-4 station as a gift to 

Chertok in 1975.

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be made to build the station. According to the comments of American scientists, all the submitted designs required very large financial investments and 

there was still much about them that remained unclear. Neither the military, 

nor the scientists, nor the economists were able to make convincing arguments 

proving the necessity for creating the large station.

Severin commented on my report: “We got ahead of the Americans because 

they are always unclear about something. Essentially, everything should be clear 

to us. But if it isn’t, we receive explanatory instructions right away.”

Everyone smiled knowingly.

In Tyuratam our airplane very softly “brushed” the surface of the landing 

strip. At the airfield I recalled Leonid Voskresenskiy’s words; when the two of 

us used to land at the firing range he would usually say, “We’re home.” I had 

not been here, “home,” since the times of preparing Soyuz-9 for the recordsetting flight of Andriyan Nikolayev and Vitaliy Sevastyanov.18

Yevgeniy Shabarov was one of 

Korolev’s (and later, Mishin’s) leading 

deputies. He was responsible for 

flight-testing various rockets and 

spacecraft designed by TsKBEM.

From the author’s archives.

On 6 April, a meeting of the 

technical management was held 

to discuss the results of preparing 

DOS No. 1, which was officially 

called 17K No. 121, and vehicles 

11F615A8 Nos. 31 and 32, or, 

using their other designation, 

7K-T No. 31 and 7K-T No. 32; 

for open publications, they were 

called Soyuz-10 and Soyuz-11. 

Shabarov opened and conducted 

the meeting. Lead designers Yuriy 

Semyonov (from Podlipki) and Vladimir Pallo (from Fili) reported on the 

progress of the preparation of all three vehicles. The deputy chief of the 

First Directorate, Colonel Vladimir Bululukov, commented on behalf of 

the military installation.

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At the firing range, Anatoliy Kirillov had been in charge of the First 

(Korolevian) Directorate for nine years after the death of Yevgeniy Ostashev. 

In 1967, he was transferred to Site No. 10 as the deputy to firing range chief 

Aleksandr Kurushin, and soon thereafter he was promoted to the rank of major 

general. Kirillov’s former deputy, Colonel Vladimir Patrushev, became chief 

of the First Directorate, and Colonel Vladimir Bululukov became his deputy. 

In 1975, Patrushev was transferred to GUKOS and Bululukov became chief 

of the First Directorate.

They had already investigated 182 glitches in the DOS. Of those, 10 were 

allowed, 20 were still in the process of being eliminated, and the rest were 

dealt with through modifications or the replacement of instruments. By and 

large, everything was more or less satisfactory. In 24 hours the DOS could 

be cleared for fueling. Allowing for its transport to the second engineering 

facility for integration with the launch vehicle, we could draw up a schedule 

of subsequent operations aiming for launch on 19 April 1971. Soyuz vehicles 

No. 31 and No. 32 were in good condition. No. 31 could be handed over to 

be fueled so that on the DOS launch day it would be mated with the launch 

vehicle and ready for launch on 22 April.

Yuriy Semyonov and Vladimir Pallo had a bone to pick with the subcontractors, who were dragging out the release of the final reports. Even until the 

early 1990s, drawing up the reports in a timely manner before the launch of 

any spacecraft remained an extremely acute problem. The lead designers of 

the head organizations “pried out” flight clearance reports from each program 

participant literally as if they were nails. If this “nail” produced a glitch during 

the preparation process at the factory or at the firing range, the corresponding 

chief designer and the manufacturing plant had to jointly submit a new finding 

coordinated with the military representatives—for the nth time confirming 

clearance for flight and explaining the reasons for the glitch and describing 

the actions taken to eliminate it.19

After the official portion of the meeting we spent a long time deciding 

which of the glitches warranted a report to the State Commission.

On 9 April 1971, Kerim Kerimov opened a session of the State Commission. 

Bululukov took the floor first to report about the test results on station 17K. 

Based on the number of glitches, our orientation and motion control system 

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From the author’s archives.

A cutout of the DOS-1 station with the 7K-T variant of the Soyuz docked on the 

left. The legend is 1) Antennas of the radar approach system, 2) Solar panels, 

3) Antennas of the radio-telemetry system, 4) Cosmonauts’ sight, 5) Orion solar 

telescope, 6) Movie camera, 7) Oxygen regeneration unit, 8) Camera, 9) Equipment 

for biological research, 10) Refrigerator for food, 11) Sleeping station, 12) Tanks 

for water support system, 13) Waste collections, 14) Attitude-control system 

engines, 15) Propellant tanks, 16) Hygiene-sanitation station, 17) Micrometeoroid 

sensor, 18) Treadmill, 19) Work table, and 20) Central control station.

(SOUD) had taken the lead.20 The remote radio communications system 

(DRS) was in second place.21

The entire cycle at Site No. 2 took 36 days. The first instrument to be 

replaced was the Salyut computer, which was supposed to be used for experiments on navigation. In all, 205 glitches were tallied up, of which 27 were 

related to ground testing equipment, 145 were corrected, and the rest were 

allowed. After Bululukov’s report, in which he dwelled in detail on previously 

reconciled glitches, the representatives responsible for developers’ systems began 

to give their presentations. Bashkin was the first to speak. He was responsible 

for the SOUD. Breaking into a smile, Mnatsakanyan reported that this time 

there were no glitches associated with the Igla system.

“Impossible!” shouted someone from his seat, which set the room laughing.

Georgiy Geondzhan accounted for the instruments of Viktor Kuznetsov’s 

company. For some reason the solar sensor was interfering with the string 

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accelerometer. They decided not to activate them at the same time and “to 

find the cause and eliminate it” beginning with DOS No. 2. Anatoliy Azarov 

cheerfully reported that all the optical sensors had been cleared without any 

anomalies observed.

“And if they give somebody trouble, then it’s your fault that you didn’t 

develop elementary protection against interference.”

Yevgeniy Yurevich attempted to speak about the work done to increase 

the reliability of the Kaktus (Cactus) gamma-ray altimeter for soft landing and 

about the prospects of the ARS, but Kerimov interrupted him.

“Any glitches?”

“No.”

“Thank you, you may sit down.”

“I request that Comrade Sheminov give us his remarks about the current 

converters.”

“They’ve been cleared, no anomalies.”

“Primary current sources—batteries. Who’s reporting?”

“Institute of Current Sources, Tenkovtsev. No anomalies.”

The chairman addressed the chief designers quite differently.

“Vladislav Nikolayevich Bogomolov, on the correction engine unit system.”22

“No anomalies. Cleared for flight.”

“Ivan Ivanovich Kartukov, you have everything in order as usual?”23

“The SAS and soft landing solid-propellant engines are cleared.”

“Comrade Galin.”

“The on-board radio complex had glitches, which were allowed, and instruments have been replaced due to failures, and findings have been released. The 

DRS is cleared for flight.”

“Zarya system—Vladimir Isaakovich Meshcheryakov.”

“No anomalies, it’s cleared.”

“Comrade Solodov from OKB MEI.”

“The radio range-finding equipment has been cleared, no anomalies.”

“Petr Fedorovich Bratslavets.”24

“No glitches in the Krechet [Gyrfalcon] television system. It’s cleared.”

“Gay Ilyich, what do you have to tell us?”

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Smiling, Severin listed all the developments: “Sanitation systems, chairs, survival kit, Kolos [Spike] regenerator, and cosmonauts’ suits have all been cleared!”

“Cosmonauts consoles—Sergey Grigoryevich Darevskiy.”25

“Cleared, no anomalies.”

“Who is giving the final report on the science equipment?” asked Kerimov, 

not finding the surname on the list in front of him. “Oh, here it is—Comrade 

Novikov, Yulian Vasilyevich.”

“It’s cleared for flight,” came the boilerplate response.

After the individual reports came the recapping ones. I reported about the 

entire on-board control complex, electrical equipment, power supply system, 

new docking assembly, and antenna feeder unit (AFU), having attested that 

everything had been verified, signed off on, and cleared for flight-developmental 

testing.26 Bushuyev did the same thing for the spacecraft’s life-support and thermal control systems and its design. Viktor Nikiforovich Bugayskiy cleared the 

DOS design. The representative of our Kuybyshev branch, Mikhail Fedorovich 

Shum, reported on the clearance of the 11A511U launch vehicle. This was 

the designation of the distinguished and often modified three-stage Semyorka. 

Regional Engineer Colonel Aleksandr Vaganovich Isaakyan—chief of main 

military acceptance—spoke next. Chelomey’s deputy, Dmitriy Alekseyevich 

Polukhin, reported on the readiness of the UR-500K launch vehicle, which 

was referred to as 8K82K No. 254 in official documents.27

In all, 130 people had gathered for the State Commission meeting. Thirtyfive of them reported on the readiness of the Soyuz spacecraft and DOS. Next 

came reports about the readiness of the Command and Measurement Complex, 

launch sites, medical service, and radiation safety service. Shabarov took the 

floor with a proposal to permit the fueling of the DOS and spacecraft 7K-T No. 

31. Colonel Patrushev, chief of the firing range’s First Directorate, announced 

the schedule of operations, which determined the launch of the first orbital 

station on 19 April and the piloted spacecraft on 23 April 1971, “if there are 

no contraindications on board the DOS (article 17K).”

Kerimov scheduled the next State Commission session at Site No. 92, 

Chelomey’s launch area, to make the decision to roll out the launch vehicle 

with station 17K attached.

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Despite the cheerful report, my notebook was overflowing with a list of 

errors and “half-baked ideas,” and I swore to myself that the guilty parties’ 

“heads would roll” when I returned to Moscow. The main glitches had to 

do with interference between the systems. There was no time or experience 

to test out electromagnetic compatibility. Vilnitskiy and the factory process 

engineers, having performed heroic work to create a new docking assembly, 

had not thought about protecting it against dust, dirt, and possible damage 

during the spacecraft’s ground preparation. There was no safety equipment 

and no “anti-bonehead” protection!

“Where is the guarantee that the pristine mirrored surfaces, which are supposed to form the pressurized tunnel after docking, won’t be damaged when the 

fairing is put on—or even worse, when it is ejected during the powered flight 

segment? And God only knows what kind of scraps will fly into the docking 

port!” I shouted at Vilnitskiy over the high-frequency communications line. 

Vilnitskiy humbly heard me out and then requested that his representatives 

keep an eye on things day and night to see that the docking surfaces were 

immaculately clean and that the rubber seals were intact.

Over dinner I met with Boris Dorofeyev, who had arrived from the big 

MIK, where testing had finally begun on N-1 No. 6L.

“You’ve completely forgotten us,” he complained. “Come and take a 

look at Block A on the inside. You won’t recognize it. We’ve rerun the cable 

conduits and wrapped them so that no fire would pose a threat to them now. 

We moved the instruments around where we could, a bit further away from 

the explosion-hazardous turbopump assemblies. The top brass isn’t rushing us 

now. By all accounts, we’ll be ready for launch in July. We’ll start to work from 

the left launch site. The right site is still under repairs.”28

“And as for us,” I boasted, “in the State Commission even the Igla had no 

glitches—knock on wood!” And I knocked on the table, which was covered 

with a white tablecloth. In such cases you’re supposed to knock on wood, and 

this table, I later learned, had a plastic veneer.

Late that evening, I had just managed to fall asleep when the telephone 

awakened me. Sosnovik was calling.

“Bashkin and I need to make an emergency report about an incident.”

“Where’s the incident?”

“On vehicle No. 31.”

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“Like we don’t have enough troubles. Come on over.”

For 30 minutes in my hotel room we studied the incident, which supposedly had happened back at the factory, but the danger wasn’t recognized until 

today, and that was by accident.

The electrical circuit of the descent control system has a remote switch 

(DP).29 It has two windings: “activate” and “cancel. ” When power is fed to 

the “activate” winding, the main contacts close, supplying power to the “ballistic descent” circuit. When this happens, the circuit supplying the “activate” 

winding is simultaneously broken to avoid overheating. Upon receiving the 

“cancel” command, the contacts open the emergency ballistic descent circuits 

and restore the guided descent circuit. During normal flight, “guided descent” 

is always selected. Therefore, the remote switch is not engaged. But when the 

“SAS” (emergency rescue system) command is issued, the “ballistic descent” 

mode is selected and the emergency rescue system sends a command to the 

“activate” winding. This command comes from the launch vehicle simulator 

during ground tests. During tests at the factory and at the engineering facility this command was issued again and again. However, based on the logic 

of subsequent work, when simulating spacecraft separation from the launch 

vehicle, the “cancel” command is issued for guided descent. Other commands 

got tangled in this seemingly simple logic, so that during testing both DP windings were simultaneously supplied with power for a long period of time. The 

specifications for the DP categorically forbid this. According to the information 

that came from the developers at the Mashinoapparat Factory, where Katkov 

was the chief designer, after 5 seconds the DP windings overheat to the point 

that they start smoking, and after 10 seconds—they burn out.

“But, you know, this DP worked glitch-free during tests, and no one 

reported anything about smoke,” I tried to object.

Usually the testers smell the smoke before something burns. Perhaps, 

smoke appeared back at the factory. At the KIS the windings burned a little, 

and in flight or during tests at the launch site they would finish burning, and 

the remote switch would get stuck in a “neither here nor there” position.

“Which descent will be selected?” I asked.

“The devil only knows. It’s just the luck of the draw. In the best case, the 

Descent Module will return to Earth,” answered Bashkin.

“So, here’s the thing,” I proposed. “Tally up how many times both windings 

of this DP ended up being supplied power simultaneously through the fault of 

our testing methods, and the maximum number of seconds that the windings 

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could be in that state. We’ll multiply those numbers by three and perform the 

experiment on the same DP. If it malfunctions under these conditions, then 

we’ll have to report to the chairman of the State Commission, immediately 

call for an instrument from Podlipki that hasn’t undergone testing, and repeat 

all the tests on 7K-T No. 31. This will mean an additional five or six days. 

All the schedules, both for the DOS and for spacecraft launches, have already 

been sent to Moscow, perhaps even to the Politburo. Everyone is waiting for 

the orbital station, and then we come out with burned-out remote switch 

windings. That’s a nice little present you’ve come up with.”

For half the night, the SOUD laboratory conducted experiments on the 

viability of the remote switch. They ran it 20 times in the prohibited mode for 5 

seconds, each time with 1-minute breaks in between. The remote switch heated 

up to 120°C [248°F], but it didn’t give up and produce smoke. According to 

the calculations, this mode was four times more demanding than during all 

possible errors while conducting previous tests. In the end, they confirmed that 

actual smoke appeared just 25 seconds after power was supplied simultaneously 

to the windings. After 30 seconds the remote switch stopped responding to 

commands. We unanimously decided that this could never happen. Therefore, 

we weren’t about to report anything to anyone.

“The designers at Mashinoapparat have been piling up reserves that they’ve 

been concealing from us. Tell them thanks if everything works out. Forget about 

the all-nighter, and correct the test documentation right away. In the morning 

send a radiogram to Rauschenbach and Karpov telling them to immediately 

insert inhibits to prevent such situations,” I said, drawing the line.

On Cosmonauts’ Day, 12 April, they finished the retesting of 7K-T No. 

31 because of another holiday gift—the replacement of the telemetry memory 

unit. This enabled us once more to “quietly” confirm that the ill-fated remote 

switch was okay.

During all the round-the-clock vigils in connection with dismantling 7K-T 

No. 31 and the replacement of instruments, the assemblers and fitters of our 

shop No. 444 worked heroically and without complaint. Having served in 1948 

as a “catwalk” soldier on R-1 rockets in Kapustin Yar, Kostya Gorbatenko, now 

deputy chief of the shop, managed to come up with a way for his “working 

class” to perform all the work twice as fast as we had planned.

A participant in the launch of Yuriy Gagarin, Major Vladimir Yaropolov, 

who had been in charge of the testing of spacecraft 7K-T No. 31, reported at 

the technical management’s operational meeting that by the end of 18 April 

the launch vehicle and spacecraft would be ready for rollout to the launch 

site, and on 19 April it would be possible to begin work at Site No. 1 [i.e., 

the launch pad] according to the program for the first launch day. Now the 

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DOS could be delivered to the fueling station. Somewhere someone decided 

that the first Soviet orbital station should be called “Zarya” (Dawn) rather 

than DOS, and certainly not 17K. This word was painted on her hull in red 

against a white background.

It took all night to fill the DOS with propellant components and gases 

for the correction engines and attitude-control thrusters. When I stopped by 

the fueling station in the morning, I met Anatoliy Abramov, who had been on 

duty there since the evening before.30 Abramov reminded me what cunning it 

had taken to get Korolev to agree to the construction of this spacecraft fueling station. Korolev tried very hard to save money on the construction and 

kicked Abramov out several times when the latter brought him the fueling 

station plans for his signature. Then Abramov arranged for an architectural 

scale-model of the fueling station to be made. A month later he brought the 

model into the reception area and asked Korolev to step out of his office for a 

minute. When S. P. returned he saw the model and swore: “Are you trying to 

get your way again? You can’t calm down! But, I suppose you’re right. Do it!”

All this time S. P. didn’t forget about the ground specialists’ proposal and 

tested himself against their stubbornness.

“Now it is funny to recall,” said Abramov, “what we were saving money on. 

Those were such crumbs compared with the grandiose ‘construction project of 

the century’ for the N-1. At Site No. 2 alone there are 1,200 people who have 

flown in on temporary assignment for the DOS and two spacecraft, and that’s 

not counting the military and civilians working here permanently.”

To transport the Zarya via the railroad to Chelomey’s Site No. 92, it was 

loaded onto a platform and covered with a protective cover. Like an honor 

guard, there were two submachine gunners standing at the front of the platform and three at the rear. This is how the first DOS was rolled out from the 

fueling station.

On the morning of 14 April, Yurevich, Nevzorov, and I climbed onto 

the vertical test stand of the 7K spacecraft in the old MIK, where we indulged 

in speculation about the rendezvous systems “on location.” The emergency 

x-ray system developed by Yurevich for the final approach segment was the 

reason we were there. We had agreed that far approach was, of course, the 

prerogative of the radio engineers, while a simple x-ray system with cosmonaut 

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participation would be good for the near segment. A laser could also be used 

instead of an x-ray unit.

“We could have done everything a lot more simply and reliably than Igla

and Kontakt, but now it’s a little late to start from scratch,” said Nevzorov.

By a strange coincidence, Legostayev called me from Podlipki over the 

high-frequency communications line. He reported that once again the expert 

commission had begun working “like crazy” on the N1-L3. The chairman of 

the control section, Academician Bunkin, insisted on the criticism that Kontakt

had no backup on the L3.31

“One failure after lifting off from the Moon to dock with the LOK, and 

the cosmonaut will stay in near-lunar orbit forever,” Bunkin argued his position. “At least back up Kontakt with a simple laser system.”

“That’s a valid comment,” I answered. “There’s nothing I can say to 

that—agreed.”

“So are you going to give me the weight for a second Kontakt? Perhaps 

you and Bushuyev will also arrange this.”

“Don’t worry and don’t argue with the commission. If only we could wait 

until the first successful flight of the N-1 and then sort out the situation with 

the vehicles.”

“Okay,” responded Legostayev. “We need to accept all of Bunkin’s proposals. And also, Vasiliy Pavlovich [Mishin] has flown out to see you.”

Over lunch we agreed that Bushuyev and I would drive out to meet Mishin, 

and Shabarov would “mind the store.” To our surprise, none of the cosmonauts, 

who had already spent several days under Kamanin’s leadership at Site No. 17, 

had come to the airfield [to greet Mishin]. Only the firing range deputy chief 

of staff represented the military authorities. After descending the airplane’s 

stairway, in response to our greeting, Mishin brusquely, unconstrained by his 

surroundings, tore into me and Bushuyev: “And why are you here? There’s 

nothing else for you to do?”

After seeing the bewildered faces of the onlookers, he greeted us eventually. 

We couldn’t help but recall the times when we had met Korolev here when 

he flew in. Usually Korolev made whoever picked him up—Voskresenskiy, 

Shabarov, or me—take a seat in his car and, the whole way to his cottage, 

questioned him about things at the firing range and shared the latest news 

from Moscow.

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At 1800 hours Shabarov suddenly convened a meeting of the technical 

management. Two glitches had been discovered on the DOS, which had 

already “departed” for Site No. 92. One of the planners, after consulting with 

the optics specialists, determined that when the cover of the x-ray telescope 

opens, it falls within the field of vision of the infrared vertical [sensors]. This 

threatens the loss of attitude control using Earth—since the telescope cover 

is “hotter” than Earth, the infrared vertical will “latch” onto it. Therefore, it 

was proposed that the cover be opened manually from a special console rather 

than in automatic mode, if after thorough analysis the “ground” would grant 

permission for that. And that was the end of that.

The second glitch proved to be not so “refined.” Belikov, our specialist 

on electric power supply systems, discovered at the last minute that the tiny 

battery of the instrument measuring the solar constant had been installed in 

such a way that during the powered flight segment, when exposed to g-loads, 

electrolyte would leak out of it. Shabarov proposed granting permission 

for access to the inside of the already sealed DOS. This meant they would 

need to release the internal air pressurization from the entire station, open 

the hatch, and very cautiously lower a man in there, who could either take 

out the battery altogether or reposition it. Then they would have to pull 

the man out, close the hatch, repressurize the station, recheck the pressure 

integrity, and....

Mishin didn’t let Shabarov finish and with a scowl asked: “Who? Tell me 

his name.”

Shabarov asked for permission to finish his report. Mishin didn’t want to 

hear it and once again demanded: “Tell me his name; who did this?”

Shabarov didn’t quite understand whose name Mishin was asking for, 

and gave an unfortunate response: “Well, Belikov. But, you know, that’s not 

the issue here.”

“You cover up for everyone. It’s all the planners’ fault! Just you wait, I’ll 

get to you,” threatened Mishin and, turning to Feoktistov, he added: “Soon 

we are going to impose stringent order.”

“This little battery,” said Feoktistov, “was installed using Bugayskiy’s drawings rather than ours.”

Mishin evidently realized that he’d gone too far: “Don’t remove anything 

and don’t do anything without consulting me! I forbid everything!”

Shabarov wanted to object but gave up and fell silent. In a few minutes the 

atmosphere of good teamwork and trouble-free, self-sacrificing mutual assistance that had developed between our staffs had been destroyed. The tension 

in the technical management room suddenly broke when Kerimov dropped by.

“As chairman of the State Commission I have received a serious warning 

notice from Moscow. We informed the Central Committee that we had named 

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the orbital station Zarya. This might offend the Chinese, who supposedly have 

already announced that they are preparing for the launch of their new rocket, 

which they named “Dawn” before we did. What are we going to do? Repaint it?”

“Why repaint it? No one is going to photograph our DOS in space, and 

we can come up with a new name for the TASS announcement,” I proposed.

But what name? Someone suggested “Salyut” (Salute). Everyone liked it. 

Thus, a series of orbital stations emerged under the general name “Salyut.”

After dinner Shabarov said to me: “I’m sending Mishin on vacation, and 

you and I need to hear out the alarmist Bashkin. He has dug something up in 

the SUS (descent control system) of spacecraft No. 31 and No. 32.”32

Bashkin had begun to suspect a problem in the operation of the descent 

control system even before the State Commission meeting. But despite calling 

in specialists, he was unable to understand and clarify the cause. He consulted 

with our comrades in Podlipki over the high-frequency communication line. 

They hatched a plan (without filling out paperwork for the trip) to find a seat 

for Anatoliy Shchukin on the Il-18 that Mishin flew out on.

Shchukin related: “On Cosmonauts’ Day at 11 p.m. a car arrives at my 

house to pick me up. They take me to the design bureau and put me on the 

high-frequency telephone. I hear horrible things from Bashkin from the firing 

range. Well, that’s all there is to it, I think: the liftoff needs to be canceled. I 

find out that the Il-18 is flying out in the morning. Nobody will fill out the 

paperwork for an official trip at night. They take me to Vnukovo-3 and shove 

me onto the plane with no documents and without being on the manifest. All 

my people are here at the firing range. Shabarov helped. They let me through 

all the checkpoints. I toss my suitcase somewhere and go straight to the MIK. 

We worked all night long. It’s a good thing that the military helped, especially 

Yaropolov. We performed five individual programs. We simulated everything, 

understood everything. The culprit for everything was a defective ground. We 

can close the comment on the SUS in the logbook with a clear conscience.”

“Our people are infallible,” I thought, as I “signed off” on these very glitches.

Late in the evening on 14 April, the desk attendant called me to the 

high-frequency communications telephone. This time Rauschenbach had 

phoned. He told me about Keldysh’s expert commission, which had convened 

the previous day from 1600 to 2200 hours. Keldysh had absolutely insisted 

that several items be inserted in the commission’s findings. First and foremost, 

the external transfer from the LK to the LOK needs to be replaced with an 

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internal transfer, similar to the way that cosmonauts will transfer from the 

7K-T to the 17K. Moreover, he added the following:

•	

•	

•	

•	

provide for firing tests for each block (or stage) of the N-1 launch vehicle,

provide a backup for Kontakt or put in a second system for reliable 

rendezvous,

develop a principle for the piloted lunar expedition’s interaction with 

Babakin’s automatic probes, and

exclude an ocean touchdown from the program.

“And a lot of other odds and ends,” added Rauschenbach. “This time 

Keldysh was very angry. I haven’t seen him like this for a long time. He let it 

be known that if we don’t agree to these modifications, then he is abandoning 

support for the N1-L3 program.”

I asked Rauschenbach if Mishin knew about Keldysh’s stance.

“Most likely he does. Keldysh said that before yesterday’s meeting he had 

already talked with Mishin and warned him about the majority of the most 

serious claims.”

The following day over lunch, Mishin spoke with us on this subject. 

Khottabych (as we sometimes amiably referred to Okhapkin) had managed 

to telephone him in this regard.33 In Mishin’s opinion, the commission had 

no serious concerns.

“According to Rauschenbach, there are issues that will require the radical 

redesigning of the vehicles. And we don’t have weight capabilities for that,” 

I said.

Bushuyev backed me up.

“Admit it, Vasiliy Pavlovich, you do not like to keep us, your deputies, 

informed about things that are at odds with your optimism.”

This time Mishin was amicably disposed, and he did not lash out at 

Bushuyev. He calmly responded: “But really, whom are you criticizing? We 

began the entire project as a team, along with Korolev. It’s our job to sort 

things out, and none of us can walk away from this. And we also need to 

decide together what to do next. This commission, like all commissions, will 

give recommendations; all of its members will run off and attend to their own 

business, and we will be left behind. There’s no running away from the N1-L3.”

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Mishin was right about this. There was no running away from the N1-L3 

for him; for us, his deputies; and especially for Bushuyev, Okhapkin, and me.

At 1700 hours, after making a 45-kilometer dash, we arrived at 

Chelomey’s Site No. 81. Here the UR-500K was being prepared. The State 

Commission was supposed to make the final decision clearing the launch vehicle 

for mating with the DOS and subsequent rollout to the launch site. Kerimov, 

Mishin, Karas, Shcheulov, and Kurushin had taken their places in the presidium. 

Polukhin was reporting on the readiness of the launch vehicle. Mishin asked 

whether Chelomey’s report clearing the launch vehicle for liftoff was available. 

Polukhin announced that he was authorized to sign the report. “I demand the 

general designer’s own report,” insisted Mishin. As State Commission chairman, Kerimov announced that he had already assigned this difficult mission 

specifically to Polukhin. Chelomey had sent a radiogram confirming Polukhin’s 

right to sign the report. And that was the end of the incident.

After the State Commission session, for the first time I carefully checked 

out the Pyatisotka [UR-500K], which had been prepared for mating with the 

DOS. Despite our “hue and cry” regarding its ecological hazard, outwardly 

it was a sight to behold. It wasn’t painted at all. The cleanness of the welding and riveting was clearly visible against the bare metal. “We saved 300 

kilograms on the paint,” said the ZIKh representative standing next to the 

Pyatisotka beauty.

One could sense the high degree of aviation technology culture in the cleanness of the fittings of all the structural curves and transitions. All the electrical 

and pneumatic lines connecting with the ground equipment terminated at 

the aft end. This provided a substantial advantage—you could do without the 

cable tower and the tense anticipation: would it pull away or not?

While the Pyatisotka was being mated with the DOS, Bashkin stood on 

the tall service platform and made sure that the fragile “ionic tubes” were not 

damaged. Everything worked out.

It seemed that all the troubles were over; the coast was clear for the first 

orbital station. But all the while I had a nagging feeling that there was something 

very important that was still unresolved, something that lacked the finishing 

touches. It wasn’t until I was on my way back to Site No. 2, when I caught 

sight of the big MIK glistening with lights, that I realized that this oppressive 

feeling was caused by deep-seated anxiety and fear over the N-1. We ourselves 

had not rejected anything that the expert commission had proposed in its 

findings. I even think that certain of our colleagues suggested something or 

other to the experts, naturally, with the best of intentions.

At the hotel, Bushuyev and I debated for a long time regarding the possible 

scenario of how events would unfold for the N1-L3 program. I insisted that 

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he, as the chief designer’s deputy responsible for the LOK and LK, support 

the expert commission’s proposals as they related to vehicles.

“Admit it, Konstantin Davidovich,” I said, “it was you, Feoktistov, and I 

who came up with the plan for the cosmonaut to crawl over from the LOK to 

the LK and back through space in lunar orbit, not Mishin. Why this potentially 

lethal stunt if a docking assembly with internal transfer has already been manufactured and will be tested in space in a week? You and Feoktistov stubbornly 

claim that there isn’t weight. What you should say is that we made a mistake. 

We really need to change the program and modify the vehicles. We also should 

support the proposals calling for the introduction of firing tests (OTI) for the 

engines or the stages as a whole. Based on the Americans’ positive experience 

and our negative experience, we simply cannot just reject OTI. At a minimum 

it will take Kuznetsov another three years to introduce them, that is, switch to 

reusable engines. Over that period, we might have time to revamp the vehicles 

and upstage the Americans. But...but...we need to convince Mishin, and then 

Keldysh, then Afanasyev, and finally Ustinov. We need to act as quickly as possible. 

We’re losing time, not making a realistic decision about the dual-launch scenario.”

Agreeing with me, Bushuyev took exception to immediate appeals through 

that chain of command.

“They will all rub our nose in the launch vehicle failure and say that now 

there is no time to redo the design unless we prove that we have a launch vehicle.”

“It’s a vicious circle,” I replied. “We will check the launch vehicle’s reliability without OTI. And we won’t institute OTI because to do this will take 

three years that they won’t give us. For those three years factories will produce 

launch vehicles and vehicles that invariably will not fulfill the mission.”

Having resolved nothing, we went to bed.

On 15 April the duty attendant woke us up at 5 a.m. At 6 a.m. we drove 

out to Site No. 92 in order to be there for the traditional rollout of the first 

UR-500K rocket-space complex—the DOS—to the launch site. The launch 

vehicle and first orbital station mated together were slightly longer than 50 

meters in length. This was, of course, half the size of the future MKBS on 

the N-1, but still an impressive beginning for this new field. Yuriy Semyonov, 

Vladimir Pallo, and Viktor Bugayskiy were engaged in a heated argument over 

something with the military men. The rollout was delayed by 20 minutes.

Kerimov began to grumble: “You’re disrupting the schedule!”

“Twenty minutes isn’t a disruption,” a colonel whom I didn’t know remarked 

rather sarcastically. “We lose years because of ungainly equipment and design 

errors. And there’s no need to be in a rush in the final phase.”

Rollout to the launch site is less exciting than liftoff, but it’s still a magnificent sight. On the way back we looked around the construction of the new 

MIK building for the Almaz. I couldn’t help but think of the questions that 

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firing range chief Kurushin had already asked out loud time and again. Why 

construct independent factories in the steppe for work that involved identical 

procedures just because the chief designers and ministry administration want 

it that way? Is it really not possible to concentrate the preparation of DOSes, 

Almazes, Soyuzes, and other spacecraft at a single assembly and testing factory at the firing range? And perhaps build it a bit closer to the city so that 

we don’t have to build each chief designer his own autonomous residential 

village? Imagine how many resources we could save if instead of feudalistic 

fiefdoms—the firms of Korolev, Chelomey, Yangel, Kozlov, and Reshetnev—the 

firing range had a single technical facility, a factory in the immediate vicinity of 

the town of Leninsk so that the workers could walk to it, or at the very least, 

make their way there on a bicycle!

The launch sites were separated from one another by 40 to 50 kilometers 

in the hope of preserving them in the event of a nuclear attack. But who would 

need space launches in the event of a nuclear missile war? After all, these weren’t 

missile silos that were actually needed for a retaliatory strike. We could have 

saved billions of rubles on roads and electrical, rail, heating, and communication lines alone—enough to build a single space technology center. This was 

no longer a mistake, but a “my-home-is-my-castle” mindset.

As a counter to this peculiar feudalism, where each chief secludes himself 

from his colleagues behind a wall of secrecy, we, acting of course on instructions from the Central Committee, had begun talks with the U.S. concerning 

cooperation in piloted flights. Babkov told us over the high-frequency communication line about the results of the negotiations in the U.S. that he had 

participated in. According to him, the Americans had received the idea of 

cooperation very enthusiastically.34

After lunch Shabarov and I once again departed for Site No. 81. Unlike 

our launch site, it was forbidden to enter this site without a gas mask. This 

was the difference between our genteel oxygen and kerosene and Chelomey’s 

nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetric dimethylhydrazine.

The Pyatisotka and DOS stack were already standing in the gantry of 

the right-hand launch site. Launch control was being conducted from the 

bunker, which was referred to as “Site No. 83.” In this bunker we caught up 

with the indignant Mishin. He was walking out of one of the underground 

halls into another one accompanied by Volkov and Khomyakov. When he 

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caught sight of Shabarov and me, he began, evidently for the second time 

around, to rant and rail.

“Well, just look at this underground palace! A year ago it wasn’t here. 

They didn’t provide money for a building for demothballing the N-1, but here 

they’ve turned out a facility like this in a year’s time.”

They really had built the two-story bunker on a large scale. Here they 

had provided everything needed for a long period of independent subsistence, 

including its own diesel electric station and life-support system for all the 

bunker personnel.

“Just look what’s going on here! And our idealist planners are insisting 

that they don’t need anything for the MKBS. Don’t you see, they’re happy 

with spartan conditions and are ready to control a launch from a hole in 

the ground.”

Khomyakov tried to calm down the infuriated Mishin as best he could. 

When we reached “our” room in the bunker, from whence control of the DOS 

preparation process was supposed to be conducted, we found ourselves in the 

dark, to which we had become accustomed since 1947. They had squeezed 

our indispensable station 11N6110 and the rack for the remote radio communications system in here for the DOS tests. On the way home Abramov 

couldn’t help teasing Bushuyev and Feoktistov.

“And Mishin was right to let you idealists have it. Chelomey has shown 

what kind of scale you need—not just for rockets and spacecraft, but also 

the ‘ground’ for them. And you all thought that us ground specialists were 

second-class people.”

“Don’t badmouth us, Anatoliy, or we won’t bring you home for a friendly 

dinner,” said Bushuyev in a conciliatory tone.

Darevskiy really did invite us to his cottage for a friendly dinner. I must say 

that each firm involved in our cooperative network built cottages for its own 

employees at Site No. 2, kept house, and didn’t need the services of hotels. As 

a rule, these cottages had a kitchen and dining room, which their own people 

took care of, rather than “housekeepers” provided by the military. Therefore, 

room and board was homestyle. The cottage that belonged to OKB Geofizika 

even had a rather ferocious dog.

Hot-smoked asp-fish was considered to be the company’s official dish. 

Local angling specialists managed to fish enormous asp-fish from the shallow, 

muddy waters of the Syrdarya River. The smoking process had been developed 

as far back as the time of the trailblazers of 1957, and it made this fish an 

exquisite delicacy.

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The star attraction of an evening at Darevskiy’s cottage was Sergey 

Anokhin.35 Usually taciturn, shy, and reserved, after the first few shots of 

vodka he became a most interesting conversationalist and ingenuous storyteller 

of the most extraordinary flight incidents. Anokhin related his stories with 

amazing simplicity, in a straightforward manner and without any theatrics. 

An unsuspecting listener who didn’t know Anokhin would get the impression 

that the work of a test pilot was a simple affair, far from heroic, and it would be 

quite baffling why test pilots would die in peacetime. This time Anokhin was 

telling about the tragic death of a test pilot who had been famous since World 

War II: two-time Hero of the Soviet Union Amet-Khan Sultan.36 He perished 

in the crash of a Tu-16 flying laboratory. The airplane’s wing flaps failed. The 

landing speed was catastrophic. Anokhin himself had also lived through an 

From the author’s archives.

Famous Soviet aviator Sergey Anokhin (left), shown here with cosmonauts 

Gennadiy Strekalov and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov. Anokhin headed the civilian 

cosmonaut detachment at OKB-1 (and later NPO Energiya) for many years.

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extraordinary hair-raising experience on a Tu-16. Before our next liftoff to 

Venus, the ability to start up the engine of Block L needed to be checked out 

in tests that included the simulation of weightlessness.37 Block L didn’t start 

up, but it did catch fire.

Anokhin ordered the crew to abandon the airplane, since a crash was 

inevitable. For some reason the cockpit canopies didn’t open in the standard 

places. The crew dashed to the tail and jumped from the tail point. Anokhin 

attempted to save the burning airplane but, after realizing that this was impossible, managed to fly it “a lot further” and also bailed out. They searched for 

him for several days. They already considered him dead, if not from injuries 

sustained in the crash, then from the –30°C [–22°F] cold.

But Sergey didn’t freeze to death. In the forest he found a little hut where a 

forest ranger was spending the winter. The latter had large supplies of alcoholic 

beverages. Anokhin spent several days in this little hut. Once he had relaxed 

and caught up on his sleep, he said goodbye to his hospitable drinking buddy, 

made his way to a large road, and returned “from the land of the dead” to his 

permanent duty station.

Anokhin was also acquainted with the Polish pilot Levanevskiy, the brother 

of our Sigizmund Levanevskiy, and with Wiley Post, who died in Alaska during 

his attempt to fly around the world.38 “And he flew with one eye—he was 

one-eyed just like me,” said Anokhin, who had lost an eye in a plane crash.

On the morning of 16 April, cosmonauts Vladimir Shatalov, Aleksey 

Yeliseyev, and Nikolay Rukavishnikov were doing their “sit-in” in vehicle 7K-T 

No. 31 (the future Soyuz-10). They were supposed to give their final comments 

after all the modifications were introduced into the standard equipment and 

layout. When I asked the unflappable Rukavishnikov how he felt, he replied 

that their regimen was too lax. They weren’t under any pressure at all; they 

just run a lot in the morning.

“I’m even fed up,” he said.

Yeliseyev seemed more anxious.

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“Why are they reporting in the VPK that the engines of the actuator 

system have a service life of 4,000 activations, while according to my calculations they’ll need more than 20,000. Is there a guarantee that there will be a 

reliable ignition of the propellant components in space at low temperature?”

Yeliseyev was pondering and trying to predict the off-nominal behavior 

of the vehicle’s systems in flight.

The film, television, and photo journalists showed up. Under the blinding light of the floodlights the cosmonauts climbed into the spacecraft. After 

another telephone call from Shabarov, who had beseeched Mishin to attend 

the “sit-in” ceremony, the latter appeared and said: “Go on without me. I’m 

rushing over to the airfield to meet the minister.”

Vladimir Shatalov’s crew sat in the vehicle for 2 hours. After airing out the 

vehicle with fans, the second (or backup) crew climbed in, Aleksey Leonov, 

Valeriy Kubasov, and Petr Kolodin.

At 1800 hours, all Party members assembled in the small dispatch room 

for a Party meeting. Shabarov briefly and concisely reported about the work 

performed to prepare the first orbital station and first transport vehicle for liftoff. 

He didn’t go into technical details, but emphasized the people’s self-sacrificing 

work. In particular, when the failure of a memory unit was discovered in the 

remote radio communication (DRS) system of vehicle 7K-T No. 31, it was 

necessary to disassemble and separate the compartments to replace it. Seven 

to 10 days were needed for the subsequent retesting cycle for this operation! 

But in actuality, the factory brigade of shop No. 444 under the leadership of 

Gorbatenko managed to pull this off in three days.

After the meeting, Mishin solemnly presented Bushuyev, Shabarov, and me 

with certificates and commemorative medals in honor of the 10th anniversary 

of the flight of Yu. A. Gagarin.

That evening, when I entered the dining hall to have dinner, all the seats 

at the table were already occupied. The only empty chair was next to the newly 

arrived minister. I greeted him and moved along to sit down at the other end 

of the long mess hall table, around which about 20 people were sitting.

“So, you don’t want to sit next to the brass?” asked Afanasyev mockingly.

I sat down next to him.

“Incidentally, in similar cases I try to sit a little farther away, too,” said 

Afanasyev to put me at ease.

I had to laugh it off. On the whole, the minister was simple and approachable in everyday interaction. He seemed menacing and instilled fear only at 

Miusskaya Square, when he led meetings of the collegium.

Work didn’t slow down even for a minute. I spent half the night at 

the MIK. When I approached the fairing with which they were about to cover 

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the vehicle after it had been mated with the launch vehicle, I caught sight of 

a perturbed Yuriy Semyonov. Earlier he had assigned the task of cleaning dust 

and any sort of debris off the fairing before the mating process, ordering that 

this be done using alcohol to wipe it down. Having used the alcohol for another 

purpose, workmen from Progress were now trying to mate the fairing, having 

limited themselves to a “dry” wipe-down. Semyonov made a last-ditch effort, 

announcing that he would not allow the mating process until he made sure of 

the surgical cleanliness of the interior surface of the fairing. It was not an easy 

job introducing a culture of cleanliness at the firing range. During dust storms 

sand finds tiny holes and penetrates into the halls of the assembly building, 

and the air is simply heavy with suspended particles. The fans drawing in the 

dust move it around, and that’s all.

On the morning of 17 April, I went to the MIK again to check the cleanliness of the fairing. The likelihood of foreign particles getting onto the clean 

surfaces of the docking assemblies was very worrisome. If something were to 

hinder their snug engagement, pressure integrity would not be ensured and 

crew transfer from the spacecraft to the DOS would be ruled out.

Semyonov couldn’t sleep all night because of the fairing.

“Today’s Saturday and there’s a Communist volunteer cleanup going on 

all over the country. And we’re also spending the day cleaning up the fairing. 

But we can’t delay the assembly process any longer,” he said. “They went over 

everything with a vacuum cleaner, then they wiped it down with rags moistened with alcohol.”

I ran a clean handkerchief over the surface of the mating ring and showed 

it to the Progress Factory foreman.

“You’re going to have to wash your handkerchief,” he said, “but there’s 

nothing more we can do. That is the film from a layer of dust. Alcohol will 

only dissolve it. We need to change the manufacturing process.”

At 1000 hours Bushuyev, Shabarov, and I drove over to the big MIK. In 

the chief designer’s spacious office, Mishin decided to discuss the proposals for 

the prospects of a new scenario for the L3M lunar expedition and the upgrading of the orbital station. Sadovskiy and Bezverbyy had flown in specifically 

to report on these matters.39

I had already seen these materials and had even signed them about two 

months before. Now, after looking them over with a fresh eye, I realized the 

 39.

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weaknesses and shortcomings in them. Many assertions about the effectiveness 

of the antispacecraft beam weaponry and the deadlines for its development 

seemed naïve. After all, we had proposed developing a design for a new DOS 

with “death rays” in all but two years’ time! Infrared sensors would scan all 

the underlying terrain. Once they detected the plume of a launched missile 

in their field of vision, radar antennas would be directed at it, measuring its 

trajectory parameters, and would guide antiballistic missiles to destroy it 

during its powered flight segment before separation of the warheads from the 

delivery vehicle.

The American designs for a missile defense system, which appeared 10 years 

later during the Ronald Reagan presidency under the infamous SDI program, 

hardly differed from our pipe dreams of that time.40

After lunch, Mishin invited Generals Karas, Kostin, and Shcheulov to 

discuss these materials, but at the old MIK.41 The generals’ objections annoyed 

Mishin. He countered the criticism, arguing that “there are organizations that 

understand this better than we do.”

Viktor Shcheulov was first deputy chief of TsUKOS; because of this, he 

had been awarded the rank of major-general-engineer.42 I had become very 

well acquainted with him at Kapustin Yar back in 1949. We liked each other 

and had been on friendly “ty” terms since that time.43 Despite his military 

ranking, from time to time he was unhesitatingly quite critical of the military 

leadership. This time he did not spare my leadership.

“Pray tell, Boris Yevseyevich, why your dear Vasiliy Pavlovich considers 

us to be such dimwits? Karas and I were entrusted with the management of 

the Central Directorate for Space Assets. Kostin is in charge of space-based 

reconnaissance and even more. To a great extent, decisions for the prospective 

military space program depend on us, and Mishin makes it sound like we are 

just bothering him.”

“Don’t take offense, Viktor Ivanovich,” I reassured Shcheulov. “When 

Mishin gets carried away, he really does not tolerate objections, but then he’ll 

quickly recover and everything will be normal.”

 40.

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Preparing for the Launch of DOS

Ten years after the flight of Yuriy Gagarin we hoped once again to 

astonish the world. The days and hours that remained before the DOS launch—

the first real Long-Duration Orbital Station—passed relatively placidly. On 

our so-called “reserve day,” 18 April, the large contingent that had gathered 

at the firing range was not engaged in its ongoing blistering-paced business, 

but, splitting up “by interests” in hotels and departmental cottages, discussed 

prospects and space policy, and picked apart the chief designers, who simply 

couldn’t come to an agreement about actually uniting efforts.

I decided to pay Pilyugin a visit. Recently diabetes had begun to torment 

him. It wasn’t easy for him to fly to the firing range. But this time he flew in 

to see for himself what was going on with the N1-L3 and at the same time 

to please the high-ranking leaders who had demanded that the chief designers be present “in person” at the launch of the DOS. Factories in Kharkov 

had performed the main operations to manufacture the instruments for the 

Semyorka launch vehicle and UR-500K control systems. But Pilyugin was still 

the chief designer.

When I dropped into Pilyugin’s cottage, he was with Vladilen Finogeyev 

and Georgiy Priss discussing a list of glitches that had managed to appear at 

the very beginning of the tests performed on N-1 No. 6L. Pilyugin moved a 

stack of documents aside. He was beginning to grow weary of the multitude 

of minor problems.

“It’s all trivial matters. You sort it out yourselves. Boris, it’s a good thing 

you stopped by. I want to teach Vasiliy so he’ll finally understand: if he doesn’t 

get seriously involved with N-1 then your organization is going to become 

useless. We’re finishing up the development tests on the digital control system 

for N1-L3. We’ve got the computer and we need to quickly prepare N-1 No. 

7L with the new system. You’ve gotten mixed up with the DOSes, you’ve 

pulled the rug out from under Chelomey’s Almaz, you’re being drawn into 

negotiations with the Americans, and if one examines the situation carefully, 

you’ve got a complete fiasco on your hands when it comes to the N-1 and 

lunar vehicles. The Kuybyshev [factories] have moved into action with all their 

might—they’re riveting the hull; here at the big MIK they’re welding the tanks, 

and soon we’re going to have all the bays chock-full of metal. But you know, 

speaking frankly, with the weights you’ve got a real mess.

“I’ve told Mishin this again and again. After all, the proposal for the duallaunch scenario had been around for a long time. We need to decide, not drag 

our feet. You and Rauschenbach have started your control systems developments. Go ahead, I don’t object, but you won’t make lunar vehicles without 

us, you know. But my guys are already tired of reporting that Bushuyev and 

Feoktistov have run into size and weight limits, and basically they don’t want 

to talk. Do you think Keldysh doesn’t understand this? He even complained 

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to me that we’re just hearing wishful thinking from Mishin. If the N-1 doesn’t 

pan out, then we’re going to have a rough time, too. We have put so much 

effort into the work.

“Yangel has loaded me down again. We’re conducting a large project with 

him now. Chelomey wasn’t able to smother Yangel with his Sotkas [UR-100 

missiles]. If you’d just let Chelomey make his Almaz in peace. What, you don’t 

have enough work? I’m over my head in work. Uncle Mitya [Ustinov], without 

asking our minister, talked me into working with Nadiradze. The job is very 

interesting. But you keep in mind, if they overload us with military stuff, and 

you get carried away with DOSes and the Americans, N-1 will completely 

wither away.”

I was unable to come up with any convincing arguments in response to 

Pilyugin’s monologue. The situation with N-1 really was such that the more 

progress we made the more confidence we lost in the certainty of fulfilling 

the final objective.

How could I contradict Pilyugin? I was part of the group that had 

approached the Central Committee with the proposal for the development 

of the DOS without having asked Mishin for his consent. The initiative for 

cooperation with the Americans and setting up a joint Soyuz-Apollo flight 

came from Bushuyev, and at the Academy of Sciences Keldysh and Boris Petrov 

backed it.44 Keldysh reported to the government, the Americans had put out a 

high-level counterproposal, and work had come to a boil, pulling in more and 

more leading specialists. And one could not accuse Mishin of having come up 

with this very crucial work.

As far as the N1-L3 weight problems were concerned, there was only one 

way for a comprehensive solution—switching over to a dual-launch scenario. 

We needed to make a decision immediately and designate new deadlines. But 

who would go before the Politburo to explain this or at least go see Leonid 

Ilyich [Brezhnev] in person? Nobody was brave enough.

The nation’s top political leadership had devoted a great deal of attention 

to the production of strategic missile armaments, attempting to work out an 

integrated concept. However, even for this problem of utmost national importance they were unable to adopt such a concept. The chief designers defended 

their ideas before the Council of Defense with enviable courage. Pilyugin 

 44.

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Preparing for the Launch of DOS

participated actively in this so-called “little civil war.”45 I took advantage of the 

opportunity and reminded him: “So you’re taking part in the ‘civil war.’ You 

there in the commissions and on the Council of Defense argue, laying each of 

your scenarios out on the table or depicting them on posters. Chelomey has an 

artistic presence; Yangel seems more unassuming but is also convincing. They 

have fundamentally different concepts for the construction of our strategic 

missile systems. And what’s the result? Brezhnev listened carefully to everything 

and made a decision, with which everyone agreed: do both, that one and the 

other one, and a third. For national defense and to intimidate the Americans, 

perhaps, it was worth it to act in that way. But to tackle everything that’s been 

conceived is simply impossible. Not just because we’ll leave the whole country 

in rags, but also because we’re not capable of getting all this through our own 

heads. If not the Defense Council, then we need someone else to finally develop 

an integrated national cosmonautics development program for 10 years. Until 

they understand this ‘at the top,’ we’ll be rushing about between dozens of 

assignments of ‘critical national importance.’ Kosygin proposed reforms in 

the economy based on common sense. Everyone there “at the top” seemed to 

agree with him and applauded them. But what happened? Goberman—chief 

of Moscow motor pools and someone from among the directors in the textile 

industry—started to do something and then everything fizzled out.”

“Now, hold your horses,” Pilyugin stopped me. “Did you hear the story 

about the old woman who came to the Party district committee to complain 

about a leaky roof? While she was complaining about the collective farm chairman and even about the regional officers, they listened to her attentively. But 

when she started to ask what the ministers and Brezhnev himself were doing, 

they cautioned her: ‘Granny!’ They shook their fingers at her, but ordered that 

her roof be repaired.”

 45.

319

Chapter 14

Launching Salyut

On 19 April 1971, all the participants and distinguished guests convened 

for the launch of the Pyatisotka carrying the first DOS. The UR-500K Proton

standing on the launch pad, with the DOS invisible beneath the fairing, was that 

bundle of metal and electronics which embodied the creative energy of dozens of 

chief designers and therefore, for the time being, reconciled all their differences.

At T minus 15 minutes, the State Commission and all the guests left the 

stuffy service rooms and climbed up on the stands of the observation center. 

On such a spring night you enjoy breathing in the air lush with the aromas of 

the steppe. It seems bizarre, why each of us has a bag containing a gas mask 

slung over his shoulder. Certainly no one wants to think about the possibility 

of the off-nominal situation that might occur if the nocturnal beauty standing 

on the launch pad decides not to fly off to a safe distance.

The Pyatisotka really is beautiful under the floodlights when it is standing 

on the launch pad, liberated from the service towers and prelaunch commotion on the ground.

T minus 1 minute!

All at once the conversations cease. I feel the inner tension of everyone 

standing at the observation post. For a few seconds, blinding light floods the 

nocturnal steppe and a deafening roar bears down on us. The Pyatisotka lifts 

off easily, outdazzling the stars with its own bright plume. The first DOS is 

on its way to space.

By the time we had dashed over to Site No. 2, reports had already come 

in from Yevpatoriya and Moscow that Salyut, or, as we referred to it, DOS 

No. 1 or 17K No. 121, had entered its intended orbit. The solar arrays and 

all the structural elements, including the Igla antenna boom, were deployed. 

At that time we still did not realize and could not foresee that this launch had 

opened the age of orbital space stations. Our sole concern was the events of 

the next few hours and days.

In our jargon, the first and subsequent Long-Duration Orbital Stations 

were referred to simply as DOSes. In production documentation all the DOSes 

had the index 17K and were given ordinal numbers: No. 121, No. 122, etc. 

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For the mass media—for the public—the first DOS was called Salyut with 

no number. It was followed by Salyut-2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, etc. TASS reports 

also referred to the piloted Almazes as Salyuts. The former were never called 

DOSes in our departmental terminology.1

After separation from the launch vehicle, the attitude-control system dampened the oscillations of the DOS, and program tests began under Yevpatoriya’s 

command. At the firing range all the attention switched to Soyuz-10. If the tests 

on the DOS did not turn up any contraindications, then Vladimir Shatalov, 

Aleksey Yeliseyev, and Nikolay Rukavishnikov would lift off into space from 

the first Gagarin launch site on 22 April 1971.

The weather had drastically deteriorated. Even those of us who considered 

ourselves Tyuratam old-timers couldn’t recall an autumnal cold rain falling in 

late April. A glitch in the form of a failure of the pull-off plug to eject from 

Block I—the third stage of the Semyorka—was chalked up to this rain on 

launch day. All the systems were brought into their initial state. The launch 

was called off.

“Shatalov simply can’t lift off on his first try,” they joked in the bunker.2

They decided not to take a risk, to sort out the problem with the pull-off plug, 

evacuate the crew, and postpone the launch by 24 hours.

On 23 April, the launch proceeded normally. The first crew reports from 

orbit were also optimistic. The technical management and the State Commission 

flew out to Yevpatoriya. At the naval aviation airfield in Saki, so many passengers streamed out of the Il-18 that we barely managed to squeeze into 

the automobiles sent for us. Once again we were in the blossoming Crimea. 

Everyone who had just arrived, displaying genuine eagerness, dropped their 

suitcases at the hotel and rushed over to the control center, despite the hospitable invitation to dinner. Agadzhanov, Tregub, and Rauschenbach, who in 

the absence of the State Commission were in charge of the Main Operations 

Control Group (GOGU), were ready to report.

Agadzhanov delivered the report: “Everything is normal on board the Salyut

and Soyuz vehicles. The DOS is now in its 79th orbit. At the recommendation 

of the ballistics experts, we must conduct the orbital correction of both vehicles 

during the 81st orbit. For the Salyut, this will be performed automatically; 

for the Soyuz, manually. To do this, during the 80th orbit we will mark the 

settings. On the Salyut the settings will be performed via command radio link; 

 1. 

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Launching Salyut

on the Soyuz we will perform them by voice transmission via Zarya, and the 

crew will input the data required for correction from the console. As a result 

of the corrections, the long-range ballistic rendezvous process will begin on 

the 82nd orbit. According to the ballistics experts’ calculations, the vehicles 

will approach one another to a distance of up to 11 to 12 kilometers at around 

0400 hours. The subsequent rendezvous will take place in automatic mode per 

commands from Igla. According to our calculations, rendezvous and docking 

should be completed within the period from 0536 hours until 0552 hours. 

According to the flight program, transfer from the vehicle to the DOS will 

be performed during orbit No. 84, the cosmonauts will unpack during orbits 

Nos. 85 and 86, and the crew should already be sleeping during orbit No. 87.”

They had just managed to sort out the list of operations for the two vehicles 

and the allocation of responsibility for them in the control and analysis group 

when two instructions came in from Moscow: first—prepare the crew for a 

conversation with Brezhnev; and second—transmit on board the text of a 

greeting from the Communist Party of Bulgaria. Then suddenly the report 

came in that during the fifth orbit of Soyuz-10 the first correction failed. 

Afanasyev was reporting the situation to Ustinov at that time and requested 

that the crew not be distracted by conversations with Brezhnev and greetings 

to the Bulgarians. Mishin demanded that Rauschenbach explain the causes 

for the failed correction.

So many people were crammed into the control room that there was no 

place for the bosses to sit. And it was quite difficult to consult with one another, 

talk, and command the various services over the dozens of telephones. Pavel 

Agadzhanov, who had been giving voice commands over the only conference 

line at the Command and Measurement Complex (KIK), had to aurally receive 

all the information pouring in over the intercom and telephone and the guidelines of the State Commission that had just flown in. It wasn’t easy for Pavel 

Popovich either.3

 He was in direct communication with the crew. His assignment, among other things, also included psychological support for the crew.

But what were they to do? Minister Afanasyev, Mishin, Kerimov, Strogonov, 

Komissarov, Karas, Popov, Tsarev, and Spitsa were people with whom one 

could not raise one’s voice; one couldn’t tell them: “Don’t disrupt my work!” 

Maintaining his enviable unflappability, Rauschenbach was reviewing the 

task for the upcoming corrections with Bashkin and the ballistics experts and 

 3. Pavel Romanovich Popovich (1930–2009) was one of the original group of cosmonauts 

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explaining—in rather unintelligible terms—to the chiefs gathered around them 

the causes for the preceding failure.

“The correction time,” he said, “changes depending on the calculations of 

the ballistics experts, who adjust the orbits based on the measurements taken 

during each orbit. The cosmonauts received the data for the beginning of the 

correction very late, and when they pressed the key on the console, the ionic 

orientation system’s readiness for orientation was reset.”

During his explanation a report came over the loudspeaker: “Soyuz-10

correction designated for 0134 hours, engine operation time 17 seconds.”

Yeliseyev reported that orientation had been executed and they were ready 

for correction. No. 35 (NIP-15) confirmed that the settings had been input 

into the DOS for the corrective acceleration at 0254 hours.4

 I requested that 

a command be issued to the DOS to switch on the television cameras for an 

orientation check. Mishin was arguing about something with Kerimov, and 

suddenly they both demanded reports about backup scenarios in the event 

that Igla were to fail.

At that time Soyuz-10 was in our tracking stations’ coverage zone, but we 

couldn’t properly conduct conversations with the crew. Mishin and Kerimov 

repeatedly interrupted flight management demanding continuous reports. 

At that time, to make matters worse, information came through about some 

glitch in the Saturn system for monitoring the stations’ orbits.5

 Usually such 

glitches are not reported. Kerimov and Mishin broke out in a furor at the 

ballistics experts and at Bogomolov. Reports from the loudspeaker cut into 

the general uproar:

“Rendezvous is in progress. Soyuz is 2 seconds ahead of Salyut.”

“Why are you giving it to us in seconds? Give it to us in kilometers!”

“Granit is reporting: radio lock-on has occurred, Igla is operating.”6

Agadzhanov couldn’t stand it, and, despite the presence of his direct superiors—Generals Karas and Spitsa—he yelled into the microphones feeding out 

to the general conference line and communication with the crew: “I read you, 

range 10 kilometers. Don’t disrupt my work!”

 4. NIP-15 was located at Galenki (a village near Ussuriysk) in the Primorskiy Kray on the 

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Launching Salyut

Evidently, the last statement caused bewilderment on board. The cosmonauts were offended: “We’re reporting on the rendezvous progress according 

to the readings on the console.”

Over the general uproar and conversations, I was trying not to miss any 

reports from the analysis group or crew about an off-nominal situation.

“If I don’t have a stroke after this work, it will be a miracle,” Ivan 

Meshcheryakov managed to mutter, as he gave the latest instructions via 

high-frequency communications to the computer center in Bolshevo.7

“Why aren’t you reporting about the completion of the orbit?” asked 

Kerimov.

Agadzhanov, barely managing to control his temper (he was conducting 

talks with Granit), reported loudly: “Igla is operating, I read you, this is for 

Granit. Range 11 kilometers—that’s for the guests.”

“What’s going on with you—first 10, then 11 kilometers? Who’s the 

culprit?” asked Mishin.

The minister behaved more calmly than anyone.

Agadzhanov continued: “We have shutdown of the propulsion system on 

DOS! Granit is reporting about the operation of its engine. The program for 

orbit No. 81 has been completed. The engine on DOS operated for 60 seconds. This is 12.8 Granit, during orbit No. 82, we’re awaiting the most crucial 

reports from you about the operation of Igla and automatic rendezvous mode.”

“Why so many unnecessary words?” fumed Mishin.

“Well, he’s giving information for communication with the crew, playing the role of commentator for the State Commission, and giving orders 

throughout the entire Command and Measurement Complex,” I said, trying 

to defend Agadzhanov.

“Orbit No. 82, search in progress.”

“All of the KIK systems are operating. Granit is reporting: DPO nozzles 

are winking.”

“What do you mean, the nozzles are ‘winking,’ what kind of nonsense 

are you talking?”

“Don’t get distracted,” I say to Agadzhanov, “they can wait!”

“NIP-16 is receiving via the Saturn system. DPOs are operating 20 seconds, 

25 seconds, 30 seconds, 35 seconds, 40 seconds, 45 seconds....”

“Why don’t they shut down on their own?” someone sobbed hysterically.

 7. This center was located at NII-4.
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

“Approach rate 8 meters per second, stable radio lock-on....”

“We see a bright dot in the periscope. Range—15 kilometers, rate—24.”

“Quiet in the control room!”

“But who will explain what is going on, why was it 11 and suddenly the 

range is 15? Chertok, Mnatsakanyan, Rauschenbach, why are you sitting and 

doing nothing?”

“Igla is doing it for us,” answers Mnatsakanyan.

“If you were sitting in the spacecraft, perhaps you would be doing something, but now you need to listen and not interfere,” I was the one losing my 

temper now.

“What a madhouse,” says Rauschenbach quietly. “I hope Igla doesn’t 

go crazy.”

Despite our squabbling, the automatic rendezvous process continued. Over 

the conference line the telemetry experts, the crew, and NIPs conducted their 

reports, which the chiefs, eager for action, jumped on. Any person who had 

not mastered all of our acronyms and in-house jargon would really think that 

data transmission and flight control were “sheer chaos” and it was high time 

to punish the out-of-hand GOGU members.

Despite the fact that it was 0400 hours, no one was snoozing in the 

control room. Reports were coming from space and from the NIPs, and local 

commentaries were in such abundance that even I didn’t always figure out the 

source of the information. The most reliable information, of course, was the 

telemetry being processed in real time and the Granit reports on Zarya. They 

were coming almost simultaneously. The communications baton was passed 

seamlessly from NIP to NIP.

“Range 11, rate 26 point 5.”

I couldn’t restrain myself and said to Agadzhanov sitting next to me at the 

microphone: “How about that Colonel Voronov—well done! It’s just chaotic 

here in the control room, but communication in the KIK is excellent today 

all the way to Kamchatka.”

“Yes, we’re lucky to have Boris Anatolyevich,” Agadzhanov just managed 

to respond.

He was right. Hundreds of KIK officers and soldiers at the NIPs, 

communications centers, and radio stations invisible and unknown to the 

top chiefs were doing their jobs calmly and selflessly. Colonel Voronov 

was in charge of creating and then operating all the KIK communications 

structures for all of the space programs. He was the KIK deputy chief, but 

he had a very modest manner and tried not come to the attention of the 

high-ranking guests.

“Range 8, rate 27 point 5; range 6, rate 27. DPO nozzles are burning. 

They’ve begun turning the spacecraft.”

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Launching Salyut

“They can’t approach at that rate,” fretted Mishin. “Why aren’t you doing 

anything? Tell the crew what to do!”

“We don’t need to do anything; deceleration will begin now,” Rauschenbach 

reassured Mishin.

“The turn was completed. SKD has executed a deceleration burn; engine 

is operating—5 seconds, 10 seconds, 13 seconds.”

“Range 4, rate 11. DPO nozzles are burning; turn is in progress.”

“Range 3 point 5, rate 10. SKDs have fired again. Ten seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 33 seconds—shutdown. Range 2 

point 7, rate 8.”

“We see the target against the background of Earth, the spacecraft lights 

are flickering, range 2 point 5, rate 8. We see the target in the periscope....”

Oh, how time seems to stand still! The fear persists that suddenly something inexplicable will happen. It’s already 0500 hours! Do these on-board 

automatic control systems really understand better than we do what to do and 

when, and they won’t slip up? Sitting here in the control room on the seashore, 

nothing threatens us. But what do they feel, these Granits, hurtling through 

space around the planet for a rendezvous with the DOS?

In response to my unspoken question, Nikolay Gurovskiy hands a note to 

Tregub. He reads it and holds it out to me: “According to telemetry, Shatalov 

and Yeliseyev have a pulse rate of over 100 and Rukavishnikov’s is 90!”

“They’ve started another turn. Range 1,600, rate 8. Engine operating—7 

seconds. Range 1,200, rate 4, turning again. Range 950, rate 2. Engine firing 

again—5 seconds. Turn, DPO nozzles flickering.”

“We see the object; turning again, SKD firing for 4 seconds; range 800, 

rate 4.”

“This is Granit; I have a good, clear view of the target.”

This is the last report from the spacecraft before it leaves the coverage zone. 

Bashkin goes up to Rauschenbach and whispers something.

“Bashkin, Rauschenbach, don’t keep secrets, tell us why rendezvous is 

going so slowly. This is your logic. According to the calculations that were 

given to me, they should have made contact while they were still in the coverage zone,” says Mishin.

“We checked the reserves,” answered Rauschenbach. “They had fuel reserves 

on board for rendezvous for just 13 meters per second for the SKD and 20 

kilograms for the DPO. If they enter our coverage zone now, without having 

docked, we need to make the decision to call it off. We can’t risk the fuel 

reserves for descent.”

I reassure the minister: “They understand everything very well there. We 

talked over such a situation with Yeliseyev. He won’t risk it. With Shatalov, 

I’m convinced they’ll make the right decision.”
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

The 30-minute break in the coverage zone was agonizingly long.

“Attention! We’re about to begin the communication session of orbit No. 

83; readiness 5 minutes!”

“Granit, this is 36. I’m giving the count: one, two, three, four....”

“This is Granit; I hear you fine! At 0447 hours we executed manual final 

approach. We had contact and mechanical capture. Retraction began. But in 

the 9th minute the docking and internal transfer system (SSVP) mode halted; 

retraction wasn’t completed.9 Docking isn’t working. We don’t know why. Look 

at the telemetry. Can you suggest what to do?”

“Where are the docking experts?”

Zhivoglotov, Vakulin, and Syromyatnikov appeared. They were pale and 

uneasy. They simply had not expected that of all the possible hypothetical 

failures, the one that would occur bore no resemblance to anything that had 

happened during ground testing.

Stammering from agitation, Zhivoglotov explained to the hushed control 

room: “The rod, which is the probe of the active docking assembly, was extended 

in front of the docking surface. The entire distance for complete retraction 

using the ball screw is 390 millimeters. Retraction began normally on a signal 

from the automatics. There was a retraction of 300 millimeters and then it 

stopped. The retracting mechanism was working and trying to draw in, but the 

gap between the surfaces of the active and passive assemblies didn’t decrease. 

It is 90 millimeters. The possible causes are very preliminary:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

there was an error in the installation of the centering pins by 180 degrees;

there was a manufacturing error when aligning the axes, which is highly 

unlikely;

the hydraulic connectors have gotten hung up on each other, although 

this is 50 millimeters rather than 90;

there was an error with the electrical connectors, if their housings have 

gotten hung up, which gives just 30 millimeters;

the assembly has gotten hung up on supplemental reinforcing brackets; we 

call them balconies, but this was checked very thoroughly at the factory;

it is possible that there is dirt on the screw—true, it would take lot of dirt 

to stop the screw dead;

ice formed upon insertion into space—but there was no rain during liftoff, 

and the ice would have melted under the pressure of the screw; and

finally, it is possible that the side levers broke—there was a very intense 

rolling motion right after capture.”

 9. SSVP—

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Launching Salyut

“Why rolling? Where were the dynamics? Rauschenbach! Why were there 

oscillations?” Mishin demanded an answer.

An unpleasant thought tore through me. I asked Pavel Popovich, who 

was communicating with Granit at that moment: “Ask Granit to describe the 

oscillations during retraction.”

“There’s no need to ask. Yeliseyev reported that after capture the DPO 

nozzles indicator lit up and blinked for about 30 seconds. During that time 

the vehicle rocked intensely.”

I understood that further questioning of the docking specialists would be 

futile, and after consulting with Rauschenbach and Tregub, I laid out for Mishin 

and Kerimov my version of what had happened: “Most likely a mechanical 

failure occurred due to the large lateral oscillations. We didn’t shut down the 

control system. Right off the bat, as soon as contact was made, disturbance 

occurred, which the angular rate sensors monitored. The control system tried 

to compensate for the angular deviation, but capture had already taken place, 

so instead of settling down, rocking began, but rather than about the center 

of mass, it was on the rod that was engaged with the DOS in the receiving 

drogue. We broke something. It’s useless to continue docking attempts. We 

need to make the decision to undock.”

However, it turned out that it wasn’t so easy to give the command to 

undock; that is, the command could be given, but that didn’t mean that the 

spacecraft would undock from the station. According to the electrical diagram, 

which Zhivoglotov and Vakulin were bent over while Tregub and I tried to 

elbow our way between them, it turned out that we needed to “go back to 

square one” for undocking. Undocking would proceed if the electrical connectors were mated beforehand and the SSVP mode was executed in its entirety.

The system had been developed in a purely automatic version, and no 

provisions for human intervention were included in the process of executing 

intermediate operations. The logic of the automatics was technically correct. 

After the tip of the active assembly’s probe entered the receiving well of the 

passive assembly’s cone, the latches captured it and issued the “capture” signal. 

This signal initiated the retraction of the active and passive parts. The ball screw 

pulled the rod into the active assembly. Retraction continued until the electrical and hydraulic connectors were mated. After the mating of the connectors, 

special hooks, which emerged from the active assembly and pulled the passive 

assembly toward it, performed final retraction ensuring the pressure integrity 

and strength of the interface between the two spacecraft. Only after this did 

the latches holding the head of the probe in the cone’s receiving drogue open. 

The rod retracted completely into the active assembly.

The “undock” command could be issued over the command radio link 

from Earth or from the Soyuz console. Upon receiving this command, the 
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

retracting hooks are retracted and the vehicle is released from its mechanical connection with the DOS. The DPO executes a back-out burn, and the 

spacecraft separate. In this long chain of operations there was no provision for 

the possibility of undocking if the entire docking cycle had not been executed. 

The “undock” command wasn’t capable of freeing a probe that was firmly held 

by the latches of the passive part of the docking assembly. It is true that an 

emergency undocking provision had been made for such an off-nominal event. 

Upon receiving an emergency command, an explosive cartridge jettisons the 

probe from the active part. But in so doing, it would remain in the passive 

cone, and redocking with the other vehicle is now impossible.

“Well, way to go, you guys. You dreamed up an assembly in which ‘mama’ 

won’t let go of ‘papa’,” Andrey Karas needled us.

“We have a reliable emergency alternative—jettisoning the docking assembly. True, in this case we free the vehicle, but the probe and levers will stay on 

the DOS ‘with mama’.”

“This amputation is no good. Do you want to lose the first orbital station, 

or what? Find a way to deceive your super intelligent system,” said the minister.

An incredibly tragic situation had developed. We couldn’t separate the 

vehicle from the DOS so that another vehicle could make a second attempt 

at docking.

“There’s an alternative,” said Zhivoglotov timidly. “We need to get to our 

instrument in the vehicle’s Habitation Compartment, find connector Sh28/201, 

and on the instrument side place a jumper on plug pins No. 30 and No. 34. 

Then from the console issue a docking command and remove the jumper. 

The command will pass through the circuit, removing the stops that the rod 

is getting held up on in the receiving well of the cone. We’ll sort of unlatch 

the door from the other side.”

“Brilliant idea, but who on board the spacecraft will be able to perform 

such an operation?”

“Rukavishnikov performed harder tricks as an electrical engineer before 

he became a cosmonaut. Of course, never in space,” I said.

For about an hour and a half we composed detailed instructions and 

transmitted them on board.

“We read you,” responded the Granits, albeit without any enthusiasm.

And suddenly one of the docking specialists recalled that there was one 

more alternative. Supposedly, it was possible to issue a command to the DOS 

rather than to the vehicle, and this command would release the latches and 

thus free the rod.

“That’s all well and good, but now the entire mass of the vehicle is hanging 

from these latches and the drive simply does not have enough force to open 

this lock.”

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“We’ll give it a try. Perhaps, over the time needed for the command to 

take effect, the vehicle will rock and the amount of force on the latches will 

turn out to be small.”

We grasped at this straw. During the 84th orbit, this unprecedented (at 

that time) operation was executed, and during the 85th orbit at 0844 hours, 

the undock command was received.

“Undocking occurred, DPO executed a back-out burn,” reports came in 

simultaneously from on board and from the analysis group.

The Soyuz-10 spacecraft and Salyut orbital station had flown for just under 

5 hours in a mated state. Hardly anyone had believed in our gamble with a 

successful undocking. For that reason, reports about the undocking caused 

considerably greater elation than during a normal docking. When the first 

dust settled, a group of docking specialists approached me and with obvious 

embarrassment reported “in confidence” that they didn’t understand why the 

undocking operation had worked. It shouldn’t have!

Next came preparations for descent and landing. Agadzhanov and Tregub 

could manage just fine without Rauschenbach and me. The State Commission 

was preoccupied with the crew’s return to Earth. Rauschenbach and I got 

on the high-frequency communication line with Kalashnikov, Vilnitskiy, 

and Legostayev, who had also been up all night in Podlipki, and fired them 

up about the unacceptable oscillations and the need to immediately set up 

experiments in shop No. 439 to simulate what had happened that night.

When we were back in Star City after landing on 26 April, we 

heard from the cosmonauts. Spacecraft commander Shatalov reported first: 

“The vehicle has good maneuverability, it responds very well during manual 

control. All the dynamic operations were performed without any glitches. It is 

true, when Igla took over rendezvous control I was somewhat ill at ease from 

the frequent turns and SKD burns. At a range of 140 meters I took over control 

for the final approach process. Manual final approach proceeded right away, 

without incident. It was easier for me than on Soyuz-4 and -5. Contact was 

soft; there was no rattling or grating. As soon as capture occurred, the vehicle 

rolled to the right as much as 30 degrees, then swung back to the left. The 

oscillation period was 7 seconds. We were afraid we would lose the docking 

assembly altogether. Then the oscillations subsided. What happened during 

retraction, we couldn’t imagine. Undocking proceeded smoothly. Visually, the 

station’s condition looks good. It’s too bad, of course, that we weren’t able to 

get inside. Landing took place in complete darkness. We did a somersault.”

Before they landed, Yeliseyev realized the fundamental error that they had 

committed in the dynamics of docking control. He told his story with more 

emotion than Shatalov.
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

“Everything was going normally, and on the whole the vehicle systems also 

were functioning normally. But why did the ‘DPO Nozzles’ indicator light up 

after contact and why did we flail from side to side? It shouldn’t have lit up. 

They were the reason we were rocking so. I am amazed we didn’t completely 

break the docking assembly. I attempted to perform a background correction of the ARS emergency range meter developed in Leningrad. The marker 

wandered between two and two and a half kilometers. We need to develop a 

method for tuning the ARS. With their instructions, the ‘ground’ left us very 

little time to prepare for correction.”

Rukavishnikov complained: “With the temperature in the spacecraft set at 

20°C [68°F], it’s very cold to sleep in a flight suit. We slept just 2 or 3 hours. 

Instead of sleeping you sit and shiver. We need sleeping bags. Communication 

in the coverage zone is good. But when we left the zone, we were left with no 

communication—that’s bad. When the big oscillations began, we wanted to 

switch on manual control and manually compensate for these disturbances, 

but we were afraid to.”

Shatalov interrupted Rukavishnikov: “We approached with virtually zero 

misalignment between the vehicle and station axes. That’s why we simply didn’t 

expect that such oscillations would begin. The probe entered the receiving 

drogue softly, without any impact. And suddenly something started that we 

absolutely did not expect. Before docking, the pressure in the DPO tanks was 

220 atmospheres, and afterwards it was just 140. We used up an incredibly 

large amount on this turbulence.”

After these frank conversations with us, the crew met with correspondents 

hungry for space news. Everything was presented to them as if there had been 

no intention of performing a transfer into the station. This was just a rehearsal, 

and it demonstrated the reliability of all the systems.

The official report stated: “On 24 April, cosmonauts V. A. Shatalov, A. S. 

Yeliseyev, N. N. Rukavishnikov on Soyuz-10 conducted a series of experiments 

in joint flight with the Salyut station. These included the testing of new docking 

mechanisms.” The Kosmonavtika: Entsiklopediya (Cosmonautics: An Encyclopedia) 

states that the goal of the flight was to perform a “trial run of the improved 

docking system of the Soyuz-10 spacecraft with the Salyut orbital station.”10

 10.

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Launching Salyut

When we returned from Star City to Podlipki, we gave free rein to self-criticism.

“What a bunch of jerks we are!” fumed Rauschenbach. “Nobody foresaw 

that immediately upon contact we needed to shut down the control system, 

and certainly shut down the DPO, and on and on.”

By the end of the day we had discussed a list of modifications with 

Lev Vilnitskiy, Viktor Kuzmin, Vladimir Syromyatnikov, and Vsevolod 

Zhivoglotov. The probe should begin to retract only after the vehicle’s oscillations subside. We needed to have the capability to control the rod manually: 

pulling in and backing out. All the automatics needed to have manual control 

backup! The dynamics specialists needed to reduce the impact velocity to 0.2 

meter per second. We needed to install a special console on the Soyuz for 

manual docking control capability. But most importantly, God helps those 

who help themselves—in addition to the alignment levers around the rod, 

we decided to engineer a sort of “jabot,” just not a lacy one, but a good steel 

collar that would take up the load during oscillations.

“Everyone get started right away! When will the documentation for the 

modifications come out?” the usual question was asked.

“Allowing for night work, we’ll have the memorandum and clean copy for 

you by tomorrow evening,” answered Vilnitskiy.

“Good, let’s call Khazanov.”

Khazanov straight away ordered that the shop process engineers team up 

with the designers.

“The shops have no more than a week to modify the assemblies and instruments,” he ordered.

I reported our proposals to Mishin over the telephone. He approved and 

warned us:

“Tomorrow Ustinov and Serbin are coming to shop No. 439. They want 

to have a look at the docking assemblies and docking process. Prepare posters, 

rehearse docking, explain everything, and show the measures we’re taking.”

“Pipe all hands on deck! We’re moving over to shop No. 439!” I commanded Kalashnikov and Vilnitskiy.

After the unsuccessful docking of Soyuz-10 with Salyut, demonstrating 

the process to Central Committee Secretary Ustinov and Central Committee 

Defense Department Chief Serbin was an extremely critical matter. They had 

promised the top political leaders that the piloted orbital station would reduce 

the impact that the four U.S. lunar expeditions had made on our populace.11

 11.
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Ustinov and the Central Committee apparat, and ultimately Serbin as well, 

had backed the initiative of the enthusiasts—Bushuyev, Okhapkin, Chertok, 

Rauschenbach, and Feoktistov—and with the considerable efforts of Minister 

Afanasyev, at the expense of Chelomey’s operations, in just a little over a year 

and a half had helped build and insert into space a real orbital station.

They notified the whole world about this. And suddenly the transport 

vehicle crew, after brilliantly executing approach and docking, couldn’t enter 

the station. How do you explain that to the “people upstairs?” Brezhnev would 

still understand. Kosygin would say that this was slovenliness again and that 

enormous sums of money were being wasted. But the others simply wouldn’t 

understand what’s what. The Central Committee and VPK took our failure 

very badly.

It had been two and a half years since Beregovoy’s unsuccessful docking.12

Over that time, Shatalov had flown twice. The first time he achieved a successful 

docking.13 The second time, the docking process failed, supposedly through 

the fault of the radio system.14 Now finally Shatalov docked, but he couldn’t 

get through to the station. “Who is organizing all of this over there? Who’s 

checking?” These are the questions that Kosygin asked.

After Mishin had explained and shown the high-ranking guests what could 

break down and interfere with retraction, Serbin asked, “And which one of 

your people made that? Show me the designer.”

Lev Vilnitskiy wasn’t about to wait until he was pushed forward out of the 

crowd of administrators gathered there, and emerging into the “line of fire,” 

he decided to seize the initiative from the “attacker.”

“Department Chief Vilnitskiy. Request permission to report,” the former 

captain introduced himself military-style. “This docking assembly has been 

radically remodeled compared with the ones that have already been tested three 

times in flight. It has been integrated with an internal transfer structure. We 

must not only join the vehicle with the DOS, but also provide a pressurized 

transfer tunnel. We calculated the strength of all the mechanisms using our 

experience in terms of impact velocity, lateral velocities, and possible angles 

of deviation, which were obtained during the three preceding dockings. A 

whole series of dockings were conducted preliminarily on this unit. After the 

experiments, many parts were modified. Docking began normally. But during 

 12.

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retraction, the Soyuz rocked vis-à-vis the DOS at substantially larger angles 

than we expected. Here, on this unit, we have reproduced an analogous mode 

and found the weak point. We understand everything, and in a week a newly 

modified assembly will arrive for testing.”

“So, you order that a TASS report be issued saying that Comrade Vilnitskiy 

made a mistake? In a week he’ll make amends, and the next crew will make 

their way through the hatch to the Salyut.”

“For me, it’s an honor to be in a TASS report, but the next docking will 

proceed normally, I give you my word.”

“You all know how to give your word, and then you miss deadlines, hoping 

for full impunity.”

Vilnitskiy didn’t have time to respond. Ustinov broke in: “The minister 

can sort out whom to punish and how to punish without us, but you show us 

what hatch the crew needs to crawl through from the spacecraft to the DOS.”

Now Isaak Khazanov, coming to Vilnitskiy’s rescue, quickly climbed up 

onto the service ladder in order to show how the hatch covers open in the docking assembly. I’m probably not the only one who breathed a sign of relief. After 

catching sight of Khazanov, Ustinov brightened. Perhaps he was remembering 

Boris Abramovich Khazanov—a major general, though at the beginning of 

the war, he was a military engineer first class, “specially commissioned by the 

people’s commissar of armament of the USSR [i.e., Ustinov] in support of 

missions of the State Committee of Defense.”

During the war, Ustinov threw Boris Khazanov into the most difficult 

artillery arms production sites. Khazanov Senior never let you down. He 

devoted all of his professional knowledge, moral courage, and physical 

strength to his work. In 1942 he was named director of the artillery factory 

in Krasnoyarsk. Under extremely difficult conditions, he pulled the factory out of a deep failure. Back then he had a bitter clash with the Central 

Committee’s authorized representative, Serbin. But Ustinov did not allow 

reprisals against Khazanov.

And now, a quarter century later, Khazanov’s son was showing Ustinov 

a spacecraft docking assembly. After seeing for the first time the hole that a 

cosmonaut was supposed to crawl through, Ustinov was amazed: “Who in the 

world can squeeze through that tunnel? Even in weightlessness I couldn’t do it.”

We had argued with the planners a great deal about the diameter of the 

hatch. Ustinov had hit a raw nerve. During the design process I had fought 

for a hatch diameter of one meter, as the Apollo had. Feoktistov, enjoying 

the authority of chief planner and the experience of a former cosmonaut, 

“squeezed” the designers down to a diameter of 800 millimeters. Bushuyev 

backed him up. Now he needed to come to Vilnitskiy’s rescue, and I gave 

Bushuyev a hard nudge.
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

“And we won’t let you, Dmitriy Fedorovich,” said Bushuyev, after quickly 

pushing Vilnitskiy aside. “The Americans have a bigger diameter on the 

Apollo—almost a meter.15 When we told [the Americans] that ours was 800 

millimeters, they were undaunted and believed that that’s enough.”

Now factory director Klyucharev joined in the argument that was flaring up.

“Dmitriy Fedorovich, I must report to you that for docking with the 

Americans the designers are designing a completely new docking assembly. 

We are going to have to do a trial run all over again.”

“What, you do all this work and then start everything from the beginning 

again?” fumed Ustinov.

“Yes, we’ve begun negotiations, in which we’ve arrived at the idea of an 

androgynous assembly. So that neither side will be offended, we’re going to 

make completely identical halves on each vehicle.”

“And why do you call it androgynous? What does that mean?”

Now Vilnitskiy came to Bushuyev’s aid: “It’s a ‘hermaphrodite’ assembly. 

Unlike our current system, where the active rod goes into the passive cone, here 

the structures on the active and passive sides are identical. Hermaphroditus, 

as the ancient Greeks believed, was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. He was 

so handsome that the gods made him bisexual. We considered it improper to 

introduce the term ‘hermaphrodite’ into technical documentation. Therefore, 

we used terminology used in botany for bisexual plants—‘androgynes’.”

“Yes, there’s never a dull moment with you,” concluded Ustinov.

“Everything’s ready; we request permission to begin,” Khazanov addressed 

Ustinov, anticipating the danger of a debate on the subject of new development.

The attention of the brass switched to the mockup of the active vehicle, 

which with its extended probe was driving toward the passive cone on the 

weight equivalent of the DOS. Low-impact dynamic parameters were selected 

on the experimental unit to demonstrate docking to the brass. The impact of 

the probe against the inner surface of the cone, its capture by the receiving 

drogue, the subsequent rocking of the vehicle mockup, and the entire retraction process had a pacifying effect on the high-ranking guests.

When the high-ranking Party leaders had departed and we were comparing notes with one another, the relieved Khazanov confided: “We wanted to 

begin right away with the docking show, but the dirty rotten ‘visit effect’ kicked 

in. Zhivoglotov had some sort of problem on the console. While Serbin was 

hearing Vilnitskiy’s confession and then Ustinov was hearing Bushuyev’s, we 

 15.

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Launching Salyut

found the glitch. When I worked under Vasiliy Gavrilovich Grabin, he taught 

us: ‘If you want to convince irate superiors of something, there’s no point in 

arguing and annoying them with verbosity. You need to quickly demonstrate 

it “for real” at the firing range or in the shop. The brass will become familiar 

with your ideas, they’ll calm down, and there will be no reprimands.’ ”

“The example of Grabin suggests otherwise,” I retorted to Khazanov. “Stalin 

was never in the shops, much less at the firing range, but he always backed 

Grabin, while Ustinov, who saw everything, was his enemy.”

These events marked the beginning of a rush job to perform modifications and all manner of tests on the “rod-cone” docking assembly. 

Vilnitskiy, Syromyatnikov, Utkin, Zhivoglotov, Bobkov, Rozenberg, Vakulin, 

Chizhikov—I could go on and on with the list of people who were involved. 

In two shifts they conducted a series of tests with production workers, checking the structural strength and the logic of the new automatics. The assembly 

was subjected to various static loads, to the point of failure. They varied the 

rates and angles of approach from nominal values to the maximum possible 

emergency situation values.

The automatic and manual docking control structures and logic optimized 

in 1971, with small improvements as statistics were accumulated, have now 

been operating failure-free for 37 years. They were used on the Mir orbital 

station for 15 years and have been in service on the Russian segment of the 

International Space Station for eight years now.16

As for the androgynous assembly, in 1975 it supported the docking and 

meeting of the Soyuz-19 and Apollo crews. After this, it was used in our domestic programs only one more time, during the docking of Soyuz TM-16 with 

one of the Mir station modules.17 An objective comparison of our versions 

and American versions of docking assemblies gives preference to ours without 

much hairsplitting. Few people are aware that in 1971 engineer Vladimir 

Syromyatnikov took on the responsibility for the development of docking 

assemblies for the reusable U.S. Space Shuttle and International Space Station. 

The Americans declined to compete. Thus, Syromyatnikov’s teams, ZEM 

and the Azov Optical Mechanical Factory, which were small by today’s standards, monopolized the field of spacecraft docking design and technology. It 

is astonishing, but in the 21st century, RKK Energiya continues to hold on 

 16.
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

to its monopoly for the delivery of docking assemblies to the U.S. for Space 

Shuttles and for the new European transport vehicle.18

 18.

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Chapter 15

Sun City

After the first unsuccessful “appointment” with the Soyuz-10 spacecraft 

launched on 19 April 1971, the DOS continued to fly in unpiloted mode. 

The program of science experiments that were supposed to be conducted 

suffered due to the fact that the cover of the infrared telescope had not been 

jettisoned. This greatly reduced the value of the science program. TASS 

reports said nothing about the failure of the cover to open or the incomplete docking process. At press conferences the crew made no mention of 

the docking node’s breakdown. Everything supposedly had gone according 

to the program—period.

We needed to rehabilitate the piloted orbital station flight program as 

soon as possible. For that reason, work was under way 24 hours a day to 

prepare Soyuz-11.

Shabarov performed the duties of technical chief at the firing range. 

According to his reports, preparations were going according to schedule and 

liftoff could take place on 6 June. Mishin had also put Shabarov in charge of 

technical management of the preparation of Block D at Site No. 31. This time 

the fourth stage of Chelomey’s UR-500K launch vehicle—our Block D—was 

being tasked with sending interplanetary stations Mars-2 and Mars-3 to Mars. 

The launches of these stations were tied hard and fast to the astronomical 

deadlines of 19 and 28 May. These new spacecraft differed substantially from 

our Mars-1, which we launched during the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis 

in 1962. Each of them had an orbital compartment and a descent module. 

Babakin’s team had done an enormous amount of work to ensure the reliability 

of these interplanetary stations. We were also in a rush because the launch of 

N-1 No. 6L was scheduled for June.

On 24 May on Miusskaya Square, the State Commission convened in 

the hall of the ministerial collegium, where I thought my report about the 

results of all the work conducted on docking dynamics would finally be the last 

one. A group comprising Okhotsimskiy, Legostayev, Voropayev, and Lebedev 

had done an excellent job preparing the materials. Right off the bat, Dmitriy 

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Okhotsimskiy had discovered our weak spot.1 Voropayev’s department was 

responsible for the rocket flight dynamics, Legostayev’s department for spacecraft control dynamics, and Vilnitskiy’s department for loads on the docking 

assembly after docking. But the dynamics of the process from the moment of 

contact until retraction were ownerless.

Vilnitskiy’s report about the measures taken to protect the docking assembly 

structure against the dynamic environment, which he illustrated with good 

posters, convinced the collegium that the theoreticians were the culprits rather 

than the designers. The members of the collegium weren’t about to penetrate 

into the depths of dynamics, and discussion ended at this ministerial level.

On 25 May, a month after Ustinov and Serbin visited shop No. 439, we 

reported at the Kremlin to the VPK about the launch readiness of the Soyuz-11

spacecraft for docking with the DOS. Mishin made the traditional general 

report about the work performed and readiness for launch. Using posters, I 

gave a very brief report (as the VPK staffers had requested of me beforehand, 

having arranged it with [VPK Chairman] Smirnov) about what had caused 

the docking node on Soyuz-10 to fail and the actions we had taken. To my 

astonishment, not one of the VPK members asked a single question.

After my speech, Keldysh deemed it necessary to say that, at the request 

of Minister Afanasyev, specialists of his institute had participated in a study 

of the dynamics of the docking process and in the development of measures 

guaranteeing its reliability.2

Next, the primary and backup crews were introduced. The primary crew 

was made up of Aleksey Leonov, Valeriy Kubasov, and Petr Kolodin. Georgiy 

Dobrovolskiy, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev formed the backup crew. 

[State Commission chairman] Kerimov reported that the launch was scheduled 

for 6 June 1971 and, considering its particularly critical nature, asked the 

chief designers to be there “in person.” This call to action, which had become 

standard by now, did not elicit any emotions. “Tomorrow morning the State 

Commission will fly out,” concluded Kerimov.

May in Moscow was unusually rainy and cold. At the airfield, as we were 

walking to our airplane, an icy north wind cut through us. Our group—

Kerimov, Severin, Darevskiy, Yurevich, and Pravetskiy—gladly warmed up 

with the hot tea that Khvastunov arranged for them soon after takeoff. Over 

 1. Dmitriy Yevgenyevich Okhotsimskiy (1921–2005) was one of the leading Soviet applied 

340
Sun City

tea, Khvastunov—a Hero of the Soviet Union, combat pilot, and the current 

chief of our flight squadron—astonished doctor of medical sciences Pravetskiy.

I was conversing with avid downhill skier Gay Severin about his latest 

accomplishments. He complained about acute pains in his legs and about 

space technology, which were both interfering with his ski jumps and falls.

“I can give you some advice regarding your legs,” Khvastunov broke into 

our conversation. “After the war I flew a lot as an instructor, and suddenly 

my legs ‘gave out.’ I couldn’t walk at all. They dragged me to hospital after 

hospital—nothing helped. It was terrible: they were going to write me off into 

retirement. But my dear old mother cured me. She put me to bed at her house 

in the village and covered my legs with raw potatoes. Three days later I stood 

up. And, as you can see, I’m flying.”

“And you had no relapses?” asked Pravetskiy.

“None. As if nothing had ever been wrong.”

After a little more than three hours’ flight from cold Moscow, we found 

ourselves in hot Tyuratam at Dalniy airfield, formerly Lastochka. Later, for 

some reason, they renamed it Krayniy.3

Shabarov, who met us, dumbfounded me: “It’s 36 degrees [96°F] here now, 

but for you it’s going to be even hotter. There’s a serious glitch in the docking 

system in the latest tests.”

After arriving at Site No. 2, I dashed into the hotel to toss off my warm 

jacket. And without grabbing some lunch, I set off on foot under the scorching Sun to the MIK. I was itching to find out what the docking and internal 

transfer system had in store for us now.

Oh, this path from the hotel to the MIK! I have been walking it since 

the spring of 1957. It used to be a dusty dirt trail from the special train, then 

from the barracks to the MIK standing all by itself on the steppe. Now, shady 

poplar trees along the asphalt protect the pedestrian from the scorching sun. 

After the checkpoint, where a soldier scrutinized my pass, I was in the “garden.” 

A group of control specialists and engine experts, who were heatedly arguing 

with one another, greeted me from a cozy gazebo.

In the testing hall our specialists and military testers were crowded around 

the manual control console for the docking mechanism, arguing. They explained 

to me that the previous day, during the performance of a test operation to 

extend the probe three times, they decided to make sure that in the retraction process, no erroneous cosmonaut actions would lead to the firing of the 

DPO nozzles, which caused the breakdown of the node on Soyuz-10. For this, 

 3. The Russian word 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Bashkin demanded that new commands be written into the test instructions. 

During the tests, in their haste, something got messed up, and the passage of 

the “undock” command lit up on the console at the wrong time.

Boris Vakulin, Boris Chizhikov, and Yevgeniy Panin—the developers of 

the docking electrical and mechanical systems—discovered this defect the 

day before at 4 a.m. It had been two days now that they’d gone without sleep 

looking for what caused the mysterious signal behavior. First off, I asked them 

to head over to the hotel and get some sleep. And in the morning after they 

had rested, they should be back here to search for the cause of the glitch in the 

individual programs. I explained the situation to Kerimov over the telephone 

and asked him to postpone the State Commission meeting from that evening 

to 27 May, no earlier than 1700 hours. He grumbled but agreed.

The next morning they ran five individual programs. And immediately 

everything became clear to everyone. In the circuit of the test console they 

discovered an “extra” relay, supposedly protecting the overload coupling against 

possible operator error. The circuit in which this relay was located did not 

participate in operations at the KIS or at the engineering facility. It was only 

needed during the testing process of the docking assembly when it was being 

assembled and handed over at the factory in shop No. 444. This relay failed, 

and the circuit, which wasn’t necessary for tests at the engineering facility, 

turned out to be hooked up and displayed false commands.

The overnight “cerebral eclipse” resulted in the discovery of the failure, 

which had nothing at all to do with an on-board system. Repeated checks 

confirmed that the on-board portion of the SSVP was in perfect order.

When everything had been ascertained, signed over, signed off on, and 

reported to the chairman of the State Commission, I walked out of the stuffy 

MIK with a light heart, sat down in the cozy gazebo, and lit up a cigarette 

with great pleasure. Pravetskiy and Severin dropped by the gazebo for a “puff.” 

They had their own problems with the cosmonauts’ spacesuits and life-support 

equipment.

“From your blissful expression I gather that you’ve caught the bobik that 

disrupted the State Commission for us,” said the always upbeat Severin, 

squinting cheerfully.4

I told them what the situation was.

 4. Beginning with the first and only ground-firing test in 1947 from Kapustin Yar, testers 

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Sun City

“In medicine this is called a ‘paired incident’, ” said Pravetskiy. “If a patient 

is brought in with an inexplicable diagnosis, don’t hurry. Wait. A second patient 

will certainly appear, and he will help form the diagnosis of the first.”

As a result of such a seemingly stupid mistake in the testing procedure, 

we lost a day. But losses of time and rattling of nerves did not end there. An 

installer from our factory brigade, who was referred to as an “old hand,” was 

standing next to the open hatch of the instrumentation compartment during 

a leak test on the [Soyuz] spacecraft’s thermal control system.

“Suddenly,” he said, “I heard a ‘pshh’ and saw a ‘cloudlet’ that smelled 

like a hot iron.”

He called over a testing officer, and he supposedly also saw the “cloudlet.”

If “pshh” and a “cloudlet” were signs of a loss of pressure integrity in the 

thermal control system (STR), then this meant a no-go for the launch.5

 They 

started retesting. They raised and then released the pressure in the system 

several times. Then they called for a delay of 12 hours. There were no signs of 

leaks and no more “pshh.” On the night of 28 May, the haggard STR testers 

guaranteed pressure integrity and approval for handing over the vehicle for 

the irreversible fueling operations.

But right then and there the issue arose: how were they to write out “pshh” 

and “cloudlet” in the logbook? What was this? And what if the STR didn’t 

come into play here at all? Perhaps it was some other instrument that went 

“pshh,” and the cloudlet was smoke from it? What if the nature of the “pshh” 

was electrical rather than pneumatic?

Lead designer Yuriy Semyonov called for lead tester Boris Zelenshchikov 

to write a full explanation in the logbook of what had actually happened and 

what they spent time on. Zelenshchikov asked for a timeout to consult with 

lead military tester Vladimir Yaropolov. After a 30-minute private discussion, 

both testers announced: “If you demand guarantees from us disavowing the 

‘pshh’ and ‘cloudlet’, we ask permission to repeat integrated test No. 1 in its 

entirety, which will take 12 hours.”

If the integrated tests were repeated to this extent, then rollout to the launch 

site would be postponed from 3 June to 4 or 5 June and it would be impossible 

to launch on 6 June. Postponing the launch date would be a disaster! What’s 

more, we had just reported at the Kremlin that we were ready for launch on 6 

June! Yet Semyonov, Feoktistov, and I convened a small review team at which 

we all voted in favor of repeating the integrated tests.

 5. STR—

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Now we needed to quickly seek out Shabarov, who had driven out to 

Chelomey’s Site No. 81, where that day, 28 May, the launch of Babakin’s 

interplanetary automatic station Mars-3 was supposed to take place. Then we 

needed to find Kerimov. He was supposed to make the decision in the State 

Commission to postpone the launch.

We decided to drive with Semyonov and Patrushev to Site No. 81. The 

Mars launch was scheduled for 2028 hours. We still had time; they had only 

just announced T minus 2 hours there. We needed to race 50 kilometers. In 

order to go through the checkpoint, we were supposed to get a gas mask. That 

was the fundamental difference between Chelomey’s and Korolev’s launch sites.6

In the office of the “Martian” State Commission, old acquaintances—

Glushko’s deputy, Viktor Radutnyy; Pilyugin’s deputy for flight tests, Georgiy 

Kirilyuk; Yuriy Trufanov from the ministry; firing range Chief Aleksandr 

Kurushin; and State Commission Chairman Aleksandr Maksimov (behind his 

back everyone called him “San Sanych”)—were busy with amicable prelaunch 

conversations.7 Sergey Kryukov, our former chief planner, was now Babakin’s 

first deputy. (He didn’t work well with Mishin, but Babakin and Kryukov were 

very happy with one another).8

We called Shabarov into another office and began to try to persuade him. 

He agreed to rerun the integrated tests, but we still needed to track down 

Kerimov. Kurushin wouldn’t let us go, and before the launch he invited our 

entire crew for a “soldier’s pilaf” on the occasion of his birthday.9

 I don’t know 

whether it was really soldier’s pilaf, but that particular evening we considered 

it magnificent.

We admired the launch of the UR-500K from the observation post. The 

red disk of the Sun was just touching the horizon and dramatically illuminated 

the rocket as it lifted off with a roar. Separation of the stages took place like a 

color animation display against the background of the darkened sky. Without 

waiting for the report about the flight’s progress toward Mars, we dashed off 

to the airfield in pursuit of Kerimov. Both cosmonaut crews were arriving 

 6. The gas masks were needed because the Proton used toxic storable propellants, while 

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Sun City

there, and we guessed that Kerimov would have to meet them. As we raced 

through the dark town, our headlights blinding people strolling after the heat 

of the day, we arrived at the airfield checkpoint (KPP) and found out that the 

cosmonauts had already driven out to their quarters at Site No. 17.10

We turned around and, slamming on the brakes at the intersections, rushed 

to find Kerimov at the cosmonauts’ base. The cosmonauts had just arrived and 

were happily talking amongst themselves while unloading their baggage with 

the trainers and physicians. After we had greeted one another they invited us 

to dinner, but we had to turn them down. Having telephoned around to all 

the attendants on duty, we determined that Kerimov had left to find us at Site 

No. 2. In the service building next to the MIK there was a communications 

room where flight progress reports poured in. We tore over to Site No. 2 in 

complete darkness, completing a trip of 170 kilometers. On the way, at the 

KPP of the “third ascent,” we ducked into the line of vehicles and, taking 

advantage of the delay, got out of the car.11 Of all things, what a coincidence! 

A spark flared up in the dark sky, and moving rapidly against the background 

of stars toward the east, it extinguished before it reached the horizon.

After looking at the time, I guessed: “We just saw the second firing of 

Block D. By the time we get back, in Yevpatoriya they’ll determine how much 

of an error Block D gave Mars-3.”

The communications room was crammed full of “Martians” who had 

come here for communications. The first reports about that beginning of the 

seven-month flight to Mars had already arrived here from the Yevpatoriya and 

Moscow ballistics centers. According to the preliminary data, the deviation 

error was 1,250,000 kilometers, instead of the calculated figure of no more 

than 250,000 kilometers.

“It’s a long trip, you’ll be able to correct it,” I reassured Kryukov.

“To correct an error like that we’ll have to use up precious fuel,” fretted 

Kryukov.12

We finally caught up with a disconcerted Kerimov in Patrushev’s office 

and began to explain the situation with the “pshh” and our proposal to rerun 

the integrated tests and postpone the Soyuz-11 launch for 24 hours.

 10.

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“I can’t decide a matter like this at my own discretion. In the morning 

we will convene the State Commission. This evening, I mean, yesterday,” said 

Kerimov, after glancing at the clock, “I reported to Smirnov that we are confirming the launch for 6 June. And you want me to go find him this morning, 

on a Saturday, at his home or at his dacha, apologize, and say that I was misled: 

launch on 6 June is impossible. After this, what kind of confidence can we 

have in the competence and reliability of our tests?”

There was a long pause. Our spirits hit rock bottom, lost in the contemplation of our own inadequacy. And suddenly! Such miracles really do happen! 

During this tragic pause Boris Zelenshchikov burst into the office. Usually 

very calm, he explained with a slight stammer: “The ‘pshh’ happened again. 

We can reproduce it.”

We rushed downstairs into the testing room. Despite the fact that it was 

4 a.m., a large crowd of “well-wishers” huddled around the spacecraft vertical 

test stand. Sure enough! The “pshh” threatened to ruin the military testers’ 

Sunday, a day that their wives and children looked forward to perhaps even 

more than they themselves.

Oleg Surguchev, one of the chief developers of the STR, stuttering slightly, 

explained: “ ‘Pshh’ is the sound of the compensator actuating, if excess pressure 

gets into it. This shouldn’t happen. But our operator made a mistake. We can 

repeat this mistake and reproduce the ‘pshh.’ We guarantee that everything is 

just fine and there is no need for any retesting.”

Yaropolov commanded: “Integrated tests for the ‘pshh’ incident are canceled. Send the spacecraft for fueling. Those who want to can go get some 

sleep. We’ll review the testers’ actions at the briefing.”

[Chief of the firing range] Kurushin, who had approached us, invited 

Semyonov, Shabarov, and me to a symposium, which was being held for the 

first time at the firing range.

“At eleven o’clock in Building Zero. I really hope you’ll be there. You still 

have time to get a little sleep.”

It wasn’t until 5 a.m. that we finally managed to get to bed. But by 10 

a.m., after grabbing a quick breakfast, Shabarov, Feoktistov, Semyonov, and 

I drove out to the symposium “On the Prospects for the Development of 

Space Technology and Missions of the Firing Range.” TsUKOS Deputy Chief 

Aleksandr Maksimov delivered a good introductory report.13

 13.

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Sun City

I talked about the prospects for the modular construction of orbital stations with respect to the three dimensions of launch vehicles: 7K-S transport 

vehicles inserted on R-7s, DOSes on the UR-500K, and the MKBS on the N-1. 

Sergey Kryukov, who had broken away from talks with Yevpatoriya regarding 

Mars-3, gave a report on plans for the exploration of the Moon, Venus, and 

Mars using automatic stations. Yevgeniy Vorobyev, chief of the Third Main 

Directorate of the Ministry of Health and the State Commission member 

concerned with piloted launches, talked about the biological problems of the 

human body during long-duration flights.

Aleksandr Kurushin interrupted the discussion that was under way and 

invited everyone to lunch in honor of his promotion to the rank of lieutenant 

general. And that is where, between toasts, a real discussion about the fate of 

the firing range started.

“They call us military installation No. such-and-such,” said Kurushin, 

“and actually, we are the nation’s central cosmodrome, where we don’t just 

conduct launches, we also perform large-scale scientific work. State-of-the-art 

information processing methods and test procedures are being developed; very 

valuable experience is being focused on ensuring the reliability and safety of 

rocket-space technology.”

Aleksandr Maksimov, somewhat fired up by the preceding toasts, spoke 

out for the first time regarding the historical mistakes that were made during 

the design and construction of the firing range.

“In order to be referred to as a cosmodrome rather than a firing range, it 

needs to have a large centralized base. Now there are many scattered engineering 

facilities. The firing range was constructed based on old ideas about the inevitability of a nuclear attack, and therefore, the sites are spread out 50 kilometers 

or more from one another. The entire main engineering and technical staff live 

with their families in a modern town, but every day they need to drive as much 

as 100 kilometers to work. This is a waste of precious time, and nothing justifies 

wastefulness now. Only the launch pads need to be spread out in the interests of 

safety. There should be a single base for the preparation of all the spacecraft and 

piloted vehicles. Zenit, Soyuz, DOS, Almaz, Venera, Mars, and Molniya, and 

perhaps the future MKBS, need to be tested and readied for launch at a single 

factory base. Such a factory should be located close to town. This will create 

conditions for recruiting and retaining a workforce. The town still needs to be 

improved so that people will want to live here. They created a genuine garden city 

in the middle of the desert in Uzbekistan called Navoi.14 Are they better than us?”

 14.

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No one contradicted Maksimov, and we raised our glasses to the construction in Kazakhstan of a “Space Navoi,” which they called Leninsk. Someone 

began to wax lyrical and in conclusion proposed a toast to “Sun City” [Gorod 

solntsa], about which the utopians of the past century had dreamed.

I proposed to my comrades from Site No. 2: “Kerimov has flown off to 

Kuybyshev to hand out awards to the Progress Factory and Kozlov. There’s 

no pressing business. No one will be looking for us, let’s spend the evening in 

town as if we were visiting it for the first time.”

“Actually, we’ve only ever seen it from automobiles. We’ve never had a 

chance to take a nice stroll,” said Pravetskiy.

Everyone accepted the proposal. Semyonov, Feoktistov, Pravetskiy, and 

I went out to the city of Leninsk—formerly Site No. 10. We didn’t have 

any particular plans, and we decided to start with a movie. The new Saturn 

Theater was a credit to any in Moscow. It had 1,100 comfortable seats with 

an excellent view, a large screen, and good acoustics. We were virtually the 

only grown men in the movie theater. Most of the movie-viewers were young 

women with children and teenagers. The French film La Grand Vadrouille [The 

Great Stroll], with famous stars of the French cinema Bourvil and Louis de 

Funès, was by no means a children’s film.15 All around us was noise, laughter, 

and even howling children.

A woman sitting near us explained that there was no one to leave children 

with at home. On their day off all the husbands go fishing, hunting, or to 

distant garden plots. These are young families, and there are no grandmothers and grandfathers in the town. We realized this one more time when we 

went out for a “great stroll” around the town. Among the public decked out 

in their Sunday best we encountered officers that we knew, who had changed 

into civilian clothes. Many were with their wives and pushing baby carriages.

“The only other place you might find such a concentration of beautiful, 

young, tanned women is at a southern resort,” noted Pravetskiy.

“Yesterday at the symposium Vorobyev said that Leninsk had moved into 

first place in the nation in terms of birth rate per thousand inhabitants. The 

local doctors complain that the superb hospital needs to be rebuilt as a birthing center.”

The Palace of the Pioneers was located next to the movie theater in the 

midst of a young and vivid green space, while closer to the Syrdarya River 

was a large sports stadium. In this same green area they had built an enclosed 

 15.

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Sun City

swimming pool with 50-meter lanes. Enjoying the rare opportunity to stroll 

unhurried, we went down to the bank of the Syrdarya. I tried to show my 

comrades the spot where we had gone swimming during the hot summer of 

1957. Back then the Syrdarya was still deep and treacherous in places.

“Over there, where that kid is standing up to his waist, there was a deep 

hole with a whirlpool. I pulled a targeting system specialist from the Arsenal 

Factory in Kiev out of there.”

“What? He didn’t know how to swim?”

“The thing is, it wasn’t a he, but a she. The person I saved was then a 

senior representative of Arsenal. During preparation for the first launch she 

dared to show up at the launch pad in trousers and calmly puttered around 

with the ground targeting instruments. When Korolev saw such irregularities, 

he ordered Voskresenskiy: ‘Get that broad off the launch site!’ Voskresenskiy 

retorted unflappably: ‘This young woman is the official representative of Arsenal. 

Without her we might mess something up with the targeting. Not long ago, 

Chertok risked his life pulling her out of the deep whirlpool, and you are ordering me to run this specialist off of the launch pad. It’s an awkward situation.’ ”

“ ‘Oh, God, you guys still find time to go swimming with girls! Well, 

good for you!’ ”

“Voskresenskiy took advantage of the mood shift, and catching sight of 

me, shouted: ‘Chertok! You saved her in the Syrdarya, now save her here, 

introduce her to the Chief.’ Korolev had absolutely nothing against making 

the acquaintance of an attractive woman, and the incident was patched up.”

My story amused my companions. Now on the site of the historic event 

there was a dock, and next to it a landscaped beach spread out. Despite the 

fact that the Syrdarya River had grown considerably shallower since the days 

of heroic 1957, 150 private boats were assigned to the dock.

“And this is the Gagarin gazebo,” I showed my companions. “We had lunch 

here with the first corps of cosmonauts two days before Gagarin’s launch.”

Behind the Gagarin gazebo in the shady park we could see the hotels and 

cottages for the visiting marshals, generals, and “various and sundry State 

Commission chairmen.” In May 1957, we couldn’t have guessed that a socialist 

Sun City would sprout up in place of the dusty, truck-battered roads, mud huts, 

and barracks on the bare steppe. The population of one hundred thousand in 

the closed city, in which there were no power outages, and no heating outages 

in the winter chill, and no problems with the supply of any necessities, labored 

solely for the sake of the Soviet Union’s rocket-space technology. In the years 

that followed, the city continued to improve, develop, and grow prettier.

A terrible blow to my rosy remembrances of this town was something I 

saw 24 years later [in 1995] and then heard repeatedly from comrades who 

have visited it regularly in the past few years. The modern-day destroyers of 

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the closed flourishing towns didn’t kill anyone or set anything on fire, like the 

Vandals who destroyed ancient Rome. The once flourishing town of Leninsk 

and the immense economy of the firing range at the end of the 20th century 

perished without the use of any weapons.16

In order to destroy a modern town all it takes is to deprive it of electricity, 

fuel, and municipal authorities. Radical reforms condemned the community in 

which powerful production forces and cutting-edge science and culture were 

created simply because it was called “socialist.”

Twenty-four years later, on just such a sunny, bright day, I once again was 

strolling around “Sun City.” But now, rather than being involved in preparation for the latest launch and burdened by the work-related worries, I was a 

distinguished guest. The Il-18 loaded with Moscow guests arrived at the Krayniy 

Airport on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of NIIP-5—the rocket firing 

range known to the entire world as the Baykonur Cosmodrome.

From the airfield we were taken to the hotel at our former home, Site 

No. 2. There was a rather brief official celebration time at the soldiers’ club right 

there at Site No. 2. There were many warm meetings between veterans who 

had flown in from various towns and with those still living here, in the “near 

From the author’s archives.

This picture was taken outside of Korolev’s former home. From left to right are 

B. Ye. Chertok, A. G. Reshetin, N. S. Koroleva (Korolev’s daughter), I. S. Prudnikov, 

and A. V. Lukyashko.

 16.

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abroad” of the former Soviet Union. The next day we had a minibus at our 

disposal to tour the various monuments. By “we” I mean the family of Nataliya 

Sergeyevna Koroleva, the daughter of Sergey Pavlovich, and myself. Nataliya 

Sergeyevna was accompanied by her children Masha, Andrey, and Sergey, 

already grown and on their own, the grandchildren of the legendary Korolev. 

Nataliya Sergeyevna Koroleva already had her own grandchildren—Sergey 

Pavlovich’s great grandchildren. By force of habit I continue to call Nataliya 

Sergeyevna Koroleva, who is a doctor of medical sciences and a surgeon, by 

the nickname “Natasha.”

In the first volume of Rockets and People I talked about the work of Soviet 

specialists who lived and worked in Germany from 1945 to 1946, restoring 

rocket technology together with the Germans after World War II. The Germans 

perceived us, the victors—officers and soldiers of the Soviet Army—as occupiers. Therefore, the wives and children who arrived 

from the Soviet Union to be with us in the spring 

of 1946 comprised a certain clan of victors. This 

isolated our families from the German populace more 

than the language barrier. When interacting, the 

local residents emphatically assigned the husbands’ 

ranks to their wives. [My wife] Katya was indignant that the German women who worked in our 

villa, the chauffeur, and even the wives of German 

specialists addressed her not by name or surname, 

but as “Frau Major.” They called [Pilyugin’s wife] 

Antonina Konstantinovna Pilyugina “Frau Oberst.” 

Our children, who didn’t know the language, didn’t 

understand this, especially since the German children 

shunned them.

In late May 1946, Korolev’s first wife—Kseniya Maksimilianovna 

Vintsentini—arrived in Bleicherode from Moscow with their 11-year-old 

daughter Natasha. That summer a close friendship developed between our 

families. Nikolay Pilyugin’s wife Tonya was glad that her daughter Nadya now 

had a Russian friend. My wife Katya hoped these demure young girls might 

be able to keep an eye on our seven-year-old son Valentin while out on walks 

and splashing in the municipal pool and, if necessary, protect him against 

unnecessarily close association with German boys of his age. Since that time, 

the daughters of Korolev and Pilyugin, even after they became grandmothers, 

remained “Natasha” and “Nadya” to our families.

Korolev’s wife and daughter left Germany soon thereafter. The chief surgeon 

of the famous S. P. Botkin Hospital in Moscow, Kseniya Vintsentini, rushed 

back to her patients, and Natasha had to get back in time for school.

From the author’s archives.

Chertok’s wife, 

Yekaterina “Katya” 

Golubkina.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

The sculptor Z. M. Vilenskiy designed and built a bust of Korolev that now resides 

in Natasha Koroleva’s residence. From left to right are Ye. V. Shabarov, P. V. Tsybin, 

Koroleva, S. S. Kryukov, Vilenskiy, and B. Ye. Chertok.

From the author’s archives.

Chertok at the Gagarin Pavilion on the banks of the Syrdarya River at Baykonur in 

June 1995.

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Sun City

After our return from Germany, changes took place in Korolev’s personal life.17

This in no way affected our warm relationship with Kseniya Maksimilianovna 

and the adult Natasha. After the death of her great father, then her grandmother 

and mother, Natasha exhibited truly Korolevian character. She raised her sons, 

Andrey and Sergey, and her daughter, Masha, and obtained academic degrees, 

titles, and a State prize. In addition to all that, she created a one-of-a-kind private 

museum dedicated to the memory of Sergey Pavlovich Korolev.

The airplane in which I flew with Natasha from Moscow to the celebration of the 40th anniversary of NIIP-5—present-day Baykonur—served as a 

fantastic time machine for us. The “time machine” had carried Natasha and 

me from the German city of Bleicherode in the green forests of Thuringia in 

1946 to the “Sun City” of rockets—Leninsk in 1995.

This land became a second home, to borrow Voskresenskiy’s phrase, not 

only for the permanent residents of Site No. 10, but also for those of us who 

flew in every year beginning in 1956 for temporary assignments lasting many 

months. After the terrible war ended, we spent many years restoring, building, and creating. Over the years that have passed since the war we became 

accustomed to thinking that only earthquakes could destroy the city. It was 

painful and horrible to see how the once flourishing “Sun City” was now dying 

without a single shot fired, without earthquakes or other natural disasters.

In 1995, a French journalist and entrepreneur, who had studied the history of cosmonautics in general and our history in particular, visited Baykonur. 

After this he did several interviews, including one with me. He did not conceal 

his admiration and indignation: 

“I was stunned by the grandeur 

of what I saw in Baykonur. I 

visited all the launch facilities. 

Regardless of the plans of Russia 

and Kazakhstan, this needs to 

be preserved for generations 

to come like the Egyptian 

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok shown here on a visit

to Baykonur in June 1995. He is 

standing at Site No. 2 outside the 

MIK. The writing in the background

says “Road to the Stars.”

 17.

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pyramids. If everything is abandoned like this, the desert will eventually swallow up these testaments to the achievements of your cosmonautics. The town 

leaves a particularly painful impression. How can you endure the fact that a 

process of such barbaric destruction is going on? You have surrendered. You 

need your own General de Gaulle.” I agreed with him with regard to de Gaulle.

In the last few years so much has been said and written on this subject 

that I won’t torment the reader further and shall return to my recollections of 

the last days of May 1971.

After our “big stroll” it came time to return to the “provinces,” 

to Site No. 2. Along the way we stopped in at Site No. 17—the cosmonauts’ 

residence—in order to wish Aleksey Leonov a happy birthday. He was 37. He 

was proud of the fact that he had been named commander of Soyuz-11 for the 

upcoming flight to the DOS. “We will enter that haunted station,” Leonov 

assured us. We toasted Leonov with Narzan mineral water and promised to 

drink to his health with something stronger when we got home: a strict dry 

law was in effect here at the cosmonauts’ residence.

After autographing the mock newspaper posted on the wall, which had 

been published in honor of Leonov’s birthday, we went out to stroll around 

the garden. Here, especially thick greenery had grown up and already achieved 

its deep, summertime coloring. Thickets of shrubbery that reminded me of 

our acacia were in bloom giving off a delicate fragrance. That evening the air 

here was particularly delightful, somehow reminiscent of the atmosphere of 

gardens in Central Russia. At the entrance to the hotel real roses were in bloom. 

A rose garden instead of camel thorn! The Kazakhstani steppe was blooming 

with more than just its famous April tulips.

On the way home we once again discussed how the firing range had grown 

and improved. The steel latticework of a television tower adorned the right side 

of the road leading out of the city. Spread out on the left side of the concrete 

road was a distribution substation with masts and transformer pillars crowding 

each other, looking from the side like a tangled skein of wires. High-voltage 

transmission lines were running in various directions.

On the hill of the “third ascent” before the traditional checkpoint established here back in 1956, two new 32-meter parabolas had sprouted up among 

the dozens of small antenna dishes. This was NIP-23 of the Command and 

Measurement Complex.18

 18.

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Sun City

From here it was 30 kilometers to the N-1 launch sites. It was easy to 

determine the direction to them by the bright glow on the horizon. Work 

there was humming along 24 hours a day.

On Monday, 31 May 1971, the Soyuz-11 returned from the fueling station and was installed in the vertical stand. They were awaiting the arrival of 

the cosmonauts for their fit check “sit in.” Out of hygienic considerations, the 

entire stand structure was thoroughly wiped down with alcohol at the request 

of the medical staff.

“What are you doing?” I asked them. “The smell alone will make the 

cosmonauts dizzy, and we need sober comments on the spacecraft.”

“We are hoping that you and the others in your entourage will take the 

opportunity to breathe in the rubbing alcohol fumes before they arrive. There 

won’t be any left for the cosmonauts,” they joked. The main crew sat in the 

spacecraft for more than the routine hour. There were many questions and 

disputes, but no serious modifications were required. The backup crew also 

sat in the spacecraft for around 20 minutes.

355

Chapter 16

The Hot Summer of 1971

On Monday, 31 May 1971, Bushuyev telephoned me at Site No. 2 over 

the high-frequency line from Podlipki and said that Keldysh had gathered 

the “inner circle” of the members of the expert commission on N1-L3 in his 

office. Keldysh announced that it was time to decide the fate of N1-L3. Then 

he enumerated the anomalies that were already known, which, if one took an 

objective approach, were difficult to dispute. According to Bushuyev, Keldysh 

was very amicably disposed. However, he firmly stated that he considered 

the approved version of a lunar expedition in 1973 to be unrealistic, and he 

proposed to Mishin, without conflicting with the expert commission, to find 

mutually acceptable solutions that together they could bring before the VPK, 

and then even higher.

Mishin showed a complete lack of self-restraint and objected to Keldysh on 

each point: “We’ll clarify everything and show that everything will work out.”

“I was forced to listen and keep my mouth shut,” said Bushuyev, “so that I 

wouldn’t put my boss in an awkward position. You and Feoktistov were lucky 

that you were at the firing range and weren’t involved in this spectacle.”

When I told Feoktistov about my conversation with Bushuyev, he had the 

following take on the situation: “It’s difficult to come to an agreement when 

one side is extremely resolute while lacking any sort of circumspection and the 

other side is cautious while having no right to make a decision.”

“Well, Konstantin Petrovich,” I objected, “when it comes to radical decisions you’re also a master. On your advice they did away with spacesuits on 

the Voskhod; you then talked Korolev into reducing the diameter of the 

Soyuz Descent Module by 200 millimeters, as on the Voskhod, but we still 

lost, weight-wise: we had to put lead in for compensation. You squeezed us 

control specialists so much on the L3 that I lost faith in the system’s reliability. 

This year we are testing out the Soyuz-DOS docking assembly with internal 

transfer, but on the L3 until very recently the weight reports still have a transfer 

through open space.”

“We’re not going to pour salt in the wounds,” suggested Feoktistov. “The 

L3 is already obsolete. The experience that we will gain on the DOS will help 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

a lot, and I don’t think it will be difficult for us to convince the top brass that 

the L3 needs to be redesigned.”

“I agree. Now the main thing is to manage to get into the DOS.”

Mishin, who flew in a day later, did not consider it necessary to tell us 

about the results of the N1-L3 discussion at the expert commission in Keldysh’s 

office. Mishin looked chipper, although he reported that he had spent three 

days in the hospital, after which he had flown to Perm on electoral business 

as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.1

Yeliseyev arrived with Mishin. After the flight on Soyuz-10 he was named 

Tregub’s deputy for flight control.2 Yeliseyev insisted on inserting precise 

instructions into the crew procedures about the time limitation on firing the 

rendezvous and correction engine (SKD) during rendezvous in the event that 

the limits designated in the so-called phase-plane diagram were exceeded.3 This 

diagram depicted a corridor of permissible closing velocities depending on the 

distances between objects. The SKD fired to accelerate or brake when zigzags 

on the diagram leaned toward one of the walls of this corridor.

The instruments controlling rendezvous were adjusted using the graph that 

our theoreticians had designed. In order to write down a specific number in 

the procedures, on 2 June, I summoned Rauschenbach and Legostayev over 

the high-frequency line. They promised to give it some thought. The morning 

of 3 June, evidently under pressure from Shmyglevskiy, our chief theoretician 

on approach, they announced that Igla and the rendezvous control unit (BUS) 

could sort out how many seconds the engine needed to operate in each specific 

case better than a cosmonaut could.4

Feoktistov and I tried to convince Yeliseyev. But he persistently argued, “You 

can’t give a cosmonaut a diagram indicating the maximum closing velocities 

and at the same time not tell him what he’s supposed to do when the motion 

parameters exceed these limits. If he doesn’t do anything, then later we’ll accuse 

 1. RSFSR—Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. All of the Soviet republics had 

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the crew of botching the rendezvous. I want to eliminate accusations against the 

crew of incorrect actions in the event the BUS fails to shut down the engine.”

Bashkin broke in, having taken offense over the BUS.

“But a failure can occur during a burn, too. In this case it’s simply dangerous to give the cosmonaut instructions.”

Feoktistov backed up Bashkin.

“I understand why the theoreticians don’t want to saddle the cosmonaut 

with the responsibility for making decisions, because an algorithm can be very 

complicated and one can’t foresee the combinations of all the input data that 

one will need to take into consideration.”

I connected Yeliseyev with Legostayev over the high-frequency line and proposed that they continue their debate as two of “Rauschenbach’s best students.”

After lunch, a large meeting, referred to as a State Commission session, took place in the MIK hall. Usually as many as a hundred participants 

and “enthusiasts” came to such prelaunch landmark sessions, although there 

were hardly more than 10 real members of the State Commission confirmed by 

decision of the Central Committee. Opening the meeting, Kerimov said that 

he had received information about a Politburo meeting at which the matter 

of the upcoming Soyuz-11 flight was discussed.

“Minister Afanasyev informed me that he, Keldysh, Smirnov, and Bushuyev 

were summoned to the Politburo. They attested that everything to support 

the flight and docking had been provided for, the necessary modifications 

had been confirmed by experimental tests, the crew was well trained, and 

everything would be in order. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev asked that everything 

be checked one more time so that docking and transfer would be executed 

this time. Comrade Brezhnev asked us to convey the message that this is very 

important. He is entrusting everything to us and hopes that we will execute the 

mission. Afanasyev reported to the Politburo about the makeup of the crews. 

Kosygin asked whether they were all well trained. Smirnov assured him that 

yes, the crews had reported before the VPK about their readiness. Brezhnev 

announced that the French government had made an inquiry about when we 

intended to perform manned flights, in view of the fact that France was getting ready to conduct an atmospheric nuclear test in the next few days.5

 After 

consulting with comrade Keldysh, Smirnov and Bushuyev answered that a 

nuclear explosion would not interfere—that’s what comrade Afanasyev said.”

 5. The French conducted eight nuclear tests in 1970: three in May, one in June, two in 

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It was up to Shabarov to report briefly about all the test results, and he 

took the opportunity to mention the “pshh” as well. Aleksandr Soldatenkov, 

Kozlov’s deputy, presented the report about the launch vehicle.6 Safety problems 

in the event of solar flares—and consequently, any other radiation hazard—

were Yevgeniy Vorobyev’s sphere of responsibility. The decision allowing the 

flight during a nuclear test had been made “at the top” without asking him. 

Vorobyev said nothing, but Severin voiced his opinion: “We need to instruct 

the cosmonauts to look to see what a nuclear explosion looks like from space.”

“What for?”

“So that they themselves can decide whether it is worth it to return to the 

ground if a nuclear shoot-out begins.”

This bit of improvisation made everyone laugh.

The State Commission set the dates: rollout to the launch site on 4 June 

and launch on 6 June 1971.

From the author’s archives.

Spacesuit Chief Designer Gay Severin 

(left) and Boris Chertok.

One hour remained before 

dinner, and I decided to spend it 

in a peaceful, horizontal position. 

But Mikhail Samokhin dropped by 

to share ideas on peopling new hotels 

and financing new construction.

On the way to the mess hall a very 

agitated Gay Severin stopped me.

“They called me from Site No. 17. 

The doctors have rejected Kubasov 

because of some sort of symptom and 

have made the decision to replace the 

entire crew. This means that I have to 

replace all the seat liners and medical 

belts, prepare the spacesuits, and other things, and the spacecraft is already 

integrated with the launch vehicle and is under the fairing.”

I was dumbfounded. We stopped in at the mess hall. Shabarov was 

calmly dining.

“Have you heard the news about the replacement of the crew?”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

 6. Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Soldatenkov (1927–) was Kozlov’s most senior deputy respon

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The Hot Summer of 1971

“You mean your boss didn’t think it was necessary to consult with you on 

such a fundamental issue?” asked an astonished Severin. Replacing the crew 

two days before a launch—this had never happened either in our experience 

or that of the Americans.7

 Once again we were conducting a “world’s first” 

experiment.

We began a heated discussion of this sensational event in the mess hall. 

Mishin telephoned Shabarov and ordered him to assemble management in 

the MIK at 11 p.m.

“An order is an order,” said Shabarov and turned to Feoktistov: “Do we 

need to recalculate the center of gravity? After all, the cosmonauts’ weights 

are different.”

“We’ll get on it right away. Since that’s the case, I’ll go find our theoreticians.”

At the nighttime meeting in the MIK, Vorobyev said that an x ray done 

on Kubasov that morning during a standard medical examination had shown 

a dark spot on his right lung. The dark spot was the size of a chicken egg. 

Pravetskiy, Vorobyev’s predecessor in management of the Ministry of Health 

Third Main Directorate, was the first to become outraged.

“Why is this being discovered two days before the launch? This kind of 

process can’t develop in a week’s time.”

“It’s well known that the Air Force Medical Monitoring Service looks after 

the cosmonauts. Ask them,” replied Vorobyev.

“After they overlooked Belyayev’s ulcer, nothing surprises me,” Pravetskiy 

continued to rant. “You know that Belyayev had hemorrhages, but he managed to avoid being examined for two years; he was afraid that he would be 

selected out of the corps of cosmonauts. In our time, to let a cosmonaut die 

in the hospital in Moscow from hemorrhaging is really not that easy! A team 

of surgeons headed by Vishnevskiy couldn’t save him. So that’s what the statements of medical ignoramuses about constant monitoring are worth.”8

“Well, Belyayev is not the issue now,” said Vorobyev in a conciliatory tone.

At the midnight meeting we came to an agreement that regardless of the 

“spot on the lungs,” the launch vehicle and spacecraft would roll out to the 

launch site at 6 a.m. This was the only possible decision. Semyonov, Severin, 

and Konstantin Gorbatenko, the head of all the machinists and installers, 

 7. In a similar situation, NASA replaced a single crewmember instead of the entire crew. 

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estimated the amount of work at 4 or 5 hours. Work would begin right after 

the launch vehicle was erected. But the replacement of the crew was the prerogative of the State Commission.

In the morning, after accompanying the rocket train to the launch site, 

the State Commission convened. Opening such an unusual meeting at 7 a.m., 

Kerimov said: “The doctors have informed us that Kubasov cannot be cleared 

for flight. This is a total surprise for all of us. Just yesterday we reported the 

crew makeup to the Politburo, got the green light—and suddenly we have this 

snafu. Let Yevgeniy Ivanovich Vorobyev explain why this became possible.”

“The cosmonauts underwent the standard preflight examination. When 

Kubasov was x-rayed, they noticed a dark spot. They performed a sectional x ray. 

They determined that the mass was located at a depth of 9 centimeters and was 

the size of a five-kopeck piece.9 They assessed the process as acute and active.”

“Oh, come on,” Kerimov flared up, “cosmonauts are under continuous 

observation. After all, this isn’t an upset stomach. Where were you earlier?”

“The last time we performed an x ray on him was in February. Everything 

was in order, and all this time Kubasov has felt fine.”

“To the best of my medical knowledge, this is an acute tubercular process. 

Were we really not able to find anything suspicious in the blood work?”

“They have now detected an elevated eosinophil count; other indices 

are normal.”

“This is all just words, but do you have a written medical finding? Who 

signed it?”

Vorobyev assured them that there was such a paper.

Kerimov turned to Kamanin: “What shall we propose, Nikolay Petrovich?”

“We believe that engineer-tester Volkov should take the place of engineertester Kubasov in the primary crew.10 Leonov has already been in space; he 

even performed a spacewalk. Volkov has already flown on a Soyuz.11 Such an 

engineer can cope with the mission.”

Mishin’s objection came as a surprise to everyone.

“We object. I consulted with our comrades. We have a document signed 

by the Air Force stating that in such cases the entire three-man crew must be 

replaced. The backup threesome underwent training with a good evaluation. 

 9. A Soviet five-kopeck coin was 2.5 centimeters in diameter.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

A new crew that hasn’t worked together will be worse than the backup crew. 

We absolutely insist on replacing the entire crew.”

Air Force Chief Engineer and Deputy Commander-in-Chief Ponomarev 

stood behind Mishin rather than with Kamanin.12 The others weren’t about 

to get involved in the argument, reasoning, “What difference does it make to 

me who flies?”

The State Commission decreed that the entire crew be replaced—the entire 

trio. Kamanin was tasked with informing the crew of the decision. Bashkin, 

who had participated in cosmonaut training and had graded their exams, took 

the crew replacement as a personal tragedy.

“My comrades and I spent so much time on the primary crew that we 

were completely at ease about them. But we simply did not have enough time 

for the backup crew. And they themselves didn’t think they’d be flying. In our 

history we have never changed a crew approved by the VPK. Frankly speaking, 

for some reason I was very confident in Kubasov; he’s practically an expert. 

And suddenly he gets an infiltration and lets us down.”

From the author’s archives.

The new Soyuz-11 prime crew of Georgiy Dobrovolskiy, Vladislav Volkov, and 

Viktor Patsayev is shown here with the crew they replaced, Aleksey Leonov, Valeriy 

Kubasov, and Petr Kolodin. The image is from the State Commission meeting a few 

days before their launch.

 12.

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“Comrade Chairman,” Shabarov spoke up, “Severin, Feoktistov, and I 

need to be at the launch site to make adjustments to the vehicle for the new 

crew, and we haven’t shaved or had breakfast yet. Request permission to leave!”

“The technical management’s proposal has been accepted. I hereby close 

the meeting,” announced Kerimov.

We hurried off to our morning grooming and breakfast, not suspecting that 

a decision had just been made to divide the crews into the living and the dead.

A difficult day stood before us. It would be nice after a shower and 

breakfast to catch a quick nap. It was only 7 a.m. Moscow time. But this wasn’t 

to be: I slept sweetly for no more than 10 minutes. The telephone woke me. 

The high-frequency line operator on duty informed me, “You have an urgent 

call from Bushuyev and [Viktor] Innelaur in Podlipki. Hurry, I already have 

a long queue.”

As I walked over to the high-frequency communications center, I ran 

through scenarios of possible problems that they might be reporting from 

Podlipki. Most likely, during tests at the monitoring and testing station (KIS) 

on the next [Soyuz] vehicle No. 33, they discovered something that required 

changes on vehicle No. 32, which was already standing on the launch pad. As 

if we hadn’t had enough problems!

It turned out that everything was much more cheerful. Innelaur said that 

last night they had completed the factory tests on spacecraft No. 33 with one 

glitch in the long-range radio communications system (DRS). They’re “signing 

away” the glitches and disconnecting the unit. But they called me to warn me.

“At 7 a.m. Moscow time the minister is flying out to you,” said Bushuyev. 

“Yesterday I was with him at the Politburo. Tsarev is flying with the minister. 

He knows the details. But I can tell you that the situation was calm and amicable. Vilnitskiy, Syromyatnikov, and I looked through all the materials on 

the docking assembly tests again and decided that if you don’t break anything 

during preparation, then everything should be fine.”

I informed Bushuyev about the State Commission’s decision to replace 

the crew. He was furious: “How can you make decisions there without having 

consulted with Moscow? We reported to the Politburo that Leonov’s crew 

would be flying. We assured them how well they were trained, and you replaced 

everybody just because of Kubasov. What kind of a position have you put 

Afanasyev, Smirnov, and Ustinov in? Now they have to give an emergency 

rebriefing. The minister is going to arrive there in 3 hours and he’s not going to 

say thank you. I called you to the telephone to put your mind at ease. Vilnitskiy 

and Syromyatnikov are completely confident in the reliability of the docking 

assembly. But be prepared: Afanasyev is going to be worked up and he’s going 

to interrogate you for the details.”

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In order to prepare, I went to the MIK, after first summoning the rested 

docking specialists there. Yevgeniy Bobrov, Boris Chizhikov, and I tried once 

again to run through possible troubles during the last millimeters of retraction. 

They both put my mind at ease. We had lived with the Chizhikov family at the 

Villa Frank in Bleicherode, Germany, in 1946. My two sons and three-year-old 

Borya Chizhikov comprised the Villa Frank “kindergarten,” to which Semyon 

Chizhikov and I paid almost no attention. Only on Sundays did we drive out 

for picnics and strolls in the forested countryside, of which Thuringia had such 

a wealth. Now 28-year-old engineer Boris Chizhikov argued: “We monitored 

the pressure integrity of the interface very carefully. We were afraid that due 

to lack of vigilance a lock wire, a piece of multilayer insulation, or some sort 

of rag would get onto the surface of the mating ring after the fairing was put 

on. The installers of shop No. 444 and Gorbatenko himself were very careful. 

They ordered 16 liters of alcohol just for wiping down the surfaces!”

“You put my mind at ease. Sixteen liters for the docking assembly—that’s 

not bad. For all I know, it will begin to sway.”

“Everything will be all right!”

That day at the launch site, general testing of the launch vehicle was 

under way. The weather was perfect. It had rained recently, accompanied by an 

unusually cold wind for that time of year. As one might expect, the Tyuratam 

old-timers tried to convince us that they couldn’t recall such a pleasant early June.

Afanasyev arrived at the launch pad. Kerimov had already informed him 

about the decisions that had been made. Strolling around the launch pad, the 

enormous Afanasyev stooped to hear the reassuring explanations about how 

preparation was proceeding normally. Aleksandr Tsarev, who had flown in with 

Afanasyev, recounted the details of the events the day before in Moscow. The 

fact that Keldysh, Smirnov, Afanasyev, and Mishin were summoned before the 

Politburo regarding the upcoming flight was unexpected. Mishin was at the firing 

range, and Afanasyev had received permission to bring Bushuyev along instead. 

That morning Bushuyev had briefed the minister on proposals for the upcoming 

negotiations with the Americans.13 Bushuyev had just left the ministry before the 

subsequent summons to the Politburo. He took with him the documents and 

posters describing the flight program and new docking assembly.

“Find Bushuyev and return immediately,” ordered the minister.

He wasn’t at work, nor at home, nor with Boris Petrov at the Academy 

of Sciences; wherever he was going, they couldn’t find Bushuyev. Time was 

 13.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

marching on, they needed to go to the Kremlin, and there were no posters and 

no documents for the report. Afanasyev arrived at the Kremlin, found Smirnov, 

and explained the situation. Smirnov made an unusual decision: telephone 

Minister of Internal Affairs Shchelokov.14

“Help us find Konstantin Bushuyev and bring him to the Kremlin 

immediately.”

Afanasyev and Smirnov appeared without Bushuyev at the appointed hour 

in Brezhnev’s reception room. Fortunately, the Politburo, discussing the preceding issue, had violated the time limit by about 30 minutes, which saved the day. 

Shchelokov gave the command to all State Automobile Inspectorate (GAI) posts 

in Moscow to find Bushuyev’s car.15 They detained it on Yaroslavskiy Highway 

between the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh) 

and the ring road.16 They delivered Bushuyev to the Kremlin 5 minutes before 

they were called into the Politburo meeting.

Afanasyev made the report about the upcoming launch. Andrey Kirilenko 

asked how confident they were about the crew’s training. Nikolay Podgornyy 

asked why they had decided to perform final approach manually rather than 

entrusting it to automatic controls. Brezhnev himself answered, “This is, after 

all, a very complicated affair. Often, even here on the ground, not everything 

works out for us. Here our comrades have properly divided the responsibilities. Furthermore, we remember spacecraft commander Leonov. He performed 

bravely during his spacewalk and then he and Belyayev pulled off an unusual 

landing. Don’t you think?”

“Quite so, Leonid Ilyich,” confirmed Afanasyev. “The automatic system 

failed and the cosmonauts availed themselves of manual control.”

“And what does Mstislav Vsevolodovich say?” asked Brezhnev, addressing 

Keldysh.

“I did not sign the letter to the Central Committee concerning continuation of operations and launch documents until I personally looked into the 

causes of the previous failure. I tasked qualified scientists with verifying the 

 14.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

reliability of the actions taken. Over that period of time a great deal of work 

has been performed to increase docking reliability. I believe that everything 

reasonable that was proposed has been done, and the docking will occur.”

I asked Tsarev whether Bushuyev had spoken at this Politburo meeting. 

Tsarev said that after the Politburo meeting when Bushuyev stopped in at his 

office (in an adjacent building where the VPK offices were located) to catch 

his breath he looked pretty bad.

“His unexpected seizure and delivery to the Kremlin by GAI had scared 

him so much that he didn’t even remember who was at the Politburo meeting 

and what assurances he had given after Keldysh’s speech.”

The general tests were completed without any glitches. Without 

time to even grab a bite of lunch, Shabarov and I drove straight from the launch 

site to Site No. 17—the cosmonauts’ residence. It was poor form to be late for 

the “ceremonial” State Commission meeting. We met Mishin in the garden.

“Oh, God, what a difficult conversation I just had with Leonov and 

Kolodin!” he told us. “Leonov accused me of supposedly deliberately refusing 

to replace Kubasov with Volynov so that we could get Volkov into space one 

more time.17 Kolodin said that up until the last day he could just feel that they 

weren’t going to launch him into space under any pretext: ‘I’m the black sheep 

in their midst. They are all pilots, and I am a rocket engineer.’ ”18

At the State Commission meeting I ended up sitting next to Kolodin. He 

sat there with his head hanging, nervously clenching and unclenching his hands, 

the muscles in his jaw twitching. He wasn’t the only one who was nervous. Both 

crews were feeling rather low. The first was stunned from being removed from 

the flight, the second from the abrupt change of fate. After the flight, amidst 

fanfare, the second crew would climb the marble stairs of the Kremlin Palace 

and receive Heroes’ stars while the music of Glinka played in the background. 

But there was no joy on their faces. A chest x ray, which hadn’t been performed 

at all before the preceding flights, had altered the fate of the six men!

The State Commission meeting under the glare of movie floodlights and 

popping flashbulbs lasted 20 minutes. Dobrovolskiy assured everyone that the 

crew was ready and the mission would be accomplished. Instead of assurances, 

 17.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Leonov gave a wave of his hand as if to say, “It’s a shame that things turned 

out like this.”

When the meeting started to break up, I found myself next to Valeriy 

Kubasov. With a guilty smile he sort of apologized: “I just caught a little cold. 

In a week everything will clear up and the x ray won’t show anything.”

No one tried to cheer him up. But he, rather than the doctors, turned out 

to be right. And to this day Kubasov is alive and healthy. He did not have any 

sort of acute tubercular process.

When we returned to Site No. 2, Pravetskiy stopped by my place to let 

off steam. The two of us sat together late into the night, polishing off some 

bottles of cognac that had somehow gone unfinished. Pravetskiy was a remarkable storyteller. He was a witness to and participant in more than 60 surface 

and underground nuclear tests and spoke glowingly of Zavenyagin, Malyshev, 

Kurchatov, Sakharov, and Khariton.19

“We’re worried about the life of several cosmonauts, while at the 

Semipalatinsk firing range we feared for the life and health of thousands of 

testers. One incident with a 3-megaton bomb will take quite a toll! An airplane 

carrying this bomb took off to test the effectiveness of a high-altitude burst 

before it touched the ground. The pilot got cold feet. He didn’t drop the bomb. 

He didn’t make a second approach. What was one to do? Kurchatov took the 

responsibility on himself, calmed everyone down, and assured them that nothing would happen with the bomb when the plane landed. The landing went 

fine. But what we went through before we transported the bomb away from 

the airfield is difficult to convey. Incidentally, this kind of stress has aftereffects. 

I’m convinced that the fatal heart attacks of Malyshev and Kurchatov were a 

vestige of that very event.”20

At 5 a.m., before the heat of the day had set in, hundreds of people were 

striding along the paved road from Site No. 2 to Site No. 1. At the request 

of the firing range political department, it was not just military testers who 

were on their way to the meeting. There were many civilians in the stream 

of people, including women who had arrived by motor locomotive from Site 

No. 10. Everyone arriving at the launch site encountered a cordon set up to 

 19.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

distribute people around the perimeter, leaving an empty square in the middle 

of the zero mark.

The deputy commander for political affairs opened the meeting. Lead 

military tester Vladimir Yaropolov spoke first: “Few are aware of our difficult 

work. Here, at the launch site, we hand over the spacecraft to you,” he said, 

addressing the crew standing at attention. “We feel certain that you will sense 

the responsibility because millions of people on Earth will be following each 

of your actions.”

Next to speak were a sergeant from the military installation and the industry representative, Armen Mnatsakanyan. When it was Dobrovolskiy’s turn to 

give his response speech, it was evident that he was quite uneasy. Actually, never 

before had there been such a mass sendoff into space. Usually the meetings were 

limited to those directly involved in the preparation of the launch vehicle and 

spacecraft. And here it looked like at least three thousand people were gathered.

On the way here I prepared a speech,” said Dobrovolskiy. “But now, after 

seeing your smiles and friendly gazes, I will simply tell you: dear comrades and 

friends, thank you so much for your selfless labor. We will spare no effort, we 

will do everything in order to fulfill our mission.”

From the author’s archives.

This image shows the ill-fated Soyuz-11 crew of Dobrovolskiy, Volkov, and Patsayev 

on the eve of their launch near the pad area. Behind them from left to right 

are senior official in the Ministry of General Machine Building Anatoliy Kirillov 

(saluting in hat), Chief Designer Vasiliy Mishin (in sunglasses), Minister of General 

Machine Building Sergey Afanasyev (the tall man in a suit and tie), and Chairman 

of the State Commission Kerim Kerimov (saluting). In sunglasses on the right of 

the picture is Boris Chertok.

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The crew did the traditional lap of honor around the square and another 

one around the rocket. The meeting broke up and the people ambled back in 

an elated, festive mood.

“Let’s celebrate the good weather,” proposed Shabarov. We walked down 

from the launch pad to the obelisk in honor of the launch of the world’s first 

satellite, which was standing in the shade of some trees. Shabarov, Semyonov, 

Gorbatenko, and I took photographs of each other standing next to this historic 

obelisk, which had the following words engraved on it:

Here, thanks to the genius of Soviet people the daring assault on 

space began / 1957 /.

These were the last hours of the day when one could relax and live in an 

unstructured manner. Tomorrow, 6 June, at 0300 hours Moscow time, we would 

get up; the prelaunch State Commission clearing the crew to take their places 

in the spacecraft would take place at 0500 hours; and at 0757 hours—liftoff.

During the fourth orbit the first correction would need to be performed to 

boost the vehicle’s orbit to the orbit of the DOS based on the results of the first 

measurements. At 1600 hours the commission would depart for Yevpatoriya. 

Using the secure communications line (ZAS), I told Agadzhanov and Tregub 

in Yevpatoriya that everything was in order with us and warned them to get 

ready to meet a large crowd of guests.21

On the launch pad, before vehicle commander Georgiy Dobrovolskiy took 

his seat in the spacecraft, he clearly recited his report to State Commission 

Chairman Kerim Kerimov. Vladislav Volkov was animated and cheerful. Viktor 

Patsayev seemed very uneasy. Afanasyev and Marshal Krylov, who had flown 

in the day before, arrived for the launch. Both went down in to the bunker. 

All of the operations proceeded precisely, calmly, without any slipups.

“Off you go, sweetie!” said someone, who had heard the telemetry experts’ 

reports about the normal start up of stage three—Block I.

Our Il-18 didn’t leave Tyuratam for the Crimea until 1700 hours. We weren’t 

able to admire the panorama of the Caucasus this time: we slept through it. We 

came to only when we had arrived in the Crimea and landed in Saki. Incidentally, 

everyone on the plane slept; after all, our workday had begun at 3 a.m.

After dropping off our overnight bags at the hotel, all of those who had just 

arrived walked over to the control room without stopping in at the hospitable 

dining hall. Agadzhanov reported, “Both spacecraft have departed the coverage 

 21.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

zone and are out of communication. Everything on board both vehicles was 

normal. The crew had been granted permission to rest. According to the medical 

staff’s findings, Volkov has adapted best of all to weightlessness. The coverage 

zone of the first daylight orbit will begin at 0725 hours over Kamchatka and 

will end in Ussuriysk at 0748 hours. If all goes well, at the end of the coverage 

zone we should receive a report from Ussuriysk via circular about the beginning 

of the final approach phase. According to the ballistics experts’ calculations, 

conditions for rendezvous after orbital correction turned out to be ideal. At 

0725 hours the range should not exceed 2 kilometers at a closing rate of up 

to 5 meters per second. GOGU recommends that everyone who just arrived 

go grab some dinner, get some sleep, and meet here at 6 a.m. We will receive 

the report about the nocturnal orbits.”

At 6 a.m. the small control room began to rapidly fill up. Through the 

open windows a refreshing breeze blew in from the sea. In addition to the five 

main GOGU members—Agadzhanov, Tregub, Chertok, Rauschenbach, and 

Yeliseyev—the control room work required another five or so people representing the analysis group, KIK, the communication service, telemetry, and 

medical services. More than 50 people were crammed into the room.

At 0726 hours Yeliseyev called up the crew: “This is Zarya. Yantar, do you 

read me? Come in!”22

The response was slow.

“This is Yantar. Everything is okay here. We’re working according to program. We have radio lock-on. Automatic rendezvous is in progress. At 0727 

hours, range 4; rate 14.”

“We read you. Everything is normal; continue your report.”

“At 0731 hours, SKD fired for 10 seconds, range 2.3; rate 8.”

Judging by the voice, it wasn’t vehicle commander Dobrovolskiy reporting, 

but Volkov. The multiple relay and amplification couldn’t muffle the agitation 

in his voice before his words reached the loudspeakers in the room. We could 

all feel his tension.

“Rate is decreasing. In the VSK we see a bright glowing spot. Range 1400, 

rate 4....23

“0737 hours, range 700, rate 2.5. We’ve turned away—we only see Earth. 

We’ve got lock-on again!...”

 22.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

“According to the telemetry data from NIP-13,” another voice announced, 

“final approach mode has occurred—range 300; rate 2 recorded.”

In the room there is not just silence, but a growing tension. The pause that 

has set in is alarming. Perhaps everything is fine, but right now only Ussuriysk 

is receiving information from space, and it is being relayed to us via groundbased channels known only to the communications operators at KIK. How 

easy it would be for somebody with a power shovel to unwittingly break this 

thin, 8,000-kilometer-long thread!

“Yantar, this is Zarya, I don’t read you.”

Volkov’s cheerful voice interrupts the seconds of silence: “Range 300; rate 

2. I have an excellent view of the station in the VSK. Adjusting roll. Cone and 

trap are very clearly visible. Roll adjustment complete—range 105; rate 0.7. 

We are switching on manual final approach.”

“Yantar, at short range carefully inspect the docking node,” instructed 

Yeliseyev.

“We read you. Range 50. Rate 0.28. DPO nozzles are operating. Receiving 

cone looks clean. Very clearly visible.... Range 20; rate 0.2. Vehicle is behaving 

stably. We are going for docking!”

And at that moment the coverage zone ends. Like the line in the famous 

joke, “again this damned uncertainty!”24

“Communication during next pass will be at 0856 hours.”

Oh, how the time drags on! Between communications sessions even nonsmokers leave the building for some air, for a smoke break reducing the nervous 

tension. Will the spacecraft and the orbital station draw together, or will there 

once again remain a gap of a few millimeters? The room is already crammed 

full of as many as a hundred agonizing people. Each one is no mere spectator 

or fan, but a participant in the event, bearing a small part of the responsibility. 

This small part in the whole chain might turn out to be fatal. Each one of the 

hundred waiting people is now helpless. There is nothing anyone can do. Just wait.

The silence is broken by Zarya’s typical background noise. Without waiting for them to make radio contact from space, Yeliseyev calls them: “Yantars, 

this is Zarya, come in!”

No answer. He repeats the call several times.

“We have television!”—exclaims Bratslavets. “Docking occurred! The 

picture is excellent.”

 24.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

“Yantars, come in, this is my fifth call. Why are you silent?”

“Zarya, we’re reporting: docking occurred without oscillations, retraction is 

complete. Mode executed! We are checking the pressure integrity of the interface. Now equalizing the pressure. We’ll continue to work per the program. Now 

opening the hatch from the Descent Module to the Habitation Compartment. 

Now transferring into the Habitation Compartment. Everything is normal.”

The noise in the room crescendoed. Someone decided to applaud, but we 

almost strangled him.

“Wait until they transfer into the DOS or we’ll jinx it.”

“The docking analysis group is reporting. Everything went according to 

the program. The spacecraft hooks reinforced retraction. The DOS hooks were 

not activated. The process is fully completed. Now the 796th DOS orbit has 

begun, or the [Soyuz] vehicle’s 19th orbit, and its 3rd daylight orbit. According 

to the program, pressure equalization should be completed, allowing the transfer hatch to open. Transfer into the DOS will proceed only when clearance is 

received from Earth.”

“Attention! Quiet! We are beginning the communication session!” shouts 

Agadzhanov.

And just then, without waiting for Yeliseyev’s call, Volkov’s cheerful voice 

rings out: “Zarya! Everything is normal here. We are still sitting in the Descent 

Module. All pressures are normal. We’re equalizing per the table. No glitches 

to report. Request permission to open the transfer hatch from the Descent 

Module to the Habitation Compartment.”

Yeliseyev turns to us. Tregub searches for someone in the crowd. Then he 

makes the decision himself and nods his head.

“Permission granted to open hatch!”

“Zarya! Command issued to open transfer hatch at 10:32:30. The ‘closed’ 

display light went out. If it doesn’t open, we’ll use a crowbar.”

“Yantars, everything is going fine. You guys are great. Don’t get excited. 

Work calmly.”

“Zarya! The opening process has been executed. But the display light isn’t 

illuminated. Evidently, we didn’t hit the limit switch. We’re not going to wait. 

Yantar-3 waved and went over!”25

Again there is a pause. Silence. We sense that there in space the first man 

is now floating into the first DOS. He’s in Salyut! Volkov took the opportunity 

to joke, “We’re flying past the fifth floor, everything is okay!”

 25.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

“Yantars, attention! You are now going to have a conversation with ‘No. 1’.” 

This is Moscow stepping in already. There, they are also nervously waiting and 

decided, without taking into consideration the complexity of the situation, 

to break in at the most strained moment of the transfer for the crew to communicate with Brezhnev.

“Zarya, wait. No. 3 is in Salyut. Don’t interfere until.... Zarya, No. 3 came 

back. There’s a strong odor in Salyut. He’s donning a mask; he’s going again.”

Afanasyev is talking with Moscow. He’s trying to postpone communication 

with “No. 1” until the next orbit.

Mishin steps in: “That’s enough unauthorized activity! All conversations 

and instructions to the spacecraft are only through me.”

Now, the mated Salyut-Soyuz begins leaving the coverage zone.

At 1202 hours the fourth daylight orbit was under way. During 

that time the Central Committee was informed that the docking had proceeded 

normally. Moscow was even shown a nonbroadcast television image of the crew 

reading a report to the Central Committee at the entrance to DOS. Finally 

the cosmonauts tore themselves away from their previously prepared texts and 

reported: “In seconds we’ll be able to jump into the Salyut. When we opened 

the hatch, we looked in and it seemed like there was no end to this station. 

After our tight quarters, there’s so much room!”

“Yantars, switch on the regenerators in Salyut. Communication is ending. 

We’ll wait for you during the next orbit in Salyut. Here, we’re all just as happy 

as you are. Congratulations!”

The silence in the room gives way to unimaginable noise. Mishin asks 

the medical staff for findings about the odors. Does it pose a danger for the 

cosmonauts? But what can they say without having smelled it?

Pravetskiy recommends: “Switch on the regenerators! They’ll get used to 

the smell and everything will be normal.”

Ilya Lavrov frets. He is in charge of life-support systems at TsKBEM. Odor 

falls within his field. He tries to reassure the others.

“Vasiliy Pavlovich! We don’t need to give any instructions now. When you 

go into a new apartment there’s always an unfamiliar smell! I’ll tell you another 

story from the time of the Civil War. It’s freezing cold winter and a member of 

the intelligentsia squeezes into a train car jam-packed with small-time traders 

and their bags. He breathes in some air, reels, holds his nose, and jumps back 

out, gasping for breath! Next a worker enters: ‘Whoa, guys, what farts you’ve let 

off! I’m going to look for another car.’ A peasant crawls in with a bag, breathes 

in, and sighs, ‘Warmth!’ and he climbs into the top bunk.”

“Attention, 1335 hours. We are beginning the communication session of 

the fifth orbit of the day.”

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The Hot Summer of 1971

Before Zarya established contact, we saw Volkov and Patsayev clearly on the 

television screen for the first time. For the first time, the cosmonauts were in the 

DOS. They were having an animated discussion about something. At that point 

it was impossible to restrain ourselves. We broke out in a thunderous applause.

“They heard our ovation!”

Actually, both cosmonauts looked in the camera, at us, and waved.

“They breathed for a bit and got used to the smell,” commented Lavrov.

We did it! We have a real piloted orbital station!

“Yantars, this is Zarya! The State Commission and GOGU congratulate you 

from the bottom of our hearts. You are the first Earthlings on a Long-Duration 

Orbital Station. Permission granted to have some dinner and rest, and tomorrow first thing in the morning we’ll begin work according to the program.”

An hour later the State Commission listened (not very attentively) 

to the reports of the medical staff and life-support-systems analysis service. No 

glitches had occurred that would require “ground” intervention. After three 

o’clock in the afternoon the control room emptied. The dining halls began to 

“hum,” and then the hotels. A festive mood swept away departmental, corporate, service, and company barriers. People broke up into “interest” groups. 

The most active ones headed to the beach with swimming masks and nets to 

catch crabs. Others, after procuring transportation, set out for Yevpatoriya. But 

by evening the majority had lain down and fallen asleep in their hotel rooms. 

I had assembled a group to wander off to the seaside for a stroll. I persuaded 

Ryazanskiy, Bogomolov, Mnatsakanyan, and Pravetskiy.

“Only one condition,” I demanded. “Today no arguments about Igla

and Kontakt.”

As we were leaving the compound we ran into Babakin. He was in charge 

of the “Martian” team.

“We have a communications session with Mars-3 in an hour.”

Ryazanskiy hesitated: “If you don’t mind, I’m going to stay. I’d like to have 

a look at how communication is going with Mars.”

“What new things have they discovered on the way to Mars?”

“We can report one discovery already,” answered Babakin. “In Korolev’s 

time it was thought that for any spacecraft the weight of the science equipment 

must not exceed 5 kilograms. This was a universal constant. Like a speed of 

300,000 kilometers per second that not a single body is capable of exceeding. 

And here we exceeded the ‘science’ mass by almost double. That’s why the 

ballistics experts are convinced that we won’t get to Mars.”

“We have the lead when it comes to the amount of deviation from the 

universal constant of mass. On the DOS we installed a heavy infrared telescope 

that weighs almost 100 kilograms,” I responded.

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“As a result, God has punished us—the telescope cover didn’t open. Don’t 

violate covenants.”

The red disk of the Sun sank into the sea. On the horizon a steamer 

crossed a sea-lane, blinding from the Sun’s glare. The inimitable fragrances of 

the Crimean seashore wafted through the clear air.

“There are no regenerators with aromatic additives that can reproduce the 

freshness of the air that the Lord God created for the Crimea,” I uttered some 

banality heard long ago.

“You’re probably right, and in future space settlements mankind will not 

create a model of the Black Sea coast,” agreed Pravetskiy.

“But, you know,” said Bogomolov, “in such rare hours of our lives as 

these, it grieves me that Sergey Pavlovich isn’t here with us. Imagine what 

he would feel now, being here, admiring this delightful sunset and knowing 

that the orbital station that he had dreamed of was making its latest orbit, 

that an automatic interplanetary station was on its way to Mars, and that 

news about all of this was being broadcast from Moscow to the Far East via 

a Molniya communications satellite. And he conceived and began all of this. 

No one, except for him, dared yell at me, ‘You insolent child!’ Perhaps that’s 

why I miss him so.”26

The next day turned out to be businesslike and bustling. At the 

State Commission meeting Mishin proposed leaving a small group of specialists 

headed by Tregub and Yeliseyev at NIP-16 in Yevpatoriya to control the flight 

and monitor program execution. The rest would update documentation and 

in the morning depart for our “permanent places of work.” Whoever might 

be needed in the course of affairs could be called up if necessary, since the 

exchange of real-time information had been arranged. The State Commission 

would return here one day before the landing.

We departed from the Crimea after agreeing that Dobrovolskiy’s crew 

should set a new record for time spent in space. A preliminary landing date 

of 30 June was set. In this case, the previous record set by Nikolayev and 

Sevastyanov would be broken by five days.27

“Before the Soyuz lands we’ll have to launch N-1 No. 6L,” Mishin reminded 

us at an informal State Commission meeting.

 26.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

“Yes, and this mission, I must tell you, is perhaps no less complicated,” 

said the minister somewhat sadly. “As soon as we get back, we’ll have to gather 

together once again, but in Tyuratam rather than Yevpatoriya.”

Having turned toward State Commission Secretary Vladimir Khodakov, 

the minister continued: “As soon as we arrive, draw up a list of whom to invite 

to the State Commission and when. Most likely, at first we’ll gather in my 

office, and then we’ll convene the prelaunch commission at the firing range. 

I’ve consulted with Dorofeyev and Moiseyev. They’ve put together a schedule 

figuring on the launch of N-1 No. 6 on 27 June.”

Over the course of the first week of piloted flight of the first DOS, 

the crew became familiar with the station.

“Judging by conversations with Earth, the guys are still dealing with the 

‘where are we?’ problem,” they reported from Yevpatoriya. For the ground services 

and GOGU, mastering the techniques of control and the real-time processing 

of data arriving from DOS were also new matters. Misunderstandings, glitches 

in the instructions, and errors in telemetry processing occurred every day.

Having taken advantage of the fact that in the break between launches and 

landings the majority of the leading figures were in Moscow, Keldysh convened 

the presidium of Academy of Sciences on 15 June [1971] to discuss issues of 

fundamental scientific research in space.

“The first full-fledged orbital station has been in space for nine days now. 

A three-man crew is working on it. This is certainly a great achievement for 

our cosmonautics. However, if one examines how this flight will enrich science with fundamental research, then quite frankly, we have nothing to boast 

about. I have asked several of our leading scientists to give their proposals for 

primary fields of study in connection with the opportunities that are presenting themselves thanks to orbital stations. These materials have been assembled 

at the Institute of Space Research (IKI). I ask the director of IKI, Georgiy 

Ivanovich Petrov, to report the main results to us.”28

Petrov reported that astrophysicists would like to have a 2.6-ton science 

equipment complex on orbital stations during the first phase and, during the 

second phase, a 20-meter-diameter parabolic antenna as well.

“They request that 5.6 tons be reserved for the study of Earth’s natural 

resources, including 0.4 tons for spectrozonal photography. In all, by our 

 28.

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calculations, the total weight of the science equipment will be around 10 

tons,” concluded Petrov.

“And could you please tell us what year these tons will be converted 

into equipment and instruments suitable for failsafe operation in space?” 

asked Keldysh.

“There is some disagreement among us on that point, but for the time 

being no one will promise anything before 1973.”

IKI Chief Engineer Khodarev and Academician Vernov tried to provide 

details for Petrov’s multi-ton concept.29

I asked when we could receive the dimensional-installation drawings and 

main requirements for the attitude-control and stabilizations systems, not even 

asking for the “real, live” instruments for installation on board.

“First, will you tell us what kind of perturbations will be caused by the 

cosmonauts ‘running around’ inside the station?”

“If the cosmonauts are going to bother you, they can go into the vehicle 

and undock it from the station during the science sessions.”

“And who then will adjust the equipment and observe?”

“For that you include one research scientist in the crew, running the risk 

of leaving him in isolation for a long time.”

The discussion had taken on a nature that was far from academic. Keldysh 

took the proposed programs as a starting point and instructed Petrov to coordinate specific proposals with TsKBEM within a month.

On 16 June, a serious incident occurred in space. That morning 

Mishin called me unexpectedly. Bushuyev, Feoktistov, Semyonov, and Tregub, 

who had arrived from Yevpatoriya, were already in his office.

“Yeliseyev just reported over the high-frequency line that there was a fire 

on DOS. The crew is getting ready for an emergency landing. We need to 

report to Kamanin so that they can bring the search and rescue service into 

readiness. Tregub and the ballistics experts need to figure out during which 

orbit the vehicle should separate from DOS so that the landing is guaranteed 

to take place on our territory.

 29.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

“I somehow sensed,” Mishin turned to Tregub, “that you should have 

stayed in Yevpatoriya. Yeliseyev is alone there and might panic. I’m going to give 

Khvastunov the order now to quickly prepare the airplane for takeoff to Saki.”

“With all the driving, the flight will take 5 hours. In that time the landing might even take place. It’s better to stay here in communication,” I said.

Tregub was busy talking over the high-frequency line, and gradually the situation began to become clearer. On 16 June, the odor of burned insulation and 

smoke started coming from the science equipment control console (PUNA).30

“We have a ‘curtain’ on board,” Volkov transmitted to the ground.

In code, “curtain” meant either smoke or fire. On the ground they had 

forgotten about the code and began to ask again what kind of “curtain.” Instead 

of the crew commander, Volkov was conducting the talks with the ground. 

He lost his composure, and after cursing, he said in plain language: “We have 

a fire! We’re evacuating into the vehicle now.”

Then he said that they couldn’t find the instructions for an emergency 

evacuation and descent and requested that ground dictate to them what they 

needed to do and in what sequence. In Podlipki we managed to arrange to 

back up the conversations between the DOS crew and NIP-16.

“Tell us the information for an emergency undocking,” demanded Volkov 

in a very agitated voice.

After a long period of searching, the ground responded: “Read the actions 

to take in the event of an emergency evacuation on pages 110 to 120. These 

pages contain the actions to take for transfer to the Descent Module. After 

transfer, reactivate vehicle per instructions on 7K-T, pages 98a and 98b. 

Nominal undocking. Prepare pages 133 to 136. Land only on instructions from 

the ground. Don’t hurry. The console is switched off and the smoke should 

stop. If you evacuate the station, then leave the harmful contaminant absorber 

activated. Take headache tablets. According to telemetry data, CO2 and O2 are 

normal. The commander makes the decision to transfer and undock.”

Dobrovolskiy understood that it was time for him to take over communication with the ground: “Zarya, this is Yantar. We’ve made the decision not 

to hurry. PUNA is switched off. For the time being, two will be on duty, one 

is resting. Don’t worry, we are geared up to keep working.”

“Yantar-1, this is Zarya. We are analyzing the state of the on-board systems 

and believe that the actions taken guarantee normal operation. We hope that 

you continue to work per the flight program. The odors will pass. We recommend a day of rest for you on 17 June; then go into mode. Keep in mind that 

 30.

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after leaving the NIP coverage zone, tracking ship Akademik Sergey Korolev

[Academician Sergey Korolev] will read you well.”

From these remote conversations we understood that Dobrovolskiy and 

Patsayev were downplaying Volkov’s emotions and had sent him to rest. After a 

couple of orbits, tracking ship Akademik Sergey Korolev transmitted that everything was okay on board the spacecraft. Yantar-1 and -3 were having dinner and 

Yantar-2 was resting. When everything calmed down a little, Mishin assembled 

everyone who had experienced the unexpected incident and instructed Tregub 

to return to NIP-16 in Yevpatoriya to restore order. Rauschenbach and I were 

supposed to fly out there with the necessary specialists in five days. Mishin 

himself planned to fly out to the firing range with the minister on 20 June for 

the preparation and launch of N-1 No. 6L.

“The launch is scheduled for 27 June. We’ll spend a day analyzing glitches. 

It means the minister and I will arrive in Yevpatoriya to join you on 29 June. If 

they don’t have any more fires up there, prepare all the materials for a nominal 

landing on 30 June.”

The commotion surrounding the code word “curtain” passed through all 

the levels of our hierarchy all the way to the chairman of the VPK. Subsequent 

reassuring reports from the control center in Yevpatoriya and from space eased 

Yuriy Mozzhorin’s situation. He had been instructed to prepare the text of 

a TASS report about the incident on the orbital station and, in connection 

with this, about the safe but premature return of the crew. Now there was no 

need for such a TASS report, and he could calmly sign off on standard reports 

about the flight of the station, the cosmonauts’ work, and how well they felt.31

On 20 June, Mishin departed for the firing range, bringing along 

Okhapkin, Simakin, and a whole “complement” of representatives from the services and enterprises involved in the preparation and launch of the N-1. After the 

departure of the expedition headed by Mishin, a brief lull set in. I decided to take 

advantage of it in order to reduce my “debts” on upcoming projects. That evening 

the duty attendant brought me a pile of mail from the first department.32 I began 

by reviewing directives and letters from subcontracting organizations. My study of 

the documents and redirecting of assignments moved quickly until I discovered a 

transcript of Ustinov’s speech about creating orbital stations. I had never properly 

secured these four sheets of paper—instead I had shuffled them together with 

 31.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

unclassified documents in a folder, and therefore I still had the memo. It was dated 

4 September 1970. In the document, Ustinov is carrying on a conversation with 

the chiefs of TsKBEM in Podlipki, having already visited ZIKh in Fili.

Rereading this transcript 28 years later [in 1998], it occurred to me that the 

modern achievements in the orbital station programs, including Mir and the 

International Space Station, are to a great extent the result of the firm position 

that Ustinov took in 1970 and subsequent years. Meanwhile, Ustinov would 

have been justified not only in withholding support for our initiative, but even 

in shutting it down. As it happened, the people responsible for the failure of the 

N1-L3 program, instead of concentrating all their efforts on saving this program, 

came out with proposals to create DOSes. I believe that it is better to be late 

than never than to never cite some excerpts from Ustinov’s statements in order 

to objectively assess his role in the history of the emergence of orbital stations.

The way that we set out to create DOSes is absolutely correct. Your 

proposals contain a great deal of what is needed to elevate the 

space program as a whole. From the very beginning I viewed this 

proposal not as a temporary rescue, but as a crucial independent 

field of endeavor. I now have an even greater appreciation for LongDuration Orbital Stations than I did before.

 All of your statements, concerns, anxieties, and proposals have 

convinced me that we have set out on the right path. I am profoundly 

convinced of this. However, I would like to caution against drawing conclusions that are too hasty and extravagant. Perhaps, from 

the standpoint of tactics and politics, you sometimes make mistakes 

and preach to the choir. Now the important thing isn’t arguing, but 

fulfilling this grandiose task that you have taken on.

 The first and second DOSes—this isn’t exactly what we would 

have liked. I understand that it simply isn’t possible to do more in that 

period of time. But I’m not going to cave in. Pay attention to the third 

and fourth, and prepare very seriously for the fifth and sixth DOSes. 

These orbital systems must be tested out to the maximum. Under no 

circumstances should we be involved now with setting systems against 

one another. At this stage, no good will come of this. We need to map 

out the sequence for the implementation of engineering solutions and 

rigidly adhere to it, making adjustments as we gain experience. In 

terms of creativity, it is difficult to help you. If you view the DOSes 

as many years of work rather than the latest “makeshift” project, then 

show it. If DOSes solve the overwhelming majority of problems, then 

we can postpone Almaz and review our programs. This is the natural 

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course of events. However, we also need to listen to the other side and 

determine our position without excessive emotion.

 There’s a lot of dissatisfaction in the Central Committee with 

the general progress of work on the space programs. They’re saying 

there are too many project themes. We need to study all the themes 

and perhaps review our previous thinking and decisions.

 We were all energetic, positive, and enthusiastic in 1969 when we got 

down to work promising to launch the first station in 1970—before the 

Party congress. The congress was postponed three months or more, and a 

certain cooling off began in your work too.33 This doesn’t look very pretty.

 The orbital station needs to begin to fly as soon as possible! Flights will 

show us our weak points; they’ll help us make the necessary corrections. 

You have a tremendous amount of work that is truly creative—essentially you are solving a problem for the whole future of orbital station 

development. We have a struggle between schools of thought ahead of 

us—concerning the role of a human being on an orbital station. A 

person should be given the opportunity to use his reason. He should 

know how to get out of any difficult situation. You must show that you 

will take on all of Almaz’s problems and solve them at a higher level.

 After receiving our support, you made a truly revolutionary step 

toward creating orbital stations. At the same time, you are losing 

perspective on the N1-L3 program. The N-1 failures are annoying, 

but they shouldn’t dispirit you. Think how you can speed up work 

on the N1-L3 using the experience of working on the DOSes.

 Is there no possibility of sending a two-man expedition to the 

Moon? The experience of working on the DOSes shows that our 

staffs have enormous reserves. We need to train crews for the orbital 

stations so that we will have competent space navigators, intelligence 

officers, and researchers. You must not compare the capabilities 

of a human being to a machine, but use the advantages of both 

to the greatest extent possible. The near-Earth space programs in 

effect now—Almaz, DOS, Soyuz 7K-T, Soyuz 7K-S, Yantar, and 

others—need to be reviewed with an eye to economizing effort and 

resources by harmonizing the programs, having them complement 

each other, and eliminating redundancy.

 Looking forward, your goal must be to create a standardized 

multipurpose orbital complex for military, economic, scientific, and 

 33.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

political missions in near-Earth space. You should already be thinking 

about the fact that the DOSes will be modules of a future MOK. The 

N-1 is needed for the MOK. The Central Committee has yet to see any 

of your proposals about the prospects for the N-1, except for the old 

plan calling for the landing of one cosmonaut on the lunar surface. 

This is causing the most profound concern in the Central Committee. 

You don’t have the same creative force on the N-1 as you put together 

for the DOSes. Perhaps we could give it some thought and create a 

branch organization that will deal only with the prospects for using the 

N-1? You also don’t have a real struggle for the RT-2 [solid-propellant 

ICBM], for this system’s place in the general concept of strategic missile 

forces. You aren’t really fighting for this. To date, these missiles have 

not been placed on combat duty.34 Your organization is at fault. We in 

the Central Committee do not feel the will of Chief Designer Mishin 

in resolving these crucial matters.

 Look at how passionately Chelomey and Yangel defend their 

concepts for combat missiles and see them through to realization. 

With regard to the RT-2, we will have to have a special conversation.

That evening, after setting aside the never-classified pages containing 

the transcript of Ustinov’s speech, I began to edit the key points concerning the 

program for the creation of a standardized Multipurpose Orbital Complex. This 

material contained interesting ideas that had been developed in my departments, 

too. Many of them strayed from the directive proposals of the design departments. A hard line needed to be adopted for standardizing the service systems 

of the transport vehicles and the different modules. I prepared a memo with a 

list of proposals for standardization of the following items:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

the motion control and navigation systems of particularly sensitive elements, as well as Sun and star trackers;

the control moment gyrostabilization system;

the life-support system assemblies;

the thermal control system equipment;

the integrated power supply system equipment;

the final approach, docking, and airlocking assemblies and automatic 

systems;

the rendezvous control radio systems;

the radio telemetry systems for monitoring all on-board systems;

 34.

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•	

•	

•	

the integrated radio systems for transmitting, receiving, and processing 

data, including commands, voice, television, and orbital-monitoring data;

the on-board digital computers, communication devices, and analog-todigital conversion devices; and

the correcting braking engines (KTDU) and their fittings.

Was it possible in principle to standardize the KTDU for spacecraft with 

different masses and orbital lifetimes? I had a conversation with Isayev on this 

topic on one of my days off.

One weekend, instead of taking a day to go canoeing, Katya and I accepted 

an invitation from Isayev and drove to Pirogovo to have a look at how our 

many gardening friends lived.35 Might we too switch over to a sedentary form 

of recreation? Isayev showed us his garden cabin, unable to conceal his pride at 

having designed it. Laws at the time restricted the area of a cabin to 25 square 

meters. In order to get around this limit, he himself had designed the cabin 

tilting the walls outward so that the interior volume was considerably greater 

than prescribed, but the area of the foundation did not exceed the permitted size.

Isayev’s wife, Alevtina Dmitriyevna, an avid participant in canoe trips, argued 

that keeping a garden on the shore of a magnificent reservoir could be completely 

compatible with paddling around in a canoe. Isayev recounted, “Alevtina and I 

got married after the canoe trips, which our visitors used to arrange. But when 

our daughter Katya came into this world, we realized that sun, fresh air, and water 

weren’t just necessary during holidays. And that’s when we got this ‘bungalow’. If 

you could manage to get 600 square meters here, it would be more than enough 

in terms of workload to replace canoe trips lasting several days.”

That day we visited “gardeners” 

Chizhikov, Raykov, Melnikov, and 

Stepan—they all unanimously tried 

to persuade us to abandon our “paradise in a hut” on the Pyalovskoye 

Reservoir and become “landowners.” 

They proudly showed us young apple 

trees, currant bushes, and radish 

sprouts on their own garden plots.

“And as far as standardizing the 

KTDU is concerned,” said Isayev, 

when we were already about to 

say our good-byes, “I don’t see any 

From the author’s archives.

Chertok and his wife Yekaterina “Katya” 

at their dacha.

 35.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

From the author’s archives.

Retired veterans of the Soviet space program, from left to right: A. G. Reshetin, 

B. Ye. Chertok, V. V. Vorshev, and V. F. Skvortsov at Chertok’s dacha in 2006.

problems there. We just need to make sure your planners don’t put on airs, 

and we’ll always come to terms.”

That evening Rauschenbach and Chizhikov interrupted my late-night 

pursuits.

“It’s time to get ready to go home,” said Chizhikov. “We’re here to bum a 

ride off of you. Today neither of us has a car.”

I glanced at my watch. It really was time. After scooping all the classified 

materials into the file, I telephoned the first department.

“Yesterday at Pirogovo we had an incident. I wanted to drop by and see 

you first thing in the morning, but instead I ended up in the shop and I got 

all tied up,” said Chizhikov.

“What happened?”

“An ambulance took Aleksey Isayev straight from his garden plot to 

the hospital.”

“He got a Czech Jawa motorcycle quite recently. Don’t tell me he crashed.”

“No, that’s not it at all. It seems he had bad chest pains.”

“That’s worse. Wait. Let’s find out what’s going on.”

I dialed Isayev’s number on the Kremlin line. His first deputy—Vladislav 

Nikolayevich Bogomolov—answered. He was also the owner of a garden plot 

in Pirogovo. Bogomolov confirmed that Isayev had started to have intense pains 

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near his heart. They called an ambulance from Mytishchi.36 At the Mytishchi 

hospital the diagnosis was that he’d had a heart attack. Consequently, they put 

him on strict bed rest on his back, IV line, and shots. He, Bogomolov, immediately informed the ministry of this calamity. There they had a fit: “What do 

you mean, he’s in Mytishchi? Get him to the kremlevka immediately!”37 An 

ambulance rushed from the kremlevka to Mytishchi with a request to release 

the patient. The Mytishchi doctors objected. In their opinion it was risky to 

transport the patient in such a condition.

After examining Isayev, the kremlevka medical staff supposedly said that 

there was absolutely no danger and that it wasn’t a heart attack at all, but 

pains from intercostal neuralgia.38 They took Isayev to the kremlevka. For the 

time being Bogomolov couldn’t say whether Isayev had had a heart attack or 

neuralgia. And I had been on the verge of inviting Aleksey Isayev to fly with 

me to Yevpatoriya for the landing of Dobrovolskiy’s crew. I had dreamed of 

talking him into making a trip with me to Koktebel after the landing and 

spending the day there reminiscing about our prewar croquet tournaments 

and strolls to Kara-Dag.

I reminded Chizhikov: “Remember what a fantastic time we had with 

Isayev in Koktebel—it’s been 31 years! Those were the good old days. Koktebel 

is quite close, but apparently it’s not in the cards any more for us to get there.”

What should we do now? We couldn’t possibly drive home. I called Yevgeniy 

Vorobyev on the Kremlin line. Despite the late hour he was on the job.

“I’ll try to find out. But keep in mind that at the kremlevka they don’t like 

it when we interfere.” Five minutes later Vorobyev telephoned.

“I managed to find out that the situation is serious. Of course, they told 

me that they’re doing everything they can and they don’t need our help....”

On 25 June 1971, Aleksey Isayev died. The staff at the Khimmash Design 

Bureau was stunned.39 Isayev not only enjoyed the authority of a chief, but 

also the sincere love of his staff, which rarely comes to a boss from his subordinates. Rarely did a spacecraft get along without Isayev’s orbital correction 

engines. Air-defense, missile-defense, and submarine-launched missiles flew 

using Isayev’s engines.

 36.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

Isayev didn’t have many people who were jealous of him, and he had no 

enemies. I had known him for 35 years. All that time it seemed that not only 

his brain, but also his heart, burned with the flame of engineering creativity. 

He belonged to a rare breed of creator/manager who could arrive at work in 

the morning, assemble his colleagues, and say, “Everything that we thought up 

yesterday needs to be tossed into the trash can and forgotten. We slipped up.”

Isayev was not afraid to admit his own mistakes and bravely contested 

popular opinion. His behavior sometimes caused outrage in the ministries 

when deadlines were missed because Isayev demanded that a large amount of 

production stock be “thrown out” like potato peelings. Simplicity, approachability, and unselfishness set Isayev apart from his peers.

Mishin telephoned me from the firing range.

“Tomorrow we have a launch. I won’t be able to fly back for Aleksey’s 

funeral. As an old comrade and representative of our organization, you go 

support the Isayevites.”

It wasn’t difficult to arrange support at funerals. First Deputy Minister 

Tyulin headed the Funeral Commission. He explained: “There’s just one day 

for the funeral. On 27 June there is the N-1 launch. On 30 June there is the 

landing of the Soyuz-11 crew. A day later all the managers, including those from 

Isayev’s firm, must fly out to Yevpatoriya. That means the funeral has to take 

place on 28 June. The Central Committee gave instructions to have the burial 

at Novodevichye Cemetery. We need to quickly select the site. I’ve been told 

that his relatives insist on the old section of Novodevichye. It’s very difficult 

to find a plot there. But all the commands have been given. You in the city 

prepare the Palace of Culture for him to lie in state. You know the drill. The 

ministry will absorb all the expenses. Don’t forget about transportation. If we 

don’t have enough buses, rent municipal ones. Help Bogomolov if problems 

arise. I will come straight to the Palace first thing in the morning.”

The launch of N-1 No. 6L wedged itself into our ritual schedule as a 

funeral salute. Liftoff took place overnight from 26 to 27 June 1971 at 2:15:52 

Moscow time. Beginning in the evening, communication was established 

with the firing range via the high-frequency line, but we weren’t able to set 

up real-time transmission of telemetry parameters. We received information 

about what happened after liftoff in the form of not very distinct oral reports 

from the bunker, and then from the firing range computer center, where the 

telemetry systems’ information was processed in real time.

All 30 first-stage engines transitioned to mode. The rocket lifted off normally. Five seconds after liftoff the telemetry operators began their running 

commentary: “Pitch and yaw normal; roll angle is increasing.”

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the first seconds, the rocket began to spin about its longitudinal axis. 

After 14 seconds of flight, the roll angle exceeded 8°. The gyro platform issued 

the AVD (emergency engine shutdown) command. The command failed to 

pass. It was inhibited until 50 seconds into the flight. This inhibit had been 

introduced after the crash of No. 5L for the safety of the launch facilities. By 

the 50th second of flight, the rocket had spun 60°. As soon as the inhibit was 

removed, all 30 engines of the first stage shut down at once. The rocket fell to 

the ground 20 kilometers away. If it hadn’t been for the safety inhibit of the 

AVD command, the rocket would have crashed a kilometer from the launch 

site. The blast wave, equivalent to 500 tons of TNT, would have destroyed the 

launch facilities for a second time.

In 1948, during the testing of R-1 missiles in Kapustin Yar, Pilyugin had 

dared to assert to the State Commission that failures provide us with experience that we don’t gain during normal launches. Recalling this, addressing 

Pilyugin and me at one of the accident investigation commission sessions, 

Barmin said with bitter satisfaction: “You have experimentally confirmed 

the fulfillment of my requirement for defective rockets to fall a safe distance 

from the launch site.”

What forces spun the rocket? It seemed the answer lay on the surface—a 

false command from the roll-control system. This scenario has been declared 

the most likely in similar cases. During that very difficult, sleepless night, even 

I gave in to the hypnosis of that very simple explanation—that it was a failure 

in the roll command transmission circuit. But the more likely scenario was 

that the command polarity was mixed up. “The same thing happened on our 

first Soyuz. They could also have gotten it mixed up on a rocket,” said those 

taking part in the all-nighter in Podlipki, having no credible information 

from the firing range. Proponents of the mixed-up polarity tried to calculate 

the angular rate of spin. In this case, instead of the stabilization automatic 

control unit providing negative feedback, the control unit provided positive 

feedback. Rather than responding to the roll angle error with counteracting 

torque from the rotation control nozzles, the automatic control unit would 

add to and intensify the torque.

By 10 a.m., according to reports from the firing range, the scenarios 

pointing to the culpability of the control system and also the likelihood of 

mixed polarity had been rejected. Georgiy Degtyarenko explained via the highfrequency communication line that the control system had fought honorably 

for the rocket’s life. From the very first seconds of flight, the engines’ control 

nozzles attempted to stop the rotation but quickly reached their stops, and the 

spinning continued. Perturbation torque about the longitudinal axis, which 

came from who-knows-where, proved to be much greater than the torque of 

the control nozzles.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

That day they telephoned us relentlessly from the offices of the Central 

Committee, VPK, and various ministries and related organizations, convinced 

that the secret of the N-1 crash had already been discovered, but that we were 

intentionally keeping them in the dark and hiding something. Khitrik was one 

of the first that day to come out with a scenario, which was later proved true.

“Using the reports of our comrades from the firing range, we have tried to 

reproduce the process on our models. The control system acts that way only 

when perturbation torque is five times greater than the value you noted in 

the baseline data. I have already informed Pilyugin of that, and he informed 

Mishin. Before they arrive I advise that we call together all the aero- and gasdynamics specialists and let them try to find where this perturbation is coming 

from, given that we didn’t have it during the exact same seconds during the 

first launch.”

All that I managed to do on that chaotic and difficult day was to pass 

on Khitrik’s doubts to the chief of the aerodynamics department, Vladimir 

Roshchin. “We couldn’t have committed such a large error,” he said. “Perhaps 

during modifications of the aft end they deformed the structure. Tell Khitrik 

to look for the problem in his own shop.” Alas, it all turned out to be considerably more complicated. This became clear after prolonged studies and 

labor-intensive experimental work.

It wasn’t until late that evening, at home, that I was able to reminisce about Isayev. Katya and I sorted through memories of our meetings with 

him beginning in 1935: in Fili, Khimki, Koktebel, the Urals, Podlipki; strolls 

together through Leningrad; the commotion of children on the meadows in 

Pirogovo; the exclamations of “well, blow my brains out” on the occasion of 

both success and failure.

Daniil Khrabrovitskiy—the screenwriter of the film Ukroshcheniye ognya

[Taming the Fire]—was shaken when I called to inform him of Isayev’s death.40

“His stories, his dedication, his real help with the launches of rockets 

enriched the film much more than I had anticipated,” said Khrabrovitskiy. 

“Despite your objections, after getting to know Isayev, I sent Bashkirtsev to 

the construction of Magnitogorsk.41 I didn’t make up the scene with the black 

caviar in the cold barracks. Isayev told me about that.”

 40.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

On the day of Isayev’s funeral, according to the established tradition, he lay 

in state at the Palace of Culture. However, it wasn’t long before such a throng 

(several thousand people) had gathered at the entrance to the building that it 

became clear: it would not be possible to allow everyone to pass through the 

hall. The Commission made an unusual decision—the casket would be carried out to the central square of Kaliningrad. The employees of Isayev’s design 

bureau very efficiently reorganized the previously written protocol.

Isayev lay in an open casket in the town’s central square under the hot 

June sun. Fresh-cut flowers carefully placed by the casket by the hundreds 

of people who had come to pay their last respects were added to the many 

dozens of wreaths from organizations. The Hero of Socialist Labor gold medal, 

four Orders of Lenin, the Lenin and State Prize laureate badges of honor, the 

Order of the October Revolution, and a multitude of medals sparkled on red 

pillows. I never saw Isayev decked out in with all of these government awards 

when he was alive.

That day Pravda came out with an obituary and picture of Isayev. After 

Korolev’s obituary in 1966, this was the second posthumous declassification.

Aleksey Mikhaylovich Isayev was among the first creators of rocket 

engines and the head of a design staff that created a whole series of 

engines for missile and space technology. The engines created under 

the leadership of A. M. Isayev were installed on Vostok, Voskhod, and 

Soyuz piloted spacecraft and on automatic interplanetary stations.... 

Aleksey Mikhaylovich was one of the designers of an airplane that 

performed the world’s first flight using a reactive engine on 15 May 

1942. In 1944, A. M. Isayev became the head of a leading engine 

building design organization....

Below the obituary were the signatures of Brezhnev, Podgornyy, Kosygin, 

other members of the Politburo, ministers, and also Tabakov, Tyulin, Glushko, 

Grushin, Lyulka, and Kuznetsov. It is inexplicable why the Central Committee 

dared place the signature of Grushin—a developer of air-defense and missiledefense missiles—under the obituary and drew the line at publishing the 

surnames of the main consumers of Isayev’s engines—Makeyev and Mishin.42

 42.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

Tyulin opened the funeral ceremony. His speech repeated the text of the 

obituary printed in Pravda. Before my speech I was handed a note: “Don’t 

mention anything about projects for Makeyev or missiles.” I couldn’t find 

the speech that I’d written and so I spoke extemporaneously. Later I was told 

that my speech was “from the heart.” The only words I remembered were that 

“Isayev was a real human being and a great engineer.”

Makeyev was deprived of the right in his eulogy to mention Isayev’s decisive 

role in the strategic missiles that Makeyev had developed for submarines.43 He 

got out of that difficulty by emphasizing Isayev’s human qualities.

According to established tradition, a second funeral ceremony took place 

at Novodevichye Cemetery. Other orators spoke more briefly. Not everyone got 

to throw a handful of earth into the grave. In the old section of Novodevichye 

with thousands in attendance, it was anything but easy. After filling the grave, 

the gravediggers with their professional knack erected a hill of wreaths and 

fresh-cut flowers. I had arranged with [my wife] Katya, who had dozens of 

acquaintances here, that if we were to lose one another in the multitude of 

people at the cemetery, we would meet up in the parking area. I wanted to 

walk through to the graves of Boguslavskiy and Voskresenskiy.44 For me this 

was a visceral need. That day, two true comrades of mine had been joined by 

a third, perhaps my closest.

While I was standing at Voskresenskiy’s grave an unfamiliar woman 

approached me.

“You don’t recognize me?”

I looked at the no-longer-young, somehow imperceptibly familiar face 

under the mop of frizzy gray hair and confessed that I didn’t recognize her.

“It’s me, Mira, have you forgotten?”

After embracing, I asked: “But where’s Oleg?”45

“Oleg has been gone for a long time. He just couldn’t deal with the tranquil 

life. I have a candidate of sciences degree. It’s interesting work, right near here 

on Pirogovskaya Street. I have two children. There’s no time to be bored. I saw 

the obituary in the newspaper and came to say goodbye to Isayev. I remembered 

him as a gallant knight, although back then he didn’t have a single medal.”

“He really was a gallant knight,” I said. “But unlike Don Quixote, he 

possessed the talent of an engineer and he performed real feats. He didn’t do 

 43.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

battle with windmills. But he worked on fantastic designs without losing his 

common sense.”

Mira opened her bag, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to me.

“What’s this?”

“You’ll see.”

“Let’s walk to my car, Katya is waiting there, we’ll drive to the funeral 

reception.”

“No. Soon everyone will be leaving; I want to be here alone for a while.”

It wasn’t until I got home that I opened the envelope. It contained a photograph from the summer of 1945: Oleg Bedarev and I. We were both in military 

uniform. Printed on a sheet of onionskin paper were poignant lines of poetry. Oleg 

had performed them while he played his guitar at our last “fireside” get-together.

A somber yellow field and grove.

The wind flutters like a captive dove.

The autumn whirlwind stirs dead leaves—

No more their beauty will we see.

Winds tear them up, drive them away,

Laughing and moaning as they play...

The bitter moan of words unsaid,

The anguish of dreams that are left for dead.

The pain of a strange and unknown dream...

The autumn whirlwind stirs dead leaves.

Life’s tumult ended.... And in the mist

They hug the ground, reduced to dust.

Hear their prayer, life’s truth, O Earth.

Receive them in peace, you who gave them their birth.

The next morning, 29 June 1971, I flew to Yevpatoriya with Kerimov 

and a group of Isayev’s coworkers who had stayed on for the funeral. There 

everyone had already prepared for the communication sessions for undocking, 

subsequent spacecraft orientation, deorbit, and landing. Minister Afanasyev 

and Mishin were supposed to fly in from the firing range. However, the failure 

of N-1 No. 6L had not yet been explained, and they did not feel that they 

could depart for Yevpatoriya.

Tregub reported to the State Commission that the crew, having spent 

around 23 days in space, had set a record. They had conducted experiments 

with the military’s OD-4 optical sight/range finder, with the Orion ultravioletrange observation system, and with the secret Svinets (Lead) radar system. They 

had photographed Earth, performed spectrographic studies of the horizon, 

and conducted experiments on gamma flux intensity and on a procedure for 

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The Hot Summer of 1971

manual orientation of the station. Tentatively, this very intense program of 

scientific, military, medical, and technical experiments should be considered 

fulfilled. The final report would be done after the materials that the cosmonauts 

delivered to the ground were processed.

The crew spent the last two days deactivating the orbital station, packing 

up materials, and activating and preparing the spacecraft. The undocking command was supposed to be issued on 29 June at 2125 hours. After separation 

from the station, two orbits were allocated for preparation for descent. The 

crew would perform manual orientation outside our coverage zone and would 

transfer control to the gyro instruments. NIP-16 would issue the command 

to activate the descent cycle; NIP-15 would stand by in reserve. An SKTDU 

deboost burn would take place at 0147 hours on 30 June.46

Vorobyev confirmed that, according to the physicians’ findings, the condition of the cosmonauts during the last few days was good. No one expected 

anything sensational at the traditional nocturnal meeting in the cramped control 

room of NIP-16. All commands to the vehicle were routed without a glitch. 

The crew reported the execution of all operations on time, without causing any 

aggravation on the ground. Everything was proceeding calmly and according 

to schedule. The ship-based tracking stations received information from the 

spacecraft as it passed over them and reported in real time that the engine had 

executed the deboost burn at the calculated time and the integrator had shut it 

down. The Command and Measurement Complex and GOGU accumulated 

good experience monitoring the spacecraft during the landing orbit.

After engine shutdown, the spacecraft left the coverage zone of the ship-based 

tracking stations located in the Atlantic. Separation took place over Africa—the 

Habitation Compartment and Instrument-Systems Compartment were jettisoned 

from the Descent Module. The Descent Module did not have a radio telemetry 

system. We had hoped to hear about what had happened after separation in the 

cosmonauts’ oral report before entry into the atmosphere when the hot plasma 

would shut down the Zarya system’s slot antenna. A Mir multichannel automatic 

recording unit had been installed to record the processes in the Descent Module. 

After the death of Komarov, two Olegs—Sulimov and Komissarov—and their 

comrades at the Institute of Measurements perfected this stand-alone recorder, 

increasing its thermal protection and mechanical strength.47

 46.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

“We asked Dobrovolskiy the whole time to give us a running commentary 

as soon as the Descent Module enters our coverage zone, but he hasn’t said a 

word,” complained Yeliseyev. “It’s strange that Volkov is quiet. During the last 

session he was very talkative.”

“When you and Shatalov descended,” I affirmed, “we saw how effective the 

slot antenna was. Shatalov’s running commentary replaced telemetry for us.”

“Before undocking, the ‘hatch closed’ indicator for the hatch between the 

Descent Module and the Habitation Compartment didn’t light up. Volkov 

was clearly nervous, but he quickly figured it out and stuck some bandage 

tape under the limit switch that registers hatch closure. Then they were quite 

wordy in their running commentary,” said Tregub.

“They’re still doing great,” I said, sticking up for them. “They’re the first crew 

of a Long-Duration Orbital Station. They’ve withstood an unscheduled flight 

and for one thing, let’s tell it straight, they performed a very intense program.”

A report came over the loudspeaker: “The space monitoring service tracking the Descent Module per prognosis.”

Finally, the long-awaited report arrived: “General Kutasin’s service reports 

that airplanes have spotted the Descent Module.48 Parachute descent is in progress. Per prognosis the overshoot is around 10 kilometers, no more, relative to 

the calculated touchdown point. Helicopters are flying out to the landing site.”

After about 20 minutes we began to get nervous. No more reports were 

coming in from the landing area. The officer in contact with the search and 

rescue service felt guilty. We pelted him with a flurry of rebukes, but he was 

unable to tell us anything. State Commission Chairman Kerimov had the 

duty of being the first to report to Moscow—to Smirnov and Ustinov—about 

the successful completion of the mission. But he found himself cut off from 

communication with the landing area.

“It’s not General Kutasin’s fault! Most likely, Commander-in-Chief of the 

Air Force Aviation Marshal Kutakhov has taken over communication and has 

ordered Kutasin not to report without his knowledge,” was the explanation 

that an experienced communications operator gave.49

Around 30 minutes after the calculated landing time, Kerimov decided to 

complain to Ustinov about the behavior of Air Force Commander-in-Chief 

Kutakhov. It took another 10 minutes to connect with Ustinov. The room 

fell silent. Finally Kerimov gave the sign: “Quiet!” But this time we heard 

48. Major-General Aleksandr Ivanovich Kutasin (1903–1978) headed the Air Force’s search 

and rescue service for the Soviet human spaceflight program.

49. Marshal Pavel Stepanovich Kutakhov (1914–1984) served as Commander-in-Chief of 

the Soviet Air Force from 1969 to 1984.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

no complaints about Kutakhov. Kerimov said nothing. He hung up. With a 

changed expression on his face, Kerimov began to recount what he had heard 

from Ustinov.

“Two minutes after landing, a rescue crew from a helicopter ran up to 

the Descent Module. It was lying on its side. Externally there was no damage 

at all. They knocked on the side. No one answered. They quickly opened the 

hatch. All three were sitting in their seats in tranquil poses. There were dark 

blue spots on their faces. Blood was running from the nose and ears. They 

pulled them out of the Descent Module. Dobrovolskiy was still warm. Doctors 

continued to perform artificial resuscitation. According to their reports from 

the landing site, death was the result of asphyxiation. No foreign odors were 

detected in the Descent Module. Measures were taken to evacuate the bodies 

to Moscow for examination. Specialists from Podlipki and the Cosmonauts 

Training Center flew out to the landing site for an investigation.”

In the total silence someone said: “It was depressurization.”

The horrible news stunned everyone. No one delighted in the clear blue 

sky or in the vast expanse of the mirror-smooth sea from whence the sweet, 

fresh morning air wafted through the wide-flung windows.

At 11:30, the State Commission and everyone who could fit onto the 

airplane departed from the Saki airfield for Moscow. A small group stayed 

on in Yevpatoriya to monitor the flight of DOS No. 1, which went down in 

the history of cosmonautics as Salyut 1. The orbital corrections prepared and 

performed for its missions supported the station’s flight until October. But 

now this no longer mattered. According to the disaster investigation results, so 

many measures would have to be taken that, in the best-case scenario, the next 

piloted Soyuz would not be able to fly until early 1972. For the N-1, the break 

in flight-development testing, regardless of what the other commission found, 

would also drag on for at least another six months. These were the thoughts 

running through our heads on the airplane. (In fact, considerably more time 

was needed for all the modifications. Test flights of unpiloted Soyuzes didn’t 

start up again until June 1972.50)

After arriving at the site where the Descent Module had touched down, the 

group of specialists headed by cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov and Descent Module 

developers Andrey Reshetin and Vladimir Timchenko looked over the module 

and checked it for leaks. They were not able to detect any off-nominal loss of 

pressure integrity. They removed the magnetic tape from the Mir recorder and 

 50.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

quickly dispatched it. Everyone was confident that after it was processed the 

cosmonauts’ cause of death would immediately become apparent.

Moscow met us with such a heat wave that the Crimea seemed cool by 

comparison. Just a week before, I had stood in the honor guard by Isayev’s casket 

in Kaliningrad. Now they were preparing the Red Banner Hall of the Central 

Building of the Soviet Army for a funeral ceremony of three cosmonauts at 

one time. All three were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet 

Union. It was the second time for Volkov. From the Central Building of the 

Soviet Army, through a vast throng of people, the funeral procession headed 

to Red Square. The urns containing the cosmonauts’ ashes were immured in 

the Kremlin Wall.

From the author’s archives.

Shown at the funeral of the Soyuz-11 crew in early August 1971 at Red Square are 

(left to right) Boris Chertok, Yuriy Semyonov, and Vakhtang Vachnadze.

Over the five days from 25 through 30 June 1971, fate had dealt us three 

blows: on the 25th, the death of Isayev; on the 27th, the failure of N-1 No. 6L; 

and on the 30th, the death of the Soyuz-11 crew. There was no doubt that 

throughout July and August our staff would be given a shaking by at least two 

independent commissions: one for the N-1 and the other for the Soyuz. After a 

brief hesitation, the Politburo added to Keldysh’s concerns. They made him chairman of the government commission investigating the causes of the death of the 

Soyuz-11 crew. They appointed Georgiy Babakin deputy chairman. Members of 

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The Hot Summer of 1971

the commission were Afanasyev, Glushko, Kazakov, Mishuk, Grushin, Shcheulov, 

Frolov, Burnazyan, Shatalov, and Tsarev (commission secretary).51

Keldysh convened the first commission meeting on 7 July. Opening the 

meeting, Keldysh announced that in addition to the members of the commission appointed by the administration, from TsKBEM he had invited Mishin, 

Bushuyev, Chertok, Tregub, Shabarov, and Feoktistov, and—at the request of 

the Ministry of Defense—Karas.

“We are obliged to submit a report to the Central Committee and Council 

of Ministers within two weeks,” said Keldysh.

He went on to say that that morning he had been invited to the Politburo 

along with Smirnov and ministers Afanasyev and Dementyev.

“After expressing his sorrow over what had happened,” continued Keldysh, 

“Leonid Ilyich asked that I tell you that under no circumstances has this given 

rise to any mindset for curtailing operations. We need to figure out as quickly 

as possible what caused this and continue the program of flights using longduration space stations. Over the past few days various groups created to assist 

our commission have performed a great deal of work, and therefore, we shall 

begin by listening to what these working groups managed to find out.”

Mishin was the first to report. He spoke in detail about the modifications 

and how the Soyuz-11 7K-T vehicle differed from its predecessors. Since 

November 1966 a total of 19 vehicles had been launched. Of these, 17 were 

7K-OK models and two were 7K-Ts. The last one, 7K-T No. 32, differed 

from the previous one [Soyuz-10] only in terms of its modified docking 

assembly. Before descent, no in-flight off-nominal situations were recorded 

on vehicle No. 32. All operations for descent proceeded normally until the 

moment of separation. According to the data from the Mir recorder, at the 

moment of separation the pressure began to drop in the Descent Module. 

Over a period of 130 seconds the pressure dropped from 915 to 100 millimeters of mercury.

Keldysh interrupted Mishin: “The Commission needs to know by all 

means about all abnormalities, not only on the vehicle but also on the station. 

We need to prepare a list of all, I repeat, all glitches without exception. The 

entire prehistory needs to be clear to us. In particular, explain: why did we 

begin flights into space in spacesuits and then do away with them so quickly?”

 51.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Mishin made a show of instructing Tregub and Feoktistov to prepare 

posters with a list of all glitches by tomorrow morning. He must have been 

very uncomfortable. First, because the guilty party in the tragedy, the news 

of which had spread throughout the world, was TsKBEM, and consequently, 

he, its boss and chief designer. Second, this disaster came on top of the N-1 

failure, for which TsKBEM was ultimately also at fault. Each accident had 

specific responsible parties. The blame for each of them might be different. 

The fact that everyone collectively didn’t know, didn’t foresee, didn’t understand something served as a general excuse. That’s the very learning process 

that Korolev used to talk about. These arguments come in handy for a lawyer 

if a case were to go to trial. But this was a trial where each person was his own 

investigator, prosecutor, judge, and lawyer. Even the aim of the members of 

the Commission was not to look for the guilty party, but to understand what 

caused the disaster. Each of them had his own failure. And each understood 

full well that there were no evildoers or slovenly individuals here. There were 

flaws or unexplored spots in a large system. They needed to be hunted out.

It was difficult for Mishin to answer Keldysh’s question about why we had 

done away with spacesuits. Korolev had made that decision personally before the 

launch of Voskhod [in 1964]. It was also impossible to fit three men in spacesuits 

in the Soyuz Descent Module. When Korolev was alive only Kamanin had 

come out strongly in favor of spacesuits. But chief planner of piloted vehicles 

Feoktistov had himself flown without a spacesuit with Komarov and Yegorov. 

He actively supported Korolev’s initiative. Mishin had nothing directly to do 

with abandoning spacesuits. No problems had arisen with maintaining pressure integrity during a single one of the Vostok, Voskhod, and unpiloted and 

piloted Soyuz flights. Somehow demands to reinstate flights in spacesuits were 

of their own accord forgotten.

Mishin set forth some scenarios, supporting them with posters that 

Feoktistov put up.

“After landing, the Descent Module was checked out and no damage was 

found. Depressurization could have occurred due to two causes. The first is 

the premature actuation of a breathing vent valve. In this case the pressure 

should fall according to the upper curve. The second possible cause is an 

improper hatch seal. The curve of the calculated pressure drop when the valve 

is opened precisely coincides with the recording of the actual pressure drop 

after separation. In addition to the coincidence of the calculated and actual 

drop curves, we have evidence from the descent control system (SUS). The 

recording of the SUS behavior shows the presence of off-nominal disturbance. 

Judging by the magnitude and character, this disturbance coincides with 

the calculated value for the egress of air from the opening formed when a 

breathing valve is opened.”

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The Hot Summer of 1971

Grushin interrupted Mishin, trying to understand why this breathing vent 

was necessary in the first place.

“Is the valve closed on the launch pad? It’s closed. Is it closed throughout 

the entire flight? It’s closed. Is it closed during descent? It’s closed. And you 

only open it at an altitude of 2 or 3 kilometers above Earth. You open up the 

hatches anyway right after landing. You’ve outsmarted yourself here somehow.”

Unintelligible explanations began as to why this valve was necessary. To be 

perfectly frank, they were very unconvincing and contradictory. The discussion that had started became even more complicated after it was determined 

that in addition to this [breathing] valve, which is opened automatically by 

an explosive cartridge, there is also a manual butterfly valve. It was provided 

in the event of a water touchdown. By turning the handle of this valve, it is 

possible to block off the opening formed by the ill-fated breathing vent valve 

so that water doesn’t get into the Descent Module.

Mishuk asked how the electrical scenario had been analyzed and why no 

one was talking about it. I answered that both the telemetry recordings and 

the autonomous recorder data had been thoroughly examined. There were no 

indications that a false premature command had been issued to the explosive 

cartridge opening the valve. An analysis of the Mir recordings showed that 

pressure integrity was lost at the moment of separation of the Descent Module 

from the Habitation Compartment. The pressure drop curve corresponded to 

a hole size equal to the cross section of a single valve. In fact there were two 

valves: one was a feed valve and the other a suction valve. If a false command 

had passed, then both valves would have opened right away: electrically, they 

were in the same circuit. The command to open two valves passed nominally, 

as it was supposed to at a safe altitude. According to the findings of specialists 

from the Scientific-Research Institute for the Operation and Repair of Aviation 

Technology (NIIERAT) (that’s the clever title worn by the Air Force institute 

that holds a monopoly in the investigation of all aviation disasters), the explosive 

cartridges were not actuated in a vacuum, but at an altitude corresponding in 

time to the issuance of a nominal command.52 But by this time one valve had 

already opened without the electrical command.

“In your opinion, what kind of evil spirit could have opened it at an altitude of 150 kilometers?” asked Kazakov.

“Let’s not get carried away prematurely with one scenario,” intervened 

Keldysh; “we need to discuss all of them on equal terms. I propose that we 

listen to Shabarov and medical science.”

 52.

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Shabarov reported on the results of the analysis of the data from the Mir

recorder, which for us performed tasks similar to a “black box.” In aviation 

disasters recovery crews hunt for the “black box” among the charred remains 

of the airplane, and we removed it safe and sound from a Descent Module 

that had executed a normal landing.

“The separation process lasted just 0.06 seconds,” reported Shabarov. “At 

0147 hours 26.5 seconds, a pressure of 915 millimeters of mercury was recorded 

in the Descent Module. One hundred fifteen seconds later it had dropped to 

50 millimeters and continued to fall. During entry into the dense layers of the 

atmosphere the operation of the SUS was recorded. G-loads reached 3.3 units 

and then decreased. But the pressure in the Descent Module began to slowly 

increase: there was an inflow of air from the external atmosphere through the 

open breathing vent. Here on the chart is the command to open the valve. 

We see that the intensity of the inflow has increased. This corresponded to 

the opening of the second vent on command. Analysis of the Mir recordings 

confirmed the scenario of the opening of one of the two vents at the moment 

the vehicle modules separated. The temperature on the Descent Module’s 

structural ring, not far from the hatch rim, reached 122.5°C [252.5°F]. But 

this was due to the general heating upon entry into the atmosphere.”

“Before we go any further, let’s hear the results of the medical investigations,” proposed Keldysh.

Burnazyan made the report.

“During the last days of the flight the physical condition of the cosmonauts 

was good. They had been taking invigorants. They did three hours of general 

physical conditioning exercises every day. Dobrovolskiy had a resting pulse rate 

of 78 to 85. His blood pressure was normal. Volkov was more emotional. His 

pulse was high, in general; before separation of the vehicle modules his pulse 

reached 120. Patsayev’s pulse was from 92 to 106. Based on the experience of 

other cosmonauts, pulse rates reached as high as 120 during peak periods, and 

Tereshkova’s even went up to 160. During the first second after separation, 

Dobrovolskiy’s pulse rate increased immediately to 114, and Volkov’s to 180. 

Fifty seconds after separation, Patsayev’s respiration rate was 42 per minute, 

which is characteristic for acute oxygen deprivation. Dobrovolskiy’s pulse 

quickly dropped and his breathing stopped at about that time. This was the 

initial period of death. At the 110-second mark, no pulse and no breathing 

is recorded in all three of them. We believe that death occurred 120 seconds 

after separation. They were conscious for no more than 50 to 60 seconds after 

separation. During that time, evidently, Dobrovolskiy wanted to take some 

sort of action, judging by the fact that he had thrown off his safety belts.

“Seventeen top specialists were called in for the autopsy. Subcutaneous 

hemorrhaging was found in all three cosmonauts. Air bubbles, like fine sand, 

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The Hot Summer of 1971

had gotten into their vessels. All of them had hemorrhaging in their middle ear 

and ruptured eardrums. Stomachs and intestines were bloated. Gases—nitrogen, 

oxygen, and CO2—dissolved in the blood—seethed under the acute low pressure. The gases dissolved in the blood, after being transformed into bubbles, 

occluded the vessels. When the pericardium was opened, gas escaped: there 

had been air plugs in the heart. The vessels in the brain looked like strings of 

beads. They were also clogged with air plugs. Also indicative of the enormous 

emotional stress and acute oxygen deprivation is the amount of lactic acid in 

the blood—it was 10 times higher than normal.

“A minute and a half after touchdown, resuscitation attempts began. They 

continued for more than an hour. It is obvious that given this degree of injury 

no resuscitation methods could save them. In the history of medicine, and 

very likely not just medicine, there are no comparable examples known, and 

nowhere have experiments been conducted, not even on animals, to determine 

the body’s reaction to such a regime of pressure reduction—from normal atmospheric pressure to virtually zero within dozens of seconds. There have been 

cases of depressurization of flight suits at altitudes in excess of 10 kilometers. 

In these cases the pilot lost consciousness from lack of oxygen, but when the 

airplane descended he regained consciousness. In this case, irreversible processes 

occurred over the course of dozens of seconds.”

Burnazyan’s calm report made a harrowing impression. Mentally placing themselves into the Descent Module, everyone tried to imagine how the 

cosmonauts felt during those first seconds. The excruciating pain throughout 

their bodies prevented them from thinking and comprehending. Certainly they 

heard the whistle of escaping air, but their eardrums quickly burst and silence 

set in. Judging by the speed of the drop in pressure, they were able to actively 

move and attempt to do something for perhaps the first 15 to 20 seconds.

The government commission for the investigation of the causes of 

death of the Soyuz-11 crew broke into groups according to scenario and areas 

of expertise. Three days later another plenary session of Keldysh’s commission 

took place. This time the leaders of the investigative groups had already reported. 

With regard to Mishin’s comment that the cosmonauts “could have figured 

out by the sound to plug the opening with their finger,” Yevgeniy Vorobyev 

officially declared that given that rate of pressure drop they would have lost 

consciousness in 20 seconds.

“To figure out what had happened, unfasten the safety belts, and find the 

hole beneath the interior paneling within 20 seconds is unrealistic,” Vorobyev 

said. “They would have had to have been trained to do that beforehand. We 

tested the ability to close the breathing vent using the manual drive, which 

is done in the event of a touchdown in water. This operation takes 35 to 40 

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seconds under calm circumstances. So they had no chance of saving themselves. 

Clinical death occurred 90 to 100 seconds later simultaneously in all of them.

“Meanwhile we affirm that 23 days in space could not have caused their 

condition to deteriorate. We affirm that subsequently we will give our approval 

for cosmonauts to stay on the station for 30 days.”

“There can be no discussion of how many days until we establish the cause 

of this incident and completely eliminate the probability of it happening again,” 

concluded Keldysh, closing the meeting.

The root cause of the depressurization of the Descent Module was 

not immediately apparent, and the fierce arguments continued. Now it was 

difficult to find the individual who was the first to come out with the scenario 

that became the leading hypothesis during all subsequent investigations conducted per the commission’s decisions.

The two compartments—the Descent Module and the Habitation 

Compartment—were firmly linked together. The surfaces of the Descent Module 

and Habitation Compartment docking rings were held together with eight 

pyrobolts. During assembly the installers tightened the compartments together 

using special torque wrenches. The operation was critical and was monitored 

not visually, but in a special pressure chamber. The interface must be airtight. 

According to another requirement, the Habitation Compartment and Descent 

Module must instantaneously separate along this interface before landing.

How was this done without unscrewing the tightening bolts? Very simply. 

The bolts needed to be pulled apart by an explosion. Each bolt had a powder 

charge, which was detonated using explosive cartridges triggered by an electrical 

command from the sequencer. All the pyrobolts were detonated simultaneously. In a vacuum, a shock wave can only spread through metal. Its impact 

is so strong that a valve mounted in the same structural ring as the explosive 

bolts could spontaneously open. That’s such a simple scenario.

We began performing experiments at our factory and at NIIERAT. Valves 

were subjected to stability tests under exposure to large impact loads. The 

Politburo-imposed two-week deadline for the commission’s work passed, but 

dozens of experiments did not bring the proof that was so indispensable. The 

valves had not opened due to explosive shock.

At Mishuk’s suggestion, several valves that had intentional manufacturing 

defects were assembled at the factory. From a quality control standpoint, they 

were obvious scrap parts. But even they wouldn’t yield to explosive shock. Out 

of frustration, Keldysh, who almost every day reported to Ustinov about the 

progress of the work and once a week to Brezhnev, proposed that the Descent 

Module and Habitation Compartment separation process be simulated in the 

large pressure chamber. It was assumed that during the simultaneous detonation 

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The Hot Summer of 1971

of all the pyrobolts in a vacuum, the shock wave spreading only through metal 

would be more powerful than at normal atmospheric pressure. “We’ll delay 

the report a week, but we’ll have a clear conscience: we did everything that 

we could,” Keldysh said.

One of the organizers of this very difficult experiment was Reshetin—at that 

time chief of the design department that had been responsible for developing 

the Descent Module. Today, Andrey Reshetin, a doctor of technical sciences, 

professor, and my colleague in the core department of the Moscow Physical 

Technical Institute, recalls, “We conducted this complicated experiment in the 

large pressure chamber at the Cosmonauts Training Center in Star City. The 

Descent Module and Habitation Compartment mockups were held together 

with standard pyrobolts. The breathing vents were intentionally installed with 

manufacturing defects, which supposedly could have taken place during their 

production. The pyrobolts were detonated simultaneously according to the configuration used in flight. The experiment was conducted twice. The valves did not 

open. The true cause of the opening of the breathing vent during separation of 

the Soyuz-11 Descent Module and Habitation Compartment remained a secret.”

Instead of the two weeks set aside for the commission and everyone participating on it, a month passed. Over the course of this month they prepared 

radical proposals guaranteeing the cosmonauts’ safety in the event of Descent 

Module depressurization.

Gay Severin, who was in charge of the Zvezda Factory, made use of his 

considerable aviation experience and quickly developed the new Sokol (Falcon) 

spacesuits. The number of crewmembers would have to be reduced from three to 

two. A life-saving oxygen unit occupied the place of the third cosmonaut. In the 

event of the Descent Module’s depressurization an automatic control was triggered, starting the flow of oxygen from the tanks. This unit would allow the crew 

to survive for the amount of time required for descent even without spacesuits.

To Ilya Lavrov, the most emotional of our life-support systems developers, 

the cosmonauts’ deaths were a profound personal tragedy.

“I’m tearing myself up over the fact that I went along with Feoktistov and 

Korolev to do away with spacesuits. I wasn’t able to persuade them to install 

simple oxygen units with masks, which were widely used in aviation. Of course, 

given such a vacuum, a mask wouldn’t have saved anyone, but it would have 

prolonged their lives by 2 or 3 minutes. Perhaps, that time would have been 

enough to close the opened breathing vent using the manual valve.”

Lavrov and Boris Penek’s electrical engineers spent six months developing 

an emergency oxygen system. In addition to all sorts of other measures, they 

introduced a quick-closing manual drive for the breathing vents.

“And as far as the final wording of the causes is concerned,” said Keldysh 

at the commission’s final meeting, “we will consider that the opening of the 

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valve was the result of a shock wave spreading over the metal of the structure. 

This is a probabilistic phenomenon. In order to achieve it under real conditions 

it would be necessary to conduct dozens or hundreds of experiments. After 

those measures, which will be implemented at the recommendation of our 

commission, evidently, it will no longer make sense to continue these costly 

pyrobolt firings in pressure chambers.”

And that was that. However, when we had estimated how much weight it 

would take for all the projected measures, we wept. In order to maintain the 

Soyuz spacecraft’s weight limit, the planners persuaded Mishin to take off the 

solar arrays. The argument was simple: from now on the Soyuz would be just a 

transport vehicle for delivering a crew to the orbital station and returning it to 

Earth. Soyuzes were no longer needed for independent long-duration flights. 

After docking with the DOS, the Soyuz’s chemical batteries would be charged 

from the DOS power system before returning to Earth.

Modification, however,

dragged on. It wasn’t until 26 

July 1972 that a Soyuz under the 

name Kosmos-496 executed an 

unpiloted flight. After a series of 

failures with orbital stations, one 

more unpiloted Soyuz was tested 

on 15 July 1973, under the name 

Kosmos-573. Only after this did 

a piloted flight of the new spacecraft take place. In the press it was 

referred to as the transport Soyuz. 

Vasiliy Lazarev and Oleg Makarov 

were the first cosmonauts to test 

out this Soyuz after the death of 

Georgiy Dobrovolskiy’s crew. They 

did not fly until September 1973 

on Soyuz-12. Soyuzes continued to 

be operated with a two-man crew 

until 1981.53 Over that period of 

time 18 piloted flights took place.

From the author’s archives.

Energiya cosmonaut Oleg Makarov in a 

signed picture given to Chertok.

 53.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

The hot summer of 1971 ended with the decision to scuttle the first 

Long-Duration Orbital Station. Initially, the flight of the Salyut orbital station 

had been designed to last three months. After being in space for more than six 

months, the station proved to be completely functional. However, our hope 

to resume piloted expeditions to the first orbital station was gone. We had no 

transport vehicles. We could have continued operating the station to test out 

the reliability of on-board systems and to train ground services. However, after 

estimating the fuel reserves, the ballistics experts and planners came up with 

another proposal. In the event of excessive fuel consumption or the failure of 

the control system or power supply, the station would become uncontrollable. 

Gradually losing altitude, it would enter the dense layers of the atmosphere, and 

everything that didn’t burn up would end up who knows where. International 

complications might arise. Georgiy Degtyarenko, who was in charge of a 

group of analysis and computation departments, approached Mishin with a 

memorandum. He proposed that while Salyut was still controllable and there 

was enough fuel to issue a command for a retroburn, we should arrange for the 

station’s safe descent into the Pacific Ocean. Mishin consented. The proposal 

met no objections in the ministry or in the VPK.

On 10 October 1971, commands were issued from Yevpatoriya to orient 

the station in orbital mode. When telemetry confirmed the stable operation 

of the control system at the calculated time, the propulsion system fired a retroburn. On 11 October 1971, the Salyut station, launched into space on 19 

April, entered the dense layers of the atmosphere and plunged into the Pacific 

Ocean as a gleaming meteorite.

The experience of scuttling the Salyut came in handy as a conflict-free way 

to end the operation of all subsequent Salyuts until it came to Salyut-7. DOS 

Salyut-7 was inserted into orbit on 19 April 1982. This is the only station 

in the history of cosmonautics that experienced “freezing” and subsequent 

reanimation in space.54 Salyut-7 remained a fully operational station after the 

appearance in space of the Mir orbital station.55 It is very difficult to control 

two stations at the same time in piloted mode. However, after four years of 

operation it was possible to prolong the station’s existence in unpiloted mode 

and obtain invaluable experience in terms of the service life of various systems. The Salyut-7 station was transferred to elevated orbit in August 1986. 

According to the prognosis, it could have continued to exist for another 10 

 54.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

years, but the Sun interfered with the ballistics experts’ calculations. Its activity 

increased the density of the upper layers of the atmosphere, and the station 

began to rapidly descend in uncontrolled mode. By late 1990 there were no 

longer any fuel and electric power reserves for a concerted scuttling operation. 

According to data received from the space monitoring services, the remains of 

the station were supposed to collide with Earth’s surface in early 1991. In this 

regard, the foreign mass media whipped up passions, denouncing the raining 

down of red-hot fragments of the station on heavily populated areas of Earth.

On 7 February 1991, Salyut-7 entered the dense layers of the atmosphere. 

Unburned remains reached Earth in the mountainous terrain of Chile. To 

the great disappointment of fans of space spectaculars, there was no news of 

destruction or victims from the impact site. Fans searching for the station’s 

remains, hoping to obtain unique souvenirs, came away empty-handed.

The Mir orbital complex, which owes its birth to the first Salyut, was also 

scuttled in the ocean after working in orbit for more than 15 years.56 For the 

developers of the station and for all those who controlled its flight for years, this 

was collective hara-kiri. There were no technical justifications to sink in the ocean 

such a unique space facility as Mir. But the Russian budget at the end of the 20th 

century could not sustain the expenditures to maintain the performance capacity 

of a piloted orbital station launched by the Soviet Union in 1986.

A group of American scientists, who banded together to form the Space 

Frontier Foundation, addressed an open letter to Russian President Boris 

N. Yeltsin with an appeal not to scuttle the Mir station, but to transfer it to 

a more elevated orbit, to wait there until Russia experienced better times and 

then continue its active life.57

“In and of itself, the pressurized volume of the station is of enormous 

value. Salyut-class space stations (very similar to Mir) often executed flight in 

automatic mode....”58

Mir was a unique science complex that made it possible to conduct research 

in the fields of astrophysics, biotechnology, space medicine, ecology, geophysics, and materials science. The construction in space of the Mir multimodule 

orbital station lasted 10 years. In February 1986, the first module—the core 

module—was inserted into space. The Mir complex comprised seven modules, 

 56.

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The Hot Summer of 1971

which housed 11.5 tons of science equipment produced in 27 countries.59

Each expedition to Mir brought new experience and new information on the 

construction of space structures, the control of large space facilities, and the 

optimization of the reliability of numerous systems.

More than 3 billion U.S. dollars were spent on the creation and operation of Mir. According to the assessments of cosmonauts and the developers 

of the different systems, the station’s service life was far from exhausted. The 

International Space Station’s operational capabilities reached Mir’s level in terms 

of its operational capabilities by 2003. So was it necessary to scuttle the Mir? 

There were more people in favor of scuttling the station in Russia than in the 

U.S. Russian supporters of scuttling the station justified their position by the 

fact that the cost of operating Mir was 220 to 240 million dollars per year. 

The Russian budget didn’t provide for such expenditures. During the time of 

the so-called “reforms,” the once-mighty rocket-space power was subjected to 

such an economic defeat that against the background of the across-the-board 

impoverishment of the people, expenditures on space science and technology 

seemed an intolerable luxury. The historical paradox is that during the first 

decades after the profoundly grueling World War II, the Soviet Union allocated 100 times more resources annually for the development of rocket-space 

technology than Russia does today.

In October 1998, I visited Germany with a group of Russian and European 

cosmonauts. My meetings with people involved with the European space programs and representatives from the mass media showed me that the European 

space community did not understand why we needed to scuttle Mir. At that 

time the struggle to save Mir had only just begun. They said that after Mir was 

scuttled, Russia would cease to be the leader in human spaceflight, thousands of 

jobs for highly skilled specialists would be lost, Russia would sustain a grievous 

loss of scientific and technical potential, and the country would experience yet 

another political defeat. The fully operational, unique Mir station was scuttled 

in the Pacific Ocean on 23 March 2001.

But let’s return to 1971. In addition to the rush jobs to modify the 

Soyuz, during the second half of 1971, design work was started up on three 

spacecraft modifications: one for servicing the Almaz orbital station (7K-TA), 

one for the Soyuz-VI military-use complex (7K-S), and one for docking with 

the U.S. Apollo (7K-TM, or Soyuz-M).

 59.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

The designs of each of these vehicles differed substantially from the Soyuz 

already flying. A lot of new technology was packed into the Soyuz (7K-TM) 

for rendezvous and docking with the Apollo. For the first time, the 7K-S 

spacecraft called for a computer-aided control system. This was a qualitative 

leap for which we had been preparing for 10 years. If you add to these projects 

the changes that we introduced into the subsequent DOS designs, then today 

it is easier to understand that past in which we “forgot” about the Moon race. 

Our immersion in DOSes and Soyuz modifications drastically reduced the pace 

of work on the lunar vehicles of the L3 complex. Even Keldysh, absorbed for 

a month with investigations into the causes of the Soyuz-11 and N-1 No. 6L 

disasters, stopped pestering us about L3 lunar vehicle problems. Studies of the 

causes of the N-1 No. 6L failure required serious gas dynamics experiments. 

The hot summer of 1971 ended with such a [long] list of modifications for the 

N-1 launch vehicle that, according to the most optimistic schedules, it would 

be a year before the next launch of N-1 No. 7L.

408
Chapter 17

The Last N-1 Launch

In July 1972, a ministerial order authorized the restructuring of Korolev’s 

OKB-1, which had been called the Central Design Bureau of Experimental 

Machine Building (TsKBEM) since 1966. The bravest subcontractors poked 

fun at us with regard to this abbreviation: “As before, we will give preference 

in our work to Mishin’s organization. It used to be that everything was clear: 

Korolev’s organization was called OKB-1, and Chelomey’s was OKB-52. Any 

fool could see that OKB-1 was many times more important. Now under 

Mishin they’re calling you TsKBEM, and Chelomey’s organization is simply 

TsKBM. For your previous services you’ve been granted a one-letter advantage. 

But on the other hand, Chelomey is a general designer, and Mishin is simply 

a chief designer.”1

The fundamental difference in the new TsKBEM structure was that chief 

designer [Mishin] had chief designers of specific rocket and space complexes 

subordinate to him. Boris 

Arkadyevich Dorofeyev was 

named chief designer of the 

N-1 launch vehicle. Vladimir 

Andreyevich Borisov became 

the chief designer of the main 

payload for the N-1, i.e., 

the system that comprised 

From the author’s archives.

N-1 Chief Designer Boris 

Dorofeyev shown at the 

periscope during a launch.

 1. In December 1956, the aviation industry introduced the rank of “general designer” to 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

the lunar vehicles: LOK, LK, and booster Blocks G and D. Yuriy Pavlovich 

Semyonov was in charge of the entire complex of orbital stations, i.e., DOS-7K. 

Igor Nikolayevich Sadovskiy was named chief designer of the updated 8K98P 

[or RT-2P] solid-propellant rocket complex. Bushuyev obtained the position 

of chief designer of the Soyuz-Apollo project and, consequently, of the 7K-TM 

vehicle (or Soyuz-M) for docking with Apollo. In addition, by government 

decree, Bushuyev became director of the Soviet portion of the Soyuz-Apollo 

program. Shabarov was in charge of work on the military 7K-S vehicle.

In the early 1970s, the small book Fiziki shutyat [The Physicists Are Joking] 

was very popular in scientific-technical circles.2 By analogy with the fun-loving 

physicists, the smart alecks in our organization proposed issuing the secret 

publication Raketchiki shutyat [The Rocket Scientists Are Joking]. Among other 

witticisms, one was asked to answer the question, “How many chief designers 

need to be appointed at TsKBEM (former OKB-1) in place of one S. P. Korolev 

in order to confuse American intelligence officers in the field once and for all?”

The 7K-OK Soyuzes that were already flying, the multipurpose orbital 

complex project, Mars-75, and nuclear propulsion systems remained officially 

without chief designers.

Mishin was directly in charge of ongoing piloted flights and all prospective 

areas of endeavor. Each of Chief Designer Mishin’s deputies was responsible for 

the group of related departments organizationally united in complexes. They 

made me a deputy chief of the enterprise and the chief of Complex No. 3, 

which contained 11 departments for motion control systems, electrical and 

radio engineering, antenna feeder systems, electromechanical devices, and 

actuators. The 11 departments entrusted to me were divided into three clusters, 

each of which was supervised by my deputies—Rauschenbach, Kalashnikov, 

and Yurasov.

Sergey Okhapkin was appointed as Mishin’s first deputy. Main design 

Complex No. 2, which Deputy Chief Designer Viktor Simakin managed, and 

material engineering Complex No. 8, where Anatoliy Severov was in charge, 

remained under his authority. Mishin retained control over design computational analysis Complex No. 1, including the computer center. Engine-related 

matters and nuclear power topics were combined in Complex No. 5, which 

deputy chief designer Mikhail Melnikov managed. Mishin also retained control 

over Melnikov’s activity.

 2. This work was a collection of science-related humor compiled by Yu. Konobeyev, 

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The Last N-1 Launch

Isaak Khazanov, the chief engineer of the 

experimental factory colocated with TsKBEM.

From the author’s archives.

There was no Complex No. 4. This 

number was supposed to be left for the production portion of TsKBEM. However, our 

Factory of Experimental Machine Building 

(ZEM) was so big and independent that it 

never occurred to anyone to equate it with 

a complex.3

 After Roman Turkov, Viktor 

Klyucharev became the factory’s director and Isaak Khazanov became its chief 

engineer. In addition, Klyucharev had the 

status of first deputy chief of TsKBEM. The 

factory was an independent administrative 

entity, which had its own “post box,” its 

own accounting department, and its own bank account. We shared the same 

territory, Party committee, professional committee, Komsomol committee, and 

various social organizations, as well as a health resort in Kislovodsk, recreation 

facilities, and pioneer camps.4

The aforementioned reorganization of TsKBEM took place a little over 

six years after the death of Korolev. Nevertheless, Korolev’s people remained 

in all the key posts of complex chiefs, their deputies, and chiefs of the main 

departments and production facilities. A journalist wrote that those in Korolev’s 

entourage were not just people, but personalities! Each one! I agree. They were 

not very obedient, but they were intelligent, unique individuals who loved 

their work and couldn’t think of life without it. Not one of them, as the result 

of their many years of righteous labor, acquired a stone mansion or made a 

fortune that could compare in any way to what the bosses of Russia today 

acquired in the 1990s.

The majority of chiefs of complexes and departments came from families 

of simple workers and intelligentsia. All of them carved out their own way to 

rockets. We didn’t belong to the stratum of the “creative intelligentsia.” For 

 3. The ZEM was formerly known as Factory No. 88 where the original NII-88 had been 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

some reason humanities experts, and after them, the various news media, do 

not classify physicists and other representatives of the exact sciences, much 

less engineers, among the so-called “creative intelligentsia.” Yes, we were technocrats. We didn’t have time to jealously keep up with belles-lettres, we rarely 

went to the theater, and we didn’t always manage to see new films. We were 

not righteous men in the Christian sense. But I cannot recall examples of 

turpitude, underhanded schemes, or treachery. We worked and enjoyed the 

companionship of people just like us, subcontractors. Each of us felt a responsibility to the nation and to history. We were more like clear-eyed devotees 

than blind fanatics. With rare exceptions, each person in a managerial post 

was a member of the Communist Party. However, it wasn’t a utopian idea 

of building Communism and destroying parasitic Western imperialism that 

united us. We had captured an advanced foothold in worldwide scientific and 

technical progress and understood that we would not be able to hold onto this 

foothold, much less expand it, without the help of the entire industrial sphere 

and all branches of the nation’s science and economy. For that reason, each of 

us was touched by the words of the song:

...Our work is simple,

Our concern is this:

That our homeland will live—

That’s all that there is—

Identifying ourselves with triumphs in space, our attitude toward the 

unlimited praise for achievements in other areas of science and economics 

was not without irony.

A wicked anecdote came out in the 1970s: “What is Soviet authority plus 

electrification of the entire nation? It’s when everybody is burnt out.”5 We 

weren’t burnt out about anything. For the majority of us, years of working 

with Korolev were like a school that had no written rules of conduct. This 

school selected people of action. For them, the daily struggle with problems 

and difficulties became a customary way of life. Here, each one proved him- or 

herself, striving for self-expression, like an artist creating a painting. No one 

attempted to shirk responsibility, no matter what happened. Therefore, to act 

rather than talk, to take risks, to influence the course of events as decisively 

as possible—this was our working style. Those who burned out were quickly 

 5. This is a play on Lenin’s famous rallying call that “Communism is Soviet power plus 

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The Last N-1 Launch

weeded out. It is possible that many in our midst lacked refinement, etiquette, 

tact, and good breeding. But we all shared an appreciation for a sense of humor, 

showed consideration for a comrade’s work, and tried, if needed, to come to 

their aid.

Criticism of national economic policy was not at all prohibited. Sometimes 

it was conducted openly and officially on what were referred to as “political 

instruction days.” Once, I received a warning from the TsKBEM economic 

planning department that, according to financial figures, by year-end the complex entrusted to me would violate the plan. Antonina Otreshko, the chief of 

the economic planning department, explained to me: “You failed to fulfill the 

plan in terms of volume by an entire 10 million rubles.”

At that time, that was a very sizeable amount. They had begun an audit. 

I argued, “Antonina Pavlovna, you are quite familiar with how our work goes, 

you’ve seen for yourself that all the work assigned to our complex has actually 

not only been fulfilled, but we have even saved these same 10 million rubles 

for the enterprise. Instead of handing them over to a subcontractor, we have 

done the work ourselves for our own salary.”

“Now that is an unforgivable sin,” objected Otreshko. “It’s time to get 

used to our perverse planning system. If we planned to allocate ‘x’ amount 

of rubles for you, then you must spend them or at least show that they were 

spent. If you can’t, that means the plan was not fulfilled. Instead of a bonus 

for saving money, you’re going to receive a reprimand, and your whole staff 

will lose bonuses.”

We were obliged to comply with this system. We had to write off large 

sums of money, in no way raising our salary. In nondefense industries, getting carried away with the amount of money hampered the solution of many 

problems. Echoes of the battle with so-called “cosmopolitanism” also made 

themselves known.6

 In nondefense industries, in one stroke they would reject 

foreign experience just because it was foreign. At the same time, they passed 

up opportunities that came to light through their own experience, the results 

of scientific research, since realizing them would involve strenuous work and 

risk and might disrupt the tranquil life of a staff accustomed to constant 

smoke breaks.

On the way toward the improvement of automobiles, combines, bathroom fixtures, footwear, industrial goods, household appliances, and many, 

 6. “Cosmopolitanism” was a code word to broadly denote excessive “subservience” to 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

many other things; on the way toward high quality and a sharp increase in 

the range of products, stood a habit that had been nurtured for years—to 

value quantity more than anything: units, tons, meters, and liters, rather 

than the quality of the articles. Increasing quantity under the slogan “Catch 

up and overtake...” is historically quite understandable.7

 But the times had 

changed, and the volume-quantitative practices in planning and reporting remained. The human being proved to be the most conservative link 

in scientific-technical and economic progress. The scales of the economy 

grew tremendously, while the customary standards, which at one time had 

been quite reasonable, proved to be extremely harmful once the times had 

changed. At the individual levels of the economy, quantity simply turned into 

a genuine fetish. The fierce battle for the quantity of shells, cannons, tanks, 

and airplanes had been quite necessary for victory during World War II. 

During the last years of the Cold War, the quantity of these essential military 

commodities sharply declined, but instead the range of items expanded due 

to the emergence of numerous types of rockets and nuclear warheads. The 

fight for new kinds of weaponry resumed. This continuous fight for a plan 

based on quantity entered our consciousness like a religion, like worshipping 

an all-powerful Moloch.

Vasiliy Ryabikov came to see us at TsKBEM in early 1971. My contact 

with him had begun back in Germany. I wrote about this in my first book.8

I recall that People’s Commissar for Armaments Ustinov had sent his first 

deputy, Vasiliy Ryabikov, to find out about the V-2 and rocket technology and 

what was going on in Bleicherode. He was the first of the managers from the 

Ministry of Armaments to decide that this was what the ministry needed to 

be involved in after or even instead of cannons, and, of course, at the expense 

of the number of cannons.

In the early 1950s, Ryabikov was in charge of the special committee for 

the creation of air defense systems.9

 In 1957, he was chairman of the State 

Commission for launches of the first R-7 rocket. Ryabikov came to see us in 

1971 as first deputy chairman of Gosplan to find out what we were involved 

with.10 He did not conceal his satisfaction about what he saw and heard.

 7. “Catch up and overtake” was a prominent slogan of the Stalin years, coined in reference 

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The Last N-1 Launch

Over lunch we were having what had become a habitual conversation about 

the delay and even stagnation in other branches of the economy. Ryabikov said, 

“Yes, there are latent processes that our economists are unable to properly explain. 

In our society the amount and rate of development mean the same thing. But now 

this is a political error, which is not so easily corrected. Here’s a typical example for 

you. Our machine-tool industry in due course mastered the production of pretty 

good general-purpose machines, and their production continued to increase. The 

machine-tool builders ended up with very high labor productivity performance 

indices in series production. But on the whole, the economy loses from this 

because we need new specialized machines of considerably higher quality. The 

machines, of which we produce record numbers, lag behind the world standard by 

10 years. And so for you we are forced in each decree to insert a clause allocating 

hard currency for the importation of modern machine tools, instruments, and 

laboratory equipment. I assure you that what we acquire abroad is technically 

not as sophisticated as your technology. But we need serious economic reforms 

in order to master the production of similar equipment in our other branches of 

industry. Until we have decided what needs to be done to make industry itself 

vitally interested in renewal, then let it be at the expense of quantity. You achieved 

this, but at what price! For you [rocket scientists], for the atomic scientists, for 

those who ensure our parity in strategic armaments with America, we are creating 

the necessary conditions but at a very high price. You deserve this. But for all the 

others, who, by the way, feed you, we cannot create these conditions.”

Ryabikov was right; to achieve political and strategic parity for the militaryindustrial complex and for the science supporting it, conditions were created—

at the expense of the whole nation’s resources—that other branches of industry 

could not even dream of. They weren’t envious of us; they believed in us and 

relied on us. We didn’t always live up to these expectations. However, decades 

later the world realized that the output of our military-industrial complex 

surpassed similar articles from the leading capitalist nations, not only in terms 

of quantity, but also in terms of quality.

The last (fourth) launch of N1-L3 No. 7L took place on 24 November 

1972, but to this day arguments continue as to whether it was necessary to 

conduct it. Did we do the right thing? For me and for the majority of those 

who participated in the ambitious rocket epic, everything that happened back 

then with the N-1 was a personal tragedy.

On 15 August 1972, Mishin held a meeting of the N-1 Council of 

Chief Designers. All the chiefs gave positive reports on their systems and 

gave their unanimous support for launch preparation. On 21 August, the 

State Commission concurred with the proposals of the Council of Chiefs and 

approved the schedule of operations. A week later, Mishin fell ill.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

But I should relate this in the order it happened. Mishin was admitted to the 

kremlevka (hospital for dignitaries) in Kuntsevo.11 His first deputy, Okhapkin, 

began to perform his chief designer duties. He tried to delve into each unresolved matter. Not having mastered the art of passing the buck, Okhapkin was 

literally smothered by the plethora of problems, for which he was personally 

responsible, and by the burden of the cares that had befallen him.

One Sunday he nevertheless managed to break away to relax at his dacha 

in Zagoryanka.12 As his wife Klavdiya Alekseyevna later recounted, Sergey 

Osipovich came home from a stroll in the forest (he was an avid mushroom 

hunter) with an unusual gait. The doctors were later amazed that he managed 

to get home at all: he was having a stroke. Through the efforts of our patrons, 

Okhapkin also ended up in the hospital in Kuntsevo. The minister gave factory 

director Klyucharev the responsibilities of chief of enterprise [i.e., TsKBEM] 

and those of chief designer to me.

Now I began to suffocate. After the death of the Soyuz-11 crew in June 

1971, a long period of spacecraft systems modifications had begun. During 

this period we did not have any piloted flights. To a certain extent this eased 

my situation. From July 1971 through April 1972, the Americans had carried 

out two more expeditions to the Moon.13 Their lunar successes had applied 

considerably more pressure to our psyches than the secret information concerning the latest upgrading of hundreds of Minuteman missiles and their 

placement on duty. In terms of the total number of strategic nuclear assets 

and, above all, of intercontinental ballistic missiles, we were steadily catching 

up with the U.S. None of us believed in the real possibility of a nuclear missile 

shootout, but this didn’t reassure anyone.

At the very beginning of September 1972, Minister Afanasyev summoned 

me. Anatoliy Kirillov was in his office.

“Something has happened at the firing range again.” I had a sinking feeling inside.

Until June 1969, Kirillov had been deputy chief of NIIP-5, known today 

as Baykonur.14 Without retiring from active military service, he transferred to 

work in the offices of the Ministry of General Machine Building. Officially, 

Kirillov performed the duties of deputy chief of the Third Main Directorate, 

 11.

416
The Last N-1 Launch

but actually he was one of the minister’s closest advisers on the flight testing 

of space systems.15

“Do you see what we have ahead of us at the firing range this next month?” 

began Afanasyev, addressing me from afar. “I hope that we complete preparation 

of N-1 No. 7L. It’s getting to the point that the launch is possible at the end 

of October. But we have a crisis on our hands with the technical management: 

Mishin and his first deputy, Okhapkin, are in the hospital. I have inquired about 

their condition, and the answers I got were not encouraging. Neither one of 

them will be able in the near future to go out to the firing range and take part 

in the work of the State Commission. They promise to restore Mishin’s health 

and release him no sooner than the end of the year, and Okhapkin had a real 

stroke. We don’t need doctors to know what that means. We’ve had consultations here, including with Keldysh, and have decided: until Mishin gets back, 

you are being appointed acting technical manager of the State Commission 

for the launch of N1-L3 No. 7L.”

Such a twist of fate came as a complete surprise to me, and I fervently 

protested.

“But, Sergey Aleksandrovich, Boris Dorofeyev was appointed chief designer 

of the N-1 by your order. He’s already been living at the firing rang for a long 

time and isn’t involved with anything but the N-1. He knows and feels this 

vehicle better than any of us. His deputy, Georgiy Degtyarenko, complements 

Dorofeyev beautifully in terms of all the design and theoretical problems. This 

pair is completely competent. And as for me, I’ll be involved anyway in the 

preparation of those systems for the development of which I am personally 

responsible. Just recently, you lambasted me in Ustinov’s presence for making 

a mess of things with the transport vehicles’ control systems and all manner 

of other things.”

“You don’t need to repeat all this to us. This launch might determine 

the fate of the N-1. It needs triple monitoring or even more. We must 

make decisions very responsibly. We are certainly not releasing Dorofeyev 

from his chief designer duties. But in the absence of Mishin, either his 

first deputy must be in charge of engineering for the complex as a whole, 

or the next one in line, and Okhapkin is ill. So we have decided that this 

will be Chertok. Incidentally, the technical management is made up of 

chief designers from related organizations, with whom you have worked 

 15.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

for many years. Matters of prestige are important for them. It’s easier for 

us to deal with them if the technical manager is a member of the Academy 

of Sciences.16 You will always find common ground quickly with Pilyugin, 

Ryazanskiy, Iosifyan, Bogomolov, Lidorenko, and Shishkin.17 And I give 

you my word; I will help with Barmin and Nikolay Kuznetsov. Dementyev 

promised me personally to check on the status of affairs with Kuznetsov’s 

engines and to confirm whether a decision about their clearance for launch 

will be necessary.”

Before departing from the ministry, I stopped in to see Gleb Tabakov. 

He had recently been relieved of his job as chief of NII-229 and appointed 

deputy minister.18 He was in charge of engine topics for the ministry and 

subcontractors.

Regarding my meeting with the minister, he said, “I have complete information on the status of affairs at OKB-276. Despite the more or less successful testing of individual engines on EU-15 and EU-16 in Zagorsk, I am not 

confident about Block A [the first stage].19 Say what you will, but of the three 

failures, two occurred due to the engine systems. Kuznetsov understands this 

and his shop is working at full speed on the reusable engine. I reported to the 

minister and even advised that we wait for the new engines. Don’t rush with 

the launch! But he doesn’t yet know how to do this.”

Tabakov was unable to say anything more encouraging.

Thus I became a direct participant in the launch preparation of N1-L3 

No. 7L and the subsequent analysis of the last flight. Do I now regret this 

confluence of circumstances? I suppose not. What happened in the flight was 

already predestined, lurking in the propulsion system long before the rocket was 

prepared at the firing range. No matter who had served as technical manager, 

he could not have prevented what happened in flight. The failure of N-1 No. 

7L could have been avoided only if the decision had been made to cancel the 

flight, to stop flight tests. But we’ll discuss this below.

 16.

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The Last N-1 Launch

In September 1972, I arrived at the firing range in this new capacity. 

Dorofeyev, Degtyarenko, Simakin, Gutskov, and all the other old hands of 

the big MIK gave me a warm reception. From the first day, we established a 

relationship of trust and working rapport. Dorofeyev, who had been managing 

N-1 testing for some years now, made sure that rapport was excellent both 

with the military leadership of the firing range and with the engineering staff 

of the Sixth Directorate’s military testers.

Emil Brodskiy and Boris Filin, who had supervised the testing and numerous modifications of the L3, did not pass up the opportunity to tease me: “So, 

Boris Yevseyevich, they dragged you away from the Podlipki dacha and spa 

resort? Instead, here you have no days off. There’s only a few papers, but you 

have daily briefings. They won’t let you get bored.”

They had already rolled the rocket out to the launch site, and there, on 

30 August, the first preliminary tests began to work out the ground-to-spacecraft 

communications. The telemetry recordings of the tests served up one headache 

after another. At one of the meetings of the technical management, Aleksandr 

Mrykin delivered a report in which he recapitulated the results of the previous 

three N-1 flight tests.20 “We have only just begun testing on N-1 No. 7L, and 

we already have 17 serious anomalies for 17 control system instruments and over 

100 for telemetry measurement systems,” he announced. “Given these statistics, 

we should think more conscientiously about the advisability of the launch.”

In addition to the official heavily attended meetings of the technical management, our inner circle gathered in a hotel room in order to calmly discuss 

the progress of preparation and to determine the main tasks of each chief for 

the next few days. At one such meeting Anatoliy Kirillov, who had arrived 

with me, described the “general disposition” like this:

“As everyone knows, Earth is held up on three whales. Science has proven 

that even without these three whales, Earth will stay put in its orbit. And here 

for us, three whales isn’t enough. With our N-1 rocket we are capable of holding 

on only with four. The first whale is the head organization, TsKBEM. Sergey 

Pavlovich’s best students represent it here. The second whale is the military 

testers and all the services of the firing range. This whale has accumulated 

such experience that we can easily rely on it. The military supports the most 

daring proposals of the technical management. All of the officers associated 

with N-1 have been dreaming for a long time of coming up from the ranks like 

 20.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

420

the one who is launching the piloted vehicles and DOSes. The third whale is 

production, and above all, the Progress Factory in Kuybyshev. The people there 

are first-rate and flawless. But we need to put things right when it comes to 

checking out all the modifications. In my opinion, there isn’t always complete 

clarity between the first and third whales. I hope that Dmitriy Ilyich Kozlov 

will help us in this matter. He’s flying in tomorrow. Well, and the fourth whale 

is the most unreliable—our subcontractors. In my opinion, our new technical 

manager [i.e., Chertok] needs to pay particular attention to this whale. For the 

first time the N-1 has two on-board computers, and for the first time the N-1 

is equipped with standard Blocks G and D and with a LOK that is not exactly 

standard. We’ve had so many problems with the subcontractors that without 

the personal intervention of the technical manager we will be threatened with 

constant breakdown of the preparation schedule.”

“You forgot about the fifth whale,” I added. “Engines.”

“No, I didn’t forget. I am afraid that engines are not one of those whales 

that hold us up. Ministers Afanasyev and Dementyev have agreed that they will 

personally provide the flight clearance certificate for those batches of engines 

that were selected for the LKI [flight-developmental tests] of No. 7L. For the 

whole package, not counting the lunar vehicle, the N-1 has 48 engines, including the control thrusters. At the launch site, if necessary, we can replace any 

instrument. But if we have to replace any engine, this means the N-1 returns 

to the MIK. Then the launch will be postponed by a month, and perhaps 

even more.”

The replacement of any instrument during the process of testing at the 

engineering facility is, in fact, routine. Replacement at the launch site is an 

unpleasant event, but permissible. Replacing engines was a complicated operation that required factory conditions.

At one of these meetings I asked Dorofeyev and Degtyarenko once again to 

give a run-down of all the ways that rocket No. 7L differed from the preceding 

ones. Although all the modifications were described in engineering reports and 

I had kept track of them to the extent possible over the course of the year, when 

we added everything up in a calm conversation, we realized that essentially 

we were beginning the flight testing of a new rocket with this fourth launch.

All three previous launches of rockets No. 3L, No. 5L, and No. 6L were 

failures. The first two launches were actually firing tests of the 30 first-stage 

engine assemblies. It wasn’t until the third launch of N-1 No. 6L that we were 

able to test out the control dynamics for the first time with all the first-stage 

engines functioning properly. And then we ran into the roll instability. Fourteen 

seconds into its flight the rocket began to spin, and after 50 seconds it was 

gone. This failure was the fault, above all, of the gas dynamics specialists and 

the TsNIImash and TsAGI scientists consulting with them.
The Last N-1 Launch

From the author’s archives.

The N-1 rocket on the pad.

The fiery streams from 30 engines joined in a common fiery plume so that 

perturbation torque, which the theoreticians had not foreseen and no calculations had predicted, was generated about the rocket’s longitudinal axis. The 

controls were unable to cope with this disturbance, and rocket No. 6L lost 

stability. When asked, “Why didn’t rocket No. 3L lose roll stability before it 

broke up due to an explosion in the aft section 50 seconds in to its flight,” the 

gas dynamics specialists replied, “Because the rocket lifted off with two engines 

shut down. The perturbation torque was within the limits of the controls’ 

ability to compensate for it.”

They managed to simulate genuine perturbation torque about the longitudinal axis using computers. In this case, the data from telemetry measurements 

received in actual flight were programmed in as the baseline data rather than 

the calculations of the gas dynamics specialists. Georgiy Degtyarenko, Leonid 

Alekseyev, and Oleg Voropayev, who were in charge of this urgent work at 

Vladimir Stepanov’s computer center, showed that the actual perturbation 

torque was several times greater than the maximum possible roll control 

moment that the control nozzles generated at their worst-case deviation.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

To correct this fundamental shortcoming of the rocket, beginning with 

No. 7L, four control engines were installed to control roll (about the longitudinal axis). This was a large modification requiring an all-hands rush job. 

The engine specialists of Melnikov, Sokolov, and Raykov performed the 

design task of selecting the engines and developing the circuits to fire and 

swivel them and connect to the main lines of the primary propulsion systems 

to supply propellant components. The control-surface actuator specialists of 

Vilnitskiy and Shutenko developed the actuators for swiveling the engines.

For the first stage, one more propulsion system consisting of four movable engines was practically redeveloped. Rather than using liquid oxygen as 

the oxidizer, the original special feature of this new propulsion system was 

its use of “acid” generator gas, tapped from the gas generators of the main 

engines. This simplified the problem of ignition.

The engine assembly production facility of our factory coped brilliantly 

with the manufacture of these special engines, swiveling assemblies, and 

sophisticated fittings. Vakhtang Vachnadze had been in charge there for a 

long time and subsequently became director of NPO Energiya; after him, 

Aleksey Borisenko, who later became the director of ZEM, was responsible 

for this task.

The three previous rockets had not had this fundamentally new system 

of actuators. The experience gained on the steering chambers of the Semyorka

and during the development of engine 11D58 for Block D (article 11S854) 

helped our engine specialists and production facility. But the N-1 control 

specialists had to break in this channel for the first time.

But this wasn’t the only reason why the entire control system of rocket No. 

7L was considered fundamentally new. The Biser (Beads) on-board computer 

system appeared five years after the deadlines stated in the first directives. 

Mikhail Khitrik, chief theoretician at Pilyugin’s firm, and our chief rocket 

dynamics specialists, who issued the baseline data for it, elected not to use a 

rigid flight control program, where all the parameters—fuel consumption, 

engine thrust, the coordinates for their shutdown in space—had strict time 

schedules. Such control systems had operated on all first-generation rockets 

until the emergence of on-board computers.

“There was no ‘free will’,” I explained to students at lectures. All the 

parameters were assigned for each second of flight. There could be no deviation 

from the firing table. With the emergence of the on-board computer system 

came the opportunity to “liberate” the rocket, using what are referred to as 

terminal control principles. In simplified form this means that the rocket is 

permitted to fly with deviations within a broad corridor: fly as you wish, as 

long as you get the payload to the target with a minimum expenditure of 

fuel and minimum deviations from the target point.

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The Last N-1 Launch

Terminal control made it possible to gain an advantage in payload mass. In 

order to control motion, all the information from the gyrostabilized platforms 

and accelerometers mounted on them was sent to the on-board digital computer for all three axes. This was no longer “automatic stabilization control” 

in the previous sense, but an inertial navigation system. The emergence of the 

on-board digital computer made it possible to simplify the relay automatics for the control of all the rocket’s systems, having shifted the solution of 

complicated logic problems to microelectronic integrated circuits. Using the 

on-board digital computer in the process of preflight ground testing and in 

flight, it became possible to perform diagnostics and replace a failed instrument 

or segment of a circuit with backup units.

The N1-L3 No. 7L complex contained two on-board digital computer 

sets—one in Block V, the third stage of the launch vehicle, and another on 

the LOK. The first on-board digital computer controlled the three stages of 

the launch vehicle for insertion into an initial Earth orbit. The second (LOK) 

computer was supposed to control exit from near-Earth orbit to the Moon, 

flight to the Moon, circumlunar flight, and return to Earth. The on-board 

digital computers were developed using Tropa (Trail) series-produced integrated 

microcircuits manufactured domestically by factories of the Ministry of the 

Electronics Industry.

The new control system required the use of new testing equipment to test 

the rocket and, consequently, new instructions and retraining of the testers. 

During ground testing of the rocket, they didn’t always manage to determine 

what had caused a program execution anomaly or a failure. These anomalies 

often occurred not because of a computer failure, but as a result of tester error 

in the process of man-machine interaction.

In the “precomputer age,” a human being sitting at a console felt completely 

in charge of the testing process. Now he had to take into consideration the 

fact that the spacecraft had something on board capable of making decisions 

at the discretion of the on-board digital computer developers. Those who 

had created the electronic computer, loaded the software into it, and quickly 

found a common language with it forgot that at the firing range new people 

would be dealing with it, people who had not yet mastered all the nuances of 

electronic “etiquette.” The “man vs. machine” problem was new and took up 

a lot of time during the No. 7L preparation process.

A new Freon fire-extinguishing system had been installed on No. 7L and 

also a small “emergency” telemetry system that was developed at OKB MEI. 

Aleksey Bogomolov was very proud of this system. It enabled OKB MEI to 

get back the telemetric glory that it had temporarily relinquished to NII-885. 

All in all, the N1-L3 No. 7L telemetry systems received information from 

13,000 sensors.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

Senior space program veterans attend Chief Designer Aleksey Bogomolov’s 75th 

birthday celebration in Moscow in 1988. From left to right are cosmonaut N. N. 

Rukavishnikov, K. P. Semagin, K. K. Morozov, B. Ye. Chertok, A. F. Bogomolov, N. P. 

Galunskiy, B. A. Dorofeyev, and G. K. Sosulin.

In May 1972, I was sitting in the big MIK at a meeting of the State 

Commission that Afanasyev was conducting. Mozzhorin presented a briefing 

paper about the three previous N-1 launches. I reported for the umpteenth 

time about the faults of the KORD system and the measures taken to protect 

it against any interference. At this time various modifications of Blocks A, 

B, and V were still continuing, preceding final assembly into an integrated 

super-heavy rocket.

“It’s better to see something once than hear about it one hundred times.” On 

the strength of this old aphorism, I changed into a pair of off-white coveralls, 

and after checking to see that there were no foreign objects in the pockets, I 

climbed into the rocket’s aft section—Block A.

The total height of the rocket was 105 meters. Block A took up 30 meters 

of that. It was in the shape of a truncated cone. The diameter of the upper 

periphery was 10.5 meters, while that of the lower base was 15.8 meters. 

Finding myself inside this truncated cone under the spherical oxygen tank, 

I felt no claustrophobia and found a comfortable spot by the turbopump 

assembly of one of the 30 engines. Looking at the aft section of the rocket 

from the outside, it is difficult to imagine that everything you see inside 

could fit within a diameter of just 15.8 meters. Fear of fire compelled us 

to introduce firewalls, increase the thermal protection of the bottom plate, 

wrap the cable bundles with asbestos fabric, and “dress” the instruments in 

424
The Last N-1 Launch

thermal protective “coats.” I tried to imagine what would happen here when 

all 30 engines started up. Maybe one of these engineering creations is hiding 

a land mine, a concealed technological defect that would cut short the flight 

of the gigantic rocket.

I recalled Germany of April 1945. On the walls of the buildings suitable to 

house command staffs and rear services, in addition to signs such as “Colonel 

Fomenko’s unit,” there was “Verified, no mines” scrawled in large uneven letters 

along with the signature of the chief combat engineer. The only way to check 

for technological mines in Block A was its preliminary firing test or, in the 

worst case scenario, a firing test of each of the 30 engines with their subsequent 

installation without overhaul. That’s what the Americans did with the Saturn 

V. My deceased comrade Voskresenskiy had called for this, and our common 

(and also deceased) chief Korolev had elected not to do this. Each N-1 flight 

for us was like going out in a minefield without a minesweeper.

Over the intervening years nothing fundamentally new has been done 

to absolutely prevent a disaster like the one that happened with No. 5L. 

It’s impossible to prevent the possibility of an earthquake in an earthquake 

zone. All one can do is take measures to minimize destruction. That’s what 

we try to do, too. It is difficult to figure out what else will be destroyed if 

this turbopump assembly, next to which I was so comfortably ensconced, 

were to explode. Hundreds of telemetry sensors installed in all the critical 

places will give their account of vibration overloads and acoustical noise 

thousands of times greater than what a human being can endure. The sensors will translate the pressure in each combustion chamber and the turbine 

revolutions, temperatures, and pressure in the gas generators into electrical 

language; will record the opening and closing of each of hundreds of valves; 

and will show what angles the motor drives are turning to, thereby changing the thrust of the peripheral engines for angular stabilization, affecting 

the electrical drives of the rate control system, and synchronously changing 

the thrust of all the engines. Affixed to the interior surfaces of the hull are 

temperature sensors—the most credible witnesses of a possible fire in the 

aft section. These were the sensors that helped to establish the true cause of 

the crash of the first flight model N-1 No. 3L in 1969. One more radical 

innovation was developed to suppress similar fires—tanks, valves, pipes, 

and injection nozzles, which under great pressure will begin to blow fireextinguishing Freon gas into the aft section.

A worker from the Progress Factory who glanced into the hatch and saw 

an outsider boss sitting there pondering couldn’t help himself and said, “That 

place is poorly suited for resting. It’s the most labor-intensive compartment in 

the whole spacecraft and the most difficult to monitor. Very many changes have 

been made.” How many little pipes of all possible calibers and high-capacity 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

pipelines there were, connected by thousands of pipe connectors to various 

types of fittings and to each other!

I attempted to add up how many connections there were on a single 

engine and the area surrounding it. When I got to a hundred, I gave up. So, 

it’s more than 3,000. All it takes is for one to lose its pressure integrity—leak 

hot “acid” gas, kerosene, or oxygen—and a fire is inevitable. And then Freon 

is supposed to save the day—that’s if a fire has started. And what about the 

KORD system that my comrades and I spent so much effort on? Over the 

course of five years of stand and flight operation, all the KORD system equipment had finally achieved a high degree of reliability. All the experts agreed 

with this. But Kuznetsov’s engine specialists and other specialists didn’t react to 

the announcement by the developers of the KORD system and of the engines’ 

automatic electric control system that the KORD system was not capable of 

saving the rocket if processes developed that destroyed the turbopump assembly 

in hundredths of a second.

Something alien, extraterrestrial, unintelligibly complex—that was the 

impression that N-1 interiors would have on an uninitiated engineer who 

wasn’t privy to our technology if he were “caught” and blindfolded so that 

he couldn’t guess where he was going, taken to the firing range, and shoved 

into the aft section. And it is quite difficult to believe that this entire macrocomplex is controlled in flight by microelectronic circuits the size of a kopeck. 

Micro- and macro-technology were harmoniously combined to blaze the trail 

to other planets for humankind.

All 30 engines—consolidated on the first stage of the rocket into a complex 

that was very complicated in terms of structure, dynamics, electrical circuitry, 

and operating logic, with a power capacity of 50 million horsepower—would 

be fully tested during one flight alone on which we pinned so many hopes. 

This Block A had been manufactured, assembled, modified, and remodeled for 

three years now. And it was expected to operate for only the first 112 seconds, 

if the flight were normal. Then it would drop off the rocket, after passing on 

the baton to Block B, and fall to the steppe, having been transformed into a 

shapeless heap of metal. And then it would become the concern of a special 

team whose duty it was to turn the engines and large parts into small fragments 

and then bury all of it in the ground to maintain secrecy. Such was the bitter 

fate of nonreusable launch vehicles. That is why it costs many thousands of 

dollars to insert each kilogram of payload into space.

Not far from me, an installer from the Progress Factory was showing an 

inspector that according to some last-minute notification, such-and-such a cable 

had been run along a safer route in case the turbopump assembly exploded. 

They came to an agreement on a statement: if the oxygen pump exploded 

again, no insulation or rerouting of a cable would save the day.

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The Last N-1 Launch

Tearing me away from reflections that had lasted way too long, the worker 

said, “I’ve got a couple of boys here, school-age, who asked me in confidence to 

explain to them what’s what in this ‘room,’ with respect to a future flight to the 

Moon. I told them, fools, all this stuff is going to drop off and fall to the ground 

right near here. It’s all going to be flat as a pancake. They were almost in tears: it 

was a pity that such work had been done—and just for a little over 100 seconds. 

And incidentally, it will be many years yet before these kids have a chance at an 

apartment in Kuybyshev. They’ll live year after year in a dormitory. And here 

this single Block A is worth a whole street of multi-unit apartment buildings.”

This simple down-to-earth notion tore me away from my reflections 

regarding the greatness of our engineering minds. At the same time, work 

was going on in the big MIK on the three stages of the launch vehicle; work 

was also proceeding in the spacecraft MIK at Site No. 2B, where they were 

modifying Blocks G and D and the LOK—which as a whole we referred to as 

the L3. Here, deputy director of ZEM Yuriy Lygin was in charge. He had been 

at the firing range without a break for months supporting the production and 

engineering part of ZEM’s activity, which had been moved from Podlipki to 

Baykonur. Despite the multitude of problems associated with the production 

of space technology under firing-range conditions, Lygin invariably radiated 

confidence and optimism. This time, however, when he met me he said, “We 

are expending so much effort on preparing this payload, but honestly, none 

of us believes that the N-1 will carry it into space.”

Horizontal tests of the stack—all three Blocks A, B, and V interconnected 

with one another—began a month after my “little getaway” in Block A described 

above. Right away anomalies cropped up involving interference in the systems 

and the unstable operation of the on-board digital computer. Searching for 

and correcting the errors dragged out the testing process. On 24 August, N-1 

No. 7L with its payload—the L3 upper stage—was rolled out to the launch site.

I am now returning to the events of September 1972. Afanasyev, who 

had flown in to the firing range, demanded a detailed report from Vladimir 

Lapygin (who was standing in for Pilyugin) about the causes of the on-board 

digital computer’s unstable operation. Pilyugin’s computer experts argued 

that the on-board digital computer was right: it had detected a false electrical 

connection with the circuit activating the Freon fire-suppression system. They 

resoldered the cables. Three days later they repeated the tests and the on-board 

digital computer suddenly began to operate according to a strange program. 

Multiple rechecks confirmed that there was a defect. The testers from Pilyugin’s 

company had no time to sleep. I knew almost all of Pilyugin’s testers from 

previous projects. Now I focused my attention on Vladimir Morozov. I had 

been told that he lived next to the rocket rather than at a hotel. At any time 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

of the day, he really could be found at the test consoles puzzling out the latest 

rebus that the computer had come up with.

At the request of the developers, Dorofeyev permitted the first flight model 

of the on-board digital computer to be removed from the rocket standing on the 

launch pad. It was taken away to the input control laboratory, where they confirmed that there was a defect. Overnight at the lab, they pulled the electronic 

assemblies out of the housings, removed suspicious buses, and soldered in new 

ones removed from the same sort of computer on the LOK.21 They urgently 

requested that another on-board digital computer be sent from Moscow for 

the LOK. During retesting, the on-board digital computer produced another 

couple of anomalies.

Among other problems, they discovered a breakdown in the device converting computer commands into control signals for the actuators. The device 

was called VP53. There were a total of 42 of them on board. The Kommunar 

Factory in Kharkov conducted the design development and manufacture 

of the device at Pilyugin’s request. The defective device was transported via 

Moscow to Kharkov. Three days later a report arrived from Kharkov: a break 

had been discovered in the transformer winding. They decided to check the 

other VP53 devices in reserve at the firing range. They also discovered a break 

in one of them.

“Report to the State Commission,” demanded Afanasyev, who had just 

arrived at the firing range. At the State Commission meeting, Afanasyev asked 

Lapygin a question not so much for himself (he had heard the answer more 

than once already when he was at NIIAP) as for the enlightenment of the large 

number of military and civilian specialists gathered there: “Tell us, please, why, 

after four years of developmental testing of the system on three flight vehicles, 

was it necessary to throw everything out for the sake of an on-board digital 

computer? Now, when the rocket has already been rolled out to the launch 

site, do we need to begin developmental testing from scratch? And how many 

integrated tests do we need to perform in order to get all the defects out of 

the on-board digital computer?”

Lapygin calmly reported that the control system had been designed from 

the very beginning for the use of two on-board computers: one to service the 

three stages of the launch vehicle, and the other on the LOK for the entire 

payload. For the first N-1 flight models, No. 3L, No. 5L, and No. 6L, it was 

necessary to do without the on-board digital computers because the electronics industry had fallen way behind in testing out the Tropa microcircuits. The 

 21.

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The Last N-1 Launch

latest defects were clearly random. The failure took place in the on-board digital 

computer, which until then had run through its entire cycle in bay No. 4 of the 

assembly building and had an accrued on-board running time of 110 hours. 

The first stand-alone tests had begun back on 20 July! Twenty-five integrated 

tests had been conducted on it and 39 full cycles equivalent to a flight. As for 

the VP53 instruments, one needed to ask Kharkov. During the investigation of 

the defect at the Kommunar Factory they discovered a strange green coloration 

on the transformer windings. The defect in the second instrument was similar. 

The specialists in Kharkov contended that a chemical process was taking place, 

causing the copper wire of the winding to deteriorate.

At that, Mikhail Khitrik hopped out of his seat.

“Allow me to add something. The on-board computer enabled us to logically integrate all the rocket’s systems requiring control into a single processing center. We gained the capability to optimize the trajectory, to allow the 

system to self-adjust and adapt in the event of off-design external jet flows in 

the upper layers of the atmosphere, partial engine failures, and other events. As 

telemetry information passes through the computer, we compress it, process 

it, and send it to the ground so that it will be easier to make reliable diagnoses 

(in particular, to make decisions for the use of backup instruments). This is in 

the event of a flight to the Moon, when there will be time. For the first three 

stages there won’t be time, and the on-board digital computer will have to make 

all the decisions on its own, without intervention from Earth. On the LOK 

during the flight to the Moon, circumlunar flight, and return to Earth, it will 

be impossible to solve problems at all without the on-board digital computer. 

It will help execute navigation, solving celestial mechanics equations on board.”

“You’ve done a good job refreshing my memory concerning celestial 

mechanics,” Afanasyev interrupted Khitrik. “We are making the decision to 

remove all VP53 devices from on board and we’re flying to Kharkov early tomorrow morning. There we’ll sort out the green discoloration in the transformer 

on-site, we’ll obtain the findings, and we’ll decide what to do next. A commission with the following members will fly out: Chertok, Kozlov, Iosifyan, Priss, 

and Ryazanskiy. Mikhail Ivanovich Samokhin will arrange for the airplane so 

that it can land at the factory airfield.22 You’ll have a day to put together the 

findings, fly back without spending the night, and then discuss the plan for 

subsequent operations in a meeting of the technical management. Specialists 

 22.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

on coil-winding wire and insulation materials will fly from Moscow to meet 

you in Kharkov. All the commands have already been given. Thank you!”

After such a radical decision by the minister, all 42 instruments were 

removed from on board [the rocket] in 40 minutes, and 3 hours later they 

had been packed up and delivered to the airplane. When the meeting broke 

up, Samokhin walked up to me in the full uniform of a colonel general with 

service ribbons and all.

“To be on the safe side I’m going to fly with you so that there won’t be 

any delays in Kharkov through the fault of aviation.”

We departed early in the morning on 12 September, having counted on 

arriving at the factory at the very beginning of the workday. After takeoff, of 

all those who hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep, Iosifyan was the first to come 

to his senses: “Can you tell me why we’re flying? Two corresponding members 

of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a chief designer from Kuybyshev, I’m vice 

president of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Ivanovich Samokhin 

is a colonel general and Hero of the Soviet Union, and we’ve left a 100-meter 

colossus standing on the launch pad and racing off thousands of kilometers in 

an airplane just because someone saw green speckles on the winding wire of 

a transformer. Let’s say that this really is mold from dampness or God knows 

what. So what? What year was the transformer manufactured?”

“The vehicle was manufactured in 1971, and the transformer in 1970,” 

answered Priss.

“And now we’re taking these unfortunate transformers to Kharkov, and 

there they’re going to check them to see that they conform to their documentation and all the specifications. I have no doubt that everything will be in order. 

What are we going to do then?”

“Then,” I proposed, “we will demand that this ‘green stuff’ be analyzed 

and that we be given a certificate clearing the instruments for a flight towards 

the Moon.”

“If I were the factory director that we’re flying out to see,” retorted Iosifyan, 

“I would give each of us a glass of cognac and send us back to Tyuratam. By 

the way, Mikhail Ivanovich, couldn’t you treat us to a drink now?”

“I’d be happy to,” answered Samokhin, “but I have strict instructions to 

look after your political and moral welfare. So you’ll have to wait until the 

return trip.”

In Kharkov a vehicle was already waiting for us at the airfield. The deputy 

factory director who met us, before taking us to the director’s office, took 

us through mass production shops where new color televisions were being 

made. At the end of a long conveyer there were vast storerooms packed solid 

with ready-made television sets. It looked like there were many hundreds 

of them there.

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The Last N-1 Launch

“Why aren’t you selling them?” I asked. “Even in Moscow people are 

standing in line for your televisions, and here you’ve got them all packed in 

from floor to ceiling.”

“You won’t believe it,” answered the deputy director. “We were forced to 

shut down the conveyer because they won’t give us railroad cars.”

“What kind of railroad cars?”

“Ordinary freight cars to load and off-load televisions. We’ve already given 

every railroad official a television set, but there still aren’t enough railroad cars. 

They imposed a plan for televisions on us without taking into account the 

railroad’s capabilities.”

After a brief meeting in the director’s office, we split up among the production shops and laboratories. We checked out the transformers’ unsophisticated 

production process as painstakingly as possible. The instruments that we had 

brought with us were subjected to voltage-withstand tests, insulation resistance 

tests, and vibration tests and then tested once again for all electrical parameters. 

Testing continued throughout the night. By morning we had found several more 

breaks in the transformer windings coated with the mysterious green mold.

A brigade of cable specialists that flew in the following day presented a 

theory, according to which mysterious “green stuff” appeared on a widely used 

PELSHO (enamel-, lacquer- and silk-coated winding wire) brand of winding 

wire, which had been washed after the lacquering using a new process involving some new, poorly tested emulsion.23 To be on the safe side, it would be a 

good idea to hunt down a supply of old wire, manufacture all the transformers 

again, and replace them in every single one of the instruments. After our report 

to the minister at the firing range, then to Moscow, to the VPK, and even to 

the Central Committee, we were detained in Kharkov to draw up a schedule 

for the modifications and delivery of all the instruments.

Thus, preparation of the rocket was temporarily halted. Round-the-clock 

work to modify the instruments began on the night leading to 14 September, 

after which we received Afanasyev’s permission to fly back. When we arrived 

at the airfield Samokhin boasted, “If it weren’t for me, you would have spent 

another night in Kharkov. It’s not easy getting the Air Force to let you make 

a night landing in Tyuratam.”

That morning, before we’d even had breakfast, we reported as a whole 

commission to the minister about our mission in Kharkov. After breakfast 

Afanasyev asked Kirillov, Dorofeyev, Degtyarenko, and me to stop by his office. 

When we appeared, he seemed very concerned.

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“While you were on the plane, I had several conversations with Moscow. 

And I have to tell you, the attitude there toward the N-1 is pretty bad. You are 

doing everything possible to prepare the vehicle. You’re changing the computers right there on the launch pad; you’ve switched out dozens of instruments; 

in the time you’ve been gone they’ve told me about two telemetry transmitters—in a word, you’re crawling on your belly toward the ‘Launch’ button. If 

only you could launch. But do you understand that if there is one more failure, 

they might shut down the project altogether? Perhaps, after amassing all the 

anomalies, we should recommend postponing this launch?”

“Well, let’s suppose the technical management takes such an initiative, 

and the State Commission makes the decision to postpone the launch; then 

what?” I asked.

“Well, that’s the whole thing. I’ll say it again, you are crawling on your belly 

toward the ‘Launch’ button, without pondering the possible consequences.”

“If I pose a question about postponing the launch to the technical management,” I said, “I need to cite serious reasons. After receiving a new computer from 

Moscow and new instruments form Kharkov, we’re going to check out the control 

system for two days and get a certificate of clearance. Personally, the engines are 

the only thing I am afraid of. Each chief designer will declare that his system has 

been thoroughly tested and debugged, and he and the military representative will 

give a certificate of clearance for flight. I cannot officially make a claim against a 

single developer. None of them will say, ‘Wait, in a month or two I’ll give you a 

new, more reliable system.’ And I really am confident today that everything possible has been done on each system. Except for the engines. Everyone knows that 

OKB-276 is working on developing new high-quality reusable engines that can 

be used three times after firing tests. They’ll be delivered to the rocket without 

reassembly. It means Kuznetsov isn’t confident in the ones we have now. We’re 

going to deliver the new engines for No. 8L. But Kuznetsov isn’t about to remove 

the guarantee from the old single-use engines. If Kuznetsov took the initiative and 

said, ‘Let’s wait, we already have the new reusable engines, we need to put them on 

No. 8L, and I request that No. 7L return from the launch pad to be modified for 

the new engines because they are fundamentally more reliable,’ then it would be 

a different thing. But Kuznetsov will never do that. We have an approved decision 

that the new engines will not be used until No. 8L. I have talked with Raykov and 

Yershov. They are aware of the status of the engines, not from documents and not 

from hearsay, but from direct participation in testing at OKB-276. Raykov said 

without hesitation that there would be complete confidence only after the new 

reusable engines are produced. Work is under way day and night in Kuybyshev.

“None of the representatives here from Kuybyshev talk about this, but they 

have modified a gas generator for the reusable engines and have completely redone 

the turbopump assembly. Rig testing has already begun, and the first ignitions 

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The Last N-1 Launch

went smoothly. The factory has begun to prepare for manufacturing the first 

production batch. Raykov predicts it will go into the assembly of No. 8L in six 

months. No matter how much you plan, with new engines it will be at least a 

year and a half before a launch vehicle will fly. It turns out that this year-anda-half delay will be Kuznetsov’s fault; in other words, MAP’s fault. If Minister 

Dementyev issues the recommendation to wait until we have the new engines, 

then the technical management certainly isn’t going to object. But without such 

a move we don’t have any official grounds for backing out of the launch.”

“No, forget it: Kuznetsov and Dementyev are never going to take the 

initiative for such a delay of flight tests,” said Afanasyev bitterly.

By all indications, he had already spoken with Dementyev.

“But where is the guarantee that we won’t destroy the launch site again?” 

asked Afanasyev.

“We are confident,” answered Degtyarenko. “The presence of the on-board 

digital computers has enabled Pilyugin and me to develop a new program for 

the first 30 seconds. Immediately after the rocket lifts off the launch table it 

doesn’t just go upward, but also to the side of the launch facilities. The control 

system has an inhibit that won’t allow a single engine to shut down regardless 

of what KORD demands. Even if one of the engines or its turbopump assembly explodes, the remaining engines will still manage to pull the rocket a bit 

farther away and the launch site will not be harmed. We have already tested 

this inhibit in flight during the previous launch.”

I laid out the last argument in favor of the launch for the minister: “Even 

if we consider No. 7L unreliable and come out with a proposal to postpone 

the launch, we’ll be asked: what are you going to do with this rocket? Are you 

going to return it and modify it with new engines? That’s going to cost a lot 

more. There are already five new rockets in the process of being built. We need 

to launch this one for their sake. We will gain experience from the separation 

of the stages, we will check out the new control systems and roll control circuit, and also the idea for getting the rocket away from the launch site, and 

finally, if we’re lucky, we’ll check out Blocks G, D, and the LOK in flight. And 

they have so many problems of their own! Politics aside, for the program as 

a whole, it is more advantageous to launch this rocket than to remove it and 

wait another six months until No. 8L comes out.”

We left it at that and went our separate ways to pursue our duties. But 

an internal voice tormented each of us: maybe we really should stop the race. 

Since the very first years of the rocket age, our psychology was set up so that 

if a rocket was standing on the launch pad, it was a one-way trip for her.

Because of the break in testing, Afanasyev flew back to Moscow 

and allowed Dorofeyev and me to leave the firing range. Meanwhile the 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

round-the-clock rush job in Kharkov ended. On 20 September, the modified 

instruments arrived at the firing range. All the different electrical tests were 

run again to the fullest extent, and on 14 October, Dorofeyev and I returned 

to the firing range.

On 18 October, Afanasyev and Komissarov flew in. We presented the 

schedules for subsequent operations. The following day at the N-1 launch 

site, we fearfully tracked the movement of a dirty, rust-colored cloud of toxic 

gases that had formed during the failed launch of one of Chelomey’s rockets. 

Nevertheless, we were lucky. The wind blew in such a direction that the cloud 

didn’t affect a single site at the firing range.

On the evening of 27 October, Kirillov and I departed from the launch 

site for Site No. 2. Our mood was not the best. The inconsistent results of 

the integrated tests with the on-board digital computers had disrupted the 

schedules we had put together. Without stopping by the hotel, we drove up 

to the deluxe dining room. The regular customers were dining there. Here, as 

a rule, a strict “dry law” was observed. Of the beverages, Borzhomi mineral 

water was the most popular.

Out of the blue, Kirillov announced, “Today Chertok and I are allowed to 

violate the ‘dry law.’ We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the salvation 

of the human race.”

Everyone looked in bewilderment at me. I was at a loss and could not 

recall playing a role in saving the human race.

“You all sure have a short memory,” Kirillov grinned. “Exactly 10 years 

ago I received the order to install an R-7A missile carrying a warhead at launch 

Site No. 1 and to prepare for launch on a command, which might come from 

Moscow. But in order to deliver the combat missile, another rocket, which 

had been prepared for a Mars launch, had to be removed from the launch site. 

And this is how Chertok’s and my interests became intertwined. He wanted 

to launch the rocket to Mars, and I had been ordered to prepare a launch on 

America. Thank God, Khrushchev and Kennedy came to an agreement. At 

that time, we had a glorious celebration of the event. Now it would be good 

to remember it.”24

Meanwhile, computer anomalies had once again occurred during the latest 

round of tests. And once again the computer had to be replaced. There was a 

hard rain during the night from 8 to 9 November. Water accumulated on the 

bottom plate in Block A, and the insulation resistance was below normal. We 

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The Last N-1 Launch

dried everything out, the air temperature dropped below zero, and the weather 

service promised the rain was over.

On 16 November, after lunch, an expanded technical management meeting 

was convened with the participation of Minister Afanasyev and firing range 

chief Kurushin. Dorofeyev gave a general report about the work conducted 

over the last 10 days.

“In all, testing during these days has identified three failures in the on-board 

digital computer: two in the arithmetic units and one in the memory unit. 

After eliminating all the anomalies, two fully integrated control tests were 

conducted. One issue remained unresolved: should we fill the electric power 

plant (EU) running on electrochemical generators (EKhG) with hydrogen? 

The issue was fundamental from a flight program standpoint. If they weren’t 

filled, we wouldn’t fly to the Moon: there was only enough electric power on 

the LOK from the battery to start up Block G, and then the control system 

would have no power—and TASS would have to announce the flight of one 

of the latest Kosmos spacecraft.25

I asked, “Does anyone have doubts about the hydrogen?”

Dorofeyev stopped short. Only the minister had doubts. Nobody else 

objected to filling the EU tank with 20 kilograms of hydrogen.

Understanding that this was a ticklish situation, I announced, “We’re not 

going to hold up everyone with this problem. Whoever needs to—stay after 

the technical management meeting.”

Colonel Moiseyev, chief of the Sixth Directorate of the firing range, spoke 

after Dorofeyev: “Everything is ready. The entire staff is confident.”

Istomin confirmed that all the launch systems were ready. The general 

reliability of the ground launch complex was 93 percent. This number created 

a stir in the room.

Lapygin reported in detail about the state of affairs with the on-board 

digital computer. The most probable causes of the failures that had occurred 

were the Tropa microcircuits. There were more than 1,500 such microcircuits 

in each on-board digital computer. Now both on-board digital computers—the 

launch vehicle’s and the LOK’s—had been rechecked and had been through a 

trial run during integrated testing. There were no contraindications to launch.

Then the minister interrupted, “How many integrated trial runs are necessary in order to get all the defects out of the on-board digital computers? Take 

 25.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

an example from the ground specialists: they named numbers—almost 100 

percent confidence.”

Next came the standard reports of the chief designers of the systems. 

Hoping to amuse the audience, in the conclusion of his report about the 

turbogenerator, Iosifyan said, “According to experimental data, the reliability 

of the turbogenerator is greater than 100 percent. After the failure during the 

first launch, all the systems were destroyed, but both turbogenerators proved 

to be functional after they were delivered from the crash site. After separation 

from stage three of the launch vehicle, the primary source of electric power 

for the payload (L3) should be the EU with the EKhG, which are installed 

in the Lunar Orbital Vehicle. The EU has never been checked out in flight.”

Afanasyev recommended that Iosifyan, Lidorenko, Ovchinnikov, Dorofeyev, 

Moiseyev, Abramov, Degtyarenko, and I stop by his office to discuss the controversial issue. In this inner circle I recalled what the EKhG was. The EKhG 

obtains electric power when hydrogen is combined with oxygen. Back in 

middle school an experiment demonstrated this: the chemistry teacher blew 

a soap bubble with hydrogen and when it floated away he held a match to it. 

To the delight of everyone, the bubble exploded in such a way that the girls 

screamed, and the boys began discussing the process for obtaining the explosive 

gas under nonlaboratory conditions.

When hydrogen is combined with oxygen in a special generator, one can 

avoid the explosion. The energy released in this process is removed from the 

generator’s electrodes as electric current. The reaction produces pure water, 

which is used in the spacecraft life-support system.

According to the flight program of No. 7L, the EU and EKhG, developed 

specially for the lunar expedition, comprised the main source of electrical power 

for the payload. For the flight from Earth to the Moon, around the Moon, and 

from the Moon to Earth, the tanks of the EU and EKhG needed to be filled 

with 20 kilograms of liquid hydrogen.

While editing the second edition of this fourth volume, I made 

some additions, taking into consideration the comments of hydrogen power 

engineering enthusiast Sergey Khudyakov, who at that time was chief of the 

design and testing sector dealing with the EU and EKhG and was responsible for 

preparing it for launch as part of the LOK.26 He later became deputy program 

 26.

436
The Last N-1 Launch

director for power plants using EKhGs. I agreed to add the history of the EU 

because, despite the tragic fate of the N1-L3 rocket complex, the broad use 

of hydrogen to directly obtain electrical power is inevitable in the near future.

The EU and EKhG designed for use in space on the basis of fuel cells first 

appeared on the U.S. piloted Gemini vehicles and then were the main sources 

of electric power and drinking water on all the Apollo lunar vehicles.27 We 

trailed behind the Americans in terms of production dates, but in the Soviet 

Union we were the first. I maintain that in Russian cosmonautics in the next 

decade of the 21st century, only the specialists of RKK Energiya and their 

partners from the Ural Electrochemical Works (developer of the EKhG) will be 

capable of creating powerful and reliable power-generating systems for future 

piloted spacecraft using just two of the most noble elements from Mendeleev’s 

periodic table—hydrogen and oxygen.

Fuel cells differ from conventional galvanic cells in that the components—

fuel (hydrogen) and oxidizer (oxygen)—are continuously fed into the reaction 

zone. The reaction product (water) is also continuously removed from the 

reaction zone. Unlike various batteries, which store electric power from an 

external source, fuel cells are generators—the primary source of electric power.

The voltage in an individual fuel cell does not exceed 1.1 volts. To raise the voltage in rocket-space systems to a specific value, fuel cells are connected in sequence 

in batteries, and to obtain a specific power output the batteries are connected in 

parallel. The necessary number of fuel cells joined into a single structure with gas 

distribution elements and autonomous thermal control is called an electrochemical generator (EKhG). Depending on the power demand, the necessary number 

of EKhGs are combined into a [single] power plant, which includes devices for 

storing and feeding components, a thermal control system, a reaction products 

(water) removal system, a power distribution and switching system, an automatic 

protection and control system, pneumohydraulic lines, and a cable network.

In the Soviet Union and later in Russia, Korolev’s organization certainly 

ranked at the top in the practical use of EUs with EKhGs. During his tenure 

as chief designer, Vasiliy Mishin assigned the development of a power plant 

using EKhGs to Mikhail Melnikov—chief of the complex; at that time, Viktor 

Ovchinnikov was his deputy. He was responsible for the manufacture and 

testing of the EU and was confident in its reliability. Subsequently, under his 

management, the EU and EKhGs for the Buran reusable space transportation 

 27.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

system (MKTS) were developed.28 A surviving group of enthusiasts continues 

to fan the flame of the “hydrogen fire” to this day.

American developments, and after them our developments as well, showed 

substantial advantages of EUs with EKhGs over other chemical current sources. 

Let’s list the main ones:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

direct conversion of chemical energy into electrical power is highly efficient 

(efficiency coefficient ≈ 65%);

unbeatable ecological cleanliness (the reaction product is super-pure water);

stable output voltage over a large range of loads;

can be connected with the spacecraft life-support system;

high specific efficiency (ratio of watt-hours to kilograms of weight of the 

power plant) compared with batteries.

In 1967, TsKBEM set up a competition between several organizations that 

were vying for the leading role in the production of EKhGs. The development by 

the Ural Electrochemical Works under the Ministry of Medium Machine Building 

showed the best results in terms of the totality of the main parameters of the design 

specifications. The atomic scientists managed to produce the EKhG faster than 

the specialized electrochemical organizations. The development, manufacture, 

and developmental testing of all the units and assemblies of the EU for the LOK 

weren’t completed until 1970. By mid-1972, the entire system had undergone a 

whole cycle of ground tests, including tests at the engineering facility in Baykonur, 

and was among the systems that received clearance to be rolled out to the launch 

site. EUs were placed in two compartments of the LOK. The main EU assemblies 

were located in the cone-shaped Transfer Compartment, also called the power 

compartment. These included three EKhGs (with an output of 1 kilowatt each), 

two hydrogen cryostats (10 kilograms of hydrogen in each), two oxygen cryostats 

(100 kilograms of oxygen in each), assemblies of the working fluids (hydrogen 

and oxygen) storage and delivery system, the thermal mode control system, and 

others. Automatic control, monitoring, and electric power switching instruments 

were installed in the LOK’s pressurized Instrumentation Compartment.

At the launch site the EU was waiting to be filled with hydrogen (20 kilograms) and oxygen (200 kilograms) from the next-to-last location on the service 

tower specially designed for this purpose at a height of 88 meters from the 

ground. Preparatory operations began on 14 November. On 16 November, a 

discussion arose among the chiefs regarding the safety of the hydrogen filling 

process. On the morning of 18 November, the minister himself looked into 

this problem yet another time.

 28.

438
The Last N-1 Launch

“For the first time there will be hydrogen at the launch site. We don’t have 

any experience working with it. Special safety measures will be required. If we 

forgo the hydrogen filling this will simplify the situation at the launch site and will 

shorten the preparation cycle by one and a half or two days. Under the freezing 

conditions that the meteorologists are promising, this is extremely important. 

Working for the first time with the EU, there might be all kinds of eventualities 

peculiar to such complex systems. Our main task is to check out the launch 

vehicle—Blocks A, B, and V. We don’t need the EU to do that. In any event, it 

doesn’t decide the fate of the N-1. If all three N-1 Blocks operate, we’ll go into 

circular orbit and send off Blocks G and D, and that will be more than enough. 

Each of you can have a monument erected in your honor,” reasoned Afanasyev.

Ovchinnikov, with whom Dorofeyev, Abramov, and I had already discussed 

all the “pros” and “cons” more than once, came up with counterarguments.

“We need to test out a promising electric power source for space technology under real conditions. We have to gain experience and assure ourselves 

that our five years of work with the atomic scientists haven’t been in vain. If 

we don’t fill the system with hydrogen we’ll need to change the flight program, 

which has been approved at all levels. Without electric power the LOK won’t 

be able to go into high elliptical orbit and then return to Earth. And so, we’ll 

be giving up on the program to return to Earth at reentry velocity and test 

out the landing system.”

Abramov was responsible for the hydrogen filling process. He assured the 

minister that all the operations had been tested out, he personally had verified everything, and he would be present at all times during filling process. 

Moiseyev confirmed that the military detail was confident in the safe outcome 

of the filling process.

“So what, then, are we going to decide by taking a poll of everyone? You 

understand the cost of a mistake,” said Afanasyev.

Dorofeyev, Abramov, Degtyarenko, Ovchinnikov, Moiseyev, Iosifyan, and 

I spoke out in favor of hydrogen. Lidorenko and Kirillov abstained.

“Have it your way, but you’ll sign off for the reliability of this operation 

in blood,” recapitulated the minister.

Cheered by the results of the vote, Ovchinnikov addressed Afanasyev: “If I 

may ask, where are you going to draw the blood that we’ll be using to sign off?”

“We’ll send a nurse to you, and the two of you can figure out the best 

place to draw blood.”

Cheered up by our determination, we agreed that in the State Commission 

we would finally approve the preparation and launch schedules.

I got in touch with Bushuyev via the high-frequency communications line 

from the big MIK in order to find out about attitudes in Moscow. Recently he had 

been a frequent visitor to the Kremlin in connection with the negotiations that had 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

begun between the Soviets and Americans.29 Bushuyev said, “Your train is on the 

tracks and under steam. You can only go straight, not to the right, not to the left.”

“But what about backward?”

“No one here will understand that. Only forward!”

Forward, then, forward.

The State Commission assembled on 21 November. Everything in 

working order had already been mentioned. Primary attention was devoted to 

the action timeline and preparation schedule. However, the minister decided 

to “tickle” Lapygin one more time regarding the on-board digital computers 

and the abundance of anomalies involving the control system.

“Actually, here at the launch site we conducted a clean trial run of the 

control system,” reported Lapygin. “We performed stand-alone tests in their 

entirety six times and all sorts of integrated tests 41 times. All the anomalies 

were looked into, corrected, and written up. We are confident in the control 

system. It is cleared for flight.”

Moiseyev reported the timeline of events at the launch site minute 

by minute.

On 22 November at 1600 hours, the launch team formed up, and Shumilin 

and Dorofeyev gave reports. At 1700 hours, the 12th day of launch preparation 

began. At 1830 hours, the cooldown of all the feed lines began. At 2000 hours, 

oxygen fueling began. At 2340 hours, oxygen filling ended. Preparation and fueling with kerosene took place from 2340 hours until 0130 hours on 24 November. 

From 0000 hours to 0500 hours, the filling of the EU with hydrogen and oxygen 

took place. From 0400 hours to 0500 hours, the fuelling of Blocks G and D 

took place. From 0500 to 0615 hours, the thermostatic control of Blocks G and 

D took place. From 0645 hours until 0755 hours, the preparation and removal 

of all the fueling lines and ground cable connections took place. At 0815 hours, 

they began to pull away the service tower.

The launch took place on 23 November at 0900 hours Moscow time.

The State Commission put Dorofeyev and Moiseyev in charge of managing 

all the preparations. Kurushin reported on the readiness of all the firing range 

services and put special emphasis on safety measures.

“Everyone not involved in preparation, except for security, communication, 

power, and medical services, must be evacuated from all launch sites, including 

 29.

440
The Last N-1 Launch

from No. 2 and No. 113. We are arranging for all evacuees to stay in heated 

facilities in the city. Traffic on all roads will be restricted.”

After the mention of the State Commission meeting, I couldn’t find a single 

word in my notebooks about the last hours of preparation and the actual launch 

of No. 7L. The general emotional stress and heavy burden of responsibility on 

each of us is no excuse. I should have shown more discipline and found just 15 

or 20 minutes to jot something down. I cannot forgive myself for this gap in my 

notes. Decades after the fact, a few illegible lines will help drag details of events 

from the depths of one’s memory that a future historian won’t find in any archives.

The overwhelming majority of people who have become participants in 

great historical events, at the moment they occur, are not aware of how much 

their descendants need their testimony. I reconstructed the events with the help 

and prompting of Boris Dorofeyev and Georgiy Priss, who had held onto the 

scraps of their records. Even the three of us, who were direct participants in 

this N-1 launch and made routine notes, when we compared them we argued 

about dates and various episodes. In this regard, I am amazed by the fanatical 

confidence with which historians describe the details of events back then when 

there wasn’t even a written record.

Except for the firing crew located in the bunker, no one really saw the 

launch. The thunder of the firing did not penetrate underground. Those who 

were far away in the steppe said that the morning was clear and sunny with a 

light frost. The white beauty of a rocket could be seen in the thin mist awaiting its first and last flight.

The reports from IP-1 were clearly heard: “Fifty seconds! Pitch, yaw, and 

roll normal. Flight normal.”

“Ninety-five seconds! Center engines are shut down. Flight normal.”

“One hundred seconds! Flight normal.”

That’s how it should be. According to the program, 94.5 seconds into the 

flight the six central engines of Block A shut down. Did it really make it? For 

the umpteenth time I glanced down at my crib sheet where the times of the 

main flight stages were listed. I tensed up in expectation of the report about 

the separation and ignition of Block B. This was supposed to take place 113 

seconds into the flight.

“One hundred ten seconds...an anomaly! An information anomaly. Loss 

of information over all channels!”

After the anomaly report, information from on board simply couldn’t 

be restored. It was already clear. It didn’t make it! The failure was in the first 

stage. This time it was just a few seconds before the firing of the engines of 

Block B and separation.

My memory and notes return to the events of 24 November. At around 

1500 hours the technical management and State Commission—all sullen, 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

having had no sleep that night and stunned with general grief, gathered in 

town in the hall of the firing range computer center. The telemetry information had been routed here during the flight. The Lotos (Lotus) automatic 

system, which the Scientific-Research Institute for Measurement Technology 

developed, had already performed the first express processing of it. We were 

waiting for the information. The lieutenant colonel of the computer center 

made the very first, preliminary report. He and his comrades had gone without 

sleep for over 24 hours.

“Up until 106.94 seconds into the flight, the propulsion systems of Block A 

had functioned normally. During liftoff all the engines had built up to the main 

stage per design. At 94.5 seconds into the flight, a control system command shut 

down the six central engines. The program stipulated this. At 106.94 seconds 

into the flight, nothing abnormal was detected in any of the 24 peripheral 

engines. The behavior of the new control thrusters was also normal.

“No commands were sent to the propulsion system of Block B for the 

ignition of the second stage. After 106.9 seconds, we were able to record an 

abrupt drop in pressure in the oxidizer and fuel tanks.

“During flight, the stabilization controller supported stable flight. The roll 

and yaw angles were negligible.

“After the 107th second of flight, there was no information at all on 

Block A. Pronounced deviations, as high as 18 degrees, were recorded on the 

upper gyro platform for all three axes before communication broke off at 110 

seconds into the flight. After 110 seconds, the on-board digital computer 

recorded an emergency situation.

“The KORD system issued no emergency signals to shut down the engines 

before 106.7 seconds into the flight. This once again confirms the normal operation of the propulsion system. It is still not clear whether an SAS command 

passed. It seems as though there was a change of level in the anomalies—we 

need to do some additional checking.

“The structural sensors recorded a G-load surge on the load-bearing ring 

at 106.95 seconds. The greatest loads were in the second plane. There was an 

information cutoff 0.05 seconds after the load surge for all channels.”

Aleksey Bogomolov interrupted: “Except for our microwave line. The 

transmitter is on Block B, and it continued to operate until the 282nd second 

on a falling and burning rocket! The microwaves passed through the plasma!”

“That’s right,” confirmed the lieutenant colonel, and he continued, “the 

telemetry system of Block B failed at exactly 107.28 seconds, in other words, 

0.33 seconds after the telemetry unit of Block A.

“The preliminary conclusion is that up until 106.95 seconds into the 

flight, all the rocket’s on-board systems were operating normally. There were 

no anomalies reported in the operation of systems and assemblies. More 

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The Last N-1 Launch

precisely, at 106.97 seconds an impact effect occurred in the area between the 

second and third planes of the load-bearing ring of Block A. Immediately after 

this, there were failures in all channels and then there was a total breakdown 

of communications for all radio systems. We could no longer decipher the 

microwave line.”

After the report, which everyone listened to in silence, as if it were a graveside speech, the shocked silence lasted several minutes. Gradually, discussion 

began throughout the room, here and there developing into arguments.

After consulting with the minister, I announced, “From the report it is 

clear that the cause of the failure has still not surfaced. We need time for each 

service to conduct a thorough microanalysis of all the information concerning 

its system. All those who haven’t had any sleep, go rest for a couple of hours 

so that tomorrow, 25 November, at 1500 hours, we’ll gather right here and 

listen to the following reports:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

Degtyarenko—general analysis;

Churkin—on the operation of the RTS-9 telemetry systems of Block A; 

there are 28 local switches in various zones;

Bogomolov—on the operation of the Orbita telemetry systems;

Komissarov—on the operation of the BRS-4 telemetry system;

Tanayev—on the operation of all the engines;

Priss—control system analysis; and

Nikitin—general analysis of the operation of the radio systems.”

I asked the most impartial and objective Valentin Yakovlevich Likhushin, 

director of the Scientific-Research Institute of Thermal Processes (the former 

NII-1 in Likhobory), to conduct an independent expert evaluation. Actually, my 

request proved to be unnecessary; he had already received the same instructions 

from the minister. Raykov took me aside from all the arguing, and, agitated, 

he said, “I managed to look through what I needed to with our guys, and I 

am convinced that the oxygen pump on engine four exploded.”

At my request, Ryazanskiy assigned Anatoliy Churkin to match up the 

telemetry information of the various systems with a unified time system. This 

was performed with a guaranteed accuracy of down to 0.1 microseconds.

At the second plenary session of the accident investigation commission, 

reports were delivered about the place and size of the space where an explosion 

might occur. Now no one had any doubt that an explosion had occurred on 

board. The swift development of the loss of radio communication was very 

convincing evidence in this regard. Therefore, I asked Boris Nikitin—chief of 

our radio department—to speak first.

“We consider it proven that at 106.9 seconds, a process began that caused 

the formation of a dense layer of plasma, which rapidly enveloped the entire 

rocket and became an impenetrable shield for radio communications between 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

the on-board antennas and ground tracking stations. The anomaly in radio 

communications over all ranges took place within tenths of seconds. We’re 

dealing with a more intense explosion than in 1969 on No. 3L. In that case, 

the process of communications loss also developed like an avalanche, but more 

slowly. The break in power feed connections between the electrical systems 

of Blocks A and B is another indicator of the explosive nature of the process. 

These connections are made using strong, heavy-gauge cable rather than fine 

wires. As you know, this cable had additional thermal insulation. The cable 

didn’t overheat, but instantly broke. This was pinpointed at a point between 

107.45 and 107.5 seconds.”

In all, the behavior of 5,500 parameters was examined! And throughout, 

a picture describing an explosion took shape.

“Why are you assuming the responsibility of speaking about an explosion 

without acknowledging the possibility of structural failure due to an off-nominal 

regime? Consequently the pipelines were damaged and then there was a fire,” 

Nikolay Kuznetsov asked. He and his deputies had been searching for proof of 

the absolute innocence of the engines since the very beginning. Since the very 

first years of the development of rocket technology, the turbopump assembly 

and combustion chamber had been considered to be explosion hazards. It meant 

that the chief designer of the engines was directly to blame for the demise of 

a rocket. In order to refute this scenario, it was necessary to propose another 

one, but it must also be an “explosion” scenario. I had already been warned 

that Kuznetsov’s people would come out with their own scenario.

“Before opening the floor to discussion, let’s listen to other reporters,” I 

proposed.

Degtyarenko explained how they tried to determine the site “where everything started” based on the G-load sensors and other parameters. This sort of 

analysis required singling out thousandths of seconds, rather than hundredths, 

on “fast telemetry.” Everyone who was involved in this search came to the 

conclusion that the “first dynamic effect” (so as not to use the term “explosion” prematurely, as Degtyarenko said) began in the area of the load-bearing 

ring of Block A between engines No. 3 and No. 5. Thus, the source of the 

explosion was engine No. 4.

Degtyarenko displayed a diagram that showed that during the time interval 

from 106.95 seconds to 107.1 seconds, in other words over a period of 0.15 

seconds, three shocks occurred and were pinpointed by the load sensors along 

the longitudinal axis.

Subsequent reports confirmed that up until 107.1 seconds, all of the 

engines operated anomaly-free, except for engine No. 4. The revolutions-perminute sensor and other indicators for engine No. 4 provided evidence of an 

interruption in the circuit at the same time that information still continued to 

444
The Last N-1 Launch

come in on the other engines. This meant that first, an interruption occurred 

in the circuits to the turbopump assembly of engine No. 4, and after that, 

the cloud of plasma and breaks in cables during the disintegration deprived 

us of information.

Very thorough microanalysis managed to establish the guilt of engine No. 4. 

The revolutions per minute of the turbopump assembly on engine No. 4 had 

stopped suddenly 0.022 seconds before adjacent engines No. 5 and No. 6. The 

first failure in telemetry was pinpointed by local switch No. 13 at 106.848 

seconds, and the loss of all telemetry, according to general consensus, took 

place at 107.210 seconds. Consequently, 0.362 seconds remained for all the 

groups to analyze. And so all investigative efforts needed to be concentrated 

on this slice of time.

At the end of the day, four subcommissions were formed. Heading them 

were [the following chief designers]: Kuznetsov—propulsion systems; Kozlov—

rocket structure; Lapygin—control system; and Dorofeyev—the entire complex 

and summation of results.

The next day, 26 November, we began to have heated arguments concerning 

the hypothesis that Kuznetsov had advanced. He demanded that the strength 

and stability of the structure of Block A be examined. One of the causes for the 

structural failure, in his opinion, might have been the simultaneous shutdown 

of the six central engines. This scenario prompted a dramatic negative reaction 

from Dmitriy Kozlov.

“Once again I declare that the margins of strength are completely sufficient. 

I gave instructions in Kuybyshev to immediately check all the calculations and 

test results, and to perform any experiment necessary on the hardware available 

at the factory. If we erred, then tell us, please: why did the breakup take place 

during the flight segment with the simplest mode?”

“But will you also take into consideration the fact,” objected Kuznetsov’s 

supporters, “that the Freon ran out several seconds before these events. Why 

did everything start after the Freon was used up? You had a component leak 

somewhere. Until then, Freon hadn’t provided the opportunity to ignite the 

mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen, which violently vaporized when it 

leaked in and accumulated. As soon as the Freon was used up, some stimulator 

actuated and this whole mixture blew up!”

Dorofeyev, Degtyarenko, and Kozlov—all experienced fighting men in 

such situations—could scarcely restrain themselves. As technical manager 

I was forced to maintain the appearance of neutrality, although the bias of 

Kuznetsov’s position disturbed me.

While we were in the midst of heated arguments, someone from among 

the military employees of the computer center wrote the following on 

the chalkboard:

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

No. 4 106.932 (+0.000),

No. 3 106.936 (+0.004),

No. 2 0106.948 (+0.016),

No. 22 106.962 (+0.030).

That’s when, having forgotten about neutrality, I said, “Very obvious! 

Look how the shock from engine No. 4 spread through the structure. It takes 

three-hundredths of a second to knock engine No. 22, located opposite No. 4, 

out of action. And they’re separated by 28 meters along a semicircle and by 14 

meters along a straight line. Isn’t it clear that we are dealing with an explosion 

that began with No. 4?”

The arguments began to take on such an intransigent nature that the official meeting had to be adjourned, and it was announced that the next day, on 

27 November, Valentin Likhushin would make a report. Likhushin had gained 

the reputation of a benevolent but strict and objective judge in the disputes 

of chief designers over engine problems. And this time he made a calm, convincing report. Understandably, I am citing just the main thrust of his report.

“The spread of the strong shock at precisely 106.932 seconds proceeds 

from the area where engine No. 4 is mounted. This fact can be considered 

unequivocally established. Shock was detected throughout other engines too, 

but this was the result of the main shock. The whole process of the shock 

disturbance spread to all the peripheral engines in 0.04 seconds, the speed of 

sound through metal. The readings from the turbopump assembly rpm sensors 

confirm this. The main question is, what was the nature of this shock? What 

is it, an external explosion or a failure inside an engine in a liquid-propellant 

rocket engine chamber? Here, there can be various points of view. It is less likely 

that something happened in the engine itself, in its combustion chamber. The 

most thorough analysis fails to confirm that some sort of kerosene or oxygen 

leak occurred before the shock. Freon was fed just to the central engines for a 

long time. We tried to reproduce—down to the hundredths and thousandths 

of a second—the sequence of the disintegration of the manifolds of the oxidizing gas feeding the turbines and compared this with the actual structure and 

layout. For the time being, for me, the most probable scenario seems to be the 

explosion of the turbopump assembly rather than the combustion chamber. As 

far as we know, similar phenomena occurred on the test stand, and we finally 

arrived at this conclusion, analyzing the failure of rocket No. 5L.”

Priss, who spoke after Likhushin, presenting an analysis of the control 

system, and Kunavin, who reported on the KORD system, argued that all systems, even the on-board digital computer, were operating anomaly-free before 

the “shock.” Moreover, after the “shock,” at 110.847 seconds, a command in 

Block V—“emergency shutdown of engines”—was pinpointed. That meant 

446
The Last N-1 Launch

the control system had been working, because this command is sent from the 

on-board digital computer if the rocket loses control, which clearly happened 

3 seconds after the explosion.

After one more day of fierce debates, Afanasyev advised, “There’s nowhere to 

rush to now. The subcommissions and working groups must appoint individuals to be personally responsible for the thorough processing of all the materials 

and their delivery to Moscow. There we will listen to the first results in a panel 

and we’ll prepare an order for the development of a report.”

The telemetry processing confirmed that the power plant (EU) and electrochemical generator (EKhG), filled with hydrogen and oxygen, had operated 

normally the entire flight up until the moment of impact with the ground. 

But now this was only interesting to their creators.

After long debates, the final text of the report had an unequivocal conclusion: “The rocket had an anomaly-free flight for 106.93 seconds, but 7 seconds 

before the calculated time for the separation of stages one and two, the oxidizer 

pump of engine No. 4 experienced a virtually instantaneous disintegration, 

which resulted in the rocket’s destruction.”

At the firing range throughout the following year of 1973, work to prepare 

rocket N-1 No. 8L with new engines continued, but the disarray and confusion 

surrounding the lunar program itself intensified at all levels from the Politburo 

to those involved in its practical implementation.

447

Chapter 18

People in the Control Loop

Originally I set out to write this chapter out of a desire to inform the reade

about the role and place of the human being in the control of actual rocket-spac

systems. Back in the “hazy youth” of my engineering career, I was interested i

the man vs. machine issue. I wasn’t able to come up with any new theories i

this field. For the most part, the printed works and numerous dissertations o

this subject, with which I became acquainted, could not serve as a guide fo

specialists who bore personal responsibility for the reliability of a specific system

Human involvement in the control process is one of the factors determin

ing the reliability and effectiveness of spaceflights. This problem was solve

radically for launch vehicles. Human involvement in the flight control of 

ballistic missile or launch vehicle ends on the ground with the keying in o

commands that set up ignition.

During all flight segments from the actuation of the “lift-off contact” unti

engine shutdown on the last stage, there is no human involvement in fligh

control of the rocket from the ground or from on board the spacecraft bein

inserted by this rocket. The only exception is the radio transmission from th

ground to the spacecraft of commands to shut down engines and to actuat

the emergency rescue system, if observers on the ground consider this to b

necessary.

The full set of equations describing the behavior of the launch vehicle

taking into account the liquid it is carrying, its structural flexibility, and variou

other qualities, is referred to as the mathematical model. Differential equation

also describe the behavior of the rocket’s flight control system. The developer

of this system have the opportunity to update the mathematical description b

simulation using the actual spacecraft, and finally, they conclusively verify th

reliability of the design calculations through flight testing. The flight testin

of ballistic missiles usually takes several dozen launches.

Such a testing method is economically wasteful for a spacecraft. It is to

expensive and one-of-a-kind and must fulfill its mission on the very first launch

r 

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r 

.

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a 

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e 

e 

, 

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s 

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.

The motion control and navigation system of any contemporary spacecraft 

consists of two complexes interconnected by radio links: a ground control 

449
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

complex and an on-board control complex. Depending on the distribution of 

tasks between the ground and on-board complexes, and also on the structure 

and reliability of the on-board complex control equipment, three control 

methods can be used:

•	

•	

•	

autonomous and automatic, using programs previously loaded into the 

on-board equipment. On contemporary spacecraft, these programs are 

loaded into the memory of the on-board digital computer in the form of 

algorithms;

commands and programs transmitted on board the spacecraft from ground 

complex control posts; and

manual control performed by the crew.

Unpiloted spacecraft combine the first two methods. Piloted spacecraft 

use all three. In this case, the control system creators can give priority to any 

of the three versions during various flight phases. The selection of an optimal 

combination is one of the tasks that control system creators solve. Beginning 

with the flight of Gagarin and continuing until recent times, we have had heated 

arguments about the priority and degree of responsibility of the crew in the 

motion control of a spacecraft. The flight programs for Vostoks and Voskhods 

did not call for the inclusion of a cosmonaut in the control loop. They were 

permitted to take control only for a trial or in a desperate emergency situation. 

The use of manual control saved the lives of the Voskhod-2 crew.1

To avoid turning my memoirs into a boring scientific treatise, I am trying 

to show the dialectic and dynamics of the development of all three methods in 

specific examples of emergency and off-nominal situations from the history of 

piloted programs in which I was directly involved. Here, I am limiting myself 

to the most interesting examples from the history of motion control, orientation, stabilization, and navigation.

Working on these memoirs, I realized the validity of asserting that catastrophic, emergency, and off-nominal situations are some of the strongest 

incentives for speeding up progress in space technology. Pilyugin first expressed 

a similar seditious (in the opinion of any high-ranking manager) thought in 

Kapustin Yar at a meeting of the State Commission on the flight testing of the 

experimental R-2 rocket in 1949. The very first launch proved to be a failure. 

Based on the results of the analysis of this failure, decisions were made for a 

fundamental modification of the rocket’s control system and structure.2

 1. See Chertok, 

450
People in the Control Loop

“A single failed launch teaches us more about a system and about how to 

operate it than 10 trouble-free launches,” Pilyugin declared.

This declaration outraged the State Commission’s Ministry of Defense 

representative Colonel Aleksandr Mrykin: “So you’re actually proposing that 

we launch rockets ‘beyond the hills’ just to satisfy your professional curiosity?”

Several years later some aphorisms composed by American rocket technology specialists reached us, and among them was “Murphy’s law”: “If it seems to 

you that everything is going well, it means that you’ve overlooked something.”

In October 1998, the Presidium of the Academy of Navigation and 

Motion Control awarded me the N. N. Ostryakov honorary prize “[f]or outstanding scientific achievements in the development and study of gyroscopes 

and autonomous navigation systems.”3 President of the Academy Vladimir 

Peshekhonov warned me that after he handed me the prizewinner’s certificate 

at the general assembly of the academy, I would have to make a scientific report. 

In my report, among the incentives contributing to the progress of motion 

control systems, I mentioned “Pilyugin’s law,” which he expressed for the first 

time in 1949. None of the very competent scientists who were members of 

the Academy voiced any challenges in this regard. “Pilyugin’s law,” which he 

formulated long before the Space Age, is also valid for space systems.

In publications on the history of Soviet and Russian cosmonautics there 

is very little mention of the numerous off-nominal situations, which were 

caused not by hardware failures, but by the actions of people participating in 

the control loop on the ground or by crew actions on board the spacecraft. 

Analysis of the specific circumstances in such instances, as a rule, was the destiny 

of special commissions; their conclusions and recommendations resulted in 

changes not only in technology, but also in the organization of flight control 

operations. Time and again I had the occasion to be the chairman or a member 

of accident investigation commissions and also to act as defendant before other 

commissions or high-ranking managers.

I’ll recap the history of the development of spacecraft control systems. Ballistic missiles and launch vehicles underwent developmental testing 

together with their control systems. Once debugged, these systems remained 

almost unchanged in series production. This was one of the conditions for 

 3. The International Public Association of the Academy of Navigation and Motion Control 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

achieving a high degree of reliability in a rocket complex. Missiles put into 

military service were updated following new flight tests of modified missiles.

Unlike missiles, each spacecraft of the first decades of the Space Age was 

unique in and of itself. Even among present-day spacecraft it is difficult to 

find two completely identical ones. Each spaceflight brings new experience, 

which entails the introduction of changes to the design, circuitry, and control 

methods. Identical launch vehicles insert spacecraft into space that vary widely 

in terms of the purposes of their missions and, consequently, in terms of their 

structure. Each of them requires the production of equipment, a power supply, 

a motion control system, telemetry, an on-board control complex, and special test equipment developed specifically for those missions—and, with the 

appearance of on-board computers, its very own software.

In the late 1950s, the scales of operations on spacecraft hardware and 

control systems turned into a problem that required radical and swift solutions. It didn’t take long for me to convince Korolev that we needed to set up 

our own facility for the development of control systems and production of 

spacecraft instrumentation. Furthermore, as soon as Korolev recognized the 

need to create such an organization within his own OKB-1, he sometimes very 

roundly criticized me for being slow to organize developments of spacecraft 

control systems.

Over a short period of time, specialized departments and laboratories were 

formed. Shops were created at the factory to implement their design developments and were combined for specialized instrumentation production. We 

were not able to develop and implement all of our ideas at our own facility 

at OKB-1. Gyroscopic and optical instruments, radio engineering systems, 

current sources, electric motors, relays, remote switches, and electronics parts 

were made according to our specifications at dozens of specialized design 

bureaus and factories.

Having first of all created our own research, design, and production facility supporting the development of spacecraft control systems, we became the 

initiators for the creation in the Soviet Union of a unified infrastructure of 

design bureaus and factories working in the field of cosmonautics. In 1966, 

the year of Korolev’s death, there were already more than 50 independent 

enterprises and laboratories in NIIs and at institutes of higher learning that 

were loaded down with our assignments.

We took on the developments that were most crucial and those that no 

amount of effort could assign to subcontractors. In late 1966, the total list of 

instruments that we had developed and that were in space or were involved in 

ground testing consisted of close to 1,000 types of units.

Essential decisions by the Commission on Military-Industrial Issues under 

the USSR Council of Ministers supported our active efforts for the development 

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People in the Control Loop

of spacecraft control technology.4 In those days the so-called civil service by no 

means hindered the solution of our problems, but assisted with them. Civil servants working in the Kremlin and in the Central Committee Party apparat on Old 

Square assisted us in overcoming interdepartmental and inter-republic barriers.

During the first decade of the rocket age (1947–1957) we created the basis 

for the infrastructure of a powerful rocket industry. During the second decade 

(1957–1967) the formation of the rocket infrastructure was completed and the 

construction of the space infrastructure began in parallel. This process went 

far beyond the limits of the capabilities of our OKB-1. The new Ministry of 

General Machine Building (MOM), Minister Sergey Afanasyev, and his deputies 

showed initiative, perseverance, and boldness uncharacteristic for government 

officials in the integrated organization of the rocket-space instrumentation 

industry. At MOM, specialized main directorates for gyroscopic technology, 

radio systems, and system-wide technology were created.5

 Finding themselves 

at the epicenter of these processes, the staffs that were combined under my 

management at Korolev’s OKB-1 became our country’s first and foremost 

creators of control systems for spacecraft for a wide variety of missions. The 

capacities of our own production facilities were quickly depleted, but we found 

good assistants in our nation. With the assistance of the Central Committee 

apparat and the VPK, we recruited factories to collaborate with us. They became 

our main production base, which worked using the documentation of OKB-1 

control departments, and continue this work to this day.

One of the first was the Plastik Factory in Moscow, whose primary output 

consisted of electric fuses. Nevertheless, it quickly mastered the production of 

on-board sequencers and electronic amplifier converters for attitude-control 

systems. The Ufa Instrumentation Factory, which until that time had produced 

autopilots, set up special shops where they manufactured switching instruments for on-board complex control and integrated electric power systems. 

The Azov Optical-Mechanical Factory set up the series production of ground 

testing stations, known under the index 11N6110. More than 200 of these stations served until the 1990s as the basic means for testing spacecraft at factory 

monitoring and testing stations and at cosmodrome engineering facilities and 

launch sites. This same factory took on the burden of manufacturing complex 

electromechanical spacecraft docking assemblies.

 4. This was the formal name of the Military-Industrial Commission (VPK).

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Korolev, Khazanov, and I flew to Kiev in 1963 to incorporate the instrument builders of Ukraine into our space sphere. For several days we haunted 

the doorways of the Ukrainian authorities. We went to Ukrainian Communist 

Party Central Committee Secretary Shelest.6 He avoided resolving the issue 

after giving us a lecture on the very difficult situation in the ferrous metallurgy industry. Korolev muscled his way in to see Ukrainian Communist Party 

Central Committee First Secretary Podgornyy. After an hour-long conversation, 

during which Korolev, according to his story, improvised as never before on 

the subject of prospects, we “received” the Kievpribor Factory. This factory 

served as the main supplier of on-board complex instruments for Soyuz and 

Progress spacecraft.

The instrument production facility of our ZEM, together with all the other 

factories loaded down with our projects, became a powerful production base 

without which our successes in space would have been impossible. Many of 

our developments (we realized this many years later) turned out to be firsts. 

The Iron Curtain prevented us from associating with American specialists. In 

Europe, even if there had been such a possibility, we couldn’t have borrowed 

anything. Everything that was required to control spacecraft we and our component suppliers thought up, developed, and manufactured at new production 

facilities on our own. We really were genuine trailblazers. Four decades later, 

much in the history of control systems from the 1960s and 1970s can seem 

naïve. Once again calling to mind this period, filled with the joys of triumphs 

and tragic failures, I can say with a clear conscience that we have something 

to be proud of. It’s only worth being sorry that in our time we couldn’t tell the 

world what we had really done and what efforts this took. The timid attempts 

of open publications or speeches at international forums ran up against a thick 

wall with the inscription “don’t let anything through!” After gaining worldwide fame, as they traveled around the world and gave numerous interviews 

and speeches, the cosmonauts did not mention the name of Chief Designer 

S. P. Korolev and the other actual creators of the rocket-space systems that had 

carried the heroes into space.

In this regard, in his own circle of confidants, Korolev said with bitterness, 

“The biggest secret in our space program is the names of the chief designers.”

When it nevertheless did come to publications, Korolev was called 

“Prof. Sergeyev” and Mishin “Prof. Vasilyev.” In one of my first articles, “Man or 

6. Petr Yefimovich Shelest (1908–1996) was a member of the Politburo (from 1964 to 

1973) and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 

1963 to 1972. In that capacity, he was the highest serving Party official in Ukraine.

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People in the Control Loop

Machine,” my identity was concealed under the pseudonym “Prof. Yevseyev.”7

During those action-packed years, such circumstances amused us and even 

filled us with pride: look how valuable we were to the state!

Our obvious achievements and successes did not protect us from the 

“childhood diseases” of rapid growth. The primary causes of failures were our 

enthusiastic idealization of our subject matter, an overestimation of our own 

strengths, and a frantic race against time.

Our staff did not have a chief designer of control systems because at our 

OKB-1 there was only one Chief—Korolev. When Mishin replaced him, 

this detail of the situation remained unchanged. Rauschenbach, Yurasov, 

Kalashnikov, and I were completely satisfied with our title of “deputy chief 

designer.” Sometimes our subordinates grumbled or teased us: “In our subcontractors, a developer who is providing us with a somewhat insignificant 

system is called a ‘chief designer,’ while the person responsible for the entire big 

system, containing dozens of subsystems and hundreds of instruments from 

all sorts of ‘chiefs’ is still called a ‘deputy chief designer’.” The damage to one’s 

pride was compensated by the fascinating work, where each person had the 

rare opportunity to demonstrate all of his or her capabilities and be involved 

in realizing designs, which quite recently had seemed fantastic.

Each government decree about the development of a new type of missile or 

launch vehicle mentioned not just the general designer of the rocket complex, 

but also without fail the surnames of the chief designers of the engines, the 

ground-based launch equipment, and the control system. The decrees for the 

creation of the spacecraft of Chief Designer Korolev (and after him Mishin), 

General Designer Chelomey, and Chief Designers Kozlov and Reshetnev 

made no mention of the names of the chief designers of the spacecraft control 

systems. That’s the way it had been since Korolev’s time. The decrees for the 

N1-L3 and Buran were exceptions to this rule.

I am making an attempt to correct a historical injustice and am naming the 

names of my comrades at OKB-1, each of whom by rights could have been called 

“chief designer of such-and-such a system,” or at the very least “scientific chief.” 

At the top of this list is the patriarch of attitude-control and navigation systems, 

world-renowned scientist Boris Rauschenbach. Without naming their academic 

degrees and ranks, I shall list the others in alphabetical order: Leonid Alekseyev, 

Oleg Babkov, Yevgeniy Bashkin, Vladimir Branets, Ernest Gaushus, Yuriy 

 7. Chertok is probably referring here to an essay published as B. Yevseyev, “Chelovek 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Karpov, Viktor Kalashnikov, 

Larisa Komarova, Mikhail 

Krayushkin, Viktor Kuzmin, 

Petr Kupriyanchik, Viktor 

Legostayev, Boris Nikitin, 

German Noskin, Boris 

Penek, Boris Savchenko, 

Igor Shmyglevskiy, Boris 

Skotnikov, Vladimir

Syromyatnikov, Yevgeniy 

Tokar, Lev Vilnitskiy, Oleg 

Voropayev, and Igor Yurasov. 

None of the individuals listed 

above ever complained about 

the small number of medals 

or other governmental awards 

and prizes. The scientists in our school of control enjoy celebrity and are deservedly respected not only in our own country, but also among the specialists of 

many foreign firms, with whom it became possible to associate after the fall of 

the Iron Curtain. The size of my book and my own limited capabilities prevent 

me from speaking about the character and contribution of each person listed.

We triggered a snowballing process in the development of the space 

industry and science. Decades later we still held a monopoly in the field of 

piloted flight control. The supplier organizations that worked on our assignments formed their own scientific schools, going far beyond the jurisdiction 

of the three control specialist chief designers: Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, and 

Kuznetsov, who were members of the legendary sextet of the first Council of 

Chief Designers. The new organizations for space control, radio electronics, 

and electrical engineering soon had their own Academy of Sciences members, 

individuals with doctoral and candidate degrees, and professors: Aleksey 

Bogomolov, Gennadiy Guskov, Yuriy Bykov, Andronik Iosifyan, Nikolay 

Sheremetyevskiy, Nikolay Lidorenko, Armen Mnatsakanyan, Aleksey Kalinin, 

Vladimir Khrustalev, Sergey Krutovskikh, and Vyacheslav Arefyev.8 Rather 

than being abstract theoreticians, each one was the creator of systems that 

were really essential to cosmonautics.

From the author’s archives.

Shown here at a function are G. V. Noskin, B. Ye. 

Chertok, and V. P. Khorunov. Noskin was a key 

developer of control and navigation systems.

 8. These men were all chief designers at their respective enterprises, as opposed to Chertok 

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People in the Control Loop

Interplanetary travels were the main subject of science fiction,

which stirred up people’s imaginations long before it became possible to realize this dream. Now, when the realization of the future was in our hands, we 

were eager to move closer to it. In the early 1960s we lived and worked in a 

risk-loving atmosphere of constant racing. Races were going on simultaneously 

in four areas of endeavor:

•	

•	

•	

•	

securing absolute superiority in nuclear missile armaments;

achieving all “firsts” in piloted spaceflight;

sending automatic interplanetary space stations to the Moon, Venus, and 

Mars; and

creating space communications systems.

Beginning with the first satellites, we considered it the norm that reports 

about success in space, introduced by the characteristic chime of the Moscow 

call sign, were broadcast by what had become the very dear voice of Levitan: 

“This is Moscow speaking! All the radio stations of the Soviet Union are 

operating!”9 For understandable reasons no mention was made over the airwaves 

of the fifth field of endeavor—military space systems.

Analyzing my work, the work of my comrades, and of the many people 

and organizations associated with us from a distance of a little more than three 

decades, I marvel at our collective faith in our strengths and our naïve tendency to “embrace the unembraceable” within inconceivably short deadlines. 

Now even science-fiction buffs have come to terms with the harsh necessity of 

considering the life cycle for the creation of sophisticated space systems with 

a high degree of reliability. It takes 8 to 12 years from the beginning of their 

development until their practical implementation. We couldn’t tolerate that. If 

in 1959 some futurologist had predicted that we wouldn’t execute the first soft 

landing on the Moon until 1966 after using up 12 four-stage launch vehicles, 

that it would be 1967 before we would transmit fragmentary telemetry data 

to Earth from a spacecraft that had penetrated Venus’s atmosphere, and that 

we would deliver a pennant of the Soviet Union to Mars in 1971, we would 

have considered him to be an incompetent pessimist or a spiteful critic.

Errors at the beginning of our difficult path to the creation of complex 

technical systems also had their good side. They unified teams of people, made 

them have a more critical attitude toward their work the more experience they 

gained, and made them seek out more reliable designs and organizational 

 9. Yuriy Borisovich Levitan (1914–1983) was undoubtedly the most famous Soviet radio 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

forms of interaction. The organizational structure that we worked out and 

our placement of specialists in departments and laboratories proved successful. Certainly luck was on our side in terms of having talented and untiring, 

hard-working people.

The present-day structure of operations for the creation of a complex of 

systems at NPO Energiya and other organizations that have put our experience 

to use is evidence of this. The departments have grown, split, and combined 

into new complexes. But the leading specialists, who determined the fate of 

each field of endeavor, stayed with their own work. Natural biological attrition has occurred over the course of 30 years, and a small number of people 

have left for other fields, but a surprisingly consistent framework of control 

specialists, which took shape in the 1960s, until very recently defined the state 

of the art in our country for spacecraft control.

After several events, including our union with Grabin’s TsNII-58 in 1959, 

the transfer of Rauschenbach’s team from NII-1 to OKB-1 in 1960, and several 

reshufflings of people in the space field, Korolev appointed me his “second first” 

deputy, placing me in charge of all design and research departments located at 

the second production site. He named German Semyonov, who had returned 

from Dnepropetrovsk, to be manager of the factory portion of the second production site. Deputy chief engineer Isaak Khazanov received the assignment to 

start up construction of an instrumentation facility at our second territory and, 

as the new buildings were put into operation, to wind down production at the 

factory of the first territory. Thus, by 1965 I had officially combined not only the 

departments of the instrumentation-control complex, but also the planning and 

design departments of all the space-related projects at OKB-1. This reorganization 

substantially expanded my authority, duties, and responsibility.

Despite the structural configurations, the creatively robust staffs of 

Konstantin Bushuyev, Mikhail Tikhonravov, Pavel Tsybin, and Konstantin 

Feoktistov remained in direct creative subordination to Korolev. The following chief planners worked under their supervision: Yevgeniy Ryazanov, Gleb 

Maksimov, Yuriy Denisov, Yuriy Frumkin, Vyacheslav Dudnikov, Andrey 

Reshetin, and other specialists brimming with enthusiasm.10

From the very beginning I asked Korolev to relieve me of responsibility 

for planning work over all space projects so that I could concentrate on a completely new area of endeavor—the development of spacecraft control systems. 

He agreed in principle, under the condition that, being his first deputy after 

 10.

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People in the Control Loop

Mishin, I had to “watch over and keep track of” everything that Bushuyev, 

Tikhonravov, and Tsybin were doing. “Considering the fact that they let their 

imaginations get away with them a lot, the planners’ assignments need to go 

through you on their way to Boldyrev’s design department.” And that was 

that. I quickly made arrangements with Bushuyev and the other managers who 

oversaw the planners and hit it off very well because their work to a great extent 

was determined by the ideas and successful work of the control specialists.

By Korolev’s way of thinking, Mishin was supposed to concentrate his 

energy and experience on the development of the new R-9 and the global 

GR-1 missiles, on rocket engines, and on the development of a future strategy, 

including the future N-1 heavy launch vehicle for a lunar expedition. During all 

the reorganizations that Korolev undertook beginning in 1947, Mishin always 

remained his “first” first deputy not only concerning engineering matters, but 

also administrative ones.

The very multifaceted work for the creation of new spacecraft control 

systems got under way at the same time as my subdivisions were retaining 

developments of steering systems and internal tank systems and supervising 

the development of control systems for missiles and launch vehicles. I shall 

list only the main areas of our work:

•	

•	

•	

motion control (orientation, navigation, rocket, and spacecraft dynamics);

systemic integration of on-board equipment control using the ground-tospacecraft system, electric equipment, special stand-alone systems, radio 

engineering systems, and antenna-feeder units; and

design work, electromechanical and electro-hydraulic systems, and instrument testing.

It would take too much time and space to list everything that the control 

and instrumentation teams were involved with. Especially since any one of 

our projects was linked with supplier organizations, and telling about them 

deserves a special treatise.

Below I shall dwell only on those projects of ours that were appreciated 

in scientific circles, made an epochal contribution to the development of 

cosmonautics, were realized or begun during the second decade of the Space 

Age, and also those that were the most interesting from the standpoint of the 

science of human behavior in the control loop.

The first two Soviet satellites, as is generally known, flew into space without any motion or attitude control in orbit. The laws of celestial mechanics 

controlled them. As we used to say, they answered only to our ballistics experts.

Unlike its predecessors, the third satellite, launched on 15 May 1958, 

now had the first command radio link that we had ever put into practice. 

I developed the design specifications for the command radio link (KRL) 

together with our radio engineers Shustov, Shcherbakov, and Krayushkin, 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

and with our first “space” electrical engineers, the developers of the control 

logic, Karpov, Shevelev, and Sosnovik.11 On 22 August 1956, I received 

Korolev’s signature of approval on the design specifications. The decision 

about the first very simple satellite had not yet been made, and we believed 

that secret Object D—the future third satellite—was going to be the first 

spacecraft.12 Controlling the activation and modes of the science equipment 

via command radio link at that time seemed to us to be a qualitative leap 

compared with the radio control systems of ballistic missiles. Director and 

Scientific Chief at NII-648 Nikolay Belov was in charge of developing the 

on-board and ground equipment of the first space command radio link. It 

took a year and a half to create the first command radio link. It supported 

the transmission on board of 20 immediate-execution one-time commands. 

This command radio link served as the basis for the development of more 

advanced versions for the piloted programs.

Motion control of future spacecraft was to be the next step. It turned 

out that for the specialists developing the automatic motion control systems 

for rockets, the creation of spacecraft motion control systems required overcoming a psychological barrier. This barrier was successfully overcome when 

Boris Rauschenbach arrived on the staff at OKB-1. Beginning with Luna-3, 

all of our spacecraft had systems making it possible to correct near-Earth and 

interplanetary trajectories. The essence of the correction process consisted 

in the fact that the parameters of the actual orbit or flight trajectory were 

measured beforehand using ground-based Command and Measurement 

Complex facilities. Next, the deviation of the trajectory from the design 

value was determined, and depending on the magnitude of the error, the 

required correcting pulse was calculated. At a specific point in the trajectory, 

at a specific time, the engine of the on-board orbital correction system fired 

and set up a new orbit.

In order to execute this operation, the spacecraft had to know how to 

orient itself in space, turning at any angles assigned by the settings transmitted 

via command radio link from Earth; maintain the given orientation while the 

 11.

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People in the Control Loop

correcting engine was operating; and control the engine system itself, ensuring 

the required magnitude of the correcting pulse.

Attitude control was one of the most crucial motion control modes. 

During this process the spacecraft had to hold the necessary angular position relative to known reference points by turning about its center of mass. 

Spacecraft attitude-control systems were crucial during the execution of the 

braking burn that was necessary for return to Earth. In the event of an error, 

the spacecraft might not return to Earth at all if the burn executed by the 

engine raised the orbit rather than lowering it. Attitude control in space was 

necessary not just for orbital correction, but also for scientific observations, 

photography, and setting up the pencil-beam antennas and solar arrays in 

the required direction.

Since 1960, Rauschenbach’s team, which was originally called 

Department 27, had been responsible for solving spacecraft attitude and 

stabilization control problems. The abundance of programs in this field 

required a sharp increase in the size of Department 27 and then its division into three departments: Viktor Legostayev’s theoretical department of 

motion dynamics; Yevgeniy Bashkin’s circuit and equipment development 

department; and Dmitriy Knyazev’s orientation effectors—correcting microengines—department. The powerful radio electronics department of Anatoliy 

Shustov (who had successfully developed sequencers—the predecessors of 

the modern on-board computers); Semyon Chizhikov’s design department, 

which issued the working drawings for any instruments to be manufactured 

at the factory; and the developments of supplier organizations assisted these 

three departments.

Working from our design specifications, Vladimir Khrustalev, the chief 

designer of optical electronics instruments at the Geofizika Design Bureau, 

developed sensors for orientation on Earth, the Sun, and stars. Chief rocket 

gyroscope specialist Viktor Kuznetsov also developed gyroscopic instruments 

according to our design specifications. At VNIIEM under Andronik Iosifyan, 

Sheremetyevskiy created a heavy-duty flywheel to control the orientation of 

the Molniya satellite. The Electron Microscope Factory in Suma manufactured 

sensors for the ionic attitude-control system that we had invented.

Each space project required its own attitude-control systems developed 

specially for a given specific spacecraft. Something they all had in common was 

the requirement to ensure triaxial orientation at the appropriate time; in other 

words, to have the capability to locate the spacecraft in space either having fixed 

its three mutually perpendicular imaginary axes rigidly in relation to stars or 

Earth’s surface and a velocity vector or maneuvering them according to a specific 

program or commands. Legostayev entrusted the conceptual development of 

triaxial orientation of a satellite on Earth to one of the first graduates of the 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Moscow Physics and Technology Institute (MFTI), Yevgeniy Tokar.13 Tokar 

had begun working on such a system back at NII-1 with Rauschenbach under 

Keldysh’s guidance. In 1957 he issued a report titled “On an active stabilization 

system for an artificial Earth satellite.”14

Tokar was the first to propose a system that became classic for all Vostoks, 

Voskhods, and Zenits and existed until the dawn of the epoch of “platformless” 

systems. To orient one of the axes of a satellite on a local terrestrial vertical (i.e., 

pointed toward the center of Earth), he proposed using an instrument sensitive to the infrared radiation of the planet’s surface. Rauschenbach had come 

out with the idea of scanning the boundary between the disk of Earth visible 

from the spacecraft and outer space. Yevgeniy Bashkin and Stanislav Savchenko 

played significant roles in developing the layout and theoretical underpinnings 

of the instrument. Vladimir Khrustalev and Boris Medvedev at TsKB Geofizika 

created the first actual infrared vertical (IKV) sensor. Currently, not a single 

near-Earth satellite can get along without an infrared vertical sensor—a local 

vertical plotter. Since those long-ago days, TsKB Geofizika has brought the 

reliability, accuracy, and mass of the infrared vertical sensor to scales that we 

had not even dreamed of during those first years.

In addition to orienting two axes along the angles of pitch and roll, which 

the infrared vertical sensor provided, the satellite’s free rotation about the 

vertical axis pointed at Earth had to be stopped, i.e., we had to learn how to 

orient it relative to its heading plane, or, as the rocketeers put it, in terms of 

the yaw angle.

To this end Tokar proposed a gyroscopic orienting instrument, later called 

a gyro-orbitant. It was used on virtually all domestic automatic and piloted 

spacecraft that required orbital orientation. The theory behind the gyroorbitant was the basis for Tokar’s candidate of sciences dissertation, which he 

defended in 1959. We were not able to manufacture the gyro-orbitant using 

our own resources. This required high-precision specialized production facilities. Naturally, we turned to Viktor Kuznetsov, who held a monopoly in the 

field of rocket gyroscopes at the time. His first reaction was quite negative. 

Kuznetsov didn’t want to manufacture an instrument in his shop if the idea for 

it had come from somewhere on the outside. Moreover, Kuznetsov questioned 

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the very idea of the gyro-orbitant, which was, as he told me, “the principle of 

a marine gyrocompass, corrupted for use in space.”

But in those days Kuznetsov couldn’t brush us off; otherwise, he might 

have to explain himself to Korolev, and the latter, for all anyone knew, might 

say: “Well, Vitya, if you refuse to help me, I’ll look for others.” “Vitya” 

asked Aleksandr Ishlinskiy to conduct a detailed review of the theory at the 

Mathematics Institute in Kiev, where he had been appointed the director back 

in 1948.15 Oskar Raykhman, one of his leading specialists, carried out an 

independent experimental review of the principle at Kuznetsov’s request. Not 

being a great theoretician, but rather a good organizer and gyroscope specialist, 

Raykhman quickly built a test stand, on which he confirmed the instrument’s 

functionality. Ishlinskiy’s and Raykhman’s great service was the fact that they 

convinced Kuznetsov independently of one another. He believed them and 

gave the “green light” for the manufacture of the first series. Kuznetsov’s instruments, with the designations KI-008, KI-009, etc., were on the first spacecraft: 

Vostoks, Zenits, subsequent reconnaissance spacecraft, and Chelomey’s Almazes.

On Salyut orbital stations we made an attempt to replace the gyro-orbitant 

with so-called “ionic orientation” using heading and pitch. One of the reasons 

for this replacement was the duration of the original “setting” period of the 

gyro-orbitant after insertion on orbit. Triaxial orientation of a satellite using 

an infrared vertical sensor and gyro-orbitant took almost an entire orbit. 

Orientation using the ionic system using pitch and heading took around 10 

minutes. However, the use of such a tempting orientation system (in terms of 

time) without first thoroughly testing it resulted in the loss of DOS No. 3. I 

will tell about this tragedy below.

Tokar worked with Gordeyev and Farmakovskiy, marine gyroscope specialists from the Elektropribor Factory in Leningrad, to develop and implement 

the idea of a more accurate block of gyro instruments that would provide 

orientation based on heading and filter the fluctuation of the optical infrared 

vertical sensor. In the design bureau of this factory they conducted an extremely 

conscientious study of the layout and developed the design of a two-rotor orbital 

gyroscopic complex for the new Zenit-4 reconnaissance satellite. This complex 

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included a gyroscopic vertical sensor corrected using signals from the infrared 

vertical sensor and the gyro-orbitant proper. Due to the Leningraders’ attention 

to detail, the system’s accuracy was 10 times greater than that of the Zenit-2! 

To conserve the working fluid, for the first time a system of electric motors 

and flywheels developed at VNIIEM was provided. On the whole, Zenit-4’s 

system of attitude-control instruments manufactured by all the suppliers was 

a noticeable qualitative leap in the technology of control in space.

Larisa Komarova was one of the leading specialists of the new system for 

Zenit-4. She brilliantly defended her candidate’s dissertation on this subject. 

Unfortunately, the Zenit-4 control system did not fly into space in this configuration. More and more launches of the already mastered Zenit-2 were needed. 

However, much later, Chelomey (OKB-52) implemented the ideas developed 

during those turbulent years on the Almaz, and Kozlov implemented them on 

new photoreconnaissance spacecraft.

For missiles, aircraft, and ships, the gyroscope companies developed increasingly complex instruments, which were poised on the brink of what was 

possible, manufacturing-wise. The rocket control specialists on Pilyugin’s, 

Kuznetsov’s, and Arefyev’s teams sought to create a high-precision inertial 

control system, the foundation of which was the precision gyroscopic platform. 

This field of endeavor also dominated the Americans’ efforts.

The aspiration to have attitude control in space so that a spacecraft could 

execute any turns and maneuvers was limited by the design of the gyroscopes’ 

gimbal mount. As soon as the angle permitted by the design of the gyroorbitant or gyro platform was exceeded, the gyroscopes “hit the stop” and a 

glitch occurred—loss of attitude control. The gyroscopic systems of missiles 

had no fear of this phenomenon because the possible angles determined by 

the program of the powered flight segment were deliberately less than those 

permitted by the gyro systems.

Somewhere within Legostayev’s theoretical department the idea cropped 

up to do away with the classic gimbal mount because the very task of controlling the orientation of an artificial satellite, due to the requirements for 

unlimited angular evolutions (programmed turns, change of attitude-control 

modes, docking maneuvers), suggested the need to do away with mechanical 

restraint. Spacecraft systems should have no maneuverability-arresting devices! 

That’s how the problem was formulated.

Theoretically, platformless systems, or, as they are now referred to, strapdown 

inertial navigation systems (BINS), had been well known for a long time.16 There 

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were even dissertations available on that score. But the most prominent rocket 

control specialists, Kuznetsov and Pilyugin, believed that this was an amusement 

for the theoreticians, sort of the latest version of perpetual motion. Nevertheless 

the theoreticians confirmed that, in principle, one could create a platformless 

attitude-control and navigation system if one mastered the numerical integration of systems of kinematical equations and conversions of coordinate systems. 

The system of angles contained in the equations describing the movement of a 

solid body, in principle, can simulate a gimbal mount for gyroscopes. If there is 

a good computer receiving information, it can replace the sophisticated design 

of gyro platforms.

The practical solution of such a problem exceeds the abilities of a pure 

mathematician. This situation requires an engineer’s view on the classical theory 

of the angular motion of a solid body. In this case it was necessary to find a 

practicable method for replacing complicated mechanics with complicated 

mathematics that have no “arresting devices” or metal weighing many dozens 

of kilograms. How could this be done?

The history of science and technology shows that serious discoveries are 

made by individuals or very small teams of two or three people. And when 

the discovery has been made, then its implementation requires courageous 

managers who will take a risk, pull a large staff onto this project, and find the 

necessary resources. A proposal from two young MFTI graduates who came 

to OKB-1 along with Rauschenbach should be considered the beginning of 

the epoch of domestic platformless systems. In 1963, 27-year-old Vladimir 

Branets and 30-year-old Igor Shmyglevskiy turned to the works of [Irish] 

mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton, who was the first to come up 

with the theory of quaternions in 1843, striving to find a convenient device 

for studying spatial geometry.

In 1973, 130 years after Hamilton’s discovery, already battle-tested at the 

rocket firing range, Branets and Shmyglevskiy published the work Application 

of Quaternions in Solid Body Orientation Problems.

17 The Nauka publishing 

house released the book two years after receiving the manuscript, which was 

the result of many years of research. The work is considered to be classic and 

has even been translated into Chinese. A grave illness prematurely took the 

life of Shmyglevskiy, and he was unable to admire his own work rendered in 

Chinese characters. Chinese scientists presented such a souvenir to Branets 

when he went to Beijing on official business.

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The methods of numerical integration of kinematical equations using 

quaternions that Branets and Shmyglevskiy proposed for use in attitudecontrol tasks of any flying vehicle, which mathematicians call a “solid body,” 

also solved problems of optimal control, i.e., maneuvers and attitude control 

with minimal power losses, and of stability of the process. However, even a 

gimballess system with the most brilliant mathematics must “begin at the 

beginning.” The “beginning” was the optical and even ionic sensors, which 

had already been mastered and were flying. If these sensors were supplemented 

with very simple angular velocity meters for each of the three orientation axes, 

then the control system would have the requisite set of baseline information.

I already mentioned that producing a coherent formulation of the problem 

for subcontracting chief designers required not only one’s wishes, but also one’s 

own specialists, who knew the actual capabilities of the subcontractor. After a 

subcontractor accepted an order for development, these specialists performed 

engineering supervision, protecting our interests and resolving the discrepancies 

that inevitably arose between what we demanded and what we actually got. 

These specialists were called curators, thereby emphasizing how they differed 

from pure developers. This division always seemed unjust to me. A specialist 

standing between two chiefs is, if he is a creative individual, capable of making 

contributions to the process of creating a new system that neither the customer 

nor the contractor came up with on their own.

We had such creative curators: for optical instruments—Stanislav 

Savchenko, whom I have already mentioned; for rendezvous radio systems—

Boris Nevzorov and Nina Sapozhnikova; and for gyroscopic instruments—Yuriy 

Bazhanov. Together with Lev Zvorykin, Bashkin’s deputy, Bazhanov took me 

out to an aviation design bureau that was able to manufacture lightweight, 

simple, and reliable angular rate sensors (DUS) per our requirements.18 My old 

acquaintance from prewar times—former Aviapribor Factory Chief Designer 

Yevgeniy Antipov—turned out to be the chief of the needed organization. The 

meeting gave us the opportunity to reminisce about our work during the hazy 

youth of the aviation industry. As fate had it, we had not seen each other a 

single time since 1934. After 30 years we very quickly came to terms with all 

the issues, and before long Antipov had signed off on the VPK’s draft decision, 

making him responsible for developing angular rate sensors according to the 

specification requirements of Korolev’s OKB-1.

For this revolutionary leap in control systems technology, the most difficult question for those times remained to be answered: where would we get 

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a good on-board computer? The history of the creation of on-board computers is fascinating and instructive. But its telling requires a special place and a 

separate chapter. In recent years on-board computers have blended into the 

structure of spacecraft control systems so organically that a young specialist 

beginning to work in our field simply cannot imagine how we could have 

flown without them.

When creating the Soyuz spacecraft, of all the motion-control problems, 

descent from orbit to Earth of the axially symmetric Descent Module with 

poor aerodynamics and low design overload required special treatment. A 

slight shifting of its center of mass in relation to its axis of symmetry created the lift of such a spacecraft. It was necessary to develop a very reliable 

structure, algorithms, and range and stabilization control instruments for the 

Descent Module, minimizing the area of the possible landing zone for a rapid 

search and crew evacuation. The descent control system should calm down 

the Descent Module so as to guarantee the initial conditions for a reliable 

introduction of the parachute system, which is controlled by an autonomous 

landing system. To ensure the reliability of the descent and landing control 

systems, they selected the simplest algorithms and used redundancy, and 

sometimes triple redundancy, of instruments and assemblies, the failure of 

which could have catastrophic consequences. For the first time, it was necessary to create not just new control technology, but also a new developmental 

organization, in which the baton of responsibility for motion control was 

passed from department to department, from the staff responsible for control of orbital flight to the descent control specialists, and from them to the 

landing system developers. In addition to their standard tasks, descent and 

landing control systems had to perform functions as part of the emergency 

rescue system during the insertion phase.

We created the three systems—descent control, landing control, and 

emergency rescue—in the form of automatic units, calling for no human 

intervention. Over a period of 30 years, in hundreds of launches, not a single 

one of these systems let us down. Both we and the Americans had catastrophes 

and off-nominal situations occur during the descent and landing phases for 

reasons attributable to other systems.

The history of the development of spacecraft control systems is 

part of the history of cosmonautics. Not wanting to thrust on the reader my 

own conception about the degree of responsibility of a human involved in the 

control loop, I shall move on to a description of actual events. I remind the 

reader that after the death of Vladimir Komarov on the first piloted 7K-OK 

spacecraft called Soyuz, there was a prolonged break in the flights of these 

vehicles so that the parachute portion of the landing system could undergo 

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substantial modification. For the flight testing of the modified vehicles and, at 

the same time, to test out the rendezvous and docking systems, we embarked 

upon launches of unpiloted 7K-OK vehicles under the name Kosmos.

Kosmos-186 and Kosmos-188 approached one another, docked, separated, 

and returned to Earth during the period from 27 October through 2 November 

1967. Kosmos-212 and Kosmos-213 executed a program of automatic rendezvous, docking, and safe landing from 14 through 20 April 1968. As the saying 

goes, “God helps those who help themselves,” and to be absolutely sure, on 

28 August 1968 a single 7K-OK vehicle, or Kosmos-238, was launched and 

safely returned to Earth.

To this day it is difficult to explain why the unpiloted 7K-OK vehicles 

were classified as anonymous, secret Kosmos vehicles. With a human being 

on board, the same vehicle was called a Soyuz. I dared to pose this question 

to the KGB officer assigned to us back then.19 He smiled and answered, “Our 

organization has nothing to do with this game of hide-and-seek. What to 

announce in TASS reports and how is the concern of political bureaucrats. 

They are convinced that the best way to keep state secrets is this inane, overly 

cautious approach and confusion in the open press. Such methods don’t increase 

the standing of our nation.”

Five successful flights of the 7K-OK, despite the fact that they were called 

Kosmoses, convinced not just us, the creators, but also all the skeptics from 

the Air Force, TsUKOS, and the VPK that it was time to switch to piloted 

launches. A governmental commission headed by the chief of LII of the Ministry 

of the Aviation Industry, Viktor Utkin, summarized the results of the work 

performed after the tragic death of Komarov and gave the clearance for piloted 

flights of 7K-OK vehicles.20 There was much arguing about the program for 

the first flight. We insisted on a complete repetition of automatic rendezvous 

and docking, but with a cosmonaut on board. Under pressure from the cosmonauts, Kamanin demanded maximum human involvement in rendezvous 

and docking control. They decided that from a distance of 150 to 200 meters 

the cosmonaut of the active vehicle would control the final approach process.

“To begin with, it’s not worth the risk,” said Keldysh at the next discussion. 

“Let the passive vehicle remain unpiloted and the active vehicle be piloted. This 

is already impressive. A vehicle carrying a cosmonaut approaches an unpiloted 

vehicle and docks with it.”

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Everyone agreed.

“But now we have to call both vehicles Soyuzes,” said one of the critically 

thinking members of the State Commission.

Together with the ballistics experts and control specialists, the planners 

began to schedule the program hour by hour and minute by minute. Mishin, 

with the support of Kamanin and Karas, insisted on landing both vehicles 

during the first half of the day. In late October, the days in our latitudes were 

already short. According to the program, the passive vehicle was inserted 

first. A day was set aside to thoroughly check it out in flight and, if necessary, 

perform an orbital correction so that a day later it would fly over the firing 

range, from which the piloted active vehicle would lift off to meet it at the 

calculated rendezvous point. Radio lock-on would take place immediately 

after orbital insertion. During the first orbit the vehicles would approach one 

another and dock. It was agreed that far approach should take place in automatic mode using the Igla radio system measuring relative motion parameters, 

and when the vehicle reached a distance of 200 meters, the cosmonaut of the 

active vehicle would switch off Igla from controlling the vehicle and perform 

berthing manually. The Igla on the unpiloted vehicle would remain activated 

and control it so that the funnel of the docking assembly cone was facing the 

probe of the active vehicle.

“If we show that we are capable of docking with our own vehicle right 

after liftoff, it means we are capable of going right up, if necessary, to an enemy 

satellite and destroying it.”

This argument was provided in favor of a liftoff with docking during the 

very first orbit, especially since the method had already been tried out in the 

two previous unpiloted dockings.

At one of the regular meetings on the flight program, which Bushuyev 

conducted, Zoya Degtyarenko, who represented the ballistics experts, pointed 

out that the most crucial berthing and docking segment was going to take place 

in the dark portion of the orbit.

“Why have you planned it like that?” Bushuyev fumed. “Set the launch 

time so that docking takes place in the sunlight portion.”

But then it would be necessary to abandon a guaranteed landing during 

the first half of the day, and we couldn’t let Rauschenbach and Bashkin scare 

us with “ionic holes.”

“No, these restrictions are absolutely necessary.”

“Why argue?” intervened Feoktistov. “Docking at night using lights is 

even more reliable than during the day when the Sun might fall in the field of 

vision of the optical sight.”

And so it was decided. The cosmonaut would have to learn to manually 

control the spacecraft using lights, which we would install on the passive vehicle. 

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Rauschenbach tasked Bashkin, Skotnikov, and Savchenko to develop the procedure for manual control using lights. The cosmonaut was supposed to observe 

the lights through a periscope sight (VSK) installed in the Descent Module.21

Two “upper” lights were constantly illuminated; two “lower” ones blinked. 

Using manual control, the cosmonaut was supposed to fire the approach and 

attitude-control engines so that the lights located in the angles of an imaginary 

trapezoid lined up in a straight line.

It all seemed very simple. The State Commission tasked Sergey Darevskiy 

with quickly devising a simplified simulator so that the process of orientation 

using lights could be understood not only by the creators of the manual control 

procedure, but by the cosmonauts as well. Kamanin, guarding the interests of 

the cosmonauts who had familiarized themselves with the control procedure 

using lights, was satisfied.

During these very hectic days of program development, I was occupied 

filling out flight readiness certificates and certificates for each of the systems. I 

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok is shown here signing copies of the first Russian edition of his 

memoirs Rakety i lyudi (Rockets and People) for famed aviator Mark Gallay at 

Moscow’s House of Journalists in 1995. Waiting in line is a former deputy to 

Korolev, A. P. Abramov.

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had to look into dozens of glitches that had cropped up during testing of the 

two vehicles, first at the KIS and now during preparation at the firing range. On 

one of those days, dropping by Bushuyev’s office, I bumped into Mark Gallay 

there. Despite the jealous attitude of Kamanin and all the Air Force training 

specialists involved with spaceflights, Gallay’s thoughts about the human factor 

had been decisive for Korolev. Possessing the exceptionally great experience 

of a combat-seasoned test pilot and aviation engineer, Gallay, a man with an 

acute and critical intellect, who remained outside departmental interests, gave 

surprisingly interesting advice on controlling piloted vehicles.22 He had become 

acquainted with Korolev back before the war and had also met up with him 

during the war at the sharashka in Kazan, when Korolev had tested airplanes 

with rocket boosters.23 Not a member of any official commission, Gallay had 

the opportunity to personally tell Korolev his views, which he was not always 

able to express in public.

After Korolev’s death, Gallay lost his main support at our OKB-1. Mishin 

didn’t take him to his bosom. Gallay maintained good relations with Bushuyev, 

Rauschenbach, and me.

Turning to me, Bushuyev said, “Mark Lazarevich has his doubts about 

manual docking in the dark.”

“I’ve had to land at night at unlit airfields,” Gallay began to reassure us. “I 

have to say that even for an experienced pilot this is a big risk. But what are you 

going to do if, after an air battle, you’ve run out of gas, and like it or not, you 

return to the ground. I’m one with the airplane until it touches the ground. 

I myself am touching the ground, not the airplane. During each flight, from 

takeoff to landing, the airplane and I are a single organism. The relationships 

between a cosmonaut and a spacecraft are completely different. A cosmonaut 

is in flight for the first time in his life. Perhaps he is a fantastic pilot. But not 

once, you understand, not once has he experienced liftoff on a rocket and the 

state of complete weightlessness. You don’t give him time to adapt and then 

you demand that, in the dark, looking through a sight with a very limited field 

of vision rather than through a big cockpit canopy, he take over control from a 

tried-and-true automatic system, and in its place begin to control a spacecraft 

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for the first time in his life, and at the same time, in complete darkness, get 

the active probe into the passive cone. Now, why would you take the risk and 

place a cosmonaut in a dangerous situation? At least let him fly for 24 hours 

before docking and become acclimated. We on Earth will make sure that a 

cosmonaut knows how to control the spacecraft and won’t do anything foolish.”

“We don’t have these 24 hours,” objected Bushuyev, “because they will 

require additional fuel consumption for correction, and our life-support reserves 

are not very big. We’re scrimping on every kilogram now.”

“Well, look. When we launched Gagarin, then Titov, and others, I was more 

confident. Even the manual emergency orientation for landing with Belyayev 

and Leonov, in my opinion, was simpler than what you are undertaking now. 

And on top of that, Darevskiy simply isn’t capable of making a simulator that 

reproduces the actual dynamics of the situation within these deadlines.”

“If docking fails in the dark, the cosmonaut can hover, and after about 

20 minutes he can make a second attempt in daylight without any lights.”

“Let’s hope so,” agreed Gallay. “The Air Force has two candidates for this 

flight—Beregovoy and Shatalov. Both are test pilots. Beregovoy saw combat 

on fighter-bombers under Kamanin’s command. I think that Kamanin will 

put him in the first slot.”

That’s what happened. Kamanin prudently coordinated the candidacy of 

Hero of the Soviet Union Georgiy Beregovoy with the Commander-in-Chief of 

the Air Force and with the Central Committee. The State Commission agreed 

with his proposal. According to the preparation schedule, the launch of the first 

unpiloted 7K-OK, which was referred to as Soyuz-2, was set for 25 October, 

while the piloted 7K-OK, or Soyuz-3, was set to lift off on 26 October 1968.

On Wednesday, 16 October, Bushuyev and I were called in to the minister’s office. Afanasyev explained that he had been asked to report to the 

Politburo about piloted spaceflights. The unexpected summons had him very 

nervous and worried. I had never before seen Afanasyev like this, somewhat 

dismayed. They had warned him that he would have no more than 10 minutes for the report. Sergey Aleksandrovich asked us to “work a little” on the 

text of the 10-minute report with him and assist him with the responses 

to possible difficult questions. We “worked a little” and left the minister at 

10 p.m. In parting, he thanked us and said that he would work another 3 

hours or so on his own.

In the morning, Bushuyev and Rumyantsev did a final edit on the report 

at the ministry. At 3 p.m., Afanasyev appeared before the Politburo. However, 

contrary to his expectations, they did not give him the floor. Brezhnev, who 

was conducting the meeting, said that the minister did not need to be heard.

“I spoke with Mishin,” declared Leonid Ilyich. “He assured me that everything was ready and we needed to launch a man into space. Who is against this?”

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No one spoke out against it. Only Keldysh, who was present at the session, 

asked for the floor and for about 5 minutes talked about the work performed 

over the past year and the program for the upcoming flight. When Afanasyev 

returned to his office he telephoned me on the “Kremlin line” and said that 

his report would be left for history, but he thanked Bushuyev and me for our 

help at a crucial moment.

On the cold Moscow morning of Monday, 21 October, Shabarov and I 

arrived at our airport, Vnukovo-3. A piercing wind drove wet snow mixed with 

fine, stinging rain. We endured the unwritten boarding protocol—no one enters 

the plane until the brass show up. We waited for the arrival of Afanasyev and 

Keldysh. Only after them did we climb the stairs into the Tu-134.

In Tyuratam the Sun was shining. After the foul autumn weather in Moscow 

we were carried off to the sweet weather of the steppes cooling off from the 

summer heat. At Site No. 2, I settled into cottage No. 1 next to Korolev’s cottage. Recently they had placed a memorial plaque there made of pink granite 

with a bas-relief of Korolev: “Here lived and worked Chief Designer and 

Academician Sergey Pavlovich Korolev. 1956–1965.” The poplar trees that had 

grown up around the cottages in the stillness filled the air with an aroma that 

was unusual for the steppes. That evening, as part of a large retinue with the 

minister, we drove around the N-1 launch sites under construction.

The Soyuz-3 launch was being prepared to take place from Site No. 31. The 

next morning Beregovoy had his “sit-in” and received an additional briefing. 

That evening in the MIK at Site No. 2, an imposing State Commission gathered.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had such a gathering,” said Isayev, who 

was sitting next to me. Afanasyev’s summons to the Politburo was not in 

vain. Glushko, Barmin, Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, Konopatov, Iosifyan, Yurevich, 

Lobanov, Khrustalev, Severin, Darevskiy, and Bratslavets had flown in for 

the State Commission meeting.24 Mishin, Karas, and Kurushin sat next to 

Kirillov in the presidium of the State Commission. The readiness check of all 

the services began with the launch vehicle. Aleksandr Soldatenkov was thoroughly prepared and confidently responded to questions concerning glitches 

that had occurred on all Semyorkas during launches over the past six months. 

After the reports about complete readiness, the State Commission made the 

decision to roll out the launch vehicle and unpiloted spacecraft 7K-OK No. 11 

to launch Site No. 1.

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On the evening of 23 October, at Site No. 17 in the cosmonauts’ residence, 

a ceremonial session of the State Commission took place with the showing of 

movie and television footage. Afanasyev spoke at the meeting.

“Today we made a very important decision,” he said. “There has been a 

prolonged break in piloted flights. We have suffered a heavy loss. But we have 

overcome this barrier. We have performed more than 70 test drops to check out 

the parachute systems and more than 700 tests of all kinds on individual elements. We have complete confidence in the success of the upcoming flight. With 

great satisfaction we accept the proposal for the flight of Georgiy Timofeyevich 

Beregovoy, Hero of the Soviet Union and distinguished test pilot.25 We are 

confident that he will fulfill this crucial assignment.

Keldysh also spoke.

“I would like to wish comrade Beregovoy success in the fulfillment of this 

very important assignment. With his flight, Georgiy Timofeyevich will restore 

faith in the reliability of the piloted programs. All of us have been preparing 

for this flight for a long time. Hundreds of people have invested a great deal 

of heart and energy in order to ensure success, which is so essential after the 

compulsory break. Once again I wish comrade Beregovoy success in the fulfillment of his assignment.”

Karas represented the Ministry of Defense.

“The personnel of the cosmodrome and of the military units participating in the work by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket 

Forces will ensure the fulfillment of all tasks assigned to them.”

In an emotional response Beregovoy thanked everyone for their confidence 

and promised to make every effort to fulfill the assignment of the Party and 

government.

According to the staffing chart, I was GOGU deputy chief and was supposed to be at the control center in Yevpatoriya. On 24 October, after reporting 

before the commission, a group of comrades and I flew from Tyuratam to Saki 

on an An-24. With a stopover for refueling in Uralsk, the flight took more 

than 8 hours. By the time we landed it was 1900 hours. The Crimea, even in 

late October, is still the Crimea. After freshening up at the hotel, I enjoyed an 

excellent dinner in the hospitable officers’ dining room. The table abounded 

with the bounty of Crimean nature. But it was the lively exchange of news 

and the stories full of good-natured humor about the latest “bobiks,” which 

inevitably occur in large rocket-space systems on the ground before a launch, 

that truly delighted those who had just arrived and the local “aborigines.”

 25.

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People in the Control Loop

The intense work on flight control of Soyuz-2 began on the morning of 25 

October. Liftoff proceeded normally. The orbital parameters were unusually 

close to the design parameters.26 For all the groups and services of the Command 

and Measurement Complex, the 24 hours of work on the unpiloted Soyuz was 

excellent training before the piloted launch.

Early in the morning on 26 October 1968, during brief time segments of 

coverage, the ballistics centers of NII-4, OPM, and TsKBEM were supposed to 

process the orbital measurements of the first orbits over our territory, calculate 

the precise time for the liftoff of the active vehicle, and transmit the data to 

the firing range 2 hours before the launch.

The beginning of the 13th orbit at 0500 hours was in the coverage zone 

of two Far East tracking stations. A 10-minute communication session was 

sufficient to determine that all the on-board systems of Soyuz-2 were operating 

normally. By 0900 hours the ballistics centers had sent telegrams: “Launch 

time 1134 hours, 18.1 seconds. Permissible launch delay for beginning of near 

rendezvous no more than 1 second.”

The idea was for the Igla radio system on the passive and active vehicles to 

warm up and switch on for mutual radio lock-on right after the insertion of 

the active vehicle into orbit. Radio lock-on would be ensured if, immediately 

after the orbital insertion of Soyuz-2, the distance to Soyuz-3 did not exceed 

20 kilometers. We issued a command to NIP-3 in Saryshagan to prepare to 

cancel the near rendezvous program loaded before the launch if liftoff were 

to be delayed by more than one second. In this case, GOGU would have to 

decide to issue a command to activate the far rendezvous mode from NIP-15 

in Ussuriysk.

Very precise work was required of the ballistics centers and communications services so that we in Yevpatoriya could make decisions and transmit 

them to the NIPs in a matter of seconds. The actual liftoff time with errors 

of tenths of a second would have to be reported from Tyuratam to NIP-16 

within 3 minutes.

At 1125 hours the T minus 5 minutes announcement is made. For 

the time being, communication hasn’t let us down. The usual, but always worrisome, reports are arriving in the control room: “Feed one,” “purge,” “T minus 

1 minute,” “pressurization,” “feed two,” “we have tower pullback!” “Liftoff!” 

There is an agonizing pause, and then: “Thirty seconds—flight is normal!”

 26.

475
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

And then Beregovoy’s voice breaks through: “It’s a go...it’s a go! Slight 

shaking, mild shaking.... Nose wandering a bit.... G-load increasing no more 

than three.... We have separation of the strap-ons.... Fairing ejection....” 

Beregovoy continues to give a running report of his surface impressions.

“Attention!” a voice from the ballistics center interrupts. “We are reporting 

the precise time of liftoff: 1134 hours, 18.4 seconds.”

The error in relation to the design value is just 0.3 seconds!

Agadzhanov looks at Tregub, then at me, we nod, and he picks up the 

microphone: “Now hear this! This is 12 speaking, informing 13 not to issue 

the cancel command!27 We are working using the primary program!”

NIP-3, which is referred to as 13 over communication lines, reports, 

“Cosmonaut’s pulse is 104.” And almost simultaneously reports come in from 

Saryshagan and Ussuriysk about telemetry data. Our experienced telemetry 

operators, who can give a running commentary directly from the tapes, had 

arrived ahead of time at these tracking stations.

“Shutdown from integrator.... We have separation!... All elements 

deployed.... Igla antennas and solar arrays deployed.... We have target presence signal!... Range 1,000 meters!”

There is a rapturous whisper in the control room.

“What a shot! Entering the zone with no more than a kilometer’s deviation 

right after separation without any correction! Way to go, ballistics!”

The latter compliment is addressed to Zoya Degtyarenko and Vladimir 

Yastrebov, who modestly mumble that it wasn’t they, but the ballistics centers 

that had calculated so precisely.

Yastrebov set the record straight: “According to our data, it was 10 kilometers before lock-on. The report of 1,000 meters was after approach with 

Igla’s assistance.”

During the last seconds of the communication from Ussuriysk a report 

came from Beregovoy via Zarya: “Range—40.”

After Soyuz-3 left the coverage zone, alarming telemetry data came 

in from Ussuriysk. As it approached Soyuz-2, the Igla antenna platform on 

Soyuz-3 was drifting in some inexplicable way in the pitch angle. The consumption of working fluid from the DPO system during the last seconds of 

communication was higher than any norms.

The most agonizing minutes had set in. We waited for the appearance 

of two spacecraft at once in our zone. How would they arrive: mated or 

 27.

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People in the Control Loop

asunder? The experience of the two previous dockings allowed us to hope 

that we would see rigidly docked spacecraft in our zone. It was an hour of 

excruciating anticipation. Just 40 meters separated the two vehicles before 

we lost communication. In any event, Bashkin and Kozhevnikova were 

instructed to prepare a correction maneuver program for a repeat approach. 

But that wasn’t necessary. As soon as the two spacecraft appeared in the 

coverage zone, the reports that came from the telemetry operators and from 

Beregovoy himself immediately quashed hope of the possibility for another 

docking attempt.

Beregovoy reported, “At 12:25, as soon as the vehicle emerged from the 

shadow, I saw that the vehicle had rolled with an error of around 180°. I 

attempted to correct the roll using the DO-1 system for 3 minutes but realized that it was dangerous to continue approach. Pressure in the DPO system 

was 110 atmospheres, and per instructions I had to shut down the system if 

pressure fell to 135.”

Cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev was conducting communication via Zarya. He 

asked, “How do you feel?”

“I feel great. My mood is lousy,” responded Beregovoy.

One could understand how he felt. He had given up flying, trained for 

a long time, earned the right to perform a crucial spaceflight, and pledged to 

everyone that he would fulfill the assignment of the Party and government. 

How could he explain to his comrades that in the darkness he was unable to 

make heads or tails of the four lights and, after taking over control from the 

automatic system in the final approach zone, the vehicle had begun to roll with 

an error to the point where it was upside down? The conditions for automatic 

final approach and docking had been ideal. And with his intervention, he had 

not only messed everything up, but for some reason he had used up so much 

propellant that the ground wouldn’t permit him to perform a repeat approach 

now. There was only enough working fluid for maneuvers to return to Earth. 

And after all, he was 47 years old! Would he have another opportunity to fly 

into space?

We convened a special on-the-spot technical management meeting. One 

after another, the team members gave their reports that all systems on both 

spacecraft were operating normally. Reproduction of the telemetry data showed 

that the cosmonaut had operated the controls very actively. There had been 

an excessive consumption of the working fluids due to the cosmonaut’s inexplicable actions.

“During automatic approach of the vehicles, 30 kilograms of propellant 

were consumed, and after the cosmonaut took over control, consumption was 

more than 40 kilograms in 2 minutes,” reported the analysis group.

“He was fighting with Igla,” said Mnatsakanyan.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

The cosmonaut’s actions particularly outraged Bashkin and Feoktistov. I 

stood up for Beregovoy.

“We did some great things, too. We devised a program that makes a 

human being, who has just endured extremely strong g-loads and who is 

experiencing weightlessness for the first time in his life, without preliminary 

training, 10 minutes after liftoff, in the dark, search with a sight for four 

lights and move a control stick so that the shape of an imaginary trapezoid 

is changed in some incomprehensible way! We ourselves are at fault for 

agreeing to manual approach without any adaptation, and at night no less, 

and the ballistics experts didn’t want to select liftoff times so that approach 

would take place in daylight.”

“I don’t accept this blame,” objected Zoya Degtyarenko. “It’s your comrades’ fault that we were forced into a docking at night. They were afraid of 

ionic holes, and the brass demands landings, even off-nominal ones, during 

daylight only. Preference should have been given to approach and docking right 

after liftoff in daylight, and we would have done that. What’s more, Feoktistov 

argued that the approach and rendezvous at night using lights was even easier 

than during the day.”

Tempers flared, but we had no time for squabbling. We needed to quickly 

reorganize the program and prepare the assignments for landing. A report 

came in from Tyuratam that an Il-18 carrying Minister Afanasyev, Keldysh, 

Kerimov, Mishin, Kamanin, Karas, and all the chief designers—75 persons 

in all—was flying out to us.

“Now, not just Beregovoy but GOGU as well is going to start controlling 

with precision until everything is upside down. Because of a proliferation of 

management, we’re going to confuse the piloted vehicle with the unpiloted 

one,” hypothesized someone who still had a sense of humor.

“Stop joking!” announced Agadzhanov. “A report has come in that on the 

passive vehicle, where, thank God, there isn’t a cosmonaut, the 45K Sun-star 

tracker messed up again during the orientation session. But it’s impossible to 

figure out what happened. Through a blunder of the control group programmers, information was downlinked from the flight recorder to Saryshagan 

instead of to us. You see, they decided to free up our tracking station for the 

downlink of information about Beregovoy’s actions.”

Two “emergency rescue teams” were formed: one just for Soyuz-2, and the 

other to downlink Beregovoy’s work and analyze his actions.

When the members of the recently arrived State Commission and their 

“entourage” filled our small control room, we tried to distract the attention 

of the brass with detailed reports about the results of the first day so that they 

wouldn’t interfere with the ongoing operations. Beregovoy had been loaded 

down with experiments on constellation identification, photographing Earth’s 

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People in the Control Loop

snow cover, studying the twilight background, observing luminous particles, 

and checking out the 45K Sun-star tracker.

“You’re chasing me like a rabbit,” complained Beregovoy, receiving one 

radiogram after another from Earth.

“You asked for it,” retorted Shatalov, who was communicating with him 

via Zarya.

During the night leading up to 29 October, I was still the responsible 

duty officer for GOGU. My partner monitoring the actions and communicating with the cosmonaut was Pavel Belyayev. According to the schedule, 

Beregovoy was supposed to be sleeping, and we could calmly chat about what 

had caused his errors.

“All the same, that was very stressful,” said Belyayev. “It’s not at all like 

controlling an airplane. They trust a pilot with his first solo flight after many 

flights with an instructor. It used to be simple for us cosmonauts, because not 

only did they not require us to intervene in control, but they also forbade us 

from doing so. Automatics did everything for us. Before our flight with Leonov 

on Voskhod, I met Sergey Pavlovich in the dining hall when I was off duty and 

asked, ‘Couldn’t we try manual control in the upcoming flight?’ He said, ‘No, 

under no circumstances.’ And despite the prohibition, we had to do it. The 

attitude-control system failed for 

the first time, and Korolev himself 

gave permission from the ground 

for manual orientation and to fire 

the SKDU for landing.”28

Belyayev recounted very vividly how he and Leonov attempted 

manual orientation for the first 

time, leaning against one another, 

“so as not to float away in zero 

gravity.”

“We did everything calmly. 

Only later did we realize that if 

From the author’s archives.

Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov 

congratulates Boris Chertok on his 

80th birthday in 1992.

 28.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

we had made a mistake, we might have remained in orbit. Before firing 

the engine I took a look at the globe and understood: if we rush we’ll come 

down in the water. We need to fly over Europe. Thoughts flashed through 

my head very quickly. Leshka [i.e., Leonov] was also looking; he checked 

how the vehicle was oriented—for acceleration or braking. Before firing the 

engine we managed to seat ourselves so that the center of mass did not shift 

very much relative to the design value. We fired the braking engine—dust 

immediately shot downwards. That’s it! That means we’re braking! Next came 

rocking, separation, a cracking sound. There was no fear. We were going back 

to Earth! Closer to home.

“At any rate, there’s no need to berate Beregovoy. At the launch site the 

tension grows even before you take your seat in the spacecraft. Then all these 

commands transmitted from the bunker. The powered flight segment. After 

all, it isn’t like taking off in an airplane. A rocket is carrying you into space, 

but who’s controlling it? Your automatics. A human being in a spacecraft is 

powerless to do anything during that time. Just wait: the spacecraft will either 

go into orbit or it won’t. From his running commentary I felt that he was 

very excited. He spoke hurriedly, with unnecessary details. It was evident that 

he was very worried. And we could also tell by his pulse. G-loads and then, 

immediately, weightlessness. There is always a temporary mental fog. Even for 

such an experienced pilot. I remember it happened to me. But we were able to 

calmly come to our senses during the first hours, and right off the bat he had 

to use the optical sight to figure out what to do with those lights. A human 

being performs without making mistakes if he is well trained, like pilots landing during wartime. Wounded, on fire, but they still landed at their airfield: 

something in the subconscious mind switched on. To tell you the truth, I feel 

sorry for Beregovoy. It will be difficult for him to explain to you why it turned 

out the way it did.”

On the evening of 29 October, 24 hours before the landing, the State 

Commission heard the preliminary reports about the reasons for the failure to 

fulfill the program. It was clear that the cosmonaut had committed irreversible control errors. However, Kamanin and the cosmonauts objected to this 

wording of the findings in which all the blame was placed on the cosmonaut. 

In the debate, Mishin’s accusation, that the Cosmonaut Training Center had 

a frivolous attitude toward cosmonaut training, triggered anger.

“Here we don’t need pilots. Our engineer could have executed such a 

simple operation. And we can get by without parachute jumps!”

Keldysh, Karas, and Kerimov, who inwardly agreed with Mishin, understood 

that they needed to smooth things over. Ultimately, the State Commission’s 

secretariat was tasked with drafting wording that contained no direct accusations that singled out the cosmonaut.

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People in the Control Loop

“And all of this because we don’t have a single strong-willed master of the 

flight program,” said Karas during a calm discussion of the results of the day 

over dinner. “Korolev never would have agreed to manual docking at night 

after two splendid automatic ones.”

Two days later we listened to Beregovoy’s explanations on the ground.

“They gave us the flight program very late. We need to know everything 

that is to be done during the flight at least a month before the flight so that 

it can be run through and debated. It took me half a day to adapt to weightlessness. An antenna in the field of vision hampered observation through the 

VSK. There’s a shiny object in front of your eyes the entire time, and it’s difficult to adapt in the darkness. But I did see the lights. I was going after the 

trapezoid; I tried to line it up. The range to the passive vehicle was decreasing, 

and the trapezoid was getting bigger. I braked at a range of 30 meters. I didn’t 

understand that I needed to turn over. I decided to go out into the light and 

figure it out there. When I was stationkeeping, the pressure in the DPO was 

160. I wanted to get the camera. I was fumbling around in the bag with the 

camera and snagged the control stick. The spacecraft spun. The spacecraft was 

very sensitive, and I couldn’t feel this through the control sticks. I couldn’t 

find my place in the man-machine structure. The whole time I had the feeling 

that propellant consumption increased at the slightest movement of the stick. 

There was virtually no dead zone. This is good for an automatic system, but 

it generates unnecessary nervousness in a human being. An unpleasant feeling of nausea continued for 10 to 12 hours. Self-control is better than when 

you are continuously controlled from the ground. You feel like a powerless 

passenger or guest—this isn’t my style. Contact between the human being 

and the spacecraft needs to change. You need to feel effort when you use the 

control sticks. Before stationkeeping in the darkness the pressure was 160. I 

lost around 30 atmospheres out of carelessness. I could have flipped over on the 

light side. But then there still wouldn’t have been anything left for approach. 

A cosmonaut needs to be allowed to fly for at least 12 hours, and then load 

him with maneuvers so that there’s no response lag. Adaptation is necessary. 

A spacecraft weighs 6 tons, and when you control it you can’t feel any effort 

in the control stick. We pilots are not accustomed to this. The training procedure needs to be changed. Moreover, the simulator doesn’t give a true idea of 

the possible situation. We learned how to take up slight roll error. But then it 

turned out that the passive vehicle had flipped ‘upside down’ by almost 180°. 

We weren’t trained for this situation. Now they’ve just explained to me that 

you also need to look where the main antenna of Igla is located. This antenna 

isn’t shown on the simulator at all....”

I have cited only the most interesting excerpts from Beregovoy’s report. 

Despite his “lousy mood,” Beregovoy made a lot of valuable comments aimed 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

at improving the spacecraft’s operation and increasing its degree of comfort. 

My colleagues, who were proponents of pure automatics, could have celebrated. In this case, the human being had not been able to cope with a task 

that automatic systems had executed two times before this. But no one was 

jubilant and no one gloated.

I have dwelled on the story of Beregovoy’s flight in such detail because it 

was very instructive. The developers themselves—planners, automatics specialists, and ballistics experts—all of them in concert had placed a human being in 

conditions where he was the decisive yet least reliable link in the control loop. 

Not only had we assured ourselves, but we had also shown the whole world 

that we knew how to reliably dock spacecraft without human involvement. 

Why was it necessary during the first piloted flight after the death of Komarov 

to include a human being in the control loop?

This plan had its own logic. On a piloted spacecraft the person needs to 

be included in the control loop in case of a failure of the primary automatic 

loop. But this person needs to be provided with observation, control, and 

monitoring equipment. All conceivable failures of the automatic loop need to 

be rehearsed on the ground long before the flight, and the future cosmonaut 

must prove on the simulator, not in flight, that he is capable in an off-nominal 

and even in an emergency situation of substituting for the automatic systems.

All of the mass media reported about the latest triumph in space. There 

was not so much as a hint at the reception at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, 

or at the press conferences, or in dozens of various articles that there had been 

any trouble whatsoever during the flight. Despite the warm congratulations of 

the Party and the government, we, the actual culprits of the “major victory in 

space,” were demoralized. These were more or less the truths that I pronounced 

at the debriefing meetings among my control specialist colleagues when discussing the results of Beregovoy’s flight. The road from the pronouncement of 

these obvious truths to their practical implementation proved difficult.

Just two months after Beregovoy’s flight, the active Soyuz-4 spacecraft, 

piloted by Vladimir Shatalov, was launched (on 14 January 1969), and two days 

later—the passive Soyuz-5 spacecraft with Boris Volynov, Aleksey Yeliseyev, and 

Yevgeniy Khrunov on board (on 15 January 1969). This time no one demanded 

a docking immediately after liftoff. Shatalov was given time for adaptation. 

Twenty-four hours later he executed automatic approach and manual final 

approach in daylight. We did without the notorious trapezoid formed by the 

four lights. After the manual final approach operation performed by Shatalov, 

I didn’t pass up the opportunity to tell my comrades in Yevpatoriya about the 

warning that Gallay had given Bushuyev and me a while back.

482
People in the Control Loop

“And what’s more, we didn’t listen to your overly cautious colleagues regarding the ionic holes,” said Zoya Degtyarenko. “The planners had to look for 

reserves for the extra day of flight before approach, while we ballistics experts 

found daylight time for two spacecraft to land.”

“Yes, now one can admit that on our recommendation Beregovoy’s 

flight program was risky. At least it is good that everything ended well,” said 

Rauschenbach.

However, our chief spacecraft planner, cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov, 

and Rauschenbach’s very close associate Yevgeniy Bashkin didn’t agree with us 

and contended that we had lost a day of flight for no good reason just because 

Beregovoy made a mistake. If he had docked, then we would have undoubtedly 

approved this same program unanimously for a new crew as well.

Subsequent events showed that we had nevertheless put our minds at 

ease too quickly and had not learned all the lessons that we could have from 

Beregovoy’s flight. In October of the same year of 1969, three spacecraft—

Soyuz-6, Soyuz-7, and Soyuz-8—were launched one after another in a group 

flight. Two of them were supposed to approach one another in automatic mode. 

The crew comprising Vladimir Shatalov and Aleksey Yeliseyev, who already 

had experience in space, were tasked to perform final approach and docking in 

manual mode. This time there was a failure in the Igla system, which excluded 

the possibility of subsequent automatic approach.

The ground, i.e., the control center in Yevpatoriya, together with the ballistics centers measuring the orbital parameters, repeatedly gave the crews data 

for correction in the hope that they could approach to the extent necessary 

for Shatalov’s experienced crew to be able to take over control and carry out 

manual final approach. The spacecraft did in fact manage to approach to the 

point of visual contact. However, there was no equipment on board to measure 

the relative range and velocity between the vehicles, and while maneuvering, 

the cosmonauts kept losing visual control.

During subsequent evaluations of this flight within my inner circle, we 

directed a lot of strong language at ourselves. There was nothing to blame the 

cosmonauts for. We had not provided them with fundamental autonomous 

navigation equipment for mutual approach.

The failure with rendezvous encouraged basic research and development 

of backup systems for Igla in the event of its failure. One such system, based 

on the use of x-ray radiation, was the ARS, proposed by Yevgeniy Yurevich, 

chief of the OKB of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. This system itself 

was not included in the automatic control loop. It was a measurement system 

and made it possible to perform manual control at short distances, receiving 

information about the range and velocity of approach.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

The off-nominal situations described above are examples of the failure of 

cosmonauts engaged in the control loop to perform an assignment because of 

a combination of two factors: the fault of the systems developers hobbled by a 

lack of appropriate simulators of the real-world circumstances, and an overestimation of the capabilities of a human being when preparing a flight program.

If a ground crew is responsible for the execution of a task rather than 

an on-board crew, the spacecraft might break down through the fault of the 

ground services. An instructive example of this is the tragedy of DOS No. 3. 

After the death of Dobrovolskiy’s crew in June 1971, there was a prolonged break 

in piloted flights. Modifications of the Soyuz vehicles for an absolute guarantee 

of the crew’s safety in the event of depressurization dragged on for more than a 

year. During this time a second orbital station was manufactured—DOS No. 2. 

It was prepared for launch in mid-1972. This station carried with it the hope to 

restore piloted flights, so necessary for the rehabilitation of our cosmonautics 

against the background of a series of American expeditions to the Moon.

But fate continued to pummel us. The “hot summer” of 1971 at Baykonur 

handed off the baton of failures to the hot summer of 1972. On 29 July 1972, 

the Proton launch vehicle flew “over the hill” and DOS No. 2 was transformed 

into formless fragments of metal strewn over the steppe.29 Once again there was 

an all-hands mobilization to speed up preparation of DOS No. 3. This was a 

second-generation station. The staff of TsKBEM, KB Salyut, ZIKh, and dozens 

of subcontracting organizations began developing the station, taking into consideration the experience of the flight of the first Salyut. In December 1972, DOS 

No. 3, which had earlier been dubbed Salyut-2, was delivered to the engineering 

facility at Site No. 2. Preparations began the very first day in all-hands rush mode.

Slightly ahead of us at Chelomey’s firing range launch sites, they were preparing for the launch of the first Almaz. Both the political and state leadership 

encouraged the competition between TsKBEM with Chief Designer Mishin 

and TsKBM, headed by General Designer Chelomey. Now, more than 30 years 

later, the Soviet Union’s creation of two orbital stations at the same time seems 

an incredible waste. Twenty-five years later, the Russian budget was incapable 

of supporting the existence in space of the unique Mir orbital station, while 

in 1973 they were about to launch two stations: the Almaz for the Ministry 

of Defense and DOS No. 3 in the interests of science and politics.

 29.

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People in the Control Loop

The Almaz lifted off on 3 April 1973. It was called Salyut-2. Right after 

it was inserted into orbit they detected a depressurization of the station.30

Salyut-2 ceased to exist on 28 May 1973. Now all hopes were pinned to 

DOS No. 3.

DOS No. 3 had been substantially modified compared with the first two. 

Three solar array panels were installed on the station, each one with autonomous orientation on the Sun. Rauschenbach’s departments had developed 

the super-economical Kaskad (Cascade) attitude-control system to extend the 

station’s service life. To generate control moment in the effectors, one could 

use the economical and rapid orientation mode. In the rapid, more efficient 

mode, three times as many rocket control nozzles were fired. The Delta onboard navigation system, which enabled the cosmonauts to independently 

determine and predict the orbital flight parameters, appeared for the first 

time. The water recovery system was also an innovation. Compared with 

the first Salyut, DOS No. 3 was packed with a rich assortment of scientific 

instruments. All of these improvements came at a price—power reserves 

had to be found.

The planners, having no real opportunity to reduce the station’s mass, 

having no desire to deplete the program by “throwing out” science equipment, and without having received the approval of the launch vehicle’s chief 

designer to increase the total mass that Proton would insert into orbit, made 

the decision to lower the orbital altitude. The lower the orbit, the greater the 

payload the launch vehicle was capable of inserting.

The aspiration to “drag” as large a payload as possible into space by lowering the altitude inevitably required a rapid raising of the orbit after separation 

from the launch vehicle using the DOS’s own orbital correction engine. The 

computed initial orbit was fairly low, and taking into account the possible 

insertion error in the worst-case scenario, such a large spacecraft, in terms of 

ballistics, could not stay in that orbit for more than three or four days. The 

more time that elapsed after orbital insertion before raising the orbit using 

the station’s own propellant, the more propellant it would have to consume. 

Delaying raising the orbit was also forbidden because the ballistics experts 

might miscalculate. If the atmosphere turned out to be “denser,” the station 

might “bury itself in” on the second day. Then there would certainly not be 

enough propellant to save it.

 30.

485
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

David R. Woods

The breakdown of the T2K mission profile shows the two major orbital changes 

used to test the main LK engine in Earth orbit. This profile shows the flight of 

Kosmos-379.

Based on the results of the flights of Kosmos-398 in February 1971 and 

dozens of Soyuzes, the effect of the exhaust stream of attitude-control engines 

on the signals of ionic sensors was discovered.31 But the engines had to be 

fired to dampen angular velocities and then to search for and orient using 

the oncoming ion flux. After the sensors locked on to the ion flux, firing the 

engines could markedly increase the level of interference and even block the 

legitimate signal altogether. In this case, stabilization using the maximum ion 

flux value was compromised. Large oscillations in the pitch and heading planes 

relative to the velocity vector are possible.

New ionic sensors were installed on DOS No. 3 for the first time. Instead 

of two separate pitch and heading sensors, they developed one that gave the 

 31.

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People in the Control Loop

control system a signal for two axes. This sensor had one common input for 

the oncoming ion flux. If noise from the engines went to this input, then it 

gave rise to false signals now coming over two channels at once. Before the 

flights, the control system didn’t undergo ground testing with an actual ion 

flux, much less with a simulation of exhaust interference. It was also noted 

that interference behaves differently depending on the geographic latitude and 

orientation relative to Earth’s magnetic field. It would seem that, in view of 

this, it was absolutely necessary to exercise maximum caution with the new 

orbital station: activate the ionic system in Yevpatoriya’s coverage zone only after 

settling down, after using the infrared vertical mode and low-thrust engines 

for this. But that takes time! Such a cautious control program required using 

up at least two and perhaps three orbits! Just setting up the station in terms of 

roll and pitch using the infrared vertical took almost an entire orbit.

Our telemetry and launch vehicle control specialists had learned to report 

in real time: “Thirty seconds, pitch, yaw, spin normal; pressure in chambers 

normal; flight normal....” Now we also wanted to achieve this degree of 

efficiency when controlling the DOSes. The most reliable maneuver control 

method should have been selected only after analyzing the tests. The waiving 

of control system tests was an error that the control system developers made.

TsKBEM management, the chief designer, and the heads of complexes and 

departments were so absorbed with testing DOS No. 3 at the engineering facility that they didn’t devote the proper attention to developing the flight control 

program. The planners simply did not issue the main defining document—the 

ground rules for flight control. Consequently, the control service did not develop 

a detailed program signed off on by everyone (above all by the control system 

developers) with a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day schedule of the 

control modes and each of the commands issued to the spacecraft. To a certain 

extent this was a reflection of the traditional guerilla manner in which we had 

worked controlling the first Soyuzes. But then the GOGU chiefs—Agadzhanov, 

myself, Tregub, and Rauschenbach—had actually constituted a think tank, 

which improvised in real time and drew up a program for each session over the 

course of the flight in the absence of approved flight programs. The program 

was discussed in the gap between communication sessions; sometimes changes 

were introduced during the actual session. This was possible thanks to the rapid 

processing of telemetry information, which systems specialists conducted virtually in real time sitting next to the telemetry operators.

On the day of the launch, in Yevpatoriya from the old GOGU lineup, there 

was Yakov Tregub, the flight director. His military deputy was Colonel Mikhail 

Pasternak. At the firing range on the day of the liftoff of DOS No. 3 were the State 

Commission, Mishin, Semyonov, Feoktistov, myself, and the main developers of all 

the systems. Just one of our specialists on the motion control system and just one 

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telemetry information-processing specialist were sitting at NIP-15 in Ussuriysk. 

Two shifts of specialists on the attitude-control system (two men per shift) were 

working at NIP-16 in Yevpatoriya, which played the role of the mission control 

center (TsUP). But low staffing wasn’t the main shortcoming of the ground control complex. Despite the experience that had already been gained in real-time 

telemetry processing and data transmission, during the flight of DOS No. 3 the 

people monitoring and controlling the flight acted slower than they needed to. 

This was certainly not because they were slovenly, but quite the contrary, because 

they sought to introduce rigid military order and discipline. Groups of telemetry, 

analysis, and systems specialists worked in isolation from one another, “in order 

not to disturb others,” and the information made its way to the person who really 

could assess what was going on with the system only after passing through a long 

chain of people receiving, transmitting, and reporting. Information came from 

distant stations to NIP-16 in the form of telegrams, the content of which had 

been encoded, and upon receipt it had to be decoded followed by the mandatory 

registration of all the messages as was the procedure with the document control of 

classified material. Throughout all of this a chain of command was also observed: 

before information requiring an immediate decision reached the flight director, it 

passed consecutively through the NIP chief, the heads of the communications or 

telemetry groups, the information-security service, and the analysis group. NIP-16 

was the first to try out an automatic telemetry information processing system called 

STI-90, which was developed at NII-885. The ground-based M-220 computer 

was used for the automatic processing. The military authorities at KIK in concert 

with NII-885 began to install this system at all NIPs that had telemetry stations. 

However, this new system had not been mastered to the extent that it could be 

entrusted to the “old hands” accustomed to manual telemetry processing.

For the sake of raising the orbit during the first orbit, at the request of 

the planners, we elected not to perform the preliminary tests on the control 

system. Having made the mistake that I mentioned earlier, we were obliged 

to set up a real-time flight control service. Even with that primitive technology, this was possible, a fact that we had learned from our experience with 

previous space launches.

One more fateful error in the tragic chain of events led to the loss of DOS 

No. 3. After its insertion into orbit, the State Commission received a report 

from NIP-3 (Saryshagan) that all of the structural elements and solar arrays 

had deployed.32 Twelve minutes after liftoff, NIP-15 in Ussuriysk transmitted 

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a command to the spacecraft to activate ionic orientation using the high-thrust 

engines in the effector system.

Subsequent investigation showed that the documentation on hand at 

NIP-15 called for issuing a command for orientation using the low-thrust 

engines [as opposed to the high-thrust engines]. A motion control theoretician 

from OKB-1 who had flown to Yevpatoriya discovered that the schedule of 

commands called for a low-thrust mode. Before his departure he and his boss 

had conducted a laboratory simulation of the orientation process in low- and 

maximum-thrust modes. For the simulation they had received the baseline data 

from the ionic system developers for the interference values that might occur 

during low and maximum thrusts. On the models, the process ran normally 

in both modes with the specified interference. However, orientation using low 

thrust took so much time that they might not have been able to correct [i.e., 

raise] the orbit during the second orbit.

This motion control theoretician sent his boss at OKB-1 a telegram 

with a proposal to begin the ionic orientation mode right away using the 

high-thrust engines. His boss was a top-notch specialist on the theory and 

dynamics of control. He trusted the baseline data that he had received from 

the ionic system developers and concurred with the proposal of his colleague. 

He sent his approval in a telegram to the control center in Yevpatoriya. After 

receiving the telegram, the author of the proposal approached the flight 

director. The latter accepted the proposal, and the change in the schedule 

of commands that were to be issued to the spacecraft during the first communication session was sent via telegraph to Ussuriysk. Ussuriysk had a 

radio coverage zone of around 10 minutes. This was completely adequate 

to assess the nature of the orientation process. However, the only specialist 

capable of doing this couldn’t receive the information until the military 

telemetry operators, who were located in a different building, had processed 

it, recorded it, and reported to the brass. And only then was he allowed 

access to it. Right away he saw that instead of single engines in the effector 

system (SIO), they were working in groups of three, which contradicted 

the documentation that he had.33 The station’s angular spin rate was 10 

times greater than the expected value! The process was reminiscent of a dog 

chasing its tail. But a dog spins in one plane, while the station was rocking 

about its center of mass in two planes at once! The triple thrust engines 

were heartily guzzling precious fuel.

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This needed to be reported immediately to the mission control center 

(TsUP). But instead of a simple telephone conversation, he had to send a 

telegram. First the text is written. The text goes to the tracking station chief for 

his signature. The telegram is encoded and goes to the communication group 

for transmission to Yevpatoriya. There it is received, typed, and the strip of 

paper containing the text is glued to a blank sheet of paper as is done at post 

offices. All of this took so much time that DOS No. 3 managed to fly around 

Earth and enter the NIP-16 radio coverage zone.

During the first communication session, TsUP was responsible for issuing a command to the spacecraft to initiate the program for the orbit-raising 

maneuver. At first everything went according to the timeline. STI-90 issued a 

report about a large consumption of propellant.

“We don’t need to scare the brass,” the analysis group decided. “Most 

likely this is an error in the program of the new telemetry processing system.”

But there was a specialist of the SIO system who was not so gullible. 

Violating discipline, he ran into the telemetry building to look at the initial 

information tapes for himself. One of the control specialists also couldn’t stand 

it. He also tore himself away from his workstation, and violating procedure, 

ran over to the telemetry operators.

Once he had seen the tape, he wanted to scream over the telephone to 

the flight director: “Shut down the engines!” But, as everyone knows, bread 

always falls buttered-side down. The telephone in this room wasn’t working. 

And the specialist sprinted (as he later averred) out of the telemetry building 

to the other one where the control room was located on the second floor. The 

SIO specialist managed to beat him and was already reporting to management 

that they needed to immediately transmit a command to the spacecraft to shut 

down the attitude-control system.

One must also understand the flight director. Responsibility for the fate 

of the DOS had come crashing down on him. Instead of a command to raise 

the orbit, two junior engineers were demanding that the control system be 

shut down immediately and that the orientation process be halted. How many 

orbits would it be now before another attempt to raise the orbit could be made? 

And wouldn’t the DOS “bury itself” in the atmosphere so that it would be 

impossible to drag it back out?

The chief designer, chairman of the State Commission, minister, and chief 

planner at the firing range got in their cars to drive to the airfield. It would 

take at least 6 hours for them to get to Yevpatoriya. Priceless seconds were 

slipping by. The DOS was now sweeping over Yevpatoriya, and they needed 

to transmit the order to Ussuriysk to issue an engine shutdown command to 

the spacecraft. Perhaps the radiation of their antenna might still manage to 

catch up with the DOS as it departed over the radio horizon.

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People in the Control Loop

Here, it is fitting to recall the words of a song from a famous film: “Don’t 

take the seconds for granted.... They whiz by like bullets past your head.... 

Moments...moments...moments....”34

Finally the flight controller made the decision, “Shut down orientation mode.”

“Too late!” his deputy told him. “The spacecraft left our Command and 

Measurement Complex coverage area 2 minutes ago.”

Now we had minutes to deal with the first notification from Ussuriysk and 

with our own telemetry. It was obvious that the orientation process, as a result 

of the active influence of the engines, was running its course with rocking in 

the heading and pitch planes searching for the ion flux, which was blocked by 

powerful interference. The disastrous consumption of propellant corresponded 

to the commands that the control system issued to the high-thrust engines 

trying to find their rightful ion flux.

About 40 minutes later the DOS would once again appear in the coverage zone of NIP-16...but now with empty tanks. If they had shut down the 

attitude-control system right at the beginning of the NIP-16 coverage zone, 

then there would still be a chance during the next orbit to make an attempt 

to orient the spacecraft and raise its orbit using the “IKV plus IO” (infrared 

vertical plus ionic orientation) mode.

The minister, State Commission, and planners who created the erroneous 

program arrived in the Crimea and reached Yevpatoriya 8 hours after liftoff. 

While they were still in the air they found out about the large propellant consumption, but there was still a glimmer of hope that the station might be saved. 

On site it became clear that it was all over. TASS broadcast the announcement 

that the launch of the latest Kosmos-557 had taken place. Without any further 

TASS announcements, on 22 May, DOS No. 3 entered the dense layers of the 

atmosphere on its own and sank in the ocean.

Three orbital stations in a row had perished ignominiously: DOS 

No. 2, Almaz, and DOS No. 3.35 The patience of the Party and government 

leaders was exhausted. To investigate, they organized a government commission 

headed by Vyacheslav Kovtunenko, the chief designer of KB-3, which was part 

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of KB Yuzhnoye.36 Members of the commission included Nikolay Pilyugin, 

Boris Bunkin, Boris Petrov, and other very competent control systems specialists.

At the same time the high commission was at work, the state security 

authorities began their own investigation. They conducted lengthy interviews 

with those directly involved in the incident and made them write explanatory 

notes. Most likely, if they really wanted to, historians could hunt down these 

explanations somewhere in the archives. The decision to initiate orientation 

using the high-thrust engines caught the attention of state security. Why did 

the control system engineer insist on changing the mode and persuade the 

flight director to change a command timeline that had already been transmitted to Ussuriysk? Not only did the KGB officers consider this decision to be 

the chief cause of the station’s demise, but some of our colleagues did, too.

It would seem that the control system engineer and the flight director were 

the real culprits. But either the times were different, or the investigation had 

been entrusted to sensible people in the KGB. The KGB understood that it 

wasn’t a matter of two specialists, but it was much more profound. The KGB 

did not find the elements of a crime, and they did not bring official charges 

against anyone. However, they made it known that our ministry should punish 

the guilty parties. If there were Party members among them, then let them 

bear Party responsibility, but not criminal responsibility.

The accident investigation commission gathered in a private conference. 

Above all, the scientists were interested in the very idea of using the ionosphere 

as a medium for orienting a spacecraft. It seemed very exotic.

“Experience has not yet been accumulated in this field, and consequently, 

anything worse than your worst nightmare might happen,” said Kovtunenko.

On the first day of the investigation Pilyugin declared, “I have never been 

an executioner for my professional comrades and I’m not going to be.”

Other members of the commission were also of the same mind.

Boris Petrov asked a naïve question, “So, who is officially the chief designer 

of the control system?”

I answered that we did not have such a position and we couldn’t have 

one. There’s a TsKBEM chief designer, there’s a DOS chief designer, there are 

subcontracting chief designers, but we don’t have a chief designer for just the 

control complex. If there were one, then he wouldn’t have agreed to this program 

 36.

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People in the Control Loop

of system activation without preliminary tests, which the chief designer had 

to approve at the recommendation of the enthusiastic planners.

“So that’s one cause, if not the fundamental cause of what happened,” said 

Pilyugin. “You gained the right to develop control systems yourselves and succeeded in this field back when Korolev was alive. But being the subordinates of 

a chief who is not very strong in control systems, you will never gain the proper 

perspective and time to test out its systems. I proposed to Sergey Pavlovich 

that he transfer all spacecraft control specialists to me. The idea even came 

up of creating an NIIAP space branch at our second production facility. But 

Chertok and Rauschenbach dreamed of independence—and this is the result.”

This was the first I had heard that Pilyugin had proposed to Korolev to 

transfer development of spacecraft control systems to him at NIIAP. There really 

had been such an idea. Three years after Korolev’s death, Pilyugin’s deputies 

Finogeyev and Khitrik came to see me on N1-L3 matters. For the first time 

they had become interested not only in the technology, but also in the organization of our work on systems for the Soyuz. That’s when a conversation about 

creating an NIIAP space branch on the basis of my complexes really did take 

place. After estimating the amount of electronics and control systems in the 

total volume of work, we reached the conclusion that it was too great to take 

it away from TsKBEM and hand it over to NIIAP.

“Then you have to change the chief designer. Without electronics and 

control devices your spacecraft is an empty barrel. And what’s more, if we pick 

you up, that means we need to transfer flight control with all its headaches.”

Since then, there has been no further discussion of this idea.

Based on the results of the accident investigation commission’s work, 

organizational findings were later issued at the ministerial and Party-committee 

level. Tregub received the harshest punishment. He was removed from his post 

as deputy chief designer and told to look for other work. He went over to work 

for Iosifyan at VNIIEM as his deputy for flight testing. On 30 October 2007, 

in the ceremonial hall of the Ministry of Defense, located next to Burdenko 

Hospital, along with many other veterans I paid my last respects to former 

Major General Yakov Isayevich Tregub.37 While waiting for the eulogy, I conversed with Rafail Vannikov. Beginning in 1946, he and Tregub had served in 

the first Special-purpose Missile Brigade, which General Aleksandr Tveretskiy 

commanded.38 We both agreed that if it hadn’t been for the failure of DOS 

No. 3, Tregub’s life would have taken a very different turn.

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494

Rauschenbach was relieved of his administrative duties as chief of the complex of departments and transferred to a consultant’s position. Soon thereafter he 

retired of his own volition “in connection with a transfer to another job.” This 

other job was staff professor and department head at the Moscow Institute of 

Physics and Technology. Legostayev was appointed director of Complex No. 3 

in Rauschenbach’s place. I received a reprimand by order of the minister and a 

reprimand by resolution of the Party committee of TsKBEM. An administrative order called for almost everyone who was involved in the production of 

the ionic system or who was at the control center in Yevpatoriya during the 

critical hours to be reprimanded and have their salaries temporarily reduced. 

Similar disciplinary sanctions were imposed on the flight control military staffs.

The reader might have noticed that when describing the circumstances 

surrounding the demise of DOS No. 3 I did not mention the surnames of 

many specialists who were directly involved in preparing the flight program, 

in control, in telemetry analysis at the center in Yevpatoriya and in Ussuriysk, 

and in the processes simulated in TsKBEM laboratories. For everyone who 

was involved in those operations, the loss of DOS No. 3 was so traumatic that 

even more than 30 years after the fact, they were unable to recall the events of 

those bitter days with indifference.

When things had calmed down, TsKBEM Party Committee Secretary 

Anatoliy Tishkin invited me to his office and asked whom I might recommend 

as director of the new crew training and flight control complex. Without 

hesitating I named [cosmonaut] Aleksey Yeliseyev. Tishkin agreed with my 

recommendation. After interviewing Yeliseyev, the Party committee recommended that Mishin prepare a ministerial order naming Yeliseyev deputy chief 

designer of TsKBEM. The present-day flight control service came into being 

the day the order was issued for Yeliseyev’s appointment.39

In those years about which I am now writing, triumphs and mistakes 

were put out for consideration at Party work meetings. Usually a chief who 

spoke at the meeting summed up the results of the past year, gave an evaluation of the work of the subdivisions, and spoke about the plans for the year 

ahead. In such reports it was considered good form to combine achievements 

and praise for those who were the most outstanding with relentless criticism 

for mistakes and shortcomings.

 39.
People in the Control Loop

In January 1974, the traditional annual Party work meeting was held for 

the complexes assigned to Legostayev, Kalashnikov, Yurasov, and me, which 

comprised 15 departments. The total number of workers in the complexes 

was 1,300. Usually at these meetings everyone was concerned with the general 

tasks, and they certainly weren’t there under duress. Inexplicably, the texts of 

my directive reports have been preserved. Similar documents have either been 

destroyed or relinquished to closed archives. After rereading them, I decided to 

extract quotations having to do with our work in 1973 and with the assessment 

of the failure of DOS No. 3. I am citing several of them in order to bring the 

reader closer to the atmosphere in which we worked in those days.

 Yesterday on television we observed the stirring picture of an 

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 The loss of DOS No. 3 stunned our entire enterprise. We had dis

I gave this impassioned speech when the results of many of the investigations 

of the behavior of the ionic systems were already known. Specialists simulating 

the stability of the attitude-control system before the flight of DOS No. 3—using 

the baseline data from the developers of the ionic system—were solving an inverse 

problem. Having a real picture of the behavior of DOS No. 3 in flight, they were 

attempting to reproduce it on a model. They succeeded in doing this only after 

they fed interference into the system’s input that was 10 times greater than what 

they had loaded, having settled on the high-thrust engine mode.

The loss of DOS No. 3 was a devastating tragedy for all the creators of 

orbital stations. Against the background of the Americans’ successes in space, 

this event could have inflicted a very severe blow to the prestige of the first space 

power. However, all of the information concerning the flight of Kosmos-557 was 

classified as secret so that neither the world nor Soviet society knew anything 

specific about it. Since there was no human loss of life, there was no need for 

funeral ceremonies, they reserved judgment on judging anyone, and back 

then representatives of the mass media displayed excessive curiosity only with 

permission from the “top.” A real danger emerged that the Long-Duration 

Orbital Station program would be shut down. However, it became the main 

thrust of Soviet cosmonautics.

The next Long-Duration Orbital Station, Salyut-4 (DOS No. 4), 

which was analogous to DOS No. 3, but without the ionic system, went into 

orbit on 26 December 1974. For this station, they engineered a triaxial orientation system using an infrared vertical and performed preliminary development 

testing of it and carried out two maneuvers using gyros. It took a long time, 

but it proved to be very reliable.

While we were licking our wounds after the demise of DOS No. 3, at 

OKB-52 (TsKBM) and at ZIKh accelerated launch preparations were under 

way on the Almaz orbital station. It was inserted into space on 25 June 1974; 

the Almaz was called Salyut-3. Chelomey had to agree to the use of our Soyuz 

vehicles to deliver a crew to the Almaz. Soyuz-14 delivered the first expedition to Salyut-3—cosmonauts Pavel Popovich and Yuriy Artyukhin—on 

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3 July 1974. Approach, final approach, and docking proceeded successfully 

in automatic mode.

And then the next expedition to Salyut-3 experienced adventures that ended 

with the creation of another accident investigation commission. During the 

approach segment of the Soyuz-15 spacecraft (launched on 26 August 1974) 

with the Almaz orbital station, the celebrated and, it seemed, well-examined Igla

didn’t simply fail—it issued false commands. Igla recognized the true range of 

350 meters as a range of 20 kilometers. Based on these data, Igla’s rendezvous 

control automatics turned the station and fired the engine to build up approach 

velocity corresponding to a range of 20 kilometers. The vehicle rushed toward 

the station at a relative velocity of 72 kilometers per hour.

We didn’t even have time to figure out that the possible impact velocity 

exceeded the speed permitted by the State Automobile Inspectorate (GAI) 

in populated areas. Disaster was inevitable. The fact that the automatic rendezvous control algorithms called for lateral velocity beginning at a range of 

20 kilometers saved the day. This enabled the spacecraft to shoot past the 

station at a distance of 40 meters. While flying past the station, Igla lost radio 

lock-on and stopped measuring relative motion parameters. The crew didn’t 

know what was happening. The malfunctioning Igla made the vehicle repeat 

the approach sessions. The spacecraft executed the potentially lethal station 

flyby two more times until the ground intervened and issued a command to 

shut down automatic approach mode. After these acrobatic stunts, docking 

simply did not take place. There was only enough propellant left for descent.

“It is not possible to foresee all off-nominal situations, but it is the crew’s 

duty to figure out from the information available on the console and from 

visual observation that the automatic approach mode needs to be shut down 

immediately”—such was the reasoning of the specialists who were responsible 

for the logic behind the automatic control mode that we had developed.

“But there is no such failure or any identifying flags in our list of offnominal situations,” objected the training specialists from the Cosmonauts 

Training Center.

Each side agreed to disagree; it was good that the crew—Gennadiy 

Sarafanov and Lev Demin—safely returned to Earth, and the culprit of the 

flight incident—the Igla system—was “caught red-handed” after processing 

the telemetry measurements. I was appointed chairman of the accident investigation commission. My traditional comrade-in-arms for accident situations, 

Colonel Yevgeniy Panchenko, was my deputy. Our commission quickly got 

to the bottom of the technical causes of the unusual failure. During the very 

first session of the commission, Chief Designer Armen Mnatsakanyan from 

the Scientific-Research Institute of Precision Instruments and Igla developers 

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Morgulev and Suslennikov explained that they understood everything and that 

they would introduce the necessary modifications to the next unit.

We did not limit ourselves to examining the causes for the hardware failure 

and proposed increasing the reliability of the human factor. Delivering a report 

before the ministry collegium, I said that the commission proposed creating a 

special operational group at TsUP to monitor the approach process and make 

instant decisions. The group should develop the approach control procedure 

for nominal flight and in off-nominal situations, analyze the approach process 

and issue recommendations to the director during the flight, and also perform 

the postflight analysis of the approach modes.

Such a group was created. Department Chief Yevgeniy Bashkin was appointed 

as its first chief. The group comprised “theoreticians” (Shmyglevskiy and Shiryayev), 

curators who had studied Igla’s radio electronic properties (Nevzorov and 

Kozhevnikova), manual mode developers (Skotnikov, Fruntz, and Nezdyur), and 

also systems specialist Borisenko. The most crucial role was set aside for the firsthand developers of the Igla radio equipment—Morgulev and Suslennikov. A year 

later, Oleg Babkov, who was calm and not inclined to unpredictable improvisation, 

replaced the emotional and impulsive Bashkin in the position of group chief. Soon 

thereafter, Boris Skotnikov, solid and professorial, occupied this hot seat.

When digital computers for control appeared on 

board spacecraft, responsibility for the approach 

process fell to Vladimir 

Branets. From 1982 to the 

present, rendezvous professional Borisenko has been 

the group chief.

The creation of a 

specialized group, which 

included the main developers of the logic, theory, 

and hardware supporting the approach process, 

completely justified itself. The flight director gained the capability to make 

decisions in compressed real time, relying on the prompting and advice of the 

most competent specialists, who were completely aware of their moral and 

professional responsibility. The many years of experience of the rendezvous 

group is an example of the real increase in the reliability of a large system that 

includes a human being in the control structure. Nevertheless, rendezvous and 

dockings in space are the sources of off-nominal situations more often than not.

From the author’s archives.

V. N. Branets and E. V. Gaushus.

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People in the Control Loop

The Soyuz-23 spacecraft, which had lifted off on 14 October 1976 with 

a crew comprising Vyacheslav Zudov and Valeriy Rozhdestvenskiy, was on its 

way to rendezvous with the Almaz station (Salyut-5). The program called for 

automatic rendezvous and final approach. Igla’s radar had executed “lock-on,” 

and the process of autonomous approach without human involvement began. 

The crew did not react to the spacecraft’s clearly abnormal oscillations around 

its longitudinal axis and unacceptable propellant consumption. The groundbased group understood that Igla was behaving abnormally on the channel 

measuring the line-of-sight angular rate. The range made it impossible to switch 

to manual approach, especially since the fluctuation of Igla’s parameters might 

have resulted in erroneous actions on the part of the crew. The group made a 

difficult decision—abandon rendezvous.

Once again I found myself reporting before the ministry collegium about 

an emergency situation associated with the off-nominal behavior of Igla.

“Large fluctuations occurred in the radio channel measuring the lineof-sight angular rate. The control equipment perceived these fluctuations, 

and the attitude-control engines responded to them. As soon as the process 

was transmitted via telemetry to Earth in the coverage zone, mission control 

issued the command to shut down Igla and terminate the approach mode. The 

accident investigation commission is continuing its work.”

“Why didn’t they decide to make a second approach?” asked one of the 

members of the collegium.

“There was a great deal of temptation to make a second attempt. However, 

the risk of consuming too much propellant remained, and we are required to 

have a guaranteed supply to return to Earth.”

“When you were preparing the vehicle on the ground, why didn’t you pay 

attention to these very fluctuations?” asked Minister Afanasyev.

The question was legitimate, and the response was difficult.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t standardize the range of fluctuations in a single 

document and there was no mention of monitoring this parameter. The testers 

had the official right not to pay them any attention.”

The individual who bore primary responsibility for Igla’s behavior—

Mnatsakanyan—stepped up to the podium. He tried to explain the physical 

nature of the fluctuations but was unable to answer intelligibly why they hadn’t 

observed it earlier and why he, Igla’s chief designer, had not demanded that 

the range of the fluctuations be monitored during ground testing.

“Now you are going to establish the range of permissible fluctuations, and 

before the next launches you are going to personally report to me that you 

guarantee Igla’s reliability,” said the minister.

Here Mnatsakanyan made a mistake. For three years now at his institute 

they had been developing the new, more advanced Kurs (Course) radio system 

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for measuring relative motion parameters. Kurs was supposed to replace Igla. 

As usual, routine work on Igla diverted the main contingent of specialists away 

from future developments. Mnatsakanyan was interested in placing further 

limits on bringing in new specialists [for work on Igla].

He declared, “It’s useless to set fluctuation norms for Igla—further use of 

Igla is tantamount to death. We need to introduce Kurs more quickly.” The 

words “tantamount to death” stunned the audience. Glushko was the first to 

regain his senses.

“Sergey Aleksandrovich,” he addressed the minister, “in connection with 

this statement from Igla’s chief designer, I request that you schedule a special 

investigation. We are also in favor of Kurs, but Igla is on the upcoming vehicles. 

Such an irresponsible statement jeopardizes government-approved programs 

for orbital stations.”

It was dangerous to stir up a scandal in the collegium when high-ranking 

officials of the Central Committee, VPK, and Ministry of Defense were present.

“We shall thoroughly examine comrade Mnatsakanyan’s irresponsible 

statement,” declared the minister, “and we will take the appropriate actions.”

Despite pressure “from above” to meet deadlines, the accident investigation commission produced an exceptionally extensive body of investigative 

work. According to one of the hypotheses put forward by Mnatsakanyan, 

elastic vibrations of the rod on which Igla’s gyrostabilized antenna was 

mounted caused the fluctuations. Eduard Korzhenevskiy, together with 

TsNIImash, set up strength and resonance testing for the rod. They had to 

reject the hypothesis. At that time we simply were unable to find the true 

source of the fluctuations, but we determined that they did not occur in 

the majority of the series-produced hardware sets or they were not strong 

enough to pose a hazard. The commission proposed a procedure for factory 

measurements of the fluctuations in order to sort out instruments that were 

suspicious based on these indices.

Without waiting for the commission’s final report to appear, officials 

at MOM prepared a portentous order, which the collegium approved on 

2 December 1976: “For insufficient ground testing and shoddy procedures for 

measuring the main parameters of equipment during all stages of its manufacture, testing, and operation, which resulted in the failure to fulfill the flight 

program of Soyuz-23, NIITP Director and Chief Designer Mnatsakanyan is 

given a severe reprimand and put on notice that if effective measures are not 

taken to rectify the situation, he will be relieved of his post.”

On 9 December 1976, Mnatsakanyan and I flew out to the firing range 

for the preparation of the latest Soyuz-24 spacecraft. We wanted to try one 

more time in the anechoic chamber to determine the nature of the fluctuations’ 

occurrence. Late that evening Mnatsakanyan stopped by my hotel room to see 

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People in the Control Loop

me and showed me a radiogram that urgently summoned him to Moscow. On 

10 December, the chief of the Main Directorate of the ministry recommended 

that he [Mnatsakanyan] submit a “voluntary” resignation notice. Mnatsakanyan 

refused. On 6 January 1977, the minister issued an order: “For failure to ensure 

proper supervision of operations at the institute, comrade A. S. Mnatsakanyan 

is relieved of his post as NIITP director and chief designer.”

Armen Mnatsakanyan took it very hard. He was not permitted to continue working in another post at his home institute. He transferred to work 

for Andronik Iosifyan, who was not afraid to take in people who had been 

burned in other organizations.41

“We accept all ‘insulted and humiliated’ individuals,” said Iosifyan’s deputy 

Sheremetyevskiy, “under the condition that they are have character and talent.”

Working at VNIIEM as laboratory chief, Mnatsakanyan continued to 

“demand his rights.” He was even so bold as to make a request to the Presidium 

of the Twenty-sixth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 

to appoint a commission to conduct an investigation of his work as NIITP 

director and of the persecution that he had endured in the Ministry of General 

Machine Building.42 On 9 April 1981, an instructor from the general department of the Central Committee informed Mnatsakanyan over the telephone 

that “no action had been taken” on his letter.43

While we were preparing the latest Soyuz-24 in February 1977, fluctuations were negligible. The crew of Soyuz-24 (launched on 7 February 1977)—

Viktor Gorbatko and Yuriy Glazkov—safely docked with Salyut-5. Gradually 

the fear of fluctuations disappeared.

On 29 September 1977, the latest orbital station, the Salyut-6, was 

inserted into space. On 9 October 1977, Soyuz-25, carrying cosmonauts 

Vladimir Kovalenok and Valeriy Ryumin, was sent up to meet Salyut-6. The 

process of approach with automatic control proceeded normally. According 

to the program, in the final approach zone at a range of 100 meters, the 

crew shut down Igla and switched to manual control. When they were just 

1 meter away from the station, the cosmonauts allowed a 2° deviation of 

the spacecraft’s longitudinal axis relative to the nominal position, which is 

 41.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

This drawing shows a slightly unusual configuration of the third-generation DOS 

station, one with two docking ports. The first third-generation station was flown 

as Salyut-6, launched in late 1977. This image shows the basic station with one 

Soyuz 7K-T transport ship docked on each end. The spacecraft docked to the right 

is docked to an extra “Modernized Equipment Compartment” that was never used 

in the flight version. The legend below the drawing provides some basic statistics 

on the station. These included crew size (2–4), maximum flight time of the station 

(180 days), average stay of a two-person crew (95–110 days), time of stay of a 

transport ship at the station (5–60 days), and orbital parameters (350 kilometers 

at 51.6° inclination).

completely permissible. Based on simulation results, a deviation of up to 4° 

is permissible. However, at just 1 meter from the station, with all systems 

functioning completely normally, the cosmonauts’ conditioned reflexes of 

ground training let them down. The simulator did not have an exact replica 

of the station’s image in the optical sight’s field of vision when the vehicle’s 

axis deviated by more than 1°. The cosmonauts perceived the image that 

they saw at a range of 1 meter when there was a 2° deviation as the “station’s 

belly”—they reported this to the ground, halted the final approach process, 

backed up from the station, and tried twice to perform docking manually, 

after shutting down Igla. Both docking attempts failed because the cosmonauts had not been able to adequately perceive the real situation. At TsUP 

they quickly realized that the fuel allocated for docking had been entirely 

consumed. There was only enough left for descent. It’s true, they still had 

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People in the Control Loop

the “emergency supply” (NZ) in the so-called backup system—but that was 

the last chance in case the main system deorbit burn system failed.44

Flight director Yeliseyev made the decision to prepare the vehicle for landing. However, after three final manual approach attempts, the vehicle had not 

received the backout pulse stipulated in the logic of the shut-down automatic 

system. And over the course of three orbits, the Soyuz was dangerously close 

to the station. The threat of collision was quite real. A dynamic backout would 

require the consumption of fuel, reducing the guaranteed supply for return to 

Earth. Ultimately the upper atmosphere slowed down the station after all, and 

the vehicle backed out to a safe distance. The crew safely returned to Earth 

without having fulfilled its main mission.45

In 1974, operations began at the Mission Control Center (TsUP) on the 

outskirts of Moscow. It was built for the Apollo-Soyuz project. In the fall of 1977, 

a new station—Salyut-6 (DOS No. 5)—was controlled from the new TsUP. 

Regular long-duration piloted flights began with this station. The flight control 

service was reorganized. Instead of a quasi-guerrilla mob similar to the Cossack 

army, made up of several hundred specialists “from various tribes” who came 

out to the Black Sea, a professional service emerged with an efficient structure 

of responsibility and a division of functions among stations, vehicles, and shifts.

With great enthusiasm, Aleksey Yeliseyev completed the creation of the 

professional flight control service, which Tregub had begun. Yeliseyev deserves 

the credit for developing the efficient structure on the basis of a single authority 

and strict responsibility during flight preparation and throughout the flight. The 

Main Operations Control Group (GOGU), as a temporary interdepartmental 

command organization, gradually evolved into a permanent and professional 

one. Since 1974, GOGU has been run by a flight director who was a cosmonaut and representative of TsKBEM (subsequently NPO Energiya). The first 

was Aleksey Yeliseyev. In 1986, Valeriy Ryumin replaced him in this post, and 

from 1988 until the present, Vladimir Solovyev has directed the service.46

The first generation of control specialists remembered the control center in 

Yevpatoriya as paradise lost. The Black Sea, kilometers of wild, sandy beaches, 

 44.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

the steppe covered with scarlet poppies in the spring, inexpensive dry wine, 

grapes, melons, fruits, the caressing sea breeze—all of this Crimean romanticism has faded into the past.

The powerful computers of the new TsUP in suburban Moscow processed 

telemetry virtually in real time during a communication session and delivered 

it in an intelligible form to the specialists’ screens. On his own screen, the shift 

flight director could call up any parameter and any information having to do 

with navigational and ballistic flight support or the status of an on-board system.

The new mission control center was built in response to a special resolution of the Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers. The state did 

not scrimp on the construction and outfitting of the facilities, which by the 

creators’ design was supposed to surpass similar American centers in all aspects.

Ustinov personally supervised the construction of the new TsUP. The NIPs 

in Yevpatoriya and Simferopol were under the dominion of the Ministry of 

Defense. Originally, they intended to make TsUP in Podlipki an independent 

organization of the ministry, but eventually they put the director of TsNIImash 

in charge of it. Afanasyev, Tyulin, and Mozzhorin devoted exclusive attention 

to the creation of TsUP. We had grown accustomed to the rather shabby service 

facilities at the firing ranges and at the Ministry of Defense’s control centers. 

The palatial splendor of the new TsUP, in particular the part that had been built 

especially for the Apollo-Soyuz project, astonished us because it was so different.

The marble steps covered with Kremlin-style carpet runners, colorful 

stained-glass windows; a mosaic wall bearing the likenesses of Tsiolkovskiy, 

Korolev, and Gagarin; numerous offices with upholstered furniture, televisions, and an abundance of telephones; an amphitheater with visitors’ seating; 

a separate hall for the State Commission; the Blue Hall for meetings and press 

conferences; offices for the chief designer and flight director; lounges for the 

top brass; a separate grand entrance; a buffet bar for foreigners; maximumsecurity guards allowing admission according to a roster—at first all of this 

bore heavily on the psyches of the control specialists, who were accustomed 

to freewheeling Yevpatoriya.

The “Indian Shrine” was the term used to refer to that part of TsUP 

designed to impact the psyche of American guests.

“We didn’t use as much marble as they did in the Taj Mahal, but in terms 

of the amount of plastic and aluminum oxidized to look like copper and gold, 

we surpassed it by far,” boasted Mozzhorin.

It seemed that we were now armed, equipped, and organized so that we 

would be able to easily overcome any off-nominal situations. But a human 

being was still a human being. In the new spacecraft and station control loop 

built using state-of-the-art science, the human being, as one of the links in 

this loop, retained to right to make mistakes.

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People in the Control Loop

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the flight control service, 

A Brief Course on the History of the Flight Control Service was published. This 

document shows that the directors of the service had not lost their sense of 

humor, which is so essential to a modern human being.47 The Brief Course 

says that before each regular expedition, public Party-Komsomol meetings 

were supposed to be held. Without these meetings it was considered generally dangerous to begin any serious business whatsoever. Vladimir Ivanovich 

Volkov, the Party Committee Secretary at the complex, giving instructions to 

prepare for such a meeting, said, “We will hold the usual Party-Komsomol 

prayer service asking that victory be bestowed on us....”

At these meetings the chiefs of all the groups solemnly promised to 

make every effort and not dishonor the control service. For example, usually 

when Arkadiy Sudachenko finished his speech he loudly pronounced, “The 

analysis group will fulfill its assignment!” and quietly added, “If there are no 

off-nominal situations.”

The new magnificent TsUP 

didn’t save us from off-nominal 

situations. On 19 April 1982, 

the Salyut-7 orbital station (DOS 

No. 5-2) went into space. Seven 

expeditions visited it until 1985. 

Seven piloted vehicles approached 

and docked with Salyut-7, and 10 

Progress cargo transport vehicles did 

so in purely automatic mode.48

Analyzing the causes of the offnominal situations, we realized that 

an on-board computer could save us 

a lot of headaches. The simplest onboard computer could shut down 

From the author’s archives.

The Salyut-7 was launched in 

1982 and hosted seven long-term 

expeditions between 1982 and 1985. 

 47.

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the system when there were manual control errors such as those that Beregovoy 

committed. Propellant would be preserved, and it would be possible to repeat 

the approach in a purely automatic mode.

In the off-nominal situation described above on Soyuz-15, an on-board 

computer could have recognized the target and issued Igla’s commands corresponding to the actual range or could have shut down the system and made 

it possible for the ground to decide what further actions to take.

Actually, an on-board computer supplementing an already well-mastered 

“computer-free” control system was inefficient. It was much more tempting to 

develop a fundamentally new system in which the on-board computer was not 

an appendage, but a main link making it possible to solve control problems on 

a qualitatively new basis; to create a system that was considerably more reliable. 

They decided to implement this idea on a modification of the Soyuz vehicle (factory index 7K-S, drawing number 11F732). The 7K-S transport vehicles, which 

were designed to deliver crews to orbital stations and were intended to replace the 

7K-T (Soyuz), were assigned the index number 7K-ST. During their flight testing, 

which began in 1974, the first five unpiloted vehicles were called Kosmoses. The 

revolutionary leap in technology for controlling these vehicles made it possible to 

produce the strapdown inertial navigation system. The on-board digital computer 

was given the task of mathematically simulating the vehicle’s orientation and 

motion. Position sensors—infrared verticals and Sun trackers—were retained for 

the preliminary “setting” and correction of the mathematical model. The main 

sensitive elements, the data from which underwent numerical integration, were 

digital angular rate sensors and accelerometers.

Branets, Shmyglevskiy, and the young enthusiastic MFTI graduates who 

joined them began developing the idea behind the system in Legostayev’s department in 1968. MFTI graduate Mikhail Chertok was among them. The final decision to install a strapdown system, among other innovations on this modification 

of the Soyuz, wasn’t made until 1972, when we were confident that we could 

series-produce an on-board digital computer. It took six years from the beginning of 

development until the first unpiloted flight of the new computer-controlled vehicle! 

The launch of the first 7K-S No. 1L spacecraft, called Kosmos-670, didn’t take 

place until 6 August 1974. Flight testing of another four unpiloted Kosmoses—

Kosmos-772, Kosmos-869, Kosmos-1001, and Kosmos-1074—lasted five years!49

Finally, on 16 December 1979, 7K-ST No. 6L lifted off. It was referred to 

publicly as Soyuz-T. The unpiloted spacecraft in automatic mode approached 

 49.

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People in the Control Loop

and docked with the Salyut-6 station, executed joint flight for 100 days, and 

safely returned to Earth.

However, the first attempt at automatic docking using the on-board digital 

computer misfired. It wasn’t so much that the computer was capricious, but 

that it “threw a fit” as a result of the disregard that the “ground” showed for its 

character. They had loaded a regular self-check algorithm into the computer’s 

program. It set up the test itself in order to “go to work” being confident that 

it was “spruced up” and ready to go. This test lasted just 5 seconds. TsUP began 

to enter the program assignment for approach right after switching on, during 

these very sacred 5 seconds. The next day, 19 December 1979, they took into 

account the computer’s caprice, and the automatic docking of the unpiloted 

Soyuz T spacecraft with the Salyut-6 station took place without incident.

In May 1980, cosmonaut No. 2, German Titov, as deputy chief of TsUKOS, 

issued a finding that cleared the 7K-ST vehicles for piloted flight.50 The first 

flight-control computer thus received its ticket to space signed by Earth’s second 

cosmonaut, General German Titov.

Finally, on 5 June 1980, 12 years after the beginning of development, 

7K-ST No. 7L (Soyuz T-2) lifted off with cosmonauts Yuriy Malyshev and 

Vladimir Aksenov on board—the first testers of the new spacecraft. For 

reasons unknown, the unpiloted version successfully executed approach 

and docking, while more often than not 

in piloted flight during the final approach 

segment they ended up terminating automatic mode and requiring human intervention. At a range of around 200 meters 

from Salyut-6, the approach-monitoring 

program loaded into the on-board digital 

computer’s memory generated an emergency message and switched off the digital 

control loop. TsUP gave the cosmonauts 

permission for manual control of final 

approach. A ground investigation of what 

From the author’s archives.

NPO Energiya cosmonaut Vladimir Aksenov 

inscribed this picture of himself while he was 

in space during his Soyuz-22 flight in 1976.

 50.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

took place showed that the computer was performing dynamic monitoring 

of the approach parameters and predicting their changes. The computer 

prognosis differed from the actual motion. Consequently, the computer 

decided that the process was abnormal, issued an “emergency” command, 

and shut down the automatic control system. The computer was not the 

culprit. It was a human error, this time committed by representatives of a 

new profession—programmers. The control algorithms required a greater 

rendezvous velocity than was actually the case.

It was mandatory that any changes in the drawings of a rocket, of a spacecraft, or in electrical circuits be documented in “change notices.” Depending 

on the causes and consequences, these notices had to be signed by the authors, 

managers, lead designers, and—in acute situations—the chief designer, too.

Changes in the software, on the other hand, could lead to much more 

significant consequences than changes in the electrical circuitry or design. For 

the design and circuitry, there were sets of drawings and technical documentation, which were accounted for in accordance with all the stringency of state 

standards. The originals were stored in archives, and each change was strictly 

recorded in accordance with the rules of technical documentation management. 

Something intangible, unaccounted, incomprehensible—software—broke 

into this strict order, which had been in place practically since the times of 

the artillery of Peter I.

This prompted some heated conversations between Yeliseyev’s and 

Legostayev’s services.

“We must train the TsUP operators and cosmonauts using documents 

that are accounted for—drawings, diagrams, descriptions—which exist for all 

the vehicle’s systems,” Yeliseyev said. “But when it comes to motion control, 

they tell us that now we need to study algorithms and programs rather than 

instruments. We are prepared to do this, but show them [to us]. It turns out 

that in the best-case scenario they are in the developers’ notebooks, and each 

one of these idea men is storing all the changes in his own memory. That’s fine 

if the person isn’t off on a business trip or on vacation, and without him no 

one can remember the ‘patch’.” These were more or less the completely valid 

grievances that Yeliseyev mentioned to me.

It took two years before some order was brought into this system. During 

the first years of on-board digital computers, the authors of algorithms and 

programs were themselves the record-keepers and executors of changes introduced into the computer memory. There were a lot of arguments, turmoil, and 

all sorts of incidents associated with this. Software was supposed to be updated, 

supplemented, and improved based on observations after each flight. Soyuz 

T-3 and Soyuz T-4 had been launched to Salyut-6, and Soyuz T-5 launched to 

Salyut-7. The computer on Soyuz T-6 once again decided to give notice that it 

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People in the Control Loop

was high time to bring strict order to the data that the whiz-kid programmers 

were using to try to “train” it. Cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Aleksandr 

Ivanchenkov, and Frenchman Jean-Loup Chrétien flew on the Soyuz T-6 

launched on 24 June 1982. Dozens of correspondents and foreign guests, 

including the French ambassador and his diplomatic entourage, filled the visitors’ gallery at TsUP. There was no need to say anything about our brass. After 

all, the first Frenchman in the history of cosmonautics was being launched 

into space on a Soviet spacecraft.

I was at TsUP following the course of the approach process on the monitors with those directly participating in this crucial historic event. Groups of 

approach and docking specialists had moved their workstations out of the main 

control room into a separate room on the second floor so that they wouldn’t 

disturb others and others wouldn’t disturb them. The crew switched on the 

automatic approach mode during the 17th orbit after executing the two-burn 

maneuver prescribed by the ballistics experts for the vehicle to make a safe 

entry into Igla’s coverage zone.

At 2009 hours, the first information appeared on the monitors: “Target 

availability signal received; range 11.4 kilometers; approach velocity 18 meters 

per second.” Ten minutes later the on-board digital computer requested crew 

permission to execute a braking burn. The crew gave permission from its console. After that the computer acted according to the algorithm loaded into its 

memory, in concert with the information received from Igla. Upon receiving 

its commands, the Chayka control system turned the spacecraft’s pitch by 90° 

and fired the engine to reduce the line-of-sight angular rate to zero. Now it 

executed a reverse turn to put the spacecraft into the initial state and then to 

swing around to fire a second correcting burn.

At 2026 hours, at a range of 1.4 kilometers, they began the second turn in 

the yaw angle. Meanwhile, the lock-on mode strayed. The Igla antennas were 

unable to maintain lock-on at wide angles. But the on-board digital computer 

kept this in mind. Upon receiving the computer’s command, the engine fired at 

a range of 960 meters. The approach velocity slowed to 3.3 meters per second. 

The computer did not “forget” to issue the command for a turnaround. In so 

doing, communication was restored via Igla.

“So that’s how we rendezvous now!” someone standing behind us marveled, with bad timing. “Remember, in Yevpatoriya we only found out from 

the films that the SKD had fired 20 times for approach. And now all it takes 

is two burns.”

“Quiet!” blurted out someone at an adjacent monitor, where Igla specialists were sitting.

While turning around, the spacecraft turned its “nose,” i.e., its docking 

assembly, toward the station. During the turn, at 2028 hours, the telemetry 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

struck the nerves of everyone sitting in hushed silence at the monitors: “The 

first block of DUSes is shut down! Backup activated.... Backup block of DUSes 

is shut down! Chayka digital circuit shut down. Igla shut down!”

“Look what comes from nostalgia for Yevpatoriya,” I sighed, stunned by 

what had happened.

Twenty-five degrees were left until the turn was completed. The spacecraft’s angular motion continued due to inertia. Flight management at TsUP 

was in shock for several seconds. But it was as if the crew had just expected 

this. Without any hesitation, Dzhanibekov switched on the backup analog 

manual control loop. Just 25 seconds passed after the “accident,” which was 

displayed simultaneously on board the spacecraft and on the monitors in the 

TsUP control rooms. Dzhanibekov saw the DOS on the screen of his optical 

sight and calmly halted the spinning of the spacecraft. According to the radio 

coverage conditions, right at that time KIK lost communication with the 

vehicle for 10 minutes.

At the most tense moment a special messenger ran in: “They’re asking for 

Yeliseyev to report to the State Commission!”

Yeliseyev gave Legostayev, Branets, and me a questioning look.

“Igla was operating normally according to all parameters all the way up 

until it shut down,” Suslennikov managed to say.

I made the following recommendation: “In 3 minutes the vehicle will 

appear in the coverage zone. We’ll go downstairs to the communications room 

and make a joint decision there. It’s not right to summon a commander from 

the field of battle in a critical situation. Pass that on to the chairman of the 

State Commission.”51

At 2036 hours, the spacecraft entered the coverage zone. It was just 100 

meters away from the station. The crew very calmly reported that everything 

was fine and requested permission to perform manual docking. Permission 

was immediately granted. Docking proceeded without a hitch. During the 

following orbit the crew entered the DOS. There was thunderous applause 

from the guests in the balcony. Flashbulbs popped as the latest triumph of 

Soviet cosmonautics and the traditional friendship with the people of France 

was recorded for history. Our top brass didn’t have time to realize what had 

actually happened. The French guests smiled happily.

While the large throng of brass and distinguished guests congratulated one 

another and those who had absolutely nothing to do with it, the true experts 

and culprits huddled around the consoles, not sharing the general jubilation, 

 51.

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People in the Control Loop

trying to grasp what had happened. Vadim Kravets, who was in charge of the 

analysis group in Yevpatoriya, congratulated me for the brilliant docking and 

pointed to Mikhail Chertok, who had retreated into himself.

“I thought that I had done a good job learning the signs that are quick 

tip-offs to off-nominal situations in the behavior of Chayka. If Mikhail Chertok 

is silently scratching his beard it means that he understood everything. There 

were no failures. This is the latest mathematical discrepancy in the program.”

Evidently, Branets also knew that pensive scratching of the beard is a sign 

of enlightenment. Mikhail began to explain to him in a deliberate manner and 

drew something on his notepad.

“Despite the happy ending, the State Commission demands my explanations,” said Yeliseyev, who had joined us. “What shall I report?”

“Report that there were no failures in the system,” advised Branets. “There 

was a glitch in terms of tolerances for runtime check. The crew was well trained; 

it executed manual approach perfectly. We’re looking into the details on our 

test stand, and we’ll report in the morning.”

There was no need for prolonged investigations of the “French off-nominal 

situation.”

After conducting an investigation according to the service hierarchy, 

Branets reported, “The program algorithm for the runtime check had values for 

angular rates for each of the three axes loaded into it. Rendezvous required two 

correction burns. In so doing, the vehicle is turned at angles that are optimal 

for propellant consumption. After issuing the command to fire the attitudecontrol engines for a turn, the computer monitors the vehicle’s angular rotation 

rate relative to its center of mass. The angular rate depends on the operating 

time of the attitude-control engines and the moments of inertia relative to the 

corresponding axis. The computer knows the engine’s operating time, and the 

ratio of the angular rate to the inertial moment is loaded into the algorithm.”

In this case, the angular rates during the turns exceeded the tolerance. The 

computer interpreted this as a failure of the angular rate sensors and switched 

from the first set to the second. But the second set also showed rates that did 

not correspond to the design values. Then, according to the runtime check 

algorithm, the digital (i.e., computerized) control loop was shut down. This 

happened at a range of 800 meters.

Soyuz-T vehicles have a backup analog manual control loop. At the initiative of Dzhanibekov and our manual control specialists, the crew had preliminary training for approach using this loop at a range up to 1,500 meters. 

Therefore, as soon as the computerized loop “failed,” Dzhanibekov switched on 

the backup, took over control—and docking took place at the calculated time.

As far as root causes were concerned, the computer was not to blame. The 

culprit was a telephone connection between the planners and our dynamics 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

specialists. The actual moments of inertia of this specific spacecraft differ from 

those that our dynamics specialists used to calculate the angular rate values. 

Instead of having official, accounted-for documents, they received the information over the telephone.

After our circle of control specialists had pored over how much the values 

of the actual center-of-mass characteristics had deviated from the design 

values loaded into the runtime check program and received assurances that 

now everything would be corrected, I then had to brief the general designer 

on the causes of the incident. To my astonishment, instead of reacting to the 

incident with the anticipated and completely understandable outrage, Glushko 

dealt with it very calmly but was meticulously interested in the mathematical 

operations that the on-board digital computer received in order to predict the 

angular rates that depended on the duration of the attitude-control engines’ 

burn. A calm conversation resulted in the following instructions: announce 

orders that stringently stipulate the requirement to issue, before each launch, an 

archived calculation, in which the center-of-mass coordinates and moments of 

inertia will correspond to the actual vehicles and crews, rather than to designs 

from three years before.

“It was quite difficult for us to establish a weight discipline,” Glushko said, 

“and we even strictly monitor the cosmonauts’ weight. But I didn’t think that 

you had tasked the computer to monitor the moments of inertia. All the planners must understand what parameters are involved in the field of computer 

monitoring and bear responsibility for their authenticity.”

The Soyuz-T crew proved that it was possible to perform docking using 

manual control from a range of around 1,000 meters. However, subsequently, 

the initial conditions did not always favor such a happy ending. Soyuz T-8, carrying cosmonauts Vladimir Titov, Gennadiy Strekalov, and Aleksandr Serebrov, 

lifted off on 20 April 1983. After insertion, the traditional all-systems test was 

performed, including the Igla rendezvous radio system. During this process, it 

was determined that Igla’s main gyrostabilized pencil-beam antenna was unable 

to assume the necessary position. All of the experts agreed that the antenna 

control mechanism had jammed. To avoid aborting the docking, TsUP formed 

a team that worked through the night and came up with an automatic rendezvous control procedure based on prediction without using Igla until the range 

was no more than 1 kilometer and then switching over to manual mode. After 

the completion of the automatic rendezvous using the scenario the team had 

developed, the range was 3 kilometers. Exercising discipline, the crew waited 

30 minutes for instructions from TsUP. Finally, TsUP made its decision and 

granted permission for manual approach.

Fifteen minutes later, the spacecraft approached to a range of around 200 

meters from the station. Precisely at that moment, the vehicle and station entered 

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People in the Control Loop

Earth’s shadow. In the darkness the crew managed to avoid collision, “diving” 

under the station. After emerging from the shadow, the Soyuz T-8 once again was 

3 kilometers from the station. Calculations showed that the remaining propellant 

reserves were insufficient for new attempts at approach. After being briefed, the 

State Commission made two decisions: to have Soyuz T-8 return to Earth and to 

form the latest accident investigation commission to determine the causes for the 

failure of the Igla. Once again I found myself in the thankless role of chairman.

Our commission succeeded in reproducing the mechanical jamming of 

Igla’s gyrostabilized antenna, having resorted to a “foreign object” scenario. 

We supposed that a wayward nut or something of that ilk floating freely in 

weightlessness under the housing of the drive mechanisms had gotten into the 

works. In this connection we recalled Mnatsakanyan’s sensational declaration 

at the collegium of ministers: “Flying with Igla is tantamount to death!” But 

we didn’t have Kurs yet, and we had to fly. Until we had Kurs, our commission 

recommended to the ballistics and approach dynamics specialists that, “just 

in case,” they develop an approach procedure in the event of a complete radio 

system failure, so that it wouldn’t be necessary to improvise at the last minute. 

The recommendation was accepted for implementation.

The team of Legostayev, Branets, Degtyarenko, Borisenko, Bragazin, and 

Semyachkin, unique in terms of its concentration of intellectuals, acquired an 

inventor’s certificate for a rendezvous method to be used in the event of the 

failure of the radio system that measures relative motion parameters. Special 

algorithms were introduced into the software of the on-board digital computer. 

In combination with the crew’s actions, this made it possible to substantially 

increase the probability of rendezvous with the station in the event of the 

failure of the on-board radar.

“It bodes ill that you came up with this,” someone at the next meeting of 

our accident investigation commission said to the inventors. “Now in addition 

to failures of Igla or Kurs, we’ll have to figure out why your procedure failed.”

A year and a half later the new technology came in handy to save 

the Salyut-7 orbital station. The story of the “clinical death” and resuscitation 

of Salyut-7 serves as a classic example, it would seem, of a small human error in 

the control loop and, subsequently, the truly heroic actions of people involved in 

another large control loop to eliminate the catastrophic consequences of this error.

On 2 October 1984, a crew made up of Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyev, 

and Oleg Atkov departed the station.52 Temporarily, the Salyut-7 station 

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remained in unpiloted mode and peacefully drifted in near-Earth space. The 

calm mode, which generated no interest in the press, the lack of a crew that 

might “do” something and require constant attention on the ground—all of 

this dulled the sense of vigilance of the personnel involved in the large control 

loop at TsUP. This sort of tranquility in space is deceptive.

On 11 February 1985, at the end of the watch of the latest shift at TsUP, 

telemetry reported that current protection in the on-board complex control 

system had been tripped, shutting down the first, primary radio transmitter 

of the long-range radio communication system. It was an unpleasant incident, 

but far from an emergency. Unit S-190, stuffed with long-range radio communication system (DRS) equipment, housed two identical transmitters. It 

also contained receivers and decoders receiving commands from Earth.

Once the radio system automatics had perceived the failure of the primary 

transmitter, it switched on the second—the backup. The shift that was on duty 

at TsUP was not surprised after discovering the automatic switch to the backup 

transmitter. It was well known that the set of radio instruments had exhausted 

its service life and had the moral right to one failure that would not lead to the 

failure of the whole system. A cargo transport vehicle had previously delivered 

the spare set that was on board. The crew of the upcoming expedition was 

supposed to replace the spent S-190 set with the new one.53

The shift recorded the unremarkable incident (compared with the scales 

of other space incidents) in the flight log with the recommendation to call in 

a specialist on the on-board complex control system (SUBK) from TsKBEM 

and the DRS specialist from the Scientific-Research Institute of Space 

Instrumentation Building (NIIKP) in Moscow so that they could analyze the 

situation together and prepare a report.54 But meanwhile they decided to work 

using the second transmitter.

Flight control was conducted from TsUP in four shifts. Each one was on 

duty for 24 hours. I wasn’t able to determine what information the members 

of that shift, who were hurrying off to get some rest after a sleepless night, 

passed on to their relief shift members. And that’s really just a detail. All we 

know is that the director of the new shift did not summon or did not wait until 

the arrival of the specialists, i.e., the SUBK developers responsible for current 

 53.

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People in the Control Loop

protection and the radio complex developers capable of making a diagnosis 

and giving a report about the shutdown of the primary transmitter.

Subsequent examination determined that in keeping with tradition and 

the existing procedure, it was the duty of the shift flight director to wait for the 

specialists (developers of the DRS and SUBK) to show up. After analyzing the 

telemetry information, having debated with one another, they were supposed 

to make recommendations as to how to work thereafter, having signed off on 

the corresponding conclusion in the logbook.

Evidently, the shift director decided “we didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” 

Without waiting for those responsible for the systems, he gave the command 

to switch on the first DRS transmitter. And really, why not give the first set 

one more try? Perhaps an accidental actuation of the automatic protection had 

occurred. And if there really is a malfunction there, that’s what the current 

protection is for—it will trip again. You can reason like that at home if you’ve 

blown a fuse. Even a housewife who has seen smoke coming from the television or vacuum cleaner will not count on the reliability of the fuses and risk 

switching it on again. At TsUP they didn’t see whether smoke had appeared 

on board the DOS. But the actuation of the current protection in itself meant 

that the strength of the current exceeded the norm by three to five times.

The findings regarding this incident, approved by Oleg Shishkin (deputy 

minister [at MOM] at that time) and signed by me, Ryazanskiy, Vorshev, and 

two military representatives, said:

. . . 3. Analysis of the circuit, design, and operational documentation, and also the broad experience accumulated during the joint 

operation of the DRS and SUBK systems on spacecraft 11F615-A8, 

11F615-A12, 11F615-A15, and 17K, showed that the principle 

“any one failure in any of the systems must not lead to the failure 

of a system” has been fulfilled.55

 4. Failure of the first transmitter of the DRS system, identified 

on 02 November 1985 during orbit 16,252, was contained by 

the current protection of the SUBK system and did not result in a 

failure in the operation of any of the systems. Up until 1320 hours, 

51 seconds, all on-board systems were operating normally according 

to data from the analysis of telemetry information.

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 5. Commands from the ground to reactivate the first transmitter, 

The failure of the decoders, which were installed in the same framework as 

the transmitters, deprived the station of the ability to receive any commands 

from Earth. The station went out of control. We were unable to reproduce 

the “snowballing process” under laboratory conditions with a short-circuiting 

current of 120 amperes passing through the transmitter because of the ambiguity and randomness of the phenomena. The findings contained the following 

modest statement: “The failures were confined to the S-190 framework of the 

DRS system and in the power circuits of the transmitters of instrument BKP 

of the SUBK system.” The short-circuiting current in excess of 100 amperes 

rapidly discharged the buffer batteries. The voltage of the on-board network 

fell to the minimum level, at which point the automatic circuit breakers were 

tripped, shutting down the electric power consumers one after another.

After commands were issued from the ground to reactivate the malfunctioning transmitter, the strength of the current in the power circuit exceeded 

100 amperes. Most likely the contacts of the radio transmitter power switch 

“burned out,” the insulation melted, and possibly there was short-circuiting 

somewhere else “along the way” in the cable network.

There was a weak glimmer of hope that despite the loss of orientation, the 

station, while turning, would still receive enough energy from the Sun to support the thermal mode to the minimum extent necessary. However, this same 

“snowballing process” also resulted in the malfunctioning of the sequencer, 

which at least once per day issued a command to connect the solar arrays to 

the buffer battery charging circuit. The command to charge the batteries did 

not get through from the ground or from the on-board sequencer. The system 

orienting the solar arrays on the Sun ceased to operate. The single power supply 

system—the on-board electric power station—completely broke down. All 

the electrical systems, including the thermal mode control assemblies, ceased 

to function.

The station began to freeze. According to the calculations of the thermal 

mode specialists, the temperature inside the station would fall to –20°C [–4°F] 

in a week. The station became a big, useless, artificial satellite, which only the 

missile defense system’s space monitoring facilities could track. Salyut-7 fell 

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People in the Control Loop

into a state of anabiosis. No ingenious sets of commands sent on board from 

TsUP were capable of bringing it out of this state.

The station could only be saved by a human being, who after entering 

the station would disconnect the failed S-190 casing; replace it with a spare, 

which fortunately was on board the station; replace the cables damaged by 

the current surge with others brought from Earth; connect a warm storage 

battery that was also brought along; begin warming up the system; and 

restore orientation, thermal control, and everything else, including the lifesupport system.

This repair team would have a lot of work to do. And it was unusual work. 

But how would a human being get there if the station was silent and the Igla

rendezvous radio system, among others, also remained without power? This 

was the full-scale manifestation of Pilyugin’s law: “Emergency situations are 

the strongest impetus for new ideas and the improvement of systems.” This was 

one more of my versions of this law. Against the background of the Americans’ 

success, the loss of the Salyut-7 orbital station could become one more powerful blow against the Soviet Union’s prestige in space.56 Moreover, there were 

many costly instruments and materials for science programs on the station. 

“Save the station no matter what” was the overriding mission that the teams 

of control specialists set for themselves.

Throughout February [1985] we assessed the degree of possible damage 

incurred in the station’s electrical network and developed measures to reanimate the systems, which inevitably go out of order when exposed to prolonged 

freezing. Everything that was needed for the repairs and restoration was 

immediately put to work. The most important thing was still the question, 

who would fly to the station to revive it and how would they get there? After 

brief discussions they settled on the plan that Vladimir Dzhanibekov and 

Viktor Savinykh should be in the primary crew. Dzhanibekov already had 

experience in manual approach from great distances and was quite familiar 

with the station.57 Engineer Savinykh from NPO Energiya was officially 

considered a specialist in optical sensors and manual orientation systems 

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From the author’s archives.

The Soyuz T-4 crew of Vladimir Kovalenok and Viktor Savinykh are shown here 

discussing one of their scientific experiments with A. V. Leventsov.

but actually was highly capable at figuring out all kinds of motion control 

technology problems.58

Three months went into the training of the rescue expedition. During 

this time they developed the process for the interaction of TsUP with the 

Ministry of Defense Space Monitoring Service. With unique antenna systems 

and powerful computers at their disposal, the missile defense service and space 

monitoring service were able to determine the true orbit of Salyut-7. Unlike our 

space Command and Measurement Complex, they did not need an on-board 

responder for radio monitoring of the orbit. When we asked them not only 

to determine the station’s orbit, but also to try to measure its angular rotation 

rate using their powerful resources, they gave a reassuring answer: “Your station is hardly rotating at all!”

Igor Gansvindt explained the theoretical underpinning of the station’s 

seemingly strange behavior. He explained that once the station was deprived 

of its nominal control system, if it was rotating about its center of mass, it 

gradually settled down as a result of the effect of gravitational orientation. Thus, 

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People in the Control Loop

our ballistics experts had the opportunity to predict the orbital motion of the 

frozen station and provide the on-board digital computer of the Soyuz T-13

spacecraft, which was being prepared for the rescue expedition, with baseline 

data for rendezvous. Algorithms making it possible to predict motion up to a 

range of 1.5 to 2 kilometers were loaded into the on-board digital computer 

software of this spacecraft. From a distance of around 5 kilometers the cosmonauts measured the actual range to the station using the LPR-1 manual laser 

range meter, specially manufactured for this unique flight. Using the LPR-1 

measurements, the cosmonauts were supposed to switch to manual rendezvous 

and final approach from a distance of 1.5 to 2 kilometers.

The Soyuz T-13 spacecraft lifted off on 6 June 1985. This flight can serve 

as a model of the excellent combination of the human being as the main link 

in a large control system with two large man-machine systems. Not only did 

Dzhanibekov and Savinykh execute approach and docking with the dead 

station brilliantly, but they also entered it and worked heroically to save it. 

They succeeded in this completely. Among all piloted flights from the time 

of Gagarin, this expedition deserves the highest marks for the heroism and 

professionalism of a human being in space. Radar quickly located the frozen 

orbital station. The rescue expedition successfully proceeded to the station 

thanks to a combination of the heroism of the rescuers and the achievements 

of radio electronics and spaceflight control technology.59

I have discussed a very small number of off-nominal situations. It 

would be good, as a training manual for anyone who works on the problem 

of “the human being in a large system control loop,” to compile a description 

of the main off-nominal situations in cosmonautics over the past 40 years! I 

am confident that an analysis of their causes and the methods for eliminating 

them would be much more useful than dozens of theoretical developments 

on the subjects of reliability and safety.

Until very recently, striving to “keep in shape,” I would show up at Mission 

Control Center at least an hour before the next docking session of a piloted 

vehicle or cargo vehicle with the orbital station. They even reserved a seat for me 

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in front of a monitor where all the information about the rendezvous process 

is displayed. Rendezvous and docking continue to be the most complex and 

crucial process of flight control technology. The availability of reliable on-board 

computer systems on the station and on spacecraft makes it possible to fully 

automate this process.

The role of observers and high-level supervisors has been assigned to the 

multitude of personnel at the Mission Control Center. The ballistics and 

navigation service of the Mission Control Center calculates all the events of 

the rendezvous process the day before, and they are loaded into the memory 

of the on-board computers via radio links in the form of settings. When, as an 

idle veteran-observer, I occupy the seat prepared for me in the control room, I 

can compare the design data with the actual data coming in via television and 

telemetry channels with the help of a geostationary communications satellite 

with accuracy down to the second.60 All that’s left to do is to anxiously await the 

“Contact” signal. After the “Contact” signal, Academician Viktor Legostayev, 

also according to tradition, loudly announces “One less reprimand!” from his 

seat next to me.61

Radio electronic technology has made a qualitative leap. And the people 

in the control loop have grown much wiser. Now it wouldn’t occur to anyone 

to propose the approach and docking scenario that we saddled Beregovoy with 

in 1968. And nevertheless, even with the most trouble-free approach process, 

a vexing feeling will crop up. Russia—the first space power—is unable to 

transmit information from the spacecraft to TsUP during “silent” orbits just 

because we don’t have a relay satellite like Altair or Molniya. Sometimes we use 

American geostationary satellites. And all because people in the government 

control “loop” are not performing their direct functions.

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Chapter 19

Valentin Glushko, N-1, 

and NPO Energiya

At the end of the day on 15 May 1974, Pilyugin called me on the Kremlin line.

“Vasiliy Mishin is leaving you. You’re going to get a new designer, but this 

time a general [designer] rather than a chief [designer].”

“Who?”

“Glushko.”

I was not surprised and didn’t repeat my question. Just two years before, 

the very same thing happened in the movie Taming the Fire [Ukroshcheniye 

Ognya].1 After the death of the main character of the film (chief designer 

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok with actor Kirill Lavrov (right), who played the role of Bashkirtsev in 

the movie Taming the Fire.

 1. The movie was released in 1972. Chertok has much to say about the movie later in this 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

of rockets Bashkirtsev, in whose character the informed viewer recognized 

Korolev), chief designer of engines Ognev took his place. The brilliant actor 

Kirill Lavrov played the role of Bashkirtsev, while Igor Gorbachev played Ognev. 

In the film, the relationship between Bashkirtsev and Ognev was portrayed 

with greater warmth than in real life. In this regard, Isayev, who advised the 

creators of Taming the Fire along with me, said that it was simply not possible 

to show in a film the degree of complexity that really existed in the relationship 

between Korolev and Glushko.

 “Let’s make them good friends,” he proposed. Daniil Khrabrovitskiy and 

I agreed.

I wasn’t about to grill Pilyugin about how he had learned this sensational 

news and who had made this decision. Pilyugin had good connections in the 

Central Committee apparat, and he had total confidence in the information 

he reported. Nevertheless, I didn’t dare pass on such earth-shattering news for 

our staff to any of my close friends.

The next day began with the usual hurly-burly of routine business, testing 

incidents, production problems and telephone calls to subcontractors, and 

disruptions of delivery dates. No one knew yet about the change of leadership. 

There was not a single telephone call “from the top,” and no one was summoned.

On the way to the dining hall for our managerial staff I asked Mishin’s 

secretary, “Where’s Vasiliy Pavlovich?”

“He’s been at the ministry all morning,” answered Nina Petrovna.

We all sat wedged around the dining table in silence. Could it be that 

everyone already knew, as I did, but didn’t dare be the first to say anything?

And, even so, I telephoned Pilyugin after lunch to recheck. He was offended.

“So, you don’t believe me? Valentin has already consulted with me regarding the N-1. He doesn’t want to continue this project. He asked how I feel 

about shutting down the N-1. I said that I had a lot of production stock for 

the control system, that I’m responsible for reliability and don’t see any reason 

why we need to halt a project that has thousands of organizations involved 

in it. I recommend that you not waste any time and call Glushko yourself. I 

advised him to talk it over with you before he shows up at your firm.”

After a minute’s hesitation I dialed Glushko’s number on the Kremlin 

line. He was clearly happy to hear from me and asked, “If it’s not too much 

trouble, ride over to my office. I’ll be waiting.”

From many years of personal dealings with Glushko, from the stories of his 

close associates, based on the complexities of the relationship between Glushko 

and Korolev and his blatant dislike for Mishin, I knew that this man’s nature 

was far from “sugar and spice.” How was he going to behave himself when he 

was in charge of a staff where the memory of Korolev was sacredly cherished 

and where Vasiliy Mishin had already been in charge for more than eight years?

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

On the road to Khimki, in my mind I ran through convincing arguments 

in defense of the N-1 that I would tell Glushko in our meeting. But would he 

want to listen? Ultimately, it wasn’t a minister or the VPK that would have to 

make such a decision, but the Politburo. Glushko knew how to show exceptional 

perseverance. This was well known. If he had ventured to mention the idea 

of shutting down the N-1 project to Pilyugin, then very likely he had already 

spoken with Keldysh, and perhaps with Ustinov as well.

In searching for the entrance gates to the grounds of OKB-456 (now KB 

Energomash), I relied on my memory. More than 30 years earlier I had worked 

briefly on these grounds at Factory No. 84. Beginning in 1939, this factory 

had been working on mastering the production of Douglas DC-3 twin-engine 

passenger airplanes. These airplanes were put into series production on the 

basis of a license purchased from the Americans and were called PS-84s—after 

the factory number. Vladimir Myasishchev was in charge of reworking the 

American drawings and converting inches into millimeters until mid-1938 

when he was arrested as a political prisoner and he once again ended up 

working under Tupolev, who had also been arrested and sent to the NKVD’s 

forced labor sharashka known as TsKB-29.2 Consequently, the airplane had no 

chief designer. In 1942, the aircraft was assigned the designation Li-2 for the 

surname of the chief engineer of Factory No. 84, Boris Lisunov.

I first passed through the factory entryway in late 1939, on my way to 

the OKB of Chief Designer Viktor Bolkhovitinov. In those days there was 

no rocket technology here. Bolkhovitinov’s OKB soon moved out of Factory 

No. 84 to Factory No. 293, built right here in Khimki. Factory No. 84 got rid 

of Bolkhovitinov’s bothersome planners, who proposed ideas for airplanes that 

were too original and interfered with the series production of the American 

Douglas DC-3.3

I, a Moscow Power Engineering Institute diploma student, had reached 

an agreement with Bolkhovitinov for the development of electrical equipment 

with an alternating current system for a brand-new bomber airplane. A year 

later I defended a classified diploma with distinction and came to work for 

Bolkhovitinov, who had already moved to Factory No. 293. However, officially 

 2. The NKVD was a precursor of the KGB. In the late 1930s and through World War II, it 

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I went to work at Bolkhovitinov’s OKB, passing through the entryway of 

Factory No. 84. Valentin Petrovich Glushko had been in charge here since 

1946. Aircraft production had been shut down. The factory was converted 

into the largest firm in Europe involved in the development and manufacture 

of liquid-propellant rocket engines (ZhRD).4

Once again I looked around the grounds for the building housing the 

office of the chief designer, who would be my new boss. True, this time rather 

than standing in line at the access control office, I drove through the gate in 

my service vehicle. Without a hitch the secretary invited me into Glushko’s 

office. For the first time I looked at Glushko as my future boss, and not as an 

esteemed subcontractor of Korolev.

It seemed to me he looked younger [than his age] when he quickly stood 

up and came out from behind his large desk to greet me. A scarcely discernible 

reserved smile lit up the regular and fine features of his face. In his splendidly 

fitting suit and tie of matching austere color, his whole slim figure radiated 

amiability and calm assurance.

“I haven’t thrust myself on you in Sergey Pavlovich’s place,” said Glushko. 

“But we are obliged to comply with the Politburo’s decision. As soon as the 

minister’s order is issued, I will come over to you right away. This could even 

happen tomorrow. You are one of the leading managers of OKB-1. If I am not 

mistaken, we first met 30 years ago. Since then our paths have crossed enough 

times for us to trust one another. I am justified in counting on your help. I 

have laid down the condition that OKB-1 be merged with OKB-456 and that 

the new organization be called the Energiya Scientific Production Association 

(NPO Energiya). The Central Committee agreed with my proposals. I do 

not intend to meddle with your staff, to bring about a new order. First and 

foremost, effort needs to be spent on making a transition toward developing 

a series of new heavy launch vehicles instead of the N-1.”

“What does ‘instead of’ mean?” I couldn’t keep quiet.

“This means that work on the current version of the N-1 will be terminated 

and we will have to quickly develop a series of new launch vehicles with reliable 

 4. Factory No. 84 was originally established in June 1932 in Khimki for the repair of civilian 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

engines. I do not intend to introduce radical changes into the space program. 

You have taken on big commitments with the orbital stations, spacecraft, and 

the joint project with the American Apollo—I am going to support this in every 

way possible; I hope that we have complete mutual understanding there. But 

you will admit that landing one man on the Moon 10 years after the Americans 

is stupid. We must have our own permanent base with a rotating team of real 

scientists on the Moon. To achieve this we need other launch vehicles. Mishin 

wasn’t removed at my initiative, but I do not want to work with him. I hope 

that he understands this. Everyone else must do his duty responsibly. I hope 

that you, Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, and Kuznetsov will support the project. I have 

already discussed this with each of them.”

Glushko said all of this calmly, firmly, and confidently, excluding the very 

possibility of any doubts.

Nevertheless, I said, “We have developed proposals for a lunar base calling 

for the use of several N-1s with new reusable engines. We believe that with 

the same funding that was allocated for N1-L3, the base could be created in 

four or five years.”

“You can’t build a lunar base using rotten engines,” Glushko interrupted me.

Glushko’s attitude toward the subject under discussion and toward his conversation partner could be determined not so much by his words as by his face 

and eyes. I had learned this back when I met him in Germany. If his face became 

impenetrable and his eyes glazed over, it was better not to continue the conversation. I shouldn’t have mentioned the lunar base to be created using the N-1.

I understood that the conversation was over, I thanked him for his confidence, and we said our good-byes. The entire appointment lasted 20 minutes. 

After driving away from the KB Energomash grounds, I got the driver confused 

trying to find the entrance to my former home Factory No. 293, which General 

Designer Petr Grushin, creator of the antimissile missile, now headed.5 By 

some quirk of fate, this took place on the very same grounds where they had 

designed the first rocket interceptor for German bombers.6 Now Petr Grushin 

was producing missiles one after the other—but these were interceptors of 

American intercontinental ballistic missiles.7

 5. Grushin headed MKB Fakel—

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

On 21 May 1974, a government decree was issued and then a minister’s 

order regarding Glushko’s appointment as general designer and director of NPO 

Energiya. What made 66-year-old Glushko agree with a proposal that dramatically 

altered his biography as an unadulterated engine specialist? He must have understood that among our staff, where the memory of Korolev was fresh, he would 

not be met with an enthusiastic reception. He took a lot of risks. The nation’s 

nuclear missile shield depended on his engines. No, he did not abandon his own 

OKB-456 engine facilities. Glushko retained Energomash, having incorporated it 

into the new NPO Energiya. For an aspiring, ambitious, and extremely dedicated 

engineer and scientist, it is possible that this was not a misstep, but the logical 

conclusion of a dream from his distant youth about interplanetary flights. To 

become not just another subcontractor, but a general designer of interplanetary 

rocket-space complexes—how can one turn down an offer like that? I wasn’t the 

only one who decided to help him rather than line up in opposition. Without 

any sort of collusion, that’s what all of Mishin’s former deputies thought.

The day after the minister’s order came out, Glushko assembled all of the 

deputies of the chief designer at TsKBEM and laid out his concept for the 

development of cosmonautics. The N-1 did not have a place in this concept.

On 24 June 1974, Glushko summoned the chief designer of the N-1, Boris 

Dorofeyev, and asked him to prepare an order calling for the termination of 

the N-1 project. Dorofeyev refused. Then Glushko composed and signed the 

order himself. Neither the Council of Chief Designers nor the internal technical 

management gathered for a meeting beforehand. Dorofeyev’s refusal was the 

only demonstration of public disobedience among the managers at TsKBEM.

Glushko called in an inner circle of planners to develop specific proposals 

for new launch vehicles. Managers, who associated with them owing to their 

professional obligations, understood that he was preparing for decisive actions 

against the N-1. But for thousands of people who had been associated with this 

“crucial government program” for many years, the order was an unexpected 

shock. Before the order came out, even my department had maintained the hope 

that the top managers—Afanasyev, Ustinov, and finally Keldysh—would not 

allow such a reprisal against the N-1 and would find some sort of compromise.

“Our new boss, it turns out, is a brave man,” N-1 patriots in confidence 

chuckled, literally through their tears. “He, like one of Nekrasov’s women, will 

stop a horse running at full tilt and will go into a burning house.”8

 8. Nikolay Alekseyevich Nekrasov (1821–1877) was a famous Russian poet known particularly 

526
Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

Actually, it was much more formidable with the stroke of a pen to shut 

down the N-1 projects under way at hundreds of enterprises than it was to stop 

a horse. Once such a shutdown occurred, it was necessary to enter “houses” 

inflamed with rebellion. The protest was particularly intense at the Progress 

Factory in Kuybyshev and at its branch at the firing range, which was created 

solely for the sake of the N-1. There they had completed preparation of launch 

vehicle N-1 No. 8, on which all conceivable measures had been implemented. 

The most important of these was the installation of the Kuznetsov’s newly 

modified engines. Each of the engines had previously undergone firing tests. 

Nikolay Kuznetsov’s firm had developed a reusable engine, which our engine 

specialists—Raykov, Yershov, and Khaspekov—had nothing against.

At a meeting in early 1974, Raykov even joked, “Boris Yevseyevich, your 

KORD specialists are going to be left without a job. At last, Kuznetsov has 

made the engines so reliable that they don’t need KORD.”

It took 10 years for Kuznetsov to create a fully reliable engine “from 

scratch.” The new engines also had a new designation. The first four N-1 rockets 

had engines with the designations 11D51, 11D52, and 11D53—for the first, 

second, and third stages, respectively. Beginning with No. 8L, engines with the 

designations 11D111, 11D112, and 11D113 were supposed to be installed.9

First and foremost, they revamped the turbopump assembly (TNA). They 

eliminated flame erosion and the breakdown of the oxygen pump by reducing 

the axial force on the radial support bearings. They improved the thermal protective coating on the turbines and elements of the oxidizer line, replaced the 

material of the seals, and improved the startup and shutdown automatics. Rather 

than a “two-out-of-four” or “two-out-of-six” selective method, a high degree of 

reliability was ensured by implementing tests of a complex of high-efficiency 

measurement and diagnostic methods for the analysis of dynamic processes. 

Bitter experience had taught that not a single defect, even the most insignificant 

one, should go without investigation, without conducting the necessary measures 

and subsequent checks under stringent conditions. They conducted 220 firing 

rig tests on 76 newly modified engines, during which they surpassed the design 

specifications requirements. Tests confirmed the reliability of repeated startup on 

24 engines. On one of the engines they performed 10 firings without overhaul. 

During repeat firings the processes in the engines remained stable and did not 

depend on the number of previous startups. Beginning with N-1 No. 8L, each 

 9. The older engines were known as NK-15 (11D51), NK-15V (11D52), and NK-19 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

series-produced engine that was to be installed on a rocket underwent inspectionsample tests from the batch and firing-acceptance tests; it was then sent to be 

installed without preliminary reworking.

Our chief engine specialist Mikhail Melnikov, who recently had been considerably more wrapped up in nuclear power problems than liquid-propellant 

rocket engines, nevertheless found time to keep an eye on the work going on 

in Kuznetsov’s department.

“If five years ago we had had the engines that Kuznetsov has now put into 

series production, our history would have taken a different turn.”

Melnikov expressed this thought having joined Bushuyev and me for an 

evening stroll along Academician Korolev Street in Moscow when we were 

discussing Glushko’s order to shut down the N-1 project.

“And where were you, our chief engine ‘ideologue,’ five years ago? Why 

did you agree to the installation of unreliable engines?” I asked in exasperation. 

“You and Mishin were both elated that the engine had unique parameters and 

didn’t think about the fact that you also needed to demand unique reliability.”

In those days there were a great many such recriminations and conversations on the subject of “What will become of the N-1 now?”

After Glushko’s order, a resolution calling for the operations to be halted 

and financing to be cut off for the N-1 program for the entire industry simply 

didn’t ensue. The Central Committee and VPK apparat timidly hinted that this 

matter still hadn’t been studied “at the very top.” In order to stop this work, the 

reason needed to be named, losses needed to be added up, a decision needed 

to be made to write off five billion rubles of expenditures, and, perhaps, even 

to name and punish the guilty parties.

“One person guilty of disrupting the program has already suffered,” they 

poked fun at us behind the scenes at VPK. “That’s Vasiliy Mishin. After removing him from the job, they’re not going to punish him any more. And all of 

you who are still there, if you raise a ruckus about N1-L3 you might suffer. 

Think about it, you’ve got enough work.”

Outrage over Glushko’s order was vented in crowded smoking rooms, 

among friends in their free time, and in the offices of managers, for whom in the 

past few years the N-1 had remained their primary raison d’être. Many people 

found themselves in a ridiculous situation: the staffs of the Progress Factory in 

Kuybyshev, which was the head factory for the manufacture of the entire launch 

vehicle, and in raw stock had already reached launch vehicle No. 14; at the 

M. V. Frunze Motor Factory, which after enormous difficulties had mastered 

the series production of rocket engines; and at Kuznetsov’s OKB-276, which 

had finally developed reusable engines. The rig tests conducted in Kuybyshev 

and with particular partiality at NII-229 in Zagorsk proved that as a result of 

more than a decade of work, the series production of oxygen-kerosene engines, 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

unique in terms of their parameters, had been set up and that these were not 

just prototypes.

Nikolay Kuznetsov flew to Moscow to meet with his minister, Petr 

Dementyev. Dmitriy Kozlov spoke his mind in this regard to Deputy Minister 

Viktor Litvinov, the former director of Progress, and to the minister himself, 

Sergey Afanasyev.

Several days after Glushko’s order came out, I rode over to the ministry. 

The apparat clerks who had been drawn into the planning, coordination of 

production, and concurrence of recriminations on N1-L3 were in a state of 

shock. The movement of papers between desks and offices suddenly stopped. 

That same day I was asked to stop by the VPK. My acquaintances in the Kremlin 

apparat were frankly outraged by the fact that Glushko had allowed himself 

to issue such an order before the VPK decision came out.

Boris Shchegolkov, one of the old, experienced developers of the aviation 

industry, who worked in the VPK apparat, boasted, “I am the only non-Party 

person in the VPK apparat. They keep me because I know the industry better 

than the majority of people sitting here and have since before the war.”

Shchegolkov didn’t conceal his outrage.

“At the beginning of the war at the aviation factory in Moscow we 

worked almost around the clock. Every single minute was valuable. You 

yourselves remember: ‘Everything for the front, everything for victory!’ And 

suddenly—the order. Shut down production, dismantle the equipment, load 

it onto special trains, and evacuate to the east.10 This was unexpected and 

psychologically difficult to endure. But we didn’t simply escape to the east; 

we had a clear order: immediately upon arrival at the new location, set up 

airplane production, even if it’s in an open field. But what is Glushko allowing himself to do? Simply shut down thousands of machine tool stations like 

that, and what are you going to start up tomorrow? In the old days heads 

would roll for stunts like this.”

But not a single head rolled. Everyone understood that Glushko would 

not have decided to issue such an order if he hadn’t obtained the minister’s 

consent, and most likely Ustinov’s as well. Before he had cooled off after his 

conversation over the Kremlin line with Glushko, Pilyugin telephoned me.

“I found out from Finogeyev, and he found out from your guys about 

Glushko’s order. Who acts like that? You understand, don’t you, that an order 

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like that affects all the other firms more than yours? My factory is swamped 

with orders for the N-1. I’ve disrupted other projects for the sake of the N-1. 

What am I supposed to do with tons of instruments and cables? What are 

you thinking there?”

It isn’t ours to divine the future. But from the future, which becomes 

the present, we can examine the past. Assessing the behavior of individual 

people and staffs, one realizes that we really did make history. If during the 

launch of the first Sputnik in 1957 we still did not fully recognize the value of 

such events, then just five years later—from state leaders and chief designers to 

thousands of engineers, workers, and soldiers who worked in design bureaus, 

laboratories, shops, and firing ranges, who to this day remain unknown to history—they understood that they were making history. They understood this 

just as clearly as a soldier during the Great Patriotic War recognized that he 

was defending his fatherland and giving up his life, not for foreign, unknown 

interests, but for his own nation, city, village, and family.

We knew the history that we had made. We tried to plan the future so 

as to correct the past. Everything in the plans, schedules, and deadlines was 

broken down year by year, month by month, and day by day. The workday was 

planned down to the minute. The preparation, launch, and flight of a rocket was 

calculated and forecast with an accuracy down to tenths of a second. Having 

been in the recent past, which just yesterday was our future, and once again 

looking into this future, which has become the past, we, like chess players, felt 

vexed as a result of our bad decisions and sorted through dozens of options in 

order to find the one that would bring victory.

My own notes, the stories of friends and acquaintances, and rare authoritative memoirs of that time have corroborated individual events and what at 

that time seemed like everyday life. Now, looking at my comrades and myself 

from today’s perspective, I realize that we were involved in tremendous achievements. Episodes that had seemed workaday were great events. However, strict 

standards forbid the historian describing the past from reflecting on the pages 

of his work. What would have been, if....

However, the majority of people allow themselves to reflect about what 

would have been if an hour, a day, a month, or a year ago he or she had acted 

in one way rather than the other. Before beginning the next game, a chess 

player who has lost a match must thoroughly analyze the preceding game, find 

his mistake, and finish playing that match with himself proceeding from the 

assumption that he has made a stronger move.

It is more difficult for a field commander, who knows full well how he 

must act to prevent his troops from taking a drubbing and to save thousands of 

lives, but despite his predictions he is ordered “from the top” to act otherwise. 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

There are many examples of this in Marshal Zhukov’s Remembrances and 

Contemplations [Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya].11

In 1974 we could still turn the tables in the Moon race. Four failed N-1 

launches had provided a wealth of experience for the creation of a reliable launch 

vehicle. In late 1974, preparation was under way for the launch of N-1 No. 8 

with new reusable engines, which had undergone technological firing tests 

(OTI). Hundreds of modifications had been performed on the launch vehicle 

based on the results of the previous four launches and also devised “just in 

case....” The future lunar base, the enormous MKBS, the expedition to Mars, 

the space radio telescopes with antennas hundreds of meters in diameter, and the 

communications satellites weighing many tons stationkeeping in geostationary 

orbit—all of this in thoroughly tangible designs was associated with the N-1. 

Only now did it begin to occur to us that along with the N-1, we were really 

losing opportunities for interplanetary flight and other less fantastic projects.

Signing the order calling for the termination of the N1-L3 projects, 

Glushko knew something that we, those involved in this work, didn’t know at 

that time. In early May 1974, Ustinov gathered his inner circle in his office to 

decide the fate of the N1-L3. They were faced with preparing a verdict, which 

first needed to be reported to the Politburo and then formalized by a resolution of the Central Committee and Council of Ministers. Keldysh, Smirnov, 

Afanasyev, Tyulin, Serbin, Komissarov, and Mozzhorin were invited to the 

meeting. The only “outsider” was Minister of the Aviation Industry Dementyev.

“It’s time to tell the Politburo the truth!” said Ustinov as he opened the 

meeting, each participant of which would have to answer to history for the 

possible consequences of the decision to be made. Not one of the N1-L3 creators was invited. Mishin’s fate had been predetermined. Ustinov didn’t invite 

Nikolay Kuznetsov because it wasn’t difficult to surmise his position. Pilyugin, 

who was the closest of the chief designers to Ustinov back then, might speak 

out of turn and destroy the assumed unity. Ustinov could disregard the opinion 

of the military in this case. There were clearly no lunar program enthusiasts 

among them.

Many years later, Mozzhorin said, “Everyone in attendance spoke in favor 

of terminating the projects and closing the subject. Keldysh had no serious 

 11.

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science programs in reserve that justified the continuation of expenditures on 

such a powerful launch vehicle. He believed that the Moon no longer held its 

previous interest for scientists. As far as Mars was concerned, we needed to 

develop a reusable space transport system (MKTS) and, with its help, begin 

construction on a large station in near-Earth orbit.”12

After Keldysh spoke, everyone, except for Mozzhorin, came out in favor of 

shutting down operations on the N-1, even Dementyev and Afanasyev. These 

two ministers should have been frightened by the prospects of terminating 

work in which tens of thousands of people were involved. These ministers 

would have to find work for them.

Serbin, who had always been highly favorable towards Chelomey and 

had protected him, had at least received moral compensation. In due time, 

Chelomey’s project—the super-heavy UR-700 launch vehicle—was shut down 

because work on the N-1 had already gained so much ground. Smirnov and 

his deputy Komissarov guessed what Ustinov wanted. Now it was easier and 

(for each of them personally) safer to shut down the N-1 than to risk continuing operations with unpredictable repercussions. Mozzhorin turned out to be 

the only one opposed to shutting down N-1 operations. He spoke in favor of 

continuing the launch vehicle’s developmental testing program. Mozzhorin 

attempted to prove the need for the launch of N-1 No. 8, having alluded to 

the fact that new reusable engines had been installed on it.

“We are gaining the opportunity to test not just the first, but the second 

and third stages as well. After the Americans halt operations on the Saturn 

V, the N-1 will be the only super-heavy launch vehicle of similar class in the 

world. We must not under any circumstances miss this opportunity.”

“And you guarantee that the fifth launch will be a success?” asked Ustinov.

“As you know, only an insurance policy gives full guarantees,” Mozzhorin 

said, recalling Voskresenskiy’s favorite aphorism.

For some reason this really infuriated Komissarov.

“Just look how he disrespects all of us. He’s sprawled out in the chair and 

is lecturing us like little boys. I don’t think that he has lived up to our hopes 

as director of the head institute.”13

Ustinov stopped Komissarov: “Boris Alekseyevich, don’t get personal, just 

go ahead and talk about the technology.”

 12.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

Winding up the meeting, Ustinov said that everyone, except Mozzhorin, 

had come out in favor of shutting down the project. We needed to prepare a 

well-reasoned resolution of the Central Committee and Council of Ministers.

“The next morning,” Mozzhorin continued his story, “I hadn’t yet managed 

to get into my daily business, when Minister Afanasyev telephoned.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sitting and thinking, when are they going to take me off the job for 

what I said yesterday.”

Afanasyev’s reaction was unexpected: “You were great! You said the right 

thing,” Afanasyev commended.

Someday future generations “sorting out the rubble of our times” will 

create a film series telling the history of three super-heavy launch vehicles—

the Saturn V, N-1, and Energiya. Showing similar shadowy meetings will be 

just as essential as spectacular frames of launching rockets to understand our 

anything-but-simple history.

The time had come to let off steam, to discuss the problem of “where are 

we going?” If not the N-1, then what instead? On 28 June 1974, the minister 

approved the organization layout of NPO Energiya, in which there was no 

longer a post for chief designer of the N-1.

At Glushko’s recommendation, they inserted chief designer posts for areas 

of endeavor directly subordinate to him. These chief designers were as follows:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

Yakov Kolyako—for multipurpose heavy launch vehicles;

Igor Sadovskiy—for reusable transport space systems;

Yuriy Semyonov—for orbital stations of all designations; and

Ivan Prudnikov—for the lunar complex.

Konstantin Bushuyev was appointed director and chief designer of the 

Apollo-Soyuz project.

In addition to the chief designers, the following posts were directly subordinate to Glushko:

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

•	

First Deputy Director and General Designer Yuriy Trufanov

First Deputy Director and Director of the Factory of Experimental Machine 

Building Viktor Klyucharev

First Deputy Director for Reconstruction, Building, and General Matters 

Georgiy Sovkov

First Deputy General Designer and Head and Chief Designer of KB 

Energomash Vitaliy Radovskiy

First Deputy Director and Head of KB Energomash and Director of the 

Experimental Factory of Power Machine Building Stanislav Bogdanovskiy

Deputy General Designer for Coordination and Control Mikhail 

Khomyakov

Deputy Director for Safety Anatoliy Kalygin

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•	 Deputy Director for Personnel Georgiy Paukov

•	 Deputy Director for Flight Testing Support Mikhail Samokhin

Thus, Glushko saddled himself with an enormous load of administrative activity, which he had never liked and for which he displayed no talent. 

Moving into Korolev’s office in Podlipki, Glushko left Khimki and his assistant 

Mikhail Yaremich. This staff employee of the security services had protected 

Glushko back in the days of his time in the Kazan sharaga—the special prison 

of the NKVD.14 He regarded Glushko with a certain reverence. “I try to lessen 

Valentin Petrovich’s burden and protect him from petty everyday and administrative concerns. He doesn’t like them and doesn’t know how to deal with 

them,” confided Yaremich. Just three years later, Glushko was relieved of his 

post as director of NPO Energiya, retaining the position of general designer. 

Vakhtang Vachnadze became director of NPO Energiya in 1977.15

The NPO’s main scientific design work was concentrated in thematic complexes. All complex managers, including the deputies of the general designer, 

were subordinate in the structural scheme to NPO Energiya First Deputy 

General Designer and Director Yuriy Trufanov, who until then had worked 

as chief engineer of the Third Main Directorate of our ministry.16 Viktor 

Legostayev, manager of design and research Complex No. 3 for control systems, 

and Viktor Kalashnikov, manager of design Complex No. 4, were directly 

subordinate to me.

Other complexes were under the management of the following:

•

•

•

•

•

•

Georgiy Degtyarenko—theoretical design;

Viktor Ovchinnikov—on-board systems;

Anatoliy Abramov—deputy general designer for the engineering launch 

site and experimental units;

Mikhail Melnikov—for on-board power systems;

Anatoliy Severov—for materials science;

Anatoliy Rzhanov—for ground experimental testing;

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

•	

•	

Yevgeniy Shabarov—for the preparation and performance of flight testing; and

Aleksey Yeliseyev—for crew training and flight control.

Dmitriy Kozlov, meanwhile, achieved a complete—not just actual but 

also official—separation from the center. The independent Central Specialized 

Design Bureau emerged at the facilities of the TsKBEM branch in Kuybyshev, 

where Dmitriy Kozlov was named chief designer and head.17 At the Progress 

Factory there, a small branch headed by Boris Penzin was spun off from the 

large one that Kozlov managed.

In order to familiarize my comrades with the new structure, I assembled 

“triangles” of complexes and departments and gave the following speech: 

“Korolev was the organizer of OKB-1, which has left its mark in history 

forever. Mishin transformed OKB-1 into TsKBEM. Both Sergey Pavlovich 

and Vasiliy Pavlovich were called chief designers. A new government resolution has made Valentin Petrovich Glushko head of our organization. And we 

have been transformed into the Energiya Scientific-Production Association, 

for which I congratulate you all and report the most preliminary information 

about changes in our subject matter and prospects.

“The heavy launch vehicle or launch vehicles will remain in first place. 

This means new developments in place of the N-1. What will actually become 

of the N-1, I don’t know. I venture only to express my own personal point of 

view. We’ve come such a long way that it’s cheaper to continue and bring the 

project to real results than to terminate it. We produced the N1-L3M design. 

At the end of this year, there is a real chance of launching N-1 No. 8. I am 

confident that after one or two launches the rocket will begin to fly. Then in 

three, at the most four, years we will be able to solve two problems: execute a 

lunar [landing] expedition and establish a lunar base—and thus upstage the 

Americans. They have terminated their lunar program, and we technically, 

ideologically, and politically can prove that we are capable of much more.

“The structure even has Chief Designer Prudnikov, who is responsible for 

lunar vehicle and lunar base designs. For us, there are basically no tasks in this 

field that are beyond our understanding. We understand full well what we need 

to do and how. We can solve the engineering, design, and process problems in 

two or three years. If the N-1 were to begin to fly, then with the two- or threelaunch scenario we could land at least three Soviet cosmonauts on the Moon 

in three years, and in five years—we would have a permanent base there, and 

you never know, we could invite an American astronaut as a guest. If we try to 

 17.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

execute this task using new launch vehicles, then add a minimum of eight years 

to today’s date of 1974 and we have 1982. But it will take at least another five to 

six billion rubles over and above the expenditures for the scenario using the N-1.

“The new structure will contain a new field of endeavor, which has been 

assigned to Sadovskiy—reusable space transport systems. They are supposed 

to become the response to the Americans’ Space Shuttle. My opinion is that if 

they really pile this work on us, the lunar problem will go onto the back burner 

or will be forgotten altogether. The most dangerous thing is if the Americans 

take up this project in earnest. From the information available, we know that 

NASA has been working successfully on a specific design for three years now.18

Our comrades who have visited the United States for the Apollo-Soyuz project 

have become acquainted with this system. After the Americans officially publicized its main parameters, some young and zealous guys from the Institute 

of Applied Mathematics (IPM) figured out in advance the possible orbits of 

the Space Shuttle allowing for possible maneuvers in the atmosphere at 2,000 

kilometers clear of ballistic orbit. They scared Keldysh. Keldysh reported to 

Ustinov, and then to Brezhnev. It turned out that the Space Shuttle, flying 

far from our borders, having lulled the missile defense (PRO) and air defense 

(PVO) into a false sense of security, could suddenly execute a maneuver—a 

‘dash to the north,’ and, flying over Moscow, could drop a 25-ton thermonuclear 

bomb with an explosive yield of at least 25 megatons there.

“I recently had the occasion to attend a meeting where they discussed the 

matter of whether it was at all worth our while to produce an MKTS in the 

American version. At this meeting, Valentin Petrovich spoke to the effect that this 

project would take away so much manpower and resources from us that the lunar 

programs would be unrealistic. He also said that he feared for the DOS projects.

“To this, Keldysh retorted that, after putting the Space Shuttle into service, the United States might obtain a decisive military advantage in a plan 

to deliver a preemptive nuclear strike against vitally important objectives on 

Soviet territory. And if so, then like it or not, we would be forced to develop 

an analogous system.

“Now, instructions have already been given to prepare a draft resolution for 

this work. Considering Keldysh’s position, I predict that this work will soon be 

included in our plans, evidently with the participation of the aviation industry.

“Instead of being threatened with the termination of their projects, everyone working on DOSes and Soyuzes is being threatened with an increase in the 

 18.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

537

volume of their work. In a year we will be faced with rendezvous and docking 

with Apollo.19 Here, we’re betting not simply on the prestige of the Soviet 

Union, but on our technical and scientific standing at the international level. 

In addition to these considerations of personal prestige, we need to consider 

that success in this program could lead to a thaw in the atmosphere of the Cold 

War. The Americans beat us in the Moon race, and then they drove their own 

lunar program into a dead end. It’s not out of the question that they want to 

continue together with us.

“Keep in mind that Valentin Petrovich warned me: despite the fact that, 

structurally, our fields of endeavor are involved with piloted programs (DOSes, 

Soyuzes, Apollo-Soyuz), and have their own chief designers—Semyonov and 

Bushuyev—he wants personally to grapple with the main control problems 

and in critical situations to make decisions as the general designer. Each of you, 

who will be reporting to him, either with or without me, must be completely, 

down to the smallest detail, competent in the problems for which you are 

responsible. I am already convinced that Glushko understands electricity well 

enough. He will read our reports and design materials with partiality. Before 

the documents go to the general designer for signature, reread them five times 

each and don’t feel sorry for the originators. After you, I don’t want to receive 

comments about an unnecessary comma.

“For the first three months of work in his new capacity, Glushko hasn’t 

begrudged time for the development of proposals for a prospective program of 

Soviet cosmonautics. Essentially, decisions concerning the creation of DOSes 

and transport vehicles were made before he came to us. They should have been 

refined, achieving greater sophistication, reliability, and service life. Above 

all, the transition from vehicle 7K to 7K-S, controlled by an on-board digital 

computer, should be refined. And there is also the Apollo-Soyuz international 

project. We planned to launch three Soyuzes and DOS No. 4 before the end 

of 1974. In 1975, we were supposed to continue preparations and then dock 

with the Americans. All of this was taking a lot of attention and time. But the 

ideas for these operations originated back with Korolev, and Mishin continued and developed them. Glushko could in no way call himself the general 

designer of these projects. That is why he devoted a great deal of time to the 

development of a completely new program, in which launch vehicles created 

based on his ideas moved into the foreground, and engines with a power the 

world had never seen before were developed for them. The fate of the N-1 was 

predetermined, but the MKTS might get in the way of his ambitious creative 

 19.
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

Shown here are Thomas Stafford (left), Nikolay Anfimov (center), and Boris Chertok in 

Moscow in 2005 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

ideas. He needs to hurry. He’s already 66 years old. He’s already a two-time 

Hero of Socialist Labor. But that’s not the main thing—these sorts of rockets 

and engines must go down in the history of technology so that no one will 

have any doubts as to their true chief creator. As today, no one doubts that the 

true chief designer of the R-7 and Vostok vehicle was Korolev.”

The spate of new assignments, which required continuous effort, gradually 

dampened the anguish over the N-1. In a family with few children, the loss 

of a single child can inflict very heavy injury on the parents. In a large family, 

the necessity for day-to-day worry over the remaining children softens the 

grief. Each day it was necessary to deal with the problems of the upcoming 

Apollo-Soyuz docking, testing of the new DOS, Salyut-4, and preparation of 

the latest Soyuz-15 for launch to Chelomey’s Almaz station. Moreover, that 

hot summer, every now and then, rebellious thoughts crept in about vacation.

Since no government resolution had been issued on the complete termination of operations on the N-1, in smoking rooms and during our time off, 

timid thoughts were being expressed about how the “powers that be” would 

come to their senses and make Glushko reexamine his irreconcilable stance. 

538
Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

There were also brave people who appealed to the Central Committee with 

letters signed by several authors in this regard.

The Party committee of the Sixth Scientific-Testing Directorate of NIIP-5, 

in violation of all traditions of military discipline, held an all-night meeting 

expressing outrage about the termination of the N-1 project.20 The result 

was a letter from military testers addressed to the Presidium of the Twentyfifth Congress of the Communist Party.21 The letter presented arguments for 

continuing debugging of the N-1, citing the opinions of specialists from the 

developer organizations. The firing range testers weren’t asking for much: 

“Give us the opportunity to test rockets No. 8, No. 9, and No. 10, which are 

already prepared.”

Of course, the letter didn’t arrive before the Congress. The Party apparat

understood full well: decisions had already been made at such a level that to 

take up the time of congressional delegates and even of the Presidium served 

no purpose. The headstrong military testers, who had devoted perhaps the 

best years of their lives to Tyuratam, Baykonur, the town of Leninsk, and to 

perfecting the grandiose N-1, were told that now their main mission was the 

MKTS program. The MIK, the launch site, and a lot of other facilities needed 

to be rebuilt for it.

At his own initiative, the irrepressible Andronik Iosifyan also appealed to 

the Central Committee with a letter. He considered the termination of the 

N-1 project to be an error of principle. But an acquaintance from the Central 

Committee apparat simply telephoned him over the Kremlin line and asked 

him to stop by and pick up his letter.

Glushko’s order on the termination of the N-1 project was not 

borne out by a ministerial order or by a VPK decision. The situation heated up. 

Conversations circulated to the effect that the government was not going to shut 

down the N-1. On Friday, 13 August 1974, three months after Glushko was 

named general designer and director of NPO Energiya, Ustinov decided to verify 

“on site” the mood of the “people.” One could understand Ustinov’s concern.

It was high time to undertake a new program in place of the landing 

expedition to the Moon that never happened. A month after his appointment 

to the post of general designer, Glushko promised to develop new promising 

proposals for the Moon, orbital stations, and space transport systems. Work 

 20.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

on N1-L3 at NPO Energiya was virtually halted, and what were the subcontractors, who had enormous amounts of process stock, to do? It was time to 

listen to the chief designers and report to the Politburo.

No one could accuse me of being superstitious. On the contrary, I was 

often accused of completely disregarding well-known folk omens. I made fun 

of drivers’ fears when a black cat crossed the road in front of them; I never 

missed the opportunity to kid members of the launch team, who up until the 

last day feared that a woman would show up at the launch site; and I chuckled 

when someone proposed knocking on wood to ward off trouble or spitting 

over one’s left shoulder. But somewhere in my subconscious I had an awareness when it came to two dates: 13 August 1937—the most probable date of 

the crash of Sigismund Levanevskiy’s airplane—and 27 March.22 I remember: 

27 March 1942—the day of my mother’s death; 27 March 1943—the day 

of Grigoriy Bakhchivandzhi’s death; 27 March 1968—the death of Gagarin. 

Perhaps 13 August 1974 would be the date of the ultimate death of the N-1.

On 12 August 1974, Valentin Glushko personally telephoned the main 

managers of NPO Energiya and courteously requested that they make themselves completely available the following day, 13 August: “Dmitriy Fedorovich is 

coming here for a serious conversation.” Glushko asked me to prepare a speech 

about the special features of the control system for the new Soyuz modification—vehicle 7K-S, or “article 11F732.” He said nothing about who would 

be participating in the upcoming meeting.

At 10 a.m. on 13 August, in the large office of our former chief, now 

our general [designer], the managerial staff of NPO Energiya and its chief 

designers assembled: Barmin, Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy, and Viktor Kuznetsov. 

Afanasyev came, too, as well as his deputies, Tyulin and Litvinov. Smirnov’s 

deputy Komissarov represented the VPK. Posters hung on the walls—pictures 

of the new launch vehicles, RLA-120, RLA-135, and RLA-150. A small group 

of planners had toiled under Glushko’s personal unremitting supervision for 

the past two months on the designs of these launch vehicles.

Ustinov arrived accompanied by Serbin and Strogonov. Before Ustinov 

appeared, we didn’t take our seats, but huddled together talking about matters 

that weren’t work related. He strode in, as usual, quickly and energetically. 

When he saw me he extended his hand, and after a firm handshake, asked, 

“So, how’s the ‘old guard’?”

“We’re hanging in there,” I answered.

“You shouldn’t just hang in there; you need to move forward.”

 22.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

Ustinov himself opened the meeting.

“I am very glad that I once again find myself in this group and in this 

historic office where Sergey Pavlovich Korolev used to work. The other day in 

the Politburo we had a serious conversation about our space problems. The 

Politburo requested that an objective assessment be made of why we have not 

landed Soviet cosmonauts on the Moon. It was mentioned in the Politburo 

that in view of the successful landings of the Americans, the task of exploring the Moon has become crucial for us. No matter what other problems 

we solve, this will remain primary and general, but in a new capacity. Today 

I would like to speak and to consult on a whole complex of problems. Your 

work is very broad here. How to organize the work so that it will not drag 

out for decades, so that it won’t be handed down to our grandchildren. Let 

them go much farther than we. It is for us to decide what we will be doing 

in the next few years.

“I would by no means curtail operations on the Soyuz project. These 

vehicles, both unpiloted and piloted, must stay with your team. This is your 

project and it must not be abandoned. The Salyut-Soyuz system is very promising. Don’t even think of abandoning it. We must examine the possibility of 

creating specialized modules for this system. Please don’t forget, under any circumstances, about those projects that have already been successfully concluded.”

These were Ustinov’s opening remarks. I don’t think that I am the only 

one from the “old guard” who viewed his speech as a warning to Glushko not 

to take it into his head to scrap and revamp a field of endeavor that Korolev 

had established and in which we had achieved universally acknowledged success under Mishin.

Ustinov continued, “How shall we approach the solution of the general 

problem? It might be worked out so that in 10 years you will again say that it’s 

not working out with the Moon. But we must have it so that each year, do you 

understand, each year something big happens. I know that the first Council of 

Chiefs [meeting], in which the new assignments were preliminarily discussed, 

has already taken place. I specifically selected this day in order to also hear 

about these plans, which you are getting ready to approve in the next council.

“I believe we are justified in sparring between two historic council [meetings]. It’s just that we need to spar about specific things. Not go off into the 

next century. Leave this job to the science fiction writers. If we are going to 

conduct business like you did with the N-1, insisting on launching in spite of 

reliability—we will obtain corresponding results.”

Afanasyev, who habitually made notes on a notepad, raised his head as 

Ustinov was saying this, and making eye contact with me, gave me a piercing 

look. He recalled our argument in November 1972 before the launch of N-1 

No. 7: “You and Dorofeyev are crawling on your bellies toward the ‘launch’ 

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button. Go ahead and launch. I give you my word: one more failure and they 

might terminate the N-1.”

Yes, perhaps the minister was right then, I thought, having met his piercing 

glance. If back then we had firmly said, “No, let’s wait for the new engines,” 

the fate of the N-1 might have shaped up differently. But, who knows? With 

the persistence of a schoolteacher, Ustinov continued to hammer us all with 

truths that were obvious, but so difficult to implement.

“You, specifically you, the creators of new space systems, must develop a 

general line and stick to it as strictly as possible. I propose that you listen to 

Valentin Petrovich.”

Glushko talked for more than two hours, spelling out his doctrine in detail 

for the next few years. Above all, Glushko proposed developing a series of heavy 

and super-heavy launch vehicles made from standardized blocks. All of the launch 

vehicles were assigned the designation RLA—rocket-flying apparatus.23 The lightest launch vehicle was the RLA-120. With a launch mass of 980 tons, this launch 

vehicle inserted a payload with a mass of 30 tons, 10 tons more than Chelomey’s 

UR-500K-Proton, into Earth orbit. The most powerful launch vehicle, RLA-150, 

was capable of inserting a payload with a mass of 250 tons into orbit. Glushko 

approached the chalkboard and, on an area free of posters, he wrote:

RLA-120—1979 (30 tons in orbit).

POS—1979.24

Unlike the DOS, the POS was a permanent orbital station rather than 

a long-duration station. In 1980 and 1981, it was proposed that the POS 

be expanded using specialized modules. Instead of the UR-500K, Glushko 

proposed using the new RLA-120 launch vehicle for the assembly of the 

permanent orbital station.

Today we know that the construction of a permanent orbital station actually began in 1986 rather than 1979.25 The RLA-120 simply didn’t appear. The 

Mir station, now known throughout the world, began to be created during 

Glushko’s lifetime with the help of Chelomey’s Proton—the UR-500K.

Glushko wrote two more lines on the board:

 23.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

RLA-135—1980 (100 tons in orbit).

Expedition to the Moon—1981.

And then further down:

RLA-150—1982 (250 tons in orbit).

Flights to Mars—1983.

“We need 12 billion rubles for the whole program. If you help us,” said 

Glushko, addressing Ustinov directly. “I can with a great degree of confidence 

affirm: an expedition to Mars in the 1980s is a realistic mission. But before 

Mars we must build a permanent base on the Moon. We have such a design; 

we are certain of its feasibility. But we need reliable launch vehicles. Carrying 

out such missions using the N-1 means suffering a catastrophe.”

By the end of the report Glushko’s calm demeanor had changed. He turned 

quite red and finished his speech with emotion that was unusual for him. It 

was the first time I had seen him so stirred up.

Ustinov began to ask questions.

“Your heaviest vehicle has 28 chambers, and you yourself criticize the N-1, 

which has 30 chambers on the first stage.”

“That’s no big deal,” answered Glushko. “Our old Semyorka had 32 chambers, and everyone’s accustomed to that. We noticed, by the way, that a chamber 

is one thing, but an engine is something else entirely. I propose four-chamber 

engines. In actuality there are only seven engines on the first stage.”26

“Please note the fundamental difference between this layout and that of 

the N-1. We are proposing a block principle. Rockets differ from one another 

in terms of the number of identical blocks on the first stage, and when necessary on the second stage as well. A decisive advantage of the block principle 

is the ability to manufacture each block at the factory and to transport it in 

assembled form to the firing range. We can conduct flight testing on the engines 

as part of the lightest single-block rocket and use this invaluable experience 

for multiblock rocket complexes without the risk of destroying a launch site. 

Each block should first undergo firing tests.”

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“Is it necessary to insert 250 tons? Isn’t that an awful lot compared with 

the Americans? They flew to the Moon and now they can’t find any work for 

their Saturn. And it only inserted 140 tons.”

“This isn’t our concern,” answered Glushko. “Let them have the headache, 

and we’ll pass them by. And after this they will fall behind in pursuit of us. Or 

they will propose collaboration.”

“And will it be tsiklin or hydrogen in the second stage?”27

“For the time being we are conducting calculations on tsiklin. We have 

too little experience with hydrogen. We can promise, but disrupt all of the 

deadlines.”

“Let’s get this straight—you clashed with Korolev because you refused to 

make powerful engines for the N-1 running on oxygen and kerosene. And 

now that Korolev is no longer around you are proposing that we agree to 

engines that you flat out rejected when Korolev was alive?” There was a clearly 

psychological subtext to Komissarov’s question.

“Korolev and I clashed not because I was fundamentally opposed to creating 

powerful engines running on oxygen and kerosene. In the early 1960s we did 

not have the necessary experience to create such engines within the timeframe 

that the government resolution called for. From my perspective, this would have 

been a gamble. We were all working hard back then. Only now do we have the 

confidence that the creation of super-powerful oxygen-kerosene engines with 

stable combustion in the chamber, operating on a gas generator layout, is feasible. 

We selected the optimal four-chamber system for a super-powerful engine. The 

engine design makes it possible to rock the chamber for flight control, rather than 

throttling them, as was done on the N-1 to the detriment of the performance 

index. Special control thrusters will not be needed for control.

“And how will you respond to the American challenge when it comes to 

the reusable space transport system, the MKTS?”

“For this we are making a medium-sized vehicle. The first phase of the 

MKTS is a space airplane. It could appear in 1982. But this is under the condition that [the] aviation [industry] will be working [with us]. We are not going 

to build the airplane ourselves. We will ensure the insertion of the airplane on 

RLA-135. Two airplanes need to be built right away.”

“What do the deadlines you’re proposing depend on?”

 27.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

Suddenly Radovskiy wedged his way into the fray: “The deadlines depend 

on the engine specialists. All of the RLAs are supposed to have oxygen engines, 

which aren’t yet available.”28

No response to this remark ensued. A 10-minute break was announced. 

After the break the meeting continued with a very aggressive speech by Barmin.

“Valentin Petrovich’s proposals, which we have listened to today, constitute 

already the third version in the past two months. Valentin Petrovich is getting 

further and further away from the realities of our century and pulling us into 

the 21st century. There has been no analysis of our previous errors. Moreover, 

the errors are being repeated. We need to start building a program with the 

spacecraft and missions that we need, rather than with launch vehicles. Let’s 

be frank. For all his genius, Korolev began the lunar program proceeding from 

the launch vehicle rather than from lunar vehicles. During his own lifetime, 

he understood that there wasn’t enough energy to launch a landing expedition 

to the Moon. Modifications began on the N-1. We added six engines to the 

first stage. Next, we realized that this still wasn’t enough. We understood that 

the expedition design needed to be altered. We wanted to correct the error 

by using a two-launch scenario for the L3M. And quite recently everyone 

agreed with this. Instead of that, today a series of entirely new launch vehicles 

is being proposed. Nobody needs a launch vehicle for a 250-ton payload. The 

Americans are making the Space Shuttle because they only need one heavy 

launch vehicle, one that’s multipurpose to boot. Today, 140 organizations are 

working with us on the lunar base project. We can create it if we don’t fritter 

away our resources on unrealistic launch vehicle designs. The 12.5 billion 

rubles that Glushko mentions is two times less than what is really required 

for such a program. Multiblock configurations for launch vehicles are unsuitable. The selection that Valentin Petrovich is proposing to us is wrong. After 

lengthy research, Korolev selected the optimal configuration for the N-1. 

He purposely rejected multiblock rockets. The N-1 needs to undergo serious updating, instead of reinventing the wheel. We have already spent four 

billion rubles on the N-1, and we must use them. Betting on engines with a 

thrust of 1,000 to 1,200 tons is tempting, but completely unrealistic in terms 

of deadlines. Take it from me, I am not the only one who has a great deal of 

experience—we all do. Tsiklin is proposed for the second and third stages. A 

kilogram of tsiklin costs 50 rubles, while a kilogram of hydrogen costs less than 

 28.

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30 rubles. Hydrogen is the future of our rocket-power generation. Valentin 

Petrovich’s lunar program stubbornly ignores both hydrogen and my proposals 

for the construction of a lunar base.29 We need to build a base on the Moon. 

To build it we need a reusable space transport system using an updated N-1. 

NPO Energiya will not pull off the program that Glushko is proposing before 

the end of the century. We need to create a system capable of taking 40 tons 

of real payload and return at least 20 tons to Earth.”

Barmin stood up, walked up to the chalkboard, and crisscrossed through 

all the lines containing information about the RLA series of launch vehicles. 

Above, he wrote: “Uprated N-1 + reusable.”

Serbin asked Barmin a question, “And how many more years will your 

uprating of the N-1 take?”

“I don’t want to answer for the developers, who are sitting here in silence. 

Most likely, Valentin Petrovich forbade them to defend the N-1, but the uprated 

launch vehicle could fly in a year and a payload needs to be prepared for it. And 

what Valentin Petrovich is proposing will hold us back on the lunar program 

by another six or seven years. I should warn about one more danger. Prominent 

psychotherapists are telling us that the human mind outside of Earth’s magnetic 

field might experience changes. The Moon has no magnetic field, and therefore 

staying there for many months is fraught with psychological problems.”

Having considered Barmin’s words regarding our silence as a hint at our 

unwillingness to speak out against our new boss, Ustinov turned to us, smiling, 

“I have no doubt that you all want to select the best scenario for carrying out 

this crucial government mission. Your statements must be bold and critical, 

but well reasoned. Without a fundamental Party relationship to the matter at 

hand we will kill any project. Speak courageously, sensibly, and authoritatively.”

“Permit me to display my courage,” requested Pilyugin.

“In my opinion, Nikolay Alekseyevich, you never lost it,” retorted Ustinov.

“Dmitriy Fedorovich, I am going to speak regarding control problems. 

Let others talk about everything else. So, today we are confident in the N-1 

control system. During the last launch, although we only got to work for a 

little while, we confirmed that the new system with the on-board computer 

reliably controls the rocket. Over the last year and a half, we have done a lot 

more and can demonstrate that control reliability will be ensured, at least for 

the first three stages. We gained a wealth of experience with the booster stages 

 29.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

during the L1 launches.30 Therefore, here too we are confident that we will 

solve the problem. The transition proposed to us today for a series of new 

launch vehicles will initially require us to curtail current production, discard 

production stock, then design, and develop, and once again set up production 

using a new manufacturing process. We will not have an RLA in any version 

before 1979. We are wasting five or six years.”

Glushko appeared calm and unflappable. He was catching his breath after 

a difficult report and was sitting with an air of detachment, as if the speech 

had been about things that had nothing to do with him.

After Pilyugin, Ryazanskiy took the floor.

“I totally disagree with what Barmin said. We need a rocket like the RLA120 capable of inserting 30 tons. We have managed to do a lot for the Moon. 

For the L1, Zond, Mars, and Soyuz programs we developed radio complexes, 

which can be modified for any program. We need to create a full-fledged 

Mission Control Center as soon as possible.”

Yuriy Semyonov defused the situation somewhat trying to remind those 

assembled about the problems of orbital stations.

“We need to ensure the reliable operation of systems in orbit for decades. 

The Americans are announcing publicly that they are already working on such 

long-duration systems. We should not postpone this work; otherwise we will 

once again be playing catch-up. Orbital stations can become permanent only 

with systems that are reliable in terms of service life.”

I began my speech by walking up to the chalkboard and erasing the X 

that Barmin had placed on number 30, the payload that the RLA-120 launch 

vehicle proposed by Glushko was capable of inserting. However, I left the bold 

X that Barmin had used to cross out the number 250. I devoted the main part 

of my speech to information about the status of the on-board digital computers 

and hardware components of the radio electronics.

“In order to have a permanent orbital station, a long-duration lunar 

base, much less an expedition to Mars, we need hardware with a guarantee 

of failure-free operation for at least three to five years. For the time being, 

our radio electronic industry is promising to provide them, but it says that 

this will require three years of testing. We will also spend two or three years 

creating instrumentation for this hardware. On balance, it will be at least five 

to six years, allowing for ground developmental testing. Another way would 

 30.

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be multiple redundancy. But this will require an increase in masses, volumes, 

and, again, power generation.”

After the meeting Feoktistov said to me, “You made two errors in your 

speech. When you left the X on number 250, you displeased Glushko, and 

when you began linking reliability testing with deadlines, you irritated Ustinov 

because you hit on one of his ‘hot-button issues.’ He understands full well that 

it takes time to achieve a high degree of reliability, but this contradicts his own 

requirement to shorten the deadlines.”

Indeed, after the loss of DOS No. 3 in 1973, Ustinov had this to say at a 

meeting in the Central Committee: “Keep in mind: we are not rushing you, 

but we do demand the most thorough testing of these complex and expensive 

mechanisms at the factory, at the KIS [monitoring and test facility], and at 

the TP [engineering facility]. But we also cannot allow liberties to be taken 

with deadlines....”

Bushuyev told in detail about the progress of negotiations with the 

Americans on the Apollo-Soyuz project, about the attitudes of the American 

side, and he confirmed that they were burning with the desire to collaborate 

with us. The curtailment of the lunar program led them into a crisis, from 

which they were trying to emerge by developing the Space Shuttle.

Mozzhorin was on vacation, so Avduyevskiy spoke on behalf of TsNIImash.31

“The Space Shuttle is advantageous for returning very expensive technology 

from space for reuse. If we follow this trend, we will need to rebuild all of our 

space programs. Barmin is correct when he says that we need to proceed from 

the final objectives, and not turn the development of launch vehicles into a 

self-contained main task.”

Our new first deputy general designer Yuriy Trufanov could not criticize 

Glushko—otherwise he would not be the first deputy.

“We must master Sun-synchronous orbits,” he said. “Once we have solved 

this problem, we will have global monitoring over the entire planet with the 

aid of the modules of the orbital station.”

I was anxious to hear the minister’s speech. How would he respond to the 

proposal to do away with the N-1? Would he really support the new rocket 

series? Ultimately he would have to answer to the Politburo!

“It is difficult to give a weighty assessment of these materials today,” began 

Afanasyev. “I am forced to admonish the head institutes of the ministry: 

 31.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

From the author’s archives.

From left to right are Sergey Afanasyev, Valentin Glushko, and Mstislav Keldysh, 

three of the most powerful men in the Soviet space program in the 1970s. They are 

attending a meeting at TsNIImash in Kaliningrad (now Korolev).

TsNIImash and NIITP.32 For some reason they adopted a wait-and-see attitude, instead of immediately getting their main subdivisions involved in these 

research projects. It would be foolish to think that the general designer’s team 

of 40,000 alone can do everything that he has said here.

“The report proposes solving all the problems almost simultaneously. This 

is a mistake. We need to introduce a rational phase-by-phase approach. We 

will manage to find such a solution if we quash our ambitious desires to seize 

everything at once and to promise unrealistic deadlines.

“Today a version of a launch vehicle for a 30-ton payload is taking shape. 

We need this launch vehicle first and foremost for the crucial intelligencegathering purposes of the Ministry of Defense in Sun-synchronous orbits. 

 32.

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Its integral tanks with a diameter of 6 meters will require completely new 

technological fittings, and the welding of very thick materials will have to be 

mastered. I have consulted with Boris Yevgenyevich Paton. He encouraged 

me that in the near future this problem will be solved. ‘We will learn how to 

weld 6-meter tanks,’ Paton assured me. But then an engine is proposed right 

off the bat with 1,200 tons of thrust. I have a great deal of respect for Valentin 

Petrovich as our nation’s, and perhaps also the world’s, greatest scientist and 

engine-building specialist, but I think that he is profoundly mistaken when 

he assures us that such an engine can be produced in two years. The ministry 

has already been tasked with producing a piloted reusable system on par 

with the U.S. Shuttle. This is a crucial and very difficult task. It’s time for 

us to master [liquid] hydrogen. Here, we’re behind the Americans. In his 

proposals the honorable Valentin Petrovich for some reason insists on walking away from hydrogen and is pushing tsiklin on us. The ministry does not 

agree with this. We insist on developing a liquid-propellant rocket engine 

that operates on oxygen and hydrogen, and we will support such projects 

in every way possible.

“The time has come to bring in other design organizations. I consulted 

with Pilyugin. He can confirm that he fully agreed to take on the production of the control system for a reusable spacecraft. The development of a 

glider needs to be assigned to the aviation industry. For the time being, I 

would leave the X that Barmin placed over 250 tons. Barmin is right in this 

case. We know what the situation is in our country. We need to restructure 

ourselves toward assembly in orbit and achieve a very high degree of reliability in docking. This will be a lot less expensive than producing another 

super-heavy launch vehicle. They are assuring us that the N-1 launch facilities 

can be used for the new series. No one has verified this in detail. Barmin 

maintains that this is impossible. This needs to be carefully examined. There 

was no Soviet man on the Moon. This is the fault of OKB-1 and our fault in 

general. A lunar base—in my opinion this is not a priority mission. It needs 

to be transferred to research work. Barmin’s strong suit is that he knows how 

to build a cooperative network. Let’s hand this project over to him especially 

since he’ll take it, and just let him.

“We need to distribute our forces sensibly. Today in the report we did not 

see a year-by-year distribution of expenditures and working capacity. How 

much does all this enjoyment cost? As I see it, MOM alone will have to double 

its budgetary allocations for this new program, and every bit of all the capital 

investments will go here. We just put missiles into service in silos in order to 

ensure parity, and now they already need to be upgraded. Do you know how 

much that costs? Please don’t forget that your organization is also responsible 

for the 8K98 [or RT-2] combat missiles and upgrading them. And no one has 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

yet taken away Valentin Petrovich’s duties as chief designer of the engines for 

Yangel’s and Chelomey’s combat missiles.33

“Today we have 40,000 people at NPO Energiya, and 30,000 are working 

on its projects at the Progress Factory, for a total of 70,000! We intend to set 

up engine production in Omsk.34 This means that another 20,000 people will 

be working on Energiya’s projects. The main problem in Omsk is the firing test 

rigs. What is to be done with the N-1 launch pad? If you get it into your head 

to seriously redesign it, new capital funds will be needed. Have you thought 

about this? The most important and urgent task is Apollo-Soyuz. Here, the 

main thing is reliability and quality. The workforce hasn’t been entirely successful with this.

“What shall we do in the near future? We need to launch DOS No. 4. We’re 

really behind schedule with DOS No. 5. They’re telling us that big changes 

have been made on it and that it’s going to be a new station. The problem of 

modular construction is being solved on it. For production here, in Podlipki, 

and in Fili this is additional work, but once it has been decided, it will have to 

be done. But if we put a new station into production, then why one? We need 

to make a sixth, and perhaps also a seventh. We can’t allow a failure. We haven’t 

landed on the Moon, so at least we should always have orbital stations circling 

Earth. ZIKh will make the hulls. But I can’t transfer systems configuration 

over to ZIKh—this is Energiya’s business. I have inspected the 7K-S spacecraft. 

Chertok assured me that a wonderful job has been done on the control system. 

However, the spacecraft is not equipped for docking. I warned: we need to 

make a new transport vehicle right away. They say that the 7K-T is obsolete. 

We don’t have a chance with Chelomey’s TKS. We must by all means debug 

the 7K-S in the transport version. I consider today’s conversation preliminary. 

We need to rework the entire prospective program taking our comments into 

consideration and only then can it be put before the Council of Chiefs.”

In Smirnov’s absence, Boris Komissarov spoke as VPK deputy chairman.

 33.

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“The program has not been coordinated with the general contractor—the 

Ministry of Defense—or with the Academy of Sciences. I do not understand 

why you absolutely have to insert 25 tons into Sun-synchronous orbit. Our 

heaviest reconnaissance satellite weighs no more than 12 tons.

“The Americans are planning to have modules weighing no more than 

14 tons. The Ministry of Defense doesn’t need 30 tons today. We need to 

tell it straight—we disgraced ourselves with the N-1 and now you propose 

a new gamble with the RLA. Space is space, but we need to keep our feet 

on the ground. Live by general toil and trouble; don’t lose contact with real 

opportunities. In the plan for updating the lunar projects we were about to 

execute an on-orbit docking using two N-1 launch vehicles. Now the general 

designer is proposing that this docking take place on the ground and that a 

new launch vehicle with a liftoff mass of 6,000 tons be developed; in other 

words, this means two N-1s! This project is a mistake. We need to pray for 

the N-1 to lift off. They crashed one, restored it, and now what—are we going 

to start tearing it apart with our own hands? Who is going to undertake such 

a bold move? In terms of market value in our branch of industry a ruble is 

equivalent to a dollar. I’d like to see the President of the United States go 

before Congress and say, by the way, you need to write off 4 billion dollars 

for a launch vehicle and allocate another 12.5 billion dollars to NASA for 

a new launch vehicle, for unknown reasons. The whole world would make 

fun of him. And here, nobody is even threatened with a reprimand for such 

unauthorized activity.”

Ivan Serbin took the floor.

“The discussion has shown that the program has not been elaborated to 

the point where we can make a decision. We don’t have much time. We must 

decide how to get the maximum use out of 70,000 people, and not a faceless 

crowd, but highly qualified specialists. The program was preliminarily estimated at a little over 12 billion rubles. But we simply do not have that kind of 

money. And if we did, then it would be very difficult to use it up. The Council 

of Chief Designers shouldn’t convene yet. We need to have comparative data 

on expenditures for each area of endeavor, rather than a single horrifying sum 

just for the RLA. Now many enthusiasts have come out in favor of a reusable 

system. This is good. But the second stage is an airplane. And without the 

Ministry of the Aviation Industry you won’t be able to cope with this project. 

We can’t allow such lack of discipline that Almaz and DOS are running in 

parallel. Neither you nor Chelomey are private firms where everyone thinks 

‘I’ll do what I want to.’ It’s time for this to end. Such a major plan needs to be 

thoroughly elaborated with the subcontractors. Without them you’re not going 

to do anything. And you also need to develop your experimental facilities for 

them. You didn’t take that into consideration in your expenses.”

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It was time to wrap up the meeting. Ustinov understood this and recommended that Glushko respond to the main critical comments. Glushko started, 

and rather than a calm speaker, I saw in him a focused prizefighter in the ring, 

who after a knockdown was once again going over for a decisive attack.

“We have been talking today about an unfinished program, and we are in 

the process of searching. We have familiarized you with the status of affairs. 

Actually, we must compare and provide evidence that the proposals are optimal. 

I have met with the military twice. We talked for a long time, and I asked for 

their help in developing plans. In particular, General Karas promised to send 

us his recommendations by 15 August. The Ministry of Defense ardently supports the station’s modular structure and 30-ton payload. We are in constant 

contact with subcontractors and competitors.

“Now let’s turn to Barmin’s speech, in which he so vehemently defended 

the N-1 and proposed, in terms of new projects, confining ourselves just to 

the reusable system. I maintain that the N-1 transports air. Compare its weight 

characteristics with Saturn V. The dry weight of a unit of volume of the first 

stage of the N-1 is two and a half times worse than the Saturn V, the second 

stage is five times worse, and the third stage is three and a half times worse. 

This is when the volumes of the stages themselves are almost equal. I didn’t 

want to mention the errors committed in gas dynamics. Let it be known to 

you that just due to pressure drop under the aft end of the first stage we lose 

more than 750 tons. In order to compensate for such a loss, we need to install 

five more engines. Vladimir Pavlovich [Barmin], do you want your launch 

site to be destroyed again? Let’s stand around with our fingers crossed, as they 

suggested today. Do we really need a launch vehicle that transports air and 

has bad engines to boot? Regarding Barmin’s speech on the lunar base, I agree 

that the construction of ‘Barmingrad’ be classified as research work.35 But it is 

our job to create the first base on the Moon for three to five persons for two to 

three weeks. And we are prepared for this work. Vladimir Pavlovich frightened 

us here saying that the Moon has no magnetic field and this is very dangerous 

for the human psyche. Such speeches show that mental deviances happen on 

Earth even with the presence of a magnetic field.”

Glushko had hit Barmin “below the belt,” but none of the high-ranking 

judges had interrupted him. He continued to speak rapidly and even passionately, which to my memory happened very rarely with him.

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“We will show what launch vehicle weights are needed on Earth so that 

on the Moon a base for three or four people might operate. We don’t just need 

spacesuits, we need cubic capacity, and special equipment, which we must first 

test and debug on the POS. I emphasize, on the permanent, not long-duration, 

orbital station. In order to create a POS we also need a new launch vehicle. 

The UR-500K with its 18 to 20 tons is inadequate. We need a minimum of 

30 tons of payload to begin with. And this is our mission, which must not be 

buried in long-term research projects. This is a priority research and development project, if anything, instead of the MKBS.

“I regret that not everyone understands the idea of a super-heavy launch 

vehicle. We are not making this launch vehicle—it’s coming about on its own, 

we’re putting it together from modules which have already been optimized 

on lighter rockets. Six modules make up the first stage. The second stage is a 

single oxygen-hydrogen block standardized for the entire launch vehicle series. 

This is standardization and modularity, which we have been talking about so 

heatedly today. And we are not going to refuse to have anything to do with 

hydrogen. But for the time being we don’t have it, so we have to use tsiklin.

“Yes, producing these launch vehicles costs a lot of money. But we gain a 

lot in standardization. One shouldn’t be afraid that some factories are going 

to ‘coast.’ We intend to schedule the project so that production doesn’t go idle 

anywhere, so that people fly into space each year.

“Now we are already working on the 7K-S vehicle in the transport version. 

It has a new and much more advanced control system. Chertok didn’t have 

time to tell about its main feature. On the 7K-S he wants to try out control 

using on-board computers. We still lag behind the Americans in this. We’ll 

begin with unpiloted vehicles. Klyucharev must master the new androgynous 

docking assembly.36 We’re using it for docking with the Americans, and then 

we’ll put it on the 7K-S and the DOSes. These vehicles will load Klyucharev 

down completely. DOS No. 5 is the workload for ZIKh, and I would vote for 

No. 6 if a gap in production were to occur at ZIKh. Progress [Factory] can 

start mastering the production process of the 6-meter tanks right away. We 

and our subcontractors are really are up to our ears in work. But I don’t see any 

other way to get ahead of the Americans. We have capabilities that we haven’t 

yet discovered and haven’t used. You caught us when development and testing 

of the programs was in full swing. I agree to postpone the Council of Chiefs 

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[meeting] for a week or two, but no more. We need to boost all cooperation 

as soon as possible. We have a lot of resources.”

Toward the end of his speech Glushko was excited and flushed, as if he’d 

just taken a bath. He took a handkerchief and wiped the beads of sweat off 

his forehead, but he didn’t sit down. Evidently he was gathering his thoughts 

to continue his speech. Taking advantage of the pause, Ustinov decided that 

it was time to wrap up the meeting, which had run over. He understood that 

he wasn’t going to get any interesting new information and that he ought 

not to get mixed up in arguments between chief designers. He said, “Thank 

you, Valentin Petrovich! I am very happy that we had such a good turnout 

for the meeting today and that we have enlightened one another a bit. You 

didn’t have time and weren’t able to say everything. I too am unable to tell 

everything definitively. We need to give some serious thought to a lot of new 

things and about a lot of things in general. But we have missions, which are 

already completely spelled out, which we are obligated to fulfill in the next 

year. I am referring first and foremost to Apollo-Soyuz. God forbid that we 

should disgrace ourselves before the world public. Valentin Petrovich, I request 

that you personally take over supervision of this project. This work must be 

performed brilliantly. Changes have taken place in the United States. The new 

president has announced that he intends to continue his predecessor’s line.37

The Americans are going to study our work intensely and literally examine it 

as if it were under a microscope. You must keep a firm hold on our technical 

and ideological positions.

“The Americans are already asking us, ‘So what shall we do next?’ We aren’t 

going to be able to avoid answering that question for long. For the time being 

we are saying that we’re using Soyuz. It’s not turning out very well. Thus, we’re 

losing initiative, or more accurately, we’re giving it away. They’re observing, 

examining, studying, and analyzing everything with their own satellites. They 

know our military complexes better than we do. Our firing ranges and launch 

sites, every liftoff, every road, every building—it’s all being monitored from 

space. We’ve agreed on a Soyuz-Apollo docking. Well, we’ll dock once, maybe 

twice. There will be a bit of hype on both sides. And then what? Where are 

your proposals? We don’t have any ideas about ways for further collaboration. 

NASA Administrators George Low and James Fletcher aren’t dying to come 

over here for no good reason.38 They are receiving our people, and how are we 

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responding? I’m convinced we have got to reciprocate. Actions speak louder 

than words; and that’s also true in the field of science. We need actions. I request 

that you formulate a strategic plan and draw up proposals.

“For the time being we are relying on the Soyuz spacecraft; I understand 

this is reality, as they say, it’s what we’ve got on hand. We need to diligently work 

on its reliability. We need to launch the new Salyut no matter what.39 We need 

to work on DOS No. 5. You are the ones who got it up and running—make 

it more reliable. But tell me exactly what is DOS No. 6? Is it a repeat of No. 

5 or something new? Get to the bottom of that. When Mishin was in charge 

no one was able to clearly define the DOS series for me. Moreover, you know, 

and this is no secret, that Chelomey and Mishin proposed terminating DOSes 

altogether, leaving only Almaz, and then focusing on Chelomey’s Transport 

Supply Vehicle.

“Don’t abandon upgrading the R-7. Progress Factory has fully mastered 

it. This rocket is your bread and butter. Just like the UR-500K is now. In the 

next two or three years these launch vehicles will determine our space plans.

“But what’s next? Designs have been proposed (and I know, they’ve gone a 

long way) for an expedition to Mars and for a lunar base. Here, collaboration 

with the Americans is possible. Don’t throw the opportunity away; we will support you. Bushuyev is meeting with them. Courage, Konstantin Davidovich. 

Try to be diplomatic, as you know how; get a feel for their attitudes.

“We’re placing a big stake on your organization. Very big. We deliberately 

created such a powerful merger and placed a very experienced chief in charge, 

who, as they say, had been through fire, water, and brass trumpets. As you 

just heard, your general designer already has forty thousand persons directly 

subordinate to him. And if you add to that the immediate subcontracting 

organizations, this number exceeds 250,000. This is an enormous workforce! 

You are capable of developing an efficient, realistic program. Break it down 

deadline by deadline into phases. Everything won’t pan out right away; we 

understand this. But keep in mind that it matters to us, how this pans out 

and at what cost. We will ask the Central Committee for what we need, but 

we will need some justification.

“When I looked at the N-1 launch complex, it took my breath away. Our 

job is not just to admire, but also to make sure that these facilities operate. 

We will try to provide you with everything that you need. But you, too, need 

to think and consider so that your own conscience is not tormented over the 

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resources that nation is so generously giving, tearing them away from the 

people’s needs.

“Now one more problem is cropping up—‘the shuttle.’ I understand this 

is a very difficult matter—and above all for airplane designers. The government just adopted a colossal aviation resolution. It spells out the workloads 

for all the aviation design bureaus and factories. We lag behind in terms of 

both military and civilian airplanes. They have resolved to eliminate this gap. 

If we go to aviation with the shuttle, we still don’t know where it will be put.

“I think that today’s conversation has been useful for everyone. We need to 

find a common line with the Ministry of Defense and the Academy of Sciences. 

Sergey Aleksandrovich [Afanasyev], you will call a meeting of your ministerial 

organizers, and then the heads of other ministries, who will be involved in these 

projects. In the next few days we need to determine a group of our comrades 

who are capable of preparing a detailed draft of a resolution and who are very 

objective. The resolution will define our strategic line. This work needs to be 

approached with a great sense of duty to the Party and the state.

“I am giving you a month, perhaps two, but no more, to prepare this 

resolution. All the issues must be given high-quality treatment. I thank you 

for the frank conversations we had today.”

The next day, 14 August 1974, Glushko called us together to share his 

thoughts and hear our considerations on the results of this fateful, as I now 

view it, meeting. It seemed to us that Glushko had failed to achieve his desired 

goals. Had Korolev been in his place, I have no doubt he would have looked 

worried and upset. Despite his theatrical flair, Korolev couldn’t conceal his 

internal state.

Bright and early, Glushko met us looking chipper, well groomed, and 

anything but dispirited. As always, in a well-fitting suit with a matching tie, 

he exuded confidence that his position was right. Once again sorting through 

my memory of the first six chiefs, I would say that Glushko emanated the pride 

and well-born manner of a gentleman. He did not like to switch over to the 

familiar ty. He didn’t tolerate any hints of chummy behavior.

“Receive with indifference both flattery and slander and don’t argue with 

a fool...,” recited Glushko, as if summarizing the conversations from the day 

before.40 It wasn’t until the last years of his life that he began to display excessive irritability. After he first arrived among his new staff it was as though he 

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wanted to show that class couldn’t be learned; one needed to be born that 

way. I remember how Barmin, after one of those difficult conversations with 

Korolev, remarked to our staff, “None of you has any class. Sergey, who when 

necessary knows how to play the Russian gentleman, does not encourage tact 

and good manners in his minions.”

Korolev’s great internal work and relentless pondering were clearly visible 

to those around him. He knew how to look an interlocutor in the eye, as if 

pouring his own will and energy, his own conviction, into him. When dealing with Korolev, I paid attention to his face, eyes, and voice. His suit didn’t 

affect me at all. That wasn’t the issue. The seriousness with which he posed 

the problem (which sometimes seemed not even to be worth his attention), 

the sharp words, and the emotionally strong language were overwhelming.

Glushko was always well groomed, impeccably dressed, and proper. In 

the discussion of a problem and also in documents, he demanded solid logic, 

clarity, and accuracy in the wording. Sometimes documents that were brought 

to him for his signature were retyped many times, just because the originator 

was unable to reconcile the clarity of the statement with the syntax of the 

Russian language or hadn’t observed scrupulous precision in the name of the 

addressee. In this regard he was meticulous, even relentless.

Concealed behind his external civility was a strong will in defense of his 

positions and convictions. Without resorting to strong language, he could reach 

logical constructions that were very offensive to his opponent. Sometimes he 

was uncompromising where it seemed a hard-line attitude would harm both 

him and the matter in question.

With any of the “non-chief” designers or subcontractors, Korolev could 

have a quarrel using very strong language. But amazingly, no matter how 

much he cursed at somebody, they weren’t offended. I remember him yelling 

at Aleksey Bogomolov, “Little boy! Get out of here! I don’t want to work with 

you anymore!”41 After this tongue-lashing, Bogomolov smiled and knew that 

the next day he and Korolev would be talking on equal footing, as if nothing 

had happened.

Without raising his voice and without resorting to strong language, Glushko 

was capable of showing a person that he or she was working irresponsibly and 

shouldn’t be trusted with anything serious. I don’t recall an instance in which 

Korolev might have displayed indifference or aloofness in business meetings 

with me, with any other of his colleagues, or subcontractors. If he didn’t feel 

like talking to you, he simply said, “Not now, look, I’ve got so much mail. 

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Figure it out yourself.” Or, “Don’t bother me, I’m about to have a difficult 

conversation with Keldysh (or with the minister, or with Ustinov).”

One of the chief designers once complained to me, “When I proposed a 

harebrained idea to Korolev, he listened to me as if he was interested and then, 

after glancing at the clock, he said that I was an old fool and had robbed him of 

30 precious minutes. But then he grabbed the telephone and called the deputy 

chairman of the VPK asking him to meet with me because the proposal was 

interesting, but had nothing to do with his line of work.”

Ten years later in that same office, Glushko sat in Korolev’s place. I was 

giving him a report, not on a harebrained idea, but on the absolutely specific 

timeline of the [Apollo-Soyuz] joint project, which was at odds with those 

deadlines that he had advocated in the draft government resolution without 

having first consulted with me. He looked through me with such a fixed, glassy 

stare that I lost any desire to persuade him. And I left. The dates that he had 

signed off on, of course, we failed to meet. Glushko turned out to be innocent, 

and the collegium reprimanded me....

Neither Korolev nor Glushko had any close friends at work (at least that’s 

the way it seemed to me and to others) with whom they could confide their 

innermost thoughts and ideas. Both men had very strong and very different 

personalities. But one thing united them: both belonged to the generation who 

were children during the civil class war and both had given up their youth 

to heroic labor for the sake of a great goal. They had been exposed to most 

horrible tests, both moral and physical, and through all of this they had not 

altered their dreams; they had maintained their singleness of purpose and their 

belief in their own strength.

Here I consider it fitting to tell about the idealization of heroes in 

movies. In 1970, at the request of the management of Mosfilm, I was engaged 

as a consultant to work on the film Taming the Fire. Screenwriter and director 

Daniil Khrabrovitskiy by that time was already a well-known screenwriter of 

the films Vse nachinayetsya s dorogi [Everything Begins with a Journey], Chistoye 

nebo [Clear Blue Sky], and Devyat dney odnogo goda [Nine Days of One Year]. 

The main characters of these films were strong people, true heroes. From the 

first days of my acquaintance with Khrabrovitskiy we developed a good, trusting relationship.

I became enthralled with the idea of showing Khrabrovitskiy the nuts and 

bolts of our work—the “creative kitchen” and, above all, the extraordinarily 

interesting character of Chief Designer Korolev. While I was reviewing and 

modifying the first, naïve version of the screenplay, no major disagreements 

occurred. Usually I said, “It doesn’t happen like that” or “That never happened.” 

Khrabrovitskiy replied that it needed to be that way or else they wouldn’t 

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release the film. When I became exasperated that the main hero Bashkirtsev 

(based on Korolev) dies not in the Kremlin hospital but on the side of a dusty 

road, Khrabrovitskiy calmly replied, “And do you think that Chapayev died 

the way it was portrayed in the celebrated film?42 When we were still kids we 

marveled over Bronenosets Potemkin [Battleship Potemkin], but the most famous 

scenes—the massacre on the Odessa Steps—have nothing in common with real 

history. I don’t need to tell you that all the episodes in the famous films Chelovek 

s ruzhyem [Man with a Gun], Lenin v oktyabre [Lenin in October], and Lenin v 

1918 [Lenin in 1918] reflect the spirit of the time, the epoch, but have nothing in common with what really happened and how, aside from the calendar 

dates. I hope that after the Twentieth Party Congress you understood this.43

There are only two people close to Lenin in the films—Stalin and Sverdlov.44

And where are the rest of the heroes and real leaders of the uprising?

“I am making an artistic film, not a documentary. You must help us by 

showing us the technology, the creative process, and people’s behavior in extreme 

situations. Don’t impose documentary authenticity on me. There is a documentary film studio for that. For the time being they are forbidden to show the 

actual creators of the technology. They have their main heroes—the cosmonauts 

and scientists who sit in the presidiums and in public press conferences. In 

my film the main heroes are the creators, you and your comrades—all under 

fictitious names, so that no one except Korolev is recognizable. Lev Tolstoy 

thought up Pierre Bezukhov, Andrey Bolkonskiy, and Natasha Rostov.45 They 

didn’t exist. But the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon, Kutuzov, and the Moscow 

fire were real. Therefore, we accept the authenticity of Tolstoy’s heroes. Your 

rockets were and are real. They launched a man into space. People will also 

believe in my characters. We will show that you experienced failures, accidents, 

heated arguments, and differences of opinion. That is the truth about which 

nothing was to be said or written. If the main characters were given the names 

of real heroes who are still alive, then we would have to stick to the facts in 

everything and speak about actual events, and this is forbidden. The censors 

won’t tolerate my naming any of you. Therefore, even unclassified Korolev 

is Bashkirtsev rather than Korolev, Glushko is Ognev instead of Glushko, 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

Ustinov is Loginov, and Nedelin is Vladimirov. I made a concession to you 

only in Voskresenskiy’s case—his first name is still Leonid, but changed his 

surname to Sretenskiy.”

When it came to selecting and approving the actors, I backed away more 

and more from my dogmatic commitment to the truth. I tried to interject into 

the screenplay a hint of the repression to which Korolev and Glushko were 

subjected in their time, but another consultant—Deputy Commander-in-Chief 

of the Strategic Rocket Forces Colonel General Mikhail Grigoryev—laughed 

at me.46 He said, “Boris Yevseyevich, I respect you very much as a specialist, 

but I am astonished by your political naiveté. Who in our time will tolerate 

this?! I won’t begrudge the funds to show real launches, and we’re concocting 

bunkers and building sets of control rooms, about which we are still only 

dreaming—this will all happen. But recollections about the Purges have nothing to do with the objectives of the film. And if we want the people to see our 

film, then don’t argue.”

Khrabrovitskiy very much wanted to show Korolev’s romantic youth 

involved with gliders and GIRD.47 I introduced him to Isayev. Khrabrovitskiy 

was literally spellbound by Isayev’s tales about his youth, his passion for 

Magnitogorsk, and then for airplanes and rocket engines. In the last edition 

of the screenplay, Khrabrovitskiy synthesized the image of the main hero so 

that it had parts of Korolev, Isayev, and Tikhonravov (whom I also introduced 

to Khrabrovitskiy), who was infatuated with the future of cosmonautics.48

Khrabrovitskiy himself fabricated the personal life of his main hero from beginning to end. It has absolutely nothing to do with the biography of Korolev 

or Isayev.

Under commission from Mosfilm, Isayev developed and, at his own production facilities, manufactured an authentic rocket for the historic frames of 

the very first steps of rocket technology. The launches of Isayev’s movie rockets 

thrilled the film’s creators. This was, very likely, a reproduction of the way it all 

began that was close to historical authenticity. But Isayev’s movie rockets proved 

to be much more reliable than the Korolev-Tikhonravov rockets in the 1930s.

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I was exasperated about the very warm relationship between the main 

hero Bashkirtsev, for whom Korolev was the prototype, and Ognev—the 

chief designer of engines, meant to be Glushko. Two outstanding actors—

Kirill Lavrov and Igor Gorbachev—played the close friends.49 Not only did 

Gorbachev (Ognev) not clash with Lavrov (Bashkirtsev), but he admired him 

and esteemed his talent. Khrabrovitskiy countered my objections that the 

characters in the film bore no resemblance to those in real life, by saying that 

the audience must see good-hearted, sympathetic, highly intellectual heroes 

in the people making history, not cold technocrats. In the film, Gorbachev 

succeeded in doing just that. In no way could his hero be suspected of being 

guilty of one of the most prevalent human vices: envy.

“It is unfortunate,” I tried to argue to Khrabrovitskiy, “that scientists, 

including great ones, chiefs and generals, are not devoid of this feeling. In 

their environment, showing envy of the success of an outsider, no matter how 

quiet it is kept, is particularly dangerous.”

“It is impossible for envy to exist between real friends Bashkirtsev and 

Ognev. They are genetically stripped of this feeling,” objected Khrabrovitskiy.

Isayev didn’t back me up in arguments with Khrabrovitskiy over the relationship between Korolev/Bashkirtsev and Glushko/Ognev. After familiarizing 

himself with the screenplay and listening to my comments, Isayev unexpectedly 

displayed the talent of a movie critic.

“The screenwriter has the right to idealize the heroes. It’s not necessary to 

give a detailed description of all their weaknesses. When we defend our designs, 

we have to glamorize them. The experts know this and tolerate it, keeping in 

mind that they will be modified during the operating process. The film has 

the advantage that it isn’t modified after it goes on the screen. So, let’s allow 

Khrabrovitskiy and his heroes all their sins.”

At my recommendation, the three of us got together on neutral territory 

in a quiet corner of the Botanical Garden to discuss the problem of the relationship between the main characters.

“What are you trying to prove?” Isayev asked me. “The acrimonious conflict 

between Korolev and Glushko occurred sometime in 1960, and not without 

some help from Vasiliy Mishin. But before then, from the time they worked 

at NII-3, then in Kazan, and in Germany during the production of all the 

rockets up to and including the Semyorka, they were kindred spirits. Both of 

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them have personalities that are too complex for literary heroes, much less for 

cinema. Korolev is even more understandable, although he was not just the 

‘founder of practical cosmonautics’, as they now write, but a great performing 

artist. If fate had taken a different turn, he could have also become a military 

leader, or director of a major factory, or perhaps even a minister. In a word, 

he was a natural leader who needed to continually overcome difficulty. If he 

had been a commander, he would have moved the army into frontal attacks, 

without regard for losses, leaving garrisons of the remaining enemy in the 

rear—if only he could be the first to seize or liberate a city. And unremittingly—onward once again.

“Glushko doesn’t have Korolev’s artistry or his talent as a commander. If 

it weren’t for his purposeful devotion since his youth to rocket engines for the 

sake of interplanetary flights, he might have become a scientist, even a loner 

astronomer, chemist, radio physicist, I don’t know what else, but [he would 

have been] very devoted. After developing a new theory in great detail, he will 

not back down from his principles and will defend them very passionately.

“In history, they were both destined to become chief designers. Before 

this, they endured the school of ‘enemies of the people’ together. This brought 

them together. Although even while imprisoned in Kazan, Korolev could barely 

acknowledge the authority of chief designer Glushko, who was also imprisoned there.50 After their release, both were sent to Germany at the same time. 

But Glushko had the rank of colonel, while Korolev was a lieutenant colonel. 

Later, Korolev officially outranked Glushko. He was head chief designer, he 

was the technical manager for all the State Commissions, and he was head of 

the Council of Chief Designers. Korolev was hungry for power, and Glushko 

was hungry for fame. At Korolev’s funeral, we walked out of the House of 

Unions together. Glushko said in dead earnest, ‘I am ready to die in a year if 

they give me a funeral like that.’

“Glushko throws himself into his work, but he dreams of fame, even 

posthumous fame. Korolev didn’t spare himself either, but he needed fame 

while he was alive.”

Our meeting in the Botanical Garden created an atmosphere ripe for revelations and reminiscences. Isayev and I had arranged to skip out of work for the 

afternoon, and Khrabrovitskiy needed to recharge to work on his screenplay 

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and direction. Isayev took advantage of the opportunity to tell us about what 

he described as a heart-to-heart conversation with Glushko.

This conversation took place at the firing range on 24 October 1968—

Isayev’s 60th birthday. The next day Isayev began to tell me about it, but 

the circumstances prevented me from hearing out his confession. We were 

preparing for Beregovoy’s launch, and at that time I wasn’t interested in hearing what Glushko discussed with Isayev. Now I shall try to reproduce Isayev’s 

story from memory.

“At the firing range at that time we were preparing the first piloted Soyuz 

launch after the death of Komarov. Beregovoy was supposed to fly, and the day 

before I had turned 60. My guys tried to organize a party, but I begged off. In 

the morning we had to get up early for liftoff. And there was the prelaunch 

State Commission [meeting]. We had first launched an unpiloted vehicle.51 If 

everything went fine with it, a day later a piloted vehicle was supposed to lift 

off to dock with the unpiloted one. Before this, after calling ‘for all the top 

ranking people’ to show up, more brass than necessary flew in from Moscow. 

Over the course of the day they came to see me at the hotel one at a time and 

in groups. I held up as best I could, but by evening, when the stream of guests 

ended, I felt more tired than after sorting out failures on the test stand. I could 

barely keep my eyes open, and all of a sudden Glushko arrived. He brought 

his own bottle. Courteously, as only he knows how, he apologized, but said 

very adamantly that two engine specialists, he and I, had both turned 60 this 

year and he would not leave until I drank with him to the success of our cause.

“From previous encounters and from common acquaintances I knew that 

he didn’t drink at all, but that evening I was immediately no longer sleepy when 

Glushko poured himself and me a glass as equals. Little by little we almost 

finished the bottle. True, it was top-notch vodka, Posolskaya (Ambassadorial), 

and there were enough snacks left on the table (the guys had intended to drop 

in for breakfast early that morning). We talked a bit about our problems and 

discussed all the brass from the minister to Ustinov, and somehow of its own 

accord the conversation came around to the N-1. Before this I had been on an 

excursion to the big MIK. Vanya Raykov showed me and explained everything 

there.52 I must admit that when I saw 30 chambers on the first stage, it made 

me a bit nervous. But after Raykov’s confession about how the developmen-

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tal testing of the engines was going in Kuznetsov’s shop, I thought that you 

wouldn’t be able to pull this huge thing off without Korolev. This gossip has 

nothing to do with your screenplay, Daniil Yakovlevich. For you it all ends 

with the death of Bashkirtsev. But it’s a shame. There should be another series 

about the Moon.”

“I remember how Glushko changed when I asked him, not very effectively, 

his opinion on the N-1. The calm, almost amicable conversation dropped off. 

He even changed outwardly. He straightened up in his chair and began to berate 

me as if I was to blame for the fact that Korolev had made that vehicle. I had 

nothing to do with that whole affair. Then Glushko very much wanted me 

to take his side in this conflict, if only as an engine specialist, and realize that 

he was right. According to him, Korolev very much wanted him to produce 

an oxygen engine with 145 to 150 tons of thrust within inconceivably short 

deadlines. From the very beginning he did not understand why Korolev just 

simply refused to go with the cluster configuration, which had ensured success for the Semyorka and which by that time Chelomey was already using in 

the Pyatisotka [Proton]. At that time, he, Glushko, was still afraid of oxygenkerosene engines due to their propensity toward high frequency. Moreover, 

Glushko maintained that he had proposed a compromise to Korolev: reconfigure the rocket so that the engine clusters would be arranged in separate blocks 

using the cluster configuration that they had optimized on the R-7. Then each 

six-engine block could be tested out in stand-alone mode on a test rig. And 

finally, he persuaded him to agree to high-boiling propellant components. In 

this case, Glushko set about creating an engine with 600 tons of thrust within 

five years.53 At that time at the hotel Glushko assured me that Korolev, under 

Mishin’s influence, did not agree to any of the compromises. Both Korolev and 

Mishin placed their bets on Kuznetsov, and they simply took him, Glushko, 

off the N-1 rocket project.

“Projects for Yangel and Chelomey compelled him to create a large-scale test 

rig facility for high-boiling component engines. Glushko promised Korolev that 

he would get involved with a high-power oxygen engine, but later. At the time, 

in 1961, there was no such window for oxygen, and in terms of the deadlines, 

it was much easier to produce a high-power engine running on tetroxide and 

geptil. In order to show that we could produce high-power engines, he accepted 

Chelomey’s proposal. He was already finishing up developmental testing of 

engines with 640 tons of thrust for the UR-700. No one was driving him. 

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There was still no trace of Chelomey’s rockets, but he had an engine. And if 

we had been working on the N-1 since 1961, then we could have delivered 

the engines as early as 1966.

“I knew the story behind the development of the Semisotka [UR-700] and 

600-ton engines. We were all exasperated by the redundancy of the N-1. But 

that evening Glushko vented his resentment to me; he wanted to prove that if 

Korolev had agreed at that time, seven years ago, then we would still have had 

the hope of catching up with the Americans. And the first stage of the N-1 

would not have become a warehouse of questionable engines. Instead of a calm 

discussion, Korolev handed over all the information to Mishin for analysis. And 

as for Mishin, right off the bat he rejected everything that didn’t conform to 

his idea of controlling the rocket by changing the thrust of opposing engines.”

Puffing on one of his favorite Belomor cigarettes, Isayev spoke so intelligibly, graphically, and convincingly, that Khrabrovitskiy, who was not well 

versed in engine matters, listened to him without interrupting and without 

asking questions. I was the one who interrupted him.

“Everything that you are telling us is top secret, and we ask Daniil 

Yakovlevich never to mention this. But to understand the complexity of the 

relationship between Korolev and Glushko, let it be taken into consideration.”

I tried to critique the screenplay for other obvious departures from the 

actual biographies of the heroes. Ada Rogovtseva played Natasha—the girl 

whom Bashkirtsev loved in his distant youth, whom he never stopped loving, 

but forgot for the sake of a rocket.54 The first rocket edged out his first love. 

After becoming famous and settling down in the House on the Embankment, 

Bashkirtsev feels that he can no longer live without this woman.55

“Now you know, there’s absolutely nothing akin to Korolev’s biography 

here,” I admonished Khrabrovitskiy. “Moreover, Ada Rogovtseva, that is, 

Natasha, is a charming woman; she raises a son on her own, and in actual fact 

Korolev had, and, thank God, has a living and healthy daughter Natasha.”

“You keep on arguing with me because you know how things really were,” 

Khrabrovitskiy said. “I am not at all obliged to reverently adhere to the real 

characters and biographies. The heroes of the film are mine, not yours, and the 

moviegoers will believe me because they will love these heroes. I deliberately 

idealize people and I want them to be that way. These shouldn’t be varnished 

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ideals, but the viewer should love each of my heroes. Our film has no evildoers, 

traitors, executioners, prostitutes, or spies. I admire all of you just as you are, 

but I want to make you even better. I see this as my mission.”

The wonderful actors such as Kirill Lavrov, Igor Gorbachev, Ada 

Rogovtseva, Vsevolod Safonov, Igor Vladimirov, Andrey Popov, and Innokentiy 

Smoktunovskiy did their part, as did the fact that Taming the Fire was shot on 

location. The Semyorka launches and crashes were the real thing, from documentary footage. In the feature film they had a much stronger impact on the 

viewer than in the documentary format.

A small group of consultants and several big-shot officials from the 

ministry and VPK, invited by Khrabrovitskiy at our insistence, watched 

the still-raw film for the first time on a small screen at the Mosfilm studio. 

No one could remain indifferent. All of us were disturbed by the question: 

how would the powers that be feel about the film? For the first time on the 

screen the fire of failed launches raged, rather than just those successful 

liftoffs known to the viewer.

“You know, Daniil Yakovlevich,” Isayev turned to Khrabrovitskiy after the 

screening, “you managed to show so convincingly the process of ‘taming the 

fire’ on the screen that I was more concerned and experienced a more intense 

thrill than when I was at the firing range for the actual launches. Even the 

real crashes affected me less because I was not as anxious over my own fate as 

I was today for your heroes.”

In the depths of his soul Isayev remained an inveterate romantic. He 

possessed a blend of creative obsession, natural simplicity, and humor that 

Korolev and Glushko lacked. But he belonged to the very same generation. 

Therefore, the romantic idealization and artistic ennoblement of their characters impressed him.

Khrabrovitskiy was happy and touched. Grigoryev and I advised him, “In 

order to get the green light for the film to be released, you need to show it to 

Ustinov. He will decide who else you need to invite.”

The management of Mosfilm took our advice and went to Ustinov. Grigoryev 

also telephoned him. He explained that Marshal Nikolay Krylov had commissioned him to be a consultant and among the consultants he mentioned Isayev 

and me, and Vladimir Patrushev, the chief of the First Directorate of the firing 

range, who directed the launches in the film footage. Ustinov accepted the 

invitation and came for a screening with a small group of Central Committee 

staff. On the advice of the Central Committee, Khrabrovitskiy did not call 

Mishin, Glushko, or other chiefs.

With Ustinov’s permission, Isayev, Grigoryev, and I were invited to the 

closed screening. Before Taming the Fire, they showed the American film 

Marooned—an artistic interpretation of the possible consequences of the 

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failure of a spacecraft’s descent engine.56 The three astronauts are deprived of 

the possibility of returning to Earth. Oxygen supplies are rapidly dwindling; 

they are faced with an agonizing death. We have always feared such a situation 

more than any other space emergencies. A Soviet spacecraft tries to save the 

Americans, but the rendezvous process failed. The U.S. Air Force frantically 

prepares a small super-secret winged spacecraft. They rush through the idea 

of using a small “shuttle” as the rescue vehicle. To add drama to the action, 

the oldest member of the American crew is ejected into space to prolong the 

lives of the younger crewmembers. All the heroes of the American film were 

quite positive, but they didn’t have to act; the bulk of the time was devoted to 

showing technology, not people. The U.S. Air Force’s secret spacecraft saves 

the crew of a spacecraft similar to the Apollo.

In Taming the Fire, at my prompting, they emphasized the organizational 

role of the high-ranking Party-economic manager. As best I could, I told People’s 

Artist of the USSR Popov about Ustinov’s role in our affairs.57 In the film 

my tip proved to be rather transparent. The screening was a success. Ustinov 

was clearly moved. He gave Khrabrovitskiy a firm handshake, congratulating 

him on his success. Turning to us, the consultants, he said, “Your influence 

is palpable. We are still just dreaming about such equipment in the bunker. 

Thank you for giving pointers, it means there’s already a mockup. And during 

Korolev’s lifetime we couldn’t make peace between him and Glushko. If they 

had been such friends as Bashkirtsev and Ognev, a lot of things would have 

been different for us.”

“I don’t think that you would have been so preoccupied with the fate of 

the N-1,” said Isayev suddenly.

“Yes, perhaps, you’re right,” replied Ustinov with a melancholy smile.

Ustinov said that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev and other members of the 

Politburo must absolutely see this film. A screening was organized, and the 

film appeared uncensored on the nation’s screens. By that time, Isayev was no 

longer among the living, and I was unable to share my impressions with him. 

In 1972, the film Taming the Fire received the Crystal Globe—the main prize 

at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival—and, in 1973, first prize at 

the All-Union Film Festival in Alma Ata.

Two years after the film’s release, when Glushko was appointed general 

designer of NPO Energiya, I was asked, “What is this? At your insistence Mishin 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

became the chief after Korolev’s death, and according to the film, which was 

shot four years ago, the chief engine specialist, that is to say, Glushko, takes 

Korolev’s place. How were you able to foresee this back then? So you wanted 

to correct your mistake through the film?”

I laughed it off: “First they showed the film to Ustinov, and then to 

Brezhnev. After that they mulled it over for two years, and as you see, they 

made the decision. This is the great power of art.”

For Isayev and me, our participation in the work on the movie became a 

sort of diversion, a respite from our very stressful everyday routine. We were 

able to correct history and people at our discretion. Together, Isayev and I 

talked Khrabrovitskiy into continuing the space epic and making an exciting science adventure film about the Moon race. Isayev’s death dashed our 

dreams. After Taming the Fire Khrabrovitskiy managed to make two more 

films: Tale of the Human Heart [Povest o chelovecheskom serdtse], devoted to 

cardiac surgeons, and Poem About Wings [Poema o krylyakh], in which the 

main heroes were Tupolev and Sikorskiy.58 At the screening of the latter 

film at the House of Film, I reminded Khrabrovitskiy about our dream. 

He promised to give it some more thought. Perhaps he did, but the cardiac 

surgeons were unable to save his life.59

After our digression about the film Taming the Fire, let’s return to 

Glushko’s office and to our conversation in August 1974.

“Barmin’s position is extremely disturbing to me,” said Glushko. “Has 

Barmin maybe been reborn in the past few years? Instead of his ostensible 

work, he’s been carried away with the effect of the magnetic field on the 

human mind. He argues with a straight face that going beyond the limits 

of the magnetic field risks mental breakdown. It seems to me that Barmin 

doesn’t want to work in our cooperative network. We need a backup for 

his organization in the development of ground-based launch systems so 

that our work doesn’t suffer—on a competitive basis. I propose that we 

give some thought to competitions not just for the ground systems. Why 

not work on going to the Moon at the same time? I’m certain that there 

are also developers who will be able to propose interesting designs for the 

competition. I’m certain that Solovyev’s design bureau can solve launch 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

problems as well as Barmin’s.60 Or Viktor Kuznetsov’s. He’s your friend, 

Boris Yevseyevich. Kuznetsov wants to have a tranquil life working on his 

old gyroscope production stock. With that kind of attitude it’s difficult to 

expect much from him. Give some thought about whom we could give 

the gyroscope order to instead of Kuznetsov, also on a competitive basis. It 

would also be good to set up competition for the entire series of reusable 

transport systems for the Moon. But we have to start with Barmin. Let him 

realize that he’s not the center of the universe, that there are groups who 

are proposing better designs.

“Next. We need to have Guskov back up Ryazanskiy on the whole radio 

complex.61 Instead of Mnatsakanyan’s Igla, it’s high time we began development 

of a backup system. Why haven’t you tested Bogomolov’s Kontakt (Contact) 

system yet?62 We particularly need this kind of competition for computers.

“Lidorenko’s electrochemical generators are clearly inferior to the 

Minsredmash proposal for the L3.63 You weren’t afraid and took the generators offered by this ministry. Why can you do it there, and not in other places? 

Can you explain this to me?”

“A competition system is fine for architecture,” I tried to object. “There, 

during the drawings phase, one can argue and select beautiful designs. In our 

technology, until we come up with the first experimental prototypes, it is 

difficult to bring out an error-free design. In order to back up development 

before the actual model-testing phase, we will have to increase expenditures 

and extend deadlines by 150 to 200 percent. We need to test not one, but 

a minimum of two versions. Such an idea will hardly be successful without 

guarantees for funding. We’ll give it some thought, but without a VPK decision 

there won’t be a bidding process. We won’t be funding our main subcontractors; the budget will.”

“And you’re going to leave that for me.”

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

From our side, Anatoliy Abramov was overseeing Barmin’s projects.64

Having worked at one time in the field of diplomacy, he was viewed by our 

organization as a diplomat and master of reconciling confrontational situations, 

including those between Korolev and Barmin.

“Vladimir Pavlovich’s speech was strange,” he said. “The very form of such 

a statement was off the wall and shocked everyone. All of us around this table 

have seen and heard all kinds of speeches over the past 20 years. But never have 

they been so spiteful. However, we must take into consideration the fact that 

it is unrealistic to entrust the modification of the N-1 launch site for any other 

rocket to anyone besides Barmin. Barmin understands this full well and knows 

that the minister will back him up. If you do not object, Valentin Petrovich, 

I will try again to speak with him.”

We all understood that regardless of his authorization, Abramov would 

still have a talk with Barmin, just as I did not need permission to meet and 

have candid conversations with Pilyugin, Kuznetsov, and Ryazanskiy.

It was most difficult for the engine specialists. Melnikov, Sokolov, 

and Raykov were supposed to concisely explain to Nikolay Kuznetsov and his 

deputies, with whom over these years they had not only argued until they were 

blue in the face but had also already begun to work well together, why work 

was being shut down on engines for the N-1. In the gravest of situations, none 

of them dreamed that now it would come to the termination of the project 

and complete breakdown. But why? They could only answer that such was 

the order of Glushko, who had been appointed general designer. There had 

not yet been any ministerial orders, much less any governmental resolutions 

calling for the termination of operations on Kuznetsov’s engines for the N-1.

Several days later Bushuyev, Pilyugin, and I had to hear out Barmin one 

more time when we met at a gathering of our academic department at the 

Institute of Machine Science on Griboyedov Street. Barmin was offended by 

Glushko’s remarks to him in front of Ustinov concerning his intention to take 

away the lunar base.

“You know better than I that from the very beginning Glushko was against 

the N-1. He proposed his own high-boiling component engines to Korolev, 

and you, Mishin, and Korolev only required oxygen. After having a run-in 

with Glushko, you had Kuznetsov begin developing a liquid-propellant engine 

from scratch. You aired your dirty linen in this regard at the Defense Council 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

that Khrushchev convened in Pitsunda.65 We hadn’t allowed such a thing 

in our own small council. I believe that Glushko ruined our old Council of 

Chief Designers. Sergey had a strong character; I don’t have to tell you that. 

Khrushchev personally tried to make peace between them. Nothing came of 

it. (Khrushchev’s attempt to reconcile Korolev and Glushko is described in 

volume two of Sergey Nikitich Khrushchev’s book Nikita Khrushchev: Crises 

and Rockets.)66 Glushko could no longer influence the development of the N-1.

“Mishin, with our general assistance, made a mess of this grandiose project. No one bothered to explain to our people why Soviet cosmonauts didn’t 

visit the Moon. Abroad they know full well that we were in the process of 

preparing an enormous rocket. They wrote openly about our failures.67 Only 

our people aren’t supposed to know the truth. At diplomatic and other types 

of meetings with foreign dignitaries and leaders of fraternal parties, Brezhnev 

was also asked, ‘What’s going on with the Moon?’ Ustinov evidently thought 

for a long time, sought a convenient excuse, and then Keldysh suggested, 

‘The most relevant space program now isn’t the Moon, but the reusable space 

transport system.’ This system is strategic, and we must give the Americans an 

appropriate response. And so as not to put an end to the lunar program, they 

report to the Politburo, or perhaps they have already reported, that an end 

hasn’t been put to the lunar program, and in fact, a powerful concentration of 

forces has been created in the form of NPO Energiya. Heading the enterprise 

is Korolev’s old compatriot, prominent scientist and engine specialist Glushko. 

Now Glushko is dreaming of going down in history not only as a great engine 

specialist, but also as a great rocket engineer. Today’s Politburo has long forgotten about Glushko’s differences of opinion with Korolev.

“The priority task when a project has been terminated is to manage to report 

to your superior that the necessary measures have been taken to strengthen management. And if someone asks Ustinov what the main ministry is doing—after 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

all, the government had created the Lunar Council—then one could report that 

Minister Afanasyev turned out not to be up to the task.68 But not right away. 

You need a one- or two-year wait until you can remove the minister—until 

the Space Shuttle begins to fly. When it comes to light that the lunar program 

has been scuttled, and the reusable system still hasn’t been created, then the 

minister can be held responsible, especially since he’s not just a minister, but 

also the former chairman of the Lunar Council. And if they make me modify 

the launch facilities for another launch vehicle, then ultimately I’ll do it. Just 

don’t let Glushko hope that this is going to be minor repairs. Modifying the 

launch facilities will take three or four years.”

Actually, it wasn’t three or four years. The decision of the Central 

Committee and Council of Ministers about the termination of operations and 

writing off the expenditures for the N1-L3 project didn’t appear until February 

1976. They wrote off expenditures of 6 billion rubles at 1970s prices. On 17 

February of that same year, 1976, a decree was issued calling for the creation 

of the MKTS, the basis of which was the new super-heavy launch vehicle. This 

decree appeared four years after a similar decision of U.S. President Richard 

Nixon calling for the creation of the Space Shuttle space transportation system. 

Nixon’s decision put an end to the possibility of the continued use of the Saturn 

V launch vehicle, which had demonstrated its reliability to the whole world 

during the lunar expeditions.

The decree of the Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers, 

dated 17 February 1976, “On the creation of the MKTS consisting of a booster 

stage, orbital aircraft, interorbital tug vehicle, system control complex, liftoff/

landing and repair/recovery complexes, and other ground-based facilities 

supporting the insertion of payloads up to 30 tons in northeast orbits to an 

altitude of 200 kilometers and the return from orbit of cargoes weighing up 

to 20 tons” finally put an end to the N1-L3 program. It also put an end to 

projects dealing with the lunar base.

Work on the Energiya-Buran program required such a mobilization of 

efforts throughout the entire nation that the RLA launch vehicle series project, 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

about which Glushko had delivered his speech in 1974, remained on paper.69

The Energiya launch vehicle distinguished itself favorably from the American 

Space Shuttle in that it could carry not only the Buran spacecraft, but also 

any payload with a mass up to 100 tons, into Earth orbit. To control the 

flight of the Space Shuttle complex the Americans created a system in which 

the entire payload was placed on board the piloted spacecraft. We remained 

faithful to the classic format. The Energiya launch vehicle had its own system 

that provided control for the insertion into space of any payload. Unlike the 

American Space Shuttle, the Buran orbital vehicle did not control flight during 

the insertion flight segment.

Up until the late 1960s, Glushko remained an opponent of producing powerful engines operating on oxygen-kerosene and oxygen-hydrogen 

propellant components for the N-1. Fifteen years after his falling out with 

Korolev, Glushko decided to prove that only his school (GDL—OKB-456—

KB Energomash) was capable of producing the best super-powerful oxygenkerosene engine in the world. After Glushko’s appointment as general director 

of NPO Energiya, Vitaliy Radovskiy became chief designer at KB Energomash 

in Khimki. He was tasked with creating the unique (in terms of its performance 

data) RD-170 oxygen-kerosene engine for the first stage of the Energiya launch 

vehicle. However, Glushko retained conceptual management and the right to 

personally make crucial decisions in critical situations. A government decree 

assigned the development of the RD-0120 oxygen-hydrogen engine for the 

second stage of the launch vehicle to Aleksandr Konopatov, the chief designer 

of KB Khimavtomatiki in Voronezh.70

The production of actuators to pivot the engine chambers on the first 

and second stages and engine control servo system drives were assigned to 

Complex No. 4 (which was part of my group), under the management of 

Vadim Kudryavtsev. Rather than being an outside observer, in my line of duty, 

I was a participant in the developmental testing of the stage-one and stage-two 

propulsion systems and their integration with the rocket and control system. 

During the process of testing the engines, a well-known dialectical postulate 

about the “transformation of quantity into quality” manifested itself to the 

full extent. The engine capacities, their dimensions and masses, moments of 

inertia, and accuracy of the deviations required for control exceeded many 

times everything that we had dealt with in our previous “actuator” work. It 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

was not possible to solve new problems using classical methods of the theory 

of automatic control.

Glushko happened to be the general designer of a rocket, the second 

stage of which used hydrogen as propellant. This was the very same hydrogen 

that Glushko had considered unacceptable for use due to its very low boiling 

temperature and low density. Directives ordering the creation of new, powerful 

engines that were called for by the government decree of 1962 were fulfilled 

20 years later under a new decree. Glushko not only rejected his previous 

anti-hydrogen dogmas, but also as the head general designer he took on the 

solution of new tasks using cryogenic components—oxygen and hydrogen.

The first stage of the Energiya consisted of four blocks, each with one 

four-chamber RD-170 engine having a sea-level thrust of 740 tons. For the 

second stage they used four single-chamber RD-0120 engines, each with a 

thrust of 200 tons. The bitter experience of explosions and fires on the N-1 

launch vehicle was fully taken into consideration during the development 

of the Energiya and, above all, of its engine systems. Glushko presented the 

ministry and later the VPK an ultimatum: the firing range needed a test rig 

for full-scale firing tests on a flight-ready model of Energiya.

Those opposed to the construction of a rig, a very expensive structure, 

argued that unlike the N-1, the engines of Energiya were reusable. They 

undergo in-process firing tests and then are installed on the rocket without 

being overhauled. The test rig was an extravagance that Glushko had contrived 

to gain time. It was obvious to everyone that the RD-170 engine was going 

to fall through, and here Glushko found a way to gain an additional couple 

of years to find a way out of this dead-end situation. The support of Ustinov, 

who at that time was a Politburo member and minister of defense, ensured a 

decision in favor of building the unique test rig/launch facility.71

The development of the RD-170 engine for the first stage of the Energiya 

began back in 1976. Just five years later the first engine arrived in Khimki for 

integrated firing tests. And from the very first firing there was one failure after 

another on the test rig. The most severe was the failure in June 1982 during 

a test on the first stage of a Zenit rocket, which had the very same RD-170 

engine as the Energiya.72 The explosion of the engine was so powerful that 

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it destroyed the only test rig in the rocket industry created especially for the 

ground-based developmental testing of heavy rockets.

Even our most revolutionary engine specialist, Mikhail Melnikov, 

was reeling.

“Glushko took a stab at a problem that is more than we or the Americans 

can handle at the current level of technology. This is like what happened 

with controlled thermonuclear reaction. It was 25 years ago that Kurchatov 

announced that we were on the verge of learning how to control a thermonuclear 

reaction and would make humankind very happy. So far, nothing has come of 

it. And then Glushko rushed to make an announcement about an engine with 

a thrust of almost 800 tons and with a closed-cycle configuration to boot.”

It wasn’t just the unique Energiya-Buran rocket space complex program that 

was on the line. Seventy-five-year-old Glushko was threatened with a technical 

defeat rather than an administrative one. But not only did he refuse to budge 

from his positions, he displayed amazing performance and an unyielding sense 

of purpose and tenacity. After each failure, it is necessary to find the causes, 

perform modifications, and prove one’s case not just to the skeptics in one’s 

own organization, but also to high-ranking interdepartmental commissions. 

By the way, Arkhip Lyulka was the only one on this commission who was not 

a harsh critic, but was a well-intentioned aide and consultant.

It wasn’t until December 1984 that completely successful tests were conducted confirming the engine’s stated parameters and reliability. By this time, 

Konopatov’s first hydrogen engines had also arrived. And we, the control 

specialists, were convinced of the reliability of our new, absolutely unique and 

powerful digital control surface actuators.

And now it was once again 15 May! But this time, it was 1987. Exactly 30 

years had passed since the launch of the world’s first intercontinental Semyorka. 

(At that time, the launch had been a failure.) The super-heavy rocket, called 

Energiya at Glushko’s recommendation, lifted off for the first time, not from a 

standard launch system, but from a test rig/launch facility, for which Glushko 

had battled so fiercely. The reliability of the launch vehicle was confirmed on 

the first attempt. The torments of many years of ground developmental testing 

had not been in vain.73

The first successful flight of the American Space Shuttle, which had spurred 

us to begin making our own Energiya-Buran reusable space system, took 

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

place on 12 April 1981—10 years after development had begun. From the 

last launch of N-1 No. 7 to the first launch of the new super-heavy launch 

vehicle, 15 years had passed!

On 15 November 1988, the Energiya-Buran reusable rocket-space complex brilliantly executed its first and last flight. This was the second launch 

for the Energiya. The Buran reusable orbital vehicle was flying for the first 

time. After making two passes around the globe in unpiloted mode, Buran 

landed at the airfield with amazing precision under conditions of very strong 

crosswind. The two flights of the Energiya launch vehicle were truly a triumph for the engine and control specialists. Neither Glushko nor Pilyugin 

was present for the first and last launch of the Energiya-Buran reusable 

rocket-space complex.74

Over the first three years of this 15-year period, i.e., from 1972 to 1975, 

it was possible using the already available production stock for the N-1 launch 

vehicle and the new batch of engines (by 1974 around 100 units had been 

manufactured) to produce a reliable launch vehicle, compared with the performance characteristics of the modern Molniya and Proton launch vehicles. Over 

this same three- to five-year period (to be on the safe side we’ll add another 

two years), our domestic technology was fully capable of creating spacecraft 

and modules for an expedition to build a lunar base.

Having created the Salyut and then the Mir orbital stations, we had ensured 

the permanent presence of a human being in Earth orbit in space. The resources 

invested in the Energiya-Buran reusable space system would have been more 

than enough to create a lunar base. And then...then, beginning in 1980, Soviet 

(and then Russian) cosmonauts would not only have been continuously in 

Earth orbit, but also on the Moon.

After 1975, after completing the Apollo-Soyuz project, the Americans 

finally halted operations on the Saturn launch vehicle, switching NASA’s main 

forces to the production of the Space Shuttle system. We rushed to catch up 

with them, having completely shut down the N1-L3 project, and following 

their example, we invested enormous resources into a reusable transport system. 

In 1988, we proved that our Energiya-Buran reusable rocket-space complex 

was technically as good as the American Space Shuttle. By the Americans’ own 

admission, economically, the Space Shuttle reusable transport system did not 

live up to their expectations. It cost more to insert payloads into space using 

the reusable system than using expendable launch vehicles. That’s where we 

beat out the Americans!

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“Every cloud has a silver lining.” The termination of the N1-L3 

project and the five-year time lag on the MKTS made us continue our work 

on orbital stations at a faster pace and perfect nonreusable transport systems 

using our tried-and-true R-7 and UR-500K launch vehicles. Despite the woes 

that befell our cosmonautics after the collapse of the USSR, and the general 

Russian economic crisis, we kept the piloted Mir station in orbit and continued 

to remain “ahead of the whole planet.” The American Shuttle learned how to 

approach our Mir and dock with it.75 Engineers from both nations worked 

together to solve this problem. If someone had mentioned the possibility of 

such a turn of events even in 1975 when the decision was made concerning 

an “appropriate” strategic response, in the best-case scenario he or she would 

have been considered delusional.

In August 1965, the Belgian newspaper Latern published an article by 

Wernher von Braun with the catchy headline “In 1970 Your Ticket to the 

Moon Will Cost 5 Billion Francs.”76 We actually could have built a base on 

the Moon by 1985. And then a ticket to visit our base would have cost around 

100 million dollars.

In 1965, Wernher von Braun gave the following prediction: “As long as 

we use nonreusable launch vehicles to transport passengers, potential clients 

will have to pay 5 million dollars when flying from Earth into orbit and 50 

to 100 million dollars when visiting the Moon, which will take place from 

1970 to 1975.”

From 1969 to 1972, the actual cost to the United States of sending one 

man to the Moon and returning him from the Moon was more than 1 billion 

dollars.77 A trip into orbit aboard the Shuttle for one individual in a sevenperson crew in 1997 cost not 5 million, as von Braun predicted, but 75 million 

dollars. If one were to sell tickets, a three-day Earth orbit on our Soyuz would 

cost 15 million dollars. But given the acute need for funds, the Russian Space 

Agency and RKK Energiya have established a rate of 20 million U.S. dollars 

for an eight- to ten-day trip for space tourists on the Soyuz and International 

Space Station.

In 1964, Korolev said that it wouldn’t be long before it would be possible 

to make a trip into space on a trade union pass. Alas! The optimistic predictions of von Braun and Korolev failed to materialize before the end of the 20th 

 75.

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Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

century. Korolev, Glushko, and von Braun were not only engineers and realists, 

but they were also dreamers. Technically, their dreams and predictions could 

have been fully realized before the end of the 20th century.

After the reliability of Kuznetsov’s engines was proven, after the creation 

of the world’s most powerful engine, the RD-170, and the RD-0120 hydrogen 

engine in Voronezh, after two spectacular flights of the Energiya launch vehicle, 

and after proving that long-term resident cosmonauts on Mir were capable of 

working, there was no more doubt: we could have created a habitable base on 

the Moon before the end of the 20th century, and with the participation of 

the U.S. and European countries—no doubt whatsoever!

The summer of 1988 was notable for particular space activity on the 

Mir orbital station. The first flight of the Energiya in conjunction with the 

Buran was being prepared for autumn. All the hardware was manufactured 

and delivered. In short supply was a “weightless” intellectual product—software. Glushko continued to amaze everyone. He patiently interrogated my 

comrades, our subcontractors, and me, attempting to understand what was 

causing the difficulties in producing and developing this product, which was 

unconventional for previous rocket technology. Unlike many other older chiefs, 

Glushko very much wanted to gain insight into the true nature of the new 

software problem. It seemed to me it would take two or three more meetings 

and he would understand the difficulties that had cropped up as a result of our 

having entrusted spacecraft control to computers. It didn’t turn out that way.

One typical workday he was working alone in his office. Taking advantage 

of his right to enter unannounced, Mikhail Yaremich stopped by to report 

about the completion of an assignment.78 He saw Glushko, who had made 

a feeble attempt to stand up. He couldn’t explain what had happened. An 

ambulance took Valentin Petrovich to a hospital on Michurinskiy Prospekt. 

A month later, we were reassured that everything would be all right, but with 

the proviso: “Bear in mind his age. Anything could happen.”

On 2 September 1988, Glushko turned 80. Semyonov, Vachnadze, 

Ryumin, Yaremich, and I came to the hospital to wish him a happy birthday. 

When we entered his ward, he was sitting in a chair dressed in clothes that 

were certainly not hospital garb. Each of us said something, told him happy 

birthday, and wished him a speedy recovery. Glushko listened, nodded slightly, 

without smiling; he looked detached, as if he were thinking about something 

completely different. The time allotted for visits quickly ran out.

 78.

579
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

Senior veterans of the Soviet space program gather at the unveiling of a memorial 

plaque in honor of Valentin Glushko at his former workplace in Building 65 at 

NPO Energiya. From left to right are M. S. Khomyakov, V. M. Filin, A. I. Ostashev, 

N. I. Zelenshchikov, B. Ye. Chertok, O. D. Baklanov, V. M. Karashtin, and M. N. Ivanov.

His illness progressed. He managed to ask Yaremich and Stanislav Petrovich 

Bogdanovskiy, the director of Energomash’s Experimental Factory, who visited him six days before his death, that his body be cremated and his ashes be 

delivered into space—to Mars or Venus. Glushko passed away on 10 January 

1989. His request about the cremation raised no objections in the top-ranking 

Party organs. But no one could fulfill his last wish. The urn containing his 

ashes was buried at Novodevichye Cemetery. Fastened to his granite gravestone 

was a stylized image of the last great creation of Soviet cosmonautics—the 

launch vehicle Energiya gushing a fiery plume with the Buran orbital vehicle 

perched on its back.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the main portion of its scientific and technical inheritance and industrial potential of the rocket-space 

sector remained in Russia. The mass breakdown of economic contacts with 

the former Soviet republics and the actual loss of effective government support threatened the scientific and technological potential of domestic rocket 

technology and cosmonautics.

History assigned a mission to the leaders of the rocket-space schools—

survive no matter what; preserve and pass on to new generations not only 

580
Valentin Glushko, N-1, and NPO Energiya

technology, but also the best of the traditions and human aspirations that 

united and contributed to the immensely rapid development of cosmonautics. 

Fifty years after the launch of the first artificial satellite, the two leading space 

powers, the United States of America and Russia, have no great strategic programs. Humankind really needs Korolev, Glushko, and von Braun. Hundreds 

of modern-day managers will never replace them.

581

Epilogue

The world in the 21st century continues to change at a scorching pace. 

Today’s reader working in any of the new fields of technology has very little 

time for reading all four volumes of my memoirs. I am counting on the attention of those who were there at the turn of the millennium, who are trying to 

make sense of the past and are not indifferent to the future.

The second half of the 20th century is replete with truly revolutionary 

scientific research, discoveries, and engineering achievements. World War II 

and the Cold War years gave rise to aerospace, nuclear, radio engineering, 

and computer technologies, and they became a great material strength. Just 

in the two decades after the war, space was transformed into a real necessity. 

The race between the two great powers to explore space was more risky and 

arduous than the rivalry between Spain, Portugal, and England during the 

Age of Exploration.

In the 20th century the rate of scientific discoveries increased hundreds 

of times. Historians believe that the total achievements of scientific and technical progress over the past 50 years have exceeded everything that was done 

in the preceding 5,000 years. The “hot” and “cold” world wars have receded 

into the past, but myriad local wars continue. They stimulate some fields of 

science and technology, slow down others, and devour enormous resources, 

which could be spent on further breakthroughs into the secrets of nature, on 

discoveries, and on enriching human knowledge. The thirst for knowledge 

did not die even in the darkest periods of human history. This is a powerful 

driving force. I was one of the warriors at the very leading edge of scientific 

and technical progress, and working there was enthralling. Writing memoirs 

about this bustling time has proved more difficult than being directly involved 

in the dynamics of the process.

I do not regret that I was born in the Russian Empire, grew up in Soviet 

Russia, achieved a great deal in the Soviet Union, and continue to work in 

Russia. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of my contemporaries lived 

“not by bread alone.” Those who revile their native land’s past in pursuit of 

big news stories and careers and try to trample underfoot everything that our 

583
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

people have created forget that they owe their very existence here on Earth to a 

heroic generation that saved human civilization. Yes, we made many mistakes. 

But those who excel in the cynicism of subverting everything that happened 

“after 1917,” under the cover of the hastily hammered together philosophy of 

utilitarian pragmatism, will not shy away from the criminal plundering of the 

riches created by the people for the sake of their own enrichment.

The most difficult thing for 

me, the author of these memoirs, 

was performing flight control on 

an imaginary time machine. Where 

and for how many lines should I 

pause? What route shall I take next? 

It is up to the reader to judge how 

successful my choices have been. 

Taking advantage of my rights as an 

author, I would like to quickly sail 

through the history of astronautics 

in the second half of the 20th century. In the process of this cursory 

perusal I would like to show the 

errors that we in the USSR, and in 

Russia, and also that the Americans 

made when producing space technology. At the beginning of the 

Space Age, fully competent and 

active developers of actual rocketspace systems pondered over its 

future, rather than outsider pundits. It is very interesting to contrast what 

they dreamed of with what actually came about, what they worked on, and 

what considerable funds were spent on. I will say, right off the bat, that both we 

and the Americans were quite wrong in our predictions. We have a legitimate 

excuse—the tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which protracted into 

a 10-year permanent political, social, and economic crisis. The Americans had 

no such legitimate excuses. It is all the more amazing that they made so many 

more errors in their prognoses. Therefore, let’s start with them.

The United States entered the Space Age on 1 February 1958, when a 

Jupiter-C launch vehicle (a modification of the Redstone combat missile) 

inserted Explorer 1—a satellite with a mass of 14 kilograms—into low nearEarth orbit. A group of German specialists headed by Wernher von Braun 

developed the Redstone and Jupiter-C in the United States. I will remind the 

reader that the Soviet Union inserted the world’s first artificial satellite (with 

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok.

584
Epilogue

a mass of 86 kilograms) into space and a second one carrying the famous dog 

Layka in 1957. After the Redstone came modifications of American combat 

missiles Thor, Atlas, and Titan II, which were used as space launch vehicles. 

The first American Mercury single-seat spacecraft were inserted into ballistic 

trajectories using the Redstone and into Earth orbits using Atlas-D launch 

vehicles. Launches of Gemini two-seat spacecraft were the preparatory stage 

of the Apollo program. The Titan II launch vehicle inserted these vehicles into 

Earth orbit. The flight of the first U.S. astronaut [in orbit], John Glenn, took 

place 10 months after the flight of Yuriy Gagarin. The new Saturn I, Saturn IB, 

and Saturn V were designed from the very beginning as space launch vehicles 

rather than strategic weapon delivery vehicles.

Rockets from the Saturn series were designed above all for the Apollo 

program of piloted lunar vehicles. It was assumed that after the first lunar 

expeditions were completed and the Saturn V launch vehicle was updated, 

it would be used for new missions—the creation of a habitable base on the 

Moon and the beginning of piloted flights to other planets. However, after 

the conclusion of the Apollo program on 7 December 1972, the Saturn V was 

used just one time, without its third stage, to insert the Skylab experimental 

orbital station.1

 The Saturn IB completed its last flight in 1975 as part of the 

Apollo-Soyuz program.

After 1975, the United States abandoned piloted flights until the reusable 

Space Shuttle space transport system was put into service. The Delta, AtlasCentaur, Titan II, and Titan III launch vehicles were subsequently used only 

to insert unpiloted spacecraft of various applications. America’s rejection of 

the tried-and-true, reliable Saturn V launch vehicle seemed strange. I believe 

it was a mistake. American historians of astronautics whom I have met have 

been unable to give a clear explanation as to why, despite previous plans, they 

“laid to rest” the excellent Saturn V launch vehicle.

In 1965, the United States prepared a prognosis of the development of 

astronautics until the year 2001. These data were presented at a high-level 

symposium in March 1966 in Washington, DC. In 1967, we received the 

opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the American plans in documents 

classified “secret” or “for official use only,” despite the fact that in the United 

States, materials from the symposium were available in open publications. The 

majority of our specialists assessed the American prognoses as overly optimistic, 

 1. The final Apollo mission, 

585
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

but no one dared call them absurd. The argument was primarily about the 

reality of the dates. We believed that even working with us, the Americans 

could fulfill a significant portion of these plans, but around five years later 

than planned. And without us, one needed to add another five years or so.

As it is impossible to discuss in detail our rivals’ prognoses for all areas of 

astronautics, I shall touch on the epochal ones. The Americans intended to 

put small, continuously operating orbital laboratory stations (like our Salyuts) 

into service in 1972; an orbital complex with chemical engines in 1973; ones 

with nuclear engines in 1974; a large orbital research laboratory in 1976; a 

piloted orbital global communications, information, and surveillance center in 

geostationary orbit in 1984; and an orbital manufacturing complex in 1987. 

Piloted flights to other planets would have begun with the landing of a human 

being on the Moon in 1969. From 1975 to 1978, there were plans to create 

a continuously operating lunar scientific station, a manufacturing base using 

local resources, and a lunar interplanetary spaceport!

NASA managers, the directors and vice presidents of leading aerospace 

corporations, reputable scientists, employees of the Department of Defense, and 

even members of Congress delivered reports about the captivating prospects for 

colonizing almost all of near-solar space. The boundaries of American interests 

extended far beyond near-Earth space. He who masters space will master the 

world—the prognoses of 1966 were built on this principle.

The Americans planned a heliocentric expeditionary flight using nuclear 

rocket engines for 1981 and a Mars reconnaissance station, Mars surface landing, and study and colonization of its satellites for 1984 to 1986. A piloted 

flight with a possible landing on Venus was supposed to take place before 1988. 

In 1966, American scientists still did not know what Venus’s atmosphere was 

like and what the conditions of its surface were. Beginning in 1967, one Soviet 

automatic Venera spacecraft after another reported that our idea of life was 

not compatible with the conditions on Venus.

During the period from 1990 to 2000, they planned to create scientific 

research stations on the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. They didn’t forget about 

Mercury either. They planned to create a station on Mercury to study the Sun, 

and by the end of the century—mines and enterprises to extract and process 

metallic ores. Numerous flights of automatic vehicles—interplanetary reconnaissance probes—were supposed to precede all of these piloted expeditions.

Now we know that this prognosis panned out only in terms of the first lunar 

expeditions and automatic reconnaissance vehicles. The Americans fulfilled 

President Kennedy’s national challenge to land on the Moon. The role of the 

lunar expeditions for the United States consisted not just in gaining scientific 

and technological priority, particularly over the Soviet Union. This red-letter 

day rallied the nation as a unified sociocultural whole.

586
Epilogue

Examples of the flights of the first Soviet cosmonauts from 1961 to 1965 

and of the American lunar expeditions from 1969 to 1972 graphically showed 

that such achievements are truly a powerful stimulus for unifying society; 

each citizen has the opportunity to be proud of the achievements of his or 

her country. After such triumphant victories, public opinion magnanimously 

pardons optimists for their prognostic errors.

The future programs of piloted orbital flights and exploration of the Moon 

and planets depended on having a refined Saturn V launch vehicle by 1975, 

bringing its payload mass to 160 tons, a launch vehicle successor to Saturn 

with a payload mass of 320 to 640 tons (developed by 1989), and a reusable 

aerospace delivery vehicle.

They intended to make broad use of impulse nuclear and thermonuclear 

rocket engines as the primary propulsion systems. These would shorten the 

flight time to planets severalfold compared with chemical fuel engines. Their 

plans also called for prosaic near-Earth space systems for the purposes of 

meteorology, communications, navigation, global surveillance, and monitoring ecological safety.

To a great extent, the prognosis of 1966 panned out regarding the flights 

of interplanetary automatic vehicles. American scientists made sensational 

discoveries every year while studying Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, their moons, and 

even the most distant planets of the solar system. In near-Earth space, new, 

strictly utilitarian commercial benefits and prospects for achieving military 

superiority in space were discovered. Fans of piloted flights to the planets had 

to “come down to Earth.”

The situation during the years 1971 to 1973, when the Space Shuttle 

program was being considered, required that the managers responsible for 

decision-making carefully add up the total cost of the program and the annual 

budgetary limits for the various attractive versions of reusable systems. Ten 

years later, in 1976, the Americans once again mobilized scientists to draw up 

a forecast for the development of space technology for the period from 1980 

to 2000. This was a much more serious collective scientific work concerning 

all areas of science and technology supporting the development of astronautics.

For piloted Earth-orbit flights, the idea of doing away with expendable 

launch vehicles gained a foothold. The main difference in the plans and corresponding decisions of 1966 and 1975 was that in 1975 there was a much 

more refined technical base, created for the Apollo program and for military 

space, scientific, and economic programs over the past decade.

Citing the space successes of the USSR, the Pentagon demanded that more 

funds be allocated to military space programs. They had yet to be formulated, 

but ideas were already “in the air” regarding the future Strategic Defense 

Initiative (SDI).

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

In 1975, the main criterion for selecting proposals based on prognoses 

for all fields supporting the advancement of space technology was the cost 

(in dollars) of inserting units of mass into low-Earth orbit. As far as delivery 

vehicles were concerned, all subsequent decisions were made in favor of 

the Space Shuttle. Moreover, it was assumed that it would be substantially 

improved compared with the design that was already being implemented. All 

plans were based on the overly optimistic estimates of the cost of inserting 

a payload into space and also on the fact that the Space Shuttle would not 

only insert but could also return expensive space hardware to the ground 

for repair and relaunch.

NASA’s preliminary estimates showed that compared with an expendable 

launch vehicle such as the Saturn IB, the cost of insertion into low-Earth orbit 

decreased, at first threefold or fivefold, and then tenfold. While neglectful economic estimates had been allowed in 1966, in the 1970s they were performed 

more meticulously. It is all the more surprising that the Americans, knowing 

how to count money much better than we, predicted a completely ridiculous 

cost for the insertion of a unit of payload mass by the year 2000.

For various scenarios using the Space Shuttle, the cost vacillated in a range 

from 90 to 330 dollars per kilogram. Moreover, it was assumed that the secondgeneration Space Shuttle would make it possible to lower these numbers to 33 

to 66 dollars per kilogram.

American economists erred by a factor of 60 to 100! Such mistakes are 

simply inconceivable when calculating the technical parameters of space systems. If American economists could commit such mistakes, should one reproach 

our domestic economist-reformers, who consider U.S. economists overly 

authoritarian? Powerful modern computer technology has sharply increased 

the confidence level and reliability of scientific and engineering calculations. 

Sometimes practical results are even better than calculations because input data 

with considerable margins have been loaded into the computer. Economic 

calculations for large systems in principle will be erroneous if the main baseline 

parameters are subjective considerations, the political situation, or an ad hoc 

social mandate.

The American scientists’ prognoses in 1966 and 1967 for the piloted flight 

programs proved true only with regard to the first lunar expeditions and the 

creation of the Space Shuttle reusable piloted transport system. For the sake 

of this system they didn’t just mothball the reliable Saturn V launch vehicles. 

The launch complexes at Cape Canaveral and at the John F. Kennedy Space 

Center were modified for the Shuttles, and they were no longer suitable for 

Saturns. The actual dates for creating a lunar base and for an expedition to 

Mars were moved far beyond the year 2001. The thrilling prospect of colonizing the planets of the solar system (before the end of the 20th century), which 

588
Epilogue

was elaborated in detail in 1966, in my view, in the best-case scenario, needed 

to be postponed to the second half of the 21st century.

The first flight of the Space Shuttle reusable space transport system took 

place on Cosmonautics Day, 12 April 1981.2

 To be fair, I must say that in 

terms of fundamental scientific research, the Americans surpassed their own 

prognoses. After spending more than 2 billion dollars, they used the Space 

Shuttle to insert the automatic Hubble satellite into space; this is a large, even 

by Earth-based standards, telescope for astrophysical research. The information 

obtained using the Hubble over the years of its service was many times greater 

than the information that the field of astrophysics had possessed before this.

In the early 1970s, after six piloted lunar expeditions, the construction 

of a permanently operating lunar base and an expedition to Mars before the 

beginning of the 21st century seemed quite feasible not just to scientists, but 

also to the clear-eyed managers of aerospace corporations. The main factor 

precluding the implementation of even these two very realistic programs was 

the turn of U.S. politics toward the militarization of space. Somewhat later, 

the whole array of military space programs to intimidate a potential enemy 

was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The main objectives and 

missions of the SDI program were considerably clearer and more necessary to 

the Pentagon, to large corporations, and to the majority of Congress than was 

the aspiration of romantic scientists for interplanetary travels.

In the late 1960s, the USSR and the United States adhered to doctrines of 

nuclear deterrence. Their gist was based on the following concept: both sides 

possess such means that if one of the sides were to use nuclear weapons first, 

then the retaliatory strike would force the aggressor to incur exorbitantly high 

expenses relative to the possible gain. Such a balance was based on the common 

sense of the sides. Both great superpowers agreed in principle that deterrence 

based on mutual vulnerability was not only expedient, but also necessary.

However, such an approach created a threat for the main producers of 

combat missile systems, nuclear warheads, nuclear submarines, and airplanes 

carrying nuclear weapons. Actually, if so much weaponry were produced 

that by design each of the opposing sides knew it was capable of destroying 

the other many times over, then the amount of orders, and consequently 

the profits and super-profits, would decrease sharply in the near future. 

Moreover, politicians who realized the senselessness of the continued buildup 

of strategic weapons began negotiations to limit and reduce them. The Soviet 

 2. This was the STS-1 mission with astronauts John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen 

589
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Union spent enormous resources and paid a high price to achieve quantitative 

and qualitative parity with the strategic rocket forces of the United States. 

American strategists, having realized that the Soviet Union had achieved 

parity, discovered a way to inflict heavy economic damage on it without 

resorting to nuclear attack. If there were more than enough intercontinental 

rockets and nuclear warheads, then it was necessary to invest many billions of 

dollars in creating an effective defense, rather than in the buildup of means for 

nuclear missile attack. Theoretically it wasn’t difficult to justify the need for 

creating fundamentally new systems to protect the United States. American 

propaganda loudly declared that Soviet missile weaponry was creating an 

increasingly greater threat to the viability of American forces of deterrence 

and the structures controlling them.

At the same time that the United States was spending over 25 billion dollars 

on the Apollo lunar program alone, the USSR continued to work intensively 

on new types of intercontinental missiles and on the creation of new classes of 

submarines equipped with state-of-the-art ballistic and cruise missiles.

The Pentagon exaggerated the achievements of our missile technology, 

counting on securing a sharp increase in budgetary allocations for the SDI 

program from Congress. They reported to Congress and to the President of 

the United States that by the mid-1970s Soviet missiles had become considerably more powerful and more accurate, which would enable them to 

quickly and effectively undermine the capability of U.S. ground forces for a 

retaliatory strike. According to the calculations of U.S. military economists (I 

was unable to find our own authoritative data), on average, the Soviet Union 

spent 40 billion dollars per year each on strategic offensive programs, and also 

on active and passive defensive programs. This did not take into account the 

many billions allocated for conventional armaments. In the Americans’ view, 

the Russians, despite their peaceful assurances, were adhering to doctrines for 

achieving their objectives by delivering a preemptive strike.

Given such a terrible prospect, could the United States allow itself to 

invest funds in colonizing the Moon, Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the moons 

of Saturn and Jupiter? It’s unclear when and what would happen there. But if, 

instead of the fanciful plans of eggheads dreaming of strolling along the “dusty 

lanes of distant planets,” you could mobilize scientists and industry, using the 

very latest achievements of world science, to develop advanced technologies 

and systems to protect against Soviet missiles, then you could kill three birds 

with one stone:

•	

•	

First, save the United States from the threat of nuclear annihilation if the 

USSR attacked first.

Second, draw the USSR into a new arms race—not of offensive weapons, but defensive ones. This would require expenditures that the Soviet 

590
Epilogue

economy would be unable to sustain, and the United States would win a 

non-nuclear victory.

Third, rather than single one-of-a-kind space objects, create new types 

of defensive weaponry that require the mass production of weaponry to 

destroy the striking power of the attacking side. And this would require 

enormous capital investments, as well as hundreds of thousands of new 

jobs, and would bring enormous profits for companies capable of mastering very advanced technology.

•	

The systemic concept of SDI looked very enticing. It called for the stageby-stage development and deployment of antiballistic missile complexes. It 

all began with space systems for monitoring and tracking targets during the 

powered flight segment, in space, and during entry into the atmosphere. 

Each enemy missile flight segment requires the development of its own monitoring and striking systems, including space-based systems, exoatmospheric 

interceptors, and ground-based antiballistic missiles. To destroy thousands of 

missiles and warheads flying toward the United States, it was suggested that 

conventional smart projectiles be used on the first stages, and thereafter a wide 

array of all sorts of laser weaponry. For “death rays” they designed space-based 

military neutral particle accelerators and space- and ground-based lasers. 

They also proposed the creation of super-high-velocity guns, first based on 

the ground and then in space. Engineer Garin, the main character of Aleksey 

Tolstoy’s famous novel Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin, works alone to create a 

portable device—the source of a beam that could burn through any obstacle 

in its path.3 Fifty years after the appearance of this talented science fiction 

detective, it turned out that it was really possible to create such a beam. But 

to do this required not one ingenious inventor, but thousands of engineers, 

physicists, and the most sophisticated manufacturing technology. Automated 

ground-based combat control and communication systems would be needed 

to control thousands of automatic vehicles on duty in space and a multitude 

of projectiles and combat platforms attacking the missiles of a potential enemy. 

They must receive advance information from numerous ground-based radar 

stations and surveillance satellites and, after processing the information, transmit commands to the weapon.

The integrated systemic design called for the development of super-highspeed computers, fundamentally new optical and microwave sensors to detect 

and track targets, high-capacity nuclear power energy sources to supply power 

 3. Aleksey Tolstoy’s 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

to accelerators and lasers, space-based platforms with all kinds of projectiles, 

and many other elements of new systems that were appealing to scientistinventors and engineers. For scientific creativity and corporate profitability, 

prospects had been opened up that were beyond their wildest dreams in the 

field of the peaceful exploration of space. Stunning “Star Wars” images filled 

movie and television screens.

After achieving worldwide celebrity for the United States, the Saturn V 

launch vehicle proved unnecessary for the SDI program. There were no payloads 

for it. In the view of the SDI creators, the Shuttles could handle everything that 

needed to be preliminarily inserted in space. Thus, the Americans themselves 

closed the door on piloted flights to the Moon and planets. All the prognoses 

and actual designs for this subject have been left for historians and posterity, 

if they are lucky enough in the 21st century to bring back to life the attempts 

to conduct interplanetary expeditions.

The new space initiative of President George W. Bush, made public in 

2006,4 calls for a return to the Moon, the construction of a lunar base, and an 

expedition to Mars. The exact dates of the flight have not yet been mentioned, 

but there is no place for an updated Saturn V and Space Shuttle in these prospective programs. Space transport systems are once again under development 

using the wealth of past experience.5

After the collapse of the USSR and the signing of various international 

agreements, the SDI program had to be curtailed. In any case, only scientific 

research has been continued. However, the broad capabilities of space technology have found practical application in local wars. If the main objective of the 

space vehicles of the SDI program was to protect the territory of the United 

States against Soviet missiles, then in the local wars in the Persian Gulf region 

in 1991, during the NATO offensive in Yugoslavia in 1999, and in the war 

in Iraq, space technology supported the conduct of combat actions in three 

areas: on land, on the sea, and in the air.

According to the latest data, more than 100 automatic space vehicles 

took part in the military operations in the Balkans. They conducted opticalelectronic, radar, and radio reconnaissance; provided navigational support for 

 4. Chertok means 2004.

592
Epilogue

combat aviation, and high-precision cruise missiles; and gave meteorological 

support and communications for troop control at strategic and tactical levels.

At the end of the Cold War, the United States had achieved its primary 

strategic objective: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the neutralization or 

utilization for its own interests of Russia’s scientific and technical potential. 

Having remained the sole superpower for a while, the United States is rushing 

to turn our planet and near-Earth space into a zone of American interests.

Instead of resuscitating programs for interplanetary flights, NASA has 

come up with the idea of creating a large near-Earth orbital station. Russia’s 

indisputable achievements in this field were the reason for this. I wrote earlier 

about how and why we got ahead of the Americans in the creation of LongDuration Orbital Stations.

Let’s return to the Soviet Union and have a look at what we planned 

during the last years of Korolev’s life and the two decades after him. Unlike 

the Americans, we did not predict the future until the year 2001; rather, we 

began at once to design this future.

In 1959, the R-7 rocket had just learned how to fly. After many failures, 

we finally delivered a pendant of the USSR to the Moon with a direct hit and 

astounded the world, having transmitted the first authentic, if not very clear, 

images of the far side of the Moon. That same year of 1959, with Korolev’s 

approval, Mikhail Tikhonravov’s group, which included Maksimov, Dulnev, 

Dashkov, and Kubasov, designed a heavy interplanetary spacecraft.6

 Work on 

the design of a single-seat Vostok had just begun, and these zealots had already 

designed the equipment layout for a three-seat vehicle weighing 75 tons, 12 

meters long, and 6 meters in diameter. A year later they modified the design: 

they added a nuclear reactor to the vehicle as a power source. After getting 

involved in the design process, Feoktistov and Gorshkov increased the number 

of crewmembers to six. Three or four people could land on the surface of Mars 

and travel in special planetary rovers.

In 1964, on the advice of the chairman of the State Committee on 

Defense Technology, Sergey Zverev, the Scientific-Research Institute of 

Transport Machine Building (NIItransmash) became involved in the design 

of planetary rovers.7 The main specialty of this NII was tank building. Korolev 

personally visited NIItransmash. Director Vladimir Stepanovich Starovoytov 

 6. The generic name of this project, which continued through the 1960s, 1970s, and 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

introduced him to Aleksandr Levonovich Kemurdzhian, whom they asked 

to switch from a tank to a planetary rover. Eight years later Kemurdzhian 

had managed to create lunar rovers that could be controlled from Earth. 

From 1970 to 1973, two lunar rovers traveled a total of 47 kilometers on 

the surface of the Moon.

Work on the Mars expedition project continued after Korolev. Failed 

launches of the N-1 rocket did not dampen the enthusiasm of Korolev’s 

“Martians.” Mikhail Melnikov’s team, together with the organizations of the 

Ministry of Medium Machine Building, achieved the first encouraging successes in the development of space nuclear reactors as primary power sources. 

Thermionic generators were sources of electric power for electric rocket engines, 

which had a performance index five times greater than chemical engines. The 

results of broad research on nuclear power sources and electric rocket engines 

inspired confidence in the reality of interplanetary expeditions.

Glushko, who had come to lead Korolev’s team, rather than shut down 

the project, supported Fridrikh Tsander’s rallying cry well known to the leading lights—“Onward to Mars!” Under Glushko, the Mars vehicle design was 

enriched for reliability with a second nuclear reactor. After operations on the 

N-1 and N-1M were shut down completely in 1976, Glushko insisted on 

using the Vulkan launch vehicle, designed to insert a payload of up to 230 

tons into near-Earth orbit.

The expedition project based on the Vulkan gave rise to acute “allergy” 

attacks in our ministry and in the cabinets of the VPK. For this reason, the 

planners of interplanetary expeditions switched to the Energiya launch vehicle, 

capable of inserting up to 100 tons of payload into Earth orbit. The very extensive experience of assembling large structures in space, which was accumulated 

during the creation of orbital stations, inspired confidence that an expedition 

could be assembled in Earth orbit in increments of 100 tons each, provided 

with everything it needed, and sent to Mars.

Everyone who has returned from space talks about how beautiful our Earth 

is. But both cosmonauts and unpiloted surveillance and reconnaissance satellites see that on our blue planet, small wars continue unabated. Even without 

space-based reconnaissance, it is well known that wars in Afghanistan and 

Chechnya and the destruction in Yugoslavia and Iraq have cost tens of times 

more money than needed for an expedition to Mars.

After the collapse of the USSR and the beginning of the implementation 

of a “market economy” in Russia, cosmonautics not only lost government 

support, but also encountered the concealed and open opposition of the 

reformers who ended up in power. After the death of Valentin Glushko, from 

1991 through 2005 Yuriy Semyonov occupied the post of general director 

and general designer of NPO Energiya. In 1994, this state organization was 

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converted into the publicly traded corporation S. P. Korolev Energiya RocketSpace Corporation.8

Unlike its predecessors, the managers of Russia’s rocket-space enterprises 

had to work under “new economic conditions” and above all solve the problem 

of survival. The chief and general designers had attained great achievements 

during the epoch of the centralized mobilized economy. However, during that 

time, not one of them had to fear for the very existence of the enterprise and 

its staff. The omnipotent Central Committee could remove a chief designer 

from the job and replace him with a more obedient one. As I recall, in the 45 

years after the war this very seldom happened. But before 1992, no one even 

dreamed that enormous staffs could be deprived of the means to sustain them 

and pushed to the verge of a squalid existence. The struggle for survival—the 

new sphere of business for the managers of all enterprises and organizations of 

the once powerful military-industrial complex—demanded enormous efforts. 

Not everyone managed to endure. Despite the fierce struggle for survival that 

the management of RKK Energiya faced, the Mars expedition projects continued to be updated. True, this was only on paper.

Well, but what about the Moon? After the American expeditions to the 

Moon we considered it quite realistic to even the score by establishing a permanently operating lunar base. Proposals for the delivery of a nuclear power 

plant to the Moon seemed quite feasible. The plant would power a factory for 

the production of oxygen from lunar rocks and provide life support for all the 

systems for scientific research.

Back in Mishin’s time, the staff of TsKBEM and specialists under Barmin’s 

supervision at KB OM had been working on the development of a design for 

the lunar base relying on the N-1M launch vehicle.9

 Funding for these projects came from the budget of the Ministry of General Machine Building.10 I 

have already mentioned that Glushko objected to continuing these projects in 

 8. The S. P. Korolev Energiya Rocket-Space Corporation (

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Barmin’s shop and persuaded the ministry and the VPK to completely transfer 

these projects to NPO Energiya.

Glushko entrusted the management for developing the Zvezda lunar 

expedition complex to two quite distinguished figures of Korolev’s school. 

Konstantin Bushuyev was in charge of developing vehicles for the flight to 

the Moon and return to Earth, while Ivan Prudnikov was in charge of the 

lunar village, which called for a habitation module, a nuclear power station, a 

laboratory module, a factory module, and a driver-operated lunar rover with 

an operating radius of up to 200 kilometers.11 Bushuyev, who held the highactivity post of director of the Soviet part of the Apollo-Soyuz program, had 

a difficult time making the transition to the placid design work on the lunar 

base after the program’s brilliant conclusion in 1975.

During this period I was so loaded down with updates on the Soyuzes 

and off-nominal situations on the Salyuts that I didn’t have time to respond to 

Bushuyev’s and Prudnikov’s requests to delve into the details of their projects 

and render active assistance in designing the control and electric power systems.

In the winter of 1977, during one of our “nightcap” strolls along 

Academician Korolev Street shrouded in a frosty fog, Bushuyev complained 

that he didn’t believe in his current design for the lunar expedition complex.

“No one but Valentin Glushko is interested in this work,” said Bushuyev. 

“The ministry and the VPK say that we need to catch up with the Americans 

in terms of a reusable transport system. With [Yuriy] Semyonov in charge, 

you all don’t have time for anything but orbital stations and Soyuzes. Igor 

Sadovskiy has gotten carried away with the Soviet version of the Shuttle and 

considers our work on the Moon to be frivolous. The Central Committee 

wants to perform as many piloted launches as possible in order to outdo the 

Americans in terms of the number of cosmonauts. We are planning an expedition counting on having at least 60 tons in lunar orbit and landing cargoes 

of 22 tons each on the surface of the Moon. If we hadn’t stopped upgrading 

the N-1, we would have optimized the hydrogen Block SR instead of Blocks 

G and D. Then two launches for such a payload would have been sufficient. 

In all: 8 to 10 launches of the upgraded N-1—and we would have a base for 

six persons on the Moon.”

The next morning, I dropped everything and I went to Bushuyev’s office 

and listened to his comments on the wall charts and diagrams of the lunar 

base/station project.

 11.

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Epilogue

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok (left) and Konstantin Bushuyev, one of the leading deputies at OKB-1 

who was in charge of the development of piloted spacecraft.

“Now you believe that, given our capacity of 43,000 people and with a half 

million subcontractors, in around five years we can produce all the vehicles and 

modules and upstage the Americans, who out of their own stupidity terminated 

the Saturn—for the long run if not forever?”

Bushuyev and Prudnikov convinced me of the feasibility of the project, 

even if the new Vulkan launch vehicle never appeared.

On the morning of 26 October 1978, Bushuyev had a toothache, and he 

went straight from his home to the polyclinic. For some reason, before the 

dentist would see him, he was advised to have an electrocardiogram. Sitting 

calmly in an armchair waiting for the results of his EKG, he died.

Prudnikov, having realized the hopelessness of continuing the projects on 

the lunar colonies, switched to a more relevant activity for that time—developing the design for a military space station.

In 1978, after reviewing the lunar expedition projects based on the use 

of Vulkan launch vehicles, an expert commission chaired by President of the 

USSR Academy of Sciences Mstislav Keldysh considered them irrelevant and 

found that they distracted the staff of NPO Energiya from the main mission 

of vital importance to the state, creating the Energiya-Buran reusable space 

transportation system.

The launch vehicle for the Buran was the Energiya rocket, which completed 

its first successful flight on 15 May 1987. Glushko made his last attempt to 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

save the lunar base projects, using the Energiya rocket, but he received no 

support “from the top.”

Our project for a lunar expedition in 1973 using upgraded N1-L3M 

rockets could have been the first attempt at equalizing the score in the Moon 

race. The lunar base projects of 1976 through 1978 were the second attempt. 

Both proposals were shut down “from the top.” Thirty years have passed. 

Today we are even further from the possibility of creating a lunar base than 

we were in 1978.

On the occasion of Vladimir Barmin’s 90th birthday, a commemorative 

meeting was held at the firm named after him.12 Among those invited, I gave a 

speech with my memories of Barmin and made sure to mention his enthusiasm 

for the lunar base project. After a session in the company museum among the 

brilliantly executed mockups of the launch systems of various rockets, which 

I had had the occasion to see in reality over the years, in the farthest corner 

of the exhibit I discovered a mockup of the lunar colony, “the Barmingrad.”

In the history of space exploration, there are dates that it has become 

tradition to celebrate, both nationally and internationally. Russia still remembers 

4 October 1957 and 12 April 1961. We rarely think about 20 July 1969, the 

date of the first landing of an Earthling on the Moon, although this event also 

ranks among the great scientific and technical accomplishments. In addition to 

such generally recognized anniversary dates, there are many events, forgotten 

by or simply unknown to the broad public, that are dear to a small group of 

individuals directly involved in them.

On 20 February 1986, the first, core module of the Mir station was 

launched and the construction of a habitable space station began. Two months 

before the launch of Mir, at the large “Council in Fili” (at the Khrunichev 

Factory), which Minister of General Machine Building Oleg Baklanov13 conducted, I reported about the software arrearages and the missed deadlines for 

the delivery of the latest innovation in control technology for the space station: 

powered control moment gyroscopes. So that the beginning of construction on 

the station would not be delayed, instead of installing them on the core module, 

Sheremetyevskiy and I proposed installing six control moment gyroscopes on 

the Kvant module, which we were getting ready to launch after we made sure 

that the main core module was operating normally.

 12.

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Epilogue

The Mir control system was fundamentally new. The dates for the station 

launch were not so much determined by its manufacture as by its groundbased debugging. My comrades, our subcontractors, and I reported optimistically, but inwardly each of us was heartsick. The skepticism regarding our 

proposal—to launch the core module, and then deliver and hook up the main 

attitude-control system (the control moment gyroscopes) a couple of months 

later—was understandable.

After an uproarious discussion during a 3-hour meeting, ZIKh Director 

Anatoliy Kiselev invited all of us to dinner.14 It would be unfair to complain 

about the array of drinks and hors d’oeuvres spread out over the tables in the 

next room. After our emotional conversations at the meeting, I relaxed and 

didn’t stop my friends when they promptly filled my wineglass.

Suddenly, over the general noise, I heard someone say my name, and my 

comrades sitting next to me started to nudge me hard.

“Answer the minister,” I heard someone whisper.

Oleg Baklanov, who was sitting an another table, had turned to me, and 

now for the third time was asking me: “So tell me honestly, Boris Yevseyevich, 

will we fulfill the mission or are we just warming up? Before the Party Congress 

we don’t just need a successful launch, but steady work in space.15 Today I 

learned that the dates and reliability of the orbital station depend on a fundamentally new control system.”

I stood up and loudly reported: “We will fulfill the mission. And the station 

will not only be in operation for the congress, but for three years after that.”

At that time three years seemed like the limit of a guaranteed service life. 

Twenty days after inserting the core module into orbit we were confident that 

we could reliably control the station. The very first Mir crew was Leonid Kizim 

and Vladimir Solovyev. They arrived on board on 15 March 1986.

Gradually the station configuration was completely transformed. The core 

module became overgrown with the modules Kvant, Kvant-2, Kristall, Spektr, 

and Priroda. The total mass of the orbital complex grew from 25 tons to 136 

tons. The total volume of the pressurized compartments was 400 cubic meters. 

Absolute world records were set on the station for the continuous length of 

time spent by a human being under spaceflight conditions. Valeriy Polyakov 

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became the absolute world record holder. He spent 438 days continuously on 

Mir, and his total time for two flights was 679 days.16

Sergey Avdeyev set the record for the cumulative duration of his time in 

space, 748 days.17 American astronaut Shannon Lucid set the women’s record 

for spaceflight duration on Mir, 188 days.18 Twenty-eight long-duration primary expeditions were conducted on Mir and 25 visiting expeditions on Soyuz 

and Space Shuttle vehicles. One hundred and four cosmonauts and astronauts 

worked as part of the crews. Given a total station mass of 135 tons, the mass 

of the scientific equipment comprised 11.5 tons. During Mir’s time in service 

the processes of rendezvous, docking, and the delivery of cargoes and fuel by 

Progress cargo vehicles was refined and brought to a high degree of reliability. 

Domestic vehicles delivered 150 tons of cargo. In all, more than 220 organizations of the former USSR were involved in the creation and operation of 

the Mir station.

On 25 June 1997, due to the error of people involved in the rendezvous 

control loop, cargo vehicle Progress M-34 collided with Mir. This was the first 

“space battering ram.” After similar off-nominal situations, airplanes “deviate 

toward the ground.” After being rammed, Mir remained functional.

Along with the piloted and unpiloted transport systems, Mir was a one-ofa-kind space complex. Mir was the pride of Russia. The Energiya Rocket Space 

Corporation, the actual owner of Mir, had every right to be proud of it, but 

no one from the Russian elite—“you greedy hordes around the throne”19—was 

interested in its continued operation in space.

Instead of the three years promised in 1986, Mir survived 15 years! The 

Americans, who did not have our unique experience, were able to create the 

big International Space Station only with our help. And we sank our superiority in the ocean with our own hands because the Russian economy denied 

 16.

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cosmonautics the funds for subsistence. “Russia cannot be understood with 

the mind alone....”20

Russia’s utmost misfortune is that not just Mir, but all of Russian science 

and the enormous technical potential of its defense technology did not fit 

together with the philosophy of the mafia-style preeminence of utilitarian/

pragmatic self-interest. Mir’s fight for life was one of the episodes of Russia’s 

general decline over the last decade of the 20th century.

At the meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences dedicated to its 275th 

anniversary, the M. V. Lomonosov Gold Medal was awarded to Aleksandr 

Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.21 Speaking from the academy’s podium, Solzhenitsyn 

said: “Under the conditions of the only pirate nation in human history under 

a democratic flag, when the concerns of those in power are only about power 

itself, and not about the nation and the people inhabiting it, when the national 

wealth went to enriching the ruling oligarchy made up of countless cadres 

from the supreme, legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, it is difficult 

to come up with a reassuring prognosis for Russia!”22

Among the many foreign guests who gave salutatory speeches on the occasion of the 275th anniversary, only the president of the Chinese Engineering 

Academy noted the great achievements of Soviet and Russian scientists in space.

At the beginning of the 21st century, China managed to put a man in 

space using its own resources.23 The Chinese economy’s rate of development 

is astounding. Rocket technology and cosmonautics are priority industries in 

China. I believe that in the next 10 to 15 years China will take the place of the 

world’s second superpower, including in the field of cosmonautics.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

Yakov Kolyako and Viktor Frumson at Red Square.

I shall return now to the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the 

N-1 rocket. This event was described in a separate chapter of my book.24 The 

management of the Energiya corporation supported the initiative of former 

N-1 chief designer Boris Dorofeyev and decided to make a gift to all those 

involved in the rocket’s creation who were still living. Dorofeyev, with the help 

of Viktor Frumson, organized the showing of a once top-secret documentary 

film dedicated to the history of the rocket’s creation and to all four launches. 

Frumson was the organizer and was involved in the creation of the full-length 

film, which is of exceptional historical value. The corporation’s management 

granted permission to invite into our large, 400-seat auditorium not only 

those still working, but also those who had retired from the enterprise and 

representatives of other organizations involved in N-1 projects.

Because 21 February 1999 fell on a Sunday, the film screening was scheduled 

for 2 p.m. on 22 February. The hour-long film covered the history of the N1-L3, 

from the first resolution to the last tragic launch in November 1972. The film 

took us back to the past, and each of us experienced it in his or her own way. The 

last frame faded from the screen, and a hush fell over the packed auditorium. The 

last launch needed just 7 seconds more for the second stage to start up and for the 

 24.

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Epilogue

flight to continue, which could 

have altered the subsequent fate 

of the N-1! The film ended with 

an optimistic text, which a professional narrator read with élan. 

The authors of the text didn’t 

know the future yet.

Discussion of the film had 

not been planned, but Vasiliy 

Mishin expressed his version 

of the demise of the N1-L3 

program. The upshot of his 

speech was that there is no need 

to seek out the guilty parties 

personally.

“The nation’s economy was 

not ready to carry out such an 

expensive program.”

Sergey Kryukov took 

exception with Mishin: “You can’t write off the N1-L3 tragedy to the weakness 

of our economy. We found financing for the Energiya-Buran program. Those 

funds would have been quite enough to update the N1-L3 and for successful 

expeditions to the Moon.”25

The discussion ended, but we were in no hurry to break up. I can’t remember now who from among the veterans walked up to me then and said: “It 

brought tears to my eyes when I was watching. You promised in your fourth 

book to tell about the history of the Moon race. Why didn’t you speak out now?”

“I really do hope to tell about that in the book, but right now a 3- to 

5-minute speech wouldn’t turn out well.”

The festivities on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the first N-1 

launch were limited to the film screening described above.

The events dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the first landing of an 

Earthling on the Moon were supposed to take place in Europe and in America 

in July 1999. The publisher of the German translation of my first volume of 

From the author’s archives.

Vasiliy Mishin, shown here in 1992, by which 

time his role in the Soviet human lunar 

program was publicly known.

 25.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Rockets and People telephoned me from Germany asking me to take part in a 

big radio show dedicated to the history of the Moon race. I was to come to 

Cologne in July for it. I asked him to pass on to the organizers of that radio 

program that as long as NATO was bombing the European nation of Yugoslavia 

using the latest achievements of aviation and cosmonautics, I could not accept 

such an offer.26 Moreover, I had no desire to appear in foreign mass media and 

tell about the glorious past of domestic cosmonautics against the background 

of its very uncertain present and of the gloomy prognosis for its future. Even 

here, in Russia, not everyone understands me if I quote the classic words from 

the popular film: “I’m offended on behalf of the nation.”27 And there’s no way 

they’ll understand this in the West.

Over the course of many decades, during periods of the worst shocks, we did 

not lose our optimism and confidence in the future. That same confidence did 

not leave the creators of the N1-L3 even after the decision to shut down operations on this program. To this day, people continue to argue about whether this 

decision was a mistake. Today, I am answering for myself: we committed many 

mistakes in the process of the Moon race. Mistakes also occurred in Korolev’s 

time. His premature departure from life deprived him of the opportunity to 

correct the mistakes, including those that he himself made. At his initiative, 

at the very beginning of the design process on the two-launch version of the 

lunar expedition, we reworked it into a single-launch version, simultaneously 

modifying the N-1 launch vehicle to increase the payload capacity from 75 to 

95 tons. Theoretically, a launch vehicle capable of inserting 75 tons into nearEarth orbit could come out a year before the one modified to insert 95 tons.

“Stop!” my opponents would object. “We had three accidents due to 

unreliable engines. And if testing had started a year earlier, the engines would 

have been even less reliable.”

“Right! That’s our mistake. That’s not Korolev’s fault. He left this life 

believing that the engines would be reliable.”

Three years after Korolev’s death, flight tests began on the unreliable 

engines, and this was a fatal error. History has shown that the engines developed 

at N. D. Kuznetsov’s design bureau in Kuybyshev were successfully brought 

to such a degree of reliability that 25 years later the Americans considered it 

 26.

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Epilogue

feasible to use them to update their launch vehicles.28 At the turn of the century 

a proposal came out to upgrade our most reliable Soyuz launch vehicle, the 

R-7: on the central block (the second stage), Glushko’s engine, which had a 

ground thrust of 85 tons, would be replaced with Kuznetsov’s engine, which 

had a thrust of 160 tons and was left over from the production stock for the 

N-1.29 The old tried-and-true Semyorka with this engine would make it possible to insert into space a piloted vehicle with a mass of 11 tons rather than 

7. The future piloted Soyuz vehicles and Progress cargo transporters would 

make a quantum leap. But that is in the future!

But meanwhile I’m sometimes asked: “How would Korolev have acted in 

the situation with the N-1 after four failures if he had lived another eight years?”

I can’t answer for Korolev. As Korolev’s comrade-in-arms I can answer 

this question as I see fit. It was easier for us to do this because we knew that 

future which remained unknown to him. Korolev always analyzed and corrected mistakes. Most likely, he would not have allowed flight tests to begin. 

Yes, he would have had to “hold his nose”—drive through the review of the 

lunar program in the administration in terms of dates, objectives, and missions.

But there could also have been a different scenario: after realizing the 

unreliability of the rocket as a whole, after the first two launches Korolev 

would forbid the continuation of flight tests. One would like to think with 

all the antagonism in his relationship with Glushko, he would have come to 

an agreement with him about technical assistance for the modification of the 

engines, which Glushko called “rotten.” Now we know that Kuznetsov brought 

them to a very high level of reliability, but this happened when Korolev’s former 

best friend—Valentin Glushko—became general designer of NPO Energiya.

Glushko received a unique opportunity: to correct—albeit late, but radically—the errors that Korolev, Mishin, and we, their deputies, had committed. Undoubtedly, the great 20th-century rocket-engine specialist was able 

to gain detailed insight into the promising outlook of Kuznetsov’s engines. 

But now Glushko himself was supposed to go against his own ambition. 

Essentially, Glushko was unwilling to remain the general designer of a rocket 

that he had not been involved in developing. I am confident that Korolev’s 

staff would have supported Glushko if he had begun to upgrade the N-1 in 

his role as general designer. Glushko was the only one who could convince 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

first Keldysh and then Ustinov that there was no point in burying the N-1 

and that the lunar program needed to be implemented from 1977 through 

1980 using the new N1-L3M configuration or any other one. Today we 

understand that this was quite realistic. But Glushko decided to start with 

new launch vehicles, new engines, and a new big system. Under his leadership, 

the new Energiya launch vehicle really was created and it had new RD-170 

liquid-oxygen–kerosene engines that were the most powerful in the world. 

There were great difficulties in the creation of this engine. During firing rig 

tests, one failure after another would occur. Many highly placed skeptics 

simply didn’t believe that it was possible to solve the problems facing the 

staff of the Energomash Design Bureau and Glushko himself. Bringing the 

engine to the highest degree of reliability by the beginning of flight tests was 

Glushko’s personal achievement.30

But this took another 13 years! What else can be said in defense of Glushko? 

He was under very strong pressure “from the top”—they said we didn’t need the 

Moon; we needed a reusable transport system that was as good as the American 

Space Shuttle. Fourteen years after shutting down the N1-L3 program, such 

a system was created.

After Buran, nobody in the world ever made a reusable spacecraft capable 

of landing at an airfield in unpiloted, automatic mode again and again with 

uncanny precision.31 On 15 November 1988, after two orbits around Earth, at 

0924 hours and 42 seconds, ahead of the calculated time by just one second, 

Buran touched down on the takeoff and landing strip at the airfield especially 

created for it, and after running 1,620 meters, it stopped in the center with a 

deviation of just 3 meters from the center line. And this was despite a stormy 

cross-headwind. The miss in terms of the longitudinal axis was just 15 meters!

But a year after the first brilliant flight, no use was made of Energiya or 

Buran. One of the Buran vehicles was installed as a space attraction next to a 

restaurant on the Kremlin quay of the Moscow River.32 And what happened 

to the Energiya launch vehicle? We feverishly hunted for payloads for it. And 

actually, very interesting prospective projects materialized, which could have 

led to new achievements in the field of fundamental astrophysics research, 

 30.

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Epilogue

global communication systems, information systems development, and also 

monitoring in the interests of the national economy and national security.

In July 1989, Central Committee General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev 

was supposed to fly to Paris for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the 

French Revolution. High-level negotiations were planned with the President 

of France, including negotiations for joint space projects. A month before the 

very high-level visit, I flew to Paris as part of a government delegation. My 

task was to persuade French specialists and bureaucrats to take part in creating a global communication system using a heavy universal space platform 

(UKP) with a mass of 18 tons, which only the Energiya rocket could insert 

into geostationary orbit.33

The French listened politely but just as politely implied that they did not 

have the funds for such promising projects, and France could serve its current 

interests with its own Ariane rocket.

At the same time as the French, we were also courting the Germans. First 

we invited specialists from leading corporations to Moscow. It seemed that 

the ice was breaking. Then the Bosch Corporation invited us to Backnang, 

where the company’s radio electronics division was located.34 Our delegation 

included the managers of the five leading Soviet radio electronics firms, with 

whom we had cooperated on the design of the UKP in geostationary orbit.

Throughout the week we familiarized the Germans with information, 

which they received with genuine interest. The specialists of the firm were 

extremely interested in a joint project, but the upper management of the 

corporation, who had spared no expense for our delegation on receptions 

and far-flung excursions, did not want to risk investing capital in a project 

that, based on a very optimistic business plan, would not return a profit 

until five years later.

In 1989, the new general designer of NPO Energiya, Yuriy Semyonov, 

exhibited a truly combative nature. He attained consideration and approval of 

proposals for the UKP in the Defense Council. A draft decision of the USSR 

Council of Ministers appeared, which N. I. Ryzhkov was supposed to sign 

shortly.35 The ministry and Military-Industrial Commission declared that the 

 33.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

work on the UKP ranked third in terms of importance after Buran and the 

Mir orbital station.36

Almost at the same time as the UKP, NPO Energiya and the Academy of 

Sciences were jointly developing the design of a space radio interferometer. 

The spacecraft, equipped with a uniquely precise parabolic antenna with a 

diameter of 25 meters, was to be inserted into elliptical orbits with an apogee 

of up to 150,000 kilometers. Only the Energiya rocket was capable of doing 

this. Corresponding Member (now Academician) Nikolay Kardashev was 

responsible for the scientific part of the project.37 We flew to the Netherlands 

together. The European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) is 

located there in the city of Noordwijk. In Noordwijk, and later in Paris, a 

special competitive commission declared that our radio interferometer would 

make it possible to study the finest structure of the universe right down to the 

“last boundaries of creation.” The universe was ready to reveal its secrets, but 

for this we needed to find approximately 1 billion dollars.... We didn’t find 

it. We even “teamed up” with the Europeans.

Yes, we could have implemented many projects. By all appearances, they 

were pipe dreams.... But why not fantasize a little? If Defense Minister Ustinov 

had not allowed the invasion of Afghanistan and had given half of the funds 

spent on that war to cosmonautics, the nation would not only have saved 

15,000 lives—we would have built a permanently operating base on the Moon. 

The mistakes of the government and politicians cost the people hundreds and 

thousands of times more than the biggest space programs.

Very interesting projects for other payloads appeared for the Energiya 

launch vehicle, including military space complexes. It was assumed that the 

reusable Energiya-Buran system would become the main system for the insertion of reconnaissance satellites and military orbital stations, including those 

equipped with laser weaponry. The Soviet Union had the opportunity to ensure 

its superiority not only in the field of ground-based and sea-launched nuclear 

missiles, but also in space in the event of “Star Wars.” However, the main customer of the Energiya-Buran complex—the Ministry of Defense—abandoned 

the system and its military application.

 36.

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Epilogue

The development of the Energiya-Buran system involved 1,206 enterprises 

and organizations from almost 100 ministries and agencies. The nation’s largest 

scientific and production centers were involved. In all, more than a million 

people worked on this large nationwide program over a period of 18 years!

In December 1991, the State Council of Russia abolished the Ministry 

of General Machine Building, which had been responsible for cosmonautics. 

Everything came tumbling down in no time. A space disaster had occurred 

through no fault of scientists, generals, chief designers, and managers of the 

rocket-space industry. Of all the major space developments of our organization that I was directly involved in, and of which I can rightfully be proud in 

front of my descendants, at that time only Mir was temporarily spared and was 

fighting for its life. The old saying “misery loves company” inspired a certain 

grain of optimism.

In connection with the 275th anniversary of the Russian Academy of 

Sciences, it was noted that recent years had inflicted on it the most fundament 

shakeups in its entire history from the times of Peter the Great.38 The Academy 

had endured because it was created under conditions that were very difficult for 

the nation, but historically favorable for the prosperity of science and industry.

The Council of Chiefs, which included many academicians, did not withstand the government’s pressure. On 3 October 2001, it made the decision to 

terminate the flight of the Mir station.39 In order to reliably scuttle the fully 

operational station, two Progress cargo vehicles had to be docked to it.

The station celebrated its 15th anniversary on 20 February 2001 without 

a crew. On 19 March, an orbit exit program was loaded into its on-board 

computer complex. On the night of 23 March, hundreds of people gathered 

at TsUP. At 9 p.m. Moscow time, 40 tons of fragments that hadn’t burned up 

in the atmosphere fell into the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t bring myself to watch 

the death of the station at TsUP. The legendary Mir complex had ceased to 

exist. I was later told that everyone stood up, a hush fell over the room, and 

they observed a minute of silence. Many had tears in their eyes. “The king is 

dead. Long live the king!” Thus, two years after the funeral of Mir we could 

console ourselves. All the “Mirites” were switched over to the construction of 

the International Space Station.

Of all the endeavors of the military-industrial complex, the rocket-space 

industry, inextricably tied with science, proved its resiliency under the conditions of the Russian national crisis. The backbone of the industry, which was put 

 38.

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in place by the pioneers of rocket science and technology, industrial organizers, 

and millions of workers—true zealots of science and technology—contributed 

to the solution of extremely complex problems. The answer to the question 

“to be, or not to be” for Russian cosmonautics can only be affirmative. I am 

confident that this is exactly how the tens of millions of Russians who blazed 

the trail to new civilization with their labor will answer.

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Afterword

To my readers, about the future of space exploration:

The beginning of the era of practical space exploration dates back to 

4 October 1957: the date that the USSR launched the world’s first artificial 

satellite. In the years since then—in less than the lifetime of one generation 

of humanity—a breakthrough was made into a new sphere of activity. A completely new branch of science, technology, industry, and culture was created.

The 20th century gave humankind the theory of relativity, quantum 

mechanics, nuclear energy, spaceflight, unusual progress in aviation technology, 

information science, the automotive industry, and many other things. What 

will the 21st century bring humanity?

The most important achievements in space exploration belong to the second 

half of the 20th century. Everything that is happening at present—in the first 

decade of the 21st century—is, so far, based on the scientific and technical 

discoveries and achievements of the 20th century.

On Errors in Predictions

One can predict scientific and technical developments 10 to 15 years in 

advance more or less accurately, but making predictions up to the mid-21st 

century is exceptionally difficult. Any prediction will be, to a certain extent, 

biased and nonobjective, including predictions about space exploration. I would 

like to call the reader’s attention to an interesting fact. In 1966, at a symposium 

of the American Astronautical Society, U.S. scientists and specialists presented 

their predictions on the development of space technology. Of greatest interest 

was the general presentation by one of the theoreticians of the former German 

rocket center in Peenemünde, K. A. Ehricke, “Solar Transportation.”1 Ehricke 

 1. Krafft Arnold Ehricke (1917–1984) was a well-known German propulsion engineer 

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envisaged the events of the next 35 years and painted a picture of real—from 

the viewpoint of American scientists—achievements of space technology by 

2001. None of the scientists doubted Tsiolkovskiy’s prediction, made at the 

beginning of the 20th century, that humankind would not remain forever in 

its cradle on Earth, but would settle the entire solar system.

“In the fall of 2000, the interplanetary flight corridors from Mercury to 

Saturn are alive with manned vehicles of relatively luxurious and sophisticated 

design.... On Mars, a long range program has just been started to induce in 

the circumpolar regions of the northern and southern hemisphere, large scale 

culture of special Mars-hardened plants....” And many other highly interesting predictions and proposals, which are no less relevant today, yet still very 

far from being realized.2

For space exploration at the beginning of the 21st century, the cost of 

sending 1 kilogram of payload into space is on the order of 10,000 dollars. I 

can only echo the challenge by Elon Musk of “500 dollars per pound of payload,” but for now, I do not see any real technological breakthroughs toward 

achieving this in this next decade.3

That which we call “common sense” allows us to assert that Tsiolkovskiy’s 

proposed human colonization of the solar system will begin only through the 

establishment of a lunar base.

Today’s unpiloted, automatic satellite telescopes, equipped with remote 

research equipment and data transmission systems, have enriched humankind 

by producing a greater number of discoveries over the last 30 years in the fields 

of planetology and the workings and creation of the universe than were made 

over all the preceding millennia. Dozens of modern countries that have joined 

the “space club” consider it necessary to have an astronaut of their own, their 

own communications satellites, and—even better—their own launch vehicles 

and launch sites. And yet it is unfortunate that we do not know the names of 

the scientists who use the achievements of space exploration for knowledge, for 

studying the world, and for discoveries. The mass media in the countries that 

 2. Abridged quote taken from the book 

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Afterword

lead the field of science (including the United States and Russia) describe the 

flights of cosmonauts and astronauts on the ISS but rarely mention the discoveries of scientists who work with the data from the Hubble orbital telescope 

or the automatic instruments on the Cassini probe, or many other spacecraft.

Modern science and technology in the 21st century have approached a 

boundary that, when overcome, will change much in the living conditions of 

humanity. This boundary is direct technological intervention by people in the 

structure of matter at the atomic/molecular level. We do not yet know who 

thought up, devised, and created the program to combine atoms and molecules 

in such a way as to create life. Romantics and fans of outer space still hold out 

hope that extraterrestrial intelligence helped. We will probably not find it by 

the end of the 21st century.

In the 21st century, humankind must acknowledge planet Earth’s uniqueness in the entire observable universe in order to unite the efforts of all the 

leading countries to preserve her. Homo sapiens is a completely exceptional 

phenomenon, falling outside of the scope of observations by spacecraft. This 

“wise man” must use the force of intellect to reliably defend the planet from 

the folly of unwise Homo sapiens.

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok shown here with Metropolitan Kirill (Cyril), the Russian Orthodox 

bishop who is the Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia. The picture was taken in 

2005 at the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School at the Korolev Readings.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

The State and Space Exploration

The future of space exploration can be predicted together with an analysis 

of national and state sociopolitical strategy. The United States, even with all 

its internal problems, by the 2030s will remain the most powerful country 

in the world in military terms and the most advanced in the field of science 

and technology. NATO is a reliable tool that allows the United States to use 

not only its own scientific-technical potential, but Europe’s as well. Priorities 

in a very broad spectrum of programs will be the space strategy for the next 

20 to 30 years.

The operation of the ISS will be supported through the transport systems 

of Russia and Europe. The ISS on its own is no longer particularly interesting to 

the United States. In 10 to 15 years, having broken the flight record of Mir, the 

ISS will be scuttled. Russia, Europe, and Japan are currently unable to support 

the operation of the ISS without the economic support of the United States.

For Russia, future programs of new technologies in the rocket-space industry are problems that are not just scientific and economic in nature. As a result 

of liberal market reforms, the Russian defense industry was deprived of many 

thousands of qualified workers and engineers. On the other hand, we provided 

the United States and Europe with personnel. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” is no longer possible in Russia; there is simply nobody to implement this 

dictatorship. From the standpoint of democracy, today the most democratic 

country in the whole world is the United States. If one compares Russian and 

American democracy, of course everything falls in favor of the American version.

There is a shortage of “golden hands” of highly qualified workers and luminous brains of enthusiastic engineers; overcoming this shortage is a problem 

Russia faces but the United States does not.

Russia, the United States, China, and India have approved programs for 

the next 10 years. With adjustments for the global economic crisis, they will 

be implemented.

In order to study the universe, a new space observatory will be launched to 

take the place of the famous Hubble telescope, which will exist for five more 

years without maintenance provided by the Space Shuttle.4

 New automatic 

spacecraft will continue research and will enrich science with a broad spectrum of new discoveries made on the planets of the solar system, primarily 

the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. NASA’s powerful scientific apparatus will 

 4. The James Webb Space Telescope, an international collaboration between NASA, the 

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Afterword

develop not only the technology, but also the strategy for future space exploration. Unfortunately, Russia lacks such a state-level apparatus that has similar 

intellectual potential.

Round-the-clock information from Earth remote sensing satellites provides 

reliable meteorological forecasts, warnings about emergencies, monitoring of 

humanmade catastrophes, violation of environmental regulations, etc. Highresolution monitoring of strategically important regions will be carried out 

by secret military spy satellites. Optical-electronic digital systems guarantee 

resolution on the order of centimeters with real-time processing. The United 

States will be the first to create systems that combine data from Navstar GPS 

navigation satellites with low-orbit spy satellites and satellite communications 

and guidance systems. Joint processing of information from satellites on three 

levels—low-orbit, navigational, and geostationary—will make it possible to 

guide all types of transport: ground, air, and sea.

The American government agency NASA is vested with a great deal of 

authority. All federal expenditures on space exploration, with the exception 

of purely military expenditures, are implemented through NASA or under its 

supervision. NASA’s annual budget for 2010 exceeds Russia’s space budget by 

almost tenfold. Given these initial conditions, there is no doubt that in the 

next 10 to 15 years, the United States will create a new launch vehicle and 

piloted spacecraft for a flight to the Moon, lunar landing module, and cargo 

delivery system for a lunar base.

Over the course of the next 20 to 25 years, China will invest enormous 

resources under the slogan “Catch up to and overtake America and Russia 

in the field of space exploration.” China is building a socialist society with 

“Chinese characteristics.” Chinese Communists were able, in a short amount 

of time, to convert a backward agrarian country with partial literacy and a 

population of 1.5 billion into a state that mastered all types of modern technology and mass production of competitive goods from the latest computers 

to tennis shoes. China’s latest strategic tasks are to create a society based on 

a “knowledge economy.” In the past 15 years, China has solved economic 

and technological tasks in scopes and within timeframes that are impossible 

for other states. China will become not only a secondary power capable of 

achieving real “supremacy in space,” but it will strive to ideologically capture 

the basic positions of world space exploration, and I think it will be successful. 

One of the deciding factors guaranteeing China’s phenomenal successes is the 

ideological and political unity and true, rather than rhetorical, enthusiasm in 

mastering knowledge and high technologies.

Go to any Russian modern electronics shop. There is a wide selection for 

any taste and any wallet. But you will not find a single one of even the simplest 

electronic gadgets that was “Made in Russia.” Ninety percent were “Made in 

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

China.” The Chinese strategy for creating advanced technologies is a reliable 

foothold for future implementation of the principle of “supremacy in space.”

Russia still does not have a development strategy that will unite society. For 

15 years of criminal reforms under the motto of the omnipotence of the free 

market, Russia’s defense industry, mechanical engineering, and agriculture were 

destroyed, and the Army has been thrown into disarray. Basic survival relies on 

the sale of natural wealth: primarily oil, gas, and timber. The super-profits from 

natural resources have created new elites, a class of super-rich and a blatantly 

corrupted bureaucracy. Why should this elite care about the country’s development of space exploration? In order for Russian space exploration to still be 

at least in the top five in the future, we need radical, stringent sociopolitical 

reforms. And not just for the sake of space exploration.

Proceeding from such unhappy thoughts, I believe that by 2030, Russia 

must devote most of its attention to programs of unconditional space security 

(satellites for all types of communications and Earth remote sensing [ERS], 

including intelligence, missile-defense systems, GLONASS, and meteorological systems).5

Space programs for ensuring security and high defense capability for the 

country must have a single general manager, who is responsible not only for 

the development and data of spacecraft, but for the whole system right up to 

immediate reports to the higher military-political leadership of the country 

about the real results of the use of space-based intelligence data.

Modern technology makes it possible to observe tanks, artillery, armored 

personnel carriers, and other equipment from space in real time.

Space exploration and rocket technology are bound by common production organizations, testing technology, and cosmodromes. Russia’s future space 

programs will, in large part, be determined by the timeframe for creating a new 

heavy launch vehicle to replace the Proton that is just as reliable. One assumes 

that it will be the Angara.6

 Ten years will be spent on this. The United States 

will create a heavy and super-heavy vehicle in the next 8 to 10 years.

 5. Russians typically use the abbreviation DZZ—

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Afterword

Geostationary Orbit

In the 21st century there will be an intensified economic and political battle 

for room for communication satellites in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO). 

A spacecraft inserted into GEO has an orbital period equal to the rotational 

period of Earth, and the plane of orbit is virtually coincident with the plane 

of Earth’s equator. The point under the satellite has its own geographical longitude—the working point—and zero latitude.

The first spacecraft were inserted into GEO in the 1960s.7 Since that time, 

a total of 800 spacecraft have been inserted into GEO, and each year, on average, 20 to 25 new ones are inserted. According to data from 2008, more than 

1,150 objects were in geostationary orbit. Among them were about 240 controlled spacecraft, while the remainder are spent upper stages and other items.

On average, the mass of the payload carried into near-Earth orbit by the 

launch vehicle makes up 3 to 4 percent of the launch mass of the vehicle. For 

geostationary orbit, the mass of the spacecraft makes up only 0.3 to 0.5 percent 

of the launch mass of the vehicle and the upper stage. Launching a spacecraft 

into GEO, as a rule, is done using a three-stage vehicle with the subsequent 

use of upper stages. Geostationary orbit, as the most advantageous location 

for placing satellite communications systems, will exhaust its resources in the 

next 20 years.

Strict international competition is unavoidable. One possible solution could 

be the creation in GEO of a heavy multipurpose platform. With coverage of 

nearly 1/3 of the surface of the planet, such a multipurpose platform will be able 

to replace dozens of modern communications satellites. The platform will require 

a high-capacity solar power plant. To support dozens of modern communications satellites, the platform will require a capacity of 500 to 1,000 kilowatts.

Large parabolic antennas or active phased arrays are capable of creating any 

given value of equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIIM) at Earth’s surface 

and receiving information from subscribers on Earth, using devices no larger 

than the best modern mobile phones.8

 The capability of placing hundreds of 

relays for various ranges on a heavy geostationary platform makes it possible 

for the owners of such platforms to sell all types of communications trunks 

for any region on Earth.

Heavy multipurpose platforms will be commercially advantageous and 

will facilitate the global information rapprochement of peoples. Humankind 

 7. The first spacecraft launched into geostationary orbit was 

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needs the development and creation of such geostationary systems not in the 

distant future, but in the next 25 to 30 years.

The problem of creating and operating heavy geostationary platforms 

can be quickly solved if there is cooperation between Russian and European 

technology. However, space stations in GEO can be used for military purposes, 

too, to suppress an aggressor in local conflicts and in situations such as “Star 

Wars.” (More about that later.)

In the early 1990s, Russia developed a real design for the world’s first heavy 

universal platform for GEO. The mass of the proposed platform, according 

to the design, was 20 tons.9

 Insertion into orbit was slated for the Energiya 

launch vehicle, which had successfully passed its flight tests. In 1989 and 1990, 

RKK Energiya, with the support of the Military-Industrial Commission of 

the USSR Council of Ministers, made proposals to Germany, France, and the 

European Space Agency regarding cooperation and joint work to create the 

universal heavy space platform in GEO. In those years, only Russia, possessing 

the unique Energiya vehicle, could perform this task. The detailed development 

of the platform design and the technology for insertion were of great interest to the leading German and French corporations. Joint work was begun. 

However, the liberal market reforms of the 1990s destroyed the organization 

and deprived the Energiya vehicle’s manufacturers of any state support. After 

the loss of the launch vehicle, the proposal for work on the heavy space platform became pointless.

Because of Russia’s geographical situation, apart from using geostationary 

orbit, which does not provide communications to Arctic regions, it is necessary to create a group of three satellites in geosynchronous elliptical orbits 

such as the Molniya, which provide coverage of 100 percent of the territory, 

including the Arctic.

Russia’s inventory of scientific and technical developments will still ensure 

the capability to implement a multifunctional space-based communication 

system for any point in the country. The prerequisite is the creation of a new 

launch vehicle and transport system for the creation in GEO of the multipurpose platform.

Star Wars

In the hot days of the Cold War, in the second half of the 20th century, 

American propaganda for “supremacy in space” introduced the term “Star 

 9. The in-orbit mass of these 

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Afterword

Wars.” This concept had nothing to do with actual stars. Various media outlets 

used the term “Star Wars” to describe the missile-defense program, the fight 

against space-based military systems, and any other actions using outer space 

for military purposes. The overt and classified programs of “Star Wars” were 

limited to near-Earth space and (in the future) to creating military bases on 

the Moon.

The use of weapons based on new physics principles was proposed as the 

main means of waging the battle to achieve military supremacy in space and 

to destroy the nuclear-missile potential of the enemy. The achievements in 

physics in the 20th century made it possible to claim that the hyperboloid of 

Engineer Garin could truly move from the pages of Aleksey Tolstoy’s excellent 

novel to become a real “Star Wars” weapon.10 Almost 100 years were necessary 

to turn a charming fantasy into reality.

Yet another effective means of blinding and defeating ground-based airdefense systems, missile-defense systems, and various radio-electronic troop 

command and control systems would be the use of powerful super-broadband 

emitters. Powerful generators of directed electromagnetic energy could be 

installed on geostationary space platforms and, in the future, could also be 

installed at a lunar military base.

Practically all types of modern-day weapons, systems for controlling air 

traffic, oceanic ships, and ground-based combat equipment, and all types of 

data transmission and processing, use microelectronic devices. By the end of 

the 21st century, electronics will be based on semiconductors operating with 

a low level of voltage and current. The absolute value of currents and voltages, 

as microminiaturization progresses, will reach very small amounts. With the 

use of nanotechnology in information technology, the values for currents and 

voltages will only get smaller.

The effect of ultra-broadband electromagnetic pulses produces induced 

currents of comparatively high voltage in all electronic devices and, in practical 

terms, causes them to fail. It is well known that powerful electromagnetic pulses 

are created by the explosion of nuclear warheads. Therefore, the electrical lines 

for controlling communications and all the electronics of modern-day missile launchers are appropriately hardened against a retaliatory strike. Powerful 

unidirectional electromagnetic strikes could be made from space without the 

use of nuclear weapons. It is practically impossible to protect the entire mass 

of communications and control electronics from this.

 10.

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The formation of artificial radiation belts around Earth could be a “Star 

Wars” weapon. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. and USSR conducted experimental nuclear explosions in near-Earth space (at altitudes of 

100 to 400 kilometers).

Studies conducted by the United States and Soviet Union showed that 

one nuclear device detonated at an altitude of 125 to 300 kilometers with a 

yield of approximately 10 kilotonnes is enough to disable all forms of radio 

communication, in all ranges, thousands of kilometers from the explosion 

site, for many hours. A nuclear explosion in near-Earth space will lead to the 

creation of such highly concentrated plasmas that for several hours, all forms 

of radar and radio communication are ruled out. For several hours, the use of 

conventional weapons will be paralyzed.

Judging by the experience of the 20th century, one can also assert that people 

in the 21st century will create new types of space-based weaponry that we cannot 

even imagine today, just as the people of the early 20th century were incapable of 

creating systems like GPS and GLONASS. However, the creation of ray, beam, 

and electromagnetic types of weapons is fully realizable in the coming decades.

The Moon and Mars

In 1986, Congress and the U.S. President created a national commission 

on developing the future space program for the next 50 years.11 The main 

recommendation of this commission was a challenge to create a permanent 

(inhabited) base on the Moon in the first decade of the 21st century.

The first decade of the 21st century has come to a close, and the Americans 

did not begin constructing a lunar base. In my personal opinion, if the United 

States intends to build a base on its own—and it is capable of doing so—a 

realistic start date would be 2020. The creation of a permanent active lunar 

base with a staff of 8 to 12 persons will require another 10 to 15 years.

In the last century, Russia projected the construction of a base that was 

jokingly named “Barmingrad” after the chief designer.12 Construction on the 

Moon does not require any sort of new scientific discoveries. Present-day technology is fully capable of supporting colonization of the Moon. But there are 

sociopolitical, economic, and international problems that any country wishing 

to have its own base on the Moon will encounter.

In light of this, one may predict that Russia is not capable of independently creating its own base in the next 20 years. Construction of a lunar 

 11.

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Afterword

base is possible, if it is a national, multiyear program on a scale exceeding the 

transformation of the Sochi region into a Winter Olympics base and resort 

comparable to the Cote d’Azur. It is likely that China will create its base five 

years before Russia does. The fourth colonizer of the Moon will be India. It is 

unlikely, but theoretically possible, that Russia and Europe will combine their 

technical and economic resources to build an international lunar base. One 

example of united technological and economic resources is the ISS.

Unlike the ISS, lunar bases can have three purposes: scientific, industrial/

technological, and military/strategic. Creation of a single lunar base for Earth 

will be possible only if the world overcomes its divisions into military-political 

groups. Taking into account the possibilities for strategic use of the Moon, 

one cannot rule out the possibility that NATO countries will combine their 

resources. Combining the leading countries of Europe with the lunar programs 

of the United States could reduce the timeframe by three to five years.

The Moon is planet Earth’s domain. The Moon is a planetary body on 

which people could live, using local lunar resources. It is fully accessible for 

humankind and will not require any new scientific discoveries.

For 3 or 4 billion years, the Moon was tied to Earth by the laws of celestial 

mechanics. In the 20th century, 12 men landed on the Moon. In the 21st century, for the first time, the Moon and Earth will be tied together by a reliable 

transport system for delivering technical cargo and the constant bidirectional 

traffic of a human transport system.

In the first half of the 21st century, NATO will be preserved and 

new military-political factions may arise. From the standpoint of “space 

supremacy” for each such faction, in the event of “Star Wars,” the prospect 

of building a base on the visible side of the Moon that has powerful ray and 

ultra-broadband weapons is enticing. Future optical-electronic and radar 

systems will make it possible to conduct continuous monitoring of everything 

taking place on dry land, in the ocean, in the air, and in near-Earth space. 

In the event of military conflicts, lunar bases can carry out local strikes preempting the use of nuclear weapons. The economic crisis of 2008 to 2010 

showed that modern states are capable of negotiating in good faith and even 

combining their economic efforts. Perhaps in 5 to 10 years, they will join 

forces in order to colonize the Moon.

For the world’s astronomers and astrophysicists, the creation of observatories on the dark side of the Moon is quite alluring. The Moon will serve as 

a screen, protecting the observatory’s equipment from noise that reduces the 

resolution capability of modern land-based observatories. Radio observatories 

on the dark side of the Moon will be equipped with extra-large parabolic antennas and phased arrays. For fans of the search for signals from extraterrestrial 

civilizations, research will be transferred to the Moon.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok with his sons Mikhail (left) and Valentin on his 95th birthday on 

1 March 2007.

Today’s mass media, and sometimes even well-known scientists and 

politicians, make announcements about human expeditions to Mars that will 

take place in the next few decades. Mars fanatics and ambitious government 

bureaucrats tout human flights to Mars as being basically the main prospect 

for space exploration in the 21st century. One has to admit that, from a 

technical standpoint, human flights to Mars could, in fact, be implemented 

in the 21st century. However, it is very difficult to prove that it is necessary 

to include human flights to Mars in future programs for the 21st century. 

Indeed, why invest a minimum of 300 to 500 billion dollars, paying for the 

labor of hundreds of thousands of workers, engineers, and scientists, if all the 

questions that interest Earthlings can be answered by the Martian robots that 

are controlled by scientists on Earth? The automatic spacecraft orbiting Mars 

and the Mars rovers that traverse the surface have convincingly shown that 

there is no life on the surface of Mars. By the end of the 21st century, at least 

8 to 10 more Mars rovers will land on the planet. They will conduct detailed, 

unhurried research on the atmosphere, the climate dynamics, and the planet’s 

soil. New information will be obtained without enormous risk to the lives of 

expedition crewmembers. Cosmonauts on a Martian expedition would have 

to spend almost a year in weightlessness on the way there. Immediately after 

landing on Mars, they would prepare for the return flight, which would be 

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riskier. (Unlike for orbital stations, Earth cannot provide assistance.) It is my 

firm conviction that human flights to Mars in the 21st century are technically 

possible, but unnecessary. The ambitious goal does not justify the enormous 

expense and risk.

Revolutionary Discoveries and Technologies

New breakthrough space programs, in terms of the timeframe for their 

implementation, their scope, and their contribution to “common human 

values,” will largely be determined by the breakthrough discoveries in other 

areas of science and technology.

For the second half of the 21st century, we can—with some degree of 

certainty—expect discoveries that make it possible to produce controlled 

thermonuclear reactions, new materials, and previously unimaginable technical 

devices. Energy sources based on thermonuclear reactors of various capacities 

will allow all types of transportation to be made completely electrical.

The demand for hydrocarbon fuels (oil and gas) will drop a hundredfold. 

Accordingly, the era of development and production of a wide variety of reliable, cheap, and available thermonuclear power sources will dawn.

Alchemists of the Middle Ages tried to obtain gold by mixing mercury with copper shavings. Physical chemists of the 21st century will create 

materials that have the properties of superconductors at high 

temperatures. This will be the 

greatest revolution in electrical 

engineering. At the same time, 

new magnetic materials will be 

created. Electrical catapults will 

replace solid-propellant and 

liquid-propellant rocket engines 

for launches from Earth or the 

Moon. High-thrust electrical 

rocket engines using thermonuclear energy sources will replace 

chemical engines for many space 

exploration tasks.

Revolutionary achievements 

in creating the structure of photoconverters of solar energy into 

electrical energy will increase their 

efficiency from 10 percent to 50 

to 60 percent. This will make it 

From the author’s archives.

Boris Chertok with his granddaughter Dasha.

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possible, if there are difficulties using thermonuclear energy, to create highcapacity ground-based solar power stations. The electrical output per unit area 

of a solar array on a spacecraft will increase by three to five times.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a technological and information 

revolution took place. Even in the middle of the 20th century, most scientists 

did not believe that any person could place in his pocket a device that could 

store all the information of the Russian State Library and the libraries of 

the British Museum and the U.S. Congress. Today’s electronic devices allow 

anyone, without leaving home, to read and even copy the contents of books 

of the main libraries of the world. At the beginning of the 20th century, this 

would have been pure fantasy.

The information revolution of the late 20th century has, in some way or 

other, touched each inhabitant of Earth. Even the science fiction writers of 

the early 20th century did not predict its scale.

From the author’s archives.

Will he fly to Mars? Boris Chertok and his 

wife Yekaterina Golubkina in 1998 with their 

great-grandson Mikhail Borisovich.

624
Index

Note: A page number in italics indicates a page with an image of the named person, object, or place.

1M, see Mars spacecraft

3KV (Voskhod spacecraft), 10 

3MV, see Mars spacecraft and Venera 

spacecraft

7K (basic Soyuz spacecraft), 10-11, 12, 13, 

80, 108, 136, 269, 282, 303, 537; see 

also Soyuz spacecraft/program

7K-9K-11K circumlunar program, 10-11, 

12

7K-L1 (circumlunar spacecraft, also known 

as L1), 13-14, 23, 140, 154, 155, 156, 

168, 169, 171, 175, 176, 181, 182, 183, 

185, 190, 211, 221, 228, 229, 233, 238, 

239, 256-263, 267, 546-547; see also 

Zond circumlunar program/spacecraft

7K-L1S (circumlunar spacecraft), 199-200

7K-OK (original Soyuz), 11, 140, 154, 156-

157, 189, 211, 257, 259, 262, 265, 266, 

273, 397, 410, 467, 468, 472, 473; see 

also Soyuz spacecraft/program

7K-S (advanced Soyuz), 19, 257, 261, 273, 

288, 347, 382, 407, 408, 410, 506, 537, 

540, 551, 554

7K-ST (advanced Soyuz), 506-507

7K-T (Soyuz ferry for DOS), 11, 261, 273, 

288, 290, 295, 299, 302, 307, 313, 314, 

379, 382, 397, 502, 506, 551; see also 

11F615A8

7K-TA (Soyuz ferry for Almaz), 407; see also 

11F615A9

7K-TM, 407-408, 410

7K-VI military Soyuz, 19, 273

8A61 missile, 15; see also R-11M

8K63 missile, 25; see also R-12

8K67 ICBM, 25; see also R-36

8K68 launch vehicle, 86; see also R-56

8K75, 9; see also R-9 ICBM

8K78 launch vehicle, 9, 64, 82; see also 

Molniya launch vehicle

8K82 launch vehicle, 86; see Proton launch 

vehicle

8K82K launch vehicle, 299; see also Proton 

launch vehicle

8K84 ICBM, 19; see also UR-100

8K95, 9; see also RT-1 solid propellant 

missile

8K98, 9, 550; see also RT-2 ICBM

8K98P, 9, 410; see also RT-2P ICBM

8K713 global missile, 9; see also GR-1

9K, see 7K-9K-11K circumlunar program

11A52, 86; see also N-1 heavy-lift launch 

vehicle

11A511 launch vehicle, 80; see also Soyuz 

launch vehicle family

11A511L launch vehicle, 27, 270

11A511U launch vehicle, 299; see also 

Soyuz-U launch vehicle

11D51 rocket engine, 527; see also NK-15

11D52 rocket engine, 527; see also NK-15V

11D53 rocket engine, 527; see also NK-19

11D58 rocket engine (for Block D), 422; see 

also Block D

11D111 rocket engine, 527

11D112 rocket engine, 527

11D113 rocket engine, 527

11F67, 494; see also Molniya-1 spacecraft

11F91, 568; see also L1 circumlunar 

spacecraft/program

11F93, 269; see also LOK

11F94, 269; see also LK

11F615A8 (Soyuz ferry vehicle for DOS), 

11, 295, 515; see also 7K-T Soyuz 

spacecraft

11F615A9 (Soyuz ferry vehicle for Almaz), 

11; see also 7K-TA Soyuz spacecraft

11F615A12 (ASTP Soyuz spacecraft), 515

11F615A15 (Progress spacecraft), 515

11F732, 506, 540; see also 7K-S

11K (tanker), 11, 12; see also 7K-9K-11K 

circumlunar program

tion, 11, 3

 Block D

11N6110 ground sta 11, 453

11S854, 422; see also

625
Rockets and People: Moon Race

15A14, 26; see also R-36M ICBM

15A15, 26; see also MR UR-100 ICBM

15A20, 20; see also UR-100K ICBM

15Zh45, 32; see also Pioner missile

17K station, 295, 296, 299, 303, 307, 321, 

515; see also DOS

45K star tracker, 478-479

99K solar sensor, 13

100K star sensor, 13

A

A-4 German ballistic missile (V-2), 51; see 

also V-2

Abramov, Anatoliy P., 195, 220, 291, 

303, 311, 436, 439, 470, 534, 571

Academician Korolev Street, xli, 85, 142, 

293, 528, 596

Academician Sergey Korolev (tracking ship), 

36, 380 

Academy of Navigation and Motion 

Control, 451

Academy of Sciences (Soviet/Russian), xviii, 

xxiii, 18, 19, 25, 29, 31, 33, 37, 70-71, 

72, 77, 92, 113-114, 125-126, 135, 150, 

162, 176, 180, 213, 217, 223-224, 226-

227, 232, 245, 252, 269, 318, 365, 418, 

430, 456, 552, 557, 597, 601, 608, 609

Academy of Sciences Presidium, 177, 377

Aelita (novel and film), 226

Afanasyev, Sergey A., 92, 135, 136, 138, 

154, 177, 180, 186, 190-194, 198, 203, 

205, 213, 217, 218, 220, 222, 224-226, 

229, 232-233, 236, 248-250, 253, 257-

258, 263, 265-266, 269-270, 271-274, 

283, 309, 314, 323, 334, 340, 359-360, 

364, 365-366, 369, 370, 374, 392, 

397, 416-417, 420, 424, 427-429, 431, 

433-436, 439, 447, 453, 472-474, 478, 

499-500, 504, 526, 529, 531-533, 540, 

541, 548-549, 557, 573

Afghanistan, 594, 608

Agadzhanov, Pavel A., 157, 159-160, 167, 

188, 249, 322-326, 331, 370-371, 373, 

476, 478, 487

Agena target vehicle, 157, 159-160, 167, 

188, 249, 322-326, 331, 370-371, 373, 

476, 478, 487

Air Defense Troops (PVO) and systems, 27, 

28, 37, 84, 179, 386, 390, 414, 536

Air Force (VVS), xi, xvi, xxx, 40, 92, 106, 

156, 166, 169, 179, 362, 363, 394, 399, 

431, 468, 471, 472

Air Force Academy, 166

Air Force Medical Monitoring Service, 361

Air Force State Red Banner ScientificResearch Institute (GKNII VVS), 166

Aksenov, Vladimir V., 507

Alabama, 39, 42

Alaska, 313

Aldrin, Edwin E. “Buzz”, x, xxi, 57

Aleksandrov, Anatoliy P., 59-60

Alekseyev, Leonid I., 117, 235, 421, 455

All-Union Film Festival, 568

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of 

Current Sources, see VNIIT

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of 

Electromechanics, see VNIIEM

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of 

Power Sources, 28

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of 

Television, see VNIIT

Alma-Ata, 162

Almaz piloted space station, xxiv, 22-23, 

243-246, 269, 271, 273, 276, 279, 281, 

283-289, 309-310, 317-318, 322, 347, 

381-382, 407, 463, 464, 499, 538, 552, 

556; launches of, 23, 484-485, 491, 496-

497; use of Almaz to create DOS, 243, 

247-249, 253-268

Alper, Naum Ya., 149

Altair relay satellite, 520

Ametist cruise missile, 24

An-24 airplane, 474

Anfimov, Nikolay A., 538

Angara family of launch vehicles, 76, 616

Anokhin, Sergey N., 312-313

antiaircraft missiles, see Air Defense Troops

antiballistic missiles, see Anti-Missile 

Defense

antimissile defense (PRO) forces/systems, 

xxvii, 20, 26, 27, 37, 84, 179, 246, 316, 

386, 390, 516, 518, 536, 591, 616, 619

antisatellite systems, see antispace defense; 

see also IS (Satellite Destroyer)

antispace defense (PKO) forces/systems, 

27, 246, 276, 316; see also IS (Satellite 

Destroyer)

Antipov, Yevgeniy F., 466

Antonov, Yu. P., 194, 195

Apollo AS-202 mission, 135

Apollo Command and Service Module 

(CSM), 51, 56, 184

Apollo spacecraft/program, xviii-xix, xxi, 

xliii, 12, 39-57, 80, 140, 173, 185, 242, 

261-262, 282, 335-336, 437, 568, 585, 

587, 590

626
Index

Apollo 1 fire, 51, 55, 57

Apollo 4 mission, 51, 55

Apollo 6 mission, 155

Apollo 7 mission, 56

Apollo 8 mission, 14, 56, 171, 183-184

Apollo 9 mission, 56, 213

Apollo 10 mission, 215-216, 238

Apollo 11 mission, x, xxi, xli, 42, 57, 231, 

238

Apollo 13 mission, 57, 272

Apollo 14 mission, 292

Apollo 17 mission, 57

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), 318, 323, 

407-408, 410, 503, 504, 525, 533, 536-

538, 548, 551, 555, 559, 577, 585, 596

apparent velocity control system, see RKS

Appazov, Refat F., 194

Application of Quaternions in Solid Body 

Orientation Problems (book), 465

Aral Sea, 11, 294

Archive of the President of the Russian 

Federation (APRF), xxix 

Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences 

(ARAN), xviii

Arctic, xiii, 281, 681

Arefyev, Vyacheslav P., 456, 464

Argon-11 digital computer, 13

Argon-16 digital computer, 245

Armenian Academy of Sciences, 430

Armstrong, Neil A., x, xxi, xli, 57

Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), 

39-40, 44

Arsenal Factory, 127, 349

Arsentyev, V. M., 194

Artyukhin, Yuriy P., 496-497

ASTP, see Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

Atkov, Oleg Yu., 513

Atlas/Atlas-D ICBMs and derived launch 

vehicles, 48, 153, 585

Atlas Centaur, 585

atomic energy, see nuclear energy

atomic industry, see nuclear industry

atomic scientists, see nuclear scientists

atomic weapons, see nuclear weapons

Avdeyev, Sergey V., 600

Averbukh, Vladimir Ya., 151

Aviapribor Factory, 31, 466

Aviatsiya i kosmonavtika (journal), xi-xii

Azarov, Anatoliy V., 188, 298

Azov Optical-Mechanical Factory, 225, 255, 

337, 453

B

B-29 Flying Fortress bomber, 227

Babakin, Georgiy N., 9, 28-29, 113, 138, 

171, 185, 189, 190, 215-216, 233, 238, 

307, 339, 344, 375, 396

Babkov, Oleg I., 117, 173, 255, 310, 455, 

498

Bakhchivandzhi, Grigoriy Ya., 540

Baklanov, Oleg D., 580, 598-599

ballistic missile defense, see missile defense 

systems

Barmin, Vladimir P., 78, 90, 92, 136, 138, 

191-192, 200, 202, 204-205, 217, 220, 

229, 266, 285, 388, 418, 473, 540, 545-

548, 550, 553, 558, 569-571, 595-596, 

598

Bashkin, Yevgeniy A., 117, 175, 247, 248, 

250, 255, 259, 293, 297, 300, 301, 306, 

308, 323, 327, 342, 359, 363, 455, 461, 

462, 466, 469, 470, 477-478, 483, 498

Bashkirtsev (fictional character), 389, 521-

522, 560, 562, 565-566, 568

Battle of Borodino, 560

Battleship Potemkin (movie), 560

Bauman Moscow State Technical School 

(MVTU), 79

Baykonur Cosmodrome, xlii, 35, 176, 290, 

350, 353, 416, 427, 438, 484, 539; see 

also Tyuratam

Bazhanov, Yuriy A., 466

BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), 

226

Bedarev, Oleg, 391-392

Bedareva, Mira, 391-392

Beijing, 465

Belikov, Vladimir N., 305

Belov, Nikolay I., 460

Belyayev, Pavel I., 361, 366, 472, 477, 479 

Beregovoy, Georgiy T., 166-167, 188, 189, 

250, 334, 472-483, 506, 520, 564

Beriya, Lavrentiy P., 246

Besserezhnov, M. F., 188

Bessonov, V. M., 119

Bezverbyy, Vitaliy K., 195, 246, 315 

Bion spacecraft, 19

Black Sea, 376, 503

Bleicherode (Germany), 351, 353, 365, 414

Block A (first stage) of N-1 rocket, 73, 93-94, 

119-120, 141, 151, 201-202, 207, 208, 

228, 230, 234, 300, 418, 424-427, 434, 

439, 441-445

627
Rockets and People: Moon Race

Block B (second stage) of N-1 rocket, 73, 

94, 141, 199, 202, 207, 209, 234, 424, 

426-427, 439, 441-445

Block D (L3 stage/Proton upper stage), 12, 

13, 22, 76, 88-89, 94-98, 121, 128, 175, 

181, 199, 228, 236, 239, 259, 269, 339, 

345, 410, 420, 422, 427, 433, 439-440, 

596

Block G (L3 stage), 76, 88-89, 91, 94-97, 

121, 128, 175, 199, 228, 234, 410, 420, 

427, 433, 435, 439-440, 596

Block I (of R-7-based launch vehicles), 82, 

322, 370

Block I engine of LOK, 88, 91, 94-97, 121, 

128

Block L (of Molniya booster), 82, 313

Block R (planned upper stage of N-1), 258, 

261

Block S (planned upper stage of N-1), 258, 

261

Block SR (planned upper stage of N-1), 596

Block V (third stage of N-1 rocket), 73-74, 

94, 141, 151, 199, 207, 209, 234, 423, 

424, 427, 439, 446

Block Ye engine of LK, 27, 88, 91, 94-97, 

108, 121, 128, 269

Bobrov, Yevgeniy G., 365

Bobyrev, Igor T., 188, 221

Boeing company, 54

Bogdanovskiy, Stanislav P., 533, 580

Bogomolov, Aleksey F., 92, 105, 324, 375, 

376, 418, 423, 424, 442, 443, 456, 558, 

570

Bogomolov, Vladislav N., 298, 385-387

Boguslavskiy, Yevgeniy Ya., 391

Boldyrev, Grigoriy G., 459

Bolkhovitinov, Viktor F., 523-524

Bolshevo, 325

Bondaryuk, Mikhail M., 60

Borisenko, Aleksey A., 422

Borisenko, Yuriy N., 498, 513

Borisov, Vladimir A., 409

“Boris Yevseyev” (Chertok’s pseudonym), xi

Bragazin, Aleksandr F., 513

Branets, Vladimir N., 455, 465, 466, 498, 

506, 510, 511, 513

Bratslavets, Petr F., 164, 298, 372, 473

Brezhnev, Leonid I., 63, 107, 113, 125, 

133-135, 138-139, 168, 177, 188, 237, 

239, 272, 318, 319, 323, 334, 359, 366, 

374, 390, 397, 402, 472, 495, 536, 568-

569, 572

British Museum, 624

Brodskiy, Emil B., 194, 234, 419

Budenny, Semyon M., 131

Budker, Gersh I., 246

Bugayskiy, Viktor N., 267, 284, 291, 292, 

293, 299, 305, 309

Bugrov, Vladimir Ye., xxvii

Bulgaria, 323

Bululukov, Vladimir A., 295, 296, 297

Bunkin, Boris V., 304, 492

Buran reusable space shuttle, xi, 437-

438, 455, 574; origins of, 521-581; 

and launch of, 576-577, 606; see also 

Energiya-Buran

Burnazyan, Avetik I., 397, 400, 401

Burya cruise missile project, 262

Bush, George W., 592

Bushuyev, Konstantin D., 85, 87, 93, 99, 

102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 113, 

125, 126, 131, 132, 136, 139, 147-148, 

154, 172-173, 181-183, 186, 189, 195, 

220-222, 225, 227, 243, 246, 248, 

253-256, 259-260, 263, 264-265, 266-

267, 284, 290, 293, 299, 304, 307-311, 

314-315, 317-318, 334-336, 357, 359, 

364-367, 378, 397, 458-459, 469, 471-

473, 482, 528, 537, 556, 571, 596-597; 

and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), 

410, 439-440, 533, 548, 556, 596-597; 

and death of, 597

Bykov, Yuriy S., 83, 105, 161, 456

C

Cape Canaveral, 53, 216, 588; see also Cape 

Kennedy and Kennedy Space Center

Cape Kennedy, 54, 55; see also Cape 

Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center

Cassini probe, 613

Centaur upper stage, 48, 52, 585

Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute, see 

TsAGI

Central Building of the Soviet Army, 396

Central Committee, xli, xlii, 3, 4, 12, 22, 

60, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 77-78, 84, 86, 

88, 92, 107, 133-139, 171, 172, 180, 

184, 185, 186, 189, 191, 192, 215, 217, 

220, 222, 225, 232, 236, 240, 247, 248, 

251-255, 257-258, 260, 263, 267-269, 

274-276, 279, 281, 283, 287, 288, 290, 

292, 305-306, 310, 318, 333-335, 359, 

366, 374, 382, 383, 387, 389, 390, 397, 

431, 453, 454, 472, 500, 501, 504, 522, 

524, 528, 531, 533, 539, 548, 556, 567, 

573, 595, 596, 607

628
Index

Central Committee Defense Department, 

22, 135, 253, 333

Central Committee Presidium/Politburo, 

3, 68, 86, 88, 106, 107, 114, 133-134, 

137, 171, 177, 179, 232, 236, 239, 240, 

248, 256, 257, 258, 266, 272, 275, 302, 

318, 359, 362, 364-367, 390, 396, 397, 

402, 447, 472-473, 523, 524, 531, 540, 

541, 548, 568, 572, 575

Central Design Bureau of Experimental 

Machine Building (TsKBEM), see 

TsKBEM and OKB-1

Central Design Bureau of Machine Building 

(TsKBM), see OKB-52

Central Directorate of Space Assets, see 

TsUKOS

Central Specialized Design Bureau, see 

TsSKB

Chaffee, Roger B., 55

Chayka attitude control system (for Soyuz), 

509-511

Chechnya, 594

Chelomey, Vladimir N., xxiv, xxviii, 12, 13, 

19-24, 27, 29, 32, 67, 71, 72, 75, 77, 

81, 82-83, 86, 104, 106-108, 155, 169, 

176-178, 180, 184, 191, 213-214, 222, 

226, 243-248, 256-258, 262, 263, 265-

267, 276, 283, 291, 299, 303, 308, 310, 

311, 317, 318, 319, 334, 339, 344, 383, 

409, 434, 455, 463, 464, 484, 496, 532, 

538, 542, 551, 552, 556, 565-566

Cherkasov, Aleksandr V., 207

Chernyshev, Nikolay G., 102

Chertok, Boris Ye., ix-xx, xxi-xxvi, xxxixxxii, 17, 23, 24, 114, 188, 189, 194, 

223, 291, 350, 352, 353, 360, 369, 

384, 385, 396, 424, 456, 470, 479, 

521, 538, 580, 584, 597, 613, 622, 

623, 624; and Apollo missions, xli, 171, 

215, 231; at Kapustin Yar, 70-71; and 

N1-L3 human lunar program, 82-88, 

101-115, 136-144, 171-186, 238-241, 

254-255, 257-265, 269-274, 304, 307-

308, 357-358, 380-383, 395, 407-408, 

602-606; see also N-1 launches; and 

N-1 control system, 117-132; and N-1 

engine testing/KORD, 79-80, 141-144, 

145-152; and first N-1 launch, 189-210; 

and second N-1 launch, 211-215, 217-

237; and third N-1 launch, 376-377, 

380, 387-389, 392, 398; and fourth 

N-1 launch, 409-447; and termination 

of N-1 program, 521-557, 569-580; 

and origins of Energiya-Buran, 521-

559, 569-580; and Zond/L1 program, 

156, 168, 169-170; and Mars interplanetary missions, 339, 344-345; and 

Venera program, 215-216; and human 

Mars missions, 222-227; and origins 

of DOS/Salyut program, 243-277; and 

preparations for launch of DOS-1/

Salyut(-1), 279-319; and launch of 

DOS-1/Salyut(-1), 321-322; and reentry 

of DOS-1/Salyut(-1), 405-406; and 

launch of DOS-2, 484; and launch 

of DOS-3/Kosmos-557, 485-496; and 

loss and recovery of Salyut-7, 513-519; 

and reentry of Salyut-7, 405-406; and 

Kosmos-212/213 mission, 156-170; and 

Soyuz-2/3 mission, 472-482; and Soyuz4/5 mission, 171, 186-188, 482-483; 

and Soyuz-6/7/8 mission, 238, 249-253, 

483-484; and Soyuz-10 mission, 322-

338; and Soyuz-11 mission, 339-395, 

484; and Soyuz-11 disaster investigation, 395-404; and Soyuz-12 mission, 

404; and Soyuz-15 mission, 496-498, 

506; and Soyuz-23 mission, 499-501; 

and Soyuz-25 mission, 501-503; and 

Soyuz T-6 mission, 508-511; and Soyuz 

T-8 mission, 512-513; and death of 

Aleksey Isayev, 384-387, 389-392; and 

death of Konstantin Bushuyev, 597; and 

Mir space station, 406-407, 598-601, 

609-610; and development and testing 

of flight control systems for missiles and 

spacecraft, 449-520; and development 

of Soyuz rendezvous systems, 467-472; 

and development of digital computers 

for spacecraft, 505-508; and Hero of 

Socialist Labor award, 167-168; and N. 

N. Ostryakov honorary prize, 451; and 

time in Germany, 351-353; and Taming 

the Fire movie, 559-569; and future of 

space exploration, 611-624

Chertok, Mikhail B. (son of Boris Chertok), 

506, 511, 622

Chertok, Valentin B. (son of Boris Chertok), 

351, 622

Chile, 406

China, xli, 153, 184, 193, 276, 465, 601, 

614, 615-616, 621

Chinese Engineering Academy, 601

Chinese space program, 153, 306, 601, 614, 

615-616, 621

Chizhikov, Boris S., 342, 365

629
Rockets and People: Moon Race

Chizhikov, Semyon G., 120, 173, 293, 337, 

365, 384, 385, 386, 461

Chkalovskiy airfield, 169

Chrétien, Jean-Loup, 509

Churkin, Anatoliy V., 443

circumlunar program (piloted), see 7K-L1 

and Zond circumlunar project

Civil War (Russian), 374

Clubb, Jerry, 45

Cold War, ix, x, xi, xiii, xiv, xli, 2, 5, 7, 241, 

414, 537, 583, 593, 618

Collins, Michael, 57

Cologne, 604

Command and Measurement Complex 

(KIK), 35, 36, 159, 167, 285, 299, 323, 

325, 326, 354, 371, 372, 393, 460, 475, 

488, 510, 518

Commission on Military-Industrial Affairs, 

see VPK

Communist Party Congresses, 257, 259, 

382, 501, 539, 560, 599

Communist Party of the Soviet Union 

(CPSU), xi, xli, 22, 137, 215, 253, 276, 

412, 501, 539

computers on spacecraft, see digital 

computing

Congress, see U.S. Congress

Cosmonaut(s) Training Center (TsPK), 395, 

403, 480; see also Star City

Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov (tracking 

ship), 36

Cosmonaut Yuriy Gagarin (tracking ship), 36

Cosmonautics: Encyclopedia (book), 48-49, 

332-333

Cosmonautics Day, 156, 589

“cosmopolitanism”, 413; see also “Doctors’ 

Plot”

Council of Chief Designers, 64, 67, 88, 190, 

261, 415, 456, 526, 541, 551, 552, 554-

555, 563, 572, 609

Council of Ministers, xvii, 3, 4, 12, 33, 60, 

63, 66, 77, 78, 86, 88, 109, 133-136, 

184, 186, 189, 215, 240, 251, 254, 274, 

276, 281, 452-453, 504, 531, 533, 573, 

607, 618

CPSU, see Communist Party of the Soviet 

Union

Crimea, 156, 168-170, 176, 251, 322, 370, 

376, 396, 474, 491, 504

cryogenic rocket engines, see liquid-hydrogen–

liquid-oxygen rocket engines

Cuba, 495

Cuban Missile Crisis, xix, 226, 339

D

D-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile 

system, 30

D-4 submarine-launched ballistic missile 

system, 30

D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile 

system, 30

D-5U submarine-launched ballistic missile 

system, 30

D-9 submarine-launched ballistic missile 

system, 30

D-19 submarine-launched ballistic missile 

system, 31

Dalniy airfield (or Lastochka), 341; see also 

Krayniy

Darevskiy, Sergey G., 299, 311, 312, 340, 

470, 472, 473

DARPA, see Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency

Dashkov, Aleksandr A., 593

DC-3 aircraft, 523

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 

(DARPA), 41

Defense Council, 134, 176, 177, 318-319, 

571-572, 607

De Gaulle, Charles, 354

Degtyarenko, Georgiy N., 195, 235, 236, 

388, 405, 417, 419, 420, 421, 431, 433, 

436, 439, 443-445, 513, 534

Degtyarenko, Zoya S., 165, 469, 476, 478, 

483

Delta launch vehicle, 585

Delta navigation system, 485

Dementyev, Petr V., 198, 264, 274, 397, 

418, 420, 433, 529, 531-532

Demin, Lev S., 497

Denisov, Yuriy S., 458

Department of Defense, see U.S. 

Department of Defense

digital computers/control systems, 13, 54, 

96, 124, 129-130, 175, 202, 245, 262, 

317, 384, 423, 427-429, 433, 434, 435, 

440, 442, 446, 447, 450, 498, 504, 506-

513, 519, 537, 547

Dnepr Dam, xv

Dnepropetrovsk, 15, 24, 25, 78, 107, 134, 

458

Dobrovolskiy, Georgiy T., xxiv, 340, 363, 

367-368, 369-371, 376, 379-380, 386, 

394-395, 400, 404, 484

“Doctors’ Plot,” 110

Dora concentration camp, xiii

630
Index

Dorofeyev, Boris A., 193, 194, 200, 203, 

205, 217, 229, 235, 300, 377, 409, 417, 

419, 420, 424, 428, 431, 433-436, 439-

441, 445, 526, 541, 602

Dorofeyeva, Z. F., 194

DOS (Long-Duration Orbital Station) program, xxiv, xxvii, 12, 254-256, 261-263, 

266-269, 271, 273, 279-290, 310, 316, 

318, 321-322, 347, 381-383, 408, 410, 

420, 536-537, 542, 552-556

DOS-1/Salyut(-1), xi, xix, 12, 23, 297, 406; 

and preparations for launch of, 279-319; 

and naming of, 306; and launch of, 

321-322; and missions to, 323-404; and 

reentry, 405-406; see also Salyut(-1)

DOS-2, 12, 279-280, 283-288, 291, 298, 

321, 381-383, 484, 491

DOS-3/Kosmos-557, xxv, 12, 283-288, 381, 

463, 484-496, 548

DOS-4/Salyut-4, 12, 283-288, 381, 496, 

537, 538, 551; see also Salyut-4

DOS-5/Salyut-6, 12, 283, 286, 381, 503-

505, 551, 554, 556; see also Salyut-6

DOS-5-2/Salyut-7, 405, 505, 510, 515; see 

also Salyut-7

DOS-6 space station concept, 283, 286, 

381, 556

DOS-7K (space station + ferry), 12, 410

DOS-A space station concept, 284-288

Douglas Aircraft Corporation, 54, 523

DS-P1-I satellite, 27

DS-P1-Yu satellite, 27

Dubov, Igor A., 159

Dudnikov, Vyacheslav N., 458

Dulnev, Lev I., 593

Dyadin, Georgiy, xvii

Dymshits, Veniamin E., 109-110

Dzhanibekov, Vladimir A., 509-511, 

517-519

Dzhezkazgan, 215

E

East Germany, see GDR

Ehricke, Krafft A., 611-612

Einstein, Albert, 280

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 42-43, 227

electrochemical generators (EKhG), 95, 

122-123, 127-132, 218, 221, 435-438, 

447, 570

Electron Microscope Factory, 461

Elektron satellites, 10

Elektropribor (NPO Elektropribor and factory), 26, 463

Elyasberg, Pavel Ye., 165

Energiya launch vehicle, xi, xxvii, 50, 51, 

71, 235, 594, 597-598, 606, 607, 608, 

618; origins of, 521-581; launches of, 

576-577, 597-598

Energiya-Buran reusable space transportation system, xix, xxv, 50, 597, 603, 608-

609; origins of, 521-581

Energiya Rocket-Space Corporation, see 

RKK Energiya

Energomash (KB/NPO Energomash), 34, 

523, 525, 526, 533, 574, 580, 606; see 

also OKB-456

EPAS, see Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

ESA (European Space Agency), 618

ESTEC (European Space Research and 

Technology Center), 608

EU-15 engine test stand, 141, 199, 418

EU-16 engine test stand, 141, 199, 418

European Space Agency, see ESA

Experimental-Design Bureau-1, see OKB-1

Explorer 1 satellite, 40, 584

Eydis, Arkadiy I., 22, 257, 265

F

F-1 rocket engine, 141

Factory No. 1 (at Kuybyshev), 17; see also 

Progress Factory

Factory No. 22 (at Fili), xix, 243

Factory No. 84 (at Khimki), 523-524

Factory No. 293 (at Khimki), 523-525

Factory No. 301 (at Khimki), 28; see also 

Lavochkin

Factory No. 586 (at Dnepropetrovsk), 25, 

77-78; see also Yuzhmash

Factory of Experimental Machine Building 

(ZEM), 244, 269, 290, 292, 337, 411, 

422, 427, 454, 533

Fadeyev, G. A., 195

Farmakovskiy, Sergey F., 463

Favorskiy, Viktor V., 8

Feoktistov, Konstantin P., xvi, xxvii, 85, 159, 

165, 166, 248-249, 254, 259, 263, 266, 

269, 284-285, 287, 305, 309, 311, 317, 

334, 335, 343, 346, 348, 357-359, 361, 

364, 378, 397-398, 403, 458, 469, 478, 

483, 487-488, 548, 593 

Fili, xix, 19, 107, 213, 243-244, 246, 248, 

255, 256, 262, 267, 279, 292, 295, 381, 

389, 551, 598

Fili branch of OKB-52, see OKB-52 Branch 

No. 1

Filin, Boris, 200, 419

631
Rockets and People: Moon Race

Filin, Vyacheslav M., xvi, xxvii, 269, 580

Filipchenko, Anatoliy V., 239, 249, 252

Finogeyev, Vladilen P., 118-119, 121, 176, 

180, 207, 217, 218, 317, 493, 529

Fletcher, James C., 555

Flight Control Center, see TsUP

Flight-Research Institute (LII), 468

Fokin, Yuriy V., 216

Foton spacecraft, 19

France, 276, 359, 508-510, 607, 618

Frolov, Sergey F., 397

Frolov, Yevgeniy A., 258-260, 397

Frumkin, Yuriy M., 85, 269, 458

Frumson, Viktor I., 602

Fruntz, Aleksandr S., 498

Frunze Motor Factory, 528

fuel cells, see electrochemical generators 

(EKhG)

G

Gagarin, Yuriy A., 156, 167, 504; and 

Vostok(-1) mission, ix, x, xix, xxi, xxvi, 

xxx, xlii-xliii, 2, 45, 47, 66, 168, 302, 

314, 317, 349, 450, 472, 519, 585; and 

death of, 540

Galin, Yevgeniy N., 220, 298

Gallay, Mark L., 470, 471-472, 482

Galunskiy, N. P., 424

Ganin, N. N., 195

Gansvindt, Igor N., 226, 518

Gasparyan, Arkadiy I., 235

Gaushus, Ernest V., 455-456, 498

Gaydukov, Lev, xvii

GDL (Gas Dynamics Laboratory), 574

GDR (German Democratic Republic or 

East Germany), 231

Gemini spacecraft/program, 43, 156, 437, 

585

Geofizika Design Bureau/Factory, 13, 28, 

33, 127, 221, 311, 461, 462; see also 

TsKB-589

Geondzhan, Georgiy G., 297

Georgadze, Mikhail P., 168

George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, 

43-45

geptil, see UDMH

German rocket technology, ix-x, xi, xii, 

xiii, 71, 227, 611; see also the V-2 and 

Wasserfall

German scientists, xiii, 39, 44-45, 51, 57, 

351, 585

Germany, xiii, xvii, xix, 351-353, 365, 407, 

414, 425, 525, 562, 563, 604, 618

Gestapo, 43

Gimbel, John, ix

GIPKh, see State Institute of Applied 

Chemistry

GIRD (Group for the Study of Reactive 

Motion), 561

GKOT, see State Committee for Defense 

Technology

GKRE, see State Committee for Radio 

Electronics

Gladkiy, V. F., 194, 195

glasnost, xi, xxi, xxix

Glazkov, A. G., 122

Glazkov, Yuriy N., 501

Glenn, John H., 585

Global Meteorological Space System 

(GMKS), 36

global missiles, 9, 61, 71; see also GR-1

Globalstar satellite system, 76-77

GLONASS, 616, 620

Glushko, Valentin P., xxix, xxx, 23, 25, 27, 

34, 48-49, 62, 81, 344, 390, 397, 473, 

500, 512, 549, 597-598; fight with 

Korolev over propellants and engines, 

xxiii, 48-50, 60-62, 66-72, 81, 82-83, 

89-90, 107, 147-148, 155, 176, 214, 

232, 266, 544, 562-566, 571, 574; relationship with Mishin, 74, 276, 522-523, 

525, 562, 565; appointment to head 

NPO Energiya and cancellation of N-1, 

xxv, 521-581, 595-596, 605-606; death 

of, 579-580, 594

Goberman, Iosif M., 319

GOGU (main operations control group), 

157, 159, 322, 326, 371, 375, 377, 393, 

474-475, 478, 479, 487, 503

Golovanov, Yaroslav K., xvi

Golubkina, Yekaterina S. “Katya” (Boris 

Chertok’s wife), 107-108, 351, 384, 389, 

391-392, 624

Golunskiy, Nikolay P., 209-210

Gorbachev, Igor O., 522, 562, 567

Gorbachev, Mikhail S., xi, 607

Gorbatenko, Konstantin F., 302, 314, 361, 

365, 370

Gorbatko, Viktor V., 239, 249, 252, 501

Gordeyev, Vladimir G., 463

Gorshkov, Leonid A., 593

Gosplan (State Planning Commission), 86, 

109, 137, 191, 272, 273, 414

Gossnab, 109

GR-1 global missile, 9, 459; see also global 

missiles

632
Index

Grabin, Vasiliy G., 337, 458

Great Britain, 276

Great Terror (Stalinist purges), xiii, xxiii, 

102, 523, 561

Grechko, Andrey A., 176-177

Grigoryev, Mikhail G., 561, 567

Grishin, Lev A., 69-70

Grissom, Virgil I. “Gus,” 55

Ground Forces, see Soviet Army

GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), 22, 

266

Grushin, Petr D., 390, 397, 399, 525

GSKB Spetsmash (State Union Design 

Bureau of Special Machine Building), 

35, 92

GTsP (State Central Firing Range), see 

Kapustin Yar

Gubanov, Boris I., xvi, xxvii

GUKOS (Main Directorate of Space Assets), 

8, 250, 266, 296; see also military space 

forces and TsUKOS

Gurovskiy, Nikolay N., 327

Guskov, Gennadiy Ya., 456, 570

Gutskov, Boris Ye., 419

H

H-1 rocket engine, 42

Hamilton, William R., 465

Harford, James, xvi

Heavy Interplanetary Ship, see TMK

Hendrickx, Bart, xviii

Hero of Socialist Labor, xxvi, 18, 19, 25, 29, 

31, 33, 150, 167-169, 390, 538

Hitler, Adolf, 48, 285

Houston, xxxi, 43, 155, 262

Hubble Space Telescope, 589, 613-614

human lunar projects, see N1-L3 program, 

L1 program, UR-700 program, LK-1 

program

Hungary, 280

Huntsville, 39, 42-43

Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (novel), 591

I

IBM company, 51, 54

Igla rendezvous system, 122, 129, 160, 163, 

225, 249-251, 257, 297, 300, 304, 321, 

323-326, 331, 358, 375, 469, 475-477, 

481, 483, 497-502, 506, 509-510, 512-

513, 517, 570

IKI, see Institute of Space Research

Il-2 fighter-bomber, 166

Il-18 airplane, 293, 306, 322, 350, 370, 478

Ilin, Yu. P., 195

India, 614, 621

Innelaur, Viktor, 364

Institute Nordhausen, 67

Institute of Applied Mathematics (IPM), 

126, 536

Institute of Atomic Energy, 60

Institute of Machine Science, 571

Institute of Military Acceptance, 36-37

Institute of Space Research (IKI), 226-227, 

377-378

Institute Rabe, xvii

Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical 

Council on Space Research, see 

MNTS-KI

International Space Station (ISS), x, xxiv, 

xxv, 57, 214-215, 241-242, 248, 323, 

381, 407, 578, 600-601, 609, 613, 614, 

621

Iosifyan, Andronik G., 33, 82, 119, 149-

152, 205, 220, 234-236, 279, 418, 

429-430, 436, 439, 456, 461, 473, 493, 

501, 539

IP-1 tracking station, 441

IPM, see Institute of Applied Mathematics

Iraq, 592, 594

Iridium satellite system, 76

IS (Satellite Destroyer), 20, 27, 276

Isaakyan, Aleksandr V., 299

Isanin, Nikolay N., 223

Isayev, Aleksey M., xxv, xxvii, 30, 34, 62, 89, 

91, 147, 247, 473, 522, 561-569; and 

death of, 384-387, 389-392, 396

Isayeva, Alevtina D., 384

Ishlinskiy, Aleksandr Yu., 463

ISS, see International Space Station

Istomin, Lev A., 435

Italy, 280

Ivanchenkov, Aleksandr S., 312, 509

Ivannikov, A. N., 195

Ivanov, M. N., 580

Ivanovskiy, Oleg G., xxvii

Iyevlev, Vitaliy M., 59

Izvestiya (newspaper), xi, xii

J

J-2 rocket engine, 53

Japan, 164, 241, 276, 614

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 43

Johnson, Lyndon B., 42, 46, 52-53, 66

Jupiter (planet), 73, 242, 586, 587, 590, 

614

Jupiter C missile, 40, 584

633
Rockets and People: Moon Race

K

Kaktus gamma-ray altimeter, 298

Kalashnikov, Viktor A., 13, 117, 120, 148, 

173, 195, 255, 331, 333, 410, 455, 456, 

495, 534

Kalinin, Aleksey F., 456

Kaliningrad, 291, 390, 396, 549; see also 

Podlipki

Kalmykov, Valeriy D., 82-85, 198

Kalygin, Anatoliy P., 533

Kamanin, Nikolay P., xvi, xxx, 166, 188, 

189, 227, 304, 362, 363, 378, 398, 468-

472, 478, 480

Kamchatka, 326, 371

Kapustin Yar, 35, 70, 250-251, 302, 316, 

388, 450

Karas, Andrey G., 230, 266, 285, 308, 316, 

323, 324, 330, 397, 469, 473, 474, 478, 

480, 481, 553

Karashtin, Vladimir, M., 580

Kardashev, Nikolay S., 608

Karev, A. T., 188

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 

568

Karmishin, Aleksandr V., 200-201

Karpov, Yuriy S., 117, 173, 255, 293, 302, 

455-456, 460

Kartukov, Ivan I., 298, 

Kasho, Aleksandr S., 194

Kaskad attitude-control system, 485

Katkov, Georgiy F., 256, 301

Kazakhstan, 215, 348, 353, 354

Kazakov, Vasiliy A., 397, 399

Kazan, 67, 471, 534, 562-563

KB Energomash, see Energomash

KB Geofizika, see Geofizika Design Bureau/

Factory

KB Khimavtomatiki, 50, 574

KB Khimmash, 34, 79, 386; see also OKB-2

KB Lavochkin, 9-10, 28-29; see also NPO 

Lavochkin

KB Salyut, 484; see also OKB-23

KB Yuzhnoye, 24-27, 492; see also 

OKB-586

KDU (correcting engine unit), 164

Keldysh, Mstislav V., 47, 54, 59, 60, 61, 

64, 72, 77, 88-90, 99, 104, 106-108, 

112-114, 125-127, 129-132, 135-139, 

172, 177, 180, 185, 190-193, 216-217, 

220-222, 224-225, 232, 252-254, 264, 

266, 271-274, 284, 286, 287, 306-307, 

309, 317-318, 340, 357-359, 365-367, 

377, 378, 396-403, 408, 417, 462, 468, 

473-474, 478, 480, 523, 526, 531-532, 

536, 549, 559, 572, 597, 606

Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, 

see M. V. Keldysh Institute of Applied 

Mathematics

Kemurdzhian, Aleksandr L., 594

Kennedy, John F., x, xxi, 44, 46, 47, 48, 52, 

66, 434, 586

Kennedy Space Center, 53, 54, 588

Kerimov, Kerim A., xvi, xxvii, 160-161, 

163-164, 166, 186, 188, 189, 190, 220, 

249-250, 266, 271, 293, 296, 298-299, 

305, 308, 309, 323-325, 329, 340-342, 

344-346, 348, 359, 362, 364, 365, 369, 

370, 392, 394-395, 478, 480

KGB (Committee for State Security), 468, 

492

Kharchev, Vasiliy I., 231

Khariton, Yuliy B., 368

Kharkov, 26, 107, 317, 428-434

Khaspekov, Viktor G., 142, 527

Khazanov, Boris A., 335

Khazanov, Isaak B., 255, 291, 333, 335, 

336, 337, 411, 454, 458

Khimki, 28, 60, 67, 112, 389, 523, 534, 

574, 575

Khitrik, Mikhail S., 121-122, 176, 180-181, 

389, 422, 429, 493

Khodakov, Vladimir N., 377

Khodarev, Yuliy A., 378

Khomyakov, Mikhail S., 194, 195, 310-311, 

533, 580

Khorunov, Vyacheslav P., 456

Khrabrovitskiy, Daniil Ya., 389, 522, 

559-569

Khrunichev Factory, see M. V. Khrunichev 

Factory

Khrunov, Yevgeniy V., 186, 188, 482

Khrushchev, Nikita S., xli, xliii, 22, 47, 63, 

66, 69, 71, 73, 77, 78, 81, 86, 90, 106, 

107, 109-110, 113-114, 125, 133-135, 

138-139, 155, 176, 236-237, 239, 275, 

434, 572 

Khrushchev, Sergey N., xvi, xxvii

Khrustalev, Vladimir A., 105, 456, 461-462, 

473

Khudyakov, Sergey A., 436

Khvastunov, Andrey G., 294, 340-341, 379

Kiev, 107, 127, 237, 293, 349, 454, 463

Kievpribor Factory, 107, 454

KIK, see Command and Measurement 

Complex

634
Index

Kirilenko, Andrey P., 134, 366

Kirill, Metropolitan, 613

Kirillov, Anatoliy S., 203, 205, 208, 229, 

232, 296, 369, 416-417, 419, 431, 434, 

439, 473

Kirlyuk, Georgiy A., 344

Kislovodsk, 253, 266, 411

Kisunko, Grigoriy V., xxvii, 84

Kizim, Leonid D., 513-514

Klyucharev, Viktor M., 154, 188, 193, 195, 

225, 255, 291, 292, 336, 411, 416, 533, 

554

Knyazev, Dmitriy A., 255, 461

Koktebel, 386, 389

Kolodin, Peter I., xxiv, 314, 340, 363, 367

Kolos generator, 299

Kolyako, Yakov P., 93, 195, 533, 602

Komarov, Vladimir M., xix, xlii, 11, 140, 

156, 167, 170, 393, 398, 467, 468, 482, 

564

Komarova, Larisa I., 456, 464

Komissarov, Boris A., 323, 434, 531, 532, 

540, 544, 551-552

Komissarov, Oleg D., 393, 443

Kommunar Factory, 428, 429

Konopatov, Aleksandr D., 50, 473, 574, 576 

KONRID system, 142-143

Kontakt rendezvous radar system, 122, 127, 

128, 129, 304, 307, 375, 570

KORD (Engine Operation Monitoring) 

system, xxiii, 94, 111-112, 120, 142, 

144, 145-149, 206-209, 217, 220, 230, 

292, 424, 426, 433, 442, 446, 527

Korolev (city), xix; see also Kaliningrad and 

Podlipki

Korolev, Sergey P., x-xii, xvi, xviii-xx, xxii, 

xxv, xxvii, xxviii, xli, xliii, 3-4, 13, 15, 

17, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 45, 47, 49, 

52, 57, 153, 154, 166, 186, 190, 198, 

200, 203, 220, 227, 228, 232, 234, 243, 

246, 269, 275, 276, 281, 303, 304, 307, 

310, 344, 349, 351, 357, 375, 398, 403, 

409, 410, 412, 425, 437, 452-455, 458-

460, 463, 466, 471, 473, 479, 481, 493, 

504, 522, 524, 526, 534, 535, 537, 538, 

541, 557, 558, 560, 561, 562, 565, 567, 

571, 578-579, 581, 593, 596, 604; and 

N-1 rocket and human lunar program, 

53-54, 59-99, 101-115, 118, 120, 121, 

125, 126, 129, 131, 140, 141, 142, 145, 

147, 150, 155, 176, 184, 193, 209, 214, 

222, 545; and fight with Glushko over 

propellants and engines, xxiii, 48-50, 

60-62, 66-72, 81, 82-83, 88-90, 107, 

147-148, 155, 176, 214, 232, 266, 544, 

559, 562-566, 568, 571, 572, 574, 605; 

and personal life, 352-353; and Mars 

expeditions, 224, 594; and last days and 

death of, xlii, 4, 135, 256, 261, 390, 

411, 569

Koroleva, Nataliya S., 350, 351, 352

Koroleva, Nina I., 147

Korund closed-loop communications system, 

16

Korzhenevskaya, V. N. 194

Korzhenevskiy, Eduard I., 194, 500

Kosberg, Semyon A., 62, 147

Kosmos-2 launch vehicle, 26-27

Kosmos-186/188 mission, 11, 156, 468

Kosmos-212/213 mission, 11, 156-166, 169, 

468

Kosmos-238 mission, 11, 468

Kosmos-300, 239

Kosmos-379, 269, 486

Kosmos-398, 486

Kosmos-496, 404

Kosmos-557, xxv, 12, 491

Kosmos-573, 404

Kosmos-670, 506

Kosmos-772, 506

Kosmos-869, 506

Kosmos-1001, 506

Kosmos-1074, 506

Kostin, Petr Timofeyevich, 316

Kosyakov, Viktor V., 195, 222

Kosygin, Aleksey N., 133, 177, 272, 319, 

334, 359, 390

Kovalenok, Vladimir V., 501, 518

Kovtunenko, Vyacheslav N., 27, 491-492

Kozhevnikova, Nina I., 477, 498

Kozlov, Dmitriy I., 15, 17-18, 104, 139, 

193, 195, 196, 215, 269, 310, 348, 360, 

420, 429, 445, 455, 464, 529, 535

Krasavtsev, Vyacheslav G., 253

Krasnoyarsk, 15, 335

Krasnoyarsk-26, 10, 15

Krasnoyarsk Machine Building Factory, 27

Kravets, Vadim G., 160, 511

Krayniy airfield, 341, 350 

Krayushkin, Mikhail V., 173, 265, 456, 

459-460

Krechet TV system, 298

Kremlin, 66, 77, 168, 188, 190, 221, 240, 

251, 276, 340, 343, 366-367, 439, 453, 

504, 529, 560, 606

635
Rockets and People: Moon Race

“Kremlin line,” 110, 125, 173, 213, 247, 

253, 385-386, 473, 521, 522, 539

Kremlin Palace of Congresses (Great 

Kremlin Palace), 188, 367, 482

Kremlin Wall, 396

Krichevskiy, Vladimir G., 164

Kriss, Petr Zh., 122

Kristall module, 599

Krutovskikh, Sergey A., 13, 456

Krylov, Nikolay I., 197, 198, 233, 234, 370, 

567

Kryukov, Sergey S., xxvii, 93, 172, 352; and 

design and work on N-1, 60, 72, 74, 

93-94, 136, 139, 195, 220, 259, 603; 

and work at NPO Lavochkin, 29, 344, 

345, 347

KTDU (correcting braking engine unit), 

165, 384

Kubasov, Valeriy N., xxiv, 239, 249, 252, 

593; and planned Soyuz-11 mission, 314, 

340, 360-363, 364, 367, 368

Kudryavtsev, Vadim V., 574

Kunavin, Yuriy N., 120, 148, 446

Kuntsevo, 416

Kupriyanchik, Petr N., 117, 218, 456

Kurchatov, Igor V., 59-61, 368, 576

Kurkova, Serafina P., 149

Kurs rendezvous radar, 499-500, 513

Kurushin, Aleksandr A., 198, 296, 308, 310, 

344, 346, 347, 435, 440, 473

Kuryer missile, 178

Kutakhov, Pavel S., 394-395

Kuybyshev, xxiii, 9-10, 15, 17, 71-72, 74, 

94, 112, 139, 142, 143, 148, 198, 201, 

202, 253, 266, 268, 269, 299, 317, 348, 

420, 427, 430, 432, 445, 527, 528, 535, 

604; see also Samara

Kuznetsov, Nikolay D., xxiii, 61, 67, 71, 

73-74, 81, 90, 91, 111, 119, 120, 141-

143, 145, 147-148, 175, 176, 177, 198, 

202, 209, 230-232, 234, 236, 250, 258, 

264, 266, 273-274, 309, 390, 418, 426, 

432, 433, 444, 445, 527-529, 531, 565, 

571, 579, 604-605

Kuznetsov, Viktor I., 91, 124-125, 257, 264, 

297, 456, 461-465, 525, 540, 570, 571

Kvant module, 598, 599

Kvant-2 module, 599

L

L1 circumlunar spacecraft/project, see 

7K-L1 and Zond circumlunar program

L3 human lunar landing project/spacecraft, 

xxii, xliii, xliv, 1, 3-7, 12, 14, 15, 22, 

27, 28, 32, 37, 39, 56, 68, 101, 455, 

493; human lunar landing spacecraft, 

early conceptions of, 76, 80-81, 84-99; 

different mission profiles, 105, 113-115; 

control systems for, 105, 113, 118-132; 

development in late 1960s, 136-141, 

154-155, 171-180, 185-186, 189-193, 

199-200, 213, 218, 220, 221, 224, 225, 

228, 231, 233; development in the early 

1970s, 254, 255-274, 283, 290, 292-

293, 304, 307-309, 317-318, 357-358, 

381-382, 409-410, 415, 420, 422, 423, 

427-429, 433, 435-439; crews for, 227; 

and cancellation of, 521-557, 569-579; 

legacy of, 602-606

L3M human lunar landing project/spacecraft, 258-260, 263, 264, 272, 274, 315, 

535, 545, 598, 606

L3S payload for N-1, 218, 221-222, 228

Labutin, Yuriy M., 269

Lake Baikal, 125

Lapygin, Vladimir L., 427-428, 435, 440, 

445

Lastochka airfield (at Tyuratam), see Dalniy 

airfield

Lavochkin, Semyon A., 262

Lavochkin Factory, 28-29, 113

Lavrov, Ilya V., 247, 374-375, 403

Lavrov, Kirill, 521, 522, 562, 567

Lavrov, Svyastoslav S., 118

Lazarev, Vasiliy G., 404

Lebedev, Yevgeniy F., 235, 339

Legostayev, Viktor P., 117, 121, 159-160, 

162, 163, 247, 255, 304, 331, 339-340, 

358, 359, 456, 461, 464, 494, 495, 506, 

508, 510, 513, 520, 534

Lenin, Vladimir I., 84, 215, 236, 257, 259, 

262, 560

Lenin Prize, 390

Leningrad, 49, 293, 332, 389, 463, 464

Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, 165, 183, 

483

Leninsk, 21, 229, 310, 348, 350, 353, 539

Leonov, Aleksey A., xxiv, xliii, 169, 188, 

479; and Voskhod-2 mission, 472, 479-

480; and planned Soyuz-11 mission, 314, 

340, 354, 362, 363, 364, 366-368, 395

Levanevskiy, Sigizmund A., 313, 540

Levanevskiy, Yuzef A., 313

Levashev, Ye. V., 194

Leventsov, A. V., 518

636
Index

Levin, Valerian R., 148

Levitan, Yuriy B., 210, 457

Ley, Willy, 40

Leypunskiy, Aleksandr I., 59

Li-2 airplane, 523

Library of Congress (U.S.), 624

Lidorenko, Nikolay S., 122, 131, 218, 418, 

436, 439, 456, 570

LII, see Flight-Research Institute

Likhushin, Valentin Ya., 264, 443, 446

Lindbergh, Charles, 282

liquid-hydrogen–liquid-oxygen rocket 

engines, xxiii, 44, 48-50, 53, 60, 62-64, 

67-68, 71, 81, 83, 85, 89, 90, 150, 192, 

225, 257-258, 261, 272, 275, 544-546, 

550, 554, 574-576, 579, 596

Lira antisatellite target, 27

Lisovich, Izrael M., 112

Lisunov, Boris P., 523

“Little Civil War,” 222-223, 318-319

Litvinov, Viktor Ya., 171-173, 195, 217, 

220, 225, 271, 529, 540

LK (Lunar Vehicle), 13, 27, 76, 88-89, 

94-98, 105, 109, 121, 125, 126, 127-

130, 143, 174, 175, 181, 199-200, 221, 

228, 257, 261-262, 269-270, 306-309, 

410, 486

LK-1 spacecraft/program, 12

LK-700 human lunar lander, 213

Lobanov, Nikolay A., 473

Lobanova, Sofya S., 234

LOK (Lunar Orbital Vehicle), 13, 88, 94, 

95, 96-98, 105, 121, 125, 127-128, 

174-175, 199, 218, 221, 228, 261, 265, 

269, 304, 306-307, 309, 410, 420, 423, 

427-429, 433, 435-439

Long-Duration Orbital Station, see DOS

Lotos telemetry processing system, 442

Low, George W., 555

Lucid, Shannon W., 600

Lukyashko, A. V., 350

Luna robotic program/spacecraft, xix, 13

Luna (Ye-6) second-generation probes, xliii, 

82, 112-113, 118

Luna third-generation probes, see Ye-8 and 

Ye-8-5

Luna-3 probe, 460

Luna-4 probe, 83

Luna-15 probe, 238

Luna-16 probe, 280

lunar base (permanent) proposals, 191-192, 

281, 525, 531, 535, 542-547, 550, 553, 

556, 571, 573, 577, 588-589, 592, 595-

598, 612, 615, 620, 621

Lunar Council, 194, 232, 573

Lunar Module (Apollo), 56

Lunokhod, 28, 281; see also Ye-8

Lygin, Yuriy I., 427

Lysenko, Trofim D., 113-114

Lyulka, Arkhip M., 67, 71, 89, 119, 150-

151, 390, 576

M

M-220 computer, 488

Magnitogorsk, 389, 561

Main Directorate of the Hydrometeorological Service, 33

Main Intelligence Directorate, see GRU

Makarov, Aleksandr A., 25

Makarov, Oleg G., 404

Makeyev, Viktor P., 29-31, 81-82, 223-224, 

390-391

Maksimov, Aleksandr A., 344, 346, 347, 

348

Maksimov, Gleb Yu., 458, 593

Malakhit cruise missile, 24

Malinovskiy, Rodion Ya., 133

Malyshev, Vyacheslav A., 368

Malyshev, Yuriy V., 507

Malyugin, O. I., 195

manned lunar projects, see N1-L3 program, 

L1 program, UR-700 program, LK-1 

program

MAP, see Ministry of the Aviation Industry

Marooned (book and movie), 567-568

Mars, xix, 9, 13, 14, 28-29, 64, 72-73, 76, 

101, 112, 113, 115, 118, 189, 191, 

192-193, 213-214, 216, 222-226, 232, 

242, 258, 259, 271-273, 339, 344-347, 

375-376, 434, 457, 531-532, 543, 547, 

556, 580, 586-595, 612, 620-623

Mars spacecraft/programs (automated), 9, 

13, 28-29, 64, 101, 112, 113, 115, 118, 

189, 191, 216, 232, 271, 339, 344-347, 

375-376, 434, 457, 547, 586, 587

Mars spacecraft/programs (human), 14, 

72-73, 76, 192-193, 213-214, 222-226, 

242, 258, 259, 272-273, 531-532, 543, 

547, 556, 588-595, 620-623

Mars-1 robotic mission, 339

Mars-2/3 robotic missions, 339, 344-347, 

375-376

Mars-75 proposal, 410

Mars-N proposals, 259

637
Rockets and People: Moon Race

Marshall Space Flight Center, see George C. 

Marshall Space Flight Center

Marx, Karl, 240, 248

Mashinoapparat Factory, 256, 301, 302

Mathematics Institute (Kiev), 463

McNamara, Robert S., 5

Medaris, John B., 40

media, see news media

Medvedev, Boris V., 462

Medvedeva, Alla K., 114

MEI (Moscow Power Institute), see OKB 

MEI

Meleshin, Petr I., 195

Melnikov, Mikhail V., 60, 72, 131-132, 194, 

234, 236, 258, 384, 410, 422, 437, 528, 

534, 571, 576, 594

Mercury (NASA program/spacecraft), 585

Mercury (planet), 586, 590, 612

Meshcheryakov, Ivan V., 8, 325

Meshcheryakov, Vladimir I., 298

Meteor weather satellite/program, 33, 268, 

271

Meteor-2 weather satellite/program, 33, 36

Meteor-3 weather satellite/program, 33, 36

Meyerovich, Yevgeniy A., 149

Miass, 29, 224

Mick, Christoph, xviii

Mikoyan, Anastas I., 134

military space forces (Russian/Soviet), xvi, 8, 

36, 92, 250, 266, 296; see also TsUKOS 

and GUKOS

Military Unit 32103, see Command and 

Measurement Complex

Military-Industrial Commission (VPK), 3-4, 

22, 63, 69, 77, 78, 81-83, 90-92, 123, 

134-135, 137, 145, 148, 152, 172, 181, 

184-186, 198, 221, 236, 239, 240, 254, 

255, 261, 269, 273, 284, 286, 287, 290, 

314, 334, 340, 357, 359, 363, 367, 380, 

389, 405, 431, 452-453, 466, 468, 500, 

523, 528, 529, 539, 540, 551-552, 559, 

567, 570, 575, 594, 596, 607-608, 618

military-industrial complex (Soviet), xi, xiv, 

1-8, 35-37, 415, 595, 609-610

Ministry of Armaments, 414

Ministry of Defense, 3, 16, 19, 33, 34, 35, 

36, 63, 65, 72, 77, 81, 82, 92, 134, 138, 

176, 244, 246, 262, 266, 269, 285, 288, 

397, 451, 474, 484, 493, 500, 504, 518, 

549, 552, 553, 557, 608

Ministry of Defense Space Monitoring 

Service, 394, 406, 516, 518

Ministry of Finance, 86, 272-273

Ministry of General Machine Building 

(MOM or Minobshchemash), 3, 23, 28, 

34, 135, 171, 179, 180, 190, 217, 240, 

266, 268, 269, 287, 288, 290, 416, 453, 

500, 501, 515, 550, 595; dissolution of, 

609

Ministry of Health, 347, 361

Ministry of Heavy Machine Building, 3

Ministry of Internal Affairs, 366

Ministry of Medium Machine Building 

(MSM or Minsredmash), 3, 35, 127, 

130-131, 273, 438, 570, 594

Ministry of the Aviation Industry (MAP), 3, 

28, 179, 198, 265, 286, 433, 468, 552

Ministry of the Communications 

Equipment Industry (MPSS), 3

Ministry of the Defense Industry (MOP), 3, 

31, 127, 179, 265, 292

Ministry of the Electrical Engineering 

Industry, 3

Ministry of the Electronics Industry, 3, 423

Ministry of the Radio (Engineering) 

Industry (MRP), 3

Minsk Automobile Factory, 32

Minsredmash, see Ministry of Medium 

Machine Building

Minuteman ICBMs, 7, 416

Mir automatic recording unit, 393, 395-

397, 399-400

Mir space station, x, xix, xxiv, 23, 214, 245, 

323-324, 381, 405, 406-407, 484, 542, 

577, 578, 579, 598-601, 608, 609, 614

MIRV (multiple independently targetable 

reentry vehicles), 6, 186

Mishin, Vasiliy P., xvi, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxvii, 

4, 15, 29, 60-61, 74, 80, 81, 85, 87, 99, 

103, 110-111, 118, 131, 136, 139, 141-

143, 147-148, 154, 159-161, 163-164, 

166-169, 172-176, 177, 180, 184, 186, 

188, 195, 205, 258-259, 263-264, 274, 

276, 291, 304-308, 315-318, 369, 383, 

387-389, 390, 392, 404, 437, 454, 459, 

469, 471, 472-473, 478, 480, 484, 487, 

494, 528, 531, 535, 537, 541, 556, 562, 

566, 567, 568-569, 572, 595, 603, 605; 

and appointment as chief designer, 135, 

455; and first N-1 launch, 189-209; and 

second and third N-1 launches, 213, 

217-228, 231-234, 238-239; and fourth 

N-1 launch, 409, 410, 415-417; and 

origins of DOS/Salyut program, 246-

250, 253, 256, 266-269, 279, 283-284, 

287-291, 308-311, 323-329, 333-334, 

638
Index

339-340, 344, 357, 358, 361-363, 365, 

367, 374, 376, 378-380, 397-399, 401, 

405; and dismissal from TsKBEM, xxv, 

521-522, 525-526; and poor relationship 

with Glushko, 49, 68-70, 565, 571

Mishuk, Mikhail N., 397, 399, 402

missile defense systems, see antimissile 

defense forces

Mission Control Center, see TsUP

MK-700M Mars project, 226

MKBS (Multipurpose Space Base/Station), 

246, 248, 273, 280, 281, 283-290, 309, 

311, 347, 382-383, 410, 531, 554

Mnatsakanyan, Armen S., 108, 225, 249, 

297, 326, 369, 375, 456, 477, 497-501, 

513, 570

MNTS-KI (Interdepartmental ScientificTechnical Council on Space Research), 

125-126

Moiseyev, Yevgeniy G., 203, 229, 377, 435, 

436, 439-440

MOK (Multipurpose Orbital Complex), 

273, 288, 382-383, 410

Molniya (8K78) launch vehicle, 9, 64, 82

Molniya-1 communications satellite, xix, 10, 

15, 16, 101, 140, 215

Molniya-2 communications satellite, 16, 36

Molniya-3 communications satellite, 16, 36

Molniya communications satellites, 153, 

268, 271, 347, 376, 461, 495, 520, 577, 

618

MOM, see Ministry of General Machine 

Building

Moon, x, xii, xix, xxi, xxii, xli, xlii, xliii, 

9-10, 12, 13, 14, 22, 28, 29, 40, 42, 44, 

45, 46-48, 49, 50, 53, 55-57, 64-66, 72, 

73, 76, 80, 82-85, 87-91, 93, 96-98, 

105-106, 108, 109, 112-115, 121, 129-

130, 139-140, 169, 173-177, 181-186, 

189, 191-193, 215-216, 218, 221-222, 

224, 227, 231, 232, 236, 238, 239, 242, 

243, 254, 257-258, 260-268, 271, 272, 

274, 275, 280-282, 288, 304, 347, 382, 

408, 416, 423, 427, 429-430, 435-436, 

457, 484, 525, 531-532, 535-537, 539-

547, 550-551, 553-554, 565, 569-570, 

572, 577-579, 585-587, 590, 592-596, 

598, 603-604, 606, 608, 615, 619, 620-

621, 623

Moon programs (human), see separate 

human lunar projects such as N1-L3, 

L1/Zond, and LK-1

Mordvinov, I. A., 195

Morgulev, Aleksandr S., 497-498

Morozov, K. K., 424

Morozov, Vladimir V., 427-428

Moscow Higher Technical School, see 

Bauman Moscow Higher Technical 

School

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 

494

Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology 

(MIT), 9, 31-33, 178-179

Moscow Physics and Technology Institute 

(MFTI), 462, 465, 506

Moscow Power (Engineering) Institute 

(MEI), 523

Mosfilm, 559, 561, 567

Mozzhorin, Yuriy A., xvi, xxviii, 86-87, 114, 

136-140, 220, 226, 284, 380, 424, 504, 

531-533, 548

MPSS, see Ministry of the Communications 

Equipment Industry

MR UR-100 ICBM, 26

MRP, see Ministry of the Radio 

(Engineering) Industry

Mrykin, Aleksandr G., 183, 419, 451

MSM, see Ministry of Medium Machine 

Building

Musk, Elon, 612

MV (Mars-Venus) program, see Mars and 

Venera separately

M. V. Frunze Motor Factory, see Frunze 

Motor Factory

M. V. Keldysh Institute of Applied 

Mathematics (IPM), 126, 536

M. V. Khrunichev Factory (ZIKh), 19-20, 

238, 243-245, 255, 262, 266, 267, 269, 

283-284, 288, 290, 292, 308, 381, 484, 

496, 551, 554, 598, 599

M. V. Lomonosov Gold Medal, 601

MVTU, see Bauman Moscow Higher 

Technical School

Myasishchev, Vladimir M., 19, 107, 243, 

523

Mytishchi, 386

N

N-1 heavy-lift launch vehicle, xix, xxii-xxv, 

xxvii, xliii, xliv, 1, 3-7, 12-13, 14, 15, 

18, 21, 22, 27, 87, 197, 204, 211, 212, 

218, 219, 228, 421, 455, 493; origins of, 

59-99; contractors for, 90-91; development of engines for, 59-72, 73-74, 75, 

78-80, 82-83, 89-90, 93-94, 103-104, 

109, 110-112, 141-144, 155, 236, 264, 

639
Rockets and People: Moon Race

565-566; design changes in 1964-65, 

101-111, 113-115; development of 

control systems for, 117-132, 145-152; 

development in 1966-69 period, 136-

141, 154, 171-180, 185, 186, 189-193, 

200-202, 564-565; preparations for first 

launch of, 171-172, 186; first launch of 

(no. 3L), 139, 171, 188, 193-213, 217, 

219-220, 227, 243, 420-421, 425, 428, 

444; second launch of (no. 5L), 206, 

209, 212, 217-222, 225-236, 243, 272, 

388, 420, 425, 428, 446; future plans 

in 1969, 222-227; foreign visit to N-1 

launch pads, 237; and use for launching 

large space station, 246, 290, 347, 383; 

work in the early 1970s, 255-274, 279, 

283, 290, 292-293, 303, 304, 307-309, 

311, 317-318, 355, 381-383, 395; use 

for launching Mars missions, 14, 72-73, 

76, 113, 115, 191-193, 222-227, 258, 

272-273, 594; and third launch of (no. 

6L), 218, 220-221, 288-289, 300, 317, 

339, 376, 377, 380, 387-389, 392, 

396, 398, 408, 420-421, 428, 506; and 

fourth launch of (no. 7L), 221, 317, 408, 

409-447, 507, 541-542, 602-603; and 

planned fifth launch of (no. 8L), 432-

433, 447, 527-529, 531-532, 535, 539; 

and cancellation of, 521-557, 569-579; 

legacy of, 596, 602-606; costs of, xxii, 

528, 545, 573

N-1M heavy-lift launch vehicle, 594-595

N-11 rocket, 75, 77, 222, 225

Nadiradze, Aleksandr D., 9, 26, 29, 31-33, 

172, 177-180, 186, 224, 276, 318

Napoleon, 560

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration), x, xxi, xxiii, xxxi, 42-46, 

52, 57, 68, 172, 239, 240, 241, 254, 

294, 536, 552, 555, 577, 586, 588, 593, 

614, 615

National Advisory Committee for 

Aeronautics (NACA), 42-43

National Aeronautics and Space Act, 42

National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration, see NASA

National Aeronautics and Space Council, 46

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization), 26, 32, 592, 604, 614, 

621

Nauka publishing house, 465

Navstar GPS, 615

Navy, see Soviet Navy

Nazarov, A. A., 188

Nazis, xiii, 43, 231-232

N. E. Bauman Moscow State Technical 

University, see Moscow Higher Technical 

School (MVTU)

Nedelin, Mitrofan I., 106, 561

Nekrasov, Nikolay A., 526

Netherlands, 608

Nevzorov, Boris G., 303-304, 466, 498

news media, xi, xxi, xli, xliii, 29, 47, 153, 

163, 185-186, 210, 215-216, 251, 252, 

274, 314, 353, 354, 374, 390-391, 411, 

482, 496, 560, 622; see also individual 

newspapers and journals

Nezdyur, Leonid A., 498

NII IT (Scientific-Research Institute of 

Measurement Technology), 393, 442

NII-1 institute (later MIT), 31; see also 

Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology

NII-1 institute (later Keldysh Research 

Center), 59-61, 443, 458, 462

NII-4 institute, 92, 165, 475

NII-10 institute, 198

NII-88 institute, xi, xix, xlii, 24, 25, 28, 79, 

86, 87, 92, 114, 171, 200-201

NII-229 institute (Novostroyka), 75, 79-80, 

109, 141, 199, 418, 528

NII-380 institute, 33, 128

NII-627 institute, 33; see also VNIIEM

NII-648 institute, 34, 35, 163, 460; see also 

NIITP

NII-695 institute, 128-129

NII-885 institute, 13, 28, 34, 91, 119, 128, 

130, 423, 488

NII-944 institute, 28, 91, 125

NIIAP (Scientific-Research Institute of 

Automatics and Instrument Building), 

13, 32, 34-35, 91, 118-119, 121, 123-

128, 149, 151, 178, 180, 200, 202, 

206-208, 218, 221, 228, 238, 263, 286, 

428, 493

NIIERAT (Scientific-Research Institute for 

the Operation and Repair of Aviation 

Technology), 399, 402

NIIkhimmash, see NII-229

NIIKP (Scientific-Research Institute of 

Space Instrumentation Building), 514

NIIP-5 launch range, 350, 353, 416, 

539; see also Tyuratam and Baykonur 

Cosmodrome

NIITP (Scientific-Research Institute of 

Precision Instruments), 34, 497-501, 

549

640
Index

NIITP (Scientific-Research Institute of 

Thermal Processes), 443; see also NII-1 

(later Keldysh Center)

NIItransmash (Scientific-Research Institute 

of Transport Machine Building), 

593-594

NIIYaF (Scientific-Research Institute of 

Nuclear Physics), 21

Nikiforenko, V. I., 119

Nikita Khrushchev: Crises and Rockets (book), 

572

Nikitin, Boris V., 443, 456

Nikolayev, Andriyan G., 188, 295, 376

NIP (ground tracking stations), 35-36, 326, 

380

NIP-3 ground tracking station, 475-476, 

488

NIP-13 ground tracking station, 372

NIP-15 ground tracking station, 160, 324, 

393, 475, 488-489, 504

NIP-16 ground tracking station, 156, 325, 

376, 379, 380, 393, 475, 488, 490-491, 

504

NIP-23 ground tracking station, 354

NITsEVT (Scientific-Research Center of 

Electronic Computer Technology), 13, 

129, 245, 279

NK-9 rocket engine, 61, 71, 74

NK-15 rocket engine, 73-74, 93-94, 141, 

199

NK-15V rocket engine, 94, 199

NK-19 rocket engine, 199

Noordwijk, 608

North American Aviation (company), 54

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, see 

NATO

Noskin, German V., 456

Novikov, Yulian V., 299

Novodevichye Cemetery, 387, 391, 580

Novosibirsk, 162, 246

Novosti kosmonavtiki (journal), xviii

Novostroyka, see NII-229 institute

NPO Elas, 28

NPO Elektropribor, see Elektropribor

NPO Energiya, xxv, 8, 50, 71, 422, 458, 

503, 517, 533, 534, 568, 594, 596, 597, 

605, 607, 608; formation of, 521-559, 

572, 574; number of personnel at, 551, 

556; see also RKK Energiya

NPO Energomash, see Energomash

NPO Geofizika, see Geofizika Design 

Bureau/Factory

NPO Lavochkin, 28-29; see also KB 

Lavochkin and Lavochkin Factory

NPO Mashinostroyeniya, 19; see also 

OKB-52

NPO Prikladnoy mekhaniki (NPO PM), 

15-16; see also OKB-10

nuclear energy, 14, 59-61, 123, 131-132, 

280, 410, 528, 576, 591-596, 611, 

623-624

nuclear industry, 35, 37, 59-60, 61, 123, 

131

nuclear physicists/scientists, 10, 15, 131, 

223, 260, 273, 415, 438, 439

nuclear rocket engines, 14, 59-64, 67, 81, 

131, 224, 273, 410, 586-587

nuclear weapons, xvii, 1-7, 20, 24, 26, 29, 

30-31, 36, 37, 44, 47, 66, 86, 177, 178, 

179, 223, 240-241, 227, 280, 359-360, 

368, 414, 416, 457, 526, 536, 576, 589-

590, 608, 619, 620, 621

Nuzhdin, Nikolay I., 113-114

O

Oberth, Hermann, 48

Object D, 459-560; see also Sputnik-3

October Revolution, see Russian Revolution

OD-4 optical sight, 392

Odessa, 134, 560

Ognev (fictional character), 522, 560, 562, 

568

OKB-1 (Korolev) design bureau, xi, 3-4, 

8-15, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 47, 60, 

63, 66-67, 77, 82, 84, 90, 91, 92-93, 

101-102, 105, 118, 122, 123, 126, 127, 

132, 136, 149, 150-151, 154, 184, 246, 

259, 269, 287-289, 409-410, 452, 453, 

455, 458, 460, 465, 466, 471, 489, 524, 

535, 550; see also TsKBEM

OKB-1 Branch No. 1, 15; see also TsNII-58

OKB-1 Branch No. 2, 15-16

OKB-1 Branch No. 3 (Kuybyshev Branch), 

9, 10, 15, 17-19, 268, 299, 535; see also 

TsSKB; Progress Factory; Kuybyshev; 

Samara

OKB-2 (Isayev) design bureau, 34, 91; see 

also KB Khimmash

OKB-10 (Reshetnev) design bureau, 10, 

15-16, 27

OKB-23 (Myasishchev) design bureau, 19, 

243-244

OKB-52 (Chelomey) design bureau (or 

TsKBM), 12, 19-24, 33, 72, 108, 184, 

641
Rockets and People: Moon Race

185, 213, 238, 243-244, 256, 260, 267, 

279, 291, 292, 409, 464, 484, 496

OKB-52 Branch No. 1 (Fili Branch), 19, 

213, 243-244, 256, 260, 262, 266, 267, 

279, 292

OKB-165 (Lyulka), 67, 89

OKB-276 (Kuznetsov) design bureau, 67, 

74, 90-91, 93, 141-142, 234, 236, 274, 

418, 432

OKB-456 (Glushko) design bureau, 23, 34, 

60, 69, 90, 523, 524, 526, 574; see also 

Energomash

OKB-586 (Yangel) design bureau, 15, 24-27, 

91; see also KB Yuzhnoye

OKB-670 (Bondaryuk) design bureau, 60

OKB-692 (Sergeyev) design bureau, 26

OKB Geofizika, see Geofizika Design 

Bureau/Factory

OKB Khimavtomatiki, see KB 

Khimavtomatiki

OKB Lavochkin, see KB Lavochkin

OKB LPI (Experimental Design Bureau of 

the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute), 

183, 483

OKB MEI (Experimental Design Bureau of 

the Moscow Power Institute), 92, 122, 

127, 129, 298, 423

OKB Yuzhnoye, see KB Yuzhnoye

Okhapkin, Sergey O., 103-104, 136, 138, 

139, 147-148, 154, 172-173, 180, 184, 

188, 196, 200-201, 220, 222, 234, 236, 

246, 253-254, 256, 264, 266, 267, 290, 

307-308, 334, 380, 410; and stroke of, 

416-417

Okhapkina, Klavdiya A., 416

Okhotsimskiy, Dmitriy Ye., 339-340

Omsk, 27, 551

OPM (Department of Applied 

Mathematics), 225, 475

OPS (Orbital Piloted Station), see Almaz

Orbita ground station, 16

Orbital Piloted Station (OPS), see Almaz

Order of Lenin, 390

Order of the October Revolution, 390

Orion UV observation system, 297, 392

Ostashev, Arkadiy I., xxviii, 580

Ostashev, Yevgeniy I., 296

Ostryakov, Nikolay N., 451

Otreshko, Antonina P., 413

Ovchinnikov, Viktor S., 122, 131-132, 218, 

436-437, 439, 534

P

Pallo, Vladimir V., 291, 295, 296, 309

Panchenko, Yevgeniy I., 250, 251, 497

Panferov, Viktor M., 200

Panin, Yevgeniy I., 342

Pantin, K. K., 195

Paris, 607-608

Party Congresses, see Communist Party 

Congresses

Pashkov, Georgiy N., 86, 92, 136, 220, 222

Pasternak, Mikhail S., 487

Paton, Boris Ye., 74-75, 196, 237, 550

Paton Institute of Electric Welding, 74, 237

Patrushev, Vladimir S., 296, 299, 344, 345, 

567

Patsayev, Viktor I., xxiv, 340, 363, 369, 370, 

375, 380, 400

Paukov, Georgiy M., 534

Pedan, A. P., 188

Peenemünde, 39, 43, 44, 611

Penek, Boris M., 173, 218, 403, 456

Penzin, Boris G., 195, 535

Perm, 358

Persian Gulf, 592

Peshekhonov, Vladimir G., 451

Peter I (the Great), 36, 134, 508, 609

Petrov, Boris N., 318, 365, 492

Petrov, Georgiy I., 377-378

Pilyugin, Nikolay A., 13, 32, 34-35, 81-84, 

90, 91, 105, 107-109, 111, 113, 117, 

118, 120-121, 123-125, 129-130, 136, 

147, 149-151, 172-173, 175-183, 186, 

200, 213, 220, 257-259, 263, 266, 

317-319, 344, 351, 388-389, 418, 422, 

427-428, 433, 450-451, 456, 464-465, 

473, 492-493, 517, 521-523, 525, 529, 

531, 540, 546, 547, 550, 571, 577

Pilyugina, Antonina K., 351

Pimenov, Boris P., 159

Pioner ICBM, 32, 178

Pirogovo, 384-385, 389

Pitsunda, 572

Plastik Factory, 453

Platonov, Arkadiy M., 149

Plesetsk launch site, 35

PO Polet, 27

Pobedonostsev, Yuriy A., 102

Podgornyy, Nikolay V., 134, 366, 390, 454

Podlipki, xix, 159, 160, 162, 180, 206, 228, 

244, 253, 283, 291-292, 295, 302, 304, 

306, 331, 333, 357, 364, 379, 381, 388, 

642
Index

389, 395, 419, 427, 504, 534, 551; see 

also Kaliningrad

Pokrovskiy, Boris A., xxviii

Polaris A-1 submarine-launched ballistic 

missile, 30

Polaris A-2 submarine-launched ballistic 

missile, 30

Politburo, see Central Committee 

Presidium/Politburo

Polukhin, Dmitriy A., 299, 308

Polyachenko, Vladimir A., xxviii

Polyakov, Valeriy V., 599-600

Ponomarev, Aleksandr N., 188, 189, 363

Ponomareva, Valentina L., xxviii

Popov, Viktor A., 253, 323

Popovich, Pavel R., 323, 329, 496

POS (Permanent Orbital Station) concept, 

542, 554

Post, Wiley H., 313

Power, Thomas S., 42

Pratt & Whitney (company), 48

Pravda newspaper, 238, 390, 391

Pravetskiy, Vladimir N., 250, 340-343, 348, 

361, 368, 374, 375, 376

Presidium, see Central Committee 

Presidium/Politburo

Priroda module, 599

Priss, Georgiy M., 149, 317, 429-430, 441, 

443, 446

PRO, see antimissile defense

Progress Factory, 17-18, 74, 80, 94, 104, 

139, 141, 196, 201, 202, 268-269, 315, 

318, 348, 420, 425, 426, 527-529, 535, 

551, 554, 556

Progress M-34 spacecraft, 600

Progress spacecraft, 454, 505, 600, 605, 609

Proton launch vehicle, 21, 22, 72, 77, 153, 

181, 214, 215, 243, 263, 269, 309-310, 

321, 484, 485, 542, 565, 577, 616; see 

also UR-500 and UR-500K

Proton satellites, 21

Proton-1 satellite, 21

Proton-3 satellite, 21

Prudnikov, Ivan S., 195, 269, 350, 533, 

535, 596, 597

PS-84 aircraft, 523

purges (Stalinist purges), see Great Terror

Puttkamer, Jesco von, xxxi, 44-45

PVO, see Air Defense Troops

R

R-1 missile, 25, 65, 71, 227, 302, 388

R-2 missile, 25, 71, 74, 450

R-2R missile, 250

R-5 missile, 25, 70

R-5M missile, 25

R-7 ICBM (Semyorka), x, xix, 8, 10, 17, 18, 

22, 41, 54, 60, 61, 74, 83, 141, 153, 

196, 201, 203, 205, 247, 260, 269, 299, 

317, 322, 347, 414, 422, 473, 538, 543, 

556, 562, 565, 567, 576, 578, 593, 605

R-7A ICBM, 8-9, 17, 18, 27, 80, 434

R-9 ICBM, 9, 18, 118, 140, 201, 269, 459

R-9A ICBM, 67, 69, 71

R-11M missile, 15

R-12 missile, 25, 26, 32

R-12U missile, 25

R-13 missile, 30

R-14 missile, 25, 26, 32

R-14U missile, 25, 26

R-16 ICBM, 21, 25 

R-16U ICBM, 25

R-21 submarine-launched ballistic missile, 

30

R-27 submarine-launched ballistic missile, 

30

R-27U submarine-launched ballistic missile, 

30

R-29 submarine-launched ballistic missile, 

30

R-36 ICBM, 21, 25-26

R-36M ICBM, 26

R-36P ICBM, 27

R-39 submarine-launched ballistic missile, 

31

R-56 heavy-lift launch vehicle, 27, 72, 75, 

86, 108

Rabinovich, Ye. N., 223

Radionov, B. A., 188

Radovskiy, Vitaliy P., 533, 545, 574

Raduga TV communications satellite, 16, 36

Radutnyy, Viktor S., 344

Ranger spacecraft, 112

Raspletin, Aleksandr A., 84

Rauschenbach, Boris V., 13, 102, 118, 121, 

126, 127, 158-160, 163, 173, 186, 

247-250, 253, 255, 266, 302, 306, 307, 

317, 322, 323, 326-329, 331, 333-334, 

358-359, 371, 380, 385, 410, 455, 458, 

460-462, 465, 469-471, 483, 485, 487, 

493-495

Raykhman, Oskar Yu., 463

Raykov, Ivan I., 142-144, 148, 231, 236, 

384, 422, 432-433, 443, 527, 564-565, 

571

RD-0120 rocket engine, 574-575, 579

643
Rockets and People: Moon Race

RD-170 rocket engine, 574-575, 579, 606

RD-270 rocket engine, 214

Reactive Scientific-Research Institute, see 

RNII

Reagan, Ronald W., 316

Red Square, 396, 602

Redstone Arsenal, 39-40, 43

Redstone rocket, 40, 584-585

Remembrances and Contemplations (book), 

531

Reshetin, Andrey G., 350, 385, 395, 403, 

458

Reshetnev, Mikhail F., 15, 215, 310, 455

Reutov, 191, 213, 243, 246, 291

RKK Energiya, xvi, 8, 337-338, 437, 578, 

600, 602, 618; formation of, 594-595

RL-10 liquid-hydrogen–liquid-oxygen 

rocket engine, 48

RLA-120 launch vehicle concept, 540, 542, 

547, 552, 573-574

RLA-135 launch vehicle concept, 540, 542-

544, 552, 573-574

RLA-150 launch vehicle concept, 540, 542-

543, 552, 573-574

RNII (Reactive Scientific-Research 

Institute), 49, 69, 102

Rodin, Aleksandr L., 161

Rogovtseva, Ada N., 566-567

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 44, 280

Roshchin, Vladimir F., 389

Roskosmos (or Roscosmos), 76

Rosselevich, Igor A., 83

Rozhdestvenskiy, Valeriy I., 499

RS-10 ICBM, see UR-100 ICBM

RS-16A ICBM, see MR UR-100 ICBM

RS-20A ICBM, see R-36M ICBM

RSD-10, see Pioner ICBM

RSM-50 submarine-launched ballistic missile, 30

RSM-52 submarine-launched ballistic missile, 31

RT-1 solid-propellant missile, 9, 118

RT-2 ICBM, 9, 31, 118, 140, 154, 178, 

383, 550

RT-2P ICBM, 9, 410

Rukavishnikov, Nikolay N., 290, 313, 322, 

327, 330, 332, 424

Rumyantsev, Igor P., 188, 472

Russian Academy of Sciences, see Academy 

of Sciences

Russian Revolution, xv, 84, 129, 156, 225, 

390

Russian State Archive of Scientific-Technical 

Documentation (RGANTD), xiv

Russian State Archive of the Economy 

(RGAE), xviii

Russian State Library, 624

Rutherford, Ernest, 280

RVSN, see Strategic Rocket Forces

Ryabikov, Vasiliy M., 92, 272, 414-415

Ryabov, F. I., 195

Ryazanov, Yevgeniy F., 85, 269, 458

Ryazanskiy, Mikhail S., 83-84, 88, 91, 105, 

129-130, 220, 257, 264-265, 266, 375, 

418, 429, 443, 456, 473, 515, 525, 540, 

547, 570-571

Ryumin, Valeriy V., 501, 503, 579

Ryzhikh, Mikhail I., 284, 292

Ryzhkov, Nikolay I., 607

Rzhanov, Anatoliy, 534

S

SA-1 (Saturn) launch, 51

Sadovskiy, Igor N., 315, 410, 533, 536, 596

Safonov, Vsevolod D., 567

Sagdeyev, Roald, xvi, 226

Sakharov, Andrey D., 114, 180, 368

Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Ye., 172

Salyut computer, 297

Salyut space station program, xxiv, xxv, 23, 

463, 541, 577, 586, 596; and origins of 

DOS/Salyut program, 243-277; see also 

various DOS stations

Salyut(-1) space station, xi, xix, 12, 23, 406; 

and preparations for launch of, 279-319; 

and naming of, 306; and launch of, 

321-322; and missions to, 323-404; and 

reentry, 405-406; see also DOS-1

Salyut-2 space station, 23, 322, 484-485

Salyut-3 space station, 23, 322, 496-497

Salyut-4 space station, 12, 23, 322, 496, 

538, 556

Salyut-5 space station, 23, 322, 499, 501

Salyut-6 space station, 12, 322, 501-504

Salyut-7 space station, 23, 322, 405-406, 

505-519

Samara, xxiii, 15, 17; see also Kuybyshev

Samokhin, Mikhail I., 188, 193, 195, 360, 

420, 430-431, 534

Sapozhnikova, Nina I., 466

Sapun mountains, 168

Sarafanov, Gennadiy V., 497

Saryshagan, 475, 476, 478, 488

Saturn (planet), 73, 242, 586, 587, 590, 

612, 614

644
Index

Saturn Factory, 150-151

Saturn ground system, 324, 325

Saturn I launch vehicle, 42, 44, 51, 55, 62, 

91, 585

Saturn IB launch vehicle, 55-56, 135, 140, 

222, 585, 588

Saturn V launch vehicle, 45, 48, 51, 54, 

55-57, 66, 81, 107, 136, 141, 144, 155, 

171, 174, 183, 214, 227, 243, 425, 532, 

533, 544, 553, 573, 585, 587, 588, 592

Saturn launch vehicles/program, 41-44, 52, 

53, 57, 68, 103, 143, 258, 273, 577, 

585, 597

Saturn theater, 348

Savchenko, Boris, 456

Savchenko, Stanislav A., 121, 462, 466, 470

Savinykh, Viktor P., 517-518, 519

Scientific-Production Association of Applied 

Mechanics, see NPO Prikladnoy 

mekhaniki

Scientific-Research Center of Electronic 

Computer Technology, see NITsEVT

Scientific-Research Institute for the 

Operation and Repair of Aviation 

Technology, see NIIERAT

Scientific-Research Institute of Automatics 

and Instrument Building, see NIIAP

Scientific-Research Institute of Measurement 

Technology, see NII IT

Scientific-Research Institute of Nuclear 

Physics, see NIIYaF

Scientific-Research Institute of Precision 

Instruments, see NIITP

Scientific-Research Institute of Space 

Instrumentation Building, see NIIKP

Scientific-Research Institute of Thermal 

Processes, see NIITP

Scientific-Research Institute of Transport 

Machine Building, see NIItransmash

SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), 76, 316, 

587, 589-592

Semagin, Konstantin P., 424

Semikhatov, Nikolay A., 224

Semipalatinsk, 59, 368

Semyachkin, Vladimir S., 513

Semyonov, German Ya., 458

Semyonov, Yuriy P., 238, 256, 267, 291, 

295, 296, 309, 315, 343, 344, 346, 348, 

361, 370, 378, 396, 410, 487, 533, 537, 

547, 579, 594, 596, 607

Semyorka, see R-7 ICBM

Serbin, Ivan D., 135-136, 137, 191-193, 

220, 222, 253, 266, 287, 333-336, 340, 

531-532, 540, 546, 552

Serebrov, Aleksandr A., 512-513

Sergeyev, Vladimir G., 26

Sevastopol, xxvi, 167-169

Sevastyanov, Vitaliy I., 294, 295, 376

Severin, Gay I., 293, 295, 298-299, 340, 

341, 342, 360, 361, 364, 403, 473

Severodvinsk, 31

Severov, Anatoliy A., 410, 534

Sfera geodetic satellite, 16

Shabarov, Yevgeniy V., 193, 295, 299, 304-

306, 310-311, 314-315, 339, 341, 344, 

346, 352, 360-361, 364, 367, 370, 397, 

399-400, 410, 473, 535

sharashka (or sharaga) prison workshops, 

471, 523, 534

Shatalov, Vladimir A., xxviii, 166-167, 

171, 188, 397, 472, 479; and Soyuz-4/5

mission, 186-188, 482; and Soyuz-6/7/8 

mission, 239, 249-250, 252, 483; and 

Soyuz-10 mission, 290, 313-314, 322, 

327, 331-332, 334, 394

Shchegolkov, Boris V., 529

Shchelokov, Nikolay A., 366

Shcherbakov, Nadezhda P., 459-460

Shcheulov, Viktor I., 293, 308, 316, 397

Shchukin, Anatoliy A., 306

Shelest, Petr Ye., 454

Sheminov, Vladimir G., 298

Sheremetyevskiy, Nikolay N., 119, 149, 

152, 205, 207, 245, 456, 461, 501, 598

Shevelev, Vladimir K., 460

Shiryayev, Anatoliy N., 498

Shishkin, Oleg N., 418, 515

Shmyglevskiy, Igor P., 358, 456, 465-466, 

498, 506

Shonin, Georgiy S., 239, 249, 252

Shulgin, Petr F., 150, 195, 234

Shum, Mikhail F., 299

Shustov, Anatoliy A., 459-461

Shutenko, Viktor I., 235, 422

Sikorskiy, Igor I., 569

Simakin, Viktor V., 195, 380, 410, 419

Simferopol, 113, 504

Site No. 1 (at Tyuratam), 160, 302, 368, 

434, 473

Site No. 2 (at Tyuratam), 140, 159, 161, 

194, 197, 229, 290, 297, 303, 308, 311, 

321, 341, 345, 348, 350, 353, 354, 357, 

368, 434, 473, 484

Site No. 2B (at Tyuratam), 427

645
Rockets and People: Moon Race

Site No. 10 (at Tyuratam), 206, 296, 348, 

353, 368

Site No. 17 (at Tyuratam), 304, 345, 354, 

360, 367, 474

Site No. 31 (at Tyuratam), 11, 339, 473

Site No. 81 (at Tyuratam), 308, 310, 344

Site No. 83 (at Tyuratam), 310

Site No. 92 (at Tyuratam), 285, 299, 303, 

305, 309

Site No. 110 (at Tyuratam), 203, 211, 218

Site No. 112 (at Tyuratam), 195, 196

Site No. 113 (at Tyuratam), 194, 229

SKB-385 design bureau, 29-30 

SKDU (approach and correction engine 

unit), 157, 479

Skotnikov, Boris P., 456, 470, 498

Skripitsyn, A. V., 119

Skvortsov, V. F., 385

Skylab space station, 585

Slavskiy, Yefim P., 130-132

Smirnov, A. S., 188

Smirnov, Leonid V., 25, 77-78, 82, 84, 90, 

108, 134, 136, 172, 184, 220-222, 225, 

236, 239, 266, 284, 286, 287, 340, 346, 

359, 364, 365-366, 394, 397, 531-532, 

540, 551

Snegirev, V. I., 205

Sochi, 621

Sokol spacesuit, 403

Sokolov, Boris A., 236, 422, 571

Soldatenkov, Aleksandr M., 360, 473

Solodov, Dmitriy M., 298

Solovyev, Vladimir A., 503, 513-514, 599

Solovyev, Vsevolod N., 569-570

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., 601

Sosnovik, Isaak A., 218, 255, 292, 300, 460

Sosulin, Gennadiy K., 424

Sotnikov, Boris I., 85

Soviet Academy of Sciences, see Academy of 

Sciences

Soviet Air Force, see Air Force

Soviet Army (Ground Forces), 2, 15, 138, 

179, 196, 240, 351, 396, 616

Soviet Navy (VMF), 7, 8, 16, 24, 27, 40, 

179, 223, 240

Sovkov, Georgiy V., 188, 291, 533

Sovnarkhoz (Council of the National 

Economy), 92, 109

Soyuz launch vehicle family, 18, 80, 108, 

335, 578, 605

Soyuz program, xi, xlii, 22, 56, 153-154, 

157, 163, 169, 192, 225, 237, 271, 382, 

388, 541, 547, 596

Soyuz spacecraft, xviii, xix, xxiv, xxvii, 

10-12, 19, 80, 104, 121, 125, 129, 136, 

140, 153-154, 155, 157, 158, 211, 243, 

245, 247-254, 268, 269, 281, 296, 299, 

310, 343, 347, 357, 390, 398, 404, 407, 

408, 410, 454, 467, 468, 469, 484, 486, 

493, 496, 506, 536, 537, 540, 556, 

578, 600, 605; Soyuz-M spacecraft, see 

7K-TM

Soyuz-1 mission, xii, xlii, 11, 564

Soyuz-2/3 mission, xxv, 11, 472-482, 564

Soyuz-4/5 mission, 186-188, 237, 331, 

482-483

Soyuz-6/7/8 mission, 225, 237-239, 245-

253, 483-484

Soyuz-9, 295

Soyuz-10 mission, 290, 295, 313-314, 

322-335, 339, 341-342, 397

Soyuz-11 mission, xxiv, 295, 339-340, 

345, 354-355, 358-380, 387, 392-

395, 408, 416, 484; and disaster 

investigation, 395-404

Soyuz-12 mission, 404

Soyuz-14 mission, 496-497

Soyuz-15 mission, xxiv, 497-498, 506, 

538

Soyuz-19 mission, 337

Soyuz-23 mission, xxiv, 499-500

Soyuz-24 mission, 500-501

Soyuz-25 mission, xxiv, 501-503

Soyuz-T(-1) mission, 506-507

Soyuz T-2 mission, 507

Soyuz T-3 mission, 508

Soyuz T-4 mission, 508, 518

Soyuz T-5 mission, 508

Soyuz T-6 mission, xxiv, 508-512

Soyuz T-8 mission, 512-513

Soyuz T-13 mission, 519-520

Soyuz TM-16 mission, 337, 357

Soyuz-U launch vehicle, 18, 299

Soyuz-VI military complex, 407

space defense systems, see antispace defense 

(PKO)

Space Frontier Foundation, 406

space monitoring system (KKP), see 

Ministry of Defense Space Monitoring 

Service

Space Shuttle spacecraft/program, x, xix, 57, 

153, 242, 289, 323-324, 536, 545, 548, 

550, 557, 573, 574, 576-578, 585, 587, 

588-589, 592, 596, 600, 606, 614

Spektr module, 599

Spitsa, Ivan I., 323, 324

646
Index

Sputnik satellites, 45

Sputnik(-1) satellite, ix, x, xi, xix, xxi, 41, 57, 

459, 530, 598, 611

Sputnik-2 satellite, 459

Sputnik-3 satellite, 459-460

SS-20 missile, 32; see also Pioner ICBM

Stafford, Thomas P., 538

Stalin, Josef (Iosif Vissarianovich), xiii, xvii, 

63, 85, 109, 246, 275, 323, 337, 560

Stalin Prize, 150

Stalinist Purges, see Great Terror

Star City, 331, 333, 403

Starovoytov, Vladimir F., 593-594

State Archive of the Russian Federation 

(GARF), xviii

State Central Firing Range (GTsP-4), see 

Kapustin Yar

State Committee for Defense Technology 

(GKOT), 77-78, 82, 86, 99, 593

State Committee for Radio Electronics 

(GKRE), 83

Stepan, Georgiy A., 384

Stepanov, Vladimir A., 118, 421

Strategic Defense Initiative, see SDI

Strategic Rocket Forces (RVSN), 7, 8, 20, 

29, 32, 36, 179, 197, 233, 240, 474, 561

Strekalov, Gennadiy M., 312, 512-513

Strela satellites, 15-16, 36

Strogonov, Boris A., 136, 188, 253, 323, 

540

Stuhlinger, Ernst, 40, 57

SUBK (on-board complex control system), 

514-516

Sudachenko, Arkadiy L., 505

Sulimov, Oleg M., 393

Sultan, Amet-Khan, 312

Suma, 461

Supreme Council of the National Economy 

(VSNKh), 133

Supreme Soviet, 168, 215, 251, 358

Surguchev, Oleg V., 247, 346

Surveyor spacecraft, 112

Suslennikov, Vladislav V., 498, 510

Suslov, Mikhail A., xlii, 180

Suvorov, Vladimir A., 167

Sverdlov, Yakov M., 560

Sverdlovsk, 130, 131, 224

Svinets radar system, 392

Syrdarya River, 294, 311, 348, 349, 352

Syromyatnikov, Vladimir S., xxviii, 255, 

328, 333, 337, 364, 456

T

T2K lunar vehicle tests, 269, 270, 271, 486

Tabakov, Gleb M., 79-80, 111, 141, 390, 

418

Taj Mahal, 504

Taming the Fire (movie), 389, 521-522, 

559-569

Tanayev, Anatoliy A., 443

Taran missile defense system, 20

Tashkent, 162

TASS, 107, 135, 157, 163, 166, 294, 306, 

322, 335, 339, 380, 435, 468, 491

Tayfun satellites, 27, 36

Temp missile, 32, 178

Temp-2S missile, 32, 178

Tenkovtsev, Viktor V., 298

Terentyev, N. A., 188

Tereshkova, Valentina V., xliii, 188, 400

Texas, 43

Thor missile, 585

Tikhonravov, Mikhail K., 65, 458-459, 561, 

593

Timchenko, Vladimir A., 85, 395

Tishkin, Anatoliy P., 195, 291, 494

Titan II ICBM, 48, 585

Titan III ICBM, 48, 585

Titan-derived launch vehicles, 153

Titov, German S., 47, 188, 472, 507

Titov, Vladimir G., 512-513

Tkachev, B. P., 119

TKS (Transport-Supply Ship) of Almaz 

complex, 244, 285, 551, 556

TMK (Heavy Interplanetary Ship), 14, 72, 

113, 593; see also Mars spacecraft/programs (human)

Tokar, Yevgeniy N., 456, 462, 463

Tolstoy, Aleksey N., 226, 591, 619

Tolstoy, Lev N., 560

Topol ICBM, 32, 178

Topol-M ICBM, 178

Tregub, Yakov I., 154, 186, 220, 246, 249, 

322, 327, 329, 331, 358, 370, 371, 373, 

376, 378-380, 392, 394, 397-398, 476, 

487, 493, 501, 503

Tropa microcircuits, 423, 428-429, 435

Trufanov, Yuriy N., 344, 533, 534, 548

TsAGI (Central Aerohydrodynamic 

Institute), 286, 420

Tsander, Fridrikh A., 594

Tsarev, Aleksandr I., 188, 220, 286, 323, 

364, 365, 367, 397

647
Rockets and People: Moon Race

TsDSA, see Central Building of the Soviet 

Army

Tselina electronic intelligence satellites, 27

Tselina-2 electronic intelligence satellites, 36

TsIAM (Central Institute of Aviation Engine 

Building), 148

Tsikada navigation system, 16, 36

tsiklin propellant, 544, 545, 550, 554

Tsiklon launch vehicle, 27

Tsiklon satellite, 16

Tsiolkovskiy, Konstantin E., 48, 49, 504, 

612

TsKB Geofizika, see Geofizika Design 

Bureau/Factory

TsKB-29 design bureau, 523

TsKB-589, 127; see also Geofizika Design 

Bureau/Factory

TsKBEM (Central Design Bureau of 

Experimental Machine Building), 4, 

8-15, 17, 19, 136, 140, 151, 154, 183, 

184, 185, 190, 199, 201, 213, 218, 220, 

238, 244, 246, 253, 257-260, 265, 266, 

268, 271, 288, 291, 292, 374, 378, 

381, 397, 398, 413, 414, 416, 419, 438, 

475, 484, 487, 492-494, 503, 514, 526, 

535, 595; and transformed into NPO 

Energiya, 409-411; see also OKB-1 and 

NPO Energiya

TsKBM (Central Design Bureau of Machine 

Building), see OKB-52

TsKBM Branch No. 1 (Fili Branch), see 

OKB-52 Branch No. 1

TsNII-58 institute, 15, 458

TsNII-108 institute, 27

TsNIIKS No. 50 institute, 8

TsNIImash (Central Scientific-Research 

Institute of Machine Building), 25, 135-

136, 165, 184, 200, 231, 272, 286, 420, 

500, 504, 548, 549; see also NII-88

TsPK, see Cosmonaut(s) Training Center

TsSKB (Central Specialized Design Bureau), 

17-19, 535

TsUKOS (Central Directorate of Space 

Assets), 240, 266, 316, 346, 468, 507

TsUP (Mission Control Center), at 

Yevpatoriya, 55, 167, 184, 488, 490, 

498, 502; at Kaliningrad, 503-520, 547, 

609

Tsybin, Pavel V., 246-247, 352, 458-459

Tu-4 bomber, 227

Tu-16 bomber, 312-313

Tu-124 airplane, 169

Tu-134 airplane, 473

Tupolev, Andrey N., 61, 523, 569

Turkov, Roman A., 124, 154, 411

Tveretskiy, Aleksandr F., 493

Tyulin, Georgiy A., 53-54, 77, 92, 106, 135, 

136, 169, 183, 190, 192, 213, 220-222, 

231, 238, 239, 248, 253, 266, 286, 387, 

390-391, 504, 531, 540

Tyuratam, 109, 140, 160, 169, 295, 322, 

341, 365, 370, 377, 430-431, 473-

475, 478, 539; see also Baykonur 

Cosmodrome

U

UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, or geptil), 23, 48, 57, 68, 82, 214, 

310, 565

Ufa, 293

Ufa Instrumentation Factory, 453

Uhl, Matthias, xviii

UKP (universal space platform) concept, 

607-608

Ukraine, 107, 454

Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 237

UR-100 ICBM, 19-20, 269, 276, 318

UR-100K ICBM, 20

UR-100N ICBM, 20

UR-100NU ICBM, 20

UR-100U ICBM, 20

UR-200 ICBM, 20-21

UR-500 (Pyatisotka) launch vehicle, 20-21, 

72, 75, 77, 82, 86-87, 89, 104 108, 222, 

225, 239, 243, 246, 247, 257, 267, 269, 

276; see also Proton launch vehicle

UR-500K launch vehicle, 12-14, 22, 23, 

169, 184-185, 190, 196, 214, 299, 308, 

309, 317, 321, 339, 344, 347, 542, 554, 

556, 578; see also Proton launch vehicle

UR-700 launch vehicle, 20, 23, 27, 82, 213-

214, 222, 243, 532, 565-566

UR-700M launch vehicle, 226

UR-900 launch vehicle, 23, 214, 226

Ural Electromechanical Works, 437-438

Urals, 29, 123, 131, 150, 294, 389

Uralsk, 474

U.S. Air Force, 568

U.S. Army, 40, 43

U.S. Congress, 46, 47, 52, 53, 552, 586, 

589, 590, 620, 624

U.S. Department of Defense, 40, 41, 46, 

586

U.S. Navy, 40, 43

“US” ocean reconnaissance satellite, 24

U.S. Strategic Air Command, 42

648
Index

USSR Academy of Sciences, see Academy of 

Sciences

USSR Council of Ministers, see Council of 

Ministers

Ussuriysk, 160-161, 371, 372, 475-476, 

488-492, 494

Ustinov, Dmitriy F., 68, 86, 90, 106, 108-

110, 114, 133-139, 171-172, 176-180, 

184, 220, 224, 232, 236, 248, 253, 

254-255, 263, 265-267, 272, 279, 283-

289, 309, 318, 323, 333-337, 340, 364, 

380-381, 383, 394-395, 402, 414, 417, 

504, 523, 526, 529, 531-533, 536, 539-

543, 546-548, 553, 555, 559-561, 564, 

567-569, 571-572, 575, 606, 608

Utkin, Ivan I., 207

Utkin, Nikolay V., 255, 337

Utkin, Viktor V., 468

Utkin, Vladimir F., 24, 25, 26, 29

Uzbekistan, 347

V

V-2 (German ballistic missile), xix, 43, 48, 

71, 227, 235, 414; see also A-4

Vachnadze, Vakhtang D., 188, 291, 396, 

422, 534, 579

Vakulin, Boris F., 328, 329, 337, 342

Vannikov, Rafail B., 493

VDNKh (Exhibition of Achievements of the 

National Economy), 366

Venera program/spacecraft, 9, 13, 118, 171, 

215, 347, 586

Venera-5 mission, 189, 215-216, 238

Venera-6 mission, 189, 215-216, 238

Venus, xliii, 9, 28-29, 72, 73, 76, 82, 112, 

113, 189, 215-216, 232, 238, 242, 271, 

313, 347, 457, 580, 586, 590

Venus launches, see Venera program/

spacecraft

Vernov, Sergey N., 21, 378

Vetrov, Georgiy S., xviii, 235

Vilenskiy, Z. M., 352

Vilnitskiy, Lev B., 117, 173, 194, 235, 255, 

300, 331, 333-337, 340, 364, 422, 456

Vintsentini, Kseniya M., 351

Vishnevskiy, Aleksandr A., 361

Vladimirov, Igor P., 567

VMF, 7; see also Soviet Navy

VNII-380 institute, 33; see also NII-380

VNIIEM (All-Union Scientific-Research 

Institute of Electromechanics), 33-34, 

149-152, 244, 461, 464, 493, 501

VNIIT (All-Union Scientific-Research 

Institute of Current Sources), 127-128, 

298

VNIIT (All-Union Scientific-Research 

Institute of Television), see NII-380

Vnukovo airport, 188, 293, 306, 473

Volkov, Vladimir I., 505

Volkov, Vladislav N., xxiv, 239, 249, 252, 

310, 340, 362, 363, 367, 369, 370-373, 

375, 379-380, 394, 396, 400

Voltsifer, A. N., 195

Volynov, Boris V., 186-188, 189, 367, 482

von Braun, Wernher, 39-46, 44, 48, 51-53, 

57, 65-66, 68, 231, 578-579, 581, 584

Vorobyev, Yevgeniy I., 347, 348, 360, 361, 

362, 386, 393, 401

Voronezh, 68, 574, 579

Voronov, Boris A., 326

Voropayev, Oleg N., 117, 118, 235, 339-

340, 421, 456

Vorshev, Vladimir V., 385, 515

Voskhod program/spacecraft, xi, xix, xxvii, 

10, 13, 82, 99, 101, 104, 140, 357, 390, 

398, 450, 462, 479, 532, 561

Voskhod(-1) mission, 82, 99, 398

Voskhod-2 mission, 10, 101, 450, 479

Voskresenskiy, Leonid A., 53-54, 78-80, 

103, 107, 109-111, 209, 227, 295, 304, 

349, 353, 391, 425

Vostok program/spacecraft, xi, xix, xxvii, 10, 

13, 55, 117, 140, 282, 390, 398, 450, 

462, 463, 538, 593

Vostok(-1) mission, ix, x, xix, xxi, xxvi, xxx, 

2, 45, 47, 66, 302, 314, 317, 349, 450, 

472, 519, 585, 598

Vostok-2 mission, xxx, 47

VPK, see Military-Industrial Commission

VSNKh, see Supreme Council of the 

National Economy

Vulkan launch vehicle concept, 594, 597

W

Warsaw Pact, 237

Washington, DC, 57, 585

West Germany, 39

White, Edward H., 55

World War II, ix, xi, xii, xiii, xix, xxi, xxvi, 1, 

5, 33, 44, 227, 281, 312, 351, 407, 414, 

530, 583

Y

Yablokova, Irina Ye., 158

649
Rockets and People: Moon Race

Yangel, Mikhail K., 21, 24-27, 29, 32, 67, 

71-72, 75, 77, 81-82, 86, 91, 107-109, 

155, 172, 176, 177, 178, 180, 222-223, 

269, 276, 310, 318-319, 383, 551, 565

Yantar reconnaissance satellites, 18, 382

Yantar-1KFT reconnaissance satellite, 36

Yantar-2K reconnaissance satellite, 36

Yaremich, Mikhail I., 534, 579, 580

Yaropolov, Vladimir I., 302, 306, 343, 346, 

369

Yazdovskiy, Vladimir I., xxviii

Ye. O. Paton Institute of Electric Welding, 

see Paton Institute of Electric Welding

Ye-6 lunar lander, xliii, 82, 112, 113, 118; 

see also Luna second-generation probes

Ye-8 lunar rover, 259

Ye-8-5 lunar sample return probe, 185, 216, 

238-239

Yefremov, Gerbert A., 22, 23

Yegorov, Boris B., 398

Yeliseyev, Aleksey S., 171, 186, 188, 239, 

249, 250, 252, 290, 313-314, 322, 324, 

327, 329, 331, 332, 358-359, 371-373, 

376, 378-379, 394, 482-483, 494, 503, 

508, 510-511, 535

Yeltsin, Boris N., 406

Yermolayev, Pavel I., 93

Yershov, Pavel Ye., 142, 195, 432, 527

Yevpatoriya, 155, 156, 157, 160, 162-163, 

166-169, 171, 186, 187, 189, 216, 248-

249, 321, 322, 345, 347, 370, 375-380, 

386-387, 392, 395, 405, 474-475, 482-

483, 487-491, 494, 503-504, 509-511

“Yevseyev, Boris” (Chertok’s pseudonym), 

see “Boris Yevseyev”

Yugoslavia, 592, 594, 604

Yurasov, Igor Ye., 13, 159, 173, 175, 292, 

410, 455, 456, 495

Yurevich, Yevgeniy I., 165, 183, 293-294, 

298, 303, 340, 473, 483

Z

Zagorsk, 54, 75, 79, 109, 111, 145, 292, 

418, 528

Zagorsk-Optical Mechanical Factory 

(ZOMZ), 145, 292

Zagoryanka, 416

Zarya communications system, 161, 298, 

323, 326, 393, 477, 479

Zavenyagin, Avraamiy P., 368

Zelenograd, 279

Zelenshchikov, Boris I., 343, 346

Zelenshchikov, N. I., 580

Zelvinskiy, Semyon M., 235

ZEM, see Factory of Experimental Machine 

Building

Zenit launch vehicle, 77, 575

Zenit reconnaissance satellite/program, 

18-19, 36, 158, 244, 268, 271, 347, 

462, 463

Zenit-2 reconnaissance satellite/program, 10, 

17, 18, 464

Zenit-2M reconnaissance satellite/program, 

18

Zenit-4 reconnaissance satellite/program, 10, 

17, 18, 463

Zenit-4M reconnaissance satellite/program, 

18

Zenit-4MK reconnaissance satellite/program, 

18

Zenit-Resurs Earth resource satellite/program, 19

Zhivoglotov, Vsevolod N., 328, 329, 330, 

333, 336, 337

Zhukov, Georgiy K., 531

ZIKh, see M. V. Khrunichev Factory

Zond human circumlunar program, 12-14, 

23, 140, 154, 155, 156, 168, 169, 171, 

175, 176, 181-185, 190, 211, 221, 228, 

229, 233, 238, 239, 256-263, 267, 547; 

see also 7K-L1

Zond-6 mission, 181

Zond-7 mission, 238

Zond-8 mission, 238

Zoshchenko, Mikhail M., 271

Zubkov, L. A., 195

Zudov, Vyacheslav D., 499

Zuyev, A. A., 291

Zverev, Ivan I., 120, 145, 173, 292-293

Zverev, Sergey A., 92, 593

Zvezda Factory, 403

Zvezda human lunar project, 596

Zvezda module of ISS, xxiv

Zvezdnyy gorodok, see Star City and 

Cosmonaut(s) Training Center

Zvorykin, Lev A., 158-164, 250, 293, 466

650
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Logsdon, John M., ed., with Dwayne A. Day and Roger D. Launius. 

Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space 

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Logsdon, John M., ed., with Roger D. Launius, David H. Onkst, and 

Stephen J. Garber. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of 

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Logsdon, John M., ed., with Ray A. Williamson, Roger D. Launius, 

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Gorn, Michael H. Hugh L. Dryden’s Career in Aviation and Space. 

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Powers, Sheryll Goecke. Women in Flight Research at NASA Dryden Flight 

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6, 1997.

Portree, David S. F., and Robert C. Trevino. Walking to Olympus: An EVA 

Chronology. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 7, 1997.

Logsdon, John M., moderator. Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics 

and Space Act of 1958: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop. Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No. 8, 1998.

Rumerman, Judy A., comp. U.S. Human Spaceflight: A Record of 

Achievement, 1961–1998. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 9, 1998.

Portree, David S. F. NASA’s Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age. 

Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 10, 1998.

Logsdon, John M. Together in Orbit: The Origins of International Cooperation 

in the Space Station. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 11, 1998.

Phillips, W. Hewitt. Journey in Aeronautical Research: A Career at NASA 

Langley Research Center. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 12, 1998.

Braslow, Albert L. A History of Suction-Type Laminar-Flow Control with 

Emphasis on Flight Research. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 13, 1999.

Logsdon, John M., moderator. Managing the Moon Program: Lessons Learned 

from Apollo. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 14, 1999.

Perminov, V. G. The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars 

Exploration in the Soviet Union. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 15, 

1999.

659
Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Tucker, Tom. Touchdown: The Development of Propulsion Controlled Aircraft 

at NASA Dryden. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 16, 1999.

Maisel, Martin, Demo J. Giulanetti, and Daniel C. Dugan. The History 

of the XV-15 Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft: From Concept to Flight. Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No. 17, 2000. NASA SP-2000-4517.

Jenkins, Dennis R. Hypersonics Before the Shuttle: A Concise History of the 

X-15 Research Airplane. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 18, 2000. 

NASA SP-2000-4518.

Chambers, Joseph R. Partners in Freedom: Contributions of the Langley 

Research Center to U.S. Military Aircraft of the 1990s. Monographs in Aerospace 

History, No. 19, 2000. NASA SP-2000-4519.

Waltman, Gene L. Black Magic and Gremlins: Analog Flight Simulations 

at NASA’s Flight Research Center. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 20, 

2000. NASA SP-2000-4520.

Portree, David S. F. Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950–

2000. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 21, 2001. NASA SP-2001-4521.

Thompson, Milton O., with J. D. Hunley. Flight Research: Problems 

Encountered and What They Should Teach Us. Monographs in Aerospace History, 

No. 22, 2001. NASA SP-2001-4522.

Tucker, Tom. The Eclipse Project. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 

23, 2001. NASA SP-2001-4523.

Siddiqi, Asif A. Deep Space Chronicle: A Chronology of Deep Space and 

Planetary Probes, 1958–2000. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 24, 

2002. NASA SP-2002-4524.

Merlin, Peter W. Mach 3+: NASA/USAF YF-12 Flight Research, 1969–1979. 

Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 25, 2001. NASA SP-2001-4525.

Anderson, Seth B. Memoirs of an Aeronautical Engineer: Flight Tests at Ames 

Research Center: 1940–1970. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 26, 2002. 

NASA SP-2002-4526.

Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Bibliography 

Commemorating the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Powered Flight on 

December 17, 1903. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 27, 2002. NASA 

SP-2002-4527.

No monograph 28.

Chambers, Joseph R. Concept to Reality: Contributions of the NASA Langley 

Research Center to U.S. Civil Aircraft of the 1990s. Monographs in Aerospace 

History, No. 29, 2003. NASA SP-2003-4529.

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The NASA History Series

Peebles, Curtis, ed. The Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History, 

The Early Years. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 30, 2003. NASA 

SP-2003-4530.

Jenkins, Dennis R., Tony Landis, and Jay Miller. American X-Vehicles: An 

Inventory—X-1 to X-50. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 31, 2003. 

NASA SP-2003-4531.

Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Chronology 

Commemorating the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Powered Flight on 

December 17, 1903. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 32, 2003. NASA 

SP-2003-4532.

Bowles, Mark D., and Robert S. Arrighi. NASA’s Nuclear Frontier: The 

Plum Brook Research Reactor. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 33, 2004. 

NASA SP-2004-4533.

Wallace, Lane, and Christian Gelzer. Nose Up: High Angle-of-Attack 

and Thrust Vectoring Research at NASA Dryden, 1979–2001. Monographs in 

Aerospace History, No. 34, 2009. NASA SP-2009-4534.

Matranga, Gene J., C. Wayne Ottinger, Calvin R. Jarvis, and D. Christian 

Gelzer. Unconventional, Contrary, and Ugly: The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle. 

Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 35, 2006. NASA SP-2004-4535.

McCurdy, Howard E. Low-Cost Innovation in Spaceflight: The History of 

the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Mission. Monographs in Aerospace 

History, No. 36, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4536.

Seamans, Robert C., Jr. Project Apollo: The Tough Decisions. Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No. 37, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4537.

Lambright, W. Henry. NASA and the Environment: The Case of Ozone 

Depletion. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 38, 2005. NASA 

SP-2005-4538.

Chambers, Joseph R. Innovation in Flight: Research of the NASA Langley 

Research Center on Revolutionary Advanced Concepts for Aeronautics. Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No. 39, 2005. NASA SP-2005-4539.

Phillips, W. Hewitt. Journey into Space Research: Continuation of a Career 

at NASA Langley Research Center. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 40, 

2005. NASA SP-2005-4540.

Rumerman, Judy A., Chris Gamble, and Gabriel Okolski, comps. U.S. 

Human Spaceflight: A Record of Achievement, 1961–2006. Monographs in 

Aerospace History, No. 41, 2007. NASA SP-2007-4541.

Peebles, Curtis. The Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History Beyond the 

Sky. Mongraphs in Aerospace History, No. 42, 2011. NASA SP-2011-4542.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Dick, Steven J., Stephen J. Garber, and Jane H. Odom. Research in 

NASA History. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 43, 2009. NASA 

SP-2009-4543.

Merlin, Peter W. Ikhana: Unmanned Aircraft System Western States 

Fire Missions. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 44, 2009. NASA 

SP-2009-4544.

Fisher, Steven C., and Shamim A. Rahman. Remembering the Giants: Apollo 

Rocket Propulsion Development. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 45, 

2009. NASA SP-2009-4545.

Gelzer, Christian. Fairing Well: From Shoebox to Bat Truck and Beyond, 

Aerodynamic Truck Research at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No. 46, 2011. NASA SP-2011-4546. 

Electronic Media, NASA SP-4600:

Remembering Apollo 11: The 30th Anniversary Data Archive CD-ROM. 

NASA SP-4601, 1999.

Remembering Apollo 11: The 35th Anniversary Data Archive CD-ROM. 

NASA SP-2004-4601, 2004. This is an update of the 1999 edition.

The Mission Transcript Collection: U.S. Human Spaceflight Missions from 

Mercury Redstone 3 to Apollo 17. NASA SP-2000-4602, 2001.

Shuttle-Mir: The United States and Russia Share History’s Highest Stage. 

NASA SP-2001-4603, 2002.

U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission Presents Born of Dreams—Inspired by 

Freedom. NASA SP-2004-4604, 2004.

Of Ashes and Atoms: A Documentary on the NASA Plum Brook Reactor 

Facility. NASA SP-2005-4605, 2005.

Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket Interactive 

CD-ROM. NASA SP-2004-4606, 2004.

Fueling Space Exploration: The History of NASA’s Rocket Engine Test Facility 

DVD. NASA SP-2005-4607, 2005.

Altitude Wind Tunnel at NASA Glenn Research Center: An Interactive History 

CD-ROM. NASA SP-2008-4608, 2008.

A Tunnel Through Time: The History of NASA’s Altitude Wind Tunnel. NASA 

SP-2010-4609, 2010.

662
The NASA History Series

Conference Proceedings, NASA SP-4700:

Dick, Steven J., and Keith Cowing, eds. Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea 

and the Stars. NASA SP-2005-4701, 2005.

Dick, Steven J., and Roger D. Launius. Critical Issues in the History of 

Spaceflight. NASA SP-2006-4702, 2006.

Dick, Steven J., ed. Remembering the Space Age: Proceedings of the 50th 

Anniversary Conference. NASA SP-2008-4703, 2008.

Dick, Steven J., ed. NASA’s First 50 Years: Historical Perspectives. NASA 

SP-2010-4704, 2010.

Societal Impact, NASA SP-4800:

Dick, Steven J., and Roger D. Launius. Societal Impact of Spaceflight. 

NASA SP-2007-4801, 2007.

Dick, Steven J., and Mark L. Lupisella. Cosmos and Culture: Cultural 

Evolution in a Cosmic Context. NASA SP-2009-4802, 2009.

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