The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

by Richard Russell Lawrence

  “Sasha, quickly, leave the module!” Korzun barked. Lazutkin dipped his head and propelled himself through the airway into base block.

  As Korzun turned back toward the fire, he saw glowing bits of molten metal and other flaming particles floating out toward him. The fire was growing larger every second, its outer edges flicking toward the far wall of the module. No one had to tell Korzun what would happen if the fire somehow burned through wall panels and pierced the hull: they would all die in minutes as the station’s atmosphere whistled through the hole.

  Smoke began to sting his eyes. The fire extinguisher in his hands had two settings, one for foam, the other for water. Korzun switched on the foam, and as the smoke grew thicker and darker around him, he pointed the extinguisher at the flame.

  Nothing.

  Nothing was coming out of the extinguisher. “At first I thought neither foam nor water was coming out,” Korzun remembered. “I thought it was just gas. I couldn’t tell what was happening because it was so dark.”

  Unsure whether the fire extinguisher was working, he dropped it. It floated off into the gathering murk. The smoke was growing thicker. He realized that he needed an oxygen mask. Turning, he ducked and propelled himself out of the module.

  “Everyone to the oxygen masks!” Korzun shouted.

  All five of the cosmonauts tumbled toward the far end of base block in a chaotic tangle of arms and legs. Russian curse words – “Shit! Damn!” – accompanied the flying scrum. Lazutkin, streaking past the others, was the first to reach a mask. He didn’t put it on, thinking he wouldn’t need it.

  Korzun’s order to don oxygen masks took Kaleri by surprise. The flight engineer had assumed the fire was already under control. He lunged toward the far end of base block, followed by Korzun, who reached his mask in two or three seconds; later the commander did not remember retrieving or donning the mask.

  “Where’s Jerry?” Korzun asked. Someone said he was in Spektr. “Bring him in here!” Korzun said, springing back toward Kvant. “We all need to be together. Okay. Now, everyone travel in pairs!” In laying out firefighting practices, the Russian trainers at Star City had emphasized how crucal it was to travel in pairs. On Earth, someone who faints or is overcome by smoke will keel over, presumably hitting the ground and prompting those nearby to rush to the rescue. In microgravity, an unconscious person will simply float in space, motionless; unless someone is hovering alongside, you may never know that individual is in trouble.

  “Sasha!” Korzun shouted to Lazutkin. “Prepare the ship!”

  Korzun’s order was for Lazutkin to prepare one of the two Soyuz escape craft for evacuation. Lazutkin immediately swam off toward the node, where the Soyuz that he, Tsibliyev, and Linenger would use to evacuate the station was docked. There is just one problem: the Soyuz reserved for Korzun, Kaleri, and Ewald was located at the end of Kvant, on the far side of the steadily growing blowtorch in the middle of the module. Simply put, there was no way to get to the Soyuz without putting out the fire. As Korzun recrossed the dinner table with a second fire extinguisher, he saw thick black smoke beginning to pour out of Kvant into base block.

  It was at about this time, as the five cosmonauts in base block were scrambling for their oxygen masks, that the station’s fire alarm – a loud, piercing buzzer – finally went off. According to Kaleri, the nearest sensor to the fire was located near the node; the alarm did not go off until the first wisps of smoke crossed the length of base block and approached the node. The alarm triggered an automatic shutdown of the station’s thundering ventilation system; this was intended to prevent the system from blowing smoke into the other modules. In the event, it was only partially successful. Smoke was soon pouring into base block.

  The alarm jarred Linenger down in Spektr, where he had already strapped himself to the wall in anticipation of sleep. He was midway through another letter to his son, John, when the alarm went off. In a flash he untangled his legs from the bungee cords securing him to the wall, flew down the length of Spektr and into the node, where he ran headlong into Tsibliyev and Ewald, who confirmed that there was, in fact, a fire in Kvant.

  “Is it serious?” Linenger asked in Russian.

  “Seryozny!” someone answered. “It’s serious! It’s serious!”

  Crawling through the node, Ewald sliced away from Linenger into Kristall, where there was a container of oxygen masks he was familiar with. The Russian oxygen mask worked on the same principle as the SFOG, using a chemical reaction to create a flow of oxygen across the wearer’s mouth. Ewald pulled the ring atop a circular container and lifted out the topmost mask, then strapped the mask across his face. It covered his mouth, nose, and eyes, protecting him from smoke inhalation. Attached to the bottom of the mask was an oxygen bottle. Flipping a switch on the container released a breath or two of oxygen. To activate the full flow of oxygen, Ewald took several quick breaths; the humidity from his breath was supposed to activate the oxygen flow. But as Ewald panted into the mask, he realized nothing was happening. There was no air flow. The mask, like the “candle” spouting fire back in Kvant, should have felt warm if the proper reaction had occurred. Ewald’s mask stayed cold.

  Without thinking, he grabbed for a second mask. “At a time like this, you don’t argue with the device,” Ewald recalled months later. The second mask worked. In seconds he felt a warm flow of oxygen across his mouth and nose. He turned and flew back into base block, where he was immediately met by an ominous sight. Thick black smoke was quickly filling the module. It had already shrouded the table where he was sitting moments before. Through the gathering murk he could just make out Korzun fighting the fire in Kvant.

  Of the fire itself, all he could see through the smoke was a yellow glow.

  Linenger too experienced problems with his oxygen mask. It fitted onto his head but wouldn’t fill up with oxygen. Smoke was already entering the node as Linenger fiddled with his mask, trying to make it work. He held his breath for several long moments, then grabbed for a second mask, flinging the other aside. Tsibliyev, who had easily donned his own mask, watched as he took several quick breaths and, to his relief found the second mask worked as planned.

  Leaving the node, Tsibliyev took Linenger into Priroda to fetch the fire extinguishers there. Linenger grabbed for one but was startled to find it was secured to the wall.

  “It won’t come off,” he said to Tsibliyev, who had found the second extinguisher would not come loose either. Both men gave the extinguishers a quick tug. Nothing.

  Months later, NASA officials analyzing the fire would be deeply disturbed by this incident. The problem of immovable fire extinguishers in Priroda was even raised in a congressional hearing by the NASA inspector general as evidence that Mir was unsafe. In fact, according to Korzun, the problem was a simple but dangerous oversight. When Priroda was blasted into space and delivered to dock with Mir in 1996, its fire extinguishers were secured by transport straps. For some reason, none of the crews who worked aboard Mir in the intervening nineteen months ever released the straps.

  This oversight effectively disabled the two extinguishers Tsibliyev and Linenger had their hands on.

  Tsibliyev remembered: Jerry wanted to talk, to ask me about it, he was saying, “What? How?” I said, “We don’t have time to discuss it. Drop it. Let’s go to Kvant 2 and get ’em there.”

  Shooting quickly back through the node into Kvant 2, Tsibliyev grabbed one of the two fire extinguishers there and handed it to Linenger.

  “Give it to Korzun,” he said.

  The second fire extinguisher Tsibliyev left on the wall. Training rules dictate always leaving one behind, in case a fire should break out in the module. Linenger took the extinguisher from Tsibliyev and ricocheted back into base block, where he was met by the sight of thick black smoke pouring into the module from Kvant. Handing the extinguisher to Kaleri, he could not see his hand in front of his face. Tsibliyev followed right behind and immediately heard Korzun shouting for more fire extinguishers. Tsi
bliyev and Linenger turned around and flew quickly to Kristall, where they recovered one more extinguisher, which they handed to Kaleri in base block.

  Lazutkin, meanwhile, heard Korzun’s order to prepare for emergency evacuation, headed through the node and into the Soyuz in which he, Tsibliyev, and Linenger would return to Earth. “We were like Pavlov’s dogs,” he remembered. “We have been trained to fulfill the [commander’s] orders. If you have a command, don’t think. Do it.” Lazutkin hunched over and began to detach the dozen or so cables draped across the entrance, including the six-inch-thick white ventilator tube.

  “What’s happening?” Tsibliyev asked Lazutkin after a moment.

  Lazutkin glanced back into base block. “It’s completely dark,” he said.

  “You can’t breathe.” Together the two men shut the capsule’s door to prevent smoke from seeping in.

  While his comrades swarmed through other parts of the station, Korzun reentered Kvant to fight the fire, alone. He hovered directly by the near wall with base block, his feet sticking through the hatch into the crawlway between the two modules. Kvant was now totally dark, smothered in smoke.

  To Korzun, who could not see his own hands, the flame itself appeared only as a bright white glow, perhaps two feet long, beneath him in the murk. He took the second fire extinguisher, turned on the foam, and shot it in a stream at a point where he believed the fire was hottest. It was difficult to tell, given the visibility, but after thirty seconds or more he didn’t believe the foam was having any effect. The flame was shooting out so fiercely, it seemd to be blowing the foam away. Korzun saw glowing particles of foam swirling around him in the dark. “It didn’t seem to be working at all,” he remembered. “The fire was too strong.”

  Korzun turned a knob on the fire extinguisher and switched his stream to water, spraying it all around the glowing white flame. He was struck by how eerie the situation was. With the ventilators shut off, the station had gone quiet. The only sound, other than the occasional muffled comments of Kaleri or one of the others behind him in base block, was the sound of the fire. It hissed at him – “like fried eggs in a frying pan,” Korzun said later.

  At first Korzun didn’t think the water was working either. He directed the stream toward the center of the hissing white glow but couldn’t be certain it was hitting the flame. And then, after a minute or so, the fire extinguisher gave out. There was no more water. Korzun turned and slipped back through the hatch into base block.

  “I need more fire extinguishers!” he shouted.

  Kaleri handed him the second unit from base block, and Korzun quickly ducked back into Kvant to face the fire.

  None of the astronauts admitted to any real fear as they fought the fire. Ewald said:

  You trained with the Soyuz to believe you can escape in your Soyuz in all circumstances. Return to Earth is assured in your mind. Even in the worst circumstances, in face masks, you think like that. You can come down. What I thought, after some seconds, after some action, I thought this would be the end of my two-week science mission. I wouldn’t get any results from my science. [When I returned to Earth] I would get a big hug, a big clap on the shoulder, but the results would have been zero for my flight. This was the end of my mission. “Sounds professional, right?”

  But as Ewald hovered amid the smoke in base block, a numbing realization struck. “Our Soyuz was on the far side of the fire,” he recalled. “It was quite clear that we would have to go through the fire to our Soyuz.” As Ewald hovered there in base block, now thoroughly filled with thick black smoke, he briefly considered making a dash for the second Soyuz, to begin powering it up for evacuation. But no sooner did the thought occur than Ewald banished it from his mind.

  Ewald remembered:

  “I’m in the military hierarchy on board; I do as I’m told. I’m not there to make up my mind and do things out of a heroic feeling. You do what the commander tells you to do. Even if I could have been some help, you do what the commander tells you, so I stayed [in base block], not because I was a coward, but because it is best to do things in an orderly way.”

  When Korzun returned to the fire with his third fire extinguisher, the glow beneath him seemed somehow smaller. He began blasting water directly at it. At about this time he heard Linenger behind him.

  “How are you?” the American shouted through his mask. “Are you okay?”

  Linenger was the crew’s only doctor. It was his unofficial duty to check on Korzun’s health, but the commander was unable to focus on what he was saying. He was too busy directing the stream of water.

  “Yes, Jerry, I am fine!” he shouted back over his shoulder. “Stay there in base block!”

  After a few moments, Korzun added some additional comments, ordering Linenger to keep a close eye on the crew. Smoke inhalation was a real danger.

  It was at about this point, Korzun remembered, that the size of the white shining beneath him appeared to be shrinking. He kept the water on it, but inch by inch the flame appeared to be dying out. Korzun didn’t remember making anything like an expression of victory or relief. His pulse was still racing, and he was breathing heavily inside his mask.

  “Jerry!” Korzun hollered.

  Linenger floated up to a position directly behind Korzun. “I need you to prepare help in case anyone is injured,” the commander said. “Check all the American FA [first aid] boxes, see what they have in them and what can be used. Check all the Russian FA boxes, as well. See what’s in those.”

  Linenger immediately sprang across the length of base block to the node, then turned and shimmied into Kvant 2, where the medical supplies were stored.

  A moment later the shining beneath the commander seemed to disappear. Korzun took a deep breath but kept the stream of water pointed downward.

  “It’s over,” Korzun told Kaleri. “I think it’s over.”

  The smoke was slowly dissipating in base block as all six crew members, still wearing their oxygen masks, gathered for the next comm pass. The damage appeared to be limited to the SFOG itself, which was destroyed, and the nearby wall panels, which were badly scorched. The hull was intact. Still, Korzun was unsure what to do. He needed guidance from the ground on whether it was safe to remain on board; no one was sure what gases had been released into the station’s atmosphere. Both Soyuz escape craft stood ready for immediate evacuation. They were flying across North America now, moving into range of the radar station NASA operated at Wallops Island, Virginia. The quality of transmission over Wallops was never strong, but it was all they had. When they came into range, Korzun began to speak into his headset microphone, describing what had happened.

  There was no reply.

  Korzun repeated himself in Russian, then in English. On the other end of the line there was only static.

  “TsUP, guys, we cannot hear you,” he said, speaking in clear, deliberate sentences. “We have had a fire aboard! We managed to extinguish the fire. The oxygen canister began burning. We extinguished it after using the third fire extinguisher The crew is wearing oxygen masks. The pressure is O2 equal to one-five-five. PCO2 is equal to five-point-five. There are nine masks left. After we take off the used masks, if we feel worse, we will put a new set of masks on and go to the [Soyuz] capsule. We will be situated in the capsules. The smokiness of the atmosphere is below average. But we don’t know the level of toxic gases.”

  Finally there was an acknowledgment from the ground. “I’ve got your information,” said an unidentified voice.

  “Any questions?” Korzun asked.

  The comm broke up again.

  “Speak, Valera!” the ground said.

  “We have ten minutes left before the masks we are wearing begin to finish,” Korzun continued. The commander, in fact, had already removed his mask and taken several tentative breaths of air. “Now we are taking the masks off and checking how we feel. If we feel worse, we’ll put on a new set of masks. We have nine left. And we will go to the capsule. Then we will be waiting in the capsule
s, waiting for when the atmosphere will be cleaner little by little. . . . The next communication will be at 4:16.”

  Another voice came on the line. “We approve your plan,” he said. “Everything is right.”

  “Okay, I understand,” Korzun said. “We’ll be controlling the situation. The only problem is we are fighting CO2. The capsules are ready for us to move into them. Meanwhile, I’m reporting, I have taken the mask off. Till now I feel normal.”

  “Are all your filters turned on?”

  “The filters, yes, the filters are switched on,” replied Korzun.

  “Did anything else burn?”

  “No, it’s normal now,” said Korzun. “Sasha Lazutkin is on duty [in Kvant]. When I left it fifteen minutes ago, it wasn’t burning. But the flame was so big that the metal at the end of [the SFOG] melted. All of it. And a little bit of the interior [of the module] around it. The panels were not touched, and all the rest [is fine]. The only thing that was, was the [SFOG]. We’ll get the reserve canisters and in case of loss of pressure, we’ll use reserve oxygen canisters in the base block.”

  “We’ve got it,” the ground said. “Everything is all right.”

  And with that, the pass was suddenly over. Korzun was nonplussed. What were they to do now? No one on the ground mentioned evacuation. For the moment the commander was unsure whether to head into the Soyuz capsules or not. The next pass, over the ground station at Petropavlovsk, on the Pacific peninsula of Kamchatka, was set for 4:16, about four hours hence.

  “I guess we wait,” Korzun told Tsibliyev.

  No one slept. Gradually the smoke cleared, helped by the station’s five different atmosphere-cleansing systems. At first everyone lingered in base block, discussing how best to proceed. Then the oxygen masks began to run out.

  “I’d like to go to a second round,” said Linenger, his voice still muffled by the bulky mask.

  “We can’t,” Korzun replied. “If we use them, we won’t have any left.”