I rehearsed a statement saying how eager I was to fulfill any missions the Party and nation would ask of me.
Every ten to fifteen minutes the door to the meeting room would open — the interviewee would emerge to disappear back to his military base (never to return?). A colonel named Nikeryasov, a man even bigger, rounder, and more intimidating than Uncle Vladimir, would then summon the next candidate.
If the credentials committee took a lunch break, I never saw it. Fully four hours after my arrival, I was the last to be summoned. “Senior Lieutenant Ribko, Yuri Nikolayevich,” Colonel Nikeryasov announced.
I rose and, in my best parade-ground manner, entered the room.
There were twenty generals and colonels waiting for me, and no place to sit. Nikeryasov merely pointed to a place on the floor facing the committee, I saluted and stood at attention.
The chair of the panel was none other than General Kamanin. I also recognized Colonel Belyayev, one of the famous Voskhod cosmonauts. Several of the other officers wore the insignia of the military medical services. The rest were jowly, bored-looking Air Force men.
Kamanin announced my name to his fellows, and gave my personal data, birthdate, place, education, Party (Komsomol) status, finishing with employment: engineer, Department 731, Central Experimental Design Bureau of Machine-Building, Postbox V-2572. (I’m not sure I had ever heard the bureau’s official new name at that time.) One of the generals, recognizing the address, grunted and sneered, “One of Artemov’s people,” as if that were a curse.
Then the questioning began. What did I know about spaceflight? What military training did I have? Did I plan to become a full member of the Communist Party? How was my health?
The only time I gave what was clearly an unsatisfactory answer was when asked if I had undergone parachute training. I had not, while, I’m sure, every pilot who was a candidate, and most of the engineers, had done so.
“Lieutenant Ribko can become qualified as a parachutist,” Kamanin said. “We already have evidence of his fearlessness, in the recovery of spacecraft Soyuz.” Several panel members turned to that page of my dossier, and were somewhat mollified.
The final question was this: Why did I want to become a cosmonaut? Here I drew on my childhood, citing the imaginary novels by Wells, Verne, and Tsiolkovsky that my mother had urged on me, how I had shaped my education in order to make some of those visions a reality, not only for the romance of discovery and exploration, but for the glory of the socialist state, and its security. I said I wanted the first man to walk on the Moon to be a Communist from the USSR. (And managed to half-believe it even as I said it.)
Finally Kamanin said, “Do you have any questions for us, Lieutenant Ribko?”
“Only this, Comrade Generaclass="underline" How many candidates will be enrolled at this time?”
“We will accept as many as twenty,” he said, “reporting on May 7.” Nobody timed anything for the first week of May in my country. People were too busy celebrating May Day and the days that followed.
Thus dismissed, I thanked the general and the committee, executed a smart salute, turned on my heel, and walked out.
I remember thinking that my chances of selection were good, with twenty possible cosmonauts out of the thirty candidates I had seen. I said as much to my father as we drove away. “Yuri,” he said, shaking his head, “this is only the third of four days of meetings. You are also competing with dozens of men who barely missed the cut two years ago.”
All right, I thought: twenty out of a possible two hundred. I still felt good about my chances. After all, hadn’t General Kamanin himself remembered me?
26
Universal Rocket 500
My fancy new uniform took its place in my closet right beside its more tattered predecessor, and I went back to work at the bureau. Everything there was frantic, since we were preparing the unmanned L-1 for launch on April 7–8, along with the two manned Soyuz craft on April 20–22. I had no contact with my father, except for one telephone call telling me that the credentials committee would not announce its choices until the end of April. That was fine, since I could not possibly leave the bureau before then. More disturbing, however, was his news that the committee was now saying it was likely to select only fifteen candidates, or possibly as few as ten.
I had no more contact with Marina; I saw Lev only at several program reviews, and then only at a distance. He was attached to Artemov like a third arm, and probably as useful. It was two weeks of madness, fifteen hours a day, until we left for Baikonur on Thursday, April 6, 1967.
The Tyuratam hotels were jammed to twice their normal capacity, understandably, given that the vehicles belonged to two entirely different — and, need I say, not remotely friendly — organizations. The rivalry was complicated by the fact that the lunar version of Chelomei’s Proton carried our bureau’s L-1 spacecraft, which itself would be pushed out of Earth orbit by our Block D upper stage. Block D was part of the even more gigantic Carrier rocket.
There were engineers from different engine-design teams, too, plus officials from two different State Commissions overseeing matters for the Central Committee, not to mention Air and Rocket Force officers. Everybody wanted to be part of the excitement: Here in April 1967, the Soviet Union would reclaim its rightful place as the world’s leader in the exploration of space.
It helped, I think, that spring was early here on the steppes of Kazakhstan. While Moscow was still trudging through the end of a long winter, fresh southern breezes were caressing the town and the launch center. The same breezes, of course, would soon become hot, nasty winds. Tulips were beginning to bloom, for a brief time, before being scorched.
Friday, the day before the launch, I had a chance to see my first Proton rocket up close. What a monster! Unlike the Voskhod and Soyuz rockets, which had a quaint, old-church Russian look to them, the Proton was pure socialist realism: a thick white cylinder except for the base, where six slim fuel tanks hugged the central core, and at the top, where the bureau’s Block D upper stage and L-1 marred the clean line. Even the names suggested different mentalities: The Voskhod and Soyuz were cousins of the original “Seven” booster. Proton’s official name was Universal Rocket #500K. Universal Rocket! It should have been serviced by gleaming silver robots.
“It’s like a soldier,” a familiar voice said. “A sentry knowing he must storm the cosmos in the morning.”
I turned and saw none other than Sergeant Oleg, my escort to the home of space dogs Breezy and Blackie from last February. He looked exactly as he had then, though the beautiful weather better fit his lack of an overcoat. He had a knapsack slung over a shoulder. “You’re a poet, Sergeant!”
He grinned, showing missing teeth. “Some reporter said it right over there.” He nodded toward another clump of sightseers, one of several crawling all over Area 82 like vermin.
“Well, you’re an honest man, at least.” Sergeant Oleg had been right about one thing: The support structure for the Proton Universal Rocket was also futuristic. Where the veteran Seven rockets sat enclosed in a cocoon of girders that opened only at liftoff, the Proton’s structure slid off to one side, as if to make sure that at the proper moment all eyes were only on the rocket.