by Mike Jenne
Like an ugly and awkward mule that could somehow paradoxically match pace with thoroughbreds, Gogol was not trotted out into public view, so as not to deflect the spotlight from those more deserving. Aside from the secret nature of his missions, he was not nearly as photogenic or polished as the glorious cosmonauts—like Gagarin, Titov and Leonov—whose handsome faces graced billboards throughout the hero-worshipping Motherland.
But his flights were not without incident. In 1964, he had literally vanished after his Vostok’s retro rockets misfired at the conclusion of his third mission. Initially presumed dead, he later reappeared, as if by magic, after spending the past forty months in China.
After his retros fired several seconds late, Gogol had endured a violent ballistic reentry in the tumbling reentry module of his Vostok. After crashing to Earth in a remote region dominated by snowcapped mountains and vast desolate plains, he struggled to make sense of his strange surroundings. Initially, just as he was trained, he waited patiently for the arrival of rescue forces, but none came, and he heard nothing but static on the radio. After days passed, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
A training manual could be written from his post-crash actions. Referring to the mission clock on the Vostok, he estimated his longitude and then determined his approximate latitude by building a makeshift sextant from sticks and string. He realized that he had likely come to Earth in northern China, a Communist country not exactly hostile but not particularly friendly, either.
He spent two days hiding his Vostok reentry module by physically rolling the spherical capsule—which weighed in at roughly two thousand kilograms—over two kilometers and into a deep ravine. He destroyed all sensitive equipment aboard before concealing the spacecraft with rocks and vegetation. He burned his pressure suit and any paraphernalia related to spaceflight and took care to only retain those items from his survival kit that would be associated with a conventional pilot. For clothing, he fashioned a makeshift burnoose from white parachute fabric, which he wore over his cotton long underwear. Then, he took off on foot across the expansive desert.
After wandering for days, he was found and adopted by a family of Mongolian nomads and spent the next two years sharing their felt ger, yogurt, and mutton. He helped them watch over their sheep and assisted them with tending to their camels and other livestock. He had hoped they would eventually wander far enough north that he could depart from them and slip across the border, but had no such luck.
Eventually, as he recounted to his interviewers during his lengthy debriefing, he realized that he would have to trek north on his own but knew that he would only be successful if he travelled in the summer months and with adequate preparation. As he learned rudiments of the language, he interacted with the various tribes that his adopted family encountered during their travels. He bartered scraps of parachute cloth to accumulate a larder of compact, nutrient-rich foods similar to jerky and pemmican. He made bladders of sheep’s gut to transport water, sewed together a simple rucksack of sheepskin, and fabricated a pair of makeshift snowshoes just in case he encountered treacherous weather as he crossed the high mountain passes. As he traded and interacted with other tribes, he gradually learned more about the terrain and conditions to the north and west.
In particular, he focused on one old nomad’s fearful description of a “road of iron ribbons” that stretched as far as the eye could see, from where the sun rose up to where it went to sleep at night. According to the nomad, the strange road was regularly traveled by fearsome “belching dragons.” Gogol was confident that the wizened old man had witnessed a railroad north of the Soviet border, and if he could make it to those tracks, then they would guide him to human habitation and eventually home.
But unfortunately for Gogol, word passed amongst the nomadic tribes, describing the Caucasian stranger who had mysteriously appeared in the expansive wastelands. As spring arrived in 1967, just days before he had intended to begin his final trek home, those rumors attracted the attention of a passing Chinese Army patrol. Curious, they sought him out, and he was eventually flown to Beijing.
After weeks of intensive interviews, he convinced his Chinese interrogators that he was merely a fledgling Soviet pilot who had gotten lost on a training mission. He claimed that he had been unaware that he was deep over Chinese airspace when he ejected from his Yakovlev interceptor after it sputtered out of fuel. Reinforced with the weathered artifacts from his survival kit, Gogol’s story was so consistent and convincing that the Chinese eventually concluded that he was the stupidest man to ever sit in a cockpit. Assuming that he was of no potential value, they repatriated him to Soviet Union in early 1968. Apparently anxious to divest themselves of the errant pilot, the Chinese did not make any demands in exchange for his safe return, but did send a bill for his lodging and meals, which the Soviets promptly paid. Coincidentally, Gogol arrived in Moscow on the very day—March 27—that Yuri Gagarin died in the crash of a MIG-15 near the town of Kirzhach.
Quietly feted as a Hero of the Soviet Union, Gogol was assigned to the Krepost effort at its inception. After working with the Krepost cosmonauts-in-training at Star City, he hand-picked Vasilyev and Travkin for his crew. From the very outset, he made it abundantly clear that he was the boss and would not tolerate insolence or insubordination in any form. Anxious to fly in space, and abundantly proud to be selected for the very first crew, Vasilyev and Travkin knuckled under and made every effort to please their gruff and eccentric taskmaster.
As difficult as it was to work with Gogol, Vasilyev was assured that his resilience and engrained survival skills would be invaluable if they landed in a remote wilderness area. Given the mission of the Krepost, that was a highly likely probability. When and if they deployed their warhead, it would almost certainly precipitate an all-out nuclear exchange between the East and West, if it wasn’t already underway. Consequently, by the time they were ready to return to Earth, there was no guarantee that there would be much of the Soviet Union left, so they might be compelled to land almost anywhere in the world. Soviet cosmonauts already received considerably more extensive survival training than their American counterparts, an investment that had already paid off repeatedly in instances where cosmonauts had to wait hours and sometimes days for rescue forces to arrive in remote areas, and Krepost cosmonauts-in-training received roughly twice as much survival training as “regular” cosmonauts.
Having witnessed his prowess on survival training excursions, Vasilyev was confident in Gogol’s ability to survive in all extremes, from pole to pole and all points in between. Gogol’s physical toughness was mythical, the stuff of legends. Several months ago, after some soldiers died of exposure during maneuvers, the Soviet General Staff became concerned that their modern soldiers were becoming soft and losing the field skills that had served the Soviet Army so effectively during the Great Patriotic War. The General Staff instituted training to reinforce basic survival skills, with the centerpiece being a simple exercise in which every soldier—of every rank, from the bottom to the top—was expected to spend a night sleeping in the frigid cold of Soviet winter, with only a standard issue woolen greatcoat and a canvas poncho/groundcloth—plash-palatka—to keep them warm.
To demonstrate that they were equally as hardy as common soldiers, and to perhaps remind them that they were not prima donnas but still military men subject to the orders that must be obeyed by all, Gogol and the Krepost cosmonauts-in-training were directed to undergo the nocturnal drill. The order was met by considerable grumbling and grousing. After all, they were carefully selected men who were headed to an entirely new frontier, and they wouldn’t be wearing the anachronistic greatcoats into orbit. All but Gogol griped about the exercise. In the morning, the shivering cosmonauts-in-training emerged from their flimsy cocoons, exhausted from their fitful and fruitless attempts to sleep. As they foraged for dry wood to build a campfire, they found Gogol sleeping soundly on the ground, covered with a layer of fresh snow, snoring like a hibernating bear, with
his neatly folded greatcoat and plash-palatka lying beside him.
Still, there was something significantly off about Gogol. Surely, the coarse cosmonaut was the absolute epitome of manliness, but Vasilyev had never once seen him in the company of a woman. It certainly wasn’t that Gogol lacked for opportunity. Probably not by accident, the Burya facility’s staff had a disproportionately large complement of attractive female workers, and the Krepost cosmonauts had their pick of the litter. It was tacitly but abundantly clear that any nurse or female technician was theirs for the taking, regardless of whether the object of their affections shared in the attraction. After all, cosmonauts-in-training were manly men engaged in patriotic pursuits, and they richly deserved any ready opportunity to vent off pent-up pressure.
While Vasilyev and Travkin remained faithful to their wives, most of their brethren did enthusiastically partake in the offerings—frequently with wild abandon—using and tossing away women like soiled tissues. Claiming that they were obligated to live life to the fullest since they would likely perish in the coming months, the neophyte cosmonauts were perpetually on the prowl, like lions stalking lambs from a captive herd.
So how could Gogol’s aloof behavior be explained? It was sometimes the subject of quiet conversation, and the explanations offered were as numerous as the colors of the rainbow. Some claimed that despite his coarse exterior, Gogol was a steadfastly conscientious pilot, a shining example of Socialist virtues, focused entirely on his critical mission. Further, some reasoned that Gogol’s self-discipline was why he naturally selected Vasilyev and Travkin for his team, since the three men effectively lived like monks at Kapustin Yar, nightly retiring to their solitary rooms to study mission documents and technical manuals.
On the other end of the spectrum, some asserted that Gogol was just genuinely anti-social. Still another explanation, based on rumors—wholly unsubstantiated—was that he had married into the nomadic family during his sojourn in the desert, and still yearned for his Mongolian bride. Vasilyev chuckled at the thought; he doubted that the Neanderthal could pine for anyone or anything except perhaps an unending supply of chow, cigarettes, and vodka.
But Vasilyev was still puzzled by Gogol’s behavior. Once, late one night, momentarily under the influence of too much brandy, he had confided to Travkin his suspicion that Gogol might not be attracted to women because he was more comfortable—perhaps too comfortable—in the company of men.
Travkin immediately—and correctly—seized on Vasilyev’s implication that Gogol might be attracted to men rather than women. Shocked, he scoffed that Gogol could not be a homosexual because he was not even remotely effeminate. Besides, he averred, a queer could not possibly become a cosmonaut, since any such tendencies would have been caught during the endless batteries of psychological testing that they were compelled to endure. To end the conversation, Travkin cautioned Vasilyev to never voice his theories again. While homosexuality was forbidden in the Soviet Union, it wasn’t exactly unheard of, but it was folly—and a criminal offense—to accuse a senior officer of such sordid behavior without substantive evidence. In accordance with Travkin’s advice, Vasilyev dropped the subject and they had not spoken of it since.
Still gazing up at the drab-painted R-7, Vasilyev heard a massive belch behind him. He pivoted to watch Gogol clamber down from the van. The stubby butt of a Zolotoye Runo—“Golden Fleece”—cigarette dangled from Gogol’s thick lips; he was a notorious chain smoker. After enduring a noxious and incessant pall of smoke during their simulated flights, Vasilyev was elated that his commander would be compelled to abandon his annoying habit, at least for the duration of their mission.
Gogol paused, yawning as he scratched his crotch. In a cosmonaut tradition initiated by Yuri Gagarin just before his inaugural flight, he strolled to the rear of the drab-painted vehicle, unzipped the fly of his flight coveralls, and urinated on the right rear tire. Vasilyev and Travkin obediently followed suit, adding their yellow streams to their commander’s.
Gogol zipped his fly, discarded his nearly spent cigarette and immediately lit another. The launch pad supervisor ordered him to extinguish it; he responded by blowing a cloud of smoke in the exasperated officer’s face. Anxious to get aboard the Soyuz, diligently struggling to appear nonchalant, Vasilyev and Travkin made small talk and fidgeted as they waited for their boss to finish his smoke.
Crushing the butt with his boot, Gogol said, “Let’s go, my little kittens.” He grinned; after losing most of his natural teeth in a training crash early in his flying career, his smile was now a gleaming array of stainless steel caps.
Soyuz “Kochevnik,” On Orbit
11:50 a.m. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), Friday, May 8, 1970
GET (Ground Elapsed Time): 7 Hours 5 minutes / Revolution # 5
After reaching orbit and spending a few hours in space, Vasilyev felt like he could relax slightly. Their Soyuz spacecraft appeared to be functioning nominally, and they had been tentatively cleared to continue with their entire mission profile. The code name of their spacecraft and mission was “Kochevnik”—“Nomad”—derived from Gogol’s operational nickname, rooted in his wandering interlude in Mongolia.
Vasilyev had heard plenty about the Soyuz even when he was training back at Star City, and much of what he had learned gave him ample cause for concern. Now considered fully operational, the Soyuz’s history had been marked with significant growing pains, including a catastrophic episode on the very first manned flight of the spacecraft. Just three months after the terrible Apollo 1 fire that took the lives of three American astronauts—Grissom, White and Chaffee—cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov died after his spacecraft’s parachute failed to open. Tragically, even before Komarov’s flight, the first generation model—7K-OK—of the Soyuz was known to have been rife with technical problems, but Soviet party leaders apparently insisted that the mission go on as planned.
Designed by the esteemed Korolev bureau, the Soyuz spacecraft consisted of three interlocking components, stacked one atop the other. The first section was a cylindrical Service Module, which itself consisted of two parts. The first was a pressurized compartment that housed life support equipment, electric power supply equipment, various electronic instruments, and communications gear. The second portion, which was not pressurized, was located at the base of the Service Module and contained the propulsion systems—including the associated propellant storage tanks—necessary for maneuvering in orbit and returning to Earth. Two wing-like arrays of electricity-producing solar panels, one on each side, protruded from the Service Module.
Mounted on top of the Service Module was a bullet-shaped Descent Module, which the cosmonauts occupied during the launch and reentry phases of the flight. Covered with a heat-resistant exterior to protect the capsule and its contents from the brutal heat of reentry, the vehicle was also equipped with two parachute systems—primary and back-up—as well as a unique solid fuel rocket system that fired just prior to landing, so as to cushion the Descent Module’s impact with the ground. Besides conveying the cosmonauts safely to Earth, the Descent Module could function as a temporary shelter, on both land and sea, in the event that rescue forces were delayed.
Definitely not designed for comfort, the interior of the Descent Module was woefully cramped. During ascent and descent, the three men were packed in as tightly as canned mackerels, seated almost on top of one another in custom-made form-fitted couches. Space was at such a premium that there was not adequate room for the three men to wear pressurized space suits; they wore flight coveralls instead.
Although it was a sophisticated spacecraft, the Descent Module’s snug cabin resembled a disorganized storage locker; large boxes and bags of equipment, mostly survival gear to protect them in various environments, were strapped to the walls. Just getting aboard the Descent Module was a complicated and carefully choreographed ballet. Once embarked, moving around was virtually impossible.
Atop the Descent Module was the Orbital Module. The module was shaped lik
e a stretched sphere and contained their galley, toilet, life support equipment, communications and various other instrument consoles.
On a normal Soyuz flight, the Orbital Module would contain an array of scientific experiments, but the Kochevnik mission was not for science, but to evaluate the systems and procedures for deploying an “Egg,” the cosmonaut’s nickname for the massive nuclear warhead that would eventually be fixed to the aft end of the Krepost station. To this end, an elaborate mock-up of the Krepost’s weapons deployment system was mounted at the stern end of the Orbital Module.
During launch, the Soyuz’s Descent and Orbital Modules were shrouded by a fiberglass aerodynamic payload fairing, which was topped by a launch escape tower, both of which were discarded on their way to orbit. In the event of a mishap during the ascent phase, the launch escape system—a solid fuel abort rocket—would fire, yanking the Orbital and Descent Modules from a malfunctioning R-7 booster. After reaching an altitude of approximately fifteen hundred meters, the launch escape system would fall away, and a special parachute—designed to open rapidly in such circumstances, would bring the crew softly—at least relatively so—to Earth.