“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s the business we’re in, Yuri. Worst of all, this morning there was an accident at Baikonur, too.” Having just visited the cosmodrome, I felt an irrational sense of alarm, as if I had a personal investment in what happened there. Well, perhaps I did. “A rocket failed.”
“That happens frequently.”
“It was the same sort of rocket we use to launch Voskhod. Had there been a crew aboard, they would have been killed. If the telemetry is right, we have a generic problem that will require weeks to fix.”
“Voskhod 3 won’t be hurt by a few delays. It will give us time to fix the oxygen system.”
Filin smiled at me as if I were a child, or worse, an idiot. “Every delay takes that flight one day closer to cancellation.”
“Why do they want to cancel it? Haven’t they already paid for the spacecraft?”
“It’s the risk, Yuri. Not only the real risk of a disaster, but the risk of losing face by not breaking an American record. And there is money to be saved on recovery forces and salaries for tracking personnel, not to mention a whole rocket, which could all be used for another program.” He cleared his throat. “Artemov says we need the money for our new lunar program, the one we stole from Chelomei. Program L-1.”
“Won’t the ministry give us the money they were going to give Chelomei?”
Now Filin laughed out loud. I guess the question was so ridiculous, he couldn’t begin to answer it. He rose, indicating that my time was up, squeezed my shoulder again, and headed me toward the door. “You may be asked to do some unusual things in the next few weeks, Yuri.”
“What kind of things?”
“Tasks. Tests. Do them. It will all turn out to your benefit, I think.”
I had no idea of what Filin was talking about for several days. When I did get an inkling, it was too late to ask him.…
Filin had checked himself into the Kremlin Hospital.
15
The Medical Institute
Department 90 of the Korolev bureau had been formed in the spring of 1964, specifically to train civilian engineers and doctors as flight-crew members. Colonel Stepan Triyanov, a test pilot at the military institute at Chkalov then in the process of being “transferred to the reserve,” had been hired to run it.
In his first few months, Triyanov successfully prepared Feoktistov, one of the bureau’s best engineers, as well as a civilian scientist and a doctor from the medical institute, to serve as benign spacecraft passengers, if nothing else. Feoktistov and the doctor, whose name was Yegorov, wound up making that first Voskhod flight along with Vladimir Komarov, one of the best cosmonauts from the military’s team.
Naturally, the younger engineers of the bureau thought this was the dawning of a new day, when healthy, well-educated technicians would push aside the short, hard-drinking, relatively uneducated jet jockeys — not to mention the thoroughly uneducated female parachutist — who had piloted the Vostoks.
Five hundred employees of the bureau swamped Korolev and Triyanov with applications to be included in the next space crew. This turned out to be 497 too many. Forced to be ruthless by the realities of flight opportunities, Triyanov simply excluded those who a) had not been with the bureau for at least five years or b) had no higher education. The bureau’s State Security department was allowed to reject applicants for lack of Communist Party or Komsomol work. These strictures eliminated a couple of hundred right there.
What really separated the true cosmonaut candidates from the pretenders was the centrifuge. Triyanov took a few busloads of applicants over to Star Town to witness a test run on one of the military guys. It was bad enough to see someone whirled round and round at the end of that big arm to the point of obvious distress, but the regime also called for the cupola containing the subject to be tumbled. The number of candidates melted like snow in spring — just from the thought of the centrifuge, not the test itself.
Eventually Triyanov found a hardcore bunch of about thirty who were qualified and willing, and in 1965 he shipped them into Moscow to the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, the civilian center for space medicine. A dozen passed the tests.
There was no age limit, because Triyanov considered himself a cosmonaut candidate. He managed to squeak through the IMBP tests, too, though I don’t know how: I had heard he was actually blind in one eye. Perhaps the doctors were intimidated by him.
These thirteen were told that they were going to be transferred to the Department 90 team “any moment now,” but nothing happened for months.
Well, what happened was that General Kamanin, the military chief of cosmonaut training, who had accepted Feoktistov and Yegorov on the Voskhod crew only at gunpoint, found out about Korolev’s plans for a civilian cosmonaut team, and screamed all the way to the Military-Industrial Council.
He was able to wave in their faces a 1960 Politburo decree giving the Air Force the sole right to select and train crew members for Soviet manned spaceflights.
He even went so far as to show that the Air Force was opening the cosmonaut team to other areas of Soviet society: He planned to train engineers and scientists at Star Town right alongside his pilots. All during 1965, Kamanin had been running his own set of medical examinations — through the Aviation Hospital, which, conveniently, reported to him through the Air Force chain of command — with the idea of selecting forty new cosmonauts.
But then it became clear that there was no room for forty new cosmonauts at Star Town — there weren’t enough apartments, instructors, or equipment. Nor, since there were already thirty cosmonauts at the center, was there likely to be a need for that many crew members for years.
So Kamanin cut the number in half, and what do you know? The ones who got selected were mostly young Air Force jet jockeys! Yes, there were several engineers — all military. And a physician — military. No scientists. No civilians.
This, then, was the situation in the spring of 1966, as Voskhod 3 waited and waited, as Program L-1 took its first steps, as the “advanced” spacecraft Soyuz took shape: Kamanin’s center had fifty military cosmonauts, ranging from the famous Gagarin and Titov to the more obscure Saditsky, to a score of anonymous candidates still in their early training.
Korolev’s bureau had a dozen engineers, and Triyanov, assigned to Department 90, but not called “cosmonauts” for fear of provoking Kamanin.
It was at this time that Triyanov asked me if I would go to the IMBP for medical tests, to see whether I would qualify as a full-fledged member of the department.
When I broke the news to Marina the Sunday before I started, she was completely against the idea. Not of flying in space, since that was only a fantasy at this time.
She didn’t want me to turn myself over to the doctors at the IMBP at all. “Why not?” I demanded. “These are the best medical specialists in the country!”
“Then I pity our country,” she snapped. She had traveled in the West and seen their clinics and hospitals. Ours, she said, were medieval by comparison. Given what I knew of Russian hospitals from Korolev’s death, and my mother’s long illness, I should have agreed. But I was too excited about my new adventure to think straight.
Ultimately Marina relented, and kissed me for good luck.
Thinking of hospitals and the fate of Korolev reminded me of my “other” responsibilities. I had no way of knowing just how closely Uncle Vladimir’s people tracked my movements — other than having me followed when he wanted to meet me — and, in fact, had no official way of contacting him.