by Allen Steele
For better or worse, they were on their way.
From Time; July 30, 1983
A SOVIET SPACE SECRET
COMES TO LIGHT
After 11 Years, A Mystery Is Solved …
And With It, New Doubts About
“Star Wars”
For more than a decade, it’s been one of the most daunting mysteries of the Cold War: why did the Soviet space program, which once rivaled the United States for superiority on the high frontier, suddenly collapse?
At one time, Russian space scientists seemed to be gaining on their American counterparts. They launched the first two-man space station in 1961, then soft-landed an unmanned probe on Mars in 1969, only 11 days after John Harper Wilson walked on the Moon. Shortly afterward, the Kremlin announced that the U.S.S.R.’s primary space objective would be to establish a permanent colony on the red planet by 1980 … and few people doubted that the Soviets were capable of doing this.
Yet by 1976, when Ares One carried the first—and last—American-Russian expedition to Mars, it was already clear that the Soviet Union was abandoning its manned space efforts. Indeed, many observers noted that Ares was largely an American effort, with a few Soviet cosmonauts hitching a ride for the sake of détente. The Soviets have claimed that they shifted their technological priorities to solving domestic problems, but this week the truth was finally revealed: a catastrophic disaster, rather than a central policy change, was responsible for the Russian retreat from space.
The revelation came from no less than dissident Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov, who was released from internal exile in Siberia and allowed to return to Soviet Georgia. Unrepentant and outspoken as ever, Sakharov told visiting Western correspondents last week about a 1972 launch pad explosion at the Baikonur cosmodrome at Tyuratam which killed at least two dozen people, including three cosmonauts and several leading Russian space scientists, just as the Soviets were on the verge of achieving a goal which had previously eluded the U.S. Space Force: the development of a man-rated nuclear spacecraft.
According to Sakharov, the Russian spacecraft was designated the G-1, code-named Zenith. Unlike the Atlas-B spacecraft briefly used by the USSF in the sixties, which was composed of a liquid-fuel booster and a nuclear-powered upper stage, Zenith was a single-stage rocket with a nuclear engine. Somewhat resembling a streamlined spaceship from a 1950s sci-fi movie, Zenith was capable of both vertical liftoffs and landings, alighting on tripodal landing gear which extended from its aft fuselage. Eighty feet tall and capable of carrying a six-person crew, the sleek vessel’s nuclear engine was rated at 900 ips (impulse per second). This is comparable to the Atlas-B’s 950 ips, and far outstrips the performance of NASA’s new Challenger space shuttle, which is rated at 450 ips.
The top-secret project was initiated in the late fifties, when the Kremlin hoped to use Zenith to beat the USSF’s Project Luna to the Moon. But development of a reliable nuclear rocket proved to be more complex than originally envisioned; it also soaked up most of the resources of the Russian space program. By 1972, though, two prototypes had been built, and in the early morning hours of September 3, Zenith-1 was rolled out to its Baikonur launch pad, where a three-man test crew climbed aboard and awaited final countdown for its maiden flight.
The launch never took place. Sakharov is uncertain about what happened, since he himself was not present at the time, and exact details of the disaster are still a closely guarded secret. Nonetheless, Sakharov believes that the main fuel tank ruptured during fueling and its hydrogen fuel ignited. The result was a massive non-nuclear explosion which not only destroyed Zenith-1 and killed its crew, but also snuffed out the lives of scientists, engineers, and workers who were on the launch pad at the time. It was only luck that prevented the rocket’s uranium-core reactor from being breached; otherwise, a nuclear fire might have destroyed the entire Baikonur complex.
The disaster was successfully hidden by GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. The wreckage was masked from American satellites by massive camouflage tarps hastily thrown over the pad after the fires were extinguished, and the fatalities were ascribed to a fictional airplane crash in the Urals. The remaining Zenith rocket was never tested; it was transported by rail to a Red Army warehouse somewhere in Siberia, where it presumably remains mothballed to this day.
As crude as this cover-up may seem, it apparently worked; Western intelligence agencies never learned about the launch pad explosion, much less the existence of the G-1 program. Yet the Soviet space program was delivered a blow from which it never recovered. Indeed, says Sakharov, the reason why Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev so readily agreed to Russian participation in Project Ares was not diplomatic so much as it was to save face.
The new Kremlin government of Yuri Andropov has categorically denied Sakharov’s allegations, but a number of Western space experts say that it seems to fit previously available information … including the mysterious crash of a Tupolev transport jet on September 4, 1972, in which it was claimed no bodies were recovered. They also say that it casts new doubt upon the validity of the Reagan Administration’s proposed “Star Wars” strategic defense initiative.
The first stage of the program is already underway as Challenger nears completion at North American Rockwell’s plant in Sunnyvale, California. SDI was dealt a setback last April by the death of one of its major proponents, nuclear physicist Edward R. Teller, and now many space experts are beginning to doubt whether the Soviet Union’s “secret space superiority,” previously claimed by the White House as justification for an orbital defense system, is a paper tiger … a tiger born in the predawn fires of a Baikonur launch pad, 11 years ago.
THIRTEEN
2/17/95 • 0852 GMT
CONESTOGA DID NOT LEAVE Earth for the Moon by itself. For the first 6,525 miles of its journey, it had an escort.
A few minutes after the moonship commenced its upward climb through Earth’s gravity well, Fido’s Pride ignited its main engine and began to follow its lunar trajectory. The retriever ship couldn’t hope to keep up with the massive vessel in front of it; even if it had attempted to do so, the fuel in its seven strap-on tanks would have been long exhausted before it got halfway to the Moon.
Yet that wasn’t its mission; Fido’s Pride’s small role in the greater scheme of things was to shadow Conestoga only until it reached the first checkpoint. So, for the next half-hour, the retriever chased the moonship like a greyhound pursuing a mechanical rabbit down a racetrack six thousand miles long.
Through the canopy windows, Ed McGraw could see the brilliant flare of Conestoga’s engines against the dense blackness of cislunar space as it gradually outraced his small, aged ship. The computer and radar screens showed that they were both right on course, following a shallow semielliptical arc which would eventually take Conestoga into lunar orbit. By then, of course, McGraw’s job would be done; he would have long since returned to the Wheel, bringing with him fragments of history.
In the aft cabin behind the cockpit, an R.E.M. tape blared from a small Sony deck which dangled on its strap from an equipment rack, swaying backward with the force of constant acceleration. Poppa was getting just familiar enough with recent rock ’n’ roll to recognize “Orange Crush” when he heard it; either that, or Billy had played it so many times that he could practically mime Michael Stipe’s voice.
“‘Follow me, don’t fall on me … ’” Poppa sang under his breath until he forgot the rest of the words. Sort of appropriate, although he would have preferred Beethoven’s Fourth just now. Maybe a little Elvis, if he had to listen to rock, although he knew he was dating himself with that thought; the last time he had caught up with the King, he was touring with U2. Leave it to the younger generation to make you feel so goddamn old….
“How’s it coming back there?” he shouted over his shoulder, careful not to take his eyes off the screens.
“Almost ready,” Billy called back. “Go ahead and pressurize the bottle.”
Billy ha
d pulled on a pressure suit and was fitting a bubble helmet over his head; the suit was just sufficient to protect him if the ship’s bottlesuit suffered decompression, although that had never occurred while he was a pilot. Poppa pumped air into the bottlesuit; when the gauges told him the pressures had equalized, he hit a switch which popped the round hatch in the floor of the aft compartment. Billy climbed down into the bottlesuit’s cocoon and shut the hatch above him.
By now, thirty-three minutes had passed since Conestoga had left Earth orbit. McGraw didn’t need the computer to prompt him on the next event; he whispered the countdown under his breath. “MECO in five … four … three … two … one …”
Right on time, the distant flare of the moonship’s engines abruptly disappeared as the giant vehicle began its long glide to the Moon. Keeping a sharp eye on the radar screen, McGraw throttled the engine back by 50 percent.
“Okay, Gene,” he murmured, “don’t keep me waiting. Get rid of your baggage now …”
Sure enough, the blip on the radar screen split into three smaller parts; the one in the center remained on its original heading while its two other parts cleaved away.
“Okay,” McGraw said aloud, “we’ve got departure tank separation.”
Got it, Billy said through the comlink. Are they staying in range?
Poppa watched the radar display for another few seconds. Although the two blips were drifting in opposite directions, they remained within a few hundred feet of each other. “Ayup, they’re in the ballpark,” he replied. “Let’s go get ’em.”
Conestoga no longer needed the four spherical tanks that had contained the lox and hydrazine necessary for departure, so they had been jettisoned, in racks of two apiece, from the moonship’s frame. Under normal circumstances they would have been ejected with small explosive charges which would have sent them tumbling into deep space, never to be seen again, but because it was desirable to retrieve the tanks so that they could later be remated with the rest of the moonship as a museum exhibit, the pyros had been removed from the strutwork. Instead, Conestoga’s flight had rolled the ship on its axis, causing the departure tanks to gently disengage from the frame and drift away so that they could be retrieved by Fido’s Pride.
“Nice job, Gene.” Poppa Dog grinned as he turned his ship toward the closer of the two braces. “Fido to Wheel Command,” he said, toggling the KU-band radio, “this is Mars Retriever One-Three. We’ve got a lock on the DTs at angles six-two-fiver and going to collect.”
It took a few moments to get a response; the Wheel was now of the far side of Earth, so McGraw’s signal had to bounce across a series of low-orbit Comsats. We copy, Mars Retriever One-Three, a voice replied through his headset. Keep us posted, over.
“Will do, Wheel,” Poppa replied as he throttled back the main engine another ten points. “Poppa over and out.”
Most of the time, Wheel Command couldn’t care less what he and Billy were doing out here, so long as they didn’t interfere with other space traffic. On the other hand, this time they weren’t hauling in a dead weather satellite or somesuch piece of orbital flotsam. Today, they were bringing home a piece of history….
Yeah. And when he was a doddering old fool, he could take the grandkids to the Smithsonian and show it to them. McGraw’s grin faded as he considered the prospect. See those fuel tanks? They’re from the last American spaceship to visit the Moon, and your grandpappy brought ’em home for you to look at. Doesn’t that make you feel proud?
“Hell of a note,” he muttered to himself.
What’s that? Billy asked.
“Never mind, son. Just thinking aloud.”
Still, it wasn’t often that he got to take Fido’s Pride out this far. Besides the occasional run out to geosynchronous orbit, most of the salvage missions he and Billy performed were in lower orbit; if they’d had enough fuel and oxygen aboard, he would have liked to chase Conestoga all the way to the Moon. Almost twenty years in the saddle and he had never walked on the Moon, and unless he cared to learn how to speak German and handle a new type of vessel, he probably never would.
Fuck it. Glancing through the canopy windows, he could see stars beginning to appear around him as the Sun set behind Earth. It was always a pretty sight, one of the few things that still made it worthwhile to be an astronaut. The mission was going well enough for him to sneak a peek.
Carefully keeping one hand steady on the yoke, McGraw loosened his shoulder straps so he could turn slightly to his left and look out the portside windows. Earth was a vast, dark shape behind him, its curve described by a thin blue-yellow line of light. A smile reappeared on his face as he savored the view. Damn, it sure was pretty. He should remember to bring a camera out here sometime, snap a few pictures for the grandkids back home. Maybe they would …
All at once, something caught his eye: a tiny spot of light within the darkness, like a fireball lancing across Earth’s atmosphere.
“Whoa!” he yelled. “You see that?”
For a moment, he thought it was a large meteorite entering the atmosphere. He had seen that a few times over the years: pieces of a passing Apollo asteroid, meeting its final fate as it disintegrated within the upper reaches of the stratosphere. Yet this miniature comet didn’t quickly burst and fade from view. And it was going in the wrong direction, heading out instead of in …
See what? Billy asked.
Of course, he couldn’t see anything. Sealed inside the bottlesuit, Billy couldn’t see jackshit until he had disengaged from the belly of the retriever ship.
As abruptly as it appeared, the fireball vanished. Poppa watched as it disappeared among the stars. In another moment, it was indistinguishable from any one of dozens of satellites in low orbit.
“Uh … naw, never mind.” McGraw turned back around, blinking rapidly as he put his eyes back on the radar display. The first brace of tanks was coming up fast; he couldn’t afford to screw around with UFO sightings right now. “Thought I saw something, that’s all.”
What did you see?
“Forget it,” McGraw replied. “Just get ready for the drop.”
Damned if it didn’t look like an orbital rocket being launched from somewhere on Earth. Yet, when he glanced at the Zulu-time chronometer and did a little mental figuring, the likely point of origin didn’t make much sense. Given the time of day, the rocket must have been launched from somewhere in Southeast Asia. With the exception of Japan’s launch sites at Kagoshima and Tanegashima Island, there weren’t any there, and the Japanese weren’t scheduled for any night launches the last time he had checked.
His right hand drifted uncertainly toward the communications panel; then he stopped himself. He could see the departure tanks through his front window now, and Fido’s Pride was going a bit too fast for an effective capture rendezvous. McGraw hastily throttled back to zero and fired the ship’s forward RCR’s; the harness dug into his chest and shoulders as the mutt put on the brakes.
Poppa, what the hell … !
“Sorry about that, kid.” McGraw returned his concentration to the tricky maneuver he had almost botched. “Just seeing things.”
And so it was. He was just seeing things.
Main-engine cutoff and separation of the departure tanks had gone as well as could be expected, and although they were to perform four course-correction burns within the next sixteen hours, the first one wasn’t scheduled for another hour and a half, when they reached the second checkpoint at 21,750 nautical miles.
Nonetheless, the launch had not gone flawlessly. When Lewitt deployed the high-gain telemetry dish and the mercury-solar boiler, he reported that the long-range radar seemed to be on the fritz. Gene unstrapped and floated over to Jay’s station, where he confirmed that the LR radar display was showing nothing but snow. Most likely, something outside the ship had come loose during launch. However, since the close-range radar was still operational, it wasn’t an immediate source of concern; while the short-range system was vital for landing, the LRR was a secondary
array which didn’t need immediate attention, since it was mainly used for rendezvousing with the hangar during the return flight.
“Keep on it,” he said to Jay. “If we don’t get it ironed out before we get to the Moon, we’ll fix it there.”
Jay nodded. “Got it. Going below?”
“Yeah. Time to check on the tourists.” Parnell pushed off from the bulkhead. “You’ve got the wheel. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He left the command deck and floated headfirst down the gangway shaft to C-deck. As he expected, most of the passengers were clinging to rungs near the portholes, watching as Earth receded behind them. Thankfully, no one had gotten spacesick; by now, even Bromleigh and Dooley had become accustomed to surges and sudden drops of g-force, and Bromleigh was aiming his Sony out one of the portholes to snag a few shots of Earth.
As he watched Dooley and Rhodes jostling for room at a porthole, like a couple of kids fighting for the best seat on a carnival ride, Parnell wondered why no one had ever taken space tourism seriously. Probably because first the Space Force, then NASA, had jealously fought off bids by various entrepreneurs to develop low-orbit spacecraft for civilians. So far, the only untrained individuals who had ever been in space were a select handful of politicians, journalists, and celebrities. Sure, NASA had let John Denver sing a couple of songs aboard the Wheel, and George Lucas had been allowed to shoot a zero-g fight scene in the hub for Revenge of the Jedi. But wouldn’t it have been better publicity if the agency had traded one famous pop singer or film director for a couple of suburban housewives, who could have then gone home to tell their friends that spending tax money on space travel was worthwhile after all?
One more lost opportunity …
He had intended to brew some coffee in the galley, only to be surprised that Markus Talsbach had already found the microgravity coffee maker. “We have studied your equipment completely,” Talsbach said, giving Gene a smug smile as he slipped a catheter around a squeeze bulb and handed it to him. “It is a good design … but it needs a little improvement, yes?”
