Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  Next morning’s headlines greeted America:

  SOVIETS PUT MAN IN SPACE.

  SPOKESMAN SAYS U.S. ASLEEP

  The fourteenth of April was declared a national holiday. There would be celebrations in Moscow. The Russians had taken Gagarin to their hearts and were fiercely proud of his achievements, of his lonely flight around the world. In their hundreds of thousands, the people came to see their hero. There were crowds everywhere: at the airport, in the streets, lining the route to Moscow, jammed into Red Square. The media, busy unfolding Gagarin’s story, had in the process turned the country boy into a glamorous and disarming figure, yet one who was of the people. The masses in Red Square were enraptured as Gagarin stood on the balcony with Khrushchev and Brezhnev on either side. When Khrushchev, grinning from ear to ear, bathing in the reflected glory, hugged the hero, the crowds roared until their throats were sore. Their applause was unceasing. This was a day for recognition and reward.

  But not for Korolev. He was just someone in the crowd, undistinguished, unrecognized, unable to wear the medals of his awards, given no place at the high table and left to fend for himself when the fan belt broke on his car. He could not reach Red Square and eventually abandoned his efforts. He would have been so cheered to know that his daughter, Natasha, was part of the crowd that day. She was sworn to secrecy and unable to speak when her companions said they would love to know the identity of the Chief Designer. Nonetheless, she wrote later, her ‘heart was full of pride’.

  History was repeating itself. Once again America was up in arms. Once again, it had been shamefully beaten by its Cold War enemy, a country that many viewed as backward, barely able to feed itself, its industry obsolete. The Soviet success ‘has cost the nation heavily in prestige’ announced the New York Times. ‘Only Presidential emphasis and direction will chart an American pathway to the stars.’ John F. Kennedy, the new President, felt the defeat keenly. When he had entered the White House in January that year, he had such an irresistible air of success about him, and to the American people he seemed to embody the promise of a new golden age. The good-looking President and his glamorous entourage: what could they not do? ‘How can we catch up?’ was his continual question. ‘There is nothing more important.’

  The Shepard launch was scheduled for May but only three days after Gagarin’s flight Kennedy became embroiled in an embarrassing fiasco with America’s near-neighbour Cuba. The military took control of the Cape, potentially derailing NASA’s schedule. The island of Cuba, a mere ninety miles off the coast of Florida, was under the communist rule of Fidel Castro, who received backing from Khrushchev. Communist Cuba was seen as a danger to America and Kennedy had inherited a plan from Eisenhower’s administration to help Cuban exiles invade the island and overthrow Castro’s administration. A brigade of more than 1400 fighters had been secretly trained and equipped by the CIA in Guatemala. Air cover was also promised by the CIA during the attack.

  As the day approached, Kennedy had second thoughts, fearing that the American involvement against the Cuban government would be recognized. When the brigade landed at the Bay of Pigs on 17 April, the promised American air cover failed to materialize. Meanwhile, Castro quickly mobilized his own military, strafing the invading forces. Ships providing vital supplies were also destroyed. Within a matter of days, all the attackers were either dead or had been taken prisoner by Castro’s men, leaving a messy American fiasco for Khrushchev’s jibes. The Cuban exiles were betrayed and the Kennedy administration was embarrassed as the American role in the attack became all too evident. The stage was set for further confrontation between America and the Soviet Union. It was, declared one historian, ‘the perfect failure’.

  Kennedy needed a success; a plan to focus minds; something astonishing. Gagarin’s flight around the world had been breathtaking as much for what it promised in the future as for the flight itself. Man was no longer earthbound; he could be his own legend. He could fly to the stars. Kennedy wanted to link his administration to the same dream. On 20 April, as a victorious Fidel Castro announced that he had destroyed ‘in less than seventy-two hours the army the US imperialist government had organized for many months’, Kennedy ordered his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, to find out what space mission the Americans stood the best chance of winning.

  Meanwhile, interest countrywide was focused on Shepard’s imminent launch into space. Its success was imperative. After several days of bad weather when low cloud hung over the Cape, the date was finally set for 5 May 1961. Tired of hearing about Soviet success, Shepard wanted to stop Khrushchev in mid-sentence from boasting about the space programme and remind him that this was a two-horse race. After an early breakfast, the doctors applied the usual monitoring sensors and by 4 a.m. he was in his space suit.

  In the early morning chill under the garish lights, the great tower stood on the launch pad, mysteriously wreathed in mists of escaping vapour from its oxygen tank, almost seeming to breathe. Shepard was seated and strapped into the Mercury capsule. Goodbyes and good lucks over, he was all alone in what felt like a sarcophagus. His fate was in the hands of others. It was a time when fear could rise through a man, when that hollow feeling in the stomach could take over and turn him to jelly. But Alan Shepard didn’t do fear. With considerable effort of will, he deliberately shut it out and concentrated on the controls.

  Time passed – three hours in fact – and Alan Shepard, a man who could move mountains in his own mind, found he was in a situation his mind could not control. His bladder was full. It needed emptying, but there was nothing provided for this basic function. He explained his need to Mercury control and requested it be dealt with urgently. Von Braun was appalled. It couldn’t be done. There wasn’t the time, came back the order from the control room. He would just have to hang on in there. Shepard replied that he could be another couple of hours in the capsule. Hanging on was not possible. Von Braun says ‘no’ came the reply. Shepard, desperate, said he would do it in his suit. The medics were horrified at what that might do to their sensing equipment. It would short-circuit and Shepard would be fried. Unrepentant, Shepard said all they had to do was turn the power off. They did. Alan Shepard, sophisticate, King of Cocoa Beach, America’s sweetheart, lying across his great tower of latent might, ‘let go’.

  Four hours after he had entered the capsule, countdown began. Six, five, four … Shepard could hear Deke Slayton’s voice at the control. That was an unexpected bonus: he would be in touch with his friend for the trip. Now he could feel the surge of power. Three, two … Against the giant roar of the engines, no one heard him whisper: ‘Deke and the man upstairs will watch over me. So don’t screw up, Shepard. Don’t screw up.’

  One. Zero. Ignition. ‘You’re on your way, Jose,’ Deke Slayton called out to Shepard. The huge thunder of ‘liftoff’ alerted everyone at the Cape to the successful launch. Three hundred reporters were on site, capturing the thrill, focusing on the power carrying America’s hope. The world and his wife left what they were doing to look skywards and wonder, as the shining streak and tail of fire disappeared into the heavens. Everyone who could was watching on TV. Vicariously they also took the flight: they marvelled at the weightlessness, were horrified at the speed of 5000 mph, gasped at the revelation that Shepard could see the world from space. They listened with apprehension as the discarded Redstone rocket wallowed out of control, torn to shreds and spat out by the destructive maw of re-entry, and worried about Shepard’s own re-entry through hostile red-hot air. And then he was down. Shepard was in the water. It was perfect; an American hero at last.

  The country celebrated. Shepard was flown by helicopter to the White House where the golden Kennedys came forward, appropriately charming, sprinkling gold dust in their wake. With the Distinguished Service Medal glittering on his chest, Shepard was driven through the thick snow of a tickertape welcome in the capital. He was indeed the keeper of a great romantic dream. Although he had not done a full orbit, as had Gagarin – merely a fifteen-minute suborbital
flight into space – the country was space mad. The idea of simply catching up with the Soviet Union was ignominious. No, America must set the standard and win.

  Behind the scenes, Kennedy had wasted no time. Von Braun was one of many who had been consulted by Lyndon Johnson. ‘We have an excellent chance of beating the Soviets to the first landing of a crew on the Moon,’ he had advised unhesitatingly. On 25 May 1961, Kennedy’s voice rang out confidently in Congress:

  I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long range exploration of space and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

  To von Braun, Kennedy’s speech sounded too good to be true. Originally his dream of a flight to the moon had been a well-guarded secret, not discussed in Hitler’s Germany. In 1941, he had confided to a friend, ‘Oh yes, we shall get to the moon – but of course, I dare not tell Hitler yet.’ Now it was out in the open, clearly delineated, with the whole country involved and excited. The endless dead years in White Sands where his motives had been questioned and thwarted were completely thrown off. All he could see ahead was a wonderful opportunity. It was his Redstone that had carried the first American into space. It would be his new Saturn rocket that would bridge the 238,000 miles to the moon if they were to have a chance of winning. And there was no time to lose. The Soviets were clearly intent on reaching the moon first. The sense of urgency was overwhelming. America must win. The President was with them. The vision that he had articulated as a prisoner in Germany in 1945 was now the vision of the American President. At last it seemed his time had come.

  Although Kennedy’s speech was not reported in the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev knew of it through the Western press and in his mind took up the challenge. Funds for space projects were tight and in constant competition with funds for defence, but his determination could not be deflected. The new breed of rockets that the army required would be powerful enough to get to the moon. It was surely only a matter of time before some smiling Russian youth, like Gagarin, was planting the Soviet flag on the surface of the moon.

  PRAVDA

  31 December 1961

  The Soviet land has become the gateway to the universe!

  PROFESSOR K. SERGEEV

  The march of time is swift. Only a year has passed, but how much has happened in the past year!

  The bright dawn of Communism is lighting the way for the people of the Socialist world and all progressive peoples. The dream is becoming a reality, a realisable plan. Future generations of Soviet people will live under Communism!

  Soviet science, technology and industry have achieved significant successes in the past year, culminating in the first space flight of Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov on ‘Vostok 1’ and ‘Vostok 2’. The vast importance of these flights cannot be overemphasised, for they herald a new era of space flight for mankind.

  The flight of Yuri Gagarin is unparalleled in history. The average speed during the flight was about 28,000km/hour, the altitude was 327km, the distance greater than 40,000km around the earth’s globe, all in only 108 minutes!

  Gherman Titov flew a distance almost equal to that of the earth to the moon and back in 25 hours and 18 minutes. This exceptional and lengthy flight was executed according to schedule. In conditions that he described as wholly comfortable, the cosmonaut completed a series of scientific experiments. He maintained a continual link with the USSR via radio, sent his greetings from space to the people of all continents, ate, slept and even did gymnastic exercises.

  ‘Vostok 2’ moved swiftly around its orbit, passing designated regions within a second’s precision. Day became night every half hour. Meanwhile, on Soviet land, several dozen observation points kept a close record of the smallest occurrences taking place on board the ‘Vostok 2’. While Gherman Titov slept, his heartbeat could be heard by everyone on our planet. He slept for 35 minutes longer than had been planned, but the medical specialists said: ‘It’s fine, he is sleeping well, let him sleep a little longer!’

  The Soviet land and the whole world gave the hero cosmonauts a rapturous reception. They are the first, but as Khrushchev said in his speech in Red Square, addressing Gagarin and Titov: ‘There is little doubt that your family of cosmonauts will grow and prosper.’

  Soviet sputnik-ships will again set off to explore the distant regions of space from the shores of the universe, our Motherland. Each flight and return will be the cause of great celebration for the Soviet people and the whole of progressive mankind, a victory for reason and progress!

  The most important result of the flights of the ‘Vostok 1’ and ‘Vostok 2’ is that they have fully confirmed the feasibility of sending man into space; proved the capability of our complicated rocket technology to send a sputnik-ship into orbit, and it has also solved the equally difficult question of the sputnik-ship’s return to earth and landing. The question of sending man into space is, without doubt, one of the most complex, giving rise to a new set of scientific questions.

  The attentiveness and daily concern of our Communist Party, the inspirational, selfless work of Soviet people, the cream of Soviet science – these are the great strengths which have made possible the unparalleled flight of our Soviet cosmonauts.

  Previously uninvestigated regions of space will undoubtedly yield practical solutions to a whole range of problems in science and agriculture.

  In the near future we can expect to see the invention of equipment for satellite stations that will transmit radio and television messages; provide vehicles and planes for navigation through space; monitor the weather and perhaps in the future exert an active influence on the weather.

  The satellites and piloted orbital vehicles will carry out scientific studies of the earth. They will study those regions of space adjacent to the earth’s atmosphere and phenomena related to the activity of the sun and the distant realms of the universe.

  Finally, satellites and space rockets will provide a practical solution to problems of communication and passenger travel. Indeed, it was only about 10–15 years ago that flight on jet-planes was experimental and was accessible only to qualified pilots. Soviet jet-planes now provide the quickest, most convenient and reliable form of transport.

  We can expect that passenger flight through space to any point on the earth’s surface will take from one to two hours. This is still only a prediction. This technology will, of course, not appear immediately and it will take a while to become affordable, convenient and reliable. A great deal more work will have to be done before we can achieve this.

  One of the most fascinating problems to have excited humanity for centuries is the question of flight to the other planets and the distant regions of the universe; at first to regions nearest to earth, such as the moon, the earth’s eternal companion, which now bears the symbol of the USSR on its surface, and then to the planets of the solar system nearest to the earth – Mercury, the thickly cloud-enshrouded Venus, mysterious Mars, distant Jupiter and the four other planets.

  These are the probable interplanetary routes for Soviet explorers. And after that: the massive suns and the worlds of the other galaxies.

  1961 has come to an end. This year has seen great leaps forward for the Soviet people. It was the year of the 22nd Party Congress, which established the programme for building Communism; a year of triumphal achievements in Soviet science and outstanding displays of bravery by our pilots, who have paved the first road into space.

  [Sergei Pavlovich Korolev’s article in Pravda under pseudonym]

  PART FIVE

  The Race for the Moon

  ‘Within 15 years we will be living and working on the moon … It will be somewhat like an Arctic camp. The first work will be the pouring of concrete around the first rocket to land humans on the Moon.’

  WERNHER VON BRAUN interviewed by VICTOR RIESEL for the Hall Syndic
ate, 21 January 1959

  ‘I just need another ten years …’

  SERGEI PAVLOVICH KOROLEV, 1966

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘The Soviets are so far ahead’

  Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was like a man looking through a one-way mirror. He could see the Americans; they could not see him. The Americans hid nothing of their ambition to reach the moon before the Russians and the scale of their efforts was remarkable. The launch facilities at Cape Canaveral were to be expanded to incorporate the flatlands to the west known as Merritt Island. Plans were underway to develop the ‘Vehicle Assembly Building’, the world’s largest hangar, on Merritt Island to be used to assemble several moon rockets simultaneously. Von Braun was to acquire more facilities for developing rocket engines, with a new test stand more than 400 feet high. The hangar simply to assemble the rockets’ first stages in New Orleans provided more than forty acres of space. To cap it all, Gilruth’s Space Task Group at Langley, Virginia, was to move to a large new site south of Houston on the gulf coast of Texas. Over a thousand acres of land would be developed into NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center to run the missions.

  Korolev longed to compete with a comparable Soviet manned lunar programme. He had first publicly proposed this as early as 1956 when he told the Soviet Academy of Sciences that ‘the real task is to develop a rocket to fly to the Moon and back’. He had followed this up two years later with specific proposals for a more advanced vehicle that could travel to the moon. And this, in his mind, was just a first step. Always before him was the enigma of space; he wanted to view the Crab Nebula from Mars, pass through the mysterious rings of Saturn and listen to Neptune’s unearthly music. Of course he hid these ambitions behind a practical façade. His original 1958 report, ‘On the Prospects of Mastering Outer Space’, had set out a full schedule in a grand design that acknowledged no limits: flights to the moon, a solar-powered space station, manned exploration of Mars and Venus and the creation of a permanent space station on the moon. But it was always understood that military interests came first. To kindle official interest, he emphasized the part a space station could play in detecting movement of enemy missiles and nuclear activity. A crew of four or five would be in an unparalleled position to monitor enemy movement.