by Jay Chladek
When plans were made for the three-person Voskhod flights, Volkov was under consideration to join the cosmonaut program as one of OKB-1s cosmonaut-engineers. He felt he had a good shot thanks to his health, his flight experience, and his engineering background, but he didn’t get the assignment. When he complained bitterly to Korolev, the chief designer responded calmly, “You are still too young. There is time. It is impossible to send everybody on spaceships. Somebody has to design them.” After briefly considering a career change, Volkov remained at his job; in 1966 after Korolev’s death, Mishin put forth his name as one of twelve cosmonaut-engineer candidates. After passing the air force medical screening, Volkov trained as a cosmonaut flight engineer.
Volkov was also the first accredited journalist to fly in space, thanks to articles he had written previously for the Soviet Army’s newspaper Red Star. He kept a personal diary of everything that happened on the Soyuz 7 flight and impressed his fellow crewmates in the process. Before launching on Soyuz 11, he had sent proof pages that he had written for his biography to a publisher, as there were plans to publish this book once he returned home.
Compared to Vladislav Volkov, Viktor Patsayev was almost a directly opposite individual. Patsayev was also a civilian engineer, but he was quiet and reserved. He liked to listen and analyze. He would typically avoid conflicts, and he would try to prove his points only with indisputable facts, rather than with his own opinions. While Volkov was driven to do things by his force of will, Patsayev typically liked to do things mainly so he could figure out how they worked. Spaceflight and how devices worked in it seemed to fascinate him.
Viktor Patsayev was born in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan, on 19 June 1933 near the Russian border. His father was director of the local bakery, but he was also a Soviet army reservist. Young Patsayev loved books from a very young age, as he would read almost anything he could get his hands on. Patsayev wanted to attend school at age five, when most children wouldn’t attend until age eight, but his parents didn’t allow him to do so until age seven. Even being one year younger than his classmates, Patsayev’s exam scores were considered excellent.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, his father was called to active duty and was killed in action, defending Moscow. This greatly affected a Viktor Patsayev who was not quite eight years old, and he seemed to mature beyond his years as a result. He still continued his quest for knowledge. Patsayev’s mother remarried after the war, and he attended school to complete seventh and eighth grade with two step-brothers.
Patsayev would read history books and mathematics and natural sciences text books. He also developed a love of science fiction as he read the novels of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and even books by Jack London. In high school, he and a few friends built their first telescope and would spend hours looking at the heavens. It is believed that this is the time when Patsayev became interested in spaceflight. He also taught himself German, and years later he became fluent in English as well.
By many accounts today, Viktor Patsayev would be considered a genius in a Western society. But he wasn’t just a bookworm; he was a very active athlete. He was also a competition sharpshooter and archer. After high school, Patsayev wanted to become a geologist. But while his scores on entrance exams to get into the Moscow Geology Institute were considered good, they were not quite good enough, and he was denied entry. Instead, he enrolled in the Penza Industrial Institute. At Penza, Patsayev applied for and was accepted into a class that would study the (then) new technology of computers. He graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1955 with honors.
Patsayev spent the next few years designing scientific instruments that were launched into the upper atmosphere by balloons and sounding rockets. During this period, he married his wife, Vera, who was a researcher at the Central Scientific Research Institute for Machine Building (TsNIIMash). They had two children—a son named Dmitry, born in 1957, and a daughter, Svetlana, born in 1962. It was during this period that Viktor Patsayev met Sergei Korolev. Patsayev read articles written by Korolev and approached the designer with a desire to transfer from his current job to OKB-1. While Patsayev was very competent at his job designing instruments for sounding rockets, he wasn’t very happy where he was working; Korolev’s work seemed like a better prospect. Korolev was impressed by the young engineer’s experience, and a position was found for Patsayev at OKB-1 a little over a year after the two men first met one another. At OKB-1 the young engineer worked on many critical components for Soviet spacecraft, including the life-support systems. After a few years working in this capacity, both he and Vladislav Volkov were assigned to the recovery teams that would retrieve cosmonauts returning from space.
In 1967 Mishin was recruiting OKB-1 engineers to participate in the Soviet lunar-landing program. After passing the medical exams, Patsayev was accepted as part of the second group of cosmonaut-engineers and was selected for lunar space-mission training. During training, Patsayev’s quiet, analytical approach to his schooling caught the attention of his classmates and instructors alike. He was determined to do a good job but didn’t make any moves to call attention to himself. Instead he let his work do the job.
14. The Soyuz 11 crew of Patsayev (top), Dobrovolsky (center), and Volkov (right) dressed in Soyuz flight gear for the era.
In 1970 Viktor Patsayev accepted a transfer to the DOS project, where he became assigned to the third crew of cosmonauts along with Dobrovolsky and Volkov. While Viktor Patsayev was the third member of the crew, he didn’t let that bother him, as he reportedly said in one interview, “Your position on the crew—flight engineer, researcher, physician, or commander—isn’t important. In order to work well together, we have to believe in and respect one another, and we must celebrate the achievements of our crewmates. That is the foundation of a crew.” Considering Viktor Patsayev apparently valued honesty and sincerity throughout his life, this statement likely sums up his character the best.
Flight of the Yantars
Two days after the crew change was made, on 6 June 1971 the crew of Soyuz 11 journeyed to the launchpad. As during the previous Soyuz flights, they wore only lightweight clothing. This was common Soviet practice, as pressure suits had not been used for launches since Voskhod 2. Even in the Soyuz missions where space walks were planned, the cosmonauts conducting those space walks would not don their suits until preparing for the EVAs themselves. For this flight, the crew was given the radio call sign “Yantar” (Russian for the semiprecious stone “Amber”). So Dobrovolsky was Yantar 1, Volkov was Yantar 2, and Patsayev was Yantar 3. On orbit, they would be referred to only by those designations during radio transmissions with the ground.
At 07:55 Soyuz 11 rose from its launchpad and headed into orbit with a flawless liftoff. The crew was in good spirits as the bad memories of the abrupt crew change gave way to the excitement of their mission and the duties they had to perform. Just before liftoff, Volkov prompted the crew to wave farewell to the controllers on the ground via their onboard camera, which they did. The spirit of a nation would ride with Soyuz 11 into orbit, as this flight of the Yantars would be the first mission covered extensively in the Soviet press while it was taking place.
Upon reaching orbit, Soyuz 11 began its one day trek to let Salyut in a slightly lower orbit catch up to it. Due to the lessons learned from the Soyuz 10 mission, not only were changes made to the docking system, but extra propellant for the thrusters was loaded for added safety margins during the rendezvous. An additional day of provisions was on board so that potential docking troubles wouldn’t necessarily cause a mission abort.
During the early morning hours of 7 June, Soyuz 11 sighted Salyut. At a distance of sixteen kilometers, the Igla rendezvous system locked on to Salyut, and the Soyuz began to close with it. As before, the intention was to dock with the station while the spacecraft was over the tracking stations of the Soviet Union. But like Soyuz 10, the final approach didn’t occur until after the craft had moved out of range of the tracking stations. It would be another twent
y-three minutes before contact was reestablished to know if docking was successful.
At the end of the blackout period, live television signals and telemetry from the Soyuz revealed that the crew of Soyuz 11 had successfully hard docked with Salyut. When docking occurred, it was so smooth that the crew reportedly did not feel the contact, and the modified control system did not produce any of the wild oscillations experienced by Soyuz 10. They switched off the thrusters, retracted the probe, and achieved a firm hard dock.
On the next orbit, the seals with the station were verified. Finally, the order was given, and at 10:45 Moscow time on 7 June, Viktor Patsayev entered Salyut. There was a stale smell in the air; this was due to the failure of six of the station’s eight ventilation fans a few hours after the station entered orbit. Leonov was in the control center at this time. Remembering the insulting remark that Mishin made about his art supplies, he apparently asked a question to be relayed up to the crew to see if his art supplies had anything to do with failure of the fans. The crew replied that was a big negative as Leonov’s pencils and brushes remained where they had been stashed before launch in their proper location. It turned out that some loose material left inside before launch did get trapped in the fans. The smell was caused by burned insulation on two of the fans, but they continued to operate normally once the blockages were cleared. And all fans were quickly restored to service. Once everything was established and working properly, the crew was ordered to have a meal and get some rest inside the Soyuz. During the rest period, the station cabin would be cleansed of its stale air.
Congratulatory telegrams were received in the control center from all over the Soviet Union on the success of the mission so far. The station was equipped with onboard television cameras so that engineers on the ground could see the activity going on in Earth orbit. Like an American spaceflight to the moon, the Yantars would report on their experiences in space, and snippets of these video transmissions would be released to the Soviet news agencies on an almost-daily basis. The Soviet people seemed captivated by the events, having never had extensive coverage of any previous mission, not even the American flights to the moon for that matter.
Even with the loss of some instruments due to the stuck cover, the Soyuz 11 crew still had plenty of scientific experiments to keep them occupied. Exercise made up a fair portion of the day for each crewmember, as the doctors on the ground had come up with a grueling exercise regime to try to minimize the effects of weightlessness and avoid a repeat of the long recovery time of the Soyuz 9 crew. Each crewmember was to spend two hours a day tethered to a treadmill while wearing a chest expander for hard exercise and then spend another thirty minutes of “light walking” on it before retiring for scheduled rest periods. Some “sports days” were also booked into the flight program, where the cosmonauts would perform more strenuous exercise to simulate competition sports.
At certain times during the flight, they were also authorized to wear the new TNKs (a Russian acronym meaning “training loading suits”), or penguin suits, for additional exercise loads on the body. These suits had been refined from the original Soyuz 9 suit. Whereas the earlier version was attached to a wall in the orbital module, these new suits could be worn anywhere in the station. It turned out that the suits were so comfortable to wear that the crew asked for and received permission to wear them for longer periods. A negative-pressure body apparatus was also used in conjunction with the penguin suit to help counteract the changes in fluid distribution that take place in space. Each cosmonaut’s medical state was monitored by a special belt they wore around their chest.
Each cosmonaut took extensive notes in their diaries during the flight. Astronomical observations with a gamma-ray telescope and an ultraviolet telescope in the transfer compartment began on the sixth day of the flight. These observations could only take place during the thirty-five-minute period when the station was on the night side and the stars could be seen. To aim the telescopes, Dobrovolsky would rotate the station while Patsayev directed him where to point it.
The cosmonauts had problems with low lighting. To help provide necessary power to critical pieces of equipment from the Soyuz-based solar arrays, designers deliberately limited illumination levels in some parts of the station. As a result, if a piece of equipment had to be operated in one of these areas, it was often difficult to see it to make the proper settings and record the results.
Growth experiments with plants and tadpoles were conducted on orbit to check the effects of weightlessness. The frog eggs were launched aboard the Soyuz and hatched in orbit. When the tadpoles reached a certain level of maturity, the embryos were frozen and returned to Earth for scientists to study the effects of weightlessness on their cellular development. For the plants, chinese cabbage and bulb onion seeds were grown in a small hydroponics lab. Blood samples from each crewmember were also regularly collected for later analysis. A portable radiation meter was used to check for radiation exposure as well.
The flight’s routine continued for ten days without interruption, with the crew doing their regular shift of space science and observations in an around-the-clock schedule. They also transmitted regular “Cosmovision” television broadcasts to the ground in which they would conduct small tours to different parts of the station and describe their activities, using the onboard television cameras.
There was some concern that breaking the circadian rhythm cycle of the human body for such a long time—with one crewmember at rest and two awake and with each on a different cycle—might cause some nervous stress, but this cycle was maintained throughout the flight until toward the end. Concerning how the crew behaved toward one another, things were reported to have gone well for the most part, although Volkov did try to override Dobrovolsky’s authority as mission commander, which apparently led to some heated exchanges on orbit between the two of them. Patsayev, on the other hand, seemed to keep up with his work in an almost-obsessive fashion. He would quietly conduct his experiments, collect his findings, and take notes in his diary. Patsayev also continued to shave regularly, while both Dobrovolsky and Volkov began to grow beards.
On day eleven the routine was interrupted by a serious incident. Volkov smelled smoke; when he went to investigate, he noticed smoke coming from a wall panel. When the next communication pass started, he reported seeing a “curtain” in the aft part of the station. The word “curtain” was a code word for fire, but the flight controllers on the ground didn’t understand and asked him to repeat. Volkov replied in plain Russian, “There is a fire on board!” He also indicated that the crew was entering the Soyuz and that they needed the procedures for an emergency undocking because in their haste they did not grab the procedures book. His concerns were justified, as fire can be a very insidious thing in airplanes and spacecraft. While only smoke might be visible, there could be a raging inferno going on inside the panel.
Immediately, cosmonauts Nikolayev and Yeliseyev, who were on the communications loop at the control center, did their best to calm down the crew. They figured the fire was likely being caused by a piece of scientific apparatus, and they instructed the crew to switch off all power to the scientific instruments, find the specific source of the smoke, and then retreat to the Soyuz if all else failed. They relayed those instructions up to the Salyut crew, but the station passed out of range before the crew could report the results.
When the station next orbited close enough to a tracking station for an update, the crew reported that they were still aboard the Salyut. The smoke was no longer being produced. But there was still smoke in the cabin, and they all had headaches, probably from carbon monoxide exposure. As suspected, the fire had been caused by a short in one of the scientific instruments. But the condition of the station was stable otherwise. Yeliseyev continued to reassure the crew and to help put their minds further at ease, reading up the instructions for emergency undocking. That way if the situation got any worse, the crew could still evacuate. He also instructed the crew to turn on the filter fans an
d let them cleanse the air inside the station.
All seemed to return to normal, and the crew were instructed to rest at that point and resume normal operations the next day. There were some concerns as to the mental state of the crew. The person who reported the fire when it occurred and reported again when the fire was out was Volkov, not Dobrovolsky as it should have been in the proper chain of command. When the situation calmed down, Dobrovolsky resumed control. After some additional communications sessions between Volkov and engineers on the ground, it had come out that Volkov tried to resolve the situation himself rather than relying on his crewmates. Mishin communicated directly with his young cosmonaut-engineer and tried to reassure him. His instructions were simple: respect the chain of command and carry out the orders of the commander. Volkov replied that the crew would decide what to do together. It isn’t entirely known if indeed the crew wanted to evacuate the station over Volkov’s wishes or if it was only Volkov himself who wanted to evacuate. None of the crewmembers’ diaries seem to tell the whole story. But Dobrovolsky’s diary did contain one curious entry. It said, “If this is harmony, what is divergence?” in apparent reference to the crew’s relationship after the fire.
The source of the fire was traced to a seized cooling fan. When the fan jammed, the motor continued to try to drive it until the stator began to pump out dense smoke. The crew restored the other systems one by one back to operation and continued with the mission. In the coming days, the routine would return to normal, although there were still some concerns about Volkov’s behavior. He had developed a bit of a short temper and was prone to making simple mistakes while being slow to admit he made them unless pressed on the issue by ground controllers.
As the days wound on, mission managers on the ground discussed the possibility of extending the mission to thirty days. But it was decided instead that the cosmonauts would undock on the evening of the twenty-fourth day as originally planned and come home on the early morning of the twenty-fifth day just before sunrise. This would beat the old record set by Soyuz 9 by the required 10 percent needed to recognize it as an official record with international agencies.