On 18 June 1960, the successful candidates were summoned to a room in OKB-1 to meet the mysterious maker of the rockets, a man sometimes known as the ‘Iron King’. Although his name was never mentioned, which gave him an invisible, almost mystical status, the Chief Designer could never be mistaken for a man without identity. On close acquaintance, everything about him was indeed larger than life, as though the years of being incognito allowed him to express himself more fully and completely. He walked towards them and, as he did so, the more observant among them registered how his presence affected those around him. He was not tall, but seemed so. His impressive head was large, his features quickly changed from neutral, intelligent enquiry to a smile that embraced everyone. What Korolev saw impressed him: his ‘little eagles’.
He spoke with warmth as he introduced himself and learned their names and piloting experience. While they listened attentively, he presented them with a vision of things to come; of journeying into the immensity of space in a machine that could travel many thousands of miles an hour, of arriving at a space station, living there or perhaps moving on to Mars: of the whole vista of a starry universe waiting to be discovered, just as the New World had been in the fifteenth century by those exploring galleons. Some of them would make that journey, one of them quite soon, he hoped. ‘Patriotism, courage, modesty, iron will, knowledge and love of people,’ he said: ‘cosmonauts must have these qualities.’ Unlike his usually ‘controlled presentation’, Korolev spoke with passion, gesticulating wildly to illustrate his ideas and was ‘noticeably carried away’.
The company felt inspired and asked questions on space travel but Korolev wanted to know more about his ‘little eagles’ and how they had arrived at this point in their lives. He looked at Gagarin, the slight young man with the unmarked face of youth and a warm smile that seemed to illuminate a generous spirit. ‘Tell us about yourself, comrade,’ he said. Gagarin spoke for several minutes and, as he talked, it became apparent that the long and tortuous path from farm and village school to jet pilot had taken more perseverance and steely determination than was apparent in his looks.
As a child during the German occupation he had witnessed events that had brought him a certain seriousness that an eight-year-old child should not possess. There had been heavy fighting in the nearby woods where he used to play. When the fighting was over, he and his older brother, Valentin, had stolen among the trees to see what had happened. They saw a Soviet colonel lying where he had fallen two days earlier among the drifting leaves and snow. He was still alive – just. They watched secretly as German officers approached and began to question him. The soldier pretended blindness and asked them to come nearer. He could hear the Germans arguing, while the Soviet colonel remained very quiet. The Germans moved nearer and bent over him, the better to hear him. That was when the wounded Soviet released the pin in a grenade he was holding under his back. Gagarin could still remember the wild leap of flame that killed the group, the noise of the explosion and the calls of the frightened birds.
Yuri knew of neighbours who had been shot. People were rounded up and locked in sheds that were then set alight. When the Gagarin family had been turned out of their house, now occupied by Nazi soldiers, they had dug a hole in the ground and made themselves a hovel in which to live. To help the war effort, Yuri, with his younger brother, Boris, had littered the roads with broken glass and watched the tyres burst on the German lorries. They had been noticed by a great bear of a German soldier called Albert who lived in their house. He grabbed the six-year-old Boris and hung him from a nearby tree by his scarf. Gagarin’s mother rushed to the scene and it looked as though there would be a double tragedy when Albert reached for his gun. Thankfully, he was called away by his superior officer and Gagarin quickly undid Albert’s work and the terrified child recovered. Far from being cowed by these experiences, however, Yuri had found ways to make his own small contribution towards Soviet revenge. Albert’s job was to top up the flat batteries of the German lorries and tanks; every night in the secrecy of darkness Yuri had found a way to render them useless. Although he had no knowledge of chemistry, he found he had a genius for rearranging the liquids in the various cells of the batteries and sometimes he would add a little dirt just for good measure.
After the war, the young Gagarin had been intent on starting to earn a living. When he explained that he had worked his way up from training as a smelter in a vocational school, Korolev immediately responded, pointing out that he too was a graduate of a vocational school. Gagarin had then won a place at the Pilots School at Orenburg on the Ural River, graduating in 1957 – shortly after the launch of Sputnik – only to find himself assigned a place at the Nikel Air Base near Murmansk in the Arctic Circle. It was here that he had first come across the mysterious recruiting teams.
Korolev was evidently impressed with Gagarin. He talked to each cosmonaut in turn and seemed pleased with the team. Once introductions were complete, he took them to see their spacecraft: Vostok, meaning ‘east’. They were led through OKB-1 to a large room of hospital-like cleanliness, where white-coated technicians were busy working on the craft. He introduced the cosmonauts to Oleg Ivanovsky, the chief constructor, and Konstantin Feoktistov, the project leader. A fleet of Vostoks in various stages of construction were aligned on both sides of the room.
The one nearest to completion was a sphere of silver sitting astride a cone-shaped base. This was a surprise for the cosmonauts. Where were the wings, they wondered. They examined the various silver balls with circumspection. The work looked impressive but where were the controls for the pilot? Was it a practical joke, part of the bizarre training? No, the Chief Designer said, the Vostok would be guided. The silver foil covering the sphere would protect them from radiation. Inside the sphere was a reclining chair for the pilot who would have a perfect view of the ceiling inches from his head. Near him was a Vzor, an instrument used when orienting the craft for re-entry. It was made up of distorting mirrors and lenses which gave a view of the earth’s horizon, enabling the correct position for re-entry to be ascertained. It was difficult to comprehend: no wings, no control of power. Was this precarious silver ball really meant to carry men racing through the heavens?
Gagarin was willing to believe so. When Korolev asked who would like to sit in the ship, Gagarin was the first to step forward: ‘Allow me,’ he said. Korolev noted his natural sense of respect as he removed his shoes before climbing into the pristine silver sphere. The little circular cell was thickly threaded with an electrical spaghetti of wires. These were the unseen nerves that would work the gyroscope and the instruments. There were some controls and switches and he guessed the reclining chair was also an ejection seat. To Gagarin it seemed a marvel of ingenuity.
Korolev was heartened by his meeting with the cosmonauts and followed their progress closely. Both Titov and Gagarin were doing well and receiving excellent reports from the new training centre being built about twenty miles from Moscow, not far from OKB-1 – which eventually became known as ‘Star City’. In Vostok simulators, the cosmonauts took it in turns to familiarize themselves with the craft: the roar of the engines on launch that were fed through loudspeakers; the correct pre-flight positions of the instrumentation; the orientation of the craft in relation to the globe. The training was intensive because the Soviets still hoped to be ready for a manned space mission by the end of the year. It was evident from the Western press that the Americans could not be ready for manned Mercury flights before January 1960. Korolev was determined to beat them.
There were still countless technical difficulties to overcome, notably the design of the retro rockets, which were to decelerate the spacecraft below orbital velocity and guide it on a trajectory to fall back through the atmosphere to earth. The safe return of the cosmonaut would depend on the exact firing of these rockets; any miscalculation and he might be condemned to a metal coffin as he hurtled out into space, or a fiery grave as he re-entered the atmosphere too steeply and burned up. Alexei Isayev, who was assigned the task of creating the rockets, was worried. ‘You and Korolev are twisting my arm,’ he confided in Chertok, who had now been promoted to become one of several deputy chief designers. ‘The schedule is too tight and you want to put one more noose around my neck … What if someone does not come back to earth because of me? The only thing I could do is shoot myself!’
Chertok persuaded Isayev at least to discuss the matter with Korolev one more time. Isayev was determined to step down from the responsibility. ‘You wait and see,’ he said. ‘It will take me two minutes to ditch that job.’ When he emerged from his conversation with Korolev, somewhat shaken, almost an hour later, he was still in charge of the retro rockets. He lit a cigarette. ‘At least I did a deal with Korolev that you [Chertok] will handle the electronics!’
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, becoming 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.
Like the bush telegraph, word spread. The astronauts were there, racing on the beach, drinking in the bars. Fun of a special kind was bouncing around like hot, loud music. It was a place where anything could happen and probably would. The racing was serious. Al Shepard would eat up the miles in a Corvette. Scott Carpenter favoured a Shelby Cobra. Schirra preferred a Maserati. The ‘personality’ cars were customized and souped up. Brunettes and newly minted blondes appeared, the kind that lived in bars, wore high heels and not much else – and collected astronauts. The kind that were irresistible – except to John Glenn, of course.
It was a hard life being an astronaut, the main problem being that there might not be much of it. They watched rockets, which, with a persistent un-American lack of cooperation, exploded quite regularly. How was an astronaut at the peak of his health, taut in mind and body, to come to terms with that? Clearly Cocoa Beach was put there to solve this problem. At Cocoa Beach the astronauts could ‘live’, sampling every possible permutation of being pleasurably alive. Plenty of time left for sitting on top of an exploding rocket. Except, of course, for John Glenn.
John Glenn was different, like a knight of old; austere, abstemious, with a sense of purpose. As he ran on the beach clocking up the miles, keeping fit, he felt the motel morals were unhelpful to the astronauts’ image. He had heard that several of the high-heeled, long-haired lovelies had been quoted as saying ‘three down four to go’. As the eldest of the astronauts, he called a meeting to remind the other six that they represented America. They stood for wholesome manliness, honest labour, American motherhood and apple pie. This message was not always well received. Al Shepard asked on whose authority he was standing in judgement. Why exactly was he casting himself as leader of the group? The implication, of course, was that the leader, the most serious-minded among them, might be the first man in space.
And everyone in America knew that that would have to be soon, or the Soviet Union would prevail. The press fanned the flames with frequent jibes that the US could lose the race. Everyone on the Mercury project was working with Herculean dedication. As many as 13,000 people at McDonnell were labouring day and night. Holidays and weekends off were but a dim memory as von Braun’s team focused on bringing abstract plans to reality, struggling to complete tests on the Redstone. Everyone connected with space flight had got the message: a superhuman effort was needed to beat the Soviets. But 1960 was passing them by. The yellow and red leaves of autumn had fallen, to turn brown and wither, blown by chillier winds. The first suborbital flight with an astronaut originally set for October had been cancelled and cancelled again, while Khrushchev continued to boast about an imminent Soviet manned flight. Gilruth still aimed to test two unmanned Mercury-Redstone flights and, assuming all went well, launch an astronaut early in 1961. But this plan too was looking unlikely – the first US flight was now postponed until the spring of 1961 and its success rate was put by the air force at 75 per cent. The latest fiasco was the failed flight of the Mercury-Redstone on 21 November. This was a key step, the first launch of a Redstone rocket with a Mercury capsule attached. It became a moment of unbelievable tragicomedy.
The whole firmament of the rocket industry stars turned out for the big event. For von Braun, who had not been able to test the capsule and the rocket together at Huntsville, it was a critical test. The Redstone was meant to lift the 1-ton Mercury capsule 130 miles up into space and return it safely back to earth – a crucial stage in the process before an astronaut could attempt the fifteen-minute space flight. Gene Kranz recalls his immediate sense of disappointment when he first saw the Mercury-Redstone. The rocket, ‘far from seeming graceful in form, something you could love and rely on’, struck him as ‘stark, awkward, crude, a large black and white stove pipe atop a simple cradle’. The Mercury capsule was equally disappointing. ‘It squatted atop the rocket, black in colour and seemingly constructed of corrugated sheet metal.’ It was hard to imagine that this was ‘a rocket ship from a science fiction novel’, upon which the pride of America rested.
Everyone took their places for the launch; von Braun and the Huntsville team could see everything from the bunker. Bob Gilruth and Chris Kraft, the Flight Director, were in the Mercury control centre at the Cape, which could plot radar information about the position of the capsule during critical phases of launch, orbit and re-entry from tracking stations around the world. The tense countdown reached zero. The engine ignited with customary fury, blazing out fire and smoke beneath the rocket. Then, faster than the eye could trace, it appeared to take off, racing away confidently, too fast for the camera to catch.
Yet in Mercury control, Chris Kraft and his team could clearly see that the rocket was still sitting on the pad, having barely lifted 4 inches, the Mercury capsule surmounting it. So what was whizzing through the heavens? Whatever it was that had shot skyward so dramatically began to make the return journey, after reaching a height of several thousand feet. And it was evidently going to fall quite nearby. People began to run in disarray as the unknown object landed on the beach with an ominous thud – and still the drama wasn’t over.
The assembled VIPs and glitterati eyed the reluctant rocket waiting for the great moment on the pad, smoke still whipping from under it. As they looked, a loud bang came from the top of the Mercury capsule and out popped a small parachute, opening as in a magician’s trick. Gently, softly, it fell to earth, pulling the main capsule parachute with it, draping the coy and unwilling rocket in bridal white.
The assembled company were now facing an exceedingly dangerous situation. Thousands of gallons of volatile fluid wrapped in thin steel were centre stage. The worry was, what would the rocket do next? Would the parachute, dancing about with the wind in it, drag the great cylinder, gorged with fuel, from its precarious upright position into an explosive dance of death? At the height of the emergency, von Braun’s team lapsed into German. This was the last straw for Chris Kraft, who went over and yanked the headset from one offending German engineer: ‘Speak to me, dammit,’ he yelled and later turned to a friend to vent his fury. ‘Those damn Germans still have not learned who they work for!’
A sort of frozen anxiety took over. Someone with limited understanding of the situation advised hiring a crack shot to shoot holes in the rocket and drain its tanks. Suggestions came and went and eventually a decision was taken to do nothing. The heat of the day would warm up the fuel which would vent through the escape valves. The clamouring press soon notched up yet another American failure. ‘What if there was an astronaut in the capsule,’ they asked. ‘Would you still be sitting here waiting for the fuel to evaporate?’ ‘The United States’ hopes of rocketing a man into space early next year were dealt a crushing blow today by the third straight failure of an unmanned space capsule launching,’ declared the New York Times the next day. ‘The failure may have cost this nation our last chance to beat the Soviet Union in the race to send a man aloft.’
The cause of the failure of the Mercury-Redstone proved to be trivial. A connection had shorted and set off a confusing list of instructions that effectively triggered the abort sequence. Even before the rocket left the pad, a spurious electrical glitch sent a signal to the engines that they had come to the end of their prescribed burn time, and they shut down. This, in turn, triggered a confused response from the capsule’s escape tower which was released and shot several thousand feet high before falling back to earth. Later it was found that the faulty connection was caused by an engineer who had filed down an electrical contact by a mere quarter of an inch so that a recalcitrant plug would fit in its socket.
Despite the endless setbacks, behind the scenes plans were being finalized for the first manned flight. The question was – who should go first? As the astronauts eyed each other up, it was difficult to assess who would be ‘the one’ who made history. The press and public had more or less decided that John Glenn should be first. He was the serious-minded, church-going hero who from the cradle had set his feet on this course. It was inevitable. He would be the one with the cool head and the calm ability to ride those eternal skies and smile his wise smile at the adulation when the job was done. Bob Gilruth, however, asked the astronauts themselves to choose. He asked them to cast a vote as to who should go first, if they couldn’t go themselves. Nobody chose John Glenn. Perhaps the lectures at Cocoa Beach had played their part. Perhaps he wasn’t one of the inner circle, his sense of responsibility disqualifying him from the forbidden fun.
On 19 January 1961, Bob Gilruth announced his choice. They were all good men but Alan Shepard would be ‘the one’ to go on the first trip. Gus Grissom would be the second and John Glenn would be backup to them both. Alan Shepard, the man’s man, and also the ladies’ man – the fastest driver, the hardest drinker and all-round favourite – was to fly the twentieth century’s ultimate airship. Bob Gilruth explained that the decision would not be made known to the public. They would no doubt continue to bet on John Glenn and he would have to smile his way through the charade as though they were right.
The next crucial stage was to test the Mercury-Redstone with a chimpanzee as passenger at the end of January – and if this was a success, the way would be clear for a manned flight. Several chimps had been in training for some months at the Holloman Air Force Base at White Sands. Chimp ‘No. 65’ was considered ideal astronaut material – he was not yet permitted a name since this might give him too much personal profile. Brought over from Africa when he was quite young, No. 65 had soon found himself in a school where there was a distinct emphasis on punishment. The tutors were obsessed with it. In their immaculate white coats, sporting a stick or length of rubber hose, their demands were law. Failures to fulfil their requirements or the odd attempt at escape were met with memorable hostility. In spite of these hazards, No. 65 was particularly clever at making it clear that the weightlessness training, the centrifuge and the ‘increased gravity’ trick he was not doing from choice.
The main emphasis in the chimps’ education was on ‘operant conditioning’. This system rewarded correct behaviour and punished mistakes. No. 65’s efforts to please his tutors’ demands for him to push certain combinations of buttons and levers correctly were rewarded with banana pellets. If he lost concentration and made a mistake, the inscrutable tutor was quick to shoot electric bolts through his sensitive feet. The astronauts’ doctors were assuming that if a chimp could cope with the rigours of space, concentrate on a correct sequence of button pushing and come back sane, then so could a human astronaut.
The chance to make history came to the reluctant chimp on 31 January 1961. He was wired up with every kind of sensor on and inside his body. The electric clamps were attached to his feet. He was strapped to his seat and transferred to the Mercury capsule. The countdown began. With an air of boredom, the amber eyes of No. 65 took in what looked like the familiar surroundings of his training capsule. He appeared relaxed as he sat on top of thousands of gallons of highly inflammable fuel 90 feet up in the air – evidently another session with the banana pellets. He had learned how to avoid the shocks.
Off went the rocket at an insane rate, going too fast, using up fuel ahead of schedule. The escape tower fired as if it were an abort, driving the Mercury capsule further than intended, as though the devil were chasing it. Unknown to the chimp, there was a fault in the electrical equipment. The punishment/reward system was faulty. For No. 65 the trip was a chastening experience. He could cope with the weightlessness and the very high 17g’s of gravity which flattened him like a cartoon character meeting a steamroller. But no matter how brilliant he was at pushing his buttons and levers – he achieved Olympic standard in trying to avoid the horrible zizzing in his feet – to no avail. He received electric shocks all the way.
The capsule went higher and further than was intended that day – No. 65 banged frantically on his levers all the way – before it was walloped down into the ocean 130 miles off course. He sat in his chair topsy-turvy, watching the water rise in the capsule. The demanding buttons and levers were now quiet but the water continued to rise. One and a half hours later, the navy collected the capsule, saving him from a watery grave – just. Since he had survived, No. 65 was officially permitted to have a name: Ham. Later, at his debut with the press, Ham made his complaints known. The one apple he had been given was obviously a paltry recompense for proving that a chimp could do an astronaut’s job, even with his feet on fire.
Analysis soon showed that several things had gone wrong on Ham’s flight. The fuel flow rate to the combustion chamber was too fast. Consequently the rocket rose too quickly, using up too much fuel and flying too high, 157 instead of 115 miles. The angle had been steep, sending it off course. A faulty valve had released the pressurized oxygen in the capsule. There was a vibration problem. And Ham himself had experienced 17g’s – close to g-loc – the point at which he would lose consciousness and eventually die. Nonetheless, Bob Gilruth, Max Faget and other key members of the Space Task Group were pleased that Ham had survived and determined that the next launch, planned for 24 March, could be Al Shepard’s. Von Braun was not so sure. He summoned his core team and each member was asked whether he thought it was safe to go for a manned flight. The odds of a successful mission, he explained, were between 88 and 98 per cent. If they delayed, the Soviets could win. If they went ahead and suffered a fatality, the entire enterprise could be destroyed.
Von Braun wanted a unanimous decision. Only one person objected – Kurt Debus, who played a key role in launch proceedings at the Cape. He argued that the vehicle should be proved safe beyond doubt, convinced there should be a perfect Mercury-Redstone flight before the life of an astronaut could be put at risk. Where would the space programme be if there was a fatal accident? Von Braun respected his decision and informed NASA authorities they had to have one more flight. Al Shepard was furious when he heard the news and urged Chris Kraft to overrule von Braun. But he did not. ‘When it comes to rockets, Wernher is king!’ Kraft told Shepard.
Secretly Kraft was fuming. ‘We had a timid German fouling our plans from inside!’ he raged. The manned flight was now set for 25 April. They were all aware that the decision could cost America the chance to win the race.
By November, with repercussions from the Nedelin disaster and technical problems with the Vostok, it was apparent that Korolev’s first piloted launch, provisionally pencilled in for December 1960, had to be postponed until at least February. Although Korolev’s work on the R-7 and the Vostok were not directly affected by Nedelin’s death, delays did ensue as many of the now depleted design bureaus, such as Glushko’s, were also involved in the space effort. And the problems continued. On 1 December, two dogs, Pchelka and Mushka, along with scientific instruments for studying radiation, successfully followed the orbit intended for a manned flight. After seventeen orbits, however, the retro engines were fired but they fired for too short a time, which meant the Vostok would not land on Soviet soil. The Soviet need for obscuring everything under a thick shroud of secrecy led to a decision to explode the capsule on re-entry using a mechanism already installed. The dogs were sacrificed rather than allow the capsule to fall into foreign hands.
The faults were corrected and on 22 December two more dogs were sent into space. This time the upper-stage booster engine failed. The capsule separated from the rocket to land in the deep snow and bitter cold of remote Siberia, where some days later it was found, the dogs still alive. Built into the capsule was an explosive device designed to detonate after sixty hours. As more than sixty hours had passed, the rescue team approached with caution, wallowing in the fresh snowdrifts. They successfully defused it and found two very cold dogs. The capsule arrived back at Baikonur in January with a list of faults that further deferred manned flight. The ejection seat had jammed, remaining in the capsule and causing damage. The two pods in the Vostok designed to separate on re-entry did not separate until the heat of re-entry burned the connection. The self-destruct system had also failed.
There were now more failures to list than successes. Certain that the Americans were close to launching a man into a suborbital flight, Korolev could not rest from the pace he had set himself. With the imminent approach of the first Soviet launch, the twenty short-listed cosmonauts were asked the same question that Gilruth had asked the American astronauts: who should be the first one to fly assuming that you cannot? Seventeen of them named Gagarin, commenting positively on his character and ability. General Kamanin narrowed the group down to a short list of six, including Gherman Titov and Yuri Gagarin.
According to Korolev’s biographer Aleksandr Romanov, the cosmonauts, aware of the endless difficulties, decided to go and speak to Korolev, who met them somewhat anxiously, waiting to see what they would say. But far from suggesting that it was too dangerous to fly, Gagarin reasoned that had there been a man on board, all the launches would have ended in success. If the automatic system had failed, Gagarin explained, he would have switched to manual. Korolev was heartened. He thanked them for their belief in him and their dedication, but insisted he would not send them into space until he was 100 per cent sure of the outcome.
It was hoped that two more automated tests in March would right the problems. The first one on 9 March collected a motley crew into the Vostok craft. As well as Blackie, the dog, there were eighty mice, guinea pigs and various reptiles. A man-sized dummy accompanied them reclining languidly in the ejection seat. He was made to look as lifelike as possible, complete with mouth, eyes, eyebrows, ‘even eyelashes’, recalled Mark Gallai, an acclaimed test pilot who was advising on cosmonaut training. In their enthusiasm, rather than waste space the scientists stuffed the dummy’s hollow body and limbs with yet more mice and guinea pigs. Then for decency’s sake they covered him with a white smock and gave him a name: Ivan Ivanovich. ‘There really was something deathly unpleasant in the mannequin sitting in front of us,’ continues Gallai. ‘Probably it is not good to make a non-human so much like a human being.’
One of the aims of the mission was to establish whether the communications systems worked in the Vostok, and whether a human voice could be heard. An automatic recording would be placed inside the dummy. The Soviet mania for keeping everything secret now asserted itself. Radio stations around the world would pick up what was being said; they could not therefore have anything that sounded like a cosmonaut. A recording of a Russian man singing was suggested. But then listening Americans would assume that the Soviet Union had sent a man up into space, who had promptly gone off his head as the ‘Song of the Volga Boatman’ resonated around the world. Finally, a recording of a choir was deemed suitable. No one would think a choir had been sent into space. On 9 March, a nervous-looking Ivan Ivanovich, fidgeting constantly as his wriggling animal insides settled down, took his first jaunt into space and was so entranced by his journey that every so often he sang like a heavenly choir.
Korolev was delighted. It was a perfect flight. The only unanticipated stumbling block, according to Mark Gallai, was that Blackie turned out to be a ‘foam-eating dog’ who insisted on consuming all the foam padding around her in her space cabin – causing concern that she would become ill. Blackie, however, suffered no ill effects from her curious diet. Another trip was scheduled for Ivan Ivanovich for the end of March. If that was a success, the next mission would be manned.
With the Americans apparently so close to claiming victory, Korolev could hardly bear to waste a day. He had had his fill of dogs, snakes, guinea pigs and singing dummies. He wanted a man in space; flesh and blood and intelligence that would see and feel the wonder of it. He would quite willingly have gone himself. He felt so close to his original vision, almost touching the infinite. ‘We are getting ready and believe in our work,’ he told Nina. ‘It is important that all should believe that everything is going to be fine and I myself should believe in that also …’