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Vostok In Preparation

v1.1.1 / chapter 9 of 26 / 01 apr 13 / greg goebel / public domain

* The Soviets started the Space Race by placing Sputnik 1 in orbit, and kept up the pressure by beating the US in the first Moon shots. Now the two superpowers ramped up their efforts to put a man in space, with the Soviets working on their "Vostok" space capsule and training a group of "cosmonauts" to ride it into space.

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[9.1] VOSTOK & ZENIT
[9.2] THE COSMONAUTS
[9.3] INITIAL VOSTOK LAUNCH EXPERIMENTS

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[9.1] VOSTOK & ZENIT

* Even before the US announced the Mercury program, the USSR was moving full speed ahead on placing a man in space. In November 1958, following over two years of preliminary design work, Sergei Korolyev had been able to persuade Krushchev and other senior Soviet leaders that a program to put a man into orbit around the Earth was a worthwhile use of resources.

Not everybody agreed. The Soviet military felt, with justification, that a spy satellite was far more valuable. Korolyev shrewdly managed to create a program that addressed both goals. In a sense, the approach was obvious. The Soviets had decided that film-return spy satellites were the best option for orbital reconnaissance in the short term. Such spacecraft needed a reentry vehicle that could return to Earth, make a soft landing, and be recovered. The same was true of a manned space vehicle.

Korolyev could design a single spacecraft that could be used for both functions. It would be big and heavy compared to the American Corona satellites, but so what? He had plenty of lift capability, all the more so because Kosberg had been refining and uprating the second stage engine that had been used for the Luna shots, resulting in the "RD-109" LOX-kerosene engine, with about 11% more thrust. Since the Soviets lagged the Americans in miniaturized technology, the USSR would have built a larger spy satellite in any case. Premier Krushchev liked space spectaculars; the Soviet military grudgingly gave in, though no doubt many of the generals felt like Korolyev was pulling a fast one on them.

The spacecraft was implemented by a team led by Oleg G. Ivanovsky of Korolyev's design bureau, with the work formally beginning in early 1959 and ready for implementation by May. In its manned form, it was known as "Vostok", translating as "East" or more to the point "Upward Rising", since the east was the direction of the sunrise. In its spy satellite form, it was known as "Zenit (Zenith)". The two versions were very similar externally. The R-7 derivative booster that launched it would also be referred to as the "Vostok" by association. It was largely the same as the Luna booster, except that the second stage was modified to use the more powerful RD-109 engine and to mate to the Vostok / Zenit spacecraft.

The spacecraft itself weighed about 4.75 tonnes (5.25 tons) and was 4.4 meters (14 feet five inches) long. It consisted of a spherical re-entry capsule, called the "sharik (mini-sphere)", with a diameter of 2.3 meters (7 feet 6 inches) on top of a spacecraft "bus" that looked like a cut diamond, with a shallow conical base. The top of the bus, where it mated to the capsule, was ringed with spherical nitrogen and oxygen tanks, and the bottom of the "diamond" was fitted with a retro-rocket that would be used to kick the spacecraft back to Earth. The spacecraft was littered with antennas on top, on the bottom, and at one side. The contraption was entirely non-aerodynamic, and unlike the American Mercury capsule had to launched inside an aerodynamic shell or "shroud" that would split open after the vehicle left the atmosphere.

The sphere would discard the bus for re-entry and land under a single large parachute. The pilot of the Vostok version wouldn't stay with the capsule to the ground, however, instead ejecting from the capsule and landing by his own parachute. The capsule was so heavy that it would have required very big parachutes or a retro-rocket system to achieve a safe landing. Adding such additional landing systems would have added weight that couldn't be handled by the boosters available at the time, and a pilot-rated landing wasn't necessary for the Zenit variant in any case.

The Vostok spacecraft contained enough expendables to keep the pilot alive for ten days. No Vostok capsule would ever spend more than five days in space, but the additional stores provided some margin for error in case difficulty arose in bringing the spacecraft back down to ground, or recovering it after landing.

* The whole exercise had a bit of an improvised feel to it, but that was characteristic of the entire early Space Race in both East and West. Although the Soviet military did not like the diversion of resources from the spy-satellite effort into the manned program, the Vostok-Zenit scheme had its merits, making the manned program in part a testbed for the spy-satellite program, and the reverse.

Vostok also provided an excellent public cover for Zenit. The American Corona program might hide behind Discoverer capsules that carried mice, but the Soviet spy-satellite effort could obscure itself behind fully functional and legitimate man-carrying space capsules. This subterfuge did not seriously mislead knowledgeable Americans, but the US wanted their own space reconnaissance capability so badly that they weren't in any real position to object if the USSR wanted one, too.

Work on the R-7 and space capsule pushed ahead, while a small army of technicals addressed all the concerns of putting a man into space, keeping him alive there, and then recovering him safely. Zvezda worked on an "SK-1" pressure suit for the occupant -- not really intended to permit work in a space environment, just to temporarily protect the wearer if the cabin depressurized; the Soviets would call such suits "rescue suits". In any case, as it emerged the SK-1 suit was a sophisticated piece of technology in itself, featuring:

• A thermal / ventilation liner garment.
  
  
• A sealed "pressure bladder" garment over that, made of rubberized fabric to keep the air in; plus a "restraint garment" over that. In vacuum, a pressure suit would tend to puff out or "balloon" and spread-eagle the wearer into a "starfish" position, and so a restraint garment needed to be provided to permit a degree of motion.
  
  
• A coverall garment, colored bright orange to make the pilot more visible to recovery teams.
  
  
• An unremoveable solid helmet with dual visors. The visor could be automatically closed in an emergency.
  
  
• Leather parachutist-style boots and gloves with ring attachments.
  
  
• Inflatable flotation collar for landing at sea, survival kit, and emergency radio.

The restraint garment used a system of adjustable loop cords, and steel ropes running from armpits to hips to control vertical ballooning -- which would otherwise make the helmet "ride up" on the user's shoulders. A ratchet system was used to adjust the rope length. The suit featured soft joints of the "orange peel" type. The orange peel scheme involved narrow cloth strips tapered at the ends and sewn together to form a curved joint that would provide flexibility while resisting ballooning. The SK-1 suit had an external life-support system, being supported by capsule systems, though it did have a short-endurance reserve for high-altitude ejection. The suit provided sanitary facilities to allow a cosmonaut to relieve himself. As with all the space suits used by both sides in the era, each suit was custom-fitted to a particular wearer.

The Soviets had recently begun a new series of high-altitude balloon flights under the "Volga" program; the effort was focused on scientific research, but flights were conducted to evaluate the suits, as well as cabin pressurization and life-support systems.

BACK_TO_TOP

[9.2] THE COSMONAUTS

* Of course, there was the question of who would ride the Vostok capsule, and the USSR according put the wheels in motion to select and train a cadre of "cosmonauts" for the Vostok program. In early 1959, Mstislav Keldysh had chaired a committee that put the plan into motion, and came to the conclusion that Red Air Force fighter pilots would be the best candidates for the job. No extraordinary requirements were thought necessary; they didn't need to have degrees, they didn't need to be test pilots, and in fact since the selection focused on younger men, they were not even the most experienced pilots.

Selection began in the summer, with a recruiting team making the rounds of air bases. The candidates were initially only told that they would be flying "aircraft of a completely new type." They generally thought that it meant they would be flying helicopters or the like, which they saw as an implicit demotion from their status as fighter pilots. They were quietly told the truth in broad terms and became more enthusiastic. 3,000 candidates were screened, with about a hundred put through final qualification in early 1960.

The final selection was performed in February 1960, with 20 pilots making the grade. They included:

• Senior Lieutenant Ivan N. Anikeyev
• Major Pavel I. Belyayev
• Senior Lieutenant Valentin V. Bondarenko
• Senior Lieutenant Valeri F. Bykovsky
• Senior Lieutenant Valentin I. Filatyev
• Senior Lieutenant Yuri A. Gagarin (often misspelled "Gargarin")
• Senior Lieutenant Viktor V. Gorbatko
• Captain Anatoly Ya. Kartashov
• Senior Lieutenant Yevgeni V. Khrunov
• Captain Vladimir M. Komarov
• Lieutenant Alexey A. Leonov
• Senior Lieutenant Grigory G. Nelyubov
• Senior Lieutenant Andrian G. Nikolayev
• Captain Pavel R. Popovich
• Senior Lieutenant Mars Z. Rafikov
• Senior Lieutenant Georgi S. Shonin
• Senior Lieutenant Gherman S. Titov
• Senior Lieutenant Valentin S. Varlamov
• Senior Lieutenant Boris V. Volyanov
• Senior Lieutenant Dmitri A. Zaikin

They began training in March 1960 at facilities in Moscow, with the cosmonaut corps under the command of General Nikolai P. Kamanin. Initial training consisted of classroom work, which the people in charge quickly realized was so eye-glazingly dull that even the disciplined cosmonaut corps couldn't digest it. The coursework was diversified, and then the cosmonauts went on to more lively activities such as parachute training, to prepare them for ejecting from the Vostok after their stint in orbit.

In July, they moved to a formal "Cosmonaut Training Center (TsPK)" named "Zvesdni Gorodok (Star Town)" a short drive outside of Moscow. There they would be subjected to much the same sort of tortures inflicted on the Mercury Seven, such as rides in a centrifuge, known to the cosmonauts as "the devil's merry-go-round", and stints in a soundproof isolation chamber for up to ten days. After these sessions of solitary confinement, the subjects would be either so eager to leave that they would almost tear the door from its hinges, or would be driven back inside by the tsunami of noise pouring in from the outside world.

The freshly-minted cosmonauts weren't played up as propaganda heroes. In fact, officially they didn't exist, since the whole effort was kept under a cloak of typical Soviet secrecy. They only told their wives that they were involved in an unspecified "experimental program", and gave the women vague answers when asked about their absences.

The cosmonauts represented a good sampling of the different republics and ethnic groups in the Soviet "empire", but though on paper they were supposedly equals, in practice some were more equal than others. The Russian Republic dominated the USSR, and so the first man the Soviet Union sent into space would naturally be a Russian, not a Kazakh or Ukrainian, and certainly not a Jew. Ideology also dictated that the winner of this space "lottery" have good proletarian credentials. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, of poor peasant origins near Smolensk, headed the top of the short list. He was very competent, photogenic, and self-assured without being immodest. He had made a very positive on Korolyev and the other powers-that-be. Gherman Titov's credentials were almost as good, and he was the backup pilot.

In retrospect, the initial cosmonaut selection would become known as the "Star Town Twelve", because of the 20 only 12 would end up flying in space. Western reporters would learn bits about the "Missing Eight", enough to occasionally contrive wild stories about failed missions conducted by these "phantom" cosmonauts. Eventually, however, their personal histories would become known and of course reveal nothing of the sort.

BACK_TO_TOP

[9.3] INITIAL VOSTOK LAUNCH EXPERIMENTS

* A number of boilerplate reentry capsules, shariks, had been built in late 1959 for airdrop tests that began in early 1960, with the capsules carried to altitude by balloons or shoved out of the back of turboprop transports flying at their maximum ceiling; the abrupt loss of tonnes of payload at such high altitudes made the lives of the pilots exciting for a few moments after each drop. The capsules would fall and build up speed to terminal velocity, then go through an ejection sequence and deploy parachutes.

The first Vostok space launch took place in 15 May 1960, in the form of a spacecraft designated "Korabl Sputnik 1 (Satellite Test Craft 1)", carrying an instrumented dummy named "Ivan Ivanovich". It was a "Vostok 1KP" spacecraft, the "P" indicating "prototype", lacking heatshield and life-support systems. The flight went well enough until the spacecraft completed its 64th orbit and the time to deorbit. Then the retro-rockets fired in the wrong direction, sending the Vostok capsule into a higher orbit. It remained in space for over two years before finally falling back to Earth.

The Soviet newspaper PRAVDA announced the flight the next day, giving enough details to strongly suggest that it was indeed a test flight for a manned spacecraft. The flight was designated "Sputnik 4" in the West, where there was considerable suspicion that the flight had actually carried a pilot and that the capsule had become his coffin. Rumors to that effect circulated for decades, along with the other rumors of other Soviet space accidents that killed cosmonauts -- many of which were generated by the brothers Achille and Giovanni Battista Jordica-Cordiglia, two Italian amateur radio enthusiasts who set up a listening station in northern Italy, where they claimed to have picked up all sorts of startling transmissions from Soviet spacecraft up to 1965, when they got out of the business. Documents released after the fall of the USSR would later dismiss the stories about the "phantom cosmonauts".

The second Vostok launch attempt was on 15 July, this time with a functional "Vostok 1K" with heatshield, life support systems, and a crew of two dogs, "Chaika (Seagull)" and "Lisichka (Little Fox)", in an ejection seat system. The Vostok 1K also featured a self-destruct system to ensure that it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands; the self-destruct system proved redundant, since the booster exploded only seconds after launch, destroying the spacecraft and killing the two dogs.

Their "comrades" were given little time to mourn, with the dogs "Belka (Squirrel)" and "Strelka (Arrow)" launched in a Vostok 1K spacecraft designated "Korabl Sputnik 2" on 19 August 1960, along with rats, mice, flies, and plants. There were two TV cameras on board to observe the dogs: Big Brother was watching them. Belka proved an interesting test subject by becoming the first creature to come down with a case of spacesickness.

The sharik was brought down after the 18th orbit after over 26 hours in space, with the reentry going smoothly. The dogs and the biological payloads were ejected and recovered unharmed. PRAVDA proudly announced the mission, which would be designated "Sputnik 5" in the West, as paving the way towards a manned flight -- of course leaving unstated the fact that it was also a big step towards operational deployment of the Soviet Zenit space reconnaissance system.