Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  The first unmanned Vostok had been launched in May 1960, under the careful supervision of Marshal Nedelin, Chairman of the State Commission. At first the mission was a great success. The Vostok successfully went into orbit, sending clear signals from space. While they were preparing a statement for the press, according to Georgi Grechko, Korolev announced a competition to decide exactly what to call it. Various names were called out: spacecraft, cosmocraft, rocket-craft … Korolev did not like any of them. ‘There are sea ships, and river ships and now there’ll be space ships,’ he declared. The excitement was palpable. ‘Comrades, do you know what we have just written,’ said Lev Grishin, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee of Defence Technology, when he received the message in Moscow. ‘We have used the word spaceship. It is a revolution! The hair on the back of my neck is standing up.’

  The excitement, however, did not last. After sixty-four orbits they were ready to test the re-entry system. The retrorocket fired successfully, but a fault in the attitude control system meant that, rather than entering the earth’s atmosphere, the craft skimmed off the upper layers of the atmosphere and, by the force of the earth’s gravitational pull, was flung into an even higher orbit. With no retrorocket fuel left, the craft was stranded. Everyone was aware that any cosmonaut would have died in a slow and very public way when the oxygen ran out.

  Nonetheless, two months later they were ready to try their ship with the first live passengers: two dogs called Chaika and Lisichka – the latter meaning ‘little fox’. Korolev loved the red-haired dog, Lisichka, and she clearly returned his affection. Boris Chertok remembers that Korolev visited the dog just before her flight and, brushing the white-coated scientists aside, lifted her up and stroked her fondly. ‘I wish so much for you to come back,’ he was heard to say, before he turned slowly and left without speaking to anyone. ‘I had been working with Korolev a long time,’ Chertok recalled. ‘I even had contradictory feelings about Korolev, yet that hot day in July 1960, I felt a lump in my throat and a feeling of pity for the first time. Maybe it was some kind of presentiment.’

  Almost immediately after the launch on 28 July 1960 one of the booster engines burst into flames and barely thirty seconds after takeoff the rocket exploded. Everyone raced for the shelter. There seemed to be as much regret for the wretched fate of the red-haired dog as there was for the demise of the costly rocket. Following this setback, Tikhonravov modified the design of the ship so that, during the first critical minute of the launch, the cosmonaut would be able to eject from the Vostok and parachute to safety if there was a failure. TASS never released any information about the launch. Despite this failure, Korolev was determined to press ahead with the next dog launch in less than a month.

  On 19 August, Belka and Strelka were carried into orbit. At first, the camera trained on them showed them looking lifeless, almost dead, only the monitoring equipment revealing that they were alive. As the flight continued they appeared a little more animated. The crucial stage came after a day, as the team prepared for re-entry. This time, using back-up facilities, the orientation system worked, Isayev’s retro rockets fired and they entered the atmosphere as planned. Indeed, the return was so successful that Belka and Strelka were parachuted to safety just over six miles from the designated landing position in Kazakhstan.

  It was a great triumph: the first creatures to return alive from space. A celebration organized at Marshal Nedelin’s house was hijacked by the need for an impromptu press conference even though it was late in the evening. In an attempt to let TASS get the story before the Western press, Belka and Strelka were paraded before an appreciative audience. It was yet another setback for America. John F. Kennedy, then an aspiring presidential candidate, chided that ‘the first canine passengers in space who safely returned were called Strelka and Belka … not Rover and Fido’.

  Following this success, in September the Central Committee of the Communist Party approved Korolev’s formal request for a manned flight. Keldysh, Nedelin, Glushko, Ustinov and other senior figures all put their signatures to the document. Korolev still aimed to launch a manned Vostok by December. In the meantime, Khrushchev hoped more exciting events were on the way as he attended a United Nations conference in New York in October 1960. As usual he was relying on a splendid performance from Korolev who was planning to send two probes to Mars. Inflated with Soviet conquests in space, he made extravagant claims for Soviet rocket science. ‘We are turning out rockets like sausages,’ Khrushchev said, ‘and will soon have a man in space.’ With irritating grandiloquence he promised a gift of one of Strelka’s puppies to the White House. But on 10 October, Mars 1, which would probably have had Khrushchev doing a pas de deux for the UN representatives had it succeeded in its journey, failed even to leave the earth’s gravitational pull before simply falling back to earth. ‘Mars keeps its secrets,’ Korolev wrote to Nina the next day, ‘and our work – which is not always successful – helps it to remain hidden. It is such a great pity that the result of such titanic work … is lying on the ground in a thousand pieces scattered somewhere in Siberia.’ Three days later a second Mars probe also failed.

  Displeased at being unable to flaunt Soviet joyrides to Mars, Khrushchev returned to Moscow and made it very clear to Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, his chief of missile deployment, that some success was overdue and Marshal Nedelin had better provide it. What had happened to Comrade Yangel’s R-16, the wonder rocket with the wonder fuel that would equip the army with storable rockets and that could be hidden in silos, safe from the prying eyes of US spy planes? He expected a successful test launch that autumn. Failure was not an option.

  Khrushchev’s hard words weighed down the epaulettes on Marshal Nedelin’s shoulders, increasing his awareness of how easily they could be removed should he be seen to be less than effective. He set out for Baikonur to organize the maiden launch of the R-16, due to lift off on 23 October. Much was riding on the back of the new rocket. The army was impatient for its strategic advantages. At last it would be possible for a build-up of stored weapons ready to fire. It was essential that the new design was seen to do well. Irritatingly, on 23 October, far from the new propellants making fuelling easier, there were considerable difficulties. Eventually, a leak was discovered and the launch was postponed while repairs were carried out overnight.

  The correct safety procedure was to drain the rocket of fuel while a proper investigation took place. Nedelin would not hear of this, however. He ordered several teams to tighten valves and patch up things in spite of the fact that the rocket was fully fuelled and highly dangerous. No one was allowed to rest. Next morning, he signed the documentation showing the rocket was fit to fly and a launch time was set while small, last-minute complications kept two hundred operatives busy on the site. With Khrushchev’s words still stinging, Marshal Nedelin wanted results. He ordered that a stool be placed 60 feet from the rocket so that he could personally supervise and see that no slacking took place. If fuel was leaking, then valves must be tightened and screws given an extra turn. ‘What is there to be afraid of?’ it is claimed he said. ‘Am I not an officer?’ Safety was ignored as men worked among corrosive, dripping fuel and toxic fumes. Nedelin sat there, surrounded by dignitaries, his disquieting presence forbidding a challenge, the rows of glittering medals confirming his exalted position, his dark eyes missing nothing.

  And there was nothing actually for the eye to see as, thirty minutes before liftoff, a faulty signal shaped the destiny of the R-16. In the complex sequence of procedures prior to launch, a wrong signal was sent to the upper stages of the rocket. Its engines fired, immediately setting alight the highly flammable liquid in the second stage below, which exploded with volcanic force. In a second, the rocket became an immense incandescent torch. The upper stage fell into the blaze, creating a whirlwind of apocalyptic proportions consuming everything in its path. Those trying to escape were suddenly embraced by far-reaching fingers of flames. The surrounding tarmac – freshly laid bitumen – melted and ignited, b
ecoming a floor of fire which trapped those running from the horror. ‘Many got stuck in the sticky burning mass and perished in the flames,’ recorded the journalist Aleksander Bolotin. The deputy minister in charge of the Soviet defence industry, Lev Grishin, who only a few months earlier had been celebrating the idea of a ‘spaceship’, happened to be just a few steps from the rocket, talking to Marshal Nedelin. He managed to run all the way across this flaming tarmac and leap across high ramps and railings, breaking both his legs with the effort. He was taken to a military hospital where, four days later, he died of his burns in the arms of his good friend, Glushko. Most of the others were overcome almost immediately by the toxic fumes.

  ‘The most horrific fate of all befell those on the upper levels of the service platforms,’ continued Bolotin. Hanging from their safety harnesses in the gantry, the dutiful technicians ‘simply burst into flames like candles’. As for Marshal Nedelin, who was standing positioned to watch the show, the roaring, swirling flames reaching temperatures of 3000 degrees simply melted him and his entourage away. The head of the emergency rescue team reported that victims could only be identified by their rings and house keys. All that was left of the vaporized Nedelin was his medals. He was identified by his gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

  When Yangel told Khrushchev of the horrific tragedy, the Soviet premier looked grave, his eyes focused on an inner reckoning.

  ‘Why aren’t you dead?’ he asked Yangel.

  ‘I was smoking a cigarette in the bunker,’ Yangel replied. To calm his nerves, at the critical moment thirty minutes before the scheduled launch, he had gone for a break. He asked Khrushchev to punish him and afterwards he was seen crying at the launch site and at home. ‘I could never get the sight out of my head,’ he later admitted.

  In true Soviet style, the disaster was hushed up. The country mourned Marshal Nedelin’s death in a plane crash. The worst was kept from the cosmonauts in Star City. Official documents – withheld at the time – state that ninety-two people lost their lives. Eyewitness reports put the total death toll at nearer 150.

  Korolev felt justified in damning those fuels so corrosive that they ate through the metal they were stored in. And he mourned the fact that crucial ground staff at the launch pad had died; he had so wanted to make up ground after the defeat of the Mars missions. In spite of being tired, shocked by Nedelin’s death and defeated by the failure of the Mars probes, Korolev could not let go. He was impelled to work until his vision had taken on the substance of reality. He could no more change his compulsion than he could change the colour of his eyes. ‘I wish I could be at home with you, or go out somewhere,’ he wrote to the ever-patient Nina, ‘but I am afraid that these are just dreams.’

  In spring 1960, the deafening sound of Wernher von Braun’s Saturn engines thundered their way into existence at the Huntsville test site. It sounded like the end of the world as windows trembled and the walls of houses shuddered; dogs slunk into dark corners and cats hid under beds. But the Huntsville citizens were tolerant; if the German engineers wanted to make a noise like the gates of hell opening, that was all right; it was probably just the sound of money anyway. Those living in the countryside were less charmed as their cows ran dry, their bullocks stampeded, heifers could not be got into calf, hens refused to lay and all manner of unwelcome phenomena haunted the farmyard. The sound could be heard a hundred miles away, the farmers claimed as they asked for compensation. But it was the sound of music to the ears of von Braun – at last his dream of space was waking to life.

  In September, the President himself came down to Alabama to inaugurate the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and von Braun, as the new director of a NASA space centre, showed him around. Eisenhower was aware that America should embrace certain aspects of space technology more fully. Only the previous May, the Soviets had brought down an American U2 spy plane. Pictures of Gary Powers, the pilot, being paraded by the Soviets had been world news. It seemed as though Eisenhower had given Khrushchev a free opportunity to crow over the backward Americans. And worse, American intelligence feared a ‘missile gap’, with the Soviets suspected of having twice the number of ICBMs.

  While the President was at the Marshall Space Flight Center, von Braun took the opportunity to be his persuasive best. Eisenhower recognized that space offered important strategic advantages, not least to spy on one’s enemies; he had already initiated a secret spy satellite programme and his administration had created NASA. In spite of this, Eisenhower had doubts about expanding the space programme still further. A ‘space race’ with the Soviets had political dimensions that troubled him. He was concerned that this could stir up Cold War tensions and undermine his already fragile relationship with the Soviets. There was also the enormous potential financial cost to consider, with no guarantee of success. Indeed one of his advisers, George Kistiakowsky, had been scathing about the Mercury programme. ‘It will be the most expensive funeral a man ever had,’ he had claimed.

  Von Braun proudly displayed the work in progress on the Mercury-Redstone project and plans for the development of the massive Saturn rocket, not to mention the research, still at an early stage, for a colossus among rockets, having 1,500,000 pounds of thrust. Preparations for the Mercury-Redstone were advancing well. They had managed to reduce vibration and noise levels in the Mercury spacecraft by the introduction of dampeners – vibration-insulating material – between the rocket and the craft. They had also introduced an ‘abort-sensing system’, an electrical system which monitored the performance of the engine, the rocket’s trajectory and other parameters. Should there be any danger, the abort system would activate the escape tower rockets, pulling the astronauts to safety. Despite his reservations about a ‘space race’, the President was duly impressed.

  All was not proceeding quite so smoothly with some of von Braun’s NASA colleagues. Von Braun, anxious about safety, was keen to carry out integration tests on the rocket and the Mercury capsule at the Marshall Space Flight Center in order to check every system before it was taken to the Cape. With the sheer number of different components that had to be coordinated – the capsule made by McDonnell, the rocket by Boeing and countless other companies involved in the massive effort – would it all fit together and work as planned? Max Faget opposed von Braun, insisting that there would not be enough time for testing at Marshall.

  Difficulties had also arisen with Chris Kraft, one of Gilruth’s core team from the Space Task Group in Langley. He was assigned the task of working out a basic flight plan and had proposed the development of a ‘mission control centre’ which would gather all the data and direct the flights from the ground. Von Braun had vehemently opposed the idea, favouring full pilot control. They had clashed openly at a party; everyone fell silent, watching. It had been left to Maria von Braun to break up the argument and gently lead her husband away.

  There may have been strong feelings towards the Germans within NASA. Gilruth and Kraft, while working for NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), had fought the Nazis during the war. ‘We knew enough [about von Braun’s … rocket factory in central Germany…] for it to generate strong emotions, bordering on loathing,’ Kraft wrote later. Others within NASA disliked von Braun’s ‘star’ status. Unlike Korolev in Russia, von Braun was now a small part of a rapidly growing space industry in America – yet he was a better-known public figure than many of the NASA team.

  There was another rather personal setback for von Braun later that September with the launch of a film about his life, I Aim at the Stars. Far from being the flattering biopic that he had envisaged, he found it critical and disappointing. Worse still, there were pickets outside cinemas in some European towns, notably London. The film’s title became transformed into a popular joke: ‘I aim at the stars and sometimes I hit London.’

  While there may have been mixed reactions to von Braun, the astronauts themselves were continually fêted by the public as living examples of the best of America. Every day they were
in American living rooms, filling TV screens – their fearlessness seeming positive proof that America was going to beat the Soviets. They opened events, made speeches and impressed the industrial aristocracy. The smallest detail of their exemplary lives was public property. There were glimpses into their perfect marriages; their religious preferences, their favourite vegetable, their sock size, the colour of their eyes and their tastes in ties were known to all.

  Out of the limelight, when they weren’t required to represent America at some important function, the astronauts were training at Cape Canaveral. Often this involved long hours acquainting themselves with the space capsule, learning procedures. It could actually be tedious. There were two distinct landscapes to their lives: training at Cape Canaveral and weekends with their families. Sometimes weekends with the family didn’t work out – fortunate, then, for Al Shepard, whose other love, apart from flying, was racing cars. He was able to get his speed up on the local dirt-hard beach that went on forever. His enthusiasm infected the others – apart from John Glenn – and they would often tear along Cocoa Beach until blue distance met the sky.

  It was implicitly understood that wives did not appear at Cape Canaveral or Cocoa Beach. They would not like it. Cape Canaveral was not a civilized place. Until the government had started laying concrete and building bunkers and sheds, no one had wanted it. It was a mosquito-ridden, featureless stretch of aridity, devoid of all charm. And Cocoa Beach itself was hardly a resort, merely a conjunction of water and sand. No boutiques, bijou clubs or handsome hotels vied for attention: just a scattering of unprofitable, clapped-out motels for people unfortunate enough to be passing through. But to the astronauts, with its racing beach, anonymous motels and lack of reporters, it was the perfect place to relax – apart from John Glenn, that is, who preferred to unwind at home with his family.