It was a horrible evening, since I knew no one but my father. Out of boredom — or was it despair over Marina? — I got drunker than I have in years.
What makes the evening stand out in memory was the sight, at two A.M., as we all staggered out of our cars back at the hotel, of cosmonauts Khrunov and Komarov playing tennis! (The eight cosmonauts, along with their trainers and General Kamanin, were staying at another — the only other — hotel near ours. There were too many of them to spend the night in Korolev’s old cottage out at the launch site.) “What the hell are these guys doing out at this hour?” some two-star general grumbled.
“They’re sleep-shifted, General. The launches will take place before dawn, which means they have to wake up around midnight. So they’ve been going to bed and waking up earlier and earlier each night, to change their internal clocks.” That, at least, is what I tried to say… God only knows what the general heard.
But he nodded in approval, and gave me a bear hug. “It’s good to have one of these smart guys along to explain these things,” he said, and over the shoulder of my newfound friend, I could see my father nodding in approval, as behind him, the gentle Komarov smoothly returned the vicious serves of my friend Khrunov.
Three-fifteen A.M., the cold morning of Sunday, April 23, 1967, Area 2, Baikonur. I stood with the crowd outside the assembly building that served the Area 2 pad, and the one at Area 31. Bathed in spotlights, Soyuz spacecraft and launchers stood in both places. Here, in front of me, Colonel Vladimir Komarov, the forty-year-old Hero of the Soviet Union, the first Soviet cosmonaut to make a second flight into space, stepped up to a microphone and addressed the dignitaries about the great honor of making the first manned test flight of Soyuz. Wearing a leather flying jacket over a coverall much like a track suit, Komarov looked rested and eager, unlike the rest of us, who were not sleep-shifted, but merely awake indecently early.
The brief ceremonies concluded, Komarov waved and, accompanied by Gagarin, Artemov, Kamanin, and the crew of the second Soyuz, got into the bus that would take him to the gantry three kilometers away.
Some of the onlookers dispersed to various posts in the control center, others went searching for tea. I hung back, watching the proceedings, wondering how I would feel should I be lucky enough to be in Komarov’s place someday. I could see the brightly lit, frozen, and steaming rocket rising above me. Then the dark landscape of the cosmodrome falling away as I rode the elevator to the ingress level with my backup pilot, with my general, and with the chief designer of my spacecraft.
There was very little room at the top level of the gantry. Kamanin and Artemov would have to stay at the elevator, leaving Gagarin to hand Komarov himself over to the four technicians who would help him into Soyuz. Two of them guided him through the EVA hatch (still too small!) in the side of the orbital module. Another tech waited inside, braced on wooden blocks so as to avoid touching flight equipment, helping Komarov lower himself to a plastic slide we called the “shoehorn,” allowing him to slip feetfirst through the even smaller nose hatch down into the bell-shaped command module. There, the fourth tech, sitting in the empty flight engineer’s couch on the right side of the spacecraft, helped steady Komarov as he carefully descended into the commander’s couch, then helped him hook up his comm lines and fasten his straps. It would be up to this same technician to squeeze past Komarov back up the nose hatch, removing the blocks and shoehorn as he went. The outer hatch would be dogged shut, and the team of technicians and the backup pilot would withdraw.
Within moments Komarov would be alone on top of the rocket, the only human being within a circle six kilometers across.
I had sat in those couches in a similar Soyuz; you hooked your heels into stirrups at the base of your couch, which forced your knees up toward your chin. Of course, it would be roomier in orbit. But if all went well, Komarov would have to make room for two new companions a day into the mission, too!
At 5:30 the viewing area fell silent as flames appeared at the base of the Soyuz, lighting up the dark sky. Sheets of ice cascaded off the rocket as it built up power, then slowly rose, the gantry opening for its escape, the rumble and roar of the first-stage engines rattling the buildings around us.
Soyuz 1 wasn’t even out of sight when I found myself glancing over to the second pad, where Soyuz 2 waited for its turn, twenty-four hours from now.
Shivering with cold, and convinced we had another day of dismal weather ahead of us, I went inside the assembly building, seeing smiling faces wherever I went, including Lev Tselauri’s. Soyuz 1 had reached orbit as planned, eight minutes after launch, and Komarov had reported that all systems were working well. “The Americans better watch out now,” I told Lev.
Grateful for any words from me that weren’t reproachful, Lev smiled and nodded.
I went looking for a couch to take a nap, since there was no point in returning to the hotel, forty kilometers away, only to have to come back here later in the day for the second launch. Besides, most members of the State Commission and the dozens of journalists covering the mission were right here, filling the offices on the second floor.
I had barely stretched out under my coat on a bed of tarps when I felt someone shaking my shoulder. “Get up, Ribko.” It was Dubnin, my comrade from the Aral Sea rescue. “We’re going on standby.”
Things had started to go wrong with Soyuz 1 an hour after reaching orbit. One of the twin solar-power panels, designed to spring out from the side of the equipment module like a wing, had failed to deploy. This was a fairly serious problem, since it limited the amount of power available for necessary spacecraft systems such as life support and navigation. In fact, without the second solar panel, Soyuz 1 could probably only operate for about twenty hours of flight. Now, this was enough time to perform a docking with Soyuz 2 and the EVA. My good friend cosmonaut Saditsky, one of several carrying information to and from the commission members on the second floor, said that some bureau engineers were talking about having Khrunov and Yeliseyev physically free the stuck panel during their EVA, an idea that I thought insane. It would be difficult enough for them to perform the simple tasks they had rehearsed: To effect repair work on equipment not designed for it, on a panel that could suddenly spring free and hit them, was dangerously stupid.
The diminished power problem, though serious, was not the biggest threat to the success of the mission. Komarov was unable to orient the spacecraft with any predictability. Engineers here at Baikonur, and with the team of specialists down at the control center in Yevpatoriya, suspected that exhaust gases from steering rockets had fogged over the optical sensor designed to lock onto the sun and certain stars.
Without orientation, there was no way for Komarov to perform the engine burns that would shape his orbit for rendezvous. He was, after all, flying the active craft of the pair.
In early afternoon, on his fifth orbit, Komarov tried to orient Soyuz by sighting on Earth’s horizon. This, too, failed. Shortly after that, his Soyuz 1 sailed off into a series of orbits that took him over Africa and America, outside our tracking and communication system. Komarov was supposed to rest during this eight-hour period, but I doubt he slept any more than did the commission members boiling up and down the stairs to the second floor, hurrying into and out of cars that roared off toward Tyuratam. (One of the earlier ones carried Gagarin, off to serve as a voice link to Komarov from Yevpatoriya.) Or any better than his comrades, Bykovsky, Khrunov, and Yeliseyev, who had to go to bed about two P.M. that afternoon, just in case they still had to launch.