Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  The Germans were not invited in the autumn of 1948 when the launch testing of the R-1 began. At first the test series did not go well for Korolev. Equipment failure prevented the first two planned launches in September. The next rocket did fly, but veered more than 50 degrees from the planned flight path to land only six miles from where it was launched. This was followed by yet another failed attempt before, finally, on 10 October 1948, there was a successful launch and the R-1 travelled almost 190 miles. This success was followed by others – but there was a recurring problem. The missiles were several miles wide of the target. As ever, Serov was on hand to scrutinize any failure and report back.

  When he returned to Moscow, Korolev received an unexpected summons to ‘the Big House’ – the Kremlin. He was instructed to go to ‘Lavrenti Pavlovich, office 13’. According to his Russian biographer Mikhail Rebrov, Beria himself demanded to see Korolev. At the time, Beria was primarily preoccupied with controlling security issues surrounding the Soviet atomic bomb, which was being developed by the leading Soviet atomic physicist, Igor Kurchatov. Although security in the Soviet missile programme had been delegated to Serov, there is evidence that Beria found time to intervene personally.

  In Rebrov’s colourful account, as Korolev approached Beria’s room he passed his assistants, their normally impassive faces heavy with foreboding. He entered office 13. Beria did not look up. Everything about him conspired to give an image of obstruction. Korolev saw a big man behind a massive desk, his large, balding head bent over papers. When he finally looked up, Korolev noticed ‘his eyes were almost completely obscured by the gleaming glass circles of his pince-nez’. It was difficult to gauge a man whose eyes could not be read. Beria threatened Korolev by creating the impression that there were ‘doubles’ – another team of designers working on exactly the same problem and whose work was much more satisfactory. ‘Why were Korolev and his colleagues working so badly?’ he demanded angrily. For Korolev it brought back sharply the fear of his early years, the feeling of ‘conveyer belt-supplied suspects’ whose lives could just be wiped away. He suddenly felt struck by ‘his complete helplessness and impotence and the lawlessness of the people in power’.

  The threats did not end with the meeting. Korolev began to receive unexpected telephone calls in the middle of the night. At first this was to demand explanations. ‘Have you had an explosion again? Why? Whose fault is it?’ On one occasion, claims Rebrov, Korolev was terrified:

  ‘Comrade Korolev?’ The voice was faint but nonetheless recognizably Beria’s.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘I’ve been sent the protocol of the latest tests. Another failure. And again no one is to blame? Some people are soliciting an award for you – but I think you deserve a warrant!’

  Beria laughed. Korolev fell silent. He knew further failures were unavoidable during development testing.

  ‘We are doing our work honestly…’ he tried to explain.

  ‘It has to be proved. Did you understand about the warrant?”

  The line went dead. Korolev, alone in the darkness, found ‘his hands were shaking and his mind was in chaos’. Fear and the experience of repression he had endured for seven long years were never far from his mind. He was very aware ‘any dissent with official policy was fraught with annihilation, if not physical then moral. The powers hugged with one hand and maimed with the other.’

  Korolev had another reason to be anxious. Despite the pressures on him to prioritize military goals, he had not been able to dismiss his all-consuming interest in space. He had been encouraging his old friend Tikhonravov to present his ideas for launching a satellite at the prestigious Academy of Artillery Sciences in Moscow. They hoped to create an open forum for discussion. In the aftermath of the Second World War, however, the notion of allocating scarce resources for something as apparently inconsequential as a satellite was considered so heretical that at first Tikhonravov had not even been granted permission to speak about it publicly. The very idea of it, says Golovanov, was seen as ‘strange if not wild’. After all, the Soviets were in urgent need of a military programme – not a space programme. What use was a satellite? Yet after some campaigning, that autumn, while Korolev’s R-1 test series was underway, Tikhonravov was finally permitted to give his presentation.

  Tikhonravov had about him the air of a man who had perhaps already sampled the mysteries of another planet. Although his manner was usually mild and retiring, when he talked about space he came alive with a conviction that could not be doubted. He explained that it had long been predicted that if an object could achieve sufficient speed, it should theoretically be possible to create a balance between the outward force generated by its velocity and the earth’s gravitational pull. This would enable a rocket to stay in orbit around the earth, held by exactly the same forces that keep the moon in orbit. These inspiring ideas came from the Russian space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the mathematics teacher whose formulae working out the relationship between a rocket’s weight, fuel and speed had shown that in principle it would be possible to launch a satellite. Now, at last, these ideas could be put to the test.

  Tikhonravov believed that it was possible to create a rocket that might have enough power to place this intriguing prospect within their grasp. There were countless unknowns: they did not know what the upper atmosphere was like, how cold it was, or whether a craft’s delicate instrumentation could be destroyed by radiation. However, from temperature and pressure measurements of the lower atmosphere they could estimate the thickness of the atmosphere at forty to fifty miles. To orbit the earth, they needed to get above this to reduce the friction and drag that the atmosphere would have on any vehicle. Tikhonravov had a solution. He outlined what he called his ‘packet theory’, showing how three or more rockets strapped together could provide enough power to achieve the necessary speed – estimated at 18,000 mph.

  Many in the audience dismissed these ideas outright as ‘the realm of fantasy’ and certainly anti-Soviet. Tikhonravov was accused by his superiors of not focusing on ‘real’ work and was quietly demoted. The usually unassuming President of the Academy, Anatoli Blagonravov, who had given permission for the presentation to go ahead, was fearful that they were at risk of being ‘accused of getting involved in things that they did not need to get involved in’. But Korolev was fascinated. Tikhonravov was setting out ideas that might enable them to make a rocket powerful enough to blast into orbit. The prospect was tantalizing, and Korolev, although aware of the risks, hoped to raise it at the highest level. He would choose his moment carefully.

  In July 1949, he thought he had his opportunity when he was summoned to meet Stalin once more. It was an important occasion, less than a month before the testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb. Stalin wanted a full report on the status of both his atomic and missile programmes. Waiting in reception with Ustinov, Korolev found himself terribly nervous at the thought of mentioning his ideas to Stalin. Eventually he was shown in. The atmosphere was tense. Stalin was pacing around the room, dressed in military style: high, stiff collar, the epaulettes of a general, trousers with wide, red stripes tucked into leather boots. Korolev noted that Ustinov ‘did not take his eyes off Stalin for a single moment’. Stalin happened to question Ustinov on the best means of transporting rockets, and ‘Ustinov didn’t just stand up, he almost bore himself into the ceiling’.

  One of the senior military officials present was critical of allocating scarce resources to rocket development since they could be as much as three miles off target. What use was such an inaccurate missile to the military? When he had finished, Stalin looked around the table. ‘Does anyone else want to say something? Please, Comrade Korolev …’

  Korolev stood up ‘without taking his gaze off the chestnut eyes of Stalin’ and launched into a passionate retaliation, accusing the official of being ‘short-sighted, technically backward and lacking a sense of innovation’. He explained that they would soon be able to test launch the R-2 and felt sure the answer to g
o beyond even this new design was on his drawing board already. His latest design, the R-3, would have a range of 1800 miles and the new engines, in development by Valentin Glushko, would be capable of at least 120 tons of thrust. This rocket would have the ability to strike at military bases in the heart of England. When he had quite finished, Korolev went suddenly ‘white as chalk’, realizing that he might have gone too far.

  There was a pause as Stalin digested the conversation. He seemed to savour the discomfiture of the people in the room, almost prolonging his deliberations. At first he appeared to agree with the military but then, after pacing the room once more, he announced: ‘I think that there is a great future in rocket technology. We need rockets as part of our armament. Let our comrade soldiers gain experience in using rockets. Let us ask Comrade Korolev to make the next rocket more precise …’

  For another long moment he remained silent, aware of his ability to create fear, then he launched into an attack against Churchill and Truman. They were warmongers, he said, who would like to use their atomic weapon on the Soviet Union. It was essential that men like Kurchatov, Ustinov and Korolev speeded up their efforts.

  The moment passed. There was no chance for Korolev to raise his vision of a space satellite. The meeting was entirely focused on critical military goals. As he left in silence, Korolev impulsively decided to sound out a senior member of the military, Colonel General Mitrofan Nedelin, head of the Chief Artillery Directorate, whom he hoped would be sympathetic. But Nedelin, too, was dismissive. He warned Korolev against too close an association with Tikhonravov, who was widely seen as ‘a dangerous dreamer’, leaving Korolev in no doubt that talk of space flight or a satellite was foolhardy. The Soviet Union was full of ears listening for such subversive talk. If Korolev persisted, he was likely to lose more than his job. Bringing the conversation to an abrupt end, he warned that higher generals had ‘called for the dismissal of Blagonravov’ at the Academy of Artillery Sciences for providing some support for the satellite notion. ‘Your name has also not been left out.’ Korolev listened to the warning, but was undeterred. With plans in development not just for the R-2, but a whole new family of Soviet rockets – the R-3 and the R-5 – he would be more careful, but nothing would stand in his way.

  Two months later, on 1 September 1949, Korolev’s ambition to marry Nina was at last fulfilled. It had been hard for his first wife, Ksenia, to acknowledge the marriage was over and the divorce came at the high cost of estrangement from his daughter, Natasha. ‘Everything inside me turned to stone,’ Natasha recalled, years later. When her father remarried, her mother made her agree never to see her father’s new wife. ‘I adored my mother and agreed to the promise,’ Natasha says.

  Almost immediately after his marriage to Nina, Korolev was off to Kapustin Yar. He had less than a year to prepare for a series of launches on his first Soviet rocket to go beyond the German work – the R-2. Facilities there were still basic. In the autumn and winter, the nights were so bitterly cold that people slept fully clothed, while the wind, moaning and spitting, whipped the sand into a weapon of torture. Communal high spirits and alcohol-induced warmth could be found in the canteen – but not by Korolev. He told Nina, ‘I can’t have a good time any longer if you are not with me.’

  Despite the inhospitable surroundings, he worked with complete dedication and in April 1950 was promoted within NII-88 to run the Special Design Bureau – now renamed OKB-1. By the autumn he was ready to embark on test launches of the R-2. The first launch was a failure but on 26 October 1950 a feeling of triumph raised spirits when the R-2 travelled, as planned, 370 miles from the launch site. Glushko’s new powerful RD-101 engines with their 35 tons of thrust combined with the innovations in the design of the missile at last enabled a greater range.

  Korolev’s R-2 set a new Soviet record and established his position as the leading Soviet missile designer. In just five years, the former ‘enemy of the state’ had unknowingly won the race for supremacy and stolen a march on his rivals in America. His team had created the foundation of a significant Soviet rocket industry, having developed a rocket of twice the range of the V-2, with many more in the planning stages. And Korolev secretly hoped that this was just the beginning.

  As for von Braun, Korolev could have spared himself any concerns that he was pioneering an American space programme. The nearest von Braun had got to the stars was when he wrote a science fiction book in 1948. Entitled The Mars Project, it described the fantastic adventures of a journey to the planet. Seventeen publishers turned it down.

  PART THREE

  The Race to Space

  ‘Dreams, dreams, without dreams man is a bird without wings. And now I’m very close to the greatest dream of mankind. In every century men were looking at the dark blue sky and dreaming.’

  SERGEI PAVLOVICH KOROLEV, to his wife, NINA, 1957

  ‘Sweeping around the earth in a fixed orbit, like a second moon, this man-made island in the heavens … could be the greatest force for peace ever devised or one of the most terrible weapons of war.’

  WERNHER VON BRAUN, Collier’s, March 1952

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘A second moon’

  In August 1949, the bright-ringed flash and the mushroom cloud billowing high in the sky over the wilderness of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan told of the Soviet success in testing their atomic bomb. American complacency was halted. For so long apparently impregnable, separated from Europe by a vast ocean, Americans now began to fear a Soviet nuclear strike. Cold War divisions between the capitalist West and the communist East hardened as the two superpowers sought to strengthen their positions. Western nations formed a military alliance, NATO, and in due course the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc united under the Warsaw Pact. As the rhetoric of the Cold War intensified, fears grew on both sides that the opposing superpower might attempt a pre-emptive strike.

  In the West there was a fear that communism was spreading across the globe and would in time undermine the capitalist way of life. China became communist under Mao Tse-Tung and other countries in Southeast Asia had communist uprisings. Then, in June 1950, communist North Korean forces launched a devastating attack into US-backed South Korea. Amid fears that Stalin had masterminded the attack, the American-led UN forces beat back the communist troops into North Korea. Soon, Chinese troops joined the North Koreans and, as the crisis escalated, the American General Douglas MacArthur called for the use of atomic weapons against China. In this explosive political climate, as the world apparently edged its way towards World War Three, defence spending rose 350 per cent in America. And at last von Braun was presented with an opportunity. He was ordered to develop a missile which could propel a nuclear warhead two hundred miles. The waiting was over.

  The US army had transferred von Braun and his team to live among the community in Huntsville, Alabama, working at the Redstone Arsenal. They began designing a rocket combining V-2 technology with an atomic warhead, which became known as the Redstone. Like the V-2, it was a short-range tactical battlefield rocket that could carry its warhead over two hundred miles, but it could deliver a much heavier payload with greater accuracy. New features were incorporated, many based on ideas originally devised at Peenemünde and similar to those developed by Korolev’s team for the R-2. The large fuel tanks became an integral part of the body of the missile, and were not contained separately within it. The nose cone and warhead could separate from the main body of the rocket and the guidance system was greatly improved with more lightweight modern electronics replacing the old valves. However, although this provided von Braun with new research in rocket technology, funding was low and the modest aims set for the Redstone were far removed from his vision of space exploration.

  While research was underway, von Braun fell under suspicion again, not for Nazi links this time but communist ones. The US Senator Joseph McCarthy initiated witch-hunts against ‘card-carrying members of the Communist Party’ in senior government positions. ‘McCarthyism’ was rife. German atomic s
cientists working in America had been exposed as Soviet spies. Klaus Fuchs, a physicist, was tried at the Old Bailey in London. His trial caused a sensation as he admitted passing on the secrets of the American nuclear programme to the Soviets, enabling them to catch up fast in atomic weaponry. Also in the spring of 1951, the Soviets had begun to release many of the Germans who had been working for them. Back in the West, some had made contact with their old Peenemünde colleagues. The finger of suspicion began to be pointed at the Germans at Huntsville.

  In June 1951, the Director of the FBI received intelligence suggesting that the Soviets were interested in the German scientists in America and feared that ‘attempts might be made to develop them as espionage agents’. File notes show that von Braun was quizzed in detail about his relatives, especially those residing in the Soviet zone such as his father-in-law, Alexander von Quistorp, formerly president of a Berlin bank. Von Quistorp had been invited to the Soviet zone in Berlin after the war, ostensibly to attend a high-level meeting with leading bankers to discuss currency stabilization in Germany. They had all been arrested and deported to an unknown destination in the Soviet Union. After a two-year wait for news, he was finally traced to the Waldheim camp in East Germany. Such was the fear that von Braun might be recruited as a double agent that within a few months he was interrogated again. He was even quizzed as to whether he ‘received unsolicited copies of the Daily Worker’ or whether he ‘had been the recipient of any threatening letters’. This time records show that von Braun was satisfactorily ‘reoriented’ as to his duties and responsibilities.