Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  Salyut continued to perform well with no major problems, as did the crew. As for the experiments, they had fallen a little behind schedule since the unusual nature of the work and sleep schedules and the disruption of the fire had thrown things into slight disarray. But the cosmonauts were still continuing to work and collect data. When they returned, they would have a treasure trove of material for the scientists on the ground to look over.

  During the twenty-first and twenty-second days of the flight, the Soviet space program suffered two setbacks. First, Aleksei Isayev, head of the Himmash (OKB-2) design bureau, suffered a lethal heart attack and died at only age sixty-three. Then the next day, on 27 June, the third test flight of the N1 moon rocket ended in failure. After liftoff, the rocket experienced a spin along its axis that could not be corrected by the roll-control motors. The spin caused the support structure between the second and third stages to fail. The upper stages toppled and exploded while the out-of-control yet still-powered lower stages shot past and crashed into the desert about thirty kilometers away, resulting in a large crater. It had been hoped that the Salyut crew would be able to observe the launch from orbit as part of a rocket launch detection experiment, until delays on the ground prevented it.

  During the final days of the mission, the sleep cycle of the three crewmembers was shifted so that they would all be awake and alert for undocking day and the return to Earth. Efforts were made to close down and store the experiments while transmitting the last findings to the control center. The station was given a thorough cleaning, and it was returned to automatic function. Tests were made on the Soyuz’s systems as it was brought out of hibernation. Everything seemed to be in working order, and it was time to return home.

  On the final dock day, the crew entered the Soyuz and sealed the hatches between the two craft. As a final procedure before undocking, they also had to seal the hatch between the orbital module and the descent module. But there was a problem, as a warning light indicated the hatch was still open even when properly shut. The problem was traced to one of several buttons that surrounded the hatch. When the hatch is closed, these buttons get pushed and the light goes out, kind of like an overhead dome light in a car or a refrigerator. But one of the buttons was barely being pushed when the hatch was fully seated. So the decision was made to put a piece of tape over the button in order to bypass it and turn out the indicator light. With that done, Soyuz 11 undocked from Salyut automatically. With two orbits left to go before reentry, all the crew had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride.

  Two hours before reentry, General Kamanin made a call to the spacecraft with a final weather report and instructions for what to do after reentry while awaiting pickup. This would be the last flight he would oversee as the director of cosmonaut training and the recovery forces, as he was retiring and turning his duties over to Shatalov. The conversation went well. Kamanin concluded his remarks with, “I wish you a soft landing. See you soon on Earth.” Dobrovolsky acknowledged the instructions; told Kamanin that the crew was “excellent”; and concluded his reply with, “We thank you for your help and good wishes.”

  Silence

  At the proper time, Soyuz 11 was ready to come home. Over the Atlantic Ocean between North and South America, just to the north of the equator, Soyuz 11 started the retrofire sequence at 22:35:24 GMT as the main motors of the Soyuz service module fired for about three minutes to slow the craft’s orbital velocity so that it would descend into Earth’s atmosphere. Once retrofire was complete, the typical reentry sequence for the Soyuz would have it pitching upward in a near-vertical orientation and jettisoning both the orbital and service modules from the descent module about five to ten minutes later. The orientation was needed in order to ensure that all three modules would reenter Earth’s atmosphere on different trajectories with no chance of a collision. The thrusters on the descent module would then orient the capsule’s blunt end forward into the reentry path and keep it aligned properly. Roll-control thrusters on the capsule would also help to guide the craft on a controlled reentry trajectory where the cosmonauts would only experience about three times the force of gravity on their bodies. If this system failed, the capsule would reenter on a steeper ballistic trajectory, and the cosmonauts might experience gravitational forces of over 9 g’s. A ballistic reentry would make for an uncomfortable ride, but the custom-fitted crew couches were designed to minimize the effects.

  The jettison sequence took place at about 22:47:28 GMT. With the propulsion module severed from the descent module, all communications ceased except for signals on a VHF transmitter located inside the descent module. Good telemetry signals were received from the descent module’s VHF antenna when it passed within range of the western-most land-based Soviet tracking stations, but there was no voice contact. The signals were lost when the capsule entered reentry blackout at 22:54 GMT. Soviet tracking radars picked up the descent module making a normal reentry a few minutes later. The drogue and main parachutes deployed properly, and Soyuz 11 made a perfect touchdown on the steppes of Kazakhstan at about 23:16 GMT on 30 June 1971. Upon touchdown, the descent module flipped over on its side, as typically happens. A recovery helicopter visually monitored the descent of the craft and was on-site right away to render assistance.

  Minutes went by with no radio response from either the crew or the recovery forces. Things were eerily quiet. Thirty minutes after touchdown, it was reported to General Kamanin by radio from an officer on the scene that the situation was “a most tragic one.” The three cosmonauts—Georgi “Zhora” Dobrovolsky, Vladislav “Vadim” Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev—were dead in their couches.

  When the recovery forces opened the hatch to the descent module, they found the cosmonauts with their eyes closed as if they were asleep. There were signs of dark-blue bruising on their faces and trails of blood from their noses and mouths. They had no signs of life, but Dobrovolsky’s body was reportedly still warm. The bodies were removed from the capsule as doctors and medics at the site tried to administer CPR on the three cosmonauts. A camera crew sent to film the recovery with movie and still cameras documented the futile attempts to revive the three cosmonauts while officers looked on in shock and disbelief.

  An investigation was immediately launched while the announcement of their deaths was made to the Soviet people. General Kamanin and Shatalov were flown to the landing site along with cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Vitali Sevastyanov to inspect the capsule. According to the results, all the systems seemed to function properly, and everything seemed to be in place except for one valve that had its handle position moved by about ten millimeters. Further testing was done on-site when the recovery crew closed all the valves and pumped up the capsule to a high internal pressure. No leaks were detected. The capsule was then returned to Moscow for further analysis.

  After the bodies were autopsied, the results were conclusive. All three crewmembers had died from decompression and oxygen starvation. Once they had lost consciousness, the trapped gases in their bodies had ruptured their eardrums, and their blood boiled. Bruising along their faces and extremities was caused by capillaries rupturing in a near vacuum. An onboard black box designed to record several parameters of data, from the spacecraft’s automatic control systems to the crew’s heart rates and other metabolic functions, was also checked for clues.

  Through the medical analysis and data from the black box, it was determined that by the time medics had gotten to the cosmonauts, they had already been dead for nearly thirty minutes. They had died from rapid decompression and had been exposed to a vacuum for as long as eleven minutes before the pressure began to come up inside the capsule as it descended into Earth’s atmosphere.

  On 1 July the cosmonauts’ bodies lay in state for eight hours at the Central House for the Soviet Army in Moscow as tens of thousands of mourners filed past to pay their respects. Other cosmonauts formed an honor guard to watch over their fallen comrades during the proceedings. The bodies were then cremated in preparation for their burial i
n the Kremlin wall alongside Sergei Korolev, Vladimir Komarov, and Yuri Gagarin.

  As a gesture of good will and solidarity among space travelers, President Nixon asked astronaut Thomas Stafford to be the NASA representative at the funeral for the Soyuz 11 cosmonauts. When he got the call to go to Moscow, Stafford was on his way to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to take part in a space exhibition. During the previous funerals for Komarov and Gagarin, NASA had offered to send astronauts along as representatives, but the Soviets kindly turned them down. For this one, though, they accepted Stafford with open arms and made him a pall bearer for a portion of the procession as the ashes of the three cosmonauts were taken to the Kremlin.

  Investigation and Aftermath

  Just what had killed the crew of Soyuz 11? The investigation ultimately focused on two pressurization valves in the descent module. Each valve was equipped with both a manual and an automatic shutter. From launch to landing, one valve would have been manually closed, the other manually opened. And both would have had the automatic shutters closed. When the main parachute opened on the Soyuz, small explosive charges were designed to blow open the automatic shutters in both valves, and the one open valve would equalize air pressure between the capsule and the outside. The Soyuz descent module was only intended for use up to about thirty minutes by itself, so no internal tank of oxygen was provided. When the capsule landed, the crew might be incapacitated from their reentry ordeal, especially if they were returning in a weakened state. So the open valve would keep fresh air coming into the capsule and prevent suffocation until rescuers arrived. The second valve was provided in case the descent module landed in water. In that case, whichever valve was not submerged could be opened and the other one kept closed to prevent water leaking into the capsule.

  As to why the valve failed, it was speculated in Western publications that the Soyuz capsule’s explosive bolts, designed to separate the orbital module from the descent module, had fired all at once instead of in a properly timed sequence, as was done in the Apollo craft, and that the resulting jolt jostled the valve open while the capsule was still in space. But this conclusion was incorrect as the Soyuz explosive bolts were designed to fire at once on a common circuit. The resulting jolt should have been no more than what the valve should have normally seen. When the valves were analyzed, it was found that they were not torqued to the proper specifications called for in the design and were way below the proper tolerances. So when the explosive bolts fired, the automatic shutter check ball inside the manually open valve was dislodged, and the air leaked out into space. Further testing on other Soyuz descent modules, both flown and still under construction, revealed that none of them had valves at the proper torque settings either. Soyuz 11’s valves had the lowest torque numbers of them all.

  With the size of the valve in question, once it had opened in what essentially was still a vacuum, it would have depressurized the capsule completely within thirty seconds to a minute. It was figured that the crew would have maybe fifteen seconds at most of useable consciousness before becoming incapacitated. They would likely have heard a whistling sound when the valve opened and probably also felt their eardrums pop as the pressure began to reduce. Dobrovolsky unlatched his seatbelts to check the descent module’s hatch since it was the source of the undocking problem earlier. The other two crewmembers shut off the alarms and radios to listen for the source of the leak themselves. Eventually, they apparently focused on one of the two valves and began to close it, although they ran into one final problem. According to Soyuz 11’s factory and preflight documentation, the manual knob of valve number one should have been closed and valve number two should have been open. But it turns out the sequence was reversed, and valve number one was open instead of valve two. Valve one was the source of the leak. Patsayev, who was located closest to valve two, would have run into a roadblock, trying to close an already-closed valve. However, it looks as though the leaking valve was located and Dobrovolsky began to close it, as indicated by the valve handle’s position on landing and his proximity to it. But the crew simply ran out of time.

  Under normal conditions, the valve would take thirty-five seconds to close. Even if they had focused immediately on the valves instead of the hatch, isolated the correct valve, and closed it in record time, the pressure in the cabin would have fallen below a level to maintain life in less than thirty seconds. Without a tank of oxygen to repressurize the cabin, the crew would have been dead anyway. If the proper valve had been closed and the other one open as originally specified, there might not have been an accident, as the valve that failed was not supposed to be open. So ultimately the Soyuz 11 crew died because of a couple of careless mistakes they likely had no control over.

  Mishin to his dying days maintained that the crew could have given themselves more time if one of the cosmonauts had put his finger over the valve’s opening to keep the air in while the valve was closed manually. Others were a bit more realistic in their assessment that more than likely there was nothing the crew could have done to save themselves once the valve was opened to space. Leonov, in his biography, said that he communicated instructions up to the crew to close the valve, around the time they undocked from Salyut, since he felt that the idea of having one valve manually opened as the checklist indicated was not smart and that the crew could always open it after they were descending on the parachutes. Leonov also maintains that if he had been flying the mission, he would have closed both valves himself before the orbital module was jettisoned. Whether or not Leonov’s crew would have survived if they had flown will ultimately never be known.

  Even in the early days of the investigation, there were calls to launch another crew to Salyut as normal since the station was operating properly. But all Soyuz flights were put on hold while the investigation determined what happened. The practice of flying crews on the Soyuz without pressure suits had been criticized by General Kamanin years before, as he felt it was an unnecessary risk. Korolev, Mishin, and Soyuz spacecraft designer Feoktistov all figured that flying with pressure suits was a waste since crewmembers on submarines don’t wear wet suits in anticipation of a leak. Plus, the Soyuz spacecraft was already at the limits of its design weight. Pressure suits and their associated equipment would incur a substantial weight penalty, and the physical size of the descent module meant that only two suited cosmonauts could fly instead of three nonsuited ones.

  Ustinov had heard enough, though; he made the official mandate: cosmonauts from then on would fly into orbit and back wearing pressure suits. Modified Sokol lightweight pressure suits used in high-altitude aircraft were added, along with a system that could rapidly repressurize the craft in the event of another pressurization failure, even if the crew were not wearing the suits.

  Since Salyut’s design life would be exhausted by the time Soyuz was ready to fly again, the decision was made to deorbit the station in October of 1971. It reentered and burned up after flying successfully for 175 days. Even in its unmanned state, the station had performed well and likely would have continued to do so if a second crew had flown to it.

  4

  The Apollo Applications Project

  In 1965 things were advancing quite well on NASA’s road to the moon. The Gemini program was hitting its stride in providing answers for rendezvous, docking, EVA, and living in space up to two weeks. Development and testing work was also progressing on the Apollo spacecraft at the contractor sites. The schedule was tight, but it looked like the goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s was within reach.

  But there was a growing problem. NASA knew what its near-term goals were, but it didn’t have any set goals beyond the lunar missions. Support for the next step was split among leaders at NASA who wanted to focus on just getting Apollo to the moon and those in Congress who wanted NASA to do another program to help sustain America’s leadership role in space. Certain Congressional leaders feared that if NASA did not have a goal after Apollo, it would make the funding fights on Capitol Hill more challenging. At the
same time, there was also a rather vocal opposition to NASA from some Congressional leaders who felt that spaceflight was a waste and that the funding would be better spent elsewhere.

  When NASA’s charter was drawn up during the Eisenhower administration, the funding for NASA would come from Public Health and Welfare as opposed to its own direct funding on the same tier as a Department of Defense agency, such as the U.S. Air Force. Part of the reason for this is that President Eisenhower wanted NASA to be a civilian agency with an open space program instead of a military one with potentially secret goals. The situation continues to be one of the primary reasons why funding debates in Congress typically come down to the space program versus welfare programs, even today.

  There was also a concern that scientists were being left out in the cold by NASA. In the perception of some scientists, Apollo’s goal of reaching the moon seemed to exclude the question of what should be done when astronauts get there. The perception among the scientific community was that scientific inquiry seemed to be tacked on to manned spaceflights as an afterthought. On the other side, many of the early astronauts expressed their dissatisfaction with scientists, since many felt that doing experiments tended to get in the way of flying the mission. Some would try their best to minimize the research if they felt that it interfered with the flight-testing goals.

  On the unmanned-mission side, research satellites and probes began providing useful data on Earth and the solar system. There were calls among members of the scientific community that after the moon landings, NASA should devote more time and finances toward unmanned missions and research satellites, arguing that those missions would provide more scientific data than what a manned flight to the moon ultimately could. With these concerns in mind, NASA began looking into a post-Apollo mission for its astronauts. The result would become known as the Apollo Applications Program (AAP).