Just outside Huntsville in Alabama, the Americans stored their greatest prize of the Second World War – the German rocket team. A few years earlier Huntsville was small with some 13,000 inhabitants. The Army purchased 35,000 acres in 1940 to build the Redstone Arsenal and a depot for chemical weapons. Twenty thousand Army personnel arrived and thousands of construction workers. Local amenities could not keep up. By the autumn, after the typical hot and humid summer, von Braun and the first wave of his engineers were collating the V-2 documents and teaching the military what they knew about rockets. They set about assembling and launching a number of V-2s from the White Sands missile base in New Mexico.
Many did not approve of von Braun’s presence in the US. In December 1946 President Truman received a letter signed by Albert Einstein and others protesting at German scientists living and working in the US. ‘We hold these individuals to be potentially dangerous carriers of racial and religious hatred,’ the letter read.
They were not allowed to leave their quarters without a military escort, so von Braun and his colleagues jokingly referred to themselves as ‘Pops’ – prisoners of peace. He was soon frustrated. His progress was not as swift as he hoped it would be.
At the end of the war the USSR may have had the most powerful land force in the world, but such forces became secondary after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons. Just eighteen days after the Potsdam conference and fourteen days after Hiroshima, on 20 August 1945 a secret decree of the Soviet Central Committee and the Council of Ministers called for the formation of the Special Committee on the Atomic Bomb to direct and coordinate all efforts on the rapid development of nuclear weapons. They also needed the missiles to deliver them. Colonel General Mitrofan Nedelin and People’s Commissar of Armaments Dimitri Ustinov were appointed by Stalin to lead the USSR’s rocketry development. Nedelin, 44, was a brilliant officer who had used solid-fuelled Katyusha rockets during the war. Korolev was placed in charge of developing long-range missiles. His first task was to build a Soviet copy of the V-2 and improve on it, but it was clear to him that that would only serve as an interim measure. They needed better rockets of their own.
In early 1945, Mikhail Tikhonravov, who in 1933 had worked with Korolev on the development of the first Soviet liquid-fuelled rocket, brought together a group of engineers to work on a design for a high-altitude rocket to carry passengers to 190 km. Called the VR-190 proposal, it was the very first project in the Soviet Union for launching humans into space. The plan envisioned the use of a modified V-2 with a recoverable capsule for carrying two ‘stratonauts’. Tikhonravov tried to obtain interest from the top:
Dear Comrade Stalin! We have developed a plan for a high-altitude Soviet rocket for lifting two humans and scientific apparatus to an altitude of 190 km. The plan is based on using equipment from the captured V2 missile, and allows for realization in the shortest time.
Stalin was interested, at least for a while, writing back, ‘The proposal is interesting. Please examine for its realization.’ But Tikhonravov’s work stagnated. In 1947 it was renamed a ‘rocket probe’ and a year later a new preliminary plan was presented for approval. Further work was allowed, with one change: the launch of humans was dropped in favour of using dogs. The following year, the project was cancelled, ending the Soviet Union’s first serious investigations into manned spaceflight. The issue would not re-emerge for several years.
Frustrated, Korolev took his own rocket argument to Stalin. On 14 April 1947, he was escorted into the Kremlin to meet the Soviet leader in person for the first time. ‘I had been given the assignment to report to Stalin about the development of the new rocket,’ Korolev later recounted. ‘He listened silently at first, hardly taking his pipe out of his mouth. Sometimes he interrupted me, asking terse questions. I can’t recount all the details. I could not tell whether he approved of what I was saying or not.’
By early 1948 Tikhonravov was pushing another idea – a satellite. Again he didn’t receive much encouragement. That summer he read his report at the Academy of Artillery Sciences in the presence of a large group of prominent dignitaries from the military. The reaction of most was negative but Korolev was among those present and afterwards he approached his old friend, saying, ‘We have some serious things to talk about.’ Soon Korolev himself made plans to ask Stalin to fund the launch of an artificial satellite. The Russians now had their R-3 missile project, a rocket with a thrust of 120 tons designed to propel a three-ton warhead a distance of 3,000 km. Could it be the basis of a satellite launcher?
Meanwhile, von Braun was living in the desert at White Sands, feeling ignored and effectively doing nothing. He said, ‘We can dream about rockets and the Moon until Hell freezes over. Unless the people understand it and the man who pays the bill is behind it, no dice.’
In 1950 Tikhonravov tried once again to get official interest, this time with the first detailed Soviet analysis of the requirements for launching an artificial satellite. His paper, ‘On the Possibility of Achieving First Cosmic Velocity and Creating an Artificial Satellite with the Aid of a Multi-Stage Missile Using the Current Level of Technology’, was presented at a special session of the Academy of Artillery Sciences. The reaction to this presentation was even worse than in 1948: some were openly hostile, some sarcastic, many silent. Korolev was one of its few supporters.
Tikhonravov wrote an article, ‘Flight to the Moon’, for Pravda, describing an interplanetary spaceship. It concluded, ‘We do not have long to wait. We can assume that the bold dream of Tsiolkovsky will be realized within the next 10 to 15 years. All of you will become witnesses to this, and some of you may even be participants in as yet unprecedented journeys.’ Two days later the New York Times said that Dr Tikhonravov left no doubt that Soviet scientific development in the field of rockets was advancing rapidly.
In the spring of 1950, a group of American scientists led by James Van Allen of Johns Hopkins University met to discuss the possibility of an international scientific program to study the upper atmosphere and outer space using rockets, balloons, and ground observations. Soon the idea expanded into a worldwide program timed to coincide with the anticipated intense solar activity from July to December 1957. They called it the International Geophysical Year (IGY). At a subsequent meeting in Rome in 1954, Soviet scientists silently witnessed the approval of an American plan to put a satellite into orbit during the IGY. In July the following year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s press secretary James C. Hagerty said that the United States would launch ‘small Earth-circling satellites’.
That same day, at the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen, Academician Sedov, Chairman of the Commission for the Promotion of Interplanetary Flights, USSR Academy of Sciences, called a press conference at which he announced: ‘In my opinion, it will be possible to launch an artificial Earth satellite within the next two years.’ But a sceptical Soviet leadership needed to be convinced. The same year, Korolev urged for work to begin on a satellite, but still no one was listening.
In the summer of 1951, engineers led by Korolev converged on the isolated Kapustin Yar launch site in southern Russia for the first Soviet attempt at launching a living thing into space. From an initial selection of nine dogs, two were chosen, their names Dezik and Tsygan. The launch, using the new R-4 missile, was to take place in the early morning hours so it would be illuminated by the Sun during its ascent. The launch was successful and the dogs reached a velocity of 4,200 km/h and an altitude of 101 km, officially entering space. They experienced four minutes of weightlessness. After 188 seconds the payload section separated from the main booster and went into free fall until it reached an altitude of 6 km, when the parachute deployed. Twenty minutes after lift-off, the dogs were back on the ground barking and wagging their tails – the first living things recovered after a flight into space. Two months later the United States were to achieve a similar feat.
Subsequent flights met with mixed results. Dezik and another dog, Lisa, died when their parachute failed. It was then decided that Tsygan should not fly again. Instead, in early September, engineer Anatoli Blagonravov took her back to Moscow. Russia’s first canine cosmonaut lived to a grand old age. Blagonravov and the dog would often be seen walking the streets of Moscow. In total, nine dogs were flown on six launches in those early years, three of them flying twice.
When Stalin died in March 1953, it instigated the first change of leadership in the Soviet Union in more than 30 years. However, the direction of the rocketry program changed little. In early 1954, Premier Khrushchev instructed Minister Ustinov to dilute Korolev’s monopoly in rocket design and construction. Ustinov came up with a plan to create two independent groups. Korolev’s rival was to be the Experimental Design Bureau, formed in the Ukraine and led by 43-year-old Mikhail Yangel. It turned out to be a bad idea.
Rockets for space flight were one thing, but what mattered more to government leaders were Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). The first Soviet ballistic missile was the R-5. In February 1956, with a live atomic bomb in its nose cone, it was test launched from Kapustin Yar. Observers at the impact site in Kamchatka saw the 300-kiloton nuclear explosion. The R-5 went into service and stayed in operation for eleven years. But work was soon under way on the more powerful R-7. At last the various factors needed to put a satellite into orbit were coming together. A suitable launcher was on the horizon and Korolev’s supportive colleague, Marshal Nedelin, had become Deputy Minister of Defence for Special Armaments and Reactive Technology. If a satellite were to lift off from Soviet soil, it would be Nedelin who would permit the use of a missile for such a project.
The R-7 was unlike anything created before. At launch, four conical strap-on boosters, each just over 19 metres in length, surrounded the central rocket core. It had a launch mass of 270 tons, of which about 247 tons was fuel. At lift-off, the total thrust was an impressive 398 tons. Korolev knew it could launch a satellite, if only the powers-that-be would allow it. Armed with two large sketchbooks, the ever persistent Tikhonravov made an appointment to meet Georgi Pashkov, the missile department chief at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. One of the books contained clippings from Western magazines, including some articles by von Braun, with descriptions of American satellites. The other sketchbook contained detailed plans showing that the Russians could beat the Americans because the USSR had more powerful rockets. Pashkov was sufficiently impressed. The satellite study was approved.
Between 1950 and 1956 von Braun and his team worked for the United States’ ICBM program which resulted in the Redstone rocket. He then developed the Jupiter-C – an improved Redstone. But he was frustrated. In a drawer in his desk he kept a small notebook he had had since he was sixteen. Inside were sketches for a spaceship. He had had it with him all the way from Peenemunde. But it seemed that the US government wasn’t interested in space.
During his time at Huntsville von Braun became aware of the growing power of the media, especially the rise of television. In the Huntsville Times of 14 May 1950 there appeared a headline: ‘Dr von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible To The Moon’. He wrote a series of articles for Colliers Magazine, under the heading ‘Man Will Conquer Space Soon’. He dreamed of 50 astronauts travelling in three huge spacecraft landing on the Moon and using the emptied cargo holds of their craft as shelters. Astronauts would drive pressurized tractors for hundreds of kilometres across the lunar surface, exploring its craters and plains. He imagined manned missions to Mars comprising a fleet of ten spacecraft, each with a mass of almost 4,000 tons, some of them carrying a 200-ton winged lander to descend to the Martian surface. To explain his vision he worked with Walt Disney on a series of films called Man in Space which aired in 1955.
On a tour of Korolev’s rocket factory in 1956 Premier Khrushchev was ambushed when Korolev said he wanted to explain the use of his rockets for research into the upper layers of the atmosphere – at which, feeling out of his depth, the Soviet leader expressed polite interest, although it was clear by this time that most of the guests were becoming tired and bored. Detecting that his guests were in a hurry to leave, Korolev quickly moved ahead and directed everyone’s attention to a model of an artificial satellite. He explained that it was possible to realize the dreams of Tsiolkovsky with the R-7 missile. He said the United States had stepped up its satellite program, but that the Soviet R-7 could significantly outdo the ‘skinny’ American rocket. Khrushchev began to exhibit some interest, and asked if such a plan might not harm the R-7 weapons research program. Korolev said that all the Russians would have to do was replace the warhead with a satellite. Khrushchev hesitated, suspicious of Korolev’s intentions, but then said: ‘If the main task doesn’t suffer, do it.’
The USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree, number 149-88ss, on 30 January 1956, calling for the creation of an artificial satellite. The document approved the launch of a large satellite, designated ‘Object D’, in 1957, in time for the forthcoming International Geophysical Year. But by mid-1956 the Object D project was already beginning to fall behind schedule. On 14 September, the prominent mathematician Mstislav Keldysh made a personal plea to a meeting of the Academy of Sciences Presidium, saying, ‘we all want our satellite to fly earlier than the Americans’.’
Indeed the Americans were getting close. Following his successful launch of the Jupiter-C in September 1956 von Braun studied charts of its flight path. It had reached an altitude of 1,120 km. He knew that if it had been fitted with a fourth stage it could have placed a satellite into orbit. It was intensely frustrating to him that he could put a satellite into orbit anytime but the government wouldn’t let him. In fact, they actively prevented him from doing so, by sending observers to his rocket tests to make sure he didn’t sneak one into orbit when they weren’t looking. President Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t want a German – an ex-Nazi at that – to launch the first American satellite: they wanted the Navy to do it. But von Braun knew that the Navy’s Vanguard rocket was inferior to the Jupiter-C, and it was behind schedule. More than once he said the Navy would lose the race to the Russians. He even said they could paint ‘Vanguard’ on the side of his rocket because, as he saw it, that represented their best chance of having a working rocket with that name. But no one was listening.
In the USSR the R-7 needed a new launch site. Kapustin Yar was too close to US radio monitoring sites in Turkey. The one chosen was almost in the middle of nowhere, in Kazakhstan at a place called Tyuratam. It was naked steppe, no trees, 45°C in summer, sub-zero in winter. The tsars had also used the location as a place of exile for undesirable citizens. The site was eventually to be called Baikonur.
As 1956 drew to a close Korolev was exhausted as a result of the travel from his factory at Kaliningrad to Kapustin Yar and Baikonur. Nearing breaking point, he also worried that the Americans would beat him into orbit; he had heard about the Jupiter-C launch and mistakenly believed that it had been a secret attempt to launch a satellite. He was also concerned because the results of static testing indicated that his rockets were not powerful enough for the heavy Object D satellite. He soon realized that in attempting to put into orbit a one-and-a-half-ton scientific observatory he was making things too difficult. So on 5 January 1957, Korolev sent off a letter to the government with a revised plan. He asked that permission be given to launch two small satellites, each with a mass of 40–50 kg, in the period April–June 1957, immediately prior to the beginning of the International Geophysical Year.
Fuelling for the R-7’s first flight began on 15 May 1957, under the direction of Georgi Grechko, a 26-year-old engineer from Leningrad who would fly into space himself eighteen years later. The trickiest part was handling the liquid oxygen, which was at a temperature of –190°C. The process took close to five hours. When the time for the launch came, the rocket lifted gracefully into the sky but at T+98 seconds the strap-on rockets broke away from the central core and the rocket broke up.
It was one of many low points for Korolev. The 50-year-old was not in good health: he had a bad sore throat and had to take regular penicillin shots. His letters to his wife were full of doubt and frustration: ‘When things are going badly, I have fewer “friends”. My frame of mind is bad. I will not hide it. It is very difficult to get through our failures. There is a state of alarm and worry.’
After modifications the second R-7 rocket was taken to the launch pad in early June. There were two launch aborts traced to errors in the rocket’s assembly. A third was moved to the pad for launch on 12 July. This time it lifted off into the sky but at T+33 seconds, all four strap-on boosters fell off. This was the lowest point for Korolev. There was talk of cancelling the entire program, which would end his career. He wrote to his wife: ‘Things are not going very well again. Things are very, very bad.’
But the fourth R-7 launch, on 21 August 1957, was successful. The missile and its payload flew 6,500 km, the warhead finally entering the atmosphere over the target point at Kamchatka in the far east. Korolev was so excited that he stayed awake until three in the morning speaking to his deputies about the great possibilities that had opened up: the artificial satellite, and beyond that the Moon and the planets. A further test launch was successful and the satellite launch was now on. Korolev, Glushko, and the other chief designers had informally planned to stage this on the 100th anniversary of Tsiolkovsky’s birth on 17 September, but that date was now unrealistic. In the meantime, Soviet spies in the United States reported that the US was ready to launch a satellite.
The next R-7 booster, this time with a satellite on board, was wheeled to the launch pad in the early morning of 3 October, escorted on foot by Korolev. He told his engineers, ‘Nobody will hurry us. If you have even the tiniest doubt, we will stop the testing and make the corrections on the satellite. There is still time.’ That night, huge floodlights illuminated the launch pad as the engineers in the nearby blockhouse checked the systems. History was about to be made.
The command for launch was entrusted to the hands of Boris Chekunov, a young artillery forces lieutenant. The seconds counted down to zero and Chekunov pressed the lift-off button. At exactly 22.28 Moscow time on 4 October, the engines ignited and the booster lifted off the pad. There were problems but not major ones. Satellite separation from the core stage occurred at T+324.5 seconds and the first manmade object entered orbit around the Earth. The Space Age had begun.