Well, later models of Soyuz would have a bigger hatch, but it was too late to change the existing spacecraft. So accommodations had to be made. First the backpack was to be replaced, for these early transfers only, with a legpack. That is, the life-support package was put into a container that the pressure-suited cosmonaut would wear strapped to the front of his thighs. After all, it was not as though he would need to be able to walk: Legs were useless appendages in that environment.
The second change was to add an additional EVA crew member to help his partner with suiting and egress. It was much safer that way, and should have been standard procedure from the very beginning. (It was later for Apollo, Shuttle, and Mir missions.)
Of course, the addition of a second set of heavy EVA equipment forced us to make other trade-offs: We had to lose over a hundred kilograms of food, supplies, and machinery from a spacecraft that was already designed to a minimum.
These were the issues I dealt with at the bureau and at Chkalov during the cold, depressing winter of 1966–67. Four crew members, two from the military team and two from the bureau, were being trained as EVA crew members. Those of us on the support team had to fly with them, train them, observe their actions, make corrections in procedures and equipment, then try them out all over again.
Time was short and we began to work weekends. On Saturday morning, January 28, 1967, we had a particularly difficult session aboard the Tu-104. We wanted to have a film-and-television record of the EVA to help with future equipment design, and for cosmonaut training, not to mention propaganda reasons, but where to put the camera in order to get a good picture of the proceedings?
Someone had proposed having the lead EVA crewman, military cosmonaut Khrunov, hold the camera in his hands and float away from the docked spacecraft to a distance of ten meters. (I suspect this was the same someone who designed the Soyuz hatch to that minimum figure.)
On this Saturday, as we coasted into perhaps the fourth of thirty planned zero-G arcs, with one of the cosmonauts already green and ready to vomit, the very hard-working and intelligent Khrunov, inside his pressure suit with “backpack” strapped to his legs, struggled mightily to hook up a safety tether, take the camera into his hands, and somehow push himself off into space — or, in this case, the interior of the Tu-104. He pushed with one hand and immediately started tumbling. Grabbing the tether with his one free hand only made things worse.
And, just like that, he was out of time. No more free fall.
It reminded me all too much of my first flights testing the Voskhod toilet. Every time poor Khrunov pushed off, he turned over, then had to be supported through the crushing weight of another descent and climb by the aircraft.
A military doctor from the training center called a halt to the whole business, which started an argument that lasted through two more zero-G arcs, and then the pilot of the plane signaled us that weather was getting bad and we would be heading back to Chkalov earlier than planned.
Khrunov was dripping wet when we got him out of the suit. He said he thought he could master the maneuver, given time.
“You don’t have time,” I said. The other cosmonauts reluctantly agreed.
One of them suggested simply mounting the camera on a telescoping pole, allowing Khrunov to essentially film himself. That seemed more promising, though we would have embraced just about any alternative. But this camera-pole also represented a design challenge, and more training for the crew, and we landed feeling we had taken two giant steps backward.
Another aircraft landed just before we did, an An-124 transport. Planes like this were always going in and out of Chkalov, of course, but what caught my eye here was the presence of several official-looking cars and some familiar faces gathered around the aircraft. One of them was Artemov.
Mindful of my surveillance duties, which I had not performed in weeks, I wandered over to the transport.
Not only was Artemov here, but also Filin, still looking subdued after his defeat and hospitalization. He greeted me, and asked me how my flight had gone.
Within reason, I tried to be honest with Filin. “Not very well,” I said, then sketched out some of our problems.
“Everything is going wrong,” he said. “Look at this.” “This” was the Antonov’s cargo, a huge rocket engine, still covered in a clear plastic wrapper.
“What is it?”
“It’s one of Kuznetsov’s engines for the Carrier rocket, on its way to Zagorsk for testing. There will be thirty of these monsters in the first stage.” At that time I still had not seen a sketch or model of the monster Moon rocket, but with each fragment of the puzzle, the beast grew in my mind. Thirty engines!
“Not Glushko’s?” Glushko was one of the pioneers of the Soviet space program — if you didn’t believe that, all you had to do was ask him — who had designed and built the engines for most of our missiles and space launchers by that time.
“He and Korolev disagreed about the fuels,” Filin said, the remembered horror of that battle still plain on his face. “Glushko wanted to use devil’s venom to get more power.” Devil’s venom was bureau shorthand for exotic fuels like fluorine or hydrazine that had been one of the causes of the famous Nedelin disaster. “Korolev wanted to stick with fuels he knew. He also didn’t trust Glushko’s schedule.” Rocket engines were notorious for taking much longer to build than predicted. Even at that time, America was still struggling with its big F-1 engines for the Saturn 5. “So we’re stuck using a big pile of engines built by a company that makes jet airplane motors.”
“You don’t sound optimistic.”
“It’s been a long few months. I have to fly to Baikonur tomorrow for the Soyuz flight, and I don’t know that we’ve fixed the problems. The first L-1 is supposed to fly soon, too.” He was clearly overwhelmed with the enormity of his obligations, and who could blame him? I was thirty years younger and staggering under the weight of my own more modest load.
“Are they really that far ahead?”
“They got started in nineteen sixty-one, while our Central Committee wouldn’t even listen to talk about a man on the Moon until three years after that. Even if you assume that we are spending the same money they are, and we aren’t, they have a three-year head start. Oh, yes, the Americans are about to take a great leap forward—”
“Vasily!” Artemov was calling to Filin as he approached. When I had looked his way, I had seen another man moving like a sleepwalker, a tortured soul. Now, just moments later, he seemed reborn. I wondered if he had taken a couple of shots of his own personal devil’s venom.
Even Filin noticed this. “I’m not interested in any more of your ‘good news,’ Boris.” He was quite curt for a man talking to his boss.
But Artemov was in a genuinely good mood. “You’ll like this news, believe me. Last night the Americans had an accident at their cosmodrome. A fire in the Apollo.”
I couldn’t quite see how this was good news. Neither did Filin, glancing at me. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Oh, yes,” Artemov went on, gleefully. “The whole crew, Grissom, White, and Chaffee, were killed. Burned to a crisp, their spacecraft destroyed right on the pad!” He was practically dancing.
“Have they said how long they’re going to be grounded?” Filin asked. In spite of a clear effort to be sympathetic, the color was returning to his face, the life to his voice.
“If it were us, we’d say six months, knowing it was going to be a year. At least that much.”
No American triumphs for a year! We could fly Soyuz, fly L-1 around the Moon, who knew what else, in that amount of time!
I was just as elated as Artemov and Filin. Bad as things had been, we had been given a second chance.