Red Moon Rising

by Matthew Brzezinski

  Throughout the modifications, Korolev anxiously paced the enormous hangar like an expectant father in the delivery room. “Silence fell whenever the Chief Designer appeared,” Colonel Mikhail Rebrov remembered. “Korolev was more exacting and strict than ever.” Every so often he checked on Tikhonravov’s baby, which sat on a felt-covered cradle in a sealed-off “clean room,” Tyura-Tam’s equivalent of a maternity ward. “Coats, gloves, it’s a must,” Korolev insisted, as he inspected the shiny satellite. Swaddled in a black velvet diaper, the little orb had spring-loaded antennae that dangled over the sides like electronic umbilical cords. To ensure its chances of survival, Tikhonravov had pressurized the sphere with nitrogen, a neutral gas that prevented corrosion. He had also installed a miniaturized climate-control system; it would heat or cool PS-1’s innards to maintain a constant temperature of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, which would ensure that its transmitters operated properly regardless of the external environment. No one knew for certain how the radio equipment—how anything man-made, for that matter—would react in the radiation-laden, zero-gravity vacuum of space, and that was another reason Korolev had insisted on the obsessive polishing of PS-l’s thin aluminum skin. He did not want to risk the heat transfers or fluctuations that could result from an uneven surface, and wanted to make sure solar rays were reflected, not absorbed, by the gleaming shell. It was during one of these final, frenzied cleanings that the senior OKB-1 engineer Anatoly Abramov witnessed a typical Korolev moment. “I saw a crowd gathered around the satellite and I heard screaming,” he recalled. “As I got closer I found myself at the receiving end of one of Korolev’s famous tirades. I immediately realized what was wrong. The satellite stand was covered in felt to prevent scratching, but the felt had been tacked on with little nails rather than glued. The nail heads weren’t actually protruding or touching the surface of the satellite, but it hadn’t occurred to us that using tacks wasn’t the brightest idea until Korolev rubbed all our noses in it.”

  The Chief Designer was next sent into a frenzy by a message that arrived from Moscow on the morning of October 2. Apparently an unscheduled meeting of the IGY was being convened in Washington on October 6. “There should be an American report of a satellite over the planet,” the IGY’s Soviet representative had cabled Moscow. In fact, “Satellite over the Planet” was merely the title of the keynote speech. Either the Soviet representative got confused or something got lost in translation, and Korolev panicked.

  “What does it mean?” he demanded, the color draining from his face. Were the Americans planning a launch? Were they planning to announce it on the sixth? “Maybe it’s just a routine update,” he tried to console himself. “Or maybe not,” he said after a moment of anxious reflection, “maybe this will be a report of a fait accompli.” Korolev was visibly shaken. A U.S. satellite might already be circling the earth by the time he attempted to launch PS-1. The idea of finishing second sent the Chief Designer into a state of profound agitation. He thrashed around his office, mumbling to himself, all the while clutching the worrisome communiqué. Get me the KGB, he finally roared.

  Was it true? he asked, when the call was patched through. Were the Americans really about to launch a satellite? The duty officer at KGB headquarters did not know. A series of coded messages was exchanged between Moscow and the resident spies at the Soviet embassy in Washington. No, came the final answer. There were no early indications that the United States was planning any sort of launch.

  Korolev, though, was far from relieved. What if the spooks were wrong? It wouldn’t be the first time Soviet intelligence had missed signals. Korolev couldn’t chance it. I’m moving up the launch date to October 4, he informed Vassily Ryabikov, chair of the R-7 State Commission.

  This time he didn’t bother to wait for an answer from Moscow.

  • • •

  The rocket was rolled out of its hangar the following morning. An overhead crane lifted the twenty-seven-ton empty shell—light and eminently more manageable without its warhead and full complement of fuel—and gingerly deposited it on a giant green erector-transporter that waited on rail tracks at the hangar door. Korolev, apparently still feeling the emotional pinch of the previous day’s panic, patted his missile sentimentally. “Well,” he told the assembled dignitaries, “shall we see off our first-born?”

  A solemn procession began along the sandy mile-and-a-half-long berm that connected the assembly hangar to the launchpad, a tradition that would be repeated for every subsequent space launch and continues to this day. Heads bowed in silence, hands clasped behind their backs, the scientists, soldiers, and technocrats followed the locomotive that slowly, painstakingly pushed the R-7 on its transporter to the fire pit. A grainy and undated Soviet video captured the scene. In the front row, Korolev in a black leather jacket walked next to Voskresenskiy, his trusted chief of flight testing, looking like a portly French painter in the black beret that he used to seal liquid oxygen leaks with frozen urine. Farther back, the bemedaled generals, their olive green uniforms matching the military paint job on the 150-foot-long transporter. Behind them, Glushko, Ryabikov, and Rudnev, the deputy minister for military-industrial works. Then, bringing up the rear, the rest of the bureaucrats and lesser designers. In the video, no one is talking, and faces seem grim. The camera pans away to reveal a tableau of windswept dunes and a pair of camels on a ridge—though these have almost certainly been spliced in for exotic effect since it was highly unlikely that Kazakh herders were permitted to wander freely around Tyura-Tam.

  Fifty minutes elapsed before the R-7 reached the launchpad, and the huge hydraulic boom on the transporter began to inch upward. Slowly, over the next hour and ten minutes, the rocket was raised into the waiting arms of the Tulip launch stand. When at last it had been fully righted, the transporter boom lowered it and the Tulip’s petals closed around its waist like a vice. The R-7 was now suspended in midair, its thrusters hanging just below ground level over the 120-foot-deep, five-football-fields-wide concrete apron of the fire pit. But before fueling could begin, it still had to be tested one last time. It was a shortcoming of horizontal assembly, a time-consuming extra step that the Americans had skipped by building their towering new hangar at Cape Canaveral several dozen stories high so that U.S. missiles could roll out already tested and in the vertical position.

  Marshal Nedelin, in particular, was unhappy with the Soviet arrangement. He was going to head the Strategic Rocket Forces, and in the event of a nuclear attack, precious time would be lost running unnecessary diagnostics. An ICBM’s retaliatory value depended largely on how quickly it could be fired, and the R-7 was proving painfully slow to get off the ground. Nor could problems be fixed once the missile was fueled, due to the risk of explosion.

  Nedelin paced impatiently throughout the morning, glancing disapprovingly at his watch as the technicians checked connections and valves and electrical circuits. Sometime during the diagnostic tests—there are conflicting accounts as to precisely when—a malfunction with the satellite was uncovered. One of its silver zinc batteries was leaking electrolytes, and there was a disruption in the current. “Technical banditry,” howled Rudnev, the man who had assured Chertok that no one would be sent to Siberia if the R-7 failed. But now, in the heat of the moment, he wanted heads to roll for the perceived sabotage. Korolev, however, was uncharacteristically calm. “Let’s not make a fuss,” he consoled the highly agitated deputy minister. “There is still time to make the necessary corrections.”

  It was not until shortly before six the following morning, on Friday, October 4, that fueling could begin. By then, many of the launch crew had fallen ill from spending so much time in the unseasonably cold weather. An Arctic blast had descended over the Kazakh steppe from Siberia, bringing howling winds and freezing temperatures, but the personnel at Tyura-Tam were still dressed for the broiling summer. Huddled around a makeshift shack that served moldy salami and stale pastries but no hot tea, the soldiers and technicians shivered and cursed. “OK, dear,”
said one, addressing the missile. “Fly away and carry our baby into space. Or at least crash. Just fly away, and don’t stay here,” he added, dreading the prospect of the additional days it would take to drain and dismantle a stalled rocket.

  Rail tankers containing 253 tons of kerosene and supercold liquid oxygen pulled up to the hinged girders of the Tulip, and soldiers heaved huge hoses onto cables and pulleys that hoisted them up to the R-7’s intake valves. The troops manning the fueling operation wore no protective clothing other than gloves, and clouds of cryogenic condensate descended on them through the bleed valves that hissed frozen oxygen vapors as they pumped a small amount of liquid oxygen to cool and pressurize the rocket’s plumbing.

  The nearly minus-300-degree liquid oxygen evaporated at an alarmingly rapid rate, which was why the R-7 had to be filled shortly before takeoff and its tanks constantly topped off, and could not be stored ready for firing like future generations of ICBMs that would use storable propellants. The combustible mist infused the soldiers’ hair and clothes; eventually, after several horrific cases of people igniting, the Soviets would adopt more stringent safety precautions. But during the early R-7 launches, caution was not a concern.

  The fueling process lasted five excruciating hours, the soldiers carefully distributing the propellant into each of the missile’s ten integral tanks to maintain weight equilibrium. Compressed gases like nitrogen and liquefied hydrogen peroxide were then pumped under high pressure into the turbos that would drive the fuel pumps. Throughout the arduous process, Nedelin once again must have watched the clock with alarm and dismay. The next war would be an instantaneous conflagration, won or lost not in a matter of days or months but hours and minutes. In such a conflict, when missiles could cross continents and oceans in the time it took to load a bomber, five hours was an eternity. The Americans were already talking about designing a new storable solid-fuel rocket that could be ready to launch in less than five minutes, and here Nedelin had to wait a day and a half just to top off the tanks. The very same soldiers fueling the R-7 would have to fire it in the event of a war, and unless they picked up the pace, the R-7 risked being taken out while it was still on the ground.

  Korolev, however, ignored the impatient rumblings of the military observers. “Nobody will rush us,” he instructed his engineers. He had come too far to make a mistake now. He had waited twenty years for this moment, sacrificed his marriage to Ksenia, his health, even his freedom during the purges to work on rockets. He could wait a few more hours. “We will launch at 22 hours and 28 minutes,” he announced.

  • • •

  “T minus ten minutes,” blared the loudspeaker, as Korolev, Voskresenskiy, and the other R-7 State Commission members filed into the underground control bunker 200 yards from the launchpad. Above them, powerful spotlights illuminated the frost-covered rocket, which glistened in the night like a giant icicle. Steam hissed from its bleed valves, enveloping the launch stand in thick, billowy clouds bisected by sharp beams of light.

  At 10:20 PM, the rocket’s automated guidance systems were switched on, and its inertial gyroscopes began spinning, emitting a low hum. Inside the crowded bunker, the military operators manning the dimly illuminated panels and dials of the various control stations scanned their indicators for signs of trouble. Almost immediately, a warning signal on the Auxiliary Systems panel started flashing. It was the fuel tank sensor in one of the peripheral boosters. The level of liquid oxygen was low. All eyes turned to Korolev. Was it serious? Should they abort? Korolev and Voskresenskiy exchanged meaningful looks and huddled in a whispered conference with the two ranking military launch commanders. It wasn’t critical, Korolev decided. They would proceed with the countdown.

  Voskresenskiy returned to the helm of one of the bunker’s two periscopes and stared out through the viewer. The R-7 seemed fine. He flashed the Chief Designer a brief, helpless smile. He and Korolev had just made their final decision. The launch was now out of the scientists’ hands, an entirely military operation, and as civilians they were henceforth just spectators.

  “One minute to go,” announced Colonel Aleksandr Nosov, swiveling the second periscope like a submarine commander. This was now Nosov’s show, and though he was aiming at space, the launch would be treated like a regular ballistic missile training exercise. “Key to launch,” he ordered, and Lieutenant Boris Chekunov, the “button man,” inserted the key that controlled the circuit breaker on the firing switch. “Key on,” Chekunov responded.

  “Roll tape.” The telemetry readouts began rolling off the printer like a stock market ticker tape. “Purge the system,” Nosov called out ten seconds later. Inside the rocket, compressed nitrogen was blasted through the engine feed lines to flush out any gaseous residue from the fueling and testing. “Key to drainage.” Chekunov flipped the switch, and all the bleed valves closed. The hissing and steaming abruptly ceased, and the vapor clouds around the rocket disappeared as the last of the feed lines that topped off the evaporating liquid oxygen was automatically disconnected. Two minutes passed before Nosov issued his next command: “Pusk,” or “Launch.”

  Chekunov pressed the launch button, starting the automated sequence. Inside the R-7, compressed nitrogen rushed into the propellant tanks, pressurizing them to the bursting point. The umbilical mast with the ground electrical connections retracted and the missile switched to onboard battery power.

  “Roll tape two,” Nosov commanded ninety seconds later. Every ground receiving station in the Soviet Union was activated to full power, ready to track the rocket. It was now 10:28 PM. Inside the R-7, valves opened, and the turbo pumps began sucking thousands of gallons out of the propellant tanks. “Ignition,” called Chekunov, reading the flashing light on the panel in front of him. From their periscopes Voskresenskiy and Nosov could see a cloud of orange smoke envelop the rocket, as flames poured out of the thirty thrusters. But the fire was languid and lazy, dancing, directionless. “Initial stage,” Nosov called out. The engines were only warming up; the turbo pumps that fed fuel to the combustion chambers were operating at a fraction of their capacity. This was normal and followed after a few seconds by a ground-shaking roar. “Primary stage,” Nosov shouted, as the R-7 went to full thrust. An ear-splitting din, like the sound of lightning as it strikes, penetrated the bunker’s thick concrete walls, and the light coming through the periscopes’ viewfinders was blinding as the flames shooting out of the rocket intensified to white-hot jets of superheated gas. They slammed into the bottom of the fire pit with such force that updrafts propelled them back up the sides of the missile 120 feet above. For a split second, the rocket sat there burning itself alive, and then it slowly rose from the pyre. “Liftoff, liftoff,” Nosov screamed, as a million pounds of downward pressure pushed the Tulip’s hinged pedals open and the R-7 was released.

  In the eight seconds it took the 280-ton missile to climb the first 1,000 feet, an alarm indicator had silenced the cheers in the control room. The engine of one of the peripheral blocs, the same side booster that had registered low liquid oxygen levels, had been late achieving full power. The rocket had still taken off normally, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a sign of trouble to come; the problematic booster might still suffer a critical failure before it separated. The seconds were ticking by quickly, though, and there was nothing anyone could do now but monitor the display panels and stopwatches and hope for the best. At sixteen seconds, another alarm indicator began winking. The Tank Depletion System, which ensured that propellant flowed evenly to all the combustion chambers, had malfunctioned. The engines weren’t burning fuel uniformly, which could affect the rocket’s course and, more important, its speed and preprogrammed cutoff time. Now everyone was seriously worried. The glitches were piling up fast, and no one had forgotten the disaster that had occurred at the ninety-eighth second of the first R-7 flight.

  At 116 seconds a fiery cross appeared thirty miles above the Tyura-Tam test range. The four side boosters had jettisoned, creating the biblical effect, and miracu
lously the separation had occurred exactly on schedule. Relief swept through the control room. Only the central sustainer core was now firing, which meant that fewer things could go wrong. Glushko’s reconfigured engine had enough fuel for two more minutes of flight. Then they would know.

  The control bunker was subdued; there were too many generals and colonels and deputy ministers present for the young lieutenants in the launch crew to display their emotions. But in the assembly hangar, where most of the civilian scientists and engineers listened to the action on a loudspeaker, it was a different story. There, emotions ran high; whoops and cheers greeted milestones, while announcements of glitches were met with moans and groans.

  For the next two minutes, all eyes were riveted on the clock. Then the loudspeaker sounded. “Main engine shut down.” A distressed murmur reverberated through the hall. The engines had run out of fuel at 295.4 seconds. That was more than a full second early, a result of the Tank Depletion System malfunction. Slide rules were whipped out and calculations hastily performed. Would the early cutoff affect escape velocity? The R-7 was supposed to be traveling at just over 8,000 meters per second—roughly 18,000 miles an hour—but it was making only 7,780 meters per second. It was also five miles lower than it should be, at 142 miles in altitude instead of 147 miles. Would it be enough to orbit? Another 19.9 seconds passed before the next announcement. Meanwhile, momentum had carried the missile, still traveling at twenty-three times the speed of sound, another one hundred miles higher. “Separation Achieved.” Inside the R-7’s nose cone, pneumatic pistons rammed PS-l’s steel cradle, pushing it away from the spent booster. A spring-loaded mechanism popped off PS-l’s conical cover, and the sphere hurtled into the blackness of space.