Nine months had passed since the Apollo 1 disaster, months in which the war in Vietnam had continued to escalate. Key strategic sites in North Vietnam had been obliterated in a series of air strikes yet this did not seem to diminish the Vietcong’s power to retaliate. Almost five hundred thousand American troops were now in Vietnam. ‘Search and destroy’ missions were underway on the ground in a war which was both increasingly unpopular and unwinnable. Despite millions of tons of bombs being dropped on strategic targets, American military might had not been able to crush the spirit of the communist troops who continued to strike back.
If America was losing face in Vietnam with ‘Uncle Sam’s’ vigour put in question, no one could doubt the superiority of the American rocket industry as the ultimate icon of power in the symbolic race for supremacy against the Soviets was wheeled out for all the world to see. On 26 August 1967, the giant doors of the vehicle assembly building at Cape Canaveral – now renamed Cape Kennedy – slid open to reveal the glistening white Saturn V. Reaching over thirty-six storeys high, with a height of 363 feet and engines capable of producing 7.5 million pounds of thrust, von Braun’s Saturn V was an impressive cylinder of power as it was slowly moved, upright, on a gigantic crawler, to Pad 39A. It was so heavy some doubted it would ever get off the ground.
The unmanned launch was planned for early autumn, but myriad details connected with getting it fuelled and into position took longer than expected. The Director of Launch Operations, Rocco Petrone, came to understand that the Saturn V lived in its own time dimension. He was dealing with what he called the ‘Saturn V minute’, which he calculated was actually about five minutes. ‘If I asked a guy how long something would take, he’d tell me 10 minutes and it would come up maybe in an hour,’ he explained. ‘Everything about the Saturn V was bigger. If you had to pick up a valve, you couldn’t pick it up by hand. You had to get a fork-lift truck.’
In November, the rocket was ready for launch. It had been in position for some weeks, a new landmark on the flat landscape. By night, floodlights bathed it in brilliance. The wind was almost visible chasing leaves and debris around its summit. Launch was set for 7 a.m. on 8 November 1967 and by dawn the wind had eased. The morning was still. No one was allowed near the rocket. A safety zone of three and half miles was in operation. Four hundred and fifty technicians were absorbed in front of their screens at the control centre. The mission, Apollo 4, would not only test the Saturn V but also a redesigned Apollo command module – in which a raft of innovations had been introduced, including a new hatch. Queues of cars were lining the roads, full of people intent on seeing the launch and living a piece of history. All the leading figures from NASA were there to observe. En masse from Cocoa Beach the press were decamping in leisurely fashion to their observation posts, casually unconcerned about being late. Countdowns were never on time.
For von Braun and those close to him, the launch would be the culmination of years of work. As far back as the 1930s, on another continent, in another age, von Braun had dreamed of this legendary rocket with its amazing power. Now he sat with Arthur Rudolph, who had shared the long journey from Bleicherode, to watch the spectacle as they tried to lift a rocket with the weight of a Navy destroyer off the launch pad. Von Braun felt certain that Saturn V had the power to ‘toss a jet aircraft into orbit – or even boost a Chevrolet clear out of the solar system’. Even so, there was no way of being completely certain of the F-1 engines, let alone all the new systems under ‘all-up’ testing on that day – fuels, pumps, electronic systems, control systems. They watched with concern as, with three minutes to go, computers took over.
Countdown was faultless. Fuelling was complete. Helium created pressure in the tanks that would bring the five powerful pumps into action. When the ignition flames were alight, 1 ton of fuel per second would arrive to be consumed by the huge engines, gently at first. Full power was delayed so that the rocket could adjust. Then the gargantuan appetite of the colossal engines converted power into a terrifying force, beyond human scale. And if one infinitesimal fault hidden among the many thousands of cooperating systems failed, the three-mile limit for safe viewing might not prove enough and the steel shutters on the control block designed to close in the event of an explosion might well prove inadequate. The four arms holding the rocket received the signal to withdraw. The giant, claw-like restraining bolts clasping the rocket at its base were released. On time and painfully slowly, the rocket began to rise. At first there was no sound, only tremors and reverberations that shook the roofs and windows. Then came the sound: deafening, like a physical force.
To the many anxious observers, the rocket was desperately slow to rise. It seemed to hover, indecisive, but then the white fury of flames under it, struggling to move the dead weight, became an inferno that nothing could resist. It was rising against its will but it was also beginning to tilt alarmingly. With horror the onlookers waited for the catastrophe. Now the rocket was gathering speed and it was obvious that it was meant to tilt. Soon it was against the blue sky, still trailing a plume of fire several hundred yards long. The volume of sound and sheer physical power was overwhelming. The rocket rent the atmosphere as though tearing a thunderous curtain. In the viewing rooms, watching the perfect performance, the crowds cheered madly. The CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite found he was holding the glass window of his viewing room in place because it was rattling so violently. In the control centre, plaster fell from the ceiling.
Two and half minutes later, the first stage had done its job and was discarded. Now von Braun waited. The second stage, shorter by 57 feet with five equally massive engines giving one million pounds of thrust, should ignite and push the cone of metal into space. He felt more certain of the third stage. It was transporting a lookalike lunar module, with the weight and size of the real thing.
‘Go, baby, go!’ yelled von Braun. He watched anxiously as each stage of the booster did its job and then cut away until, eleven minutes after launch, the Apollo command and service module was in free orbit. What he had just witnessed was a man-made miracle: the synergy of thousands of systems into one powerful purpose. The column of fire could be seen more than 150 miles away. The elation he felt was unrepeatable.
In Russia, a sombre mood hung over the entire country. It was absorbed in mourning a hero. Yuri Gagarin was dead, killed in a plane crash. Kamanin had tried to protect him, Russia’s bright star. After the Komarov disaster, Kamanin had informed Gagarin there would never be another space flight for him. He had bigger, brighter plans for Gagarin’s career, although he was increasingly troubled by Gagarin’s antics. ‘There were many situations when Gagarin miraculously escaped big trouble,’ he wrote. ‘I was particularly concerned about his driving at high speeds … The active lifestyle, endless meetings and drinking sessions were noticeably changing Yuri and slowly but steadily erasing his charming smile from his face.’
When news first broke of the crash on 27 March 1968, Gagarin’s fate was uncertain. The plane was not found immediately. He had been on a training mission with a co-pilot; the weather had been snowy, visibility poor. Without warning, communications had ended abruptly half an hour into the flight. With the continued radio silence, helicopters were sent out to investigate. In the afternoon, a wrecked plane was found. Crisis meetings continued during the night. Those who knew Gagarin could not hide their emotions. ‘Kamanin had his lips pressed tightly together,’ recalled one cosmonaut. ‘Kuznetsov was struggling to control his trembling chin. Leonov had his face to the wall.’ In the morning, at the scene of the accident, Kamanin identified a piece of Gagarin’s jacket. The two pilots had hit the ground at a speed of more 430 mph. The plane was scattered over a wide area, and it became painfully evident that their bodies were as fragmented as the aircraft.
Gagarin’s death was felt as a personal loss to every Russian. As far as the eye could see, silent crowds waited patiently in the snow to file passed his coffin lying in state at the House of the Soviet Army. Gagarin’s mother, a simple countrywoman, overwhelmed by the event, waited to see her son in his coffin one last time before his cremation. She wanted to mourn in a way she understood. Officials refused her request. But she fussed and insisted and the officials gave way. The red velvet cloth was removed. She opened the coffin to find a plastic bag containing human fragments – all that could be found of her son.
Gagarin was irreplaceable. ‘Gagarin’s death will be my biggest loss for the rest of my life,’ Kamanin confided in his diary. ‘I know years will pass and new outstanding space explorers will come along but not a single one of them would be able to go as high as Yuri Gagarin’s grand deed.’ A bright star had burned out, leaving the sky dark. For the Soviets he had been a hopeful symbol of what was good in the all-too-dreary communist system of mediocrity and shortage. Russian grief could not be assuaged. Gagarin’s face, recognized throughout the world, was so much a part of Soviet triumphs in space. Now he was dead and the Soviet Union was slowly losing its premier position to America.
For two years now there had been little but failed flights and disasters. At Baikonur, Vasily Mishin recognized it was crucial to restore the balance but he himself was struggling to make headway, all too often seeking the help of alcohol for this task. According to Kamanin, Mishin had been sent into rehabilitation for a drink problem at least once. In his diary he was unsparing in his criticism, describing Mishin as ‘rude and always up for a fight’ when under pressure, as well as ‘hostile to any advice’. At times it seemed that Mishin was making ‘so many mistakes’ it was hard not to ‘feel sorry for him’.
Earlier in the year, according to Kamanin, he, along with leading cosmonauts, including Gagarin and Leonov, had taken their worries to the First Deputy of Defence, Marshal Yakubovsky. The marshal had given them a ‘very warm welcome’, Kamanin recalled, and listened carefully to their concerns about ‘the USSR falling behind America’. Many of their criticisms centred on Mishin, who was finding it difficult to walk in Korolev’s shoes. Yakubovsky conceded that Mishin, although a brilliant engineer, was possibly a little lacking in charm; those who possessed an abundance of creative energy, he noticed, often had the drawback of a short fuse. He was inclined to the opinion that chief designers as a breed were not the easiest to deal with and promised to help as much as possible. But nothing happened and no action was taken against the struggling Mishin. Kamanin made a forecast: if Mishin were to stay as Chief Designer, ‘things could only get worse’.
America now had the rocket to fly to the moon. And the Apollo spacecraft was phoenix-like, rising from the ashes, born anew. It performed flawlessly on the Apollo 4 mission, even on re-entry where temperatures reached almost 10,000 degrees F. The next mission, Apollo 5, would test the lunar module. By any standards, this was an extraordinary vehicle. It did not need to be an aerodynamic shape as it would be flying in a vacuum in space or in the moon’s gravity – which is only one-sixth of that of the earth. Custom-built to land on an unknown surface with its big padded feet on long, extending legs, it could never be called streamlined. The overwhelming prerequisite was that it had to be light. Its metal skin was so thin; it was barely thicker than a couple of sheets of paper. It stood 23 feet high and came in two sections. The upper part carried ascent engines, a fuel tank and cockpit and would boost the two-man landing crew back to the command module orbiting the moon. The lower half, which would remain behind on takeoff, carried the descent engine, fuel and necessary equipment.
There was no detailed first-hand knowledge of the lunar surface, yet skilful handling and landing of the lunar craft were vital for success. Astronauts practised this in a full-scale mock-up of the cabin layout, with a computer camera-simulated view of a moon surface model seen through the window. In addition, staff at Langley Research Center devised an unlikely flight vehicle designed to give the commander and pilot real flight experience.
A strange craft with more than a hint of Heath Robinson about it was to be seen in the skies above Ellington Air Force Base, seventeen miles outside Houston, Texas. Called the ‘Flying Bedstead’ – and looking rather like one – its function was to give astronauts some experience of a lunar landing. It seemed to be only framework, with no decent covering hiding its complex interior. Reassuringly, four legs jutted out from its four corners. Less reassuringly, the pilot’s control seat jutted outwards, surrounded by nothing more than fresh air. Its official name was the ‘lunar landing training vehicle’ and it was especially designed to remove the feeling of gravity, using a downward-thrusting jet engine and rocket to lift off. Separate manoeuvring thrusters, similar to those used on the lunar module, were also fitted to provide the hapless pilot with enough control in pitch, yaw and roll, to land successfully back on the ground, or, if he failed, to send it spinning off to destruction. Just in case, NASA had fitted an ejection seat.
Neil Armstrong was something of a virtuoso on the machine but one day in May 1968 he almost played his swansong. The ‘Bedstead’ decided to give a bucking bronco performance with an almost vertical 800 feet rise and an equally stomach-churning vertical drop. From his controls in the corner of the ‘Bedstead’, Armstrong held the machine steady, hovering near ground level. Then, without warning, up it went again 200 feet, bucking and veering to the left, rolling and turning over the runway, determined to throw off its passenger. The bed was wild. Ground control shouted at Armstrong to eject, but something in Armstrong’s character responded to bucking bedsteads in a positive way. He was the boss; he would control the thing. Not until he was past knowing for sure that the bed had won would he eject. Seconds later it crashed on the runway. As for Armstrong, his parachute opened only just before his boots met the ground.
The inquest on the untimely demise of the ‘Flying Bedstead’ was a sobering event. On that windy day it had guzzled extra fuel and the inert helium supply used to push propellant through the fuel tanks was squandered, making the engine stutter repeatedly. But more sobering still was Armstrong’s timing. Had he delayed his departure by two-fifths of a second, there would have been no time for his parachute to open. NASA officials hoped that if and when a lunar landing was made, Armstrong’s timing would be less interesting.
In 1968, George Low, Program Chief, Manned Space Flight, and other senior NASA officials were becoming increasingly worried about delays in the manufacture and delivery of lunar modules – it was unlikely an operational craft would be ready for testing before the end of the year. The next mission was intended to test both the lunar and command modules in earth orbit. But it was becoming clear that if they waited for delivery of the lunar vehicle, they might not get their man on the moon by the end of the decade. It was looking more and more as though that prize would fall to the Soviet Union.
The pressure increased as the CIA made NASA aware of a Soviet programme to have a cosmonaut in orbit around the moon by Christmas 1968. It would be hard to claim that they had reached the moon first if the Soviets accomplished such a feat. In 1968, Mishin launched a series of modified unmanned Soyuz capsules called Zonds. In March, Zond 4 had returned from deep space to earth orbit, having tested re-entry from a lunar orbit, and in September a cargo of tortoises, flies and assorted plant life was also taken for a journey around the moon in Zond 5. In October there was a successful rendezvous in space with a manned Soyuz craft. Next up was the N-1 launch itself. It was wildly rumoured that the Soviets were on the brink of going one step further in December with a manned trip around the moon. A date was even specified in the Western press – 8 December. Although the Russians had had their share of failures, their ambitions to reach the moon were undiminished. They too were desperate to see their flag planted on its surface.
George Low was increasingly concerned that the Soviets might beat them to it; it was time to take some short cuts. He went to see Chris Kraft with a risky proposal. Rather than waiting for the lunar module and testing its flight worthiness in earth orbit, he suggested that the next flight should be a huge gamble. They needed to gain experience of navigation and communication on a manned flight around the moon. Why not send the first manned flight of the Saturn V straight into lunar orbit and around the back of the moon? The astronauts would gain the valuable experience of flying in lunar orbit using the Apollo command module. Kraft liked the idea, although it meant speeding up the development of the lunar navigation software.
Unfortunately they had come to this decision at a bad time. During the Apollo 6 mission on 4 April 1968, the second unmanned flight of the Saturn V had run into serious difficulties and revived all the old anxieties. During the initial stages of F-1 testing, vibrations had been so severe that the mechanical stress was approaching 10 g’s. This ‘pogo’ effect in the first stage lasted a full ten seconds and made the command module above judder so much that any astronauts on board might have been in danger. During the second stage there was more erratic data and two engines failed. This made it impossible to put the command module into the right lunar orbit. At the time these failings scarcely made front-page news, eclipsed on the day by the assassination of civil rights campaigner Dr Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee, which prompted a wave of civil unrest across America. Von Braun himself was worried that yet more engine faults were being found at this time. He had believed the problems of the F-1 engines were behind them.
With some foreboding, Kraft counselled the cautious von Braun. He had expected protests from him. It had been his decision to have ‘one more launch’ before Alan Shepard’s flight that had lost America the title of ‘first man in space’. It required more than a leap of faith to send astronauts on the very first manned Saturn trip straight into an untried and complex mission. Von Braun’s team at Marshall had analysed the data from Apollo 6 and introduced further shock absorbers and vibration-absorbing dampeners to reduce the effect – but there was no guarantee of safety.
‘Wernher, we need you to commit to your next Saturn V flight. It has to have men on it and it’s going to the moon.’ Kraft’s appeal did not fall on deaf ears. In spite of recent problems, von Braun had confidence in his rocket. He didn’t insist on yet another test flight. If it could achieve earth’s orbit, then it ought to be able to go further to a lunar orbit. He did not hesitate. ‘It’s a great idea,’ he said.
Had the Americans known the difficulties facing the Soviets they might not have taken such a risk. The original plans for the N-1 and its attendant services had been magnificent, as though conceived in the eye of Colossus. The assembly building, 150 feet high and 800 feet wide, was immense. The two launch pads, 1500 feet apart, would have service towers 500 feet in height. But by the time Mishin was ready to wheel out the first N-1 booster in May 1968, something in the Soviet system had conspired to undermine efficiency. The vast metal meteor was still not ready, with questions about its engines. Almost farcically, cracks were also found in the outer skin of the first stage and it had to be taken back to the assembly building for repair. Ground testing continued to run into problems and in September a bulldozer accidentally severed the main electric cable to the N-1 launch complex causing a two-month delay in testing. Repairs to the booster took far longer than expected. Delivery dates for equipment were invariably missed. A perverse unreliability was becoming the norm, presided over by Mishin who was still struggling with his own little problem with the bottle.
Any plans to modify the Zond missions for manned flight had to be revised in November, when the unmanned probe, Zond 6, raced back from a successful circumlunar mission only to develop a pressure failure, which killed the biological specimens on board. The fall in pressure jeopardized re-entry and also killed the dreams of a manned mission around the moon. Cosmonauts would not have survived. Mishin felt the strain acutely. ‘Mishin did not look good this morning,’ observed Kamanin on 15 November. ‘His eyes were red, his hands were trembling, his face puffed up, he keeps drinking.’ The following night, as the pressure plummeted still further in the landing apparatus, ‘he could no longer stand the strain’. Kamanin was summoned in the small hours to find that Mishin had drunk so much and slept so little he was ‘incapacitated’. He was firmly escorted straight from the control room to hospital. Zond 6 itself crashed into the ground as the parachute failed to deploy correctly.
On 21 December 1968, the mighty Saturn carrying Apollo 8 rose majestically into orbit. The three astronauts on board, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, were embarking on arguably the most dangerous manned mission yet undertaken: navigation into the moon’s orbit. In 1966, Gemini 11 had powered 850 miles into space. No one had gone beyond that achievement. Now Apollo 8 had to travel a vast 234,000 miles into the unknown to navigate successfully into the grip of the moon’s gravitational field. Precision and timing were essential. They must enter the moon’s gravitational field while in control of the craft, using engine power to slow down to a speed of 3700 mph. This would take them into lunar orbit.
Mission control wanted to be sure about the engine – known as the service propulsion system – that would power Apollo 8 into lunar orbit before they made a decision. If all was well, it was feasible to go for ‘trans lunar injection’, or TLI, to power the craft on to a trajectory to the moon. Ground control liked what they saw on the screen monitors. The craft made a perfect orbit around the earth.
‘Apollo 8, you are go for TLI,’ said Mike Collins from mission control. They had the all-clear to power away from the earth, increasing their speed to 33,500 feet per second, beyond escape velocity – the speed required ultimately to break out of earth orbit.
On the third day, they had reached more than 200,000 miles out into space. At 38,000 miles from the lunar surface they began to fall towards the moon, pulled in by its gravitational field. Soon, the astronauts would be behind the moon and out of radio contact for more than twenty minutes. They would be on their own. Entry into lunar orbit required the Apollo engines to fire for exactly 247 seconds. This would take the craft to the lowest point of its orbit, seventy miles from the moon. If this failed, there would not be a second chance. If the engines did not fire for the exact required time, Apollo 8 would be unable to enter lunar orbit, but would sail on forever, lost in space. ‘All the mathematicians in the world had looked at the calculations,’ said one engineer, but still there was no way of knowing for sure that it would work.
In a few minutes the astronauts would know if this was a new beginning or a fearful end to their lives. The engines fired for the required 247 seconds at full blast. They had done it. They could now use the attitude control thrusters to align the craft. For the first time in the twin histories of earth and moon, a tiny speck of humanity was sailing confidently in the vastness of space behind the moon travelling at 5000 mph, viewing what looked like the world of the dead, a blanched landscape of peaks and troughs devoid of life. They were in lunar orbit, and could hardly believe it.
Ground control, meanwhile, did not yet know the outcome. Adding to the nail-biting suspense, they could not stop calling the ship although they knew they could not be heard:
‘Apollo 8, come in. Apollo 8 … Apollo 8 …’
Agonizing minutes and seconds were to pass before they heard:
‘Go ahead, Houston.’
Jim Lovell’s voice sounded calm and clear as though it were coming from just round the corner. In mission control, grown men, sober men, whose days had been filled with equations and figures and bone-dry facts displayed on monitor screens, exploded into noisy delight. The relief was enormous. The thrill unbelievable. The huge complexity of their exquisite calculations had created a thing of wonder.
Kamanin recalls that on 24 December as he and some of the cosmonauts were travelling in a bus at the launch site, they suddenly rounded a corner and saw the bright crescent of the moon. ‘Everyone grew silent for a minute.’ They knew full well that Apollo 8 was at that minute circling the moon, and were ‘filled with contradictory feelings’. It was impossible not to admire the courage of the American astronauts, yet also they ‘felt hurt that it was not our men orbiting the moon’.
It was Christmas, a time when humanity traditionally paused to consider its collective myths and miracles: and now they had a real one. Some of their number were within a short distance of the unreachable moon, almost among the stars. The crew of Apollo 8 felt a sense of wonder. Looking out of their window, they felt themselves surrounded by the numinous. The view of the moon’s surface beneath them was spectacular, millions of years of history embedded in its heavily cratered surface. They wanted to investigate the Sea of Tranquillity, a possible landing site for the following year. Jim Lovell, who was assigned to the task, reported that he could see no reason why it would not make an excellent landing site.
On Christmas Eve, they broadcast to half a billion people. ‘This is Apollo 8 coming to you live from the moon,’ began Borman. Each described the scene. ‘The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring,’ Lovell said. ‘It makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.’ The moon ‘looks a vast, lonely, forbidding place, an expanse of nothing … clouds of pumice stone’. And, in contrast to the dead and ghostly moon, Lovell saw the earth ‘as a grand oasis in the big vastness of space’. Bill Anders sent earth a Christian message reading from Genesis: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth …’ And Frank Borman was moved by the sight of the earth rising beyond the moon’s bleak surface, a beautiful globe of swirling white and blue surrounded by the vast blackness of space: ‘This is the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life.’
The euphoria continued, then on Christmas Day Apollo 8 completed its tenth and final orbit around the moon. It was time for the journey back into earth’s orbit, and it was this journey, the ‘trans earth injection’, that unnerved NASA. A small miscalculation, a wrongly placed decimal point, an infinitesimal cough in the engine, would translate into disaster from which there was little hope of rescue. Everything now depended on the service propulsion system engine. Failure meant the Apollo 8 would not come back. When the oxygen ran out in about seven days’ time, the men would die and the space craft with its phantom crew, alternately bathed in silver light and blackest night, would circle the moon forever.
Once again, the Apollo 8 astronauts were behind the moon and out of radio contact. Once again, NASA was sitting on the edge of its seat. The time came to operate the engine, which fired for the exact 304 seconds required, taking them out of lunar orbit and on their two-and-a-half-day trek through the darkness of space towards the brilliant, luminous earth. The computer was in charge. They felt the jolt and heard the roar of flame as they sped to the precise point that would allow re-entry. At 25,000 mph, with a flaming tail 120 miles long, they entered the narrow orb that would take them back to their lives on earth. The intense burn-up of re-entry inevitably slowed the craft. Then, still high above the Pacific, the ship’s three parachutes opened like exotic flowers. Their triumphant return was a heady affair even by American standards: these were men who had touched the infinite and their epic journey was a harbinger of things to come.
The Apollo 8 circumlunar mission sent a shock wave throughout the Soviet space industry. America was leading the way, showered in glory, while the Soviet Union, with faltering steps, looked like the country cousin. As 1969 began, a meeting chaired by the Minister of General Machine Building, Sergei Afanasyev, was held at Baikonur with the aim of rescuing the situation. ‘How can we get out of this mess?’ he appealed to the chief designers in the room. The discussion centred on how to beat the Americans to the moon. It was acknowledged that it was a good thing that Mishin would soon be testing both the manned Soyuz space docking and the N-1.
Once again, Mishin confounded his critics. On 14 January 1969, Soyuz 4, with one man on board, was launched from a Baikonur covered in snow. The next day, Soyuz 5 followed, with three further crew members. After successfully docking, two of the cosmonauts transferred to Soyuz 4 and returned. Re-entry was somewhat more hair-raising for the remaining cosmonaut, Boris Volynov, left in Soyuz 5. The service module failed to separate from the main descent capsule and the craft turned over and over, out of control, with temperatures rising fast and smoke wafting inside. Volynov had the impression that the craft was disintegrating around him. He was convinced he was going to die. By a miracle he survived, only to find that the parachute was deployed too early and the cords became caught up, preventing it from opening. He hurtled through space, waiting for the sickening impact that would mark his final exit from the world. But incredibly the disastrous situation righted itself. The parachute straps took their correct positions and he was able to land safely. In spite of the hazards, the trip was a success, and the Soviet press were quick to claim that this represented the world’s first orbital space station.
The N-1 launch was planned for February. By January, work was well underway to prepare the N-1 for its coming test. Waiting to be called into life, it lay in the assembly building attended by more than two thousand workers who had been drafted in from the services to wait on the behemoth and deliver it to the site on a transporter. On its slow journey to the pad, there was a ghostly, unoccupied presence just ahead of the rocket, where Korolev had once walked. Slowly it rose up vertically, a colossal tower held fast by forty-eight bolts at its base, pale against the leaden skies. As it stood alone, its size brooked no comparisons. This was Korolev’s beloved N-1, 344 feet tall with a thrust of 4500 tons. It was his dream ticket to the moon and he had bet he would get there before the Americans.
The launch date set for 20 February 1969 was missed due to icy winds, blowing snow. The next day was bitterly cold, but bright. The occasion was toasted with a big bottle of champagne by Mishin, and high-powered visitors awaited that singular and exciting moment of takeoff. For Kuznetsov it was to be the first time that the layout of the engines would be fully tested firing together. ‘Even if you had attended our Soyuz launches dozens of times, you couldn’t help being excited,’ Boris Chertok observed. ‘The image of an N-1 launch is quite incomparable. All the surrounding area shakes, there is a storm of fire and you would have to be insensitive to be able to remain calm at such moments. You really want to help the rocket: “Go on! Go up! Take off!”’
The rocket blazed off with a fury of fire and thunder as all thirty engines sprang to life. The ground submitted to the terrible upheaval. The buildings absorbed the sickening shock waves. The windows trembled. The power of the engines and the white fire were awesome as the majestic column slowly moved upwards through the mass of billowing clouds at its base. The audience was enthralled.
Suddenly it became clear that something was wrong. Two engines shut down. The rocket kept going at reduced power. Then all the first-stage engines cut out. Still rising, with a tremendous surge of power it shuddered with enough violence to break fuel lines, bathing the interior in cascades of flame. Still rising, all the engines were now ablaze. The great star of fire travelled seventeen miles before exploding in unseen glory over the barren desert.
Solemn faces emerged from the bunker. ‘I’m so sad I could cry,’ Kamanin admitted in his diary. ‘But it could have been worse. The rocket did take off and the launch pad is not damaged.’ Their analysis showed that the KORD control system may have caused the initial shutdown of the two engines. Quite what triggered the huge fireball that engulfed the first stage and prompted all the engines to shut down was unclear but Mishin was reassuring. It was early days. More testing was needed; this was entirely normal. They had been through it all with the R-7. America had not won yet.