The three female Russian cosmonauts selected for Vostok 6: (from left to right) Valentina Ponomareva and Irina Solovyeva (both backups), and Valentina Tereshkova—who was ultimately to be the first woman to fly in space on June 16, 1963.
THE FEMALE FACE OF THE COSMOS
During late 1962 and early 1963, in an attempt to regain the headlines, the Russians planned a number of high-profile missions: the first multiple mission and the longest flight. The most eye-catching was putting the first woman into space—this was achieved on June 16, 1963, with the flight of Valentina Tereshkova. Meanwhile the Americans impressively flew two more Mercury missions, completing the program at six manned missions.
The future plans of the Soviet Union depended upon Korolev’s unwritten rule that each mission be a significant advance over the previous one, although there was no overarching plan. One month after Titov’s troubled flight, Korolev proposed a dramatic mission—three Vostok spacecraft, each with a single cosmonaut, to be launched on three successive days. The first pilot would conduct a three-day mission, while the two others would be in space for two or three days. On one of those days, all three spacecraft would be in space. But others were not convinced about the viability of the project, and Korolev was forced to reduce the plan to two Vostok craft, launched by January 1962 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, the Central Committee had approved the hiring of 60 new cosmonaut trainees, including five women: Tatyana D. Kuznetsova, age 20; Valentina L. Ponomareva, age 28; Irina B. Solovyeva, age 24; Valentina V. Tereshkova, age 24; and Zhanna D. Yerkina, age 22. Solovyeva had 900 parachute jumps to her credit, followed by Tereshkova with 78, and Ponomareva with ten. Although Ponomareva was clearly the most accomplished pilot, Gagarin opposed her inclusion because she was a mother. Another candidate, Tereshkova, did not have any academic honors but had been an active member of the local Young Communist League.
The three female Russian cosmonauts selected for Vostok 6: (from left to right) Valentina Ponomareva and Irina Solovyeva (both backups), and Valentina Tereshkova—who was ultimately to be the first woman to fly in space on June 16, 1963.
The publicity surrounding Glenn’s launch had not gone unnoticed in the USSR. Military-industrial Commission Chairman Ustinov called Korolev on February 7, just days before Glenn’s flight, and ordered the dual Vostok launch in mid-March. In his diary Kamanin commented on the foolishness of making decisions in such a way:
This is the style of our leadership. They’ve been doing nothing for almost half a year and now they ask us to prepare an extremely complex mission in just ten days’ time. The program of which has not even been agreed upon.
Fortunately a rocket failure at Baikonur forced a much-needed delay to the dual Vostok mission.
Cosmonauts Nikolayev and Popovich were the obvious candidates for the two missions. One of the few bachelors in the team, the 32-year-old Nikolayev began his career as a lumberjack before later joining the Soviet air force, receiving his pilot’s wings in 1954. Popovich, also 32, had enjoyed a distinguished career in the Soviet air force before receiving the Order of the Red Star for an assignment in the Arctic. His wife Marina was one of the most accomplished women test pilots in the USSR.
On August 11 Nikolayev took off. Korolev was so nervous throughout the ascent phase that he held tightly to the red telephone with which he would give the order to abort the mission in case of a booster failure. Khrushchev spoke to Nikolayev four hours into the mission, and the world saw Nikolayev smile on television. As Vostok 3 passed over Baikonur at 11:02 a.m. a day later, Vostok 4 climbed after it. It was the first time that more than one piloted spacecraft, or indeed more than one human, had been in orbit. Western media was surprised by the second launch, speculating that there would be a docking. There was talk that the mission was a rehearsal for a Moon flight, but watchful commentators noticed that this was not a true rendezvous, just two spacecraft launched into similar orbits, neither of which could be altered. Both Vostoks fired their retrorockets within six minutes of each other on August 15. Nikolayev landed after a three-day, 22-hour and 22-minute flight, during which he had circled Earth 64 times. Popovich landed 125 miles (200 km) away after a two-day, 22-hour and 57-minute flight, and 48 orbits.
Korolev breathed a sigh of relief. His political masters were satisfied, but his health was worsening. He had been in poor condition for many years; the effects of the privations of the labor camps had never left him. His busy work schedule aggravated matters—working 18 hours a day for several weeks on end was common. He found it hard to delegate, often involving himself in trivial matters he should have left to others. Soon after the return of the twin Vostoks he suffered intestinal bleeding. After a stay in the hospital, he was ordered to take a holiday at the seaside resort of Sochi, but he took his work with him and was constantly on the telephone.
The Mercury program was gaining momentum with the launch of Walter Schirra in the Sigma 7 capsule in October 1962. He intended to fly a technically perfect mission:
Schirra: Not to criticize John and Scott, but the mission was designed to have a chimpanzee in there. They replaced the chimp. But that meant they had to have a lot of automatic maneuvers. Automatic maneuvers took a tremendous amount of attitude control fuel. I said: “I don’t want to do that. I just want to save that.” And as a result, I ended up, I think, about retrofire, about 80 percent of my attitude fuel was still remaining.
As water came out of the spacecraft it froze instantaneously into one snowflake, but a very tiny, tiny snowflake. These stuck on the outside of the spacecraft. They drifted around. This was what John called fireflies, is what Scott got involved with banging the spacecraft and watching them come off. And as a result, both of them lost sight of the fact they had to have fuel enough to fly the mission. John got a little wrapped up; I did, too, because I was his Capcom in California, on the retro-rocket package that had to be kept on because of a false signal that said his heat shield had detached, when in fact it turned out it had not. But at any rate, that became kind of a traumatic part of John’s mission. But in both cases, they almost ran out of attitude control fuel; and that kind of shook me up, because there’s no reason to do that. In fact, I alienated some of the flight controllers because, after drifting for a while, I put it back into automatic control. I’m in chimp mode now; it didn’t go over too well.
The final Mercury flight occurred in May 1963 when the relaxed Gordon Cooper flew in his capsule Faith 7. He had to endure what was becoming a common problem on Mercury flights—spacesuit overheating. The flight was nevertheless going well and he remarked how much detail he could see down on the ground. He deployed a flashing beacon from the nose of his capsule to test how far he could see it—an important procedure for future rendezvous missions. Then there was trouble, as he later described:
On the 19th orbit a warning light came on. The .05 G green warning light came on, which is the light that tells you you’re starting to reenter. I was sure that I wasn’t reentering, because there had been nothing to slow down my speed at all. And, of course, as usually happened on these missions, we had long spaces when we were out of radio contact; and I was out of radio contact when this happened. So when I got in radio contact first time, the Cape was kind of concerned when they heard about this light on. Then we proceeded on the next orbit or so to try to analyze, go through various procedures to try to find what it was. And we realized I was, slowly but surely, having an electrical fire from my relays; and they did short out the inverters. So, eventually I lost my total electrical system.
It meant that I had the manual push/pull rods to activate the jets for attitude control. I had eyeballs out the window for my attitude—my pitch, roll and yaw attitude. I had a wristwatch for timing. And I had to activate each and every one of the relays, and I’d have to manually fire the retros while manually flying the spacecraft. So, everything had to be done manually. I’d have to control the spacecraft all the way through reentry. I’d have to put my drogue out manually. And I’d have to deploy my parachute manually. I’d have to deploy the landing bag manually.
In the end it was a perfect splashdown just 4 miles (6.4 km) from the USS Kearsarge in the Pacific.
Mercury ended with a total of two days, five hours and 55 minutes of cumulative space time from six missions. It might not have sounded much but it was a sound start, verifying the technology necessary to maintain a human in Earth orbit for a short period of time. Well before that last flight, plans for a second-generation spacecraft were already on the drawing boards. As early as December 1961, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Seamans approved a “Mercury Mark 2” vehicle proposed by the former Space Task Group, which had been renamed the Manned Spacecraft Center. This new spacecraft would be capable of conducting extensive rendezvous and docking operations in Earth orbit, allowing astronauts to acquire experience in techniques needed for the Apollo lunar landing program. By January 1962, the project had been renamed Gemini. It was clearly a major leap in capabilities over either Mercury or Vostok. The spacecraft would be able to change orbits, it would carry two astronauts and it would allow flights lasting as long as two weeks.
Wernher von Braun had transferred to NASA from the army in 1960, having extracted the proviso that NASA develop the powerful rocket needed to launch astronauts to the Moon. He had already produced the Jupiter-C, so they named the new rocket after the next planet out from the Sun—Saturn.
Alan Shepard was chosen to fly in the Gemini program but a medical problem grounded him and that seemed, at the time, to be the end of his career as an astronaut:
I was chosen to make the first Gemini mission. Tom Stafford, who is a very bright young guy, was assigned as copilot, and we were already into the mission, already training for the mission. We had been in the simulators, as a matter of fact, several different times. I’m not sure whether we’d looked at the hardware in St. Louis or not prior to the problem, which I had. The problem I had was a disease called Menière’s; it is due to elevated fluid pressure in the inner ear. They tell me it happens in people who are Type A, hyper, driven, whatever. Unfortunately, what happens is it causes a lack of balance, dizziness, and in some cases nausea as a result of all this disorientation going on up there in the ear. It fortunately is unilateral, so it was only happening with me on the left side. But it was so obvious that NASA grounded me right away, and they assigned another crew for the first Gemini flight.
On March 27, 1963, three trainee cosmonauts, Nelyubov, Anikeyev and Filatev, were returning to the training center after an evening out in Moscow. They had been drinking and became involved in an altercation with a military patrol at a railway station. Nelyubov threatened to go over the head of the offended officers if they filed a formal report against the cosmonauts. Later, officials at the Cosmonaut Training Center requested the duty officer not to file a report against the three men. He agreed, on condition that they apologize for their behavior. Although Anikeyev and Filatev agreed to do so, Nelyubov refused, and so the offended duty officer filed a report against the three men, and within a week they were all dismissed from the cosmonaut team. Nelyubov was one of the brightest and most qualified cosmonauts; he had served as Gagarin’s second backup during the first Vostok mission, and he certainly would have gone into space in the near future.
How was the USSR to respond to the impressive Mercury flights and demonstrate its superiority? It was decided that the next flight of the Vostok was to include a woman. Reports on the candidates stated that Ponomareva had the most thorough preparation and was more talented than the others:
She exceeds all the rest in flight, but she needs a lot of reform as she is arrogant, self-centered, exaggerates her abilities, and does not stay away from drinking and smoking. Solovyeva is the most objective of all, more physically and morally sturdy, but she is a little closed off and is insufficiently active in social work. Tereshkova is active in society, is especially well in appearance, makes use of her great authority among everyone who she knows. Yerkina has prepared less than well in technical and physical qualities, but she is persistently improving and undoubtedly she will be a rather good cosmonaut.
The report then reached a conclusion:
We must first send Tereshkova into space flight, and her double will be Solovyeva.
It was said among the trainees that Tereshkova was “Gagarin in a skirt!”
The flight was set for August 1963, but then Korolev discovered a problem. His engineers realized that the operational lifetime of both the proposed spacecraft was due to expire in May–June 1963, well before the August flight, and there was no possibility of extending their “shelf life.” They had to either launch them or scrap them, so they changed the timetable. The first spaceship, launched in May or June, would carry a man into orbit for a full eight days, while the second would carry the first woman into space for two to three days. The choice for the first mission was Valeri Bykovsky; the decision on the woman was more difficult. According to later reports, what swung the decision in Tereshkova's favor was the fact that some were lobbying too enthusiastically for Ponomareva. Without such support she would have been the first woman in space. In her book, The Female Face of the Cosmos, Ponomareva later wrote:
Korolev started with me: he asked why I was sad and whether I would resent it if I do not fly. I rose and said with emphasis: “Yes, Sergei Pavlovich, I would resent it very much!” Pointing his index finger at me, Korolev said: “You are right, you fine girl. I would have resented it too.” He spoke with emphasis, very emotionally. Then he has kept silent for a while, gave every one of us a long attentive look, and said: “It’s all right, you’ll all fly into space.”
The session of the State Commission on May 21, 1963, was short, and there was no miracle. It was announced that Valentina Tereshkova was appointed the commander of the space ship, and Irina Solovyeva and Valentina Ponomareva were the backups. As I remember the physician Karpov’s explanation, two backups, instead of one as for men, were appointed “with the consideration of the complexity of the female organism.”
But for Vostok 5 trouble began soon after Bykovsky arrived at the pad. Neither of the shortwave transmitters on Vostok 5 were working, later there was a problem with the ejection hatch and then there was a control failure in the third stage. Engineers moved in. They had just six hours to repair the faults, otherwise the launch would have to be canceled and the Vostoks would exceed their design lives. Finally, the task was accomplished but the problems were not over. In the final minute of Bykovsky’s countdown a light indicated that the rocket had not severed its umbilical electrical connection to the pad. Korolev looked on the verge of panic, but all around him said they should launch. In the end the rising rocket tore the cable from its socket and left it flailing on the pad.
Tereshkova and her backup Solovyeva were prepared for the second mission. All seemed to go well and Tereshkova lifted off two days later, becoming the first woman in space. The Vostoks flew closest to each other immediately after launch, when they passed at a distance of about 3 miles (5 km). Bykovsky later reported that he had not spotted Vostok 6, while Tereshkova thought she might have glimpsed Vostok 5. They established radio contact shortly afterward, and within three hours of the launch Moscow television was showing live shots of Tereshkova in her capsule. But she was not feeling well; subsequent transmissions showed her tired and looking weak. She initially failed to perform one of the major goals of her mission, the manual orientation of her spacecraft. Kamanin ordered Gagarin, Titov and Nikolayev to radio new instructions. Eventually she accomplished the task, showing that if the automatic system failed she would be able to put the craft into the correct orientation for reentry. Bykovsky reported there had been a knock, and that this had caused consternation on the ground. When questioned further, Bykovsky clarified what he had said: “There had been the first space stool.” the Russian word for “stool” (stul) had been mistaken for the word for “knock” (stuk). It was a historic moment of sorts—the first time a human had made a bowel movement in space.
Tereshkova landed without incident, although she bruised her face. During Bykovsky’s reentry, like that of Gagarin and Titov, his instrument compartment failed to separate from the descent capsule as planned—it was getting to be a persistent problem. Fortunately he landed without too much worry.
It was heralded as a triumph for the Soviet Union; a woman had flown in space for longer than all the six American Mercury flights combined. Bykovsky claimed the world duration record for a single-crew spaceship; it still stands today, over 45 years after his mission.
TIMELINE
| 1962 | August 11 Vostok 3 launched |
| August 12 Vostok 4 launched to join Vostok 3 in space | |
| October 3 Sigma 7, part of the Mercury program, launched with Walter Schirra aboard | |
| 1963 | May 15 Launch of Faith 7 with Gordon Cooper aboard marks the end of the US Mercury program |
| June 14–19 Valery Bykovsky completes the longest manned space flight to date (199 hours, 81 orbits) during the Vostok 5 mission | |
| June 16 Vostok 6 launched with first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, aboard |
