by Jay Barbree
The final minutes ticked away; the three astronauts listened to the launch controllers passing the word “GO!” from one console after the other to the launch director. Just before Saturn 1B went to full internal power and all systems came on line, Stafford asked the launch team to send a message from the American astronaut crew to Soyuz 19:
“Alexei and Valeri, from Apollo. We’ll be up there shortly.”
It was all coming up roses. Tom Stafford’s quiet confidence was terrific. The countdown reached zero. Saturn 1B exploded into life.
Fire and thunder spewed in sheets over the launch platform and shook Apollo and its crew. It took only seconds for Deke, Tom, and Vance to learn that their booster was no smooth and mighty Saturn V. 1B was an angry, spitting, snarling wolverine, which shook and rattled everything it held in its teeth.
Smaller but still mighty, the mini-Saturn clawed its way off the launch pad, and Deke felt as if he were riding an old pickup truck slam-banging down a rutted, country dirt road back on his Wisconsin farm. Eight engines blazed away at full thrust with a cacophony of noises—propellants pounding through lines from turbo-pumps spinning at tremendous speed, pressures surging with booming thuds throughout the stage, all to the accompaniment of teeth-rattling, eye-blurring shaking.
Deke had wanted to sit back and enjoy the trip into orbit. Instead, he felt as if he were balancing atop a long rubber balloon fighting its way through wild winds, and at its very top, where the three astronauts rode, the motions went from up and down to simultaneous spiraling. A dog shaking water from its body with a twisting, swinging motion while its legs collapsed beneath the hapless animal was Deke’s description of his ride and he could only hold on and lock his spurs into the bottom of his seat.
Punching through maximum aerodynamic pressure was another adventure as enormous forces squeezed and shook the Saturn 1B. Vibration pummeled the entire rocket and the Apollo. Then, suddenly, they were through Max Q, and they shot upward like a frightened jackrabbit. Almost at once, now into the supersonic region, engine roar and the high-pitched howl of air ripping past the rocket vanished.
While the noise of the liftoff abated, the booster complained with deep, hollow groans and the creaking of an old wooden ship wallowing in rough seas. Finally came the burnout of the first stage. For a precious moment the creaks, groans, wiggles, shaking, vibration, and other unpleasantness were gone.
That was for only a moment. Explosive charges blew apart the two stages with all the velvety touch of a locomotive thundering off a high trestle to roll down a rocky slope. The second stage fired, aiming toward their target, that small doughnut in space through which they must pass to enter their planned orbit. They left the potholed country road far behind, and moments later they settled into their orbital track.
“I love it,” shouted Slayton. “Hot damn, I love it. Man, I tell you this was worth waiting sixteen years for.”
“You liked that, huh, Deke?” Stafford grinned.
The fifty-one-year-old rookie astronaut threw his arms out in triumph. “I would like to make that ride about once a day,” Deke laughed.
Then, instantly, it was there.
Weightlessness!
And Deke felt it. His body was now as light as a falling snowflake.
“Woweee!” he yelled.
Stafford and Brand laughed and shared the enjoyment of this man who had waited so long to reach space. They quickly got out of their spacesuits, donned their flight coveralls, and settled into the comfort of weightless flight.
The Apollo crew disconnected from the spent rocket stage, maneuvered through transposition to withdraw the docking module (a procedure identical to connecting with the lunar module on the moon missions) from its parking spot atop the empty stage. They fired maneuvering thrusters to move away from the booster and began to match their orbit to that of the waiting Russian ship.
Vance Brand switched on the radio frequency for Soyuz. “Miy nakhodit-sya na orbite!” We are in orbit!
Deke sent a second call to the Russians, speaking in their language. “Soyuz, Apollo. How do you read me?”
They heard Kubasov answer in English. “Very well. Hello, everybody.”
“Hello, Valeri,” Slayton said. “How are you? Good day, Valeri.”
“How are you? Good day!” Kubasov replied.
“Excellent!” Deke boomed. “I’m very happy. Good morning.”
Leonov’s voice came on. “Apollo, Soyuz. How do you read me?”
“Alexei, I read you excellently,” Deke responded.
“I read you loud and clear,” Leonov confirmed.
“Good,” Slayton said. He wasn’t the most loquacious pilot in the business, and that last was in English. In Russian he felt he was stumbling through their exchange. But who the hell cared?
He’d made it! Orbit!
It was time for the hunt to begin. Apollo’s crew executed the first of several maneuvers to track down Soyuz over a two-day period in a game of celestial tag. Circling in a lower orbit and making precise course-changing engine burns, Apollo gradually caught up with the Russian ship, and on July 17 the two spacecraft, high over the French city of Metz, performed a stately orbital ballet as they maneuvered close to and around each other. Earthlings had a ringside seat as a television camera pointed out the Apollo window relayed pictures of Soyuz, eerie and bug-like, glowing a startling green in brilliant sun against the blackness of space and the azure blue of the earth below. “I can see your beacon in the porthole,” radioed Leonov, speaking English.
“Less than five meters distance . . . three meters . . . one meter,” said Stafford in Russian as he guided Apollo nearer.
The mission went smoothly with a faster than expected timeline, dispelling the naysayers who said the joint mission could never be carried off. Just fifty-two hours after Leonov and Kubasov had departed Baikonur, Stafford, Slayton, and Brand brought the two spacecraft together.
There was a slight shudder as the two craft, both traveling more than 17,400 miles per hour, docked. “We have capture,” Stafford reported.
“Well done, Tom,” the Soyuz commander replied. “It was a good show. Soyuz and Apollo are shaking hands.”
At that moment history had a new page to be read for future centuries.
Throughout the world, millions of fascinated, even astonished, viewers watched the American and Russian spacemen clear the hatches between their respective vessels and push them in a weightless ballet from one spacecraft to the other.
Television observers shook their heads in disbelief at the reality of three Americans speaking Russian and two Russians speaking English, congratulating themselves high above the earth while far below the Cold War was put temporarily on hold.
“Tovarich,” (“friend”) Stafford called out as he shook hands with Leonov. “Very, very happy to see you. How are things?” Leonov asked, giving Stafford and Slayton the traditional Russian bear hug. They then floated into the Soyuz cabin to be greeted by Kubasov. The spacemen traded gifts, including flags of their nations and commemorative plaques. Leonov, a gifted artist, gave the astronauts sketches he had made of them during training.
The visiting Americans then gathered around a green metal table in Soyuz with their Russian hosts to eat and toast with apple juice the success of the mission. They feasted on reconstituted strawberries, Roquefort cheese, sticks of apples and plums, and tubes of borscht, which the cosmonauts had mischievously labeled vodka. Later, aboard Apollo, the cosmonauts were treated to potato soup, bread, more strawberries, and grilled steak. Space flyers have never considered their food the best, prompting Leonov to remark, “As the philosophers say, the best part of a good lunch is not what you eat, but with whom you eat.”
During the forty-seven hours the two ships were linked, astronauts and cosmonauts executed their own brand of shuttle diplomacy. Leonov said that the flight had been made possible by the “climate of détente” that had been begun by President Richard Nixon and termed it “a first step on the endless road
of space exploration.” Slayton said that through space flight men of various nations could gain a greater sense of understanding.
President Gerald Ford could hardly wait for his chance to talk to the crew aboard Apollo while the two were still docked. He asked for and spoke directly to Deke Slayton.
“As the world’s oldest space rookie, do you have any advice for young people who hope to fly on future space missions?” the president asked.
Deke answered in his own pragmatic style. The best advice he could offer the youngsters of the world, he said, is to “decide what you want to do, and then never give up until you’ve done it.”
Before the hatches between the craft were closed for the last time, the two commanders held a brief farewell ceremony in Soyuz. Each crew had brought along halves of two commemorative aluminum and steel medallions, which Stafford and Leonov joined together. They also signed four forms for the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, a body that verifies achievements in aviation and space. In addition, they traded small boxes of seeds from their countries—the Americans contributed a hybrid white spruce; the Russians, Scotch pine, Siberian larch, and Nordmann’s fir—for planting on return to earth. In the Soviet Union this ancient tradition of a visitor planting a tree is considered a gesture of true friendship.
As both ground teams did, at Mission Control near Houston and at Star City.
It was incredible. Alan Shepard had more than once found himself holding his breath during the most critical elements of the flight, the fiery ascent, separation of rocket stages, insertion into orbit, flying the exquisitely demanding shifts in power and height above the earth to ride the rails of orbital mechanics in order to meet up with Soyuz, the docking.
Yet Alan quickly distanced himself from the technical aspects. His mind soared to capture a vision of Deke testing the delicious sensation of zero gravity, of knowing finally that incredible feeling of weightlessness.
And he thought of Deke floating on the edge of the heavens, staring out at the moon and planets, individual stars and whole galaxies, and he knew Deke was now one of those privileged few who with a single glance could drink in the beauty of the gleaming earth below, lift his head, and become part of the universe.
Alan Shepard smiled warmly.
He knew it couldn’t get any better for Deke Slayton.
The docking of the two spacecraft had until now been strictly an American show. It was time to prove the competence and quality of Russian space science and the skill of the cosmonauts. The two spacecraft separated, and Apollo adopted the passive role. Leonov flew Soyuz 19 in with consummate ease. As if he’d been flying this maneuver for years, he slid the two ships together for a perfect hard dock.
There remained no question that either nation in an emergency now had the capability of rescuing men and women in crisis high above the planet.
Precedent continued to be broken as the mission progressed. Only a few years before, the idea of a joint American-Soviet space mission had been judged unthinkable. Now five spacemen from both countries, gathered 140 miles above the planet with multi-national spacecraft, held press conferences with reporters from several nations on earth.
That was the lasting foundation and the heart of the Apollo-Soyuz mission. World news media hailed the flight as a stunning high-water mark in space exploration. That was the least of it. Of all the aims and achievements of Apollo-Soyuz, nothing could have mattered less than spacecraft or technical achievement or scientific goals.
That representatives of the two most powerful military nations in history, bristling with antagonism and weaponry, met peacefully, in full cooperation, hiding none of their equipment, was the “salt and bread” of this space flight.
Finally the two spacecraft separated for the last time. Deke Slayton worked the thruster controls of Apollo with a deft and sure hand, backing off from Soyuz and then flying dazzling maneuvers about the Soviet craft. They drifted together awhile, and then moved away from each other.
As the ships began to part, Alexei Leonov declared, “Mission accomplished.” From Tom Stafford came the reply, “Good show.” Apollo and Soyuz went their separate ways, conducting independent experiments.
On July 21, after six days in space, Leonov and Kubasov fired retro-rockets to slip out of orbit and start back to earth. Soviet television cameras provided the world with the first-ever live coverage of a Russian spacecraft returning home, picking up Soyuz as it descended through cloudy skies, dangling beneath a single red-and-white parachute. Eight feet above a flat, featureless wheat field in central Russia, Soyuz triggered braking rockets to cushion the landing and stirred up a massive cloud of dust. Within thirty seconds, a helicopter landed beside Soyuz and recovery workers quickly opened the hatch. The cosmonauts stepped out smiling, hugged recovery team members, and waved at cameramen. A crowd of several hundred persons, including farmers and peasants, clapped and cheered loudly from a short distance away.
Applause also came from the Apollo crew still in orbit. Stafford, Slayton, and Brand told Mission Control to give Leonov and Kubasov their best and to say they were glad they had made a safe landing.
Soyuz was home.
The last Apollo’s work was not yet done. Three more days of orbital experiments awaited the astronauts as they moved into the final phase of their flight plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, and the Day After
FROM THE SURFACE OF THE Gulf of Alaska, looking through scattered clouds, one star in the night moved. It first appeared just above the horizon, a sharp pinpoint of slivered light traveling with a sense of unreality across the top of the world.
In absolute silence it sped closer until it was at its brightest, directly overhead, sweeping in a long, sinking fall toward the southeastern curve of the planet over Canada, a bright messenger in the heavens. Directly ahead lay the western shores of Lake Superior, no longer in the dark of night but washed by the deep orange glow of dawn.
Deke Slayton floated weightlessly to a viewing port of his Apollo spacecraft, braced with one arm and his leg against his seat. He looked downward, still awed by the swelling light racing across the horizon, turning the huge expanse of Lake Superior orange, quickly advancing to a pale crimson and then resplendent with the sun climbing quickly upward above the flanks of the world.
His practiced eye, skilled at searching for landmarks from high above the earth through a lifetime of flight, checked the southern shore of the lake against the sparkling lights of Duluth. Now he followed the Mississippi River winding southward, dawn reflecting off the ribbons. He looked for the confluence of the Mississippi with the Wisconsin River. There. Reflected dawn showed him clearly where they joined. Now he looked barely north to where the Mississippi widened. There was La Crosse, unmistakable with its night lights still glowing. From 140 miles high, the town of Sparta, east from La Crosse, was visible.
Below Sparta, five miles on a map, wrapped together to the human eye from this height, the countryside flowed along hills and valleys. Deke knew this Wisconsin farmland better than any place on the planet below. A hundred and sixty acres of that land was where he had spent his boyhood years, farmland with a heart-touching similarity to his family’s origins in Norway. But for more than a century his family had lived on that land over which he now sped at five miles every second. What was visible as early morning countryside, without country roads too distant to view, without any boundaries save the two rivers, without a specific marking of the Slayton family farm, he saw clearly in the memories of his mind’s eye.
Then, with a silent sigh of time it was gone, flowing far behind the hurtling spacecraft.
Deke Slayton felt at home in two places at that same time. Down below, a forever place in his memory, and his immediate physical surroundings—within the interior of the spaceship he had for so long waited to fly.
Deke floated away from the view port, glancing at Tom Stafford and Vance Brand engrossed in flight plan chores. The green-and-white Russian Soy
uz with Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov had already returned to earth following their historic orbital linkup. Soon Deke and his crewmates would end their three additional days of flight. Apollo would then begin its fiery descent through atmosphere.
But not yet. There was still time to revel in the wonder of weightlessness and the mind-numbing display of celestial fireworks.
Deke Slayton, Tom Stafford, Vance Brand, and the two Soviet cosmonauts had demonstrated that all terrestrial boundaries were artificial, invisible, and meaningless seen from space.
Most space flyers had long known the great truth. Boundaries between states and nations did not exist. When they looked down, borders appeared only as rivers and coastlines and mountain valleys. It was simply impossible to tell what belonged to whom. From fifty thousand feet, national borders could be found only on maps. To the eye, a single homogeneous world flowed together.
Now, at last, in the summer of 1975, Deke saw Earth from the high throne of orbit, and he could look with awe at his stunning yet unfathomable universe. He sailed in an enclosed cylinder of magic, silently, with so much to see! So much at which he marveled, drunk with the wonder of what was displayed before him on this incredible celestial stage. He begrudged every moment he could not look at the earth and beyond. He fought not to miss a single moment, another angle, and a variation in view.
Even with a sunrise and a sunset fitted neatly within a time span of every ninety minutes, a double explosion of waxing and waning brilliance and colors as the sun raced above the horizon or fell in silent escape as the rim of the earth ascended, he knew he could see only a part of the glory before him. Each sunrise, each sunset, differed from all those that had gone before. The clouds changed the colors and the intensity. Smoke and dust and moisture altered the colors and their shapes and the quiet rush of kaleidoscopic hues across the curving surface of the world. He found himself holding his breath, then gasping for air, as if this might help to grasp—and freeze the moment until he could study it carefully—each race between the gods of sun and earth.
