On 3 April 1967, NASA 2, a Grumman Gulfstream aircraft, was taxiing for take-off from Washington National Airport. Bob Gilruth and his Deputy George Low were about to return to Houston after meetings in Washington. Just before starting down the runway, the pilot received a message to return to the terminal where the passengers were to wait in the pilot’s lounge. Soon Jim Webb, Bob Seamans, George Mueller, and Sam Phillips arrived. Webb came right to the point: Apollo was faltering; the fire that claimed the lives of three astronauts had been a major setback and its consequences were not yet known. Time, he said, was running out on the nation’s commitment to land on the Moon before the end of the decade. Webb asked Low to take on the task of rebuilding the Apollo spacecraft, and meeting Kennedy’s deadline.

There was a lot to do, as Low later explained:

Apollo would fly in space with a pure oxygen atmosphere at 5 psi, about one-third the pressure of the air we breathe. But on the launching pad, Apollo used pure oxygen at 16 psi, slightly above the pressure of the outside air. In oxygen at 5 psi things will burn as they do in air at normal pressures. But at 16 psi oxygen most non-metallic materials will burn explosively; even stainless steel can be set on fire. In addition, most non-metallic things will burn – even in air or 5 psi oxygen – unless they are specially formulated or treated. Somehow, over the years of development and test, too many non-metals had been included into the Apollo capsule and nobody had realized the growing threat. The cabin was full of Velcro to help astronauts store and attach their checklists. There was a lot of paper as well as a special kind of plastic netting to provide more storage space. The spacesuits themselves were made of rubber, fabric and plastic.

What was especially worrying to the investigators was that in the haste of the project, the control and documentation of changes had not been rigorous. In fact, the investigation board was unable to determine the precise detailed configuration of the spacecraft, how it was made, and what was in it at the time of the accident. Major changes had to be made, and fast. Time was running out. There were only 33 months remaining from April 1967 and the end of the decade. At any chosen landing site the Sun would only rise 33 more times before 1970.

The Command Module hatch was redesigned to open out instead of in. The Command Module was rewired with better insulation. Much non-metallic material was removed. A new insulating coating that would not burn was developed, only to find that it would absorb moisture and become a conductor, so engineers had to invent another one. Pressure suits had to lose their nylon outer layer, to be replaced with a glass cloth; but the glass would wear away quickly, and shed fine particles which contaminated the spacecraft and caused the astronauts to itch. The solution was a coating for the glass cloth.

Max Faget came up with an idea for the pure oxygen problem on the launch pad: launch with an atmosphere that was 60 per cent oxygen and 40 per cent nitrogen, and then slowly convert to pure oxygen after orbit had been reached and the pressure was 5 psi. The 60:40 mixture was a balance between medical requirements (too much nitrogen would have caused the bends as the pressure decreased) and flammability problems on the other. It worked.

Away from the Command Module, engineers set off small explosive charges inside the burning rocket engines, and to their horror found the LM ascent engine was prone to catastrophic instability – a way of combustion that could destroy the engine on take-off and leave the astronauts stranded on the Moon. A new engine was built, faster than anyone thought possible. Mock-ups of the entire spacecraft were built and set on fire. If they burned, they were redesigned, rebuilt, and tested again. Items were overstressed and overloaded until they broke, and if they broke too soon, they were redesigned, rebuilt and tested again.

After the fire Gene Kranz called a meeting of his staff and said;

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: Tough and Competent. Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Competent means that we will never take anything for granted. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write Tough and Competent on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room, these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.

While NASA was coming to terms with the Apollo 1 disaster, the third unmanned test flight of the Soyuz spacecraft took place. TASS announced the flight as Kosmos-140, another in a long series of nondescript satellites with no stated mission. On 7 February it took off and this time reached orbit successfully. Trouble started on its fourth orbit. The solar panels were not being pointed towards the Sun so that its batteries could be charged. In addition, fuel levels in the manoeuvring thrusters were at 50 per cent far too soon. There were further malfunctions including a too-steep re-entry that breached the heat shield. Any crew on board would have been killed. Remarkably, it was believed that all of its problems could have been overcome if a cosmonaut were on board. The remaining systems, such as life support, the main engine, and thermal control, worked well. Nevertheless, the cosmonauts could see that the Soyuz capsule was a reckless gamble. It was not ready, but officials kept pointing out that a cosmonaut had not been in space for nearly two years.

The State Commission decided to press ahead with the dual manned launches, setting 23 April as the launch date. In one Soyuz would be Komarov. The following day, as the Soyuz was flying over Baikonur, Soyuz 2 would be launched with Bykovsky, Yeliseyev and Khrunov on board. After docking, Yeliseyev and Khrunov would spacewalk to the Soyuz 1, which, with a crew of three, would return the following day. Soyuz 2, now with a crew of one, would also return that same day.

There exists a film of Komarov being driven to the launch pad in a bus. He looks condemned. Kamanin and Gagarin accompanied him to the rocket: Gagarin went up with him all the way to the top of the rocket and remained there until the hatch was sealed. Soyuz-1 lifted off on time. Komarov was the first cosmonaut to make a second flight. He was 40 years old.

He ran into problems straight away. One of the two solar panels did not deploy, resulting in a shortage of power for the spacecraft’s systems. Komarov also had problems orienting the Soyuz. By orbit 13 the stabilization systems had failed completely. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Komarov even tried to knock the side of the ship to jar open the stuck panel. Due to dwindling power, he could not stay in space for long. The second Soyuz flight was cancelled and plans made for an emergency reentry. The three cosmonauts of Soyuz 2 pleaded to be allowed to launch: perhaps they could perform a spacewalk to free the jammed solar panel on Soyuz 1? But they were turned down.

Chertok carefully checked the set of instructions that Gagarin personally transmitted to Komarov. There would shortly be a break in communications as the capsule entered an ionization layer. In the final seconds before loss of contact, Mishin and Kamanin both wished Komarov good luck.

At the appointed time, the re-entry rocket did not fire. Communication with Komarov was re-established and the problem rectified. Another attempt was made. Komarov did not have many more chances left. Miraculously Komarov manually oriented the Soyuz and performed the de-orbit burn. About fifteen minutes after retrofire there came another break in communications. A few minutes later, Komarov’s voice cut through the radio silence, sounding ‘calm, unhurried, without any nervousness’.

The pilot of one of the search and rescue helicopters flying east of Orsk reported that he could see the Soyuz capsule. When they reached the landing site, it was clear that there had been a disaster. The re-entry capsule was lying on its side, and the parachute could be seen alongside. It was surrounded by clouds of black smoke. The capsule was crushed, on fire and completely destroyed. The parachutes had not worked. Komarov’s body was found in the crushed capsule. Medics gathered what they could and a few days later his ashes, like those of Korolev, were interred in the Kremlin Wall after a state funeral. But so great was the destruction of the capsule that later a group of Young Pioneers found more remains that were later buried at the crash site.

To add to the problems with the recovery from the Soyuz disaster, Premier Brezhnev wanted a space spectacular to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in November 1967 – preferably a cosmonaut trip around the Moon. Indeed, just days after Komarov’s death, Chief Designer Mishin set out a new plan for the circumlunar project that envisaged four automated spacecraft flying around the Moon between June and August 1967, followed by three piloted flights to make the November 1967 political deadline.

Many in the West believed that the Moon was the Russians’ goal. In May 1967 Gemini astronauts Michael Collins and David Scott visited the Paris Air Show at the same time as Soviet cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Konstantin Feoktistov. It was only a month after Komarov’s death and the Americans gave their condolences. What they were told was that there would be several Earth-orbital test flights that year followed by a circumlunar flight. Collins later recalled that Belyayev said he expected to make a circumlunar flight in the not-too-distant future. Later that year Academician Obraztsov said that ‘the very next milestone in the conquest of space will be the manned circumnavigation of the Moon, and then a lunar landing’.

In August there was a brief news report that ten Soviet cosmonauts were practising splashdown tests for future space missions. It was significant because unlike Earth-orbital missions, cosmonauts returning from the Moon could land on water.

It was clear that due to the accumulating problems the Soyuz docking and spacewalk mission, conceived as practice for later missions in which the crew would transfer to a lunar transit craft – the L1 – would be delayed, so the plan was changed. There would be no transfer. Cosmonauts would launch in the L1 direct on a more powerful rocket – the Proton. Because of this, two additional automated circumlunar missions were put into the flight sequence, making a total of six robotic flights before a piloted one. If they all went well then there was a chance they could fly a man around the Moon by the November 1967 political deadline.

Once again it was a highly dangerous strategy. Testing on the spacecraft had hardly started but even in the early stages had been beset with poor standards by contractors. Communist Party and government leaders were anxious knowing that the first launch of the Americans’ mighty Saturn 5 rocket was due for late 1967 while their own giant N1 booster was still many months away from launch. In August 1967, Secretary of the Central Committee for Defence and Space Ustinov was infuriated. He told Mishin: ‘We have a celebration in two months, and the Americans are going to launch again, but what about us? What have we done?’ As the summer wore on some degree of sense prevailed. It was realized that the November deadline was impossible. With the pressure off for a little while, Mishin could think about beating the Americans in a flight around the Moon. Following the Apollo fire, US manned flights would not take place until mid-1968 at the earliest. It gave them breathing space.

Meanwhile the manned Soyuz flights in Earth orbit were continuing. Two automatic Soyuz capsules were prepared to practise rendezvous and docking manoeuvres. The first launched and, for the first time in the Soyuz program, all its systems were functioning without fault when it reached orbit; the solar panels deployed, and the Igla (‘Needle’) radio docking system seemed to be working. On the second day of the flight there were some glitches but the State Commission gave the go-ahead for the second Soyuz launch. It was launched on 30 October. Within 62 minutes of its launch both vehicles were docked – the first automated docking ever performed. After they were linked, however, controllers discovered that there had not been a ‘hard’ docking because there was a gap between the two ships. Upon analysis this was considered a minor problem, and after three and a half hours they separated.

At the same time, the Americans achieved a major milestone on their more logical and organized attempt on the Moon. Apollo 4 was launched on 9 November – the first test, unmanned, of the Saturn 5 rocket. Eighty-nine trucks of liquid oxygen, 28 of liquid hydrogen and 27 rail cars of RP-1 (refined kerosene) were delivered to the Cape. The Saturn’s first stage, consisting of five mighty F-1 rocket engines, burned RP-1 and liquid hydrogen, providing 35 tons of thrust; the second stage comprised four powerful J-2 engines using liquid oxygen and hydrogen; and the third stage used a single J-2. All worked flawlessly. Von Braun watched the rocket rise into the sky. Apollo 4 subjected the CSM to the lunar return speed of over 40,000 km per hour. Temperatures on the heat shield reached 2,750°C, more than half the surface temperature of the Sun. The heat shield charred as expected, but the inside of the cabin remained at a comfortable 21°C.

In January 1968 the L1 cosmonauts began training in a specially built simulator, carrying out at least 70 runs. The following month Mishin and Kamanin agreed on the selection of four commanders for the first few missions: Bykovsky, Leonov, Popovich, and Voloshin. They did not have much confidence in the spacecraft. Kamanin recalled that by March the cosmonauts were working diligently and knew the craft well: ‘Perhaps, it is precisely because the cosmonauts excellently know all the strong and weak points of the craft and the carrier rocket that they no longer have their initial faith in the space hardware.’

In early 1968, Mishin and Chelomei agreed to launch a test spacecraft out to a distance of about 330,000 km into deep space – lunar distance – and bring it back to Earth, simulating an actual circumlunar flight. But there was an air of pessimism, a feeling of inevitable failure that was difficult to shake off. Kamanin wrote in his diary: ‘All of us need a successful launch like a breath of fresh air. Another failure would bring innumerable troubles and may kill the people’s confidence in themselves and the reliability of our space equipment.’