Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight

by Brennan, Gerald

  “Good luck, Yura,” Blondie says.

  “Go to hell, Blondie.”

  I strap myself back in. Run through the alignment procedures again.

  When at last it is time for the burn, I watch the seconds count down. I bring my hand up to the panel five seconds early, as if it might get delayed along the way.

  I stab the button. Nothing.

  If there was a burn, I would have settled back into my seat. But nothing has happened.

  “We do not have a burn,” I transmit. “We do not have a burn.”

  Now there is a delay not caused by the distance alone, but by the gravity of the situation. “No burn.” Blondie says at last. “Understood, Cedar.” And there is another delay and a muffled conversation and he comes back on. “We’re going to walk back through the switches and attempt it again. Please reset everything to the initial settings. We will attempt it again at 3 days, 2 hours, 43 minutes. Burn duration still 31 seconds.”

  Again the countdown. Again I press the button, harder this time. Again, nothing.

  As I wait for an answer, I should point out that I’ve spent time down there during such crises, so I know the techniques we use. There are six rules; they might serve you well:

  1) Calm discussions only. (Order and reason will solve our problems. Chaos is the enemy. And few things are more chaotic than a noisy discussion among intelligent people who are proud of their intelligence.)

  2) Everyone is guilty until they prove themselves innocent. (There are many possible reasons for failure, and the tendency is to point fingers. Which is acceptable here, because it’s best to cast a wide net when looking for the causes of problems in complicated systems. So if you are responsible for a system, or a part, it is up to you to prove that it didn’t cause problems with the whole.)

  3) Between larger meetings, everyone will work in a small group with a specific task—studying telemetry, for instance, or getting answers about factory testing procedures, or looking at design drawings.

  4) Any hypotheses must be tested at the factory using the next spacecraft awaiting flight to see if the problem can be reproduced.

  5) Members not under suspicion must not busy themselves with observing these discussions, but must continue to provide normal flight support for the craft.

  6) A group must also be formed to start writing up the findings of the various committees.

  So I can almost picture how everything’s been at Yevpatoriya: tense, poring over schematics and memos, choking on the bitterness of yesterday’s wrong decisions, or savoring the thin satisfaction of someone else’s mistakes.

  At last, Blondie’s back. “Yura, Mishin believes there may be a problem with the fuel tanks because of the vibrations during the failed firing,” Blondie says. We both know what all of this means. If the vibrations during the failed engine firing caused a leak, the fuel is gone. So regardless of whether the vibrations were caused by a combustion chamber defect or a faulty sensor, the engine is useless. “We are going to have to work out an alternate plan.”

  Popovich comes on around lunchtime so Blondie can get a break. He is ordinarily a jovial man, but there is a hesitancy now. Nobody quite knows what to say to someone in my situation.

  I am doing some housekeeping and getting the cabin straight after lunch when Mishin breaks in. Even he is not his normal self. He is quieter and more circumspect.

  “How is my trajectory?” I ask.

  “We will know more once you round the moon tomorrow. Given the mass concentrations, there is some uncertainty. But we believe you are currently not on track for a free return.”

  This is serious. They think I will miss earth on my current trajectory. I will round the moon and come back towards the earth, but unless they can adjust my trajectory, I will not reenter the atmosphere, and the earth will sling me off into some new direction.

  Mishin and I both know he is no Sergei Pavlovich. In fact, we’ve had heated words in the past. But now all that feels far away. In the midst of such seriousness, all personal feuds seem temporary, insignificant. We are united in shared crisis.

  “Understood,” I say.

  “We are working on an alternate course of action,” he says. “We will have more details tomorrow.”

  I don’t know if he has a serious and credible plan, or if he is just telling me what he thinks I want to hear.

  “Understood,” I repeat.

  I am exhausted. I eat a few packages for dinner—chicken and potato paste. I clean up and take care of my business and turn off the interior lights.

  I fall asleep. A deep, hard, heavy sleep.

  •••

  I wake up.

  In the night I had dreams I barely remember, dreams about the war.

  We suffered greatly back then, of course. And like all great tragedies, it has given all of us who survived it a sense of identity and purpose and meaning. I used to think it was a sign of particular national greatness that we had gone, in the course of two decades, from having fascists at the gates of our capital to launching a man into space. And I am still proud of all we’ve done, but my take on it now is less triumphal, more mature: when you have gone through such misery on earth, you are going to try all the harder to escape. The Americans are fat and full; they do not have the same urgency to go elsewhere.

  In my dream we had been occupied again. It was one of those dreams where you somehow know and accept certain facts which don’t make logical sense. I was still me, still in my 30s, still a cosmonaut, but we had been occupied by the Germans. An awful, helpless feeling. After such dreams, I am always grateful to wake up. Even now, in a crippled spacecraft, on a mission whose outcome seems dubious, life feels preferable to those dark days. My family spent the war living in an earthen dugout in our backyard because the fascists had kicked us out of our home. Only by watching the skies could I imagine freedom: the brave Soviet pilots doing battle above always gave us hope. But life on earth was hell. I saw the fascists hang my brother to within an inch of his life. Even this uncertain trip feels better than that.

  And I am well-rested, for the first time all mission. Sleep makes all the difference. One’s situation doesn’t change, but one’s attitude does.

  I enjoy my morning meal. Whatever else happens, today I am going to be the first man to go around the moon. Nothing is going to stop that. Everything else may be in doubt, but this is certain.

  The ship is travelling faster now. We’re close enough to the moon that its gravity reigns supreme. Earth’s pull is ineffectual.

  I haven’t even finished putting away my empty breakfast containers when I glance out the window and see a thick swath of grey and tan, mottled craters and mountain shadows and the smoother dark lowlands, the mare, what old Italians thought were lunar seas. I unstow the camera and snap frame after frame.

  We are approaching along the darkened side, so beneath the shrinking bright stretch of moon there is a vast void yawning, a dead space lit dimly blue with earthlight. And my arms go to gooseflesh. I am really at the moon, and it is impossibly huge and round and real, and so close that it’s blocking out a large segment of my field of view. I stretch to watch for as long as possible while the spacecraft continues its solar roll. This is truly something.

  “Cedar, this is Dawn-2.” Blondie’s on again. I calculate it out, and I can tell he’s working far longer than the normal shift, even with the middle breaks.

  “Dawn-2, this is Cedar. Are you in trouble, Blondie?”

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “They certainly have you working long hours.”

  “I’m in trouble with myself, Yura. I’m punishing myself. I don’t want to miss this, though. Not for the whole world.”

  “Neither do I.” A pang in my heart. If we cannot correct my trajectory, I am perhaps going to miss the whole world for this. Is it worth it? I don’t know that anyone can give an honest answer to such a question.

  “We have the estimated communications blackout time, Yura. It will begin at 12:34 Mosc
ow time. 3 days, 6 hours, 31 minutes total mission time. It should last forty-seven minutes.”

  “Very well.” We will, of course, be out of radio contact as I round the moon. A different kind of loneliness than anyone’s ever experienced. “It’s quite the sight so far. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of descriptions when I come back around. Do we have a start time for the broadcast?”

  And now there is another long delay, long enough that my transmission probably had time to go to Mars. “Yura, the State Commission met to discuss your situation following the rocket failure yesterday. Kamanin insisted that there will be no live broadcast.”

  “Understood, Blondie.” Kamanin. I could feign outrage, but I’m not entirely surprised. My situation puts everyone involved in a difficult spot when it comes to publicity. And there are plenty of times, after all, where Kamanin and I are of the same mind. So this is just another piece of information. Something that’s no longer on my task list.

  Now the slice of sunlit moon has disappeared completely. I pass into shadow and the light streaming through the porthole cuts off abruptly. But I want to make it darker still, so I cut the interior lights. Now there is only the soft glow of the pushbutton panel and the melancholy yellow of the voltmeter. And outside, all the stars, and beneath them the last earthlit piece of moon is giving way to an immense emptiness, like when flying over water at night. And yet this is unlike anything any human being has ever experienced. How is it that I have been chosen, not once but twice, to be the first human being to do such monumental things? It is amazing to be so unique, so alone. And yet I would be a stingy man indeed if I didn’t want everyone, every man and woman, to see what I’m seeing and feel what I’m feeling.

  “I’m can see the dark side now, Blondie. There’s not much to photograph, but finally this is a scene I could paint as well as you.”

  There’s a delayed chuckle, like he’s slow getting the joke. (Which he is, of course, but through no fault of his own.) And: “Very good, Yura.”

  Then it’s back to business for the last few minutes before we lose contact. Recording cabin temperature and pressure in the logbook, and monitoring voltage and amperage and the performance of the buffer batteries now that the solar panels have nothing to do. Listening to my friend until the radio signal cuts out.

  •••

  I was in the control room for Sunrise-2, two years ago. There was some doubt about the outcome there as well, so I know how Blondie must be feeling.

  After so many public successes—at least in the area of human spaceflight—our leaders became addicted to triumph. And they knew the Gemini program was getting ready for launches, and they knew Union wouldn’t be ready for some time, so they stretched the capabilities of the East spacecraft far past its safe limits. That’s what Sunrise-1 and Sunrise-2 really were—the same spacecraft, with a different name! I can tell you that now, at least.

  With Sunrise-1, they realized that they could cram three men in a capsule originally sized for one, provided nobody wore a pressure suit. It was dangerous, it was reckless, and there was much unpleasant deliberation by the State Commission. But it worked.

  For Sunrise-2, they realized that they could build a collapsible rubberized airlock—an inflatable airlock—and mount it outside the craft, and have one cosmonaut use it to exit the ship and float freely in space. Objectively speaking (I can say this now!) this was beyond reckless. The Americans had designed their spacecraft to open up in space and allow their men to enter and exit safely. We had made no such provisions.

  But of course in our profession, nobody wants to be second. And if you fret too much, they will find someone else, someone better at hiding their fears.

  Blondie was selected for this mission. Like me, he was personally chosen by Korolev. Pavel Belayev was flying the spacecraft, but Blondie was the one chosen to walk in space. He had gone through a rigorous training regimen of calisthenics and parachute jumps and weightless trips in the Tupolevs to practice opening the hatches.

  When he went into the airlock, everything was going according to plan. There was a television camera mounted outside the ship, and they did a live broadcast on state television of the historic adventure. Everyone could see him, his face hidden behind the smooth glassy visor, and the large letters on his helmet: C.C.C.P. Floating free, an umbilical cord connecting him back to the ship. A man in a puffed-up spacesuit swimming above a sea of clouds.

  But the puffed-up spacesuit was not part of the plan.

  There are always unforeseen effects when one’s doing something for the first time. Blondie’s spacesuit had swollen in the vacuum of space, but of course Blondie was the same size, so his fingers were no longer in the gloves. And he needed to grab on to handles, to pull and manipulate himself to get back to the craft, but he could only move with the greatest of exertion. His breathing grew extremely labored, and he came very near to passing out from the effort.

  I was in the control room, monitoring all this. We knew he had to get back inside on his own. There were no provisions for the spacecraft commander to come out and rescue him. If Blondie hadn’t been able to get back in the airlock and back in the craft, Belayev would have eventually had to cut him loose so as to survive the reentry.

  We cut the camera feed to the state television network and told them we were having technical difficulties. Nobody wanted to air his death on national television.

  When Blondie tried to climb back inside the airlock, he couldn’t make it. He seemed to be having a hard time getting back in.

  “Wait one minute,” he told us.

  We knew something else was wrong. We didn’t know what it was. As it turned out, his suit was too wide, now that it had expanded. He was letting air out of his own spacesuit so he could fit back in the airlock. He had to reduce the pressure all the way down to .27 atmospheres. He didn’t tell us what he was doing, though. He didn’t want us to worry, given that we couldn’t have helped him.

  Finally he squeezed inside, head first, which was backwards. He had to laboriously turn around inside the airlock so as to get back inside the ship itself.

  State television, I found out later, had cut to somber music. Mozart’s “Requiem.” The same piece they play when a prominent national figure is dead and they are waiting on a public announcement.

  And it turned out the troubles were not over for Blondie and Pavel Belayev. They needed to reenter soon after the conclusion of the spacewalk, but they were having difficulties orienting their craft. The automatic system wasn’t working. They had to orient themselves manually and fire the retrorockets on their own.

  Seconds make a tremendous difference when you’re travelling at first cosmic velocity. They had to perform the manual orientation while unseated, then scramble back into their couches for the retrorocket firing. So they were a few seconds off in timing their burn, and they came down far off course. Their capsule landed in a snowy forest in the Urals, and they were wedged between two trees, and the snow was two meters deep. The hatch blew open, and it was freezing, and Blondie’s spacesuit was filled with sweat, all the way up to his knees.

  For hours, our rescue helicopters had no idea where they were.

  Blondie and Belayev had to spend the night in the capsule, warding off wolves, using the parachute to stay warm.

  Finally the next day the rescue helicopters arrived, and they were flown to safety. State television was able to announce the successful conclusion of Sunrise-2. The crisis was forgotten, unmentioned in public. No one was the wiser.

  That was our last flight before my voyage to the moon.

  •••

  The sun rises again over a bleak panorama, stark and beautiful and sharp in a way earthly landscapes can never be.

  I am the first human to see a sunrise over the moon. It is every bit as abrupt as its opposite had been—more so, for the interior lights are still off. I am more alone than any human in history.

  I am flying just over 1200 kilometers above an alien world. One of our earliest probes phot
ographed the far side back in 1959, but as usual the real scene’s incredibly sharper and more detailed. There are more craters than I can comprehend, small ones barely visible and large ones sending streaks for hundreds of kilometers. And none of the smooth dark mare—there are some darker and lighter areas, but far less variety of appearance than one sees from the earth, even. Still, it’s mesmerizing, like the sea on a sunny windy day. Themes repeating, a common pattern copied endlessly with infinite small variations. For a few precious moments, everything falls away—my uneven past and my uncertain future are now both as remote and invisible as earth. The only thing real is the unreal scene beneath me, and for that brief precious time I am alive and aware in a way that I’m struggling to put into words. An exalted sense of pure existence. Living in the grandest possible sense.

  I do have scientific observations to make—I’m looking for volcanoes. It was not the first priority during my training; I only had time for a few hasty hours of instruction crammed into 12- and 14- and 16-hour workdays. But I at least want to discover something and pass it on. I have to do more than just being here.

  The camera is floating next to me. I reload it and start snapping away again, shooting pictures of sharply shadowed holes in countless shades of gray. Flying over earth, one sees that land is so often shaped by water: folds assemble into ravines, and those in turn open into valleys as streambeds accumulate to make rivers. But here of course there are no such processes. And I can’t see any volcanoes. Only countless impact craters, holes on top of holes on top of holes, old deep craters whose outlines are disrupted by newer and sharper and smaller craters. A sphere covered with circles and sections of circles. A mottled and pitted surface, like an old cannonball somehow turned from rusty iron to dusty stone.

  I have been floating, nose pressed almost to the glass. We are still rolling slowly, so after a while I must switch to the other porthole. Once I’ve snapped two more rolls of film, I snatch up my logbook and make a few notes. (I have to work under the assumption I’ll get home, that I’ll someday be helping someone make sense of all these pictures, that all my efforts mean something.) Then I drop the camera and stare, really concentrate on the scene in front of me, the sunlit highlights of innumerable circles. However long I live, I want to remember this as sharply as I see it now.