Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight

by Brennan, Gerald

  I eat dinner in silence. Watching the light move as the spacecraft rotates, it occurs to me that I need to fashion some sort of cover for the broken porthole shade before my next sleep period. And since the first sections of my mission checklist binder—the ones relating to de-orbit procedures prior to leaving earth’s orbit—are now useless, I remove those and fold them until I have smallish squares of paper. Then I wedge these impromptu nightshades up against the glass.

  I try to fall asleep. Nothing.

  I pride myself on my willpower, but sleep is perhaps the area of human endeavor least susceptible to the will. Less than death, even, for that can be hastened through force of will, if one is of that mind. Whereas sleep is the complete absence of will. Then again, there are pills of various sorts…

  My thoughts fall apart like nesting dolls. Different parts roll around until they are mismatched. East-1, looking down on the cloud tops from orbit. The Nedelin Incident, tales of inferno, burning men running from an exploding rocket. Sergei Pavlovich’s funeral, public recognition at last for the truly indispensable hero of our space efforts, his ashes in the Kremlin wall. Playing on the couch with my daughters. The moment after Foros when I woke up in the hospital, hearing stories of my fall.

  I fall asleep.

  I wake up.

  Is this a dream? No, it can’t be. When you are dreaming you don’t know you’re dreaming, but when you’re awake, you know you’re awake. And to create confusion between the two is a tactic for a third-rate storyteller, which I am not.

  I try not to look at the timer. I tell myself that, if I don’t see it, I won’t worry about how much sleep I have or haven’t gotten.

  I fall asleep.

  I wake up.

  •••

  You probably haven’t heard about the Nedelin Incident. I should perhaps tell you about that in the meantime. It is a state secret, but not as important as it used to be, and it will help you better understand my story.

  The story of our country’s space triumphs is the story of its strategic rockets. It’s this way in America, too, of course—the Atlas that launched John Glenn was a weapon of war, as were the Titans of Gemini. The Americans like to pretend otherwise, to act as if these two purposes of rocketry aren’t related! But advances in one turn into successes in the other, just as surely as potential energy is transformed to kinetic.

  When Korolev was designing the R-7, Old Number Seven, the goal was to hurl a fusion warhead from one continent to the next. Sergei Pavlovich was working from an early set of specifications from Academician Kurchatov. And because Kurchatov was having a hard time reducing the size of his designs, he was planning on large warheads, so Korolev had to build a large rocket. To get it done quickly he focused on simplicity and reliability. So it was a steel beast, so solid that the technicians could walk around on it when it was lying on its side being assembled. (Quite unlike the elegantly engineered American rockets—those were so thinly designed that they crumple unless they’re full of fuel!)

  Because Korolev had to design to such robust specifications, he realized he’d be able to do other things with Old Number Seven. Things he’d been dreaming of. Launching satellites, and people. And because he was succeeding with his strategic rocket testing, he was allowed to do these other things. The currency of bureaucracy: not just funding, but decrees and permissions, and successes, which make those who issued the decrees look good, which leads in turn to more decrees and more permissions.

  So it all started with strategic rockets. Stalin had gotten Korolev going, after he’d rehabilitated him. (You might not know about Korolev’s ordeal; I’ll perhaps discuss it more later.) Stalin knew what the fascists had done with rockets, and he knew what was possible, and though he died in 1953, he had set it all in motion.

  And we had great successes, indeed! While I was off in Saratov learning to fly, and later passing lonely hours patrolling near the Arctic Circle, Korolev was building rockets for the state. He gave them the means to destroy London, and then New York, so they gave him permission to put a satellite in space. (“If the main task doesn’t suffer, then do it,” Khrushchev had said.) And because that was such a propaganda coup, they let Korolev put a man in space.

  But there was a problem with Korolev’s strategic rockets. They worked as promised, but because they were fueled with liquid oxygen and kerosene, they could not be launched quickly, nor could they stay in an advanced state of readiness for very long. Liquid oxygen boils off quickly, so it must be pumped in during the hours before launch, and if the launch is delayed, it must be topped off. But Korolev was fixated on using it, and his bureau suffered because of it. (Engineers gather data, of course, but design is also a matter of emotion. Everyone has their preferences and their aversions, and those can lead them down the wrong path for quite a ways, especially when getting started on a project.)

  In engineering, as in parenting, changes in direction often take place from generation to generation. In your family, you see the things you didn’t like about how your parents raised you, and you do things differently with your children; you may make mistakes, but they’re yours, and you’ve avoided the problems of the past generation. Then your children can choose to go in yet another direction. So, too, with design. Others like Chelomey (and Yangel, who had worked under Korolev but had started his own bureau in 1954) did not have the same biases as Korolev. So for the next generation, they started developing rockets based on hypergolics: chemicals with a high boiling point that could be stored for much longer periods. These chemicals have their own issues; they’re corrosive and toxic, to the point that Korolev had started referring to them as “Devil’s Venom.” But for purposes of strategic rocketry, they’re much better: if your rockets take an hour to launch, and the other side’s rockets take a day, you can destroy them at leisure and win a nuclear war without taking too many casualties. (I should emphasize that none of us wanted such a war. We were survivors, after all, of the most destructive portion of the greatest war in human history. But surely the best way to prevent a war is to convince your opponent you can win one, and the second best way—almost as good—is to convince him he will face unendurable pain if he wins.)

  So in 1960, the rush was on to develop and test this new generation of rockets. Yangel’s R-16 was the leading contender, and Marshal Nedelin was leading the development program. And of course there was pressure to get things done by the anniversary of the October Revolution.

  Rocket testing is a demanding enterprise—long days out on the firing range inspecting components, watching technicians remove panels and replace parts, testing electrical systems and subsystems, developing fueling procedures. And failures have a cascading effect: a circuit fails, a hard-to-reach component must be replaced, a test is delayed, another test cannot take place. And there are other tests—humans, too, are put to the test; tempers flare; decisions must be made to delay or to take shortcuts. And Nedelin was a good military man. And those of us in the military know that plans must be executed on time, and for that one must sometimes take shortcuts.

  The rocket was put out on the pad on the 23rd of October, and it was fueled and was being made ready, but there was a problem with a sequencer. And the safe thing would have been to drain the rocket. But the safe thing is never the shortcut. The State Commission decided to make repairs without draining it, and Nedelin concurred. And the next day, while the launch complex was still full of people, the engines of the second stage ignited.

  (The survivors and witnesses were strictly forbidden to discuss the incident. But Sergei Pavlovich knew about it almost immediately. One of his engineers had a brother in Yangel’s bureau, and Nedelin himself had been on the State Commission for East-1, which was then about six months from launch. So Korolev knew the rough magnitude of the disaster as soon as it happened, and he heard details from the survivors afterwards: the official reports, and the drunken late-night stories of horror and remorse. And not long before his death, Korolev, in turn, got drunk at a party and told me.
)

  The engines ignited with a roar that everyone described as the most unexpected and frightening sound they’d ever heard. Within seconds, the second-stage engines had burned through the first stage’s propellant tanks. And these exploded in a hellish inferno, a bright brown-yellow cloud and a tower of flame.

  The images from this must have been truly horrifying, for they remained clear in the retelling, from others to Korolev, from Korolev to me: burning people running from the pad before succumbing to the toxic fumes, and others shattering legs and backs jumping from concrete landings to escape the inferno.

  Nedelin was dead. So, too, were many others. Some were disintegrated, or burned into piles of ash; Nedelin’s remains were only identified by the remnants of the medals on his uniform. Even years later when he told me the story, Korolev did not know the final tally, but he had heard some numbers: 74, and 78, and 126.

  Yangel had survived. He’d survived by the slimmest of chances; he’d survived because of a cigarette.

  Nedelin’s deputy Myrkin wanted to quit smoking, and he’d decided that that day, October 24th, would be his last cigarette. So he’d wanted one final smoke break a half hour before launch. And of course all smokers want someone to smoke with, so he’d grabbed Yangel, and they’d gone into one of the concrete blockhouses to smoke.

  I do not know all the details of Yangel’s actions; Korolev did not know, and because Yangel and I were never close, he never told me, and anyhow only the worst sort of person goes about asking another human being to describe the worst day of their life. But I imagine it here and there: Yangel in the blockhouse, hearing the noise, his heart instantly racing—he surely knew right away what was happening. And the normal human impulse is to help, so he and Myrkin surely could have rushed instantly out of the blockhouse, but I imagine Yangel was too smart to do that; I imagine him waiting at least a few minutes, until the flames had burned down and the fumes from the hypergolics had dissipated. So perhaps they just raced to the viewing slits to see it; perhaps they saw the rocket topple and explode, all their plans turning to catastrophe. And that’s how I imagine it—Yangel at the viewing slit, looking out at the running burning people, standing in helpless horror. (Not that I blame him! I might well have done the same. I only know that in such situations, one wonders endlessly whether one has done everything possible, and even if the answer is “Yes,” one feels guilty afterwards. I’m glad I wasn’t faced with that choice!) I keep imagining the scene, and wondering if the reality was in line with my mental imagery. This is the power of such events, and the stories they spawn—they stay alive in your imagination, in your dreams; you create your own visions and scenes.

  Afterwards, Khrushchev appointed Brezhnev to head the commission to investigate the catastrophe. (Brezhnev at the time was of course already chairman of the Presidium, and he had much experience supervising the defense ministry.) And it might surprise you to know, depending on your perceptions and prejudices about our country, but Brezhnev insisted that there be no punishments. Investigations and answers, yes, but no punishments. The guilty, Brezhnev said, have already been punished.

  The moral of the story, as far as the state was concerned, was to drain rockets during such work, and to install safeguard circuits to prevent spurious signals from igniting the engines before launch. Myrkin reportedly drew an additional lesson: don’t ever stop smoking, because it might save your life. And I came to my own conclusion when I learned that the cottage in which Titov and I slept the night before East-1, the little white cottage that everyone referred to as “Korolev’s cottage” had, in fact, been Nedelin’s cottage before his death: So much for lucky rituals.

  Yangel had been hoping to take a leading role in rocketry, but after that he was busy making up lost ground and getting the R-16 deployed in a timely fashion. Chelomey’s bureau ultimately gained on both Yangel and Korolev, at least for a while; Chelomey was developing his own hypergolic strategic rockets. (And of course he had hired Khrushchev’s son, which certainly didn’t hurt, at least not until Khrushchev was deposed.) There are of course no needles or indicators or gauges for such things, but everyone can sense how power shifts from one design bureau to others in the wake of such calamities. OKB-586 loses, OKB-1 holds steady, OKB-52 gains. New decrees, new directives, and funds and people to go with. No one wants to be guilty of standing in the way of a decree.

  As for Nedelin, there was no mention of the catastrophe in our press. Just a brief story, a single sentence: “Marshal Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin, 57, Chief of Strategic Rockets, died in a plane crash in an undisclosed location.”

  Why am I sharing this secret with you? Chelomey’s period of advance allowed him to develop the Proton, of course, which gave him a part in this mission, but there’s more to it than that. I bring it up because it’s indicative of the way we have done things. For unlike the Americans, we don’t go blathering away about every mistake, every misstep. We have launched probes to Venus and Mars; we do not announce them as such when they fail in their assigned objectives. If they fail, they get innocuous names – Cosmos, and a number—and only if they succeed do they get a name indicative of their mission. There is no need to look foolish.

  There have been some secondary effects to these tendencies, of course, just as there are unintended additional consequences to every course of action. Our discretion regarding launch failures has spawned rumors regarding our space program, absurd stories that would perhaps not otherwise exist. On my travels, I’ve heard fanciful tales of lost cosmonauts, people like Tupolev’s son who were supposedly launched before me but then failed to come back successfully, and who were consequently never discussed because such stories would embarrass the state. I know how ridiculous such stories are! But can I convince anyone else? Of course not. They feel I have an interest in maintaining the deception.

  Still, I can’t say I have any problem with our judgment and discretion in such matters, especially regarding something like the Nedelin catastrophe, with such obvious implications for our nation’s security. Again, can anyone who survived the Great Patriotic War think ill of such behavior? For we have been facing a new enemy, an enemy of tremendous resources, tremendous strength. And against such an enemy, one must also appear strong, just as animals puff themselves up to dissuade aggressors. It’s natural to do what we’ve done! And so: before the hypergolic rockets were fielded, we held May Day parades with rows of rockets rolling through Red Square and Khrushchev looking on, and soldiers driving those same rockets down the side streets and around and back to parade them through Red Square again, to make us look stronger, as if we could build an unending succession of rockets. And bombers, flights of bombers flying over, then taking a loop around the outer city and getting in line to fly over again. A conveyor belt of military hardware. The illusion of infinite strength. And no mention of failures and catastrophes, particularly regarding the development of strategic rockets. So we have lied, perhaps, but these are lies that prevent war. Surely there is nobility in such lies!

  •••

  In my morning I pull my paper covers from the broken porthole and raise the shades on the others. Sunlight scrapes my tired eyes. I barely eat.

  Even now, I am not yet at the moon. Today is the last full day of the trip there, and it promises to be a day of troubleshooting the engine failure. As always in these situations, we must determine the answers to the three key questions: What went wrong? Who is to blame? And (most importantly): What do we do now?

  “Good morning, Cedar,” Blondie says, somewhat crackly. “How did you sleep?”

  “Not well, Blondie.”

  There is a noticeable delay. For a moment I wonder if it’s a problem with the transmitter, on top of everything else. Then I remember: at these distances, it takes time for my words to get to him and his words to get back to me. More than anything, this tells me how great a void lies between me and home: even the radio waves cannot sprint across it.

  Then at last: “Ahh, yes. If it makes you feel any better, th
e engineers haven’t slept at all. So compared to them, you’re well-rested. ”

  “Yes. And it’s a bright and sunny day, at least. Not a cloud in the sky.” I’m tired enough that this seems funny in my mind. But out loud it falls flat.

  “That’s the spirit,” he says at last.

  “What do we know so far?”

  At last, Blondie comes back on: “The alignment issue and the engine problem appear to be unrelated. As we discussed, the 100-K…” (His voice crackles.) “…failing in stellar alignment mode due to optical contamination issues discussed yesterday. As for the engine…” (Crackles.) “…analyzed the firing data. It appears the engine is shutting off the fuel flow due to…” (There is a final blizzard of static.)

  “Dawn-2, this is Cedar. Say again your last.”

  I breathe. I wait. For my fate, or just instructions on what to do next.

  “Yura, the engine is shutting off its own fuel flow due to low pressure readings in the combustion chamber.”

  “Understood. Low pressure readings in the combustion chamber. Do we know why?”

  Again I wait.

  Another voice. Mishin: “The shutdown is by design, Yuri. To prevent flooding the engine with fuel if the engine is defective. You could have a manufacturing defect in the combustion chamber which is preventing normal firing of the engine.”

  “Could it be a faulty sensor?”

  I scan the instruments before they reply. Then: “It is possible, Yuri. We will try again manually, but if it doesn’t work, we will need another plan.”

  “Understood. Please let me know the parameters of my burn.”

  A pause. If nothing else, the delays in receiving transmissions are forcing an extra level of calmness into our conversation. “We will attempt a burn in fifteen minutes. We’ll have you do a solar alignment beforehand. Start time for the burn: Mission elapsed time of 3 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes. Burn duration: 31 seconds.”

  I pluck my pencil from the air and copy everything down. Then I repeat it: “I have: 3 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes mission elapsed time, manual burn duration of 31 seconds.” These are the things you write down, the things you double- and triple-check.